HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS
THE
;.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY
A MAGAZINE OF
^ &rt, ana
VOLUME XC
BOSTON AND NEW YOKE
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Uliber^itie ^re^, Camftritige
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902,
Br HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
The Riverside, Press, Cambridge, Mass USA
ectrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
CONTENTS.
INDEX BY TITLES.
PAGE
African Pygmies, The, Samuel Phillips
Verner 184
All Sorts of a Paper, Thomas Bailey Al-
drich 735
America, Certain Aspects of, H. D. Sedg-
wick, Jr '5
America, The Ideals of, Woodrow Wilson 721
Artist in Hair, An, Mary A. Taylor . . 838
Athletics, Intercollegiate, Ira N. Hollis . 534
Author, An Unpublished, Edward Thomas 834
Autumn Thoughts, Edward Thomas . . 354
Black Men, Of the Training of, W. E.
Burghardt Du Bois 289
Bo's'n Hill Ground, The, George S. Was-
son 73
Book in the Tenement, The, Elizabeth
McCracken. . . . 589
Books New and Old, H, W. Boynton.
Landor's Poetry 126
Summer Fiction 275
American Humor 414
Poetry and Commonplace 553
Four Recent Biographies 706
Cleverness 852
Brazil, A Letter from, George Chamber-
lain 821
Bret Harte, H. C. Merwin 260
Brieux, Eugene, The Plays of, George P.
Baker 79
Browning Tonic, The, Martha Baker Dunn 203
Cave of Adullam, The, Alice Brown . . 252
Christianity, Chinese Dislike of, Francis
H. Nichols 773
Coal Wars, Australasian Cures for, Henry
Demarest Lloyd 667
Commercialism, Edward Atkinson . . . 517
Comparative Literature, The Columbia
Studies in, Ferris Greenslet 133
Cookery Books, My, Elizabeth Robins Pen-
nell 221,679
Court Bible, The, Alexander Black ... 809
Delicate Trial, A, Marrion Wilcox ... 772
Democracy and Society, Vida D. Scudder 348
Democracy and the Church, Vida D. Scud-
der 521
Desert, The, Verner Z. Eeed 166
Dumas, The Elder, George B. Ives ... 841
Economic Cycle, The End of an, Frederic
C.Howe 611
Education, A National Standard in Higher,
Herbert W. Horwill 329
Elaine, Emerson Gifford Taylor .... 548
Emerson's Diary, Fresh Leaves from :
Walks with Ellery Channing .... 27
England, Early Georgian, S. M. Francis . 714
Ethics, The New, William De Witt Hyde . 577
Evenings at Simeon's Store, George S.
Wasson 694
Eyes, The Care of the, A. B. Norton . . 614
Fisheries Question, The Atlantic, P. T.
McGrath 741
French Memoirs in English, S. M. Francis 281
Gardens and Garden-Craft, Frances Dun-
can 559
Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins, The,
E. E. Young 55
Handicraft, Modern Artistic, Charles H.
Moore 674
Henry Thoreau and Isaac Hecker, A Bit
of Unpublished Correspondence between,
E.H.Eussell 370
In the Fear of the Lord, Norman Dun-
can 145
Japanese Painters, Two, Adachi Kinnosuke 527
Jimville : A Bret Harte Town, Mary Aus-
tin 690
Johnson, Lionel, Of, Louise Imogen Guiney 856
Kansas of To-Day, The, Charles Moreau
Harger 361
Knightly Pen, A, Harriet Waters Preston 506
Local Option, A Study of, Frank Foxcroft 433
Longfellow, Higginson's, W. A. Neilson 849
Marsh, The, Dallas Lore Sharp .... 87
Mary Boyle, S. M. Francis 420
Memories of a Hospital Matron, Emily V.
Mason 305, 475
Memories, The Garden of, C. A. Mercer . 703
Miss Petrie's Avocation, Kate Milner Eabb 95
Montaigne, H. D. Sedgwick, Jr 441
Moonshiner at Home, The, Leonidas Hub-
bard, Jr 234
Moral Hesitations of the Novelist, Edith
Baker Brown 545
Mozart : A Fantasy, Elia W. Peattie . . 634
IV
Contents.
Navy, The New, Talcott Williams ... 383
Negro, The : Another View, Andrew Sledd 65
Night's Lodging, A, Arthur Cotton ... 195
Old Times at the Law School, Samuel F.
Batchelder 642
On Keeping the Fourth of July, Bliss
Perry 1
On Reading Books through their Backs,
Gerald Stanley Lee 124
On the Off-Shore Lights, Louise Lyndon
Sibley 377
Our Lady of the Beeches, Baroness von
Hutten 13, 172, 335, 493
Pagan, Why I am a, Zitkala-Sa .... 801
Philippines, Race Prejudice in the, James
A. Le Roy 100
Pipes of Passage, Joseph Russell Taylor . 454
Place of Darkness, The, George Kibbe Tur-
ner 394
Poetic Drama, The Revival of the, Ed-
mund Gosse 156
Porto Rico and her Schools, Some Impres-
sions of, C. Hanford Henderson . . . 783
Porto Rico, Two Years' Legislation in,
William F. Willoughby 34
Princess of Make -Believe, The, Annie
Hamilton Donnell 268
Recent Religious Literature, John Win-
throp Plainer 423
Russia, Herbert H. D. Peirce 465
Sailing, W. J. Henderson 43
Sally, Laura Spencer Portor 626
Samuel Johnson, A Possible Glimpse of,
William Everett 622
Scott, Lockhart's Life of, Henry D. Sedg-
wick, Jr 755
Shakespeare and Voltaire, Ferris Greenslet 712
Short Story, The, Bliss Perry 241
Sill's Poetry, W. B. Parker 271
Skyscrapers, Limitations to the Production
of, Burton J. Hendrick 486
Some Brief Biographies, S. M. Francis . 421
Sound of the Axe, The, S. Carleton ... 454
Strikes, A Quarter Century of, Ambrose P.
Winston 656
Things Human, Benjamin Ide Wheeler . 636
To-Morrow's Child, Mary Tracy Earle . 599
The Trade Union and the Superior Work-
man, Ambrose P. Winston 794
Unconscious Plagiarist, The, Fanny K.
Johnson 812
Walter Pater, Edward Dowden .... 112
Whar my Chris'mus ? Beirne Lay ... 749
What Public Libraries are doing for Chil-
dren, Hiller C. Wellman 402
White Feather, The, Thomas Bailey Al-
drich 298
William Black, Edward Fuller .... 409
Women's Heroes, Ellen Duvall .... 831
Woods, Going into the, Eben Greenough
Scott 318
Woodberry's Hawthorne, Ferris Greenslet 563
INDEX BY AUTHORS.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, The White Fea-
ther 298
All Sorts of a Paper ,. . 735
Alexander, Hartley, " The Only Good' In-
dian is a Dead Indian " 656
Atkinson, Edward, Commercialism . . . 517
Austin, Mary, Jimville : A Bret Harte
Town 690
Baker, George P., The Plays of Eugene
Brieux 79
Batchelder, Samuel F., Old Times at the
Law School 642
Black, Alexander, The Court Bible ... 809
Boynton, H. W., Books New and Old.
Lander's Poetry 126
Summer Fiction 275
American Humor 414
Poetry and Commonplace 553
Four Recent Biographies 706
Cleverness 852
Domremy and Rouen 514
Brown, Alice, The Cave of Adullam . . 252
Brown, Edith Baker, Moral Hesitations of
the Novelist 545
Carleton, S., The Sound of the Axe ... 454
Chadwick, John White, An Autumn Field 360
Chamberlain, George, A Letter from Brazil 821
Cloud, Virginia Woodward, Balm ... 124
Colton, Arthur, A Night's Lodging ... 195
Daskam, Josephine Dodge, Two Sonnets
from the Hebrew 748
Donnell, Annie Hamilton, The Princess of
Make-Believe 268
Dorr, Julia C.R., When I Sleep ... 304
Dowden, Edward, Walter Pater .... 112
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, Of the Train-
ing of Black Men 289
Duncan, Frances, Gardens and Garden-
Craft 559
Duncan, Norman, In the Fear of the Lord 145
Dunn, Martha Baker, The Browning Tonic 203
Duvall, Ellen, Women's Heroes .... 831
Earle, Mary Tracy, To-Morrow's Child . 599
Everett, William, A Possible Glimpse of
Samuel Johnson 622
Foxcroft, Frank, A Study of Local Option 433
Francis, S. M., French Memoirs in English 281
Mary Boyle 420
Some Brief Biographies 421
Early Georgian England 714
Fuller, Edward, William Black .... 409
Contents.
Gosse, Edmund, The Revival of the Poetic
Drama 156
Greenslet, Ferris, The Columbia Studies in
Comparative Literature 133
Woodberry's Hawthorne 563
Shakespeare and Voltaire . . . . . 712
Guiney, Louise Imogen, Of Lionel Johnson 856
Harger, Charles Moreau, The Kansas of
To-Day 361
Hawthorne, Hildegarde, Loss 99
Henderson, C. Hanford, Some Impressions
of Porto Rico and her Schools .... 783
Henderson, W. J., Sailing 43
Hendrick, Burton J., Limitations to the
Production of Skyscrapers 486
Hollis, Ira N., Intercollegiate Athletics . 534
Horwill, Herbert IF., A National Standard
in Higher Education 329
Howe, Frederic C., The End of an Eco-
nomic Cycle 611
Hubbard, Leonidas, Jr., The Moonshiner
at Home 234
Hyde, William De Witt, The New Ethics . 577
Ireland, Ethel Alleyne, A Renunciation . 492
Ives, George B., The Elder Dumas ... 841
Johnson, Fanny K., The Unconscious Pla-
giarist 812
Ketchum, Arthur, A Song 610
Kinnosuke, Adachi, Two Japanese Paint-
ers 527
Lay, Beirne, Whar my Chris'mus ? . . . 749
Lee, Gerald Stanley, On Reading Books
through their Backs, 124
Le Roy, James A., Race Prejudice in the
Philippines 100
Lloyd, Henry Demarest, Australasian Cures
for Coal Wars 667
Macy, Annie Weld Edson, The Highlands,
Cape Cod 401
Mason, Emily V., Memories of a Hospital
Matron 305, 475
Mercer, C. A., The Garden of Memories . 703
Merwin, H. C., Bret Harte 260
Monahan, Michael, Ballade of Poor Souls 793
Moore, Charles H., Modern Artistic Handi-
craft 674
Morse, James Herbert, Spider Web ... 78
McCracken, Elizabeth, The Book in the
Tenement 589
McGrath, P. T., The Atlantic Fisheries
Question 741
Neilson, W. A., Higginson's Longfellow . 849
Nichols, Francis H., Chinese Dislike of
Christianity 782
Nicholson, Meredith, Wide Margins ... 440
Edward Eggleston 804
Norton, A. B., The Care of the Eyes . . 614
Parker, W. B., Sill's Poetry 271
Peattie, Elia W., Mozart : A Fantasy . . 634
Peirce, Herbert H. D., Russia 465
Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, My Cookery
Books 221, 679
Perry, Bliss, On Keeping the Fourth of
July . 1
The Short Story 241
Piatt, John James, At Kilcolman Castle . 702
Plainer, John Winthrop, Recent Religious
Literature 423
Pollock, Frank Lillie, The End of the
Quest 347
Pomeroy, Edward N., The Watch Be-
low 53
Portor, Laura Spencer, Sally 626
Preston, Harriet Waters, A Knightly
Pen 506
Rabb, Kate Milner^ Miss Petrie's Avoca-
tion 95
Reed, Verner Z., The Desert 166
Russell, E.H.,A Bit of Unpublished Cor-
respondence between Henry Thoreau and
Isaac Hecker 370
Scott, Duncan Campbell, Rapids at Night . 259
Scott, Eben Greenough, Going into the
Woods 318
Scudder, Vida D., Democracy and Society 348
Democracy and the Church 521
Sedgwick, Henry D., Jr., Certain Aspects
of America . 5
Montaigne 441
Lockhart's Life of Scott 755
Sharp, Dallas Lore, The Marsh .... 87
Sibley, Louise Lyndon, On the Off-Shore
Lights 337
Sledd, Andrew, The Negro : Another View 65
Spofford, Harriet Prescott, Midsummer's
Day 183
Tabb, John B., The Dove 304
Taylor, Emerson Gifford, Elaine .... 548
Taylor, Joseph Russell, Pipes of Passage . 454
Taylor, Mary A., An Artist in Hair . . 838
Thomas, Edward, Autumn Thoughts . . 354
An Unpublished Author 834
Turner, George Kibbe, The Place of Dark-
ness 394
Verner, Samuel Phillips, The African Pyg-
mies 184
Von Hutten, Baroness, Our Lady of the
Beeches 13, 172, 335, 493
Wasson, George S. , The Bo's'n Hill Ground 73
Evenings at Simeon's Store 694
Wellman, Hitter C., What Public Libra-
ries are doing for Children 402
Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, Things Human . 636
Wilcox, Marrion, A Delicate Trial ... 772
Williams, Talcott, The New Navy ... 383
Willoughby, William F., Two Years' Leg-
islation in Porto Rico 34
Wilson, Woodrow, The Ideals of Amer-
ica ... . 721
VI
Contents.
Winston, Ambrose P., A Quarter Century
of Strikes 656
The Trade Union and the Superior
Workman .... .794
Young, B. E.< The Genius of Retta Rom-
any Tompkins 55
Zitkala-Sa, Why I am a Pagan
801
A Song, Arthur Ketchum
At Kilcolman Castle, John James Piatt .
Autumn Field, An, John White CkadwicTc
Ballade of Poor Souls, Michael Monahan .
Balm, Virginia Woodward Cloud . . .
Domremy and Rouen, Henry Walcott
Boynton
End of the Quest, The, Frank Lillie Pol-
lock ,
POETRY.
610 Pipes of Passage, Joseph Eussell Taylor . 454
702
360 Rapids at Night, Duncan Campbell Scott . 259
Renunciation, A, Ethel Alleyne Ireland . 492
793 -
124 Spider Web, James Herbert Morse
18
The Dove, John B. Tabb 304
514 The Highlands, Cape Cod, Annie Weld
Edson Macy 401
" The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian,"
347 Hartley Alexander 656
Two Sonnets from the Hebrew, Josephine
Loss, Hildegarde Hawthorne 99 Dodge Daskam 748
Midsummer's Day, Harriet Prescott Spof-
ford
Watch Below, The, Edward N. Pomeroy . 53
183 When I Sleep, Julia C. R. Dorr .... 304
Wide Margins, Meredith Nicholson ... 440
CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.
. 429 Milton and his Elm . 719
Altruism, The New
Barbara Frietchie at Home 717 Orthography, A Question of 716
Belt and Button 284 Out of the Way, A Little 572
Bookshelf, My Friends' 430
Peddlers, A Plague of 137
Contributor, The Reminiscences of a . . 285 Plots that One Covets 140
Good Story, Concerning the 431 Reading, Pace in 143
Grievance, An Afternoon 568 Robert Herrick, A Call on 574
InMemoriam 288 Singular Plurality, A 139
South Africa, A Briton's Impressions of . 136
Law, The Lady's 569
Local Color, The Study of 864 Those Red-Eyed Men 139
Lowell's Temperament 862
Verse in Prose 283
MagnaParsFui 575
Millionaires, On a Certain Lack of On- Walk with Mr. Warner, A 428
ginality in 286
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
of literature^ ^cience^ art, anD
VOL. XC. JUL Y, 1902. No. DXXXVIL
ON KEEPING THE FOURTH OF JULY.
" This anniversary animates and gladdens
and unites all American hearts. On other days
of the year we may be party men, indulging in
controversies, more or less important to the pub-
lic good ; we may have likes and dislikes, and
we may maintain our political differences, often
with warm, and sometimes with angry feelings.
But to-day we are Americans all ; and all no-
thing but Americans." DANIEL WEBSTER :
Address on July ^, 1851,
" The assumption that the cure for the ills of
Democracy is more Democracy." JANE AD-
DAMS : Democracy and Social Ethics, 1902.
THE readers of the Atlantic may re-
member that in the January number
there was something said about the
Cheerful and the Cheerless Reader.
Under a harmless fiction which enabled
him to speak as the Toastmaster of the
monthly dinner, the editor of the maga-
zine commented upon some of the arti-
cles which were to make up the bill of
fare for the ensuing year. And July
is here already; the year is half over,
and the monthly feasts have been duly
spread. No doubt they might have been
more skillfully served. The Atlantic's
modest " mahogany tree " might have
been garnished in a more costly manner.
But there has been wholesome fare, each
month, and good company, and new
voices to mingle pleasantly with the more
familiar ones. Saying grace has nowa-
days gone somewhat out of fashion, but
among the Atlantic's circle there has
been at least a grateful disposition to re-
turn thanks. It is the Cheerful Reader
who has been mainly in evidence since
January. Perhaps the Cheerless Read-
ers are suffering from writer's cramp.
Or are they grimly sharpening their pens
for some future onslaught ? At any rate,
they have kept strangely, perhaps omi-
nously silent. It has been the turn of
the gayer souls to be voluble. The
Toastmaster has been assured that even
the business communications to the maga-
zine, such as renewals of subscriptions
and directions for summer addresses,
have frequently been signed "Yours
Cheerfully." It is true that this access
of gayety may prove to be but temporary.
In that case there is some comfort in
the shrewd advice of a seasoned man of
letters, who writes to the editor : " My
theory is that every periodical should
contain in every number something to
make somebody ' cuss.' It is certainly
the next best thing to making them de-
lighted." Very possibly that is just
what the unlucky Toastmaster is now
proceeding to do, in offering, by way of
introduction to the contents of the pre-
sent number, some considerations On
Keeping the Fourth of July.
It should be said, in the first place,
that few readers of the Atlantic are like-
ly to accuse it of a lack of patriotism.
An intelligent devotion to the highest in-
terests of America is the chief article in
its creed. It endeavors to secure, month
by month, the opinions of competent ob-
servers of our national life,, and to en-
courage perfect freedom in the expres-
sion of those opinions. While it is not
committed to the support of any partisan
platform or policy, it believes that the
men who have been chosen to carry for-
On Keeping the Fourth of July.
ward the present administration of the
government are honest, able, and high-
minded, and that they deserve the fullest
possible cooperation of their fellow citi-
zens in maintaining American interests
at home and abroad. Whatever criti-
cism of national policy may appear from
time to time in these pages is due to the
fact that in a government like ours, based
upon freely voiced public opinion, men
of knowledge and conviction are bound
to differ in their interpretation of current
issues. It is the aim of the Atlantic to
present views based upon both know-
ledge and conviction. Such has been the
spirit of Mr. Nelson's review of the
opening months of President Roosevelt's
administration ; of Lieutenant Hanna's
and Superintendent Atkinson's accounts
of educational work in Cuba and the
Philippines ; of Mr. Villard's paper on
The New Army of the United States.
This last article, together with one short-
ly to appear, on The New Navy, will
perhaps serve better than the others to
illustrate the attitude of this magazine.
Many of its readers deplore, as its editor
certainly does, that present glorification
of brute force which would measure na-
tional greatness by the size of national
armaments. We may properly wish for
and work for the day when the Disarma-
ment Trust so agreeably pictured by
Mr. Rollo Ogden shall be a reality.
But even while we are supporting schools
and churches and every other means for
promoting good will among men, we keep
a policeman at the crossing, in the inter-
ests of that very decency which will ulti-
mately make the policeman unnecessary.
The world's cross-roads will have to be
policed for a long time yet, until men
learn to hate one another less, and our own
country's share in the world's police ser-
vice should be efficient and ample. The
good citizen of the United States ought
to know something about this department
of his country's activities, and the Atlan-
tic believes in offering him the informa-
tion, whatever may be his or the edi-
tor's personal views as to the essential
folly and wickedness of militarism.
The current number of the magazine,
for example, contains several of these ar-
ticles devoted to fundamental problems
of our national life, issues that should
not be forgotten on Independence Day.
Mr. Sedgwick's interpretation of Certain
Aspects of America is characterized by
the frank analysis, the insistence upon
the subordination of material to spiritual
values, for which he has so often made
the readers of the Atlantic his debtors.
Mr. Willoughby, the Treasurer of Porto
Rico, gives a re'sume' of the legislation
already enacted in that island, where
American " expansion " is apparently
accomplishing some of its most beneficent
results. Mr. Le Roy, who has lately re-
turned from two years' service with the
Philippine Commission, calls attention
to the grave consequences of perpetuat-
ing our American race prejudices in deal-
ing with the Filipinos. He shows that
the " nigger " theory of proceeding with
the natives has already proved a serious
obstacle to the pacification of the islands.
How deep rooted this theory is, and how
far reaching are the moral and political
penalties of African slavery in America,
can be traced in Mr. Andrew Sledd's illu-
minating discussion of the negro problem
in the South.
Indeed, profitable argument concern-
ing the behavior of our soldiers and civil-
ians in the Orient must begin with this
sort of scrutiny into what we really feel
and think at home. Self-examination,
reflection upon the actual organization
of our American society, and upon the
attempts we are making to impose that
organization by force upon Asiatic peo-
ples, this is surely a useful occupation
for some portion of the Fourth of July.
It happens that the Toastmaster is quite
ignorant of the political affiliations of the
authors of those four articles to which
allusion has been made. But men of all
parties and creeds have shared and will
continue to share in the Atlantic's hospi-
On Keeping the Fourth of July.
3
tality, and on Independence Day in par-
ticular, questions of party politics should
be tacitly dismissed. " On other days
of the year we may be party men. . . .
But to-day we are Americans all ; and all
nothing but Americans."
Do they sound rather grandiloquent,
these orotund Websterian phrases of
half a century ago ? Have we grown
superior to spread-eagleism, to barbe-
cues and buncombe, to the early fire-
cracker and the long-awaited sky-rocket,
and all the pomp and circumstance of
the Glorious Fourth ? The Toastm aster,
for one, confesses to a boyish fondness
for the old-fashioned, reckless, noisy
day. He is willing to be awakened at an
unseemly hour, if only for the memory
of dewy-wet dawns of long ago, and the
imminent deadly breach of the trusty
cannon under the windows of irascible
old gentlemen, of real battle-flags wav-
ing, and perspiring bands pounding out
The Star-Spangled Banner, and impas-
sioned orators who twisted the British
Lion's tail until it looked like a cork-
screw. The day we celebrate, ladies
and gentlemen ! And may there ever
be American boys to celebrate the day !
In the schooling of the twentieth cen-
tury we have learned something, of
course. Twisting the Lion's tail already
seems a rather silly amusement, espe-
cially when it is likely to lessen the in-
come from our investments. " We deep-
ly sympathize with the brave burghers,"
announces a New Orleans paper, " but
we cannot afford to miss selling a single
mule." It seems provincial now to re-
peat the old self-satisfied " What have
we got to do with abroad ? " We have
a great deal to do with abroad. We
have been buying geographies, and have
grown suddenly conscious of the world's
life. And new occasions teach new du-
ties. Here is a fighting parson in Bos-
ton who insists that we shall " take the
Golden Rule and make it militant," and
a doughty Captain of Infantry in Buf-
falo who preaches that "the currents
of civilization flow from the throne of
God, and lead through ways sometimes
contrary to one's will, but it seems to
me that our civilization of steel and
steam must be laid over all the world,
even though its foundations be cemented
with the blood of every black race that
strives to thwart us in our policy of be-
nevolent assimilation." Thus is the
Websterian doctrine of " Americans all ;
and all nothing but Americans " brought
up to date in 1902.
And yet looking back to the Fourth
of July oratory preceding and imme-
diately following the Civil War it is
difficult to avoid the feeling that we
have lost something too. Beneath all
the rhodomontade there was a real gen-
erosity of sentiment. There was boast-
ing enough and to spare, but it was a
boasting of principles, of liberal politi-
cal theory, of the blessings of liberty
itself. The politicians of that day were
not so frankly materialistic as their suc-
cessors, not such keen computers of the
profits of commercial supremacy. It is
true that they had less temptation. It
is likewise true that they failed, in more
than one section of the country, to carry
the principles of the Declaration to their
logical conclusion. But they were at least
proud of the Declaration ; it did not oc-
cur to them to doubt its logic, although
here and there they may have forgotten to
practice it. But ever since Ruf us Choate
set the bad example of sneering at its
" glittering generalities," there have not
been lacking clever young students of
history and politics who have been eager
to demonstrate its fallacies. One may
suspect that some of the Americans who
have just attended King Edward's coro-
nation, and many more who have stayed
at home and read about it, are at heart
a trifle ashamed of the provincial ear-
nestness of Jefferson's indictment of King
George. And we are told that in one
portion of the American dominions, a
year ago, it was a crime to read the De-
claration aloud.
On Keeping the Fourth of July.
But it is no crime to read it here, and
one may venture to say that a good many
inconspicuous Americans, who have not
recently refreshed their memory of the
immortal document, will this year hunt
around until they find it, in some hum-
ble Appendix to a School History, very
likely, and take the trouble to read
it through. For there has been a good
deal said about the Declaration lately,
and much more is likely to be said before
our Philippine troubles are ended. The
past three months have thrown more light
upon the essential character of our occu-
pation of the Archipelago than the pre-
ceding three years have done. The At-
lantic argued many months ago that the
first duty of the Administration and Con-
gress was to give the country the facts,
that it was impossible to decide upon our
future course in the islands until we knew
more about what was actually happening
there. We have found out something at
last. The knowledge is not very plea-
sant, but it sticks in the memory, and not
all the fire-crackers and fun of the Glori-
ous Fourth will keep American citizens
from reflecting that we are engaged, on
that anniversary, in subjugating a weak-
er people who are struggling, however
blindly and cruelly, for that independ-
ence which we once claimed as an " in-
alienable right " for ourselves.
For subjugation is the topic of the
day ; it is no longer a question of " ex-
pansion," or even of " imperialism." It
is plain enough now that we are holding
the Philippines by physical force only,
and that the brave and unselfish men we
have sent there have been assigned to a
task which is not only repellent to Amer-
icans, but bitterly resented by the sup-
posed beneficiaries of our action. To
risk the life of a soldier like Lawton or
a civilian like Governor Taft in order
to carry the blessings of a Christian civ-
ilization to benighted Malays seemed,
in the opinion of a majority of Ameri-
cans in 1899, a generous and heroic en-
terprise. It was a dream that did the
kindly American heart infinite credit.
But now that we have learned how the
thing must be done, if it is to be done
successfully, the conscience of the coun-
try is ill at ease. It is neither necessary
nor desirable to dwell on the fact that
some of our soldiers have disgraced their
uniform. Such men have shown the pit-
iable weakness of human nature under
distressing conditions which they did not
create ; but the story is a shamefully old
one ; it has been told for three hundred
years in the history of tropical coloni-
zation. Lincoln put the whole moral of
it, with homely finality, into his phrase
about no man being good enough to
govern another man without the other
man's consent. Not " strong enough,"
nor " smart enough," nor " Anglo-Sax-
on enough ; " simply not good enough.
Upon that point, at least, there is no-
thing more to be said.
Rude as this awakening to the actual
nature of the Philippine campaign has
been, it is far less disheartening to the
lover of republican institutions than the
period of moral indifference which pre-
ceded it. It is a lesser evil to see war
in its nakedness and be shocked by it,
than to be so absorbed in material inter-
ests as to be willing to sacrifice a gal-
lant Lawton in order that some sleek
trader should win a fortune. Any bit-
ter truth is preferable to
' ' The common, loveless lust of territory ;
The lips that only babble of their mart
While to the night the shrieking hamlets blaze ;
The^bought allegiance and the purchased praise,
False honor and shameful glory."
With the passing of this good-natured,
easy-going indifference to suffering and
struggle, we are distinctly nearer a solu-
tion of the Philippine problem. Presi-
dent Roosevelt declared last December,
with characteristic generosity, that the
aim of our endeavors was to " make them
free after the fashion of the really self-
governing peoples." If he were now, in
the light of the additional evidence as
to the attitude of the Filipinos and the
Certain Aspects of America.
changed sentiment here, to send a mes-
sage to Congress embodying a definite
programme leading not merely to Fili-
pino " self-government " but to ultimate
national independence, he would have be-
hind him a substantial majority, not only
of his own party, but of the citizens of the
United States. To promise the Fiilpinos
ultimate independence, upon any rea-
sonable conditions, meaning to keep
that promise, as we have already kept our
word to Cuba, would be honor enough for
any administration. President Roose-
velt's administration inherited the Phil-
ippine " burden." The islands came to
us partly through force of circumstances,
partly through national vanity and thirst
for power, but mainly through our igno-
rance. Now that we have learned what
we were really bargaining for, it becomes
possible to give over the burden to those
to whom it belongs. It cannot be trans-
ferred in a day, it is true, but a day is long
enough to make a resolve to rid ourselves
of it at the earliest practicable moment.
And the Fourth of July is a good day for
such a resolution. To leave the Philip-
pine Islands, under some amicable ar-
rangement, to the Philippine people may
be called " scuttling," if critics like
that word, but it will be a return to
American modes of procedure, to that
fuller measure of Democracy which is
the only cure for the evils of Democracy.
For the chief obstacle to the subjugation
of an Asiatic people by Americans lies in
human nature itself. The baser side of
human nature may always be depended
upon to strip such conquest of its tinsel
and betray its essential hideousness;
while the nobler side of human nature
protests against the forcible annexation
of a weaker people by the countrymen of
Washington. This protest, in the Toast-
master's opinion, will never be more in-
stinctive or more certain of final victory
than on the day sacred to the memory
of our own national independence.
B. P.
CERTAIN ASPECTS OF AMERICA.
Gulliver. (Aside.) What is Lilliput doing ?
Lilliputian. (In Gulliver's snuff-box.) The
life of this Giant is very dark and snuffy.
THERE is an opinion, at least a saying,
current among us, that a great man steps
forth when a nation needs him. This
theory is very comfortable, especially in
those parts -of the world where great
men are rare, for it follows that ordinary
men behave themselves so wisely and so
well that they have no need of a great
man. It is a theory, however, that
bristles with difficulties. Ancient na-
tions have decayed and fallen to ruin ;
did not they need great men ? Some na-
tions to-day are losing vigor and vitality ;
do not they need great men? Has a
nation ever been so great as it might
have been, so noble as it might have
been, so honorable as it might have
been, or so rich and comfortable that it
might not have been still more rich
and yet more comfortable ? Neverthe-
less there is some truth in the saying,
for certain needs do create great men.
Our human nature is such that if its
most sensitive children hear the cry of
human needs, their faculties pass, as it
were, through a fire, become purged,
hardened, and of a temper to do those
deeds which we call great. It is not
every human need, unfortunately, that
has that creative power. Mere barren-
ness and want cannot create great men ;
neither can corporeal needs, they are
too easily satisfied. Since Prometheus
Certain Aspects of America.
struck the first spark, neither corporeal
needs, nor their derivatives, ease, com-
fort, luxury, have required great ser-
vice. It is not a common need, but a
penitential need, that brings forth the
great man. Washington rose up, not
because our forefathers needed to gain
battles, but because they needed "a
standard to which the wise and the just
could repair ; " Lincoln arose, not be-
cause our fathers needed statecraft, but
because they needed " malice towards
none ; with charity for all." When a
nation's want is deepened to desire, and
desire is intensified into need, then that
nation may hope that its need will create
a great man. The fructifying need must
be a yearning and a conscious need. In
America we have no men whom we call
great, not because we have no needs, for
we have profound needs, but because we
are not conscious of them. We walk
about as in a hypnotic spell, all unaware
of our destitution. When we shall open
our minds to our needs, we shall do the
first act toward ministering to them.
What is there to open our minds ?
Nature has provided a means through
our affections. For ourselves, we are too
old to perceive that which we lack, our
habits are adjusted to privation, we are
unconscious of the great needs of life ;
but if we let our thoughts dwell on those
things which we desire for our children,
then by constant brooding, by intense
thinking, out of vague notions, out of un-
certain hopes, out of dim ambitions, defi-
nite wants will take shape, grow hungrier
and leaner, till they starve into needs that
must be satisfied. What is a son to a
father's hope, " in form and moving
how express and admirable ! in action
how like an angel ! in apprehension how
like a god ! "
Hamlet gives our clue : our manners
and behavior should be express and ad-
mirable ; our actions should be like the
angels', just and dutiful ; our apprehen-
sion should be like the gods', seeing the
values of things as they truly are. Thus
through affection we discover our real
needs. But as they are only creations of
imaginative insight, they are very placid.
They do not disquiet us ; they do not
make us wriggle on our chairs, nor lie
awake at night ; nor do they take from
cakes and ale their pristine interest.
What can we do to nurse these Barme-
cide wants, to convert these embryonic
desires into organic needs ? Is not the
first thing to speak out, and give them
at least an existence in words ; and hav-
ing put them into words, is not the sec-
ond thing to speculate as to how they are
affected, whether for health or for disap-
pearance, by our American civilization ?
There is nothing unpatriotic in sociologi-
cal inquiry. Civilization is organized ef-
fort to satisfy conscious needs, and we
may naturally be curious to see how our
American civilization affects unconscious
needs, how it tends to make our manners
gracious and admirable, to render our ac-
tions just and dutiful, to clarify our ap-
prehension so that it shall behold life as
it really is.
Yet there is a certain elementary feel-
ing, akin to filial piety, which would nat-
urally deter a right-minded man from any
attempt at expressing even the adumbra-
tion of his opinions concerning his coun-
try. If a friend were about to tumble
into such a pitfall, properly set for
foreigners, one would buttonhole him,
urge him to desist, explain that his pro-
ject was temerarious, or, if need were,
make use of still more violent means.
One would catch at everything from
superstition to coat-tails to prevent such
a display of sentimental deficiency. But
every man is wiser for his friends than
for himself. We seldom listen to the
modest voice of self-criticism ; we charge
it with opportunism, cowardice, con-
servatism, and retrogression, and go on
our own way.
The very difficulties and risks lend a
zest to rashness. The America which I
think I see may have been produced by
applying a microscope to the street in
Certain Aspects of America.
which I live, till that be magnified to the
requisite bulk ; or it may be merely my
own shadow cast on the clouds of my
imagination by the simple machinery of
ignorance and self-complacency. But
when I consider my friend Brown, the
manufacturer, and find that in his opin-
ion America is the most magnificent of de-
partment stores ; or Jones, of the militia,
who conceives her as a Lady Bountiful
presenting liberty and democracy to Asia
and Polynesia ; or Robinson, the ship-
builder, who beholds her, robed in oil-
skins, glorious queen of the seas, I reflect
that perhaps to me, as well as to them, a
little of the truth has been vouchsafed,
and I am encouraged to use the Ameri-
can prerogative of looking with my own
eyes to see what I can see.
ii.
The aims to which we would aspire
for our sons are various and require a
various civilization, a manifold educa-
tion. It is obvious, however, that our
national life is not manifold but single.
The nation embodies to an astonishing
degree the motto, E Pluribus Unum.
Our civilization is single, it centres about
the conception of life as a matter of in-
dustrial energy. This conception, at
first hazily understood and imperfectly
mastered, has now been firmly grasped,
and is incorporate in our national civili-
zation. Its final triumph is due to the
generation which has been educated
since the Civil War. Under that guid-
ance material prosperity has dug the
main channel for the torrent of our
activities, and the current of our life
pours down, dragging even with the
whiff and wind of its impetuosity the
reluctance and sluggishness of conserva-
tism. The combinations of business,
the centralization of power, the growth
of cities, the facility of locomotion, have
decreed uniformity. Individuality, the
creation of race and place, is wrenched
from its home. The orange-grower from
Florida keeps shop in Seattle, the school-
ma'am from Maine marries a cow-
puncher. All of us, under the assimilat-
ing influences of common ends, assume
the composite type. The days of diver-
sity are numbered. The Genius of in-
dustrial civilization defies the old rules
by which life passed from homogeneity
to heterogeneity : she takes men from all
parts of Europe, Latin, Teuton, Celt,
and Slav, trims, lops, and pinches, till
she can squeeze them into the Ameri-
can mould. Miss Wilkins's New Eng-
landers, Bret Harte's miners, Owen Wis-
ter's ranchmen, are passing away. The
variegated surface of the earth has lost its
power over us. Mountain, prairie, and
ocean no longer mark their sons, no
longer breed into them the sap of pine,
the honey of clover, the savor of salt.
This moulding influence does its work
thoroughly and well; it acts like that
great process of nature in the insect
world, which M. Maeterlinck calls I' es-
prit de la ruche. The typical American
becomes a power house of force, of will,
of determination. He dissipates no en-
ergy ; as a drill bites into the rock, so he
bores into his task.
This mighty burst of American in-
dustry is as magnificent in its way as
Elizabethan poetry, or Cinquecento
painting ; no wonder it excites admira-
tion and enthusiasm. What brilliant
manifestation of energy, of will, of cour-
age, of devotion ! Willy nilly we shout
hurrah. There stands America, bare-
armed, deep-chested, with neck like a
tower, engaged in this superb struggle
to dominate Nature and put the elements
in bondage to man. It is not strange
that this spectacle is the greatest of in-
fluences, drawing the young like fishes
in a net. Involuntarily all talents apply
themselves to material production. No
wonder that men of science no longer
study Nature for Nature's sake, they
must perforce put her powers into har-
ness; no wonder that professors no
longer teach knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, they must make their stu-
8
Certain Aspects of America.
dents efficient factors in the industrial
world ; no wonder that clergymen no
longer preach repentance for the sake
of the kingdom of heaven, they must
turn churches into prosperous corpora-
tions, multiplying communicants, and dis-
tributing Christmas presents by the
gross. Industrial civilization has de-
creed that statesmanship shall consist of
schemes to make the nation richer, that
presidents shall be elected with a view
to the stock market, that literature shall
keep close to the life of the average
man, and that art shall become national
by means of a protective tariff.
The process of this civilization is sim-
ple; the industrial habit of thought
moulds the opinion of the majority which
rolls along, abstract and impersonal,
gathering bulk, till its giant figure is
saluted as the national conscience. As
in an ecclesiastical state of society, de-
crees of a council become articles of
private faith, and men die for homoiou-
sian or election, so, in America, the opin-
ions of the majority once pronounced
become primary rules of conduct. Take,
for example, the central ethical doctrine
of industrial thought, namely, that ma-
terial production is the chief duty of
man. That and other industrial dog-
mas, marshaled and systematized, sup-
ported by vigorous men whose interest
is identical with that of the dogmas, grow
and develop ; they harden and petrify ;
they attack dissent and criticism. This
is no outward habit, but an inward plas-
ticity of mind; the nervous American
organism draws sunshine and health
from each new decree of public opinion.
This appears in what is called our re-
spect for law, the recorded opinion of
the majority, in our submission to
fashion, in the individual's indecision and
impassivity until the round-robin reaches
him, in the way that private judgment
waits upon the critics and the press,
while these hurriedly count noses.
Such a society, such educating forces,
produce men of great vigor, virility, and
capacity, but do not tend to make man-
ners and behavior gracious and admir-
able, nor actions just and dutiful, nor ap-
prehensions which see life in its reality.
ill.
If we pursue our examination of the
educational tendencies of our industrial
civilization, we perceive not only that
they are single while the ends which we
seek are multiple, but also that indus-
trial civilization, so far as it is not with
us, is against us. For, according to the
measure in which industrial interests ab-
sorb the vital forces of the nation, other
interests of necessity are neglected. This
neglect betrays itself in feebleness, in
monotony, in lack of individuality. Let
us consider matters which concern the
emotions, religion or poetry ; matters
which in order to attain the highest ex-
cellence require passion. Now, passion is
only possible when vital energy is thrown
into emotion, and as we have other uses
for our vital energy, we find ourselves
face to face with a dilemma ; either to
make up our minds to let our religion
and our poetry and all our emotional
life be without passion, or else to use
a makeshift in its stead. What course
have we chosen ? Look at our religion,
read our poetry ; witness our national joy,
expressed in papier-mache arches and
Dewey celebrations, our national grief
vented in proclamations and exaggera-
tion. We have not boldness enough to
fling overboard our inherited respect for
passion, and to proclaim it unnecessary
in religion and poetry, in grief and joy ;
and so we cast about for a makeshift,
and adopt a conventional sentimentality,
which apes the expressions of passion,
as in tableaux an actor poses for Laocoon,
and combines a sincere desire to ape
accurately with an honest enjoyment in
the occupation. Our conventional sen-
timentality is the consequence of econo-
my of vital energy in our emotional life
in order that we may concentrate all our
powers in our industrial life.
Certain Aspects of 'America.
Or let us look at our spiritual life, to
see how that has been affected by this
diversion of vital energy. Spiritual
sturdiness shows itself in a close union
between spiritual life and the ordinary
business of living, while spiritual feeble-
ness shows itself in the separation of
spiritual life from the ordinary business
of living. We get an inkling of the
closeness of that union in this country
by considering, for instance, our concep-
tion of a nation. In our hearts we be-
lieve that a nation consists of a multi-
tude of men, joined in a corporate bond
for the increase of material well-being,
for the multiplication of luxury, for the
free play of energy, at the expense, if
need be, of the rest of the world. In
countries which spare enough vital en-
ergy from industrial life to vivify spirit-
ual life, other conceptions prevail. Maz-
zini defined a nation as a people united
in a common duty toward the world ; he
even asserted that a nation has a right
to exist only because it helps men to
work together for the good of humanity.
Our conception shows how our spiritual
life holds itself aloof from this worka-
day world, and denies all concern with
so terrestrial a thing as a nation. One
cause of this spiritual feebleness is our
irregularly developed morality, for spir-
itual life thrives on a complete and cu-
rious morality which essays all tasks,
which claims jurisdiction over all things ;
but our morality, shaped and moulded
for industrial purposes, is uneven and
.* lopsided, and, as industrial civilization
has but a limited use for morality, as-
serts but a limited jurisdiction. It has
certain great qualities, for industrial civ-
ilization exacts severe, if limited, ser-
vice from it ; it has resolution, perse-
verance, courage. Subject our morality
to difficulty or danger, and it comes out
triumphant ; but seek of it service, such
as some form of self-abnegation, some
devotion to idealism, which it does not
understand, and it fails. Cribbed and
confined by a narrow morality, our spir-
itual life sits like an absentee landlord,
far from the turmoil and sweat of the
day's work, enjoying the pleasures of
rigid respectability.
Another proof of the lack of vitality
in the parts and organs remote from the
national heart is our formlessness. An
industrial society is loath to spare the
efforts necessary to produce form. The
nice excellences which constitute form
require an immense amount of work.
The nearer the approach to perfection,
the more intense is the labor, the less
obvious the result, and to us who enjoy
obvious results, who delight in the appli-
cation of power to obvious physical pur-
poses, the greater seems the waste of
effort. The struggles of the artist to
bridge the gap between his work and his
idea look like fantastic writhings. We
stare in troubled amazement at the ideal-
ist.
" Alas, how is 't with you ?
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' incorporal air do hold dis-
course ? "
Read poetry, as the material in which
form is readily perceived ; if we pass
from the verse of Stephen Phillips, of
Rostand, or of Carducci, to that of some
American poet of to-day, we experience
a sensation of tepidity and lassitude.
Or, consider the formlessness of our
manners, which share the general debil-
ity of non-industrial life. Our moral-
ity is too cramped to refine them, our
sense of art too rough to polish them, our
emotional life too feeble to endow them
with grace. The cause is not any native
deficiency. " We ought," as Lowell said
fifty years ago, "to have produced the
finest race of gentlemen in the world,"
nor is it lack of that cultivation which
comes from books, but of that education
which comes from looking on life as a
whole, which a man acquires by regard-
ing himself, not as an implement or tool
to achieve this or that particular thing,
but as a human being facing a threefold
task, physical, intellectual, and spiritual.
10
Certain Aspects of America.
IV.
The unequal development in this rapid
evolution of the industrial type appears
also in the contrast between different
sets of our ideas. Those ideas which are
used by industrial civilization are clear,
definite, and exact ; they show rigorous
training and education, whereas ideas
which have no industrial function to per-
form, being commonly out of work, de-
generate into slatterns. Industrial civi-
lization is like a schoolmaster with a hob-
by : it throws its pedagogical energies
into the instruction which it approves,
and slurs the rest; in one part of the
affairs of life, the reason, the under-
standing, the intelligence are kept on the
alert, in another part no faculty except the
memory is used. The result is frequent
discrepancy between ideas expressed in
action and ideas expressed in language.
This discrepancy appears in our po-
litical life. We have all learned by
heart the Declaration of Independence,
snatches from old speeches, " give me
liberty, or give me death ; " tags from the
Latin
" Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Catoni ; "
and . maxims concerning inalienable
rights, natural justice, God's will,
maxims whose use is confined to speech,
come from the memory trippingly to
the tongue. Put us to action, make us
do some political act, such as to adjust
our relations with Cuba, and we uncover
another set of maxims, those whose
use is confined to action : " the indus-
trially fit ought to survive," " the elect
of God are revealed by economic supe-
riority," " Success is justified of her chil-
dren," " the commandments of the ma-
jority are pure and holy." If we are
taxed with the discrepancy, we stare,
and repeat the contrasted formulae, one
set in words, the other in actions ; we are
conscious of no inconsistency, we will
give up neither. This is not a case of
hypocrisy. We believe what we say;
for belief with us is not necessarily a
state of mind which compels action to
accord with it, but often an heirloom
to be treated with respect. Look at our
Christianity: we honor riches, oppress
our neighbors, keep a pecuniary account
with righteousness, nor could even St.
Paul persuade us to be crucified, and
yet we honestly insist upon calling our-
selves Christians.
It is the same with our social ideas.
The American believes that all men are
born free and equal, that they possess
an inalienable right to pursue their own
happiness, but if one questions his neigh-
bor in the smoking-car on the way to
Chicago as to his views on Socialism, he
will reply, " Socialism, sir, is the curse
of this country. Czolgosz and Guiteau
are enough for me ; the Socialists must
be suppressed. If they ever set up an-
archy in these United States, I will em-
igrate, I'll go to Europe." To which
you reply, " Certainly ; but may there
not be something in their notions, that
the accident of birth is unjust, that op-
portunities should be equal, that every
man should receive pay according to his
labor ? " Then he will answer, " In this
country, sir, all men are equal ; but if
you think that my partner and me are
to be treated equal to Herr Most or the
late lamented Altgeld, or some of those
Anarchists, I say no, not if I know it."
Take our practice in ethics. We be-
lieve in " millions for defense, but not one
cent for tribute ; " nevertheless, as direc-
tors or stockholders of a corporation, we
buy immunity from hostile legislation.
We believe in the brotherhood of man,
but we use any means to save our cor-
porate purse from removing stoves from
our cars, from putting electric power to
use in our tunnels, from providing seats
for our shopgirls. Even in science it is
not beyond the mental elasticity of the
American to harbor in one compartment
of his mind the conclusions of biological
evolution, and in another the texts of the
Old Testament.
Certain Aspects of America.
11
This capacity for self-deception ex-
tends far and wide, it honeycombs our
thoughts and theories. We call our lack
of manners liberty, our lack of distinc-
tion fraternity, our formless homogeneity
equality. We think that industrial so-
ciety with its carri&re ouverte aux tal-
ents is democracy ; in fact, it bears the
relation to democracy which the Napo-
leonic empire bore to the ideals of the
French Revolution. We are none the
less honest, we are a people with a na-
tive love of phrases. Phraseology is that
form of art which we understand the
best. We cling to a phrase made by one
of our patriot fathers, a phrase of the
best period, and no more dream of
parting with it because it does not repre-
sent any living idea, than a man would
part with a Gainsborough portrait of his
great-great-grandfather. It is like an
ancestral chair in the parlor, not to be
sat upon. We are justly proud of our
heroic maxims ; we shall teach them to
negroes, Filipinos, Cubans, perhaps to the
Chinese ; we shall contribute them as our
fine art to the world. Who can blame
us ? We have had our Revolution, our
struggle with slavery ; we have had Wash-
ington and Lincoln ; we have had noble
enthusiasms which have bequeathed to
us a phraseology : and if we make parade
of it, if we sentimentally cling to it, who
shall find fault ?
v.
One has moods, and as they shift, the
image of America shifts too. At one
time it appears, like Frankenstein's mon-
ster, to move its great joints and irresist-
ible muscles under the influence of am-
bitions and purposes that seem incompre-
hensible, as Hamlet's words about man
drift through one's mind. At another
time it appears young, brilliant, powerful,
flushed with hope, full of great projects,
flinging all its abounding energy into its
tasks, which to-day are physical, but to-
morrow shall be intellectual, and there-
after spiritual. Now it looks the dan-
ger, and now the liberator, of the world.
But whichever view be correct, whether
America shall fulfill our hopes or our
fears, we are bound to do thbse humble
and commonplace acts which may help
our sons to meet the difficulties that lie be-
tween them and our aspirations for them.
We see that absorption of our ener-
gies in material labor leaves great do-
mains of human interest uncared for;
we find that our emotional life is thin,
that our sentimentality is ubiquitous ; we
find that our intelligence, when not de-
voted to business, is slovenly and trips us
into self-deceit. The dangers are plain ;
how can we help ourselves ? Surely with
such an inexhaustible reservoir of will
and energy, America might spare a little
to free her from sentimentality and save
her from self-deceit.
We accept sentimentality, because we
do not stop to consider whether our emo-
tional life is worth an infusion of blood
and vigor, rather than that we have de-
liberately decided that it is not. We
neglect religion, because we cannot spare
time to think what religion means, rather
than that we judge it only worthy con-
ventionality and lip service. We think
poetry effeminate, because we do not read
it, rather than that we believe its effect
to be injurious. We have been swept
off our feet by the brilliant success of
our industrial civilization, and, blinded
by vanity, we enumerate the list of our
exports, we measure the swelling tide of
our material prosperity, but we do not
stop even to repeat to ourselves the names
of other things. If we were to stop, and
reckon the values of idealism, of religion,
of literature, if we were to weigh them in
the balance against comfort, luxury, ease,
we should begin to deliberate, and after
deliberation some of us would be convert-
ed, for the difficulty confronting the typ-
ical American is not love of material
things, but pride of power. He deems
that will, force, energy, resolution, perse-
verance, in the nature of things must be
put to material ends, and that whatever
may be the qualities and capacities put
12
Certain Aspects of America.
to use in science, philosophy, literature,
religion, they are not those. Once per-
suade him that will, energy, and their fel-
low virtues will find full scope in those
seemingly effeminate matters, and he will
give them a share, if not a fair share, of
his attention ; for the American is little,
if at all, more devoted to luxury, ease,
and comfort than other men. But how
is he to be buttonholed, and held long
enough for arguments to be slipped into
his ear? There is at hand the old, old
helper, " the Cherub Contemplation." By
its help man for it takes him upon an
eminence sees all the great panorama
of life at once, and discovers that it is a
whole. Since the first conception of mo-
notheism there has been no spiritual idea
equal to that of the unity of life, for it as-
serts that spiritual things and material
things are one and indivisible. Contem-
plation also teaches that action is not a
substitute for virtue, that will, resolution,
and energy take rank according to their
aims ; it leads man little by little to fix
his mind upon the notion that he ought
to have a philosophy of life, and to live
not unmindful of that philosophy, for a
philosophy however imperfect is not like-
ly to teach him that happiness and the
meaning of life are to be found only in
industrial matters, and if it should, well
and good, for the aim of Contemplation
is not to teach a man this belief or that,
but to rescue him from the clutch of
blind social forces, and let him choose
his own path in life.
As our sentimentality is a sign that we
have neglected great interests connected
with the emotions, so our self-deceit is a
sign that we have neglected great inter-
ests connected with the intellect. If our
minds were used to study not merely ma-
terial things, but also all other ideas that
surround and vivify life, we should not
be able to lead this amphibious existence
of self-deceit, half in words and half
in deeds. As Contemplation is our help
to see life as a whole, and our guide to-
ward ripeness and completeness, so we
may discover a help against self-deceit in
the observance of Discipline. Discipline
is the constant endeavor to understand,
the continual grapple with all ideas, the
study of unfamiliar things, the search for
unity and truth ; it is the spirit which
calls nothing common, which compels that
deep respect for this seemingly infinite
universe which the Bible calls the fear
of the Lord. Discipline turns to account
all labor, all experience, all pain ; it is
the path up the mountain of purgatory
from the top of which Contemplation
shows man life as a whole. On the in-
tellectual side Discipline teaches us to
keep distinct and separate the permanent
and the transitory ; on the moral side Dis-
cipline teaches us that right and wrong
are not matters of sentimentality, that
will and energy are untrustworthy guides.
Discipline lies less in wooing success than
in marriage to unsuccessful causes, un-
popular aims, unflattering ends. Disci-
pline is devotion to form ; it teaches that
everything from clay to the thought of
man is capable of perfect form, and that
the highest purpose of labor is to approach
that form. Discipline will not let us nar-
row life to one or two ideas ; it will not let
us deceive ourselves, or put on the sem-
blance of joy or grief like a Sunday coat.
" For the holy Spirit of Discipline will flee de-
ceit,
And remove from thoughts that are without
understanding,
And will not abide when unrighteousness com-
eth in."
Discipline and Contemplation bring
life to that ripeness which is the founda-
tion of happiness, of righteousness, of
great achievement ; they are the means
by which, while we wait for the inspira-
tion and leadership of great men, we may
hope to piece out the brilliant but imper-
fect education provided by our industrial
civilization, and help our sons to become,
in Lowell's proud words, " the finest race
of gentlemen in the world."
H. D. Sedgwick, Jr.
Our Lady of the Seeches.
13
OUR LADY OF THE BEECHES.
PROLOGUE OF LETTERS.
LETTER I.
IN A BEECH FOREST, April 7.
DEAR PESSIMIST, I have read
your book through three times ; my copy
has grown very shabby ; the covers are
stained, I dropped it in a brook ; the
margins are covered with penciled notes.
In a word, I love ttye book. Does this
justify my writing to you, an absolute
stranger ? By no means, I should say ;
and yet, safe among my beeches, I am
not afraid of doing so. I don't know
who you are, nor you who I may be, and
if you should choose to ignore my let-
ter, that is an easy way of making an
end of it. The direct reason for my
writing is this :
The little pointed shadows of the new
beech leaves, dancing over the ground,
have reminded me of your shadow the-
ory, and I have been wondering whether
you really believe in that theory, or
whether it is merely a poetic idea be-
longing to your pose as "The Pessi-
mist. " Do you really think that no life
can be judged alone, "without consid-
^ eration of the shadows of other lives
that overlap it " ?
This theory, sincerely believed in,
would lead to a very comfortable phi-
losophy of irresponsibility, and the more
I study the Breviary, the more I won-
der whether it is sincere, or merely an
artistic point of view assumed for the
occasion. Your chapter on Hamlet is
delicious; Hamlet as a neurasthenic,
treated in a way that tempts me strong-
ly to the belief that you are a physi-
cian. I wonder! Is n't it Balzac who
says, " Les drames de la vie ne sont pas
dans les circonstances, ils sont dans
le co3ur " ?
I have been sitting here, like Mr.
Leo Hunter's expiring frog, "on a
log, " trying to think over this theory in
connection with yours of the shadows.
I say trying to think, because, what-
ever other women may find their brains
capable of, I much doubt whether my
own ever gets further than musing
or even dreaming.
You say that if Hamlet had not been
a nervous invalid, the trifling shock of
his father's murder and his mother's
marriage would not have been fatal to
him, such events being quite every-
day in his age and country. Then you
apply your shadow theory to him, the
shadows, on his poor dazed brain, of his
mother, of Ophelia, etc., and go off
into incomprehensibilities that make my
poor dazed brain whirl.
I have read and re-read the abstruser
parts of the book, trying to understand
with I fear little success, but against
one thing I protest. You speak of na-
ture, and yet you avow that your studies
are made in a laboratory ! Wise as you
are and ignorant though I am, I am
nearer nature here in my forest than
you in your laboratory. The things that
fall away from one, leaving one almost
a child, when one is alone with trees!
The tone of your book is a curious
one. It is not despairing, it is intel-
lectual, it is charming, and yet what
is the use of being wise if it brings no
more than it has brought you !
Another thing. Why do you say
that you do not know German ? You
do, for your translations from poor
Nietzsche are original. Chapter 5, para-
graph 2 : " Great people have in their
very greatness great virtues, and do not
need the small goodnesses of the small-
brained." Let it go at that. You are
a great man, and do not need the bour-
geois virtue of truth-telling. T^he last
remark is rather impertinent, but it
14
Our Lady of the Beeches.
is one of those spring days when one
grows expansive and daring, and, after
all, the luxury of saying what one likes
is rare.
So, good-by, Pessimist. Greetings
from my beech forest and from myself.
The small brook, much interested in the
greenness of the valley, is rushing down
over the stones with the noisy haste of
things youthful, and I see one cowslip in
a hollow. I wonder if even Pessimists
love Spring!
And if you will be indulgent toward
this feminine curiosity about your book,
which has charmed a woman not easily
charmed, let me know just this much:
whether the Breviary expresses your
real convictions, or is written as it were
by a fictitious character.
If you will tell me this I shall be
very grateful to you, and in any case
let me thank you for having charmed
away for me a great many hours. Ad-
dress :
MADAME ANNETTE BONNET,
4 bis, rue Tambour, Paris.
Madame Bonnet being an old servant,
who will forward your note, if you are
kind enough to write one, to me here in
my forest.
LETTER II.
In A LABORATORY, May 7.
To MY UNKNOWN CRITIC, Should
I explain, excuse, give a thousand and
one reasons why four weeks have been
allowed to pass without my acknowledg-
ing the kindly meant letter of a gra-
cious critic? A "gentle" one, too, as
the polite men of a hundred years ago
used to say.
But why should I answer ? And why
do I?
From a beech forest to a laboratory
is a wide leap, a rude transition, one,
my critic, that, if you could make it,
would cause you to rub your eyes, and
stare, and blink (forgive the unroman-
tic picture that I draw), and cry, "Wait
till I collect my senses."
It is no wonder that you would be
dizzy, for a moment at least, and think
that some rude hand had roughly called
you back from a land of dreams, beau-
tiful dreams, and dragged you into a
dazzling light of stern, hard, unroman-
tic facts. It is all very well to lie in
your beautiful forest, and watch the
lights and shadows play, and dream that
you know the truth.
Truth is not found in dreams, dear
lady. It is found, if ever, in laborious
observation of facts, in patient, drudg-
ing study of nature. What do you
know of truth? Do you not see that
it is absurd, your calling me to account
for my book ? You are idling with the
emotions that nature stirs within you,
and I have studied that nature for
years. Not the nature only of trees and
flowers, but the nature that is every-
thing, the spring of the universe.
You watch a cowslip and fancy yourself
close to the heart of the world, while
we scientists crush every emotion that
the real naked facts of nature may not
be obscured. There is no passion in
the soul of the scientist.
But I am rude, and after all it is
only a difference in the point of view.
You in your beech forest watch the ef-
fect of nature on the human heart,
not on the soul, as you imagine ! We
in our laboratories see the warring and
antagonizing force of nature ; the world
as it is, not as man loves to picture it
to himself. Why, then, dreamer, do you
ask me whether I really believe in my
own theories? Pardon me that I for-
got myself for the moment, and be-
came too earnest, perhaps impatient,
but you "wonder whether I am real-
ly in earnest ! "
If there is one exasperating thing in
the world to a man who has spent his
best years looking down, deep down,
into the recesses of life, seen things as
they are, and detected their false color-
ing as well as the deceit practiced on
the senses of this jabbering, stupid flock
of sheep called mankind, it is to be
OUT Lady of the Beeches.
15
told that he does not really believe in
what he has learned by years of hard
work.
Why should I pretend to believe
something which I do not ? Is it to en-
joy the fancies excited by But I
forget. You live in a beech forest.
After all, everything is only a ques-
tion of the vibration of one's cerebral
molecules. They vibrate transversely
and one is displeased, yours will vi-
brate transversely, no doubt, in reading
this answer to your charming letter;
and though I am bearish, I will admit
that mine vibrated perpendicularly on
reading your kind words of apprecia-
tion.
About my theories, dear lady, the
little book you have read is only the
forerunner of a much more comprehen-
sive, and much duller, volume which is
to come out soon ; may I refer you to
that? I will only say now, in two
words, that I do believe' that everything
in the world is relative, and that every
life is a resultant, as physicists say, of
all the forces of its environment. No
life could be what it is if isolated from
all others, surely even a dreamer in
a forest must know that ?
Only a small fraction of the know-
ledge of any human being can be cred-
ited to himself. Ninety-nine per cent
is the result of the accumulated know-
ledge of the generations which have pre-
N ceded him, and of his contemporaries.
So his personality is in part the inher-
ited characteristics of his ancestors, in
part the traits engrafted upon the soil
by suggestions (subtle and unconscious
often) from the lives about him. Upon
him is impressed the composite individ-
uality of many lives.
But I am talking too much, and I
doubt not you will think me garrulous,
as well as unappreciative ! I admit the
lie about the German, the reason being
that my incognito must be kept, on ac-
count of the new book. As a rule, what
you call the "bourgeois virtue " of
truth- telling is mine. Forgive my
roughness. Perhaps to-morrow who
knows ? might find me in a milder
mood, when I would tear up this un-
grateful letter. But then, would I
write another?
Who are you ? I wonder what you
are like, whether But it doesn't
matter.
LETTER III.
May 8.
To THE FOREST DREAMER, Since
writing you I have re-read your letter,
and I am struck with two things.
The first, that I should have written
as I did to an utter stranger; that to
this stranger, who carefully conceals
every trace of her identity, I, of all
men, should have orated and scolded
through ten pages or more !
The second point that astonishes me
is that this unknown has told me abso-
lutely nothing of herself beyond the fact
that she once sat on a log like an ex-
piring frog, and that she wrote from a
beech forest.
Do you take my amazement amiss ?
If so, I must in defense offer half a
hundred or more of letters all un-
answered sent me by as many daugh-
ters of Eve, of many nations, for you
do not appear to know that the Breviary
has been translated into both French
and German.
Some of these dear creatures have
sent me pages of heart-history, and one
or two their photographs. It is an
irony of fate that you, the one whose
letter irritated or charmed me into a
reply, should be she who tells me no-
thing of herself ! May I not know
something? Your incog, is at least as
safe as mine. Even from the shad-
owy indication I can glean from your
writing, your mode of expression, etc.,
I think I have made a picture from
them not wholly unlike the original:
you are not, I am sure, more than
twenty - seven, you are married, you
are But from the security of
your forest, will you not tell me a lit-
tle of yourself ?
16
Our Lady of the Beeches.
LETTER IV.
IN THE BEECHWOOD, May 28.
To the laboratory from the beech-
wood, all hail ! And you should see the
grace with which every bough sways
downward, while the glossy leaves quiv-
er with pleasure, and the shadows
my shadows chase each other across
the moss, and the cuckoo calls.
So I am a dreamer ? A dreamer in a
forest ! Since writing to you, O Pes-
simist, this dreamer has been far from
her dear trees. She has been at a
court, she has walked a quadrille with a
King and supped with an Emperor.
She has worn satin gowns and jewels
that contrasted oddly with her wind-
browned face ; she has flirted lazily with
tight-waisted youths in uniform; she
has learned something of a certain great
Power's China Policy that President
McKinley would love to know, and
she has been bored to death, poor
dreamer !
Last night, near to-day, after a long
journey and a two hours' drive through
a silvery world, she reached the old
house among the trees that she loves ;
and now here she is again, high on the
hill in the mottled shadows at which
you laugh. The lilies of the valley
have come, and the brook is shrinking
in the heat.
Just as she reached this corner of the
world where she idles away so much
time, a cuckoo called to her, the
first, mind you, that she had heard this
year!
Instead of turning money in her
pocket, she paused, poor dreamer, to find
a happiness in her heart to turn ! The
servant's explanation would be incom-
prehensible to you, if quoted, but what
he brought were your two letters, ar-
rived during the tarrying at courts, and
forgotten in the hurry of arrival.
Thank you. Thank you for telling
me that you really do believe in your
book. Do you know, Pessimist, that
in spite of the tone of the book, your
theories are merciful ? If every life is
the result of its environments, and every
character the result of heredity and sur-
roundings, then people should judge
each other more tenderly. Without
knowing it, are you one of those who
have pessimism in their mouths, opti-
mism in their hearts?
Do not be angry with me, a mere
dreamer in a beech forest (do you par-
ticularly despise beeches ?), for daring
to suggest thus a sort of unconscious in-
sincerity in what you profess to be-
lieve. Remember, opinions are merely
points of view, and what I think comes
to me partly from my grandfather the
bishop, partly from my great-great-
great-uncle the pirate!
Joking aside, why must my dreams
in a forest be of a necessity less profit-
able to me personally than are to you
what after all are only your dreams in
a laboratory ? God and I mean the
universal Master, not the prejudiced
president of any narrow sect gave us
nature as a guide, or at least as a help.
Do you, among your crucibles and tests,
find the peace and rest that I do here
under my great, quiet, understanding
trees ?
And I am not a child nor even
an elderly child of nature. I may
be a dreamer, but I am a woman of
the world with open eyes, and I know
that what I see in the world I learn to
understand here, far from its din and
hurry.
The wood is full of cuckoo-clocks,
striking all sorts of impossible hours,
dream-hours, dream-clocks, de-
spise them as much as you like, for you
haven't them, poor scientist! Now
the nearest dream -clock has struck
twenty-three, which is time for lilies-
of-the-valley-picking, so good-by.
Thank you for your letter. I say for
your letter, because the second was sim-
ply a burst of graceful inconsistency.
If I am only a bundle of molecules,
Our Lady of the Beeches.
17
cerebral and otherwise, why should you
wish to know what I look like, and who
I am?
Believe me, your desire is let us
say nothing but an irregular vibra-
tion of cerebral molecules! and I am
"as other men (sic!) are," I am just
"Snug the Joiner."
This is a leaf from the biggest, wisest,
and dearest of my beeches. It has just
fluttered down to me, and I think wishes
to go to you. Good-by.
LETTER V.
June 10.
And so you are still to be a myth
to me, my Fair Unknown ? Well, it
does not matter. Thank you for your
letter. You are a poet. I like you,
I like your forest, I like your brook and .
your cuckoos. Won't you tell me more
of them ?
So you find my questions, my cu-
riosity, inconsistent with devotion to
science ? Why ? There is a type of
New England woman who thinks that
when a man marries he becomes a
monk. Do you think that because a
man takes the study of nature as his
life-work, he becomes a monk ? Rather,
is not a woman part of nature ? And
because I have written a somewhat dry
book, am I to have no interest in things
charming ? I rather think my cerebral
molecules are jingling and tingling over
your letter as would those of any one of
your tight- waisted lieutenants. How-
ever, to-morrow comes work again, and
you will be forgotten.
So my forest dreamer has been to
court, and danced with kings and em-
perors, and been bored to death
withal. I wonder whether she felt like
Alice, when she told her Wonderland
kings, " You are nothing but a pack of
cards " ?
At all events, I am glad that my
dreamer is a woman of the world, and
because of being that, fond of her beech
forest. This all tells me much. And
so you are "as other men are " ! When
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 2
a woman is as other men are, she has
developed much that other women do
not know. She is a woman of whom a
man may make a friend. They speak
the same language, think the same
thoughts, and each knows that the
other can understand. Good - night.
Write me again.
LETTER VI.
June 26.
After being called a "Fair Un-
known " it is painful to be obliged to
undeceive you. However, I must do
this, for though my cerebral molecules
may be charming, I am outwardly not
attractive. I was born with slightly
crossed eyes and large red ears, which
misfortune many tears have failed to
remedy.
I notice a startling amount of world-
liness in your last letter, and as I fear
you will no longer care to hear from a
person afflicted as I am, I will take
time by the forelock and bid you good-
by now.
Ainsi, adieu.
LETTER VII.
July 10.
It is not true ! Do you think that
science is a study so unprofitable that
I have devoted myself to it for years
without having learned something of
cause and effect?
No woman with crossed eyes and
(Heaven save the mark) "large red
ears " could ever have written the let-
ters you have written me!
You are not only charming, but you
are beautiful. I 'd stake my profes-
sional reputation on this. Your forest,
your kings and emperors, your cuckoos
and cowslips, may be all a pose ; you
may be old, you may be Madame An-
nette Bonnet yourself for all I know,
but you are, or have been, beautiful;
men have loved you, women have envied
you, you have known power.
Deny this, if you dare, on your word
of honor!
18
Our Lady of the Beeches.
LETTER VHI.
August 10, THE LABORATORY.
Are you never going to write me
again ?
LETTER IX.
August 25, BERLIN.
No.
LETTER X.
September 17.
DEAR PESSIMIST, Did you think
me very horrid? Did your cerebral
molecules rub each other into shreds,
tranverse shreds ?
It was not nice of me, but I was
not in a letter-writing frame of mind,
and I could n't write, even to you whom
I don't know. I was away from home,
amid crowds of people, people I
don't like ; I was worried and irritated
in more ways than one.
And now!
Here I am again by my brook, which
is rushing noisily in frantic haste, swol-
len by recent rain; the birches, dear
butterfly trees, are losing their poor
wings; there are coppery lights on the
beech leaves ; the ferns are drying, and
here and there the duskiness of autumn
is lit by the scarlet of a poisonous fun-
gus. Quite near me is a lizard's hole,
and out of it peers a small bright eye.
I like lizards. One of my happinesses
is that of being free from little fears
fears of bats ; of poor wee snakes ;
of blundering winged things. The only
thing of the kind of which I have a hor-
ror is the creature called a "black bee-
tle, " and as I have never seen one, and
know it chiefly through a translation
of Le Petit Chose that I read when
almost a child, I cannot say that the
horror is very vivid. But this is ab-
surd, my writing you about black bee-
tles!
Your last letter, or last but one, was
amusing. I neither affirm nor deny the
truth of what you say in it, but it
amused me. You say, O Wise Man,
that men have loved, women envied
me. And have I loved any man, and
envied any woman ? You see, I am in
a sentimental September mood.
I have been learning how I missed
my trees during the hot, hot days,
and how my trees missed me, the
days when a blue mist softens the dis-
tance, when the pine smell is the strong-
est, the shadows the blackest of the year,
when no place on earth is bearable
except the depths of a thick-knit wood.
Don't snub me by calling this poetical,
for you know you wrote that you wished
to hear about my trees and my brook,
which was crafty of you !
To-day I have visited all my deserted
friends; the dream tree, the wisdom
tree, a great beech, the butterfly tree,
and they all looked sadly at me, and I
at them. The face in the wisdom tree,
a combination of knots and branches,
cowled in summer by leaves, frowns at
me to-day in evident disapproval of my
wasted midsummer. A bird has built
her nest in one of the eyes, which some-
how gives it the air of the sternest of
monkish confessors. Only the cedars
and pines and firs are unchanged. They
are tonic, but a wee bit unsympathetic.
One great fir has a wound in his side as
large as my hand, but he holds his head
as erect as ever, and does not seem to
notice his heart's blood oozing down his
rough bark. I should not dare pity
him, which is fatal to a true sympathy.
I found a mushroom, and ate it. Per-
haps it was a toadstool.
You will think me mad, you will
snub me.
I don't mind being thought mad, for
I am used to it, and rather agree with
the theory in my heart of hearts ; but I
object to being snubbed. So, to avoid
that, let me hasten to snub you first. I
saw in AmieFs Journal, the other day, a
most fitting sentiment, which please ac-
cept with my compliments: "Science
is a lucid madness, occupied in tabu-
lating its own hallucinations."
Think me crazy, "tabulate" me,
and go on making nasty messes in cru-
Our Lady of the Beeches.
19
cibles, or are crucibles the soap-bub-
bly things that explode ? but if your
laboratory holds one single object as
consoling to you on blue days as is
one of my trees to me, even on a wet
September evening, I '11 eat that ob-
ject !
The sun is going down the hill, arid
so must I. Good-night.
LETTER XI.
IN THE WILDS OF MAINE, October 2.
Bonjour, 1'Inconnue! Your letter
has just been brought to me, and though
Heaven knows you don't deserve it, I sit
down at once by the lake, to answer. I
missed you, cross-grained though I am,
and though I fully recognize the way in
which you, Our Lady of the Beeches,
intend to use this humble devotee, I am
glad to hear from you once more, and
put myself at your disposition.
Your kings and queens, your people
whom you "don't like," know nothing
of the dreamer. They know the slightly
mocking writer of your letter of June
26, they know nothing of the beech
forest, nothing of the impetuous, nat-
ural, warm-hearted woman that the
Primo Facto meant you to be.
And I, insignificant scientific worm,
am to be your safety valve. Did you
think I did not realize all this ? As
you never intend to tell me who you are,
you feel safe. You are safe. No one
N shall ever see one of your letters, and I
shall make no effort to find you out.
Dear lady, will your crossed eyes
twinkle with amusement when I tell you
that your letters have been the means
of sending me up here, away from the
haunts of woman, to rest an over-tired
nervous system? Without the small
packet in my writing-table I should
have betaken myself to the comparative
simplicity of Bar Harbor; with the
small packet I came here, three
weeks ago. I am alone, but for my
guide. There are little beech trees
here, too, a few, many pines, a
small lake, birds, and quiet. In spite
of these charming things, however, I
am not happy. The quiet gets on my
nerves, and if your letter had not come
to-day, I should probably have been off
to-morrow.
Solitude is bad, I see, for me. My
sins loom great among the rusty pine
stems, my neglected opportunities stare
me in the face, my utter insignificance
is brought home to me in a way I do
not like. You are too young to feel
the reproach of wasted years, or you
could not love your forest as you do.
May I know your age ? And do
not snub me if you have troubles
small enough to be talked about, and
choose to do so, tell me them. Advice
helps no mortal, but it suggests self-
help.
Now good-by. I must go and make
coffee. I suppose you do not know the
smell of coffee rising among sunbaked
pines ?
LETTER XII.
LONDON, October 25.
So you will be my confessor, my pa-
tient safety valve ? Are you not afraid
of being overwhelmed by an avalanche
of sentimental semi-woes ? What if I
should write you that I am that most
appalling creature, une femme incom-
prise ? Or that I am pining with love
for a man not my husband ? Or that
I adore my husband, while he wastes
his time in greenrooms ? Or or
or Pessimist, where is thy pessi-
mism, that thou riskest such a fate ?
However, as it happens, I have no
woes to pour into even your sympathetic
and invisible ear. I am quite as happy
as my neighbors, and even of a rather
cheerful disposition. Bored at times,
of course, who isn't? That is all.
In a few days I go to Paris, after a
very charming visit in England, where
I have met many very interesting and
delightful people, among others the
Great Man.
He is a great man, the Napoleon of
the eye-glass, though I have heard that
he is not Napoleonic, in that he has a
20
Our Lady of the Beeches.
conscience, whose existence he carefully
hides behind a mask of expediency. It
amused me, while stopping in the house
with this man and studying in a hum-
ble way his face and his manners, to
read certain European papers describ-
ing him as slyness and unscrupulousness
in person !
Do you like gossip? I love it my-
self, and here is a good story. A cer-
tain R. H. told a lady of his acquaint-
ance that she might choose for herself
a certain gift, say a tiara of dia-
monds, costing 2000. The lady, see-
ing a very beautiful one for 4000,
bought it and had it sent with the bill
for 2000 to the royal giver, and paid
the extra two thousand herself. So far,
good. But wasn't it one of life's lit-
tle ironies that the gift, greatly ad-
mired by H. R. H., should have been
sent by him to a younger and fairer
friend, and that the poor fading one
should have had to pay for half of it !
England rings with such tales. It
is a curiously anomalous country, Re-
spectability is its God, yet it readily, al-
most admiringly, forgives the little slips
of the smart set. One woman, Lady
X, told me, "Oh yes, Lord Y is my
aunt Lady F's lover." On seeing my
expression, she added, with a laugh,
"Everybody has known it for years,
so some one else would have told you
if I had n't. Besides, she is received
everywhere." So she is. An awful
old woman with a yellow wig, poor
soul.
So you do not love solitude ? And
you miss people. Possibly I love my
beeches so, because I can never be alone
with them more than a few hours at a
time. Possibly, but I don't believe it.
My portrait has just been done by a
great English painter, and I was much
pleased that he himself suggested doing
it out of doors ! The background is a
laurel hedge, glistening and gleaming
in the sun. The picture is good, but
it flatters me.
I have been trying again to under-
stand the more scientific parts of the
book, but I can't! This will probably
reach you in your beloved laboratory.
Are your fingers brown and purple ? Do
you wear an apron when you work ? If
so, I will make you one !
Good-by, and a pleasant winter to
you. Thanks for the kindness in your
letter.
LETTER XIII.
THE LABORATORY, November 11.
Please make me an apron ! Could it
have a beech-leaf pattern ?
Thanks for your charming letter,
which I will answer soon. I am just
off to Paris, affaire de Sorbonne.
Don't mock at my laboratory, dear Our
Lady of the Beeches ! I have been as
happy as a child ever since I got back
to it. Forests may be all very well for
the young, I am too old for them
and need hard work. Good-by !
LETTER XIV.
December 13, THE LABORATORY.
DEAR LADY, I sit by my table.
The " soap-bubbly things that explode "
are pushed aside, to make room for an
electric lamp ; I am beautiful to behold
in the beech-leaf pattern apron !
I landed yesterday, to find the pack-
age awaiting me, and the contents ex-
ceeded my wildest, most sanguine ex-
pectations ! Did you yourself put in all
those wee stitches? I notice that the
border is sewed on extra, did you do
it ? It took me some time to solve the
mystery of the strings, it is years
since I wore a bib, but now, they are
neatly tied around my waist and about
my neck. It falls in graceful folds,
it is perfect.
There is only one drawback to my
happiness in my new possession, the
well-founded fear of making a spot on
it, or burning a hole in it ! By the way,
speaking of burning holes in things, I
burnt a large one, the other day, in my
thumb, luckily my left one. It hurt
like mad, kept me awake two or three
nights, and did no good to my temper.
Our Lady of ttie Seeches.
21
Once I got up (it was in Paris, you
know) and went out for a tramp. You
don't know the Paris of two o'clock
in the morning. It had rained, there
was a ragged mist, the lights reflected
their rays in ruts and pools ; the abomi-
nation of desolation is Paris at two
o'clock in the morning, to cross-
grained foot passengers. You were in
Paris that night, probably dancing at
some ball " lazily flirting with a
tight-waisted " somebody.
I thought of you as I plodded through
the dreary streets and laughed at the
remembrance of my first letter to you,
a pedantic outpouring of heavy-
handed indignation. Our Lady of the
Beeches must have smiled at it. Will
she smile again at what I 'm going to
tell her now? A carriage passed me
at a corner of the rue Royale, and the
lights flashed over the face of its oc-
cupant; a woman wrapped in a dark
furred coat. The idea came to me that
it was you. I wonder ! She had
lightish, brilliant hair and a rather tired
face.
If I had been well several years
younger, I should have followed the
carriage; but I remembered my pro-
mise, and let it pass without hailing the
hansom near by. The horses were
grays, the carriage dark green I did
n't notice the livery.
Rue Tambour, 4 bis it was n't
^breaking my word to drive to rue Tam-
bour, was it ? I walked in a pouring
rain (good for a feverish thumb !) the
length of the deserted street to 4 bis.
Six stories high, respectable, dull, with
a red light in the hall. And there
dwells Madame Annette Bonnet, sweet
sleep to her.
Where are you now ? Lady without
troubles, in what part of the world are
you smiling away the winter in cheer-
ful content?
Write me again when the spirit mov-
eth you.
The night I visited rue Tambour was
November 26.
LETTER XV
RUE TAMBOUR, 4 bis, PARIS,
Christmas Day.
The night you visited rue Tambour
I sat high up in 4 bis, watching a sick
woman.
My poor old nurse was taken ill a
few days before, and as she has only
me in the world, I moved from my
hotel here, and have been with her ever
since. I leave to-morrow, but have a
fancy for writing to you from here, so
forgive this paper, which I couldn't
wound her by refusing, and try to ad-
mire the gilt edges.
How curious that you should have
been roderiug about underneath our win-
dows that night. It was her worst one,
and I sat up till dawn. Several times I
went to the window and looked out at
the rain. I was very anxious and very
sad. I love old Annette; she gave me
all the mothering I ever had, and one
doesn't forget that.
The young doctor, hastily called in
when she fainted, was unsatisfactory,
being too busy trying to show me, in
delicate nuances, his full appreciation
of the strangeness of the presence in
that house of such a woman as I ; the
nurse, a stupid Sister of Charity, made
me very nervous ; if I had known you
were below, who knows whether I would
not have rushed down for a word of
sympathy? But now I am happier
again, 'the dear old woman is nearly
well, and her sweet taking-for-granted
of my kindness to her, better than all
the gratitude in the world.
Thanks for your letter. I am glad
that you like the apron. I did make
it myself, every stitch, and a terri-
ble time I had finding the famous beech-
leaf pattern ! Only please wear it, burn
holes in it (instead of your poor thumb)
and really use it. Then, when it is
worn out, I '11 make you another. Did
I tell you how old I am ? I am twenty-
nine.
By the way, olive oil and lime water
is a very good remedy for burns. Re-
22
Our Lady of the Beeches.
member this, as you will doubtless go
on burning yourself from time to time !
Good-by.
LETTER XVI.
January 14, THE LABORATORY.
DEAR LADY, What, in your wis-
dom, do you think of this story? A
woman, whom I have known for more
years than she would care to remember,
has just enlivened us by running away
from her husband with a man whom
every one knows and nearly every one
dislikes. The town has been agog with
the tale for the past week ; it has been
the occasion of much excited conversa-
tion at two or three dinners where I was,
and the different view-points of differ-
ent people have interested me greatly.
The retrospective keenness of observa-
tion of almost all those men and women
is delightful ; but as for myself, though
I have known jtnany men and some wo-
men, and flattered myself that I knew
more than a little about human nature,
this case has floored me. Listen, and
then tell me what you think.
She is a woman of forty-two or three,
handsome, fairly clever, masterful, with
a faint idea of metaphysics and some
knowledge of archaeology. Her husband
is a good sort, with plenty of money,
who let her do about as she liked, -
even to the extent of blackening her
eyebrows. The other man is thirty-
four, with padded shoulders and a lisp.
He wears opal shirt-studs, and was
formerly suspected of a bracelet. He
has no money, no profession, no pros-
pects. Off they went one moonlight
night, and as Mr. will divorce
her, they will marry, and live on
love, in New Jersey. Do you think
it possible for two rational beings to
live on love, in New Jersey ? And yet
they must love each other, or they
wouldn't have done it.
The question and the collateral ones
suggested by it have been distracting
me greatly. When I was twenty
or even twenty-five, I could in fact
did believe in the sufficiency of one
man and one woman to each other. I
no longer do, however, and know few
people who could swear to such a belief.
My sister-in-law, a clever woman, with
whom I have discussed the affair, seems
inclined to envy them, she herself has
been a widow for years, and shows no
disposition to change her estate; but
I am conscious of pitying them both.
Are n't they going to wake up in a few
weeks at most, and loathe each other ?
Tell me what you think ?
Even assuming that Browning is
right in his Soul-Sides theory, must not
two people, as isolated as they must be,
be bored to death by each other's soul-
sides after a time ? People rarely tell
each other the whole truth in the dis-
cussion of such questions, chiefly be-
cause every one has a certain amount of
pose ; but you, woman of the world,
from your forest, could tell me fear-
lessly your inmost thoughts about the
matter. If you wish to!
I like to think of you caring for your
old nurse, and I am glad you were in the
house that night when the spirit in my
feet led me to it.
This disembodied friendship has a
great charm for me, and I like knowing
of you all that you will allow me to,
though I grant you that did we know
each other personally much of the in-
terest would be lost. You are wise in
telling me nothing of your outside per-
sonality, your name, your home, your
looks, etc., but let me know what you
can of your character, your thoughts,
your feelings.
I would willingly tell you my name,
but it would not interest you, and would
change the whole attitude of things, per-
haps disastrously to me. We would be
friends if we met, you and I, but each
would keep from the other something
that he or she would tell the next com-
er. Our view-points would influence,
not the character of each other, but
what each would be willing to show the
other.
Would there not be a great charm in
Our Lady of the Beeches.
23
being absolutely truthful to each other
by letter ? In showing each other
you know what I mean. The idea is
not original, but we have drifted uncon-
'sciously into the beginning of an origi-
nal exposition of it.
I am over forty years old. I have
never had any especial fondness for
women as a whole ; I am a busy man,
with an engrossing life-work that, even
were my temperament other, would
prevent my ever trying to penetrate
your incognito.
You are a young and (I insist) beau-
tiful woman, living in the world, occu-
pied with the million interests of the
woman of the world ; consoled on the
other hand for the inevitable slings and
arrows of life by a curiously strong love
of nature and a certain intelligent cu-
riosity as to things abstruse.
Granted, then, that I am (alas!) no
impetuous boy, to fall in love with you
and rush across the world to find you
out, that you are no lonely senti-
mentalist with a soul-hunger, why
not be friends ?
You say you have no troubles. Good !
Then tell me your joys. What I will
be able to give you, Heaven knows ! I
am asking much, and can probably give
little or nothing, though one thing I
can do. I can send you books, if you
will let me, books that would never
\come in your way, probably, and that
you will love.
And you will do ! give me many
pleasant thoughts, instantaneous day-
dreams, so to say, gleams of sunshine
that brighten my hours of hard work.
This has grown to be a volume, and
if, after all, you only laugh at me, O
dreamer? I '11 only say, if you must
snub, snub gently!
There is a heart-breaking hole burnt
in the front breadth (!) of the apron,
and a terrible tear at the root of one of
the bib-strings. I forgot I had an apron
on, and nearly hanged myself getting
down from a ladder on which I 'd been
standing driving some nails in the wall.
My sister-in-law mended it, and offered
even to make me another, but I would
n't have it.
I hope you 've not forgotten your
promise ?
Dear Lady of the Beeches, good-by.
LETTEK XVII.
February 1,
In a small room high in a tower.
Why should I snub you? On the
contrary I am pleased flattered, pos-
sibly by your letter. Another thing,
you have put into words something
that I have felt for years. The influ-
ence of the character of another person,
not on one's own character, but on the
choice of the side of one's character
that one is willing to show that person.
If I have a virtue (besides that of
modesty, you see!) it is that of frank-
ness. I think I may honestly say that
I know no woman with less of conscious
pose. Yet even when striving with
somewhat untoward circumstances to be
perfectly natural, I am conscious of
something more than mere justifiable
reserve.
The side I show to one person is
never, do what I will, the same side I
show to another, and, as the French say,
that afflicts me, in morbid moments.
" Each life casts a shadow, be it ever so
slight, on the lives about it, and is shad-
owed by those lives. The sun show-
ing through a combination of blue and
green, though the same sun, throws a
light different from that it throws when
it shines through blue and red."
You will remember this quotation,
though it is not exact.
In moments of self-confidence, which
are more frequent than the morbid
ones, I tell myself that one must re-
spect one's moods, which are a part of
one's self after all. Am I right? Is
this a bit of what you, O Wise Man,
call so gently "an intelligent interest
in things abstruse " ?
This interest in one's self, in one's
motives, is of course a kind of vanity,
24
Our Lady of the Beeches.
but surely if one honestly tries, one can
learn to know one's self better than any
other person's self, and one's self be-
longs to humanity as much as does one's
neighbor.
So we are to be friends. I am glad.
I am glad you are not young, I am glad
you are a busy man. And you must in-
deed be busy between your laboratory
and your metaphysics. I like busy
men, and I am glad you understand so
well the advantages of our not knowing
each other personally.
Frankly, I should be terribly influ-
enced by external things. It could
never be the same. If your eyes hap-
pened to be blue instead of brown, or
brown instead of gray, I should be dis-
appointed. Also, if you had a certain
kind of mouth I should be quite unable
to like you. Observe how gracefully I
ignore the possibility of your being in-
fluenced by such trifles. Your great
mind being sternly bent on molecules,
you no doubt would not even notice
whether I am tall or short, bony or
baggy! But you will think this very
foolish babbling, after the profundity of
my beginnings.
About your story. I agree with you
in pitying her. In such cases I am al-
ways inclined to pity the woman. And
this woman has put everything into the
scale against the love of a man years
younger than she, as well as having
taken from him, at least for a time,
the companionship of other men and
women, his club, all his menus.
As a merciful Providence in the mys-
tery of his wisdom has created man
polygamous, woman monogamous (by
instinct, which is, after all, what counts),
every man, unless his love for a woman
is backed and braced by a lot of other
things, the respect of his kind, amuse-
ment, occupation, etc., is bound to tire
of her after a time.
Even backed by these things, how
many a perfectly sincere love wanes
with time!
Poor soul! I hope her husband will
divorce her soon, and at least give her
the legal possession of the lisp and the
opals, before the charm of her position,
her house, her friendships with other
people, in a word, before his love
under the removal of the host of gra-
cious " shadows " chased away by the
stern sun of solitude has begun its
absolutely inevitable waning.
There is my opinion; take it for
what it 's worth.
I have just been out for a walk
through softly melting snow, on which
all shadows are blue, into the beech-
wood. The snow was so deep that I
could not go far, but I stood under a
big, knobby old fellow near the edge,
and looked up the slope, up which the
blue shadows slanted.
A wood in winter is very beautiful.
The white quiet was not yet broken by
the thaw, though the branches gleamed
black in the moist air; all little twigs
seemed sketched in ink against the
snow. The sun behind me threw a red
glow for a second over it all, edging
the shriveled leaves clinging here and
there with fire.
The snow will soon be gone, leaving
the ground an untidy mass of slippery
red soil, and I will put on rubber boots,
take a stick, and pay a round of visits
on the slope. The winter has been hard,
and some of my friends will have suf-
fered.
There is a pastel portrait hanging op-
posite me as I write, and I think you
must be like it. I don't mean as to
features, but in a certain air of quiet
determination and knowing what you
are about.
I forgot to tell you that the other
day, in a certain old university town,
I was taken to see a chemical labora-
tory. It made me think of you, dear
Pessimist, and I admit that the retorts
and crucibles have a certain charm, to
say nothing of all the other things,
nameless to me.
Our Lady of the Beeches.
25
I shall be glad to have the books.
Don't forget to send them.
Since my walk, by the way, I am
less fearful for the poor woman with
the blackened eyebrows. Possibly she
has great charm, and possibly he is too
completely under her sway to tire of
her. I hope so, and I have seen it,
only in my case the woman was greatly
the social superior of the man. At all
events, they interest me, and she was
certainly better and more courageous in
running off with him than she would
have been in doing what nine women
out of ten over here, at least would
have done.
It is late; I must dress for dinner.
Shall I wear yellow or pink ?
Good-night, amigo di mi alma.
LETTER XVIII.
March 16.
Thank, you. I can write you only a
few words, dear lady, as I have had
pneumonia, and am still almost help-
less. Your letter was given me to-day,
and Heaven knows how often I have
re-read it. I suppose that by this time
you are busy hunting the first violets ?
Send me one.
It is an infernal thing to be ill; a
worse thing to be ill and alone. It is
just as well, perhaps, that I can't write,
for I am in a state approaching the
fearful.
If I had married the girl whom I once
loved, my eldest child might have been
nineteen, and, if a girl, sitting there in
the big chair with the firelight on her
hair. I am growing old; I drivel. If
I were even ten years younger I should
want you awfully. It is hard to feel
that one is too old for falling in love
with the most charming woman in the
world, and you are she, of that I am
sure.
Have you dimples, and blue veins in
your temples ? My nurse has come, and
is scolding me for disobeying her. She
has no dimples ; she has an imperial in-
stead.
Write me soon, and forgive all this
idiocy. I am to have a poached egg.
If it is slippery, I won't eat it. Would
you? C. R. S.
LETTER XIX.
March 30.
Poor dear! I am so sorry that you
have been ill. Are you better now?
Here is the violet, poor wee thing!
bringing a most cordial and sincere
greeting from me to you.
It is awful to be ill, and it is worse
to be ill and alone. A nurse with an
imperial would hardly improve matters,
I suppose, though, all things considered,
perhaps the imperial was a blessing in
disguise.
You were, despite your potential
daughter of nineteen, in a dangerous
state of mind when you wrote that note,
Mr. Pessimist! But now, no doubt,
you are back at work, at least no longer
shut in your room, and all is well.
This last month has been an anxious
one for me. My poor Annette, fired
with ambition as to window-cleaning,
fell off a chest of drawers and broke her
leg, a few days after I wrote you. She
was in Paris ; I far from there. She
is the embodiment of health as a rule,
but she is over sixty, and to make mat-
ters worse, fell to fretting for her hus-
band, a creature charming in his way,
but with whom she had never been able
to live in peace, and whom she left
twenty years ago and more.
Her letters to me have been very
touching. Years ago they had a child,
a poor little thing born lame, and it
seems that Pere Bonnet's one good qual-
ity, beyond great charm of manner, and
a tenor voice fit for the heavenly choir,
was his utter devotion to Le Mioche.
I know no other name for him. Le
Mioche lived only four years, but those
four years, looked back on, through the
kindly mist of something over thirty,
have grown to be of paramount impor-
tance to the poor old woman. Her man,
she wrote me, used to carry Le Mioche
in a sort of hammock on his back, and
26
Our Lady of the Beeches.
then, while he worked, Le Mioche sat
in a heap of sawdust covered with her
man's coat, and looked on. Le pere
Bonnet was working in a lumber camp
at that time, indeed, they lived in a
log hut built by his own hands. Le
Mioche had a precocious fondness for
mushrooms, and many times "mon
homme " brought a hatful home with
him, and tenderly fed them to the poor
child raw ! The grave is somewhere
there in the Maine woods, and several
times, of late, Annette has expressed
to me her longing to visit it once more
with the recreant Bonnet, who, "after
all, " was the father of Le Mioche.
It would be a pitiful pilgrimage,
would it not ? She was a high-spirited,
handsome woman, as I first remember
her. Now she is old and bent, this
very longing for the husband she hated
in her youth being a pathetic indica-
tion of her weakness. He, I gather,
for I remember him very faintly, was a
handsome, light-hearted creature who
simply could n't understand her mental
attitudes, and whom her ideas of faith-
fulness and honor bored to death. Think
of the meeting, drawn together over the
grave of Le Mioche !
I suspect her of having written to
him, poor soul ! Does this bore you ?
I hope not, for it really is "being
friends, " as children say. My mind is
full of Annette and her troubles, so I
tell you of them. It is at least a sug-
gestive story enough. I hope your friend
who ran away with the man with the
opals had no Mioche !
To-morrow I go south on a yachting
trip. We leave Italy about April 15,
and I don't know where we shall go, so
do not hurry about writing, though I
am always glad to have your letters.
Has not your book come out?
I will write you some time from the
yacht, and in the meantime, behiit' dich
Gott.
You signed your initials to your note,
do you remember?
LETTER XX.
ON BOABD THE YACHT X , May 3.
Just five minutes in which to beg a
great favor of you. Le pere Bonnet
needs money, and I cannot get ashore
to send it him. Will you send him $200
at once, with the inclosed note ?
We shall be in England next week
en route for home, and I will of course
send you the money at once. I know
that this is very dreadful, but I have no
one in America to do it for me, and
Annette writes, urging me to send it
at once, as a miracle has come to pass,
and he wishes to go to France to see
her.
You see, I trust you, in giving you
the address of this man who would tell
you all about me. I will send you the
money in English banknotes, registered,
care Harper Brothers.
Thanking you a thousand times in
advance, believe me to be sincerely your
friend, W. Z.
LETTER XXI.
May 20, THE LABORATORY.
Thank you for trusting me. Pere
Bonnet has his money, and as I sent no
address he could not write to acknow-
ledge it, and I know no more of you,
dear Lady of the Beeches, than I did
before. That is do I not ? Am I not
learning to know so much that it is more
than just as well that I know no more ?
Thank you for signing the initials of
your name, and thank you again for
trusting me.
I am tormented by an insane desire
to tell you my name, but I dare not.
I know you would snub me, and possibly
you might never write me again. So
good-by. * I have been writing to you
for hours with this result.
C. R. S.
Bettina von Hutten.
(To be continued.)
Walks with J2llery Channing.
27
WALKS WITH ELLERY CHANNING.
THE following extracts from the MS.
diaries of Ralph Waldo Emerson are
here for the first time offered to the
public, with the consent of his children.
They describe with utter frankness his
walks, talks, and excursions with his
younger neighbor and friend, the late
William Ellery Channing, usually known
as Ellery Channing, to distinguish him
from his uncle and godfather, the emi-
nent divine. The younger Channing
resided for the greater part of his life
in Concord, and clearly inspired in Em-
erson much admiration for his rare gifts,
as well as a warm affection for his way-
ward and recluse temperament. This
combination of feeling shows Emerson
in a light almost wholly new to the gen-
eral reader, exhibiting him, not merely
as a warm and even tender friend, but
as one fully able to recognize the limita-
tions and even defects of the man he loved
.and to extend to him, when needful, the
frankest criticism. With all our previous
knowledge of Emerson, it may yet be
truly said that he has nowhere been re-
vealed in so sweet and lovable a light
as in these detached fragments. His
relations with Thoreau may have come
nearest to this friendship with Channing ;
but in dealing with the self-reliant Tho-
reau, he had not to face a nature so com-
plex, so shy, or so difficult to reach. It
might well be of this friendship 'that Em-
erson wrote, in his essay bearing that
title, " Let it be an alliance of two large
formidable natures, mutually beheld, mu-
tually feared, before yet they recognize
the deep identity which beneath these dis-
parities unites them."
T. W. H.
Probably 1841. 10 December. A
good visit to Boston, saw S. G. W.
[Ward] and Ellery [Channing] to ad-
vantage. E. has such an affectionate
speech and a tone that is tremulous with
emotion, that he is a flower in the wind.
Ellery said his poems were proper love
poems ; and they were really genuine
fruits of a fine, light, gentle, happy in-
tercourse with his friends. C.'s [Chan-
ning's] eyes are a compliment to the hu-
man race ; that steady look from year
to year makes Phidian Sculpture and
Poussin landscape still real and contem-
porary, and a poet might well dedicate
himself to the fine task of expressing
their genius in verse.
1843. Ellery, who hopes there wiU
be no cows in heaven, has discovered
what cows are for, namely, it was two-
fold, (1) to make easy walking where
they had fed, and (2) to give the farm-
ers something to do in summer-time. All
this haying comes at midsummer be-
tween planting and harvest when all
hands would be idle but for this cow and
ox which must be fed and mowed for ;
and thus intemperance and the progress
of crime are prevented.
20 May. Walked with Ellery. In
the landscape felt the magic of color;
the world is all opal, and those ethereal
tints the mountains wear have the finest
effects of music upon us. Mountains
are great poets, and one glance at this
fine cliff scene undoes a great deal of
prose and reinstates us wronged men in
our rights.
Ellery thinks that very few men carry
the world in their thoughts. But the ac-
tual of it is thus, that every man of me-
diocre health stands there for the sup-
port of fourteen or fifteen sick ; and
though it were easy to get his own bread
with little labor, yet the other fourteen
damn him to toil.
Ellery said the village [of Concord]
did not look so very bad from our point ;
the three churches looked like geese
swimming about in a pond.
28
Walks with JZllery Channing.
W. E. C. railed an hour in good set
terms at the usurpation of the past, at the
great hoaxes of the Homers and Shake-
speares, hindering the books and the men
of to-day of their just meed. Oh, cer-
tainly ! I assure him that the oaks and
the horse-chestnuts are entirely obsolete,
that the Horticultural Society are about
to recommend the introduction of cab-
bage as a shade tree, so much more con-
venient and every way comprehensible ;
all grown from the seed upward to its
most generous crumpled extremity with-
in one's own short memory, past contra-
diction the ornament of the world, and
then so good to eat, as acorns and horse-
chestnuts are not. Shade trees for break-
fast.
Ellery's poetry shows the art, though
the poems are imperfect ; as the first da-
guerres are grim things, yet show that a
great engine has been invented.
Ellery's verses should be called poetry
for poets. They touch the fine pulses of
thought and will be the cause of more
poetry and of verses more finished and
better turned than themselves ; but I
cannot blame the N. Americans [N. A.
Reviews J and Knickerbockers if they
should not suspect his genius. When
the rudder is invented for balloons, rail-
roads will be superseded, and when El-
lery's muse finds an aim, whether some
passion, or some fast faith, and kind of
string on' which all these wild and some-
times brilliant beads can be strung, we
shall have a poet. Now he fantasies
merely, as dilettante in music. He breaks
faith continually with the intellect. The
sonnet has merits, fine lines, gleams of
deep thought, well worth sounding, well
worth studying, if only I could confide
that he had any steady meaning before
him, that he kept faith with himself ; but
I fear that he changed his purpose with
every verse, was led up and down to this
or that with the exigencies of the rhyme,
and only wanted to write and rhyme some-
what, careless how or what, and stopped
when he came to the end of the paper.
He breaks faith with the reader, wants
integrity. Yet, for poets, it will be a
better book than whole volumes of Bry-
ant and Campbell.
A man of genius is privileged only as
far as he is a genius. His dullness is as
insupportable as any other dullness. Only
success will justify a departure and a
license. But Ellery has freaks which
are entitled to no more charity than the
dullness or madness of others, which he
despises. He uses a license continually
which would be just in oral improvisa-
tion, but is not pardonable in written
verses. He fantasies on his piano.
Elizabeth Hoar said that he was a
wood-elf which one of the maids in a
story fell in love with and then grew
uneasy, desiring that he might be bap-
tized. Margaret [Fuller ?] said he re-
minded one of a great Genius with a
wretched little boy trotting before him.
1846. Channing thinks life looks
great and inaccessible and constantly at-
tacks us, and notwithstanding all our
struggles is eating us up.
Sunday, September 20. Suffices El-
lery Channing a mood for a poem.
" There, I have sketched more or less in
that color and style. You have a sam-
ple of it, what more would you get if I
worked on forever ? " He has no pro-
position to affirm or support, he scorns
it. He has, first of all Americans, a
natural flow, and can say what he will.
I say to him, if I could write as well as
you, I would write a good deal better.
No man deserves a patron until first
he has been his own. What do you
bring us slipshod verses for ? no occa-
sional delicacy of expression or music of
rhythm can atone for stupidities. Here
are lame verses, false rhymes, absurd
images, which you indulge yourself in,
which is as if a handsome person should
come into a company with foul hands or
face. Read Collins ! Collins would have
cut his hand off before he would have
left, from a weak self-esteem, a shabby
line in his ode.
Walks with Ellery Charming.
29
1847. Channing wished we had a
better word than Nature to express this
fine picture which the river gave us in
our boat, yesterday. " Kind " was the
old word which, however, only filled half
the range of our fine Latin word. But
nothing expresses that power which
seems to work for beauty alone, as C.
said, whilst man works only for use.
The Mikania scandens, the steel-blue
berries of the cornel, the eupatoriums
enriched now and then by a well-placed
cardinal adorned the fine shrubbery with
what Channing called judicious modest
colors, suited to the climate, nothing ex-
travagant, etc.
1848. I find W. E. C. always in cun-
ning contraries. He denies the books
he reads, denies the friends he has just
visited ; denies his own acts and pur-
poses : " By God, I do not know them,"
and instantly the cock crows. The per-
petual non sequitur in his speeches is ir-
resistibly comic.
Ellery affirms, that "James Adams,
the cabinet maker, has a true artistic
eye ; for he is always measuring the
man he talks with for his coffin."
He says that Hawthorne agrees with
him about Washington, that he is the
extreme of well-dressed mediocrity.
If he was Mr. Bowditch [President
qf the Life Insurance Company] he
would never insure any life that had any
infirmity of goodness in it. It is Good-
win who will catch pickerel ; if he had
any moral traits, he 'd never get a bite.
He says writers never do anything ;
some of them seem to do, but do not.
H. T. [Thoreau] will never be a writer ;
he is as active as a shoemaker. The
merit of Irving's Life of Goldsmith is
that he has not had the egotism to put
in a single new sentence ; 't is agreeable
repetition of Boswell, Johnson & Com-
pany ; and Montaigne is good, because
there is nothing that has not already
been cured in books. A good book be-
ing a Damascus blade, made by welding
old nails and horseshoes. Everything
has seen service, and had wear and tear
of the world for centuries, and now the
article is brand-new. So Pope had but
one good line, and that he got from
Dry den, and therefore Pope is the best
and only readable English poet.
Channing has a painter's eye, an ad-
mirable appreciation of form and espe-
cially of color. But when he bought
pigments and brushes, and painted a
landscape with fervor on a barrel-head,
he could not draw a tree so that his wife
could surely know it was a tree. So Al-
cott, the philosopher, has not an opinion
or an apothegm to produce.
Ellery C. declared that wealth is ne-
cessary to every woman, for then she
won't ask you when you go out whether
you will call a hack. Every woman has
a design on you all, all if it is only
just a little message. But Mrs. H. rings
for her black servant.
Ellery was witty on Xantippe and the
philosophers old and new ; and compared
one to a rocket with two or three mill-
stones tied to it, or to a colt tethered
to a barn.
He celebrates Herrick as the best of
English poets, a true Greek in England ;
a great deal better poet than Milton who,
he says, is too much like Dr. Channing.
Yesterday, 28 October. Another walk
with Ellery well worth commemoration,
if that were possible ; but no pen could
write what we saw. It needs the pencils
of all the painters to aid the description.
November 19. Yesterday, a cold fine
ride with Ellery to Sudbury Inn and
mounted the side of Nobscot. 'T is a
pretty revolution effected in the land-
scape by turning your head upside down ;
an infinite softness and loveliness is add-
ed to the picture. Ellery declared it
made Campagna of it at once ; so, he said,
Massachusetts is Italy upside down.
26 November. Yesterday walked over
Lincoln hills with Ellery and saw golden
willows, savins with two foliages, old
chestnuts, apples as ever.
" What fine weather is this," said El-
30
Walks with Ellery Channing.
lery, as we rode to Acton, " nothing of
immortality here ! "
" Life is so short," said he, " that I
should think that everybody would steal."
" I like Stow. He is a very good char-
acter. There is only a spoonful of wit,
and ten thousand feet of sandstone."
He told Edmund Hosmer that he " did
not see but trouble was as good as any-
thing else if you only had enough of it."
He says " Humour is unlaughed fun."
He said of Stow's poor Irishman that
he " died of too much perspiration."
He thinks our Thurston's disease is
" a paralysis of talent."
Of H.D. T. [Thoreau] he said, " Why,
yes, he has come home, but now he has
got to maximize the minimum, and that
will take him some days." [This irresist-
ibly suggests Thoreau's noted sentence,
" I have traveled a great deal in Con-
cord."]
[Apparently a quotation from Ellery
Channing's talk.] " Drive a donkey
and beat him with a pole with both hands
that 's action ; but poetry is revolu-
tion on its own axis."
He says he has an immense dispersive
power.
" How well they [the stars] wear ! "
He thought a man could still get along
with them, who was considerably re-
duced in his circumstances ; they are a
kind of bread and cheese which never
fail.
1849, November 17. Yesterday saw
the fields covered with cobwebs in every
direction, on which the wake of the set-
ting sun appeared as on water. Walked
over hill and dale with Channing, who
found wonders of color and landscape
everywhere, but complained of the want
of invention : " Why, they had frozen
water last year ; why should they do it
again ? Therefore it was so easy to be
an artist, because they do the same thing
always, and therefore he only wants time
to make him perfect in the imitation;
and I believe, too, that pounding is one
of the secrets." All summer he gets
water au naturel, and in winter they
serve it up artistically in this crystal
johnny-cake; and he had observed the
same thing at the confectioners' shops,
that he could never get but one thing
there, though [they] had two ways of
making it up.
14 December. Every day shows a
new thing to veteran walkers. Yester-
day, reflections of trees in the ice ; snow-
flakes, perfect, on the ice ; beautiful
groups of icicles all along the eastern
shore of Flint's Pond, in which, espe-
cially where encrusting the bough of a
tree, you have the union of the most
flowing with the most fixed. Ellery all
the way squandering his jewels as if they
were icicles, sometimes not comprehend-
ed by me, sometimes not heard. " How
many days can Methusalem go abroad
and see somewhat new ? When will he
have counted the changes of the kaleido-
scope ? "
1850. Then came the difference be-
tween American and English scholars.
H. said the English were all bred in one
way, to one thing, they went to Eton,
they went to college, they went to Lon-
don, they all knew each other and never
did not feel [i. e., never doubted] the
ability of each. But here Channing is
obscure, Newcomb is obscure, and so all
the scholars are in a more natural, health-
ful, and independent condition.
W. E. C. said A. [Alcott] is made of
earth and fire ; he wants air and water.
How fast all this magnetism would lick
up water! He discharges himself in
volleys. Can you not hear him snap
when you are near him ?
1852. Walk with Ellery to Lincoln ;
benzoin, laurus, rich beautiful plant in
this dried-up country ; parti-colored war-
bler. E. laughed at Nuttall's descrip-
tion of birds, " On the top of a high tree
the bird pours all day the lays of affec-
tion," etc. Affection ! Why, what is it ?
A few feathers, with a hole at one end,
and a point at the other, and a pair of
wings ; Affection ! Why, just as much
Walks with Ellery Channing.
31
affection as there is in that lump of peat.
We went to Bear Hill, and had a fine
outlook. Descending, E. got sightof some
laborers in the field below. Look at them,
he said, those four ! four demoniacs
scratching in their cell of pain ! Live
for the hour ! Just as much as any man
has done or laid up in any way, unfits
him for conversation. He has done some-
thing, makes him good for boys, but spoils
him for the hour. That 's the good of
Thoreau, that he puts his whole sublu-
nary capital into the last quarter of an
hour ; carries his whole stock under his
arm. At home I found H. T. [Thoreau]
himself who complained of Clough or
somebody that he or they recited to every
one at table, the paragraph just read by
him or them in the last newspaper, and
studiously avoided everything private. I
should think he was complaining of one
H. D. T. [Thoreau himself].
1853. Yesterday a ride to Bedford
with Ellery along the " Bedford Levels "
and walked all over the premises of the
Old Mill, King Philip's mill, on the
Shawsheen River ; old mill, with sundry
nondescript wooden antiquities. Boys
with bare legs were fishing on the little
islet in the stream ; we crossed and re-
crossed, saw the fine stumps of trees,
rocks and groves, and many Collot views
of the bare legs ; beautiful pastoral coun-
try, but needs sunshine. There were
millions of light to-day, so all went well
(all but the dismal tidings which knelled
a funeral bell through the whole after-
noon, in the death of S. S.).
Rich democratic land of Massachu-
setts, in every house well-dressed women
with air of town ladies ; in every house
a clavecin [harpsichord] and a copy of
the Spectator ; and some young lady a
reader of Willis. Channing did not like
the landscape ; too many leaves one
leaf is like another and apt to be agi-
tated by east wind, on the other hand
" Professor " (Ellery's dog) strode grave-
ly as a bear through all the sentimental
parts and fitted equally well the grave and
the gay scenes. He has a stroke of humor
in his eye, as if he enjoyed his master's
jokes Ellery " thinks England a flash
in the pan ; " as English people in 1848
had agreed that Egypt was humbug. I
am to put down among the monomaniacs
the English agriculturist, who only knows
one revolution in political history, the
rape-culture. But as we rode, one thing
was clear, as oft before, that is favora-
ble to sanity the occasional change of
landscape. If a girl is mad to marry,
let her take a ride of ten miles, and see
meadows, and mountains, she never saw
before, two villages and an old mansion
house and the odds are, it will change
all her resolutions. World is full of fools,
who get a-going and never stop ; set them
off on another tack, and they are half-
cured. From Shawsheen we went to Bur-
lington ; and E. reiterated his conviction,
that the only art in the world is land-
scape-painting. The boys held up their
fish to us from far ; a broad new pla-
card on the Brails announced to us that
the Shawsheen mill was for sale ; but we
bought neither the fish nor the mill.
1854. Delicious summer stroll through
the endless pastures of Barrett, Buttrick,
and Esterbrook farms, yesterday, with
Ellery ; the glory of summer, what mag-
nificence ! yet one night of frost will kill
it all. E. was witty on the Biographie
Universelle de soi-meme. H. D. T.
had been made to print his house into his
title-page, in order that A. might have
that to stick into one volume of the B. U.
[Probably referring to Alcott's volumi-
nous journals.]
1856. November 15. Walk with
Ellery, who finds in Nature or man that
whatever is done for beauty or in sport
is excellent; but the moment there is
any use in it, or any kind of talent, 't is
very bad and stupid. The fox-sparrows
and the blue snow-birds pleased him, and
the water-cresses which we saw in the
brook, but which he said were not in
any botany.
When I said of Ellery's new verses
32
Walks with Ellery Channing.
that they were as good as the old ones,
" Yes," said Ward, " but those were excel-
lent promise and now he does no more."
He has a more poetic temperament than
any other in America, but the artistic ex-
ecutive power of completing a design he
has not. His poetry is like the artless
warbling of a vireo, which whistles pret-
tily all day and all summer on the elm,
but never rounds a tune, nor can increase
the value of melody by the power of com-
position and cuneiform [sic"\ determina-
tion. He must have construction also.
As Linnaeus delighted in a new flower
which alone gave him a seventh class, or
filled a gap in his system, so I know a
man who served as intermediate between
two notable acquaintances of mine, not
else to be approximated, and W. E. C.
served as a companion of H. D. T., and
T. of C. [Thoreau of Channing].
In answer to evidences of immortal-
ity, Ellery said, " There is a great deal
of self-importance, and the good Orien-
tal who cuts such a figure was bit by
this fly."
He said of Boston, " There is a city
of 130,000 people, and not a chair in
which I can sit."
There often seems so little affinity be-
tween him and his works that it seems
as if the wind must have written the
book and not he.
1859. Secondary men and primary
men. These travelers to Europe, these
readers of books, these youths rushing
into counting-rooms of successful mer-
chants, are all imitators, and we get
only the same product weaker. But the
man who never so slowly and patiently
works out his native thoughts is a pri-
mary person.
Ellery said, looking at a golden-rod,
" Ah ! here they are. These things con-
sume a great deal of time. I don't
know but they are of more importance
than any other of our investments."
Glad of Ellery's cordial praise of
Carlyle's history, which he thinks well
entitled to be called a " Work," far su-
perior to his early books ; wondered at
his imagination which can invest with
such interest to himself these (one would
think) hopeless details of German story.
He is the only man who knows. What
a reader, such as abound in New Eng-
land, enwreathed by the thoughts they
suggest to a contemplative pilgrim.
"Unsleeping truths by which wheels on
Heaven's prime."
There is a neglect of superficial cor-
rectness which looks a little studied, as
if perhaps the poet challenged notice to
his subtler melody, and strokes of skill
which recall the great masters. There
is nothing conventional in the thought
or the illustration, but " thoughts that
voluntary move harmonious numbers,"
and pictures seen by an instructed eye.
Channing, who writes a poem for our
fields, begins to help us. That is con-
struction, and better than running to
Charlemagne and Alfred for subjects.
W. E. C.'s poetry is wanting in clear
statement. Rembrandt makes effects
without details, gives you the effect of a
sharp nose or a gazing eye, when, if you
look close, there is no point to the nose,
and no eye is drawn. W. M. Hunt ad-
mires this, and in his own painting puts
his eye in deep shadow ; but I miss the
eye, and the face seems to nod for want
of it. And Ellery makes a hazy, indefi-
nite expression, as of miscellaneous music
without any theme or tune. Still it is an
autumnal air, and like the smell of the
herb, Life Everlasting and syngenesious
flowers. Near Home is a poem which
would delight the heart of Wordsworth,
though genuinely original and with a sim-
plicity of plan which allows the writer to
leave out all the prose. 'T is a series of
sketches of natural objects.
W. E. C., the model of opinionists, or
weather painters. He has it his own way.
People whose watches go faster than
their neighbors'.
1861. March 26. Yesterday wrote
to F. G. Tuckerman to thank him for
his book [Poems. Boston : 1860], and
Walks with JZllery Channing.
33
praised Rhotruda [a poem]. EHery C.
finds two or three good lines and metres
in the book ; thinks it refined and deli-
cate, but says the young people run on a
notion that they must name the flowers,
talk about an orchis, and say something
about Indians; but he says, "I prefer
passion and sense and genius to botany."
Ellery says of Tennyson, "What is
best is the things he does not say."
He thinks these frogs at Walden are
very curious but final facts ; that they
will never be disappointed by finding
themselves raised to a higher state of
intelligence.
Here is a right bit of Ellery C. :
" Helps's book, called Friends in Coun-
cil, is inexpressibly dull." " In this
manufacture the modern English excel.
Witness their Taylors, Wordsworths,
Arnolds and Scotts (not Walter). Wise,
elegant, moderate, and cultivated, yet
unreadable."
Ellery says of Thoreau : " His effects
can all be produced by cork and sand ;
but the substance that produces them is
godlike and divine." And of C. [Cur-
tis ?], " Yes, he would make a very
good draughtsman, if he had any talent
for it."
October 24. A ride yesterday to
Marlborough, though projected for years,
was no good use of the day. That town
has a most rich appearance of rural
plenty, and comfort ; ample farms, good
houses, profusion of apples, pumpkins,
etc. Yellow apple heaps in every en-
closure, whole orchards left ungathered,
and in the Grecian piazzas of houses,
pumpkins ripening between the columns.
At Gates's, where Dr. Channing and Mr.
Jonas Phillips used to resort, they no
longer keep a public house, closed it
to the public last spring. At Cutting's,
though there were oats for the horse,
there was no dinner for men, so we
repaired to the chestnut woods and an
old orchard, for ours. Ellery, who is a
perpetual holiday, and ought only to be
used like an oriflamme or a garland for
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 3
May-days and parliaments of wit and
love, was no better to-day nor half so
good as in some walks.
Ellery says : " What a climate !
one day they take the cover off the sun,
and all the Irishmen die of drinking cold
water ; and the next day you are up to
your knees in snow."
He admires, as ever, the greatness in
Wilhelm Meister. "It is no matter
what Goethe writes about. There is no
trifle ; much superior to Shakespeare in
this elevation."
A. B. A. [Alcott] said of W. E. C.
that he had the keen appetite for society
with extreme repulsion, so that it came
to a kind of commerce of cats, love and
hate, embrace and fighting.
Ellery thinks that he is the lucky man
who can write in bulk, forty pages on a
hiccough, ten pages on a man's sitting
down in a chair (like Hawthorne, etc.)
that will go. [Evidently referring to
the marvelous chapter in the House
of the Seven Gables, where Governor
Pyncheon sits dead in the lonely room.]
Ellery thinks that these waterside cot-
tagers of Nahant and Chelsea, and so on,
never see the sea. There, it is all dead
water, and a place for dead horses, and
the smell of Mr. Kip's omnibus stable.
But go to Truro, and go to the beach
there, on the Atlantic side, and you will
have every stroke of the sea like the
cannon of the " sea-fencibles " [old-fash-
ioned military companies for coast de-
fense]. There is a solitude which you
cannot stand more than ten minutes.
He thinks the fine art of Goethe and
company very dubious, and 't is doubtful
whether Sam Ward is quite in his senses
in his value of that book of prints of old
Italian school, Giotto and the rest. It
may do for very idle gentlemen, etc.,
etc. I reply, There are a few giants
who gave the thing vogue by their real-
ism, Michel Angelo and Ribiera and
Salvator Rosa, and the man who made
the old Torso Hercules and the Phidias
man or men who made the Parthenon
34
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
reliefs had a drastic style which a
blacksmith or a stone-mason would say
was starker than their own. And I
adhere to [Van Waagen's ?] belief, that
there is a pleasure from works of art
which nothing else can yield.
1862. Matthew Arnold writes well
of "the grand style," but the secret of
that is a finer moral sentiment. 'Tis
very easy for Alcott to talk grandly, he
will make no mistake. 'Tis certain
that the poetic temperament of W. E. C.
will utter lines and passages inimitable
by any talent; 'tis wood-thrush and
cat-bird.
His talk is criss-cross, humorsome,
humorous. I tormented my memory
just now in vain to restore a witty criti-
cism of his, yesterday, on a book.
1864. On the 24th of September
Ellery and I walked through Becky
Stow's hole dry-shod ; hitherto a feat
for a muskrat alone.
This year the river meadows all dry
and permeable to the walker. But why
should Nature always be on the gallop ?
Look now, and instantly, or you shall
never see it. Not ten minutes' repose
allowed. Incessant whirl ? And J t is
the same, I thought, with my compan-
ion's genius. You must carry a steno-
graphic press in your pocket if you would
have his commentaries on things and
men or they are irrecoverable.
TWO YEARS' LEGISLATION IN PORTO RICO.
THE WORK OF THE FIRST LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF PORTO RICO,
1900-1902.
THE problem of endowing our new-
ly acquired insular possessions with po-
litical institutions and systems of law at
once conforming to American ideals of
individual liberty and political justice,
and yet adapted to the peculiar condi-
tions in each island and the character
of its inhabitants, constitutes one of the
greatest of the many responsibilities now
resting upon the American people. Of
the various possessions to which this
problem relates Porto Rico occupies an
unique position from the fact that it is
the first of the possessions coming to us
from Spain to be granted a civil govern-
ment and a considerable measure of
local autonomy. It is in this island,
then, that the United States is really
making its first essay in the field of
governing a dependency. The capacity
of the United States to govern another
people may be said there to be on trial.
More than this, it is certain that the re-
sults there actually accomplished will
exercise a profound influence upon the
management of affairs in our other pos-
sessions. If the policies pursued in
Porto Rico meet with success, they will
undoubtedly be used as a guide for action
elsewhere. Everything, therefore, that
is done in Porto Rico in the way of work-
ing out the problem of government and
administration assumes an interest and
importance to the whole United States
almost as great as to Porto Rico itself.
Civil government was organized in
Porto Rico on May 1, 1900. Its con-
stitution is found in the so-called " For-
aker Act," approved by Congress April
12, 1900, which provides the Organic
Act under which civil government is es-
tablished on the island. This act did
little more than set forth the bare out-
lines of a scheme of central government,
leaving to the Porto Ricans its subsequent
elaboration. Briefly, the act provided
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
35
that the government of the island should
be administered by a Governor and six
chiefs of executive departments known
as the Secretary, the Attorney-General,
the Treasurer, the Auditor, the Commis-
sioner of the Interior, and the Commis-
sioner of Education, all appointed by the
President with the advice and consent
of the Senate. The exercise of legisla-
tive powers was vested in a Legislative
Assembly consisting of an Executive
Council, or upper house, and a House of
Delegates, or lower house. The Execu-
tive Council was composed of eleven
members, the six chiefs of executive
departments already named, and five
others, citizens of Porto Rico, appointed
by the President. The House of Dele-
gates was made to consist of thirty-five
members, to be elected by the people of
Porto Rico. The Governor was given
the usual power of veto of legislation,
while Congress remained the final au-
thority with full power to legislate re-
garding the affairs of the island in any
particular.
While Congress thus provided for a
form of insular government, it made al-
most no provision regarding the funda-
mental laws that should regulate Porto
Rican affairs. The greatest freedom
was given to the newly constituted gov-
ernment to work out the great problems
of revenue, of education, of public works,
of local government, and, in fact, of
practically every question requiring the
exercise of governmental authority. A
great responsibility was thus thrown
upon the persons entrusted with the ad-
ministration of affairs in the island.
Whether the bestowal of so large a
measure of independent government was
or was not a wise act would be deter-
mined according to the way in which
the great powers entrusted to those in
authority were exercised by them. The
two sessions of the first Legislative As-
sembly have now been held, the first
sitting for sixty days in the months of
December, 1900, and January, 1901,
and the second during the months of
January and February, 1902, and it is
a matter of no little interest to attempt
to sum up the manner in which it has
performed its novel duties and the ex-
tent to which it has met the great re-
sponsibilities thrown upon it.
Properly to appreciate the work of
these two sessions it is necessary to un-
derstand something of the conditions
under which the law-makers worked.
As the Legislative Assembly of Porto
Rico is organized, the American mem-
bers of the government, constituting a
majority of the Executive Council, are
able to control the action of that body.
The lower house is composed entirely
of representatives elected by the people
of Porto Rico, and, therefore, represents
the will of the island in respect to all
matters. The consequence of this con-
dition of affairs is that though the Execu-
tive Council and the Governor through
his power t>f veto can prevent legislation
which they believe to be undesirable,
they cannot secure legislation that they
may desire without the consent of the
lower house. Any measure to become
a law must, therefore, meet with the ap-
proval of both the representatives of the
United States and of Porto Rico.
Generally speaking, the essential point
of difference between the two bodies is
that of location of power in the central
or insular government, or in the local
or municipal governments. The Ameri-
can representatives feel the necessity for
exercising a considerable degree of con-
trol for some years to come, and this
control they can only exercise through
the insular government. The Porto
Ricans, however, almost without excep-
tion, are demanding a greater voice in
affairs, and as they absolutely control
local government in the island they de-
sire to have governmental duties and
functions as far as possible made muni-
cipal functions. This essential differ-
ence in the positions of the American
and the Porto Rican representatives in
36
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
the Assembly must always be borne in
mind in the framing of any policy af-
fecting the political institutions of the
country. Not a measure can be brought
forward, whether regarding the organi-
zation of a system of taxation, of a pub-
lic health service, of the regulation of
industry, or what not, but that it is sub-
jected to the closest scrutiny of the House
of Delegates with a view to determining
if its administration cannot be entrusted
to the local authorities.
When the first Legislative Assembly
convened on December 1, 1900, it had
before it several imperative tasks for
accomplishment. The first and most
important of these was probably that of
providing a revenue law. The system
for the raising of revenue which had ex-
isted under the Spanish regime had been
slightly modified by certain general or-
ders issued by the military authorities,
but even in its modified form, was of
a character so inequitable to individual
taxpayers, and so inefficient in the meth-
ods of its administration, that its con-
tinuance could not for a moment be con-
templated. The urgency of devising a
new revenue system for the island had
already been recognized by the War De-
partment, and the President had sent a
special commissioner, Dr. J. H. Hollan-
der, a trained economist, to visit the island
and report upon the steps that should be
taken for reorganizing its finances. Upon
the inauguration of civil government the
wise step was taken by the President of
appointing this special commissioner to
the important office of Treasurer of the
island. The man best fitted for the task
was thus put in a position where he could
exercise a direct influence in having the
plans which he deemed desirable adopt-
ed. Dr. Hollander, before the meeting
of the legislature, had carefully drawn up
a revenue act providing for a fiscal sys-
tem closely following American practice
in taxation. This system was embodied
in a bill and promptly introduced into
the legislature. It immediately met with
intense hostility on the part of the Porto
Ricans, because it contemplated the shift-
ing of the burdens of taxation to the own-
ers of property, to whom such bur-
dens properly belong. In spite of this
hostility the act was finally passed, with
slight modifications, and became the law
under which the insular government now
obtains its revenue.
Though this act has been in operation
but little over a year, it has vindicated
the claims of its author, and those who
were its strongest opponents are now
among its greatest admirers. It pro-
vided that the insular revenue should be
obtained from the following sources :
(1) excise and license taxes upon the
manufacture and sale of liquors and to-
bacco in their various forms, and upon
certain classes of commercial papers;
(2) a general property tax upon all real
and personal property, with certain lib-
eral exemptions, of one half of one per
cent ; (3) a tax upon inheritances ; and
(4) certain miscellaneous imposts of
minor importance. In addition to the
proceeds of these taxes, it should be
stated that Congress had provided with
great liberality that the net receipts from
all customs duties collected in Porto Rico
on foreign importations should be turned
over to the insular treasury. The act,
furthermore, made elaborate provision
for carrying out the assessment of pro-
perty on the island for purposes of taxa-
tion. This in itself was a stupendous
task, and, considering the short time that
was available for its performance, was in
the main successfully carried through.
This was the first great accomplishment
of the first session of the legislature.
The reputation of this assembly for
ability to transact business does not,
however, rest wholly upon the enactment
of this law. One of the distinct pledges
of the American government was to
provide an adequate system of public
schools. This work had already been
begun and notable results accomplished
under the administration of the military
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
37
authorities. That this work, however,
might be systematized and made a per-
manent undertaking there was required
a fundamental school law. A bill pro-
viding for such a law was drafted by
the Commissioner of Education, and was
duly enacted. It outlines a scheme of
public instruction comparable to that
which exists in many of the American
states, and its workings thus far have
given great satisfaction. Under it lo-
cal school boards have been created all
over the island ; the municipalities have
been required to devote a certain per-
centage of their income to school pur-
poses ; schools have been established in
all important centres, and their work
has been received with great enthusiasm
by all classes of the population. In ad-
dition to this general educational law
special acts were passed providing for
the sending of twenty young men and
women to the United States at the ex-
pense of the insular government, to
be educated in the various arts and trades
best qualifying them to assist in the im-
provement of conditions in Porto Rico,
and a further number of young men
to pursue advanced studies, for a period
not to exceed five years, in such subjects
as the Legislative Assembly and the
Commissioner of Education should deter-
mine. An annual appropriation of fifteen
thousand dollars was made for carrying
out the provisions of these two acts.
Among other laws going to the very
basis of the legal constitution of the island
that met with successful action at this
first session was a law introducing trial
by jury. This act was drawn with great
care by the present Governor of Porto
Rico, Honorable William H. Hunt, who
then held the office of Secretary. An-
other law provided for the creation and
maintenance of an insular police force.
This was an imperative necessity, as
many of the municipalities did not pos-
sess financial resources permitting them
to maintain a police force on a proper
basis. It also gave to the insular au-
thorities a body of men through whom
order could be maintained throughout
the island, of which there was great need.
Other important acts were those pro-
viding for the organization of police
courts throughout the island of Porto
Rico, for the abolition of the board of
charities, and the creation of the new of-
fice of director of charities, the creation
of the office of director of prisons and
the determination of his powers and
duties, the establishment of a peniten-
tiary, the condemnation and use of lands
for cemetery purposes, and, finally, an
act authorizing the larger municipalities
of the island to incur bonded indebted-
ness to an extent not exceeding in any
one case seven per cent of the total value
of the property of such municipalities
for purposes of taxation, the proceeds of
which were to be devoted to the making
of urgent public improvements. Under
this act a number of the municipalities
have already successfully floated issues
of bonds at or above par, and a begin-
ning in the application of the sums thus
realized has been made.
The second session of the legislature
was productive of even more important
results. It assembled with the great ad-
vantage of the experience gained in the
preceding session. The members of both
houses had become familiar with parlia-
mentary procedure, committee work, and
the drafting of bills, and it was thus able
to accomplish within the sixty days,
which constitutes the maximum length of
the session permitted under the Organic
Act, a much greater volume of work.
While the first session accomplished
the fundamental task of providing a reve-
nue and a school system for the island,
the second session performed the equally
important work of definitely adopting a
series of codes covering the more impor-
tant branches of law, and of thoroughly
reorganizing the entire system of local
government. In addition to this work
a large number of very important laws
were also enacted.
38
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
Prior to the organization of civil gov-
ernment on the island, the Secretary of
War had appointed a special commission
to prepare codes relating to these dif-
ferent branches of law. This commis-
sion went out of existence with the or-
ganization of civil government, but one
of the first acts of the first Legislative
Assembly was to provide for a new com-
mission to continue the work of the old.
This commission completed its labors
shortly before the assembling of the sec-
ond session of the Legislative Assembly,
and promptly upon the convening of the
latter laid before it drafts of a penal
code, a code of criminal procedure, a civil
code, and a political code. Both houses of
the legislature went over these proposed
codes with great care, examining each
feature in detail, and as a result made
important changes, most or all of which
were undoubtedly in the line of better-
ment. The improvement that will be
brought about by the adoption of these
codes cannot well be overestimated.
Owing to the change of government,
first from the Spanish to the United States
military authorities, and then from the
military to the civil authorities, there
had inevitably arisen uncertainty regard-
ing the laws in force, and many of the
laws that the civil government received
as a legacy from prior governments were
framed on principles so contrary to
American practice that the substitution
of other laws for them was extremely
desirable. With these four codes duly
enacted Porto Rico will now be able to
continue her advancement under a sys-
tem of law closely in accord with Ameri-
can practice and principle.
Second only in far-reaching effect to
the enactment of these codes should be
reckoned the important action taken by
the Legislative Assembly for the reor-
ganization of the whole system of local
government upon the island. The Or-
ganic Act related only to the provision of
a scheme of central government for the
island, and contained no provision what-
ever regarding municipal affairs, local
government being thus allowed to con-
tinue in practically the same form as un-
der the Spanish regime. Without en-
tering into details, it may be said that
this system presented almost every defect
that it would seem a local government
could well present. Authority and re-
sponsibility were not definitely located ;
the form of government was on a scale
far more expensive than the resources
of the municipalities could afford ; pub-
lic office was administered as a means of
gratifying private ends rather than the
public good ; extravagance and misdi-
rection in the expenditure of municipal
funds were prevalent, but a small part
of the public revenues being spent for
public improvements, while the majority
went for the payment of excessive sala-
ries, or for the salaries of useless officers ;
the obligations of the municipalities were
persistently disregarded, and many of
them were burdened with obligations the
results of deficits running back a num-
ber of years, and which they were wholly
unable to pay ; discriminations of the
most unfair character were made between
taxpayers, some being greatly overbur-
dened, while others standing in the favor
of those in authority were practically ex-
empt from taxation ; and, finally, there
existed a hopelessly complicated system
for regulating the relations that existed
between the insular government and the
local governments.
The defects of this system were both
in organization and in administration.
As regards organization the chief points
of criticism were : the excessive number
of local divisions into which the island
was divided ; the unsatisfactory relations
which existed between the governments
of these districts and the central govern-
ment ; and the entrusting of both legis-
lative and executive powers to the same
set of individuals within the municipal-
ity, thus making it possible in certain
cases for one man or a few men abso-
lutely to control the government.
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
39
This small island was divided into
sixty-six local divisions called munici-
palities, each of which was endowed with
a scheme of government fitted for a large
city, though many comprehended only
sparsely settled rural districts. An ob-
vious measure of reform, therefore, con-
sisted in the reduction of the number of
these municipalities. This was accom-
plished by a special act, which provided
for the consolidation of twenty-one of
the weaker municipalities with the re-
maining stronger ones, leaving the island
divided into forty-five instead of sixty-
six separate local divisions. It is doubt-
ful whether this consolidation went far
enough, but it was believed to be as radi-
cal a measure as was advisable at the
present time.
Nothing short of a complete reorgani-
zation of the scheme of government could
meet the other two evils. A bill was
therefore carefully prepared providing
a new scheme of local government for
the island, and after receiving some
amendment was duly enacted. The gen-
eral principles upon which this act is
framed are the following :
In the first place a complete change
is made from the old system whereby,
as has been said, legislative and execu-
tive powers were exercised by the same
parties to one where they are rigidly
divorced. This is accomplished by pro-
viding that the mayor of a municipality
shall no longer be the president of the
municipal council, as under the old sys-
tem, and by providing that all appoint-
ments with the exception of that of comp-
troller, whose essential functions are
those of checking the administration of
finances by the executive, shall be taken
away from the council, where they for-
merly rested, and be given to the mayor.
There is an equally complete change
in the manner in which the insular gov-
ernment will exercise its control over the
administration of affairs in the munici-
palities. The old system required the
local authorities to get an authorization
or permit before they could take any step
of importance. This, while apparently
giving to the central government a very
great power over local affairs, in practice
resulted frequently only in vexatious in-
terference. The central government was
utterly unable to pass upon the wisdom
of every proposal brought before it, and
the fact that the local authorities had to
secure such authorization weakened to a
very great extent their own sense of re-
sponsibility. The new system is framed
upon the theory of frankly entrusting to
the local authorities original power to
act within their jurisdiction regarding
local affairs without intervention on the
part of the central government so long
as they act in a legal and just manner.
Should, however, the local authorities be
guilty of action contrary to law or work-
ing injustice between individual citizens,
the central government has then full
power to intervene on appeal being made
to it, or on the matter coming to its at-
tention in any way. Considerable ap-
prehension has been expressed regarding
the wisdom of thus entrusting the man-
agement of affairs to the local authori-
ties, but it is evident that if a beginning
is ever to be made in the building up of
responsible local self-government in Porto
Rico it must be by giving to the local
authorities the power of independent ac-
tion so long as this power is not abused.
The third important principle involved
in the new law is that in respect to the
authority of the insular government as
exercised through the Treasurer over the
management of the financial affairs by
the municipalities. The act as framed
gives to the Treasurer full power to pre-
scribe the manner and form in which
municipalities shall keep their accounts,
deposit all moneys, audit all claims, et
cetera ; to require such reports from mu-
nicipal treasurers and comptrollers as he
deems fit ; and, finally, and most impor-
tant of all, to have their accounts inspect-
ed at any time by examiners especially
appointed by him for this purpose. Un-
40
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
der these provisions it will now be possi-
ble for the Treasurer of the island to
require all of the municipalities to keep
their books according to an uniform sys-
tem and in accordance with the most ap-
proved rules of public accounting. He
will also be able to keep himself informed
of exactly how the affairs are being ad-
ministered, whether irregularity or dis-
honesty exists, and to bring about the
prompt removal and punishment of of-
fenders. It is hardly necessary to com-
ment upon the tremendous significance of
these powers in bringing good local gov-
ernment to the island.
Another very important feature of the
bill relating to municipal finances is that
which provides that if any municipality
fails to make adequate provision in its
budget for any fiscal year for the meeting
of any deficit resulting from the operation
of prior years, or of expenditures for
which it is obligated in consequence of
contracts already entered into, or of all
payments imposed upon it by the laws of
Porto Rico, or of all payments on account
of final judgments rendered against it
by any competent tribunal, its budget for
the next fiscal year shall not become ef-
fective until it has been submitted to and
duly approved by the Treasurer of Porto
Rico, and that officer is given full power
to make such changes in the budget in
the way of eliminating or reducing items
of expenditure, or in raising the rates of
the proposed taxes, that he deems neces-
sary. It will be observed that according
to this provision municipalities are to be
treated exactly as are ordinary corpora-
tions. Within the limits of their char-
ters they are allowed full freedom of ac-
tion as long as they meet all of their legal
obligations, but as soon as they default
in any respect the state steps in in one
case by the intervention of the Treasur-
er, and in the other by the appointment
of a receiver under the authority of the
courts to manage the affairs of the de-
faulting corporation until all legal re-
quirements have been complied with.
There are a great many other features of
this bill which are of interest, but limita-
tions of space prevent us from entering
into further details.
Mention has been made that one of the
defects of the old system was that muni-
cipalities utterly failed to perform a num-
ber of the most important duties properly
falling to local governments, the revenues
instead being expended upon extravagant
salaries or the remuneration of useless
officers. This failure was especially ap-
parent in respect to the maintenance of
public schools and the opening and im-
provement of local highways. To correct
this evil two special laws were passed :
the one provides that each municipality
shall devote a certain proportion of its
income to the constitution of a school
fund, to be used in promoting public edu-
cation in conjunction with the expendi-
tures for the same purpose made by the
insular government ; the other divides
the island into a number of road districts,
and provides that not less than twenty-
five per cent of the income derived from
the tax upon real estate situated in the
rural districts shall be carried to a road
improvement fund, to be exclusively ex-
pended for the betterment of local roads.
The insular government, as is well
known, has already done a great deal in
the way of the construction of main
thoroughfares, and is still devoting large
sums to the working out of a comprehen-
sive system of public trunk highways.
This work would fail of accomplishing
the results desired unless improved local
roads, to act as feeders, were constructed
by the municipal authorities. With this
act in practical operation Porto Rico will
in time be given a system of improved
highways of which many states in the
Union might well be envious.
Another matter in respect to the muni-
cipalities urgently requiring action was
that of making some provision regarding
the heavy floating debt with which they
were burdened. An act was accordingly
passed which provides that each munici-
Two Years' Legislation in Porto Rico.
41
pality having a floating indebtedness may
issue certificates of indebtedness in li-
quidation of all claims against it due and
unpaid on July 1, 1902, which certificates
shall bear interest at the rate of three
per cent and be retired iu five annual in-
stallments.
All of these acts that have been men-
tioned go in force on July 1, 1902, and
on that date, therefore, the new forty-
five municipalities will start upon a new
life under a new form of government with
their old obligations definitely adjusted,
and with new services to look after two
of their most important functions : that
of providing for public education, and for
road improvement. Only time can tell
how this new system will work, but it at
least represents a step that had to be tak-
en sooner or later, and permits the people
of Porto Rico to make the essay of local
government under more favorable condi-
tions than they have ever heretofore en-
joyed, while at the same time leaving to
the insular government full power to in-
tervene wherever failure results.
A great deal of attention has been giv-
en to this subject of local government,
as it is one of such fundamental impor-
tance. The second session of the legis-
lature, however, found time to take im-
portant action in a number of other
directions. A law was thus passed vast-
ly simplifying and improving the system
for the assessment of property on the
island for purposes of taxation ; while
another act corrected features of the rev-
enue system passed by the first session
that had been found to work badly in
practice. The most important of these
changes introduced were the more defi-
nite separation of the sources from which
the incomes of the insular and munici-
pal governments, respectively, should be
derived : in raising slightly the license
taxes upon saloons, restaurants, mer-
chants, and others selling liquor and to-
bacco ; in providing that each piece of
real property should be separately listed,
assessed, and taxed, instead of the hold-
ings of each individual being assessed as
a whole, a matter which often made it
impossible to determine whether a partic-
ular property was encumbered by a lien
on account of unpaid taxes or not ; in
making the corporation tax strictly an
insular tax ; and in correcting an omis-
sion in the first law which failed to state
specifically the method to be followed in
assessing foreign corporations.
Another act that will have the most
beneficial effect upon the industrial de-
velopment of the island was that putting
upon the statute books a general corpo-
ration law. This law is modeled close-
ly after that of the state of New Jer-
sey, which possesses features especially
desirable in the case of a new country
awaiting development. Under it the in-
vestment of capital in the island under
the corporate form of management will
be much stimulated, and one of the ob-
stacles that have stood in the way of the
influx of foreign capital will be removed.
To attempt to comment at any length
upon other important measures becom-
ing law would require an examination
of almost every department of public
affairs. Thus, the whole system of the
protection of public health and the du-
ties of the insular and local authorities
in respect to sanitation and prevention
of disease was put upon a more definite
and satisfactory basis by a general law
providing for the appointment of a di-
rector of public health and a superior
board of health, and defining their re-
spective duties. An act was passed for
the regulation and government of the in-
sular police force of Porto Rico and
permitting its extension throughout the
island of Porto Rico. The political
system of the island was improved by
the enactment of a general election law
embodying the chief features of the
Australian ballot and regulating in de-
tail the manner of holding elections.
The organization of building and loan
associations and their regulation were
provided for by a law modeled closely
42
Two l r ears 9 Legislation in Porto Rico.
after the Massachusetts statute though
incorporating several of the good fea-
tures of other acts. Thirty thousand
dollars was appropriated for the repre-
sentation of Porto Rico at the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in
1903. The Governor was authorized to
cooperate with the United States Geolo-
gical Survey in having a topographical
survey and map of the island prepared,
and an adequate sum of money was
placed at his disposal for this purpose.
The purchase of land for the use of the
new United States Agricultural Experi-
ment Station was authorized. A con-
servative employers' liability law was
enacted. Provision was made for the es-
tablishment and maintenance of an asy-
lum for the indigent blind. The carry-
ing of firearms and concealed weapons
was regulated. Gaming was prohibit-
ed. Cruelty to animals was made a mis-
demeanor. The judicial system of the
island was modified in various ways so
as to introduce needful changes and
make it conform to American practice.
Finally must be mentioned the passage
at each session of that most important
of laws, the general appropriation act.
These acts, carrying each between two
and two and a quarter million dollars,
determined the whole programme of the
government for the ensuing fiscal years.
Inevitably there existed much difference
of opinion regarding the wisdom of cer-
tain items that were included and of the
failure to include others. The demand
for appropriations for certain works was
very great, and the final passage of the
acts carrying total appropriations well
within the financial resources of the
treasury constitute not the least claim of
the first Legislative Assembly as a con-
servative and public-spirited body.
In conclusion, when the facts are
taken into consideration that each ses-
sion of the legislature was limited by
law to a duration of sixty days ; that
one of its houses, at least, was composed
of members exercising for the first time
legislative functions, and were, conse-
quently, wholly unfamiliar with parlia-
mentary procedure ; that there was an
essential difference between the two
houses in respect to the extent to which
power should be conferred upon the
people of Porto Rico acting through
their local governments ; that many of
the measures proposed represented rad-
ical changes from existing customs ; that
the patriotic purposes of the United
States were still questioned by a portion
of the population, when these and nu-
merous other difficulties are appreciated,
this record of the first genuine legislative
body that the island has ever enjoyed
cannot but be considered as a remark-
ably creditable one. Yet this is but the
beginning of the real work of endow-
ing Porto Rico with institutions and
laws conforming to Anglo-Saxon ideals.
The problems that confront the United
States cannot be solved by a few months
of legislative activity. The great ques-
tions are questions of administration ra-
ther than of legislation. Whether the
laws that have been passed will prove suc-
cessful or not will depend wholly upon
the manner in which they are adminis-
tered, and the tact and ability with which
the American representatives exercise
their delicate functions of control and
supervision. Years will be required be-
fore the difficulties involved in the po-
litical problem will be brought under
control, the new system of local govern-
ment perfected, and the thousand and
one details of the administrative ma-
chinery satisfactorily worked out. Only
the most conscientious and sustained ac-
tivity on the part of those entrusted with
authority in our insular possessions will
bring about the full realization of the high
aims that the American people have set
before them in respect to the govern-
ment of the countries that have lately
come under the protection of the Amer-
ican flag.
William F. Willoughby.
/Sailing.
SAILING.
FAR back beyond the shadowy years
in which the Egyptian traders were
wafted across the Mare Internum to the
shores of Greece, before the Phoenician
galleys carried the crystals and purples
of Sidon to the barbarians of Gaul, or
took homeward the ivory and gold of
Ophir, the incense and spices of Arabia,
or the pearls of the Persian Gulf, there
blazed in the insatiable heart of man a
burning desire to cross great waters, to
master the might and mystery of the sea.
Byron, wresting truth to poetic ecstasy,
sang,
" Man marks the earth with ruin, his control
Stops with the shore."
But man has never rested content upon
the shore. Somewhere in the dim ages
beyond the furthest backward glance of
peering History, he embarked in a qua-
vering, infant shallop, and ferried him-
self over some appalling rivulet. Thirty
centuries before Christ there were toler-
ably fashioned sailing ships, and com-
merce had taken its place among the ac-
tivities of the world. Furthermore there
were luxurious yachts in the early days
of Greek history, for even then man sailed
not for gain or necessity alone, but for
his lordly pleasure.
The story of the distant times is the
story of to-day. For the mastery of the
seas man still strives. Though the
power of steam has revolutionized com-
merce, and huge steel leviathans have
made the ocean safer than a New Eng-
land railway, the brave spirit of old yet
lives, and it delights men to adventure
upon the waters in light sailing craft,
not immune from the furies of wind and
wave. It is this spirit which preserves
the sport of sailing, in all its forms, from
the impudent challenge of foamy wind-
rows by the cedar canoe to the trium-
phant progress over crested hills of the
sea-going schooner yacht.
In this favored land of ours the gen-
eral history of the practice of sailing has
been obscured by the brilliant annals of
yacht racing. Our long series of tri-
umphs in the defense of the America's
Cup has monopolized our attention, and
in looking at ourselves as adepts of the
flying start and connoisseurs of balloon
canvas, we have forgotten how much of
the true sea hawk's blood flows in our
veins. The spirit of the Saxon and
Danish and Norman invaders, who har-
ried the hosts of Britain, and of their
descendants, Drake and his followers,
who swept the coasts of the West Indies
and southern America, has never died
out in the land which produced Law-
rence and Perry, Farragut and Dewey.
But in Great Britain a greater propor-
tion of the people is familiar with sail-
ing than in our country. This is not
the place nor the occasion for a discus-
sion of political policies which bear upon
this matter. We may safely confine
ourselves to a brief consideration of the
work of natural causes.
In the creation of the differences in
the seafaring proclivities of the two na-
tions the vast extent of our interior as
compared with our coast line is a pri-
mary factor. Our shores measure many
more miles than Britain's, but our ter-
ritory measures still more, and thus the
ratio of sailors to non-sailors becomes
smaller in our population. In England,
the shore is scalloped by innumerable
harbors, and the heart of the land is
touched by rivers that have not far to
flow to reach the sea. A thousand sails
woo the breezes of these streams, while
here the river sailing craft is almost a
stranger except in tidewaters. In too
many of our rivers sailing except for
business is neglected, because tides race
swiftly, or high shores cut the breezes
into alternate streaks of calm and sud-
44
Sailing.
den squall. One may watch the paddles
of a hundred steamers churn the wa-
ters of the Mississippi or the Ohio, but
seldom see the tower of a white sail,
while the lordly Hudson is ploughed by
only a few patient strugglers against piti-
less tides and baffling winds. As for the
inland lakes, only in recent years has the
spirit of sailing adventure reached them,
though they have long borne upon their
bosoms a. race of hardy and skillful sea-
men of commerce.
Not only have the lakes and the in-
land rivers lacked the physical advan-
tages of salt water, but they have also
wanted the stimulus of yacht racing, and
the great cruises of the leading yacht
clubs. Sailing as a sport is nurtured by
the racing and the cruising spirit. The
great regattas and the monster cruises
of fleets belong to the eastern coast.
And the eastern coast has these things
largely because of its eastward outlook.
To face the western ocean is to bask in
the sunlight of four centuries of mari-
time glory. It is to sit continually be-
fore the glittering page on which Colum-
bus and Raleigh, Hudson and John
Smith, wrote their deeds with the stylus
of the streaming prow. It is to breathe
inspiration from the breezes that brought
to our shores the first adventurous cara-
vels of Spain laden with their precious
freight of futurity. It is to smell the
odor of the distant gales that sent Tyng
and Pepperell to take Louisburg, Paul
Jones to find the Serapis, and Hull and
Decatur to make the American frigate
the terror of the seas. It is to look out
upon the waters over which, in fair
weather or foul, with the winds roaring
out of their crescent canvas and acres of
smoking foam under their thundering
bows, the American clippers and packets
scored records of speed only to be oblit-
erated by the black smoke of the Atlan-
tic greyhound. It is to front the ocean
over which royal Sammy Samuels drove
the clipper Dreadnaught from New
York to Liverpool in 13 days and 15
hours, and the schooner yacht Henrietta
from Sandy Hook to Daunt's Rock in
13 days and 21 hours.
And to face that eastern outlook is to
fix the eyes upon a sea whose power is
still subject to the mastery of seaman-
ship. Though the record-breaking ton-
nage giant, hurling herself over vainly
opposing combers, never pausing for
gale or lying helpless in calm, has super-
seded the clipper and the packet as a
carrier of both freight and humanity,
the Atlantic is not bare of canvas. Even
yet the
" stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill,"
for the splendid four-masters of Liver-
pool and Glasgow stem the tides of the
Gedney and Hypocrite channels, and the
barkentines come swimming up from the
south with the odor of the northeast trades
yet in their sails. And it 's
" 0, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play ! "
for the schooners of Chatham and
Gloucester still scatter their dories above
the mighty submarine pasturage that
spreads from the southernmost limit of
the ice northward to where the swells
quiver around the Virgin Rock.
Where man goes for his necessities, he
goes for his pleasure. Sordid and filled
with the thirst of gain as we all are, we
have dared more from curiosity than
from hope of wealth. Men have faced
the deadly cold and eternal snows of
Nome for gold, but there are no dia-
monds away yonder in the north where
lie the bones of Franklin, and where
Peary yet struggles to wrest the secret
of the Pole. Men have toiled over the
Rockies in search of the yellow dust, but
there are no diadems of precious stones
upon the brows of Mont Blanc and
Everest. If only the insatiable curiosity
of the human intellect has sent men to
their fates on the sands of Sahara, in
the jungles of India, and in the hills of
South Africa, a lordly scorn of danger in
the pursuit of pleasure has been the first
Sailing.
45
page of many a story of missing craft,
and in the wake of the streaming hull of
commerce always floats the gilded pin-
nace of pastime. The yacht ensign has
circled the world; it has flown to the
gales of the North Atlantic and the mon-
soons of the Indian Ocean. And the
great majority of sea-going yachts which
make long voyages lift their anchors in
the harbors of our eastern seaboard, for
the storied waters of the western ocean
invite with the irresistible witchery of
recorded daring.
But prosaic and practical considera-
tions play no less important a part in
making the eastern seaboard the sail-
ing front of our country. The geogra-
phical features of the coast offer advan-
tages or impose limitations which guide
the operations of the human will and
fancy. The essentials of a sailing country
are an extensive coast line with numer-
ous bays of considerable extent and
depth. These bays should be well shel-
tered by land from the swifter winds
and rougher seas to be found on the
open waters outside. Within the bays
small craft, unsuited to the outer waters,
could find abundant room to spread their
little wings, and in days of light winds
and smooth waters could venture outside
and rock themselves upon the deep-
chested breathing of summer swells.
The generous depth of water in these
bays would afford riding ground for
large sea-going yachts, thus bringing to-
gether all types of pleasure craft.
If now we add to these large, deep,
landlocked bays some shallows, of min-
gled fresh and salt water, with openings
into the bays or the sea, such shining ve-
neers of water as the Shrewsbury River
and Barnegat Bay, we have a sailing
country which offers every conceivable
advantage. Perhaps the man who loves
to solve small problems with tiller and
sheet may ask for one thing more, a
narrow tidewater creek, winding its
devious path among salt grass and wiry
reeds, far up into the bosom of some
marshy flat where ages ago a broad
river flowed, and where now the bittern
broods and the kingfisher chatters in
the idle sun of the summer afternoon.
A most enticing ribbon of water is the
tidewater creek, and its elusive waters
woo the brown and ragged urchin of the
countryside to launch his rickety bateau,
flat-bottomed and sprit-sailed, upon voy-
ages of conquest or adventure, not in-
frequently ended by ignominious strand-
ing upon the unsuspected mud-bank.
A country combining all these features
will produce pleasure sailors as surely
as salt meadows produce mosquitoes.
The number of the sailors, however, will
be greatly increased if large cities and
rich yacht clubs are in this country and
operating to stimulate in the surround-
ing population the sailing spirit. The
country boy who goes out in his dirty
skiff to get clams enjoys no longer his
pristine peace of mind when once he
has seen the thirty-footer of some " city
chap," with her white sides gleaming
with new paint, her brass flashing back
the refulgence of the sun, her rigging all
a-taut, and her ensign snapping in the
breeze. For him the line between the
working and the pleasure craft is now
drawn, and he rests no more till the an-
cient bateau gets a coat of green paint
and the old sprit is scraped, if not var-
nished.
Such a land as this lies along the
eastern seaboard of the United States.
The deep, landlocked bays, the shallow
broads, the tidewater rivers and creeks
stretch along almost the entire length of
our Atlantic coast, and even follow the
line around into the Gulf, where Tampa
Bay, at least, invites the sailor with no
little charm. But the Gulf has no yacht-
ing waters to compare with the Atlantic
shore, while the Great Lakes require of
the sailor a large amount of hardihood
and ready skill. Though landlocked,
these bodies of water are too large to
resemble bays, and they are subject to
sudden and fierce squalls. The west
46
Sailing.
coast of our country is almost destitute
of waters favorable to yachting. San
Francisco Bay stands almost alone as a
sailing centre. Once outside the Golden
Gate, the sailor must face the iron coast
of the Pacific, which is not at all what
its name implies.
Let us look at these matters more
closely. Boats are sailed on the coast
of Maine. The natives of the region
sail strictly for business, for they are not
gifted with large quantities of this
world's goods, and they cannot afford to
loiter on the waters for their amuse-
ment. If they venture, as they often
must, into open water, they meet with
stiff breezes and lumpy seas. Wherefore
one finds along this coast a race of raw-
boned, slab-sided fishermen, who squint
to windward with an especial solemnity,
and go down to the sea in craft of sturdy
patterns and sound timbers. Up in the
northern islands sailing is more com-
fortable, but even here the native is a
professional. A professional he is with
a world-wide reputation, for who has
not heard of the Deer Island sailors of
Defender and Columbia ? Nowhere on
the American coast are there better sea-
men than these sons of Maine, and out of
their rock-bound harbors come the great
five and six masted schooners, levia-
thans of pure American breed, not born
in other lands. Up among these same
Maine islands are thousands of summer
homes, owned by people from Boston
and New York ; even from as far west
as Cleveland. These people have their
pleasure craft almost literally tied up to
their front gate-posts. Small sloops and
catboats are the favorite types, but all
are broad of beam, fairly deep, and
high-sided ; for the sea will get up oc-
casionally and the boat must be able.
These are not the only pleasure craft,
for the cruising yachts sail up from the
south, and the magnificent floating pal-
aces of Boston and New York magnates
often lave their shining sides in the cold
waters of Bar Harbor.
But sailing on the Maine coast as a
sport is purely exotic. The people there
sail, as has been said, too much for busi-
ness to care about doing it for pleasure.
To them the sea is a hunting ground and
a burial place, a vast, mysterious expanse
from which a precarious livelihood is
wrung by daring, in the face of cruel
danger, and where the bones of many a
sound vessel and good man lie fathoms
deep among swaying grasses and inde-
scribable crawling things.
As one slips slowly down the eastern
coast, however, he comes upon a land of
boats and boatmen, a land where every
boy has some sort of craft to sail, and
where the waters whiten on Saturday
and Sunday with the foam of a thousand
driven keels. Spreading away to the
northward in the swelling neck of Mar-
blehead, the kind lagoons of Salem and
Lynn, and the broad bight of Nahant
Bay, to the southward in the streaming
stretches of Nantasket Roads, the shel-
tering circle of Hingham Bay, the tor-"
tuous channels of Cohasset Harbor, and
the pygmy cranny of Scituate, it is the
lovely land that lies round about the
hub of the world. It is a land of chan-
nels and reefs, tideways and tiderips,
rocks and islands, with its Graves and
its Roaring Bulls, its Devil's Back and its
Shag Rocks, its Thieves' Ledge and its
Centurions, its score of scattered islands,
and in the centre of all the wise old eye
of Boston Light gazing in benignant
refulgence over all.
Boston Harbor is confessedly a
" mean " place for sailing, but Boston
Bay, out to the northward and eastward
of Deer Island, down to the southward
and eastward of Boston Light, is a
paradise, while in Marblehead Harbor
there is the sweetest anchorage imagi-
nable for craft of high and low degree.
With such waters, it is not at all as-
tonishing that Boston is the most en-
thusiastic yachting port in the United
States, and that in every nook and cor-
ner of the surrounding waters are to
Sailing.
47
be found boat sailors of all kinds.
Racing runs rampant. Even the fisher-
men have schooners built by yacht de-
signers, and meet in stirring competition
for substantial prizes. The Eastern
Yacht Club leads in the luxury of the
sport, while the Corinthian and the Hull-
Massachusetts, and a score of others, sup-
ply the demands of sailors of small boats.
The small boats used around Boston
Bay are a demonstration in themselves
of the hold the sport of sailing has on
all classes. Even young men of small
means associate and raise money enough
to purchase some old-fashioned sloop of
small tonnage, discarded by her owner
for a newer type. Such out-of-date
craft one may see any summer Saturday
fighting for supremacy off Marblehead
Rock with the newest designs in u knock-
abouts " and " raceabouts," and not infre-
quently, through superior skill and the
inventiveness which comes of necessity,
winning the prizes. But this is not all.
The numerous contests among small boat
sailors in and around Boston have de-
veloped the fastest, stanchest, and sound-
est types of small craft known to the east-
ern seaboard. There is plenty of water
all around Boston Bay, and the typical
small yacht of that country has what the
seamen call a " long leg." This means
that she is built with a healthy body go-
ing well down into the water, giving her
a deep draught, placing her ballast and
her centre of gravity low, and making her
uncapsizable. These characteristics have
been found in a dozen types of Boston
small craft, which have set the pattern
for the rest of America.
Deep keel sloops of the old type were
more popular around Boston than else-
where. Who forgets the famous Burgess
thirties of a dozen or fifteen years ago,
Saracen, Rosalind, and their compan-
ions ? I never sailed a sweeter ship than
one of these, twenty-nine feet seven
inches on the water line, thirty-five feet
over all, with six feet of head room in
the cabin, and berthing space for six
persons forward and aft. And she had
a sound lead keel going six feet toward
the bottom. Fin keels abounded in
Boston waters in the days when these
sword-fish of the sailing world were the
fashion, and the sneak-box bow and
elongated overhang were familiar around
Marblehead before they were at New-
port. In short, there is no kind of sail-
ing craft that is used for pleasure and
sailed by an amateur that is not to be
found in the waters around Boston.
Who sails boats in that part of the
world? Why, every one! From the
"Adams Boys," the smartest yacht
racers of the East, down to the Marble-
head street boy, every one takes pride
in his skill in getting the best work out
of some sort of sailing boat. Those
who do not sail talk about it, and on a
summer day in the drowsy atmosphere
of a Boston club, or in the shadow of
some tall pile in Washington Street, you
shall hear more racing seaman's lore
than anywhere else in this country ex-
cept on the cruising ground of the
Rocking-Chair fleet at the Larchmont
Yacht Club. Boston's claim to be the
hub of the universe may be disputed
perhaps when you consider the steel in-
dustry or the unimportant matter of
freight tonnage ; but when you come to
talk about sailing, you must admit that
Boston is the greatest yachting port in
this country. Even the little children
there know the history of the America's
Cup, and the public school boy can sail
a dory with a leg-of-mutton sail for driv-
ing power and an oar for steering gear.
The New England coast from Prov-
incetown down to the entrance to the
Vineyard Sound is not favorable to the
sport of sailing, and little is done except
for the business of fishing. Nantucket
is no place for small craft, though a few
hardy catboats do take out fishing
parties. The same is true of Cottage
City. The tides race swiftly east and
west through the Sound, and fresh
breezes kick up a choppy sea. It is a
48
Sailing.
wet and uncertain sailing ground. But
it has a sound type of catboat, broad
of beam, deep of draught, high -sided,
strongly sheered, and not over-sparred.
All sorts of craft are seen in Vineyard
Haven and even at Edgartown, for here
is the eastern limit of the cruising
grounds for the great fleets of small
sailing craft from Newport, New Lon-
don, New Haven, and New York. But
on the other side of the northern shore
of the Vineyard Sound, and connected
with it by those captivating little pas-
sages, Wood's Hole, Quick's Hole, and
Robinson's Hole, lies the broad, inviting
bosom of Buzzard's Bay, landlocked on
all sides, filled with a thousand nooks
and corners of placid shoal water, a
very paradise for small boat sailing, and
the sailing grounds of a truly amphibious
race. If the boys of Boston are nauti-
cal, those of the heel of the Cape are
pure salt, and when the summer heat
sends the Boston boy down to join the
Cape boy for the months of July and
August, all that man knows of the art
of sailing small craft is explored and re-
vised.
Westward from where the barrens of
Cuttyhunk front the Joseph's Coat of
Gay Head the gliding keel moves
through enchanted waters of translucent
blue, till the rising of the lighthouse at
West Island warns of the approach to
Newport. Here is the summer haven
of all that is opulent and luxurious in
the world of the sailor. It is the riding
ground, too, of the humblest ; for as a
cat may look at a king, so may the
homely single-handed cruiser of some
New York boy lie within the shadow of
the boom of the railroad magnate's
palatial schooner. For west of New-
port lies the most inviting stretch of
yachting water in all America, water
ploughed by every type of sailing craft
known to the United States, from the
Herreshoff cup defender to the crusier
that " looks as if some fellow had built
her himself." Deep keels, skimming
dishes, centreboards, fins, schooners,
sloops, yawls, knockabouts, half-raters,
auxiliaries, and a thousand weird pat-
terns of small craft improvised out of old
ships' boats or cut down fishing smacks,
all these may be seen of a summer's
day on the welcoming bosom of old
Long Island Sound.
A wondrous and beneficent gift of na-
ture to New York is that Sound. The
Hudson River is not favorable to sailing ;
the bay is rough and torn to shreds by
the iron prow of restless Commerce ; the
East River is a roaring tideway beset
with ferry-boats and tows. But once
past the treacherous swirls of Hell Gate,
the world is open to the New York sail-
or, and as he sets his face eastward, he
knows that as far as Nantucket he may
thrash the foamy windrows with his little
vessel almost certain of a comfortable
harbor every night. True, the tide does
set east and west through the Sound with
perceptible force, but the prevailing
winds are such that almost any sailing
craft can beat the tides. Seriously rough
weather is not often encountered in the
summer season, though a smoky south-
wester does sometimes make a bad lee
shore of Connecticut. But the weather-
wise sailor is seldom on the lee shore,
and if he is, there are plenty of harbors.
The most frequent winds have some
southing in them, and the north shore is
dotted with islands and scalloped with
bays. The south shore has fewer, but
deeper harbors, and in such shelters as
Glen Cove a mighty fleet could lie at
anchor.
At the eastern extremity of Long Is-
land Sound one passes out into a stretch
of open water, but here he may pick his
weather for the run around to Newport,
and while waiting may lie peacefully in
the placid waters of New London Har-
bor, or in the still more sequestered an-
chorage of Stonington. Or he may slip
across to the south shore, and thread-
ing the narrows of Plum Gut, swim into
the broad lagoon of Gardiner's Bay, or
Sailing.
49
hurry on to the slimmer avenues oppo-
site Greenport and the enticing hotels
at Shelter Island. Biting deep into the
heart of Long Island at this end lies Pe-
conic Bay, but although I have gone over
its shores and its shallows with compass
and sounding line making a naval militia
reconnaissance, I have seen little use of
its waters by pleasure craft. It lacks
objective, there is no place to go.
That is the secret of the idleness of many
an otherwise attractive piece of water.
Who sails the alluring waters to the
eastward of New York ? For pure sport
one may take it for granted that the
dwellers along their shores do not.
These sail for business. There is a fine
fishing fleet at Larchmont, and the Larch-
mont Yacht Club gets one race a year
out of it by offering good prizes ; but
this race is a gentle bribe to prevent the
fishermen from removing course marks
and buoys planted out in the Sound by
the club. From every bay and harbor
of these waters oystermen or fishermen
go out to seek for food products beneath
the surface, but the pleasure sailing is
done almost wholly by summer visitors
or city people who have made country
homes along the shores. As a cruising
ground for the New York youths of
moderate means the Sound is most popu-
lar, and many a badly built, badly
manned, and badly sailed craft, with a
crew and a cook of the lowest amateur
standing, staggers out past Execution
Light, finding her nightly anchorage by
good luck rather than good navigation.
Yet it is the nautical spirit that sends
her out, and an added store of nautical ex-
perience that brings her back. From such
beginnings grow up the crack yachts-
men of New York, men who almost hold
their own with the professional skippers,
who fill pages of the racing annals of
great years, and who sometimes become
even managers of cup defenders.
Long Island Sound is the scene of the
big annual cruises of the yacht clubs of
New York, but the history of these is
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 4
known of all men. Let me pause here
only to say that there never was a more
interesting popular error than that which
regards the yachtsmen of the New York,
Larchmont, Atlantic, and Seawanhaka
yacht clubs as so many gilded orna-
ments on the decks of their own yachts.
It is true that these clubs contain a good
many dilettante sailors, but the repre-
sentative men are masters of their art,
and command even the patronizing ad-
miration of their own sailing masters.
On the south side of Long Island lies
the Great South Bay, and here is the
real nursery of New York yacht sailors.
In this broad, shallow sheet, where four
feet are a deep draught, and where a
forty-foot water line is the foundation of
a leviathan, has been bred a race of ex-
pert small boat sailors, capable of han-
dling the omnipresent catboat or the jib-
and-mainsail yacht as well as any others
in the world. Along the shores dwells
a hardy race of seafarers, who venture
out through the treacherous waters of
Fire Island Inlet into the open sea in
search of fish. These sailors never sail
for pleasure, but all summer long they
carry on the business of taking out visit-
ors for hire in all sorts of craft, from th
twenty-foot catboat of Amityville to the
high-sided, broad-bodied, forty-foot jib-
and-mainsail that plies between Sayville
and Water Island. These sailor men
are the instructors of thousands of young-
sters from the cities, and the dean of
them all is that splendid old racing mas-
ter, Captain " Hank " Haff of Islip.
Again, to the southward of New York
lie the great summer resorts of the New
Jersey coast, with the Shrewsbury and
Navesink rivers and Barnegat Bay
within easy reach. Shallow broads are
these where the skimming-dish catboat
and the half-rater are sailed daily, but
again chiefly by the boys from the cities.
The native sails for gain in the summer ;
in the winter on the Shrewsbury at
least he finds his sport in racing the
swift ice-boat. But in all these wonder-
50
Sailing.
ful stretches of water that lie around
New York there are sailors of all classes,
and he who imagines that yachting is a
sport exclusively for the rich has not
seen the young adventurers of Gotham.
From the poor clerks who band together
in groups of four or five and hire a New
Haven sharpie, long, squat, and uncom-
fortable, for a two weeks' vacation cruise,
and the hard-fisted Brooklyn boys who
spend Saturday afternoon in thrashing
down the Bay against the southerly wind
that they may lie over Sunday in the
racing tides of the Shrewsbury near the
Atlantic Highlands drawbridge and
bathe with the excursionists at Highland
Beach, to the owner of the big schooner
that reels off her ten knots as she flies
eastward through the Sound, or of the
steamer that drops her anchor off Sea
Gate and lolls lazily in the summer sea,
all conditions of men are represented in
the army of pleasure sailors in and about
New York. They form a smaller per-
centage of the population than the sailing
fraternity of Boston and its vicinity, and
there is probably no other seaport, except
London, where there is such a vast and
overpowering ignorance of nautical mat-
ters as there is in New York. Yet the
love for sailing and the appreciation and
understanding of it grow every year, and
there is a very considerable influence of
that spirit which made the War of 1812,
the clipper ship, and the America's Cup
all ours.
What has been said of sailing on the
northern part of the Atlantic coast of the
United States embodies what might be
said in a general way of sailing in the
Southern states. The use of the boat
among the natives is almost invariably
fathered by necessity. To find a coast
dweller going out " for a sail " is, indeed,
a rare thing. If he goes, he uses his boat
as a means of conveyance. He goes to
fish, or perchance to shoot ducks, or to set
lobster pots but not just to sail. On
the other hand there is hardly a bay or
a river mouth on the entire coast without
its group of summer homes, and the
dwellers in these homes use boats for
their pleasure. Men do not build cot-
tages beside the water without the desire
to float. These summer visitors carry
with them the racing spirit, and with it
they stimulate the native to look upon
his boat as something more than a mere
vehicle. Thus sailing as a sport makes
its way among the toilers of the sea, and
the fishing craft learns to jockey for po-
sition at the start and to fly kites. All
the way down the Atlantic coast one
finds the sport of sailing and flourishing
yacht clubs. The cruising yachts of va-
rious ports find their way along the coast
line, and some of them creep through the
sheltered waters of the various sounds.
The government a few years ago sent a
torpedo boat through the tortuous chan-
nels of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds,
solely for the purpose of demonstrating
their usefulness. While these waters
have long been ploughed by light-draught
vessels of the types familiar to the east-
ern coast, they now not infrequently
carry on their kindly bosoms the larger
and deeper sea-going craft from distant
ports. And so you may follow the sports-
man of the water all the way round into
Tampa Bay, where you will be welcomed
by the members of a lively little yacht
club, and will find at anchor as pretty a
" mosquito " fleet as you would in Larch-
mont Harbor.
On the west coast of the United States
sailing as a sport is almost wholly con-
fined to San Francisco, for the simple
reason that the requirements of a yacht-
ing country are to be found only there.
Outside cruising is little practiced for
reasons already given. Winds are heavy,
seas rough, harbors scarce. Almost
singular in western sailing annals stands
the cruise of the Casco, schooner yacht,
ninety-four feet long, which went down
into the South Seas. It was a memora-
ble cruise, a never-to-be-forgotten schoon-
er, for one of the passengers was Robert
Louis Stevenson. When the San Fran-
Sailing.
51
cisco yachtsman does venture outside the
Golden Gate, it is for a run down to Mon-
terey. Owing to the prevalent winds,
it is literally a run down and a beat
back. Usually the owner of the yacht
leaves the windward " thrash " to his
sailing master and goes home by train.
If he stays on his yacht, he has much pa-
tience or no engagements. In the sum-
mer the sailor's worst enemy, fog, is fre-
quently found outside, and consequently
most of the sailing is done inside the Bay.
Here, indeed, is a magnificent body of
water. The Bay proper is 290 square
miles in extent, and with all its branches
it reaches the size of 480 square miles.
Hundreds of miles of river and creek
open into this splendid inland sea and of-
fer irresistible allurements to the sailor of
the light-draught vessel. Chiefly because
the masters of this Bay issue out of these
creeks and rivers the deep-keel yacht is
scarce in San Francisco waters. The
typical craft is a centreboard, fore-and-
aft rigged yacht, of wide beam and short
spars. The yawl rig is very popular, and
balloon canvas is rare.
Of course there are reasons for these
peculiarities. When it blows, it blows a
fresh breeze, and it comes on quickly. It
is more comfortable to have a yacht with
a small rig than to be continually reefing.
Owing to the regularity with which the
wind rises in the afternoon, when the
sailor men wish to reach their home
ports, balloon canvas is seldom carried,
because at the time when it would be
most desired it would be superfluous.
The favor of the yawl rig is due to the
ease and celerity with which it admits of
the shortening of sail. Yachting in San
Francisco Bay is all done in the summer
season, for the excellent reason that in
the winter there are no winds and a good
deal too much rain. In the summer, how-
ever, there is enough sailing to delight
the eye of the most enthusiastic lover of
the sport, and the waters north and south
and east and west are ploughed by a great
fleet of high -sided, short bodied, and
low-rigged craft which get their stability
chiefly from their wide, squat hulls, and
which, though not especially fast, are
safe, weatherly, and comfortable.
There was a time when the fresh
water sailor was not taken into account,
but that time has passed. The Great
Lakes are, as I have already said, not en-
couraging to the sport of pleasure sailing,
yet it is not absent from them. One of
the greatest drawbacks to the pastime is
the want of places to visit. When a man
goes out sailing he likes to run into some
inviting place to dine or eat a light lunch-
eon. Such resorts are rare on the Great
Lakes. When you go out to sail, you sail
and you go home again. But the racing
spirit again comes to the front, and in-
cites the amateur of the helm and sheet
to drive his craft over the blue waters of
our inland seas. The history of the in-
ternational races between American and
Canadian yachts on the lakes is yet
young, but it is inspiring. These races
have done much to evolve sound and
swift types of sailing craft for lake sail-
ing, and they will do a great deal more
in the future. On Ontario, for instance,
there has been for years a racing circuit,
which embraces Big Sodus Bay, Oswego,
Sackett's Harbor, Kingston, Belleville,
Cobourg, Port Hope, and Toronto. The
fleet cruises around this circuit, sailing
races at each port, and the sailors gain a
large amount of valuable experience.
The lakes are squally waters, and the
yachts and sailors are both fashioned to
suit their needs. The trading schooners,
for example, all have short lower masts
and long topmasts, so that by clewing up
topsails they are immediately put under
snug canvas and made fit for any ordi-
nary squall. So one finds that the plea-
sure yachts are mostly able-bodied craft,
with ample freeboard and low rigs.
They are just the sort of sailing boats to
contend with fresh winds and choppy
seas. Plenty of modern designs are to be
found on the Great Lakes now, and the
eastern designers send many of the pro-
Sailing.
ducts of their boards to fight for the su-
premacy of the inland seas. The work-
ing seamen of the lakes are splendid
sailors, and the amateurs are a handy,
hardy lot, who compare very favorably
with the best Corinthians of the salt
water clubs.
Even the smaller lakes of the North-
west have their sailor men and their ra-
cing craft. The twin cities of Minneapo-
lis and St. Paul can turn you out some
of the liveliest handlers of the good old
"sand-bagger" to be found anywhere
outside of Larchmont. Minneapolis peo-
ple sail on Minnetonka Lake, while the
St. Paul yachtsman finds his sea on
White Bear Lake. But the sand-bag-
ger with outriggers is rapidly going out
of fashion, if, indeed, it has not already
quite gone ; and now one finds in these
waters half-raters, one-raters, and the
omnipresent catboat.
This cursory glance at the sport of
sailing as practiced in the United States
should suffice to demonstrate at least one
thing, namely, that it is chiefly in the
hands of amateurs, most of whom are
dwellers in cities and towns. The rural
population does little sailing for pleasure.
From it, however, comes the great body
of professional seamen, who teach the
amateurs all they know. The nautical
spirit of the country is fairly divided be-
tween the two classes ; for, if the city
yachtsman races from Sandy Hook to
Daunt's Rock or defends the America's
Cup, he has the aid of the best profes-
sional talent in the land ; and when the
American flag is to be carried to the ut-
termost ends of the earth, it is the profes-
sional seaman who takes the helm, who
cons the ship, and who shapes the course.
The traditions of the American merchant
marine, except in the matter of the treat-
ment of men by officers, are all glorious,
and they go far toward inspiring the
amateur with courage to adventure upon
the sea. If to the professional belongs
the desire to master the ocean for utili-
tarian purposes, the amateur seeks to
master it for the sheer joy of the game.
Out of the endeavors of the two classes
have grown the American ship and the
American yacht. The former now shows
a diminished glory, but her past is im-
perishable. The records of the Dread-
naught, the Flying Cloud, the Comet,
and the Sovereign of the Seas are graven
in letters of gold on the pages of sea an-
nals. The achievements of American
skill in yacht building and handling are
known to all the world. For a time the
nautical spirit seemed not to penetrate
deeper than the skin of the land. It lay
along the coasts. But with the advent
of the specially designed defenders of the
America's Cup, beginning with the Puri-
tan in 1885, there came a revival of nau-
tical enthusiasm, and a spread of it into
the interior. Doubtless this had not a
little influence in the passage of certain
appropriation bills by Congress looking
toward the beginnings of our new navy.
In the War of 1812 the American frigate
was the terror of the seas, and the Ameri-
can seaman the monarch of the deep.
The spirit which made that seaman and
that frigate living actualities has re-
turned, and it has given us our new navy,
with its unsurpassed ships and its un-
equaled personnel.
The nurture of that spirit in its broad-
est relations to the national life begins
with the boat sailor, who learns to feel
the thrill of conquest of the elements even
when steering his little catboat across
some landlocked bay. His act, his
thought, his emotion are the seedlings
from which grow the splendid plant. Yet
in nine cases out of ten he but follows in
the wake of the large yacht, and strives
to imitate the yachtsman of the club.
We owe a big debt to our leading yacht
clubs. They are the propagators of the
true nautical spirit among the lovers of
sport. Their membership is a very small
percentage of the myriad of sailors they
give to the country.
W. J. Henderson.
The Watch Below. 53
THE WATCH BELOW.
His childhood's longings are come true
In all their widest, wildest range ;
This is the picture fancy drew;
How real, yet how strange !
The braces snap ; the storm sails rip ;
The fettered gales have struggled free;
The straining greyhound is the ship,
The foaming wolves, the sea.
Their glistening fangs are wide to strike ;
Their famished eyes are flakes of fire ;
Hunger and surfeit whet alike
Their immemorial ire.
But fleeter than the fleeing hound,
And surer than the ruthless foe,
On rushes to its fated bound
The midnight watch below.
The watch is called ; he never heeds ;
Let the sweet feast his longing cloy }
On nectar and ambrosia feeds
The sleeping sailor boy.
The fo'castle, the deck, the spars,
The swollen sea, the lowering skies,
The drowning sun, the dripping stars
Have faded from his eyes.
The mast is creaking by his berth,
The lantern smokes above his head,
But sleepless potentates of earth
Might envy him his bed.
4
His yearning gaze is on the past:
Through their red gates the hot tears flow
That this swift hour will be his last
Ah, well he does not know!
His sister's prattle charms his ear;
His mother's silence stirs his soul:
What matters now the exile's tear,
The vessel's plunging roll?
54 The Watch Below.
All in the revel of his dream
He loiters down the leafy lane ;
He plashes in the pebbly stream ;
Above the storm's refrain
He hears the oriole's sweet clang ;
He sees the swinging apple spray ;
The same call through the orchard rang .
The morn he came away.
The age-long malady of grief
No earthly remedy can mend:
Alas, that only joy is brief,
That fairest visions end !
He wakes at rush of trampling feet,
And shouts, and oaths that stay his prayer,
To join, at halyard and at sheet,
The seamen swaying there.
With these he lines the lurching deck
And mans the yards that skim the seas :
He fears nor wind, nor wave, nor wreck,
Nor destiny's decrees.
In all his wrath the storm is on ;
Deep calls to deep in travail-moan:
Down to the waste the boy has gone
The weltering waste alone.
The horror of the downward sweep !
The struggle of the smothering brine!
My guardian angel, thou wouldst weep
If such a fate were mine!
Did ghostly forms about him flit
In the vast void of rolling foam ?
Did all the demons of the pit
To mock his anguish come ?
Stay, weak lament ! He fared not ill ;
My life-dream too will soon go by.
It is his watch below ; be still :
Let the wet sea boy lie !
Edward N. Pomeroy.
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
55
THE GENIUS OF RETTA ROMANY TOMPKINS.
IF Penangton had been in England
instead of in Missouri, the relative su-
periority of the Tompkins family would
have come to stunted blossom in the
title of squire; but the advantage of
living in Missouri over living in Eng-
land is suggested by the aphorism that
to title superiority is to limit it. To
be heralded a squire is to be heralded
as better than a yeoman, but it is also
to be heralded as not so good as a lord.
Nobody in Missouri could stand that.
Instead of being squires, the Tompkins
family for three generations had been
prosperous citizens ; and for three gen-
erations they had been the kind of citi-
zens to whom a Western town can most
safely allow success. Whatever the de-
gree of success attained by a Tompkins,
the stress of it had never yet carried
him beyond the claim of Penangton;
there had been no lifting him out of the
Missouri soil; he had been warm and
rich with Missouri, and he had lived and
died in Missouri.
Going back three generations, the
first Tompkins out from Kentucky was
Thousand-acre. He came with the rush
in 1816, and on the banks of Big
Snibble Creek he took up so much gov-
ernment land and "pitched " his crops
so successfully that being a Tompkins
came easier ever after. The son of
Thousand-acre was State Rights Tomp-
kins, one of the elect few called down
to St. Louis in 1861 to help determine
which way Missouri should go. It was
Frank Blair, with that great mailed
hand of his immediately on the throat
of the caucus, who jumped to his feet
on the side of the Union in the very
fever of the St. Louis discussion, and
shouted : " Gentlemen, we waste time !
Let us have a country first, and talk
politics later ! " And it was old State
Rights Tompkins who jumped to his
feet next, and caught Blair on the re-
bound, as though Blair had been a rub-
ber ball. " In God's name, sir, " State
Rights bellowed, "what better country
do you want than Missourah ? "
And then, continuing in the inevita-
ble Missouri sequence of those days,
with gouge of spur and hemp- tied, rot-
ting boots, there dashed to the front
State Rights' son Elmer, Colonel Bare-
head Tompkins, who rode into Penang-
ton one September evening, hatless,
blood-dabbled, and laughing like a luna-
tic. "The Lyon's whelps 'most got me,
boys ! " he called to the gray-faced men
who came hobbling from the Court
House steps. "But I said I'd bring
those dispatches through from Jackson,
didn't I?" Elmer was not the sort
of man to have thrown away his hat for
the sake of riding into Penangton with
his yellow hair streaking out behind,
but it would have been plain to a baby,
if there had been any babies that Sep-
tember, that since the hat was gone the
gentleman knew how to make the most
of himself without a hat. He made his
mare leap forward, he rose in his stir-
rups, and he yelled over his shoulder :
"Well, I guess I got 'em! They got
my hat, but I got the dockyments. Er-
raw for Pap Price V the State Guard ! "
Bareheaded, with the hair blowing back
from his gay, thin face, he thundered on
toward Academy Hill where Price lay
encamped.
State Rights' daughter, Miss Muriel
" Murmur, " was a Tompkins whose tal-
ents were essentially and delicately pre-
servative. In the first blush of those
talents she compiled a volume of poems
from the works of Missouri's best po-
ets, and styling the compilation Mis-
souri's Murmur ings, the title's gentle
meanderings through happy hearts, win-
ter winds, soft sighs, and rippling rivers
finally brought it to rest upon the gifted
lady's own head in an encircling climax
56
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
not unlike laurel. It also fell to Miss
Muriel's lot, after the finish of Elmer
in the wild hours at Bloody Hill and
the death of Elmer's heart-broken fa-
ther and wife, to supervise his orphan
children, and prod them up to what was
expected of them as Tompkinses.
During the childhood of Elmer's son
and daughter it was Miss Muriel's habit,
as it was all Penangton's habit, to dwell
with a certain high-headedness upon the
characteristics of the Tompkins girl.
"Her father's own child, you may say, "
was Miss Muriel's and Penangton's way
of labeling the girl's energy, vitality,
and tricks of face and gesture, until the
child herself took up the song, and got
around in front of her brother with it.
"I 'm a Tompkins all over, ain't I, Mar-
maduke? And you are like mother,
ain't you, Marmaduke? " she would say.
And the boy would say yes, with a
strange, old feeling of locking arms
with his mother, and so standing, white
and ineffectual, before a capable world
of Tompkinses. Then he would prob-
ably lift the girl from some fence to a
lower and safer place, or pull her back
from the brink of Little Snibble, or in
some other way look out for her and
take care of her.
It was not until the girl was fifteen,
and had twice run away from the Cen-
tral Missouri Female Boarding School
in St. Louis, that Miss Muriel and Pe-
nangton began to see that the Tompkins
energy and vitality might prove disturb-
ing elements in a woman, and to set
about doing their best by the Tompkins
boy, and showing him that since his fa-
ther had been cut down in the very
heat and sweat of accomplishment, and
since his sister wasn't a man, he was
expected to finish that father's record.
Having set about this, Penangton and
Miss Muriel did it so well that all
through his youth Marmaduke had to
carry about with him a digging sensa-
tion that he ought to do something or
other, or be something or other ; and all
through his youth life presented dark,
unsatisfactory spots where the Penang-
tonians buttonholed him and tried to
help him toward a big career.
Perhaps it was General Tom Whit-
tington, his father's one-time crony,
and now deputy United States marshal :
"Marmaduke, see here a minute.
Would you care for that West Point
place ? Seems like a pity to put you
in the off-color clothes ; but what 's past
help 's past grief, Marmaduke, and if
you can be half as good a fighter as
your daddy, seems like a pity not to
put you where you can fight."
Perhaps it was his aunt Muriel her-
self, with her transparent hand on his
shoulder, prodding him poetically:
" Whither now, young aspirant ? Un-
der which queen ? Scientia ? Justitia ?
Martia?"
Meantime Marmaduke was growing
up the more helpless to do because the
more appreciative of what ought to be
done. The boy realized, if the town
didn't, that it was not to be allowed
to him, as it had been allowed to his
ancestors, to be a pillar of state with-
out ever leaving the porch of Thousand-
acre. Missouri was too big for that
now, and his father had already brought
the family name too close to the outer
boundaries of Missouri. If the Tomp-
kins record was to be continued, the
banner must next, and inevitably, be
carried on beyond Missouri. Marma-
duke did not want to get beyond Mis-
souri, under no matter how good a ban-
ner. It was not only that he had n't
the capacity for that sort of progres-
sion; he didn't want it. He had ac-
cepted the family feeling for Missouri
just as it had been handed to him ; then,
as his town was a good place, something
Southern and something Western, and
as he was susceptible to the influence of
old landmarks, well-known faces, the
fair, wide roll of the land, the crunch-
ing bite of the river, and the sweep of
the wind in the wheat, the feeling had
grown as he grew into an immeasur-
able devotion to his state and to his
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins
57
town. He saw things as his town saw
them; he was accustomed to what his
town was accustomed to, and he was
convinced, as his town was convinced,
that everybody ought to be a Presbyte-
rian, a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Camp-
bellite, and eat supper at night instead
of dinner.
It was on a fine June day, close to
his twenty-second birthday, that he came
home from Chicago, after one last effort
at the university somehow to get him-
self ready to do what was expected of
him. When he left the train at the
Penangton depot, he doubled straight
back into the Thousand-acre land,
jumped Little Snibble Creek, climbed
a fence into the Red Haw Pasture,
fared across that, struck the Fair
Ground Road at Big Snibble Bridge,
and so up to the great Thousand-acre
gate. There he stooped down and pat-
ted the earth. "Good old ground," he
said. Once in his old room, he lost no
time in getting out of his pepper-and-
salt suit, got his stiff shirt up over his
head, and flapped his arms vigorously.
"Because," he crowed, "I'm done.
Before I 'd squeeze up my soul in kid,
before I 'd forget the smell of the
ground where the reaper 's run over, I 'd
well, I don't squeeze and I don't for-
get. That 's all. As I am, after this,
not as I ought by family rights to be.
Can't be a lawyer, can't be a soldier;
going to be a farmer and a damn
good one almost surely, " he said, while
his eyes rioted outside in the young glory
of his fields.
For a few months he lay back easy
and fanned himself in the relief his de-
cision had brought him. Miss Muriel
had closed Thousand-acre that last win-
ter, because the Fair Ground Road got
so bad, and had moved in to the Tomp-
kins town house to live; but it didn't
take Marmaduke very long to marshal
the old force of Tompkins darkies back
into the kitchen, to the tubs, and into
the fields ; and he was so well satisfied
to be about it, and got so busy selling
his wheat and keeping his fences up,
that cold weather had fairly come be-
fore he saw that the tragedy which his
decision had entailed upon the town had
worked to the surface and had frozen
over Penangton like a great tear. By
Christmas time he was having to stand
the knowledge that Penangton was say-
ing soberly, "Oh, 'tis n't as though
Marmaduke had taken after his father's
side."
Two years is a good while to work
against the disappointment of your
town, against its patiently silent re-
proach, . but it was all of two years
years of close-mouthed effort on Mar-
maduke 's part to lift some of the results
of the war from Thousand- acre be-
fore General Tom Whittington found
occasion to say: "Talk to Marmaduke
about the farmers' body militant or the
mistakes of the Grangers, and you won't
get him to do nothing but bat his eyes ;
but harkee, " the general cleared a
permanent way for the revised opinion
by spitting far up the cottonwood tree in
front of the Commercial Hotel : " Mar-
maduke can pitch the southwest quarter
of the northwest quarter of section seben
in township leben of range thirteeun in
chicory beans and reap a mighty good
article of wheat off the forty."
That ought to have meant a good
deal to Marmaduke, and undoubtedly
would have, had it not been that just at
this time he was too absorbed in his sis-
ter Retta's future to care much about
his own present, or what Penangton
thought or said about it. Retta had
gone from the school in St. Louis to a
school in New York, and she had now
written from the New York school that,
please God, she was done with schools,
and was going to visit a friend in the
city. She said she would stay at the
friend's house until she could think up
another place. "And the place won't
be Penangton," she said.
As the girl had moved restlessly far-
ther and farther from Marmaduke and
Thousand-acre, it had followed, as one
58
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
of the results of his nature, that Mar-
maduke had all the more braced him-
self, ready and waiting, for whatever
she might by and by require of him.
Almost unconsciously, the religious feel-
ing that was his by inheritance came to
be doubly his by necessity, in the mat-
ter of Retta' s future. He had grown
to feel that the only thing to do was to
turn the matter over to God; that it
was too much for him. But long after
Penangton had given Retta up, and long
after Miss Muriel had ceased to speak
of her except with a frightened sigh,
Marmaduke kept hoping that all that
fanfare of childish ability in Retta might
yet mean something, that she might
some day do something that would pull
both her and him to a fair level with the
dead-and-gone Tompkinses, even while
he kept fearing that she might some day
do something so terrible that she would
pull both her and him down too low for
the shadow Tompkinses on the heights
ever to recognize them. There was a
cheerfulness in his conviction that he
would go up or down with Retta that
gave it the free dignity of a determina-
tion, and there was enough of a haunt-
ing prescience that the journey would be
down to give the conviction the set face
of courage.
It was out in the wheat at Thousand-
acre, one day, that he lifted up his eyes
and saw a boy coming toward him, wav-
ing something that was flat and white;
and though the boy was little he was
accurate, and he landed fair at Marma-
duke 's feet. In another flash the spe-
cial letter was open and Marmaduke
was reading :
" MARMADUKE, DEAR, You see I
haven't been telling you all I 've been
up to these last few weeks. I 've been
meeting some people and pulling some
strings, and now such a splendid thing
has happened. I 'm going on the stage.
And right in the beginning, don't you
get the idea that you or anybody can
stop me. It means too much to me.
It 's a great thing for me, even if I do
have to begin at the bottom. I don't
care where I begin. I don't care how
I begin. The thing is to begin be-
gin begin "
The letter blurred under Marma-
duke 's eyes, and he stared about him.
The post-office boy was cutting along
the fence path, slashing at the fluffy-
headed wheat as he went. The darky
on the reaper had turned on the upsweep,
and only his back was visible, a round,
sweat -stained back, which soon disap-
peared through the barn gate. Down
on Snibble a bird crinkled her timid toes
in the shallows, gave a cheep of terror,
and careened into the air toward some
distant nest. Every man and bird and
beast on Thousand-acre, just at that
hour, was bound for home, where the
niche of shelter was. Would all of
them find the way ? The man would :
he rooted close to earth, where there
is room. The boy would: a boy can
always squeeze in. But the bird yon-
der, already far up in the tremulous
air, would it find the way ? It was
flying to the north now, where the town
stretched out as calm and cocksure as
though no baneful news ever seeped into
it. In a little while the town must
know. Then the talk.
"Ah, God! " cried Marmaduke, "the
talk ! " He turned to the letter again.
" Oh, Marmaduke, I know I 'm a silly
to believe them, but they say it is n't
just talent: they say it 's genius; they
say I owe it to the world as well as to
myself to go on the stage "
"They! " snarled Marmaduke,
" they ! And who may they be ? Some
yellow-skinned, thick-lipped son of a
pawnbroker; some lying, hump-nosed
scoundrel who knows of the girl's mon-
ey ; some Ah, God ! " cried Marma-
duke again, dropping crazily down into
the wheat. "Why do you let it hap-
pen ? Why did n't you protect her ? I
trusted you, I trusted." The letter
rustled waitingly on the wheat heads
while he dug at his eyes.
"They say there is no question about
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
59
my career, that I 'm sure of a great fu-
ture "
" Oh yes, great of sin and suffer-
ing," choked Marmaduke.
"Of course I 've got to start almost
at the bottom. At first I thought I
should have to start at the very bottom,
and when the extras were called for the
Far From Home Company I went down
to the theatre to take my medicine with
the rest; but Goldberg happened to be
there, and seemed to notice me, for I saw
him go over to Silbermann, who is stag-
ing the play, and say something, and
directly I was singled out for a little
business part. Oh, Marmaduke, ever
since then the world 's been turned up-
side down, and I 've been walking with
my feet inside heaven. Be glad. I
don't stop now till I get to the top. I
want you to come a little later to see
my success. It 's not to be a little suc-
cess, not just a Penangton, Tompkinsy
success. The whole wide world is to
ring with it. Poor old Marmaduke,
are you very afraid for me ? Of course
you are. You were always afraid for
me ; afraid I 'd fall off things or get too
close to things, scare-for-nothings
all, Marmaduke. I 'm all right. I 'm
not so awful just because I 'm going to
be an actress. But I tell you what, if
it was the most awful thing on earth,
I 'd still be one; I 've got to. Only I
wish one thing, I wish you didn't
have to hear Penangton talk about me.
I know it '11 hurt. Take my side,
Marmaduke, take my side. Also send
me a lot of money."
She wrote just enough more to re-
mind him that she was of age ; that he
could come after her now if he wanted
to, but that he wouldn't get her; that
she had found a good place to board ; and
that New York was not as dark a place
to get around in at night as Penangton.
Then she closed in order to add a post-
script: "My! oh, won't they talk!"
Ay, would n't they? Penangtonians
are as kind as the exigencies of conver-
sation permit anybody to be, but when
a girl reared in the first Presbyterian
Church of Penangton goes on the stage,
there is a great deal to be said. It be-
gan to be plain to Marmaduke that the
town's very kindness, the close intima-
cy, the interest, must pour out in a tide
of talk that would menace the Tompkins
family root and branch. All about him,
across miles of pasture land, timber, and
cereal, spread the honor and the glory
of his family. He looked, as his an-
cestors had looked, at the stretch of it,
and off across Snibble Bridge he saw, as
his ancestors had seen, the town that
was at once his vassal and his mistress.
That bird had closed in again, and
straight up over his head was circling
dizzily. Off to the left was the Fair
Ground Road, crawling like a strip of
gold back into his childhood, where a
little hot hand had often lain in his,
throbbing, twitching, burning.
Take my side, Marmaduke.
In front of him lay the big house,
bare, lonely, stripped down to a ridicu-
lous bachelor stiffness inside, yet as full
to-day as it had been all these sixty
years of his sagacious great-grandfather,
of his assertive grandfather, of his gay,
daring father, all of them forceful
still, even as ghosts, and all of them de-
manding their dues from their posterity.
Take my side, Marmaduke.
He lay flat down in the wheat, dry-
eyed again, and stared at the sky. The
bird in the high, white air was going
rickety ; she teetered ; and little by lit-
tle she descended, batting the air with a
helpless flutter, until she settled plain-
tively back into the shallows of Little
Snibble. Marmaduke wondered what
she had hoped to find up there that she
had not found.
Take my side, Marmaduke.
He got up then, and went around the
wheat to the house. A half hour later
he came down from his room, and passed
through the dining - room without so
much as a glance at the portraits on the
wall. He had taken off his corduroys
for a blue serge suit, and he looked trim
60
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompldns.
and strong and young in spite of the
blue, beaten places under his eyes.
"Shan't want any supper, Dilse, "
he said to the negress in the kitchen.
"I 'm going in to the town house. I '11
take supper with aunt Muriel."
Dilsey shuffled lazily on her flat feet ;
then cried out in half fright : " Namer-
gawd, Mist' Mommyduke, what matter
yeh face ? Look like yeh been stompin'
on yehse'f."
He remembered afterward that he
laughed at Dilsey, and that he whistled
as he went out the kitchen door to take
the reins from the stable hand who had
just brought his buggy up. He remem-
bered because that was where the laugh
and the whistle first came to his aid,
and because he used both afterward till
the laugh sounded like the Penangton
firebell and the whistle seemed to take
the asthma. Ten minutes later he drove
around the corner below the town house,
and saw Miss Muriel in the grape arbor
at the rear of the house. By the time
he had let the mare's head down and
had drawn her rein through the hitch-
ing ring Miss Muriel was on her way to
him across the short, tough Missouri
grass, and the very air had curled on
itself and was bugling the command:
Place for the granddaughter of Thou-
sand-acre Tompkins! Place for the
daughter of State Rights Tompkins!
Place for the sister of Barehead Tomp-
kins ! And also, place for the Preserver
of Poetry !
"Good-evening, Marmaduke, " she
said cordially. "Hess was just this
minute wishing you would drive in.
There 's to be flour cakes for supper.
Come right in."
He came in, with a terrible distaste
for flour cakes, supper, everything that
a man has to swallow when his throat
is dry, springing up within him. Ever
since his return from Chicago the town
house had seemed to Marmaduke like a
great frame for the Tompkinses' past.
Miss Muriel had gathered between its
four walls all the horsehair sofas, all
the dragon-legged tables, all the silver
soup ladles, and all the chandeliers with
dangling prisms that had checked off
the prosperity of the family from gen-
eration to generation. If the difference
between Retta and Retta' s forbears was
pronounced at Thousand-acre, it was
appalling here in the town house. Mar-
maduke put his hat on the antlered
rack, his great-grandfather had killed
the deer which furnished the antlers,
sat down in an armchair which had
been his grandfather's special delight,
and stared at his father's old rattletrap
gun which hung above the rack.
"Well, what news from Retta?"
Miss Muriel was getting a glass of crab-
apple jelly from the closet under the
stairway, and she put her question with
some physical difficulty because of the
strained position of her body, and some
hesitation because of the strained po-
sition her mind was always in about
Retta.
With his eyes on the gun barrel, Mar-
maduke replied quite steadily: "The
best of news. Retta Retta, aunt
Murey, is going to be a great success.
What would you think, now, if you were
some day to be pointed out as the aunt
of a great well, say of a great ac-
tress? "
Miss Muriel backed out of the closet,
and unscrewed the top from the jelly-
glass. "Why," she said, trying to
support herself on a laugh that trem-
bled, "why don't you ask me how I
should like to be a great actress my-
self ? " She fished off the cap of white
paper from the top of the jelly and said
sombrely: "I shouldn't like it. I
guess you know that, Marmaduke."
Marmaduke got up from his chair,
and began again, straight and even as
the gun barrel above him : " I mean a
great one, aunt Murey. I mean one
of the actresses who sink all questions
of family position and convention by the
very weight of their genius. I mean
one who will make the whole wide world
ring with her success. I don't mean a
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
61
Penangton success, I don't mean a Mis-
souri success. I mean world-wide "
"Wait,Marmaduke, wait, child."
As they stood there, the flower-like
delicacy of Miss Muriel's own achieve-
ment drifted between them like the fra-
grance of a past day. "I know what 's
coming. I 've always known it would
come, or that something like it would
come. It 's that Retta 's going on the
stage."
"It 's that she 's gone on the stage!
And why not ? " cried Marmaduke.
"Why not the stage? 'T is as good a
way as any. For genius, mind you.
If 't were talent, now, there might be a
question; but there's no question for
genius, is there? That 's what it is in
Retta, genius ! Let her go. 'T would
be a shame to keep her back. 'T would
be wrong to her, wrong to the world."
He had the matter well in hand now.
He had already carefully figured out
just what he had to do. Back of his
aunt Muriel stretched the phalanxes of
tradition, religion, and unworldliness,
stern and jealous. He dared not take
Retta into their midst ; he felt that he
must somehow project her over them,
he must give her wings. "You want to
get you some smoked glasses and watch
the flight of that girl, aunt Murey.
Ho ! there 's a Tompkins that '11 count.
You 've always been nagging at me to
take up the Tompkins banner where my
father dropped it. Watch that girl.
There 's a Tompkins that '11 do it for
you. She '11 have it waving high and
steady soon "
"Yes," cried Miss Muriel at last,
bringing up her words with a cog-wheel
catch, "yes, the Tompkins banner
from the stage with a device of the
devil on it in letters of red "
Then Marmaduke : " From the stage !
With Genius on it in letters that you '11
never wash out with your tears, aunt
Murey " He came over and faced
his aunt, and there was suddenly some-
thing overpowering in the great hulk-
ing reach of his young body. "See
here, aunt Murey, you got to quit tak-
ing this thing this way before you be-
gin it. You shan't do it. You can
ruin Retta by it. You can make the
town take her as a runaway girl, set over
against her family ; you can make her
cheap. But if you 're going to do it, "
he leveled his long brown hand at her
with loose, supple force, "if you 're
going to do it, I 'm a pretty good person
not to have around when you do it."
It was the sort of voice that wipes away
tears as with a scrubbing brush, and he
began to ring in that short, sharp laugh
he had just picked up. "The plain
truth, " he said, "the plain truth is that
just because it 's your own niece you
are n't getting it into your head how big
a matter this is. This is no ordinary
question of a young girl going on the
stage, no question of morals and paint
and disgrace. Those things fall away,
they flatten out, under the feet of Gen-
ius. You know that, and you 'd better
take my word for it that Retta 's a gen-
ius." His lips stayed parted even when
he stopped for breath, and his eyes had
a peculiar hard brightness.
"When did you hear?" asked the
poor, unconvinced, but overwhelmed lady
in front of him, driven like a hapless
leaf in the swirl of his zeal.
"Just got the letter. It 's like this :
she 's already attracted the attention of
the New York managers, and I 'm to go
on to New York myself pretty soon to
help arrange with 'em about her her
career, you know." He came up close
to his aunt, the wistful sadness of an
honest nature betrayed by itself in his
eyes. " 'T is n't all thought out yet, "
he said meaningly. "What I 'm going
to try to do is to let her know that we
are with her, that I am, at least ; to
let her know that she can't get so far
away but what I '11 be with her; to let
this town know it; to let everybody
know that she doesn't have to stand
alone nor to fight alone. D' you see
what I mean ? "
There was a long pause in the hall.
62
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
Through the open door came the soft,
mystifying rays of the evening sun, and
the intermittent murmur of the town's
life as it went, quiet and satisfied, up
and down the street in front of the house.
Miss Muriel, with her thin knuckles
against her mouth, seemed to be push-
ing herself through some substratum of
thought. "I guess I do see what you
mean, Marmaduke, " she said by and by.
Her mouth was still rigid, but her eyes
rippled in light. "That isn't all:
whatever you mean, I 'm with you, Mar-
maduke. We '11 stand shoulder to
shoulder with Retta, Tompkins with
Tompkins. That 's it, isn't it? Now
see here ^. now don't, Marmaduke,
now don't give way." Defrauded of
anything further on the outside to fight
down and trample under, his emotion
had turned inward and undone him, and
he sobbed miserably before her. " Mar-
maduke, " she said, with a fitting and
beautiful assumption of the r6le of com-
forter, "you are right about it. It 's
getting plainer to me. It 's getting as
plain as day. And it 's a good way,
Marmaduke, and we '11 work it out just
that way. What a girl she is, Mar-
maduke, so fearless and so ready-wit-
ted ! And, Marmaduke, I certainly do
wish you would come on in and try the
cakes."
He laughed full and clear now, be-
cause he could never help laughing at the
Tompkins women for expecting a man
to eat his way through trouble. "No,
I think not, aunt Murey. I could n't
get the cakes down, this trip. I want
to cut back to Thousand-acre and think
it out, but I '11 survive overnight on
the comfort you 've been to me."
She watched him go over the grass
a moment later, and unhitch the mare,
and she saw how for one second man's
head and mare's head rested together
in his dumb cry for further comfort,
and how with a leap he was in his buggy
and off again to Thousand-acre.
For the next three months, while he
waited, full of anxious foreboding, for
Retta to summon him to New York, it
was Marmaduke 's self-imposed task to
trumpet his sister's genius to Penang-
ton. In his way of putting the matter
before his aunt he had shown that he
knew the town's point of view; that he
realized that the only way to save Retta
in the town's eyes would be to get her
before it in such a white electrification
of genius that the town could think of
her only as a sort of diaphanous, deper-
sonalized glory, too big and remote to
bother about, as it thought of the United
States Senator who got his first growth
in Penangton, or as it thought of Mark
Twain, who once went to school at Pe-
nangton Academy. In his effort to es-
tablish Retta in this goodly company he
soon threw Penangton into a peculiarly
disagreeable state of perplexity. If
there is one thing a Missourian likes
better than another, it is to be fore-
handed in belief in the right thing ; and
if there is one thing he hates worse than
another, it is to be gulled into belief in
the wrong thing. Perhaps, if Marma-
duke had gone a little slower in his ar-
gument, Penangton would have joined
him a little earlier in his conclusion ;
but Marmaduke was far from being able
to go slow ; he was enf evered with anx-
iety, and because he had to argue not
only against the town, but against his
own fear, he became over-vehement, and
soon irritated the town into jeering op-
position.
" Marmaduke, " General Whittington
would say, "you ought to stop this gol-
darned ballooning of your sister, and
get on a train and go bring her home.
What that girl needs is an apron round
her waist and a tea-towel in her hands.
I guess that 's about what she needs."
" General, " Marmaduke would reply,
with bitter politeness, "you used to be
a good guess with a gun, but nowadays
your guesses don't come knee-high to a
puddle duck."
"And another thing, Marmaduke,"
the general would continue irascibly,
"you forget that Retta is a professor.
The Gfenius of Retta Romany TompJcins.
63
You can't build a theatre big enough
for a stage and a pulpit. They won't
house together and they can't house to-
gether."
"Then I '11 tell you what," Marma-
duke would cry, goaded to fury and
laughing that harsh, snorting laugh of
his, "I '11 tell you what : if it comes
to a choice, genius will have to have the
stage! It's got to act, it's got to
sing, it 's got to paint, it 's got to dis-
cover, it 's got to get itself expressed.
That 's the great thing with genius, re-
ligion or no religion."
Sometimes he sat on his back porch
out at Thousand-acre, his face pulled
and thoughtful, and read over the last
letter from Retta, trying to find in it
something like willingness to give up
the struggle, something like the first
stirring of a desire to get out of the
glare and the scorch, something like
homesickness for the sweet, cool life at
Thousand-acre ; but he always put the
letter back in his pocket with a deep
and burdened sigh. For the letter only
said :
" MARMADUKE, DEAR, Well, I
didn't pass up on a line last night.
Didn't have but one to pass up on!
I 'm to get something better next time.
Trouble is I 'm so everlastingly young.
They 're afraid of me. They say it
is n't often that a girl gets even as much
of a start as I 've had. Try to believe
in me. Mr. Goldberg stands right up
for me ; he says I 'm to have a chance
in centre before the season is over,
whether I get any older or not. Mar-
maduke, I'll tell you a secret: it's
slow work and hard as nails. I '11 tell
you another : I would n't give it up if it
were ten times harder and I knew that
I was never to succeed in it. Are they
still talking? Course they are. Bet-
ter send me some money pretty generally
when you write."
After such a letter he was always
more taciturn out at Thousand-acre and
more vehement in town, bringing into
his arguments with Penangton an added
fire and discursiveness, an uncompro-
mising assurance, that were as discon-
certing to the town as they were ex-
hausting to Marmaduke.
"What 's your feeling in regard to
Retta' s course, Miss Murmur?" Pe-
nangton would ask, in despair over Mar-
maduke.
"Oh, I agree with Marmaduke,"
Miss Muriel would answer, as true as
steel.
It was well that this sort of thing
did not have to go on forever. When
Marmaduke had had three months of it
he was Jimp. He drove down to one of
his farms near Weaver for a few days, to
get away from it ; but as he turned into
the Fair Ground Road, coming home,
one crisp fall morning, he found that he
had not gotten away from it at all. It
made him irritable to see Thousand-acre
piling off before him in a great spread-
ing protection that had yet fallen lam-
entably short of protecting the girl
who had the best claim on it. It exas-
perated him, as he came on around the
house, to see Miss Muriel with her nose
deep in some newspapers before the sit-
ting-room fire, safe, comfortable. She
so emphasized to him the difference be-
tween the woman who stays at home and
gets old without ever running any dan-
ger from anything and the woman who
fares forth and runs the gamut of every
danger in the world, that he made a
point of staying at the barn as long as
he could find any excuse for doing so.
When he did at last turn toward the
house, it was because Miss Muriel had
come to the cistern platform outside the
kitchen and was shaking a paper at him.
"You, Marmaduke ! I 've been wait-
ing for you! Come to the house this
minute! "
He had put himself between the shafts,
and was backing his buggy into the bug-
gy-house as the long shake in her voice
smote him. With a sick feeling of
crisis he stopped, his hands still on the
shafts, and tried to steady himself.
"Marmaduke, why don't you come
64
The Genius of Retta Romany Tompkins.
on? Or if you won't come, listen.
This '11 bring you " and she raised
the paper and shrieked across the yard
to him : " ' Missouri has reason to be
proud of the success achieved in New
York a few nights ago by the actress
Retta Romany, a Missouri girl. ' ' She
flapped the paper with her hand. "St.
Louis Republic ! " she screamed. "And
there 's a telegram come for you two
days ago, and New York papers. Why,
Marmaduke, what in the name of crazi-
ness are you bringing that buggy for ? "
With his hands still on the buggy
shafts he had started on a leaping run
to the cistern platform. " Well, I guess
I won't take it any further," he said,
abashed. "'T won't go through the
kitchen door, will it ? Quit your laugh-
ing at me, aunt Murey, and give me that
telegram." He bounded on into the
sitting-room, snatched a yellow envelope
from the table, tore it open, and read :
"I send papers to-day now will you
believe in me come as soon as you can."
His aunt was beaming at him from
across a table piled with newspapers.
"You went to Weaver the wrong time, "
she said gayly; "these came yesterday.
Did you ever hear of a young lady named
Retta Romany ? I 'm told her last name
is Tompkins. Listen. " She picked out
one of the papers and began to read :
" ' The success of the evening was made
by Miss Retta Romany, a young actress
of little or no experience, but who last
night gave evidence of the higher dra-
matic ability which we are wont to name,
not talent, but genius. ' And here 's an-
other of the best : ' Retta Romany is
the name of the young person of whom
Mr. Goldberg has been predicting glory
all season, once he could get her before
the public in a suited part. The as-
tuteness of Mr. Goldberg's judgment
was made manifest last night when a
large audience of accustomed first-night-
ers clapped its hands and stamped its
feet for Miss Romany. She is one of
the notable comediennes of the future. ' "
Under Miss Muriel's guidance, Mar-
maduke cut his way, like a pair of clip-
ping scissors, through one marked place
after another ; then took all the papers,
rolled them into a neat bundle, slipped
a rubber band around them, and started
for the front door. "I 've got to go
to the office of the Progress, " he said.
"The town must have the facts."
At the Thousand-acre gate he stood
a moment to let the enlightening sun
blaze away at him from the eastern sky.
"So that's Retta," he said, "and
it 's all true, all my lies. And I have
n't even done her justice. I bet the
next time I lie I do it a-plenty."
A little later he had left the papers
at the office of the Penangton Progress ;
a little later still he was sauntering into
the post office. The post office was full
of men and women ; at the pen-and-ink
desk stood General Tom Whittington.
"Yes, " the general was saying, "she 's
a genius. Oh, well, she always showed
it as a child. I always said Hi !
that you, Marmaduke ? " The general,
a trifle uneasily, held out his hand.
"You 've heard from Retta? "
"Yes, I 've heard from Retta," said
Marmaduke carelessly, though his heart
was trailing blood-red wattles and strut-
ting like a turkey gobbler. "Heard
same thing I 've always heard, heard
she 's a genius. You all are pretty
deaf around Penangton, general, but I
reckon you are beginning to hear it too
about now, aren't you? "
"Well, to tell the truth, Marma-
duke, " said the general, drowning the
words as much as he could in a stream
of tobacco juice, "we will have to admit
that you know what 's what in theatri-
cals better 'n we do."
"I should think it," said Marma-
duke, with that damnable assurance that
had made him so distasteful to Penang-
ton for the past three months. "If,"
continued the young man mercilessly,
"I couldn't tell genius any better 'n
you all, I 'd never go out by daylight."
R. E. Young.
The Negro : Another View.
65
THE NEGRO: ANOTHER VIEW.
So much has appeared in the public
prints touching the various phases of the
negro problem in the South that it is
perhaps presumptuous to attempt any
further contribution to the literature on
that subject. Previous discussion, how-
ever, seems open to two very serious
criticisms, it has been largely section-
al j and, by consequence, it has been for
the most part partisan.
Northern writers, with practically no
knowledge or experience of actual con-
ditions, have theorized to meet a condi-
tion that they did not understand. Since
emancipation, the negro has been re-
garded as the rightful prote'ge' of the
section that wrought his freedom ; and
his cause has been championed with a
bitter and undiscriminating zeal as ear-
nest as it is misguided. Southern writers,
on the contrary, remembering the negro
as the slave, consider him and his rights
from a position of proud and contemp-
tuo'us superiority, and would deal with
him on the ante-bellum basis of his ser-
vile state.
The North, with many things in the
Southern treatment of the negro justly
open to impeachment, by a general in-
dictment at once weakens its own case
and fortifies the evils it seeks to over-
throw. The South, in answer to what
is unjust in the charge of the North, re-
calls former days, persuades herself of
the righteousness of her cause, and con-
tinually recommits herself to an anti-
quated and unsound policy.
Such partisan and sectional discus-
sion cannot fail to be alike bitter and
unfruitful. While it may, indeed, have
been natural at the close of the Civil
War that the hostile sections should
align themselves on opposite sides, and
carry on by the pen, and with a more
virulent because impotent animosity, the
discussion that had been fought out with
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 5
the sword, yet now, surely, the time for
such recrimination is past. If we are,
indeed, one people, United States in more
than name only, the problems, perplexi-
ties, and interests of every section ap-
pertain in no slight or trivial measure
to the country as a whole. It is true
that each section and state and county
and township has its own problems,
but the particular problems of the part
are the general problems of the whole ;
and the nation, as a nation, is interested
in the administration and concerns of the
most insignificant members of the body
politic.
It would be trite and old-fashioned to
apply to ourselves the old fable of the
body and its members ; but we surely
lie open to its application in our treat-
ment of the negro question. The South
has regarded it as a local and not a na-
tional matter; has refused to receive
any light upon it from outside sources ;
and has met any suggestions and offers
of outside help with a surly invitation
to " mind your own business." The
North, on the other hand, considering
the question in its wider bearings, has
approached it from the side of preformed
theories, rather than of actual facts ; in a
spirit of tearful or indignant sentimen-
tality, rather than of calm, unbiased rea-
son ; and has therefore proposed reme-
dies that must, in the very nature of
things, be at once undesirable and im-
possible. As is usual in such cases, the
truth lies between the two extremes.
The negro question is a national one ;
as much so as the question of tariff, of
immigration, of subsidies, or any such
issue that is universally recognized as
touching the interests of the whole peo-
ple. It is but right, therefore, that the
solution of the question should command
the attention and enlist the interest of
the people as a people, regardless of sec-
66
The Negro: Another View.
tion or party or ante-bellum attitude ;
and the South has no right to take offense
at any well-meant and kindly effort to
relieve the situation.
But, at the same time, the fact must
be recognized that the negro question is
not different from all other questions,
does not occupy a place apart, unique,
and cannot be dealt with in any other
way than the common, rational method
applicable to the commonest social and
political problem. Ignorance of the facts
cannot take the place of knowledge here
any more than elsewhere. Sentiment
cannot safely here or elsewhere usurp
the place of reason. Blindness, preju-
dice, uncharitableness, vilification, have
the same value here as elsewhere, and
are as likely to lead to a fair and satis-
factory solution of the negro problem as
of any other, just as likely and no
more. We must, as a whole people,
candidly and honestly recognize a cer-
tain set of underlying facts, which may
or may not differ from our theories,
cross our sympathies, or contravene our
wishes. Then we shall be in a position
to deal with the question.
Now, the fundamental facts to be re-
cognized in the case are these :
(1.) The negro belongs to an infe-
rior race.
And this not by reason of any pre-
vious condition of servitude or brutal
repression on the part of his former
master, whether in the days of slavery
or since ; not on account of his color or
his past or present poverty, ignorance,
and degradation. These, to be sure, must
be reckoned with ; but they do not touch
the fundamental proposition.
The negro is lower in the scale of de-
velopment than the white man. His
inferiority is radical and inherent, a phy-
siological and racial inequality that may,
indeed, be modified by environment, but
cannot be erased without the indefinite
continuance of favorable surroundings
and the lapse of indefinite time. But
what the negro race may become in the
remote future by process of development
and selection is not a matter for present
consideration. The fact remains that
now the negro race is an inferior race.
There can hardly be any need to de-
fend this proposition in these days of
the boasted universal supremacy of the
Anglo-Saxon. Occasionally we hear hys-
terical utterances by negroes or by well-
meaning, but misguided friends of the
race to the effect that the negro is the
equal of any white man anywhere. But
in general such ill-advised cant is being
laid aside, and the inferiority of the race
is coming to be recognized.
This is a hopeful sign. And the gen-
eral recognition of the proper place of
the freedman will go far toward adjust-
ing conflicting theories and removing lin-
gering sectional misunderstanding and
bitterness. It will do away at once with
all those schemes that used to find favor
in the North, and are still at times most
unwisely advocated, for the establishment
of social equality and the amalgamation
of the races.
Probably no scheme advanced for the
solution of this problem has given more
lasting offense to the people of the South,
or done more to embitter sectional feel-
ing than this of amalgamation. It has
been received in the same spirit, and
has engendered the same feelings, as a
proposition to bring about equality and
a union between some cultured New
England belle and the public scavenger
of her city, with all the filth and foul-
ness of his calling on his person and in
his blood. The very words are sicken-
ing. And the idea, so coarse and re-
pugnant to every finer feeling, could
have originated only in the brain of the
wildest theorist, ignorant of conditions,
and hurried by his negrophile propen-
sities and desire to do justice to the
black man into entire forgetfulness of
the rights and feelings of the Southern
white man.
There seems to be no essential con-
dition of causality between the previous
The Negro: Another View.
67
bondage and suffering of the negro and
the assumption by him or for him, on
emancipation, of any equality with his
former master other than the grand and
fundamental equality of man to man be-
fore God and the national law. Eman-
cipation could not eradicate the essen-
tial inferiority of the negro. No such
conditions existed as in other states of
slavery, in Greece or Rome, for ex-
ample, where the slave was often of
kindred blood, and even higher born,
better educated, and of finer tastes and
feelings than his master. Emancipation
there might naturally be followed by an
approximate equality between the ex-
slave and his former master. But the
negro when enslaved was a negro ;
and the emancipated negro was a negro
still. Freedom had not made him a
new creature. He was, indeed, better
than when he entered slavery ; but his
emancipation had not changed, and could
not change, the fundamental features,
the natural inferiority of his race.
(2.) But the negro has inalienable
While the North has erred in ap-
proaching the negro question with the
assertion of the equality of the races,
and seeking to solve it on that unsound
postulate, the South has, much more
grievously, erred in precisely the op-
posite direction. For our section has
carried the idea of the negro's inferi-
ority almost, if not quite, to the point of
dehumanizing him. This is an unpalata-
ble truth ; but that it is the truth, few
intelligent and candid white men, even
of the South, would care to deny. Bla-
tant demagogues, political shysters, court-
ing favor with the mob ; news sheets,
flattering the prejudices, and pandering
to the passions of their Constituency ;
ignorant youths and loud-voiced men
who receive their information at second
hand, and either do not or cannot see,
these, and their followers, assert with
frothing vehemence that the negro is
fairly and kindly treated in the South,
that the Southern white man is the ne-
gro's friend, and gives him even more
than his just desert.
But, if we care to investigate, evi-
dences of our brutal estimate of the black
man are not far to seek. The hardest
to define is perhaps the most impressive,
the general tacit attitude and feeling
of the average Southern community to-
ward the negro. He is either nothing
more than the beast that perishes, un-
noticed and uncared for so long as he
goes quietly about his menial toil (as
a young man recently said to the writer,
" The farmer regards his nigger in the
same light as his mule," but this puts
the matter far too favorably for the ne-
gro) ; or, if he happen to offend, he is
punished as a beast with a curse or a
kick, and with tortures that even the
beast is spared ; or, if he is thought of
at all in a general way, it is with the
most absolute loathing and contempt.
He is either unnoticed or despised. As
for his feelings, he hasn't any. How
few alas how few words of gentle-
ness and courtesy ever come to the black
man's ear! But harsh and imperious
words, coarseness and cursing, how they
come upon him, whether with excuse or
in the frenzy of unjust and unreasoning
passion ! And his rights of person,
property, and sanctity of home, who
ever heard of the " rights " of a " nig-
ger " ? This is the general sentiment,
in the air, intangible, but strongly felt ;
and it is, in a large measure, this senti-
ment that creates and perpetuates the
negro problem.
If the negro could be made to feel
that his fundamental rights and priv-
ileges are recognized and respected equal-
ly with those of the white man, that he
is not discriminated against both publicly
and privately simply and solely because
of his color, that he is regarded and
dealt with as a responsible, if humble,
member of society, the most perplexing
features of his problem would be at once
simplified, and would shortly, in normal
68
The Negro: Another View.
course, disappear. But the negro can-
not entertain such feelings while the
evidence of their groundlessness and
folly is constantly thrust upon him. We
do not now speak of the utterly worth-
less and depraved. There are many
such; but we whose skins are white
need to remember that our color too has
its numbers of the ignorant, lecherous,
and wholly bad. But take a good ne-
gro, well educated, courteous, God-
fearing. There are many such; and
they are, in everything save color, supe-
rior to many white men. But what is
their life ? As they walk our streets,
they lift their hats in passing the aged
or the prominent, whether man or wo-
man ; yet no man so returns their salu-
tation. They would go away ; at the
depot they may not enter the room of
the whites, and on the tram they must
occupy their own separate and second-
class car. Reaching their destination,
they may not eat at the restaurant of
the whites, or rest at the white hotel.
If they make purchases, shop ladies and
messenger gentlemen look down upon
them with manifest contempt, and treat
them with open brusqueness and con-
tumely. And if, on a Sabbath, they
would worship in a white man's church,
they are bidden to call upon God, the
maker of the black man as well as of
the white, and invoke the Christ, who
died for black and white alike, from a
place apart. And so, from the cradle to
the grave, the negro is made, in Southern
phrase, " to know and keep his place."
In the case we are considering, these
distinctions are not based on this negro's
ignorance, on his viciousness, on his
offensiveness of person or of manner;
for he is educated, good, cleanly, and
courteous. They are based solely on
the fact that he is a negro. They do
not so operate in the case of a white
man. But the black man, because of
his blackness, is put in this lowest place
in public esteem and treatment.
Lynching, again, is but a more in-
flamed and conspicuous expression of
this same general sentiment. An in-
vestigation of the statistics of this prac-
tice in the United States will bring to
light several interesting and startling
facts.
1. In the last decade of the last cen-
tury of Christian grace and civilization,
more men met their death by violence
at the hands of lynchers than were ex-
ecuted by due process of law. And this
holds true, with possibly one exception,
for each year in the decade. The total
number thus hurried untried and un-
shriven into eternity during these ten un-
holy years approximated seventeen hun-
dred souls.
2. The lynching habit is largely sec-
tional. Seventy to eighty per cent of
all these lynchings occur in the Southern
states.
3. The lynchings are largely racial.
About three quarters of those thus done
to death are negroes.
4. The lynching penalty does not at-
tend any single particular crime, which,
by its peculiar nature and heinousness,
seems to demand such violent and law-
less punishment. But murder, rape, ar-
son, barn-burning, theft, or suspicion
of any of these, may and do furnish
the ground for mob violence.
These facts, especially the second,
third, and fourth items, are bitterly con-
troverted in the section which they most
concern. But they are as demonstrable
as any other facts, and demand the as-
sent of every candid mind.
The world is familiar with the usual
Southern defense of lynching. Passing
by the number, place, and race of the
victims, the defense centres on the fourth
statement above made ; and our public
men and our writers have long insisted
that this terrible and lawless vengeance
is visited upon the defilers of our homes,
who should be as ruthlessly destroyed as
they have destroyed our domestic purity
and peace. This is the regular plea put
forth in defense of this brutal practice,
The Negro: Another View.
69
warmly maintained by hot-blooded and
misinformed people in private and in the
public prints. No less a person than a
former Judge Advocate-General of Vir-
ginia, in a recent issue of the North Amer-
ican Review, reiterates these threadbare
statements.
He says : "It is unnecessary to
shock the sensibilities of the public by
* calling attention to the repulsive details
of those crimes for which lynching, in
some form, has been the almost invaria-
ble penalty. They have always been,
however, of a nature so brutal that no
pen can describe and no imagination pic-
ture them." " Lynchings in the South
are mainly caused by the peculiar nature
of the crimes for which lynching is a
penalty ; " and, more explicitly, " The
crime itself, however, is more responsible
for mob violence than all other causes
combined." " No right thinking man
or woman, white or black, ought to have,
or can have, any sympathy for such
criminals as those who suffer death for
the crime described, nor can they believe
that any punishment, however cruel or
severe, is undeserved." This is a fair
type of the usual plea of the Southern
advocate. For such a statement as the
last quoted to be possible is sufficient evi-
dence of the general sentiment of the
section.
But, now, if it were strictly the fact
that violent rape is the cause of most of
our lynchings ; if it were true, moreover,
that the man were suddenly and violent-
ly slain by the husband, lover, father,
brother, of the dishonored one, in quick
tempest of wrath and agony unspeaka-
ble, while we must still condemn, we
might, in sympathy and sorrow, condone
the deed of hurried vengeance. But
neither of these things is true.
It has been repeatedly shown, in the
first place, that only a very small propor-
tion (in some years one tenth) of South-
ern lynchings are due to rape, either
actual or suspected. Statistics on the
subject may be had for the asking ; and
in their light it seems about time for our
apologists to drop this stock and entirely
false pleading. " But the writer in the
Review cites a case where this plea held
good." Granted ; but this is advocacy :
and for every case so cited from five to
ten cases can be cited where it not only
did not hold good, but was not even pre-
tended by the workers of mob violence.
So, in a recent issue of a noted and rabid
Southern daily a case of lynching for
rape is indicated by large headlines ;
and just beneath it is a short and insig-
nificant paragraph noting the lynching
of two negroes for suspected barn-burn-
ing. But these latter cases are not men-
tioned by our advocates ; or, if mentioned,
are minified by those who feel that our
section must be defended at any cost, and
so plead.
On the contrary, a frank consideration
of all the facts, with no other desire than
to find the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, however contrary
to our wishes and humiliating to our sec-
tion the truth may be, will show that by
far the most of our Southern lynchings
are carried through in sheer, unqualified,
and increasing brutality. In nearly
every case, neither the sentiment that
prompts them nor the spirit of their exe-
cution deserves anything less than the
most bitter arraignment. We do, indeed,
hear from time to time of an " orderly
body of leading citizens " conducting a
lynching. But, while the writer knows
of certainly one instance where this took
place, the accused being, however, a
white man known as guilty, and put to
death in the most painless possible way
with chloroform by those nearest and
dearest to his victim, it is fortunately
a much rarer occurrence than our news-
papers would have us believe. Our
lynchings are the work of our lower and
lowest classes. What these classes are
is hardly comprehensible to one who has
not lived among them and dealt with
them.
One adult white man in the South in
70
The Negro: Another View.
every six or eight can neither read nor
write ; and if the standard be put above
the level of most rudimentary literacy
the disproportion rapidly increases. A
generation before our Civil War, George
Bourne charged the Southern slavehold-
ers with " self-conceit," " marble-heart-
ed insensibility," total lack of " correct
views of equity," and " violence in
cruelty." Whether applicable, as used
by Mr. Bourne, or not, this terrible in-
dictment at once intimates the origin of
our present views and treatment of the
negro, and may be applied to-day, in
every term, to the classes that supply
our lynchers. Wholly ignorant, abso-
lutely without culture, apparently without
even the capacity to appreciate the nicer
feelings or higher sense, yet conceited
on account of the white skin which they
continually dishonor, they make up, when
aroused, as wild and brutal a mob as ever
disgraced the face of the earth. For
them, lynching is not " justice," however
rude ; it is a wild and diabolic carnival of
blood.
No candid man who has seen the av-
erage lynching mob, or talked with the
average lyncher, can deceive himself for
a moment with the idea that this is the
expression of a public sentiment right-
eously indignant over the violation of the
law and its impotence or delay. This,
too, is a common Southern plea ; but it
is pure pretense. The lyncher is not,
even under ordinary circumstances, over-
zealous for the law ; and in this case he
is not its custodian, but himself its vio-
lator. As for the law's delay or ineffi-
ciency, the lyncher does not wait to see
what the law will do ; and yet it is a
well-known fact in the South that in the
case of a negro, where violent rape is
proven, the punishment of the law is
both swift and sure. And in other
crimes as, well, it is known that the negro
will receive at the hands of the consti-
tuted authorities the same, perhaps even
a little sharper justice than is meted out
to the white man. But as the lyncher
sees it, the case stands thus : A negro
has committed or is supposed to have
committed a crime. A negro, and
the rest follows. There may be some
maudlin talk about the " dreadful
crime," about " upholding the majesty
of the law," about " teaching the nig-
gers a lesson ; " yet the lyncher is but
little concerned with the crime, less with
the law. As for " teaching the niggers
a lesson," that catch phrase of the lynch-
ing mob betrays its whole attitude and
temper. It would teach the negro the
lesson of abject and eternal servility,
would burn into his quivering flesh the
consciousness that he has not, and cannot
have, the rights of a free citizen or even
of a fellow human creature. And so the
lyncher seizes his opportunity at once to
teach this lesson and to gratify the brute
in his own soul, which the thin veneer of
his elemental civilization has not been
able effectually to conceal.
A recent experience of the writer's
may serve to illustrate. A murder had
been committed in one of our Southern
states. On a night train, returning to
the capital of the state, were a marshal
and several deputies. Word had gone
before that these officers had in charge
a negro, suspected of being the mur-
derer ; and at four stations in less than
forty miles, as many mobs were gathered
to mete out summary vengeance to the
merely suspected black. Fortunately,
the negro was not on the train. Had
he been, his life were not worth the ask-
ing ; and he would have been most for-
tunate to find a speedy end on the near-
est tree. It cannot be supposed that
these mobs were composed of friends
and kinsmen of the murdered man.
Probably not one quarter of them had
ever heard of him previous to the mur-
der, and fewer knew him. They were
not orderly bodies of leading citizens,
nor of the class in which one would
usually find the upholders of the law ;
but they were coarse, and beastly, and
drunk, mad with the terrible blood-lust
The Negro: Another View.
71
that wild beasts know, and hunting a
human prey.
Take another instance. The burning
of Sam Hose took place on a Sabbath
day. One of our enterprising railroads
ran two special trains to the scene.
And two train-loads of men and boys,
crowding from cow-catcher to the tops
of the coaches, were found to go to see
the indescribable and sickening torture
and writhing of a fellow human being.
And souvenirs of such scenes are sought,
knee caps, and finger bones, and
bloody ears. It is the purest savagery.
The utter shallowness and hypocrisy
of this Southern plea that this is a right-
eous public sentiment, aroused and ad-
ministering a rude but terrible justice,
is patent and undeniable, and can be
shown in the clearest light by a single
simple proposition. White men commit
the same crimes, and worse, against the
black man, for which the black man pays
this terrible and ungodly penalty. Can
any sane man, white or black, North or
South, suppose for a single instant that
a Southern community would either per-
mit a black mob to lynch a white man,
whether merely suspected or known as
guilty of his crime, or that a white mob
would lynch one of its own color for any
crime against a black ? The idea is in-
conceivable. The color of the victim's
skin is the determining factor in most of
our lynchings.
And yet, the home of the negro is as
sacred as that of the white man; his
right to live as truly God-given. If the
negro can be kicked and cuffed and
cursed rightly, so can the white man.
If there is no wrong in dishonoring a
negro's home, there is no more wrong
in dishonoring the white man's. If the
negro criminal may be burned at the
stake with the usual accompaniments of
fiendish cruelty, a white man guilty of
the same crime deserves, and should
suffer, the same penalty. There is no-
thing in a white skin, or a black, to nul-
lify the essential rights of man as man.
And yet to the average Southern white
man this manifestly just view seems both
disloyal and absurd.
It is useless to speak of any solution
of the negro question while the condi-
tion of public sentiment above described
continues to exist. The negro's poverty
is, in the main, the result of the regular
operation of economic laws; his igno-
rance is the result of several, but, in
general, very natural causes ; his social
position is, aside from general sentiment,
the result of a manifest inferiority and an-
tipathy of race ; so that any effort satis-
factorily to solve his problem on any of
these lines, not touching the root of the
matter, cannot hope to meet with any
large success. The radical difficulty is
not with the negro, but with the white
man ! So long as the negro is popularly
regarded and dealt with as he is to-day,
his problem will remain unsolved, and
any views as to its solution or " passing "
under present conditions are optimistic
in the extreme. Indeed, it may be fairly
said that, as things now are, the educa-
tional, financial, or social advancement
of the negro will only serve to render
more acute the situation in the South.
It is not necessary, nor desired, that
the negro should be the social equal of
the white man. His political privileges
may be curtailed, and without injustice
or offense, provided the curtailment work
impartially among blacks and whites
alike. If fifty per cent of the negroes
are deprived of the right of suffrage by
reason of illiteracy, and the same legis-
lation is fairly permitted to work the
disenfranchisement of all whites (fifteen
to twenty per cent of our voting popula-
tion) of the same class, no injustice is
done, and there is no ground for com-
plaint. His economic and educational
condition may be left to the operation of
natural and statute laws, fairly adminis-
tered. For it is certainly most unwise
in any case to surround him with arti-
ficial conditions, and to create in him
artificial ideas, ideals, or desires.
72
The Negro : Another View.
The development of a free people is
a process of law, the gradual unfold-
ing and expansion of the inherent poten-
tialities of the race. If they are capa-
ble of advancement, they will inevitably
advance ; if not, they will as inevitably
fail and fall out ; and no artificial con-
ditions, temporarily created, can perma-
nently affect the operation of this law.
Yet it will not do, on this principle,
to say, as is so often said in the South,
that the negro has had his chance and
has failed. He is but a generation from
servitude and almost complete illiteracy.
During that time he has lived under the
cloud of his former state, and in the mi-
asmic atmosphere of unfriendliness and
repression. That he has made any pro-
gress is strange ; that he has made the
progress that he has is little short of
wonderful. For the development of a
servile people cannot be measured by
the standards of the free. But freedom
is not a matter of form and statute only.
No people is free whose simple human
privileges and possibilities are curtailed
or denied by the public sentiment that
surrounds them. No people is free that
is dominated and terrorized by a more
numerous and powerful class. No peo-
ple is free whose inherent rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
how much soever guaranteed by the or-
ganic law, are, in practice and in fact,
held on sufferance, and constantly at the
mercy of a lawless mob.
Freedom does not, indeed, imply so-
cial, intellectual, or moral equality ; but
its very essence is the equality of the fun-
damental rights of human creatures be-
fore God and the law. Such freedom
is not a human institution ; and no man
or men have any right inhering in their
birth, color, or traditions, to tamper with
or curtail such freedom at their arbi-
trary pleasure, or in accordance with
the dictates of their frenzied passions.
Such men are violators of the law, both
human and divine.
And here lies the remedy for the con-
dition of things as existing in the South.
The white man who wrongs a black and
the white mob that lynches a negro
have, by that act and to that extent, be-
come criminals in the eyes of the law,
and should be dealt with unsparingly
as such. It should no longer be a notable
thing, to be chronicled in the news col-
umns and elicit editorial comment, that
several white men should be punished
for the brutal murder of one inoffensive
negro. It should be the rule. And as
for lynching, let all the officers of the
law, with all the powers of the law, de-
fend the rights and life of every pris-
oner. Surely we who can revel in the
burning of a fellow human being, and
a section some of whose prominent men
can soberly defend such a bloody pro-
ceeding, ought not to have any over-sen-
sitive scruples at the shedding of a little
additional blood, and that too of crimi-
nals caught in the very act of crime. So
let our marshals have instructions, failure
to obey which shall result in criminal
prosecution, to protect at any cost the
accused who come into their care.
If this seems bloody, is it more bloody
than the lyncher's purpose ? Or is he
any the more a murderer who, in silence
and alone, takes the life of a fellow man,
than every member of a mob which,
without the process of the law, takes a
human life ? And if the mob calls mur-
der a justification for its course of ven-
geance, does it not, by its own act and
attitude, condemn itself to a like penal-
ty? At any rate, this is the only re-
straining influence that our lynchers can
comprehend, and this, together with the
most rigid administration of the law in
the case of every wrong done to a ne-
gro, is the only available remedy for
conditions as they now exist. Our lower
classes must be made to realize, by what-
ever means, that the black man has rights
which they are bound to respect.
This is the heart of the Southern
problem of the negroj If we call upon
the people of the North to give over
The BcSs^n Hill Ground.
73
their mistaken ideas of the equality of
the races in superficial and accidental
things, we are called upon by the louder
voice of simple' humanity to give over
our much more vicious idea of the in-
equality of the races in the fundamental
rights of human creatures. If we call
upon them to lay aside sentiment, we
must lay aside cruelty. If they are not
to elevate the negro above his proper
sphere, we are not to debase him to
the level of the brute. But in mutual
understanding, a frank (if sorrowful) re-
cognition of all the facts, of the lim-
itations of the race on the one hand,
and of its inalienable rights on the oth-
er, with charity and good will between
North and South, and of both toward
the black man, let us give him fair
and favorable conditions, and suffer him
to work out, unhampered, his destiny
among us.
Andrew Sledd.
THE BO'S'N HILL GROUND.
LYING upon its side on a little shelf
containing the few books owned by Miss
Mercy Gaskett was an ancient and much
thumbed copy of the American Ooast
Pilot, dog-eared and dirty, and stained
by countless soakings in fog, rain, and
salt water. For thirty odd seasons Skip-
per Reuben Gaskett carried the book
with him to the coast of Labrador in the
old pinky schooner Good Intent, and
when in a memorable gale over half a
century ago the stout little vessel at last
laid her bones on the desolate Magdalens,
the old book was one of the very few ar-
ticles saved from the wreck. All those
sturdy mariners who eagerly scanned its
pages in fog and storm for so many years
have long slept either with the skipper
behind the weather-beaten meeting-house
on the hill at the Cove, or fathoms deep
in the ocean. As a pilot the old book
has entirely outlived its usefulness, since
owing to variation of the compass, x the
courses given in it would speedily lead
to disaster if followed to-day, while so
many changes have taken place in the
appearance of the coast since it was com-
piled that the sailing directions are also
wholly untrustworthy.
Miss Mercy was herself aware that
the book had now no practical value, and
was therefore somewhat surprised when
one morning Jason Fairway came sham-
bling up her path in his red fishing boots,
and asked leave to look it over for a few
moments.
" Look at it ! " she exclaimed. " Why
to be sure you can look at it all you want,
an' welcome, Jase, but it ain't the least
mite o' good to you aboard your bo't, now
I can tell you that ! Brother Pel'tiah I
know, he set out one time to run a course
outen her, an' like to have got cast away
there to the Mussel Ridges too. He
allus has told how they had a dretf ul close
shave of it, an' I guess likely 't was that
much 's anything made him quit goin',
an' stop ashore same 's he has sence."
"Wai, Miss Mercy," said Jason, "I
ain't cal'latin' to take no chances run-
nin' ary course outen the book, for I
don't doubt a mite but that it 's jes' you
say, she 's pooty nigh bein' a back num-
ber at this day o' the world, but what
I 'm comin' at is this here. Your bro-
ther Pelly was tellin' of me only the very
last time I was to his store there, how
there was a'writin' somewheres into that
ole book that give the marks for the
Bo's'n Hill Ground. He 'lowed 't was
years sence he see it, but he says, 's 'e,
' It 's there somewheres into that ole book
right in black an' white, an' in my father's
own han'writin', too.' "
74
The Bo's'n Hill Ground.
" Well, well," said Miss Mercy, "pro-
b'ly it 's so, then ! Bo's'n Hill Ground !
Land's sakes, ef that don't carry me
clean way back to the time I was a little
gal a-pickin' oakum stormy days up in
the ole attic there to home ! You take
an' set down in the cheer there back o'
the laylocks, where it 's good an' shady,
Jase, an' I '11 fetch her right out to ye."
So saying, Miss Mercy went into the
house, and soon returned with the ven-
erable leather-covered book.
" You would n't b'lieve," she continued,
" you would n't scursely b'lieve how kind
o' queer it doos seem to hear tell about
the Bo's'n Hill Ground ag'in ! Why,
when I was growin' up, 't was nothin'
but Bo's'n Hill Ground, an' the Spring
Gardin, an' Betty Moody's Ten Acre
Lot, an' a sight more I clean forgit the
names of now. How comes it we don't
never hear tell about them ole fishin'
grounds now'days, Jase ? "
" Wai," replied he, taking the old book
in his lap, " come to that, there 's some
that doos fish on the Spring Gardin by
spells now'days, but I can't say 's ever
I knowed jes' the marks would put ye
onto Betty Moody's Lot, there, though I
would n't wonder but that there 's folks
here to the Cove that 's got 'em yit, but
you come to take the Bo's'n Hill, an'
seem 's ef the marks was gone from here
clip an' clean ! That is. there 's jes' one
man knows 'em, fur 's I can make out,
an' he's so blame' mean he won't tell
'em to nobody, so there we be hung up,
ye see."
" Who is it knows 'em ? " cried Miss
Mercy. " Guess I can think, though,
who it must be ! " she added.
" You would n't have to travel fur to
run foul on him ! " said Jason, as he
clumsily turned the old book's yellow
pages. " Oho ! " he soon exclaimed.
" Here we have it, so quick ! Here 's
the whole bus'niss wrote on a piece o'
paper, an' pasted in here plain 's can
be ! ' Marks for the Boatswain's Hill
Ground. Brandon's Cove, November 5,
1822. Scant eight fathoms at low wa-
ter. Hard bottom.' See, Miss Mercy ? "
" No," she said. " Can't make out a
word without my specs, but you take an'
read it out loud, Jase."
" Wai, 't ain't so ter'ble plain 's what
I thought for, come to look right at it,"
said he. " The ink 's eat chock through
the paper in spots, so 's 't the words kind
o' run together like ; then here 's 'nother
place where it seem 's though somebody
'd spilt fire outen his pipe, from the
looks on 't. Beginnin' starts off con-
sid'ble plain though, ef only a feller could
make out to git holt o' the res' part.
Lemme see now, how doos she read, any-
ways ? ' Bring the steeple of Ole York
meetin'-house to bear eggsac'ly over the
sou' west dry ledge o' the Hue an' Cry,'
that 's plain 'nough so fur, but 't ain't
right, I know ! Never was so in God's
world ! That range would fetch ye clean
away to the east'ard, way off here on
the Big Bumpo, I sh'd cal'late ! "
" Well, but Jase ! " interrupted Miss
Mercy, " prob'ly it means the big ole
yaller meetin'-house use to set there on
the post ro'd 'most up to the Corners,
you rec'lec', or was that 'fore your time,
though ? Burnt chock to the ground she
was, one time when ole Elder Roundturn
was preachin' into her, oh, years ago."
" I jes' barely rec'lec' her, an' that 's
all," said Jason, " but ef that 's the style,
we 're all adrift ag'in on gittin' them
marks ! Le' 's see, though, what it goes
on to say 'bout t'other range. * Bring
the dark strake in the woods on the
no'therly side of Bo's'n Hill to bear in
range ' Wai, it jes' happens there
don't make out to be no woods up there,
not a blamed stick ! Stripped ri' down
to the bare rock, she is ! Now where was
I to ? Oh, here, I guess ! ' To bear in
range with the eastern c-h ' What in
blazes is it ? C-h-i- oh, chimbly, that 's
it ! The eastern chimbly on the what
house? Set -fire ef I can make that
out, noways ! The ink 's eat the paper
all to flinders right here ! Now don't
The jBo's'n Hill Ground.
75
that make out to be some aggravating
you!
" Still, I dunno 's it makes no great
odds, neither, for I cal'late 't would puz-
zle the ole boy hisself to take an' put a
bo't on the Bo's'n Hill Ground from
them marks to - day, 'lowin' we could
make out to spell 'em out ! 'S too bad,
I swan to man ! Jes' much obliged to
you, though, Miss Mercy, o' course, for
the trouble."
" Not a mite o' trouble, Jase ! Not a
speck ! Sorry you can't git no sense out
o' the thing, I 'm sure ! It doos seem 's
ef there 'd ought to be some ways to
git holt o' them marks though, as many
years as what folks has been fishin' on
that Bo's'n Hill Ground ! "
" Wai," replied Jason, " the thing of
it is, the Bo's'n Hill ain't been fished
o' late years, an' that 's jes' where the
trouble comes in. 'Cordin' to tell, them
ole fellers used to git the biggest kind
o' fishin' out there in the spring an' fall
o' the year, but nigh 's I can make out,
it fin'lly come to be fished pooty much
dry, ye see, an' folks got in the way o'
goin' furder to the west'ard, or else out
to them grounds way off shore there, till
bimeby 'most the whole o' them ole fel-
lers that knowed the Bo's'n Hill marks
was un'neath the sod, or else drownded,
so come to take it at this day o' the
world, seem 's ef the only man left here
to this Cove that 's got 'em yit is ole
Loop-eye Kentall, an' you know what
he is, prob'ly ! "
" Sakes alive ! " exclaimed Miss Mer-
cy. "It's likely we ain't lived next
door neighbors all these years for no-
thin' ! I guess if 't depends on him,
but there ! He 's all the nigh neighbor
I 've got, an' I s'pose it don't look jes'
right my sayin' no great, anyways. Don't
he never go out there fishin' into his
bo't, so 's 't you could kind o' watch him
like, or else make out to f oiler him some-
ways?"
"Oh, he's fishin' there right along,
this spring," answered Jason. " It 's
seldom ever he '11 miss ary decent chance
to git onto the ground now'days, for
there 's fish there ag'in an' no mistake !
Commenced goin' out there some time
last fall, the fust I knowed on 't, but
it 's no sense tryin' to f oiler him, 'cause
you might jes' soon try trackin' a blame'
loon to her nest as to ketch that ole rat
on the Bo's'n Hill ! Ye see he won't
never leggo his killick out there at all ef
there 's ary one o' the other bo'ts 'round
anywheres, an' you come to take it after
he doos git hisself settled on the ground,
quick 's ever ary other bo't shows up
'most anywheres in sight he '11 up killick
an' put sail on her for all he 's wuth !
Seem 's ef you can't rig it so 's to ketch
him nappin' noways, for there 's quite a
few on us this spring has tried to work
it all manner o' ways to git the marks
for the Bo's'n Hill outen him, but set-fire
ef he ain't made out to beat us so fur,
ev'ry dog-gone time !
" One thing, you see, there ain't no
size to the ground anyways ; it 's nothin'
only a little mite of a shoal spot, the
Bo's'n Hill ain't, with consid'ble deep
water chock up to her on ev'ry side, so 's 't
you might liken her to a sort o' chimbly-
shaped rock that them big overgrowed
steakers loves to play round, an' feed
off'n, but you can see for yourself, with-
out a feller 's extry well posted, it 's a
ter'ble blind job tryin' to git on to the
thing.
" Brother Sam he did make out one
time to stumble right atop on 't into his
drag-bo't, but as luck would have it,
't was so thick an' hazy like, he could n't
see the main to git holt on ary marks
at all. He took an' stopped right out
there till past sundown hopin' she 'd
scale so 's 't he 'd be able to see sumpin',
but the way it worked, in room o' scalin',
it jes' turned to an' shet in thick o' fog
on him, an' the wind breezened up out
here to the east'ard so spiteful that
fin'lly it growed so dinged hubbly he
had to give it up, an' p'int her for the
turf ! But he 'lowed how the whole
76
The Bo's'n Hill Ground.
bus'niss wa'ii't much bigger over 'n the
Odd FeUers' HaU there to the Cove,
anyways, an' right atop on 't you 'd have
'bout eight fathom o' water at half tide,
but he said come to shift your berth not
more 'n mebbe a couple o' bo't's lengths,
an' like 's not the lead would run out
thirty odd fathom o' line so quick 't would
make your head swim ! "
" For the laud's sakes ! " exclaimed
Miss Mercy. " You don't tell ! Why,
't is a reg'lar-built chimbly-rock, ain't it
though ! I do r'ally hope you '11 make
out to git them marks so 's to find it
ag'in, declare I do ! 'T ain't I wish no
hurt to my neighbor here, but it doos
kind o' seem 's though an ole man that 's
got as much of it laid by as what he
has, an' all soul alone in the world, too,
I must say it doos 'pear as if he might
quit goin' bo't-fishin', an' sort o' lay back
a little for the rest part o' the time he 's
got to stop 'round here yit ! "
" There ! That 's me too, ev'ry time ! "
cried Jason Fairway. " That 's jes'
eggsac'ly how I look at it, Miss Mercy !
Why, ef only I was quarter part 's well
heeled as what ole Loop-eye Kentall is,
do you cal'late I 'd ever bother to set
'nother gang o' lobster-traps, or bait up
'nother tub o' trawls long 's I lived ?
Guess not, no great ! I sh'd jes' turn
to an' buy me a nice snug little place up
back here somewheres, an' git me a
good cow, an' a couple dozen hens, an'
then I sh'd figger on takin' of it good
an' easy ! Prob'ly 'nough I sh'd want
me a fresh haddick now an' then, an'
when I done so, I sh'd slip off here in my
bo't an' ketch me one without sayin' by
your leaf to nobody, but this here actin'
same 's a tormented ole hog "
" S-h ! Jase ! " sibilated Miss Mercy.
" Remember he 's "
" Can't help it ! " persisted Jason.
" Sich works as them he 's up to is fit
to turn a feller's poke, swan ef they
hain't ! Why, ef I was to set to an' go
into the snide tricks ole Loop-eye allus
an' forever 's been a-tryin' on, I dunno,
but seem 's though I sh'd be skeered to
turn in when it come night-time, for
fear God A'mighty 'd up an' shet off
my wind afore mornin' ! "
" Why Jason Fairway, you ! " began
Miss Mercy again.
" He 's went to work an' got a mort-
gage on half the places to the Cove, I
was goin' to say," continued Jason, " an'
'twa'n't but only last week he turned
to an' took away the bo't from pore ole
Uncle Isr'il Spurshoe way down on the
Neck there ! Did n't you never hear tell
o' that yit ? Wai, that 's what he done,
an' them two was boys together, mind
ye; went to the Bay together, an'
growed right up together you may say,
but Uncle Isr'il there, he 'd up an' slat
the clo'es off'n his back any day ef he
seen a man needed 'em wuss 'n what he
done ; that 's Isr'il Spurshoe all over,
that is, but you take ole Loop-eye, an'
he 'd allus rob ye in room o' givin' ye
nothin' ef he see a chance to git in his
work unbeknownst, an' as for lyin', why
I would n't b'lieve him no furder 'n what
I could take an' sling a four year ole
bull by the tail!"
" There ! There, Jase ! " cried Miss
Mercy once more. " Don't take on so,
son ! Ole Loop-eye, er, that is, ole Mr.
Kentall here is jest what the Lord made
him"
"Got my doubts 'bout the Lord's
havin' ary hand in the job 't all ! " in-
terrupted Jason, with a grin. " But I
must be joggin' down 'long. Do drop
in an' see us, Miss Mercy, won't ye,
when you 're our ways ? "
Not long after this talk between Jason
Fairway and Miss Mercy, the dogfish
" struck " on the coast, and as Was ex-
pected, almost at the same time, sum-
mer boarders " struck " in the Cove.
Now however beneficial these latter may
be accounted in other places, in the
Cove the question of which were the
greater nuisance, dogfish or boarders,
was often discussed. According to the
popular idea, both were to be looked for
The So's'n Hill Ground.
77
at about the same date, and while dog-
fish were certain to drive all other fish
from the shore during their stay, so the
boarders were credited with driving all
business from the Cove, and were even
accused of attempting to drive the na-
tive population back into the woods.
At any rate, after dogfish and board-
ers were in full possession, fishing as a
business was abandoned outright, and
though occasionally a party of boarders
was taken out and afforded the mild ex-
citement of hooking a beggarly scrod or
two from among the kelps at the har-
bor's mouth, yet the regular boat-fisher-
men as a rule laid their craft on the
moorings for a season, and began pre-
paring their gear for the fall fishing.
After this was well under way, Loop-
eye Kentall, though sorely beset by
rheumatism, started in, as he said, to
get his winter's fish, but his leaky old
lapstreak boat was almost daily to be
seen discharging its trip of fish at the
wharf in the village, while the few that
found their way to the moss-grown flakes
in his own yard were invariably of a
sort that could not be disposed of on
any terms.
Fish were scarce this fall, and as a
rule the boats were obliged to go a long
distance offshore to find them, starting
away from the Cove long before day-
light, and frequently not returning until
far into the night.
But this state of things was exactly
to the mind of Loop-eye Kentall, and
he improved the opportunity by making
use of his secret marks to the utmost.
Judging from the number of great
" steak " cod repeatedly landed from his
crazy old craft, there was no dearth of
fish on the Bo's'n Hill Ground this sea-
son at any rate, and Jason Fairway soon
determined to make still another effort
at getting a share of them ; so one clear
morning, instead of running his boat
broad offshore toward the distant grounds
he and the others had lately been com-
pelled to seek, he headed her several
miles to the eastward, and then hove to
until sunrise.
It proved just such a day as he had
hoped for. There was no haze to dim
the sun's brightness, and the sea was ruf-
fled by a brisk morning breeze, so that
to a person looking eastward toward the
sun, its blaze upon the dancing waters
was almost blinding.
By aid of the old canvas-covered spy-
glass Jason had brought with him, Loop-
eye Kentall was presently discovered
stealing out from under the high land
in his black -sailed old boat, and in
course of time dropping killick upon
what was presumably the Bo's'n Hill
Ground.
Then Jason put his tiller up, and
keeping as nearly as he could judge
directly in the wake of the dazzling sun
blaze, attempted to put to the test his
latest plan for stealing a march upon
the foxy old fisherman.
Half an hour passed, and under the
freshening breeze he was then at a dis-
tance when Loop-eye Kentall would
commonly have taken the alarm and
left posthaste, for he usually allowed
no boat to approach within a mile or
two. Nearer and nearer drew the trim
little jigger, and the dark object ahead
rapidly grew larger, till Jason chuckled
to himself at the apparent success of his
scheme.
" Ef our bird won't rise for another
five minutes," said he to his boy, " I '11
resk but that we '11 be able to sound out
that ground 'fore noontime, anyways ! "
Five minutes, ten minutes more, and
still no movement of the lone figure in
the boat ahead.
" Guess he must be gaftin' 'em in solid
this mornin' ! " said the boy. " Can't
see him movin* no great, though, neither.
'Pears to be settin' there takin' his com-
fort ! "
"I see he doos," said his father.
" Prob'ly cal'lates ev'ry blessed hooker
to the Cove's chock out on the Sou'-
west Ridge by this time o* day! It
78
Spider- Web.
looks to me as ef we 'd scored on him at
last ! Ef he 's on the Bo's'n Hill, I '11
have the marks this mornin' sure, for it
never made out to be no clearer ! "
" What you goin' to do, dad ? " asked
the boy. " Goin' to hail him, or jes' let
her go clean down onto him, till he
looks 'round ? "
" Guess we might 's well run down to
loo'ard a grain, an' shoot her up 'long-
side, ef he don't twig us fust. What
you s'pose ails the ole divil that makes
him set there humped up sideways, so
fashion ? Would n't wonder but that
he 's sick, or sumpin ! "
The next moment Jason's boat shot
up close to the side of the other, and a
quick look at its silent occupant showed
unmistakably that he had dropped his
killick for the last time. In the boat's
bottom lay an immense cod wound up
in a snarl of wet line, and as yet hardly
through its gasping.
"My God! Elishy Ken tall !" mut-
tered Jason Fairway. " Ef you hain't
made out to git snubbed up some short ! "
Without another word he reached for
the sounding lead, and let it run the
line swiftly over the boat's side. Then
he began hauling it up again, measuring
the fathoms with his arms as he did so.
Is it the Bo's'n Hill Ground, dad ? "
asked the white-faced boy anxiously.
" Six seven eight fathom, an*
rocky bottom. It lacks an hour to low
water yit. Yas, son, I sh'd say 't was ! "
In this way Loop-eye Kentall gave
away his cherished secret, and the Bo's'n
Hill Ground again became common
property of the fishermen at the Cove.
George S. Wasson.
SPIDER-WEB.
A SLENDER filament is yon
Bright bit of gossamer whereon
The sunlit spider swings what if he fall?
A couch of grass is all.
A daring architect, he lays
His skillful courses on my ways
But see how idly ! For with one light blow
I lay his rafters low.
Yet he'll go building still, as I,
Whose castles oft in ruins lie,
Begin and spin anew my filament
By some vast Being rent.
Mayhap, because I choose to lay
My daring rafters ' on His way,
He sweeps His vexed forehead with a frown
And strikes my castles down !
James Herbert Morse.
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
79
THE PLAYS OF EUGENE BRIEUX.
A DOZEN years ago, when M. Eugene
Brieux was plying the managers of Paris
theatres of all grades with his plays, most
of them were not even read. In 1879,
Bernard Palissy, a one-act play in verse
written in collaboration with M. Gaston
Salandri, had had a hearing at one of
the experimental performances then and
now so common at certain small theatres
of Paris, but between that first night and
the acceptance of Manages d' Artistes by
M. Antoine of the Theatre Libre lay
eleven years. In 1892, two years later,
M. Antoine produced Blanchette, a genu-
ine success that has become one of the
stock pieces of the Theatre Antoine, the
successor of the Theatre Libre. After
the favorable reception of this comedy,
plays of M. Brieux appeared in rapid suc-
cession : L'Engrenage, La Rose Bleue,
L'Evasion, Les Bienfaiteurs, LeBerceau,
Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont, L'Ecole
des Belles - Meres, Le R^sultat des
Courses, La Robe Rouge, Les Rempla-
antes, and Les Avarie's. To these should
be added Monsieur de Re'boval, which
has not been printed. These plays have
had their first nights at the Vaudeville,
the Gymnase, the Porte St. Martin, the
Antoine, and the Frangais, that is, at the
leading Paris theatres ; several, when
published, have gone into a number of
editions and are still selling ; and two,
L'Evasion and La Robe Rouge, have been
crowned by the Academy. Surely, plays
which could produce within a decade so
marked a change toward their author
must have unusual merit.
Two of them, La Rose Bleue and
L'Ecole des Belles-Meres, are one-act
ingenious trifles, but all the others are
for one reason or another of decided in-
terest, and three or four are masterly
studies of French life to-day. Manages
d' Artistes treats, with much amusing
satire on the affectations of would be
literary people, the selfishness of the
type of artist whose ambition much ex-
ceeds his powers. Blanchette paints the
misery that may result from giving a
peasant girl an education which, even if
not elaborate, puts her completely out of
sympathy with the home to which she
must return when her studies are finished
and her chance to teach does not come
promptly. L'Engrenage satirizes the
wheels within wheels of modern French
political life. Of course, the subject is
not new even to the stage, and, as a
whole, L'Engrenage cannot be classed
among the best plays of M. Brieux. Les
Bienfaiteurs mocks at modern systema-
tized charity and the pretended interest
in it of the fashionable world. The con-
flicts in authority, the petty jealoisies,
the blindness to facts in absorption in
theories, the frequent cruelty of this sys-
tematized charity, are treated with in-
dignant irony. L'Evasion has a dou-
ble purpose : to gird with almost Molier-
esque intensity at the self-sufficiency of
fashionable physicians and modern medi-
cal science ; and to represent the tragedy
sure to result if young men and wo-
men come into maturity believing them-
selves as unalterably doomed by the acts
of their forbears as, in the Greek trage-
dy, were the heroes whom the gods had
banned. Le Berceau treats the power-
lessness of human theoretical law when
it conflicts with human natural law. Ray-
mond and Laurence, estranged by the
folly of Raymond, have been divorced.
Laurence, thinking herself perfectly free,
has yielded to her father's entreaties and
married again. But when Raymond and
Laurence meet over the cradle of the
dangerously ill boy whom they both love
passionately, they come to realize that,
whatever the laws of man may say, na-
ture provides a bond in their common
love for the child which makes it impos-
80
The Plays of Eugene Bneux.
sible for their lives to be wholly separate.
Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont shows
the tragedies of three lives caused by the
absolute control of French parents over
their daughters. Le Re'sultat des Courses
is a very varied study of the life of the
men employed in the large workshop of
a caster in bronze, and finds its trage-
dy in the evil effects on this class of the
betting mania. Two of the best of M.
Brieux's plays follow : La Robe Rouge
and Les Remplagantes. The first, with a
breadth of human sympathy, a keenness
of insight, and a mercilessness of satire
which again remind one of Moliere, ex-
poses the way in which personal ambi-
tion, and politics interfering with law,
may blind and deprave French justice.
Les Remplaantes, probably M. Brieux's
masterpiece thus far, paints, with evident
complete knowledge of the conditions
used, the gradual depraving of certain
French districts because their chief sup-
port has come to be supplying wet nurses
for the babies of Parisian women of fash-
ion. Just before the last play, Les Ava-
rie's, was to have its first night at the
Antoine last autumn, the Censure re-
fused to allow it to be given. The logic
of the Censor is a little hard to follow :
apparently a French dramatist may treat
what he likes so long as he is suggestive-
ly nasty or wrings from his material
every bit of impropriety there is in it ;
but when he treats a subject, undoubted-
ly scabrous, with intention to make his
public cry out against the conditions
shown, modesty forbids in the Censor's
office. However, though one must be
grateful to M. Brieux for the insight
with which he has discerned the exact
causes of the evils he treats, and for the
courage with which he says what should
be more generally understood, one can-
not say much for the play as a play. In
the first place the subject the tragedy
of the introduction of disease into the
family by the husband is not fit for
the stage. Secondly, so completely has
the indignant student of French manners
swamped the dramatist, that Les Ava-
rie's is a twentieth-century morality : for,
though Act II. does contain action and
characterization, Act I. is but a dialogue,
and Act III. is little more than a long
lecture. It cannot be denied that in the
plays preceding Les Avarie's M. Brieux
broadened the choice of topics for the
modern drama, but here he has gone too
far. It is to be hoped that in the play
now in rehearsal at the Theatre Franjais,
Petite Amie, the dramatist will once more
guide and control the social reformer.
From this summary it must be clear
that there is no more up to date drama-
tist than M. Brieux : his plays of the
last twelve years treat French life in
those years. Nor does he seek particular-
ly what is permanently comic or tragic :
he is quite as much interested in dra-
matic crises which can occur only as
long as conventions and habits at present
deep rooted have not yielded in their
hopeless struggle against more enlight-
ened ideals and customs. The changing
present is his field. Do not suppose,
however, that you will find in the list
only thirteen theses on social questions
thinly disguised as plays. With the ex-
ception of Les Avarie's, these plays are
full of interesting dramatic situations de-
veloped by admirable characterization.
Nor is the chief quality of the work
brutal realism. The plays show tender-
ness, remarkable range of sympathy with
human nature, and a strong underlying
belief in the good in man when he is not
blinded by convention or driven astray
by the insistent theories of self-consti-
tuted leaders of society. The humor of
M. Brieux, usually quiet, appears most
often in swift, final touches of character-
ization such as mark the domino game
in Blanchette (Act I., Sc. 13) between
the suspicious, wily, and obstinate pea-
sants, Morillon and Rousset. The por-
trait, in Les Bienfaiteurs, of Clara, the
maid whom the charitable Landrecys en-
dure because they know she will not be
able, if dismissed, to get another place,
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
81
must thoroughly amuse any one who has
suffered from impudent stupidity in ser-
vants. Often this humor of M. Brieux
has an admixture of irony or satire, for
naturally both are among his principal
weapons. The following from Scene 1,
Act I., of L'Evasion shows his gayer
irony : Dr. La Belleuse asks the advice
of his famous chief, Dr. Bertry, as to
which are worrying him.
La Belleuse. There is one case that
I can't succeed in relieving.
The Doctor. That will happen.
La Bell. Of course, but he wants
to go to Lourdes.
The Doc. Let him go.
La Bell, (dismayed) . You don't mean
that ? What if he should be cured ?
The Doc. You can always find a sci-
entific explanation.
La Bell. Suggestion ?
The Doc. Certainly, it answers for
everything. Anything else ?
La Bell. There is Probard, the pa-
tient of whom I spoke to you. He can't
last more than a week.
The Doc. Call a colleague in consul-
tation. That will divide the responsi-
bility.
La Bell. But Probard is almost a
celebrity.
The Doc. Call in two.
La Bell. Yes. At the hospital, Num-
ber Four in the St. Theresa room is still
in the same condition.
The Doc. Have you tried everything ?
La Bell. Everything.
The Doc. Even doing nothing ?
La Bell. Even doing nothing. Not
one of us can tell what is the matter with
her.
The Doc. (after a sigh). We shan't
know till the autopsy. Let us wait.
La Bell. Stopping all treatment ?
The Doc. No. One must never seem
to lose interest in a case. That would
be a mistake a regrettable mistake.
Do no matter what, but do something.
That is all?
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 6
La Bell, (consulting his memoranda).
I don't see anything more.
The biting quality of the following,
from Les Bienfaiteurs, results from its
close, indignant observations of methods
not confined to France. Escaudin calls on
Pauline Landrecy at the office of one of
the charities she has founded through the
bounty of her brother, Valentin Salviat.
Pauline. We were talking, my brother
and I, this is M. Escaudin, of whom
I spoke to you, we were talking of the
difficulty there is in dispensing charity.
I have been robbed, M. Escaudin, I have
been robbed by pretended poor.
Escaudin. Ah, that 's it ! You, you
want to mix charity and sentiment : you
will always be deceived. Now I, you
see, have been for ten years the head of
a charitable committee ; that toughens a
man, that does. I scent a fraud two
miles and a half away. The time is past
when they could trick me.
Pau. How do you manage ?
Esc. I don't know. It 's a matter of
instinct. You women let yourselves feel
pity. In practicing charity you must
use the same common sense and the same
coolness as in business. I who made my
fortune in business Look here, you
have still some clients, I call them my
' clients, you have still some clients in
the waiting-room. Would you like to
have me receive them in your presence ?
Then you will see.
Pau. Most willingly.
Esc. I must place myself there (des-
ignating the table at the left).
Pau. Why?
Esc. You must always have a desk,
a table between you and your client,
that keeps you from contact with him
and insures respect. (Laughing.) Ah,
ah, ah ! That 's one of my tricks ! (He
establishes himself.) Now you can let
them come in. (Enter Rosa Mag loir e.)
Come forward. Your name Christian
name your address ?
82
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
Rosa. Magloire, Rosa, 14 M^nard
Square.
Esc. (after writing). Married ?
Rosa. Yes, sir.
Esc. What do you want ?
Rosa. A little aid ; I have a sick child.
Esc. Send him to the hospital. The
hospitals are n't built for dogs, you know.
What more ?
Rosa. I am very unhappy.
Esc. Yes (insinuatingly). You have
a very hard time bringing up your chil-
dren ?
Rosa. Yes, sir.
Esc. (False good-fellowship.) You
work hard, and your husband, when he
comes home drunk, beats you ?
Rosa. Yes, sir.
Esc. Exactly : you can go, my good
woman. We can't do anything for you.
If we should give you aid, it would be
the liquor dealer who would get the bene-
fit of it. We don't foster intemperance.
When your husband stops getting drunk,
you can come back. The next. (Rosa
goes out.) (Laughing.) Ah, ah ! That
did n't take long, eh ? You saw how I
sent her packing. Now for a look at
this one. (Enter Michel Moutier, neat-
ly dressed.)
Michel. Good-day, sir.
Esc. Come forward. Name Chris-
tian name address ?
Mic. Moutier, Michel, 22 rue Basse.
Esc. What do you want ?
Mic. Some aid.
Esc. You are a beginner, are n't you ?
Mic. Sir?
Esc. You are not a professional, eh ?
This is the first time you have begged ?
Mic. Almost.
Esc. (to Pauline and Salviat) . You
see ; I am not to be fooled. (To Michel.)
If you were a professional, you would not
come in an overcoat on which you could
get sixty cents from the pawnbroker, nor
with a wedding-ring on which you could
easily raise a dollar. We cannot aid
any except the genuinely poor. Ex-
tremely sorry, sir.
Mic. But sir that ring -
Esc. I beg your pardon, there are
others waiting. Good -day, sir. The
next. (Michel goes out. Leon Chenu en-
ters.) Come forward. Name Chris-
tian name address ? j
Leon. Le'on Chenu.
Esc. Address?
Leon. I have n't one. They can write
to me at 4 Benoit Alley. My former
landlord, who kept my furniture for the
rent, is willing to pass on my letters.
Esc. You want aid ?
Leon. No, sir, I want work.
Esc. (laugh). Ah, ah! You want
work ; very well, some shall be given
you, my friend. Kindly take the trou-
ble to go to this address. Good-day.
(Leon goes out.) The next.
Pan. There is no one else.
Esc. (laugh). Ha, ha ! That did n't
take long, did it ?
Salviat (restraining himself}. My
compliments ! And what are you going to
make that one do to whom you promised
work ?
Esc. Ah that, that is one of my fine
little tricks. It is assistance through
work in my manner. I have sent him
to my house with a special card which my
man will recognize. There is a pump in
my garden. The man who wants work
will be invited to pump for an hour.
Sal. But what are you going to do
with all that water ?
Esc. Nothing ; it will run off in the
gutter. When the man has pumped an
hour, he will be given ten cents. Will
you believe it, sir, there was one of them
who in return Do you know what
he did ? When he had pumped his
hour and had pocketed his money, he
took a bucket he found there, filled it,
and flung it hit or miss into the kitchen,
upon the range on which the dishes for
my dinner were cooking, saying to the
cook, " Take that ; the water I have
pumped shall at least be of that use."
Yes, sir, there was one who insulted me.
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
83
Sal. (from a distance). Pauline !
Pan. (going to him). What is it ?
Sal. Will you politely tell that gen-
tleman to clear out, for if I listen to him
for another ten minutes, I won't answer
for myself, or for him. (Act III., Sc.
6-10.)
This is severe, but it is by no means
M. Brieux at his sternest. Yet his love
for even erring human nature keeps him,
on the one hand, from the caricature
which deprived Ben Jonson's satire of
moral significance, and, on the other,
guards him, even when his satire is most
mordant, from the savageness of Swift.
Nor is the work sordid. In the first
place, M. Brieux does not, to use a
phrase of Mr. Meredith, "fiddle har-
monics on the strings of sensualism."
His plays are far removed from the
comedy of the Restoration and from the
modern drama of intrigue. Sex as sex
has no fascination for him : he treats it
only when it must be faced in order to
make clear the central idea which binds
together the parts of his play. Even
then there is no lingering on the scene for
its own sake : he moves with the swift
frankness, even with the daring of the
scientific demonstrator, and for the same
reason, because the facts and their
exact significance must be grasped if the
truth is not to be missed. When he does
treat sex, he pleads for what must win him
hearty sympathy, for less sentimental-
ity and more honesty in initiating youth
into the responsibilities of its maturing
powers ; for emancipation of French girls
from parental absolutism in the matter
of marriage, that is, for love as the best
basis of selection ; for a fuller recogni-
tion by the fashionable world of the beau-
ty of fatherhood and motherhood, and
of the duties of parents to their children.
It is even one of M. Brieux's chief rights
to consideration that, when the sex ques-
tion is absorbing the attention of serious
dramatists everywhere, he has made it
central in few of his plays, and, while
recognizing with exactness its importance
as a cause of tragedy, has found in French
life many other absorbingly dramatic and
genuinely tragic subjects.
The plays are not depressing. One
leaves them surer that the virtues belong
to no one class, and with fresh evidence
that there are abidingly in life self-sac-
rifice, devoted love, honest men, and gen-
tle, good women. M. Brieux is very
fond of the hard-working and ill-paid
country doctors who devote their lives to
their patients. He may almost be called
the dramatist of passionate mother love,
for both Le Berceau and Les Rempla-
cantes are full of it. He has a genius
for discerning and presenting convincing-
ly the good even in his vicious charac-
ters. He is no pessimist : he paints ex-
isting evils, not for themselves, not de- '
spairing of solution, but that he may
hasten the solution. What could be more
optimistic than his defiance in L'Evasion
of the present cult of Heredity ? In the
story of Jean and Lucienne he insists
that the greatest force in so-called he-
redity is the self -mesmerism of those who
give themselves up as doomed. Struggle
and you can break free, if indeed you
really were ever bound. Compare that
attitude with Ibsen's in A Doll's House,
or in Ghosts.
This, then, is no ordinary drame a
these, which treats sex as the most in-
teresting factor in life, revels in sordid
realism, and argues a case to a solution
or ends with a pistol shot. M. Brieux
is a realist because he deals with the life
about him, but he does not select realis-
tic details for their own sake. In read-
ing his work, one should never forget
that the central idea of his play is his
lodestone. Approach La Robe Rouge
as a character study, or as a plot in the
usual sense, and the interest seems to
shift from the Yagret family to Mouzon,
and again to Yanetta, the peasant. Con-
sequently the play, read in either of these
ways, is confusing. Read it, however,
as an exemplification of the ways in
84
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
which politics and personal ambition may
corrupt French justice, and each part
will be seen to be in its proper place.
His plays find their unity, then, not in
a central character or group of charac-
ters, but in an idea. Yet M. Brieux does
not first find a theory of life, and then
mould his characters by it in order to ex-
ploit his theory cleverly. Instead, clear-
eyed, broadly sympathetic, he watches
the life about him. Complications, trage-
dies rivet his attention. He does not rest
till he thinks he has found the causes.
Then he studies minutely the people in
whom these causes and results manifest
themselves. By careful selection of the
moments in their lives which best show
these causes and results, by remarkably
accurate and interpretative characteriza-
tion, he puts the story before us. In
reading Le Re'sultat des Courses, Les
Trois Filles de M. Dupont, and Les A va-
ried, it is easy to conclude that M. Brieux
finds a solution for all existing evils in
forgiveness, pardon. For instance, Dr.
Mossiac, in Le Berceau cries : " Forgive,
always forgive. Not a single one of us
is perfect. Therefore, each of us does
some wrong. Consequently, marriage
is possible only by dint of constant for-
giveness on one side or the other." But
M. Brieux cannot believe in either the
advisability or the adequacy of a solu-
tion which exacts most from those who
have already suffered most and provides
no guarantee that the sinner will not fall
again. M. Brieux offers a sedative, not
a cure. He must intend that readers,
seeing that the only present way out of
the evils he portrays is so unjust and has
so little finality, shall cry that the con-
ditions making such a sedative inevitable
must and shall be changed. Indeed, his
work as a whole shows his conviction
that not one but two plays are needed to
present the solution of a problem in life :
one to state the problem, the other to
show the working of the solution. There-
fore, he is content to arouse active sym-
pathetic thought.
His right to serious consideration
comes from four sources : his swift, ac-
curate characterization ; his remarkably
judicial attitude toward his dramatis per-
sonae; his power of discerning in the
life of the day its own distinctive trage-
dy ; and his skill in writing plays inter-
esting not only as drama, but as sugges-
tion and comment. The people of M.
Brieux, whether they come from the
fashionable world or elsewhere in the
social scale, are always real. His keen
sympathy for poverty is the result of his
own bitter experience, for until recently
he was very poor. In earlier days he
has often read beneath the lamp-post
outside his door because he could not
afford the necessary light. A Parisian
by birth, he knows the bourgeois in-
timately, and, as editor for some years
of a Rouen newspaper, he has had a
chance to study the peasant class closely.
Indeed, he is at his best in painting pea-
sants.
What, in large part, makes M. Brieux's
portraiture of permanent value is his
judicial fairness, his refusal to idealize.
Think over the plays of the day and
note that it is an axiom of the current
playwright that, in order to keep an au-
dience in sympathy with the hero or he-
roine, he must be to his or her faults so
very kind as to put a blinder on the
mind and pretend he or she has none.
Qne finds the fullest exemplification of
this in the heroes and heroines of melo-
drama. In even so early a play as Blan-
chette, the heroine, though attractive, is
so in spite of her petty vanity, selfish-
ness, and sentimentality, which are plain-
ly shown, and the obstinate, hot-tem-
pered Rousset, father of Blanchette, is
so painted that you cannot dismiss him
with execration and centre your affec-
tions on the heroine. The finest thing
in the play, indeed, is the way in which
you are made to recognize sympatheti-
cally what natural developments from
their different educations are Rousset
and Blanchette, and how impossible it
The Plays of Eugene Brieux.
85
is that either should understand the oth-
er. Read Le Berceau and see how com-
pletely you are made to understand and
sympathize with M. de Girieu, the sec-
ond husband, as well as with Laurence,
and with Raymond the divorced hus-
band. Most dramatists would not only
be content with our sympathy for the
last two, but would even fear that sym-
pathy for M. de Girieu might lessen our
esteem for the other two. Read the tre-
mendous scene of Julie and Antonin in
Act III. of Les Trois Filles de M. Du-
pont, and be swept on in sympathetic un-
derstanding and approval of Julie, only
to realize, as Antonin answers, that he
too has genuine grievances, that, as is
always the case in life, but rarely in fic-
tion, there are two sides to any wrong.
How much nearer life the drama comes
here, in making it difficult to take sides.
M. Brieux sees clearly that in the life
of the day tragedy results, not simply
from sex, but from the maladjustment
of human laws and standards to the un-
alterable sweep of nature's laws. The
century just closed has been a time of
incompleted readjusting of our ideals,
even of our common habitudes, to the
multifold discoveries of the period. It
is because men and women, instead of
studying their own characters, play at
being what nature never meant them to
be, because they blindly follow laws and
standards which are the results of the-
orizing, not of fearless study of na-
ture's workings, that there is tragedy all
about us. In Blanchette, Le Berceau,
Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont, La Robe
Rouge, and Les Remplacantes, recogni-
tion of these facts has carried M. Brieux
to tragedies specially characteristic of
the period just closed. Mark the re-
straint, the simplicitj', of this represen-
tation of the powerlessness of human
law when in conflict with everlasting
laws of human emotion. Laurence and
Raymond, her first husband, meet by
chance by the sick bed of their little boy.
M. de Girieu, the second husband, who
is madly jealous of Raymond, and of
Laurence's love for her boy, has just
refused Raymond's request to be allowed
to watch by the child till he is out of
danger. Resting confidently on the con-
trol over Laurence and the boy which
the laws give him, M. de Girieu is sure
he can keep his wife and her former
husband apart.
(Long silent scene. The door of lit-
tle Julien's room opens softly. Lau-
rence appears with a paper in her hand.
The two men separate, watching her in-
tently. She looks out for a long time,
then shuts the door, taking every pre-
caution not to make a noise. After a
gesture of profound grief, she comes
forward, deeply moved, but tearless.
She makes no more gestures. Her face
is grave. Very simply, she goes straight
to Raymond.)
Raymond (very simply to Laurence).
Well?
Laurence (in the same manner). He
has just dropped asleep.
Ray. The fever ?
Lau. Constant.
Ray. Has the temperature been
taken?
Lau. Yes.
Ray. How much ?
Lau. Thirty-nine.
Ray. The cough?
Lau. Incessant. He breathes with
difficulty.
Ray. His face is flushed ?
Lau. Yes.
Ray. The doctor gave you a pre-
scription ?
Lau. I came to show it to you. I
don't thoroughly understand this.
(They are close to each other, exam-
ining the prescription which Raymond
holds.)
Ray. (reading). " Keep an even tem-
perature in the sick room."
Lau. Yes.
Ray. " Wrap the limbs in cotton wool,
and cover that with oiled silk." I am
86
The Plays of 'Eugene Brieux.
going to do that myself as soon as he
wakes. Tell them to warn me.
Lau. What ought he to have to
drink ? I forgot to ask that, and he is
thirsty.
Ray. Mallow.
Lau. I 'm sure he does n't like it.
Ray. Yes, yes. You remember when
he had the measles.
Lau. Yes, yes. How anxious we
were then, too !
Ray. He drank it willingly. You
remember perfectly ?
Lau. Yes, of course I remember.
Some mallow then. Let us read the
prescription again. I have n't forgot-
ten anything ? Mustard plasters. The
cotton wool, you will attend to that.
And I will go have the drink made.
" In addition every hour a coffee-
spoonful of the following medicine."
(The curtain falls slowly as she con-
tinues to read. M. de Girieu has gone
out slowly during the last words.)
Though it must be clear from what
has been said that the work of M. Brieux
is less varied than that of some other
dramatists of the day, it is, when at its
best in its chosen field, masterly. Per-
haps more than any other he may be
called the scientific dramatist, for he
finds his tragedies mainly in the crises
resulting from the shifting in social
ideals which scientific discovery has
caused, and his approach to his work
is that of the gentle-minded scientist.
With the same broad sympathy for his
fellows, he has the same passion for
truth, the same judicially, the same
fearlessness in the face of facts, and the
same daring in stating them, no matter
what their effect on ill-based conven-
tions or habits. With him, when the
social reformer does not prove too much
for the dramatist, and there is only
one marked instance of this, Les Ava-
rie's, we have a drama of ideas that
is really drama.
Are there any results of all his dra-
matic demonstration ? It is extreme-
ly difficult, of course, to trace the influ-
ence of a play so complicated as it is
with other influences, but I am credi-
bly informed that Les Remplagantes has
decidedly decreased the evil which it
scourged. I suspect, however, that be-
fore M. Brieux wins the general recog-
nition especially outside France
which he deserves, he must feel the full
force of Philistia in its enthusiastic ac-
ceptance of the words of his fellow dra-
matist, M. Paul Hervieu : " He who
is not like his fellows is necessarily
wrong." But M. Brieux evidently ac-
cepts, and wisely, the old French pro-
verb, " Tout vient a point a qui sait at-
tendre," for he could persevere through
ten years of indifference to his work,
and he quotes approvingly before Les
Bienfaiteurs the words of his philoso-
pher friend, Jean-Marie Guyot : " I am
very sure that what is best in me will
survive. Even, it may be, not one of
my dreams will be lost ; others will take
them up and dream them after me until
one day they shall come true. By the
dying waves the sea succeeds in fashion-
ing its shore, in shaping the vast bed in
which it dies."
George P. Baker.
The Marsh.
87
THE MARSH.
IT was a late June day whose break-
ing found me upon the edge of the great
salt marshes which lie behind East Point
Light, as the Delaware Bay lies in front
of it, and which run in a wide, half-land,
half-bay border down the cape.
I followed along the black sandy road
which goes to the Light until close to
the old Zane's Place, the last farm-
house of the uplands, when I turned
off into the marsh toward the river.
The mosquitoes rose from the damp
grass at every step, swarming up around
me in a cloud, and streaming off behind
like a comet's tail, which hummed in-
stead of glowed. I was the only male
among them. It was a cloud of females,
the nymphs of the salt marsh ; and all
through that day the singing, stinging,
smothering swarm danced about me,
rested upon me, covered me whenever I
paused, so that my black leggings turned
instantly to a mosquito brown, and all
my dress seemed dyed alike.
Only I did not pause not often, nor
long. The sun came up blisteringly hot,
yet on I walked, and wore my coat, my
hands deep down in the pockets and my
head in a handkerchief. At noon I was
still walking, and kept on walking till I
reached the bay shore, when a breeze
came up, and drove the singing, stinging
fairies back into the grass, and saved me.
I left the road at a point where a low
bank started across the marsh like a
long protecting arm reaching out around
the hay meadows, dragging them away
from the grasping river, and gathering
them out of the vast undrained tract of
coarse sedges, to hold them to the up-
land. Passing along the bank until be-
yond the weeds and scrub of the higher
borders, I stood with the sky-bound,
bay-bound green beneath my feet. Far
across, with sails gleaming white against
the sea of sedge, was a schooner, beat-
ing slowly up the river. Laying my
course by her, I began to beat slowly out
into the marsh through the heavy sea of
low, matted hay-grass.
There is no fresh water meadow, no
inland plain, no prairie with this rainy,
misty, early morning freshness so con-
stant on the marsh ; no other reach of
green so green, so a-glitter with seas of
briny dew, so regularly, unfailingly
fed:
" Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate chan-
nels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost
creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million
veins ! "
I imagine a Western wheatfield, half-
way to head, could look, in the dew of
morning, somewhat like a salt marsh.
It certainly would have at times the pur-
ple distance haze, that atmosphere of the
sea which hangs across the marsh. The
two might resemble each other as two
pictures of the same theme, upon the same
scale, one framed and hung, the other
not. It is the framing, the setting of
the marsh that gives it character, vari-
ety, tone, and its touch of mystery.
For the marsh reaches back to the
higher lands of fences, fields of corn,
and ragged forest blurs against the hazy
horizon ; it reaches down to the river of
the reedy flats, coiled like a serpent
through the green ; it reaches away to
the sky where the clouds anchor, where
the moon rises, where the stars, like far-
off lighthouses, gleam along the edge ;
and it reaches out to the bay, and on,
beyond the white surf line of meeting,
on, beyond the line where the bay's blue
and the sky's blue touch, on, far on.
88
The Marsh.
Here meet land and river, sky and
sea ; here they mingle and make the
marsh.
A prairie rolls and billows ; the marsh
lies still, lies as even as a sleeping sea.
Yet what moods ! What changes !
What constant variety of detail every-
where ! In The Marshes of Glynn
there was
" A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-
high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with
a light or a shade,"
but not in these Maurice River marshes.
Here, to-day, the sun was blazing, kin-
dling millions of tiny suns in the salt-wet
blades ; and instead of waist-high grass,
there lay around me acres and acres of
the fine rich hay-grass, full grown, but
without a blade wider than a knitting
needle or taller than my knee. It cov-
ered the marsh like a deep, thick fur,
like a wonderland carpet into whose
elastic^ velvety pile my feet sank and
sank, never quite feeling the floor.
Here and there were patches of higher
sedges, green, but of differing shades,
which seemed spread upon the grass-
carpet like long-napped rugs.
Ahead of me the even green broke
suddenly over a shoal of sand into tall,
tufted grasses, into rose, mallow, and
stunted persimmon bushes, foaming, on
nearer view, with spreading dogbane
blossoms. Off toward the bay another
of these shoals, mole-hill high in the dis-
tance, ran across the marsh for half a
mile, bearing a single broken file of
trees, sentinels they seemed, some of
them fallen, others gaunt and wind-
beaten, watching against the sea.
These were the lookouts and the rest-
ing places for passing birds. During
the day, whenever I turned in their di-
rection, a crow, a hawk, or some smaller
bird was seen upon their dead branches.
Naturally the variety of bird life upon
the marsh is limited ; but there is by no
means the scarcity here which is so often
noted in the forests and wild prairies of
corresponding extent. Indeed the marsh
was birdy rich in numbers if not in
species. Underfoot, in spots, sang the
marsh wrens ; in larger patches the
sharp-tailed sparrows ; and almost as
widespread and constant as the green
was the singing of the seaside sparrows.
Overhead the fishhawks crossed fre-
quently to their castle-nest high on the
top of a tall white oak along the land-
edge of the marsh ; in the neighborhood
of the sentinel trees a pair of crows
were busy trying (it seemed to me) to
find an oyster, a crab, something big
enough to choke, for just one minute,
the gobbling, gulping clamor of their
infant brood. But the dear devour-
ing monsters could not be choked ;
though once or twice I thought by their
strangling cries that father crow, in
sheer desperation, had brought them
oysters with the shells on. Their awful
gaggings died away at dusk. Beside
the crows and fishhawks a harrier would
now and then come skimming close
along the grass. Higher up, the turkey
buzzards circled all day long ; and once,
setting my blood leaping and the fish-
hawks screaming, there sailed over far
away in the blue, a bald-headed eagle,
his snowy neck and tail flashing in the
sunlight as he careened among the
clouds.
In its blended greens the marsh that
morning offered one of the most satis-
fying drinks of color my eyes ever
tasted. The areas of different grasses
were often acres in extent, so that the
tints, shading from the lightest pea green
of the thinner sedges to the blue green
of the rushes, to the deep emerald green
of the hay-grass, merged across their
broad bands into perfect harmony.
As fresh and vital as the color was
the breath of the marsh. There is no
bank of violets stealing and giving half
so sweet an odor to my nostrils, out-
raged by a winter of city smells, as the
salty, spray-laden breath of the marsh.
It seems fairly to line the lungs with
The Marsh.
89
ozone. I know how grass-fed cattle
feel at the smell of salt. I have the
concentrated thirst of a whole herd
when I catch that first whiff of the
marshes after a winter, a year it may
be, of unsalted inland air. The smell
of it stampedes me. I gallop to meet
it, and drink, drink, drink deep of it,
my blood running redder with every
draught.
II.
I had waded out into the meadow
perhaps two hundred yards, leaving a
dark bruised trail in the grass, when I
came upon a nest of the long-billed
marsh wren. It was a bulky house, and
so overburdened its frail sedge supports
that it lay almost upon the ground with
its little round doorway wide open to
the sun and rain. They must have been
a young couple who built it, and quite in-
experienced. I wonder they had not
abandoned it ; for a crack of light into
a wren's nest would certainly addle the
eggs. They are such tiny, dusky, tucked
away things, and their cradle is so deep
and dark and hidden. There were no
fatalities, I am sure, following my efforts
to prop the leaning structure, though the
wrens were just as sure that it was all
a fatality utterly misjudging my mo-
tives. As a rule I have never been able
to help much in such extremities. Either
I arrive too late, or else I blunder.
I thought, for a moment, that it was
the nest of the long-billed's cousin, the
short -billed marsh wren, that I had
found, which would have been a gem
indeed, with pearly eggs instead of choc-
olate ones. Though I was out for the
mere joy of being out, I had really come
with a hope of discovering this mousy
mite of a wren, and of watching her
ways. It was like hoping to watch the
ways of the " wunk." Several times I
have been near these little wrens ; but
what chance has a pair of human eyes
with a skulking four inches of brownish
streaks and bars in the middle of a
marsh ! Such birds are the everlasting
despair of the naturalist, the salt of his
earth. The belief that a pair of them
dwelt somewhere in this green expanse,
that I might at any step come upon them,
made me often forget the mosquitoes.
When I reached the ridge of rose and
mallow bushes, two wrens began mutter-
ing in the grass with different notes and
tones from those of the long-billed. I
advanced cautiously. Soon one flashed
out and whipped back among the thick
stems again, exposing himself just long
enough to show me stellaris, the little
short-billed wren I was hunting.
I tried to stand still for a second
glimpse and a clue to the nest ; but the
mosquitoes ! Things have come to a
bad pass with the bird-hunter, whose
only gun is an opera-glass, when he can-
not stand stock still for an hour. His
success depends upon his ability to take
root. He needs light feet, a divining
mind, and many other things, but most
of all he needs patience. There are few
mortals however with mosquito-proof
patience, one that would stand the test
here. Remembering a meadow in New
England where stellaris nested, I con-
cluded to wait till chance took me thith-
er, and passed on.
This ridge of higher ground proved
to be a mosquito roost, a thousand
here to one in the deeper, denser grass.
As I hurried across I noted with great
satisfaction that the pink-white blos-
soms of the spreading dogbane were
covered with mosquito carcasses. It
lessened my joy somewhat to find, upon
examination, that all the victims were
males. Either they had drunk poison
from the flowers, or else, and more like-
ly, they had been unable to free their
long-haired antennae from the Sticky
honey into which they had dipped their
innocent beaks. Several single flowers
had trapped three, and from one blos-
som I picked out five. If we could
bring the dogbane to brew a cup which
90
The Marsh.
would be fatal to the females, it might
be a good plant to raise in our gardens
along with the Eucalyptus and the castor-
oil plants.
Everywhere as I went along, from
every stake, every stout weed and top-
ping bunch of grass trilled the seaside
sparrows, a weak, husky, monotonous
s'ong, of five or six notes, a little like the
chippie's, more tuneful, perhaps, but not
so strong. They are dark, dusky birds,
grayish olive-green close to, with a con-
spicuous yellow line before the eye, and
yellow upon the shoulder.
There seems to be a sparrow of some
kind for every variety of land between the
poles. Mountain tops, seaside marshes,
inland prairies, swamps, woods, pastures,
everywhere, from Indian River to the
Yukon, a sparrow nests. Yet one can
hardly associate sparrows with marshes,
for they seem out of place in houseless,
treeless, half-submerged stretches. These
are the haunts of the shyer, more secre-
tive birds. Here the ducks, rails, bit-
terns, coots, birds that can wade and
swim, eat frogs and crabs, seem natu-
rally at home. The sparrows are perch-
ers, grain eaters, free flyers, and singers ;
and they, of all birds, are the friends and
neighbors of man. This is no place for
them. The effect of this marsh life upon
the flight and song of these two species
was very marked. Both showed unmis-
takable vocal powers which long ago
would have been developed under the
stimulus of human listeners ; and during
all my stay (so long have they crept and
skulked about through the low marsh
paths) I did not see one rise a hundred
feet into the air, nor fly straight away
for a hundred yards. They would get
up just above the grass, and flutter and
drop, a puttering, short-winded, apo-
plectic struggle, very unbecoming and
unworthy.
By noon I had completed a circle and
recrossed the lighthouse road in the di-
rection of the bay. A thin sheet of luke-
warm water lay over all this section.
The high spring tides had been rein-
forced by unusually heavy rains during
April and May, giving a great area of
pasture and hay land back, for that sea-
son, to the sea. Descending a copsy
dune from the road I surprised a brood
of young killdeers feeding along the drift
at the edge of the wet meadow. They
ran away screaming, leaving behind a
pair of spotted sandpipers, " till-tops,"
that had been wading with them in the
shallow water. The sandpipers teetered
on for a few steps, then rose at my ap-
proach, scaled nervously out over the
drowned grass, and, circling, alighted
near where they had taken wing, con-
tinuing instantly with their hunt, and
calling tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet, and tee-
tering, always teetering, as they tiptoed
along.
If perpetual motion is still a dream
of the physicist, he might get an idea
by carefully examining the way the body
of till-top is balanced on its needle legs.
If till-tops have not been tilting forever,
and shall not go on tilting forever, it is
because something is wrong with the
mechanism of the world outside their
little spotted bodies. Surely the easiest,
least willed motion in all the universe
is this sandpiper's teeter, teeter, teeter,
as it hurries peering and prying along
the shore.
Killdeers and sandpipers are noisy
birds ; and one would know, after half
a day upon the marsh, even if he had
never seen these birds before, that they
could not have been bred here. For
however
"candid and simple and nothing -withhold-
ing and free "
the marsh may seem to one coming sud-
denly from the wooded uplands, it will not
let one enter far without the conscious-
ness that silence and secrecy lie deeper
here than in the depths of the forest
glooms. The true birds of the marsh,
those that feed and nest in the grass, have
the spirit of the great marsh-mother. The
sandpiper is not her bird. It belongs to
The Marsh.
91
the shore, living almost exclusively along
sandy, pebbly margins, the margins of
any, of almost every water, from Del-
aware Bay to the tiny bubbling spring in
some Minnesota pasture. Neither is the
killdeer her bird. The upland claims it,
plover though it be. A barren stony
hillside, or even a last year's cornfield
left fallow, is a .better loved breast to
the killdeer than the soft brooding breast
of the marsh. There are no grass birds
so noisy as these two. Both of them
lay their eggs in pebble nests ; and both
depend largely for protection upon the
harmony of their colors with the general
tone of their surroundings.
I was still within sound of the bleating
killdeers when a rather large, greenish
gray bird flapped heavily but noiselessly
from a muddy spot in the grass to the
top of a stake and faced me. Here was
a child of the marsh. Its bolt upright
attitude spoke the watcher in the grass ;
then as it stretched its neck toward me,
bringing its body parallel to the ground,
how the shape of the skulker showed !
This bird was not built to fly nor to
perch, but to tread the low narrow paths
of the marsh jungle, silent, swift, and
elusive as a shadow.
It was the clapper rail, the " marsh-
hen." One never finds such a combina-
tion of long legs, long toes, long neck
and bill, with this long, but heavy hen-
like body, outside the meadows and
marshes. The grass ought to have been
alive with the birds. It was breeding
time ; but I think the high tides must
have delayed them or driven them else-
where ; for I did not find an egg, nor
hear at nightfall their colony-cry, so com-
mon at dusk and dawn in the marshes
just across on the coast about Town-
send's Inlet. There at sunset in nesting
time one of the rails will begin to call,
a loud, clapping roll ; a neighbor takes
it up, then another and another, the cir-
cle of cries widening and swelling until
the whole marsh is a-clatter.
Heading my way with a slow labored
stroke came one of the fishhawks. She
was low down and some distance away,
so that I got behind a post before she
saw me. The marsh-hen spied her
first, and dropped into the grass. On
she came, her white breast and belly
glistening, and in her talons a big glis-
tening fish. It was a magnificent catch.
" Bravo ! " I should have shouted
rather I should n't ; but here she was
right over me, and the instinct of the
boy, of the savage, had me before I
knew, and leaping out, I whirled my
cap and yelled to wake the marsh. The
startled hawk jerked, keeled, lifted with
a violent struggle, and let go her hold.
Down fell the writhing, twisting fish at
my feet. It was a splendid striped bass,
weighing at least four pounds, and still
live enough to flop.
I felt mean as I picked up the useless
thing and looked far away to the great
nest with its hungry young. I was no
better than the bald eagle, the lazy
robber-baron, who had stolen the dinner
of these same young hawks the day be-
fore.
Their mother had been fishing up the
river and had caught a tremendous eel.
An eel can hold out to wiggle a very
long time. He has no vitals. Even
with talon-tipped claws he is slippery and
more than a clawful ; so the old hawk
took a short cut home across the railroad
track and the corner of the woods where
stands the eagle tree.
She could barely clear the treetops,
and, with the squirming of the eel about
her legs, had apparently forgotten that
the eagle lived along this road, or else
in her struggle to get the prize home, she
was risking the old dragon's being away.
He was not away. I have no doubt
that he had been watching her all the
time from some high perch, and just as
she reached the open of the railroad
track, where the booty would not fall
among the trees, he appeared. His
first call, mocking, threatening, com-
manding, shot the poor hawk through
92
The Marsh.
with terror. She screamed, she tried
to rise and escape ; but without a sec-
ond's parley the great king drove down
upon her. She dropped the fish, dived,
and dodged the blow, and the robber,
with a rushing^swoop that was glorious
in its sweep, in its speed and ease, caught
the eel within a wing's reach of me and
the track.
I did not know what to do with my
spoil. Somewhat relieved, upon looking
around, to find that even the marsh-hen
had not been an eye-witness to my
knightly deed, I started with the fish,
and my conscience, toward the distant
nest, determined to climb into it and
leave the catch with the helpless, dinner-
less things for whom it was intended.
I am still carrying that fish. How
seldom we are able to restore the bare
exaction, to say nothing of the fourfold !
My tree was harder to climb than Zac-
chaeus's. It was an ancient white oak,
with the nest set directly upon its dead
top. I had stood within this very nest
twelve years before ; but even with the
help of my conscience I could not get
into it now. Not that I had grown
older or larger. Twelve years do not
count unless they carry one past forty.
It was the nest that had grown. Gazing
up at it I readily believed the old farm-
er in the Zane's house who said it
would take a pair of mules to haul it.
He thought it larger than one that blew
down in the marsh the previous winter,
which made three cartloads.
One thinks of Stirling and of the
castles frowning down upon the Rhine
as he comes out of the wide, flat marsh
beneath this great nest, crowning this
loftiest eminence in all the region. But
no chateau of the Alps, no beetling
crag-lodged castle of the Rhine, can
match the fishhawk's nest for sheer bold-
ness and daring. Only the eagles' nests
upon the fierce dizzy pinnacles in the
Yosemite surpass the home of the fish-
hawk in unawed boldness. The eyrie
of the Yosemite eagle is the most sub-
limely defiant of things built by bird, or
beast, or man.
A fishhawk will make its nest upon
the ground, or a hummock, a stump, a
buoy, a chimney, upon anything near
the water, that offers an adequate plat-
form ; but its choice is the dead top of
some lofty tree where the pathway for
its wide wings is open and the vision
range is free for miles around.
How dare the bird rear such a pile
upon so slight and towering a support !
How dare she defy the winds, which,
loosened far out on the bay, come driving
across the cowering, unresisting marsh !
She is too bold sometimes. I have known
more than one nest to fall in a wild May
gale. Many a nest, built higher and
wider year after year, while all the time
its dead support has been rotting and
weakening, gets heavy with the wet of
winter, and some night, under the weight
of an ice storm, comes crashing to the
earth.
Yet twelve years had gone since I
scaled the walls and stood within this
nest; and with patience and hardihood
enough I could have done it again this
time, no doubt. I remember one nest
along Maurice River, perched so high
above the gums of Garrens Neck swamp
as to be visible from my home across a
mile of trees, that has stood a landmark
for the oystermen this score of years.
The sensations of my climb into this
fishhawk^s nest of the marsh are vivid
even now. Going up was comparatively
easy. When I reached the forks hold-
ing the nest I found I was under a bulk
of sticks and cornstalks which was about
the size of an ordinary haycock, or an
unusually large washtub. By pulling out,
pushing aside, and breaking off the sticks,
I worked a precarious way through the
four feet or more of debris and scrambled
over the edge. There were two eggs.
Taking them in my hands, so as not to
crush them, I rose carefully to my feet.
Upright in a hawk's nest! Sixty
feet in the air, on the top of a gaunt old
The Marsh.
93
white oak, clean and above the highest
leaf, with the screaming hawks about my
head, with marsh and river and bay ly-
ing far around ! It was a moment of
exultation ; and the thrill of it has been
transmitted through the years. My body
has been drawn to higher places since ;
but my soul has never quite touched that
altitude again, for I was a boy then.
Nor has it ever shot swifter, deeper
into the abyss of mortal terror than fol-
lowed with my turning to descend. I
looked down into empty air. Feet fore-
most I backed over the rim, clutching
the loose sticks and feeling for a foot-
hold. They snapped with any pressure ;
slipped and fell if I pushed them, or
stuck out into my clothing. Suddenly
the sticks in my hands pulled out, my
feet broke through under me, and for an
instant I hung at the side of the nest in
the air, impaled on a stub that caught
my blouse as I slipped.
There is a special Providence busy
with the boy.
This huge nest of the fishhawks was
more than a nest, it was a castle in very
truth, in the sheltering crevices of whose
uneven walls a small community of pur-
ple grackles lived. Wedged in among
the protruding sticks was nest above
nest, plastering the great pile over,
making it almost grassy with their loose
flying ends. I remember that I counted
more than twenty of these crow-blacks'
nests the time I climbed the tree, and
that I destroyed several in breaking my
way up the face of the structure.
Do the blackbirds nest here for the pro-
tection afforded by the presence of the
hawks ? Do they come for the crumbs
which fall from these great people's ta-
ble ? Or is it the excellent opportunity
for social life offered by this convenient
apartment house that attracts ?
The purple grackles are a garrulous,
gossipy set, as every one knows. They
are able bodied, not particularly fond of
fish, and inclined to seek the neighbor-
hood of man, rather than to come out
here away from him. They make very
good American rooks. So I am led to
think it is their love of " neighboring "
that brings them about the hawks' nest.
If this surmise is correct, then s the pre-
sence of two families of English sparrows
among them might account for there be-
ing only eight nests now, where a decade
ago there were twenty.
I was amused no longer amazed
at finding the sparrows here. The seed
of these birds shall possess the earth. Is
there even now a spot into which the
bumptious, mannerless, ubiquitous little
pleb has not pushed himself? If you
look for him in the rainpipes of the
Fifth Avenue mansions, he is there ; if
you search for him in the middle of the
wide, silent salt marsh, he is there ; if
you take but it is vain to take the
wings of the morning, or of anything
else, in the hope of flying to a spot where
the stumpy little wings of the English
sparrow have not already carried him.
There is something really admirable
in the unqualified sense of ownership,
the absolute want of diffidence, the abid-
ing self-possession and coolness of these
birds. One cannot measure it in the
city streets where everybody jostles and
stares. It can be appreciated only in
the marsh : here in the silence, the se-
crecy, the withdrawing, where even the
formidable-looking fiddler crabs shy and
sidle into their holes as you pass, here,
where the sparrows may perch upon the
rim of a great hawk's nest, twist their
necks, ogle you out of countenance, and
demand what business brought you to the
marsh.
I hunted round for a stone when one
of them buttonh6led me. He wasn't
insolent, but he was impertinent. The
two hawks and the blackbirds flew off
as I came up ; but the sparrows stayed.
They were the only ones in possession
as I moved away ; and they will be the
only ones in possession when I return.
If that is next summer, then I shall find
a colony of twenty sparrow families
94
The Marsh.
around the hawks' nest. The purple
grackles will be gone. And the fish-
hawks ? Only the question of another
year or so when they, too, shall be dis-
possessed and gone. But where will they
go to escape the sparrows ?
III.
From a mile away I turned to look
back at the " cripple " where towered the
tall white oak of the hawks. Both birds
were wheeling about the castle-nest, their
noble flight full of the freedom, their
piercing cries voicing the wildness of the
marsh. And how free, how wild, how
untouched by human hands the wide
plain seemed ! Sea-like it lay about me,
circled southward from east to west with
the rim of the sky.
I moved on toward the bay. The sun
had dropped to the edge of the marsh,
its level -lined shafts splintering into
golden fire against the curtained win-
dows of the lighthouse. It would soon be
sunset. For some time there had been
a quiet gurgling and lisping down in the
grass, but it had meant nothing, until,
of a sudden, I heard the rush of a wave
along the beach : the tide was coming in.
And with it came a breeze, a moving,
briny, bay-cooled breeze that stirred the
grass with a whisper of night.
Once more I had worked round to the
road. It ran on ahead of me, up a bushy
dune, and forked, one branch leading off
to the lighthouse, the other straight out
to the beach, out against the white of the
breaking waves.
The evening purple was deepening
on the bay when I mounted the dune.
Bands of pink and crimson clouded the
west, a thin cold wash of blue veiled the
east ; and overhead, bay ward, landward,
everywhere, the misting and the shadow-
ing of the twilight.
Between me and the white wave bars
at the end of the road gleamed a patch
of silvery water the returning tide.
As I watched, a silvery streamlet broke
away and came running down the wheel
track. Another streamlet, lagging a
little, ran shining down the other track,
stopped, rose, and creeping slowly to the
middle of the road, spread into a second
gleaming patch. They grew, met and
the road for a hundred feet was covered
with the bay.
As the crimson paled into smoky pearl,
the blue changed green and gold, and
big at the edge of the marsh showed the
rim of the moon.
Weird hour ! Sunset, moonrise, flood-
tide, and twilight together weaving the
spell of the night over the wide wak-
ing marsh. Mysterious, sinister almost,
seemed the swift stealthy creeping of the
tide. It was surrounding and crawling
in upon me. Already it stood ankle-
deep in the road, and was reaching to-
ward my knees, a warm thing, quick and
moving. It slipped among the grasses
and into the holes of the crabs with a
smothered bubbling ; it disturbed the
seaside sparrows sleeping down in the
sedge and kept them springing up to
find new beds. How high would it rise ?
Behind me on the road it had crawled
to the foot of the dune. Would it let
me through to the mainland if I waited
for the flood ?
It would be high tide at nine o'clock.
Finding a mound of sand on the shore
that the water could hardly cover I sat
down to watch the tide miracle ; for here,
surely, I should see the wonder worked,
so wide was the open, so full, so frank
the moon.
In the yellow light I could make out
the line of sentinel trees across the marsh,
and off on the bay, a ship looming dim
in the distance coming on with wind and
current. There were no sounds except
the long regular wash of the waves, the
stir of the breeze in the chafing sedges,
and the creepy stepping of the water
weaving everywhere through the hidden
paths of the grass. Presently a night-
hawk began, to flit about me, then an-
Miss Petrie's Avocation.
95
other and another, skimming just above
the marsh as silent as the shadows.
What was that ? Something moved
across the moon. In a moment, bat-
like and huge, against the great yellow
disk, appeared a marsh owl. He was
coming to look at me. What was I that
dared remain abroad in the marsh after
the rising of the moon ? that dared in-
vade this eerie realm, this night-spread,
tide-crept, half-sealand where he was
king ? How like a goblin he seemed ! I
thought of Grendel, and listened for the
splash of the fen-monster's steps along
the edge of the bay. But only the owl
came. Down, down, down he bobbed,
till I could almost feel the fanning of his
wings. How silent ! His long legs hung
limp, his body dangled between those
soft wide wings within reach of my face.
Yet I heard no sound. Mysterious crea-
ture ! I was glad when he ceased his
ghostly dance about me and made off.
It was nine o'clock. The waves had
ceased to wash against the sand, for the
beach was gone ; the breeze had died
away ; the stir of the water in the grass
was still. Only a ripple broke now and
then against my little island. The bay
and the marsh were one.
the plains of the waters be !
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height :
And it is night."
Dallas Lore Sharp.
MISS PETRIE'S AVOCATION.
NECESSITY, not choice, was primarily
the cause of the adoption by Miss Petrie
of the profession of teaching. Carpentry,
which her father followed under the
more euphonious name of contracting,
was not largely remunerative in the town
of Enterprise, and when Miss Petrie,
robed in white swiss muslin, had de-
claimed with many gestures her graduat-
ing " oration " on " Who would be free,
himself must strike the blow," and faced
the cold world, she found herself faced
in turn by the alternative of " doing
something" outside, or washing dishes
and darning stockings for the well-filled
house of Petrie.
Either fired by ambition or stimulated
by a distaste for dishwashing, Miss
Petrie took her first step up the ladder
of fame by choosing pedagogy as her
profession. In other words, she applied
to the township trustee for a country
school, and asked her father for five
dollars with which to pay her tuition in
the summer " Normal " held in Enter-
prise each vacation by the county su-
perintendent and the superintendent of
the Enterprise schools for the purpose
of increasing their insufficient incomes.
As the county teachers had long since
learned that patrons of the Normal had
no difficulty in securing licenses to teach,
the attendance was large, and Miss Pe-
trie found herself shoulder to shoulder
with the pedagogical talent, male and
female, of every township in the county.
The road through the new country
opened to Miss Petrie by this gate of
instruction, while not a royal one, was
at least level and easy to travel. By a
study of the monthly examination ques-
tions prepared by the State Board of
Education (these published each month,
with answers, in the State School Edu-
cator, which thus assured itself of a bona
fide circulation of as many paid sub-
scribers as there were teachers in the
state) , one soon became familiar with the
Board's manner of questioning and was
prepared therefor. In arithmetic, for
instance, the applicant was so unfailingly
required to calculate the capacity of a
96
Miss Petrie's Avocation.
square cistern, that had one of the school
patrons asked his teacher to tell him the
capacity of his own (round) cistern, the
said pedagogue would have been subject-
ed to much embarrassment and confusion.
In grammar, the only strain on the in-
tellect was the committing to memory of
the entire volume prescribed by the law
for state use ; and in geography, he or
she who could trace the wanderings of a
bushel of wheat from Duluth to Arch-
angel, name the capital of Alaska, and
bound Indiana, was assured of a grade
of one hundred per cent. History was
likewise simple. The dates of the four
colonial wars alternated from month to
month with the great battles of the Civil
War ; while a description of the battle of
New Orleans was sure to follow a ques-
tion on the Alien and Sedition Laws,
and these to be followed by a list of the
Presidents of the United States, in or-
der. In reading, the most stupid teacher
could make up six questions on such
lines as
" I take my little porringer
And eat my supper there."
For example, " What is a porringer ?
What is a little porringer ? Who is
speaking ? What did she have in her
little porringer ? What time in the day
is it? Where is 'there'?" And a
perusal of a thin volume on The Prin-
ciples and Practice of Teaching assured
moderately correct answers on the Sci-
ence of Teaching.
The instruction in the Normal along
the lines suggested by the Board of
Education, and the manner and vocabu-
lary attained by six weeks' constant as-
sociation with the county teachers, so
fully equipped Miss Petrie that she
passed successfully the examination held
on the Saturday following the close of
the Normal, and received the six months'
license granted to beginners. .
The township school in which Miss
Petrie began her labors (the township
trustee was a friend of old John Petrie
and had not hesitated when asked to
give the girl a school, as he and John
were juggling a bridge contract in which
he expected a rake-off) was the average
country school in which the teacher
taught twelve or more classes a day in
everything from A B C's to United States
history, and in which she had to look
sharp, or the older boys who had " fig-
ured clear through " Ray's Higher Arith-
metic for several seasons would catch her
in some mistake. Miss Petrie was rea-
sonably conscientious, and being moder-
ately bright, her work was sufficiently
successful to assure her of a school in
town the next year. The town mer-
chant had been elected a member of the
School Board, and he reasoned that if
the girl had a school in town she would
not only be able to pay the bill old John
owed him, but would see the necessity
of so doing if she expected to keep her
place.
As a " city " teacher, Miss Petrie be-
gan better to realize the importance of
her calling. She still attended the Nor-
mal because licenses were indispensable,
and she sat in the Institutes while various
county and state educational lights made
diagrams of " John is good " and sub-
divided the mind into Intellect, Sensi-
bilities, and the Will. And having ac-
quired a remarkable facility in computing
the capacity of square cisterns, and in
tracing the wanderings of a bushel of
wheat over the universe, and her labors
in the schoolroom (she had the primary
grade under the then prevailing theory
that that was the place to " break in "
new teachers) being limited to teaching
her pupils to print, to count to ten, to
read at concert pitch from a large chart,
and to sing " by ear " various simple and
innocuous melodies, her evenings and
Sundays were free for other amusements.
These were naturally very mild, pub-
lic opinion in Enterprise not countenan-
cing any great gayety on the part of its
educators. She could not, therefore, play
cards, but she might go boat riding and
picnicking; and attend Sunday-school,
Miss Petrie's Avocation.
97
where she taught a class ; and prayer
meeting, and have beaux, of whose calls
the neighbors kept account with a view
toward complaining to the trustees, if
they seemed too frequent.
Among these callers was the new
county superintendent, an unmarried
man of middle age, attracted apparently
by Miss Petrie's devotion to her school
work.
Miss Petrie, however, gave him little
encouragement, although she accepted
his attentions at the Reading Circle, re-
cently organized, and had received from
him, as presents, several volumes which
the teachers of the state had been ordered
by the Board of Education to " review."
This book reviewing was regarded by
the State Board of Education as a step
forward, a progression toward higher
ideals in the noble profession of teaching,
by taking which the candidate would be
better fitted for leading the youth of the
state into the broad fields of literature.
The applicant for license was given the
choice of David Copperfield, The Scarlet
Letter, or Vanity Fair, and because re-
viewing was heretofore unheard of in
Enterprise and vicinity, the county su-
perintendent was soon overwhelmed with
bulky manuscripts in pale ink, in which
the writer endeavored to condense the
whole story into several thousand words,
and failed ignominiously, or had copied
several chapters word for word and add-
ed the last chapter, evidently trusting
that the superintendent would look only
at the first page and the last. The In-
stitute instructors who had droned away
heretofore for the week on "John is
good " now found a new field in talking
on book reviews, and in outlining the
newly prescribed Reading Circle work.
This Reading Circle work, so Miss
Petrie soon learned, was not compulsory,
but the teacher who took the four years'
course, passing each year the examina-
tions, received a diploma which exempted
her forever from answering the questions
on the Science of Teaching, when pass-
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 7
ing the examination for license. As the
questions on the Science of Teaching were
taken each month from some book in the
Reading Circle course, those teachers
who saw no escape through the loophole
of matrimony perceived the wisdom of
having the agony over in four years, and
hastened to buy the books at prices pre-
scribed by the Reading Circle Board,
places on which were eagerly sought by
" leading " state educators.
Miss Petrie, who by this time was
beginning to feel some pride in the pro-
fession which seemed destined to be her
life work, was giving up moonlight boat
rides, picnics, and other small frivolities,
and bore the distinction of being the first
teacher in the county to adopt the new
word method of teaching reading,
plunged into the Reading Circle work
with great zeal. She attended the meet-
ings of the city circle, whose member-
ship decreased in the course of the first
year from twelve to three, in spite of
the fact that the county superintendent,
still unmarried, was chairman ex officio,
and read in the four years Watts's On
the Mind, Hailman's Lectures on Edu-
cation, Sully's Handbook of Psychology,
and Boone's Education in the United
States, varied by such lighter works as
Green's England, and The Lights of
Two Centuries.
By the practice of rigid economy she
was enabled to spend a few weeks at Bay
View one summer, and to attend a ses-
sion of a summer school at a college in
the state, and this, her Reading Circle
diploma, and her high standing at home,
enabled her to secure a position in the
schools of a neighboring city. She was
further assisted to this end by her mail'
ner, which was a happy combination of
the severe style of address in vogue at
the time of her entrance into the work
with the melting sweetness of the present
day, and the correctness of her speech.
Never in the most exciting discussion
did Miss Petrie drop into the colloquial
" have n't," did n't," or " could n't ; "
Miss Petrie's Avocation.
her " has nots " and her " could nots "
were never elided, and her articulation
and accent of the final syllable of " chil-
dren " would have aroused envy even in
the breast of the president of the Na-
tional Association of Teachers had he
chanced to hear her speak.
And now Miss Petrie, who had started
out rather aimlessly, with no higher aim
than to avoid dishwashing, and in whose
breast were finally kindled some sparks
of true ambition to succeed in her call-
ing, was caught by the strong current of
modern education and swept forward re-
sistlessly.
At eight o'clock in the morning she
must be in the schoolroom to write on
the board the lessons for the day, be-
cause the superintendent's fad was to
avoid the use of text-books whenever
possible. After school there was more
of the same work, varied by correcting
papers, because the superintendent de-
manded that all the children's work be
written. She must also find time to take
country rides in search of flowers and
shrubs in their season, and of rabbits,
owls, and other beasts, birds, and insects,
of which the children were to write their
impressions.
On Saturday mornings the superin-
tendent thoughtfully provided recrea-
tion for his teachers in the form of lec-
tures by celebrated apostles of Child
Study and Nature Study, which Miss
Petrie, with the others, was required to
attend. She also found it necessary to
take several courses of private study in
drawing, painting, music, science, and
calisthenics, as the supervisors of these
subjects came infrequently, and the in-
struction rested principally in her hands.
In her spare time, there were entertain-
ments to be prepared for, that teacher
whose pupils could present portions of a
Wagner opera or a Shakesperean play
being considered of much higher profes-
sional rank than her fellows who confined
their efforts to stereopticon lectures and
recitations from the American poets.
In the summer, those teachers who
could keep out of a sanitarium were ex-
pected to refresh their minds and elevate
the standard of their professional work
by attending the summer school of some
university.
After five years of this work, Miss
Petrie suddenly reappeared in Enter-
prise, where she spent the first entire
summer with her family since the second
year of her professional career. When
autumn came and the bell in the old
schoolhouse across the street announced
the opening of the school year, she still
remained at home. To the county su-
perintendent, still unmarried, who called
shortly after her return, Miss Petrie ex-
plained herself.
"I took a pride in my profession,"
said she, " and while many younger girls
broke down, I was able to keep on, on
the principle, I suppose, of the man who
began to carry the calf in its infancy. I
entered upon my career in the days when
the work was simple, and assumed the
new burdens one by one, so I was better
able to bear them. If I had undertaken
to lift them all at once I might have failed
like some of the others. As it was, I
never had to go to a sanitarium, even
once!
" No, it was not that which brought
me back here. I taught my primary
grades carefully. I began, as you know,
with the old A B C method in the
country school. I taught printing first.
I taught the word method and the sen-
tence method. I taught writing, Oh,
John ! I taught Spencerian writing, and
I taught vertical writing, and I taught
reformed vertical writing, and I hear
that this year they are going back to
Spencerian. I taught those babies to
sew, to paint in water colors, and to
write compositions on the Greek gods.
I had them make original nature investi-
gations, and I never was sorry for them,
not once. But when, last spring, our
superintendent told us that he wanted to
introduce the new object method, and
Loss.
99
gave us preliminary instruction, and I
learned that after I had written jump '
on the blackboard, and printed it, and
spelled it, I was to stand up on the plat-
form and jump, as an illustration, I felt
that the last straw had been placed on
the camel's back. Maybe I had been
breaking, gradually. Anyway, I have
saved a little money, and I decided to
come back to Enterprise to rest. It may
be by the time I am rested they will have
returned to the old methods, as they
have in writing, and I can begin over
again."
She said this resolutely, but the coun-
ty superintendent was nevertheless em-
boldened to put the question that had for
years been trembling on his lips, and
Miss Petrie accepted him with a smile of
satisfaction.
" I have loved you all this time," he
said, " and I am sure I can make you
happy. I, too, have my troubles. The
examinations are becoming so severe
that it is very difficult to answer the ques-
tions. You have got to use your reason
these days, and work out psychological
problems even in arithmetic and gram-
mar, while the geography and history
examinations are all taken out of the
newspapers. 'When was Tolstoi ban-
ished ? ' ' Write a brief biography of Agui-
naldo 5 ' * How old is Queen Wilhelmi-
na ? ' ' Give the population of Luzon.'
I certainly need a helpmate, and with
your advantages you can be of great as-
sistance to me in grading the papers."
Miss Petrie smiled a wintry smile.
Even in Cupid's toils she was not alto-
gether to escape from the new education.
Kate Milner Rabb.
LOSS.
WHO that hath lost some dear-beloved friend
But knoweth how when the wild grief is spent
That tore his soul with agony, and did lend
E'en to the splendor-beaming firmament
The blighting darkness of his shadowed heart
There surely follows peace and quiet sorrow
That lead his spirit, by divinest art,
Past the drear present to that glorious morrow
Where parting is not, neither grief nor fear !
But how shall he find comfort, who sees die,
Not the one presence that he held most dear ;
But from his heart a hope as Heaven high,
And from his life a wish as Truth sublime,
And from his soul a love that mocked at Time?
Hildegarde Hawthorne.
100
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
RACE PREJUDICE IN THE PHILIPPINES.
WE Americans like to call ourselves
the most democratic people on earth, but
the boast requires extensive qualification
before it can be made applicable to our
social habits. Every one recognizes the
all-exclusiveness with us of the term
" white man." Nor should " white " be
emphasized rather than " man ; " the
phrase might properly be written as a
hyphenated noun. Whether fetich or
philosophy, it predicates to us the high-
est common multiple of intelligence and
virtue. We make it our synonym for
" civilization."
Nor is this merely an indication of our
share in that theory of racial superiority
which talks responsibility and thinks in
terms of commercial supremacy. Amer-
icans are not proof against the flattering
unction of a doctrine which sings Chris-
tianity while it means inequality. But
until recently we have been comparative-
ly untouched by this contagion, have, in
fact, rather been inclined to adopt a cyn-
ical attitude with reference to it. Our
social prejudices have been provincial.
Excuses are readily to be found for a peo-
ple so sorely tried as we have been by the
negro problem. Mere intolerance of col-
or, however, is much less noticeable than
unreasoning and unrestrained impatience
with any and all who do not at once ac-
knowledge the superiority of our institu-
tions and customs, and hasten to adopt
them. We are proud of our reputation
as an asylum of the oppressed, and yet it
may be doubted if we should have been
so tolerant of immigration from Europe
had the immigrants been less ready of as-
similation. Here, to be sure, prejudice
may create a natural and proper national
safeguard ; yet, in spite of the fact that
as a people we are only a blend, the na-
tive American, be his nativity but two
generations strong, has for his neighbor
of another country a sort of pity that es-
capes being ignorant prejudice only by
its real kindliness.
Our provincial assumption of superi-
ority has been ridiculed by Mr. Kipling,
but it is different in degree only, and not
in kind, from that which, as the white
man's poet, he exploits. There is no
difference in quality between the phari-
saism of a rustic and the pharisaism of a
world power.
Many people find in our occupation of
the Philippine Islands the threat of a
radical change in American character
and ideals. Even if we look only on the
evil side of things, it is hard to see how
American character and social ideas can
thus be radically altered. That it is a
step of transcendent importance, involv-
ing new and various political difficulties,
is true. But it draws us into a field
in which ultimately our prejudices may
broaden out, and in which our provincial-
isms must disappear.
Meanwhile, however, it must be ad-
mitted, the prospect of such beneficent
results seems spoiled by two untoward
phases of our new venture : we have car-
ried into the Philippines a petty race pre-
judice, the offspring of past provincial-
ism and the inheritance of slavery with
its residue of unsettled problems; and
we are betraying a tendency to swagger
under the " white man's burden," some-
times in the garb of commercialism,
sometimes in the raiment of science.
As might be expected, the petty pre-
judices are first to exhibit themselves,
and are also, just at present, the more
serious obstacles to a general good un-
derstanding in the Philippines. Relying
upon the common sense of the reader not
to draw any hysterical conclusions of gen-
eral " oppression " in the Philippines,
it may be worth while to cite instances
and facts to show how race prejudice has
been doing us harm in the islands. Only
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
101
instances for which I can personally
vouch will be employed.
That the color line would be drawn by
some Americans who had to do with af-
fairs in the islands could readily have
been predicted. The extent to which
it has been held in veneration is, how-
ever, far from complimentary either to
the intelligence and general information
or to the breadth and charity of Ameri-
cans. This tendency to shy at a darker
skin, no matter who or what the wearer,
is doubtless a minor reason for English
cynicism at our talk of Philippine self-
government. But we need not go to In-
dia, nor learn that there are dark-skinned
branches of the Caucasian family, to ap-
preciate how small is the significance of
color alone in connection with mankind.
Without in the least justifying the pre-
judice against the negroes in the United
States, what possible excuse does that
afford for proceeding on the " nigger "
theory among a people largely Malayan ?
The typical Filipino is every whit as dis-
tinct from the Negro as he is from the
European. Yet it is the usual thing
among Americans who have been in the
Philippines, and imbibed a contempt or
dislike for the people, to betray in their
conversation the fact that their theories
of the situation are based upon popular
notions at home as to negro shortcomings
and incapacity. They prejudge the peo-
ple before they have even seen them, and
they come away without ever having
made a single honest effort to find out
what they really are like.
Before the arrival of the second Phil-
ippine Commission at Manila and the
inauguration by Judge Taf t and its other
members of social gatherings in which
the natives were in the majority, prac-
tically nothing had been done in the way
of providing an informal meeting ground
for representative Filipinos and Ameri-
cans. The first Philippine Commission
had given a ball in 1899, which was a
landmark for Filipino matrons and
belles in their discussions and misappre-
hensions as to what Americans were like
socially. With two or three very nota-
ble exceptions, officers whose wives had
joined them did not think of meeting any
residents but some of the wealthy Span-
ish *' left-overs " on anything like terms
of social equality. Eight months after
Judge Taf t and his colleagues had begun
a new policy in this respect, General
MacArthur gave a distinctly successful
reception in the governor's palace in
Malacanan. Of course, it is not intended
to imply that it was incumbent upon
army officers to incur the expense and
trouble incident to such affairs, nor that
those charged with the burden of mili-
tary administration in the islands could
or should have spared time in the midst
of active fighting to inaugurate a social
campaign in Manila. What it is desired
to point out is that some cultivation of
the social amenities, some willingness
to meet the natives halfway, was quite
worth the while. When it is considered
that there are in Manila many wealthy
and well-educated mestizos, some of
whom have polished their minds and
manners in Madrid and Paris, who hold
themselves quite as good as any man,
and who, in fact, were imbued with some
of the Latin-European contempt for
Americans as uncultured meney-makers,
the folly of such aloofness is doubly evi-
dent. That most of this class had for-
merly sought to identify themselves so-
cially with the Spaniards, and had been
virtually of the Spanish contingent, did
not alter the fact that nearly all had their
following among the people ; nor did our
knowledge of their contributions to the
insurgent cause, whether made volunta-
rily or through prudence, render it either
politic or patriotic to assume an air of
superiority.
Force of circumstances has from the
first, through the necessarily closer con-
tact and the lack of other society, brought
about more social mingling in the pro-
vincial towns. In general, however,
the attitude of the army women in the
102
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
islands is typified by that one in Manila
who, in discussing affairs in her first
call on the wife of a member of the Com-
mission, exclaimed in horror : " Why,
surely you don't propose to visit these
people and invite them to your own home
just the same as you would white peo-
ple ! " Time has perhaps brought a lit-
tle more catholicity, at any rate the cus-
tom of entertaining natives has come to
be received without a shock ; but few
army women in Manila have Filipinas
on their calling list, and in the provinces
they often take it on themselves to cau-
tion American women sent out as teachers
against mingling with the people of their
towns. This attitude is also that of the
great majority of officers in the army,
though the men, like men everywhere,
are less formal about a social rule and
less rigid in their likes and dislikes of
persons.
An instance of this attitude was the
attempt to exclude from the Woman's
Hospital at Manila (founded by a dona-
tion of Mrs. Whitelaw Reid) all Filipi-
nos as patients, as well as to keep off the
list of patronesses the names of Filipino
women. At about the same time the
board of ladies to whose energy the Amer-
ican Library of Manila was due asked
to have it made a public library, to be
helped out by funds from the Philippine
treasury, and made very strenuous pro-
tests against having it also thrown open
to Filipinos for a share in its manage-
ment and use. They contended that it
had been established as a monument to
American soldiers who lost their lives in
the Philippines, and that it was unfitting
that Filipinos should have anything to
do with it, though Philippine taxes might
support it.
At a ball given to various American
authorities by the native residents of a
provincial capital, an American officer
stopped the band after it began a dance
at the direction of the Filipino who was
master of ceremonies, and ordered it to
start a two-step. When interrogated, he
announced that the military were in com-
mand of that town, thus insulting the
Filipino who had charge of affairs, and
incidentally also a number of American
ladies whose partners had brought them
on the floor for the Philippine quadrille.
The American officer was a graduate of
one of our leading universities, and for-
merly occupied a responsible position in
one of the largest American cities. The
Filipino, as perhaps the officer knew,
had finished his education in Madrid and
Paris, had resided for some years in the
latter city, had published a number of
scientific treatises, and was a member of
various learned societies of Europe.
This and the other instances do not,
of course, reveal a prejudice grounded
entirely on color, yet this is the chief
factor. It may be worth while remark-
ing that, judging by one man's personal
observation, this attitude of contempt is
less noticeable among officers from the
South than among those from the North.
Doubtless this is due to their having had
closer contact with people of another
color, and to a greater tolerance through
the staling of custom, although the con-
viction of the other's inferiority may yet
be deeper bred.
On the other hand, an experience to
be remembered was hearing some South-
ern as well as Northern officers rate the
Filipino higher than the American negro,
greatly to the indignation of a colored
chaplain of the army who overheard them.
And these officers were rather more tol-
erant of the presence among the first-
class passengers of an army transport of
a Filipino mestizo from the Visayan is-
lands than of the same chaplain, who
was finally given a seat by himself be-
cause some very important young lieu-
tenants would not sit next him.
Something more than mere color pre-
judice must be invoked to explain the
actions of a major who put sentries out
under unprecedentedly strict orders in
the capital of a province where civil gov-
ernment had lately been established, and
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
103
then backed them against the civil au-
thorities in overriding the rights of na-
tives and in shooting down a peaceable
citizen in the streets. Again, an ex-in-
surgent general, whom many of our of-
ficers denounced as having been respon-
sible for assassinations by the men un-
der him, was set at liberty by General
Chaffee, but a young lieutenant who hap-
pened at the time to be in command of
the military prison where he was confined
ignored the order of release till compelled
by appeal to recognize it. Meanwhile he
set the ex-insurgent officer, a man of
standing and education, to cleaning out
stables. One has to appeal to a strain
of meanness and to a brutal pleasure in
the exercise of the power over one's fel-
lows that circumstances have temporarily
conferred, to explain these and similar in-
stances. The details of the China cam-
paign, not really well known, show how
such instances might be multiplied, and
our national pride suffers when we find
that, after all, they were not all confined
to Russians, Germans, and Frenchmen.
The writer was one of a group of
American civilians halted in the street
of a Philippine town by an ugly sentinel
and ordered, in gruff terms at the bayo-
net's point, to salute a minute Ameri-
can flag on the top of a fifty-foot pole.
Not one, of course, had seen it. The
pole had purposely been set some hun-
dreds of feet from the barracks, almost
in the street itself, and the order was
enforced against every one who passed.
A protest to the officer in command, a
gray-haired captain, brought the reply
that he was " teaching the niggers a les-
son." This province was a leader in the
revolt against Spain, first because of the
friars, and second because of the abuses
suffered at the hands of the Spanish civil
guard. One need not add that the ha-
tred felt toward our troops is intense.
One of our young officers there had ac-
quired the genial habit of imbibing to
the point of mischief, then ordering out
a corporal's guard and raiding Filipino
houses at all hours of the night. He
finally raided the house where the Fili-
pino judge of that circuit was staying,
which put an end to this particular form
of amusement for him. When this same
judge, a Filipino educated in Paris, of
unusually solid character and attain-
ments, opened court in this town, the
provincial capital, he was obliged to be-
gin by requesting that an American of-
ficer not a youngster either remove
his hat from his head and his feet from
the table. The province is under civil gov-
ernment, and the officer took this means
of expressing his contempt of the civil
government idea in general and of this
Filipino's court in particular. No fight-
ing has occurred in the province for
some months, yet so sure were high mil-
itary authorities of trouble brewing that
they saw rifles in their sleep, and the
Chinese rival in business of an ex-insur-
gent officer was able to get him into jail
by dropping in the street a letter pur-
porting to contain the latter's plans for
an uprising. This method of denuncia-
tion of one's enemies became very com-
mon after Spain began her deportations
on suspicion.
The ex-insurgent-appointed governor
of a neighboring province did not see fit
to salute the officers of the garrison in a
town under his jurisdiction, and the latter
started a newspaper campaign against
him in Manila, charging him with all
sorts of treachery and plotting. Simi-
larly, the garrisoning force at Cebu was
put in such a state of mind by the re-
storation of civil control there that even
the privates felt called upon to stop the
officers of the native police in the streets
and make them salute. Abuses of a rath-
er more serious nature led a Spanish
newspaper in Manila to recall to the
Americans that the people of Cebii never
really turned against Spain until the lat-
ter power had let some Moro troops loose
in their streets to run things to their lik-
ing.
These instances do not afford ground
104
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
for a general indictment of the army in
the Philippines. Like other organiza-
tions, the army has its share of all sorts
of men ; and, were it in point here, the
testimony of various Filipinos themselves
to utterly unexpected generosity at the
hands of officers and privates, and ex-
amples of unselfish efforts to get into
touch with the people and to better their
condition, could readily be adduced. Re-
cent revelations have focused attention
on the conduct of the army in the Philip-
pines, and some have tried to make out
that downright brutality was the rule of
campaign there. Cases of actual inhu-
manity have been, I am convinced, the ex-
ceptional ones. It must be admitted, how-
ever, by any one who really knows things
as they now are in the islands, that at least
three fourths of the army, rank and file,
entertain a more or less violent dislike
for the Filipinos and a contempt for their
capacity, moral and intellectual. This
feeling in the army has grown during
the past two years. Perhaps it may be
dated back to the early days of 1900,
when guerrilla warfare had begun, and
our troops had to contend with ambushes
and a foe who was an excellent masquer-
ader, and who practiced the art of assas-
sination on his own fellow countrymen in
forms of the most refined cruelty. The
American soldier has something of the
mediaeval warrior's love of an out and
out, decisive test of strength, and wants
his opponent to come out into the open
and slay or be slain. He is disposed to
underrate the bravery and the capacity
of a foe whose very circumstances drove
him to employ methods which nature and
his talents gave him, while secret assassi-
nation can find excuse with none of us.
Then, too, the loss of power through
the merging of military into civil govern-
ment has increased the hostility of nar-
row-minded army officers to the native.
The atmosphere of army life is undemo-
cratic. It was sometimes amazing to find
how large some ordinary American citi-
zens could become in their own eyes,
when, thousands of miles from home,
they gained absolute'control over five to
twenty thousand or more people, with no
white man at hand who could venture to
question their dictates. Such men
and some were in high place and some
in low let go of a newly tasted power
with ill grace, and promptly became con-
vinced that civil government was a mis-
take. One present in the Philippines dur-
ing this transfer of governing power
could see a bitterness against the natives
crop out that had not been expressed, and
often not felt before.
This contempt and ill feeling grew
apace, as one following the American
press of Manila could note, until many
would not concede to the native the pos-
session of a single good quality. Offi-
cers stationed in pacified provinces might
often have been judged by their actions
as being really desirous of provoking an-
other outbreak, while in the main their
conduct was due to mere thoughtless pre-
judice, spurred into activity by the con-
stant iteration in the mouths of all around
them of charges against the native in-
habitants. An illustrative case is that
of a young lieutenant, whom I once over-
heard telling an American lady how he
and a fellow officer used to go up and
down the streets of a Cavite town shoot-
ing water buckets out of the hands of
startled natives and otherwise keeping
up revolver practice. It was done to
" keep the gugus in a proper frame of
mind," he commented. This was in a
province for some time pacified, and in a
garrison where time doubtless hung rath-
er heavy. Yet subsequent conversation
with this officer revealed that he had no
deep-seated prejudice, despite an ugly
bolo wound he carried, but was thought-
lessly classing all Filipinos together as
bad, incapable, and in general not much
entitled to consideration.
This is not the attitude solely of the
army, though it is the attitude of a majori-
ty in the army. American civilians, both
those in the employ of the civil govern-
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
105
ment and the smaller element not so em-
ployed, often feel the same. Naturally,
as the success of the civil government
must rest upon conciliation, while in the
last resort military success always de-
pends upon force, the employees of the
civil government are obliged to consult
native feelings and native interests, no
matter what may be their personal pre-
judices. But among the subordinates
one finds petty prejudice cropping out in
many different ways, such as striding ma-
jestically along the middle of a crowded
sidewalk and shoving natives right and
left, while violent and ill-considered opin-
ions are often expressed.
Allusion has been made to the attitude
of the American press in Manila. Two
of the three American dailies there are
characterized by intemperance and inde-
cency of expression and a general cheap-
ness. They are the mouthpieces of an
element which loudly proclaims that it
represents American commercial inter-
ests in the Orient. It is hardly necessary
to say that, while there are a few very
praiseworthy pioneers of our industry in
the Philippines, really substantial busi-
ness interests have very generally held
aloof, because of active insurrection, and
because Senator Hoar's amendments to
the " Spooner Bill " postponed invest-
ments of capital until Congress had
taken further action. But adventur-
ers, army camp-followers, schemers, and
shyster lawyers have of course not been
held back by any such considerations.
With no desire to belittle the few who
are honestly seeking a foothold there,
and who do us credit, it is nevertheless
true could not, in fact, be otherwise
under the circumstances that the great
bulk of Philippine business remains in
the hands of the Spanish, British, and
other European firms. Some American
firms there, which rejoice in high-sound-
ing names as commercial companies,
have headquarters greatly resembling
" sample rooms," and their stock, other
than liquid goods, is largely carried in
catalogues. Beer-agents often "roll
high " in Manila, and assume a dignity
and importance as " captains of indus-
try " that would merely be amusing were
it not that newspapers backed by them
and others of like faith pose before the
natives as representative of Americans
and American sentiment. They furnish
the Spanish journalists of Manila, who,
almost without exception, are eager to do
us mischief, with many a text for insinu-
ating columns about " exploitation," the
fear of which is very present with the
Filipino.
Loud talk of patriotism and the flag
characterizes this element, and the motto
" America for Americans " also signifies
to them "the Philippines for Americans."
Quite naturally, a policy which consults
principally the interests of the Filipinos
is not to their liking. This is the real
reason for the attacks on Senors Tavera
and Legarda, two of the three Filipinos
who were added to the Philippine Com-
mission in September last, these calum-
niations being based on the charges of
a Spanish journalist since convicted of
libel. Commissioner Luzuriaga has so
far escaped the mud-slinging, as he was
drafted into service from Negros, and
had not been entangled in affairs at the
capital.
Attacks on the natives constantly
grew in bitterness last fall. The mas-
sacre in Sa"mar afforded excuse for all
sorts of rumors and even circumstantial
accusations of revolts in Manila itself,
in its environs, and in some of the paci-
fied provinces. Sometimes these were
merely the product of reportorial inven-
tion and lack of copy ; in other cases,
they could be traced to an attack of
hysteria on the part of some army or
constabulary subordinate. A fearful
" Katipunan rising " in Tarlac, which
occupied Manila papers for several days,
and which reached the United States as
dignified cable news, resolved itself upon
investigation into a lovers' quarrel. A
Filipino maiden whose favors had been
106
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
transferred to an American sergeant was
called to account by her former lover, a
native, and she denounced him to the ser-
geant as connected with a big revolt. Ar-
rests were prompt, and the story grew in
size and details every mile of the way to
Manila.
The meetings of the Federal party in
Manila for the purpose of drawing up
a petition to Congress were at times
amusingly turbulent, but they were
grossly misreported with a view to com-
ment on the ridiculousness of conferring
any degree of self-government upon the
Filipinos. A press but lately freed from
the censorship of an army officer began
to cry for the restoration of military
government and a " thorough " policy,
by which, apparently, they meant a pol-
icy of extermination. Typical of these
almost daily outbreaks are these quota-
tions from a Manila Freedom editorial
of last October :
" Every Filipino is an insurgent at
heart, and every Filipino hates the
Americans if the truth was known.
They take our money, and they smile
to our faces, but in their hearts they
have no use for us or our government.
Incapable of gratitude, they view our
generosity in the light of a weakness,
and at the first favorable moment be-
tray the trust reposed in them. We
deny that there are Filipinos who favor
us, or who appreciate what we have done
or wish to do for them."
The Spanish editors always see to it
that the reading Filipinos do not miss
such things for want of a translation.
They have inspired frequent indignant
protests from the Filipino press and the
demand that loyalty be met with loyal-
ty. These instances may help to shed
light on the passage of the libel and se-
dition laws in Manila. It must be re-
membered that there is no such organ-
ized public opinion to deal with newspa-
per extravagances in the Philippines as
with us at home, while these American
papers are taken much more seriously
by the Filipinos than by Americans. As
bearing on the reason for enacting a se-
dition law, it is to be noted that the Phil-
ippine government has invoked this law
so far only against American editors in
Manila. In the month of March last,
vituperation of the natives on the part
of two American publications exceeded
even anything said last fall.
Race prejudice, like any other preju-
dice, cannot, simply as such, be logically
explained. Even its defenders admit
this when they appeal to " an innate
sense of superiority," or preach of " the
limits assigned by God to the different
tribes of men." Gentlemen who would
scorn to admit being bound to the an-
cient and outgrown Jewish system of
political philosophy are often very glib
with such phrases. But when race pre-
judice descends from its pedestal of su-
pernaturalism and seeks to -justify itself
by human argument, it subjects itself to
ordinary rules of logic.
Attacks on the character of the native
are usually made the basis of the white
man's plea in the Philippines. For this
purpose the natives are all treated as
identical in kind and character, grouped
into one, as it were. Upon such a hy-
pothesis one can argue that, because
one native known to him was deficient
morally and seemed incapable mentally,
therefore the Filipinos are a dishonest
and inefficient race. But thus baldly
stated, the proposition seems too ridicu-
lous to emanate from any educated per-
son ; yet it is remarkable how common-
ly it is set forth by persons who consider
themselves very well educated. We all
know how indignant we become when a
European writer of short experience
among us proceeds to cut one suit of
clothes to fit us all ; yet the Filipinos
are hardly a more homogeneous people
than we, and there are just as strongly
marked individual types in the East as
in the West.
I do not seek to gloss over Filipino
defects. No one who knows them as
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
107
they really are to-day will undertake the
t'ask of deification. It is a great pity
that there is no real translation into
English of Rizal's novels, Noli Me Tan-
gere and El Filibusterismo. The idea
is prevalent that Rizal was a political
revolutionist. On the other hand, the
primary object of his books was to ex-
hibit to his own countrymen their short-
comings. No such exposition of the
character and conditions of the Filipi-
nos, truthful yet sympathetic, can be ob-
tained elsewhere.
Though awake to their failings, yet
Rizal, from the heights of his German
university training and his contact with
European civilization, did not look down
on his people as "savages with a thin
veneer of civilization," as one of our
Congressmen very considerately pro-
nounced them to be to their faces. A pro-
duct of wider opportunities himself, Ri-
zal believed in wider opportunities for
all his countrymen. The " savages "
contention has had of late some very
ardent advocates among the Spanish
friars, though the early missionaries of
the very orders that now turn and rend
the Filipino people have left much de-
tailed testimony to show that their
charges were by no means savages when
the Spaniards first came that way. To get
at the truth as to the state of civilization
of the Filipinos at the time of the Span-
ish conquest one must carefully weigh'
the evidences of an accumulation of
mainly useless and unreliable documents,
and the history of the Philippines has
yet to be written in the modern spirit ;
but it is sufficient for this discussion to
say that there is no place for the notion
that the Filipinos are savages held in
check by religious awe and superstition.
Here, as throughout the discussion, no
reference is had to the Moros, the Indo-
nesian hill tribes of Mindanao, or the
mountain wild people of Luzdn and a
few other islands. The Negritos remain-
ing are a negligible quantity.
There are cruelty and indifference to
suffering, often to a shocking degree.
These are due to an ever present fatalism,
which the little real religious teaching
the people have received has built upon
rather than sought to eliminate, and to
the absolute lack of an appeal to, or of
an attempt to educate, higher feelings.
If it is to be assumed at the outset that
these people are forever incapable of
such higher feelings, then it ought also
to have been assumed that they were in-
capable of Christianity. Water torture,
which has in some cases been resorted to
on our side, is one of the forms of torture
to which these people are accustomed.
The list of victims buried alive by order
of guerrilla chiefs, the maiming, mutila-
tions, and secret assassinations certainly
make up an appalling and shocking chap-
ter. War stirs up the darkest passions
among the most advanced peoples, how-
ever, and it was in a degree to be ex-
pected that a people untrained in modern
international usages, and never in the
past treated as though they belonged to
the brotherhood of man, or were respon-
sible to humanity for humaneness, would
not exhibit an entirely refined code of
slaying. The " ethics of warfare," af-
ter all, is that not a rather paradoxical
phrase ?
That instances of real brutality on the
part of our troops have been the excep-
tion has been stated to be the opinion of
the writer. On the confession of the of-
ficer who conducted it, the campaign in
the island of Sa"mar from October to
March last must be excepted from this
general statement. He has met the
charge of violating the rules of civilized
warfare with the counter-charge that the
people of Smar are savages, and that it
was necessary to suspend many of these
rules in order to restore peace and quiet
to that part of the archipelago. By in-
ference, it then became a war of exter-
mination till one side or the other should
cry quits. It is hard to deal with this
matter as yet in a strictly impartial
spirit, and full knowledge is one of the
108
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
first requisites. One thing can at least
be asserted, namely, that the classification
of all the people of Sdmar in one lump
as savages will bear close scrutiny. How
differentiate the bulk of them, living in
Christianized towns on the coasts or up
some of the more important rivers, from
their close neighbors and kinsmen in the
island of Leyte ? The rough and moun-
tainous character of much of the interior
of Sdmar, with its primitive wild people
and a proportion of " Kemontados " (as
the friars denominated those who refused
Christianity, who became fugitives from
the law, or who, for other reasons, " re-
mounted " the hills), must, of course, be
taken into account. But the people of
the towns were, at least in the main,
those who were engaged against us. The
statement that the Spanish friars and offi-
cials never got any foothold in Samaras
utterly without foundation, while yet
their failure to penetrate the interior has
been noted.
This much may be said with certitude
of the S^mar campaign of General Jacob
Smith : The expeditions which went
down there from Manila, on the heels of
the Balangiga massacre, went in a spirit
of revenge. No one who appreciated
how that massacre caused those in all
the islands who wished us ill to exult and
to lift their heads again will underesti-
mate the importance of having just retri-
bution dealt promptly to the offenders ;
but to make no distinction between
friend and foe, and to voice the cry of
blood for blood's sake, " an eye for an
eye," not discriminating whose, was
to lower ourselves to the plane of those
wretches who treacherously slew our men
at Balangiga. The writer has not the
first-hand knowledge to enable him to as-
sert that indiscriminate slaughtering took
place in Smar ; but he was assured by
the representative of one of our leading
newspapers, who was there during Oc-
tober and November, that there was " no
regard for friend or foe," and he remem-
bers the unofficial statements in Manila
papers of those months that the orders
were out to " take no prisoners " and
to " spare only women and children,"
while the recrudescence at that time of
native hatred in Manila and throughout
the islands has been noted above. The
people of Leyte, neighboring island to
Sa"mar, and the officers of Leyte's civil
provincial government, both Americans
and Filipinos, were sorely tried at the
time by the arbitrary actions of General
Smith and the men under him. All na-
tives came in for condemnation just then,
and officers of the American army be-
haved in peaceful Leyte in most lawless
disregard of law established by authority
of the President, their commander in
chief.
For General Smith, it can at least be
said that he was logical. The Ssirnar
campaign represents the military view
of the natives and the military theory as
to rule over them carried to their legiti-
mate extreme. Yet, again it must be
said that this campaign is to be treated
by itself, and the belief reiterated that, on
the whole, inhumane conduct has been
the exception. No one who knows the
two men, or the circumstances of the
campaigns, will think of putting General
James F. Bell's reconcentration and
similar measures in Batangas and Lagu-
na side by side with the conduct of af-
fairs in Sa"mar.
This digression as to matters of recent
controversy will have been worth while
if it shall serve to induce to a saner con-
sideration of army conduct in the islands,
and if it shall also emphasize the fact
that the generally contemptuous attitude
of army men and other Americans to-
ward the natives that feeling which
gives itself vent in the term " niggers "
is what does us greatest harm. The
Filipinos have grown, by hard experi-
ence, somewhat callous to measures that
seem to us extreme, if not actually
brutal. We do not make enemies for
ourselves half so much by the occasional
administration of the water cure or other
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
109
forms of torture and barbarity as by a
studied attitude of contempt, an assump-
tion of racial and individual superiority,
and the constant disregard of their petty
personal rights and of the little amenities
which count for so much with them.
Nor is it true that the water cure has
been very commonly applied, nor that
our officers and men are, as a body, given
to that sort of thing. The recent riot of
exaggeration was regrettable, in this :
that it has tended to produce a reaction,
to lead people to feel that it was all, not
partly, partisan hue and cry, and thus to
make easier a " whitewash " of those
particular men who need punishment,
wherever, in the circles of their fellow
subordinate officers, there may be a dis-
position to whitewash.
Lack of capacity to develop mentally
is a frequent charge against the Fili-
pinos. It is forever put forward by friar
writers ; one comes to believe finally that
this is to excuse the failure to advance
the natives further. Just how deficient
the past education of the Filipinos has
been, just how narrow and mediaeval has
been the atmosphere of thought, one can-
not realize until he has come into direct
contact with its evidences. Often the
best educated Filipinos cannotthemselves
realize it. The fact is, no one has the
right gratuitously to assume that the
Filipino is purely imitative, that he lacks
the logical, mathematical qualities of
mind, and that, while bright when young,
he soon reaches his limit and can go no
farther. He is entitled to an honest
trial, and the entire deficiency of past in-
struction is summed up when it is said
that he has never yet had it. Pending
a thorough trial of the new system of
education, beginning, as it does, at the
bottom and working up gradually, no
one has the right to be positive as to the
capacity or incapacity of the Filipino. I
have in mind one Filipino who, though
in other lines exhibiting perfectly his
Manila college training in circumlocu-
tion and scholastic chop-logic, will, on
economic matters within his scope, rea-
son as closely and with as great a devo-
tion to practical examples as any devotee
of the research method. He certainly
never got this quality from his training.
In fact, real acquaintance with Filipinos
and frank exchange of sentiments will
correct various preconceived notions. It
is frequently asserted, for instance, that
the Tagalog has no sense of humor ;
quite the reverse is true.
We should also be honest with the
Filipino in the matter of laziness. Ameri-
can " get-up-and-get " is not the product
of life in the tropics, and to a consider-
able extent is not compatible with it.
But, before American contractors are al-
lowed to flood the islands with contract
coolie labor, the Filipino has a right to
a fair trial, and such a fair trial will in-
volve a considerable number of years.
Development of the country may not be
quite so rapid, but it will proceed on a
sounder basis if the rights of its people
to the first share in it are consulted. In
fact, the success of our political venture
in the Philippines depends in large mea-
sure on the extent to which we can arouse
in the people a desire for better homes,
better towns, and better surroundings.
There are evidences that, as he awakened
to European civilization, the Filipino did
not settle back idle wholly through the
lack of a desire for greater comforts and
conveniences, but in part at least because
of the all but hopelessness of an effort to
rise above a certain place in the hard
and fast industrial society the Spaniards
found and continued. So far higher
wages in Manila have generally meant
patent leathers and diamonds, but even
that is encouraging. Perhaps, too, we
shall learn some things to our advantage
from the Filipino. Ordinarily our su-
perior in courtesy, something for which
many Americans have not the time, why
may he not inspire in us a greater re-
spect for repose, dignity, and lack of
nervousness while we are arousing him
to a rather more strenuous existence ?
110
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
Filth and unsanitary ways of living,
again, are urged against the Filipinos.
They are certainly not unclean by na-
ture, as the daily bath and the scrupu-
lously white clothes testify. Ignorance
of the most primary hygienic principles
is, however, nearly universal. It will be
recalled that the Spaniards, so far be-
hind in this respect, could give them lit-
tle modern teaching or example. The
general character of the education at the
friar-conducted college in Manila, which
turned out practically all the physicians
in the Philippines, may be inferred from
such facts as that its text - books and
library in important subjects date back
over sixty years, that bacteriology has
been introduced only within the past
three years, and there are no microscopes.
Female cadavers are never dissected,
while the course in anatomy, like most
of the others, is very much of a farce.
Honest differences of opinion may ex-
ist as to the points already discussed,
but there can be no honest objection to
giving the Filipinos the benefit of the
doubt until they prove themselves unde-
serving. Perhaps no public utterance
of the late President has received less
general attention than his instructions
of April 7, 1900, to the present Philip-
pine Commission. Yet, as time goes by,
it will not be strange if the fame of Wil-
liam McKinley shall rest mainly on that
document, whether penned by him or
penned by Secretary Root and author-
ized by him. In it he said :
" In all forms of government and ad-
ministrative provisions which they are
authorized to prescribe, the Commission
should bear in mind that the government
which they are establishing is designed
not for our satisfaction or for the ex-
pression of our theoretical views, but for
the happiness, peace, and prosperity of
the people of the Philippine Islands, and
the measures adopted should be made to
conform to their customs, their habits,
and even their prejudices, to the fullest
extent consistent with the accomplish-
ment of the indispensable requisites of
just and effective government."
And again : " Upon all officers and
employees of the United States, both
civil and military, should be impressed
a sense of duty to observe not merely the
material but the personal and social
rights of the people of the islands, and
to treat them with the same courtesy
and respect for their personal dignity
which the people of the United States
are accustomed to require from each
other."
These instructions are based on the be-
lief that it is not the white man alone who
possesses " certain inalienable rights."
Science has progressed far since the hu-
man rights movement of the eighteenth
century. But it has not reached its
final postulates, and it is still somewhat
safer to follow the promptings of hu-
manity than some of the over-positive
dicta of the science of man. Like politi-
cal economy and other non-absolute sci-
ences, ethnology suffers from a present
tendency to employ the evolutionary
method of reasoning in a one-sided fash-
ion. Heredity is invoked wherever pos-
sible, and environment considered only
where it cannot be overlooked. If the
equality of man was often preached in
fantastic or Utopian form in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, so has
the inequality of man met with a most
superficial extension in the latter part of
the nineteenth century. Ethnology and
anthropology are sciences yet too young
and undeveloped to justify very positive
assertions being based on them. More-
over, if any one great truth has been
made evident by them, it is this, that
man has in all ages been wonderfully
responsive to his surroundings, that he
is to a remarkable degree the product
of his environment. Physically, men,
of all colors, the world over, are of one
species ; in psychic equipment, in all
that goes to make up social life, the va-
rious divisions of men often present dif-
ferences as great as the physical differ-
Race Prejudice in the Philippines.
Ill
ences on which genera or even fami-
lies are outlined among other animals.
Evolutionary science developed its pro-
cesses in connection with facts and fea-
tures essentially physical ; entrancing
as the results may be, is it necessarily
certain that these processes should be
applied literally and in detail to phe-
nomena of other sorts ?
It is wearisome to note how uniformly
writers on the peoples of the Orient as-
sume that they are inherently different
from us in every respect, that the ordi-
nary Western ways of reasoning have no
place in the East, must in fact be re-
versed. The familiar saying that the
Chinese do everything backward is in
point. Now, John seems to me one of
the most unsparingly logical human be-
ings in the world. Kipling's jingles are
responsible for much of that feeling that
the Oriental is a wholly mysterious be-
ing, not given to be understood by other
men, a curious psychological phenome-
non. "Half -devil and half -child" comes
trippingly to the tongue of many Ameri-
cans in the Philippines, and their phi-
losophy of the Filipino is thus summed
up for them before their study of him
has ever begun. What is less creditable,
the same stock theory and a few facts,
more or less, constitute the equipment of
various university economists and world
problem specialists.
The writer can lay no claim to world
specialism or globe trotting, but he has
been more than anything else impressed
with the feeling that, after all, the differ-
ences in the races of men are much fewer
and less important than their points of re-
semblance. Great and sometimes amaz-
ing as are the former at times, they strike
our notice first, while the impression that
lingers with us is the unity of man.
More important than the theories, sci-
entific or unscientific, are the practical
political problems facing us, a nation to
whose one long-standing and yet unset-
tled race problem have now been added
others. The Atlantic's editor has al-
ready noted that one of the first results
of our new venture in the oceans has
been the complication of the negro ques-
tion at home ; so likewise our failures
wifch the black people in the United
States are often urged against us among
the Filipinos, and " lynch law " is held
before them by those who like us not.
For the moment, it is no reproach to
preach inequality, and more or less open-
ly pity is expressed for the narrowness
of the promulgators of the Declaration
of Independence. Jefferson had no in-
kling of the evolutionary theory, it is
true ; neither had the laws of selection
and survival been stated in Christ's time.
But the divinely human love he incul-
cated and exemplified met with a real
revival in the crusade for equality among
men, and the true tenets of evolution
have to-day no higher trend than this.
The fact is, the Declaration of Inde-
pendence is acquiring with time a range
of truth uncomprehended by its authors,
and in ways incomprehensible to their
times. While, on the one side, well-
meaning Americans are sure that we are
engaged in swashbuckler imperialism,
our British critics, whom we have always
with us, are equally confident of our fail-
ure through undue idealism. One of
these has just finished cautioning us that
we must not attempt any " Jeffersonian-
ideals " foolishness in the Philippines,
and advises us to pattern after the Brit-
ish in the Straits Settlements. The peo-
ple of the latter are strictly comparable
to the Moros, but not at all to the civil-
ized Filipinos. In a book just published,
another British writer, one of the few
who have been on the ground and know
what is really going on in the Philip-
pines, has recognized that we are at-
tempting there something new in the his-
tory of the world, and, despite a cock-
sureness as to the superiority of British
methods that will crop out, has thought
best to reserve judgment. But he is an
exception ; his fellow countrymen in the
Orient are laughing in their sleeves at
112
Walter Pater.
the simple Americans who believe that
self-government can exist in that atmos-
phere. Even to call into question the
validity of the theory that some men are
made to rule and some to obey is to jar
most inconsiderately the complacency of
those men who have landed on the ruling
side.
The answer to the fearsome at home
is that, when they doubt our doing jus-
tice in the Philippines, they themselves
call into question government by the peo-
ple. The answer to our outside critics
can only be given by time. It surely is
no sin to hope and believe that the Ori-
ent is not impermeable to progress ; and
it surely is better to strive to that end
until it is proved to be an impossible one,
if it shall be so proved. As for our pre-
judices, may we not learn to shed them
as we mingle more with the men of the
world and think less of our cherished
isolation ? For the way to a broader so-
cial vision and a truer and nobler Chris-
tianity real humanity lies through
experience of our own limitations, hear-
ing our shortcomings from the tongues
of other peoples, acquiring charity in the
stress of temptation, knowing our fellows
on the earth.
James A. LeEoy.
WALTER PATER.
LET us imagine to ourselves a boy born
some ten years before the middle of the
last century, of a family originally Dutch,
a family with the home-loving, reserved
temper of the Dutch, and that slow-mov-
ing mind of Holland which attaches it-
self so closely, so intimately to things
real and concrete, not tempted away from
As beloved interiors and limited prospects
by any glories of mountain heights or
wide-spreading and radiant horizons ; a
family settled for long in the low-lying,
slow-moving Olney of Buckinghamshire,
Cowper's Olney, which we see in the
delicate vignettes of The Task, and in
the delightful letters, skilled in making
so much out of so little, of the half-play-
ful, half-pathetic correspondent of John
Newton and Lady Hesketh. Dutch, but
of mingled strains in matters of reli-
gion, the sons, we are told, always, until
the tradition was broken in the case of
Walter Pater, brought up as Roman
Catholics, the daughters as members of
the Anglican communion. Walter Pa-
ter's father had moved to the neighbor-
hood of London, and it was at Enfield,
where Lamb, about whom the critic has
written with penetrating sympathy,
Lamb and his sister Mary, had lately
dwelt, that Pater spent his boyhood.
" Not precocious," writes his friend of
later years, Mr. Grosse, " he was always
meditative and serious." Yes, we can-
not think of him at any time as other
than serious ; withdrawn from the bois-
terous sports of boyhood ; fed through
little things by the sentiment of home,
that sentiment which was nourished in
Marius at White Nights by the duteous
observances of the religion of Numa ; in
Gaston at the Chateau of Deux-Manoirs
with its immemorial associations and its
traditional Catholic pieties ; in Emerald
Uthwart at Chase Lodge, with its per-
fumes of sweet peas, the neighboring
fields so green and velvety, and the church
where the ancient buried Uthwarts slept,
that home to which Emerald came back
to die, a broken man ; in Florian Deleal
by " the old house," its old staircase,
its old furniture, its shadowy angles, its
swallow's nest below the sill, its brown
and golden wall-flowers, its pear tree in
springtime, and the scent of lime-flowers
floating in at the open window.
Walter Pater.
113
And with this nesting sense of home
there comes to the boy from neighbor-
ing London, from rumors of the outer
world, from the face of some sad way-
farer on the road, an apprehension of
the sorrow of the world, and the tears
in mortal things, which disturbs him
and must mingle henceforth with all his
thoughts and dreams. He is recognized
as "the clever one of the family," but it
is not a vivacious cleverness, not a con-
tentious power of intellect, rather a shy,
brooding faculty, slow to break its sheath,
and expand into a blossom, a faculty of
gradual and exact receptiveness, and one
of which the eye is the special organ.
This, indeed, is a central fact to remem-
ber. If Pater is a seeker for truth, he
must seek for it with the eye, and with
the imagination penetrating its way
through things visible ; or if truth comes
to him in any other way, he must project
the truth into color and form, since other-
wise it remains for him cold, loveless,
and a tyranny of the intellect, like that
which oppressed and almost crushed out
of existence his Sebastian van Storck.
We may turn elsewhere to read of " the
conduct of the understanding." We
learn much from Pater concerning the
conduct of the eye. Whatever his reli-
gion may hereafter be, it cannot be that
of Puritanism, which makes a breach be-
tween the visible and the invisible. It
cannot be reached by purely intellectual
processes; it cannot be embodied in a
creed of dogmatic abstractions. The
blessing which he may perhaps obtain
can hardly be that of those who see not
and yet have believed. The evidential
value of a face made bright by some in-
ner joy will count with him for more than
any syllogism however correct in its
premises and conclusions. A life made
visibly gracious and comely will testify
to him of some hidden truth more de-
cisively than any supernatural witnessing
known only by report. If he is im-
pressed by any creed it will be by virtue
of its living epistles, known and read of
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 8
all men. He will be occupied during
his whole life with a study not of ideas
apart from their concrete embodiment,
not of things concrete apart from their
inward significance, but with a study of
expression, expression as seen in the
countenance of external nature, expres-
sion in Greek statue, mediaeval cathedral,
Renaissance altar-piece, expression in the
ritual of various religions, and in the
visible bearing of various types of man-
hood, in various exponents of tradition,
of thought, and of faith.
His creed may partake somewhat of
that natural or human Catholicism of
Wordsworth's poetry, which reveals the
soul in things of sense, which is indeed,
as Pater regards it, a kind of finer, spir-
itual sensuousness. But why stop where
Wordsworth stopped in his earlier days ?
Why content ourselves with expression
as seen in the face of hillside and cloud
and stream, and the acts and words of
simple men, through whom certain primi-
tive elementary passions play ? Why
not also seek to discover the spirit in
sense in its more complex and subtler
incarnations, in the arts and crafts, in
the shaping of a vase, the lines and
colors of a tapestry, the carving of a
capital, the movements of a celebrant in
the rites of religion, in a relief of Delia
Robbia, in a Venus of Botticelli, in the
mysterious Gioconda of Lionardo ? Set-
ting aside the mere dross of circum-
stances in human life, why not vivify all
amidst which we live and move by trans-
lating sense into spirit, and spirit into
sense, thus rendering opaque things lumi-
nous, so that if no pure white light of
truth can reach us, at least each step we
tread may be impregnated with the stains
and dyes of those colored morsels of
glass, so deftly arranged, through which
such light as we are able to endure has
its access to our eyes ?
If such thoughts as these lay in Pater's
mind during early youth they lay un-
folded and dormant. But we can hard-
ly doubt that in the account of Emerald
114
Walter Pater.
Uth wart's schooldays he is interpreting
with full-grown and self-conscious imagi-
nation his experiences as a schoolboy at
Canterbury, where the cathedral was the
presiding element of the genius loci :
" If at home there had been nothing
great, here, to boyish sense, one seems
diminished to nothing at all, amid the
grand waves, wave upon wave, of pa-
tiently wrought stone ; the daring height,
the daring severity, of the innumerable
long, upward ruled lines, rigidly bent just
at last in one place into the reserved
grace of the perfect Gothic arch."
Happy Emerald Uthwart in those early
days, and happy Walter Pater with such
noble, though as yet half-conscious, dis-
cipline in the conduct of the eye ! If
Pater thought of a profession, the mili-
tary profession of his imagined Emerald
would have been the last to commend it-
self to his feelings. His father was a
physician, but science had no call for
the son's intellect, and we can hardly
imagine him as an enthusiastic student in
the school of anatomy. He felt the attrac-
tions of the life and work of an English
clergyman, and when a little boy, Mr.
Gosse tells us, he had seen the benign
face of Keble during a visit to Hurs-
ley, and had welcomed Keble's paternal
counsel and encouragement. Had Pater
lived some years longer it is quite possi-
ble that his early dream might have been
realized, but Oxford, as things were, dis-
solved the dream of Canterbury.
Two influences stood over against each
other in the Oxford of Pater's under-
graduate days. There was the High
Church movement, with which the name
of the University has been associated.
The spell of Newman's personal charm
and the echoes of his voice in the pulpit
of St. Mary's were not yet forgotten.
The High Church movement had made
the face of religion more outwardly at-
tractive to such a spirit as Pater's ; there
had been a revival, half serious, half
dilettante, of ecclesiastical art. But the
High Church movement was essentially
dogmatic ; the body of dogma had to
some extent hardened into system, and
Pater's mind was always prone to regard
systems of thought philosophical or
theological as works of art, to be ex-
amined and interpreted by the historical
imagination ; from which, when inter-
preted aright, something might be re-
tained, perhaps, in a transposed form,
but which could not be accepted and
made one's own en bloc. On the other
hand there was a stirring critical move-
ment, opening new avenues for thought
and imagination, promising a great en-
franchisement of the intellect, and claim-
ing possession of the future. Jowett was
a nearer presence now at Oxford than
Newman, and Pater had already come
under the influence of German thinkers
and had discovered in Goethe greatest
of critics a master of the mind. Art,
to which he had found access through
the Modern Painters of an illustrious
Oxford graduate, had passed beyond the
bounds of the ecclesiastical revival, and,
following a course like that of the mediae-
val drama, was rapidly secularizing it-
self. We see the process at work in the
firm of which William Morris was the
directing manager, at first so much oc-
cupied with church decoration, and by
and by extending its operations to the
domestic interiors of the wealthier lay-
folk of England. Pater's dream of oc-
cupying an Anglo-Catholic pulpit re-
shaped itself into the dream of becoming
an Unitarian minister, and by degrees
it became evident that the only pulpit
which he could occupy was that of the
Essayist, who explores for truth, and
ends his research not without a sense
of insecurity in his own conclusions, or
rather who concludes without a conclu-
sion, and is content to be fruitful through
manifold suggestions.
We can imagine that with a somewhat
different composition of the forces within
him Pater's career might have borne
some resemblance to that of Henri Amiel,
" in wandering mazes lost." But the
Walter Pater.
115
disputants in Amiel's nature were more
numerous and could not be brought to a
conciliation. One of them was forever
reaching out toward the indefinite, which
Amiel called the infinite, and the Maia
of the Genevan Buddhist threw him back
in the end upon a world of ennui. Pa-
ter was saved by a certain " intellectual
astringency," by a passion for the con-
crete, and by the fact that he lived
much in and through the eye. He had
perhaps learnt from Goethe that true ex-
pansion lies in limitation, and he never
appreciated as highly as did Amiel the
poetry of fog. His boyish faith, such as
it was, had lapsed away. How was he
to face life and make the best of it ?
Something at least could be gained by
truth to himself, by utter integrity, by
living, and that intensely, in his best self
and in the highest moments of his best
self, by detaching from his intellectual
force, as he says of Winckelmann, all
flaccid interests. If there was in him
any tendency to mystic passion and re-
ligious reverie this was checked, as with
his own Marius, by a certain virility of
intellect, by a feeling of the poetic beau-
ty of mere clearness of mind. Is no-
thing permanent ? Are all things melt-
ing under our feet ? Well, if it be so,
we cannot alter the fact. But we need
not therefore spend our few moments of
life in listlessness. If all is passing away,
let the knowledge of this be a stimulus
toward intenser activity, let it excite
within us the thirst for a full and per-
fect experience.
And remember that Pater's special
gift, his unique power, lay in the eye and
in the imagination using the eye as its
organ. He could not disdain the things
of sense, for there is a spirit in sense,
and mind communes with mind through
color and through form. He notes in
Marcus Aurelius, the pattern of Stoical
morality, who would stand above and
apart from the world of the senses, not,
after all, an attainment of the highest
humanity, but a mediocrity, though a
mediocrity for once really golden. He
writes of Pascal with adequate know-
ledge and with deep sympathy, but he
qualifies his admiration for the great
friend of Jansenism by observing that
Pascal had little sense of the beauty even
of holiness. In Pascal's " sombre, trench-
ant, precipitous philosophy," and his
perverse asceticism, Pater finds evidence
of a diseased spirit, a morbid tension like
that of insomnia. Sebastian van Storck,
with the warm life of a rich Dutch in-
terior around him, and all the play of
light and color in Dutch art to enrich his
eye, turns away to seek some glacial
Northwest passage to the lifeless, color-
less Absolute. Spinoza appears to Pa-
ter not as a God-intoxicated man, but as
climbing to the barren pinnacle of ego-
istic intellect. Such, at all events, could
not possibly be his own way. There is
something of the true wisdom of humility
in modestly remembering that we are
not pure intelligence, pure soul, and in
accepting the aid of the senses. How
reassuring Marius finds it to be, after
assisting at a long debate about rival
criteria of truth, " to fall back upon di-
rect sensation, to limit one's aspiration
after knowledge to that." To live in-
tensely in the moment, " to burn with a
gemlike flame," to maintain an ecstasy,
is to live well, with the gain, at least
for a moment, of wisdom and of joy.
" America is here and now here or
nowhere," as Wilhelm Meister, and, after
him, Marius the Epicurean discovered.
There is no hint in Pater's first vol-
ume of the fortifying thought which af-
terwards came to him, that some vast
logic of change, some law or rhythm of
evolution, may underlie all that is transi-
tory, all the pulsations of passing mo-
ments, and may bind them together in
some hidden harmony. Looking back
on the period of what he calls a new
Cyrenaicism, he saw a most depressing
theory coming in contact, in his own case
as in that of Marius, with a happy tem-
perament, happy though subject to
116
Walter Pater.
moods of deep depression, and he saw
that by virtue of this happy temperament
he had converted his loss into a certain
gain. Assuredly he never regarded that
view of life which is expressed in the
Conclusion to Studies in the History of
the Renaissance as mere hedonism, as
a mere abandonment to the lust of the
eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride
of life. No : looking back, he perceived
that his aim was not pleasure, but full-
ness and vividness of life, a perfection
of being, an intense and, as far as may
be, a complete experience ; that this was
not to be attained without a discipline,
involving some severity ; that it demand-
ed a strenuous effort ; that here, too, the
loins must be girt and the lamp lit ; that
for success in his endeavor he needed
before all else true insight, and that in-
sight will not come by any easy way, or,
as we say, by a royal road ; that on the
contrary it must be sought by a culture,
which may be, and ought to be, joyous,
but which certainly must be strict. The
precept " Be perfect in regard to what
is here and now " is one which may be
interpreted, as he conceived it, into lofty
meanings. A conduct of the intellect
in accordance with this precept, in its
rejection of many things which bring
with them facile pleasures, may in a cer-
tain sense be called a form of asceticism.
The eye itself must be purified from all
grossness and dullness. " Such a man-
ner of life," writes Pater of the new
Cyrenaicism of his Marius, "might it-
self even come to seem a kind of re-
ligion. . . . The true ' aesthetic culture '
would be realizable as a new form of the
1 contemplative life,' founding its claim
on the essential ' blessedness ' of ' vision,'
the vision of perfect men and things."
At the lowest it is an impassioned ideal
life.
Such is Pater's own apologia pro vita
sua that is, for life during his earlier
years of authorship as given in Ma-
rius the Epicurean. But the best apo-
logia is, indeed, the outcome of that life,
the volume of Studies in the History of
the Renaissance, and later essays, which
are essentially one with these in kind.
The richness of color and delicacy of
carving in some of Pater's work have
concealed from many readers its intel-
lectual severity, its strictness of design,
its essential veracity. A statue that is
chryselephantine may be supposed to be
less intellectual than the same statue if
it were worked in marble ; yet more of
sheer brainwork perhaps is required for
the design which has to calculate effects
of color. There are passages in Pater's
writing which may be called, if you like,
decorative, but the decoration is never
incoherent ornament of papier mache
laid on from without ; it is, on the con-
trary, a genuine outgrowth of structure,
always bringing into relief the central
idea.
This central idea he arrives at only
through the process of a steadfast and
strenuous receptiveness, which has in it
something of the nature of fortitude.
Occasionally he gives it an express defi-
nition, naming it, not perhaps quite hap-
pily, the formula of the artist or author
who is the subject of his study. Thus,
the formula of Raphael's genius, if we
must have one, is this : " The transfor-
mation of meek scholarship into genius
triumphant power of genius." The
essay on Raphael is accordingly the re-
cord of a series of educations, from which
at last emerge works showing a synoptic
intellectual power, and large theoretic
conceptions, but these are seen to act in
perfect unison with the pictorial imagi-
nation and a magic power of the hand.
The formula, to turn from pictorial art
to literature, of Prosper Me'rime'e, who
met the disillusion of the post-Revolution
period by irony, is this : " The enthusi-
astic amateur of rude, crude, naked force
in men and women wherever it could be
found ; himself carrying ever, as a mask,
the conventional attire of the modern
world carrying it with an infinite con-
temptuous grace, as if that too were an
Walter Pater.
Ill
all-sufficient end in itself." Nothing
could be more triumphantly exact and
complete than Pater's brief formula of
Me'rime'e. But perhaps his method is
nowhere more convincingly shown than
in the companion studies of two French
churches, Notre Dame of Amiens, pre-
eminently the church of a city, of a com-
mune, and the Madeleine of Vdzelay,
which is typically the church of a mon-
astery. Here the critic does not for a
moment lose himself in details ; in each
case he holds, as it were, the key of the
situation ; he has grasped the central
idea of each structure ; and then with
the aid of something like creative im-
agination, he assists the idea the vital
germ to expand itself and grow be-
fore us into leaf and tendril and blossom.
In such studies as these we perceive
that the eye is itself an intellectual, a
spiritual power, or at least the organ and
instrument of such a power. And this
imaginative criticism is in truth con-
structive; But the creative work of im-
agination rises from a basis of adequate
knowledge and exact perception. To
see precisely what a thing is, what, be-
fore all else, it is to me ; to feel with en-
tire accuracy its unique quality ; to find
the absolutely right word in which to ex-
press the perception and the feeling, -
this indeed taxes the athletics of the
mind. Sometimes, while still essential-
ly a critic, Pater's power of construc-
tion and reconstruction takes the form
of a highly intellectual fantasy. Thus
A Study of Dionysus reads like a fan-
tasia suggested by the life of the vine
and the " spirit of sense " in the grape ;
yet the fantasia is in truth the tracing
out, by a learned sympathy, of strange
or beautiful sequences of feeling or im-
agination in the Greek mind. In Denys
F Auxerrois and Apollo in Picardy, which
should be placed side by side as com-
panion pieces, the fancy takes a freer
range. They may be described as trans-
positions of the classical into the roman-
tic. Apollo now for mediaeval con-
temporaries bearing the ill-omened name
Apollyon appears in a monkish frock
and wears the tonsure ; yet he remains
a true Apollo, but of the Middle Age,
and, in a passage of singular romance,
even does to death the mediaeval Hy-
acinthus. Denys, that strange flaxen
and flowery creature, the organ-builder
of Auxerre, has all the mystic power
and ecstatic rage of Dionysus. Are
these two elder brothers of Goethe's
Euphorion, earlier -born children of
Faust and Helena ?
Even these fantasies are not without
an intellectual basis. For Pater recog-
nizes in classical art and classical liter-
ature a considerable element of romance
strangeness allied with beauty ; and
to refashion the myths of Dionysus and
even of Apollo in the romantic spirit is
an experiment in which there is more
than mere fantasy. Very justly and
admirably he protests in writing of
Greek sculpture against a too intellec-
tual or abstract view of classical art.
Here also were color and warmth and
strange ventures of imaginative faith,
and fears and hopes and ecstasies, which
we are apt to forget in the motionless
shadow or pallid light of our cold muse-
ums. Living himself at a time, as we
say, of " transition," when new and old
ideas were in conflict, and little interest-
ed in any form of action except that of
thought and feeling, he came to take a
special interest in the contention and
also in the conciliation of rival ideals.
Hence the period of the Renaissance
from the auroral Renaissance within the
Middle Age to the days of Ronsard and
Montaigne, with its new refinements of
mediaevalism, seen, for example, in
the poetry of the Pleiad, its revival in
an altered form of the classical temper,
and the invasions of what may be
summed up under the name of " the
modern spirit " had a peculiar attrac-
tion for him. His Gaston de Latour,
as far as he is known to us through
what is unhappily a fragment, seems
118
Walter Pater.
almost created for no other purpose than
to be a subject for the play of contend-
ing influences. The old pieties of the
Middle Age survive within him, leaving
a deep and abiding deposit in his spirit ;
but he is caught by the new grace and
delicate magic of Ronsard's verse, of
Ronsard's personality ; he is exposed to
all the enriching, and yet perhaps disin-
tegrating forces of Montaigne's undulant
philosophy, the philosophy of the re-
lative ; and he is prepared to be lifted
lifted, shall we say, or lowered ?
from his state of suspended judgment
by the ardent genius of that new knight
of the Holy Ghost, Giordano Bruno,
with his glowing exposition of the Low-
er Pantheism.
His Marius, again, cannot rest in the
religion of Numa, which was the pre-
siding influence of his boj'hood. His
Cyrenaicism is confronted by the doc-
trine of the Stoics, sad, gray, depress-
ing, though presented with all possible
amiability in the person of Marcus Au-
relius. And in the Christian house of
Cecilia, and among the shadowy cata-
combs of Rome, his eyes are touched by
the radiance of a newer light, which
thrills him with the sense of an unap-
prehended joy, a heroic perhaps a
divine hope. In the eighteenth cen-
tury Pater's Watteau, creating a new
and delicate charm for the society of his
own day, is yet ill at ease, half detached
from that society, and even saddening
experience ! half detached from his
own art, for he dreams, unlike his age,
of a better world than the actual one ;
and by an anachronism which is hardly
pardonable (for it confuses the chrono-
logy of eighteenth - century moods of
mind) the faithful and tender diarist of
Valenciennes, whose more than sisterly
interest in young Antoine has left us
this Watteau myth, becomes acquainted
and through Antoine himself with
the Manon Lescaut of many years later,
in which the ardent passion of the pe-
riod of Rousseau is anticipated. And,
again, in that other myth of the eigh-
teenth century, Duke Carl of Rosenmold,
myth of a half-rococo Apollo, the
old stiff mediaevalism of German courts
and the elegant fadeurs of French
pseudo-classicism are exhibited in reve-
lation to a throng of fresher influences,
the classical revival of which Winck-
elmann was the apostle, the revival of
the Middle Age as a new and living
force, the artistic patriotism which Leas-
ing preached, the " return to nature "
of which a little later the young Goethe
he, a true Apollo was the herald,
and that enfranchisement of passion
and desire, which, now when Rousseau
is somewhere in the world, brooding,
kindling, about to burst into flame,
seems no anachronism.
I cannot entirely go along with that
enthusiastic admirer who declared
surely not without a smile of ironic in-
telligence that the trumpet of doom
ought to have sounded when the last
page of Studies in the History of the
Renaissance was completed. Several
copies of the golden book in its first edi-
tion, containing the famous Conclusion,
would probably have perished in the
general conflagration ; and Pater was
averse to noise. But a memorable vol-
ume it is, and one which testifies to the
virtue of a happy temperament even
when in the presence of a depressing
philosophy. Too much attention has
been centred on that Conclusion ; it
has been taken by many persons as if it
were Pater's ultimate confession of faith,
whereas, in truth, the Conclusion was a
prologue. Pater's early years had made
a home for his spirit among Christian
pieties and the old moralities. When
Florian Deleal, quitting for the first
time the house of his childhood, runs
back to fetch the forgotten pet bird, and
sees the warm familiar rooms " lying so
pale, with a look of meekness in their
denudation," a clinging to the cherished
home comes over him. And had Pater
in his haughty philosophy of manhood
Walter Pater.
119
in like manner dismantled and dese-
crated the little white room of his early
faith? The very question seemed to
carry with it something of remorse ; but
Pater's integrity of mind, his intellec-
tual virility, could not permit itself to
melt in sentiment. In the essay on Au-
cassin and Nicolette, he had spoken of
the rebellious antinoraian spirit connect-
ed with the outbreak of the reason and
imagination, with the assertion of the
liberty of heart, in the Middle Age.
" The perfection of culture," he knew,
" is not rebellion, but peace ; " yet on the
way to that end, he thought, there is
room for a noble antinomianism. Now,
like his own Marius, he began to think
that in such antinomianism there might
be a taint, he began to question whether
it might not be possible somehow to ad-
just his new intellectual scheme of things
to the old morality. His culture had
brought with it a certain sense of isola-
tion, like that of a spectator detached
from the movement of life and the great
community of men. His Cyrenaic the-
ory was one in keeping with the proud
individualism of youth. From the Stoic
Fronto his Marius hears of an august
community, to which each of us may
perchance belong, "hulnanity, an uni-
versal order, the great polity, its aristo-
cracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their
example over their successors." But
where are these elect spirits ? Where
is this comely order ? The Cyrenaic
lover of beauty begins to feel that his
conception of beauty has been too nar-
row, too exclusive ; not positively un-
sound perhaps, for it enjoined the prac-
tice of an ideal temperance, and involved
a seriousness of spirit almost religious,
so that, as Marius reflects, " the saint
and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty would
at least understand each other better
than either would understand the mere
man of the world." His pursuit of per-
fection was surely not in itself illegiti-
mate, but by its exclusiveness of a more
complete ideal of perfection it might al-
most partake of the nature of a heresy.
Without rejecting his own scheme of
life, might it not be possible to adjust it
to the old morality as a part to a whole ?
Viewed even from a purely egoistic
standpoint had not such attainments as
were his and the attainments wore
unquestionably precious been secured
at a great sacrifice ? Was it a true
economy to forfeit perhaps a greater
gain for the less? The Stoical ideal,
which casts scorn upon the body, and
that visible beauty in things which for
Marius was indeed a portion of truth, as
well as beauty, he must needs reject.
But might there not be a divination of
something real, an imperfect vision of a
veritable possibility in the Stoical con-
ception of an ordered society of men, a
Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis?
And what if the belief of Marcus Au-
relius in the presence of a divine com-
panion, a secret Providence behind the
veil, contained some elevating truth ?
What if the isolated seeker for a nar-
row perfection could attach himself to
some venerable system of sentiment and
ideas, and so " let in a great tide of ex-
perience, and make, as it were, with a
single step, a great experience of his
own ; with a great consequent increase
to his own mind, of color, variety, and
relief, in the spectacle of men and
things " ?
There are two passages of rare spirit-
ual beauty in Marius the Epicurean :
one is that which tells of Marius wander-
ing forth with such thoughts as these
keeping all these things in his heart
to one of his favorite spots in the Alban
or the Sabine hills ; the other is the de-
scription of the sacred, memorial cele-
bration in the Christian house of Cecilia.
After a night of perfect sleep Marius
awakes in the morning sunlight, with
almost the joyful waking of childhood.
As he rides toward the hills his mood is,
like the season's, one of flawless seren-
ity ; a sense of gratitude gratitude to
what ? fills his heart, and must over-
120
Walter Pater.
flow ; he leans, as it were, toward that
eternal, invisible Companion of whom
the Stoic philosopher and emperor spoke.
Might he not, he reflects, throw in the
election of his will, though never falter-
ing from the truth, on the side of his
best thought, his best feeling, and per-
haps receive in due course the justifica-
tion, the confirmation of this venture of
faith ? What if the eternal companion
were really by his side ? What if his
own spirit were but a moment, a pulse,
in some great stream of spiritual energy ?
What if this fair material universe were
but a creation, a projection into sense of
the perpetual mind ? What if the new
city, let down from heaven, were also a
reality included in the process of that
divine intelligence ? Less through any
sequence of argument than by a discov-
ery of the spirit in sense, or rather of the
imaginative reason, Marius seems to live
and move in the presence of the Great
Ideal, the Eternal Reason, nay, the Fa-
ther of men. A larger conception as-
suredly of the reasonable Ideal than that
of his Cyrenaic days has dawned for
him, every trace or note of which it
shall henceforth be his business to gath-
er up. Paratum cor meum, Deus ! pa-
ratum cor meum !
It is a criticism of little insight which
represents Marius as subordinating truth
to any form of ease or comfort or spir-
itual self-indulgence ; an erroneous criti-
cism which represents him as only extend-
ing a refined hedonism so as to include
within it new pleasures of the moral
sense or the religious temper. For Ma-
rius had never made pleasure his aim
and end ; his aim and end had been al-
ways perfection, but now he perceives
that his ideal of perfection had been in-
complete and inadequate. He discovers
the larger truth, and the lesser falls into
its due place. His experiences among
the Sabine hills, which remind one of
certain passages in Wordsworth's Ex-
cursion, may have little evidential value
for any other mind than his own ; even
for himself they could hardly recur in
like manner ever again. But that such
phenomena however we may interpret
their significance are real cannot be
doubted by any disinterested student of
human nature. What came to Marius
was not a train of argument, but what we
may call a revelation ; it came as the
last and culminating development, under
favoring external conditions, of many
obscure processes of thought and feeling.
The seed had thrust up its stalk, which
then had struggled through the soil ; and
at last sunlight touches the folded blos-
som, which opens to become a flower of
light. ^
Marius had already seen in Cornelius
the exemplar of a new knighthood, which
he can but imperfectly understand. En-
tirely virile, Cornelius is yet governed by
some strange hidden rule which obliges
him to turn away from many things that
are commonly regarded as the rights of
manhood; he has a blitheness, which
seems precisely the reverse of the tem-
per of the Emperor, and yet some veiled
severity underlies, perhaps supports, this
blitheness. And in the gathering at
Cecilia's house, where the company
and among them, children are sing-
ing, Marius recognizes the same glad
expansion of a joyful soul, " in people
upon whom some all-subduing experience
had wrought heroically." A grave dis-
cretion ; an intelligent seriousness about
life ; an exquisite courtesy ; all chaste
affections of the family, and these under
the most natural conditions ; a temperate
beauty, all are here ; the human body,
which had been degraded by Pagan vo-
luptuousness and dishonored by Stoic as-
ceticism, is here reverenced as something
sacred, or as something sanctified ; and
death itself is made beautiful through a
new hope. Charity here is not painful-
ly calculated, but joyous and chivalrous
in its devotion ; peaceful labor is re-
habilitated and illumined with some new
light. A higher ideal than Marius had
ever known before higher and glad-
Walter Pater.
121
d er is operative here, ideal of woman,
of the family, of industry, including all
of life and death. And its effects are
visible, addressing themselves even to
the organ of sight, which with Marius is
the special avenue for truth ; so that he
has only to read backward from effects
to causes in order to be assured that some
truth of higher import and finer efficacy
than any previously known to him must
be working among the forces which have
created this new beauty. What if this
be the company of elect souls dreamed of
by the rhetorician Fronto? And with
the tenderest charity in this company of
men and women a heroic fortitude the
fortitude of the martyrs, like those of
Lyons is united. What if here be
Uranopolis, Callipolis, the City let down
from heaven ? For Marius in the house
of Cecilia the argument is irrefragable
rather the experience is convincing.
Possibly in the light of a more extended
survey of history new doubts and ques-
tions may arise ; but these were days of
purity and of love, the days of the minor
peace of the church.
Yet even in the end Marius is brought
only to his Pisgah, the mount of vi-
sion. He does not actually set foot within
the promised land. Even that act of
surrender, by which Cornelius is de-
livered and Marius goes to his death, is
less an act of divine self-sacrifice than
the result of an impulse, half careless,
half generous, of comradeship. His spir-
it anima naturaliter Christiana
departs less in assured hope than with
the humble consolation of memory
tristem neminem fecit ; he had at least
not added any pang to the total sum of
the world's pain.
And although the creator of Marius
had arrived, by ways very different from
those of Pascal, at some of Pascal's con-
clusions, and had expressed these with
decisiveness in a review of Amiel's Jour-
nal, we cannot but remember that essen-
tially his mind belonged to the same or-
der as the mind of Montaigne rather
than to the order of the mind of Pascal.
We can imagine Pater, had he lived
longer, asking himself, as part of that
endless dialogue with self which consti-
tuted his life, whether the deepest com-
munity with his fellows could not be
attained by a profound individuality
without attaching himself to institutions.
Whether, for example, the fact of hold-
ing a fellowship at Brasenose, or the
fact of knowing Greek well, bound him
the more intimately to the society of
Greek scholars. We can imagine him
questioning whether other truths might
not be added to those truths which made
radiant the faces in Cecilia's house.
Whether even those same truths might
not, in a later age, be capable of, might
not even require, a different conception,
and a largely altered expression.
While in the ways indicated in Ma-
rius the Epicurean Pater was departing
from that doctrine of the perpetual flux,
with ideals of conduct corresponding
to that doctrine, or was at least subor-
dinating this to a larger, really a more
liberal view of things, his mind was also
tending, and now partly under the in-
fluence of Plato, away from the brilliant-
ly colored, versatile, centrifugal Ionian
temper of his earlier days toward the
simpler, graver, more strictly ordered,
more athletic Dorian spirit.
Plato and Platonism, in noticing which
I shall sometimes use Pater's own words,
is distinguished less by color than by
a pervasive light. The demand on a
reader's attention is great, but the de-
mand is not so much from sentence to
sentence as from chapter to chapter. If
we may speak of the evolution or devel-
opment of a theme by literary art, such
evolution in this book is perhaps its
highest merit. No attempt is made to
fix a dogmatic creed, or to piece together
an artificial unity of tessellated opinions.
Philosophies are viewed very much as
works of art, and the historical method
is adopted, which endeavors to deter-
mine the conditions that render each
122
Walter Pater.
philosophy, each work of art, and espe-
cially this particular work of art, the
Platonic philosophy, possible. And there
is something of autobiography, for those
who can discern it, below the surface of
the successive discussions of ideas, which
yet are often seemingly remote from
modern thought.
The doctrine of the Many, of the per-
petual flux of things, which was so con-
sonant to the mobile Ionian temper, is
set over against the doctrine of the One,
for which all that is phenomenal be-
comes null, and the sole reality is pure
Being, colorless, formless, impalpable.
It was Plato's work to break up the form-
less unity of the philosophy of the One
into something multiple, and yet not
transitory, the starry Platonic ideas,
Justice, Temperance, Beauty, and their
kindred luminaries of the intellectual
heaven. Platonism in one sense is a
witness for the unseen, the transcen-
dental. Yet, austere as he sometimes ap-
pears, who can doubt that Plato's aus-
terity, his temperance is attained only
by the 'control of a richly sensuous na-
ture ? Before all else he was a lover ;
and now that he had come to love invisi-
ble things more than visible, the invisible
things must be made, as it were, visible
persons, capable of engaging his affec-
tions. The paradox is true that he had
a sort of sensuous love of the unseen.
And in setting forth his thoughts, he is
not a dogmatist but essentially an essay-
ist, a questioning explorer for truth,
who refines and idealizes the manner of
his master Socrates, and who, without
the oscillating philosophy of Montaigne,
anticipates something of Montaigne's
method as a seeker for the knowledge of
things.
At this point in Pater's long essay, a
delightful turn is given to his treatment
of the subject by that remarkable and
characteristic chapter in which he at-
tempts to revive for the eye, as well as
for the mind, the life of old Lacedae-
mon Lacedaemon, the highest con-
crete embodiment of that Dorian tem-
per of Greece, that Dorian temper of
which his own ideal Republic would
have been a yet more complete develop-
ment. Those conservative Lacedaemo-
nians, " the people of memory preemi-
nently," are made to live and move
before us by creative imagination work-
ing among the records, too scanty, of
historical research. There in hollow
Laconia, a land of organized slavery
under central military authority, the
genius of conservatism was enthroned.
The old bore sway ; the young were
under strict, but not un joyous discipline.
Every one, at every moment, must strive
to be at his best, with all superfluities
pruned away. " It was a type of the
Dorian purpose in life a sternness, like
sea-water infused into wine, overtaking
a matter naturally rich, at the moment
when fullness may lose its savor and
expression." There in clear air, on the
bank of a mountain torrent, stands Lace-
dsemon ; by no means a " growing "
place, rather a solemn, ancient moun-
tain village, with its sheltering plane
trees, and its playing-fields for youthful
athletes, all under discipline, who when
robed might almost have seemed a
company of young monks. A city not
without many venerable and beautiful
buildings, civic and religious, in a grave
hieratic order of architecture, while its
private abodes were simple and even
rude. The whole of life is evidently
conceived as matter of attention, pa-
tience, fidelity to detail, like that of
good soldiers or musicians. The Helots,
who pursue their trades and crafts from
generation to generation in a kind of
guild, may be indulged in some illiberal
pleasures of abundant food and sleep ;
but it is the mark of aristocracy to en-
dure hardness. And from these half-
military, half-monastic modes of life are
born the most beautiful of all people in
Greece, in the world. Everywhere one
is conscious of reserved power, and the
beauty of strength restrained, a male
Walter Pater.
123
beauty, far remote from feminine ten-
derness. Silent these men can be, or,
if need arise, can speak to the point, and
with brevity. With them to read is al-
most a superfluity, for whatever is essen-
tial has become a part of memory, and is
made actual in habit ; but such culture
in fact has the power to develop a vigor-
ous imagination. Their music has in it
a high moral stimulus ; their dance is not
mere form, but full of subject ; they
dance a theme, and that with absolute
correctness, a dance full of delight, yet
with something of the character of a li-
turgical service, something of a military
inspection. And these half-monastic peo-
ple are also as monks may be a very
cheerful people, devoted to a religion of
sanity, worshipers of Apollo, sanest of
the national gods ; strong in manly com-
radeship, of which those youthful demi-
gods, the Dioscuri, are the patrons. Why
all this strenuous task-work day after
day? An intelligent young Spartan
might reply, " To the end that I myself
may be a perfect work of art."
It is this Dorian spirit which inspires
the Republic of Plato. He would, if
possible, arrest the disintegration of
Athenian society, or at least protest
against the principle of flamboyancy in
things and thoughts, protest against
the fluxional, centrifugal, Ionian ele-
ment in the Hellenic character. He
conceives the State as one of those dis-
ciplined Spartan dancers, or as a well-
knit athlete ; he desires not that it shall
be gay, or rich, or populous, but that it
shall be strong, an organic unity, entirely
self-harmonious, each individual occu-
pying his exact place in the system ; and
the State being thus harmoniously strong,
it will also be of extreme aesthetic
beauty, the beauty of a unity or har-
mony enforced on highly disparate ele-
ments, unity as of an army or an order
of monks, unity as of liturgical music.
It could hardly happen that Pater's
last word in this long study should be
on any other subject than art. It is no
false fragment of traditional Platonism
which insists on the close connection be-
tween the aesthetic qualities of things
and the formation of moral character ;
on the building of character through
the eye and ear. And this ethical in-
fluence of art resides even more in the
form its concision, simplicity, rhythm
than in the matter. In the ideal Re-
public the simplification of human na-
ture is the chief affair ; therefore art
must be simple and even austere. The
community will be fervently aesthetic,
but withal fervent renunciants as well,
and, in the true sense of the word
ascetic, will be fervently ascetic. " The
proper art of the Perfect City is in
fact the art of discipline." In art, in
its narrower meaning, in literature,
what the writer of the Republic would
most desire is that quality which solicits
an effort from the reader or spectator,
" who is promised a great expressiveness
on the part of the writer, the artist, if
he for his part will bring with him a
great attentiveness." Temperance su-
perinduced on a nature originally rich
and impassioned, this is the supreme
beauty of the Dorian art. Plato's own
prose is, indeed, a practical illustration
of the value of intellectual astringency.
He is before all else a lover, and infinite
patience, quite as much as fire, is the
mood of all true lovers. It is, indeed,
this infinite patience of a lover which
in large measure gives to Pater's own
studies of art and literature their pecu-
liar value. The bee, that has gone down
the long neck of a blossom, is not more
patient in collecting his drop of honey.
Edward Dowden.
124 Balm. On Heading Books through faeir Backs.
BALM.
AFTER the heat the dew,
and the tender touch of twilight;
The unfolding of the few
Calm stars.
After the heat the dew.
After the Sun the shade,
and beatitude of shadow ;
Dim aisles for memory made,
And thought.
After the Sun the shade.
After all there is balm ;
from the wings of dark there is wafture
Of sleep, night's infinite psalm,
And dreams.
After all there is balm.
Virginia Woodward Cloud.
ON READING BOOKS THROUGH THEIR BACKS.
i.
I HAVE a way every two or three days
or so, of an afternoon, of going down to
our library, sliding into the little gate by
the shelves, and taking a long empty
walk there. I have found that nothing
quite takes the place of it for me, wan-
dering up and down the aisles of my ig-
norance, letting myself be loomed at,
staring doggedly back. I always feel
when I go out the great door as if I had
won a victory. I have at least faced the
facts. I swing off to my tramp on the
hills where is the sense of space, as if I
had faced the Bully of the World, the
whole assembled world, in his own den,
and he had given me a license to live.
Of course it only lasts a little while.
One soon feels a library nowadays pull-
ing on him. One has to go back and do
it all over again, but for the time being
it affords infinite relief. It sets one in
right relations to the universe, to the Ori-
ginal Plan of Things. One suspects that
if God had originally intended that men
on this planet should be crowded off by
books on it, it would not have been put
off to the twentieth century.
I was saying something of this sort
to the Presiding Genius of the State of
Massachusetts the other day, and when
I was through he said promptly, " The
way a man feels in a library (if any one
can get him to tell it) lets out more about
a man than anything else in the world."
It did not seem best to make a reply
to this. I did n't think it would do either
of us any good.
Finally, in spite of myself, I spoke up
and allowed that I felt as intelligent in a
library as anybody.
He did not say anything.
When I asked him what he thought
On Reading Books through their Backs.
125
being intelligent in a library was, he took
the general ground that it consisted in
always knowing what one was about
there, in knowing exactly what one
wanted.
I replied that I did not think that that
was a very intelligent state of mind to be
in, in a library.
Then I waited while he told me (fif-
teen minutes) what an intelligent mind
was anywhere (nearly everywhere, it
seemed to me). But I did not wait in
vain, and at last when he had come
around to it, and had asked me what I
thought the feeling of intelligence con-
sisted in, in libraries, I said it consisted
in being pulled on by the books.
I said quite a little after this, and of
course the general run of my argument
was that I was rather intelligent myself.
The P. G. S. of M. had little to say to
this, and after he had said how intelligent
he was awhile, the conversation was
dropped.
The question that concerns me is, what
shall a man do, how shall he act, when
he finds himself in the hush of a great
library, opens the door upon it, stands
and waits in the midst of it, with his poor
outstretched soul all by himself before
IT, and feels the books pulling on
him ? I always feel as if it were a sort
of infinite Cross Roads. The last thing
I want to know in a library is exactly
what I want there. I am tired of
knowing what I want. I am always
knowing what I want. I can know what
I want almost anywhere. If there is a
place left on God's earth where a mod-
ern man can go and go regularly and not
know what he wants awhile, in Heaven's
name why not let him hold on to it ? I
am as fond as the next man, I think, of
knowing what I am about, but when I
find myself ushered into a great library
I do not know what I am about any
sooner than I can help. I shall know
soon enough God forgive me ! When
it is given to a man to stand in the As-
sembly Room of Nations, to feel the
ages, all the ages, gathering around him,
flowing past his life, to listen to the im-
mortal stir of Thought, to the doings of
The Dead, why should a man interrupt
interrupt a whole world to know
what he is about ? I stand at the junc-
tion of all Time and Space. I am the
three tenses. I read the newspaper of
the universe.
It fades away after a little, I know. I
go to the card catalogue like a lamb to
the slaughter, poke my head into Know-
ledge somewhere and am lost, but
the light of it on the spirit does not fade
away. It leaves a glow there. It plays
on the pages afterward.
There is a certain fine excitement about '
taking a library in this fashion, a sense
of spaciousness of joy in it, which one is
almost always sure to miss in libraries
most libraries by staying in them.
The only way one can get any real good
out of a modern library seems to be by
going away in the nick of time. If one
stays there is no help for it. One is soon
standing before the card catalogue sort-
ing one's wits out in it, filing them away,
and the sense of boundlessness both in
one's self and everybody else the thing
a library is for is fenced off forever.
At least it seems fenced off forever.
One sees the universe barred and pat-
terned off with a kind of grating before
it. It is a card catalogue universe.
I can only speak for one, but I must
say, for myself, that as compared with
this feeling one has in the door, this feel-
ing of standing over a library mere
reading in it, sitting down and letting
one's self be tucked into a single book in
it is a humiliating experience.
ii.
I am not unaware that this will seem
to some this empty doting on infinity,
this standing and staring at All-know-
ledge a mere dizzying exercise, whirl-
ing one's head round and round in No-
thing, for Nothing. And I am not una-
126
Books New and Old.
ware that it would be unbecoming in me
or in any other man to feel superior to
a card catalogue.
A card catalogue, of course, as a de-
vice for making a kind of tunnel for one's
mind in a library for working one's
way through it is useful and necessary
to all of us. Certainly, if a man insists
on having infinity in a convenient form
infinity in a box it would be hard
to find anything better to have it in than
a card catalogue.
But there are times when one does
not want infinity in a box. He loses the
best part of it that way. He prefers it
in its natural state. All that I am con-
tending for is, that when these times
come, the times when a man likes to feel
infinite knowledge crowding round him,
feel it through the backs of unopened
books, and likes to stand still and think
about it, worship with the thought of it,
he ought to be allowed to do so. It
is true that there is no sign up against
it (against thinking in libraries). But
there might as well be. It amounts to
the same thing. No one is expected to.
People are expected to keep up an ap-
pearance, at least, of doing something
else there. I do not dare to hope that
the next time I am caught standing and
staring in a library, with a kind of blank,
happy look, I shall not be considered by
all my kind intellectually disreputable
for it. I admit that it does not look in-
telligent this standing by a door and
taking in a sweep of books this read-
ing a whole library at once. I can ima-
gine how it looks. It looks like listen-
ing to a kind of cloth and paper chorus
foolish enough, but if I go out of the
door to the hills again, refreshed for
them and lifted up to them, with the
strength of the ages in my limbs, great
voices all around me, flocking on my
solitary walk who shall gainsay me ?
Gerald Stanley Lee.
BOOKS NEW AND OLD.
LANDOR'S POETRY.
IT is not easy to admit a great liking
for Landor without ranging one's self
with the Landorians, however desirous
one may be to avoid the special plead-
' ing of a sectarian for the god of his
fancy. And indeed our natural sympa-
thy for the under-god may readily put
us in the way of conversion to the right
Landorian sect, or to any other. We
begin by sticking up for somebody, and
end by falling fairly under his spell, or
under the spell which our assiduity has
woven about him. We are aware that
no greatness needs sticking up for, that
in the end it must get what it deserves.
But in the meantime we may say what
we can in the interest of our friends ;
for Landor, certainly, the end is not yet.
The existence of his poetry is suspect-
ed by many persons who have a nodding
acquaintance with the gilt backs of his
Imaginary Conversations : in some such
way the case still stands against the
reading public, even perhaps against the
minor part of it which may not more
properly be called the buying and bor-
rowing public. In prose he has at least
won the success of esteem, the sort of
success which is often in itself enough
to keep one from being really read much.
An invisible but real barrier rises like
an exhalation between the common hu-
man being and the possessor of that mys-
terious quality, "style." If we could
only forget that Burke and Landor and
De Quincey had style, we might find
Books New and Old.
127
them more humanly approachable ; as it
is, let us make our salaams and pass on.
Landor's prose is read by many, if not
by the many, and is greatly deferred to.
It would hardly be true to say as much
of his verse, which, though it comes high-
ly recommended, appeals to a surpris-
ingly small audience. This is easy to
account for on superficial grounds alone.
Its serenity of tone, its purity of outline,
its lack of ornateness in detail, are pre-
cisely the qualities with which modern
poetry is inclined to dispense. Pentelic
marble is good, but we of to-day prefer,
secretly or otherwise, the glowing if per-
ishable canvases of our Titians, or even
of our Bouguereaus. These at least are
full of warmth and feeling ; we may do
very well without the severity of form
which seemed paramount to an earlier
and, after all, a ruder age. Purity of form
is certainly the most salient characteris-
tic of Landor's verse ; no modern writer
has possessed it in the same measure.
Milton was pure, but, if we except the
sonnets, rarely in English ; his wonders
were done in a hybrid medium. Words-
worth was pure, but only in his finest
moments, and never at any considerable
remove from baldness. An austere puri-
ty is Landor's native air ; and though it
blew from Parnassus, he breathed it on
the banks of Avon.
But Milton and Wordsworth possessed
a quality his lack of which accounts less
obviously for Landor's failure to gain
the larger public. They were dead in
earnest, and their earnestness sprang
from a profound sense of moral respon-
sibility. "The poet's message to his
time " has become something of a catch-
phrase in criticism. The fact that a great
poet has had a particular thesis to pre-
sent to his own generation is historically
interesting, but hardly accountable for
his greatness. For it is not likely to be
in the exercise of his highest gift as a
poet that he has directly influenced the
opinion or behavior of his neighbors in
time or place. He has made practical
use of an instrument the highest use of
which is not immediate or practical. Yet
there is no doubt that the habit of moral
conviction and settledness of mind, which
in its direct application is likely to pro-
duce poetry, if real, of an inferior order,
must by indirection enrich even the sort
of poetry that seems most spontaneous
and unfortified with opinion. This would
apply even to the work of the dramatic
poet, who is supposed to have his being
in a chronic process of self-effacement.
As for the lyric poet, since it is his affair
to express only himself, we inevitably
feel the invisible moral atmosphere in
which that self moves. To say that such
a poet has no message should mean not
that he fails to say things, but simply that
the total impression of his personality in-
ferred from his utterance is in some way
inharmonious or incomplete. The infer-
ence from the lyrical verse of Milton or
Wordsworth is an inference of suppressed
moral zeal ; the Muse has forced them
for the moment to an expression of pure
feeling, though they would have liked,
perhaps, to be at their favorite business
of preaching. Landor's suppression, on
the other hand, is of a weakness, or, more
fairly perhaps, of a limitation. He can-
not fitly utter the whole of his personal-
ity in verse, for his life, rich in the ma-
terials of poetry, was not a poem. A
certain instability of moral temper is to
be hidden, not dishonestly, but decent-
ly and in the name of art. Unfortu-
nately for this poet, the more nearly man
and artist are fused, the stronger a poet's
hold is upon general sympathy. We are
not satisfied to be admitted to one cor-
ner of a man's heart, or to a single cham-
ber of his brain, even if we have reason to
think the rest of the house is given over
to cobwebs and skeleton closets. There
is something disconcerting in the admir-
able manners of a person about whom
things are rumored ; we do not know
which way to look in his presence.
One of the most comfortable ways of
disposing of Laridor has been by the re-
128
Books New and Old.
sort to paradox. What an unaccount-
able creature he was, hot-headed and
gentle, dreamy and disputatious, stub-
bornly proud and the sport of every
whim, a sort of literary ruffian and an
apostle of peace. " I strove with none,
for none was worth my strife," he writes
with lofty serenity, after threescore and
ten years of quarreling with everybody.
What are we to make of such a person
as that?
But nothing is easier to manage than
a paradox if one takes the trouble to
humor it. Admitted that Landor was
a dare-devil student, an irascible hus-
band, an ungovernable subject, and that
he wrote much of the serenest prose, the
most delicately urbane verse in the lan-
guage; and there is still nothing con-
fused or irrelevant in the story of his
life and work, nothing even to suggest
him as a " case " for the Society for
Psychical Research. His personality
was by no means a patchwork of stray
entities ; given the flesh and blood, every-
thing else is congruous and germane.
To so turbulent and exuberant a nature
there could be only one literary salva-
tion : the guiding instinct of the artist,
to impose here and restrain there, so that
of the multitude of impressions by which
the poet is besieged, each may find its
allotted place, may be discarded as
unworthy of expression, or given the
expression which is fit. The irresponsi-
ble rude vigor which marked Landor's
daily conduct and habit of mind was
somehow precipitated by the act of art,
taking on a form of dignity and grace,
as some cloudy chemical virtue assumes
the lucid firmness of the crystal. Here,
then, is the true Landorian paradox :
precisely because he was all compact of
ungovernable will and romantic feeling,
his art must subject itself to classical
line and precept ; his fluid nature crys-
tallizing, that it might not diffuse itself
in ineffective vapor, and the poetic me-
dium of expression become " a limbeck
only."
Restless vigor of mind, rather than
productive intellectual energy, would
seem to mark much of his prose work.
He bristled with opinions, and delighted
to give them a sonorous utterance of
which he only was capable. But we do
not feel sure of the fundamental princi-
ples upon which he grounds them ; we
are troubled by a lurking doubt, not of
his sincerity, but of his responsibility,
and we come to take each of his good
things with a pinch of reservation. In
his lyrical mood, fortunately, this is of
less consequence. We do not want him
to reason, we want him to feel ; and if
his confidences are kept within measure,
we may be sure that he is observing a
principle which not even romantic poe-
try can safely ignore. " The great and
golden rule of art, as well as of life,"
says William Blake, in one of his remark-
able prose fragments, " is this that the
more distinct, wiry, and sharp the bound-
ing line, the more perfect the work of
art." Landor's life suffers from the ap-
plication of this rule, but it is exactly the
merit of his art. And it is the posses-
sion of this merit which distinguishes
him from a popular poet like Byron.
Byron had apparently much in common
with him ; he, too, was turbulent, diffi-
cult, irresponsible, a republican in theo-
ry and an aristocrat in taste, a rebel
against society, and an exile from re-
spectable England. Yet Byron's verse
expresses all that was in him, for good
or ill. It is as romantic and unrestrained
in form as in feeling, now lofty, now
sensational, now sentimental, now cyn-
ical. Why could not Landor have writ-
ten himself like that ?
The two poets met only once, at a per-
fumer's, where Landor was buying attar
of roses, and Byron, scented soap. There
is a whimsical suggestion in the incident
of the difference between them : the re-
fined artist, with his power of concentrat-
ing and purifying emotion, at some cost
of popularity, and the coarsish amateur,
with his constant and successful appeal
Books New and Old.
129
to " the gallery " by the exaggeration of
what he believed himself to feel. A very
little perfume will go a long way in
soap. Of course one cannot get rid of
Byron in any such summary way ; but
the real power in him was obscured by
the very quality which made him popu-
lar ; so much at least is true. The fash-
ionable improvisatore was understood to
be beyond the common law ; his work
is unconscious of the " bounding line " in
thought or expression ; and it has not
stood. Landor had Byron's habit of
producing his verse at a heat, and of giv-
ing it little or no revision, but a glance
is enough to show how different the pro-
duct of rapid workmanship is from the
product of improvisation.
But, one perhaps thinks, Landor has
so little human interest. What a pic-
ture of English society lies open in By-
ron's verse. Here was a man who knew
the age in which he lived, and conse-
quently left his mark upon it. As a mat-
ter of fact, Landor, too, was absorbingly
interested in the life about him, an eager
radical, ready to see the world move for-
ward, and to help it as far as he could.
His youthful mind was deeply stirred,
as all noble minds were, by the liberty
and equality propaganda ; and not mere-
ly to opinion, as his personal enlistment
in the Spanish cause presently showed.
Nor was his interest in the problem of
the hour less intense in later life. All
this zest in practical matters finds outlet
in his prose ; he had other uses for his
verse, though none in the least remote
from human interest. For the greatest
human interests are beyond those which
are born of emergency or fashion, and it
is these interests above all others which
the poet is bound to interpret for us.
Some deep concerns of life left Landor
unmoved, as we have seen. He has the
unmorality of the healthy pagan. He
lacks the subdued religious fervor which
gives its tone, for better or worse, to the
poetry of Christendom ; but he knew his
own heart, and it was greater than most.
VOL. xc. NO. 537. 9
It was only in his art that he stood
consciously aloof from his contempora-
ries, owing nothing, as he rightly boasted,
to any man or school of them all. Nor
was he the founder of a school,, though
even his earliest work contains a sure
presage of the greatest Victorian poetry,
and all later poets have been subtly in
his debt. His influence exerted itself
upon the method rather than upon the
manner of their work. English verse
gained from him a new sense of chastity
and proportion, not as a desired quality,
imported direct from the Mediterra-
nean or filtered through this or that
Latin source, and in either case carry-
ing with it much foreign baggage of dic-
tion and syntax, but as a native virtue,
obviously inseparable from the simplest
and purest English idiom. Landor's per-
sonal manner was incommunicable. No-
body has successfully imitated even his
trifles ; it is harder to build a bubble to
order than a palace.
It is almost a pity to have connected
the word trifle with his shorter lyrics,
for only what is imperfect is trifling in
art, and in these poems Landor's art
has attained its pure perfection. The
opinion is common that his real power
lay in the direction of the drama: I
think it mainly lyrical. His plays are
not mere JEschylean elaborations in dia-
logue of lyrical motives ; nor are they
root-bound by the utter subjectivity of
Byron. But they are barren of action,
and of rapid dramatic speech. Above
all, they lack the passionate interplay of
circumstance and temperament, the in-
finitely varied illumination of character,
which mark the creative drama. Lan-
dor does not create, he discerns. Human
nature he knew in the large, because he
knew himself. He knew, too, certain
striking types of character, the scholar,
the priest, the libertine, the king, the wo-
man ; but he could not differentiate them,
as examples of the same general type are
given distinct personalities by Shake-
speare or Miss Austen. His characters
130
Books New and Old.
speak according to his opinion of what
such characters would say rather than of
their own accord, because they are what
they are. The Imaginary Conversations
are properly named ; only two or three
of them have even the semblance of dra-
matic dialogue. Yet to make one's char-
acters speak according to one's opinion
of what they would say still leaves much
leeway for excellence. If Landor lacks
the power to create persons, to set the
breath of life in motion and let flesh and
blood take care of itself and its own, he
possesses a faculty of only secondary
value to the poet. He is able to divine
the significance of types, and to give them
humanity, if not personality. His per-
sons are as much more concrete than
Ben Jonson's as they are less convincing
than Shakespeare's. In short, he car-
ries the objective process as far as it
will go ; that he came so near dramatic
achievement is due to the fact that he
was not merely intellectually, but sym-
pathetically objective.
Very early in life he conceived an am-
bition to express himself in the more
formal and sustained poetic modes, which
resulted, in those two superb efforts of his
'prentice hand, Gebir and Count Julian.
One might be inclined to say of such
work that it fulfills its own promise. In
its merely technical aspect it was very
remarkable ; there had been no such
blank verse written since Milton. But
the public was deaf to that sounding
music, and the poet, independent as he
professed himself, rather than be ignored,
gave up an effort in which mere hostility
might have confirmed him. " I confess
to you," he said quietly, many years af-
ter, " if even foolish men had read Gebir,
I should have continued to write poetry ;
there is something of summer in the hum
of insects." But it is easily possible to
exaggerate the world's loss from his fail-
ure to develop a faculty for formal epic
and dramatic composition. Baffled by
the silence with which his first great
bursts of song were met, the poet must
still be in some manner expressing him-
self. Noble as are those majestic tours
de force, we can hardly doubt that he
found a more fitting utterance in the less
pretentious lyrical forms in which his
genius took refuge. If he can no longer
dream of rearing massy shafts to the level
of cloud-capped Ilium, or sounding the
depths of passionate experience, there
are still the delicate flowers of human
sentiment, over which he may lean and
smile a moment as he passes. He has
not torn them from their root in his
heart ; let the world do with them what
it will.
The world has done very little with
them, as it did very little with that other
poetry of his. Why should one halt in
the sober journey of life to dwell upon
a mere prettiness of four or a dozen
lines like Dirce or Rose Aylmer ? What
if it is perfect in its way, so is the
symbol for nothing. A half thought,
a dainty sentiment tricked in graceful
verse, how is the conscientious student
of literature to find a criticism of life in
such poetry as this ? Now and then the
question strikes home upon some honest
Landorian, and a table of the master's
solid excellences is produced, to the con-
fusion of his critics, and of the question
in point. For the lover of Landor some-
times fails to see the superior value of
his lighter work. He is praised for his
dignity rather than for his grace, for his
vigor of conception rather than for his
delicate human ness of feeling. Yet
grace and sympathy, not gravity and
force, constitute the main charm of his
verse.
As the poet of refined sentiment Lan-
dor stands quite alone in English ; that,
it seems to me, is his distinction. It is
not at all the popular sort of sentiment ;
its serenity and subtlety are doubtless
irritating to the patron of literary vaude-
ville. You are not in the least danger
of laughing one moment and crying the
next ; humor and sentiment are not set
off against each other, they simply have
Books New and Old.
131
no separate existence. It is an inner
quality which quite as distinctly as his
outward manner marks Landor's kinship
with the poets of the old world. Yet no
poetry has been written which is more
free from the taint of the lamp. He
was a Greek in nothing more truly than
in his daily dependence upon the spir-
itual elbow-room of field and sky. He
was in the habit of composing out of
doors. His atmosphere is always quiet-
ly in motion. Love of nature was a
trait of his, not a virtue. He has no-
thing of the mystical worshiping attitude
which Wordsworth and his disciples
have imposed upon us almost as a duty.
He breathed freer in the open, that was
all. A wild flower was more to him
than a mountain peak. The daily round
may do very well without grandeur, but
hardly without its objects of chivalry and
affection. And upon human nature, ac-
cordingly, he looks with tenderness ra-
ther than with the passionate yearning
of romantic poets. The world has its
tragedies, but there are many pleasant
things in it for a healthy man to take
delight in.
The shorter lyrics of Landor, then,
constitute a poetry of urbanity, a sort of
sublimated vers de societe. With all the
elegance and good -breeding in the world,
it is never artificial; the smirk of the
courtier is never to be detected under the
singer's wreath. It is urbane, but least
of all urban. It deals unostentatiously
with the kindlier human sentiments :
personal affection for places, employ-
ments, living things ; friendship without
its exactions, hope without suspense,
memory without bitterness ; love with-
out its reactions and reverses. It belongs
to the healthy life which is aware of
conditions rather than problems. In
certain buoyant and full-blooded moods,
the mysteries of existence do not trouble
one ; there is a straight road to every-
thing. Doubt of one's self or the world is
a sort of treason, sorrow and suffering
are morbid affections of the brain. Any
extravagant feeling seems hysterical,
even extravagant joy. The body is ac-
tive, the mind ruminates, quietly con-
scious of e very-day relations and experi-
ences. This golden mood is habitual
with Landor, and it is this mood to
which he gives utterance in poetry not
less rich because it is confined for the
most part to the middle register.
The quality of his work in this vein
is nowhere better illustrated than in his
poetic treatment of a single cherished
sentiment, the tenderness of a strong
man for womanhood. For flowers and
for women he had the same fondness,
touched sometimes with humor, but
never with hard analysis ; he was not a
botanist nor an anatomist. In an early
letter to Southey he owns a weakness
for the study of feminine character, and
it must have been very early that he
gained the perception of a real type of
womanhood to which he is never tired
of paying tribute. It would be absurd
to think of laying the finger upon this or
that feminine creature of Shakespeare's
and saying, u This is the woman of Shake-
speare." The woman of Landor, on the
contrary, is as distinct a type as to
compare great things with small the
Du Maurier woman. She is, like most
of Shakespeare's heroines, in the first
blossoming of youth and grace. Her
delicate purity, her little petulances, her
womanish lights and shadows of mood
and mind, arouse in the poet an infi-
nite delight. He has the reverence of a
lover for her subtle charm, and a good-
humored cousinly indulgence for her foi-
bles. The feeling of his Epicurus for
Ternissa, or of his ^Esop for Rhodope,
leaves nothing to regret for those of us
who think none the less of human life
because it does not habitually wear the
buskin. Brutus's Portia or the mother
of the Gracchi Landor may admire ; but
his little lanthe stands for the sex in
his eyes. "God forbid that I should
ever be drowned in any of these butts of
malmsey ! " he said of Oriental poetry.
132
Books New and Old.
" It is better to describe a girl getting a
tumble over a skipping-rope made of a
wreath of flowers."
Here and there throughout the varied
volume of his work this dainty creature
is continually making her exits and her
entrances. The nymph in Gebir embod-
ies her human self :
"She smiled, and more of pleasure than dis-
dain
Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip,
And eyes that languisht, lengthening, just like
love."
And in the Hellenics, written fifty years
later, she again speaks through the half-
divine lips of the Hamadryad :
"Hamadryad. Go ... rather go, than make
me say I love.
Phaicos. . . . Nay, turn not from me now,
I claim my kiss.
Hamadryad. Do men take first, then claim ?
Do thus the seasons run their course with
them?
. . . Her lips were seal'd, her head sank on his
breast,
'T is said that laughs were heard within the
wood,
But who should hear them ? . . . and whose
laughs, and why ? "
But these are only hints of sweetness ;
it is in Landor's shorter lyrics that she
chiefly lives. There is no pretty caprice
or evanescent cloud of temper which he
allows to escape the airy fetters of his
verse. Now it is merely the sweet play-
fulness of girlhood :
" Come, Sleep ! but mind ye ! if you come with-
out
The little girl that struck me at the rout,
By Jove ! I would not give you half-a-crown
For all your poppy - heads and all your
down."
Now it is her buoyant good humor :
" Your pleasures spring like daisies in the
grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever ;
From you, lanthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples down a sunny river."
Perhaps it is the momentary shifting of
her moods :
" Pyrrha ! your smiles are gleams of sun
That after one another run
Incessantly, and think it fun.
" Pyrrha ! your tears are short sweet rain
That glimmering on the flower-lit plain
Zephyrs kiss back to heaven again.
" Pyrrha ! both anguish me : do please
To shed but (if you wish me ease)
Twenty of those, and two of these."
Or it is her sheer charm, to be wondered
at, not phrased about :
" Fair maiden, when I look at thee,
I wish I could be young and free ;
But both at once, ah ! who could be ? "
Sometimes, too, he touches a deeper
string, though still without overstepping
the bound between sentiment and pas-
sion :
" Artemia, while Orion sighs,
Raising her white and taper finger,
Pretends to loose, yet makes to linger,
The ivy that o'ershades her eyes.
" ' Wait, or you shall not have the kiss,'
Says she ; but he, on wing to pleasure,
' Are there not other hours for leisure ?
For love is any hour like this ? '
" Artemia, faintly thou respoudest,
As falsely deems that fiery youth ;
A God there is who knows the truth,
A God who tells me which is fondest."
lanthe in absence still gives color to his
mood :
" Only two months since you stood here !
Two shortest months ! then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry ? "
Or, with a more characteristic lightness
of touch, he is uttering one of the finest
things ever said by man to absent maid :
" Summer has doft his latest green,
And Autumn ranged the barley-mows.
So long away then have you been ?
And are you coming back to close
The year ? it sadly wants repose."
She is real to him ; though delicately
idealized, not conventionalized, as is often
true of the darlings of the lighter muse.
Not less remarkable than this sure-
ness of conception is the perfection of
the medium employed ; its simple dic-
tion, its subtle variations of rhythm,
giving even to the baldest of verse forms,
the quatrain in ballad metre, a high dis-
The Columbia Studies in Comparative Literature. 133
tinction; its elusive power of sugges-
tion; the curious fillip to fancy and
feeling often given in the final verse.
One does not feel that there has been a
process of adjustment between thought
and expression ; neither could exist
without the other. Who can really con-
ceive a mute inglorious Landor or
Milton ? But we may avoid a nearer
approach to that Serbonian bog, the
question of style. Landor's light verse
is society verse without the exclusions of
caste, occasional verse without its, mouth-
ing and ornamentation ; a pure type of
lyrical comedy. Such poetry has its
serious uses. Delicacy of sentiment and
austerity of form may well command
attention from an over-intense, ornate
period like ours. Surely we are not
grown too serious to turn at times from
the agony of Lear or the titanic petu-
lance of Satan to a consideration of
" the tangles of Neaera's hair " ? It
would be a pity if the habit of listening
virtuously to any variety of poetic thun-
der, even stage thunder, should have un-
fitted us to enjoy and not be ashamed
poetry of pure sentiment, poetry like
this :
" There is a flower I wish to wear,
But not unless first worn by you . . .
Heart's-ease ... of all earth's flowers most
rare;
Bring it ; and bring enough for two."
H. W. Boynton.
THE COLUMBIA STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE. 1
" THE criticism which alone can much
help us for the future," wrote Mr. Arnold
in his luciferous manner, " is a criticism
which regards Europe as being, for in-
tellectual and spiritual purposes, one
great confederation, bound to a joint ac-
tion and working to a common result."
It is the hope of attaining such con-
structive thought as this, which, in a day
when the artfully phrased gustation of
bookish flavors too often passes under
the name of criticism, can best justify
single-minded devotion to the tenth
Muse. To many it is a pleasure to ob-
serve how the saner manifestations of
1 A History of Literary Criticism in the Re-
naissance. With special reference to the influ-
ence of Italy in the formation and direction of
modern classicism. By JOEL ELLAS SPINGARN.
New York : The Columbia University Press.
The Macmillan Co. 1899.
Spanish Literature in the England of the
Tudors. By JOHN GARRETT UNDERBILL.
New York : The Columbia University Press.
The Macmillan Co. 1899.
Romances of Roguery. An episode in the
history of the novel. By FRANK WADLEIGH
the study of comparative literature are
tending to the realization of this ideal.
The name comparative literature may
be new, but the thing is old. In its best
contemporary form it is quite in the
genial English tradition of humane schol-
arship. Bacon's Advancement of Learn-
ing was perhaps its first important docu-
ment, and, despite the alleged insularity
of English taste, it has nowhere been
more finely exhibited than in the work of
such scholars as Bowles, Southey, Hal-
lam, and Pater, or in that of their Amer-
ican cousins, Ticknor and Lowell. It
has, indeed, been advanced by influences
CHANDLER. Part I. The Picaresque Novel in
Spain. New York : The Columbia University
Press. The Macmillan Co. 1899.
The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.
By HENRY OSBORNE TAYLOR. New York:
The Columbia University Press. The Mac-
millan Co. 1901.
The Italian Renaissance in England. Stud-
ies. By LEWIS EINSTEIN. Illustrated. New
York: The Columbia University Press. The
Macmillan Co. 1902.
134
The Columbia Studies in Comparative Literature.
from the Continent, by the synoptic
idealism of the German philosophers
and critics of the romantic period, by
the indefatigable delving of German
students, and by the keen Gallic dis-
criminations of the school of Sainte-
Beuve ; it has caught something of penin-
sular enthusiasm from Italy and Spain ;
yet at its best, English scholarship in
this kind has been distinguished by flex-
ibility of sympathy and a just perspec-
tive. It has been notably free from the
apoplectic erudition, the excessive pre-
occupation with dusty detail, the logom-
achies, and fractious arietations, which
elsewhere have drawn upon such studies
the reproach of vanity.
At Columbia University, under the
inspiration and editorial control of Pro-
fessor Woodberry, there has grown a
series of books which illustrates admira-
bly that minute and careful research is
not inconsistent with sound taste and a
wide horizon. Taken as a whole, in-
deed, these Studies in Comparative Liter-
ature constitute a singularly substantial
and important contribution to literature
in the wider sense, and an unusually in-
teresting chapter in the World's Cultur-
geschichte. Viewed in the round they
summarize many of the more important
and significant aspects of European lit-
erature and intellectual life from the de-
cadence of paganism to that flooding of
literary lowlands which was consecutive
upon the Renaissance. Withal they con-
stantly regard Europe as " bound to a
joint action and working to a common
result," and they resume the inter-action
of the various European national liter-
atures in a way little seen in the run of
Einfluss studies where the form of know-
ledge is too often divorced from its sub-
stantial body.
Mr. Taylor's Classical Heritage of the
Middle Ages, though one of the latest
volumes in the series, is logically its be-
ginning. It traces the passing over of the
pagan man into his mediaeval character
with commendable lucidity and sugges-
tiveness. and with copious evidence of
full-bodied research. Any one who has
seen the league -long set of Migne's
Patrologise Cursus Completus will have
some faint notion of the character of
Mr. Taylor's wide and inarable field.
That he has educed from it such a wealth
of informing criticism is the more to his
praise. To the literary student the chief
interest of the book lies in its account of
the growth of the more poignant emo-
tions of Christianity in the controlled
pagan heart, resigned to order, and
the consequent merging of law-abiding
classical literature in the rhymed exuber-
ance, the unction and raysticity, of me-
diaeval poetry. This was the outgrowth
of that aspiration of the Christian soul,
which, as Mr. Taylor says finely, " will
produce at last on one hand the Roman
de la Rose, and on the other the Divina
Commedia ; while as it were between
these two, swing and waver, or circle
like starlings, strange tales of sinful love
and holy striving, whereof Arthur's
knights shall be the heroes, and wherein
across the stage pass on to final purity
Lancelot and Guinevere as well as Gala-
had and Parcival."
The tonic chord of the series is struck
in Dr. Spingarn's History of Literary
Criticism in the Renaissance. Here the
problem was to show how the men of
the Renaissance justified imaginative lit-
erature, which to the mediaeval mind
with its rigors and beatific visions had
come to seem a light and vain thing.
The interest for us lies in the fact that
the justification was grounded upon those
ever memorable generalizations of Aris-
totle about the universal in art, warmed
and vitalized by the breath of Platonic
idealism. Dr. Spingarn's learned and
skillful account of the rise of Aristotelian
canons of criticism will perform a double
service to most students of literature. It
will remind them of the truth, too often
forgotten, that modern classicism which
they sometimes decry as formal and un-
inspired, or at best praise for its lucid
The Columbia Studies in Comparative Literature.
135
order and labor of the file, did, as a mat-
ter of fact, draw inspiration from the
perennial springs of ideal art. Further-
more it should impress many with a
fresh sense of the debt owing to Italy
for the spread of just and pregnant no-
tions concerning the essential nature of
the art they love. The frequent pre-
sence in Dr. Spingarn's pages of such
poetic and engaging figures as Sidney,
.best of poet-courtiers, and golden-haired
Pico della Mirandola imparts to them
a humane charm not common in such
treatises.
Mr. Einstein has taken up the torch
and pursued still further the story of
Italian influence on the world's culture
in his studies of The Italian Kenaissance
in England. This minute account of cer-
tain strains in the life of Italianate Eng-
land contains much of interest and novel-
ty drawn from rare and hardly accessible
manuscripts, and it is, we believe, the
first attempt to present a complete con-
spectus of the singular relations between
Italy and England in the sixteenth cen-
tury. By virtue of its subject Mr. Ein-
stein's book has something of the subtle
romantic appeal which inheres in the
close study of an age of transition and
complex development, like the peculiar
interest we feel in Hellenizing Rome
during the second and third centuries of
this era, or in Gallicizing Germany dur-
ing the eighteenth. This volume is fur-
ther notable for the rare and striking
portraits of old worthies by which it is
embellished.
Not the least interesting of the series
are the two books which deal with some
of the literary influences flowing from
the Spanish peninsula. There is no rich-
er and fresher field for the pursuit of
genial learning than the literatures which
boast the great names of Cervantes, Cal-
deron, and Camoens, which have, too, an
incomparable store of picturesque songs
and fables of the people. There is at
the root of all this peninsular literature
an intense, esoteric, indigenous quality,
a profound racial idealism, which will
elude all but the most patient and sym-
pathetic study ; yet when once the scholar
has realized this he will have his reward,
for Spanish Literature will then stand
to him as perhaps the clearest and most
coherent type of a national literature
playing its part with others in joint ac-
tion toward one result.
Dr. Underbill's Spanish. Literature in
the England of the Tudors is informed
by this fructifying idea. He presents
for the first time a comprehensive view
of political, social, and literary relations
between Spain and England in the six-
teenth century, and traces the part played
by Spanish pride, worldly wisdom, mys-
ticism, and high-flown courtesy in form-
ing the ideals and manner of English
writers in the Elizabethan and Jacobean
periods. The book is notable for the
wealth of evidence other than literary
which is adduced, and for the intimacy
of the comparisons of English and Span-
ish authors. Herein the work is exem-
plary for the comparative student, who
is too often lamentably deficient in his
knowledge of the authors compared,
while he is long, so to say, on their re-
lation.
The ever delightful picaro, that glad,
extra -moral personage, through whom
we enjoy vicariously rich pleasure of
knavery and robustious horse-play, all
the rare, old-world adventures of the life
of the road, is made the subject of Dr.
Chandler's readable and suggestive trea-
tise of Romances of Roguery, of which
mention has already been made in the
pages of the Atlantic.
As an episode in the development of
the modern novel the history of the Span-
ish picaresque romances is of very con-
siderable importance. It was with the
rogue the anti-hero that story-tell-
ers first learned the trick of realism, of
embodying the result of nice observation
in the portrayal of character, and thus
these rollicking human stories, pur gee,, as
Le Sage has it, des moralitez superflues,
136
The Contributors' 1 Club.
came to be of incalculable moment in
forming the robust English art of Field-
ing and Smollett. All this is presented
by Dr. Chandler clearly and cogently,
with a reticulation of roguish narrative
which makes excellent reading.
We remember the typical story of the
youthful savant who laid as a love-gift
at the feet of his sweetheart "an im-
pertinency in folio," a fat and learned
Latin dissertation, De Levitate Femina-
rum. It is a noteworthy fact that while
three of the five volumes of the series
under review were composed for doctoral
purposes, they are all as singularly free
from this distortion of perspective as
from the arid parvitude of style which we
associate with the academic dissertation.
They show, indeed, throughout, a fresh
and lively enthusiasm for orderly and
humane learning that gives them a lit-
erary quality almost equivalent to tem-
perament. In the images and old thoughts
which they have transferred from scarce
and cryptic pages is preserved the es-
sence of humanism, " that belief," as
Pater said, " that nothing which has ever
interested living men and women can
wholly lose its vitality, no oracle be-
side which they have hushed their voices,
no dream which has once been enter-
tained by actual human minds, nothing
about which they have been passionate or
expended time or zeal." Furthermore it
is in the constructive conclusions to which
these five volumes lead that they are
representative of the best contemporary
literary study, which is more and more
leaving the primrose way of lyrical and
personal writing to study literature as
the cumulative record of the life of so-
ciety. Hence it is a pious and particular
pleasure to notice these earnest studies
which contrive to unite something of the
range of the literary Darwinians with
the generous flexibility of the older schol-
arship, so to pave a little portion of the
way to wider and juster views of that
large life of which the finest vision is seen
through the spectacles of books. F. G.
THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.
rica<
SOUTH AFRICA changes, chameleon-
A Briton's like, as one approaches. A
man mav reach Pretoria in
three weeks from London, but
the geographical distance is no index
to the difference in mental perspective
between the theorist at home and the
worker on the spot. For two years the
English papers have hurled South Afri-
can impressions at their readers : Johan-
nesburg has become as familiar a name
as Birmingham : few families have not
sent a relative to the war. And yet the
traveler, however learned he may be in
the book- work of his subject, is singu-
larly unprepared for the reality which
begins to dawn upon an observant man
after a few months' experience. He be-
gins to realize the geographical vastness,
the curious absence of natural means of
communication, the paradoxes of the
climate and the soil ; but even then he
is only on the brink of discovery. The
race problem, too often talked of at
home as the ordinary question which has
faced Britain in all her colonies, begins
to reveal itself as an apparently insoluble
enigma. The rural Boer, the most dog-
matic individualist in the world, was
shaped by judicious management from
Pretoria into some momentary semblance
of a nation and a very formidable reality
of an army. The war is over, and he
is returning to his home, beaten, angry,
but still unconvinced. His sombre God
has chastened him for his sins that is
The Contributors' Club.
137
all : some day doubtless He will lift from
him the cloud of his displeasure. To this
people, without culture, without enter-
prise, wholly un-modern and un-political,
the so-called lessons of the war mean
nothing, and side by side with them
there lives in the towns a race modern
of the moderns. The old mining-camp,
California-cum-Ballarat character of the
gold industry in South Africa has utterly
passed away. Gold-mining has ceased
to be a speculation, and has become a
vast and complicated industry, employ-
ing at high salaries the first engineering
talent of the world. The great mine-
owner is frequently a man of education,
almost invariably a man of extreme
ability. In few places can you find men
of such mental vigor, so eagerly recep-
tive of new ideas, so keenly awake to
every change of the financial and politi-
cal worlds of Europe. It is as if in the
seventeenth century in Scotland, when
the Covenanters were hiding in the hills,
the towns had been filled with French
intellectuels and modern scientists.
In this fact lies the intricacy of the
South African problem. The twentieth
century and the seventeenth exist side
by side, and must be harmonized. The
common false impression pictures South
Africa as a clean slate, without history,
institutions, or race tradition. It would
be more exact to describe it as permeated
in a large part with the most conserva-
tive of memories, the most bigoted and
intolerant of traditions. So far it is
plain that there is no common meeting
ground of Boer and Uitlander. If
things are allowed to drift, the towns
will grow in population and wealth, the
Rand will occupy itself with exploiting
its two thousand millions' worth of un-
discovered gold ; and meanwhile at the
back of it all will be the country districts,
stagnant, poor, with long, bitter memo-
ries and an irreconcilable race hatred.
It is not a pleasant picture, but it is
inevitable unless the problem is recog-
nized and boldly met. If a meeting
ground does not exist, it must be created.
In my opinion the most hopeful solution
is to be found in the schemes of land
settlement which it seems certain will
soon be put into execution. It is pro-
posed to buy great tracts of land, and
settle on them selected British colonists,
who will be at once exponents of scien-
tific agriculture and a country police
force. Model government farms will be
started which will serve as agricultural
bureaus and training colleges. Such a
scheme will fulfill many purposes. It
will encourage South African farming,
and exploit some of the vast agricultural
riches which lie dormant in the soil ; it
will provide a civilizing agency for re-
mote districts ; it will increase the British
stock in the new colonies by the influx
of the best class of colonists ; and it will
provide the most effective of forces for
local defense. It is in such a policy alone
that we can find hope of some ultimate
and permanent reconciliation. The High
Commissioner is the type of administra-
tor peculiarly fitted for the intricate
South African problem. A common of-
ficial would not see the difficulty ; a weak
man, if he saw it, would shrink from it in
despair. Lord Milner, with the imagi-
nation and trained perceptions of the
scholar, has the direct practical vigor
of a great man of affairs. Where a
coarser or more cautious man would
fail, there is every chance that he may
succeed.
" REMOTE, unfriended, solitary, slow,"
A Plague of I murmur reflectively. " Re-
Peddlers. mote we certainly are, Hea-
ven be praised ! from city sights and
sounds ; " slow," yes, if you like, but
" unfriended, solitary," never, while the
unending procession of peddlers wends
through the summer land. Before our
doors lies the shining sea, " the path of
the bold ; " behind us the dusty highway,
path of the undefeated, undismayed ven-
der of small wares, mostly things which,
as Charles Lamb said of the treasures his
sister would transport from one abode to
138
The Contributors' Club.
another, "the most necessitous person
could never want." It is a militant tribe
early upon the warpath, and while the
" top of the morning " is still making glad
our hearts, come the dark-eyed, sombre
Italian hucksters, one following close
upon the heels of another, and offering
in broken English all known fruits and
vegetables, except possibly the very one
for which our souls long.
But what has become of the gayly clad,
festa-loving Italian peasant of song and
story ? One meets him on the sunny
roads of Italy with his white Tuscan
oxen, but he drives no huckster's cart on
this side the sea. Once he has crossed
the ocean, the dolce far niente phase of
existence lies behind him, and "hus-
tling " and the " strenuous life " become
the order of the new day. We fall into
chat with our peanut man, who is all
smiles and shrugs, showing his flashing
white teeth as he talks. Near Napoli
was his home. " Were we ever there ? "
" Yes." And he tells us just the spot on
the sloping sides of Vesuvio where his
home lay. " Will he go back ? " " Oh
no, America is better." His peanuts
seem to sell, and he is not, apparently,
in the plight of his push-cart brother,
whose bitter plaint has become a classic,
"What I maka on da peanut I losa on
da dam banan'."
Now, the morning being still young,
comes the youth with strident voice who
puts us in touch with what to us, in our
uneager life, seems an insanely active
world. He is selling metropolitan dailies
to eke out the slender resources needful
to complete his Law School course. With
such a voice must Macbeth's raven have
croaked " the fatal entrance of Duncan."
We wish our embryo lawyer well, but
hope that he may never be called to lift
up his voice for the oppressed. As the
morning wears on appears a " Rever-
end " somebody of somewhere peddling,
Heaven save the mark ! his own poems.
The price, I say, is modest, five cents a
copy. " Wait," replies our friend the
author, an author beloved on both sides of
the sea, who is tarrying with us for the
day, "you will not think so when you
have read his verse." I do not. Here
are lines, perhaps the worst of twenty-
three stanzas, from In Memoriam, com-
memorating those who lost their lives
in a trolley accident. They do not re-
motely suggest Tennyson. Thus runs the
verse :
" But see ! with no note of warning !
My God I what is this I behold ?
The wheels of the trolley leap outward.
Oh ! How can the story be told ! "
Would it make any impression on our
reverend poet if he knew that he was
trying to dispose of his wares to one of
the distinguished litterateurs of the day ?
Probably not. The dauntless intrepidity
of a poet who vends his creations from
door to door would hardly quail at such
a contretemps. At all events he passes
on unknowing ; unknowing, too, that he
is adding to the gayety of nations.
Papers and poems having furnished
more or less nutriment for the interior
of our heads, along comes a friendly, gay
soul who would like to supply nourishing
washes for their exterior improvement.
Truth to tell, the Dominie, one of our in-
mates and intimates, is a shining mark
for such ministrations. " Hair coming
out ? " says our new peddler, a woman
this time, brisk and laconic, with a sug-
gestion of success won by hard work.
Her prices are prohibitive, and we tell
her so. But she laughs us to scorn as
one who knows she has a good thing.
" No," she chirps, " I never come down
on my prices. I'm not lugging this
heavy bag about all day for only seven
dollars." So we part company, the ever
widening partings of our unfortunate
heads unrefreshed by Madame's hair
vigor.
Last of all upon the scene, while the
" moonglade " shimmers across the
water, come the wandering peddlers of
music, whose playing seems, alack, to
sensitive ears,
The Contributors' Club.
139
" To crack the voice of melody,
And break the legs of time."
Their ministrations finished and paid for,
we sleepily climb the stair, and as we go
out upon our upper balcony for a good-
night look at the purple-blue dome of the
sky, and a glance out to the far sea
line, while the scent of honeysuckle fills
the air, we find it in our hearts to waste
no sentimental regrets over Ships that
pass in the Night, if only we might be
sure that peddlers would pass in the
day.
THE following letter from Mr. Emer-
ThoseRed- son was written on receiving
Eyed Men. a criticism of William Ellery
Channing's earlier writings, sent him by
a friend with a view to its being forward-
ed to The Atlantic Monthly, if found
worthy of being submitted to the " red-
eyed men " for whom Mr. Emerson ex-
presses so warm a sympathy. It has an
especial interest for our readers at the
present moment, as a new and enlarged
edition of Mr. Channing's poems is about
to appear in Philadelphia.
As a bit of gentle sarcasm, and as a
lesson on what even then was considered
" acceptable " to weary readers of end-
less manuscripts, it could hardly be ex-
celled. The Yankee wit and shrewd-
ness, the generous encouragement and
consideration given the efforts of a be-
ginner which this letter shows are inter-
estingly characteristic of Mr. Emerson's
kindly nature. But the criticism in
question never saw the light !
CONCORD, 26 May, 1858.
DEAR FRIEND, It is a piece of char-
acter, and, as every piece of character in
writing is, a stroke of genius also, to
praise Channing's poems in this cordial
way, and I read the manuscript with
thankful sympathy. But you will print it.
It is by no means character and genius
that are good to print, but something
quite different, namely, tact, talent,
sparkle, wit, humor, select anecdote, and
Birmingham lacker, and I have kept the
paper for many days, meaning to read
it later and find whether it had the glass
buttons required. On looking into it to-
day I hesitate to send it to that sad
Bench where two judges or three judges
are believed to sit and read with red eyes
every scrap of paper that is addressed
to The Atlantic Monthly. I know that
they read four hundred papers to admit
ten, one time. I am not of their counsel,
but some of their cruelties have tran-
spired. Yet who but must pity those
red-eyed men ?
I can easily believe that you have the
materials of a good literary article. If
I had the journal in which you have at
any time set down detached thoughts
on these poems it might easily furnish
the needed details and variety of criti-
cism. I am not even sure that this piece
as it is will not presently appear pre-
sentable to me. Nothing can be acuter
criticism than what you say of " the art
to say how little, not how much, belong-
ing to this fatal poet." Think a mo-
ment and tell me, if you can say another
word as descriptive of his genius. The
selections, too, all have good reason. But
I must have a few more good points.
" So saith the Grand Mufti."
Yours faithfully,
R. W. EMERSON.
IN what varying moods does the re-
A Singular jected contributor meet his
Plurality. f ate j There is the self-de-
preciating writer, who falls at the first
thrust of the editorial poniard ; the egoist
who, as George Eliot says, " carries his
comfort about with him," and whom no-
thing could convince that the favoritism
or obtuseness of the editor is not respon-
sible for his repeated failures.
Then there are those who, while recog-
nizing the justice of the official verdict,
often philosophically turn their disap-
pointment into pleasantry, as is shown
by the number of jocose poems on this
theme so frequent in newspaper col-
umns.
140
The Contributors' Club.
Sometimes our blithe genius turns
upon the editor, as did this verse-monger
whose wares were declined in bad gram-
mar :
The poet dreamed, and as he dreamed
Amazing strange ! he slept ;
The great " Pacific " had, it seemed,
Both of his poems kept,
And sent forthwith a goodly check
Not on his hopes this time
With praise well measured, quite a peck,
And begged for all his rhyme.
The morning broke, the poet woke
Alas for grief like this !
One little " slip " between the lip
And Fame's full cup of bliss.
But pause ! upon that type-writ screed,
Phrased with such touching grace,
That " neither is of use " we read,
But why the " is " erase ?
That blazing editorial star,
Or one moved by his law,
Has scratched out " is " that 's singular !
And made it " are ; " the awe,
The glory that doth hedge about
The great sanctorum chair
Just one amended word strikes out
Our poet walks on air !
But now no more to that high star,
By which he 's steered so long,
He hitches up his little car,
His chariot of song.
IT has so often occurred to me what
Plots that a delightful occupation novel-
One Covets. wr iting must have been in its
beginnings, before the word " stale "
could be applied to plots and the most
delightful situations had not become
hackneyed. One can fancy the joy of
Fanny Burney sitting down to write the
book that turned out to be Evelina, with
a whole world full of plots and situations
from which to choose. This in fancy.
In fact, the story of the much abused,
long suffering Evelina was probably the
cause of her writing, not the outcome of
a desire to write.
Nowadays, on the other hand, all the
most openly attractive plots and situations
are already taken ; special phrases, even,
have been preempted. You can't even
have your hero clasp your heroine in his
strong young arms. And yet, to be
clasped in strong young arms is such an
agreeable experience to which to treat
one's heroine. I have a tender affection
for my heroine myself. I like to let
her have the best of everything. It is
with excessive reluctance that I give
her any sorrows but sentimental ones,
which don't count, being half a pleasure
in themselves. Sometimes I make her
unfortunate and unhappy just to height-
en the effect of the good things that are
coming to her in the next chapter but
one, or to develop her character so that
she will be better deserving of the good
fortune ; but to put her in sordid, unhappy
surroundings and to keep her there from
"Chapter I." to "The End," I really
don't see how authors can make them-
selves do it. It may be high art, but it
shows a hard heart. No doubt I shall
be forced into playing her some such
mean trick some day. People with high
literary ideals always come to it sooner
or later, for you don't get strength and
depth and other desirable things in the
stories of prosperous, happy people. I
may even make a book end unhappily,
not with mere sentimental unhappiness,
but with disgrace, or sordid, bread-
lacking poverty, or faith betrayed, or
chronic disease, I may do this, but it
will be at the expense of regret and
heartache to myself. I could almost as
easily condemn my daughter to such
sorrows as the dearly beloved child of
my fancy.
There were so many delightful situa-
tions in which to put your heroine when
people first began to write novels ; and
yet, I do not believe that writers in those
days had any keener realization of their
privileges than an Indian at having the
forests of the New World to himself.
Freedom is only understood by experi-
encing the lack of it. I am sure neither
The Contributors' Club.
141
Richardson, nor Fielding, nor any of
those old fellows, ever once stretched
out his arms and exclaimed, " How
glorious it is to be the first ! " And,
doubtless, those that come after us will
envy us, freedom, like almost every-
thing else, being relative.
New conditions in life make new liter-
ary conditions and new situations, and
these we have ; but the dear old senti-
mental ones that charmed in themselves,
apart from the handling of them, are all
used up. I am perfectly reconciled to the
fact that Homer should have the Trojan
War to write about, and Dante the other
world, and Milton the Fall of Man. I
would n't take these subjects away from
them for my own use if I could. I
would n't deprive Shakespeare of the mo-
tives of Hamlet, Othello, or Lear ; but I
should like the desert island situation of
Foul Play. What an opportunity for
an interesting human relation that gives !
The mere thought of it is alluring. First,
one would have a shipwreck, a nice,
vague, ladylike shipwreck, without any
nasty details such as drawing lots to
decide who shall furnish the next meal,
and with no incomprehensible and la-
boriously acquired (by the author) nauti-
cal terms, a shipwreck in which a rope
is called a rope and not a hawser or a
sheet, and the deck is always just plain
deck, no matter in what part of the ship
you find it. I 'd give the proper local
color by calling the ship " she " instead
of "it," and by throwing in an occasion-
al " Heave ahoy ! " or " Man the life-
boats ! " or even " Shiver my timbers ! "
but nothing more difficult than that.
The shipwreck should be carefully en-
gineered so that the party on the desert
island should be strictly a deux, after
the manner of the entry into the Ark,
one male and one female.
Reade, in his version, treats the situ-
ation inadequately. He has no con-
ception of its literary possibilities. I
don't remember it very well, as I read
it when I was about fourteen, but even
at that innocent age I thought it tame.
Still, I may have come to that conclu-
sion (this thought has just occurred to
me) because of that innocent age. I
might find it quite different now. At
all events, I know he did n't put any
charm into it, and charm is absolutely
essential to a desert island story.
I am supposing my hero to be a strictly
well - conducted young man, and my
heroine a virtuous young woman, as
heroes and heroines should be. They
must n't be too unconventional or too
advanced, or they would simply make a
picnic of the occasion (I would supply
them plentifully with provisions) and
forget all about the impropriety, and
that would n't do at all. To make the
proper atmosphere for a desert island
story, their feelings must be mixed dis-
tress and delight, and the heroine must
be uncomfortably apprehensive as to
what people will say when they are
rescued. A heroine of mine would
know that she was certain to be rescued.
If the situation really were brand-
new, it would be fun to have the hero
ask her to marry him, and to have her
refuse because she thinks he is doing it
from a sense of honor, and then all the
rest of the book could be spent in un-
deceiving her. Of course, he really is
madly in love with her, but doesn't
think it proper to reveal it to her in the
absence of a chaperon. I don't mean
that he would declare it in the presence
of one (he is n't as proper as that), but
he would prefer to have a chaperon
tucked away behind the nearest banana
tree.
Just think ! if nobody had ever done
it before, what fun it would be to have
them find bread-fruit trees, and to pick
up barrels of the luxuries of the sea-
son which had been cast up on the
shore. And the hero could be deliciously
stiff and constrained, because he is so
much in love and is afraid of not being
proper ; and the heroine could imagine
all sorts of uncomfortable things from
142
The, Contributors' Club.
his attitude. What a wealth of mis-
understandings there would be to choose
from ! And they would always be look-
ing for sails with one eye and praying
that they would n't come with the other,
and neither of them will own to an un-
willingness to leave. And he can make
her a lodge of boughs, such as Nicolette
makes herself (there is absolutely no
other parallel between the two stories),
and save her from innumerable dangers.
Dear me ! the more I think of it, the
more I am impressed with Charles
Reade's selfishness in grabbing so de-
lightful a situation, especially when he
had so little idea how to handle it.
Another plot that I have always
coveted is one that you find in many
books. The best specimens that I know
of are a German story called Gltick
Auf , and The Awakening of Mary Fen-
wick. It also appears in the relation
of two of the secondary characters in
Molly Bawn. Two people who do not
know each other contract a formal mar-
riage, for some reason. They live in
the same house, in armed neutrality for
a time, and gradually fall in love with
each other, though nothing could make
them acknowledge it. The pride mo-
tive is the strongest one in this story.
One has usually overheard something
disparaging that the other has said, and
each is determined, for varying reasons,
not to be the first to give in. The in-
terest in this situation is heightened by
the contrast between the formality of
their private relations and the absence
of conventional barriers between them.
The distance is entirely of their own
making. They do not have to consider
outside elements, having squared them
all in marrying. Everything rests ab-
solutely with themselves, which makes
a tenser situation, by giving a sense of
greater and more immediate possibilities
than in the ordinary relations of man
and woman. This is a plot that has an
irresistible fascination for women. It
has suggestions of perfectly proper im-
proprieties in it, and that is what women
like. They like to hover on the verge
of things, to have all the excitement, and
yet not feel obliged to disapprove.
Another attractive husband and wife
story is the one in which they become
estranged, and are brought together by
the serious illness of their only child.
The jealousy motive comes into play in
this, though in the end it usually shows
itself to be without foundation, a con-
venient little habit which I wish to good-
ness jealousy in real life would adopt.
There is so much opportunity for inter-
esting scenes in the night watches by the
child's bed. The two are necessarily
thrown together in an intimate way, and
find it impossible to be stiff and polite
over hot water bottles and poultices.
The governess or companion story is
a favorite one of mine. It is astonish-
ing what a strong element of romance it
has, when the position of a governess in
real life is the most unromantic thing on
earth. In real life the big man of the
place whom all the mothers are trying
to capture for their daughters does n't
fall in love with the governess. Her
close connection with her social superiors
makes her social disadvantage too evi-
dent, and it takes a very big man indeed
to discover personal importance when it
is overshadowed by social unimportance.
The novel hero is more clear sighted or
more disinterested. Besides, the novel
governess is a most delightful person,
demure, reserved, and self-sufficient on
the surface, but daring, piquant, and
original underneath, a reminiscence
of Jane Eyre, probably. She takes
pleasure in snubbing the big man, and
he finds it a refreshing contrast to the
flattery he meets on every side. She re-
fuses to admit that he is of any conse-
quence to her, and in the end he dis-
covers the truth only by some accident,
the truth being that she is passionately in
love with him. The Wooing O't is the
best instance of this kind of story that I
know.
The Contributors' Club.
143
There is such a nice scene in a gov-
erness story by Beatrice Whitby, whose
name I can't remember. The heroine is
very much in love with the step-brother
of her little pupils, the heir to the estate,
but never allows him to suspect it. One
day she finds one of his gloves, and, the
temptation being strong, picks it up, and
hearing him coming hides it in the
bosom of her gown. His dog, who has
been left in charge of it, rushes fiercely
at her; the hero arrives on the scene,
saves her from the dog, and discovers
what she has done. It is very thrilling,
a scene to be coveted.
I suppose there are infinite combina-
tions of man, woman, and circumstance
yet to be made, the more that all three
quantities are variables. Our grand-
children will be finding plots in subjects
that are completely unsuggestive to us
now. I can imagine a great novel with
a street-cleaning or a plumbing motive.
No doubt these will be extremely inter-
esting, to their authors at all events, but
I am afraid I shall always be old-fash-
ioned enough to prefer the desert-island
or the wife in name only motive.
A COMMON and trivial excuse given
Pace in by those who read little is
Reading. t h a t they have no time for
reading. One may have no time for
eating or sleeping, but hardly no time
to make love or to read. It is good will,
concentration, and the habit of dispatch,
not leisure or unlimited opportunity,
which have always performed the great-
est wonders in both of these useful pur-
suits. Many persons in mature life are
conscious of a gentle and luxurious sen-
timent in favor of reading, which comes
to nothing because they do not know how
to read. With all the good will in the
world, they lack concentration and the
habit of dispatch. The good will was
not applied early enough, or not applied
at all to any other end than the lazy di-
version of a moment. This naturally
resulted in the formation of the newspaper
habit, by which I do not mean simply
the habit of reading newspapers, but the
habit of mind which makes it possible for
men to spend an evening in going through
motions. There is no more reason for
spending two hours in reading the news-
paper than in having one's boots blacked.
Some people never make their way into
the great Establishment of Letters farther
than the vestibule, where they spend
their lives contentedly playing marbles
with the hall-boys. Of course we do not
call the newspaper worthless simply be-
cause some other things are worth more.
The best reading is both intensive and
extensive ; one reads a little of every-
thing, and a great deal of some things.
The good reader takes all reading to be
his province. Newspapers, periodicals,
books old and new, all present them-
selves to him in their proper perspective ;
they are all grist to his mill, but they do
not go into the same hopper or require
the same process. On the contrary, one
of the main distinctions of the clever
reader is that without varying as to in-
tensity, he varies almost indefinitely as
to pace. This power of reading flexibly
comes mainly, of course, with practice.
For those who have lacked an early ex-
perience of books, the manipulation of
them is never likely to become the per-
fect and instinctive process of adjust-
ment which it should be. People often
achieve a certain degree of education and
refinement late in life, but seldom, I
think, the power of the accomplished
reading man. It is simply not to be ex-
pected. An adult who takes up the vio-
lin may get much amusement and profit
from his instrument, but he cannot hope
to master it. A certain increase of fa-
cility, however, the belated reader may
surely expect to gain from some sort of
observance of this simple principle of
adjustment.
This anxious but unskilled reader is
too likely to have a set gait, so many
words to the minute or lines to the hour.
An essay, an editorial, a chapter in a
novel or in the Bible, a scientific article,
144
The Contributors' Club.
a short story, if they contain the same
number of words, take up just the same
amount of this misguided person's time.
No wonder reading becomes an incubus
to him, with the appalling monotony of
its procession of printed words filing
endlessly before him. He really has
time enough, if he knew how to make
use of it. Eben Holden keeps him busy
for a week or more ; it should be read
in a few hours. He plods methodically
through Sir Walter, and finds him slow ;
the happy reader who can get Quentin
and his Isabelle satisfactorily married in
six hours does not. The trained reader
readjusts his focus for each objective.
Milton may be read in words or lines,
Macaulay in sentences, Thackeray in
paragraphs, Conan Doyle in pages. The
eye, that is, readily gains the power of
taking in words in groups instead of sep-
arately. How large a group the glance
can manage varies with the seriousness
of the subject. With the same degree
of concentration, eye and mind will take
care of a page of the Prisoner of Zenda
as easily as they can absorb a line of
Macbeth, or one of Fitzgerald's quatrains.
Of course this disposes of the indolent
lolling style of reading, or rather makes
a rare indulgence of it. When one occa-
sionally comes upon the novel of his heart,
or the poem he has waited for, he may
well afford to consider it at his luxurious
leisure, minimizing labor by dilatoriness.
But as a rule the widely reading man is
not an indolent person. Not that he is
to be always keeping his nose in a book.
By regulating his pace, he not only cov-
ers an astonishing amount of ground in
reading, but makes room for other
things. He knows how to get the most
for his time, that is all. The bee does
not eat the flower to get the honey out
of it. The eye of the skilled reader acts
like a sixth sense, directing him to the
gist of the matter, in whatever form it
may appear. Twenty minutes yields all
that there is for him in the book which
his neighbor, knowing that it would
mean a week's spare hours, is careful to
avoid.
This, it may be said, sounds very much
like an advocacy of skimming. Skim-
ming and rapid reading are different
processes, but skimming is at times a
good thing, too ; even skipping becomes,
on occasion, a sacred duty. We may
go a step farther, for skimming implies
cream, and skipping, a foothold some-
where ; and many books deserve neither
of these less and least complimentary
modes of treatment. The eye brushes
a page or two, and the mind is hardly
called in to assist in a damnatory ver-
dict which is informal, but summary.
The experienced reader, in short, is an
artist, and, like other artists, attains his
highest powers only when he has learned
what to subordinate, to slight, even to
omit. The poor fellow whose con-
science will not let him refuse an equal-
ly deliberate consideration to every six
inches of black and white which comes
in his way may be an excellent husband
and father, a meritorious lawyer or mer-
chant, and a model citizen ; he is cer-
tainly not a good reader.
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
ittaga?ine of literature^, ^cience^ art, ana politics,
VOL. XO. AUG UST, 1902. No. DXXXVIII.
IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD.
LET it be made plain, in the begin-
ning, that the dear Lord had nothing to
do with it, for the doors of that poor
heart were fast closed against him, and
the benighted child within trembled,
ever trembled, to hear Love's timid
knocking: such, gentle reader, is the
teaching of gray seas and a bleak coast,
the voice of thunder is a voice of
warning, but the waving of the new-
blown blossom, where the sunlight falls
upon it, is a lure to damnation. It was
not the dear Lord: it was the Lord
God A'mighty, a fantastic miscon-
ception, the work of the blind minds of
men, which has small part with mercy
and the high leading of love. Men's
imaginations, being untutored and un-
confined, fashion queer gods of the
stuff the infinite contains. When they
roam afar, as from bleak places,
where no yellow fields, no broad, wav-
ing acres, yielding bounteously, make
love manifest to the children of men,
nor do vaulted forests all reverberant
to the wind's solemn strains inspire
souls to deeper longing, when they
roam afar, it may be, the gods they
fetch back are terrible gods. In Ragged
Harbor, which is a cleft in the New-
foundland upper shore, some men have
fashioned a god of rock and tempest and
the sea's rage, a gigantic, frowning
shape, throned in a mist, whereunder
black waters curl and hiss, and are cold
and without end ; and in the right hand
of the shape is a flaming rod of chas-
tisement, and on either side of the
throne sit grim angels, with inkpots and
pens, who jot down the sins of men,
relentlessly spying out their innermost
hearts; and behind the mist, far back
in the night, the flames of pain, which
are forked and writhing and lurid, light
up the clouds and form an aureole for
the shape, and provide him with his
halo. No, it was not the dear Lord
who had to do with the case of Naza-
reth Lute of Ragged Harbor, not the
Lord who lives in melting hearts and
therefrom compassionately proceeds to
the aid and comfort of all the sons of
men, even as it is written : it was mere-
ly the Lord God A'mighty.
Now, the father of this Lute, old
Richard Lute, of the path to Squid
Cove, where it rounds the Man-o'-War,
called his first - born, Nazareth, and
changed his own name to Jesus when
he was converted, believing it to be no
sin, but, indeed, a public confession of
old transgressions and new faith, a
deed of high merit, which might coun-
terbalance even so much as the past un-
righteousness of putting more sea water
than lobsters in the cans he had traded
with Luke Dart, and would so be count-
ed unto him when he stood on the waters
at the foot of the throne and the dread
account was put in his hand. "If it
goas agin them lobsters on the Lord God
A' mighty 's bill," he told the people,
" 't will do. If it oan'y goas agin the
lobsters, b'y, " he said to young Solomon
Stride, "maybe, maybe, b'y, I '11
146
In the Fear of the Lord.
have a balance t' me favor, an' I '11 slip
through the pearly gate. 'T were a
clever thought, b'y, changin' me name,
iss, 'twere; iss, 'twere!" There-
after, Jesus Lute lived righteously, ac-
cording to the commands of his God ;
but he died mad: because, as it has
been said, and I do verily believe, he
dwelt overmuch on those things which
are eternal, wondering, wondering,
wondering, in sunlight and mist and
night, off shore in the punt, laboring
at the splitting table, spreading fish on
the flake, everywhere, wondering all the
while whither souls took their flight.
So much of Richard Lute : and it must
be said, too, that the mother of this
Nazareth was of a piety exceeding deep.
She was famed in seven harbors for her
glory fits, for her visions and pro-
phecies and strange healings, and
from seven harbors folk came for to see,
when it was noised abroad that a glory
fit was upon her or at hand : to see and
to hear, and to interrogate the Lord
God A 'mighty concerning the time and
manner of death, for it was believed
that the Lord God A 'mighty spoke with
her lips at such times.
"But it gets the weather o' me how
that b'y comes by his wickedness, " said
old Solomon Stride, when Nazareth had
grown to be a man. "It do get the
weather o' me. He 've a gun'le load
of it sure he have. "
"They was nar a sinful hair to his
mother's head," asserted Priscilla, Sol-
omon's wife.
"Sure, noa, dear," said Solomon.
"Nor yet ar a one to his fawther's
when he had ar a one, afore he cap-
sized, poor mortal ; which he had n't t'
the madhouse t' Saint John's, they
says, 'cause he just would tear un out,
an' they was noa such thing as his
heavin* to."
" 'T is queer," replied Priscilla
thoughtfully. "But they be lots o'
things that 's queer about religion, "
she added, with a sigh, and plucking at
her apron. "An his mother were oan'y
here t' have a glory fit, us might find
out find out "
" What might us find out, dear ? "
"Sh-h-h! They be things about
Heaven 'tis not for we t' know."
"'Tis true; but the dear Lord is
wise wise an' kind, noa matter what
some poor folk trys t' make un out."
"The Lord God's- the Lord God
A'mighty, " said Priscilla quickly,
speaking in fear.
"I 'low he 'm better 'n us thinks,"
added Solomon, looking into the depths
of the sunset.
"Solomon, b'y, "urged Priscilla, "I
fear me you '11 be a-sittin' in the seat
o' the scorner afore long."
"Noa, dear," said Solomon. "Noa,
noa!"
To be sure, the wickedness of Naza-
reth Lute was of a most lusty, lively
character: not a dullard, shiftless
wickedness, which contents itself with
an unkempt beard, a sleep in the sun-
shine, and a maggoty punt. It was a
wickedness patent to all the folk of
Ragged Harbor: so, only the unright-
eous, who are wise in a way, and the
children, who are all-wise, loved him;
and it may be that the little people
loved him for one of his sins the sin
of unfailing jollity, in which he was
steeped. His beard, which was curly
and fair and rooted in rosy flesh, and
his voice, which was deep and throb-
bing, and his blue eye, which flashed
fire in the dusk, were, each in its way,
all wicked: the hearts of the maids
fluttered and told them so when he came
near. The poise of his head and his
quick, bold glance proclaimed him devil-
may-care ; and his saucy wit and irrev-
erence put the matter beyond all doubt.
His very gait his jaunty, piratical
roll down the Old Crow Road was
a flouting of the Lord God A'mighty,
before whom, as Uncle Simon Luff has
it, . men should bear themselves as
" wrigglin' worms. " He wickedly glo-
ried in his strength, in the breadth
and height and might of himself : ever
In the Fear of the Lord.
147
forgetting, as Uncle Simon said, that
the "grass withereth, an' the tall trees
is laid low." In boyhood, his ambi-
tions were all wicked ; for he longed to
live where he could go to the theatre,
of the glittering delights of which he
had read in a tract, and to win money
at cards, of which he had read in an-
other. Later, his long absences and
riotous returns were wicked; his hip
pocket bulged with wickedness for a
week after he came ashore from the
mail boat, and for the same week his
legs wickedly wabbled, and the air was
tainted with wickedness where he
breathed. The deeds he did on his
cruises were wicked, in truth, ever
more deeply wicked : wicked past con-
ception to the minds of men who do not
know the water fronts of cities, nor
have imagined the glaring temptations
which there lie in wait.
"They 's a spring o' sin in the in-
nards o' that there b'y," said Uncle
Simon Luff, "an' 'twill never run dry
'til the fires o' hell sap un up."
When Nazareth Lute was thirty- two
years old, he came ashore from the mail
boat one night in spring, after long
absence from Ragged Harbor; and he
was sober, and very solemn. He went
straight to his father's house, on the
Squid Cove path, where he now lived
alone ; and there he remained until the
evening of the next day, which was the
Sabbath. When Sammy Arnold tolled
the bell he set out for the meeting-house
in his punt, observing which, many
people went to church that night. At
the after-meeting, for which, curiously,
everybody waited, Nazareth stood up,
the first of all : whereupon there was a
rustle, then a strained hush, which filled
the little place, even to the shadows
where the rafters were.
" O friends, " he began, in a dry, fal-
tering voice, "I come here, the night,
I come here, where I were barn an'
raised, t' this here ha'bor where I
warked on me fawther's flake, as a wee
child, an' kept the head of his punt up
t' the wind many a day on the Grap-
plin' Hook grounds, as a lad, an' jigged
squid for his bait many a sunset time
after the capelin school was gone off
shore, here, where I were a paddle
punt fisherman on me own hook, as a
man, I come here, O friends, the
night, " his voice now rising tremulous-
ly, "f tell all you folk how my poor
soul were saved from the damnation o'
the Lard God A'mighty." He stopped
to wet his lips, and to gulp, for lips
and throat were dried out ; then he went
on, the light of conviction burning ever
brighter in his eyes: "O friends, I 've
been standin' on the brink o' hell these
many year, all afire o' the stinkin'
flames o' sin, as you knows; an' the
warnin's o' the Lard God A'mighty,
hisself, which he sent me in three
wrecks an' the measles, was like the
shadow o' some small cloud, like a
shadow a-runnin' over the sea; for the
shadow passes quickly, an' the sea is
the same as he were afore. (Amen,
an* Amen, O Lard!) Likewise, O
friends, was the warnin's o' God
A'mighty t' my poor soul," he went
on, his voice of a sudden charged with
the tearful quality of humiliation,
"'til Toosday, a week gone, at six
o'clock, or thereabouts, in themarnin'.
The day afore that, O friends, I were
bound out from Saint John's t' Twillin-
gate, in ballast o' salt, along o' Skipper
Peter Alexander Bull, an' a crew o'
four hands, which is some 'at short-
handed for Skipper Peter Alexander's
schooner, as you all knows. (O Lard!)
When we was two hours out the skipper
he got drunk; an' the cook, which was
Jonathan Bluff, from this here ha'bor,
he were drunk a 'ready, as I knows, for
I lent a hand t' stow un away when he
come aboard ; an' when the skipper he
got drunk, an' the cook he were drunk
a'ready, James Thomson and William
Cole they got drunk, too, for they was
half drunk an' knowed noa better."
They were now all listening enrapt;
148
In the Fear of the Lord.
and from time to time they broke into
exclamations, as they were moved by
Nazareth's dramatic recital. "So I
were the oan'y able hand aboard o'
she," the man went on, speaking
hoarsely, as though again in terror of
the thing he did, "an' I says t' myself,
though I had the wheel, O friends
(Lard, Lard!), I said t' myself, which
was sunk in iniquity, an' knowed not
the heaviness o' sin (Save un, O Lard,
save un!), says I, ' I might 's well be
drunk, too.' So I goas down t' the
fo'cas'le, O friends, an' in the fo'cas'le
I gets me dunnybag (O Lard !), an' from
the dunnybag I takes a bottle (0 Lard,
Lard !), an' out o' the bottle I draws
the stopper (O Lard A'mighty!), an'
1 raises the bottle t' me lips (Stop un,
O Lard !), an' an' I gets drunk,
then an' there; so then the schooner
she were in the hands o' the wind,
which it were blowin' so light as a' most
nothin' from the sou 'east, an' we was
well off shore."
Nazareth paused. He raised his right
arm, and looked up, as though in sup-
plication. His head dropped over his
breast, and he was still silent ; so the
old parson began this hymn :
" When, rising from the bed of death,
O'erwhelm'd with guilt and fear,
I see my Maker face to face,
Oh, how shall I appear ?
" If yet, while pardon may be found
And mercy may be sought,
My heart with inward horror shrinks
And trembles at the thought,
"When thou, O Lord, shalt stand disclosed,
In majesty severe,
And sit in judgment on my soul,
Oh, how shall I appear ?
With him all the people sang, from
the shrill- voiced young to the quaver-
ing, palsied old, sang with joyful en-
thusiasm, as they who have escaped
great terror.
"In the night," Nazareth went on,
"I hears a noise; so I said, ' What 's
that ? ' The skipper he woke up, an'
says, < 'T is a rat. ' 'T was n't, though ;
but I falls asleep once moare, an' when
I wakes up in the marnin' I be all
a-shakin' and blinded by the liquor, an'
I sees queer streaks o' green an' yellow
in the air. So I goas on deck, an'
there I sees that the schooner do be
rubbin' her nose fair agin Yellow Rock,
by the tickle t' Seldom Cove; an'
she 've wrecked her bowsprit, an' she 've
like t' stove a hoale in her port side.
But the sea is all ripplin', an' they is
hardly noa wind ; so she pounds easy. "
Nazareth looked up to the grimy rafters
overhead, and the words following he
addressed to the Lord his God, his
voice thrilling as his soul's exaltation
increased: "An' I looked up, an' I
sees you, O Lard God A'mighty, sit-
tin' on the top o' Yellow Rock; an'
your cloathes do be spun o' fog, an' your
face is hid from me. Iss, O Lard, you
was a-lookin' down on me; an' you
sings out, O Lard, ' Nazareth Lute, '
you sings out, ' repent ! ' But behind
the cloud which hid your face, like a
veil, O Lard God A'mighty, I knowed
you was a-frownin' ; an' I were scared,
an' said nar a word. ' Nazareth Lute, '
you sings out agin, l repent afore
you 're lost ! ' But I were still scared,
O Lard God A'mighty, for the light o'
the cloud went out, an' it were black,
like the first cloud of a great starm.
Nazareth Lute, ' you says for the third
time, ' repent afore you 're hove into
the fires o' hell ! ' Then the cloud shiv-
ered, like when the wind tears un t' bits ;
an' my voice come t' me, an' I says,
* Iss, Lard, I will.' ' Turning once
more to the people, Nazareth said:
"Then I sings out, ( All hands on
deck ! ' But the crew was drunk an'
did not come; an' when I looked up
again t' Yellow Rock, the Lard was
gone from that place. So I soused the
hands with buckets o' water, O friends;
an' over the head o' the skipper I
slushed three of un, for he were the
drunkest of all. So when they was so-
ber agin we set sail, an' the Lard sent
In the Fear of the Lord.
149
us a fair time, an' we come safe t'
Twillingate. The fight do be over for
me, O friends, the long, long fight-
I fought with sin. 'Tis over now,
all over; an' I've come t' peace.
For I found the Lard God A 'mighty
a-sittin' there on Yellow Rock, by the
tickle t' Seldom Cove, a-frownin' in a
cloud."
That was the manner of the conver-
sion of Nazareth Lute ; and thereafter
he lived righteously, even as his father
had lived, according to the commands
of the Lord God A' mighty, his God,
whom he had fashioned of tempest and
rock and the sea's rage, with which his
land had abundantly provided him.
Thereafter he lived righteously ; but his
eyes were blinded to all those beauties,
both great and small, which the dear
Lord has strewn in hearts and places, in
love withholding not ; and his ears were
stopped against the tender whisperings
which twilight winds waft with them,
from the infinite to the infinite: for it
was as though the cloud and flame of
the wrath of his God, following after,
cast a shadow before him, and filled the
whole earth with the thunder and roar
and crackling of their pursuit. There-
upon, indeed, he became a fisherman
again, and thereafter he lived right-
eously: for he did thereafter not do
many things which he had been used to
doing. All the maids with dimpled
cheeks and all the children knew that
he put the sin of jollity far from him.
Also, it is told to this day, when men
speak of righteous lives, how that he
hung his last clay pipe from a rafter,
and looked upon it morning and even-
ing, after prayer, to remind himself
that sensual delights, such as are con-
tained in the black, cracked bowls of
pipes, are like snares set for the souls
of the unwary. Moreover, it can be
proved how that once, when he could
not take the punt to his nets on a Sat-
urday night, the wind being high, he
freed all the fish on Monday morning,
freed them all, the quintal upon quintal
of gleaming fish in the trap; more,
then and there in the nets by chance,
than the Lord God A 'mighty had grant-
ed to his labor all that summer through ;
but, thereby, he saved himself from the
charge of desecrating the Sabbath in
permitting his nets to work on that day,
which the grim angels were waiting to
note down against him, and he gained
greatly in humility and in strength
against temptation. He lived right-
eously : for, as he fled the wrath of his
God, the cloud and flame were close be-
hind; and at the end of the toilsome
path, as upon the crest of a long hill,
was set the City of Light and the gates
of the City, wherethrough men passed
to a shiny splendor.
"I been thinkin', b'y," he said to
Solomon Stride, at the time of one
blood-red sunset, when their punts were
side by side coming in from the Mad
Mull grounds, "that I doan't know as
I '11 want one o' they golden harps."
"Sure, an' why not, b'y? " Solomon
called over the purpling water.
"I doan't know as I will, " said Naz-
areth, " for I were never much of a hand
at the jew's-harp. 'T will be gran' for
you, b'y. You was always a wonder-
ful hand at that, an' the harp o' gold
'11 come easy t' 1'arn. Sure, you '11
pick un up in a day. But with me 't is
different. I I can't so much 's
whistle a hymn, Solomon. Noa, b'y,
I doan't know as I '11 want one o' they
harps; but if they 's a sea there, b'y,
they 's fish in it; an' if the sea 's gold,
the fish 's gold; an' 't is like, b'y,
they '11 be hooks as well as harps, an'
maybe a trap an' a seine or two. An'
if they 's "
"You is all wrong about Heaven,"
said Solomon. "They 's noa eatin',
there, Nazareth."
" 'T is true, b'y, maybe iss, may-
be 't is," said Nazareth, in all humility
admitting the possibility of error.
"'T would be hard eatin', whatever.
But, maybe," with a reflective frown,
150
In the Fear of the Lord.
"they 's a queer kind o' teeth comes
with the new body. Oh, well, what-
ever, " with a sigh, "I doan't know
what I '11 do when I gets there sure
an' I doan't."
"You '11 take a grip on a harp, b'y, "
Solomon cried enthusiastically, "an'
you '11 swing your flipper over the gold-
en strings, an' "
"Noa, noa! 'T would be a sinful
waste o' good harps for the Lard God
A'mighty t' put one in my hands. I 'd
break un sure."
"But he 've a great heap o' them,
an' he 'd "
"Noa, noa!"
"But he'd 1'arn you, b'y; he'd
1'arn you t' " -
"Noa, b'y noa. 'T would be too
tough a job, an' I would n't put the
Lard God A'mighty t' the trouble o'
that. Noa, noa; if they 's noa fish in
that there sea, I doan't know what I '11
do when I gets there. I doan't know
what I '11 do, Solomon. I doan't know
what I '11 do all the time."
Nazareth Lute thought that a man
should either search diligently for things
to do in the last light of day, or be cast
down when there was no work about the
cottage, the punt, or the flake. He should
look to the condition of the capelin in
the loft, or gather soil for a new potato
patch : in his sight the sin of idleness
was like a clog to the neck of one who
traveled the road to the City of Light
the idleness of half-hours after sun-
set, it may be, when the fish were split,
and the unrighteous rested, and the
wicked had their way. One winter,
when he had mended his cod trap and
knitted a herring seine and a new salm-
on net, he set out to whittle the model
of a schooner, thinking to sell it to
Manuel of Burnt Arm, who builded five
schooners every year, and give the mon-
ey to the church, to the end that, at
last, Ragged fearbor might be in a fair
way toward having a parson all to her-
self. So he whittled, and whittled,
and whittled away ; and while the wood
took form under his fingers, even as he,
himself, directed, yielding to his veriest
whims, and gave promise of that grace
and strength which he, alone of all the
vrorld, had conceived, a new, flooding
joy came to him, such happiness as he
had not hoped for on earth or in heaven.
He whittled the drear days through,
and, in the night, while the wind swept
the hills and flung snow against the
panes, he sat long in the leaping fire-
light, whittling still, bending ever closer
over the forming thing in his hands,
creeping ever nearer to the expiring
blaze, and dreaming great dreams all
the while. In this work his soul found
vent ; even, it may be^ said, a touch of
the tiny hull a soft, lingering touch
in the night gave a comfort which
neither prayer nor fasting, nor any
other thing, could bring to his unrest ;
and, soon, his last waking thought was
not of the Lord God A'mighty, his God,
as it had been, nor yet of a yawning
hell, but of the thing which his hands
were forming. And when the model
was polished and mounted, which was
in that spring when old Simon Luff's
last grandson was born, he did not sell
it to Manuel of Burnt Arm; for he
wanted to know of his own knowledge,
when he saw the craft afloat, that the
builder had brought her promise to its
perfect fulfillment. So he determined
to build her himself. She would be, he
told himself, the work of his own hands :
and the work would be good. In the
summer he toiled hard at the fishing,
and in the winter following he cut tim-
ber in the inland woods, and hauled it
out with the dogs ; and in three years
he had the keel laid and two of the ribs
set in place.
"Solomon, b'y," he confided to Sol-
omon Stride, in a dark whisper, once,
"she '11 be the best sixty-tonner ever
sailed these seas once I get her
done."
"She'll be overlong in buildin', I
be thinkin'," said Solomon.
In the Fear of the Lord.
151
"Oh, I doan't know 's she will,"
Nazareth made reply. " 'T will be a
matter o' twelve year, maybe. But
once I get she done, Solomon once I
get she out o' the tickle in a switch
from the nor 'east once I doos, b'y,
she'll be a cracker t' goa! Iss, an'
she will."
"Iss, an' I hope so," said Solomon.
"But her keel '11 rot afore this time
twelve year."
"Iss, maybe, " said Nazareth. "I be
'lowin' for a rotten keel. Iss, I be
'lowin' t' use up two keels on this here
craft."
One day, old Uncle Simon Luff, row-
ing in from the grounds with but two
fish to show for the day's jigging, turned
his punt into the little cove where Naz-
areth was at work, and came ashore.
"They tells me," said he, "that you
be goain' t' use galvanized nails for
she," with a side nod toward the
schooner.
Nazareth's adze fell twice upon the
timber he was dubbing. " Iss, " said he.
"I be goain' t' use galvanized nails.
'Tis true."
"They tells me 't will cost a wonder-
ful sight moare."
"I calc'late $76.80 for nails, b'y,"
said Nazareth, as his adze fell again,
"which is ugh! as you says
ugh! a wonderful sight moare 'n
ugh ! wrought nails. "
Uncle Simon sat down on the keel.
"What do you 'low for your spars,
b'y?" he asked.
Nazareth spat on his hands, and an-
swered while he rubbed the horny palms
together. "Well, b'y, I can't cut the
spars single-handed, an' they 's noagood
timber in these parts," he said. "But
I can get un t' Burnt Arm, an' I can
tow un up with the punt : which it is
but a matter o' twenty mile, as you
knows. I 'low $150 for a set, an' $12
for a main boom, an' $4 for three gaffs
an' a topmast if I doan't cut un me-
self. But 't is a long time 'til I needs
un."
"Nazareth," said Uncle Simon,
"what do you 'low this schooner '11 cost
you ? "
Nazareth suspended the dubbing, and
put a foot on the keel. "I be goain' t'
make she a good schooner, Uncle Si-
mon, " he said solemnly. "So good a
schooner as ever sailed out of a ha'bor.
She '11 have twenty-five ribs to her body
frame, which is five moare 'n Manuel's
Duchess have ; an' I be goain' t' brace
her bows with oak for the ice. I be
goain' t' give she four sets o' clamps,
an' juniper top-sides, an' two an' a
quarter inch ceiling planking ; an' I '11
put a bolt where they 's call for a bolt.
She '11 have her suit o' sails from Saint
John's, an' I '11 serve her standin' rig-
gin', an' when it comes t' caulking I '11
horse her. Uncle Simon, b'y, I 'low
$767 for her timber, an' I 'low $550
for iron an' nails an' oakum an' wind-
lass an' harse pipes an' all they things ;
an' 't will cost me $1200 t' fit she out,
'lowin' I can get three anchors an' some
likely chain for $250, an' rope enough
fbr $80, an' a set o' blocks for $100,
an' the suit o' sails I wants for $400.
Maybe, Simon, countin' in me own
labor an' what little I hire at $900,
an' gettin' me smithy wark done t'
Burnt Arm for $250, she '11 cost me
$3500 afore I take she out o' the tickle
for t' try she. Simon," he concluded,
his voice a-thrill with deep purpose,
"she '11 be the best sixty- tonner what
ever sailed these seas ! "
"Nazareth," said Simon, "can you
do it, b'y?"
"Iss, Simon, if the Lard God
A'mighty sends the seals in the spring
an' a reasonable sign o' fish in season,
I '11 do it. If the Lard God A'mighty
leaves me take $200 out o' the sea each
year if he oan'y doos that I'll
sail she this spring come twelve year."
" 'T is a deal t' expect," urged Si-
mon, shaking his head. "S'pose the
Lard cuts you down t' $150 ? "
Nazareth scratched his head in a per-
plexed way. "I'd sail she, I s'pose, "
152
In the Fear of the Lord.
he said, "this spring come eighteen
year."
"Maybe," said Simon, for he had
looked back through the years he had
lived. "A man can do a good spell o'
wark in a life. But you 're lookin'
poor an' lean, b'y, " he added. "Eat
moare, " now rising to go to his punt,
"an' you '11 get a wonderful sight moare
wark out o' yourself."
" Doos you think so ? " asked Naza-
reth, looking up quickly, as though the
suggestion were new and most striking.
"I knows it," said Uncle Simon.
"Maybe, now, you 're right," added
Nazareth. "I '11 try it."
But at the end of twelve years, which
was the time when Uncle Simon's last
grandson was made a hand in the trap-
skiff, the schooner was still on the
stocks, though Nazareth Lute had near
worn out his life with pinching and
cruel work : for they were hard years,
/and the Lord God A 'mighty, his God,
had not generously rewarded the toil of
men. Uncle Simon Luff, who was now
surpassing old and gray, and, like a
prophet, stood upon the holiness of past
years, called upon the people to re-
pent of their sins, that the Lord God
A' mighty might be persuaded to with-
draw his anger from them. "Yea,
even," cried Uncle Simon, in one ec-
stasy at the meeting-house, "hunt out
the Jonah among you, an' heave un out
o' this here ha'bor! " Now, Nazareth
Lute, believing that Uncle Simon had
come to that holy age when the mouth
may utter wisdom which the mind con-
ceive th not, searched his heart for sin,
but found ~none: whereupon, he was
greatly distressed, for he thought to
appease the wrath of the Lord God
A' mighty with repentance, that the
Lord, his God, might grant the means to
make the schooner ready for launching.
Nevertheless, being exceeding anxious
to purge his heart of such sins as may
lurk in hearts all unsuspected, he put
ashes on his head for three nights, when
his fire went out ; for with his whole
heart he longed for the Lord God
A' mighty to restore his favor, that the
schooner might some day be finished.
And when, for three more years, the
Lord God still frowned upon Ragged
Harbor, he put no blame upon the Lord
God A' mighty, his God, for scorning his
poor propitiation, but, rather, blamed
himself for having no sackcloth at hand
with which to array himself.
"They 's a good sign o' fish t' Round
Ha'bor, " said Solomon Stride to Naza-
reth, in the beginning of that season,
when the news first came down. " 'T is
like they '11 strike here. 'T will be a
gran' cotch o' fish this year, I 'm
thinkinV
"Doos you think so, b'y ? " said Naz-
areth, his face lighting up. "Solomon,
b'y, if I can oan'y get me schooner
done, if I can oan'y get she done
afore I dies, I '11 not be much afeard
t' face the Lard God A'mighty when I
stands afore the throne."
"Noa, noa, lad sure noa! "
"Solomon, when the Lard God
A'mighty says t' me, ' Nazareth Lute,
what has you got t' show for the life I
give you? ' I 'll/ say, t O Lard God
A'mighty,' I '11 say, ' I built the fast-
est sixty-tonner what ever sailed these
seas.' An' he '11 say, ' Good an' faith-
ful sarvent, ' he '11 say, * enter into thy
reward, for you done well along o' that
there schooner.' An' I been thinkin',
o' late, Solomon," Nazareth went on,
letting his voice fall to a confidential
whisper, "that he '11 say a ward or two
moare 'n that. Maybe," with a sweet,
radiant smile, "he '11 say, ' Nazareth
Lute, ' he '11 say afore all the angels,
* I 'm proud o' you, b'y, I'm fair
proud o' you.' '
"Iss, an' he will," said Solomon
gently, for he perceived that the strain
of toil and longing had somewhat weak-
ened Nazareth for the time. "Sure,
he '11 say them very words. I knows
it."
" Maybe, " said Nazareth ; then, with
a wise wag of his head: "'T is hard
In the Fear of the Lord.
153
t' tell for sure, though, just what the
Lard God A'mighty will do. 'T is
wonderful hard, I 'm thinkin'."
"Iss, wonderful," said Solomon;
"but 't is sure t' be done right."
When Uncle Simon Luff's last grand-
son had learned to loiter at the Nee-
dle Rock to make eyes at the maids as
they passed, which was two years after
the season of plenty, Nazareth Lute
launched his schooner ; and with prayer
and psalm-singing and a pot of black-
berry jam she was christened the
Heavenly Hope. The days of tribu-
lation, when the great fear of the wrath
of the Lord God A'mighty descended
upon Ragged Harbor, were over : again,
with his whole heart, Nazareth Lute
longed to lay a guiding hand upon the
helm of the craft he had made, to
feel the thrill of her eager response to
the touch of his finger. Day-dreams
haunted him while he worked,
dreams of singing winds and a wake of
froth, of a pitching, heeling flight over
great waves, of swelling sails and of
foam at the rail, of squalls escaped, and
of gales weathered in the night. In
these long, sunny days, when all the
rocks of the harbor cheerily echoed the
noise of hammer and saw, and the smell
of oakum and paint and new wood was
in the air to delight in, he was happy :
for the cloud and flame of the wrath of
the Lord God A'mighty, his God, were
unperceived and forgotten. In these
days, too, Uncle Simon Luff puttered
about the deck, a querulous, flighty, tot-
tering old child : and sometimes he fan-
cied he was the master-builder of the
schooner, and gave orders, which Naza-
reth pretended to obey ; and sometimes
he fancied she was at sea in a gale, and
roared commands, at which times it was
hard to soothe him to quiet. But Naz-
areth Lute delighted in the company
and in the prattle, from sunny day to
sunny day, while he rigged the boat :
for he did not know that a revelation
impended and might come by the lips
of old Simon Luff, the inevitable,
crushing revelation of his idolatrous de-
parture from the one path of escape.
"Nazareth," said Uncle Simon
crossly one day when Nazareth was
caulking the forward deck planks, "I
told you t' horse them planks, an' you
isn't doin' it."
"Iss, I is, Uncle Simon, b'y," said
Nazareth, looking up with a smile. "I
be drivin' the oakum in thick an'
tight."
"Noa, you isn't!" said Uncle Si-
mon in a rage.
"Iss, b'y, sure "
Uncle Simon sprung away. He
straightened himself to his full stature
and lifted up his right hand. His long
white hair fell over his shoulders: his
white beard quivered, and his eyes
flashed, as the eyes of some indignant
prophet might.
"Nazareth Lute," he cried, "you
loves this here schooner moare 'n you
loves the Lard God A'mighty! "
Nazareth's mallet clattered harshly
on the deck. It had fallen from his
grasp, for the strength had gone out of
his hands. He rose, trembling.
"Take them wards back, Simon," he
said hoarsely. "Take un back, b'y,"
he pleaded. "They isn't true."
"Iss, an' they is true, " Simon grum-
bled. "This here schooner 's your gold-
en calf. The Lard God A'mighty '11
punish you for lovin' she moare 'n you
love him."
The cloud and flame x of the wrath of
the Lord God A'mighty seemed very
near to Nazareth. In a dazed way he
watched old Simon totter to the side
and climb into his punt : watched him
row out from the ship.
"Simon," he called earnestly, "say
't is n't true what you said."
" 'T is, an' 't is, an' can't be 't iser, "
said Simon.
Nazareth was struck a mortal blow.
When the light failed, that night,
and there remained but the wan light
154
In the Fear of the Lord.
of the stars to guide the work of his
hands, Nazareth Lute put aside his mal-
let and his oakum; and he stretched
himself out on the forward deck, with
his face upturned, that he might pon-
der again, in the night's silence, the
words of Simon Luff: for Simon was
old, very old and white-haired ; and he
had lived a long life without sin, as
men knew, and had at last come to
those days wherein strange inspirations
and communications are vouchsafed to
holy men. And Nazareth fell asleep
while from the stars to the shimmer-
ing water, and from the sea's misty rim
to the first shrubs and shadows of the
wilderness, the infinite hymned the
praises of great works, he fell asleep;
and while star and shadow and misty
water still joined with the wilderness
and great rocks in the enravishing
strain, he dreamed a dream : a dream
of the Lord God A' mighty, who ap-
peared in a glowing cloud above him.
Now, the words of the Lord God
A 'mighty, his God, whom he had made
in his blindness of tempest and naked
rock and the sea's hard wrath, I here,
in all compassion for Nazareth Lute, set
down as they were told by him to one
who told them to me.
"Nazareth Lute!" said the Lord
God A'mighty.
"Here I be, O Lard," said Nazareth
Lute.
The glowing cloud was a cloud of
changing colors, of gold and purple
and gray and all sunset tints: and, of
a sudden, it melted from gold to gray.
"Nazareth Lute!" said the Lord
God A'mignty.
Now, Nazareth Lute trembled ex-
ceedingly, for he knew that the Lord
God A'mighty, his God, had come in
wrath to reprove him for his idolatry;
and he was afraid.
"Here I be, O Lard," he made an-
swer.
But the Lord withheld his voice for
a time, and Nazareth knew that he was
frowning in the gray cloud.
"Nazareth Lute!" said the Lord
God A'mighty, for the third time.
"Iss, Lard," said Nazareth Lute.
" 'T is Nazareth a-speakin'. Doos you
not know me, Lard ? "
" Oh, I knows you, never fear, " said
the Lord God A'mighty.
"Sure, you doos, O Lard," said
Nazareth. "I been sarvin' you ever
since that day I seen you sittin' on Yel-
low Rock, by the tickle t' Seldom Cove.
You knows me, Lard."
Then a drear silence : and roundabout
was deep night, but the light of the
crimson cloud fell upon the shrouds, and
upon the thrice-dubbed planks of the
deck, and upon the mallet near by ; so
the man knew that he was yet upon the
deck of his own schooner, and he was
comforted.
"Scuttle this here fore-an' -after,"
said the Lord God A'mighty.
Now, for a time, Nazareth Lute had
no voice to plead against the command
of the Lord God A'mighty, for he
knew that the words of the Lord stand
forever.
"O Lard," he cried out, at last,
"leave me sail she once just once, O
Lard God A'mighty!"
The cloud of changing colors hung in
its place ; but no words fell upon the
waiting ears of Nazareth Lute.
"O Lard," he cried, "leave me put
her sails on, an' sell she, an' give the
money t' the church! "
But the cloud of changing colors
made no answer: yet the very silence
was an answer.
"O Lard," said Nazareth Lute,
braving the anger of the Lord, "leave
me keep she. Leave me let she ride
at anchor an' rot but leave me keep
she by me."
Still the cloud of changing colors
kept silence.
"O Lard," said Nazareth Lute, for
his heart was breaking, and he no
longer feared the wrath of the Lord
God A'mighty, "'t isn't fair sure,
't is n't fair. She 've been well build-
In the Fear of the Lord.
155.
ed, O Lard. She 'd be the best sixty-
tonner in these parts. Why, Lard,
must I scuttle "
"Nazareth Lute, does you hear me ? "
"Iss, Lard; but"
"Nazareth Lute," cried the Lord
God A 'mighty from the depths of the
black cloud, "stop your prate! 'T is
not for wrigglin' worms t' know the
mysteries o' the heaven an' o' the earth.
An you doan't scuttle this here fore-
an' -after, she '11 wreck on her first
v'y'ge, an' all hands '11 loss themselves.
Mind that, Nazareth Lute ! "
Whereupon, the cloud of changing
colors vanished : and all things were as
they had been when the daylight failed
from the stars to the shimmering
water, and from the sea's misty rim to
the first shrubs and shadows of the wil-
derness. But the hymn in praise of
great works fell upon the ears of a numb
soul.
Now, Nazareth Lute told no man
what the Lord God A' mighty, his God,
had commanded him to do : and, from
year to year, continuing, he toiled early
and late, as he had done before, that his
schooner might be a great and perfect
work before he died ; but he dreamed
no more dreams of swelling sails and
a wake of froth. On the night when
Uncle Simon Luff's last grandson's first
child was born, which was long after
Uncle Simon's feet had grown used to
the streets of the City of Light, as men
said, Nazareth went to Solomon Stride's
cottage, under the Man-o'-War, to talk
a while ; for old Solomon lay ill abed,
and Nazareth's work was done. The
shadows were then stealing out of the
wilderness upon the heels of the sun's
red glory: and behind lurked the dusk
and a clammy mist.
"Draw the curtains back, b'y, " said
Solomon. "Leave us see the sun sink
in the sea. 'Tis a gran' sight."
The rim of the sea was a flaring red
and gold : a great, solemn glory filled
all the sky.
"They tells me," said Solomon, af-
ter a time, "that you got the suit o'
sails from Saint John's by the last
mail boat."
"Iss, b'y," said Nazareth. "I fit-
ted un on, a week gone Toosday. Me
wark 's done, b'y. The schooner 's fin-
ished. She 've been lyin' off Mad Mull
for five days over fifteen fathom o'
water at low tide."
"She've been well builded, Naza-
reth. She 've been well builded."
" Iss the best sixty-tonner in these
parts. I made she that, Solomon, as
I said I would."
"Looks like us '11 have a switch from
the nor 'east the morrow," said Solo-
mon, turning from the sunset. "'Tis
like you '11 try she then."
"Noa, Solomon."
" 'T will be a gran' wind, I 'm think-
in', b'y."
But, while the gloaming shadows
gathered over the harbor water, Naza-
reth told Solomon Stride of the vision
in which the Lord God A 'mighty, his
God, had appeared to him : and when
he was done, the dusk had driven the
flush of pink in upon the sun and was
pressing upon the red and gold at the
edge of the world.
"'T were not the Lard a-speakin' ! "
Solomon cried. "'T were not, b'y
'twere not! "
" Doos you think not, Solomon ? "
said Nazareth softly. "But you for-
gets about the sacrifice an' propitiation
for sin."
"'T were n't the Lard," said Solo-
mon.
"You forgets, Solomon," said Naz-
areth, in all simplicity, "that I seed
the Lard once afore, a-sittin there on
Yellow Rock. Iss, b'y, I seed un once
afore, an' now I knows un when I sees
un. 'Twere he, b'y iss, 't were."
"'Twere not the Lard said them
wards, " said Solomon.
"You forgets, Solomon," said Naz-
areth, "that the Lard God A'mighty
sung out t' Abraham, one day, an' told
156
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
un t* offer up Isaac as a burnt offer in'.
T' offer up his son, Solomon t' offer
up his son. He 've oan'y asked a
schooner o' me."
"Iss, Nazareth, he done that," said
Solomon. "But he sent an angel in
time t' save that poor lad's life : which
were what he intended t' do, all the
time."
"Iss," said Nazareth, as in a dream,
"he sent an angel."
The night, advancing swiftly, thrust
the last sunset color over the rim of the
sea; and it was dark.
"Solomon," said Nazareth, "for
four nights I been on the deck o j that
there schooner, watchin' for the angel
o' the Lard, but none come. Solomon, "
he faltered, "I been waitin', an' wait-
in', an' waitin', but the Lard God
A 'mighty sends noa angel t' me."
"Did the new day come? " said Sol-
omon earnestly, lifting himself on his
elbow.
"Iss, the new day come."
"Seems t' me, Nazareth," said Sol-
omon, "that the dear Lard peeps out
o' every dawn t' bless us poor folk."
" Noa, noa, " Nazareth groaned ; " the
Lard God A 'mighty was not in them
dawns, nor yet the angel o' the Lard ;
for I kep' a sharp lookout, an' I 'd 'a'
seed un if they was there. Noa, noa,
b'y, " he went on, speaking with rising
firmness, "he 've asked a sacrifice o'
me, an' he means t' have me make it.
She've been fitted out with all the
things she needs to her cask-dipper,
b'y, an' her buzzie an' anchor-light.
I 've painted her sides, an' swabbed
down her deck, an' made she all neat
an' trim an' shipshape. She 's all
ready t' be offered up all ready,
now. I 'm fair sad t' think but
I 'm goain' t' "
t'What do it all matter? " said Solo-
mon, falling back on his pillow, wearied
out. "What do it matter so 's a man
trys t' please the dear Lard in all he
doos?"
"Iss, Solomon," said Nazareth,
"what do it all matter, so 's a man
oan'y saves his soul from the fires o'
hell?"
And Nazareth went out : and in that
night he scuttled his schooner, even as
he believed the Lord God A 'mighty,
his God, had commanded him to do.
Norman Duncan.
THE REVIVAL OF POETIC DRAMA.
IT is probably safe to say that since
the days of Shirley, that is, since the ex-
perience of men who might have known
Shakespeare, the present is the first oc-
casion upon which two dramatic poems,
of real and high literary merit, by the
same author, have enjoyed runs of suc-
cess at the same time upon the London
stage. Even although Mr. Stephen Phil-
lips should prove to be one of those swal-
lows who do not make a summer, and
although poetic drama should once more
sink into desuetude, the vogue of his
beautiful plays will remain a cheering
landmark in the history of our literature.
It will encourage us to go on hoping,
even though such a triumph should not
occur again for another two hundred and
fifty years. But it is impossible in the
flush of his very interesting experiments
to take a view relatively so gloomy as
this. We prefer to believe, and we are
justified in hoping, that the perennial
yearning for beauty and harmony and
mystery, which is embodied in the heart
even of the London playgoer, may be so
fostered and fed by Ulysses and by Paolo
and Francesca that it will not be content
in future to be persistently snubbed and
silenced as it has been in the past.
The JRevival of Poetic Drama.
157
It seems worth while to consider, from
a perfectly common-sense point of view,
what is the reason of the difficulty which
English poets have hitherto found in
making their verse listened to with en-
joyment on the stage. That in some
countries poetry and large bodies of plea-
sure-seekers are able to shake hands
across the footlights is absolutely certain.
We have only to look at France, where
the tragedies of Corneille and Racine
which are nothing if they are not poe-
try have delighted successive genera-
tions, without intermission, since the very
time, when we, in England, began to
find stage poetry so difficult as to be
practically impossible. If gay, social, and
lively people, in large, recurrent num-
bers, can still be induced to sit, breath-
less, through five-act tragedies of elabo-
rately rhymed poetry, like Le Cid and
Phedre, appreciating the drama thor-
oughly, and no whit impeded by the har-
monies of the exquisite verse, it is plain
that there can be no necessary divorce
between a poem and the stage. But we
are told that France, and Scandinavia
with its saga-dramas, and Germany with
its Schiller and Goethe, and Italy from
Politian down to d' Annunzio are not
England or America, and that there is
something radically offensive to the An-
glo-Saxon playgoer in drama that has
pure literary form. Well, then, let us
keep our inquiry to England and see
what the facts are.
Before we consider what actors like
Betterton and Garrick and Macready did
or tried to do in the ages which preceded
Mr. Beerbohm Tree, and what strug-
gles dramatic poetry made during the
two centuries and a half while the green-
room waited for Mr. Phillips, it may be
desirable to combat one or two fallacies.
To the commonest argument against po-
etic drama, namely, that people go to the
theatre for an amusement which is al-
most infantile in its simplicity, an enter-
tainment which takes them out of them-
selves without strain or responsibility or
effort of any kind, the reply which I would
make is to resign the contention without
a struggle. I would admit it to be true
that eighty per cent of those who go to
the play, go there because it is a " play,"
because the lights, and the music, and
the pretty women, and the bright illu-
sions help them to " get through " the
evening ; because they have worked too
hard and are worried, or have eaten too
much food and are comatose, or have
risked too much money and are anxious ;
and because they want, not an intellec-
tual stimulus, but a physical and moral
sedative. This is a fact, and in our
modern existence it is not likely to di-
minish in importance. There will al-
ways be this eighty per cent who take
their theatre as if it were morphia, or at
least as if it were a glass of champagne.
When we ask for a revival of poetic
drama, we do not forget the numerical
importance of this class, or its limited
powers of endurance. We propose that
it should continue to be catered for. But
we suggest that the residue, the twenty
per cent, are now strong enough to in-
sist on being catered for also.
Another fallacy, it appears to me, is
that poetry on the stage must be so lofty
and pompous a thing, so pharisaical, so
dictatorial, that common ears are stunned
by its sermons or glutted by its imagery
and its diction. We have allowed our-
selves to accept the notion that poetic
drama must not be expected to give
pleasure, but only instruction and intel-
lectual stimulus. There is an idea that
it is connected with "examinations,"
that it may involve a university profes-
sor holding forth on the stage between
the acts. For my own part, I am one
of those who are not averse to a serious
moral purpose on the stage. Quite oc-
casionally, I can listen to a sermon from
the footlights, and I have never been
able to understand why a " problem "
play which is purely and simply a
play which excites difference of opinion
regarding a moot point in morals
158
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
should be considered so detestable and
make the critics so excessively angry. I
confess I believe it to be these latter
gentlemen, and not the real public, who
bridle so much at the idea that some one
is trying to preach to them in the thea-
tre. But we are not dealing with " prob-
lem " plays to-day ; we are speaking of
" poetic " dramas of love and adventure
and romance, written in fine verse by
distinguished poets, and able to be en-
joyed as literature even in the absence
of scenery and lights and the glamour of
the actresses. It has certainly been our
error to make this class of play too
grandiloquent and too remote from hu-
man interests. Success awaits the poet
who will bring on to the boards the real
flush and glow of fancy, with perfect
dignity, yet in such a simple fashion that
every one can without difficulty follow
and appreciate.
Until the closure of the theatres under
the Commonwealth it may be said that
no distinction between vulgar and poetic
drama had been conceived. Whenever
a play was at all carefully composed, it
contained some concession to literary
effect. For instance, the late and very
popular comedy of The Wise Woman of
Hogsdon, a piece quite on a level with a
topical farce of our own day, is written
in loose, colloquial prose without any
ambition. Yet, even here, when a touch
of sentiment is required, or the attention
of the audience is to be concentrated, the
language braces itself up, and falls into
a blank verse march. In fact, so para-
mount was the literary tradition of the
drama, that after the playhouses were
shut up by the Puritans, plays went on
being written and printed, in which
everything was more and more recklessly
sacrificed to what was supposed to be
poetry, and by 1650 no one in England
could any longer write a drama which a
conceivable troupe of actors could have
played. This, to my mind, was the origin
of the deep-seated prejudice to poetic
drama in England ; it was dimly felt to
have been an element in the violent death
of the stage.
When the theatres began to be opened
again, just before the Restoration, some-
thing of the exterior form of poetic
drama clung for a long time to the fash-
ionable play. Taste has altered so com-
pletely that it is very difficult for us to
realize that the full-bottomed tragedies
and tragi-comedies of Dryden's day, in
pompous rhyme, with stately soliloquiz-
ings addressed to passive confidants, gave
poetic pleasure. They give no sort of
enjoyment to the majority of modern
readers. But some fifteen years ago I
had the great satisfaction of being pre-
sent when Dryden's Secret Love : or
The Maiden Queen was very sympa-
thetically and gracefully given, on a sin-
gle night, by a company of young pro-
fessional actors, and I was surprised to
perceive how much of the perfume and
dignity of poetry lingered around these
old, rejected rhymes of 1668. Now,
when everybody has been crowding to
Mr. Phillips's plays, it may seem odd to
say that I recall no performance of which
that of Herod has so sharply reminded
me as this of Dryden's Maiden Queen.
In a sense not our sense, indeed, but
that of their own age the playgoers of
Charles II. and James II. were votaries
of the poetic drama, and possessed, in a
bastard and impure form, something of
its magnificent tradition.
If I were reviewing Mr. Phillips's
talent, in detail, I should have something
to say about what appears to me to be
the invitation which it gives him to the
composition of opera. I will here only
pause to suggest that as the vulgarization
of drama, at the close of the seventeenth
century, became complete, it was only in
the masques and operas written for the
music of Purcell that poetry survived.
We have seen the opera of Dido and
^Eneas performed in London within the
last few months, and there has certainly
appeared no other work on the recent
stage with which Ulysses could be so
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
159
fairly compared. It is true that the verse
of Dido and .ZEneas is by Nahum Tate,
and is mainly contemptible ; but here is
the attitude, here the tradition, here the
last breath of the Renaissance spirit of
English poetic drama, and this was lost,
as it seems to me, for two hundred years,
to be restored, almost as it dropped from
the hands of Dryden and Betterton and
Purcell, by the combined talents of Mr.
Beerbohm Tree and Mr. Stephen Phil-
lips.
From the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury onward, what we observe in the
history of the English stage is the grow-
ing determination of audiences to be
given what they like rather than what
the author likes, and an equally steady
decline of the level of popular taste un-
til the author is utterly discouraged, and
cares no longer to do his best. But it is
very interesting to note how, again and
again, one group of persons of taste,
strenuously working together, has con-
trived for a moment to force poetic drama
on the boards again. The earliest and
the most remarkable instance of this in
the eighteenth century was the perform-
ance of Addison's Cato. Again I must
repeat that in this consideration we must
not be affected by our twentieth-century
attitude toward a particular work. We
cannot read Cato with enjoyment, we do
not, in fact, read Cato at all, but in the
sense in which we are now using the
phrase it was, to its own time, " poetic
drama " precisely as Midsummer Night's
Dream was to the age of Elizabeth or
Paolo and Francesca to the age of Ed-
ward VII. What contemporaries said
that they admired in it was the " beauty
of poetry which shines through the
whole." They accepted it as a protest
against the humdrum vulgarity into which
stage-writing had fallen. Here, at least,
in Cato nothing was sacrificed to the
b-oundlings ; here, at least, was the dig-
nll j of versified literature supported as
compiv^y ag t jj e g en i us O f a mos t ele-
gant writ, ould contriye> yet, with all
its prestige, with all the thunders of ap-
plause, with all the political and literary
influence concentrated on its encourage-
ment, Cato proved, in the long run, a
colossal failure.
The reasons why Cato failed should,
I think, be studied by any one who seeks
to understand why poetic drama has
been doomed so long to penitence and
exile. It is absolutely useless it was
useless in 1713, it will be useless in 1913
to invite a well-dressed crowd, of both
sexes, who have dined, to sit through a
whole evening listening to declamatory
dialogue in which " chill philosophy " is
discussed in terms of " unaffecting ele-
gance." Even when Addison's tragedy
was first produced, under the auspices of
such a claque as modern times have never
seen, of such a crowd of illustrious and
servile admirers as might turn our most
practiced " log-roller " green with envy,
even then criticism uttered the fatal
judgment, " deficiency of dramatic busi-
ness." We shall find, if we examine in
succession all the splendid failures which
lie, like wrecked carracks laden with
spice and pearl, on the shores of our dra-
matic literature, that this is the reef on
which, one after the other, each of them
has struck. They have been convinced
that fine sentiments, showy literature,
melodious versification, a fund of brilliant
fancy, would save their credit if they
could only secure an audience of sym-
pathetic and cultivated people, and not
one has understood that all the poetic
ornament in the world will not redeem
that fatal deficiency, the lack of " dra-
matic business."
The example of Cato was followed at
intervals, and with the closest exactitude,
all down the eighteenth century. The
next effort at first-class " poetic " drama
was that which culminated in the So-
phonisba of Thomson. The history of
this play reads like a solemn burlesque
of what we see repeated at least once in
every generation. The tone of the play-
houses had sunk to triviality and non-
160
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
sense ; lovers of literature looked round
to try to find somebody to redeem it;
and the young and brilliant poet of The
Seasons was discovered. He was urged
forward to do his best ; it was whispered
that the result of his efforts was extra-
ordinary. The very rehearsals of So-
phonisba were " dignified " by audiences
of the elite, " collected to anticipate the
delight that was preparing for the pub-
lic." Alas, when the event which was to
mark the year 1730 forever in white on
the fagade of the Tempfe of Fame came
off at length in a perfect furore of taste
and expectancy, " it was observed, that
nobody was much affected, and that the
company rose as from a moral lecture " !
Thomson was an excellent poet, and there
was nothing amiss with his sentiments
or his versification, but he had no idea of
" dramatic business." The disappointed
public chanted, " Oh ! Jemmy Thomson,
Jemmy Thomson Oh ! " and went about
its affairs.
A quarter of a century later it was the
turn of the Rev. John Home and his glo-
rious and immortal tragedy of Douglas.
Delirious eulogy paved the way for the
performance of this piece, which reflect-
ed with no little cleverness the new ro-
mantic feeling that was daily forcing it-
self into popularity.
" The angry spirit of the water shriek'd,"
one realizes with what rapture, mingled
with a fear that imagination was really
going " too far," that would be received
in 1756. So delicate a critic as Gray
wrote that the author of Douglas " seems
to me to have retrieved the true language
of the stage, which had been lost for
these hundred years." During the first
performance at Edinburgh, a youthful
and perfervid Scot leaped to his legs in
the pit, flung up his bonnet, and shrieked,
"Where's your Wully Shakespeare
noo ? " One hears the melancholy pat-
ter still :
" My name is Norval ; on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks."
It is like the sound of a hurdy-gurdy far
away. Ah! "Where's your Douglas
noo ? " He had in all the body of his sen-
timentality no fibre of " dramatic busi-
ness."
It would be tedious to pursue the re-
lation of these failures. The manner of
them is so uniform that one is amazed at
its regularity, at the mechanical futility
of successive generations of very clever
men. Obviously the eighteenth-century
patrons were searching for the wrong
quality, and, oddly enough, we went on
almost down the nineteenth century mak-
ing the same mistake. We have seen
that Addison and Thomson and " Doug-
las " Home were supposed to have done
all that was necessary when they re-
deemed the diction of the theatre fr6m
mediocrity. It was taken for granted
that all that was required of a poet was
that he should "retrieve the true lan-
guage of the stage." But what was not
seen, in spite of failure upon failure,
what was understood by Tennyson as
little as it had been understood by Ad-
dison, was that before you can put on the
embroidery of language you must have
a sound theatrical business as a basis and
a framework. The would be dramatic
poets were willing to turn the stage into
a platform or a pulpit or a concert-room ;
the one thing they would not do was to
treat it simply as a stage.
At the romantic revolution, one hun-
dred years ago, the theatre had a great
chance of reviving. In The Fall of
Robespierre in 1794, Coleridge and
Southey put forward, in dramatic form,
a simple representation of a recent fact.
In The Borderers, in 1795, Wordsworth
attempted, with unusual boldness, to deal
with an incident of fierce, illicit passion.
But these efforts did not even reach the
stage, and they continue to be mere cu-
riosities of literature. It is a very odd
fact, and one which has escaped general
attention, that the romantic movement
made an abortive attempt to work through
the theatre before it found 'is true field
The JKevival of Poetic Drama.
161
of action in lyrical poetry. If Words-
worth and Coleridge had happened to be
brought into closer relations of friendship
with some enterprising young manager
in 1796, it is conceivable that our litera-
ture might have been reformed on pure-
ly theatrical lines, as German literature
in the dramas of Schiller. But no en-
couragement was given them to appear
before the footlights, and Coleridge's
subsequent experiments on German bases,
his Waller.stein, his Zapolya, even his
moderately dramatic and not too poetic
Remorse give us no certainty that a
heaven-made playwright was crushed
when nobody would act his tragedy of
Osorio.
We pass over twenty years more in
our swift survey, and we find, in 1815,
the most popular poet of the day made
a member of the Managing Committee
of Drury Lane Theatre. This was By-
ron, through whose influence, indeed,
Coleridge's Remorse had been produced
some years earlier. It might have been
expected that now, if ever, the poetic
drama would have flourished in England.
But the business side of Byron's charac-
ter, his curious shrewdness and practical
judgment, asserted themselves. He had
accepted the responsibility as a matter
of affairs, and by no means with the in-
tention of being played tricks upon by
the Muses. We therefore search his
correspondence of this period in vain for
any proposals that his solemn compeers
should contribute high-flown poems to
his theatre. He is found occupied, like a
merchant, "in such complicated and ex-
tensive interests as the Drury Lane pro-
prietary " may offer, and if he rather
faintly suggests that Tom Moore should
write an opera for him, what he really
is eager about is some melodrama trans-
lated by Concanen from the French, or
some flashy drama in which the charms
of Fanny Kelly could be advertised.
In the very curious Detached Thoughts
which Byron put down in 1821, and
which were fully printed for the first
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 11
time in 1900, Byron makes some inter-
esting remarks about his own conduct as
a theatrical manager. He evidently feels
that he ought to have done something to
encourage the poetic drama, and, as peo-
ple are apt to do in looking back, he
thinks that he did a good deal. He had
recourse, " in hope and in despair," to
Sir Walter Scott ; he " tried Coleridge,
too ; " he dallied with Maturin, and sank
back upon Sir James Bland Burgess.
On the whole, one realizes that he was
foiled in faintly good intentions by his
colleagues, that he was not greatly in-
terested (at that time) in dramatic lit-
erature, that Drury Lane occupied his
thoughts simply in connection with its
opportunities of business and pleasure.
Byron's experience as the manager of a
great theatre was brief ; it was washed
away in the catastrophe of his domestic
fortunes. When he began to write plays
himself, he profited little by what expe-
rience he had enjoyed. After frenzied
efforts to prevent his own old theatre of
Drury Lane from acting Marino Faliero
in 1821, Byron sullenly withdrew the
injunction at the last, but the tragedy
was coldly received. Of the rest of his
dramas, not one was put on the boards
until long after the poet's death, nor has
one, in later representations, contrived
to hold public attention. I record only
a personal impression when I say that
there is a blank verse tragedy of Byron's
the half - forgotten Sardanapalus
which I can imagine forming an agree-
able spectacle in the hands of Mr. Beer-
bohm Tree. It was played in 1834 by
Macready, and in 1853 by Kean, with
some positive credit and advantage ; it
may be looked upon as perhaps the least
unsuccessful of nineteenth-century " po-
etic " plays.
The mention of Byron's tragedies
seems to remind us that Shelley said to
Leigh Hunt, " Certainly, if Marino Fa-
liero is a drama, The Cenci is not."
Since 1820, literary criticism has been
engaged in reversing these clauses. It
162
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
would probably be admitted that The
Cenci is not merely in the truest sense
dramatic, but the most brilliant example
of purely poetic drama written by an
English poet in the nineteenth century.
Yet no one sees it on the boards ; no
one has been found with courage enough
to accept the complicated infamy of its
personages. The character of Count
Francesco Cenci is extremely theatrical ;
its elements are calculated in the highest
degree to excite pity and terror on the
stage ; Shelley has imbued the scheme
of the intrigues which surround it with
an amount of dramatic business which
is surprising in a poet with no practical
knowledge of the requirements of the
stage. It is the subject the awful and
revolting scheme forever present in
the beholder's mind, that appalling sub-
ject which cannot be ignored or put
aside without sacrifice of significance to
every scene and every speech, which ex-
cludes The Cenci from the theatre. We
have here an instance of the peculiar
conditions of dramatic art. We can
read Shelley's tragedy, with all its wicked
coil of passions, without more emotion
than can be endured ; but if it were set
out before us on the public stage, visu-
ally and systematically, we should rise
from our seats and fly the house in hor-
ror.
Even if the subject of The Cenci were
one which the theatre could bear, there
would be other objections to it. It is
well contrived, but not well enough. An
actress of great genius would doubtless
make the speech of Beatrice to the guests,
" I do entreat you, go not ! " extremely
effective, and her part, in general, has
plenty of " business " in it. But it would
need marvelous powers of elocution to
prevent an audience from fretting at Or-
sino's unbroken soliloquy of sixty lines
toward the end of the second act, at
Giacomo's complicated descriptions, at
Cenci's long-drawn ravings. And these
are matters in the green tree of Shel-
ley's extremely passionate, adroit, and
skillful drama, which is still full of in-
tellectual life. What, then, is to be said
of the dry ? What of the scene of Mat-
urin and Sheil, of Sheridan Knowles
and Talfourd, of all that the beginning
and middle of the nineteenth century
took for poetic drama ? What, indeed,
if not that, absolutely without excep-
tion, it was founded upon a wrong concep-
tion of art, theatrical and poetic alike ?
The one significant fact in the earlier
half of the century was the attitude of
Macready to the theatre. He was the
one manager of his age who genuinely
preferred " poetic " drama, and desired
to encourage and promote it. To his
ardor, from 1825 to 1840, a certain re-
vival of romantic plays was due. He
commissioned various writers, Bulwer-
Lytton and Browning among them, to
compose tragedies for him in blank verse,
and he continued with extraordinary per-
tinacity to produce the bourgeois versi-
fied plays, in imitation of Massinger,
which were poured forth by the excel-
lent Sheridan Knowles before he left
the "loathed stage " and became a Bap-
tist minister. We are quaintly told that
Macready withdrew from the manage-
ment, first of Covent Garden, then of
Drury Lane, because he " found his de-
signs for the elevation of the stage ham-
pered and finally frustrated by the sor-
did aims of the proprietors and the ab-
sence of adequate public support." But
it is odd that it did not occur to him that
of course the public would not support
what did not amuse it, and, equally of
course, that the aims of the proprietors
of the theatre must include a decent re-
turn on the money they expended. How
a very clever actor and a sensible per-
son like Macready could go on hopeless-
ly producing objects of dreary diversion
such as Virginius and Ion, and plays far
more wooden than these, it passes the
mind of man to conjecture.
Finally, about a quarter of a century
ago, a fresh effort to revive poetic drama
was made by Mr. (now Sir) Henry
The Revival of Poetic Drama.
163
Irving. Of this, also, it is not now possi-
ble to speak without some depression of
spirits. One thing, indeed, must always
be remembered greatly to Mr. Irving's
credit. His famous revival of Hamlet
in 1874 reintroduced Shakespeare to the
London playgoer, and accustomed our
ears to the finest language presented in
a tragic manner, which was not always
inadequate, and was frequently intelli-
gent. But of encouragement to living
literature much was said during this Ly-
ceum period and remarkably little done.
Mr. Irving was fascinated by the oppor-
tunities which romantic melodrama of-
fered to the picturesque richness of the
performances which he liked to give,
and all the talk about poetry evaporated
in such plays as those of W. G. Wills,
whose unliterary and almost illiterate
Charles I. and Faust (the latter a really
shameful travesty of a masterpiece) did
much to lower the level of popular taste.
Meanwhile, Mr. Irving had some com-
munication with Browning, but the poet
would write nothing new, while the ac-
tor-manager refused to perform The Re-
turn of the Druses, as, indeed, he well
might. Encouragement of poetic drama
confined itself to the performance of one
or two plays by Tennyson, of which
Becket was the least insignificant. But
Irving grew less and less inclined, as
years went on, to adventure upon a new
play of any description.
It was necessary to recount, thus rap-
idly, the experience of the last two centu-
ries, to show how incessantly the desire
for poetic drama has reasserted itself,
and how completely it has been rejected
by successive generations of theatre-go-
ers. On the eve of considering what is
at least a very curious and interesting
recrudescence of this effort, it is worth
while looking back again to the eigh-
teenth century and asking ourselves what
has led to this constant failure. Why
is it that all the talent of Betterton and
Garrick and Kean and Macready, aid-
ed by all the talent of Addison and
Thomson and Byron and Browning, has
been able to make precisely nothing at
all of poetic drama in England? If we
can only discover the reason, the can-
kerworm at the root of this, we may
possibly be able to deal more intelligent-
ly with the future. If we cannot dis-
cover it, the present hopeful gleam of
revival will sink and be quenched like
all its predecessors. My belief is that it
is possible to suggest the principal, the
most ubiquitous and most fatal danger,
but to indicate it, it is necessary for me
to wear the white sheet of penitence for
an error of judgment in the past.
Mr. William Archer, certainly the
most competent of our living theatrical
critics, suggested several years ago that
the customary mode of approaching such
a poem as Webster's Duchess of Malfy
was not correct as regards the stage. It
required some courage to suggest that
the tragedy on which every critic, from
Charles Lamb and Mr. Swinburne down-
wards, had lavished eulogy for its power
to move the emotions and its intense dra-
matic effect was really, for stage pur-
poses, a very bad play, and its " dread-
ful apparatus," as Elia calls it, the silly
terror of a bogy-man. I forget in what
connection Mr. Archer advanced these
censures ; I read them, much incensed,
since our holiest poetic shibboleth, the
Elizabethan Tradition, seemed to be
questioned and undermined. Successive
generations of analysts have dwelt more
and more occultly on the splendor of the
crowd of tragic poets who wrote from
the times of Kyd and Marlowe to the
times of Ford and Shirley. Not only
has the imagination, the literary pas-
sion, of these playwrights been considered
something above all censure, but it has
come to be a matter of faith that their
stagecraft was equally faultless. In short,
the universal opinion of the higher criti-
cism has been that nothing but the vul-
garity and ignorance of modern audi-
ences prevented Middleton and Tourneur
and the rest from being entirely enjoy-
164
Revival of Poetic Drama.
able on the boards to-day. With this
went the corollary that to produce a
tragedy worthy to be acted, you must
write as much as possible in the mode of
Tourneur and Middleton.1
Whether Mr. Archer, whose dealings
are mainly with the living drama, has
pushed his audacities further than to
question the value of the horror scenes
in The Duchess of Malf y, I do not know.
His remark, however, sunk deep into my
own breast, and (I have to confess) has
wrought a revolution there. I have been
reading the old " impressive scenes " of
the seventeenth-century dramatists over
again from the stage point of view, and
while I admire their poetry no less than
ever, I am bound to say that I can no
longer hold the faith of our fathers as to
their stage quality. In reading these
plays, and rediscovering them, a hundred
years ago, Charles Lamb found in them
" an exquisitiveness of moral sensibility,
making one to gush out tears of delight,"
and we may still find it there. But these
are closet beauties, and we may be sure
that half of them would be impercepti-
ble on the stage, and half of the rest
repulsive.
The great reason, then, in my humble
and converted opinion, why poetic drama
since the seventeenth century has inevi-
tably failed in England, is that it has re-
mained faithful to the Elizabethan Tra-
dition. This has been followed by every
writer of a play in verse. It haunts us,
it oppresses us, it destroys us. On the
merits of the seventeenth-century drama,
it is no longer needful to insist. The
silver trumpets of Mr. Swinburne's praise
are ever in our ears ; he ceases not from
celebrating " the dawn-enkindled quire "
of starry playwrights. But, on the other
hand, why is it forbidden to point out
how violent and excessive they are, how
wearisome in their iterations, how con-
fused, wordy, and incoherent ? These
are faults which the reader of a dramatic
poem easily skips over and forgets ; but
these are what ruin a play upon the
stage. These violences and verbosities,
this lack of thought for narrative evolu-
tion, this absence of consideration for
the eye and ear of the audience, have
come to be accepted as essential charac-
teristics of poetic drama. This is the
unshaken Elizabethan faith, and it is
this that has wrecked play after play on
the English stage. If poetry, in the fu-
ture, is to speak from the footlights, it
must avoid the Elizabethan Tradition as
it would the plague.
The great hope of the newest revival
of poetic drama in England lies, to my
mind, in the fact that it is more inde-
pendent of the Elizabethan Tradition
than any previous movement of the kind
has been. Neither Mr. Yeats in his Irish
folk - plays, nor Mr. Stephen Phillips
in his three remarkably successful ex-
periments, has permitted himself to be
bound down by the mannerisms which
so grievously handicapped, to speak of
no others, such illustrious predecessors
of theirs as Tennyson, Browning, and
Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Yeats, in common
with M. Maeterlinck and certain other
Continental playwrights of the latest
school, obtains new effects by plunging
deeper than the dramatist has hitherto
been expected to plunge into the agita-
tions and exigencies of the soul. He
uses the symbol to awaken the mystical
sense ; he works before our eyes the psy-
chological phenomena of mystery, and
excites our curiosity with regard to those
" invisible principles " on which the au-
thor of La Princesse Maleine delights
to insist. In this species of drama, with
its incessant suggestion of the unseen,
the unknown, there is something child-
like. It takes us back to the infancy
of feeling, to the May-time of the world.
It does not pretend and would not desire
to obtain gross successes in the popular
theatres of large world centres.
The dramatic poetry of Mr. Stephen
Phillips, on the other hand, does make
that pretension, and it is difficult not to
believe that the performances of Herod
The ^Revival of Poetic Drama.
165
in 1901 and of Ulysses and Paolo and
Francesca in 1902 will take an inter-
esting place in the history of theatrical
literature. For it is important to notice
that Mr. Phillips does not separate him-
self, as M. Maeterlinck and Mr. Yeats
do, from the common observations of
mankind. In his plays we discover no
effort to deal with any but the superfi-
cial aspects of life and passion. He con-
fines himself, in a remarkable degree, to
the obvious characteristics of emotion.
It is these, indeed, which most appeal to
the modern playgoer, and when Mr.
Phillips succeeds in pleasing alike the
seeker after delicate literary sensations
and the average sensual person in the
stalls, he achieves a remarkable triumph
of tact. That he does it without re-
course to the Elizabethan Tradition is
another proof of his adroitness. His
theatrical pretensions are the more easy
to deal with because in all other respects
he is in no sense an inaugurator. Like
M. Rostand in France whose career
has in some ways curiously resembled
his Mr. Phillips is so little of an inno-
vator in his essential dramatic aesthetics,
that the extreme school deny to him the
merit of being a dramatic poet at all, his
genius except in its tact and adroit-
ness being entirely conservative and
reproductive.
The literary success of Mr. Stephen
Phillips is bound up in a remarkable
degree with praatical knowledge of stage
requirements. The poet is himself an
actor, he played with applause the
dignified and pleasing role of the Ghost
in Hamlet, and he has all that ac-
quaintance with the necessities and im-
possibilities of stage movement which
greater poets than he have utterly failed
for the want of. He has also, it would
seem, placed himself more unreservedly
than the writers of the old tradition were
willing to do in the hands of the actor-
manager. In particular, to refuse to
acknowledge the part of Mr. Beerbohm
Tree in this revival of poetic drama
would be to commit an act of flagrant
injustice. Mr. Tree believed in the pos-
sibility of bringing poetry out across the
footlights when the chasm between verse
and the people seemed to be at its widest
His productions of Shakespeare, tinc-
tured as they all have been with some-
thing too flamboyant and redundant for
an austere taste, curiously indicative
as we look back upon them of the bro-
caded and embroidered side of his own
genius as a manager, brought him into
close relations with romantic verse, and
with the treatment of what we call " pur-
ple passages." He felt, as we cannot
but surmise, that the total disregard of
purity of enunciation, which was the
malady of the Lyceum school of acting
twenty years ago, must be fatal to poe-
try, since, whatever the splendor of orna-
ment and whatever the subtlety of act-
ing, if the language of the piece is in-
audible the purpose of the poet must be
frustrated. Mr. Tree deserves no lit-
tle commendation for the clearness and
dignity of utterance upon which he in-
sists.
In working out this cardinal reform,
the clear and correct pronunciation
of English, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, and
indeed the whole London stage, owes
much to the Oxford company of beginners
trained so patiently and unobtrusively by
Mr. F. R. Benson. This troupe, in fact,
supplies the English stage to-day wijjjh
its most cultivated and, we may say, its
most academic actors. From this school,
by the way, Mr. Phillips himself pro-
ceeded. The company with which Mr.
Alexander plays Paolo and Francesca is
recruited from the same source, and it
is charming to see with what gravity,
with what reverence for the text, they
pronounce Mr. Phillips's romantic blank
verse, as if their object were to give as
much of its beauty as possible, and not
as little, which was the earlier tradition-
al plan. Our actors and managers, 4 in
fact, have at last accepted poetic drama
as a possible treasure to boast of, not
166
The Desert.
as a thing to be apologized for arid to
be hidden as much as possible out of
sight.
Mr. Stephen Phillips, then, would
seem to have succeeded in producing one
of those revivals of poetic drama which
occur in our history three or four times
in every century. Whether he will do
more than this, whether he will inaugu-
rate a new epoch of dramatic literature
remains to be experienced. We have
seen that the difficulty is not so much to
get a poem acted, amid the plaudits of
a clique, as to persuade the general pub-
lic to like it and to continue to support
it. At present, our advices are that the
London audiences liked Herod better
than could be expected, and are liking
Paolo and Francesca better still. In
the long run it is not by silly personal
friends of the author " claiming his kin-
ship with Sophocles and with Dante "
that a new writer for the stage is sup-
ported. The poetic inventor who writes
for the stage has to learn that he cannot
trust to the flattery of his associates. For
him the severest tests alone are pre-
pared ; he must descend, like Ulysses,
" to gather tidings of his land
There, in the dark world, and win back his
way."
Mr. Stephen Phillips has been the vic-
tim of more injudicious praise than is
often poured out upon young writers
even in this crude and impetuous age.
But he has shown qualities of power and
reserve which give us hope that he will
survive the honeyed poison of his friends.
He possesses a high sense of beauty, and
great skill in preserving this under the
vulgar glare of the theatre. He can tell
a story theatrically so as to excite curi-
osity, and lead it steadily forward to the
close. He is fond of those familiar types
which are consecrated to romantic ideas
in the minds of all cultivated people,
and which relieve them of the strain of
following an unknown fable. He realizes
that modern audiences will not think
after dinner, and he is most adroit in
presenting to them romantic images, rich
costumes, and vivid emotions, without
offering to their intellects the smallest
strain. He does not attempt, like his
predecessors, to dictate to the actors im-
possible and unscenic tasks, but bends
his ambition to the habits and require-
ments of a practicable modern stage. In
short, he seems to represent the essence
of common sense applied to the difficult
task of reviving poetic drama upon the
boards where it flourished until two hun-
dred and fifty years ago, and where it
has never flourished since. We need not
talk rubbish about Sophocles, but we
ought, surely, to offer every reasonable
welcome to an experiment so graceful,
so civilizing, and so intelligent.
Edmund Gosse.
THE DESERT.
OPINIONS are frequently so hastily
formed, and conclusions are so often
erroneous, that they need not be taken
too seriously into account. One may
believe that the earth is borne upon the
back of a turtle, or that God will pun-
ish his creatures for performing the acts
that he caused them to perform; yet
these beliefs will not alter the real
truth of the matter. Truth is not ly-
ing at the bottom of a well, but is all
about the world, on the sea, in count-
ing houses, in workshops, and in tem-
ples. That it is often not recognized
makes no difference with the fact that
its presence is universal. Yet even
truth may seem to be a variable thing,
in accordance with conditions. To a
The Desert.
167
monk, withdrawal from the world and
the practice in the sternest way of ab-
stinence and continence may represent
the requirements of truth, but that
seeming of truth to him does not make
it truth to others. So it is with peo-
ple, and landscapes, and places. The
fact that a given man can see no beauty
away from Piccadilly or the Bois de
Boulogne does not disprove the beauty
of the Lake of Bourget or the Valley
of Apam. Because deserts, to most
people, are places of desolation that
they like to shut out of their sight if
they can, and out of their memories
when they have once passed over them
and are safely in the green valleys or
the fertile flat lands, it is none the less
true that they are among the most in-
teresting places upon the face of the
earth. Deserts are equal to the sea in
the ideas they give of extent, solitude,
and infinity, and equal to the moun-
tains in beauty and weirdness. One of
their chiefest beauties is that they are
far from the throngs and crowds of
tired, nervous, disappointed, and envious
men and women, who occupy much of
the nearer landscape in inhabited places.
In the uninhabited desert there are
no men bending under weights of un-
derpaid labor, no women eating out
their hearts because of unsatisfied crav-
ings and ambitions ; there are no richer
and no poorer ones there; no vexing
questions of schism and sect, or ruled
and rulers, of capital and labor, of nat-
ural desires and artificial morals. But
there is a brooding peace, as deep as
the fountains of life in the bosom of old
mother earth ; there is silent communion
with the powers and laws of nature,
with the Power or Force or God that
somewhere back of its visible and invis-
ible mysteries looks so carefully after
the things that exist that even the spar-
rows are accounted for; and there is a
content that is beyond money and power
and position and the accidents of birth,
station, and environment. Like old
Omar's
" Strip of herbage strown,"
the deserts surely are the places
" Where name of slave and sultan is forgot,"
and well forgot. They are the places
where Truth wears no disguises, and
whose face may be studied even by a fool.
The deserts too have physical beauty.
This varies with each one as much as
do the individual beauties and peculiar
attractions of different ranges of moun-
tains. With some there are the shift-
ing seas of gray sands, ever moving,
ever rearing themselves into hills and
dunes that are blown down again by the
next wind blown down and dispersed
and scattered as men have ever been dis-
persed and scattered, no matter how
strongly they allied themselves into
tribes and communities and nations.
Nor are the dunes much sooner forgot-
ten than are the men and the races, if
the measurement is computed by geo-
logical time. In such hot, gray des-
erts there is a strange weirdness, al-
most beauty, in the metallic sky, in the
occasional sagebush or cactus, in the
great ball of molten fire that is the sun.
But the chiefest charm in such deserts,
as with all, is in the fact that here one
can be alone, with himself and with na-
ture, and away from all the mistakes
and cares that burden life in the inhab-
ited places. When the Juggernaut car
of Civilization presses unduly and un-
usually hard, when things are most out
of joint, when the disease of progress is
at such an acute and critical stage that
a powerful counter-irritant is needed,
then the beauties of the hottest and most
barren desert are unfolded, and are ap-
preciated, as is strong drink after expo-
sure to severe cold. But for lasting
beauty and permanent enjoyment, the
deserts where some vegetation grows,
where a dry stream-bed winds its way
across the landscape, where prairie dogs
and locusts abound and ant-hills mark
the course of vision, are the most de-
sired. In some such deserts there are
a, few winding, irresolute little rivers
168
The Desert.
that seem to have been frightened by
tales of the uproar and fury of the sea,
and to have turned inland to places
where they can drop out of sight and
bury themselves in the sands in peace.
I know such a desert, where cottonwood
trees grow along the courses of the odd
little rivers, inviting the dusty traveler
to lie under their welcome shade and
prove the wisdom of the nations that
number the siesta among their national
institutions. And if there is a gray,
hazy mist in the sky or in part of it,
and given that the sun is willing, there
is spread before one the marvelous mi-
rages of the Southland. In such a place,
I once saw a mirage of an island in a
quiet sea. The beach descended in an
easy slope to the water line, irregular
rows of palm trees grew along the shore,
and an infinite silence and peace hovered
like a benison over the place. I do not
know where the reality of the image is
located, but some place on the face of
this one of God's worlds that island of
beauty exists, perhaps in undiscovered
pristinity, and is another of the visible
manifestations of the absolute beauty,
and consequently of the absolute good,
of nature. A few of us saw this trans-
ferred picture when we were in a barren
desert of the great Bolson of Mapimi,
and its only settings were the sky, the
sun, and the broad, silent stretches of
sand. I think no one of that little
party had ever seen anything more beau-
tiful among all the lands and cities he
knew ; and I think no one of them will
ever be told so much of the real grace
and goodness of nature or of God as was
there disclosed as a picture in the si-
lence of the desert.
The deserts have voices, and we can
hear and understand them if the ears of
our souls are open and attuned to the
languages they speak. They do not
speak loudly, and with insistence, but
very gently, and with great modesty ;
and they speak with the sublime indif-
ference that is one of the chief appur-
tenances of all truth. We may listen
or close our ears, we may understand or
not, we may heed or go unheeding, it
is all matter of the most complete in-
difference, to the desert. It is with the
voice of nature that the desert speaks,
with the truth of nature, with the per-
sistence of nature ; but if we heed not
its voice, or are indifferent to its mes-
sage, the great soul of the desert stops
not to argue nor to grieve, for it knows
that to-morrow we shall be dead and at
one with nature anyhow. Whether we
hear or are deaf, God's will will be done ;
nations will rise and fall, mountains will
emerge from the sea, and the sea will
submerge mountains ; fables of Jehen-
num and the devil will be hurled broad-
cast to frighten men during their few
days, and men will in time return to
the dust from which they are made, and
the future will remain in the hands of
God, who perhaps has not told even to
the spirits of the desert the secret of
the purpose of things. The inevitable
and infallible evolution of things will
go on, the processes of the suns will
work out the destinies that were set to
them, and why should the soul of the
desert trouble itself because weak mor-
tals cannot understand its language, and
that they prefer to keep their eyes to
the ground and suffer deafness of their
own choosing, rather than strive to see
the beauties it speaks of, and under-
stand the messages it is willing to say
into their unwilling ears ?
I know a desert that is full of voices,
that is full of messages written in stone
that men can but dimly understand,
that is full of sermons of a rarer and
better kind than men have ever spoken.
This desert is on a high plateau, a thou-
sand feet above the desertlike valley
of a lonely river that winds its way
along nature's course to the sea, un-
mindful of what bands of temporary
peoples may from time to time inhabit
and encumber its banks. This desert
was once inhabited, and through its
crumbling ruins it tells of nations that
were born into the world, perhaps be-
The Desert.
169
fore the word history had a definition,
and who faded from life perhaps before
the Druids were sacrificing blood in the
groves of Britain, and who were fol-
lowed by other nations in a younger
time that is now so old as to be almost
beyond comprehension. These old cliff
ruins, slowly wearing away by the gen-
tle action of the soft winds that blow
down from the mountains, speak elo-
quently of the inevitable destiny of men
and the races of men. We may find,
if we seek the knowledge, that distant
descendants of the ancient nations who
once dwelt and toiled and loved and
worshiped and died, in what is now
this gray desert, live petty lives in mud
villages in remote places ; but the time
has been so long, and food has had to
be sought so persistently, that they
know of the old tribes of their ancestors
only by dim traditions and the scraps of
history handed down and woven into the
fantastic superstitions of their priests.
The soul of this desert, speaking from
among the crumbling ruins that dot it
as any hills dot a sandy valley, seems
to say, "In the end all the works of
men lead but to oblivion and decay.
Individuals, communities, tribes, and
nations may fret the face of the earth
for a little time with their presence,
with their toilings, and their wranglings
over things that they know not of, but
in the end it will be in all places as it
is here. The peoples will be gone, and
those who come after them will know
not where. Memories of them will not
abide with their successors, and they
will be forgotten utterly in all places in
the world. But the effects of what they
have done will not be lost, for nothing
is lost in nature."
The realizing sense that we get in
this desert of our own smallness and
futileness is better than much of the
education that is dinned into the ears
of students by pale-faced, dogmatic pe-
dants. And, when we come to think
upon the truths that the desert teaches,
we find them pleasant. We are yet at
the beginning of things, although we
may be the descendants and ascendants
of every form of vegetable and animal
life that has ever been upon the earth
or in its waters. For us, with our lit-
tle brains that are so easily turned, it
is perhaps better that we are incapable
of understanding the skies and the stars,
the beginning and the end of things, and
the great facts about God and his myri-
ads of worlds. Else might the know-
ledge craze us ; and as it would be im-
possible for our wisdom to keep even
pace, even if we could comprehend the
knowledge, our happiness is better con-
served, and our progress better assured,
that things are as they are.
In the desert the condition of the sur-
roundings makes it plain to us, as the
forests made the same truths plain to
Thoreau, that we are insignificant and
ignorant ; that we do not know the let-
ter "A" and cannot count one. But
a great fact, temporarily at least, is
made known to our intuitive senses, a
fact that all the science and theology
of all. the races of men have not yet
been able to conclusively and absolutely
prove, namely, that with us, and as part
of us, are souls, mysterious parts of the
fabrics of our being that we do not com-
prehend, and that are immortal if it is
wisest and best for them to be so. The
desert takes away from her true lovers
the fear of death and the mysteries of
the unknown and unknowable future.
She teaches that it is wisest and best
that she herself exists, that the moun-
tains exist, that humanity exists, that
the universe exists, that water seeks al-
ways its level, that the clouds pass over
the face of the earth, that all that is is
right, and that it must also be true that
it is' best for all life that exists in flesh
to have an end. The silent voices of
the desert say that in all nature there
are no mistakes ; that, therefore, it is
impossible for mankind to be a mis-
take, and that if immortality is best,
then it will surely be.
There are poisonous things in the des-
170
The Desert
erts, plants whose juices are death-deal-
ing, and creatures that are venomous,
but they have their places and their uses
in the great system of things ; and this
is none the less true because we, who
do not know even our own uses and pur-
poses, fail to know theirs. It must also
be inevitably true that their uses and
purposes are for ultimate and absolute
good, as are all things else in the world.
I know a desertlike place that is not
wholly a desert, yet it is neither oasis
nor fertile land. It is what might be
termed a semi-desert, and it has a mood
that is different from that of other des-
erts. It seems a philosophic, well-con-
tented sort of place, that has much know-
ledge, much wisdom, and that extracts
a wise enjoyment from the days that
pass over it. It is nearly related to a
tall peak, and is akin to a near-by range
of mountains, and to the air and the
sky. Flowers grow upon this semi-
desert, sunflowers, and bergamot,
and bluebells, and Mariposa lilies, and
many other shaggy little stems that bear
blue and yellow and white and seven-
hued blossoms. It knows sagebrush,
too, and yucca, and various pygmy
cacti. It is field and farm and native
land for many well-established, ancient,
and wise nations of prairie dogs, and it
is the world and the fullness thereof for
thousands of republics of ants. This
semi-desert stretches away from the
mountains apd runs undulating in billows
toward the east. We know it reaches
to farms and towns and work and trou-
ble, and that its next of kin, the prairie,
goes on to the great rivers whose banks
are lined with the coveters of chattels,
but we like to think that, as a desert,
it stretches away beyond the horizon,
and passes unchanged on to infinity, and
that across it is the road to eternity,
and endless growth of soul, and cease-
less joy of effort and consummation.
A little town has been built upon the
edge of this desert. The town is the
best one I know, and is infinitely supe-
rior to London or Paris or New York,
in that it is infinitely smaller, and
therefore cannot hold so much poverty
and vice and false pride and malice and
envy; but yet it seems a sort of dese-
cration for it to sit in all its upstart
garishness upon the edge of this ancient
and perfect semi-desert. It seems an
impertinence, something as a beetle
would if it sat upon a masterpiece of
the painter's art. The desert crowds
upon the town somewhat, by way of dis-
cipline, and it sometimes seems mildly to
threaten that it will press forward and
sweep the houses and gardens before it.
But I think it is not much annoyed
by the town, or that it gives much
thought to it, for other towns, in other
and forgotten times, may have settled
upon its borders, and they are gone, and
the desert knows by that past experience,
as well as by its natural wisdom, that
this town too will go in time, and that
it will be left again to undisturbed com-
munion with the stars that are its an-
gels, and the mountains that are its sis-
ters, and with the sun that is lover of
both it and the mountains. And then,
too, if the town has the same good right
to exist that the desert has, the desert
knows that much better than does the
town. The mountains that look down
upon this semi-desert wrap themselves
in mantles of filmy mist at night, and
they and the desert sleep the peaceful
sleep of nature, secure in the absolute
knowledge that the sun will come again
as soon as it is best for him to come.
Then in the morning the mists unwrap
themselves in winding veils of beau-
ty and melt away; the sun kisses the
desert and thrills the mountains to
their hearts with messages of infinity
and eternity. Yet perhaps the desert
and the mountains say to one another
that the little town is not a desecration,
but is also good, and that even its poor-
est and meanest inhabitant is as great
and as valuable in the estimation of God
as is the sun himself.
The most beautiful, the most myste-
rious, the most inscrutable of all the
The Desert.
171
deserts I know is one that lies to the
north of the city of Zacatecas. It is
much loved by the sun, but it loves the
shadow better. The sun gathers pic-
tures over the world for it and casts
them as mirages upon it for it to see,
much as any other foolish lover casts
pieces of stone and bits of metal at the
feet of his sweetheart. But this desert
loves the sun better because of his dis-
appearance ; and when he sinks behind
the Sierra Madres, which are the true
lovers and beloved of this desert, she
puts on her loveliest appearance, and
takes unto herself a beauty that is be-
yond description. The hills outvie her
in effort and in beauty, and if in all the
w,orld there is a more lovely or more
beautiful place than is this at sunset,
then have travelers missed the purpose
of their wanderings, for they have not
told of such a place. The sun casts
golden messages back as he sinks over
the side of the world, shafts of light
that strike the sides of the everlasting
hills and refract from them in prisms
of greater beauty than ever artist fas-
tened to canvas. The mountains trans-
late these golden messages into shadows,
and send them stealing over the bosom
of the desert. The everlasting hills
change their color from the dull brown
of day into an ultramarine, and the
golden aureole on their summits makes
them seem to be truly clothed in royal
purple and golden crowns, but better
than human imitations, for theirs are
purple of royal nature and crowns of
nature's beauty. The subtropical at-
mosphere that has been surcharged with
heat throughout the day quivers in vi-
brations that seem to extend to the ends
of space, and the mountains appear to
quiver, and even to move forward in
perfect motion and in dancing light, in
sympathy with the kind and perfect
farewell of the sun. These everlasting
mountains seem to call out a message
to the desert, and to the humans and
beetles and ants, too, if they can under-
stand, and say,
"We are the everlasting hills. We
are the beloved of the sun, who thrills
us to our hearts each day, and tells us
of the infinity and immutability and
all-wisdom of our Creator. We stand
as emblems of eternity and steadfast-
ness and truth and right-being. We
are motionless, but we are content, for
we know that in God's good time we
will be changed. But we are immor-
tal, and indestructible, and created of
God, and nothing can be other than
well with us. And the sun loves us,
and love is the warmth and the light of
existence, and we are content, and more
than content."
And as the golden crowns fade from
the summits of the mystic mountains,
and the shadows stretch in longer lines
of beauty over the face of the perfect
earth, the desert gives voice, and an-
swers,
" I am the desert, the eternal desert,
also beloved of the sun. I have been
since the beginning of God's earth, and
I shall be until the end of his earth
shall come. The sun that kisses me,
and impregnates me with warmth and
heat, has taught me that in some form
and in some place I shall always be,
and so I am content, and all is well
with me. I stand for quiet and for
peace, and I am the visible emblem of
quietness and of peace in the world.
My limits, that lie beyond the scope of
vision, are to teach men of the bound-
less extent of right and truth; my
peace is to teach them that all is good,
and that to all will come peace. I that
am finite stand as a visible enlblem of
infinity. I that am mortal am an ir-
refutable proof of immortality. And
because I am great and silent and mys-
terious, I speak unerringly to the depth
and greatness and silence and mystery
of the souls of humans, that, like me,
were made by nature and by nature's
God."
The desert sometimes has a sterner
message. If one appears before her in
pride and arrogance, she will say,
172
Our Lady of the Beeches.
"Oh, poverty-stricken human; you
are among the least of all things in the
sight of God, for he has given you less
than the gifts that are to his other crea-
tures. Your days are less than the
days of the stone, your joys are less
than the joys of the lark, your under-
standing is less than my own, and all
that was vouchsafed you was an uncer-
tain few of nights and days. Yet have
you manacled these few nights with ter-
ror, and hindered your days with loads
of folly and vain desire. Seek not so
much after riches, for your flesh melts,
and soon you sink back into the ele-
ments of nature. Embitter not your
souls with envy, for you and those
whom your envy causes you to hate are
but as the beetles and the grass and the
leaves, inheritors only of inevitable
death. Be not selfish, for your weak
self is but as a mote in a ray of light.
God will not stop the blowing of one of
the least of his winds in order that you
may triumph over your neighbor, or
that your selfish vanity may be grati-
fied. And all the largesse you pay to
self-appointed agents of the Immutable
Right will not add a single day to
your days, nor will it relieve you from
paying a full right for the least of your
wrongs."
But the desert has the same spirit as
its mother earth, who speaks messages
of hope and peace to all her creatures.
And when we seek wisdom from the
desert, and listen to it in reverence, it
"Come to me, for I am solitude, and
in solitude is wisdom. Come to me, for
I am silence, and in silence is commun-
ion with God. Come to me, for I am
beauty, and beauty is a thing beyond
the creation of Caesar or of Midas. But
come not to me at all unless you come
in humility and right thinking, for in
exacting those things I am as one with
God, and with me a king is no greater
than a beggar. But if you will know
me, and study me, and love me, I will
give you peace, and a great content, and
a knowledge that is beyond what you
may gain from men, or from events, or
from books."
Verner Z. Reed.
OUR LADY OF THE BEECHES.
PROLOGUE OF LETTERS.
LETTER XXH.
June 4, AMONG THE BEECHES.
I AM glad you did riot tell me who
you are, "as I do not wish to know. But
I understand your letter only too well.
You are lonely, poor man of science!
you long for a friend, and because you
do not know me, you fancy I might be
that friend. You are in that state of
mind or isn't it in reality a state
of heart ? when a man longs for a wo-
man, a woman for a man friend.
I too have struggled with the feel-
ing that it is foolish to keep you at such
a distance, that we would each of us
be happier for knowing the other, but
I am conscious all the time that the
feeling is a weakness. I like you, I
like your letters ; the eyes of the pastel
in the tower-room have grown to be your
eyes, and I like and trust them. But
if I know who yea are, would not half
the charm be gone ?
Have you never, before going to some
strange place, made for yourself a pic-
ture of that place, and then, arriving,
been almost ludicrously disappointed
because the house was on the wrong side
of the road, or the door not where you
had built it in your imagination ? The
Our Lady of the, Beeches.
173
me you have invented is the friend you
want and need. The me I am is a
different woman, the result of a host of
things in which you have had no hand.
And I confess that the you I have in-
vented is all that I want, and I should
be disappointed in a thousand ways if
we should ever meet.
No, let us leave things as they are,
dear Pessimist. I have been having a
bad time of late: outside things have
gone wrong; but what is worse, I am
upset and jarred mentally. Even my
trees cannot soothe me into my usual
calm.
These lovely May days nearly break
my heart, for some reason ; the birds'
singing brings tears to my silly eyes;
I feel the terror of growing old. Time
is going, "the bird of Time is on the
wing, " and I am doing nothing. I
am doing no one any good, myself least
of all. I am not even enjoying life.
But this is what you call " drivel, "
forgive it, and set it down to a touch
of spring fever!
Thanks for the book, which I am glad
to have, though I have not yet even
opened it.
Old Annette expects her husband in
July. She is much excited, in a quaint,
shy way, and leaves me in a few days
to go back to Paris. Here she comes
with a frightful concoction of herbs for
me to drink. She is very wise, and she
thinks the spring air has got into my
blood. v
Perhaps it has !
Good - by, kindliest of Pessimists.
Write me soon, and tell me I am a
goose. W.
LETTER XXIII.
June 15, BAB HARBOR.
DEAR W. Poor child, poor child !
so you have it, too. Spring fever is
what the old wives in Yankeeland call
it, did you know ? In children it may
come from the liver. In grown people
it comes from the memory. The mem-
ory of happy days is bad enough, but
far wdrse is the memory of the ^iappy
days one never had.
But you are too young to know this.
You should not know it, should not,
and yet you do; and I have a feeling
that your pain comes, as does mine,
from the memory of those happy days
never had. Old Annette gave you all
the mothering you ever knew. My
grandmother gave me mine, and to this
day I envy children with a silly, illogi-
cal, loving little mother who spoils
them and cuddles them in her soft arms.
Do you? Have you children of your
own?
You are right, we must not meet ; but
we must be friends, we must trust each
other. Do not be afraid of me ; I swear
that if by moving my hand I could know
all about you, I would not do it with-
out your permission. There is not one
person in the world who would not gasp
with astonishment could he see this let-
ter, but I mean it all. I am lonely.
I do sometimes long, with a keenness
that hurts, for a sympathetic woman
friend with whom to talk, " the heart in
the hand, " as Italians say ; and yet I am
not in the least a sentimental, or even
a woman's man. Once, years ago, when
I was still in college, I fell in love with
a pretty girl, and asked her to marry
me. She refused, in the kindest way
in the world, because I had no money,
and she only a little ; beyond this I
have had no romances. Is n't it rather
pitiful, the baldness of such a life ? I
could wish sometimes that I were the
victim of a great tragedy. It would be
something to remember, something for
which to deserve the self-pity that wells
up to my very eyes sometimes.
Are you laughing at me? Is Our
Lady of the Beeches in one of her mock-
ing moods? If so, so be it. We are
friends, and surely friends can bear a
bit of chaff.
If you have not yet read the book,
do not, I beg you. It is sincerely and
honestly written, but it is the work of
a materialist, and, I now see, no read-
174
Our Lady of the Beeches.
ing for a young woman of your char-
acter.
Why I was sent into the world with
this taste and talent for iconoclastics,
that which made me must know. I am
counted a wise man, I have a string
of letters after my name, I have made
two discoveries considered important;
but, after all, what good has it. done
me?
And such reading as you could do on
my lines, dear lady, at best superficial
and imperfectly understood, can do you
only harm. May I know whether you
believe in a God ? If you do, as I hope,
read nothing to shake that belief.
The Pessimist as a preacher !
I have been in this delightful place
for ten days, and shall stay all summer,
boating, riding, and loafing.
The air, a rare combination of sea
and mountain, is delicious, the colors
equal to those of Italy, and the house
where I am stopping almost a bache-
lor's hall, though my friend is married.
His wife plays golf all day, and when
the season is in full swing will dance
all night, so we here are subject to but
little control.
I went to a dinner last night, at
which the conversation turned, strange-
ly enough, on American women who
have married foreigners. Nearly every
one present knew of some such case,
while of course several were well known
to us all. I wondered whether any of
the talkers knew Our Lady of the
Beeches.
My silence drawing attention to me,
one man asked, laughing :
"And you, S , don't you know
any such fair deserter ? "
Almost involuntarily I answered,
" Yes, the most charming woman I ever
knew married in Europe." And then
the charming women present besieged
me with questions, which I did not an-
swer.
I noticed, among all the examples of
international marriages cited, that not
one was said to be conspicuously happy.
I wonder why women will not learn that
to cut themselves off from all early
associations, after the age for making
new close friends, is a dangerous thing.
Women need friends, acquaintances will
not do ; and a girl brought up in one
country can never love her husband
as she may learn to be of another
country.
But I am lecturing. Forgive me,
you who know from experience whether
I am right or wrong.
Write me soon again. Send your
letter to Box 71, Bar Harbor, Maine.
Faithfully your friend,
C. R. S.
LETTER XXTV.
June 27, LONDON.
Yesterday I had a tremendous shock.
A man whom I have known for years,
and liked, a friend of my husband, I
had thought a friend of mine, asked me
to go away with him.
I have never flirted with him, I knew
that he was more or less in love with
me, but I had thought that he was a
gentleman. He has been mixed up in
my life a great deal of late, and once
or twice has shown me a kind of tacit
sympathy that I could not refuse.
That is all. Yesterday he dared, in
perfectly cold blood, to propose to me to
leave my husband for him.
He began by telling me I had a great
deal of self-control, and you will see
how innocent I was when I tell you I
did not know what he meant. Then
he asked me point-blank whether I had
not known that he loved me.
I answered honestly that I had known
it, and that I was very grateful to him
for never letting his feelings become an
obstacle to our pleasant friendship.
He informed me thereupon that
when a man loves a woman he never is
mistaken about her feeling for him, that
he knew I loved him, and that the time
had come when neither of us could stand
the strain of present circumstances any
longer.
Our Lady of the Beeches.
175
His strength of conviction was such
that I was utterly aghast for a minute,
and then, the funny side of it suddenly
appearing to me, I burst into what he
called "a roar" of laughter. It was
all so absurd.
When at last he stopped talking I
told him very gently that he was utterly
wrong, that I was not in the least in
love with him, and that I must beg of
him not to force me to see him again
until he had come to his senses. He
left me without a word, and I have been
growing angrier ever since.
There must be a strain of vulgarity
in me, for I should like at this moment
nothing better than to box his ears.
The worst of it is, Pessimist, that I am
sure the wretch is somewhere cursing
my self-control.
The belief that I care for him ap-
pears to be too deep-rooted to be jerked
out so suddenly, and it seems that sev-
eral of my innocent words and acts have
been construed into a tacit acceptance
of his passion. He called it his pas-
sion !
My unfortunate burst of laughter he
no doubt took on consideration as the
result of hysterical joy, and here I am,
angry as I have been but a few times in
my life, and perfectly helpless. How
can I make the creature believe that I
never gave him a thought of that kind
that I looked on him as a good sort,
not too clever, and rather attractively
faithful to his mute adoration of my
charming self ! However
So you are at dear old Bar Harbor !
Why spell it with a " u " ? Anything so
essentially, deliciously American surely
ought to be writ in the American way.
I have been there, and love it.
When I was very young I was in love
there, and that was enchanting.
The object of my love was a hand-
some youth with blue eyes, and, ,oh
rapture ! a budding mustache. He had
a great deal of money, and his atten-
tions, although I was in reality too
young to be the recipient of such things,
were not discouraged by my only rela-
tive, a cousin, and for a time all went
well, and we were engaged, subject to
certain restrictions.
The following winter I had the mea-
sles and was taken South to recuperate.
My young body, alas, recuperated no
sooner than did my young heart, and
poor Annette's was the task of seeing
him when he came to see me in the early
spring. Vanity notwithstanding, I am
compelled to admit that he was not
crushed by the blow, and a few years
ago I met him at Venice with his wife,
a very pretty girl with a curl in the
middle of her forehead.
' Does one still go to Duck Brook and
Bubble Pond ? Dear Bar Harbor, how
blue the air is there, and how strong
the salt smell!
No, I have no children ; and will you
think me very awful for being glad I
have not?
Your moralizing on international
marriages amuses me. How do you
know, dear Pessimist, for you do know
a great deal. You are not entirely
right, however . Now the reason, I think,
that such marriages are apt to be un-
happy is that they are nine times out of
ten merely mariages de convenance. A
very rich girl marries a more or less
needy nobleman (and say what one will,
European men as a whole greatly prefer
marrying women of their own race) ; she
lives with him the life he is used to and
likes, and takes up his interests. If
they are in love with each other in such
a way that it lasts, of course all is well ;
but usually at least one of them tires,
and then no old associations, no com-
mon relations and friends binding them
together, the woman, do what she will,
compares the two countries, and grows
homesick. It is a dangerous experi-
ment, as you say, though there are some
exceptions.
The happiest people I know in the
world are an American girl and her
Dutch husband. The girl was not rich,
the man had not only little money, but
176
Our Lady of the Beeches.
also no particular social position, and
yet they are perfectly happy; the ne-
cessary bond in this case being a passion
for tulips. The girl was always crazy
about flowers, and the man is one of the
most successful amateur " tulipists " in
Holland. He directed her love for flow-
ers in general to tulips in particular,
and there they live among acres of gar-
den, like an unmolested Adam and
Eve.
So you have never married. I thought
you had not, even before the letter after
your illness. I have been married for
some years. My husband is very good
tome; I can't imagine a better hus-
band, in many ways.
I tell you this that you may imagine
me no Griselda, after my occasional
wails. The unhappiness I have, amigo,
comes from within. Do not pity me
too much.
To-day, or rather this evening, I am
savage with the whole world, most of
all with myself for paying so little heed
to the moods and thoughts of what I
considered a harmless little man. I
should like to fly off to a wilderness and
revert to a savage life. I wish my only
thought was to have enough to eat. I
wish I had a nice comforting vice, such
as smoking, or bridge. Nothing keeps
a woman out of mischief so well as a
pet vice.
I have not read the book, but I think
you had better let me. The God I be-
lieve in is the God of no creed, and of
infinite mercy. I do not fear Him.
Your book would not shake me. No
book in the world could, though I am
not at all pious.
Annette had a mass read to-day, in
the I fear vain hope of receiving a let-
ter from her husband, who has not once
written since you sent him the money.
Poor old woman!
I trust the money reached you safely
through the Harpers?
Good-by. I like the thought that
you are my friend. God bless you.
W.
I.
" * La vie est breve, un peu d'espoir, ' "
Leduc sang as he came slowly up the
slope, the letter in his hand : " ' Un peu
de reve, et puis bonsoir ! '
Saxe rolled over, brushing the pine
needles from his coat. "Hurry up! "
he called.
Leduc 's vivid blue eyes twinkled un-
der their wrinkled lids as he put the
letter into Saxe's outstretched hand.
"M'sieu is pretty old to be so excited
by a letter from a woman. Pretty
old!"
"Old? I? I am twenty-five this
evening in feelings and in appetite.
Did you get the coffee ? "
Leduc grunted. "Yes an* the dev-
iled ham, an' the whiskey. Leduc tired,
Leduc must sleep two-three minutes,
then he make the fire."
Throwing himself face downward on
the fragrant earth, he was silent.
Saxe watched him, an amused smile
in his eyes.
"The facile sleep of the man of rudi-
mentary conscience and a good diges-
tion. The man is to be envied, by
another than me, however."
The letter expected for days lay on
Saxe's updrawn knees: a long, slim
white envelope, addressed in a very
clear, unadorned handwriting, "To the
Author of The Pessimist's Breviary,"
and re-addressed by a clerk in his pub-
lisher's office. He turned it over; the
blue seal was small and perfect.
"When I held out my hand to take
it," the man mused, "it trembled. I
both felt and saw it tremble. Once
more, Richard Saxe, I ask you, on your
honor, are you in love with her ? "
A snore from Leduc being the only
answer to his question, he took a knife
from his pocket and carefully cut the
letter open.
It was five o'clock in the evening,
and the ochre seams in the big pines
about him were crimson in the sunlight.
Our Lady of the Beeches.
177
The ground, modulating gently to a lit-
tle blue lake, was bare of grass, warm
with rich tints of brown, and swept with
swift shadows as the wind stirred the
branches high above. To the left stood
a small cabin, flanked by a dingy tent.
Saxe read his letter slowly, often
going back and re-studying a phrase, his
expression changing curiously in his per-
fect freedom from observation. His
face was that of a man ctose on middle
age, with a handsome nose and chin,
small brilliant eyes that shone behind
rimless glasses, a broad, well-modeled
brow shadowed by a lock of stiff brown
hair, and a heavy, short-cut mustache
streaked with gray. His muscular
throat, bared by a low-collared flannel
shirt, lent him a youthful air that he
would have lacked in more civilized
clothes, and his clever looking hands,
though brown, were distinctly the hands
of a student. Once he laid down the
letter, and taking off his eyeglasses
with a little downward swoop of three
fingers, opened and closed his eyes sev-
eral times in rapid succession, in a way
evidently characteristic, before putting
them on again.
" Beast ! " he said aloud once, and
then a quick smile at himself flashed
two dimples in his cheeks.
At last Leduc grunted, rolled over,
and awoke. " Bien, bien, bien, bien, "
he muttered, yawning. " I dream M'sieu
have the fire all built for poor old
Leduc!"
"Leduc had better hurry and build
the fire for poor old M'sieu. The trout
is cleaned, and in the pail there. I '11
attend to the coffee while you fry him."
Leduc paused, looking down at him
shrewdly. "De bonnes nouvelles,
M'sieu?"
"Yes. Very good. More than
get to work, man."
"When I was the age of M'sieu,
there was a little English girl in Ban-
gor, pretty to eat, I tell you. My
God, how I love that girl, when I
was the age of M'sieu! "
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 12
"Why didn't you marry her?"
asked Saxe, rising too, and walking the
old man toward the cabin.
" Oh, she was married, and me,
too. Telle est la vie. Rottenr old
world ! "
"Rotten old Leduc! I forgot you
were a Frenchman. Unmarried French-
men never fall in love with girls, do
they?"
Leduc scrutinized his innocent face
sharply, and then, satisfied of his good
faith, "No, we marries them, but we
do not love them. Oh no. I too have
passed that way. I too married a girl.
La, la, where is that trout ? "
He disappeared behind the cabin, and
a few minutes later Saxe heard him
burst into a shout of laughter, and ex-
claim : " Holy Mother of God, he has
cut off its head ! "
Saxe apologized. He had cut the
trout's head off, half through ignorance,
half through absent-mindedness, and
felt thoroughly ashamed of himself.
He was feeling very happy, moreover,
and quite willing to apologize to nearly
any one for nearly anything.
As he poured out a glass of whiskey,
he smiled at it absently and said to Le-
duc : " Nothing like a ' nice comforting
vice, ' is there ? "
"Vice? M'sieu! But yes, M'sieu
is right, only I should choose not whis-
key. Whiskey make a brute of a man.
A pig."
" I may say without vanity that nei-
ther would it be my choice. By Jove,
smell that coffee ! "
The fire, burnt down to a steady
glow, cast a faint circle of beautiful
light around the two men sitting by it.
The fish, nailed to a strip of board, was
half cooked ; the fragrance of the coffee
mingled with the pine smell as a cone
crackled from time to time, sending a
spray of sparks into the closing in dark-
ness. An owl hooted. Saxe sat with
his arms clasped about his knees, his
eyeglasses glinting in the firelight, his
forehead white under the lock of hair.
178
Our Lady of the Beeches.
Leduc, a picturesque enough figure,
knelt close in the glow, shifting the
board to which the decapitated trout,
ruined, according to him, for boiling,
was nailed. Suddenly the old man
turned, and dropped the board full in
the fire.
"Can you kindly show us the way
to Lake Silver Camp ? "
The speaker stood close by him, her
face in the light, his back to it. "Lake
Silver?"
"I am looking for a guide there,
Lucien Bonnet."
Leduc rose. "Sacristi, Annette!"
Saxe sat perfectly still. It all
seemed to have happened before. The
burning fish hissed, the coffee boiled
over. Leduc and the little woman
stood staring at each other; then she
put her hand to her face and burst into
tears.
Saxe rose and left the firelight.
She.w&s standing just outside its
radius, and as he approached, a sudden
leap of the flame fed by the pine board
flashed over her.
"Let us leave them alone, poor
things," he said.
The boat was drawn up in the sand,
and they sat down on it in silence.
At last she said, " Is it really he,
Bonnet?"
"Yes. But I knew him they
all do hereabouts as Leduc. You
must believe that."
"I must believe that ? What do you
mean ? " she returned, struck by his
tone.
"I mean that I did n't know. I am
Richard Saxe, and you are ' Our Lady
of the Beeches/ "
There was a short silence, while the
water lapped the sand with soft lips,
and the trees stirred overhead. He
could barely see the outlines of her
figure, it was so dark; he looked in
vain for the moon ; the mesh of waving
darkness overhead was studded with
stars.
"Hush! " she said suddenly. "He
is crying, too."
"Le Mioche, " suggested Saxe.
Then he smiled to himself. Leduc 's
tears were very near the surface.
" Where has he been, do you know ? "
she asked, rising and facing him. "He
did not come, and he never wrote."
"Yes, he has been on a spree, to
Bangor. "
"ToBang6r!" She laughed softly.
"Yes, he told me of the spree, but
I never suspected that you furnished
the money for it. You and I."
They both laughed again.
All at once she turned. "What is
burning ? It is your- supper ! "
"It is my supper; my only trout.
Let it burn."
But she sped up the path ; he saw her
slight figure bend easily over the fire,
there was a splash of sparks, anotlier
laugh, and she stood upright, her face
in the light beckoning to him.
"It is a charcoal ruined a
wreck. And those two old geese
have disappeared. I hope they have n't
gone altogether! "
"I should n't mind, " answered Saxe
recklessly. "But they are only in the
cabin."
"Oh, you have a cabin? How dis-
appointing. "
She turned, with a little gesture of
disapproval that delighted him.
"The cabin is Leduc Bonnet's.
Behold my habitation."
"Ah, a tent. That is much bet-
ter."
She sat down, leaning against the very
tree on which he had leaned two hours
before while reading her letter, and took
off her hat. Her fair hair was ruffled
into a roughness of little curls and ten-
drils ; her cheeks were flushed. Saxe
stood looking at her.
From the cabin window came a nar-
row strip of yellow light and the sound
of voices.
"If you don't put on some wood, the
fire will be out in two minutes. "
Our Lady of the Beeches.
179
He started. "Yes, I will put on
a log."
While he bent over the fire an idea
struck him. "You will have a cup of
coffee? It is good."
"Yes. I am hungry."
She smiled on him with the serenity
common to some women when a man is
on their account beside himself with
embarrassment or any other emo-
tion. He poured out the coffee, gave
her sugar and condensed milk; he
rushed to the cabin and brought out a
tin of " water crackers " and another of
deviled ham. A small box it had
held candles did duty as her table.
He watched her eat.
"Don't you want to know how we
happened to drop in on you in this
way ? " she asked, after a time.
" Yes, I want to know, " he answered
with an effort. "Your letter came this
afternoon. It was written in England. "
She dropped her cracker, and looked
away. " My letter, " she repeated
" which letter ? I never " A slow
flush, deliciously visible in the now
vivid firelight, was creeping from her
high white collar to the loose hair on
her brow.
Saxe's courage came back with a
rush. "Yes, your letter. The best of
them all. The one about the fool who
dared to make love to you. To you!
You ended by bidding God bless
me."
She set down her cup, and rose. " Mr.
Saxe, or do I mean Dr. Saxe ?
that was all very well, it was amusing,
and harmless, so long as we didn't
know each other, but now that we do
in a way you must forget all that.
Although," she went on, in a lighter
tone and with a little smile, "I am off
to-morrow, so after all it does n't make
much difference."
Saxe winced.
"I must forget all that. And you
are off to-morrow ? "
" Yes, I go back to civilization, leav-
ing Annette." As she spoke, the old
woman and the old man came out of the
cabin, and approached the fire.
" Monsieur must excuse me, " Leduc
began at once, in French, wiping his
eyes. "It is my wife. She comes
all the way from Paris to look me
up."
Saxe held out his hand to the old
woman. "I cannot tell you how glad
I am that you found us, " he said. "Sit
down and have some supper."
"Thank you, sir," she answered, in
far better English than her husband
could boast. "We drove over from
Windsor."
"Mademoiselle will permit the old
man to kiss her hand, after all these
years ? " Leduc bowed in a graceful
way that amused Saxe in the midst of
his bewildered pain. Going away to-
morrow !
"It is to visit the grave of our little
child, sir, that I have come," Annette
went on, in an undertone, to Saxe.
"And Mademoiselle has come with me
because I am too old to go so far alone.
She is an angel."
"I am sure of it."
"What will you? Only my man
knows to find the grave, and we may
be gone two-three days, and who but
Mademoiselle would stay all that time
in the 'otel at Windsor! "
Saxe took off his eyeglasses and
closed his eyes hard for a minute.
"She is going to stay at Wind-
sor?"
" Annette, some one must tell the boy
that we are coming, or he will drive off
and leave us."
It was the voice of Mademoiselle.
Annette turned down the slope, and
Saxe, calling after her to wait, thrust
a lighted lantern into Leduc 's hand and
sent him after her.
Then he turned. "You say you are
off to-morrow," he said quickly; "but
Annette tells me that you were going
to stay on at Windsor while she and
he go to see the grave of Le
Mioche. Now listen. You say I must
J
180
Our Lady of the Beeches.
forget all that, now that we know
each other. Very well; I promise; I
will neither by word nor look, if I can
help it, remind you of anything. You
will have to see me only when you
choose. I will do all that you wish. I
have always done all that you wish.
Only stay. Let them go to the grave
of Le Mioche."
The old pair were coming back, the
lantern danced among the trees, and
Leduc's voice, piercingly sweet, sang
a snatch of some old song: "Plaisir
d'amour ne dure qu'un instant."
She laughed. "Not very polite of
him, after her coming all this way, is
it?"
" You will stay ? " he persisted,
frowning over his eyeglasses.
"If I had known I was to see you "
she answered, demurring.
"But you did not. Nor I. And it
is hot fair to punish me for what the
gods have chosen to bring about."
"Mademoiselle, a storm is coming
up, and the boy refuses to wait, " An-
nette said, coming toward them.
The trees were tossing, the wind
moaning.
"Yes, you must go," assented Saxe,
a little roughly.
She put on her hat without speaking,
and they followed the lantern to the
waiting wagon.
"Well?" he said suddenly, stop-
ping.
"I _I would rather go."
"No. Stay. You forget the chief
thing, " he added, forcing a laugh. "I
do not, need not, know your name, Ma-
demoiselle! Can't you stay? "
"' Mademoiselle,' " she repeated,
hesitating. Then, holding out her hand,
"Very well. I will stay; you will not
know my name, and you will forget
the rest. We will begin over ! "
Saxe awoke at dawn, a sound of beat-
ing mingling with the every-day one of
Leduc's piercingly sweet voice raised in
his favorite "La vie est vaine." Vague
reminiscences of house-cleaning, years
ago in his grandmother's day, stirred
his brain ; he opened his eyes to find his
tent flooded with rosy light ; to see, be-
yond, a patch of blue sky, blurred and
broken by stiff pine branches. He re-
membered, and reaching for his eye-
glasses, put them on.
" I say, Leduc, Bonnet, what-
ever your name is ! "
"M'sieu?"
Leduc's face, rosy as the drawn it-
self in spite of his age, appeared in the
open flap, his soft curly hair ruffled.
"What the deuce is that noise? "
The old man entered unceremonious-
ly, a stout stick in his hand.
"It is that I am preparing for An-
nette, M'sieu. She has eyes like a
hawk, and a tongue like a scourge."
" So it was house-cleaning ! "
"C'est a. I've been beating my
mattress. The dust in that mattress
was something e'tonnant ! and not a
grain would have escaped her. A ter-
rible woman ! "
Saxe turned over lazily. "Then you
think she will be coming again to-day ? "
Leduc rose and took up his stick.
"Coming? M'sieu she love Leduc,
that old woman. It is a cur'ous thing,
by gum! Twenty years ago she left
Leduc. He treated her pretty bad, an'
she couldn't stand it, so off she went
at the end. Now here she is."
"You know perfectly well that she
hasn't come on your account,, you old
scoundrel," returned Saxe, watching
him.
"Comment ca? Why then? Why
she come ? "
"Le Mioche."
Leduc turned and looked out into the
morning.
"Tiens, Le Mioche!"
"Yes, Le Mioche. Now look here,
Leduc. Did I, or did I not, pay you
well, last year ? "
"Oui, monsieur"
" Did I, or did I not, give you a new
rifle, and a present in money besides ? "
Our Lady of the Beeches.
181
"M'sieu was very good M'sieu
is galant homme."
The old man turned, his face irra-
diated with the most enchanting of
smiles.
Saxe went on, rubbing his eyeglasses
on a corner of his blanket. " Very well.
If you want another present this time,
say that setter of Sam Bradley 's and
some money, you, too, are going to
behave like a galant homme ! "
"M'sieu, Leduc is a galant homme.
Leduc a bad man, but he always been a
slave to women."
"Nonsense ! I don't want you to be
a slave, but I won't have you disappoint
Annette."
"M'sieu a raison. Poor Annette,
she would be very sad. Also Made-
moiselle."
"Also Mademoiselle," agreed Saxe,
without flinching from the keen eyes
fixed on him.
"What does M'sieu wish me to do ? "
asked the old man, unable, as he always
was, to look long into Saxe's face, and
turning away.
" I want you to be as decent as your
instincts, partly inherited, no doubt,
also partly acquired, will allow you."
Then with a mischievous delight he went
on slowly : "Those fools'who deny ata-
vism, inherited tendency, the whole Dar-
winian theory, should be confronted in
a body, my good Leduc, with you. You
are a most beautiful example of all of
those things. The shape of your head
is distinctly simian; your instincts are
simian, splendidly so. You have
spent the greater part of your life in
the humanizing influence of great trees,
and yet you are untouched by any of
the qualities that emanate from them.
Amazing, amazing ! "
There was a short pause, after which
the old man, passing his hand through
his hair as if to feel the shape of his
head, said :
"M'sieu wishes to bathe, this morn-
ing? What time does M'sieu want his
coffee?"
Saxe looked at his watch. "Be ready
for me at half -past six and remem-
ber : one word to disappoint your poor
wife, no dog, no present."
Leduc straightened up. "It is not
necessary for M'sieu to menacer. Le-
duc have a heart, and Leduc grows
old."
Then he went out with a beautiful
dignity of carriage.
Saxe splashed about in the still gild-
ed waters of the little lake for ten
minutes, dressed, and appeared at the
fire at promptly half -past six. Break-
fast was ready. Coffee, fried eggs,
bacon, and johnny-cake. Leduc, in a
clean flannel shirt, his hair still sepa-
rated into gleaming, wavy locks by the
recent passage of a wet comb, awaited
him.
When Saxe had demonstrated his
good humor by praise of the johnny-
cake, the old man began gravely :
"M'sieu Leduc wants to tell
M'sieu something."
"To tell me something? "
"Oui, M'sieu Leduc has no chil-
dren, he is a poor solitary old man
except when M'sieu is with him."
Saxe bowed his acknowledgment of
this compliment in silence.
" But Leduc, Leduc has here in
his breast what no one can take from
him. A memory."
The sharp blue eyes were wet. Saxe
put down his cup and watched him, a
frown of interest between his brows.
"Years ago Leduc had a little
child. A little child with so yellow
curls. God sent it to Leduc to make
him a better man. But God got tired
of trying and took Le Mioche."
"For Heaven's sake, man, stop it! "
Saxe rose impatiently and turned
away. A squirrel rushed across an
opening in the trees, his plumy tail
erect ; birds were singing everywhere ;
a little yellow flower peered out from
the mossy roots of the one beech near.
Saxe stooped and picked the flower with
gentle fingers, and after looking at it
182
Our Lady of the Beeches.
closely, laid it between the leaves of
his notebook.
"M'sieu!"
He turned. Leduc 's face was white,
his eyes dry. "M'sieu, you wrong an
old man. Leduc a bad man, a liar,
he beat his wife when he was drunk,
he cheat at cards. But Leduc love Le
Mioche. LeMioche love him. M'sieu
scold about Annette. Bien I am
sorry she comes, ca m'ennuie, but
M'sieu go to the grave of Le Mioche
and he will see how many white stones !
Thirty- one. Every year one. Leduc
did not forget Le Mioche, M'sieu."
He was telling the truth, and the
poor dignity in his voice touched Saxe,
who held out his hand.
"I beg your pardon, Leduc. I was ^
wrong, and I am sorry."
Leduc shook his hand and sat down
again in silence.
"Monsieur," he said at last, in one
of his accesses of good French, "you
are very wise, and I am an ignorant
old scoundrel, but I have taught you
one thing that you did not know be-
fore. The worst of men has his one
good quality. The blackest of sheep
has its one white hair. It is bad to
be too pessimistic."
Saxe repressed a smile at the old
man's vain delight in himself as an
exposition of this theory, and went on
with his breakfast.
"M'sieu, Mademoiselle is pretty,
is n't she?"
Saxe started. "Pretty, oh yes.
Very pretty, and very good I gather
from your wife."
"Yes, very good. I know her since
she was a little baby. That 's why I
still say 'Mademoiselle.' Her real
name is "
" My very good fellow, do you think
I do not know her real name ? "
Leduc started, as he scraped the
remaining shreds of bacon together
preparatory to mopping them up on a
bit of bread. "M'sieu knew her be-
fore?"
" Of course I knew her before, " re-
turned the other man, taking off his
glasses and opening his eyes very wide.
"Why shouldn't I know her? "
" Dieu, que le monde est petit ! But
that is very nice for her, to find
M'sieu here, and very nice for M'sieu
as the other lady does not come."
"The other lady?"
"The lady whose letter makes
M'sieu's eyes change. Oh, Leduc is
not blind ! Last year there was a let-
ter, too "
Saxe considered a minute, and then,
vaguely seeing a series of advantages
to be derived from this error, laughed
aloud.
"Leduc certainly is not blind. As
he says, I cannot have the lady of the
letters, so it will be very agreeable for
me to see something of Mademoiselle,
who is charming, too."
"I suppose M'sieu will not be com-
ing to the woods any more ? "
The old man, encouraged in his cu-
riosity, smiled knowingly. "He will
be marrying this winter."
"Everything is possible in this best
of possible worlds. Now then, old
chatterbox, hurry and clear away that
i "
Bettina von Hutten.
mess!
(To be continued.)
Midsummer's Day. 183
MIDSUMMER'S DAY.
WHENCE comes he ? He is all distraught.
A bramble in his hair is caught,
And there are dreams within his eyes
From regions of the upper skies,
Found in deep forest pools that drowse
Under low interlacing boughs
And for a moment wake to paint
Unreal parallels, when faint
With breath of nectaries blown bare
A wind steals from one knows not where.
In that obscure where he has been
What are the wonders he has seen ?
In steam of marish spots and springs
.Touched by the noon, what startled things,
What great eyes glancing through green gloom,
What faces fashioned out of bloom,
Where creatures of the azure mists
Weave their enchantment, what bright lists
Of airy shapes, and what swift flight
Up the long pencils of the light,
What phantoms turning as they fled ?
What voices lured, what beckoning led ?
Forbid to all but such as he,
They say he read the charactery,
On bark and stem, of mystic runes.
They say he heard forgotten tunes,
Sung when the moons were young, oh, sweet,
And only broken measures fleet
Homeless till some blest listener hears
The bitter music sealed in tears !
They say he saw sweep over him
Or whirling scarf, or flashing limb,
That something liefer touched his lips
Than honey that the wild bee sips,
That something whispered" him all day
While in a trance of joy he lay
And flower-soft fingers brushed his brow
The secrets known to no man now.
In some deep dell with mosses lined
They say he left his soul behind.
The chantry tolled beyond the wood
As if from outer solitude.
Softly the day drew down ; and far
184 The African Pygmies.
As echoes falling from a star
The children called him. And he came,
And on his face immortal flame.
For the dark wood had held him fast,
The leaves a subtle sorcery cast,
The briers bound him, the wild sprays
Tangled his feet in dear delays,
Tendrils would clasp, and waterfalls
Foam round him, and he broke through walls
Of living amethyst where sun
And haze and distance wrought as one.
And you will know him from the look
Of men by happiness forsook,
Since he had been that time made free
Of the first court of poesy,
Nor till midsummer's day return,
And skies are blue and roses burn,
Shall he set foot within those dim
Delightful ranges, nor for him
Those vaporous barriers be stirred
For he has lost the magic word.
Harriet Prescott Spofford.
THE AFRICAN PYGMIES.
NOT long after my settlement at not understand my extraordinary visitor.
Ndombe, the town of a remarkable mon- His language sounded more like the
arch of the same name, the king of the gabbling of an ape than the ordered
Balunda tribes around Wissmann Falls, speech of the intelligent Balunda ; but
Central Africa, an odd-looking creature when I brought out the salt which is the
came up to my bungalow, bringing a universal currency in that country, his
piece of fresh meat for sale. At first I eyes sparkled, and a broad smile and
took him for a boy, judging by his height beaming face rendered further efforts at
and size, for he was about four feet high, conversation unnecessary to the trade,
and could not have weighed more than The little man grinned, laid his meat on
eighty pounds. As he came closer and the floor, readjusted his quiver of darts,
held out his meat, making a peculiar gilt- picked up the bow he had laid aside, and
tural sound, I noticed that he appeared started down the path, to all appearances
to be an old man. His form was slight- supremely happy.
ly bent, his hair and beard were tinged Turning to one of the boys in my em-
with white, the lines were deeply sunken ploy, I asked who that man was. The
in his face, and his deep-set eyes were boy answered, " Oh, he is one of the
glazed with the film of age. Batwa." The word had no sooner been
I began to question him, having be- uttered than I seized my helmet and
come proficient in the native tongues, started off in pursuit of the stranger ; for
and was surprised to discover that I could I had read enough of African ethnology
The African Pygmies.
185
to know that Batwa meant Pygmies, and
here was a chance not to be lost.
My visitor was not far ahead, and did
not seem to be alarmed at my following
him, for soon he led me into a clearing
in the adjacent plain, not more than a
few hundred yards from my house, in
which a little hamlet was ensconced.
The Pygmy, if such he was, entered one
of the beehive huts, and ousted a swarm
of children, who scampered wildly about
at sight of the white man. The boy who
had given the name Batwa to my caller
had followed me, and I now turned to
him for more information concerning
this strange village. He said that the
Batwa were little people who lived to
themselves, and were much afraid of the
big people ; that those in this town were
under the authority of Ndpmbe, who
would not destroy them, but kept them
to hunt and fish for him. A few ques-
tions to the boy, and a careful study of
the town and people, assured me that
my next door neighbors were none others
than the Pygmies of Herodotus, the fa-
bled dwarfs of Ethiopia in reality and
truth. From that time I began a close
study of the life, condition, manners,
customs, and language of these remark-
able people, for the three years during
which I lived among them.
The village of the Batwa was located
in the suburbs of the town of Ndombe,
the nephew of Mai Munene, who found-
ed a famous African kingdom at the
head of navigation of the Kasai tributary
of the Congo River. The proximity of
this Pygmy settlement to the principal
city of tribes long noted for their large
stature and fine physique was a unique
fact in my knowledge of these people.
Stanley, and most of the other explorers
who had described them, had represent-
ed them as inhabiting the densest for-
ests, and as being entirely separate from
the other Africans, but this settlement
was on the edge of the great plateau of
Lunda, and under the sovereignty of a
distinctly alien tribe.
Ndombe's town is situated on the crest
of the watershed of the Kasai and Lubi
rivers, and about fifteen miles above
their confluence at Wissmann Falls, a
series of cataracts in the former stream,
so called in honor of the celebrated gov-
ernor of German East Africa. This
region is about five degrees south lati-
tude and twenty-two degrees east longi-
tude, with an average elevation of twen-
ty-five hundred feet, some of the peaks
of the Chrystal Range rising to over six
thousand feet. The plateau of Lunda
stretches from the Wissmann Falls to
the Zambezi divide, embracing a terri-
tory about the size of Texas.
The population of Ndombe's capital is
about five thousand, and that of the sub-
urban Pygmies about three hundred.
The Batwa formed a distinct village of
their own, with no other inhabitants save
their immediate chief or mayor, and his
wife. This man was of Ndombe's own
family, the representative of the king,
who acted as the sub-chief of the Pygmy
village under Ndombe's general suzerain-
ty. His authority seemed never to be dis-
puted, and through him the dwarfs paid
their tribute of game and fish daily to the
king. The Pygmies dwelt in little huts
shaped like a beehive, with an opening
on the side at the bottom, barely large
enough to admit their bodies crawling.
These houses were built by bending sticks
into the shape of a bow, placing the ends
in the ground, and thus forming a frame-
work, upon which a matting of large
leaves was tied with the fibres of the
palm. These huts, although a full-grown
normal African could not stand erect or
recline at full length in them, sufficed for
a Pygmy and his whole family, sometimes
consisting of a wife and half a do/en
children. About eighty of these little
dwellings were arranged without any
order or design upon the slope of the
hill toward the Lubi, near the meeting
place of the grassy plains and the tangled
forests, which constituted the Pygmies'
happy hunting grounds. The village cov-
186
The African Pygmies.
ered about three acres, and was dotted
here and there with the characteristic
trees of the African plains, the baobab,
euphorbia, and palm. Besides these, the
wife of the Bakuba chief of the Pyg-
mies had planted the village with plan-
tains, bananas, and pineapples, also the
never-failing pawpaw, red pepper, and
castor-oil bushes. It is noteworthy that
this planting was not done by the Pyg-
mies, who did absolutely no agricultural
work at all.
From the limbs of the trees about
the houses hung uncanny trophies of
the skill of the Batwa at the chase,
the head-bones of the antelope and buf-
falo, the skeletons of monkeys, boars,
and large rodents, the skins of snakes,
the scaly armor of the ant-eater, the
feathers of many large birds, the shells
of the porpoise, and the head and verte-
brae of many large fishes. Immense nets,
made both for hunting and fishing, were
thrown over poles suspended under grass
sheds about the village, while the walls
of the little huts bristled with spears,
knives, bows, and arrows, traps, har-
poons, and hunting horns. Yellow dogs,
whose diminutive dimensions were in
proportion to those of their masters,
prowled about the open spaces between
the houses, jangling the peculiar wooden
bells which were fastened about their
necks. One striking peculiarity of these
African curs is that they do not bark,
and so the bells are put upon them to
enable the huntsmen to follow. Often
the dogs themselves are eaten by the
Africans, but I never found the Pygmies
guilty of this unsportsmanlike conduct.
Neither was I ever able to detect any
evidences of cannibalism on the part of
the little people.
The life of the Pygmies was concerned
chiefly in the procuring of meat for them-
selves and for the larger tribes with whom
they traded. They were expert hunts-
men and fishermen, their principal wea-
pon being the bow and arrow with its
poisoned wooden dart, the most formid-
able of all the implements of savage
African warfare. The bow of the Pyg-
mies was made from the wood of a very
strong and tough tree, the color of the
heart of which was bright crimson ; the
bowstring was made of a fibre stripped
from the body of a rattan vine growing
in the swamps. This fibre produced a
string perfectly pliable, and exceeding
a rawhide in strength. The Pygmies
were often shorter than their bows. The
arrow was a light straight piece of bam-
boo, usually the stem of the frond of one
of the smaller palms. This frond stem
was cylindrical in shape, and hollow
throughout its length, the woody fibre
being wonderfully strong and light. Con-
trary to the practice among larger tribes,
these arrows were neither tipped with
iron, nor furnished with the feathery
barb. They were simply the neatly
trimmed bamboo sticks, sharpened at the
top and cleft at the bottom, the sharp
point being thickly smeared with a dark
poison. It is the last fact which makes
these simple contrivances such deadly
weapons. The poison is one of the most
fatal known. It is decocted from the
roots of one of the euphorbias by boil-
ing and pressing them, a black sticky
scum rising to the surface, into which
the points of the arrows are dipped. The
scum is very adhesive, and also impreg-
nates the wood of the arrowhead, which
is made from a certain kind of timber
specially for the purpose.
The effect of this poison is more dead-
ly than that of any vegetable poison with
which I am acquainted. It has been
known to produce death within two
minutes of its administration to a human
being. The ordinary way to test its
efficacy among the Africans is to try it
on a monkey, and the usual result is
death in less than five minutes. The use
of the poison in]war or the chase depends
upon the infliction of a very slight wound
on the victim by the point of the arrow,
the small amount of poison thus put into
the system sufficing to cause death.
The African Pygmies.
187
Sometimes, however, instead of death,
the effect is insanity.
I noted several instances of the terri-
ble effects of these poisoned arrows. A
man of Ndombe's town insulted one of
the Pygmies and was shot in the thigh.
Despite all that the medicine men could
do in the way of charms and various
hoodoo practices, besides using certain
herbs and roots which are often effica-
cious in ordinary ailments, the wound-
ed man died in great agony after several
hours of delirious coma. On another
occasion the poison was administered as
an ordeal to a woman accused of witch-
craft, and she died in less than half an
hour. A man in my employ was once
going down the Kasai River in a canoe,
and was attacked by some of the savage
Baschilele tribe, who were armed with
these poisoned arrows obtained from the
Pygmies. The man sustained a scratch
on the forehead from a passing arrow.
Although the wound was so slight as to
be almost invisible to the eye, the poor
fellow went violently insane, lingered
for two weeks, and then died in terrible
convulsions.
Once, in making a survey of the up-
per Kasai valley, I had occasion to as-
cend a high mountain, upon whose sum-
mit I walked about, compass in hand,
taking observations. Suddenly, without
the least warning, I fell violently into
the earth. I had come upon a concealed
pit, made to impale antelopes upon sharp-
ened stakes set in the bottom. One of
these stakes penetrated my thigh and
caused a severe wound. My only at-
tendant, a boy of fourteen years, ran,
down the mountain and secured men,
who carried me quickly to an adjacent
village. The boy sucked the wound
thoroughly, and the native doctors cau-
terized it by pouring boiling oil into it,
thus no doubt saving my life and reason.
I was dangerously ill for a month, and
suffered for three years afterwards. The
sucking of the wound and the cautery
were at my own suggestion.
The use of these poisoned arrows by
the Pygmies in killing game is wonder-
fully effective. The flesh around the
wound is excised, and the rest of the
meat is eaten with impunity. With its
coat of poison, the puny bamboo reed
becomes more fatal than the Krag-Jor-
gensen or Martini-Henry. With his
bow and arrows the Pygmy is more
than a match for any denizen of the
African jungle ; he kills the elephant,
buffalo, antelope, leopard, hyena, jackal,
and the numberless smaller animals of
forest and plain, besides guinea-fowl,
water-fowl, and others of the feathered
tribe. The Batwa of Ndombe's village
frequently brought in meat from these
different animals, part of which went to
Ndombe as his regular tribute, the rest
being kept for their own use, or ex-
changed for the farinaceous produce of
the Bikenge. Once the dwarfs brought
in immense chunks of a huge python,
which they found asleep after making
his monthly meal of a whole antelope,
horns, hoof, and all. The total length
of the tremendous snake was twenty-six
feet, and his body was as thick as a
man's thigh. There was wild excite-
ment in the Pygmies' town, and the
other natives flocked in from far and
wide to see the monster and enjoy the
feast. It may be remarked here that
the Pygmies' diet includes everything
from the soft bodies of the white ant to
the hippopotamus. I have known them
to shake caterpillars from the trees, and
dry them in the sun, preserving them as
a special delicacy ; and the locust, upon
which John the Baptist fed in the wil-
derness, is as highly esteemed among
them as the shrimp or lobster among the
epicures of the West.
The method of hunting the monkey,
the eating of which must have been the
beginning of anthropophagy, is most in-
teresting. A clearing of about half an
acre is made in the forest where the
simians abound ; a net ten feet high and
forty feet long, made from a very tough
188
The African Pygmies.
and strong fibrous plant, is stretched
across this clearing. The Pygmies then
drive the monkeys from the forest into
the clearing. When the monkeys at-
tempt to cross the open space, they no
longer find the convenient branches of
the trees which have hitherto assisted*
them in their flight, and are forced to
rush across the clearing on the ground.
When they come upon the net, they are
sorely puzzled, and instead of trying to
climb over it, vainly strive to get through
the meshes, and in this bewildered con-
dition are set upon by the Pygmies with
their bows and arrows and spears, and a
general slaughter ensues. One reason
why this method of hunting 4he monkey
is followed is that a wounded monkey is
so very difficult to pursue in the mazes
of the forests.
The fact that the Pygmies did not
cultivate the soil at all was established
by careful and prolonged investigation,
and is one of the most remarkable char-
acteristics of these people. At the time
of my residence among them, they had
been in the habit for centuries past of
trading the meat from the chase for pro-
duce of the fields of the Bantu. The
latter people engaged quite extensively
in raising food supplies of various kinds.
Their principal implement is the hoe, the
blade of which their blacksmiths make
from the abundant magnetic iron ore of
the country, the handle of the hoe being
a short stick about two feet long, with
a hole bored through a knot in the end,
for the attachment of the blade. The
Bantu women use this hoe exclusively, as
they have neither plough, spade, shovel,
nor any other agricultural implement.
With this primitive hoe, however, they
plant and cultivate corn, peas, beans,
onions, tomatoes, tobacco, cotton, melons,
pepper, and various tropical fruits and
vegetables, besides the universal manioc,
plantain, and peanut. The word for
peanut, by the way, in the language of
Ndombe, is " Ngoobah."
None of these products, which the
African soil and climate cause to flour-
ish with such ease and abundance, have
ever been cultivated by the Pygmies.
The dwarfs, before the advent of the
larger tribes, were literally wild men of
the woods, who subsisted entirely on
the bounty of unaided nature. , The in-
digenous and uncultivated edibles of the
African soil were considered ample for
their needs. They lived on the roots
and tubers of trees and of certain plants
resembling the Irish potato, the young
and tender shoots of succulent bushes,
and the acidulous fruits occurring in
great quantity in the forest, which the
monkeys feed upon with avidity.
The relations of the Batwa to Ndombe
and the powerful Balunda were unique.
According to the traditions of both peo-
ple, many ages previously the Pygmies
had been the sole inhabitants and the un-
disputed masters of the vast territories
now occupied by the dominant races in
Africa. Then the forefathers of the
Bantu came down from the Northeast,
and began to fight the Pygmies. The lat-
ter represent these early conflicts as long
and bitter. Some of the dwarfs escaped
into the depths of the remote forests,
into whose gloomy wilds the conquering
invaders would not follow them. This
accounts for Stanley's discovery of them
in the Aruwimi forests, and explains his
impression that the Pygmies were never
found elsewhere in association with the
other Africans. But some of the little
people were captured in those ancient
wars, and kept near their captors until
their shyness wore off, and they were
willing to live with them on friendly
terms. It was in this way that Ndombe's
kingdom came to embrace this settle-
ment of the dwarfs. It is possible that
the superior tribes could never have
overcome the Pygmies had they not
learned the secret of the manufacture
and use of the poisoned arrows of the
latter. But there never was any inter-
marriage between the two peoples, nor
did either adopt the ways of the other.
The African Pygmies.
189
Both remained separate and distinct,
though living side by side for centuries.
The Pygmies did not increase rapidly in
numbers, and barely kept up their ex-
istence from generation to generation.
In this they appear to have been already
a moribund race when the larger men
came down upon them.
The complete confidence of Ndombe
and his people facilitated my intercourse
with the Pygmies. This ripened into
the most friendly association when the
little people found me such a steady
customer for their game, the more so as
the principal article which I had to offer
was what they most earnestly coveted
common salt. The craving for chloride
of sodium is enhanced by the fact that
the chief mineral ingredient of the food
of the African aborigines is a kind of
chlorate of potash obtained by precipi-
tating a lye made from th ashes of a
marsh weed. Although there are de-
posits of rock salt in different parts of the
continent, the natives have not learned
to use it. The potash salt is so very in-
ferior to the "white man's salt," as the
blacks call our article, that the latter
commands fabulous prices in the remote
interior, where I was located. Salt is
more precious than gold in the opinion
of the Pygmies. As I was fairly well
supplied with the coveted relish, my eager
little neighbors undertook to barter all
the meat they could persuade me to take
for it. In this way quite a familiarity
sprang up between us, and I was enabled
to collect much detailed information con-
cerning them.
The clothing of the Pygmies was the
most primitive of all I saw in Africa.
The children and some of the women
were nude, and the best clad of them
wore nothing more than a yard of palm
fibre around their loins, this garment
being obtained from the other tribes.
Some wore pieces of fibre of the size of
a pocket handkerchief suspended from
a string around the waist, while others
were content with leaves or grass. They
had no looms, and manufactured no cloth
as the other natives did. The favorite
ornamental garment among them was the
skin of a large baboon. I never saw a
single Pygmy tattooed in any way. They
. often made amulets or charms of the
skin or bones of small animals. They
did not wear the beads or brass and
copper wire which were affected by the
Balunda, but they often wore the gay
feathers of some bird in their woolly
hair.
The extreme simplicity of the man-
ners and customs of the Pygmies was
in striking contrast to the more com-
plex life of the other races. Ndombe's
people, for example, had been enjoying
for centuries the advantages accruing
from the subdivision of labor, somewhat
on the lines of more civilized countries.
The Balunda had blacksmiths, wood-
carvers, weavers, mat-makers, manufac-
turers, besides lawyers, medicine men,
governmental officials such as consta-
bles, tax-collectors, and executioners with
chieftains and petty governors under
the greater kings. The Pygmies had
none of these. The governmental sys-
tem under which the Batwa lived at
Ndombe was imposed on them by the
king. Nor had their system ever been
even patriarchal. In most of these mat-
ters the aboriginal race of Pygmies must
have been the most primitive race of
mankind.
The poverty of the Pygmies alone re-
stricted their naturally polygamous ten-
dencies. The other Africans enjoy as
many wives and concubines as they have
means to buy. There are so few dis-
tinctions of wealth among the Pygmies
that their women are pretty evenly di-
vided among them. They are also
much less prolific than the larger tribes.
Their children are precocious, being ex-
posed early to the hardening influences
of their parents' lives, and made to shift
for themselves as soon as they can catch
mice, or dig up roots. While the men
hunt and fish, the women search for the
190
The African Pygmies.
wild food of the plain and forest, or
barter meat for the food of the Ba-
lunda.
The average height of fifty grown
men of the Batwa village was fifty-one
and seven eighths inches, or four feet and .
nearly four inches. Seven men averaged
less than three feet and nine inches high,
and five of them were over four feet, six
inches. It was very difficult to persuade
the women to submit to measurement,
but eight of them, mothers of families,
averaged forty-seven and three eighths
inches, four inches shorter than the men.
The prevalent color was a light chocolate
brown. The older men wore scanty
beards.
The head of the Pygmy is of the
brachycephalic order. The mean cranial
index of the skulls of eight adult males
is eighty-one degrees. The nose is small,
but more aquiline than that of the real
Negro. The mouth is large, and the chin
usually receding. The hair is of a light-
er color, almost a shade of brown,
and is kinky and woolly. His hands and
feet are small and well shaped, the hands
in particular being delicately formed.
In proportion to his size, his strength far
exceeds that of all the other Africans.
His powers of endurance on the march
or in the chase are phenomenal. Fifty
miles a day is an ordinary march for
him, and he is almost as much at home
in the trees as the monkeys themselves.
The senses of the Pygmies are unusu-
ally acute. At quite a distance, they
can distinguish the chameleon from the
foliage in which it is hidden, notwith-
standing the fact that the color of the
little animal coincides with that of its
hiding place. Much of their quarry is
discovered through the powers of the
nose, and it is no exaggeration to say that
the Pygmies' sense of smell is as keen
as that of their dogs. They are such
shots with the bow that I have seen one
send an arrow through a rat at twenty
yards, while it was running through the
village. The Bantu would spear fish as
they leaped from the water, or darted
among the rocks in the streams.
As might be expected, the chief charac-
teristic of the Pygmy's mind is cunning.
Ages of warfare with ferocious beasts,
and long periods of struggling against
tribes of men physically superior to
them, have made the little people so fa-
mous for treachery, sly dexterity, and
extraordinary agility, that the words
" Mudimuki mu mutwa " (sharp as a
Pygmy) have become the favorite sim-
ile of the Bantu race.
The language of the Batwa is the
most strongly onomatopoetic of any with
which I am acquainted. The names of
animals are made of sounds most char-
acteristic of the beasts they describe.
" Elephant " is humba-humba ; "
" snake " is " luwilya-wilya " (note how
this word squirms). The verbs describe
actions imitatively. The vocabulary is
much more limited than that of the
Bantu. The Batwa appear to have very
few, if any, abstract ideas.
The religion of the Pygmies consisted
primarily in the worship of the sun.
They were not idolatrous the sun was
worshiped as God, and the moon was
feared as the devil. They made no im-
ages of material objects, and had very
few of the superstitious practices of the
other Africans.
After my acquaintance with the Pyg-
mies had ripened into complete mutual
confidence, I once made bold to tell them
that some of the wise men of my country
asserted that they had descended from
the apes of the forest. This statement,
far from provoking mirth, met with a
storm of indignant protestation, and fur-
nished the theme for many a heated dis-
cussion around the Batwa firesides. The
sequel of the matter was an amusing
occasion, when a venerable grandfather
among the Pygmies turned the tables on
me. One day a young ape of the Soko
species was brought to my house as a
present to me from my little neighbors.
A gray-haired old Pygmy watched the
The African Pygmies.
191
antics of the young Soko, the peculiarity
of which consisted in its perfectly white
face and hair. Turning his eyes on the
Saxon propounder of the insulting hy-
pothesis concerning his progenitors, and
noting that Saxon and Soko alike were
strikingly white, the shrewd old chap
dryly asked : u If we black Batwa come
from black monkeys in the forest, who
then comes from that Soko there ? "
The history of the Batwa tribe of the
Pygmies is involved in the general his-
tory of all the dwarf races. It has been
shown by exhaustive research that this
species of the genus homo is not con-
fined to Africa, but is widely distributed
over the whole globe. My only guides
to the history of the Batwa were their
own traditions and those of the Bantu
around them, sources of information
much more trustworthy than is often sup-
posed. The Africans are very careful
to conserve their traditions, and the old
men gather the young ones about their
firesides, and relate to them the lore
of their people and the deeds of their
fathers. They reckon time by the ap-
pearances of the new moon and the oc-
currence of such natural phenomena as
earthquakes, eclipses, droughts, besides
unusual wars, migrations, or any extraor-
dinary events.
The concurrence of testimony is to
the effect that the ancestors of the Pyg-
mies many years before had exclusively
occupied the vast territories throughout
which they are now scattered. The
statements of the Bantu and Batwa alike
agreed that the latter were the only spe-
cies of mankind occupying the plains of
Lunda when the former came down upon
them from the direction of the rising
sun. The migrations of the Bantu,
therefore, into Central Africa were from
the direction of Egypt and Asia. When
these larger people found the Pygmies, as
before indicated, they began to destroy
or subdue them, or to chase them into
the depths of the remote forests. It is
noteworthy that the Pygmies have never
developed any of the primitive arts which
are practiced among the Bantu to-day.
There are no signs of a stone age in
Africa. This fact is of the utmost an-
thropological value when taken in con-
nection with the fact that Central Africa
is of extremely recent geological forma-
tion. The irruption of the Bantu, who
were already in the iron age, upon the
Batwa, who had not yet reached the
stone age, is curiously like the superpo-
sition of volcanic strata upon a tertiary
formation.
The geographical distribution of the
dwarf races is much wider than has been
popularly believed. The ancient Egyp-
tians report them at the head waters of
the Nile. This was confirmed by Stan-
ley and Emin Pasha. Schweinfurth
made a thorough study of a settlement
of Pygmies in North Central Africa in
the valley of the Welle, a branch of the
Mobangi tributary of the Congo, three
degrees north latitude, twenty-five de-
grees east longitude. Du Chaillu identi-
fied them in the Ogowe country of the
Gaboon, a thousand miles southwest of
Schweinfurth's investigation. Another
thousand miles southeast of those found
by Du Chaillu are the Batwa which I
am describing, in the location already
mentioned. Three hundred miles north-
east of this country occurs a tribe of
Pygmies mentioned by Dr. Wolf. It
will thus be seen that the existence of
the Pygmies has been authenticated in
five different parts of Africa, over a ter-
ritory much larger than the United
States. Besides these it is pretty clearly
established that the Hottentots and Bush-
men of extreme South Africa also belong
to this class.
The Pygmies are not, as has been
alleged from lack of exact data, restrict-
ed solely in their habitat to the forests
or impenetrable jungles. They are the
residuum of complete occupation of vast
continental areas. The interesting part,
however, about this occupation is that no
traces have been found of any human be-
192
The African Pygmies.
ings prior to the Pygmies. In this re-
spect, the Caucasian discoveries in North
America differ totally from those in
Africa. The aborigines whom the Euro-
peans found in America had evidently
been antedated by a people vastly supe-
rior to them in the arts of civilization.
But the white man has found no traces
of the handiwork of man preceding the
Pygmies. These dwarfish beings are the
most primitive of men yet discovered in
the annals of history.
Reference has already been made to
the existence of other Pygmy tribes.
Most of these occur in different parts
of the eastern hemisphere. One of the
principal localities in which these Orien-
tal Pygmies occur is in the Philippine
Islands. In Luzon, particularly, black
Pygmies with straight hair have been
found. The other localities are the An-
daman Islands, Borneo, Madagascar,
the Punjab of India, the extreme west-
ern part of China, and the Malay Penin-
sula, while certain skulls on the Pacific
coast of America point to the probability
that the Pygmies, as well as the larger
Asiatics, once occupied the western hem-
isphere.
While the indubitable existence of
these Pygmy races is a fact which late
modern research alone has demonstrated
to the satisfaction of the scientific world,
stories about the Pygmies have been
current in literature from the dawn
of history. The recent investigations
of scientists in Africa have done much
to dignify the oft-ridiculed writings of
Herodotus. The Father of History re-
cords stories of his day concerning Pyg-
mies who were said to occupy upper
Egypt. Homer also makes reference
to these little people, and Aristotle em-
bellishes his account with reference to
diminutive horses as well as men. Pliny
places his Pygmies in a number of lo-
calities. Swift, therefore, had abundant
classical ground for his Lilliputians, and
a truer basis in fact than he imagined.
The sober facts of the nineteenth cen-
tury have eclipsed the romances of
Homer, Swift, and Defoe alike.
The philosophic speculations raised by
the facts brought to light about these
Batwa, Akka, Hottentots, Mincopies,
and Negritos as they have been various-
ly called, are not the least interesting
results of their discovery. Who and
what are they? Are they men, or the
highest apes ? Who and what were their
ancestors ? What are their ethnic rela-
tions to the other races of men ? Have
they degenerated from larger men, or
are the larger men a development of
Pygmy forefathers ? These questions
arise naturally, and plunge the inquirer
at once into the depths of the most heat-
ed scientific discussions of this genera-
tion.
For practical consideration, we may
classify these questions into three :
1. Were the ancestors of the Pygmies
larger men ? That is, are the Pygmies
a degenerate race ?
2. Were the ancestors of the Pygmies
also the ancestors of the larger men ?
3. Are the Pygmies an unchanged
race from their creation, or from their ap-
pearance as human beings on the globe ?
It is to be remarked that so many cor-
relative issues in questions which have
been the subject of the fiercest debate
are here raised, that only a re'sume' of the
leading arguments in each hypothesis
can be given.
The principal points in favor of the hy-
pothesis of degeneracy are these : the
clearly established fact of degeneracy
as influential in modifying animals ; the
long ages in which this deteriorating his-
tory has certainly had time to act in
the case of Pygmies history records
their existence for five thousand years,
and the extreme probability points to a
much longer period ; the fact that the
widespread occurrence of the dwarf races
over the globe points to migration rather
than to separate spontaneous evolution ;
and, stronger than any other point, the
anatomical completeness of the Pygmy's
The African Pygmies.
193
body shows near kinship to all the races
of man. If the dwarfs were undeveloped
men, not yet come to the full stature of
manhood, this fact would probably ap-
pear in some incompleteness in their
anatomic structure.
The considerations in favor of the
Pygmy as the primeval man from whose
ancestors the larger races were developed
are the usual arguments for the evolu-
tion of man from lower to higher types,
and are too well known for extended dis-
cussion here. The anatomic complete-
ness of the Pygmy applies as strongly to
this hypothesis as to that of degeneracy.
It may be remarked that if the ances-
tors of the Pygmies also fathered the
larger races, then there ought to appear
among the Pygmies of to-day some cases
of progressive development in that direc-
tion. As a matter of fact, I did not ob-
serve any case of this, nor have I found
any recorded. The strongest argument
for this hypothesis is, that everywhere
the Pygmies have been found they seem
to have chosen the outer frontier of the
lands occupied by the stronger peoples.
This looks as if the latter drove the for-
mer toward the extremities of the world
from a country in which all were origi-
nally together.
The last hypothesis, that the Pygmies
present a case of unmodified structure
from the beginning, is supported by the
usual arguments which are brought
against both evolution and degeneracy.
It is true that these little people have
apparently preserved an unchanged phy-
sical entity for five thousand years. But
that only carries th'e question back into
the debated ground of the origin of spe-
cies.
The point at issue is distinct. Did
the Pygmies come from a man who was
a common ancestor to many races now
as far removed from one another as my
friend Teku of the Batwa village is from
the late President McKinley ? We must
reserve the discussion of this question
for another time. It is too profound and
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 13
comprehensive to be fully presented now.
The juxtaposition of the Bantu and the
Batwa in Africa affords one of the best
specific cases for this study which has
ever been brought before the scientific
and philosophical world.
Of one fact my experience and obser-
vation completely convinced me, that
these Pygmies are human beings in every
sense of the word. The data corrobo-
rating this opinion are physical, psycho-
logical, and ethnical.
The Pygmies, without exception, have
all the parts, organs, and powers of the
human body, without any variation in
kind distinguishing them from other men.
They lack nothing in this respect, nor
are there any cases of atrophied mem-
bers of the body. Their vocal organs en-
able them to make all the sounds necessa-
ry to speak the languages of the several
different tribes which meet and mingle
at Ndombe. The linguistic differences
between these tribes are such as to jus-
tify the word language rather than dia-
lect. The fact of there being no cases
of marital alliance between the Pygmies
and the other races is due to the attitude
of the larger and not of the smaller men.
There is a variation of at least one foot
among the Pygmies themselves, and it
is conceivable that the law of natural se-
lection might develop a larger race from
the selected members of the dwarfs. But
there are no authenticated cases of this
development on record as far as I have
been able to discover.
The Pygmies show, in a greater or less
degree, all the mental faculties which are
characteristic of other men. The love of
parents for their children is quite marked.
The affectionate playfulness toward their
dogs attracted my attention. The insti-
tution of marriage is recognized among
them, and although polygamy prevails,
there is the disapproval of laxity in these
matters which one finds among the higher
races. I have already referred to sun-
worship as their chief religious princi-
ple. Murder, theft, and violence are
194
The African Pygmies.
punished by common consent with vary-
ing severity in each case. The necessity
of cunning rather than of force as a
means of self-defense has affected their
standard of truthfulness, but they know
the difference between a lie and the
truth, and have words to express both
ideas. They show the play of the emo-
tions of love, hatred, fear, self-respect,
vanity, emulation, and, in fact, to a great-
er or less rudimentary degree, of all the
passions and affections. The possession
of rational powers by the Pygmies is be-
yond dispute. They can form a correct
induction from/ facts, and can deduce
conclusions from premises, and act con-
stantly on axioms which are expressed
pithily in their language. This reason-
ing faculty was what especially caught
my attention, and caused me to prose-
cute a psychological study of them ; with
the result that I was fully convinced that
they were men, and if the lowest type,
still men.
The Pygmies are essentially gregari-
ous in their habits. This is in sharp con-
trast with the practice of the highest
apes, the gorillas, which go in pairs, each
pair exhibiting unrelenting hostility to
all others. The Pygmies are not natu-
rally warlike in their attitude toward one
another, and the wars in which they
have been engaged have been principally
in self-defense.
On one occasion the Pygmies showed
their common sense in rather a decided
way. In my employ were some very
turbulent natives of the Zappo-Zap and
Batetela tribes, whose headstrong dispo-
sition was a source of constant anxiety
to me. They were so superior in indus-
try and intelligence to all the other na-
tives available as laborers that I could
not conveniently dispense with their ser-
vices. Their love of meat made them
constant visitors to our Pygmy neigh-
bors, and their taste for sharp bargains
made the little people decidedly reluc-
tant to deal with them. So one day the
Pygmies mixed an emetic herb with the
meat the Zappo-Zaps insisted on buy^
ing at too low a figure, and put an end
to the nuisance.
Once some black soldiers sent by the
Belgian representative of the Congo gov-
ernment to collect taxes from Ndombe
came upon the town, and poured into the
Batwa village demanding meat. The
little people gave them all they had on
hand, and promised more on the morrow.
When the soldiers came next morning,
they were presented with an abundance
of venison, which, fortunately for them,
they first fed to some dogs as a precau-
tion. The dogs died, and it was asserted
by the soldiers that the Pygmies had
prepared to poison them all. But for
my own earnest intervention, there would
have ensued a bloody fray at once. The
soldiers contented themselves with feed-
ing the meat to the Pygmies' dogs, and
the little people wept sorely because I
pronounced this fair play, and told them
that they thus escaped lightly from worse
punishment.
Although I made many efforts to im-
press the principles of Christianity upon
the Batwa, they were very slow to com-
prehend or act upon them. They were
extremely materialistic in their views of
life, and preferred the sodium chloride
of commerce to the salt of religion. One
of them is now a member of the church
in good and regular standing, according
to my latest information, and I believe
they have souls with light enough in them
to see the way to their spiritual improve-
ment and redemption.
In conclusion, it may afford a strik-
ing contrast to this description of the
dwarfs, if I briefly allude to the prin-
cipal characteristics of the giant king
Ndombe and his family. Ndombe stood
six feet six in stature, with broad square
shoulders, Herculean limbs, and massive
statuesque features of a distinctly Egyp-
tian cast. He was of a bright copper
color, with aquiline features, and mag-
nificent brown eyes. He carried him-
self as erect as a life-guardsman, and
A Night's Lodging.
195
although he weighed fully two hundred
and fifty pounds, there was not a super-
fluous ounce of flesh on him. The tout
ensemble of the man was regal, and I
have never seen his physical superior.
He had thirty-one wives and over forty
children. His family connections were
so extensive that they occupied a whole
town, and his personal bodyguard was
composed entirely of his blood relations.
Ndombe's character was kindly and his
deportment dignified. As a rule, he
treated his subjects with benevolence,
and even his slaves were devoted to him.
Toward me his attitude was always both
friendly and deferential. The complete
confidence which his Pygmy subjects re-
posed in him was one of the strongest
testimonies to his good sense and diplo-
matic ability.
The accessibility of these Pygmies to
the outside world by reason of the recent
opening up of the Kasai valley to steam
navigation a steamboat for Kasai river
having been built in Richmond, Virginia
ought to lead to a thorough study of
these little people. No subject can be
of more fascinating interest, whether to
the followers of science, or to any others
who agree with Pope to the extent of
believing that at least one " proper study
of mankind is man."
Samuel Phillips Verner.
A NIGHT'S LODGING.
FATHER WILISTON was a retired
clergyman, so distinguished from his
son Timothy, whose house stood on the
ridge north of the old village of Win-
throp, and whose daily path lay between
his house and the new growing settle-
ment around the valley station. It oc-
curred at odd times to Father Wiliston
that Timothy's path was somewhat un-
deviating. The clergyman had walked
widely since Winthrop was first left be-
hind fifty -five years back, at a time when
the town was smaller and cows cropped
the Green but never a lawn mower.
After college and seminary had come
the frontier, which lay this side of the
Great Lakes until Clinton stretclied his
ribbon of waterway to the sea; then a
mission in Wisconsin, intended to mod-
ify the restless profanity of lumbermen
who broke legs under logs and drank
disastrous whiskey. A city and twenty
mills were on the spot now, though the
same muddy river ran into the same
blue lake. Some skidders and saw-
tenders of old days were come to live
in stone mansions and drive in nickel-
plated carriages ; some were dead ; some
drifting like the refuse on the lake
front; some skidding and saw-tending
still. Distinction of social position was
an idea that Father Wiliston never was
able to grasp.
In the memories of that raw city on
the lake he had his place among its
choicest incongruities; and when his
threescore and ten years were full the
practical tenderness of his nickel-plated
and mansioned parishioners packed him
one day into an upholstered sleeping
car, drew an astonishing check to his
credit, and mailed it for safety to Tim-
othy Wiliston of Winthrop. So Father
Wiliston returned to Winthrop, where
Timothy, his son, had been sent to take
root thirty years before.
One advantage of single-mindedness
is that life keeps on presenting us with
surprises. Father Wiliston occupied his
own Arcadia, and Wisconsin or Win-
throp merely sent in to him a succes-
sion of persons and events of curious in-
terest. "The parson," Wisconsin
so spoke of him, leaning sociably over
its bar, or pausing among scented slabs
and sawdust, "the paVson resembles
196
A Night's Lodging.
an egg as respects that it 's innocent
and some lopsided, but when you think
he must be getting addled, he ain't.
He says to me, ' You '11 make the Lord
a deal of trouble, bless my soul! ' he
says. * I don't see how the Lord 's going
to arrange for you. But ' thinking
he might hurt my feelings i I guess
he '11 undertake it by and by.' Then
he goes wabbling down-street, picks up
Mick Riley, who 's considerable drunk,
and takes him to see his chickens. And
Mick gets so interested in those chick-
ens you 'd like to die. Then parson
goes off, absent-minded and forgets
him, and Mick sleeps the balmy night
in the barnyard, and steals a chicken in
the morning, and parson says, * Bless
my soul! How singular! ' Well,"
concluded Wisconsin, "he's getting
pretty young for his years. I hear
they 're going to send him East before
he learns bad habits."
The steadiness and repetition of
Timothy's worldly career and semi-
daily walk to and from his business
therefore seemed to Father Wiliston
phenomenal, a problem not to be solved
by algebra, for if a equaled Timothy, b
his house, c his business, a -\- b -f- c was
still not a far-reaching formula, and
there seemed no advantage in squaring
it. Geometrically it was evident that
by walking back and forth over the same
straight line you never so much as ob-
tained an angle. Now, by arithmetic,
" Four times thirty, multiplied by
leaving out Sundays Bless me !
How singular ! Thirty-seven thousand
five hundred and sixty times ! "
He wondered if it had ever occurred
to Timothy to walk it backward, or,
perhaps, to hop, partly on one foot, and
then, of course, partly on the other.
Sixty years ago there was a method of
progress known as " hop - skip - and-
jump, " which had variety and interest.
Drawn in the train of this memory came
other memories floating down the after-
noon's slant sunbeams, rising from every
meadow and clump of woods ; from the
elder swamp where the brown rabbits
used to run zigzag, possibly still ran in
the same interesting way; from the
great sand bank beyond the Indian
graves. The old Wiliston house, with
roof that sloped like a well-sweep, lay
yonder, a mile or two. He seemed to
remember some one said it was empty,
but he could not associate it with emp-
tiness. The bough apples there, if he
remembered rightly, were an efficacious
balm for regret.
He sighed and took up his book. It
was another cure of regret, a Scott
novel, The Pirate. It had points of
superiority over Cruden's Concordance.
The surf began to beat on the Shetland
Islands, and trouble was imminent be-
tween Cleveland and Mordaunt Mer-
toun.
Timothy and his wife drove away
visiting that afternoon, not to return
till late at night, and Bettina, the
Scandinavian, laid Father Wiliston 's
supper by the open window, where he
could look out across the porch and see
the chickens clucking in the road.
"You mus' eat, fater," she com-
manded.
"Yes, yes, Bettina. Thank you,
my dear. Quite right."
He came with his book and sat down
at the table, but Bettina was expe-
rienced and not satisfied.
"You mus' eat firs'."
He sighed and laid down The Pi-
rate. Bettina captured and carried it
to the other end of the room, lit the
lamp though it was still light, and de-
parted after the mail. It was a rare
opportunity for her to linger in the com-
pany of one of her Scandinavian admir-
ers. "Fater " would not know the dif-
ference between seven, and nine or ten.
He leaned in the window and watched
her safely out of sight, then went across
the room, recaptured The Pirate, and
chuckled in the tickling pleasure of a
forbidden thing, "asked the blessing,"
drank his tea shrewdly, knowing it
would deteriorate, and settled to his
A NigMs Lodging.
197
book. The brown soft dusk settled,
shade by shade ; moths fluttered around
the lamp ; sleepy birds twittered in the
maples. But the beat of the surf on
the Shetland Islands was closer than
these. Cleveland and Mordaunt Mer-
toun were busy, and Norna, " Really,
Norna was a remarkable woman, "
and an hour slipped past.
Some one hemmed close by and
scraped his feet. It was a large man
who stood there, dusty and ragged, one
boot on the porch, with a red handker-
chief knotted under his thick tangled
beard and jovial red face. He had solid
limbs and shoulders, and a stomach of
sloth and heavy feeding.
The stranger did not resemble the
comely pirate, Cleveland ; his linen was
not "seventeen hun'red;" it seemed
doubtful if there were any linen. And
yet, in a way there was something not
inappropriate about him, a certain cha-
otic ease; not piratical, perhaps, al-
though he looked like an adventurous
person. Father Wiliston took time to
pass from one conception of things to
another. He gazed mildly through his
"I ain't had no supper," began the
stranger in a deep moaning bass; and
Father Wiliston started.
"Bless my soul! Neither have I."
He shook out his napkin. "Bettina,
you see "
"Looks like there 's enough for two, "
moaned and grumbled the other. He
mounted the porch and approached the
window, so that the lamplight glim-
mered against his big, red, oily face.
"Why, so there is!" cried Father
Wiliston, looking about the table in
surprise. "I never could eat all that.
Come in." And the stranger rolled
muttering and wheezing around through
the door.
"Will you not bring a chair? And
you might use the bread knife. These
are fried eggs. And a little cold chick-
en ? Really, I 'm very glad you dropped
in, Mr."
"Del Toboso." By this time the
stranger's mouth was full and his enun-
ciation confused.
"Why," Father Wiliston helped
himself to an egg, "I don't think I
caught the name."
"Del Toboso. Boozy 's what they
calls me in the push."
"I 'm afraid your tea is quite cold.
Boozy? How singular! I hope it
doesn't imply alcoholic habits."
"No," shaking his head gravely, so
that his beard wagged to the judicial
negation. "Takes so much to tank me
up I can't afford it, let alone it ain't
moral. "
The two ate with haste, the stranger
from habit and experience, Father Wil-
iston for fear of Bettina 's sudden re-
turn. When the last egg and slice of
bread had disappeared, the stranger sat
back with a wheezing sigh.
"I wonder," began Father Wiliston
mildly, "Mr. Toboso Toboso is the
last name, is n't it, and Del the first ? "
"Ah," the other wheezed mysteri-
ously, "I don't know about that, El-
der. That 's always a question."
"You don't know! You don't
know ! "
"Got it off'n another man," went
on Toboso sociably. "He said he
wouldn't take fifty dollars for it. I
didn't have no money nor him either,
and he rolled off'n the top of the train
that night or maybe the next. I don't
know. I didn't roll him. It was in
Dakota, over a canon with no special
bottom. He scattered himself on the
way down. But I says, if that name 's
worth fifty dollars, it 's mine. Del
Toboso. That 's mine. Sounds valu-
able, don't it?"
Father Wiliston fell into a reverie.
"Toboso? Why, yes. Dulcinea del
Toboso. I remember, now."
"What 's that? Dulcinea, was it?
And you knowed him ? "
"A long' while ago when I was
younger. It was in a green cover Don
Quixote he was in a cage, ' The
198
A Night's Lodging.
Knight of the Rueful Countenance.'
He had his face between the bars." .
"Well," said Toboso, "you must
have knowed him. He always looked
glum, and I 've seen him in quad my-
self."
"Yes. Sancho Panza. Dulcinea
del Toboso."
"I never knowed that part of it.
Dulcinea del Toboso! Well, that's
me. You know a ruck of fine names,
Elder. It sounds like thirteen trumps,
now, don't it? "
Father Wiliston roused himself, and
discriminated. "But you look more
like Sancho Panza."
"Do? Well, I never knowed that
one. Must 've been a Greaser. Dul-
cinea 's good enough."
Father Wiliston began to feel singu-
larly happy and alive. The regular and
even paced Timothy, his fidgeting wife,
and the imperious Bettina were to some
extent shadows and troubles in the even-
ing of his life. They were careful peo-
ple, who were hemmed in and restricted,
who somehow hemmed in and restricted
him. They lived up to precedents.
Toboso did not seem to depend on pre-
' cedents. He had the free speech, the
casual inconsequence, the primitive
mystery, desired of the boy's will and
the wind's will, and traveled after by
the long thoughts of youth. He was
wind-beaten, burned red by the sun,
ragged of coat and beard, huge, fat,
wallowing in the ease of his flesh. One
looked at him and remembered the wide
world full of crossed trails and slum-
bering swamps.
Father W iliston had long, straight
white hair, falling beside his pale-
veined and spiritual forehead and thin
cheeks. He propped his forehead on
one bony hand, and looked at Toboso
with eyes of speculation. If both men
were what some would call eccentric,
to each other they seemed only compan-
ionable, which, after all, is the main
thing.
"I have thought of late," continued
Father Wiliston after a pause, "that
I should like to travel, to examine hu-
man life, say, on the highway. I should
think, now, your manner of living
most interesting. You go from house
to house, do you not ? from city to
city? Like Ulysses, you see men and
their labors, and you pass on. Like
the Apostles, who surely were wise
men, besides that were especially main-
tained of God, like them, and the pil-
grims to shrines, you go with wallet
and staff or merely with Faith for your
baggage."
"There don't nothing bother you in
warm weather, that 's right," said To-
boso, "except your grub. And that
ain't any more than 's interesting. If
it wasn't for looking after meals a
man on the road might get right down
lazy."
- "Why, just so! How wonderful!
Now, do you suppose, Mr. Toboso, do
you suppose it feasible ? I should very
much like, if it could be equably ar-
ranged, I should very much like to have
this experience."
Toboso reflected. "There ain't many
of your age on the road." An idea
struck him suddenly. "But supposing
you were going sort of experimenting,
like that, and there 's some folks that
do, supposing you could lay your
hands on a little bunch of money for
luck, I don't see nothing to stop."
"Why, I think there is some in my
desk."
Toboso leaned forward and pulled his
beard. The table creaked under his
elbow.
"How much?"
"I will see. Of course you are quite
right."
"At your age, Elder."
"It is not as if I were younger."
Father Wiliston rose and hurried out.
Toboso sat still and blinked at the
lamp. "My Gord!" he murmured
and moaned confidentially, "here 's a
game ! "
After some time Father Wiliston re-
A Night's Lodging.
199
turned. "Do you think we could start
now ? " he asked eagerly.
"Why sure, Elder. What's hin-
dering?"
"I am fortunate to find sixty dol-
lars. Really, I didn't remember.
And here 's a note I have written to my
son to explain. I wonder what Bettina
did with my hat."
He hurried back into the hall. To-
boso took the note from the table and
pocketed it. "Ain't no use taking
risks."
They went out into the warm night,
under pleasant stars, and along the road
together arm in arm.
"I feel pretty gay, Elder." He
broke into bellowing song, " Hey, Jinny !
Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me."
"Really, I feel cheerful, too, Mr.
Toboso, wonderfully cheerful."
"Dulcinea, Elder. Dulcinea 's me
name. Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!"
"How singular it is! I feel very
cheerful. I think really, I think I
should like to learn that song about
Jinny. It seems such a cheerful song. "
" Hit her up, Elder, " wheezed Tobo-
so jovially. "Now then "
"Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny! Listen,
love, to me."
So they went arm in arm with a roar-
ing and a tremulous piping.
The lamp flickered by the open win-
dow as the night breeze rose. Bettina
came home betimes and cleared the ta-
ble. The memory of a Scandinavian
caress was too recent to leave room for
her to remark that there were signs of
devastating appetite, that dishes had
been used unaccountably, and that " Fa-
ter " had gone somewhat early to bed.
Timothy and his wife returned late.
All windows and doors in the house of
Timothy were closed, and the last lamp
was extinguished.
Father Wiliston and Toboso went
down the hill, silently, with furtive,
lawless steps through the cluster of
houses in the hollow, called Ironville,
and followed then the road up the chat-
tering hidden brook. The road came
from the shadows of this gorge at last
to meadows and wide glimmering skies,
and joined the highway to Redfield.
Presently they came to where a grassy
side road slipped into the highway from
the right, out of a land of bush and
swamp and small forest trees of twenty
or thirty years' growth. A large chest-
nut stood at the corner.
"Hey, Jinny!" wheezed Toboso.
"Let 's look at that tree, Elder."
"Look at it ? Yes, yes. What for ? "
Toboso examined the bark by the
dim starlight; Father Wiliston peered
anxiously through his glasses to where
Toboso 's linger pointed.
"See those marks?"
"I 'm afraid I don't. Really, I 'm
sorry. "
"Feel 'em, then."
And Father Wiliston felt, with eager,
excited finger.
"Them there mean there 's lodging
out here; empty house, likely."
"Do they, indeed. Very singular!
Most interesting! " And they turned
into the grassy road. The brushwood
in places had grown close to it, though
it seemed to be still used as a cart path.
They came to a swamp, rank with
mouldering vegetation, then to rising
ground where once had been meadows,
pastures, and plough lands.
Father Wiliston was aware of vaguely
stirring memories. Four vast and aged
maple trees stood close by the road, and
their leaves whispered to the night ; be-
hind them, darkly, was a house with a
far sloping roof in the rear. The win-
dows were all glassless, all dark and
dead-looking, except two in a front
room, in which a wavering/ light from
somewhere within trembled and cow-
ered. They crept up, and looking
through saw tattered wall paper and
cracked plaster, and two men sitting on
the floor, playing cards in the ghostly
light of a fire of boards in the huge
fireplace.
200
A Nights Lodging.
"Hey, Jinny! " roared Toboso, and
the two jumped up with startled oaths.
"Why, it 's Boston Alley and the New-
ark Kid! " cried Toboso. "Come on,
Elder."
The younger man cast forth zigzag
flashes of blasphemy. "You big fat
fool! Don't know no mor* 'n to jump
like that on me! Holy Jims! I ain't
made of copper."
Toboso led Father Wiliston round by
the open door. "Hold your face, Kid.
Gents, this here 's a friend of mine
we '11 call the Elder, and let that go.
I 'm backing him, and I hold that
goes. The Kid," he went on descrip-
tively, addressing Father Wiliston, " is
what you see afore you, Elder. His
mouth is hot, his hands is cold, his
nerves is shaky, he 's always feeling
the cops gripping his shirt-collar. He
did n't see no clergy around. He begs
your pardon. Don't he? I says, don't
he?"
He laid a heavy red hand on the
Newark Kid's shoulder, who wiped his
pallid mouth with the back of his hand,
smiled, and nodded.
Boston Alley seemed in his way an
agreeable man. He was tall and slen-
der limbed, with a long, thin black mus-
tache, sinewy neck and hollow chest,
and spoke gently with a sweet, resonant
voice, saying, "Glad to see you, El-
der."
These two wore better clothes than
Toboso, but he seemed to dominate
them with his red health and windy
voice, his stomach and feet, and solid-
ity of standing on the earth.
Father Wiliston stood the while gaz-
ing vaguely through his spectacles. The
sense of happy freedom and congenial
companionship that had been with him
during the starlit walk had given way
gradually to a stream of confused mem-
ories, and now these memories stood
ranged about, looking at him with sad,
faded eyes, asking him to explain the
scene. The language of the Newark
Kid had gone by him like a white hot
blast. The past and present seemed to
have about the same proportions of vi-
sion and reality. He could not explain
them to each other. He looked up to
Toboso, pathetically, trusting in his
help.
"It was my house."
Toboso stared surprised. "I ain't on
to you, Elder."
"I was born here."
Indeed Toboso was a tower of
strength even against the ghosts bf other
days, reproachful for their long dur-
ance in oblivion.
"Oh! Well, by Jinny! I reckon
you'll give us lodging, Elder," he
puffed cheerfully. He took the coinci-
dence so pleasantly and naturally that
Father Wiliston was comforted, and
thought that after all it was pleasant
and natural enough.
The only furniture in the room was
a high-backed settle and an overturned
kitchen table, with one leg gone, and
the other three helplessly in the air,
so it had lain possibly many years. Bos-
ton Alley drew forward the settle and
threw more broken clapboards on the
fire, which blazed up and filled the room
wfth flickering cheer. Soon the three
outcasts were smoking their pipes and
the conversation became animated.
"When I was a boy," said Father
Wiliston, "I remember so distinctly,
there were remarkable early bough
apples growing in the orchard."
"The pot's yours, Elder," thun-
dered Toboso. They went out groping
under the old apple trees, and returned
laden with plump pale green fruit. Bos-
ton Alley and the Newark Kid stretched
themselves on the floor on heaps of
pulled grass. Toboso and Father Wil-
iston sat on the settle. The juice of
the bough apples ran with a sweet tang.
The palate rejoiced and the soul re^
sponded. The Newark Kid did swift,
cunning card tricks that filled Father
Wiliston with wonder and pleasure.
"My dear young man, I don't see
how you do it ! "
A Night's Lodging.
201
The Kid was lately out of prison from
a two years' sentence, "only for get-
ting into a house by the window instead
of the door, " as Boston Alley delicate-
ly explained, and the "flies," meaning
officers of the law, " are after him again
for reasons he ain't quite sure of. " The
pallor of slum birth and breeding, and
the additional prison pallor, made his
skin look curious where the grime had
not darkened it. He had a short- jawed,
smooth- shaven face, a flat mouth and
light hair, and was short and stocky,
but lithe and noiseless in movement, and
inclined to say little. Boston Alley was
a man of some slight education, who
now sometimes sung in winter variety
shows such songs as he picked up here
and there in summer wanderings, for in
warm weather he liked footing the road
better, partly because the green country
sights were pleasant to him, and part-
ly because he was irresolute and keep-
ing engagements was a distress. He
seemed agreeable and sympathetic.
"He ain't got no more real feelings
'n a fish, " said Toboso, gazing candidly
at Boston, but speaking to Father Wil-
iston, "and yet he looks like he had
'em, and a man 's glad to see him.
Ain't seen you since fall, Boston, but I
see the Kid last week at a hang-out in
Albany. Well, gents, this ain't a bad
lay."
Toboso himself had been many years
on the road. He was in a way a man
of much force and decision, and prob-
ably it was another element in him,
craving sloth and easy feeding, which
kept him in this submerged society;
although here, too, there seemed room
for the exercise of his dominance. He
leaned back in the settle, and had his
hand on Father Wiliston's shoulder. His
face gleamed redly over his bison beard.
"It 's a good lay. And we 're gay,
Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny! "
"Yes, yes, Toboso. But this young
man, I 'm sure* he must have great
talents, great talents, quite remarkable.
Ah yes, Jinny ! "
"Hey, Jinny," they sang together,
"Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me.
I '11 sing to you, and play to you, a
dulcet melode-e-e, " while Boston
danced a shuffle and the Kid snapped
the cards in time. Then, at Toboso 's
invitation and command, Boston sang a
song, called The Cheerful Man, resem-
bling a ballad, to a somewhat monoto-
nous tune, and perhaps known in the
music halls of the time, all with a
sweet, resonant voice and a certain
pathos of intonation :
" I knew a man across this land
Came waving of a cheerful hand,
Who drew a gun and gave some one
A violent contus-i-on,
This cheerful man.
" They sent him up, he fled from ' quad '
By a window and the grace of God,
Picked up a wife and children six,
And wandered into politics,
This cheerful man.
" In politics he was, I hear,
A secret, subtle financier
So the jury says, ' But we agree
He quits this sad community,
This cheerful man.'
" His wife and six went on the town,
And he went off ; without a frown
Reproaching Providence, went he
. And got another wife and three,
This cheerful man.
" He runs a cross-town car to-day
From Bleecker Street to Avenue A.
He swipes the fares with skillful ease,
Keeps up his hope, and tries to please,
This cheerful man.
" Our life is mingled woe and bliss,
Man that is born of woman is
Short-lived and goes to his long home.
Take heart, and learn a lesson from
This cheerful man."
"But, " said Father Wiliston, "don't
you think really, Mr. Alley, that the
moral is a little confused? I don't
mean intentionally," he added, with
anxious precaution, "but don't you
think he should have reflected "
"You 're right, Elder, " said Toboso,
202
A Night's Lodging.
with decision. "It 's like that. It
ain't moral. When a thing ain't moral
that settles it." And Boston nodded
and looked sympathetic with every
one.
"I was sure you would agree with
me," said Father Wiliston. He felt
himself growing weary now and heavy-
eyed. Presently somehow he was lean-
ing on Toboso* with his head on his
shoulder. Toboso 's arm was around
him, and Toboso began to hum in a kind
of wheezing lullaby, "Hey, Jinny!
Ho, Jinny ! "
"I am very grateful, my dear
friends," murmured Father Wiliston.
"I have lived a long time. I fear I
have not always been careful in my
course, and am often forgetful. I
think," drowsily, "I think that
happiness must in itself be pleasing to
God. I was often happy before in this
room. I remember my dear mother
sat here who is now dead. We have
been quite, really quite cheerful to-
night. My mother was very judi-
cious an excellent wise woman she
died long ago." So he was asleep, be-
fore any one was aware, while Toboso
crooned huskily, "Hey, Jinny!" and
Boston Alley and the Newark Kid sat
upright and stared curiously.
"Holy Jims!" said the Kid.
Toboso motioned them to bring the
pulled grass. They piled it on the set-
tle, let Father Wiliston down softly,
brought the broken table, and placed it
so that he could not roll off.
"Well," said Toboso, after a mo-
ment's silence, "I guess we'd better
pick him and be off. He 's got sixty
in his pocket."
"Oh," said Boston, "that's it, is
it?"
"It 's my find, but seeing you 's here
I takes half and give you fifteen
apiece."
"Well, that's right."
"And I guess the Kid can take it
out."
The Kid found the pocketbook with
sensitive gliding fingers, and pulled it
out. Toboso counted and divided the
bills.
" Well, " whispered Toboso thought-
fully, "if the Elder now was forty
years younger, I wouldn't want a bet-
ter pardner." They tiptoed out into
the night. "But," he continued,
"looking at it that way, o' course he
ain't got no great use for his wad and
won't remember it till next week.
Heeled all right, anyhow. Only, I says
now, I says, there ain't no vice in
him."
"Mammy tuck me up, no licks to-
night," said the Kid, plodding in front.
"I ain't got nothing against him."
Boston Alley only fingered the bills
in his pocket.
It grew quite dark in the room they
had left, as the fire sunk to a few flames,
then to dull embers and an occasional
darting spark. The only sound was
Father Wiliston 's light breathing.
When he awoke the morning was dim
in the windows. He lay a moment con-
fused in mind, then sat up and looked
around.
" Dear me ! Well, well, I dare say
Toboso thought I was too old. I dare
say " getting on his feet "I dare
say they thought it would be unkind
to tell me so."
He wandered through the dusky old
rooms and up and down the creaking
stairs, picking up bits of recollection,
some vivid, some more dim than the
dawn, some full of laughter, some that
were leaden and sad; then out into
the orchard to find a bough apple in
the dewy grasses, and, kneeling under
the gnarled old tree to make his morn-
ing prayer, which included in petition
the three overnight revelers, he went
in fluent phrase and broken tones
among eldest memories.
He pushed cheerfully into the grassy
road now, munching his apple and hum-
ming, "Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny! " He
examined the tree at the highway with
fresh interest. "How singular! It
The Browning Tonic.
203
means an empty house. Very intel-
ligent man, Toboso."
Bits of grass were stuck on his back
and a bramble dragged from his coat
tail. He plodded along in the dust and
wabbled absent-mindedly from one side
of the road to the other. The dawn
towered behind him in purple and crim-
son, lifted its robe and canopy, and
flung some kind of glittering gauze far
beyond him. He did not notice it till
he reached the top of the hill above
Ironville with Timothy's house in sight.
Then he stopped, turned, and was star-
tled a moment ; then smiled companion-
ably on the state and glory of the morn-
ing, much as on Toboso and the card
tricks of the Newark Kid.
" Really, " he murmured, " I have had
a very good time."
He met Timothy in the hall.
"Been out to walk early, father?
Wait there 's grass and sticks on
your coat."
It suddenly seemed difficult to ex-
plain the entire circumstances to Tim-
othy, a settled man and girt with pre-
cedent.
" Did you enjoy it ? Letter you
dropped? No, I haven't seen it.
Breakfast is ready."
Neither Bettina nor Mrs. Timothy
had seen the letter.
"No matter, my dear, no matter.
I really, I ' ve had a very good time. "
Afterward he came out on the porch
with his Bible and Concordance, sat
down and heard Bettina brushing his hat
and ejaculating, "Fater! " Presently
he began to nod drowsily and his head
dropped low over the Concordance. The
chickens clucked drowsily in the road.
Arthur Colton.
THE BROWNING TONIC.
I.
THERE was once a time not so long
ago, either, as I would like to induce
credulous people to believe when the
three editions of Robert Browning's
poems which now find home and wel-
come in my bookcases would, had I
possessed them, have been sealed books
to me.
In those days already so incon-
ceivable that they seem to recede into
a prehistoric vista it was commonly
supposed by readers in my rank and
station of enlightenment that a person
who made any assured claim to a com-
prehension of Browning was either a
rank pretender or the victim of a spe-
cial revelation. It was during this
period, I remember, that a teacher of
English in thejpublic schools said to me
rather sadly,
"I don't like to tell people that I
enjoy reading Browning it makes me
appear so conceited."
Even in that dark era of my ex-
istence, however, I did not consider my-
self so ignorant of the work of the great
poet as my present confession seems to
imply. I was more or less familiar with
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, I had heard
the story of {he good news that was
brought from Ghent to Aix vigorously
thundered forth on various declamatory
occasions, and I had read with emotion
that Incident of the French Camp
which Owen Wister makes his Virgin-
ian hero criticise so cruelly. I should
not say, if I were going to state my
conception of the situation, that I had
been growing up through gradations of
Longfellow, Lowell, Tennyson, and the
rest to the possibility of a comprehen-
sion of Browning. The library with
which I was most familiar in my youth
offered to a child naturally hungry for
204
The Browning Tonic.
poetry a noble collection of English
authors. Fed from this source I de-
voured Shakespeare with the avidity
which one saves nowadays for the pe-
rusal of a popular novel, pored over
Paradise Lost with the conviction that
it was rather sensational reading, laid
my head upon the lap of earth with
Gray, and spouted Collins 's Odes to
hill and sky in my lonely walks.
This was princely fare, and I ought
to have benefited by it far more than
I did, yet, in spite of my limitations,
I assimilated something from it all,
something that became a part of me,
imperishable until I perish. From such
a foundation, however ill profited by,
one does not "grow up " to other au-
thors one simply enlarges one's
Olympian temple to make room for
new gods,
" A hundred shapes of lucid stone !
All day we built its shrine for each."
A man asked me once if I had not
outgrown Dickens, and I questioned my
inner consciousness to know if this were
the case. Through long familiarity I
had, indeed, ceased to read Dickens,
but outgrown ? Does one outgrow
Mr. Micawber, Betsey Trotwood, Mr.
Pickwick, and the rest? Is it not
rather that one enlarges the circle of
one's friends to find room for them all,
every one, the old no less than the new ?
Sometimes, too, the high gods prove too
high, or the son of the carpenter is trans-
formed before our eyes into the King
of Men.
Lucian's parable of the council of the
gods and the struggle for precedence is
applicable still. The dog-faced mon-
ster from Egypt with the great gold
nose is, it is true, sooner or later rele-
gated to the background when one learns
to estimate comparative values, but he
is not banished to outer darkness. All
our gods come to stay and a gold
nose counts for something.
I can remember the exact moment
when Robert Browning was first defi-
nitely revealed to me as a presiding
deity.
I have always had a tendency to
grasp at the pictorial aspect of things,
and, as it chances, each of the group
of poems which first revealed that poet
to me as the friendliest friend of all is
pigeon-holed in my mind with a spec-
tacular tag attached to it.
Thus I entered the Browning coun-
try the real land of faery where
Browning is king through the gate
of Prospice, and the gate was opened
to me by a young man. He stood, I
remember, while he read the poem
aloud, and a slant of sunlight fell full
upon his broad brows and his rather
nice gray eyes, and even lent a glamour
to the exceedingly pointed toes of his
patent leather shoes. He liked what
he read, and was in earnest about it ;
he was not thinking of me and I very
ooon ceased thinking of him.
The peculiar movement of the poem
appealed directly to an element always
easily aroused in my nature, the fight-
ing spirit, which may be in my case
more bravado than pluck, but which at
any rate knows how to appreciate pluck
in others.
" I was ever a fighter, so one fight more
The best and the last ! "
struck a chord that went thrilling on
until the quick transition at the end of
the poem, when
" the element's rage, the fiend voices that
rave,"
dwindle and blend and change, to be-
come
" first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee
again,
And with God be the rest ! "
There is no touch to which the hearts
of men and women so readily thrill with
instant response as to this touch of hu-
man love, whether it be that of the
fighter leaning across the black gulf of
death to clasp the beloved one again, or
The Browning Tonic.
the Blessed Damozel stooping from
" the gold bar of heaven " to say,
" I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come."
Every one of us,? even those who have
deliberately taken husbands or wives in
a series, cherishes in his or her inmost
thought the conviction that under dif-
ferent and more favorable circumstances
we, too, might have been capable of ro-
mantic love and perfect constancy. This
unformulated belief in ourselves aids
our self-respect immensely, and helps
to put a garland invisible perhaps,
but to the eye of faith none the less
decorative around the least senti-
mental existence.
The motive of the whole poem, too,
the courage, the constancy, the devo-
tion, strikes with a bold hand as
Browning always does strike that
keynote of strength which is the domi-
nant note in everything he writes.
Weakness is the only thing he conceived
it possible to fear. Be bold, act a man's
part and leave the rest, above all, re-
member that fighting is the best fun in
the world, and a man who won't fight
is not worth his salt.
" Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! "
My next discovery in the Browning
country was Rabbi Ben Ezra, a mine of
pure gold from which I have been dig-
ging nuggets ever since. The personal
recollection to which my earlier know-
ledge of this poem is joined is that of
a clergyman with whom I conned it
over stanza by stanza, for the purpose,
as I recall it, of convincing him that
Browning had written some things
which compared favorably with the work
of his favorite Tennyson and were not
materially harder to understand.
I told him, with that modest confi-
dence in my literary judgments which
has always distinguished me, that Ten-
nyson never but once mustered sufficient
courage really to "let himself go," and
that Maud, which was the outcome of
this first and last indulgence, has a hys-
205
teric note in it which would have been
impossible to Browning.
" One feels all the time, " I criticised
confidently, "that the
* dreadful hollow behind the little wood '
was a great deal more dreadful than it
need have been if the hero of the poem
could only have ' braced up ' and ful-
filled his own longings,
' And ah for a man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be ! ' "
My clerical friend, however, did not
believe in any man's right to let him-
self go, and our sitting ended with a
hopeless discrepancy between the lay
and the ministerial judgment.
I have read this poem many times
since then and never without finding in
it something strong and stirring, some-
thing that gave me fresh courage to be
gone
" Once more on my adventure brave and
new."
f In many a night of weariness and
racking pain I have repeated over and
over to myself that inner self that
has power over the physical being
fragments from its battle call, the
bugle call to my retreating courage :
" Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting- that bids nor sit nor stand but go !
Be our joys three parts pain !
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ;
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never
grudge the throe ! "
It is true, I never did welcome each
rebuff, and there was no moment, I sup-
pose, when I would not joyfully have
turned earth's roughness smooth, but
since I must endure the throe whether
I grudged it or not, here was something
to take hold of, to crystallize around,
to serve as a sting to my spiritual
weakness.
If, of all our authors, we are most
indebted to him who helps us to hate
cowardice, then Robert Browning must
206
The, Browning Tonic.
be hailed above all others as the prophet
of courage, courage in victory, courage
in defeat, the courage of the losing fight
no less than the courage of success.
One, he was,
" who never turned his back, but marched
breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted,
wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
I have never asked, it is true,
whether in detail he lived up to what
he preached. It does not matter. Most
of us are in one way or another born
cowards, and what we need more than
anything else is to be made properly
ashamed of ourselves. Hail, then,
Robert Browning, disturber of the
peace !
While I was still in the grasp of
Rabbi Ben Ezra, I was invited to spend
an afternoon with a " Reading Circle, "
which was at that time struggling with
the dark mysteries of Childe Roland to
the Dark Tower Came.
They told me sadly the members
of the Circle that they had pored
over a dozen interpretations of the
poem and "didn't understand it yet."
"Of course I would like to under-
stand what Browning meant by the
thing, " one reader said candidly,
"that is, if he himself had any idea
* where he was at,' but I don't see
how anybody could like it."
Having had my attention thus called
to Childe Roland, I made a bold
charge at his secrets, but very soon
made up my mind that I was not under
the slightest obligation to understand
him. I have trodden that dark way
with him many a time, have lost my-
self upon the barren plain, felt what he
felt, looked with despairing eyes on
what he saw, and when
" Burningly it came on me all at once
This was the place,"
I have always been sure that, after
going through so much disagreeableness
for the sake of arriving at the Dark
Tower, only to find "all the lost ad-
venturers, my peers, " on dress parade
watching to see what I was going to do
about it, I should have blown the horn
at all hazards. As I have previously
hinted, Browning's chief virtue is that
he makes one feel willing to blow horns
and wave banners and lead forlorn
hopes.
It was at about this period of my
Browning explorations that I began to
meet the Greek professor in my morn-
ing walks. The springtime had come
and the voice of the turtle was heard
in the land, a condition of affairs
which made it more possible for the hu-
man voice to gain an audience. The
Greek professor who had retired from
the active duties of his position now
and then joined company with me dur-
ing our leisurely return from the morn-
ing errands which gave us an excuse for
being abroad. He had a genuine pas-
sion for the classics, and enjoyed rolling
out sonorous quotations from his favor-
ite authors, although these gems of
thought always required translation into
English for the instruction of my igno-
rance.
One day he asked me rather mourn-
fully if I liked Browning. I acknow-
ledged with cheerful hope that I thought
I was going to like him, though I had
not yet penetrated very far into the
labyrinth of his pages.
It appeared from the professor's nar-
rative that an enthusiastic young friend
"who in the inexperience of youth
doubtless flattered himself that he could
comprehend all mysteries " had request-
ed him, the professor, to read Caliban
upon Setebos oh, the drawling scorn
of accent with which this was spoken!
and he was in process of offering this
sacrifice to friendship.
"If you have n't read the gibberish, "
he suggested, " and have time to waste,
as most women do have, I wish you
would see whether you can make head
or tail of it. I can't."
The Browning Tonic.
207
The next time we met I told the pro-
fessor that I had ventured on Caliban
and rather enjoyed the experiment. I
spoke more diffidently than is my wont.
I am generally most positive in regard
to subjects I know least about.
"Enjoyed it!" the professor ex-
claimed. "Will you tell me what there
is to enjoy about Caliban upon Sete-
bos ? " the old scornful intonation.
"Well," I replied, "the same ele-
ment that appeals to me in all the
Browning poems I know, the daring
of it, the boldness with which he puts
his finger on the sore spots so many
of us are conscious of and think it
wicked to mention."
"Pooh ! " my friend repeated, " Cali-
ban upon Setebos! My dear woman,
there 's nothing in it less than no-
thing! Now here 's a little bit that I
got from my Greek Calendar this morn-
ing an epitaph by Leonidas. See
what you think of this," and the pro-
fessor translated for me,
" A slave was Epictetus, who before you buried
lies,
And a cripple and a beggar and the favorite
of the skies."
"I like it," I answered, "partly, I
think, because it shows the same spirit
that draws me toward Browning."
" The only difference I recognize be-
tween the two, " the professor remarked
in his very softest drawl, "is the dif-
ference between words with meaning
much in little and words without
meaning little in much."
I no longer meet the professor in my
morning walks. He heard one day
"the great voice " from those skies
" Where Zeus upon the purple waits,"
and calling last Ave atque Vale! to
those he left behind, he went his way.
It may be that in that high Olympus
he talks to-day with "Euripides the
human " and Catullus the beloved and
Browning the brave, and there has
learned to know as he is known.
From Caliban upon Setebos I passed
by an easy transition to Paracelsus.
This transformation scene was owing to
the prophetic guidance of the Woman's
Literary Club. The "programme com-
mittee " of this organization, knowing
well where Genius had her home, had
invited me to "prepare a paper" on
the latter poem. I did not hesitate
for a moment. I had once glanced
hastily through the poem, and, being
hampered by very little knowledge of
its real import, in three days from the
time of request I had delivered myself
of an interpretation which solved satis-
factorily to my thinking every
vexed problem that the critics had ever
raised in regard to its meaning.
I did not hesitate to assert in the
most "flat-footed " manner, "Whatever
charge of obscurity can be brought
against other of Browning's poems,
thereis nothing obscure in Paracelsus ! "
It was a great paper. I liked the
exordium of it :
"It is characteristic of the power
and the outreach of Browning's genius
that it almost seemed as if he had no-
thing to learn from life. In Paracelsus,
written by a stripling hardly past the
age of boyhood, a young man standing
at the threshold of his years, joyous
with an Italian affluence of tempera-
ment, having never known the deep ex-
periences, the struggles that are birth
pangs of the soul, the disenchantments
and failures of life, he paints the dream,
the yearning, the bitter comedy, and
the tragedy of the human drama as if
his genius could foresee the end from
the beginning, or as if he had already
reached the vantage point of that
4 Last of life for which the first was made.' "
I am not much addicted to reading
papers in public, I think, in fact, that ,
I made my de*but and my final exit in
that capacity on the occasion in question,
and I remember well that the electric
light above my head shone with unex-
ampled violence, and the faces of the
audience advanced and receded like the
208
The Browning Tonic.
waves of the sea. There were tones in
my voice, too, which were unrecogniz-
able even to myself. When I had fin-
ished, a lady, who was then serving God
and her native land by accepting the po-
sition of domestic in some needy house-
hold, took me kindly by the hand and
told me that she liked my piece. Few
of my audience seemed to realize that
they were apathetically letting the op-
portunity of a lifetime slip by.
I have never been sorry for my auda-
city in writing that paper. I got from
it for myself much that I did not know
how to give to others, the burden
and message of Paracelsus, that strange,
complex nature, trying at all the gates
of life, striving to live a purely spirit-
ual existence in a human world, forced
to recognize one by one the physical
and material barriers which made such
a life impossible, hampered by the very
strength of his own powers, and stoop-
ing at last to be bound by the restraints
he despised, yet through strength and
weakness alike,
" upward tending, all though weak,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him."
It is the same dominant chord of
courage. All the battle cries of all the
ages are in it, and the confidence born
of all the victories that have been.
A Browning notion of victory, how-
ever, does not with any necessity what-
ever imply the getting what one wants.
It often means just keeping eternally at
it, and realizing that surrender is the
only defeat :
" But what if I fail of my purpose here ?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up and begin again
So the chase takes up one's life, that 's all."
II.
I am as well aware as any one can
be that my Browning explorations are
valuable to the world at large only as
an indication of the ease with which
one can grow rich.
As Captain Bunsby would say, " The
bearings of this obserwation lies in the
application on it."
If I who am but a woman, neither
scholar nor critic, a shallow adventur-
ess going at the quest in mere haphaz-
ard fashion, have been able to discover
for myself the true elixir, the tonic
which the twentieth century most jieeds,
what wealth may not lie in the search
for that dominant sex which habitually
calls itself "the stronger," the sex of
assured intellect and logical mind, and,
to speak candidly, the sex that needs
the tonic most.
I may be wrong, and if so I am
willing to acknowledge it to anybody
who can convince me of my error, but
my observation goes to show that the
average woman of to-day has more ideals
than the average man and is therefore
morally stronger. Moreover, no wo-
man is ever allowed to suppose herself
incapable of improvement. We belong
to a sex that is continually being les-
soned and lectured. One never takes
up a newspaper without finding in it
some admonition in regard to what wo-
men should or should not do. On the
other hand, while our daily reading
furnishes much inconsistent criticism of
individual men, the evidence seems to
point to the fact that men in the con-
crete are very well satisfied with them-
selves as they are. One cannot help
feeling that if the entire sex could be
lined up, and the question propounded
to them, "What's the matter with
man ? " the answer would be one univer-
sal roar of "He's all right!"
A woman, once convinced that she has
a soul, can seldom be quite easy in ig-
noring it ; a man feels sure that if he
has one it isn't his fault, and therefore
he feels himself relieved from too great
responsibility. The twentieth-century
man, however, is not indolent in any
sense but an ethical one. Never was
The Browning Tonic.
209
there a time when more attention was
paid to physical growth and culture,
but a tonic whose efficacy must be as-
sured by a more strenuous spiritual life
does not especially commend itself to
our athlete. He prefers ease of mind
and malt extracts. He has "outworn"
the old dogmas, seen the folly of ideals,
and prefers to confine his attention to
the things that really count. If there
is another existence to follow this one,
its philosophy is simple :
" Our egress from the world
Will be nobody knows where,
But if we do well here
We shall do well there,"
therefore, why bother one's self too
much about a future which is, at best,
problematic ?
The human race has not altogether
deteriorated. The twentieth - century
man has in him all the heroic possibil-
ities that any man ever had, but he is
suffering from that weakening of fibre
which necessarily accompanies a dearth
of convictions.
The acquisition of wealth, which is
the ruling motive of the America of our
century, does not constitute an ideal,
since an ideal implies some sort of
moral earnestness. Materialism, how-
ever, is perfectly consistent with great
benevolences, generosity without sacri-
fice and sympathy without abnegation.
Indeed, in proportion as we lower the
standard of that absolute strength which
constitutes perfect manhood and wo-
manhood, the more "kind-hearted " we
grow, the more we deprecate anything
which creates pain or demands endur-
ance, the more we send flowers to crimi-
nals and sign petitions against the exe-
cution of murderers. We cry out against
war and send delegates to Peace Con-
gresses, not altogether because this
course is "Christian, " though that is
how we usually define our feeling,
but partly, too, because, like the child
in Helen's Babies, we object to the
sight of anything "bluggy."
I do not know anything which better
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 14
illustrates the deterioration of fibre
which is the result of an unstrenuous
standard than the attitude of the Amer-
ican people too large a proportion
of them, at least toward the Cuban
War.
I was too young at the time of our
civil conflict to pronounce with any ac-
curacy upon the feeling of the public at
large in regard to it, so perhaps I arn
wrong in imagining, as I always have
done, that it was that of heroic accep-
tance and endurance, and that men and
women alike felt that the best blood of
a nation was not too great a price to
pay to settle a moral issue forever and
settle it aright.
Years after, when the bugles of war
again sounded for a contest not our
own, a war of generosity to right the
wrongs of another and alien people,
the response was just as ready, the deeds
of heroism were no less conspicuous,
and for a breathing space while the men
of the country were shouting " Remem-
ber the Maine ! " and the women were
gathering in sewing circles for the man-
ufacture of the flannel night clothing
which no self-respecting soldier ever
fails to assume before retiring to rest
in the trenches, a thrill of the same un-
questioning courage swept through the
land.
Scarcely had the echo of the guns of
Santiago died away, however, before
the howl began, the howl of the kind-
hearted, the sympathetic, the unstren-
uous generation.
What justification, they asked, has
any Christian nation for going to war
at all, especially in a quarrel not its
own?
If, however, to suit his own pur-
poses, President McKinley insisted
upon war, why did he not select a coun-
try possessing a more temperate climate
as the scene of battle?
If time had been given the soldiers
to provide themselves with suitable out-
fits, could not this delay have been util-
ized by the government for the manu-
210
The Browning Tonic.
facture of sandwiches in readiness for
informal lunches to be served during
charges and on the field of battle?
Has not a toiling and much enduring
soldier a right to expect such common,
every -day recognition of his services as
a hot dinner, prepared promptly, would
represent? Is the "poor soldier " ask-
ing too much when he calls for clean
linen and an opportunity to run up a
laundry bill?
In short, the voice of the people
suggested wisely, if we must have war,
let us see that it is conducted regularly
and in order, without bloodshed or con-
fusion. Let physicians be provided to
feel the military pulse daily and keep
down all unnecessary fever in the veins.
Hence it happened that while we
were taking all our newly acquired he-
roes down from their pedestals, and our
army officers were quarreling over the
division of glory, and mothers of volun-
teers were writing to the newspapers to
complain that the tastes of their sons
had never been consulted in regard to
having oatmeal for breakfast, and com-
mittees of investigation were diligently
smelling at all the army stores that re-
mained unused, there were one or two
more or less important facts that seemed
to escape general cognizance.
It has, for instance, sometimes been
apprehended that war is a grim game,
not suited to holiday soldiers ; but if the
thing at stake is worth the price to be
paid, the only decency is to pay it joy-
fully without doubt or hesitation, and
having paid, never to repent. Repen-
tance, in such a case, is cowardice.
I remember a certain little boy who
came home from school with a black
eye and a bleeding nose and a question
in his young mind whether he should
weep or swagger. Just as his mother's
sympathy and first aid to the wounded
were beginning to convulse his infant
features his father appeared on the
scene.
"Did you have any good reason for
fighting ? " he asked.
The budding warrior proclaimed a
noble cause for battle.
"Did you lick the other fellow? "
The other fellow had ignominiously
bitten the dust.
"Then," inquired the parent, "what
are you whining over ? "
Every grave on those Cuban hillsides
marks a sacrifice for human progress,
and when one remembers the failures,
the futilities, the disgraces among liv-
ing men, who can feel that he who
in the moment of a supreme impulse
offered all, and found his abnegation
accepted, did not choose the better
part ?
" Life's business being just the terrible choice "
betwixt strength and weakness.
It is a part of the materialism of
modern life and the cowardly theory
that life is worth to a man only "what
he gets out of it as he goes along,"
that so many men spend their days in
offering continual sacrifices to their
bodies.
When the hero of the popular short
story is not eating or drinking, he is
smoking. His chronicler flavors his
pages with tobacco smoke and punctu-
ates them with cocktails. In joy or
sorrow, in the most romantic no less
than the most commonplace moments
the hero "lights another cigarette."
Emotion unaccompanied by nicotine is
something of which he evidently has no
conception.
It is the same, too, with the up to
date young man in real life. He knows,
if he has been properly trained, that
while a toothpick should be indulged in
only in that spot to which Scripture
enjoins us to retire when we are about to
pray, a meerschaum pipe is a perfectly
well-bred article for public wear, and
one which enables him to fulfill agree-
ably that law of his being which sug-
gests that he should always be putting
something in his mouth.
At a college ball game not long since
where, as is usual on such occasions,
The Browning Tonic.
211
clouds of incense were rising to the
heavens from the male portion of the
spectators, I amused myself by observ-
ing a young man who sat in a carriage
near me, and who while the game was
in progress smoked a pipe three times
and filled in all the intervals with cigars
and cigarettes. I knew something about
him, and had frequently heard him re-
ferred to as " a first-rate fellow, " but if
anybody had asked him if he believed
himself capable of a single pure impulse
of the soul entirely unmixed with bod-
ily sensations he would have stared in
amazement.
Rabbi Ben Ezra's test,
" Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone
way ? "
would have struck this young man as a
decidedly "fresh" inquiry. A certain
pictorial advertisement which for a long
time held a conspicuous place in the
daily newspapers would, however, have
appealed to him at once. It depicted
a youth with a pipe in his mouth, hold-
ing his sweetheart on his knee, and
rapturously exclaiming, as he diligent-
ly puffed the smoke into her face,
"With you and a pipeful of Every Day
Smoke I am perfectly happy ! " Old
Omar gives us a more poetic version of
the same thing :
" A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow ! "
I am not desirous in this essay of
discussing the morality of any habit, as
such ; I simply wish to emphasize the
fact that constant self-indulgence of
any kind is incompatible with strength.
The Browning tonic which I would
like to substitute for the proprietary
medicines of the age does not inspire
any man to be an angel before his time,
it only stimulates him to be a man
and master of himself;
" A man for aye removed
From the developed brute ; a God though in
the germ."
The tonic in question is not an ex-
pensive remedy except in the amount of
effort required on the part of the patient
to render it efficacious, but it is perhaps
a little too bracing to be taken in large
doses until the spirit of it has begun to
steal into one's veins.
If, for instance, the young man of the
ball game should begin before breakfast
in the morning with
" What have I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the un-
manly ? "
follow it up at about the time of his
after-breakfast pipe with
" I count life just a stuff,
To try the soul's strength on,"
manfully swallow an afternoon dose of
" When the fight begins within himself
A man 's worth something,"
and substitute for his usual nightcap,
" Why comes temptation but for man to meet,
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph ? "
he might at first find such a sudden in-
flux of red blood into his veins a little
more than his system could bear, but,
in due time, if the prescription were
persevered in, he might learn to wel-
come the joy and the strength of the
new elixir of life.
"Don't you get a little weary of
hearing life compared to a battlefield ? "
the athletic young man inquired when
the rhetoric of these prescriptions was
discussed in the family circle.
"Call it a football field, then," I re-
torted. "If you are going to play at
all, one has a perfect right to expect you
to get into the game."
Martha Baker Dunn.
212
JLi Wan, the Fair.
LI WAN, THE FAIR.
"THE sun sinks, Canim, and the heat
of the day is gone ! "
So called Li Wan to the man whose
head was hidden beneath the squirrel-
skin robe, but she called softly, as though
divided between the duty of waking him
and the fear of him awake. For she
was afraid of this big husband of hers,
who was like unto none of the men she
had known.
The moose meat sizzled uneasily, and
she moved the frying-pan to one side
of the red embers. As she did so she
glanced warily at the two Hudson Bay
dogs dripping eager slaver from their
scarlet tongues and following her every
movement. They were huge, hairy
fellows, crouched to leeward in the thin
smoke-wake of the fire to escape the
swarming myriads of mosquitoes. As
Li Wan gazed down the steep to where
the Klondike flung its swollen flood be-
tween the hills, one of the dogs bellied
its way forward like a worm, and with
a deft, catlike stroke of the paw dipped
a chunk of hot meat out of the pan to
the ground. But Li Wan caught him out
of the corner of her eye, and he sprang
back with a snap and a snarl as she
rapped him over the nose with a stick
of firewood.
"Nay, Olo, " she laughed, recovering
the meat without removing her eye from
him. "Thou art ever hungry, and for
that thy nose leads thee into endless
troubles."
But the mate of Olo joined him, and
together they defied the woman. The
hair on their backs and shoulders bris-
tled in recurrent waves of anger, and
the thin lips writhed and lifted into
ugly wrinkles, exposing the flesh-tear-
ing fangs, cruel and menacing. Their
very noses serrulated and shook in brute
passion, and they snarled as wolves
snarl, with all the hatred and malig-
nity of the breed impelling them to
spring upon the woman and drag her
down.
"And thou, too, Bash, fierce as thy
master and never at peace with the hand
that feeds thee ! This is not thy quar-
rel, so that be thine ! and that ! "
As she cried, she drove at them with
the firewood, but they avoided the
blows and refused to retreat. They
separated and approached her from
either side, crouching low and snarling.
Li Wan had struggled with the wolf-
dog for mastery from the time she tod-
dled among the skin-bales of the tepee,
and she knew a crisis was at hand.
Bash had halted, his muscles stiff and
tense for the spring ; Olo was yet creep-
ing into striking distance.'
Grasping two blazing sticks by the
charred ends, she faced the brutes.
The one held back, but Bash sprang,
and she met him in mid-air with the
flaming weapon. There were sharp
yelps of pain and swift odors of burn-
ing hair and flesh as he rolled in the
dirt and the woman ground the fiery
embers into his mouth. Snapping wild-
ly, he flung himself sidelong out of her
reach and in a frenzy of fear scrambled
for safety. Olo, on the other side, had
begun his retreat, when Li Wan re-
minded him of her primacy by hurling
a heavy stick of wood into his ribs.
Then the pair retreated under a rain of
firewood, and on the edge of the camp
fell to licking their wounds and whim-
pering and snarling by turns.
Li Wan blew the ashes off the meat
and sat down again. Her heart had not
gone up a beat, and the incident was
already old, for this was the routine of
life. Canim had not stirred during the
disorder, but instead had set up a lusty
snoring.
"Come, Canim! " she called. "The
heat of the day is gone and the trail
waits for our feet."
Li Wan, the Fair.
213
The squirrel- skin robe was agitated
and cast aside by a brown arm. Then
the man's eyelids fluttered and drooped
again.
"His pack is heavy," she thought,
"and he is tired with the work of the
morning. "
A mosquito stung her on the neck,
and she daubed the unprotected spot
with wet clay from a ball she had con-
venient to hand. All morning, toiling
up the divide and enveloped in a cloud
of the pests, the man and woman had
plastered themselves with the sticky
mud, which, drying in the sun, covered
their faces with masks of clay. These
masks, broken in divers places by the
movement of the facial muscles, had
constantly to be renewed, so that the
deposit was irregular of depth and pe-
culiar of aspect.
Li Wan shook Canim gently but with
persistence till he roused and sat up.
His first glance was to the sun, and af-
ter consulting the celestial timepiece he
hunched over to the fire and fell to rav-
enously on the meat. He was a large
Indian, fully six feet in height, deep-
chested and heavy-muscled, and his eyes
were keener and vested with greater
intelligence than the average of his
kind. The lines of will had marked his
face deeply, and this, coupled with a
sternness and primitiveness, advertised
a native indomitability, unswerving of
purpose and prone, when thwarted, to
sullen cruelty.
"To-morrow, Li Wan, we shall
feast. " He sucked a marrow-bone clean
and threw it to the dogs. "We shall
have flapjacks fried in bacon grease,&nd
sugar, which is more toothsome "
"Flapjacks?" she cried, mouthing
the word curiously.
"Ay," Canim answered with supe-
riority; "and I shall teach you new
ways of cookery. Of these things I
speak, you are ignorant, and of many
more things besides. You have lived
your days in a little corner of the earth
and know nothing. But I " he
straightened himself and looked at her
pridef ully "I am a great traveler,
and have been all places, even among
the white people, and I am versed in
their ways, and in the ways of many
peoples. I am not a tree, born to stand
in one place always and know not what
there be over the next hill; for I am
Canim, The Canoe, made to go here and
there and to journey and quest up and
down the length and breadth of the
world."
She bowed her head humbly. "It is
true. I have eaten fish and meat and
berries all my days, and lived in a little
corner of the earth. Nor did I dream
the world was so large until you stole
me from my people, and I cooked and
carried for you on the endless trails."
She looked up at him suddenly. "Tell
me, Canim, does this trail ever end ? "
"Nay," he answered. "My trail is
like the world ; it never ends. My trail
is the world, and I have traveled it
since the time my legs could carry me,
and I shall travel it until I die. My
father and my mother may be dead, but
it is long since I looked upon them, and
I do not care. My tribe is like your
tribe. It stays in the one place,
which is far from here, -but I care
naught for my tribe, for I am Canim,
The Canoe ! "
"And must I, Li Wan, who am weary,
travel always your trail until I die ? "
"You, Li Wan, are my wife, and
the wife travels the husband's trail
wheresoever it goes. It is the law.
And were it not the law, yet would it
be the law of Canim, who is lawgiver
unto himself and his."
She bowed her head again, for she
knew no other law than that man was
the master of woman.
"Be not in haste," Canim cautioned
her, as she began to strap the meagre
camp outfit to her pack. "The sun is
yet hot, and the trail leads down and
the footing is good."
She dropped her work obediently and
resumed her seat.
214
Li Wan, the Fair.
Canim regarded her with specula-
tive interest. "You do not squat on
your hams like other women," he re-
marked.
" No, " she answered. " It never came
easy. It tires me, and I cannot take
my rest that way."
"And why is it your feet point not
straight before you ? "
"I do not know, save that they are
unlike the feet of other women."
A satisfied light crept into his eyes,
but otherwise he gave no sign.
"Like other women, your hair is
black; but have you ever noticed that
it is soft and fine, softer and finer than
the hair of other women ? "
"I have noticed," she answered
shortly, for she was not pleased at such
cold analysis of her sex deficiencies.
"It is a year, now, since I took you
from your people," he went on, "and
you are nigh as shy and afraid of me
as when first I looked upon you. How
does this thing be ? "
Li Wan shook her head. "I am
afraid of you, Canim, you are so big
and strange. And further, before you
looked upon me, even, I was afraid of
all the young men. I do not know
I cannot say only, it seemed,
somehow, as though I should not be for
them, as though "
"Ay," he encouraged, impatient at
her faltering.
"As though they were not my kind. "
" Not your kind ? " he demanded
slowly. "Then what is your kind? "
"I do not know, I " She shook
her head in a bewildered manner. "I
cannot put into words the way I felt.
It was strangeness in me. I was un-
like other maidens who sought the young
men slyly. I could not care for the
young men that way. It would have
been a great wrong, it seemed, and
an ill deed."
" What is the first thing you remem-
ber ? " Canim asked with abrupt irrele-
vance.
"Pow-Wah-Kaan, my mother."
"And naught else before Pow-Wah-
Kaan?"
"Naught else."
But Canim, holding her eyes with
his, searched her secret soul and saw it
waver.
"Think, and think hard, Li Wan! "
he threatened.
She stammered, and her eyes were
piteous and pleading, but his will dom-
inated her and wrung from her lips the
reluctant speech.
" But it was only dreams, Canim, ill
dreams of childhood, shadows of things
not real, visions such as the dogs, sleep-
ing in the sun warmth, behold and
whine out against."
"Tell me," he commanded, "of the
things before Pow-Wah-Kaan, your
mother. "
"They are forgotten memories," she
protested. "As a child I dreamed
awake, with my eyes open to the day,
and when I spoke of the strange things
I saw I was laughed at, and the other
children were afraid and drew away
from me. And when I spoke of the
things I saw to Pow-Wah-Kaan, she
chided me and said they were evil ; also
she beat me. It was a sickness, I be-
lieve, like the falling sickness that
comes to old men; and in time I grew
better and dreamed no more. And
now I cannot remember " She
brought her hand in a confused manner
to her forehead, "They are there,
somewhere, but I cannot find them,
only "
"Only," Canim repeated, holding
her.
"Only one thing. But you will
laugh at its foolishness, it is so un-
real."
"Nay, Li Wan. Dreams are dreams.
They may be memories of other lives
we have lived. I was once a moose. I
firmly believe I was once a moose.
What qf the things I hav^f seen in
dreams, and heard ? "
Strive as he would to hide it, a grow-
ing anxiety was manifest, but Li Wan,
Li Wan> the Fair.
215
groping after the words with which to
paint the picture, took no heed.
"I see a snow-tramped space among
the trees, " she began, " and across the
snow the sign of a man where he has
dragged himself heavily on hand and
knee. And I see, too, the man in the
snow, and it seems I am very close to
him when I look. He is unlike real
men, for he has hair on his face, much
hair, and the hair of his face and head
is yellow like the summer coat of the
weasel. His eyes are closed, but they
open and search about. They are blue
like the sky, and look into mine and
search no more. And his hand moves,
slow, as from weakness, and I feel "
"Ay," Canim whispered hoarsely.
" You feel"
"No, no! " she cried in haste. "I
feel nothing. Did I say ' feel ' ? I did
not mean it. It could not be that I
should mean it. I see, and I see only,
and that is all I see a man in the
snow, with eyes like the sky and hair
like the weasel. I have seen it many
times, and always it is the same a
man in the snow "
" And do you see yourself ? " he
asked, leaning forward and regarding
her intently. "Do you ever see your-
self and the man in the snow ? "
"Why should I see myself? Am I
not real ? "
His muscles relaxed and he sank
back, an exultant satisfaction in his
eyes which he turned from her so that
she might not see.
" I will tell you, Li Wan, " he spoke
decisively; "you were a little bird in
some life before, a little moose-bird,
when you saw this thing, and the mem-
ory of it is with you yet. It is not
strange. I was once a moose, and my
father's father afterward became a bear
so said the shaman, l and the shaman
cannot lie. Thus, on the Trail of the
Gods, we pass from life to life, and the
gods know only and understand. Dreams
and the shadows of dreams be memo-
1 Medicine man.
ries, nothing more, and the dog, whin-
ing asleep in the sun warmth, doubtless
sees and remembers things gone before.
Bash, there, was a warrior once. I do
firmly believe he was once a warrior."
Canim tossed a bone to the brute and
got upon his feet. "Come, let us be-
gone. The sun is yet hot, but it will
get no cooler."
"And these white people, what are
they like ? " Li Wan made bold to ask.
"Like you and me," he answered,
"only they are less dark of skin. You
will be among them ere the day is
dead."
Canim lashed the sleeping-robe to his
one hundred and fifty pound pack,
smeared his face with wet clay, and sat
down to rest till Li Wan had finished
loading the dogs. Olo cringed at sight
of the club in her hand, and gave no
trouble when the bundle of forty pounds
and odd was strapped upon him. But
Bash was aggrieved and truculent, and
could not forbear to whimper and snarl
as he was forced to receive the burden.
He bristled his back and bared his teeth
as she drew the straps tight, the while
throwing all the malignancy of his na-
ture into the glances shot at her sidelong
and backward. And Canim chuckled
and said, " Did I not say I believed he
was once a very great warrior ? "
" These furs will bring a price, " he
remarked as he adjusted his head-strap
and lifted his pack clear of the ground.
"A very big price. The white men
pay well for such goods, for they have
no time to hunt and are soft to the cold.
Soon shall we feast, Li Wan, as you
have feasted never in all the lives be-
fore."
She grunted acknowledgment and
gratitude for her lord's condescension,
slipped into the harness, and bent for-
ward to the load.
"The next time I am born, I would
be born a white man," he added, and
swung off down the trail which dived
into the gorge at his feet.
The dogs followed close at his heels,
216
Li Wan, the, Fair.
and Li Wan brought up the rear. But
her thoughts were far away, across the
Ice Mountains to the east, to the little
corner of the earth where her childhood
had been lived. Ever as a child, she
remembered, she had been looked upon
as strange, as one with an affliction.
Truly she had dreamed awake and been
scolded and beaten for the remarkable
visions she saw, till, after a time, she
had outgrown them. But not utterly.
Though they troubled her no more wak-
ing, they yet came to her in her sleep,
grown woman that she was, and many
a night of nightmare was hers, filled
with fluttering shapes, vague and mean-
ingless. The talk with Canim had ex-
cited her, and down all the twisted slant
of the divide she harked back to the
mocking fantasies of her dreams.
"Let us take breath," Canim said,
when they had tapped midway the bed
of the main creek.
He rested his pack on a jutting rock,
slipped the head-strap, and sat down.
Li Wan joined him, and the dogs
sprawled panting on the ground beside
them. At their feet rippled the glacial
drip of the hills, but it was muddy and
discolored, as soiled by some commotion
of the earth.
"Why is this? " Li Wan asked.
"Because of the white men who work
in the ground. Listen ! " He held up
his hand, and they heard the ring of
pick and shovel and the sound of men's
voices. "They are made mad by gold,
and work without ceasing that they may
find it. Gold ? It is yellow and comes
from the ground, and is considered of
great value. It is also a measure of
price. "
But Li Wan's roving eyes had called
her attention from him. A few yards
below, and partly screened by a clump
of young spruce, the tiered logs of a
cabin rose to meet its overhanging roof
of dirt. A thrill ran through her, and
all her dream phantoms roused up and
stirred about uneasily.
" Canim, " she whispered in an agony
of apprehension. "Canim, what is
that ? "
"The white man's tepee, in which
he eats and sleeps."
She eyed it wistfully, grasping its
virtues at a glance and thrilling again
at the unaccountable sensations it
aroused. "It must be very warm in
time of frost," she said aloud, though
she felt impelled to form strange sounds
with her lips.
She longed to utter them, but did not,
and the next instant Canim said, "It
is called a cabin."
Her heart gave a great leap these
were the sounds, the very sounds ! She
looked about her in sudden awe. How
should she know that strange word be-
fore ever she heard it ? What could be
the matter? And then, with a shock,
half of fear and half of delight, she re-
alized that for the first time in her life
there had been sanity and significance
in the promptings of her dreams.
"Cabin," she repeated to herself.
"Cabin." Then an incoherent flood of
dream stuff welled up and up till her
head was dizzy and her heart seemed
bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks
of things, and unintelligible associations
fluttered and whirled about, and she
strove vainly with her consciousness to
grasp and hold them. For she felt that
there, in that welter of memories, was
the key of the mystery; could she but
grasp and hold it, all would be clear and
plain.
O Canim! O Pow- Wah-Kaan ! O
shades and shadows, what was that?
She turned to Canim, speechless and
trembling, the dream stuff in mad,
overwhelming riot. She was sick and
fainting, and could only listen to the
ravishing sounds which proceeded from
the cabin in a wonderful rhythm.
"Hum, fiddle," Canim vouchsafed.
But she did not hear him, for in the
ecstasy she was experiencing it seemed
at last that all things were coming clear.
Now! now! she thought. A sudden
moisture swept into her eyes, and the
Li Wan, the Fair.
217
tears trickled down her cheeks. The
mystery was unlocking, but the faint-
ness was overpowering her. If only she
could hold herself long enough! If
only but the landscape bent and
crumpled up, and the hills swayed back
and forth across the sky, as she sprang
to her feet and screamed, "Daddy!
Daddy ! " Then the sun reeled, and
darkness smote her, and she pitched for-
ward limp and headlong among the
rocks.
Canim looked to see if her neck had
been broken by the heavy pack, grunted
his satisfaction, and threw water from
the creek upon her. She came to slow-
ly, with choking sobs, and sat up.
"It is not good, the hot sun on the
head," he ventured.
And she answered, "No, it is not
good, and the pack bore upon me hard. "
"We shall camp early, so that you
may sleep long and win strength, " he
said gently. "And if we go now we
shall be the quicker to bed."
She said nothing, but tottered to her
feet in obedience and stirred up the
dogs. Taking the swing of his pace
mechanically, she followed him past the
cabin scarce daring to breathe. But no
sounds issued forth, though the door was
open and smoke curling upward from the
sheet- iron stovepipe.
They came upon a man in the bend
of the creek, white of skin and blue of
eye, and for a moment Li Wan saw the
other man in the snow. But she saw
dimly, for she was weak and tired from
what she had undergone. Still, she
looked at him curiously, and stopped
with Canim to watch him at his work.
He was washing gravel in a large pan,
with a circular, tilting movement ; and
as they looked, giving a deft flirt, he
flashed up the yellow gold in a broad
streak across the bottom of the pan.
"Very rich, this creek," Canim told
her, as they went on. "Some time I
will find such a creek, and then I shall
be a big man."
Cabins and men grew more plentiful,
till they came to where the main por-
tion of the creek was spread out before
them. It was the scene of a vast de-
vastation. Everywhere the earth was
torn and rent as though by a Titan's
struggles. Where there were no up-
thrown mounds of gravel, great holes
and trenches yawned, and chasms where
the thick rime of the earth had been
peeled to bed-rock. There was no worn
channel for the creek, and its waters,
dammed up, diverted, flying through
the air on giddy flumes, trickling into
sinks and low places, and raised by huge
water wheels, were used and used again
a thousand times. The hills had been
stripped of their trees, and their raw
sides gored and perforated by great tim-
ber slides and prospect holes. And over
all, like a monstrous race of ants, was
flung an army of men, mud-covered,
dirty, disheveled men, who crawled in
and out of the holes of their digging,
crept like big bugs along the flumes,
and toiled and sweated at the gravel
heaps which they kept in constant un-
rest, men, as far as the eye could see,
even to the rims of the hilltops, dig-
ging, tearing, and scouring the face of
nature.
Li Wan was appalled at the tremen-
dous upheaval. "Truly, these men are
mad," she said to Canim.
"Small wonder. The gold they dig
after is a great thing," he replied.
"The greatest thing in the world."
For hours they threaded the chaos of
greed, Canim eagerly intent, Li Wan
weak and listless. She knew she had
been on the verge of disclosure, and she
felt that she was still on the verge of
disclosure; but the nervous strain she
had undergone had tired her, and she
passively waited for the thing, she knew
not what, to happen. From every hand
her senses snatched up and conveyed to
her innumerable impressions, each of
which became a dull excitation to her
jaded imagination. Somewhere within
her, responsive notes were answering to
the things without ; forgotten and un-
218
Li Wan, the Fair.
dreamed-of correspondences were being
renewed ; and she was aware of it in an
incurious way, and her soul was trou-
bled, but she was not equal to the men-
tal exaltation necessary to transmute
and understand. So she plodded wea-
rily on at the heels of her lord, content
to wait for that which she knew, some-
where, somehow, must happen.
After undergoing the mad bondage
of man, the creek finally returned to its
ancient ways, all soiled and smirched
from its toil, and coiled lazily among
the broad flats and timbered spaces
where the valley widened to the mouth.
Here the "pay " ran out, and men were
loath to loiter with the lure yet beyond.
And here, as Li Wan paused to prod
Olo with her staff, she heard the mellow
silver of a woman's laughter.
Before a cabin sat a woman, fair of
skin and rosy as a child, dimpling with
glee at the words of another woman in
the doorway. But the woman who sat
shook about her great masses of dark
wet hair which yielded up its dampness
to the warm caresses of the sun.
For an instant Li Wan stood trans-
fixed. Then she was aware of a blind-
ing flash, and a snap, as though some-
thing gave way ; and the woman before
the cabin vanished, and the cabin, and
the tall spruce timber, and the jagged
sky line, and Li Wan saw another wo-
man, in the shine of another sun, brush-
ing great masses of black hair and sing-
ing as she brushed. And Li Wan heard
the words of the song, and understood,
and was a child again. She was smit-
ten with a vision, wherein all the trou-
blesome dreams merged and became one,
and shapes and shadows took up their
accustomed round, and all was clear and
plain and real. Many pictures jostled
past, strange scenes, and trees, and
flowers, and people; and she saw them
and knew them all.
"When you were a little bird, a lit-
tle moose-bird," Canim said, his eyes
upon her and burning into her.
"When I was a little moose-bird,"
she whispered, so faint and low he
scarcely heard. And she knew she lied,
as she bent her head to the strap and
took the swing of the trail.
And such was the strangeness of it,
the real now became unreal. The mile
tramp and the pitching of camp by the
edge of the stream seemed like a pas-
sage in a nightmare. She cooked the
meat, fed the dogs, and unlashed the
packs as in a dream, and it was not un-
til Canim began to sketch his next wan-
dering that she became herself again.
"The Klondike runs into the Yu-
kon, " he was saying ; "a mighty river,
mightier than the Mackenzie, of which
you know. So we go, you and I, down
to Fort o' Yukon. With dogs, in time
of winter, it is twenty sleeps. Then
we follow the Yukon away into the
west one hundred sleeps, two hun-
dred, I have never heard. It is very
far. And then we come to the sea.
You know nothing of the sea, so let me
tell you. As the lake is to the island,
so the sea is to the land ; all the rivers
run to it, and it is without end. I
have seen it at Hudson Bay ; I have yet
to see it in Alaska. And then we may
take a great canoe upon the sea, you
and I, Li Wan, or we may follow the
land into the south many a hundred
sleeps. And after that I do not know,
save that I am Canim, The Canoe, wan-
derer and far- journey er over the earth ! "
She sat and listened, and fear ate into
her heart as she pondered over this
plunge into the illimitable wilderness.
" It is a weary way, " was all she said,
head bowed on knee in resignation.
Then it was a splendid thought came
to her, and at the wonder of it she was
all a-glow. She went down to the
stream and washed the dried clay from
her face. When the ripples died away
she stared long at her mirrored fea-
tures ; but sun and weather had done
their work, and, with the roughness and
bronze, her skin was not soft and dim-
pled as a child's. But the thought was
still splendid and the glow unabated as
Li Wan, the Fair.
219
she crept in beside her husband under
the sleeping-robe.
She lay awake, staring up at the blue
of the sky and waiting for Canim to
sink into the first deep sleep. When
this came about, she wormed slowly and
carefully away, tucked the robe around
him, and stood up. At her second step,
Bash growled savagely. She whispered
persuasively to him and glanced at the
man. Canim was snoring profoundly.
Then she turned, and with swift, noise-
less feet sped up the back trail.
Mrs. Evelyn Van Wyck was just pre-
paring for bed. Bored by the duties
put upon her by society, her wealth,
and widowed blessedness, she had jour-
neyed into the Northland and gone to
housekeeping in a cosy cabin on the
edge of the diggings. Here, aided and
abetted by her friend and companion,
Myrtle Giddings, she played at living
close to the soil, and cultivated the
primitive with refined abandon.
She strove to get away from the gen-
erations of culture and parlor selection,
and sought the earth-grip her ancestors
had forfeited. Likewise she induced
mental states which she fondly believed
to approximate those of the stone folk,
and just now, as she put up her hair for
the pillow, she was indulging her fancy
with a palaeolithic wooing. The de-
tails consisted principally of cave dwell-
ings and cracked marrow-bones, inter-
sprinkled with fierce carnivora, hairy
mammoths, and combats with rude
flaked knives of flint ; but the sensations
were delicious. And as Evelyn Van
Wyck fled through the sombre forest
aisles before the too arduous advances
of her slant-browed, skin-clad wooer,
the door of the cabin opened, without
the courtesy of knock, and a skin-clad
woman, savage and primitive, came in.
"Mercy!"
With a leap that would have done
credit to a cave woman, Miss Giddings
landed in safety behind the table. But
Mrs. Van Wyck held her ground. She
noted that the intruder was laboring un-
der a strong excitement, and cast a swift
glance backward to assure herself that
the way was clear to the bunk, where
the big Colt's revolver lay beneath a
pillow.
"Greeting, O Woman of the Won-
drous Hair, " said Li Wan.
But she said it in her own tongue,
the tongue spoken in but a little cor-
ner of the earth, and the women did
not understand.
"Shall I go for help?" Miss Gid-
dings quavered.
"The poor creature is harmless, I
think, " Mrs. Van Wyck replied. "And
just look at her skin clothes, ragged and
trail- worn, and all that. They are cer-
tainly unique. I shall buy them for
my collection. Get my sack, Myrtle,
please, and set up the scales."
Li Wan followed the shaping of the
lips, but the words were unintelligible,
and then, for the first time, she real-
ized, in a moment of suspense and in-
decision, that there was no medium of
communication between them.
And at the passion of her dumbness
she cried out, with arms stretched wide
apart, "O Woman, thou art sister of
mine I "
The tears coursed down her cheeks
as she yearned toward them, and the
break in her voice carried the sorrow
she could not utter. But Miss Gid-
dings was trembling, and even Mrs.
Van Wyck was disturbed.
"I would live as you live. Thy ways
are my ways, and our ways be one. My
husband is Canim, The Canoe, and he
is big and strange, and I am afraid.
His trail is all the world, and never
ends, and I am weary. My mother was
like you, and her hair was as thine, and
her eyes. And life was soft to me,
then, and the sun warm."
She knelt humbly, and bent her head
at Mrs. Van Wyck's feet. But Mrs.
Van Wyck drew away, frightened at
her vehemence.
Li Wan stood up, panting for speech.
220
Li Wan, the Fair.
Her dumb lips could not articulate her
overmastering consciousness of kind.
"Trade? You trade?" Mrs. Van
Wyck questioned, slipping, after the
manner of the superior peoples, into
pigeon tongue.
She touched Li Wan's ragged skins
to indicate her choice, and poured sev-
eral hundreds of gold into the blower.
She stirred the dust about and trickled
its yellow lustre temptingly through
her fingers. But Li Wan saw only the
fingers, milk-white and shapely, taper-
ing daintily to the rosy, jewel-like
nails; and she placed her own hand
alongside, all work-worn and calloused,
and wept.
Mrs. Van Wyck misunderstood.
a Gold, " she encouraged. " Good gold !
You trade ? You changee for changee ? v
And she laid her hand again on Li
Wan's skin garments.
"How much? You sell? How
much ? " she persisted, running her hand
against the way of the hair so that she
might make sure of the sinew-thread
seam.
But Li Wan was deaf as well, and
the woman's speech was without signifi-
cance. Dismay at her failure sat upon
her. How could she identify herself
with these women ? For she knew they
were of the one breed, blood-sisters
among men and the women of men.
Her eyes roved wildly about the inte-
rior, taking in the soft draperies hang-
ing around, the feminine garments, the
oval mirror, and the dainty toilet ac-
cessories beneath. And the things
haunted her, for she had seen like things
before ; and as she looked at them her
lips involuntarily formed sounds which
her throat trembled to utter. Then a
thought flashed upon her, and she stead-
ied herself. She must be calm. She
must control herself. There must be
no misunderstanding this time, or else,
and she shook with a storm of sup-
pressed tears and steadied herself
again.
She put her hand on the table.
"Table," she clearly and distinctly
enunciated. " Table, " she repeated.
She looked at Mrs. Van Wyck, who
nodded approbation. Li Wan exulted,
but brought her will to bear and held
herself steady. "Stove," she went on.
"Stove."
Then at every nod of Mrs. Van
Wyck, Li Wan's excitement mounted.
Now stumbling and halting, and again
in feverish haste, as the recrudescence
of forgotten words was fast or slow,
she moved about the cabin, naming
article after article. And when she
paused, finally, it was in triumph,
with body erect and head thrown back,
expectant, waiting.
"C-a-t," Mrs. Van Wyck laughing-
ly spelled out in kindergarten fashion.
"I see the cat catch the
^rat."
Li Wan nodded her head seriously.
They were beginning to understand at
last, these women. The blood flushed
darkly under her bronze at the thought,
and she smiled and nodded her head
still more vigorously.
Mrs. Van Wyck turned to her com-
panion. "Received a smattering of
mission education somewhere, I fancy,
and has come to show it off."
"Of course, " Miss Giddings tittered.
"Little fool! We shall lose our sleep
with her vanity."
"All the same I want that jacket.
If it is old, the workmanship is good,
a most excellent specimen." She re-
turned to her visitor. "Changee for
changee ? You ! changee for changee ?
How much ? Eh ? How much, you ? "
"Perhaps she 'd prefer a dress or
something," Miss Giddings suggested.
Mrs. Van Wyck went up to Li Wan
and made signs that she would exchange
her wrapper for the jacket. And to
further the transaction, she took Li
Wan's hand and placed it amid the lace
and ribbons of the flowing bosom, and
rubbed the fingers back and forth that
she might feel the texture. But the
jeweled butterfly which loosely held the
My Cookery Bocks.
221
fold in place was insecurely fastened,
and the front of the gown fell aside,
exposing a firm white breast which had
never known the lip-clasp of a child.
Mrs. Van Wyck coolly repaired the
mischief; but Li Wan uttered a loud
cry, and ripped and tore at her skin-
shirt till her own breast showed firm
and white as Evelyn Van Wyck's.
Murmuring inarticulately and making
swift signs, she strove to establish the
kinship.
"A half-breed," Mrs. Van Wyck
commented. "I thought so from her
hair. "
Miss Giddings made a fastidious ges-
ture. "Proud of her father's white
skin. It 's beastly. Do give her some-
thing, Evelyn, and make her go."
But the other woman sighed. "Poor
creature, I wish I could do something
for her. "
There was a crunching on the gravel
without. Then the cabin door swung
wide and Canim stalked in. Miss Gid-
dings saw a vision of sudden death and
screamed, but Mrs. Van Wyck faced
him composedly.
"What do you want ? " she demand-
ed.
"How do," Canim answered suavely
and directly, pointing at the same time
to Li Wan. "Um my wife."
He reached out to her, but she waved
him back.
"Speak, Canim! Tell them I am "
" Daughter of Pow- Wah-Kaan ?
Nay, of what is it to them that they
should care ? Better should I tell them
thou art an ill wife, given to creeping
from thy husband's bed when sleep is
heavy in his eyes."
Again he reached out for her, but
she fled away from him to Mrs. Van
Wyck, at whose feet she made frenzied
appeal, and whose knees she tried to
clasp. But the lady stepped back, giv-
ing permission with her eyes to Canim.
He gripped Li Wan under the shoulders
and raised her. She fought with him,
in a madness of despair, till his chest
was heaving with the exertion and they
had reeled about over half the room.
"Let me go, Canim! " she sobbed.
But he twisted her wrist till she
ceased to struggle. "The memories of
the little moose-bird are over-strong and
make trouble," he began.
But she interrupted. "I know!
I know ! I see the man in the snow,
and, as never before, I see him crawl on
hand and knee. And I, who am a lit-
tle child, am carried on his back. And
this is before Pow- Wah-Kaan and the
time I came to live in a little corner of
the earth."
"You know," he answered, forcing
her toward the door ; " but you will go
with me down the Yukon and forget."
"Never shall I forget! So long as
my skin is white shall I remember! "
She clutched frantically at the door-
post and looked a last appeal to Mrs.
Evelyn Van Wyck.
"Then will I teach thee to forget,
I, Canim, The Canoe ! "
As he spoke, he pulled her fingers clear
and passed out with her upon the trail.
Jack London.
MY COOKERY BOOKS. 1
II. mind must like, I think, to read about
them." The words are Thackeray's,
"NEXT to eating good dinners, a and they encourage me, if I need en-
healthy man with a benevolent turn of couragement, in my belief that to go on
1 Seo Atlantic for June, 1901, p. 789.
222
My Cookery Books.
writing about my Cookery Books is a
duty I owe not only to myself, but to
the world.
If I have owned to a sneaking pre-
ference for the little calf and vellum
covered duodecimos of the seventeenth
century, courteous and gallant as the
Stuart days to which they belong, I
should lose no time in adding that it
is to the eighteenth century I am in-
debted for the great treasure of my
collection, Mrs. Glasse in the famous
"pot folio " of the first edition. The
copy belonged, as I have explained, to
George Augustus Sala, and came up for
sale when his library was disposed of at
Sotheby's in the July of 1896. This
library was a disappointment to most
people, to none more than to me. I
had heard much of Sala's cookery books,
but small as my collection then was I
found only three that I had not already.
Bartolommeo Scappi's Cuoco Secreto, 1
in fine binding, but not in the first edi-
tion (which I secured a year or two af-
ter); The Delmonico Cook Book, and
excellent it is; and Mrs. Glasse,
The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and
Easy, which far Exceeds Every Thing
of the Kind yet Published, to give her
book its full title. In the preliminary
paragraphs that went the round of the
press, Mrs. Glasse alone received the
honor of special mention ; in that dingy
little salesroom in Wellington Street,
where, however high passions and
prices may run, the group at the ta-
ble seem to have come together for
nothing more exciting than a sociable
nap, Mrs. Glasse again held the place
of honor in a glass case apart. Every-
thing pointed to a struggle. It would
take a braver woman than I to face
the "knock-outs " and "rings " before
which the private buyer is said to be as
a lamb led to the slaughter. When the
day of the sale came, like royalty at
important functions, I was "represent-
ed " at Sotheby's, and myself stayed at
1 It was at the Court of Pius V. that he held
this important position.
home with my emotions. The sequel
is known. Is not the book on my
shelves? It came that same evening,
the two others with it. "I am
pleased, " wrote my representative, " to
be able to send you the three books, and
all below your limit, and hope you will
be satisfied." Satisfied? Was there
ever a woman yet to whom a bargain
was not half the joy of possession ?
Sala, it was currently reported, val-
ued the book at five hundred dollars;
I paid but fifty. It was not because
he overestimated its rarity. The first
edition was almost as rare as he
thought. On the fly-leaf of his copy
he wrote, July, 1876, that only three
others were known to be in existence :
one at the British Museum, a second at
the Bodleian, and a third in the library
of a country clergyman. Since then
only two others, to my knowledge, have
materialized. But Sala was a vandal ;
his copy was evidently in a shocking
state when he found it, in a barrow in
a South London slum according to the
legend, and he had the battered and
torn pages mended, and the book bound
in substantial and expensive, if inap-
propriate binding. So far so good.
.Still he also had it interleaved. He
seems to have believed that his own
trivial newspaper correspondence on the
subject carefully pasted in would in-
crease its value. How often have I
looked at the book and decided, at
whatever cost, to get rid of the inter-
leaving and the newspaper clippings, an
insult alike to Mrs. Glasse and myself!
How often have I decided that to re-
duce it to its original slimness would
be to destroy its pedigree ; not a very
distinguished pedigree, but still the
copy was known in the auction room as
Sala's, and, therefore, as Sala's must
it not remain ? Whoever can settle this
problem for me will lift a burden of re-
sponsibility from shoulders not strong
enough to bear it.
Now, I have the first edition, I do
not mind admitting that no other trea-
My Cookery Books.
223
tise on cookery owes its reputation so
little to merit, so much to chance. It
was popular in its own day, I grant
you. The Biographical Dictionary says
that, except the Bible, it had the great-
est sale in the language. It went into
edition after edition. There are ten in
the British Museum. I own five my-
self, though I vowed that the first suf-
ficed for my wants. The book was
republished in Edinburgh. It was re-
vived as late as 1852, perhaps later
still, for all I as yet know. But al-
most all the eighteenth-century books
shared its popularity, only the Bio-
graphical Dictionary has not happened
to hear of them. I have The Compleat
Housewife, by E. Smith, in the eigh-
teenth edition ; I have Elizabeth Mox-
on's English Housewife, in the thir-
teenth; I have John Farley's London
Art of Cookery, in the eleventh, and I
might go on through a list of titles and
authors long forgotten by every one but
me. All are as amusing now as the
Art of Cookery, and were probably very
useful in their day. The receipts are
much the same; indeed, the diligence
with which the authorities upon cookery
in the eighteenth century borrowed one
from the other, without a word of ac-
knowledgment, ought to have kept the
law courts busy. Nor does the manner
vary more than the matter. Of most
of the books the authors could say as
truthfully as Mrs. Glasse of hers, that
they were "not wrote in the high polite
stile." Not even her sex gives Mrs.
Glasse distinction in an age when au-
thorship or public practice of any sort
was indelicate in a female. Mary
Eale, E. Smith, Elizabeth Raffald,
a charming person in a mob cap, if you
can trust her portrait, Charlotte
Mason, Elizabeth Cleland, Martha
Bradley, were a few of her many rivals.
And where are they now?
" Where 's Hipparchia, and where is Thais ? "
If Mrs. Glasse alone survives, H is
for one reason only, and that the most
unreasonable. Her fame is due not to
her genius, for she really had none,
but to the fact that her own generation
believed there was "no sich person,"
and after generations believed in her
as the author of a phrase she never
wrote. And, indeed, no one would re-
member even the doubt at the time
thrown upon her identity, but for Bos-
well. I know Cumberland also is an
authority for the report that Dr. Hill
wrote the book. Hill, he says, was
"a needy author who could not make
a dinner out of the press till, by a happy
transformation into Hannah Glasse, he
turned himself into a cook and sold re-
ceipts for made dishes to all the savoury
readers in the kingdom. Then, indeed,
the press acknowledged him second in
fame only to John Bunyan ; his feasts
kept pace in sale with Nelson's Fasts,
and when his own name was fairly
written out of credit, he wrote himself
into immortality under an alias. " But
nobody nowadays reads Cumberland's
Memoirs, and everybody reads Boswell,
or pretends to. The subject came
up at Mr. Dilley's dinner-table. "Mrs.
Glasse 's Cookery, which is the best, was
written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade
knows this, " said Mr. Dilley, who, be-
ing in the trade himself, ought to have
been an authority. But Dr. Johnson
was of another opinion: "Women can
spin very well, but they cannot make
a good book of cookery." Mrs. Glasse's
is not a good book, mistakes occurring
in it ; therefore, Dr. Hill, a man, could
not have written it. I agree with Dr.
Johnson's conclusions, but on far sim-
pler grounds. The impersonation of
Mrs. Glasse would, in the end, have
become too elaborate a joke to carry
through, had Dr. Hill been as ingen-
ious and as wanting in veracity as in
Dr. Johnson's description of him to
George III. The first edition of the
Art of Cookery the folio, sold at
Mrs. Ashburn's China Shop, corner of
Fleet Ditch, and at Mrs. Wharton's,
at the Blue Coat Boy, near the Royal
224
My Cookery Books.
Exchange was published anonymous-
ly in 1747. "By a Lady " is printed
on the title-page. Only later editions,
the octavo, sold by innumerable booksell-
ers, Dr. Johnson's friend, Mr. Millar,
among them, appear with the name H.
Glasse printed on the title-page and in
facsimile above the first chapter. To
invent the name would have been no
great tax on the imagination. But, by
the fourth edition, which I search for
in vain, Dr. Hill would have had to in-
vent a trade as well. For in this edi-
tion, and in this one only, an impressive
engraved frontispiece describes Hannah
Glasse and if the description is long,
it is too inimitable not to be quoted in
full as "Habit Maker to Her Royal
Highness, the Princess of Wales, in
Tavistock St., Covent Garden, Makes
and Sells all sorts of Riding Hab-
its, Joseph's Great Coats, Horsemen's
Coats, Russia Coats, Hussar Coats,
Bedgowns, Nightgowns, and Robe de
Shambers, Widows' Weeds, Sultains,
Sultans, and Cartouches after the neat-
est manner, Likewise, Parliament,
Judges' and Chancellors ' Robes, Ital-
ian Robes, Cossockroons, Capuchins,
Newmarket Cloaks, Long Cloaks, Short
Do., Quilted Coats, Hoop Petticoats,
Under Coats, All Sorts of Fringes and
Laces as cheap as from the makers.
Bonnetts, Hatts, Short Hoods, and
Caps, of all Sorts, Plain Sattins, Sas-
netts,and Persians. All Sorts of Child-
bed Linning, Cradles, Baskets and
Robes. Also Stuffs, Camblets, Cabi-
nances, and Worsted Damasks, Norwich
Crapes, and Bumbasins, Scarlet Cloaths,
Duffels and Frizes, Dimitys, New-
market Hunting Caps, etc. Likewise
all sorts of Masquerade Dresses."
More than this, Dr. Hill, thus es-
tablished on copper plate, would have
had promptly to invent his failure. In
1 Just as I am re-reading this before trusting
it to the post, a package is handed to me. I
open it. The Servant's Directory, or House-
keeper's Companion, by H. Glasse. The book
I have been searching for during long years !
1 754, three years later, Hannah Glasse
figured among the bankrupts of the
year; "Hannah Glasse of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden, Warehousekeeper, " is
the entry. He would also have had to
claim two other books: The Servant's
Directory, published in 1760, almost
fifteen years after the Art of Cookery,
a book I have never been able to find, 1
and The Compleat Confectioner, pub-
lished in I cannot say what year, for
my copy, a first edition, has no date,
and the book is known neither to Haz-
litt nor Vicaire. And as a last touch,
he must have had the brilliant idea of
opening a cookery school in Edinburgh,
if I can trust "M. D.," who wrote
a note on the fly-leaf of my copy of
The Compleat Confectioner to protest
against the revival, in the Times, of
the old scandal. This was in 1866,
when some one rashly called Mrs. Glasse
"Mrs. Harris." Mrs. Glasse, M. D.
says, "lived in the flesh in Edinburgh
about 1790. She taught cookery to
classes of young ladies. My mother
was a pupil, and fondly showed in her
old age to her children a copy of
Glasse 's Cookery, with the autograph
of the authoress, gained as a prize in
the School of Cookery." "M. D." at
once spoils her case by adding "This
book does contain ' Catch your Hare.' '
Not before seeing it could I believe.
I have spent hours in pursuit of the
famous phrase, or, at least, the reason
of the misquotation, in the hope that
success might, forever after, link my
name with that of Hannah Glasse. But
I can come no nearer to the clue than
the "First Case your hare, " found in
every cookery book of the period, and
that Mr. Churton Collins has just been
offering as an explanation, and so de-
priving me of the chance of being the
first with even this obvious discovery.
The miracle I owe, I am proud to say, to Mr.
Janvier, whose intimacy with Mr. Hutchinson,
Port of Philadelphia, has made him sympathize
with me in my study of the Science of the
Gullet.
My Cookery Books.
225
Well, any way, believe in Mrs. Glasse,
or not, the cookery book that bears her
name is the only one published in the
eighteenth century now remembered by
the whole world. And yet, it is in
eighteenth-century books my collection
is richest. They are mostly substantial
octavos, calf bound, much the worse
for wear, often "embellished " with an
elegant frontispiece, a portrait of the
author, or picture of the kitchen, and,
I regret to say, seldom very beautiful
examples of the printer's art. Several
have been given to me by friends who
know my weakness. For instance, few
books in my entire library do I prize
more than the Collection of above Three
Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick
and Surgery for the use of all Good
Wives, Tender Mothers, and Careful
Nurses, not so much because it is curi-
ous and tolerably rare, as because of
the little legend, "Homage to Auto-
lycus, 1 Austin Dobson," on the fly-leaf .
The greater number I have bought at
different times, but it is to be noted
that never, like Sala, have I picked
one up from a costermonger's barrow,
though, for a while, I made weekly pil-
grimages to Whitechapel in their pur-
suit. Usually they have come through
the second-hand booksellers. A few
sympathizers, Dr. Furnivall chief
among them, never fail to let me know
of a chance for a bargain. Once I
was offered some odd twenty, all in one
lot, before they were advertised, and
I hardly receive a catalogue that does
not contain two or three in its list.
Nor are they often costly. For the
price of one Mrs. Glasse in the first
edition, you can have a whole series
of her contemporaries. And so this
section of my collection has grown, un-
til I have some sixty or seventy books
published in England alone during the
eighteenth century.
If I were asked to point out any one
1 Perhaps I should explain that my articles
on cookery appeared in the Pall Mall, under
the title of Wares of Autolycus, and it was
VOL. XC. NO. 538. 15
characteristic they all share in common,
I would say it was the businesslike
seriousness of their authors. The ama-
teur had been silenced forever by artists
like Robert May and Will Rabisha.
By the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury, almost all the new cookery books
were being written by cooks. And the
new authors were in haste, on the very
title-page, to present their credentials.
Henry Howard (England's Newest Way
in all Sorts of Cookery, 1703, my
edition, alas, is 1707) and J. Hall
(The Queen's Royal Cookery, 1713)
were Free Cooks of London. Patrick
Lamb (The Complete Court Cook,
1710) was "near fifty years Master
Cook to their late Majesties King
Charles II, King James II, King Wil-
liam, Queen Mary, and to her Pre-
sent Majesty, Queen Anne, " and in the
Ordinances and Regulations for the
Government of the Royal Household,
you can learn to a halfpenny how much
he earned in a year. Charles Carter
(The Compleat City and Country Cook,
1732), whose boast it was that he came
of " a long race of predecessors, " pre-
sided over the kitchens of the Duke
of Argyle, the Earl of Pontefract, and
Lord Cornwallis. John Nott (The
Cooks' and Confectioners' Dictionary,
1723), Vincent LaChapelle (The Mod-
ern Cook, 1751, but then mine is a
fourth edition), William Verral (A
Complete System of Cookery, 1759),
all I could name have as irreproach-
able references. A few were not cooks
in service, but teachers: Edward Kid-
der, Pastry-Master, for one, who ran
two schools: in Queen Street, near St.
Thomas Apostle's, where he held his
classes on Mondays, Tuesdays, and
Wednesdays, and at Furnival's Inn in
Holborn, where he presided on Thurs-
days, Fridays, and Saturdays; he also
was willing, kind soul, to teach ladies
in their own houses. I respect Kidder
while I was writing them that Mr. Dobson
gave me the hook.
226
My Cookery Books.
as a man of originality, for his Receipts
of Pastry and Cookery is unlike any
book of the same period. From the
frontispiece, where he appears in ample
wig, with one hand uplifted as if in
exhortation to his class, to the amazing
plans for setting and decorating a din-
ner - table, it is neatly engraved and
printed on one side of the page only,
the receipts written out in the most
beautiful copper-plate writing. He
was original in his spelling, too:
" Sauceages, " I consider a gem even in
the eighteenth century; and he was
surely a forerunner of the modern cock-
ney, when he wrote, "To roast an
Hare."
The ladies were as eager to vouch
for their qualifications. Mrs. Mary
Eale, whose Receipts were published in
1708, was Confectioner to Queen Anne ;
Mrs. Charlotte Mason was a House-
keeper who had had "upwards of Thirty
Years' Experience in Families of the
First Fashion;" Mrs. Elizabeth Raf-
fald held the same position to the Hon.
Lady Elizabeth Warburton, and Mrs.
Sarah Martin, to Freeman Bower,
Esq., of Bawtry, I have his copy of
her book, with receipts in his own hand-
writing on pages inserted for the pur-
pose, with a note testifying to their
origin by his great-nephew, Canon Jack-
son ! Others proudly proclaimed their
town or country, as if their reputation
made further detail superfluous : Mrs.
Mary Wilson of Hertfordshire, Mrs.
Sarah Harrison of Devonshire, Mrs. Su-
sannah Carter of Clerken well, Mrs. Ann
Shackleford of Winchester. And then
there were the rivals of Edward Kid-
der: Mrs. Frazer, Mrs. Cleland, and
Mrs. Maciver taught the Arts of Cook-
ery, Pastry, and Confectionery in Ed-
inburgh, where, if M. D. is to be be-
lieved, Hannah Glasse joined them after
her adventures in the Bankruptcy Court.
But whatever their qualifications, they
are to be counted by the dozen, so that
I can but wonder why it seemed so as-
tonishing a thing for Hannah More,
Mary Wollstonecraft, and the other
Blue Stockings of the eighteenth cen-
tury to rush into print.
The seriousness with which these
cooks and housekeepers and professors
took themselves was reflected in their
style. An occasional seventeenth-cen-
tury book, reappearing in an eighteenth-
century edition, may have continued to
enjoy something of popularity; an oc-
casional new book at the very beginning
of the period may have retained some-
thing of the old picturesqueness. The
Collection of above Three Hundred Re-
ceipts fills its pages with Tansies and
Possets, Syllabubs and Flummeries,
still recommends a dish as "the best
that ever was tasted, " and still advises
you " to put in a little shalot, if you love
it; " The Queen's Royal Cookery is as
flamboyant with decorative adjectives
as any queen's closet. But as time
went on, the pleasant old familiarity
went out of fashion, and ornament was
chastened. The literary tendency of
the age was toward more formal dig-
nity, a greater regularity of form. In
accordance with the mode, receipts were
written with a businesslike decision, a
professional directness that allowed no
flowers of speech,, Many cooks seem to
have forestalled or copied Dr. Johnson
in the effort to say a thing as pompously
as it could be said ; disdain of ornament
led many to a matter of fact bluntness
that is appalling. " Stick your Pig just
above the breast-bone, " says Mrs. Eliz-
abeth Raffald without any preamble,
"run your knife to the heart, when
it is dead, put it in cold water. " Who-
ever, after that, would eat of her pig
has more courage than I.
Some sort of order was also intro-
duced into the arrangement of receipts,
in the place of the haphazard disorder
of the old MSS. books. The change
was due, in a large measure, to French
influence. In France, the art of cook-
ery had reached a much higher stage of
perfection than in England. The Eng-
lish might rebel against the fact, and
My Cookery Boohs.
227
they did in good earnest. It was not
only the Squire of Clod-Hall who
" Classed your Kickshaws and Ragoog
With Popery and Wooden Shoes."
Steele deplored the fashion that ban-
ished the "noble Sirloin " ignominiously
" to make way for French Kickshaws, "
and he held a French ragout to be "as
pernicious to the Stomach as a glass
of spirits." "What work would our
countrymen have made at Blenheim and
Ramillies, if they had been fed with
fricassees and ragouts ? " he asks. It
was the "parcel of Kickshaws contrived
by a French cook " that gave the finish-
ing touch to Matthew Bramble's dis-
pleasure with the wife of his friend
Baynard. "Their meals are gross,"
was one of Dr. Johnson's first entries
in the Diary of his little Tour in
France, proving forever that he was not
the "man of very nice discernment in
the science of cookery " that Boswell
thought him. And, at home, was it
not of a certain nobleman's French cook
he was heard to say with vehemence,
"I'd throw such a rascal into the
river " ? The English cooks were as
outspoken. Mrs. Glasse's Preface is
a protest against "the blind Folly of
this age that they would rather be im-
posed on by a French Booby than give
encouragement to a good English Cook
... if Gentlemen will have French
cooks, they must pay for French
tricks.'' E. Smith regretted that in
her book she had to include a few
French dishes, "since we have, to our
disgrace, so fondly admired the French
tongue, French modes, and also French
messes " Charles Carter lamented that
"some of our Nobility and gentry have
been too much attached to French Cus-
toms and French Cookery, " too will-
ing " to dress even more delicious Fare
after the Humour of the (perhaps viti-
ated) palates of some great Personages
or noted Epicures of France." It was
the one point upon which all, with a
few exceptions, were agreed.
But protests were of small avail.
Already, in his Directions to Servants,
Swift had found it a long time since
the custom began among the people of
quality to keep men cooks and generally
of the French nation. Patriotism, I
fear, does not begin in the stomach.
French cooks presided in most of the
big houses ; French cooks were patron-
ized by royalty ; French , cooks wrote
cookery books. The French Family
Cook (1793) was but a belated transla-
tion of the famous Cuisiniere Bourgeoise
(1746). La Chapelle, who published
a treatise, was a Frenchman. So was
Clermont. Verral studied under a
Frenchman. And from French sources
the most patriotic were not ashamed to
steal. Mrs. Smith, however she might
object to French messes, must still ad-
mit the necessity to temporize, justify-
ing herself by including only "such re-
ceipts of French cookery as I think may
not be disagreeable to English palates."
Mrs. Glasse, however she might scorn
the French Booby, must still give some
of her dishes " French names to distin-
guish them, because they are known by
those names, " and it matters not if they
be called French so they are good. The
question reduced itself simply to one of
demand and supply. But if the " French
Kickshaws" had been so bad for the pub-
lic as patriots preached, the study of
French books was altogether good for
the preachers. Under the sweet civil-
izing influence of France the barbarous
medley of the English cookery book
disappeared. A roast did not turn up
unexpectedly between a sweet and a sa-
vory, or a fish in the midst of the soups,
or an omelet lost among the vegeta-
bles. Each dish was duly labeled and
entered in its appropriate chapter.
Chemical, Physical, and Chirurgical
Secrets were banished to separate vol-
umes with a few curious exceptions. "I
shall not take upon me to meddle in the
physical way farther than two receipts, "
writes Mrs. Glasse. "One is for the
bite of a mad dog, and the other if a
228
My Cookery Books.
man should be near where the Plague
is, he shall be in no danger." And
these receipts are so often repeated in
rival cookery books that I can only sup-
pose there were many who believed in
earnest what Lord Chesterfield said in
jest when, six years after Mrs. Glasse's
book was published, he wrote to his son
that his friend Kreuningen " admits no-
body now to his table, for fear of their
communicating the plague to him, or at
least the bite of a mad dog." But it
was no easy matter for the ladies to re-
linquish their rights to prescribe. If
the gentlewoman of the day still
" knew for sprains what bands to choose,
Could tell the sovereign wash to use
For freckles, and was learned in brews
As erst Medea,"
it would not have done for the self-
appointed instructors of the sex to be
behindhand in these arts. E. Smith
cannot resist giving some two hundred
receipts "never before been made pub-
lic," though she has the grace to print
them in a section apart. Mrs. Harrison
and Mrs. Price both undertake to make
" Every man his own Doctor, " and in
the undertaking Mrs. Price supplies a
cure that I quote on the chance of its
proving useful, for I fancy the malady
continues to be common, so afflicted am
I with it myself. " For the Lethargy, "
she says, "you may snuff strong vine-
gar up the nose." It was natural at
a time when Compendiums, Universal
Visitors, Dictionaries of Commerce,
and of everything else, were in vogue,
that other women took upon themselves
also, by means of Dictionaries, and
Magazines, and Companions, and Jew-
els, and Guides, to see their sex com-
fortably through life "from the cradle
to the grave." I have any number of
ambitious books of this kind, all based
on The Whole Duty of Woman, and the
performance of Mrs. Hannah Woolley
of seventeenth-century fame. Take a
few headings of chapters from any one
chosen at random, and you have the
character of all : Of Religion ; The Duty
of Virgins; Of Wives; Of Gravies,
Soups, Broths, Pottages. But the sys-
tem, the careful division of subjects,
now become indispensable, is observed
even in these compilations.
The new love of order had one draw-
back. It gave writers less opportunity
for self-revelation. I miss the personal
note so pleasant in the older books of
cookery, that is, in the receipts them-
selves. One collection is so like another
I can hardly tell them apart unless I
turn to the title-page or the preface.
But here ample amends are made. The
cook did not suppress his individuality
meekly, and, fortunately for him, the
age was one of Prefaces and Dedica-
tions. In the few pages where he still
could swagger, he made up for the many
where the mode forced him to efface
himself. "Custom," says John Nott,
in 1723, to the "Worthy Dames" to
whom he offers his Dictionary, "has
made it as unfashionable for a Book to
appear without an Introduction, as for
a Man to appear at Church without a
Neckcloth, or a Lady without a Hoop-
petticoat. " " It being grown as unfash-
ionable for a Book to appear in public
without a Preface, as for a Lady to ap-
pear at a Ball without a Hoop-petti-
coat," says Mrs. Smith in 1727, her
great talent being for plagiarism, "I
shall conform to custom for Fashion's
sake, and not through any Necessity."
Mr. Hazlitt thinks Mrs. Smith un-
usually observant; he should have re-
membered the library at her disposal,
and, had he known this library more
intimately, he would have realized how
little scruple she had in drawing from
it. She only writes because, although
already there are "various Books that
treat on this subject and which bear
great names as Cooks to Kings, Princes
and Noblemen, " most of them have de-
ceived her in her expectations, so im-
practicable, whimsical, or unpalatable,
are the receipts. But she presents the
result of her own experience *' in Fash-
ionable and Noble Families, " and if her
My Cookery Books.
229
book but "prove to the advantage of
many, the end will be answered that is
proposed by her that is ready to serve
the Publick in what she may." Each
writer in turn is as eager to find a rea-
son for his or her help in glutting the
market. The author of the Collection
of above Three Hundred Receipts is
prompted by the sole "desire of doing
good," in which, fortunately, she has
been aided by those "who with a Noble
Charity and Universal Benevolence have
exposed to the World such invaluable
secrets," as, I suppose, "how to stew
Cucumbers to eat hot, " or " to make the
London Wigs, " gratitude, above all,
being due to the Fair Sex, "who, it may
be because of the greater Tenderness of
their Nature or their greater Leisure,
are always found most Active and In-
dustrious in this, as well as in all other
kinds of Charity. O Heavenly Chari-
ty ! " and so on, and so on. William
Gelleroy has learnt during service with
the Lord Mayor that "so long as it is
the fashion to eat, so long will cookery
books be useful." Mrs. Elizabeth
Price, the healer of Lethargy, thinks
it her duty to show the world how to
unite "Economy and Elegance," and,
as an assurance of her ability, breaks
into verse on her title-page :
" Here you may quickly learn with care
To act the housewife's part,
And dress a modern Bill of Fare
With Elegance and Ant."
Mrs. Charlotte Mason knows there are
many books, but has "never met with
one that contained any instructions for
regulating a table." Mrs. Elizabeth
Moxon, like the modest author to-day,
shifts the responsibility to her "hon-
ored friends who first excited her to the
publication of her book, and who have
been long eye-witnesses of her Skill and
Behaviour in the Business of her Call-
ing." Mrs. Elizabeth Raffald, reflect-
ing upon the contempt with which the
many volumes already published were
read, seems to have hoped no one would
find her out if she boldly borrowed from
Mrs. Price and Mrs. Glasse, and tried
to save her own from the general fate
by uniting "Economy and Elegance,"
taking the very words out of Mrs.
Price's mouth, and by seeing that it
was not " glossed over with Hard Names
or words of High Stile, but wrote in
my own plain language, " barely alter-
ing Mrs. Glasse 's memorable phrase.
I select a few specimens of her plain
language : "Hares and Rabbits requires
time and care, " she says, with a cheer-
ful disregard of grammar; "Pigeons
Transmogrified " is a term I should re-
commend to the Century Company for a
new edition of their Dictionary; while
upon a very popular dish of the day she
bestows the name "Solomon-gundy,"
as if she fancied that, somehow, King
Solomon were responsible for it. John
Farley hopes his book is distinguished
from others by " Perspicuity and Regu-
larity." But I might go on quoting in-
definitely, for almost every Preface is
a masterpiece of its kind, so pompous
in its periods, so bombastic in its elo-
quence, until I begin to suspect that
if Bacon wrote Shakespeare, so Dr.
Johnson must have written Nott and
Lamb and Clermont and Farley ; that
if Dr. Hill transformed himself into
Hannah Glasse, so Dr. Johnson must
have masqueraded as E. Smith, Eliza-
beth Raffald, and a whole bevy of fair
cooks and housekeepers.
There is another trait shared by all
these cooks, to whom I should do scant
justice if I did not point it out. This
is the large liberality with which they
practiced their art. The magnitude of
their ideas, at times, makes me gasp.
I have been often asked if, with such a
fine collection to choose from, I do not
amuse myself experimenting with the
old receipts. But all our flat turned
into a kitchen would not be large
enough to cook an eighteenth-century
dinner, nor our year's income to pay
for it. The proportions used in each
different dish are gigantic. What Dr.
King wrote in jest of the different
230
My Cookery Books.
cooks who, "to show you the largeness
of their soul, prepared you Mutton
swol'd l and oxen whole, " was virtually
true. For a simple "Fricassy, " you
begin with half a dozen chickens, half
a dozen pigeons, half a dozen sweet-
breads, and I should need a page to ex-
plain what you finish with for garni-
ture. Fowls disappeared into a lamb
or other meat pie by the dozen ; a sim-
ple leg of mutton must have its garni-
ture of cutlets; twelve pounds of good
meat, to say nothing of odd partridges,
fowls, turkeys, and ham, went into the
making of one stew, it is something
stupendous to read. And then the end-
less number of dishes in a menu, the
insufferably crowded table. A century
before, Pepys had discovered the supe-
rior merit of serving "but a dish at a
time " when he gave his fine dinner to
Lord Sandwich. But the eighteenth-
century books continue to publish menus
that make Gargantua's appetite seem
mere child's play ; their plates "exhib-
iting the order of placing the different
dishes, etc., on the table in the most
polite way " would spoil the appetite
of the bravest. Forty- three dishes
are symmetrically arranged for a single
course in one of Vincent La Chapelle's
plates, and La Chapelle was a French-
man, and in England enjoyed Lord
Chesterfield's patronage. Cooks may
have got so advanced as no longer to
believe "that Syllibubs come first and
Soups the last," but quantity was still
their standard of merit. Authorities
may have begun to decree that "three
courses be the most." But consider
what a course meant. Let me give one
menu of two courses as an average ex-
ample. It is for a July day, and Mrs.
Smith is the artist: "First Course:
Cock Salmon with buttered lobsters,
Dish of Scotch collops, Chine of Veal,
Venison pasty, Grand Sallad, Roasted
geese and ducklings, Patty royal, Roast-
ed pig larded, Stewed carps, Dish of
1 " Swol'd Mutton is a sheep roasted in its
Wool " according- to Dr. Lister himself.
chickens boiled with bacon, etc.,"
that etc. is expressive. "Second
Course : Dish of partridges and quails,
Dish of lobsters and prawns, Dish of
ducks and tame pigeons, Dish of jel-
lies, Dish of fruit, Dish of marinated
fish, Dish of Tarts of sorts." Add a
third course to this if you dare.
At first, this lavishness perplexed
me. I remembered eighteenth-century
dinners as simple as our own. For
example, Boswell's with Dr. Johnson
one Easter Sunday, a very good soup,
a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal
pie, and rice pudding, that seems rea-
sonable. Or again, the beef, pudding,
and potatoes to which Grub Street
was invited on Sundays by the suc-
cessful author, according to Smollett.
Or Stella's breast of mutton and a pint
of wine when she dined at home in Dub-
lin. "Two plain dishes, with two or
three good-natured, cheerful, ingenious
friends," was Steele's idea of a good
dinner. But then there is the oppo-
site side of the picture. Dr. John-
son's Gulosulus, cultivating the art of
living at the cost of others. Swift, in
London, sauntering forth of a morning
deliberately in search of a dinner at
somebody else's house and expense, and
if none of the great men with great es-
tablishments invited him, dropping in
for want of something better, and with-
out a moment's notice, at Mrs. Van-
homrigh's, and he could not have been
a more severe critic had he had the
special invitation which Dr. Johnson
thought made the special menu an obli-
gation. "The worst dinner I ever saw
at the dean's was better," Swift wrote
to Stella, " than one had at Sir Thomas
Mansel's, " and "yet this man has ten
thousand pounds a year and is a Lord
of the Treasury ! " At the Earl of
Abingdon's, on a certain Ash Wednes-
day, there was nothing but fish that was
raw, wine that was poison, candles that
were tallow ; and yet " the puppy has
twelve thousand pounds a year, " though
I do not find that Swift went the length
My Cookery Books.
231
of calling his host puppy in print, more
outspoken as he was than most of his
contemporaries. Swift was but one of
a large crowd of hungry men in search
of a free dinner which they looked upon
as their right. By food the noble Lord
tamed his authors and secured his syco-
phants ; by food the gracious Lady ruled
her salon. "Whenever you meet with
a man eminent in any way, feed him,
and feed upon him at the same time, "
was Lord Chesterfield's advice to his
son. Mrs. Thrale had but to provide
sweetmeats to make her evenings a suc-
cess, Dr. Johnson thought. Nor, for
that matter, has the bait lost its cun-
ning in the London of to-day. Now
the eighteenth-century cook who wrote
books was a snob. He would always
have you know it was with the Tables
of Princes, Ambassadors, Noblemen,
and Magistrates he was concerned ; but
rarely would he devise "the least expen-
sive methods of providing for private
families," and then it must be "in a
very elegant manner." He had, there-
fore, to design on a large scale, to adapt
his art to the number and hunger and
fastidiousness of the hanger-on. And
here, I think, you have the explanation.
But another problem I have hitherto
been unable to solve. When I study the
receipts of the period, I am struck by
their variety and excellence. The ten-
dency to over-seasoning, to the mixing
of sweets and savories in one dish, had
not altogether been overcome ; probably,
I am afraid, because fresh meat was not
always to be had, and suspicious flavors
had to be disguised. Some "made
dishes " you know, without tasting them,
to be as "wretched attempts " as Mac-
laurin's seemed to Dr. Johnson. How-
ever, so many and ingenious were the
ways of preparing soups, sauces, meats,
poultry, game, fish, vegetables, and
sweets, the gourmet had sufficient chance
to steer clear of the tawdry and the
crude. Only in Voltaire's witticism
was England then a country of a hun-
dred religions and one sauce. Soup
soared above the narrow oxtail and tur-
tle ideal, and the cook roamed at will
from the richest bisque to the simplest
bouillon. The casserole was exalted
and shared the honors with the honest
spit. Fricassees and ragouts were not
yet overshadowed by plain roast and
boiled. Vegetables were not thought,
when unadorned, to be adorned the
most. And as for oysters, an American
could not have been more accomplished
in frying, scalloping, stewing, roasting,
broiling, and boiling them, even Swift
gave his dear little M. D. a receipt for
boiled oysters, which must have been
not unlike that delicious dish of mussels
one has eaten in many a French provin-
cial hotel. And what is England to-
day ? A country soupless and sauceless,
consecrated to a " Chop or a Steak, sir ! "
from John o' Groat's to Land's End,
vowed irrevocably to boiled potatoes and
greeris, without as much as a grain of
salt to flavor them. How did it hap-
pen ? What was the reason of the De-
cline and Fall ? Not Tatler's appeal to
his fellow countrymen to " return to the
food of their forefathers, and reconcile
themselves to beef and mutton." That
was uttered in 1710, and had absolutely
no effect upon the tendency of the eigh-
teenth-century cookery books that fol-
lowed. As for "the common people of
this kingdom [who] do still keep up the
taste of their ancestors, " never yet have
they set the fashion. I confess, I still
remain in outer darkness, groping for a
clue.
If, as a rule, the eighteenth-century
books, save for their preface, have a
strong family resemblance, I prize the
more the small but select saving rem-
nant that makes for individuality.
There are books that stand out with dis-
tinction, in my estimate at least, be-
cause of the originality of the title : for
instance, Adam's Luxury and Eve's
Cookery; or the Kitchen Garden Dis-
played. (Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall
Mall, 1744.) This octavo I saw first
in the Patent Library collection of
232
My Cookery Books.
cookery books, never resting afterwards
until I had secured a copy of my own,
and the contents would have to be more
colorless than they are to spoil my plea-
sure in the name. Now the charm is
in the illustrations ; for example, The
Honours of the Table or Rules for Be-
haviour during meals (by the author of
Principles of Politeness, 1791). Most
of the cookery books of the period are
content with the frontispiece, engraved
on copper or steel. But this little book
has tail-pieces and illustrations scattered
through the text, described in catalogues
and bibliographies as "Woodcuts by
Bewick." I saw it also first at the Pa-
tent Library, and before the ardor of
my pursuit had cooled to the investiga-
tion point, two different editions had
a place on my shelves : one printed in
London at the Literary Press, 1791,
the second printed in Dublin in the same
year. Then I found that the wood en-
gravings it is a mistake to call them
woodcuts, and one might as well be pe-
dantic in these matters are not by
Thomas but by John Bewick, which
makes a difference to the collector. But
then Bewick's brother is not to be de-
spised, and the book is full of useful
hints, such as "eating a great deal is
deemed indelicate in a lady (for her
character should be rather divine than
sensual) ; " or, " if any of the company
seem backward in asking for wine, it is
the part of the master to ask or invite
them to drink, or he will be thought to
grudge his liquor." A few books please
me because of the tribute their learning
pays to the kitchen. Among these the
most celebrated is Dr. Lister's edition
of Apicius CoBlius, published in 1705,
now a rare book, at the time a bomb-
shell in the camp of the antiquary, who,
living in the country and hearing of it
but not yet seeing it, was reduced to
such "perplexity of mind" that "he
durst not put any Catchup in his Fish
Sauce, nor have his beloved Pepper,
Oyl and Limon with his Partridge,"
lest "he might transgress in using
something not common to the Antients. "
Another is The Art of Cookery (1708),
in imitation of Horace, by the Dr. King
who was described, two years later,
by Swift to Stella as "a poor starv-
ing wit." And, indeed, the 32 5 0,
said to have been paid him for the
poem by Lintot, could not have tided
him over his difficulties as a thirsty
man. It is rather a ponderous per-
formance, with here and there flashes :
probably the verses were some of those
Pope said he would write "in a tavern
three hours after he could not speak."
The book was a skit really on Dr. Lis-
ter and his Apicius Crelius that, for the
moment, served the wit as a target for
his ridicule.
But, of all, the books I love most are
those that make their appeal by some
unexpected literary association. I own
to a genuine emotion when I found it was
to Lord Chesterfield that Vincent La
Chapelle dedicated The Modern Cook,
and that to the chef in his kitchen the
noble patron offered the helping hand he
later refused to the author at his door.
I cannot understand why, for La Cha-
pelle, in his praise of his lordship's ex-
alted qualities, did not humble himself
more completely than Johnson when
overpowered, like the rest of mankind,
by the enchantment of his lordship's
address. In The Gentle Art of Toady-
ing, the author of the eighteenth century
could instruct the cook. It was, how-
ever, reserved for William Verral to
give me the greatest thrill. His Com-
plete System of Cookery is little known
even to bibliographers ; its receipts do
not seem exceptional, perhaps because
they have been so freely borrowed by
other compilers ; in make-up the book
scarcely differs from the average, nor is
there special distinction in Verral 's post
at the time of his writing, he was
master of the White Hart Inn, Lewes,
Sussex ; " no more than what is vulgarly
called a poor publican " is his descrip-
tion of himself. But his title-page at
the first glance was worth more to me
My Cookery Books.
233
than a whole shelf of his contempora-
ries' big fat volumes. Let me explain.
By no great man in the annals of cook-
ery have I been so puzzled as by that
once famous " Chloe, " French cook to
the Duke of Newcastle, and important
enough in his own generation to swag-
ger for a minute in the Letters of Hor-
ace Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. I had heard of Chloe, the
beloved of Daphnis; I had heard of
Chloe, the rival of Steele's Clarissa; I
had even heard of Chloe, the old darky
cook of the South. But of Chloe, a
Frenchman, I had never heard, and I
knew, without consulting the Encyclo-
paedia, he simply could not exist. Who,
then, was the Duke of Newcastle's
Chloe ? He was the last person I had
in my mind when I began to read Ver-
ral's title, but by the time I got to the
end I understood : A Complete Sys-
tem of Cookery, In which is set forth
a Variety of genuine Receipts ; collected
from several Years' Experience under
the celebrated Mr. de St. Clouet, some-
times since Cook to his Grace, the Duke
of Newcastle. Clouet Chloe is
it not as near and neat a guess as could
be hoped for in the French of eigh-
teenth-century London? He deserves
his fame, for his receipts are excellent ;
wisdom in all he says about soup ;
genius in his use of garlic. Verral,
moreover, writes an Introductory Pre-
face, a graceful bit of autobiography,
"to which is added, a true character of
Mons. de St. Clouet ; " so well done that
there is scarcely a cook in history, not
Vatel, not Careme, whom I now feel I
know better. "An honest man, " Ver-
ral testifies, "worthy of the place he
enjoyed in that noble family he had the
honour to live in," not extravagant as
was said, but "setting aside the two
soups, fish, and about five gros entrees
(as the French call them) he has with
the help of a couple of rabbits or chick-
ens, and six pigeons, completed a table
of twenty-one dishes at a course, with
such things as used to serve only for
garnish round a lump of great heavy
dishes before he came." Fortunately
for the Duke of Newcastle's purse St.
Clouet must still have been with him
for the famous banquets celebrating his
installation as Chancellor at Cambridge,
when, according to Walpole, his cooks
for ten days massacred and confounded
"all the species that Noah and Moses
took such pains to preserve and distin-
guish, " and, according to Gray, every
one "was very owlish and tipsy at
night." This was in 1749; 1759 is
the date of Verral' s book, by which
time St. Clouet had become cook to the
Mare'chal de Richelieu. I think it but
due to him to recall that he was "of a
temper so affable and agreeable as to
make everybody happy around him. He
would converse about indifferent matters
with me (Verral) or his kitchen boy, and
the next moment, by a sweet turn in his
discourse, give pleasure by his good be-
haviour and genteel deportment, to the
first steward in the family. His con-
versation is always modest enough, and
having read a little, he never wanted
something to say, let the topick be what
it would." How delightful if cooks to-
day brought us such graceful testimo-
nials !
It is with discoveries of this kind my
Cookery Books reward me for the time
and worse, the money I spend
upon them. I never pick up one already
in my collection, well as I may know it,
without wondering what puzzle it will
unravel for me ; I never buy a new one
without seeing in it the possible key to
a mystery. And when I consider how
much more fruitful in such rewards my
eighteenth-century books have been than
my seventeenth, when I consider the
splendor of their mock heroics, the mag-
nificence of their bombast, I waver in
my old allegiance and begin to think
that, after all, this is the period that
charms me most in the Literature of the
Kitchen.
Elizabeth Robins. Pennell.
234
The Moonshiner at Home.
THE MOONSHINER AT HOME.
AT first the forestry camp was looked
upon with suspicion by the mountain-
eers, for they knew the foresters were
in some way connected with the govern-
ment, and the government it is whose
officials collect revenue and arrest men
who make whiskey without paying it.
There was something mysterious, too,
in these men who went about through
the woods measuring trees and making
marks in little blank books. This might
be some new scheme of the " revenues "
to entrap the unwary among the moon-
shining population. Then the real pur-
pose of government forestry began to
dawn upon the mountain people, and we
were able to see behind the veil and
catch glimpses of the moonshiner's inner
life.
It was one day just after our removal
to a new camp on the roaring Ocoee,
near Little Frog Mountain, in the
southeasternmost county of Tennessee,
that our guide became communicative
as to the chief interest of this mountain
region. We had climbed to the top of
Panther Knob to study the topography
of the region, when the old man, point-
ing across the unbroken stretch of tree-
tops to a cove through which rushed a
stony mountain stream, said :
"See that bunch of poplar tops?
That 's where they got my brother Silas
when they sent him to the penitentiary. "
The remark was made as indifferent-
ly as though the guide were pointing
out the place where a deer had been
killed or a bee tree cut. There was no
apparent evidence of a sense of shame,
and none of the assumed indifference of
many offenders who affect to despise the
hand of authority. I was surprised,
and the surprise continued until I had
received similar confidences from a
number of sources, and knew that going
to the penitentiary for moonshining is
considered no disgrace.
The guide paused as if expecting
the conversation would be continued.
So, adopting the mountain phrase, I
asked,
"Was he 'stillin' '?"
"Yes."
There was another pause. Then the
old man went on, speaking slowly, in
a manner so simple and straightforward
as to be almost childlike :
" They caught him when he was run-
nin' off his first batch, and hit never
done him a bit of good. Silas always
did have powerful hard luck. He got
sent to the penitentiary that time for
a year. When he got out hit was n't
more 'n a month till they had him
again. Hit would n't been so bad if
he 'd made something out of hit. When
he got caught again I told him if I was
in his place I 'd never go near another
1 still.'"
Then, in the same slow, quiet way,
he went on to tell of Silas's first ar-
rest, and the origin of a mountain feud
which brought hatred and bloodshed to
East Tennessee, and which will one day
end in a battle. The story of Dave
Payne's capture and confession was told
two years ago in the dailies, but not
the troubles that led up to it.
"Silas and Milos Wood had been
makin' a * still ' in that 'ere cove, and
Dave Payne wanted to go in with 'em.
They hadn't any use for another man,
and they told Dave so. Dave had been
'stillin' ' over on the other side, but
he 'd decided to turn revenue, and was
expectin' his commission then. Hit
must have come about the time Silas
got his 'still ' goin', for he was drawin'
off his first batch, and had his back to
the door when he heard some one yell.
He looked 'round and there was Dave
Payne with a shotgun pointin' at Silas's
head. Of course Silas surrendered.
Then Dave went down to the Wood
The Moonshiner at Home.
235
place and got Milos. Milos paid his
fine and got out, but Silas went to the
penitentiary for a year.
"There was powerful hard feelin's
agin Dave after that. He got mad
at his own uncle Bill and tried to have
him arrested. Milos Wood told him he
wanted him to keep to the other side of
the road when he went past his place,
and not to come breshin' up agin his
palin's. This made Dave mad. The
next time he got drunk he went right up
to Milos 's place and shot him through
the heart. Old man Wood come to
the door and Dave shot him, too."
The story of Dave Payne's capture
is old. It came about through the fact
that the mountain people, despising one
of their fellows who " turns revenue, "
made up a posse and assisted in the
search. Dave stayed quietly in jail un-
til spring when he broke out. Then
came commotion in the mountains.
Those who had assisted in the search
got out their rifles and still carry them.
One or two of Dave's relatives turned
against him, but the rest remained true.
Now the two parties watch each other
like opposing armies. Some day when
too much moonshine has beqn imbibed
there will be a quarrel. Then rifles
will crack, and when the echoes have
died away there will be more deaths to
avenge and new scores to wipe off the
mountain slates.
I started out one afternoon to visit
the scene of Silas's capture, and the jour-
ney gave me considerable insight into
moonshine methods. Up the river trail
some three miles from camp is one of
those rushing mountain streams which
rise in the timbered coves of the Unakas.
It came roaring from the rocky woods,
and knew no sunlight for the boughs of
laurel and rhododendron intertwining in
solid mass above. There was no path
upon the bank, but one could make his
way up the course by stepping from
stone to stone on the stream's bottom.
Half a mile of such travel and I came
to a little low log building. A part of
the roof had fallen in, but the furnace,
made of flat slate stones, was intact.
So was the trough, which led to a
point some few rods up the run and
brought down a stream of clear, cold
mountain water, for use in the distill-
ing. The barrels, or rather gums, for
holding malt and beer, still stood about.
Against one leaned the old mash stick
with which the brewing liquid was
stirred. With no trail save the bed of
the stream, the only method of trans-
porting hither the meal was to pack it
on the shoulder. When one pictures to
himself two men, bent half double with
loads of meal, plodding up the rocky
stream-bed, plodding down again after
nights of labor with the liquid product,
always watched and always watching,
the pathetic smallness of the whole of-
fense comes over him. And if he live
for a time among these poor but gen-
erous mountain folk, he is very likely
to go forth with a new sympathy,
almost a fellow feeling for them. I
believe every one in the forestry camp
felt, before the sojourn in East Tennes-
see was over, a sort of subconscious an-
tipathy to revenue officials ; and I doubt
not that every one, when he hears of
captures and killings in this bit of the
mountains, will be suddenly conscious
that his involuntary sympathies are with
the outlaws.
Stories are numerous of revenue men
who met death at the hands of the
moonshiners. One hears also tales of
innocent strangers, shot because their
urban appearance suggested the revenue
man. But in all these mountains we
could learn of no such occurrence. On
the other hand, the instances of cap-
tures and tales of fights tended rather
to show the general harmlessness of the
distiller save when in local troubles he
fights his fellow mountaineer.
Before making this camp on the
Ocoee we had been warned to look out
for Garret Heddon, whose career has
been exploited in the daily papers, and
who is looked upon by both officials and
236
The Moonshiner at Home.
mountaineers as a bad man. His name
first came before the criminal world
when he went across into Alabama,
quarreled with a negro about a boat,
and throwing the black man into the
river, held him there till he was dead.
For this Heddon served a term in the
Alabama penitentiary. Returning to
Tennessee, he was twice arrested for
moonshining, but each time the evidence
needed to convict was wanting. Then
came the deed which made him feared
among the mountains. I have the story
from a nephew of Heddon; also from
his best friend, to whom he made a full
statement. I have it, too, from an ex-
sheriff who investigated the case. Go-
ing to the house, he was met by Hed-
don who, hospitable even in strenuous
times, pointed his rifle at the officer and
asked him to sit down to dinner. The
officer accepted the invitation, and later,
with the rifle still pointing in his di-
rection, went away without attempting
to make an arrest.
Garret Heddon and his brothers,
Reilly and Bill, and half a dozen other
mountaineers, were at work in one of
the little valleys. They had spent the
greater part of the day splitting shin-
gles, while moonshine flowed freely.
Half drunk, Bill Heddon became quar-
relsome. He was a hard man to get
along with at his best, and now he was
looking for trouble in a way that pro-
mised to end disastrously. He started
to quarrel with Garret's best friend.
Garret told him to stop. Bill paid no
attention, but grabbed his opponent
around the neck and drew his knife.
The knife was not far from the man's
throat when Garret's rifle cracked and
Bill dropped dead.
Man killing in the mountains is com-
mon, but fratricide is not, and from that
tima on Garret Heddon was looked upon
as a dangerous man. This impression
went out into the settlements, and when,
some weeks later, seven revenue men
stole into the neighborhood to arrest
Reilly Heddon for making moonshine
whiskey, they were ready to shoot Gar-
ret at sight.
Gus Heddon told me the story.
" I was in the ' still ' house, " said he,
"and I had n't no idee the revenues was
anywhere 'round. I was stoopin' over
a barrel of mash when some one said,
' Throw up your hands . ' I looked ' round
and there was the revenues pointin' their
guns at me. I saw they done had me,
so I give up. Then I looked up and
saw Silas comin' up the trail with a bag
of meal. I yelled at him to run. That
made the revenues mad, and they said
if I didn't shut up they'd kill me.
Silas did n't have sense enough to run,
and come right down, so they got him.
Then they marched us down to Reilly 's
house, and got Reilly and his brother-
in-law. They had us all handcuffed out
in front of the house when some one
yelled that Garret was comin'. I
looked up, and sure enough there did
come Garret ridin' a mule, with a Win-
chester across the saddle. The revenues
was powerful 'fraid of Garret because
since his trouble over Bill he says he
never will give up, and everybody
knows he means it. They thought when
they saw him comin' that he meant to
kill some one. Reilly was handcuffed
to one of the revenues, and the revenue
was so badly scared he tried to kill
Reilly with his shotgun. He shot two
shoots, holdin' the gun in his right hand.
Reilly pushed the barrel away, and the
shoots went into the ground. Then the
revenues jumped into the house and be-
hind the corncrib, and begun to shoot
at Garret. They shot seven or eight
shoots before he moved. Then he slid
off his mule and laid down behind a log.
"The revenues threatened to kill us
if we didn't go out and get Garret to
go away. We told 'em we could n't do
nothin' with Garret. So we all laid
there behind the house, and Garret laid
behind his log with his Winchester
scarin' the revenues powerful nigh into
fits. When it got too dark to see they
took us and sneaked out."
The Moonshiner at Home.
237
As a result of this skirmish Heddon's
name was more than ever feared. Reilly
was sent to the penitentiary for one
year ; Gus, who had never been in court
before, got merely four months in jail,
while the two other men were given
short terms for assisting an unlawful
enterprise.
We had been warned against ventur-
ing into the Heddon settlement, but as
the dime novel idea of moonshiners wore
off, we were all more or less ashamed
of our first fears. Dressed one day in
garments that gave no opportunity for
concealing weapons, and which, there-
fore, obviated any danger of being mis-
taken for a revenue official, I threw a
camera across my back and started for
the neighborhood. One trail, half foot-
path, half wagon road, led to the settle-
ment, but to reach it I would have to
go far down the river. So, following
the directions of our guide, I traveled
a half marked path which led first along
the bank of a mountain stream, up the
mountain side, and along a hard- wood
covered ridge. Then crossing a valley
and another hill, I saw beyond an open-
ing in the forest. It was a strange lit-
tle clearing on the hillsides. The whole
might be compared to the inside of an
inverted pyramid. The steep sides were
cleared fields, while in the apex stood
a log house and a corncrib beside a cold
gushing spring, whose waters formed a
rivulet, and flowed away through a cleft
where one corner of the pyramid had
been cut away. It was a desolate place
in every sense, and in the poverty of its
windowless cabin and bleak outlook I
could see excuse for almost any occupa-
tion that would give a few dollars to
buy clothing and ammunition.
A path led down to the cabin. Dogs
barked at my approach, and a face
wreathed in masses of black unkempt
hair was extended fearfully from behind
the door casing. Then the body ap-
peared, and a barefoot, hungry-looking
girl of eleven years stood in the door-
way. Several smaller children followed.
"Will you tell me who lives here? "
I asked.
"Reilly Heddon lives here when he 's
at home," came the reply in quick ac-
cents. "But he ain't here now. He 's
in the penitentiary. He 's my daddy."
"Do you care if I take a picture of
the house ? "
"Mammy ain't got no money to pay
fur it. We live pretty hard since daddy
got caught. There comes mammy,
now."
A woman approached. Her feet and
head were bare. She had a hoe in her
hand, and came from hoeing corn on the
hillside. Her hair was black, and her
jet black eyes had a fierce intelligence
in them. Had it not been for a hag-
gard, worried look, the face would have
been a handsome one. Like most moun-
tain people, she was talkative, and told
of her husband's arrest, of the fight,
and of the various circumstances attend-
ing his conviction. Through the story
ran the characteristic mountain frank-
ness. There was no thought of shame
or disgrace in her husband's imprison-
ment. It was a mere matter of course
that a man who "stills " will some time
fall prey to the " revenues, " and a con-
viction is merely a misfortune compar-
able to the capture of a soldier in war-
time.
Once a shade of suspicion seemed to
flash across the woman's mind. I had
seen a little oven-like arrangement of
stone some five feet square by four high,
and thinking it might be an interesting
feature of mountain life, asked what it
was.
"Oh, that's just a drier. I dry
fruit in it. I tell folks hit 's my 'still '
house, and some of them comes power
ful nigh to believin' hit; but hit ain't,
Hit 's just a drier my husband mado
before he went to the penitentiary."
I asked the way to Garret Heddon' s,
and following down the creek through
the missing corner of the pyramid, 1
passed the place where Bill Heddon met
his death, and winding with the trail
238
The Moonshiner at Home.
to the top of a ridge, came to another
little clearing set down in the prevail-
ing woods. There, squatting beside a
mountain stream, was a log cabin as old
and picturesque as any in this part of
Tennessee. This is the home of Gar-
ret Heddon, a man feared by revenue
officials and mountaineers alike, yet
loved, too, by the latter, for, as they
say, he is "clever," and will do any-
thing in the world for a friend, a fact
which was emphasized when his defense
of a comrade made him a fratricide.
Yet these very same men who would
fight for him have a way of shaking their
heads and saying that if Garret Heddon
became their enemy they would move
out of the country "powerful quick."
I wanted to meet Heddon, so I
climbed the fence which separates woods
from clearing. Instantly three savage-
looking hounds set up a baying and
started toward me. At the same time
a man's haggard face appeared at a
loophole in the wall.
"What d' ye want ? " roared a voice.
"Call off your dogs. I want to know
the way to the forestry camp."
"Follow right along that 'ere trail
till you come to the river, " roared the
voice again.
"I want to take a picture of your
house. May I?"
"A what? A picture?"
"Yes."
" Do you take pictures ? "
"Yes."
" Will you take a picture of my lit- '
tie boy?"
"Sure!"
"Then I reckon you 'd better come
in."
The dogs, that had stood like a fir-
ing squad awaiting orders to execute the
condemned, were called back. The man
with the haggard face met me at the
door.
"Come right in and take a cheer.
The woman 's out in the field, but she '11
be back after a bit to fix the boy up.
Beckon you ain't in no hurry."
He was some six feet tall, but his
shoulders stooped, and he looked less
the mountain bad man than the broken-
down farmer. His hair had been coal
black, but plentiful white streaks were
making their advent. Apparently it
had not been combed for days, for it
stuck out in mats and tangles from
under the edges of a frayed and ragged
black felt hat. His beard was short
and scrubby, grizzled like his hair. His
eyes were bluish gray, and when he
spoke there was a look in them which I
have seen in the eyes of more than one
politician, a look which says, "I
know you and you know me, and you
know I 'm telling things which are not
true because it is part of my business
to do so." Much frayed suspenders,
fastened by nails, held up a pair of
threadbare black trousers. A dark cal-
ico shirt hung open in front displaying
a sun-browned chest. When the man
walked, it was with a decided limp, the
result of wearing manacles in an Ala-
bama chain gang.
The cabin had one room. At the end
was an immense stone fireplace, and on
either side of this a loophole or window
some six by eight inches in area. There
were no other windows than these, and
there was about the whole interior a
gloominess which might prove discon-
certing to an official coming suddenly
in from the sunny outside. A table
rested against one wall, and over this
was a shelf on which stood half a dozen
quart bottles, some tin cans, and a few
dishes. In the end opposite the fire-
place were two beds. At the head of
one stood a brace of repeating rifles, a
Marlin and a Winchester, so placed as
to be within easy reach of the sleeper.
The walls were as bare as the floor save
for the wings and tails of some half-
dozen wild turkeys which hung from
nails and pegs.
My host sat down between me and
the rifles.
"Powerful glad to have you come
along," he began. "I 've been want-
The Moonshiner at Home.
239
in' for a right smart time to have a pic-
ture of my boy, but I don't jest like to
go out to town to get it. There comes
the woman. She '11 be gettin' dinner.
Take your cheer with you and let 's go
out under the trees."
I stepped outside and sat down under
an oak that stood beside the creek.
Heddon followed with a chair in one
hand and his Winchester in the other.
"I reckoned maybe you 'd like to see
my Winchester, " said he, and the twin-
kle in his eyes became more distinct.
"That 's the best Winchester I ever
saw. I killed all them turkeys with it.
The sights was n't good when I got it,
but I took it to town and had that piece
of silver put on in front. That 's bright
enough so I can draw down fine. Jest
look at it." He handed me the gun,
but that was the farthest it got from
his hand. While we talked in the shade
it lay across his knees. When we sat
down to dinner it stood against the wall
at his right hand.
Now a haggard-faced woman came
along the trail with four children at her
heels. The youngest was a toddling boy
of two years. This was the father's fa-
vorite, the one whose picture was to be
taken. A few minutes later a smooth-
faced, good-looking young mountaineer
came from the other way. This was
Gus Heddon, Garret's nephew.
" Got any dram in camp ? " asked my
host, when the children had gone by.
The term was new and I hesitated.
"Drink, I mean!"
"No. There does not seem to be
any one that sells it around here."
"Maybe I've got a little in the
house. I don't know. Reckon maybe
there 's enough for a drink."
He limped to the house and brought
out a quart bottle.
"That 's good whiskey," I said.
"Maybe I can get some more."
Now the eyes sparkled and shone.
"Here, Gus," he called. "Jump on
the mule and see if you can't find us
some more dram. Here 's some money
to pay for it," and drawing a purse
from his pocket he offered the young
man a silver coin. All this time his
eyes were saying, "This is for appear-
ances, but of course we both under-
stand."
"Tell you what, " he said, turning to
me. "If you all can't get nothin' to
drink, maybe I can help you. Now,
I don't have nothin' to do with whis-
key myself, except to drink it up, but
I guess maybe I can help you get a lit-
tle. I '11 tell you what I '11 do. I '11
come over to camp some night a little
late."
Not wanting to outstay my welcome
I asked if the boy might not be ready
for his picture.
" Reckon we '11 have somethin' to eat
before you take that," said he. "We
live pretty hard up here, but I reckon
you can eat one meal of our grub if we
live on it all the time."
We had for dinner hot corn bread,
bacon, fresh pork, coffee, young onions,
and black honey. The honey was from
a bee tree, the pork the flesh of a wild
mountain hog, fattened, I doubt not, on
refuse from the "still." There was
but one table knife. That came to
me. Garret and Gus ate with their
jackknives, and when my host fin-
ished eating, he wiped each side of the
blade on his trousers leg, and then
closing it put it back into his pocket.
Gus and I had saucers for our coffee
cups, but the rest had none. There
was no sugar for the coffee and no but-
ter for the bread.
The conversation turned to guns.
"Reckon you've seen these rifles
that shoot steel bullets ? " asked Garret.
"Well, I ain't got no use for them.
Had seven men shootin' at me with 'em
one day 'bout a year ago, and they nev-
er touched me."
"How was that? " I asked.
Then followed an account of the fight
at Reilly's house. Garret said he had
been riding past on his way to the river,
when, before he saw them, the men be-
240
The Moonshiner at Home.
gan shooting at him. He told the story
much as Gus had told it. There was no
bragging of his own part in the affair,
and the whole tone of the narrative
smacked more of a great joke on the
"revenues " than of a feat creditable to
himself.
"Why didn't you shoot back?" I
ventured.
"Reckoned it wasn't much use,"
said he. "I couldn't see 'em because
they got behind the house and corner ib.
And then I knew that if I" went to
shootin' for luck they 'd kill the boys
they had handcuffed. So I jest laid
behind the log with my Winchester and
kep' 'em scared.
"Reilly ain't havin' such a powerful
hard time in the penitentiary. He
can't eat what they give 'em there, so
they let him buy whatever grub he
wants. We send him money to do it.
I send him five dollars a month, and
the old man sends him a little. He
says he weighs thirty pounds more than
he did when he went. But he did hate
powerful to go."
Dinner over, the four children were
taken out to be photographed. There
was a pretty little girl of ten, two quiet
boys of six and eight, besides the two
year old favorite. This spoiled child
refused to have his face washed.
"Let him come without washin',"
said the father. "You see we can't
make him do anything. He 's the
worst little skunk you ever saw. When
he gets mad at anybody he '11 take a
knife and say, i I '11 cut your neck.' I
lick all of 'em but him. I want to see
how he '11 come out and grow up with-
out lickin'."
Why is this boy the favored child of
his father? May there not be in the
baby that takes a knife and, toddling
across the floor, threatens to cut his
sister's "neck " the same wild instinct
which led the father to shoot his bro-
ther and drown his enemy? Perhaps
this common instinct is the subtle link
of sympathy between father and boy.
There are strange things in human na-
ture. One of these is the development
of a man who really does what the rest
of us would like to do in our worst mo-
ments, but which we do not, a man
whose finger is steady on the trigger
when a touch means murder, and whose
unimaginative eye does not see the aw-
ful consequences in time to check the
criminal impulse. Garret Heddon is
such a man. In his neighborhood are
other men who have killed their fellows,
but they fear to quarrel with Garret
Heddon because, as they all say, "he '11
do jest what he says he '11 do, no mat-
ter if he has to kill his whole family."
Pathetic in the extreme is the out-
look for these children. They must
spend their childhood in the midst of
alarms. Their father's hand is ever
near a rifle. His eye is always on the
trail. Some day he will walk out of
the cabin never to come back. If he
is the man his neighbors believe, he will
die with a smoking rifle in his hands
and the lust of battle in his heart.
But, however he may die, his chil-
dren grow up to carry weapons and dis-
till forbidden liquors. The gospel of
their people teaches them to hate the
revenue man as their natural enemy.
There will come years of work in hid-
den mountain distilleries, arrests, prison
walls, battles, murders, and who can
tell what else ? Yet through it all they
will be following the precepts that came
to them in the cradle, living the best
life they know.
My host said he would show me the
way to camp, but before we started he
took out his pocketbook and asked how
much he should pay me for the pictures.
When I declined to accept money a
pained look came into his eyes, and
he said,
"I want to pay. We live pretty
hard up here, but we can pay what we
owe."
I explained that since I was not tak-
ing pictures for money I would no sooner
allow him to pay for a photograph of his
The Short Story.
241
children than he would allow me to pay
for my dinner.
Now he was satisfied, and going into
the house, brought out the beard of a
wild turkey.
"Reckon you don't have many tur-
keys like that up North. That beard
came off of the biggest gobbler I ever
saw. Won't you take it along? "
I was pleased to accept the gift, for
the beard would make a pretty trophy
for the wall of a far-off den. Then I
asked if I might not take my host's
picture.
"No," said he with emphasis. "I
don't let anybody take mine." For
reasons which seemed sufficient I did
not insist.
Then he spoke a few words with Gus.
The latter went into the house, and
from a bin in the loft took down a sack
of corn. This he shouldered, and then
started down a side trail toward a mill,
a little water mill with a capacity
of some dozen bushels a day. I could
mentally follow that corn from the dry-
ing place in the loft to the mill, and
thence to the distillery. Now Garret
threw the Winchester over his shoulder
and said,
"I '11 show you the way to camp."
We went down the stream, climbed
the ridge, and walked to a point where
our path branched.
"That trail will take you to camp,"
he said. "Reckon I 'd better not go
any farther. Remember, I 'm comin'
over to camp one of these nights a lit-
tle late."
When I looked back from the bottom
of the ridge he still stood leaning on
his rifle at the forks of the trail.
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.
THE SHORT STORY.
THE initial difficulty in discussing
the Short Story is that old danger of
taking one's subject either too seriously
or else not seriously enough. If one
could but hit upon the proper key, at
the outset, one might possibly hope to
edify the strenuous reader and at the
same time to propitiate the frivolous.
Let us make certain of our key, there-
fore, by promptly borrowing one ! And
we will take our hint as to the real na-
ture of the short story from that indis-
putable master of the long story, Thack-
eray. In his Roundabout Paper On
a Lazy Idle Boy there is a picture,
all in six lines, of "a score of white-
bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave
seniors of the city, seated at the gate
of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the
story-teller reciting his marvels out of
The Arabian Nights." That picture,
symbol as it was to Thackeray of the
story-teller's role, may well hover in
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 16
the background of one's memory as he
discourses of the short story as a form
of literary art.
Is it a distinct form, with laws and
potencies that differentiate it sharply
from other types of literature? This
question is a sort of turnstile, through
which one must wriggle, or over which
one must boldly leap, in order to reach
our field of investigation. Some of
the Atlantic's readers are familiar with
a magazine article written many years
ago by Mr. Brander Matthews, entitled
The Philosophy of the Short-story, and
recently revised and issued as a little
volume. 1 It will be observed that Pro-
fessor Matthews spells Short-story with
a hyphen, and claims that the Short-
story, hyphenated, is something very
different from a story that merely hap-
1 The Philosophy of the Short-story. By
BRANDER MATTHEWS, D. C. L. New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. 1901.
242
The Short Story.
pens to be short. It is, he believes, a
distinct species ; an art-form by itself ;
a new literary genre, in short, charac-
terized by compression, originality, in-
genuity, a touch of fantasy, and by the
fact that no love interest is needed to
hold its parts together. Mr. Matthews
gives pertinent illustrations of these
characteristics, and comments in inter-
esting fashion upon recent British and
American examples of the Short-story.
But one is tempted to ask if the white-
bearded, white-robed warriors at the
gate of Jaffa were not listening, centu-
ries and centuries ago, to tales marked
by compression, originality, ingenuity,
a touch of fantasy, and all the other
"notes " of this new type of literature.
The critical trail blazed so plainly by
the professor of dramatic literature at
Columbia has been followed by several
authors of recent volumes devoted to
the art of short story writing. Dr.
Nettleton's Specimens of the Short
Story l is a carefully edited little book
containing eight examples of different
phases of narrative art. Lamb's The
Superannuated Man illustrates the
Sketch; Irv ing's Rip van Winkle, the
Tale; Hawthorne's The Great Stone
Face, the Allegory; Foe's The Pur-
loined Letter, the Detective Story;
Thackeray's Phil Fogarty, the Bur-
lesque; Dickens 's Dr. Manette's Man-
uscript, the Story of Incident; Bret
Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, the
Local Color Story, and Stevenson's
Markheim, the Psychological Story.
The range of another new volume is still
wider, as may be inferred from its title, 2
The World's Greatest Short Stories.
It is edited by Sherwin Cody, who
published some years ago an anonymous
treatise on The Art of Short Story
Writing. Mr. Cody prints, with brief
1 Specimens of the Short Story. Edited with
Introductions and Notes, by GEORGE HENRY
NETTLE-TON, Ph. D. New York : Henry Holt
&Co. 1901.
2 Selections from The World's Greatest Short
expository introductions, stories from
Boccaccio, The Arabian Nights, Irving,
Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Poe,
Hawthorne, Maupassant, Mr. Kipling,
Mr. Barrie, and Mr. Arthur Morrison.
And there has lately been issued still
another handbook, entitled Short Story
Writing. 3 Like the preceding volume,
it was conceived in Chicago, and its
breezy, wholesome Philistinism is tem-
pered with reverent quotation from Mr.
Brander Matthews, Poe, and Munsey's
Magazine, and with much useful infor-
mation for the benefit of the young au-
thor. The Introduction begins with
this extraordinary statement: "The
short story was first recognized as a
distinct class of literature in 1842, when
Poe's criticism of Hawthorne called
attention to the new form of fiction."
But story-telling, surely, is as old as the
day when men first gathered round a
camp-fire, or women huddled in a cave !
The study of comparative folk-lore is
teaching us every day how universal is
the instinct for it. Even were we to
leave out of view the literature of oral
tradition, and take the earlier written
literature of any European people, for
instance, the tales told by Chaucer and
some of his Italian models, we should
find these modern characteristics of
" originality, " " ingenuity, " and the
rest in almost unrivaled perfection, and
perhaps come to the conclusion of Chau-
cer himself, as he exclaims in whimsical
despair, "There is no new thing that
is not old ! "
And yet if the question be put point-
blank, "Do not such short story writ-
ers as Stevenson, Mr. Kipling, Miss
Jewett, Bret Harte, Daudet not to
mention Poe and Hawthorne stand
for a new movement, a distinct type of
literature ? " one is bound to answer
Stories. By SHERWIN CODY. Chicago: A.
C. McClurg & Co. 1902.
8 Short Story Writing. A Practical Treatise
on the Art of the Short Story. By CHARLES
RAYMOND BARRETT, Ph. B. New York : The
Baker and Taylor Co.
The Short Story.
243
"Yes." Here is work that contrasts
very strongly, not only with the Italian
novella and other mediaeval types, but
even with the English and American
tales of two generations ago. Where
lies the difference ? For Professor Bran-
der Matthews and his Chicago disciples
are surely right in holding that there is
a difference. It is safer to trace it, how-
ever, not in the external characteristics
of this modern work, every single fea-
ture of which can easily be paralleled in
prehistoric myths, but rather as Mr.
Cody, indeed, seems in part to do in
the attitude of the contemporary short
story writer toward his material, and in
his conscious effort to achieve under cer-
tain conditions a certain effect. And
it is true that no one has defined this
conscious attitude and aim so clearly as
Edgar Allan Poe.
In that perpetually quoted essay
upon Hawthorne's Tales written in
1842 one of the earliest and to this
day one of the best criticisms of Haw-
thorne Poe remarks :
" Were I bidden to say how the high-
est genius could be most advantageously
employed for the best display of its own
powers, I should answer, without hesi-
tation in the composition of a rhymed
poem, not to exceed in length what
might be perused in an hour. Within
this limit alone can the highest order
of true poetry exist. I need only here
say, upon this topic, that, in. almost all
classes of composition, the unity of ef-
fect or impression is a point of the
greatest importance. It is clear, more-
over, that this unity cannot be thor-
oughly preserved in productions whose
perusal cannot be completed at one sit-
ting. We may continue the reading of
a prose composition, from the very na-
ture of prose itself, much longer than
we can persevere, to any good purpose,
in the perusal of a poem. This latter,
if truly fulfilling the demands of the
poetic sentiment, induces an exaltation
of the soul which cannot be long sus-
tained. All high excitements are ne-
cessarily transient. Thus a long poem
is a paradox. And without unity of
impression the deepest effects cannot be
brought about. . . .
"Were I called upon, however, to
designate that class of composition
which, next to such a poem as I have
suggested, should best fulfill the de-
mands of high genius should offer it
the most advantageous field of exertion
I should unhesitatingly speak of the
prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here
exemplified it. I allude to the short
prose narrative, requiring from a half-
hour to one or two hours in its perusal.
The ordinary novel is objectionable,
from its length, for reasons already
stated in substance. As it cannot be
read at one sitting, it deprives itself,
of course, of the immense force deriv-
able from totality. Worldly interests
intervening during the pauses of perusal,
modify, annul, or counteract, in a great-
er or less degree, the impressions of the
book. But simple cessation in reading
would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy
the true unity. In the brief tale, how-
ever, the author is enabled to carry out
the fullness of his intention, be it what
it may. During the hour of perusal
the soul of the reader is at the writer's
control. There are no external or
extrinsic influences resulting from
weariness or interruption.
"A skillful literary artist has con-
structed a tale. If wise, he has not
fashioned his thoughts to accommodate
his incidents ; but having conceived,
with deliberate care, a certain unique
or single effect to be wrought out, he
then invents such incidents, he then
combines such events as may best aid
him in establishing this preconceived ef-
fect. If his very initial sentence tend
not to the outbringing of this effect,
then he has failed in his first step. In
the whole composition there should be
no word written, of which the tendency,
direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-
established design. And by such means,
with such care and skill, a picture is at
244
The Short Story.
length painted which leaves in the mind
of him who contemplates it with a kin-
dred art, a sense of the fullest satisfac-
tion. The idea of the tale has been
presented unblemished, because undis-
turbed ; and this is an end unattainable
by the novel."
If we assent to Poe's reasoning we
are at once upon firm ground. The
short story in prose literature corre-
sponds, then, to the lyric in poetry;
like the lyric, its unity of effect turns
largely upon its brevity ; and as there
are well-known laws of lyric structure
which the lyric poet violates at his peril
or obeys to his triumph, so the short
story must observe certain conditions
and may enjoy certain freedoms that
are peculiar to itself. Doubtless our
professional story-tellers seated before
the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout had ages
ago a naive instinctive apprehension of
these principles of their art, but it is
equally true that the story-writers of
our own day, profiting by the accumu-
lated experience of the race, respond-
ing quickly to international literary in-
fluences, prompt to learn from and to
imitate one another, are consciously
and no doubt self - consciously study-
ing their art as it has never been studied
before. Every magazine brings new
experiments in method, or new varia-
tions of the old themes, and it would
speak ill for the intelligence of these
workmen if there could be no registra-
tion of results. Some such registration
may at any rate be attempted, without
being unduly dogmatic, and without
making one's pleasure in a short story
too solemn and heart- searching an af-
fair.
Every work of fiction, long or short,
depends for its charm and power as
we are nowadays taught in the very
schoolroom upon one or all of three
elements : the characters, the plot, and
the setting. Here are certain persons,
doing certain things, in certain circum-
stances, and the fiction- writer tells u.s
about one or another or all three of these
phases of his theme. Sometimes he
creates vivid characters, but does not
know what to do with them ; sometimes
he invents very intricate and thrilling
plots, but the men and women remain
nonentities; sometimes he lavishes his
skill on the background, the milieu, the
manners and morals of the age, the
all-enveloping natural forces or historic
movements, while his heroes and hero-
ines are hurriedly pushed here and there
into place, like dolls at a dolls' tea par-
ty. But the masters of fiction, one need
hardly say, know how to beget men and
women, and to make them march toward
events, with the earth beneath their feet
and overhead the sky.
Suppose we turn to the first of these
three potential elements of interest, and
ask what are the requirements of the
short story as regards the delineation
of character. Looking at the charac-
ters alone, and not, for the moment, at
the plot or the setting, is there any dif-
ference between the short story and the
novel ? There is this very obvious dif-
ference : if it is a character-story at all,
the characters must be unique, original
enough to catch the eye at once.
Everybody knows that in a novel a
commonplace person may be made in-
teresting by a deliberate, patient expo-
sition of his various traits, precisely as
we can learn to like very uninteresting
persons in real life if circumstances
place them day after day at our elbows.
Who of us would not grow impatient
with the early chapters of The New-
comes, for instance, or The Antiquary,
if it were not for our faith that Thack-
eray and Scott know their business, and
that every one of those commonplace
people will contribute something in the
end to the total effect? And even
where the gradual development of char-
acter, rather than the mere portrayal
of character, is the theme of a novelist,
as so frequently with George Eliot, how
colorless may be the personality at the
outset, how narrow the range of thought
The Short Story.
245
and experience portrayed! Yet, in
George Eliot's own words, "these com-
monplace people have a conscience, and
have felt the sublime prompting to do
the painful right." They take on dig-
nity from their moral struggle, whether
the struggle ends in victory or defeat.
By an infinite number of subtle touches
they are made to grow and change be-
fore our eyes, like living, fascinating
things.
But all this takes time, far more
time than is at the disposal of the short
story writer. If his special theme be
the delineation of character, he dare not
choose colorless characters ; if his theme
is character-development, then that de-
velopment must be hastened by striking
experiences, like a plant forced in a
hothouse, instead of left to the natural
conditions of sun and cloud and shower.
For instance, if it be a love story, the
hero and heroine must begin their de-
cisive battle at once, without the advan-
tage of a dozen chapters of preliminary
skirmishing. If the hero is to be made
into a villain or a saint, the chemistry
must be of the swiftest ; that is to say,
unusual forces are brought to bear upon
somewhat unusual personalities. It is
an interesting consequence of this neces-
sity for choosing the exceptional rather
than the normal, that so far as the char-
acter-element is concerned the influence
of the modern short story is thrown
upon the side of romanticism rather than
of realism.
And yet it is by no means necessary
that the short story should depend upon
character-drawing for its effect. If its
plot be sufficiently entertaining, comi-
cal, novel, thrilling, the characters may
be the merest lay figures and yet the
story remain an admirable work of art.
Poe's tales of ratiocination, as he loved
to call them, like The Gold-Bug, The
Purloined Letter, or his tales of pseu-
do-science, like The Descent into the
Maelstrom, are dependent for none of
their power upon any interest attaching
to character. The exercise of the pure
logical faculty, or the wonder and the
terror of the natural world, gives scope
enough for that consummate craftsman.
We have lately lost one of the most
ingenious and delightful of American
story-writers, whose tales of whimsical
predicament illustrate this point very
perfectly. Given the conception of
u Negative Gravity, " what comic possi-
bilities unfold themselves, quite without
reference to the personality of the ex-
perimenter ! I should be slow to assert
that the individual idiosyncrasies of the
passengers aboard that remarkable ves-
sel The Thomas Hyke do not heighten
the effect produced by their singular
adventure, but they are not the essence
of it. The Lady or the Tiger remains
a perpetual riddle, does it not, precisely
because it asks : " What would a woman
do in that predicament ? " Not what
this particular barbarian princess would
do, for the author cunningly neglected
to give her any individualized traits.
We know nothing about her ; so that
there are as many answers to the riddle
as there are women in the world. We
know tolerably well what choice would be
made in those circumstances by a spe-
cific woman like Becky Sharp or Doro-
thea Casaubon or Little Em'ly; but to
affirm what a woman would decide ?
Ah, no; Mr. Stockton was quite too
clever to attempt that.
Precisely the same obliteration of
personal traits is to be noted in some
tales involving situations that are meant
to be taken very seriously indeed. The
reader will recall Poe's story of the
Spanish Inquisition, entitled The Pit
and the Pendulum. The unfortunate
victim of the inquisitors lies upon his
back, strapped to the stone floor of his
dungeon. Directly above him is sus-
pended a huge pendulum, a crescent of
glittering steel, razor-edged, which at
every sweep to and fro lowers itself
inch by inch toward the helpless captive.
As he lies there, gazing frantically upon
the terrific oscillations of that hissing
steel, struggling, shrieking, orcalculat-
246
The Short Story.
ing with the calmness of despair, Poe
paints with extraordinary vividness his
sensations and his thoughts. But who
is he ? He is nobody, anybody,
he is John Doe or Richard Roe, he
is man under mortal agony, not a
particular man; he has absolutely no
individuality, save possibly in the in-
genuity by means of which he finally
escapes. I should not wish to imply
that this is a defect in the story. By
no means. Poe has wrought out, no
doubt, precisely the effect he intended :
the situation itself is enough without
any specific characterization; and yet
suppose we had Daniel Deronda strapped
to that floor, or Mr. Micawber, or Ter-
ence Mulvaney? At any rate, the sen-
sations and passions and wily stratagems
of these distinct personalities would be
more interesting than the emotions of
Poe's lay figure. The novelist who
should place them there would be bound
to tell us what they and no one else
would feel and do in that extremity
of anguish. Not to tell us would be to
fail to make the most of the artistic
possibilities of the situation. Poe's
task, surely, was much less complex.
The Pit and the Pendulum is perfect in
its way, but if the incident had been
introduced into a novel a different per-
fection would have been demanded.
Nor is it otherwise if we turn to that
third element of effect in fiction, name-
ly, the circumstances or events envelop-
ing the characters and action of the
tale. The nature of the short story is
such that both characters and action
may be almost without significance,
provided the atmosphere the place
and time the background is artis-
tically portrayed. Here is the source
of the perennial pleasure to be found in
Mr. P. Deming's simple Adirondack
Stories. If the author can discover -to
us a new corner of the world, as Mr.
Norman Duncan and Mr. Jack London
have done in the current number of this
magazine, or sketch the familiar scene to
our heart's desire, like Mr. Colton and
Miss Alice Brown, or illumine one of
the great human occupations, as war,
or commerce, or industry, he has it in
his power, through this means alone, to
give us the fullest satisfaction. The
modern feeling for landscape, the mod-
ern curiosity about social conditions,
the modern aesthetic sense for the char-
acteristic rather than for the beautiful
as such, all play into the short story
writer's hands. Many a reader, no
doubt, takes up Miss Wilkins's stories,
not because he cares much about the
people in them or what the people do,
but just to breathe for twenty minutes
the New England air if in truth that
be the New England air! You may
even have homesickness for a place you
have never seen, some Delectable
Duchy in Cornwall, a window in Thrums,
a Calif ornian mining camp deserted be-
fore you were born, and Mr. Quiller
Couch, or Mr. Barrie, or Bret Harte
will take you there, and that is all you
ask of them. The popularity which
Stephen Crane's war stories enjoyed for
a season was certainly not due to his
characters, for his personages had no
character, not even names, nor to the
plot, for there was none. But the sights
and sounds and odors and colors of War
as Crane imagined War were plas-
tered upon his vacant-minded heroes
as you would stick a poster to a wall,
and the trick was done. In other words,
the setting was sufficient to produce the
intended effect.
It is true, of course, that many sto-
ries, and these perhaps of the high-
est rank, avail themselves of all three
of these modes of impression. Bret
Harte 's Luck of Roaring Camp, Mr.
Cable's Posson Jone, Mr. Aldrich's
Marjorie Daw, Mr. Kipling's The Man
Who Would be King, Miss Jewett's
The Queen's Twin, Miss Wilkins's A
New England Nun, Dr. Kale's The
Man Without a Country, present people
and events and circumstances, blended
into an artistic whole that defies analy-
sis. But because we sometimes re-
The Short Story.
247
ceive compound measure, pressed down
and running over, we should not forget
that the cup of delight may be filled in
a simpler and less wonderful way.
This thought suggests the considera-
tion of another aspect of our theme,
namely, the opportunity which the short
story, as a distinct type of literature,
gives to the writer. We have seen in-
directly that it enables him to use all
his material, to spread before us any
hints in the fields of character or ac-
tion or setting, which his notebook
may contain. Mr. Henry James's sto-
ries very often impress one as chips from
the workshop where his novels were
built ; or, to use a less mechanical
metaphor, as an exploration of a tempt-
ing side path, of whose vistas he had
caught a passing glimpse while pursuing
some of his retreating and elusive major
problems.
It is obvious likewise that the short
story gives a young writer most valu-
able experience at the least loss of time.
He can tear up and try again. Alas,
if he only would do so a little of tener !
He can test his fortune with the public
through the magazines, without waiting
to write his immortal book. For older
men in whom the creative impulse is
comparatively feeble, or manifested at
long intervals only, the form of the
short story makes possible the produc-
tion of a small quantity of highly fin-
ished work. But these incidental ad-
vantages to the author himself are not
so much to our present purpose as are
certain artistic opportunities which his
strict limits of space allow him.
In the brief tale, then, he may be
didactic without wearying his audience.
Not to entangle one's self in the inter-
minable question about the proper lim-
its of didacticism in the art of fiction,
one may assert that it is at least as fair
to say to the author, " You may preach
if you wish, but- at your own risk, " as
it is to say to him, "You shall not
preach at all, because I do not like to
listen." Most of the greater English
fiction-writers, at any rate, have the
homiletic habit. Dangerous as this
habit is, uncomfortable as it makes us
feel to get a sermon instead of a story,
there is sometimes no great harm in a
sermonette. "This is not a tale ex-
actly. It is a tract," are the opening
words of one of Mr. Kipling's stories,
and the tale is no worse and like-
wise, it is true, no better for its pro-
fession of a moral purpose. Many a
tract, in this generation so suspicious
of its preachers, has disguised itself as
a short story, and made good reading,
too. For that matter, not to grow
quite unmindful of our white-robed,
white-bearded company sitting all this
time by the gate of Jaffa, there is a
very pretty moral, as Mr. Cody has
taken pains to point out, even in the
artless tale of Aladdin's Lamp.
The story-writer, furthermore, has
this advantage over the novelist, that
he can pose problems without answering
them. When George Sand and Charles
Dickens wrote novels to exhibit certain
defects in the organization of human
society, they not only stated their case,
but they had their triumphant solution
of the difficulty. So it has been with
the drama, until very recently. The
younger Dumas had his own answer for
every one of his problem-plays. But
with Ibsen came the fashion of staging
your question at issue, in unmistakable
terms, and not even suggesting that one
solution is better than another. " Here
are the facts for you," says Ibsen;
"here are the modern emotions for you ;
my work is done." In precisely simi-
lar fashion does a short story writer like
Maupassant fling the facts in our face,
brutally, pitilessly. We may make what
we can of them ; it is nothing to him.
He poses his grim problem with surpass-
ing skill, and that is all. A novel
written in this way grows intolerable,
and one may suspect that the contem-
porary problem-novel is apt to be such
an unspeakable affair, not merely for its
dubious themes and more than dubious
248
The Short Story.
style, but because it reveals so little
power to "lay " the ghosts it raises.
Again, the short story writer is al-
ways asking us to take a great deal for
granted. He begs to be allowed to
state his own premises. He portrays,
for instancej some marital comedy or
tragedy, ingeniously enough. We re-
tort, " Yes ; but how could he have ever
fallen in love with her in the first
place ? " " Oh, " replies the author off-
hand, "that is another story." But if
he were a novelist, he would not get
off so easily. He might have to write
twenty chapters, and go back three gen-
erations, to show why his hero "fell in
love with her in the first place." All
that any fiction can do very naturally
is to give us, as we commonly say,
a mere cross-section of life. There are
endless antecedents and consequents
with which it has no concern; but the
cross-section of the story-writer is so
much thinner that he escapes a thousand
inconveniences and even then considers
it beneath him to explain his miracles.
What is more, the laws of brevity
and unity of effect compel him to omit,
in his portrayal of life and character,
many details that are unlovely. Un-
less, like some very gifted fiction-writ-
ers of our time, he makes a conscien-
tious search for the repulsive, it is easy
for him to paint a pleasant picture.
Bret Harte's earliest stories show this
happy instinct for the aesthetic, for
touching the sunny places in the lives
of extremely disreputable men. His
gamblers are exhibited in their charm-
ing mood ; his outcasts are revealed to
us at the one moment of self-denying
tenderness which insures our sympathy.
Such a selective method is perfectly
legitimate and necessary : The Luck of
Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of
Poker Flat each contains but slightly
more than four thousand words. All
art is selective, for that matter, but
were a novelist to take the person-
ages of those stories- and exhibit them
as full-length figures, he would be bound
to tell more of the truth about them, un-
pleasant as some of the details would be.
Otherwise he would paint life in a whol-
ly wrong perspective. Bret Harte's
master, Charles Dickens, did not always
escape this temptation to juggle with
the general truth of things; the pupil
escaped it, in these early stories at
least, simply because he was working
on a different scale.
The space limits of the short story
allow its author likewise to make artis-
tic use of the horrible, the morbid, the
dreadful, subjects too poignant to
give any pleasure if they were forced
upon the attention throughout a novel.
The Black Cat, The Murders in the
Rue Morgue, The Descent into the
Maelstrom, are admirable examples of
Poe's art, but he was too skillful a
workman not to know that that sort of
thing if it be done at all must be done
quickly. Four hundred pages of The
Black Cat would be impossible.
And last in our list of the distinct
advantages of the art-form we are con-
sidering is the fact that it allows a man
to make use of the vaguest suggestions,
a delicate symbolism, a poetic impres-
sionism, fancies too tenuous to hold in
the stout texture of the novel. Wide is
the scope of the art of fiction ; it in-
cludes even this borderland of dreams.
Poe's marvelous Shadow, a Parable;
Silence, a Fable; Hawthorne's The
Hollow pf the Three Hills, or The Snow-
Image ; many a prose poem that might
be cited from French and Russian writ-
ers ; these illustrate the strange beau-
ty and mystery of those twilight places
where the vagrant imagination hovers
for a moment and flutters on.
It will be seen that all of the op-
portunities that have been enumerated
the opportunity, namely, for inno-
cent didacticism, for posing problems
without answering them, for stating ar-
bitrary premises, for omitting unlovely
details and, conversely, for making
beauty out of the horrible, and finally
for poetic symbolism are connected
The Short Story.
249
with the fact that in the short story
the powers of the reader are not kept
long upon the stretch. The reader
shares in the large liberty which the
short story affords to the author. This
type of prose literature, like the lyric
in poetry, is such an old, and simple,
and free mode of expressing the artist's
personality ! As long as men are inter-
esting to one another, as long as the in-
finite complexities of modern emotion
play about situations that are as old as
the race, so long will there be an op-
portunity for the free development of
the short story as a literary form.
Is there anything to be said upon the
other side ? Are the distinct advantages
of this art-form accompanied by any
strict conditions, upon conformity to
which success depends ? For the brief
tale demands, of one who would reach
the foremost skill in it, two or three
qualities that are really very rare.
It calls for visual imagination of a
high order: the power to see the ob
ject ; to penetrate to its essential na-
ture; to select the one characteristic
trait by which it may be represented.
A novelist informs you that his heroine,
let us say, is seated in a chair by the
window. He tells you what she looks
like: her attitude, figure, hair and
eyes, and so forth. He can do this,
and very often seems to do it, without
really seeing that individual woman or
making us see her. His trained pencil
merely sketches some one of the same
general description, of about the equiv-
alent hair and eyes, and so forth
seated by that general kind of window.
If he does not succeed in making her
real to us in that pose, he has a hun-
dred other opportunities before the
novel ends. Recall how George Eliot
pictures Dorothea in Middlemarch, now
in this position, now in that. If one
scene does not present her vividly to us,
the chances are that another will, and
in the end, it is true, we have an abso-
lutely distinct image of her. The short
story writer, on the other hand, has but
the one chance. His task, compared
with that of the novelist, is like bring-
ing down a flying bird with one bullet,
instead of banging away with a whole
handful of birdshot and having another
barrel in reserve. Study the descrip-
tive epithets in Stevenson's short sto-
ries : how they bring down the object !
What an eye ! And what a hand ! No
adjective that does not paint a picture
or record a judgment ; and if it were
not for a boyish habit of showing off
his skill and doing trick shots for us
out of mere superfluity of cleverness,
what judge of marksmanship would re-
fuse Master Robert Louis Stevenson the
prize ?
An imagination that penetrates to
the very heart of the matter; a verbal
magic that recreates for us what the
imagination has seen ; these are the
tests of the tale-teller's genius. A
novel may be high up in the second
rank like Trollope's and Bulwer-
Lytton's and lack somehow the lit-
erary touch. But the only short sto-
ries that survive the year or the decade
are those that have this verbal finish,
"fame's great antiseptic, style."
To say that a short story at its best
should have imagination and style is
simple enough. To hunt through the
magazines of any given month and find
such a story is a very different matter.
Out of the hundreds of stories printed
every week in every civilized country,
why do so few meet the supreme tests ?
To put it bluntly, does this form of lit-
erature present peculiar attractions to
mediocrity ?
For answer, let us look at some of
the qualities which the short story fails
to demand from those who use it. It
will account in part for the number of
short stories written.
Very obviously, to write a short story
requires no sustained power of imagina-
tion. So accomplished a critic as Mr.
Henry James believes that this is a
purely artificial distinction ; he thinks
250
The Short Story.
that if you can imagine at all, you can
keep it up. Ruskin went even farther.
Every feat of the imagination, he de-
clared, is easy for the man who per-
forms it ; the great feat is possible only
to the great artist, yet if he can do it
at all, he can do it easily. But as a
matter of fact, does not the power re-
quired to hold steadily before you your
theme and personages and the whole
little world where the story moves cor-
respond somewhat to the strength it
takes to hold out a dumb-bell? Any
one can do it for a few seconds ; but in
a few more seconds the arm sags ; it is
only the trained athlete who can endure
even to the minute's end. For Haw-
thorne to hold the people of The Scar-
let Letter steadily in focus from Novem-
ber to February, to say nothing of six
years' preliminary brooding, is surely
more of an artistic feat than to write
a short story between Tuesday and Fri-
day. The three years and nine months
of unremitting labor devoted to Mid-
dlemarch does not in itself afford any
criterion of the value of the book ; but
given George Eliot's brain power and
artistic instinct to begin with, and then
concentrate them for that period upon
a single theme, and it is no wonder
that the result is a masterpiece. "Jan
van Eyck was never in a hurry, "
says Charles Reade of the great Flem-
ish painter in The Cloister and the
Hearth, "Jan van Eyck was never in
a hurry, and therefore the world will
not forget him in a hurry."
This sustained power of imagination
and the patient workmanship that keeps
pace with it are ndf demanded by the
brief tale. It is a short distance race,
and any one can run it indifferently
well.
Nor does the short story demand of
its author essential sanity ; breadth and
tolerance of view. How morbid does
the genius of a Hoffmann, a Poe, a
Maupassant seem, when placed along-
side the sane and wholesome art of
Scott and Fielding and Thackeray!
Sanity, balance, naturalness ; the novel
stands or falls in the long run by these
tests. But your short story writer may
be fit for a madhouse and yet compose
tales that shall be immortal. In other
words, we do not ask of him that he
shall have a philosophy of life, in any
broad, complete sense. It may be that
Professor Masson, like a true Scotch-
man, insisted too much upon the intel-
lectual element in the art of fiction
when he declared, "Every artist is a
thinker whether he knows it or not, and
ultimately no artist will be found great-
er as an artist than he was as a thinker. "
But he points out here what must be
the last of the distinctions we have
drawn between the short story and the
novel. When we read Old Mortality,
or Pendennis, or Daniel Deronda, we
find in each book a certain philosophy,
"a chart or plan of human life." Con-
sciously or unconsciously held or for-
mulated, it is nevertheless there. The
novelist has his theory of this general
scheme of things which enfolds us all,
and he cannot write his novel without
betraying his theory. "He is a thinker
whether he knows it or not."
But the story- writer, with all respect
to him, need be nothing of the sort.
He deals not with wholes, but with frag-
ments; not with the trend of the great
march through the wide world, but with
some particular aspect of the procession
as it passes. His story may be, as we
have seen, the merest sketch of a face,
a comic attitude, a tragic incident ; it
may be a lovely dream, or a horrid
nightmare, or a page of words that
haunt us like music. Yet he need not
be consistent ; he need not think things
through. One might almost maintain
that there is more of an answer, im-
plicit or explicit, to the great problems
of human destiny in one book like Van-
ity Fair or Adam Bede than in all of
Mr. Kipling's one hundred and sixty
short stories taken together, and Mr.
Kipling is indubitably the most gifted
story-teller of our time.
The Short Story.
251
Does not all this throw some light
upon the present popularity of the short
story with authors and public alike?
Here is a form of literature easy to
write and easy to read. The author
is often paid as much for a story as he
earns from the copyrights of a novel,
and it costs him one tenth the labor.
The multiplication of magazines and
other periodicals creates a constant mar-
ket, with steadily rising prices. The
qualities of imagination and style that
go to the making of a first-rate short
story are as rare as they ever were, but
one is sometimes tempted to think that
the great newspaper and magazine read-
ing public bothers itself very little about
either style or imagination. The pub-
lic pays its money and takes its choice.
And there are other than these me-
chanical and commercial reasons why
the short story now holds the field. It
is a kind of writing perfectly adapted
to our over-driven generation, which
rushes from one task or engagement to
another, and between times, or on the
way, snatches up a story. Our habit
of nervous concentration for a brief
period helps us indeed to crowd a great
deal of pleasure into the half -hour of
perusal; our incapacity for prolonged
attention forces the author to keep with-
in that limit, or exceed it at his peril.
It has been frequently declared that
this popularity of the short story is un-
favorable to other forms of imaginative
literature. Many English critics have
pointed out that the reaction against
the three- volume novel, and particularly
against George Eliot, has been caused
by the universal passion for the short
story. And the short story is fre-
quently made responsible for the alleged
distaste of Americans for the essay.
We are told that nobody reads magazine
poetry, because the short stories are so
much more interesting.
In the presence of all such brisk gen-
eralizations, it is prudent to exercise a
little wholesome skepticism. No one
really knows. Each critic can easily
find the sort of facts he is looking for.
American short stories have probably
trained the public to a certain expecta-
tion of technical excellence in narrative
which has forced American novel-writ-
ers to do more careful work. But there
are few of our novel-writers who exhib-
it a breadth and power commensurate
with their opportunities, and it is precise-
ly these qualities of breadth and pow-
er which an apprenticeship to the art
of short story writing seldom or never
seems to impart. The wider truth, after
all, is that literary criticism has no ap-
paratus delicate enough to measure the
currents, the depths and the tideways,
the reactions and interactions of literary
forms. Essays upon the evolution of
literary types, when written by men like
M. Brunetiere, are fascinating reading,
and for the moment almost persuade you
that there is such a thing as a real evo-
lution of types, that is, a definite re-
placement of a lower form by a higher.
But the popular Caprice of an hour upsets
all your theories. Mr. Ho wells had no
sooner proved, a few years ago, that a
certain form of realism was the finally
evolved type in fiction, than the great
reading public promptly turned around
and bought Treasure Island. That does
not prove Treasure Island a better story
than Silas Lapham; it proves simply
that a trout that will rise to a brown
hackle to-day will look at nothing but
a white miller to-morrow; and that
when the men of the ice age grew tired
of realistic anecdotes somebody yawned
and poked the fire and called on a ro-
manticist. One age, one stage of cul-
ture, one mood, calls for stories as naive,
as grim and primitive in their stark sav-
agery as an Icelandic saga ; another age,
another mood, nay, the whim that
changes in each one of us between morn-
ing and evening, chooses stories as
deliberately, consciously artificial as The
Fall of the House of Usher. Both types
are admirable, each in its own way,
provided both stir the imagination.
For the types will come and go and
252
The Cave of Adullam.
come again ; but the human hunger f or
fiction of some sort is never sated.
Study the historical phases of the art of
fiction as closely as one may, there come
moments and perhaps the close of an
essay is an appropriate time to confess
it when one is tempted to say with
Wilkie Collins that the whole art of
fiction can be summed up in three pre-
cepts: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em
cry; make 'em wait."
The important thing, the really sug-
gestive and touching and wonderful
thing, is that all these thousands of con-
temporary and ephemeral stories are
laughed over and cried over and waited
for by somebody. They are read, while
the " large still books " are bound in full
calf and buried. Do you remember Po-
mona in Rudder Grange reading aloud
in the kitchen every night after she had
washed the dishes, spelling out with
blundering tongue and beating heart:
" Yell after yell resounded
as he wildly sprang " Or
"Ha ha Lord Marmont
thundered thou too shalt
suffer " ? We are all more or less like
Pomona. We are children at bottom,
after all is said, children under the
story-teller's charm. Nansen's stout-
hearted comrades tell stories to one an-
other while the Arctic ice drifts onward
with the Fram ; Stevenson is nicknamed
The Tale-Teller by the brown-limbed
Samoans ; Chinese Gordon reads a story
while waiting hopelessly waiting
at Khartoum. What matter who per-
forms the miracle that opens for us the
doors of the wonder- world ? It may be
one of that white-bearded company at
the gate of Jaffa ; it may be an ardent
French boy pouring out his heart along
the bottom of a Paris newspaper; it
may be some sober- suited New England
woman in the decorous pages of The
Atlantic Monthly; it may be some
wretched scribbler writing for his sup-
per. No matter, if only the miracle
is wrought ; if we look out with new
eyes upon the many-featured, habitable
world; if we are thrilled by the pity
and the beauty of this life of ours, itself
brief as a tale that is told ; if we learn
to know men and women better, and to
love them more.
B. P.
THE CAVE OF ADULLAM.
"I HAVE often thought," said the
young minister, " that your house might
be called the Cave of Adullam."
Miss Lucretia Blaine adjusted her
glasses, as if they might help her to
some mental insight, and then illogi-
cally directed her puzzled gaze at him
over their top. She was short and
plump, with brown eyes and an abun-
dance of bright hair lapsing into dun
maturity. There was so much of the
haii' that it was difficult to manage, and
she had wound it in a sort of crown.
So it happened that she carried her head
in a fashion that looked like haughtiness
and belied the patient seeking of her
dove's eyes. She was not much given
to reading, even Bible reading, and the
minister's pictorial talk perplexed her.
It was vaguely discomfiting, in a way,
much like the minister himself. He
was a short and muscular man, with a
scholarly forehead, a firm mouth, and
eyeglasses magnificently set in gold.
He had always disturbed Miss Lucretia,
coming as he did after a mild and fad-
ing pulpit dynasty. She could never
understand how he knew so much, at
his time of life, about human trials and
their antidotes ; his autocracy over the
moral world was even too bracing, too
insistent. Now she took off her glasses
The Cave of Adullam.
253
and laid them down, regarding him with
that blurred, softened look which is the
gift of eyes unused to freedom.
"I don't know," said she, "as I
rightly understand."
"The Cave of Adullam!" repeated
the minister, in his pulpit manner.
" David was there, if you remember, in
the time of his banishment, ' and every
one that was in distress, and every one
that was in debt, and every one that
was discontented gathered themselves
unto him.' It was a refuge. Your
house appeals to me, in a figurative
sense, as being somewhat the same
thing. The poor, the unfortunate, flee
hither to you. This is the Cave of
Adullam."
New trouble added itself to Miss Lu-
cretia's look. This unnecessary classify-
ing merely greatened her accepted load.
She only saw herself pottering about,
doing her chores and serving the people
who were mysteriously meted out to her.
Life was very simple until it became
complicated by words.
"Well," said she vaguely, "I guess
there 's a good many such places, if all
was known."
"Yes," returned the minister, "we
all have some earthly refuge."
"I should like to know what cousin
'Cretia 's got ! " came a young voice
from the doorway, a woman's voice,
melodious, full. There stood Lucrece,
a distant relative defined within some
limit of cousinship. She was tall and
strenuous, a girl all life and the desire
of life. Her pose had an unconsidered
beauty; her muscles, whether in rest
or action, obeyed according purposes
and wrought out harmony. The minis-
ter caught his breath as her face flow-
ered upon him like some exotic bloom.
He had a young wife at home, and her
he truly cherished; yet no one could
look upon Lucrece and continue quite
unmoved.
Miss Lucretia only smiled at her.
She was used to the incursions of the
young and passionate thing. Dealing
with the hot moods Lucrece engendered
seemed more or less like feeding a tame
leopard in the kitchen.
"I 'd like to know," continued Lu-
crece rapidly, in her moving contralto,
"what refuge cousin 'Cretia 's had!
There 's great-uncle Pike in the parlor
chamber. He 's got dropsy. He likes
it. There 's cousin Mary Poole in the
west room. She 's got nerves. Cousin
'Cretia 's had to hear her clack from
sunrise to sunset for going on nine
years. Mary Poole and uncle Pike
have got their refuge, both of 'em.
Where 's cousin ' Cretia' s? "
" There, there ! " counseled Lucre-
tia. "You come in, dear, an' se'
down."
The minister cleared his throat. He
was momentarily dashed by this on-
slaught of the human, and the natural
man in him agreed with Lucrece. Yet
officially he could not concur.
" All these trials, " said he, with no
abatement of his former emphasis, "will
be stars in her crown of rejoicing."
"Oh!" returned the girl bitingly.
She came in and stood by the mantel,
her head held high, as if it carried a
weight she scorned. "But what about
now? They 're having their refuge
now. What about cousin 'Cretia's?"
" Crechy ! " came a wheezing voice
from above. "Crechy, you step up here
a minute ! "
This might have been a signal for
concerted effort. Another voice, dra-
matically muffled, issued from the west
room.
"Crechy, you mind what I say ! You
come in here first ! Crechy, you come ! "
Lucretia rose in haste and made her
capable way out of the room, fitting on
her glasses as she went.
" There ! " said Lucrece triumphant-
ly, having seen the proving of her point,
"they 're both calling on her at once.
That 's what they do. They 're neck
and neck when it comes to trouble. If
one finds a feather endwise in the bed,
the other falls over a square in the car-
254
The Cave of Adullam.
pet. And cousin 'Cretia 's got to
smooth it all out."
The minister felt his poverty of re-
source. The young creature interro-
gating him at white heat would have
flouted his divine commonplaces. He
knew that, and decided, with true hu-
mility, that he should only be able to
meet her after a season of prayer.
"I cannot account for it," he said,
rising with dignity. "I fear I must be
going. Please say good-by to Miss
Lucretia. "
The girl accompanied him to the
door with all the outward courtesy due
him and his office ; but her mind seemed
suddenly to be elsewhere. She shook
hands with him ; and then, as he walked
down the path between beds of velvet
pinks, her fighting blood rose once more,
and she called lightly after him, " What
about cousin 'Cretia? "
But he made no answer, nor did she
wait for one. On the heels of her
question she turned back into the sit-
ting-room and flung herself at full
length on the broad lounge, where she
lay tapping the white line of her teeth
with an impatient finger. Presently
Lucretia came down the stairs and, en-
tering the room, gave a quick look
about. Her eyes interrogated Lucrece.
"Yes," said the girl carelessly,
"he 's gone. He thinks I 'm awful."
Lucretia sat down again by the win-
dow and took up her work. There was
an abiding stillness about her. She was
very palpably a citizen of the world,
and yet not of it, as if some film lay
between her and the things that are.
"Have both of 'em had a drink of
water ? " asked the girl satirically.
"Yes, both of 'em!"
" Have they ordered what they want
for supper ? "
A slow smile indented the corners of
Lucretia' s mouth. "Well," said she
indulgently, "I b'lieve they did men-
tion it."
"I bet they did! And to-morrow
it '11 be just the same, and to-morrow,
and to-morrow. It 's all very well to
talk about Caves of Adullam. Where 's
your cave ? "
Lucretia dropped her work and gazed
at the girl with unseeing eyes. She
had the remote look of one who con-
jures up visions at will. "Don't you
worry, " said she. "I don't mind them
no more than the wind that blows."
"Well," said Lucrece moodily, "I
suppose everybody 's got to have some-
thing. Only it seems as if you had
everything. They all come and sponge
on you. So do I. To-day I 'm mad-
der 'n a hatter, and I put for you."
Lucretia 's glance returned to a per-
ception of tangible things.
"What is it, Lucrece?"
The girl spoke with the defiance of
one who combats tears.
"I 'm not going to be married."
"Why not?"
"All the money Tom saved he put
in with his father. He wants it out
now, to go into the lumber business,
and his father won't let him have it.
And Tom 's got nothing to show for it."
Lucretia sat motionless, a slow flush
rising into her face. One might have
said she looked ashamed. The room
was very still. A bee buzzed into the
entry, and described whorled circlets
of flight. The sound of his wandering
was loud, out of all proportion to its
significance.
" That means putting off our marry-
ing for a year or two, " said Lucrece in-
differently. Then, having cried a few
tears and angrily wiped them away with
her hand, she crushed her pink cheek
into the sofa pillow for a moment, and,
as if she flung aside an unworthy mood,
rose to her feet with a spring.
" Tom pretty much hates his father, "
said she. "He's ashamed to be the
son of a miser. He 's afraid he might
catchit. But he need n't worry. Tom's
as good as they make 'em. " She walked
to the door and then, returning, stooped
over Miss Lucretia and kissed the top
of her head. "Don't you mind," said
The Cave of Adullam.
255
she. "It '11 all come out right. I 'm
just like them two upstairs, only mine 's
temper where they 've got nerves and
dropsy. Why, cousin 'Cretia, what is
it?"
Two tears were rolling down Lucre-
tia's cheeks. They splashed upon her
hand. Lucrece had never seen her look
so moved and broken.
"Why," said the girl, "you taking
it so hard as that, just my being mar-
ried? It 's only put off."
Lucretia rose and folded her work
conclusively. Her cheeks were pink un-
der their tears, and her voice trembled.
"Don't you worry, dear," said she,
a humorous smile beginning to flicker
on her lips. "I s'pose I can have my
mad fit, too, can't I? There! you run
along now. I 've got to get in the
clo'es."
It was a dismissal not to be gainsaid,
and Lucrece wenfc wonderingly away.
At the door she hesitated.
"I guess I'll go across lots," said
she. "There 's old Armstrong coming
up the road. I can't talk to him as I
feel now." She took the narrow path
skirting the house front, and stepped
over the low stone wall into the or-
chard. There she walked away with
a lilting motion, and still with the
erect pose of one who carries a burden
lightly.
Miss Lucretia stood in the middle of
the sunny room, so still that all the lit-
tle noises of the day seemed loud about
her. There was the ticking of the
clock, the booming of bees on the jes-
samine sprays, and chiefly the thick-
ened beating of her heart. Suddenly,
as if mounting thought had cast her
forth on one great wave, she hurried
out of doors and down the path to the
gate. There, her hand on the palings,
she waited for Dana Armstrong. Yet
she did not glance at him, as he came
striding along the road, but into the
green field opposite, and again her eyes
had the unseeing look of one to whom
visions are more palpable than fact.
Dana Armstrong was over sixty, but
he carried himself like a youth, with
the free step and sinewy vigor of one
whose time is yet to come. And still,
in spite of that assertive strength, the
years had marked him with their tell-
tale tracery. His cheeks were deeply
scored with long, crisp lines ; his mouth
dropped slightly at the corners. The
gray eyes were cold, though a fanciful
mind might have found in them some
promise, however unfulfilled, some hint
of blue.
" Dana Armstrong, " called Miss Lu-
cretia, " you come here ! I want to talk
with you."
He quickened his walk, his eyes
warming a little at sight of her. She
swung open the gate, and he stepped in-
side.
"Anything happened?" he asked
concernedly.
"No. You come in a minute."
She preceded him along the path, her
short steps breaking in upon the time
of his. They crossed the sun-lighted
entry into her sitting-room, and there
Dana took off his hat with a grave de-
liberation much like reverence. It had
been years since he entered this room,
and the memory of time past shook him
a little, dulled as he was by the routine
of life and its expediency.
"Be seated," said Miss Lucretia,
taking her accustomed place by the win-
dow. He laid his hand upon a chair,
and then withdrew it. This had been
grandfather Elaine's chosen spot, and
he remembered how the old man used
to sit there thumbing over his well-worn
jokes when Dana Armstrong came court-
ing the girl Lucretia, all those years
ago. He could not have taken the chair
without disturbing some harmony of re-
membrance ; so he sat down on the sofa
where Lucrece had lain, and held his
hat before him in his stiff, half -bashful
way.
"I hear Tom ain't goin' to be mar-
ried this year," said Miss Lucretia,
"him and my Lucrece!" Her voice
256
The Cave of Adullam.
came from an aching throat. It sound-
ed harsh and dry.
Armstrong started slightly.
"Well! " said he.
"I 'm told Tom's money 's in with
yours, an' you won't give it up to
him."
Dana's eyes darkened. His forehead
contracted into those lines she remem-
bered from a vivid past, when his face
made her one book of life, to be conned
with loyal passion. Yet she was not
looking at him now ; there was no need.
Only it was the young Dana, not the
old one, who sat there. That gave her
courage. She could throw herself back
into that time when no mischance had
come between them, and speak with the
candor of youth itself, which scorns to
compromise. Her eyes were fixed upon
the square of sunlight on the floor.
Little shadows were playing in it, and
once the bulk of a humming bird swept
past. The sunlight had a curious look,
as if in that small compass lay the sum-
mer and all the summers she had lived,
witnesses now to her true testimony.
She began in an unmoved voice, and
Dana listened. She seemed to be speak-
ing from a dream, and inch by inch
the dream crept nearer him, and gradu-
ally enfolded him without his will.
"When I heard that, not an hour
ago, I says to myself, ' Ain't Dana
Armstrong got over the love o' money?
Ain't he killed that out of him yet? ' "
"There, there! " said Dana hastily,
exactly as he had used to check her
years ago.
"No, it ain't any use to say ' There,
there ! ' But she was not speaking as
the girl was wont to speak. The girl
had been quick-tempered, full of be-
seechings, hot commendation, wild re-
proach. "We 've got to talk things
over. It 's a good many years, Dana,
since you an' I were goin' to be mar-
ried that fall, an' you give me up be-
cause my sister was in consumption, an'
you would n't have her live with us."
He turned full upon her, and seemed
to question her face, the stillness of her
attitude. These were strange words to
be spoken in the clear New England
air. They shook him, not only from
their present force, but because they
held authority from what had been.
They seemed to be joining it to what
still was, and he felt the continuity of
life in a way bewilderingly new. His
voice trembled as he answered with
some passion,
"I did n't give you up! "
"No, not in so many words. You
only said Lindy might live for years.
You said there 'd be doctors' bills, an'
my time all eat up waitin' an' tendin'
an' so I told you we would n't con-
sider it any more. An' you went an'
married Rhody Bond, an' she helped
you save an' you got rich."
The words, meagre as they were,
smote blightingly upon him. He saw
his life in all its barrenness. Yet he
was not the poorer through that revela-
tion. A window had been opened, dis-
closing a tract of land he had hitherto
seen only by inches. It was hopelessly
sterile, but the window was wide
and he could breathe, though chokingly.
The woman's voice sounded thin and
far away.
"I thought when I lost you my heart
broke. I don't know now what hap-
pened. Somethin' did; for after that
I was different. For I did set by you.
I knew your faults, an' they 'most
killed me : that is, one o 'em did,
your lovin' money so. But even that
never 'd ha' separated us if it had n't
bid fair to hurt somebody that could n't
fight for herself. Nothin' could ever
have separated us." She spoke reck-
lessly, as if none but the great emotions
were worth her thought. In spite of
outer differences, she was curiously like
the young Lucrece. There was the same
audacity, the courage strong enough to
challenge life and all its austere min-
istrants. But still she did not look at
him. If she had looked, it might have
been impossible to go on.
The Cave of Adullam.
257
"I did n't give you up, Dana Arm-
strong, " said she. "I never give you
up one minute."
The man leaned forward and bent his
brows upon her, over burning eyes.
"What do you mean?" he asked,
with the harshness of emotion leashed
and held.
"I never give you up one minute.
When Lindy died, I was here all alone.
You were married then, but I set by
you as much as ever. I didn't even
blame you for choosin' money instead
o' me. I could n't blame you for any-
thing, any more 'n if you was my own
child. You could hurt me. You could
n't make me blame you." Her voice
ended in one of those lingering falls
that stir the heart. It was quite un-
considered. She had as yet no purpose
in moving him, even by the simplest
eloquence : only her own life was elo-
quent to her, and she could not voice it
save with passion.
" I thought it all over, " she said rap-
idly, like one giving long considered
testimony. "I thought it over that
summer you an' Rhody moved into the
new house. I used to set here nights,
with the moon streamin' in through the
elms an' consider it. I knew I could
n't give you up, and it come over me it
wa'n't needful I should. I prayed to
God. I made a bargain with Him. I
said, * If I won't speak to him, or look
at him, or sin in my thoughts, You let
me have some part of him ! ' An' God
was willin'. From that time on it was
as if you an' me lived here together :
only it was our souls. I never touched
your life with Rhody. I never wanted
to. Only every day I talked to you.
I told you how I wanted you to be good.
I tried to be good myself. I tried to do
all I could for them that was in need.
But I never lived my life with 'em, even
when I was tendin' upon 'em an' gettin'
kind of achy trottin' up an' down stairs.
You an' me were always together, your
soul an' mine. The minister says every-
body has a refuge. I guess he 'd say
VOL. xc. NO. 538. 17
that was my refuge. He 'd say 'twas
my cave." Her voice broke upon the
word, and she laughed a little in a
whimsical fashion.
He stretched out his hand, and his
face softened in an uncomprehending
sympathy. But she seemed not to see
the movement, and went on.
"There was no harm in it. I 've
come to the conclusion we can set by
folks as much as we 've a mind to, so
long as we don't clutch an' grab, so
long as it 's all spirit. I don't know
what spirit is, but I know it 's suthin'
we 've got to take account of in this
world, same as any other. Well, I
went with you, step an' step. When
little Tom was born I could have eat
him up, I loved him so."
Famished mother-longing had come
into her voice, and thenceforward she
spoke recklessly. Rehearsing her de-
votion to the man, she bound herself in
stiffer phrasing; when it came to the
child, she could name the great name *
and feel no shyness over it.
"Up to then, I'd said my prayers
for you. Then I had the boy to pray
for him and you. When he went to
school, he was stronger 'n' heartier 'n
any of 'em, an' I was proud of him.
When he begun to wait on my Lucrece,
I got sort of acquainted with him, an*
I says to myself, ' He don't set by
money the way his father did. ' An' I
thanked my God for that."
Dana's hands were trembling. He
put up one of them to cover his betray-
ing mouth.
"I kep' near you every step o'
the way," said Lucretia mercilessly.
" When you got the better o' yourself
an' give the town that schoolhouse, I
kneeled down an' thanked God. When
you done suthin' mean, I tried to go
through it with you an' make you see
how mean it was. I ain't been away
from you a minute, Dana Armstrong,
not a minute all your life. I 've tried
to help you live it the best that ever I
knew how."
258
The Cave of Adullam.
The man started up in irrepressible
passion. " God ! " he said brokenly.
"If I 'd only known ! " But he could
not have told what it was he should
have known. This was only a blind
arraignment of a sterile past.
"When Rhody died," said the wo-
man, with the least little break in her
voice, "I guess I dropped away a mite.
I could n't do no less. Seemed as if
'twould be stretchin' out my hand to
you, an' that I never did."
"I come over here a year an' a day
after she died, " said Dana hotly. " You
wouldn't so much as walk downstairs
to see me ! "
"No," answered Lucretia softly, "I
wouldn't."
"You wouldn't take the gift of
me! "
"Them things were past an' gone,"
she told him gently, as if she feared to
bruise some piteous memory. "There 's
a time for all things. The minister said
so last Sunday. The time for some
things ain't ever gone by ; but for some
it is. If you an' I could have grown
old together " A spasm contracted
her face, and it was a moment before
she could go on. "But we are old, an'
we 've got there by different roads.
'T would be like strangers livin' to-
gether. But our souls ain't strangers.
Mine has lived with you, day in, day
out, for forty year."
Pure joy possessed her. She was
transfigured. Her face flushed, her
eyes shone, each with a spark in it, a
look not altogether of this earth. She
was radiant with some undefined hope :
perhaps of that sort bred, not of cir-
cumstance, but out of things unseen.
The man was chiefly puzzled, as if he
had been called on to test an unsuspect-
ed bond. This plain speaking about the
eternal was quite new to him. It had
an echo of Sunday talk, and yet with-
out that weariness attendant on stiff
clothes and lulling tunes. He seemed
to be standing in a large place where
there was great air to breathe. Hith-
erto he had been the servant of things
palpable. Now it began to look as if
things were but the tools of Life, and
Life herself, august, serene, sat there in
the heavens beside her master, God, in
untouched sovereignty.
"There! " said Lucretia suddenly, as
if she broke a common dream. "I
only wanted to tell you how I 've bat-
tled to have you do what 's right. I
don't know as I 've earned anything of
you by battlin', for maybe you 'd ha'
forbidden it if you 'd had your way.
But I wanted to tell you there 's things
fightin' for your soul, an' you better
think twice afore you kill out anything
in them that 's young. Tom an' Lu-
crece they 've got it all before 'em.
You let 'em come together afore it 's
any ways too late." The note of plead-
ing in her voice seemed as much for
herself as for another. She might have
been demanding compensation for her
years. She had shown him the late
blooming of her life, for him to justify.
Something he mysteriously owed her,
and, with that obedience men give to
women when the cry is loud and clear,
he knew it. must be paid. He rose and
stood regarding her. His face worked.
His eyes held blue fire. He felt young
again, invincible. But though thoughts
were crowding on him, he had only one
word for them, and that her name.
"Lucretia!"
"What is it? " she asked quietly.
He hesitated and then broke forth
blunderingly, like a boy. "Should you
just as soon I 'd come in here, once a
week or so ? "
She answered as a mother might who
refuses because she must, for hidden
reasons.
"I don't think we 've any call to see
much of one another. We 've both got
a good deal to think over, an' if Tom
an' Lucrece should get them a house,
you 'd want to run round often an' set
with them."
He bent his head in an acquiescent
courtliness, and went haltingly out at
Rapids at Night.
259
the door. Miss Lucretia sat there, her
hands dropped loosely in her lap, not
thinking, but aware of life, as if the
years were leaves fluttering down about
her in autumnal air. They prophesied
no denial, nor hardly yet decay: only
change, the prelude to winter and then
again to spring. She sat there until a
voice came querulously,
"Ain't it 'most supper time? You
come up here ! I '11 ventur' you forgot
to blaze the fire ! "
Next morning, a little after ten,
Miss Lucretia went into the garden, to
do her weeding. The sun lay hotly on
her hair and burnished it to gold. Her
cheeks were warm with sunlight and her
hands thick coated with the soil. Life
and the love of it were keen within her,
strong enough to grip eternal things,
sane, commonplace like these of earth,
and make them hers forever.
The gate clanged, and then there
came a rush of skirts. Lucrece was on
her like a swooping wind.
"Cousin 'Cretia ! " she cried. "Cou-
sin 'Cretia! Get up here! I 've got
to speak to you."
Miss Lucretia rose and found the
throbbing creature ready to grasp and
hold her. Young Lucrece was lovely,
like the morning. The moodiness of
yesterday had quite gone out of her.
Sweet, quivering sentience animated
her, obedient to the call of life. Her
beauty clothed her like a veil : it seemed
a wedding veil.
"What do you think? " she said rap-
idly, in a tone like the brooding note of
birds. "Mr. Armstrong 's paid over
all Tom's money, every cent. And he 's
given him the deed of the house in the
Hollow. And this morning he came
over and kissed me old Armstrong
did ! and said he hoped we 'd be mar-
ried right away. I 'm awful happy,
cousin 'Cretia! "
Lucretia stood there holding the
trowel in her earthy hand. Her voice
dropped liquidly.
" Did he ? " she said, not looking at
Lucrece at all. 'Did he? "
The tension of her tone struck keenly
on the girl and moved her to some won-
der.
"What makes you so pretty, cousin
'Cretia? " she asked, half timorous be-
cause the other woman seemed so far
away. "What makes you speak so?
Is it because I 'm glad ? "
"Yes," answered Lucretia softly.
"An' I'm glad, too! "
Alice Brown.
RAPIDS AT NIGHT.
HEBE at the roots of the mountains,
Between the sombre legions of cedars and tamaracks,
The rapids charge the ravine :
A little light, cast by foam under starlight,
Wavers about the shimmering stems of the birches :
Here rise up the clangorous sounds of battle,
Immense and mournful.
Far above curves the great dome of darkness
Drawn with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets.
Deep at the core of the tumult,
Deeper than all the voices that cry at the surface,
Dwells one fathomless sound,
Under the hiss and cry, the stroke and the plangent clamor.
260 Bret Harte.
(0 human heart that sleeps,
Wild with rushing dreams and deep with sadness !)
The abysmal roar drops into almost silence,
While over its sleep plays in various cadence,
Innumerous voices crashing in laughter;
Then rising calm, overwhelming,
Slow in power,
Rising supreme in utterance,
It sways, and reconquers and floods all the spaces of silence,
One voice, deep with the sadness,
That dwells at the core of all things.
There by a nest in the glimmering birches,
Speaks a thrush as if startled from slumber,
Dreaming of Southern ricefields,
The moted glow of the amber sunlight,
Where the long ripple roves among the reeds.
Above curves the great dome of darkness,
Scored with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets;
Like the strong palm of Ged,
Veined with the ancient laws,
Holding a human heart that sleeps,
Wild with rushing dreams and deep with the sadness,
That dwells at the core of all things.
Duncan Campbell Scott.
BRET HARTE.
BRET HARTE would still have been a not of perception but of creation. The
genius and a great writer if gold had proof of this creative power is that the
never been discovered in California ; but characters portrayed by it are submitted
history records no happier union of the to various exigencies and influences ; they
man and the hour than his advent to the grow, develop, yes, even change, and
Pacific coast close upon the heels of the yet retain their harmony and consisten-
pioneers. Some writers of fiction, those cy. The development of character, or at
who have the very highest form of ere- least the gradual revelation of character,
ative imagination, are able from their forms the peculiar charm of the novel,
own minds to spin out the web and woof as distinguished from the short story,
of the characters that they describe ; and A few great novels have indeed been
it makes little difference where they live written by authors who did not possess
or what literary material lies about them, this highest form of creative genius, es-
It is true that even such writers do not pecially by Dickens ; but no novel was
construct their heroes and heroines quite ever written without betraying the au-
out of whole cloth ; they have a shred thor's deficiency in this respect, if the
or two to begin with. But their work deficiency existed. It is betrayed in the
is in the main and essentially the result case both of Kipling and Bret Harte,
Bret Harte.
261
each of whom has written a novel, and in
each case the book is a failure. Gabriel
Conroy, Bret Harte's novel, is so bad as
a whole, though abounding in gems, its
characters are so inconsistent and con-
fused, its ending so incomprehensible,
that it produces upon the reader the ef-
fect of a nightmare. It is evident that
he took little interest in it, and it rein-
forces the impression, derived from a
careful study of his stories and con-
firmed by his own statement, that his
characters were copied from life. But
they were copied with the insight and
with the emphasis of genius.
The ability to read human nature as
Bret Harte could read it is almost as rare
as the higher form of creative ability.
How little do we know even of those
whom we see every day, whom we have
lived with for years ! Let a man ask
himself what his friend, or his wife, or his
son would do in some supposable emer-
gency : how they would take this or that
injury or affront, good or bad fortune, a
great sorrow or great happiness, a sud-
den temptation, the treachery of a friend.
Let him ask himself any such question,
and it is almost certain that, if he is hon-
est with himself, he will have to admit
that he can only conjecture what would
be the result. This is not because human
nature is inconsistent ; the law of char-
acter is as immutable as any other law :
it is because human nature eludes us.
But it did not elude Bret Harte. One
who was intimate with him in Califor-
nia says : u He found endless enjoy-
ment in the people whom he saw and
met casually. He read their characters
as if they were open books." Another
early friend of his, Mr. Noah Brooks,
in his reminiscences of Bret Harte nar-
rates the following : "In Sacramento
he and I met Colonel Starbottle, who
had, of course, another name. He wore
a tall silk hat and loosely fitting clothes,
and he carried on his left arm by its
crooked handle a stout walking stick.
The colonel was a dignified and benig-
nant figure ; in politics he was every-
body's friend. A gubernatorial election
was pending, and with the friends of
Haight he stood at the hotel bar, and as
they raised their glasses to their lips he
said : < Here 's to the Coming Event ! '
Nobody asked at that stage of the can-
vass what the coming event would be,
and when the good colonel stood in the
same place with the friends of Gorham
he gave the same toast, ' The Coming
Event.' "
The reader will recognize the picture
at once, even to the manner in which
the colonel carried his cane.
Bret Harte (christened Francis Brett)
was born in Albany, New York, Au-
gust 25, 1839, of an ancestry which, it
is said, combined the English, German,
and Hebrew strains. His father was a
teacher of Greek in the Albany Female
College, but he died while his son was
still a child, and Bret Harte's only in-
struction was obtained in the Albany
public schools, and ceased when he was
thirteen or fourteen years old. At the
age of eleven he wrote a poem called
Autumn Musings, which was published
in the New York Sunday Atlas, but the
household critics treated it with that
frank severity which is peculiar to rela-
tives, and the youthful poet wrote no
more, so far as anybody knows, until he
electrified the world with The Heathen
Chinee.
In the spring of 1854, Mrs. Harte and
her son sailed for California, an ad-
venturous step for a poor widow with
a boy of fifteen ; but no woman not ad-
venturous could have borne such a son.
Upon their arrival at San Francisco, Bret
Harte walked thence to Sonoma, where
he started a school. The school soon
closed its doors, but so long as the Eng-
lish tongue remains, it will survive in the
pages of Cressy. In all literature there
are no children drawn with more sym-
pathy, more insight, more subtlety, more
tenderness than those sketched by Bret
Harte. He apprehended both the sav-
262
Bret Harte.
agery and the innocence of childhood.
Every reader is the happier for having
known that handsome and fastidious boy
Rupert Filgee, who, secure in his avowed
predilection for the tavern-keeper's wife,
rejected the advances of contemporary
girls. "And don't you," to Octavia
Dean, "go on breathing over my head
like that. If there 's anything I hate,
it 's having a girl breathing around me.
Yes, you were ! I felt it in my hair."
Upon the failure of the school, Bret
Harte tried mining, but that, too, proved
unprofitable. Later, at the age of seven-
teen, he became a deputy collector of
taxes, and was sent into the lawless min-
ing camps, where no taxes had ever been
collected. But the miners yielded to
the unarmed boy what armed men had
not been able to extort, and, to the sur-
prise of his superiors, he returned to San
Francisco with the taxes in his pouch.
Afterward he became a messenger for
Wells, Fargo & Company's Express, and
traveled upon the box of a stagecoach,
presumably with Yuba Bill as the driver.
It was a dangerous business : his prede-
cessor had been shot through the arm
by a highwayman, his successor was
killed ; but he escaped without injury.
" He bore a charmed life," writes an-
other of his early friends, Mr. C. W.
Stoddard. " Probably his youth was his
salvation, for he ran a thousand risks,
yet seemed only to gain in health and
spirits." Later, he drifted to San Fran-
cisco, where he began by setting type
for a newspaper ; from that he soon
passed into being a contributor to the
newspapers, writing, among other things,
The Heathen Chinee, the Condensed
Novels, and his first story, M'liss, which
was published in the Golden Era. It
was at this time that he held the position
of Secretary in the United States Mint,
a sinecure, or very nearly that, such as
in the good old days was properly be-
stowed upon literary men. In 1868 he
became the editor of the Overland
Monthly, and finally he served for a
brief period as Professor of Literature
in a San Francisco college.
It will thus be perceived that Bret
Harte knew by personal experience
almost every form of life in California ;
and it was such a life as probably the
world never saw before, as, almost cer-
tainly, it will never see again.
When Bret Harte first became fa-
mous he was accused of misrepresenting
California society. A philosophic and
historical writer of great ability once
spoke of the " perverse romanticism " of
his tales ; and since his death these accu-
sations, if they may be called such, have
been renewed in San Francisco with bit-
terness. It is strange that Californians
themselves should be so anxious to strip
from their state the distinction which
Bret Harte conferred upon it, so anx-
ious to show that its heroic age never ex-
isted, that life in California has always
been just as commonplace, respectable,
and uninteresting as it is anywhere else
in the world. But be this as it may,
the records, the diaries, journals, and
narratives written by pioneers them-
selves, and, most important of all, the
daily newspapers published in San
Francisco and elsewhere from 1849 to
1859, fully corroborate Bret Harte's as-
sertion that he described only what he
saw and, in almost every case, only
what actually occurred. The fact is
that Bret Harte merely skimmed the
cream from the surface. The pioneers
and those who followed them in the
early fifties were mainly young men,
many of them well educated, and most
of them far above the average in vigor
and enterprise. They were such men
as enlist in the first years of a war ; and
few wars involve more casualties than
fell to their lot. They were sifted
again and again before the survivors
reached their destination. Many were
killed by the Apaches in the valleys
of the Rio Grande and the Colorado ;
many died of hunger and thirst ; many
had no other food during the last part
Bret Harte.
263
of their journey than the putrefying
bodies of the horses and oxen that had
perished along the way.
In the story called Liberty Jones's
Discovery, Bret Harte has sketched the
wan and demoralized appearance of a
party of emigrants who just managed to
reach the promised land. Many were
caught by storms in the late autumn, and
were snowed up in the mountains. In
Gabriel Conroy are described the suffer-
ings of such a party, a few of whom
were rescued in the spring ; and the hor-
rors which Bret Harte relates are only
the actual facts of the case upon which
his account is based. Those who came
by sea had to face a long, wearisome
voyage in lumbering craft, besides the
deadly Panama fever, and the possible
violence of the half-breeds on the Isth-
mus, who killed fifty out of one ship's
company.
Nor was life in California easy : the
toil was severe, the food often bad, the ex-
posure productive of rheumatism. Still
more wearing upon the nervous system
were the excitements, the chances and
changes of a miner's life. It has been
remarked of the California pioneers, as
of the veterans of the Civil War, that
they have grown old prematurely. Few
of them acquired wealth. Marshall, the
sawmill foreman, who discovered those
deposits which in five years produced gold
to the tune of $50,000,000, died poor.
No millionaires are found among the
" Forty-Niners," those time-worn asso-
ciates who gather annually to celebrate
their achievements beneath the folds of
the Bear Flag, the ensign of a prema-
ture, half-comic, half-heroic attempt to
wrest from Spain what was then an out-
lying and neglected province. Pioneers
do not, as a rule, gather wealth; they
make it possible for the shrewd men who
come after them to do so.
But the California pioneers enjoyed an
experience that was better than wealth.
They had their hour. The conditions of
society then prevailing were those which
the Almighty and the American Consti-
tution intended should prevail on this
continent, but from which we are daily
drifting further and further. All men
felt that, whether they were born so or
not, they had become free and equal.
Social distinctions were rubbed out. A
man was judged by his conduct ; not by
his bank account, nor by the class, the
family, the club, or the church to which
he belonged. Where all are rich equality
must prevail, and how could any one be
poor when the simplest kind of labor was
rewarded at the rate of eight dollars per
day ; when the average miner " cleaned
up " twenty or thirty dollars as the fruit
of his day's work, and a taking of from
three hundred to five hundred dollars a
week for weeks together was not uncom-
mon. Servants received about $150 a
month ; and washerwomen acquired for-
tunes and founded families. It was
cheaper to send one's clothes to China to
be laundered, and some thrifty persons
availed themselves of the fact.
Everybody was young. A man of
fifty with a gray beard was pointed out
as a curiosity. A woman created more
excitement in the streets of San Fran-
cisco than an elephant or a giraffe ; and
little children were followed by admir-
ing crowds eager to kiss them, to shake
their hands, to hear their voices, and
humbly begging permission to make
them presents of gold nuggets and
miners' curiosities. Almost everybody
was making money ; nobody was ham-
pered by past mistakes or misdeeds ; all
records had been wiped from the slate ;
the future was full of possibilities ; and
the dry, stimulating climate of Cali-
fornia added its intoxicating effect to
the general buoyancy of feeling. Best
of all, men were thrown upon their own
resources ; they themselves, and not
a highly organized police and a brave
fire department, protected their lives
and their property. We pay more
dearly than we think for such conven-
iences. The taxes which they involve
264
Bret Harte.
are but a small part of the bill, the
training in manliness and self-reliance
which we lose by means of them is a
much more serious matter. In the
mining camps of California, as in the
mediaeval towns of England, every man
was his own policeman, fireman, car-
penter, mason, and general functionary,
nay, he was his own judge, jury,
sheriff, and constable. With pistol and
bowie knife, he protected his gold, his
claim, and his honor. There is some-
thing in the Anglo-Saxon nature, left to
itself and freed from the restraints of a
more or less effete public opinion, which
causes it to resent an insult with what-
ever weapons are sanctioned by custom
in the absence of law.
In the early days of California soci-
ety reverted to this militant, heroic type.
The reversion was inevitable under the
circumstances, and, it was greatly as-
sisted by the social predominance of the
Southern element. The class represented
and partly caricatured in Colonel Star-
bottle was numerous, and, for reasons
which we have not space to recall, was
even more influential than its numbers
warranted. An editorial defense of
dueling was published in a San Fran-
cisco paper of Southern proclivities.
The senior editor of the Alta California
was killed in a duel ; and at another
time an assistant editor of the same
paper published a long letter, in which,
with an unconscious humor worthy of
Colonel Starbottle himself, he denied
the charge of having sought two rival
editors with homicidal intent. " I had
simply resolved," he wrote, "to pro-
nounce Messrs. Crane and Rice pol-
troons and cowards, and to spit in their
faces ; and had they seen fit to resent
it on the spot, I was prepared for them."
In those early days, when it was impos-
sible to turn a neighbor in distress over
to the police, or to a hospital, or to some
society, charitable or uncharitable, or to
dismiss him with a soup-ticket, in
that barbarous time, men were not only
more warlike, they were more generous,
more ready to act upon that instinctive
feeling of pity, which is the basis of all
morality. In short, the shackles of con-
ventionality and tradition were cast off,
and the primeval instincts of humanity
the instincts of pride, of pugnacity,
and of pity asserted themselves.
Such was the society in which Bret
Harte, at the age of fifteen, " a truant
schoolboy," to use his own words, was
plunged. Few writers have shown more
well-bred reticence about themselves, but
we have seen how varied was his experi-
ence, and we catch a single glimpse of
him in the exquisite poem, that " spray
of Western pine," which he laid upon
the grave of Dickens :
" Perhaps 't was boyish fancy, for the reader
Was youngest of them all,
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall ;
" The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with ' Nell ' on English
meadows
Wandered and lost their way."
The extent of the influence which
Dickens exercised upon Bret Harte has
been much discussed, and the critics com-
monly agree that this influence was whol-
ly bad. It is true that on the surface we
see only the bad effects of it, certain
faults of style, certain mannerisms, a cer-
tain mawkishness of sentiment. Bret
Harte had a morbid passion for splitting
infinitives, and he misuses a few words,
such as " gratuitous " and " aggravat-
ing," with malice aforethought. The
truth is that a spice of self-will, a modest
but radical unconventionality were just
as much parts of his character as was the
fastidiousness which in general controlled
his style.
Occasionally, moreover, he lapses into
a strange, pompous, involved manner,
making his heroes and heroines, in mo-
ments of passion or excitement, deliver
themselves in a way which seems ludi-
crously out of place, as, for example, in
Bret Harte.
265
Susy, where Clarence says : " If I did
not know you were prejudiced by a foolish
and indiscreet woman, I should believe
you were trying to insult me as you have
your adopted mother, and would save you
the pain of doing both in her house by
leaving it now and forever." Or, again,
in A Secret of Telegraph Hill, where
Herbert Bly says to the gambler, whom
he has surprised in his room hiding from
the vigilance committee : " Whoever you
may be, I am neither the police nor a
spy. You have no right to insult me by
supposing that I would profit by a mis-
take that made you my guest, and that I
would refuse you the sanctuary of the
roof that covers your insult as well as
your blunder." And yet the speaker is
not meant to be a prig.
So again he imitates, or at least re-
sembles, Dickens when he admires his
heroes in the wrong place, representing
them as saying or doing something quite
out of keeping with their real character,
and hardly to be described by any other
word than that of vulgar. The reader
will remember that passage in Our Mu-
tual Friend, where Eugene Wrayburn,
in his interview with the schoolmaster,
taking advantage of both his natural su-
periority and the superiority of the cir-
cumstances in which they happen to be
placed, treats the schoolmaster with an
arrogance which Dickens evidently feels
to be the natural manner of a fine gen-
tleman, but which is really an example
of that want of chivalry which is the
essence of an ungentlemanly character.
Bret Harte in several places makes Jack
Hamlin act in almost precisely the same
manner, playing the part of a bully in
respect to men who were inferior to him
socially, and inferior also in that capa-
city to shoot quickly and accurately,
which made Mr. Hamlin formidable.
Such, for example, was Hamlin's treat-
ment of Jenkinson, the tavern-keeper,
whom the inimitable Enriquez Saltello
described with Spanish courtesy as " our
good Jenkinson, our host, our father ; "
or again, in Gabriel Conroy, where
Hamlin insults the porter and threatens,
as Bret Harte says, falling into the man-
ner as well as the spirit of Dickens at
his very worst, " to forcibly dislodge
certain vital and necessary organs from
the porter's body."
On the whole, however, it seems high-
ly probable that Bret Harte derived
more good than bad from his admiration
for Dickens. The reading of Dickens
must have stimulated his boyish imagi-
nation, must have quickened that sym-
pathy with the weak and suffering, with
the downtrodden, with the waifs and
strays, with the outcasts of society, which
is the keynote of both writers. Senti-
ment and satire are the two moulds in
one or the other of which must be cast
all portrayal or discussion of human na-
ture provided that it has any emotional
character, is anything more than cold-
ly analytical. Sentiment furnishes the
subjective, and satire the objective meth-
od. Sentiment is sympathy, and satire
is antipathy. Swift's weapon was satire ;
that of Lamb was sentiment sharpened
by satire. Sterne dealt almost entirely
with sentiment. Thackeray could use
both instruments with equal skill, but he
is known chiefly as a satirist ; whereas
Dickens was strong in sentiment, and
commonly failed when he resorted to
satire. Sentiment is an infinitely more
valuable quality than satire. Satire is
merely destructive, whereas sentiment is
constructive. Becky Sharp is a warn-
ing ; but Colonel Newcome is an inspira-
tion. Satire convicts : sentiment regen-
erates. The most that satire can do is to
clear the ground, to lay bare the follies
and vices of human nature, to show how
the thing ought not to be done. This is
an important and necessary office ; but
sentiment goes much further : it prompts
to action ; it supplies the dynamic force
of benevolence, of affection, of ambi-
tion. It makes the tears flow, the blood
kindle. Satire is almost as objection-
able as reform ; and reformers are noto-
266
Bret Harte.
riously unlovely persons. The reformer,
like the satirist, can tear down, but he
cannot build up ; and it is so much more
important to build than to destroy that
the office of the man of sentiment is far
more valuable to the world than that of
the man of satire. This is the justifica-
tion of that popular judgment which,
despite the critics, sets Dickens above
Thackeray. Dickens, though perhaps
the inferior, both as man and artist, is
worth more to the world.
Bret Harte, like Dickens, deals main-
ly with sentiment, but, unlike Dickens,
he is a master of satire as well. His
satire is directed chiefly against that pe-
culiar form of cold and hypocritical
character which sometimes survives as
the very dregs of Puritanism. This is
the type which he has portrayed with
almost savage intensity in the character
of a woman who combines, sensuality and
deceit with the most orthodox form of
Protestantism and horse -hair sofa re-
spectability. Occasionally Bret Harte's
humor takes a satirical form, as when,
after describing how a stranger was
shot and nearly killed in a mining camp,
he speaks of a prevailing impression in
the camp " that his misfortune was the
result of the defective moral quality of
his being a stranger ; " or again in
Cressy, where Mrs. McKinstry, the
stern survivor of a Kentucky vendetta,
is said to have u looked upon her daugh-
ter's studies and her husband's interest
in them as a weakness that might in
process of time produce an infirmity of
homicidal purpose, and become enervat-
ing of eye and trigger finger. ' The old
man's worrits hev sorter shook out a lit-
tle of his sand,' she explained."
In the main, however, Bret Harte
was a writer of sentiment, and that is
why he is so beloved. Sentiment re-
solves itself into humor and pathos ; and
both humor and pathos are said to con-
sist in the perception of incongruities.
In humor, there is the perception of
some incongruity which excites derision
and a smile ; in pathos, there is the per-
ception of some incongruity which ex-
cites pity and a tear. It would hardly
be an exaggeration to say that in no
other writer in the world are humor
and pathos so nearly the same as they
are in Bret Harte. There are sentences
and paragraphs in his stories and poems
which might make one reader laugh and
another weep, or which, more likely yet,
would provoke a mingled smile and tear.
Perhaps the most consummate example
of this is found in the tale, How Santa
Glaus came to Simpson's Bar.
The reader will remember that Johnny,
after greeting the Christmas guests in
his " weak, treble voice, broken by that
premature hoarseness which only vaga-
bondage and the habit of premature self-
possession can give," and after hospita-
bly setting out the whiskey bottle and
some craxjkers, creeps back to bed, and is
then accosted by Dick Bullen, the hero
of the story.
" * Hello, Johnny ! you ain't goin' to
turn in agin, are ye ? ' said Dick.
" ' Yes, I are,' responded Johnny de-
cidedly.
" ' Why, wot 's up, old fellow ? '
" I 'm sick.'
" l How sick ? '
" * I Ve got a f evier, and childblains,
and roomatiz,' returned Johnny, and van-
ished within. After a moment's pause,
he added in the dark, apparently from
under the bedclothes, ' And biles ! '
" There was an embarrassing silence.
The men looked at each other and at
the fire."
I might quote many similar passages.
There is one in Gabriel Conroy which
describes Oily, Gabriel's little sister, get-
ting out of bed to ask what it was that
seemed to be troubling him. " She went
up to him so softly that she startled him,
shaking a drop of water on the hand
that she suddenly threw around his neck.
* You ain't worrying about that woman,
Gabe?'"
" ' No,' said Gabriel, with a laugh.
Bret Harte.
267
Oily looked down at her hand. Gabriel
looked up at the roof. ' There is a leak
thar that has got to be stopped to-mor-
row. Go to bed, Oily, or you '11 take
your death.' "
In discussing Bret Harte, it is almost
impossible to separate substance from
style. The style is so good, so exactly
adapted to the ideas which he wishes
to convey, that one can hardly imagine
it to be different. Some thousands of
years ago, an Eastern sage remarked
that he " would like to write a book
such that everybody should conceive
that he might have written it himself,
and yet so good that nobody else could
have written the like." This is the
ideal which Bret Harte fulfilled. Al-
most everything said by any one of his
characters is so accurate an expression
of that character as to seem inevitable.
It is felt at once to be just what such a
character must have said. Given the
character, the words follow; and any-
body could set them down ! This is the
fallacy underlying that strange feeling,
which every reader must have experi-
enced, of the apparent easiness of writing
an especially good or telling conversation
or soliloquy.
In Bret Harte, at his best, the choice
of words, the balance of the sentences,
the rhythm of the paragraphs, are very
nearly perfect. He had an ear for style
just as some persons have an ear for mu-
sic. In conciseness, in artistic restraint,
he is the equal of Turgenieff, of Haw-
thorne, of Newman. All this could not
have been achieved without effort. Bret
Harte had the conscience of an artist, if
he had no other conscience ; his master-
pieces were slowly and painfully forged.
" One day," wrote Mr. C. W. Stoddard,
who was his friend in California, "I
found him pacing the floor of his office
in the United States Branch Mint. He
was knitting his brows and staring at
vacancy. I wondered why. He was
watching and waiting for a word. . . .
I suggested one ; it would not answer ; it
must be a word of two syllables, or the
rhythm of the sentence would suffer.
Fastidious to a degree, he could not
overlook a lack of finish in a manuscript
offered him. He had a special taste
in the choice of titles, and I have known
him to alter the name of an article two
or three times, in order that the table of
contents might read handsomely and
harmoniously."
The truth is, Bret Harte was essen-
tially an artist, with all the peculiarities,
mental and moral, which are commonly
associated under that name ; and this
fact explains some apparent anomalies
in his career. Why did he leave and
never revisit California ? Why did he
make his home in England ? Bret Harte
left California when the glamour had de-
parted from it, when, if not in the state
generally, at least in San Francisco,
where he was living, a calculating com-
mercialism had in some degree replaced
the generous mood of earlier days. It
is well known that respectable San Fran-
cisco stood aghast at The Luck of Roar-
ing Camp, the alarm having been sound-
ed by a feminine proof-reader who was
shocked by what she conceived to be the
indecency of the tale. Not equally well
known is the contrasting fact, now record-
ed, that another young girl, an assistant
in the office of The Atlantic Monthly,
first called Mr. Fields' s attention to the
story, upon its publication in the Over-
land Monthly ; and Mr. Fields, having
read it, wrote that letter, soliciting a con-
tribution to the Atlantic, which, as Bret
Harte himself has related, encouraged
him and confounded his critics. Even
the sense of humor must have been weak-
ened in a community which insisted that
the newspapers should skip lightly over
the facts of a recent and destructive
earthquake, lest Eastern capital should
become alarmed.
Nor did Bret Harte find elsewhere in
this country any rest for the sole of his
foot. Fate took him to Cambridge,
a spot which, with all its virtues, could
268
The Princess of Make- Believe.
hardly have been congenial to a poet who
had breathed the free air of the Sierras.
New York and Boston were only one de-
gree less crude than San Francisco, and
almost as provincial. In London, he
doubtless found not only a more literary
and artistic atmosphere, but also a great-
er simplicity, a cultivated simplicity
different from, and yet essentially resem-
bling the unsophisticated naturalness of
a mining camp. Bret Harte's incapa-
city to generalize, to deal with abstract
notions or general propositions, is an-
other trait of the artistic nature. Every-
thing presented itself to him in a con-
crete form. He seldom attempts to
point the moral of his tales, and when
he does so he is apt to go astray. Nor
is it easy to persuade one's self that Bret
Harte was a very conscientious man, or
that he was actuated by lofty motives.
Finally, there can be discerned in him
that streak of coarseness which so often
accompanies extreme refinement and fas-
tidiousness.
But this is all that can be said in dis-
paragement; and one blushes to have
said it, when one reflects upon the no-
bility of the characters with whom Bret
Harte has enriched the world. It is re-
lated that of all his stories he himself
preferred Tennessee's Partner ; and this
is easy to believe, because the hero of
that tale is actuated by love and pity
entirely unalloyed, without the slightest
admixture of passion or self-interest.
We must not stop to call the roll of
Bret Harte's heroes and heroines ; two
characters only shall be mentioned, and
first that of the schoolmistress in the Idyl
of Red Gulch, who, true to her New
England instincts and training, gathers
her white skirts about her and flies from
the temptation, though few would now
call it such, which involved the happi-
ness of her life. Not Hawthorne him-
self could have conceived a character
actuated by purer motives, or could have
told the story more delicately. The sec-
ond is the Rose of Tuolumne, that beau-
tiful figure, as brave, as womanly, as
passionate as Juliet, who, in garments
stained with the blood of the man whom
she loved, dared his cowardly rival to
turn his pistol upon her. Such women
make the mothers of heroes, and the
genius who can portray them is an ele-
ment in the formation of an heroic race.
H. C. Merwin.
THE PRINCESS OF MAKE-BELIEVE.
THE Princess was washing dishes. On
her feet she would barely have reached
the rim of the great dish-pan, but on the
soap-box she did very well. A grimy
calico apron trailed to the floor.
" Now this golden platter I must wash
extry clean," the Princess said. " The
Queen is ve-ry particular about her gold-
en platters. Last time, when I left one
o' the corners it 's such a nextremely
heavy platter to hold she gave me a
scold oh, I mean I mean she tapped
me a little love pat on my cheek with her
golden spoon."
It was a great brown-veined, stone-
ware platter, and the arms of the Prin-
cess ached with holding it. Then, in an
unwary instant, it slipped out of her soap-
sudsy little fingers and crashed to the
floor. Oh ! oh ! the Queen ! the Queen !
She was coining ! The Princess heard
her shrill, angry voice, and felt the jar
of her heavy steps. There was the space
of an instant an instant is so short !
before the storm broke.
" You little limb o' Satan ! That 's my
best platter, is it ? Broke all to bits, eh ?
I '11 break " But there was a flurry
The Princess of Make-Believe.
269
of dingy apron and dingier petticoats,
and the little Princess had fled. She did
not stop till she was in her Secret Place
among the willows. Her small lean face
was pale, but undaunted.
" Th-the Queen is n't feeling very well
to-day," she panted. " It 's wash-day up
at the Castle. She never enjoys herself
on wash-days. And then that golden
platter I 'm sorry I smashed it all to
flinders ! When the Prince comes I shall
ask him to buy another."
The Prince had never come, but the
Princess waited for him patiently. She
sat with her face to the west and looked
for him to come through the willows with
the red sunset light filtering across his
hair. That was the way the Prince was
coming, though the time was not set. It
might be a good while before he came,
and then again you never could tell !
" But when he does, and we 've had
a little while to get acquainted, then I
shall say to him, ' Hear, O Prince, and
give ear to my my petition ! For ver-
ily, verily, I have broken many golden
platters and jasper cups and saucers,
and the Queen, long live her ! is sore
sore ' "
The Princess pondered for the forgot-
ten word. She put up a little lean brown
hand and rubbed a tingling spot on her
temple ah, not the Queen! It was
the Princess long live her ! who was
"sore."
" < I beseech thee, O Prince,' I shall
say, 4 buy new golden platters and jas-
per cups and saucers for the Queen, and
then shall I verily, verily be be ' "
Oh, the long words how they slipped
out of reach ! The little Princess sighed
rather wearily. She would have to re-
hearse that speech so many times before
the Prince came. Suppose he came to-
night ! Suppose she looked up now, this
minute, toward the golden west and he
was there, swinging along through the
willow canes toward her !
But there was no one swinging along
through the willows. The yellow light
flickered through that was all. Some-
where, a long way off, sounded the mo-
notonous hum of men's voices. Through
the lace-work of willow twigs there
showed the faintest possible blur of col-
or. Down beyond, in the clearing, the
Castle Guards in blue jean blouses were
pulling stumps. The Princess could not
see their dull, passionless faces, and she
was glad of it. The Castle Guards de-
pressed her. But they were not as bad
as the Castle* Guardesses. They were
mostly old women with bleared, dim eyes,
and they wore such faded silks.
" My silk dress is rather faded," mur-
mured the little Princess wistfully. She
smoothed down the scant calico skirt
with her brown little fingers. The patch
in it she would not see.
" I shall have to have the Royal Dress-
maker make me another one soon. Let
me see, what color shall I choose ? I 'd
like my gold-colored velvet made up.
I 'm tired of wearing royal purple dresses
all the time, though of course I know
they 're appropriater. I wonder what
color the Prince would like best? I
should rather choose that color."
The Princess's little brown hands were
clasped about one knee, and she was rock-
ing herself slowly back and forth, her
eyes, wistful and wide, on the path the
Prince would come. She was tired to-
day and it was harder to wait.
" But when he comes I shall say,
4 Hear, O Prince. Verily, verily, I did
not know which color you would like to
find me dressed I mean arrayed in,
and so I beseech thee excuse pardon,
I mean mine infirmity.' "
The Princess was not sure of " infirm-
ity," but it sounded well. She could not
think of a better word.
" And then I think then he will
take me in his arms, and his face will be
all sweet and splendid like the Mother
o' God's in the picture, and he will whis-
per, I don't think he will say it out
loud, oh, I 'd rather not ! ' Verily,
Princess,' he will whisper, < Oh, verily,
270
The Princess of Make-Believe.
verily, thou hast found favor in my sight ! '
And that will mean that he does n't care
what color I am, for he loves me."
Lower and lower sank the solemn voice
of the Princess. Slower and slower
rocked the little lean body. The birds
themselves stopped singing at the end.
In the Secret Place it was very still.
" Oh, no, no, no, not verily ! "
breathed the Princess, in soft awe. For
the wonder of it took her breath away.
She had never in her life been loved,
and now, at this moment, it seemed so
near! She thought she heard the foot-
steps of the Prince.
They came nearer. The crisp twigs
snapped under his feet. He was whis-
tling.
" Oh, I can't look ! I can't ! "
gasped the little Princess, but she turned
her face to the west, she had always
known it would be from the west, and
lifted closed eyes to his coming. When
he got to the Twisted Willow she might
dare to look, to the Little Willow
Twins, anyway.
" And I shall know when he does," she
thought. " I shall know the minute ! "
Her face was rapt and tender. The
miracle she had made for herself, the
gold she had coined out of her piteous
alloy, was it not come true at last ?
Verily, verily?
Hush ! Was the Prince not coming
through the willows ? And the sunshine
was trickling down on his hair ! The
Princess knew, though she did not look.
" He is at the Twisted Willow," she
thought. " Now he is at the Little Wil-
low Twins." But she did not open her
eyes. She did not dare. This was a
little different, she had never counted on
being afraid.
The twigs snapped louder and nearer
now very near. The merry whistle
grew clearer, and then it stopped.
" Hullo ! "
Did princes say " hullo ! " The Prin-
cess had little time to wonder, for he was
there before her. She could feel his
presence in every fibre of her trembling
little being, though she would not open
her eyes for very fear that it might be
somebody else. No, no, it was the
Prince ! It was his voice, clear and ring-
ing, as she had known it would be. She
put up her hands suddenly and covered
her eyes with them to make surer. It
was not fear now, but a device to put
off a little longer the delight of seeing
him.
" I say, hullo ! Have n't you got any
tongue ? "
" Oh, verily, verily, I mean hear,
Prince, I beseech," she panted. The
boy's merry eyes regarded the shabby
small person in puzzled astonishment.
He felt an impulse to laugh and run
away, but his royal blood forbade either.
So he waited.
" You are the Prince," the little Prin-
cess cried. " I 've been waiting the long-
est time, but I knew you 'd come,"
she added simply. " Have you got your
velvet an' gold buckles on ? I 'm goin'
to look in a minute, but I 'm waiting to
make it spend."
The Prince whistled softly. " No," he
said then, " I did n't wear them clo'es
to-day. You see, my mother "
" The Queen," she interrupted, " you
mean the Queen ? "
" You bet I do ! She 's a reg'lar-built-
er ! Well, she don't like to have me
wearin' out my best clo'es every day,"
he said gravely.
" No," eagerly, " nor mine don't.
Queen, I mean, but she is n't a mo-
ther, mercy, no ! I only wear silk
dresses every day, not my velvet ones.
This silk one is getting a little faded."
She released one hand to smooth the
dress wistfully. Then she remembered
her painfully practiced little speech and
launched into it hurriedly.
" Hear, O Prince. Verily, verily, I
did not know which color you 'd like to
find me dressed in I mean arrayed.
1 beseech thee to excuse oh, pardon,
I mean "
Sill's Poetry.
271
But she got no further. She could
endure the delay no longer, and her eyes
flew open.
She had known his step ; she had known
his voice. She knew his face. It was ter-
ribly freckled, and she had not expected
freckles on the face of the Prince. But
the merry, honest eyes were the Prince's
eyes. Her gaze wandered downward to
the homemade clothes and bare, brown
legs, but without uneasiness. The Prince
had explained about his clothes. Sud-
denly, with a shy, glad little cry, the
Princess held out her hands to him.
The royal blood flooded the face of the
Prince and filled in all the spaces be-
tween its little gold-brown freckles. But
the Prince held out his hand to her. His
lips formed for words and she thought
he was going to say, " Verily, Princess,
thou hast found favor "
" Le' 's go fishin'," the Prince said.
Annie Hamilton Donnell.
SILL'S POETRY.
THE appearance of the Poems of Ed-
ward Rowland Sill as one of the Lim-
ited Editions of the Riverside Press
draws attention to a poetic reputation
singularly gradual and persistent in its
growth. It is nearly thirty-five years
since the first slender volume of Sill's
work came from the press of Leypoldt
& Holt in New York. It was followed
at long intervals by four other thin
books, of which the later issues were in
part reprints, and now, fifteen years
after the poet's death, the first col-
lection approximating completeness is
ready.
The causes for the slow growth of
Sill's fame are not difficult to find. He
was notably unconcerned for his repu-
tation. Most of his poems appeared
unsigned or over a nom de plume, and
his poetry was of the undramatic, re-
flective order that lends itself but indif-
ferently to wide republication or quo-
tation. It was, moreover, peculiarly
personal in its appeal. The secret of
Longfellow's popularity as a poet, it
has been remarked, is that he "ex-
presses a universal sentiment in the sim-
plest and most melodious manner. " Sill
had no such secret. He had not the
secret of form : he never approached
Longfellow's mastery of melody. He
had even less the secret of matter. The
sentiments he dealt with were not uni-
versal, but markedly individual. He
did not voice the general mood, but the
tingling personal thought that was stir-
ring in his own mind. He once made
the distinction in one of his charming
bits of prose between the uses of prose
and verse, that prose is the language
of one's profession, verse the language
of one's heart. Content with giving ex-
pression to his own moods, reflections,
and sentiments, he was not concerned
for the effect upon the public, and he
has been sought not by the general
throng of readers, but by the constantly
growing number who have found their
experience reflected in his, who have
found themselves in sympathy with the
struggle, the doubt, the hope that are
voiced in his verses.
Sill was, as the late Mr. H. E. Scud-
der admirably put it in reviewing the
little volume called Poems in the At-
lantic fifteen years ago, a " battling
spirit." Such his inheritance, his tem-
perament, and his environment united
to make him. He was born of New Eng-
land stock, and joined the two strains of
preacher and of doctor, which in other
times were conceived to possess a subtle
opposition, as standing for rival devo-
tions, to body and to spirit. His father
and grandfather were physicians, but his
272
Sill's Poetry.
mother's father and grandfather were
ministers, and the antinomy which we
may imagine dimly suggested in his
ancestry was more fully realized by his
lack of health, which kept him on the
verge of invalidism all his life, and
made him sadly familiar with the un-
ending feud of sense and soul. He was
born, too, into an environment of moral
and spiritual struggle. His youth was
passed in the time of preparation for
the Civil War. He was an undergradu-
ate at Yale when Darwin's Origin of
Species appeared to open a strife of
opinions hardly less significant in the
world of thought than the great war was
in the world of affairs.
What share each of the elements of
strife had in Sill's life it is not easy to
say, but together they gave its prevail-
ing tone of unrest that classed him
among the Stoics of his time, and made
him, with Matthew Arnold and Arthur
Hugh Clough, a poet of doubt and spir-
itual struggle. His best known poem
is a prayer ; the one which most nearly
shares that place is a song of the bat-
tlefield; the most musical and equable
of his longer poems, The Venus of Milo,
is of the strife between the higher and
the lower love ; the most frequently re-
curring note in his lyrics is that of de-
sire, of a soul disquieted, of longing and
aspiration. This turmoil of spirit wa^s
a true reflection of Sill's inner state.
For years he was in doubt what he was
to do. He had expected, while an un-
dergraduate, to enter the ministry, but
left college out of heart for it; after
six years in the West he returned to
Cambridge still undetermined. This
long uncertainty, which closed in the
realization that he could not find his
place in the profession of his choice,
gets frequent voice in his poems. The
experience of religious doubt which to
sensitive and devout souls comes with
mortal pangs has had few more touching
and wistful expressions than he gave it
in the last stanza of Spring Twilight.
In another poem, The Thrush, there is
added to the note of wistfulness and
sympathy a somewhat pathetic touch of
regret, as if he questioned whether the
price in capacity for pain that marks
the scale of rank in nature were not
too high a price to pay for man's differ-
ence from the bird.
Sill's intense sensibility to the pain
and ache of the world, and to the pathos
of human fate, came to utterance in the
plaintive verses, A Foolish Wish, with
their poignant refrain "Before I go,"
voicing the world-old shrinking from
death like a thin echo from Omar's
" Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the
Rose!"
but made more touching by their chid-
ing of self and their sense of larger
issues :
" 'T is a child's long-ing, on the beach at play :
' Before I go,'
He begs the beckoning mother, ' Let me stay
One shell to throw ! '
'T is coming night ; the great sea climbs the
shore,
' Ah, let me toss one little pebble more,
Before I go!'"
So his refined consciousness of the
discords of life and its ceaseless contest
drove him to ask the old, unanswered
questions, of the nature of things and
men, and the constitution of the uni-
verse. He did not find the world as
Browning found it, subject to man's
control, but perceived that,
" Sullen earth can sever souls
Far as the Pleiades."
A.nd as to man's place in it, he wrote,
with at least a touch of scorn, in The
Hermitage,
" 'T is ludicrous that man should think he
roams
Freely at will a world planned for his use.
Lo, what a mite he is ! Snatched hither and
yon,
Tossed round the sun, and in its orbit flashed
Round other centres, orbits without end ;
His bit of brain too small to even feel
The spinning of the little hailstone, Earth.
So his creeds glib 
