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THE 


ALIFORNIAN 


A    WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


V 

pi 

\'* l" 


JANUARY— JUNE,  1881 


VOLUME    III. 


SAN     FRANCISCO: 

THE    CALIFORNIA   PUBLISHING   COMPANY, 

No.  202  SANSOME  STREET,  CORNER  PINE. 


CONTENTS. 


Agra  Bazaar,  An Jno.  H.  Gilmour 366 

American  Imitation  of  England,  The.      A  Colloquy Octave  Thanet. 5 

American  Traveler,  An John  C.  Barrows 399 

Art  and  Artists 89,  186,  281,  572 

Barbary  Coast  City,  A A.  M.  Morce 468 

Best  Use  of  Wealth,  The E.  X.  Sill. . . .'. 43 

Blighted Constance  Maude  Neville 356 

Books  Received 90,  189,  285,  375,  476,  574 

California  under  the  Friars John  S.  Hittell 432 

Child's  Journey  through  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  A. .  .Kate  Heath 14 

China  Sea  Typhoon,  A Wm.  Lawrence  Merry 127 

Clouded  Summer,  A Lydia  E.  Houghton 463 

Correspondence 383 

Day  on  a  Guano  Island,  A Emily  S.  Loud 113 

Decay  of  Earnestness,  The Josiah  Royce 18 

Division  of  the  State,  The J.  P.    Widney 124 

Doubting  and  Working J.  Royce 229 

Drama  and  Stage 90,  188,  282,  380,  476,  571 

Dream-plant  of  India,  The Jno.  H.  Gilmour. 535 

Earl  of  Beaconsfield  and  his  Work,  The Robt.  J.   Creighton 545 

Endowment  of  Scientific  Research,  The George  Davidson 293 

Festival  of  Childhood,  The Marie  Howland 61 

Forgotten  Poet,  A William  D.  Armes 180 

'49  and  '50 John   Vance  Cheney 197,  328,  401,  505 

Gardens  of  the  Sea-shore,  The C.  L.  Anderson 77 

George  Eliot  as  a  Religious  Teacher Josiah  Royce 300 

George  Eliot's  Later  Work Milicent  Washburn  Shinn 501 

Good-for- Naught Helen    Wilmans 343,  421,  523 

Homely  Heroine,  A Evelyn  M.  Ludlum 52 

Hydraulic  Mining. — Need  of  State  Action  upon  Rivers. .  .John  H.  Durst 9 

Interoceanic  Communication Wm.  Lawrence  Merry 213 

In  the  Skyland  Omnibus Mary  H.  Field 246 

Irish  Question  Practically  Considered,  The R.  E.  Desmond 101 

Is  the  Jury  System  a  Failure? E.    W.  McGraw 412 

Literary  Shrine,  A Nathan    W.  Moore 242 

Literature  of  Utopia,  The M.  G.    Upton .\, 530 

Lucretia  Mott Ellen  C.  Sargent 354 

Monroe  Doctrine  and  the  Isthmian  Canal,  The John  C.  Hall 389 

Mr.   Hiram  McManus Warren  Cheney 564 

Mr.  Wallace's  "Island  Life" Joseph  Le  Conte 485 


CONTENTS. 


New  California,  A Alexander  Del  Mar 207 

New  Poet,  A Abner  D.   Cartwright 70 

Note  Book 86,  183,  277,  373,  570 

Old  Californians Joaquin  Miller. 48 

"Old  China" Mellie  A.  Hopkins 66 

Old  Colleges  and  Young Martin  Kellogg. 488 

Old  Hunks's  Christmas  Present Chas.  H.  Phelps 82 

Olive  Tree,  The John.  I.  Bleasdale 256 

One  Stormy  Night Julia  H.  S.  Bugeia 237 

Outcroppings 93.  r93-  287.  38l«  479.  5?8 

Parish  Primaries,  The Sam  Davis 449 

People  I  would  Like  to  Endow Martin  Kellogg. ...    168 

Pescadero  Pebble,  A ! Isabel  Hammell  Raymond 131 

Pessimistic  Pestilence John  S.  Hittell 363 

Poetry  of  Theophile  Gautier,  The •. Edgar  Fawcett 397 

Present  House  of  Stuart,  The Edward  Kirkpatrick 269 

Reminiscences  of  the  Telegraph  on  the  Pacific  Coast. .  .James  Gamble 321 

Republic  of  Andorra,  The Edward  Kirkpatrick 108 

Rival  Cities,  The William  Sloane  Kennedy 275 

Science  and  Industry 87,  184,  279,  374,  471 

Seeking  Shadows J.   W.  Gaily 311 

Shall  we  have  Free  High  Schools?. E.  jR.  Sill 172 

Six  Weeks  at  Ilkley Mary  R.  Higham 158 

Southern  California Charles  H.  Shinn  . . 446 

State  vs.  the  Christian  University,  The C.   C.  Stratton 457 

Strange  Confession,  A W.   C.  Morrow 25,   117,  221 

Study  of  Walt  Whitman ,  A William  Sloane  Kennedy 149 

Swinburne  on  Art  and  Life Alfred  A.    Wheeler 129 

Taxation  in  California C.    T.  Hopkins 139 

Teachers  at  Farwell,  The Milicent   Washburn  Shinn 434 

Toby '. Josephine  Clifford. 491 

Twelve  Days  on  a  Mexican   Highway D.  S.  Richardson 440 

Uncle  Sam  and  the  Western  Farmer. Leigh  Mann 250 

Up  the  Moselle  and  around  Metz W.    W.   Crane,  Jr 36 

Venus  Victrix    Mary  W.   Glascock 539 

Verse-painter  of  Still  Life,  A Nathan  Newmark ....    326 

View  from  Monte  Diablo,  The A.  R.  Whitehall. 369 

What  is  a  University? E.  R.  Sill 452 

Wiring  a  Continent James  Gamble 556 

POETRY. 

Alvarado  of  Madrid Yda  Addis 167 

Californian  Cradle  Song Chas.  H.  Phelps 148 

Coronation Henrietta  R.  Eliot 431 

Defrauded Carlotta  Perry 544 

Divided .S.  E.  Anderson 501 

Dream  of  Death,  A William  Sloane  Kennedy 342 

Eleanore Julia  H.  S.  Bugeia 563 

Four  German  Songs Milicent   Washburn  Shinn 362 

In  Time  of  Drought Milicent   Washburn  Shinn 69 

Learned  by  the  Way James  Berry  Bensel 268 

Love's  Knightriness Charles  Edwin  Markham 36 

Moths  Round  a  Lamp Edgar  Fawcett 116 

Night  of  Storm,  A Ina  D.   Coolbrith 220 

Old  Story,  An ._, Carlotta  Perry 241 

Parted .'. Katharine  Lee  Bates 452 

Royal  Wine,  The Alice  E.  Pratt 522 

Ruby-throat L.  H.  Bartram 410 

To  Ethel S.  E.  Anderson 47 

Washington  Territory Joaquin  Miller 310 


THE  CALIFORNIA^ 


WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE, 


VOL.  III.— JANUARY,  1881.— No.  13. 


THE   AMERICAN    IMITATION    OF    ENGLAND. 

A    COLLOQUY. 

[SCENE — MR.  RALPH  ENDICOTT'S  library,  furnished  in  old  English  style.  MR.  ENDICOTT  stands  beside  his  wife 
at  the  window,  looking  out  over  the  Berkshire  hills.  He  is  tall  and  fair,  and  his  black  velvet  morning-coat 
sets  off  his  wavy  yellow  hair  and  auburn  beard.  She  is  slender  and  dark.  Her  clear,  olive  skin  has  a  faint 
tinge  of  color  on  the  cheeks.  The  outline  of  her  face  is  exquisite,  and  she  has  very  thick,  dark  hair,  and 
fine  eyes.] 


ENDICOTT.     If  he  were  only  less  of  a  cad ! 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.     He  is  very  good-natured. 

ENDICOTT.  Oh,  he  is  not  half  a  bad  fellow ; 
but  he  is  so  horribly,  so  demonstratively  Amer- 
ican. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT  (smiling'}.  We,  also,  are 
American,  Ralph. 

ENDICOTT.  At  least  we  don't  shake  the  fact 
in  every  one's  face.  Yesterday,  when  he  was 
talking  to  Anstice  at  dinner,  I  grew  hot  half  a 
dozen  times  at  his  bragging.  He  hadn't  the 
sense  to  see  how  distasteful  his  talk  was  to  me. 
By  Jove,  I  longed  to  throw  him  out  of  the  win- 
dow. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT  (patting his  arm'}.  Sir  Wil- 
frid didn't  seem  to  mind.  And,  certainly,  he 
must  have  seen  how  heroically  you  struggled 
to  change  the  conversation.  I  pitied  you  from 
my  heart,  but  I  was  too  far  off  to  help  you. 

ENDICOTT  (lifting  the  hand  on  his  arm  and 
kissing  it}.  You  were  an  angel.  Only  the  oc- 
casional warning  signals  I  caught  from  your 
eyes  enabled  me  to  keep  from  blazing  out  at 
Havens.  But  it  wasn't  in  my  character  of  host 
that  I  suffered  most ;  though  it  isn't  pleasant  to 
invite  your  friends  to  hear  their  country  abused. 
Still,  Anstice  is  a  gentleman,  and  understood. 
The  worst  thing  was  that  Havens's  talk  made 


me  ashamed  of  my  country.  I  haven't  a  doubt 
Anstice  thought  him  a  representative  Ameri- 
can. Good  heavens,  Margaret !  Do  you  sup- 
pose he  is? 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  A  Western  American  ?  I 
don't  know.  Perhaps.  Hush  !  I  hear  him  in 
the  hall.  He  is  talking  to  Nelly. 

ENDICOTT.  Uncommonly  good  running  he 
seems  to  make  with  Nelly,  too,  confound  him. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  She  sympathizes  with  him 
in  his  disgust  at  what  they  call  our  "English 
nonsense."  Good  morning,  dear.  Did  you 
have  a  pleasant  walk? 


[Enter  Miss  NELLY  GOODRICH,  of  Kansas  City,  Mis- 
souri, a  very  pretty  girl,  whose  brown  hair  has  been 
roughed  by  the  wind  and  whose  brown  eyes  are  shin- 
ing-] 

Miss  NELLY.  Perfectly  lovely.  I  think  the 
Berkshire  hills  are  too  beautiful  for  anything. 
Don't  say  now  that  I  don't  admire  something 
in  Massachusetts.  I  think  the  scenery  is  per- 
fection— I  dote  on  it. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  We  would  prefer  to  have 
you  dote  on  the  people. 

Miss  NELLY.  I  don't.  I  can't  help  it.  I 
suppose  it's  my  unlucky  Western  education.  I 


Vol.  III. —  i.        [Copyright  by  THE  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors.] 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


can't  play  tennis  or  whist;  I  don't  do  Ken- 
sington needlework ;  I've  never  been  to  Europe, 
and  I  hate,  hate,  hate  Henry  James— 

[Enter  MR.  CYRUS  L.  HAVENS,  of  Chicago.  He  is  a 
tall  young  man  of  thirty  or  thirty-five,  handsome,  and 
carrying  himself  well,  if  with  something  of  assertion.] 

MR.  HAVENS.  Hullo!  Who's  Nelly  hat- 
ing? Who  is  Henry  James,  anyhow,  Cousin 
Margaret — somebody  I  ain't  met  yet  ? 

ENDICOTT  (grimly}.    No.    He's  an  author. 

HAVENS.  Oh,  yes — solitary  horseman  fel- 
low. He's  rather  slow.  But  what  do  you  want 
to  waste  so  much  emotion  on  that  dead  old 
party  for,  Nelly? 

Miss  NELLY  (looking  sidewise  at  Endicott 
to  detect  any  hint  of  a  smile}.  It  is  another 
man,  Mr.  Havens.  Henry  James  is  a  smart 
young  American,  who  lives  in  London,  and  is 
making  a  fortune  by  ridiculing  his  own  country. 

HAVENS.  Don't  take  much  stock  in  Aim,  if 
that's  the  case.  What's  the  use  of  having  a 
country  if  you  can't  stand  up  for  it? 

Miss  NELLY.  That's  what  I  think.  But 
wherever  I  go,  East,  I  run  into  people  who  can't 
find  anything  good  enough  for  them  in  their 
own  country.  They  import  everything  from 
England  or  from  France.  In  New  York,  it  was 
all  France ;  but  here,  it's  all  England.  They 
get  their  furniture,  and  their  dishes,  and  their 
cookery,  and  their  coachmen,  and  even  their 
accent,  from  England.  When  I  went  to  Bos- 
ton, the  other  day,  I  was  told  eight  times  in  an 
evening  that  the  Bostonians,  according  to  Eng- 
lish testimony,  spoke  the  purest  English  going. 
All  the  young  men  I  met  were  dressed  by  Eng- 
lish tailors,  and  talked  just  like  characters  in 
English  novels.  Mercy  knows !  they  were  stu- 
pid enough  to  have  been  in  a  novel  themselves. 

ENDICOTT.  We  never  could  get  you  to  say 
much  about  that  dinner  before,  Nelly.  I  am 
glad  to  get  particulars. 

Miss  NELLY.  I  didn't  enjoy  the  occasion 
enough  to  talk  about  it  much. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.    But  Aunt  Millicent? 

Miss  NELLY.  Aunt  Millicent  was  a  saint  in 
good  clothes,  as  she  always  is.  But,  of  course, 
she  couldn't  be  with  me  every  minute.  And 
the  others — I  never  was  so  genteelly  snubbed 
in  my  life. 

HAVENS  (who  has  been  tugging  fiercely  at 
his  mustache  for  the  last  five  minates}.  Peo- 
ple's notions  of  politeness  differ.  Now,  in  Chi- 
cago, when  we  go  to  see  people  and  meet  a 
stranger,  we  think  it  the  polite  thing  to  make 
it  as  pleasant,  as  we  can  for  him. 

ENDICOTT.  Yes ;  you  tell  him  what  a  won- 
derful city  you  have,  and  describe  its  beauties. 
I  have  been  in  Chicago. 


MRS.  ENDICOTT.  But,  Nelly,  I  can't  believe 
that  any  of  Aunt  Millicent's  friends  could  have 
been  so  rude.  You  must  have  fancied — 

Miss  NELLY.  Oh,  I  don't  mean  that  they 
were  ri  ^e.  They  were  dreadfully  well  behaved 
and  pi-  Je.  Nobody  said  a  word — that  was 
just  it,  ton't  you  see?  They  were  so  careful, 
whenever-  showed  my  ignorance  of  something 
that  they  seemed  to  know  as  well  as  their  own 
names,  they  changed  the  conversation,  and 
talked  abou^  nice,  easy,  common  things — like 
Indians.  It  s  amusing  how  they  all  seemed 
to  think  I  L  be  interested  in  the  Indians. 
The  fact  is,  tver  saw  an  Indian  in  my  life. 
I  suppose  thv  _  thought  I  was  a  kind  of  savage 
myself.  I  know  I  felt  very  much  like  one.  I 
was  perfectly  possessed  to  say  something  shock- 
ing, they  were  all  so  prim  and  so  proper,  and 
all  talking  in  the  same  Englishy  way,  with  such 
a  horid,  indefinite  expression  about  them,  as 
though  they  knew  it  all.  I  couldn't  help  seeing 
that  everything  I  thought  fine  they  despised, 
and  everything  they  seemed  to  be  enthusiastic 
about  I  thought  silly  or  else  hideous. 

HAVENS.    Well,  I'm  glad  I  didn't  go. 

Miss  NELLY.  You  may  be.  You  would 
have  been  an  awful  comfort,  though ;  only  I'm 
afraid  you  would  have  disgraced  yourself  by 
laughing  right  out  over  some  of  the  things  they 
said  and  did.  I  wish  you  could  have  heard 
them  go  on  about  some  frightful  engravings,  by 
some  old  German — I've  forgot  his  name.  No, 
they  weren't  engravings — they  were  etchings. 
Aunt  Millicent  had  just  paid  some  fabulous 
price  for  the  old  horrors,  and  everybody  was 
looking  at  them.  And  there  was  some  needle- 
work, too,  that  they  looked  at  and  admired. 
One  of  the  men  was  a  good  deal  more  inter- 
ested than  the  women.  Think  of  a  man's  be- 
ing interested  in  fancy-work!  I  told  him  I 
thought  it  was  queer  a  gentleman  should  care 
for  such  things. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  That  must  have  been 
Philip  Locke.  Didn't  you  find  him  agreeable? 

Miss  NELLY.  Indeed,  I  didn't.  He  was 
horrid.  Every  once  in  a  while,  though  his  face 
was  perfectly  sober,  his  eyes  would  flash  in  such 
a  way  I  knew  he  was  laughing  at  me.  And  he 
was  so  English.  He  put  "don't  you  think?"  at 
the  end  of  every  sentence.  I  hated  him.  He 
knew  Henry  James,  and  said  he  was  a  delight- 
ful fellow. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  Wasn't  there  any  one 
there  whom  you  liked? 

Miss  NELLY.  Well,  there  was  one  man  I 
thought  rather  nice;  but,  afterward,  I  found 
he  was  dreadfully  talented,  and  had  written  a 
book  about  "quarternions,"  and,  as  I  hadn't  the 
ghost  of  an  idea  what  that  was,  I  thought  I'd 


THE  AMERICAN  IMITATION  OF  ENGLAND. 


better  fight  shy  of  him.  Then  there  was  an- 
other man  I  liked  the  looks  of,  but  he  was  /g"o- 
ing  to  reform  the  civil  service,  and  at  dinner  I 
heard  him  telling  his  next  neighbor  h<  /  great, 
and  grand,  and  glorious,  and  perfect  -ie  Eng- 
lish civil  service  was;  so  I  thought  t>  t  was  all 
I  cared  to  know  about  him.  And  p'j  ,ie  was  a 
very  pretty  girl  who  came  up  U,  me,  and  I 
thought  I  should  get  along  with  her  because 
she  said  she  couldn't  learn  to  ptey  tennis;  but 
when  I  overheard  her  talking"  icrbert  Spen- 
cer to  a  dreadful  man  who  "  y  him,  I  gave 
her  up,  too. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  Did  she  ,  .ave  light  hair, 
and  dark  eyes,  and  very  pretty  dimples? 

Miss  NELLY.    Yes.    Why? 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  It  was  Amy  Carinth.  In 
spite  of  Herbert  Spencer,  she  is  a  very  charm- 
ing, unassuming  girl,  and  I  am  sure  you  would 
have  liked  her. 

Miss  NELLY.  No,  I  wouldn't  Excuse  me 
for  contradicting,  but  I  never  could  like  a  per- 
son who  talked  of  the  "lower  clawses,"  and 
thought  a  limited  monarchy  had  great  advan- 
tages. 

HAVENS.  I  wish  all  these  folks  who  are  so 
keen  for  monarchy,  and  set  themselves  up  for 
aristocrats,  would  take  themselves  off  where 
they  belong.  We  haven't  any  use  for  them. 
This  is  a  free  country,  where  one  man's  as  good 
as  another. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT  (gently}.  I  am  afraid,  Cy- 
rus, there  is  no  place  in  all  this  world  where 
one  man  is  as  good  as  another,  and  there  never 
will  be. 

HAVENS.  I  don't  think  I  see  just  what  you 
are  driving  at.  I  don't  mean  good  in  a  moral 
sense.  I  mean  politically,  and well,  so- 
cially. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  You  have  a  large  pork- 
packing  establishment,  I  believe,  Cyrus.  Did 
you  ever  ask  any  of  your  "hands"  to  dine  with 
you  ? 

HAVENS.  Don't  ask  questions  to  trip  me  up, 
like  those  dialogues  of  Socrates  they  used  to 
have  in  the  Speaker.  Of  course,  you  know  why. 
If  I  don't  ask  Tim  O'Brien,  for  instance,  to 
take  dinner  with  me,  it  ain't  because  I  hold  my- 
self up  to  be  a  whit  better  man  than  Tim,  for  I 
can  tell  you  that  I  am  not.  I  only  wish  I  was 
as  good.  No;  it's  simply  because  Tim's  ways 
are  not  my  ways,  and  we  wouldn't  jibe  together. 
He  would  be  as  uncomfortable  as  I.  But  I 
don't  feel  called  upon  to  give  myself  airs  to 
Tim  just  because  I  have  had  a  better  educa- 
tion, and  eat  with  my  fork,  while  he  finds  a 
knife  handy. 

ENDICOTT.  Nor  do  I  give  myself  airs  of  su- 
periority when  I  recognize  such  a  fact,  and  talk 


about  the  "lower  classes,"  and  refuse  to  speak 
of  Tim  O'Brien  as  a  gentleman. 

HAVENS.  Don't  you  chip  in,  Ralph.  I'm 
waiting  to  hear  Margaret  point  her  own  moral. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  I  merely  meant,  Cyrus,  that 
it  is  unhappily  true  that  men  are  not  born  free 
and  equal.  Some  are  born  weak  and  some  are 
born  strong,  some  healthy,  some  deformed,  and, 
I  am  afraid  we  must  admit,  also,  some  good  and 
some  bad.  The  differences  between  men  run 
deep  as  human  nature,  and  no  political  system 
has  ever  been  able  to  smooth  them  out — 

HAVENS.  I  know  all  that.  But  what  I'm 
after  is  just  this :  Granted  there  are  natural 
barriers  between  men.  Well,  I  hold  that  is  the 
very  reason  why  we  shouldn't  be  building  arti- 
ficial ones.  Let  the  best  man  take  the  best 
place,  I  say;  but  don't  let's  give  a  man  a  place 
just  because  his  great-grandfather  was  the  best 
man.  Don't  let's  import  the  infernal  spirit  of 
caste,  which  is  about  played  out  in  the  old  world, 
into  our  new  world.  Don't  let's  imitate  effete 
aristocracies  and  their  ways.  No,  sir.  Let's 
stand  on  our  own  feet,  and  believe  in  our  own 
country,  and  give  every  man  a  show  on  his 
merits. 

Miss  NELLY  (clapping  her  hands}.  Three 
cheers  for  our  side  ! 

ENDICOTT.  But  who  is  your  best  man?  Are 
you  going  to  allow  him  to  be  civilized,  or  will 
civilization  make  him  too  much  of  an  effete 
aristocrat?  Beg  pardon,  Margaret;  were  you 
going  to  say  something  ? 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  I  was  going  to  say  that 
Cyrus  and  I  were,  may  be,  a  little  like  the 
knights  who  quarreled  about  the  shield.  Per- 
haps I  haven't  made  what  I  meant  quite  clear, 
yet  I  think  that,  just  as  civilized  men  are  wide- 
ly removed  from  savages,  in  all  their  feelings, 
and  ideals,  and  customs  of  life,  so  certain  class- 
es of  civilized  men — though,  of  course,  not  so 
widely — are  removed  from  each  other  in  the 
same  way,  according  as  they  are  more  or  less 
civilized;  and  I  see  no  dishonor  to  any  class  in 
the  frank  recognition  of  this  fact.  It  is  no  kind- 
ness to  a  man  to  tell  him  he  is  your  equal  when 
he  is  not. 

HAVENS.  But  suppose  I  say  he  is  my  equal. 
Take  Tim  O'Brien,  who  can't  read  or  write,  but 
who  has  a  good^clear  head  upon  his  shoulders, 
and  is  as  honest  as  the  sun.  Ain't  he  my 
equal  ? 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  I  have  no  doubt  that  Mr 
O'Brien  is  a  very  worthy  man.  But  you  axe 
honest  also,  and  have  a  "good  head  on  your 
shoulders,"  while  you  have  what  he  has  not,  that 
wider  view  of  the  world,  and  refinement  of  feel- 
ing, and  capacity  to  use  men  and  things  which 
education — 


8 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


HAVENS.  Spare  my  blushes!  Take  away 
the  taffy ! 

ENDICOTT  (aside},  "Refinement  of  feeling !" 
By  Jove,  she  is  trying  the  "sweet  reasonable- 
ness" of  persuasion  with  a  vengeance  ! 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.    At  least,  if  you  havenVs 
all  these  fine  things,  you  ought  to  have. 

HAVENS.     Oh,  I  admit  I  have.     What  then? 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  Then  Tim  O'Brien  is  not 
your  equal,  and  can't  be  until  he  gets  those 
very  same  things. 

ENDICOTT.  And  they  say  women  haven't 
the  logical  faculty  !  Hear!  Hear!  Four  gen- 
erations of  lawyers  are  speaking  through  you, 
Margaret.  I  listen  with  a —  (She  puts  her 
hand  over  his  mouth,  laughing}. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  He  shan't  make  fun  of 
me,  shall  he,  Cyrus? 

ENDICOTT.  I  will  be  good.  I  will  be  very 
good.  Now,  Cyrus,  I  am  going  to  make  re- 
marks—  if  I  may,  madam?  Thanks.  Cyrus, 
do  you,  or  don't  you,  consider  civilization  of  ac- 
count ? 

HAVENS  (starting  a  little — he  has  been  look- 
ing from  his  cousin  to  Miss  Nelly,  with  a  rather 
singular  expression}.  What  say? 

ENDICOTT.  Do  you  think  civilization  is  worth 
anything? 

HAVENS.     Of  course  I  do. 

ENDICOTT.  Then  it  is  worth  trying  to  at- 
tain ? 

HAVENS.  Come,  now,  don't  you  be  trying 
Socrates  on  me,  too. 

ENDICOTT.  And  if  some  other  nation  hap- 
pens, in  some  ways,  to  be  more  civilized  than 
we,  why  should  we  not  imitate  her  in  those 
ways,  even  though  she  be  an  effete  aristocracy? 
If  we  raise  better  or  cheaper  beef  than  England, 
England  takes  our  beef;  because  we  mix  drinks 
better  than  they  do  in  England,  all  over  Eng- 
land one  sees  signs  of  American  drinks.  Now, 
if  the  English  order  their  households  in  such  a 
way  that  life  is  easier,  and  their  women  are 
healthier,  why  should  not  we  do  likewise?  If 
tennis  is  an  innocent,  pleasant,  healthful  game, 
why  should  we  refuse  to  play  it  only  because 
the  English  aristocracy  enjoy  it?  If  the  Eng- 
lish speak  their  own  language  better  than  we — 

Miss  NELLY  and  HAVENS  (at  the  same  mo- 
ment}. They  dorit! 

ENDICOTT.  The  best  authorities  think  that 
they  do,  taking  everything  into  account.  WThy, 
if  they  do,  shouldn't  we  speak  it  as  they  do? 
If  the  English  civil  service  is  better  than  ours, 
why  shouldn't  we  study  its  merits,  and  try  to 
copy  them,  while  avoiding  its  defects?  The 


imitation  of  English  ways  and  manners,  and  all 
tljat  sort  of  thing,  of  course,  has  plenty  of  silli- 
ncjs  and  snobbishness  mixed  up  in  it ;  but  it  has 
•£  vasi"  ,deal  of  sense  in  it  as  well.  One  of  the 
toaster V  tendencies  of  civilization  is  to  break 
cfyjjm  national  distinctions,  and  help  each  na- 
tion to  obtain  the  best  in  all.  And  shan't  we 
borrow  ideas  as  well  as  clothes  and  machines? 
Why,  look  at  us !  Here  we  are,  every  year, 
getting  ship-loads  of  vice  and  poverty  from  Eu- 
rope ;  and,  if  we  don't  get  some  wisdom  from 
them,  too,  to  show  us  how  to  deal  with  them, 
we  shall  be  smothered." 

HAVENS.     Universal  suffrage — 

ENDICOTT.  — is  a  good  safety-valve,  and  that 
is  the  best  one  can  say  for  it.  It  hasn't  saved 
the  poor  from  the  distinction  of  their  pover- 
ty, nor  kept  our  politics  clean,  nor  prevented 
our  great  cities  from  being  a  reproach  to  us. 
By  Jove,  Havens,  this  country  has  a  heavy 
load  to  carry,  and  it's  poor  patriotism  to  shut 
one's  eyes  and  howl,  "We're  all  right,  and  every 
other  nation  is  all  wrong."  In  a  hundred  ways 
we  are  not  right ;  and  the  best  thing  we  can  do 
is  to  admit  it,  and  look  about  us  to  see  how 
other  nations  have  managed  who  have  had  the 
same  load  to  carry  which  is  crushing  us. 

HAVENS.  Oh,  they've  shifted  theirs  off  on 
to  our  shoulders. 

ENDICOTT.  They  have  enough  left.  And 
it  is  worth  our  while  to  study  their  methods. 
We  can't  afford  to  neglect  anything  which  will 
help  to  civilize  all  ranks.  It  is  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  with  us,  for  universal  suffrage  has  its 
own  dangers. 

Miss  NELLY.  Well,  for  my  part,  I  can't  see 
what  there  is  peculiarly  civilizing  or  elevating 
to  the  poor,  or  anything  of  that  sort,  in  saying 
"I  fancy,"  instead  of  "I  guess,"  or  putting  a 
coachman  into  a  light  overcoat  and  three  capes, 
or  being  waited  on  at  dinner  by  a  man  in  a 
swallow-tail. 

MRS.  ENDICOTT.  The  fork,  also,  is  a  mere 
prejudice. 

[Enter  EDWIN,  the  butler.] 
EDWIN.     Sir  Wilfrid  Anstice. 
[Enter  SIR  WILFRID.] 

SIR  WILFRID  (bowing all  around}.  Endicott 
has  promised  to  teach  me  to  play  poker,  your 
great  game,  and  I'm  come  to  learn — 

CURTAIN. 

OCTAVE  THANET. 


HYDRAULIC  MINING. 


HYDRAULIC    MINING.— NEED    OF    STATE    ACTION 
UPON    OUR   RIVERS. 


Hydraulic  mining  is  one  of  the  conspicuous 
industries  of  California,  both  because  its  opera- 
tions are  upon  so  extended  a  scale  and  are  so 
uniqae  among  industrial  processes,  and  because 
its  products  are  so  large  and  concentrated.  It 
lies,  however,  aside  from  the  central  routes  of 
travel,  and  without  the  range  of  ordinary  obser- 
vation, and,  as  a  consequence,  is  known  only 
by  reports.  Very  few  of  those  familiar  with  it 
by  name  have  had  the  opportunity  to  examine 
it  so  thoroughly  as  to  have  a  correct  conception 
of  its  methods  and  its  peculiar  bearing  upon 
the  industry  of  the  region  of  its  operations  and 
upon  the  prosperity  of  the  State ;  yet,  just  at  this 
time,  when  a  question,  resulting  from  it,  in  re- 
gard to  our  navigable  rivers,  is  before  the  State 
for  action,  a  thorough  understanding  of  its  his- 
tory, methods,  and  results  would  aid  much  to 
effective  legislation  and  engineering. 

Its  history  is  soon  told.  Hydraulic  mining 
was  never  practiced  before  in  any  part  of  the 
world.  It  was  projected  and  developed  in  Cal- 
ifornia, and  is  one  of  the  wonders  she  can  show 
the  old  and  the  new  continents.  The  gold- 
seekers  of  '49  used  the  rocker  and  cradle,  and 
subsequently  took  to  drifting,  gravel,  and  quartz 
mining.  The  first  recorded  hydraulic  mining 
is  in  1856.  In  one  of  the  many  mining  towns 
of  the  Sierra  an  ingenious  individual  conceived 
the  idea  of  bringing  water  through  a  canvas 
hose  from  an  elevated  barrel.  With  a  head  of 
sixteen  feet,  the  stream  from  the  nozzle  washed 
a  bank  he  wished  to  mine  into  his  sluice-boxes. 
There  was  not  wanting  ingenuity  and  enterprise 
among  the  thousands  of  energetic  adventurers 
then  in  our  mountains  to  enlarge  upon  and  vary 
the  application  of  the  principle  he  had  thus 
brought  to  the  service  of  man.  The  successive 
steps  in  the  development  of  the  process  were 
too  speedy  and  varied  to  be  followed  in  this 
article.  It  is  within  the  last  ten  years  that  the 
large  and  powerful  machinery  and  cunning 
methods  and  devices  have  been  completely  de- 
veloped. 

Although  hydraulic  mining  has  been  classed 
with  quartz  and  drift  mining,  the  similarity  ex- 
tends only  to  the  region  of  operations  and  to 
the  nature  of  the  product.  In  methods,  and  in 
the  bearing  upon  the  region,  and  upon  other 
industries,  the  former  differs  distinctively  from 
the  latter,  and  must  be  studied  alone.  The  ef- 


ficient cause  of  the  difference  is  the  difference 
of  the  gold  sources  upon  which  the  two  divisions 
of  mining  are  mainly  occupied.  The  placers, 
as  distinguished  from  the  quartz  veins,  are  grav- 
el beds  found  generally  in  the  ridges  adjacent 
to  the  river  canons,  but  higher  up  than  the 
river  beds.  They  are  ordinarily  capped  by  lay- 
ers of  rock  and  dirt  which  contain  but  a  trace 
of  gold.  The  mode  in  which  these  placers  were 
formed  from  quartz  veins  is  interesting,  and  a 
knowledge  of  it  will  aid  in  understanding  the 
peculiar  nature  and  results  of  this  species  of 
mining.  Through  the  investigations  of  Pro- 
fessor Joseph  LeConte,  it  has  been  determined 
to  the  satisfaction  of  most  geologists.  All  of 
North  America,  northward  from  a  line  through 
the  southern  part  of  the  United  States,  was  cov- 
ered in  the  geologic  era  preceding  the  present 
one  by  an  ice-cap  similar  to  that  now  covering 
Greenland.  The  northern  part  of  California 
and  most  of  Oregon,  with  the  adjacent  Territo- 
ries, were  also  covered,  at  some  preceding  pe- 
riod, by  an  outflow  of  lava  to  the  depth  of  from 
three  to  five  thousand  feet,  from  great  cracks 
near  the  base  of  the  Sierra  Nevada.  The  Co- 
lumbia has  cut  a  canon  through  this  from  one 
to  three  thousand  feet  deep,  and  the  lava  beds 
of  Modoc  notoriety  are  but  a  rougher  part  of 
this  general  lava  covering.  The  geologic  evi- 
dence indicates  that  just  as  the  glacial  epoch 
was  coming  on,  and  large  masses  of  ice,  espe- 
cially in  the  higher  regions,  had  accumulated, 
the  earth  commenced  to  get  warm  from  the  im- 
pending lava  flow.  The  ice,  melted  by  the  in- 
ternal heat,  caused  destructive  floods.  These 
tore  down  cliffs  and  the  inclosed  quartz  veins 
into  which  the  gold  had  been  secreted  from  the 
surrounding  rock.  The  dirt  and  rock  fragments 
were  carried  down  by  the  floods,  and  the  river 
canons  were  gorged  and  filled  with  the  frag- 
ments of  rock  and  quartz.  Before  the  rivers 
could  cut  them  out  again,  the  lava  flow  came 
and  covered  the  gravel-filled  beds.  The  sever- 
ity of  the  glacial  epoch  then  came  on.  As  it 
passed  away  the  rivers  appeared  again,  and 
commenced  cutting  new  channels.  Since  the 
lava  was  thinnest  above  the  old  divides,  the 
new  river  channels  were  cut  there.  At  the 
same  time  with  the  lava  flow  there  seems  to 
have  been  a  general  elevation  of  the  Sierra  Ne- 
vada. As  a  consequence,  the  new  rivers  cut 


10 


THE    CALTFORNIAN. 


deep  canons  below  their  old  beds,  leaving  these 
far  up  the  sides  of  the  canons,  as  layers  of  gravel 
capped  by  layers  of  lava  or  ashes.  The  gravel 
miners  tunnel  into  these  beds,  carry  the  gravel 
of  the  pay-streak  to  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel, 
and  there  wash  it,  leaving  the  hill  intact.  Their 
operations  and  results  are  thus  very  similar  to 
those  of  the  quartz  miner.  The  hydraulic  proc- 
ess, however,  brings  down  the  gravel  bed  with 
the  superincumbent  cliff  from  fifty  to  four  hun- 
dred feet  in  hight,  to  be  washed  in  the  sluices. 
The  companies  have  possessed  themselves  of 
water-rights  upon  the  heads  of  the  various  riv- 
ers, where  an  immense  supply  is  stored  and  fur- 
nished by  the  snow- fields  of  the  Sierra.  The 
water  is  brought  to  the  neighborhood  of  the 
works  through  ditches  and  flumes,  that  wind 
for  miles  around  the  dizzy  sides  of  cliffs  and  in 
and  out  of  numberless  canons.  It  is  then  re- 
ceived in  strong  iron  pipes,  one  foot  or  more  in 
diameter.  In  these  it  is  carried  down  four  hun- 
dred to  a  thousand  feet,  to  the  scene  of  the  min- 
ing, where  it  is  projected  from  the  "Little  Gi- 
ant" (a  nozzle  of  the  ordinary  shape,  but  from 
four  to  eight  inches  in  diameter  at  its  mouth) 
in  a  stream  that  tears  down  the  cliffs  and  sends 
earth  and  huge  bowlders  and  stones  rolling  pell- 
mell  to  the  sluice -boxes.  The  amount  of  the 
material  thus  washed  down  it  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive, and  it  was  not  definitely  known  until  the 
investigations  of  State  Engineer  Hall.  In  his 
report  he  states  that  the  material  washed  down 
by  hydraulic  mining  in  one  year  amounts  to 
53,404,000  cubic  yards,  or  enough  to  cover  sev- 
enteen square  miles  one  yard  in  depth.  The 
difference  between  the  few  hundred  thousand 
cubic  yards  produced  by  quartz  and  gravel  min- 
ing and  this  gigantic  washing  is  the  first  differ- 
ence between  these  two  methods  of  mining. 
But  it  might  be  anticipated,  from  the  nature  of 
the  placers,  that  they  would  not  last  always, 
and  so  the  Engineer  is  of  the  opinion  that,  with 
the  increasing  extent  of  the  operations,  the 
profitable  gravel -beds  will  be  worked  out  in 
thirty  years.  As  yet,  however,  there  are  miles 
of  gold-bearing  hills  to  be  washed.  In  places 
there  are  ridges  extending  as  much  as  ten  miles 
waiting  to  be  worked. 

At  present,  this  class  of  mining  produces  one- 
half  of  the  gold  yield  of  the  State.  The  es- 
timated yield  of  1878  was  $16,000,000,  of  which 
$8,000,000  was  from  hydraulic  mining.  Hy- 
draulic mining,  however,  cannot  be  carried  on 
except  by  large  companies,  since  the  water- 
rights,  ditching,  machinery,  etc.,  require  a  large 
outlay.  As  a  consequence,  there  are  but  few 
companies,  all  large  ones.  Upon  the  Bear, 
Yuba,  and  Feather  Rivers,  they  number  some 
nineteen.  Thus,  in  an  industrial  point  of  view, 


it  has  a  different  social  bearing  from  the  other 
division  of  mining.  A  man  of  very  small  capi- 
tal can  open  a  quartz  mine ;  and  throughout  the 
mountains,  there  are  hundreds  of  companies 
engaged  in  quartz  and  gravel  mining  whose 
whole  capital  ranges  from  $1,000  to  $10,000. 
While  in  the  case  of  the  latter  the  proprietors 
are  actual  residents,  in  the  former  the  stock  - 
owners  are  almost  entirely  non- resident;  in- 
deed, much  of  the  stock  is  owned  in  London. 
In  the  hydraulic  mines,  also,  the  dirt  is  moved, 
and  most  of  the  work  done  by  water-power,  so 
that  mines  paying  a  profit  upon  $500,000,  or  a 
$1,000,000,  employ  only  from  twenty- five  to 
fifty  men.  Before  the  Third  District  Court, 
Senator  Sargent,  who  is  interested  in  the  mines, 
testified  that  the  hydraulic  mines  upon  the  Bear 
River  (one  of  the  three  principal  hydraulic  re- 
gions), afforded  employment  to  only  four  hun- 
dred men.  With  quartz  and  gravel  mines,  it  is 
different.  The  dirt  is  obtained  from  the  tunnel 
by  actual  labor.  Many  of  these  mines,  paying 
a  profit  upon  a  capital  of  from  $10,000  to  $20,- 
ooo,  employ  as  many  men  as  do  the  large  hy- 
draulic companies.  It  thus  becomes  evident 
that,  while  hydraulic  mining  may  produce  one- 
half  the  gold  product,  yet,  in  a  local  point  of 
view,  it  is  of  minor  importance.  Quartz  and 
gravel  mines  are  much  more  numerous,  furnish 
more  general  employment,  and  the  proprietors 
are  more  frequently  actual  residents.  The  gold 
products  from  these  species  of  mining  enter  the 
local  channels  of  trade,  augment,  and  in  reality 
support,  the  business  of  the  region,  while  the 
major  part  of  the  product  of  hydraulic  mining 
goes  to  San  Francisco  and  London,  and  other 
regions  enjoy  the  benefits.  When  it  does  cease, 
as  it  is  bound  to,  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
things,  in  thirty  years,  it  is  evident  that  it  will 
leave  no  such  gap  in  the  business  or  the  labor 
market  of  that  region,  and  turn  no  such  army 
of  laborers  adrift,  as  would  the  general  stop- 
page of  quartz  mining  effect.  The  social  disturb- 
ance will  leave  no  trace,  after  the  course  of  a 
season,  during  which  the  supply  of  labor  is  ad- 
justing itself  anew.  Another  distinction  in  the 
social  bearing  of  the  two  divisions  of  mining, 
is  also  well  marked.  The  quartz  ledges  are 
scattered  in  countless  numbers  through  the 
mountains,  and  as  thousands  have  been  found, 
so  there  are  other  thousands  undiscovered, 
leaving  open,  to  multitudes  of  lucky  and  enter- 
prising men,  chances  of  securing  fortunes.  The 
placers,  being  filled -up  river  channels,  can  be 
traced  up  when  discovered,  and  their  whole 
extent  located.  Thus  this  mineral  producing 
source  of  our  State  has  been  secured  at  nomi- 
nal prices,  by  a  number  of  large  companies, 
who  enjoy  the  riches  which  are  shared  in  the 


HYDRAULIC  MINING. 


ii 


case  of  quartz  mining  by  whole  communities  of 
men.     This  mineral  wealth  does  not  increase 
the  business  and  population  of  the  region,  as 
do  the    quartz  ledges,   which   distribute  their 
gifts  to  tens  of  thousands  of  men  of  moderate 
fortunes,  who  are,  in  the  main,  actual  residents. 
Hydraulic  mining,  however,  has  performed  a 
service  for  the  foothills  of  the  Sierra  Nevada 
which  could  have  come  from  no  other  indus- 
try, in  furnishing  to  localities  the  means  of  irri- 
gation, at  an  early  time,  when  the  needs  of  agri- 
culture would  not  have  warranted  the  State,  or 
individuals,  in  introducing  any  sort  of  a  system 
of  irrigation.     Nevada   City,  and  many  other 
towns  in  the  hills,  as  well  as  some  farms  along 
the  line  of  the  ditches,  received  water  at  an 
earlier  date  than  they  could  have  had  it  other- 
wise, and  are  still  furnished  with  an  abundant 
supply.     But,  at  present,  when  the  agricultural 
capabilities  of  the  lower  regions  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada,  with  the  aid  of  irrigation,  has  become 
apparent,  the  hydraulic  mining  rather  prevents 
than  aids  the  introduction  of  a  thorough  system 
of  irrigation,  and  thus  the  thorough  develop- 
ment of  that  region.     There  are  some  six  mill- 
ion acres  in  the  foothills  capable  of  producing 
fruit,  raisins,  wine,  olive  oil,  and  all  kinds  of 
dairy  produce ;  capable,  in  fact,  of  combining 
the  fertility  of  the  English  hilly  soils  with  the 
two -fold   productions   of  Italy   and   England, 
when  provided  with  irrigation.     The  supply  of 
water  must  be  found  in  the  higher  Sierras,  but 
the  water -rights  and  available  ditch  routes  are 
owned  by  the  hydraulic  mining  companies,  who 
find  it  more  profitable  to  use  any  additional 
supply  of  water  in  extending  their  operations, 
rather  than  in  making  the  outlay  necessary  for 
a  comprehensive  system  of  ditches,  with  profits 
to  accrue  from  a  demand  not  in  actual  existence, 
but  to  spring  from  an  agricultural  activity  to 
be  caused  by  the  prospect  of  abundant  water. 
Furthermore,  if  such   an   agricultural   activity 
were  aroused,  the  growing  needs  of  that  vigor- 
ous industry  might  soon  demand  an  encroach- 
ment upon  the  supply  for  mining.     The  agri- 
culturists might  soon  become  numerous  and 
energetic  enough   to   secure   State  action,  by 
which  some — at  least — of  the  water -rights  of 
the  companies  would  be  condemned,  and  turned 
to  the  service  of  the  agricultural  community. 
It  is  against  the  interests  of  the  companies  to 
court  the  disturbance  this  would  occasion  them. 
Meanwhile,  the  introduction  of  anything  like  an 
adequate  system,  by  private  individuals  is  pre- 
vented by  the  want  of  opportunity,  since  all  the 
water-rights  and  ditch  courses  are  occupied; 
and  on  the  part  of  the  State,  it  is  impossible, 
since,  in  the  hill  counties,  the  towns  are  sup- 
plied with  water  and  are  content,  and  the  farm- 


ing class,  who  feel  the  need  of  it,  are  too  poor 
to  make  it  a  public  question. 

These  are  the  main  points  in  the  relation  of 
hydraulic  mining  to  the  region  of  its  opera- 
tions, which  must  be  fully  understood  before 
the  real  importance  of  the  industry  can  be  ap- 
preciated. But  its  more  prominent  influence 
upon  the  rest  of  the  State,  through  the  tailings 
emptied  into  the  Yuba,  Bear,  Feather,  and 
American,  is  imperfectly  understood  by  those 
who  have  not  experienced  the  actual  effects  on 
the  districts  traversed  by  the  rivers.  Yet,  now 
that  the  treatment  of  the  question  of  amending 
the  state  of  things  in  Sacramento  Valley  has 
been  assumed  by  the  State,  a  safe  decison  re- 
quires a  more  accurate  acquaintance  by  the  gen- 
eral public  with  the  true  condition  of  the  upper 
Sacramento  Valley.  Jt  is  only  then  that  the 
urgent  need  of  continued  and  effective  State 
action  can  be  understood.  Fortunately,  in  the 
investigations  of  the  State  Engineer  we  have 
reliable  data,  which,  if  surprising,  will  yet  be 
accepted  unreservedly.  The  tailings,  or  debris, 
that  appear  in  the  valley  are  of  a  two-fold  char- 
acter. They  consist,  first,  of  coarse  insoluble 
sand,  which  the  water  rolls  in  billows  along  the 
bottom,  filling  up  and  leveling  all  inequalities 
and  deep  holes.  As  fast  as  the  channel  behind 
is  leveled,  the  front  of  this  sand  advances.  The 
second  constituent  is  a  clay,  amounting  to  some 
thirty  per  cent,  of  the  debris,  which  is  carried 
in  solution  by  the  water  and  deposited  in  the 
channels  and  upon  the  flood -plains  in  advance 
of  the  sand. 

Its  effects  reach  down  to  the  mputh  of  the 
Sacramento,  the  scene  of  its  principal  deposits 
advancing  ahead  of  the  sand.  The  Yuba  and 
the  Bear,  the  main  tributaries  of  the  Feather, 
have  been  affected  the  most  disastrously  by  the 
tailings.  They  were  originally  clear  streams, 
running  in  channels  from  fifteen  to  thirty  feet 
in  depth,  over  pebbly  beds;  upon  either  side 
were  the  bottoms,  extending  two  or  three  miles 
to  the  redland,  and  covered  with  oak  and  buck- 
eye forests,  broken  by  moist,  grassy  meadows 
and  glades.  The  crystal  water  was  filled  with 
trout,  and  shoals  of  salmon  annually  ascended 
to  spawning  grounds  upon  their  head -waters. 
At  times,  during  the  winter  floods,  the  water 
ran  over  the  bottoms,  leaving  a  film  of  fertiliz- 
ing deposit,  from  the  washings  upon  the  hill- 
sides above,  but  receded  in  a  few  hours,  caus- 
ing no  damage  of  moment  to  the  lands  or  prop- 
erty on  either  side.  The  soil  was  a  rich,  black 
allluvium,  as  fertile  as  the  richest  alluvial  loams 
in  the  world.  Many  valuable  orchards  were 
scattered  along  the  rivers  from  the  hills  to  their 
mouths.  About  1860  the  sand  began  to  appear 
from  the  canons,  where  it  had  paved  its  way 


12 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


down.  It  entered  and  filled  the  channels  to 
the  brim,  and  commenced  to  spread  upon  the 
bottoms  on  either  side.  The  low  levees,  for- 
merly adequate  to  confine  flood -waters,  were 
overtopped,  and  the  river  began  to  flow  upon  a 
constantly  raising  bed  of  sand.  Each  year  the 
levees  had  to  be  raised,  to  cause  the  floods  and 
sand  to  sweep  farther  down;  and  with  each 
year,  one  after  another  farmer  gave  up,  as  the 
water  overtopped  his  levee  and  buried  his 
land  in  the  sand.  Upon  the  south  side  of  the 
Yuba,  not  a  single  farm  remains  upon  the  river 
bottom.  The  whole  reach  of  alluvial  bottom  is 
covered  in  coarse  sand,  from  ten  to  sixteen  feet 
in  depth,  which  either  lies  in  barren  sand-tracts 
or  is  covered  with  a  growth  of  willows  and  cot- 
tonwoods,  over  which  the  river  spreads  and 
threatens  to  swerve  aside  upon  the  redlands. 
Upon  the  north  side,  Marysville  alone  remains, 
surrounded  by  levees,  with  the  water  above  the 
level  of  her  streets,  and  compelled  to  pump  the 
seepage  water  into  the  river.  The  original  chan- 
nel of  the  Bear  River  is  obliterated,  and  the 
sandy  level  over  which  it  flows  is  from  seven  to 
ten  feet  high  above  the  small  portion  of  its  for- 
mer bottom,  still  preserved  for  a  few  miles  upon 
its  northern  side.  The  State  Engineer  states 
that  the  Yuba  has  been  filled  at  Smartsville 
dumps  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet,  at  the 
Yuba  mill  and  mining  shaft,  eighty  feet — both 
places  where  the  river  is  about  leaving  the  hills ; 
and  at  its  mouth,  some  sixteen  miles  below,  the 
low-water  plane  has  been  raised  from  thirteen 
to  sixteen  feet.  The  land  alone,  destroyed  upon 
the  Bear,  Yuba,  and  Feather,  he  has  estimated 
at  $2,597,235 ;  but  his  estimate  is  low  in  many 
cases,  and  he  instances  an  orchard  of  six  hun- 
dred and  forty  acres,  formerly  considered  worth 
$640,000,  "whose  tree-tops  are  now  found  above 
the  sand  with  which  they  have  been  covered," 
whose  former  value  he  estimates  at  a  hundred 
dollars  an  acre  only,  and  for  whose  present  val- 
ue fifty  cents  an  acre,  he  says,  would  be  a  lib- 
eral estimate.  The  losses  in  crops,  improve- 
ments, etc.,  he  says,  are  not  capable  of  definite 
estimation,  but  are  probably  several  times  the 
more  tangible  loss  in  lands.  The  property  in 
Marysville  has  depreciated,  since  1860,  from 
$3,823,518  to  $1,703,900  in  1880,  according  to 
the  Assessor's  figures.  Nor  does  this  represent 
the  total  loss,  since  the  population  and  property 
ought  to  have  increased  greatly  in  twenty  years. 
Four  times  the  loss  of  land,  or  $10,390,540,  is 
allowable  at  the  least,  according  to  his  figures, 
for  losses  of  lands  and  improvements.  Add  to 
this,  $2,000,000,  the  perceptible  depreciation  in 
Marysville,  and  the  total  loss  to  the  region  and 
to  individuals  has  been  only  approached.  There 
is  still  the  depreciation  in  other  adjacent  prop- 


erty, money  sunk  year  after  year  in  unsuccess- 
ful levees,  and  the  loss  from  a  prospective  de- 
velopment arrested. 

But  there  is  a  further  loss,  incapable  of  esti- 
mation, in  the  destruction  of  the  rivers — as 
means  of  exit  for  the  crops,  and  as  a  leverage 
by  which  the  freights  could  be  brought  to  the 
lowest  reasonable  figures ;  as  a  source  of  food, 
in  the  fish,  that  formerly  swarmed  in  their  wa- 
ters, but  have  now  utterly  deserted  the  viscid, 
muddy  rivers,  which  have  proved  uninhabitable 
to  them ;  and,  finally,  in  the  increased  unhealth- 
fulness,  and  the  loss  of  the  added  pleasure  to 
life  derived  from  a  sparkling  stream  with  its 
opportunities  for  enjoyment.  We  are  so  accus- 
tomed to  hear  of  millions  that  it  is  difficult  to 
conceive  of  the  magnitude  of  this  calculated 
loss.  Twelve  millions,  the  least  loss  capable  of 
being  definitely  fixed,  is  an  enormous  sum. 
But  the  injury  done  by  the  debris  is  not  confined 
to  these  regions  where  the  land  is  actually  bur- 
ied— to  the  gray-haired  men,  deprived  of  homes 
and  property,  of  the  savings  and  results  of  a  vig- 
orous youth  and  prime.  There  is  a  further  in- 
jury to  the  State  system  of  drainage  and  river 
navigation  fairly  commenced,  and  to  be  consum- 
mated in  five  years,  if  unhindered,  whose  mag- 
nitude, estimated  as  bearing  upon  the  future 
prosperity  of  the  State,  far  exceeds  the  ten  or 
twenty  millions  injury  upon  the  minor  rivers. 
The  navigation  of  the  Feather  is  almost  at  a 
standstill.  Only  a  small  portion  of  the  wheat 
crop  is  moved  down  by  its  means.  On  the  Sac- 
ramento, it  is  known  that  in  the  "fifties"  steam- 
ers of  one  thousand  tons  ascended  to  the  capi- 
tal; now  only  small  stern -wheel  steamers,  of 
three  or  four  feet  draught,  and  two  hundred  tons 
or  less,  ascend  it,  and  then  with  frequent  stop- 
pages upon  the  bars.  Three  or  four  of  these, 
only,  ply  between  the  bay  and  the  city.  Engi- 
neer Hall  reports  that  below  the  mouth  of  the 
American  River,  along  the  water-front  of  Sac- 
ramento City  and  below,  the  maximum  fill  in  the 
river  has  been  thirty  feet,  and  the  average  fill 
fifteen  and  two -tenths  feet.  The  former  deep 
reaches  are  filled  up,  and  bars  are  frequent. 
The  San  Joaquin  will  soon  suffer  by  the  clog- 
ging of  the  lower  Sacramento  and  Suisun  Bay. 
Thus  the  whole  system  of  inland  navigation  is 
in  a  fair  way  to  be  ruined.  These  rivers  serve, 
also,  as  a  drainage  system  for  the  whole  inland 
valley  of  California ;  but  Engineer  Hall  states 
(page  13,  part  III,  of  his  report)  that  the  car- 
rying capacity  of  the  Feather,  and  of  the  Sacra- 
mento below  the  mouth  of  the  Feather,  for  flood 
waters  between  their  natural  banks,  has  been 
reduced  thirty  per  cent.,  and  in  some  places 
fifty  per  cent.  The  water  is  backed  up  into  the 
upper  Sacramento  Valley,  where  the  debris  is 


HYDRAULIC  MINING. 


not  seen,  and  more  frequent  floods  at  Colusa 
and  above  are  the  result.  The  waters  of  the  San 
Joaquin  will  soon  fail  of  a  ready  outlet  into  the 
Sacramento,  and,  in  its  comparatively  level  val- 
ley, floods  will  be  aggravated.  Meanwhile,  to 
this  actual  lessening  of  the  carrying  capacity  of 
the  Sacramento  is  distinctly  traceable  the  flood 
that  caused  a  loss  of  $500,000  in  the  Sacra- 
mento Valley  in  1878,  and  those  of  the  last  win- 
ter, when  it  seemed  that  the  levees  at  some 
places  on  one  side  or  the  other  must  break  and 
relieve  the  river.  Sacramento  City  is  coming 
to  occupy  a  situation  similar  to  that  of  Marys- 
ville.  The  embankment  built  by  the  Railroad 
Company  has  been  a  protection  for  a  number 
of  years,  but  it  was  with  difficulty  that  the  water 
was  kept  out  last  winter.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  city  was  raised  a  number  of  years  ago 
some  twelve  feet,  her  drainage  is  now  in  a  fair 
way  to  be  interrupted,  in  the  winter,  at  least — 
during  which  season,  when  the  levees  at  points 
far  below  her  break,  the  break-water  will  threat- 
en her,  as  happened  in  the  last  winter.  Below 
the  city  the  drainage  is  already  interfered  with. 
For  twenty  miles  the  orchards  are  injured,  and 
trees  are  dying  in  consequence  of  the  raising  of 
the  water-line  in  the  grounds.  If  the  flood-car- 
rying capacity  of  the  Sacramento  has  been  re- 
duced one-third,  and  the  steamers  plying  upon 
it  have  been  reduced  from  one  thousand  to  two 
hundred  tons,  and  to  three  and  four  feet  draught, 
in  the  last  fifteen  years,  in  the  next  five  years  it 
will  be  rendered  entirely  unnavigable,  and  its 
usefulness  as  a  flood-carrier  entirely  destroyed, 
for  the  reason  that  the  sand  which  formerly 
lodged  in  the  reaches  of  the  Yuba  and  Bear, 
and  made  these  rivers  inclined  planes,  is  de- 
scending into  the  Feather,  while  the  light  mate- 
rial formerly  deposited  in  the  Feather  proceeds 
to  the  Sacramento.  As  it  is,  the  Engineer  esti- 
mates that  in  the  past  the  lower  Sacramento  has 
been  carrying  annually  of  this  soluble  material 
from  the  mines,  13,200,000  cubic  yards,  or 
enough  to  cover  four  square  miles  a  yard  in 
depth,  much  of  which  reaches  the  bay.  It  is 
thus  plain  that,  while  a  special  and  signal  injury 
is  being  done  to  the  region  where  the  sand 
actually  covers  the  land,  and  an  incalculable 
hardship  and  injustice  is  being  worked  to  the 
multitude  of  individuals  whose  property  is  par- 
tially or  totally  ruined,  yet,  in  addition,  the 
whole  State  is  about  to  suffer  an  injury  by  the 
destruction  of  its  navigable  streams  and  drain- 
age system  that  cannot  be  estimated.  The 
urgency  of  effective  action  immediately  is  evi- 
dent. The  last  Legislature  passed  what  is 
known  as  the  "Young  Bill,"  providing  for  a 
State  tax  of  one -twentieth  of  one  per  cent.,  a 
small  district  tax  upon  the  farming  and  mining 


counties  immediately  affected,  and  a  tax  upon 
the  water  used  by  the  hydraulic  mining  compa- 
nies. The  money  was  to  be  used  in  construct- 
ing a  series  of  stone  dams  in  the  canons  of  the 
rivers,  behind  which  the  debris  could  be  lodged, 
and  in  erecting  levees  upon  the  Yuba,  Bear, 
and  Feather,  to  protect  land  in  imminent  dan- 
ger, according  to  the  scheme  reported  by  the 
State  Engineer.  In  his  report  he  has  desig- 
nated sites  for  dams  to  be  raised  annually, 
which  would  have  sufficient  capacity  to  hold 
all  the  sand  and  heavy  material  produced  dur- 
ing the  next  thirty  years.  To  complete  these 
works  upon  the  Yuba  he  estimates  that  $2,894,- 
534  will  be  required,  or  about  $100,000  a  year, 
upon  the  average ;  but  of  the  total  sum  $500,000 
will  be  required  the  first  year,  and  diminishing 
amounts  each  succeeding  year.  To  build  clams 
upon  the  Yuba,  Bear,  Feather,  and  American, 
he  estimates  will  require  $233,000  a  year,  or 
$6,990,000  in  the  thirty  years.  In  accordance 
with  the  bill,  a  district  was  organized  and  a 
Board  of  Commissioners  appointed  to  determine 
and  execute  the  work  to  be  done.  Three  dams 
will  be  built  to  the  hight  of  eight  feet  this  year, 
two  in  the  Yuba  and  one  in  the  Bear;  but  they 
will  be  of  brush  instead  of  stone. 

This  is  the  only  method  the  State  can  adopt 
to  prevent  further  injury  upon  the  upper  rivers 
and  the  destruction  of  Sacramento  River,  and 
it  may  be  of  Suisun  Bay,  short  of  forbidding 
the  emptying  of  tailings  into  the  river.  It  is 
necessary,  for  her  own  protection,  that  the  State 
should  act,  and  since  the  works  are  to  prevent 
any  injury  to  her,  as  a  whole,  it  would  be  an  in- 
justice to  assess  the  cost  upon  any  particular 
district ;  and,  indeed,  the  burden  would  ruin  any 
district  upon  which  it  should  be  imposed.  Fur- 
thermore, it  is  the  State's  duty  toward  the  por- 
tions of  her  citizens  upon  the  Yuba,  Bear,  and 
Feather.  It  is  a  plain  principle  of  our  Govern- 
ment, that  every  citizen  has  a  right  to  the  en- 
joyment of  his  property,  free  from  obstruction, 
or  injury  upon  the  part  of  others.  He  has  also 
a  right  to  such  use  of  the  waters  of  an  adjacent 
stream,  as  serves  his  purposes,  so  long  as  he 
causes  no  detriment  to  those  below  him,  and 
does  not  prevent  their  enjoyment  of  the  stream. 
In  these  rights,  it  is  recognized  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  State  to  protect  him.  The  case  of 
the  citizens  upon  these  rivers,  is  a  plain  appli- 
cation of  these  principles.  The  property  of  a 
part  has  been,  and  of  the  rest  is  being,  destroy- 
ed by  the  sand  emptied  into  the  streams  and 
brought  down ;  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  State 
to  protect  them  from  further  injury,  by  prevent- 
ing the  further  flow  of  the  debris  into  the  val- 
ley. It  can  do  this,  either  by  dams  in  the 
canons,  or  by  preventing  the  introduction  of 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


tailings  into  the  rivers  in  the  future.  They 
are  suffering  an  injustice  at  the  hands  of  the 
State,  who  had  the  power  and  whose  province 
it  was  to  protect  them.  Morally,  the  State 
ought  to  make  them  restitution,  although  it  can- 
not be  exacted  from  her  now  by  legal  means. 
But  here  arises  an  interesting  and  curious 
question.  May  it  not  be  possible,  in  time,  that 
the  State  will  be  made  liable  for  such  injuries 
suffered,  because  of  its  inaction,  where  it  should 
have  protected,  as  was  the  city  of  Philadelphia 
for  the  destruction  of  $3,000,000  worth  of  prop- 
erty by  the  riots  her  police  should  have  sup- 


pressed? Were  such  a  principle  introduced  into 
law,  and  the  machinery  and  methods  devised 
to  apply  it,  it  is  evident  that  it  would  be  one 
guarantee  secured  to  weakness,  against  a  dis- 
regard of  the  rights  guaranteed  it  by  the  State. 
It  would  prompt  Legislatures  to  greater  vigi- 
lance, and  more  speedy  attempts  to  arrest  in- 
justice, where  it  was  within  the  power  and  prov- 
ince of  the  State  to  do  so,  in  the  same  way  that 
the  principle  in  regard  to  the  liability  of  cities 
makes  municipal  governments  a  little  more  vig- 
orous in  their  dealings  with  mobs. 

JOHN  H.  DURST. 


A  CHILD'S  JOURNEY  THROUGH  ARIZONA  AND   NEW 

MEXICO. 


As  I  look  back  it  seems  like  the  bright  and 
the  dark  sides  of  a  dream.  From  out  the  heart 
of  June  was  born  the  fairest  scene  that  ever  went 
unframed.  The  little  valley  lay,  an  uncombed 
lawn,  between  the  sloping  forests ;  and  a  small 
stream,  babbling  and  tinkling,  lost  a  mimic 
battle -shout  as  it  ran  somewhere  between  en- 
trance and  outlet,  gleaming  like  a  string  of  wa- 
ter-pearls, shut  in  between  banks.  The  milk- 
ers, at  sunrise,  went  in  among  the  cows,  call- 
ing and  soothing  and  laughing,  and  I  took  my 
cup,  with  the  webs  of  sleep  still  tangling  across 
my  eyes,  and,  listening  to  the  plash  of  the 
stream,  looked  off  down  the  valley.  A  herd  of 
antelopes  sped  away  out  of  vision,  frightened  at 
the  echoes  of  their  own  retreat.  The  dark  verd- 
ure of  the  forest  swept  up  to  the  skies  that  lay 
beyond,  and  miles  and  miles  away  rose  the 
beautiful  Mount  St.  Francisco,  his  head  hoary 
with  snow.  In  my  child-heart  I  bowed  before 
that  wondrous  mountain  and  did  him  rever- 
ence. He  seemed  like  God,  weird  and  strange 
and  set  apart;  a  veil -like  atmosphere  wound 
about  him  like  a  garment  of  holiness ;  the  snow 
was  upon  his  breast  like  a  beard.  The  whole 
world  seemed  filled  with  happiness  and  plenty. 

Months  after  I  returned  to  the  spot.  I  re- 
member that  I  was  hungry.  Dry  leaves  skip- 
ped and  danced  about,  and  a  sharp  wind 
swirled  through  the  little  valley.  My  clothes 
were  old  and  worn,  and  I  should  have  liked  a 
shawl  to  wrap  around  me.  Somewhat  dwarfed 
by  greater  that  I  had  seen,  there  was  Mount  St. 
Francisco,  with  a  sheet  of  rain  lying  between  us. 
He  was  gray  and  dull,  and  his  glory  was  dim- 
med. The  little  stream  was  gathering  itself  for 
winter.  I  was  filled  with  a  sense  of  desolation. 


and  I  felt  that  old  women  should  never  laugh 
for  in  their  long  lives  they  must  have  been 
sorry  so  many  times.  That  day  the  last  sack 
of  flour  in  the  camp  was  brought  to  our  tent 
because  there  was  the  widow  and  her  children. 
They  tell  me  that  Prescott,  Arizona,  has  sprung 
into  life  somewhere  there  since,  but  I  cannot 
imagine  a  town  in  that  wilderness. 

There  was  a  city  set  upon  a  hill,  and  it  was 
called  Zuni.  It  was  closely  built  and  thickly 
inhabited  by  half- civilized  Indians.  On  every 
hand  there  were  stupid  looking  eagles,  sacred 
birds,  at  whom  one  must  never  throw  a  stone. 
I  seem  also  to  think  of  a  rude  church  as  belong- 
ing there.  Small  panes  of  isinglass  were  set  in 
the  windows,  and  for  safety,  in  case  of  the  con- 
stantly feared  invasion  by  the  Navajos,  one 
sometimes  made  entrance  to  the  houses  by  go- 
ing up  a  ladder  to  the  flat  roof,  and  then  down 
a  ladder  to  the  floor.  The  people  were  exceed- 
ingly hospitable,  and  greeted  the  coiner  with 
"eat,  eat."  The  men  tended  the  babies,  knit, 
and  wove  blankets,  and  the  women  ground  the 
corn.  A  woman  grinding  corn  got  upon  her 
knees,  and,  taking  an  ear  in  her  hands,  with  the 
motion  of  washing  clothes,  rubbed  it  on  a  coarse, 
sloping  stone.  Often,  as  she  ground,  she  car- 
ried a  nursing  child  upon  her  back,  throwing 
her  breast  over  her  shoulder  within  its  reach. 
She  chewed  constantly  what  proved  to  be  wheat, 
and  when  it  had  reached  a  certain  consistency 
she  took  it  out  and  chewed  more  wheat.  I  had 
eaten  heartily  of  a  certain  sweet  mush  they  had 
given  me,  but  I  was  hardened  to  many  things, 
and  I  only  laughed  when  I  learned  it  was  a 
choice  dish  made  of  chewed  wheat.  Also,  they 
made  wafer  bread.  I  saw  two  albinos,  with 


A    CHILD'S  JOURNEY. 


white  hair  and  small,  weak,  pink  eyes,  who 
were  looked  upon  as  unfortunates  by  their 
friends. 

When  I  left  Zuni  the  darkness  Was  gathering 
around  a  cluster  of  dome-like  rocks,  that  looked 
like  women  in  cloaks,  and  I  trembled  and  cow- 
ered close  in  the  covered  wagon  for  fear  of  Na- 
vajos. 

One  night  a  little  company  were  gathered 
upon  a  bared  elevation,  choosing  this  site  be- 
cause it  was  free  of  chaparral,  and  no  Indians 
could  lurk  near  unseen.  The  oxen  were  in 
yoke,  the  horses  bridled,  and  if  one  man  spoke 
to  another  it  was  in  a  whisper.  It  is  the  most 
horrible  memory  of  my  life,  and  for  years  after- 
ward I  would  start  away  from  myself  and  find 
a  companion  to  rid  myself  of  the  dread  of  that 
hour.  Once  my  mother,  wrapped  in  a  buffalo- 
robe,  for  fear  of  arrows,  and  carrying  her  little 
boy  in  her  arms,  on  Lucy,  our  old  family  horse, 
rode  to  the  wagon  side,  and,  under  her  breath, 
whispered  a  word  of  cheer.  One  of  the  oxen 
lay  down,  and  his  yoke  creaked  against  the 
stillness  of  the  night,  and  immediately  every 
man  put  his  hand  upon  the  lock  of  his  gun  and 
steadied  his  eye.  The  hoot  of  an  owl,  wild  and 
distinct,  before  us,  was  answered  by  another 
hoot  behind,  and  because  fear  and  suffering 
had  made  me  wise,  I  knew  they  were  human 
voices  signaling  each  other  in  the  dark.  My 
own  heart  seemed  to  thunder  thickly  in  my 
ears,  but  I  stifled  it  to  hear  the  Indian  whoops 
and  yells  a  mile  back  upon  the  Colorado  River, 
where  we  had  left  all  our  worldly  goods.  Oh, 
those  wild  and  curdling  yells !  They  echoed 
afterward  from  every  pillow  I  pressed,  they 
sounded  in  every  lonely  spot,  they  rushed  upon 
me  in  strange  moments  of  mirth,  they  intruded 
in  the  midst  of  school-books,  and  now  that 
sterner  duties  have  come,  here  they  are  still, 
flocking  about  me  and  mocking  till  the  old  fear 
and  shuddering  come  again. 

A  man  came  to  our  wagon,  and  began  to 
search  for  something  very  silently. 

"Oh,  sir,"  I  said,  with  falling  tears,  "why 
didn't  you  save  my  father?" 

He  answered : 

"My  child,  it  was  impossible,"  and  went 
hastily  away. 

In  another  moment  the  moon  broke  forth  as 
calm  and  radiantly  pale  as  ever  she  had  been 
when  she  shone  upon  us  in  our  old  home,  and 
by  her  light  we  took  up  our  line  of  march. 

I  remember  two  graves.  Sickness,  brought 
on  by  exposure  and  want,  had  fallen  upon  the 
little  boy  who  had  been  carried  on  horseback 
that  dreadful  night  through,  in  his  mother's 
arms,  under  a  buffalo  -  robe,  to  be  safe  from  ar- 
rows. Two  Mexican  women  came  into  the  tent, 


laughing  toward  the  men  as  they  came,  and 
one,  having  learned  a  little  English,  pointed  to- 
ward the  sick  child  and  said : 

"What  ails  him?" 

Two  days  afterward,  in  our  wagon,  we  were 
carrying  a  little  coffin  to  the  small  burying- 
ground  set  apart  by  the  American  inhabitants 
of  Albuquerque,  New  Mexico.  It  was  on  a 
lonesome  and  sandy  hillside,  and  the  wagon 
tipped  a  little  as  we  neared  it.  It  contained 
but  few  graves,  but  they  were  all  the  graves  of 
white  people.  When  our  small  hillock  was 
made,  we  stood  around  it,  watering  it  with  tears, 
and  we  knew,  having  once  left  it,  we  never 
should  see  it  again.  We  gathered  stones  and 
put  upon  it,  to  prevent  the  digging  of  wolves ; 
and  then,  having  done  all,  we  looked  at  each 
other,  dreading  to  go.  We  had  grown  stoical 
with  starvation  and  danger,  and  we  had  each  a 
knowledge  of  death  from  having  stared  him  in 
the  face  so  often ;  but,  as  my  mother  turned,  in 
the  wagon,  to  look  her  last  upon  the  lonely  hill- 
side, an  agonized  cry  broke  from  the  lips  she 
had  forced  shut : 

"  Oh,  my  boy,  my  boy !  How  can  I  leave  him 
there?" 

Along  in  the  middle  of  one  warm  afternoon, 
I  stood  by  the  side  of  another  grave.  The 
whole  landscape  was  flooded  with  yellow,  and 
even  the  red  slide  of  the  mountain -back  was 
turned  to  gold.  In  the  distance  flowed  a  broad 
and  shallow  river,  its  broader  bed  from  which 
it  had  receded  shining  with  yellow  sand.  It 
was  the  Gila,  treacherous,  mysterious  stream, 
which  eluded  and  then  sprung  noisily  upon  us ; 
whose  dry  channel  we  crossed  a  dozen  times 
one  day  to  cross  it  a  dozen  times  again,  filled 
with  water  the  next.  I  stood,  inured  to  the 
thought  of  dead  people,  by  the  grave  at  the 
roadside,  and  looked  with  interest  at  the  mound. 
A  headboard  bore  upon  it  the  inscription,  "Sa- 
cred to  the  Oatman  Family,"  erected  by  some 
friendly  stranger;  and  the  little  fence  looked 
as  though  it  had  been  carefully  constructed  of 
poles,  the  ends  placed  in  corner-posts.  I  had 
heard  the  tale  of  surprise  and  murder  so  often 
that  I  knew  it  by  heart.  I  had  been  in  the 
Pima  Village  to  which  Lorenzo  Oatman  had 
crawled,  holding  his  cracked  and  scalped  skull 
between  his  hands.  I  had  been  for  days  in  a 
camp  haunted  by  the  Mojave  Indians,  among 
whom  Olive  Oatman  had  been  for  such  a  weary 
time  a  captive,  and  in  whose  midst  her  little 
sister  had  died,  singing  with  her  last  breath  the 
well  known  hymn,  beginning,  "How  tedious 
and  tasteless  the  hours  when  Jesus  no  longer 
I  see."  And  this  was  the  grave  where  reposed 
the  remains  of  the  four  who  were  murdered  by 
the  wolf- like  and  ill  favored  Tonto  Apaches, 


i6 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


whose  scowling  faces  and  low -drawn  brows  I 
well  knew.  I  wondered  why  we  had  escaped 
and  they  been  doomed.  I  ascended  the  over- 
hanging bluff,  and  stood  among  the  scattered 
remnants  of  their  effects.  •  Here  lay  the  hub  of 
a  wheel,  there  a  ragged  portion  of  cloth  clung 
to  a  bush  ;  just  beyond,  a  tin-pan,  battered  and 
rusty,  half  tipped  upon  a  stone ;  and  each  arti- 
cle seemed  to  whisper  into  my  child -ears  the 
story  again.  I  see  yet  that  red  and  yellow  light 
upon  the  Gila  River,  the  bare  slide  upon  the 
mountain,  and  the  Oatman  grave,  solitary  and 
desolate,  under  the  bluff. 

We  were  crawling  through  the  desert,  and  a 
parching  thirst  fell  out  from  the  hot  sun.  The 
grains  of  sand  burned  the  callused  soles  of  my 
bare  feet,  or  struck  through  the  moccasins  I 
put  on  sometimes.  The  oxen  shut  their  eyes, 
and  toiled  on,  oh,  so  slowly  ! — it  was  almost  like 
moving  not  at  all.  There  was  nothing  left  to 
eat  but  meat  taken  from  the  cattle,  poor  and  sick 
from  alkali,  and  it  must  be  eaten  without  salt. 
A  week  ago,  Tiger,  our  faithful  dog,  had  crept 
weakly  along,  his  dry  tongue  hanging  from  his 
mouth,  had  fallen,  scrambled  on  again,  and 
finally  lain  down  to  die  of  thirst,  and  so  had 
watched  us  out  of  sight.  He  was  only  a  dog, 
but  it  was  hard,  very  hard,  to  leave  him.  To- 
day a  man  had  made  a  little  wound  upon  his 
hand,  and  taken  the  blood  from  the  cut  vein  to 
moisten  his  mouth.  My  own  lips  were  swollen 
and  cracked;  my  tongue  was  growing  larger, 
and  constantly  searched  about  in  my  cheeks 
for  moisture.  Ah,  me !  I  sighed,  and  wonder- 
ed if  these  dreadful  days  would  ever  end.  I 
looked  away  off  ahead  into  the  sky.  Around 
the  fire,  the  night  before,  I  had  heard  them  tell- 
ing of  a  mirage  of  funeral  processions  march- 
ing up  the  sky,  each  figure  standing  on  its  head ; 
of  inverted  ships,  sailing  along  the  blue  out  of 
the  horizon,  and  other  of  the  strangest  tales, 
but  they  did  not  frighten  me  any.  I  feared  only 
the  great  comet,  the  comet  of  '59.  It  was,  with 
its  fiery  tail,  sweeping  the  heavens,  and  when  I 
awoke  in  the  night  I  hugged  the  blanket  round 
my  chin,  while  I  shuddered  at  him  and  won- 
dered if  he  could  be  the  monster  working  us 
all  this  evil.  But  often  we  traveled  in  the  night, 
to  escape  the  heat  of  the  day,  and  then  I  kept 
always  in  the  wake  of  my  mother's  skirts,  for 
fear  of  that  comet.  Then,  when  for  five  min- 
utes there  was  a  halt  allowed,  the  weary  oxen, 
women,  and  children  dropped  upon  the  sand 
and  slept,  and,  as  there  was  no  one  to  see  to 
another,  each  person  took  precautions  for  awak- 
ening. My  mother  sat  between  the  wheels,  I 
often  caught  one  of  the  spokes,  and  other  hands 
grasped  the  wagon  behind  to  feel  its  first  mo- 
tion. A  nameless  dread  shook  me  one  night, 


for  one  of  the  young  girls  had  failed  to  waken, 
and  we  had  traveled  on  without  her.  Oh,  hor- 
ror!—  if  it  had  been  I  to  open  my  eyes  upon 
the  comet,  and  find  myself  alone  in  the  track- 
less sand !  When  she  was  recovered,  I  looked 
upon  her  with  awe  because  of  the  experience 
that  had  just  been  hers.  Oh,  yes ;  I  knew 
what  mirage  was.  There  it  lay  now,  quivering 
in  the  horizon  like  a  broad  river  shining  in  the 
sun,  so  beautiful,  so  tantalizing,  so  tempting, 
and  so  disappointing.  Oh,  if  I  could  just  have 
a  drink  of  water !  I  would  never  eat  anything 
more  if  they  would  only  give  me  all  the  water 
I  wanted.  Would  it  sizz  in  my  hot  throat  as  it 
went  down?  What  sweet,  cold  water  we  used 
to  draw  out  of  the  old  well  at  home !  Oh,  for 
just  one  cup,  only  one  cup,  from  that  well ! 
And  then  one  of  the  men  came  with  a  tin  buck- 
et, and  tipped  it  toward  my  mouth  a  little  way 
— such  a  very  little  way  that  I  could  not  by  any 
possibility  get  all  I  wanted.  But  it  was  so  good. 
And  when  he  was  gone  I  straightway  longed 
for  more,  with  a  consuming,  fainting  desire  that 
made  me  restless  and  irritable. 

One  warm  day  in  August,  upon  the  bank  of 
the  muddy  Colorado,  we  children  were  lazily 
sitting  about  on  the  ground.  One  sister  was 
stringing  beads  taken  from  an  old  moccasin, 
and  most  of  the  men  were  sleeping  under  the 
wagons  through  the  heat  of  the  afternoon. 
There  was  a  great  stillness  upon  everything, 
save  for  the  children's  chatter,  and  a  heat  rose 
from  the  ground  that  smote  the  eyes.  Sud- 
denly there  was  a  dreadful  scream,  echoed,  re- 
echoed, multiplied ;  then  another,  and  another, 
as  when  one  strikes  the  hand  upon  the  mouth, 
till  in  one  second  of  time  the  air  seemed  rent 
and  torn  with  yells.  In  just  that  second  the 
close  chaparral  had  become  black  with  Indi- 
ans, who  had  crawled,  serpent -like,  on  hands 
and  knees,  till,  right  upon  us,  in  concert  they 
could  leap  into  sight.  They  wore  cloths  upon 
their  loins,  and  some  had  feathers  wound  in 
their  hair,  with  hideous  paint  glowing  on  face 
and  breast.  I  gazed  in  dumb  amazement,  be- 
numbed with  surprise,  and  then  I  think  I  awoke 
to  the  excitement  of  the  occasion.  The  women 
and  children,  through  an  air  thick  with  flying 
arrows,  were  marshaled  into  one  covered  wagon, 
and  there  my  mother  wrapped  us  all  round  with 
feather-beds,  blankets,  and  comforters.  I  do 
not  think  I  was  frightened,  not  because  of  any 
precocity  of  courage,  but  because  of  a  wild  ex- 
citement that  filled  me.  I  half  leaned  upon  the 
knee  of  my  sister.  She  says  she  was  conscious 
of  no  pain,  she  felt  no  sudden  pang,  but  some- 
thing warm  seemed  running  down  her  side, 
and,  looking  down,  she  saw  an  arrow  which 
had  pierced  her  flesh  and  protruded  its  flinty 


A    CHILD'S  JOURNEY. 


head  from  the  wound.  "Mother,"  she  exclaim- 
ed, "I  am  shot,"  and  fainted.  My  mother,  the 
woman  whose  spirit  never  failed  her  in  this  or 
the  dreadful  trials  which  succeeded  this  disas- 
trous fight,  put  forth  her  hand  and  drew  the  ar- 
row backward  through  the  wound.  It  was 
while  thus  supporting  the  head  of  the  girl  she 
supposed  dying,  it  somehow  became  known  to 
her  that  her  husband  was  lying  quite  dead  and 
filled  with  arrows  under  the  great  cottonwood 
tree  round  which  the  camp  was  made.  It  was 
but  a  few  moments  more  till  one  of  the  men 
spoke  from  the  front  of  the  wagon.  Said  he : 

"Our  ammunition  is  giving  out,  and  we  do 
not  know  but  it  may  come  to  a  hand-to-hand 
fight.  Get  out  the  knives  you  have  in  the  bed 
of  the  wagon." 

Through  the  backward  march  which  followed 
it  was  ever  the  women  who  rose  superior  to  suf- 
fering and  to  danger.  The  men  lost  courage, 
hope,  and  spirit,  but  the  women  never.  A  few 
moments  after  the  demand  for  the  knives,  a 
Methodist  preacher,  who  had  seized  my  father's 
rifle,  aimed  at  the  chief  with  a  dinner-bell  de- 
pending from  his  belt,  and  saw  him  fall.  In 
five  minutes  not  an  Indian  was  to  be  seen,  the 
living  dragging  with  them  the  dead  as  they 
went.  In  the  meantime,  under  cover  of  the 
fight,  our  great  herd  of  cattle  had  been  made  to 
swim  the  river,  and  were  safely  corraled  in  the 
Mojave  villages. 

Then  began  a  weary  tramp  backward  to  Al- 
buquerque, over  mountain,  desert,  and  plain, 
every  step  of  which  for  hundreds  of  miles  we 
felt  was  watched  from  every  bush  and  point. 
The  few  cattle  remaining  to  us  were  those  too 
feeble  from  the  effects  of  alkali  to  swim  the 
river,  our  food  was  insufficient,  we  could  not 
find  water,  our  progress  was  miserably  slow. 
Oh,  the  agony  of  those  days  as  they  must  have 
been  to  my  mother,  just  widowed,  with  her  lit- 
tle ones  looking  to  her  for  care  and  comfort ! 
Reader,  is  it  any  wonder  that  memory  clings  to 
the  subject  so  faithfully,  or  that  the  bark  of  the 
wolf  and  the  wild  whoop  of  the  Indian  that  start- 
led the  child  still  linger  in  the  ear  of  the  woman? 

I  remember  a  strange  pit,  like  a  huge,  round 
pot  let  into  the  earth,  and  they  called  it  Jacob's 
Well.  Its  sides  were  so  steep  as  almost  to  for- 
bid descent,  but  the  thirsty  cattle  burst  bounds 
and  plunged  down  toward  the  pool  of  water  at 
the  bottom.  It  was  a  dark,  still,  mysterious 
pool,  filled  with  a  greenish -black  water,  in 
which  swam  eyeless  fish  with  legs  like  frogs. 
Some  one  said  it  was  bottomless.  Bottomless? 
I  wondered  at  the  idea,  and  tried  to  grasp  it  as 
I  now  clutch  desperately  at  the  idea  of  eternity, 
and  still  at  this  day  I  shake  my  head  at  both, 
for  I  can  compass  neither.  Trees  of  a  delight- 


ful verdure  grew  in  the  pit,  and  they  were  cool 
and  fresh — cool  and  fresh  and  beautiful  enough 
to  quench  the  thirst  of  a  sight  parched  with 
heat  and  glare  and  sand  and  mirage  and  the 
fever  of  disturbed  sleep.  Well,  well !  Had  the 
Bible  come  into  Arizona,  and  was  this  really 
that  well  of  old  Jacob,  of  whom  I  had  heard  on 
Sundays  as  a  very  mythical  personage  who 
cheated  his  brother  and  afterward  had  a  gray 
beard? 

And  then,  whether  near  or  far  from  this  halt- 
ing place  my  memory  fails  to  tell,  we  drew  to- 
ward a  great  pile,  with  angles  and  curves  and 
overhanging  cliffs  threatening  destruction ;  and 
this  was  Inscription  Rock,  a  quaint  and  curious 
and  marvelous  mass,  towering  from  the  plain 
into  the  sky.  The  stone  was  grained  like  sand, 
and  so  soft  that  a  knife -blade  would  easily  cut 
into  it.  It  was  covered  with  names  and  rude 
carvings,  some  put  so  high  up  I  wondered  how 
a  hand  ever  could  have  reached  them.  It  was 
here  I  first  learned  the  word  hieroglyphics  and 
heard  mention  of  Montezuma.  They  said  some 
of  the  carvings  were  hieroglyphics,  and  that 
perhaps  —  a  very  vague  perhaps — the  old  ruins 
built  on  the  top  of  Inscription  Rock  might  be 
the  remains  of  a  fortification  of  Montezuma's 
time. 

We  were  encamped  at  the  Warm  Springs,  a 
little  way  out  upon  the  hillside  from  Socorro. 
The  water  gushed,  blood  warm  or  a  little  more, 
from  a  rock  in  the  hill,  springing,  quite  a  stream, 
from  the  fissure  that  made  two  parts  of  the  rock. 
It  had  hollowed  out  a  basin  for  itself  where  it 
fell,  and  this  it  filled  like  a  bowl  with  warm  wa- 
ter, so  clear,  so  very  clear,  that  you  could  count 
all  the  legs  on  the  little  black  bugs  moving  slug- 
gishly about  on  the  rocks  two  or  three  feet  deep. 
To  this  basin  flocked  the  women  of  Socorro 
when  infrequent  wash-day  came — flocked  bare- 
footed, and  with  the  bundles  of  clothes  upon 
their  heads.  They  wore  a  skirt  and  a  chemise, 
and  this  latter,  as  if  by  design,  slipped  contin- 
ually from  their  shoulders.  Child  as  I  was,  I 
wondered  at  the  freedom  of  their  smiles  and 
glances,  while  I  was  fascinated  by  the  little 
trickles  of  laugh  that  bubbled  every  moment 
from  their  lips,  and  the  chant  of  words  which 
seemed  like  rhythm  as  they  talked.  They  let 
down  their  bundles,  and  washed  their  clothes 
upon  the  stones  as  the  Zuni  women  ground  the 
corn,  slapping  them  and  pounding  them  often 
with  soap-root,  which  obediently  gave  out  lath- 
er. And  then,  while  they  caressed  and  encour- 
aged me,  and  passed  me  round,  it  was,  "Oh, 
the  little  child!"  and  "Ah,  the  poor  little  girl, 
out  from  the  midst  of  the  Indians!"  and  "See 
the  little  one!"  while,  half  bashful  and  half 
charmed,  I  drew  away,  and  at  the  same  time 


i8 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


yielded.  When  the  washing  was  done  and 
spread  to  dry,  then  into  the  basin  they  sprung 
and  laughed  and  splashed  and  shouted,  or  swam 
as  lazily  and  sluggishly  about  as  the  little  black 
bugs  below. 

After  that  there  was  more  danger,  andjhere 
was  the  Apache  country.     I  well  remember  the 


shudder  at  Apache  Pass,  and  the  visit  which 
Cochise,  the  famous  chief,  paid  to  our  lonely 
wagon.  But  the  hard  balance  of  suffering  was 
over,  and  finally,  when  the  rolling  hills  were 
green  with  spring,  our  tired  eyes  greeted  Los 
Angeles,  that  fairest  city  of  the  south. 

KATE  HEATH. 


THE    DECAY   OF    EARNESTNESS. 


Every  animal,  when  not  frightened,  shows  in 
its  own  way  a  certain  quiet  self-complacency,  a 
confidence  in  the  supreme  worth  of  its  individ- 
ual existence,  an  exalted  egotism,  which  is  often 
not  a  little  amusing  if  we  reflect  on  the  short- 
ness, the  insignificance,  and  the  misery  of  most 
creatures'  lives.  This  animal  self-complacency 
characterizes,  also,  as  we  know,  all  naturally- 
minded  men.  We  know,  too,  that  most  men  are 
nearly  as  much  in  error  as  the  beasts,  in  the 
degree  of  importance  that  they  attach  to  their 
lives.  But  what  I  have  just  now  most  in  mind 
is  that  the  same  kind  of  blunder  is  frequently 
found  in  the  judgment  that  any  one  age  passes 
upon  itself  and  its  own  work.  Every  active 
period  of  history  thinks  its  activity  of  prodig- 
ious importance,  and  its  advance  beyond  its 
predecessors  very  admirable.  So  the  eight- 
eenth century  thought  that  the  English  poetry 
of  past  times  had  been  far  surpassed  in  form 
and  in  matter  by  the  poetry  of  the  age  of  Dry- 
den  and  of  Pope.  Long  since  the  blindness  of 
the  eighteenth  century  upon  this  point  has  been 
fully  exposed.  The  Neoplatonic  philosophy, 
the  Crusades,  the  First  French  Empire,  are 
familiar  instances  from  the  multitude  of  cases 
where  men  utterly  failed  to  perform  the  perma- 
nent work  which  they  were  very  earnestly  try- 
ing to  do,  and  where  they  were,  at  most,  doing 
for  the  world  that  which  they  least  of  all  wished 
or  expected  to  do.  Like  individuals,  then,  whole 
eras  of  history  go  by,  sublimely  confident  in  their 
own  significance,  yet  often  unable  to  make  their 
claims  even  interesting  in  the  sight  of  posterity. 

The  same  lesson  may  be  drawn  both  here 
and  in  the  case  of  individuals.  The  man  is 
vain ;  so  is  the  age.  The  man  ought  to  correct 
his  vanity  first  by  negative -criticism;  so  ought 
the  time.  But  the  disillusioning  process  is  a 
cruel  one  in  both  cases.  It  is  hard  for  the  man 
to  bear  the  thought  that,  perhaps,  after  all,  he 
is  a  useless  enthusiast.  So  it  is  hard  for  an  age 
to  bear  the  thought  that  its  dearest  worship  may 
be  only  idolatry,  and  its  best  work  only  a  fight- 


ing of  shadows.  But  for  both  the  lesson  is  the 
same.  Let  them  find  some  higher  aim  than  this 
merely  natural  one  of  self-satisfaction.  Let  their 
work  be  done,  not  that  it  may  seem  grand  to 
them  alone,  but  so  that  it  must  have  an  element 
of  grandeur  in  it,  whatever  be  the  success  of  its 
particular  purposes.  Grandeur  does  not  depend 
upon  success  alone,  nor  need  illusions  always 
be  devoid  of  a  higher  truth.  The  problem  is  to 
find  out  what  is  the  right  spirit,  and  to  work  in 
that.  If  the  matter  of  the  work  is  bad,  that 
must  perish,  but  the  spirit  need  not. 

Now,  in  our  age  we  are  especially  engaged 
upon  certain  problems  of  thought.  We  discuss 
the  origin  of  the  present  forms  of  things  in  the 
physical  and  in  the  moral  universe.  Evolution 
is  our  watchword ;  "everything  grew,"  is  the  in- 
terpretation. Our  method  of  inquiry  is  the  his- 
torical. We  want  to  see  how,  out  of  certain 
simple  elements,  the  most  complex  structures 
about  us  were  built  up.  Now,  in  the  enormous 
thought-activity  thus  involved,  two  things  espe- 
cially strike  one  who  pauses  to  watch.  The  first 
is,  that  in  studying  Evolution  men  have  come  to 
neglect  other  important  matters  that  used  to  be 
a  good  deal  talked  about.  The  true  end  of  life, 
the  nature  and  grounds  of  human  certitude,  the 
problems  of  Goethe's  Faust  and  of  Kant's  Crit- 
ique— these  disappear  from  the  view  of  many 
representative  men.  The  age  finds  room  to  talk 
about  these  things,  but  not  to  enter  upon  them 
with  a  whole-souled  enthusiasm.  Yet  these  are 
eternally  valuable  matters  of  thought.  The  age 
for  which  they  are  not  in  the  very  front  rank  of 
problems  is  a  one-sided  age,  destined  to  be  se- 
verely criticised  within  a  century.  The  other 
fact  that  strikes  us  in  this  age  is  that  the  result 
of  our  one-sidedness  is  an  unhappy  division, 
productive  of  no  little  misery,  between  the  de- 
mands of  modern  thought  and  the  demands  of 
the  whole  indivisible  nature  of  man.  The  eth- 
ical finds  not  enough  room  in  the  philosophy  ot 
the  time.  The  world  is  studied,  but  not  the  act- 
ive human  will,  without  whose  interference  the 


THE  DECA  Y  OF  EARNESTNESS. 


world  is  wholly  void  of  human  significance.  The 
matter  of  thinking  overwhelms  us ;  we  forget  to 
study  the  form,  and  so  we  accept,  with  a  blank 
wonder,  the  results  of  our  thinking  as  if  they 
were  self -existent  entities  that  had  walked  into 
our  souls  of  themselves.  For  example,  we  make 
molecules  by  reasoning  about  facts  of  sensation, 
and  by  grouping  these  facts  in  the  simplest  and 
easiest  fashion  possible ;  then  we  fall  into  a  fear 
lest  the  molecules  have,  after  all,  made  us,  and 
we  write  countless  volumes  on  a  stupid  theme 
called  materialism.  This  unreflective  fashion 
of  regarding  the  products  of  our  thought  as  the 
conditions  and  source  of  our  thought,  is  largely 
responsible  for  the  strife  between  the  ethical  and 
the  scientific  tendencies  of  the  time.  The  scien- 
tific tendency  stops  in  one  direction  at  a  certain 
point,  content  with  having  made  a  theory  of  ev- 
olution, and  fearing,  or,  at  any  rate,  neglecting, 
any  further  analysis  of  fundamental  ideas.  The 
ethical  tendency,  on  the  other  hand,  rests  on  a 
rooted  feeling  that,  after  all,  conscious  life  is  of 
more  worth  than  anything  else  in  the  universe. 
But  this  is,  nowadays,  commonly  a  mere  feeling, 
which,  finding  nothing  to  justify  it  in  current 
scientific  opinion,  becomes  morose,  and  results 
in  books  against  science.  The  books  are  wrong, 
but  the  feeling,  when  not  morose,  is  right.  The 
world  is  of  importance  only  because  of  the  con- 
scious life  in  it,  and  the  Evolution  theory  is  one- 
sided because  of  the  subordinate  place  it  gives 
to  consciousness.  But  the  cure  is  not  in  writ- 
ing books  against  science,  but  solely  in  such  a 
broad  philosophy  as  shall  correct  the  narrow- 
ness of  the  day,  and  bring  back  to  the  first  rank 
of  interest  once  more  the  problems  of  Goethe's 
Faust  and  of  Kant's  Critique.  We  want  not  less 
talk  about  evolution,  but  more  study  of  human 
life  and  destiny,  of  the  nature  of  men's  thought, 
and  the  true  goal  of  men's  actions.  Send  us 
the  thinker  that  can  show  us  just  what  in  life  is 
most  worthy  of  our  toil,  just  what  makes  men's 
destiny  more  than  poor  and  comic,  just  what  is 
the  ideal  that  we  ought  to  serve ;  let  such  a 
thinker  point  out  to  us  plainly  that  ideal,  and 
then  say,  in  a  voice  that  we  must  hear,  "Work, 
work  for  that;  it  is  the  highest" — then  such  a 
thinker  will  have  saved  our  age  from  one-side- 
edness,  and  have  given  it  eternal  significance. 
Now,  to  talk  about  those  problems  of  thought 
which  concern  the  destiny,  the  significance,  and 
the  conduct  of  human  life,  is  to  talk  about  what 
I  have  termed  "the  ethical  aspect  of  thought." 
Some  study  we  must  give  to  these  things  if  we 
are  not  to  remain,  once  for  all,  hopelessly  one- 
sided. 

In  looking  for  the  view  of  the  world  which 
shall  restore  unity  to  our  divided  age,  we  must 
first  not  forget  the  fact  that  very  lately  all  these 


now  neglected  matters  have  been  much  talked 
about.  It  is  the  theory  of  Evolution  that,  with 
its  magnificent  triumphs,  its  wonderful  ingenu- 
ity and  insight,  has  put  them  out  of  sight.  Only 
within  twenty  years  has  there  been  a  general 
inattention  to  the  study  of  the  purposes  and 
the  hopes  of  human  life — a  study  that,  embod- 
ied in  German  Idealism,  or  in  American  Tran- 
scendentalism, in  Goethe,  in  Schiller,  in  Fichte, 
in  Wordsworth,  in  Shelley,  in  Carlyle,  in  Emer- 
son, had  been  filling  men's  thoughts  since  the 
outset  of  the  great  Revolution.  But  since  the 
end  of  the  period  referred  to  our  knowledge  of 
the  origin  of  the  forms  of  life  has  driven  from 
popular  thought  the  matters  of  the  worth  and 
of  the  conduct  of  life,  so  that  one  might  grow 
up  nowadays  well  taught  in  the  learning  of  the 
age,  and  when  asked,  "Hast  thou  as  yet  receiv- 
ed into  thy  heart  any  Ideal?"  might  respond 
very  truthfully,  "I  have  not  heard  so  much  as 
whether  there  be  any  Ideal." 

Yet,  I  repeat,  the  fault  in  our  time  is  negative 
rather  than  positive.  We  have  to  enlarge,  not 
to  condemn.  Evolution  is  a  great  truth,  but  it 
is  not  all  truth.  We  need  more,  not  less,  of 
science.  We  need  a  more  thorough -going,  a 
more  searching — yes,  a  more  critical  and  skep- 
tical— thought  than  any  now  current.  For  cur- 
rent thought  is,  in  fact,  naif  and  dogmatic,  ac- 
cepting without  criticism  a  whole  army  of  ideas 
because  they  happen  to  be  useful  as  bases  for 
scientific  work.  We  need,  then,  in  the  inter- 
ests of  higher  thought,  an  addition  to  our  pres- 
ent philosophy — an  addition  that  makes  us.e  of 
the  neglected  thought  of  the  last  three  genera- 
tions. But,  as  preliminary  to  all  this,  it  becomes 
us  to  inquire :  Why  was  modern  thought  so 
suddenly  turned  from  the  contemplation  of  the 
ethical  aspect  of  reality  to  this  present  absorb- 
ing study  of  the  material  side  of  the  world? 
How  came  we  to  break  with  Transcendental- 
ism, and  to  begin  this  search  after  the  laws  of 
the  redistribution  of  matter  and  of  force?  To 
this  question  I  want  to  devote  the  rest  of  the 
present  study;  for  just  here  is  the  whole  prob- 
lem in  a  nut -shell.  Transcendentalism,  the 
distinctly  ethical  thought-movement  of  the  cent- 
ury, failed  to  keep  a  strong  hold  on  the  life  of 
the  century.  Why?  In  the  answer  to  this 
question  lies  at  once  the  relative  justification, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  understanding,  of  the 
incompleteness  cf  our  present  mode  of  thinking. 

By  Transcendentalism,  I  mean  a  movement 
that  began  in  Germany  in  the  last  thirty  years 
of  the  eighteenth  centuiy,  and  that  afterward 
spread,  in  one  form  or  another,  all  over  Europe, 
and  even  into  our  own  country — a  movement 
that  answered  in  the  moral  and  mental  world 
to  the  French  Revolution  in  the  political  world. 


20 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


Everywhere  this  movement  expressed,  through 
a  multitude  of  forms,  a  single  great  idea :  the 
idea  that  in  the  free  growth  and  expression  of 
the  highest  and  strongest  emotions  of  the  civ- 
ilized man  might  be  found  the  true  solution  of 
the  problem  of  life.  Herein  was  embodied  a 
reaction  against  the  characteristic  notions  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  the  conventional, 
in  submission  to  the  external  forms  of  govern- 
ment, religion,  and  society,  joined  with  a  total 
indifference  to  the  spiritual,  and  with  a  general 
tendency  to  free  but  shallow  speculation,  the 
average  popular  thought  of  the  last  century  had 
sought  to  attain  repose  rather^than  perfection. 
The  great  thinkers  rose  far  above  this  level; 
but,  on  the  whole,  we  look  to  the  age  of  the 
rationalists  rather  for  ingenuity  than  for  pro- 
fundity, rather  for  good  sense  than  for  grand 
ideas.  The  prophetic,  the  emotional,  the  sub- 
lime, are  absent  from  the  typical  eighteenth 
century  mind-life.  Instead,  we  find  cultivation, 
criticism,  skepticism,  and  at  times,  as  a  sort  of 
relief,  a  mild  sentimentality.  The  Transcend- 
ental movement  expressed  a  rebound  from  this 
state  of  things.  With  the  so-called  Storm  and 
Stress  Period  of  German  literature  the  protest 
against  conventionality  and  in  favor  of  a  higher 
life  began.  Love,  enthusiasm,  devotion,  the  af- 
fection for  humanity,  the  search  after  the  ideal, 
the  faith  in  a  spiritual  life — these  became  ob- 
jects of  the  first  interest.  A  grand  new  era  of 
history  seemed  opening.  Men  felt  themselves 
on  the  verge  of  great  discoveries.  The  highest 
hopes  were  formed.  A  movement  was  begun 
that  lasted  through  three  generations,  and  far 
into  a  fourth.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  in  nature  a 
young  men's  movement ;  but  as  the  men  of  one 
generation  lost  their  early  enthusiasm,  others 
arose  to  follow  in  their  footsteps — blundering- 
ly, perhaps,  but  earnestly.  When  Goethe  had 
outgrown  his  youthful  extravagances,  behold 
there  were  the  young  Romanticists  to  under- 
take the  old  work  once  more.  When  they  crys- 
tallized with  time,  and  lost  hold  on  the  German 
national  life,  there  came  Heine  and  the  Young 
Germany  to  pursue  with  new  vigor  the  old  path. 
In  England,  Wordsworth  grows  very  sober 
with  age,  when  there  come  Byron  and  Shelley ; 
Coleridge  fails,  and  Carlyle  is  sent;  Shelley 
and  Byron  pass  away,  but  Tennyson  arises. 
And  with  us  in  America  Emerson  and  his  help- 
ers renew  the  spirit  of  a  half  century  before 
their  time.  This  movement  now  seems  a  thing 
of  the  past.  There  is  no  Emerson  among  the 
younger  men,  no  Tennyson  among  the  new 
school  of  poets,  no  Heine  in  Germany — much 
less,  then,  a  Fichte  or  a  Schiller.  Not  merely 
is  genius  lacking,  but  the  general  public  inter- 
est, the  soil  from  which  a  genius  draws  nour- 


ishment, is  unfavorable.  The  literary  taste  of 
the  age  is  represented  by  George  Eliot's  later 
novels,  where  everything  is  made  subordinate 
to  analysis,  by  the  poetry  of  several  skillful 
masters  of  melody,  by  the  cold  critical  work 
of  the  authors  of  the  series  on  "English  Men 
of  Letters."  Men  of  wonderful  power  there  are 
among  our  writers — men  like  William  Morris 
in  poetry,  or  Mathew  Arnold  in  both  criticism 
and  poetry ;  but  their  work  is  chiefly  esoteric, 
appealing  to  a  limited  class.  Widely  popular 
writers  we  have  upon  many  subjects ;  but  they 
are  either  great  men  of  abstract  thought,  like 
Spencer  and  Huxley ;  or  else,  alas  !  mere  super- 
ficial scribblers  like  Mr.  Mallock,  or  rhetori- 
cians like  Rev.  Joseph  Cook.  The  moral  lead- 
er, the  seer,  the  man  to  awaken  deep  interest 
in  human  life  as  human  life,  no  longer  belongs 
to  the  active  soldiers  of  the  army  of  to-day; 
and,  what  is  worse,  the  public  mind  no  longer 
inquires  after  such  a  leader.  There  must  sure- 
ly be  a  cause  for  this  state  of  public  sentiment. 
Neglect  of  such  vital  questions  must  have 
sprung  from  some  error  in  their  treatment. 
Let  us  look  in  history  for  that  error. 

The  Storm  and  Stress  Period  in  Germany  be- 
gan with  the  simplest  and  most  unaffected  de- 
sire possible  to  get  back  from  conventionality 
and  from  shallow  thought  to  the  purity  and 
richness  of  natural  emotion.  There  was  at  first 
no  set  philosophy  or  creed  about  the  universe 
common  to  those  engaged  in  the  movement. 
The  young  poets  worshiped  genius,  and  de- 
sired to  feel  intensely  and  to  express  emotion 
worthily.  To  this  end  they  discarded  the  tra- 
ditions as  to  form  which  they  found  embodied 
in  French  poetry  and  in  learned  text -books. 
Lessing  had  furnished  them  critical  authority. 
He  had  shown  the  need  of  appealing  to  Nature 
for  instruction,  both  in  the  matter  and  in  the 
manner  of  poetry.  Popular  ballads  suggested 
to  some  of  the  young  school  their  models. 
Their  own  overflowing  hearts,  their  warm,  ideal 
friendships  with  one  another,  their  passion  for 
freedom,  their  full  personal  experiences,  gave 
them  material.  Together  they  broke  down  con- 
ventions, and  opened  a  new  era  in  literary  life, 
as  the  French  Revolution,  twenty  years  later, 
did  in  national  life.  Every  one  knows  that 
Goethe's  famous  Werther  is  the  result  of  this 
time  of  ferment.  Now,  if  one  reads  Werther 
attentively,  and  with  an  effort  (for  it  needs  an 
effort)  to  sympathize  with  the  mood  that  pro- 
duced and  enjoyed  it,  one  will  see  in  it  the 
characteristic  idea  that  the  aim  of  life  is  to  have 
as  remarkable  and  exalted  emotional  experi- 
ences as  possible,  and  those  of  a  purely  per- 
sonal character;  that  is,  not  the  emotion  that 
men  feel  in  common  when  they  engage  in  great 


THE  DECAY  OF  EARNESTNESS. 


21 


causes,  not  the  devotion  to  sublime  impersonal 
objects,  not  surrender  to  unworldly  ideals,  but 
simply  the  overwhelming  sense  of  the  magni- 
tude and  worth  of  one's  own  loves  and  longings, 
of  one's  own  precious  soul -experiences — this, 
and  not  the  other,  is  to  be  sought.  Werther 
cannot  resist  the  fate  that  drives  him  to  load  his 
heart  down  with  emotion  until  it  breaks.  He 
feels  how  far  asunder  from  the  rest  of  mankind 
all  this  drives  him.  But  he  insists  upon  despis- 
ing mankind,  and  upon  reveling  in  the  danger- 
ous wealth  of  his  inspiration.  Now,  surely  such 
a  state  of  mind  as  this  must  injure  men  if  they 
remain  long  in  it.  Men  need  work  in  life,  and 
so  long  as  they  undertake  to  dig  into  their  own 
bowels  for  the  wonderful  inner  experiences  that 
they  may  find  by  digging,  so  long  must  their 
lives  be  bad  dreams.  The  purpose  of  these 
young  men  was  the  highest,  but  only  those  of 
them  who,  following  this  purpose,  passed  far 
beyond  the  simplicity  of  their  youth,  did  work 
of  lasting  merit.  The  others  stayed  in  a  state 
of  passionate  formlessness,  or  died  early.  The 
result  of  remaining  long  in  this  region,  where 
nothing  was  of  worth  but  a  violent  emotion  or 
an  incredible  deed,  one  sees  in  such  a  man  as 
Klinger,  who  lived  long  enough  to  reap  what  he 
had  sown,  but  did  not  progress  sufficiently  to 
succeed  in  sowing  anything  but  the  wind.  I 
remember  once  spending  an  idle  hour  on  one  of 
his  later  romances,  written  years  after  the  time 
of  Storm  and  Stress  had  passed  by,  which  well 
expresses  the  state  of  mind,  the  sort  of  katzen- 
jammer,  resulting  from  a  long  life  of  literary 
dissipation.  It  is  Klinger's  Faustus — the  same 
subject  as  Goethe's  masterpiece,  but  how  differ- 
ently treated!  Faustus  is  a  man  desperately 
anxious  to  act.  He  wants  to  reform  the  world, 
to  be  sure,  but  that  only  by  the  way.  His  main 
object  is  to  satisfy  a  vague,  restless  craving  for 
tremendous  excitement.  The  contract  with  the 
devil  once  made,  he  plunges  into  a  course  of 
reckless  adventure.  Where  he  undertakes  to 
do  good  he  only  makes  bad  worse.  Admirable 
about  him  is  merely  the  magnitude  of  his  proj- 
ects, the  vigor  of  his  actions,  the  desperate  cour- 
age wherewith  he  defies  the  universe.  Brought 
to  hell  at  last,  he  ends  his  career  by  cursing  all 
things  that  are  with  such  fearless  and  shocking' 
plainness  of  speech  that  the  devils  themselves 
are  horrified.  Satan  has  to  invent  a  new  place 
of  torment  for  him.  He  is  banished,  if  I  re- 
member rightly,  into  horrible  darkness,  where 
he  is  to  pass  eternity  perfectly  alone.  Thus  ter- 
ribly the  poet  expresses  the  despair  in  which 
ends  for  him,  as  for  all,  this  self  -  adoration  of 
the  man  whose  highest  object  is  violent  emo- 
tional experiences,  enjoyed  merely  because  they 
are  his  own,  not  because  by  having  them  one 

VOL.  III.- a. 


serves  the  Ideal.  As  a  mere  beginning,  then, 
the  Storm  and  Stress  Period  expressed  a  great 
awakening  of  the  world  to  new  life.  But  an 
abiding  place  in  this  state  of  mind  there  was 
none.  What  then  followed? 

The  two  masters  of  German  literature  who 
passed  through  and  rose  above  this  period  of 
beginnings,  and  created  the  great  works  of  the 
classical  period,  were  Goethe  and  Schiller.  As 
poets,  we  are  not  now  specially  concerned  with 
them.  As  moral  teachers,  what  have  they  to 
tell  us  about  the  conduct  and  the  worth  of  life? 
The  answer  is,  they  bear  not  altogether  the 
same  message.  There  is  a  striking  contrast, 
well  recognized  by  themselves  and  by  all  subse- 
quent critics,  between  their  views  of  life.  Both 
aim  at  the  highest,  but  seek  in  different  paths. 
Goethe's  mature  ideal  seems  to  be  a  man  of 
finely  appreciative  powers,  who  follows  his  life- 
calling  quietly  and  with  such  diligence  as  to  gain 
for  himself  independence  and  leisure,  who  so 
cultivates  his  mind  that  it  is  open  to  receive  all 
noble  impressions,  and  who  then  waits  with  a 
sublime  resignation,  gained  through  years  of 
self-discipline,  for  such  experiences  of  what  is 
grand  in  life  and  in  the  universe  as  the  Spirit 
of  Nature  sees  fit  to  grant  to  him.  Wilhelm 
Meister,  who  works  eagerly  for  success  in  a  di- 
rection where  success  is  impossible,  and  who 
afterward  finds  bliss  where  he  least  expected 
to  find  it,  seems  to  teach  this  lesson.  Faust,  at 
first  eagerly  demanding  indefinite  breadth  and 
grandeur  of  life,  and  then  coming  to  see  what 
the  limitations  of  human  nature  are,  "that  to 
man  nothing  perfect  is  given,"  and  so  at  last 
finding  the  highest  good  of  life  in  the  thought 
that  he  and  posterity  must  daily  earn  anew  free- 
dom, never  be  done  with  progressing,  seems  to 
illustrate  the  same  thought.  Do  not  go  beyond 
or  behind  Nature,  Goethe  always  teaches.  Live 
submissively  the  highest  that  it  is  given  you  to 
live,  and  neither  cease  quietly  working,  nor  de- 
spair, nor  rebel,  but  be  open  to  every  new  and 
worthy  experienced  For  Goethe  this  was  a  per- 
fect solution  of  the  problem  of  life.  He  needed 
no  fixed  system  of  dogmas  to  content  him.  In 
the  divine  serenity  of  one  of  the  most  perfect 
of  minds,  Goethe  put  in  practice  this  maxim : 
Live  thy  life  out  to  the  full,  earnestly  but  sub- 
missively, demanding  what  attainment  thy  nat- 
ure makes  possible,  but  not  pining  for  more.  ) 

Now,  this  of  course  is  a  selfish  maxim.  If 
the  highest  life  is  to  be  unselfish,  Goethe  can- 
not have  given  us  the  final  solution  to  the  prob- 
lem. His  selfishness  was  not  of  a  low  order. 
It  was  like  the  selfishness  in  the  face  of  the 
Apollo  Belvedere,  the  simple  consciousness  of 
vast  personal  worth.  But  it  was  selfishness  for 
all  that.  We  see  how  it  grew  for  him  out  of  his 


22 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


early  enthusiasm.  The  Storm  and  Stress  Period 
had  been  full  of  the  thought  that  there  is  some- 
thing grand  in  the  emotional  nature  of  man, 
and  that  this  something  must  be  cultivated. 
Now,  Goethe,  absorbed  in  the  faith  of  the  time — 
himself,  in  fact,  its  high  priest — learned  after 
a  while  that  all  these  much  sought  treasures  of 
emotion  were  there  already,  in  his  own  being, 
and  that  they  needed  no  long  search,  no  storm- 
ing at  all.  He  had  but  to  be  still  and  watch 
them.  He  needed  no  anxious  brooding  to  find 
ideals ;  he  went  about  quietly,  meeting  the  ideal 
everywhere.  The  object  of  search  thus  attained, 
in  so  far  as  any  mortal  could  attain  it,  Goethe 
the  poet  was  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  Goethe 
of  practical  life ;  and  so  was  formed  the  creed 
of  the  greatest  man  of  the  century.  But  it  was 
a  creed  of  little  more  than  personal  significance. 
For  us  the  grand  example  remains,  but  the  at- 
tainment of  like  perfection  is  impossible,  and 
we  must  look  for  another  rule  of  living.  For 
those  sensitive  and  earnest  people  who  learn, 
as  many  learn  while  yet  mere  school -boys  or 
school -girls,  that  there  is  a  great  wealth  of 
splendid  emotional  life,  of  affection  and  aspira- 
tion and  devotion,  shut  up  in  their  own  hearts ; 
for  those  who,  feeling  this,  want  to  develop  this 
inner  nature,  to  enjoy  these  high  gifts,  to  order 
their  lives  accordingly,  to  avoid  shams  and 
shows,  and  to  possess  the  real  light  of  life — for 
such  natural  Transcendentalists,  what  shall 
Goethe's  precept  avail?  Alas  !  their  little  lives 
are  not  Olympian,  like  his.  They  cannot  meet 
the  Ideal  everywhere.  Poetry  does  not  come 
to  express  their  every  feeling.  No  Grand  Duke 
calls  them  to  his  court.  No  hosts  of  followers 
worship  them.  Of  all  this  they  are  not  worthy. 
Yet  they  ought  to  find  some  path,  be  it  never 
so  steep  a  one,  to  a  truly  higher  life.  Resigna- 
tion may  be  the  best  mood,  but  Goethe's  reason 
for  resignation  such  souls  have  not. 

Perhaps  Schiller's  creed  may  have  more 
meaning  for  men  in  general.  In  fact,  Schiller, 
though  no  common  man,  had  much  more  in 
him  that  common  men  may,  without  trouble, 
appreciate.  His  origin  was  humble,  and  the 
way  up  steep  and  rough.  In  his  earlier  writ- 
ings the  Storm  and  Stress  tendency  takes  a 
simpler  and  cruder  form  than  that  of  Werther. 
What  Schiller  accomplished  was  for  along  time 
the  result  of  very  hard  work,  done  in  the  midst 
of  great  doubt  and  perplexity.  Schiller's  ideal 
is,  therefore,  to  use  his  own  figure,  the  labori- 
ous, oppressed,  and  finally  victorious  Hercules 
— i.  e.j  the  man  who  fears  no  toil  in  the  service 
of  the  highest,  who  knows  that  there  is  some- 
thing of  the  divine  in  him,  who  restlessly  strives 
to  fulfill  his  destiny,  and  who  at  last  ascends  to 
the  sight  and  knowledge  of  the  truly  perfect.  \ 


Schiller's  maxim  therefore  is :  Toil  ceaselessly 
to  give  thy  natural  powers  their  full  develop- 
ment, knowing  that  nothing  is  worth  having  but 
a  full  consciousness  of  all  that  thou  hast  of  good, 
now  latent  and  unknown  within  thee.  Resigna- 
tion, therefore,  though  it  is  the  title  of  one  of 
Schiller's  poems,  is  never  his  normal  active 
mood.  He  retains  to  the  end  a  good  deal  of 
the  old  Storm  and  Stress.  He  is  always  a  sen- 
timental poet,  to  use  the  epithet  in  his  own 
sense;  that  is,  he  is  always  toiling  for  the  ideal, 
never  quite  sure  that  he  is  possessed  of  it.  He 
dreams  sometimes  that  he  soon  will  know  the 
perfect  state  of  mind;  but  he  never  does  at- 
tain, nor  does  he  seem,  like  Goethe,  content 
with,  the  eternal  progress.  There  is  an  under- 
current of  complaint  and  despair  in  Schiller, 
which  only  the  splendid  enthusiasm  of  the  man 
keeps,  for  the  most  part,  out  of  sight.  Some  of 
his  poems  are  largely  under  its  influence. 

Now,  this  creed,  in  so  far  as  it  is  earnest  and 
full  of  faith  in  the  ideal,  appeals  very  much  more 
immediately  than  does  Goethe's  creed  to  the 
average  sensitive  mind.  Given  a  soul  that  is 
awake  to  the  higher  emotions,  and  if  you  tell 
such  a  one  to  work  earnestly  and  without  rest  to 
develop  this  better  self,  you  will  help  him  more 
than  if  you  bid  him  contemplate  the  grand  at- 
tainment of  a  Goethe,  and  be  resigned  to  his  own 
experiences  as  Goethe  was  to  his.  For  most  of 
us  the  higher  life  is  to  be  gained  only  through 
weary  labor,  if  at  all.  But  what  seems  to  be 
lacking  in  Schiller's  creed  is  a  sufficiently  con- 
crete definition  of  the  ideal  that  he  seeks.  Any 
attentive  reader  of  Faust  feels  strongly,  if  vague- 
ly, what  it  is  that  Faust  is  looking  for.  But  one 
may  read  Schiller's  "  Das  Ideal  und  das  Leben" 
a  good  many  times  without  really  seeing  what 
it  is  that  the  poor  Hercules,  or  his  earthy  rep- 
resentative, is  seeking.  Schiller  is  no  doubt,  on 
the  whole,  the  simpler  poet,  yet  I  must  say  that 
if  I  wanted  to  give  any  one  his  first  idea  of  what 
perfection  of  mind  and  character  is  most  worthy 
of  search,  I  should  send  such  a  one  to  Goethe 
rather  than  to  Schiller.  Schiller  talks  nobly 
about  the  way  to  perfection,  but  he  defines  per- 
fection quite  abstractly.  Goethe  is  not  very 
practical  in  his  directions  about  the  road,  but 
surely  no  higher  or  clearer  ideals  of  what  is  good 
in  emotion  and  action  can  be  put  into  our  minds 
than  those  he  suggests  in  almost  any  passage 
you  please,  if  he  is  in  a  serious  mood,  and  is 
talking  about  good  and  evil  at  all. 

But  neither  of  the  classical  poets  satisfied  his 
readers  merely  as  a  moral  teacher.  As  poets, 
they  remain  what  they  always  seemed — classics, 
indeed;  but  as  thinkers  they  did  little  more 
than  state  a  problem.  Here  is  a  higher  life, 
and  they  tell  us  about  it.  But  wherein  consists 


THE  DEC  A  Y  OF  EARNESTNESS. 


its  significance,  how  it  is  to  be  preached  to  the 
race,  how  sought  by  each  one  of  us — these  ques- 
tions remain  still  open. 

And  open  they  are,  the  constant  theme  for 
eager  discussion  and  for  song  all  through  the 
early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Close 
upon  the  classical  period  followed  the  German 
Romantic  school.  Young  men  again,  full  of 
earnestness  and  of  glorious  experience !  On 
they  come,  confident  that  they  at  least  are  called 
to  be  apostles,  determined  to  reform  life  and 
poetry — the  one  through  the  other.  Surely  they 
will  solve  the  problem,  and  tell  us  how  to  culti- 
vate this  all  important  higher  nature.  Fichte, 
the  great  idealist,  whose  words  set  men's  hearts 
afire,  or  else,  alas !  make  men  laugh  at  him ; 
young  Friedrich  Schlegel,  versatile,  liberal  in 
conduct  even  beyond  the  bounds  that  may  not 
safely  be  passed,  bold  in  spirit  even  to  insolence ; 
the  wonderful  Novalis,  so  profound,  and  yet  so 
unaffected  and  child-like,  so  tender  in  emotion 
and  yet  so  daring  in  speculation ;  Schelling,  full 
of  vast  philosophic  projects;  Tieck,  skillful 
weaver  of  romantic  fancies;  Schleiermacher, 
gifted  theologian  and  yet  disciple  of  Spinoza; 
surely,  these  are  the  men  to  complete  the  work 
that  will  be  left  unfinished  when  Schiller  dies 
and  Goethe  grows  older.  So  at  least  they  thought 
and  their  friends.  Never  were  young  men  more 
confident ;  and  yet  never  did  learned  and  really 
talented  men,  to  the  most  of  whom  was  granted 
long  life  with  vigor,  more  completely  fail  to  ac- 
complish anything  of  permanent  value  in  the 
direction  of  their  early  efforts.  As  mature  men, 
some  of  them  were  very  influential  and  useful, 
but  not  in  the  way  in  which  they  first  sought  to 
be  useful.  There  is  to  my  mind  a  great  and  sad 
fascination  in  studying  the  lives  and  thoughts 
of  this  school,  in  whose  fate  seems  to  be  exem- 
plified the  tragedy  of  our  century.  Such  aspira- 
tions, such  talents,  and  such  a  failure !  Frag- 
ments of  inspired  verse  and  prose,  splendid 
plans, earnest  private  letters  to  friends,  prophetic 
visions,  and  nothing  more  of  enduring  worth. 
Further  and  further  goes  the  movement,  in  its 
worship  of  the  emotional,  away  from  the  actual 
needs  of  human  life.  Dramatic  art,' the  test  of 
the  poet  that  has  a  deep  insight  into  the  prob- 
lems of  our  nature,  is  tried,  with  almost  com- 
plete failure.  The  greatest  dramatic  poet  of 
the  new  era,  one  that,  if  he  had  Jived,  might 
have  rivaled  Schiller,  was  Heinrich  von  Kleist, 
author  of  the  Prinz  von  Hamburg.  Driven  to 
despair  by  unsolved  problems  and  by  loneliness, 
this  poet  shot  himself  before  his  life-work  was 
more  than  fairly  begun.  There  remain  a  few 
dramas,  hardly  finished,  a  few  powerful  tales, 
and  a  bundle  of  fragments  to  tell  us  what  he 
was.  His  fate  is  typical  of  the  work  of  the 


younger  school  between  the  years  1805  and 
1815.  There  was  a  keen  sense  of  the  worth  of 
emotional  experience,  and  an  inability  to  come 
into  unity  with  one's  aspirations.  Life  and 
poetry,  as  the  critics  have  it,  were  at  variance. 

Now,  in  all  this,  these  men  were  not  merely 
fighting  shadows.  What  they  sought  to  do  is 
eternally  valuable.  They  felt,  and  felt  nobly, 
as  all  generous-minded,  warm-hearted  youths 
and  maidens  at  some  time  do  feel.  They  were 
not  looking  for  fame  alone ;  they  wanted  to  be 
and  to  produce  the  highest  that  mortals  may. 
It  is  a  pity  that  we  have  not  just  now  more  like 
them.  Yet  their  efforts  failed.  What  problems 
Goethe  and  Schiller,  men  of  genius  and  of  good 
fortune,  had  solved  for  themselves  alone,  men 
of  lesser  genius  or  of  less  happy  lives  could 
only  puzzle  over.  The  poetry  of  the  next  fol- 
lowing age  is  largely  the  poetry  of  melancholy. 
The  emotional  movement  spread  all  over  Eu- 
rope ;  men  everywhere  strove  to  make  life  richer 
and  worthier ;  and  most  men  grew  sad  at  their 
little  success.  Alfred  de  Musset,  in  a  well  known 
book,  has  told  in  the  gloomiest  strain  the  story 
of  the  unrest,  the  despair,  the  impotency  of  the 
youth  of  the  Restoration. 

Wordsworth  and  Shelley  represent  in  very 
much  contrasted  ways  the  efforts  of  English 
poets  to  carry  on  the  work  of  Transcendental- 
ism, and  these  men  succeeded,  in  this  respect, 
better  than  their  fellows.  Wordsworth  is  full 
of  a  sense  of  the  deep  meaning  of  little  things 
and  of  the  most  common  life.  Healthy  men, 
that  work  like  heroes,  that  have  lungs  full  of 
mountain  air,  and  that  yet  retain  the  simplicity 
of  shepherd  life,  or  children,  whose  eyes  and 
words  teach  purity  and  depth  of  feeling,  are  to 
him  the  most  direct  suggestions  of  the  ideal. 
Life  is,  for  Wordsworth,  everywhere  an  effort  to 
be  at  once  simple  and  full  of  meaning;  in  har- 
mony with  nature,  and  yet  not  barbarous.  But 
Wordsworth,  if  he  has  very  much  to  teach  us, 
seems  to  lack  the  persuasive  enthusiasm  of  the 
poetic  leader  of  men.  At  all  events,  his  appeal 
has  reached,  sojfar,  only  a  class.  He  can  be 
all  in  all  to  them,  his  followers,  but  he  did  not 
reform  the  world.  Shelley,  is,  perhaps,  the  one 
of  all  English  poets  in  this  century  to  whom 
was  given  the  purest  ideal  delight  in  the  higher 
affections.  If  you  want  to  be  eager  to  act  out 
the  best  that  is  in  you,  read  Shelley.  If  you 
want  to  cultivate  a  sense  for  the  best  in  the  feel- 
ings of  all  human  hearts,  read  Shelley.  He  has 
taught  very  many  to  long  for  a  worthy  life  and 
for  purity  of  spirit.  But  alas !  Shelley,  again, 
knows  not  how  to  teach  the  way  to  the  acquire- 
ment of  the  end  that  he  so  enthusiastically  de- 
scribes. If  you  can  feel  with  him,  he  does  you 
you  good.  If  you  fail  to  understand  him,  he  is 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


no  systematic  teacher.  At  best,  he  will  arouse 
a  longing.  He  can  never  wholly  satisfy  it. 
Shelley  wanted  to  be  no  mere  writer.  He  had 
in  him  a  desire  to  reform  the  world.  But  when 
he  speaks  of  reform  one  sees  how  vague  an  idea 
he  had  of  the  means.  Prometheus,  the  Titan, 
who  represents  in  Shelley's  poem  oppressed  hu- 
manity, is  bound  on  the  mountain.  The  poem 
is  to  tell  us  of  his  deliverance.  But  how  is  this 
accomplished?  Why,  simply  when  a  certain 
fated  hour  comes,  foreordained,  but  by  nobody 
in  particular,  up  comes  Demogorgon,  the  spirit 
of  eternity,  stalks  before  the  throne  of  Jupiter, 
the  tyrant,  and  orders  him  him  out  into  the 
abyss ;  and  thereupon  Prometheus  is  unchain- 
ed, and  the  earth  is  happy.  Why  did  not  all 
this  happen  before?  Apparently  because  De- 
mogorgon did  not  sooner  leave  the  under- world. 
What  a  motive  is  this  for  an  allegoric  account 
of  the  deliverance  of  humanity !  Mere  accident 
rules  everything,  and  yet  apparently  there  is  a 
coming  triumph  to  work  for.  The  poet  of 
lofty  emotions  is  but  an  eager  child  when  he  is 
to  advise  us  to  act. 

The  melancholy  side  of  the  literary  era  that 
extends  from  1815  to  1840  is  represented  espe- 
cially by  two  poets,  Byron  and  Heine.  Both 
treat  the  same  great  problem,  What  is  this  life, 
and  what  in  it  is  of  most  worth?  Both  recog- 
nize the  need  there  is  for  something  more  than 
mere  existence.  Both  know  the  value  of  emo- 
tion, and  both  would  wish  to  lead  men  to  an 
understanding  of  this  value,  if  only  they  thought 
that  men  could  be  lead.  Despairing  themselves 
of  ever  attaining  an  ideal  peace  of  mind,  they 
give  themselver  over  to  melancholy.  Despair- 
ing of  raising  men  even  to  their  own  level,  they 
become  scornful,  and  spend  far  too  much  time 
in  merely  negative  criticism.  The  contrast  be- 
tween them  is  not  a  little  instructive.  Byron  is 
too  often  viewed  by  superficial  readers  merely 
in  the  light  of  his  early  sentimental  poems. 
Those,  for  our  present  purpose,  may  be  disre- 
garded. It  is  the  Byron  of  Manfred  and  Cain 
that  I  now  have  in  mind.  As  for  Heine,  Mat- 
thew Arnold  long  since  said  the  highest  in  praise 
of  his  ethical  significance  that  we  may  dare  to 
say.  Surely  both  men  have  great  defects.  They 
are  one-sided,  and  often  insincere.  But  they 
are  children  of  the  ideal.  Byron  has,  I  think, 
the  greater  force  of  character,  but  the  gift  of 
seeing  well  what  is  beautiful  and  pathetic  in 
life  fell  to  the  lot  of  Heine.  The  one  is  great 
in  spirit,  the  other  in  experience.  Byron  is,  by 
nature,  combative,  a  hater  of  wrong,  one  often 
searching  for  the  highest  truth ;  but  his  experi- 
ence is  petty  and  heart- sickening,  his  real  world 
is  miserably  unworthy  of  his  ideal  world,  and 
he  seems  driven  on  into  the  darkness  like  his 


own  Cain  and  Manfred.  Heine  has  more  the 
faculty  of  vision.  The  perfect  delight  in  a  mo- 
ment of  emotion  is  given  to  him  as  it  has  sel- 
dom been  given  to  any  man  since  the  unknown 
makers  of  the  popular  ballads.  Hence,  his  fre- 
quent use  of  ballad  forms  and  incidents.  Sure- 
ly, Byron  could  never  have  given  us  that  picture 
of  Edith  of  the  Swan's  Neck  searching  for  the 
dead  King  Harold  on  the  field  of  Hastings, 
which  Heine  has  painted  in  one  of  the  ballads 
of  the  Romancero.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
Heine  lacks  the  force  to  put  into  active  life  the 
meaning  and  beauty  that  he  can  so  well  appre- 
ciate. He  sees  in  dreams,  but  he  cannot  create 
in  the  world  the  ideal  of  perfection.  So  he  is 
bitter  and  despairing.  He  takes  a  cruel  delight 
in  pointing  out  the  shams  of  the  actual  world. 
Naturally  romantic,  he  attacks  romantic  ten- 
dencies ever  afresh  with  hate  and  scorn.  In 
brief,  to  live  the  higher  life,  and  to  teach  others 
to  live  it  also,  one  would  have  to  be  heroic  in 
action,  like  Byron,  and  gifted  with  the  power  to 
see,  as  Heine  saw,  what  is  precious,  and,  in  all 
its  simplicity,  noble,  about  human  experience. 
The  union  of  Byron  and  Heine  would  have  been 
a  new,  and,  I  think,  a  higher,  sort  of  Goethe. 

Since  these  have  passed  away  we  have  had 
our  Emerson,  our  Carlyle,  our  Tennyson.  Upon 
these  men  we  cannot  dwell  now.  I  pass  to  the 
result  of  the  whole  long  struggle.  Humanity 
was  seeking,  in  these  its  chosen  representative 
men,  to  attain  to  a  fuller  emotional  life.  A  con- 
flict resulted  with  the  petty  and  ignoble  in  hu- 
man nature,  and  with  the  dead  resistance  of 
material  forces.  Men  grew  old  and  died  in  this 
conflict,  did  wonderful  things,  and — did  not 
conquer.  And  now,  at  last,  Europe  gave  up  the 
whole  effort,  and  fell  to  thinking  about  physical 
science  and  about  great  national  movements. 
The  men  of  the  last  age  are  gone,  or  are  fast 
going,  and  we  are  left  face  to  face  with  a  dan- 
gerous practical  materialism.  The  time  is  one 
of  unrest,  but  not  of  great  moral  leaders.  Ac- 
tion is  called  for,  and,  vigorous  as  we  are,  spir- 
itual activity  is  not  one  of  the  specialties  of  the 
modern  world. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  reasons  why  what  I 
have  for  brevity's  sake  called  Transcendental- 
ism lost  its  hold  on  the  life  of  the  century. 
These  reasons  were  briefly  these:  First,  the 
ideal  sought  by  the  men  of  the  age  of  which  we 
have  spoken  was  too  selfish,  not  broad  and  hu- 
man enough.  Goethe  might  save  himself,  but 
he  could  not  teach  us  the  road.  Secondly,  men 
did  not  strive  long  and  earnestly  enough.  Sure- 
ly, if  the  problems  of  human  conduct  are  to  be 
solved,  if  life  is  to  be  made  full  of  emotion, 
strong,  heroic,  and  yet  not  cold,  we  must  all 
unite,  men,  women,  and  children,  in  the  com- 


A   STRANGE    CONFESSION. 


mon  cause  of  living  ourselves  as  best  we  can, 
and  of  helping  others,  by  spoken  and  by  writ- 
ten word,  to  do  the  same.  We  lack  persever- 
ance and  leaders.  Thirdly,  the  splendid  suc- 
cesses of  certain  modern  investigations  have 
led  away  men's  minds  from  the  study  of  the 
conduct  of  life  to  a  study  of  the  evolution  of 
life.  I  respect  the  latter  study,  but  I  do  not 
believe  it  fills  the  place  of  the  former.  I  wish 
there  were  time  in  our  hurried  modern  life  for 
both.  I  know  there  must  be  found  time,  and 
that  right  quickly,  for  the  study  of  the  old  prob- 
lems of  the  Faust  of  Goethe. 

With  this  conclusion,  the  present  study  ar- 
rives at  the  goal  set  at  the  beginning.  How  we 
are  to  renew  these  old  discussions,  what  solu- 
tion of  them  we  are  to  hope  for,  whether  we 
shall  ever  finally  solve  them,  what  the  true 
ideal  of  life  is — of  all  such  matters  I  would  not 
presume  to  write  further  at  this  present.  But 
let  us  not  forget  that  if  our  Evolution  text-books 
contain  much  of  solid— yes,  of  inspiring — truth, 
they  do  not  contain  all  the  knowledge  that  is 
essential  to  a  perfect  life  or  to  the  needs  of  hu- 


manity. A  philosophy  made  possible  by  the 
deliberate  neglect  of  that  thought -movement, 
whose  literary  expression  was  the  poetry  of  our 
century,  cannot  itself  be  broad  enough  and 
deep  enough  finally  to  do  away  with  the  needs 
embodied  in  that  thought-movement.  Let  one, 
knowing  this  fact,  be  therefore  earnest  in  the 
search  for  whatever  may  make  human  life  more 
truly  worth  living.  Let  him  read  again,  if  he 
has  read  before,  or  begin  to  read,  if  he  has 
never  read,  our  Emerson,  our  Carlyle,  our  Ten- 
nyson, or  the  men  of  years  ago,  who  so  aroused 
the  ardent  souls  of  the  best  among  our  fathers. 
Let  him  study  Goethe,  Schiller,  Heine,  Words- 
worth, anything  and  everything  that  can  arouse 
in  him  a  sense  of  our  true  spiritual  needs.  And 
having  read,  let  him  work  in  the  search  after  • 
the  ideal — work  not  for  praise,  but  for  the  good 
of  his  time. 

And  then,  perhaps,  some  day  a  new  and  a 
mightier  Transcendental  Movement  may  begin 
— a  great  river,  that  shall  not  run  to  waste  and 
be  lost  in  the  deserts  of  sentimental  melan- 
choly. JOSIAH  ROYCE. 


A  STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  plan  adopted  by  Mrs.  Howard  withj-ef- 
erence  to  the  newspapers  had  due  weight.  It 
is  impossible  to  refrain  from  remarking  in  this 
connection  that,  ordinarily,  the  power  of  a  re- 
porter is  greatly  underrated.  He  is  looked 
upon  as  a  machine,  for  which  his  salary — gen- 
erally very  small — is  the  fuel  for  raising  steam, 
and  the  policy  of  his  newspaper  the  length  of 
his  stroke.  As  the  quantity  of  fuel  is  generally 
quite  small,  there  is  never  a  dangerous  head  of 
steam,  thus  dispensing  with  the  necessity  for  a 
safety-valve.  The  machine  runs  steadily  on 
for  years  and  years,  and  it  is  not  long  that  a 
vestige  of  the  original  varnish,  and  polish,  and 
finishing  blue  remains.  It  runs  on  and  on,  un- 
til the  parts  are  worn,  and  the  joints  are  loose, 
and  the  flues  are  choked  with  cinders  and  ashes. 
When  it  is  worn  out  at  last,  it  becomes  a  poli- 
tician. 

But  the  reporter,  although  his  policy  is  con- 
trolled— or  who,  rather,  has  no  policy  of  his 
own  —  is  nevertheless  a  quiet  and  dangerous 
power.  Sometimes  he  is  human — more  the 
pity.  In  fact,  if  the  fraud  must  be  exposed,  he 
is  generally  human.  Perhaps  his  peculiar  train- 


ing renders  him  comparatively  free  from  preju- 
dices, for  his  judgment  must  always  be  open, 
while  his  heart  must  always  be  closed.  He  is 
paid  for  his  brain,  and  not  for  his  sentiment. 
As  he  is  human — a  disgraceful  admission — he 
is  capable  of  feeling,  which  enters  unconscious- 
ly and  conscientiously  into  all  his  work.  His 
policy  having  been  outlined  for  him,  depend- 
ence is,  to  a  certain  extent,  placed  in  him.  His 
judgment  is  supposed  by  his  employer  to  be  his 
guide,  and  confidence  is  reposed  in  his  judg- 
ment; and  it  is  never  knowingly  betrayed. 
Though  he  may  have  sentiments  of  his  own 
that  clash  with  the  work  in  hand,  he  tears  them 
to  shreds  with  perfect  cheerfulness.  He  takes 
a  grim  delight  in  trampling  on  them,  and  show- 
ing to  others  how  unnecessary  and  how  wrong 
they  are.  A  man  insults  him,  and  yet  he  lauds 
that  man  a  hero.  But  the  insult  goes  down 
into  his  heart,  and  rankles  there,  to  crop  out 
when  least  expected.  He  is  a  nomadic  insect 
— if  such  an  expression  be  allowable — and  what 
he  has  no  opportunity  of  writing  for  this  paper, 
he  may  for  the  next  that  employs  him.  The 
reporter  is  a  whole  encyclopaedia  of  kindnesses 
to  be  remembered  and  wrongs  to  be  redressed. 
There  is  no  other  man  in  society  who  is  so 


26 


THE    CALIFORNIA*!. 


much  flattered,  and  so  often  wounded,  as  he. 
His  mind  is  an  arsenal  of  facts,  and  his  heart 
a  magazine  of  memories.  He  has  a  thousand 
ways  of  doing  a  thing,  and  he  soon  learns  them 
intuitively.  This  chapter  is  entirely  too  short 
to  give  an  adequate  exposition  of  his  tricks. 
He  is  not  feared  as  much  as  he  might  be,  or 
he  would  always,  even  for  policy,  be  treated 
with  consideration.  He  is  very  much  like  a 
camel. 

Mrs.  Howard  grasped  this  idea  at  once,  as 
many  women  in  the  world  have  done.  She  did 
not  avoid  interviews ;  but  while  granting  them, 
and  withholding  all  information,  she  threw  her- 
self into  her  natural  surrounding  circumstances, 
and  raised  up  an  impassable  barrier  of  her 
woman's  rights — rights  that  men  do  not  have 
to  the  same  extent,  and  that  are  sacred  and  in- 
violable. In  the  whole  category  of  human 
opinions,  creeds,  beliefs,  and  sentiments,  there 
is  one  thing  sacred  with  a  reporter — a  woman's 
wish.  In  the  entire  array  of  things  animate 
and  inanimate,  things  created,  things  destroyed, 
things  beautiful,  things  repulsive,  there  is  one 
always  sacred  with  the  reporter — a  woman. 
But  she  must  be  a  woman,  and  nothing  else,  in 
order  to  lay  claim  to  this  great  privilege.  She 
must  not  be  a  man,  nor  a  devil,  nor  a  simpleton, 
nor  a  child,  nor  an  animal ;  but  a  woman.  She 
may,  if  she  can,  practice  cunning  and  dissem- 
bling deeper  than  the  cool  and  close  scrutiny 
of  a  sharp-witted  man — a  man  who  believes 
few  things,  and  places  not  always  implicit  con- 
fidence in  the  evidence  of  his  own  senses.  But 
it  is  dangerous ;  for  the  man  who  listens,  silent, 
and  does  not  question  nor  contradict,  may  ex- 
pose the  ruse  in  the  morning,  and  make  her 
wish  she  had  never  been  born. 

Thus  it  had  come  about  that  Mrs.  Howard 
was  not  again  branded  as  an  accessory  to  the 
murder.  She  was  guarding  her  son's  life,  and 
not  the  honor  of  her  family.  Under  the  influ- 
ence of  newspaper  reports,  and  the  better  feel- 
ing that  followed  the  riot,  her  efforts  were  ap- 
preciated, and  her  mother's  heart  respected. 

The  remarkable  manner  in  which  she  had 
rescued  him  from  the  mob,  outwitting  it  and 
Casserly,  had  reached  the  ears  of  the  public. 
Great  excitement  had  followed  this  disclosure. 
The  Crane  had  disappeared  with  Howard,  and 
the  butcher's  cart  was  found  that  evening  on 
the  road  to  Monterey.  Doubtless  the  two  men 
had  struck  across  the  country  to  the  Santa  Cruz 
Mountains,  and  lost  themselves  in  the  wilds  of 
that  country. 

The  great  mistake  that  Casserly  made  was 
that  he  kept  separate  the  three  persons  who 
alone  could  have  had  any  direct  knowledge  of 
the  tragedy.  This  was  a  natural  error,  and  one 


frequently  fallen  into  by  detectives.  In  by  far 
the  majority  of  cases  it  is  the  better  plan,  as  it 
prevents  a  coincidence  of  manufactured  testi- 
mony ;  but  it  also  frequently  happens  that  there 
is  a  misunderstanding,  and  consequently  a  de- 
sire to  shield  by  saying  nothing. 

The  funeral  of  the  dead  girl  had  taken  place 
before  Casserly  tracked  Emily  Randolph  to 
Santa  Cruz.  It  was  a  strange  affair.  Kind 
hands  had  placed  the  body  tenderly  in  a  coffin, 
which  was  covered  with  flowers  the  rarest  and 
sweetest.  Mrs.  Howard,  from  her  cell  in  the 
third  floor  of  the  jail,  had  directed  all  the  prep- 
arations. As  soon  as  it  became  known  that 
she  was  a  member  of  the  Presbyterian  Church, 
ladies  of  that  society  proffered  their  services. 
There  was  little  to  be  done,  yet  much  was  done. 
At  the  request  of  Mrs.  Howard,  the  minister  of 
the  church  readily  concurring,  the  coffin  was 
taken  into  the  church  building,  and  the  funeral 
exercises  held  there.  Such  a  crowd  of  people 
had  never  before  thronged  a  church  in  San 
Jose*. 

After  the  coffin  had  been  placed  at  the  foot 
of  the  altar,  Mrs.  Howard  entered,  walking  be- 
tween Casserly  and  Judge  Simon — for  she  was 
a  prisoner.  She  was  dressed  in  plain  black, 
with  no  profusion  of  mourning  apparel.  It  was 
quite  firmly  that  she  walked  up  the  aisle,  with 
her  veil  raised,  that  all  might  see  her  face. 
Every  eye  was  turned  upon  her.  Many  hearts 
went  out  to  her.  This,  then,  was  the  woman  of 
such  daring  and  cunning.  This  woman,  with 
soft  step,  with  calm  face,  with  eyes  full  of  wom- 
anly tenderness,  with  "grace  and  beauty  of  form 
and  face,  was  she  who  held  the  secret  of  the 
crime,  and  who  braved  death  to  give  her  recre- 
ant son  his  liberty ;  they  could  hardly  believe  it. 

A  front  pew  had  been  reserved  for  them,  and 
in  it  the  three  seated  themselves.  But  in  all 
that  vast  assemblage  there  was  not  a  single 
hand  extended  toward  her;  not  a  single  word 
uttered  of  condolence  or  sympathy.  She  felt  a 
great  distance  from  them.  They  saw  between 
them  and  her  a  wide  river  of  blood.  There 
was  blood  upon  her  name,  and  mayhap  upon 
her  hands.  The  two  bright  hectic  spots  upon 
her  usually  pale  cheeks  were  smeared  thereon 
with  blood.  She  was  surrounded  with  an  at- 
mosphere teeming  with  the  odor  of  blood.  If 
she  had  not  herself  committed  the  deed,  she 
had  looked  upon  it;  had  seen  death  enter  av 
young  breast,  boring  a  ghastly  hole,  and  letting 
the  blood  flow ;  carried  that  crime  in  her  heart, 
the  red  blood  of  it  mingling  with  that  which 
coursed  through  her  veins.  Among  all  the  peo- 
ple in  that  house,  there  could  not  have  been  a 
lack  of  that  sympathy  that  would  lead  to  an 
avowal  of  it  under  more  favorable  conditions. 


A   STRANGE    CONFESSION. 


27 


There  was  much  of  it — there  always  is  under 
such  circumstances;  but  at  that  moment  Mrs. 
Howard  was  extremely  unfashionable,  and  to 
have  taken  her  hand  would  have  been  desper- 
ately irregular. 

Withal,  it  was  a  touching  funeral  service. 
The  sermon  was  short,  but  affecting.  There 
was  nothing,  said  the  minister,  upon  which  a 
discourse  could  be  built.  There  was  an  entire 
lack  of  opportunity  to  draw  a  moral,  for  the 
girl's  history  was  unknown.  Had  she  traveled 
the  darker  ways  of  life,  and  found  only  selfish- 
ness— sordid,  miserable  selfishness — that  sacri- 
ficed her  without  a  pang? — that  gave  her  over  to 
the  tomb  when  it  had  done  with  her,  to  be  de- 
voured by  worms,  as  all  corruption  is? — and  that 
did  this  foully,  and  with  strong,  murderous 
hands?  If  so,  find  this  selfishness,  Humanity. 
Find  this  thing  that  lies  at  the  foundation  of 
every  evil,  of  every  crime.  Let  not  a  stone  re- 
main unturned.  Loose  every  bloodhound  of 
divine  justice,  and  let  him  scent  this  blood,  and 
track  this  fleeing  criminal,  this  revolting  selfish- 
ness, to  death.  Hunt  it  down,  Humanity.  Pur- 
sue it  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  And  when  you 
find  it,  let  your  bloodhounds  tear  out  its  vitals, 
and  feast  upon  them,  like  famished  vampires. 
For  it  is  Death,  and  Death  must  be  killed.  It 
is  Crime,  and  Crime  must  be  strangled. 

She  was  dead.  She  lay  there,  he  said,  in  all 
the  calm  beauty  of  death.  Ah,  the  tenderness 
of  death  !  Ah,  the  sadness  of  death  !  Ah,  the 
desolation  that  it  brings,  the  hearts  that  it  leaves 
empty !  It  is  something  that  steals,  and  does 
not  repay  the  theft ;  that  breaks,  and  tears,  and 
lacerates;  that  comes  unbidden,  and  snatches 
away  the  dearest  and  best,  so  ruthlessly,  so  cru- 
elly !  Is  there  a  whisper  of  calumny?  Let  it  be 
hushed.  Is  there  a  finger  of  scorn?  Let  it  be 
pointed  inward.  For  this  is  death,  and  death 
is  awful;  death  is  avenging;  death  is  the  judg- 
ment of  God.  Rather  let  it  be  a  reminder,  sad 
though  it  is,  and  bitter  though  it  maybe,  of  the 
cup  that  all  must  drink.  But  far  better  such  a 
death  as  this  than  that  other  death,  which  leaves 
not  a  stamp  of  beauty ;  which  lays  up  no  tender 
memories,  but  which  brings  only  ashes,  and 
dust,  and  broken  hearts ;  and  that,  all  in  gloom 
and  darkness,  threads  in  pain  and  anguish  the 
dreary  mazes  of  eternity  forever  and  forever. 

Thus  did  the  minister  speak.  Some  persons 
shed  tears,  and  others  admired  his  eloquence, 
but  all  were  impressed ;  and  when  he  conclud- 
ed, a  painful,  empty  silence  remained.  His 
words  had  died ;  she  had  died,  and  they  would 
be  buried  with  her. 

There  was  more  than  one  breast  that  yielded 
up  its  dead  that  day.  There  were  shrouded 
onus  that  lay  upon  the  benches,  and  in  the 


aisles,  and  in  white  rows  behind  the  chancel- 
rail.  On  some  of  the  pallid  faces  of  those  that 
memory  resurrected  were  smiles  of  peace  and 
undying  faith;  on  other  faces,  lines  of  pain, 
and  suffering,  and  cruelty,  and  desertion;  on 
others,  tears  of  shame  and  sorrow ;  and  on  many 
— very  many — were  hard  and  bitter  looks  of 
accusation  and  revenge  unsatisfied. 

As  the  bell  tolled,  they  took  life,  and  held  a 
ghostly  revelry,  and  increased  in  numbers  so 
rapidly  that  they  filled  the  house  to  overflow- 
ing, darting  unexpected  from  unseen  sources, 
and  crowding  to  suffocation.  They  perched 
upon  the  organ,  and  flitted  lightly  over  the  altar, 
some  making  strange  grimaces,  and  shaking 
the  finger  in  solemn  warning.  Then  all  was 
bustle  and  confusion,  and  they  chased  one  an- 
other madly  out  upon  the  street,  singing,  and 
praying,  and  exhorting,  and  sighing,  and  curs- 
ing—  out  into  the  bright  June  sunshine,  where 
the  heat  changed  them  into  vapor,  and  they 
ascended  to  heaven. 

Then  came  the  next  scene  in  this  painful 
drama.  By  common  consent,  the  crowd  upon 
the  right  moved  forward  to  view  the  body,  while 
those  on  the  left  passed  out,  and  entered  again 
at  the  right,  those  upon  the  right  passing  out  at 
the  left.  Thus  a  continuous  stream  was  formed, 
the  crowd  being  greatly  augmented  by  many 
in  the  street  who  had  been  unable  to  gain  ad- 
mittance. 

As  they  pass,  and  gaze  upon  the  beautiful, 
upturned  face,  there  are  varying  expressions  of 
countenance,  and  different  emotions.  Here  is 
an  old  man,  bowed  with  age,  with  his  little 
granddaughter,  whom  he  laboriously  raises  in 
his  arms,  that  she  may  see  the  face. 

"  Oh,  grandpapa,  how  beautiful  she  is  !  What 
is  she  lying  there  for?  Is  she  asleep?" 

"Yes,  my  child,  asleep — sound  asleep." 

"Asleep  in  church  !     Oh,  grandpapa !" 

"Yes,  sound  asleep — sound  asleep." 

And  they  pass  quickly  on,  for  here  come  two 
fine  ladies,  and  they  look  impatient. 

"Why,  shew  pretty!" 

"Yes— rather." 

"Give  me  those  flowers." 

"Take  them." 

"  I'm  sure  they  are  the  prettiest  that  will  be 
brought  here  to-day.  I  will  lay  them  at  the 
head;  they'll  look  better  there." 

Pass  on  there,  women !  for  here  come  two 
miserable  wretches,  with  wild  hair  and  harden- 
ed looks — outcasts,  who  have  slept  in  the  pris- 
on, and  oftener  in  the  gutter — fiends  that  were 
born  to  be  women. 

"Poor  thing!" 

"Hush  !     She  was  better  than  you." 

"What  a  pity !     Oh,  what  a  pity !" 


28 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


"Hush  !    They  are  listening." 

"I  —  I — don't  like  to  put  'em  there,  'longside 
them  pretty  ones." 

"Hush !  Put  'em  there  quick,  so  they  won't 
see  you." 

Pass  on,  there,  with  your  rags,  and  dirt,  and 
uncleanliness !  Pass  on,  and  be  quick  about 
it,  for  you  have  no  heart  nor  soul — degraded 
things  !  The  flowers  you  left  are  withered  and 
dead  as  the  memory  of  your  innocence. 

And  thus  they  go,  passing  on  and  on.  There 
are  persons  of  intellect  and  persons  of  culture, 
and  persons  with  heart  and  persons  without 
heart,  and  ignorant  persons,  and  the  good  and 
the  bad — all  passing  on  and  on. 

The  organist  is  playing  an  air  in  a  minor 
strain.  Painfully  sweet  it  seems  to-day,  with 
light  and  life  without,  and  death  and  darkness 
within.  In  some  hearts  it  awakens  chords  that 
better  had  slumbered  on  forever;  while  into 
others  it  sinks  deep  and  tenderly,  going  down 
into  unused  places,  and  finding  beauty  there, 
and  bringing  it  up  to  life. 

And  still  they  come,  and  still  they  go,  pass- 
ing on  and  on — passing  by  hundreds,  until  the 
church  is  empty. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

Garratt  had  done  all  in  his  power.  He  and 
Casserly  worked  together,  to  the  same  end,  but 
with  different  motives.  Casserly  looked  to  the 
duty  that  devolved  upon  him  to  hunt  down  the 
criminal,  and  there  was,  besides,  a  considerable 
amount  of  pride  in  the  feelings  that  actuated  his 
conduct.  With  Garratt  it  was  different.  He  re- 
cognized but  one  ultimatum — success.  To  ac- 
complish this  he  would  scruple  at  nothing  that 
could  be  done  by  legal  means.  With  him  noth- 
ing was  sacred  that  stood  in  the  way  of  this 
purpose.  And,  strange  to  say,  it  was  more  his 
construction  of  duty  than  the  gratification  of 
heartless  malice.  Garratt  was  a  useful  mem- 
ber of  a  certain  church ;  could  offer  a  good, 
though  not  eloquent,  prayer,  and  was  not  mean 
in  matters  of  charity  that  involved  simply  an 
outlay  of  money.  He  was  prosperous  in  busi- 
ness, and  had  many  friends.  His  disposition 
was  rather  impatient  than  domineering,  and  he 
was  entirely  lacking  in  every  trace  of  sentimen- 
tality— apart  from  religious  matters.  It  would 
be  unkind,  and  doubtless  untrue,  to  assert  that 
he  became  one  of  a  religious  sect  for  sordid  and 
selfish  reasons.  He  was  eminently  a  practical 
man — who  is  defined  by  sentimentalists  a  cruel, 
cold-hearted,  selfish,  unscrupulous  man — but 
these  would  have  been,  in  Garratt's  case,  exag- 
gerations. It  had  never  been  charged  against 


him  that  he  was  not  a  conscientious  man,  or 
that  he  could  be  corrupted  in  the  exercise  of 
his  official  duties,  or  that  he  ever  neglected  his 
duty  in  the  least  particular.  On  the  contrary, 
if  blame  was  attached  to  him  at  all,  it  was  for 
over -zeal. 

The  coroner's  office  is  a  peculiar  one,  and 
much  like  the  physician's.  A  coroner  must 
combine  tenderness  of  manner  with  honesty, 
discretion,  and  tact.  He  is  a  sworn  officer, 
under  strict  obligations  to  the  terms  and  spirit 
of  his  oath ;  and  in  this  he  differs  from  the  phy- 
sician, who,  when  he  receives  his  diploma,  is 
simply  required  solemnly  to  promise  certain 
things,  and  is  not  an  officer  of  the  law  nor  re- 
sponsible to  bondsmen. 

Not  unfrequently  is  it  the  case  that  decency 
and  common  humanity  require  of  a  coroner 
that  certain  cases  coming  under  his  official  no- 
tice should  be  handled  with  the  utmost  care, 
and  that  revolting  disclosures,  where  no  appa- 
rent good  purpose  can  be  subserved,  should  not 
unnecessarily  be  made.  This  is  a  fact  so  com- 
mon that  all  reflecting  persons  are  aware  of  it. 
It  is  often  better  to  bury  a  crime  than  expose  it. 
Coroners,  as  a  rule,  appreciate  this  unwritten 
law,  and  act  upon  it,  with  the  full  sanction  and 
commendation  of  society.  It  is  a  part  of  their 
duty,  and  no  coroner  performs  his  whole  duty 
who  neglects  this  one.  Still,  this  is  a  method 
of  reasoning  that  the  public  does  not  trouble 
itself  to  follow  out,  and  so  it  simply  says  of  a 
man  who  violates  this  obligation  that  he  is  over- 
zealous  and  too  faithful;  but  no  general  bad 
opinion  of  him  is  thereby  created.  This  is  one 
of  the  anomalies  of  human  nature. 

Now,  in  order  to  carry  out  this  rigorous  idea 
of  duty,  a  person  must  lack  charity,  that  high- 
est of  human  qualities.  Charity  and  honesty 
may  go  together,  but  it  is  a  curious  fact  that 
they  are  entirely  independent  of  each  other,  and 
travel  in  different  channels,  and  come  from  dif- 
ferent sources.  One  may  exist  without  the 
other.  Charity  is  an  impulse,  and  honesty  is  a 
principle.  Impulses  are  always  natural,  while 
principles  are  frequently  the  result  of  cultiva- 
tion. But,  as  a  rule,  principles  are  safer  than 
impulses. 

Garratt  was  not  an  uncommon  type  of  men. 
He  was  utterly  unable  to  appreciate  the  feelings 
that  actuated  Mrs.  Howard.  When  he  read  to 
her  the  terrible  newspaper  report  he  had  the 
hope  that  in  the  burst  of  anger  he  was  sure 
would  follow  she  would  commit  herself,  or  state 
the  facts,  whatever  they  might  be.  He  was 
naturally  a  suspicious  man,  and  he  certainly 
was  a  hard  man. 

With  great  care  he  had  seen  that  an  autopsy 
was  properly  made.  The  course  of  the  bullet 


A   STRANGE    CONFESSION. 


29 


was  traced  by  skillful  hands,  and  the  direction 
from  which  it  came  ascertained.  Death  must 
have  followed  quickly,  and  doubtless  not  a  groan 
escaped  the  girl.  Carrying  out  his  idea  persist- 
ently, he  had  ransacked  the  room  for  possible 
evidence.  Without  any  scruples  whatever,  he 
read  several  letters  and  papers  he  found  here 
and  there,  but  had  discovered  nothing.  One  of 
the  jurymen,  however,  made  a  strange  discov- 
ery, in  this  manner:  He  accidentally  saw  in 
the  grate  the  cinders  of  paper  that  had  been 
recently  burned. 

"Doctor,"  he  said,  "come  and  look  at  this." 

Garratt  hurried  up,  stooped  over  the  grate, 
and  examined  them  closely. 

"Those  were  letters,"  he  remarked. 

Here  was  a  discovery.  Garratt  touched  the 
cinders,  and  they  crumbled  to  ashes. 

"They  are  all  burned,"  he  said. 

In  fact,  not  a  single  piece  remained.  After 
admitting  as  much  light  into  the  room  as  pos- 
sible, he  fell  upon  his  knees  and  scrutinized  the 
cinders  closely,  but  he  could  decipher  not  a  sin- 
gle word.  During  all  this  examination  the  body 
of  the  girl  was  lying  on  the  bed. 

"Now,"  said  Garratt,  as  all  the  jurymen  gath- 
ered around,  "you  see  at  once  that  there  has 
been  no  other  fire  in  this  grate.  There  is  not  a 
trace  of  ashes.  These  letters  were  thrown  into 
it  and  burned,  for  fear  they  would  give  evi- 
dence. Who  threw  them  in  ?  The  policeman  ? 
No.  Who,  then?  Mrs.  Howard.  We  see  her 
cunning  everywhere.  She  is  playing  a  desper- 
ate game.  Now,  let  us  think.  As  she  is  so  de- 
termined that  the  truth  shall  not  be  discovered, 
it  must  be  of  a  nature  that  would  make  some- 
body hang.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  that — 
at  least,  to  my  mind." 

"But  how  are  you  going  to  find  out?" 

"Make  her  talk." 

"How?" 

"You  shall  see." 

"Casserly  says  she  told  him  that  she  would 
not  testify  before  a  coroner's  jury." 

"Very  well;  but  wait  and  see." 

"She  is  a  deep  woman,  Doctor." 

"Is  she?"  asked  Garratt,  as  he  laughed. 

"She  fooled  Casserly  and  the  mob,  both." 

"Very  good." 

"Can  you  make  her  talk?" 

"I  promise  nothing;  but  Casserly  has  posi- 
tive information  of  the  girl's  whereabouts,  and 
when  he  brings  her  here  we  shall  see.  He  has 
gone  to  bring  her." 

"But  she  may  tell  Casserly  all  about  it." 

"  I  think  not,"  said  Garratt.  "  Casserly  means 
well,  but " 

"But  what?" 

"Nothing." 


"She  may  speak  of  her  own  accord." 

"She  may." 

He  searched  everywhere.  The  discovery  of 
the  burnt  paper  inspired  Garratt  more  than 
ever  with  the  importance  of  the  case,  and  con- 
vinced him  that  Mrs.  Howard  must  have  had 
the  strongest  motives  for  the  many  extraordi- 
nary things  which  she  had  done,  all  tending  to 
one  end — the  concealment  of  the  facts.  Gar- 
ratt cannot  be  censured  for  entertaining  this 
opinion,  for  the  case  presented  many  remarka- 
ble features.  The  inquest  was  postponed  until 
further  developments  should  be  made,  and  in 
the  meantime  the  dead  girl  was  buried. 

Casserly  had  seen  that  it  was  useless  for  him 
to  make  any  further  attempt  at  extorting  a  con- 
fession from  Mrs.  Howard;  but  Judge  Simon 
felt  a  singular  interest  in  the  affair.  Casserly 
depended  upon  him  greatly  in  many  things,  and 
particularly  in  the  matter  of  sounding  the  mo- 
tives of  the  mother  and  son.  Judge  Simon  was 
greatly  disappointed  that  he  had  failed  to  see 
the  young  man,  but  would  make  amends  by 
talking  with  the  mother.  This  was  not  done 
until  after  the  funeral,  and  before  Casserly  re- 
turned with  Emily  Randolph. 

The  rules  governing  the  jail  were  not  over- 
strict.  It  is  true  that  ordinarily  dangerous 
criminals  were  not  permitted  to  hold  conversa- 
tion with  visitors  unless  it  was  in  the  presence 
of  a  jail  officer,  but  there  were  occasional  viola- 
tions of  this  important  rule.  When  Judge  Si- 
mon called  Tuesday  morning  to  see  Mrs.  How- 
ard he  was  permitted  not  only  to  see  her  alone, 
but  to  enter  her  cell  upon  her  invitation.  The 
strongest  woman  needs  a  friend  in  time  of  great 
trouble.  Mrs.  Howard  had  from  the  first  seen 
that  in  Judge  Simon's  face  which  strongly  at- 
tracted her  toward  him.  Not  only  honor  did 
she  there  see,  but  tenderness  also,  and  pro- 
found regard  for  her  in  her  affliction. 

It  was  generally  understood  that  the  old 
Judge  had  taken  a  lively  interest  in  the  case, 
and  that  he  was  extending  valuable  aid  to  Cas- 
serly. His  high  integrity  raised  him  above  all 
suspicion  of  sympathy  for  the  unfortunate  pris- 
oner, or  of  any  intention  to  assist  her.  Cas- 
serly looked  upon  him  as  his  most  valuable  ally, 
and  it  was  agreed  between  them  that  the  old 
Judge  should  undertake  the  interview  with  Mrs. 
Howard.  But  Casserly  did  not  have  a  very 
extensive  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  was 
taking  a  risk  that  he  knew  not  of.  Judge  Si- 
mon was  nothing  if  not  a  kind-hearted  man. 
So  was  Casserly;  but  Casserly  had  much  at 
stake  in  this  matter,  and  kept  a  strict  guard 
over  his  kindly  feelings.  He  was  in  utter  igno- 
rance of  the  fact — and  so,  also,  was  Judge  Si- 
mon himself,  for  that  matter — that  the  old  man's 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


sympathy  was  antagonistic  to  Casserly's  plans. 
Although  Judge  Simon  doubted  the  truth  of 
Howard's  confession,  and  was  ready  to  believe 
that  either  the  mother  or  Emily  Randolph  com- 
mitted the  act  of  crime,  he  could  not  bring  him- 
self to  believe,  after  he  had  seen  the  mother, 
that  she  was  the  guilty  party.  So  he  secretly 
agreed  with  himself  that  he  would  conceal  from 
Casserly  his  suspicions,  which,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  were  merely  suspicions,  and  might  prove 
wrong.  But  if  the  mother  had  confessed  that 
she  was  the  criminal,  Judge  Simon  would  have 
received  a  terrible  shock;  a  fact  the  possible 
existence  of  which  he  could  not  bring  his  mind 
to  entertain. 

She  exhibited  no  surprise  when  the  wicket- 
door  of  her  cell  was  opened,  and  the  face  of 
Judge  Simon  appeared. 

"Judge  Simon !     I  am  glad  to  see  you." 

He  returned  the  salutation,  and  a  moment  of 
awkward  silence  followed. 

"I  would  like  to  talk  with  you,  sir.  Will 
they  let  me  out  for  a  short  while,  or — or  admit 
you?" 

This  instantly  relieved  him  of  his  embarrass- 
ment. He  turned  to  speak  to  some  one  she 
could  not  see,  and  then  the  door  was  opened, 
and  Judge  Simon  entered. 

The  cell  occupied  the  south-east  corner  of 
the  jail  proper ;  was  large  and  airy,  having  two 
grated  windows.  It  was  furnished  with  a  cheap 
bedstead,  a  small  table,  upon  which  stood  a 
pitcher  and  wash-basin,  a  piece  of  looking-glass 
held  against  the  wall  by  tacks  at  various  angles 
in  the  fragment  of  glass,  and  a  few  flower-pots 
in  the  east  window,  containing  geraniums  that 
were  suffering  for  water.  There  were  marks 
upon  the  wall,  showing  that  bunks  had  recent- 
ly been  removed  from  the  cell,  the  indications 
consisting  principally  of  discolorations  produc- 
ed by  not  over-clean  occupants  of  the  bunks  as 
they  rolled  against  the  wall  in  their  sleep.  In 
addition  to  the  names,  dates,  scraps  of  po- 
etry, and  other  inscriptions  on  the  walls,  there 
was,  on  the  west  wall,  a  picture  that  was  calcu- 
lated to  test  the  strength  of  the  strongest  nerves, 
and  engender  harrowing  nightmares.  It  was  a 
life-size  portrait  done  in  lead-pencil.  The  face 
was  as  black  as  frequent  wettings  of  the  pencil- 
point  could  make  it,  and  the  eyes  were  intense- 
ly white,  and  of  the  shape  of  a  strung  bow,  with 
the  elliptical  part  uppermost.  In  the  center  of 
each  was  a  spot,  very  small  and  very  black, 
representing  the  pupil.  The  remaining  parts 
of  the  eyes  were  vast  wildernesses  of  white. 
The  nose  also  was  white,  and  was  very  like  the 
letter  A  with  the  cross  taken  out.  The  mouth 
was  the  most  hideous  feature,  being  constructed 
on  the  principle  of  mouths  in  heads  made  from 


pumpkins.  The  teeth,  which  were  each  an  inch 
long,  had,  in  order  to  relieve  the  monotony  of 
color,  been  made  a  violent  red.  Credulous  vis- 
itors to  the  jail  were  told,  in  quite  a  solemn 
manner,  that  it  was  the  correct  portrait  of  a 
noted  criminal  of  those  parts. 

This  remarkable  art  production  gave  rise  to 
an  unexpected  incident.  Judge  Simon  was  in 
the  act  of  seating  himself  on  one  of  the  two 
stool-bottom  chairs,  when  his  vision  was  sud- 
denly greeted  with  this  spectacle.  He  invol- 
untarily started,  for  he  was  a  nervous  old  man, 
and  the  thing  stood  out  upon  the  wall  in  a  bold 
and  aggressive  manner.  Mrs.  Howard  noticed 
his  movement,  and  allowed  her  gaze  also  to  fall 
upon  the  picture. 

"It  is  not  very  artistic,  sir,"  she  said. 

"Artistic !     It's  hideous." 

"I  suppose  it  was  done  by  a  prisoner." 

"By  some  one  held  for  insanity,  madam. 
No  healthy  brain  could  have  conceived  such 
a  monstrosity.  But — but  doesn't  it  frighten 
you?" 

"Oh,  no.     It  annoyed  me  a  little  at  first." 

"Why,  if  I  should  sleep  in  such  a  presence, 
I  could  not  help  thinking  that  Dante  had  failed 
to  pursue  his  investigations  to  any  satisfactory 
extent.  Why,  my  dear  madam,  it  is  an  outrage. 
Let  me  see,"  he  said,  looking  around;  "it  stares 
you  to  sleep  when  you  retire,  and  then  leaves 
the  wall  and  conspires  with  other  monsters  to 
invade  your  slumbers.  The  first  thing  it  does 
in  the  morning  is  to  greet  you,  on  waking,  with 
that  horrible  grin." 

She  smiled  faintly  at  this  conceit.  It  greatly 
flattered  him. 

"It  is  a  shame,  madam — a  perfect  shame. 
I'll  arrange  it  so  that  its  insults  will  not  reach 
you." 

He  drew  out  his  handkerchief,  and  fitted  it 
to  the  wall,  concealing  the  picture. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do,  Judge?" 

"Hide  it;  blindfold  it;  gag  it;  clip  its  claws." 

He  glanced  around,  as  if  looking  for  some- 
thing, and  discovered  a  small  shelf  attached  to 
the  wall  beneath  the  piece  of  broken  mirror. 
On  this  shelf  was  a  comb  and  a  brush,  and  a 
small  pin-cushion.  He  went  to  the  shelf,  took 
two  pins,  and  again  stood  in  front  of  the  por- 
trait. He  stuck  a  pin  through  one  corner  of 
the  handkerchief  into  the  brick  wall,  while  he 
held  the  other  pin  in  his  mouth,  and  was  pro- 
ceeding to  secure  another  corner,  so  that  the 
handkerchief  would  conceal  the  picture,  when 
he  was  interrupted  by  Mrs.  Howard : 

"You  will  need  your  handkerchief,  Judge  Si- 
mon." 

"Oh,  no;  I  assure  you  I  will  not.  See,  I 
have  another." 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


"But  .a  newspaper  would  do  just  as  well." 

"No;  really,  the  handkerchief  is  much  bet- 
ter. Paper  would  tear,  and  fall  down,  you  see." 

He  said  this  in  a  manner  of  such  droll  wis- 
dom that  she  smiled  again,  and  this  time  much 
more  perceptibly  than  the  other. 

His  quick  eyes  soon  caught  another  glaring 
defect. 

"Madam,"  he  said,  "it  is  a  great  pity." 

"What,  sir?" 

"Those  flowers  are  dying  for  water." 

"Oh!" 

He  bustled  to  the  little  table,  and  was  grati- 
fied to  find  the  pitcher  full  of  water.  She 
watched  him  quietly  while  he  watered  the 
plants. 

"I  like  flowers,"  he  said,  suddenly. 

"Yes?" 

"  I  do,  certainly.     So  do  you." 

There  was  a  slight  reproach  in  these  words. 

"  I  didn't  think  of  them,"  she  said,  quite 
sadly. 

These  two  trifling  incidents  removed  the  con- 
straint that  naturally  existed  between  them,  and 
gave  her  an  insight  into  his  nature;  for  she 
knew  well  enough  that  he  covered  the  picture 
that  its  ugliness  might  not  be  an  effrontery 
to  her,  and  that  he  watered  the  flowers  that 
their  freshness  might  throw  some  gleam  of 
cheerfulness  into  her  desolate  abode — both 
showing  very  slight  consideration,  but  much 
delicacy,  for  all  that. 

Then  he  became  grave,  and,  placing  his  chair 
near  her,  sat  down.  By  an  impulse,  that  sur- 
prised him  almost  as  much  as  it  would  Casser- 
ly,  if  that  official  had  heard  him,  he  said : 

"Madam,  you  need  a  friend — a  friend  you 
can  depend  upon,  who  can  give  you  advice. 
May  I  be  of  any  assistance  to  you?" 

This  took  her  completely  by  surprise.  She 
saw  at  once  that  he  was  perfectly  sincere,  and 
would  be  glad  to  help  her.  Nevertheless,  she 
could  not  so  suddenly  impart  her  great  secret 
to  any  one,  especially  to  a  stranger,  and  when 
her  own  judgment  told  her  that  no  good  could 
come  of  it. 

Having  said  what  he  did,  the  old  Judge  felt 
very  much  like  a  criminal,  for  he  was  about  to 
betray  Casserly;  but  at  that  moment  he  was 
constrained  to  put  a  higher  estimate  on  the 
laws  of  humanity  than  on  the  laws  of  codes. 
It  had  often  been  urged,  he  reflected,  that  they 
were  synonymous  terms,  and  so  this  sustained 
his  conscience. 

She  was  confused.  After  some  hesitation, 
she  said : 

"I  deeply  appreciate  your  kind  proffer  of 
friendship,  sir,  but  I  am  not  deserving  of  it." 

"Tut,  tut,  madam!" 


"And,  then,  a  friend  could  do  nothing  for  me 
in  this  case," 

"A  friend  can  always  be  of  assistance,  mad- 
am." 

She  smiled  faintly  at  his  persistence,  but 
there  was,  nevertheless,  a  bright  tear  in  her 
eye. 

"There  is  nothing  to  be  done,  sir." 

"Now,  my  dear  madam,  let  us  talk  over  this 
matter  as  sensible  persons  should.  You  are  ig- 
norant of  legal  matters.  There  is  a  strange 
persistency  in  these  officers  of  the  law  that 
makes  them  hunt  such  things  down,  and  resort 
to  all  kinds  of  ruses  that  you  know  nothing 
about.  Mark  my  words :  this  thing  will  be  fer- 
reted to  the  bottom." 

Instantly  she  turned  to  stone.  He  saw  it, 
and  continued : 

"If  it  were  only  you  from  whom  the  facts 
were  to  be  learned,  the  world  might  go  down  to 
the  grave  in  ignorance.  But  there  are  others, 
and  one  of  them  has  been  found." 

She  looked  up,  startled. 

"Casserly  has  found  Emily  Randolph,  and 
will  return  with  her  to-night." 

A  shade  of  intense  anxiety  passed  over  her 
face. 

"They  will  resort  to  every  means,  fair  or  foul, 
to  wring  from  her  the  facts.  Do  you  think  they 
will  permit  you  to  speak  to  her?  Certainly 
not." 

She  was  so  bewildered  by  the  information 
that  Emily  had  been  found  that  she  could  only 
gasp: 

"Is  it  quite  true  that  they  have  found  her?" 

"There  is  no  doubt  of  it.  Here  is  a  telegram 
from  Casserly." 

She  hastily  read  it,  and  became  convinced. 

"They  will  misrepresent  facts  to  her,"  Judge 
Simon  continued,  "and  employ  every  means  to 
make  her  tell  the  truth,  whether  by  threats  or 
any  other  method.  You  have  a  determined  op- 
ponent in  Casserly,  and  he  has  everything  in 
his  favor.  Besides,  he  has  an  unscrupulous  ally 
in  Garratt,  the  Coroner,  who  will  have  no  mercy 
on  you." 

This  speech  almost  crushed  her.  Occasion- 
ally a  grave  suspicion  would  cross  her  mind 
that  this  ingenuous  old  man  was  practicing  sub- 
tle cunning  to  secure  a  statement  from  her,  but 
the  thought  would  die  before  his  earnest,  anx- 
ious look. 

"Madam,  disabuse  your  mind  of  the  idea  that 
you  alone  can  bring  yourself  and  the  others 
safe  through  this  trouble.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible. Do  not  be  over-confident  of  yourself  and 
the  plans  you  have  laid.  That  mistake  has 
been  the  ruin  of  so  many — so  many.  Again, 
even  if  the  ordeal  of  the  inquest  is  passed,  the 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


examination  before  a  magistrate  will  follow. 
By  the  way,  an  important  clue  has  been  found." 

"What  is  it?" 

"Almost  a  convincing  one.  A  great  many 
others,  also,  will  be  found,  and  they  will  war- 
rant the  magistrate,  perhaps,  in  committing  you 
all,  without  bonds.  You  may  have  to  lie  in  jail 
for  months  yet." 

"What  is  the  clue?" 

Should  he  divulge  it?  He  reflected  a  mo- 
ment, and  decided. 

"They  have  found  where  the  pistol  was 
bought,  and  when." 

"And  by  whom?" 

"Yes;  your  son,  two  days  before  the  killing." 

She  sank  under  this  terrible  blow.  Deathly 
pale,  and  trembling  violently,  she  tried  to  utter 
a  denial,  but  failed.  She  was  speechless  with 
grief  and  terror.  At  length,  recovering  her 
voice,  she  said,  almost  gasping : 

"That  is  not  proof  against  him." 

"But  it  is  a  strong  circumstance,  and  persons 
have  been  hanged  on  less  convincing  evidence. 
It  would  not  be  enough  to  convince  me,  but  a 
jury  is  different." 

She  sat  so  helpless  and  pitiful  that  the  pro- 
foundest  feeling  of  the  old  man's  good  heart 
was  touched.  He  almost  regretted  that  he  had 
filled  her  with  so  much  alarm,  but  consoled 
himself  with  the  reflection  that  it  was  a  binding 
duty. 

"Madam,"  he  said,  "it  has  been  thirty  years 
since  I  practiced  law,  and  fifteen  years  since  I 
left  the  bench.  But  I  will  forget  my  age,  and 
be  a  young  man  again.  I  am  almost  old  enough 
to  be  your  grandfather.  Listen  attentively  to 
what  I  am  about  to  say.  I  will  be  your  attor- 
ney. You  must  have  one — you  cannot  be  with- 
out one.  I  will  take  this  case  in  hand,  and  do 
what  I  can  for  you.  I  will  take  no  refusal." 

There  were  bright  tears  in  his  eyes  as  he  said 
this,  for  Mrs.  Howard  was  crying  bitterly — 
weeping  as  if  she  had  not  a  friend  in  the  world, 
but  was  desolate,  desolate. 

He  stood  beside  her,  and  took  her  hand  with 
great  tenderness. 

"My  dear  friend,"  he  said,  softly,  "it  may 
come  out  all  right.  I  will  do  all  that  a  man 
can  do.  Are  you  listening?" 

"Yes." 

"Casserly  thinks  I  am  assisting  him  to  hunt 
you  down.  Do  not  let  him  know  any  better. 
He  depends  very  much  upon  me,  for  he  knows 
that  I  have  a  better  knowledge  of  such  things 
than  he.  Casserly  would  feel  desperate  and 
undone  if  he  knew  that  I  am  against  him.  You 
and  I  will  work  together  against  him.  We 
will  meet  cunning  with  cunning.  I  don't  ask 
you  for  any  confidences  now.  There  is  time 


enough  for  that.  Compose  yourself  when  I  am 
gone,  and  think  calmly  over  it.  But  for  all  you 
do,  don't  deceive  me  or  mislead  me ;  don't  be- 
tray me  and  my  friendship  for  you.  Will  you 
promise  that?" 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  in  a  whisper. 

"Then  I  will  put  implicit  confidence  in  you." 

He  went  to  the  door,  and  rapped  with  his 
pocket-knife  upon  the  wicket-door.  She  arose 
hastily,  and  approached  him,  and  took  his 
hand. 

"I  want  to  thank  you,"  she  said,  brokenly, 
between  her  sobs. 

"Tut,  tut !     It  is  nothing." 

"If — "  she  continued,  "if  they  find  my  son — 
or  Emily — says  anything — I'll  tell  you — the 
truth." 

The  footsteps  of  the  jailer  were  heard,  and 
she  went  to  the  window.  The  door  was  open- 
ed, and  Judge  Simon  passed  out,  his  old  head 
trembling  somewhat  with  agitation. 

Long  did  Mrs.  Howard  stand  at  the  window, 
gazing  at  the  court-house,  examining  minutely 
the  arabesque  carving  of  the  brackets  beneath 
the  coping;  gazing  at  the  trees  in  St.  James 
Square;  gazing  far  beyond  them  at  the  foot- 
hills, which  soon  became  tinged  with  the  soft 
glow  of  the  setting  sun ;  gazing  far,  far  beyond 
them  at  the  reddish-blue  sky,  and  vaguely  won- 
dering how  far  it  was  away ;  gazing,  gazing,  till 
night  came  on  and  wrapped  the  city  in  gloom. 

It  must  have  been  about  nine  o'clock  when 
her  meditation  was  interrupted  by  the  sound 
of  carnage -wheels  in  the  passage-way.  The 
carriage  halted  at  the  gate.  Soon  afterward 
she  heard  the  faint  tinkle  of  the  jail  bell.  It 
seemed  an  age  before  the  jailer  appeared  in  the 
yard  below,  bearing  a  lantern  and  a  bunch  of 
keys.  He  cautiously  opened  the  small  wicket 
near  the  door,  and  the  gruff  voice  of  a  man 
asked  him  to  open  the  door.  He  evidently 
recognized  the  man,  for  he  instantly  obeyed. 

Casserly  entered.  Clinging  to  his  arm  was 
the  fragile,  timid,  hesitating  form  of  a  girl. 
The  light  from  the  lantern  fell  upon  her  face, 
which  was  pale  and  frightened.  The  two  burn- 
ing eyes  in  the  window  above  recognized  Em- 
ily Randolph. 

A  shrill  cry  startled  Casserly.  It  came  from 
above.  It  was  a  despairing  cry : 

"Emily,  my  child!" 

The  girl  looked  wistfully  around,  not  know- 
ing whence  the  voice  came,  but  recognizing  it 
instantly.  She  had  halted.  Casserly  uttered 
an  imprecation,  seized  her  in  his  strong  arm, 
and  dragged  her  hurriedly  to  the  jail  door. 

"Emily,  remember!"  came  the  cry  again,  as 
the  door  slammed  noisily  and  shut  them  in. 

Oh,  John,  how  could  you,  how  could  you ! 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


33 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Dust.  Great  clouds  of  it.  Immense  billows 
of  it,  rolling  one  upon  the  other,  chasing  one 
another,  wrangling  and  contending,  grim,  si- 
lent, and  aggressive  ;  angry  dust — dust  that 
had  been  trodden  upon  and  ground  under  the 
heel  until  it  rebelled.  Now  it  leaps  madly  up 
as  a  tormenting  gust  of  wind  sweeps  down  the 
mountain-side  and  stirs  its  ire ;  then,  expending 
its  venom,  it  lies,  snarling,  down  again,  only  to 
spring  up  with  renewed  vigor  and  fasten  its 
fangs  upon  the  feet  and  legs  of  two  pedestrians 
toiling  wearily  through  it  and  maddening  it  to 
desperation.  It  had  been  patient  for  so  long — 
for  ages ;  had  slept  peacefully  while  men  came 
into  the  world  and  passed  away,  and  generation 
followed  generation  to  the  tomb.  Dust  whose 
empire  had  been  usurped,  whose  domain  had 
been  invaded.  Dust  which  had  lain  contented 
through  ages,  and  rose  up  in  arms  against  in- 
trusion. Fierce  and  determined,  it  sent  detach- 
ments to  settle  upon  the  leaves  and  hide  their 
beauty;  others  to  choke  the  thrush,  and  hush 
his  song;  others  to  scamper  wildly  down  the 
mountain,  and  up  the  mountain,  and  raise  the 
devil  everywhere. 

The  two  pedestrians  trudged  wearily  through 
it,  covered  and  begrimed  with  it.  One  was  a 
young  man ;  the  other  was  older,  and  would 
have  been  quite  tall  if  the  crooked  places  in 
him  had  been  straightened  out.  The  younger 
man  was  silent  and  gloomy,  and  the  other 
watched  him  furtively,  as  if  wondering  what  he 
would  next  do  or  say. 

"A  many  a  time,"  said  the  older,  "I've  hed 
sech  work  to  do.  Onct  I  cleaned  out  a  poker 
sharp  in  Ferginny  City,  an'  then  he  got  on  his 
ear  an'  said  ez  how  he'd  chaw  me  up.  Well,  I 
don't  like  to  blow,  but  they've  got  to  git  up  early 
in  the  mornin'  to  chaw  me,  fer  I'm  purty  good 
on  the  chaw  myself.  Samson's  riddle  warn't  a 
circumstance  to  the  chawin'  thet  was  done  thet 
day." 

"Did  you  eat  him?" 

"No;  oh,  no;  I  chawed  him." 

"Simply  chawed  him !" 

"Thet's  it — simply  chawed.  Chawed  him  up 
so  fine  thet  his  friends  couldn't  tell  whether  he 
had  swallowed  a  load  o'  giant  powder,  an'  it 
hed  gone  off  in  him,  or  was  a  bear-skin,  tanned 
by  the  chemical  pro-cess.  Then  I  lit  out.  They 
trailed  me  up  into  the  Sierry  Nevaidy — " 

"What  for?" 

"To  kill  me,  I  reckin.  Thet  was  about  the 
size  of  the  tune  they  wanted  to  play  on  my  fid- 
dle. But  when  they  ketched  up  with  me,  /was 
thar,  too.'.' 


"Indeed?" 

"Yes;  thar,  small  but  nat'ral;  thar,  from  the 
crown  of  my  head  to  the  sole  of  my  foot ;  six 
long  foot  of  me  thar;  a  hull  infantry  battalion 
of  me." 

"What  then?" 

"I  drawed  up  a  set  of  resolutions  ez  how  I 
was  a  harry  cane  an' — " 

"A  what?" 

"Harry  cane — tornado — water-spout." 

"Oh!" 

"Then  we  went  at  it."  Saying  which  the 
man  looked  around  with  an  air  of  indifference, 
and  of  disclaiming  modesty. 

"What  did  you  do?" 

"'Modesty  ferbids  me,  Mr.  Howard.  Ye'rea 
brave  man,  an'  kin  respec'  silence.  All  I'm 
pertickler  'bout  addin'  is  thet  I'm  here — six 
long  foot  of  me,  an'  a  few  inches  to  spar', 
hevin'  growed  some  sence  then." 

They  plodded  along  through  the  dust,  that 
lay  three  or  four  inches  deep  in  the  road,  and 
maintained  a  silence  for  some  time. 

"These  are  lovely  mountains,  Sam." 

"Yes,  very  good.  Plenty  o'  b'ar  in  these  here 
Santy  Cruz  Mountains.  I'd  like  to  tackle  one, 
jist  fer  a  change.  It's  a-gittin'  lonesome." 

The  road  wound  along  the  side  of  the  mount- 
ain, and  on  either  side  was  abundant  growth. 
Far  below  them  was  Los  Gatos — an  unpreten- 
tious stream  at  that  point — and  they  could  catch 
glimpses  of  it  at  rare  intervals,  sparkling  in  the 
sunlight. 

As  they  were  thus  trudging  along,  the  Crane 
inadvertently  stepped  into  a  hidden  rut  that 
had  been  cut  by  the  heavy  lumber  wagons,  and, 
as  it  was  filled  with  dust,  he  did  not  observe  it, 
but  tumbled  sprawling  to  the  ground.  He  ut- 
tered a  horrible  oath,  and  regained  his  feet, 
swearing  vengeance  on  everything. 

The  Crane  had  a  vast  respect  for  the  young 
man.  It  was  inspired  by  the  following  inci- 
dent, which  occured  soon  after  they  had  aban- 
doned the  cart :  Howard  insisted  on  their  sep- 
arating, but  the  Crane  begged  so  earnestly,  and 
with  such  positive  indications  of  fright  at  being 
abandoned,  that  the  young  man  consented  to 
retain  him.  The  Crane  knew  that  he  himself 
was  a  criminal,  for  having  conspired  in  the  es- 
cape of  the  prisoner.  Their  community  of  in- 
terests brought  about  aHdnd'of  familiarity.  So, 
after  they  had  walked  a  few  hours  together,  the 
Crane  asked,  in  a  confidential  manner : 

"We're  kind  o'  in  the  same  boat  now,  an' 
yer'd  better  tell  me  why  yer  killed  her,  hadn't 
yer?  'Twould  ease  yer  mind,  like." 

Howard  turned  angrily  upon  him,  seized  the 
lapels  of  his  greasy  coat,  and,  glaring  at  him 
like  a  tiger,  in  a  quiet  but  angry  tone  said : 


34 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"If  you  ever  mention  that  subject  again,  I'll 
cut  your  throat  from  ear  to  ear." 

This  frightened  the  harmless  Crane  nearly 
out  of  his  wits,  and  he  hastily  promised  that  he 
never  would  advert  to  it  again. 

Thus  the  Crane  knew  he  was  a  brave  man, 
and  so  mentioned  that  fact  while  they  were 
plowing  through  the  thick  dust  of  the  mountain 
road. 

For  four  days  they  skulked  in  the  mountains, 
buying  food  at  isolated  farm-houses,  and  sleep- 
ing in  the  fields  or  in  the  woods.  Howard  was 
attired  in  a  suit  of  rough  clothes  that  the  Crane 
had  purchased  for  him,  his  own  having  been 
taken  by  his  mother  to  dress  the  effigy ;  and, 
with  black  whiskers  that  were  cropping  out, 
and  in  the  dirt  and  dust  that  covered  him,  was 
not  recognizable  as  the  young  man  of  the  crime. 
There  never  was  a  question  by  those  who  saw 
them  but  that  they  were  tramps ;  and,  in  order 
to  carry  out  this  illusion,  they  sometimes  begged 
for  food.  Besides,  their  supply  of  money  was 
limited.  The  Crane  bore  the  proud  distinction 
of  being  the  treasurer,  Mrs.  Howard  having 
given  him  all  the  money  she  had  about  her, 
which,  as  bad  fortune  would  have  it,  was  only 
twenty -five  dollars.  It  is  true  that  she  had 
given  the  Crane  her  watch,  which,  with  the  chain, 
was  valuable,  but  they  dared  not  offer  it  for 
sale ;  and  Howard  had  in  his  pocket  a  diamond 
ring  that  she  had  forced  upon  him,  but  it  would 
have  been  a  fool -hardy  step  to  endeavor  to 
sell  it. 

The  Crane  had  another  reason  for  keeping 
Howard  in  sight,  and  it  was  no  other  than  the 
fear  of  losing  the  five  hundred  dollars  that  Mrs. 
Howard  promised  him  if  he  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing her  son  from  arrest.  As  the  payment  of 
the  money  was  contingent  on  this,  the  Crane 
dared  not  lose  sight  of  him,  fearing  that  the 
young  man  would  again  surrender  himself. 

As  the  two  men  had  avoided  the  thorough- 
fares, they  were  ignorant  of  everything  that  had 
transpired  since  the  riot.  In  escaping  and  re- 
maining concealed,  Howard  was  simply  obey- 
ing a  strong  appeal  by  his  mother,  and  not  fol- 
lowing an  inclination  of  his  own.  The  possi- 
bility had  never  occurred  to  his  mind  that  his 
mother  and  Emily  Randolph  would  be  appre- 
hended and  thrown  into  prison.  Rather  than 
have  even  this  indignity  put  on  either  of  them, 
he  would  have  persisted  in  his  confession  of 
the  murder. 

A  desire  to  learn  something  of  the  way  in 
which  his  escape  was  regarded  became  so  great 
that  it  could  no  longer  be  denied ;  and  Howard 
trusted  to  his  disguise  to  shield  him  from  iden- 
tification. They  were,  therefore,  finding  their 
way  to  a  staging  station,  to  see  the  newspapers, 


and  were  walking  through  the  dust  to  reach  it. 
As  they  neared  the  station,  a  strange  dread 
seized  them,  and  they  instinctively  practiced 
greater  caution,  darting  from  the  road  into  the 
brush  whenever  they  heard  an  approaching 
team. 

At  length  the  station  was  sighted.  It  was 
upon  a  plateau  that  formed  the  top  of  one  of  the 
lower  mountains.  The  level  ground  was  planted 
in  fruit-trees,  while  the  slopes  were  covered 
with  vineyards.  The  station  consisted  of  two 
buildings.  One  was  the  dwelling  of  the  pro- 
prietor, and  the  other  contained  a  store,  saloon, 
and  post-office  combined. 

Howard  left  the  Crane  in  the  brush,  knowing 
that  with  persons  of  any  powers  of  observation 
the  Crane  would  be  recognized  at  a  glance ;  his 
appearance  was  too  remarkable  not  to  attract 
attention.  Howard  found  a  few  lourigers  at  the 
store,  as  it  was  about  noon,  when  some  labor- 
ers dropped  in  for  a  drink  and  a  chat.  He 
walked  boldly  into  the  store,  the  animated  con- 
versation that  was  going  on  being  interrupted 
by  his  entrance.  There  was  a  rough -looking 
clerk  in  the  store,  who  simply  stared  at  the  in- 
truder, without  rising  from  his  seat. 

"Who  has  charge  here?"  asked  Howard. 

"I  have." 

"Will  you  be  so  kind  as  to  get  up,  and  walk 
behind  that  counter?" 

"Maybe,  if  you  want  something." 

"I  want  something,  then." 

The  clerk  slowly  came  to  the  perpendicular, 
his  joints  snapping  with  the  effort.  It  is  a 
strange  physiological  fact  that  the  joints  of  lazy 
men  snap  more  willingly  and  more  heartily  than 
do  those  of  other  men.  This  is  particularly 
noticeable  with  those  who  indulge  in  the  dissi- 
pation of  snapping  their  finger -joints.  The 
clerk  laboriously  walked  behind  the  counter, 
and  then  collapsed,  falling  upon  the  counter, 
and  supporting  his  weight  thereon  with  his  el- 
bows. 

"What  d'yer  want?" 

"A  drink." 

The  man  of  unstrung  energies  then  painfully 
straightened  himself  again,  and  handed  out  a 
bottle  and  a  tumbler. 

"Will  you  take  something?"  asked  Howard. 

"Don't  keer  if  I  do,"  replied  the  man,  yawn- 
ing as  if  dissolution  were  imminent. 

After  drinking  the  vile  liquor  and  paying  for 
it,  Howard  seated  himself  on  an  empty  box, 
and  picked  up  a  newspaper.  It  was  with  a  de- 
gree of  anxiety  and  pallor  that  he  sought  for 
news.  At  last  he  found  it. 

He  found  it  and  read,  and  it  nearly  unnerved 
him ;  his  breast  heaved  with  anger  and  indig- 
nation. So  absorbed  was  he  that  he  forgot  his 


A   STRANGE    CONFESSION. 


35 


surroundings,  until  one  of  the  men  startled  him 
with  the  remark : 

"Must  be  kind  o'  interestin'  news  yer're  read- 
in',  stranger." 

Instantly  he  was  calm  again. 

"It  was  the  whisky  that  made  me  sick,"  he 
replied,  quickly. 

The  clerk  took  this  as  a  personal  affront. 

"It's  as  good  whisky  as  yer  kin  git  in  these 
mountains,"  he  replied,  indignantly. 

Howard  did  not  argue  the  point.  The  news 
that  he  had  read  was  a  recapitulation  of  all 
that  had  occurred  since  the  riot;  and  it  was 
further  stated  that  Emily  Randolph,  it  was  be- 
lieved, had  made  a  full  statement  under  Cas- 
serly's  ruse  (which  was  Howard's  pretended 
implication  of  her),  and  that  there  was  no  long- 
er a  reasonable  doubt  that  justice  demanded 
the  immediate  capture  of  Howard,  for  whose 
apprehension  a  heavy  reward  had  been  offered 
by  the  Governor.  It  was  noted,  however,  that 
such  statement  by  Emily  Randolph  was  more 
a  surmise  than  anything  else,  which  was  based 
on  corroborative  circumstances  tending  to  fast- 
en the  crime  on  Howard,  and  on  the  strenuous 
efforts  that  the  authorities  were  making  for  his 
arrest.  Casserly,  it  was  said,  was  very  reticent, 
but  admitted  frankly  that  the  case  was  as  strong 
as  he  could  wish — against  whom  he  would  not 
say. 

Howard  rose  to  his  feet  with  the  old  spirit  of 
reckless  desperation.  That  his  mother  and  the 
girl  should  be  in  prison,  and  under  suspicion, 
was  more  than  he  could  bear. 

The  conversation  of  the  men  turned  on  this 
subject.  They  wondered  if  Howard  was  still 
hiding  in  the  Santa  Cruz  Mountains.  Some 
thought  not,  but  that  he  was  making  his  way 
to  the  south.  During  this  conversation  the 
eyes  of  the  clerk  were  fastened  steadily  on 
Howard,  who  finally  rose,  and,  bidding  them 
good  day,  sought  the  Crane.  He  found  the  lat- 
ter gentleman  where  he  had  left  him. 

"Sam,  I'm  going  back  to  San  Jose*.  You 
may  stay,  if  you  prefer." 

The  Crane  was  greatly  surprised,  and  eagerly 
demanded  an  explanation.  Howard  doggedly 
refused  to  give  it,  and  turned  to  walk  away  and 
carry  out  his  purpose.  An  unusual  and  dan- 


gerous glitter  came  into  the  eyes  of  the  Crane. 
He  sprang  before  Howard  with  surprising  agil- 
ity, and  said,  fiercely : 

"You  shan't  go." 

"Eh?"  demanded  Howard,  halting,  and  star- 
ing at  him,  bewildered. 

"You're  a-goin'  to  stay  right  here,"  said  the 
Crane,  as  he  whipped  out  the  famous  sheath- 
knife,  and  assumed  the  half  cowering  posture 
of  a  timid  man  who  knows  that  his  adversary 
is  unarmed  and  helpless. 

The  two  men  glared  silently  at  each  other  a 
moment.  Then  Howard  began  to  step  slowly 
backward.  The  Crane,  mistaking  this  move- 
ment for  fear,  approached.  Howard  halted, 
and  the  Crane  did  likewise,  holding  the  long 
knife  in  readiness  to  strike.  A  coward  is  a 
dangerous  foe  under  such  circumstances,  and 
Howard  knew  it.  He  would  take  no  desperate 
chances  now,  for  his  life  was  precious,  How- 
ard saw  the  uselessness  of  an  attempt  at  par- 
leying. He  suddenly  turned  and  fled  rapidly, 
putting  considerable  distance  between  himself 
and  the  Crane,  who  sprang  after  him.  But 
Howard  had  all  his  wits  about  him.  At  the 
first  opportunity,  after  they  had  run  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  mile,  he  picked  up  a  heavy  stave, 
and  turned  upon  the  Crane.  The  latter  halted 
so  suddenly  that  he  nearly  fell.  It  was  How- 
ard's turn  now  to  advance.  He  did  so,  and  the 
Crane  fled  precipitately — ran  like  a  deer,  bound- 
ed over  logs  and  bushes  until  he  disappeared  in 
the  distance.  Howard  abandoned  the  chase, 
and  turned  his  steps  toward  San  Jose,  soon  for- 
getting the  incident  in  the  great  cares  that 
bowed  him  down.  He  thought  of  all  manner 
of  impossible  things  that  ought  to  be  done,  and 
the  determination  commenced  to  take  root  in 
his  mind  that  he  would  murder  this  villain 
called  Casserly,  for  the  wrong  he  had  done  the 
defenseless  girl. 

But  there  was  a  danger  lurking  in  his  road 
that  he  knew  not  of.  The  Crane  followed  him 
stealthily,  with  the  knife  in  his  hand,  and  only 
biding  his  time.  If  Howard  were  dead,  and  his 
body  concealed  in  some  mountain  gorge,  the 
Crane  could  claim  his  bribe  with  impunity;  for 
Howard  would  then  be  far  beyond  the  reach  of 
earthly  justice.  W.  C.  MORROW. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


LOVE'S    KNIGHTLINESS. 

So  brave  is  Love,  and  rosy,  sunny  sweet, 
The  darkness  breaks  to  day  before  his  feet — 
So  knightly  that  his  bright,  unworldly  words 
Soar  through  the  ethers  like  ecstatic  birds : 
His  golden  pseans  at  the  rise  of  suns, 
What  time  the  stars  do  pass  like  quiet  nuns, 
Soar  to  the  fire  of  dawn  through  crimson  cloud 
And  sing  as  larks  their  victories  aloud; 
Low  whispers  in  the  blushing  ear  of  Joy 
Are  purple  doves,  whose  days  are  one  employ 
Of  bridal  worship,  where  the  zephyr  weaves 
Its  liquid  music  in  the  sunny  leaves; 
And  all  his  elfin  lyrics  of  delights, 
Writ  in  his  ritual  of  bridal  rites, 
Are  joyous  throstles  for  eternal  days 
On  stilly  wings  down  rapture's  rosy  ways; 
And  lo!  at  twilight  all  the  starry  skies 
Hearken  to  hear  Love's  orisons  arise, 
For  all  his  sweet  adorings  that  confess, 
When  kneeling  to  the  Bridal  Holiness, 
Take  flight  as  nightingales  that  love  the  lily, 
And  dwell  in  starry  woodlands  dim  and  stilly. 

CHARLES  EDWIN  MARKHAM. 


UP   THE   MOSELLE   AND   AROUND   METZ. 


I  had  passed  two  delightful  days  at  Boppard 
among  the  vineyards  on  the  left  banks  of  the 
Rhine,  and  rather  reluctantly  took  the  after- 
noon boat  to  go  on  down  the  river,  because  I 
doubted  whether  in  my  future  rambling  in  the 
border  lands  between  France  and  Germany  I 
should  come  upon  any  spot  which  would  be  so 
thoroughly  satisfying  in  its  picturesqueness  and 
peacefulness  as  this  one  I  was  leaving.  Cob- 
lentz  is  only  an  hour  distant,  and  I  was  there 
before  night,  of  which  I  was  very  glad,  as  I  had 
time  to  walk  across  the  bridge  of  boats  and  en- 
joy the  rich  coloring  of  the  fading  sunset  upon 
the  bold  crags  and  massive  fortification  of  Eh- 
renbreitstein. 

Coblentz  stands  at  the  confluence  of  the  Mo- 
selle with  the  Rhine.  In  order  to  be  not  far 
from  the  former  river,  and  my  point  of  depart- 
ure the  next  day  for  its  upper  waters,  I  drove 
across  the  city  to  the  old-fashioned  Hotel  de 
Liege.  I  told  the  distinguished  looking  waiter 
who  escorted  me  to  my  room  that  I  wished  to 
take  the  steamboat  which  left  the  next  morning 


at  six  o'clock  for  Treves.  He  bowed  most  af- 
fably in  response  to  my  request,  assured  me 
I  should  be  called  in  ample  time,  and  then  dis- 
appeared. The  careless  fellow  forgot  his  prom- 
ise, and  if  I  had  not  awakened  in  time  to  dress 
hastily  and  hurry  down  to  the  boat,  I  should 
have  been  obliged  to  remain  over  two  days. 

The  little  boat  was  lying  at  the  bank  of  the 
river,  just  ready  to  start.  It  was  not  certainly 
as  cheerful  a  commencement  of  a  pleasure  tour 
as  one  might  wish.  Though  it  was  in  the  lat- 
ter days  cf  August,  the  morning  was  chilly 
enough  for  an  overcoat.  This,  however,  large- 
ly came  from  a  heavy  mist  which  curtained 
river  and  town.  The  solid  old  mediaeval  bridge, 
though  only  a  little  way  below  us,  seemed  a  se- 
ries of  spectral  arches  connecting  two  distant 
cloud-banks.  The  boat  was  small  and  low,  and 
her  deck,  at  the  best  not  ample,  was  crowded 
with  piles  of  freight.  Two  or  three  sleepy  pas- 
sengers were  standing  about.  Presently  a  lit- 
tle band  of  eight  girls  and  boys  came  aboard 
with  a  young  man.  The  uniformity  of  their 


UP  THE  MOSELLE  AND  AROUND  METZ. 


37 


plain  dresses  indicated  that  they  were  from 
some  public  institution,  and  it  proved,  upon  in- 
quiry, that  they  were  poor  half-orphans  return- 
ing to  their  native  village  for  the  vacation.  The 
only  enlivening  feature  in  the  prevailing  depres- 
sion was  the  shrill  notes  of  a  fife  playing  the 
Boccaccio  march  at  the  head  of  a  company  of 
soldiers  crossing  the  bridge. 

The  little  boat  pushed  off  into  the  stream, 
and  commenced  its  two  days'  journey  in  a 
wheezy,  melancholy  sort  of  a  way.  However,  a 
cup  of  hot  coffee  made  the  world  seem  a  little 
more  cheerful,  and  in  a  couple  of  hours  the 
mist  rolled  away,  the  sun  shone  warmly  along 
the  steep  hill-sides,  and  the  puffing,  tugging  lit- 
tle steamer  began  to  look  more  endurable.  As 
midday  approached  it  became  very  warm. 

The  Rhine  between  Mayence  and  Coblentz  is 
grand  and  picturesque.  In  the  traveling  season 
the  tourist  on  one  of  the  passenger  boats,  which 
are  constantly  passing  each  other  on  the  way 
up  or  down,  discovers  very  soon  that  the  hur- 
ried landings  and  departures,  the  constant  bus- 
tle, the  perpetual  eating  and  drinking  going 
on,  bring  a  succession  of  disturbing  elements 
which  take  off  the  edge  of  true  enjoyment,  and 
make  him  rather  glad  when  the  trip  is  over. 
He  is  on  the  Continent ;  it  is  a  solemn  duty  to 
do  the  Rhine,  and  he  feels  relieved  when  it  is 
over.  To  extract  all  that  is  enjoyable  from  this 
noble  river  one  must,  as  it  were,  taste  it  bit  by 
bit — must  linger  along  its  banks,  going  from 
point  to  point  deliberately.  Even  under  these 
circumstances  he  will  meet  crowds  and  more  or 
less  of  the  bustle  prevailing  where  tourists  con- 
gregate. If  he  wishes  a  few  days  of  charming 
picturesqueness,  let  him  turn  aside,  as  I  did,  at 
Coblentz,  and  sail  up  the  valley  of  the  Moselle. 
If,  however,  the  traveler  does  not  care  to  pass 
two  days  on  the  little  boat,  he  can,  on  his  way 
down  the  Rhine,  leave  the  steamer  at  Bingen, 
go  across  country  by  rail  to  Treves,  and  sail 
down  the  Moselle  with  the  current,  in  eleven 
hours. 

As  I  said,  the  mist  rolled  away  and  the  sun 
shone  out  warmly.  We  were  already  among  the 
vineyards.  The  river,  in  the  lower  half  of  its 
way  to  the  Rhine,  twists  and  turns  among  the 
hills  in  a  most  irregular  course,  and  wherever 
these  hills  present  a  proper  exposure  they  are 
covered  with  vineyards.  I  was  constantly  and 
everywhere  struck  with  the  enormous  labor  and 
expense  which  these  vineyards  must  have  cost. 
The  most  of  them  lie  upon  hill-sides  which  are 
so  steep  that  the  earth  is  terraced,  and  these 
terraces  are  supported  most  generally  by  solid 
walls  of  masonry.  Frequently  a  little  spot  sus- 
taining not  above  two  dozen  vines  will  be  kept 
in  place  by  a  larger  surface  of  stone  wall. 

Vol.  III.- 3. 


These  odds  and  ends  of  cultivation  very  often 
lie  around  in  the  high  angles  and  corners 
away  up  in  apparently  inaccessible  places. 
Sometimes  there  will  be  broad,  sloping  sur- 
faces planted  up  to  the  summit  and  stretching 
for  a  mile  along  the  river,  and  these,  on  the 
line  of  the  roadway  which  follows  the  shore,  are 
flanked  by  walls  of  smooth,  solid  stone  ma- 
sonry. The  wines  produced  along  the  Moselle 
are  known  all  over  the  world,  but  vary  in  excel- 
lence at  different  points  on  the  river.  The  best 
are  made  about  midway  between  Coblentz  and 
Treves.  On  the  second  day,  while  we  were 
still  in  this  middle  section,  a  passenger  came 
on  board,  with  whom  I  fell  into  conversation. 
He  was  a  wine -buyer  for  dealers  in  Cologne 
and  Coblentz,  and  appeared  to  be  familiar  with 
all  the  specialties  of  the  region.  He  said  that 
vineyard  land  is  not  sold  by  the  acre,  but  for 
so  much  per  vine ;  that  the  best  brings  about  a 
dollar  and  a  half  per  vine;  not  quite  so  good,  a 
dollar ;  and  the  inferior  sorts,  seventy  cents  per 
vine.  The  vines  are  usually  planted  a  little 
more  than  a  yard  apart  each  way,  so  that  an 
acre  of  the  best  is  worth  between  seven  and 
eight  thousand  dollars.  These  hills  appear  to 
be  masses  of  slaty  rock.  At  Marienberg  I 
walked  down  the  hill  through  a  large  vineyard, 
which,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  had  no  soil  at  all ; 
the  vigorous  vines  were  growing  up  from  a  sur- 
face of  bits  of  loose  slate.  The  vines  were 
trained  up  five  and  six  feet  high ;  on  the  Rhine 
the  custom  is  to  train  them  somewhat  lower. 
Most  of  the  Moselle  wine  is  consumed  in  Ger- 
many, and  my  wine-buying  friend  said  that  on 
the  declaration  of  war  by  France  against  Ger- 
many, in  1870,  the  people  of  this  valley  were  in 
great  tribulation,  fearing  the  success  of  France, 
and,  as  a  result,  the  extension  of  her  bounda- 
ries to  the  Rhine,  which  would  take  them  in. 
They  feared  a  loss  of  their  German  market  for 
their  wines  would  follow,  through  restrictive  tar- 
iffs. 

The  river  varies  in  width,  but  is  not  usually 
above  three  to  four  hundred  yards  across.  The 
turns  are  so  abrupt  and  frequent  that  a  con- 
stantly changing  series  of  pictures  is  presented. 
Alongside  the  bank  there  is  a  roadway,  dotted 
with  whitewashed  stones  on  the  outer  edge, 
and  lined  with  small  trees.  Now  and  then 
there  will  be  the  solitary  mansion  of  the  well 
to  do  vineyard  proprietor,  very  likely  standing 
at  the  mouth  of  a  ravine,  opening  out  to  the 
water.  The  building  is  square,  two  stories  high, 
white  stuccoed,  with  steep,  slated  roof  and  lit- 
tle dormer  windows,  and  most  usually  a  tall 
poplar  rises  by  the  gate  of  the  small  garden. 
Generally,  however,  the  people  are  collected  in 
the  little  villages  which  lie  along  the  river  at 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


frequent  intervals.  When  one  of  these  stands 
at  a  bend  in  the  river,  as  is  often  the  case,  it 
presents  a  perfect  little  scene,  such  as  one  often 
sees  on  the  stage,  admires,  but  yet  looks  upon 
as  a  bit  of  pardonable  fantasy.  In  the  warm 
sunlight  there  is  the  same  vivid  contrasts  of 
color;  in  the  foreground  the  glassy  stretch  of 
the  smooth-flowing  river;  on  one  side  the  steep 
slope  of  the  vineyard,  its  vines  in  serried  rows, 
on  the  other  a  wooded  hill-side ;  in  the  near  dis- 
tance the  irregular,  quaint,  white-plastered,  hud- 
dled-together  houses  of  the  village,  with  their 
black  slated  roofs,  and  the  church  steeple  ris- 
ing from  their  midst.  This  confused  mass  of 
structures  stands  against  the  dark  green  back- 
ground of  a  steep,  conical  hill,  which  is  crowned 
with  a  gray  ruin — all  that  is  left  of  the  halls  of 
the  old  robber  knights,  who  lorded  it  over  the 
village,  and  perhaps  a  small  section  of  the  sur- 
rounding territory,  and  who  came  down  and 
robbed  the  traveler  on  the  river.  We  come  up 
closer  to  the  village,  and  discover  that,  though 
it  is  highly  picturesque,  it  cannot  be  very  com- 
fortable. Narrow  streets  run  up  from  the  wa- 
ter's edge  between  houses  which  appear  to  be 
jammed  together  and  pressed  down  until  the 
windows  are  left  in  all  sorts  of  queer  shapes. 
There  are  no  open  spaces  or  cheerful  little  gar- 
dens. There  will  be  low  stone  break -waters 
running  out  into  the  river,  to  break  the  force  of 
the  freshets,  which  often  come  down  with  dev- 
astating force  in  the  spring.  You  will  be  apt 
to  see  barefooted  women  out  on  these  stone 
projections  dipping  up  water  in  shiny  metal 
pails  or  industriously  washing  clothes.  A  little 
red  flag  is,  perhaps,  displayed  on  the  beach. 
This  is  the  sign  that  a  passenger  wishes  to 
come  aboard ;  so  the  boat  slows  up,  and  a  canoe- 
like  skiff  pushes  off  with  the  new-comer,  who 
steps  on  board. 

The  most  picturesque  point  on  the  river  is  at 
Cochem,  which  is  reached  about  noon  of  the 
first  day.  The  village — or,  rather,  town,  for  it 
aspires  to  that  dignity — stands  at  a  sharp  turn 
of  the  stream,  and  is  piled  and  crowded  along 
and  up  the  sides  of  the  steep  bank.  Up  above, 
on  the  crest  of  the  craggy  hill,  is  the  castle.  It 
was  occupied  by  the  Archbishops  of  Treves  in 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  was,  in 
large  part,  destroyed  by  the  French  in  1688,  but 
within  the  past  ten  years  has  been  carefully  and 
elaborately  restored,  so  that  now  it  looks,  no 
doubt,  as  it  did  in  its  days  of  splendor.  As  the 
boat  moved  away  around  the  turn  until  town 
and  castle  stood  across  the  background,  there 
was  a  picture  which  seemed  like  a  glimpse  into 
the  middle  ages. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  we  came  to  Alf.  Here 
the  river  makes  a  sweep  around  a  long  hill, 


and  comes  back  to  a  point  only  a  few  minutes' 
walk  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  ridge.  Most 
of  the  passengers  left  the  boat  here,  and  walk- 
ed over.  On  the  top  of  the  ridge  we  found  a 
restaurant,  and,  as  is  always  the  case  in  Ger- 
many where  there  is  an  opportunity  to  sit  out- 
doors and  eat  and  drink,  there  were  people 
busily  engaged.  The  view  back  from  Marien- 
berg,  as  the  ruin  on  the  top  is  called,  is  very 
striking,  especially  of  the  bold  and  graceful 
span  of  the  railway  bridge  across  the  river  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill.  Descending  to  the  other 
side,  I  found  a  short  cut  through  a  large  vine- 
yard which  extended  over  the  steep  hill-side  to 
the  road  on  the  river  bank.  The  steamboat 
was  an  hour  and  a  half  getting  around,  and  I 
had  plenty  of  leisure  to  sit  on  the  bank  and 
watch  the  ferry  which  connects  this  side  with 
the  little  village  of  Piinderich,  on  the  opposite 
bank.  It  was  of  the  primitive  sort — a  flat-bot- 
tomed boat,  whose  propelling  force  was  the  cur- 
rent, and  was  guided  by  a  rope  from  one  bank 
to  the  other. 

Frequent  trips  were  made  while  I  was  there. 
A  wagon  would  come,  drawn  by  a  couple  of 
cows,  loaded  with  dried  pea -vines  or  straw. 
Girls  and  women,  with  baskets  strapped  to  their 
backs  filled  with  grass,  old  women  with  bun- 
dles of  faggots,  laborers,  and  children,  went  on 
to  the  little  craft,  paid  a  coin  to  the  shock- 
headed  Charon,  glided  across,  and  disappeared 
up  the  narrow  village  street.  The  evening  twi- 
light was  settling  down,  and  I  was  rather  disap- 
pointed to  leave  this  quiet  scene,  which  made 
still  another  picture  to  add  to  the  many  I  had 
already  enjoyed.  The  puffing  little  steamer 
came  along,  and  I  was  obliged  to  go  aboard  or 
be  left  behind. 

Toward  nine  o'clock,  just  as  the  moon  was 
coming  up  over  the  dark  hill-tops,  the  boat  came 
alongside  of  the  little  landing  at  Frarbach,  and 
I  went  ashore  to  pass  the  night  at  the  Belle- 
vue  Hotel.  The  little  orphan  children  were 
from  this  place,  and  there  was  a  great  crowd  of 
children  at  the  landing  to  greet  them  as  they 
came  ashore. 

The  next  day,  early,  we  were  under  way 
again.  In  a  few  hours  we  were  passing  be- 
tween long  stretches  of  vineyards,  where  the 
best  of  the  Moselle  wine  is  made.  The  villages 
are  closer  together,  larger,  and  evidently  more 
prosperous,  than  farther  down  stream.  About 
noon  the  country  began  to  be  more  open.  The 
hills  lie  back  farther  and  farther  from  the  river, 
and  the  intervening  land  is  gently  rolling  and 
cultivated  with  the  ordinary  farm  crops.  As 
you  approach  Treves  the  land  on  the  right  rises 
in  bold  red  sandstone  cliffs,  rimmed  with  trees ; 
on  the  left  the  plain  stretches  away  to  the  dis- 


UP  THE  MOSELLE  AND  AROUND  METZ. 


39 


tant  vine-clad  hills.  It  was  Sunday  afternoon, 
and  numerous  pleasure  parties  were  sailing  on 
the  glassy  river,  or  crossing  it  in  small  boats  to 
the  restaurants  and  cafes  at  the  foot  of  and  on  the 
cliffs.  We  came  to  the  landing,  close  by  the 
massive  old  stone  bridge,  about  four  in  the  aft- 
ernoon, and  I  rather  regretfully  left  the  boat. 

Above  Treves  the  Moselle  is  not  navigable 
except  by  very  small  boats  drawing  a  few  inches 
of  water.  The  valley  of  the  Moselle  is  excep- 
tionally rich  in  historical  associations,  com- 
mencing with  the  overthrow  of  the  Treveri,  a 
tribe  of  Belgic  Gauls,  by  Julius  Caesar,  B.  c. 
56,  and  running  down  through  mediaeval  times, 
through  the  devastations  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War,  and  in  this  century  in  connection  with 
the  Napoleonic  occupation.  In  and  about 
Treves  are  enduring  traces  of  the  Romans,  and 
all  along  the  river  to  the  Rhine  are  gray  ruins, 
mementoes  of  the  feudal  days  and  the  later 
stormy  times  of  the  seventeenth  century.  These 
ruins,  however,  are  not  as  frequent  or  as  impos- 
ing as  those  of  the  Rhine,  but,  as  along  the 
larger  river,  these  of  the  Moselle  have  each  its 
legend. 

Treves  is  the  oldest  of  the  German  cities.  It 
is  supposed  to  have  been  established  as  a  Roman 
colony  in  the  first  century  of  our  era,  during 
the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Claudius.  It  subse- 
quently became  the  capital  of  the  Occident,  and 
the  center  of  Roman  domination  in  Gaul,  Spain, 
and  Great  Britain.  Many  of  the  Emperors, 
among  others  Constantius,  Constantine  the 
Great,  Valentinius,  Gratianus,  and  Maximus, 
had  residences  there.  Christianity  obtained  a 
foothold  there  at  a  very  early  date,  and  was 
definitely  established  by  an  edict  of  Constan- 
tine in  313.  Later  it  was  joined  to  the  Frank- 
ish  monarchy.  In  843  it  was  incorporated 
with  Lorraine,  but  not  long  after  was  ceded  to 
Germany,  to  which  it  has  always  since  then 
appertained,  except  during  the  French  occu- 
pation at  the  time  of  the  revolution. 

During  the*  middle  ages  it  was  governed  by 
Archbishops,  subsequently  by  Electors.  In 
1634  the  city  was  taken  by  the  Spaniards,  then 
by  the  French  under  Turrenne  in  1645.  In 
1794  in  was  occupied  by  France,  and  by  the 
Treaty  of  LuneVille  in  1801  was  ceded  to  that 
country.  This  domination,  however,  only  last- 
ed until  1814,  when  Prussia  took  possession, 
which  possession  was  made  definitive  by  the 
Treaty  of  Vienna  of  1816.  It  will  thus  be  seen 
that  the  city  has  had  a  long  and  checkered  his- 
tory. At  present  it  contains  about  22,000  in- 
habitants, of  whom  perhaps  one -tenth  only  are 
Protestants. 

Early  in  the  morning  following  my  arrival  I 
walked  out  through  the  narrow  streets,  toward 


the  north-east  quarter  of  the  city,  and  thence 
out,  perhaps  a  fifteen -minutes'  walk  into  the 
country,  to  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  Amphithea- 
ter. The  roadway  is  lined  with  trees,  and  leads 
past  a  pretentious  villa  surrounded  with  pretty 
grounds.  To  the  right  the  outlook  between  the 
trees  is  over  rolling  fields,  which  just  then  were 
covered  with  the  yellow  shocks  of  the  newly 
cut  grain  ;  in  the  distance  were  pretty  bits  of 
wood.  I  turned  to  the  left  into  the  broad  en- 
trance of  the  Amphitheatre.  Nothing  is  left  but 
the  lower  parts  of  the  solid  brick  walls.  The 
arena  is  clearly  defined ;  along  up  the  circling 
sides,  where  the  multitude  sat,  are  trees  and 
bushes,  and  up  on  the  adjoining  hill -side  stands 
a  cosy  dwelling,  supported  on  one  side  by  a 
fragment  of  the  upper  wall.  I  walked  across 
the  arena  and  turned  up  the  bank  on  the  oppo- 
site side,  and  sat  down  where  I  could  overlook 
the  entire  city,  which  lies  upon  lower  ground, 
and  also  the  ruins  about  me.  I  might  easily 
have  fancied  myself  in  Italy.  There  was  the 
soft,  warm  haze  of  August  over  the  charming 
scene.  In  the  background  were  those  bluffs  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  river,  the  red  sandstone 
gleaming  out  through  the  fringing  and  lacing  of 
green,  and  contrasting  with  the  white  houses 
along  their  base.  In  the  middle  ground  the 
brown,  slated  roofs  of  the  city,  out  of  which 
arose  the  massive  towers  of  the  old  Cathedral ; 
to  the  left  the  modern -looking  brick  Basilica, 
which  it  is  true  is  partly  renewed,  but  which 
in  the  main  is  fifteen  centuries  old  ;  alongside 
it  the  Stadt  -house,  which,  though  less  than  two 
centuries  old,  looks  in  its  degraded,  fantastic 
style,  tawdry,  aged,  and  wrinkled.  Away  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  city  are  the  massive  gray 
remains  of  the  Porta  Nigra.  Back  of  where  I 
sat  rise  slopes  covered  with  vineyards.  Pres- 
ently a  soft  chime  of  bells  came  across  the 
housetops  from  the  old  dome.  The  deception 
was  complete  ;  it  must  really  be  a  section  of 
Italy,  accidentally  out  of  place.  I  heard  the 
laughter  of  children  and  looked  down  into  the 
grassy  arena,  from  whence  it  came,  and  saw  a 
half  dozen  youngsters  pursuing  butterflies.  Two 
or  three  obvious  reflections  were  suggested. 
One  was  the  contrast  between  the  sports  of 
these  boys  and  girls  and  those  of  the  earlier 
days  on  this  spot,  where  men  had  killed  each 
other,  or  had  fought  wild  beasts  in  order  to  gain 
the  applause  of  the  populace.  Another  was,  how 
ineradicable  is  this  disposition  to  capture  and 
destroy;  and,  after  all,  is  the  difference  between 
human  nature  to-day  and  two  thousand  years 
ago  appreciable  in  its  essence?  However,  the 
boys  captured  the  butterflies,  stuck  pins  through 
them,  and  amused  themselves  with  the  fluttering 
of  the  impaled  insects,  and  I  turned  to  again 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


enjoy  the  quiet  beauty  of  the  picture  of  city  and 
vineyard. 

The  arena  of  this  amphitheatre  is  oval -shap- 
ed, two  hundred  and  ten  feet  long  and  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  feet  wide.  The  entrances  to  the 
dens  for  the  wild  beasts  and  to  the  chambers  for 
the  gladiators  are  still  plainly  traceable,  lead- 
ing into  the  arena.  Thirty  thousand  spectators 
could  be  accommodated  on  its  benches,  which 
is  about  one -third  of  the  number  which  the 
Coliseum  at  Rome  could  hold.  The  Treveans 
of  those  early  days  were  regaled  with  frequent 
and  striking  spectacles  in  the  arena.  It  is  re- 
corded that  thousands  of  captive  Franks  and 
Bructori  were  torn  to  pieces  by  wild  beasts  or 
sacrificed  to  amuse  the  people. 

Not  far  distant  at  the  corner  of  the  city  are 
the  ruins  of  a  Roman  palace,  showing  remains 
of  halls  and  chambers,  heating -rooms,  and  even 
water-pipes  and  hot-air  pipes.  The  best  pre- 
served, however,  of  these  Roman  remains,  is 
the  Porta  Nigra,  a  two -story  massive  gateway 
on  the  west  side  of  the  city ;  the  huge  blocks  of 
granite,  now  blackened  with  age,  are  clearly  fit- 
ted and  clamped  together  with  iron,  and  the 
broad  surface  and  great  elevation  are  relieved 
with  graceful  arches  of  gateway  and  window - 
like  openings  above,  with  solid  pillars  and  cor- 
nices along  the  front. 

There  are  also  recently  uncovered  remains  of 
an  extensive  bath.  The  Basilica  is  a  massive 
brick  structure,  now  restored  and  used  for  a 
church ;  formerly  it  was  the  Roman  Court  of 
Justice  and  Exchange. 

The  Cathedral  is  a  noble  monument  of  a  later 
era.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest  churches  in  Ger- 
many, its  beginnings  even  going  back  into  Ro- 
man times ;  and  its  different  stages  of  growth 
and  restoration,  after  partial  destruction  and  de- 
cay though  these  many  centuries,  are  plainly 
traceable  in  its  huge  irregular  exterior.  With- 
in, the  glare  of  day  is  softened  by  the  oldest  of 
painted  windows,  through  which  a  soft  light 
falls  upon  dozens  of  tombs  and  monuments  of 
Electors  and  Archbishops,  who  at  various  times 
were  mighty  in  the  land.  A  little  side  door,  not 
far  from  the  altar,  leads  into  remarkably  beau- 
tiful and  well  preserved  cloisters,  which  are 
supposed  to  have  been  built  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  In  the  center  is  a  pretty  garden,  over- 
shadowed on  the  south  and  west  by  the  lofty, 
irregularly  built  side  of  the  Dome,  and  by  the 
adjoining  graceful,  gothic  Liebfrauenkirche. 

I  rambled  about  the  narrow,  winding  streets  of 
the  old  city,  watching  the  quiet  life  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  then  out  on  to  the  massive  old  Roman 
bridge,  and  had  a  glance  up  and  down  the  Mo- 
selle ;  below,  the  red  sandstone  hights  to  the  left, 
and  the  city  to  the  right;  above,  the  glassy 


surface  of  the  quiet  river,  making  a  graceful, 
sweeping  bend  toward  the  city,  here  and  there 
boats  moored  to  its  banks,  and  in  the  distance 
the  vine -covered  hill -sides  looking  like  distant 
cornfields. 

I  was  loth  to  leave  ;  but  the  traveler,  like  the 
tramp,  must  keep  moving  on  ;  and  so,  after  a 
couple  of  days  in  this  quaint  old  city  of  Treves, 
I  was  flying  along  south,  in  the  afternoon  train, 
towards  Metz,  which  is  also  on  the  Moselle. 
The  country  very  soon  opens  out  into  broad,  roll- 
ing fields  on  each  side  of  the  ever  narrowing 
river.  Metz  is  three  hours  by  rail  from  Treves, 
and  before  one  is  two -thirds  of  the  way  the 
French  speech  begins  to  be  heard  about  the 
railway  stations  and  from  passengers  who  come 
on  the  train.  In  other  words,  we  come  into  the 
province  of  Lorraine,  taken  from  the  French 
ten  years  ago.  The  Germans  now  designate 
their  conquest  by  the  general  name  of  Elsass- 
Lothringen.  The  railroad  station  at  Metz  is 
just  outside  the  walls,  and  as  I  drove  through 
the  massive  gateway,  flanked  on  each  side  with 
cannon,  and  through  the  narrow  streets,  where 
every  other  passer  was  a  soldier,  I  became 
vividly  conscious  that  I  was  in  a  conquered 
fortification  on  the  border  of  a  nation  with 
whom  war  is  possible,  and  not  really  improba- 
ble, at  any  moment.  Germany  and  France  are 
under  a  constant  military  strain — the  one  is 
ready,  and  seeks  to  maintain  herself  alertly  and 
effectively  so ;  the  other  is  quietly  and  persist- 
ently making  herself  ready. 

Metz  is  really  a  German  advanced  post  in  an 
enemy's  territory.  The  resident  population  is 
about  49,000,  of  whom  perhaps  one  -  quarter  are 
Germans  who  have  come  in  since  the  conquest ; 
the  remainder  are  French.  It  is  said  that  the 
city  has  lost  since  1870  about  17,000  of  its  old 
population,  who  have  voluntarily  abandoned  it, 
rather  than  remain  under  German  rule.  The 
garrison  consists  of  from  sixteen  to  eighteen 
thousand  men,  and  consequently  officers  and 
soldiers  abound  in  every  direction,  and  at  all 
times  there  is  the  tramp  of  companies  and  reg- 
iments in  the  streets.  The  German  officers  and 
privates  are  much  more  soldierly  in  appearance, 
and,  as  far  as  one  can  judge  casually,  are,  man 
for  man,  heavier  and  capable  of  greater  physi- 
cal endurance  than  the  French.  It  is  apparent 
on  the  surface  that  the  discipline  of  the  former 
is  very  much  more  rigid. 

The  fate  of  the  war  of '7o-'7i  was  really  set- 
tled in  and  about  Metz.  The  subsequent  capt- 
ure of  Sedan,  the  advance  on  Paris,  and  the 
siege  and  final  capitulation,  were  but  the  finale 
of  a  drama  whose  veritable  climax  was  reached 
when  Bazaine,  after  the  bloody  day  of  Grave- 
lotte  retreated  into  Metz. 


UP  THE  MOSELLE  AND  AROUND  METZ. 


It  will  be  recollected  that  MacMahon  was 
badly  defeated  by  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia 
on  the  6th  of  August,  1870,  in  a  decisive  battle 
at  Worth,  and  retreated  rapidly  toward  Chal- 
ons. There  was  then  a  large  French  force  in 
and  about  Metz.  Napoleon  III.  was  in  com- 
mand of  the  whole  army  of  the  Rhine.  The 
disaster  at  Worth  spread  dismay  among  the 
French,  and  Napoleon  hastened  to  relieve  him- 
self from  personal  responsibility  for  further  op- 
erations by  delivering  over  to  Marshal  Bazaine 
the  chief  command,  and  retired  toward  the  cen- 
ter of  France.  MacMahon's  army  was  badly 
shattered.  Part  of  it  fled  toward  Strasbourg, 
but  the  larger  number  withdrew  to  Chalons,  on 
the  road  to  Paris,  and  there  the  effort  was  made 
to  form  a  new  army.  The  effect  of  this  move- 
ment was  to  separate  the  French  forces  into 
two  parts — one  about  Metz,  the  other  at  Chalons, 
over  one  hundred  miles  distant — and  naturally 
the  Germans  hastened  to  concentrate  them- 
selves in  between  these  two  wings,  in  order  to 
fight  each  separately  rather  than  both  together. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  obvious  policy  of  the 
French  was  to  withdraw  from  Metz,  which  now, 
by  the  force  of  events,  had  become,  as  it  were, 
only  a  side  station  on  the  line  of  the  advancing 
enemy,  and  to  concentrate  at  some  available 
point  in  his  front.  A  glance  at  the  map  will 
show  that  Metz  lies  a  very  little  north  of  east 
from  Chalons.  Bazaine's  army  lay  just  east  of 
Metz,  and  slowly  commenced  to  move  through 
the  city  and  across  the  Moselle  westward  in 
the  direction  of  Chalons.  This  slowness  and 
delay  proved  fatal.  The  Germans  pushed  for- 
ward some  corps  under  Steinmetz  to  hold  Ba- 
zaine in  check  until  they  could  advance  and 
concentrate  across  the  road  to  his  destination. 
As,  therefore,  Bazaine's  advance  guard  was 
crossing  the  Moselle  on  the  west  side  of  Metz, 
his  rear  guard,  and,  in  fact,  his  main  force,  was 
attacked  by  Steinmetz  on  the  east  side.  The 
French  kept  the  enemy  at  bay,  and  the  next 
day  continued  their  march  westward.  But  the 
Germans  had  gained  their  point,  which  was  to 
delay  the  French  movements  at  least  one  day, 
to  give  time  to  their  other  troops  to  move  in 
advance. 

The  high  road  from  Metz  to  Verdun,  and 
thence  to  Chalons,  runs  westerly  about  five 
miles  to  the  little  village  of  Gravelotte  ;  there  it 
deflects  a  little  to  the  south-west,  and  passes 
through  the  hamlets  of  Rezonville,  Vionville, 
and  the  little  town  of  Mars  la  Tour.  In  the 
center  of  Gravelotte  a  road  turns  at  right  an- 
gles to  the  north,  then  in  a  mile  or  so  turns 
again  toward  the  north-west  to  Sedan.  On  the 
morning  of  the  combat  east  of  Metz,  August 
I4th,  Napoleon  and  his  son  left  Metz,  slept  at 


Gravelotte,  and  the  next  morning  early  rode 
along  this  road  to  Sedan. 

Bazaine's  army  moved  slowly  westward  past 
Gravelotte  as  far  as  Rezonville  in  the  direction 
of  Verdun  and  Chalons.  Here,  on  the  i6th  of 
August,  they  found  the  greater  part,  but  not  the 
whole,  of  the  German  army  across  their  path. 
The  French  lines  extended  obliquely  across  the 
main  road,  with  the  center  at  Rezonville ;  the 
Germans  were  in  front  of  them,  with  their  left 
also  across  the  road.  The  proposition  on  the 
French  side  was  to  get  on  to  Chalons ;  on  the 
German,  to  at  least  hold  Bazaine  where  he  was 
until  there  could  be  a  further  concentration  of 
their  forces,  and  more  crushing  blows  could  be 
given.  Here,  about  Rezonville,  a  most  obsti- 
nate and  bloody  battle  was  fought.  The  loss 
on  each  side  was  seventeen  thousand  men. 
When  darkness  closed  the  combat,  little  ground 
had  been  gained  on  either  side.  The  Germans 
expected  a  renewal  of  the  fight  the  next  day,  but 
in  the  night  Bazaine  gave  the  order  to  retire  to- 
ward Metz,  alleging  the  failure  of  provisions  and 
munitions.  On  the  I7th,  new  positions  were 
taken  by  the  French.  Their  left  wing  retired 
between*  two  and  three  miles,  while  the  main 
line  was  swung  round  at  right  angles  to  the  old 
position. 

On  the  morning  of  the  i8th,  the  French 
lines  were  extended  north  and  south,  instead  of 
east  and  west,  as  on  the  i6th,  with  the  right  and 
left  wings  retired  somewhat  toward  the  east. 
The  German  lines  were  parallel,  with  the  strong- 
est bodies  of  troops  in  front  of  the  village  of 
Gravelotte.  In  the  interim,  large  additions 
were  made  to  the  German  forces,  so  that  they 
brought  into  the  decisive  struggle  230,000  men 
against  180,000  French.  The  line  of  battle  ex- 
tended over  about  ten  miles.  The  fighting  in 
front  of  Gravelotte  was  terrific,  where  the  at- 
tempt at  first  was  to  cut  through  the  French 
left  wing;  but  finally,  toward  evening,  the  Sax- 
ons came  up  on  the  extreme  right  wing  of  the 
French,  and  rolled  it  back  in  confusion  on  the 
center  and  left,  which  had  held  their  ground. 
Bazaine  was  defeated,  and  the  next  day  retired 
into  Metz.  The  German  loss  was  about  20,000 
men,  much  heavier  than  that  of  the  French, 
which  numbered  between  12,000  and  13,000. 
The  operations  of  the  Germans  between  the 
1/j.th  and  i8th  of  August  had  been  in  a  general 
way  to  swing  the  French  army  completely  round 
upon  its  left  wing,  as  a  pivot,  into  Metz.  The 
city  and  the  inclosed  army  were  then  invested, 
and  they  finally  surrendered  on  the  29th  of  Oc- 
tober. This  most  extraordinary  capitulation 
delivered  into  the  hands  of  the  victors  173,000 
men,  including  71  generals,  6,000  other  officers, 
and  over  1,400  pieces  of  cannon.  The  history 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


of  warfare  does  not  furnish  anything  approach- 
ing it  in  magnitude. 

On  a  warm  August  day  I  rode  out  over  the 
battle-field  of  the  i8th.  The  dusty  road  leads 
out  through  the  suburbs,  crosses  the  Moselle  at 
Devant  les  Fonts,  and  gradually  ascends  to  the 
plateau  along  which  the  French  army  lay, 
through  what  were  then  woods,  but  are  now, 
for  military  reasons,  cut  away.  Riding  through 
the  little  village  of  Amanvillers,  we  came  to 
the  village  of  St.  Privat,  and,  a  little  farther  on, 
to  the  hamlet  of  Carriers  de  Jaumont.  Around 
St.  Privat  and  this  last  named  hamlet  was  the 
right  wing  of  the  French,  and  where  they  were 
finally  driven  back  by  the  Saxons.  Naturally 
the  fighting  was  hot,  and  the  houses  and  walls 
still  bear  evidence  of  the  rough  storm  of  iron 
and  lead  that  played  around  them.  It  must  be 
recollected  that  a  French  village  is  not  at  all 
like  one  of  ours.  It  is  a  collection  of  stone 
houses  with  tile  roofs,  crowded  together,  side 
by  side,  along  one  or  two  narrow  streets,  and 
the  walls  which  surround  the  little  gardens  and 
inclosures  around  it  are  compact  stone  struct- 
ures, laid  in  mortar  and  covered  with  a  coat  of 
plaster. 

These  wall  are  usually  about  five  feet  in 
hight,  so  that  a  village  is  like  a  little  fortification 
to  the  troops  in  possession  of  it.  The  French 
troops  had  their  lines  for  miles  along  the  pla- 
teau, the  center  and  left  along  and  in  front  of 
the  woods  already  mentioned.  In  front  the 
open  country  falls  away  in  a  slight  declination. 
One  can  look  for  miles  across  fields,  which  just 
now  were  being  harvested,  and  were  coated  with 
the  yellow  stubble.  Here  and 'there  are  the 
huddled -together  villages  and  hamlets,  with 
their  red-tiled  roofs. 

I  then  turned,  and  rode  along  a  narrow  road 
which  ran  along  the  rear  of  the  German  line,  to 
Gravelotte,  where  I  stopped  for  lunch  at  the  lit- 
tle inn  with  the  magniloquent  name  of  the  Horse 
of  Gold. 

Scattered  all  over  this  stretch  of  miles  over 
which  the  armies  fought  are  monuments  erect- 
ed to  the  fallen,  the  more  pretentious  by  the 
different  German  regiments  to  their  perished 
members.  Here  and  there  are  mounds  with  a 
simple  cross,  where  perhaps  a  hundred  or  two 
bodies  were  collected  and  hastily  buried.  After 
lunch,  I  took  a  walk  about  the  village  of  Grave- 
lotte, and,  seeing  a  collection  of  persons  in  a 
graveyard,  walked  in.  In  this  little  inclosure, 
I  was  told,  about  two  thousand  men  had  been 
buried.  There  were  a  few  head -stones  and 
monuments,  but  the  mass  were  left  without  me- 
mentoes. One  little  head -stone  attracted  my 
attention  from  the  little  wreath  of  oak  leaves 
which  had  evidently  been  recently  placed  on 


the  grave.     The  inscription  neatly  traced  upon 
it  ran  thus : 

"  Here  reposes  in  God,  fallen  for  King  and  Father- 
land, in  the  battle  of  Gravelotte,  my  dearly  beloved  and 
never  to  be  forgotten  husband,  FRITZ  DENBARD,  Cap- 
tain Twenty-  ninth  Infantry  Regiment.  We  shall  see 
each  other  again." 

I  found  the  people  were  watching  a  laborer 
digging  up  bones,  skulls,  and  bits  of  shoes  and 
clothing,  and  throwing  them  pell-mell  into  a 
long  wooden  box.  The  box  was  already  nearly 
full,  and  yet  he  had  not  gone  more  than  a  foot 
below  the  surface.  I  was  told  that  hundreds 
had  been  thrown  into  a  pit  here,  and  they  were 
transferring  the  remains  to  another  point.  The 
spectacle  was  not  a  very  pleasant  one,  and  I 
soon  turned  away. 

A  little  way  out  of  Gravelotte  toward  Metz, 
about  where  was  the  center  of  the  French  left, 
I  rode  over  a  piece  of  road,  bounded  on  one 
side  by  a  ravine  and  on  the  other  by  a  bluff 
bank,  up  which  four  hundred  German  cavalry 
charged  to  take  a  battery  of  mitrailleuse  on  the 
plateau  on  the  top,  and  every  man  and  horse 
was  killed  or  wounded.  All  about  this  point 
the  fighting  was  terrific,  and  all  around  are  the 
monuments  and  crosses  over  the  burial  places 
of  the  fallen.  My  way  back  into  Metz  led 
through  Ronzevilles,  where  the  extreme  left  of 
the  French  was  posted.  It  is  not  difficult  on 
the  ground  for  even  an  unmilitary  person  to  see 
that  the  French  had  the  advantage  of  position, 
and  that  the  Germans,  in  order  to  attack  all 
along  the  line  with  vigor,  had  to  have  many 
more  men  than  their  opponents,  and  in  order 
to  turn  the  right  wing  had  to  march  a  long  dis- 
tance over  an  open  country,  where  there  was  no 
cover  from  the  sweeping  fire  of  batteries  and 
infantry  with  long-range  arms.  One  can,  there- 
fore, understand  why  the  Germans  lost  so  many 
men,  and  also  can  appreciate  the  obstinate  nat- 
ure of  their  onslaught. 

My  driver  was  an  intelligent  man,  a  native  of 
Metz,  and  was  there  during  the  battles  and 
siege.  He  expressed  what  the  French  univer- 
sally assert,  that  Bazaine  was  grossly  incompe- 
tent in  the  management  of  the  campaign,  and 
a  traitor  in  surrendering  his  army.  I  inquired 
of  him  as  to  the  feelings  of  the  people  toward 
their  conquerors,  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  tell 
me,  probably  because  I  was  a  foreigner,  that 
they  were  much  embittered,  and  that  their  pref- 
erences were  all  for  France.  One  great  ground 
of  complaint  is  the  steady  increase  of  the  taxes, 
which  seem,  as  he  said,  to  be  always  mounting 
higher  and  will  shortly  become  unbearable,  and 
also  the  rigidity  of  the  German  conscription. 
W.  W.  CRANE,  JR. 


THE  BEST  USE   OF   WEALTH. 


43 


THE    BEST    USE   OF  WEALTH/ 


If  a  man  has  a  great  fortune,  what  is  the  best 
use  he  can  make  of  it  ?  Or,  as  one  perhaps  likes 
best  to  put  the  question,  "  If  I  had  a  great  fort- 
une, what  would  I  do  with  it !" 

Of  course  many  different  answers  might  be 
given,  according  to  the  place  and  time,  the 
surrounding  opportunities,  the  personal  possi- 
bilities of  the  possessor,  the  claims  of  private 
duties,  and  so  on.  But  an  answer  may  be  sug- 
gested which  will  at  least  mark  out  some  gen- 
eral principles  involved  in  any  satisfactory  re- 
ply. And,  to  make  the  inquiry  as  definite  as 
possible,  let  us  suppose  it  put  by  a  man  of  our 
own  time,  in  California  (for  example),  who  has 
by  honest  means  accumulated  a  large  fortune, 
through  energy  and  prudence  ;  and  whose  life 
has  not  been  so  narrow  as  to  make  him  love 
money  for  its  own  sake,  but  has  given  him  a 
genuine  desire  to  see  his  wealth  become  the 
greatest  possible  power  for  good  to  his  fellow- 
men.  Such  a  man,  looking  about  him,  finds 
plenty  of  ways  to  give  passing  pleasure  with  his 
money,  and  perhaps  would  have  little  difficulty 
in  making  some  part  of  it  a  means  of  happi- 
ness, so  far  as  happiness  depends  on  external 
circumstances,  to  this  or  that  individual.  But 
how  to  use  the  whole  of  it  wisely  for  permanent 
good  to  the  community  and  to  mankind  ?  For 
certainly  nothing  less  than  this  aspiration  will 
content  a  man  of  sufficient  breadth  and  reach 
of  mind  to  have  gathered  and  successfully  man- 
aged a  vast  property.  He  will  not  make  the 
mistake  of  leaving  that  which  might  have  been 
a  blessing  to  the  community  to  be  a  curse  to  his 
own  children  ;  if  daughters,  to  make  them  the 
shining  mark  for  designing  villainy;  and  if  sons, 
to  ruin  their  careers  and  characters  by  an  un- 
limited income  unaccompanied  by  the  energy 
and  self-command  that  in  his  own  case  were 
gained  by  its  very  acquisition.  History,  or  in- 
deed any  man's  life -experience,  is  too  full  of 
examples  that  point  the  paralyzing  and  corrupt- 
ing effect  of  the  gift  to  a  young  man  of  unearn- 
ed wealth.  Plainly,  a  great  fortune  must  either 
be  wasted,  or  worse  than  wasted,  or  go  to  serve 
some  high  public  purpose.  But  where,  and 
how  ? 

To  begin  with,  two  wholly  different  general 
plans  at  once  suggest  themselves  :  either  to  dis- 

*By  special  request,  and  in  order  to  give  this  article  a  wider 
circulation  than  in  its  original  form,  it  is  here  reprinted,  with 
slight  alterations  by  the  author,  from  the  last  number  of  The 
Berkeley  Quarterly. — EDITOR. 


tribute  the  entire  sum  in  small  portions  to  vari- 
ous scattered  benevolent  uses,  or  to  concentrate 
it  on  some  single  object.  It  is,  no  doubt,  a  cer- 
tain advantage  in  the  former  method,  that  in 
this  way  one  can  easily  direct  the  details  of 
every  expenditure,  suiting  it  to  a  given  need, 
and  avoiding  all  risk  of  misappropriation.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  all  such  scatcered  use  of 
wealth  is  in  one  sense  itself  a  misappropriation, 
since  it  wholly  loses  that  peculiar  power  resid- 
ing in  any  great  sum  of  money  employed  as  a 
unit.  The  successfuL  business  man,  of  all  oth- 
ers, knows  the  almost  magical  increase  of  force 
that  belongs  to  the  very  magnitude  of  large 
total  sums.  To  throw  away  this  enormous  pow- 
er of  the  aggregate  amount  is  to  make  a  single 
vast  fortune  of  no  more  avail  than  ten  insignifi- 
cant ones. 

If,  then,  a  fortune  is  to  be  used  as  a  single 
sum,  there  are  again  two  possible  plans :  either 
to  add  it  as  a  contribution  to  some  already  ex- 
isting enterprise  or  institution,  or  to  found  with 
it  a  wholly  new  one.  Let  us  first  consider  the 
former  plan,  of  contribution  to  some  enterprise 
already  existing. 

Looking  about  over  the  world  of  manifold 
activities,  we  discover,  after  all,  but  few  lines  of 
deliberate  effort  for  the  generous  service  of  hu- 
manity. These  may  be  in  the  main  divided  into 
three  groups,  according  to  their  proximate  ob- 
ject :  those  which  aim  to  increase  men's  com- 
fort (as,  most  of  what  goes  under  the  name  of 
public  charity),  those  which  aim  to  increase 
men's  morality  (as,  the  churches),  and  those 
which  aim  to  increase  men's  intelligence  (as, 
the  high  schools,  colleges  and  universities; 
these,  rather  than  the  lower  schools  in  general, 
since  the  latter  are  largely  the  outgrowth  of  the 
aim  to  bring  youth  up  to  the  average  intelli- 
gence, only,  in  order  to  enable  them  to  "get  on 
in  the  world").  In  other  words,  looking  at  the 
matter  from  the  obverse  side,  the  three  groups 
of  benevolent  activities  are  those  aiming  to  de- 
crease human  suffering,  those  aiming  to  decrease 
human  wickedness,  and  those  aiming  to  decrease 
human  ignorance.  The  question  then  arises, 
which  of  these  three  groups  of  enterprises  is  it 
most  necessary  to  society  to  foster :  the  charita- 
ble institutions  so-called,  the  churches,  or  the 
higher  educational  institutions?  Or,  granting 
the  importance  of  all  of  them,  is  there  either 
one  of  them,which  at  the  present  moment,  and 


44 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


in  our  particular  stage  of  civilization,  is  the 
most  urgent  need  of  society?  Or,  again,  is  there 
either  one  of  them  which  is  inclusive  of  the 
others,  and  by  its  attainment  would  accomplish 
their  ultimate  aim  also? 

One  must  admit,  in  the  first  place,  that  it 
would  be  a  good  use  for  wealth  if  in  any  way 
it  could  be  employed  to  make  the  generality 
of  men  more  comfortable.  Whatever  opinion 
one  may  hold  as  to  the  ill  effects  of  too  luxuri- 
ous or  easy  a  life,  he  cannot  but  see  that  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  even  merely  physical  comfort  is 
a  necessary  condition  of  progress  in  civiliza- 
tion. Only  a  superstitious  asceticism  could  fail 
to  desire  that  the  mass  of  men  might  be  reliev- 
ed of  some  part  of  their  benumbing  miseries. 
The  world  of  ordinary  human  beings  is  a  hard, 
hostile  world.  So  that  there  is  no  question  that  if 
man  is  to  "live  upward,  working  out  the  brute," 
he  must  escape  from  brutish  misery.  For  this 
end,  however,  the  first  need  is  that  we  should 
understand  the  fundamental  causes  of  his  trou- 
bles. Mere  short-sighted  charity  is  useless. 
To  feed  the  pauper  is  to  produce  the  pauper. 
It  is  of  little  use  to  treat  the  symptom ;  we  must 
try  to  cure  the  disease.  But  how? 

Many  persons,  especially  those  who  are  them- 
selves engaged  in  church  work,  would  answer, 
"The  cause  of  human  suffering  is  human  sin." 
They  would  say,  "Decrease  vice,  and  you  de- 
crease misery.  Moral  amelioration  is  the  great 
want  of  the  race.  Let  the  money  be  given  to 
that  great  organization  which  has  all  these  cent- 
uries been  fighting  against  human  wickedness — 
the  church." 

No  doubt  there  is  a  truth  in  this  answer,  but 
not  the  whole  truth.  No  doubt  the  church  has 
done  much  good,  and  will  continue  to  do  good. 
Wickedness  is,  no  doubt,  the  cause  of  much 
human  misery,  but  we  have  come  in  these  mod- 
ern times  to  see  that  ignorance  is  the  cause  of 
more.  It  is  human  ignorance  that  has  kept  man 
down  and  kept  civilization  back.  It  is  progress 
in  intelligence  that  has  lifted  him  up,  and  that 
will  urge  civilization  onward.  Besides,  to  go  to 
the  bottom  of  it,  what  is  the  cause  of  wicked- 
ness itself?  In  the  deepest  and  broadest  sense, 
ignorance.  "We  needs  must  love  the  highest 
when  we  see  it."  It  is  truer  sight  that  is  need- 
ed, and  the  truer  choice  must  follow.  Who  can 
doubt  that  to  make  men  wiser  is  to  make  them 
better? 

Moreover,  the  greatest  service  of  the  church 
itself  has  been  in  those  times  and  countries 
where  it  has  been  most  conspicuously  an  edu- 
cating force.  There  was  a  time  in  history  when 
the  church  was  the  center  of  intellectual,  as  well 
as  of  religious  life.  And  this  depended  on  two 
causes :  first,  its  perfect  organization  inherited 


from  Rome,  and  the  sole  relic  of  the  Roman 
organism  in  an  epoch  of  utter  disorganization 
and  decay ;  and  secondly,  the  accident  of  hav- 
ing in  its  clergy  the  only  profession  or  occupa- 
tion that  necessitated  the  mastery  of  literature. 
The  church,  as  the  sole  repository  of  organiza- 
tion and  of  letters,  did  nobly  a  two -fold  service, 
religious  and  intellectual.  But  the  time  came 
when  there  was  other  organized  intellectual 
activity  and  other  literature  than  that  of  the 
church.  The  universities  established  secular 
learning :  the  old  literature  of  classic  paganism 
was  rediscovered,  and  the  new  literature  of 
modern  thought  appeared.  And  from  that  time 
the  church,  as  an  organization,  took  up  its  per- 
manent position  in  two  camps ;  the  one  as  an 
ally,  more  or  less  hearty,  of  intellectual  prog- 
ress, the  other  absolutely  against  it.  When 
Wiclif  put  the  English  Bible  in  every  English 
household,  he  builded  better  than  he  knew,  for 
the  English  mind  learned  to  read  and  to  think, 
each  mind  as  a  separate  individual  force,  and 
the  era  of  intellectual  liberty  commenced — com- 
menced, as  it  has  gone  on  increasing,  through 
literature ;  that  is  to  say,  through  the  free  appro- 
priation by  the  individual  mind  of  free  human 
thought,  feeling,  aspiration,  and  every  spiritual 
power.  So  far  as  the  church  has  increased  hu- 
man intelligence,  it  has  done  a  great  service  for 
humanity.  But  so  far  as  it  leaves  out  of  view 
the  need  of  higher  intelligence,  it  ignores  the 
chief  source  of  human  misery,  for  that  is  men- 
tal degradation,  brutish  stupidity,  ignorance. 

If,  therefore,  one  great  need  of  society  is  to 
be  relieved  from  its  miseries,  the  only  sure  path 
to  that  relief  is  through  higher  intelligence.  If 
one  of  its  great  needs  is  to  be  converted  from 
its  wickedness,  the  only  way  is  through  higher 
intelligence.  If,  in  fine,  the  urgent  need  of  all 
humanity  is  for  every  reason  just  this  higher  in- 
telligence, for  better  living  as  to  material  com- 
fort, for  higher  living  as  to  morality,  and  for  its 
own  sake,  that  men  may  be  thinking  men  in- 
stead of  mere  dumb  animals,  then  can  any  one 
doubt  that  the  best  use  of  a  princely  fortune  is 
to  provide  with  it  for  the  education  of  the  race? 

But  if  the  whole  world  is  too  wide  to  be  con- 
sidered easily,  let  us  but  look  at  any  small  seg- 
ment of  it  immediately  about  us.  In  Califor- 
nia, for  instance,  what  is  the  great,  pressing  need 
of  our  time?  Material  prosperity,  no  doubt,  for 
one  thing,  and  greater  public  and  private  virtue, 
for  another;  but  most  pressing  of  all,  partly 
because  its  attainment  would  surely  bring  these 
others  in  its  train,  is  the  need  of  higher  intelli- 
gence in  the  mass  of  the  people.  The  process 
of  evolution  in  society  is  precisely  a  progress  in 
intelligence;  not  the  mere  "smartness"  or  sharp- 
ness of  mind,  which  is  but  little  more  than  the 


THE  BEST  USE   OF   WEALTH. 


45 


keen  sense  cf  the  brute  applied  to  slightly  more 
complex  surroundings,  but  that  broad  power  of 
sight  and  insight  into  both  material  and  spiritual 
things,  such  as  education  alone  can  bring.  There 
is  the  brute  stage  and  the  human  stage  of  devel- 
opment, with  all  grades  between ;  and  the  hu- 
man is  higher  than  the  brute  by  nothing  else 
than  higher  intelligence.  In  our  society,  as 
elsewhere  in  the  world,  there  are  types  of  every 
grade.  What  it  needs  is  to  have  the  highest 
carried  higher,  and  the  lowest  brought  up  to 
the  grade  already  reached  by  the  highest.  At 
least,  the  average  must  be  lifted  higher,  or  our 
civilization  must  come  to  a  standstill  or  go  back- 
ward. 

The  great  danger  to  California  is  that  her 
new  population,  her  own  native-born  youth  (for 
on  them,  after  all,  must  depend  her  future),  will 
fail  to  keep  abreast  of  the  times.  All  the  wis- 
dom that  is  in  the  world  at  any  given  epoch  is 
needed  to  save  society,  or  any  segment  of  it,  at 
that  epoch.  The  resources  of  the  eighteenth 
century  are  not  sufficient  for  the  nineteenth; 
for  with  its  enlightenment — not  the  results  of 
it,  but  the  results  of  the  same  myriad  causes — 
have  come  dangers.  With  the  taste  of  divine 
liberty  has  come  the  craving  for  devilish  li- 
cense. With  the  sense  of  personal  freedom  has 
come  the  impatience  of  all  restraint,  even  of 
that  of  one's  own  reason  and  will.  With  the 
gain  of  personal  power  has  come  the  claim  of 
equal  right  to  power  by  the  brutish  mob.  The 
nineteenth  century  must  save  itself,  if  at  all,  by 
the  full  possession  of  all  the  resources  of  the 
past  not  only,  but  of  all  its  own  resources,  and 
by  their  possession  by  all  men.  And  these  re- 
sources can  be  given  to  the  ordinary  mind  only 
by  the  best  and  most  liberal  education. 

Are  there,  then,  any  existing  organizations 
among  us  ready  to  receive  from  wealth  the 
contribution  of  its  accumulated  power,  that  are 
devoted  to  this  most  needed  service  of  society? 
The  world  over,  the  institutions  that  most  near- 
ly approach  this  character  are  the  colleges  and 
universities.  It  is  now  some  four  hundred  years 
since  they  began  their  work  among  English- 
speaking  people,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  whatever  is  valuable  in  modern  civilization 
is  owing  to  them  more  than  to  all  other  organ- 
ized efforts  put  together.  They  have  alternate- 
ly furnished  the  radical  element  when  radical- 
ism was  needed,  and  the  conservative  element 
when  conservatism  was  needed.  They  have 
been  the  rallying  point  for  all  the  forces  of  en- 
lightenment and  progress.  From  them  has 
come,  directly  or  indirectly,  nearly  all  that  the 
world  counts  precious  in  thought  and  investiga- 
tion. It  is  through  them,  and  almost  through 
them  alone,  that  each  successive  generation  has 


been  made  possessor  of  the  intellectual  accumu- 
lations of  all  preceding  generations.  There  have 
been  in  all  times,  no  doubt,  an  exceptional  few 
who,  by  dint  of  remarkable  natural  endowment, 
have  risen  to  the  full  stature  of  intellectual  men 
without  their  aid.  But  civilization  never  could 
have  been  preserved,  much  less  kept  on  its  up- 
ward career,  by  those  few  anomalous  excep- 
tions. The  great  service  of  the  colleges  has 
been  that  they  have  enabled  the  many  ordinary 
minds  to  attain  what  otherwise  could  have  been 
attained  only  by  the  few  extraordinary  minds. 
Leaving  out  of  account  the  scattered  prodigies, 
the  self-made  men  whose  enormous  vigor  of 
mind  and  character  has  enabled  them  to  make 
the  world  their  college,  it  is  plain  enough  that 
it  is  the  colleges  that  have  bred  the  men  who 
have  guided  civilization  forward  through  the 
latter  centuries. 

And  the  reason,  too,  is  plain.  It  is  because 
in  the  complex  modern  life,  in  the  midst  of  the 
rush  and  swirl  of  its  forces,  no  untrained,  half- 
developed  man  is  anything — no  trained  and  de- 
veloped man,  even,  by  himself,  is  anything. 
The  only  mind  that  can  cope  with  modern  life 
is  the  one  that  has  taken  advantage  of  whatever 
has  yet  been  learned  as  to  means  of  high  devel- 
opment, and  that  stands  not  by  the  feeble 
strength  of  what  one  life-time  can  teach  a  sin- 
gle individual,  but  by  the  whole  force  of  what- 
ever wisdom  has  been  gained  through  all  the 
ages,  a  heritage  whose  possession  it  is  the  untir- 
ing effort  of  the  colleges  to  bestow. 

Plainly  enough,  then,  he  who  would  do  the 
greatest  possible  service  to  society,  if  he  is  to  do 
it  through  any  existing  institution,  can  do  noth- 
ing better  than  to  bestow  his  fortune  on  a  col- 
lege or  university.  And  the  same  principle 
which  dictates  that  he  should  use  his  wealth  as 
a  total  sum,  instead  of  wasting  its  force  by  scat- 
tering it,  dictates  also  that  he  should  choose  for 
his  endowment  an  institution  that  is  already  a 
power,  and  that  has  already  received,  and  is 
likely  to  receive  in  future,  other  such  endow- 
ments. In  this  way  will  his  means,  reinforced 
by  that  of  others,  continually  gain  in  power  of 
service.  The  force  which  would  keep  in  motion 
or  accelerate  a  body  already  moving,  might  be 
utterly  powerless  to  initiate  its  motion.  Many 
a  handsome  sum  has  been  thrown  away  on  some 
small  and  helpless  institution,  which  would  have 
been  of  immense  value  if  joined  with  the  mo- 
mentum of  a  vigorous  university.  In  any  such 
university,  where  there  is  a  solid  foundation  and 
active  energy  of  growth,  one  may  find  abundant 
opportunities  for  rich  investments.  There  are 
new  buildings  that  need  to  be  erected  for  the 
service  of  science  or  art.  When  men  build  gran- 
ite monuments  on  which  to  inscribe  their  names, 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


why  do  they  not  build  them  in  such  wise  as  this, 
that  so  their  memories,  instead  of  being  left  to 
the  forgotten  solitudes  of  the  graveyard,  may  be 
treasured  by  successive  generations  of  grateful 
students  and  scholars  ?  There  are  costly  labora- 
tories to  be  founded;  there  are  libraries  to  be 
collected,  bringing  to  our  young  men  and  wom- 
en, isolated  in  our  remote  regions,  the  intel- 
lectual harvest  of  the  whole  world ;  there  are 
scholarships  and  fellowships  to  be  established, 
giving  to  poor  and  talented  youth  the  opportu- 
nities for  which  they  hunger  and  thirst.  Every 
county  in  the  State  has  wealth  that  might  easily 
maintain  at  the  University  a  score  of  its  bright- 
est youth.  And  every  county  has  private  fort- 
unes that  might  endow  a  free  academy  or  high 
school  within  its  borders,  so  that  its  youth  should 
go  to  college  finely  prepared.  Above  all,  there 
are  chairs  in  the  University  to  be  endowed — a 
hundred  fields  of  science  and  art  and  philosophy 
that  should  be  filled  by  the  foremost  men  in  the 
world,  and  that  now  are  silent  and  empty. 

But,  one  may  ask,  would  it  not  be  better  to 
build  up  a  new  college  altogether?  Are  there 
not  grave  defects  in  all  those  existing  at  pres- 
ent— defects  which  we  can  see  well  enough,  but 
which  can  hardly  be  corrected  except  by  leav- 
ing them  behind  and  beginning  anew?  This, 
indeed,  is  a  serious  question.  Great  as  is  the 
power  for  good  in  our  best  colleges,  it  is  visible 
to  some  of  us  that  they  are  far  from  being  the 
ideal.  Some  of  them  are  too  closely  bound  to 
the  past,  by  tradition,  by  precedent,  by  inher- 
ited tendency,  for  the  needs  of  this  present  time. 
They  seem,  indeed,  to  move,  as  the  waves  of 
modern  forces  go  by  them,  but  they  are  anchor- 
ed in  the  past,  and  only  rock  upon  the  waves. 
Others,  on  the  contrary,  are  adrift  at  the  mercy 
of  the  unstable  gusts  of  politics,  and  the  shift- 
ing notions  of  the  time.  They  are  afloat,  it  is 
true,  but  they  are  all  afloat,  having  no  bold  pol- 
icy, no  settled  plan,  no  steady  onward  progress. 
Some,  in  their  courses  of  study,  are  slow  to  rec- 
ognize that  there  is  anything  more  to  be  learn- 
ed in  this  present  century  than  there  was  three 
hundred  years  ago.  They  would  still  make  Lat- 
in, Greek,  and  mathematics  (the  college  "three 
R's")  almost  the  sole  mental  furnishing  of  the 
youth  preparing  for  modern  life.  Others,  car- 
ried away  by  the  reaction  from  this  extreme, 
would  count  hardly  anything  as  valuable  knowl- 
edge except  what  the  present  generation  has 
discovered.  "Science"  is  to  them  like  a  new 
toy,  engrossing  and  delighting  the  child's  every 
waking  moment ;  or,  like  the  dyspeptics  latest 
medicine,  certain  to  prove  the  universal  pana- 
cea. Again,  the  church  is  partly  right  in  its 
complaint  that  moral  teaching  is  neglected  in 
some  of  the  existing  colleges.  Whatever  diffi- 


culties may  be  involved  in  the  connection  of 
morals  with  creeds,  it  is  certainly  deplorable 
that  any  great  institution  should  go  on  from 
year  to  year  sending  out  men  to  be  leaders  in 
modern  thought  and  society  without  offering  to 
them  instruction  from  commanding  intellects 
on  the  great  subjects  of  ethics,  of  rights  and 
wrongs  and  duties,  of  the  history  of  the  human 
intellect  in  its  wrestlings  with  the  great  under- 
lying problems  of  existence.  Certainly  a  grand- 
er college  could  be  conceived  than  has  ever  yet 
been  builded.  The  best  possible  use  of  a  vast 
fortune,  if  vast  enough,  would  be  to  build  such 
a  one,  or  even,  perhaps,  to  lay  fitly  its  prophetic 
corner-stones. 

But,  practically,  the  chances  are  enormously 
against  the  attainment  of  any  such  perfect  in- 
stitution as  might  be  conceived  or  dreamed  of, 
if  it  were  attempted.  Unless  a  man  were  at  the 
same  time  the  wealthiest  and  the  wisest  man  in 
the  world,  and  should  begin  to  build  his  college 
in  his  own  middle  life,  at  furthest,  so  that  he 
himself  might  attend  to  every  detail  of  its  es- 
tablishment, the  chances  of  success  would  be 
doubtful.  If  the  money  were  left  to  a  single  in- 
dividual to  control,  we  should  probably  have  a 
tottering  edifice  built  on  the  back  of  his  partic- 
ular educational  or  religious  hobby.  If  it  were 
put  into  the  hands  of  a  body  of  many -minded 
trustees,  their  dissensions  might  easily  frustrate 
any  judicious  plan.  After  all,  is  it  not  true  that 
valuable  organisms  must  be  the  result  of  grad- 
ual growth  rather  than  of  sudden  construction? 
Is  there  not  more  hope  in  helping  on  toward 
perfection  a  well  established  organization,  the 
slow  product  of  countless  converging  forces,  by 
needed  additions  and  by  gradual  modifications, 
than  in  trying  to  replace  it  by  some  brand-new 
experiment? 

And  if,  finally,  one  is  to  select  some  existing 
institution  on  which  to  bestow  his  wealth,  where 
could  it  better  be  found  than  here  in  our  own 
community?  At  first  thought  it  might  seem 
more  profitable  to  cast  in  one's  help  with  the 
great  universities  of  the  Old  World — of  Ger- 
many or  England — or,  short  of  that,  of  the  At- 
lantic border.  But  that  is  the  old  civilization, 
with  growth  in  it,  doubtless,  but  not  the  unfet- 
tered, vigorous  growth  of  the  new.  The  branch- 
ing vine  of  civilization  has  gone  spreading  from 
its  ancient  roots  in  Asia,  on  through  Greece 
and  Rome  and  England  and  the  New  England, 
and  now  the  first  green  shoots  are  budding  into 
leaf,  if  not  yet  into  blossom  and  fruitage,  on  our 
farther  shore.  It  is  here  that  the  latest  hopes 
of  men  are  centered,  and  reaching  forward  to-, 
ward  a  possible  fulfillment.  But,  be  it  remem- 
bered, we  are  far  from  the  root-sources  of  growth 
and  power.  It  would  be  easy  for  this  budding 


TO  ETHEL. 


47 


promise  to  be  destroyed,  and  for  the  new  civil- 
ization to  be  retarded  for  a  century  or  forever. 
Just  now,  while  the  air  seems  full  of  the  electric 
tension  of  free  thoughts  and  brave  impulses, 
seems  the  time  to  insure  the  happy  result.  And 
to  one  who  believes  in  his  age,  who  sees  that 
here,  and  soon,  there  might  be  clearer  inspira- 
tions than  ever  before,  the  question  comes  with 
all  the  deeper  significance  :  Shall  our  people  be 
a  people  of  high  intelligence,  in  a  more  and 
more  prosperous  country,  or  a  crude,  ignorant, 
mob -ridden  population,  in  an  out  of  the  way, 
neglected  corner  of  civilization,  visited,  like 
some  barbarous  island,  for  its  natural  scenery, 
and  fled  from  as  soon  as  possible? 

If  there  be  any  way  to  determine  this  ques- 
tion, except  by  insuring  beyond  a  peradvent- 
ure  the  broadest  opportunities  for  education,  it 
must  be  by  some  new  way  undiscovered  as  yet 
by  any  nation.  Not  that  there  is  any  mystic 
virtue  in  towering  buildings,  or  apparatus,  or 
imposing  forms ;  but  there  is  a  virtue  in  the 
gathering  together  of  trained  and  vigorous  in- 
tellects, together  with  the  written  representa- 
tives of  such  in  every  age,  in  all  the  world's  lit- 
erature, and  bringing  within  the  charmed  circle 
of  their  influence  a  multitude  of  youth,  drawing 
them  by  the  gentle  persuasions  of  science  and 
culture  into  the  good  old  compact  of  high  serv- 
ice to  humanity. 

There  never  was  a  time  when  a  fortune  might 
do  so  much  for  society.  Nor  is  it  any  visionary 
dream  that  points  out  its  possibilities.  The  fut- 


ure years  are  surely  coming,  and  their  days  will 
be  as  plain,  common-sense,  practical  facts  as  the 
Mondays  and  Tuesdays  of  the  present.  Their 
suns  will  rise  and  set,  and  the  air  will  still  sweep 
back  and  'forth  in  its  rhythmical  tides  the  breath 
of  the  mountains  and  the  answering  breath  of 
the  sea ;  and  the  earth  will  bear  the  footprints 
of  multitudes  of  men.  What  shall  those  multi- 
tudes be?  A  sordid,  half -barbarous  horde, 
wrangling  over  the  contemptible  prizes  of  their 
animal  existence  ?  A  scattered  handful  of  clean- 
lived  and  thinking  men,  dragging  a  vexed  life- 
time in  a  population  they  cannot  help?  Or  a 
prosperous,  vigorous,  intelligent  community, 
such  as  already  the  globe  has  borne  on  a  few 
of  its  most  favored  garden  spots  of  civilization  ? 
One  seems  to  see  the  question  trembling  in  the 
balance  of  the  fates,  and,  poised  above  the  scale 
that  bears  all  our  hopes,  the  golden  weight  of 
some  splendid  fortune  ready  to  decide  the  issue. 
But,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  past,  it  is  hard- 
ly reasonable  to  expect  that  wise  public  use  will 
be  made  of  our  great  fortunes  in  this  country. 
It  is  rather  the  mere  dust  of  the  balance,  the 
slow  accumulations  of  small  influences,  mote 
by  mote  and  grain  by  grain,  that  turns  the  scale 
of  the  fates.  And,  after  all,  the  best  things  of 
the  future  will  probably  come,  as  the  best  things 
of  the  past  have  come,  through  the  sturdy  and 
patient  work,  little  by  little,  of  many  cooperat- 
ing brains  and  hands,  each  quietly  adding  to 
the  common  store  whatever  small  help  it  can. 

E.  R.  SILL. 


TO     ETHEL. 


Who  has  not  seen  the  scarlet  columbine, 

That  flashes  like  a  flame  among  the  ferns, 

Whose  drooping  bell  with  rich,  warm  color  burns, 
Until  its  very  dew-drops  seem  like  wine? 
In  thy  dark  eyes  the  blossom's  soul  doth  shine, 

On  thy  bright  cheek  doth  live  its  splendid  hue  ; 

Of  all  the  wild -wood  flowers  that  ever  grew, 
Thou'rt  like  but  one — the  dainty  columbine. 
So,  when  the  welcome  wild -flowers  come  again 

Among  the  gold,  and  white,  and  blue,  there'll  be 
One  blossom  with  a  ruby  glow,  and  then, 

Gath'ring  its  brightness,  will  I  think  of  thee, 
For,  looking  on  the  treasure  that  I  hold, 
I'll  see  it  hides,  like  thee,  a  heart  of  gold. 

S.  E.  ANDERSON. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


OLD   CALIFORNIANS. 


"In  those  days  there  were  giants  in  the  land:  mighty  men  of  power  and  renown." — BIBLE. 


The  cowards  did  not  start  to  the  Pacific 
Coast  in  the  old  days ;  all  the  weak  died  on  the 
way.  And  so  it  was  that  we  had  then  not  only 
a  race  of  giants,  but  of  gods. 

It  is  to  be  allowed  that  they  were  not  at  all 
careful  of  the  laws,  either  ancient  or  modern, 
ecclesiastical  or  lay.  They  would  curse.  They 
would  fight  like  dogs — aye,  like  Christians  in 
battle.  But  there  was  more  solid  honor  among 
those  men  than  the  world  will  ever  see  again  in 
any  body  of  men,  I  fear,  till  it  approaches  the 
millennium.  Is  it  dying  out  with  them?  I  hear 
that  the  new  Californians  are  rather  common 
cattle. 

Do  you  know  where  the  real  old  Californian 
is? — the  giant,  the  world-builder? 

He  is  sitting  by  the  trail  high  up  on  the 
mountain.  His  eyes  are  dim,  and  his  head  is 
white.  His  sleeves  are  lowered.  His  pick  and 
shovel  are  at  his  side.  His  feet  are  weary  and 
sore.  He  is  still  prospecting.  Pretty  soon  he 
will  sink  his  last  prospect-hole  in  the  Sierra. 

Some  younger  men  will  come  along,  and 
lengthen  it  out  a  little,  and  lay  him  in  his  grave. 
The  old  miner  will  have  passed  on  to  prospect 
the  outcroppings  that  star  the  floors  of  heaven. 

He  is  not  numerous  now;  but  I  saw  him  last 
summer  high  up  on  the  head-waters  of  the  Sac- 
ramento. His  face  is  set  forever  away  from 
that  civilization  which  has  passed  him  by.  He 
is  called  a  tramp  now.  And  the  new,  nice  peo- 
ple who  have  slid  over  the  plains  in  a  palace 
car,  and  settled  down  there,  set  dogs  on  him 
sometimes  when  he  comes  that  way. 

I  charge  you  treat  the  old  Californian  well 
wherever  you  find  him.  He  has  seen  more, 
suffered  more,  practiced  more  self-denial,  than 
can  now  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  man. 

I  never  see  one  of  these  old  prospectors  with- 
out thinking  of  Ulysses,  and  wondering  if  any 
Penelope  still  weaves  and  unweaves,  and  waits 
the  end  of  his  wanderings.  Will  any  old  blind 
dog  stagger  forth  at  the  sound  of  his  voice,  lick 
his  hand,  and  fall  down  at  his  feet  ? 

Nothing  of  the  sort.  He  has  not  heard  from 
home  for  twenty  years.  He  would  not  find 
even  the  hearthstone  of  his  cabin  by  the  Ohio, 
should  he  return.  Perhaps  his  own  son,  a 
merchant  prince  or  the  president  of  a  railroad, 


is  one  of  the  distinguished  party  in  the  palace 
car  that  smokes  along  the  plain  far  below. 

And  though  he  may  die  there  in  the  pines 
on  the  mighty  mountain,  while  still  feebly 
searching  for  the  golden  fleece,  do  not  forget 
that  his  life  is  an  epic,  noble  as  any  handed 
down  from  out  the  dusty  eld.  I  implore  you 
treat  him  kindly.  Some  day  a  fitting  poet  will 
come,  and  then  he  will  take  his  place  among 
the  heroes  and  the  gods. 

But  there  is  another  old  Californian,  a  wea- 
rier man,  the  successful  one.  He,  too,  is  getting 
gray.  But  he  is  a  power  in  the  land.  He  is  a 
prince  in  fact  and  in  act.  What  strange  fate 
was  it  that  threw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  that  old 
Californian,  sitting  by  the  trail  high  up  on  the 
mountain,  and  blinded  him  so  that  he  could  not 
see  the  gold  just  within  his  grasp  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago?  And  what  good  fairy  was  it  that 
led  this  other  old  Californian,  now  the  banker, 
the  railroad  king,  or  senator,  to  where  the 
mountain  gnomes  had  hidden  their  gold  of  old? 

What  accidental  beggars  and  princes  we 
have  in  the  world  to-day?  But  whether  beggar 
or  prince,  the  old  Californian  stands  a  head  and 
shoulder  taller  than  his  fellows  wherever  you 
may  find  him.  This  is  a  solid,  granite  truth. 

A  few  years  ago  a  steamer  drew  into  the  Bay 
of  Naples  with  a  lot  of  passengers,  among 
whom  were  a  small  party  of  Americans.  The 
night  had  been  rough  and  the  ship  was  behind 
time.  It  was  ten  o'clock  already,  and  no  break- 
fast. The  stingy  Captain  had  resolved  to  econ- 
omize. 

A  stout,  quiet  man,  with  a  stout  hickory 
stick,  went  to  the  Captain  and  begged  for  a  lit- 
tle coffee,  at  least,  for  his  ladies.  The  Captain 
turned  his  back,  fluttered  his  coat-tails  in  the 
face  of  the  stout,  quiet  man,  and  walked  up  his 
deck.  The  stout,  quiet  man  followed,  and  still 
respectfully  begged  for  something  for  the 
ladies,  who  were  faint  with  hunger.  Then  the 
Captain  turned  and  threatened  to  put  him  in 
irons,  at  the  same  time  calling  his  officers 
around  him. 

The  stout  man  with  the  stout  stick  very 
quietly  proceeded  to  thrash  the  Captain.  He 
thrashed  him  till  he  could  not  stand ;  and  then 
thrashed  every  officer  that  dared  to  show  his 


OLD   CALIFORNIANS. 


49 


face,  as  well  as  half  the  crew.     Then  he  went  j 
down  and  made  the  cook  get  breakfast. 

This  was  an  old  Californian,  "Dave  Colton," 
as  we  used  to  call  him  up  at  Yreka. 

Of  course,  an  act  like  that  was  punishable 
with  death  almost.  "Piracy  on  the  high  seas," 
and  all  that  sort  of  offense  was  charged;  and  I 
know  not  how  much  gold  it  cost  to  heal  the 
wounded  head  and  dignity  of  the  Captain  of  the 
ship.  But  this  California  neither  knew  the  law 
nor  cared  for  the  law.  He  had  a  little  party  of 
ladies  with  him,  and  he  would  not  see  them  go 
hungry.  He  would  have  that  coffee  if  it  cost 
him  his  head. 

Dear  Dave  Colton !  I  hear  he  is  dead  now. 
We  first  got  acquainted  one  night  in  Yreka 
while  shooting  at  each  other. 

And  what  a  fearful  shooting  affair  that  was ! 
Many  a  grizzled  old  miner  of  the  north  still  re- 
members it  all  vividly,  although  it  took  place 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  It  would 
make  the  most  thrilling  chapter  of  a  romance, 
or  the  final  act  of  a  tragedy. 

To  crowd  a  whole  book  briefly  into  a  few 
words,  the  Yreka  miners  insisted  on  using  all 
the  water  in  Greenhorn  Creek  by  leading  it 
through  a  great  ditch  from  Greenhorn  over  to 
Yreka  Flats.  The  Greenhorn  miners,  about 
five  hundred  strong,  held  a  meeting  and  re- 
monstrated with  the  miners  of  Yreka,  who 
numbered  about  five  thousand.  But  they  were 
only  laughed  at. 

So,  on  the  23d  day  of  February,  1855,  they 
threw  themselves  into  a  body,  and  marching 
down,  to  a  man,  they  tore  out  the  dam  and  sent 
the  water  on  in  its  natural  channel.  I  say  to  a 
man,  and,  I  might  add,  to  a  boy.  For  I,  the 
only  boy  on  Greenhorn,  although  quietly  offici- 
ating as  cook  in  the  cabin  of  a  party  of  miners 
from  Oregon,  was  ordered  to  shoulder  a  pick- 
handle  by  the  red -headed  leader,  Bill  Fox,  and 
fall  in  line.  I  ought  to  admit,  perhaps,  that  I 
gladly  obeyed — for  it  flattered  me  to  be  treated 
as  if  I  were  a  man,  even  by  this  red -headed 
Irish  bully  and  desperado. 

I  remember  that  on  the  march  to  the  dam 
the  quiet,  peace-loving  men  of  Quaker  procliv- 
ities were  found  still  at  work.  On  their  declin- 
ing to  join  us,  Fox  ordered  his  men  to  seize 
them  and  bear  them  along  in  front ;  so  that 
they  should  be  the  first  exposed  to  the  bullets 
of  Yreka. 

Had  the  mob  dispersed  after  destroying  the 
dam,  no  blood  would  have  been  shed.  But, 
unfortunately,  the  Wheeler  brothers  rolled  out 
a  barrel  of  whisky,  and,  knocking  in  the  head, 
hung  the  barrel  with  tin  cups  and  told  the  boys 
to  "pitch  in."  A  fool  could  have  foreseen  the 
result. 


Some  worthless  fellows  got  drunk  and  went 
to  Yreka,  boasting  of  their  work  of  destruction. 
They  were  arrested  by  Dave  Colton,  then  Sher- 
iff of  Siskiyou  County,  and  thrown  into  prison. 
The  news  of  the  arrests  reached  us  at  Green- 
horn about  dark,  and  in  half  an  hour  we  were 
on  our  way  to  the  county-seat  to  take  the  men 
out  of  jail.  Some  of  our  own  men  were  half 
drunk,  others  wholly  so,  and  all  were  wild  with 
excitement.  Nearly  all  were  armed  with  six- 
shooters.  We  ran  forward  as  we  approached 
the  jail,  pistols  in  hand.  Being  nimble -footed 
and  having  no  better  sense,  I  was  among  the 
first. 

Sheriff  Colton,  who  had  heard  of  our  coming, 
and  taken  up  position  in  the  jail,  promptly  re- 
fused to  give  up  his  prisoners  without  process 
of  law ;  and  we  opened  fire.  The  Sheriff  and 
\i\s  posse  answered  back — and  what  a  scatter- 
ment !  Our  men  literally  broke  down  and  swept 
away  board  cabins  and  fences  in  their  flight ! 
I  know  of  nothing  so  cowardly  as  a  mob. 

But  there  were  some  that  did  not  fly.  One, 
Dr.  Stone,  the  best  man  of  our  whole  five  hun- 
dred I  think,  lay  dying  in  the  jail -yard  along 
with  a  few  others ;  and  there  were  men  of  our 
party  who  would  not  desert  them.  The  fight 
lasted  in  a  loose  sort  of  fashion  for  hours.  We 
would  fight  a  while  and  then  parley  a  while. 
We  were  finally,  by  some  kind  of  compromise 
not  found  in  law  books,  allowed  to  go  back  with 
our  prisoners  and  our  dead  and  wounded.  This 
was  known  as  the  "  Greenhorn  War." 

We  threw  up  earthworks  on  Greenhorn,  and 
waited  for  the  Sheriff,  who  had  been  slightly 
wounded,  to  come  out  and  attempt  to  make  ar- 
rests. But  he  never  came.  And  I  never  met 
him  any  more  till  his  trouble  in  Naples.  I 
wonder  how  many  of  us  are  alive  to-day!  I 
saw  the  old  earthworks  only  last  year.  They 
are  almost  leveled  now.  The  brown  grass  and 
weeds  covered  them.  As  I  climbed  the  hill  to 
hunt  for  our  old  fortress,  a  squirrel  scampered 
into  his  hole  under  the  wall,  while  on  the  high- 
est rock  a  little  black  lizard  basked  and  blinked 
in  the  sun  and  kept  unchallenged  sentinel. 

I  remember  when  we  came  to  bury  the  dead. 
The  men  were  mighty  sober  now.  We  could 
not  go  to  town  for  a  preacher,  and  so  one  of  our 
party  had  to  officiate.  That  was  the  saddest 
burial  I  ever  saw.  The  man  broke  down  who 
first  began  to  read.  His  voice  trembled  so  he 
could  not  get  on.  Then  another  man  took  the 
Bible  and  tried  to  finish  the  chapter ;  but  his 
voice  trembled  too,  and  pretty  soon  he  choked 
up  and  hid  his  face.  Then  every  man  there 
cried,  I  think.  They  loved  Dr.  Stone  so.  He 
was  a  mere  boy,  yet  a  graduate,  and  beautiful 
and  brave  as  a  Greek  of  old. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Ah,  these,  the  dead,  are  the  mighty  majority 
of  old  Californians  !  No  one  would  guess  how 
numerous  they  are.  California  was  one  vast 
battle-field.  The  knights  of  the  nineteenth 
century  lie  buried  in  her  bosom;  while  here 
and  there,  over  the  mountain -tops,  totters  a 
lone  survivor,  still  prospecting, 

"And  I  sit  here,  at  forty  year, 
Dipping  my  nose  in  the  Gascon  wine." 

There  is  an  older  Californian  still — "the  old- 
est inhabitant,"  indeed.  I  knew  him,  a  lusty 
native,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  in  the  impen- 
etrable forests  and  lava  beds  around  the  base  of 
Mount  Shasta.  He,  too,  is  dead ;  dead  in  spirit 
at  least,  if  not  altogether  in  fact. 

If  valor  is  a  virtue,  let  us  at  least  concede 
that  to  the  red  man  of  the  California  mount- 
ains. There  were  battles  fought  here  between 
the  miners  and  red  men  before  General  Canby 
was  ever  heard  of.  They  were  bloody  battles, 
too.  But  they  never  got  to  the  ears  of  the 
world.  If  Captain  Jack  with  his  handful  of 
braves  held  the  United  States  army  at  bay  for 
half  a  year,  you  may  well  understand  that  we 
miners  met  no  boy's  play  there  when  these 
Indians  were  numerous  and  united. 

But  this  "old  Californian,"  as  I  knew  him 
there,  is  utterly  extinct.  About  the  fisheries  of 
the  McCloud,  and  along  the  stage  road  on  the 
head-waters  of  the  Sacramento  River,  you  see 
little  houses  now  and  then  not  unlike  our  min- 
ers' cabins  of  old.  There  are  the  homes  of  the 
few  remaining  Indians  of  Northern  California. 
There  is  a  little  garden  and  straggling  patches 
of  corn  about  the  door ;  two  or  three  miserable 
ponies  nibble  about  the  barren  hills  hard  by, 
and  a  withered,  wrinkled  old  squaw  or  two 
grunts  under  a  load  of  wood  or  water  as  she 
steps  sullen  and  silent  out  of  the  path  to  let  you 
pass.  And  that  is  about  all.  Her  husband,  her 
sons,  are  dead  or  dying  of  disease  in  the  dark, 
smoky  cabin  yonder.  He  accepted  the  inevit- 
able, and  is  trying  to  be  civilized.  Alas !  long 
before  that  point  is  reached,  he  will  have 
joined  his  fathers  on  the  other  side  of  dark- 
ness. 

I  spent  a  few  weeks  at  Lower  Soda  Springs, 
near  Mount  Shasta,  last  summer,  in  sight  of 
our  old  battle-ground  in  Castle  Rocks,  or  Cas- 
tillo del  Diablo,  as  it  was  then  called.  I  tried 
to  find  some  of  the  men  who  had  fought  in  that 
little  battle.  But  one  white  man  remained, 
Squire  Gibson.  At  the  time  of  this  fight,  which 
took  place  on  the  i$th  day  of  June,  1855,  he 
was  married  to  the  daughter  of  a  friendly  chief, 
and,  as  he  was  the  only  alcalde  in  all  that  coun- 
ty, was  a  sort  of  military  as  well  as  civil  leader, 
and  in  the  battle  was  conspicuous  both  for 


courage  and  good  sense.  He  tried  to  keep  me 
back  and  out  of  danger.  He  told  me  that  I 
was  of  no  account  in  the  fight,  and  only  in  the 
way.  But  when  I  was  shot  down  at  his  side  in 
a  charge  through  the  chaparral,  he  took  me  in 
his  arms  and  carried  me  safely  aside.  He 
cared  for  me  afterward,  too,  till  I  got  well. 
How  glad  I  was  to  find  him  still  alive !  When 
you  go  up  to  Soda  Springs,  jump  out  of  the 
stage  at  Sweetbrier  Ranch,  only  a  few  miles 
this  side  of  Soda,  and  look  him  up.  Do  you 
think  him  an  illiterate  boor?  He  is  of  one  of 
the  best  families  in  New  York,  a  gentleman,  and 
a  scholar. 

A  few  years  ago,  one  of  his  wealthy  sisters 
came  out  to  visit  the  old  man  from  the  Eastern 
States.  From  San  Francisco  she  telegraphed 
her  approach  and  the  probable  day  of  her  arri- 
val at  his  mansion. 

She  came ;  but  she  did  not  find  him.  Squire 
Gibson  had  long  contemplated  prospecting  the 
rugged  summit  of  an  almost  inaccessible 
mountain.  He  felt  that  the  time  had  come 
for  this  work,  as  his  venerable  maiden  sister, 
with  all  her  high  ideas  of  "family,"  approached. 
He  called  his  spouse  and  his  tawny  children 
about  him,  bade  them  take  up  their  baskets  and 
go  high,  very  high  up  into  the  mountains,  for 
acorns.  And  the  gray  old  Californian  sinched 
his  little  mule  till  she  grunted,  tied  a  pick,  pan, 
and  shovel  to  the  saddle,  and  so  pointed  her 
nose  up  the  peak,  and  climbed  as  if  he  was 
climbing  for  the  morning  star. 

Squire  Gibson,  I  beg  your  pardon  for  drag- 
ging your  name  and  your  deeds  before  the 
heartless  world.  Believe  me,  old  friend  and 
comrade,  it  is  not  to  trade  upon  it  or  fatten  my 
own  vanity.  But  do  you  know  I  have  been  wait- 
ing for  ten  years  for  you  to  die,  so  that  I  might 
write  you  up  and  do  you  a  turn  for  your  kind- 
ness to  a  hair-brained  boy  more  than  twenty- 
five  years  ago?  It  is  a  fact.  But  it  begins  to 
look  now  as  if  you  are  going  to  outlive  me ;  you 
there  in  the  high,  pure  air,  and  I  here  in  the 
pent-up  city.  And  so  I  venture  to  put  you  in 
this  sketch,  and  name  you  as  one  of  the  un- 
crowned Californian  kings ! 

I  count  it  rather  odd  that  I  should  have  found 
even  one  man  in  this  region  still,  after  so  long 
a  time,  for  of  all  wanderers  the  Californian  is 
the  veriest  nomad  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Perhaps  it  is  a  bit  of  that  same  daring  and  en- 
durance which  took  him  to  California  that  still 
leads  him  on  and  on  and  on,  through  all  the 
lands  and  over  all  the  seas;  for  I  have  found 
him  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe. 

And  wherever  I  have  found  the  Californian,  I 
have  found  him  a  leader ;  not  an  obtrusive  one, 
but  a  man  who,  when  a  man  is  needed,  quietly 


OLD   CALIFORNIANS. 


steps  forward,  takes  hold  the  helm,  and  guides 
the  ship  to  safety. 

Once  on  the  Rhine,  between  the  armies  of 
France  and  Germany,  I  got  into  great  trouble 
with  the  authorities.  The  military  police,  who 
were  arresting  everybody  they  could  lay  hands 
on,  had  got  me  into  their  clutches  and  were  try- 
ing to  read  a  whole  lot  of  mixed -up  manuscript 
which  constituted  the  main  part  of  my  luggage, 
in  order  to  find  out  what  sort  of  a  man  I  was ; 
for  I  could  not  talk  a  word  of  either  French 
or  German.  I  think  they  must  have^been  poor- 
ly educated,  for  they  could  hardly  read  it.  But 
they  tried  and  tried  with  all  their  might.  And 
the  harder  they  tried  the  madder  they  got ;  and 
they  laid  the  blame  all  on  to  me. 

They  were  about  to  iron  me  and  march  me 
off  for  a  spy,  when  an  American  stepped  up 
and  laid  down  the  law  in  a  way  that  made  them 
open  their  eyes.  He  was  a  Californian,  and  my 
trouble  was  over.  He  could  not  talk  a  word  to 
them — no  more  than  I ;  but  they  soon  saw  that 
although  he  could  not  talk  in  any  of  their  six  or 
seven  tongues,  he  could  at  least  fight  in  any  lan- 
guage under  the  sun. 

I  am  reminded^here  of  two  Californians,  who, 
short  of  money  and  determined  to  see  the  Holy 
Land,  went  with  Cook,  the  tourist.  They  were 
the  horror  of  all  the  staid  old  orthodox  parties, 
but  in  less  than  a  week  they  were  the  leaders 
of  the  company. 

They  wanted  to  pump  out  Jacob's  Well,  and 
get  down  to  the  bed-rock.  They  were  perfectly 
certain  it  was  only  a  prospect-hole.  And  when 
they  came  to  Mount  Sinai  they  found  quartz  in- 
dications, and  declared  that  all  that  side  of  the 
mountain  from  which  the  tables  for  the  Ten 
Commandments  were  supposed  to  have  been 
taken,  would  pay  ten  per  cent.  They  pretended 
to  find  plenty  of  gold  in  the  rock  one  morning, 
and  made  the  whole  party  believe  that  they  in- 
tended to  set  up  a  forty-stamp  mill,  and  have  it 
thundering  down  that  same  canon  Moses  is  sup- 
posed to  have  descended  with  the  Laws ! 

There  are  many  of  the  wandering  children  of 
the  dear  old  Pacific  Coast  in  art,  and  at  work, 
all  over  the  world.  I  have  known  as  many  as 
five  of  the  eight  or  ten  theaters  in  the  city  of 
New  York  to  have  either  Californian  actors  or 
Californian  plays  on  their  boards  all  at  the  same 
time.  And  in  the  army  and  the  navy !  Con- 
sider the  deeds  of  the  old  Californians  there. 
When  one  speaks  of  California,  her  northern 
sister,  Oregon,  is  of  course  included. 

But  perhaps  it  is  in  the  financial  world  that 
the  old  Californian  takes  first  rank.  Yon  ele- 
vated railroad,  that  stretches  down  the  streets 
of  New  York,  was  built  and  is  owned  by  an  ex- 
mayor  of  San  Francisco.  Down  yonder,  at  the 


end  of  the  Island  of  Manhattan,  where  the 
"bulls"  and  "bears"  guide  the  finance  of  the 
world,  there  is  one  little  Californian  who  stands 
next  to  the  head  of  the  class.  And  if  ever  Jay 
Gould  misses  a  word,  this  man  will  spell  it,  and 
turn  him  down,  and  take  his  place. 

When  Chicago  was  howling  as  if  it  would  go 
mad  at  this  man  for  buying  the  wheat  which 
she  wanted  to  sell,  and  paying  for  it,  too,  in 
good  Californian  gold,  I,  who  had  never  seen 
him,  thought  him  some  six-foot  monster  who 
had  stumbled  on  to  a  mine  and  was  making  a 
very  bad  use  of  his  money.  On  the  contary,  he 
is  not  strong,  physically,  and  his  face  is  as  re- 
fined and  sympathetic  as  a  girl's. 

Why,  there  is  a  whole  bookful  of  good  deeds 
marked  to  the  credit  of  this  modest  little  Califor- 
nian away  up  and  above  the  stars,  although 
he  is  angry  if  any  one  tells  of  them  on  earth.  I 
had  rather  have  his  record,  notwithstanding 
the  wrath  of  Chicago,  than  that  of  any  pub- 
lished philanthropist  whose  skinny  statue  stands 
in  the  parks  of  the  world. 

Two  little  facts  let  me  mention.  More  than 
fifty  years  ago  the  very  brightest  of  all  the  young 
men  of  the  city  of  New  York  married  the 
daughter  of  the  then  wealthiest  and  most  dis- 
tinguished of  her  great  merchants.  Fifty  years 
bring  changes.  This  bright  young  man  was  no 
longer  the  head  of  the  city.  He  was  no  longer 
a  banker.  He  was  poor,  and  all  his  idols  lay 
broken  and  behind  him.  He  was  still  a  gentle- 
man. But,  says  the  Spaniard,  "who  is  there  so 
poor  as  a  poor  gentleman?" 

Well,  fifty  thousand  dollars  were  handed  this 
good  and  worthy  old  gentleman  by  this  old 
Californian,  who  is  not  willing  to  ever  let  his 
own  name  be  published  in  connection  with  the 
gift. 

The  other  circumstance  is  of  less  import  to 
any  one  but  myself.  A  new  and  unskilled  deal- 
er in  stocks,  an  utter  stranger,  found  himself  one 
morning  routed,  "horse,  foot,  and  dragoons." 
Half  desperate,  he  rushed  down  to  the  old  Cal- 
ifornian, and  asked  his  advice. 

Advice?  He  gave  his  advice  to  this  stranger 
in  the  shape  of  three  hundred  shares  of  WTest- 
ern  Union.  These  shares  in  a  few  days  turned 
out  a  profit  of  nearly  three  thousand  dollars. 
And  still  he  will  not  permit  his  name  to  be 
mentioned  in  this  connection.  Very  well;  I 
will  not  give  you  the  name  of  this  "old  Califor- 
nian." Neither  will  I  give  you  that  of  the  ven- 
erable banker  who  received  the  fifty  thousand 
dollars.  But  I  see  no  reason  why  you  may  not 
have  the  name  of  the  embarrassed  speculator 
who  received  the  three  thousand  dollars'  worth 
of  "advice."  You  will  find  it  subscribed  at  the 
end  of  this  rambling  sketch. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Who  was  ever  so  generous  as  is  the  Old  Cal- 
ifornian  ? 

In  conclusion,  while  writing  of  wealth  for  a 
city  where  gold  has  been  and  is  almost  a  god 
in  the  eyes  of  many,  let  me  implore  you  do  not 
much  care  for  it.  Nor  would  I  have  you  very 
much  respect  those  who  possess  it. 

In  the  first  place,  the  foundations  of  nearly 
all  the  great  fortunes  of  the  Far  West  have 
been  almost  purely  accidental.  After  that  it 
became  merely  a  question  of  holding  on  to  all 
you  could  get.  Of  course,  many  threw  away 
their  opportunities  there.  But  remember  that 
many  others  gave  away  all  they  had  to  help 
others,  and  are  now  gray  and  forgotten  in  the 
mountains,  while  they  might  have  been  to-day 
at  the  head  of  their  fellows  in  the  city. 

I  know  it  is  hard  to  teach  and  to  preach 
against  the  traditions  and  the  practices  of  all 
recorded  time.  But  while  money  may  remain 
to  the  end  "the  root  of  all  evil,"  I  think  one 
may  grow,  if  not  to  despise  it,  certainly  not  to 
worship  it.  And  so  it  is  that  I  wish  to  sand- 
wich-and  wedge  in  this  fact  right  here.  I  im- 
plore you  do  not  too  much  admire  the  rich  men 
of  this  rich  land,  where  wealth  may  be  had  by 
any  man  who  is  mean  enough  to  clutch  and 
hold  on  tight  to  it. 

I  tell  you  that,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  great 
acquired  wealth  lifts  up  in  monumental  testi- 
mony the  meanness  of  its  possessor. 

I  knew  two  neighbors,  old  Californians,  who 
had  about  equal  fortunes.  They  were  both  old 
settlers,  both  rich,  and  both  much  respected. 
In  that  fearful  year,  1852,  when  the  dying  and 
destitute  immigrants  literally  crawled  on  hands 
and  knees  over  the  Sierra  trying  to  reach  the 
settlements,  one  of  these  men  drove  all  his  cat- 
tle up  to  the  mountains,  butchered  them,  and 
fed  the  starving.  He  had  his  Mexicans  pack 


all  the  mules  with  flour,  which  at  that  time  cost 
almost  its  weight  in  gold,  and  push  on  night 
day  over  the  mountains  to  meet  the  strangers 
there  and  feed  them,  so  that  they  might  have 
strength  to  reach  his  house,  where  they  could 
have  shelter  and  rest. 

The  other  man,  cold  and  cautious,  saw  his 
opportunity  and  embraced  it.  He  sat  at  home 
and  sold  all  his  wheat  and  mules  and  meat,  and 
with  the  vast  opportunities  for  turning  money 
to  account  in  that  new  country  soon  became 
almost  a  prince  in  fortune. 

But  his  generous  neighbor  died  a  beggar  in 
Idaho,  where  he  had  gone  to  try  to  make  an- 
other fortune.  He  literally  had  not  money 
enough  to  buy  a  shroud ;  and  as  he  died  among 
strangers,  by  the  roadside,  he  was  buried  with- 
out even  so  much  as  a  pine  board  coffin. 

I  saw  his  grave  there  only  last  year.  Some 
one  had  set  up  a  rough  granite  stone  at  the 
head.  And  that  is  all.  No  name — not  even  a 
letter  or  a  date.  Nothing.  But  that  bowlder 
was  fashioned  by  the  hand  of  Almighty  God, 
and  in  the  little  seams  and  dots  and  mossy 
scars  that  cover  it  He  can  read  the  rubric  that 
chronicles  the  secret  virtues  of  this  lone  dead 
man  on  the  snowy  mountains  of  Idaho. 

The  children  of  the  "Prince"  are  in  Paris. 
Upheld  by  his  colossal  wealth  their  lives  seem 
to  embrace  the  universal  world.  He  is  my 
friend.  He  buys  all  my  books,  and  reads  every 
line  I  write.  When  he  comes  to  this  sketch  he 
will  understand  it.  And  he  ought  to  under- 
stand, too,  that  all  the  respect,  admiration,  and 
love  which  the  new  land  once  gave  these  two 
men  gathers  around  and  is  buried  beneath  that 
moss-grown  granite  stone;  and  that  I  know, 
even  with  all  his  show  of  splendor,  that  his 
heart  is  as  cold  and  as  empty  as  that  dead 
man's  hand.  JOAQUIN  MILLER. 


A   HOMELY   HEROINE. 


The  early  Spanish  designation  of  the  south- 
eastern part  of  San  Francisco,  Potrero,  mean- 
ing pasture-ground,  still  clings  to  that  portion 
of  the  city — no  longer  fitly.  The  pick-ax  has 
laid  bare  the  bowels  of  its  rolling  hills,  and 
blasting  powder  has  bitten  into  them,  leaving 
unsightly  scars.  Knoll  after  knoll  has  been 
beaten  into  fine,  ashen  dust,  and  scattered  along 
the  highway  now  called  Potrero  Avenue.  This 
fine,  ashen  dust  rides  on  the  high  winds  in  des- 
olate gray  clouds,  seen  through  which  the  sky 
is  no  longer  blue  nor  the  sunshine  golden. 


On  the  high  winds  ride,  also,  insupportable 
odors  ravished  from  drying  pelts,  from  heaps  of 
offal,  from  stagnant  ponds,  from  exposed  rills  of 
sewerage.  These  the  wind  catches  up  to  bear 
away;  but,  like  a  scavenger's  cart, leaks  putres- 
cence as  it  rolls. 

More  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  the 
earliest  preemptors  there  found  one  settler  oc- 
cupying before  them :  an  old  man — his  air  so 
wonted  to  his  surroundings  that  he  might  have 
been  accepted  as  a  veritable  Potrero  autoch- 
thon. 


A  HOMELY  HEROINE. 


53 


Dry  winds  and  beating  sun  had  made  his 
complexion  as  brown  as  the  redwood  shanty  he 
tenanted,  or  the  arid  slope  upon  which  it 
perched.  This,  his  shriveled  cheek,  his  shrewd 
eye,  and  his  lonely  life,  surrounded  him  with 
mystery,  and  encouraged  speculation.  He  had 
never  been  known  to  seek  human  society. 
Though  neither  gruff  nor  surly,  when  address- 
ed, he  was  uncommunicative.  The  following  is 
a  transcript  of  an  attempted  conversation. 
Time,  1852;  place,  near  old  Tom's  cabin: 

"Hallo,  Hardman!  Fine  weather,  this." 
Such  was  the  neighbor's  cautious  beginning. 

With  unexpected  cordiality:  "Mighty  han'- 
some." 

"You  are  a  very  old  resident  here,  eh?" — 
more  boldly. 

Tom  had  just  illumined  his  evening  pipe,  and, 
as  it  obstinately  refused  to  draw,  it  required  his 
absorbed  attention. 

"At  least"— the  silence  becoming  discourag- 
ing— "people  say  as  much." 

"  So?" — with  a  passing  gleam  of  interest. 

"Yes,"  more  briskly,  "you've  a  fine  piece  of 
property." 

Puff,  puff,  puff;  pipe  drawing;  facial  ex- 
pression profoundly  serious. 

"Hope  your  title  is  sound.  You  derive  it 
from  a  Mexican  grant,  the  Micheltorena,  I  be- 
lieve ?  At  any  rate,  you've  held  undisputed  pos- 
session ever  since  '43,  or  was  it  '45?" 

Puff,  puff,  puff. 

"I  say,"  very  loudly,  with  sudden  suspicion 
that  the  man  might  be  hard  of  hearing,  "  I  hope 
your  title  is  sound,"  etc. 

Without  removing  his  pipe:  "Fraudulous 
(puff)  titles  (puff)  is  a  plenty." 

"By  the  way,  how  many  varas  are  there  on 
this  slope?" 

As  yet,  Hardman  had  built  no  fences.  He 
might  own  the  whole  hill-side,  or  a  very  small 
portion  of  it ;  the  question  was  designed  to  clear 
up  this  hidden  matter. 

"Well,  I "  Hardman  began  slowly;  but 

the  sentence  ended  in  smoke. 

The  neighbor  made  another  effort:  "I'd  like 
to  own  from  the  creek  to  the  brow  of  the  hill." 

"How?" 

Impatient  repetition  of  the  sentence. 

"Accordin'  to  the  lay  of  the  land,  them's  the 
nateral  bound'ries." 

"East  and  west" — sarcastically — "I  suppose 
you'll  grab  all  you  can?" 

"Potrery  (puff)  property'll  be  worth  (puff, 
puff)  suthin'  one  of  these  days." 

The  interviewer  retired  discomfited,  and  Tom 
Hardman's  private  affairs  were  left  to  conject- 
ure. Feminine  gossip,  however,  made  sure  of 
one  thing :  he  was  an  old  bachelor. 

VOL.  III.- 4. 


Wrong  again.  When  a  farther  slope  began 
to  boast  of  three  or  four  redwood  cabins,  Tom 
Hardman's  was  suddenly  enlivened  by  the  pres- 
ence of  a  woman  and  two  buxom  children. 

This  change  in  his  mode  of  life  was  the  fore- 
runner of  other  changes.  The  shanty  was  im- 
mediately enlarged  and  whitewashed ;  some  ad- 
ditions, of  rude,  home  contrivance,  were  made 
to  the  scanty  furniture;  fences  were  built,  and 
a  stately  goose  and  gander  began  daily  journeys 
to  and  from  that  charming  estuary,  Mission 
Creek. 

Then,  just  as  one  would  naturally  suppose 
that  old  Tom  Hardman  had  planned  to  live 
after  some  domestic,  if  not  social  sort,  he  dis- 
appeared. 

By  this  time  the  settlement  of  an  indefinite 
region  over  the  hill  had  been  accomplished  by 
a  half-dozen  families,  whose  common  prejudices 
resulted  in  a  strong  local  sentiment  condemna- 
tory of  Mrs.  Hardman. 

She  was  by  them  dubbed  "Old  Mother 
Dutchy,"  a  sobriquet  which  derived  its  appro- 
priateness from  her  mongrel  speech.  Of  stur- 
dy build,  and  indomitable  activity,  she  was  a 
scourge  to  all  prowlers,  in  whom  she  saw  possi- 
ble squatters.  But  the  popular  fancy  pictured 
her,  armed  with  any  available  weapon,  perpetu- 
ally lying  in  wait  for  whoever  might  set  foot  on 
her  land,  on  whatever  errand. 

According  to  Larry  Cronin's  story,  she  could 
be  guilty  of  gratuitous  outrage. 

Sent  one  morning  in  search  of  a  stray  goat, 
this  promising  youth  did  not  return  until  after 
nightfall,  and  he  did  straightway  depose  (tremb- 
ling before  the  paternal  rod)  that  for  daring  to 
peep  through  "Ould  Mother  Dutchy's"  gate,  he 
had  been  by  her  seized,  beaten  with  many 
stripes,  and  incarcerated  in  a  chicken-house. 
Reliable  witnesses,  however,  were  found  to  tes- 
tify to  his  pugilistic  presence  in  the  Mission  on 
that  very  day ;  but  such  was  the  prevailing  cast 
of  thought  that  his  figment  was  often  quoted  as 
fact.  Had  Mrs.  Hardman  used  him  as  he  said, 
she  might  have  considered  herself  justified. 

In  lieu  of  more  refined  diversions,  the  juve- 
niles of  those  rude  slopes — the  dauntless  Larry 
at  their  head — were  wont  to  indulge  in  impish 
tantalism.  What  bliss  to  haunt  Thady  Finne- 
gan's  dog  kennels,  and  to  lash  the  chained  and 
savage  brutes  up  to  impotent  fury  by  their  an- 
tics! Or  to  troop  over  the  hill,  and,  climbing 
Mrs.  Hardman's  fence,  to  dance  and  gibber 
there  in  thrilling  expectation  of  provoking  her 
to  a  raid,  which  their  lively  young  legs  were 
sure  to  render  fruitless  !  Sometimes  they  went 
so  far  as  to  throw  stones  at  her. 

On  a  foggy  evening  in  October,  1853,  a  Mrs. 
O'Dennis,  as  well  known  in  those  parts  as  Mrs. 


54 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Hardman  herself,  was  entertaining  a  few  neigh- 
bors with  gossip  and  whisky  punch — the  latter 
served  in  a  battered  tin  pan. 

A  rude  sign -board,  nailed  crookedly  across 
the  outer  surface  of  her  door,  proclaimed  her 
the  pioneer  trader  of  the  Potrero.  It  read: 

"GROSS.  RIS. 

&  LIQR'  KEP  BY  MISES.  TIMTHY 
O  DENNIS  ON  DRAF." 

The  store  and  dwelling  were  in  one  room. 
Of  this,  fully  a  third  was  taken  up  by  the  bar. 
A  rough  carpenter's  bench  served  as  a  counter, 
and  was  raised  to  a  practicable  hight  by  divers 
contrivances  not  unsuggestive  of  reckless  in- 
genuity. Three  bricks  propped  one  leg,  a  can- 
dle-box another,  a  cobble-stone  the  third,  and 
a  cracked  iron  pot,  reeking  with  grease  and 
soot,  the  fourth.  A  counter  by  day,  by  night 
the  bench  was  turned  upside  down,  and  con- 
verted into  a  legless  four-poster,  wherein  did 
repose  Mrs.  O'Dennis's  niece,  Miss  Hannah 
McArdle.  The  rest  of  the  family,  numbering  six 
souls,  occupied  two  dirty  straw  mattresses, 
spread  on  the  bare  floor. 

To  return  to  that  foggy,  convivial  evening : 
The  four  O'Dennis  children  had  been  uncere- 
moniously huddled  into  bed.  The  guests  sat 
around  a  rickety  table,  dipping  by  turns  into 
the  steaming  lake  of  whisky  and  water.  To  eke 
out  a  limited  supply  of  heterogeneous  drinking 
vessels,  Tim  O'Dennis  had  possessed  himself  of 
a  tin  funnel  used  in  doling  out  molasses.  By 
closing  the  nozzle  with  his  thumb,  and  a  leak  in 
the  seam  with  his  forefinger,  he  did  such  bibu- 
lous execution  as  to  excite  envy. 

"Shure,  ye'd  betther  shtop  the  hole  wid  yer 
mout',  Timmy,"  exclaimed  Patsey  Cronin,  father 
of  the  mendacious  Larry,  "an3  let  some  wan 
pour  a  shtiddy  shtrame  down  yer  troat.  Be- 
gorra,  the  resht  of  us  shtand  no  show  alongside 
yez." 

But  to  this  Mrs.  O'Dennis,  busily  plying  a 
broken  shaving -mug,  loudly  and  profanely  ob- 
jected. To  speak  mildly,  this  woman  was 
neither  an  honor  to  her  adopted  country  nor 
an  ornament  to  her  sex.  Her  bloated  and  burn- 
ing cheeks  told  of  ceaseless  alcoholic  fires  within 
and  blear  eyes,  constantly  running  over,  suggest- 
ed vents  for  the  steam  thereby  engendered. 

"Hould  yer  divil  iv  a  clatther,"  she  ejaculated, 
in  tones  of  husky  pleasantry.  "Is  there  e'er  a 
wan  iv  yez  has  heard  anny  worrd  yit  iv  that 
ould  nut,  Tommy  Harrdman?" 

"Wirra,  wirra!"  moaned  a  voice  of  intro- 
spective melancholy;  "an3  he  wint  away  a  week 
before  me  poor  Ellen  (God  resht  her  sowl),  an' 
she  all  holly  wid  her  insides  shpit  up." 


The  speaker  was  Larry  Cronin's  grandmoth- 
er, a  little,  wizened  octogenarian.  Her  palsied 
head,  and  the  frill  of  an  "ould  bordhery  cap" 
adorning  it,  shook  as  if  in  incessant  negation. 

"Sure,  it's  small  comfort  Ellen  was  to  me 
this  manny  a  day,'3  retorted  Patsey  Cronin. 
"Begorra,  where's  the  since  iv  shpilin'  a  festive 
occasion  by  the  talk  iv  her?" 

And  he  leered  at  Hannah  McArdle,  as  if  ex- 
pecting her  approval. 

"D-d-divil  a  worrd  has  anny  wan  heard  iv 
ould  Tommy,"  cried  Tim  O'Dennis,  in  his  hur- 
ried and  stuttering  brogue.  "An3  shure,  I'm 
b-beginnin3  to  think  we'll  lay  no  eye  till  him  be- 
tune  now  an'  Joodgmint  Day.  If  Tommy  was 
aloive,  forty  yoke  iv  oxen  cudn't  keep  him  off 
the  Potrery  so  long,  an3  do  yez  moind  that? 
A-an3  is  it  a-an  ould  n-nut  yez  call  him,  Biddy? 
Och,  thin,  3twould  t-take  the  d- devil  to  crack 
his  shell,  for  a  tough  one  it  is,  I'm  thinkin'.'3 

"An3,  begorra,"  Mrs.  O'Dennis  burst  out,  with 
a  hoarse  laugh,  "if  the  ould  nut  is  cracked,  as 
Timmy  says,  it's  that  murtherin'  haythen  wum- 
mun  has  done  it,  or  may  I  choke  wid  the  lie. 
Not  one  shtep  has  he  gone  away.  She's  cut 
him  intil  six  quarthers  an'  drowndid  him  in  the 
wather  down  below.  O-och-hone !  poor  Tom- 
my— an3  he  not  shtook  up  above  buyin3  his  piece 
of  'baccy  iv  dacent  folks.3' 

Mrs.  O'Dennis  bore  Mrs.  Hardman  a  partic- 
ular grudge  for  not  encouraging  local  enter- 
prise. The  latter  had  thus  far  avoided  the  store. 

"May  I  dhrink  ditch -wather  the  rimnant  iv 
me  days,"  said  Mr.  Thady  Finnegan,  jocosely, 
"jbut  I'd  enj'y  takin3  'Thady  Finnegan3  over  the 
hillj  for  a  little  shport."  A  tall,  cross-eyed 
man,  with  a  wiry  red  goatee,  his  business  in  life 
was  the  breeding  of  savage  dogs  for  the  pit.  Of 
these,  "Thady  Finnegan33  was  at  once  his  name- 
sake and  his  pride. 

Tickled  by  this  humorous  suggestion,  Mrs. 
O'Dennis  fell  into  a  paroxysm  of  laughter. 
Husky  chuckles,  beginning  in  her  fat  throat, 
rapidly  descended  until  lost  in  unfathomable 
recesses  of  her  rotundity. 

"D-don't  yez  think,"  exclaimed  Tim,  alarmed 
by  her  suspended  breath  and  starting  eye-balls, 
"as  how  I'd  b-betther  fetch  her  out  iv  that  wid 
a  shwot  iv  m-me  fisht?  Shure,  she  m-moight 
have  a  fit." 

Mrs.  McNamara  suggested  a  sprinkling  with 
cold  water  as  a  specific  "ag'in  fits;33  but  Patsey 
Cronin  pinned  his  faith  by  the  strongest  of 
oaths  to  a  "soop  o3  whusky." 

In  the  conflict  of  opinions,  no  active  meas- 
ures were  taken.  As  soon  as  Mrs.  O'Dennis 
could  recover  her  voice,  she  used  it  to  ask  Tirn, 
angrily,  why  he  was  making  such  a  "shtook, 
shtarin3  fool33  of  himself. 


A  HOMELY  HEROINE. 


55 


Mrs.  McNamara  hastily  interposed  in  the  in- 
terests of  connubial  peace. 

"Poor  Tommy  Harrdman  !  Some  man  ought 
to  go  an'  ax  Mother  Dutchy  is  he  dead  or  aloive." 

"Begorra,  who's  betther  to  be  shpared  for 
that  same  expedition  than  yez,  Granny?"  ex- 
claimed her  son-in-law,  with  a  brutal  laugh, 
and  again  ogling  Hannah.  "That  ould,  shakin' 
shkull  iv  yours  might's  well  be  cracked  be 
Mother  Dutchy  as  another,  an'  betther  airly 
than  late.  When  yez  are  provided  for,  there'll 
be  the  full  iv  the  mug  for  me  an'  some  wan  I 
have  in  me  eye." 

"Musha,  will  yez  list  till  that  for  a  haythin," 
cried  Hannah,  blushing.  "An'  Ellen  not  dead 
three  weeks ! " 

"Begorra,"  added  Tim,  "it's  a  shmall  sup 
anny  wan  gits  iv  anny  mug  whin  yez  are  by, 
P-patsey.  Much  less  the  likes  iv  Mrs.  Mc- 
N-namara,  wid  her  shkin  shtickin'  all  in -wrin- 
kles till  her  b-bones." 

There  was  a  general  laugh,  at  Cronin's  ex- 
pense, which  Mrs.  O'Dennis  interrupted. 

"If  I  should  go  over  the  hill  mesilf,  as  don't 
care  that,"  snapping  her  fingers  viciously,  "for 
ould  Mother  Dutchy's  clubs  an'  cracks,  do  yez 
think  she'd  be  afther  tellin'  me  the  trewt  fore- 
nint  hersilf?" 

"D-divil  a-a-a  bit,"  said  Tim,  promptly." 

"Be  the  howly  .Moses,"  shouted  Finnegan, 
"Thady  wud  discuss  the  matther " 

"Och,  if  wanst  I  lay  a  good  grip  till  her  troat, 
I'll  be  betther  nor  a  bull-dog  mesilf,"  exclaimed 
Mrs.  O'Dennis,  falling  into  another  fit  of  laugh- 
ter, which  was  cut  short  by  a  loud,  distinct  rap- 
ping at  the  door. 

There  was  something  ominous  in  the  sound. 
No  visitors  were  expected.  No  customers  were 
likely  to  come  at  so  late  an  hour. 

Two  children,  who  had  been  awake  enjoying 
the  conversation,  took  instant  fright.  In  a  quak- 
ing voice,  Mrs.  O'Dennis  bade  Tim  not  to  an- 
swer the  summons. 

"Arrah,  what's  on  yez,  Biddy?"  he  replied, 
assuming  a  manly  superiority  to  fear.  "Some 
poor  ghost  is  afther  shmellin'  the  hot  shtuff, 
passin'  by,  an'  shtops  to  beg  a  dhrop." 

He  marched  to  the  door  and  threw  it  open. 
He  instantly  recoiled  in  undisguised  alarm. 
Awaiting  no  invitation,  a  woman  stepped  heav- 
ily over  the  threshold. 

Conny  and  Katy  O'Dennis  redoubled  their 
terrified  screams.  Their  recognition  of  those 
heavy  shoulders,  that  vigilant  gray  head — nay, 
the  purple  of  a  cheap  print  gown — was  instanta- 
neous. 

Having  been  over  the  hill  on  diversion  bent 
that  very  day,  they  conceived  Mrs.  Hardman's 
errand  one  of  vengeance  dire. 


"Bad  cess  to  thim  divil's  brats,"  gasped  Mrs. 
O'Dennis,  quite  beside  herself  with  terror  and 
the  screams,  to  which  were  now  added  those  of 
a  young  babe.  "Go  to  thim,  Tim,  man,  and 
crack  their  heads  ag'in  the  flure." 

The  unwelcome  intruder  stood  soberly  near 
the  door,  glancing  first  toward  the  mattress 
and  then  toward  the  table.  If  she  realized  that 
she  was  the  cause  of  the  shrill  outcries  on  the 
one  hand,  or  the  electrified  silence  on  the  other, 
she  gave  no  sign. 

"I  was  gome,"  she  said,  composedly,  in  a 
voice  of  somewhat  heavy  quality,  "fer  dot  ret 
bepper." 

"Red  pepper  is  it!"  ejaculated  Mrs.  O'Den- 
nis, showing  vast  relief.  "I'm  afther  thinkin' — 
shtick  your  fisht  down  Katy's  troat,  will  yez, 
Tim? — that  I  have  wan  bottle  iv  the  shtuff." 

She  rolled  out  of  her  chair,  and,  keeping  an 
uneasy  eye  on  her  customer,  picked  up  the 
infant  and  silenced  him  at  her  breast.  Hold- 
ing him  carelessly  on  one  arm  she  hastily  rum- 
maged among  some  fly- specked  bottles  and  pa- 
pers spread  across  a  dirty  shelf.  In  vain. 

Mr.  Hardman  quietly  turned  to  leave. 

"Sure,  mum,"  Mrs.  O'Dennis  called  out,  un- 
willing to  let  so  rare  an  opportunity  slip,  "how 
is  it  we  niver  see  no  more  iv  the  ould  man  what 
owns  yez?" 

Mrs.  Hardman  paused  in  the  doorway  to  look 
back.  There  was  nothing  forbidding  in  her 
manner.  Still,  a  certain  steadiness  of  eye, 
coupled  with  a  laconic  gravity  of  tongue,  duly 
impressed  her  observers. 

There  was  a  moment's  silence,  through  which 
the  babe  was  heard  drawing  vigorous  suste- 
nance from  the  maternal  fount  of  ignorance  and 
vice.  Then  Mrs.  Hardman  said,  deliberately : 

"Dom  he  is  down  to  Podro  Wolley." 

"To  where?" 

"ToPod-roWol-ley." 

Mrs.  O'Dennis  became  instantly  apologetic. 

"No  offinse  intinded.  Shure  I  take  it  a  pity 
iv  me  not  to  have  the  pepper  for  yez.  The 
firsht  time  yez  have  been  in  the  shtore,  too ! 
Was  yez  afther  wantin'  the  shtuff  for  anything 
spicial?" 

"Fer  Zhag." 

"Is  it  the  b'y,  Jack,  yez  mane?  What's  on 
him !  I  seen  him  pass  the  day." 

"Pains,"  returned  Mrs.  Hardman,  with  a  pro- 
foundly speculative  air,  and  putting  a  hand  to 
her  throat  to  indicate  their  locality.  "  It's  dot 
neurolchy." 

Before  another  question  could  be  asked,  she 
was  gone.  Her  brief  and  incomprehensible  re- 
plies had  aroused  fresh  dislike.  Mrs.  O'Den- 
nis complained  bitterly  that  she  "twishted  her 
tongue"  so  that  no  "dacent  Christm"  could  un- 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


derstand  her.  Tim  suggested  that  "P-podro 
Wolley,"  for  all  he  knew  to  the  contrary,  might 
be  Dutch  for  "P-purgathory ;"  while  Mr.  Fin- 
negan,  excitedly  invoking  the  author  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch, implored  him  to  "shpake  the  word  or 
give  the  wink"  and  he  and  "Thady"  would  take 
a  "thrip  over  the  hill." 

Mrs.  O'Dennis's  malicious  assertion  in  regard 
to  old  Tom  and  the  "wather  down  below," 
bore  fruit.  Startled  by  the  mere  suspicion  of  a 
crime  having  been  committed,  the  neighbor- 
hood speedily  settled  into  an  enjoyable  convic- 
tion that  the  supposition  must  be  true.  A  sin- 
ister light  was  thus  thrown  upon  Mrs.  Hard- 
man's  errand  to  the  store.  Had  either  of  her 
children  made  sudden  departure  from  the  world, 
no  one  would  have  doubted  that  red  pepper 
played  an  important  part  in  the  tragedy. 

Instead  of  such  news,  however,  other  news 
came — in  a  letter  from  a  Mr.  Penniford  to  his 
wife.  The  latter,  who  held  herself  superior  to 
the  "low,  drunken  Irish"  around  her,  did,  nev- 
ertheless, deal  at  the  store.  Immediately  after 
reading  that  Tom  Hardman  was  alive  and  well, 
she  discovered  that  she  was  out  of  vinegar. 

"My  husband  seen  him  himself,"  she  explain- 
ed volubly,  as  Mrs.  O'Dennis  was  filling  her 
pint  measure,  "down  in  Pajaro  Valley,  a-squat- 
tin'  onto  a  powerful  mossel  of  land  as  still  as  a 
spinx!" 

One  evening,  soon  after,  Larry  Cronin  rushed 
excitedly  into  the  shop,  which  was  the  best  mar- 
ket for  any  rumor,  however  idle.  He  had  been 
hunting  ducks  by  the  creek,  and  on  his  way 
home  had  seen  such  and  such  things,  breath- 
lessly recounted. 

Other  listeners  dropping  in,  the  story  was  re- 
peated with  still  more  zest.  Calls  were  made 
for  instant  and  organized  effort  to  solve  the 
mystery.  But  no  joint  action  was  taken  :  secret 
disintegrating  motives  were  at  work.  If  old 
Hardman  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  thePotrero 
furtively  for  the  hiding  of  treasure,  let  him  un- 
earth the  spoils  whose  wit  was  keenest. 

The  belief  that  their  recluse  neighbor  had 
struck  rich  diggings  in  Pajaro  gained  fascinat- 
ing ascendancy  over  some  minds,  and  a  deal  of 
independent  prowling  was  indulged  in.  After  a 
month's  patient  watching,  two  men  simultane- 
ously discovered  the  stealthy  light  which  Larry 
Cronin  had  described.  As  in  his  graphic  re- 
cital, it  wandered  here  and  there  across  the 
Hardman  place,  and  then  kept  close  along  the 
fence.  When  it  settled  into  a  dull,  steady  glow, 
the  watchers  (utterly  unconscious  of  each  other) 
crawled  toward  it  from  different  directions.  By 
the  beam  of  the  same  lantern,  which  illumined 
Tom  Hardman's  diligent  spade,  they  stared  into 
one  another's  blank  faces. 


Mr.  Finnegan  put  finger  to  lip,  and  Patsey 
Cronin  shut  an  eye — by  these  signs  silently 
agreeing  to  divide  the  spoils. 

There  were  no  spoils  to  divide.  The  two 
would-be  thieves  crouched  and  listened  and 
watched.  By  all  they  heard  and  saw,  the  old 
man  was  guiltless  of  any  wealth  save  the  brown 
clods  of  earth  to  which  he  clung  so  tenaciously. 
His  journeys  hither  were  merely  to  make  sure 
that  all  was  going  well  with  his  family  and  his 
property.  His  wandering  lantern  meant  thor- 
ough inspection  of  the  fences;  his  digging,  the 
setting  up  of  a  few  posts  blown  awry  by  the 
wind. 

The  year  wore  on  toward  its  close.  In  De- 
cember— and  a  bitter  cold  December  it  was  for 
California! — old  Hardman  came  home  in  his 
usual  unexpected  fashion,  toward  nightfall,  on  a 
way-worn  mustang;  but  not  on  his  usual  er- 
rand. 

After  a  long  frustration  of  the  neighborhood's 
desperate  craving  for  excitement,  he  had  re- 
lented. It  was  characteristic  of  the  man's  stub- 
born resolution  that  he  had  abandoned  his  dis- 
tant post  only  when  convinced  that  a  long, 
lingering  illness  was  about  to  terminate  fatally; 
and  that  he  had  endured  the  rough  travel  in  his 
suffering  condition. 

He  went  from  saddle  to  bed.  Inflammation 
set  in  and  did  its  work  expeditiously.  In  twen- 
ty -  four  hours,  he  breathed  his  last.  Patsey  Cro- 
nin had  been  to  the  Mission  that  day.  Coming 
back,  he  met  Jack  Hardman  near  the  little 
bridge.  The  lad's  eyes  were  swollen  with  weep- 
ing. 

"What's  on  yez?"  asked  Patsey,  who  made 
sure  that  his  mother  had  beaten  him  and  that 
he  was  running  away  from  home. 

"Daddy's  dead,"  said  Jack  with  a  fresh  out- 
burst of  grief,  "an'  I'm  a-goin'  for  the  under- 
taker." 

This  intelligence  being  hastily  carried  to  Pat- 
sey's  neighbors,  the  women  got  together  and 
held  consultation,  the  result  of  which  was  that 
they  crossed  the  dividing  ridge  of  land  and  of 
sentiment  in  a  body,  and  walked  slowly  down 
hill  toward  the  widow's  cabin.  There  were 
Mrs.  Penniford,  Mrs.  Cronin  (formerly  Hannah 
McArdle),  Mrs.  McNamara,  her  negatory  cap- 
frill  busier  than  ever,  and  last,  but  far  from 
least,  Mrs.  O'Dennis. 

In  view  of  a  death,  there  is  an  awe -struck 
state  of  mind  which  can  only  be  appeased  by 
full  particulars.  Patsey  had  been  able  to  give 
none.  Wondering  and  speculating,  the  visitors 
solemnly  entered  Mrs.  Hardman's  gate,  and 
proceeded  toward  her  door.  They  shuddered 
as  they  knocked  there,  in  half  enjoyable  antic- 
ipation of  entering  upon  a  dramatic  scene  of 


A   HOMELY  HEROINE. 


57 


woe.  Patsey  Cronin's  elaborate  description  of 
Jack  Hardman's  grief  prepared  them  for  some- 
thing really  sensational.  Disappointment  in- 
stantly flashed  upon  them  in  a  rosy,  cheerful 
face — Jack's  face.  With  the  elasticity  of  youth 
and  superb  health,  the  boy  had  recovered  from 
his  first  horror  and  sorrow.  Julia  Hardman,  a 
girl  of  twelve,  was  smiling  too.  It  was  enough 
to  scandalize  anybody,  Mrs.  Penniford  after- 
ward declared;  and  Biddy  O'Dennis,  who  was 
a  very  demon  for  temper,  said  she  never  "lay 
eyes  till  such  harrd-hearted  haythin." 

Mrs.  Hardman  soon  showed  herself.  There 
was  an  air  of  settled,  almost  dogged,  compo- 
sure on  her  strong -featured  face.  Whatever 
the  nature  of  those  feelings  that  had  held  her 
so  long  apart  from  her  neighbors,  she  accepted 
their  visit  at  such  a  time  calmly. 

"You  wout  like  to  zee  Dom?"  she  asked. 
A  murmured  assent  arose.  She  led  the  way 
to  a  small  bed-room.  Old  Hardman  lay  on  the 
little  cot  where  he  had  died.  She  reverently 
uncovered  his  dark,  wrinkled  face,  the  shrewd- 
ness gone  out  of  it  forever.  After  the  wont  of 
her  kind,  Mrs.  O'Dennis  blubbered;  and  Mrs. 
McNamara,  in  memory  of  her  own  affliction, 
raised  a  long,  soulless  quaver — the  Irish  cry. 
Mrs.  Hardman  placed  chairs  for  her  visitors, 
and  took  one  herself.  She  had  made  no  at- 
tempt at  mourning  attire.  Her  purple  print 
gown  had  been  newly  washed  and  ironed ;  her 
scant  gray  hair  was  neatly  brushed.  Mrs.  Pen- 
niford asked  of  the  dead  man's  disease,  and  she 
answered  as  best  she  could. 

"My  Dom,"  she  began,  wiping  a  slow,  large 
hand  across  her  nose  and  lips  while  dividing  a 
mournful,  sidelong  gaze  between  Mrs.  Penni- 
ford and  the  stark  face  beside  her,  "my  Dom 
he  wasn't  he's  zelf  when  he  wend  away  dot  last 
time  to  Podro.  No,  he  wasn't  he's  zelf.  Zhule 
he  remembers  dot  he's  fader  wasn't  not  all 
right." 

"Zhule  he"  referred  to  her  daughter,  Julia. 
One  of  the  most  marked  peculiarities  of  Mrs. 
Hardman's  diction  was  the  use  of  superfluous 
pronouns,  always  of  the  masculine  gender. 

"But  he  never  gomblained,  dough  I  zayt  to 
Zhag,  'I  kin  zee  you  fader's  got  anodderturn  of 
dot  neurolchy.' " 

Be  it  said  that,  with  Mrs.  Hardman,  "dot 
neurolchy"  was  an  active  and  malignant  agent 
in  all  bodily  distresses  not  caused  by  visible 
wounds;  nay,  after  the  latter,  "dot  neurolchy" 
was  almost  sure  to  set  in. 

"My  Dom  he  coot  fight  zigness,  but  dot  neu- 
rolchy fedged  him  at  last."  She  ended  with  a 
tear  on  her  cheek,  and,  sighing  deeply,  drooped 
forward  in  her  favorite  posture,  with  a  heavy 
hand  resting  on  either  knee. 


Mrs.  Penniford's  thin  head -voice  became 
slightly  didactic : 

"  You  say  he  died  of  neurology :  what  was 
the  seat  of  the  disease?" 

Mrs.  Hardman  lifted  her  pale  countenance, 
the  tear  yet  on  her  cheek,  to  meet  her  question- 
er's eye. 

"Dot  neurolchy,"  she  replied,  carefully  weigh- 
ing her  words,  "was  inside  him." 

No  physician  ever  expressed,  in  any  language, 
profounder  belief  in  his  own  diagnosis. 

"Ochone!"  broke  in  Mrs.  O'Dennis,  with  a 
wild  disregard  of  truth,  "it's  a  bee-utiful  corpse 
he  makes,  mim." 

"Arrah,  how  much  he  must  have  suffered 
wid  that — neurolchy,"  said  Mrs.  McNamara, 
very  softly. 

"He  dit  zuffer,"  Mrs.  Hardman  answered,  as 
softly,  turning  toward  the  old  woman.  "Fer 
two  days  I  t'ought  he  di'n't  know  me.  But 
zhoost  before  he  died  he  wake  up  und  zayt :  *  Dot 
landt,  Mart'a.  Keep  holt  him.  Don'da  give 
up  dot  landt,  Mart'a.' " 

This  sudden  revelation  of  what  had  been  the 
ruling  passion  of  Tom  Hardman's  life  caused  a 
deal  of  after  comment.  Belief  was  that  Mrs. 
Hardman  had  forgotten  her  habitual  reserve  in 
a  moment  of  retrospection. 

Her  husband  put  in  quiet  possession  of  a  last 
modest  square  of  mother  earth,  the  widow  pre- 
pared herself  to  battle,  if  need  be,  for  her  rights. 
Never  had  her  like  been  seen  in  the  dull 
chambers  of  the  Probate  Court.  Without  ex- 
pressing aggressiveness,  she  stood  out  before 
men's  eyes  a  stern,  vigilant,  stubborn  fact,  ar- 
rayed in  scant,  though  decent,  black,  her  square 
throat  innocent  of  any  collar,  and  her  feet 
thrust  into  heavy  masculine  boots,  that  added 
weight,  if  not  dignity,  to  her  step. 

No  callow  underlings  or  busy  lawyers  hustled 
her,  as  they  are  wont  to  hustle  the  poor  Irish 
widow  with  her  apologetic  manners  and  counte- 
nance corrugated  by  anxiety.  An  opinion  pre- 
vailed that  she  carried  an  expostulator  of  for- 
midable caliber  in  the  leg  of  her  right  boot. 

As  somebody  laughingly  remarked  afterward, 
she  eyed  the  clerk  mumbling  the  oath  before  her 
much  as  a  self-conscious  rooster  eyes  a  strange 
bug  sprawling  helplessly  under  his  scratching 
claw. 

Her  shrewd,  "What's  dot  you  zay?"  startled 
that  limp  functionary  into  decent  explanatory 
English. 

The  Judge,  asking  the  ordinary  routine  ques- 
tions touching  the  property  left  by  the  deceased, 
was  struck  by  her  clear  and  explicit  replies. 
For  a  woman — and  one  who  could  not  write 
her  name — her  command  of  dates  and  dimen- 
sions was  remarkable. 


THE    CALIFORNIA!?. 


Before  joining  her  husbancTupon  the  Potrero, 
it  seems  that  she  had  held  possession  of  a  piece 
of  property  at  North  Beach.  This  was  now 
leased  to  a  relative,  who  had  pledged  himself 
to  defend  it  from  lawless  encroachment.  Ac- 
cording to  the  high  hopes  then  cherished  of  the 
future  of  real  estate  in  San  Francisco,  this  land 
alone  would  make  Mrs.  Hardman  rich.  The 
dreariest  pessimist  only,  if  such  existed  in  Cali- 
fornia's golden  days,  foresaw  that  the  collapse 
in  rents  and  values,  which  began  late  in  '53,  was 
to  be  in  a  measure  final. 

Mrs.  Hardman's  attorney  rather  plumed  him- 
self upon  having  so  singular  a  client. 

"  She  is  apprehensive  of  but  one  creature  on 
the  face  of  the  earth,"  he  said,  laughingly  dis- 
cussing her  with  his  brother  lawyers — "a  squat- 
ter. I  pity  a  bird  of  that  feather  who  lights  on 
her  land.  There'll  be  no  red  tape  about  her 
writ  of  ejectment,  but  there  will  be  considera- 
ble cold  lead." 

"Zhoost  to  dinks,  Zhag,"  lamented  this  hard 
and  blood-thirsty  creature,  sitting  dejectedly  at 
home  after  her  first  day  in  court,  "dot  I  should 
live  to  hear  you  fader  galled  Dhomas  Hartman, 
diseased!" 

The  ice  having  been  broken  between  Mrs. 
Hardman  and  her  neighbors,  the  women,  'at 
least,  took  occasion  to  visit  her  now  and  again. 
Never  inhospitable,  she  did  not  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  their  voluble  gossip,  but  would  sit  a 
little  apart,  watching  and  listening  with  an  air 
of  speculation,  putting  in  a  sober  word  at  times. 
Jack  invariably  took  his  overpowering  blushes 
into  the  corner  remotest  from  the  guests,  and 
there  gaped  or  grinned  in  dumb  enjoyment  of 
the  noise  and  company.  One  evening,  how- 
ever; he  forgot  himself  in  a  loud  laugh  over 
some  vulgar  witticism  of  Mrs.  O'Dennis,  and 
drew  upon  himself  the  lavish  compliments  of 
that  huge  dame. 

"Och,  it's  a  foine  b'y  yez  have  there,  Mrs. 
Harrdman,"  cried  she,  with  her  blear  eyes  fixed 
upon  Jack,  and  her  throat  full  of  husky  chuck- 
les. "There  ain't  his  match  betune  here  an' 
the  Plazy.  Begorra,  if  I  wasn't  tied  to  Timmy, 
I'd  be  afther  havin'  Jack  mesilf,  or  may  I  choke 
wid  the  lie." 

At  fifteen,  the  lad  was,  indeed,  a  splendid 
young  giant,  and  his  mother  was  proud  of  him. 
But  Mrs.  O'Dennis's  language  offended  her,  the 
more  because  she  noted  how  eagerly  Jack  was 
swallowing  it.  So  she  came  to  the  rescue,  ad- 
ministering the  following  curt  sentences  as  a 
corrective  to  nauseous  flattery : 

"Dere's  boys,"  she  said,  dividing  a  sidelong 
glance  between  her  son  and  Mrs.  O'Dennis, 
"und  dere's  men.  Und  dere's  dem  ain't  neider 
boys  nor  men.  I  galls  'em  fools !" 


But  one  inference  was  possible.  Still,  Jack 
did  not  take  it  to  heart.  What  with  Mrs.  O'Den- 
nis's praises  and  his  mother's  severity,  he  fairly 
perspired  with  delight. 

Later,  when  the  visitors  were  going,  Mrs. 
Hardman  became  so  far  confidential  as  to  an- 
nounce her  proposed  departure  for  that  long- 
time mysterious  region,  "Podro  Wolley,"  her 
object  being  to  see  to  her  property  there. 

"You'll  be  afther  lavin'  Jack  to  take  care  iv 
this  place,  I  suppose?"  inquired  Mrs.  O'Dennis. 

That  was  his  mother's  intention. 

"An'  a  tough  wan  he'll  be,  begorra,  for  the 
squatthers,  if  they  thry  to  handle  him  !"  she  ex- 
claimed, gazing  upon  him  admiringly,  as  he 
lingered  in  the  background. 

"There's  enough  of  them  squatters — wolves, 
I  call  'em — around,"  said  Mrs.  Penniford,  who 
always  encouraged  exciting  topics  of  conversa- 
tion. "Pap  says  there  was  three  men  killed  to- 
day on  Third  Street,  defendin'  their  land." 

Mrs.  Hardman  was  moved  by  this  story.  It 
was  Third  Street  to-day ;  it  might  be  the  Po- 
trero to-morrow.  Whoever  owned  a  bit  of 
ground  in  those  times  must  face  the  possibility 
of  being  called  upon  to  surrender  it. 

Mother  and  son  left  alone  (Julia  had  been 
sent  to  North  Beach  immediately  after  the  fu- 
neral), the  former  sat  pondering.  Jack  dutifully 
waited,  knowing  that  she  had  something  on  her 
mind.  Presently  the  woman  lifted  her  pale,  de- 
termined countenance  upon  him,  and  delivered 
the  following  quaint  homily': 

"Zhag,  we  must  all  die  once  in  a  while.  We 
zhenerally  goes  by  degrees." 

She  meant  one  by  one. 

"Zome  he  gids  a  zigness.  Zome  he  goes  an- 
odder  ways.  Dot  neurolchy  fedges  a  plenty. 
It  fedged  your  fader.  If  we  live  long  enough, 
it  will  fedge  me  und  you.  When  it's  a  queztion 
of  proberty,  Zhag,"  shaking  a  solemn  finger  and 
head  at  him,  "when  it's  a  queztion  of  proberty, 
why  zhoost  dinks  dot  bistol  palls  don'd  hurt  no 
worzer  dan  dot  neurolchy,  nohow.  You  fader 
he  zayt,  'Don'da  give  up  dot  landt !' " 

The  next  day,  the  widow  set  forth  on  her 
lonely  journey.  The  winter  had  been  one  of 
unusual  bitterness.  The  March  heavens  had 
poured  forth  a  flood  of  waters  upon  the  melting 
snow.  Dry  gulches  became  the  beds  of  brawl- 
ing rivers.  Stage  roads  were  impassable. 

Often  through  driving  rain,  always  through 
mud  and  slime,  sometimes  in  a  rough  country 
cart,  oftener  afoot,  and  once  up  to  her  neck  wad- 
ing a  treacherously  swollen  creek,  Mrs.  Hard- 
man went  on  her  determined  way. 

An  odor  of  the  grave  clung  to  the  shanty 
which  her  husband  had  left  to  go  to  his  death- 
bed. The  roof  leaked  like  a  sieve ;  she  mended 


A   HOMELY  HEROINE. 


59 


it  as  best  she  could.  The  rude  brush  fences 
were  blown  flat  in  some  places ;  she  set  them 
up  again.  This  done,  and  a  sheep -herder  found 
who  would  hold  possession  for  her  in  return  for 
pasturage,  she  set  out  on  her  homeward  journey. 

By  the  time  she  reached  San  Josd,  the  storm 
had  blown  over,  and  the  stage  was  about  to 
start  for  San  Francisco. 

This  rude  conveyance  set  her  down  not  far 
distant  from  the  little  bridge  at  the  foot  of  Cen- 
ter Street,  now  Sixteenth. 

Rolling  softly  to  right  and  left,  their  dusty 
hopelessness  passed  utterly  away  and  forgotten 
in  an  ecstasy  of  living  green,  the  Potrero  hills 
rose  before  her  joyful  vision.  The  outcropping 
rocks  were  thickly  mossed.  Little  rills  trickled 
down  in  the  rejoicing  hollows. 

Ten  days  of  incredible  toil  had  told  upon  the 
woman's  tough  strength.  She  looked  on  long- 
ingly toward  the  four  walls  so  dear  to  her.  The 
smoke  curling  upward  in  faint,  peaceful  plumes, 
suggested  that  Jack  was  preparing  the  evening 
meal.  She  thought  of  her  purple  gown,  well 
starched  and  clean,  awaiting  her,  and  could 
scarce  endure  for  another  moment  the  clinging 
of  her  wet,  bedraggled  skirts.  Plodding  on 
sturdily,  she  reached  the  western  fence.  A 
dark,  bulky  figure  was  crouching  in  a  hollow 
there.  It  started  up  hurriedly. 

"Zhag!"  she  said,  sharply.  Her  son  burst 
into  tears  of  boyish  rage  and  grief.  She  gazed 
at  him,  and  then  turned  her  face  toward  the  four 
peaceful  walls  and  curling  smoke  blankly. 

"Three  men  are  there  !"  gasped  Jack  answer- 
ing her  dumb  query.  "That over  the 

hill  is  at  the  bottom  of  it." 

"Mrs.  O'Dennis?" 

He  nodded  as  he  went  on  passionately. 

"She  came  two  nights  after  you  left.  To  see 
how  I  was  gettin'  on,  she  said.  When  she  was 
startin'  home  she  axed  would  I  go  along  of  her. 
I  went  into  the  shop.  She  gave  me  suthin'  to 
drink.  An'  that  was  all  I  knowed." 

He  paused,  choked  by  a  great,  helpless  sob. 
His  mother  listened  without  any  comment. 
Sturdy  determination  was  resuming  its  wonted 
control  of  her  wearied  limbs.  Her  head  was 
alert,  her  eye  clear.  A  weather-beaten  end  of 
ribbon  fluttering  from  her  bonnet,  caught  up  by 
a  sudden  chill  air,  snapped  sharply  against  her 
cheek.  She  neither  heard  nor  felt  it. 

"When  I  come  to,  I  was  layin'  out  in  the 
rain.  I  suspicioned  suthin'.  I  got  up  an'  ran 
home.  There  was  a  light  in  the  winder — I 
hadn't  left  any,  an'  I  heard  men  talkin'.  My 
gun  was  standin'  at  the  head  of  my  bed.  I 
couldn't  do  nothin'." 

Mrs.  Hardman's  eyes  traveled  involuntarily 
in  the  direction  of  her  home  once  more.  A 


white,  long  line  of  geese — she  had  raised  them 
herself  and  loved  them — was  winding  slowly 
up -hill  from  the  creek.  She  murmured  softly, 
"  Dem  bretty  goozes !"  as  if  grieved  that  they 
did  not  seem  to  miss  her.  It  was  her  sole  sign 
of  weakness,  Her  next  words  were  harsh  : 

"Do  dem  people  dinks  I  will  give  up  dot 
landt?" 

Within  the  half  hour,  she  was  talking  to  a 
carpenter  on  Mission  street.  All  night  long, 
there  issued  from  this  man's  shop  sounds  of  saw 
and  hammer,  busily  creaking,  busily  beating. 
Mrs.  Hardman  and  Jack  worked  side  by  side. 

The  light  of  early  morning  revealed  the  floor 
of  a  new  cabin  ready  laid,  and  its  walls  went  up 
bravely.  By  midday,  the  roof  was  on ;  by  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  it  stood  completed; 
at  .four,  it  was  going  along  Center  street  on 
wheels. 

The  carpenter  and  two  teamsters  where  chiv- 
alrously pledged  to  set  it  on  the  widow's  land. 

So  rough  and  broken  was  the  road  that  at 
times  the  shanty  rattled  and  reeled,  and  once 
had  nearly  fallen.  A  few  additional  planks  be- 
ing laid  at  the  bridge,  the  precious  burden  was 
gotten  safely  over  the  creek.  On  the  hill  slopes 
progress  was  necessarily  slow ;  but,  at  length, 
the  desecrated  home  came  into  view.  As  if  in 
mockery  of  Mrs.  Hardman's  trouble,  the  smoke 
still  peacefully  curled  over  the  roof. 

Reaching  the  western  fence  (through  which  a 
way  must  be  broken),  without  any  sign  that  the 
occupants  of  the  cabin  had  observed  them,  brief 
council  was  held.  It  was  believed  that  the  un- 
avoidable noise  would  bring  the  robbers  out  of 
doors.  All  stood  on  the  alert,  Jack  took  the 
ax  and  his  mother  gave  the  signal.  At  the 
stout  blows,  rails  went  crashing  down ;  but  their 
fears  were  not  justified.  Only  a  window  in  the 
distant  shanty  was  hastily  raised,  and  Dodd,  the 
carpenter,  was  struck  by  a  spent  ball. 

One  of  the  teamsters — a  violent  fellow — 
abused  the  squatters  roundly  and  dared  them 
to  come  out.  Mrs.  Hardman  ordered  him  to 
drive  on. 

It  was  pitch  dark  before  a  foundation  had 
been  hastily  leveled  in  the  hillside  and  the  new 
shanty  set  there  in  a  position  to  command  the 
old.  This  done,  the  woman  sturdily  bade  her 
helpers  to  go  back  quietly  to  their  homes,  and 
leave  her  to  defend  her  own. 

She  listened  as  long  as  she  could  hear  the 
retreating  voices  of  her  friends.  Satisfied  that 
they  had  retired  without  any  warlike  demon- 
stration, she  shut  the  door  of  her  little  fort. 
Jack  sat  on  the  floor  with  his  back  against  it. 
Her  station  was  at  the  one  small  window. 

They  had  neither  light  nor  fire.  A  raw,  blus- 
tering wind  beat  itself  frantically  about  the 


6o 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


shanty,  as  if  enraged  at  the  new  obstruction  to 
its  free  sweep  across  the  slope.  In  spite  of  the 
coarse  blankets  provided  by  their  sympathiz- 
ers, it  was  bitterly  cold.  The  darkness  was  omi- 
nous and  appalling.  Out  of  it  the  woman  would 
whisper  at  intervals,  "Zhag?"  and  the  boy  would 
answer,  "I'm  awake,  mother." 

The  hours  dragged  so  heavily  that  it  may 
have  been  no  later  than  midnight,  when  a  sharp 
exclamation  roused  Jack  from  an  uneasy  doze. 

"What  do  you  hear,  mother?" 

"Listen." 

He  heard,  too.  A  sound  so  faint  it  might 
have  been  the  crowing  of  a  distant  cock  expect- 
ant of  morning ;  but,  gradually  drawing  nearer 
and  nearer,  there  were  human  tones. 

"Mother,"  he  whispered,  excitedly,  "good  rea- 
son the  squatters  ain't  attackted  us;  they  wasn't 
to  home." 

"Dere  was  one  man  in  dot  house,"  she  an- 
swered, slowly.  "He  coot  killed  us  all  if  we 
wend  near.  Dem  odders  are  goming  back  from 
dot  zaloon  crazy  drunk." 

Oaths,  quarrelsome  shouts,  and  snatches  of 
ribald  song  went  to  confirm  the  truth  of  this 
guess.  And  by  these  the  breathless  listeners 
were  enabled  to  follow  their  enemies'  unsteady 
way  along  the  fence  and  into  the  cabin. 

Jack  now  anticipated  an  immediate  attack; 
but,  after  watching  and  waiting  a  patient  while, 
Mrs.  Hardman  said: 

"Lie  down  und  zleep,  Zhag.  Dey  will  gome 
in  the  morning." 

The  boy's  heavy  breathings  soon  filled  the 
cabin.  Meanwhile  his  mother  sat  at  her  post, 
alert  and  vigilant,  watching  a  candle  that  flick- 
ered in  the  window  of  her  old  home.  How 
busy  her  thoughts  were,  dipping  into  the  past 
of  honest  and  frugal  toil,  into  the  present  of  dis- 
comfort and  danger,  into  the  future  of  uncer- 
tainty !  While  she  had  a  drop  of  wholesome 
courage  in  her  veins,  she  would  not  give  up  one 
foot  of  the  land.  Upon  that  she  was  sternly  re- 
solved. She  and  Jack  would  fight  and  die  for 
it,  if  need  be.  There  was  no  redress  in  the  te- 
dious processes  of  the  law. 

The  candle  still  flickered  down  below,  and 
she  gazed  at  it,  or  seemed  to  gaze  at  it,  steadily. 
It  may  be  that  her  heavy  eye-lids  fell  in  an  in- 
stant of  unconsciousness,  for  the  feeble  candle- 
flicker  had  suddenly  become  a  broad  flame, 
lighting  up  the  hill-side  and  angrily  reddening 
the  lowering  sky. 

What  had  happened,  what  was  happening, 
was  clear  to  her  in  a  flash. 

"Zhag,"  she  cried,  in  a  strong,  wakening  voice, 
"dem  drunken  men  has  zet  demzelves  afire." 

The  sleeper  neither  woke  nor  stirred.  She 
shook  him  roughly,  but  he  was  heavy  with 


slumber  and  could  not  understand.  The  mo- 
ments were  precious.  She  pulled  him  back 
from  the  door,  opened  it,  and  ran  down  hill. 
No  human  voice  broke  the  stillness.  The  eager 
flames  leaped  and  crackled.  The  cabin  was  a 
mere  shell,  and  as  dry  as  tinder. 

Jack  awoke  shuddering  with  cold.  An  un- 
mistakable draft  of  out-door  air  was  blowing  on 
his  face.  He  held  up  a  startled  hand,  and  felt 
the  wind  upon  that. 

"Mother!"  he  whispered,  in  shaken  tones. 

The  silence  was  ominous.  Strange  visions 
of  disaster  had  troubled  his  later  sleep — he 
now  thought  them  realities.  The  squatters  had 
attacked  them,  and  he  was  lying  wounded,  he 
knew  not  where. 

"Mother!" 

He  fancied  he  heard  a  smothered  groan.  He 
rose,  and  half  stumbled,  half  fell,  through  the 
open  door. 

Little  shoots  of  flame,  and  quick,  fiery  sparks, 
rose  up  from  a  mysterious  hollow,  he  could  not 
tell  in  what  direction.  The  air  was  full  of 
smoke.  He  was  utterly  bewildered.  Some- 
thing seemed,  in  some  blind  way,  to  direct  his 
steps.  He  ran  forward,  and  struck  against  a 
prostrate  human  body. 

Great  and  virtuous  indignation  blazed  forth 
against  "Old  Mother  Dutchy"  over  the  hill. 
Those  who  had  sympathized  with  her  in  her 
land  troubles  now  bitterly  denounced  her.  Had 
she  shot  the  squatters,  the  popular  verdict  might 
have  acquitted  her ;  but  to  fire  a  roof  over  the 
heads  of  drunken  and  sleeping  men  was  the 
work  of  a  fiend. 

In  the  small  hours  of  morning,  Mrs.  O'Den- 
nis  had  been  awakened  by  a  vigorous  pounding 
on  her  door,  and,  demanding  who  was  there, 
the  answer  came : 

"  It's  us,  Finnegan  and  Cronin.  We're  afther 
fetchin'  Tim.  We're  badly  hurted,  an'  he's  nigh- 
hand  dead." 

The  rescued  men  told  conflicting  stories. 
With  unexpected  chivalry,  they  seemed  bent 
upon  disclaiming  any  praise,  each  in  the  other's 
favor.  According  to  Finnegan,  Cronin  had 
roused  him  and  carried  Tim  out ;  according  to 
Cronin,  these  good  deeds  were  Finnegan's. 
Tim's  poor,  miserable  life  trembled  in  the  bal- 
ance. He  could  not  speak.  But  on  one  point 
the  two  friends  were  agreed:  they  had  both 
seen  "Old  Mother  Dutchy"  performing  witch- 
like  antics  around  the  burning  building.  They 
went  down  to  the  city  together  to  swear  out  a 
warrant  for  her  arrest,  on  a  charge  of  incendi- 
arism. The  mere  syllables  had  frightful  mean- 
ing in  those  days  of  devastating  fires. 


THE  FESTIVAL    OF  CHILDHOOD. 


61 


As  the  woman  was  a  well  known  desperate 
character,  and  was  backed  by  her  son,  three 
officers  were  detailed  to  make  the  arrest.  Mr. 
Finnegan  accompained  them. 

The  little  cabin  that  had  made  so  sudden  ap- 
pearance stood  closed  and  silent  above  the  spot 
where  blackened  cinders  told  of  sudden  disap- 
pearance in  flame  and  smoke. 

The  four  men  climbed  the  fence  and  marched 
resolutely  forward.  Finnegan  gave  unofficial 
advice  to  fire  at  the  first  sign  of  life,  or  "Moth- 
er Dutchy  wud  have  the'dhrop"  on  them.  Not 
the  least  sign  of  life  was  given,  however. 

"Be  the  howly  Moses!"  was  Finnegan's  agi- 
tated whisper,  "the  ould  hag  has  made 
thracks!" 

They  listened,  crouching  at  the  side  of  the 
house.  There  was  no  stir ;  no  footstep  within. 
But  hark!  Was  that  a  muffled  groan  ?  Cocking 
his  pistol,  the  officer  in  command  opened  the 
door  and  stepped,  without  any  warning,  over  the 
threshold.  The  others  crowded  up  behind  him. 

Something  down  in  a  corner,  that  seemed  a 
huddle  of  old  clothing,  shook  and  stirred,  and  a 
face  was  lifted  slowly  toward  them;  a  blind, 
blank  face,  horrible  to  see,  with  blackened  fore- 
head, shriveled  eyelids,  and  raw,  ragged  burns. 
About  this  countenance,  what  may  once  have 
been  neat,  gray  hair  hung  in  a  few  crisped, 
hideous  knots. 

"You  too  lade,  Doctor,"  said  a  rough,  wander- 
ing voice.  "Where's  Zhag?" 


The  lifted  head  fell  back ;  the  huddle  of  cloth- 
ing writhed,  groaning. 

Even  Finnegan,  coarse  brute  that  he  was,  un- 
covered silently. 

"Zwalleyin'  fire  is  bad,  Zhag,"  came  the 
rough,  wandering  voice  again;  "worzer  dan 
dot  neurolchy.  But  I  got  dem  drunken  men 
oud." 

There  were  hoarse,  gasping  sounds;  then  a 
long  silence. 

"Is  she  gone?"  whispered  Finnegan.  An 
officer  put  up  a  warning  hand.  The  woman 
stirred  again ;  and  an  impatient  quacking  of  un- 
fed geese,  down  by  the  burned  cabin,  borne 
loudly  through  the  open  door,  she  murmured, 
"Dem  bretty  goozes."  The  officer  did  not  un- 
derstand. "Water?"  he  asked,  bending  over 
her.  Her  answer  came  strong  and  clear,  "Dot 
landt!  Don'da  give  up  dot  landt,  Mart'a?" 

And  Jack?  His  mother  dead  and  buried,  he 
went  to  Pajaro  Valley,  and  got  into  a  dispute 
with  the  sheep-herder.  The  latter  claimed  that 
Mrs.  Hardman  had  deeded  him  one-half  her 
property  there  in  consideration  of  his  services. 
He  produced  a  paper;  it  was  signed  "Martha 
Hardman." 

"The  deed  is  a  forgery!"  cried  poor  Jack; 
"my  mother  could  not  write." 

Whereupon,  the  sheep-herder  leveled  his  gun, 
took  deliberate  aim,  and  fired.  Jack  fell,  never 
to  rise  again.  EVELYN  M.  LUDLUM. 


THE   FESTIVAL  OF   CHILDHOOD. 


[Mr.  Edward  Champury,  a  resident  of  the  Familistere,  at  Guise,  France,  gives,  in  Le  Devoir,  a  graphic 
account  of  the  late  annual  "Festival  of  Childhood"  (F&te  de  L'Enfance)  in  that  institution.  The  following 
is  a  careful  translation:] 


The  first  Sunday  of  September  is  a  great  day 
for  the  twelve  hundred  inhabitants  of  the  Fa- 
milistere. On  that  day,  every  year,  is  celebrated 
the  Festival  of  Childhood ;  on  that  day  the  pu- 
pils of  the  schools  of  the  association  receive  re- 
wards for  good  conduct,  for  progress  in  study, 
and  for  assiduity. 

This  day,  therefore,  is  the  burden  of  every 
conversation  for  a  long  time  before  it  arrives. 
The  mammas  and  big  sisters  make  their  needles 
fly  over  the  new  costumes  and  fresh  toilettes 
that  must  be  ready  for  that  day.  Little  wide- 
awake boys  talk  about  the  prizes  they  hope  to 
win,  and  of  the  games  in  which  they  will  take 
part ;  little  girls,  with  silky  hair  bristling  in  curl- 
papers, describe  to  each  other  the  new  dresses 


being  made  for  them,  and  the  color  of  the  rib- 
bons they  will  wear.  Papas  and  big  brothers, 
during  the  leisure  hours  afforded  by  their  daily 
toil,  discuss  the  decorations  of  the  great  central 
court,  and  study  how  to  make  it  more  splendid 
than  it  was  the  preceding  year.  In  a  word, 
everybody  interests  himself  in  the  fete  with  as 
much  enthusiasm,  at  least,  as  if  it  were  a  per- 
sonal affair. 

Sunday  Morning. — The  rain  pours,  but  this 
does  not  prevent  the  people  from  busying  them- 
selves with  the  festival  preparations  as  soon 
as  the  day  breaks.  The  Familistere,  indeed 
(thanks  to  its  style  of  construction),  is  marvel- 
ously  well  adapted  to  the  celebration  of  festi- 


62 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


vals  even  in  the  worst  weather.  The  great 
courts,  covered  with  glass,  afford  perfect  shel- 
ter and  protection  to  everything.  Therefore, 
during  all  the  morning  hours,  you  see  ladders 
raised  in  the  central  court,  and  hear  the  sound 
of  hammers — no  one  paying  any  attention  to 
the  rattle  of  the  rain  upon  the  great  glazed  roof. 
Great  is  the  animation  in  the  court.  A  whole 
army  of  joyous  volunteers  are  decorating  the 
galleries  extending  all  around  the  court  on  three 
stories.  Trophies  of  flags  bearing  the  colors  of 
France,  garlands  of  evergreens  or  of  brilliant 
paper,  shields  bearing  various  mottoes,  masses 
of  branches  in  full  foliage,  are  fastened  and  fes- 
tooned all  along  the  three  galleries,  which  ex- 
tend around  the  four  sides  of  the  vast  nave. 
At  the  eastern  extremity  of  this  court  an  im- 
mense escutcheon,  three  stories  high,  symbol- 
izes the  instruction  and  the  protection  of  child- 
hood. 

Sunday  Afternoon. — The  distribution  of 
prizes  is  announced  for  three  o'clock,  and  from 
a  quarter  after  two  the  pretty  building  devoted 
to  the  nursery  and  the  kindergarten — the  place 
appointed  for  the  rendezvous  of  the  children — 
is  alive  with  a  joyous  throng.  While  without 
the  thunder  rolls  and  the  rain  pours  like  the 
best  day  of  the  Deluge,  the  spectacle  inside  is 
one  of  the  most  charming.  This  building,  it 
must  be  noted,  is  connected  with  the  palace  of 
the  Familistere  by  a  covered  gallery.  Never 
was  a  hive  of  bees  more  full  of  life  and  joy. 
Every  face  is  flushed  with  pleasure,  every  eye 
sparkles  with  keen  expectancy.  Those  among 
the  children  who,  the  evening  before,  received 
decorations  for  good  conduct  or  progress  in 
learning,  are  the  first  to  arrive.  Ah  !  how  hap- 
py they  are !  They  are  to  carry  a  banner  in  the 
procession — a  banner  of  brilliant  colors,  dis- 
playing in  handsome  golden  letters  the  special- 
ty in  which  they  have  obtained  the  first  rank. 
Not  without  some  difficulty  do  the  principal 
and  the  assistant  teachers  succeed  in  classing, 
in  the  order  of  their  merit,  all  the  little  boys 
and  girls,  so  impatient  and  excited  are  they 
over  their  great  yearly  fete. 

While  the  children  are  forming  for  the  pro- 
cession in  their  building,  the  orchestra  of  the 
Familistere  meet  in  the  halls  of  the  casino;  the 
company  of  firemen  and  the  archery  company 
form  their  lines  before  the  principal  facade  of 
the  palace,  and  there  receive  their  flags.  The 
other  divisions  of  the  cortege  assembled  in  the 
great  glazed  court  of  the  left  wing. 

At  half  past  two,  the  different  groups  march 
out  and  enter  the  great  central  court,  already 
described,  and  there  the  cortege  is  formed. 
The  firemen  and  archers  take  their  place  at  the 


end  of  the  court,  behind  the  ranks  of  children 
formed  in  a  half-circle.  In  less  than  fifteen 
minutes  every  one  is  in  his  place,  and  the  pro- 
cession moves,  the  Familistere  band  of  musi- 
cians filling  the  immense  structure  of  the  court 
with  its  grand  harmonies. 

By  a  fortunate  coincidence  the  storm  ceases 
at  this  moment.  The  clouds  roll  away,  and  the 
sun  appears  in  all  its  glory,  just  as  the  proces- 
sion passes  out  of  the  central  door  of  the  court 
and  crosses  the  great  place  laid  in  cement, 
which  extends  from  the  palace  to  the  theater, 
the  schools,  and  the  other  dependent  buildings. 
A  crowd  of  people,  mostly  from  the  city  of 
Guise,  just  across  the  River  Oise,  encumber 
this  place,  while  from  the  two  hundred  and 
sixty-six  windows  of  the  front  of  the  palace  the 
inhabitants  of  the  numerous  apartments  look 
down  upon  the  imposing  spectacle.  According 
to  custom,  the  sappers  clear  the  way  through 
the  crowd;  after  them  follow  the  drums  and 
the  clarions,  all  in  their  particular  uniform; 
then  come  the  Familistere  firemen  in  their 
severe  uniform,  their  helmets  glistening  in  the 
sun,  bearing  their  colors  in  advance.  After 
these,  in  the  place  of  honor,  march  the  joyous 
heroes  of  the  day,  the  pupils  of  the  schools  and 
of  the  kindergarten,  two  by  two,  or  rather  in 
two  files — the  girls  at  the  left,  and  the  boys  at 
the  right.  The  students  of  the  first  merit  carry 
the  banners ;  others  wear  medals,  or  ribbons  of 
different  colors,  as  insignia  of  distinction. 

The  second  part  of  the  cortege  marches  in 
the  following  order : 

i. — The  Familistere  Musical  Society  (VHar- 
monie  du  Familistere },  in  their  elegant  uni- 
form, and  bearing  their  magnificent  banner  of 
garnet  velvet,  crowned  with  a  trophy  of  medals. 

2. — The  founder  of  the  Familistere,  M. 
Godin,  attended  by  the  two  councils  of  the 'as- 
sociation, the  presidents  and  secretaries  of  the 
Boards  of  Mutual  Assurance,  Medical  Aid,  and 
Pensions. 

3. — The  employe's  of  the  Familistere  Iron 
Works,  and  a  delegation  of  former  workmen. 

The  Familistere  Archery  Company,  bearing 
its  flag,  closes  the  procession.  As  the  cortege 
reaches  the  entrance  to  the  theater,  the  fire 
company  form  in  lines  on  either  side,  between 
which  the  cortege  passes,  the  band  plays  a  piece 
from  its  rtpertoire^  and  quickly  the  theater  is 
filled.  The  public  occupy  the  three  tiers  of  gal- 
leries. The  parterre  is  devoted  to  the  children 
— the  boys  at  the  right,  the  girls  at  the  left,  and 
on  both  sides  the  smallest  in  front.  M.  Godin 
and  the  councils  take  their  places  on  the  stage, 
the  orchestra  behind  them. 

Masses  of  fuchsias,  Reine  Marguerite,  dah- 
lias, and  amaranths,  growing  in  elegant  vases, 


THE  FESTIVAL   OF  CHILDHOOD. 


are  arranged  on  steps  that  rise  from  the  floor 
of  the  parterre  to  the  stage.  The  vases,  and 
also  their  pedestals,  are  cast  in  the  Familistere 
works.  At  the  foot  of  the  stairs  leading  to  the 
stage  is  a  very  beautiful  terrestial  globe  and  a 
cosmographe  a  bougie*  All  around  the  first  gal- 
lery are  displayed  drawings  executed  by  the 
pupils,  and  in  the  lobby  there  is  a  fine  exhibi- 
tion of  needle -work.  The  ladies  belonging  to 
committees  have  seats  upon  the  stage. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  see  the  pupils  of  the  Famil- 
istere schools  grouped  in  this  way,  the  boys  in 
their  finest  Sunday  clothes,  the  girls  in  their 
daintiest  and  freshest  toilettes.  All  are  irre- 
proachably clean.  All  are  well,  and  some  ele- 
gantly, dressed.  Yet,  with  four  or  five  excep- 
tions, they  are  sons  and  daughters  of  ordinary 
laboring  men.  This  fact  is  sufficient  comment 
in  itself. 

The  Harmonie,  or  orchestra  of  the  Familis- 
tere, opens  the  ceremonies  —  if  the  word  cere- 
mony may  be  applied  to  this  charming  festival 
of  childhood — by  a  fine  selection  from  Ziegler, 
rEsperance.  A  mixed  chorus  of  children,  with 
a  soprano  solo,  sing  Les  Abeilles  (the  Bees), 
words  by  Henry  Murger,  music  by  Leon  De- 
libes.  The  audience  applauds  with  a  good 
will,  wondering,  no  doubt,  how  the  pupils  of 
the  association  can  execute  a  piece  of  music 
like  this,  bristling  with  changes  of  measure. 

The  singing  ended,  a  young  pupil  named  Eu- 
gene Griviller  takes  his  stand  before  the  cosmo- 
graphe, and,  with  perfect  self-possession  and  in 
a  good  style,  gives  a  lesson  to  his  school-mates. 
From  time  to  time,  to  assure  himself  that  they 
are  listening  attentively,  he  questions  one  or 
another  pupil,  who  rises  and  responds  from  his 
or  her  seat.  For  the  most  difficult  parts,  sev- 
eral pupils  in  turn  are  called  before  the  cosmo- 
graphe, to  put  questions  themselves  or  to  ex- 
plain those  put  to  them. 

After  this  lesson,  which  we  can  say  without 
exaggeration  astonished  the  audience,  a  charm- 
ing little  girl,  Palmyre  Poulain,  gives  a  recita- 
tion with  great  aplomb  and  perfect  accentua- 
tion. The  subject  is,  "The  Origin  of  the  Lazy 
and  the  Improvident."  Two  poems  follow. 
The  last,  "My  Grandmother's  Spectacles,"  by 
Mademoiselle  Heloise  Point,  a  little  girl  of 
nine  years,  is  rendered  with  such  art,  and  at 
the  same  time  with  such  naturalness,  that  the 
entire  audience,  surprised  and  charmed,  ap- 
plaud her  to  the  echo.  It  is  an  honor  to  the 
Familiste're  schools  to  have  among  its  pupils 
those  who  can  hold  a  large  audience  thus  en- 
tranced. 

*  The  technical  name  of  the  apparatus  for  teaching  cosmog- 
raphy :  "  The  constitution  of  the  whole  system  of  worlds,  or  the 
figure,  disposition,  and  relation  of  all  its  parts." 


At  this  point  of  the  ceremonies,  M.  Godin  de- 
livered the  remarkable  address  which  we  give 
below,  and  which]  will  show  that  he  takes  is- 
sue very  directly  with  the  routines  of  instruc- 
tion so  generally  prevailing  in  our  schools.  His 
discourse  was  warmly  applauded. 

ADDRESS  OF  M.   GODIN. 

"Dear  pupils,  another  year  has  passed.  For 
you  a  year  of  study — of  progress  in  that  knowl- 
edge which  men  and  women  must  acquire  in 
order  to  render  themselves  intelligently  useful 
in  whatever  career  they  may  be  called  to  fol- 
low. 

"Education,  as  we  conceive  it,  should  pre- 
pare the  child  for  practical  life.  It  should,  in 
the  first  place,  facilitate  his  finding  a  calling, 
and  then  enable  him  to  seize  the  details  of  that 
calling  and  apply  to  them  the  knowledge  of 
principles  acquired  at  school. 

"Unfortunately,  this  primary  object  of  public 
education  has  not  been  recognized  heretofore. 
Young  people  have  been  forced  to  devote  their 
time  to  what  is  of  little  use  to  them,  while  re- 
ceiving no  instruction  about  those  things  they 
will  most  need  on  leaving  school  or  college. 
Boards  of  education  are  now  taking  a  deter- 
mined stand  against  routine,  and  demanding 
that  children  be  taught  what  is  practical  and 
useful.  But  how  much  time  it  takes  to  es- 
tablish a  rational  theory  of  education — to  con- 
struct a  programme  of  rational  instruction,  and 
then  to  educate  teachers  for  carrying  it  into 
practice ! 

"Such  has  been  the  folly  of  public  school  in- 
struction up  to  this  time,  that  reading,  the  fun- 
damental basis  of  instruction,  has  been  so  neg- 
lected that  before  knowing  how  to  read  well 
pupils  have  been  drilled  in  studies  and  prob- 
lems of  which  they  can  'never  make  any  use. 
Their  memory  has  been  burdened  with  no- 
tions contrary,  in  nearly  all  instances,  to  the 
principles  of  modern  society.  Their  judg- 
ment, therefore,  has  been  atrophied,  and  they 
have  been  left  in  ignorance  of  that  which  is 
most  important  for  them  to  know,  namely: 
the  progress  of  nations  toward  liberty  and  in- 
dustrial emancipation. 

"It  is  vitally  important  that  public  instruction 
should  abandon  its  old  methods  and  rise  to  the 
needs  of  the  present  day.  To  this  end,  the  art 
of  reading  must  be  taught  with  care,  with  meth- 
od, and  with  good  text -books.  Not  only  is  it 
essential  that  the  pupil  know  how  to  read  in 
the  commonly  received  sense  of  the  word :  he 
must  be  taught  the  full  meaning  of  words,  to 
digest  each  sentence,  and  to  seize  perfectly  the 
sense  of  the  author.  ' 


64 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


"Give  to  the  child  the  art  of  reading,  and 
you  have  given  him  the  key  to  science.  How 
many  men  have  risen  to  distinction  by  their 
own  efforts,  after  this  simple  accomplishment ! 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  all  that  a  child  learns  he 
will  forget  unless  he  learns  how  to  read  well. 
On  the  contrary,  if  he  is  a  good  reader  he  will 
not  only  retain  what  he  learns,  but  he  will  con- 
stantly learn  more  because  of  his  love  of  read- 
ing. Science  to  him  will  be  easily  accessible. 

"Fathers  and  mothers,  if  you  would  know 
the  amount  of  useful  instruction  which  your 
children  are  receiving,  measure  it  by  the  per- 
fection of  their  reading ;  for  if  they  read  poorly, 
whatever  they  learn  will  be  of  little  use  to  them. 
Let  us,  then,  be  careful  that  our  children  be- 
come good  readers,  since  it  is  by  reading  that 
they  become  acquainted  with  what  goes  on  in 
the  world.  Being  good  readers,  their  thoughts 
will  acquire  more  precision,  and  the  expression 
of  them  in  writing  more  force  and  elegance. 
Arithmetic  should  be  taught  by  constant  exer- 
cise upon  problems  of  common,  practical  use. 
Better  far  abandon  the  old  method  of  making 
them  study  the  solution  of  problems  which  have 
nothing  to  do  with'  their  after  life.  On  the  con- 
trary, let  them  be  well  drilled  upon  the  most 
ordinary,  practical  questions.  Thus  they  will 
be  developed  into  good  workmen,  foremen,  en- 
gineers, and  finally  leaders  of  industry.  Noth- 
ing which  they  have  learned  at  school  should 
be  lost  to  them,  and  thus  their  entrance  into  a 
productive  career  will  be  easy. 

"Such  has  been  the  principle  that  has  guided 
us  in  the  education  of  the  children  of  the  Fa- 
milistere, and  this  principle  should  continue  to 
inspire  us  if  we  would  have  all  our  children 
worthy  successors  of  their  fathers — successors 
who  will  continue  to  present,  in  the  Familistere, 
the  spectacle  of  a  population  of  workers  living 
in  ease,  harmony,  and  domestic  happiness.  But 
we  must  not  forget  that  this  result  is  too  broad 
to  be  compassed  by  school  instruction  alone.  Be- 
sides the  knowledge  necessary  to  the  perform- 
ance of  daily  functions,  man  must  understand 
his  social  destiny,  his  rights  and  duties  as  a  cit- 
izen ;  and  with  us  a  still  further  acquirement  is 
essential:  namely,  the  sentiment  of  fraternal 
love. 

"We  confess,  with  regret,  that  our  Familis- 
tere schools  are  not  yet  free  from  the  common 
faults  of  public  schools.  Good  text -books  are 
greatly  needed — text -books  meeting  the  de- 
mands of  modern  methods  of  instruction ;  and, 
also,  habits  contracted  under  the  bad  influ- 
ences of  the  past  are  an  obstacle  that  must  be 
overcome. 

"Our  schools  must  rid  themselves  of  all 
priestly  interference,  if  they  would  become  re- 


ally progressive,  and  inaugurate  a  system  of  in- 
struction worthy  of  a  republican  government, 
preparing  for  the  nation  noble  citizens,  who  re- 
gard labor  as  the  first  and  most  sacred  function 
of  society — citizens  rejecting  all  ideas  of  caste 
and  class,  and  cherishing  the  sentiments  of  hu- 
man dignity  and  of  fraternity  among  men. 

"This,  dear  pupils,  is  the  role  which  belongs 
to  you  especially.  In  no  part  of  the  world  has 
there  been  offered  to  any  generation  a  mission 
so  noble  as  that  to  which  you  are  called.  You 
are  to  be  the  continuers  of  the  association  es- 
tablished here.  You  are  to  succeed  your  fa- 
thers in  the  glorious  task  of  practicing  justice  in 
the  distribution  of  the  products  of  labor.  It  is, 
therefore,  indispensable  that  you  raise  yourselves 
through  study  and  learning  to  the  hight  of  the 
role  which  you  have  to  fill.  The  association 
being  established  among  us,  you  are  to  become 
its  laborers,  foremen,  supervisors,  accountants, 
engineers,  directors,  and  its  administrators. 
How  can  you  accomplish  this  object  if  by  your 
efforts  you  do  not  acquire  sufficient  education, 
and  if,  by  trying  to  be  good  and  true,  you  do 
not  raise  yourselves  to  the  hight  of  those  moral 
qualities  necessary  in  the  management  of  a  fra- 
ternal association? 

"And  you,  fathers  and  mothers,  who  are  listen- 
ing to  my  words,  you  who  have  long  enjoyed  the 
advantages  of  this  association,  labor  to  increase 
those  advantages. 

"The  Society  of  the  Familistere  is  now  estab- 
lished. The  institutions  are  founded  here  to 
give  each  of  you  security  for  the  morrow,  care 
and  medical  aid  in  sickness,  a  retreat  for  inva- 
lids, to  widows  and  orphans  the  means  of  liv- 
ing, to  every  child  education — all  these  institu- 
tions were  placed  in  your  hands  at  the  same 
time  that  you  became  partners  in  the  societary 
industries  and  in  the  instruments  of  labor  which 
give  you  your  means  of  living. 

"But,  despite  the  fact  accomplished,  many 
among  you  still  refuse  to  believe  in  the  reality 
of  the  association  that  I  have  founded  here 
among  you.  Disposed  to  find  in  every  act  a 
personal  interest,  they  refuse  to  see  things  as 
they  are,  and  vainly  ask  themselves  what  mo- 
tive the  founder  could  have  in  establishing  this 
association.  To  ask  his  workmen  to  share  the 
profits  of  a  great  industry,  when,  as  the  owner, 
he  could  keep  all  for  himself,  is  something  that, 
according  to  them,  no  one  would  ever  do ;  there- 
fore, they  will  not  believe  in  the  association.  The 
dividends  distributed  in  the  past,  and  the  pub- 
lished articles  of  association,  do  not  suffice  to 
convince  them.  A  longer  experience  of  practi- 
cal results  is  necessary.  For  such,  nothing  can 
be  done  but  to  wait.  The  day  is  not  far  off 
when  they  will  come  and  eagerly  demand  to  be 


THE  FESTIVAL   OF  CHILDHOOD. 


inscribed  upon  the  roll  of  members.  They  will 
do  this  when  they  see  their  friends  receiving 
their  yearly  dividends  and  the  interest  that  will 
be  due  them. 

"As  to  those  among  you  whose  hearts  are 
with  the  association,  but  are  too  modest  to  ask 
admission,  I  would  say :  Be  reassured,  Have 
faith  and  confidence.  Our  society  admits  all 
those  who  will  work  for  it  with  good  hearts,  and 
it  exacts  no  sacrifice  of  them. 

"Certain  persons,  I  am  told,  pretend  that  no 
one  can  enter  the  association  except  by  putting 
money  into  it.  They  have  not  read  the  articles 
of  our  constitution,  or  they  are  incapable  of 
comprehending  the  full  significance  of  those 
articles  touching  the  future  realization  of  pros- 
perity for  the  laborer  and  the  abolition  of  the 
wages  system. 

"May  all  doubt  vanish  from  your  hearts,  and, 
in  view  of  what  has  been  already  accomplished, 
may  the  most  timid  become  inspired  with  cour- 
age to  carry  forward  the  great  enterprise  we 
have  undertaken !  Be  vigilant  from  this  time 
forward  in  maintaining  the  common  prosperity. 
Give  to  the  world  the  proof  that  the  laborer 
himself  is  the  largest  factor  in  the  problem  of 
his  own  welfare,  and  that  to  solve  that  problem 
he  needs  only  liberty  and  a  field  of  action. 

"And  now,  directors,  administrators,  and 
members  of  the  councils,  a  noble  task  devolves 
upon  you.  You  are  the  first  to  have  openly  ac- 
cepted the  moral  responsibility  of  cooperating 
for  the  success  of  the  association  of  capital  and 
labor.  Your  efforts  in  the  way  of  industrial 
work,  as  well  as  in  the  organization  of  meas- 
ures best  adapted  to  secure  mutuality  and  fra- 
ternity in  our  association,  will  become  known 
to  posterity.  History  will  record  our  success 
or  our  failure,  and  do  full  justice  to  each  and 
all  of  us  according  to  our  merit ;  for  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  Familistere  is  too  important  a 
fact  in  the  history  of  labor  to  not  be  examined 
some  day  in  all  its  details. 

"The  problem  of  the  conciliation  of  interests 
between  employers  and  laborers  is  the  most 
pressing  one  before  society  at  this  hour.  Let 
us  endeavor  to  prove  that  this  problem  is  not 
insoluble ;  that  justice  and  equity  may  be  estab- 
lished in  the  distribution  of  the  fruits  of  produc- 
tion ;  that  the  worker  of  every  degree,  the  com- 
mon laborer  as  well  as  the  employer,  can  receive 
a  just  share  of  what  he  has  helped  to  produce. 

"Our  efforts  here  have  demonstrated  another 
and  very  important  proposition,  which  is  that 
associative  labor  has  power  to  protect  the  weak, 
and  to  fully  guarantee  the  family  of  the  work- 
man against  poverty. 

"We  have,  I  repeat,  practically  demonstrated 
this  already ;  but  it  is  by  the  perpetuation  of  the 


work  that  the  world  will  become  convinced. 
Our  association  must  continue  to  prosper,  in 
order  that  its  principles  may  serve  the  solution 
of  the  social  problems  that  disturb  society  to- 
day. To  secure  this  result,  our  children  must 
continue  the  work  we  have  begun.  This  is  why 
I  have  called  your  attention  to  the  duty  devolv- 
ing upon  us  in  the  education  of  the  young  in 
the  Familistere  of  Guise,  and  upon  the  impor- 
tance of  developing  the  love  of  labor,  and,  above 
all,  the  love  of  our  association  in  the  hearts  of 
our  children. 

"Do  not  lose  sight  of  this;  for,  from  this 
time  forward,  it  is  not  simply  their  own  indi- 
vidual interests  that  these  children  will  have  to 
consider :  they  are  to  show  the  world  that  it  is 
by  the  power  of  association  that  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  working  classes  is  to  be  effected. 

"From  all  parts  of  the  earth  you  hear  the 
voices  of  the  workers,  demanding  their  rights ; 
everywhere  strikes  and  conflicts  between  capi- 
tal and  labor.  Reflect  upon  the  privations  of 
the  laborer,  and  the  uncertainty  of  his  condi- 
tion, and  remember  that  we  are  accomplishing 
a  holy  work  in  demonstrating  to  the  world  how 
by  the  association  of  capital  and  labor,  we  have 
destroyed  among  us  that  hideous  leprosy  which 
decimates  humanity — Poverty! 

"Such  a  result  is,  indeed,  worthy  of  your  high- 
est courage,  your  warmest  enthusiasm.  Let  us 
work  then,  brothers,  for  it  is  by  labor,  and  by 
the  love  of  doing  good,  that  man  must  accom- 
plish the  salvation  of  the  world." 

Following  the  address  of  M.  Godin,  was  a 
song  by  the  children,  the  music  by  Rivetti,  and 
the  words  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  Then 
came  the  distribution  of  the  prizes. 

The  first  two  names  called  are  the  young 
Griviller — the  same  whom  we  have  just  seen 
demonstrating  before  the  cosmographe — and 
Master  Aristide  Te'tier.  These  two  have  won 
the  prize  of  honor  in  the  highest  division  of  the 
Familistere  schools.  It  should  be  mentioned 
that  in  each  division  it  is  the  pupils  themselves 
who  decide  who  shall  receive  the  prizes.  They 
are  chosen  by  ballot,  and  in  every  instance  it 
has  been  found  that  those  they  elect  are  pre- 
cisely those  whom  the  teachers  would  have 
named,  had  the  responsibility  rested  with  them 
alone. 

Every  promotion  in  the  association  of  the 
Familistere  is  gained  through  legitimate  com- 
petition. Mr.  Godin,  wisely  believing  that  the 
best  way  to  guard  the  institution  of  the  ballot 
from  ever  becoming  corrupt  or  inefficient  was 
to  develop  among  the  members,  from  their 
childhood,  the  habit  of  carefully  appreciating 
merit,  he  introduced  into  the  schools  the  custom 


66 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


of  balloting  for  the  prizes  of  honor,  and  the  re- 
sult has  proved  a  perfect  success. 

After  the  awarding  of  the  prizes  in  the  highest 
division,  the  distribution  of  the  ordinary  prizes 
commences.  These  are  about  the  same  as  in 
preceding  years. 

As  each  name  is  called,  the  pupil  advances 
and  receives,  from  the  hands  of  the  Directress 
of  Education,  a  prize  and  a  crown.  The  pupil 
takes  the  crown  to  one  of  the  occupants  of  the 
big  arm  chairs  on  the  stage,  and  asks  him  or 
her  to  crown  him.  The  prizes  are  beautiful 
books — finely  bound,  illustrated,  and  chosen 
with  the  greatest  care  from  among  the  editions 
published  by  Hachette,  of  Paris.  The  recom- 
penses destined  for  professional  instruction  con- 
sist of  tools,  cases  of  mathematical  instruments, 
etc.,  for  the  boys ;  and  for  the  girls,  sewing  and 
knitting  implements.  Toys  are  given  to  the 
very  young  children. 

The  pupils  receiving  the  highest  honors  this 
year  after  Eugene  Griviller  and  Aristide  Te"tier, 
already  named,  were  Zdphyr  Proix  and  Al- 
phonse  Sarrasin,  of  the  highest  division;  and 
in  the  second  division,  with  He'loise  Point  and 
Palmyre  Poulain,  already  named,  Camille  Del- 
zard.  May  the  publishing  of  their  names  in 
this  journal  be  a  reward  for  their  past  efforts, 
and  an  encouragement  for  the  future ! 

La  Tourangelle^  a  very  beautiful  piece  of 
music  by  Bleger,  with  a  remarkable  part  for  the 
first  cornet,  closed  the  ceremonies,  and  the  quit- 
ting of  the  theatre  was  effected  in  the  same  or- 
der as  the  entrance.  They  all  reassembled  in 
the  court  of  the  left  wing,  and  after  the  singing 
of  the  'Chanson  de  Roland  by  the  children — 
words  by  Sedaine,  music  by  Grdtry — and  the 
execution  of  the  Marseillaise^  the  crowd  dis- 
perse over  the  place,  where  the  industrials  have 
installed  various  amusements.  At  eight  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  the  orchestra  mount  the  plat- 
form raised  for  them  in  the  great  court,  the  ball 
opens  and  continues  until  midnight.  It  is  a 
charming  sight,  this  vast  ball-room,  over  one 
hundred  and  forty -seven  feet  long,  in  which 
hundreds  of  couples  move  about  with  perfect 
ease,  while  thousands  of  spectators  (most  of 


them  from  the  city  of  Guise  and  from  neigh- 
boring villages)  form  a  living  border  in  each  of 
the  galleries  surrounding  this  immense  hall. 

Monday. — This  day  of  the  festival  has  special 
attractions  for  the  children.  It  is  devoted  to 
games  and  plays.  This  year  it  is  favored  by 
uncommonly  fine  weather. 

In  the  early  morning  the  trumpet  of  the  corps 
of  firemen  invites  the  curious  to  a  parade  and 
maneuver  with  the  fire-engines,  the  Familistere 
Theater  being  the  focus  of  a  fictitious  confla- 
gration. 

At  2  P.  M.,  the  drums  and  trumpets  sound  the 
rappel.  The  games  commence.  The  boys, 
with  balle  a  cheval,  casse-pot,  and  calottes  de 
couleur^  occupy  the  court  of  the  central  pavil- 
ion, the  court  of  the  left  wing,  and  the  great 
square  before  ft&fa$adej  while  the  girls  amuse 
themselves  with  blind-man's-buff,  the  game  of 
rings  and  scissors,  in  the  court  of  the  right 
wing  and  of  the  central  building. 

Conclusion. —  Rightly  understood,  festivals 
like  these  are  a  culture  to  the  people,  mentally 
and  morally.  Deprived  of  them,  the  laborer 
degenerates  into  a  mere  working  machine.  It 
is  absolutely  essential  to  him  that  he  should  not 
only  witness,  but  take  part  in,  grand  festivals 
and  ceremonies.  They  afford  him  diversion 
and  rest.  The  Familistere  is  admirably  adapt- 
ed to  this  end.  Where  will  you  find,  except  in 
a  large  association,  grouped  together  in  fami- 
lies, the  conditions  that  enable  simple  laborers 
to  give  festivals  so  grand  and  well  ordered  as 
this  which  we  have  described? 

Be  not  deceived.  The  success  of  the  Famil- 
istere fetes  depends  upon  two  causes,  which, 
operating  heretofore,  have  make  all  their  cele- 
brations splendid,  and  will  make  them  more 
magnificent  in  the  future.  The  first  of  these 
causes  is  that  the  unitary  habitation  affords 
material  conditions  for  grand  celebrations  that 
can  be  found  nowhere  else ;  the  second  is  that 
association  accustoms  its  members  to  seek  their 
pleasure  in  the  pleasure  of  all. 

MARIE  ROWLAND. 


"OLD    CHINA." 


MANCHESTER,  N.  H.,  Nov.  17,  1880. 
MY  DEAR  JOHN  : — When  you  were  here  a 
month  or  so  ago,  and  wandered  about  my  sit- 
ting-room with  your  hands  behind  you,  looking 
at  my  pictures  with  an  air  of  connoisseurship, 
and  inquiring  into  the  history  of  my  bric-a- 


brac  collection,  do  you  remember  that  you  par- 
ticularly admired  a  small,  blue  china  cup  and 
saucer?  It  was  so  thin  that  you  could  hardly 
resist  crushing  it  like  an  egg-shell  in  your  great 
hand,  and,  in  spite  of  your  usual  contempt  of 
"gew-gaws,"  I  think  you  really  wanted  that 


11  OLD    CHINA." 


67 


cup — for  it  was  all  I  could  do  to  keep  you  from 
carrying  it  off  with  you  to  San  Francisco.  It 
is  a  sort  of  relic,  a  sacred  one  to  me — for  it 
has  quite  a  history,  which  I  am  going  to  write 
about  now. 

I  spent  the  summer  on  the  unfashionable  side 
of  Mount  Desert,  at  South-west  Harbor.  It 
is  a  small  place  and  very  unpretentious,  its  only 
pride  being  in  its  natural  beauties.  The  toe  of 
the  village  lies  on  a  high  bluff  which  runs  out 
to  see  what  the  broad  Atlantic  is  doing,,  while 
the  heel  rests  under  the  shadow  of  the  ever- 
lasting hills.  Out  on  the  point  lives  a  family 
named  King,  but  before  I  speak  of  them  let 
me  remind  you  how  democratic  I  am.  In  ac- 
cordance with  my  natural  taste,  I  made  friends 
of  these  rude,  rough,  warm-hearted  villagers. 
I  gave  music  lessons  to  a  couple  of  girls  who 
were  ambitious  to  learn  to  play  the  "pianner," 
and  thereby  gained  the  approbation  of  the  peo- 
ple, who  are  usually  rather  shy  of  city  folks.  I 
became  so  interested  in  the  villagers,  that  I 
finally  left  the  hotel  and  went  to  live  with  one 
Mrs.  Haines,  who  was  a  sister  to  the  Kings  who 
live  on  the  bluff.  One  day,  hearing  a  loud 
talking  and  lamenting  in  the  summer  kitchen/! 
went  out  to  see  what  was  the  matter.  Mrs. 
Haines  was  crying,  and  one  or  two  stout,  weath- 
er-beaten men  were  looking  as  if  they  would 
like  to  cry,  but  didn't  dare,  so  they  put  the  en- 
ergy of  their  grief  into  their  jaws,  and  chewed 
their  tobacco  with  more  than  usual  zest. 

"Oh,  Miss  H.,"  they  all  exclaimed  when  I 
entered,  "what  shell  we  do?  David  King  is 
dead,  and  there's  nary  a  girl  to  lead  the  singin' 
at  the  funeral.  They's  all  gone  over  to  Bar 
Harbor  to  wait  on  table.  Priscilla  Morton  she's 
got  the  sore  throat,  and — poor  David  was  so 
fond  of  that  good  old  tune  'China'  'at  it's  a 
shame  and  a  sin  it  can't  be  sang  to  him  the  last 
thing." 

Before  the  harangue  was  half  through  the 
voices  had  diminished  to  one,  that  of  Mrs. 
Haines,  sister  of  the  deceased. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "  if  I  can  do  anything  to  help 
you,  you  must  be  sure  to  let  me  know.  Per- 
haps /  can  lead  the  singing  if  you  can't  get 
Priscilla  to  do  so." 

Mrs.  Haines  face  brightened  a  bit,  and  she 
said,  "Do,"  in  her  short,  decisive  way. 

So,  then  and  there,  I  made  arrangements 
with  "Sol,"  who  kept  store,  dried  fish,  and  per- 
formed the  duty  of  undertaker  to  the  whole  vil- 
lage, to  have  the  parson  call  on  me  that  after- 
noon, to  plan  the  rehearsal. 

It  was  one  of  those  lovely  summer  days  pe- 
culiar to  Mount  Desert.  The  sunshine  poured 
itself  down  in  such  rich  abundance  that  it  made 
even  the  shadows  throb  and  thrill  with  yellow 


glory.  I  sat  on  the  door -step  awaiting  the  par- 
son's coming.  There  was  a  narrow  road  be- 
tween me  and  the  ocean,  which  at  high  tide 
came  almost  to  the  road's  edge,  as  if,  in  return 
for  the  bluffs  advances,  it  was  curious  to  know 
what  we,  on  the  land,  inside  those  homely  cot- 
tages, could  be  about.  I'm  afraid  I  fell  into 
one  of  my  dreaming  fits  as  I  sat  there  watch- 
ing the  sunshine  dance  over  the  water.  The 
glory  of  heaven  seemed  to  shine  upon  the  earth 
that  day;  and  although  I  knew  there  was  death 
and  sorrow  out  on  the  cliff,  I  could  not  be  un- 
happy, for  it  was  one  of  those  times,  when  the 
sun  and  flowers  alone  make  glad  the  heart.  I 
was  awakened  from  my  reverie  by  seeing  the 
figure  of  the  parson  approaching.  As  he  drew 
nearer  I  could  hear  him  repeating  slowly,  in  a 
deep  monotone  : 

"As  soon  as  thou  scatterest  them,  they  are 
even  as  asleep,  and  fade  away  suddenly  like 
the  grass.  In  the  morning  it  is  green  and  grow- 
eth  up ;  in  the  evening  it  is  cut  down,  dried  up, 
and  withered ;  for  we  consume  away  in  thy  dis- 
pleasure, and  are  afraid  at  thy  wrathful  indig- 
nation  For  when  thou  art  angry,  all  our 

days  are  gone ;  we  bring  our  years  to  an  end, 
as  it  were  a  tale  that  is  told." 

Then  seeing  me,  he  said,  "Sister  in  the  Lord, 
this  is  a  mournful  occasion,  truly." 

"Not  so,"  I  replied.  "When  a  good  man 
dies  ripe  in  years  and  full  of  good  deeds,  has 
he  not  won  his  rest,  and  does  he  not  deserve 
the  quiet  that  death  only  can  give?" 

And  then  followed  a  discussion  which  would 
have  amused  you,  John.  It  ended  amicably, 
however,  and  we  then  proceeded  to  arrange 
matters  for  the  choir. 

"Where  are  the  rest?"  I  said,  looking  at  the 
road,  and  seeing  none  appear. 

"Rest?"  he  queried. 

"Yes;  the  young  people  who  are  to  sing  to- 
day with  me." 

"No  one  is  to  sing  with  you.  The  boys  and 
girls  are  all  away." 

"I  haven't  got  to  sing  alone?"  I  gasped. 

"Yes,  sister,"  he  answered;  "the  widder  ex- 
pects it." 

Seeing  there  was  no  withdrawing  gracefully, 
I  humbly  asked  who  played  the  organ,  and  if  I 
might  see  that  person. 

"There  isn't  any  organist." 

"No  one  to  play  for  me?  Must  I  do  my 
own  accompaniments?" 

"There  isn't  any  organ,"  responded  this  dole- 
ful, mournful  servant  of  Christ. 

"No  organ,  no  piano,  no  player,  no  singers, 
and  yet  you  expect  me  to  conduct  the  musical 
part  of  the  service,"  I  replied,  fairly  aghast 
with  horror. 


68 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


"Certainly.  There  are  four  hymns  the  wid- 
der  selected:  *  China,'  'Hark,  from  the  tombs,' 
'Broad  is  the  road  that  leads  to  death,'  and 
one  other,  which  I've  forgotten." 

I  was  horror-stricken  at  the  appalling  list, 
but,  seeing  that  I  was  in  for  it,  and  that  the 
best  way  was  to  go  ahead,  I  gave  my  consent, 
and  we  arranged  a  programme  for  a  service, 
which  it  took  us  no  less  than  two  hours  to  per- 
form. 

When  the  preliminary  arrangements  were 
finished,  the  parson  said : 

"  I  suppose  you  know  where  the  singers'  seats 
are,  for  I  think  you've  been  to  meeting  in  our 
house." 

"No,"  I  said. 

"They're  on  a  platform  under  the  pulpit,  fac- 
ing the  congregation,"  replied  he. 

"I'm  sorry,"  I  said,  "but  I  cannot  sing  unless 
there  is  some  other  place  for  me  to  sit.  I  really 
could  not  do  it  there." 

"Well,"  he  responded,  "there's  the  old  gal- 
lery. No  one's  been  up  there  for  ten  years,  so 
I  reckon  its  rather  dusty,  and  there's  only  a  lad- 
der leading  to  it." 

And  with  that  he  made  me  a  bow,  and  took 
his  solemn  way  to  the  house  of  mourning,  leav- 
ing me  to  my  own  devices. 

It  wanted  only  half  an  hour  of  service,  so  I 
walked  to  the  meeting-house  to  look  up  the 
hymns  and  try  my  voice  in  the  strange,  empty 
place.  The  walls  were  white  and  bare,  save 
where  a  few  smoky  kerosene  lamps  had  specked 
the  spaces  between  the  windows.  The  pulpit 
was  of  white  pine,  painted  in  imitation  of  mar- 
ble. The  books  were  black  and  doleful  look- 
ing ;  in  fact,  there  was  not  one  bit  of  color  in 
the  place. 

I  found  my  way  up  the  ladder  into  the  loft, 
closing  the  trap-door  carefully  after  me,  lest  in 
the  darkness  I  should  lose  my  way  and  fall 
down  the  hole.  One  little  round  window,  with 
a  green  cambric  curtain,  was  all  I  had  to  light 
me  through  my  task.  Soon  I  found  the  books, 
and  when  I  tried  the  first  hymn,  "Why  should 
we  mourn  departed  friends?"  my  voice  fairly 
frightened  me,  the  place  seemed  so  uncanny 
and  gruesome. 

Presently  the  people  began  to  come  in.  First 
of  all,  Polly  Jones,  with  her  ridiculous  bonnet, 
unlike  anything  I  ever  saw  or  heard  of.  To 
my  horror,  she  took  a  prominent  seat,  and,  turn 
which  way  I  would,  that  terrible  woman,  with 
her  sad  face  and  absurd  bonnet,  haunted  me. 
When  I  sang,  "Or  shake  at  death's  alarms,"  I 
fear  I  was  inwardly  shaking  at  that  alarming 
woman.  Polly  was  followed  by  a  string  of  vil- 
lagers, all  clean  and  appropriately  solemn  look- 
ing, in  their  "best  Sunday  clo'es."  Finally  the 


mourners  filed  in,  one  by  one,  to  the  front  seats. 
Where  the  corpse  was  I  could  not  imagine,  and 
as  I  was  to  open  the  service  with  an  introit  ( ! ) 
of  some  sort,  I  was  a  little  anxious.  We  wait- 
ed and  waited,  I  for  the  corpse,  the  minister  for 
me,  the  congregation  for  him.  Although  the 
minister  was  opposite  me,  at  the  other  end  of 
the  church,  he  was  so  near-sighted  that  he  could 
not  see  my  interrogative  gestures,  so  he  remain- 
ed in  ignorance  of  my  dilemma.  Finally  the 
trap-door  of  my  ladder  snapped  open,  and  a  lit- 
tle gray-bearded  man  popped  his  head  up,  look- 
ing, in  his  setting  of  darkness,  like  a  Jack-in- 
the-box. 

"We  ain't  goin'  ter  have  no  corpse!"  he 
shouted  across  the  gallery,  in  a  stage  whisper, 
to  me.  "It  wouldn't  keep;  we's  buried  him 
down  in  his  own  seminary,  in  his  garding;" 
and  down  he  popped  again,  as  suddenly  as  he 
had  appeared,  leaving  me  convulsed  with 
laughter  I  dared  not  give  utterance  to. 

Soon  the  parson,  not  knowing  of  the  funny 
little  man's  performance  on  the  ladder,  arose 
and  announced,  with  a  loud  "Ahem!"  that 

"Miss  H ,  of  Oakland,  California,  would 

favor  them  with  a  hymn." 

Fancy  it,  John !  It  was  almost  too  much  for 
me ;  but  with  superhuman  effort  I  mastered  my- 
self and  began,  "I  heard  a  voice  from  Heaven," 
the  congregation  rising,  and  turning  round  to 
face  me.  After  the  prayer  I  sang 

"Why  should  we  mourn  departing  friends, 

Or  shake  at  Death's  alarms? 
'  Tis  but  the  voice  that  Jesus  sends 
To  call  us  to  His  arms," 

which  sounded  very  strangely  with  only  one 
part.  When  the  service  was  over,  I  waited  till 
the  people  had  all  gone,  and  then  I  descended 
from  the  loft  and  went  out  of  the  church.  At 
the  door  I  met  Mrs.  King,  the  widow,  whom  I 
supposed  had  gone  home. 

"Oh,  my  dear  child,"  she  sobbed,  "how  beau- 
tiful it  was !"  and,  putting  her  arms  about  my 
neck,  "  I  wish  you'd  a  ben  here  when  my  Sam- 
my died !" 

Wasn't  that  pathetic,  John?  You  can  im- 
agine how  guilty  I  felt  at  having  wanted  to 
laugh  so.  I  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  on  the 
door-steps  of  Mrs.  Haines's  house,  watching  the 
sunset  on  the  water,  and  thinking  what  a  queer 
experience  I  had  had,  and  how  my  Californian 
friends  would  have  laughed  at  me,  had  they 
happened  to  go  to  that  meeting-house  at  that 
hour,  and  heard  the  music  and  witnessed  my 
predicament. 

Presently  a  boat  came  rowing  down  from  the 
bluffs ;  it  stopped  in  front  of  the  door,  and  a 
tall,  gaunt  man  jumped  ashore,  carrying  the 


IN  TIME  OF  DROUGHT. 


69 


painter  of  the  boat  in  one  hand,  and  nervously 
tucking  his  hat  under  his  arm  with  the  other. 
He  approached  me,  saying : 

"Be  you  the — be  you  the  young  woman  as 
sang  to  my  father's  funeral  ter-day  ?  'Cause  ef 
you  be,  here  is  a  mackerel  I  kotched  fur  yer 
supper.  I  wish — I  wish  it  was  a  whole  boat- 
load I  had,  and  you  wanted  every  one  of  them, 
marm !"  And,  without  waiting  for  a  reply,  his 
long  legs  carried  him  to  his  boat  again,  and  his 
long  arms  soon  pulled  the  craft  out  of  sight. 

Later,  when  the  moon  rose,  and  I  was  still 
sitting  on  the  steps,  I  saw  Mrs.  King  coming 
down  the  road.  She  was  carrying  a  white  pack- 
age in  her  hand. 

"I've  heerd,"  she  began,  "that  folks  in  cities 
gets  paid  for  doin'  what  yer  done  this  afternoon. 
I  know  yer  don't  want  none,  and  I  ain't  agoin' 
to  offer  yer  none;  but  ef  you'd  like  to  remem- 
ber how  you  soothed  a  poor  widder's  grief,  and 
let  in  a  bit  of  God's  sunshine  to  her  heart,  I 
tho't  as  how  you  might  take  this,"  handing  me 
the  blue  cup  and  saucer  you  admired  so,  John. 
"T'was  David's,  that's  dead  and  gone,  and  his 


father,  and  his  father  afore  him,  drank  out  of 
it ;  but  yer5!!  take  it  ter  please  me,  now  won't 
yer?  And  would  you  mind  doin'  it  once  more 
for  me — it's  so  sweet." 

So  in  the  moonlight  we  sat,  and,  taking  the 
poor  woman's  hand  in  mine,  I  softly  sang  the 
quaint  minor  strain, 

"Why  should  we  mourn  departing  friends  ?  " 

Heigh,  ho !  How  near  together  lie  the  pa- 
thetic and  the  ludicrous !  I  never  quite  knew 
whether  to  laugh  or  cry  at  that  day's  experi- 
ences. But  now  you  know  why  I  value  that 
cup,  and,  how  by  gratifying  some  one  else's 
love  of  old  "China,"  my  own  passion  for  "old 
china"  was  gratified  also,  for  that  cup  is  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  old. 

Your  affectionate  sister,  M. 

P.  S. — You  must  not  think  I  have  embellish- 
ed this  story ;  for  it  actually  occurred  just  as  I 
have  related  it. 

MELLIE  A.  HOPKINS. 


IN   TIME   OF   DROUGHT. 


VOL.  HI.— 5. 


A  brown  and  barren  world!    Ah,  desolate 

The  land  whose  green  of  spring  is  ended, 

Whose  harvest -gold  is  all  expended, 

Whose  ocean  wind  with  dust  is  blended — 

Ah,  desolate! 
Yet  who  shall  call  it  cursed  of  Fate, 

If,  closely  clasped  by  skies  unclouded, 

It  lies  with  tender  blue  enshrouded, 

Till  barren  Earth  with  Heaven  is  crowded? 
Uncursed  of  Fate. 

Ah,  desolate  the  life — ah,  desolate — 
Where  childhood's  springing  grass  has  faded, 
Where  love's  ripe  gold  long  since  evaded 
The  feeble  hands  that  clung  unaided — 

Ah,  desolate! 

Yet  who  shall  dare  to  rue  its  fate, 
If,  resting  in  some  faith  unclouded, 
With  gladness  infinite  enshrouded, 
Its  grief  with  larger  peace  is  crowded? 
Most  blessed  of  Fate ! 

MILICENT  WASHBURN  SHINN. 


THE   CAL1FORNIAN. 


A   NEW   POET. 


It  is  surprising  to  note  how  few  men  of  the 
younger  generation,  here  in  America,  are  doing 
poetic  work  of  the  least  originality  or  force. 
The  old  race  are  passing  away,  one  by  one ; 
but  when  we  ask  who  is  to  succeed  them  the 
question  seems  answerable  only  in  one  hopeless 
manner.  A  brilliant  exception  to  this  dearth  of 
promise,  however,  has  of  late  come  to  the  no- 
tice of  literary  observers.  There  is  a  young 
poet  in  New  York,  Mr.  Francis  S.  Saltus,  whose 
claims  to  future  distinction  are  growing  stronger 
with  every  succeeding  year.  Mr.  Saltus  pub- 
lished a  volume  of  poems  in  1873,  under  the 
imprimatur  of  Messrs.  Lippincott  &  Co.,  en- 
titled Honey  and  Gall.  It  was  a  youthful  affair 
in  many  respects,  and,  excepting  about  ten  or 
twelve  of  the  poems  which  it  contained,  gave 
little  evidence  of  what  striking  achievements 
were  to  follow  from  the  same  hand.  It  called 
forth  very  severe  criticism,  and  in  some  quar- 
ters it  even  roused  a  certain  horrified  dislike. 
The  author  was  still  in  his  early  twenties.  He 
had  lived  for  years  in  France,  and  had  com- 
pletely drenched  himself  with  the  rather  pagan 
spirit  of  modern  French  literature.  The  influ- 
ence of  Charles  Baudelaire  was  strongly  mani- 
fest in  Honey-  and  Gall;  and  Baudelaire,  even 
for  a  man  of  trained  capacity,  must  always  be 
the  most  dangerous  of  models.  Another  marked 
fault  of  this  book  was  the  tendency  shown  by 
its  author  to  employ  obselete  words  and  weird, 
arbitrary  neologisms.  Every  language  has  its 
hospital  of  disabled  adjectives  and  invalided 
verbs,  and  it  would  seem  as  if  Mr.  Saltus  had 
been  stimulated  by  a  longing  to  send  these  un- 
fortunates hobbling  out  again  into  the  healthy 
daylight  of  popular  usage.  Still,  it  must  be  con- 
ceded that  "The  Landscape  of  Flesh"  was  a 
poem  no  less  powerful  than  hideous;  that  "A 
Dream  of  Ice"  had  undoubted  grandeur;  that 
the  verses  on  "Goya,"  that  ghastly  Spanish 
painter,  were  strong  in  several  stanzas,  and  that 
a  trifle  called  "Chinoiserie"  had  a  unique  ring, 
in  spite  of  some  affectation.  The  general  cult- 
ure, the  familiarity  with  foreign  literatures,  and 
the  poetic  sense,  now  clear-seen  and  now  strug- 
gling to  find  fit  expression,  were  features  of 
Honey  and  Gall  that  chiefly  struck  an  unpreju- 
diced reader.  It  was  a  remarkable  book  for  a 
beginner,  but  it  was  evidently  a  beginner's 
book.  Its  recklessness  was  sometimes  unpar- 
donable ;  its  artistic  sins  were  often  more  than 


peccadillos.  But  it  gave  great  promise;  and 
the  object  of  this  article  is  not  to  speak  further 
of  Honey  and  Gall^  but  to  show,  as  we  think 
can  very  conclusively  be  shown,  that  its  author 
has  redeemed  that  promise,  in  his  later  poems, 
with  noteworthy  fulfillment. 

The  Evolution,  a  New  York  journal  of  irreg- 
ular excellence  and  of  very  bold  social  views, 
has  thus  far  published  Mr.  Saltus's  best  verse. 
Not  long  ago  the  International  Review  took 
occasion  to  call  him,  in  the  course  of  a  certain 
book  notice,  "our  American  Baudelaire,"  and  it 
is  doubtless  almost  solely  on  account  of  Mr. 
Saltus's  work  in  The  Evolution  that  this  strik- 
ing bit  of  eulogy  was  paid.  The  Evolution  se- 
ries has,  on  the  whole,  been  a  very  important 
one.  It  began,  if  we  mistake  not,  with  a  poem 
entitled  "Ad  Summum  Deum,"  which  contains 
not  a  particle  of  so-called  atheism,  but  a  great 
deal  of  revolt,  discontent,  and  of  that  which  or- 
thodoxy must  of  necessity  denounce  as  gross 
irreverence.  Its  first  stanza  at  once  strikes  the 
key-note  of  all  the  rest : 

"If,  O  God,  thou  art  eternal, 
Most  omnipotent,  supernal, 
Spare  us  from  life's  pains  diurnal." 

The  other  lines  bear  one  unvarying  strain 
of  arraignment,  audacious  caviling,  and  satur- 
nine accusation.  There  is  no  doubt  that  few 
English -writing  poets  have  ever  presumed  to 
cast  aside  all  trammels  of  conventional  thinking 
as  the  author  of  "Ad  Summum  Deum"  has  done. 
The  poem  may  be  hated  by  the  majority,  for 
whom  the  love  of  the  Deity,  vigilant  though 
unexplained,  existent  though  darkly  mysterious, 
is  a  changeless  religious  tenet.  A  few  will  ap- 
preciate it  alone  for  the  fine  technical  manage- 
ment of  its  stanzas,  and  a  very  few  more  will 
value  it  because  expressing  just  those  moods  of 
defiant  bitterness  which  are  harbored  by  cer- 
tain souls  after  a  crushing  grief  or  a  profound 
disappointment.  The  poem  continues  thus : 

"How  can  I  respect  thy  glory,1 
When,  through  years  of  myth  and  story, 
Thou  appearest  stern  and  gory? 

"Can  the  throngs  of  souls  o'ertaken 
By  thy  wrath,  by  thee  forsaken, 
Love  and  faith  in  men  awaken? 

"Can  we  call  thee  just  and  blameless, 
When  by  thy  desertion  shameless 
We  still  groan  here  blind  and  aimless?     *     * 


A   NEW  POET. 


"For  thy  Son's  divine  prediction 
Must  weak  mortals  in  affliction 
Wait  another  Crucifixion? 

"Why,  if  he  has  died  to  spare  us 
From  all  torments,  shouldst  thou^bear  us 
Hate  implacable  and  dare  us, 

"In  our  wrechedest  prostration 
With  thine  anger's  desolation? 
Are  we  not  of  thy  creation? 

"If  the  sun  and  stars  thou  makest, 
If  supreme  the  stars  thou  shakest, 
If  from  naught  thou  something  takest, 

"Prove  it  to  us,  though  thou  rend  us 
In  divine  ways  and  tremendous — 
Thrill  us  with  thy  might  stupendous  1 

We  know  of  nothing  in  English  that  at  all 
resembles  this  poem.  It  bears  a  certain  vague 
similarity  to  the  verses  of  Alfred  de  Musset,  be- 
ginning : 

"  Pourquoi~re'ver  et  deviner  un  Dieu," 

though  the  resemblance  is  one  neither  of  phras- 
ing or  general  treatment,  but  merely  of  intel- 
lectual gloom  and  pessimism.  Mr.  Swinburne, 
it  is  true,  touches  something  of  the  same  chord 
in  his  "Fe'lise"  and  "The  Triumph  of  Time," 
though  between  the  poetry  of  Mr.  Saltus  and 
Mr.  Swinburne  there  are  very  few  points  in 
common.  The  verse  of  each  is  structurally  dif- 
ferent. The  younger  poet  has  drawn  nothing 
from  the  elder.  Each  is  original  in  his  way, 
but  each  has  a  separate  voice  of  his  own.  We 
should  say  that  Victor  Hugo,  Baudelaire,  De 
Musset,  and  Theophile  Gautier  (as  will  be 
shown  afterward)  have  all  gone  to  the  making 
of  Mr.  Saltus.  He  is  essentially  and  individu- 
ally French.  Not  always,  though  sometimes, 
in  the  way  of  careful  polish ;  for  occasionally, 
even  in  his  later  capable  work,  he  deliberately 
refuses  to  hamper  his  daring,  dusky,  or  gro- 
tesque thought  with  neat  elaboration.  But  he 
is  always  French,  on  the  other  hand,  in  his  dis- 
dain of  boundary  lines  that  seem  impassable  to 
the  average  Anglo-Saxon  mind.  In  English 
we  should  say  that  he  had  of  late  chiefly  stud- 
ied, as  regards  the  way  of  putting  things,  Mr. 
Tennyson  and  the  succeeding  poets  of  that 
school.  Not,  indeed,  the  Tennyson  of  "Godi- 
va"  and  "The  Miller's  Daughter,"  but  rather 
him  who  gave  us  such  grim,  florid,  or  sensuous 
work  as  "The  Vision  of  Sin,"  "The  Dream  of 
Fair  Women/'  and  "The  Palace  of  Art."  He 
has  a  passion  for  the  double  rhyme,  and  some- 
times uses  it  to  the  detriment  of  perfectly  spon- 
taneous expression  in  poems  of  a  sustained  nar- 
rative sort.  But  he  is  a  rhymer  of  wonderful 
richness  and  almost  unerring  correctness. 


The  second  poem  of  The  Evohttion  series 
eclipsed  its  predecessor  in  boldness.  It  is  a 
work  of  pure  imagination,  executed  with  a 
strong  hand,  and  probably  calculated  to  shock, 
by  its  acrid  and  merciless  sarcasm,  nine-tenths 
of  the  readers  who  have  seen  it.  It  is  called 
"Extermination."  "With  prescient  sight  that 
pierced  the  future's  distance,"  the  poet  is  sup- 
posed to  witness  earth  as  it  will  exist  in  twice  a 
million  years  from  now.  In  a  vision  he  sees 

"Vast  populous  towns  of  contour  Babylonian, 

Temples  and  palaces  imperially  rare, 
Mazes  of  marble  grandiose  and  Neronian, 
Towering  everywhere." 

Beauty,  form,  splendor,  grace  and  magnifi- 
cence meet  him  on  all  sides,  and  the  race 
which  inhabits  these  abodes  of  grandeur  is  de- 
scribed as  creatures 

"Who  knew  but  one  all-sacred  duty, 

One  cult  to  which  the  vilest  would  adhere : 
A  perfect  love  of  pure  impeccable  beauty, 
Supreme,  immense,  sincere ! 

"The  poesy  of  broad  skies,  the  moaning  ocean, 
All  Nature's  glory  spoke  not  to  their  souls ; 
For  Art  alone  they  held  sublime  devotion, 
Despising  other  goals. 

"No  anthems  filled  the  air,  no  psalms  or  psalters 
Praised  the  Creator  who  had  given  them  birth ; 
His  name,  unknown,  was  honored  by  no  altars 
On  this  strange  perfect  earth. 

"No  voices  sang  harmonious  Te  Deums, 

No  prayerful  women  bowed  with  pious  plaints, 
No  roses  sighed  upon  the  mausoleums 
Of  long-loved  martyr-saints. 

"The  woe  of  Christ  to  them  was  but  a  story, 

A  pleasing  myth  of  legendary  lore, 
And  in  our  God's  unique  stupendous  glory 
These  men  believed  no  more." 

And  now  comes  the  strange,  almost  terrific 
raison  d'etre  of  this  extraordinary  poem — not 
justifying,  many  will  say,  the  abundant  beauties 
of  language  and  delicacies  of  melody  which 
prelude  and  accompany  it,  yet  somehow  clad 
with  a  sinister  fascination,  like  that  which  makes 
the  tales  of  Poe  entice,  while  at  the  same  time 
they  repel  us : 

"Then,  as  I  gazed  upon  them  in  my  dreaming, 

I  saw  a  man  with  white  majestic  head 
By  frantic  crowds  from  every  by-way  streaming, 
Unto  a  grim  cross  led. 

"Spat  on  and  stoned  in  his  severe  affliction, 

He  calmly  stood,  nor  did  his  glances  quail ; 
Helpless  I  saw  his  odious  crucifixion,        % 
Felt  every  rugged  nail 

"That  tore  his  feeble  palms  and  feet  asunder, 
And  yet  he  shrank  not,  in  his  pride  august, 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


While  the  great  hum  of  voices  like  a  thunder 
Exclaimed,  'His  pain  is  just.' 

"And  all  the  throng,  the  haughty  and  the  lowly, 

Cried,  '  Peerless  Beauty,  may  thy  will  be  done ! 
This  wretch  upon  our  faultless  earth,  all-holy, 
Is  now  the  only  one. 

"  'No  shame,  no  torture  can  be  too  unlawful 

To  free  from  his  vile  feet  the  ground  he  trod, 
For  he  who  writhes  before  us,  pale  and  awful, 
Dared  to  believe  in  God.' " 

We  have  said  that  this  poem  contains  sar- 
casm, and  when  the  reader's  first  surprise  at  its 
peculiar  denoument  has  worn  off,  the  sarcasm, 
we  think,  becomes  more  biting  in  its  sharpness. 
It  is  emphatically  a  poem  of  imagination,  and 
not  fancy.  The  whole  picture  rises  before  us 
with  perhaps  the  hideousness  of  a  nightmare, 
but  with  none  of  the  inaccuracy  and  contradic- 
tion so  common  among  dreams.  Its  colors 
have  the  baleful  glory  of  a  flower  that  has  fed 
on  rank  dampness  and  noisome  exhalations,  and 
whose  perfume  bears  a  deadly  keenness.  It  is 
a  genuineyfcw  du  mal\  but,  for  all  that,  it  is  a 
flower,  full  of  serpentine  symmetry  and  morbid 
splendor. 

"Misrepresentation"  is  the  next  of  the  series 
under  discussion.  This  has  even  a  bolder  grasp 
and  a  wider  range.  But  it  is  a  poem  positively 
soaked  in  the  night-dews  of  thought,  and  seem- 
ingly the  product  of  a  spirit  from  which  hor- 
ror conceals  none  of  her  most  appaling  im- 
ageries. It  is  Mr.  Saltus's  first  attempt  in  a 
new  field,  which  he  afterward  worked  with  as- 
tonishing power.  We  mean  the  building  of 
certain  poetic  structures  upon  the  basis  of  a 
scriptural  theme.  Before  we  had  frequent  men- 
tion of  the  Deity  and  Christ,  but  as  yet  he  had 
formed  no  poem  upon  any  plan  of  recognized 
biblical  legend.  He  now  takes  the  legend  of 
the  Crucifixion,  and  daringly  makes  it  serve  his 
own  artistic  ends  in  a  way  that  no  reader  who 
accepts  the  authenticity  of  Revelation  can  read 
without  a  shiver  of  repulsion.  It  is  probably 
the  most  audacious  poem  that  he  has  ever 
written,  and  at  the  same  time  it  abounds  in  pas- 
sages of  dazzling  beauty.  We  ask  ourselves  for 
the  motives  that  could  have  stimulated  so  fright- 
ful a  conception,  and  induced  the  commingling 
of  so  much  radiant  eloquence,  so  much  vivid- 
hued  picturesqueness,  with  a  fantasy  of  such 
grisly  and  miasmatic  origin.  It  is  useless  to 
seek  an  answer  for  this  question.  "  Misrepre- 
sentation;?  has  been  written  with  neither  moral 
nor  immoral  motives.  Like  many  other  of 
Mr.  Saltus's  poems,  it  is  the  product  of  a  mind 
which  believes  that  lyric  originality  and  dra- 
matic strength  may  seize  their  material  from 
whatever  source  they  choose,  and  that  the  one 


success  resultant  from  such  effort  is  the  vig- 
or, freshness,  and  pervading  harmony  of  the 
achievement.  If  it  is  ghastly  and  horrible,  if  it 
shocks  rooted  beliefs  and  strikes  a  blow  in  the 
very  face  of  religious  worship,  its  aim  has  not, 
for  this  reason,  been  marred,  or  its  right  to  ex- 
ist at  all  shaken.  The  critic  may  condemn  any 
such  theory  if  he  desires,  but  he  is  always  con- 
scientiously bound,  as  in  the  present  case,  to 
show  with  what  consistency  it  has  been  carried 
out.  These  are  the  opening  stanzas  of  "Mis- 
representation," and  tell  their  own  Dantesque 
story: 

"In  desolate  dreams  whose  memory  terrific 

Will  haunt  me  to  my  life's  unhappy  close, 
The  ghost  of  Christ,  our' Saviour  beatific, 
Disconsolately  rose. 

"Sad  years  have  flown,  but  still  to  me  are  vivid 

The  angry  fevers  in  his  piercing  eyes 
As  he  before  me  stood,  erect  and  livid, 
But  God-like  in  no  wise. 

"The  bleeding  palms  and  feet,  the  blonde  beard  tan- 
gled, 

Were  changed  not  since  the  dolorous  day  of  death ; 
I  saw  the  thorn-pressed  brow,  the  lean  side  mangled, 
And  heard  his  hot  quick  breath  ; 

"  But  marked  with  stupor  that  no  sign  of  meekness 

Dwelt  in  that  face,  still  marvelously  fair, 
And  that  his  lips  were  curled  in  scornful  weakness, 
While  no  prayer  lingered  there. 

"And  he  whose  pure  imperishable  glory 

The  fears  of  men  for  ages  did  assuage, 
He,  the  unique,  the  sweet,  the  salvatory, 
Stood  pallid  in  strong  rage. 

"And  with  vindictive  voice  upon  me  calling 

This  poor  Redeemer,  bartered,  murdered,  sold — 
To  me,  mute^shivering  mortal,  an  appalling 
And  hideous  story  told, 

"Which,  were  it  known,  and  could  mankind  conceive  it, 

This  strange,  weird  vision,  most  sublimely  sad, 
Would  fill  with  awe  the  minds  that  dared  believe  it, 
And  make  whole  nations  mad. 

"For  in  this  tale  of  sacrifice  and  error, 

Monstrous  narration  of  bewildering  things, 
I  understood  at  last  Christ's  pain  and  terror, 
His  unknown  sufferings" 

We  have  intentionally  italicised  the  last  few 
lines  quoted,  for  by  their  aid  the  "horror,  the 
soul  of  the  plot,"  first  dawns  upon  the  soul 
of  the  reader.  This  haggard  spectre  then  nar- 
rates how,  as  a  child,  he  received,  in  a  vision, 
God's  charge  to  be  holy,  faithful,  meek,  and 
chaste,  and  afterward  to  preach  the  sacred 
Word  among  mankind.  Knowledge  and  wis- 
dom then  grew  within  the  mind  of  Christ.  Hav- 
ing reached  maturity,  he  went  forth  on  his  in- 
spired mission.  His  experiences  as  teacher 


A   NE  W  POET. 


73 


and  reformer  are  now  told  in  the  followin 
stanzas,  which,  for  felicity,  warmth,  tenderness 
and  exquisite  melody,  are  rivaled  by  few  pas 
sages  among  the  loftiest  singers  of  this  century 

"Ah,  now,  while  my  poor  spirit  wanders  sphereless, 

Alone  in  incommensurable  space, 
I  still  remember  those  delicious  peerless 
Sweet  dreamy  days  of  grace  ! 

"When  throngs  adoring,  in  that  past  existence, 

Kissed  with  quick  eager  lips  my  passing  hem, 
While  white  before  me  in  the  sapphire  distance 
Rose  towered  Jerusalem  ! 

"And  I  recall  with  tomb-touched  memories  tender, 

The  Mount  of  Olives,  and  each  fruitful  tree 
That  nursed  blithe  birds  above  the  gem-like  splendor 
Of  lakes  like  Galilee. 

"By  Him  at  that  hour  I  was  not  forsaken, 

For  in  the  inner  essence  of  my  soul 
Poesy's  charm  to  me  he  did  awaken 
And  gave  me  its  control. 

"Then  I  than  earth's  most  noble  bard  was  greater, 

And  on  my  lips  inspired  there  ever  hung 
The  unuttered  canticles  of  my  Creator, 
Songs  that  no  man  has  sung. 

"And  I  remember  those  departed  glories, 

When  Kedron's  vales  reechoed  linnet's  songs, 
And  how  I  charmed  with  texts  and  allegories 
The  vast  attentive  throngs  ; 

"And  when,  with  my  disciples,  friends,  and  leaders, 

I  roamed  where  Spring  had  made  Gennesaret  green, 
And  how  amid  fair  Bethany's  tall  cedars 
I  preached  my  creed  serene  ; 

' '  With  John  beside  me,  Matthew,  James,  and  Peter, 

The  upright  Andrew,  the  confiding  Jude, 
Men  whose  allegiance  and  whose  love  made  sweeter 
The  strange  life  I  pursued. 

"And  I  recall  those  nights  when,  charmed,  I  listened 

To  music  of  soft  ugabs  and  shophars, 
While  the  blue  depths  of  calm  Tiberias  glistened 
Beneath  a  world  of  stars  ! " 

The  phantom  of  Christ  then  records  how  he 
was  perpetually  buoyed  up,  amid  all  the  trials 
which  beset  him,  by  divine  encouragements; 
how,  amid  disgrace,  derision,  and  curses,  he 
ever  heard  that  his  Father  rejoiced  in  his 
strength,  and  compassed  him  with  sweet,  invisi- 
ble protection.  Then  at  last  came  the  hour 
when  he  was  seized  by  the  Jewish  "rabble  and 
led  before  Pontius  Pilate.  But  still  he  believed 
firmly  in  the  helpful  guardianship  of  Jehovah, 
never  suspecting  that  his  enemies  would  be 
permitted  the  fearful  triumph  which  they  after- 
ward secured.  "  Surely,"  he  thought,  "  I  cannot 
perish,"  even  when  they  had  nailed  him  to  the 
fatal  cross.  Enoch  and  Elijah  were  translated 
to  Heaven.  Why  should  he  fear?  How,  in- 
deed, 


"Could  he,  this  God  superb  and  powerful, 

Take  life  like  mine,  when  He  had  said  to  me, 
1  More  great  than  kings  thou  shalt  be  on  the  flowerful 
Green  slopes  of  Galilee  !'  " 

Hanging  on  the  cross  between  the  two  thieves, 
he  waited  for  help,  but  no  help  came. 

This  weird  and  unearthly  poem,  so  full  of 
savage  majesty  and  solemnity,  ends  with  these 
lines,  spoken  by  him  who  is  supposed  to  have 
dreamed  the  doleful  dream  of  which  they  form 
the  substance : 

"Then,  the  sad  silence  of  my  vision  rending, 

I  heard  a  wail  of  terrible  despair, 
And  saw  a  hundred  spectral  hands,  descending, 
Clutch  at  his  gory  hair.  .  .  . 

"Twas  o'er.  .  .  .  The  martyr's  ghost  far  from  me  flut- 
tered ; 

Sighing,  I  woke  and,  gaining  thought's  control, 
Suddenly  felt  the  truth  of  all  he  uttered, 
And  terror  seized  my  soul.'  " 

The  next  poem  deals  with  the  Old  Testament 
story  of  the  Witch  of  En -dor  and  Saul.  Mr. 
Saltus's  version  of  this  legend  is  entirely  his 
own.  Shumma,  an  Israelitish  harlot,  passion- 
ately loves  Saul,  the  King.  She  watches  him 
march  to  battle,  exults  in  his  victories,  dreams 
of  him  by  night  and  day,  yet  never  can  win 
from  him  the  lover-like  heed  for  which  her  soul 
thirsts.  Observe  the  splendid  force  and  rich- 
ness of  this  passage : 

'And  I  in  dreams  saw  battles  raging  frantic. 

Swift-hurrying  steeds  and  labyrinths  of  spears ; 

I  heard  the  clash  of  tzinnahs  and  the  cheers, 
And,  over  all,  I  saw  him  tower  gigantic. 

'A  diadem  upon  his  brows,  and  weighted 

With  glistening  greaves,  a  carnage-god  most  grand, 
While  in  the  supple  terror  of  his  hand 

His  massive,  reeking  chanith  scintillated. 

'Ah,  sweet  Jehovah  blest,  was  he  not  glorious 
The  day  the  gross  Amalekites  he  slew 
And  dragged  Agag,  their  king,  and  retinue 
Captive  and  gyved  unto  his  towns  victorious ! 

'Yes,  and  I  loved  his  blind  impetuous  valor 
The  towering  passion  of  his  soul  and  eyes, 
His  brawny  torso  and  his  battle-cries, 

And  all  that  face  that  never  knew  fear's  pallor. 

'And  when,  war-worn,  he  feasted  to  restore  him 
From  sullen  thought,    I,    with  his  slaves,  would 

come, 

And,  to  the  sound  of  timbrel  and  of  drum, 
Would  dance  in  stately  palace-ways  before  him." 

Note  the  marvelous  picturesqueness  of  that 
nal  line,  which  is  one  of  many  similar  touches 
hat  fill  this  stately,  Hebraic -tinged  poem, 
humma  now  tells  of  how  the  day  at  length  ar- 
ived  when  the  legions  of  the  Midianites  in- 
aded  Gilboa.  Saul,  fearful  of  coming  disas- 


74 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ter,  and  with  eyes  where  "gleamed  the  fires  of 
madness,"  goes  to  consult  the  witch  of  En -dor 
in  her  dismal  cave  amid  the  wilderness.  Shum- 
ma  personates  this  witch,  clad  in  rags,  which 
conceal  beneath  their  foulness  a  luxurious  robe. 
"Fasting,  pale,  and  by  his  God  forsaken,"  the 
unhappy  Saul  comes  to  her,  goaded  with  dark 
presentiments  of  calamity.  Then  the  false  sibyl 
burns  strange  mephitic  drugs  in  a  caldron,  and 
causes  her  slaves  to  personate  phantoms,  which 
rise  one  by  one  in  the  misty  gloom  of  the  cave. 
At  length  Saul  falls  prone  upon  the  earth  in 
livid  fear.  Shumma  then  ends  her  sorceries, 
and  prepares  for  him  a  refreshing  feast,  of 
which  Saul  presently  partakes.  When  the  sub- 
tle and  powerful  wines  have  warmed  him  into 
new  life  and  vigor,  the  wily  Shumma  flings 
aside  her  disguise,  and  stands  before  the  king 
in  glowing,  gem -adorned  beauty.  Fascinated 
and  bewildered,  Saul  yields  at  last  to  the  al- 
lurements of  her  charms.  He  hears  the  story 
of  Shumma's  subterfuge,  and  amorously  par- 
dons her.  He  tells  her  that  she  has  "tossed  to 
gloom  all  brooding  superstitions,"  and  that  he 
will  go  on  the  morrow  fearlessly  with  his  sons, 
Jonathan  and  Abinadab,  "to  rend  the  mongrel 
hordes"  that  oppose  him.  But  still,  though 
desperately  enamored  of  Shumma,  and  inspired 
by  fresh  courage  and  confidence,  he  questions 
her  as  to  whether  she  saw  all  the  phantoms 
that  appeared  in  the  cave.  Haunted  by  an 
unconquerable  doubt,  he  asks  her : 

"  'Didst  thou  behold  or  bring  about  the  horrid 
Dire  shadow,  draped  in  mysteries  of  white, 
The  accusing  figure  of  a  Midianite, 
That  hurled  dull  blood  unto  my  burning  forehead? 
****** 

"  'Didst  thou  see  all?1  ....  'Yea,  yea,'  again  I  told 

him. 

'This  canst  thou  swear?' ....  'Aye,  have  no  fool- 
ish dread.' 

And,  sighing,  on  his  breast  I  drooped  my  head, 
And  with  soft  arms  did  languidly  enfold  him. 

"Gone  were  the  visions,  terrible  and  hated, 

Gone  were  the  pains  my  kisses  strove  to  heal, 
While  by  his  side,  like  a  great  ghost  of  steel, 
His  mighty  massive  chanith  scintillated." 

At  dawn  Saul  goes  forth  from  the  cave,  "to 
Gilboa  and  to  death,"  leaving  Shumma  in 
ecstasy  at  her  conquest,  and  undreaming  of  the 
immediate  doom  that  awaits  her  new  princely 
lover.  Thus  the  poem  ends.  It  is  probably 
the  longest  that  Mr.  Saltus  has  yet  published. 
Its  faults  are  an  over -luxuriance  of  expression 
— a  tropical  excess  of  expletives.  But  in  a 
young  poet  this  may  scarcely  be  termed  a  fault, 
and  in  these  days  of  cream-tinted  mediocrity  it 
is  almost  refreshing  to  find  opulence  and  liber- 


ality of  phrase.  Indeed,  what  shall  we  say  of 
such  a  tendency,  when,  as  in  the  early  part  of 
the  poem,  describing  the  despondence  of  Saul, 
it  gives  us  a  stanza  so  incomparably  beautiful 
as  this : 

"For  deadly  dreams  and  fantasies  would  seize  him, 
His  valorous  veins  would  bound  with  unknown 

fears, 

While  David,  moved  by  his  infuriate  tears, 
Would  throb  his  moaning  heart's  soul  forth  to  please 
him.'1' 

Nothing  could  be  finer  than  that  last  sinewy 
yet  aeolian  line,  and  we  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  only  a  man  in  whose  soul  dwelt  the 
essential  spirit  of  song  could  have  written  any- 
thing so  faultlessly  tender.  But,  after  all,  the 
poem  abounds  in  many  such  lines  and  passages. 
Even  those  who  would  decry  it  as  a  whole  for 
being  uselessly  unwholesome,  must  admit  the 
shining  literary  merits  of  its  composition.  And 
if  we  give  their  niches  to  Heine,  Baudelaire, 
and  Poe,  why  refuse  like  honor  to  one  who  has 
steeped  his  spirit  in  no  darker  shadows,  while 
walking  among  them  with  feet  as  firm  and  fear- 
less? 

Better,  to  our  thinking,  than  any  of  the  poems 
in  this  scriptural  series,  is  "Potiphar's  Wife," 
whose  appearance  followed  that  of  "The  Witch 
of  En-dor."  It  is  set  in  the  same  key  as  "Mis- 
representation;" that  is,  a  ghost  addresses  the 
poet — a  homeless  spirit,  uttering  low  sighs,  tort- 
ured with  unrest,  "all  Egypt's  beauty  blooming 
in  her  face,"  and  "clasping  a  mantle  in  one 
shadowy  hand." 

This  is  the  ghost  of  Potiphar's  wife,  who  re- 
cords, in  a  melancholy  and  passionate  wail,  her 
love  for  Joseph,  while  hovering  above  the  tomb 
in  which  he  lies  buried.  The  shred  of  mantle 
that  she  holds  is  the  legendary  one  torn  from 
Joseph  as  he  fled.  She  now  moans  for  his  par- 
don, saying: 

"See,  thy  fair  mantle  in  my  hand  I  hold, 
A  shred  of  thee,  as  sacred  as  thy  kiss, 
Far  holier  than  the  heart  of  Anubis ; 
And  though  the  joys  of  Paradise  I  miss, 
Still  have  I  clung  to  it  as  worlds  grow  old." 

But  at  length  the  poet  himself  says  : 

"In  the  vague  gray  gloaming  I  could  see 
The  poor,  unpardoned  ghost  caress  the  mound 
Where  envied  pity  she  had  never  found, 
Prostrate  and  humble  on  the  leafy  ground, 
Clutching  the  mantle  in  dumb  agony. 

"And  when  her  lamentations  seemed  to  cease, 
To  this  distracted  spirit,  love-denied, 
A  dull,  sepulchral  voice  at  last  replied, 
And  from  the  crypt's  deep  gloom  in  anger  cried, 
'Away,  thou  specter  harlot.     Give  me  peace.'" 


A  NEW  POET. 


75 


This  is  less  artificial  in  conception!,  more  le- 
gitimately and  naturally  dramatic,  more  appeal- 
ing through  spontaneous  pathos,  and  more 
soundly  effective  in  its  tragedy,  than  anything 
which  Mr.  Saltus  has  yet  done.  In  that  final 
line,  spoken  by  a  voice  from  the  depths  of  the 
tomb,  we  have  all  the  typical  chastity  of  Joseph, 
whose  name  has  come  down  to  us  through  the 
centuries  as  the  very  incarnation  of  such  icy 
rectitude  as  can  never  feel  one  qualm  of  real 
temptation.  But  the  workmanship  of  "Poti- 
phar's  Wife"  is  somehow  inferior  to  that  of  the 
other  poems.  It  has  beautiful  passages — what 
one  of  Mr.  Saltus's  poems  has  not? — but  the 
ghost's  passion  seems  to  us  in  places  somewhat 
turgid  and  hysterical.  Surely  not  so,  however, 
when  she  exquisitely  says : 

"  Blame  for  my  sin,  if  sin  it  be,  'alone 
The  curves  symmetric  of  thy  perfect  limbs ; 
Blame  the  grave  music  of  Hebraic  hymns, 
The  memory  of  thy  voice,  that  nothing  dims  ; 
Blame  my  frail  heart,  that  could  not  be  of  stone. 

4 '  Blame  the  voluptuous  murmur  of  the  Nile, 
The  pomp  and  glitter  of  my  home,  the  palm 
That  shaded  every  reverie,  the  calm 
Of  torrid  star-thronged  nights,  the  gentle  balm 
Of  dreamy  wines— but,  above  all,  thy  smile. 

That  line,  "the  grave  music  of  Hebraic 
hymns,"  is  a  wonderful  bit  of  felicity,  and  de- 
serves a  permanent  place  in  the  language  of 
quotations,  like  Keats's  "large  utterance  of  the 
early  gods/'  or  Tennyson's 

"Music  that  softer  on  the  spirit  lies 
Than  tired  eyelids  upon  tired  eyes." 

Strange  enough,  the  last  poem  in  this  series 
is  one  that  utterly  forsakes  the  realm  of  lurid 
imagination.  It  is  entitled  "The  Cross  Speaks." 
The  cross  on  which  Christ  was  crucified  tells 
of  how  it  stood  for  years  in  towering  stateliness, 
"the  lord  of  cedars,"  in  the  holy  woods  of  Leb- 
anon. Below  it  "roamed  the  solemn  peace- 
eyed  herds,"  while  winds  from  the  Grecian  seas 
caressed  it.  Its  life  was  full  of  sanctity.  In 
the  distance  it  saw  the  towers  and  spires  of 
Sidon.  But  one  evening  "strange  men  with 
shining  blades"  passed  through  the  wood  where 
it  grew. 

"Then  to  the  core  they  struck  me  with  sharp  steel; 
I  felt  the  sap  within  my  veins  congeal ; 

I  writhed  and  moaned  at  every  savage  blow. 
And  I,  whose  strength  had  braved  the  fiercest  storm, 
Tottered  and  fell,  a  mutilated  form, 

While  all  the  forest  waved  its  leaves  in  woe." 

The  tree  is  then  fashioned  into  a  cross,  and 
dragged  "down  to  the  holy  town,  Jerusalem," 
there  to  give  death  to  those  condemned  by  the 
law.  The  city's  thieves  are  nailed  upon  it,  one 
by  one,  as  time  lapses.  Its  "wood  is  soiled  by 


blood  and  split  by  nails ;"  wild  cries  echo  from 
it;  "oppressed  by  carrion  weights,"  it  lives  for 
weeks  "in  one  mad  hell  of  harrowing  wails." 
The  final  eight  stanzas  of  the  poem  had  best  be 
given  entire,  since  no  descriptive  paraphrase 
could  do  justice  to  their  swift,  brilliant,  and  yet 
pathetic  beauty : 

' '  Then  came  a  dark  and  sacrilegious  day 
Of  crime,  of  malediction,  of  dismay. 

Rude  soldiers  tore  me  from  the  hated  ground, 
And  brought  me,  with  foul  oaths  and  many  a  jeer, 
Before  one  pale  sweet  man,  who  without  fear 

Did  tower  above  them,  god-like,  nettle-crowned. 

"  Shrill  voices,  formed  to  curse  and  to  abuse, 
Cried,  choked  with  scorn,  '  Ignoble  King  of  Jews, 

Save  thyself  now,  if  that  thou  hast  the  power.' 
But  he,  the  meek  one,  resolutely  caught 
My  hideous  body  to  him,  and  said  naught, 

And  God  was  with  us  in  that  awful  hour  ! 

"Thrilled  by  his  touch,  a  sense  I  never  knew 
Sudden  within  my  callous  fibers  grew, 

Warning  my  spirit  he  was  pure  and  good. 
And  I  could  feel  that  he  was  Christ  divine, 
And  that  a  deathless  honor  then  was  mine  ; 

In  one  dark  instant  I  had  understood  ! 

"The  raucous  shouts  of  thousands  rent  the  air 
When  on  his  outraged  shoulders,  scourged  and  bare, 

He  bore  to  dismal  Calvary  and  night 
My  ponderous  weight,  my  all-unhallowed  mass, 
While  I,  God-strengthened,  strove  and  strove — alas, 

Without  a  hope ! — to  make  the  burden  light. 

"He  perished  on  my  heart,  and  heard  the  moan 
That  shuddered  through  me — he,  and  he  alone. 

But  no  man  heard  the  promise  he  gave  me 
Of  sweetest  pardon,  nor  did  any  mark 
His  pitying  smile  that  aureoled  the  dark 

For  me,  in  that  wild  hour  on  Calvary. 

"When  tender  women's  hands,  that  sought  to  save, 
Had  carried  his  sweet  body  to  the  grave, 

A  streak  of  flame  hissed  forth  from  heaven,  and 

rent 

My  trunk  with  one  annihilating  blow, 
Leaving  me  prostrate,  charred,  too  vile  to  know 
That  I  was  nothing,  and  God  was  content. 

"  But  he  who  punished  my  sad  sin  with  fire, 
Forsook  me  not  in  my  abasement  dire, 

And  mercifully  bade  my  soul  revive, 
To  take  new  spells  of  life  that  all  might  see — 
With  beauty  far  exceeding  any  tree, 

Once  more  with  resurrected  leaves  to  thrive. 

"And  now,  in  verdurous  calm,  adored  of  birds, 
Circled  by  flowers,  and  by  the  tranquil  herds 

That  love  beneath  my  stateliness  to  browse, 
I  dream  in  peace,  through  hours  of  sun  and  gloom, 
And  near  unto  the  Saviour's  worshiped  tomb 

I  wave  my  soft  and  sympathizing  boughs." 

This  is  very  beautiful  and  forcible,  but  we 
think  a  mistake  has  been  made  in  having  the 
cross  speak  of  its  "sad  sin"  being  punished  by 
God ;  since,  as  Mr.  Saltus  manages  his  legend, 


76 


THE    CALIFORN2AN. 


the  episode  of  Christ's  death  upon  the  cross 
was  something  for  which  its  own  mere  passive 
compulsion  could  not  possibly  have  made  it 
blameworthy.  Then,  too,  the  stanza  begin- 
ning, "He  perished  on  my  heart,"  shows,  to  our 
mind,  a  management  as  awkward  as  it  is  un- 
characteristic of  the  author.  We  have,  in  the 
second  line,  the  pronouns  "me,"  "he,"  and  "he" 
once  again,  while  each  is  immediately  after- 
ward repeated  in  the  third  line,  making  an  un- 
pleasant clash,  and  suggesting  constructive 
weakness,  whatever  may  have  been  the  writer's 
real  intention.  But  these  are  minor  faults,  and 
easily  passed  over  amid  the  ^manifold  excel- 
lences of  the  poem.  Certainly  there  is  nothing 
here  to  shock  or  wound  the  most  exacting  read- 
er. Let  him  disapprove  ever  so  strongly  of 
"art  for  art's  sake,"  he  cannot  but  grant  that  art 
has  been  employed  in  "The  Cross  Speaks"  only 
for  sweet,  healthful  ends  and  uses.  The  whole 
poem  has  the  fervid  sincerity,  the  mingled  elo- 
quence and  ingenuity,  which  marks  so  many  of 
Victor  Hugo's  lyrics.  The  idea  vaguely  .re- 
minds us  of  Hugo ;  he  might  easily  have  chosen 
and  used  it,  and  had  he  done  so,  the  great 
master's  general  treatment  would  probably  not 
have  been  dissimilar  to  the  one  here  employed. 
Mr.  Saltus  is  a  most  skillful  sonneteer.  It  is 
in  this  branch  of  poetry  that  his  love  for  Thd- 
ophile  Gautier  becomes  chiefly  apparent.  He 
builds  his  octaves  and  sextets  usually  after  the 
most  approved  Tuscan  model.  And  he  has 
drawn  his  inspiration  in  sonnet -writing,  too,  at 
first  hand,  having  studied  the  famous  Italian 
singers  for  years.  It  is  not  long  ago  that  he 
showed  his  able  mastery  of  the  Italian  language 
by  the  following  scholarly  sonnet  to  Mr.  Long- 
fellow, of  whose  poetry  he  is  said  to  be  a  pro- 
found admirer : 

"AD   ENRICO  W.    LONGFELLOW. 

' '  Dopo  la  lettura  del  siio  Capo  Lavoro  sul  Ponte  Vecchio 
di  Firenze. 

"Scritto  hai  di  luoghi  al  cor  Toscano  santi 
Dell'  Arno  e  di  Santa  Maria  del  Fiore : 
D'Amalfi  tutta  rose  ed  amaranti, 

Di  Roma  augusta  in  tutto  il  suo  splendore  ! 

"Rifulge  Italia  d'immortali  incanti, 

Nei  versi  che  t'inspira  ardente  il  core, 
E  le  sue  glorie,  i  pregi,  i  prieghi,  i  pianti, 
Trovano  un'  eco  in  te  sempre  d'amore  ! 

"E  della  bella  Italia  tu  sei  degno: 

Che  a  te  Iasci6  Petrarca  l'armonioso 

Plettro  d'amor ;   Boccaccio  il  suo  sorriso. 
Ma  di  Dante  il  sublime  e  forte  ingegno, 
Rese  il  tuo  spirto  grande  e  vigoroso : 

Ne  mai  il  tuo  nome  fia  del  suo  diviso  1" 

French  sonnets  and  lyrics  of  great  grace  and 
charm  Mr.  Saltus  has  also  frequently  written, 


and  he  has  repeatedly  given  evidence  of  pos- 
sessing the  very  rare  power  to  translate  English 
poems  into  French  with  great  fidelity  and  liter- 
alness,  while  at  the  same  time  preserving  all 
the  force  and  finish  of  the  originals.  It  may 
be  said  here,  in  passing,  that  the  English,  Ger- 
man, French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  languages 
have  no  secrets  for  him,  while  he  is  acquainted 
with  numerous  European  dialects,  and  has  con- 
siderable knowledge  of  Russian  and  Turkish. 
Let  us  take  one  or  two  of  his  English  sonnets. 
This,  for  example,  which  we  think  he  wrongly 
entitles  "Graves,"  and  should  call  "The  Night- 
Wind,"  is  absolutely  perfect  in  every  way : 

"The  sad  night-wind,  sighing  o'er  sea  and  strand, 

Haunts  the  cold  marble  where  Napoleon  sleeps  ; 
O'er  Charlemagne's  grave,  far  in  the  northern  land, 

A  vigil  through  the  centuries  it  keeps. 

O'er  Greecian  kings  its  plaintive  music  sweeps  ; 
Proud  Philip's  tomb  is  by  its  dark  wings  fanned  ; 
And  round  old  Pharaohs  (deep  in  desert  sand, 

Where  the  grim  Sphinx  leers  to  the  stars)  it  creeps. 
Yet  weary  it  is  of  this  chill,  spectral  gloom  ; 

For  moldering  grandeurs  it  can  have  no  care. 
Rich  mausoleums,  in  their  granite  doom, 

It  fain  would  leave,  and  wander  on  elsewhere, 
To  cool  the  violets  upon  Gautier's  tomb 

Or  lull  the  long  grass  over  Baudelaire." 

We  have  only  space  for  another  sonnet  of  Mr. 
Saltus,  a  masterpiece  of  color,  music  and  passion: 

THE  BAYADERE. 

"  Near  strange  weird  temples,  where  the  Ganges'  tide 
Bathes  domed  Delhi,  I  watch,  by  spice  trees  fanned, 
Her  agile  form  in  some  quaint  saraband, 
A  marvel  of  passionate  chastity  and  pride, 
Nude  to  the  loins,  superb  and  leopard-eyed. 
With  redolent  roses  in  her  jeweled  hand, 
Before  some  haughty  Rajah,  mute  and  grand, 
Her  flexible  torso  bends,  her  white  feet  glide  ! 
The  dull  kinoors  throb  one  monotonous  tune, 
And  mad  with  motion,  as  in  a  hasheesh  trance, 
Her  scintillant  eyes,  in  vague  ecstatic  charm, 
Burn  like  black  stars  beneath  the  Orient  moon, 
While  the  suave  dreamy  langour  of  the  dance 
Lulls  the  grim  drowsy  cobra  on  her  arm." 

From  the  copious  examples  we  have  given,  it 
must  have  become  apparent  to  any  reader  that 
this  young  poet  is  a  genius  of  very  distinct  and 
notable  endowments.  Never  was  promise  of 
future  greatness  more  abundantly  given,  and 
seldom  has  a  man  scarcely  past  his  thirtieth 
year  made  for  himself  so  stately  a  monument  of 
accomplished  work.  He  is  so  full  of  power  that 
even  those  who  dislike  must  recognize  him; 
and  while  there  is  much  in  his  work  that  the 
average  newspaper  critic  will  neither  under- 
stand nor  tolerate,  there  is  also  much  that  the 
literary  age  to  which  he  belongs  must  of  neces- 
sity welcome  and  value. 

ABNER  D.  CARTWRIGHT. 


THE   GARDENS   OF  THE   SEA-SHORE. 


77 


THE   GARDENS   OF   THE   SEA-SHORE. 


If  we  would  get  at  the  secrets  of  Nature,  and 
be  enabled  to  read  her  works  with  understand- 
ing minds,  we  must  learn  her  language,  and 
get  the  meaning,  in  the  first  place,  of  her  sim- 
plest and  commonest  words.  We  must  under- 
stand the  first  principles  of  her  language,  as  re- 
vealed in  the  beginnings  of  things.  Without 
this  the  study  of  the  earth  and  the  planets,  the 
stars  and  space,  motion  and  force,  would  be 
comparatively  fruitless. 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  consider  some  of  the 
first  of  organic  forms — the  letters  that  make  up 
the  words,  and  the  words  that  make  the  sen- 
tences, that  may  be  read  in  the  rocks,  in  the 
waters,  and  in  the  air. 

In  the  study  of  marine  botany  we  have  to 
deal  with  the  beginnings  of  life.  Here  we  find 
protoplasm  and  the  cell  in  their  primitive,  sim- 
plest form,  easiest  to  recognize  and  understand. 
Without  seeing  the  machinery  of  life  thus  sim- 
plified, we  can  hardly  form  a  distinct  idea  of  the 
intricacies  as  seen  in  the  progressive  forms  of 
plants  and  animals. 

What  that  force  is  that  is  planted  in  a  bit  of 
plastic  matter — or,  more  properly  speaking, 
what  that  principle  is  that  exists  as  a  center, 
and  draws  about  it  material  from  all  direc- 
tions, yet  has  no  limit  of  wall  or  membrane, 
reaching  out  and  commanding  the  atoms  to 
fall  into  line  and  march  to  some  definite  de- 
sign—  science  does  not  tell  us.  It  is  beyond 
the  sense  of  vision,  aided  by  the  best  of  micro- 
scopes. Chemistry  or  natural  philosophy  can- 
not unfold  it.  It  is,  possibly,  an  infinitesimal 
brain,  with  sympathies  wide  as  the  universe, 
yet  home  so  narrow  that  it  cannot  be  meas- 
ured by  any  of  the  means  at  our  command;  a 
principle  of  illimitable  possibilities,  and  yet  it 
has  been  impossible  for  the  human  mind,  so 
far,  to  comprehend  it.  We  have  called  it  vitality, 
or  the  life  principle.  It  is  that  force  which  takes 
hold  of  matter  and  rearranges  its  elements, 
forming  them  into  definitely  shaped  bodies,  that 
move  and  grow,  and  then  die  and  fall  to  pieces. 
It  differs  from  chemical  affinity;  and  yet,  as 
an  eminent  microscopist  has  said,  "there  is 
on  the  one  hand  the  drop  of  resin  gum  or  mu- 
cus, held  together  by  the  natural  chemical  affin- 
ity, and  on  the  other  hand  there  are  certain  liv- 
ing beings  so  exceedingly  simple  in  structure 
that  they  may  be  compared  to  a  drop  of  gum  or 
mucus,  but  from  which  they  are  distinguished 


by  being  held  together  and  animated  by  the 
affinity  which  is  called  the  principle  of  life? 

It  has  been  held  by  some  that  life  is  but  a 
mechanism,  that  runs  for  a  time  and  then  stops 
— a  living  machine,  in  which  matter  is  decom- 
posed and  its  elements  rearranged.  "Molecu- 
lar machinery"  is  the  term,  existing  in  matter, 
conditioned  so  that  it  may  run  for  a  season  and 
then  cease.  But  there  is  something  that  condi- 
tions this  machinery,  that  supplies  the  anima- 
tion, that  generates  the  vitality,  that  designs  the 
shape  of  the  body,  and  that  superintends  all  the 
processes  of  growth,  maturity,  death,  and  disin- 
tegration ;  something  that  makes  the  tall  forest 
tree,  the  monster  whale,  and  the  humble  sea- 
weed, into  such  different  patterns  from  simple 
cells  not  distinguishable  by  our  senses  from 
each  other. 

But  our  purpose  is  not  to  speculate  about  the 
unknowable,  but  rather  to  consider  a  few  things, 
plain  and  simple,  coming  so  near  the  hand  of 
the  Maker  that  some  of  us  think  we  almost 
know  how  the  work  is  done,  and  that  we  are 
nearly  wise  enough  to  do  it  ourselves.  The 
probability,  however,  is  that  we  are  as  distant 
from  a  solution  of  the  mystery  of  life,  and  know 
as  little  of  it.  as  we  know  of  some  almost  invis- 
ible star  that  went  down  last  evening  behind 
the  western  sea. 

Impressions  of  sea -weeds  are  found  in  the 
oldest  sedimentary  rocks,  and  are  doubtless  the 
earliest  of  organized  things.  The  plant  pre- 
ceded the  animal.  Its  duty  was  and  is  to  pre- 
pare the  mineral  kingdom  for  ready  appropria- 
tion by  the  animal.  The  sea  brought  forth 
plants  and  animals  in  abundance  before  there 
was  any  dry  land.  At  certain  times  and  places 
the  plant-growths  in  the  sea  must  have  been  very 
abundant.  They  were  of  such  a  tender  and 
evanescent  growth  that,  with  few  exceptions, 
all  signs  of  their  existence  have  disappeared. 
I  may  mention  here  that  one  large  and  inter- 
esting family  of  the  Algae,  the  Diatoms,  made 
up  of  a  silicious  frame- work,  admired  and  stud- 
ied by  all  microscopists,  has  been  left  in  large 
deposits,  adding  much  to  the  bulk  of  sediment- 
ary rocks.  Some  portions  of  the  mountains  on 
the  northern  shore  of  Monterey  Bay  are  largely 
made  up  of  minerals  that  are  the  result  of  ma- 
rine plants — silex,  lime,  and  alumina.  How  im- 
portant and  extensive,  then,  must  have  been 
these  plants  when  the  sea  covered  the  earth's 


78 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


surface  almost,  if  not  quite,  universally!  By 
them  the  water  was  kept  in  purity,  so  that  ani- 
mals might  live  therein.  And  all  the  way  down 
through  the  epochs  of  the  earth's  progress  they 
have  continued,  and  still  continue,  to  exert  a 
salutary  influence. 

There  are  but  few,  if  any,  deserts  in  the  sea. 
Almost  every  drop  teems  with  spores  of  plants, 
and  in  many  places  the  waters  are  so  filled  with 
dense  tangles  of  vegetation  that  ships  cannot 
pass  through.  So  it  has  become  proverbial  that 
the  sea  is  our  mother.  Even  the  same  word  in 
many  languages  is  used  for  sea  and  for  mother. 
In  a  poetical  sense  the  poet  Wordsworth  says : 

"Though  inland  far  we  be, 
Our  souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 
Which  brought  us  hither." 

The  currents  which  exist  in  all  oceans  carry 
the  spores  of  sea -weed  to  all  the  coasts,  and 
there,  if  the  surroundings  are  favorable,  they 
grow.  In  all  the  explored  latitudes  sea -weeds 
abound.  The  number  of  species  decreases  as 
we  approach  the  poles,  but  the  quantity  is  not 
lessened.  I  have  said  there  are  few  deserts  in 
the  sea.  The  water  is  full  of  microscopic  kinds 
in  all  latitudes.  But  sea-weeds  rarely  grow  on 
sand,  unless  it  is  of  a  very  compact  form. 
When  the  sea -bottom  is  of  loose  sand,  as  it  is 
in  many  places,  Algae  will  not  grow  there; 
hence,  there  are  many  submerged  deserts  as 
plantless  as  the  African  wastes. 

With  but  one  or  two  exceptions,  all  the  ma- 
rine plants  belong  to  the  class  known  as  Algce. 
They  are  cellular  plants,  with  no  system  of  ca- 
nals or  tubes  running  through  them  to  carry 
fluids,  as  in  ferns  and  flowering  plants.  The 
circulation  is  carried  from  cell  to  cell  through 
the  cell-wall  by  the  process  known  in  physics 
as  osmosis.  They  derive  their  nourishment  al- 
most entirely  from  the  water.  Their  roots  serve 
more  for  hold-fasts  than  to  derive  nourishment 
from  the  material  on  which  they  grow.  Al- 
though some  forms  of  Algaa  have  root,  stem, 
and  leaf,  there  are  many  kinds  that  consist  of  a 
simple  cell.  Generally  these  cells  are  in  mass- 
es, and  imbedded  in  a  jelly-like  material,  but 
each  cell  is  independent  of  its  neighbor,  and 
there  is  no  union  of  mind  to  form  a  body.  Then, 
again,  these  cells  have  a  common  purpose  to 
spread  into  a  leaf,  or  membrane,  or  to  form  in 
lines,  and  present  a  cylindricarbody,  with,  per- 
haps, a  membraneous  expansion  at  the  summit. 
Some  continue  in  strait  lines,  with  joints  at  reg- 
ular distances.  Others  tend  to  branch  at  these 
joints,  just  as  a  bud  starts  out  from  the  axis  of 
a  leaf.  Some  cling  to  the  rocks  and  stems  of 
other  sea -weeds  so  closely  that  they  seem  a 
part  of  the  rock  or  plant  on  which  they  grow. 


Some  are  hard  and  brittle,  like  coral,  some 
leathery  and  tough,  while  others  are  thin  and 
fine  as  silk,  and  as  fragile  as  the  web  of  a  spi- 
der. Some  float  in  the  water,  growing  on  each 
other  in  immense  fields,  at  the  centers  of  ocean 
currents,  like  the  Sargassum.  Indeed,  there 
seems  to  be  as  great  a  diversity  of  form  in 
plants  of  the  sea  as  in  plants  of  the  land,  but 
less  intricacy.  In  fact,  there  is,  to  my  mind,  no 
good  reason  why  marine  botany  should  not 
precede  the  study  of  the  terrestrial.  While  it 
makes  but  little  difference  where  we  begin,  we 
find  that  all  roads  lead  to  it  as  the  beginning  of 
the  science.  It  seems  "as  if  Nature  had  first 
formed  the  types  (in  the  waters)  of  the  com- 
pound vegetable  organs,  so  named,  and  exhib- 
ited them  as  separate  vegetables,  and  then,  by 
combining  them  in  a  single  frame -work,  had 
built  up  her  perfect  idea  of  a  fully  organized 
plant." 

Suppose,  for  a  few  moments,  we  glance  at  a 
few  types  of  plants  as  we  see  them  in  the  line 
of  progress  from  the  simplest  form  to  the  most 
complex.  We  will  not  attempt  to  follow  the 
links  of  the  chain — that  would  be  too  difficult, 
and  require  too  much  time — -but  merely  take 
up  a  plant,  here  and  there,  familiar  to  all. 

Growing  on  the  smooth  surface  of  perpen- 
dicular cliffs,  in  this  neighborhood,  may  be  seen, 
during  the  rainy  season,  one  of  the  water-plants, 
appearing  on  the  rocks  like  a  coating  of  red  or 
dark  brown  paint.  It  looks,  in  some  places,  as 
though  blood  had  been  brushed  on  the  banks. 
Under  the  microscope,  we  may  see  that  it  is  a 
one-celled  plant,  surrounded  with  a  kind  of 
gelatine ;  in  fact,  it  grows  in  patches,  or  commu- 
nities. Each  cell  is  of  globular  shape,  and  in- 
dependent of  its  neighbors,  so  far  as  its  life-his- 
tory is  concerned,  although  the  gelatine  belongs 
to  the  community.  Its  growth  is  similar  to  the 
"red  snow,"  of  which  nearly  everybody  has 
some  information.  By  some  naturalists  it  is 
called  Palmellaj  by  others,  Porphyridium.  It 
is  classed  among  the  fresh  water  Algae. 

Let  us  take  one  cell,  or  plant,  as  we  find  it  in 
the  mass  of  gelatine — round,  full,  blood -red. 
Watching  it  for  a  little  while,  we  begin  to  see  a 
tendency  towards  division.  A  thin  wall  is 
thrown  across  the  middle,  and  soon  we  have  a 
separation,  each  half  becomes  an  independent 
cell.  These  again  divide;  and  so  the  process 
of  binary  division  goes  on  for  a  good  many 
generations.  We  see  no  reason  why.it  should 
stop  until  the  whole  world,  and  the  universe,  is 
full  of  the  little  microscopic  Palmellas.  But 
they  have  a  different  mind,  and  in  one  of  these 
numerous  generations  a  change  takes  place. 
Instead  of  the  little  round  cell  dividing,  as  here- 
tofore, we  see  it  filled  with  a  different  kind  of 


THE   GARDENS  OF  THE  SEA-SHORE. 


79 


endochrome,  chlorophyl,  or  cell -matter,  as  we 
are  pleased  to  call  it,  from  the  cells  we  have 
been  noticing.  They  burst,  and  from  each  hole 
in  the  cell  issues  swarms  of  spores.  These  are 
exceedingly  small,  and  armed  with  cilia — fine, 
thread-like  projections — so  that  the  spores 
move,  by  means  of  these  cilia,  through  the  wa- 
ter, or  air,  as  the  case  may  be.  Now,  here  is  a 
new  form  of  life-development,  the  product  of  a 
cell,  and  yet  very  different  from  the  parent. 
They  move  with  great  rapidity,  in  every  direc- 
tion, when  set  free  in  water.  They  seem  to  be 
animals;  and  were  they  to  remain,  and  con- 
tinue to  exhibit  the  same  activity,  for  any  con- 
siderable time,  we  could  not  distinguish  them 
from  many  forms  of  life  which  are  known  to  be 
animals.  But  in  a  little  while — say  an  hour  or 
two — they  seek  lodgment,  and  come  to  rest. 
The  cilia  fall  off,  they  increase  in  size,  and  soon 
we  find  a  well  developed  cell,  just  like  the  one 
we  commenced  with,  ready  to  go  through  the 
process  of  "binary  division"  through  certain 
generations,  until  it  reaches  the  reproductive 
cell  again.  Now,  this  is  the  life  of  a  plant  con- 
sisting of  a  single  cell,  one  of  the  smallest  forms 
of  Algae,  that  can  be  seen  only  with  the  micro- 
scope, unless  in  large  masses.  It  is  also,  per- 
haps, one  of  the  simplest  forms.  Yet  it  exhibits 
a  mind  of  a  similar  character  to  that  of  some 
forms  of  animal  life;  especially  in  the  little 
round  of  development  it  makes,  reminding  us 
of  the  Aphides,  or  "plant  lice,"  and  other  ani- 
mals of  a  still  more  complex  organization,  or 
rather  differentiation,  but  far  removed  from  the 
simple  plant  of  a  single  cell. 

Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  another  little 
plant  found  in  streams  and  pools  of  fresh  wa- 
ter; for  it  seems  these  little,  almost  insignifi- 
cant, things  are  too  fragile  for  rough  handling 
in  the  sea,  or  to  endure  the  salt  water,  so  we 
find  them  about  springs  and  shallow  waters. 
It  belongs  to  a  small  tribe  of  plants  called  Nos- 
tocs.  It  consists,  instead  of  separate  and  al- 
most independent  cells,  as  in  the  Palmella,  of  a 
filament  distinctly  beaded,  and  lying  in  a  firm, 
gelatinous  mass  of  somewhat  regular  shape. 
These  filaments  are  usually  simple  or  but  sel- 
dom branched.  They  are  curved  and  twisted 
in  various  direction,  but  having  a  tendency 
mainly  toward  a  spiral  direction.  The  masses 
of  jelly  that  contain  these  filaments  are  some- 
times of  considerable  size,  and  suddenly  appear 
after  a  rain  in  places  that  were  apparently  dry 
before.  It  is  only  with  a  microscope  that  the 
filaments  can  be  seen  in  the  jelly.  Now,  one 
of  the  peculiar  features  of  this  plant  is  that  at 
regular  .distances  on  the  beaded  filaments  can 
be  seen  one  or  more  beads  larger  and  more  dis- 
tinct, as  if  the  mind  of  the  plant,  after  making 


ordinary  cells  for  a  long  time,  suddenly  changed, 
and  made  and  intervened  a  peculiar  kind  of  cell, 
differing  in  many  respects  from  the  common 
kind.  As  well  as  we  can  understand,  these 
cysts,  which  are  called  heterocysts,  are  in  some 
way  so  changed  for  purposes  of  reproduction. 
This  Nostoc,  then,  is  increased  in  several  ways  : 
i.  By  one  cell  growing  ("budding")  on  the 
side  or  end  of  another,  extending  in  a  continu- 
ous line  to  form  a  filament  of  definite  size  and 
in  a  definite  direction.  2.  Division  of  the  fila- 
ment by  breaking  up  of  the  jelly  when  wet  or 
dry,  as  the  case  may  be,  each  fragment  serving 
as  a  nucleus  for  a  fresh  colony  of  threads.  3. 
By  the  escape  of  a  subdivision  of  filament, 
around  which,  in  the  course  of  time,  a  gelatine 
is  formed,  and  a  continuation  of  growth.  These 
two  methods  correspond  to  "cuttings."  4.  By 
spores,  which  are  formed  in  the  heterocysts,  or 
enlarged  cells,  that  I  have  mentioned.  These 
spores  are  of  two  kinds  contained  in  these  ves- 
icles or  cysts,  contiguous  to  each  other.  They 
are  different  from  the  endochrome  that  is  found 
in  the  common  cells.  They  are  more  like  zo- 
ospores,  or  animal  spores,  and  some  of  them 
have  cilia  moving  freely  through  the  water,  sim- 
ilar to  many  other  water  plants  and  fungi  con- 
taining "swarm  spores."  This  method  corre- 
sponds to  the  seeds  or  fruiting  of  flowering 
plants. 

We  will  glance  now  at  another  plant  found 
growing  on  the  rocks  in  all  our  seas — a  beauti- 
ful, feathery,  deep  green  little  plant,  looking  like 
a  small  fern,  or  branches  from  a  fir  tree.  It  is 
called  Bryopsis  plumosa.  Each  frond  and 
frondlet  consists  of  a  single  tube,  straight  and 
round.  The  walls  of  the  tube  are  made  up,  as 
usual,  of  little  cells,  closely  fitted  to  each  other, 
a  thin,  transparent  structure.  These  tubes  taper 
to  each  end,  where  they  are  closed  nearly,  if 
not  quite.  The  plant  grows  from  a  base  hav- 
ing a  number  of  branches,  tree-like.  The  plume 
is  generally  confined  to  the  upper  half  of  the 
frond,  and  the  deep  green  color  is  given  to  it 
by  the  chlorophyl  filling  these  tubes.  This, 
when  mature,  escapes  from  the  plant  by  the 
bursting  of  the  tube,  and  is  the  means  of  its 
propagation,  in  the  form  of  zoospores.  Thus 
we  have  in  this  plant  several  things.  We  have 
a  root,  which,  although  of  little  use  to  convey  nu- 
triment to  the  fronds,  serves  as  a  hold-fast.  It 
is  a  single  elongated  cell  or  tube,  containing 
starchy  matter  and  a  slightly  fibrous  structure. 
From  this  arises  a  single  tube,  branching  by 
buds  from  the  side.  These  branches  come  off 
pinnately,  and  instead  of  a  single  cell  filled  with 
cell-matter  (endochrome),  we  have  little  cases, 
slightly  connected,  surrounded  by  a  cellular 
membrane,  in  which  the  processes  of  its  simple 


8o 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


life  are  carried  on.  The  mind  of  this  plant  is 
toward  a  symmetrical  structure,  sufficiently  dif- 
ferentiated to  look  toward  a  higher  type  and 
greater  complexity — a  root,  a  stem,  a  frond, 
all  constructed  out  of  single,  but  much  en- 
larged, cells,  each  one  being  an  elongated  tube, 
built  into  a  beautiful  little  tree  of  the  most  ex- 
quisitely green  shade. 

Common  on  the  rocks  of  our  sea  coast  grows 
a  species  of  Halidrysy  commonly  called  the 
"sea-oak."  It  is  a  stout  plant,  with  leaves  cut 
and  lobed,  somewhat  resembling  certain  species 
of  oak.  I  mention  it  rather  for  contrast  than 
comparison  with  the  several  plants  we  have 
been  looking  at.  It  belongs  to  the  Order  of 
Fucacice,  and  is  closely  related  to  the  Sargas- 
sum  of  nearly  all  the  temperate  and  tropical 
seas.  It  has  a  root  which  seems  to  adhere  by 
means  of  a  sort  of  cartilaginous  disk  spread- 
ing over  the  surface  of  rocks.  It  often  grows 
to  be  seven  or  eight  feet  long.  In  this  case  the 
tips  of  the  branches  are  composed  of  long 
strings  of  air-vessels,  growing  from  the  tips  of 
the  broad,  leaf- like  frond,  and  branching  nu- 
merously, so  that  when  these  become  tangled, 
it  is  very  difficult  to  unfasten  them.  The  first 
growth  from  the  root  is  a  flat  leaf,  mid-veined, 
and  from  this  the  frond  proceeds.  This  leaf  is 
six  or  eight  inches  in  length.  As  the  plant 
grows  older,  the  mid-rib  of  this  first  leaf  is  bor- 
dered with  lobes,  and  these  gradually  develop 
into  cysts,  or  air-vessels,  and  surmounting  all 
these  we  find  the  fruit,  situated  in  spore-cavi- 
ties, or  cells,  especially  arranged  for  perfecting 
the  seed  for  new  plants.  In  this  plant  we  no- 
tice what  we  have  not  noticed  before.  The 
whole  structure  contributes  toward  a  fruiting 
process,  located,  not  in  all  the  cells,  but  in  a 
special  part  of  the  plant,  and  by  a  special  kind 
of  cells.  We  also  see  the  whole  plant  contrib- 
uting to  another  special  function — the  air-ves- 
sels, which  are  for  the  purpose  of  suspending 
the  plant  in  the  water.  We  likewise  see  what 
might  be  called  leaves,  with  mid-ribs  attached 
to  the  frond.  We  find  a  thick  and  dense  cellu- 
lar structure,  having,  in  the  old  plant,  but  lit- 
tle appearance  of  the  delicate  cells  we  noticed 
in  the  plants  we  have  been  looking  at. 

The  features  of  this  coarse  sea-weed  have 
been  added  step  by  step  from  the  little  moving 
spore  that  found  a  crevice  in  the  side  of  a  rock 
in  which  to  plant  itself,  throwing  off  cell  after 
cell  to  make  the  root  and  the  leaf;  an  expand- 
ing of  the  lobes ;  a  change  to  air-vessels ;  a 
throwing  in  here  and  there,  as  needed,  of  con- 
nective tissue ;  and,  finally,  the  construction  of 
a  little  chamber,  at  the  tips  of  the  plant,  lined 
with  silky  threads,  in  which  the  spores  for  the 
new  plant  may  grow  and  mature. 


Now,  after  considering  this  matter,  may  we 
not  repeat  what  is  true  and  has  been  taught  in 
phenogamic  botany  for  many  years :  that  all 
the  organs  of  a  plant  are  transformed  leaves. 
But  we  may  take  a  step  still  nearer  the  begin- 
ning of  organic  things,  and  say,  with  equal 
truth,  that  all  plants  and  all  animals  are  but 
transformed  cells.  At  least,  we  may  say  they 
are  formed  of  cells,  each  one  of  which,  at  some 
period  of  its  living  existence,  was  a  simple,  inde- 
pendent being.  They  have  become  ft&  formed 
material  of  the  bodies  of  plants  and  animals. 
Comparatively  speaking,  there  are  very  few  liv- 
ing cells. 

The  proportion  of  the  living  to  the  dead,  or 
formed,  matter  is  as  the  thin,  narrow  surface  of 
the  living  coral  insects  to  the  mass  of  the  coral 
island.  When  a  cell  has  fulfilled  its  office,  it 
dies,  and  is  either  thrown  away  or  enters  into 
the  composition  of  the  body  in  which  it  grew, 
to  carry  out  the  form  of  that  body  according  to 
the  mind  which  presides  in,  over,  and  about  the 
organism.  A  cell  may  be  considered  an  organ- 
ic unit,  and  whatever  its  elementary  composi- 
tion may  be  depends  on  the  use  it  is  intended 
to  serve  in  Nature's  endless  diversity  of  forms. 

After  long  and  careful  investigation,  with  pa- 
tience and  years,  some  of  our  naturalists  have 
almost  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  many  of 
what  are  classed  among  the  lower  plants  and 
animals  as  distinct  forms,  species,  and  genera, 
are  of  doubtful  character,  and  are  but  spores,  or 
cells,  that  will  possibly,  and  in  some  cases  cer- 
tainly, change  into  something  else.  Thus  some 
of  the  plants  that  we  have  been  looking  at  are 
liable  to  change,  before  our  eyes,  into  some- 
thing quite  different  from  the  parent ;  as  the 
little  string  of  beads  in  the  Nostoc  filament 
suddenly  develops  into  a  large,  round  vesicle  or 
two,  or  four,  and  then  suddenly  relapses  again 
into  the  common  little  cell.  I  do  not  know  that 
we  can  call  this  development.  Nature  seems 
suddenly  to  have  changed  her  mind,  and  we 
have  a  flying,  egg-laying  Aphis  after  many  gen- 
erations of  a  helpless,  wingless,  plant -eating 
parasite.  We  have  a  Lichen  which  is  suspected 
as  originating  from  a  Nostoc.  And,  indeed,  all 
our  orders  of  Lichens  are  suspected  by  some 
as  being  only  escaped  Algas,  and  held  in  prison 
by  fungi.  There  are  green  coatings  low  down 
on  shaded  walls,  fences,  rocks,  trunks  of  trees, 
and  sometimes  on  the  ground,  when  it  and 
these  are  damp.  These  may  be  seen  at  all 
seasons  of  the  year.  They  are  generally  single 
cell  plants.  They  are  called  Protococcus,  Plete- 
rococcuS)  Cklorococcus,  etc.,  by  botanists.  It  is 
possible  they  belong  to  something  else — are  a 
part  of  some  process  of  development,  which, 
for  the  time  being,  is  delayed  in  its  progress  to- 


THE   GARDENS  OF  THE  SEA-SHORE. 


81 


ward  a  higher  state  of  existence ;  or,  quite  as 
likely,  they  never  reach  beyond  their  present 
form,  and  that  their  little  round  of  existence 
ends  with  the  dissolution  of  the  walls_and  gran- 
ules that  compose  their  cells. 

I  have  used  the  word  "differentiation"  in  the 
sense  of  special  organs,  "each  performing  ac- 
tions peculiar  to  itself,  which  contribute  to  the 
life  of  a  plant  as  a  whole?  Differentiation"leads 
to  a  composite  fabric,  as  stem,  leaves,  roots, 
flowers,  fruit,  etc,  I  can  see  no  reason  why  the 
number  of  organs  should  invalidate  or  consti- 
tute any  organism  to  recognition  as  such. 
Whether  the  plant  has  one  cell,  or  an  indefinite 
number,  and  a  complex  organization,  matters 
but  little  with  independence  and  individuality. 
For  we  may  compare  an  animal,  or  plant,  to  a 
populous  town  where  each  person  follows  his 
own  vocation,  yet  all  helping  in  the  general  pros- 
perity. 

Lately,  Edmond  Perrier,  at  the  Museum  of 
Natural  History  in  Paris,  advanced  some  new 
views  in  regard  to  this  subject.  They  are  prob- 
ably not  new  to  those  who  have  considered 
transformations  of  plants  and  animals  from 
their  earlier  beginnings.  But  M.  Perrier  may 
be  the  first  one  to  publish  these  views.  He 
says:  "The  law  which  I  now  have  to  put  for- 
ward may  be  called  the  law  of  association,  and 
the  process  by  which  it  works,  the  transforma- 
tion of  societies  into  individuals?  He  has  ref- 
erence to  colonial  societies  in  which  the  indi- 
viduals are  almost,  if  not  quite,  in  contact  by 
continuity  of  tissue.  For  example :  Polyps,  as 
illustrated  in  the  sponge  and  the  coral.  The 
animals  of  the  colony  are  independent  individ- 
uals, as  may  be  proved  by  separating  one  or 
more  of  them  from  the  group,  when  they  will 
live  and  start  a  new  colony.  What,  then,  is  a 
sea -weed/ a  cabbage,  or  a  tree,  but  a  colony  of 
independent  plants,  associated  and  working  for 
a  common  interest  and  object?  So  we  have  a 
system  of  form,  color,  and  regularity  of  struct- 
ure, according  to  the  mind  that  is  in,  over,  and 
about  every  living  organism.  What  that  mind 
really  is  we  do  not  clearly  see,  we  do  not  fully 
know.  But  as  Dr.  Carpenter,  the  world -re- 
nowned scientist,  has  lately  said:  "I  deem  it 
just  as  absurd  and  illogical  to  affirm  that  there 
is  no  place  for  a  God  in  nature,  originating,  di- 
recting, and  controlling  its  forces  by  his  will,  as 
it  is  to  assert  that  there  is  no  place  in  man's 
body  for  his  conscious  mind."  The  application 
of  science  by  the  human  intellect  is  limited. 
Professor  Tyndall  likens  our  minds  to  "a  mu- 
sical instrument  with  a  certain  range  of  notes, 
beyond  which,  in  both  directions,  exists  infinite 
silence.  The  phenomena  of  matter  and  force 
come  within  our  intellectual  range,  but  behind, 


and  above,  and  around  us,  the  real  mystery  of 
the  universe  lies  unsolved,  and,  as  far  as  we 
are  concerned,  is  incapable  of  solution." 

But,  because  we  are  placed  in  the  midst  of 
the  infinite,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should 
not  strive  to  solve  all  the  problems  within  the 
range  of  our  power.  Moreover,  that  range  has 
unknown  limits  to  us.  We  know  not  how  far 
in  either  direction  we  may  be  able  to  see  and 
to  comprehend.  The  fields  of  research  in  sci- 
ence are  fruitful  whichever  way  we  look.  Ev- 
ery fact  we  discover  adds  to  our  mental  vista. 
Every  well  tested  phenomenon  is  an  aid  to  dis- 
covery. We  are  strengthened  and  enlightened 
as  we  proceed.  It  may  seem  of  little  account 
to  plod  over  a  pile  of  sea -weeds,  or  even  to 
study  the  beautiful  forms  and  colors  that  per- 
tain to  some  of  them,  to  admire  the  arrange- 
ment and  structure  of  their  cells,  to  learn  their 
long  Latin  names,  and  perhaps  worry  no  little 
in  their  classification  and  arrangement.  And 
so  it  is  of  little  account  if  we  are  to  stop  here. 
They  are  but  the  ABC,  or,  at  best,  short  words, 
that  go  to  make  up  the  language  that  Nature 
speaks.  For 

"To  him  who  in  the  love  of  Nature  holds 
Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language." 

No  two  plants  have  the  same  mind,  or  the 
same  language  to  express  that  mind.  The  Ner- 
cocystis,  with  its  long  thread,  or  rope-like  stem, 
crowned  with  a  wide  expanse  of  leaves  floating 
over  the  water,  on  which,  in  places,  the  sea- 
otter  feeds  and  sleeps,  has  a  long  history  of  sea- 
faring life  to  tell  us,  in  words  old  and  strange, 
dating  back  to  a  period  when  "the  spirit  of  God 
moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters"  for  the  first 
time — an  ancient  language,  yet  always  new  to 
each  succeeding  generation ;  never  a  dead  lan- 
guage, save  to  those  who  will  not  at  least  try  to 
read  it. 

Of  a  different  mind,  and  a  different  language, 
are  the  pines  that  whisper  over  our  heads  in 
tongues  more  modern,  and  more  complex, 

"The  murmuring  pines,  and  the  hemlocks, 
Bearded  with  moss,  and  in  garments  green;" 

while, 

"Loud  from  its  rocky  caverns,  the  deep-voiced  neigh- 
boring ocean 

Speaks,  and,  in  accents  disconsolate,   answers   the 
wail  of  the  forest." 

But  the  voices  of  Nature  are  only  audible  in  a 
poetical  sense.  Her  grandest  works,  and  most 
wonderful  and  powerful  processes,  are  silent  to 
our  ears.  The  coral  islands,  infusorial  depos- 


82 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


its,  and  Algse,  with  lime  and  silex,  building  up 
great  continents,  and  not  so  much  as  the  sound 
of  a  hammer  is  heard !  Even  the  immense  sys- 
tem of  worlds,  moving  with  inconceivable  ve- 
locities about  and  among  each  other,  and  not 
so  much  as  a  vibration  is  felt  by  oin-  senses. 
The  "music  of  the  spheres"  may  be  all  about 
us,  but  we  cannot  hear  it. 

Well,  then,  may  we,  each  one,  soliloquize  in 
the  words  of  Bryant's  "Forest  Hymn  :" 


'My  heart  is  awed  within  me  when  I  think 
Of  the  great  miracle  that  still  goes  on 
In  silence  round  me ;   the  perpetual  work 
Of  Thy  creation,  finished,  yet  renewed 
Forever.     Written  on  Thy  works  I  read 
The  lesson  of  Thine  own  eternity. 
Lo !   all  grow  old  and  die ;  but  see  again, 
How,  in  the  faltering  footsteps  of  decay, 
Youth  presses — ever  gay  and  beautiful  youth — 
In  all  its  beautiful  forms!" 

C.  L.  ANDERSON. 


OLD    HUNKS'S   CHRISTMAS    PRESENT. 


Pacific  Street  held  high  carnival ;  in  fact,  all 
Barbary  Coast  was  in  a  blaze  of  glory.  Christ- 
mas Eve  was  being  celebrated — save  the  mark ! 
— in  the  gin-mills.  From  every  door,  as  one 
passed  along  the  street,  burst  out  sounds  of 
music  and  hilarity.  Down  in  the  cellars  men 
were  sitting  at  tables  drinking  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  orchestrions.  Overhead — for,  as 
though  it  were  not  enough  that  saloons  should 
be  placed  side  by  side,  they  were  piled  one  over 
the  other — overhead,  boisterous  raffles  were  go- 
ing on  for  Christmas  turkeys,  and  there  was 
more  blaze  of  gaslight,  and  more  men  were 
drinking  in  the  thick,  smoky  atmosphere ;  while 
women,  passing  to  and  fro  in  gaudy  costumes, 
laughed  in  metallic  and  joyless  tones  at  jokes 
of  as  questionable  character  as  themselves. 
Sailors  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  men  and 
women  of  every  nation,  oaths  and  jests  in  every 
language !  Block  after  block — saloon  after  sa- 
loon ! 

Up  on  the  hill  yonder  the  stately  mother 
smiled  on  her  children  as  they  gathered  around 
the  tree  in  eager  anticipation,  and  the  father 
looked  over  his  broad  expanse  of  waistcoat  with 
a  smile  of  serene  content.  But  how  was  it  on 
Barbary  Coast? 

In  little  knots  on  the  sidewalks,  lured  with  a 
fatal  curiosity  nearer  and  nearer  until  angrily 
ordered  away  by  the  bar -tenders,  were  chil- 
dren, ten,  twelve,  fourteen  years  of  age,  with' 
little  pinched  old  faces ;  children  unduly  wise, 
who  laughed  and  jested  at  drunkenness,  to 
whom  the  light  and  the  hilarity  had  a  resistless 
fascination ;  human  shrubs  whose  dwarfed  and 
distorted  lives  were  destined  never  to  bear  flow- 
ers or  fruitage.  Some  of  them  were  smoking, 
some  were  munching  oranges  that  the  fruit- 
venders  had  rejected  and  thrown  into  the  street; 
but  the  most  of  them  were  peering  with  admira- 
tion into  the  saloons  in  defiance  of  the  occa- 
sional efforts  made  to  drive  them  away. 


Some  of  the  "respectable"  saloons  had  wood- 
en screens  inside  in  front  of  the  doors  to  shut 
off  the  view  from  the  street.  At  these  places 
the  music  was  louder,  the  laughter  more  con- 
tinuous, the  numbers  greater,  the  smoke  thick- 
er, the  confusion  and  glare  more  bewildering. 
Larger  groups  of  children  were  here  gathered 
on  the  sidewalk,  and  occasionally  one  more  dar- 
ing than  the  rest  would  creep  around  the  corner 
of  the  screen  and  gaze  upon  the  feverish  and 
noisy  scene  with  admiration.  From  little  back 
rooms  came  the  clink  of  coin,  and,  child  as  he 
was,  the  boy  at  the  screen  knew  what  it  meant. 
Indeed,  as  he  stood  there,  with  a  cigar  stump 
in  his  little  mouth,  which  he  occasionally  re- 
moved to  pay  his  respects  with  unerring  precis- 
ion to  the  nearest  spittoon,  he  was  different 
from  those  about  him  only  in  size.  Give  him 
time,  and  the  difference  will  disappear. 

On  this  particular  Christmas  evening  there 
was  suddenly  a  shout  among  the  urchins  on  the 
outside.  The  boy  by  the  screen  was  on  the 
sidewalk  in  an  instant. 

"What's  up?" 

"There  comes  Old  Hunks." 

Slowly  up  the  street,  muttering  to  himself, 
came  an  old,  stoop-shouldered  man,  who 
glanced  apprehensively  at  the  group  of  boys. 
His  appearance  was  shabby  in  the  extreme. 
His  hair  was  unkempt,  his  eyebrows  were  shag- 
gy, his  beard  was  tangled  and  uncombed,  and 
his  small,  nervous  gray  eyes  shone  like  balls 
of  fire.  To  a  stranger  the  old  man  might  have 
appeared  to  be  in  the  depths  of  destitution. 
But  the  residents  of  this  neighborhood  knew 
better.  Many  of  them  paid  rent  to  him,  for  he 
owned  many  of  the  buildings  that  were  illumin- 
ed to-night  with  such  a  fateful  glare.  His  ten- 
ants hated  him.  They  said  he  was  a  miser, 
that  he  was  hard-hearted,  that  he  granted  no 
delays,  that  he  had  no  soul.  What  use  could  a 
miser  have  for  a  soul  ? 


OLD  HUNKS'S  CHRISTMAS  PRESENT. 


The  boys  heard  this  talk  at  home. 

"Hello,  Hunksy,"  said  one,  with  a  box  slung 
over  his  shoulder.  "Have  a  shine?  I'll  take 
yer  note  for  it." 

No  one  knew  the  old  man's  name.  Proba- 
bly it  appeared  somewhere  on  musty  old  title- 
deeds.  He  signed  his  rent  receipts,  always, 
"O.  H. ;"  and  when  some  wag— for  they  have 
a  grim  humor  on  Barbary  Coast — suggested 
that  the  letters  stood  for  "Old  Hunks,"  the 
name  stuck  to  him. 

"What  yer  goin'  to  give  me  for  Chris'mus?" 
queried  a  cross-eyed  gamin  with  a  freckled  face. 

"Lemme  a  bit,  will  yer,  Hunksy?"  asked  an- 
other. ''Til  pay  yer  out  er  my  divvydends." 

"  He  wouldn't  len'  a  feller  a  stable  to  be  born 
in,  he  wouldn't,"  replied  a  third,  "not  without 
yer  spouted  yer  watch  with  him." 

The  old  man  grabbed  the  last  speaker,  and 
administered  a  couple  of  sound  cuffs. 

"Who  yer  hittin'?"  angrily  demanded  the 
urchin,  although  there  seemed  little  room  for 
doubt  on  that  question. 

But  before  he  could  get  an  answer,  the  miser 
had  turned  into  a  side-street,  and  the  boys  went 
back  to  the  saloon  door,  not  without  some  jeers 
at  their  crestfallen  companion. 

Old  Hunks  evidently  was  out  of  humor.  Some 
of  his  tenants  had  not  paid  him  to-day.  Sev- 
eral were  overdue  a  considerable  time.  There 
was  Digby,  for  instance,  who  lived  with  his  wife 
and  four  children  in  the  two  back  rooms  over 
the  last  saloon.  Digby  was  more  than  a  week 
behind,  and  it  was  Digby's  boy  whom  he  had 
cuffed.  The  father  was  in  the  saloon,  drink- 
ing, as  the  old  man  probably  knew.  Four  or 
five  others  were  behind  from  one  to  two  weeks, 
something  Old  Hunks  had  never  permitted  be- 
fore. They  pleaded  harcl  times.  They  said 
they  couldn't  get  work.  What  had  he  to  do 
with  hard  times?  It  wasn't  his  fault  if  they 
couldn't  get  work.  They  didn't  want  to  work. 
They  wouldn't  work  if  you'd  give  them  a  chance. 
Work,  indeed — nonsense. 

But  the  worst  case  was  that  of  the  sick  woman 
with  the  two  little  children,  who  lived  in  the  ten- 
ement house  on  this  side-street. 

"Three  months  now,"  growled  Old  Hunks  to 
himself  as  he  shuffled  along  the  narrow  side- 
walk, from  which  the  tired-looking,  hard-faced 
women  withdrew  into  their  doors  with  their 
children  to  let  him  pass. 

"Three  months  now,  and  not  a  cent.  That's 
what  I  get  for  showing  a  little  kindness  to  these 
people,  and  letting  the  rent  run." 

He  turned  in  at  the  door  of  the  tenement 
house,  and  climbed  slowly  up  the  narrow  stair- 
case. The  air  was  musty,  and  rank  with  the 
smell  of  the  afternoon's  cooking,  which  had 


mingled  from  a  dozen  different  apartments. 
There  was  no  light,  save  that  one  of  the  rooms 
on  the  first  floor  boasted  a  stained  transom, 
thick  with  venerable  dust,  through  which  a  few 
rays  struggled  from  a  candle  inside.  It  was 
sufficient  to  enable  him  to  feel  his  way  up  the 
creaky  stairs. 

As  he  finished  the  third  flight,  and  stopped 
to  catch  his  breath,  he  heard  a  woman's  sobs, 
interrupted  by  those  of  two  children. 

"They  heard  me  coming,"  muttered  Old 
Hunks  to  himself,  "and  they're  getting  a  good 
ready." 

The  old  man  knocked  at  the  door.  There 
was  no  response.  He  waited  a  moment,  then 
knocked  a  second  time.  Still  the  sound  of  sobs 
within,  but  no  answer. 

Putting  his  hand  upon  the  knob,  he  opened 
the  door  and  went  in.  The  room  was  cold  and 
bare.  The  wind  came  in  at  a  broken  pane  in 
spite  of  the  effort  some  one  had  made  to  check 
it  with  a  piece  of  newspaper.  There  was  one 
chair,  with  the  rounds  missing,  one  small  ta- 
ble, and  a  bed.  Upon  the  latter,  in  the  corner 
of  the  room,  lay  a  woman,  sobbing,  and  evi- 
dently very  sick.  By  her  side  were  two  small 
children,  a  boy  about  five  years  of  age,  and  a 
girl  about  three.  The  children  also  were  cry- 
ing. They  were  so  occupied  that  they  did  not 
see  the  new  comer. 

Old  Hunks  did  not  look  at  the  group,  but 
fixed  his  face  in  a  hard,  set  way,  toward  the  va- 
cant wall. 

"I  have  come  for  my  money,"  he  said  ston- 
ily, advancing  a  step  or  two. 

His  voice,  and  the  sound  of  his  feet  upon  the 
bare  floor,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  sick 
woman.  Turning  with  evident  difficulty  and 
pain,  she  looked  in  his  direction,  drawing  one 
arm  in  instinctive  fear  about  her  children.  Old 
Hunks  saw  the  movement,  although  he  avoided 
her  face. 

"I  have  come  for  my  money,"  he  repeated. 
"I  have  been  put  off  long  enough." 

The  woman  put  her  hand  to  her  head,  as  if 
trying  to  realize  what  was  going  on.  She  ut- 
tered a  moan  of  pain,  which  she  seemed  too 
weak  to  stifle.  At  last  she  broke  down  com- 
pletely, and  commenced  to  sob. 

"My  children  !     Oh,  my  poor  children  !" 

Old  Hunks  shifted  position  uneasily,  but  still 
held  doggedly  to  his  declaration,  in  a  sterner 
manner. 

"I  have  come  for  my  money.  What  do  you 
expect  to  do  ?  I  can't  keep  you  along  forever." 

The  woman  straightened  up  in  her  bed.  A 
sudden  power  seemed  to  have  seized  her.  She 
rose  with  desperate  resolution,  and,  walking 
unsteadily  across  the  floor,  caught  the  miser 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


by  the  sleeve.  The  pallor  of  death  was  in  her 
face.  The  clutch  of  death  was  in  her  fingers. 
Her  white  garments  hung  about  her  like  a 
shroud,  and  her  luminous  eyes  burned  with  an 
unearthly  light. 

"For  the  love  of  God,  sir,  do  not  let  my  chil- 
dren starve.  If  you  hope  for  mercy — oh,  my 
poor  children  ! — do  not — " 

The  exertion  was  too  much.  She  staggered, 
and  fell  to  the  floor.  The  old  man,  with  some 
effort,  lifted  her  upon  the  bed.  He  chafed  her 
hands  nervously  for  a  few  moments.  He  spoke 
to  her,  but  she  did  not  answer.  At  last  he  saw 
that  she  lay  very  still,  that  the  nostrils  did  not 
appear  to  move.  Her  eyes  had  a  glassy  look, 
and  the  children,  who  had  huddled  together 
frightened,  began  to  cry.  And  well  they  might, 
for  outside  was  the  merciless  world,  and  here, 
in  this  silent  room,  was  merciless  Death. 

The  little  boy  dropped  something  from  his 
hand.  It  fell  at  the  feet  of  the  miser,  who  pick- 
ed it  up  and  looked  at  it,  then  took  it  to  the 
light,  and  held  it  there  some  time.  It  was  a 
small  locket,  and  contained  the  picture  of  a 
young  girl  apparently  about  eighteen  years  of 
age.  The  locket  was  gold.  It  had  a  small 
chain,  long  enough  to  go  about  the  neck,  also 
gold.  He  examined  both  chain  and  locket 
closely,  then  put  them  upon  the  table.  He 
picked  up  his  hat,  and  moved  toward  the  door. 
He  hesitated  at  the  threshold,  came  back,  put 
the  locket  and  chain  in  his  pocket,  and  went 
out,  closing  the  door  behind  him. 

Who  can  tell  his  thoughts  as  he  shuffled,  mut- 
tering to  himself,  down  the  rickety  stairs  and 
into  the  narrow  street?  Was  it  not  enough  to 
lose  his  money?  What  right  had  a  woman  to 
die  and  leave  her  children  for  others  to  feed? 
It  was  not  to  be  tolerated.  Other  women  would 
be  doing  the  same  thing.  People  must  pay 
their  honest  debts,  and  support  their  children. 
Little  they  would  care  for  Old  Hunks  if  he  were 
to  die !  What  if  he  did  have  a  little  money — 
there  wasn't  so  much  after  all — but  what  of  it? 
Didn't  he  get  it  honestly?  Didn't  he  pay  his 
debts — that  was  the  question — did  he  ever  die 
and  leave  both  debts  and  children  behind? 

Whatever  Old  Hunks's  thoughts  may  have 
been,  he  went  slowly  down  the  stairs  and  out 
into  the  night.  And  the  helpless  children  were 
left  alone  with  their  dead — so  helpless  that 
they  thought  it  was  sleep,  so  innocent  that  they 
fondled  her  dead  face  and  wondered  why  she 
answered  not,  and  so  tired  with  their  sobbing 
that  they  finally  crept  up  beside  her  and  went 
to  sleep  upon  her  bosom. 

Two  hours  passed,  and  still  they  slept.  The 
clock  on  St.  Mary's  tolled  the  hour  of  mid- 
night. The  narrow  street  grew  quiet,  but 


around  the  corner  Barbary  Coast  was  still 
ablaze,  though  the  boys  were  no  longer  seen  on 
the  sidewalks.  Men  were  drinking  deeply  and 
sullenly  now.  Now  and  then  a  drunken  man 
staggered  by  on  his  way  home.  Now  and  then 
a  noise  from  some  saloon  told  of  a  brawl  over 
the  dice  or  cards.  Farther  up  the  street  a  man 
had  been  killed  in  a  quarrel  over  a  disputed 
game.  On  the  hills  above  the  lights  were  dy- 
ing out  of  the  windows.  In  a  few  homes  they 
still  shone  on  happy  faces,  and  on  fair  forms 
that  moved  in  the  graceful  dance.  It  was  only 
a  few  blocks  from  this — to  this.  It  is  only  a 
step  from  wealth  to  poverty,  from  virtue  to 
crime,  from  innocence  to  shame. 

The  echoes  of  the  cathedral  clock  had  scarce- 
ly died  upon  the  midnight  air  when  a  carriage 
drew  up  in  front  of  the  tenement  house.  Two 
ladies  and  a  gentleman  alighted,  and  the  three 
passed  up  the  narrow  stairs.  At  the  third 
flight  they  stopped,  and,  after  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation, opened  the  door  facing  the  staircase. 
The  children  were  still  sleeping. 

"Poor  things,"  said  one  of  the  ladies,  "what 
would  have  become  of  them !" 

Carefully  lifting  them  one  by  one,  still  sleep- 
ing, the  gentleman  carried  them  down  stairs 
and  handed  them  tenderly  to  some  person  in 
the  carriage.  He  then  returned  up  stairs,  and 
the  carriage  drove  rapidly  away. 

Pacific  Street  awoke  sluggishly  the  next  day. 
On  the  side-street  few  were  stirring  early  in  the 
morning.  The  fumes  of  Chrismas  Eve  still  pol- 
luted the  pure  morning  air  of  Christmas  Day. 
Mrs.  Dennis  Regan,  who  had  rooms  on  the 
third  floor  of  the  tenement  house,  having  heard 
unusual  noises  in  the  next  apartment  during  the 
night,  peered  out  of  her  room  about  eight  o'clock. 
The  door  opposite  was  open,  and  she  saw  three 
persons,  two  ladies  and  a  gentlemen,  watching 
there.  "The  sick  woman's  dead,"  she  said  to 
herself,  "and  her  rich  friends  have  come  to 
watch  wid  her.  It  wouldn't  have  hurt  'em  to 
have  looked  afther  her  a  bit  when  she  needed 
it  more  than  she  does  now,  poor  sowl." 

The  news  of  the  death,  and  the  interest  taken 
by  the  ''rich  friends,"  soon  flew  through  the 
street,  which  straightway  began  to  be  mollified 
in  its  usual  bitter  feelings  toward  well  to  do 
people.  But  at  ten  o'clock  an  event  occurred 
which  roused  the  popular  indignation  to  the 
highest  pitch.  The  undertaker  arrived,  ac- 
companied by  a  man  muffled  in  a  great  coat, 
under  whose  directions  the  body  was  soon 
taken  away.  But  Mrs.  Dennis  Regan,  happen- 
ing to  come  up  the  narrow  stairs  as  the  muffled 
man,  who  seemed  desirous  of  avoiding  observa- 
tion, was  going  down,  recognized  him  as  the 
much  detested  miser,  "Old  Hunks." 


OLD  HUNKS'S  CHRISTMAS  PRESENT. 


The  theory  of  the  "rich  friends"  was  imme- 
diately abandoned  by  the  street. 

"The  old  skinflint,  bad  cess  to  him,"  abjured 
Mrs.  Dennis  Regan,  "has  garnisheed  the  dead 
woman  for  the  rint." 

"The  Lord  save  them  pore  childers!"  shud- 
dered her  neighbor,  as  she  listened  with  breath- 
less interest  to  the  story  of  the  miser's  heartless 
action. 

"To  think  of  me  takin'  that  deperty  sheriff 
fer  a  gintleman,  and  them  two  brazen-faced 
things  fer  ladies,"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Regan. 

That  Christmas  afternoon,  Old  Hunks  climb- 
ed up  to  his  little  room  on  the  fourth  floor  of 
one  of  his  own  buildings — a  room  for  which 
no  one  would  pay  rent,  and  which  he  had  ac- 
cordingly occupied  for  many  years.  Do  you 
know  what  manner  of  place  a  miser's  home  is? 
It  is'nt  a  very  inviting  spot,  to  be  sure.  It  has 
a  barren  and  desolate  look,  like  the  life  of  the 
miser  himself.  But  some  how  or  other,  the  old 
man  had  become  attached  to  this  room  through 
all  the  years  that  he  had  lived  there.  They 
were  weary  years  as  he  looked  back  on  them ; 
years  rich  in  gold,  but  oh,  how  poor  in  human 
sympathy  and  companionship  !  There  was  lit- 
tle pleasure  that  he  could  remember  in  them. 
He  had  given  himself  wholly  over  to  money- 
getting,  and  his  soul  had  shrunk,  and  shrunk, 
until  the  room  had  not  appeared  small  and 
mean  to  him.  That  is  the  worst  of  a  sordid 
passion ;  we  lose  our  finer  sense  of  the  perspec- 
tive and  relation  of  things.  On  this  afternoon, 
somehow,  the  room  seemed  cramped  and  op- 
pressive. He  sat  down  by  the  table,  and  lean- 
ed his  head  upon  his  hand.  He  was  buried  in 
deep  thought.  The  hard  expression  was  relaxed, 
and  there  were  fine  lines  in  his  face.  Observed 
closely,  he  did  not  appear  so  old  as  his  white 
hair  would  indicate.  He  was  evidently  much 
distressed,  and  a  nature  capable  of  entire  devo- 
tion to  one  object,  even  though  a  sordid  one,  is 
capable,  also,  of  intense  feeling.  At  last  an  ex- 
pression of  pain  escaped  him  : 

"O  my  God!  And  I  never  suspected  it." 
Rising  after  a  while,  and,  going  to  an  old 
trunk  in  the  corner,  he  unlocked  it  and  took 
out  a  strong  tin  box,  which  he  brought  back  to 
the  table  and  placed  thereon.  Producing  a 
small  key  from  his  pocket  he  opened  it.  On 
the  top  were  some  deeds  and  mortgages.  Re- 
moving these,  he  came  to  a  small  parcel,  care- 
fully tied  in  a  piece  of  oil-silk.  He  undid  this 
parcel  slowly,  and  as  though  every  movement 
was  painful  to  him.  It  contained  two  old  let- 
ters, and  a  small  gold  locket  with  a  chain.  He 
took  from  his  pockets  the  trinket  which  he  had 
taken  from  the  little  boy.  In  outward  appear- 
ance the  lockets  and  chains  were  exactly  similar. 

Vol.  III.— 6. 


The  one  he  had  taken  from  the  box  con- 
tained the  picture  of  a  young,  and,  withal,  hand- 
some man,  and  bore  the  inscription  : 

"O.  H.  TO  A.  M." 

The  one  he  took  from  his  pocket  contained  the 
face  of  a  young  girl,  and  in  similar  lettering  was 
inscribed : 

"A.  M.  TO  O.  H." 

The  two  letters  in  the  box  were  yellow  and 
discolored  with  age. 

"Twenty  years  !"  he  said,  bitterly,  to  himself. 
"  Twenty  years !  And  we  both  threw  our  lives 
away  for  a  momentary  spite — she  to  become 
the  wife  of  one  she  did  not  love,  and  I  to  be- 
come the  miserable  thing  that  I  am.  And  I 
hunted  her  to  the  death !  O  my  God !  If  I 
had  only  suspected  it !" 

He  paced  the  floor  in  agitation.  The  past 
rose  before  him  like  a  hideous  specter,  grinning 
in  horrible  triumph.  Even  the  sweet  face  in  the 
locket  was  turned  to  him  sadly,  with  a  reproach- 
ful look.  A  strong  nature,  capable  of  utter  self- 
abnegation,  of  the  demolition  of  every  ideal  and 
idol,  of  the  pursuit  of  a  repulsive  object  not  as 
a  matter  of  choice  but  of  will,  is  susceptible, 
upon  occasion,  of  the  most  bitter  and  intense 
remorse.  There  was  no  thought  in  his  mind 
of  the  contrast  between  the  promise  of  his 
youth  and  the  barren  and  dreary  fulfillment  of 
his  manhood — only  the  haunting  suggestion  of 
the  wrong  to  another,  of  the  contrast  between 
the  sweet  face  which  looked  up  to  him  from 
yonder  table  and  the  agonized  face  which  had 
implored  him  with  dying  eyes  the  night  before. 

"Heaven  is  my  witness  that  I  never  suspected 
it.  I  cannot " 

It  was  too  much.  His  head  burned,  and  he 
felt  a  heavy,  oppressive  pain  at  his  heart  which 
startled  him.  He  went  to  the  table,  took  a 
sheet  of  paper,  and  commenced  to  write.  After 
a  few  lines  he  tore  it  up  and  selected  another 
sheet.  Upon  this  he  wrote  a  few  short  sen- 
tences, then  signed  his  name  and  affixed  the 
date.  Weak  and  exhausted,  he  went  to  the 
bed  and  lay  his  head  upon  the  pillows.  The 
afternoon  sunlight  came  in  at  the  little  window 
and  shone  upon  his  tired  face.  The  rays  seem- 
ed warmer  and  more  rosy  than  usual.  Look- 
ing out  through  the  panes,  the  west  was  aflame 
with  a  glory  of  color.  And  through  this  radi- 
ance of  the  heavens  the  sun  was  sinking  slowly 
into  the  waters  of  the  limitless  sea; 

Early  the  next  morning,  Digby,  still  out  of 
work,  and  still  in  arrears  for  his  rent,  mounted 
the  stairs  leading  to  the  miser's  room,  to  beg 
for  a  further  delay.  Digby  considered  himself 


86 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


wronged,  in  some  indefinite  way,  by  every  one 
who  had  wealth,  and  by  his  landlord  in  particu- 
lar. It  had  so  happened  that,  on  a  certain  day 
of  the  week  before,  Digby  had  been  possessed 
of  the  money  to  pay  his  rent.  But  the  landlord, 
not  knowing  this  fact,  failed  to  call  upon  him, 
having  done  so  without  success  several  pre- 
vious days  in  succession.  As  a  consequence, 
the  money  went  into  the  coffers  of  the  saloon 
situated  immediately  under  the  Digby  resi- 
dence, and  that  worthy,  by  some  irrelevancy  of 
logic,  considered  Old  Hunks  principally  to 
blame  for  this  result.  Hence  it  was,  as  he 
climbed  the  stairs,  that  he  looked  upon  his  er- 
rand as  largely  in  the  nature  of  a  humiliation ; 
and  it  was  a  little  vindictively,  perhaps,  that  he 
knocked  with  such  unnecessary  distinctness. 
Hearing  no  answer,  with  the  usual  directness 
of  his  class,  he  applied  his  hand  to  the  knob, 
and  opened  the  door. 

He  stood  a  moment  irresolute.  There  is  one 
presence  which  unnerves  the  strongest.  Digby 
was  not  a  bad  man  at  heart.  He  took  his  hat 
from  his  head  instinctively,  and  said,  below  his 
breath : 


"God  forgive  me  for  the  hard  things  I've  said 
about  him." 

A  doctor  was  soon  brought,  but  human  skill 
is  powerless  in  the  presence  of  the  awful  mys- 
tery of  death.  He  pronounced  it  heart  disease. 
He  never  knew  with  what  unconscious  truth  he 
spoke. 

Upon  the  table  they  found  a  holographic  will, 
penned,  signed,  and  dated  in  the  well  known 
characters.  It  lay,  still  open,  where  it  had 
been  written.  They  took  it  up,  curious  to  read 
the  will  of  a  miser.  After  the  appointment  of 
an  executor,  it  contained  these  words : 

"I  forgive  and  release  all  persons  in  my  debt  the 
amounts  to  which  they  are  severally  indebted.  To  my 
said  executor,  I  give  one-half  of  all  my  property,  real 
and  personal,  in  trust,  to  be  invested  by  him,  and  the 
income  to  be  applied  to  the  relief  of  worthy  people  in 
distress  in  the  city  of  San  Francisco.  All  the  residue 
and  remainder  of  my  property  I  give,  share  and  share 
alike,  to  the  two  children  of  my  deceased  friend  Alice 
Benton,  formerly  Alice  Marshall.  And,  with  trust  in 
His  eternal  goodness,  I  commit  my  soul  unto  Him  who 
knoweth  and  forgiveth." 

CHAS.  H.  PHELPS. 


NOTE   BOOK. 


THE  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM  ASSOCIATION  is  the 
name  of  an  organization  having  its  headquarters  in  New 
York  City,  and  having  in  view  the  accomplishment  of 
the  following  objects,  as  declared  in  the  second  clause 
of  its  constitution : 

"The  object  of  the  Association  shall  be  to  establish  a 
system  of  appointment,  promotion,  and  removal  in  the 
Civil  Service  founded  upon  the  principle  that  public 
office  is  a  public  trust,  admission  to  which  should  de- 
pend upon  proved  fitness.  To  this  end  the  Association 
will  demand  that  appointments  to  subordinate  executive 
offices,  with  such  exceptions  not  inconsistent  with  the 
principle  already  mentioned,  as  may  be  expedient,  shall 
be  made  from  persons  whose  fitness  has  been  ascertained 
by  competitive  examinations  open  to  all  applicants  prop- 
erly qualified ;  and  that  removals  shall  be  made  for  legit- 
imate causes  only,  such  as  dishonesty,  negligence,  or  in- 
efficiency, but  not  for  political  opinion  or  for  refusal  to 
render  party  service ;  and  the  Association  will  advocate 
all  other  appropriate  measures  for  securing  intelli- 
gence, integrity,  good  order,  and  due  discipline  in  the 
Civil  Service." 

Mr.  George  William  Curtis  is  President  of  the  Associa- 
tion, and  the  high  character  of  those  who  are  engaged 
in  promoting  it  is  a  sufficient  guaranty  of  its  purpose 
and  aims.  It  is  probable  that  this  organization  may  be 
productive  of  great  good  if  its  influence  be  not  dissi- 
pated in  the  attempt  to  bring  about  inconsequential  ' '  re- 
forms" with  which  the  people  are  not  in  sympathy.  In 
other  words,  the  progress  of  civil  service  reform  so  far 
has  been  retarded  by  the  attempted  enforcement  of  irri- 
tating, petty  regulations  as  to  the  individual  conduct  of 


office  holders,  regulations  which  in  some  instances  went 
so  far  as  to  abridge  the  freedom  of  one  in  office  to  par- 
ticipate with  his  fellow-citizens  in  the  privileges  of  Amer- 
ican citizenship.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  people  have 
never  been  and  will  not  be  in  sympathy  with  any  such 
efforts.  Now,  the  essential  point  in  reforming  the  civil 
service  is  to  introduce  a  tenure  of  office  during  life  or 
good  behavior.  So  long  as  the  petty  offices  shall  be  be- 
stowed in  payment  for  party  zeal,  so  long  will  those  who 
desire  to  possess  or  retain  those  offices  be  mere  retain- 
ers of  the  party  "leaders,"  so  long  will  the  "leaders" 
use  their  power  to  perpetuate  their  rule,  and  so  long  will 
the  reform  be  delayed.  On  the  other  hand,  let  the  ten- 
ure for  life  or  good  behavior  be  introduced,  there  will  be 
every  incentive  for  the  honest  performance  of  duty,  and 
none  whatever  for  its  neglect.  Public  officials  will  look 
forward  to  a  long  and  honorable  life  in  the  Government 
employ,  and  these  positions  will  grow  in  respectability 
and  general  esteem.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  a 
change  of  administration  should  affect  the  position  of 
any  officer  of  the  Government,  except,  possibly,  the 
Cabinet.  But  how  is  this  to  be  brought  about.  It  is 
not  to  be  expected  that  Senators  and  Representatives  in 
Congress  will  lend  their  aid  to  any  scheme  which  shall 
deprive  them  of  the  patronage  by  which  they  perpetuate 
their  power.  In  fact,  experience  has  proved  that  they 
will  stand  like  a  solid  phalanx  in  the  way  of  any  such 
measure.  And  if  one  Congress  could  be  persuaded  into 
the  passage  of  an  adequate  law,  the  same  would  be  sub- 
ject to  the  amendment,  repeal,  or  practical  nullification 
of  every  succeeding  Congress.  It  is  clear  that  any  pro- 


SCIENCE  AND  INDUSTRY. 


vision  of  this  kind,  in  order  to  be  permanent,  must 
be  placed  above  the  reach  of  those  who  might  be  inter- 
ested to  have  it  abrogated  or  amended.  There  is  but  one 
such  place,  and  that  is  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  In  the  case  of  our  federal  judges  it  was  thought 
to  be  important  that  they  should  hold  office  during  good 
behavior,  and  it  was  accordingly  so  provided  in  the  Con- 
stitution. As  a  result,  they  are,  in  general,  men  of  in- 
telligence and  honesty,  keeping  aloof  from  partisanship 
and  performing  their  duties  efficiently.  From  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Government  the  judiciary  has  been  its 
most  honorable  and  learned  department.  Now,  if  it  be 
desirable  that  all  our  offices  be  as  inviolable  as  these,  it 
is  also  desirable  that  the  enactment  be  equally  beyond 
the  reach  of  those  who  would  render  it  nugatory.  It  is 
better,  perhaps,  not  to  make  the  experiment  than  to  fail 
in  it.  If  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Association  will  de- 
vote its  efforts  to  procuring  a  constitutional  amend- 
ment providing  that  all  appointive  executive  officers, 
save  members  of  the  President's  Cabinet,  shall  hold 
office  for  life  or  during  good  behavior,  except  when  re- 
tired for  old  age  upon  suitable  pensions,  it  will  accom- 
plish more  in  the  direction  of  reforming  the  public 
service  than  can  be  brought  about  in  any  other  manner. 
It  is  well  enough  to  urge  competitive  examinations,  but 
the  manner  of  appointment  is  of  infinitely  less  impor- 
tance than  the  tenure  of  office  after  appointment. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  SUCH  A  REFORM  upon  the  mo- 
tives  of  the  voters  will  not  be  inconsiderable.  The 
elective  franchise  will  be  to  an  extent  lifted  out  of  the 
quagmire  of  politics  on  to  the  higher  and  better  ground 
of  statesmanship.  The  objective  point  will  be  essen- 
tially different.  An  election  will  no  longer  be  a  mere 
scramble  for  offices.  It  will  be  a  struggle  to  secure  the 
legislative  rather  than  the  executive  department  of  gov- 
ernment— to  shape  the  national  policy,  to  enact  the 
laws,  and  to  determine  in  a  given  way  grave  questions 
of  statecraft,  rather  than  merely  to  secure  the  spoils. 
In  England,  when  a  change  of  administration  takes 
place,  a  score  or  so  of  gentlemen,  whose  positions  have 


directly  to  do  with  the  national  policy,  go  out  of  office, 
and  are  replaced  by  as  many  of  their  opponents.  The 
great  body  of  office-holders  are  undisturbed.  The  ques- 
tion of  spoils  does  not  come  even  remotely  into  the  con- 
test. The  question  of  individual  gain  does  not  and  can- 
not enter  the  mind  of  the  average  voter.  It  is  purely  a 
matter  of  public,  and  not  at  all  of  personal,  moment. 
The  end  in  view  is  to  influence  legislation  or  to  effect  in 
some  manner  the  public  policy.  It  is  a  matter  of  utter 
inconsequence  who  does  the  clerical  work,  who  fills  the 
petty  places.  A  broader,  higher,  and  better  motive  pre- 
vails. In  this  country  the  struggle  is  to  secure  the  exec- 
utive department.  The  party  is  deemed  to  have  won 
who  has  this,  even  if  its  adversary  remain  in  possession 
of  the  law-making  power.  Every  voter  is  a  possible 
office-holder,  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  too  many  of 
them  have  this  fact  in  mind  at  the  polls.  When  the 
tenure  of  office  is  for  life  or  during  good  behavior,  this 
motive  will  cease  to  exist,  and  voters  will  consider  mere- 
ly the  public  good. 


THE    INDIVIDUAL  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  WRITERS  for 

the  opinions  which  they  express  in  the  articles  published 
over  their  signatures  in  THE  CALIFORNIAN  has  been  edi- 
torially proclaimed  upon  several  different  occasions.  But 
as  a  number  of  persons  not  otherwise  open  to  the  charge 
of  feculence  of  intellect  seem  unable  to  comprehend  this 
very  general  rule,  we  take  occasion  to  reannounce  it. 
We  desire,  and  expect  to  publish,  vigorous  and  able 
articles  from  leading  men  on  both  sides  of  live  questions. 
We  do  not  expect  to  prune,  cut  down,  or  distort  the 
same,  nor  to  strike  out  ideas  with  which  we  do  not 
agree.  If  the  magazine  were  to  be  held  responsible  for 
opinions  expressed  in  articles  it  would  be  necessary  to 
do  this.  Every  article  would  be  deprived  of  its  individ- 
uality, and  the  only  opinion  would  be  that  of  the  editor. 
We  prefer  to  make  the  magazine  the  exponent  of  the 
best  thought  of  the  contributors,  and  we  shall  not  ask 
them  to  write  or  think  by  measure  according  to  our  dic- 
tation. As  a  corollary,  it  is  not  THE  CALIFORNIAN, 
but  the  contributor,  who  is  responsible  for  the  senti- 
ments which  appear  over  his  signature. 


SCIENCE   AND    INDUSTRY. 


DUST-SHOWERS. 

The  wide-spread  area  over  which  a  single  occurrence 
of  that  class  of  phenomena  known  as  "dust-showers" 
frequently  extends  has  suggested  the  idea  that  they 
may  oftentimes  have  a  cosmic  origin.  Dust-showers,  it 
is  true,  often  occur  from  local  causes,  such  as  volcanic 
eruptions,  by  which  ashes  are  distributed  over  areas  of 
many  hundred  miles  in  extent,  or  from  dust  raised  by 
the  passage  of  wind-storms  over  large  tracts  of  desert, 
and  deposited  at  distant  points,  as  often  occurs  in  the 
southern  part  of  California.  But  the  following,  collat- 
ed from  the  official  organ  of  the  United  States  Civil 
Service  for  March,  1880,  would  seem  to  imply  a  cosmic 
origin :  A  most  remarkable  dust-shower  made  its  ap- 
pearance in  British  Columbia  on  the  afternoon  of  March 
24th,  and,  moving  southward,  passed  over  Idaho  on  the 


morning  of  the  2$th ;  still  continuing  its  easterly  course, 
it  was  central  in  Nebraska  on  the  afternoon  of  the  26th. 
At  midnight  of  the  same  day  it  was  central  in  Iowa. 
On  the  afternoon  of  the  2jth  it  was  felt  in  Illinois,  and 
at  midnight  in  Ohio.  Very  remarkable  dust-storms  pre- 
vailed at  the  same  time  in  Missouri,  Kansas,  and  New 
Mexico.  During  the  continuance  of  this  fall  of  dust  the 
barometer  at  the  different  localities  mentioned  varied 
from  0.04  to  0.75  below  the  normal  point.  It  is  well 
known  that  snow  collected  on  mountain-tops  and  with- 
in the  Arctic  Circle,  far  beyond  the  influence  of  factories 
and  smoke,  or  the  effects  of  wind  passing  over  the  bare 
earth,  confirm  the  supposition  that  minute  particles  of 
dust  float  in  space,  and,  in  time,  come  in  contact 
with  our  atmosphere,  when  they  fall  to  the  earth.  These 
particles  of  dust  are  sometimes  found  to  consist  largely 
of  iron,  and  by  many  scientists  are  thought  to  bear 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


some  relation  to  auroral  phenomena.  Gronemann,  of 
Gottingen,  has  put  forth  the  theory  that  streams  of  these 
particles  revolve  around  the  sun,  and  that  when  the 
earth  passes  through  such  streams  the  iron  particles  are 
attracted  to  the  poles,  from  whence  they  shoot  forth  in 
long  filaments  through  the  upper  atmosphere  with  such 
velocity  that  they  often  become  ignited,  and  they  pro- 
duce the  well  known  luminous  appearance  characteriz- 
ing auroral  phenomena.  Professor  Nordenskjold,  who 
recently  examined  snow  at  points  far  north  of  Spitz- 
bergen,  reports  that  he  found  in  it  exceedingly  minute 
particles  of  metallic  iron,  cobalt,  and  phosphorus.  It 
would  seem  exceedingly  probable  that  such  particles 
could  have  no  other  than  a  cosmic  origin. 


HOT  ICE. 

The  idea  of ' '  hot  ice  "  would  seem  to  be  somewhat  par- 
adoxical. Yet  it  may  be  realized,  and  ice,  or  frozen  water, 
may  be  kept  in  a  vessel — glass,  if  you  please — so  that  it 
may  both  be  seen  and  handled,  and  yet  be  so  hot  that 
it  will  burn  the  hand  that  holds  it.  The  principle  under 
which  it  is  possible  that  this  curious  experiment  may  be 
shown  is  as  follows  :  In  order  to  convert  a  solid  into  a 
liquid,  the  pressure  must  be  above  a  certain  point,  else 
no  amount  of  heat  will  melt  the  substance.  Hence,  if 
we  can  keep  a  cake  of  ice  at  a  certain  point  of  pressure, 
no  heat  can  liquify  it ;  the  degree  of  heat  which  it  will 
withstand  depending  upon  the  degree  of  pressure  which 
is  maintained.  This  interesting  experiment  has  recently 
been  performed  by  Mr.  Thomas  Carnelly,  during  his 
experimental  investigations  in  regard  to  the  boiling  point 
of  water,  and  other  substances,  under  pressure. 


ENGLISH  DISLIKE  OF  INNOVATION. 

One  great  cause  of  the  decrease  in  English  exports  is 
the  conservatism  among  English  manufacturers  and 
their  extreme  dislike  of  innovations.  They  are  inclined 
to  stick  to  old  processes  and  old  styles,  refusing  to 
study  the  tastes  of  their  customers.  They  seek  to  im- 
pose their  own  notions  and  ideas  upon  the  world. 
Hence,  foreign  buyers  seek  in  America,  in  Germany, 
and  in  France,  goods  better  suited  to  their  taste  and 
needs.  French  manufacturers  are  particularly  ready 
and  quick  to  suit  their  work  to  the  tastes  of  their  cus- 
tomers. They  are  especially  apt  in  devising  new  styles 
and  patterns,  such  as  shall  most  readily  meet  the  vary- 
ing tastes  of  buyers.  They  realize  that  variety  is  pleas- 
ing and  fashion  capricious,  and  never  hesitate  to  change 
a  machine,  or  a  pattern,  when  the  old  one  fails  to  suit; 
while  the  Englishman  looks  well  at  the  cost,  and  pre- 
fers to  continue  "in  the  good  old  way,"  with  the  hope 
that  some  day  the  fashion  may  come  round  again.  An- 
other example  of  the  conservatism  of  the  English  manu- 
facturer is  manifested  in  his  preference  for  hand  work 
over  machine  work.  He  refuses  to  believe  that  a  ma- 
chine can  be  made  to  do  more  perfect  work  than  the 
hand.  Hence,  in  the  manufacture  of  watches,  of  sew- 
ing-machines, and  of  many  classes  of  fire-arms,  he  ut- 
terly fails  to  compete  with  more  progressive  mechanics 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  more  observing  and 
thoughtful  of  Englishmen  themselves  are  beginning  to 
realize  these  facts,  and  have  already  raised  the  note  of 
alarm.  A  British  correspondent,  who  styles  himself  "A 
Skilled  Workman,"  who  recently  visited  some  of  our 


manufacturing  establishments,  writes  as  follows  to  the 
Sheffield  Telegraph:  "The  use  of  files,  rasps,  and  floats 
are  superseded  by  other  tools  [machine  tools]  astonish- 
ing in  their  adaptability  for  perfect  and  rapid  produc- 
tion. No  written  description  could  convey  an  idea  of 

their  great  ability  and  method The  skill  of  the 

engineer  has  taken  the  place  of  the  skilled  artisans  ;  for 
mere  boys  are  tending  these  operations,  and  yet  quality 

is  not  ignored The  readiness  of  the  employers  to 

adopt  any  practical  suggestion  from  any  one  of  their 
hands  is  a  notable  feature  in  most  American  factories, 
whereas  the  cold  shoulder  is  generally  given  such  in 
England.  We  weakly  waddle  in  the  wake  of  America 
in  the  matter  of  inventions  until  a  necessity  is  proved, 
when  an  earnest  effort  is  made  and  progress  is  attained. 
Old-fashioned  methods  of  manufacture  will  have  to  be 
abandoned  for  newer  and  better  ones,  if  '  Mene,  mene, 
tekel,  upharsin,'  is  not  to  be  written  across  British  com- 
merce in  the  future.  The  individual  skill  and  handi- 
craft of  the  best  Sheffield  workmen  I  have  not  seen  sur- 
passed in  the  United  States,  but  they  are  inadequate  for 
all  the  requirements  of  the  present  age." 


A   DELICATE   INSTRUMENT. 

Professer  S.  P.  Langley,  of  the  Alleghany  Observa- 
tory, has  invented  an  instrument  for  measuring  the  in- 
tensity of  radiant  heat,  which  he  claims  is  thirty  times 
more  sensitive  than  the  ordinary  thermopile — the  most 
delicate  instrument  yet  invented  for  such  use.  More- 
over, the  thermopile  is  very  slow  in  its  action,  while  the 
Professor's  new  instrument,  which  he  calls  the  thermal 
balance,  takes  up  the  heat  and  parts  with  it,  so  that  it 
may  be  registered,  in  a  single  second.  Its  action  is  al- 
most as  prompt  as  the  human  eye.  Its  accuracy  is  so 
perfect  that  it  will  record  within  one  per  cent,  of  the 
amount  to  be  measured.  Its  sensitiveness  is  so  great 
that  it  will  register,  accurately,  an  amount  of  heat  which 
will  not  exceed  one  fifty-thousandth  part  of  a  degree  of 
Fahrenheit.  When  mounted  in  a  reflecting  telescope, 
it  will  record  the  heat  given  off  by  a  man,  or  even  any 
small  animal  in  a  distant  field.  The  Professor  has  been 
applying  it  to  measure  the  heat  of  the  moon,  from 
which  some  interesting  and  reliable  data  may  soon  be 
expected.  It  is  the  most  delicate  and  truly  scientific 
instrument  for  measuring  the  energy  of  radiant  heat 
which  has  ever  been  devised. 


THE  DEAD-POINT  IN   MIND  TENSION. 

It  is  a  common  subject  of  marvel  that  criminals,  in 
the  presence  of  immediate  execution,  are  so  often  per- 
fectly self-possessed,  and  exhibit  such  singular  compos- 
ure. They  will  sleep  through  the  night  before  execution, 
and  rise  as  for  an  ordinary  day's  duties.  Those  who 
form  exceptions  to  this  rule,  who  are  more  or  less  pros- 
trated by  the  agonizing  prospects  of  violent  death,  no 
doubt  suffer  much  more  than  those  who  control  their 
feelings.  The  former  usually  retain  every  faculty  and 
sense,  and  seek  for  information,  and  adopt  measures  to 
minimize  their  sufferings  at  the  critical  moment.  As  a 
general  thing,  their  pulse  is  even  less  disturbed  than  is 
that  of  the  officials  who  are  compelled  to  carry  out  the 
dread  penalty  of  the  law.  Why  is  this?  The  Lancet 
answers  as  follows  :  ' '  The  rnind  has  reached  what  may 
be  designated  a  'dead-point'  in  its  tension.  The  ex- 
citement is  over,  the  agony  of  anticipation,  the  trem- 


ART  AND  ARTISTS. 


89 


bling  doubt  between  hope  and  fear  of  escape,  has  ex- 
hausted the  irritability  of  the  mind,  and  there  is,  as  it 
were,  a  pause,  an  interval  of  passive  endurance  between 
the  end  of  the  struggle  for  life,  and  the  bitterness  of  re- 
morse, and  agony  of  disappointment,  which  may  begin 
at  death.  In  this  interval,  the  mind  is  released  from 
the  tension  of  its  effort  for  self-preservation,  and  almost 
rebounds  with  the  sense  of  relief  that  comes  with  cer- 
tainty, even  though  the  assurance  be  that  of  impending 


death The  mental  state  of  a  criminal,  during 

the  hours  previous  to  execution,  presents  features  of  in- 
tense interest  to  the  psychologist,  and,  rightly  compre- 
hended, it  is  to  be  feared  they  would  throw  new  light 
on  the  supposed  preparation  these  unfortunate  persons 
evince  for  a  fate  which,  being  inevitable,  they,  at  the 
final  moment,  are  able  to  meet  with  a  composure  in 
which  hypocrisy  or  self-deception  finds  the  amplest 
scope." 


ART   AND   ARTISTS. 


WILLIAM   KEITH. 

There  are  few  among  the  landscape  painters  of  the 
country  whose  work  is  more  full,  both  of  fulfillment  and 
promise,  than  the  artist  whose  name  stands  at  the  head 
of  this  paragraph.  Mr.  Keith  has  recently  returned 
from  New  England,  and  has,  in  his  San  Francisco 
studio,  eighty-seven  sketches  in  oil  of  scenes  in  Maine 
and  New  Hampshire.  To  say  that  these  are  admirable 
is  to  do  them  scant  justice.  They  range  through  all  the 
different  moods  of  Nature.  They  paint  her  in  all  her 
costumes,  from  the  gaudy  glory  of  her  autumnal  dress 
to  her  most  sober  and  ashen  vestment.  They  display 
more  versatility  than  one  would  have  imagined  possi- 
ble. To  one  familiar  with  New  England  landscape, 
they  seem,  in  their  way,  perfect.  A  lady  not  inaptly 
remarked  that  they  made  her  homesick.  Detailed  crit- 
icism is,  of  course,  from  the  number  of  these  sketches, 
impossible.  The  characteristic  which  they  have  in  com- 
mon is  a  remarkable  truthfulness  of  impression,  a  bold 
grasp  of  the  subject  as  a  whole.  They  are  vivid,  real- 
istic, true  to  nature  as  well  as  to  art.  In  fact,  one  in- 
sensibly renders  them  the  highest  tribute  that  can  be 
paid ;  he  forgets  the  art,  he  sees  only  the  scene.  The 
impression  one  gets  is  general,  not  detailed ;  it  is  that 
which  is  received  in  gazing  upon  Nature  for  inspiration, 
not  in  examining  her  for  information.  Artists  too  often 
make  the  mistake  of  finishing  every  rock,  tree,  and  bank 
as  it  appears  upon  a  close  study.  As  a  result,  the  pict- 
ure has  no  perspective ;  neither  foreground  nor  back- 
ground. It  is  bewildering.  The  one  impression  sought 
is  lost  in  a  maze  of  impressions.  The  picture  is  merely 
a  botanical  catalogue  in  oil.  In  Mr.  Keith's  sketches, 
everything  is  properly  subordinated  to  and  harmonized 
with  the  whole,  as  in  nature  itself.  It  presents  the 
scene  as  the  poet  sees  it,  as  the  artist  beholds  it,  not  as 
the  painstaking  scientist  analyzes  it.  Mr.  Keith's  ad- 
mirers will  claim  that  these  sketches  are  equal,  if  not  su- 
perior, to  anything  which  has  been  produced  in  the 
same  line.  And  those  who  enjoy  the  rare  privilege  of 
seeing  them  will  not  be  inclined  to  dispute  this  claim. 


THE    ARCHAEOLOGICAL    INSTITUTE    OF 
AMERICA. 

This  society,  founded  in  Boston  a  year  and  a  half  ago, 
has  now  had  its  experts  for  some  months  in  the  field, 
and  is  likely  to  make  very  important  contributions  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  life  of  prehistoric  man  in  America. 


The  remains  of  the  works  of  the  former  inhabitants  of 
this  continent  are  the  principal  source  to  which  we  must 
look  for  a  knowledge  of  the  condition  of  man  in  Amer- 
ica previous  to  its  discovery  four  hundred  years  ago. 
These  remains  have  never  yet  been  made  the  object  of  a 
comprehensive  survey  and  a  scientific  classification,  but 
their  varied  character,  and  the  wide  field  over  which 
they  extend,  make  them  a  most  attractive  object  of  ex- 
ploration. From  the  south-western  corner  of  Colorado, 
across  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  and  Mexico,  to  Yucatan 
and  Central  America,  the  unexplained  structures  of  a 
vanished  race  impel  us  to  inquire  what  were  the  objects 
of  their  builders,  and  how  far  their  methods  of  con- 
struction indicate  an  intellectual  purpose,  mechanical 
skill,  the  possession  of  improved  tools,  or  any  other  ad- 
vancement toward  civilization.  Within  the  limits  of  the 
United  States  the  principal  structures  awaiting  interpre- 
tation are :  ( i )  the  extraordinary  cave-dwellings,  found 
principally  along  the  tributaries  of  the  San  Juan,  in  Col- 
orado, and  built  in  the  faces  of  cliffs  hundreds  of  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  valleys ;  (2)  the  towers  and  the  an- 
cient pueblos,  no  longer  inhabited,  built  in  terrace  form, 
and  comprising,  in  some  instances,  as  many  as  five  hun- 
dred apartments  in  one  structure;  (3)  the  modern  pue- 
blos, like  the  ancient  in  plan,  and,  like  them,  found 
principally  in  New  Mexico  and  Arizona,  and  inhabited 
by  existing  Indian  tribes.  Such  are  the  pueblos  which 
extend  along  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  and  are  found 
at  Zuni  and  Moqui,  points  hitherto  remote  from  contact 
with  white  men.  To  explore  each  of  these  groups  of 
structures  will  be  the  first  object  of  the  Archaeological 
Institute,  which  has  wisely  determined  to  begin  investi- 
gations by  a  precise  study  of  the  inhabited  pueblos. 
This  will  enable  the  Institute  to  put  on  record  a  scien- 
tific account  of  the  mode  of  life,  the  industries,  the  cus- 
toms, the  religion,  the  folk-lore,  the  traditions  of  tribes 
which  must  soon  perish  before  the  advance  of  our  own 
race.  The  information  thus  acquired  will  doubtless  fur- 
nish the  key  to  interpreting  the  constructive  purposes  of 
the  ancient  pueblos,  so  closely  allied  to  those  of  the 
present ;  and  the  theory  advanced  as  to  the  connection 
between  the  plan  of  the  buildings  and  a  supposed  com- 
munal mode  of  life  will  probably  be  definitely  settled. 
It  may  not  be  too  much  to  expect  that  the  study  of  ex- 
isting pueblo  life  will  also  supply  many  hints  as  to  the 
objects  for  which  the  cliff-dwellings  may  have  been 
erected.  The  Institute  will,  at  any  rate,  secure  trust- 
worthy ground-plans  and  measurements  of  those  and  of 
all  other  structures  ;  and,  in  view  of  the  demolition  of 
many  structures  for  building  purposes  which  is  certain 


9o 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


to  attend  the  approaching  settlement  of  the  country, 
this  work  has  not  been  begun  a  moment  too  soon.  It 
is  also  of  importance  that  the  work  of  collecting  the  leg- 
ends and  superstitions  of  the  numerous  small  tribes  of 
Indians  scattered  over  Arizona  should  proceed  as  rap- 
idly as  possible.  It  has  been  a  matter  of  frequent  ob- 
servation by  travelers  who  have  visited  Arizona  at  inter- 
vals during  the  past  ten  years  that  a  frightful  mortality 
invariably  manifests  itself  in  tribes  which  come  in  con- 
tact with  the  vagrant  mining  population  of  the  place. 
This  fact  should  stimulate  the  Institute  to  push  its  work 
forward  as  rapidly  as  possible.  The  ability  to  do  so 
will  no  doubt  depend  upon  the  subscriptions  received. 


The  Institute  appeals  to  the  whole  country.  It  is  a 
thoroughly  American  enterprise.  At  the  same  time  the 
field  of  its  labors  belongs  especially  to  the  Pacific  Coast, 
and  we  do  not  doubt  that  the  value  of  the  Institute's  re- 
searches as  a  basis  for  future  history  will  be  appreciated 
here,  and  meet  with  substantial  encouragement.  In  the 
list  of  life-members,  which  appears  in  the  first  annual 
report,  Mr.  D.  O.  Mills  has  the  honor  of  representing 
California.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  in  the  next  report 
the  names  of  many  other  Californians  will  stand  by  his. 
The  conditions  of  membership  may  be  learned  by  ad- 
dressing the  Secretary,  Mr.  Edward  H.  Greenleaf,  Mu- 
seum of  Fine  Arts,  Boston. 


DRAMA   AND   STAGE. 


CONTRARY  TO  GENERAL  EXPECTATION,  Daniel  Ro- 
chat  is  a  success  in  New  York.  Originally  produced  at 
the  Theatre  Fran9ais,  under  the  author's  immediate 
supervision,  to  an  audience  composed  of  the  tlite  of 
Paris,  and  interpreted  by  the  best  actors  in  all  Europe, 
it  failed  to  achieve  even  the  modest  success  of  being 
understood.  This  is  something  of  a  paradox,  and  the 
explanation  interesting — for  it  is  not  often  that  the  ver- 
dict of  Paris  is  reversed  in  New  York.  The  simple  fact 
is,  Daniel  Rochat  is  an  English  play  in  a  French  dress, 
and  its  philosophy  proved  quite  too  subtile  for  the 
nctivctd  of  the  French  mind.  In  the  first  place,  the 
character  of  "Lea  Henderson"  could  not  be  intelligi- 
ble to  them  from  any  stand-point.  That  a  woman 
could  be  religious  without  being  bigoted,  and  worship 
liberty  without  denying  God,  has  never  entered  into 
their  ideas.  Yet  there  is  a  little  town  in  Massachusetts, 
Boston  by  name,  which  we  venture  to  say  would  in- 
dorse "  Lea"  in  toto.  It  is  curious,  in  this  connection, 
that  the  author  of  I'Oncle  Sam  should  have  displayed 
to  the  eyes  of  Europe  so  favorable  a  specimen  of  Amer- 
ican womanhood.  He  would  apologize,  perhaps,  by 
pointing  out  the  fact  that  she  is  half  English.  Again, 
giving  to  "Lea"  the  power  of  analysis  was  positively 
startling  to  them,  and  the  remark  which  so  fascinated 
"  Rochat" — "  La  liberte"  en  France  est  un  peu  comme 
le  ge"nie  de  la  Bastille,  le  pied  toujours  en  1'air  pour 
s'envoler  " — could  never  have  come  from  the  mouth  of 
a  French  girl.  As  she  is  the  central  figure,  and  "Ro- 
chat," dramatically  speaking,  but  a  foil  to  her,  this,  of 
itself,  would  explain  its  success  where  she  was  a  living 
thing,  its  failure  where  she  was  a  shadowy  unreality. 
Moreover,  making  "Rochat"  more  bigoted  that  big- 
ot was  another  shock  to  the  conventionalism  which  is  so 
characteristic  of  the  French  mind  ;  and  yet  the  propo- 
sition that  proselytism  and  intolerance  are  common  to 
human  nature,  and  not  the  accidents  of  creeds,  would 
seem  to  be  almost  an  axiom.  Sardou  evidently  appre- 
hended some  difficulty  here,  since  in  the  long  scene  be- 
tween the  elder  "  Fargis"  and  "  Rochat"  he  is  careful 
to  contrast  the  average  skeptical  temperament  with  the 
rarer  enlightened  one.  "Rochat,"  completely  taken 
aback  by  the  conservative  skepticism  of  his  friend,  ex- 
claims : 

DANIEL. — Enfin  tu  n'es  pas  un  clerical !    Tu  es  un  philo- 
sophe  ! 

FARGIS. — Religieux ! 


DANIEL. — De  quelle  religion  ? 
FARGIS. — De  toutes. 
DANIEL. — Et  moi  d'aucune. 

It  may  be  urged  that  all  this  belongs  rather  to  a  the- 
sis than  to  a  play.  But  there  is  a  practical,  a  dramatic 
— nay,  a  poetic — side  to  the  most  negative  of  human 
ideas  ;  and  if  Sardou  has  failed  to  state  his  premises 
with  simplicity,  he  has  not  overlooked  any  element  of 
human  interest  in  the  working  out  of  his  conclusion.  It 
is  just  the  element  of  human  interest  in  "Daniel  Ro- 
chat "  and  in  "  Lea  "  which  is  precious,  for  he  would  be 
a  poor  playwright  indeed  who  should  found  a  work  ap- 
pealing almost  exclusively  to  the  feelings  and  the  heart 
upon  a  negation.  They  are  in  the  position  of  two  trav- 
elers meeting  at  cross-roads,  but  to  take  widely  divergent 
paths.  She,  hating  tyranny  of  every  kind,  thinks  to 
find  in  "Rochat"  a  liberality  equal  to  her  own,  but 
awakes  to  discover  a  skepticism  more  narrow  than  the 
bigotry  from  which  she  has  fled.  For  if  "  Lea  "  is  typi- 
cal of  anything,  it  is  of  a  thirst  for  liberty,  but  not  the 
liberty  which  rejects  the  good  with  the  bad.  She  pros- 
ecutes a  crusade  against  all  tyranny  in  the  name  of  God; 
he,  a  crusade  against  all  religion  in  the  name  of  liberty. 
The  situation  of  making  a  play  turn  on  the  mere  formal- 
ities of  marriage  is  not  absolutely  new  to  the  stage,  but 
is  nevertheless  one  of  great  power  and  purpose;  that  of 
being  married  and  not  married  is  certainly  dramatic 
enough  for  any  taste,  and  this  is  the  gist  of  Daniel  Ro- 
chat, all  else  being  mere  details  grouped  around  the 
central  point.  That  two  persons  should  contract  with 
enthusiasm,  marry  in  haste,  one  of  the  parties  even  ig- 
norant that  she  was  married  at  all ;  that  out  of  discus- 
sion of  mere  formalities  should  grow  a  knowledge  of 
one  another ;  that  a  terrible  duel  should  arise ;  that  love 
should  expire  in  the  conflict,  and  divorce  be  a  welcome 
solution — surely  all  this  is  dramatic  enough  ;  perhaps 
too  much  so. 


THOSE  WHO  THINK  THAT  GENIUS  HAS  DEPARTED 
from  the  stage  should  see  Sheridan.  If  greatness  con- 
sists in  a  complete  identification  of  the  actor  with  the 
character,  then  Sheridan  is  unmistakably  great.  On 
seeing  Louis  XL  a  second  time,  we  tried  the  experiment 
of  repeating  mechanically  to  ourselves,  ' '  This  is  Sheri- 
dan the  actor. "  The  experiment  proved  a  failure.  Sher- 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


idan  the  actor  disappeared,  and  in  his  place  stood  the 
grim  personality  of  "Louis."  Sheridan  has  this  advan- 
tage over  many  of  his  fellow-actors,  that  he  has  attained 
celebrity  after  a  long  apprenticeship.  He  is  master  of 
the  technics  of  his  art.  Sheridan  has  this  in  common 
with  his  English  prototype,  Irving.  They  are  both 
realistic,  though  the  former  possesses  a  far  greater  power 
of  drawing  out  the  salient  features  of  the  characters  he 


plays.  Moreover,  he  would  not  have  stooped  to  the 
bit  of  clap-trap  which  Irving  introduced  into  his  Louis 
XI. ,  in  making  his  hair  turn  white  between  the  fourth 
and  fifth  acts.  In  fact,  herisan  artist,  disdaining  all  un- 
worthy ways  to  public  favor.  Never  playing  to  the  gal- 
leries, but  always  to  the  most  critical  of  his  audience, 
he  has  attained  complete  success  by  absolutely  artistic 
methods. 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


FOUR  CENTURIES  OF  ENGLISH  LETTERS.  Selections 
from  the  Correspondence  of  One  Hundred  and  Fifty 
Writers  from  the  Period  of  the  Paston  Letters  to  the 
Present  Day.  Edited  and  arranged  by  W.  Baptiste 
Scoones.  New  York:  Harper  &  Brothers.  1880. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

This  collection  of  letters  is,  of  course,  open  to  the 
same  general  criticisms  as  all  collections.  They  are 
never  very  satisfactory.  They  contain  too  much  and 
too  various  matter  to  be  read  consecutively  through, 
and  not  enough  to  be  perfectly  satisfactory  for  browsing 
among.  The  old  letters  of  English  writers  are  as  inter- 
esting as  any  branch  of  history,  biography,  or  literature 
could  be,  but  the  ideal  way  to  read  them  is  in  full  files. 
We  ought  to  have  libraries  at  our  elbows  in  which 
should  stand  side  by  side  full  collections  of  the  letters  of 
every  English  writer  worth  publishing,  and  also  of  a  good 
many  not  worth  publishing,  to  make  us  appreciate  the 
good  ones.  Among  these  volumes  we  could  search  and 
prowl  at  our  own  sweet  will,  and  feel  very  much  as  if  we 
had  found  in  an  old  chest  up  garret  stores  of  yellow 
packets  recording  the  courtship  of  our  great-grandfa- 
thers and  the  household  affairs  of  their  aunts  and 
mothers,  and  had  sat  down  on  the  floor  beside  it,  with 
our  laps  full  of  the  brittle  sheets,  to  spend  a  long  after- 
noon in  wandering  through  the  world  of  a  hundred 
years  ago.  The  obvious  impossibility  of  reading  old 
English  letters  in  any  such  ideal  way,  unless  one  lives 
at  some  great  literary  center,  reconciles  us  to  such  eclec- 
tic works  as  the  one  in  question.  It  gives  to  most  of  us 
the  opportunity  to  read  letters  that  otherwise  we  should 
not  have  read  at  all. 

It  is  somewhat  surprising  to  see  how  small  a  propor- 
tion, even  in  a  book  of  selected  letters,  consists  of  really 
good  ones,  and  flattering  to  nineteenth  century  van- 
ity to  see  how  this  proportion  steadily  increases  as 
one  nears  the  present  time.  The  chronological  order 
adopted  by  the  editor  displays  this  progress  excellently. 
The  most  marked  and  permanent  impression  made  by 
the  book  is  the  steady  increase  in  simplicity,  self-re- 
spect, and  sincerity  apparent  in  the  tone  of  the  letters. 
The  strain  of  artificial  compliment  in  all  the  earlier  ones 
seems  to  us  not  simply  a  custom,  but  an  indication  of  a 
certain  servility.  The  self-respect  with  which  writers  of 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  ask  favors,  the 
frank  equality  with  which  they  address  friends,  is  not  to 
be  found  earlier.  Humor,  too,  appears  to  be  in  letters 
a  modern  product,  though  literature  showed  no  lack  of 
it  as  far  back  as  Chaucer.  Another  thing  which  few  of 
the  older  letter-writers  seem  to  have  been  capable  of  is 
clear  and  direct  expression.  It  is  really  refreshing  to 


see  the  vague,  cumbrous  sentences  grow  clearer,  century 
by  century,  as  we  approach  the  present. 

The  really  good  letters  are  distributed  among  a  very 
few  writers,  and  these  are  almost  invariably  men  of  lit- 
erary distinction,  whose  "Life  and  Letters"  are  already 
in  print.  This  fact  takes  away  from  the  interest  of  the 
book.  We  feel  that  all  that  is  best  in  it  we  have  had 
before  in  lives  of  Charles  Lamb,  Wordsworth,  Macau- 
lay,  etc.  Nevertheless,  the  book  gives  us  an  interesting 
opportunity  to  compare  the  good  with  the  mediocre ;  it 
includes  many  letters  that  are  not  brilliant,  yet  are  mildly 
interesting,  and  it  also  includes  some  excellent  ones  that 
are  not  likely  to  be  found  elsewhere,  especially  among 
the  older  writers.  There  are  one  or  two  excellent  let- 
ters of  Roger  Ascham,  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  of 
Lord  Bacon,  shining  out  like  lamps  among  feeble  tal- 
low-dips, and  there  is  at  least  one  good,  vigorous  letter 
from  Queen  Elizabeth,  written  when  too  angry  to  mind 
the  formalities.  But  the  whole  collection  leaves  us  free 
to  believe  that  instead  of  lost  arts,  letter-writing  and 
conversation  are  still  vigorous,  and  improving  from  gen- 
eration to  generation. 


LEARNING  TO  DRAW,  OR  THE  STORY  OF  A  YOUNG  DE- 
SIGNER. By  Viollet-le-Duc.  Translated  from  the 
French  by  Virginia  Champlin.  Illustrated  by  the 
author.  New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  For  sale 
in  San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

Everybody  can  learn  to  draw,  but  not  everybody  can 
be  an  artist.  This  dictum,  which  has  the  support  of 
Ruskin,  is  also  the  guiding  principle  of  the  lessons  con- 
veyed in  this  capital  book  by  the  late  distinguished 
architect  and  critic,  M.  Viollet-le-Duc.  "Drawing," 
says  the  author,  "  taught  as  it  should  be,  no  more  leads 
a  child  to  become  an  artist  than  instruction  in  the 
French  language  leads  him  to  become  a  poet.  To  me 
drawing  is  simply  a  mode  of  recording  observations  by 
the  aid  of  a  language  which  engraves  them  on  the  mind 
and  permits  one  to  utilize  them,  whatever  the  career  he 
follows."  If  children  who  have  gone  through  a  long 
series  of  drawing  lessons  "never  think  of  making  a 
sketch  which  will  remind  them  of  a  scene,  a  place,  a 
piece  of  furniture,  or  a  tool,"  it  is  "because  they  have 
never  been  taught  to  see ;  and  one  learns  to  see  only  by 
drawing,  not  from  engraved  patterns,  but  from  objects 
themselves."  These  principles  M.  Viollet-le-Duc  pro- 
ceeds to  illustrate  in  a  charming  story ;  for  his  whole 
book  is  only  the  story  of  a  little  boy  who  showed  in  a 
crude,  but  original,  drawing  of  a  cat  that  he  had  the 
talent  of  seeing  for  himself.  Captivated  by  this  sketch, 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


a  generous  old  bachelor  takes  the  boy  into  his  own 
hands,  and  diligently  trains  his  eye  to  see  and  his  hand 
to  record.  From  the  drawing  of  geometrical  cubes  he 
advances  to  the  study  of  plants,  from  plants  to  the 
anatomy  of  a  bat,  from  the  bat  to  man.  On  all  sides 
the  habit  of  observation  is  strengthened,  and  in  the 
course  of  years  the  boy  and  his  master  visit  the  cliffs  of 
the  French  coast,  the  "crags  and  peaks"  of  Switzerland, 
the  art  galleries  of  Italy,  and  at  last  the  boy  finds  his 
vocation.  All  teachers  of  drawing  will  find  this  book 
rich  in  suggestiveness,  and,  with  a  little  explanation  of 
the  more  technical  passages,  it  might  be  put  in  the 
hands  of  pupils  with  the  certainty  of  stimulating  enthu- 
siasm and  correcting  wrong  tendencies.  We  speak  of 
explanations  because  the  author's  philanthropic  bachelor 
has  not  always  united  to  his  judgment  a  simplicity  of 
statement  adapted  to  his  youngest  readers.  There  is, 
we  imagine,  an  art  of  being  a  bachelor  not  unlike  that 
"art  d'etre  grandpere"  of  which  Victor  Hugo  is  the 
consummate  master. 


NEW  COLORADO  AND  THE  SANTA  FE  TRAIL.  By 
A.  A.  Hayes,  Jr.  Illustrated.  New  York:  Harper 
&  Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A. 
L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

At  a  moment  when  a  southern  overland  route  is  about 
to  be  opened  to  travelers,  the  publication  of  a  book  de- 
scriptive of  Colorado  and  the  Santa  F£  Trail  is  espe- 
cially timely.  Mr.  Hayes's  copiously  illustrated  book 
is  probably  the  most  complete,  as  well  as  the  most 
trustworthy,  account  of  that  portion  of  the  country 
which  has  yet  been  published.  Chapters  on  cattle- 
ranches  and  sheep-herding  supply  carefully  prepared 
statistics  for  the  settler,  and  there  are  convenient  direc- 
tions for  the  tourist  and  the  invalid,  besides  many  inci- 
dents of  travel  and  sketches  of  character  for  the  casual 
reader.  The  style  is  unfortunately  marred  by  stale  quo- 
tations, cheap  jokes,  and  a  painfully  conscious  effort  to 
be  amusing. 


THE  BOY  TRAVELERS  IN  SIAM  AND  JAVA.  By  Thom- 
as W.  Knox.  Illustrated.  New  York :  Harper  & 
Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot, 
Upham  &  Co. 

MR.  BODLEY  ABROAD.  Boston  :  Houghton,  Mifflin 
&  Co.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A.  L. 
Bancroft  &  Co. 

THE  LOYAL  RONINS.  Translated  from  the  Japanese 
of  Tamenaga  Shunsui  by  Shiuichiro  Saito  and  Ed- 
ward Greey.  Illustrated  by  Kei-sai  Yei-sen,  of  Yedo. 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Fran- 
cisco by  Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

JAPANESE  FAIRY  WORLD.  Stories  from  the  Wonder- 
lore  of  Japan.  By  William  Elliot  Griffis.  Illustrated 
by  Ozawa,  of  Tokio.  Schenectady,  N.  Y. :  James  H. 
Barhyte.  1880. 

Certainly  children's  books  were  never  made  more 
beautiful  or  interesting  than  now.  Those  of  the  pres- 
ent season  seem  to  relate  largely  to  foreign  and  fascinat- 
ing lands.  The  reputation  of  the  "  Bodley  Series"  is  so 
well  established  that  Mr.  Bodley  Abroad  will  be  wel- 
comed with  delight  by  thousands.  It  is  profusely  illus- 
trated, and  the  peculiar  charm  of  the  other  Bodley 
books  is  not  wanting  in  this  latest  one.  The  Orient 
brings  all  its  wonders  to  delight  the  children  of  Amer- 
ica. Mr.  Thomas  Knox,  whose  Boy  Travelers  in  China 
and  Japan  was  so  favorably  received,  leads  off  with  a 
supplemental  volume,  in  which  he  conducts  his  young 


prote'ge's  through  Siam  and  Java.  A  great  deal  of  infor- 
mation is  mingled  with  the  narrative.  The  book  is 
elaborately  and  beautifully  illustrated.  In  The  Loyal 
Ronins  we  have  a  translation  of  a  Japanese  romance, 
with  cuts  by  a  Japanese  artist.  The  work  is  certainly 
unique  in  the  book-maker's  line.  The  "  Loyal  Ronins" 
were  a  band  of  faithful  retainers  who  avenged  the  death 
of  their  master.  As  a  piece  of  literary  bric-a-brac  this 
book  is  unexcelled.  Not  less  quaint  in  its  way  is  the 
Japanese  Fairy  World,  in  which  the  folk-lore  of  Japan 
is  reproduced.  Here  also  are  specimens  of  native 
art.  Those  who  delight  in  the  literature  of  fairy-land, 
and  we  confess  we  believe  them  to  be  the  best  and  most 
sympathetic  minds  to  be  found,  will  hail  this  addition 
from  a  new  and  strange  quarter. 


ONTI  ORA.  A  Metrical  Romance.  By  M.  B.  M.  To- 
land.  Philadelphia:  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co.  For 
sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

This  little  volume,  beautifully  bound  and  illustrated, 
is  just  at  hand.  The  author  is  the  widow  of  the  late  Dr. 
H.  H.  Toland,  of  this  city,  and  to  his  memory  the  work 
is  dedicated.  Aside  from  a  certain  facility  of  metric  con- 
struction, and  a  few  good  lines  here  and  there,  the 
poetry  is  ordinary  and  spiritless.  Purporting  to  be 
American  in  scene  and  plot,  the  surroundings  rapidly 
become  European  as  the  story  advances,  and  the  thread 
of  narrative,  with  its  gypsies,  apparitions,  and  noble 
Frenchmen,  is  stereotyped  and  threadbare.  The  com- 
position lacks  character,  thought,  and  the  true  poetic 
atmosphere,  and  we  cannot  but  deplore  the  tendency 
toward  the  production  of  this  class  of  literature. 


THE  FLIGHT  INTO  EGYPT.  A  Narrative  Poem,  with 
Some  Minor  Poems.  By  Thomas  E.  Van  Bebber. 
1880.  San  Francisco  :  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

The  work  before  us  has  been  indited  by  a  Californian 
writer  and  issued  by  a  Californian  publisher.  We  feel 
very  friendly  to  home  enterprise.  We  therefore  refrain 
from  a  review. 


THREE  FRIENDS'  FANCIES.  Philadelphia :  J.  B.  Lip- 
pincott &  Co.  1880. 

JOHN  SWINTON'S  TRAVELS.  New  York :  G.  W.  Carle- 
ton  &  Co.  1880. 

LOCKE.  By  Thomas  Fowler.  English  Men  of  Let- 
ters Series.  New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1880. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

MARPLE  HALL  MYSTERY.  A  Romance.  By  Enrique 
Palmer.  New  York  :  Authors'  Publishing  Co.  1880. 

FRANKLIN  SQUARE  LIBRARY.     New  York :  Harper  & 
Brothers.    1880.    For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot, 
Upham  &  Co. 
No.  143. — English  Men  of  Letters — Burns,  Goldsmith, 

Bunyan. 
No.  144.—  English  Men   of  Letters— Johnson,    Scott, 

Thackeray. 

No.  145. — Three  Recruits.     A  Novel.    By  Joseph  Hat- 
ton. 

HARPER'S  HALF-HOUR  SERIES.  New  York :  Harper 
&  Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

No.  145. — Missing.     By  Mary  Cecil  Hay. 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


93 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


CHRISTMAS. 

When  I  look  back  over  the  years  that  I  have  lived,  I 
find  my  earliest  recollections  clustered  around  Christ- 
mas, and  clinging  with  a  tenacity  that  defies  time.  I 
can  recall  every  incident  of  that  happy  season — the  joy- 
ful anticipation,  which  dated  from  the  morning  of  the 
fifth  of  July ;  the  eager  expectation  as  the  time  drew 
near ;  the  count  of  months  and  days  and  hours ;  the 
mysterious  hush  of  Christmas  Eve ;  the  golden  dreams 
that  thronged  the  night,  and  the  delirious  joy  of  the 
winter  dawn  ;  the  pattering  of  little  feet,  and  the  visions 
of  little  nightgowns,  as  the  elders  were  awakened  by  the 
happy  childish  voices.  Then  the  calm  fruition  of  the 
day,  and  the  sisters  and  the  cousins,  and  the  turkey  and 
the  pudding,  and  the  stomach-ache  that  grandly  crown- 
ed the  whole.  But  the  day  came  when  we  awoke  from 
the  bright  dream,  and  in  place  of  the  rubicund  and 
frosty  face,  the  flowing  beard,  and  the  pawing  reindeer, 
we  found  the  ministering  hands  of  parents  and  friends. 
It  is  the  first  idol  that  is  broken,  and  nothing  in  after 
life,  neither  riches,  nor  power,  nor  fame,  nor  beauty,  nor 
love,  can  quite  fill  the  pedestal.  Out  of  the  mists  of 
life's  morning  the  rising  sun  fashions  fleecy  mountains 
and  cloudy  towers  and  depths  of  golden  sea,  while  the 
bright  blaze  of  manhood's  noon  dwarfs  the  mountain, 
scatters  the  towers,  and  the  sea  itself  is  found  to  be  but 
the  mirage  of  youth.  But,  though  bright  illusions  go 
out  of  life,  memory  is  constantly  recalling  them.  Nor 
is  material  progress  really  hostile  to  sentiment ;  it  is  sim- 
ply busy.  By  and  by,  when  it  sits  down  for  a  moment 
to  wipe  its  heated  brow,  it  will  be  sorry  it  had  not  time 
to  notice  that  poor  little  feeling.  Amid  the  clank  of  the 
piston,  and  the  hiss  of  steam,  and  the  click  of  the  mag- 
netic lever,  the  human  heart  is  still  beating,  and  once  a 
year  the  children's  hour  commands  a  hush  till  you  can 
count  the  throbs. .  Who  shall  estimate  the  value  of  this 
season  ?  How  many  withered  hearts  have  been  renewed 
under  its  tender  influence  !  How  many  selfish  natures 
have  felt  the  unwonted  pleasure  of  making  others  hap- 
py !  To  how  many  Scrooges  the  Christmas  carol  has 
brought  a  revelation  of  humanity  !  If  Christianity  had 
given  the  world  nothing  else  but  Christmas,  it  would 
have  given  that  which,  in  the  sum  of  human  happiness, 
outweighs  all  the  gifts  of  all  the  creeds  that  earth  has 
seen.  Its  distinctive  glory  is  that  it  is  the  religion  of  hu- 
manity—  the  religion  that  softens  man,  that  elevates 
woman,  that  casts  a  halo  around  infancy.  The  doc- 
trine of  Christ's  nativity  may  be  repugnant  to  the  rea- 
son ;  the  facts  of  his  humanity  touch  the  heart.  Who 
can  withhold  veneration  from  a  being  who,  in  a  world 
of  violence  and  hate,  preached  the  gospel  of  peace  and 
love. 

In  the  noble  words  of  Macaulay,  ' '  It  was  before  Deity, 
embodied  in  a  human  form,  walking  among  men,  par- 
taking of  their  infirmities,  sharing  in  their  joys,  leaning 
on  their  bosoms,  slumbering  in  the  manger,  bleeding  on 
the  cross,  that  the  prejudices  of  the  synagogue,  and  the 
doubts  of  the  Academy,  and  the  pride  of  the  Portico, 
and  the  fasces  of  the  lictor,  and  the  swords  of  thirty  le- 
gions were  humbled  in  the  dust."  To  realize  what 


Christianity  has  done  for  women,  look  back  on  the  an- 
cient world.  Take  the  literature  of  Greece.  Think  of 
its  richness  and  variety.  What  phase  of  thought  or 
feeling  has  it  left  untouched  ?  It  has  reached  the  hight 
of  sublimity  in  the  thunder  of  Demosthenes,  and  the 
billowy  roll  of  Homer's  hexameters.  It  has  sounded  the 
depths  of  passion  in  the  tragedies  of  .5£schylus  and 
Sophocles.  It  has  peopled  comedy  with  the  most  fan- 
tastic figures,  and  made  it  vocal  with  bursts  of  song  and 
peals  of  elfish  laughter.  What  impression  do  we  carry 
away  of  women  ?  We  know  that  there  was  a  class  of 
brilliant  beings  who  amused  the  leisure,  and  sometimes 
shared  the  toil,  of  great  men.  But  they  had  no  domes- 
tic existence.  We  know  that  Socrates  had  a  wife  the 
thought  of  whom  must  have  made  the  hemlock  palatable. 
Doubtless,  there  was  the  household  drudge,  but  her  life 
has  no  place  in  story.  The  names  of  some  Roman  ma- 
trons have  survived,  famed  chiefly  for  harsh  and  unlove- 
ly virtues.  But  woman,  the  companion  and  helpmate 
of  man,  the  sharer  of  his  joys,  the  consoler  of  his  griefs, 
the  queen  on  whose  brow  the  wreaths  of  poetry  were 
laid,  and  at  whose  feet  mail-clad  warriors  knelt,  owes  all 
that  makes  her  lot  brighter  than  the  lot  of  her  sister  in 
the  ancient  world  to  the  infant  that  was  born  on  Christ- 
mas Day.  Has  she  forgotten  it?  Religion,  faint  from 
the  blows  of  reason,  has  taken  refuge  in  the  hearts  of 
women.  Darwin  and  Spencer,  and  Huxley  and  Tyn- 
dall,  may  investigate,  and  illustrate,  and  demonstrate, 
and  prove ;  as  long  as  one  mother  shall  gather  her  lit- 
tle ones  around  her  to  tell  them  the  story  of  Bethlehem, 
so  long  one  ear  shall  be  deaf  and  one  heart  closed  to 
aught  that  would  injure  the  religion  which  made  a  wom- 
an the  mother  of  God.  Christ  said,  "Suffer  the  little 
children  to  come  unto  me."  They  have  come,  O  Gali- 
lean !  Men  may  reject  Thy  cross,  but  children  will 
kneel  around  Thy  cradle.  E.  FIELD. 


AT  THE  CIRCUS. 

It  was  really  a  splendid  show,  was  Cole's  Circus. 
( Don't  start,  Mr.  Editor ;  it's  neither  a  puff  nor  an  ad- 
vertisement— they  sailed  for  Australia  more  than  two 
months  ago.)  It  was  instructive,  too,  my  escort  said,  as 
we  stopped  in  the  menagerie  tent  to  look  at  the  ani- 
mals, tame  and  wild,  there  assembled. 

"  Highly  instructive,"  I  assented,  bitterly,  as  I  gazed 
at  the  zebra  in  his  cage ;  "for  didn't  I  boldly  use  the  sim- 
ile 'striped  as  a  zebra's  legs,'  in  something  I  wrote  the 
other  day  ;  and  here  I  find  every  part  of  that  aggravat- 
ing brute's  body  striped,  head  and  tail  included— only 
not  his  legs  !  What  shall  I  do?" 

"Don't  write  about  what  you  don't  know,  for  the  fut- 
ure," was  the  curt  reply. 

I  got  mad,  of  course,  but  kept  my  mouth  shut  till  it 
was  time  to  go  into  the  next  tent  to  see  the  perform- 
ance. Just  as  my  escort  was  about  to  enter  the  narrow 
lane  leading  into  the  large  tent,  I  held  him  back. 

"Don't,"  said  I,  beseechingly;  "don't  leave  this 
tent.  You  can  see  for  yourself  that  this  menagerie  is 
'  the  most  comprehensive  and  complete  ever  brought  to 


94 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


this  coast,'  with  one  exception — they  have  no  bear. 
Now,  if  you  could  only  be  prevailed  upon  to  stay  with 
them,  the  collection  would  be  perfect." 

He  pocketed  my  rebuke  as  submissively  as  I  had  taken 
his,  and  we  went  amicably  together  in  search  of  our 
seats.  The  performance  progressed  in  the  usual  satis- 
factory manner ;  the  horses  were  something  above  the 
average ;  the  wit  of  the  clowns  fell  but  little  behind,  and 
the  athletes  kept  one  in  a  delicious  state  of  expectancy ; 
every  leap  through  mid -air  looked  as  if  it  must  be  their 
last. 

Just  as  the  young  lady  who  suspended  herself  through 
a  pair  of  rings,  about  five  hundred  feet  above  sea  level, 
was  twisting  and  untwisting  herself,  to  the  enchanting 
strains  of  "Sweet  spirit,  hear  my  prayer,"  my  dizzy 
glance  slipped  over  something  directly  in  front  of  me. 
I  had  brought  my  eyes  down  from  the  gyrating  maiden 
on  high,  to  rest  them.  But  when  they  fell  where  they 
did,  they  literally  slipped  right  off,  and  I  had  to  raise 
them  to  my  neighbor's  face,  so  that  they  could  rest  on 
something  dull  and  sober-  tinted.'  I  took  the  liberty  to 
nudge  him,  however,  and  point  out  to  him  the  shining 
object  with  my  finger.  It  was  a  little  boy's  head,  with 
the  hair  shingled.  Shingled?  Scraped,  sand-papered, 
planed  off,  .would  express  it  better.  It  was  just  one 
polished  surface,  cranium  and  forehead  alike  smooth, 
and  the  rays  of  the  light  reflected  fronvboth  with  equal 
brilliancy. 

Even  Bruin  chuckled ;  and  I  laughed  till  I  thought 
the  boy's  broad-faced  mother  must  turn  around  to  see 
what  I  was  laughing  at.  Perhaps  my  laughter  did  not 
strike  her  as  out  of  place,  for  she  herself  laughed  at 
everything  that  was  said  and  done — even  by  the  clowns; 
and  her  pug-nosed  husband  brought  up  the  rear  of  the 
ripple,  so  to  speak — for  from  the  mother  the  shingle- 
headed  boy  took  his  cue,  and  from  him,  two  larger  broth- 
ers, seated  between  him  and  the  father ;  and,  in  this 
way,  the  laugh  passed  along  the  whole  line. 

Soon,  however,  a  dark  cloud  was  to  obscure  all  this 
harmony  and  mirth.  A  loud-voiced  man  stepped  into 
the  middle  of  the  ring,  and  announced  that,  after  this 
performance  was  closed,  there  would  be  an  extra  per- 
formance— a  family  concert — to  which  all  were  invited 
to  remain,  upon  payment  of  the  extraordinarily  low  sum 
of  twenty-five  cents  per  head.  It  was  a  study  to  watch 
the  effect  of  this  announcement  on  the  group  in  front 
of  me.  The  pug-nosed  father  looked,  questioningly,  at 
the  broad-faced  mother  ;  but  this  worthy  matron's  feat- 
tures  seemed  to  harden  and  set  during  the  short  speech 
of  the  showman,  and  the  three  boys,  never  once  con- 
sulting the  eyes  of  the  father,  turned  their  triple  atten- 
tion to  the  madres  face.  She  was  determined  to  ignore 
the  three  pairs  of  pleading  eyes  fixed  upon  her,  and  she 
looked  straight  ahead  at  the  saw-dust  ring ;  but  three 
voices  raised,  in  chorus,  "Ma,  let's  stay — shan't  we?" 
soon  convinced  her  that  this  storm  must  be  bravely 
faced. 

"Hsh — sh — sh,"  she  whispered,  energetically,  "not 
a  whimper  out  of  you; "  and  she  learned  forward  to  give 
them  all  the  benefit  of  her  threatening  eye.  The  storm 
was  only  momentarily  quelled,  however,  and  it  broke 
out  with  renewed  fury  directly. 

"Ma,  I  want  to  stay — want  to  stay — want  to  stay," 
the  refrain  came  along  the  line,  more  clamorously  than 
before,  and  the  stern  parent  was  obliged  to  resort  to 
more  severe  measures.  Without  another  word  she 
passed  her  arm  behind  the  three  young  lads,  and  a 
spasmodic  backward  jerk  of  the  oldest  one's  head,  and 


his  sudden  silence,  convinced  me  that  his  hair  had  been 
pulled  with  unusual  vigor.  The  second  one  dodged  for- 
ward in  the  midst  of  his  refrain,  but  did  not  escape  his 
measure.  Only  the  youngest,  the  one  nearest  her,  came 
off  unscathed. 

Bruin  had  been  watching  this  side-show  with  his 
habitual  somber  expression,  but  he  bent  over  to  whisper 
in  my  ear : 

"Now  you  see  what  a  shingled  head  is  good  for. 
That  boy  escaped  his  mother's  wrath  only  by  having  no 
hair  to  pull." 

I  bridled  up  at  once. 

"Nothing  of  the  kind,"  I  said,  indignantly;  "she 
never  meant  to  pull  his  hair.  He's  the  youngest,  don't 
you  see?  She  wouldn't  pull  his  hair  if  he  had  a  bushel 
of  it,  and,  besides,  there's  enough  hair  on  his  head  to 
pull,  if  it  is  shingled.  But  what  does  a  bear  know  about 
maternal  tenderness  and  forbearance  toward  a  youngest 
child?" 

And  I  shrugged  my  shoulders  in  pity  and  contempt. 

When  we  got  ready  to  go,  the  interesting  family 
marched  ahead  of  us  in  the  same  order  they  had  sat  be- 
fore us:  mother,  youngest,  second  youngest,  oldest, 
father.  Almost  at  the  outlet  of  the  tent  stood  the 
tempter  once  more,  proclaiming  this  as  the  last  chance 
to  buy  tickets  for  the  family  concert  about  to  begin  in  a 
few  minutes,  price  only  twenty-five  cents,  children  with 
their  parents,  free.  Madame  the  mother  set  her  teeth; 
Monsieur  the  father  looked  moved ;  but  Messieurs  the 
sons  set  up  a  shout  of  mingled  woe  and  remonstrance 
against  maternal  cruelty  and  hard-heartedness.  Mov- 
ing on  with  the  crowd,  and  unheeding  the  combined 
lamentations,  the  strong  arm  of  discipline  was  once 
more  brought  around  the  three  pairs  of  shoulders,  two 
youthful  heads  were  jerked  backward,  the  third  dodging 
instinctively,  but,  Bruin  insisted,  unnecessarily. 

"I  tell  you,"  he  whispered,  excitedly,  "she  can'tpnll 
the  little  one's  hair  or  she  would.  I  can  see  it  in  her 
eye." 

"You  are  mistaken,"  I  answered,  loftily,  determined 
to  have  the  last  word,  at  all  events;  "she  does  not  want 
to  pull  it.  But  there  is  hair  enough  on  the  boy's  head 
to  pull,  and  I'll  prove  it  to  you." 

Bringing  thumb  and  forefinger  close  together  (for  I 
knew  there  was  not  very  much  hair),  I  raised  my  hand 
stealthily  to  the  back  of  the  youngest  boy's  head,  took  a 
good  aim,  and  smiled  in  anticipation  of  seeing  a  startled 
childish  face  turn  on  me  with  a  command  to  "stop 
pulling  my  hair."  Instead  of  that,  presently  came  a 
howl: 

"Ow — wow!  O  golly,  who's  a-pinchin'  my  head?" 
JOSEPHINE  CLIFFORD. 

NIRVANA. 
I  stand  before  thy  giant  form,  Ranier, 

That  rises  wrapped  in  robe  of  dazzling  snow, 

And  wonder  what  has  made  thee  tower  so 
Calm,  cold,  and  changeless  in  the  sunlight  clear. 
The  answer  comes :   Volcanic  rocks  have  here 

For  ages  burnt,  upcast  with  fiercest  glow 

In  fiery  ..torrents  from  the  hell  below. 
Thus  did  this  mighty  pyramid  uprear 
Its  matchless  form,  till  now  it  stands  alone 

Above  the  storms  that  vex  the  lower  skies, 
And  snows  eternal  clothe  its  shapely  cone. 

O  soul,  cast  out  the  hell  that  in  thee  lies 
Of  passions  and  desires  that  makes  thee  moan, 

And,  clad  in  white,  thou,  too,  shalt  grandly  rise. 
C.  S.  GREENE. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


95 


SOME   INDIAN   SUPERSTITIONS. 

Old  Tousus  came  into  my  claim  one  morning,  equip- 
ped, as  usual,  with  his  mining  outfit,  consisting  of  a 
broken  pick,  a  pan,  and  tin  cup,  and  a  piece  of  hoop- 
iron  which  had  been  transformed  into  a  scraper.  In 
those  days  the  Indian  population  did  a  great  deal  of 
mining  in  a  small  way,  and  it  was  no  uncommon  thing 
to  see  a  whole  village,  including  the  squaws  and  pa- 
pooses, scraping  industriously  over  the  bed-rock  which 
the  white  miners  had  cleaned  in  the  careless  way  pecul- 
iar to  the  early  days  of  mining,  and  instances  are  not 
wanting  in  which  the  Indians  got  the  cream  of  the 
claim. 

Tousus  did  not  come  alone  this  morning.  He  was 
followed  by  his  squaw  and  little  ones,  and  with  them 
was  an  old  Indian  I  did  not  recollect  having  seen  be- 
fore. I  asked  Tousus  who  he  was. 

"  He — he  my  brother." 

"What's  his  name?" 

"Jim." 

"I  don't  mean  his  American  name,  but  what  is  his 
name  in  Indian?" 

"O-o." 

Which,  being  freely  translated,  meant  that  he  did  not 
know.  Now,  any  man,  white  or  Indian,  should  know 
the  name  of  his  brother,  and  of  course  Tousus  lied.  But 
the  lie  was  what  we  Christians  would  call  a  "white" 
one,  because  it  was  told  without  intent  to  do  any  harm. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  old  Tousus  would  about  as  soon 
have  thought  of  cutting  off  one  of  his  hands  as  to  tell  a 
stranger  the  Indian  name  of  either  himself  or  any  one 
closely  connected  with  him.  In  his  firm  belief,  it  would 
be  followed  by  some  great  disaster  to  the  party.  But 
other  Indians,  while  equally  reticent  about  themselves, 
gave  me  the  coveted  information  without  hesitation,  and 
I  found  the  name  of  the  new-comer  was  "Wywanny," 
which  signifies  "going  north." 

It  was  not  a  great  while  after  this  that  I  had  an  op- 
portunity of  seeing  another  example  of  Indian  customs, 
which,  while  it  does  not  have  so  deep  a  foundation  in 
superstition  as  the  one  I  have  instanced,  was  yet  ad- 
hered to  most  religiously.  "Kentuck,"  a  young  Indian 
who  had  already  attained  fame  as  a  hunter,  was  taken 
sick,  and,  notwithstanding  the  incantation  of  the  most 
famous  "medicine  men"  of  which  the  tribe  could  boast, 
died  in  a  very  short  time.  Kentuck  was  the  son  of  a 
former  chief,  and  Indians  came  from  far  and  near  to 
attend  the  burial.  A  deep,  round  hole  was  dug,  the 
body,  rolled  in  blankets  and  doubled  up  like  a  ball,  was 
lowered  in,  and  then  commenced  the  destruction  of 
everything  he  owned  while  living.  Among  other  things, 
a  fine,  new  rifle,  with  which  he  had  slain  about  forty 
deer  the  winter  previous,  was  broken  across  a  log,  and 
the  pieces  thrown  into  the  grave.  Kentuck  had  been 
the  purveyor  of  fresh  meat  the  winter  before  for  the 
whole  camp,  whites  as  well  as  Indians,  for  the  snow  had 
fallen  deep  early  in  the  fall,  and  beef-cattle  could  not  be 
driven  across  the  mountains.  Knowing  Kentuck's  gun 
to  be  the  only  good  one  owned  by  the  Indians,  I  asked 
another,  who  was  also  a  good  hunter,  why  it  was  not 
saved.  His  answer  was  conclusive,  so  far  as  it  went : 

"  He's  dead  now — he  can't  shoot  it  any  more." 

The  wanderings  of  the  Indians  took  them  to  another 
section,  and  some  months  elapsed  before  I  saw  Tousus 
again.  When  I  next  saw  him,  the  whole  family,  as  well 
as  himself,  were  daubed  with  pitch — a  sign  of  mourn- 
ing. 


"Who's  dead,  John?"  I  asked,  using  the  name  the 
whites  had  given  him. 

"My  brother." 

"What ?    Wywanny,  the  one  here  last  summer?" 

But  such  a  cry  of  horror  at  this  inquiry  went  up  that 
I  knew  at  once  that  I  had,  to  use  a  slang  phrase,  "put 
my  foot  in  it"  somehow.  Cries  of  "  Don't  name  him," 
or  words  of  similar  import,  came  from  every  one.  When 
the  shock  occasioned  by  my  blunder  had  subsided,  I 
asked  one  who  talked  English  pretty  well  why  the  name 
of  a  dead  Indian  was  not  to  be  spoken,  and  was  an- 
swered at  once : 

' '  S'pose  he  hears  you  call  his  name,  then  he'll  come 
here." 

These  superstitions  of  the  race  have  given  rise  to 
some  curious  incidents.  The  valley  of  the  Trinity, 
when  gold  was  first  discovered,  supported  a  large  abo- 
riginal population,  and  by  all  the  accounts  which  have 
been  handed  down  to  us,  it  would  seem  that  they  were 
very  friendly  toward  the  new-comers.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  friendly  feeling  was  soon  broken  by  the  act  of 
an  Oregonian,  who  shot  an  Indian  deliberately  one  day, 
"just  to  see  him  jump,"  he  said.  After  this  act  the  In- 
dians took  to  the  mountains,  and  kept  up  a  predatory 
warfare  against  the  whites  until  the  spring  of  1852,  when 
one  of  their  camps  being  surprised  and  almost  the  en- 
tire population  killed,  in  punishment  for  the  murder  of 
Captain  Anderson,  near  Weaverville,  the  other  villages 
sent  in  messengers  to  ask  for  peace.  But  the  number  of 
white  men  whose  lives  were  sacrificed  before  this  time 
was  reached  will  never  be  known.  The  Indians  were 
conscious  of  the  numbers  and  superiority  of  those  with 
whom  they  had  to  do,  and  carried  on  their  war  of  re- 
venge with  a  fiendish  cunning  which  for  a  long  time 
secured  them  comparative  immunity  from  pursuit  and 
vengeance.  At  that  time  the  prospector  who  was  pres- 
ent one  day  might  be  found  miles  away  upon  the  mor- 
row ;  or  he  might  be  encamped  for  weeks  in  a  place  while 
his  very  name  would  be  unknown,  perhaps,  to  his  near- 
est neighbor.  If  missed  from  his  claim  or  camp,  it 
would  be  assumed  that  he  had  gone  to  some  other  local- 
ity, and  if  no  suspicions  of  foul  play  were  raised,  the 
chances  were  that  in  a  very  brief  space  of  time  he  would 
be  forgotten.  Such  a  condition  of  affairs  was  in  every 
way  favorable  to  the  manner  in  which  the  Indians  con- 
ducted their  attacks,  which  were  always  directed  against 
small  parties  or  single  miners  and  travelers,  and  were 
so  successful  that  their  victims  never  escaped  to  tell  the 
tale. 

After  peace  was  concluded,  the  tribe  came  into  the 
settlements  and  freely  intermingled  with  the  whites, 
when  one  of  the  common  results  of  frontier  life  soon 
followed.  Women,  in  the  mines,  were  few  and  far 
between,  and,  as  a  natural  result  of  this  condition  of 
society,  many  of  the  miners  "took  up"  with  Indian 
women.  Some  of  these  ill-assorted  alliances  continue 
even  to  the  present  day,  where  the  miners  became 
attached  to  the  ones  they  had  chosen,  and  were  legally 
married.  It  was  then  only  that  the  whites  began  to 
learn  the  extent  to  which  their  race  had  suffered  while 
hostilities  were  in  progress.  Many  a  spot  has  since 
been  pointed  out  as  the  scene  of  a  conflict,  in  which 
one  or  more  white  men  were  slaughtered,  and  their 
bodies  dragged  away  to  some  lone  place,  or  buried,  to 
conceal  the  evidences  of  the  fray. 

Plunder,  as  a  matter  of  course,  was  a  necessary 
accompaniment — plunder  for  its  own  sake,  if  nothing 
more.  In  many  cases,  the  victims  were  the  possessors 


96 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


of  large  amounts  of  money,  generally  gold-dust.  The 
Indians  knew  nothing  then  of  the  uses  or  the  value  of 
money.  To  them,  it  was  only  something  that  the  white 
man  cared  for,  and,  therefore,  legitimate  "spoils  of 
war."  When  one  of  their  own  number  was  killed, 
either  in  a  fight  where  the  white  man  was  killed  also,  or 
on  a  cabin -robbing  excursion,  the  booty  thus  acquired 
was  looked  upon  as  the  peculiar  property  of  the  un- 
fortunate aborigine,  and  buried  with  him.  In  many 
cases  it  was  stolen,  and  thrown  away  afterward,  as  of 
no  value.  A  legend  points  to  a  large  sum  thrown  into 
the  bushes,  within  sight  of  the  town  of  Weaverville, 
which,  though  search  has  been  made  for  it  several 
times,  has  never  been  found.  So  far  as  recovering  any- 
thing of  this  kind  which  was  buried  with,  or  strewn 
above  the  grave  of  one  of  their  number,  so  great  is  their 
superstition  that  they  would  not  think  of  touching  a 
penny's  worth  of  it,  though  it  kept  them  from  starving. 
And  the  same  superstitious  fear  of  speaking  of  the  dead 
prevents  them  from  pointing  out  such  deposits  to  any 
white  man,  however  friendly  the  relations  may  be  other- 
wise. It  was  not  until  after  years  had  passed,  and  those 
who  lived  with  the  whites  began  to  be  somewhat  shaken 
in  their  beliefs,  that  intimations  (slight  and  intangible 
at  first,  but  given  more  fully  after  frequent  questionings) 
were  dropped.  Yet  although  twenty  or  thirty  places, 
where  large  sacks  of  dust,  and  pieces  of  money,  ' '  shaped 
as  if  cut  off  the  end  of  a  rifle  -  barrel "  (fifty -dollar 
"slugs"),  have  been  indicated,  only  two,  so  far  as 
known,  have  been  discovered.  Two  or  three  more  of 
these  mysterious  finds  have  been  made  which  may,  or 
may  not,  be  attributed  originally  to  this  cause.  Of  the 
first  of  these,  I  knew  but  little ;  the  second  I  knew  of, 
for  I  was  well  acquainted  with  all  the  parties,  and 
learned  the  full  particulars,  except  in  regard  to  the 
amount  of  treasure  recovered. 

From  the  particulars  of  the  story,  it  seems  that  some 
time  in  the  year  '50,  or  '51,  a  white  man  was  traveling 
alone  down  the  Trinity  River,  below  the  point  where 
the  main  wagon-road  to  Shasta  now  crosses  the  stream. 
He  rode  a  white  horse,  and  carried  a  rifle.  He  was 
seen  by  a  small  band  of  Indians,  who  were  upon  the 
mountain  above.  They  slipped  across  the  ridge  to  a 
bend  of  the  river  below,  to  a  point  where  the  mouth  of 
two  brushy  ravines  made  a  most  complete  ambush.  In 
the  fight  that  followed,  the  white  man  was  killed  ;  his 
body  was  hidden,  or  buried;  the  gun,  which  became 
broken  in  the  contest,  was  thrown  into  the  river  ;  while 
the  white  horse  and  pack  were  taken  to  the  Digger 
camp.  But  the  rifle,  before  it  was  broken,  sent  its  mes- 
senger of  death  through  the  arm  of  one  of  the  attacking 
party  ;  and  as  the  Indians  were  not  able  to  bring  any 
of  the  appliances  of  surgery  to  the  aid  of  the  wounded 
man,  the  hand  came  off  some  time  before  the  death  of 
the  Indian.  The  hand  was  buried,  and  the  gold-dust 
scattered  on  the  little  grave,  with  all  the  funeral  cere- 
monies. 

Among  those  present  at  this  burial  was  a  little  girl  of 
five  or  six  years  of  age.  Some  years  later,  she  was  liv- 
ing with  a  white  man,  to  whom  she  related  the  incident, 
and  a  party  was  at  once  formed  to  search  for  the  treas- 
ure. The  grave  was  in  a  flat,  now  fenced  in  and  sowed 
to  grain,  and  the  leveled  ground  showed  no  trace  of 
anything  unusual.  It  soon  became  evident  that  the 
squaw  either  did  not  know  the  exact  locality  of  the  ob- 
ject of  their  search,  or,  knowing,  was  so  worked  upon 
by  her  superstitions,  or  so  influenced  by  others,  that 
she  would  make  no  further  revelations.  After  they  had 


searched  for  about  two  weeks,  and  were  about  ready  to 
give  up,  a  band  of  Indians  passed  where  they  were 
working,  and  stopped  to  talk  with  the  squaw,  who  told 
them  what  they  were  looking  for.  With  the  band  was 
an  older  woman,  who  was  known  to  have  been  at  the 
burial,  but  resisted  all  persuasion  and  offers  of  reward 
to  disclose  what  she  knew.  From  the  fragments  of  con- 
versation overheard  by  the  white  men,  it  became  evi- 
dent that  the  Indians  were  Irying  to  influence  the 
young  squaw  to  persuade  her  companions  to  quit  the 
search.  When  the  band  went  away,  it  was  noticed 
that  the  old  woman  cast  a  stealthy  glance  toward  an 
oak  tree  in  another  part  of  the  field,  and  after  the  de- 
parture of  the  band,  the  man  who  observed  this  went 
where  she  had  looked,  and  was  fortunate  enough  to  find 
the  treasure.  The  ground  had  been  plowed  and  har- 
rowed several  times,  scattering  the  dust  over  a  large 
surface,  but  the  party  (although  they  kept  their  own 
counsel)  undoubtedly  recovered  several  thousand  dol- 
lars. 

A  great  many  other  searches  have  been  made,  but 
with  very  indifferent  success.  As  matters  now  stand,  it 
is  probable  that  nothing  more  will  ever  be  found,  unless 
through  the  medium  of  accident.  The  once  numerous 
tribe  of  the  Wintoons,  which  then  peopled  the  valley  of 
Trinity  and  its  branches,  has  dwindled  away  to  a  mere 
handful,  and  if  there  are  any  yet  living  who  remember 
the  places  to  which  Indian  custom  consigned  the  plun- 
der taken  from  the  hated  race,  their  superstition  is  yet 
so  strong  that  they  will  carry  the  secret  with  them  to 
their  graves.  T.  E.  JONES. 


AT  POINT  BONITA. 

Upon  this  frowning  promontory's  hight 

Whose  base  is  lashed  by  the  upheaving  surge, 

I  stand  alone,  and  watch,  with  aching  sight, 
Yon  lessening  speck  on  the  horizon's  verge. 

I  trust  my  love  to  thee,  and  am  undone 

If  thou  prove  merciless,  O  treacherous  sea  ! 

Thou  hast  thy  myriads,  while  I  have  but  one, 
But  she  outvalues  all  thy  wealth,  with  me. 

Brave  bark  that  bears  her,  fading  down  the  west, 
God  speed  thee,  since  'twere  vain  to  bid  thee  stay. 

With  thy  fair  freight  o'er  Ocean's  placid  breast, 
May  heaven's  own  zephyrs  waft  thee  on  thy  way. 

And  thou,  sweet  wanderer,  my  plighted  bride, 
Though  fate  condemns  us  for  a  time  to  part, 

Where'er  thou  stray 'st,  thy  home  is  by  my  side, 
Thy  throne,  fair  despot,  still  is  in  my  heart. 

•GEORGE  T.  RUSSELL. 


AUTHORSHIP  AND  CRITICISM. 

Addison  somewhere  declares  that  no  man  writes  a 
book  without  meaning  something,  although  he  may  not 
possess  the  happy  faculty  of  writing  consequentially, 
and  expressing  his  meaning  clearly.  So  also  is  many  a 
well  intentioned  author  mistaken  in  his  judgment  as  to 
the  value  of  that  which  he  would  indite  ;  and,  after  the 
labor  of  composing  and  the  expense  of  publication  — 
when  it  is  too  late — it  is  discovered  that  time  and  labor 
and  money  have  been  expended  upon  a  useless  or  vi- 
cious thing.  When  such  is  unfortunately  the  sad  state 
of  affairs,  the  fact  is  surely  brought  to  light  when  the 
vigorous  scalpel  of  the  vigilant  critic  is  applied  to  the 
tissue  of  the  work. 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


97 


The  last  named  class  of  professionals,  when  they  ply 
their  art  with  a  knowing  hand,  a  steady  nerve,  and  an 
honest  heart,  are  very  serviceable,  alike  to  those  who 
read  and  those  who  write ;  for  they  freely  and  fearlessly 
lay  bare  every  substance -fiber,  point  out  with  unerring 
precision  every  element  of  truth  and  of  beauty,  and 
distinguish  every  tissue  of  worth  and  worthlessness  ; 
but  when  captious  instead  of  critical,  malignant  instead 
of  just,  and  bungling  and  boggling  instead  of  applying 
with  confidence  and  skill  and  intrepidity  those  tests 
that  reveal  true  worth,  separate  gold  from  dross,  they 
mislead  the  public,  and  send  a  Java  -  poisoned  arrow, 
quivering,  into  the  bleeding  bosom  of  a  worthy  author, 
which,  like  a  gnawing  canker,  saps  the  life-blood  of  his 
young  ambition,  and,  mayhap,  consigns  him  to  oblivion 
or  the  tomb. 

England's  erratic  poet  sings  mournfully  of 

"John  Keats — who  was  killed  off  by  one  critique, 
Just  as  he  promised  something  great." 

Her  abused  and  neglected  singer,  whose  organization 
was  so  delicate  that  he  could 

"  Hardly  bear 
The  weight  of  the  superincumbent  hour," 

whose  earthly  remains  were  committed  to  the  urn  near 
the  Spezian  floods,  and  his  great  cor  cordium  was  sent 
to  the  British  Museum  to  be  placed  among  the  curiosi- 
ties of  his  native  country,  says  that  this  kind  and  gen- 
tle and  loving  minstrel  fell 

"Pierced  by  the  shaft  which  flies  in  darkness." 

A  strangely  sensitive  creature  Keats  certainly  must 
have  been,  who  could  feel  so  deeply  an  unjust  criticism 
that  a  hireling  reviewer  could  publish  ;  yet  he  did  feel, 
and  feel  poignantly,  the  sting  of  the  viper  t  and  his  spirit 
was  so  utterly  broken  by  it,  his  ambition  so  hopelessly 
crushed,  and  his  despair  so  absolutely  reckless,  that,  as 
Headley  declares,  he  wished  to  record  his  own  ruin,  and 
have  his  very  tombstone  tell  how  worthless  were  his 
life  and  name.  With  the  fading  of  the  last  ray  of  hope 
of  life,  his  dying  hand  indited  a  line  he  directed  to  be 
placed  upon  whatever  monument  should  call  the  atten- 
tion of  succeeding  generations  to  his  last  resting-place, 
which  was  done.  The  line  reads  thus  : 

"Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water." 

Surely  singing  birds,  who  prosper  in  serene  regions, 
cannot  flourish  in  a  storm. 

"Oh.  can  one  envious  tongue 
So  blight  and  "blast  earth's  holiest  things 
That  e'en  the  glorious  bard  that  sings 

Grows  mute,  and,  all  unstrung, 
His  bleeding,  quivering  heart  gives  o'er, 
And  dies  without  one  effort  more?" 

Dr.  John  Hawkesworth,  a  brilliant  essayist,  whom 
Samuel  Johnson  pronounced  capable  of  dignifying  his 
narratives  with  elegance  of  diction  and  force  of  senti- 
ment, is  said  by  the  elder  Disraeli  to  have  "died  of  crit- 
icism." Dr.  Bently  declares,  and  he  was  in  a  position 
to  know  whereof  he  spoke,  that  John  Lake's^thorough 
confutation  of  Bishop  Stillingfleet's  metaphysical  treatise 
on  the  "Trinity"  hastened  the  death  of  the  Bishop. 
William  Whiston,  the  intimate  friend  and  warm  ad- 
mirer of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  declared  that  he  did  not 
think  it  proper  to  publish  his  treatise  in  confutation  of 
the  philosopher's  work  on  the  "Chronology  of  Ancient 


Kingdoms"  during  his  lifetime,  because  he  said  he  knew 
Newton's  temperament  so  well  he  knew  that  it  would 
kill  him.  Pope,  the  invalid  poet,  writhed  in  his  chair 
under  the  sting  of  the  light  shafts  darted  at  him  by 
crabbed  Gibber.  And  Tennyson,  the  English  laureate, 
ere  he  had  yet  given  anything  to  the  public,  read  that 
exquisite  little  poem,  "Lilian,"  to  a  company  of  his 
friends,  and  was  laughed  out  of  the  room  for  his  pains. 
When  he  first  published  his  poems  the  critics  found 
fault  with  them,  and,  with  his  shy  and  somber  nature, 
Tennyson  retired  to  solitude  and  study,  and  for  ten 
years  his  name  was  not  seen  in  print,  and  his  very  ex- 
istence was  forgotten  by  the  literary  world.  WThen  he 
did  appear  again  and  claim  the  attention  of  the  public, 
he  took  his  position  among  the  veterans.  Who  can  tell 
what  would  have  been  the  result  had  the  critics  again 
found  fault  with  his  performances  and  the  public  turned 
aside  with  a  sigh  of  disappointment? 

The  light  of  many  a  rising  and  ambitious  genius — the 
world  and  the  critics  now  recognize  the  critic-murdered 
Keats  to  have  been  a  man  within  whose  sensitive  and 
delicate  organization  resided  the  Olympic  fire  of  true 
genius — has  been  nipped  in  the  bud  by  the  unjust  and 
harsh  opinion  of  some  hireling  critic ;  so  that  in  this  day 
of  doggerel  verses  and  crabbed  criticism  we  feel  fully 
the  force  of  Pope's  caustic  couplet,  when  he  says : 

"  Such  shameless  bards  we  have ;  and  yet,  'tis  true, 
There  are  as  mad,  abandon'd  critics,  too." 

When  Byron's  pugnacious  spirit  was  roused  to  its 
highest  pitch  of  fury  by  Henry  (subsequently  Lord) 
Brougham's  ill-natured  critique  in  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view on  his  "  Hours  of  Idleness,"  he  wrote,  in  consum- 
mate spleen : 

"As  soon 

Seek  roses  in  December,  ice  in  June ; 

Hope  constancy  in  the  wind,  or  corn  in  chaff; 

Believe  a  woman,  or  an  epitaph, 

Or  anything  else  that's  false,  before 

You  trust  in  critics." 

And  when  Dr.  Kenrick  pronounced  "The  Traveler" 
to  be  "a  flimsy  poem,"  discussed  it  as  a  grave  political 
pamphlet,  condemned  the  whole  system,  and  declared 
it  built  on  false  principles,  and  said  that  ' '  The  Deserted 
Village"  was  "pretty,"  but  that  it  had  "  neither  fancy, 
dignity,  genius,  nor  fire" — poor  Goldsmith,  the  impul- 
sive child  of  Nature,  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to 
visit  condign  punishment,  though  summary  justice, 
upon  the  impudent  critic  by  administering  to  him  a 
sound  caning.  For  this  indiscreet  action  the  public 
severely  condemned  the  poet.  He  published  a  defense 
of  his  action  in  the  papers  of  the  day,  in  which  occurs 
the  following  characteristic  paragraph : 

"  The  law  gives  us  no  protection  against  this  injury.  The 
insults  we  receive  before  the  public,  by  being  more  open,  are 
the  more  distressing  ;  by  treating  them  with  silent  contempt 
we  do  not  pay  a  sufficient  deference  to  the  opinion  of  the 
world.  By  recurring  to  legal  redress  we  too  often  expose  the 
weakness  of  the  law,  which  only  increases  our  mortification  by 
failing  to  relieve  us.  In  short,  every  man  should  singly  con- 
sider himself  as  a  guardian  of  the  liberty  of  the  press,  and,  as 
far  as  his  influence  can  extend,  should  endeavor  to  prevent  its 
licentiousness  becoming  at  last  the  grave  of  its  freedom." 

Goldsmith  was  in  a  measure  justified  in  his  action. 
This  man  Kenrick  was  an  Ishmaelite  of  the  press — the 
hired  tool  of  the  Griffiths.  He  was  a  man  of  some 
talent  and  great  industry,  who  had  abandoned  a  paying 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


business  as  a  mechanic  for  the  thorny  path  of  author- 
ship as  a  profession.  He  tried  his  hand  in  every  de- 
partment of  literature,  gained  a  popular  name,  and  re- 
ceived from  some  obscure  university  the  title  of  Doctor 
of  Laws;  but  he  did  not  win  success.  He  was  one 
among  that  class  of  men  of  whom  Dr.  Johnson  said 
they  succeeded  in  making  themselves  public  without 
making  themselves  known.  His  own  want  of  success 
made  him  jealous  of  every  one  who  was  in  any  measure 
successful ;  and  being  reduced  to  book-work  to  gain  a 
livelihood,  in  malignant  reviews  he  made  dastardly  at- 
tacks on  almost  all  the  authors  of  his  day.  The  follow- 
ing sketch  of  the  critic  is  left  by  one  of  his  contempora- 
ries whom  he  had  attacked : 

"  Dreaming  of  genius  which  he  never  had, 
Half  wit,  half  fool,  half  critic,  and  half  mad  ; 
Seizing,  like  Shirley,  on  the  poet's  lyre, 
With  all  his  rage,  but  not  one  spark  of  fire ; 
Eager  for  slaughter,  and  resolved  to  tear 
From  others'  brows  that  wreath  he  must  not  wear, 
Next  Kenrick  came ;  all  furious  and  replete 
With  brandy,  malice,  pretense,  and  conceit; 
Unskilled  in  classic  lore,  through  envy  blind 
To  all  that's  beauteous,  learned,  or  refined; 
For  faults  alone  behold  the  savage  prowl, 
With  reason's  offal  glut  his  raving  soul ; 
Pleased  with  his  prey,  its  inmost  blood  he  drinks, 
And  mumbles,  paws,  and  turns  it,  till  il  stinks." 

Vicious  criticism,  though  always  ungenial  and  nip- 
ping, to  use  Disraeli's  figure,  ' '  does  not  always  kill  the 
tree  it  has  frozen  over,"  and  points  with  force  the  say- 
ing of  Richard  Cumberland,  that  authors  should  never 
be  thin-skinned,  but  shelled  like  the  rhinoceros.  Yet  it 
is  a  sadly  lamentable  fact  that  the  solitary  road  to  liter- 
ary preferment  and  successful  authorship  lies  through 
the  galling  gauntlet  of  criticism ;  and  it  requires  some- 
thing of  the  spirit  that  impels  the  warrior  to  scale  the 
walls  of  the  citadel  and  carry  off  the  fire-belching  can- 
non, to  pursue  the  even  tenor  of  a  course  mapped  out, 
and  of  plans  laid,  undisturbed  and  unruffled  by  the 
average  critic's  chirp — a  something  not  at  all  in  keep- 
ing with  the  modest,  retired,  and  timorous  ^nature  of 
most  authors. 

It  is  certainly  a  source  of  consolation  and  comfort  to 
sickened  and  disheartened  authors  to  know  that  in  his 
tremendous  sweep,  old  Father  Time,  the  great  autocrat 
of  the  world  and  the  sovereign  arbiter  of  the  fame  of 
men  and  the  life  of  nations,  not  only  destroys  authors 
and  annihilates  critics,  but,  with  a  benevolence  scarce 
expected  and  surely  not  surpassed  by  mortals,  kindly 
rescues  from  the  slough  of  contempt  and  the  misery  of 
neglect  some  who  have  been  ruthlessly  cast  down  by 
critics,  and  mercilessly  consigned  to  oblivion  by  the 
shallow  public  who  humbly  bow  down  at  the  critic's 
shrine,  and,  by  daily  weakening  and  removing  unjust 
criticisms  and  unfounded  prejudices,  lifts  worthy  au- 
thors to  their  deserved  places  in  the  world's  literature 
and  history,  making  them 

"A  burnin'  and  a  shinin'  light" 

to  all  the  nations.  In  ancient  times,  when  superstition 
and  ignorance  held  a  firm  grip  upon  the  base  of  the 
world,  the  dignities  of  the  church  detected  witches  and 
the  magnates  of  the  cities  rabid  dogs,  by  casting  them 
into  the  water  ;  so  also  could  they,  by  a  direct  interpo- 
sition of  the  hand  of  Providence,  bring  to  light  the  truth 
or  falsity  of  a  statement  or  position,  the  worth  or  worth- 
lessness  of  a  book,  by  an  application  of  the  "ordeal  by 


fire."  When  all  Italy  was  thrown  into  intense  excite- 
ment over  the  proposition  to  substitute  the  Roman  for 
the  Mozarbaic  rite,  about  the  year  1077,  with  one  com- 
mon voice  a  resort  was  made  to  the  fire  ordeal.  A  mis- 
sal from  each  was  committed  to  the  flames,  and,  to  the 
great  joy  of  all  patriotic  Castilians,  the  Gothic  offices 
were  untouched  by  the  flames,  while  the  others  were 
utterly  consumed;  and  thus,  it  was  contended  and  con- 
ceded, the  Lord  of  Hosts  confirmed  the  decisions  of 
the  courts  previously  rendered  in  favor  of  the  national 
ritual,  greatly  to  the  consternation  and  mortification  of 
the  partisans  of  the  Roman  offices.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered by  the  student  of  church  history  that  at  the  com- 
mencement of  St.  Dominic's  crusade  against  the  Albi- 
genses,  the  arguments  of  each  were  reduced  to  writing 
and  the  parchments  committed  to  the  flames  to  test  the 
truth  and  accuracy  of  each.  That  of  the  Saint  was  un- 
scathed by  the  fire,  while  that  of  his  opponents  was  re- 
duced to  ashes.  An  appeal  to  this  "law  of  fire"  oc- 
curred at  Constantinople  as  late  as  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury. When  Andronicus  II.  ascended  the  Byzantine 
throne,  he  found  the  city  torn  into  factions  by  reason  of 
the  expulsion  of  Assenius  from  the  patriarchate ;  and, 
in  accordance  with  the  prevailing  custom  and  the  popu- 
lar demand,  the  statements  and  claims  of  each  faction 
were  reduced  to  writing  and  consigned  to  the  all-deter- 
mining fire-fiend,  to  ascertain  which  was  in  the  wrong, 
when,  much  to  the  mutual  surprise  of  each  faction,  the 
manuscript  of  each  was  entirely  consumed. 

This  method  of  detecting  spiritual  truths  and  testing 
literary  excellence  may  have  been  potent  and  reliable 
during  those  dark  days  of  human  history,  when  devils 
incarnate  walked  the  earth  and  lurked  in  the  vicinity  of 
churches,  and  their  allies — witches — infested  and  pes- 
tered communities,  but  it  long  since  passed  from  use 
among  the  civilized  and  the  enlightened,  whom  devils 
have  abandoned  and  witches  have  ceased  to  trouble. 
Fire  may  now  very  properly  be  dubbed  a  consuming 
critic,  inasmuch  as  it  consumes  all  works  regardless  of 
classes  or  merits. 

Criticism  proper  may  be  divided  into  two  classes  or 
kinds,  to  wit :  Constructive  criticism  and  destructive 
criticism.  It  is  the  province  and  mission  of  the  first 
class  to  analyze  and  detect  the  author's  methods  of  pro- 
cedure, as  well  as  to  point  out  the  beauties  that  are  to 
be  admired  and  the  defects  that  are  to  be  shunned  and 
avoided ;  and  thus  help  to  a  hearty  appreciation  of  a 
chaste  and  healthy  literature.  The  solitary  end  and 
aim  of  destructive  criticism  is  to  find  fault  and  point  out 
defects ;  the  first  is  frequently,  if  not  generally,  cap- 
tiously done,  and  the  latter  magnified,  if  not  manufact- 
ured. This  class  of  criticism,  while  distaseful  alike  to 
the  author  and  the  public,  can  benefit  but  one  party, 
and  that  is  the  author  criticised.  This  is  not  a  class  of 
criticism  to  be  indulged  in  by  the  critic  or  commended 
by  the  public. 

Literary  criticism  is  regarded  by  many  as  merely  the 
art  of  finding  fault  systematically ;  the  frigid  application 
of  certain  technical  terms  and  set  rules,  known  and  ap- 
plied mainly  by  one  class  of  persons  only,  by  means  of 
which  those  who  make  them  a  study  are  enabled  to 
cavil  and  censure  in  a  learned  manner.  Such  has  been 
declared  by  the  prince  of  English  rhetoricians  to  be  "the 
criticism  of  pedants  only."  He  then  adds,  and  his  doc- 
trine in  this  is  recognized  as  the  true  and  only  one  : 

"True  criticism  is  a  liberal  and  humane  art.  It  is 
the  offspring  of  good  sense  and  refined  taste.  It  aims 
at  acquiring  a  just  discernment  of  the  real  merit  of  au- 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


99 


thors.  It  promotes  a  lively  relish  of  their  beauties,  while 
it  preserves  us  from  the  blind  and  implicit  veneration 
which  would  confound  their  beauties  and  their  faults  in 
our  esteem.  It  teaches  us,  in  a  word,  to  admire  and  to 
blame  with  judgment,  and  not  to  follow  the  crowd 
blindly."  J.  MANFORD  KERR. 


NO  MORE! 

Come  back?    Ah,  yes,  when  the  faith 

Thou  hast  slain  like  a  bird  in  its  track 
Shall  arise  and  revive  out  of  death, 
I  will  come  back. 

Come  back?    Yes,  when  from  the  dust 

Of  the  grave's  mouth,  hollow  and  black, 
Shall  awaken  my  dead,  lost  trust, 
I  will  come  back. 

And  when  in  my  heart  this  word 

That  tells  of  thy  treason  is  dumb, 
Thy  voice  that  recalls  may  be  heard, 
And  I  will  come. 

But  the  dead  that  are  dead  rise  not ; 

From  the  night  with  its  ruin  and  wrack, 
The  hope  that  went  forth  proud  and  hot 
Doth  not  come  back. 

And  the  grave  and  the  pit  give  not  up 

The  feet  that  have  trodden  their  track ; 
And  the  drops  thou  hast  spilled  from  the  cup, 
Can  they  come  back? 

No ;  pass  on  thy  way,  and  know  this : 

Nevermore,  through  the  long  years'  sum, 
Shall  we  meet  for  woe  or  for  bliss — 

I  will  not  come.  BARTON  GREY. 


A  MULE  KICKS  A  BEE- HIVE. 

I  was  visiting  a  gentleman  who  lived  in  the  vicinity  of 
Los  Angeles.  The  morning  was  beautiful.  The  plash 
of  little  cascades  about  the  grounds,  the  buzz  of  bees, 
and  the  gentle  moving  of  the  foliage  of  the  pepper  trees 
in  the  scarcely  perceptible  ocean-breeze,  made  up  a  pict- 
ure which  I  thought  was  complete.  It  was  not.  A 
mule  wandered  on  the  scene.  The  scene,  I  thought, 
could  have  got  along  without  him.  He  took  a  different 
view. 

Of  course  mules  were  not  allowed  on  the  grounds. 
That  is  what  he  knew.  That  was  his  reason  for  being 
there. 

I  recognized  him.  Had  met  him.  His  lower  lip 
hung  down.  He  looked  disgusted.  It  seemed  he  didn't 
like  being  a  mule. 

A  day  or  two  before,  while  I  was  trying  to  pick  up  a 
little  child  who  had  got  too  near  this  mule's  heels,  he 
kicked  me  two  or  three  times  before  I  could  tell  from 
.  which  way  I  was  hit.  I  might  have  avoided  some  of 
the  kicking,  but,  in  my  confusion,  I  began  to  kick  at 
the  mule.  I  didn't  kick  with  him  long.  He  outnum- 
bered me. 

He  browsed  along  on  the  choice  shrubbery.  I  forgot 
the  beauty  of  the  morning.  Remembered  a  black  and 
blue  spot  on  my  leg.  It  looked  like  the  print  of  a  mule's 
hoof.  There  was  another  on  my  right  hip.  Where  my 
suspenders  crossed  were  two  more,  as  I  have  been  in- 
formed. They  were  side  by  side — twin  blue  spots,  and 
seemed  to  be  about  the  same  age. 

I  thought  of  revenge.  I  didn't  want  to  kick  with  him 
any  more.  No.  But  thought,  if  I  had  him  tied  down 


good  and  fast,  so  he  could  not  move  his  heels,  how  like 
sweet  incense  it  would  be  to  first  saw  his  ears  and  tail 
smooth  off,  then  put  out  his  eyes  with  a  red-hot  poker, 
then  skin  him  alive,  then  run  him  through  a  threshing- 
machine. 

While  I  was  thus  thinking,  and  getting  madder  and 
madder,  the  mule,  which  had  wandered  up  close  to 
a  large  bee -hive,  got  stung.  His  eyes  lighted  up,  as  if 
that  was  just  what  he  was  looking  for.  He  turned  on 
that  bee-hive  and  took  aim.  He  fired.  In  ten  seconds, 
the  only  piece  of  bee -hive  I  could  see  was  about  the  size 
a  man  feels  when  he  has  told  a  joke  that  falls  on  the 
company  like  a  piece  of  sad  news.  This  piece  was  in 
the  air.  It  was  being  kicked  at. 

The  bees  swarmed.  They  swarmed  a  good  deal. 
They  lit  on  that  mule  earnestly.  After  he  had  kicked 
the  last  piece  of  bee-hive  so  high  that  he  could  not  reach 
it  any  more,  he  stopped  for  an  instant.  He  seemed  try- 
ing to  ascertain  whether  the  ten  thousand  bees  which 
were  stinging  him  meant  it.  They  did. 

The  mule  turned  loose.  I  never  saw  anything  to 
equal  it.  He  was  enveloped  in  a  dense  fog  of  earnest- 
ness and  bees,  and  filled  with  enthusiasm  and  stings. 
The  more  he  kicked,  the  higher  he  arose  from  the  ground. 
I  may  have  been  mistaken,  for  I  was  somewhat  excited 
and  very  much  delighted,  but  that  mule  seemed  to  rise 
as  high  as  the  tops  of  the  pepper  trees.  The  pepper 
trees  were  twenty  feet  high.  He  would  open  and  shut 
himself  like  a  frog  swimming.  Sometimes,  when  he 
was  in  mid-air,  he  would  look  like  he  was  flying,  and  I 
would  think  for  a  moment  he  was  about  to  become  an 
angel.  Only  for  a  moment.  There  are  probably  no 
mule-angels. 

When  he  had  got  up  to  the  tops  of  the  pepper  trees, 
I  was  called  to  breakfast.  I  told  them  I  didn't  want 
any  breakfast. 

The  mule  continued  to  be  busy. 

When  a  mule  -kicks  himself  clear  of  the  earth,  his 
heels  seldom  reach  higher  than  his  back;  that  is,  a 
mule's  fore-legs  can  reach  forward,  and  his  hind-legs 
backward,  until  the  mule  becomes  straightened  out  into 
a  line  of  mule  parallel  with  the  earth,  and  fifteen  or 
twenty  feet  therefrom.  This  mule's  hind-legs,  however, 
were  not  only  raised  into  a  line  with  his  back,  but  they 
would  come  over  until  the  bottom  of  the  hoofs  almost 
touched  his  ears. 

The  mule  proceeded  as  if  he  desired  to  hurry  through. 

I  had  no  idea  how  many  bees  a  hive  would  hold  until 
I  saw  that  bee-hive  emptied  on  that  mule.  They  cov- 
ered him  so  completely  that  I  could  not  see  any  of  him 
but  the  glare  of  his  eyes.  I  could  see,  from  the  expres- 
sion of  his  eyes,  that  he  didn't  like  the  way  things  were 
going. 

The  mule  still  went  on  in  an  absorbed  kind  of  a  way. 

Not  only  was  every  bee  of  the  disturbed  hive  on  duty, 
but  I  think  the  news  had  been  conveyed  to  neighboring 
hives  that  war  had  been  declared.  I  could  see  bees  flit- 
ting to  and  fro.  The  mule  was  covered  so  deep  with 
bees  that  he  looked  like  an  exaggerated  mule.  The 
hum  of  the  bees,  and  their  moving  on  eath  other,  com- 
bined into  a  seething  hiss. 

A  sweet  calm  and  gentle  peacefulness  pervaded  me. 

When  he  had  kicked  for  an  hour,  he  began  to  fall 
short  of  the  tops  of  the  pepper  trees.  He  was  settling 
down  closer  to  the  earth.  Numbers  were  telling  on  him 
He  looked  distressed.  He  had  always  been  used  to 
kicking  against  something,  but  found  now  that  he  was 
striking  the  air.  It  was  very  exhausting. 


1OO 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


He  finally  got  so  he  did  not  rise  clear  of  the  ground, 
but  continued  to  kick  with  both  feet  for  half  an  hour, 
next  with  first  one  foot  and  then  the  other  for  another 
half  an  hour,  then  with  his  right  foot  only  every  few 
minutes,  the  intervals  growing  longer  and  longer,  until 
he  finally  was  still.  His  head  drooped,  his  lip  hung 
lower  and  lower.  The  bees  stung  on.  He  looked  as  if 
he  thought  that  a  mean,  sneaking  advantage  had  been 
taken  of  him. 

I  retired  from  the  scene.  Early  the  next  morning  I 
returned.  The  sun  came  slowly  up  from  behind  the 
eastern  hills.  The  light  foliage  of  the  pepper  trees 
trembled  with  his  morning  caress.  His  golden  kiss  fell 
upon  the  opening  roses.  A  bee  could  be  seen  flying 
hither,  another  thither.  The  mule  lay  near  the  scene  of 
yesterday's  struggle.  Peace  had  come  to  him.  He  was 
dead.  Too  much  kicking  against  nothing. 

LOCK  MELONE. 


A   REMARKABLE   REMINISCENCE. 

Cases  where  persons  have  read  their  own  obituaries 
are  not  infrequent  in  history,  but  are  considered  none 
the  less  remarkable.  Lord  Brougham  the  veteran  Eng- 
lish politician,  Thiers  the  French  statesman,  Peabody 
the  philanthropist,  and  Proctor  the  astronomer,  all  thus 
had  the  pleasure  of  reading  the  verdict  of  the  press  on 
their  supposed-to-be  ended  lives.  The  similar  and  more 
recent  case  of  Nellie  Grant  -Sartoris  is  fresh  in  public 
memory.  While  General  Grant  was  sailing  through  the 
Golden  Gate  last  year,  in  the  course  of  conversation 
with  the  reporters  and  others  around  him,  the  subject 
of  the  false  rumor  of  his  daughter's  death  was  broached, 
and  the  emotions  of  Mrs.  Sartoris  upon  reading  her 
would-be  post  mortem  eulogies,  were  commented  upon. 
General  John  F.  Miller  remarked  that  he  had  twice  read 
obituaries  of  himself,  having  been  reported  dead  on  the 
battle-field.  This  led  General  Grant  to  relate  a  similar 
incident  of  Colonel  Chamberlain,  who  has  since  been 
Governor  of  Maine. 

A  propos  of  these  reminiscences,  is  the  case  of  a  resi- 
dent of  Oakland,  whose  story,  apart  from  the  coinci- 
dence, is  full  of  interest,  illustrating  as  it  does  the  ups 
and  downs  of  American  society.  Charles  Snyder,  the 
old  gentleman  who  for  a  long  time  has  been  installed 
as  manager  of  the  Oakland  Free  Reading-rooms,  and 
whose  face  is  familiar  to  all  frequenters  of  that  newsy 
resort,  is  now  sixty-five  years  old.  Over  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  under  the  stage  name  of  Charles  Ashton, 
he  was  an  opera  singer  and  actor  of  wide-spread  fame 
in  the  Eastern  and  Southern  States.  His  early  musical 
instructor  was  the  then  noted  Signer  Bazzioloe.  He 
made  his  dlbut  with  an  elder  sister  of  Adalina  Patti, 
at  the  Astor  Place  Opera  House,  in  New  York  City,  un- 
der Maurice  Strakosch.  Snyder  was  henceforth  recog- 
nized as  the  leading  tenor  of  the  time,  and  had  a  mem- 
orable run  at  the  old  Astor.  This  opera-house — which 
was  then  the  acknowledged  resort  of  the  upper-ten — has 
since  been  transformed  into  the  Clinton  Library.  After 
this,  Snyder  sang  one  winter  with  Madame  de  Vries  in 
Havana,  thirteen  weeks  with  Jenny  Lind  in  New  Or- 
leans, and  was  just  finishing  a  farewell  opera  season  in 
Cincinnati  with  Madame  Alboni  when  the  incident  re- 
ferred to  occurred.  He  was  under  a  $100,000  engage- 
ment to  go  to  Europe  with  Madame  Alboni,  when  he 
was  taken  violently  ill  with  congestion  of  the  lungs. 
For  several  days  he  sunk,  until  his  life  hung  as  it  were 
by  a  hair.  At  length  his  physicians  gave  him  up,  and 


when  on  a  certain  evening  an  intimate  friend  of  Snyder 
called  to  learn  of  his  condition,  he  was  informed  that 
the  case  was  hopeless — Snyder  would  die  at  midnight. 
The  gentleman  was  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Cincinnati 
Nonpareil.  True  to  his  journalistic  instincts,  the  editor 
smothered  his  grief,  went  straightway  to  his  office,  and 
wrote  a  half-column  obituary  of  Snyder,  recounting  the 
virtues  of  that  eminent  singer,  who,  he  said,  had  died  at 
midnight.  The  article  appeared  in  the  next  morning's 
paper.  And  now  comes  the  strange  ddnodment.  At 
midnight,  the  time  set  for  Snyder's  demise,  an  unac- 
countable change  for  the  better  occurred.  The  tide  of 
life  ceased  ebbing ;  the  sufferer  began  to  breathe  easier, 
and  before  morning  was  pronounced  out  of  immediate 
danger.  The  next  day  he  was  able  to  peruse  his  own 
obituary.  Mr.  Snyder  recovered,  and  subsequently  be- 
came for  a  time  an  instructor  in  elocution  in  Washing- 
ton. But  he  never  again  appeared  before  the  footlights. 
The  ravages  of  the  disease  had  ruined  his  fine  voice, 
and,  with  but  brief  intervals,  he  has  not  since  been  able 
to  speak  much  above  a  whisper. 

W.  B.  TURNER. 


"SUCH    A    FAMILYAH    PLACE." 

Last  spring,  I  rented  a  house  quite  near  the  business 
part  of  our  town,  and  hired  Henry — a  colored  man — 
to  saw  some  wood  for  me.  When  I  went  home  to  din- 
ner, I  stepped  out  into  the  yard  where  Henry  was  at 
work,  and  asked  him  how  he  liked  my  new  place. 

' '  Oh,  dis  is  a  nice  place,"  said  Henry.  ' '  Such  a  famil- 
yah  place,  sah." 

"  Familiar  place !  Oh,  you  have  worked  here  often, 
have  you,  Henry?" 

"No  sah;  nevah  worked  heah  afore  in  de  world, 
sah,"  answered  Henry. 

"How  is  it  so  familiar  to  you,  then  ;  have  you  lived 
near  here?" 

' '  No,  sah ;  my  house  is  a  long  ways  from  heah,  sah ;  I 
don't  mean  dat  it's  familyah  to  me,  but  familyah  to  de 
town  ;  very  familyah  to  de  main  street,  sah." 

"Oh,  you  mean  convenient,  Henry,"  said  I. 

1 '  Yes,  sah  ;  conveent,  sah,  dat's  it.  I  done  mistook 
de  word,  sah  ;  dat's  all." 

"Yes,  it  is  a  convenient  place,  Henry,  and  I  think 
I've  got  a  pretty  good  garden,  don't  you? " 

"Yes,  sah;  fine  garden,  and  so  much  scrubbery," 
said  Henry. 

4 ' Scrubbery — what's  that?  " 

"Oh,  de  currints,  an1  goosebries,  an'  rasbries;  an 
look  at  dem  plum  trees,  sah  ;  an'  apple  trees.  Yes,  sah, 
you  got  de  best  scrubbery  ob  any  one  on  dis  street, 
sah."  C.  L.  C. 


SEND   US  ITEMS. 

.  Our  aim  is  to  make  ' '  Outcroppings  "  a  light  and  pleas- 
ing corner  of  the  magazine,  and  we  should  be  glad  if 
our  readers  would  send  us  from  time  to  time,  briefly  and 
pithily  told,  such  humorous  incidents  as  may  come  un- 
der their  observation. 


AN   ELEGANT  HOLIDAY  PRESENT. 

There  can  be  no  more  suitable  or  distinctive  gift  to 
friends  at  home,  in  the  East,  or  abroad,  than  a  year's 
subscription  to  THE  CALIFORNIAN. 


THE  CALIFORNIAN. 


A   WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  III.— FEBRUARY,  1881.— No.  14. 


THE    IRISH    QUESTION    PRACTICALLY    CONSIDERED. 


To  deny  that  the  ever  harassing  and  chroni- 
cally unsettled  Irish  question  is  beset  with 
enormous  and  discouraging  difficulties  would 
be  futile,  and  would  be  also  a  betrayal  of 
ignorance  of  past  and  current  history.  It  has 
baffled  the  investigations,  the  devices,  and  the 
remedial  measures  of  the  most  astute  British 
statesmen ;  it  has  caused  the  overthrow  of  sev- 
eral ministries ;  it  has  afforded  themes  for  lim- 
itless eloquence  to  patriots  and  politicians  of  all 
grades  on  both  sides  of  St.  George's  Channel ; 
it  has  given  rise  to  several  rebellions;  it  has 
brought  to  the  hideous  ordeal  of  a  high-treason 
execution,  or  death  in  prison,  the  Fitzgeralds, 
the  Emmets,  the  Sheares,  the  Tones  of  their 
times;  it  caused  the  "monster  meetings"  of 
half -millions  of  people,  under  the  leadership  of 
O'Connell,  in  the  years  '43  and  '44,  the  subse- 
quent formation  of  "The  Young  Ireland  Party," 
which  resulted  in  the  exile  to  penal  settlements 
of  William  Smith  O'Brien,  Thomas  Francis 
Meagher,  Mitchel,  and  the  rest  of  the  "patriots" 
of  that  era ;  the  foundation  of  what  is  known  as 
"Fenianism,"  and  to-day  the  question  is  appar- 
ently as  far  from  settlement  as  ever.  But  to 
aver  that  it  is  incapable  of  solution  would  be 
not  only  unmanly  and  cowardly,  but  it  would 
be  an  unworthy  admission  that  the  science  of 
politics  is  faulty  and  incomplete,  and  that  there 
are  universal  national  wrongs  for  which  there 
is  no  remedy.  Seeing  that  those  evils  were  of 
purely  human  creation,  and  cannot  be  attribut- 
ed to  Providence  or  nature — like  earthquakes, 
droughts,  floods,  cyclones,  etc. — they  must  be 
held  to  be  correctable  by  human  agency.  Nor 


is  another  Alexander  necessary  to  cut  this  mod- 
ern Gordian  knot.  To  those  who  would  solve 
the  Irish  problem,  it  is  only  necessary  to  bring 
to  the  task  a  fair  knowledge  of  Ireland's  story 
from  the  time  when  her  history  began  to  be 
known,  a  disinterested  desire  to  undo  and  re- 
form existing  grievances,  a  recognition  of  natu- 
ral rights  that  belong  inherently  to  the  people 
of  every  country,  and  a  determination  to  adjust 
the  question  on  the  plan  of  natural  and  national 
justice  and  equity.  Before  discussing  the  mo- 
dus operandi  to  be  pursued  with  the  object 
mentioned,  it  will  be  well,  as  a  foundation  for 
argument,  to  state  sufficient  of  the  facts  in  Ire- 
land's history  to  enable  the  reader  to  take  an 
enlightened  and  comprehensive  view  of  the 
situation.  In  the  following  necessarily  brief 
resume  of  events  I  shall  confine  myself  almost 
exclusively  to  those  of  a  political  character. 
For  all  who  require  fuller  information,  there 
are  plenty  of  works  to  consult  on  Ireland's 
hydrography,  climate,  geology,  population  at 
different  eras,  agriculture,  fisheries,  mining, 
manufactures,  commerce,  religion,  and  educa- 
tion. 

The  early  "history  of  the  country  is  shrouded 
in  much  obscurity,  and  little  is  known  of  it  be- 
fore the  fourth  century.  There  is  a  tradition 
that  Ireland  was  originally  inhabited  by  the 
Firbolgs  and  Danauns,  who  were  subsequently 
subdued  by  the  Milesians,  or  Gaels.  In  the 
fourth  century  the  inhabitants  were  known  as 
Scoti,  and  they  made  descents  upon  the  Roman 
province  of  Britannia  and  Scotland,  and  even 
crossed  to  what  is  now  known  as  France. 


Vol.  III.— 7.        [Copyright  by  THE  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors.] 


102 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


Early  in  the  fifth  century  Christianity  was  in- 
troduced, when  St.  Patrick  became,  and  has 
since  been  considered,  the  Apostle  of  the  land. 
Religion  and  its  handmaidens,  civilization  and 
learning,  then  made  rapid  progress,  and  in  the 
sixth  century  missionaries  were  sent  forth  from 
the  Irish  monasteries  to  convert  Great  Britain 
and  the  nations  of  northern  Europe.  Schools, 
churches,  and  religious  retreats  were  built  in  all 
parts  of  Ireland.  The  people,  at  this  period, 
were  divided  into  numerous  clans,  who  owned 
allegiance  to  four  kings  and  to  an  ardrigh,  or 
monarch,  to  whom  the  central  district,  called 
Meath,  was  allotted.  The  Irish  were  not  long 
permitted  to  enjoy  the  island  in  peace,  and  its 
progress  in  civilization  was  seriously  checked 
by  the  incursions  of  the  Scandinavians  in  the 
eighth  century.  They  for  a  time  firmly  estab- 
lished themselves  on  the  eastern  coast,  whence 
they  made  predatory  incursions  into  the  in- 
terior of  the  country.  After  having  caused 
trouble  for  about  two  centuries,  they  were 
finally  overthrown  by  the  Irish  at  the  battle  of 
Clontarf,  near  Dublin,  in  1014,  the  victors  be- 
ing commanded  by  Brian  Borumha,  the  "mon- 
arch" of  Ireland,  as  distinguished  from  the  pro- 
vincial "kings." 

From  the  eighth  to  the  twelfth  century  Irish 
scholars  enjoyed  a  high  reputation  for  learning. 
The  arts  were  cultivated,  and  the  famous  round 
towers — ruins  of  which  still  exist — are  believed 
to  be  remains  of  the  architecture  of  this  era. 
Although  the  Popes  have  ostensibly  claimed 
temporal  power  only  in  that  portion  of  Italy 
known  as  "the  States  of  the  Church,"  yet  at 
least  one  of  their  Holinesses  has  certainly 
helped  to  lose  Ireland  to  the  Irish.  In  1155, 
Pope  Adrian  IV.  (the  only  Englishman  who 
ever  wore  the  tiara;  there  never  has  been  an 
Irish  Pope)  took  upon  himself  to  authorize 
Henry  II.  of  England  to  take  possession  of 
Ireland,  on  condition  of  paying  an  annual  trib- 
ute. 

In  pursuance  of  that  iniquitous  arrangement, 
the  first  invasion  by  Englishmen  on  Irish  soil 
was  made  under  Henry,  in  1172.  •  He  received 
the  homage  of  certain  chiefs,  and  authorized 
certain  Norman  adventurers  to  take  possession 
of  the  entire  island  in  his  behalf.  In  the  course 
of  the  following  century,  the  thirteenth,  these 
Norman  barons,  favored  by  dissensions  which 
they  had  fomented  among  the  Irish,  had  suc- 
ceeded in  firmly  establishing  their  power;  but 
in  the  course  of  time  their  descendants  identi- 
fied themselves  with  the  Irish,  even  to  the  ex- 
tent of  adopting  their  language.  It  then  was 
not  long  before  the  power  of  England  became 
limited  to  a  few  coast  towns,  and  to  the  dis- 
ricts  around  Dublin  and  Drogheda,  known  as 


"The  Pale."  In  1541,  Henry  VIII.  of  England 
received  the  title  of  King  of  Ireland  from  the 
Anglo-Irish  Parliament,  then  sitting  in  Dublin, 
and  several  of  the  native  princes  acknowledged 
him  as  their  sovereign;  but  the  majority  of 
them,  and  the  bulk  of  the  inhabitants,  refused 
to  make  such  acknowledgment,  or  to  have 
their  country  made  a  dependency  of  England. 

The  attempts  soon  after  made  to  change  the 
religion  of  the  country  from  Catholicity  to  Prot- 
estantism led  to  repeated  revolts,  and  the  lands 
of  Catholic  chiefs  were  lawlessly  seized  and 
parceled  out  among  the  English  and  Scotch  set- 
tlers. The  so-called  "Plantation  of  Ulster"— 
the  stronghold  of  Protestantism  and  Orange- 
ism — took  place  in  this  manner  under  James  I. 
of  England.  In  1641  arose  the  Catholic  rebel- 
lion against  the  Protestants,  to  whom  the  real 
estate  of  the  former  had  been  confiscated.  But 
that  rebellion,  after  terrible  bloodshed,  was 
crushed  by  Oliver  Cromwell,  who  laid  the  isl- 
and waste  in  1649.  At  the  Revolution  the  na- 
tive Irish  generally  sided  with  James  II.,  the 
English  and  Scotch  "colonists"  with  William 
and  Mary,  and  the  war  lasted  until  1692,  when 
the  Catholics  were  subdued.  In  order  to  thor- 
oughly weaken  and  keep  them  down,  rigorous 
penal  statutes  were  enacted  against  them ;  and 
the  general  dissatisfaction  gave  rise  to  the  re- 
bellions of  the  close  of  the  last  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century.  It  is  needless  to 
describe  here  those  barbarous  laws,  which  were 
subsequently  piecemeal  repealed,  and  what  is 
known  as  "Catholic  Emancipation"  was  granted 
in  1829.  On  the  ist  of  January,  1801,  the  Irish 
Parliament  was  legislated  out  of  existence,  and 
the  Act  of  Union  was  passed  which  politically 
incorporated  Ireland  with  England  under  the 
title  of  the  "United  Kingdom." 

Before  closing  the  evidence  or  fundamental 
facts  in  this  controversy,  and  reaching  the 
arguments  and  conclusions,  it  may  be  stated 
that  the  best  historians  and  other  authorities 
on  the  subject  admit  that  every  quasi  bargain 
or  contract  made  between  the  Irish  and  the 
English  was  based  on  fraud,  bribery,  and  cor- 
ruption, and  is  therefore  void.  Eminent  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant  historical  witnesses  exhibit 
a  oneness  and  conclusiveness  in  their  testimony 
on  this  point,  which  are  not  only  satisfying  and 
comforting  to  the  presumably  disinterested  jury 
of  mankind  who  are  to  pronounce  a  verdict  on 
the  question,  but  which  ought  to  leave  no  doubt 
as  to  the  final  adjudication  of  the  case.  The 
fraud  and  force  by  which  Cromwell  and  the 
English  kings  mentioned  confiscated  the  lands 
of  Catholics  are  too  patent  to  need  argument. 
It  is  admitted  by  both  sides — by  these  is  meant 
the  Irish  and  English — that  the  act  of  legisla- 


THE  IRISH  QUESTION  PRACTICALLY  CONSIDERED.  103 


tive  union  which  went  into  operation  on  the  ist 
of  January,  1801,  was  brought  about  by  the 
grossest  bribery  and  corruption.  Lord  Cas- 
tlereagh, who  represented  England,  was  the 
principal  actor  in  that  movement,  and  he  be- 
stowed titles  and  pensions  right  and  left  on 
members  of  the  Irish  Parliament  to  induce 
them  to  vote  for  the  political  union  of  the  two 
countries.  Castlereagh  was  so  filled  with  re- 
morse at  the  frightful  bribery  which  he  had 
employed  that  he  committed  suicide.  To  quote 
on  this  point  a  high  authority  in  the  British 
House  of  Peers,  Lord  Byron,  after  alluding  to 
"carotid  artery  cutting  Castlereagh,"  declared 
that  he  had  "first  cut  his  country's  throat  and 
then  his  own."  The  peerages  and  sums  of 
money  given  by  England  for  votes  in  the  last 
Irish  Parliament  to  pass  the  Act  of  Union  are 
now  as  well  known  as  last  year's  revenues  of 
both  countries.  Such  are  briefly  what  may  be 
termed  the  original  facts  with  which  the  public 
have  to  deal  on  the  Irish  question,  and  on 
which  to  arrive  at  a  correct  decision  on  the 
disputes  between  the  two  islands.  But  there 
are  some  more  recent  facts  bearing  on  the 
question,  which  will  appear  further  on. 

There  are  several  stand-points  from  which  to 
view  the  leading  events  narrated — the  Irish 
stand -point,  the  English  stand -point,  and  the 
stand -point  of  the  whole  civilized  world,  for 
nowadays  every  civilized  nation  takes  an  inter- 
est in  every  other  civilized  nation.  Let  us,  in 
order  to  arrive  at  a  just  conclusion  on  the  ques- 
tion, consider  those  several  stand-points  in^their 
order. 

At  the  first  blush  of  the  question  it  would  ap- 
pear that  the  position  taken  by  the  people  of 
Ireland  is  unassailable  and  unanswerable.  They 
have  natural  and  national  law  and  logic  on  their 
side,  and  this,  too,  as  propounded  by  the  great- 
est jurisprudents  of  the  age  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  primary  law  of  nature  and  na- 
tions gives  the  right  to  the  inhabitants  of  every 
country  to  rule  it  as  they  please.  It  is  mainly 
by  going  back  to  first  principles  that  the  Irish 
controversy  can  be  equitably  settled.  But  be- 
sides rescrting  to  these  primary  principles,  the 
Irish  people  deny,  and  have  ever  denied,  that 
they  voluntarily  gave  up  a  rood  of  their  soil  to 
the  dominion  of  England.  They  hold  as  non- 
binding  on  them,  and  as  nugatory,  every  act  by 
which  Cromwell  and  other  English  leaders 
wrested  the  lands  from  the  legal  owners  and  be- 
stowed them  on  parasites  and  favorites.  It  was 
those  arbitrary  and  unjust  proceedings  which 
originated  the  present  oppressive  system  of 
landlordism  in  Ireland,  and  took  the  ownership 
of  the  soil  from  prosperous  millions  and  vested 
it  in  a  few  favored  individuals,  who  gave  no 


value  for  the  land  to  the  lawful  owners.  Of  the 
five  and  a  half  millions  or  so  of  the  present  pop- 
ulation there  are  only  a  few  thousand  fee-simple 
proprietors.  The  great  bulk  of  the  people,  who 
are  the  descendants  of  those  who  were  unlaw- 
fully deprived  of  the  land,  are  compelled  to  pay 
to  those  whose  title  originated  in  fraud  the  high- 
est rent  that  can  be  exacted,  and  which  keeps 
the  agricultural  part  of  the  population  in  a  state 
of  chronic  want,  bordering  on  starvation.  Ever 
since  this  position  of  affairs  has  existed,  and  par- 
ticularly since  the  island  was  devastated  and 
confiscated  by  Cromwell,  the  conduct  of  the 
people  has  been  a  continuous  protest  against 
the  wrongs  mentioned.  This  is  evidenced  by 
the  action  of  their  leaders  in  and  out  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  by  the  rebellions  and  the  constant 
dissatisfaction  that  has  ever  prevailed.  The 
standing  protest  against  the  English  occupation 
of  Ireland  was  not  made  alone  by  the  Catholic 
leaders,  but  by  such  eminent  Protestant  patri- 
ots as  Burke,  Grattan,  Flood,  Curran,  Sheridan, 
and  others.  It  is  true  that  the  Protestant  Irish, 
for  the  most  part,  especially  those  of  the  north 
— in  Antrim  and  neighboring  counties — give 
powerful  support  to  the  British.  This  partly 
arises  from  the  fact  that  the  Protestants,  to 
whom,  or  to  whose  ancestors,  the  penal  laws  re- 
ferred to  never  applied,  are  better  off  in  worldly 
goods  than  their  Catholic  fellow-countrymen; 
partly  on  account  of  religious  animosity;  and 
partly,  but  mostly,  by  reason  of  that  bane  of 
Ireland,  Orangeism,  which  even  causes  trouble 
in  the  United  States,  Canada,  and  Australia. 
There  are,  however,  a  large  number  of  the 
Protestant  population  who  side  with  the  Cath- 
olics in  their  national  aspirations,  and  among 
those  who  were  exiled  to  penal  settlements  in 
the  contemptible  fiasco — unworthy  to  be  called 
a  rebellion — of  1848,  there  were  nearly  as  many 
Protestants  as  Catholics.  In  all  the  high  treason 
trials,  and  trials  for  that  singular  combination 
of  crime,  "treason-felony,"  the  wrongs  and  op- 
pressions of  the  people  were  set  before  the  ju- 
ries in  burnjng  eloquence,  but  invariably  with- 
out effect,  so  far  as  procuring  an  acquittal  was 
concerned.  As  a  specimen  of  the  kind  of  lan- 
guage that  was  so  addressed  to  courts  and  ju- 
ries on  such  occasions,  the  following  brief  ex- 
tract from  the  speech  of  that  veteran  counsel, 
Robert  Holmes,  on  the  trial  of  John  Mitchel, 
may  serve  as  a  sample : 

"In  the  history  of  provincial  servitude,"  observed  Mr. 
Holmes,  "no  instance  can  be  found  so  striking,  so  af- 
flicting, and  so  humiliating  as  Ireland  of  the  influence 
of  moral  causes  in  counteracting  the  physical  aptitudes 
of  nature,  and  producing  weakness  and  want,  and  igno- 
rance and  wretchedness,  where  all  the  outlines  of  crea- 
tion seemed  formed  for  power  and  happiness.  For  many 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


a  long  century  a  deep  and  blighting  gloom  had  covered 
this  fair  and  fertile  land  on  which  the  benignant  gifts  of 
Heaven  seemed  to  have  been  poured  forth  in  vain.  A 
light  once  shone  across  that  gloom.  Bright  and  glori- 
ous was  that  light,  but  short  and  transient,  serving  but 
to  show  the  darkness  which  had  gone  before  and  the 
deeper  darkness  that  followed  after.  Yes,  a  light  over- 
shone  that  gloom.  That  light  was  extinguished  by  the 
foulest  means  that  ever  fraud  or  injustice  practiced ;  and 
now  it  seems  that  every  attempt  to  rekindle  that  light  is 
to  be  crushed  as  sedition,  and  the  sentence  of  depend- 
ence and  degradation  pronounced  against  Ireland  is  to 
be  confirmed  and  made  perpetual." 

Such  appeals,  which  were  really  meant  as  a 
justification  of  revolution,  or,  at  least,  of  very 
radical  measures  to  set  matters  right,  were  in- 
variably vainly  made.  The  penal  laws  debar- 
red Catholics  from  sitting  on  juries,  and,  even 
after  that  boon  had  been  granted,  juries  were 
invariably  "packed"  with  men  who  were  aliens 
to  the  Catholics  in  faith  and  in  feelings.  There 
should  be  no  attempt  or  desire  to  antagonize 
people  on  religious  grounds.  But,  admitting 
that  the  Irish  Protestants,  as  a  body,  were  and 
are  favorable  to  a  continuation  of  English  rule 
in  Ireland,  their  fewness  of  numbers — about  a 
million,  as  compared  with  about  four  and  a  half 
millions  of  Catholics — should  not  be  allowed  to 
prevail.  In  other  words,  a  very  small  minority 
should  not  be  permitted  to  sway  and  override 
the  will  of  a  very  large  majority. 

It  may  be  assumed,  for  no  point  has  ever  been 
better  proved  and  settled,  that  England  would 
never  consent  to  part  with  Ireland  by  moral 
suasion,  or  otherwise  than  by  physical  force. 
This  aspect  of  the  question  was  thoroughly  and 
finally  disposed  of  by  the  repeal  agitation  of 
Daniel  O'Connell  in  1843-4,  who  was,  to  a  fault, 
a  man  of  peace,  and  who  denied  that  what  he 
called  "the  regeneration  of  Ireland"  was  worth 
the  cost  of  a  single  drop  of  human  blood.  With- 
out discussing  that  proposition,  it  will  be  gene- 
rally conceded  that  the  "moral  force"  which  he 
brought  to  bear  on  the  British  Parliament  could 
not  be  exceeded  or  surpassed.  He  literally  had 
all  but  a  fraction  of  the  Irish  people  at  his  back 
when  they  numbered  about  eight  millions ;  he 
was  indorsed,  almost  without  an  exception,  by 
the  Catholic  hierarchy  and  priesthood ;  the 
newspapers  were  enlisted  in  the  cause ;  each  of 
his  principal  out -door  meetings  was  attended 
by  hundreds  of  thousands;  he  could  send  whom- 
soever he  pleased  from  the  Irish  constituencies 
to  the  British  Parliament,  and  he  had  a  large  fol- 
lowing in  England  and  on  the  European  conti- 
nent. At  every  session  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons he  introduced  a  bill  for  the  repeal  of  the 
act  of  legislative  union  between  Ireland  and 
England,  yet  he  never  secured  a  fourth  of 
enough  support  to  pass  the  measure.  Nearly 


all  the  English  and  Scotch  members,  number- 
ing about  five  hundred,  voted  solidly  against 
the  one  hundred  or  so  Irish  members,  and  the 
"moral  force"  and  "repeal  agitation"  were 
worse  than  useless,  and  would  be  so,  if  again 
tried,  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  Still  consider- 
ing this  subject  from  the  Irish  stand-point,  the 
question  arises,  Moral  force  or  suasion  being 
useless,  is,  or  would  Ireland  be,  justified  in  re- 
sorting to  revolution  to  gain  her  independence? 
There  is  abundance  of  authority  to  justify  the 
affirmative  of  that  proposition.  Victor  Hugo, 
not  long  ago,  while  attending  the  funeral  of  a 
noted  revolutionist,  made  a  speech  at  the  grave, 
and,  among  other  things,  said,  "Here,  in  the 
presence  of  that  great  deliverer,  Death,  let  us 
name  that  other  great  deliverer,  Revolution." 
It  certainly  was  revolution  that  overthrew  in 
France  the  effete  Bourbons.  It  was  revolution 
which  hurled  the  perjured  Louis  Napoleon  from 
the  throne  he  had  usurped,  and  gave  the  French 
their  present  republic.  It  was  revolution  that 
regenerated  the  early  Roman  and  other  em- 
pires, and  gave  the  people  a  purer  government. 
It  was  revolution  that  enabled  the  Saxons  them- 
selves, whose  descendants  now  domineer  over 
Ireland,  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  the  Romans, 
who  had  overrun  and  despoiled  the  land,  and 
had  long  made  Britain  a  Roman  province.  It 
was  revolution  which  gave  the  people  of  the 
United  States  their  glorious  republic.  And 
other  instances  of  the  beneficent  result  of  revo- 
lution might  be  mentioned.  With  these  exam- 
ples before  their  eyes,  the  great  mass  of  the 
Irish  people,  viewing  the  wrongs  which  they 
have  endured  from  England  for  seven  centu- 
ries, claim  the  right  to  adopt  the  violent  and 
extreme  remedy  of  revolution.  This,  as  has 
been  shown,  is  no  new  claim,  but  the  rebellions 
have  hitherto  been  abortive.  The  right  of  an 
oppressed  people  to  everthrow  their  oppressors 
will  scarcely  be  denied.  It  was  acknowledged 
in  the  case  of  the  Poles,  and  more  recently  in 
reference  to  the  Cubans,  who  had  the  sympa- 
thy of  most  Americans,  and  substantial  aid 
from  many  in  the  United  States.  But  in  dis- 
cussing the  Irish  question,  even  from  the  Irish 
stand -point,  and  admitting  the  right  of  every 
people  to  govern  their  own  country,  it  may  be 
asked,  Could  a  revolution  in  Ireland  be  inaugu- 
rated and  prosecuted  to  a  successful  issue?  If 
not,  would  such  an  extreme  proceeding  be 
wise?  Can  the  grievances  arising  out  of  the  ten- 
ure of  land  system  be  rectified  by  legislation  in 
the  British  Parliament? 

To  answer  the  last  question  first,  it  is  perfectly 
safe  to  assume  that  if  every  agriculturist  in  Ire- 
land were  made  a  present  of  a  farm,  and  given 
a  fee-simple  title  to  it,  Irish  discontent  against 


THE  IRISH  QUESTION  PRACTICALLY  CONSIDERED.  105 


England  would  be  just  as  rife  as  ever.  That 
fact  is  perfectly  well  known  to  every  student  of 
Irish  history  or  who  understands  the  Irish  char- 
acter. The  London  correspondent  of  a  New 
York  journal  knew  what  he  was  speaking  about 
when  he  recently  telegraphed  as  follows  : 

"  I  fear  it  will  be  found,  sooner  or  later,  that  the  land 
agitation  is  only  the  outward  manifestation  of  a  deep- 
seated  feeling  that  the  proper  place  in  which  to  make 
laws  for  Ireland  is  College  Green,  Dublin,  and  this  feel- 
ing will  remain  in  spite  of  all  land  measures  that  the 
Government  will  introduce  and  Parliament  pass." 

The  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  no  mean  author- 
ity, in  his  late  speech  at  Woodstock,  said : 

' '  The  land  agitation  is  only  a  surface  manifestation  of 
the  old  Home  Rulers'  spirit,  which  still  thoroughly  per- 
meates what  may  be  called  the  rebellious  sections  of  Ire- 
land, being  the  west,  south,  and  south-west,  and  part  of 
the  eastern  coast.  No  amount  of  legislation,  however 
conciliatory,  can  wipe  out  the  Nationalist  feeling  in  Ire- 
land." 

The  correspondent  of  another  New  York  pa- 
per recently  cabled  the  following : 

' '  They  are  blind  who  do  not  recognize  the  Irish  move- 
ment as  a  great  revolutionary  act,  and  the  only  one 
which  ever  stood  any  chance  ,of  success.  ...  It  took 
an  army  to  dig  Captain  Boycott's  turnips,  yet,  despite 
that  army,  Boycott  had  to  leave  his  home  with  his  fam- 
ily forever.  We  read  that  the  Coldstream  Guards  are 
coming,  yet  one  hundred  thousand  Saxon  soldiers  might 
occupy  the  country  without  affecting  the  situation  in  the 
slightest  degree.  Wholesale  evictions  might  take  place, 
but  the  soldiers  could  not  stand  guard  over  every  evicted 
farmer,  and  the  farms  would  be  reoccupied  after  the  sol- 
diers left.  The  armies  of  the  world  could  not  compel 
the  payment  of  rent,  or  force  men  to  work  for  obnox- 
ious fellow-men,  or  keep  shop-keepers  from  refusing  to 
sell.  Coercive  acts,  a  few  months  ago,  would  have  been 
effective,  but  now  they  would  be  useless.  The  people 
have  learned  their  power  too  well  to  be  cowed." 

These  extracts  are  given  because  they^are 
founded  on  a  correct  diagnosis  of  the  situation 
and  of  the  Celtic  character.  It  may,  therefore, 
be  taken  for  granted  that  no  land  law  which 
the  British  Parliament  could  enact  for  Ireland 
would  have  the  effect  of  quieting  the  people  or 
rendering  them  a  whit  more  tolerant  of  English 
rule. 

One  of  the  questions  propounded  is,  Could  a 
revolution  in  Ireland  be  prosecuted  to  a  success- 
ful issue?  It  would  probably  be  a  great  mis- 
take to  answer  that  question  in  the  negative  on 
the  sole  ground  that  no  revolution  by  the  Irish 
against  the  English  has  succeeded.  The  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  are  now  very  different 
from  those  existing  at  any  previous  rebellion. 
The  people  are  better  armed  and  drilled;  the 
doctrines  of  Fenianism,  which  is  a  military  rev- 


olutionary organization,  permeate  the  peasantry 
from  Cape  Clear  to  the  Giant's  Causeway ;  the 
movement  would  have  an  almost  world -wide 
moral  support,  and  very  substantial  assistance 
from  the  millions  of  Irish  in  the  United  States. 
Money,  arms,  and  recruits  would  be  extensively 
sent  from  America,  and  it  would  be  next  to  im- 
possible to  prevent  their  being  landed  on  the 
Irish  coast.  But,  notwithstanding  all  this,  an 
insurrectionary  war  would  probably  last  over  as 
many  years  in  Ireland  as  the  similar  struggle 
was  prolonged  in  Cuba,  and  with  doubtful  re- 
sult. The  old  adage,  "England's  difficulty  is 
Ireland's  opportunity,"  would  scarcely  apply  at 
the  present  time,  as  Great  Britain  is  not  at  war 
with  any  country  that  could  assist  the  Irish. 
It  was  different  in  the  rebellion  of  1798,  when 
England  was  engaged  in  war  with  France,  and 
Bonaparte,  not  for  any  love  he  entertained  for 
the  Irish,  but  to  annoy  and  harass  the  English, 
promised  to  send  a  large  number  of  troops  to 
Ireland.  His  hands,  however,  were  too  full  on 
the  Continent.  He  needed  all  his  soldiers  at 
home,  and  the  few  he  dispatched  to  Ireland 
were  of  no  avail. 

For  years  past  prominent  Irish  and  Irish- 
American  papers  have  actually  seriously  advo- 
cated that  Ireland  should  become  the  thirty- 
ninth  State  of  our  United  States,  but  the  propo- 
sition is,  perhaps,  too  extravagant  for  serious 
consideration.  That  there  is  a  bond  of  sincere 
sympathy  between  Americans  and  Irishmen  is 
undeniable,  and  that  bond  is  strengthened  by 
the  fact  that  four  of  the  signers  of  our  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  were  born  in  the  Green 
Isle.  Nevertheless,  Congress  would  scarcely 
be  prepared  to  place  Ireland  in  our  column  of 
States,  as,  however  desirable  it  might  be  for 
the  interest  of  our  Republic  to  obtain  a  firm 
foothold  in  Europe,  and  so  to  open  additional 
markets  for  our  exports,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
Ireland  could  be  gained  only  by  an  expensive 
war  with  England.  The  result  of  such  a  con- 
test could  not  be  doubtful,  as  with  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  Irish  their  island  could  unquestiona- 
bly be  won  for  the  United  States.  Only  a  plebis- 
cite^  taken  in  Ireland,  could  be  held  as  a  satis- 
factory assent  of  the  willingness  of  the  people 
of  that  country  to  have  it  annexed — if  the  word 
"annexed"  is  a  proper  term  to  use  in  this  con- 
nection— to  our  republic.  All  writers  on  the 
law  of  nations  concede  the  fact  that  every  peo- 
ple may  choose  its  own  form  of  government, 
and  alter  it  at  pleasure,  and  that  that  pleasure 
may  be  expressed  either  by  a  plebiscite  or  in 
the  national  legislature.  Blackstone,  in  his 
Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  England,  says 
that  it  would  be  quite  in  order  for  any  member 
of  Parliament  to  move  to  repeal,  alter,  or  amend 


io6 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  Act  of  Succession  to  the  Throne,  and  to  sub- 
stitute either  another  form  of  government,  or 
another  reigning  house,  instead  of  the  existing 
one.  He  would,  perhaps,  be  a  bold  member  of 
the  British  iHouse  of  Commons  who  would  in- 
troduce a  bill  declaring  that  the  House  of 
Hanover,  to  which  Queen  Victoria  belongs, 
should  cease  to  reign,  and  that  some  John 
Smith  and  his  heirs  should  reign  instead.  Yet 
the  legality  of  such  a  bill  is  beyond  doubt,  and 
if  it  could  be  passed  its  constitutionality  would 
be  unquestionable.  Is  there  any  valid  reason 
for  not  applying  to  Ireland  the  general  rule 
stated,  and  for  affirming  that  she  alone  among 
the  countries  of  the  earth  should  be  denied  the 
right  of  choosing  her  own  form  of  government? 
Even  England  allows  to  each  of  her  nearly 
fifty  colonies  its  own  legislature,  or  law-making 
power.  Each  of  the  Australian  colonies  has 
its  upper  and  lower  houses,  answering  to  our 
Senate  and  House  of  Representatives.  But 
Ireland  is  denied  a  parliament  or  a  legislature 
of  any  description. 

Viewing  the  question  by  the  light  of  the  facts 
stated,  it  ceases  to  be  a  matter  for  wonderment 
that  all  British  remedial  legislation  for  Ireland 
has  been  unsatisfactory  and  unacceptable  to 
the  inhabitants,  and  the  like  would  be  the  case, 
as  stated,  with  respect  to  any  land  law  which 
might  be  passed.  The  reason  is  that  no  ap- 
plied remedy  has  gone  to  the  root  of  the  dis- 
ease. It  is  as  though  a  physician  were  to  treat 
locally  a  complaint  which  requires  constitu- 
tional treatment.  Thus,  if  a  man  were  to  have 
a  cutaneous  eruption  on  his  neck  which  denot- 
ed a  general  blood  disease,  it  would  manifestly 
be  improper  to  endeavor  to  effect  a  -cure  by 
local  applications  alone.  A  constitutional  reme- 
dy must  be  adopted,  a  medicine  given  that  will 
eliminate  the  poison  from  all  the  blood.  So  it 
is  with  Ireland.  The  land  grievance  is  only  a 
single  manifestation  of  general  discontent  which 
has  its  root  in  the  non-independence  of  the  peo- 
ple ;  in  other  words,  their  being  governed  by  a 
foreign  power.  On  a  former  occasion  the  great 
complaint  was  the  existence  of  a  dominant 
church  in  Ireland.  That  church  was*  disestab- 
lished by  an  administration  under  the  premier- 
ship of  Mr.  Gladstone.  No  sooner  was  the 
church-ghost  exorcised,  than  the  place  became 
possessed  of  other  unquiet  spirits,  and  when 
these  were  laid  at  rest,  then  the  demon  of 
landlordism  erected  its  head,  and  so  a  line  of 
angels  of  darkness,  as  long  as  the  procession  of 
spirits  seen  by  Macbeth,  appears  to  torment 
the  Irish  people.  They  have  got  it  into  their 
Jieads  that  nothing  short  of  self-government 
would  be  a  panacea  for  their  wrongs  and  griev- 
ances, and  nothing  else  will  ever  satisfy  them. 


They  certainly  have  good  grounds  for  the  stand 
which  they  take  in  this  connection.  While 
they  had  their  own  Parliament,  the  island  was 
comparatively  prosperous.  Since  the  Act  of 
Union  things  have  been  going  from  bad  to 
worse;  nor  could  it  be  otherwise.  When  the 
Parliament  assembled  in  College  Green,  Dub- 
lin, its  members  were  largely  composed  of  the 
wealthy  landlords,  who  necessarily  had  to  re- 
main in  Ireland  for  a  great  part  of  every  year, 
and  so  spend  the  money  in  the  country  whence 
they  drew  their  rents.  When  the  Parliament 
was  abolished,  and  Irish  legislation  was  trans- 
ferred to  England,  those  landlord  members, 
while  still  drawing  their  rents  from  Ireland, 
spent  the  money .  in  England  and  on  the  con- 
tinent, and  to  that  extent  impoverished  Ireland. 
For  that  grievance  there  is  no  remedy  under 
the  sun  except  to  retransfer  the  Parliament  to 
Dublin. 

In  whatever  way  the  question  may  be  viewed 
from  the  Irish  stand-point,  one  thing  is  certain 
— namely,  if  the  condition  of  the  people  were 
not  bettered  by  self-gpvernment,  it  certainly 
could  not  be  made  worse  than  it  is  now  or  has 
been  since  the  Act  of  Union.  There  is  no 
surer  sign  of  a  country's  decadence  than  a 
steady  decrease  of  her  population.  The  last 
four  censuses  exhibited  the  following  figures :  In 
1841  the  population  was  8,175,124;  1851,6,552,- 
385;  1861,5,792,055;  1871,  5,41 2,377,  and  since 
then  it  is  certain  that  the  number  of  inhabitants 
has  much  decreased.  A  fruitful  cause  of  the 
decrease  is  unquestionably  emigration,  and  this 
progressing  on  a  large  scale,  and  carried  on  by 
a  people  who  are  naturally  very  attached  to 
fatherland,  show  the  straits  to  which  they  are 
driven  to  make  a  bare  subsistence  in  their  own 
country.  They  are  the  worst  fed,  the  worst 
clothed,  and  the  worst  housed  of  any  people  in 
the  world,  and  this,  too,  in  a  land  which  is  re- 
markably productive,  and  which  is  calculated 
to  afford  abundance  for  a  much  larger  popula- 
tion than  has  ever  inhabited  Ireland.  Before 
the  Act  of  Union  her  commerce  was  large,  her 
manufactures — especially  of  linen — extensive, 
her  mines  thrivingly  worked,  and  her  coast  and 
river  fisheries  prosecuted  on  an  elaborate  and 
remunerative  scale.  Of  late  all  these  and  other 
industries  have  languished,  and  the  country 
is  hardly  worth  living  in.  The  landlords  are 
exacting  and  relentless,  and  the  tenants  are 
crushed  and  desperate.  Is  it,  then,  any  wonder 
that  there  is  a  demand  for  a  change— a  demand 
to  be  reverted  to  that  self-government  under 
which  the  people  were  happy  and  contented? 
Ireland,  left  to  herself,  can  be  not  only  a  self- 
supporting,  but  an  exporting  nation.  Knowing 
this,  the  celebrated  Dean  Swift  advised  his  coun- 


THE  IRISH  QUESTION  PRACTICALLY  CONSIDERED.  107 


trymen  to  burn  everything  that  was  brought 
from  England,  except  her  coal.  His  remark 
was  founded  on  the  fact  that  it  has  ever  been 
England's  policy  to  sell  her  goods  in  Ireland, 
and  to  obtain  the  latter's  money  in  return — a 
policy  which  is  ruinous  to  Ireland.  The  Celt 
must  have  his  "grievance"  against  Great  Brit- 
ain, even  if  he  has  to  go  without  his  dinner; 
but,  truth  to  say,  he  seldom  has  any  difficulty 
to  find  a  just  cause  of  complaint. 

Of  course  it  is  only  fair  to  present  the  question 
from  the  English  stand -point.  England's  title 
to  Ireland  is  claimed  under  the  usurpation  of 
the  island  by  Henry  II.,  by  permission  of  Pope 
Adrian  IV.,  although  that  Pontiff  had  no  title 
in  the  soil  to  pass  or  convey  to  another.  Sec- 
ondly, by  the  Anglo -Irish  Parliament,  in  1541, 
acknowledging  Henry  VIII.  King  of  Ireland; 
and,  thirdly,  by  the  conquest  of  the  island  by 
Oliver  Cromwell  in  1649.  It  is  deemed  unne- 
cessary here  to  argue  at  length  on  the  validity 
of  the  title  so  set  up.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  such 
validity  of  title,  for  reasons  already  mentioned, 
is  denied  in  toto  by  the  Irish  people.  But,  even 
for  the  sake  of  argument,  admitting  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  title  so  derived,  it  is  no  answer 
to  the  broad  principle  stated,  and  allowed  by 
all  civilized  nations,  that  the  inhabitants  of  every 
country,  on  the  axiom  that  "all  power  is  from 
the  people,"  have  a  right  to  change  their  rulers 
and  form  of  government  whenever  and  as  often 
as  they  please.  England  herself  acted  on  that 
principle  when  she  was  a  Roman  colony  or 
province,  by  driving  the  Romans  out  of  the 
place  and  establishing  her  own  system  of  gov- 
ernment. The  proverbial  goose  and  gander 
sauce  is  as  palatable  now  as  ever.  But  while 
the  English  press  prate  of  "the  conquest  of  Ire- 
land" as  a  justification  for  the  British  oppres- 
sion of  that  island,  it  would  be  treating  with  in- 
justice the  common  sense  and  acumen  of  Eng- 
lish statesmen  to  suppose  that  they  resist  the 
constant  demand  of  the  Irish  for  self-govern- 
ment on  the  ground  that  the  title  mentioned  is 
valid.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  England  holds 
Ireland  for  other  reasons :  First,  to  squeeze  all 
the  wealth  she  can  out  of  the  island,  which  cer- 
tainly is  not  much  at  present,  whatever  it  was 
formerly.  Secondly,  because  if  Ireland  were 
given  autonomy  she  might,  on  account  of  old 
sores  and  grievances,  be  a  continual  source  of 
annoyance  and  peril  to  Great  Britain.  Thirdly, 
if  England  were  at  war  with  another  power,  she 
could  not  afford  to  have  the  enemy  allowed  a 
foothold  in  Ireland,  and  so  make  an  invasion 
by  way  of  Wales  or  Scotland.  This,  in  the 
opinion  of  British  statesmen,  would  be  a  perpet- 
ual menace.  And,  lastly,  continental  statesmen 
would  probably  be  constantly  intriguing  against 


England  with  the  Irish  Government  in  matters 
of  commerce  and  otherwise.  Those  reasons  are 
forcible  from  the  English  stand -point,  but  are 
destitute  of  logic  when  put  forth  as  arguments 
for  depriving  another  people  of  autonomy.  They 
simply  amount  to  a  plea  that  Ireland  was  made 
for  the  English,  not  for  the  Irish,  which  the  lat- 
ter respectfully  decline  to  admit.  British  states- 
men aver  that  Ireland  is  too  near  to  England  to 
be  allowed  her  independence.  She  was  equally 
near  when  she  had  her  own  Parliament  up  to 
eighty  years  ago.  She  is  not  so  near  England 
as  France  is.  The  United  States  and  Canada 
have  no  quarrels  on  account  of  their  nearness  to 
one  another.  Only  an  imaginary  line  separates 
Spain  and  Portugal,  and  two  or  more  of  most  of 
the  European  and  Asiatic  continental  powers  lie 
in  near  proximity  to  each  other.  Without  elab- 
orating the  reasons  put  forth  by  British  states- 
men for  retaining  Ireland  in  subjection,  every 
intelligent  reader  can  form  an  opinion  for  him- 
self on  that  aspect  of  the  question.  It  really  re- 
solves itself  into  this :  Should  one  country  be 
kept  in  a  state  of  serfdom  in  order  to  gratify  the 
interests  and  convenience,  and  to  dispel  the 
fears  and  suspicions,  of  another  country? 

No  friend  of  Ireland  would  counsel  a  revolu- 
tion in  that  country  to  throw  off  the  British  yoke 
unless  the  movement  were  backed  by  the  assist-' 
ance  of  a  foreign  power.  But  until  the  present 
so-called  "land  agitation"  got  to  a  considerable 
heat,  the  idea  was  almost  universal  that  only 
by  revolution  could  Ireland  secure  autonomy. 
O'Connell  himself,  with  all  his  professions  of  a 
"peace  policy,"  was  in  the  habit,  in  his  speeches, 
of  quoting  Byron's  lines  : 

"Hereditary  bondmen  !  know  ye  not 

Who  would  be  free  themselves  must  strike  the  blow  ? 

By  their  right  arms  the  conquest  must  be  wrought,"  etc. 

He  knew  that  the  union  of  Ireland  and  England, 
somewhat  akin  to  that  of  the  Siamese  twins,  was, 
to  his  countrymen,  as  compulsory  as  it  was  re- 
volting. But  the  quasi  "land  agitation,"  while 
worthless  for  what  it  professes  to  be,  bids  fair 
to  make  Ireland  too  costly  and  troublesome  for 
England  to  hold.  While  it  would  be  unadvisa- 
ble  to  risk  the  result  of  a  revolution,  yet,  for  the 
reasons  stated,  that  result  could  not  be  predi- 
cated. But,  without  taking  chances  in  the  mat- 
ter, it  is  tolerably  clear  that  if  the  Irish  keep  up 
a  peaceful  opposition  to  the  landlords,  refuse  to 
pay  rent,  decline  to  sell  supplies  to  all  who  will 
not  join  their  movement,  and  so  forth,  they  may 
eventually,  and  without  bloodshed,  exhaust  the 
English  treasury  and  power  in  Ireland,  and 
abolish  English  rule  in  that  country.  This  is, 
perhaps,  the  only  satisfactory  solution  of  a  ques- 
tion which  is  the  greatest  political  conundrum 
of  the  age.  R.  E.  DESMOND. 


io8 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


THE    REPUBLIC   OF   ANDORRA. 


In  the  upper  Pyrenees,  between  France  and 
Spain,  is  an  ancient  republic  of  which  but  little 
is  known,  for  it  is  seldom  visited,  and  its  peo- 
ple have  never  occupied  any  important  place  in 
history.  Its  government,  however,  has  existed, 
without  change,  for  more  than  eleven  hundred 
years,  a  monument  of  independence  from  the 
time  of  Charlemagne,  and  remains  to-day  the 
oldest  civilized  government  in  the  world. 

The  Republic  of  Andorra  lies  between  the 
Pyrenees  of  the  Department  of  the  Aridge  and 
the  Pyrenees  of  Catalonia,  and  is  approached 
only  over  mountains,  whose  tops,  even  in  mid- 
summer, are  covered  with  snow. 

I  twice  visited  this  interesting  country — once 
by  making  the  ascent  of  the  mountains  from 
the  French  side  of  the  frontier,  by  way  of  the 
valley  of  the  Aridge.  As  I  passed  through 
this  beautiful  valley  I  encountered  a  most  de- 
lightful landscape.  Fresh  banks,  groves,  culti- 
vated fields,  and  flocks  and  herds,  were  spread 
out  before  me,  and  the  background,  as  it  grad- 
ually receded  toward  the  horizon,  displayed  a 
broad  undulating  belt  of  green  and  gently 
sloping  hills.  But  what  a  contrast  followed! 
In  an  hour's  time  this  charming  prospect  pass- 
ed out  of  sight,  and  I  beheld  only  the  severest 
aspect  of  the  mountains,  with  their  peaks  cov- 
ered with  snow.  The  great  gorge  of  the  Ra- 
made  opened  before  me  like  a  vast  tomb  of 
granite.  My  eyes  sought  involuntarily  to  meas- 
ure the  distance  over  the  wild  and  barren  re- 
gion in  front,  but  in  vain,  for  the  pathway  was 
crooked,  and  the  mountain  walls  were  high  and 
almost  perpendicular — so  high  that  the  sun  only 
at  meridian  could  possibly  reach  me.  Down  in 
the  bottom  ran  the  Aridge ;  all  about  was  soli- 
tude and  desolation. 

I  pursued  my  lonely  way  up  by  the  side  of 
this  deep  ravine,  along  the  ledges  of  crumbling 
rocks  or  the  shelving  sides  of  the  precipice, 
until  at  last  the  giant  walls  of  the  mountain  be- 
gan to  widen,  and  the  gulf  below  to  look  less 
hideous  under  a  broader  expanse  of  blue  sky. 
High  above  me,  on  an  eminence  that  seemed 
to  divide  the  abyss  of  the  Ramade,  rose  the 
ruins  of  an  old  castle — the  Chateau  of  Miglos — 
an  ancient  and  feudal  nest,  long  since  deserted, 
but  still  standing  with  its  towers  and  battle- 
ments as  if  to  guard  the  passage  of  the  mount- 
ains, as  no  doubt  it  did  in  its  day.  Ascending 
to  the  top  of  the  ridge  beyond,  I  witnessed  an- 


other change;  life  reappeared,  and  the  little 
bourg  of  Vic-de-Sos  lay  before  me.  The 
mountains  were  here  spread  out  in  the  form 
of  a  semi-circle,  and  presented  at  the  bottom 
of  the  perspective  a  triple  range  of  summits. 
In  the  valley  below  were  chimneys  and  forges, 
and  men  at  their  work ;  culture  and  industry 
enlivened  the  scene.  Not  far  distant  from 
where  I  stood  were  some  Druidical  monuments 
and  towers  of  the  dark  ages ;  and  side  by  side 
with  these  relics  of  barbarism  were  clustered 
the  grottoes  of  the  Albinos,  fortified  asylums  of 
that  unfortunate  and  proscribed  race.  The  Al- 
binos, like  the  gypsies  of  the  Basque  provinces, 
and  some  other  races  of  Navarre  and  Catalonia, 
are  placed  outside  the  protection  of  the  law. 
They  are  said  to  have  sprung  from  negro  fathers 
and  white  mothers.  Their  complexion  is  of  a 
dirty  white,  tinged  with  red,  the  latter  color 
most  noticeable  about  their  eyes  and  finger- 
nails. They  still  preserve  their  short  and  crispy 
curls,  and  their  features  and  habits  in  general 
indicate  the  race  from  which  they  are  descend- 
ed. Ex  nigrd  stirpe  albus  homo. 

Several  little  streams  came  foaming  down 
through  the  crevices  of  the  mountain,  and,  pass- 
ing through  the  valley,  blended  their  murmurs 
with  the  melody  of  grazing  herds — native  music 
in  a  foreign  land.  As  I  turned  to  one  side  I 
beheld  the  Montcal  and  Rancid,  and  on  the 
other  was  the  Col  de  Sem.  A  Druidical  monu- 
ment elevated  itself  upon  a  solitary  summit, 
and  near  by  I  could  distinguish  a  table  of  gran- 
ite resting  upon  three  small  blocks,  as  upon 
mutilated  feet,  between  which  the  distant  sky 
was  visible.  This  roughly  worked  table  of  stone 
still  presented  in  the  center  of  its  surface  the 
circular  cavity  which  in  former  times  received 
the  blood  of  human  victims.  Bearing  toward 
my  right  was  the  Col  de  Sherz,  but  towering 
above  all  were  the  dreary  ice-fields  of  the  White 
Pyrenees,  far  above  the  habitations  of  living 
men;  and  immediately  in  front  was  the  pas- 
sage that  was  to  conduct  me  up  into  the  mount- 
ain regions  of  Andorra.  I  went  down  into 
the  valley  on  to  the  threshold  of  Vic-de-Sos, 
the  very  center  of  a  great  amphitheater,  from 
which  point  I  followed  a  winding  pathway  up  to 
the  Col  de  Sem,  where,  from  a  hight  of  over 
two  hundred  feet,  falls  a  beautiful  cascade  per- 
pendicularly over  great  rocks,  surrounded  by  a 
forest  of  stunted  fir  trees.  On  the  opposite  side 


THE  REPUBLIC   OF  ANDORRA. 


109 


of  Vic-de-Sos  is  an  ancient  camp  of  Charle- 
magne, where  still  remain  scattered  upon  a 
mound  the  debris  of  a  large  fort.  Continuing 
my  toilsome  journey,  I  found  hidden  away  upon 
the  slopes,  and  in  the  gorges  of  the  mountains, 
a  number  of  little  hamlets,  and  among  them 
the  villages  of  Sue  d' Oilier  and  Goulier,  the 
latter  always  half  buried  with  snow  or  lost  in 
banks  of  fog. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  villages  whom  I  en- 
countered, whether  farmers,  muleteers,  or  min- 
ers, differed  noticeably  in  their  habits  and  cus- 
toms. One  commune  was  noted  for  its  habits 
of  order,  sobriety,  and  economy,  while  in  an- 
other, not  a  league  away,  the  people  were  ex- 
tremely frivolous  and  indolent.  The  inhabit- 
ants of  Sem  do  not  know  how  to  read,  but  they 
are  all  adepts  in  the  art  of  chicanery.  The 
miners  of  Goulier  are  hard  workers,  and  noted 
in  all  the  surrounding  country  for  their  athletic 
powers  and  prodigious  appetites.  Their  meals 
were  simply  enormous,  enough  to  recall  the  re- 
pasts of  Apicius.  In  drawing  nearer  to  the 
borders  of  the  Republic,  I  crossed  the  summits 
of  mountains  where  snow  obstructs  the  passage 
for  at  least  six  months  in  the  year.  On  the 
frontier  of  Andorra  I  was  arrested  by  some- 
thing more  than  mere  curiosity  to  reflect  that 
I  stood  before  a  republic  that  dates  from  the 
time  of  Charlemagne,  whose  public  records 
bear  the  inscription,  "In  the  eleven  hundred 
and  second  year  of  the  Republic,"  and  that 
maintains  a  government  which  all  its  neighbors 
respect,  and  which  above  all  respects  itself. 

The  Andorrese  as  a  people  are  still  faithful 
to  the  rustic  manners,  institutions,  and  usages 
of  their  ancestors.  The  stability  which  reigns 
in  family  life  has  preserved  to  each  valley  and 
to  each  village  its  own  peculiar  characteristics. 
The  clans  remain  side  by  side,  as  in  days  of 
yore,  and  the  friction  of  centuries  has  not  suc- 
ceeded in  effacing  the  little  differences  that  tra- 
dition says  have  always  distinguished  them. 
Coming  down  from  one  generation  to  another, 
fathers  have  transmitted  to  their  children  the 
same  callings,  the  same  ideas,  and  the  same 
manner  of  living. 

The  existence  of  the  Republic  of  Andorra  as 
an  independent  State  dates  from  the  year  778, 
the  time  of  Charlemagne's  first  expedition 
against  the  Moors,  when  he  made  the  passage  of 
the  Pyrenees  by  way  of  Andorra,  a  region  which 
the  Saracens  believed  to  be  inaccessible  to  an 
invading  army.  The  Andorrese,  a  warlike  race, 
were  the  first  champions  against  the  Moors,  and 
had  successfully  repulsed  their  repeated  attacks. 
They  now  joined  the  forces  of  the  great  Empe- 
ror, and  conducted  them  through  the  defiles  of 
the  mountains  down  on  to  the  plains  of  Cata- 


lonia. Charlemagne  defeated  the  Moors  in  the 
Valley  of  Carol,  to  which  he  gave  his  name, 
but  was  routed,  and  a  portion  of  his  army  de- 
stroyed, as  he  was  returning  to  France  (accord- 
ing to  the  Annales  of  Eginhard)  through  the 
Pass  of  Roncesvalles.  In  the  first  book  of  Par- 
adise Lost)  the  discomforture  of  Charlemagne 
is,  by  a  geographical  error  of  Milton,  located  at 
Fontarabia : 

"Or  whom  Biserta  sent  from  Afric  shore, 
When  Charlemain,  with  all  his  peerage,  fell 
By  Fontarabia." 

To  recompense  the  inhabitants  of  Andorra 
for  their  services,  Charlemagne  made  them  in- 
dependent, and  left  them  to  be  governed  by 
their  own  laws.  He  authorized  them  to  select 
a  Protector,  which  they  did  in  the  person  of  the 
Count  of  Foix,  and  the  arms  of  the  Republic 
are  still  quartered  with  those  of  the  Counts  of 
Foix.  There  were  certain  rights  reserved,  how- 
ever, which  still  exist,  and  consist  principally 
of  a  tribute  and  the  retention  of  a  part  of  the 
judiciary  power.  The  tithes  of  the  six  parishes 
were  granted  to  the  See  of  Urgel. 

In  the  year  801,  Louis  le  Debonnaire,  King 
of  Aquitaine,  granted  the  Andorrese  a  fresh 
charter,  expressed  to  be  in  right  of  his  father, 
Charlemagne,  for  their  fidelity  to  the  Emperor 
and  the  support  they  had  rendered  the  Chris- 
tian cause  againt  the  Moors.  The  original  man- 
uscript of  this  charter  is  still  preserved  among 
the  archives  of  the  Republic.  This  was  the  year 
of  the  second  expedition  against  the  Moors  to 
the  south  of  the  Pyrenees,  which  was  under  the 
immediate  command  of  the  King,  whose  object, 
says  Theganus,  was  to  expel  Zadun,  the  Moor- 
ish chief  of  Barcelona.  Louis  organized  a  more 
perfect  administration  of  government  for  the 
Andorrese,  which  exists  to-day  in  the  same 
form;  and  the  names,  divisions,  and  boundaries 
are  the  same,  presenting  the  remarkable  phe- 
nomenon of  a  little  country  preserving  its  inde- 
pendence, with  the  same  institutions,  for  eleven 
centuries,  in  the  midst  of  revolutions  which  have 
so  often  changed  the  forms  of  government  of 
the  two  great  neighboring  States.  The  apostles 
of  revolution  have  been  listened  to  with  effect 
in  one  period  or  another  in  most  of  the  civilized 
countries  of  the  world,  but  their  words  have 
never  penetrated  the  walls  that  surround  the 
valleys  of  this  ancient  and  model  republic. 
Louis  subsequently  surrendered  up  to  the  peo- 
ple some  of  the  rights  that  Charlemagne  had 
reserved.  Among  other  things,  it  was  stipu- 
lated that  one -half  of  the  tithes  of  the  six  par- 
ishes should  belong  to  the  Bishop  of  Urgel,  and 
the  other  half,  the  city  of  Andorra  excepted,  to 
the  chapter  of  the  cathedral  church  which  the 


no 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Moors  had  destroyed.  The  half  from  the  city 
of  Andorra  was  given  to  one  of  the  principal  in- 
habitants, as  a  recompense  for  the  services  he 
had  rendered  the  French  arms,  and  that  portion 
is  still  called  droit  carlomngien. 

In  the  year  860,  Charles  the  Bold  issued  a 
diploma  wrongfully  assigning  the  sovereignty  of 
Andorra,  which  Charlemagne  had  vested  in  the 
inhabitants,  to  -the  Bishops  of  Urgel.  But  this 
the  Andorrese  refused  to  recognize,  whereupon 
commenced  the  four  hundred  years'  war  of  in- 
dependence, between  the  Republic  as  an  inde- 
pendent and  lawful  sovereign,  the  Bishops  of 
Urgel  as  pretenders,  and  the  Counts  of  Foix 
nominally  as  protectors.  The  Counts,  like 
nearly  all  the  protectors  and  powerful  families 
of  that  age,  merely  ravaged  the  country  they 
professed  to  befriend.  In  1278,  the  Andorrese 
succeeded  in  a  final  pacification,  under  which 
the  Bishops  and  Counts  receded  from  the  con- 
test, and,  in  course  of  time,  their  authority  set- 
tled into  a  sort  of  co-protectorate.  The  Counts 
of  Foix  became  absorbed  in  the  house  of  Bdarn, 
which,  in  its  turn,  became  absorbed  in  that  of 
Bourbon,  and  the  protectorate  at  length  attach- 
ed to  the  de  facto  French  Government.  The 
President  of  the  French  Republic  and  the 
Bishop  of  Urgel  are  now  the  joint  protectors  of 
Andorra,  under  the  charter  of  801  and  the  con- 
vention of  1278. 

The  manner  in  which  the  de  facto  govern- 
ment of  France  obtained  the  protectorate  is  re- 
lated as  one  of  the  legends  of  Andorra.  The 
Syndic  of  the  Republic  in  the  time  of  the  first 
Napoleon  was  a  guest  of  the  Emperor  at  Fon- 
tainebleau.  He  went  there  in  his  official  dress, 
a  long  black  coat,  a  cocke^J  hat,  and  leather 
breeches.  Napoleon  had  commanded  that  he 
be  received  with  all  the  splendor  that  the  pal- 
ace and  court  could  display.  The  magnificence 
of  the  imperial  household,  the  elegant  costumes 
of  the  people,  and  the  familiar  and  fascinating 
ways  of  the  ladies  of  the  court,  greatly  bewil- 
dered him  as  he  thought  of  his  own  people  and 
their  humble  dwellings  in  Andorra.  The  im- 
perial host  enjoyed  the  embarrassment  of  the 
Syndic  immensely,  for  he  knew  that  he  would 
gain  the  small  victory  upon  which  he  was  re- 
solved. The  business  which  had  brought  the 
Syndic  to  the  French  capital  was  to  amend  the 
anomalous  relations  between  France  and  An- 
dorra caused  by  the  fall  of  the  Bourbons,  who 
had  been  the  hereditary  co-protectors,  and  also 
to  relieve  some  of  the  privations  of  his  country- 
men by  concluding  a  commercial  treaty.  He 
never  questioned  that  the  heir  of  Louis  XVI., 
who  was  the  heir  of  the  Counts  of  Foix,  was 
the  only  French  protector  of  the  commonwealth. 
But,  under  the  influences  of  the  court,  the  au- 


stere devotee  of  republican  institutions  halted, 
doubted,  and  wavered,  and  the  imperial  bland- 
ishments at  length  triumphed.  The  fidelity  of 
the  Syndic  to  the  memory  of  the  extinguished 
Counts  of  Foix  melted  away  in  the  seductive 
atmosphere  of  the  court,  and  he  signed  a  treaty 
with  the  Emperor,  which  was  afterward  ratified 
by  the  Republic  for  the  sake  of  the  commercial 
advantages,  which  were  a  counterpart  of  the 
Andorrese  acknowledging  the  de  facto  govern- 
ment of  France  as  co- protector  with  the  Bish- 
ops of  Urgel. 

The  Andorrese  are  very  jealous  of  any  en- 
croachment upon  their  religious  or  political 
rights,  as  well  as  of  any  violation  of  their  terri- 
tory. In  1794,  General  Shabert  was  ordered 
by  the  French  Government  to  pass  his  troops 
through  Andorra  to  attack  Urgel,  but  the  peo- 
ple objected,  and  the  order  was  revoked. 

The  territory  of  the  Republic  has  an  area 
of  about  thirty  miles  in  length  by  twenty  in 
breadth,  and  contains  three  beautiful  and  fer- 
tile valleys,  one  of  which  runs  parallel  to  the 
great  range  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  the  other  two 
lay  almost  at  right  angles  to  it.  The  govern- 
ment of  Andorra  partakes  of  a  political,  mili- 
tary, judicial,  and  commercial  character.  The 
charter  of  80 1  forms  the  six  parishes  of  An- 
dorra, San  Julia,  Massana,  Canillo,  Encamp, 
and  Ordino  into  an  independent  State,  under 
the  title  of  "Respublica  Handorrensis?  subject 
to  the  right  of  tithe  previously  given  to  the  See 
of  Urgel.  Louis  Ddbonnaire,  in  the  name  of 
his  father,  Charlemagne,  traces  out  for  the  An- 
dorrese some  general  principles  of  government, 
and  advises  them,  among  other  things,  to  es- 
tablish an  equality  of  civil  rights,  to  make  the 
country  an  asylum  for  foreign  political  offend- 
ers who  might  take  refuge  in  its  territory,  and 
urges  them  to  foster  agriculture  and  improve 
the  character  of  their  dwellings. 

Each  of  the  six  departments  has  its  own  leg- 
islature, which  is  composed  of  those  land-hold- 
ers who  can  show  a  descent  from  ancestors 
who  possessed  the  hereditary  right  of  legisla- 
tion. These  bodies  severally  elect  two  Con- 
suls, who  form  the  executive  of  each  division, 
and  serve  for  one  year.  The  General  Council 
of  the  Republic  is  composed  of  twenty -four 
delegates,  four  being  sent  by  each  of  the  local 
legislatures,  and  consists  of  the  two  Consuls  for 
the  current  year  and  the  two  last  ex-Consuls  in 
each  division.  The  General  Council  elects  a 
Syndic  and  a  Deputy  Syndic,  who  constitute 
the  executive  authority  of  the  Republic.  All 
citizens  from  sixteen  to  sixty  years  of  age  are 
armed,  and  the  military  organization  and  drill 
of  each  parish  are  under  the  direction  of  a  cap- 
tain, while  the  chief  judiciary  authority  of  the 


THE  REPUBLIC  OF  ANDORRA. 


in 


State  is  the  head  of  the  whole  army.  There 
are  no  salaries  or  emoluments  connected  with 
the  government;  all  citizens  of  the  Republic 
are  supposed  to  be  patriotic  and  brave,  and 
willing  to  serve  their  country  without  pay. 
Here  is  a  complete  administrative  organization 
where  no  salaries  are  given,  and,  proportion- 
ately speaking,  a  large  military  establishment 
without  a  dollar  of  taxation. 

The  feudal  theory  of  nobility  exists  among 
the  land-owners,  and  possession  of  land  is  the 
Andorrese  idea  of  freedom.  Andorrese  nobles, 
whose  long  descent  would  dwarf  the  genealogi- 
cal tree  of  an  Arundel,  or  a  Percy,  and  who 
derive  their  grants  of  land  from  the  Emperor 
Charlemagne,  may  be  found  grooming  their  own 
horses  or  shearing  their  own  sheep.  The  in- 
tellect of  these  hardy  mountaineers  is  mostly 
ruled  by  physical  strength.  Education  and  lux- 
ury are  unknown  among  them.  The  people  are 
noted,  however,  for  their  high  public  virtue  and 
private  charity.  So  benevolent  are  they  that 
in  winter  he  who  has  goods  shares  them  with 
the  poorest  around  him. 

The  General  Council  of  the  Republic  meet 
five  times  a  year  at  the  city  of  Andorra  to  de- 
liberate upon  public  affairs,  though  but  few 
laws  are  ever  passed.  Certain  days  of  religious 
festivals  are  chosen  for  the  meeting  of  the  Coun- 
cil; these  are  Christmas,  Easter,  Whitsuntide, 
All  Saints'  Day,  and  Saint  Andrew's.  The 
twenty -four  deputies  arrive  at  the  place  of 
meeting  on  horseback,  and  each  puts  up  his 
own  horse  in  one  of  the  twenty -four  stalls  of 
the  national  stables.  The  first  duty  of  a  con- 
sul is  to  attend  divine  service  in  the  little 
chapel  attached  to  the  capitol  building.  He 
then  proceeds  to  the  robing -room,  where  the 
peasant  dress  is  changed  for  a  more  stately 
costume,  consisting  of  a  long,  black,  straight- 
collared  coat,  with  two  rows  of  very  large  but- 
tons, leather  knee-breeches,  and  a  turn-up  black 
hat.  The  building  in  which  the  Council  meet 
is  called  the  "Palace,"  and  is  constructed  of 
rough  granite  blocks.  The  hall  where  the  de- 
liberations are  held  is  on  the  second  floor.  To 
the  right  and  left,  on  entering,  are  benches  for 
the  Consuls,  and  at  the  upper  end  of  the  room 
a  chair  for  the  Syndic,  wfyo  acts  as  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  assembly.  In  the  Council  Cham- 
ber is  a  great  strong-box,  which  contains  the 
archives  of  the  nation.  The  State  records  are 
preserved  with  such  religious  care  that  but  few 
persons  have  ever  been  allowed  to  see  them. 
The  cabinet  which  contains  these  sacred  docu- 
ments is  fastened  with  six  locks,  having  each  a 
different  key.  The  locks  correspond  to  the  six 
different  divisions  of  the  State  whose  records 
are  deposited  there.  The  executive  of  each 


parish  is  intrusted  with  the  key  to  a  single 
lock,  and  as  the  six  locks  are  on  the  outer 
door,  no  part  of  the  box  can  be  opened  ex- 
cept in  the  presence  of  the  six  heads  of  the 
six  departments,  who  are  required  to  be  pres- 
ent at  the  meeting  of  the  Council. 

The  faculty  of  reading  is  almost  exclusively 
confined  to  the  twenty-four  Consuls.  I  believe 
that  most  of  the  Andorrese  nobles  sign  their 
names  by  making  a  cross.  Any  land -owner 
who  inherits  the  right  to  be  a  legislator,  and 
can  read  the  Andorrese  records,  and  correspond 
with  the  French  and  Spanish  officials  on  either 
frontier,  may  aspire  to  govern  the  Republic. 
Not  a  book  of  any  kind  exists  in  the  Andorran 
tongue,  though  the  language  is  not  difficult  to 
acquire,  having  only  a  dialectic  difference  from 
the  Catalan.  A  late  Syndic  had  heard  of  North 
America,  but  he  believed  that  all  Americans 
were  copper -colored,  and  that  England  was  a 
colony  of  France.  The  ignorance  and  real  sim- 
plicity of  the  people  reminds  one  of  the  amus- 
ing fable  of  Wieland  related  in  his  Geschichte 
der  Abderiten,  illustrative  of  the  extreme  sim- 
plicity of  the  Abderitans.  The  story  of  Wie- 
land, even  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
would  have  applied  to  the  Andorrese,  for  they 
have  taken  more  than  one  traveler  to  be  out  of 
his  senses  because  his  sayings  were  beyond 
their  comprehension. 

The  title  of  "Most  Illustrious"  is  given  to 
the  members  of  the  General  Council  by  the 
Andorrese,  but  in  official  reports  and  commu- 
nications with  foreigners,  the  Syndic  and  two 
criminal  judges  receive  only  the  title  of  "Illus- 
trious." These  latter  carry  a  sword  as  a  dis- 
tinctive mark  of  the  supreme  authority  of  the 
law.  The  civil  or  inferior  judges  are  called 
"Honorable."  In  the  General  Council  there 
are  three  forms  of  deliberation,  according  to 
the  importance  of  the  business,  comprising: 
First,  one  member  from  each  parish ;  second, 
two  members  from  each  parish,  and  third,  all 
the  members  of  the  General  Council  as  a  com- 
mittee of  the  whole  house. 

The  judiciary  system  consists  of  one  judge 
appointed  by  France  for  life,  who  is  generally 
a  magistrate  from  the  Department  of  the  Ari- 
e"ge,  and  another  appointed  by  the  Bishop  of 
Urgel,  who  must  be  a  subject  of  the  Republic, 
and  who  holds  office  for  three  years.  These 
judges  exercise  criminal  authority  only,  while 
the  civil  power  is  vested  in  two  inferior  judges, 
selec^d  by  the  criminal  judges  from  a  list  of 
six  presented  by  the  Syndic.  There  is  no  trial 
by  jury,  and  no  written  law.  Equity  and  cus- 
tom alone  determine  the  decisions  of  the  courts. 
The  sentence  of  the  court,  when  proclaimed  by 
the  General  Council,  is  irrevocable,  and  must  be 


112 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


carried  into  execution  within  twenty-four  hours. 
A  court  of  appeal  exists  only  on  the  civil  side. 
Its  chief,  appointed  by  France  and  the  Bishop 
of  Urgel,  sits  from  time  to  time  to  review  the 
decisions  of  the  two  inferior  judges. 

Neither  the  French  revolutionary  law  of  in- 
heritance, nor  the  partition  of  property  as  es- 
tablished in  Spain,  have  as  yet  influenced  the 
character  of  Andorrese  legislation.  The  law  of 
primogeniture  still  prevails  as  of  old.  Some  of 
the  mountain  races  in  both  France  and  Spain 
attempted  to  retain  this  right  of  having  their 
estates  descend  only  to  the  eldest  son,  but,  be- 
ing amenable  to  the  law  of  their  respective 
countries,  they  were  obliged  to  adopt  the  expe- 
dient of  family  compacts. 

The  patricians  of  Andorra,  who  are  the  lesser 
land-owners,  do  not  appreciably  differ  from  the 
common  laborers,  and  are  not  generally  admit- 
ted to  the  rank  of  senator.  The  laborers  in  the 
valleys  live  in  poorly  constructed  huts,  and 
sleep  on  the  skins  of  bears  or  izards.  The 
mountain  shepherds,  in  yet  worse  hovels,  dwell 
in  winter  in  constant  fear  of  avalanches  and 
wolves.  While  the  habitations  of  the  people 
are  poor,  their  churches  show  that  they  bestow 
considerable  upon  their  religion  in  aid  of  archi- 
tecture. The  interior  of  the  church  at  Canillo 
is  an  example  of  this,  for  it  is  spacious  and  in 
good  style,  with  some  carving  and  decoration. 

Field  sports  are  in  favor  with  the  Andorrese. 
They  shoot  partridges  and  pheasants  in  sum- 
mer, and  bears  and  wolves  in  autumn  and  win- 
ter. Wolves  are  hunted  on  horeback  in  the 
valleys  and  on  the  lower  ridges,  but  the  bear 
and  izard  choose  the  cover  of  the  steep  mount- 
ain-sides, and  the  hunt  is  consequently  con- 
ducted with  guns  and  dogs,  and  is  sometimes 
attended  with  both  hardship  and  danger.  Bears 
are  now  becoming  scarce,  except  on  the  highest 
mountains.  In  severe  seasons  both  bears  and 
izards  descend  into  the  lower  regions,  and  are 
easily  taken.  Bear's  meat,  even  after  the  fa- 
tigue of  a  hard  day's  shooting,  is  strong  and 
tough,  but  the  natives  of  the  country,  on  their 
return  at  night,  feast  upon  it  in  the  lurid  light 
of  their  chimney -fires  with  the  sumptuousness 
of  a  Cyclops. 

In  religion  the  inhabitants  of  Andorra  are 
Catholic.  Religion  is  there  associated  with 
every  circumstance  of  business  or  pleasure.  It 
opens  legislation  and  initiates  dancing,  the  lat- 
ter being  a  recreation  of  which  the  people  are 
very  fond.  The  chief  dance  is  called  the  Val 
d'Andorre,  and  is  awkward,  but  peculiar  to  the 
country.  It  is  said  to  have  been  in  vogue  as 
long  ago  as  the  time  of  Charlemagne.  Relig- 
ious fetes  are  a  national  pastime,  and  the  Val 
d'Andorre  may  be  witnessed  on  any  Saint's  Day 


sacred  in  the  Andorrese  calendar.  The  anni- 
versary opens  with  a  short  mass,  celebrated  at 
the  nearest  chapel,  and  the  remainder  of  the 
day  is  given  up  to  dancing.  But  a  Saint's  Day 
is  not  always  necessary,  for  a  piece  of  green- 
sward, a  clear  moonlight,  and  the  balmy  air  of 
a  midsummer  night  are  generally  sufficient  in- 
citements. The  women  are  robust  and  well 
proportioned.  They  are  French  in  manner  and 
action,  but  Spanish  in  physiognomy  and  com- 
plexion. Their  ways  are  frank  and  somewhat 
attractive,  but  they  are  under  a  certain  degree 
of  subjection,  for  every  wife  regards  her  hus- 
band as  her  master. 

The  Republic  has  no  roads.  Even  the  high- 
way leading  to  the  capital  must  be  traversed  by 
men  and  horses  sure  of  foot.  Notwithstanding 
this,  the  country  at  large  is  almost  unequaled 
for  the  variety  of  its  productions,  as  well  as  for 
the  beauty  of  its  scenery.  The  land  is  divided 
between  tillage  and  flocks  and  herds,  the  high- 
lands being  pastoral,  and  the  lowlands  arable. 
Horses,  sheep,  and  pigs  are  the  principal  ani- 
mal productions  of  the  country.  There  are  also 
goats  and  fowls,  but  few  cows  or  oxen.  The 
valleys  are  rich,  and  produce  fine  crops  of 
wheat,  barley,  rye,  and  corn.  Wheat  bread  is 
used  in  the  cabins  of  the  land-owners,  and  rye 
in  the  huts  of  the  peasantry.  Grapes,  figs,  dates, 
and  olives  grow  on  the  warmer  hill-sides  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Auvina,  and  cocoa-nut  trees  in 
the  western  communes.  The  flocks,  in  appear- 
ance, are  hardly  to  be  surpassed,  and  the  mut- 
ton is  equal  to  the  finest  in  the  world.  Iron 
mines  are  plentiful,  but  coal  is  altogether  want- 
ing. There  is  an  abundance  of  wood  in  the 
mountains.  This  is  public  property,  and  is  fur- 
nished to  the  inhabitants  gratuitously,  but  sold 
by  the  parishes  to  the  proprietors  of  forges. 
The  manufacture  of  iron  is  exceedingly  crude, 
and  the  forges  are  the  most  primitive  that  I 
have  ever  seen.  The  cloth  manufactured  there 
is  the  coarsest  that  could  possibly  be  made. 
To  carry  their  produce  to  market,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  roads,  the  people  have  contrived  large 
quadrangular  baskets,  formed  of  strips  of  wood, 
which  they  fasten  to  the  backs  of  horses.  These 
frequently  obstruct  the  narrow  highway,  but  the 
traveler  must  of  course  give  way.  The  State  re- 
ceives a  small  income  from  imports  and  pastur- 
age, out  of  which  the  Syndic  pays  $190  tribute 
each  to  France  and  the  Bishop  of  Urgel,  the 
chief  expense  of  the  Republic. 

On  taking  my  departure  from  Andorra  and 
its  hospitable  people,  I  visited  Auvina,  near  the 
Spanish  frontier,  on  the  road  to  Urgel.  At  Au- 
vina is  a  grand  cascade  and  a  succession  of 
beautiful  waterfalls,  the  finest  in  the  Pyrenees. 
There  is  an  interesting  legend  connected  with 


A   DAY  ON  A    GUANO  ISLAND. 


Auvina,  which  the  Andorrese  believe  to  be  au- 
thentic. I  give  it  in  substance  as  it  has  been 
before  related : 

In  the  middle  ages  the  Bishops  of  Urgel  had 
arrogated  to  themselves  a  supremacy  over  the 
Republic.  These  claims  of  ecclesiastical  as- 
cendency were  in  collision  with  the  spirit  of 
Andorrese  independence.  The  exactions  of  Ur- 
gel became  more  and  more  intolerable.  Mean- 
while a  lady,  called,  from  her  dress  and  appear- 
ance, the  White  Lady,  became  possessed,  in 
right  of  her  father,  of  a  tower  on  the  hights 
above  the  Cascade  of  Auvina,  which  command- 
ed the  road  leading  from  Urgel  to  San  Julia. 
Certain  magical  powers  were  attributed  to  the 
owners  of  this  ancient  building,  and  the  White 
Lady  was  accordingly  supposed  to  be  skilled  in 
the  black  art.  The  tower  had  been  originally 
built  as  a  bulwark  against  the  irruptions  of  the 
feudal  prelates  of  Urgel.  On  this  account,  as 
well  as  upon  account  of  the  dark  gifts  with 
which  it  was  thought  to  be  endowed,  the  lords 
of  the  tower  of  Auvina  were  popularly  regarded 
as  the  guardians  of  the  Republic. 

The  White  Lady  had  more  than  once  forbid- 
den the  entrance  of  the  Bishop  into  Andorra. 
He,  nevertheless,  came  and  went,  until  one 
night,  on  his  return  toward  Urgel,  the  White 
Lady  stood  before  him  in  the  moonlit  glade  be- 
side the  Falls  of  Auvina,  and  beckoned  him 
away  from  his  attendants.  He  followed  her, 
spell-bound  and  alone,  to  the  edge  of  the  woods. 
At  length  he  returned,  with  a  greatly  altered 
countenance,  and  refused  to  divulge  what  he 
had  seen  or  heard.  For  a  long  time  he  vent- 
ured not  again  to  pass  the  Cascade  of  Auvina. 
His  priests  undertook  missions  in  his  stead, 


and  each  time,  at  whatever  hour  of  the  day  or 
evening  they  might  pass,  the  White  Lady  stood 
before  their  path.  At  length,  however,  she  was 
more  rarely  seen,  and  the  Prelate  of  Urgel 
dared  once  more  to  cross  the  threshold  of  An- 
dorra. They  were  no  longer  troublesome  times, 
and  he  undertook  the  journey  unattended.  He 
was  never  again  seen,  nor  did  the  White  Lady 
again  visit  the  cascade  or  inhabit  the  tower. 
From  this  time  forward  a  solitary  wolf  infested 
that  part  of  Andorra,  and  devoured  all  the  sheep 
that  came  within  its  reach.  The  simultaneous 
disappearance  of  the  enchantress  and  the  Bish- 
op gave  a  mystical  character  to  the  place.  The 
Andorrese  went  forth  from  time  to  time  to  shoot 
the  depredator  on  their  flocks,  but  in  vain.  At 
last  the  Syndic  himself  went  in  search  of  him, 
and  succeeded  in  killing  the  marauder.  But 
ever  afterward,  night  after  night,  he  became 
subject  to  frightful  dreams  and  visions,  which 
lasted  while  the  sun  was  down.  His  health 
soon  began  to  fail,  but  the  visions  did  not  in- 
termit. As  it  became  evident  that  his  hours 
were  numbered,  the  White  Lady  appeared  be- 
fore him.  His  attendants  implored  the  exer- 
cise of  her  magic  to  effect  the  Syndic's  cure. 

"I  could  deliver  the  Republic,"  said  she,  "but 
I  could  not  deliver  thee  from  the  power  of  the 
Bishop.  The  wolf  thou  killedst  was  even  he." 

The  Syndic  died,  and  the  White  Lady  was 
never  again  seen*  From  that  time  the  Bishops 
of  Urgel  never  attempted  to  invade  the  rights 
of  the  Republic.  The  moral,  that  prelates 
should  not  covet  their  neighbor's  rights,  is  re- 
membered in  the  land  of  Andorra,  however 
much  it  may  be  forgotten  at  Urgel. 

EDWARD  KIRKPATRICK. 


A   DAY   ON   A   GUANO    ISLAND. 


Shortly  after  sunrise  the  swift  little  brig  Nau- 
tilus left  the  harbor  of  Papeete,  Tahiti,  bound 
for  San  Francisco.  Usually  passengers  taking 
this  trip  do  not  see  land  again  from  the  time  the 
mountain  peaks  of  Tahiti  are  lost  to  view  until 
they  sight  the  Farallones,  thirty  miles  from  San 
Francisco.  But  the  three  passengers  on  board 
the  Nautilus  (myself  one  of  the  number)  were 
fortunate  in  being  on  a  vessel  which,  taking  a 
more  westerly  course  than  usual,'  was  to  stop  at 
the  Guano  Islands  of  the  South  Pacific  to  leave 
a  mail,  and,  remaining  there  for  a  few  hours,  re- 
ceive one  in  return,  destined  for  California  and 
England.  We  were  favored  with  a  good  breeze, 


and  in  a  week  from  the  day  we  left  Papeete, 
shortly  after  sunrise,  we  anchored  off  the  isl- 
ands about  a  mile  and  a  half  from  shore. 

There  is  quite  a  large  group  of  these  islands, 
but  the  principal  ones  are  Vostok,  Flint,  and 
Caroline  Islands.  The  first  named,  Vostok,  is 
the  smallest,  being  only  half  a  mile  in  width. 
The  next,  Flint  Island,  is  about  three  miles 
long  and  three  quarters  of  a  mile  wide.  It  is 
in  10°  26'  south  latitude  and  150°  48'  west  lon- 
gitude, and  extends  in  a  north-easterly  and 
south-westerly  direction.  Nearly  five-sixths  of 
the  island  is  covered  with  trees,  the  rest  being 
coral  beach  and  reef.  The  trees  are  from  sixty 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


to  one  hundred  feet  high,  and  the  land  is  about 
twelve  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  For  the 
past  three  years  or  more,  the  English  company 
engaged  in  shipping  guano  from  these  islands 
have  made  Flint  Island  their  headquarters; 
but  at  the  time  we  visited  them  their  opera- 
tions were  being  carried  on  at  Caroline  Island, 
which  is  much  larger  than  the  others,  being 
seven  miles  and  a  half  long,  and  one  mile  and 
a  half  wide,  lying  north  and  south.  It  is  in 
9°  56'  south  latitude  and  150°  6' west  longitude. 
There  is  a  large  lagoon  near  the  center  of  the 
island,  surrounded  by  forty  small  islets,  and, 
indeed,  the  whole  island  seems  made  up  of 
many  small  ones ;  so  that  when  the  tide  is  low 
one  can  go  from  one  to  another  on  the  reef, 
which  forms  the  connecting  chain  that  binds 
them  together.  Looking  at  the  islands  from 
the  deck  of  the  ship  we  could  see  a  long  line  of 
breakers  dashing  over  the  reef,  and  sending  the 
spray  continuously  in  the  air;  so  that  a  snowy 
mist  seemed  to  conceal  the  land,  save  an  occa- 
sional glimpse  of  bright  green  foliage,  above 
which  the  cocoa-palms  reared  their  heads,  ever 
a  distinguishing  feature  of  tropical  scenery. 

Our  vessel  had  hoisted  signals,  which  were 
answered  from  shore,  and  in  an  hour  from  the 
time  we  had  come  to  anchor  a  boat,  containing 
two  Europeans  and  four  native  oarsmen,  came 
alongside  the  ship.  On  coming  on  board  the 
gentlemen  were  introduced  as,  Mr.  Arundel,  the 
English  agent  of  the  Guano  Company,  and 
his  friend,  Mr.  Robinson,  who  was  stopping  at 
the  islands,  for  a  few  months,  for  the  benefit  of 
his  health.  After  receiving  their  letters  and 
papers,  and  hearing  the  news  from  the  outside 
world,  from  which  they  seemed  to  be  so  isolat- 
ed, they  left  for  the  shore  again  to  prepare  their 
return  mail.  Before  leaving,  however,  they  ex- 
tended to  us  a  cordial  invitation  to  return  with 
them  and  visit  their  island  home.  We  gladly 
accepted  the  invitation,  and  in  a  few  moments 
the  other  lady  passenger  and  myself  were  climb- 
ing down  the  rope  ladder  at  the  side  of  the  ship 
into  the  boat.  It  took  but  a  short  time  to  reach 
the  shore,  or  reef  rather,  for  it  was  low  tide, 
and,  disembarking,  we  walked  about  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  over  the  reef,  avoiding  as  best  we 
could  the  hollows  which  the  receding  tide  had 
left  filled  with  water,  forming  natural  aqua- 
riums. The  reef  passed  over,  we  stepped  on 
shore,  and  many  were  our  exclamations  at  the 
novelty  and  beauty  of  the  scene  before  us. 

My  idea  of  a  guano  island  had  always  been 
that  it  was  very  rocky,  and  covered  with  a 
white  substance  resembling  mortar  before  the 
sand  is  mixed  with  it.  I  imagined,  too,  that  it 
exhaled  an  odor  differing  somewhat  from  the 
orange  groves  of  Tahiti.  Had  I  not  been  told 


that  I  was  on  a  guano  island,  I  would  not  now 
have  known  it  from  the  surroundings.  Instead 
of  being  rocky,  the  soil  was  mellow  and  dark, 
and  everywhere  vegetation  was  most  luxuriant. 
The  air  was  remarkably  clear  and  pure.  Dur- 
ing a  walk  around  the  island,  I  then  learned  that 
there  are  two  kinds  of  guano ;  or,  rather,  that 
of  certain  qualities  which  all  guano  possesses, 
some  of  these  qualities  predominate  in  that 
found  in  a  given  locality,  while  guano  taken 
from  islands  differently  located  possesses  in  a 
much  stronger  degree  some  other  essentials. 
Thus  the  guano  of  the  islands  off  the  coasts  of 
South  America,  exposed  to  the  rays  of  a  trop- 
ical sun,  where  the  surface  of  the  land  is  never 
cooled,  and  where  rain  seldom  or  never  falls, 
possesses  the  strongest  ammoniacal  properties. 
Not  only  the  excretions  of  birds  are  deposited 
there,  but  the  birds  themselves  come  there  to 
die ;  and  eggs  have  frequently  been  taken  out, 
a  little  below  the  crusts  which  form  over  these 
deposits,  that  are  almost  pure  ammonia.  The 
guano  of  these  islands  has  a  strong,  pungent 
odor,  and  is  white  and  light  brown  in  color. 
But  the  guano  of  the  islands  of  the  Southern 
Pacific  is  made  up  of  decomposed  coral,  form- 
ing mostly  phosphates  of  lime  and  magnesia. 
It  is  entirely  inodorous,  and  of  a  dark  brown 
color,  resembling  well  pulverized  loam.  It  is 
believed  that  the  birds,  which  in  large  numbers 
inhabit  these  islands,  living,  as  they  do,  almost 
entirely  on  fish,  deposit  phosphoric  acid  on  the 
coral,  and  also  leave  the  bones  of  the  fish,  which 
they  cannot  eat.  These  decompose  the  coral, 
and  thus  form  the  phosphates  which  give  to 
the  guano  its  value.  The  guano  is  separated 
from  the  coral  in  the  following  manner :  There 
is  quite  a  force  of  natives  employed,  who  gather 
the  earth  in  large  heaps,  and  then  screen  it  in 
the  same  manner  as  fine  coal  is  separated  from 
coarse.  The  screens  are  about  eight  feet  by 
three,  and  the  iron  gauze  covering  them  is  fine, 
allowing  only  the  guano,  or  fine  portions  of  the 
earth,  to  pass  through,  and  leaving  the  coral  in 
the  screens.  The  guano  is  then  sacked,  and 
shipped  to  Hamburg,  whence  it  is  reshipped  to 
different  parts  of  Europe. 

Having  satisfied  our  curiosity  in  regard  to 
the  guano,  we  looked  about  us  for  other  objects 
of  interest.  There  is  quite  a  plantation  of  cocoa- 
nut  trees  on  one  side  of  the  island,  but  they  ap- 
pear to  be  slowly  dying.  It  is  strange  that 
although  this  tree  attains  a  great  hight,  and 
appears  capable  of  withstanding  the  storms  of 
decades,  yet  should  any  disease  or  worm  attack 
the  central  tuft  of  feathery  foliage  which  crowns 
its  top  the  tree  inevitably  dies.  There  were 
other  trees,  also,  on  the  island,  one  of  which, 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten,  furnishes  a  very 


A   DAY  ON  A    GUANO  ISLAND. 


beautiful  wood  for  cabinet  use.  Mr.  Arundel 
showed  us  an  easy  chair,  the  frame  of  which 
was  made  from  this  wood.  It  is  of  a  dark  color, 
takes  a  fine  polish,  and  is  as  durable  as  ma- 
hogany. 

We  had  been  all  this  time  slowly  walking  to- 
ward the  beach  which  partly  inclosed  the  island. 
Although  at  the  landing-place  the  reef  came 
close  up  to  the  shore,  on  the  western  side  of  the 
island  it  ran  out  into  the  ocean  about  half  a  mile 
from  the  land.  Here  there  was  a  fine  beach, 
two  or  three  miles  in  extent,  covered  with  glis- 
tening white  sand,  in  which  could  be  found 
many  beautiful  shells,  but  we  had  time  to  gath- 
er only  a  few.  There  were  the  shells  of  various 
kinds  of  lobsters,  crabs,  and  other  shell -fish, 
which  the  sun's  powerful  rays  had  bleached  to 
a  pearly  whiteness,  or  changed  into  hues  of  lav- 
ender, deep  purple,  and  brilliant  blue.  I  car- 
ried some  of  them  away  with  me,  but  they  were 
so  brittle  that  they  were  broken  on  the  passage 
home.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  anything  more 
beautiful  than  this  beach,  with  its  banks  of  snow- 
white,  glittering  sands,  the  green,  luxuriant  veg- 
etation above  them,  and  the  foamy,  crested 
waves,  which,  gallantly  charging  onward,  seem- 
ed eager  to  submerge  the  tiny  island,  until,  as  if 
in  obedience  to  that  mighty  voice  which  says, 
"Thus  far  shalt  thou  come,  and  no  farther,"  they 
suddenly  broke  and  divided  into  numberless  tiny 
ripples  at  our  feet. 

We  next  visited  a  small  lagoon,  which  had 
been  inclosed,  and  some  green  turtles,  caught 
by  the  gentlemen,  placed  therein.  But  alas  for 
their  future  anticipations  of  turtle  soup !  An 
enterprising  hard -shelled  turtle  had  made  an 
opening  in  the  corral^  and  not  only  had  he  him- 
self escaped,  but  the  others  had  all  followed  in 
his  wake.  Passing  through  a  small  grove  of 
trees,  we  were  shown  the  house  of  the  native 
minister,  built  of  bamboo,  up  in  the  branches  of 
one  of  the  trees.  Here  the  old  preacher  could 
sit  and  meditate  upon  his  sermon  for  the  com- 
ing Sabbath ;  and  eloquent,  indeed,  should  have 
been  his  discourse,  surrounded  as  he  was  by 
two  of  God's  most  glorious  works,  the  ocean 
and  the  heavens. 

We  had  been  roaming  about  for  several  hours, 
and  the  summons  to  dinner,  which  reached  us 
at  that  moment,  revealed  to  us  the  fact  that 
mental  food  will  not  satisfy  the  demands  of  the 
stomach,  and  that  "nature  abhors  a  vacuum" 
equally  in  mind  or  body.  Our  bill  of  fare  was 
quite  varied.  Fowls,  canned  meats  and  vege- 
tables, desiccated  potatoes,  pudding,  fruit,  and 
such  handsome  eggs  it  seemed  a  pity  to  break 
the  shells.  They  were  the  eggs  of  the  plover,  I 
believe,  and  beautifully  mottled  brown  and 
white,  gray,  blue,  and  a  delicate  green.  The 


frigate,  or  man-of-war,  bird  is  also  found  on 
these  islands.  This  bird,  instead  of  catching 
its  own  fish  from  the  ocean,  as  do  other  birds, 
waits  until  it  sees  some  poor  bird,  smaller  than 
itself,  wearily  flying  home  with  a  fish  in  its  beak. 
Darting  down  upon  it,  it  pecks  at  the  bird  until, 
exhausted,  it  drops  the  fish.  This  the  frigate 
bird  seizes  upon,  and  hastens  away  to  enjoy  its 
ill  gotten  meal,  while  the  other  bird  must  either 
go  supperless  to  bed  or  catch  another  fish. 

Our  hosts  made  the  dinner  hour  pass  most 
pleasantly  by  their  interesting  accounts  of  the 
neighboring  islands,  with  their  products,  birds, 
and  so  forth.  When  we  rose  from  the  table  we 
were  shown  through  the  dwelling-house,  and 
then  the  gentlemen  retired  to  write  their  letters, 
having  bidden  us  to  look  around  wherever  fancy 
dictated.  The  house  was  a  large,  one-story  cot- 
tage, built  of  wood,  with  a  broad  veranda  run- 
ning around  three  sides  of  it.  The  room  in 
which  we  dined  was  dining  and  sitting-room 
combined.  A  parlor  organ  stood  in  one  corner, 
pictures  hung  on  the  walls,  and  rare  shells  and 
curiosities  were  placed  in  attractive  positions. 
There  were  book -cases  filled  with  books,  mag- 
azines, and  papers  from  every  part  of  the  world. 
Newspapers  which  I  had  not  seen  since  I  left 
Massachusetts,  years  ago,  looked  at  me  with 
familiar  pages,  and  my  heart  thrilled  at  the 
thought  that  words  penned  in  my  native  State, 
thousands  of  miles  away,  wafted  across  a  con- 
tinent and  over  the  broad  Pacific,  should  meet 
my  eye  on  this  lone  island.  Native  mats  were 
strewn  upon  the  floor,  and  everything,  from  the 
little  flower  garden  outside  of  the  veranda  to 
the  exquisite  neatness  inside  of  the  house,  be- 
spoke the  culture  and  refinement  of  our  gentle- 
manly host.  Adjoining  the  sitting-room  was 
the  bed-room,  containing  two  single  beds.  Back 
of  these  rooms  was  the  laboratory  of  the  Super- 
intendent. There  were  crucibles  and  retorts, 
a  brick  furnace,  shelves  containing  bottles  of 
chemicals,  acids,  and  powders,  bags  containing 
samples  of  earth  brought  or  sent  from  other 
islands  to  be  tested  as  to  their  value  in  guano, 
and  many  other  needful  adjuncts  to  a  scientific 
investigator.  There  were  also  curious  looking 
minerals,  and  the  gathered  trophies  of  many  a 
voyage  to  distant  lands.  Another  large  room, 
used  as  a  store  for  the  natives  employed  on  the 
island,  and  a  bath  room,  completed  the  list  of 
apartments,  the  kitchen  being  in  a  separate 
building,  at  a  short  distance  from  the  main 
house.  There  were  also  a  fowl-house,  a  stable 
for  the  three  horses  employed  on  the  island, 
and  the  bamboo  huts  of  the  natives,  forming 
altogether  quite  a  settlement. 

Mr.  Arundel,  the  Superintendent  of  these 
guano  islands,  is  what  we  too  seldom  find  in 


n6 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


these  far-away  places — a  Christian  gentleman, 
educated  and  refined,  who  tries  in  every  way  to 
benefit  those  who  come  within  reach  of  his  in- 
fluence. The  natives  reverence  and  love  him. 
Were  more  of  our  white  traders  and  business 
men  who  go  to  the  islands  of  the  South  Pacific 
possessed  of  a  similar  spirit,  it  would  not  be  an 
open  question,  as  it  certainly  must  be  now  to 
any  thinking  person  who  visits  these  islands, 
whether  civilization  has  not  been  more  of  a 
curse  to  the  natives  than  a  benefit. 

But  the  pleasantest  days  must  have  an  end- 
ing, and  the  sun,  gradually,  but  surely,  sinking 
toward  the  western  horizon,  admonished  us  that 
the  short  twilight  of  the  tropics  would  soon  be 
upon  us,  and  that  we  must  return  to  our  ship. 


The  tide  now  covered  the  reef,  and  as  it  was 
not  considered  safe  to  bring  the  boat  up  over  it, 
lest  the  jagged  edges  of  coral  might  injure  it, 
we  ladies,  seated  in  Chinese  lounging  chairs, 
were  escorted  in  honor  down  to  the  boat  by  na- 
tives, two  on  each  side  of  our  chairs,  holding 
us  up  above  the  water,  which  was  nearly  three 
feet  deep.  Every  now  and  then  the  foot  of  one 
of  the  men  would  slip  into  one  of  the  numerous 
hollows  of  the  reef,  and  we  had  fears  of  an  in- 
voluntary bath.  But  we  reached  the  boat  with- 
out any  such  mishap  befalling  us,  and  with  many 
thanks  to  the  gentlemen  for  their  courtesy  and 
kind  attentions,  and  amid  the  smiling  "yuran- 
nahs"  of  our  native  bearers,  we  bade  farewell  to 
Caroline  Island.  EMILY  S.  Loub. 


••  * 


MOTHS    ROUND   A   LAMP. 


The  red  sun  fell  two  sultry  hours  before; 

No  dew  has  made  the  lawn's  vague  spaces  damp; 
In  through  my  open  windows  more  and  more 

The  giddy  moths  come  reeling  round  the  lamp. 

From  bournes  of  Nature's  pastoral  silence  brought, 
Below  the  night's  pure  orbs,  the  wind's  faint  breath, 

What  willful  spell,  I  question  of  my  thought, 
Entices  them  to  this  mad  glaring  death? 

By  what  perverse  doom  are  they  led  to  meet 
This  fiery  ruin,  when  so  calm  and  cool 

The  deep  grass  drowses  at  the  elms'  dim  feet, 

The  moist  leaves  droop  above  the  starlit  pool?  .  .  . 

But  while  in  dreamy  watch  I  linger  long, 
To  duskier  coloring  my  mood  recedes, 

Till  now  the  tranquil  chamber  seems  to  throng 
With  dark  wild  imageries  of  man's  misdeeds. 

And  then,  like  some  full  rustle  of  sudden  wings, 
A  long  breeze  floats  disconsolately  past, 

And  steals  from  unseen  foliage  that  it  swings 
A  murmur  of  lamentation,  till  at  last, 

While  the  sad  pulses  of  each  gradual  tone 
A  sadder  meaning  from  my  reverie  win, 

All  earth's  rebellious  agony  seems  to  moan 
The  curse,  the  mystery  of  all  human  sin ! 


EDGAR  FAWCETT. 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


117 


A  STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Howard  felt  the  necessity  of  reaching  San 
]os6  with  all  possible  dispatch.  But  he  was 
compelled  to  walk,  and  the  distance  was  about 
fifteen  miles.  He  hoped,  however,  to  fall  in 
with  a  wagon;  but  night  had  overtaken  him, 
and  he  had  found  no  assistance.  It  was  impos- 
sible for  him  to  sleep.  Already  he  was  weary 
and  footsore ;  but  he  was  capable  of  great  en- 
durance, was  full  of  youth  and  life  and  strength, 
and  was  spurred  forward  by  a  powerful  desire 
to  shield  those  who  were  so  dear  to  him.  He 
could  do  this  with  perfect  ease.  The  case  was 
plain  enough — his  surrender  and  confession 
would  relieve  them  of  all  suspicion. 

He  was,  as  Judge  Simon  had  conjectured,  an 
extraordinary  man ;  but,  after  all,  a  confession 
of  a  crime  is  not  an  uncommon  thing.  Fre- 
quently the  commission  of  a  desperate  deed  is 
the  sole  purpose  of  life.  When  it  is  done,  every- 
thing is  accomplished,  and  the  problem  of  life 
has  been  worked  out,  and  the  end  reached.  In 
such  cases,  unless  coveted  death  comes  to  his 
relief,  the  criminal  thereafter  leads  a  miserable, 
broken  life.  It  requires  a  peculiar  tempera- 
ment to  bring  about  such  a  condition.  There 
must  be  morbid  sensitivenesss  and  a  quick 
conscience.  Hope  must  be  dead,  and  all  the 
charms  of  life  must  be  changed  to  bitterness. 

Perhaps  Howard  was  playing  a  deep  game, 
and  saw  a  way  out  of  the  difficulty. 

Nevertheless,  his  purpose  was  strong,  and  no 
power  in  heaven  or  earth  could  shake  it.  Hav- 
ing a  sound  judgment,  and  fully  relying  upon  it, 
he  would  accept  from  no  one  any  advice.  As 
Judge  Simon  once  remarked,  it  was  strange  that 
the  young  man  should  persist  in  a  course  which 
he  knew  would  break  his  mother's  heart.  Was 
this  merely  an  alternative? 

Howard  trudged  heavily  along  the  road,  fol- 
lowing the  windings  of  Los  Gatos.  The  stream 
had  not  yet  subsided  to  the  volume  of  a  mere 
brook,  and  sometimes  the  road,  which  frequent- 
ly traversed  the  bed  of  the  stream  in  dry  weath- 
er, wound  in  and  out  among  clumps  of  shrub- 
bery on  the  bank. 

It  was  some  time  after  dark  that  he  found 
himself  confronted  by  a  tall  man,  who  stood 
perfectly  still,  awaiting  him.  He  had  been 
walking  with  his  head  down,  absorbed  in  his 
thoughts.  He  suddenly  halted,  and  his  heart 

Vol.  III.— 8. 


leaped  with  a  strange  dread.  He  had  caught 
sight  of  the  man  with  much  the  same  feeling 
that  one  sees  an  object  in  the  room  at  first 
waking,  and  which,  but  imperfectly  seen  and 
understood,  takes  on  a  hideous  shape,  and 
causes  fright ;  or  as,  when  walking  in  the  dark, 
one  catches  sight  of  an  object  that  seems  im- 
mediately near,  when,  in  fact,  it  may  be  a  great 
distance  away. 

Howard  was  hardly  susceptible  to  fear,  but 
being  of  a  nervous  temperament  he  was  easily 
startled.  His  first  impulse  was  to  address  the 
silent  figure.  Then  he  laughed  at  his  tempo- 
rary timidity,  and  went  forward,  expecting  the 
man  to  stand  aside,  or  speak,  or  show  some 
sign  of  life.  At  this  time  he  was  about  ten 
feet  from  the  man.  Howard^  was  greatly  sur- 
prised to  see  him  make  a  movement  as  if  to 
spring  forward,  with  his  right  arm  raised,  and 
something  in  his  hand.  This  could  barely  be 
seen  in  the  gloom.  The  man,  however,  sud- 
denly checked  himself,  sprung  aside,  and  dis- 
appeared in  the  brush.  Howard  called  after 
him,  but  received  no  answer,  and  presently 
everything  was  silent  again. 

This  strange  occurrence  filled  the  young 
man's  mind,  with  forebodings  of  no  pleasant 
character.  He  went  on,  pondering  deeply  on 
it,  when  suddenly  he  uttered  a  suppressed  ex- 
clamation : 

"The  Crane!" 

Was  this  man  hunting  his  life,  and  did  his 
courage  fail  at  the  supreme  moment?  Howard 
was  almost  in  his  power.  A  quick  stroke  might 
have  done  the  work,  though  the  young  man 
was  active  and  strong,  and  might  have  turned 
the  tables.  He  searched  his  mind  for  an  ex- 
planation, and  then  discovered  it:  the  Crane 
would  murder  him,  and  hide  his  body,  and 
claim  Mrs.  Howard's  offered  reward.  Howard 
smiled  in  some  bitterness  as  he  reflected  on  the 
fact  that  the  means  his  mother  had  adopted  to 
save  him  were  now  directed  against  his  life. 
The  Crane  did  not  know  of  the  reward  for  How- 
ard's arrest  that  had  been  offered  by  the  author- 
ities, which  was  ten  times  as  great  as  the  stake 
for  which  he  played. 

"Very  well,"  thought  Howard.  "If  he  at- 
tempts it  again  I  will  tell  him  of  the  Governor's 
reward,  and  permit  him  to  arrest  me." 

Still,  this  conclusion  did  not  banish  the  dread 
he  experienced,  for  the  Crane  might  strike  him 


n8 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


in  the  back  unawares.  The  young  man  did 
not  really  believe  that  the  Crane  would  again 
make  the  attempt ;  but  his  recent  narrow  escape 
filled  him  with  alarm,  and  he  was  determined 
to,  be  on  his  guard  henceforth.  With  brisk 
walking  he  ought  to  reach  San  Jos&  by  sunrise ; 
but  the  whole  night  was  before  him,  and  his 
position  was  perilous.  As  a  precautionary  meas- 
ure, he  armed  himself  with  a  heavy  stick,  which 
he  used  as  a  walking -cane,  and  again  walked 
briskly  on. 

The  night  was  still,  and  the  least  sound  could 
be  heard  a  considerable  distance.  Once  or  twice 
he  thought  he  heard  the  crackling  of  twigs  as  of 
some  one  walking  along  the  mountain-side,  and 
on  such  occasions  he  halted  and  listened  intent- 
ly, and  heard  nothing  more.  He  grasped  his 
stick  firmly,  and  trudged  on,  never  passing  a 
clump  of  bushes  or  a  large  tree  on  the  road-side 
without  expecting  the  appearance  of  the  Crane. 

About  ten  o'clock  he  heard  behind  him,  faint 
in  the  distance,  the  approach  of  a  wagon.  Just 
as  he  had  halted,  and  was  straining  his  hearing 
to  catch  the  sounds,  something  sprung  upon 
his  back,  fastening  its  fangs  in  his  shoulder, 
and  suddenly  jerking  him  to  the  ground.  He 
fell  upon  his  back,  and  his  assailant  pressed 
his  knee  upon  his  breast,  and  raised  a  knife, 
and  struck.  Howard  caught  the  wrist,  and  the 
Crane  made  powerful  efforts  to  liberate  his  hand; 
but  Howard  held  it  like  a  vice.  A  quiet  strug- 
gle then  ensued.  Howard  was  a  stronger  man 
than  the  Crane,  and  easily  held  the  right  arm 
of  the  latter  with  his  own  left  hand.  But  he 
could  not  rise.  The  Crane  held  him  to  the 
ground.  It  was  then  merely  a  matter  of  en- 
durance and  time.  Whoever  should  get  pos- 
session of  the  knife  was  the  victor.  The  Crane 
closed  his  fingers  on  Howard's  throat,  and  How- 
ard tore  his  hand  away,  and  thus  held  him 
firmly  by  both  hands,  . 

The  wagon  rapidly  approached.  The  Crane 
suddenly  became  aware  of  its  proximity ;  and, 
cursing  and  twisting,  attempted  to  rise;  but 
Howard  pulled  him  down,  and  held  him. 

"Hello,  there  !"  called  one  of  the  two  men  in 
the  wagon,  as  the  horses  reared  with  fright  at 
the  strange  sight  in  the  road. 

No  answer  was  returned.  They  alighted,  and 
approached  cautiously.  The  two  men  on  the 
ground  were  breathing  audibly. 

"I  believe  they  are  the  men  we  want.  Who 
are  you?  What  are  you  doing?" 

"Take  that  knife  from  him,"  said  Howard, 
speaking  with  difficulty,  all  the  Crane's  weight 
being  on  his  chest. 

"Fighting,  are  you?"  replied  one  of  the  men, 
as  he  secured  the  knife,  which  the  Crane  will- 
ingly yielded  up. 


Howard  released  his  grasp,  and  the  Crane 
rose,  followed  by  Howard.  The  two  strangers 
were  greatly  astonished.  The  Crane  remarked : 

"He  was  a-tryin'  to  git  his  work  in  on  me, 
an'  I  got  the  knife  away  from  him,  and  throwed 
him  down." 

Howard  simply  smiled  at  this  statement. 

The  man  who  had  remained  in  the  back- 
ground, seeing  that  the  danger  was  over,  stretch- 
ed himself,  causing  apparently  every  joint  in 
his  body  to  snap.  He  slowly  produced  a  re- 
volver, and  said : 

"Ye're  the  man  I'm  lookin'  fer,  Howard. 
Ye're  my  prizner.  Ye  wasn't  satisfied  with 
killin'  a  girl,  but  ye  wanted  to  put  this  fellow 
out  o'  the  way." 

Howard  made  no  reply.  The  men  bound 
him,  and  placed  him  in  the  wagon ;  and  during 
all  the  time  thus  occupied,  Howard  did  not  ut- 
ter a  word.  As  he  took  his  seat  in  the  floor 
of  the  wagon,  one  of  the  men  grasped  his  col- 
lar, that  he  might  not  escape. 

"Hello!  What  is  this?"  he  exclaimed. 

He  released  his  hold,  and  examined  his  hand. 

"Blood,"  he  said.  "Where're  you  cut,  young 
man?" 

Howard  sullenly  remained  silent.  The  man 
lighted  a  lantern,  and  examined  his  prisoner's 
shoulder,  and  found  a  knife  wound. 

"Aha!"  he  exclaimed.  "That  was  struck 
from  behind." 

Then  he  looked  around  for  the  Crane,  who 
had  disappeared. 

"  Tears  to  me,"  said  the  man  of  noisy  joints, 
as  they  whipped  up  the  horses,  "jedgin'  from 
the  wipe  he  fetched  ye  in  the  shoulder,  that 
ye  warn't  the  man  on  the  kill.  'S  thet  so  ?'' 

Howard  deigned  no  reply.  He  was  pecul- 
iarly a  stubborn  man,  and  scornful  of  many 
things. 

"Well,"  mused  the  clerk5  "I  reckin'  ye're 
right  to  hold  yer  lip.  Mebbe  he  hed  a  proper 
grudge  agin  ye;"  saying  which,  he  relapsed 
into  silence,  and  the  wagon  bowled  along  the 
mountain  road  through  the  dust. 

With  all  necessary  pomp  and  decorum  the 
two  men  turned  over  their  prisoner  to  Casserly. 
They  related  with  much  satisfaction  their  acute- 
ness  in  discovering  the  outlaw  through  his  pro- 
found disguise,  and  his  cunning  behavior  in 
attempting  to  escape  identification,  and  the 
sanguinary  struggle  they  witnessed  in  the  road. 

Casserly  was  grateful.  His  plans  all  worked 
smoothly  enough,  and  he  had  little  of  which 
to  complain.  The  prisoner's  wound  was  very 
slight,  for  the  Crane  in  his  excitement  had 
missed  his  mark. 

The  problem  that  now  confronted  Casserly 
was  this :  While  there  could  be  no  doubt  that 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


119 


all  three  of  the  prisoners  were  cognizant  of  the 
facts  connected  with  the  death  of  Rose  Howard, 
it  was  utterly  improbable  that  all  were  guilty; 
consequently,  the  criminal  must  be  one,  or  per- 
haps two ;  and  the  difficulty  lay  in  extorting  a 
statement  from  any  one  of  them.  Casserly  had 
studied  this  problem  from  every  point  of  view, 
and  he  and  Garratt  had  discussed  the  matter 
at  great  length.  It  was  quite  true  that  the 
testimony  of  Emily  and  Mrs.  Howard  could  be 
dispensed  with,  for  John  Howard  reiterated  his 
confession,  adding  that  neither  his  mother  nor 
the  girl  was  connected  with  the  affair  in  any 
way  whatever.  It  was  his  own  concern,  he 
said. 

Casserly  was  somewhat  startled  to  hear  How- 
ward  say  in  some  confusion  : 

"I  killed  her  accidentally." 

"Ah,"  thought  Casserly,  "he  is  regretting 
already,  and  is  commencing  to  hedge.  I  will 
talk  further  with  him  about  this." 

Howard  was  again  in  the  Little  Tank,  which 
had  been  made  secure. 

"I  regret,"  he  said,  in  a  calm  manner,  "that 
I  informed  you  the  shot  was  fired  accidentally. 
I  regret  it,  because  I  surrendered  myself  as 
a  murderer,  whereas  accidental  killing  is  not 
murder ;  and  in  this  particular  there  is  a  vari- 
ance in  my  confession.  But  let  me  put  the 
case  to  you  in  this  way:  When  I  saw  that  I 
had  killed  her — she  was  very  dear  to  me,"  and 
the  prisoner's  voice  was  not  quite  steady  as  he 
said  this — "I  was  in  despair,  and  acted  impul- 
sively. Again,  if  I  had  at  first  said  the  killing 
was  accidental,  it  would,  as  matters  have  turned 
out,  have  been  discredited  by  all  the  evident 
efforts  my  mother  has  made  to  shield  me." 

"  If  it  was  accidental,  why  did  she  wish  to 
shield  you?" 

"Because,  in  my  despair,  I  neglected  to  tell 
her  that  it  was  accidental,  and  she  acted  under 
misapprehension." 

This  explanation  completely  disarmed  Cas- 
serly. It  was  the  solution  of  the  whole  mys- 
tery, and  was  so  unexpected  as  to  be  a  violent 
surprise.  He  sent  for  Garratt,  and  related  this 
new  development. 

"I  would  by  no  means  accept  it,"  said  Gar- 
ratt. "Why  did  you  buy  the  pistol,  Howard?" 

Garratt's  brusque  manner  incensed  Howard, 
who  regarded  the  Coroner  with  a  look  of  scorn. 
Turning  to  Casserly,  Howard  quietly  said : 

"If  you  take  this — person  away,  I  will  ex- 
plain it." 

Garratt  turned  on  his  heel  and  left,^boiling 
with  rage.  Before  he  had  got  beyond  ear-shot, 
Howard  said,  deferentially,  to  Casserly : 

"If  you  have  no  serious  objection,  I  will  thrash 
him." 


Casserly  smiled  gravely  at  this  nonchalance. 
Garratt  cast  a  terrible  look  upon  the  prisoner, 
and  then  passed  out. 

"The  purchasing  of  the  pistol,"  said  Howard, 
"was  merely  a  circumstance.  I  bought  it  for 
the  simple  reason  that  burglaries  are  so  numer- 
ous now." 

This  was  plausible,  for  house-breakers  infest- 
ed the  town. 

"Why  didn't  you  explain  this  matter  to  your 
mother  when  she  stole  you  from  the  mob?" 

"Because  she  would  not  let  me  speak,  the 
Crane  being  present;  and,  to  be  sure  that  I 
should  not,  she  removed  my  clothes,  stuffed 
them  with  straw,  secured  the  two  placards,  and 
did  not,  during  the  whole  time,  remove  the  gag 
from  my  mouth,  fearing  I  should  say  something 
that  it  would  be  dangerous  for  the  Crane  to 
hear.  It  was  after  she  left  me  that  the  Crane 
removed  the  gag." 

"Did  she  untie  your  hands?" 

"No." 

"How  did  she  remove  your  coat,  then?" 

"She  cut  the  sleeves  with  a  long  hunting- 
knife." 

Casserly  nodded,  and  said : 

"That's  right;  the  sleeves  were  cut.  You 
would  have  removed  the  gag  and  explained  if 
she  had  released  your  hands?" 

"I  might  have  done  so,  and  I  might  not. 
There  was  no  necessity  for  it." 

"Why  did  you  not  come  back  as  soon  as  the 
Crane  released  you?" 

"I  saw  no  necessity  for  that,  for  I  did  not 
know  that  my  mother  had  been  arrested,  or 
that  Emily  had  fled,  or  that  a  reward  had  been 
offered  for  my  arrest,  until  I  read  the  account 
in  the  store  of  the  man  who  arrested  me.  As 
soon  as  I  did  find  out  that  it  had  taken  so  seri- 
ous a  turn,  I  started  to  come,  and  was  over- 
taken and  arrested.  Furthermore,  after  I  had 
regained  my  liberty  the  possibility  occurred  to 
me  that  my  statement  of  accidental  killing  would 
not  be  believed,  and  I  valued  my  mother's  hap- 
piness too  highly  to  run  the  risk  of  the  gallows 
through  a  possible  unwillingness  of  the  jury  to 
credit  my  statement." 

At  Casserly's  request,  Howard  entered  into 
the  minute  details  of  the  killing. 

He  was  explaining  to  his  cousin  the  use  of  the 
revolver,  when  it  was  accidentally  discharged. 

Casserly  would  have  been  perfectly  satisfied 
with  this  statement,  though  it  caused  him  dis- 
appointment and  chagrin,  and  he  could  have 
effected  the  young  man's  release ;  but  Garratt, 
whom  he  immediately  sought,  laughed  at  him 
for  his  credulity,  and  made  him  waver. 

"I  am  surprised,"  he  said,  "that  an  experi- 
enced man  like  you  should  be  hoodwinked  by 


120 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


such  a  shallow  story.  It  seems  probable,  but  I 
tell  you  it  is  not  true." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,  one  reason  is  that  his  perturbation 
and  excitement  at  the  time  of  his  surrender 
should  have  been  grief.  Again,  it  is  altogether 
improbable — and  you  know  it  is,  Casserly — that 
he  should  have  neglected  to  inform  his  mother 
at  once." 

"Then,  what  do  you  think  is  the  truth?" 

"  I  am  forced  to  one  conclusion,  Casserly.  I 
hardly  believe  the  boy  is  guilty,  though  his  face 
shows  that  he  is  capable  of  anything?" 

"Who  is  guilty?" 

"The  mother." 

This  was  the  first  time  that  such  a  proposi- 
tion had  been  put  in  definite  shape,  and  Cas- 
serly unconsciously  felt  his  heart  sink. 

"What  is  your  reason  for  thinking  that,  Doc- 
tor?" 

"You  know  we  have  learned  that  Rose  How- 
ard was  a  dependent,  while  Emily  Randolph 
has  a  large  property.  The  mother  is  proud  and 
ambitious.  She  induced  this  girl  to  visit  her, 
in  the  hope  that  she  would  win  her  son,  who,  I 
believe,  loved  the  dead  girl,  and  was  broken- 
hearted at  her  death.  The  mother,  finding  this 
to  fail,  murdered  her  niece.  Knowing  that  his 
mother  committed  the  deed,  and  having  noth- 
ing more  to  live  for,  he  surrendered  himself  to 
save  his  mother.  Now,  see  what  a  craven  cow- 
ard he  is :  after  having  had  time  to  reflect  upon 
it,  and  regain  his  equilibrium,  he  commences  to 
retract  and  modify.  It  is  our  duty,  Casserly,  to 
bring  the  right  person  to  justice.  It  would  be 
wrong  to  allow  this  young  man  to  be  tried,  and 
possibly  convicted,  for  a  crime  of  which  he  is 
not  guilty." 

Casserly  was  silent.  The  Coroner's  words 
impressed  him  deeply. 

"Oh,  by  the  by,  Casserly,  did  I  show  you  this 
letter?" 

"What  is  it?" 

"A  long  letter  from  Howard  to  his  cousin. 
It  was  found  this  morning.  That  will  convince 
you." 

Casserly  read  the  letter.  It  was  an  earnest 
outpouring  of  the  deepest  affection.  It  puzzled 
Casserly  exceedingly.  Then  he  noticed  the 
date. 

"Why,"  said  he,  "it  is  ten  months  old." 

"That  makes  no  difference." 

"He  might  have  changed  his  love." 

"Bah !  Are  you  looking  for  excuses,  Cas- 
serly? Again,  on  the  night  of.  the  killing  the 
mother  raved,  and  said,  'My  poor  boy,  my  poor 
boy  !'  What  did  that  mean?  Simply  that  she 
regretted  the  act,  and  feared  the  effect  on  her 
son." 


"What  would  you  suggest?" 

"We  will  make  the  woman  confess." 

"How?" 

"By  confronting  her  with  her  son's  confes- 
sion. We  will  let  her  know  nothing  of  this  new 
phase  he  attempts  to  thrust  upon  us.  She  is 
very  deep  and  wily,  and  may  find  a  way  to  ex- 
plain it  all.  But  I  feel  certain  that  she  will  not 
permit  him  to  stand  trial;  and,  if  we  are  cau- 
tious, we  may  extort  a  confession.  I  have  seen 
the  girl.  It  is  utterly  useless  to  try  anything 
in  that  quarter.  She  has  no  confidence  in  her 
own  shrewdness,  and,  besides,  leaves  everything 
to  Mrs.  Howard :  so  will  not  speak." 

"Well,  I  am  willing  to  try  it,"  said  Casserly, 
reflecting. 

"It  is  your  duty,  Casserly.  Now  listen.  I 
suspect  Judge  Simon  of  a  great  deal." 

"What?"  asked  Casserly,  opening  his  eyes. 

."Never  mind  now.  For  all  you  know  he 
might  have  arranged  this  last  plan,  and  the 
mother  may  know  all.  But  you  must  not  let 
him  see  Howard  again,  and  he  must  not  know 
what  has  occurred,  if  he  doesn't  already  know. 
Let  us  go  and  confront  the  woman." 

This  they  did  at  once. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

They  found  her  looking  weary  and  broken 
down.  She  received  them  graciously,  but  with 
some  reserve.  This  alarmed  Garratt.  He  asked: 

"Has  Judge  Simon  been  here  this  morning, 
madam?" 

"Yes." 

"  I  suppose  he  told  you  of  your  son's  arrest." 

"No,"  she  replied,  becoming  very  pale,  and 
much  frightened. 

Garratt  was  triumphant.  Evidently  the  old 
man  had  not  heard  the  news. 

"Yes;  he  was  brought  in  this  morning." 

She  regarded  them  eagerly  and  anxiously.  It 
could  plainly  be  seen  that  her  strength  was 
failing,  and  that,  with  shattered  nerves,  she 
was  not  the  woman  of  two  days  ago.  She  had 
been  unable  to  sleep,  and  could  not  partake  of 
food.  In  spite  of  her  strong  efforts  to  retain 
complete  mastery  over  herself,  she  failed,  and 
her  face  betrayed  her.  The  most  powerful  agen- 
cy that  hunters  for  criminals  can  employ  is  to 
wear  out  their  game,  and  bring  it  to  bay 
through  exhaustion.  The  principle  is  this: 
anything  is  preferable  to  suspense. 

"I  see  no  chance  for  him,  madam;  he  pro- 
tests his  guilt." 

She  remained  speechless  a  long  time,  and 
then  asked : 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


121 


"Will  you  let  me  see  my  son?" 

"It  is  out  of  the  question,  madam." 

Again  was  she  silent.     Presently  she  asked : 

"May  I  speak  to  Judge  Simon?" 

"He  has  gone  to  San  Francisco  to  remain  a 

few  days.     He  left  this  note  for  you,  as  he  was 

called  away  suddenly." 

She  read  the  note,  which  ran  thus  : 

"MRS.  HOWARD: — I  think  it  will  be  far  better  for 
all  concerned  to  make  a  full  statement.  I  advise  you 
to  do  this.  Trust  all  to  me.  ADOLPH  SIMON." 

This  was  the  severest  blow  she  had  received. 
Was  Judge  Simon  betraying  her?  Many  con- 
jectures rapidly  chased  one  another  through 
her  weary  brain ;  and  then  she  hung  her  head, 
and  gave  up  all  hope.  She  had  staked  her  all, 
and  had  lost.  It  was  impossible  that  Judge 
Simon  had  betrayed  her.  She  banished  the 
thought,  ashamed  that  she  had  entertained  it  a 
moment.  "Trust  all  to  me."  That  meant  a 
great  deal — it  meant  everything.  Perhaps, 
then,  it  were  better  to  tell  the  whole  truth. 
Perhaps  he  saw  a  way  through  it  all.  He  was 
deeply  learned  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  the 
law,  and  his  judgment  was  better  than  hers. 
What  would  be  the  effect  of  prevarication?  It 
may  destroy  the  effect  of  the  truth,  if  the  truth 
must  be  told  at  last.  She  pondered  long  and 
deeply.  The  way  was  dark,  and  she  groped 
blindly,  and  stumbled,  and 

"  I  will  tell  you  the  whole  truth,"  she  said  at 
last,  in  her  soft,  musical  voice,  but  with  pain  in 
her  eyes. 

Again  did  she  become  silent,  as  if  unable 'to 
utter  the  words,  or  as  if  pondering  beforehand 
on  their  effect. 

"Well?"  asked  Garratt,  his  voice  startling 
her. 

Then  she  hung  her  head,  and  would  not  look 
them  in  the  face,  as,  in  low  tones,  she  told  the 
following  story,  raveling,  the  meanwhile,  a 
handkerchief  which  she  had  torn  to  bind  her 
aching  temples : 

"I  had  hoped,"  she  said,  "that  I  would  be 

spared  this  conf statement,  I  had  hoped 

that  my  son's  innocence  would  be  established ; 
and  that,  all  suspicion  having  been  removed 
from  him,  it  would  not  rest  elsewhere.  At  first 
I  did  not  believe  that  justice  would  be  so  per- 
sistent ;  and  in  my  blindness  I  thought  it  would 
become  weary  of  the  hunt.  I  hoped  that,  as 
there  was  so  little  to  be  gained  by  the  discov- 
ery of  the  truth ;  as  nothing  demanded  it  but  a 
strict  construction  of  justice  and  the  clamor  of 
the  people  for  a  careful  investigation ;  and  as 
it  would  destroy  happiness  and,  perhaps,  life, 
without  recalling  the  dead — I  hoped  that  jus- 
tice would  become  weary,  and  desist.  Doctor 


Garratt,"  she  continued,  regarding  that  gen- 
tleman steadily  a  few  moments,  "after  you 
have  heard  what  I  am  about  to  say,  I  hope 
you  will  not  regret  your  zeal.  I  trust  that  in 
years  to  come,  when  age  shall  have  bowed  you 
down,  and  the  grave  opens  at  your  feet;  or 
when,  by  some  unexpected  means,  sorrow  may 
overtake  you,  and  your  heart  thus  become  soft- 
ened, and  opened  to  the  memory  of  things  that 
you  have  done,  and  of  acts  of  harshness  or 
kindness  that,  through  a  sense  of  duty,  you 
have  performed — I  trust  that  then  you  may  not 
regret  your  zeal.  I  shall  pray  that,  for  your 
own  happiness,  and  that  of  your  wife  and  chil- 
dren, you  may  never  learn  the  grand  truth  that 
human  charity  is  the  noblest  virtue,  nor  that 
the  standard  which  the  purity  of  our  own  lives 
raises  up  for  all  other  lives  is  not  always  last- 
ing. You  have  hunted  me  down,  Doctor  Gar- 
ratt." 

She  dropped  her  eyes  to  the  handkerchief 
which  she  was  raveling,  and  pulled  out  several 
threads  at  once,  causing  the  fringe  to  lengthen 
perceptibly. 

"Mr.  Casserly,"  she  continued,  "I  believe 
you  have  done  your  duty.  I  think  you  have 
noble  and  generous  impulses.  It  is  my  opinion 
— though  I  may  be  mistaken  in  my  estimate  of 
you — that  if  you  had  relied  solely  on  your  own 
construction  of  right,  this  last  extremity  would 
not  have  been  reached — it  would  have  been 
unnecessary.  I  am  sure  that  what  you  will 
learn  from  my  recital  will  pain  you,  even  though 
it  may  not  plant  a  sting  in  your  conscience. 
Your  regret  will  be,  not  alone  that  justice  is 
harsh,  but  that  you  have  been  led  to  believe 
that  justice  is  necessary.  I  have  no  reproaches 
for  you,  Mr.  Casserly." 

The  fringe  was  lengthening  very  slowly. 

"Gentlemen,  my  son  is  innocent.  It  makes 
little  difference  to  me  whether  you  think  I  am 
attempting  to  shield  him  or  am  telling  the  truth. 
Indeed,  I  think  that  you  expected  me  to  pro- 
tect him.  I  rescued  him  from  a  terrible  death, 
and  at  the  same  time  tore  him  from  the  grasp 
of  the  law.  I  would  have  done  it  though  he  had 
been  guilty  of  the  darkest  crime  that  history 
knows.  I  would  have  saved  him  though  he 
had  attempted  my  own  life.  He  is  a  noble  boy. 
I  knew  he  would  be,  when,  as  a  babe,  I  held 
him  to  my  breast ;  and  doubly  great  did  my  de- 
votion to  him  become  when  his  father  died,  ten 
years  ago.  He  is  my  only  child,  and,  what  is 
infinitely  more,  my  only  son.  And  no  circum- 
stance has  ever  transpired  to  shake  my  love  for 
him,  or  to  make  him  other  than  what  he  is  at 
this  moment — my  king." 

She  paused  after  saying  this,  for  her  voice 
was  husky,  and  she  was  busily  engaged  in  re- 


122 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


moving  a  tangle  in  the  fringe,  which,  being  long, 
was  becoming  rebellious. 

"Is  it  possible,  gentlemen,  that  none  of  you 
have  understood  his  nature  well  enough  to  see 
that  his  persistency  in  avowing  his  guilt  is  un- 
natural ?  Are  you  so  blind  to  truth,  and  so  ab- 
sorbed in  an  insatiable  desire  to  mete  out  pun- 
ishment for  a  crime  you  know  has  been  com- 
mitted, that  you  cannot  see  his  motive?  Con- 
sider :  he  is  not  a  man  capable  of  cool  and  de- 
liberate calculation.  His  nature  is  impulsive, 
because  his  heart  is  warm  and  generous.  What, 
then,  would  be  the  natural  consequence?  Sup- 
pose that  he  loved  his  mother  even  with  the  love 
of  simple  gratitude ;  suppose  that  this  love  was 
merely  an  appreciation  of  his  mother's  devotion; 
suppose  that  from  this  source  came  not  a  tenth 
of  the  love  he  bore  his  mother,  but  was  the 
deeper  and  truer  love  of  a  son—  a  love  that 
would  live  through  a  mother's  cruelty,  through 
her  disgrace,  through  her  poverty,  through  ev- 
erything, even  hate — what  would  he  do  were 
she  in  great  distress?  Think  of  that  carefully. 
I  would  ask  you,  Mr.  Casserly,  what  would  you 
do  for  your  mother?" 

She  raised  her  eyes,  and  regarded  Casserly 
for  a  moment,  while  he  looked  only  at  the  floor. 
The  fragment  of  cloth  was  now  half  raveled, 
and  the  length  of  the  fringe  gave  her  consider- 
able trouble ;  so  she  tore  away  the  hem  from  the 
other  side,  and  started  afresh.  The  threads  be- 
gan to  fall  rapidly  on  the  floor. 

"You  will  readily  understand,  and  believe 
his  innocence,  when  I  tell  you  the  history. 
Rose  Howard  was  adopted  by  my  husband 
when  she  was  quite  a  child.  She  was  a  sweet, 
lovable,  unselfish  child,  and  we  loved  her  dear- 
ly. She  brought  so  much  sunshine  into  the 
house !  Her  flaxen  hair,  and  rosy  cheeks,  and 
bright  blue  eyes,  and  cheery  child's  laugh,  trans- 
formed our  quiet  home.  My  boy  had  always 
been  grave,  and  so  dearly  did  he  love  me  that 
he  watched  with  jealousy  my  growing  love  for 
the  litle  girl,  and  would  have  learned  to  hate 
his  little  cousin ;  but  she  would  throw  her  arms 
around  his  neck,  and  kiss  him,  and  laugh  at 
him,  and  show  in  so  mapy  ways  how  sweet  she 
was  and  how  much  she  loved  him,  that  he 
would  kiss  her  in  return,  and  laugh  as  heartily 
as  she.  I  was  ambitious  for  my  son.  He  de- 
veloped a  strong  mind  and  stanch  principles, 
and  I  saw  a  brilliant  future  awaiting  him.  As 
they  advanced  in  years  it  began  to  dawn  upon 
my  mind  that  the  bright  little  beauty  had  be- 
come very  dear  to  him.  This  grieved  me  much. 
Ah,  what  a  mistake  I  made!  My  ambition 
blinded  my  love.  Then  I  sent  him  away  to 
college.  After  acquiring  a  fair  education  in 
America,  I  sent  him  to  Europe,  and  he  gradu- 


ated with  high  honors.  Two  years  ago  he  re- 
turned. You  cannot  imagine  how  proud  I  was 
to  see  my  boy  a  strong,  handsome  man,  free 
from  contamination  with  the  corrupting  influ- 
ences of  the  world,  and  gentle,  kind,  and  brave. 
My  heart  had  so  yearned  for  him  during  all 
the  years  that  he  was  absent  that  I  lavished  a 
wealth  of  love  upon  him.  His  cousin  was  just 
merging  into  lovely  womanhood.  She  had  be- 
come more  quiet,  but  was  cheerful  and  happy. 
The  children  had  regularly  corresponded,  and, 
though  they  employed  endearing  and  affection- 
ate terms,  there  was  nothing  to  indicate  more 
than  the  natural  love  between  brother  and  sis- 
ter. When  they  met,  there  was  a  tender,  touch- 
ing welcome  from  her,  and  he  took  her  in  his 
strong  arms  and  smothered  her  with  kisses.  I 
thought  little  about  it,  but  presently  Rose,  who 
had  been  quietly  holding  one  of  his  hands  while 
I  held  the  other,  slipped  away  to  her  room.  I 
soon  went  to  find  her,  and  saw  her  lying  on  the 
floor,  crying. 

"'Rose,  my  child,'  I  asked,  'what  is  the  mat- 
ter with  my  little  girl?' 

"'Oh,  mother,'  she  replied,  'I  am  so  glad  he 
has  come  !  It  almost  kills  me.' " 

The  poor  woman  worked  nervously  at  the 
raveling,  and  two  bright  tears  trembled  upon 
her  lashes,  and  then  dropped  upon  her  hand. 
The  strip  of  cloth  was  becoming  narrower  and 
narrower,  and  the  fringe  was  very  much  longer. 

"It  distressed  me  exceedingly,  but  I  lived  in 
hope  that  the  extensive  knowledge  my  son  had 
of  the  world ;  the  number  of  charming  women 
he  must  have  met;  the  callousness  that,  per- 
haps, numerous  love  affairs  had  produced ;  the 
keen  appreciation  I  knew  he  had  for  a  bache- 
lor's freedom ;  the  lack  of  restraint  that  I  knew 
he  loved ;  an  ambition  to  utilize,  in  the  study  of 
law,  the  extensive  knowledge  he  already  had 
acquired ;  the  desire  I  knew  him  to  possess  to 
mingle  as  much  as  possible  with  learned  men, 
and  to  be  free  from  the  obligations  to  seclusion 
that  a  married  life  imposes — all  these,  in  addi- 
tion to  a  desire  that  I  thought  existed  in  him  to 
marry,  if  at  all,  a  woman  of  the  world — brilliant, 
rich,  worshiped  by  society — these,  I  thought, 
raised  up  a  barrier  between  him  and  his  cousin. 
But  I  was  fatally  mistaken  in  his  nature.  I 
found  that  the  world,  as  it  does  with  all  but 
ordinary  natures,  had  broadened  his  views  and 
made  liberal  his  ideas.  I  discovered  that  wan- 
derings in  strange  lands,  among  strangers,  had 
taught  him  a  deep  and  holy  appreciation  of 
home,  and  of  the  quiet  and  happiness  it  affords. 
I  learned  that  his  nature  was  more  affectionate 
than  ambitious,  and  that  he  was  warm — some- 
times impulsive — but,  withal,  singularly  quiet 
and  unobtrusive.  Modesty  was  a  prominent 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


123 


feature  in  his  character.  He  was  not  a  seeker 
for  novelty  or  excitement.  Still,  it  was  a  pecul- 
iarity with  him  that  he  could  readily  accom- 
modate himself  to  whatever  surroundings  he 
might  have ;  but,  for  all  that,  he  had  a  choice 
in  all  things.  He  was  remarkably  unselfish, 
liberal,  and  charitable.  I  had  some  means — 
enough  for  all  purposes  as  long  as  either  of  us 
might  live ;  but  he  was  not  extravagant,  and  his 
wants  were  very  few.  And  it  struck  me  as  being 
particularly  singular  that  he  despised  my  money, 
though  he  endeavored  to  conceal  his  feelings ; 
and  I  saw  that  his  greatest  aim  in  life  was  not 
to  win  fame,  nor  become  a  hero  or  a  wealthy 
man,  but  to  live  independent  of  my  means.  I 
must  confess  that  this  disappointed  me  greatly. 
I  saw  that  he  had  more  pride  than  ambition? 
and  that  his  will  was  stronger  than  mine.  It 
was  then  that  I  felt  his  power  and  superiority, 
and  thenceforward  he  was  my  master.  It  made 
me  love  him  the  more,  and  cling  to  him  the 
closer,  and  depend  more  on  his  better  judgment 
in  all  things ;  and  it  was  not  without  a  pang  of 
wounded  pride  that  I,  who  had  from  girlhood 
been  a  queen  in  my  own  home,  and  who  had 
held  him  on  my  knee  when  he  was  a  helpless 
infant,  saw  him  rise  up  in  his  great  manly 
strength  and  conquer  me.  I  looked  up  to  him, 
and  worshiped  him,  and  this  is  the  punishment 
that  God  has  visited  upon  me." 

And  still  the  fringe  grew  longer  and  longer. 

"It  was  his  unconquerable  pride  that  opened 
my  eyes  to  the  fact  that  he  would  not  marry  for 
money ;  that,  other  things  being  equal,  he  would 
marry  poverty  in  preference,  and  fight  his  way 
through  the  world,  proud  and  independent.  Still 
I  did  not  despair.  Learning  that  Emily  Ran- 
dolph, the  daughter  of  an  old  friend,  was  threat- 
ened with  consumption,  I  offered  her  a  home  in 
my  house.  Though  not  a  brilliant  girl,  she  had 
been  given  superior  advantages,  and  had  well 
availed  herself  of  them.  I  knew  that  my  son 
loved  his  cousin — how  deeply  I  did  not  know, 
but  I  believed  she  was  very  dear  to  him;  for 
when  he  would  leave  home  for  short  trips  he 
would  write  her  letters  full  of  the  tenderest  af- 
fection. Emily  Randolph,  I  thought,  was  bet- 
ter fitted  to  be  his  wife.  She  was  not  only 
wealthy,  but  had  a  timid,  shrinking,  retiring 
nature,  that  I  felt  sure  would  win  upon  his 
strong  character.  So  you  will  understand  that 
my  motives  in  introducing  Emily  to  my  home 
were  not  altogether  ambitious  ones.  Her  con- 
nections were  high,  proud,  and  influential.  Her 
disposition  was  very  different  from  that  of  my 
niece,  who  was  all  sunshine  and  storm.  Rose's 
temper  was  not  as  patient  as  Emily's,  but  I  be- 
lieve she  was  more  unselfish  and  self-sacrificing. 
She  was  bright  and  cheerful,  and  prettier  than 


Emily,  and  fuller  of  life  and  spirit.  But  I 
thought  that  for  these  reasons  John  would  love 
Emily  the  better,  for  he  was  strong  and  she  was 
weak.  The  climate  of  California  proved  vastly 
beneficial  to  Emily's  health;  but,  as  we  were 
living  in  San  Francisco,  the  climate  became  too 
harsh  for  her  after  she  had  experienced  the  first 
benefits  of  its  bracing  effect,  and,  as  soon  as  I 
could,  I  moved  to  San  Josd.  I  thought  at  first 
that  my  plans  worked  well.  My  son  petted  her, 
and  treated  her  like  a  child ;  but  that  only  grat- 
ified me,  for  I  saw  that  he  felt  the  difference  in 
their  natures.  She  seemed  for  a  time  to  dread 
him,  for  he  was,  in  her  eyes,  a  peaceful  lion, 
that  might  suddenly  burst  through  the  restraints 
of  his  taming,  and  tear  and  crush ;  and  I  think 
she  still  regards  him  in  that  light.  Rose  had  a 
stronger  nature,  and  did  not  fear  her  cousin. 
She  was  his  companion,  and  not  his  slave. 
Now,  you  will  at  once  see  that  with  a  man  hav- 
ing his  disposition — kindness  and  tenderness, 
accompanied  by  strength — there  is  no  inclina- 
tion to  exercise,  or  feel  consciousness  of,  any 
superiority  whatever,  but  rather  is  there  a  long- 
ing for  a  helpmate  and  a  companion.  So  I  saw 
my  cherished  scheme  fall  to  the  ground  through 
an  insufficient  knowledge  of  human  nature  on 
my  part.  I  had  studied  the  problem  carefully, 
and  had  failed  to  solve  it.  I  saw  my  niece  con- 
tinue her  sway  over  my  son's  heart.  Then  it 
was  that  I  resorted  to  the  last  means  in  my 
power.  I  would  reason  with  my  niece,  and 
plead  with  her,  by  the  love  she  bore  my  son,  to 
relinquish  him.  This  interview  occurred  on 
the  night  of  the  2oth  of  June." 

But  a  few  strands  remained.  A  moment 
more,  and  the  last  thread  would  be  raveled. 

"  I  led  her  into  my  son's  room,  and  broached 
the  subject  as  tenderly  as  I  could.  It  was  a 
terrible  blow  to  the  poor  child;  and  at  first  it 
crushed  her ;  but  soon  she  recovered,  and  then, 
rising  up  in  the  majesty  of  outraged  woman- 
hood, she  charged  me  with  heartlessness  and 
cruelty.  Not  only  this,  but  she  openly  defied 
me,  and  said  that  she  and  my  son  were  as  near 
and  as  dear  to  each  other  as  wife  and  husband 
could  be,  and  that  no  power  on  earth — not  even 
the  machinations  of  his  mother — could  sepa- 
rate them.  I  was  standing  near  the  bureau,  on 
w"hich  lay  a  small  pistol  my  son  had  recently 
purchased  for  protection  against  burglars." 

The  unhappy  woman  paused  a  while,  for  the 
supreme  moment  had  arrived.  Only  one  strand 
remained  to  hold  together  the  straggling  fringe, 
and  she  regarded  it  closely  before  removing  it. 
Her  voice  was  very  low  as  she  continued: 

"In  a  moment  of  mad  passion  that  I  should 
be  defied,  and  my  fondest  hope  spurned,  I 
raised  the  pistol  ....  and  fired May 


124 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


God  ....  have  mercy  ....  on  my  soul!" 
She  buried  her  face  in  her  hands ;  and,  chok- 
ing with  sobs,  fell  upon  her  knees  as  she  uttered 
the  last  words.  Nothing  now  held  the  fringe 
together,  and  it  fell  upon  the  floor,  an  ungainly 


heap ;  where  a  gust  of  wind,  which  then  came 
eddying  in,  madly  caught  it  up,  whirling  it 
hither  and  thither,  finally  driving  several  of  the 
strands  out  between  the  bars — out  to  life,  and 
light,  and  freedom.  W.  C.  MORROW. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


THE    DIVISION    OF   THE    STATE. 


The, project  of  a  division  of  the  State  of  Cal- 
ifornia is  not  new.  Even  at  the  time  of  the 
organization  of  the  State,  in  1849,  the  feeling  in 
favor  of  a  separate  government  was  very  strong 
in  what  are  now  the  southern  counties.  This 
feeling,  instead  of  dying  out,  grew  stronger 
after  the  organization.  In  1859,  the  State  Leg- 
islature, recognizing  the  existence  of  this  feel- 
ing, passed  an  act  to  provide  for  the  separation 
of  the  counties  of  San  Luis  Obispo,  Santa  Bar- 
bara, Los  Angeles,  San  Diego,  San  Bernardino, 
and  a  portion  of  Buena  Vista,  from  the  remain- 
der of  the  State.  This  act  provided  for  the  tak- 
ing of  a  vote  of  the  counties  specified  upon  the 
question  of  such  separation.  The  act  was  ap- 
proved by  the  Governor.  The  vote  was  taken, 
and  the  result  was  in  favor  of  a  separation.  A 
certified  copy  of  the  act,  with  a  report  of  the 
vote  of  the  people  of  the  six  counties  ratifying 
it,  was  transmitted  officially  by  Governor  La- 
tham to  the  President  of  the  United  States. 

These  facts  I  take  from  a  republication  of  the 
official  documents  in  the  Los  Angeles  Weekly 
Express,  of  May  8th,  1 880,  forming  a  portion  of 
an  article  by  ex- Governor  John  G.  Downey. 
The  ground  is  taken  by  Governor  Downey,  in 
his  article,  that  this  act  is  still  valid,  and  that 
only  the  consent  of  Congress  is  now  necessary 
to  complete  the  division.  Congress  took  no 
action  at  that  time,  probably  because  of  the 
coming  on  of  the  war,  and  the  absorbing  inter- 
est of  political  subjects  since  then  has  left  the 
whole  matter  dormant.  The  project  has  never 
been  forgotten,  however.  It  has  since  then 
been  at  various  times  discussed. 

Several  years  ago  I  published  in  one  of  the 
Los  Angeles  papers  an  article  urging  anew  the 
subject.  This  article  was  noticed  to  some  ex- 
tent by  the  papers  of  the  State.  The  object  of 
the  present  article  is  to  show  the  causes  at 
work  tending  to  a  division  of  the  State;  not  dis- 
cussing the  question  in  any  sectional  or  parti- 
san manner,  but  as  a  question  which  should  be 
considered  in  only  one  light,  viz.:  the  welfare  of 


the  people  interested  in  its  decision.     Yet  I 
write  as   a   Southern    Californian,   loving   my 
home,  loving  its  snow-capped  mountains,  lov- 
ing every  mile  of  its  broad,  sunny  plains,  and 
the  long  leagues  of  its  foam-girt  shores. 
Reasons  tending  to  produce  a  separation : 
First — The  contour  of  the  State  is  such  that 
the  southern  portion  belongs  to  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent geographical  system. 

In  an  article  entitled  "  Climatic  Studies  in 
Southern  California,"  published  in  THE  CALI- 
FORNIAN for  November,  1880,  I  described  the 
two  great  parallel  ranges  of  Californian  mount- 
ains, the  Sierra  and  the  Coast,  which  hold  be- 
tween them  that  vast  interior  basin,  the  Sacra- 
mento-San Joaquin.  This  basin,  with  the  San 
Francisco  Bay  and  upper  coast  valleys,  as  the 
Humboldt,  the  Santa  Cruz,  and  Salinas,  forms 
one  natural  division  of  the  State,  constituting  es- 
pecially the  Alta  (or  Upper)  California  of  early 
Spanish  days.  But,  as  described  in  that  arti- 
cle, these  ranges,  gradually  drawing  near  to 
each  other,  at  length  unite  south  of  the  Tulare 
country  in  a  broken  confusion  of  peaks,  from 
which  the  Sierra,  emerging,  circles  around  the 
westerly  rim  of  the  Mojave  Desert,  and  then 
turns  off  to  an  easterly  course,  forming  a  vast 
wall  between  the  upper  interior  basin  and  Cali- 
fornia of  the  south.  This  mountain-wall  marks 
the  dividing  line  between  the  Sacramento -San 
Joaquin  California  and  an  entirely  different 
country.  Practically,  the  only  line  of  commu- 
nication between  the  two  for  a  quarter  of  a  cent- 
ury of  union  under  the  one  State  Government 
was  by  the  long  circuit  of  the  sea — down  the 
rivers  to  San  Francisco  Bay,  out  of  the  Heads 
by  ship,  down  four  hundred  miles  of  coast  to 
the  ports  of  Santa  Barbara,  Wilmington,  and 
San  Diego,  and  then  back  by  land  to  the  inte- 
rior. The  power  of  these  mountains  to  separate 
a  people  is  shown  in  the  fact  that  places  in  a 
direct  line  only  a  few  hundred  miles  from  each 
other  were  thus,  for  the  purposes  of  commerce 
or  trade,  a  thousand  miles  apart. 


THE  DIVISION  OF  THE  STATE. 


125 


This  practical  separation  of  many  hundreds 
of  miles  subjected  the  people  south  of  these 
mountains  to  long  and  tedious  delays — delays 
involving  great  loss  and  expense  in  the  trans- 
action of  business  with  the  legislative  and  judi- 
cial departments  of  the  State;  for  the  prepon- 
derance of  population  and  wealth  fixed  the  cap- 
ital in  the  northern  division.  Had  this  coast, 
like  the  eastern,  been  settled  more  slowly,  it  is 
not  probable  that  two  sections  so  dissimilar  ge- 
ographically, so  shut  off  from  each  other  by 
impassable  mountains,  would  ever  have  been 
joined  under  one  State  government.  The  exi- 
gencies of  the  times,  however,  the  power  of 
political  parties,  and  the  perils  of  a  common 
blood  thus  far  removed  from  its  home,  forced  a 
union  which  circumstances  have  since  kept  up. 
The  union  was  felt  to  be  so  in  opposition  to 
natural  laws  that  at  that  time  the  people  of 
Southern  California  were  much  disinclined  to 
assent,  and,  as  before  shown,  they  have  always 
been  restive  under  it,  and  have  made  one  seri- 
ous attempt  to  cut  loose  from  it. 

The  completion  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Rail- 
road from  San  Francisco  to  Los  Angeles  has 
made  the  separation  somewhat  less  marked, 
but  the  steep  grades  of  the  Tehachepi  show 
the  feeble  tenure  of  the  bond  thus  made,  and 
the  three  thousand  nine  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  feet  of  elevation  at  which  the  road  crosses 
that  range  forever  mark  the  dividing  line  be- 
tween two  distinct  commercial  systems. 

It  has  been  said  that  mountains  interposed 
make  enemies  of  bloods  that  had  else,  like  kin- 
dred waters,  been  mingled  into  one.  In  this 
instance  they  have  not  made  enemies,  but  they 
have  made  two  distinct  and  separate  peoples. 

Second — Climatic  differences,  and  the  conse- 
quent development  of  different  types  of  charac- 
ter in  the  people. 

As  a  result  of  the  difference  of  topographical 
features,  the  climate  of  Southern  California  is 
very  different  from  that  of  the  upper  portion  of 
the  State.  The  two  great  parallel  ranges,  the 
Coast  and  the  Sierra,  with  the  long  interior 
plain  of  the  Sacramento -San  Joaquin,  give  to 
the  country  north  of  the  Tehachepi  a  sweep 
of  cold  northerly  wind,  which  is  unknown  in 
Southern  California,  where  the  transverse  ranges 
wall  off  the  north-westerly  trade-winds  and  the 
northers  of  the  fall  and  winter,  while  the  country 
opening  out  toward  the  warm  southern  sea  has 
a  hinting  of  the  tropics  in  its  climate. 

With  the  difference  in  climate,  and  a  differ- 
ence in  the  distribution  of  the  precious  metals, 
has  come  a  difference  in  the  pursuits  of  the 
people.  Upper  California  has  been  a  mining 
country,  and  is  now  becoming  a  grain-produc- 
ing country.  Southern  California  from  a  pas- 


toral life  is  changing  to  a  life  of  vineyards  and 
orchards.  The  emblem  upon  its  seal  should 
be  not  the  miner's  pick  and  the  crouching 
bear,  but  the  clustering  grape,  the  orange, 
the  olive,  and  the  broad  leaves  of  the  banana, 
drooping  in  the  warm  rays  of  the  southern 
sun. 

With  this  difference  in  climate  and  pursuits, 
and  as  a  consequence  of  it,  there  has  been  de- 
veloped a  difference  in  the  character  of  the  peo- 
ple. The  restless,  uneasy  mining  population  of 
the  north,  ever  drifting,  without  local  attach- 
ments, has  no  counterpart  in  Southern  Califor- 
nia ;  neither  has  the  wild  spirit  of  mining  spec- 
ulation ever  flourished  here.  Stocks  have  no 
charms  for  the  calmer  blood  of  these  people  of 
the  south.  Their  wealth  lies  in  their  warm  sun, 
and  in  the  broad  leagues  of  well  watered  and 
fertile  soil.  With  this  peaceful  life,  possibly  in 
part  as  a  result  of  it,  there  has  been  grown  up 
in  the  people  an  intense  love  of  their  land.  I 
have  seen  nothing  like  it  in  the  northern  por- 
tion of  the  State.  And  it  is  for  their  own  sec- 
tion of  the  State  that  this  love  exists.  They 
call  themselves  not  Californians,  but  Southern 
Californians.  The  feeling  is  intense.  I  can 
only  liken  it  to  the  overmastering  love  of  the 
old  Greek  for  the  sunny  shores  that  lay  around 
the  yEgean.  Philosophize  over  it  as  we  may, 
the  fact  remains  that  here  dwells  a  population 
which  is  not  Californian,  but  Southern  Cali- 
fornian. 

For  myself,  I  feel  more  and  more  each  time 
that  I  visit  the  upper  portion  of  the  State  that 
I  am  going  into  a  strange  land.  And  the  im- 
pression never  leaves  me  until,  upon  my  return, 
I  look  down  from  the  crest  of  the  Tehachepi 
over  the  warm  southland.  Then  the  feeling 
comes  to  me  that  I  am  in  my  own  land,  and 
among  my  own  people  again. 

There  is  a  certain  tinge  of  pride,  also,  in  the 
feelings  of  this  people.  They  cannot  forget  that 
when  San  Francisco  was  yet  a  drift  of  unin- 
habited sand-hills,  and  the  interior  known  only 
to  a  few  wandering  vaqueros.  Southern  Califor- 
nia was  a  land  of  towns  and  vineyards,  and  of  a 
settled  people.  They  cannot  forget  that  South- 
ern California  is  the  older  California;  that  it 
was  the  former  seat  of  government.  It  is  the 
pride  of  a  century  looking  down  with  some- 
what of  a  courteous  pity  upon  the  growth  of 
thirty  years. 

Third — Different  commercial  ties,  needs,  and 
interests. 

California  of  the  north  is  centered  in  San 
Francisco.  The  only  outlet  to  the  sea  of  all 
the  vast  interior,  which  reaches  from  Shasta 
on  the  north  to  Mount  Pinos  upon  the  south, 
and  from  the  Sierra  to  the  Coast  Range,  is 


126 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


through  the  Golden  Gate;  and  there  San 
Francisco  sits  as  toll-gatherer.  Paris  is  not 
so  much  France  as  San  Francisco  is  Califor- 
nia of  the  north.  It  is  San  Francisco  that 
rules  the  daily  life  of  all  the  broad  plains  of 
the  Sacramento  -  San  Joaquin.  Not  until  the 
grade  of  the  Tehachepi  is  crossed  is  the  over- 
mastering power  of  this  one  city  lost,  and 
men  no  longer  care  what  San  Francisco  says 
or  does. 

Why  is  this? 

It  is  simply  because  of  the  fact  that  the  crest 
of  the  Tehachepi  marks  the  dividing  line  be- 
tween two  entirely  different  commercial  sys- 
tems. North  of  that  line  the  law  of  grades 
forces  everything  to  the  sea  through  San  Fran- 
cisco Bay.  No  ton  of  grain  can  go  out  to  the 
consumer  unless  toll  is  paid.  South  of  the  Te- 
hachepi freight  reaches  ship  at  Santa  Barbara, 
Ventura,  Wilmington,  and  San  Diego.  At  the 
foot  of  the  land  lies  the  great  highway  of  the 
sea,  and  beyond  are  the  markets  of  the  world. 

The  completion  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Rail- 
road eastward  still  further  separates  the  com- 
mercial relations  of  Southern  California  from 
the  upper  portion  of  the  State.  It  is  giving 
back  to  Southern  California  again  its  old  posi- 
tion at  the  portals  of  the  East.  As  San  Fran- 
cisco, for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  when  the  com- 
merce of  the  State  was  carried  on  by  the  sea, 
stood  at  the  gateway  of  the  land,  so,  under  the 
newer  order  of  railroads,  shall  some  city  of 
Southern  California  stand  warder  at  the  en- 
trance to  the  State  from  the  plains. 

The  long  line  of  the  Sierra  lifts  like  a  forbid- 
ding wall  between  Northern  California  and  the 
heart  of  the  continent.  The  Central  Pacific 
climbs  it  on  the  route  from  San  Francisco  di- 
rectly eastward,  at  an  elevation  of  nearly  eight 
thousand  feet.  For  hundreds  of  miles  it  has  no 
break.  The  whole  length  of  the  Sacramento- 
San  Joaquin  plain  has  no  pass  worthy  of  the 
name  through  it  to  the  East.  Here,  however, 
in  Southern  California,  for  the  first  time,  the 
range  breaks  down. 

At  the  San  Gorgonio  Pass,  directly  east  of 
Los  Angeles,  the  grassy  plain  swells  up,  and, 
without  even  a  distinguishable  crest  or  divid- 
ing line,  rolls  through  to  become  one  with  that 
other  great  southern  plain  whose  farther  verge 
is  fringed  by  the  surf -line  of  Atlantic  waters, 
for  the  Rocky  Mountains  this  far  south  hardly 
mar  the  horizon  line  of  that  long  inland  plateau. 
A  gentleman  could  drive  his  one-horse  buggy 
from  San  Pedro  to  Galveston  without  dismount- 
ing through  stress  of  road. 

The  greatest  elevation  in  the  San  Gorgonio 
Pass  is  only  two  thousand  eight  hundred  feet. 
Vineyards  look  down  upon  it,  and  in  midwin- 


ter cattle  and  sheep  graze  upon  the  green  grass. 
Coming  westward  from  the  Mississippi,  all  the 
natural  grades  of  the  continent  point  southward 
toward  this  pass  and  the  Cajon,  which  breaks 
through  the  same  range  from  the  Mojave  Des- 
ert a  few  miles  further  north.  The  Utah  South- 
ern, the  Atlantic  and  Pacific,  the  Atchison  and 
Topeka,  the  Southern  Pacific,  the  Texas  Pacific, 
all  are  aiming  to  reach  the  waters  of  the  west- 
ern seas  through  these  low  southern  passes. 

These  roads  make  Southern  California  inde- 
pendent of  San  Francisco.  The  positions  are 
reversed.  San  Francisco  must  reach  the  East 
through  Los  Angeles.  Southern  California  is 
to  keep  the  toll-gate  hereafter;  and  she  knows 
it.  Her  trade  is  already  reaching  out — not 
northward,  but  eastward.  Arizona  and  the  in- 
terior territories  consume  her  produce.  Her 
merchants  are  laying  their  plans  to  buy  their 
goods  not  in  the  markets  of  San  Francisco, 
but  upon  the  quays  of  St.  Louis  and  New  Or- 
leans. The  Southern  Pacific  says  it  will  in  four 
days  lay  down  the  wines  and  the  wheat  of  Los 
Angeles  upon  the  wharfs  of  Galveston,  to  take 
ship  directly  for  Europe. 

What,  then,  has  Southern  California  commer- 
cially in  common  with  San  Francisco?  Noth- 
ing. And  the  people  feel  it.  They  say,  Our 
paths  lie  apart.  Neither  are  they  content  that 
San  Francisco  should  retain  all  the  trade  with 
China  and  Japan.  They  say,  With  our  short 
land  lines,  and  easier  grades  to  the  East,  we 
shall  claim  our  share  of  this  trade  for  our  own 
sea-ports.  They  say,  We  talk  of  it  now ;  in  ten 
years  we  shall  have  it. 

Fourth — Among  the  minor  considerations 
leading  to  the  separation  are  questions  of  the 
difficulty  of  framing  State  legislation  to  suit 
communities  so  widely  differing  in  interests  as 
the  northern  and  southern  portions  of  Califor- 
nia; questions  of  local  inequalities  and  injus- 
tices in  taxation ;  the  undue  centering  of  State 
institutions,  and  expenditure  of  State  moneys 
in  the  San  Francisco  Bay  counties — although 
the  people  of  Southern  California  are  ceasing 
to  care  about  this :  they  say  they  prefer  now  to 
wait,  and  build  up  their  own  institutions;  the 
difficulty  of  gaining  any  influence  in  Congress, 
and  of  securing  Government  aid  for  harbor  im- 
provements and  public  works ;  the  desire  to  be 
free  from  the  controlling  and  corrupting  influ- 
ence of  San  Francisco  in  State  politics — for  the 
new  State  would  be  essentially  an  agricultural 
and  pastoral  State,  without  any  one  great  city 
within  its  borders  to  overshadow  with  its  influ- 
ence the  purer  vote  of  the  country. 

Another,  and  strong,  consideration  is  the 
legal  relations  of  the  new  railroad  system  which 
must  enter  Southern  California  from  the  East. 


A    CHINA   SEA    TYPHOON. 


127 


These,  however,  are  questions  of  minor  im- 
portance. The  great  reasons  are,  as  I  have 
stated,  the  feeling  that  geographically  we  are 
separated ;  that  the  mountains  have  divided 
us ;  that  we  are  a  different  people,  different  in 
pursuits,  in  tastes,  in  manner  of  thought  and 
manner  of  life ;  that  our  hopes  and  aspirations 
for  the  future  are  different ;  and  that  commer- 
cially we  belong  to  a  distinct  and  separate  sys- 
tem, and  must  work  out  our  business  future  for 
ourselves.  People  have  not  forgotten  the  days 
when  the  easy  grades  brought  the  trade  from  a 
quarter  of  a  continent  to  the  sea  at  San  Pedro. 

It  is  only  fair  in  discussing  the  question  of 
division  to  state  the  reasons  which  may  be 
urged  against  such  a  step.  Among  the  people 
here  I  have  heard  only  one  point  raised — not 
against  the  division,  but  whether  the  popula- 
tion and  wealth  of  Southern  California  will  yet 
justify  the  step.  It  is  conceded  to  be  only  a 
question  of  time;  the  doubt  has  been  solely 
whether  the  time  is  yet  fully  come.  Each  year, 
however,  is  depriving  this  objection  more  and 
more  of  its  force,  and,  with  the  rapid  influx  of 
wealth  and  population  which  will  follow  the 


completion  of  the  southern  transcontinental  sys- 
tem of  roads,  the  time  must  shortly  come  when 
such  an  objection  can  no  longer  be  raised. 

In  conclusion,  it  is  well  for  the  people  of  the 
State  to  begin  to  face  this  subject.  In  South- 
ern California  it  is  not  merely  an  idle  abstrac- 
tion. The  people  are  looking  forward  earnestly 
to  it.  And  when  the  time  comes  there  will  be 
no  tie  to  sever  except  the  strictly  legal  one ;  for 
this  people,  as  I  before  said,  look  upon  them- 
selves not  as  Californians,  but  as  Southern  Cal- 
ifornians.  They  have  never  surrendered  their 
separate  intellectual  and  social  life.  They  have 
kept  independent  of  San  Francisco.  They  are 
building  up  their  own  institutions  of  learning. 
They  form  their  own  society. 

As  yet  I  have  found  no  feeling  of  bitterness 
in  this  question.  If  bitterness  arise,  it  will  not 
be  of  our  begetting.  The  only  feeling  is  that 
for  the  future  our  ways  lie  asunder,  and,  as 
friends  who  have  journeyed  together,  but  who 
have  now  come  to  the  parting  of  the  road,  we 
would  shake  hands,  bid  each  other  God  speed, 
and  each  go  his  own  way  in  peace. 

J.  P.  WIDNEY. 


A  CHINA   SEA  TYPHOON. 


It  is  now  twenty  years  since  a  splendid  clip- 
per ship  lay  at  anchor  off  the  Pagoda,  a  few 
miles  below  the  city  of  Foo  Chow  Foo,  on  the 
River  Min.  The  last  chests  of  tea  were  going 
on  board.  The  sails  were  bent,  every  rope  was 
in  its  place,  and  the  ship  was  "ready  for  sea." 
A  noble  vessel  she  was,  with  lofty  spread  of 
canvas,  and  lines  the  symmetry  of  which  at  once 
proved  to  the  nautical  expert  that  she  deserved 
the  reputation  for  speed  acquired  'during  her 
previous  career;  and,  what  was  better  than 
speed,  she  had  always  been  "a  lucky  ship." 

"All  cargo  on  board,  sir,  and  seventy  tons 
space  in  main  hatch,"  reported  the  chief  officer. 
He  was  ordered  to  "block  off,"  and  thus  we 
sailed,  drawing  twenty-one  feet  six  inches,  with 
a  cargo  of  new  crop  fancy  brands  of  tea  for  the 
London  market,  insured  for  £  120,000,  refusing 
freight  needed  to  fill  the  ship  because  we  could 
get  no  additional  insurance  thereon  in  China, 
and  no  ocean  cable  was  then  available  whereby 
it  could  have  been  placed  in  London. 

On  the  4th  of  August,  1860,  the  order  was 
given,  "All  hands  up  anchor,"  and  we  slowly 
dropped  down  the  tortuous  River  Min,  narrow, 
but  deep,  reaching  its  mouth  on  the  6th  of  Au- 


gust, and  there  discharging  our  four  Chinese 
pilots,  with  every  appearance  of  fine  weather, 
although  one  of  the  almond-eyed  mariners  re- 
marked to  me  just  before  he  went  over  the  side, 
"Two, three  day  you  catchee  typhoon* — no  likee 
topside."  And  he  proved  a  true  prophet,  al- 
though the  barometer  then  gave  no  sign.  The 
shores  of  China  faded  in  the  dim  distance,  and 
our  long  homeward  journey  was  commenced. 
With  such  a  splendid  ship,  with  a  picked  crew, 
"homeward  bound,"  we  commenced  our  voyage 
gladly,  for  we  had  tired  of  China  and  the  Chi- 
nese. 

With  a  fresh  north-east  monsoon  we  headed 
for  the  north  end  of  Formosa,  with  every  indi- 
cation of  easily  weathering  it,  so  that  we  could 
stand  out  of  the  China  Sea,  to  avoid  the  south- 
west monsoon  already  blowing  at  its  southern 
extreme.  By  1 1  A.  M.  of  the  yth,  the  weather 
commenced  to  look  ugly,  and  the  barometer, 
that  faithful  guide  to  the  intelligent  navigator, 
commenced  its  silent  warning  by  dropping  slow- 
ly and  steadily.  In  the  eastern  horizen,  whither 
we  were  heading,  a  dense  bank  of  heavy,  leaden 


Chinese—  Typhoon,  or  Tyfoong(  great  wind). 


128 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


colored  clouds  warned  us  to  beware,  and  from 
the  upper  edge  of  this  cloud -bank  feathery, 
fleecy  streamers  detached  themselves,  moving 
with  lightning  rapidity  to  the  northward.  The 
ship,  under  double  reefs,  moved  with  a  quick, 
nervous,  and  uneasy  motion  over  a  sea  which, 
while  not  very  high,  ran  without  regularity  of 
speed  or  motion.  We  knew  that  we  were  "in 
for  it,"  and  made  every  preparation.  All  light 
yards  and  studding-sail  booms  were  sent  down, 
sails  were  furled  with  "cross -gaskets,"  ports 
were  opened  to  let  the  water  run  off  the  decks, 
hatches  battened  down,  spare  spars  were  double 
lashed,  and  everything  that  a  sailor's  experience 
could  suggest  was  done  to  prepare  our  ship  for 
the  ordeal  we  felt  was  in  store  for  her.  We  had 
ample  time  and  warning.  By  IIP.  M.,  we  were 
in  a  heavy  gale,  dragging  under  close -reefed 
top-sails  and  storm  stay-sails,  with  a  furious  sea 
running.  At  this  time,  as  we  were  fairly  enter- 
ing the  radius  of  the  cyclone,  an  occasional 
sharp  flash  of  vivid  lightning  could  be  seen 
through  the  driving  rain,  followed  by  muttering 
thunder  in  the  distance,  both  which  phenomena 
were  absent  after  we  neared  the  vortex  of  the 
storm.  By  midnight  the  barometer  had  fallen 
to  28.60,  and  was  rapidly  dropping.  By  i  A. 
M.  of  August  8th,  it  was  blowing  furiously,  but 
thus  far  our  noble  ship  made  no  sign.  Her 
light  cargo  made  her  as  buoyant  as  a  cork,  and 
although  she  had  at  times  five  .feet  of  water  on 
deck,  she  would  rise  to  the  sea  and  shake  the 
water  from  her  like  a  half  drowned  water-dog. 
At  i :  30  A.  M.  of  the  Qth,  the  fore  top-mast  storm 
stay-sail  blew  out  of  the  bolt-ropes,  and  a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour  later  the  main  storm  try -sail  fol- 
lowed, both  new  sails  going  to  ribbons  with  the 
report  of  a  cannon,  close  aboard.  We  then 
took  in  our  close -reefed  mizzen  top -sail,  fortu- 
nately saving  it.  At  2  .-40  A.  M.,  the  close-reefed 
fore  top -sail  blew  away,  and  we  decided  to  try 
and  save  the  main  top-sail ;  but  we  had  waited 
too  long.  When  the  weather-sheet  was  started 
it  went  out  of  existence  like  a  flash,  with  a  re- 
port which  sounded  for  an  instant  above  the 
roaring  of  the  hurricane.  We  were  thus  "lay- 
ing to  under  bare  poles ; "  barometer  at  5  A.  M., 
28.22,  and  still  falling.  By  4  A.  M.,  we  were 
feeling  the  fury  of  the  typhoon;  barometer 
27.65.  Successive  seas  had  stove  in  our  bul- 
warks, and  at  times  the  ship  would  go  under 
forward  to  her  foremast  with  such  violence  that 
I  could  not  but  ask  myself,  when,  quivering  in 
every  timber,  she  recovered  herself  for  another 
plunge,  how  much  deeper  she  could  go  and 
come  to  the  surface  again.  Meanwhile  the 
wind  had  hauled  easterly,  heading  us  off,  and 
we  were  on  a  lee-shore  off  the  north-east  end 
of  the  Island  of  Formosa.  For  a  few  hours 


there  was  no  prospect  of  saving  the  ship.  A 
rock -bound  lee -shore  in  a  hurricane  is  bad 
enough,  but  the  additional  certainty  that  if,  by 
a  happy  chance,  any  of  us  reached  the  shore 
alive,  we  should  have  our  throats  cut  -by  the 
savage  aborigines  inhabiting  that  part  of  For- 
mosa, was  not  cheering.  But  the  ship  demand- 
ed my  attention,  and  gave  me  little  time  to 
think  of  personal  peril. 

At  4:30  A.  M.,  I  witnessed  for  the  first  time, 
during  a  sea  service  of  sixteen  years,  the  full 
force  of  a  "China  Sea  typhoon."  Its  violence 
was  awful,  its  fury  indescribable!  The  Om- 
nipotent appeared  to  have  concentrated  His 
strength  in  one  mighty  effort  to  manifest  His 
power!  To  hear  a  human  voice,  even  with 
the  aid  of  a  trumpet,  was  impossible,  and  we 
looked  aloft  in  astonishment  to  see  the  work 
of  human  hands  withstand  such  power.  The 
hurricane  roared  like  a  mighty  cataract,  and 
while  one  imagined  that  it  was  blowing  as 
hard  as  it  could,  a  -sudden  blast  would  strike 
the  ship,  sounding  like  a  park  of  artillery  fired 
under  our  ears.  During  this  part  of  the  ty- 
phoon our  ship  lay  with  her  lee -rail  to  the 
water,  and  comparatively  easy,  as  the  immense 
violence  of  the  hurricane  had  "flattened  down" 
the  sea,  which  was  feather-white  as  far  as  the 
eye  could  reach,  and  this  was  not  far,  for  the 
atmosphere  was  full  of  "spoon-drift" — flying 
foam,  taken  from  the  tops  of  the  waves  in 
white  sheets,  and  hurled  through  the  air  with 
such  violence  that  one  could  only  keep  his 
eyes  open  by  looking  to  leeward.  Moment- 
arily expecting  the  masts  to  go  over  the  side, 
we  stood,  helplessly  lashed  on  deck,  awed  at 
the  sublimity  of  the  scene. 

The  hurricane  expended  its  utmost  violence 
in  about  two  hours,  and  by  6 : 30  A.  M.  we  could 
notice  a  diminished  violence  in  the  gusts,  and 
the  sea  was  again  rising,  more  dangerous  even 
than  the  hurricane,  for  such  a  confused  cross- 
sea  I  never  witnessed,  and  our  ship  labored 
heavily,  frequently  with  hundreds  of  tons  of 
water  on  deck,  moving  with  such  violence  that 
it  was  impossible  to  stand  without  a  firm  grip 
on  something  stationary. 

Morning  dawned  dark,  gloomy,  and  tempest- 
uous, with  a  tremendous  sea  running,  but  the 
vortex  of  the  storm  had  passed,  and  the  barom- 
eter had  stopped  its  downward  course.  We 
were  still  on  a  lee -shore  however,  and  as  the 
wind  had  gradually  headed  us  off,  the  sea  was 
doubly  dangerous.  We  decided  to  "wear  ship," 
if  such  a  thing  were  possible,  under  bare  poles. 
The  crew  were  placed  at  their  stations,  and  they 
fully  understood  the  dangerous  character  of  the 
maneuver  we  were  about  to  attempt,  feeling  that 
therein  lay  our  only  hope.  The  helm  was  grad- 


SWINBURNE   ON  ART  AND  LIFE. 


129 


ually  put  up,  and  as  the  squared  after-yards  felt 
the  blast  our  noble  ship  started  ahead  like  a 
frighted  deer,  and  was  off  before  it  like  light- 
ning, with  her  head  pointed  toward  the  iron- 
bound  coast  under  our  lee.  Watching  closely 
for  an  interval  between  the  blasts,  and  with  a 
sharp  eye  on  the  tremendous  sea  running,  our 
ship  was  gradually  brought  to  the  wind  on  the 
off-  shore  tack,  heading  the  sea,  and  thus  ena- 
bled to  surmount  it  more  easily. 

At  this  time,  8:30  A.  M.,  occasional  patches 
of  blue  sky  could  be  seen  overhead,  across 
which  feathery  thin  streamers  of  cloud  passed 
with  lightning  speed;  a  tremendous  sea  was 
still  running,  and  a  furious  gale  blowing.  The 
barometer,  to  our  delight,  commenced  to  rise 
very  slowly,  and  we  felt  that,  unless  knocked 
on  our  beam-ends  by  an  unlucky  sea,  we  could 
pass  through  the  storm  in  safety.  A  test  of  our 
pumps  showed  that  the  ship  was  "as  tight  as  a 
bottle." 

By  10  A.  M.  of  Augusth  8th,  the  gale  had  sen- 
sibly abated,  and  we  were  able  to  replace  our 
storm -sails  gradually,  having  the  ship  under 
close  reefed  top-sails  by  noon,  when  the  weather 
cleared  up,  and  we  could  see,  happily  astern  of 
us,  the  rugged  coast  of  the  Island  of  Formosa, 
distant  about  fifteen  miles.  It  looked  verily  a 


terra  inhospitalis,  and  over  its  rugged  mount- 
ains the  Storm  King  held  high  revel,  for  the 
dense  bank  of  clouds,  with  the  flying  scud  over 
them,  clearly  marked  the  progress  of  the  cyclone 
on  its  way  to  the  Chinese  coast.  It  had  been 
an  unwelcome  visitor,  and  we  were  glad  to  see 
it  leaving  us,  for  it  had  given  us  a  near  call ! 

By  4  o'clock  P.  M.,  we  had  our  ship  under 
single-reefed  top-sails,  and  were  repairing  dam- 
ages, although  when  we  finally  reached  Lon- 
don some  of  the  scars  of  that  contest  were  still 
visible.  Eleven  passages  around  Cape  Horn, 
five  around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  many 
winter  passages  across  the  stormy  North  At- 
lantic, have  failed  to  furnish  another  such  ex- 
perience. I  close  the  journal  from  which  I  have 
copied  with  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  that  during 
a  sea -life  of  sixteen  years  I  have  had  one  op- 
portunity to  observe  how  hard  it  can  blow,  and 
what  severe  contests  with  the  elements  a  good 
ship,  well  manned,  can  pass  through  with  im- 
punity. 

"What  became  of  the  ship?"  The  banner 
of  St.  George  now  flies  at  her  peak.  Over 
the  Southern  Ocean,  in  the  English-Australian 
trade,  she  still  doefcher  full  duty,  driven  from 
our  flag  by  too  onerous  taxation. 

WM.  LAWRENCE  MERRY. 


SWINBURNE   ON   ART   AND    LIFE. 


Mr.  Swinburne  is  a  defender  of  the  doctrine 
of  art  for  art's  sake.  He  can  make  no  terms 
with  those  who  think  that  "to  live  well  is  really 
better  than  to  write  or  paint  well,  and  a  noble 
action  more  valuable  than  the  greatest  poem  or 
most  perfect  picture."  To  him  art  and  moral- 
ity are  forever  separate,  and  their  followers 
occupy  hostile  camps.  "Handmaid  of  relig- 
ion, exponent  of  duty,  servant  of  fact,  pioneer 
of  morality,  art  cannot  in  any  way  become." 
"There  never  was  or  can  have  been  a  time 
when  art  indulged  in  the  deleterious  appetite 
of  saving  souls  or  helping  humanity  in  general 
along  the  way  of  labor  and  progress."  In  other 
words,  art  and  the  subject  which  it  embodies 
are  entirely  distinct — the  one  may  be  perfect, 
however  repulsive  the  other. 

That  Mr.  Swinburne  should  insist  on  this 
separation  is  not,  perhaps,  altogether  surpris- 
ing. The  doctrine  is  in  perfect  harmony  with 
other  tendencies  of  the  times.  The  German 
pessimist,  Arthur  Schopenhauer,  with  ill  con- 
cealed disgust  at  the  discovery  that  he  is  not 


the  Creator,  condemns  the  world  as  the  most 
wretched  contrivance  imaginable.  In  like  man- 
ner, Mr.  Swinburne,  in  his  anger  that  the  love 
of  beauty  should  ever  have  suffered  at  the  rude 
hands  of  Puritanism,  denies  all  possible  con- 
nection between  art  and  morals.  Each  view  is 
extreme,  and  proceeds  from  a  reaction  against 
previous  exaggeration  in  an  opposite  direction. 
But  no  abhorrence  of  asceticism  can  be  suffi- 
cient excuse  for  a  doctrine  which  would  lead  to 
the  worst  consequences  in  life.  Least  of  all  are 
such  views  to  be  tolerated  at  a  time  when  to 
establish  a  rule  of  conduct,  and  to  obey  it — at 
all  times  the  gravest  work  of  man — becomes 
doubly  solemn  and  momentous  in  view  of  the 
weakness,  in  certain  quarters,  of  traditional 
beliefs. 

Mr.  Swinburne's  doctrine,  however,  cannot 
withstand  the  most  moderate  test.  Essentially 
beyond  the  uninitiated,  designed  for  those  su- 
perior spirits  who,  under  high  pressure,  are 
capable  of  enjoying  moments  of  supreme  de- 
light, the  doctrine — art  for  art's  sake — involves 


130 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


a  confusion  of  thought  to  which  nothing  but  the 
intoxication  of  those  moments  could  have  blind-, 
ed  its  supporters.  To  assert  that  art  is  to  be 
cherished  for  what  it  is,  and  not  for  what  it  ex- 
presses, is  to  insist  upon  a  distinction  precisely 
analogous  to  that  of  the  metaphysicians,  who 
for  a  long  tjme  made  their  own  consciousness 
the  measure  of  the  universe,  and  thought  it  un- 
necessary for  knowledge  that  there  should  be 
anything  to  be  known,  so  long  as  there  was 
anybody  to  know !  To  talk  of  distinguishing 
art  from  the  subject  which  it  expresses,  is  as 
absurd  as  to  propose  to  take  away  the  con- 
cavity of  a  line  and  leave  its  convexity.  That 
the  subject  is  noble  does  not,  it  is  true,  neces- 
sarily involve  the  excellence  of  the  art;  but  that 
the  subject  is  base,  not  only  implies  the  degra- 
dation of  the  artist,  but  ultimately  leads  to  the 
degradation  of  his  work.  Art  is  always  the 
expression  of  the  character  of  the  artist ;  and 
great  art,  like  all  great  work,  implies  great 
character.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  artist 
must  have  a  didactic  purpose  and  make  the 
teaching  of  morality  the  end  of  his  work;  but 
it  means  that  the  artistic  sense  must  be  sup- 
plemented by  that  moral  temper  which  alone 
can  give  to  its  expression  me  enduring  quality 
of  perfected  form.  It  is  for  the  artist  not  only 
to  perceive  the  beautiful,  but  also  to  make  it 
manifest  to  those  who  lack  his  faculty  of  vision; 
and  this  task  demands  a  power  of  expression, 
a  mastery  of  the  implements  of  his  art,  which 
moral  excellence  alone  can  give.  Without  this, 
faultless  workmanship  is  unattainable;  and  if 
the  degradation  of  sensuality  be  present,  the 
work  through  its  imperfect  execution  loses  in 
aesthetic  value,  and  fails  to  exhibit  those  qual- 
ities which  give  the  art  of  the  man  of  unim- 
paired character  a  beauty,  which,  in  its  enno- 
bling influence,  is  moral. 

But  these  conclusions  are  still  open  to  eva- 
sion. Mr.  Swinburne  would  no  doubt  readily 
admit  that,  in  so  far  as  a  base  subject  does  in- 
volve a  degradation  which  will  weaken  the  ar- 
tist's power  of  execution,  art  and  morality  are 
interdependent ;  but,  he  would  retort,  who  shall 
say  that  a  base  subject  and  a  degraded  charac- 
ter are  necessary  companions?  Is  the  artist 
bound  to  govern  his  work  by  the  ignorance  of 
the  multitude,  and  so  to  refrain  from  depicting 
passions  the  representation  of  which  seems  in 
their  eyes  indecent  and  immoral,  though  to  him 
they  are  "sacred,"  like  all  else  that  is  human? 
This  specious  argument  cannot  save  the  doc- 
trine. It  is  sad  to  be  compelled  to  deny  any- 
thing to  that  which  has  been  so  often  maltreat- 
ed as  genius;  but  there  are,  nevertheless,  cer- 
tain matters  which  even  this  age,  with  all  its 
love  of  invention,  rightly  believes  to  be  estab- 


lished beyond  the  possibility  of  improvement. 
Among  them  is  the  determination  of  the  rela- 
tive superiority  of  the  human  faculties.  Error 
has  undoubtedly  been  committed  in  cultivating 
the  intellect  to  the  neglect  of  the  senses;  but 
the  superiority  of  the  intellect  over  the  passions 
which  man  has  in  common  with  brutes,  needs 
not  the  experience  of  any  previous  age  to  give 
it  certainty.  And  genius,  so  long  as  human, 
cannot,  without  self-destruction,  exalt  what  is 
debased  for  all  mankind.  When  men  exclaim 
that  all  the  earth  wears  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
and  pretend,  like  Walt  Whitman,  to  consecrate 
each  single  atom  of  growth  and  of  decay,  it  is 
quite  as  fair  to  suppose  that  their  cries  proceed 
from  an  ignorance  of  what  is  beautiful  as  from 
the  discovery  of  any  strange  potency  in  vileness. 

There  is  still  a  higher  ground  for  the  rejec- 
tion of  Mr.  Swinburne's  doctrine.  "Art  for  art's 
sake"  is  laid  down  as  a  guiding  principle  of 
work — indeed,  of  that  highest  work  which,  from 
Homer  to  Tennyson,  from  Phidias  to  Michael 
Angelo,  has  been  charged  with  the  expression 
of  all  that  is  noblest  in  man.  But  a  rule  of 
work,  or  of  conduct,  or  of  any  human  action, 
must  rest  upon  our  conception  of  man's  true  re- 
lation to  the  universe.  If  we  believe  the  world 
to  be  under  a  curse,  it  may  not  be  improper  for 
us  to  live  a  life  of  atonement  and  torture  of  the 
flesh.  If  we  believe  that  the  highest  motives  to 
action  are  the  hope  of  heaven  or  the  fear  of  hell, 
it  will  scarcely  be  inconsistent  in  us  to  make  in- 
dividual, selfish  advantage  the  ground  of  doing 
good  or  of  abstaining  from  evil.  But  if  we  be- 
lieve that  on  this  planet  man  must  look  for  hap- 
piness, our  highest  motive  will  be  to  live  for 
others,  This  is  the  principle  denied  by  Mr. 
Swinburne  and  affirmed  by  science. 

According  to  Mr.  Swinburne,  life  is  but  "an 
interval,  and  then  our  place  knows  us  no  more. 
Some  spend  this  interval  in  listlessness,  some  in 
high  passions,  the  wisest  in  art  and  song.  For 
our  chance  is  in  expanding  that  interval,  in  get- 
ting as  many  pulsations  as  possible  into  the 
given  time.  High  passions  give  one  this  quick- 
ened sense  of  life.  Only  be  sure  it  is  passion, 
that  it  does  yield  you  this  fruit  of  a  quickened, 
multiplied  consciousness.  Of  this  wisdom,  the 
poetic  passion,  the  desire  of  beauty,  the  love  of 
art  for  art's  sake,  has  most;  for  art  comes  to 
you  professing  frankly  to  give  nothing  but  the 
highest  quality  to  your  moments,  and  simply 
for  those  moments'  sake."  That  is  Mr.  Swin- 
burne's doctrine — "the  highest  quality  to  your 
moments,  and  simply  for  those  moments'  sake" 
— a  doctrine  which  carries  selfish  gratification 
to  the  sensual  level  of  the  beast  in  the  field. 

Science,  on  the  other  hand,  disproves  the  ex- 
istence of  that  human  isolation  which  makes  it 


A  PESCADERO  PEBBLE. 


indifferent  what  the  individual  does,  so  long  as 
he  interferes  not  with  the  existence  of  others. 
The  right,  the  imperative  duty,  of  the  individ- 
ual to  attain  his  own  highest  development,  has 
its  assurance — nay,  its  sanction — in  all  that  sci- 
ence teaches.  But  "it  is  a  universal  law  of  the 
organic  world,"  as  the  late  Mr.  Chauncey  Wright 
has  said,  "and  a  necessary  consequence  of  nat- 
ural selection,  that  the  individual  comprises  in 
its  nature  chiefly  what  is  useful  to  the  race,  and 
only  incidentally  what  is  useful  to  itself,  since 
it  is  the  race,  and  not  the  individual,  that  en- 
dures or  is  preserved."  Side  by  side,  then,  with 
its  recognition  of  individualism,  science  asserts 
the  "unity  of  all,"  and  affirms  that  every  man 
is  what  he  is  by  virtue  of  his  relation  to  all 
other  men.  This  intersection  of  conflicting  ten- 
dencies must,  by  necessity,  be  manifest  in  every 
stage  of  the  development  of  society ;  and  in  the 
civilization  of  to  -  day  we  see  it  in  the  fact  of  a 
high  degree  of  individualism  co- existing  with 
the  need,  imposed  by  the  complexity  of  life,  of 
the  widest  cooperation.  In  conduct,  in  work, 
these  mutually  opposed  elements  must  be  made 
to  coalesce,  and  the  fusion  of  the  two  into  one 
is  possible  only  through  the  recognition  of  un- 
selfishness as  the  supreme  guide  of  action.  Be 
selfish  in  order  to  be  unselfish  is  the  command  of 
science.  Be  selfish  for  the  sake  of  the  delights 
of  selfishness  is  the  precept  of  Mr.  Swinburne. 


I  reject,  therefore,  his  doctrine  of  art  for  art's 
sake,  not  only  for  its  confusion  of  thought,  for 
its  degradation  of  both  art  and  artist,  but  also 
as  a  principle  of  action  which  rests  on  the  gross- 
est misconception  of  man's  relation  to  the  uni- 
verse. It  involves  a  "barbaric  conception  of 
dignity,"  a  deification  of  self,  which,  after  what 
Copernicus,  and,  above  all,  what  Darwin  has 
taught  us,  is  intolerable.  All  work,  all  wisdom, 
is  valuable  only  for  what  it  adds  to  the  happi- 
ness of  mankind,  and  civilization  means  only 
the  eradication  of  selfishness.  But  with  Mr. 
Swinburne's  doctrine,  disinterestedness  is  im- 
possible. It  acknowledges  no  debt  to  the  past, 
professes  no  care  for  the  future ;  and  it  sets  up 
a  dangerous  principle  of  work  which  it  would 
be  only  too  easy  to  transfer  to  all  branches  of 
human  activity.  We  should  thus  recognize  as 
an  established  Power  that  selfishness  which,  in 
political  and  in  social  life,  is  even  now  every- 
where belligerent;  which  has  already  caused 
the  instinct  of  the  statesman  to  transform  itself 
into  the  appetite  of  the  harpy,  and  has  driven 
farther  and  farther  away  the  hope  of  hearing 
many  men  unite  in  teaching,  with  Carlyle, 
"Thou  wilt  never  sell  thy  Life,  or  any  part  of 
thy  Life,  in  a  satisfactory  manner.  Give  it,  like 
a  royal  heart.  Let  the  price  be  Nothing :  thou 
hast  then  in  a  certain  sense  got  all  for  it." 

ALFRED  A.  WHEELER. 


A   PESCADERO    PEBBLE. 


It  was  only  a  bit  of  rose-pink  carnelian,  wave- 
worn  to  a  perfect  oval,  and  holding  in  its  trans- 
lucent depths  a  gleam  almost  jewel -like  in  lus- 
ter; but  the  palm  of  the  little  hand  in  which  it 
lay  was  as  delicately  molded  and  as  rosy -pink 
as  itself;  and  when  the  owner  of  the  palm,  look- 
ing up  from  under  her  broad  beach -hat  with  a 
charming  air  of  confidence  in  his  sympathy, 
asked  Mr.  Bradford,  "Isrit  it  lovely?"  it  was 
small  wonder  that  he,  being  half  artist  and 
wholly  human,  and  taking  into  his  survey,  be- 
sides the  pebble,  the  whole  dainty  figure  in  its 
blue  yachting-suit,  crowned  by  a  rose-bud  face 
lit  by  sweet  brown  eyes,  shpuld  answer  quite  as 
fervently  as  she  expected. 

"It  is,  indeed,  very  lovely." 

If  his  reply  had  reference  only  to  the  car- 
nelian it  was  rather  a  generous  concession  on 
his  part,  for,  though  Pescadero  pebbles  are  rare 
and  lovely,  they  can  hardly  be  of  absorbing 


interest  to  a  man  who  had  bartered  with  Cin- 
galese pearl-divers  for  their  choicest  "finds," 
had  hunted  for  moon -stones  and  white  sap- 
phires under  fierce  Indian  suns,  had  braved 
many  a  wild  Baltic  storm  with  the  hardy  gath- 
erers of  yellow  amber,  and  had  fought  less  suc- 
cessfully, if  not  less  gallantly,  for  the  rarer 
and  lovelier  blue  amber  against  the  rapacity 
of  bronzed  Catanian  Jews. 

But,  whether  he  praised  the  pebble  for  its 
own  pink  beauty,  or  with  a  mental  reservation 
in  favor  of  the  fair  maid  who  held  it,  there  he 
lay,  in  true  Pescadero  fashion — six  feet  of  gray 
tweed  stretched  at  full  length  along  the  beach 
— poking  over  the  multi  -  colored  gravel  with  a 
shapely  sun-browned  hand,  occasionally  hold- 
ing up  a  bright  bit  for  Miss  Brenton's  inspec- 
tion, and  talking  to  her,  the  while,  of  strange 
shores  on  the  farther  side  of  the  blue  water 
whose  white  crests  slipped  so  gently  up  the 


132 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


shore  and  broke  in  soft  and  rhythmic  murmurs 
at  their  feet. 

Miss  Brenton  was  a  good  listener,  having 
learned,  during  her  short  life,  some  valuable  les- 
sons in  the  art  of  putting  herself  in  the  back- 
ground. Indeed,  for  a  young  lady  who  had 
recently  been  graduated  with  many  honors  and 
yards  of  white  organdie  at  a  fashionable  sem- 
inary, and  who  awaited  only  the  coming  season 
for  her  introduction  into  a  brilliant  San  Fran- 
cisco circle,  she  retained  her  native  modesty 
and  lack  of  self-consciousness  in  a  very  credit- 
able degree.  So,  with  a  few  well  put  questions 
and  a  large  amount  of  appreciative  silence,  she 
had  completely  charmed  away  the  slight  film 
of  cool  indifference  with  which  Mr.  Bradford 
liked  to  believe  that  he  concealed  from  the 
world  a  naturally  enthusiastic  character,  and  it 
was  hard  to  say  which  of  the  two  enjoyed 
most  his  charming  talk  of  his  wandering  dur- 
ing some  months  before  in  Oriental  lands. 

But  salt  air  begets  appetite,  and  a  delightful 
drive  along  a  tree-lined  mountain  road  in  Java, 
behind  half  a  dozen  pairs  of  the  little  native 
ponies,  was  not  disagreeably  interrupted  by  the 
shrill  cries  of  "Lunch!"  and  "Chowder!"  which 
rose  above  the  soft  booming  of  the  waves.  Then 
a  querulous  voice  called : 

"Pauline,  dear,  do  come  and  help  me." 

And  Miss  Brenton  and  Mr.  Bradford  hasten- 
ed toward  two  elderly  ladies,  who,  seated  upon 
carriage-robes  out  of  reach  of  the  waves,  had 
been  comfortably  "picking  pebbles"  under  the 
shadow  of  a  great  umbrella.  Miss  Brenton  took 
possession  of  a  rather  faded,  artificial  looking 
little  person,  whose  numerous  belongings  were 
widely  scattered ;  but  Pauline  successfully  res- 
cued her  veil  from  the  wind,  her  bottle  of  peb- 
bles from  overturning,  and  her  shawl  and  um- 
brella from  other  disasters,  while  she  offered 
her  arm,  saying,  cheerily  : 

"  I  suppose  you're  quite  ready  for  this  famous 
chowder,  Aunt  Nellie?" 

"  Oh,  dear,  yes,  and  half  famished  for  the  last 
hour,"  grumbled  Aunt  Nellie;  "and  now  we've 
got  to  cross  this  dreadful  beach  that  nearly 
covers  one's  feet  at  every  step.  I've  fifty  peb- 
bles, at  least,  in  my  boots  now.  I'm  sure  I 
can't  see  why  they  spread  the  lunch  away  up 
under  that  bluff!" 

"That's  because  the  tide  is  coming  in,  and 
you  wouldn't  relish  salt  water  in  your  chowder, 
you  know,  auntie." 

"Well,  I  dare  say  they  have  made  the  tea  of 
salt  water,  because  where  are  they  to  get  any 
other?" 

"Oh,  I  fancy  they  wouldn't  forget  that  part 
of  it.  I  saw  two  great  demijohns  in  the  wagon, 
so  I  think  your  tea  will  be  all  right." 


And  so  at  last  they  reached  the  bluff,  where 
Aunt  Nellie  was  seated  upon  a  drift-wood  log, 
after  a  deal  more  of  the  same  sort  of  complaint. 

Meantime,  Mr.  Bradford,  unmindful  neither 
of  the  aunt's  exigeance  nor  of  the  niece's  pa- 
tience therewith,  had  appropriated  the  other 
old  lady,  a  stately  little  woman,  whose  sweet 
face,  crowned  with  its  puffs  of  silvery  white 
hair,  was,  so  far  in  the  young  man's  life,  the 
dearest  face  in  the  world  to  him.  Under  the 
cliff  arose  the  blue  smoke  of  a  drift-wood  fire, 
and  near  it  stood  a  rude  table,  and  toward  this 
people  were  coming  from  all  over  the  little  cove, 
for  this  was  a  field-day  at  the  beach;  and  in- 
stead of  the  usual  private  and  exclusive  baskets 
of  cold  lunch,  there  was  to  be  a  chowder,  made 
under  the  immediate  supervision  of  a  distin- 
guished epicure  from  "the  city,"  with  Mrs. 
Swanton  as  assistant.  The  season  was  a  good 
one,  Swanton  House  and  outlying  cottages  be- 
ing full  to  overflowing,  and  more  than  the  usual 
spirit  of  good  feeling  and  camaraderie  seemed 
to  exist  among  the  guests.  So  there  had  been 
surf-fishers  out  since  early  morning,  and  a  mag- 
nificent catch  of  red  and  blue  rock-cod — worthy, 
in  their  silvery  beauty,  of  a  Brookes  to  immor- 
talize them — was  slowly  simmering  itself  into  a 
most  toothsome  mixture,  while  an  aroma  of  hot 
tea  and  coffee,  and  a  subdued  popping  of  corks, 
added  to  the  conviviality  of  a  very  successful 
day. 

After  lunch,  there  was  more  pebble  -  hunting, 
and  much  scrambling  over  rocks  and  cliffs  in 
search  of  the  dainty  wild-flowers  '(and  hardy, 
sweet  little  strawberries  that  grow  on  the  breezy 
uplands  above  the  bluff. 

But  for  Pauline  there  was  little  more  hilarity 
of  any  sort,  for  Mrs.  Hasbrook  grew  more  ex- 
acting as  she  waxed  weary,  and  her  unreasona- 
ble and  unreasoning  demands  upon  the  girl's 
strength  and  patience  were  aggravating  to 
hear.  But  Pauline  was  equal  to  the  occasion 
in  her  own  cheery  fashion,  never  dreaming 
that  she  was  a  martyr;  and  if  she  did  think 
once  or  twice  how  very  pleasant  it  would  be 
to  stroll  with  Mr.  Bradford  and  his  mother  at 
the  top  of  the  cliff,  she  stifled  the  fancy  as  in- 
gratitude, for  it  was  quite  evident  that  Aunt 
Nellie  was  "coming  down"  with  a  sick  head- 
ache, and  so,  of  course,  not  responsible  for  her 
ill  nature.  In  fact,  Pauline  Brenton  wasted 
all  her  opportunities  for  being  miserable  in 
the  most  provoking"  way. 

"So  exasperatingly  cheerful !"  complained  her 
room-mate  at  school,  who  never  exasperated 
anybody  with  her  cheerfulness. 

"Such  a  rest,  such  a  comfort,  as  you  have 
been !"  whispered  the  teacher  who  had  charge 
of  her  division,  when,  just  before  the  commence- 


A  PESCADERO  PEBBLE. 


ment  exercises,  Pauline  came  to  her  in  all  her 
white  beauty  for  a  last  little  "talk." 

And  so  when  she  came  home  to  Aunt  Nel- 
lie— Aunt  Nellie  with  her  pet  sick -headaches, 
which  were  an  affliction  to  herself  and  an  in- 
fliction to  her  friends,  her  querulous  temper, 
and  her  gift  for  fault-finding — Pauline,  I  believe, 
was  not  a  bit  discouraged. 

There  had  been  in  Mrs.  Hasbrook's  early 
life  some  of  those  crushing  sorrows  from  which 
the  spirit  rises  once,  perhaps,  in  a  thousand 
times,  triumphant  over  earthly  ills,  to  live  there- 
after in  an  atmosphere  already  half  heavenly ; 
but  more  often  there  remains  but  the  poor,  spir- 
itless shadow  of  the  former  self  to  fight  the  bat- 
tle with  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  in  a 
weakened  and  half- conquered  fashion.  Mrs. 
Hasbrook  was  weak  enough  in  body  and  spirit, 
and  her  small  vanities  had  been  fostered  by  the 
possession  of  an  ample  fortune;  but,  among  a 
number  of  good  deeds  which  I  am  sure  the  re- 
cording angel  was  glad  to  place  to  her  credit, 
not  the  least  was  the  taking  of  little  orphaned 
Pauline  Brenton  to  her  heart  and  home.  Home 
and  love  and  education  she  had  given  her,  and 
Pauline  had  grown  in  graces  of  body  and  mind, 
and  had  cultivated  in  the  genial  soil  of  her  nat- 
ure an  old-fashioned  flower  we  call  gratitude, 
and  its  blossoms,  uncommon  enough  in  these 
days,  crowned  this  rather  stylish  and  modern 
young  lady  with  a  rare  and  old-time  grace. 

Truth  to  tell,  Mrs.  Hasbrook  had  some  brill- 
iant projects  in  view  for  the  future  of  the  niece 
who  was  rewarding  her  fostering  care  so  well, 
and  her  day-dreams  were  often  of  the  time 
when,  after  a  brilliant  season  or  two  in  Califor- 
nia, they  two  should  go  abroad — to  "dear,  de- 
lightful Paris,"  of  course ;  and,  having  in  fancy 
once  crossed  the  Atlantic,  she  found  it  easy 
also  in  fancy  to  gain  a  foothold  in  the  very 
citadel  of  the  ancien  regime,  and,  after  a  gor- 
geous campaign  in  costumes  from  Worth  and 
Pingat,  accompanied  by  unlimited  diamonds, 
she  always,  in  these  bright  visions,  married 
Pauline  to  a  nobleman — nothing  less  than  the 
bluest  blood  would  do;  for  Aunt  Nellie,  like 
many  very  good  and  very  wealthy  Californians, 
though  a  native  republican,  was,  au  fond,  the 
fiercest  of  aristocrats.  As  for  the  money,  she 
would  reflect  with  a  shrug  of  satisfaction,  that 
did  not  matter.  She  had  always  intended  those 
shares  of  Segregated  Maryland  and  that  gold 
mine  in  Amador  for  Pauline's  dot,  and  she 
rather  fancied  they  would  offset  several  gallons 
of  blue  blood. 

But  often,  alas,  the  old  lady  would  arouse  from 
these  roseate  reflections  tofind  unconscious  Pau- 
line singing  away  at  some  plebeian  employment 
— perhaps  the  mending  of  her  own  dainty  silk- 

VOL.    III.- 9. 


en  hose,  or  the  concoction  of  a  delectable  des- 
sert— in  such  utter  unconcern  for  this  brilliant 
future  of  hers  that  the  dreamer  of  dreams  would 
feel  herself  to  be  a  much  injured  party,  and 
would  therefore  render  herself  so  obnoxious 
for  the  rest  of  the  day  that  poor  Pauline,  uncon- 
scious of  offense,  could  only,  in  charity,  lay  the 
blame  at  the  door  of  her  b&te  noire,  the  sick- 
headache. 

For,  with  uncommon  good  sense,  Mrs.  Has- 
brook had  not  as  yet  imparted  these  wonderful 
schemes  to  her  niece,  who,  being  fond  of  her 
books,  her  music,  her  pets,  and  even  of  her  lov- 
ing services  to  her  aunt,  had  not  yet  begun  to 
trouble  her  small  head  about  fortunes  or  hus- 
bands, or  any  of  the  more  serious  matters  of 
life. 

While  I  have  been  telling  you  all  this,  Mrs. 
Bradford  and  her  son  have  been  enjoying  their 
stroll  at  the  top  of  the  cliff,  watching  the  groups 
of  busy  people,  breathing  the  salt,  sweet  air,  and 
talking  together  with  a  loving  confidence  that 
nothing  has  ever  yet  interrupted. 

"So,  little  mother,"  Bradford  was  saying, 
"you  like  Pescadero?" 

"Indeed  I  do,  Bruce.  It  is  restful  and  quiet 
here,  and,  after  the  regular  California  round,  so 
refreshing  not  to  be  called  upon  constantly  to 
admire  something  that  is  higher  or  deeper  or 
larger  than  anything  else  of  its  kind  in  the  known 
world." 

"That's  so,"  said  Bradford,  with  a  laugh.  "I 
knew  there  was  a  charm  about  it,  though  I 
couldn't  have  expressed  it  so  well.  Nice  peo- 
ple here,  too.  Don't  you  like  little  Miss  Bren- 
ton?" 

"Yes"— emphatically.  "She  is  a  dear  girl- 
quite  one  of  the  old-fashioned  sort ;  but,  Bruce, 
she's  a  martyr.  I  should  be  glad  to  pull  her 
worldly  little  aunt's  blonde  curls  for  her  aggra- 
vating ways  with  the  poor  child." 

"Come,  come,  Dona  Quixote,  don't  you  go 
tilting  at  a  wind-mill.  I  can't  see  that  the  'poor 
child'  pines  much  under  the  treatment.  In 
fact,  she's  quite  blooming,  and  Coleman,  of 
San  Francisco,  tells  me  that  Mrs.  Hasbrook 
has  done  everything  for  her." 

"And  well  she  may.  The  young  lady  will  be 
a  great  credit  to  her  socially,  and  is  a  perfect 
slave  to  her  caprices,  and — oh,  Bruce,  how  love- 
ly those  cloud -shadows  are  drifting  over  the 
water,  and  what  a  wide  and  lovely  view  we  have 
here!" 

And  so  it  was.  Landward  the  hills,  yellow 
with  barley,  blue  with  the  bloom  of  the  flax,  or 
brown  with  recent  plowing,  rose  and  softly 
swelled  into  the  mountains  of  the  Coast  Range, 
whose  utmost  hights,  crowned  with  somber  red- 
woods, fringed  the  blue  and  lofty  sky-line.  Sea- 


134 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ward  there  was  nothing  to  break  the  wide  ex- 
panse of  amethystine  sea,  save  when  a  great 
steamer  passed  noiselessly  on  her  way  to  the 
Orient.  And  over  all  this  glorious  chord  of 
color  drifted  the  constant  cloud-shadows  of  the 
broken  and  slowly  gathering  fog.  After  a  little 
pause,  Mrs.  Bradford  said : 

"I  suppose,  Bruce,  dear,  you  look  for  the 
Lawrences  soon?" 

"Yes.  Lawrence  told  me  they  would  be  down 
the  last  of  the  month,"  and  a  long  breath,  that 
sounded  uncommonly  like  a  sigh  of  impatience, 
finished  the  sentence. 

"Miss  Lawrence  is  a  very  fine  young  lady, 
Bruce  ?" — interrogatively. 

"  Very  " — concisely. 

"And  they  have  been  very  kind  to  us." 

"Certainly;  why  not,  dear?"  lighting  a  fresh 
cigar. 

"And  we  must  show  them  all  the  attention 
we  can,  you  know,  when  they  come." 

"Of  course,  madame  mere,  I  shall  be  as  civil 
as  possible." 

"But— Bruce— " 

'  "Well,  go  on,  mother.  You  seem  uncom- 
monly bashful,"  with  never  a  look  at  the  blue 
eyes  trying  so  hard  to  find  his. 

"Well" — desperately — "you  won't  be  too  civil, 
now,  Bruce,  will  you?" 

With  an  amused  laugh,  he  looked  down  at 
his  poor  little  victim,  and  said,  saucily : 

"You  jealous  old  person !  I  believe  you  don't 
want  me  to  admire  anybody  but  you.  But  don't 
you  fear,  mother  mine — at  least  not  in  that  quar- 
ter. Of  course,  as  our  banker  on  this  side  of 
the  world,  Lawrence  has  been  very  kind  to  us, 
and  his  wife  and  daughter  also ;  but,  though  I 
don't  like  to  say  it,  I  fancy  it  is  very  much  a 
matter  of  dollars  and  cents,  and  I  have  a  feel- 
ing that  the  polish  in  that  family  is  a  sort  of  top- 
dressing,  as  the  farmers  say.  I  fear  some  day 
we  shall  see  the  ugly  sub-soil  crop  up  in  a  very 
disagreeable  way.  But  come;  there  are  the 
wagons,  and  I  want  you  to  have  a  comfortable 
seat." 

After  that  day  at  the  beach  there  followed 
many  others,  each  with  its  charm  of  out -door 
life.  Mr.  Bradford  and  his  mother,  though  so 
devoted  to  each  other,  had,  apparently,  no  objec- 
tion to  a  quartet,  since  Mrs.  Hasbrook  and  her 
niece  were  nearly  always  of  their  party.  There 
were  long,  still  days  up  in  the  heart  of  the  Red- 
woods, where  the  Pescadero,  coming  down  from 
the  mountains,  had  worn  for  itself  a  lovely  path ; 
past  the  gray  and  lichened  rocks ;  under  giant 
stems  of  redwood  and  fragrant  branches  of  aza- 
lea, ceanothus,  and  madrono ;  where  the  trout 
darted  through  sun-streaked  shallows  or  rested 
in  sherry-brown  pools;  down,  still  down,  through 


the  sunny  ranch -lands,  past  the  village,  and  so 
out  to  sea. 

Other  days  were  spent  under  far  -  spreading 
branches  of  century-old  laurels,  which  grew  on 
the  banks  of  a  little  tributary  of  the  Pescadero. 
Here  they  spread  their  simple  lunch,  and  read, 
or  talked,  or  wandered  through  well  kept  fields 
and  orchards,  till  the  sun  threw  long  afternoon 
shafts  of  yellow  light  athwart  the  branches,  or 
the  fog  rolled  in  to  drive  them  home.  Some- 
times they  followed  the  Butano  far  up  into  the 
fern-loved  forest,  where  the  brake  grew  almost 
like  palm  trees,  and  the  dainty  maiden -hair 
ferns,  nourished  and  protected  through  all  the 
year,  spread  their  branches  far  out  over  the 
water  where  it  fell  in  sparkling  cascades  into  a 
crystal  green  pool.  Oftenest  of  all  they  sought 
the  sea — sometimes  at  the  pebble  beach  ;  some- 
times where  the  Butano  and  Pescadero  go  out 
together  in  a  broad  estuary  to  the  ocean,  and 
where  salmon-trout  and  perch  abound ;  or,  far- 
ther down,  at  Pigeon  Point,  where  long  ago  on 
the  unfriendly  reefs  the  Carrier  Pigeon  went  to 
pieces — but  always  they  four  together,  the  elder 
ones  tolerating  each  other  till  toleration  grew 
into  a  certain  friendliness,  the  younger  ones 
learning  slowly,  and  of  course  delightfully,  to 
do  much  more  than  tolerate  each  other.  But 
this  old -new  lesson  of  loving,  to  be  perfect, 
must  be  blindly  learned ;  so  these  two  were  for 
many  a  long  day  unconscious  of  the  part  they 
were  conning.  Pauline  only  knew  that  never 
before  had  there  been  so  perfect  a  summer,  that 
the  birds  sung  and  the  sun  shone  as  in  no  other 
year  of  her  life,  and  that  no  other  valley  that 
wound  its  sweet,  wild  way  from  the  heart  of  the 
Coast  Range  down  to  the  sea  was  half  so  lovely 
as  that  of  the  Pescadero. 

Bradford  had  drifted  down  the  days  and  the 
weeks  lazily  enough,  taking,  as  was  his  philo- 
sophical way,  all  possible  pleasure  and  profit 
from  all  possible  people  and  circumstances.  If 
he  sometimes  fretted  at  his  self-  imposed  inac- 
tion, and  longed  for  the  busy  life  of  a  loved 
profession  once  more,  his  mother  never  knew 
it,  but  he  was  surprised  at  himself  one  day  for 
being  piqued  into  self-justification  to  Miss 
Brenton.  She  had  expressed  great  admiration 
for  some  incident  of  manly  energy,  and  Brad- 
ford found  himself  all  at  once  in  the  middle  of 
an  explanation. 

"My  mother,"  said  he,  "was  ordered  a  year's 
travel  by  her  physician.  I  can  hardly  tell  you, 
Miss  Pauline,  of  all  the  opportunities  I  sacri- 
ficed when  I  left  my  business  to  take  care  of 
itself.  1  fear  you  think  me  a  very  lazy  fellow, 
but  indeed  I  love  work — love  it  for  its  own  sake 
and  for  what  it  brings,  too;  but  I  am  deter- 
mined the  dear  old  lady  shall  not  have  her  en- 


A  PESCADERO  PEBBLE. 


joyment  clouded  by  a  single  thought  of  sacri- 
fice on  my  part.  This  fall  finishes  our  year, 
and  I  am  taking  her  home  so  much  improved 
in  health  that  I  am  well  repaid." 

"Ah,"  said  Pauline,  with  an  appreciative  look, 
"but  such  inaction  as  that  is  better  and  grand- 
er than  any  year's  work  you  have  ever  done." 

If  Mr.  Bradford  had  had  his  mind's  eye  as 
wide  open  as  usual,  he  might  have  suspected 
that  his  satisfaction  at  Pauline's  reply  was  more 
intense  than  that  he  usually  felt  at  the  approval 
of  his  lady  friends ;  but  it  was  another  day  that 
was  to  open  his  eyes  to  a  new  fact  in  his  exist- 
ence. 

On  this  day  they  had  all  gone  to  the  beach — 
Aunt  Nellie  at  first  having  declared  she  would 
not,  but  having  finally  yielded,  like  so  many 
others,  to  the  indescribable  fascinations  that 
those  elusive  pebbles  possess.  At  first  glance, 
lying  upon  the  Pescadero  beach,  with  the  May 
sunshine  all  about  you,  soft  Pacific  airs  blowing 
over  you,  and  nothing  to  do  but  glean  the  rarest 
and  loveliest  pebbles,  seems  as  near  dolce  far 
niente  as  anything  in  this  disappointing  world 
can.  But  try  it  all  day;  lean  upon  one  elbow 
till  it  is  damp  with  salt  water  and  blistered  by 
the  friction  of  the  gravel,  till  your  spine  aches 
with  the  unnatural  position  and  your  lips  are 
parched  with  thirst,  while  the  water -jug  stands 
rods  away  under  the  cliff  in  aggravating  cool- 
ness, and  all  about  you  people  are  finding  lovely 
pink  or  red  carnelians,  bits  of  translucent  am- 
ber-colored quartz,  and  "opals"  which  almost 
equal  the  genuine  in  their  fire  and  luster,  while 
your  fingers,  poke  as  they  may,  bring  up  only 
the  commonest  brown  or  black  gravel-stones — 
and  see  if  you  do  not  go  back  to  the  hotel  at 
night,  tired,  cross,  and  firmly  determined  to 
spend  the  remainder  of  your  time  hunting  ferns 
in  the  Pescadero  woods  or  trout  in  the  Pesca- 
dero waters,  leaving  the  beach  to  those  who 
like  it.  Yet,  after  you  have  bathed  and  dined, 
and  come  out  upon  the  twilight  haunted  porch, 
or,  if  the  fog  has  come  in,  to  the  hotel  parlor 
with  its  blazing  live-oak  fire,  where  people  are 
exhibiting  and  expatiating  upon  the  day's  treas- 
ure-trove, you  are  once  more  fascinated,  and 
the  small  miseries  of  the  past  are  forgotten  in 
an  avaricious  desire  to  outstrip  the  others.  And 
when  the  morning  comes,  and  the  great  omni- 
bus dashes  up  to  receive  its  indiscriminate  load 
of  young  and  old,  lunch-baskets  and  surf-lines, 
pet  dogs  and  babies,  you  are  one  of  the  first  and 
fiercest;  and  with  your  wide -mouthed  bottle 
clutched  tightly  in  your  hand  you  are  off,  leav- 
ing Pescadero  woods  and  waters  to  keep  their 
treasures  for  another  day,  while  you  have  one 
more  "try"  for  that  ideal  pebble,  which,  every 
time  you  closed  your  eyes  last  night,  stood  out 


against  the  dark  in  all  its  beautiful  and  elusive 
perfection. 

Aunt  Nellie,  after  many  false  starts,  had  at 
last  got  herself  settled  to  her  apparent  satisfac- 
tion ;  and  Pauline,  seeing  her  so  contented  and 
that  Mr.  Bradford  and  his  mother  were  near, 
said  to  her : 

"Auntie,  I've  a  fancy  for  going  up  the  shore 
a  little  way,  if  you  don't  mind." 

Auntie  was  aggrieved  at  once. 

"Well,  I  suppose  you  can,  my  dear,  if  you 
wish ;  but,  before  you  go,  just  bring  me  a  cup 
of  water,  and — fasten  a  pin  in  this  veil,  and  I'm 
sure  the  tide  will  be  up  soon,  and  I  shall  have 
to  move — oh,  dear !  you've  upset  that  bottle." 

Pauline,  with  a  comical  look  of  dismay,  was 
about  to  give  up  her  little  walk,  when  all  at 
once  Mrs.  Hasbrook  found  her  bottle  right 
side  up,  and  a  cup  of  water  at  her  very  lips, 
while  Mr.  Bradford  was  saying,  quietly : 

"If  you  will  allow  me,  Mrs.  Hasbrook,  I'll 
see  that  you  are  quite  comfortable,  and  I'm 
sure  the  walk  will  do  Miss  Brenton  good." 

"Of  course,"  said  Aunt  Nellie,  with  a  hal/ 
sense  of  her  own  absurdity,  "  I  shall  get  along 
very  well,  I've  no  doubt.  I'm  afraid,"  she  add- 
ed, plaintively,  as  Pauline  went  gratefully  off, 
"I'm  afraid  I'm  a  little  exacting  with  Pauline; 
still,  I  think  it's  for  her  good." 

What  Mr.  Bradford  might  have  thought  about 
that  he  did  not  say ;  but  he  took  such  good  care 
of  Aunt  Nellie  that  she  was  quite  happy  and 
cheerful  till  the  tide  really  did  begin  to  come 
in,  and  then  she  began  to  worry  about  Pau- 
line. She  was  quite  sure  she  would  either  be 
drowned  or  get  her  feet  wet — one  disaster  be- 
ing, apparently,  quite  as  deplorable  as  the 
other.  Mr.  Bradford,  with  praiseworthy  alac- 
rity, offered  to  go  in  search  of  the  truant, 
which  offer  being  accepted,  he  was  off. 

Pauline  had  not  wandered  far.  A  little  cove, 
where  the  rocks  shut  out  everything  but  the 
blue  water,  had  attracted  her,  and  happy  in  the 
possession  of  a  fascinating  book — it  was  the 
Strange  Adventures  of  a  Phaeton — she  had 
yielded  to  a  delicious  feeling  of  laziness,  and, 
lying  at  ease,  with  as  sweet  and  salt  an  air 
about  her  as  ever  blew  over  the  Hebrides,  and 
a  sea  and  sky  before  her  that  William  Black 
would  have  loved  to  picture,  she  fell  into  a 
dreamful  sleep,  in  which  she  was  "Bell,"  and 
the  blonde  head  of  Mr.  Bradford  did  duty  as 
the  "  Lieutenant,"  and  they  were  careering  over 
the  Pescadero  hills  in  that  identical  phaeton, 
with  Mrs.  Bradford  and  Aunt  Nellie  in  the 
places  of  Queen  Tita  and  her  husband.  Ob- 
livious of  the  incoming  tide,  she  slept — in  dan- 
ger after  a  while  of  a  thorough  wetting,  if  noth- 
ing worse,  though  the  under-tow  is  strong  there, 


136 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  might  have  done  her  deadly  harm.  At  least 
so  it  looked  to  Bruce  Bradford,  who  arrived  at 
'the  head  of  the  cove  just  in  time  to  see  one 
great  wave  recede  from  her  feet,  and  another, 
before  he  could  reach  her,  envelop  her  wholly 
in  its  frothy,  cold  embrace.  With  something 
very  cold,  very  vice-like,  and  exceedingly  novel 
clutching  at  his  heart,  he  sprung  toward  the 
poor  girl  and  caught  her  in  his  arms,  with  an 
exclamation  upon  his  lips,  the  warmth  of  which 
astonished  Mr.  Bradford  himself,  as  much  as  it 
could  have  done  any  listener  he  might  have  had. 
If  it  reached  Pauline's  ears,  it  was  too  much 
like  a  part  of  her  rudely  finished  dream  for  her 
^o  be  certain  of  it,  and  when  she  fairly  recov- 
ered from  her  bewilderment,  and  found  herself 
quite  safe,  but  still  encompassed  by  Mr.  Brad- 
ford's arm,  she  gently  disengaged  herself,  say- 
ing: 

UI  think  you  have  saved  my  life,  Mr.  Brad- 
ford; but  I  can't  thank  you  now  as  I  should." 

He  seemed  half  dazed,  but,  after  a  moment's 
hesitation,  said,  absently: 

"Yes,  yes;  but  you're  very  damp,  you  know, 
and  in  danger  of  taking  cold.  We  must  get 
home  at  once." 

This  was  dreadfully  common  place  for  so  ro- 
mantic a  situation.  Pauline  was  quite  sure  the 
"Lieutenant"  would  have  done  better,  but  as 
she  could  only  assent  to  the  self-evident  truth 
of  the  remark,  she  said,  laughingly : 

"Yes,  I  know  what  Mr.  Mantalini  would  have 
called  me,  don't  you  ?"  Then,  as  they  drudged 
briskly  on,  she  added:  "Pray,  don't  let  us 
alarm  Aunt  Nellie ;  she  will  be  quite  distressed 
enough  as  it  is." 

Mr.  Bradford  only  bowed  assent,  and  hurried 
her  on  till  they  reached  the  rest  of  the  party, 
where,  after  much  wringing  out  of  skirts  and 
many  explanations,  she  was  put  into  the  wagon 
and  enveloped  in  all  the  shawls  and  robes  her 
escort  could  beg  or  borrow.  Homeward  he  was 
silent  as  the  Sphinx  itself,  but  watchful  as  pos- 
sible of  her  comfort;  and  when  he  had  seen  her 
to  her  cottage,  and  ordered  fires,  and  hot  water, 
and  tea,  he  took  himself  off,  leaving  Pauline  to 
laugh  heartily  at  his  overpowering  but  dumb 
attentions,  for  to  her  young  and  strong  phy- 
sique the  adventure  was  little  more  than  a  tonic, 
though  she  had  been  a  good  deal  frightened. 

Bradford  emerged  from  his  cottage  soon  after, 
armed  with  rod  and  creel,  and  betook  himself 
to  the  brook-side,  where  he  had  been  wont  to 
capture  the  trout  with  gratifying  success.  But 
it  was  soon  evident  that  the  fish  had  little  to 
fear  from  him  that  day,  for  he  whipped  the 
stream  languidly  a  little,  and  then  gave  it  up 
entirely.  Throwing  himself  under  the  shade  of 
a  great  buckeye  tree,  whose  fragrant  blossoms 


rained  down  upon  him  with  every  slightest  gust, 
he  gave  himself  up  to  a  rather  stormy  reverie, 
if  one  might  judge  by  the  number  and  frequen- 
cy of  his  cigars,  and  the  vigorous  and  impatient 
pulls  at  his  long  blonde  moustaches. 

To  confess  the  truth,  he  was  regularly  ap- 
palled at  the  revelation  of  the  morning.  He 
realized  perfectly  that  if  the  wave  which  only 
drenched  Pauline  Brenton  had  carried  her 
back  with  it  out  into  the  infinite  unknown, 
there  would  have  gone  with  her  all  the  light 
from  his  life  and  all  the  strength  from  his  am- 
bitions; but  so  far  from  his  plan  of  life  had 
been  all  thought  of  love  and  marriage,  except 
in  the  far  future,  that  he  could  not  at  first  give 
any  welcome  to  this  new  feeling  which  already 
possessed  him  so  wholly.  All  at  once  he  was 
startled  to  find  his  destiny  inextricably  compli- 
cated with  that  of  this  slip  of  a  girl  who  might 
or  might  not  care  for  him,  but  who  in  either 
case  could  never  again,  to  a  nature  like  his, 
be  as  one  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  Separate 
and  apart  forever  would  be  the  slight,  dainty 
figure,  the  rose-bud  face  and  the  sweet  eyes, 
from  which  looked  forth,  he  would  fain  be- 
lieve, a  brave,  faithful,  and  honest  soul.  Being 
brave,  faithful,  and  honest  himself,  there  could 
be  but  one  ending  to  his  reverie,  and  after  more 
hours  than  he  realized,  he  took  up  his  home- 
ward way  with  a  definite  purpose  to  woo  and 
win,  if  possible;  and  to  do  him  justice  he  had 
modesty  enough  to  admit  a  doubt  upon  the 
subject,  ,even  to  himself.  Finding  upon  his 
return  the  subdued  bustle  attendant  upon  the 
arrival  of  the  afternoon  stage,  "Any  passen- 
gers ?"  he  inquired  of  Sam  Greaves,  a  bright 
youth  of  sixteen,  who  attached  himself  to 
Pauline  in  the  role  of  youthful  adorer. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Sam,  "lots.  All  the  Day- 
tons,  three  or  four  men,  and  the  Lawrences. 
Know  them,  sir?" 

"Yes,"  returned  Bradford,  concisely,  some- 
what put  out  to  find  his  premeditated  cam- 
paign thus  interrupted. 

"I  say,  Sam,  could  you  take  these  wild  flow- 
ers to  Miss  Brenton  with  my  compliments,  and 
ask  how  she  is  after  her  drowning?" 

The  delighted  Sam  grasped  them  valiantly, 
and  strode  away,  leaving  Bradford  to  go  to  his 
room. 

After  dinner  that  night,  a  wonderfully  lovely 

twilight  called  every  one  out  of  doors.    Pauline, 

who  had  been  in  close  attendance  upon  Mrs. 

Hasbrook  and  her  inevitable  headache,  and  had 

dined  in  her  room,  had  thrown  a  light  shawl 

over  her  shoulders,  and  seated  herself  at  the 

door  of  the  cottage.     Up  and  down  the  long 

I  vista  of  the  porches  people  were  passing  and  re- 

I  passing,  but  she  enjoyed  her  solitude  and  quiet 


A   PESCADERO  PEBBLE. 


after  the  day's  excitement.  Two  little  words 
rang  in  her  ears  over  and  over  again ;  and  yet 
had  she  really  heard  Mr.  Bradford  say,  "My 
darling,"  as  he  drew  her  from  the  water,  or  was 
that,  too,  only  a  part  of  her  unfinished  dream  ? 
What  a  lovely  world,  she  thought;  the  earth 
was  all  in  tune  with  her  happy  heart.  High 
above  Lincoln  Hill  swung  the  crescent  lamp  of 
a  young  moon,  sending  its  soft  light  down 
through  the  Lamarque  rose -vines  that  shaded 
the  porch,  and  penciling  their  delicate  foliage 
in  shadowy  lines  upon  the  floor.  Up  from  the 
garden  at  her  feet  floated  faint  odors  of  tea-rose 
and  mignonette.  Beyond  the  cliff  sounded  the 
low  monotone  of  the  surf,  while  some  one  in  the 
half -lit  cottage  next  door  was  playing  in  a 
dreamy,  impromptu  fashion,  stringing  exquis- 
ite bits  of  Strauss  and  Gounod  and  Offenbach 
upon  a  thread  of  dainty  modulation,  and  down 
by  the  gate  a  night-bird  called  from  an  acacia 
tree  in  shrill,  sweet  tones.  It  was  easy  to  be- 
lieve, at  least  for  to-night,  that  life  might  hold 
all  sorts  of  sweet  possibilities  for  her. 

Just  then  upon  this  rose-colored  reverie  broke 
the  sound  of  voices  in  some  open  window  near. 

"Yes,"  some  one  was  saying,  "he  is  a  fine  fel- 
low, and  quite  a  catch,  too,  I  believe.  Miss 
Lawrence  has  done  well." 

"Is  it  really  an  engagement,  then?"  asked 
another  voice. 

"  I  believe  so.  At  least,  the  Lawrences  don't 
deny  it,  and  Mr.  Bradford  and  his  mother  were 
their  guests  for  some  time  this  spring."' 

"Well,  it  really  will  be  a  good  thing  for  Maud 
Lawrence.  She's  certainly  a  trifle  passe,  and 
might  die  an  'unappropriated  blessing,'  you 
know.  I  judge  he  is  wealthy,  or  she  would 
have  none  of  him." 

"Oh,  yes.  There  is  a  handsome  family  prop- 
erty in  New  York  and  on  the  Hudson,  and  the 
young  man  is,  besides,  a  promising  lawyer." 

And  so  on — though  I  doubt  if  Pauline  heard 
even  so  much. 

She  was  very  glad,  she  thought,  to  have  heard 
what  she  did.  It  was  so  much  better  that  she 
should  correct  that  little  mistake  of  hers  before 
she  had  come  to  believe  it  true.  How  fortunate 
that  she  had  not  given  away  even  the  least  lit- 
tle bit  of  her  heart  unasked. 

But — with  a  little  shiver — how  cold  and  dark 
it  had  grown.  She  looked  for  the  moon,  but  its 
light  was  quenched  in  a  bank  of  fog.  People 
were  disappearing  from  the  porches,  and  the 
player  in  Mrs.  Dayton's  cottage  had  grown  lu- 
gubrious. He  was  playing  Chopin  now,  and 
the  muffled  drums  of  the  "Marche  Funebre" 
made  the  heavy  air  throb  with  their  sorrow. 
Just  as  the  exquisitely  sad  adagio  began,  Pau- 
line rose  to  go  in.  She  would  go  to  sleep. 


It  was  good  sometimes  to  forget,  and — was  this 
a  tear  that  wet  her  cheek  ? 

The  days  that  followed  were  gay  with  excur- 
sions of  all  sorts,  planned  for  the  pleasure  of 
the  Lawrences  and  other  new-comers.  Mr. 
Bradford,  though  inclined  to  perform  his  social 
duties  to  them  in  his  own  thorough  manner, 
had  no  mind  that  Mrs.  Hasbrook  or  her  niece 
should  suffer  any  neglect.  So  they  were  al- 
ways among  the  first  to  be  consulted,  and  it  was 
always  evident  that  some  one  was  looking  out 
thoughtfully  for  their  comfort.  Pauline,  under- 
standing, as  she  imagined,  the  delicacy  of  feel- 
ing that  would  not  allow  her  little  rush-light  to 
be  obscured  by  the  rising  of  the  bright  particu- 
lar star,  accepted  such  attentions  with  utter 
good  feeling,  and  gave  no  time  to  bitter  thoughts. 
But  several  refusals  were  unavoidably  given, 
owing  to  Aunt  Nellie's  ailments,  so  that  she 
really  saw  very  little  of  Miss  Lawrence  or  of 
.Mr.  Bradford's  supposed  devotion  to  her.  She 
discovered  however,  through  sundry  personal 
experiences,  that  the  young  lady  was  an  adept 
in  that  sort  of  society  stiletto  practice  which 
enables  people  to  stab  you  skillfully  in  the  back 
while  presenting  a  smiling  countenance  to  you 
and  the  rest  of  the  world;  though  why  Miss 
Lawrence  should  honor  her  especially  with 
such  attentions,  Pauline  was  too  blind  to  see. 

Miss  Lawrence's  younger  bother,  one  of  those 
unsparing  critics  we  often  encounter  in  the  very 
heart  of  our  own  family  circle,  said  to  her  one 
morning : 

"I  say,  Maud,  I  can't  see  why  you  waste  so 
much  ammunition  on  that  little  Miss  Brenton. 
You're  uncommonly  free  with  your  shot  and 
shell  when  she's  around." 

"I  can't  help  your  blindness,"  was  the  ele- 
gant retort.  "  If  you  can't  see  that  she  is  throw- 
ing herself  directly  at  Bradford,  I  can;  and 
that  game  of  unsophisticated  innocence  is  just 
the  one  to  catch  such  a  man." 

"Well,  to  be  candid,  sis,  if  she  really  entered 
for  the  race,  I  believe  her  chance  would  be 
quite  as  good  as  yours.  I  didn't  suppose  you 
were  so  far  gone,  though." 

"You  know  as  well  as  I  do  how  much  I  am 
likely  to  care  for  such  a  strict-laced  individual 
as  he  is,  but  the  Bradford  property  and  the 
Bradford  diamonds  are  worth  winning,  and  I 
mean  to  do  it." 

"Then  I  advise  you  to  be  a  little  more  care- 
ful. The  young  gentleman  overheard  your 
pointed  observation  about  school -girl  imperti- 
nence last  night,  and  was  furious.  By  Jove,  I 
didn't  know  blue  eyes  could  blaze  so.  Be  care- 
ful,  Maud.  Ta-ta." 

"If  I  don't  win,  she  shall  not,"  muttered  Miss 
Maud,  tragically. 


138 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


From  which  bit  of  conversation  it  will  be 
seen  that  Mr.  Bradford's  suspicion  of  the  latent 
coarseness  in  the  Lawrence  family  was  not 
unfounded.  It  was  during  a  day  in  the  woods 
that  more  of  the  same  thing  came  to  the  sur- 
face. 

The  excusion  on  this  day  was  to  the  Falls  of 
the  Butano,  and  nearly  every  one  was  going. 
As  everybody  knows,  the  wagon  road  comes  to 
an  untimely  end  above  Clellan's  Mill,  and  it  is 
customary  to  make  a  camp-fire  there  for  those 
who  do  not  care  to  attempt  the  rather  severe 
trail  that  leads  to  the  falls.  Around  the  fire  on 
this  occasion  gathered  Mrs.  Bradford  and  Mrs. 
Hasbrook,  with  several  other  elderly  ladies,  and 
Pauline,  insisting  that  they  needed  some  one  to 
keep  the  fire  and  make  their  tea,  decided  to  stay 
with  them.  The  loudly  expressed  disapproval 
of  the  pedestrian  party  at  the  loss  of  one  of  their 
best  walkers  had  no  effect  upon  her,  and  she 
laughingly  persisted  in  her  determination,  at 
which  Mrs.  Bradford  expressed  her  gratifica- 
tion. 

"You  are  the  only  one  of  the  young  people, 
my  dear,  who  has  patience  with  my  fern  mania 
and  can  tell  one  from  another.  Shall  we  have 
a  little  search  for  them  to-day?" 

Pauline  was  only  too  happy.  To  Mrs.  Brad- 
ford, whose  motherhood  was  the  strongest  part 
of  her  nature,  all  young  girls  represented,  in 
one  way  or  another,  the  ever  regretted  daugh- 
ter whom  Heaven  had  denied  her ;  so,  attract- 
ed to  Pauline  from  the  first,  she  had  shown 
her  liking  generously  and  freely.  This  first  real 
revelation  of  mother  tenderness  had  been  to 
the  poor  child  almost  too  sweet  to  be  borne, 
and  she  found  herself  yielding  more  and  more 
to  it  as  the  days  went  by.  So  they  set  off  to- 
gether very  happily,  though  a  little  sadly,  too, 
knowing  that  not  many  more  of  these  pleasant 
days  could  come.  The  ferns  were  plenty  enough, 
and  tropical  in  luxuriance.  Every  uprooted  red- 
wood tree  left  a  grotto,  which  was  speedily  filled 
with  brake  and  fern  and  feathery  rush,  till  it 
seemed  a  home  fit  for  the  queen  of  all  the  fair- 
ies, and  every  fallen  log  was  arched  or  hidden 
by  the  dainty  growth.  Pauline,  with  arms  and 
hands  full,  was  still  pressing  on,  eager  for  more, 
when  a  sharp  cry  of  pain  stopped  her  suddenly, 
and  she  hurried  back  a  little  way,  to  find  Mrs. 
Bradford  lying  beside  a  huge  log  she  had  tried 
to  cross  alone. 

"  I  think,  my  dear,"  she  said,  faintly,  as  Pau- 
line bent  over  her,  "that  my  ankle  is  sprained. 
It  is  the  one  that  has  been  hurt  before." 

That  it  was  badly  sprained  was  sure,  for  Pau- 
line found  it  already  almost  impossible  to  un- 
button the  boot,  How  she  got  the  suffering, 
but  brave,  old  lady  back  to  the  fire  she  hardly 


knew;  but  it  was  done,  and,  leaving  her  to  the 
care  of  the  others,  'she  at  once  took  the  trail  to 
the  falls  in  search  of  the  son,  who  would,  she 
knew,  be  the  mother's  best  physician.  In  fact, 
she  felt  sure,  and  time  proved  her  right,  that  it 
was  no  trifling  accident,  and  that  it  was  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  get  Mrs.  Bradford  back  to 
the  hotel  as  soon  as  possible.  Over  the  ground 
she  sped,  urged  by  keenest  sympathy,  climbing 
great  fallen  redwoods,  over  which  she  had  be- 
fore been  helped  most  carefully ;  crushing  down 
the  remembrance  of  various  stories  she  had 
heard  of  wild  animals  met  in  these  woods,  that 
'wo^tld  rise  up  to  haunt  her ;  startled,  in  spite  of 
herself,  at  the  vague,  unfamiliar  sounds  of  forest 
life  around  her,  and  feeling  keenly  how  alone 
she  was;  catching  her  dress  upon  bush  and 
brier  till  it  was  in  tatters;  crossing  the  creek 
once  or  twice  upon  fallen  logs  at  dizzy  hights 
above  the  water,  from  one  of  which  she  lost  her 
hat,  and  gave  it  a  farewell  glance  as  it  sailed 
peacefully  down  the  stream;  still  on,  losing 
breath  as  the  trail  began  to  ascend,  but  never 
wholly  losing  courage,  till  at  last  the  loiterers 
of  the  party  turned  to  see  a  little  figure  flying 
toward  them  with  disheveled  hair  blown  in 
tossing  tendrils  across  the  flushed  face,  and  gar- 
ments to  whose  streaming  tatters  clung  twig 
and  leaf  and  branch  in  mad  confusion. 

Reaching  Bruce  Bradford,  to  whose  arm  Miss 
Lawrence  clung  in  interesting  helplessness,  Pau- 
line expended  her  last  remnant  of  breath  in  tell- 
ing him  of  the  accident  to  his  mother.  Then 
came  that  ugly  cropping-up  of  the  genuine  Law- 
rence nature  which  Bruce  had  once  prophesied 
to  his  mother.  Realizing  that,  with  all  her  dis- 
advantages, Pauline  had  never  appeared  so  ab- 
solutely lovable  in  her  life,  Maud,  half  mad  with 
rage  and  disappointment,  forgot  herself  entire- 
ly, and,  clinging  still  closer  to  the  arm  she  held, 
exclaimed,  loud  enough  for  every  one  to  hear : 

"Don't  go  one  step,  Mr.  Bradford.  I  don't 
'believe  a  word  of  it.  She  only  wants  to  get  you 
back  to  the  camp." 

Her  words  were  so  childishly  angry  as  to  be 
laughable,  but  Bradford  was  so  agitated  that  he 
saw  only  the  spirit  that  animated  them,  and, 
turning  his  white  face  toward  her  while  he  dis- 
engaged his  arm,  he  said,  coldly  and  clearly : 

"Miss  Brenton  is  utterly  incapable  of  such 
deception." 

Then,  turning  to  the  poor  little  messenger, 
who  was  cruelly  hurt  by  this  last  and  barest 
thrust,  he  rapidly  and  tenderly  seated  her  upon 
a  fallen  tree,  folded  round  her  one  of  many  of- 
fered shawls,  and,  calling  her  devoted  Sammie 
Greaves,  said  to  him : 

"  I  want  you  to  stay  with  this  lady  till  she  is 
cool  and  rested,  and  then  bring  her  carefully 


TAXATION  IN  CALIFORNIA. 


139 


back  to  the  wagons.     Will  you  do  this  for  me, 
"Sam?" 

"I'll  do  it  for  both  of  you,  sir,"  said  Sam,  at 
the  summit  of  pride  and  happiness  to  be  serv- 
ing two  of  his  admirations  at  once. 

Then  Bruce,  with  one  lingering  look  into 
Pauline's  eyes  which  spoke  volumes  to  her  pal- 
pitating little  heart,  and  with  not  a  single  one 
of  any  kind  at  Miss  Lawrence,  was  off  like  the 
wind. 

Pauline,  half  overcome  with  fatigue,  excite- 
ment, and  indignation,  was  decidedly  on  the 
verge  of  a  good  cry,  which  fact  was  quite  ap- 
parent to  poor  Sam,  who  was  beside  himself 
with  distress.  What  should  he  do  for  her? 
What  did  people  do  for  weeping  damsels,  he 
wondered. 

c;Miss  Pauline,  don't  now;  please  don't  cry. 
What  shall  I  get  for  you?"  Then,  as  a  happy 
thought,  struck  him:  "Just  wait  a  minute;  I'll 
get  the  governor's  brandy-flask.  I'm  sure  that 
will  do  you  good." 

Pauline  was  obliged  to  politely  decline  the 
brandy,  but  her  hearty  laugh  at  the  discomfited 
Sam  quelled  the  impending  deluge,  and  all  was 
well. 

I  may  as  well  mention  here  that  Miss  Law- 
rence gave  orders  to  her  long-suffering  and 
much  enduring  parents  to  secure  seats  next 
morning  for  Santa  Cruz  and  Aptos — that  her 
maiden  meditations  are  still  fancy  free,  and  that 
she  considers  Pescadero  a  very  stupid  place. 

When  Mr.  Bradford  sought  an  interview  with 
Mrs.  Hasbrook  upon  a  subject  of  much  impor- 
tance to  himself,  she  received  him  with  consid- 
erable hauteur.  It  was  a  coming  down,  indeed, 
from  that  blue-blooded  nobleman  of  her  dreams 
to  a  mere  American,  no  matter  how  much  of  a 
gentleman  he  might  be,  and  she  felt  that  for 
Pauline's  sake  she  ought  to  hesitate  about  en- 
tertaining his  proposals.  Bradford,  however, 
being  entirely  unacquainted  with  his  visionary 


rival,  and  not  even  suspecting  that  there  was 
one,  being,  moreover,  armed  with  a  knowledge 
of  Pauline's  acquiescence  in  his  designs,  took 
such  lofty  ground  of  assuming  Mrs.  Hasbrook's 
consent  to  be  a  foregone  conclusion,  that  she 
finally  yielded  with  what  she  considered  be- 
coming dignity,  and  in  the  days  that  followed 
— days  of  tedious  seclusion  for  poor  Mrs.  Brad- 
ford, whose  painful  limb  was  the  only  shadow 
in  the  glowing  picture  of  that  summer  time — 
Aunt  Nellie  came  out  gloriously  as  a  gentle 
nurse,  a  genial  companion,  and,  best  of  all,  an 
emancipated  martyr,  for  in  all  those  weeks  she 
forgot  to  have  a  sick-headache. 

At  a  merry  lunch  party  given  in  a  hospitable 
Oakland  home  to  a  number  of  "graduates" 
from  a  celebrated  seminary  there  was,  of  course, 
a  great  deal  of  "Class"  gossip.  As  they  lin- 
gered over  the  fruit  some  one  asked: 

"Does  any  one  know  where  Pauline  Brenton 
has  been  this  summer?  I've  neither  seen  nor 
heard  from  her." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  another,  "she  and  her  aunt 
have  been  at  Pescadero  all  the  season.  Nina 
Lewis  saw  them  there;  and  our  little  Pauline  is 
engaged.  What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

Chorus  of  wonder  and  delight,  finishing  with 
a  unanimous,  though  ungrammatical,  "Who  to?" 

"A  Mr.  Bradford,  a  wealthy  gentleman  from 
the  East,  and  handsome,  too,  Nina  says." 

"I  wonder  if  it  is  a  Mr.  Bradford  we  met  at 
the  Lawrences  last  spring?" 

"The  same,  I  think;  and,  oh,  girls !  what  do 
you  think  the  ring  is?" 

"A  big  solitaire,  I  suppose,  since  he  is  so 
wealthy." 

"My  dear," — impressively — "they  are  rich 
enough  to  do  without  diamonds,  if  they  choose. 
No !  The  ring,  for  Nina  saw  it,  is  simply  a 
pink  Pescadero  pebble!" 

ISABEL  HAMMELL  RAYMOND. 


TAXATION    IN    CALIFORNIA. 


Three  questions  must  present  themselves  to 
the  consideration  of  the  honest  law-maker  while 
making  up  his  mind  to  support  or  oppose  any 
bill  for  the  imposition  of  taxes : 

First — Is  the  measure  just  and  right  in  prin- 
ciple? 

Second — Is  it  practicable? 

Third — What  will  be  its  effect  upon  the  gen- 
eral prosperity  of  the  people  ? 


Only  the  first  of  these  questions  seems  to 
have  been  thought  of  by  the  framers  of  our 
present  Constitution.  Consequently  their  work, 
though  intended  to  compel  equal  taxation  (ex- 
cept upon  the  farmers),  has  proved  impractica- 
ble, and  has  thus  far  greatly  disturbed  and 
hindered  the  general  prosperity. 

Art.  XIII,  Sec.  i,  of  the  new  Constitution  of 
this  State,  provides  that  "All  property  in  the 


140 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


State,  not  exempt  under  the  laws  of  the  United 
States,  shall  be  taxed  in  proportion  to  its  value." 
"The  word  'property,'  as  used  in  this  article  and 
section,  is  hereby  declared  to  include  moneys, 
credits,  bonds,  stocks,  dues,  franchises,  and  all 
other  matters  and  things,  real,  personal,  and 
mixed,  capable  of  private  ownership ;  provided, 
that  growing  crops"  and  government  property 
"shall  be  exempt  from  taxation." 

A  revenue  law,  intended  to  enforce  assess- 
ments according  to  the  letter  of  this  definition 
of  property,  and  yet  avoid  the  double  taxation 
of  things,  if  not  of  persons,  commanded  by  the 
Constitution,  was  passed  by  the  last  Legisla- 
ture. From  the  new  system  of  assessment  thus 
inaugurated  great  results  were  expected  in  sub- 
jecting to  taxation  the  millionaires  and  wealthy 
corporations  who  were  supposed  previously  to 
have  escaped  their  fair  proportion  of  the  public 
burdens.  Let  us  see  how  these  expectations 
have  been  realized. 

The  report  of  the  State  Board  of  Equalization 
now  in  press  gives  the  following  assessments 
for  the  whole  State  for  1880  as  compared  with 
those  of  1879: 

1879.  1880,  Increase. 

Real  estate $329,213,192  $349,157,295  $19,944,103 

Improvements 107,344,299  111,536,922  4,192,623 

Personal 101,198,292  149,656,007  48,457,715 

Money 9,866,986  24,678,330  14,811,344 

Railroads '. 31,174,120  31,174,120 

Totals $547,622,769    $666,202,674    $118,579,905 

In  the  assessment  for  1880  the  folio  wing  new 
items  appear : 

Solvent  credits  (supposed  to  be  the 
balance  not  offset  by  debts  due 
to  residents  of  this  State) $19,984,777 

Assessed  value  of  shares  of  capital 
stock  in  corporations  (what  a 
farce  !)* 8,499,329 

Franchises  (?) 16,347,146 

Mortgages,  being  simply  a  division 
of  ownership  in  the  real  estate 
mortgaged,  and  adding  nothing 
to  the  assessment  list 96,811,171 

As  the  total  increase  of  the  assessed  value  is 
only  21  }4  per  cent.,  not  only  are  we  disappointed 


*  The  market  value  of  stocks  and  bonds  quoted  in  the  Cali- 
fornia Bond  and  Stock  Herald on  December  17,  1880,  was  as 
follows  : 

State,  city,  and  county  bonds $15,456,612 

Bonds  of  California  corporations 6,583,000 

Stocks  of  banking  and  industrial  corpora- 
tions      47.737, 722 

Railroad  stocks 40,406,625 

$110,184,459 

From  the  first  two  items  no  deduction  can  be  made  under  the 
revenue  law.  From  the  last  two,  deductions  are  allowable  for 
property  assessed  to  the  corporations  themselves.  Besides 
these,  the  gross  market  value  of  all  mining  stocks  whose  works 
are  beyond  the  State  are  assessable,  which  must  amount  to 
many  millions.  Yet  we  are  gravely  informed  that  the  entire 
assessed  value  of  all  these  stocks  is  just  $8,499,329  ! 


as  to  any  reduction  in  the  rate  of  State  taxation, 
but  we  are  called  on  to  pay  64  cents  on  the  $100, 
in  stead  of  62  cents  in  1879-80,55  cents  in  1878-9, 
and  63  cents  in  1877-8. 

In  the  city  of  San  Francisco,  whose  rich  men 
and  corporations  were  specially  intended  to  be 
reached  by  the  new  measures,  the  result  is  as 
follows : 


1880. 

Real  estate $122,098,868 

Improvements 42,931,540 


Personal $68,828,264 

Money 19,747,623 


$165,030,458 


88,575-' 


Total  ..............................  $253,606,345 


^17.389.336 


Real  estate  and  improvements.  $166,429,  845 
Personal,  including  money..     50,959,491 


Difference,  being  increase  ...............     $36,217,009 

Increase  in  personal  property  and  money 
only  .....................  ...........       37,616,396 

As  this  increase  bears  no  sort  of  proportion 
to  popular  anticipation,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the 
City  and  County  Assessor  has  found  himself 
compelled  to  file  supplementary  assessments  on 
the  supposed  personal  property  of  about  100 
persons  and  corporations,  amounting  to  $190,- 
000,000,  even  though  it  may  safely  be  presumed 
that  no  taxes  from  this  assessment  will  ever 
reach  the  city  treasury. 

It  will  be  noticed  that,  so  far  from  any  de- 
crease in  the  city  rate  of  taxation  consequent  on 
the  expected  increase  in  the  assessment  of  per- 
sonal property,  we  are  taxed  this  year  1.59  per 
cent,  against  1.27  in  1879-80. 

Now,  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  the  definition 
of  property  in  the  new  Constitution  has  entirely 
failed  to  bring  out  but  a  very  small  proportion 
of  the  personal  property  which  has  hitherto  not 
been  assessed.  Take  the  money  item,  for  ex- 
ample. The  State  assessment  this  year  shows 
$24,678,330,  an  increase  of  $14,811,344  over 
1879.  But  the  report  of  the  Bank  Commission- 
ers of  December,  1879,  showed  deposits  in  banks 
throughout  the  State  amounting  to  $82,133,- 
256.  1  5,  all  of  which  was  surely  intended  to  be  as- 
sessed by  the  revenue  law.  That  is,  $57,454,- 
926  escaped  taxation  in  this  item  alone  ;  or,  in 
other  words,  the  assessors  have  found  only  $i 
out  of  $3  which  a  public  document  informed 
them  was  liable  to  assessment. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  the  sum 
insured  on  improvements  and  visible  personal 
property  in  San  Francisco,  of  course  exclusive 
of  money,  debts,  and  franchises,  was,  in  1879, 
$172,175,238,  which  sum  represented  about  half 
the  market  value  of  those  descriptions  of  prop- 


TAXATION  IN  CALIFORNIA. 


141 


erty,  for  not  more  than  half,  if  so  much,  is  in- 
sured.    But  the  assessors  have  found  only : 

Improvements $42,931,590 

Personal  property  (not  money). . .     68,828,264 

$111,759,854 

That  is,  the  assessments  on  real,  tangible 
personal  property  (for  none  other  is  insurable), 
and  on  buildings  of  all  kinds,  are  taken  at  less 
than  one -third  of  the  insurable  value  thereof. 
Where  are  the  remaining  two-thirds  ?  Where, 
too, are  all  the  "credits,  bonds, stocks,  dues,  fran- 
chises, and  all  other  matters  and  things  capa- 
ble of  private  ownership?" 

It  is  evident  from  these  figures  that  the  tri- 
fling increase  of  21  per  cent,  in  the  State  as- 
sessment roll,  accompanied,  as  it  has  been,  by 
an  increase  instead  of  a  reduction  in  the  rate  of 
tax  levied,  both  in  State  and  city,  deprives  the 
advocates  of  the  new  Constitution  of  any  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  its  clauses  on  taxation,  as  de- 
rived from  experience.  Nothing  at  all  commen- 
surate with  the  expectation  has  been  added  to 
the  assessment  roll ;  there  has  been  no  deduc- 
tion, but  an  increase  of  taxation.  All  the  fuss 
and  discussion  about  these  new  principles  have, 
therefore,  developed  no  good,  but  only  the  fol- 
lowing evils : 

A  division  of  interests  between  mortgageors 
and  mortgagees  in  the  assessments  of  real  es- 
tate, settled  by  an  enormous  increase  of  labor 
and  expense  to  the  State,  but  adding  nothing 
at  all  to  the  assessment  roll. 

An  attempted  confiscation  of  20  to  30  per 
cent,  of  the  revenue  heretofore  derived  from 
money  lent  on  mortgage,  which  fails  because 
there  is  now  established  in  the  market  a  dis- 
crimination against  loans  on  mortgage,  except 
at  a  rate  of  interest  higher  than  on  other  securi- 
ties by  the  estimated  amount  of  the  tax. 

A  complete  exemption  of  all  taxes  on  farm 
produce,  in  the  farmer's  hands,  indirectly  ef- 
fected. For,  as  the  growing  crops  are  exempt- 
ed by  the  Constitution,  which  also  (Art.  XIII, 
Sec.  8)  fixes  the  first  Monday  in  March  as  the 
time  to  which  all  assessments  must  relate,  of 
course  the  farmer,  whose  crops  are  then  just 
sown,  is  not  assessed;  and  by  the  next  first 
Monday  in  March  the  crop  has  been  har- 
vested, sold,  and  moved  off,  so  that  he  es- 
capes assessment  altogether,  except  on  the 
very  small  proportion  ($5,000,000  this  year) 
that  then  may  remain  on  hand.  Doubtless, 
$80,000,000*  worth  of  farm  produce,  including 
what  is  consumed  in  this  and  the  adjoining 

*  A  careful  estimate  of  the  crop  yield  of  the  State,  as  re- 
ported in  the  Surveyor-General's  report  for  1879,  less  six  coun- 
ties not  reported,  gives  a  value  of  $66,708,097.  This  year  the 
yield  has  been  much  greater. 


States,  have  thus  escaped  taxation  this  year  al- 
together. 

Another  neat  little  arrangement  for  the  farm- 
er's benefit,  at  the  expense  of  the  city,  is  found 
in  the  clause  (Sec.  2,  Art.  XIII),  "Cultivated 
and  uncultivated  land  of  the  same  quality,  and 
similarly  situated,  shall  be  assessed  a"t  the  same 
value."  Of  course,  under  this  clause  cultivated 
land  must  practically  be  assessed  at  the  value 
of  uncultivated,  for  as  "value"  is  defined  in  the 
revenue  law,  to  mean  "the  amount  at  which 
the  property  would  be  taken  in  payment  of  a 
just  debt,  due  from  a  solvent  debtor,"  no  Asses- 
sor would  be  justified  in  rating  $10  land  at  $50. 
Consequently,  under  the  Constitution  the  $50 
land  must  come  down  to  the  rating  of  the  $10 
land.  Thus  we  have  in  the  report  of  the  State 
Board  of  Equalization  for  this  year  $184,046,- 
046  given  as  the  value  of  26,116,080  acres  of 
land,  being  all  the  real  estate,  "other  than  city 
lots" — a  value  not  exceeding  an  average  of  $7.04 
per  acre,  or  an  amount  probably  no  greater  than 
the  value  of  three  years'  produce  of  all  kinds.* 

Again,  we  have  an  insoluble  problem  pre- 
sented to  the  assessors,  under  clause  3640  in 
the  Revenue  Act.  To  avoid  double  taxation, 
it  is  provided  "that  the  assessable  value  of 
each  share  of  stock  shall  be  ascertained  by 
taking  from  the  market  value  of  the  entire 
capital  stock  the  value  of  all  property  assessed 
to  the  corporation,  and  dividing  the  remainder 
by  the  entire  number  of  shares  into  which  its 
capital  stock  is  divided."  Now,  this  may  work 
well  enough  when  the  stock  is  owned  by  an  in- 
dividual. But  suppose  two  such  corporations 
each  to  own  a  portion  of  the  other's  stock,  which 
often  happens,  how  is  this  problem  to  be  solved? 
In  fact,  the  assessors  have  not  attempted  to 
find,  much  less  to  figure,  the  values  of  stocks 
in  private  hands ;  and  so  the  amount  of  stocks 
reached  by  them  is  a  mere  trifle  compared  with 
their  actual  amount. 

Again,  the  clause  allowing  the  reduction  from 
assets  of  debts  due  only  "to  bona  fide  residents 
of  this  State"  (Sec.  i,  Art.  XIII),  if  executed 
strictly,  would  work  a  crying  injustice  to  im- 
porters whose  debts  are  principally  owing  be- 
yond the  State.  Why  should  the  jobber  be 

*  The  report  of  the  State  Board  of  Equalization  for  1880 
puts  the  area  of  cultivated  land  at  5,313,580  acres.  This,  at 
$30  average  value,  which  ought  to  be  low,  considering  that  it 
includes  all  the  vineyards,  orange  orchards,  etc.,  worth  $500 
to  $1,000  per  acre,  amounts  to  $159,407,400.  Now,  it  is  safe 
to  assume  the  value  of  the  remaining  20,802,580  acres,  to  aver- 
age $5  per  acre,  for  certainly  no  land  is  offered  for  sale  at  less 
than  $5.  This  gives  $104,012,900 ;  or, 

An  aggregate  of $263,420,300 

Less  actual  assessment 184,046,046 

Value  unassessed $  79,374,254 

Add  value  of  crops 80,000,000 


Total  unassessed  Lo  farmers $159,374,254 


142 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


taxed  less  than  the  importer,  by  the  deduction 
of  his  debts  due  the  importer,  while  the  latter 
must  pay  not  only  on  the  debts  due  to  him  by 
the  jobber,  but  on  those  due  by  him  beyond  the 
State? 

Thus  much  in  criticism  of  the  taxation  clauses 
in  the  new  Constitution,  which,  however,  might 
be  extended  to  other  points.  But  there  is  an- 
other vice,  common  to  both  the  new  and  the 
old  constitutions,  as  well  as  to  the  plan  of  taxa- 
tion, adopted  by  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  Ameri- 
can States.  A  tax  upon  principal,  however 
uniform,  is  necessarily  a  tax  of  varying  and  un- 
equal amount  on  the  revenue  derived  from  the 
use  of  that  principal.  It  is  often  frightfully  ex- 
cessive when  the  income,  on  which  we  all  rely 
to  pay  taxes  with,  is  considered.  Thus,  when 
the  revenue  is  6  per  cent,  per  annum  (now  the 
current  rate  for  safe  investments)  a  tax  of  2  per 
cent,  confiscates  33  per  cent,  of  it.  But  a  tax 
of  2  per  cent,  on  land  valued  at  $10  per  acre, 
and  yielding  a  crop  worth  $10,  is  a  tax  of  only 
2  per  cent,  on  the  farmer's  income.  English- 
men pay  an  income  tax  of  6  pence  in  the 
pound,  or  just  2^  per  cent,  on  incomes.  Is 
it  likely  they  will  continue  to  send  funds  here 
for  investment  where  the  tax  is  20  per  cent., 
30  per  cent.,  or  more,  on  the  income  of  their 
money  ? 

Therefore,  it  is  useless  to  talk  of  establishing 
extensive  manufactures  in  California  while  the 
present  laws  are  in  force.  For,  though  but  a 
single  tax  were  imposed  on  property  of  all 
kinds,  so  long  as  that  tax  is  on  capital  and 
not  on  profits,  and  is  anything  like  2  per  cent, 
per  annum,  so  long  will  such  tax  consume  so 
large  a  part  of  the  profits  as  to  render  such  in- 
vestments inexpedient.  And  so  long  as  the 
Constitution  requires  double  taxation  of  prop- 
erty, by  requiring  separate  assessments  of  each 
interest  in  it,  so  long  will  the  fear  of  its  enforce- 
ment doubly  prevent  the  use  of  money  in  the 
principal  direction  required  by  the  economical 
wants  of  the  State. 

It  is  now  perfectly  evident  that  the  attempt 
made  in  our  Constitution  and  revenue  law  to 
bring  out  and  place  upon  the  assessment  lists 
all  the  items  of  personal  property  that  appear 
as  such  on  the  private  books  of  the  citizens 
has  failed,  as  such  attempts  have  always  failed 
everywhere,  and  must  always  fail  in  the  future. 
It  is  in  fact  impracticable.  Our  limited  experi- 
ence is  precisely  that  of  all  the  civilized  world. 
The  report  of  David  A.  Wells,  Edwin  Dodge, 
and  George  W.  Cuyler,  commissioners  appoint- 
ed by  the  Governor  of  New  York,  in  1871,  to 
revise  the  laws  of  that  State  for  the  assessment 
and  collection  of  taxes,  shows  (pp.  40, 41)  that 
the  assessment  of  personal  property  in  that 


State  for  1869-70  did  not  discover  but  $i  out 
of  every  $4.50  that  was  known  by  public  docu- 
ments to  exist  in  that  State.  Theodore  C.  Peters, 
one  of  the  State  Assessors,  made  a  report  to  the 
New  York  Legislature,  in  1864,  containing  the 
following  statement:  "Of  the  taxable  property 
of  the  State  not  one-fifth  of  the  personal  prop- 
erty is  now  reached.  While  the  real  estate  is 
estimated  at  eleven -twentieths  of  its  value, 
personal  is  at  less  than  four -twentieths."  "A 
further  conclusion  is  arrived  at  that  the  real 
and  personal  property  are  of  equal  value  in 
fact." 

The  figures  attained  by  the  assessments  of 
other  States,  of  cities  and  counties  therein, 
show  a  wonderful  inequality  in  the  amount  of 
personal  property  listed  for  taxation,  and,  of 
course,  prove  that  only  the  wildest  uncertainty, 
and  consequent  gross  inequality,  is  inherent  in 
the  system  of  attempting  to  assess  it  at  all. 
Thus  the  assessment  for  1869-70  showed  per- 
sonal property  per  caput  of  the  population  : 

New  York $  99. 13 

Massachusetts 34S'*9 

Ohio 189 . 67 

California,  1880-1 207.00 

California,  1878-9 138.83 

"Fully  recognizing  facts,"  says  Mr.  Wells 
(on  the  fifty -first  page  of  the  above  quoted  re- 
port), "the  recognition  being  due  in  most  in- 
stances to  years  of  tentative  experience,  all  the 
leading  civilized  and  commercial  nations  on  the 
face  of  the  globe,  with  the  single  exception  of 
the  United  States,  have  abandoned  all  attempts 
to  levy  a  direct  tax  on  personal  property  in  the 
possession  of  individuals,  as  something  entirely 
beyond  the  reach  of  any  power  of  constitutional 
law,  or,  indeed,  of  any  power,  save  that  possi- 
bly of  an  absolute  despotism,  to  effect  with 
any  degree  of  perfectness  or  equality;  while 
the  opinion  of  the  civilized  world  generally  is 
further  agreed  that  all  attempts  to  practically 
enforce  laws  of  this  character  are  alike  prejudi- 
cial to  the  morals  and  material  development  of 
a  State."  "  Much  of  the  property  which  it  may 
be  desirable,  and  is  made  obligatory  on  the 
assessors  to  assess,  is  invisible  and  incorporeal, 
easy  of  transfer  and  concealment,  not  admitting 
of  valuation  by  comparison  with  any  common 
standard,  and  the  determination  of  the  situs  of 
which  constitutes  one  of  the  oldest  and  most 
contraverted  questions  of  law.  When  once, 
moreover,  personal  property  is  valued  and  en- 
rolled for  assessment,  the  assessment  list  is 
necessarily  subject  to  losses,  which  never  oc- 
cur in  respect  to  real  property.  Business  firms 
assessed  on  their  merchandise,  machinery,  or 
capital,  fail,  dissolve,  and  break  up,  and  the 
taxes  are  practically  abandoned.  Household- 


TAXATION  IN  CALIFORNIA. 


ers  break  up,  sell  their  personal  effects,  leave 
the  place  of  their  assessed  residence,  and  the 
tax  levied  on  them  is  lost.  Deaths  break  up 
households,  and  the  property  ceases  to  exist 
as  assessed."* 

It  is  evident  from  the  consideration  of  the 
facts  thus  far  quoted,  which  might  be  multi- 
plied ad  infinitiim,  as  well  as  from  the  experi- 
ence of  our  State  during  thirty  years,  that  as- 
sessments upon  personal  property,  define  it 
as  we  will,  are  unequal,  arbitrary,  uncertain, 
attended  with  an  inquisition  into  private  af- 
fairs which  no  free  people  will  submit  to,  and 
are  to  the  last  degree  demoralizing  by  their  re- 
liance on  oaths  whose  falsity  is  stimulated  by 
a  reward  for  lying  and  punishment  for  telling 
the  truth.  Consequently,  all  such  assessments 
are  impracticable  in  their  very  nature.  Is  it 
not  time  that  our  law-makers  should  recognize 
the  fact  that  the  laws  of  human  nature  are 
stronger  than  any  form  of  government,  and 
that  the  tide  of  economical  necessity  will  rise 
high  enough,  in  spite  of  all  statutory  brush- 
fences,  to  roll  in  resistless  volume  whitherso- 
ever the  laws  of  nature  propel  it? 

Now,  the  confusion  in  the  public  mind  on  the 
subject  of  taxation  in  this  State  is  due  to  the 
ambiguity  of  the  language  of  the  Constitution, 
which  leaves  it  uncertain  whether  persons  or 
things  are  intended  to  be  taxed.  In  theory, 
nothing  is  more  just  than  the  maxim,  "Every 
individual  should  be  taxed  in,  proportion  to 
what  he  is  worth?  This  means,  if  it  means  any- 
thing, that  each  individual  should  pay  taxes  on 
the  difference  in  his  favor,  if  any,  between  his 
assets  and  his  liabilities.  Had  the  Constitution 
stated  this  maxim  instead  of  what  it  does — viz., 
"All  property  in  the  State,  not  exempt  under 
the  laws  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  taxed  in 
proportion  to  its  value,"  followed  by  a  defini- 
tion of  property  in  its  vulgar  sense — then  the 
duty  of  framing  a  statute  to  enforce  the  man- 
date would  have  been  clear  and  easily  per- 
formed. Nay,  more,  the  question  of  double  tax- 
ation would  not  have  arisen,  for  the  double  tax- 
ation commanded  in  the  Constitution  is  si  prop- 
erty, and  not  of  persons.  All  the  different  rights 
in  the  same  thing,  owned  by  different  persons, 
or  represented  by  different  evidences  (as  stock, 
bonds,  debts,  etc.),  are  intended  to  be  taxed  to 
those  different  persons,  and  its  provisions,  as 
they  stand,  were  it  not  for  the  clause,  "all prop- 
erty shall  be  taxed  in  proportion  to  its  value," 

*  Thus  the  San  Francisco  Auditor's  report  for  1878-9  (p.  591) 
shows: 

Taxes  on  real  estate  roll $4,264,722.78 

Delinquent  only 242.20 

Taxes  on  personal  property  roll 916,763.32 

Delinquent 308,966.78 

Or  more  than  30  per  cent. 


could  be  easily  enforced  by  simply  requiring 
each  person  to  file  his  sworn  statement  of  assets 
and  liabilities  with  the  assessor  on  the  first 
Monday  in  March. 

But  would  the  people  of  California  endure 
such  an  inquisition  as  this?  Would  any  civil- 
ized people  be  willing  to  file  their  sworn  state- 
ments of  the  condition  of  their  private  affairs  in 
a  public  office?  Does  not  all  the  world  know 
that  all  attempts  to  base  an  assessment  upon 
information  extorted  from  unwilling  witnesses 
by  means  of  the  oath  results  only  in  public  de- 
moralization? The  once  clear  moral  atmos- 
phere of  our  country  has  now  become  thick 
with  the  murky  clouds  of  almost  universal  per- 
jury. At  almost  every  point  of  contact  between 
the  Government  and  the  individual  the  oath  is 
interposed,  like  packing  in  machinery,  as  the 
only  means  of  abating  the  necessary  friction. 
Excessive  use  has  long  ago  worn  out  this  pack- 
ing. Is  there  now  one  in  one  hundred  who 
feels  his  conscience  burdened  by  perjury  if 
thereby  he  may  reap  a  pecuniary  advantage  at 
the  expense  of  the  Government  or  a  corpora- 
tion ?  Is  it  not  time  that  we  realized  the  posi- 
tive evil  of  so  many  unnecessary  temptations  to 
this  crime,  especially  since  the  oath  is  no  longer 
any  guarantee  of  truth?  Is  it  worth  while  to 
expect  taxes  from  even  a  candidate  for  the 
Presidency  when  his  own  oath  is  our  only  reli- 
ance in  ascertaining  the  amount? 

Bearing  now  in  mind  that  the  prevailing  idea 
is  that  taxes  should  be  laid  in  proportion  to 
personal  ability  to  pay,  while  the  Constitution 
is  so  worded  as  to  make  property  the  basis  of 
assessment,  the  ambiguity  consists  in  the  adop- 
tion of  the  ordinary  definition  of  the  word  "prop- 
erty," instead  of  defining  it  with  reference  to 
the  extraordinary  sense  in  which  it  must  be  used 
in  levying  taxes.  Says  Judge  McKinstry,  in 
People  vs.  Hibernia  Bank  (51  Cal.):  "The 
sovereign  power  of  the  people,  in  employing 
the  prerogative  of  taxation,  regards  not  the 
claims  of  individuals  on  individuals,  but  deals 
with  the  aggregate  wealth  of  all.  That  which 
is  supposed  to  be  unlimited  is  here  limited  by 
an  inexorable  law  (of  nature)  which  Parlia- 
ments cannot  set  aside,  for  it  is  only  to  the 
actual  wealth  that  Governments  can  resort, 
and,  that  exhausted,  they  have  no  other  prop- 
erty resource.  This  is  as  certain  as  that  a  paper 
promise  to  pay  money  is  not  money.  It  is 
property  in  possession  or  enjoyment,  and  not 
merely  in  right,  which  must  ultimately  pay  every 
tax." 

Says  Judge  Wallace,  in  the  same  case :  "Mere 
credits  are  a  false  quantity  in  ascertaining  the 
sum  of  wealth  which  is  subject  to  taxation  as 
property,  and,  in  so  far  as  that  sum  is  attempt- 


144 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ed  to  be  increased  by  the  addition  of  those  cred- 
its, property  taxation  based  thereon  is  not  only 
merely  fanciful,  but  necessarily  an  additional 
tax  on  a  portion  of  the  property  already  once 
taxed.  Suppose  the  entire  tax-rolls  exhibited 
nothing  but  such  indebtedness.  Taxation  un- 
der such  circumstances  would,  of  course,  be 
wholly  fanciful,  as  having  no  actual  basis  for  its 
exercise," 

If,  therefore,  property,  and  not  persons,  are 
to  be  taxed,  it  becomes  logically  necessary  to 
define  "property,"  for  the  purposes  of  taxation, 
to  be  things,  not  rights  in  things  nor  representa- 
tives of  things,  and  the  claim  of  the  Government 
for  taxes  is  a  claim  in  rem,  resulting  from  its 
right  of  eminent  domain,  and  not  in  personam. 

It  is  evident,  on  a  moment's  reflection,  that 
the  aggregate  property  of  the  State  must  be  the 
aggregate  value  of  the  visible,  tangible  things, 
or,  in  other  words,  the  actual  realized  wealth, 
owned  no  matter  by  whom,  but  situated  within 
its  limits — that  is,  the  aggregate  value  of  lands, 
buildings,  animals,  products,  vehicles,  ships,  fur- 
niture, railroads,  rolling  stock,  machinery,  goods, 
etc.  It  matters  not  to  the  State  who  owns  these 
things — whether  there  be  one  or  a  dozen  titles 
to  them ;  whether  they  are  paid  for  or  not ;  or 
whether  the  owners  reside  beyond  its  jurisdic- 
tion or  not.  The  thing  itself'^  what  it  is,  or 
should  be,  liable  to  taxation,  under  a  system  of 
property  tax,  and  it  should  be  taxed  but  once. 

Now,  the  relation  of  debtor  and  creditor  be- 
tween the  tax -payers  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  aggregate  value  of  their  property ; 
for,  as  by  each  individual's  private  books,  what 
he  owes  is  exactly  balanced  by  the  credit  extend- 
ed to  him  on  his  creditors'  books,  so  the  aggre- 
gate of  all  debts  must  exactly  balance  all  cred- 
its, and  therefore  they  neutralize  each  other. 
The  plus  quantities  equal  the  minus  quantities, 
so  that  their  difference  is  nothing.  For  exam- 
ple :  Suppose  ten  men  each  own  a  house  and 
lot  worth  $10,000.  The  aggregate  value  is 
$100,000.  Now  let  each  man  borrow  $5,000  of 
his  neighbor.  The  aggregate  debt  thus  created 
is  $50,000.  But  a  corresponding  credit  of  $50,- 
ooo  is  also  created.  Will  our  granger  friends 
claim  that  the  ten  men  are  now  worth  any  more 
than  they  were  before?  Equals  from  equals 
and  nothing  remains ;  so  that,  whether  there  be 
debts  between  the  parties  or  not,  the  original 
$100,000  is  the  aggregated  net  value  of  the 
whole  property  for  taxation  or  for  any  other 
purpose. 

So  as  to  stocks  and  bonds.  Suppose  a  corpo- 
ration to  have  $1,000,000  capital,  and  its  stock  to 
be  quoted  at  50  cents.  It  has  real  and  personal 
property  assessed  at  say  $250,000.  Deducting 
this  from  the  market  value  of  the  stock,  the  lat- 


ter is  commanded  to  be  assessed  at  25  cents. 
So  far  there  is  no  double  taxation.  But  sup- 
pose the  corporation  has  issued  $250,000  of 
bonds,  and  these  are  assessed  as  required  by 
law.  The  amount  on  which  the  corporation  is 
assessed  is 

On  real  and  personal  property,  assess- 
ed to  the  corporation $250,000 

On  stock,  assessed  to  stock-holders..  250,000 
On  bonds,  assessed  to  bond-holders. .  250,000 

Total $750,000 

or  50  per  cent,  more  than  the  whole  value  of 
the  real  and  personal  property  in  existence.  Is 
not  this  double  taxation  of  things,  if  not  of  per- 
sons? 

Now,  the  assessment  of  tangible,  visible  things 
is  all  that  is  within  the  powers  of  the  average 
assessor  (who  is  not  gifted  with  second  sight); 
for  all  actual,  material  property  shows  for  itself, 
and  a  claim  in  rem  for  taxes  compels  whoever 
owns  it  to  pay  the  tax  or  lose  his  property  by 
tax  sale.  If  it  were  possible  to  force  every  cit- 
izen to  exhibit  his  exact  accounts  to  the  assessors 
on  a  given  day,  showing  the  things  owned  by 
him,  the  result  would  be  precisely  the  same  as  if 
the  outside  assessment  of  things  only  were 
made  at  the  same  value  without  noticing  rights 
in  things.  Why,  then,  not  confine  the  labors  of 
the  assessors  to  the  listing  of  things  only,  in- 
stead of  requiring  from  them  impossibilities,  at 
the  cost  of  equality  and  truth,  and  of  the  de- 
moralization caused  by  the  present  system?  Let 
the  Constitution  command  double  taxation  of 
property  as  it  will,  so  great  is  the  opposition  of 
the  people  to  it  that  the  Legislature  and  courts 
will  not  enforce  it,  the  assessors  dare  not  im- 
pose it,  and  the  citizens  will  not  pay  it.  The 
only  results  will  be  what  they  already  are,  viz., 
the  destruction  of  that  confidence  without  which 
capital  withdraws  or  declines  investment,  leav- 
ing labor  unemployed  and  our  great  resources 
undeveloped;  the  discouragement  of  immigra- 
tion ;  and  contempt  of  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land,  thus  crumbling  into  sand  that  cement  of 
respect  for  law  which  alone  holds  the  masonry 
of  free  institutions  together. 

The  problem  to  be  now  solved  is  how  to  get 
our  State  out  of  the  inconsistency  in  which  it 
has  been  involved  by  the  ambiguity  of  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Constitution. 

There  are  several  ways  in  which  this  can  be 
done,  though  all  of  them  require  amendment 
of  the  Constitution. 

(i.)  If  the  traditional  public  opinion  of  our 
State  is  yet  too  strongly  set  in  favor  of  taxing 
both  real  and  personal  property  to  justify  any 
attempt  to  change  it,  then  the  question  of 
double  taxation  can  be  wholly  eliminated  by 


TAXATION  IN  CALIFORNIA. 


substituting  for  the  present  definition  of  "prop- 
erty" the  following: 

"Property  for  the  purposes  of  taxation  is 
hereby  defined  to  mean  things— -not  rights  in 
things,  nor  representatives  of  things.  The 
claim  of  the  State  and  muncipal  govern- 
ments for  taxes  is  a  lien  in  rem  upon  the 
things  assessed.  No  evidence  of  debt  shall 
be  subject  to  taxation." 

And  in  order  to  reach  the  agricultural  prod- 
uce of  the  State,  which  has  always  escaped 
taxation,  another  amendment  should  be  made, 
fixing  a  separate  assessment  thereof  in  October 
or  November  of  each  year.  Of  course,  all  the 
clauses  relating  to  the  taxation  of  mortgages, 
debts,  credits,  etc.,  would  have  to  come  out  of 
Art.  XIII,  and  these  changes  would  leave  the 
whole  matter  just  where  it  was  left,  in  1877,  by 
the  decision  in  People  vs.  Hibernia  Bank,  ex- 
cept that  the  farmers  would  be  obliged  to  pay 
their  share  of  taxes  on  personal  property. 

(2.)  A  second  solution  of  the  problem  would 
be  effected  by  striking  out  of  the  Constitution 
the  words  "all  property  in  the  State  shall  be 
taxed  in  proportion  to  its  value"  and  substitute 
therefor  the  words  "each  person  (natural  or 
artificial)  in  the  State  shall  be  taxed  in  pro- 
portion to  his  wealth,"  leaving  the  definition 
of  property  as  it  stands,  and  compelling  the 
citizens  and  corporations  to  make  a  sworn 
statement  of  the  actual  condition  of  their  af- 
fairs on  assessment  day. 

(3.)  Another  mode  of  solving  the  problem 
is  to  substitute  for  the  "all  property"  clause 
the  following:  "Each  person  (natural  or  artifi- 
cial) in  the  State  shall  be  taxed  in  proportion 
to  his  income,"  striking  out  the  definition  of 
property  and  other  inconsistent  clauses  alto- 
gether. Then  make  it  mandatory  on  the  Leg- 
islature to  enact  a  statute  providing  that  all 
taxation  shall  be  itpon  income  only,  in  the  same 
manner  as  has  been  done  in  Great  Britain  dur- 
ing fifty  years,  or  more.  This  is  theoretically 
the  fairest  mode  of  taxation  which  statecraft 
has  yet  devised. 

But  the  people  of  the  State  will  never  submit 
to  the  inquisition  into  private  affairs  required 
by  both  the  last  two  suggestions.  They  will, 
therefore,  not  be  advocated  by  any  one. 

(4.)  But  if  public  opinion  should  be  so  far 
instructed  by  the  failure  of  our  present  system, 
as  well  as  by  the  failure  of  taxes  on  personal 
property  everywhere,  as  to  be  equal  to  the  task 
of  leading  all  the  other  American  States  on  this 
vexed  subject,  I  respectfully  suggest,  as  follows: 

(a.)  That  all  taxes  on  personal  property  and 
all  personal  taxes  be  abolished,  except  an  in- 
come tax  on  foreign  corporations  having  no  in- 
vestments in  the  State,  and  excepting  also  mu- 


nicipal license  taxes  on  those  occupations  only 
that  tend  to  public  demoralization. 

(b.)  That  the  only  property  taxed  shall  be 
lands,  to  be  assessed  at  their  uncultivated  value, 
and  buildings  of  all  kinds,  including  railroads 
and  all  other  structures  fixed  to  the  soil,  except 
machinery,  the  works  of  the  miner,  the  fences, 
ditches,  and  irrigating  works  of  the  farmer,  and 
the  dams,  flumes,  and  machinery  of  the  manu- 
facturer. 

The  debates  we  have  had  on  this  subject  in 
the  daily  press  and  on  the  stump  have  been 
exhaustive  on  the  topic  of  double  taxation,  but 
have  failed  to  notice  either  the  ambiguity  in 
the  Constitution  between  property  and  per- 
sonal taxation,  or  the  remarkably  shrewd  man- 
ner in  which  our  political  masters  in  the  coun- 
try have  contrived  to  shirk  their  share  of  taxes 
at  the  expense  of  the  city.  There  is  another 
vital  principle  which  has  been  similarly  ig- 
nored. I  refer  to  the  law  of  the  diffusion  of 
taxes.  This  law  is  thus  stated  by  Mr.  Wells, 
in  his  Rational  Principles  of  Taxation  : 

"  All  taxation  ultimately  and  necessarily  falls  on  con- 
sumption; and  the  burden  of  every  man,  -which  no  effort 
will  enable  him  directly  to  avoid,  -will  be  in  the  exact 
proportion,  or  ratio,  which  his  consumption  bears  to  the 
aggregate  consumption  of  the  taxing  district  of  which  he 
is  a  -member." 

This  is  best  illustrated  by  the  working  of  the 
tariff  of  the  United  States.  Every  one  can  see 
at  a  glance  that  if  a  gallon  of  wine  costs  a  dol- 
lar to  import,  and  must  then  pay  a  duty  of  40 
cents,  whoever  consumes  that  wine  must  pay 
at  least  $1.40  for  it,  exclusive  of  the  dealer's 
profit.  The  duty  is  in  fact  a  part  of  the  cost  of 
the  article,  and  if  not  refunded  to  the  merchant 
who  advances  it,  would  result  in  speedily  break- 
ing up  his  business.  So  with  the  duty  on  wool. 
It  is  sold  at  a  price  which  includes  the  duty  to 
the  manufacturer,  whose  selling  price  of  cloth 
of  course  includes  this  as  well  as  all  other  items 
of  expense  in  producing  the  cloth.  The  tailor 
having  in  his  turn  advanced  the  tax,  charges 
it  with  all  other  items  that  go  to  make  up  the 
cost  of  a  suit  of  clothes,  and  the  consumer  of 
the  clothes  repays  the  last  advance  without 
recourse  to  any  one  else.  Evidently,  the  more 
wine  and  clothes  consumed  by  any  individual, 
the  more  tax  he  pays,  whether  he  knows  it  or 
not;  or  whether  he  ever  saw  the  inside  of  a 
custom  house  or  not. 

This  law  of  diffusion  of  taxes  is  as  much  a 
law  of  nature  as  that  by  which  a  snowball 
grows  with  each  successive  turn.  Every  busi- 
ness successful  enough  to  give  a  living  must 
enable  the  man  who  pursues  it  to  get  back  all 
his  costs,  including  taxes  of  whatever  nature, 


146 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


besides  the  profit  on  which  he  lives.  This 
proposition  is  self-evident. 

It  is  also  self-evident  that  whether  the  as- 
sessment list  be  large  or  small,  the  govern- 
ment must  be  supported,  and  will  raise  the 
sum  necessary  to  its  support,  indifferently  by 
a  small  tax  on  a  large  assessment,  or  by  a  large 
tax  on  a  small  assessment ;  by  a  tax  on  one  in- 
terest or  on  all  interests. 

So  that  nothing  is  gained  as  to  the  amount 
of  money  raised,  whether  the  assessment  in- 
cludes "everything  capable  of  private  owner- 
ship," or  only  one  thing.  Neither  is  anything 
gained  by  the  people  as  to  the  amount  of  tax 
they  pay,  whether  each  man  pays  his  tax  di- 
rectly to  the  Government,  or  whether  one  set 
of  men  advance  the  whole  tax  and  the  rest  re- 
fund it.  Therefore,  if  it  be  possible  to  select 
some  one  species  of  property  whose  nature  is 
such  that  it  cannot  be  concealed  or  removed, 
that  a  claim  in  rem  against  it  would  be  always 
good,  whose  value  can  be  ascertained  by  the 
assessors  without  the  necessity  of  tempting  the 
owner  to  take  a  false  oath,  whose  use  is  a  neces- 
sity to  all  mankind  and  must  be  paid  for  by  all 
who  use  it,  then  shall  we  have  found  the  solu- 
tion of  nearly  all  the  difficulties  that  surround 
this  most  intricate  question. 

There  are  only  two  such  species  of  property 
— land  and  buildings — including  railroads  and 
other  structures  fixed  to  the  soil. 

The  taxes  levied  on  rented  land  are  refunded 
in  the  rent,  which  again  is  recouped  by  the 
produce  of  the  soil  which  everybody  consumes. 
If  not  rented,  but  cultivated  by  the  owner,  the 
produce  directly  refunds  the  tax  with  the  other 
costs  of  production.  If  not  used  for  any  pur- 
pose, it  ought  to  be  taxed  anyhow,  for  the  hold- 
ing of  land  on  speculation  has  been  long  recog- 
nized as  an  evil  in  our  State,  and  present  sound 
legislation  tends  to  its  discouragement.  Again, 
taxes  on  buildings  are  replaced  by  the  rent. 
The  tenant  of  a  dwelling  is  the  consumer  who 
ultimately  pays  the  tax,  as  does  the  owner  who 
inhabits  his  own  house.  But  the  premises  let 
for  business  uses  carry  the  tax  in  the  rent,  which 
is  an  item  in  the  expense  of  the  business,  and 
added  to  the  cost  of  the  product  of  the  business. 
The  customers  of  such  tenants,  if  themselves 
merchants  or  shopmen,  repeat  the  process  with 
their  patrons,  until  the  tax  has  distributed  itself 
infinitesimally  among  all  who  live  on  the  land, 
or  inhabit  buildings,  or  consume  any  articles 
whatever.  In  this  view,  the  baby  in  his  cradle 
is  a  tax -payer,  in  the  proportion  that  his  con- 
sumption bears  to  that  of  the  whole  community. 

In  this  view,  the  railroad  people,  who  con- 
sume many  millions  per  annum  in  merely  oper- 
ating their  lines,  to  say  nothing  of  building  new 


ones,  would  still  be  the  largest  tax-payers  in  the 
State,  though  they  paid  no  direct  tax  to  the 
treasury;  and  we  may  depend  upon  it  that  all 
of  the  enormous  taxation  now  attempted  to  be 
assessed  upon  railroads  and  railroad  owners 
will  be  added  to  their  fares  and  freights  and 
thus  exacted  from  the  people,  despite  all  the 
merely  nominal  regulations  of  fares  and  freights 
likely  to  be  exerted  by  our  boasted  jnstitution 
of  Railroad  Commissioners.* 

The  idea  of  confining  taxation  to  land  only  is 
not  new.  It  has  been  advocated  by  economists 
during  many  years.  More  than  a  century  ago, 
Adam  Smith  wrote  :t  "The  quantity  and  value 
of  the  land  which  any  man  possesses  can  never 
be  a  secret,  and  can  always  be  ascertained  with 
great  exactness.  But  the  whole  amount  of  the 
capital  stock  which  he  possesses  is  almost  al- 
ways a  secret,  and  can  scarce  ever  be  ascer- 
tained with  tolerable  exactness.  It  is  liable  to 
almost  continual  variations An  inquisi- 
tion into  every  man's  private  circumstances 
.  .  .  .  would  be  a  source  of  such  continual  and 
endless  vexation  as  no  people  could  support. 
Land  is  a  subject  which  cannot  be  removed, 
whereas  stock  easily  may.  The  proprietor  of 
land  is  necessarily  a  citizen  of  the  country  in 
which  his  estate  lies.  The  proprietor  of  stock 
is  properly  a  citizen  of  the  world,  and  is  not 
necessarily  attached  to  any  particular  country. 
He  would  be  apt  to  abandon  a  country  in  which 
he  was  exposed  to  a  vexatious  inquisition  in 
order  to  be  assessed  to  a  burdensome  tax,  and 
would  remove  his  stock  to  some  other  country 
where  he  could  either  carry  on  his  business  or 
enjoy  his  fortune  more  at  his  ease."  ( How  pro- 
phetic of  what  is  going  on  in  California  to-day  ! ) 
"By  removing  his  stock  he  would  put  an  end  to 
all  the  industry  which  it  had  maintained  in  the 
country  which  he  left,"  etc. 

If,  now,  it  be  admitted  that  taxation  on  land 
alone  would  yield  all  necessary  revenue,  cannot 
be  evaded,  is  more  easily  and  cheaply  assessed, 
is  more  equal,  and  diffuses  itself  thoroughly 
among  the  community  by  the  laws  of  trade ; 
that  it  would  tend  to  discourage  land  specula- 
tion, and  to  encourage  the  most  profitable  use 
of  the  land;  and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
farmers  can  be  made  to  see  that  the  taxes  on 
business  they  were  smart  enough  to  shirk  for 
themselves  are  as  irksome  to  all  other  branches 
of  industry  as  to  their  own ;  that  all  industries 


The  railroads  from  which  no  deduction  of 

the  mortgages  is  allowed  are  assessed  at  $31,174,120 

Stocks  and  bonds  arbitrarily  assessed 
against  three  of  the  resident  owners  in 
the  supplementary  assessment  of  San 
Francisco,  $19,000,000  each 57,000,000 


$88,174,120 


t  Wealth  of  Nations,  672. 


TAXATION  IN  CALIFORNIA. 


are  alike  valuable  to  the  community  in  propor- 
tion to  their  relative  magnitude ;  that,  above  all, 
manufactures  are  useful  to  the  farmer,  as  cre- 
ating on  the  spot  a  market  for  raw  materials, 
and  largely  increasing  local  consumption  of  all 
the  products  of  the  soil,  and  therefore  should 
be  preeminently  encouraged;*  if  they  can  be 
made  to  see  that  the  relation  between  city  and 
country  is  that  of  the  belly  to  the  members,  and 
that  their  present  attitude  of  oppression  toward 
the  city  is  slow  poison  to  themselves — then  why 
will  they  not  be  willing  that  the  State  should 
adopt  the  measure  proposed? 

Let  us  see  how  it  would  work : 

The  Controller's  estimate  of  the  expenses  of 
the  State  for  the  fiscal  years  1881-83  is  $6,560,- 
246,  or  $3,280,123  per  annum.  To  meet  this 
a  tax  of  64  cents  has  been  levied  on  the  total 
assessment  of  all  kinds  of  property,  amounting 
to  $666,202,674.  If  the  personal  property  por- 
tion of  this  assessment  were  all  "good,"  as  in 
the  nature  of  things  it  cannot  be,  then  it  is  evi- 
dent that  a  tax  of  50  cents  would  pay  all  the 
State  expenses.  The  State  Board  of  Equaliza- 
tion have,  however,  for  this  reason,  as  required 
by  Sec.  3696  of  the  Political  Code,  levied  a  tax 
of  64  cents,  or  14  cents  more  than  would  be 
needed  if  there  were  to  be  no  delinquent  list. 

Now,  the  items  of  real  estate  and  improve- 
ments amount  to  $460,694,217,  out  of  the  $666,- 
202,674.  A  tax  of  71 X  cents  on  this  lesser  sum 
would,  therefore,  pay  the  expenses  of  the  State ; 
that  is,  the  additional  tax  of  only  7X  cents  put 
on  real  estate  and  improvements  would  be  all 
the  difference  resulting  to  the  debit  side  of  the 
proposed  change,  so  far  as  State  taxes  are  con- 
cerned. 

In  the  city,  the  tax  this  year,  on  a  total  as- 
sessment of  $253,606,345,  is  1.57  per  cent.,  or 
$3,981,620,  for  city  purposes.  If  this  were  con- 
fined to  real  estate  and  improvements,  the  rate 
would  be  advanced  to  2.41.  Add  State  tax,  and 
the  owners  of  real  estate  and  improvements 
would  be  taxed  this  year  3.12%  per  cent. 

What,  then,  would  be  the  results  to  the  tax- 
payer? 

( i.)  The  abolition  of  personal  taxes,  licenses, 
etc.,  would  of  course  be  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  increase  of  the  tax  on  land  and  buildings  in 
both  city  and  country,  so  that  in  the  aggregate 
the  tax-payers  would  pay  no  more  taxes  than 
they  now  do.  Furthermore,  the  aggregate  of 
the  tax  would  be  reduced  by  the  amount  now 
wasted  in  the  cost  of  assessing  and  collecting 
the  revenue  from  so  many  sources.  It  would 
often  be  the  case,  too,  that  each  tax-payer,  who 

*  Vermont  exempts  wholly  from  taxation  all  manufactories 
for  five  years  from  their  inception. 


is  now  assessed  on  both  real  and  personal 
property,  would  find  the  relief  on  the  one  tax 
balance  the  increase  on  the  other. 

(2.)  Rents  would  be  advanced  to  cover  the 
tax,  or  more.  At  the  least,  all  leases  would 
thereafter  oblige  the  tenant  to  pay  the  specific 
amount  of  the  tax  in  addition  to  the  old  rate  of 
rent,  and  by  the  process  of  diffusion  already 
explained  the  landlord  would  be  recouped  and 
the  consumer  pay  the  tax.  Nevertheless,  real 
estate  would  be  unfavorably  affected  for  a  while. 
But  by  and  by — 

(3.)  All  other  taxes  being  removed,  there  be- 
ing no  longer  any  apprehension  of  interference 
of  the  tax-collector  with  business  in  any  way  or 
manner,  capital  would  flow  into  the  city,  new 
enterprises  would  be  inaugurated,  population 
would  increase,  rents  would  go  up,  and  real  es- 
tate would  recover  from  its  temporary  depres- 
sion and  soon  reach  much  higher  prices  than 
before. 

(4.)  As  new  enterprises,  especially  manufact- 
ures, were  developed,  the  accumulation  of  wealth 
would  soon  flow  out  into  the  country,  where  the 
demand  for  new  and  more  remunerative  prod- 
ucts than  wheat  would  gradually  cause  a  change 
in  the  present  destructive  agricultural  policy 
of  our  State.  Small  farms  of  irrigated  land 
would  produce  $50  to  $500  per  acre  from  crops 
that  can  best  be  raised  on  a  small  scale,  and 
for  which  there  is  now  no  demand,  yet  for  whose 
production  our  soil  and  climate  are  particular- 
ly designed  by  nature.  This  paper  is  already 
too  long  to  more  than  allude  to  what  might  be 
done  with 'jute,  hemp,  ramie,  sugar,  cotton,  to- 
bacco, silk,  madder,  teasels,  grapes,  olives,  and 
the  whole  list  of  fruits  that  can  now  be  dried 
and  preserved  so  as  to  become  permanent  arti- 
cles of  commerce.  No  taxes  on  money,  on 
debts,  mortgages,  on  business,  stocks,  shipping, 
banks,  or  corporations  as  such,  capital  would 
be  attracted,  and  invested  in  a  greater  variety 
of  channels  than  ever.  Immigration  would  fol- 
low, especially  to  those  regions  heretofore  mo- 
nopolized by  land  speculators,  whose  burden  of 
taxation  would  make  them  anxious  to  let  go  at 
a  great  reduction  of  former  prices.  I  look  for- 
ward with  hope  and  confidence  to  the  dawning 
of  the  manufacturing  and  industrial  day,  now 
apparently  sure  to  succeed  our  long  night  of 
mere  speculation.  I  hope  to  live  long  enough 
to  see  the  State  dotted  over  with  manufactories, 
its  lands  generally  irrigated,  cut  up  into  small 
holdings,  and  furnishing  support  to  thousands 
of  substantial  resident  yeomanry,  where  now 
there  are  but  tens,  the  bulk  of  whom  are  em- 
ployed only  a  few  months  in  the  year.  How  is 
all  this  to  be  accomplished  when  our  vicious 
system  of  taxation  strangles  in  the  birth  all  ef- 


148 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


fort  toward  improvement?  How  can  we  thrive 
under  a  cast-iron  Constitution,  molded  in  the 
heat  of  class  antagonisms,  intended  to  affect 
present  public  interests  as  they  appeared  to  the 
inflamed  eyes  of  men  laboring  under  mere  tem- 
porary excitement,  and  formulated  in  contempt 
alike  of  the  universal  experience  of  mankind 
in  the  past,  and  of  the  changes  in  our  require- 
ments that  will  of  course  develop  themselves 
in  the  future? 

I  have  said  enough  thus  far  to  enlist  the  at- 
tention of  thoughtful,  earnest,  and  patriotic 
men,  enough  to  stimulate  study  of  this  most 
complicated  of  all  the  questions  of  statecraft, 
and  enough  to  excite  the  attacks  of  that  un- 
fortunately large  class  in  every  new  community 


who  exhaust  themselves  in  the  effort  to  prove 
in  their  own  persons  that  "a  little  knowledge  is 
a  dangerous  thing."  Much  more  might  be  said 
in  anticipation  of  the  objections  which  are  sure 
to  be  made  to  any  proposition  to  change  the 
new  Constitution  by  those  whose  pride  of  con- 
sistency would  lead  them  to  sink  the  State 
rather  than  acknowledge  an  error  under  any 
circumstances.  It  is  hoped  that  this  paper  may 
prove  the  entering  wedge  of  a  discussion  on  the 
merits  of  this  most  important  subject,  and  that 
such  debate  may  be  conducted  with  that  free- 
dom from  passion  and  prejudice  which  is  es- 
sential to  the  development  of  "the  truth,  the 
whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth." 

C,  T.  HOPKINS. 


NOTE. — Since  the  above  was  put  in  type,  the  report  of  the  State  Board  of  Equalization  has  been  issued.  It  is 
full  of  suggestive  facts  in  accord  with  the  tenor  of  the  above  article.  It  shows  that  the  maladministration  of  the 
business  of  assessment,  especially  in  the  country,  has  reduced  the  whole  thing  almost  to  the  level  of  a  scandal ! 
After  showing  (p.  29)  that,  deducting  the  assessments  of  franchises,  solvent  debts,  and  shares  of  capital  stock  from 
the  total  value  of  personal  property,  "  the  assessed  value  of  the  personal  property  this  year  is  only  $1,716,718  over 
the  assessment  of  1878,  and  is  $6,749,996  less  than  that  of  1877."  It  says,  "We  feel  sure  that  many  millions  of 
dollars'  worth  escape  assessment.  We  believe  that  if  it  were  possible  to  secure  for  once  a  full  and  correct  assess- 
ment of  the  State,  the  assessment  roll  would  aggregate  $1,000,000,000."  The  report  gives  ample  evidence  of 
the  utter  incapacity,  if  not  deliberate  fraud,  of  a  large  portion  of  the  county  assessors — all  at  the  expense  of  the 
city;  e.  g,,  the  average  valuation  of  1,389,550  acres  of  land  in  Kern  County  at  $1.48  per  acre,  and  900,454  acres 
(376,930  less  than  in  1879)  in  San  Diego  County  at  59  cents !  But  San  Francisco's  farming  lands,  6,862  acres, 
though  mostly  sand-dunes  or  rough  hills,  are  quoted  at  $168.32  per  acre.  The  report  deserves  careful  criticism  by 
all  classes  of  the  community,  and  it  is  hoped  the  press  will  give  it  careful  and  discriminating  attention. — C.  T.  H. 


CALIFORNIAN    CRADLE    SONG. 

There  are  cumulus  clouds  on  these  purple  hills, 

The  water  runs  in  forgotten  rills, 
Sedate  nemophilas'  eyes  of  blue 

Demurely  smile  on  the  world  anew, 
For  the  raindrops  cease  their  murmur  of  peace, 
And  the  fowls  creep  out, 

And  the  children  shout, 
And  an  oriole  sings 

Where  a  poppy  springs, 
And  the  field  is  green, 

And  the  sky  serene, 

And  the  baby  wonders,  and  cannot  guess 
Why  the  world  is  clad  in  such  loveliness. 

O  wise  young  mother  whose  notes  prolong 

The  dreamful  tones  of  your  tranquil  song, 
O  trustful  babe  at  your  mother's  breast 

Remembering  dimly  a  land  more  blest, 
Do  you  think  it  strange  that  the  hill -sides  change? 
That  a  flower  renews 

Its  maidenly  hues? 
That  an  oriole  sings 

And  a  poppy  springs? 
I  recall  the  grace 

Of  a  lifted  face, 

And  I  see  it  again  in  this  babe,  and  guess 
Why  the  world  is  renewed  in  such  loveliness.         CHAS.  H.  PHELPS. 


A   STUDY  OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


149 


A   STUDY   OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


After  making  all  allowances  and  concessions 
as  to  the  bad  taste  and  the  coarse  indecencies 
of  much  of  Walt  Whitman's  earlier  writing,  it 
still  remains  true  that  he  is  the  most  remarka- 
ble literary  phenomenon  of  the  age.  A  great 
deal  of  worthless  rubbish  has  clustered  about 
the  pure  magnetic  ore  of  his  thought,  but  there 
is  noble  metal  at  the  center.  That  it  is  no 
child's  play  to  analyze  and  criticise  his  writings, 
opening  up  as  they  do  the  profoundest  ques- 
tions in  poetry,  politics,  and  religion,  no  one 
who  has  read  his  works  will  need  to  be  told.  It 
is  puzzling  to  know  where  to  take  hold  of  him, 
or  how.  He  cannot  be  classified.  He  must 
rather  be  understood  and  interpreted  by  sym- 
pathetic intuition.  Whitman  has  been  greatly 
under  estimated  and  greatly  over  estimated. 
This  happens  because  of  his  duality.  He  is 
mixed  of  iron  and  gold.  He  is  like  those  stat- 
ues in  the  shops  of  Athens  of  which  Socrates 
speaks  :  outwardly  they  were  ugly  and  uncouth 
sileni,  but  within  were  the  images  of  the  ever- 
lasting gods.  Whitman  sometimes  seems  the 
spokesman  of  the  low-bred  rabble,  uttering  only 
bluster,  coarse  fustian,  and  beastly  indecencies 
of  language,  but  on  the  very  next  page,  per- 
haps, his  strain  rises  high  and  sweet  and  clear, 
and  you  tremble  with  awe  at  the  manifestation 
of  superhuman  power,  recognizing  for  the  mo- 
ment in  this  rude  poet  of  the  new  world  the 
peer  of  Homer,  of  ^Eschylus,  of  Angelo.  Swin- 
burne puts  the  case  very  neatly  in  a  single  para- 
graph of  a  pamphlet  entitled  Under  the  Micro- 
scope. He  says : 

"Whitman  is  not  one  of  the  everlasting  models,  but 
as  an  original  and  individual  poet  it  is  at  his  best  hardly 
possible  to  overrate  him;  as  an  informing  and  reforming 
element  it  is  absolutely  impossible." 

This  is  true.  As  a  reforming  element  in  po- 
etry, political  ethics,  and  religious  philosophy, 
his  writings  are  of  incalculable  importance.  In 
poetry  his  chants  are  vast  Angelo-cartoons  of 
new  world  life  and  landscape,  to  be  filled  in  by 
future  American  poets ;  in  religious  philosophy 
he  is  typical  and  prophetic,  and  has  struck 
with  mighty  hands  chords  that  are  to  resound 
for  ages. 

But,  apart  from  his  magnificent  originality  as 
an  interpreter  of  nature,  and  apart  from  the 
unparalleled  grandeur  of  his  poems  of  immor- 
tality and  death,  he  is  absolutely  unique  in  one 

Vol.  III.— 10. 


thing :  he  is  the  first  great  poet  of  democracy. 
One  hundred  years  ago  modern  democracy  be- 
gan to  be,  and  Whitman  is  thus  far  the  first 
tribune  of  the  people  who  has  bravely  dared  to 
take  his  seat  in  the  senate  of  letters  with  the  lit- 
erary patricians  of  the  world.  In  this,  again,  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  overrate  his  influence. 
This  it  is  which  distinguishes  him  from  all 
others,  and  makes  it  certain  that  he  will  be 
read  for  centuries  during  the  transition  of  hu- 
manity from  feudalism  to  democracy.  The 
other  features  of  his  writings,  though  deeply 
original,  are  yet  paralleled  and  surpassed  in 
the  works  of  Shakspere,  Goethe,  and  Emerson. 
But  these  writers  have  not  been  the  spokesmen 
of  the  masses.  The  masses  have  never  had  a 
great  poet  until  Whitman,  unless,  perhaps,  we 
except  sweet  Robbie  Burns,  whose  exquisite 
lyrics  should  not  be  compared  with  Whitman's 
vast,  tumultous  hymns  of  the  universe.  Burns 
is  great  as  a  daisy  or  a  rose  is  great ;  Whitman 
as  the  cloud,  the  lightning,  the  tempest.  It  is 
foolish  to  deny  to  Whitman  this  title  of  repre- 
sentative poet  of  democracy,  as  a  recent  critic 
of  him  has  done  in  an  article  in  THE  CALIFOR- 
NIAN.  Thoreau  said  everything  when  he  said, 
"He  is  democracy."  We  are  told  by  the  critic 
that  he  is  no  true  poet  of  the  people  because 
(think  of  it !)  he  has  actually  read  all  the  great 
master -pieces  of  literature,  and  talks  about 
Osiris,  Brahma,  and  Hercules,  and  many  other 
things  of  which  "the  people"  are  not  supposed 
to  know  anything.  The  mistake  of  the  critic  is 
in  thinking  that  the  people  are  so  ignorant  in 
this  age  of  universal  reading  as  not  to  under- 
stand allusions  to  the  commonplaces  of  litera- 
ture. The  language,  too,  of  Whitman,  is  that 
of  the  people — almost  wholly  Saxon.  Take  the 
song  of  the  broad-ax,  for  example,  in  Chants 
Democratic,  and  the  description  of  the  Euro- 
pean headsman  in  the  same  poem,  Almost 
every  word  is  Saxon,  and  every  word,  with  one 
exception,  is  either  monosyllabic  or  dissyllabic. 
It  seems  as  if  no  one  with  eyes  and  a  brain 
back  of  them  could  read  Whitman's  prose  writ- 
ings, the  Democratic  Vistas  and  Memoranda 
during  the  War,  and  not  see  that  he  is  de- 
mocracy incarnated. 

The  very  grossness,  the  swagger,  the  bad 
grammar,  and  the  billingsgate  which  so  fre- 
quently deface  his  early  writing,  instantly  stamp 
him  as  of  the  people,  as  belonging  to  the  class 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ordinarily  spoken  of  as  uncultured.  He  himself 
is  avowedly  very  bitter  against  conventional 
"culture."  It  has  been  very  justly  said  of  him 
that  he  sometimes  affects  his  rdle.  There  is  too 
much  of  this,  I  admit.  He  is  often  too  self-con- 
scious. 

But  this  too  frequent  self- consciousness  does 
not  by  any  means  make  all  his  work  affectation, 
and  his  carriage  always,  or  often,  that  of  an  atti- 
tudinizer  or  mere  poser.  This  is  only  occa- 
sional* No,  he  is  really  and  truly  representa- 
tive of  the  people.  As  he  himself  says, 

"I  will  accept  nothing  which  all  cannot  have  their 
counterpart  of  on  the  same  terms." 

And  in  another  place, 

"I  advance  from  the  people  in  their  own  spirit." 

Before  Whitman  self-government  seemed 
problematical.  Its  ablest  defenders  had  their 
despondent  hours,  and  often  in  the  bottom  of 
their  hearts  were  skeptical  of  the  outcome. 
Those  most  enthusiastic  for  it  were  the  igno- 
rant, who  saw  not  its  terrible  dangers,  and 
learned  theorizers,  writers  upon  political  sci- 
ence. 

But  here  in  America  arises  a  man  who,  by 
the  native  grandeur  of  his  soul  and  his  vast 
prophetic  insight  and  vorstellungskraft^  dis- 
cerns the  magnificent  promise  of  democracy,  is 
filled  with  glowing  faith  in  its  possibilities,  and 
loves  it  with  the  deep  and  yearning  love  of  a 
mother  for  her  child.  He  pours  forth  his  burn- 
ing thoughts  in  words — he  writes  the  great  epic 
of  democracy,  "the  strong  and  haughty  psalm 
of  the  Republic ; "  he  calls  it  Leaves  of  Grass. 
The  very  title  is  democratic — suggests  equal- 
ity. His  enthusiasm  is  catching,  it  is  irresisti- 
ble. Your  skepticism  gradually  disappears  as 
you  read,  and  with  deep  delight  you  find  your- 
self possessed  of  the  national  pride  and  self-re- 
spect which  an  unquestioning  patriotism  gives. 
Your  debt  of  gratitude  is  very  great.  You  love 
the  man  who  has  given  you  a  country.  You 
reverence  the  great  heart  that  beats  with  such 


*  I  must  again  quote  from  Swinburne's  Under  the  Micro- 
scope (p.  47  ):  "What  comes  forth  out  of  the  abundance  of  his 
[  Whitman's  ]  heart  rises  at  once  from  that  high  heart  to  the 
lips  on  which  its  thoughts  take  fire,  and  the  music  which  rolls 
from  them  rings  true  as  fine  gold  and  perfect.  What  comes 
forth  by  the  dictation  of  doctrinal  theory  serves  only  to  twist 
aside  his  hand  and  make  the  written  words  run  foolishly  awry. 
What  he  says  is  well  said  when  he  speaks  as  of  himself,  and  be- 
cause he  cannot  choose  but  speak,  whether  he  speak  of  a  small 
bird's  loss  or  of  a  great  man's  death,  of  a  nation  rising  for  bat- 
tle or  a  child  going  forth  in  the  morning.  What  he  says  is 
not  well  said  when  lie  speaks  not  as  though  he  must,  but  as 
though  he  ought — a  sthough  it  behooved  one  who  would  be  the 
poet  of  American  democracy  to  do  this  thing  or  to  do  that 
thing  if  the  duties  f  that  office  were  to  be  properly  fulfilled, 
the  tenets  of  that  e  ligion  worthily  delivered." 


boundless  sympathy  and  tender  love  for  all  men. 
You  feel  safe  in  the  shelter  of  such  mighty  faith. 
Henceforth  you  are  strong,  self-reliant.  The 
influence  of  your  new  faith  is  felt  in  every  act 
and  thought  of  your  life.  You  are  a  new  man 
or  a  new  woman. 

Whitman's  idea  of  a  republic  is  superb  be- 
yond comparison.  Plato's  dream  is  but  a  dream, 
but  Whitman's  ideal  sketch  is  based  on  reality, 
on  experiment.  It  is  but  a  prophetic  forecast- 
ing of  the  certain  future,  a  filling  in  of  the  out- 
lines already  thrown  upon  the  screen  of  the  fut- 
ure by  actually  realized  events.  Leaves  of  Grass 
is  destined  to  be  a  text -book  for  the  scores  of 
great  democracies  into  which  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean family  is  fast  organizing  itself  in  various 
parts  of  the  globe;  for  it  is  the  only  book  in 
the  world  which  states  in  the  plainest  speech, 
and  in  a  picturesque,  concrete  form  (and  there- 
fore a  popular  form),  the  laws  and  principles, 
the  ways  and  means,  by  which  alone  self-gov- 
ernment can  be  successful.  The  principles  laid 
down  are  as  broad  and  true  and  unerring  as  the 
fundamental  laws  of  nature.  They  will  be  as 
true  thousands  of  years  hence  as  they  are  to- 
day. In  his  republic  Whitman  will  have  great 
women,  able-bodied  women,  an'd  equality  of  the 
sexes.  There  shall  be  a  new  friendship — the 
love  of  man  for  man,  comradeship,  a  manly  af- 
fection purer  than  the  love  of  the  sexes,  making 
invincible  the  nation,  revolutionizing  society. 
There  are  to  be  great  poets,  great  musicians, 
great  orators,  vast  halls  of  industry,  completest 
freedom,  and,  above  all,  profound  religious  be- 
lief, without  which  all  will  be  failure.  The  pict- 
ure of  this  vast  continental  republic  of  the  new 
world  is  wrought  out  to  its  minutest  detail  in 
the  poet's  mind.  All  on  fire  at  the  magnificence 
of  the  vision,  he  bursts  forth  into  that  wild,  ec- 
static century -shout,  the  apostrophe  in  Chants 
Democratic,  which,  for  wild  intensity  of  passion, 
seems  to  me  unequaled  in  all  literature : 

"O  mater!    O  fils  ! 

O  brood  continental ! 

O  flowers  of  the  prairies  ! 

O  space  boundless !    O  hum  of  mighty  products  ! " 

"  O  days  by-gone !     Enthusiasts  !    Antecedents  ! 
O  vast  preparations  for  these  States  !    O  years  ! " 

"  O  haughtiest  growth  of  time  !    O  free  and  ecstatic !" 

"  O  yon  hastening  light ! 

O  so  amazing  and  so  broad,  up  there  resplendent,  dart- 
ing and  burning ! 

O  prophetic  !  O  vision  staggered  with  weight  of  light, 
with  pouring  glories  ! " 

"O  my  soul !  O  lips  becoming  tremulous,  powerless  ! 
O  centuries,  centuries  yet  ahead  ! " 


A   STUDY  OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


There  are  passages  in  Nahum,  Habakkuk, 
and  Isaiah  which  are  even  finer  than  this  in 
splendor  of  imagery,  but  none  which  excel  it 
in  intensity.  Take  for  example  the  following 
passage  from  Isaiah  (v,  26-30),  and  see  how 
quietly  it  reads  in  comparison  with  Whitman, 
and  yet  notice  that  in  exalted  majesty  of  im- 
agery and  in  stately  magnificence  of  movement 
it  excels  him : 

"He  lifteth  up  a  banner  for  the  nations  afar  off, 

He  whistleth  for  them  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,    • 

And  behold  they  haste  and  come  swiftly; 

None  among  them  is  weary,  and  none  stumbleth; 

None  slumbereth,  and  none  sleepeth; 

The  girdle  of  their  loins  is  not  loosed, 

Nor  the  latchet  of  their  shoes  broken; 

Their  arrows  are  sharp, 

And  all  their  bows  bent; 

The  hoofs  of  their  horses  are  like  flint, 

And  their  wheels  li'ke  a  whirlwind." 

In  regard  to  the  communistic  tendencies  of 
Whitman,  I  confess  that  to  my  taste  his  politi- 
cal creed  is  too  democratic — too  all -leveling. 
In  his  ideal  American  republic  one  is  distressed 
by  the  monotonous  uniformity  of  men  and  in- 
stitutions. All  such  attempts  (conscious  or  un- 
conscious) to  level  distinctions  arise  from  fail- 
ure to  keep  steadily  in  view  the  great  evolu- 
tionary law  of  nature — the  law  of  continual  and 
universal  differentiation.  Whitman  says,  in  his 
prose  work,  Democratic  Vistas: 

"Long  enough  have  the  People  been  listening  to 
poems  in  which  common  Humanity,  deferential,  bends 
low,  acknowledging  superiors.  But  America  listens  to 
no  such  poems." 

To  this  I  reply,  that  when  any  people  be- 
comes so  mad  as  not  to  acknowledge  its  natu- 
ral leaders  and  superiors,  then  we  shall  have 
anarchy  and  not  democracy.  But  we  must  not 
do  Whitman  injustice.  No  one  believes  more 
unwaveringly  in  great  men  than  he;  and  if 
generally  he  seems  to  expect  that  all  may  be 
raised  to  one  uniform  level  of  attainment,  he 
yet  firmly  insists  upon  reverence  for  the  native 
superiority  of  mind ;  as,  e.  g.,  in  the  immortal 
words  in  which  he  describes  the  greatest  city 
(Chants  Democratic,  ii,  6-15): 

"What  do  you  think  endures — 

A  teeming  manufacturing  State, 

Or  hotels  of  granite  and  iron? 

Away !  These  are  not  to  be  cherished  for  themselves. 

The  show  passes;  all  does  well  enough,  of  course. 

All  does  very  well  till  one  flash  of  defiance. 

The  greatest  city  is  that  which  has  the  greatest  man 

or  woman. 
If  it  be  a  few  ragged  huts,  it  is  still  the  greatest  city 

in  the  whole  world." 

"Where  behavior  is  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts; 
Where  the  men  and  women  think  lightly  of  the  laws; 


Where  the  populace  rise  at  once  against  the  never- 
ending  audacity  of  elected  persons; 
Where  fierce  men  and  women  pour  forth,  as  the  sea 
to  the  whistle  of  death  pours  its  sweeping  and 
unript  waves; 

Where  the  city  of  the  faithfulest  friends  stands, 
Where  the  city^of  the  cleanliness  of  the  sexes  stands, 
Where  the  city  of  the  healthiest  fathers  stands, 
Where  the  city  of  the  best  bodied  mothers  stands, 
There  the  greatest  city  stands." 

"All  waits  or  goes  by  default,  till  a  strong  being  ap- 
pears. 

A  strong  being  is  the  proof  of  the  race  and  of  the 
ability  of  the  universe. 

When  he  or  she  appears,  materials  are  overawed; 

The  dispute  on  the  soul  stops." 

The  great  defect  of  Whitman's  ideal  of  a 
democracy,  as  it  is  of  his  own  nature,  is  that 
it  is  too  coarse  and  rude — it  does  not  provide 
for  the  polish  and  fine  finishing  which  Nature 
shows  through  all  her  works.  His  ideal  is 
a  magnificent  skeleton  of  a  democracy,  and 
herein  seems  absolutely  perfect.  But  we  still 
await  the  great  poet  who  shall  combine  the 
strength  of  Whitman  with  the  high-bred  courte- 
sy and  elegance  of  Emerson  or  Goethe,  and 
thus  be  himself  a  living  incarnation  of  the  Per- 
fect Democracy.  Whitman  betrays  the  defect 
of  his  nature  in  a  paragraph  on  his  own  style. 
He  says :  . 

"Let  others  finish  specimens — I  never  finish  speci- 
mens. I  shower  them  by  exhaustless  laws,  as  nature 
does,  fresh  and  modern  continually." 

But  nature  does  finish  all  her  specimens  most 
exquisitely.  And  so  must  the  greatest  poet. 
So  did  Shakspere;  and  so  have  the  ten  or 
eleven  other  great  master-poets  of  the  world. 

A  word  about  the  Calamus  of  Whitman.  The 
billowing,  up -welling  love  and  yearning  affec- 
tion of  Whitman's  great  heart — the  love  which 
led  him  to  give  those  long  years  of  self-sacrific- 
ing ministration  to  the  wounded  and  dying  in 
the  hospitals  of  the  war,  this  manly  love,  this 
love  of  comrades  which  he  announces  and  sings 
in  his  Calamus — seems  to  the  reader  to  be  some- 
thing entirely  novel.  Such  is  the  force  of  the 
powerful  flavor  of  originality  that  he  gives  to 
every  subject  he  touches.  This  type  of  manly 
affection  he  symbolizes  by  the  calamus,  or  sweet- 
flag.  It  is  a  beautiful  and  fit  symbol.  Like 
the  grass,  it  too  is  a  democratic  symbol.  It 
grows  in  fascicles  of  three,  four,  and  five  blades, 
which  cling  together  for  support.  It  is  found 
in  vast  masses,  standing  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  its  fellows,  stout,  pliant,  and  inexpugnable, 
confronting  all  weathers  unmoved,  rejoicing  in 
the  sunshine,  and  unharmed  by  the  storm.  The 
delicate  fragrance  it  gives  forth  when  wounded, 
and  the  bitter-sweet  flavor  of  its  root,  are  also 


152 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


aptly  typical  of  the  nature  of  friendship.  Whit- 
man is  the  first  great  modern  writer  upon  de- 
mocracy who  has  insisted  so  strenuously  upon 
loving  comradeship  as  the  indispensable  condi- 
tion of  its  success.  The  very  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity is  contained  in  the  principle.  Jesus  was 
the  world's  first  great  democrat. 

Whitman's  thoughts  upon  this  subject  are 
summed  up  in  the  following  words  from  Demo- 
cratic Vistas: 

"It  is  to  the  development,  identification,  and  gen- 
eral prevalence  of  fervid  comradeship  (the  adhesive 
love,  at  least  rivaling  the  amative  love  hitherto  pos- 
sessing imaginative  literature,  if  not  going  beyond  it) 
that  I  look  for  the  counter-balance  and  offset  of  ma- 
terialistic and  vulgar  American  democracy,  and  for  the 
spiritualization  thereof.  ....  I  say  democracy  infers 
such  loving  comradeship  as  its  most  inevitable  twin  or 
counterpart,  without  which  it  will  be  incomplete,  in  vain, 
and  incapable  of  perpetuating  itself." 

This  great  love  fuses  and  interfuses  all  Whit- 
man's writings,  as  it  has  all  his  actions.  It  is 
this  glowing  love  and  mighty  faith,  born  of  per- 
fect physical  health  and  Greek  strength  and 
saneness,  that  flame  out  in  his  description  of 
a  visit  to  a  dying  man : 

"I  seize  the  descending  man,  and  raise  him  with  re- 
sistless will. 

0  despairer,  here  is  my  neck. 

By  God!  you  shall  not  go  down.     Hang  your  whole 
weight  upon  me  ; 

1  dilate  you  with  tremendous  breath,  I  buoy  you  up; 
Every   room   of  the  house  do    I  fill  with   an  armed 

force — 

Lovers  of  me,  bafflers  of  graves. 
Sleep!    I  and  they  keep  guard  all  night." 

And  in  the  fine  description  of  the  wounded 
slave,  where  he  says  : 

"Agonies  are  one  of  my  changes  of  garments; 
I  do  not  ask  the  wounded  person  how  he  feels, 
I  myself  become  the  wounded  person." 

And  in  the  pathetic  hymn,  en  titled  "The  Singer 
in  the  Prison:" 

"A  soul,  confined  by  bars  and  bands, 
Cries,  Help!  Oh,  help!  and  wrings  her  hands; 
Blinded  her  eyes,  bleeding  her  breast, 
Nor  pardon  finds,  nor  balm  of  rest. 

O  sight  of  shame,  and  fain,  and  dole! 

O  fearful  thought — a  convict  soul! 

"It  was  not  I  that  sinn'd  the  sin, 
The  ruthless  body  dragged  me  in; 
Though  long  I  strove  courageously, 
The  body  was-  too  much  for  me. 

O  life!  no  life,  but  bitter  dole! 

O  burning,  beaten,  baffled  soul! 

"(Dear  prisoned  soul,  bear  up  a  space 
For  soon  or  late  the  certain  grace; 


To  set  thee  free,  and  bear  thee  home 
The  heavenly  pardoner,  Death,  shall  come. 

Convict  no  more — nor  shame,  nor  dole ! 

Depart,  a  God-enfranchised  soul!)" 

— Passage  to  India. 

As  well  here  as  anywhere  else  I  may  speak 
of  the  coarse  indecencies  of  language  that  have 
made  Whitman's  poems  tabooed  in  all  parlors 
and  in  all  social  circles.  There  is  not  a  parti- 
cle of  excuse  for  these  beastly  blurts  of  lan- 
guage. I  doubt  whether  society,  as  a  whole, 
will  be  ready  for  even  a  refined  treatment  of  the 
relations  of  the  sexes  for  millenniums  hence,  and 
a  coarse  and  bald  treatment  of  such  themes 
as  Whitman's,  notwithstanding  the  essentially 
pure  and  moral  tone  given  it  by  the  large  purity 
of  the  poet's  own  nature,  is  a  most  unfortunate 
anachronism,  and  a  most  lamentable  mistake 
in  any  writing.  Such  a  thing' never  will  be  tol- 
erated and  never  ought  to  be  tolerated.  We 
have  enough  and  too  much  of  this  thing  in  Chau- 
cer and  Shakspere,  in  Rabelais  and  Swift.  The 
progress  of  the  universe  is  toward  refinement, 
toward  greater  elegance,  greater  finish  of  details. 
The  universal  soul,  through  a  million  human 
hands,  is  giving  finish  and  delicate  grace  to  the 
plastic  material  in  its  great  workshop  of  time. 
There  is  danger  in  refinement,  it  is  true.  Re- 
finement has  rotted  nations.  Whitman  raises 
the  warning  cry  for  us  when  he  says : 

' '  Fear  grace  ;  fear  delicatesse  ; 
Fear  the  mellow-sweet,  the  sucking  of  honey-juice  ; 
Beware  the  advancing  mortal  ripening  of  nature  ; 
Beware  what  precedes  the  decay  of  the  ruggedness  of 
States  and  men."  — Chants  Democratic. 

But  then  he  goes  too  far  the  other  way,  and 
we  are  obliged  to  shun  his  coarseness  and  rude- 
ness, and  hold  our  noses  while  we  read  some  of 
his  paragraphs. 

Let  it  be  distinctly  understood,  however,  that 
all  that  is  objectionable  in  this  respect  is  found 
only  in  Leaves  of  Grass,  the  work  of  his  earlier 
years.  His  later  poems  are  wholly  free  from 
the  beastly  language  of  parts  of  Leaves  of  Grass. 
He  somewhere  confesses  that  he  himself  has 
had  misgivings  about  this  early  work.  His 
mind  seems  to  have  gradually  worked  itself 
free  from  the  fury  of  its  first  essays.  The  toss 
and  turbulence  of  the  stream  in  its  descent  from 
its  mountain  home — the  foam,  the  roar,  the 
deafening  thunder -tumult  of  the  breakers,  the 
snarl  of  the  rapids — have  now  given  place  to  the 
slow  roll  of  the  calm,  majestic  flood  of  the 
plains. 

A  word  may  be  said  here  upon  the  egoism 
and  egotism  of  our  poet.  As  to  his  egoism, 
we  must  accept  that  if  we  accept  his  poems  at 
all,  for  they  are  avowedly  based  upon  "the 


A   STUDY  OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


great  pride  of  man  in  himself,"  upon  the  indi- 
vidual personality.  It  is  this  which  consti- 
tutes one  of  the  most  remarkable  elements 
of  their  originality.  In  these  poems  the  writer 
often  speaks  in  the  first  person  typically  only. 
It  is  the  soul,  the  cosmos,  that  speaks.  It  is 
God  in  self-conscious  humanity  asserting  him- 
self, proving  his  divinity.  As  to  Whitman's 
egotism,  it  is  disagreeably  great,  to  be  sure.  It 
is  often  offensive.  Its  prominence  shows  lack 
of  high  breeding.  But  much  can  be  endured  in 
a  man  who  possesses  grandeur  of  soul  and  is 
never  mean  or  contemptible.  And,  besides,  his 
egotism  is  no  greater  than  that  of  every  man 
conscious  of  great  powers,  only  in  his  case  it  is 
not  concealed.*  Then  there  are  many  pas- 
sages which  show  how  modest  is  his  estimate  of 
his  printed  works.  E.  g.,  these : 

"Poets  to  come  !. . . . 

What  is  the  little  I  have  done  except  to  arouse  you  ?. . . 
I  but  write  one  or  two  indicative  words  for  the  future  ; 
I  but  advance  a  moment,  only  to  wheel  and  hurry  back 
in  the  darkness." 

•"  All  I  have  done  I  would  cheerfully  give  to  be  trod 
under  foot,  if  it  might  only  be  the  soil  of  superior 
poems." 

' '  I  am  the  teacher  of  athletes. 

He  that  by  me  spreads  a  wider  breast  than  my  own 

proves  the  width  of  my  own  ; 
He  most  honors  my  style  who  learns  under  it  to  destroy 

the  teacher." 

In  one  of  the  most  pathetic  of  his  great  organ- 
voiced  sea-chants  he  says : 

"1,  too,  but  signify  at  the  utmost  a  little  washed-up 

drift, 

A  few  sands  and  dead  leaves  to  gather — 
Gather,  and  merge  myself  as  part  of  the  sands  and 

drift." 

He  calls  the  "Two  Rivulets" 

' '  These  ripples,  passing  surges,  streams  of  death  and 
life," 

And  elsewhere  speaks  of  them  in  this  modest 
and  exquisite  manner : 

"  Or  from  that  Sea  of  Time, 

Spray-blown  by  the  wind — a  double  windrow-drift  of 

weeds  and  shells  ; 
(O  little  shells,  so  curious,  convolute,  so  limpid,  cold, 

and  voiceless  ! 

Yet  will  you  not,  to  the  tympans  of  temples  held, 
Murmurs  and  echoes  still  bring  up — eternity's  music, 

faint  and  far, 
Wafted  inland,  sent  from  Atlantica's  rim — strains  for 

the  Soul  of  the  Prairies, 
Whispered  reverberations,  chords  for  the  ear  of  the 

West,  joyously  sounding 

*  Compare  the  opening  words  of  Thoreau's  Walden  upon  the 
use  of  the  pronoun  /. 


Your  tidings  old,  yet  ever  new  and  untranslatable  ! ) 
Infinitesimals  out  of  my  life  and  many  a  life 
{ For  not  my  life  and  years  alone  I  give — all,  all  I  give  ; ) 
These  thoughts  and  songs — waifs  from  the  deep — here 

cast  up  high  and  dry, 
Washed  on  America's  shores." 

It  remains  now  to  speak  of  Whitman  first  as 
nature-poet,  and  second  as  religious  poet ;  and 
these  portions  shall  be  preceded  by  some  re- 
marks on  his  style.  We  here  come  upon  the 
inner  secret  of  the  man,  that  which  is  most  dif- 
ficult to  analyze  or  describe,  for  the  style  is 
the  man,  and  the  man  in  this  case  is  perfectly 
unique.  The  distinguishing  characteristic  of 
his  style  (as  everybody  who  knows  anything 
about  him  is  aware)  is  its  titanic  strength. 
This  is  the  secret  of  the  thrill  of  pleasure  given 
by  the  first  four  or  five  sections  of  the  poem,  or 
"Proto-leaf,"  of  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  I  never 
tire  of  reading  this.  I  read  it  each  time  with 
fresh  admiration,  and  with  inward  exclama- 
tions of  wonder  and  delight.  It  is  a  magnifi- 
cent shout,  the  joyous  exultation  of  perfect 
strength.  You  do  not  until  several  readings 
see  the  full  grandeur  and  beauty  of  these  para- 
graphs. But  they  really  reveal  all  the  opulence 
of  the  poet's  nature.  In  them,  as  in  all  Whit- 
man's writings,  the  all -tyrannous  fascination 
springs  out  of  the  subtile  and  evasive  spirit, 
which  breathes  from  the  words  rather  than 
from  the  word -vehicle  itself.  His  poems  are 
palimpsests;  the  priceless  classic  thought  lies 
beneath  the  written  words.  It  is  the  very  gen- 
ius of  the  new  world  that  speaks  in  the  "Proto- 
leaf."  Here  at  last  is  a  man  who  confronts 
the  grandeur  of  this  vast  new  hemisphere  with 
an  answering  grandeur  of  soul.  Nay,  more — it 
seems  not  to  be  the  man  that  speaks  at  all ;  he 
seems  to  be  but  the  seolian  harp,  or  the  dark- 
ened camera  through  which  the  storms,  the 
glowing  tumultuous  skies,  the  encrimsoned  for- 
ests, the  broad  blue  lakes,  the  rivers,  winds, 
mountains,  and  meadows  of  the  new  world,  di- 
rectly express  their  fresh  living  nature  in  min- 
iature articulation  or  outline.  I  said  the  chief 
characteristic  of  the  thought  is  its  strength. 
This  strength  seems  something  superhuman. 
These  first  rude  chants  burst  from  his  deep 
chest  as  from  its  iron  throat  the  wild  hoarse 
pantings  of  the  locomotive.  You  tremble  and 
shudder  with  a  new  and  indefinable  delight — a 
few  sentences  fill  the  mind  to  repletion.  You 
could  dwell  for  days  upon  single  pages.  It  is 
the  powerful  magnetic  thrill  produced  by  great 
oratory  that  you  feel.  But  it  is  -a  strength  so 
rude  that  it  tears  and  rends  your  very  life  at 
first.  The  cosmic  emotion,  the  continual  strain 
upon  the  imagination,  caused  by  the  irregular, 
elliptical  style  of  expression,  the  incoherence  of 


154 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  thought — all  these  fatigue  one  terribly  at 
first  reading,  much  as  one  would  be  sympa- 
thetically fatigued  at  seeing  the  writhings  and 
hearing  the  ravings  of  a  frenzied  religious  fa- 
natic, or  a  possessed  person.  The  man  resem- 
bles Danton  or  Mirabeau  more  than  he  does 
Homer  or  Dante,  and  we  see  that  his  poetry, 
as  respects  its  form,  is  but  rude  barbaric  poetry 
— the  crude  and  uncrushed  ore  of  melodious 
verse.  Shakspere,  and  Shakspere  alone,  equals 
Whitman  in  strength;  but  Shakspere  has  united 
elegance  and  perfect  melody  with  his  super- 
human power,  and  herein  becomes,  of  course, 
superior  to  Whitman,  as  he  is  superior  in  every 
respect  in  his  own  field  of  human  life. 

Whitman  is  a  New  Yorker,  "a  Manhattan- 
ese,"  and  the  feverish,  convulsive,  and  fluctu- 
ating life  of  that  seething  metropolis  of  the  new 
world,  its  daring  speculation,  its  splendid  enter- 
prise, and  its  haughty  pride,  are  well  represented 
and  typified  in  its  great  poet.  He  does  not  rep- 
resent its  cultured  class  (which  is  really  a  very 
small  portion  of  it),  but  he  has  absorbed  the 
spirit  of  the  whole  place,  the  genius  loci,  the 
local  tone.  The  wild  and  rugged  energy,  and 
the  crudity,  of  his  poems  accurately  express 
the  features  of  New  York  City,  and  the  whole 
country  outside  of  the  boundaries  of  New  Eng- 
land. 

The  second  great  feature  of  his  style  is  its 
amplitude  and  naked  simplicity.  He  sketches 
in  large  and  bold  outlines,  with  the  hand  of  an 
Angelo.  The  figures  upon  his  huge  cartoons 
are  as  naked  as  those  of  Flaxman,  and  as  mus- 
cular as  those  of  Blake.  His  landscapes  are 
Turneresque.  There  is  not  a  particle  of  Flem- 
ish painting  in  his  work.  He  speaks  with  "the 
large  utterance  of  the  early  gods."  In  this  mat- 
ter of  diction  he  differs  from  Keats,  from  Homer, 
from  Chaucer,  in  one  respect  only — their  pict- 
ures are  tableaux  vivants;  they  are  sculpt- 
uresque. The  tranquil  mind  contemplates  calm 
scenes,  embalmed  in  the  deep  and  far  serenity 
of  the  past ;  but  Whitman's  pages,  while  equally 
Greek,  have  yet  the  quality  of  unrest.  There 
is  always  the  idea  of  infinity,  of  immensity. 
The  mind  is  always  on  the  stretch.  The  con- 
ditions of  our  modern  life  make  this  inevitable. 
We  have  discovered  the  universe,  and  all  our 
thought  has  a  cosmical  side.  The  serenity  and 
limitation  demanded  by  true  art  are  hard  to  at- 
tain or  retain  in  this  age.  The  prose  style  of 
Whitman  is  most  astounding.  It  is  Greek- 
Gothic,  an  Olympian  plain  strewed  with  the 
wrecks  of  classic  temples,  a  luxuriant  tropical 
jungle,  or  banyan  grove,  tangled  with  blossoms, 
fruit,  and  undergrowth  of  vines  and  shrubs.  It 
is  worse  than  Carlyle's,  worse  than  Jean  Paul's, 
worse  than  Milton's  prose,  in  complexity  and 


involution.     It    is   splendid   and  exasperating, 
and,  withal,  indescribable. 

As  illustrating  the  quality  of  largeness  and 
simplicity  of  which  I  have  spoken,  it  may  be 
interesting  to  many  to  be  told  that  the  hand- 
writing of  Whitman  is  very  large,  and  bold,  and 
naked,  the  marks  of  punctuation  being  very  few. 

A  vexata  qucestio  in  literature  at  the  present 
day  is  the  problem  of  what  constitutes  poetry. 
What  is  its  province,  and  what  are  its  essen- 
tial and  necessary  methods  of  expressing  it- 
self? We  need  not  here  inquire  into  the  nat- 
ure and  province  of  poetry,  but  the  nature  of 
Whitman's  writings  and  theories  make  it  a 
necessary  and  interesting  task  to  glance  at  the 
laws  of  poetic  form  or  expression.  Whitman,  as 
is  well  known,  maintains  that  the  greatest  and 
truest  poetry  cannot  be  cribbed  and  cramped  by 
rhyme  and  arbitrary  meters,  but  that  all  that 
is  necessary  is  a  certain  rhythmic  flow  of  lan- 
guage. Now,  all  admit  that  poetry  must  have 
melody  of  some  sort.  Lewes,  in  his  Life  of 
Goethe,  speaks  thus:  "Song  is  to  speech  what 
poetry  is  to  prose  :  it  expresses  a  different  men- 
tal condition.  Impassioned  prose  approaches 
poetry  in  the  rhythmic  impulses  of  its  move- 
ments ( as  with  the  Arabs,  Hebrews,  and  most 
semi-civilized  nations);  but  prose  never  is  po- 
etry." Lewes  then  illustrates  by  placing  a  sen- 
tence from  Goethe's  prose  version  of  Iphigenie 
side  by  side  with  the  same  thought  in  the  poetic 
version.  The  prose  is  "Unniitz  seyn,  ist  todt 
seyn ; "  the  poetical  form  is, 

"Ein  unniitz  Leben  ist  ein  friiher  Tod." 

Schiller,  too,  somewhere  speaks  of  how  close- 
ly substance  and  form  are  connected  in  poetry. 
Indeed,  so  long  as  the  processes  of  all  nature 
are  rhythmic,  from  the  lapping  of  the  waves  of 
the  sea  to  the  orbital  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  so  long  will  no  sane  man  be  found  who 
will  deny  that  the  emotional  thought  of  man 
must  express  itself  rhythmically.  Now,  tried 
by  this  test,  a  great  deal  of  Whitman's  writing 
is  true  poetry,  and  that  of  the  very  highest  kind ; 
for,  as  Rossetti  says,  much  of  his  poetry  "has 
a  powerful,  majestic,  rhythmic  sense."  There 
is  nothing  new  in  Whitman's  theory.  The  po- 
etry of  all  barbarous  and  semi-civilized  peoples 
consists  of  rhythmical  chants.  Oriental  poetry 
is  all  of  this  character.  African  poetry  is  of  this 
character,  too.  Take,  e.  g.,  the  following  chant 
improvised  by  Stanley's  men  in  a  moment  of 
deep  emotion,  when  they  were  approaching  the 
Victoria  Nyanza  Lake  after  a  long  and  toil- 
some march : 

"  Sing,  O  friends,  sing — the  journey  is  ended  ; 
Sing  aloud,  O  friends,  sing  to  the  great  Nyanza  ; 


A   STUDY  OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


Sing  all,  sing  loud,  O  friends — sing  to  the  great  sea  ; 
Give  your  last  look  to  the  lands  behind,  and  then  turn 
to  the  sea." 

All  that  Whitman  has  done  is  to  recall  the 
Occident  to  the  fact  that  sublime  poetry  can 
be  expressed  in  other  than  fixed  and  arbitrary 
metrical  forms.  He  has  shown  to  be  true  what 
the  poet  Freiligrath  suggests;  /'.  <?.,  that  "the 
age  has  so  much  and  such  serious  matter  to 
say  that  the  old  vessels  no  longer  suffice  for 
the  new  contents."  It  is  a  good  service  to  break 
up  any  cramping  and  too  tyrannous  custom. 
Undoubtedly,  a  great  poet  of  this  age,  with  a 
powerful  sense  of  melody,  may  translate  into 
such  rhythmical  forms  as  he  will  or  can  the 
mighty  and  struggling  thoughts  which  the  re- 
discovered universe  is  awakening  in  the  mind, 
Whitman  has  chosen  the  irregular  rhythmical 
chant.  So  far  so  good.  But  now  note  this :  it 
is  only  occasionally  that  he  rises  to  the  melody 
of  perfect  rhythm.  The  greater  part  of  what  he 
calls  poetry  is  nothing  in  the  world  but  pure 
prose.  The  pieces  of  poetry  are  magnificent 
exceptions — nuggets  of  gold  in  vast  masses  of 
quartz.  And  just  in  proportion  to  the  splendor 
of  the  expression,  and  to  the  wild  intensity  of 
passion  with  which  the  thought  is  uttered,  do 
the  words  approach  more  nearly  to  regular 
metrical  forms.  This  is  seen  in  the  song  of  the 
broad -ax,  in  the  apostrophes  to  the  night  and 
the  sea,  in  "President  Lincoln's  Burial  Hymn," 
in  the  little  stanza, 

' '  Long,  long,  long  has  the  grass  been  growing, 
Long  and  long  has  the  rain  been  falling, 
Long  has  the  globe  been  rolling  round  ; " 

and,  finally,  in  the  poem  on  the  "Convict  Soul," 
quoted  above,  which  is  his  only  rhymed  poem, 
and  one  of  the  most  pleasing.  From  this  we 
may  gather  that,  while  the  conditions  of  mod- 
ern life  make  it  permissible,  and  perhaps  im- 
perative, that  Whitman,  dealing  as  he  does 
with  the  vastest  and  most  solemn  themes,  should 
make  use  of  the  majestic  and  stately  chant ;  yet 
that,  tried  by  his  own  test,  he  has  been  only 
partially  successful.  In  respect  of  melody,  he 
falls  far  behind  Shakspere,  Homer,  Milton,  and 
Dante.  He  has  not  the  music  in  him  that  the 
greater  poets  always  have.  He  has  a  good 
deal  of  it,  and  might  have  had  more  if  he  had 
cultivated  his  talent.  But,  perhaps  dimly  con- 
scious of  the  defect  of  his  nature  in  this  respect, 
and  being  compelled  to  lead  a  stormy  and  busy 
life,  which  afforded  little  leisure  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  sense  of  melody,  he  made  a  virtue 
of  necessity,  expressed  his  thought  generally  in 
crude  prose  form,  and  succeeded  in  convincing 
himself  that  his  defect  was  a  virtue.  He  has 
been  very  headstrong  in  maintaining  his  the- 


ory, but  his  own  poetry  would  confute  him,  if 
the  great  poetry  of  all  time  did  not  do  so. 
"The  arts,"  says  Taine,  "require  idle,  delicate 
minds,"  long  periods  of  leisure,  and  opportunity 
for  reverie.  If  Whitman  had  had  more  of  this 
leisure,  we  should  probably  have  had  more 
metrical  and  more  symmetrical  poems,  and  less 
foolish  talk  about  the  obsoleteness  of  rhyme 
and  the  iamb,  spondee,  trochee,  dactyl,  and 
anapaest.  But  let  us  thank  heaven  that  he  had 
the  courage  to  express  himself  in  any  way,  for 
his  thought  is  of  great  value  in  and  of  itself. 
Before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject,  I  must 
quote  a  few  lines  from  Whitman,  and  also  from 
C.  P.  Cranch.  The  subject  treated  by  each  is 
nearly  the  same.  Whitman  gives  us  pure  prose, 
and  Cranch  pure  poetry  : 

WHITMAN. 

"  But  now  the  chorus  I  hear,  and  am  elated 

A. tenor,  strong,  ascending,  with  power  and  health,  with 

glad  notes  of  day-break,  I  hear  ; 
A  soprano,  at  intervals,  sailing  buoyantly  over  the  tops 

of  immense  waves  ; 
A  transparent  base,   shuddering  lusciously  under  and 

through  the  universe  ; 
The  triumphant  tutti — the  funeral  waitings,  with  sweet 

flutes  and  violins — all  these  I  fill  myself  with. 
I  hear  not  the  volumes  of  sound  merely.     I  am  moved 

by  the  exquisite  meanings. 

I  listen  to  the  different  voices,  winding  in  and  out,  striv- 
ing, contending  with  fiery  vehemence  to  excel 

each  other  in  emotion. 

— Music  Always  Around  Me. 

CRANCH. 

"Had  I,  instead  of  unsonorous  words, 

The  skill  that  moves  in  airy  melodies, 
And  modulations  of  entrancing  chords 

Through  mystic  mazes  of  all  harmonies, .... 
I  would  unloose  the  soul  beneath  the  wings  • 

Of  every  instrument ; 
I  would  enlist  the  deep-complaining  strings 

Of  doubt  and  discontent ; 
The  low,  sad  mutterings  and  entangled  dreams 

Of  viols  and  bassoons, 
Groping  for  light  athwart  the  clouds  and  streams 

That  drown  the  laboring  moons  ; 
The  tone  of  crude  half-truth  ;    the  good  within, 
The  mysteries  of  evil  and  of  sin  ; 
The  trumpet-cries  of  anger  and  despair  ; 

The  mournful  marches  of  the  muffled  drums  ; 
The  bird-like  flute-notes  leaping  into  air — 

Ere  the  great  human,  heavenly  music  comes, 
Emerging  from  the  dark  with  bursts  of  song 
And  hope  and  victory,  delayed  too  long." 

— Satan,  a  Libretto. 

The  whole  of  the  overture  from  which  the 
above  is  taken  is  one  of  the  most  perfect  pieces 
of  melody  and  poetry  in  the  English  language. 
The  idea  is  a  rich  and  happy  one,  the  move- 
ment majestic,  sustained,  and  by  its  complex 
winding  finely  suggestive  of  the  music  of  the 


156 


THE   CALIFORNIA**. 


orchestra,  which  the  poet  imagines  at  his  com- 
mand. But  it  must  also  be  evident  that  much 
of  the  pleasure  we  take  in  it  comes  from  the 
delicate  metrical  measurements.  This  is  the 
very  thing  the  absence  of  which  makes  Whit- 
man's piece  nothing  but  plain  prose. 

The  catalogues  of  Whitman,  as  they  have 
been  called,  are  hardly  defensible  even  as 
prose.  They  read  like  agricultural  reports  or 
tax  lists.  Prof.  Edward  Dowden,  however,  says 
a  good  word  for  them,  and  there  is  certainly 
truth  in  what  he  says.  He  thinks  that  by  them 
"the  impression  of  multitude,  of  variety,  of 
equality  is  produced,  as,  perhaps,  it  could  be  in 
no  other  way."  And  Mrs.  Anne  Gilchrist  thinks 
they  will  please  the  people,  for  they  will  see  in 
them  their  own  crafts  chronicled.  But  this  is  no 
excuse  for  their  dreary  prosaic  nature.  They  are 
wearisome  in  the  extreme.  Swinburne  speaks 
what  should  be  said  when  he  remarks,  "It  is 
one  thing  to  sing  the  song  of  all  trades,  and 
quite  another  thing  to  tumble  down  the  names 
of  all  possible  crafts  and  implements  in  one  un- 
sorted  heap.  To  sing  the  song  of  all  countries 
is  not  simply  to  fling  out  on  the  page  at  ran- 
dom in  one  howling  mass  the  titles  of  all  divi- 
sions of  the  earth,  and  so  leave  them."  One 
may  fitly  close  this  discussion  of  the  poetical 
abilities  of  Whitman,  in  which  we  have  been 
obliged  to  deny  him  some  of  the  qualities  of  the 
great  poet,  by  citing  his  remarkable  words  on 
the  qualifications  of  the  American  poet.  They 
contain  crushing  satire  upon  many  of  our  poets. 
If  he  is  defective  in  some  of  the^qualities  of  a 
great  poet,  none  the  less  are  they,  even  the  best 
of  them: 

' '  Who  are  you,  indeed,  who  would  talk  or  sing  in 
America  ? 

"Are  you  faithful  to  things? 

Are  you  very  strong?     Are  you  of  the  whole  people? 
Are  you  done  with  reviews  and""criticisms  of  life,  ani- 
mating to  life  itself? 

"What  is  this  you  bring  my  America? 

Is  it  a  mere  tale,  a  rhyme,  a  prettiness? 

Does  it  answer  universal  needs?  Will  it  improve  man- 
ners? 

Can  your  performance  face  the  open  fields  and  the 
sea -side? 

Will  it  absorb  into  me  as  I  absorb  food,  air,  nobility, 
meanness — to  appear  again  in  my  ^strength, 
gait,  face? 

"The  swarms   of  the  reflectors  and  the  polite  pass, 

and  leave  ashes. 
The  proof  of  a  poet  shall  be  sternly  deferred,  till  his 

country  absorbs  him  as  affectionately  as  he  has 

absorbed  it." 

Whitman  the  nature -poet!  The  poetry  of 
earth  is  ceasing  never.  It  needs  but  the  man 


to  feel,  see,  and  interpret  it.  One  of  the  many 
great  services  which  Whitman  has  rendered 
America  is  that  of  revealing  to  us  our  poetical 
resources.  He  has  traveled  all  over  the  conti- 
nent, and  knows  it  from  Alpha  to  Omega.  He 
is  a  poet  of  the  open  air — is  objective,  Greek, 
scientific,  cosmic.  He  sees  the  poetry  of  the 
commonest  things — the  sea,  the  night,  touch, 
the  locomotive,  the  negro,  the  atmosphere: 

"The  atmosphere  is  not  a  perfume — it  has  no   taste 

of  the  distillation — it  is  odorless; 
It  is  in  my  mouth  forever;  I  am  in  love  with  it; 
I  am  mad  for  it  to  be  in  contact  with  me." 

He  is  the  first  to  picture,  in  words,  an  en- 
semble view  of  the  whole  mighty  continent  in 
all  the  variety  of  its  scenery.  You  get  this  men- 
tal picture  from  many  parts  of  his  writings.  It 
is  especially  vivid,  I  think,  in  the  following  de- 
scription : 

' '  Fecund  America  !    To  -  day 

Thou  art  all  over  set  in  births  and  joys  ! 

Thou  groan'st  with  riches  !    Thy  wealth   clothes  thee 

as  with  a  swathing  garment ! 

Thou  laughest  aloud  with  ache  of  great  possessions  ! 
A  myriad -twining  life,  like  interlacing  vines,  binds  all 

thy  vast  demesne  !" 

In  his  Salut  au  Monde  he  has  given  us,  in 
one  picture,  sketches  of  all  the  countries  of  the 
globe.  To  all  he  "raises  high  the  perpendicu- 
lar hand,"  and  makes  the  signal  of  friendship. 
It  is  a  most  remarkable  attempt  to  express  in 
the  articulate  speech  of  men  the  infinite  clamor 
of  the  great  phantasmagorial  orchestra  of  nat- 
ure, and  paint  it  in  its  thousand  flashing,  shim- 
mering tints.  It  is  very  difficult  to  get  such  a 
•vorstellung,  but  the  stretch  of  mind  it  gives  one 
makes  it  well  worth  one's  while  to  attempt  the 
task.  The  epithets  of  Whitman  are  exquisite, 
as  his  admirers  well  know:  "The  gorgeous, 
indolent,  sinking  sun — burning,  expanding  the 
air."  "The  clank  of  the  shod  horses  on  the 
granite  floor."  "The  polished  breasts  of  mel- 
ons." "Leaves  of  salt -lettuce."  "Sun-tan." 
"  Air  -  sweetness. "  "  Crook  -  tongued  waves. " 
"Banding  the  bulge  of  the  earth  winds  the 
hot  equator."  "The  sun  wheels  in  slanting 
rings."  "The  hissing  rustle  of  the  liquid  and 
the  sands."  "Patches  of  citrons  and  cucumbers 
with  silver- wired  leaves."  "The  katydid  works 
her  chromatic  reed  on  the  walnut  tree  over  the 
well."  This  last  reminds  us  of  a  wonderful  line 
of  the  poet  Channing: 

"To  the  close  ambush  hastening  at  high  noon, 
When  the  hot  locust  spins  his  Zendic  rune." 

Whitman  is  a  magnificent  pagan,  a  true  Greek 
in  his  attitude  toward  nature,  and  he  is  more 


A   STUDY  OF   WALT   WHITMAN. 


than  this.  He  is  more  by  virtue  of  the  religious 
element,  his  massive  and  colossal  ideal  panthe- 
ism. He  is  a  poetical  Hegel.  His  religion  is 
"unitary  ideal  realism/'  to  use  Mr.  W.  H.  Chan- 
ning's  deep  phrase.  He  exalts  the  present; 
sees  as  much  in  a  muscular,  heroic  fireman  as 
in  "the  gods  of  the  antique  wars:"  a  morning- 
glory  at  his  window,  a 'hair  on  the  back  of  his 
hand,  a  running  blackberry,  a  cow  crunching 
with  depressed  head,  the  morning  glow,  the 
dusk  and  the  dawn,  are  forever  and  intrinsically 
miraculous  and  divine.  Whitman  has  nowhere, 
I  think,  adequately  expressed  his  indebtedness 
to  Emerson  —  not  even  in  his  recent  letter 
in  the  Literary  World.  It  is  not  the  first  time 
that  a  disciple  has  kicked,  colt -like,  against 
his  master.  Aristotle  is  said  to  have  treated 
Plato  so.  It  is  as  plain  as  daylight  to  one  who 
reads  his  works  that  in  his  exaltation  of  the  liv- 
ing present  he  often  echoes  the  thought  of  his 
great  contemporary  and  only  great  rival  in 
America.  All  I  mean  is  that  he  has  received 
great  stimulus  from  Emerson  in  this  matter  of 
fresh  and  pagan  love  of  the  present.  His  own 
powerful  originality  in  everything  he  touches 
cannot  be  doubted. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  people  inhab- 
iting this  vast  and  isolated  new  world  would  re- 
produce many  of  the  naive  traits  of  the  morn- 
ing-time of  the  old  world.  The  light  soil,  pure 
air,  brilliant  skies,  the  verve,  the  nervousness 
of  the  climate  of  New  England  and  the  Middle 
States,  are  producing  here  a  race  of  spiritual- 
ized Athenians — an  ethereal,  volatile,  laughter- 
loving  people,  passionately  fond  of  what  is  new, 
realistic;  clinging  with  pugnacity  to  the  soil; 
proud,  free,  and  inventive ;  destined,  in  time,  as 
I  think,  to  be  the  great  artist -nation  of  the 
world.  We  are  Greek -Hindoo  in  genius,  and 
Whitman  and  Emerson  are  our  two  Greek- 
Hindoo  poets.  For  examples  of  the  Greek 
quality  of  Whitman,  compare  Leaves  of  Grass, 
iv;  Walt  Whitman,  313;  the  same,  66;  which 
last  contains  the  description  of  the  negro  driver, 
the  "picturesque  giant,"  with  his  team  of  four- 
in-hand: 

' '  His  glance  is  calm  and  commanding.  He  tosses  the 
slouch  of  his  hat  away  from  his  forehead. 

The  sun  falls  on  his  crispy  hair  and  mustache — falls  on 
the  black  of  his  polished  and  perfect  limbs." 

The  whole  poem,  Walt  Whitman,  is  pure 
Greek  in  spirit.  As  he  walks  with  "the  tender 
and  growing  night,"  he  hears  the  stars,  the  trees, 
the  grass  of  graves  whispering  together;  the 
sea  sings  him  her  "savage  and  husky  song;" 
the  earth  is  his  father — he  falls  on  his  breast, 
and  implores  him  to  tell  the  secret  of  existence. 
In  the  following  lines  there  is  a  rich  and  subtile 


spirit  of  strange  fascination  to  me.  He  is  speak- 
ing of  the  turbid  pool  that  lies  in  the  autumn 
forest : 

"Toss,  sparkles  of  day  and  dusk,  toss  on  the  black 

stems  that  decay  in  the  muck, 
Toss  to  the  moaning  gibberish  of  the  dry  limbs." 

I  think  this  line,  descriptive  of  the  dissolution 
of  life,  the  grandest  single  line  ever  penned  by 
mortal  hand : 

"  I  depart  as  air.     I  shake  my  white  locks  at  the  run- 
away sun." 

For  the  discussion  of  Whitman  as  a  poet  of 
religion,  we  have  little  space  left.  All  his  writ- 
ing is  religious.  It  is  all  cosmic  theism.  He 
states  that  he  does  not  write  a  line  that  has  not 
reference  to  the  soul.  Nature  is  that  part  of 
the  soul  which  is  expressing  itself  in  symbols. 
So,  nature  is  the  soul,  in  the  sense  in  which  a 
part  of  a  homogeneous  thing  may  be  said  to  be 
that  thing.  But  the  soul  is  greater  than  a  part 
of  itself: 

' '  It  magnificent,  beyond  materials,   with  continuous 
hands,  sweeps  and  provides  for  all." 

The  soul  is  our  father,  and  the  earth,  as  part 
of  the  soul,  is  also  our  father.  The  whole  is 
mystical,  unfathomable.  As  Thoreau  says : 
"Nature  is  a  personality  so  vast  that  we  have 
not  yet  seen  one  of  its  features."  Yet  we  trust 
it,  and  struggle  to  unriddle  its  secrets.  One  of 
the  most  astounding  things  in  Whitman  is  the 
mighty  intensity  of  his  belief  in  immortality,  in 
the  union  of  his  soul  with  the  living  soul  of  the 
All.  He  deals  the  thundering  blows  of  a  giant 
upon  the  colossal  wall  of  the  phenomenal,  and 
then  puts  his  ear  close  to  listen  if  he  can  catch 
any  reverberations  in  the  great,  whispering  gal- 
lery of  the  real.  Rarely  does  his  faith  waver. 
Yet  he  has  despondent  hours.  One  of  these 
moods  is  pictured  in  Elemental  Drifts.  There 
is  in  it  the  deep  pathos  of  a  strong  man's  wail 
of  utter  perplexity : 

"Oh,  baffled,  balked  ! 

Aware  now  that  I  have  not  once  had  the  least  idea  who 

or  what  I  am. 
Oh,  I  perceive  I  have  not  understood  anything — not  a 

single  object — and  that  no  man  ever  can." 

But  in  Calamus,  vii,  he  says  that  his  terrible 
doubts  are  always  laid  when  he  holds  in  his  own 
the  hand  of  a  dear  friend,  a  lover.  He  is  then 
completely  satisfied  and  at  rest. 

Whitman's  optimism,  his  confounding  of  good 
and  evil,  is  certainly  dangerous  and  mischiev- 
ous to  some  extent.  We  are  told  that  this 
is  no  defect,  that  nature  contains  evil,  and  it 
ought  to  be  expressed  by  the  poet.  This  is  a 


158 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


most  damnable  piece  of  ethics.  If  two -thirds 
of  life  is  morality,  if  morality  is  the  very  warp 
and  woof  of  nature,  and  if  the  poet  stands  as 
the  representative  of  God — if,  as  history  shows, 
all  great  poetry  has  been  ethical — how  is  it  that 
you  tell  us  the  poet  must  helplessly  reflect  nat- 
ure, confounding  the  evil  and  the  good?  It  is 
a  grand  error.  It  is  that  which  is  at  the  bot- 
tom of  all  the  defects  of  Whitman's  nature  and 
of  his  writings.  He  confesses,  in  one  of  his 
fictitious  reviews  of  his  own  works,  that  his 
poems  are  "beyond  the  moral  law,"  and  "must 
ever  be  appalling  to  many."  And  they  may 
well  be  appalling  to  everybody  in  this  respect. 
A  great  poem  always  discriminates,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  the  evil  from  the  good — as 
does  that  great  poem,  the  universe.  But  per- 
haps the  unmoral  character  of  his  writings  will 
be  practically  harmless.  Men  see  that  he  is 
speaking  from  a  universal  point  of  view,  and 
not  a  human  one.  He  once  admits  that  "the 
difference  between  sin  and  goodness  is  no  de- 
lusion" (Burial,  21),  and  in  his  Confession  Sprig 
confesses  his  own  sins  with  unflinching  magna- 
nimity. Elsewhere  he  naively  admits  that  his 
poems  may  do  as  much  evil  as  good.  Clearly 
this  is  a  rollicking  truant  boy  whom  the  great 
Mother  has  not  been  able  to  spank  into  sub- 
mission. He  will  bear  to  be  watched  in  some 
things. 

But  this  lack  of  moral  discrimination  does 
not  affect  the  positive  element  of  his  religious 
nature.  He  everywhere,  in  his  prose  and  in  his 
poetry,  insists  upon  the  vital  necessity  of  relig- 
ion. "The  real  and  permanent  grandeur  of 


these  States  must  be  their  religion,"  he  says  ; 
"otherwise  there  is  no  real  and  permanent 
grandeur."  His  Passage  to  India  contains 
those  vast  and  solemn  hymns  of  Death  and 
Immortality  which  stamp  Whitman  as  divine, 
as  superhuman,  in  power  and  insight.  There 
is  a  slight  tinge  of  melancholy  in  these  later 
poems.  His  heroic  labors  with  the  wounded 
and  dying  during  the  war  had  forever  broken 
his  constitution.  The  sense  of  "health  alfresca" 
is  gone.  He  can  say  with  Wordsworth : 

' '  A  power  is  gone  which  nothing  can  restore ; 
A  deep  distress  hath  humanized  my  soul." 

And  yet  there  is  in  these  poems  none  of  the 
sickening  melancholy  which  we  find  in  Rich- 
ter's  Hesperus,  in  the  scenes  in  which  "Eman- 
uel"  figures.  The  general  tone  is  glad  and 
strong.  The  spirit  which  breathes  through 
them  is  embodied  in  the  following  beautiful 
passage,  with  which  this  essay  must  close : 

"Here  are  our  thoughts — voyager's  thoughts; 

Here  not  the  land,  firm  land,  alone  appears.... 

The  sky  o'erarches  here.  We  feel  the  undulating  deck 
beneath  our  feet. 

We  feel  the  long  pulsation — ebb  and  flow  of  endless 
motion; 

The  tones  of  unseen  mystery,  the  vague  and  vast  sug- 
gestions of  the  briny  world,  the  liquid -flowing 
syllables, 

The  perfume,  the  faint  creaking  of  the  cordage,  the 
melancholy  rhythm, 

The  boundless  vista,  and  the  horizon  far  and  dim,  are 
all  here, 

And  this  is  Ocean's  poem." 

WILLIAM  SLOANE  KENNEDY. 


SIX   WEEKS   AT    ILKLEY. 


The  prettiest  country  in  Yorkshire,  and  the 
most  enticing  place  to  tarry  in  all  the  West 
Riding,  is  Ilkley — yet  to  see  it  for  the  first  time, 
as  Marguerite  Leslie  saw  it  through  a  cloud  of 
mist  and  rain,  it  is  not  conducive  to  over- 
much enthusiasm,  to  say  the  least.  She  had 
stood  by  the  window  fully  ten  minutes — a  long 
time  for  that  mercurial  young  lady — watching 
the  rain  drip  and  fall  on  the  stone  casement, 
trying  to  make  out  all  the  features  of  the  imper- 
fectly seen  landscape,  her  eyes  roving  over  the 
swell  and  rise  of  surging  woods  and  undulating 
park,  beyond  which  she  caught  glimpses  of  a 
wider  world  of  downs,  as  the  mist  lifted  and 
parted.  She  had  arrived  at  Ben  Rhydding 
only  an  hour  before,  with  her  invalid  father, 


some  younger  sisters  and  brothers,  a  maid,  and 
a  young  lady  friend  some  years  her  senior. 
After  having  peeped  into  the  various  rooms  and 
disposed  of  the  father  and  children,  Mallie  Ray 
had  followed  Marguerite  to  her  room,  walking 
soberly  behind  her,  as  she  flitted  through  the 
stone  court,  up  the  matted  stairway,  stopping 
to  peer  down  a  moment  in  the  entrance  hall, 
giving  little  rapid  nods  of  approval,  with  an  air 
of  settled  judgment  that  belonged  essentially  to 
Miss  Leslie. 

"Well,  my  dear,  what  do  you  think  of  it?" 
Miss  Ray  ventured  to  say,  in  a  gentle,  depreca- 
tory voice,  as  her  friend  had  stood  by  the  win- 
dow apparently  quite  lost  to  the  world  in  gen- 
eral, and  her  presence  in  particular. 


SIX    WEEKS  AT  ILKLEY. 


159 


"I  think  it  charming,"  responded  Marguerite, 
quickly.  "The  most  romantic  spot  in  the  world. 
Papa  was  right  in  coming.  Of  course,  he  will 
get  well,  and  I — oh,  Mallie  !  anything  in  the 
world  might  happen  here ;  no  Romance  of  the 
Forest  would  seem  out  of  place.  Ben  Rhyd- 
ding  is  a  castle,  and  we  are  two  princesses  in 
disguise;  and  the  fairy  godmother  is  around 
somewhere — in  those  woods,  I  fancy;  and  by 
and  by  a  knight  will  come  riding  up — we  will 
call  him  a  knight,  but,  of  course,  he  will  be  a 
prince — and  then — what  always  happens  in 
a  fairy  story,  Mall?"  turning  abruptly  to  her 
friend,  with  the  prettiest  nod  imaginable. 

"You  know  you  have  come  here  for  your 
poor  papa's  health,  and  not  for  flirtation ;  and, 
then,  what  about  Mr.  Rossie?"  queried  Mallie, 
in  a  faintly  remonstrant  tone. 

"And  who  spoke  of  flirtation?"  retorted  Rita. 
"How  can  you,  who  are  ever  so  much  wiser  and 
older,  put  such  wicked  ideas  in  my  head.  I  am 
sure  I  should  never  have  thought  of  it  but  for 
your  imprudence.  Now,  there  is  no  telling 
what  may  happen.  I  have  scriptural  authori- 
ty to  warrant  my  quoting:  'Those  that  sow  the 
wind  must  reap  the  whirlwind.'  I  dare  say  it 
will  end  in  a  cyclone.  /  only  thought  of  ro- 
mances, and  knights,  and  princes — how  could 
you  expect  me  to  include  Mr.  Rossie?"  with  a 
pretended  pout  of  anger. 

Miss  Ray  drew  down  the  bright  face,  full  of 
pent-up  mischief,  and,  patting  the  round  cheek, 
said,  smilingly,  "You  may  make  up  any  plot  you 
please,  dear.  I  know  of  no  spot  so  surrounded 
by  romance  and  tradition." 

"Then  I  have  your  permission  to  find  the 
prince,  Mallie,"  said  Marguerite,  springing  up 
with  concentrated  energy.  "  I  will  find  him,  you 
may  be  very  sure.  If  not  at  Ben  Rhydding, 
there  are  scores  of  other  places  equally  roman- 
tic. To-morrow  I  am  going  out.  There  are 
the  woods  to  explore,  and  the  hills,  and  the 
downs,"  counting  on  her  fingers,  with  a  laugh- 
ing nod  as  she  marked  off  each  one,  "and  then 
Bolton  Abbey,  Wharfedale,  Airdale,  and  Nid- 
derdale,  and  Skipton  Castle,  and  Burnham 
Crags,  and  Fountain's  Abbey,  and  Rabald's 
Moor;  and  we  can  go  over  to  Haworth,  and 
wander  among  those  forlorn  old  tombstones 
that  inspired  Charlotte  Bronte  to  give  Jane  Eyre 
to  the  world.  If  I  can't  find  my  prince,  I  can 
scare  up  another  Mr.  Rochester.  I  am  not  com- 
ing all  the  way  from  America  for  nothing." 

"And  there  is  always  Mr.  Rossie  to  fall  back 
upon." 

"There  will  always  be  Mr.  Rossie,  in  any 
case,"  said  Marguerite,  turning  away  a  little 
haughtily.  "You  may  be  sure  I  shall  never 
forget  to  include  htm" 


"Stop  a  moment,  dear;  don't  be  angry;  you 
do  love  him  a  little,,  don't  you?"  asked  her 
friend,  earnestly. 

"I  love  him  well  enough  to  take  him  for  my 
husband,"  replied  Marguerite,  flushing  hotly. 
"You  have  no  right  to  ask  me  such  questions, 
Mallie.  You  should  know  me  better  than  to 
doubt  me ;"  then,  putting  up  her  lips  with  a  sud- 
den saucy  movement,  she  laughed,  "Don't  let's 
quarrel,  Mai;  but  I  mean  to  have  my  flirtation 
all  the  same." 

That  night  when  Miss  Ray  entered  the  din- 
ing hall  with  the  Leslie  family,  she  instinctively 
gave  a  comprehensive  glance  up  and  down  the 
long  table,  and  then  flashed  a  look  of  intelli- 
gence back  to  Marguerite.  There  was  evident- 
ly no  prince  —  a  row  of  stolid  English  faces 
(ladies  predominating,  as  is  always  the  case  in 
such  establishments),  a  few  respectable  heads  of 
families,  together  with  half  a  dozen  children ; 
and  just  at  the  last  moment  a  tall,  disorderly 
young  fellow,  in  a  loose  shooting-jacket,  stalked 
in,  dropped  into  a  chair  nearly  opposite  the 
Californian  party,  bowed  slightly,  with  an  air 
of  English  indifference,  to  the  ladies,  and  then 
never  once  lifted  his  eyes  from  his  plate.  By 
the  time  the  melancholy  meal,  formally  recog- 
nized as  supper,  was  ended,  Marguerite's  en- 
thusiasm had  vanished,  and  she  took  her  fa- 
ther's arm  to  ascend  to  the  drawing-room,  where 
a  sort' of  general  introduction  took  place.  The 
young  girl  at  once  detected  great  preparations 
for  liveliness.  The  older  people  were  sitting  in 
formal  rows,  talking  over  their  diseases  sedate- 
ly, while  the  younger  ones  were  gathered  about 
a  piano  which  a  female,  of  uncertain  age,  was 
diligently  belaboring.  She  was  singing  also, 
appealing  in  a  thin,  frantic  voice  for  somebody 
to  go  over  the  mountains  with  her,  and  .ending 
in  a  tra-la-la  arrangement  that  apparently  was 
satisfactory,  for  she  concluded  her  petitions  af- 
ter three  frantic  attempts  in  verse.  After  this 
performance  a  benign,  middle-aged  lady,  who 
had  been  listening  with  evident  pleasure,  said: 

"Miss  Leslie,  won't  you  sing?  You  Ameri- 
cans always  do  everything  so  well.  You  need 
not  offer  any  excuses.  We  shall  be  quite  con- 
tent to  take  what  you  give  us." 

What  young  girl  just  out  of  boarding-school 
cannot  sing?  Rita  knew  some  weird  little  Ger- 
man songs — pathetic,  tender,  and  dreamy.  So 
she  yielded  with  a  graceful  readiness  that  in 
itself  was  a  charm;  and  in  the  first  moment  she 
discovered  that,  at  the  least,  her  audience  were 
appreciative.  There  was  not  a  whisper  in  the 
room  until  she  had  finished,  and  then  they  ap- 
plauded heartily,  begging  for  another,  and  just 
another  song,  while  she,  inspirited  by  their  en- 
joyment, warbled  her  lieder  as  unrestrainedly 


i6o 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


as  if  she  were  alone  in  the  room,  and  not  sur- 
rounded by  utter  strangers.  While  she  was 
singing,  the  same  gentleman  who  was  seated 
opposite  her  at  table  came  in.  He  had  changed 
his  careless  attire  for  an  evening  dress,  and,  after 
standing  irresolutely  for  a  moment,  came  over 
to  the  piano. 

"Oh,  don't  stop,"  he  said,  impulsively,  when 
she  rose  with  a  laughing  gesture.  "Won't  you 
sing  me  the  polonaise  from  Mignon?  Your 
voice  is  just  suited  to  that,"  as  if  he  had  known 
her  all  her  life,  and  talking  to  her  was  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world. 

"I  don't  know  that  I  ought  to  attempt  any- 
thing more,"  she  said,  doubtfully,  playing  a  lit- 
tle running  accompaniment  with  one  hand  as 
she  hesitated,  and  then  with  a  gleam  of  humor 
in  her  eyes,  "Perhaps  Miss  McDowell  will  sing 
again." 

"Heaven  forbid !"  he  said,  in  a  low  voice. 

She  looked  at  him  as  she  complied  with  his 
request,  a  half  shade  of  doubt  on  her  face.  Was 
this  another  of  her  heinous  offenses  against  all 
the  proprieties?  She  rose  from  the  piano  sud- 
denly when  she  had  ended  the  song,  but  her 
new  friend  followed  her  to  the  window. 

"I  suppose  I  may  introduce  myself,  since  no 
one  has  taken  the  trouble,  Miss  Leslie?" 

"How  did  you  know  my  name?"  with  a  brus- 
querie  that  was  pretty  as  it  was  natural  to  her, 
looking  up  at  him  through  her  eyelashes. 

"  I  heard  you  announced  at  the  drawing- 
room  door,  with  that  sweeping  generalization 
that  characterizes  introductions  at  this  place, 
'Mr.  Leslie  and  family.'  My  name  is  Lever- 
ing— Captain  Levering;  not  in  active  service, 
as  you  will  perceive.  Perhaps  it  would  be  better 
for  me  if  I  were  ordered  anywhere  to  relieve 
the  monotony  of  my  present  existence.  Pray, 
Miss  Leslie,  may  I  ask  if  life  isn't  a  fearful 
bore  to  you?" 

"To  me?"  turning  upon  him  the  wondering 
flash  of  her  large  eyes.  "It  has  been  a  perfect 
Paradise — that  is,  up  to  our  coming  here.  I 
am  a  little  doubtful  after  to-night.  Are  you 
always  so  gay?" 

"  Oh,  this  is  nothing  to  it.  Wait  until  you  hear 
Miss  McDowell  in  her  choicest  selections." 

"And  is  listening  to  Miss  McDowell  all  that 
one  can  do  ?" 

"There  are  the  douches  and  the  packs,  you 
will  please  remember ;  the  constitutional  walks 
— the  rivalry  in  diseases.  That  is  a  great  point 
in  such  a  place  as  this." 

"I  am  tired  to  death  in  advance,"  she  con- 
fided, dropping  into  a  chair  and  assuming  a 
collapsed  attitude.  "  I  am  sure  I  shall  do  some- 
thing to  shock  the  people,  if  only  to  give  variety 
and  piquancy  to  life." 


"Are  you  much  given  to  that  sort  of  thing  in 
America?" 

"Shocking  people?  Oh,  I  am  always  doing 
dreadful  things.  I  don't  know  about  other  peo- 
ple. It  is  quite  enough  to  think  of  myself.  I 
have  been  here  less  than  half  a  day,  and  I  feel 
like  a  feminine  Methuselah  already.  Am  I  very 
much  wrinkled?" 

"Of  course,"  said  he;  "the  old  Bible  hero 
wasn't  a  circumstance." 

The  very  dullness  of  the  place  drew  these 
young  people  much  together,  and  in  a  few  days 
they  had  become  well  enough  acquainted  to 
devise  plans  for  mutual  amusement,  The  bar- 
riers of  formality  soon  give  way  on  shipboard, 
or  in  the  country.  One  evening  as  they  sat 
in  the  parlor  chatting,  Captain  Levering,  ob- 
serving Miss  McDowell  watching  them,  said, 
audaciously  : 

"I  suppose  the  good  ladies  have  detected  an 
incipient  flirtation,  Miss  Leslie.  Suppose  we 
give  them  something  to  talk  about  at  once?" 

"Agreed,"  cried  Rita,  promptly,  with  a  flash 
of  mirth  in  her  eye.  "It  is  the  very  thing  I  am 
dying  for.  But  I  want  a  devoted  slave  !" 

"Try  me  and  see." 

"  I  shall  be  very  exacting." 

"It  will  be  your  privilege." 

"Let  us  begin  all  right  and  fair,"  she  said, 
with  a  frankness  that  was  surprising  to  him. 
"I  shall  not  fall  in  love  with  you." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Oh!— I— I— because,"  looking  down,  "for 
one  thing — there  is  another  whose  claims  are 
my  first  consideration;  and  then,  putting  that 
aside,  you  are  quite  the  last  person  on  earth 
that  /  should  fancy." 

"Ah,  indeed?  Thanks,"  twirling  his  mus- 
tache, with  an  air  of  pretended  affront. 

"And  you  must  not  fall  in  love  with  me," 
Rita  went  on,  with  an  air  of  gravity. 

"  I  should  not,  in  my  wildest  flight  of  fancy, 
dream  of  such  a  thing,"  responded  the  Captain, 
with  a  mocking  light  in  his  eyes. 

She  laughed  a  low,  girlish  laugh. 

"This  is  splendid  !  I  think  we  shall  under- 
stand each  other.  But  you  must  pretend  to 
admire  me  immensely.  I  wonder  if  you  could 
look  like  a  lover,"  eyeing  him  with  burlesque 
thoughtfulness. 

"Of  course,"  running  his  fingers  through  his 
hair  and  assuming  a  general  look  of  idiotic  in- 
fatuation. "Something  this  way,  I  suppose; 
or  shall  I  exaggerate  the  expression?" 

She  was  laughing  so  that  she  could  hardly 
answer.  "No,  no;  that  will  do  excellently. 
Don't  make  me  laugh  so,  please.  You  musn't 
do  so  all  at  once,  you  understand.  Such  things 
come  gradually." 


SIX    WEEKS  AT  ILKLEY. 


161 


"I  have  some  conscience  in  the  matter,"  re- 
sponded the  Captain,  with  dignity.  "Remem- 
ber it  is  a  clear  case  of  love  at  first  sight." 

"Yes;  but,  also,  remember  we  have  only 
known  each  other  for  a  few  days,  as  it  were." 

"Impossible!  There  are  moments  in  our 
lives  that  seem  like  years!" 

"  I  don't  know  whether  to  construe  that  into 
a  compliment  or  let  it  pass  with  sublime  indif- 
ference." 

"Decidedly  a  compliment,"  said  the  Gaptain, 
with  irresistible  candor.  "Is  anybody  looking 
now?" 

"Of  course.  Every  eye  in  the  room  is  upon 
us  by  this  time." 

He  pulled  the  flower  that  graced  his  button- 
hole and  handed  it  to  her,  with  a  killing  sigh 
that  nearly  sent  her  into  convulsions ;  then  of- 
fered her  his  arm,  and  together  they  walked  up 
to  a  deep  open  window  overlooking  the  stone 
court,  where  they  could  hear  the  soft  summer 
rain  drip,  as  they  laughed  unrestrainedly  and 
matured  their  plans  for  astonishing  the  house- 
hold. 

During  the  next  fortnight  there  was  hardly  a 
day  on  which,  on  some  pretense  or  other,  Mar- 
guerite and  Captain  Levering  were  not  together. 
The  world — that  is,  the  Ben  Rhydding  portion 
of  it — felt  an  assurance  on  the  subject  of  the 
romance  that  was  being  acted  out,  day  by  day, 
that  was  positively  enticing  to  a  girl  of  Mar- 
guerite's provokingly  coquettish  temperament. 
Indeed,  the  only  wonder  was,  as  the  days  went 
by,  that  the  engagement  was  not  publicly  an- 
nounced; and  the  father's  utter  absence  of  in- 
terest in  the  whole  affair  was  only  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  low  state  of  his  health. 

Every  morning  the  ladies,  on  watch  from  the 
lower  drawing-room  window,  would  make  a 
careful  study  of  the  Captain's  face  as  he  paced 
back  and  forth  along  the  graveled  court,  with 
his  impenetrable  military  air,  and  his  cigar  be- 
tween his  lips,  until  a  flutter  of  fresh  muslin 
swept  up  to  the  window  or  out  on  the  croquet 
lawn.  In  an  instant  the  impenetrable  air  van- 
ished. The  face  was  plain  as  an  open  page 
to  read.  The  cigar  thrown  away,  he  pursued 
croquet  as  if  a  thorough  knowledge  of  that  game 
were  the  chief  end  and  aim  of  his  existence. 
There  was  such  perfect  abandon  to  this  love- 
making  that  it  proved  a  boon  of  delight  to  the 
ladies  on  guard,  as  it  were,  who,  with  more  time 
than  usual  on  their  hands,  could  but  admit  that 
the  old  worn-out  romance  that  was  going  on  un- 
der their  eyes  had  assumed  phases  that  were  re- 
freshing from  very  novelty,  for  Captain  Lever- 
ing lived  for  nothing  else  apparently.  He  had 
come  to  Ben  Rhydding  from  a  sense  of  ennui 
more  than  to  restore  health  to  his  manly  frame, 


and  the  absolute  assurance  that  he  gave  now 
was  that  he  stayed  for  Miss  Leslie,  and  no  one 
else.  He  made  no  scruples  about  showing  his 
infatuation.  Indeed,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  he  was  apparently  willing  to  have  it  pro- 
claimed from  the  house-top  that  he  was  Miss 
Leslie's  slave,  and  if  she  spoke  the  word  he  was 
ready  to  be  bound  by  chains,  only  to  be  severed 
by  death  itself.  It  was  well  for  the  little  com- 
munity that  anything  so  interesting  as  a  love 
affair  should  have  turned  up.  In  respect  of 
variety,  it  offered  uncounted  attractions  over 
rheumatism  or  dyspepsia. 

As  for  Miss  Leslie,  she  would  have  been  sat- 
isfied with  a  less  complete  surrender.  In  fact, 
he  rather  overacted  his  part.  But  if  it  some- 
times gave  her  a  vague  uneasiness,  it  quickly 
vanished  when  she  found  herself  alone  with 
him,  when  she  could,  with  perfect  impunity,  re- 
buke and  snub  him.  They  walked  a  great  deal 
upon  the  hillside — the  "Little  Go,"  as  it  was 
called — and  he  read  and  talked  with  the  full  free- 
dom that  the  bonds  of  their  tomradeship  gave 
him.  He  told  her  of  his  life  at  school,  and  aft- 
erward in  college,  of  his  military  experiences 
(few  in  number,  alas!),  what  his  pet  theories 
were,  what  his  hopes  of  life,  his  expectations — 
always  somewhat  circumscribed  for  a  younger 
son.  He  even  told  her  of  a  flirtation  that  he 
had  once  passed  through.  "  Quite  heart-whole. 
It  was  nothing  like  love,"  he  added,  with  a  per- 
ception of  that  untranslatable  emotion  showing 
in  his  face,  while  Rita  made  a  careful  study  of 
the  moor  blossoms  in  her  hand  as  demurely  as 
if  she  were  the  most  insane  follower  of  Linnaeus. 

But  although  Marguerite  had  never  swerved 
from  the  strict  line  of  their  agreement,  Captain 
Levering  had  formed  a  determination,  strength- 
ening as  the  days  went  by,  that  he  was  utterly 
incapable  of  performing  his  part  of  the  contract. 
To  his  surprise,  he  found  that  he  loved  her,  and 
as  soon  as  he  discovered  this,  he  promised  him- 
self no  delay  in  acquainting  Marguerite.  But 
this  was  a  difficult  thing  to  do,  although  in  her 
prescribed  role  she  hastened  the  natural  result 
of  Levering's  passion,  which,  from  the  first,  had 
shown  itself  stripped  of  conventional  reserve. 
One  day,  after  searching  for  her  some  time,  he 
found  her  with  Miss  Ray  in  a  shaded  spot  by 
the  pretty  wicket-gate  of  the  "Little  Go."  She 
had  been  apparently  reading  aloud,  for  she  held 
up  a  volume  as  he  drew  near,  with  the  explana- 
tion: 

"I  am  improving  my  mind,  you  see.  I  sup- 
pose you  will  say,  with  your  usual  offensive  man- 
ner, that  it  is  quite  time." 

"How  very  unkind  of  you,"  he  retorted.  "Do 
you  wish  to  imply  that  I  am  in  the  habit  of  find- 
ing fault  with  you?" 


162 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"Not  that  exactly;  but  you  are  critical,  and  I 
am  a  little  diffident  under  such  circumstances." 

"What  do  you  say  then  to  giving  up  the  read- 
ing and  making  the  explorations  we  have  been 
promising  ourselves  for  the  last  week?  And 
Miss  Ray  must  come  with  us." 

"Oh,  certainly,"  said  Rita,  speaking  as  usual 
for  both,  and  carelessly  throwing  aside  her  book. 

In  a  few  moments  they  were  walking  up  the 
winding  path  of  the  "Big  Go,"  Captain  Lever- 
ing playing  cicerone  to  all  the  lions  within  sight. 

"Stop  a  moment  here,"  he  said.  "From  this 
point  you  can  see  the  Cow  and  Calf  to  great 
advantage.  No,  not  that  way.  There!  They 
are  natural  rock  formations;  of  course  with  a 
legend  attached.  When  we  go  up  there  I  will 
show  you  the  mark  of  Giant  Rumbald's  foot- 
steps. Perhaps  you  don't  know  that  the  giant 
one  day  in  stepping  from  St.  Alme's  Cliff  over 
to  this  missed  his  footing,  merely  touching  the 
edge,  which  broke  off  under  his  weight  and  re- 
tained the  impression  of  his  foot  ever  after.  St. 
Alme's  used  to  be  a  famous  place  for  witches." 

"  I  told  you  so,"  said  Rita,  nodding  gravely  at 
Miss  Ray.  "We  shall  find  your  knight,  Mai." 

"My  knight !"  responded  Mallie,  indignantly, 
and  Captain  Levering  asked,  "Who,  pray?" 

"Oh,  one  of  Miss  Ray's  inspirations,"  said 
Rita,  making  cabalistic  motions  behind  the  Cap- 
tain's back.  "Go  on,  Captain  Levering;  tell  us 
some  more,"  gathering  up  her  long  dress  and 
giving  her  friend  a  sly  glance. 

"Well,  if  you  go  up  still  higher  to  Rumbald's 
Moor,  you  can  see  Baildon  in  the  distance — 
that  is,  the  hill  of  Bael,  the  fire -god;  but  if 
you  want  a  knight,  Miss  Ray,  you  will  have  to 
go  down  to  the  little  Church  of  All  Saints, 
where  Sir  Adam  de  Middleton  sits  in  effigy, 
covered  with  chain  mail,  his  head  supported  by 
an  angel,  his  feet  by  a  dog."  Miss  Ray  mur- 
mured a  confused  protest,  and  Captain  Lever- 
ing went  on.  "The  church  looks  unpretending 
enough  with  its  quaint,  square  Norman  tower, 
but  one  can  read  the  history  of  the  human  race 
almost  on  its  old  stones  and  inscriptions." 

"Are  there  any  Darwinian  epitaphs?"  in- 
quired Rita,  innocently. 

"Not  precisely.  Perhaps  if  you  could  de- 
cipher the  inscriptions  on  the  three  Runic 
crosses  outside  the  porch,  your  curiosity  might 
be  appeased.  There  are  certainly  dragons 
enough  on  them  to  satisfy  the  most  ardent 
evolutionist,  and  they  are  of  a  very  peculiar 
kind,  being  two-footed." 

"Is  that  a  rare  thing?"  Miss  Ray  asked,  with 
interest. 

"Oh,  yes.  One  only  sees  them  occasionally 
in  Belgian  and  Norse  relics,  and  never,  as  far 
as  I  can  find,  in  Latin  countries.  Perhaps  the 


stones  were  carved  in  honor  of  some  saint  or 
hero  who  had  fought  and  conquered  a  dragon. 
At  all  events,  there  is  the  noble  human  head, 
encircled  with  an  orthodox  enough  nimbus  at 
the  top,  and  the  dragon  at  the  base." 

"But,  pray,  why  are  they  in  front  of  a  Chris- 
tian church?" 

"Oh,  about  forty  years  ago  they  were  set  up 
in  a  row,  to  be  called  emblems  of  the 'Trinity. 
Evidently,  they  have  been  rather  a  drug  in  the 
market,  and  at  one  time  must  have  been  de- 
graded to  the  use  of  gate-posts,  for  there  are 
still  traces  of  the  lead  hinges  which  fastened 
them.  The  highest  shaft  is  nine  feet,  the  low- 
est five — a  most  heterodox  conception  of  the 
Trinity." 

"Let  us  go  down,"  said  Rita,  "and  blast  them 
with  a  look  at  once,  Mai." 

She  ran  lightly  down  the  path,  a  little  in  ad- 
vance of  the  other  two,  and,  turning  to  glance 
back,  tripped  against  a  stone.  The  next  instant 
she  had  fallen. 

"You  should  take  better  care  of  me,"  she 
said,  with  an  attempt  at  a  pout,  as  Captain  Lev- 
ering ran  to  her  assistance  with  some  tender, 
hurried  words,  that  she  pretended  not  to  hear. 

She  shook  the  dust  from  her  flounces,  and  pre- 
sented two  grass-stained  palms  for  inspection. 

"Now,  we  may  as  well  go  home,  and  begin 
some  day  to  do  the  whole  thing  over." 

"I  wish  you  would  give  me  the  right  to  take 
care  of  you  always,"  he  breathed  softly  in  her 
ear. 

Rita  was  not  surprised.  She  had  felt  it  in  the 
air  all  the  morning,  just  as  she  had  felt  a  thun- 
der-storm before  the  cloud  no  bigger  than  a 
man's  hand  had  appeared.  Perhaps  he  wanted 
to  inveigle  her  into  a  real  flirtation  outside  of 
that  going  on  for  the  benefit  of  the  gossips. 
Very  well.  She  would  be  quite  prepared  for 
any  emergency. 

"And  be  killed  outright  to  pay  for  my  clem- 
ency," she  laughed,  lightly,  as  she  drifted  over 
to  Mallie's  side,  with  a  pretended  cry  of  distress. 
"Pray  let  us  get  home  as  soon  as  possible.  I 
really  am  not  fit  to  be  seen,"  hurrying  on,  keep- 
ing just  far  enough  in  advance  of  him  to  prevent 
another  speech.  But  she  could  not  resist  turn- 
ing once  to  flash  him  an  exasperatingly  tri- 
umphant glance,  that  he  was  not  slow  to  inter- 
pret. 

"A  born  coquette.  I  might  have  known  it," 
he  sighed,  as  she  disappeared  through  the  stone 
court,  waving  him  good-bye,  and  still  showing 
the  laughter  in  her  eyes.  But  he  inwardly 
amended,  "I  shall  find  the  opportunity  to  speak 
— I  will  conquer  yet." 

And  it  seemed  to  him  likely  that  his  hope 
would  meet  with  fruition,  for  the  next  week 


SIX    WEEKS  AT  ILK  LEY. 


163 


there  was  to  be  an  excursion  to  Bolton  Abbey, 
according  to  a  long  projected  plan.  The  elder 
and  invalid  portion  of  the  party  decided  to  go 
in  drags,  so  that  it  was  an  easy  task  for  Captain 
Levering  to  persuade  Marguerite  that  for  them 
the  trip  would  be  completely  charming  if  made 
on  horseback.  It  was  also  easy  to  gain  Miss 
Leslie's  consent  to  an  early  breakfast  and  a  gal- 
lop long  before  the  Ben  Rhydding  household 
were  awake  ;  and  as  for  the  father,  when  had  he 
ever  been  known  to  thwart  his  eldest  daughter? 
Moreover,  he  had  satisfied  himself  that  Captain 
Levering  was,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  a  suit- 
able escort  for  any  young  lady ;  and  Rita,  was 
she  not  engaged  to  his  dearest  friend,  Mr.  Hugh 
Rossie?  And  Captain  Levering  had  been  made 
to  understand  perfectly  not  only  the  engage- 
ment, but  the  affection  of  years  out  of  which  the 
engagement  had  grown.  Above  all,  Mr.  Leslie 
knew  nothing  of  women  beyond  the  wife  whom 
he  had  buried  years  before  and  the  daughter  she 
had  left  him.  He  simply  had  adored  and  trust- 
ed them  both. 

It  was  fine  midsummer  weather,  but  not  too 
warm  to  make  the  twelve  or  fourteen- mile  ride 
delightful.  There  was  just  enough  breeze  to 
stir  the  long  woodland  grasses  into  ecstatic 
waving,  and  a  spirit  of  peace  and  content  seem- 
ed to  pervade  the  whole  landscape.  It  even 
touched  the  young  girl,  and  subdued  her  for  the 
moment  as  she  waited  in  the  stone  court  with 
Captain  Levering  for  the  horses  to  come  around. 

"The  day  is  a  perfect  poem.  Mind  that  you 
are  in  tune  with  its  perfectness,  Miss  Leslie," 
he  said,  as  he  lifted  her  to  her  saddle. 

She  laughed,  and  touched  her  horse  with  her 
whip,  as  they  started  off  down  the  sloping  road, 
•silent  for  some  time,  and  watching  the  fan- 
tastic shadows  their  flying  figures  made  gliding 
noiselessly  by  their  side,  a  ghostly  double  on  gi- 
gantic steeds.  The  sky  was  still  and  blue  as  a 
Californian  sky;  that  alone  made  the  day  in 
England  a  marvel  of  beauty.  On  either  side  of 
the  road  the  birds  in  the  hedge -rows  or  in  the 
still  woods  twittered  and  trilled  in  very  abandon 
of  joy,  while  here  and  there  they  galloped  past 
arched  gateways  and  rustic  bridges,  catching 
glimpses  of  old  gardens  bordered  with  fantastic 
box  or  dotted  with  prim  cypress. 

Rita  glanced  shyly  at  her  companion. 

"Is  it  such  a  beautiful  road  all  the  way?"  she 
asked,  with  an  elaborate  attempt  at  easy  and 
impersonal  conversation.  "If  it  is,  I  am  sure 
we  shall  be  there  too  soon.  Ah,  this  is  what 
I  lo^ve,"  as  they  left  the  village  behind  them 
"We  are  out  of  the  Ben  Rhydding  atmosphere 
at  last.  Now  I  can  breathe  and  laugh.  You 
won't  criticise  me  too  severely,  that  I  know. 
Isn't  it  glorious,  Captain  Levering?"  she  went 


gayly  on,  as  the  soft  puffs  of  blossom-laden  air 
blew  upon  her  face  and  lifted  the  light,  loose 
curls  about  her  forehead.  "I  feel  like  an  es- 
caped prisoner.  Think  of  the  poor  wretches 
getting  up  to  buttered  toast  and  tea  in  the  last 
stages  of  dilution,  and  the  stereotyped  'How 
do  you  feel  this  morning?'  Do  you  feel  the 
packs  agreeing  with  you,  Captain  Levering?" 
with  an  audacious  attempt  at  caricature. 

"Do  we  never  talk  of  anything  else  but  our 
packs  and  douches,  and  must  the  tea  always  be 
weak  and  the  conversation  weaker?  Or  do  you 
refer  more  particularly  to  the  blight  which  Ben 
Rhydding  suffers  when  you  withdraw  yourself 
from  only  one  breakfast  ? " 

"How  satirical  you  have  grown,"  retorted 
Rita;  "but,  all  the  same,  I  know  you  infinitely 
prefer  my  society  to  Miss  McDowell's." 

They  looked  at  each  other,  and  both  burst 
out  laughing ;  but  for  some  reason  he  was  not 
quite  as  effusive  as  usual,  and  by  and  by  Rita's 
talk  subsided,  taking  a  softer  and  more  inter- 
rupted flow,  until  at  last  it  ceased  altogether. 

When  they  reached  the  ruin,  Levering  helped 
her  dismount,  tying  the  horses  to  a  tree,  and 
then  offered  his  arm. 

"What  a  pity  the  places  hereabout  are  all 
hackneyed,"  said  he.  "I  would  give  anything 
for  the  first  flush  and  enthusiasm  of  travel — " 

"Like  mine,  for  instance,"  laughed  Rita.  "It 
is  the  regulation  method  to  sigh  and  look  pen- 
sive at  things  of  this  sort,  isn't  it,  Captain  Lev- 
ering? Do  tell  me,  that  I  may  do  the  correct 
thing,  please.  It  is  an  unfortunate  habit  of 
mine,  as  probably  you  have  found  out,  to  be 
melancholy  in  the  wrong  place.  Tragedy  is 
invariably  comedy  with  me.  I  generally  have 
Mallie  along  to  give  me  my  proper  cue.  Pray, 
is  there  anything  to  be  sad  about  in  Bolton  Ab- 
bey?" as  they  came  around  in  view  of  the  south 
side  of  the  choir. 

"Only  the  sadness  of  inevitable  decay.  The 
old  monastery  was  founded  in  1120,  I  be- 
lieve—" 

"Don't  be  statistical,  please.  I  was  getting 
ready  to  drop  a  tear  to  somebody's  memory," 
flirting  an  elaborate  handkerchief.  "I  am  so 
glad  you  have  spared  me  the  pains." 

She  sank  down  upon  one  of  the  flat  stones, 
in  the  sunshine,  and  beat  the  grass  absently 
with  her  riding- whip  as  she  stared  at  the  broken 
roof  and  arched  windows. 

"I  couldn't  waste  sentiment  on  a  lot  of  dead 
and  gone  abbots,  could  you?  But  doesn't  it 
seem  strange  and  sad  that  when  life  is  so  sweet 
me  must  ever  lose  it?  I  suppose  it  was  all  as 
sweet  to  them  as  it  is  to  me.  And  to  go  away 
from  it  all,  and  be  forgotten  ! "  with  a  little  shiver, 
and  a  pensive  look  in  her  eyes. 


164 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


These  sudden  transitions  from  gayety  to  grav- 
ity constituted  one  of  her  chiefest  charms  in 
the  young  man's  eye.  He  had  been  standing, 
looking  down  upon  her  uplifted  face,  but  he 
found  it  impossible  to  tell  with  just  what  stage 
of  feeling  her  lips  trembled  and  her  color  came 
and  went. 

"I  didn't  know  you  ever  had  such  serious 
thoughts,"  he  said,  gently. 

"Why,  I  am  human,"  she  retorted,  and  then, 
with  a  mixture  of  embarrassment  and  pique, 
added,  " — and  a  woman.  Isn't  that  enough  to 
be  serious  about?  I  quite  feel  like  peeping  into 
that  broken  window.  Shall  we  try  it?" 

"Better  go  around  to  the  front." 

And  then  he  led  her  into  the  cool,  dark  ruin, 
she  stopping  to  break  off  a  long  tendril  of  ivy 
and  twist  it  about  her  hat,  talking  gayly  all  the 
time. 

And  then  they  wandered  into  the  wood,  go- 
ing on  and  on  until,  far  away,  they  caught  a 
glimpse  of  the  Strid,  leaping  from  rock  to  rock 
with  that  faint  whisper  and  murmur  that  seems 
like  unwritten  music — a  melody  that  no  man  can 
catch. 

"Did  you  ever  notice  how  sweet  the  sound 
of  falling  water  is  on  a  still  day  in  the  woods? 
Stop  a  moment  and  listen,"  said  the  young  girl. 
"There  is  a  regular  rhythmic  sound  that  al- 
most shapes  itself  to  words.  If  I  shut  my  eyes 
I  can  see  such  pictures  !" 

"Try  it,  Miss  Leslie.  Tell  me  what  you  can 
see  now.  Let  us  sit  down  and  wait  for  the  rest 
of  our  party  to  come  up,  and  you  shall  paint 
me  a  picture  while  we  are  waiting." 

"You  will  be  disappointed.  You  have  a 
pretty  little  pastoral  in  your  mind's  eye — a 
scene  of  Arcadian  simplicity.  I  can  only  think 
of  a  gypsy  camp,  and  pretty,  dark-browed  girls, 
in  scarlet  bodices,  flitting  among  the  trees,  and 
rough  looking  men,  with  real  Roumanian  faces, 
sleeping  in  the  shade." 

"And  you  would  be  one  of  the  gypsy  girls?" 

"Oh,  yes,  of  course." 

"Is  that  all?" 

"Yes,  all  that  I  can  see  at  present,"  she  said, 
unclosing  her  eyes  with  a  pretty  little  air  of  af- 
fectation. 

"I  am  disappointed.  I  thought  you  would 
have  painted  my  portrait." 

"I  have.  You  are  one  of  the  rough  looking 
men." 

"Oh,  very  well"— stiffly.  "I  decline  to  sit  for 
my  portrait  to-day." 

"It  will  be  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to 
blot  you  out,"  said  Rita,  gravely  flourishing  an 
imaginary  brush.  "I  love  Bohemia.  I  should 
like  to  be  queen  of  it,  and  reign  forever  and 
ever;  to  reduce  life  to  its  very  simplest  ex- 


pression ;  to  be  utterly  aimless,  purposeless ;  to 
drift  with  the  tide  or  winds ;  when  you  hear  of 
anything  new,  to  say,  'Let  us  see  it,'  and  go." 

"I  wo,uld  never  dream  of  such  a  career  for 
you.  I  remember  what  I  first  thought  when  I 
saw  you.  It  was  at  the  piano,  you  remem- 
ber—" 

"Oh,  do  tell  me  what  you  thought,"  she  in- 
terrupted, with  child-like  eagerness.  "  We  have 
dropped  conventionalities  so  thoroughly,  why 
not  tell  me  frankly  what  you  thought  of  me 
then?" 

"I  had  rather  not  tell  you  what  I  thought. 
You  remember  I  had  never  met  an  American 
lady  before." 

"And  I  shocked  you,"  she  pouted,  "and  you'd 
rather  not  confess  to  me  now.  Never  mind.  I 
want  to  hear  my  condemnation  spoken." 

"You  insist?" 

"Of  course.  I  do  not  imagine  you  thought 
anything.  Now,  if  you  were  a  lady,  you  could 
tell  me  what  I  wore,  but  being  a  gentleman — " 

"Well,  you  shall  see.  You  wore  a  white  mus- 
lin. That's  the  way  all  American  girls  dress  in 
your  novels — " 

"But  I  wasn't  in  a  novel.  I  choose  to  be  lit- 
eral. I  was  in  the  upper  drawing-room." 

"Were  you?     You 

'Seemed  a  splendid  angel,  newly  drest, 
Save  wings  for  heaven.'" 

She  opened  her  eyes  at  the  sudden  acces  of 
tenderness  in  his  voice,  shook  her  head,  and 
said: 

"Nonsense!" 

And  so,  to  be  sure,  it  was  nonsense.  But 
that  is  so  much  better  than  wisdom,  particularly 
to  the  young. 

His  impulse  was  to  pour  the  whole  truth  out 
to  her  on  the  spot,  but  by  some  mental  intui- 
tion he  felt  she  was  ready  to  oppose  him ;  and 
she,  with  a  tremulous  fear  that  for  a  moment 
lent  her  power  and  perception,  dashed  off  into 
a  hurried : 

"Do  you  remember  how  dull  and  ennuyt  I 
was  when  I  took  a  mental  survey  of  the  assem- 
bled company  and  the  pursuits  they  were  in- 
dulging in?  I  have  often  wondered  at  my  au- 
dacity. I  suppose  we  have  both  been  a  little 
foolish.  I  think  it  is  quite  time  we  had  a  quar- 
rel. That's  the  prescribed  rule,"  giving  him 
one  of  her  incomprehensible  glances  under  her 
long  eye-lashes.  "When  shall  we  begin?" 

They  both  laughed,  and  she  went  on  with 
what  seemed  to  him  the  most  innocent,  girl- 
like  prattle  in  the  world : 

"How  very  funny  it  seems,  doesn't  it,  that 
after  making  this  compact  just  to  set  gossips 
talking,  and  with  no  thought  of  even  toleration 


SIX    WEEKS  AT  ILK  LEY. 


on  our  part,  that  we  should  really  come  to  find 
ourselves  very  good  friends,  and  it  isn't  a  bore 
at  all — that  is,  it  isn't  much  of  a  bore  that  you 
should  have  to  take  up  with  me,  and  I  should 
have  to  take  up  with  you  all  the  time,  is  it? 
But  it  will  soon  be  ended,"  skillfully  suppressing 
a  yawn.  "We  go  over  to  Paris  in  just  a  week 
from  to-day.  Won't  I  be  glad!"  turning  her 
eyes  upward  with  anything  but  a  religious  fer- 
vor. "You  have  been  to  Paris,  so  you  can  af- 
ford to  laugh  at  me,  but — the  new  dresses  I 
shall  get  there,  Captain  Levering;  the  sights  I 
shall  see ;  the  shops,  the  opera,  the  theaters ! 
Why  do  people  call  it  the  American's  paradise, 
Captain  Levering?  Isn't  it  the  world's  para- 
dise?" dazzling  him  with  another  glance  of  her 
brown  eyes. 

"It  wouldn't  be  my  paradise — unless — unless 
you  were  there,"  he  stammered  like  a  school- 
boy. 

"Oh,  what  a  nice  speech ;  but  too  personal  by 
far.  But  for  that  I  should  say,  'Pray  go  on'— 
it  is  lovely.  But  then  I  cannot  myself  imagine 
a  paradise  that  would  be  paradise  unless  I  were 
there  in  it,"  she  added  so  naively  that  he  could 
not  resist  the  words  that  came  to  his  lips. 

"No,"  he  said,  with  a  passionate  energy  that 
nothing  could  have  stopped;  "you  know  my 
only  paradise  is  with  you,  Rita — you  know  that 
I  love  you." 

"Why  do  you  say  such  things  to  me  here?' 
she  asked,  with  resistant  courage.  "Why  didn't 
you  wait  to  say  it  on  the  lawn,  or  in  the  draw- 
ing-room, where  every  one  could  have  an  idea 
of  what  was  going  on?  It  is  pursuing  an  unfair 
advantage,"  trying  to  jest  fate  aside. 

"  Oh,  my  darling,"  he  whispered,  half  stretch- 
ing his  arms  out  to  her,  "what  does  it  matter 
where  I  say  it?  I  do  not  care  if  the  whole  world 
knows  it.  But  you  must  understand — you  must 
have  felt  that  I  was  in  earnest  all  the  time." 

"And  you  coolly  lured  me  on  into  making 
the  wildest  proposals  for  your  hand !  I  thought 
such  things  were  never  done  in  advanced  stages 
of  civilization.  You  have  taught  me  a  lesson," 
rising  and  gathering  the  folds  of  her  habit  about 
her  in  some  trepidation. 

He  stood  looking  down  into  her  face  with  a 
bewildered  air. 

"You  need  not  answer  me  yet.  I  don't  ask 
you  to  love  me  now.  I  can  be  patient,  if  you 
will  only  tell  me  I  may  wait." 

"Captain  Levering,"  she  said,  with  more  real 
dignity  than  he  had  ever  seen  her  display,  "I 
shall  never  forgive  myself.  I  thought  we  under- 
stood each  other  perfectly,  and  now  it  seems  as 
if  this  pleasant  summer  must  always  be  a  bitter 
pain  and  memory  to  us  both.  Do  forget  what 
you  have  said,  or  take  it  back.  Say  you  don't 

VOL.  HI.- IT. 


mean  it,  and  let  us  be  friends,"  putting  out  her 
hand  appealingly.  "And  I  only  am  to  blame," 
with  a  half  sob.  "I  have  wronged  you  and  Mr. 
Rossie  both — and  I  thought  it  was  merely  the 
most  perfect  acting  on  your  part." 

A  great  wave  of  regret  and  tenderness  swept 
over  his  soul  as  he  bent  down  and  pressed  her 
hand  to  his  lips,  but  she  wrung  it  loose,  and, 
only  giving  him  one  hurried  glance  of  tearful 
reproach,  walked  away. 

He  followed  silently.  Half  way  up  to  the 
abbey  they  met  Miss  Ray  and  Mr.  Leslie. 

"Such  news!"  cried  Mallie,  waving  her  hat; 
and  then  her  father  took  her  arm. 

"My  child,"  he  said,  "Mr.  Rossie  is  here. 
He  is  at  the  ruin,  waiting  to  receive  you.  Go 
on,  and  we  will  follow  more  slowly." 

How  still  the  wood  had  suddenly  grown ! 
No  sound  but  the  beating  of  her  heart  as  she 
went  on  hurriedly  to  greet  her  future  husband. 
She  had  not  seen  him  since  they  had  parted  in 
America  six  months  before.  Six  months?  Six 
years,  rather.  What  had  she  to  say  to  him 
now?  She  stood  in  the  bright  sunlight,  looking 
straight  forward  into  the  gloom  and  shadow  of 
the  old  abbey,  her  cheeks  blanched  of  all  color, 
her  eyes  full  of  speechless,  silent  eagerness; 
and  Mr.  Rossie,  who  had  been  watching  her  a 
long  way  off,  stood  still  a  moment,  too  startled 
to  speak.  Then  he  came  forward  and  gathered 
her  hands  in  his. 

"My  darling,"  he  whispered,  "I  could  not 
wait  any  longer.  You  are  not  angry  with  me 
for  coming?" 

Her  head  dropped  upon  his  shoulder,  and 
she  burst  into  tears. 

"Not  angry — glad,"  she  murmured,  hastily. 
"I  think  I  never  needed  you  so  much  before  in 
all  my  life.  I  have  done  you  such  a  wrong — 
not  willfully,  but  blindly,  carelessly!  I  have 
acted  like  a  child  instead  of  a  woman,  and  my 
heart  is  so  full  it  will  break  unless  I  tell  you  all 
now,  this^very  minute." 

"You  were  always  rash,"  he  said,  patting  her 
hand  indulgently.  "Some  time  you  shall  tell 
me  all  you  want  to,  but  just  now  I  can  only 
think  of  my  joy  in  having  you  again." 

"No,  no,"  she  insisted;  and  then  she  looked 
up  into  his  face  for  the  first  time,  to  gather 
strength  therefrom  to  tell  her  story. 

Oh,  how  old  he  had  grown !  Nearly  as  old 
as  her  father,  she  thought,  with  a  bitter  pang, 
remembering  whose  face  she  had  looked  into 
but  a  few  moments  ago.  It  was  all  wrong,  all 
wrong ! 

He  could  not  understand  her  gravity  or  her 
evident  distress,  but  he  smiled  down  into  her 
eyes  with  the  look  of  an  indulgent  parent  to- 
ward a  spoiled  child.  A  very  pleasant,  kind 


i66 


THE    CALIFORNIAN 


face  had  Mr.  Rossie,  with  grave,  sweet  lines 
about  the  mouth,  and  honest,  clear  eyes.  What- 
-  ever  she  might  confess,  he,  for  one,  would  not 
judge  her  harshly. 

"Don't  smile,"  entreated  Rita,  "and  take  it 
so  lightly.  Please,  don't.  I  am  very  unhappy. 
And  you  will  despise  me  after  I  tell  you — but  I 
must  speak,  and  then  you  can  judge.  I  have 
deceived  you  all  along." 

"My  darling,"  he  said,  softly,  pressing  the 
tips  of  her  fingers  again  to  his  lips. 

"But  I  have  deceived  myself,  too,"  she  went 
on,  without  heeding  his  interruption.  "I  was 
very  young  when  you  came  to  me  and  told  me 
that  you  loved  me,  Mr,  Rossie.  You  were  my 
father's  friend,  and  dear,  very  dear,  to  us  all. 
I  did  not  know— I  had  never  met  any  one  else." 

"Ah  !"  he  muttered,  tightening  his  grasp  upon 
her  hand ;  and  then,  more  quietly,  "go  on,  my 
dear;  tell  me  all.  Have  you  met  some  one  else?" 

"I  must  go  back  to  the  beginning,"  she  said, 
her  voice  trembling  with  the  effort  to  restrain 
her  tears.  "It  has  only  been  since  we  came 
here.  It  began  in  a  spirit  of  fun — a  flirtation. 
I  never  thought  of  him  in  any  other  way  than 
as  a  pleasant  companion,  and,  indeed,  I  thought 
he  was  flirting  with  me.  I  told  him  of  my  en- 
gagement the  very  night  we  met,"  lifting  her 
candid,  troubled  eyes  to  his.  "I  am  afraid  I 
was  bold,  and  so  led  him  on,  but  I  never  thought, 
I  never  suspected,  until  to-day,  that  he  was  in 
earnest — and  oh,  Mr.  Rossie,  he  loves  me,  too." 

"And  you?"  said  Mr.  Rossie,  still  holding 
her  hand,  but  turning  his  head. 

"That  is  the  worst  part  of  it  all.  Do  not  be 
angry.  I  must  tell  you  all." 

"Go  on,"  he  whispered  softly,  but  the  utter 
despair  in  his  voice  stabbed  her  to  the  heart. 

"Do  you  love  me  so  much,  then,  too?"  she 
said,  brokenly.  "Oh,  why  must  I  cause  so 
much  misery,  and  yet  I  must  tell  you.  It  is 
your  right— I  never  knew  until  to-day— I  did 
not  mean  it;  but  I  am  afraid — afraid  I  was  in 
earnest,  too — and  I  thought  I  did  not  care  until 
to-day— until  he  spoke,  not  half  an  hour  ago." 

Sharp  and  bitter  as  was  the  pain,  the  straight- 
forward simplicity  of  the  girl  disarmed  him,  He 
unclasped  her  hand  from  his  arm  and  turned 
away,  so  that  she  might  not  see  his  face,  walk- 
ing up  and  down  in  the  solemn  shadows,  with 
anguish  and  mortification  in  his  heart,  each 
passion  struggling  for  the  mastery.  She  sat 
perfectly  still,  with  downcast  head,  hearing  the 
steps  up  and  down,  up  and  down,  as  if  they 
were  trampling  upon  her  heart. 

He  came  up  to  her,  stooping  down  with  con- 
centrated passion  to  lift  her  face  to  his. 

"Rita," he  said,  "I  want  to  understand  clear- 
ly, before  I  see  your  father.  Do  you  love  this 


stranger  better  than  you  can  ever  love  one  who 
has  cared  for  you  ever  since  you  were  a  child?" 

She  tried  to  soften  the  blow.  "I  do  love 
you,"  she  whispered,  drawing  in  her  breath  like 
a  sob,  "but  not  that  way — not  the  way  I  ought 
to.  Oh,  forgive  me !  but  you  seem  too  — " 

"Old"  she  would  have  said,  but  he  put  up 
his  hand  with  a  hoarse  entreaty  to  "stop;"  then 
bent  down,  kissing  her  forehead  with  a  passion- 
ate sense  of  loss. 

"Yes,"  he  mused,  "you  women  are  all  alike. 
You  say  you  have  deceived  and  wronged  me; 
and  you  have — you  have,  Rita,  and  then  you  ex- 
pect me  to  forgive  you  and  go  away  and  forget 
it  all — like  a  woman  !  But  you  are  right — right 
as  you  always  are.  I  am  too  old,  that  is  it — 
too  old.  I  ought  to  have  known,"  and  then  he 
kissed  her  on  the  forehead — this  time  gravely 
and  despairingly  as  her  father  might  have  done 
— and  went  away. 

Captain  Levering  did  not  see  Marguerite  aft- 
er this  excursion  to  Bolton  Abbey  for  several 
days.  She  went  home  with  her  father  in  the 
drag,  and  a  groom  was  sent  back  for  the  horse 
which  she  had  ridden  with  such  a  light  heart  in 
the  morning;  and  when  he  appeared  with  the 
rest  of  the  party,  distrait  and  weary  at  the  sup- 
per table,  Mr.  Rossie  had  gone,  and  Marguer- 
ite was  ill  with  a  headache. 

Two  years  after,  Mr.  Rossie  consoled  himself 
by  taking  Miss  Ray  for  a  wife,  and  no  one  who 
saw  their  devotion  to  each  other  would  have 
suspected  the  little  romance  that  preceded  their 
engagement  and  marriage.  Altogether,  it  was 
a  most  suitable  choice,  for  Miss  Ray  was  no 
longer  young,  and  the  beautiful  home  that  Mr. 
Rossie  gave  her  was  too  tempting  and  sweet  a 
repose  to  be  refused,  after  her  lonely  state  of 
dependence  for  many  years. 

How  Marguerite  and  Captain  Levering  found 
out  each  other's  hearts  no  one  ever  knew.  He 
followed  her  over  to  Paris,  abruptly  offered  him- 
self after  prescribed  rules,  was  accepted  at  once, 
and  soon  after  married.  That  she  was  happy 
thereafter  no  one  ever  doubted.  She  was  with 
her  husband  in  a  quiet  little  town  in  Normandy, 
when  he  brought  in  her  father's  letter,  announc- 
ing Mr.  Rossie's  marriage  with  her  friend  Mai- 
lie,  and  her  eyes  were  wet  with  thankful  tears 
when  she  read  it. 

"It  has  all  turned  out  for  the  best,  my  dar- 
ling," he  wrote — good,  kind,  and  indulgent  of 
his  daughter's  feelings  as  ever.  "  I  think  Rossie 
is  more  than  satisfied,  and  to  see  you  all  so  hap- 
py in  my  declining  years  is  a  pleasure  that,  at 
one  time,  I  never  expected  to  see.  Come  home 
to  me  soon,  dear,  and  tell  Levering  I  shall  never 
regret  my  six  weeks  at  Ilkley  if  he  does  not." 
MARY  R.  HIGHAM. 


ALVARADO   OF  MADRID.  167 


ALVARADO   OF    MADRID. 

y\driano  Alvarado,  through  whose  veins  there  coursed  the  strain 
Of  a  blood  as  blue  and  haughty  as  the  royal  line  of  Spain, 
Was  a  devotee  of  music,  though  a  courtier  he,  and  young, 
And  his  madrigals  were  sweetest  that  the  Spanish  maidens  sung. 
All  that  made  the  life  of  Madrid  for  companions  of  his  age 
Was  to  Alvarado  only  an  interpolated  page 
In  the  book  of  life  he  pondered — only  one  brief  interlude 
In  the  drama  of  existence.      All  the  sweet  solicitude 
Of  his  fairest  country-women,  all  the  shine  of  liquid  eyes 
Lifted  up  to  his  in  wondering,  half -expectant,  soft  surprise, 
Laughed  he  down  with  slightest  pity,  holding  no  regret  nor  ruth, 
In  the  waywardness  of  genius  and  the  light  caprice  of  youth. 
He  would  turn  from  wildest  revels,  he  would  slight  the  gayest  bands, 
To  pursue  some  strain  of  music  wrought  by  simple  peasant  hands. 
In  the  day  of  Alvarado  there  was  not  in  all  the  land 
Any  native -b.orn  composer  of  the  church's  music  grand; 
And  the  holy  dignitaries  trembled  with  a  wrathful  shame 
For  the  genius  so  perverted  from  the  church's  need  and  fame. 
But  his  kindred  and  the  people  of  the  city  held  him  dear, 
Since  no  vices,  only  follies,  marked  his  brave  and  bright  career. 
And  his  dearest  foe  might  bluster  to  impeach  his  life  in  vain, 
Since  he  held  his  spotless  honor  dearer  than  the  crown  of  Spain, 
Till  upon  his  restless  spirit  fell  a  thought  with  evil  rife, 
Sapping  all  the  happy  promise  from  his  else  so  fruitful  life. 
Whether  elemental  forces  stirred  with  potent  sensuousness, 
Or  some  current  unsuspected  of  the  Moorish  blood  laid  stress 
On  his  fine,  poetic  nature,  none  could  hazard,  none  divine; 
But  a  madness  seized  upon  him,  madder  than  the  craze  of  wine : 
To  revive  the  Inca  worship  of  a  far  south-western  clime, 
Where  the  sun,  the  day -god  mighty,  should  resume  a  sway  sublime, 
Adriano  bowed :   not  lightly,  with  the  fervor  of  a  day, 
But  with  vehemence  and  passion.      He,  with  none  to  say  him  nay, 
Built  a  great  barbaric  altar,  faced  to  greet  the  rising  sun, 
Decked  with  every  costly  splendor  that  his  ample  wealth  had  won; 
And  he  bent,  when  morning's  banners  fluttered  redly  in  the  east, 
By  the  fane  in  humble  worship,  like  an  olden  Inca  priest. 
None  can  picture  all  the  sorrow,  all  the  awe -struck  fear,  that  broke 
Over  pious  Madrid  people.      Then  their  oldest  prelate  spoke: 
"Only  Satan's  machinations  have  seduced  this  goodly  youth 
To  idolatrous  diversion  from  the  way  of  light  and  truth. 
I  have  exorcised  the  demon  long,  with  candle,  book,  and  bell, 
But  my  weak  and  fruitless  effort  fails  before  his  potent  spell. 
I  will  send  to  ask  instructions  from  the  holy  one  at  Rome; 
Meanwhile,  minister  unto  him  daily,  in  some  Christian  home." 
Time,  the  wearer  out  of  vigils,  sent  the  days  slow  lapsing  by,  • 
Till  the  pontiff,  from  his  palace,  sent  incisive,  terse  reply: 
"Mayhap  that  his  body  sickens;   leechcraft  something  may  avail, 
Stayed  by  spiritual  solace  from  within  the  holy  pale. 
For  a  spirit  sorely  tempted,  much  may  be  derived  of  good 
From  the  tranquil,  peaceful  habits  of  a  holy  brotherhood. 
Give  him  themes  for  churchly  music,  let  him  write,  and  let  him  play, 
In  the  cloister's  safe  seclusion,  for  a  year  and  for  a  day." 


1 68 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


In  a  gorge,  remote  and  dreary,  of  the  mountains  of  Castile, 

Stood  a  lonely  monastery,  grim  and  gray,  a  looming  pile, 

On  whose  dark  roof,  steeply  sloping,  never  fell  a  ray  of  sun, 

In  whose  corridors  and  chapel  chant  and  prayer  were  never  done. 

Thither  banished,  Alvarado  brought  his  raging,  restless  heart, 

Without  slightest  inclination  to  a  penitential  part. 

But  the  fiat  was  resistless  and  immutable  as  fate ; 

Though  he  offered  prayer  and  promise,  vain  were  they,  and  he  must  wait. 

For  a  time  he  found  a  pleasure  in  the  chill,  monastic  tone 

Of  the  place,  that  wrought  upon  him  with  a  power  all  its  own. 

Strangely,  too,  the  zealous  ardor  of  his  whilom  pagan  course 

Had  abated,  though  its  fever  burned  with  undiminished  force. 

All  day  long  he  paced  the  circuit  of  his  narrow -bounded  cell, 

Hearkening  to  the  oft-recurring  clangor  of  the  convent  bell. 

All  night  long  he  alternated  prayer  and  curse  and  sleepless  dole, 

Till  a  deep  despair  succeeded  to  the  frenzy  of  his  soul, 

Venting  its  excess  in  music;  so  the  monks,  for  many  days, 

Heard  his  organ  deeply  pealing  tones  of  wondrous  power  and  praise. 

Then  a  silence  fell ;  they  left  him  to  himself  a  little  space, 

And  a  longer,  until  terror  grew  upon  their  hearts  apace. 

Then  they  sought  him  with  foreboding — and  they  found  him ! — all  the  score 

Of  his  music  lay  about  him,  strewn  upon  the  earthen  floor, 

Drifted  sheets,  and  still  among  them  Alvarado  lay  at  peace, 

Dead  before  the  silent  organ,  with  his  face  upon  the  keys. 

When  the  brothers  would  have  raised  him,  straight  the  nerveless  fingers  thrilled, 

And  a  hush  of  expectation  all  within  the  chamber  stilled, 

While  the  dead  hands,  slowly  lifted,  wandered  all  the  key-board  o'er, 

And  a  dirge  wailed  out,  as  never  fell  on  mortal  ears  before. 

Of  the  hapless  Alvarado,  only  this  survives  his  name. 

When,  with  awe  and  tender  reverence  for  his  legacy,  they  came 

To  lift  up  the  scattered  music,  it  had  perished  where  it  lay ; 

Even  while  they  gazed,  it  paled,  and  paled,  and  faded  quite  away. 

Every  year,  in  that  lone  monastery  on  the  mountain  -  side, 

On  the  night  that  marks  the  time  when  hapless  Alvarado  died, 

Sounds  within  his  cell,  untenanted,  the  sorrow -burdened  strain, 

And  a  rustle  as  of  sheeted  music  drifting  down  again  ; 

And  sojourning  pilgrims,  listening  till  they  mark  the  burden,  say 

That  it  lingers  ever  with  them.     True  it  is,  that  to  this  day, 

In  the  poorer  streets  of  Madrid,  on  the  city's  outer  verge, 

There  is  played  a  strain  of  music  known  as  "Alvarado's  Dirge." 

YDA  ADDIS. 


PEOPLE    I   WOULD    LIKE   TO    ENDOW. 


As  soon  as  I  have  fifty  thousand  dollars  to 
spare,  I  mean  to  have  a  good  time  in  giving  it 
away.  And  when  I  give,  it  will  be  to  people  I 
know,  rather  than  to  institutions.  Institutions 
must  be  built  up,  and  happy  are  they  who  can 
build  them.  It  would  be  pleasant  to  help,  on  a 
small  scale,  to  give  a  little  to  some  worthy  acad- 
emy, or  to  some  promising  college  or  universi- 
ty. But  the  magnitude  of  these  enterprises  is 
discouraging.  Public  education  on  an  adequate 


scale  calls  for  very  large  outlays.  The  million- 
aires should  look  after  the  great  institutions,  and 
the  institutions  should  ''go  for"  the  millionaires. 
My  choice  of  objects  will  be  humbler,  and  will 
not  perpetuate  my  name ;  but  it  will  have  the 
advantage  of  a  fresher  personality,  and  there 
will  be  a  perpetuity  of  good  influences  through 
happy  hearts  and  useful  lives.  That,  I  fancy, 
is  the  best  sort  of  immortality;  and  I  think  the 
little  oases  I  may  chance  to  bless  will  be  much 


PEOPLE  I    WOULD  LIKE    TO  ENDOW. 


169 


greener  than  the  wider  areas  of  an  equally  lim- 
ited and  impersonal  benefaction.  Think  how 
little  way  fifty  thousand  dollars  can  go  in  en- 
dowing any  of  our  really  great  institutions.  I 
propose,  instead,  to  endow  a  few  individuals. 
And  though  I  am  not  yet  in  sight  of  any  fifty 
thousand  dollars,  I  like  the  pleasure  of  antici- 
pating and  planning,  and  am  already  making 
up  a  list  of  recipients.  It  runs  as  follows : 

(i.)  The  first  on  the  list,  as  might  be  expect- 
ed, is  a  young  man  trying  to  "get  an  educa- 
tion ;"  and  by  this  I  mean  what  is  called  higher 
education.  All  our  boys  are  taught  the  three 
R's.  Many  of  them  have  gone  through  the 
grammar  school,  and  a  few  through  the  high 
school.  So  far,  so  good.  A  still  higher  or  col- 
lege education  is  not  an  absolute  necessity.  It 
will  not  coin  money;  it  will  not  insure  social 
prominence,  nor  win  political  promotion.  .  But 
there  must  be  some  who  love  knowledge  for  its 
own  sake — who  gaze  on  the  vast  fields  of  learn- 
ing and  science  with  a  longing  which  neither 
business  success,  nor  social  prominence,  nor 
political  promotion  can  satisfy.  And  some  mas- 
terful spirits  there  are  who  are  shrewd  enough 
to  see  that  the  highest  aims  of  professional  and 
political  ambition  are  to  be  reached  only  by 
men  of  the  widest  culture  and  the  most  thor- 
ough mental  discipline.  I  doubt  whether  my 
young  man  has  any  such  ambition.  At  pres- 
ent, he  is  intent  only  on  discipline  and  culture, 
as  if  for  their  own  sake. 

His  story  is  a  simple  one.  His  parents,  who 
live  in  the  country,  are  willing  to  help  him,  but 
cannot.  The  home-farm  is  mortgaged,  and  the 
mortgage  has  not  shrunk  in  many  years.  Other 
mouths  are  to  be  fed,  other  backs  to  be  clothed. 
Our  young  collegian  has  been  frankly  told  that 
his  "time"  is  all  that  can  be  given  him.  He 
taught  school  at  eighteen  in  a  sparsely  settled 
district,  boarded  around,  and  received  forty-five 
dollars  a  month,  of  which  he  could  lay  by  but 
twenty.  A  year  and  a  half  of  such  toil  made 
him  seem  to  himself  rich  enough  to  enter  col- 
lege. So  he  came  down,  lived  in  a  club  (not  of 
a  Greek  letter  society),  obtained  some  work  in 
vacations,  and  got  half  way  through  his  college 
course.  Then  came  the  end.  He  was  willing 
to  work,  but  work  was  not  to  be  had.  No  one 
wanted  a  private  tutor,  an  extra  accountant,  an 
amanuensis,  or  even  a  chore-boy.  So,  for  more 
than  one  or  two  years,  he  has  been  out  of  col- 
lege— a  part  of  the  time  teaching,  in  hope  of 
saving  enough  to  carry  him  through  the  re- 
maining years  of  study;  then  becoming  dis- 
couraged and  drifting  into  a  business  engage- 
ment. Just  now  there  is  an  even  balance  be- 
tween learning  and  intellectual  power  on  the 
one  hand,  and  business  drudgery  and  eclipse 


of  scholarly  aspirations  on  the  other.  That 
young  man  I  would  like  to  endow.  He  is  not 
brilliant  in  scholarship  or  in  oratory;  he  is  not 
a  born  poet,  nor  a  promising  young  journal- 
ist. The  very  bright  men  usually  make  their 
way.  Their  exceptional  abilities  attract  notice 
and  win  them  friends.  I  have  greater  sympa- 
thy for  the  non- genius,  the  faithful  plodding 
student  who  gets  no  first-class  notice  from  col- 
lege papers  or  faculty  bulletins,  who  puts  on  no 
airs  in  the  class-room  or  the  debating  society. 
The  one  of  whom  I  speak  has  roundabout  com- 
mon sense;  and  if  I  know  anything  of  young 
men,  he  would  some  day  be  of  much  value  to 
the  community,  if  he  could  only  be  educated. 
How  much  would  he  want?  Say  $2,500,  for 
college  and  graduate  studies ;  a  paltry  twenty- 
five  hundred  dollars  to  meet  the  strong  and 
healthy  hunger  of  a  noble  soul,  and  give  the 
world  what  it  so  rarely  gets — another  full  pat- 
tern of  manhood. 

(2.)  The  second  on  the  list  is  a  hard-working 
and  poorly  paid  teacher.  He  chose  his  profes- 
sion for  its  own  sake — not  turning  to  it  as  a 
stepping-stone  to  some  other  profession,  nor  yet 
as  a  last  resort  when  other  occupations  had 
faile'd  him.  He  thought  the  best  way  to  reme- 
dy the  evils  of  society  was  to  bring  on  the  stage 
a  better  generation  of  actors,  and  to  make  that 
next  generation  better  by  beginning  with  them 
in  childhood.  He  wanted  to  be  a  fashioner  of 
minds,  and  to  take  them  in  the  most  plastic 
state.  So,  with  an  education  that  would  have 
justified  a  much  higher  aim  (seemingly,  not 
really,  higher),  he  dropped  himself  into  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  public  schools,  and  has  been  for 
ten  years  a  most  laborious,  faithful,  and  suc- 
cessful teacher  in  an  ungraded  country  school. 
Most  of  the  people  like  him  well  enough,  but 
they  do  not  know  a  tenth  part  of  his  nobleness. 
He  never  blows  his  own  trumpet,  and  no  one 
thinks  of  blowing  it  for  him.  Of  course,  he  has 
made  some  enemies,  among  parents  who  rear 
ill  behaved  children  and  resent  a  teacher's  ef- 
forts to  make  them  well  behaved.  His  salary 
is  meager,  barely  enough  to  support  himself, 
and  wife,  and  child.  But  some  rough  patrons 
of  the  school,  who  live  chiefly  on  the  produce 
of  their  farms,  cannot  see  why  the  district  should 
pay  so  much  for  a  teacher;  they  work  more 
hours  a  day,  and  see  much  less  money  than  he 
does.  If  he  were  to  strike  for  higher  wages, 
they  would  not  hesitate  to  let  him  go.  Plenty 
of  teachers  can  be  got  for  even  a  smaller  salary, 
and  few  stop  to  sift  out  the  best  teachers.  Some 
care  little  what  sort  of  a  teacher  they  have.  So 
he  stays  on — this  man  to  whom  the  community 
owes  so  much — working  for  an  inferior  mechan- 
ic's wages,  and  trying  vainly  to  keep  up  with 


170 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  educational  progress  of  the  day.  He  can- 
not afford  to  take  a  Teacher's  Journal,  he  de- 
nies himself  a  daily  paper,  and  snatches  the 
news  from  chance  conversation.  He  cannot 
think  of  taking  any  of  the  leading  magazines, 
nor  of  buying  the  books  for  which  his  soul  hun- 
gers. It  is  just  a  tug  and  struggle  to  make 
ends  meet.  If  he  were  laid  aside  from  work, 
he  would  be  obliged  to  run  in  debt,  his  anxiety 
would  increase  his  malady,  and  his  family  would 
probably  be  left  helpless.  He  had  a  life  insur- 
ance policy,  but  could  not  keep  up  the  pre- 
miums. He  is  not  laying  up  anything  against 
a  rainy  day,  nor  bracing  himself  for  the  inevita- 
ble down-grade  of  coming  years. 

When  I  see  this  worthy  member  of  the  pro- 
fession which  stands  closest  to  the  welfare  of 
coming  generations,  there  is  nothing  I  would 
like  more  than  to  take  his  bank-book  and  enter 
a  round  sum  to  his  credit.  How  much  would 
put  him  on  a  good  footing,  and  enable  him  to 
do  his  best  work?  He  gets  $75  a  month;  he 
ought  to  have  at  least  $125.  The  $50  additional 
implies  a  capital  of  $10,000.  He  ought  to  have 
that  sum  at  once,  but  $5,000  would  be  a  won- 
derful help. 

(3.)  Number  three  is  a  minister.  I  have  a 
lingering  fondness  for  the  "three  learned  pro- 
fessions," as  they  used  to  be  designated  before 
the  throng  of  modern  professions  had  sprung 
up ;  when  the  minister,  the  lawyer,  and  the  doc- 
tor were  the  three  great  men  of  every  country 
town.  And  the  minister  was  chief  of  the  three, 
primus  inter  pares.  The  cloth  are  in  less  es- 
teem now,  but  some  are  no  less  deserving  than 
the  good  dominies  of  old. 

My  number  three  did  not  enter  his  profession 
as  an  easy  one;  he  did  not  seek  display  or 
prominence.  I  happen  to  know  that  he  refused 
very  eligible  offers  where  men  were  plenty,  and 
deliberately  chose  a  far-away  parish,  where 
work  was  hard,  and  p*ay  nothing  to  speak  of. 
His  enterprise  prospered  as  well  as  he  could 
expect.  He  got  a  modest  church  building,  on 
which  he  wrought  with  his  own  hands.  He 
never  spared  himself,  in  physical  or  mental 
labor,  in  the  stress  of  sympathy  with  a  poor 
people  and  with  sorrowing  households.  He  is 
not  a  perfect  man.  His  chief  failing  leans 
strongly  toward  a  virtue;  viz.,  an  outspoken 
impatience  with  shams.  He  cannot  bear  a  hol- 
low-hearted moralist  nor  an  insincere  church 
member.'  He  sometimes  touches  the  quick, 
and  stirs  quite  a  commotion.  But  most  of  his 
little  congregation  love  him,  and  would  be  very 
sorry  to  lose  him.  He  is  not  narrow-minded. 
He  fraternizes  with  all  good  men,  and  helps  in 
all  good  causes.  For  a  while  a  society  for  such 
purposes  gave  him  a  small  subsidiary  stipend ; 


but  its  funds  failed,  and  the  stout-hearted  man 
was  left  wholly  to  his  poor  parish.  He  does 
not  complain.  His  wife  does  her  own  house- 
work, takes  care  of  the  children,  plays  the  little 
organ  in  church,  manages  the  sewing  circle, 
and  does  admirably  the  thousand  things  sup- 
posed to  devolve  on  a  minister's  wife.  Alas ! 
she  shows  the  over -work,  and  her  strength  is 
visibly  diminishing.  She  is  cheery,  but  is  sim- 
ply trying  to  do  impossibilities.  And  her  hus- 
band is  borne  down  not  only  by  public  burdens, 
but  by  domestic  anxieties. 

How  much  I  would  like  to  drop  into  the 
home  of  this  faithful,  uncomplaining  man,  pre- 
sent him  the  compliments  of  the  season,  and 
put  into  his  hands  a  cheque  for  $10,000.  It 
would  help  him  turn  the  corners.  It  would 
give  him  a  much  needed  feeling  of  independ- 
ence, so  that  he  could  piously  snap  his  fingers 
at  the  one  old  curmudgeon  of  his  church.  It 
would  indefinitely  postpone  his  wife's  funeral. 
It  would  help  him  educate  his  boys.  It  would 
put  new  life  into  his  mental  and  spiritual  ma- 
chinery. Certainly,  number  three  must  have 
$10,000. 

These  instances  are  of  men,  and  men  can  do 
something  worth  while  for  their  own  support, 
if  not  in  the  most  desirable  occupations,  in 
some  others  that  are  only  less  respectable  and 
useful.  But  I  am  especially  drawn  toward  ben- 
eficiaries of  the  weaker  sex,  who  have  hearts 
just  as  stout  as  any  of  their  brothers,  but  are 
virtually  excluded  from  the  best  chances  of  mak- 
ing a  living.  Misfortunes  do  not  pass  them  by 
because  they  are  women.  The  grim  wolf  of  pov- 
erty comes  quickest  to  their  doors.  Disease 
and  accident,  sometimes  dissipation  and  crime, 
take  away  the  bread-winners,  and  helpless  fam- 
ilies are  left  to  battle  against  fearful  odds.  So 
my— 

(4.)  Number  four  is  a  music  teacher ;  a  young 
lady  of  refinement  and  energy,  who  has  to  pro- 
vide for  herself,  her  invalid  mother,  and  two 
young  sisters.  Early  and  late  she  plies  her 
humble  profession.  She  is  not  yet  highly  ac- 
complished, and  must  pay  large  tuition  to  her 
own  teacher,  Herr  Niemand,  successor  to  the 
lamented  Herr  Todt.  It  takes  many  toilsome 
hours  with  her  own  young  pupils  to  earn  enough 
to  pay  for  one  fleeting  hour  with  the  distinguish- 
ed master.  But  she  knows  that  that  is  the  way 
to  success,  and  she  braves  wind  and  storm  to 
meet  all  her  appointments.  She  is  not  ill  look- 
ing, and  has  tastes  which  would  fit  her  to  enjoy 
society,  and  perhaps  to  shine  in  it.  But  she 
resolutely  turns  her  back  on  society;  truth  to 
say,  she  cannot  afford  the  time  or  the  money 
for  a  single  grand  party.  I  see  her  on  the  boat 
occasionally,  and  sometimes  fear  she  is  over- 


PEOPLE  1    WOULD  LIKE   TO  ENDOW. 


171 


working.  There  is  the  same  determined  look, 
the  same  resolute  step,  but  the  lines  of  weari- 
ness are  beginning  to  show  in  her  face.  What 
if  this  main-stay  of  the  family  should  give  out? 
Without  health,  her  musical  career  would  fail, 
and  few  constitutions  can  stand  such  a  strain. 

I  saw  a  young  man  looking  intently  at  her 
the  other  day — not  a  society  man,  but  a  hard- 
working, sensible  business  man,  who  is  well  to 
do  now,  and  has  excellent  prospects  for  the  fut- 
ure. He  is  a  "chance  acquaintance."  Evi- 
dently he  respects  her  highly,  and  was  wonder- 
ing whether  her  tasks  are  not  too  great.  Was 
he  questioning  whether  he  should  offer  to  light- 
en them?  Men  are  so  slow  to  see  the  whole 
truth — all  the  nobleness  of  the  worthiest  spir- 
its, all  the  danger  of  the  choicest  lives.  I  wish 
he  would  step  in;  but  if,  as  I  fear,  he  fails  to 
do  so,  I  would  like  to  cheer  the  heart  of  the 
brave  little  music  teacher  with  a  bonus  of 
$5,000. 

(5.)  Number  five  is  a  family  without  even  a 
woman  for  a  bread-winner.  The  mother  is  an 
inebriate's  widow.  The  father  was  a  promising 
lawyer,  and  had  a  comfortable  income,  but  his 
one  rich  client  led  him  astray.  "Go  out  and 
take  a  drink,"  he  used  to  say  after  finishing  a 
consultation ;  and  the  two  grew  cordial  in  the 
adjoining  high-toned  saloon.  ,  "Come  down  to 
my  house  this  evening,  and  play  a  friendly 
game."  The  young  lawyer  kept  on  the  right 
side  of  his  client,  and  got  on  the  wrong  side  of 
his  business.  Tippling  became  a  necessity, 
and  grew  into  a  disgrace.  Play  fascinated  him, 
impaired  his  health,  and  drained  his  pocket. 
At  last  no  one  would  give  him  new  business; 
the  old  rich  client  swore  at  him  for  a  fool.  Dis- 
couragement deepened  the  dissipation.  He 
lost  his  manhood,  and  became  an  absolute  bur- 
den to  his  family.  It  was  really  a  relief  to  the 
loving  wife  to  see  him  put  away  in  the  ground. 
But  she  was  left  quite  destitute.  Three  young 
children  were  to  be  cared  for,  fed,  and  clothed ; 
no  way  of  earning  money,  no  time  nor  strength 
for  earning  it  if  there  were  a  way.  How  do 
such  families  get  along?  How  do  they  keep 
the  breath  of  life  in  them?  Why  do  they  not 
all  rush  to  the  poor-house,  or  go  mad  and  get 
carried  to  the  insane  asylum?  This  is  one  of 
the  greatest  mysteries  in  the  world,  how  proud 
and  refined  and  delicate  women  live  on  from 
week  to  week  and  from  month  to  month,  hav- 
ing others  to  provide  for  and  no  source  of  in- 
come, helpless  and  hopeless,  the  sky  above 
them  brass,  and  the  earth  beneath  them  iron. 
If  there  is  any  proper  claimant  for  help,  it  is 
surely  such  a  widow  with  her  fatherless  chil- 
dren. She  ought  to  have  $10,000  from  our  fund, 
and  I  wish  it  could  be  twice  as  much. 


(6.)  And  here  is  a  family  without  children, 
but  with  a  group  of  dependent  women,  and  no 
one  to  depend  on  save  themselves.  Three  sis- 
ters have  long  helped  each  other  to  fight  a  bat- 
tle with  the  world,  and  for  a  good  while  the  fight 
was  on  their  side.  They  were  not  teachers  nor 
artists — only  plain  seamstresses.  Left  early  to 
their  own  resources,  they  developed  an  uncom- 
mon business  tact.  No  one  could  ever  charge 
them  with  lack  of  good  management.  It  is 
only  within  a  few  years  that  they  have  ceased 
to  prosper,  and  that  has  been  through  no  fault 
of  theirs.  They  have  had  to  sacrifice  most  of 
the  little  property  acquired  by  many  years  of 
hard  work.  Tired  of  the  city,  they  went  long 
ago  to  the  country  and  bought  a  modest  home, 
which  in  due  time  was  almost  paid  for.  Then 
came  illness,  first  of  one  sister,  then  of  another; 
illness  of  different  types,  but  chronic  with  each. 
The  third  sister  had  all  she  cjpuld  do  in  tending 
the  sick.  Of  course  their  income  was  cut  off. 
The  vanishing  mortgage  grew  larger  again,  and 
still  larger,  and  it  was  clear  that  the  pretty  home 
must  be  sacrificed.  Health  had  come  back  to 
one  of  the  invalids,  but  the  scattering  country 
custom  had  been  lost,  and  it  was  hard  to  find 
employment.  Without  waiting  to  starve,  or  to 
chant  the  "Song  of  the  Shirt"  from  the  depths 
of  utter  poverty,  the  three  sisters  gave  up  their 
loved  home  in  the  country,  and  went  back  to 
the  crowded  city.  The  city  has  advantages  for 
such  wage-seekers,  despite  the  throng  of  com- 
petitors. There  is  a  wider  spread  of  one's  good 
repute  as  a  worker,  a  quicker  opening  of  new 
doors.  In  the  city  the  sisters  may  be  found  to- 
day, living  in  a  quiet  alley  shut  in  by  stately 
houses  that  over -top  their  modest  tenement. 
It  is  a  sort  of  Three  Sisters'  Court.  They  are 
cheery  still,  fighting  the  old  fight  bravely,  earn- 
ing just  enough  to  live  comfortably  and  to  pro- 
vide occasional  delicacies  for  the  remaining  in- 
valid. But,  with  age  creeping  on  and  strength 
diminishing,  what  will  the  upshot  be?  What 
can  it  be  but  narrowing  means,  increasing  hard- 
ships, and  possibly  three  pitiable  death-scenes — 
the  last  the  most  pitiable  ?  There  is  but  one  way 
to  avert  it — an  accession  of  means  from  some 
other  purse.  I  would  like  to  endow  the  three 
sisters  with  one  or  two  tithes  of  the  $50,000. 

(7.)  From  another  home,  and  a  poor  one, 
father  and  mother  have  lately  gone  to  their 
graves,  leaving  a  little  child  but  three  years  old 
— too  young  to  know  her  loss;  too  ignorant  to 
choose  new  friends.  Who  will  befriend  her? 
She  is  a  plain,  uninteresting,  tiresome  little  girl. 
The  mothers  dowered  with  children  do  not  want 
her ;  the  childless  are  afraid  of  her.  Where  can 
she  go,  save  to  an  unloved  and  precarious,  per- 
haps vagrant,  life?  Or,  at  best,  to  some  great 


172 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


asylum,  where  the  individual  is  swallowed  up  in 
the  throng,  where  clock-work  machinery  takes 
the  place  of  the  sweet  ministries  of  home.  There 
she  must  tread  a  broad  and  dusty  highway, 
amid  the  noisy  footsteps  of  hundreds  more, 
under  a  blinding  glare  of  publicity.  How  dif- 
ferent from  the  watered,  and  winding,  and  shady 
paths  of  private  life!  Suppose  this  young  soul 
could  be  put  in  charge  of  the  three  sisters  afore- 
said, how  it  would  bless  her  life  and  brighten 
theirs !  But  they  cannot  afford  it  as  a  charity. 
Some  friendly  hand  must  come  in  to  make  this 
new  arrangement  and  pay  for  the  added  bur- 
dens, in  order  to  secure  this  quiet  and  cool  re- 
treat, this  home  love  and  training,  for  the  or- 
phan child.  As  nearly  as  I  can  estimate,  $5,000 
would  set  this  matter  straight,  and  put  the  little 
waif  in  the  way  of  a  right  culture  and  a  trade 
by  which,  in  due  time,  she  can  earn  an  honora- 
ble and  independent  living. 

I  need  not  stay  to  count  up  the  sums  already 
bespoken.  I  can  see  at  a  glance  that  the  $50,- 
ooo  is  far  spent.  Here  are  seven  cases,  and 
how  easily  they  might  be  multiplied  to  seventy 
times  seven,  Take  the  very  first.  Not  one 
poor  student  alone,  but  scores  of  them,  almost 
equally  claim  consideration.  Not  young  men 
only,  but  resolute,  aspiring,  promising  young 
women  as  well,  are  tantalized  with  the  half- 
tasted  cup  of  knowledge.  For  one  hard-work- 
ing, ill  paid  principal  of  a  country  school  there 
are  half  a  dozen  hard-working,  ill  paid  lady 
teachers,  in  country  and  city,  too.  The  utterly 
conscientious  poor  minister  is  not  seldom  paral- 
leled by  honest  but  poor  practitioners  of  law 
and  medicine — men  who  are  not  supple  enough 
or  unscrupulous  enough  to  push  their  way,  un- 
befriended,  to  remunerative  places  in  the  profes- 
sional ranks.  The  music  teacher  has  many  sis- 
ters in  poverty,  struggling  to  support  themselves 
and  others  dependent  on  them.  The  inebri- 
ate's widow  is  found  in  all  stages  of  effort  and 
despondency.  Fell  disease,  cruel  accident,  mur- 


derous hands,  the  country's  battle-field,  may 
have  been  the  instruments  to  strike  her  and 
her  little  ones  helpless.  The  three  sisters  may 
not  be  three,  but  they  stand  for  a  long  rank  of 
dependent  women  with  whom  the  battle  of  life 
goes  hard.  And  as  for  orphans,  one  need  only 
go  to  our  city  asylums  and  look  for  himself,  and 
then  reflect  how  few  come  to  so  good  a  home 
as  that. 

I  have  not  hinted  at  several  other  friends 
who  would  go  on  a  supplementary  list  for  a 
second  fifty  thousand.  Here  is  a  young  philol- 
ogist who  might  become  a  Max  Miiller,  or  a 
Whitney,  if  only  he  could  give  himself  to  his 
favorite  study.  Here  is  a  promising  devotee  of 
science.  I  wonder  that  the  fashionable  patrons 
of  science  have  not  yet  found  him  out.  Here 
is  an  inventor — not  in  the  pay  of  speculators  in 
gas  stocks.  He  has  a  head  full  of  bright  ideas, 
and  if  he  could  spend  time  to  work  them  out, 
and  had  a  little  money  to  pay  for  first  steps,  he 
might  prove  one  of  the  best  friends  of  the  peo- 
ple. The  poets,  the  literary  aspirants,  and  the 
philosophers,  I  should  leave  to  those  who  are 
better  judges.  Certainly,  I  should  not  care  to 
help  a  self-centered,  dawdling  idler,  or  an  ego- 
tistical student  of  thought  who  sets  up  his  own 
mushroom  conceptions  as  a  test  for  all  great 
thinkers.  But  there  is  no  need  of  saying  whom 
I  would  not  endow. 

Let  me  return  to  my  small  list,  Dear  friends, 
I  am  afraid  my  good  wishes  are  all  I  can  give 
you.  If  I  live  long  enough  to  bestow  anything 
more  substantial,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  shall 
begin  with  the  first  and  last  numbers,  the  young 
student  and  the  orphan  child — perhaps  with  the 
last  first.  I  have  printed  my  list  as  at  least 
suggestive  to  those  who  can  now  begin  to  give, 
and  I  heartily  hope  they  will  sweep  these  friends 
off  my  list.  Some  rich  men  and  rich  women 
have  fifty  thousand  dollars  to  spare;  how  many 
oases  they  might  make  in  the  homes  and  hearts 
of  the  less  fortunate.  MARTIN  KELLOGG. 


SHALL  WE  HAVE  FREE  HIGH  SCHOOLS? 


It  is  a  fine  delicacy  that  imposes  silence  on 
the  writers  and  speakers  of  our  day  concerning 
certain  things.  Just  as  in  any  private  company 
there  is  an  instinctive  avoidance  of  those  topics 
of  conversation  which  any  one  present  would 
not  be  likely  to  understand,  so  in  the  general 

*  Section  6  of  Article  IX  of  the  new  Constitution  of  Cali- 
fornia cuts  off  all  the  higher  schools  from  State  support.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  ill  advised  of  its  provisions,  and  should  be  one 
of  the  first  to  he  amended  by  the  people. 


public  there  seems  to  be  a  feeling  that  nothing 
ought  to  be  openly  discussed  unless  it  can  be 
intelligently  discussed  by  all,  and  that  no  con- 
siderations should  be  advanced  unless  all  will 
understand  and  appreciate  them.  Civilization 
has  come  a  long  way  when  this  delicacy  has  be- 
come such  a  binding  instinct. 

Refined  and  gentlemanly  as  this  reticence  is, 
however,  from  a  private  point  of  view,  it  be- 
comes somewhat  absurd  if  indulged  where  ques- 


SHALL    WE  HAVE  FREE  HIGH  SCHOOLS? 


tions  of  public  interest  are  concerned.  There 
are  a  number  of  important  subjects  that  need 
to  be  discussed,  and  discussed  frankly,  notwith- 
standing that  there  may  be  different  degrees  of 
ability  to  understand  them  and  to  appreciate 
the  highest  considerations  that  bear  on  them. 
There  are  even  subjects  with  regard  to  which 
the  flat  truth  might  possibly  offend  some  one's 
tender  sensibilities,  and  yet  the  flat  truth  about 
them  is  just  what  we  need  to  see  and  to  say. 
No  doubt  there  are  other  topics  whereon  a  del- 
icate reserve  is  still  the  safe  rule,  because  no 
harm  can  come  from  silence;  and  there  is  no 
surer  test  of  literary  high  breeding  than  the  in- 
stinct of  drawing  this  line  in  precisely  the  right 
place.  But  we  all  remember  the  case  of  the 
man  who  hesitated  to  tell  his  neighbors  that 
their  house  was  on  fire  for  the  reason  that  he 
had  never  been  introduced  to  them.  It  is  some- 
thing so  when  men  refrain  from  uttering  the 
truth  on  really  important  public  questions  lest 
their  views  should  not  be  comprehended  by 
everybody  or  should  hurt  somebody's  feelings. 

The  most  important  of  all  public  questions  in 
this  country  is  the  very  one  that  feels  the  evil 
effects  of  this  excessive  reticence  most  pro- 
foundly :  it  is  the  question  of  public  education. 
The  word  is  often  enough  mentioned — perhaps 
too  often,  as  tending  to  make  the  subject  seem 
trite  to  those  who  have  only  thought  of  it  su- 
perficially ;  but  there  is  a  lack  of  thoroughness 
in  its  discussion,  because  a  thorough  discussion 
involves  the  frank  utterance  of  some  plain  facts 
about  society  which  are  supposed  to  be  unpal- 
atable to  some  people.  It  is  time  that  we  faced 
these  facts.  They  must  be  faced,  or  the  future 
— at  least  the  immediate  future — of  our  civiliza- 
tion is  doubtful.  It  is  necessary  to  build  up  a 
sentiment  on  the  subject  of  public  education  that 
is  based  on  a  clear  view  of  certain  fundamental 
truths  of  society. 

One  such  fundamental  truth  is  the  existence 
in  this  country,  as  everywhere  else  on  the  globe, 
of  different  classes  of  men.  Tney  are  all  equal, 
no  doubt— or,  rather,  they  all  ought  to  be  equal, 
before  the  law;  but  there  is  no  other  equality 
possible  in  a  complex  civilization  like  ours  at 
the  present  point  of  its  development.  This  dif- 
ference between  men  is  chiefly  a  difference  in 
two  things :  intelligence  and  character.  It  is 
an  old  folly  to  declare  that  one  man  is  as  good 
as  another.  There  are  good  men,  and  there  are 
bad  men :  it  is  needless  to  ignore  the  fact  lest 
the  bad  man's  feelings  should  be  hurt.  It  is 
perhaps  not  so  ancient  a  notion,  but  certainly 
an  equally  foolish  one,  that  all  men  in  the  com- 
munity are  equally  intelligent.  There  are  in- 
telligent men,  and  there  are  stupid  and  igno- 
rant men :  nor  need  we  conceal  this  fact,  either, 


out  of  a  delicate  regard  for  the  sensibilities  of 
the  latter  class.  The  wise  thing  is  to  face  the 
fact,  and  then  soberly  take  measures  that  all 
the  new  people,  the  youth,  may  grow  up  to  be 
of  the  good  and  intelligent  class,  and  not  of  the 
vicious  and  ignorant  class. 

Such  measures,  fortunately,  may  easily  be 
taken.  For  while  it  is  true  that  there  are  dif- 
ferent classes  in  this  country,  just  as  truly  as  in 
the  older  countries,  there  are  these  two  enor- 
mous differences  between  our  social  conditions 
and  theirs.  In  the  first  place,  there  the  grades 
are  dependent  on  artificial  distinctions:  here 
on  natural  distinctions.  There,  men  are  in  one 
class  or  another  according  to  birth  and  occupa- 
tion, and  according  to  stars  and  ribbons  and 
gewgaws  of  rank,  conferrable  by  man.  Here, 
men  are  in  one  class  or  another  according  to 
education  and  character,  attainable  by  one's 
own  energy  and  will.  In  the  second  place, 
there  the  grades  are  rigid  as  the  strata  of  the 
rocks ;  once  in  a  certain  class,  a  man  is  almost 
powerless  to  rise  beyond  it.  Here,  the  grades 
are  as  fluent  as  the  currents  of  the  ocean  :  taken 
early  enough  in  life,  no  man  need  belong  to  an 
inferior  class  in  intelligence  and  character. 

It  is  almost  ludicrous,  if  it  had  not  such  la- 
mentable results  on  questions  of  public  educa- 
tion, to  see  how  persistently  these  omnipresent 
distinctions  in  our  country  are  ignored  in  speech, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  are  tacitly  recog- 
nized in  all  the  affairs  of  daily  life,  in  every 
man's  business,  in  social  relations,  in  all  the 
work  and  play  of  the  world.  We  do  not  rank 
men  here  by  their  titles  or  their  dress  or  their 
occupation ;  but  we  rank  them,  instinctively  and 
inevitably. 

No  doubt  there  are  constant  attempts,  and 
always  will  be  attempts,  to  set  up  in  this  coun- 
try the  artificial  class  distinctions  of  aristocratic 
countries.  The  pride  of  birth  and  wealth  con- 
stantly endeavors  to  crystallize  into  arbitrary 
rank,  but  the  genius  of  our  institutions  happily 
prevents  it,  and  such  artificial  distinctions  as 
constantly  break  down  and  become  inoperative. 
In  some  provincial  city,  here  and  there,  they 
may  partially  succeed ;  but  they  do  not  endure 
the  free  air  of  the  wide  country  at  large.  On 
the  other  hand,,  these  grades  which  nature  fixes 
endure  everywhere.  Even  among  the  artificial 
classes  of  foreign  aristocracies  these  natural 
divisions  are  in  force  as  a  cross-division,  an  im- 
perium  in  imperio;  and  the  inevitable  grada- 
tions of  mind  and  soul  constantly  force  their 
way  to  recognition. 

Another  notable  contrast  between  artificial 
class -distinctions  and  the  natural  ones  of  our 
republican  society  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  former 
are  relative  distinctions.  An  artificial  higher 


174 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


class  implies  and  depends  for  its  existence  on 
an  artificial  lower  class.  Your  aristocrat  can 
only  exist  as  overtopping  your  plebeian.  But 
these  higher  and  lower  classes  of  our  society  are 
based  on  no  such  necessity.  There  is  no  reason 
in  the  nature  of  things  why  all  men  should  not 
be  of  the  highest  class  in  mind  and  soul.  For 
when  it  comes  to  these  distinctions,  it  is  not 
"the  more  of  yours  the  less  of  mine,"  but  the 
more  of  yours  the  more  of  mine,  also,  and  of 
all.  So  that  in  conferring  on  young  people  the 
gift  of  an  education,  we  are  not  bestowing  an 
invidious  privilege  on  them  at  the  expense  of 
others.  We  are,  to  be  sure,  lifting  them  to  a 
higher  grade,  but  it  is  that  sort  of  grade  to 
which  the  more  come,  the  more  will  come. 
Give  a  boy  self-control  and  the  ability  to  think^ 
and  you  are  giving  him  the  power  to  help  in- 
numerable others  to  self-control  and  the  ability 
to  think.  There  is  a  certain  divine  and  irre- 
pressible contagion  in  intelligence.  And  to  the 
number  of  these  peerages  there  is  absolutely  no 
limit. 

Facing  the  fact,  then,  that  there  are  these 
enormous  differences  in  the  grades  of  men, 
from  the  most  ignorant  and  vicious  up  to  the 
most  intelligent  and  virtuous,  it  is  plain  enough 
that  the  whole  problem  of  the  progress,  and 
even  of  the  maintenance,  of  civilized  society  de- 
pends on  the  success  or  failure  of  a  people  in 
lifting  the  lower  to  the  higher  grades.  And 
now,  how  can  this  be  done  ? 

With  the  adult  population,  it  cannot  be  done 
at  all.  It  is  not  altogether  a  pleasant  truth  to 
contemplate,  but  grown  men  are  as  they  are. 
Not  so,  however,  with  children  and  youth : 
their  nature  is  their  natura,  their  coming  to  be. 
And  since  it  is  perfectly  well  established  that 
the  prosperity — the  safety,  even — of  a  republic 
depends  on  having  an  intelligent  and  virtuous 
people,  nothing  can  be  more  evident  than  the 
imperative  duty  of  a  State  like  ours  to  lift  its 
future  population  to  the  higher  levels  by  the 
only  means  which  have  ever  in  all  history  had 
the  slightest  effect, — namely,  by  the  free  and 
liberal  public  education  of  its  children  and 
youth. 

The  only  possible  question  is,  how  far  ought 
this  public  education  to  be  carried?  Shall  it 
stop  with  the  primary  grade,  with  the  grammar 
grade,  with  the  high  school  grade,  with  the 
college  grade,  or  with  the  professional  school? 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show,  in  the  light 
of  generally  admitted  principles  regarding  man 
and  society,  what  is  the  proper  limit  of  the  duty 
of  the  State  in  education.  But  the  scope  of 
this  paper  admits  only  of  an  attempt  to  show 
where,  at  least,  its  limit  should  not  be  fixed; 
namely,  that  it  should  not  be  below  the  close  of 


what  we  understand  by  the  high  school  course. 
Let  us,  at  the  outset,  clear  the  ground  by  re- 
moving a  very  common  confusion  that  exists 
between  two  different  theories  as  to  the  purpose 
of  education,  and  of  two  different  sorts  of  stud- 
ies. There  is  what  we  may  call  the  occupative 
theory  of  the  purpose  of  schools,  and  the  edu- 
cative theory :  there  are,  correspondingly,  the 
occupative  sort  of  studies,  and  the  educative 
sort.  The  occupative  theory  of  the  purpose  of 
schools  holds  that  their  object  is  to  teach  boys 
and  girls  to  get  a  living;  and  the  occupative 
studies  are  aimed  at  the  acquirement  of  a  lucra- 
tive occupation  for  this  sole  end.  The  educa- 
tive theory,  on  the  other  hand,  holds  that  the 
purpose  of  public  education  is  to  make  boys 
and  girls  intelligent  and  virtuous ;  and  the  edu- 
cative studies  are  aimed  at  the  attainment  of 
this  end. 

Now  the  duty  of  the  community  as  to  provid- 
ing free  education  is  limited  by  two  considera- 
tions:— i.  It  should  do  those  things  which  are 
necessary  to  its  own,  z.  e.  the  public  welfare  and 
safety.  2.  Of  these  beneficial  things  it  should 
do  those  which  will  not  be  well  done,  or  not 
done  at  all,  if  left  to  individual  enterprise. 

These  almost  self-evident  considerations 
mark  plainly  enough  the  duty  of  the  State  as 
between  occupative  and  educative  training. 
With  the  former  directly  it  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do ;  with  the  latter  it  has  everything  to 
do.  For  in  the  first  place,  men  as  a  rule  do 
and  will  make  their  own  living.  It  is  a  matter 
of  the  adult  stage  of  existence,  and  there  are 
private  motives  enough  to  insure  the  attain- 
ment of  this  end.  And  in  the  second  place,  the 
goodness  or  the  badness  of  the  living  men 
make  for  themselves  is  after  all  not  the  supreme 
consideration  with  the  community.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  educative  training  of  youth  is 
an  imperative  duty  of  the  community,  because 
in  the  first  place,  this  is  a  matter  of  the  imma- 
ture stage  of  existence,  when  there  are  no  suf- 
ficiently strong  ^private  motives,  on  the  part  of 
the  child,  to  insure  the  attainment  of  intelli- 
gence and  virtue,  nor  any  sufficiently  strong 
motives,  on  the  part  of  the  illiterate  parent,  to 
urge  him  to  provide  this  for  his  child.  And  in 
the  second  place,  it  is  of  supreme  importance 
to  the  community  that  its  youth  shall  grow  up 
to  be  intelligent  and  virtuous  men.  Not  so 
much  what  kind  of  a  living  they  make,  as  what 
kind  of  a  life  they  make,  is  the  question  of  pub- 
lic importance.  It  is  entirely  possible  for  a  re- 
public to  be  successful  when  its  people  work 
hard  and  live  plainly ;  but  it  is  not  possible  for 
a  republic  to  be  successful,  or  to  exist  long,  at 
all,  if  its  youth  grow  up  to  ignorance  and  vice. 
Besides,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  by  securing  the 


SHALL    WE  HAVE  FREE  HIGH  SCHOOLS'! 


175 


one  end  the  State  in  effect  secures  the  other. 
For  who  that  has  eyes  does  not  see  that  the  ig- 
norant and  vicious  class  the  world  over  are  the 
ones  who  fail  to  provide  for  themselves  or  their 
families  a  decent  and  comfortable  living,  while 
with  intelligence  and  virtue,  health  and  thrift 
and  prosperity  go  hand  in  hand. 

This  necessity  to  the  community  of  a  certain 
amount  of  educative  training  of  the  mind  and 
character  is  so  universally  recognized  that  there 
is  practically  no  dispute  as  to  the  public  duty 
of  giving  a  child  at  least  a  grammar  school  ed- 
ucation. But  as  to  going  farther  and  leaving 
open  the  high  school  course  to  the  public  in 
general  there  has  arisen  of  late  a  question :  a 
question  which  we  must  assume  to  express  the 
candid  doubt  of  at  least  some  who  are  raising 
it.  Let  us  therefore  examine  the  state  of  the 
case. 

The  grammar  school  course,  or  the  ordinary 
common  school  course  of  the  country  school, 
gives  the  child  the  rudiments  of  reading,  writ- 
ing, and  ciphering,  with  a  small  amount  of  ge- 
ography, and  sometimes  a  mere  glimpse  of  one 
or  two  other  studies.  The  amount  of  ciphering, 
or  arithmetic,  considered  as  a  convenient  ac- 
quisition, is  considerable:  enough  to  enable 
the  boy  to  transact  ordinary  buying  and  sell- 
ing by  weight  and  measure,  dealings  with  the 
shop-keeper,  the  money  lender,  etc.  Consid- 
ered, however,  as  an  educative  study,  it  goes 
but  a  very  little  way  indeed  toward  that  de- 
velopment of  the  intelligence  which  is  afford- 
ed by  the  further  study  of  mathematics.  The 
knowledge  of  writing  given  is  hardly  more  than 
the  practice  of  penmanship.  It  has  not  yet 
given  the  pupil  any  power  to  express  his  own 
ideas,  or,  what  is  really  the  true  purpose  of 
higher  instruction  in  writing,^the  power  to  ob- 
serve and  think  and  write.  The  knowledge  of 
reading  has  reached  hardly  further  than  the 
ability  to  read  with  the  eye  and  the  lips,  not  yet 
with  the  mind ;  that  is,  to  recognize  and  pro- 
nounce easy  words.  It  has  hardjy  touched  upon 
that  true  ability  to  read,  which  consists  of  the 
power  to  understand  complex  human  thought 
on  important  subjects. 

The  three  R's,  in  fact,  are  only  a  preparation 
for  education,  not  at  all  an  education  in  them- 
selves. They  leave  a  boy  at  about  the  age  of 
fourteen,  ready  to  begin  his  education,  but  with 
no  power  and  no  disposition  as  yet  to  carry  it 
on  for  himself.  The  powers  of  his  mind  have 
scarcely  as  yet  been  awakened,  to  say  nothing 
of  being  strengthened,  or  directed  into  useful 
paths.  The  common  school  has  done  a  won- 
derful thing,  to  be  sure.  It  has  taken  a  child 
in  a  state  of  absolute  ignorance  and  has  made 
him  ready  to  learn.  It  is  so  indispensable  a 


work  that  it  is  worth  any  amount  of  pains  and 
expense  and  time  to  get  it  well  done;  but  as 
yet  only  the  first  steps  have  been  taken  toward 
the  development  of  that  matured  intelligence 
which  the  civilized  community  demands  in  its 
members. 

If  men  and  women  grow  up  in  perfect,  blank 
ignorance,  like  the  lowest  peasantry  of  Europe, 
they  are  in  one  sense  safe  citizens  enough,  safe 
as  any  domestic  animals  are,  provided  there  is 
a  strong  enough  government  to  control  them; 
though  recent  developments  in  other  countries 
intimate  that  even  then  you  may  have  trouble. 
They  discuss  international  disarmament  in  Eu- 
rope ;  but  they  do  not  venture  to  say  aloud  how 
necessary  it  is  for  each  country  to  maintain  a 
strong  force  of  bayonets  to  keep  down  its  own 
ignorant  populace. 

But  even  if  it  were  safe  in  a  nation  with  a 
strong  monarchical  government  to  keep  a  large 
class  in  utter  ignorance,  it  is  a  manifest  impos- 
sibility and  absurdity  in  a  nation  where  the  peo- 
ple are  themselves  the  rulers.  And  the  moment 
you  give  the  children  of  the  least  intelligent  class 
the  beginnings  of  intelligence,  enough  to  seize 
for  themselves  the  mere  sour  dregs  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  then  turn  them  loose  at  fourteen  years 
old  to  the  sort  of  associations  and  the  sort  of 
pamphlets  and  papers  that  are  provided  for 
such,  you  have  made  a  dangerous  population 
on  which  to  base  free  institutions.  We  do  not 
need  to  depend  on  theory  to  estimate  the  re- 
sults of  this  so-called  common  school  educa- 
tion when  carried  no  higher.  Have  we  not  had 
some  experience  of  its  results  at  no  great  dis- 
tance from  home,  and  in  no  very  remote  times  ? 

What, then,  shall  the  community  do  with  these 
children  of  fourteen,  when  they  have  more  or 
less  imperfectly  acquired  these  rudiments  of 
knowledge?  There  is  but  one  rational  thing  to 
do  with  them:  let  them  go  on  and  become  youth* 
of  real  intelligence.  The  one  business  of  chil- 
dren is  to  grow.  Give  them  not  only  free  access, 
but  every  friendly  incitement  to  all  those  lib- 
eral studies  which  experience  has  shown  to  be 
most  effectual  in  developing  the  vigor  and  serv— 
iceableness  of  the  whole  mind. 

We  constantly  use  this  term,  intelligence. 
What  is  it  that  we  mean  by  it?  We  mean  all 
those  faculties  of  man's  soul  by  which  he  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  lower  animals.  And  it  is 
precisely  those  same  faculties  whose  difference 
makes  such  a  broad  line  of  demarkation  be- 
tween man  and  brute,  that  mark  also  the  de- 
markations  between  the  different  classes  of  men. 
We  mean  the  power  of  perception,  of  judgment, 
of  reason,  of  voluntary  attention,  of  the  volun- 
tary memory,  of  the  sober  imagination  that  dis- 
cerns the  distant  and  the  hidden  truth,  of  the 


i76 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


fervid  aspiration  toward  those  ideals  of  charac- 
ter which  the  imagination  portrays,  of  the  ra- 
tional care  for  other  interests  than  those  of  self, 
of  the  long  look  before  and  after,  of  the  enthu- 
siasm of  humanity,  of  the  steadfast  loyalty  to 
truth  and  right.  These  are  the  powers  that  con- 
stitute human  intelligence.  We  should  never 
allow  that  field  to  be  narrowed  in  the  discus- 
sion of  education.  Some  men  talk  as  if  the 
senses  were  all  that  needed  to  be  trained ;  but 
with  all  our  training  we  shall  never  make  the 
senses  of  a  civilized  man  equal  those  of  a  sav- 
age, or  the  senses  of  a  savage  equal  those  of  a 
dog.  It  is  not  the  senses,  only,  but  sense  that 
needs  to  be  trained :  the  sense  of  beauty,  the 
sense  of  truth,  the  sense  of  right. 

And  this  is  just  what  the  high  schools  con- 
stantly accomplish.  For  see  what  are  their 
studies : — The  mathematics,  with  their  training 
of  close,  persistent  attention  and  concentration: 
their  drill  in  the  power  of  good  honest  brain- 
work. —  History:  a  knowledge  of  what  other 
men  and  times  have  attempted  and  done  for  the 
progress  of  humanity ;  the  mistakes,  the  recti- 
fications; the  illusions  seen  through,  the  soph- 
istries detected  in  the  long  school  of  experience; 
the  endurance  and  heroism  of  great  men. — Civil 
government :  the  principles  on  which  our  nation 
is  based ;  their  course  of  development ;  the  dan- 
gers to  be  avoided,  the  rights  to  be  maintained ; 
the  measures  that  have  so  far  effected  their 
maintenance,  and  those  that  have  threatened 
them  with  ruin. — The  natural  sciences:  botany, 
with  its  key  to  the  secrets  of  vegetable  life ;  nat- 
ural history,  with  its  incitements  to  accurate  and 
habitual  observation;  physics,  with  its  hundred 
outlooks  into  the  great  laws  of  natural  operations 
and  into  the  triumphs  of  human  art;  physiology, 
with  its  revelation  of  the  rights  and  wrongs  of 
the  human  body ;  chemistry,  with  its  glimpses 
into  the  secret  processes  of  the  universe;  as- 
tronomy, with  its  nurture  of  the  power  of  large 
conception,  and  its  awakening  of  all  the  nobler 
feelings  of  awe  and  worship.  Nor  is  it  any 
smattering  of  these  sciences  that  we  mean. 
There  is  a  vast  difference,  not  visible,  perhaps, 
to  hasty  thinkers,  between  a  smattering  and  a 
foundation,  in  any  subject.  To  be  well  ground- 
ed in  any  one  of  these  great  sciences  is  a  vastly 
different  thing  from  being  superficially  acquaint- 
ed with  it.  A  good  high  school  course  gives  a 
boy  such  a  foundation  that  he  will  not  only  be  j 
able,  but  be  eager,  to  go  on  and  build  on  it  a  ! 
higher  knowledge. 

Then  there  is   the   study  of   some  foreign  ! 
tongue:   nothing  is  more  certain  to  break  up 
the  narrow  provincialism  of  an  ignorant  mind. 
Whether  it  be  Latin,  Greek,  German,  or  what- 
ever it  be,  provided  it  be  the  language  of  a  great 


people,  with  a  great  history  and  literature,  its 
study  shows  a  boy,  not  by  any  formal  argument, 
but  by  that  gradual  absorption  that  makes  it 
forever  a  part  of  his  nature,  the  great  truth  that 
there  are  other  minds  besides  his  own  and  dif- 
ferent from  his  own,  with  other  ideals  than  his ; 
and  that  words — his  words  or  their  words — are 
only  imperfect  symbols,  while  the  pervasive 
soul  is  greater  than  all  its  garments  of  outward 
expression  in  speech. 

And,  finally,  there  is  the  study  of  our  own 
literature :  not  any  mere  surface  polish  by  the 
accomplishment  of  polite  literature,  so  called, 
but  the  invigorating  daily  contact  with  all  that 
is  choicest  of  what  the  best  and  greatest  minds 
have  put  into  books. 

These  and  such  as  these  are  the  studies  by 
means  of  which  the  high  schools  are  year  by 
year  transforming  the  crude  material  of  the 
lower  schools  into  young  men  and  women  of 
trained  and  capable  minds,  and  of  characters 
disciplined  by  that  industry  and  self-control 
without  whose  constant  exercise  no  such  course 
of  study  was  ever  successfully  accomplished. 

Nor  is  it  the  studies  alone  that  produce  this 
result.  It  -is  largely  owing  to  that  daily  con- 
tact with  the  teachers  of  the  high  school.  It  is 
a  great  thing,  no  doubt,  that  for  three  years  the 
aspiration  of  the  young  mind  is  fed  with  these 
liberal  studies ;  that  for  three  years  it  is  kept 
from  the  debasing  influences  that  haunt  the  ig- 
norant boy  and  girl,  and  kept  in  contact  with 
the  high  researches  of  science  and  the  pure 
voices  of  literature;  but  it  is  even  a  greater 
thing  that  for  those  three  determining  years  of 
life  the  young  mind  is  close  at  the  side  of 
stronger  and  maturer  minds,  whose  very  life- 
object  it  is  to  watch  the  development  of  the 
growing  soul,  to  reinforce  its  better  part  against 
its  weaker,  to  strengthen  its  higher  faculties 
against  the  lower,  to  inspire  it,  not  alone  by 
precept,  but  by  example,  with  the  steady  as- 
piration toward  higher  levels  of  attainment. 

We  sometimes  hear  people  talk  as  if  they 
supposed  free  high  school  education  was  a  new 
experiment.  In  fact,  the  English  nation  has 
grown  up  on  free  high  schools,  for  three  cent- 
uries. We  cannot  pride  ourselves  on  their  be- 
ing an  invention  of  these  United  States.  John 
Milton  fitted  for  college  at  a  free  high  school  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before  there  were  any 
United  States.  It  was  St.  Paul's  School  in  Lon- 
don, founded  before  Queen  Elizabeth's  time ; 
and  an  admirable  education  they  gave  him.  And 
on  the  windows,  blazoned  across  the  glass,  for 
pupils  and  masters  to  read,  ran  the  Latin  in- 
scription— Aut  doce,  aut  disce,  aiit  discede — 
either  learn,  or  teach,  or  be  off  with  you.  Eng- 
land is  dotted  all  over  with  such  high  schools, 


SHALL    WE  HAVE  FREE  HIGH  SCHOOLS? 


177 


carrying  on  a  liberal  education  to  the  gates  of 
the  university.  The  difference  from  ours  is,  they 
are  sustained  by  ancient  endowments ;  and  they 
are  called  grammar  schools,  because  the  Latin 
and  Greek  grammar  was  of  old  their  chief  study. 
English  civilization  has  grown  up  on  such 
schools,  and  if  we  would  perpetuate  and  ad- 
vance it  here,  we  must  have  them  also.  And 
since  no  otherwise  can  we  have  them,  we  must 
have  them  through  that  united  action  which 
we  call  the  State. 

The  need  of  high  schools  in  the  country  to  give 
the  poor  man's  son  a  chance  to  fit  himself  for 
college  covers  only  one  of  their  uses.  The  same 
studies  and  the  same  training  which  give  a  boy 
the  industry  and  intelligence  and  aspiration  to  go 
on  and  take  advantage  of  college  opportunities, 
give  him — in  case  he  cannot  go  up  to  college — 
the  industry  and  intelligence  and  aspiration  to 
go  up  into  the  college  of  the  world  and  carry 
on  his  own  further  education  in  the  great  uni- 
versity of  life-experience.  It  is  all  preparatory 
training.  There  is  not  a  liberal  study  of  the 
high  school  course  but  is  needed  by  the  boy 
who  is  to  be  a  carpenter  or  a  merchant  or  a 
farmer;  for  there  is  not  one  but  is  needed  to 
make  him  a  man.  And  we  do  not  speak  from 
theory  alone  on  this  point.  These  are  the  stud- 
ies that  have  nourished  the  boyhood  of  the  most 
successful  and  forceful  men  of  Germany,  of  Eng- 
land, and  of  our  own  country.  If  we  want  home- 
testimony,  there  was  lately  a  meeting  of  the 
graduates  of  one  of  our  largest  and  best  high 
schools,  and  the  history  of  all  the  living  gradu- 
ates was  traced.  Some  had  gone  through  the 
university  and  had  taken  the  highest  distinc- 
tions in  its  gift.  And  of  the  rest,  every  one 
was  doing  some  honorable  work,  and  doing 
it  well. 

But  we  hear  of  certain  objections.  One  is  the 
assertion  that  the  State  has  no  right  to  tax  it- 
self for  the  support  of  high  schools.  Here  the 
burden  of  proof  certainly  lies  with  those  who 
deny  this  right.  For  it  is  one  that  has  been  con- 
stantly exercised  by  the  most  reasonable  and 
steady  -  minded  communities  in  the  country, 
where  at  least,  if  anywhere,  there  is  sufficient 
intellectual  power  to  scrutinize  the  principles  of 
government,  ancl  sufficient  watchfulness  to  pre- 
serve all  the  rights  of  free  citizenship.  Can  it 
be  possible  that  some  of  those  few  who  have 
raised  this  objection  have  not  done  so  after  all 
from  their  great  affection  for  free  government, 
and  their  irrepressible  public  spirit ;  but  rather 
because  on  other  accounts-  they  dislike  our  sys- 
tem of  public  education,  and  have  seized  on  this 
notion  as  one  last  possible  argument  against  it? 
It  would  be  a  sad  weakness  to  discover  in  some 
of  our  friends,  but  not  wholly  inconsistent  with 


certain  well  known  tendencies  of  the  finite  hu- 
man mind  to  self-deception.  At  least  the  ob- 
jection appears  late  in  the  day,  with  all  the 
marks  about  it  of  a  hastily  snatched  after- 
thought. The  simple  truth  is  that  if  there  is 
any  one  indefeasible  right,  whether  of  an  indi- 
vidual or  of  a  State,  it  is  the  right  of  existence 
and  of  self-protection.  And  if  a  free  State  is  to 
exist  at  all  in  safety  it  must  be  by  intelligence 
and  virtue  in  its  people.  Our  nation  has  already 
gone  through  imminent  dangers,  and  the  condi- 
tions of  danger  are  increasing.  What  safety  it 
has  had  has  come  from  the  results  of  its  schools. 
If  there  had  been  no  communities  in  the  United 
States  where  any  higher  education  existed  than 
that  of  the  three  R's,  we  should  not  be  here  in 
a  civilized  community  to-day  to  discuss  this 
question.  Our  country  so  far  has  been  guided 
on  the  whole  by  its  reason  and  its  self-control : 
and  these  have  been  trained  in  its  liberal 
schools.  But  the  ignorant  and  vicious  class 
is  more  and  more  coming  into  prominence.  If 
any  considerable  part  of  our  country  is  to  be 
forced  back  into  the  condition  of  some  of  its 
darker  regions,  there  is  small  hope  for  us.  A 
man  must  have  a  very  inadequate  notion  of 
what  is  necessary  to  conserve  society  if  he  sup- 
poses that  the  only  duty  of  a  citizen  is  to  per- 
form the  physical  act  of  walking  to  the  polls 
and  depositing  a  ballot ;  or  that  the  only  en- 
lightenment requisite  for  the  safety  of  free  in- 
stitutions is  the  ability  to  read  the  names  on 
the  ticket.  Public  opinion,  the  sentiment  of  the 
community,  the  morale  of  society, — these  are 
far  more  important  than  the  mere  ballot;  and 
the  chief  service  of  the  citizen  to  the  State  is  his 
daily  and  hourly  contribution  to  these  powers 
that  lie  behind  all  voting  and  all  legislation  and 
all  execution  of  justice.  No  man  is  a  safe  citi- 
zen in  a  republic  unless  he  has  the  judgment 
and  reason  and  self-control  of  a  thoroughly  in- 
telligent man.  And  it  is  a  dangerous  doctrine 
to  deny,  for  selfish  or  sect  or  party  purposes, 
the  right  of  the  State  to  secure  its  own  safety 
and  permanence  by  insuring  the  existence  of 
such  men  for  its  citizens.  When  some  new  way 
is  discovered  to  insure  this  end,  not  merely  de- 
vised in  Utopian  theory,  but  shown  to  be  in  suc- 
cessful operation,  it  will  be  time  enough  to  dis- 
cuss the  advisability  of  taking  this  duty  from 
the  hands  of  the  community.  The  work  must 
be  done,  for  the  welfare  of  the  State ;  and  the 
State  must  do  it,  or  it  will  not  be  done, — that 
is  the  simple  common  sense  answer  to  all  such 
visionary  speculations. 

Another  objection  against  high  school  edu- 
cation, urged  by  a  few  discontented  men  who 
know  very  little  about  education  except  that  it 
is  a  popular  subject  for  fault-finding,  is  that  it 


i78 


THE   CAL1FORNIAN. 


is  not  "practical"  enough.  That  means,  if  we 
look  into  the  state  of  mind  of  those  urging  it, 
simply  that  the  studies  and  training  in  the  high 
school,  as  in  all  education  worthy  of  the  name, 
are  educative  and  not  occupative.  That  is  to 
say,  their  purpose  is  to  produce  intelligence  and 
character,  not  to  furnish  a  trade.  The  commu- 
nity can  only  afford  at  present  to  do  at  the  pub- 
lic expense  what  is  absolutely  indispensable  to 
the  public  well-being  to  have  done;  and  that 
is  to  produce  a  population  of  reasonable  and 
self-controlled  men  and  women.  This  can  be 
done,  and  is  done,  in  every  community  where 
liberal  schools  are  well  supported.  And,  more- 
over, it  is  precisely  in  such  communities  that 
there  is  the  least  difficulty  about  honest  and  rep- 
utable means  of  self-support.  If  the  word  prac- 
tical means  anything,  in  the  midst  of  its  many 
vague  uses,  it  means  that  which  answers  as  suc- 
cessful means  to  important  ends.  And  since  the 
most  important  of  all  ends  to  society  is  the  de- 
crease of  ignorance  and  unthrift  and  crime,  that 
system  of  education  which  everywhere  is  effect- 
ual in  accomplishing  this  end  is  plainly  a  most 
practical  system. 

And  now  there  is  still  one  other  objection 
urged  against  high  schools  and  indeed  against 
all  our  public  education.  An  objection  so  base- 
less and  absurd  that  it  would  seem  to  lend  it 
too  much  dignity  even  to  answer  it,  except  that 
the  enemies  of  our  free  schools  are,  like  private 
slanderers,  only  too  eager  to  announce  a  charge 
as  admitted,  however  irrational  it  be,  unless  it 
is  distinctly  denied.  We  refer  to  the  charge 
that  education  is  subversive  of  morality.  It 
only  needs  that  a  man  should  look  about  him  in 
any  American  community  to  see  that  this  charge 
is  even  ludicrously  the  reverse  of  true.  It  sounds 
like  the  very  burlesque  of  argument.  Who  that 
has  any  observation  of  life  can  be  blind  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  ignorant  class  that  is  the  dan- 
gerous and  expensive  class  to  the  State,  and 
that  the  intelligent  class  are  the  men  of  thrift 
and  sobriety  and  regulated  lives. 

If  one  is  fond  of  statistics,  he  need  only  turn 
over  the  census  of  education  and  compare,  State 
by  State,  the  number  of  high  schools,  with  the 
established  reputation  of  these  regions  for  pros- 
perity, for  wholesome  home-life,  for  law  and  or- 
der, for  the  prompt  execution  of  justice,  for  the 
security  of  life  and  property,  and  the  freedom 
of  speech  and  thought,  and  whatever  other 
things  go  to  make  up  civilization  in  distinction 
from  barbarism.  Or  if  one  happens  to  have 
traveled  at  all  widely  in  the  United  States,  he 
needs  only  the  evidence  of  his  own  eyes  and 
ears  to  teach  him  that  a  full  and  liberal  course 
of  public  education  is  the  only  safeguard  of  a 
prosperous  and  well  ordered  community. 


The  plain  truth  is,  that  just  as  there  are  two 
different  classes  of  men  in  this  country,  the 
clean-lived  and  reasonable  class,  and  the  vicious 
and  ignorant  class,  so  there  are  two  different 
kinds  of  communities  in  our  union  of  States  : 
one  where  life  and  property  are  secure,  where 
there  are  visible  marks  of  thrift  and  prosperity 
and  good  order  in  every  village,  where  every 
country  farm-house  speaks  to  the  eye  of  the  in- 
dustry of  its  owner,  where  the  boys  and  girls 
show  in  their  looks  and  their  speech  that  they 
are  growing  up  into  intelligent  men  and  women, 
worthy  of  the  privileges  of  a  republic  and  able 
to  maintain  them.  This  is  the  region  where 
free  schools  are  liberally  supported  even  to  the 
door  of  the  college.  And  there  is  another  sort 
of  community  (if  that  may  be  called  a  commu- 
nity where  each  man  lives  for  his  own  narrow 
and  selfish  ends),  where  broken  fence,  and  top- 
pling chimney,  and  leaning  wall,  and  slovenly 
door-yard,  and  slatternly  children,  and  igno- 
rance and  brutality  and  squalor  announce  that 
the  republic  with  its  modern  civilization,  so  far 
as  this  corner  of  it  is  concerned,  is  on  the  road 
to  failure  and  shameful  defeat.  And  this  is  the 
region  where  only  the  three  R's  are  heard  of,  and 
the  high  school  and  the  college  are  unknown. 

Like  which  of  these  communities  is  Califor- 
nia to  be?  Like  which  of  these  communities  is 
California  to-day,  in  many  of  its  country  re- 
gions? Are  we  satisfied  with  their  civilization? 
Shall  a  false  patriotism  make  us  silent  to  the 
condition  of  things  as  it  already  exists  in  many 
parts  of  our  State?  No  nation  and  no  State 
can  be  prosperous  with  an  ignorant  country 
population.  A  young  city  may  hug  the  delusion 
that  it  can  be  self-sustaining,  but  no  city  is  any- 
thing without  a  country  behind  it.  It  is  only  the 
heart  of  the  body  politic,  and  cannot  create  the 
richness  of  its  own  blood.  Those  only  are 
prosperous  and  happy  regions  where  the  coun- 
try homes  are  prosperous  and  happy.  It  is  not 
Boston  that  has  made  Massachusetts  :  it  is  Mas- 
sachusetts that  has  made  Boston.  It  is  not  Ber- 
lin that  has  made  Germany,  but  Germany  that 
has  made  Berlin.  Does  San  Francisco  suppose 
she  is  on  an  island  in  the  sea,  or  sailing  on  a 
cloud  in  the  air,  that  she  begrudges  her  aid  in 
education  to  t  that  outlying  country  on  whose 
salvation  her  own  depends? 

But  the  present  condition  of  our  State  is  not 
all  we  need  to  consider.  What  is  it  to  be  in  the 
future?  The  present  adult  population  are  not 
products  of  this  western  coast.  They  grew  up 
among  other  and  more  liberal  institutions.  The 
question  is,  what  advantages  shall  be  provided 
for  their  sons  and  daughters  here? 

The  critical  time  is  upon  us.  If  the  question 
be  not  decided  in  favor  of  free  high  school  edu- 


SHALL    WE  HAVE  FREE  HIGH  SCHOOLS'! 


179 


cation  now,  there  will  soon  be  an  overwhelming 
majority,  the  product  of  the  very  lack  of  it,  to 
destroy  its  last  vestiges.  For  consider  in  what 
way  our  population  is  being  increased :  no  long- 
er by  the  Argonauts  who  gave  us  such  a  mag- 
nificent start,  but  by  illiterate  immigrants  from 
every  foreign  country.*  And  as  to  the  home- 
born  country  population,  they  are  growing  up 
far  from  the  advantages  which  their  fathers^and 
mothers  enjoyed.  Some  men  talk  as  if  the 
present  intelligence  of  the  community^  once 
gained,  would  without  further  expense  or  trou- 
ble remain  and  be  perpetuated.  It  is  as  if  a 
child  should  for  a  moment  hold  back  a  stream 
with  his  hands,  and  expect  it  to  stay  so  when 
his  hands  were  removed.  The  work  of  educa- 
tion, once  done,  is  not  done  once  for  all;  but 
must  be  done  every  year  and  continually.  There 
is  no  immunity,  even  in  the  best  families,  from 
the  law  that  every  child  is  born  ignorant  and 
selfish.  Each  new  generation,  in  fact,  is  an 
immigration  from  a  country  where  they  know 
even  less  of  our  institutions  and  are  even  less 
capable  of  self-control  than  the  populations  of 
Europe. 

The  only  hope  of  permanent  prosperity  for 
California  is  the  establishment  of  free  schools 
of  a  high  grade  in  every  populated  region  of 
the  State.  It  would  be  a  fine  thing,  no  doubt, 
if  private  munificence  would,  as  in  England, 
endow  such  schools.  Here  and  there,  perhaps, 
even  before  the  dawn  of  the  millennium,  this 
may  be  done;  but  it  will  not  do  to  wait  for 
this.  The  population  is  increasing  day  by  day : 
the  youth  are  growing  up  to  be  men  and  women. 
Time  does  not  stand  still  and  wait  for  our  Uto- 
pian dreams  to  come  true.  These  higher  schools 
must  be  established,  and  the  community  must 
see  that  it  is  done.  It  would  be  fine  if  private 
wealth  would  build  substantial  roads  and  beau- 
tiful bridges,  and  endow  reformatory  prisons  and 
houses  of  correction, — but  we  do  not  wait  for 
this  to  happen.  Yet  the  need  to  the  community 
of  intelligence  and  character  in  its  growing  pop- 
ulation is  vastly  more  than  all  these  things. 
We  may  turn  our  backs  on  these  truths  and 
look  at  our  city  high  schools  and  at  our  Uni- 
versity, and  rub  our  hands  congratulating  each 
other  on  our  splendid  school  system, — but  the 
city  is  doomed,  and  the  State  is  doomed,  if  the 
country  population  has  no  higher  advantages. 
And  as  to  the  University,  what  shall  we  say  of 
the  wisdom  of  a  State  that  establishes  a  uni- 
versity, thanks  to  the  foresight  of  the  Argo- 

*  At  the  last  election  the  voters  in  San  Francisco  were — Na- 
tive, 20,195  ;  foreign,  23,326.  The  California  school  census  of 
1879  gives  the  nativity  of  children  not  over  seventeen,  as  fol- 
lows :  Native  born  children,  both  parents  native  born,  135,860; 
native  born  children,  both  parents  foreign  born,  114,309. 


nauts,  and  then  cuts  away  every  public  ladder 
and  stairway  that  leads  to  its  door? 

For  there  is  no  other  way  by  which  the  poor 
man,  or  the  family  in  moderate  circumstances, 
can  send  a  boy  or  a  girl  to  college  but  through 
the  free  preparation  of  the  high  school.  Do 
the  opponents  of  these  schools  wish  to  establish 
an  aristocracy,  wherein  only  the  sons  of  the 
rich  shall  be  permitted  to  receive  a  higher  edu- 
cation? And  is  it  only  from  the  youth  of  two 
or  three  wealthy  cities  that  the  ranks  of  the  pro- 
fessions are  to  be  permitted  to  be  filled? 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  it  is  the  poor 
and  plain-living  people  who  are  opposed  to  the 
high  schools.  They  are  the  very  ones  who 
desire  an  education  for  their  children.  The  op- 
position comes  either  from  the  aristocrat,  who 
is  very  willing  that  the  intelligence  as  well  as 
the  wealth  of  his  family  shall  rise  conspicuous 
over  the  common  herd  below ;  or  it  comes  from 
the  demagogue,  whose  trade  depends  on  the 
existence  of  an  unlettered  and  pliable  constit- 
uency; or  it  comes  from  bitter  sectarians,  whom 
either  Satan  has  blinded — 

' '  Out  of  their  weakness  and  their  melancholy, 
As  he  is  very  potent  with  such  spirits  "— 

to  honestly  believe  in  the  immoral  results  ot 
popular  intelligence,  or  who  have  ends  to  accom- 
plish that  are  wholly  outside  of  any  considera- 
tion of  the  public  weal. 

And  there  is,  finally,  another  ground  on  which 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  open  to  all  its 
youth  the  opportunities  of  a  high  school  edu- 
cation :  a  ground  on  which  we  see  no  possibil- 
ity of  a  reasonable  doubt.  That  is,  the  right 
of  the  child  himself  to  all  the  possibilities  of 
his  own  matured  intelligence.  A  boy  does  not 
belong  to  the  community  as  a  chattel  and  a 
slave,  that  we  have  a  right  to  his  labor  without 
giving  him  the  chance  to  be  a  man  among  men. 
He  comes  into  this  world  by  no  will  of  his  own. 
Has  he  not  a  right  to  demand  something  of  us 
as  our  bounden  duty  to  him?  Is  it  not  a  bar- 
barous injustice  to  give  him  only  that  amount 
of  intelligence  that  we  think  will  make  a  docile 
drudge  of  him,  with  no  share  in  this  heritage 
of  knowledge  and  thought  and  "godlike  rea- 
son"? 

For  this  was  the  high  school  education  es- 
tablished :  that  every  boy  and  girl  might  go 
out  into  life  with  eyes  trained  to  see,  with  rea- 
son trained  to  reflect,  with  character  trained  to 
self-control,  with  feelings  purified  and  ennobled 
by  a  share  in  whatever  the  race  has  yet  attained 
of  what  is  noble  and  pure.  We  must  not  allow 
this  light  to  go  out  in  darkness.  We  must  not 
permit  the  standard  of  our  public  education  to 


i8o 


THE    CALIFORNTAN. 


be  degraded  below  the  level  of  the  most  enlight- 
ened countries  and  states. 

If  the  mass  of  our  people  are  to  be  con- 
fined to  the  bare  rudiments  of  learning,  they 
will  soon  have  not  even  that.  There  will  be 
neither  intelligence  enough  in  the  community 
to  demand  it,  nor  public  spirit  and  means  to 


pay  for  it,  nor  teachers  to  impart  it.  In  the 
history  of  civilization  it  has  invariably  been  the 
establishment  of  higher  schools  that  has  led  to 
the  establishment  of  lower.  And  if  civilization 
in  any  particular  region  is  to  break  down,  its 
decay  will  doubtless  follow  the  same  order. 

E.  R.  SILL. 


A   FORGOTTEN    POET. 


Astronomers  tell  us  of  stars  that  suddenly 
blaze  out  in  the  clear  heavens  and  surpass  the 
brightest  planet  in  their  brilliancy  and  splendor, 
but  which,  after  having  been  for  a  brief  period 
the  wonder  and  admiration  of  the  world,  grad- 
ually fade  away  until  scarcely  discernible.  So 
sometimes  an  author  writes  a  successful  book, 
and  suddenly  becomes  the  idol  of  the  people, 
the  fashion  of  the  hour,  surpassing  in  popularity 
authors  of  far  greater  merit ;  but,  after  enjoying 
for  a  time  the  favor  of  sovereigns  and  the  ap- 
plause of  the  populace,  he  is  thrown  aside  for 
the  next  new  favorite,  and  is  soon  lost  in  a  neg- 
lect as  unaccountable  as  his  former  popularity. 
John  Lyly,  the  subject  of  this  sketch,  is  a  strik- 
ing example  of  the  truth  of  the  saying,  "The 
glory  of  this  age  is  the  scorn  of  the  next."  The 
favorite  of  Elizabeth's  court,  placed  by  his  con- 
temporaries before  Shakspere,  Spenser,  and 
Chapman,  his  first  work,  Euphues,  enjoyed  a 
popularity  accorded  to  but  few  books.  Gradu- 
ally, however,  his  influence  and  popularity  be- 
gan to  wane,  and  in  1777  Berkenhout  probably 
expressed  the  public  sentiment  when  he  termed 
the  book  "a  most  contemptible  piece  of  affecta- 
tion and  nonsense."  Now,  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  Lyly  is  just  beginning  to  assume  his 
true  place  in  English  literature,  and  his  services 
in  developing  the  harmony  and  euphony  of  our 
language  are  first  being  recognized.  Before 
considering  his  works  let  us  take  a  brief  survey 
of  his  life. 

John  Lyly  was  born  in  Kent  in  1553,  eleven 
years  before  the  birth  of  Shakspere.  Of  his 
family  and  early  life  we  know  nothing.  At  the 
age  of  sixteen  he  entered  Magdalen  College, 
Oxford,  matriculating  as  plebiifilitts.  He  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  a  very  diligent  student 
while  at  college.  Anthony -a- Wood  says  that 
he  was  "always  averse  to  the  crabbed  studies 
of  logic  and  philosophy.  For  so  it  was  that  his 
genie,  being  naturally  bent  to  the  pleasant  paths 
of  poetry  (as  if  Apollo  had  given  to  him  a 
wreath  of  his  own  bays,  without  snatching  or 


struggling),  did,  in  a  manner,  neglect  academi- 
cal studies,  yet  not  so  much  but  that  he  took 
the  degrees  in  arts,  that  of  master  being  com- 
pleated  in  1575,  at  which  time  as  he  was  esteem- 
ed at  the  university  a  ncted  wit,  so  afterwards  in 
the  court  of  Q.  Elizabeth,  where  he  was  also 
reputed  a  rare  poet,  witty,  comical,  and  face- 
tious." 

In  1574,  while  yet  in  college,  Lyly  wrote  a 
Latin  letter  to  Lord  Burleigh,  begging  him  to 
use  his  influence  with  the  queen  to  secure  him 
a  fellowship.  This  application  was  unsuccess- 
ful, but  Burleigh  took  Lyly  under  his  patronage, 
and  until  1 584  the  poet  was  probably  a  member 
of  his  household.  In  1578,  being  then  twenty- 
five  years  of  age,  Lyly  wrote  his  first  work, 
Euphues,  the  Anatomie  of  Wit,  and  two  years 
later  he  followed  this  with  Euphues  and  his 
England.  These  books  immediately  made  him 
famous,  and  in  1584  he  removed  to  the  court  of 
"good  Queen  Bess."  His  chief  occupation  here 
was  play-writing,  and  his  heart  was  set  on  the 
office  of  Master  of  Revels,  a  position,  however, 
to  which  he  never  attained.  His  first  play  was 
The  Woman  in  the  Moone,  written  in  blank 
verse,  and  presenting  few  of  the  peculiarities 
that  afterward  distinguished  his  style.  Before 

1589,  Lyly  had  written  nine  plays,  many  of 
which  were  not  only  presented  at  court,  but 
were  also  acted  in  the  public  theaters.     All  of 
these  plays  were  very  popular,  and  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth made  our  author  many  promises,  but  in 

1590,  and  again  three  years  later,  we  find  him 
complaining  because  these  promises  have  not 
been  performed. 

In  his  second  petition  he  thus  laments  her 
faithlessness:  "Thirteen  years  your  highnes' 
servant,  but  yet  nothing.  Twenty  friends  that 
though  they  saye  they  wil  be  sure,  I  find  them 
sure  to  be  slowe.  A  thousand  hopes,  but  all 
nothing;  a  hundred  promises,  but  yet  noth- 
ing  My  last  will  is  shorter  than  my  in- 

vencion;  but  three  legacies — patience  to  my 
creditors,  melancholic  without  measure  to  my 


A   FORGOTTEN  POET. 


181 


friends,  and  beggerie  without  shame  to  my 
family." 

"Oh,  how  wretched 
Is  that  poor  man  that  hangs  on  princes'  favors!" 

Soon  after  this  he  appears  to  have  left  the 
court,  but  of  the  circumstances  of  his  life  after 
this  nothing  is  known.  The  next  notice  we  have 
of  him  is  a  brief  entry  in  the  register  of  St.  Bar- 
tholomew's, under  the  date 

"Nov.  30,  1606,  John  Lylie,  gent.,  was  buried." 

Thus  briefly  is  recorded  the  end  of  one  who 
was  the  idol  and  glory  'of  Elizabeth's  court  and 
the  most  popular  author  of  his  time. 

Before  treating  of  his  works  more  particularly 
it  will  be  of  value  to  notice  the  chief  peculiari- 
ties of  his  style.  The  first  peculiarity  that 
strikes  us  is  one  of  form — his  continuous  use  of 
balanced  construction  and  verbal  antithesis. 
Sentence  is  balanced  with  sentence,  word  with 
word,  and  even  letter  with  letter,  for  alliteration 
is  one  of  our  author's  delights.  Witness  the 
following : 

"lam  neither  so  suspitious  to  mistrust  your  good 
will,  nor  so  sottish  to  mislike  your  good  counsayle,  as  I 
am  therefore  to  thanke  you  for  the  first,  so  it  standes  me 
upon  to  thinke  better  on  the  latter." 

This  produces  a  smooth  effect,  and  lends  a 
peculiar  sweetness  to  his  sentences,  which,  how- 
ever, soon  grows  tiresome  on  account  of  its  mo- 
notony. Even  in  tragic  parts  he  maintains  his 
balanced  construction,  and  we  look  in  vain  for 
the  strong  bursts  of  rage  of  Shakspere's  "Lear" 
or  the  agonized  utterances  of  Marlowe's  "Faus- 
tus."  In  no  place  does  Lyly  break  away  from 
the  fetters  of  his  style,  nowhere  is  he  free  and 
natural.  His  lions  roar  like  sucking  'doves. 
Puns  and  verbal  quibbles,  the  natural  outgrowth 
of  such  a  style,  are  introduced  in  the  most  inop- 
portune places,  a  fault  which  Shakspere  also 
has,  and  which  possibly  he  caught  from  Lyly. 

The  next  peculiarity  to  be  noticed  is  Lyly's 
classicism.  All  of  his  plays,  with  the  exception 
of  Mother  Bombie,  are  classical  in  their  origin, 
and  the  characters  have  classical  names.  Clas- 
sical allusions  are  abundant  in  his  works,  and 
one  suggests  another,  and  this  yet  another,  in 
such  a  way  that  he  sometimes  nearly  loses  the 
thread  of  his  discourse.  A  classical  quotation 
is,  according  to  his  idea,  always  appropriate, 
and  it  has  been  observed  that  all  of  his  charac- 
ters, from  the  prince  to  the  lowest  serving-man, 
are  familiar  with  Virgil,  Horace,  and  other  clas- 
sical writers. 

But  the  most  striking  peculiarity  of  his  style 
is  "the  employment  of  a  species  of  fabulous  or 
unnatural  natural  philosophy,  in  which  the  exist- 

VOL.    III.- 12. 


ence  of  certain  animals,  vegetables,  and  miner- 
als is  presumed,  in  order  to  afford  similes  and 
illustrations."  Instead  of  fitting  his  similes  to 
the  existing  order  of  things,  he  takes  the  ob- 
verse method,  and  changes  the  whole  created 
world  to  conform  to  his  similes.  "Polyphus  is 
ever  of  the  color  of  the  stone  it  sticketh  to." 
"The  bird  of  paradise  lives  on  air,  and  dies  if 
she  touch  the  earth."  "Salamints,  a  peculiar 
kind  of  flower,  are  white  in  the  morning,  red 
at  noon,  and  purple  at  night."  "The  estritch 
plucks  out  her  bad  feathers,  and  burns  them." 

Keeping  well  in  mind  these  peculiarities  of 
Lyly's  style,  which  may  be  found  on  almost 
every  page  he  has  written,  let  us  now  take  a 
more  particular  view  of  his  works.  His  first 
work,  Euphues,  the  Anatomic  of  Wit^  was  pub- 
lished in  1579,  and  passed  through  six  editions 
in  two  years,  which  betokens  a  popularity  en- 
joyed by  few,  if  any,  other  books.  It  is  the 
story  of  a  young  Athenian,  "Euphues,"  living 
in  Naples,  and  it  treats  of  friendship,  love,  edu- 
cation, and  religion.  Appended  to  the  book 
are  letters  on  bearing  bereavement  and  exile 
with  Christian  fortitude,  and  on  the  conduct  of 
life.  The  continuation,  Euphues  and  his  Eng- 
land^ is  a  narrative  of  "Euphues's"  journey  into 
England,  and  was  designed  to  teach  Eng- 
lishmen then  seeking  pleasure  and  adventure 
abroad  the  beauties  and  merits  of  their  own 
island.  The  two  books  are  closely  related,  and 
may  be  considered  as  one.  Of  the  chief  char- 
acteristics of  his  style  we  have  already  spoken. 
It  must  not  be  supposed  that  because  the  style 
is  so  meretricious  the  sentiments  are  likewise 
poor.  It  is  common  sense  masquerading  in  the 
fantastical  garb  of  folly.  His  moral  is  always 
good,  and  his  advice  excellent.  His  language 
is  chaste,  and  in  point  of  morality  he  stands 
vastly  above  any  poet  or  play-wright  of  his  age. 
He  says  in  the  preface  of  Euphues,  "This  I 
have  diligently  observed,  that  there  shall  be 
nothing  found  that  may  offend  the  chast  mind 
with  unseemly  tearmes  or  uncleanly  talke."  He 
is  at  times  a  vigorous  satirist  and  reformer,  and 
ridicules  the  courtiers  for  preferring  the  French 
fashions  before  those  of  their  own  country.  He 
is  a  devout  believer  in  God,  and  in  one  place 
says,  "There  is  no  man  so  savage  in  whom 
resteth  not  this  divine  particle,  that  there  is  an 
omnipotent,  eternall,  and  divine  mover,  which 
may  be  called  God."  Charles  Kingsley  wishes 
for  no  better  proof  of  the  nobleness  and  virtue 
of  the  Elizabethan  age  than  the  fact  that 
Euphues  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia  were 
the  two  popular  romances  of  the  day. 

In  writing  his  plays,  Lyly  adopted  and  popu- 
larized George  Gascoigne's  innovation  bf  writ- 
ing plays  in  prose.  Lyly  wrote  nine  plays,  and 


182 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


seven  of  these  are  in  prose,  one  in  blank  verse, 
and  one  in  rhyme.  In  his  plays  we  see  the 
germs  of  those  sparkling,  witty  dialogues  which 
we  so  enjoy  in  Shakspere's  comedies.  For 
the  most  part  his  plays  are  totally  deficient  in 
plot,  being  little  more  than  dramatized  anec- 
dotes, flimsy  in^onstruction  and  poor  in  exe- 
cution. "  Endymion"  and  "  Midas"  are  elaborate 
political  allegories — the  former  representing 
the  disgrace  brought  upon  the  Earl  of  Leices- 
ter for  clandestinely  marrying  the  Countess  of 
Sheffield,  while  at  the  same  time  seeking  the 
hand  of  Elizabeth;  and  the  latter  depicts  the 
troubles  experienced  by  Philip  I.  in  establish- 
ing the  Roman  Catholic  religion  in  Spain. 
The  only  one  of  Lyly's  plays  which  has  a  plot 
worthy  of  the  name  is  Mother  Bombie,  which 
has  a  very  skillfully  entangled  plot,  founded  on 
mistaken  identity. 

But  it  is  in  his  songs  that  Lyly's  poetic  talent 
is  best  shown.  Taine  says,  "Lyly,  so  fantas- 
tic that  he  seems  to  write  purposely  in  defiance 
of  common  sense,  is  at  times  a  genuine  poet,  a 
singer,  a  man  capable  of  rapture,  akin  to  Spen- 
ser and  Shakspere."  Lyly's  songs  occur  in  his 
plays,  and  are,  unfortunately,  short,  and  few  in 
number.  Most  of  them  are  light,  pretty  love 
songs,  that  have  been  compared  to  the  well- 
known  lyrics  of  Herrick.  "Cupid  and  My  Cam- 
paspe,"  from  Lyly's  first  play,  Alexander  and 
Campaspe\  is  the  best  known  of  his  songs,  and 
is  so  good  that  I  have  ventured  to  quote  it  en- 
tire. Alexander  having  fallen  in  love  with  Cam- 
paspe,  engages  Apelles  to  paint  her  portrait. 
Apelles  does  so,  and  falls  in  love  with  the  fair 
Theban,  and  sings  the  following  song  in  her 
praise : 

CUPID  AND   MY  CAMPASPE. 

"Cupid  and  my  Campaspe  playd 
At  cardes  for  kisses,  Cupid  payd ; 
He  stakes  his  Quiver,  Bow,  and^ Arrows, 
His  mother's  doves,  and  teeme  of  sparrows, 
Looses  them,  too;  then  down  he  throwes 
The  corrall  of  his  lippe,  the  rose 
Growing  on's  cheek  (but  none  knows  how), 
With  these  the  cristall  of  his  Brow, 
And  then  the  dimple  of  his  chinne, 
All  these  did  my  Campaspe  winne. 
At  last  he  set  her  both  his  eyes; 
She  won,  and  Cupid  blind  did  rise. 

O,  Love!  has  shee  done  this  to  Thee? 

What  shall  (Alas!)  become  of  Mee!" 

As  may  readily  be  supposed,  a  work  so  popu- 
lar as  Euphues  was  and  possessing  such  mark- 
ed peculiarities  exerted  great  influence  on  con- 
temporaneous literature.  Lyly  was  praised  and 
copied  by  nearly  all  of  the  writers  of  his  time. 
Other  writers  took  up  the  subject  of  Euphues^ 


and  in  1590  Lodge  published  Rosalynde,  Eu- 
phues' Golden  Legacie,  which  is  the  foundation 
of  Shakspere's  As  You  Like  It.  Not  only  in 
writings  was  Lyly's  influence  felt,  but  the  con- 
versation in  Elizabeth's  court  was  modeled  on 
the  patterns  found  in  Euphues.  Blount,  writing 
about  twenty-five  years  after  Lyly's  death,  thus 
testifies  to  our  author's  influence  and  popularity: 
"Our  Nation  are  in  his  debt  for  a  new  English 
which  hee  taught  them.  Euphues  and  his  Eng- 
land first  began  that  language.  All  our  Ladies 
were  then  his  Schollers;  and  that  beauty  in 
Court  which  could  not  parley  Euphueisme, 
was  as  little  regarded  as  she  which  now  there 
speaks  not  French." 

There  were  a  few  authors  sufficiently  clear- 
sighted to  see  the  evils  of  this  fantastical  style, 
and  in  1627  Drayton  praises  Sidney  for  reduc- 
ing— 

"Our  tongue  from  Lillie's  writing  then  in  use: 
Talking  of  Stones,  Stars,  Plants,  of  fishes,  Flyes, 
Playing  with  words,  and  idle  Similes, 
As  the  English  Apes  and  very  Zanies  be 
Of  every  thing  that  they  doe  heare  and  see; 
So,  imitating  his  ridiculous  tricks, 
They  spake  and  writ  all  like  meere  lunatiques." 

Shakspere,  in  LovJs  Labor  Lost,  and  Ben 
Jonson,  in  Every  Man  out  of  His  Humor ^ 
ridiculed  euphuism,  but  at  the  same  time  they 
imitated  it.  Shakspere  more  particularly  seems 
well  acquainted  with  Lyly's  works,  and,  Hal- 
lam  thinks,  has  often  caught  the  euphuistic 
style  when  he  did  not  intend  to  ridicule  it,  es- 
pecially in  some  speeches  of  Hamlet.  And  not 
only  has  Shakspere  imitated  euphuism,  but  in 
many  cases  he  has  directly  conveyed,  as  the 
wise  call  it,  sentiments  from  Lyly's  works  to  his 
own  pages.  Many  examples  could  be  adduced, 
but  a  single  one  must  suffice.  Lyly  wrote,  in 
Campaspe:  "Is  the  war- like  sound  of  drum 
and  trump  turned  to  the  soft  noise  of  lyre  and 
lute? — the  neighing  of  barbed  steeds,  whose 
lowdness  filled  the  aire  with  terrour,  and  whose 
breathes  dimmed  the  sun  with  smoake,  convert- 
ed to  delicate  tunes  and  amorous  glances?" 
Who  can  doubt  that  these  opening  lines  of 
Richard  III.  were  copied  directly  from  this? 

"Our  stern  alarums  changed  to  merry  meetings, 
Our  dreadful  marches  to  delighful  measures. 
Grim-visaged  war  hath  smoothed  his  wrinkled  front; 
And  now,  instead  of  mounting  barbed  steeds, 
To  fright  the  souls  of  fearful  adversaries, 
He  capers  nimbly  in  a  lady's  chamber 
To  the  lascivious  pleasing  of  a  lute." 

We  thus  see  that  Lyly's  influence  on  con- 
temporaneous literature  was  by  no  means  con- 
temptible, and  one  critic  even  thinks  that  to 


NOTE  BOOK. 


183 


him  our  language  owes  much  of  its  present 
smoothness. 

In  bidding  farewell  to  Lyly  we  know  of  no 
way  to  leave  a  better  impression  of  the  man 
and  his  work  than  by  quoting  a  part  of  his  ad- 
vice to  young  men,  which  bears  quite  a  resem- 
blance, by  the  way,  to  Polonius's  advice  to  his 
son: 

"Descend  into  thine  own  conscience  and  consider 
with  thyselfe  the  great  difference  between  staring  and 
starke  blynde,  witte  and  wisdome,  love  and  lust.  Be 


merry,  but  with  modestie;  be  sober,  but  not  too  sullen; 
be  valyaunt,  but  not  too  venturous;  let  thy  attire  bee 
comely,  but  not  too  costly ;  thy  dyet  wholesome,  but  not 
too  excessive;  use  pastime,  as  the  word  importeth,  to 
passe  the  time  in  honest  recreation;  mistrust  no  man 
without  cause;  neither  be  ye  credulous  without  proofe; 
be  not  lyght  to  follow  every  man's  opinion,  nor  obsti- 
nate to  stand  in  thine  own  conceipt.  Serve  God,  love 
God,  feare  God,  and  God  will  so  bless  thee,  as  eyther 
thy  heart  canne  wish  or  thy  friends  desire;  and  so 
I  ende  my  counsaile,  beseeching  thee  to  begin  to  fol- 
low it." 

WILLIAM  D.  ARMES. 


NOTE    BOOK. 


THAT  THE  CONDITION  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA  is  disappointing  to  many  citizens,  is  un- 
fortunately true.  It  may  be  that  to  an  extent  this  arises 
from  a  popular  misapprehension  of  the  work  now  being 
done  at  that  institution.  It  is  certainly  true  that  there 
are  many  things  there  to  admire.  The  professors  are, 
without  exception,  able  and  learned  men.  They  are 
enthusiastic  in  the  performance  of  their  duties.  Some 
of  them  have  national,  some  world -wide  reputations. 
The  two  LeContes  are  everywhere  honored  for  their 
achievements  in  science.  Such  men  as  Professors  Kel- 
logg, Sill,  Rising,  Moses,  Welcker,  Soule",  Hilgard,  and 
others,  would  be  an  honor  to  any  institution.  Numer- 
ous students  throng  the  halls,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
assert  that,  from  the  educational  stand -point  alone,  the 
University  makes,  all  things  considered,  a  remarkable 
showing.  But,  notwithstanding  all  this,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  it  has  not  the  hold  upon  the  popular  sym- 
pathy and  esteem  which  it  ought  to  have.  Outside  of 
a  limited  circle,  there  is  no  enthusiasm  in  regard  to  it. 
The  great  mass  of  citizens  know  little  about  it,  and  care 
less.  In  some  parts  of  the  State  there  is,  or  has  been, 
an  active  enmity.  When  a  meeting  of  the  Legislature 
occurs  the  claims  of  the  University  are  not  pressed  with 
spirit,  and,  as  a  result,  no  adequate  appropriation  is 
made.  Meantime,  the  great  universities  of  the  East 
are  making  gigantic  strides.  Harvard,  during  the  last 
ten  or  twelve  years,  has  made  as  much  progress  as  dur- 
ing its  whole  previous  existence.  The  credit  for  this  is 
due  almost  entirely  to  one  man — President  Eliot.  With- 
out being  a  great  or  profound  scholar,  he  is  yet  a  man 
of  great  executive  ability.  And  this  is  the  whole  secret. 
The  functions  of  a  college  president  are  almost  wholly 
executive.  He  must  be  a  man  of  affairs.  He  must  be 
able  to  interest  men  of  means  in  the  institution,  to  build 
up  its  finances,  to  conciliate  its  enemies,  to  stimulate  its 
friends.  He  should  be  burdened  with  no  classes.  He 
should  be  free  to  devote  his  entire  energies  to  the  exec- 
utive management,  leaving  the  educational  duties  en- 
tirely to  the  professors.  Now,  precisely  because  he  is  a 
ripe  scholar,  a  profound  student,  a  learned  scientist,  un- 
used and  undevoted  to  practical  affairs,  shrinking  from 
contact  with  the  world,  and  preferring  the  investigations 
and  calculations  of  his  study,  is  the  President  of  the 
University  of  California  unfitted  to  build  up  that  insti- 
tution to  the  greatness  of  which  it  is  capable.  No  man 


could  bring  to  a  professor's  chair  greater  learning  in  his 
specialty.  The  association  of  no  name  with  the  Uni- 
versity would  give  it  greater  honor  than  his.  His  learn- 
ing and  his  investigations  have  given  him  a  reputation 
among  scientific  men  upon  two  continents.  But  these 
are  not  the  qualifications  of  a  president.  It  is  of  infi- 
nitely more  importance  that  the  head  of  the  University 
should  be  one  who  knows  men,  who  understands  the 
intricacies  of  business,  who  will  see  that  every  citizen  on 
the  broad  Pacific  Coast  has  an  interest  and  a  pride  in 
the  great  educational  center  over  which  he  presides.  He 
certainly  should  not  be  an  unlettered  man.  He  should 
possess  such  attainments  as  would  command  the  respect 
and  such  graces  as  would  win  the  esteem  of  those  with 
whom  he  comes  in  contact.  But  if  he  should  have  the 
practical  gifts  of  an  Eliot,  he  would  be  better  fitted  for 
the  executive  duties  of  the  presidency  than  if  he  were 
master  of  the  exhaustless  learning  of  the  ages.  Such 
a  man  we  should  have  at  the  head  of  our  University. 
Now  is  the  accepted  time.  There  is  no  great  college 
on  this  side  of  the  continent.  The  University  has  a 
handsome  start.  It  needs  other  endowments.  It  re- 
quires popular  support.  With  these  it  will  slowly  take 
its  place  by  the  side  of  the  older  seminaries  of  learning, 
which  are  the  pride  of  all  Americans,  and  which  have 
graduated  the  brightest  and  best  minds  of  the  day.  The 
business  side  of  the  University  is  as  important  as  the 
educational  side.  In  one  sense  it  is  more  important, 
for  the  latter  must  surely  fail  if  the  former  be  neglected. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  devolve  these  duties  upon  a  professor 
who  has  no  taste  for  them  if  he  is  scholar  enough  to 
deserve  his  chair,  nor  time  for  them  if  he  attends  to 
his  specialty. 


INDIRECTION  is  not  a  usual  characteristic  of  the 
American  people.  What  they  desire  to  do  they  gener- 
ally set  about  in  the  most  simple  and  direct  manner. 
Just  at  present  there  seems  to  be  a  relapse  from  this 
ordinary  mood.  The  question  is  being  vigorously  de- 
bated whether  or  not  a  distinguished  ex -President 
should  be  provided  for  by  the  nation,  and  a  dozen 
methods  are  proposed,  all  of  them  more  or  less  round- 
about in  their  means,  to  accomplish  this  end.  The  fact 
that  this  particular  ex-President  has  been  a  military 


i84 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


man  seems  to  complicate  matters  still  more.  It  would 
appear  that  the  first,  and  indeed  the  principal,  question 
is  this:  "  Is  it  desirable  that  the  nation  provide,  in  a  re- 
spectable manner,  for  those  whom  it  has  elevated  to 
the  high  office  of  Chief  Executive?"  If  this  is  an- 
swered affirmatively,  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
trend  of  the  argument  is  in  that  direction,  why  is  it  not 
best  to  provide  for  the  retirement  of  the  President  on 
part  pay  in  a  direct  manner,  as  is  done  with  the  judges 
and  the  officers  of  the  army  and  navy?  If  the  nation 
provide  for  one  President,  it  should  provide  for  all.  It 
would  be  spared  the  mortification  of  seeing  a  former 
Chief  Executive  die  in  poverty  and  distress  as  in  the 
case  of  James  Monroe.  If  a  military  office  is  created 
for  one  President,  what  is  to  be  done  for  the  next  one 
whose  administration  is  equally  wise  and  temperate, 
but  who  does  not  happen  to  be  a  great  commander  ? 
This  is  a  purely  impersonal  matter.  It  involves  princi- 
ple alone,  and  not  persons.  It  is  right  and  expedient 
that  those  who  do  great  work  for  the  republic  should 
be  rewarded.  It  would  stimulate  others,  and  it  would 
tend  to  lift  every  President  above  intrigue  to  know  that 
provision  had  been  made  for  him  upon  retirement,  and 
that  he  need  have  no  personal  thought  for  the  morrow. 
But  the  law  should  be  a  general  one.  If  Lowell  should 
be  elected  President,  should  he  be  created  Poet  Laureate 
upon  retirement?  When  Mr.  Garfield  goes  out  will  there 
be  a  proposition  to  make  him  Vicar-General  ?  It  will  be 
seen  that  the  scheme  to  provide  for  Presidents  upon  per- 
sonal grounds,  according  to  their  vocations  before  elec- 
tion, will  necessarily  lead  to  confusions  and  absurdities. 
We  are  not,  fortunately,  so  impoverished,  and  it  is  to 
be  hoped,  also,  that  we  are  not  so  parsimonious,  that 
there  is  any  obstacle  in  the  way  of  providing  that  the 
declining  days  of  those  who  serve  the  nation  in  this 
high  office  may  be  passed  in  dignity  and  comfort. 


THE  TOWN  OF  BERKELEY  has  set  a  commendable 
example  to  the  other  towns  and  villages  of  the  Pacific 
Coast.  The  citizens  have  formed  an  ' '  Association  for 
the  Promotion  of  Neighborhood  Improvements."  The 
objects  of  this  organization  are  declared  to  be 

" — to  promote  the  improvement  and  ornamentation 
of  the  streets,  stations,  and  public  places  of  this  local- 
ity, by  planting  and  cultivating  trees,  establishing  and 
maintaining  walks,  grading  and  draining  roadways, 
clearing  the  roads  and  sidewalks  of  unsightly  weeds  and 
rubbish,  promoting  the  introduction  of  water  and  the 
utilization  of  the  same  for  sprinkling  the  roads;  the  con- 


sideration and  promotion  of  such  a  system  of  sewerage 
as  may  be  best  adapted  for  the  sanitary  condition  of  the 
town;  encouraging  system,  order,  and  tidiness,  and  gen- 
erally to  do  whatever  may  tend  to  the  improvement  of 
the  town  of  Berkeley  as  a  place  of  residence." 

We  are  informed  that  at  least  two  other  towns  have 
similar  associations.  There  are  few  things  of  which  the 
people  of  the  Pacific  Coast  have  reason  to  feel  more 
ashamed  than  of  the  appearance  of  most  of  their  small 
towns.  In  many  of  these  the  spirit  of  untidiness  holds 
eternal  carnival.  Gates  are  off  the  hinges,  fences  are 
not  even  whitewashed,  houses  are  unpainted,  gardens 
are  unkempt,  and  the  whole  place  is  a  disheveled  ap- 
parition of  which  one  sight  is  all  that  the  ordinary  per- 
son desires.  There  are  many  persons  who  will  not  un- 
derstand the  effect  of  beauty  upon  their  own  lives  and 
upon  those  of  their  children.  But  they  ought  to  be  able 
to  comprehend  how  ruinous,  from  a  financial  point  of 
view,  this  slovenly  condition  of  a  town  is.  And  it  is  so 
entirely  inexcusable.  Nature  is  fecund.  The  richness 
of  the  soil  is  our  untiring  boast.  Almost  at  the  word 
trees  will  grow  and  flowers  will  blossom.  But  it  may 
be  objected  that  the  expense  will  be  too  great.  Turn- 
ing to  the  by-laws  of  the  Berkeley  association,  we  find 
that  the  cost  to  members  over  sixteen  years  of  age  is 
one  dollar  per  year ;  to  members  under  sixteen,  fifty 
cents;  and  the  Executive  Committee  are  limited  in  their 
expenditures  to  the  funds  in  hand.  This  small  sum,  to- 
gether with  the  personal  exertion  of  each  citizen  upon 
his  own  place,  will  soon  make  a  garden  of  the  whole 
neighborhood.  There  ought  to  be  one  of  these  socie- 
ties in  every  town,  and  now  is  the  time  to  form  them, 
before  the  season  for  planting  is  over. 


A  NEW  SERIAL  STORY  will  be  commenced  in  the  next 
number  of  THE  CALIFORNIAN  which  will  run  during 
the  remainder  of  the  year.  It  is  entitled  "  '49  and  "50," 
and  is  a  story  of  early  days  upon  this  coast.  The  au- 
thor is  Mr.  John  Vance  Cheney,  whose  articles  in  the 
leading  Eastern  magazines  and  in  THE  CALIFORNIAN 
have  received  such  wide  and  merited  recognition.  Mr. 
Cheney  has  had  this  story  in  preparation  for  THE  CALI- 
FORNIAN for  some  time.  Competent  critics,  to  whom 
it  has  been  submitted,  pronounce  it  at  once  realistic  and 
fascinating.  The  stirring  events  of  1849  and  the  suc- 
ceeding year  are  vividly  pictured.  Absolute  truthful- 
ness of  impression  is  sought  rather  than  idealization.  A 
thread  of  romance  runs  through  the  work,  and  the  in- 
terest is  sustained  to  the  end. 


SCIENCE   AND   INDUSTRY. 


JUPITER  AND   HIS  SPOTS. 

The  most  attractive  object  in  the  evening  sky  just  at 
this  time  is  the  giant  planet  Jupiter.  The  markings  upon 
his  belts  have  for  some  time  been  attracting  the  universal 
attention  of  astronomers  and  amateur  observers.  Always 
enigmatical,  this  planet  has,  since  the  appearance  of  the 
great  red  spot  in  its  southern  hemisphere,  become  still 
more  perplexing  to  the  astronomer.  It  was  at  first  sup- 
posed that  this  prominent  object  would  form  a  ready 


means  of  determining  the  true  period  of  the  planet's 
revolution,  but  that  result  has  not  been  realized.  On 
the  contrary,  if  anything,  it  has  rendered  that  problem 
still  more  doubtful.  Soon  after  the  "great"  spot  was 
discovered,  two  or  three  other  smaller,  but  still  plainly 
discernible  and  permanent  spots  were  observed  near 
by  the  larger  one.  Close  and  continued  observations 
of  these  several  spots  during  the  past  summer,  accord- 
ing to  the  published  reports  of  Professor  Barnard,  of 
Nashville,  Tennesee,  have  revealed  the  most  singular  fact 


SCIENCE  AND  INDUSTRY. 


'85 


yet  developed,  that  these  spots  are  not  identical  in  their 
revolutions,  as  would  be  the  case  if  they  were  absolutely 
fixed  to  the  central  nucleus  of  the  planet.  On  the  25th 
of  last  July,  the  center  of  one  of  the  small  spots  preceded 
the  center  of  the  large  spot  by  one  hour  and  thirty-five 
minutes.  On  the  22d  of  November,  the  center  of  the 
small  spot  preceded  the  center  of  the  large  one  by 
three  hours  and  seventeen  minutes.  The  large  spot 
had  thus  apparently  moved  backward  one  hour  and 
forty-two  minutes  between  July  25th  and  November 
22d,  showing  a  daily  difference  of  rotation  of  0.439  min- 
utes per  day.  At  this  rate  the  small  spot  would  gain  an 
entire  revolution  in  about  twenty-three  months.  There 
is  quite  a  difference  in  the  motion  of  all  the  spots  to  be 
seen  on  the  planet's  disk.  In  a  letter  to  Science,  dated 
November  29,  Professor  Barnard  writes  in  regard  to  this 
planet  as  follows  :  "The  region  occupied  by  the  equa- 
torial belt  is  subject  to  constant  and  quite  rapid  change, 
being  filled  at  times  with  the  most  delicately  soft,  plumy 
forms.  Brilliant  white  spots  are  not  unfrequent  in  this 
zone.  ...  All  the  objects  in  the  equatorial  zone  move 
with  a  very  great  velocity  in  the  direction  of  rotation, 
but  invariably  in  a  contrary  direction  to  that  pursued  by 
the  [great]  red  spot,  which  is  really  the  only  object  on 
the  planet  which  has  a  backward  motion.  Indeed,  it 
would  not  be  a  bad  comparison  to  compare  the  red  spot 
to  a  mighty  city  built  on  the  shore  of  a  vast  and  swiftly 
flowing  river,  which  is  constantly  being  filled  with  drift, 
and  an  occasional  glistening  mass  of  ice  tearing  its 
way  past  the  city  with  a  velocity  of  not  less  than  six  thou- 
sand miles  a  day.  In  such  a  comparison  the  city  would 
be  as  great  in  area  as  three-fourths  of  our  entire  earth, 
and  the  river  fully  sixteen  thousand  miles  in  breadth." 
Jupiter  passed  its  perihelion  on  the  25th  of  September 
last.  That  great  planet  then  reached  its  nearest  point 
to  the  sun,  and  was  also,  at  the  same  time,  within  a  few 
days  of  its  nearest  point  to  the  earth  ;  so  that  the  Rubi- 
con of  its  perihelion  and  its  nearest  approach  to  the  earth 
and  sun  has  already  passed.  At  its  perihelion,  Jupiter 
is  forty-six  million  miles  nearer  the  sun  than  at  its  aphe- 
lion. The  difference  between  the  two  intervals  of  dis- 
tance is  about  half  the  entire  average  distance  of  the 
earth  from  the  sun.  Yet  Jupiter,  at  its  nearest  approach, 
is  four  hundred  and  fifty  million  miles  from  the  great 
central  luminary.  Nearly  twelve  years  must  elapse  be- 
fore Jupiter  will  be  as  favorably  situated  for  observation 
as  he  is  at  this  time.  With  the  exception  of  Saturn, 
nothing  in  the  heavens  affords  a  more  interesting  sub- 
ject for  study  than  Jupiter  and  his  moons.  It  is  delight- 
ful to  watch  those  four  little  diamond-points  as  they 
move  in  rapid  succession  around  the  parent  body,  pass- 
ing now  as  dark  spots  across  his  disk,  then  behind  and 
eclipsed  by  it.  A  glimpse  of  its  moons  may  be  had  even 
through  a  good  opera-glass,  and  in  an  exceptionally  clear 
atmosphere,  at  a  considerable  elevation  above  the  sea, 
they  have  been  seen  by  the  unassisted  eye.  The  large 
spot  may  be  seen  with  a  five-inch  telescope.  When  this 
spot  is  just  beginning  to  appear  at  the  eastern  portion 
•of  Jupiter's  disk,  so  rapid  is  the  rotation  of  that  planet 
that  in  a  little  over  two  hours  it  will  have  reached  the 
center,  and  in  less  than  five  it  will  again  be  out  of  sight, 
having  passed  around  its  western  limb.  The  size  of  this 
spot  varies  somewhat  in  length,  but  is  quite  constant  in 
breadth.  Its  average  length  is  about  twenty-three  thou- 
sand miles,  by  a  breadth,  in  its  widest  portion,  of  six 
thousand  nine  hundred  miles — equal  in  area  to  about 
three-quarters  of  the  entire  surface  of  the  earth.  Its 
color  is  a  light  red.  Jupiter  turns  on  its  axis  in  a  little 


less  than  ten  hours,  so  that  an  observer  on  its  equator 
would  be  hurled  around  at  a  rate  of  five  hundred  miles 
a  minute  instead  of  the  comparatively  slow  progress  of 
seventeen  miles  that  marks  the  rate  of  the  earth's  revolu- 
tion at  its  equator. 


THE  COLORING  MATTER  OF  FLOWERS. 

Hitherto  it  has  generally  been  supposed  that  the  va- 
rious colors  observable  in  flowers  and  leaves  were  due 
to  different  kinds  of  matter  which  enter  into  the  com- 
position of  the  leaves  and  petals — each  color  being  a 
different  chemical  combination,  and  so  constituted  that 
the  substance  of  no  one  color  could  in  any  natural  way 
be  made  to  take  up  another  color.  Recently,  however, 
Prof.  Schnetzler  read  an  interesting  paper  upon  this 
subject  before  the  Vadois  Society  of  Natural  Science, 
in  which  that  gentleman  details  a  series  of  experiments 
recently  made  by  him,  which  present  this  interesting 
subject  in  an  entirely  new  light.  The  professor  showed 
by  experiment  that  when  the  color  of  a  flower  has  been 
extracted  by  mascerating  the  flower  in  alcohol,  one  may, 
by  adding  different  acids  or  alkalies,  obtain  from  that  one 
color  all  the  various  other  colors  which  plants  exhibit. 
Take,  for  example,  a  peony :  when  mascerated  in  al- 
cohol a  violet-red  liquid  is  obtained.  Now,  if  some 
acid  oxalate  of  potassa  be  added  to  the  fluid,  it  becomes 
pure  red ;  if  soda  be  added,  it  will  appear  violet,  blue, 
or  green,  according  to  the  proportion  of  soda  employed. 
If  a  green  color  is  produced,  it  will  appear  red  by  trans- 
mitted light,  just  as  a  solution  of  'chlorophyl  does.  It 
was  held  by  the  professor  that  these  changes  of  color 
might  quite  as  well  be  obtained  naturally  in  the  plant 
by  giving  it  the  proper  plant  nourishment,  since  in  all 
plants  acid  or  alkaline  matters  always  exist.  It  was 
furthermore  stated  that  the  change  from  green  to  red 
in  "autumn  leaves"  is  due  to  the  action  of  the  tannin, 
which  is  developed  in  the  leaves.  Hence,  without  af- 
firming it  absolutely,  the  professor  believes  that  there  is 
in  plants  and  flowers  only  one  coloring  matter — chloro- 
phyl— which,  being  modified  by  certain  agents,  fur- 
nishes all  the  various  tints  that  flowers  and  leaves  ex- 
hibit. As  for  white  flowers,  said  the  professor,  it  is 
well  known  that  their  cells  are  filled  with  a  colorless 
fluid,  opacity  being  due  to  the  air  contained  in  their 
numerous  cells.  This  may  be  proved  by  placing  the 
petals  of  such  flowers  under  the  receiver  of  an  air-pump, 
when  they  are  seen  to  lose  their  opacity  and  become 
transparent  as  the  air  escapes.  If  the  deductions  which 
the  professor  makes  from  his  experiments  are  correct,  a 
wide  and  most  interesting  field  of  experiment  is  hereby 
opened  up  to  the  scientific  florist. 


THE   SHIP  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

In  attempting  to  replace  wood  with  iron  in  the  build- 
ing of  heavy  ships  many  difficulties  have  been  encoun- 
tered, and  resort  was  finally  had  to  steel ;  but  still  the 
results  were  not  what  was  expected.  Many,  even  of  the 
best  plates  produced,  failed  to  pass  the  requisite  inspec- 
tion, and,  in  numerous  cases,  when  they  did  pass,  and 
were  put  into  actual  service  in  the  hulls  of  vessels, 
cracked  and  gave  out  in  most  inexplicable  ways.  Seams 
would  sometimes  open  up  the  whole  length  of  a  plate, 
the  fracture  of  which  showed  no  sufficient  cause  for 
such  weakness.  But  still  the  steel  manufacturers  of 


i86 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Great  Britain,  though  greatly  discouraged,  would  not 
give  it  up.  They  called  to  their  assistance  the  best 
scientific  talent  of  the  world  to  study  out  the  problem, 
to  determine  where  the  difficulty  existed,  and  to  devise 
a  way  to  remedy  it.  England's  supremacy  on  the  ocean 
depended  upon  the  successful  solution  of  the  problem. 
The  failures  were  many ;  the  experiments  were  tedious 
and  costly ;  but  success  seems  to  have  finally  crowned 
their  efforts,  and -we  may  now  safely  predict  that  the 
ships  of  the  future  will  be  constructed  of  steel;  that  they 
will  be  far  more  durable,  much  cheaper  in  the  end, 
able  to  carry  more  freight  in  proportion  to  size,  be  safer 
from  the  ordinary  danger  of  the  seas,  whether  from 
foundering,  stranding  upon  a  lee-shore,  or  striking  upon 
sunken  rocks,  and  finally  that  they  will  secure  a  ma- 
terial addition  to  the  profits  of  a  voyage  over  ships  of 
either  iron  or  wood.  Owing  to  the  improved  processes 
introduced  into  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  its  conver- 
sion into  steel,  plates  are  now  made  which  will  endure  a 
tensile  strain  of  from  twenty-six  to  thirty  tons  per  inch, 
and  the  ductility  of  which  satisfies  all  the  bending  and 
punching  tests  which  the  most  rigid  inspection  can  pre- 
scribe. Ships  built  in  English  dock-yards  of  such  im- 
proved steel  are  already  afloat,  and  giving  the  most  en- 
tire satisfaction.  The  Cunard  Company  are  now  build- 
ing a  large  steamer  of  this  improved  steel.  The  build- 
ing of  steel  steamships  is  no  longer  experimental.  And 
notwithstanding,  less  than  five  years  ago,  British  steel 
manufacturers  were  on  the  point  of  abandoning  in  de- 
spair their  efforts  in  this  direction,  steel  is  to-day  vic- 
torious, and  even  the  British  Admiralty  accepts  the  fact. 


A  SCIENTIFIC  APPLICATION  OF  THE  PHO- 
TOPHONE. 

Prof.  Bell's  newly  invented  instrument  for  the  repro- 
duction of  sound  through  the  agency  of  a  beam  of 
light,  is  being  applied  to  the  study  of  the  solar  surface. 
While  Mr.  Bell  was  in  Paris,  recently,  M.  Janssen  hav- 
ing informed  him  that  he  had  detected  movements  of 
prodigious  rapidity  in  the  photospheric  matter,  Mr. 


Bell  suggested  the  idea  of  employing  his  photophone 
for  the  reproduction,  at  the  earth's  surface,  of  the 
sounds  which  must  necessarily  accompany  such  move- 
ments. M.  Janssen  approved  the  idea,  and  requested 
Mr.  Bell  to  attempt  its  realization  at  the  Mendon  Ob- 
servatory, where  all  necessary  instruments  and  facilities 
would  be  placed  at  his  disposal.  The  first  attempt  was 
made  on  the  soth  of  October,  but  the  phenomena  were 
not  sufficiently  decided  to  be  regarded  as  successful; 
yet  Mr.  Bell  hopes  to  succeed  by  continued  study  and 
perseverance.  Experiments  will,  therefore,  be  contin- 
ued. M.  Janssen  holds  that  the  idea  is  one  of  so  much 
importance  that  its  author,  Mr.  Bell,  should  be  fully 
recognized  in  his  priority  of  its  conception. 


THE  SUN   RECORDING  ITS   BRILLIANCY. 

An  instrument  for  recording  the  intensity  and  dura- 
tion of  sunshine  was  devised  as  early  as  1856,  by  Mr.  J. 
F.  Campbell  of  England ;  but  it  has  never,  until  quite 
recently,  been  made  thoroughly  practical  and  reliable. 
Still,  even  in  its  imperfect  form,  it  has  been  made  to  do 
duty  for  several  years  at  Greenwich,  and  Kew,  and 
several  private  observatories  in  England.  The  instru- 
ment consists  of  an  ordinary  "burning  glass,"  or  lens, 
the  focus  of  which  is  made  to  keep  its  place  on  a  con- 
stantly moving  strip  of  paper.  The  manifest  difficulties 
of  properly  adjusting  the  complicated  movements  in- 
volved in  such  a  work  have  only  quite  recently  been 
fully  overcome  by  the  genius  and  patience  of  Prof. 
Stokes  of  England,  whose  improved  instrument  has  re- 
cently been  set  up  in  some  thirty  stations  in  the  British 
Isles.  We  are  not  advised  as  to  whether  the  instrument 
has  been  introduced  into  this  country  ;  but  if  it  will  do 
what  it  is  credited  with,  it  must  soon  become  a  part  of 
the  ordinary  equipment  of  every  important  meteorologi- 
cal station  in  the  world ;  for  by  it  we  may,  in  time,  ob- 
tain a  sufficient  record  of  a  meteorological  element  of 
primary  importance  in  its  relations  to  agriculture  and 
to  the  public  health,  but  which  has  heretofore  been  very 
imperfectly  registered. 


ART   AND   ARTISTS. 


RICHARD  WAGNER. 

This  great  art  reformer,  composer,  poet,  and  critic, 
who  will  have  completed  his  sixty-eighth  year  on  the 
22d  of  next  May,  has  just  finished  a  new  musical 
drama.  Parsifal,  as  it  is  called,  sets  forth  in  three  acts 
an  episode  in  the  wonderful  story  of  the  Holy  Grail, 
which  has  passed  through  the  fire  of  Wagner's  imagina- 
tion and  been  transformed  into  a  drama,  retaining  the 
mediaeval  garb,  but  dealing  with  problems  of  the  deep- 
est ethical  significance  to  the  world  to-day.  The  text 
of  this  drama  was  published  three  years  ago,  but  the 
music  has  but  just  been  finished  by  the  composer  in 
Italy,  where  he  has  spent  almost  the  whole  of  the  past 
year.  Parsifal  is  a  work  which  no  degree  of  familiarity 
with  the  previous  creations  of  Wagner  could  have  led 
one  to  expect.  Both  in  form  and  in  subject  it  is  wide- 


ly different  from  everything  that  its  author  has  writ- 
ten, and  yet  we  shall  not  be  surprised  if  it  be  ultimately 
accepted  as  the  most  remarkable  work  that  Wagner  has 
produced.  From  the  loose  structure  and  shaky  versifi- 
cation of  Wagner's  first  opera,  Rienzi  ( 1839),  it  would 
have  needed  a  bold  critic  to  predict  that  the  same  com- 
poser might  one  day  show  by  his  sense  of  the  right  be- 
ginning of  a  drama,  by  his  clear  vision  of  the  end  from 
the  beginning,  by  the  compactness  and  due  adjustment 
of  all  that  intervened,  that  he  was  no  mean  follower,  in 
power  of  dramatic  construction,  of  the  great  Greek  mas- 
ters. In  point  of  formal  execution,  the  poetry  of  Parsi- 
fal exhibits  a  great  deviation  from  the  theories  which  gov- 
erned the  composer  when  he  was  writing  the  Ring  des 
Nibelungen,  in  1852.  Alliterative  verse  has  been  aban- 
doned, and  with  it  the  blemishes  which  came  from 
forced  alliteration  are  absent.  Wagner  has  now  adopt- 


ART  AND  ARTISTS. 


187 


ed  a  poetical  form  which  is  chiefly  marked  by  its  great 
rapidity  of  change  from  one  rhythm  to  another.  This 
makes  the  language  admirably  adapted  to  the  freedom 
of  Wagner's  musical  treatment,  while  at  the  same  time 
the  work  is  marked  throughout  by  a  compactness  and 
sustained  intensity  of  expression.  The  first  performance 
of  Parsifal  is  to  take  place  next  August  at  Bayreuth, 
Bavaria,  in  Wagner's  special  theater.  As  at  the  per- 
formance of  the  Ring  des  Nibelungen  in  1876,  the  best 
singers  and  musicians  from  all  Germany  will  take  part. 
Wagner's  plan  for  raising  the  standard  of  German  op- 
eratic and  musical  performance  will  thus  be  fairly  start- 
ed, and  henceforth  there  will  be  annual  gatherings  at 
Bayreuth  of  the  leading  singers  and  musicians  of  Ger- 
many, who  will  strive  to  attain  an  exemplary  method  of 
rendering  the  works  both  of  Wagner  and  of  other  great 
masters. 


THE  FINE  ARTS  AT   HARVARD. 

A  well  known  writer  on  art,  Mr.  P.  G.  Hamerton,  re- 
cently expressed  the  hope  that  as  the  teaching  of  art 
advanced  toward  perfection  there  would  be  ' '  two  pro- 
fessorships of  fine  art  in  each  university,  one  of  aesthet- 
ics, including  art  history,  and  the  other  of  technics,  in- 
cluding practical  knowledge  of  all  kinds."  This  very 
important  division  of  art-teaching  has  been  hitherto  car- 
ried out  in  this  country,  so  far  as  we  know,  only  at  Har- 
vard University.  There  for  the  past  six  years  an  art 
department  has  been  steadily  growing  up  in  which  the 
teaching  of  art  history  and  of  art  technics  is  conducted 
by  two  men  of  the  highest  competence  in  their  respective 
courses.  Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  whose  recent  voP 
ume  we  noticed  in  December,  holds  the  professorship  of 
art  history,  and  the  broad  culture  which  has  won  him 
the  esteem  of  the  best  minds  in  England  and  America 
makes  his  lectures  invaluable  to  the  student.  The  teach- 
ing of  drawing  and  painting  is  in  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Charles  H.  Moore.  How  splendidly  Mr.  Moore  unites 
complete  technical  skill  with  a  poetic  sense  of  beauty, 
visitors  at  Messrs.  Morris  &  Kennedy's  have  had  a 
slight  opportunity  of  judging  from  the  few  water-color 
drawings  of  Mr.  Moore  exhibited  there.  But  it  would 
be  necessary  to  visit  the  rooms  of  the  art  department  at 
Harvard  before  any  estimate  could  be  formed  of  the 
scope  of  Mr.  Moore's  powers.  Having  seen  there  much 
of  his  original  work,  as  well  as  his/a<:  similes  of  master- 
pieces by  Titian,  Tintoret,  Veronese,  Carpaccio,  Botti- 
celli, and  Ffa  Angelico,  we  feel  it  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say  there  are  very  few  painters  in  the  world  who 
could  do  such  work.  No  wonder  that  Mr.  Ruskin,  on 
seeing  these  pictures,  endeavored  to  tempt  Mr.  Moore 
to  give  up  his  connection  with  Harvard  and  to  paint  ex- 
clusively for  England.  Even  within  the  limited  range 
of  the  water-colors  already  referred  to,  the  elements  of 
Mr.  Moore's  strength  are  distinctly  visible.  The  exquis- 


ite texture  of  the   "  Fleur-de-Lis,"  the  delicate  delinea- 
tion and  warm  tints  of  the  ' '  Rocks  on  the  Coast  of 
Maine,"  are  evident  to  the  first  observer.    But  especially 
in  the  views  of  the  "Simplon"  do  we  find  that  sensi- 
tiveness to  outline,  that  mosaic-like  arrangement  of  pure 
colors,  that  quiet  chiaroscuro  preserving  the  qualities  of 
hues  even  in  shadow,  which  Mr.   Moore  reproduces  so 
beautifully  in  hisfac  similes  of  the  great  masters.     The 
presence  of  these  three  qualities  in  his  works  has  its  ex- 
act correspondence  in  the  scheme  of  instruction  which 
Mr.  Moore  sets  before  his  pupils.     From  a  little  pam- 
phlet in  which  Mr.  Moore  calls  attention  to  the  distinct- 
ive qualities  of  each  fac  simile  he  has  made,  we  make 
this  extract :    ' '  Finished  painting  involves  difficulties 
which  are  vastly  too  many  and  great  to  be  taken  all  to- 
gether and  conquered  at  once.     These  difficulties  must 
therefore  be  separated  and  arranged  in  proper  order  for 
rudimentary  practice.     The  first  broad  division  of  them 
is  that  stated  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  in  his  eleventh 
discourse,  where  he  says,   '  The  properties  of  all  ob- 
jects, as  far  as  a  painter  is  concerned  with  them,  are  the 
outline  or  drawing,  the  color,  and  the  light  and  shade. 
The  drawing  gives  the  form ;  the  color,  its  visible  qual- 
ity ;  and  the  light  and  shade,  its  solidity. '    This  divis- 
ion is,  of  course,  generally  well  enough  understood,  but 
the  importance  of  just  this  order  is  by  no  means  well 
understood  at  the  present  time.     It  is,  however,  not 
only  the  order  upon  which  the  great  masters  of  the  an- 
cient and  mediaeval  schools  have  instinctively  or  con- 
sciously proceeded,  but  it  is  the  only  order  of  procedure 
which  has  yielded  good  results  in  modern  times."     Mr. 
Moore  has  therefore  adopted  in  his  scheme  of  instruc- 
tion the  following  order :    ' '  ist,  outline ;  2d,  color ;  3d, 
chiaroscuro.     And  not  only  are  each  of  these  visual 
properties  of  things  to  be,  more  or  less  separately,  mas- 
tered in  this  order,  but  also  (and  this  is  still  more  im- 
portant) in  the  treatment  of  any  subject  the  student  is 
always  to  ask  himself:    ist,  What  is  its  outline?    ad, 
What  is  its  color?    3d,  What  is  its  chiaroscuro?    The 
practice  of  the  academic  schools,  of  attending  to  chiaros- 
curo without  previous  reference  to  color  as  a  basis  and 
moderating  influence,  led  to  extravagance  of  chiaros- 
curo and  the  loss  of  color-power  by  those  schools.    And 
the  practice  of  some  present  schools,  of  attending  to 
light  and  shade  without  previously  Securing  a  correct 
outline,  hinders  the  development  of  sensitiveness  to  the 
most  essential  characteristics  of  form.     Whereas  the 
study  of  outline  and  color  is  always  safe,  and  some  of  the 
most  beautiful  forms  of  art  are  the  result  of  it  alone. 
Egyptian  painting  is  nothing  else,  ancient  Etruscan  and 
early  Italian  painting  are  little  more."    These  are  the 
principles   of  art-teaching  at  Harvard.     It  is   not  too 
much  to  hope  that  under  the  inspiration  of  men  like  Mr. 
Moore  and  Mr.  Norton,  and  sharing  besides  in  the  cult- 
ure diffused  by  a  great  university,  students  are  leaving 
Harvard  who  will  ultimately  take  high  rank  with  the 
artists  of  the  world. 


i88 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


DRAMA   AND    STAGE. 


MR.  SHERIDAN'S  ENGAGEMENT  was  not  an  extended 
•one.  Yet  in  one  way  and  another  it  sufficed  to  make 
him  well  known  to  the  people  of  San  Francisco.  Be- 
sides appearing  in  Louis  XI. ,  in  The  Lyons  Mail,  in 
Wild  Oats,  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  and  in  Riche- 
lieu, not  to  mention  two  rather  unlucky  benefit  per- 
formances, he  undertook,  or  was  compelled  to  under- 
take, Othello,  Hamlet,  and  Sir  Giles  Overreach — that, 
too,  with  the  limited  resources  of  a  stock  company  and 
at  short  notice.  The  necessarily  hurried  nature  of  his 
study,  and,  with  some  exception,  the  poor  character  of 
his  support,  made  heavy  demands  upon  his  resources 
and  developed  some  of  those  faults  from  which  even 
genius  is  not  free.  But  on  the  whole  we  do  not  regret 
these  unfavorable  circumstances.  They  put  him  on  his 
mettle,  brought  him  all  the  nearer  to  his  public,  for 
there  is  something  pathetic  in  genius  struggling  with 
obstacles;  and  though  we  are  convinced  he  can  do 
much  better  under  more  favorable  auspices,  the  fact 
still  remains  that  he  did  achieve  a  remarkable  success 
in  the  most  exacting  rdles.  We  are  also  glad  to  note 
that  his  is  not  the  versatility  of  talent,  but  of  genius. 
We  do  not  tire  of  Mr.  Sheridan's  art,  for  it  is  ever  fresh 
and  living.  Surely,  whatever  he  has  done  for  himself, 
he  cannot  complain  that  nature  has  neglected  him.  He 
is  as  rich  in  the  outward  gifts  as  he  is  in  the  higher 
qualities  of  head  and  heart.  With  a  fine  manly  figure, 
a  strong  and  fascinating  face,  and  a  voice  that  lends 
itself  equally  to  the  whisper  of  death,  the  querulousness 
of  disease,  the  storm  of  hate  and,  passion,  and  the 
broken  accents  of  pathos  and  love,  he  is  fully  equipped 
for  his  profession.  He  has  but  to  go  forth  to  make 
other  cities  tributary  to  his  power.  This  is  the  lan- 
guage of  enthusiasm  we  know,  but  it  is  language  we 
are  not  disposed  to  qualify.  Those  who  remember  the 
dignity  of  his  "Shylock,"  the  astuteness  of  his  "Louis," 
the  moral  strength  of  his  "Richelieu,"  the  passionate 
sweep  of  his  "Othello,"  and  the  noble  pathos  of  his 
"Hamlet,"  will  readily  allow  us  to  place  him,  for  power 
to  conceive  and  intelligence  to  interpret,  in  the  very 
front  rank  of  his  profession. 


THE  MERCHANT  OF  VENICE  was  the  most  interest- 
ing of  the  Shaksperian  series,  for  two  reasons:  First — 
Because  it  is  rare  to  see  one  of  his  plays  put  upon  the 
stage  with  any  regard'  to  stage  detail  or  to^the  author's 
text.  Second — Because  it  raised  the  question  as  to 
whether  Mr.  Sheridan's  impersonation  of  the  Jew  was 
the  correct  one.  As  to  the  first  point,  we  are  bold 
enough  to  be  of  the  opinion  that  Shakspefe's^layTa^ 
adapted  to  stage  representation,  and  we  make  the^state- 
ment  without  reservation  that  they  can  be  played  by  an 
ordinary  stock  company,  and  even  without  any  great 
artists  in  the  caste,  so  as  to  give  at  least  as  much  pleas- 
ure as  those  dramatic  works  which  are  produced  every 
day.  For,  though  some  of  Shakspere's  language  has 
become  obsolete,  though  there  are  allusions  to  customs 
no  longer  current,  though  there  is  a  wealth  of  imagery 
unknown  to  our  more  reserved  age,  he  is  still  essential- 


ly a  dramatic  artist  and  a  practical  playright.  These 
propositions  may  seem  almost  superfluous  to  some  of 
our  readers,  but  we  have  heard  them  frequently  con- 
troverted, and  that  by  men  of  considerable  critical  taste, 
and  the  practice  of  our  stage  has  been  in  accordance 
with  their  views.  We  are  informed  that  Shakspere  is 
old-fashioned,  out  of  date,  antiquated  !  Our  forefathers 
they  tell  us,  had  a  peculiar  faculty  of  imagination  which 
differed  from  and  transcended  our  .own.  All  this  seems 
to  us  dangerous  generalization,  which  we  would  not 
even  notice  if  not  on  the  lips  of  eminent  authority. 
Why,  then,  when  put  to  the  practical  test  of  representa- 
tion, does  not  Shakspere  seem  to  justify  what  we  claim 
for  him?  Simply  because  he  has  been  over-subtilized 
by  the  critic  and  played  with  too  reverent  convention 
by  the  actor.  If  they  would  apply  the  same  rules  of 
common  sense  to  Shakspere  that  they  do  to  Sardou, 
much  would  be  gained;  for  though  Shakspere  does  re- 
quire genius,  positive  genius,  to  meet  the  top  of  ex- 
pectation, still  this  method  would  not  fail  to  give  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  pleasure.  It  may  be  urged  that  all  this 
amounts  to  an  appeal  for  naturalness — that  naturalness 
being  the  very  aim  of  art,  and  art  being  confessedly 
difficult,  we  have  made  but  little  advance.  There  is 
some  force  in  this  objection,  and  we  offer  the  following 
suggestions,  which  appear  to  us  calculated  to  meet  it: 
First — Without  some  study — some  literary  study,  we 
mean — it  is  impossible  to  render  the  lines  with  due 
perspicuity  and  effect.  As  there  are  ample  facilities  for 
such  study  open  to  the  humblest  purse,  there  is  little 
excuse  for  not  reading  a  cheap  edition  of  the  play  in 
question  with  notes.  Second — Blank  verse  should  not 
have  the  cadence  of  song  nor  be  mumbled  away  like 
prose.  There  is  a  golden  mean  by  which  the  dramatic 
points  are  preserved  and  some  attention  paid  to  har- 
mony. We  admit  that  this  is  a  difficult  accomplish- 
ment, and  one  which  few  attain.  Miss  Mary  Anderson's 
reading  of  "Ion"  is  a  notable  case  of  success.  Third 
— The  rhyming  couplets  at  the  end  of  the  scenes  are 
put  for  the  purpose  of  dramatic  time  —  to  give  a  more 
tripping  measure  to  the  verse.  The  rhyme  should  not 
be  accented,  but  allowed  to  drop  gracefully  and  softly 
from  the  lips.  Fourth — And  above  all,  there  should 
be  a  sharp  separation  between  matters  of  mere  orna- 
ment and  matters  of  essential  meaning,  for  Shak- 
spere's glowing  intellect  threw  off  metaphor  like  sparks 
from  a  wheel.  What  the  great  master  did  instinctively 
we  must  imitate.  The  emphasis  should  be  strong  only 
on  those  words  that  convey  the  meaning.  There  are 
some  exceptions  to  this  rule.  Still,  its  importance  can- 
not be  over  estimated.  For  when  by  undue  emphasis 
points  are  made  of  metaphors  and  ornaments,  not  only 
the  ornaments  themselves  are  deprived  of  their  graceful- 
ness, but  the  attention  of  the  audience  is  distracted 
from  the  main  current  of  the  action,  and  the  text  is  ren- 
dered absolutely  unintelligible.  For  instance,  those 
famous  test  lines  in  the  trial  scene, 

"The  quality  of  mercy  is  not  strain'd  ; 
It  droppeth  as  the  gentle  rain  from  heaven 
Upon  the  place  beneath," 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


189 


Are  generally  read  with  emphasis  on  the  three  words 
"droppeth,"  "heaven,"  and  "beneath."  This  amounts 
to  making  three  dramatic  points  of  a  pure  metaphorical 
expression,  and  covers  the  action,  the  source,  and  the 
place,  whereas  the  mind  should  be  permitted  to  dwell 
-only  on  the  process  of  the  gentle  fall  of  rain.  This  is 


effected  by  emphasizing  "droppeth"  and  allowing  the 
voice  to  descend  gradually  from  the  climax.  This  fault 
pervades  almost  every  line,  scene,  and  act  in  the 
modern  delivery,  and  is  a  very  tiresome  one.  We  are 
glad  to  see  that  Mr.  Sheridan,  whatever  may  be  his  theo- 
retic views,  is  emphatically  of  our  opinion  in  his  practice. 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES.  From  the  accession 
of  Queen  Victoria  to  the  Berlin  Congress.  By  Justin 
McCarthy.  In  two  volumes.  New  York :  Harper  & 
Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A. 
L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

Mr.  McCarthy,  though  an  Irishman,  has  written  a 
work  which  has  been  received  with  universal  applause  at 
the  hands  of  English  critics  for  the  accuracy  of  its  facts 
and  the  sobriety  of  its  judgments.  His  History  of  Our 
Own  Times  has  taken  its  place  with  the  half  dozen  nota- 
ble historical  successes  of  the  last  ten  years.  Though 
not  to  be  compared  with  that  model  of  historical  study, 
Freeman's  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  it  may  yet 
be  fairly  ranked  with  Bryce's  Holy  Roman  Empire  and 
Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  It  is  inferior  in 
dignity  of  style  to  either  of  those  works,  but  it  is  never- 
theless sufficiently  careful  in  research,  lucid  in  state- 
ment, and  dispassionate  in  tone,  to  have  secured  for  it- 
self a  position  which  will  not  soon  be  superseded.  We 
must,  however,  take  exception  to  that  manner  of  re- 
garding our  own  times  which  induces  Mr.  McCarthy  to 
date -their  beginning  from  the  accession  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria. Except  for  the  picturesque  convenience  of  be- 
ginning with  a  new  reign,  the  division  is  purely  arbi- 
trary. National  movements  are  no  longer  necessarily 
contemporaneous  with  the  rise  of  sovereigns,  and  it  is 
preeminently  characteristic  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Vic- 
toria that  the  great  tendencies  with  which  her  rule  will 
be  identified  in  history  had  their  conspicuous  begin- 
ning five  years  before  she  ascended  the  throne.  The 
Reform  Bill  of  1832  marks  the  first  considerable  in- 
crease in  this  century  of  the  popular  share  in  English 
government.  It  was  the  first  gleam  of  light  after  years 
of  Tory  darkness.  Up  till  1832,  suspicion,  engendered 
by  the  French  Revolution,  of  everything  that  seemed 
like  a  tendency  to  democracy,  had  dominated  English 
politics.  But  with  the  success  of  the  Reform  Bill  began 
that  movement  which  has  ever  since  been  the  main- 
spring of  English  liberty  and  progress,  and  has  for  its 
present  leader  the  greatest  anti-feudal  protestant  of  this 
century,  Mr.  Gladstone.  Not  to  have  begun,  therefore, 
with  the  history  of  the  Reform  Bill  seems  to  us  to  de- 
tract greatly  from  the  completeness  of  Mr.  McCarthy's 
work.  He  may  have  wished  to  avoid  the  suspicion  of 
partisanship  ;  but  he  has  secured  that  end  at  the  ex- 
pense of  historical  continuity.  Apart  from  this  we  have 
little  but  praise  for  the  manner  in  which  Mr.  McCarthy 
has  carried  out  his  plan.  Without  attempting  in  our 
narrow  limits  to  give  examples  of  his  concise  descrip- 
tion of  events,  his  vivid  portraiture  of  statesmen,  his 
clear  exposition  of  political  measures,  his  candid  and 
unsparing  criticism  of  acts  which  have  detracted  in  his 
opinion  from  his  country's  honor,  it  will  suffice  to  say 
that  every  important  movement  in  English  life  to-day 
may  be  traced  in  Mr.  McCarthy's  pages  from  its  origin 


to  its  present  stage  of  development.  The  Eastern  ques- 
tion, the  Irish  question,  extension  of  the  franchise,  lim- 
itation of  the  privileges  of  landed  proprietors,  national 
education,  movements  in  the  churches,  free  trade,  colo- 
nial government— these  are  some  of  the  subjects  which 
unfold  themselves  in  Mr.  McCarthy's  pages  in  the  order 
in  which  they  have  arisen  during  the  past  thirty  or  forty 
years.  Already,  in  our  daily  newspapers,  when  touch- 
ing upon  British  politics,  we  notice  a  commendable  in- 
crease of  knowledge,  which  is  directly  traceable  to  Mr. 
McCarthy's  volumes.  His  work,  indeed,  will  henceforth 
have  a  place  in  the  education  of  every  man  who  wishes 
to  keep  abreast  of  the  times,  and  no  reader  will  rise 
from  its  perusal  without  a  quickened  sense  of  the  rich- 
ness and  variety  of  the  problems  which  British  politics 
call  on  men  to  solve. 


HISTORY  OF  Music.  In  the  form  of  lectures.  By 
Frederic  Louis  Ritter.  In  two  volumes.  Boston : 
Oliver  Ditson  &  Co.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  at 
Gray's  Music  Store. 

The  wide-spread  ignorance  concerning  the  history  of 
music,  which  is  conspicuously  noticeable  in  circles  other- 
wise respectably  educated,  makes  us  ready  to  welcome 
almost  any  work  which  presents  in  an  interesting  man- 
ner the  leading  facts  of  musical  history.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  of  the  large  body  of  people  in  every 
important  American  city  who  profess  to  be  delighted  by 
the  performance  of  works  which  it  requires  considerable 
musical  culture  to  enjoy,  only  a  ridiculously  small  num- 
ber have  ever  passed  beyond  the  rudiments  of  musical 
knowledge.  If  a  series  of  concerts  were  made  up  of  se- 
lections from  the  works  of  Palestrina,  Bach,  Handel, 
Gluck,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  how  many  of  the  audience 
would  be  able  to  tell  the  date,  within  fifty  years,  at  which 
each  of  these  composers  was  born,  or  what  was  the 
character  of  their  works  at  different  periods  of  their 
lives,  or  how  far  they  developed  musical  form  beyond 
the  skill  of  their  predecessors?  We  venture  the  opinion 
that  at  such  a  concert  not  only  would  these  questions 
go  unanswered,  but  the'  fashionable  audience  would  be 
even  unable  to  distinguish  the  works  of  the  composers 
mentioned  from  those  of  any  modern  masters  that 
might  be  played  without  their  title  at  the  same  time. 
This  would  not  be  the  case  if  musical  amateurs  made  a 
study  of  musical  history,  and  then  used  the  skill  of  their 
voices  and  fingers  to  interpret  for  themselves  some  of 
the  works  of  the  composers  of  different  times.  In  this 
way  a  knowledge  of  musical  style  would  be  obtained 
which  would  make  it  just  as  exceptional  for  a  lover  of 
music  to  confuse  widely  separate  composers  as  it  would 
be  for  a  reader  of  poetry  to  confuse  Spenser  and  Ten- 
nyson. To  this  end  the  two  little  volumes  before  us 
will  be  found  a  useful  guide.  Prof.  Ritter  has  made  an 


190 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


outline  of  musical  history,  not  a  "history  of  music." 
But  he  furnishes  a  great  deal  of  entertaining  informa- 
tion, is  dispassionate  in  his  judgments,  and  presents 
not  only  his  own  opinions,  but  copious  extracts  from 
standard  works  of  English,  German,  and  Italian  writers. 
Beginning  with  an  account  of  the  crude  state  of  music 
in  the  middle  ages,  the  author  shows  how  the  art  was 
advanced  by  the  successive  efforts  of  St.  Gregory,  the 
monk  Hucbald,  and  Guido  of  Arezzo,  until  an  art  of 
harmony  was  gradually  evolved,  which  combined  with 
the  Gregorian  chant  and  the  folk-song  to  raise  musical 
art  to  the  perfection  it  reached  in  the  sixteenth  century 
at  the  hands  of  Palestrina.  The  rise  of  the  oratorio, 
its  connection  with  the  early  miracle  plays,  and  its  treat- 
ment by  Bach  and  Handel,  are  then  discussed.  The 
opera,  which  arose  at  the  same  time,  and  first  delighted 
cultivated  Italy  while  Shakspere's  plays  were  first  per- 
forming in  England,  is  next  considered,  together  with 
the  corresponding  changes  in  musical  forms  and  the 
treatment  of  the  opera  by  Scarlatti  in  Italy,  by  Purcell 
in  England,  by  Lully  and  Rameau  in  France,  by  Gluck 
in  Germany.  This  brings  us  near  to  our  times,  and 
after  describing  the  rise  and  development  of  instrument- 
al music,  the  author  enters  upon  his  account  of  modern 
composers  down  to  Berlioz,  Liszt,  and  Wagner.  His 
judgments  are  not  always  correct.  He  calls  Schumann, 
for  instance,  w  the  greatest  composer  since  Beethoven's 
death,"  and  speaks  of  the  oratorio,  "  this  noble  form  of 
musical  drama,  as  the  ideal,  the  goal,  to  reach  which 
few  composers  have  the  strength  of  talent  and  the 
necessary  knowledge."  The  oratorio  is  not  "a  form  of 
musical  drama  "  at  all.  Only  in  a  partial  sense  can  it 
be  said  to  have  any  "form,"  and  it  is  no  more  a  work 
of  art  than  anything  else  which  may  be  added  to  or  cur- 
tailed without  destroying  its  organic  unity.  But  Prof. 
Ritter's  work  will  nevertheless  be  found  full  of  interest 
to  musical  amateurs. 


SAND,  AND  BIG  JACK  SMALL.  By  J.  W.  Gaily.  1880. 
Chicago:  Belford,  Clarke  &  Co.  For  sale  in  San 
Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

That  the  typical  early  Californian  had  a  certain  rug- 
gedness,  directness,  and  manliness  of  character,  even 
those  who  never  saw  him  could  infer  from  his  "counter- 
feit presentment "  in  the  pages  of  fiction.  Whether  pict- 
ured as  miner,  mule-driver,  ranchero,  or  gentleman-gam- 
bler, the  portrait  lacks  verisimilitude  if  it  misses  a  cer- 
tain self-reliant  poise,  a  freedom  from  conventionality, 
a  disdain  of  affectation  manifested  in  every  gesture  and 
tone.  But  precisely  because  such  traits  as  these  are 
broad  and  well  marked  are  they  difficult  to  depict.  In 
the  hand  of  the  mediocre  artist  they  degenerate  into 
mere  coarseness  or  swagger.  Any  one  can  daub  color 
on  a  canvas,  but  it  takes  a  master  to  paint  a  sunset. 
There  is,  perhaps,  as  much  danger  in  over-refining  such 
characters.  It  is  a  narrow  line  between  these  two  ex- 
tremes, and  the  ability  to  walk  it  without  toppling  to- 
ward either  side  constitutes  the  artist.  One  of  the  two 
or  three  who  have  accomplished  this  feat  is  Dr.  J.  W. 
Gaily.  His  characterizations  of  rough  life  in  the  mount- 
ains are  unexcelled.  His  ox-teams  creak  slowly  around 
the  bend,  and  the  driver  leans  on  his  whip-stock  to  let 
you  pass.  The  incident  is  a  slight  one,  but  it  remains 
vividly  in  the  mind.  You  can  see  the  cloud  of  dust, 
and  hear  the  chains  rattling  abput  the  wagon  with  its 
great,  towering  load,  on  top  of  which  lies  ' '  that  Injin, 
Gov.  Nye,"  asleep.  The  patient  animals  plod  dutifully 


on,  and  the  track  of  the  sliding  wheels  stretches  far  back 
to  the  rear. 


"Big Jack  Small  has  a  head  under  his  slouched  hat, 
and  a  face  that  shows  between  his  hat-brim  and  his 
beard.  If  you  are  not  in  the  habit  of  looking  at  heads 
and  faces  for  the  purpose  of  forming  your  own  estimate 
of  men,  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  look  at  Jack. 
You  might  as  well  pass  on.  He  is  of  no  interest  to  you. 
But  if  you  want  to  look  into  a  face  where  the  good-nat- 
ured shrewdness  of  Abraham  Lincoln  shines  out,  smooth- 
ed of  its  rough-carved  homeliness,  you  can  accost  Jack 
when  you  meet  him  walking  beside  his  winding  train 
down  the  rough  canon  or  across  the  dusty  valley,  and 
ask  him  how  the  road  is  over  which  he  has  come.  This 
interrogation  requiring  some  length  of  answer,  he  will 
shout,  '  Whoa-ooa-ah,  ba-a-ck  !'  then,  drawing  down  the 
great  iron  handle  or  lever  of  the  brake  on  his  first  wagon, 
his  team  will  gradually  stop.  Now  he  steps  out  into  the 
sage-brush  in  front  of  you,  sets  the  point  of  his  whip- 
stock  carefully  in  the  fork  of  a  bush,  builds  his  arms  one 
on  the  top  of  the  other  upon  the  butt  of  the  stock,  shoves 
his  hat  to  the  back  of  his  head,  and  says  : 

'  'We-e-11,  the  road's  nuther  good  nur  bad.  Hit's 
about  tollable  to  middlin'.  Seen  wuss  an1  seen  better.' 

"  '  How's  the  alkali  flat? ' 

"  'Well,  yer  know  ther's  two  alkali  flats  'tween  yer'n 
Austin.  The  first  one's  a  little  waxy,  an'  t'other'n's  a 
little  waxy,  too. ' 

"  'Will  our  horses  sink  down  in  the  flats  so  as  to  im- 
pede— that  is,  so  that  we  cannot  get  out?' 

"  '  O  h — 1,  no.  Only  hard  pullin'  an'  slow,  hot  work 
sockin'  through  the  stiff  mud.  I  hed  to  uncouple  an' 
drop  all  my  tail-wagons,  an'  pull  an"  holler  an'  punch 
round  at  both  o'  them  flats  fer  two  days,  till  my  cattle 
looks  like  the  devil.  But  you  can  go  right  along,  only 
slow,  though — very  slow.  The  rest  of  the  road's  all 
right — no  trouble." 


' '  You,  passing  on  your  way,  say  to  yourself  or  com- 
panion : 

' '  '  What  a  fine  face  and  head  that  rough  fellow  has ; 
with  what  a  relish  that  full,  wide  forehead  must  take  in 
a  good  story  or  survey  a  good  dinner ;  what  a  love  for 
the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous  there  must  be  in  the 
broad,  high  crown  of  that  skull  which  is  so  full  at  the 
base  !  Why,  the  fellow  has  a  head  like  Shakspere  and  a 
front  like  Jove.  What  a  pity  to  waste  so  grand  a  man 
in  ignorance  among  rocks  and  oxen  ! ' 

"All  of  which  may  be  a  good  and  true  regret ;  but 
you  must  not  forget  that  nature  knows  how  to  summer- 
fallow  her  own  rare  products. 

"You  will  please  to  understand  that  Mr.  Small  is  his 
own  master,  as  well  as  master  and  owner  of  that  long 
string  of  oxen ;  and  that  train  which  slowly  passes  you 
is  laden  with  perhaps  every  conceivable  variety  of  valu- 
able articles,  worth,  in  the  aggregate,  thousands  of  dol- 
lars, for  the  safe  conveyance  whereof,  over  a  road  hun- 
dreds of  miles  long,  the  owners  have  no  security  but  a 
receipt  signed  'John  Small.'  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
nothing  but  '  the  act  of  God  or  the  public  enemy'  will 
prevent  the  sure  delivery  of  the  entire  cargo — a  little 
slowly,  but  very  surely. 

"  I  do  not  think  you  will  get  a  just  idea  of  Big  Jack 
Small  and  the  men  of  his  profession,  who  are  very  nu- 
merous in  Nevada,  without  1  tell  you  that  the  sage-brush 
ox-teamster  seldom  sleeps  in  a  house — does  not  often 
sleep  near  a  house — but  under  his  great  wagon,  where- 
ever  it  may  halt,  near  the  valley  spring  or  the  mountain 
stream.  His  team  is  simply  unyoked,  and  left  to  feed 
itself  until  gathered  up  again  to  move  on,  the  average 
journey  being  at  the  rate  of  eight  miles  per  day — some 
days  more  than  that,  some  less. 

' '  Twice  a  day  the  teamster  cooks  for  himself  and  eats 
by  himself  in  the  shadow  cast  by  the  box  of  his  wagon. 
Each  evening  he  climbs  the  side  of  his  wagon — very  high 
it  sometimes  is — heaves  his  roll  of  dusty  bedding  to  the 
earth,  tumbles  it  under  the  wagon,  unbinds  it,  unrolls  it, 
crawls  around  over  it  on  his  hands  and  knees  to  find  the 
uneven  places  and  punch  them  a  little  with  his  knuckles 
or  boot-heel,  and — and — well,  his  room  is  ready  and  his 
bed  is  aired.  If  it  is  not  yet  dark  when  all  this  is  done, 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


191 


he  gets  an  old  newspaper  or  ancient  magazine,  and, 
lighting  his  pipe,  lies  upon  his  back,  with  feet  up,  and 
laboriously  absorbs  its  meaning.  Perhaps  he  may  have 
one  or  more  teams  in  company.  In  that  case  the  leisure 
time  is  spent  smoking  around  the  fire  and  talking  ox,  or 
in  playing  with  greasy  cards  a  game  for  fun.  But  gen- 
erally the  ox-teamster  is  alone,  or  accompanied  by  a 
Shoshonee  Indian,  whose  business  it  is  to  pull  sage- 
brush for  a  fire  when  pine  wood  is  scarce,  and  drive  up 
the  cattle  to  be  yoked." 

This  Indian  in  Jack  Small's  train,  "Gov.  Nye,"  is 
made  to  play  a  laughable  part.  On  one  of  his  trips  Mr. 
Small  was  accompanied  by  a  clergyman  who  wanted 
to  "rough  it"  as  a  cure  for  dyspepsia.  The  Indian  had 
heard  of  religion  "in  a  left-handed  way,"  and  the  min- 
ister was  welcomed  by  the  teamster  as  a  valuable  ad- 
junct. 

"  '  All  right.  I'll  teach  you  how  to  punch  bulls,  and 
you  kin  convert  me  and  the  Injin.  I've  been  wantin' 
that  Injin  converted  ever  since  I  hed  him.'  " 

The  conversion  did  not  progress  rapidly.  On  retiring 
the  first  night,  the  clergyman  asked  the  privilege  of  of- 
fering prayer. 

"  'Yes,  sir.  Yere,  Gov.,  come  yere.  I  want  that  In- 
jin to  year  one  prayer,  if  he  never  years  another.  I've 
paid  money  when  I  was  a  boy  to  have  Injins  prayed 
fer,  an'  now  I'm  goin'  to  see  some  of  it  done.  Come 
yere,  Gov.' 

' '  The  Indian  came  to  the  fire-side. 

11  'Yere,  Gov. — you  sabe?  Thisa-way ;  all  same  me,' 
and  Mr.  Small  dropped  upon  his  own  knees  at  the  side 
of  his  roll  of  bedding. 

"  'All-a-same — Injin  all-a-same — little  stand-up?' 
asked  Gov. ,  dropping  his  blanket/and  placing  his  hands 
upon  his  knees. 

'  'Yes.     Little  stand-up — all  same  me." 

"  'Yash,'  assented  Gov.,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
roll,  settling  gradually  upon  his  knees. 

"It  happened  that  the  parson  kneeled  facing  the  In- 
dian, so  that  the  Indian  had  him  in  full  view,  with  the 
firelight  shining  on  the  parson's  face,  and,  not  being  ac- 
customed to  family  worship,  nor  having  had  the  matter 
fully  explained  to  him,  he  conceived  the  idea  of  doing 
as  others  did ;  so  that  when  the  parson  turned  his  face 
to  the  stars  and  shut  his  eyes,  the  Indian  did  so,  too, 
and  began  repeating,  in  very  bad  English,  word  for 
word,  the  parson's  prayer — which  piece  of  volunteer  as- 
sistance, not  comporting  with  Mr.  Small's  impression  of 
domestic  decorum,  caused  that  stout  gentleman  to  place 
his  two  hands  upon  the  Indian's  shoulders  and  jerk  him 
face  down  upon  the  bedding,  with  the  fiercely  whispered 
ejaculation  : 

"  'Dry  up.' " 

The  effort  made  to  impress  upon  the  mind  of  the  In- 
dian a  proper  idea  of  heaven  was  equally  fruitless.  We 
have  not  space  to  follow  Mr.  Small's  little  company 
through  all  their  adventures,  humorous  and  pathetic. 
The  teamster's  character  is  admirably  outlined,  and 
there  can  be  no  question  that  this  story  is  one  of  the 
best  and  most  attractive  that  the  literature  of  this  coast 
has  yet  produced.  "Sand,"  the  initial  story  of  this 
volume,  first  appeared  in  the  pages  of  this  magazine, 
and  for  that  reason  a  review  in  these  columns  would  be, 
perhaps,  inappropriate.  It  received  very  extended  and 
laudatory  notices  from  the  press.  Some  of  the  scenes, 
notably  those  among  the  miners,  are  extremely  felicitous, 
The  author  has  produced  other  stories  which  deserve  a 
place  by  the  side  of  "Sand"  and  "Big  Jack  Small." 
And,  with  only  the  regret  that  they  were  not  included, 
lovers  of  nature  will  welcome  this  little  volume,  with  its 
lessons  of  healthful  and  rugged  manhood. 


ALL  ROUND  THE  YEAR.  Verses  from  Sky  Farm,  with 
which  are  included  the  thirty  poems  issued  in  illus- 
trated form  in  the  volume  entitled,  In  Berkshire  with 
the  Wild  Flowers,  by  Elaine  Goodale  and  Dora  Read 
Goodale.  New  York  :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1881. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

With  the  majority  of  persons  the  first  impulse  upon 
reading  the  announcement  that  these  are  "the  poems  of 
two  children  "  will  be  to  throw  the  book  down  in  the 
strong  impression  that  it  is  another  instance  where  pa- 
rental pride  has  been  betrayed  into  the  folly  of  permit- 
ting the  publication  of  the  adolescent  inanities  of  the 
nursery.  But  in  this  particular  case  the  reader  will  do 
well  to  remember  that  Pope  "lisped  in  numbers,"  that 
Chatterton  was  but  a  boy,  and  that  the  strong  presump- 
tion against  verses  which  is  raised  by  the  announce- 
ment of  the  author's  extreme  youth  is  not,  in  all  in- 
stances, entirely  conclusive.  In  this  little  book  we  have 
some  exquisite  verses.  The  words  are  simple  and  apt. 
The  sentiment  is  pure  and  sweet.  The  construction  is 
easy,  and  there  is  a  morning-air  freshness  about  some 
of  the  poems  that  is  lamentably  absent  from  the  produc- 
tions of  many  of  our  latter-day  elaborators  of  verse.  We 
have  space  to  quote  but  one  of  these  admirable  poems  : 

SWEETBRIER. 

"7  chanced  upon  a  rose  the  other  day, 

A  pale  and  faded  flower,  forgotten  long, 
And  with  it  these  unfinished  veises  lay, 
The  faltering  echo  of  a  deeper  song: 

"A  perfect  day  in  June — the  golden  sun 

Looks  down  upon  the  green  and  tangled  way; 
The  Summer  song  and  silence  are  as  one — 
The  light  and  longing  of  a  Summer's  day ! 

"  O  untaught  harmony  of  Summer  days  ! 

The  distant  tinkle  of  a  waterfall, 
The  blue,  blue  sky,  that  deepens  as  you  gaze, 
The  wayward  rose  that  blossoms  by  the  wall ! 

"  Unspoiled  and  sweet  in  every  country  lane, 

All  dewy  cool  in  maiden  pink  she  blooms, 
Still  green  and  fragrant  through  the  Summer  rain, 
When  freer  airs  are  thrilled  with  light  perfumes*. 

"She  blossoms  close  beside  the  dusty  way, 

Her  heart  the  careless  passer-by  may  see ; 
Sweet  is  her  fragrance  through  the  burning  day, 
But  sweeter  is  her  open  secrecy. 

"  Though  he  who  will  may  pierce  her  leafy  green, 

Where  sits  the  brooding  robin  on  its  nest, 
The  secret  of  her  life  is  all  unseen, 

Unknown  the  impulse  of  her  sweet  unrest. 

"All  day  the  winds  about  her  cool  the  air, 

Faint  sounds  the  tinkle  of  the  waterfall — 
What  is  the  sudden  answer  you  may  bear, 

O  wayward  rose,  that  blossoms  by  the  wall?" 


THE  EARLY  HISTORY  OF  CHARLES  JAMES  Fox.  By 
George  Otto  Trevelyan,  M.  P.,  Author  of  The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Lord  Macaulay.  New  York :  Harper 
&  Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

Since  the  Commons  became  the  predominant  factor 
in  the  English  Government,  any  writer  of  ordinary  skill 
writing  about  the  great  Parliamentary  leaders  and  the 
important  events  in  which  they  participated  has  found 
little  difficulty  in  obtaining  numerous  and  interested 
readers.  This  is  particularly  the  case  where  his  work 
refers  to  that  period  which  may  be  called  the  heroic  age 
of  the  modern  Parliament — the  age  of  Burke,  of  Chat- 


192 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


ham,  and  of  Fox.  The  popularity  of  Mr.  Trevelyan's 
writings  is  due,  in  large  part,  to  the  character  of  his  sub- 
jects. Macaulay,  although  neither  a  profound  thinker  nor 
a  great  historian,  was,  nevertheless,  a  master  of  narra- 
tion ;  and  a  large  number  of  persons,  both  in  England 
and  America,  who  had  been  attracted  and  interested  by 
his  brilliant  writings,  were  eager  to  hear  about  him  just 
what  Mr.  Trevelyan  was  able  to  tell.  The  Life  and  Let- 
ters of  Lord  Macaulay  was,  therefore,  presented  to  a  pub- 
lic that  had  not  to  be  persuaded — that  would  have  read 
willingly  even  had  the  story  been  less  well  told.  In  the 
subject  of  his  second  important  literary  undertaking  Mr. 
Trevelyan  has  been  scarcely  less  fortunate  than  in  that 
of  the  first,  and  this  fact  must  be  kept  in  mind  if  we 
would  arrive  at  a  just  appreciation  of  his  real  merits  as  a 
writer.  The  book  before  us  is  called  The  Early  History 
of  Charles  James  Fox,  but  its  title  is  in  no  sense  de- 
scriptive of  the  scope  of  the  work  ;  in  fact,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  indicate  briefly  its  field  of  inquiry.  It  is  not 
properly  a  history  of  the  early  part  of  Fox's  life,  for  from 
Mr.  Trevelyan's  pages  it  is  impossible  to  gather  a  com- 
plete and  connected  account  of  the  great  debater  as  he 
was  in  the  years  which  the  author  attempts  to  cover. 
It  does  not  deal  exclusively  with  either  social  or  polit- 
ical affairs,  nor  is  it  a  social  and  political  history  of 
England  in  the  age  of  which  he  writes.  It  treats  of  cer- 
tain features  and  circumstances  of  the  life  of  a  limited 
class  of  Englishmen  during  the  middle  and  later  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  class  referred  to  embraces 
those  who  were  directly  concerned  in  managing  the  af- 
fairs of  the  Government.  The  separate  parts  of  the  book 
are  well  written,  but  the  lack  of  a  connecting  thread 
running  through  the  whole  is  a  serious  defect.  It  will 
be  widely  read,  for  it  includes  enough  political  and  social 
gossip  to  make  it  generally  attractive,  but  it  lacks  the 
qualities  which  would  warrant  us  in  giving  it  a  high 
rank  as  a  history.  It  is  not  a  skillfully  managed  narra- 
tive, and  the  reader  carries  away  only  a  confused  and 
imperfect  idea  of  a  story  which  the  writer  desires  to  pre- 
sent. It  is  not  a  profoundly  thoughtful  book,  but  in 
many  parts  superficial.  Our  attention  is  directed  to  the 
figures  on  the  stage,  but  we  are  not  shown  the  lines  of 
influence  by  which  they  are  moved ;  and  the  figures 
themselves  are  not  drawn  with  that  marked  individuality 
which  the  circumstances  of  the  case  permit.  In  this 
point  the  author  shows  his  inferiority  to  some  of  his  con- 
temporaries, particularly  to  Justin  McCarthy. 

These  and  certain  other  defects  of  Mr.  Trevelyan's 
book  appear  when  it  is  tried  as  a  history  by  a  high 
standard,  and  they  seem  more  glaring  because  of  the 
inevitable  comparison  with  the  writings  of  his  uncle, 
whose  faults  are  here  exaggerated  and  whose  excellen- 
cies are  seldom  or  never  attained.  But  as  a  general  in- 
troduction to  the  history  of  the  later  and  more  impor- 
tant part  of  Fox's  career  it  is  worthy  of  careful  attention. 
It  is  not  a  great  work,  it  doe£  not  belong  to  the  same 
rank  as  the  writings  of  Macaulay,  but  it  is  the  best  of 
the  biographies  of  Fox,  and  lacks  only  a  little  of  being 
excellent. 


A   HOPELESS    CASE.     By    Edgar    Fawcett.     Boston: 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.     1880. 

The  scene  of  this  little  story  is  laid  in  the  ultra-fash- 
ionable quarter  of  New  York.  Agnes  Wolverton,  a 
young  orphan,  comes  to  womanhood  among  relatives 
in  Brooklyn,  who  live  in  a  simple  modest  manner. 
Naturally  a  girl  of  more  than  ordinary  character,  she 


has  imbibed  from  her  surroundings  a  love  of  reading, 
an  earnestness  of  purpose,  and  an  enduring  love  of 
truth  and  hatred  of  sham.  The  Brooklyn  relatives  re- 
solve to  remove  to  the  West,  and  Agnes  goes  to  live 
with  her  cousins,  the  Leroys,  whose  aims  and  manner  of 
life  present  the  contrast  which  is  the  motif  of  the  book. 
The  young  girl  is  immediately  plunged  into  a  round  of 
parties,  receptions,  operas,  and  kettle-drums,  making 
her  dtbut  with  marked  success.  Of  the  fact  that  she  is 
more  or  less  interested  in  these  things,  she  is  somewhat 
ashamed.  She  is  considerably  given  to  analyzing  and 
dissecting,  and,  in  the  end,  renounces  the  "pomps  and 
vanities,"  and  joins  her  Brooklyn  friends  in  the  West. 
Society  votes  her  a  "hopeless  case,"  because  she  pre- 
fers Herbert  Spencer  to  an  afternoon  tea-party.  One 
of  the  best  drawn  characters  in  the  book  is  Maxwell, 
the  whole-souled,  good-natured  fellow  who  likes  every 
one  and  whom  every  one  likes.  The  interest  in  the 
story  is  maintained  to  the  conclusion,  and,  as  a  work  of 
fiction,  by  all  the  tests  which  we  can  apply,  A  Hopeless 
Case  is  a  success.  As  a  character  study,  it  is  something 


HOME,  SWEET  HOME.  By  John  Howard  Payne.  With 
designs  by  Miss  L.  B.  Humphrey,  engraved  by  An- 
drew. Boston  :  Lee  &  Shepard.  1881.  For  sale 
in  San  Francisco  by  Doxey  &  Co. 

This  edition  of  the  familiar  lines  of  John  Howard 
Payne  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  books  of  the  late 
holiday  season.  The  designs  are  chaste  and  in  concord 
with  the  spirit  of  the  poem.  An  interesting  feature  is 
the  text,  as  originally  written  by  the  author,  containing 
some  lines,  which  in  the  adaptation  to  music  were  omit- 
ted, to  the  manifest  benefit  of  the  poem.  In  its  pres- 
ent form  it  seems  likely  to  endure  forever,  as  the  preface 
suggests,  as  an  instance  in  which  fit  music  is  truly 
"married  to  immortal  verse." 


FIVE  MICE  IN  A  MOUSE  TRAP.  By  the  Man  in  the 
Moon.  Done  in  the  Vernacular  from  the  Lunacular 
by  Laura  E.  Richards.  With  illustrations  by  Kate 
Greenaway,  Addie  Ledyard,  and  others.  Boston  : 
Estes  &  Lauriat.  1880. 

The  author  of  this  little  book  is  a  daughter  of  Julia 
Ward  Howe,  and  is  already  known  in  the  field  of  juve- 
nile fiction,  having  written  Babyhood,  which  achieved 
upon  its  publication  a  wide  popularity.  It  is  bright, 
and  at  the  same  time  adapted  to  the  comprehension  of 
children,  a  combination  not  always  possessed  by  juve- 
nile books.  It  contains  some  very  pretty  fancies,  and 
not  a  little  "  fun." 

MARPLE  HALL  MYSTERY.  Romance.  By  Enrique 
Parmer.  New  York  :  The  Authors'  Publishing  Com- 
pany. 

NESTLE  NOOK.  A  Tale.  By  Leonard  Kip.  New 
York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1880.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

BEN  HUR.  A  Tale  of  the  Christ.  By  Lew.  Wallace. 
New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

How  I  FOUND  IT.  North  and  South,  together  with 
Maury's  Statement.  Boston  :  Lee  &  Shepard.  1880. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Doxey  &  Co. 

AMERICAN  NEWSPAPER  ANNUAL.  Philadelphia :  N. 
W.  Ayer  &  Son.  1880. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


BALLAD   OF  YE  SHOVEL. 

It  was  an  ancient  diggerman  ; 

His  shovel  was  his  staff, 
And  where  the  lines  of  commerce  ran 

He'd  labor,  and  he'd  laugh. 

"I  laugh  to  think,"  he  quaintly  said, 

"  Of  years  I'll  never  see, 
When  I  am  graded  with  the  dead, 
And  all  is  naught  to  me. 

"Will  anybody  ever  ask 

What  place  I  occupied ; 
The  nature  of  my  toil  and  task, 
Or  when  it  was  I  died? 

"I  am  the  great  majority; 
In  me  it  is  explained ; 
We  rule,  we  are  authority, 
We  vote— for  little  gained. 

"I  laugh  to  see  how  little  weight 

Our  boasted  power  conveys 

In  church,  in  party,  or  in  State — 

For  all  the  speakers'  praise. 

"I  dug  a  man  up  yesterday, 

I  cast  aside  his  bones, 
And  now  beside  the  'cut'  are  they 
Among  the  sticks  and  stones. 

"Who^was  the  man?    Was  he  as  I?— 

A  toiler  by  the  way? 
Did  he  lie  down  and  simply  die, 
Without  a  word  to  say? 

"Quien  sabe?    Commerce  wants  a  road, 

I .  want  my  daily  bread  ; 
Our  wants,  together,  lift  the  load 
That  lies  upon  the  dead. 

"My  little  girl  was  telling  me 

(She  goes  to  school  and  learns) 
"The  world  is  round  as  round  can  be, 
And  every  day  it  turns.' 

"I  reckon  it's  all  right  she  reads, 
And  brings  away  from  school, 
But  learning  that  one  never  needs 
Is  folly  for  a  fool. 

"What  profit  is  it  if  we  know 

A  thousand  other  things, 
But  cannot  strike  the  sturdy  blow 
That  bread  and  dinner  brings? 

"What  care  the  bones  of  him  I  dug 

If  this  world  turns  or  no? 
He  can't  object,  e'en  with  a  shrug — 
He  lived  so  long  ago. 

"So,  by  and  by,  some  other  'hand' 

For  some  new-fangled  road, 

Will  dig  me  out  upon  the  land, 

And  never  know  my  load. 

"Thus  every  worker,  after  death, 

Is  nothing  but  the  soil 
On  which  he  drew  his  daily  breath 
By  doing  daily  toil. 

"That's  why  I  laugh  and  shovel  on 
Contented  as  I  am, 


Nor  care  who  cares  when  I  am  gone, 
Or  who  may  bless  or  damn. 

'I'll  do  my  duty  here  to-day, 
I'll  take  my  joy  or  sorrow, 
For  no  one  living  now  can  say 
Where  I  shall  be  to-morrow. 

'The  road  'directors'  come  along 

The  line  in  costly  raiment ; 
I  don't  know  if  'tis  right  or  wrong, 
Nor  care — I  care  for  payment. 

'I  s'pose  they  think  I  never  think 

Of  things  above  a  shovel, 
So  long  as  victual,  clothes,  and  drink 
Are  mine,  and  warm  my  hovel. 

'Well,  it's  a  fact,  I  never  do- 
That  is,  if  I  can  stop  it — 

And  when  I  learn  of  something  new, 
I  strive  at  once  to  drop  it. 

'  I've  heard  somewhere  of  ancient  knights,. 

That  nothing  could  resist  'em ; 
'Twas  manhood  then  won  all  the  fights, 
But  now  it  is  'the  system.' 

'This  'system'  is  a  tyrant  word, 

As  plain  as  any  king  is, 
The  monarch  of  '  the  common  herd,' 
The  power  that  'the  ring'  is. 

'You  wish  to  steal  the  schooling  tax, 

You  want  to  rob  the  State, 
Your  'system'  covers  all  the  tracks 

And  leaves  the  record  straight. 

"I  wish  I  had  a  'system,'  so 

That  I  could  loaf  and  shirk, 
And  still  get  paid,  per  day,  as  though 
I'd  kept  right  on  at  work. 

"Now,  I  look  'round  me  all  abroad, 

And  what  I  say  I  mean  : 

Our  manhood  is  a  hollow  fraud — 

We're  part  of  the  machine. 

"Bah  !    What's  the  use  to  wander  off 

Through  regions  of  the  fancy? 

I'd  better  laugh  :    I  have  enough — 

Myself,  my  wife,  and  Nancy. 

"What  more  has  each  'director'  got, 

For  all  his  cash  and  fashions? 
He  can't  do  more  than  boil  his  pot 
And  have  his  likes  and  passions.. 

"It  may  be  that  his  name  will  live, 

But  it  can't  live  forever; 
For£when  the  dead  can  nothing  give, 
The  dead  are  mentioned  never. 

"I'll  ask  the  bones  of  that  unknown, 

When  I  go  by  to  dinner. 
Which  rots  the  faster,  bone  for  bone, 
A  buried  saint  or  sinner." 

Right  here  the  ancient  digger  stopped — 

He  heard  the  whistle  blow— 
And  readily  his  shovel  dropped 

As  he  did  homeward  go.  J.  W.  GALLY. 


194 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


A  CORNER   IN   COFFINS. 

Once,  in  a  certain  mining  town  in  Nevada,  a  man 
died.  It  was  an  isolated  town,  and  its  people  had  to 
procure  their  supplies  from  a  long  distance.  The  man 
died  because,  among  other  reasons,  he  could  not  post- 
pone it. 

The  brother  of  the  dead  man  ordered  a  handsome 
coffin  for  the  occasion.  He  ordered  it  of  an  undertaker 
by  the  name  of  Hotchkiss.  The  mother-in-law  of  the 
deceased,  not  knowing  this,  ordered  a  coffin,  too — a 
cheap  one.  She  ordered  it  of  Sudberry,  another  under- 
taker. 

Hotchkiss  came,  measured  the  corpse,  and  withdrew. 
Shortly  afterward,  Sudberry  appeared.  He  took  the 
measure  of  the  remains,  too,  the  attendants  supposing 
that  he  was  in  some  way  connected  with  the  other  un- 
dertaker. 

In  the  afternoon,  Hotchkiss  came  with  his  coffin.  It 
fitted  like  a  glove.  Just  as  he  was  giving  the  finishing 
touches,  and  making  the  corpse  feel  comfortable,  Sud- 
berry arrived  with  his  coffin.  They  looked  at  each 
other.  Hotchkiss  smiled  ;  Sudberry  didn't.  The  latter 
saw  that  the  former  had  got  ahead  of  him  ;  but  that  was 
not  all.  Hotchkiss's  coffin  was  not  only  a  very  hand- 
some one,  but  he  had  arranged  things  so  that  the  corpse 
looked  like  it  was  proud  of  being  dead.  Its  appearance 
cheered  grief-stricken  friends  and  relatives.  They  were 
elated.  Sudberry's  coffin  was  cheap  and  coarse — and 
it  was  empty. 

They  had  words.     Sudberry  blurted  out : 
"  You've  taken  a  mean,  sneakin'  advantage  of  me." 
"  Coffin  was  ordered  of  me  in  a  reg'lar  way,"  returned 
Hotchkiss. 

"  I'd  like  to  furnish  a  coffin  to  bury  you  in,"  contin- 
ued Sudberry, 

"  I'd  rather  live  forever  than  to  be  buried  in  one  of 
your  old  cheap  coffins." 

"  I'll  cut  down  the  price  6f  coffins  until  you'll  have  to 
pack  your  blankets  out  of  town." 
"  Cut  away." 

He  did  cut  down  prices  so  low  that  he  got  all  of 
Hotchkiss's  business.  Then  Hotchkiss  cut  below  Sud- 
berry's prices.  It  was  getting  cheaper  to  die  than  to 
live.  Several  availed  themselves  of  the  reduced  rates. 
Old  Gudsey,  who,  as  a  matter  of  economy,  ate  only  one 
meal  a  day,  took  this  occasion  to  get  off  and  avoid  the 
expense  of  even  one  meal  a  day. 

Sudberry  cut  again.  Hotchkiss  met  it.  Then  the 
former  began  to  pay  a  dollar  for  the  privilege  of  under- 
taking a  corpse.  His  business  livened  up.  Teddy 
O'Flynn,  who  had  a  partner  in  a  boot-black  stand  that 
he  could  not  get  along  with,  availed  himself  of  this  op- 
portunity to  dissolve  the  partnership,  and  make  a  dol- 
lar. His  partner  died  very  unnaturally.  The  increase 
of  the  death-rate  of  the  town  was  very  noticeable.  A 
good  many  people  seized  the  occasion  to  get  rid  of  their 
enemies  and  turn  an  honest  dollar. 

Hotchkiss,  too,  began  to  offer  a  reward  of  a  dollar  a 
corpse,  and  a  drink  of  whisky  thrown  in.  The  next 
morning,  Rattlesnake  Bill,  a  desperate  character  of  the 
town,  stopped  before  Hotchkiss's  shop,  with  four  dead 
Chinamen  in  a  wagon.  He  wanted  four  dollars  and  the 
drinks.  The  undertaker  objected  to  taking  the  China- 
men. Bill  told  him  he  could  take  them  or  be  dumped 
dead  in  with  them,  and  go  over  to  Sudberry's.  Hotch- 
kiss took  the  four  Chinamen.  Bill  took  the  four  drinks. 
Hotchkiss  had  cut  prices  about  as  far  as  he  could.  He 


had  a  large  family  dependent  upon  him.  Sudberry  had 
no  family — no  family  at  the  time.  He  had  previously 
buried  the  several  members  of  his  family,  as  it  came 
right  in  his  line,  and  he  did  it  at  first  cost.  The  former 
approached  the  latter  to  see  if  they  could  not  agree  to 
restore  old  prices.  Sudberry  would  not  entertain  any 
such  proposition.  Said  he  would  sell.  Hotchkiss  bought. 
Then,  to  retrieve  his  losses,  he  put  up  coffins  to  exor- 
bitant prices.  He  knew  if  any  one  else  set  up  in  the 
undertaking  business,  weeks  would  elapse  before  his 
coffins  arrived.  There  was  a  great  falling  off  in  the 
mortality  that  had  prevailed.  None  but  the  wealthy 
could  afford  to  die — that  is,  to  die  decently.  There  was 
a  great  deal  of  dissatisfaction.  People  expostulated  with 
Hotchkiss.  They  said  it  was  perfectly  legitimate  to 
make  a  corner  in  any  other  article  of  trade,  but  to  make 
it  in  coffins  was  sacrilegious,  and  ought  not  to  be  en- 
dured. He  answered  by  showing  that  he  had  as  much 
right  to  put  up  the  price  of  his  wares  as  a  baker  or  a 
butcher  had  to  put  up  prices  in  his  business  ;  that 
he  did  not  cause  the  death  of  people,  and  was  under  no 
obligation  to  bury  them.  Said,  though,  that  he  would 
bury  all  he  killed.  He  further  explained  that  there  was 
no  overwhelming  necessity  for  a  man  to  have  a  coffin, 
or  even  to  be  buried,  as  to  that  matter  ;  that  no  man 
would  make  any  complaint  if  not  buried.  Such  argu- 
ments did  not  satisfy  the  people.  None  of  them  were 
needing  coffins  either. 

Old  man  Eli  Stone  was  taken  sick  before  the  under- 
takers had  compromised  matters,  and  was  not  keeping 
abreast  with  the  coffin  war.  He  was  known  to  be  the 
most  contrary  man  in  Nevada.  He  was  old  and  failed 
rapidly.  The  doctors  told  him  to  make  whatever  prep- 
arations he  desired,  as  the  end  was  not  far  off.  A  law-, 
yer,  being  called  in,  was  writing  the  old  man's  will. 
The  dying  man's  words  were  scarcely  audible,  and  he 
would  have  to  cease  speaking,  at  short  intervals,  to  get 
his  fleeting  breath.  He  could  hear  good.  As  the  writ- 
ing of  the  will  progressed,  he  overheard  some  of  his 
friends  in  an  adjoining  room  talking  about  the  monop- 
oly in  coffins — the  unheard-of  charges.  He  told  the 
lawyer  to  stop  right  where  he  had  got.  Said  he  was 
not  going  to  die.  He  didn't. 

The  feeling  of  hostility  toward  Hotchkiss  increased. 
There  were  mutterings  for  a  day  or  two.  Finally  a  mob 
gathered  in  front  of  his  establishment.  The  men  com- 
posing the  mob  did  not  appear  to  be  suffering  for  cof- 
fins either.  They  were  healthy  looking,  and  some  of 
them  would  weigh  two  hundred  pounds.  One  Dutch- 
man— he  was  very  mad — would  have  weighed  four  hun- 
dred pounds.  No  one  ever  thought  of  his  being  buried 
in  a  coffin.  Hogshead.  The  men  hardly  knew  how 
to  proceed,  their  knowledge  of  mobbing  coffin-shops  be- 
ing quite  limited.  It  was  at  first  proposed  to  burn  the 
building  and  contents.  This  was  objected  to,  as  it 
would  leave  the  town  without  coffins,  and,  consequent- 
ly, without  inducements  to  the  citizens  to  die.  Then 
one  infuriated  little  man  shouted  : 

"  We  can  use  his  coffins." 

"  I  don't  want  to  use  one,"  said  another. 

"  Durned  'f  I  do,"  exclaimed  a  third. 

"Me,  nuther,"  chimed  in  a  man  dressed  in  buck- 
skin. 

And  "  me,  nuther,"  seemed  to  be  the  general  feeling. 

At  last,  Hotchkiss,  speaking  through  an  auger-hole, 
agreed  to  a  compromise.  He  was  to  reduce  prices  for 
poor  people,  and  where  a  whole  family  died,  to  allow 
them  excursion  rates. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


Old  Eli  Stone  got  well.  It  was  thought  he  would  put 
up  an  opposition  undertaker's  shop,  to  punish  Hoth- 
kiss  for  his  meanness.  No.  He  presented  Hotchkiss 
a  two  hundred-dollar  gold  watch,  inscribed,  "Yours 
gratefully."  LOCK  MELONS. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 

The  miner,  searching  o'er  the  ground,  espies 
Outcropping  modestly  above  the  soil 
A  glinting  grain,  and,  digging  down,  his  toil 

A  treasure  finds  that  'neath  the  trifle  lies ; 

As  o'er-ripe  fruit  to  earth  quick  downward  flies, 
Philosophers  make  heavenly  law  their  spoil, 
The  secrecy  of  nature's  workings  foil, 

See  God's  grand  laws  outcrop  from  atom's  size. 

And  through  the  pall  of  blackest  wintry  blight 

With  which  the  earth  is  shrouded  dark  and  drear, 
Bright  proofs  of  His  almighty  love  appear 

In  pendants  lambent  of  twinkling  light, 

That  blazon  o'er  the  sable  realm  of  night, 

Outcropping  hopes  midst  dismal  haunts  of  fear. 
FRANK  CLARKE  PRESCOTT. 


REBECCA  AT  THE  WELL. 

Sitting  alone  in  the  twilight,  the  other  night,  I  fell  to 
thinking  of  a  queer  old  couple  that  once  touched  so 
close  to  my  life ;  and  I  wondered  what  had  become  of 
them — if  they  were  still  in  the  same  place,  doing  the 
same  humdrum  things,  and  living  the  same  monotonous 
existence. 

It  was  so  many,  many  years  ago  !  And  yet  ^remem- 
ber them  as  well  as  though  it  were  but  yesterday  ;  the 
picture  stands  out  as  fixedly  as  though  on  canvas. 

There  was  a  queer,  weird  little  room,  nothing  cheer- 
ful or  bright  about  it.  From  the  smoke-stained  rafters 
spiders'  webs  hung  in  festoons.  The  two  figures  hover- 
ing around  the  range  in  which  a  dull  fire  smoldered ;  the 
coals  giving  out  a  faint,  lurid  heat ;  the  dim  light  of  the 
feeble  lamp — all  were  in  harmony.  The  man  was  tall, 
and  gaunt,  and  spare,  with  scanty  locks  and  expression- 
less face.  The  woman  was  tall  and  angular,  with  a 
thin  coil  of  hair,  and  sharp,  pinched  features. 

We  always  called  them  ghouls,  and  unconsciously 
they  furnished  us  a  deal  of  amusement,  we  had  watched 
them  so  long. 

We  were  the  attaches  of  an  office,  and  our  back  door 
led  into  an  alley-way  into  which  opened  the  back  doors 
of  a  number  of  shops  with  living-rooms  in  the  rear. 
The  man  made  candy  in  one  shop.  He  was  a  widower 
with  two  grown  daughters.  The  woman  was  an  old 
maid,  and  sewed  in  the  shop  adjoining. 

Half  way  between  the  two  back  doors  stood  a  pump, 
which  supplied  the  water  for  the  residents  of  the  tene- 
ments. Here  they  always  met ;  and,  as  it  seemed  a 
strange  coincidence  that  one  never  seemed  to  draw 
water  but  when  the  other  happened  to  be  near,  we  final- 
ly^named  them  ' '  Isaac  "  and  ' '  Rebecca. "  Poor  old  Re- 
becca !  Her  life  had  not  been  a  happy  one,  and  work 
and  worry  had  left  their  impress  on  both  heart  and  face. 
We  young,  foolish  things,  careless  in  the  fullness  of  our 
youth  of  what  the  future  had  in  store  for  us,  used  to 
laugh,  and  have  much  amusement  at  her  expense.  The 
idea,  at  her  age,  of  her  having  a  lover,  and  such  a  lover  ! 
We  never  thought  that  under  that  unattractive  exterior 
a  heart  might  beat  with  just  such  throbs  as  ours ;  and  we 
forgot — or  else  we  were  careless  and  did  not  think — that 


once  she  was  as  young  as  we,  and  had  prospects  as 
bright  as  any  of  ours. 

Their  conversation  always  amused  us,  and  we  never 
failed  in  our  ready  laugh.  His  one  chief  topic  was  the 
weather.  He  never  exhausted  it  or  grew  weary  of  it. 
It  was  prolific,  and  he  always  returned  to  it,  after  any 
digression,  as  the  weary  wanderer  in  foreign  lands  re- 
turns to  the  home  of  his  childhood.  Just  before  Christ- 
mas we  "lookers  on  in  Vienna"  noticed  an  intonation 
in  his  voice  tenderer  than  usual  when  he  told  her  that 
"it  looks  like  rain  to-day." 

"Yes,"  she  replied,  half  simpering,  and  with  the  faint 
echo  of  coquetry  in  the  nervous  jerking  of  her  head. 

It  was  a  singular  fact  that  in  making  this  reply  it 
never  occurred  to  her  to  scan  the  heavens.  Perhaps 
she  felt  it  in  her  bones.  They  say  old  people  are  ex- 
cellent barometers. 

"  We  need  rain  just  now,"  he  said,  musing. 

"Oh,  we  really  do  1" 

Now,  it  was  another  singular  fact  that  there  was  no 
need  of  rain  whatever ;  so,  while  the  barometric  proper- 
ties of  her  bones  might  have  been  true  to  the  working 
perfection  of  their  organization,  her  judgment  was  cer- 
tainly at  fault.  But  surely  it  was  not  wicked  in  the  old 
man  to  predicate  such  an  absurdity,  and  secure  her  ac- 
quiescence. 

"The  flowers  are  parched  and  faded,"  she  added. 

Aye,  that  they  were  !  They  were  old,  and  faded,  and 
drooping.  It  had  been  many  a  dreary  year  since  the 
sunshine  had  fallen  on  them,  or  the  bright,  fresh  dew  of 
life's  morning  had  refreshed  them  in  their  languishing. 

We  noticed  that  they  lingered  about  the  pump  longer 
than  usual,  and  that  now  he  carried  the  water  for  her. 
Several  other  tokens  showed  our  Argus  eyes  that  they 
were  engaged,  and  we  were  not  astonished  to  learn 
they  intended  to  begin  the  new  year  together. 

They  were  married  very  quietly,  and  she  took  up  her 
abode  in  the  shop  with  him,  and  they  made  candy  to- 
gether. There  was  a  sarcastic  irony  in  their  occupa- 
tion. Fancy  two  old  wrinkled  people  compounding  the 
sweet,  toothsome  dainties  of  such  delicate  pattern  and 
sweetness !  There  was  something  sad  in  it,  too,  and 
our  hearts  were  touched.  We  wondered,  with  a  sympa- 
thetic quiver  in  our  voices,  if  our  fate  would  be  like 
hers  ;  if  we  should  live  lonely,  unloved  lives,  and  then, 
away  down  the  lane,  so  far  that  our  eyes  grew  misty 
with  the  tears  which  did  not  fall,  have  such  an  end  to  our 
romance. 

Perhaps  Rebecca  did  not  mind  it  at  all.  Perhaps  all 
those  old  dreams  and  fancies  of  hers  were  buried  so 
deep  that  they  were  all  forgotten ;  but  to  us  in  our 
youth — in  our  glad  joy  of  simply  being  alive,  and  with 
our  bright  outlook  upon  the  future — it  seemed  cruel, 
cruel,  and  a  mockery  of  love. 

She  was  very  neat ;  and,  despite  her  homely  face  and 
gaunt  form,  there  was  an  innate  refinement  about  her, 
and  a  gentle  inflection  in  her  voice  that  caused  us  to 
love  her ;  while  he  was  so  the  reverse — untidy,  coarse, 
and  ignorant.  We  could  but  pity  her. 

Ah  !  that  was  long,  long  ago — so  long  that  nearly  all 
our  dreams  and  fancies  have  had  time  to  become  rudely 
shattered.  We  are  all  changed;  all,  all  are  changed. 
We  are  not  what  we  used  to  be  when  our  lives  were  so 
closely  knit  together  that  "parting  was  sad  pain." 
Many  of  our  number  are  married,  and  have  had  oppor- 
tunity to  test  whether  or  not  their  lines  fell  in  pleasanter 
places  than  hers.  Some  are  far  away,  and  some  of  us 


196 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


are  dead.  The  one  brightest,  sweetest,  and  best — who 
was  so  lovely  and  gifted — has  passed  beyond.  For  her, 
long  before  the  shadows  began  to  darken  and  life  grow 
heavy,  a  white-winged  messenger  came,  and  she  lies 
mute  and  still  in  a  far-off  grave.  The  wide  Pacific  di- 
vides her  resting  place  from  those  that  loved  her  so  well, 
and  who  have  missed  her  so  much,  so  much. 

As  for  me,  I  am  an  old  woman  now,  and  perhaps  my 
idle  laughter  and  careless  ridicule  of  poor  old  Rebecca 
will  be  visited  on  my  head.  Perhaps  I,  too,  will  trudge 
alone  down  the  pathway  unloved  and  uncared  for.  Per- 
haps I,  too,  will  furnish  amusement  to  a  careless  crowd 
of  young  folks,  and  they  will  indulge  in  idle  speculations 
as  to  why  it  was  so.  But  they  will  never  know  how 
near  happiness  came,  and  how  it  was  missed ;  not 
through  my  fault,  nor  of  any  one  else,  but  because^God 
willed  it  so.  L.  E.  H. 


WHY  FALL  THE   LEAVES? 

Why  fall  the  leaves? 
The  boughs  that  with  such  tender  care 
Sustained  them,  rustling  in  the  air, 
Though  still  as  strong,  are  stripped  and  bare ; 
The  sun  is  bright,  the  skies  are  fair — 

Why  fall  the  leaves? 
The  breezes  through  the  forest  moan 
And  sob,  to  find  their  playmates  gone ; 
The  oaken  limbs,  with  creak  and  groan, 
Repine  that  they  are  left  alone — 

Why  fall  the  leaves? 
Their  rustling  music  soothed  the  wold, 
But,  widely  scattered,  brown  and  gold, 
They  lie,  and,  after  Winter's  cold, 
Will  quickly  turn  to  forest  mold — 

Why  fall  the  leaves? 
Their  span  is  run,  and  time  has  cast 
Their  lot  with  millions  in  the  past ; 
And  millions  more,  still  following  fast, 
Will  live,  grow  old,  and  fall  at  last 

As  fall  these  leaves. 

HARRY  L.  WELLS. 


A   NEW   USE  FOR   "GULLIVER." 

In  a  magistrate's  court  of  British  Columbia,  at  Victo- 
ria, a  strange  discovery  was  made  two  or  three  weeks 
ago.  It  had  been  the  habit  for  several  months  to  swear 
all  witnesses  on  a  venerable  looking  book  with  the  calf 
binding  as  tattered  and  torn  as  if  it  had  been  passed 
through  a  threshing-machine.  Perhaps  one  hundred 
persons  have  kissed  the  book  and  sworn  to  ' '  tell  the 
truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth." 

A  short  time  ago  a  witness  of  the  Israelitish  persuasion 
came  forward  and  was  handed  the  book  to  kiss.  In  ac- 
cordance with  the  practice  of  persons  of  his  faith,  he 
opened  the  book  and  prepared  to  swear  on  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. As  he  did  so  his  eyes  caught  a  plate,  and, 
pointing  to  it,  he  asked  the  clerk  : 

"  Ain't  that  a  queer  looking  picture  for  the  Bible  to 
have  in  it?" 

The  clerk  looked,  turned  pale  with  fright,  and  handed 
the  volume  to  the  magistrate,  who  turned  over  several 
leaves  and  then  threw  the  book  violently  to  the  floor. 

A  spectator  picked  the  volume  up,  and  discovered  that 
it  was  a  well  worn  volume  of  Gulliver's  Travels,  and 
that  the  plate  which  had  attracted  the  witness's  eye 
was  a  representation  of  Gulliver  in  the  act  of  ex- 


tinguishing the  fire  at  the  Lilliputian  palace.  Some 
wicked  wag  had  changed  the  books,  thinking,  rightly, 
that  as  long  as  it  was  believed  to  be  a  Bible  the  exchange 
would  not  be  noticed. 

Had  all  the  persons  sworn  upon  it  been  Christians, 
the  discovery  might  not  have  been  made  now.  A  Jew 
has  probably  saved  the  State,  not  for  the  first  time 
either.  But  what  about  the  validity  of  the  testimony 
taken  by  virtue  of  that  book  ?  Disputed  points  arising 
from  this  prank  of  a  wag  may  be  among  the  first  the 
judges  may  have  to  pass  upon. 


A  WESTERN  WEDDING. 

A  newly  elected  Justice  of  the  Peace  who  had  been 
used  to  drawing  deeds  and  wills,  and  little  else,  was 
called  upon,  as  his  first  official  act,  to  marry  a  couple 
who  came  into  his  office  very  hurriedly  and  told  him 
their  purpose.  He  lost  no  time  in  removing  his  hat, 
and  remarked,  ''Hats  off  in  the  presence  of  the  court." 
All  being  uncovered,  he  said,  "Hold  up  your  right 
hand.  You,  John  Markin,  do  you  solemnly  swear  to 
the  best  of  your  knowledge  an'  belief  yer  take  this  wo- 
man to  have  an'  ter  hold  for  yerself,  yer  heirs,  exekyer- 
ters,  administers,  and  assigns,  for  your  an'  their  use 
an'  behoof  forever?  " 

"  I  do,"  answered  the  groom. 

' '  You,  Alice  Ewer,  take  this  yer  man  for  yer  hus- 
band, ter  hev  an1  ter  hold  forever  ;  and  you  do  further 
swear  that  you  are  lawfully  seized  in  fee-simple,  and 
free  from  all  incumbrance,  and  hev  good  right  to  sell, 
bargain,  and  convey  to  the  said  grantee  yerself,  yer 
heirs,  administrators,  and  assigns?" 

"  I  do,"  said  the  bride,  doubtfully. 

"Well,  John,  that'll  be  about  a  dollar'n  fifty  cents." 

"  Are  we  married? "  asked  the  bride. 

"Yes,  when  the  fee  comes  in."  After  some  fumbling 
it  was  produced  and  handed  to  the  "court,"  who  pock- 
eted it,  and  continued:  "  Know  all  men  by  these  pres- 
ents, that  I,  being  in  good  health  and  of  sound  and  dis- 
posin'  mind,  in  consideration  of  a  dollar'n  fifty  cents  to 
me  in  hand  paid,  the  receipt  whereof  is  hereby  acknowl- 
edged, do  and  by  these  presents  have  declared  you  man 
and  wife  during  good  behavior,  and  until  otherwise  or- 
dered by  the  court." 


FAMILIAR   LINES   FROM   CONGREVE. 

Women  are  like  tricks  by  slight  of  hand, 
•     Which,  to  admire,  we  must  not  understand. 

Courtship  to  marriage  is  a  very  witty  prologue  to  a 
very  dull  play. 

Thus  grief  still  treads  upon  the  heels  of  pleasure ; 
Married  in  haste,  we  may  repent  at  leisure. 

Every  cock  will  fight  upon  his  own  dung-hill. 

Heaven  has  no  rage  like  love  to  hatred  turned, 
Nor  hell  a  fury  like  a  woman  scorned. 

Music  hath  charms  to  soothe  the  savage  breast. 
E'en  silence  may  be  eloquent  in  love. 

The  lover  laid  down  his  salvation, 
And  Satari  staked  his  reputation. 

For  many  things,  when  done,  afford  delight, 
Which  yet,  while  doing,  mayA  offend  the  sight. 


THE  CALIFORNIAN. 


A   WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  III.— MARCH,  1881.— No.  15. 


'49   AND   '50. 


'Behind  the  squaw's  light  birch  canoe 

The  steamer  rocks  and  waves  ; 
And  city  lots  are  staked  for  sale 

Above  old  Indian  graves. 
I  hear  the  tread  of  pioneers — 

Of  nations  yet  to  be — 
The  first  low  wash  of  waves,  where  soon 

Shall  roll  a  human  sea." 


CHAPTER  I. 

"I  have  faith — faith?  said  James  Swilling, 
his  angular  Yankee  features  beaming  with  ex- 
citement. 

"You  are  determined  not  to  comprehend  the 
differences  of  our  situation,"  replied  Mortimer 
Blair,  a  smile,  somewhat  haughty,  somewhat 
sad,  playing  about  his  handsome  mouth.  "I 
am  free  from  all  home  ties,  all  domestic  embar- 
rassment. I  have  no  friends  that  cannot  live 
as  well  without  my  assistance  or  encouragement. 
I  am  deterred  by  no  business,  by  no  pleasures; 
mo're  than  that,  I  have  money  to  waste." 

"  I  have  faith — faith,"  again  responded  young 
Swilling  of  Swansea. 

"James,"  spoke  the  other,  turning  his  clear 
gray  eyes  quickly  upon  him,  "are  you  fixed  in 
your  determination  to  set  sail  with  me  for  the 
land  of  gold?  Be  certain  before  you  speak." 

"Mother  has  given  her  consent;  Mary,  too, 
has  yielded  to  my  persuasion.  Cousin  Morti- 
mer, it  is  my  duty  to  go,  and  I  am — decided." 


There  was  a  quiver  upon  the  lips  of  the 
speaker.  Blair  extended  his  hand,  saying : 

"Be  ready  to  sail  at  a  day's  warning.  And 
one  thing  more,"  he  added,  shutting  tighter 
upon  James's  long  fingers — "sell  neither  cow 
nor  cat  from  the  old  homestead,  but  come  to 
me  with  a  brave  heart,  and,  as  you  stand  be- 
fore me  now,  without  a  dollar  in  your  pocket." 

Such  were  the  closing  words  of  a  conversa- 
tion between  two  cousins,  which  took  place  in 
Mortimer  Blair's  elegant  suite  of  rooms  over- 
looking Boston  Common,  early  in  the  year  '49. 
Fate  seldom  brings  together  two  young  men  of 
so  dissimilar  characters  and  fortunes.  Both 
had  contracted  the  "gold  fever"  so  lately  broken 
out  the  world  over;  and  both,  in  spite  of  all 
medical  aid,  were  determined  to  come  flat  down 
with  it — to  be  prostrate  from  choice,  and  that 
with  symptoms  of  a  most  tardy  recuperation. 
Blair,  orphaned  when  a  child,  had  inherited  a 
considerable  property,  which  (rare  as  such  an 
instance  is)  he  had  made  good  use  of.  He  was  a 
college  graduate,  and,  both  by  nature  and  by 
education,  fitted  for  wide  influence  and  eminent 


Vol.  III. — 13.      [Copyright  by  THE  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors,] 


198 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


usefulness.  He  was  powerful  physically  as  well 
as  mentally,  and  there  was  a  certain  robustness 
in  his  mien  and  conversation  "with  which  he 
concealed  a  heart  that  was,  deep  within,  unusu- 
ally sensitive  and  delicate  in  its  impressions  and 
perceptions.  He  preferred  to  be  regarded  by 
his  acquaintances  as  a  mild  sort  of  cynic.  He 
was  so  looked  upon,  particularly  by  the  young 
ladies;  toward  none  of  whom  had  he  ever 
evinced  any  favoritism.  He  had  just  been  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar,  when  the  gold  fever  number- 
ed him  among  its  victims.  To  tell  the  truth, 
the  practice  of  the  law,  he  saw,  was  not  going  to 
be  as  congenial  labor  as  the  theoretical  pursuit 
of  it,  and  he  was  glad  of  an  excuse  for  a  vaca- 
tion of  indefinite  length.  The  Blairs  were  thor- 
ough Americans,  with  a  dash  of  something  like 
the  Spanish  love  of  adventure  and  conquest. 

Mortimer's  only  brother,  older  than  himself, 
had  gone  to  sea  at  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  had 
never  since  been  heard  from.  The  younger  son 
always  seemed  inclined  to  follow  in  the  wild 
paths  of  the  elder,  but,  up  to  this  time,  he  had 
wisely  restrained  his  inborn  desire.  However, 
while  Mortimer  was  now  ready  to  plunge  into 
the  midst  of  grave  uncertainties,  he  was  by  no 
means  willing  that  another  should  share  with 
him  his  risks  and  perils.  Much  as  he  would 
enjoy  the  company  of  plain,  sensible,  but  enthu- 
siastic, open  and  warm-hearted  "Jimmy  Swill- 
ing," he  had  done  all  he  could  to  dissuade  him 
from  joining  in  the  expedition  to  California. 
His  simple  home  life,  brightened  by  what  learn- 
ing boys  get  at  country  schools,  seemed  the  sort 
of  existence  in  which  he  ought  to  continue. 
James  was  the  only  son,  the  idol  of  his  parents, 
and — what  Mortimer  himself  could  appreciate, 
whether  he  would  admit  it  or  not — he  was, 
moreover,  sincerely  beloved  by  a  little  rural 
maid  who  cherished  the  hope  of  one  day  claim- 
ing a  closer  than  blood  relationship.  In  view 
of  all  this,  Mortimer  had  put  every  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  his  stubborn  cousin's  execution  of  his 
resolve.  When,  however,  he  found  that  exhort- 
ing, pleading,  threatening,  separately  and  com- 
bined, failed  to  check  the  resistless  magic  of 
the  boy's  dreams,  he  not  only  ceased  to  oppose 
him,  but  promised,  as  has  been  seen,  to  render 
him  all  the  assistance  in  his  power. 

"At  least,"  he  said  to  himself,  "Jim  shall 
leave  no  mortgaged  or  deserted  farm,  nor  shall 
he  travel  one  furlong  upon  money  needed  to 
maintain  those  left  weeping  at  home." 

On  October  ist  of  the  same  memorable  year, 
a  vessel,  hailing  from  Boston,  approached  what 
appeared  to  be  a  narrow  cut  through  the  bold 
coast- land  of  the  Pacific,  opening  from  the  sea 
somewhere  into  the  country  of  the  interior. 
Making  this  entrance,  ancj.  following  along  the 


strait  amid  singular  and  most  picturesque  scen- 
ery on  either  side,  the  vessel  bore  round  a  gi- 
gantic rock,  and,  through  what  may  be  termed 
a  second  or  inner  entrance,  glided  by  many  an 
ominous  looking  ship  in  the  distance  into  the 
placid  waters  of  a  most  beautiful  bay.  Among 
the  eager  passengers  on  this  vessel,  which  found 
its  way  safely  to  port  by  sheer  good  fortune,  so 
wholly  unseaworthy  was  it,  were  our  new  ac- 
quaintances, the  cousins  from  New  England. 
With  sensations  such  as  they  had  never  felt  be- 
fore, did  these  young  men  gaze  over  the  smooth, 
lake-like  waters,  broken  here  and  there  by  ab- 
rupt and  rugged  islands,  between  which  floated 
idly  numerous  vessels  of  all  kinds  and  descrip- 
tions, from  various  distant  harbors  of  the  world. 
It  was  morning,  and  the  calm,  far -stretching 
bay  lay  like  an  enchanted  sea  in  itself — a  favor- 
ite child,  as  it  were,  of  the  great  waters,  that 
had  slipped  inside  what  is  now  known  as  the 
"Golden  Gate,"  to  bask  in  the  cloudless  sun. 
So  recent  was  the  coming  of  the  thousands  of 
hungry  crafts  that  now  vexed  its  surface  that 
it  seemed  not  yet  to  have  awakened  from  its 
serene  and  beautiful  repose  of  centuries.  And 
was  it  strange  that  -the  primeval  spell  should 
still  dwell  upon  it?  The  dusky  form  of  the  In- 
dian, as  he  paused  in  his  chase  of  the  deer  over 
the  surrounding  hills,  an  occasional  presence 
of  the  haughty  Spaniard,  and  the  more  frequent 
visitation  of  lesser  men  in  whose  veins  coursed 
the  diluted  blood  of  old  Spain — these  were  all 
that  it  had  felt  or  seen,  all  that  might  have  for 
a  moment  disturbed  its  long,  unbroken  dream. 

The  change  was  too  sudden  and  amazing. 
Nature  could  not  yet  comprehend  it,  but  cer- 
tain it  was  that  the  true  conquerers  had  landed, 
and  that  her  reign  of  quiet  was  at  an  end. 

"Well,  Cousin  Mortimer,"  spoke  James  of 
New  Hampshire,  "these  hills  are  very  unlike 
those  we  have  left  behind." 

The  tall,  spare,  angular  young  man  wore  a 
solemn  look  upon  his  usually  bright  and  happy 
countenance. 

"Yes,  indeed,"  was  the  reply  of  the  laughing 
philosopher  from  the  Athens  of  America,  "and 
very  different  maidens  from  the  matchless  Mary 
have  for  centuries  played  within  their  shad- 
ows." 

Jim  roused,  and,  mentally  shaking  himself, 
changed  the  subject  as  quickly  as  possible. 

"It  seems,"  said  he,  "that  several  of  'em  have 
the  start  of  us,  after  all.  If  these  vessels  were 
all  as  well  filled  as  this  miserable  old  hulk  of 
ours,  I  can  well  imagine  that  the  motley  throng 
have  scraped  clean  every  creek  and  crevice, 
ditch  and  river-bed."  * 

"Faith,  Jimmy  !  Don't  forget  your  first  and 
foremost  quality." 


'49  AND 


199 


A  second  time  James  was  driven  to  the  intro- 
duction of  a  fresh  topic. 

"How  is  that  for  a  town  !"  he  shouted,  point- 
ing to  some  sand-hills  now  near  at  hand. 

"The  old  bachelor  poet  of  England  was  not 
a  little  bilious,"  answered  the  other,  "but  his 
head  was  clear  as  a  bell  when  he  said,  'God 
made  the  country,  man  made  the  town.'  And, 
Jim,  it  is  my  present  impression,  from  the  helter- 
skelter  arrangement,  or,  rather,  disarrangement, 
of  all  those  tents  and  woodshed -like  edifices 
set  squat  in  the  dirt,  that  his  highness  with  the 
cloven  foot  had  a  scratch  in  the  town  before  us. 
What  do  you  say?" 

James  had  no  time  to  answer.  Present]spec- 
ulation  was  at  an  end.  The  ship  had  cast  an- 
chor, and  Blair  was  already  singling  out  a  Ka- 
naka boat  in  which  to  take  passage  to  the  shore. 
"How  much  to  the  landing  there,  you  black 
rebel?"  he  shouted,  as  two  brawny  fellows  came 
alongside. 

"Five  dollars,"  was  the  reply. 
"Five  dollars  to  row  two  of  us  less  than  a 
quarter  of  a  mile!" 

"Let  us  pay  it,  cousin,"  spoke  James,  in  a 
gentle  voice.  "The  sooner  we  get  ashore,  why 
the  better  chance  we  stand  to  take  our  choice 
of  spots  at  the  diggings" 

"O  Jimmy,  O  Jim  !"  sighed  Blair.  "For  the 
comfort  of  your  confident  soul,  I  will  submit 
to  this  initiative  robbery.  Quam  multa  causa 
amicorum!" 

Whether  it  was  the  effect  of  this  mysterious 
Latin,  or  because  of  excitement  from  another 
source,  is  not  to  be  positively  stated — but  long- 
limbed,  loose-jointed  James  had  no  sooner  set 
foot  in  the  boat  than  he  sat  himself  hurriedly 
down  in  its  very  bottom,  where,  simultaneously, 
his  "gray  breeks,"  his  "only  pair,"  received  a 
speedy  saturation. 

"  Have  faith,  Jimmy,"  roared  Blair.  "  Keep 
your  seat  and  believe  hard  to  the  contrary,  and 
your  trousers  will  remain  as  dry  as  the  breasts 
of  human  kindness." 

Jim  was  not  a  stranger  to  accidents.  His 
father  confidently  affirmed  that  he  stubbed  one, 
at  least,  of  his  ten  toes  every  hour  that  he  trav- 
eled barefooted  through  the  days  of  his  care- 
less childhood.  When  he  had  risen  to  the  dig- 
nity of  shoes  and  stockings,  he  maintained  his 
early  reputation  by  frequent  and  violent  saluta- 
tions of  Mother  Earth  with  his  bare  forehead. 
The  mortal  part  of  poor  James  was  never  with- 
out an  ornamental  spot  of  blue  or  black  touched 
there  by  the  hand  of  heedJessness.  Twice  were 
each  of  his  long,  bony  arms  broken  before  the 
clown  upon  his  upper  lip  began  to  suggest  ap- 
proaching manhood.  All  this  cruelty  had  James 
Swilling  practiced  upon  his  own  lean  body;  but 


never  had  another  suffered  through  his  instru- 
mentality, either  in  flesh  or  spirit.  Undoubted- 
ly his  good  old'  grandmother  was  right :  James 
ought  to  have  been  a  clergyman.  As  such, 
without  much  personal  exposure,  he  might  have 
been  the  means  of  great  good  to  his  less  con- 
siderate, less  patient,  less  forgiving  fellow-creat- 
ures. 

With  this  enlightenment  as  to  James's  pecu- 
liarities, the  reader  may  not  be  surprised  to  find 
him  the  victim  of  frequent  mishaps,  attaining 
too  often  to  the  dignity  of  disasters.  Indeed, 
no  sooner  had  he  stepped  upon  a  huge  raft  float- 
ing against  the  pier,  than,  making  a  misstep, 
his  foot  became  wedged  between  two  logs,  and 
he  went  down,  barely  escaping  a  second  bath, 
which  would  have  been  more  thorough  than 
the  first.  His  little  box -trunk,  which  was  gal- 
lantly riding  upon  his  high  shoulder,  of  course 
descended  with  its  owner,  and  so  great  was  the 
momentum  that  it  burst  wide  open,  strewing 
its  contents  upon  the  wet  and  treacherous  tim- 
bers. Shouts  rose  from  the  landing : 

"Gather  'em  in  !"  cried  one. 

"Set  'em  up  !"  screamed  another. 

"Don't  cry!"  roared  a  great  bass  voice. 

"Go  back  to  your  mother!"  piped  the  quail- 
like  organ  of  a  boy. 

Added  to  these  there  were  uttered  various 
ejaculations  in  tongues  that  had  never  before 
saluted  the  ears  of  poor  persecuted  James.  He 
heard  them  all,  but  none  smote  him  like  the  si- 
lent language  of  a  certain  little  star-shaped,  red- 
topped  pin -cushion  that  he  would  have  saved 
at  the  expense  of  every  article  besides.  He 
picked  it  up,  dried  it  with  his  handkerchief, 
and,  gazing  intently  upon  it,  wholly  forgot  his 
situation.  Blair  was  busy  gathering  the  scat- 
tered effects  together,  but  he  could  not  go  on 
without  his  joke.  With  a  red  under-garment  in 
one  hand,  and  a  pair  of  woolen  socks  in  the 
other,  he  fixed  his  eyes,  with  those  of  James, 
upon  the  flaming  cushion,  and  repeated  sol- 
emnly : 

"Thou  ling'ring  star,  with  less'ning  ray, 
That  lov'st  to  greet  the  early  morn, 
Again  thou  ush'rest  in  the  day 

My  Mary  from  my  soul  was  torn." 

"Cousin  Mortimer's  ridicule,"  as  James  term- 
ed Blair's  sallies  of  this  sort,  was  an  instantane- 
ous restorative.  Consequently,  our  friends  were 
soon  wending  their  way  through  the  immense 
piles  of  boxed  goods  of  all  descriptions,  and 
over  the  narrow  planks  that  ran  across  the  mud- 
flats to  the  steeps  of  the  town.  Having  gain- 
ed an  eminence  that  commanded  an  extensive 
view,  they  sat  down  upon  a  rock  and  began  a 
methodical  survey  of  the  curiosities  displayed 


200 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


before  them.  First,  the  great  snarl  of  hetero- 
geneous canvas -houses  attracted  their  atten- 
tion. Now  and  then  appeared  a  structure  of 
wood ;  but  where  its  neighbor  or  what  its  pur- 
pose was  a  thing  beyond  calculation.  Con- 
fusedly huddled  together  on  the  patch  of  level 
ground  upon  the  very  edge  of  the  water,  these 
anomalous  structures  presented  anything  but 
an  inviting  appearance.  Behind  the  straggling 
tents  hills  of  sand,  covered  with  a  thick  growth 
of  shrubbery,  but  without  a  single  tree,  rose 
abruptly,  and  only  added  to  the  general  depres- 
sion produced  by  the  scene.  Little  could  our 
adventurers  have  imagined  that  one  of  these 
tents,  crazy  enough  to  all  external  appearance, 
had  a  name  as  high-sounding  as  the  Parker 
House;  and  with  still  greater  difficulty  could 
they  have  been  made  to  believe  at  this  time 
that  its  rent  was  $150,000  a  year.  The  palatial 
interiors  of  these  extempore  shanties,  measur- 
ing from  ten  to  forty  feet  square,  were  yet  to 
be  revealed  to  them.  From  the  shed-house  of 
bare  boards  to  that  of  hides  stretched  over  a 
frame,  from  this  latter  to  the  adobe  and  the 
few  frame  dwellings  proper,  ever  thronged  an 
incongruous  multitude  in  prosecution  of  some 
errand  unknown.  Teams  of  horses,  oxen,  and 
mules,  in  long  files,  dragged  slowly  and  contin- 
uously heavily  loaded  wagons  and  carts,  sink- 
ing deep  into  the  mire  of  the  streets.  Perhaps 
fifteen  thousand  people,  thirteen  thousand  of 
whom  had  arrived  since  the  opening  of  the 
mad  year,  were  now  hurrying  to  and  fro  in  this 
little  mud-hole  between  the  sand-hills  and  the 
bay — each  for  himself,  and  himself  only — wres- 
tling with  fate,  which  they  hoped  would  yet 
yield  to  them  sudden  and  inexhaustible  riches. 
And  still  the  rush  of  gold -seekers  continued. 
Two  hundred  vessels  stood  idle  in  the  bay.  The 
sailors,  that  but  a  few  days  since  were  climbing 
their  masts,  now  climbed  the  virgin  hills  far 
inland.  Many  of  these  vessels,  deserted  for- 
ever, were  not  again  to  ride  the  open  sea.  More 
ships  must  come,  however,  to  share  a  like  fate. 
During  the  three  months  intervening  between 
the  present  date  and  '50,  five  thousand  more  of 
the  worshipers  of  Mammon  must  land  at  this 
City -of- a -Day,  give  one  look  of  astonishment, 
and,  paying  a  ruinous  sum  for  the  privilege, 
pass  on  to  the  foothills  glistening  with  fabulous 
treasure. 

At  this  moment  the  passengers  of  a  second 
newly -arrived  ship  are  making  their  way  up 
from  the  pier,  with  its  extension  of  huge  rafts 
piled  hill -high  with  cumbrous  merchandise. 
The  senses  of  our  Yankee  boys  are  already 
slightly  dazed;  but  with  good-natured  perse- 
verance they  turn  their  eyes  toward  the  shore 
and  watch  the  advance  of  the  motley  immi- 


grants. The  fop  tricked  out  in  the  hight  of 
fashion  side  by  side  with  the  sturdy  mechanic; 
the  Spaniard  gracefully  protecting  his  sombrero 
and  serape  as  the  coarse  mob  jostle  him  hither 
and  thither;  the  brown -faced  farmer  step  by 
step  with  the  pale-faced  clerk — all  kinds  and 
diversities  of  humanity,  representing  more  na- 
tionalities than  old  Dr.  Johnson  conceived  of 
when  he  penned  the  first  couplet  of  his  "Vanity 
of  Human  Wishes."  On,  on  they  come,  hurry- 
ing each  one  as  if  his  life  depended  upon  his 
being  foremost.  With  a  derisive  smile  upon 
his  face,  the  old  Oregon  trapper  looks  on,  aside, 
while  the  swarthy  native,  with  high -pointed 
hat,  gay -colored  jacket,  and  velvet  breeches, 
takes-a  hasty  but  exhaustive  survey,  then  turns 
thoughtfully  away  to  his  own  affairs. 

"Gentlemen  from  England,  Ireland,  Scot- 
land, and  WTales ;  friends  from  New  Zealand 
and  the  Sandwich  Islands;  brothers  from  the 
North  Pole  and  from  the  South  Pole,"  cried 
Mortimer  Blair,  waving  his  hat  in  the  air, 
"whoever  and  whatever  you  are,  be  it  noble 
or  clown,  young  or  old,  grave  or  gay,  clergy- 
man or  blackleg,  sage  or  dolt — everybody  from 
everywhere,  black,  brown,  saffron,  or  speckled 
— hail !  hail !  The  golden  calf  bleats  to  you 
from  the  hills  a  most  sonorous  welcome !" 

A  mournful  smile  passed  over  James's  feat- 
ures, and  at  the  close  of  this  rhetorical  flourish 
he  shouldered  his  box,  and  sighed : 

"This,  then,  is  San  Francisco  !" 


CHAPTER  II. 

Owing  to  the  heaviness  of  the  early  rains 
foot-travel,  or,  indeed,  travel  of  any  kind,  was 
attended  with  much  difficulty.  It  required  real- 
ly more  caution  than  James  Swilling  had  any 
conception  of  to  avoid  the  misstep  that  would 
plunge  one  hopelessly  into  some  fatal  depth  of 
the  universal  mire.  He  had  been  on  Califor- 
nian  soil  only  a  few  hours,  but  he  had  already 
become  so  plastered  with  mud  that,  indifferent 
as  he  was,  in  any  other  clime  and  under  any 
other  circumstances  he  would  have  been  great- 
ly ashamed  of  his  extended  and  angular  ex- 
terior. 

However  man  may  blunder,  Nature  always 
works  with  the  nicest  precision.  The  per- 
son of  our  unfortunate  James  received  the  fin- 
ishing touch  of  the  grotesque  humor'  that  per- 
vaded his  fashioning  from  the  spectacles  that 
short-sightedness  made  it  necessary  for  him  to 
set  astride  his  long,  thin,  almost  transparent, 
nose.  It  was  by  the  aid  of  these  instruments 
that,  stretching  up  his  craney  neck  at  the  nick 


AND    '50. 


201 


of  time,  he  saved  himself  from  what  would  have 
probably  been  the  last  scene  of  his  ludicrous 
life-career.  He  was  about  striding  into  a  black 
sea  in  the  very  middle  of  one  of  the  main  lines 
of  travel,  when  he  caught  sight  of  the  following 
admonitory  placard : 

"THIS  STREET  IS  NOT  PASSABLE; 
NOT  EVEN  JACKASSABLE  ! " 

"That  means  me,  Cousin  Mortimer,"  he 
drawled,  and  the  two  turned  aside  into  a  safer 
route.  They  had  proceeded  but  a  little  dis- 
tance, and  Mortimer  was  still  laughing  at  the 
ridiculous  turn  given  to  the  lines  of  warning, 
when  a  man,  with  a  great  trunk  on  his  back, 
advanced,  and,  setting  his  burden  down  with 
noticeable  haste,  rushed  up  to  James,  seized 
both  his  hands  in  his  own,  and  cried : 

"Master  James  -Swilling,  how  do  you  do! 
You  didn't  know  me  at  first,  did  you?" 

"I  can't  believe  it  is  you  yet,  Mr.  Johnson," 
returned  the  other. 

"It  is  no  one  else,  James.  You  see  the  cloth 
is  not  regarded  with  the  respect  here  that  it  is 
back  in  old  Swansea.  And  whom  have  you  for 
company  ?" 

"My  cousin,  Mr.  Blair,  of  Boston.  Cousin 
Mortimer,  allow  me  to  introduce  you  to  an 
old  acquaintance,  the  Rev.  Joshua  Johnson,  of 
Swansea." 

"I  am  both  pleased  and  surprised,  Mr.  John- 
son, to  make  your  acquaintance." 

"My  present  employ," returned  the  ex-clergy- 
man, "may  strike  you  a  little  strangely  at  first, 
but  a  word  will  convince  you  of  its  advantages 
over  the  sacred  calling  to  which  my  life  has 
been  heretofore  devoted." 

"  I  should  think  it  would  be  far  preferable  to 
bear  the  baggage  of  this  mad  people,  provided 
one  must  shoulder  either  that  or  their  loads  of 
iniquity,"  replied  Blair. 

"However  that  may  be,"  was  the  response, 
"I  have  carried  this  article  nearly  to  its  destina- 
tion— a  quarter  of  a  mile  at  most — and  I  shall 
have  earned 'in  so  doing  more  money  than  I 
ever  received  for  a  month's  preaching  in  New 
Hampshire." 

There  was  an  accent  of  worldliness  clinging 
to  the  garment -hem  of  this  statement,  which, 
though  unobserved  by  James,  was  perceived 
and  inwardly  commented  upon  by  his  cousin, 
who  had -had  better  opportunities  for  studying 
the  vicissitudes  of  fortune.  There  was,  too,  a 
look  in  the  eyes  of  the  Rev.  Johnson  that  Blair 
surmised  was,  at  least,  not  his  old  Swansea  pul- 
pit expression.  At  this  moment  a  large,  fleshy 
man  was  attempting  to  pass  the  group  with 


a  team  of  mules  drawing  a  load  of  unburned 
brick. 

"Hello,  Judge!"  greeted  the  preacher,  "then 
you  finally  got  the  mule  safely  out  last  night." 

"You  bet  your  life  I  did,"  roared  back  the 
other.  "And  what's  more,  I  punched  hell  out 
of  the  Yankee  Doctor  that  wouldn't  black  my 
boots  until  I  put  up  the  dust.  It  made  fun  for 
the  boys,  parson.  But  see  here,  I'm  dry  as  a 
salt  cod.  Come,  you  and  the  strangers  fall  in, 
and  we'll  step  into  the  El  Dorado  and  take  a 
smile." 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  art  of  writing  is 
so  limited  that  the  expression  that  came  upon 
James  Swilling's  countenance,  instantaneously 
with  this  invitation,  must  be  left  wholly  to  the 
reader's  imagination.  He  would  give  more  for 
a  faithful  copy  of  it  than  for  the  originals  of  all 
the  beauties  adorning  the  El  Dorado,  toward 
which  the  Judge  was  now  already  on  his  roll- 
ing way.  Did  he  go  alone?  Not  he.  Laying 
his  profane  hand  upon  the  collar  of  the  parson, 
and  locking  with  his  other  arm  the  lank  form 
of  dumb-foundered  Jimmy  Swilling,  he  proceed- 
ed, as  closely  attended  as  genuine  affection 
could  desire.  Blair,  hector  that  he  was,  to  add 
to  his  gentle  relative's  discomfort  volunteered 
to  stay  behind  and  watch  the  mules  and  the 
trunk.  One  glance,  however,  from  the  forlorn 
face  of  James  convinced  him  that  the  jest  was 
too  cruel,  and  without  further  persuasion  he 
joined  the  group. 

"Do  you  know  what  would  come  of  it, 
stranger,"  shouted  the  Judge,  "if  anybody 
meddled  with  those  animals  or  the  parson's 
freigb^?" 

James  having  expressed  himself  totally  inca- 
pable of  conjecturing,  the  Judge,  squeezing  him 
with  the  heartiness  of  a  grizzly  bear,  answered 
his  own  interrogatory : 

"Why,  the  parson  and  I  would  slip  a  little 
string  we  have  made  on  purpose  round  his  car- 
cass just  above  the  shirt-collar,  and  run  him  up 
to  the  first  post  we  came  to." 

"Hang  him  !"  exclaimed  James. 

"Well,  yes;  that's  a  good  name  for  the  pro- 
ceeding. We  used  that  expression  back  in  the 
States,.!  recollect,  under  circumstances  strik- 
ingly similar.  What — hey — parson?"  contin- 
ued the  drayman,  slapping  the  back  of  Rev. 
Johnson  with  what  James  considered  most  un- 
becoming familiarity. 

"You  see,  Mr.  Swilling,"  spoke  the  preacher 
from  Swansea,  "a  residence  in  California,  be  it 
ever  so  short,  inclines  one  to  modify  the  old- 
est and  most  cherished  opinions.  I  confess 
that  there  is  something  about  capital  punish- 
ment that  is  repulsive  to  our  natures.  But,  as 
you  will  soon  discover,  it  is  a  positive  necessi- 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ty  in  certain  conditions  of  society.  Now,  the 
Judge " 

"Cut  it  short,  parson,"  broke  in  the  burly 
representative  of  the  law.  "Damn  his  eyes  !  It 
does  me  good  to  watch  the  legs  of  a  thief 
limber  up  when  fairly  suspended  in  mid-air. 
Stranger,  philosophizing  is  a  slim  business  in 
this  country.  Reflection  is  here  a  lost  art.  We 
have  to  act.  By  God,  sir,  we  have  no  time  to 
dally  with  fine-spun  theories." 

No  doubt  the  Judge  would  have  supplied  dis- 
tracted James  with  a  deal  more  information 
pertinent  to  the  new  life  upon  which  he  had  en- 
tered, but  the  company  had  now  arrived  at  the 
El  Dorado.  Again  the  features  of  James  Swill- 
ing, faithfully  copied,  would  have  made  the 
fortune  of  the  artist  that  had  succeeded  in 
transferring  them  to  canvass.  In  dumb  amaze- 
ment he  rolled  his  gray  eyes  from  side  to  side, 
and  through  his  bespattered  spectacles  drank 
in  the  profuse  splendors  of  this  most  magnifi- 
cent of  the  many  gambling  palaces  of  youthful 
San  Francisco.  The  halls  were  hung  with  cost- 
ly mirrors,  alternating  with  voluptuous  pictures 
set  in  gorgeous  frames,  and  with  pieces  of  plas- 
ter statuary  of  like  questionable  design ;  while 
table  after  table  surmounted  by  dazzling  heaps 
of  gold  and  silver,  and  a  variety  of  expensive 
gambling  tools,  invited  the  guest  to  a  seat  at 
their  side.  Double,  triple,  quadruple  rows  of 
glistening  bottles  were  arranged  behind  the 
bar,  the  sight  of  which  would  tempt  the  most 
abstemious.  In  the  midst  of  these  brilliant 
attractions,  blinding  the  eyes  with  their  fatal 
splendor,  sat  men  of  all  nationalities,  of  all 
ages  and  professions,  making  and  losing  fort- 
unes in  a  single  hour,  By  day  and  by  mght  the 
games  went  on.  Monte,  faro,  roulette,  which- 
ever the  individual  bias  and  training  preferred 
— these  and  many  other  games  stood  waiting 
those  that  were  sure.,  sooner  or  later,  to  come 
within  the  circle  of  their  magic  influence. 
There  was  music  in  the  very  ring  of  the  glasses 
as  they  were  passed  over  the  bar;  but  above 
their  merry  sound  rose  voluptuous  melodies 
evoked  from  various  instruments  by  skilled 
players,  who,  in  the  home-land  behind,  had  been 
ornaments  to  their  profession. 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that  it  was  all  one  un- 
broken blaze  of  glory  in  this  paradise  of  the 
gamblers.  By  the  side  of  the  military  officer 
in  blue  coat  with  brass  buttons,  it  is  true,  sat 
the  princely  Spaniard  calmly  folded  in  his  high- 
colored  serape;  but  next  beyond  them  was  to 
be  seen  the  haggard  face  of  one  smitten  with 
sickness  or  worn  with  poverty  and  despair.  An 
elderly  man  this  might  be,  with  sunken  eyes, 
his  white  hair  disheveled  and  his  uncleanly 
blouse  hanging  forlornly  about  an  emaciated  ' 


and  sunken  frame ;  or  it  was,  perchance,  a 
youth,  prematurely  old,  his  bones  racked  with 
rheumatism  and  his  skin  livid  with  ague.  If 
neither  of  these,  perhaps  it  was  a  blear-eyed, 
hopeless  sailor,  or  a  squalid,  shapeless  wretch, 
name  and  country  unknown,  but  whose  skele- 
ton fingers  were  clutching  as  eagerly  as  those 
of  another  at  the  piles  of  glittering  gold.  Yes, 
there  was  something  dreadful,  after  all,  in  this 
rich  and  enchanting  illumination.  Shadows, 
in  the  guise  of  innumerable  wrecks  of  human- 
ity, stretched  their  black  shapes  here  and  there, 
casting  a  death -like  gloom  over  the  heart  of 
him  that  was  still  innocent  enough  to  perceive 
it  and  to  understand  its  message  of  warning. 

Such  a  heart,  with  all  his  other  misfortunes, 
had  poor  James  Swilling.  The  Judge  called 
on  the  liquors  without  delay,  but  James's  breast 
had  already  received  a  serious  wound.  It  was 
not  from  a  glance  at  the  nude  figures  lolling  in 
graceful  attitudes  in  the  largest  picture  upon 
the  walls.  No;  it  was  from  an  appealing  look 
given  him  as  he  entered  by  a  young  man  seat- 
ed beneath  it  that  7ames  received  a  painful 
thrust. 

"Nominate  your  pizen,  gentlemen,"  shouted 
the  Judge. 

James  turned  to  the  Rev.  Johnson,  who 
meanwhile  had  quietly  remarked  to  the  man 
behind  the  bar : 

"Fusil — no  sugar." 

One  more  turn  of  his  long  neck,  and  James 
was  looking  steadfastly  into  the  eyes  of  his 
cousin. 

"Mr.  Swilling  and  myself,"  spoke  Blair,  com- 
ing to  the  rescue,  "will  content  ourselves  with 
a  smoke." 

"The  hell  you  will !"  roared  the  Judge. 

"Yes,  thank  you,"  was  the  response. 

It  was  hardly  uttered  when  a  slender  man 
advanced,  and,  confronting  the  Judge,  said : 

"You  will  please  observe  a  little  more  polite- 
ness .toward  the  gentleman  from  Boston.  He 
happens  to  be  an  old  acquaintance  of  mine." 

"The  hell  you  say!"  again  thundered  the 
now  irate  Judge.  "Who  are  you,  you  infernal 
Yankee  peddler!" 

Blair  was  about  to  take  the  new-found  friend 
by  the  hand,  when  he  perceived  that  the  Judge 
had  drawn  his  pistol.  He  had  no  more  than 
discovered  this,  when  his  friend,  with  a  move- 
ment of  surprising  swiftness,  unsheathed  a  long 
knife  and  buried  it  in  the  broad  breast  of  him 
that  had  offered  the  insult.  With  a  terrible 
curse,  the  wounded  Judge  reeled  against  the 
bar,  and  the  next  instant  fell  lifeless  to  the 
ground. 

"We  are  quits,"  muttered  the  quiet,  woman- 
faced  avenger,  wiping  his  dripping  blade  upon 


AND 


203 


the  sole  of  his  high  boots,  and  calmly  eyeing 
the  tumultuous  throng  that  now  pressed  around 
him  and  his  dead  antagonist. 

"That  thar's  purty  sarcey,"  spoke  a  tall  Ken- 
tuckian,  shaking  his  broad  hat  defiantly. 

"It  was  a  difficulty  of  some  months'  stand- 
ing," replied  an  officer  in  the  army. 

"Served  him  right,  hey,  boys?"  continued  the 
man  behind  the  bar.  "See  here.  The  liquor's 
paid  for.  What'll  you  have?  Ho,  fall  in  there, 
you  fellows  in  the  corner." 

This  last  remark  was  directed  to  two  wretch- 
ed looking  men,  evidently  sailors,  who  had  not 
even  raised  their  eyes  from  the  table  to  learn 
the  cause  of  the  disturbance. 

Blair's  newly  discovered  acquaintance  now 
took  him  by  the  hand,  saying,  as  if  nothing  of 
importance  had  happened  : 

"I  am  right  glad  you  gave  me  an  opportunity 
to  do  you  a  favor  so  soon  after  your  arrival.  I 
did  myself  a  double  one  at  the  same  time." 

"I  am  very  sorry,  Frank,"  returned  the  other. 
"Knowing  nothing  of  the  antecedent  provoca- 
tion, I  have  no  right  or  inclination  to  say  more." 

"I  will  explain  it  all  to  you,"  was  the  reply 
of  Frank  Ensign,  a  young  member  of  the  Bos- 
ton bar,  a  few  years  Blair's  senior.  "These 
men  know." 

Ensign  was  right.  All  present  knew  that,  in 
accordance  with  the  code  of  honor  of  which  the 
Southern  Judge  had  been  a  zealous  champion, 
his  fall  was  just.  But  Ensign,  cool  and  confi- 
dent as  he  appeared,  was  also  aware  that  no 
very  distant  provocation  would  be  sought  by 
certain  of  the  chivalry  present  to  avenge  the 
death  of  their  comrade.  It  was  not  a  coveted 
task,  however — for  the  slender,  delicate  looking 
lawyer  was  not  only  a  favorite  with  the  better 
men  of  the  settlement,  but  was  supposed  to 
have  no  superior  among  them  in  the  use  of 
deadly  weapons. 

' '  Quaff  a  cup  to  the  dead  already, 

And  hurrah  for  the  next  that  dies." 

The  chorus  rose  from  two  or  three  dozens  of 
throats,  and  the  glasses  were  drained — all  but 
one.  James  Swilling  made  an  effort  to  grasp 
that  set  before  him,  but  his  hand  fell  back  pow- 
erless by  his  side. 

"Andy!"  he  whispered.  "Andy  Wheeler, 
you  here  !  Why  don't  you  speak?" 

The  wretch  that  he  addressed,  crouching  mo- 
tionless beneath  the  nude  figures  in  the  mass- 
ive golden  frame,  only  leered  at  him  in  blank 
bewilderment.  Upon  one  side  lay  the  body  of 
the  murdered  Judge ;  upon  the  other,  curled  up 
like  a  dying  dog,  lay  Andy  Wheeler,  the  play- 
mate of  childhood's  happy  days,  now  an  abso- 


lute idiot  from  exposure,  disappointment,  and 
drink.  Poor  James  Swilling  was  no  underling 
in  intellect,  neither  was  he  a  coward,  but  his 
breast  had  not  yet  been  fired  with  the  wild  life, 
nor  had  his  nerves  been  yet  steadied  by  that 
heroic,  that  desperate  and  terrible  steel -like 
strength,  characterizing  the  wonder-workers  of 
California  in  early  days.  His  brain  failed  to 
do  its  office ;  his  senses  swam ;  the  gaudy  glo- 
ries of  El  Dorado  grew  gradually  dimmer  and 
more  dim,  until,  at  last,  his  cousin  was  obliged 
to  conduct  him  quickly  to  the  open  air. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  famous  fall  of  '49,  memorable  for  its 
long,  cold  rains,  brought  devastating  sickness. 
Many  miners,  returning  from  the  hills,  car- 
ried disease  down  with  them,  while  others  con- 
tracted it  in  the  towns.  The  best  of  the  frail 
tenements  of  San  Francisco  were  ill  calculated 
to  protect  their  inmates  from  the  drenching 
storms.  Even  had  they  been  water-tight  over- 
head, their  foundations  must  still  have  rested 
in  the  perpetually  deepening  mire.  To  many, 
because  of  the  enormity  of  rent,  the  miserable 
shelter  of  a  tent  was  denied.  Such  took  pos- 
session of  the  first  hiding-place  they  could  dis- 
cover, and  in  it  either  struggled  through  until 
clear  weather,  or,  without  the  least  comfort  or 
care,  perished  in  the  attempt. 

The  occupation  of  grave-digging  was,  during 
the  season,  perhaps  the  safest  pursued  upon 
the  Pacific  Coast.  The  leading  man  in  this 
sombe*f  employment  fell  to  cursing  without  stint 
did  the  pale  messenger  fail  to  leave  with  him 
his  orders  for  from  five  to  eight  new  graves 
per  day.  Altercations  terminating  fatally,  as 
did  that  between  Judge  Brainard  and  Ensign, 
were  looked  upon  by  him  in  the  light  of  visit- 
ations of  divine  favor.  The  first  words  that 
James  clearly  distinguished  upon  reviving  from 
his  swoon  were  those  of  rejoicing  uttered  by 
this  heartless  creature:  "Damn  him,"  he  croak- 
ed, "a  right  smart  chap,  and  that's  a  fact, •'but 
my  quota  must  be  full  every  day,  you  know, 
even  if  the  riffle  has  to  be  made  among  the 
chivalry  of  my  own  sunny  South." 

"Heavens!"  sighed  James.  "Cousin  Morti- 
mer, for  pity's  sake  help  me  away  from  this 
dreadful  place!  Is  that  Judge  surely  dead? 
And  Andy — what  have  they  done  with  him?" 

The  grave-digger,  still  lingering  over  his  cup, 
cast  a  look  of  vile  inquiry  at  the  cousins  stand- 
ing without ;  but,  deterred  by  a  dark  scowl  on 
Blair's  brow,  he  acted  his  true  coward's  part, 
and  remained  at  a  respectful  distance. 


204 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"Do  you  feel  able  to  walk  a  little  way,  Jim?" 
asked  his  protector. 

"Walk?  Yes.  I  could  run  were  there  no 
other  way  to  quit  this  den  of  devils.  But  Andy 
— can't  we  take  him  along?" 

"I  requested  Ensign  to  supply  his  necessi- 
ties, and  he  has  done  so.  He  will  recover,  I 
trust.  Beastly  intoxication  seemed  to  be  his 
main  difficulty." 

"Mortimer,"  continued  James,  as  the  two 
moved  away  together,  "I  declare  such  things 
are  too  terrible  to  believe.  Had  you  the  faint- 
est idea  that  staid,  pious  preachers  like  Mr. 
Johnson  would  come  here,  and  in  a  few  months' 
time  forget  the  righteous  practices  of  forty 
years  and  fall  into  grossest  dissipation?" 

"It  seems  they  do,"  was  the  response,  "and 
we  must  take  things  as  they  come.  Stiffen  up, 
Jimmy.  It  won't  do  to  give  way  to  human  feel- 
ings, highly  commendable  though  they  be  in  any 
country  but  this.  The  gamblers,  cut -throats, 
and  dare-devils  generally  of  all  climes  have 
flocked  in  here,  and  we  must  meet  them  on 
their  own  ground.  It  looks  just  now  as  if  hon- 
est men  were  wofully  scarce,  but  we  shall  find 
some  of  them  yet." 

"Strange  that  we  should  have 'run  across 
three  or  four  old  acquaintances  so  soon.  1 
knew  that  Mr.  Johnson  and  Andy  were  here, 
and  was  looking  forward  to  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  them.  I  would,  now,  that  I  had  never 
seen  either  of  them." 

"Tush,  man  !  No  more  chicken-heartedness. 
You  need  not  be  reminded  what  the  poet  says 
about  the  'brave'  and  the  'fair.'  Mary,  by  all 
the  gods  of  Olympus,  by  all  the  deities  of 
Mount  Washington—  yes,  Jim,  by  the  entire 
celestial  posse  of  'em,  ancient  or  modern — Mary 
is  fair !  Now,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  dicta 
of  great  poets,  and  if  there  is  any  logic  in  these 
matters  of  love,  James,  it  is  imperative  that  you 
should  be  brave." 

A  certain  quaint  philosopher  publishes  his 
conviction  that  there  is  a  north-west  passage 
to  the  intellectual  world.  A  little  further  dis- 
covery would  have  revealed  to  him  a  second 
route,  equally  important  to  the  spiritual  inter- 
communication of  men,  leading  to  the  heart. 
Blair  was  a  veritable  Columbus  in  this  most 
peculiar  and  difficult  navigation  of  the  unknown 
waters  of  the  human  breast.  Too  soon  for  his 
cousin's  comfort,  he  found  the  direct  course  to 
his  young  and  confiding  heart.  With  Mary 
Thornton  for  his  north  star,  Blair  invariably 
sailed  -via  Swansea,  New  Hampshire,  into  the 
innermost  harbor  of  James  Swilling's  affection. 
Now,  James  was  a  little  weak—both  in  the  head 
and  knees— at  the  time  of  Blair's  last  trip,  re- 
corded immediately  above;  and  when  Mary's 


beauty  was  thus  vividly  flashed  before  his  blink- 
ing eyes,  he  could  make  no  reply.  Speechless, 
he  used  all  his  strength  to  keep  a  sure  foot- 
ing as  he  journeyed.  He  could  not  resist  the 
temptation,  however,  to  cast  a  furtive  glance 
at  a  certain  inexpensive,  but  exceedingly  pre- 
cious, pendant  swinging  perturbedly  upon  his 
steel  watch-chain.  He  bent  his  long  neck  down 
toward  it  several  times,  though  every  effort 
nearly  cost  him  a  plunge  into  the  mire.  Awk- 
ward gestures  they  were,  but  pathetic,  indeed. 
One  might  either  laugh  or  cry  at  them  as  he 
would.  Blair  chose  the  former. 

"Jimmy,"  said  he,  "for  all  the  world  you  act 
like  a  crane  oiling  himself." 

Here  the  arrival  of  the  cousins  at  a  hotel- 
tent,  named  "The  Oro,"  put  an  end  to  the  con- 
versation. 

"I  have  a  sick  friend  here,"  said  Blair  to  a 
jolly-looking  man  that  he  judged  to  be  the  pro- 
prietor. "We  would  like  accommodations  for 
the  night." 

"Well,  that's  a  sensible  idee,  stranger.  You 
are  right  welcome." 

"What  have  you  for  rooms,  and  how  do  you 
let  them?" 

"Well,  stranger,  I  can  furnish  you  a  room 
without  board  for  five  dollars  a  day  per  man." 

James  looked  wild  enough,  but  spoke  not  a 
word. 

"And  what  would  be  the  additional  expense 
of  board,  sir?"  continued  Blair. 

"Well,  stranger,  a  good,  square  meal,  such 
as  gentlemen  like  yourself  ought  to  have,  can 
be  set  onlfc>r  about  two  dollars.  Well,  say  for 
the  two  of  you  ten  dollars  a  day.  That's  a  low 
figure  for  the  genuine  article,  and  I'll  swear  to't." 

It  is  probable  that  James  thought  the  pro- 
prietor was  really  going  to  vent  a  volley  of  con- 
firmatory profanity,  for  he  went  to  the  door  and 
began  an  earnest  survey  of  scenes  without  the 
tent.  Blair  having  heard  one  man  say  that  he 
had  just  paid  a  dollar  for  a  beefsteak  and  a  cup 
of  coffee,  and  another  that  he  had  disbursed 
seventy-five  cents  each  for  two  eggs,  which  he 
endeavored  to  devour  with  a  relish  proportion- 
ate to  their  cost,  was  not  much  surprised  at  the 
prices  named  by  the  good-natured  landlord 
with  whom  he  was  now  bargaining. 

"You  can't  get  a  small  room  with  single  bed 
(at  a  respectable  house,  of  course)  for  less  than 
one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  if  you  rent  it  by 
the  month,"  continued  the  proprietor  of  "The 
Oro."  "Why,  stranger,  what  else  can  you  ex- 
pect when  flour  is  forty  dollars  a  barrel  and 
pork  sixty  dollars  a  barrel?  Every  stick  of 
wood  burned,  mind  you,  costs  at  the  rate  of 
forty  dollars  a  cord.  These  are  facts.  'The 
Oro'  is  no  swindle,  and  I'll  swear  to't." 


V?  AND   'so. 


205 


"  I  am  satisfied/'  answered  Blair,  after  a  state- 
ment of  these  prices  and  many  more  equally 
enormous.  "Let  us  get  my  friend  to  bed  as 
quickly  as  possible." 

Night  was  now  approaching,  and  dismal 
shades  began  to  settle  upon  this  wild,  young 
town  by  the  western  sea.  It  was  well  that 
James  Swilling  sought  his  little  damp  bunk  be- 
fore he  had  an  opportunity  to  increase  his  heart- 
sickness  by  the  inexpressible  dreariness  of  the 
scene.  Before  the  revel  of  the  darkness  was 
fairly  ushered  in,  he  had  closed  his  eyes  in  sleep. 
His  last  words  were  : 

"The  money  for  my  cattle  on  the  old  farm 
wouldn't  have  gone  far  at  this  rate,  would  it, 
Cousin  Mortimer?" 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Having  seen  his  comrade'safely  laid  to  rest, 
Blair  determined  to  learn  a  little  more  of  the 
new  world  of  which  he  was  now  an  inhabit- 
ant. For  a  time  he  busied  himself  walking  the 
streets,  now  and  then  peering  into  places  des- 
ignated by  such  inviting  names  as  Gotham  Sa- 
loon, Cafe  Francais,  The  Colonnade.  Some  of 
these  hotels  and  saloons  had  enough  wood  in 
their  composition  to  almost  entitle  them  to  be 
called  buildings,  All  was  strange  and  more  or 
less  distracting;  but  the  more  Blair  dwelt  upon 
the  immense  business  already  established  by 
commission  merchants,  upon  the  prosperity  of 
all  traders  and  business  men  of  whatever  de- 
scription, the  more  heart  he  took,  and  saw  the 
clearer  that,  with  health,  toil,  and  sobriety  for 
his  capital,  a  man  must  meet  with  pecuniary 
success.  Revolving  in  his  mind  thoughts  kin- 
dred to  the  foregoing,  he  turned  down  toward 
the  plaza,  and  eventually  entered  the  two-story 
wooden  building  upon  its  left — the  famous  Par- 
ker House — most  imposing  and  costly  of  the 
structures  yet  erected  in  the  settlement. 

Here  were  assembled  men  of  more  pleasing 
mien  than  Blair  had  hitherto  met.  Many  of 
them  were  quietly  reading  the  Alta,  others  en- 
gaged in  discussing  business  matters,  while 
here  and  there  a  miner,  more  rude  than  the 
rest,  keyed  his  voice  somewhat  loudly  in  dis- 
quisitions upon  the  present  condition  of  the 
"diggin's"  and  their  "prospects"  for  theTuture. 
The  young  Bostonian  began  to  feel  quite  at 
home,  and  resolved  to  enter  into  conversation 
with  a  man  seated  in  the  chair  next  his  own. 
Judging  from  the  stout  buckskin  moccasins 
on  his  legs,  by  the  pistols  and  knife  in  his  belt, 
and  by  the  Mexican  sombrero  resting  carelessly 
upon  his  knee,  he  was  a  miner,  recently  from 
the  hills.  So  it  proved. 


"My  name  is  Marshall,"  said  he,  after  the 
two  had  gotten  a  little  acquainted.  "Not  a  fa- 
mous man,  by  any  means,  but  you  may  have 
chanced  to  hear  of  me." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  responded  the  other.  "I  was 
going  to  say  that  I  knew  you  well.  It  wouldn't 
be  much  of  an  exaggeration  to  affirm  that  the 
people  of  the  United  States  regard  Captain  Sui- 
ter and  yourself  as  anything  but  strangers." 

"And  you  thought  you  would  come  out  and 
follow  up  the  acquaintance.  Well,  I'm  glad  to 
see  you.  You  think  that  you  have  struck  a 
queer  spot,  I  reckon." 

"I  must  say,  Mr.  Marshall,  that,  though  this 
is  my  first  night  in  town,  I  have  already  dis- 
covered many  striking  peculiarities." 

"I  don't  doubt  it;  and  you  are  not  through 
with  'em  yet.  There — there  is  a  new  one  this 
very  minute,"  whispered  the  miner,  pointing  to- 
ward the  door,  where  a  most  novel  looking  creat- 
ure was  entering. 

His  appearance  first  suggested  a  peacock 
rather  than  a  human  being,  but  he  soon  proved 
himself  too  vain  for  anything  but  a  man  whose 
brain  had  run  to  worship  of  the  gaudiest  finery. 
Beneath  his  blue  jacket  flashed  a  white  satin 
vest,  ornamented  with  bright  flowers ;  in  his  hat 
waved  an  ostrich  feather ;  while  his  hands,  cased 
in  immaculate  kids,  flourished,  as  only  a  fool  or 
a  fop  fe  able,  a  light  cane,  carved  with  the  con- 
genial device  of  a  monkey's  head. 

"Won't  you  take  that  for  a  new  specimen  in 
your  collection?"  asked  the  pioneer,  with  a  con- 
temptuous smile,  indicatingkhis  appreciation  of 
the  dancing  dandy. 

"Yes;  he  must  go  on  the  upper  shelf.  But 
what  name  can  I  find  vapid  enough  to  write  on 
his  label?" 

"The  euphonious  title,  sir,  of  Jemmy  Twitch- 
er." 

"And  who,  pray,  may  Jemmy  Twitcher  be?" 

"One  of  the  Hounds" 

"I  shall  have  to  trouble  you  with  a  second 
inquiry.  I  like  the  sound  of  the  name  of  the 
order  to  which  you  assign  the  nervous  coxcomb; 
but  who  are  the  Hounds?" 

"A  better  way  to  put  it  would  be,  Who  were 
the  Hounds?  They  have,  I  am  happy  to  say, 
ceased  to  be  an  organized  body.  Some  three 
or  four  months  since,  a  gang  of  desperadoes 
took  it  into  their  heads  that  they  would  regu- 
late matters  up  in  the  mines  according  to  their 
own  sovereign  ideas.  Certain  foreigners,  par- 
ticularly those  of  Spanish  extraction,  were  do- 
ing cheaper  labor  than  they  felt  willing  to  com- 
pete with.  Accordingly,  they  banded  them- 
selves together,  elected  their  officers,  establish- 
ed head -quarters  of  operation,  and  began  to 
exercise  their  self- constituted  authority.  On 


206 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  slightest  provocation,  they  insulted  and  beat 
the  Chilians,  plundered  their  tents,  and  put  their 
gold  into  their  own  pockets.  This  condition  of 
affairs  continued,  until,  one  of  their  number  be- 
ing killed  by  a  Chilian,  they  avenged  themselves 
with  greater  severity  than  ever  upon  foreigners 
living  here  in  San  Francisco.  This  was  too 
much  for  the  hot  blood  of  so  excitable  a  town, 
and  a  public  meeting  was  immediately  called 
by  the  Alcalde.  Money  was  raised  by  sub- 
scription to  succor  the  sufferers,  and  a  company 
of  something  like  two  hundred  and  fifty  special 
constables  enlisted  and  armed.  Before  the  sun 
went  down,  twenty  of  the  Hounds  had  been  ar- 
rested and  lodged  in  safe  custody." 
"Prompt  and  efficient  action,  surely." 
"Yes,  that  is  a  marked  characteristic  of  this 
people,  heterogeneous  as  it  is.  The  worst  men 
in  the  world  are  to  be  found  here,  and  a  new- 
comer will  light  upon  them  first.  In  this  way 
he  gains,  often,  an  exaggerated  opinion  of  the 
various  forms  of  vice  that,  unfortunately,  are 
prevalent  enough,  but  not  all-controlling.  Ev- 
ery man  that  comes  to  this  coast  grows  more  or 
less  wild — necessarily  so ;  for  the  prime  object 
of  his  life  is  to  reap  as  quickly  as  possible  har- 
vests of  immense  wealth.  There  are  no  re- 
straining influences,  and  greed  naturally  be- 
comes rampant.  The  majority  of  those  that 
come  here  are,  moreover,  young  men— many  of 
them  boys,  whose  characters  are  not  yet  form- 
ed. Nevertheless,  destitute  as  we  are  of  the 
wholesome  checks  brought  to  bear  in  countries 
that  have  attained  to  a  high  degree  of  civiliza- 
tion, there  is  a  silent  under- current  of  strong 
and  noble  manhood.  The  men  composing  this 
class  are  neither  parading  their  merits  nor  mak- 
ing their  boasts  of  authority  in  public  places; 
but  when  the  time  comes  for  their  voices  to  be 
heard  and  their  arms  to  be  felt  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  a  just  cause,  they  make  immediate  and 
most  salutary  response.  The  devils  among  us 
are  not  uppermost  when  the  hour  of  trial  ar- 
rives. The  vilest  influence  that  we  have  to 
contend  with  is  that  of  a  horde  of  lazy,  profli- 
gate, virtually  banished  politicians,  who  have 
hurried  here  from  all  quarters.  But  I  tell  you 
that  these  impious  and  bullying  rascals  don't 
hold  the  reins  in  their  own  hands.  One  of  them 
was  summarily  stopped  in  his  career  this  very 
morning.  You  undoubtedly  have  had  a  full  re- 
port of  it." 

"I  am  pleased  with  your  sentiments  of  ap- 
proval," responded  Blair,  "for  Ensign  is  an  old 
acquaintance,  and  I  felt  convinced  that  there 
must  be  something  like  justification  for  so  seri- 
ous a  deed.  It  was  under  pretense  of  the 
Judge's  insult  to  me  that  Ensign  sought  a  quar- 
rel with  him." 


"I  don't  mean  to  say  that  I  exactly  commend 
such  proceedings,"  returned  the  miner;  "that 
is,  as  a  rule.  But  there  is  no  doubt  in  my 
mind  that  Brainard  deserved  death.  If  Ensign 
was  willing  to  take  the  responsibility,  why,  well 
and  good.  I  look  upon  him,  in  view  of  the  law- 
lessness among  us,  as  a  public  benefactor." 

"Of  one  thing  I  am  certain,"  said  Blair,  fill- 
ing in  the  pause  made  by  the  sturdy  pioneer ; 
"such  days  as  these  are  never  repeated  in  a 
man's  experience." 

"Never,  sir;  nor  will  they  occur  again  in  the 
history  of  these  United  States.  You  see  that  we 
have  only  made  a  faint  beginning.  Out  of  all 
this  chaos  is  to  come  a  vast  organization  of  un- 
told wealth,  destined  to  revolutionize  the  money 
markets  of  our  own  and  foreign  lands." 

"The  mines,  then,  in  your  opinion,  have  as 
yet  yielded  but  an  intimation  of  their  treas- 
ures." 

"Sir,  they  are  inexhaustible;  and  there  is  no 
knowing  with  what  unlimited  success  agricult- 
ure, in  the  not  very  distant  future,  may  be  pur- 
sued in  California.  This  land  is  one  huge 
garner  of  wealth,  from  the  sky  above  to  the 
bowels  of  the  earth  beneath.  Congress  has  not 
done  the  right  thing  by  us,"  continued  the  speak- 
er, giving  his  sombrero  an  energetic  shift.  "It 
has  made  arrangements  to  secure  our  revenue, 
and  perhaps  that  is  all  it  wants,  but  I  trust  not. 
We  shall  pull  through,  in  one  way  or  another. 
The  members  of  our  convention  down  at  Mon- 
terey are  not  altogether  harmonious,  but  I  have 
faith  that  they  will  present  the  people  with  an 
acceptable  constitution.  They  have  now  en- 
tered upon  their  fifth  week,  and  the  reports  so 
far  confirm  my  hopes." 

"You  speak  encouragingly,  Mr.  Marshall, 
without  the  suspicious  vehemence  that  attaches 
itself  to  the  delivery  of  unwarranted  opinions. 
I  must  say  that  I  thank  you  heartily.  As  you 
may  imagine,  I  am  anxious  to  get  to  the  mines, 
but  I  am  one  of  those  that  can  bide  the  proper 
time.  My  companion,  I  fear,  will  not  be  able 
to  go  on  for  a  few  days  yet." 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  that.  I  should  be  pleased 
to  have  your  company,  as  far  as  Sacramento  at 
least,  but  I  shall  be  obliged  to  leave  here  in  the 
morning.  I  will  post  Captain  Sutter,  however, 
and  see  that  you  have  some  assistance  from 
him  upon  your  arrival  at  the  Fort.  He  is  a  ter- 
ribly busy  man,  but  you  will  find  him,  for  all 
that,  a  warm  and  attentive  friend.  You  ought 
to  make  your  way  up  as  soon  as  possible,  for 
the  season  is  getting  late.  Many  of  the  miners, 
having  been  to  the  diggings,  and  'seen  the  ele- 
phant' to  their  satisfaction  for  a  time,  are  al- 
ready returning  to  squander  the  fruits  of  their 
toil  in  this  den  of  gamblers." 


A   NEW  CALIFORNIA. 


207 


Here  the  conversation  was  brought  to  an  end 
by  the  appearance  of  one  desiring  the  pioneer's 
presence  in  connection  with  the  business  that 
had  occasioned  his  visit  to  the  grand  repository 
of  the  earnings  of  the  miners. 

"Keep  up  good  courage,  young  man,"  he  said, 
as,  in  parting,  he  gave  Blair  a  hearty  shake  of 
the  hand.  "You  have  the  right  sort  of  stuff  in 


you  to  heel  yourself  handsomely  before  you 
take  leave  of  California.  I  can  see  it  in  your 
eye.  Make  haste  to  the  Fort,  and  meanwhile 
I  will  see  to  it  that  the  Captain  takes  you  under 
his  broad  wings  and  sends  you  on  up  the  river 
with  a  good  outfit.  Don't  spend  a  particle  of 
dust  for  Eastern  traps.  Mind  what  I  say.  So 
long  to  you."  JOHN  VANCE  CHENEY. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER. 


A    NEW    CALIFORNIA. 


The  hard  times  of  the  past  few  years  have 
swept  away  nearly  all  that  was  left  of  "old 
California."  The  industrial  and  social  condi- 
tion of  the  State  has  greatly  changed.  Look- 
ing up  from  the  depths  of  our  present  depres- 
sion, it  is  pleasing  to  observe  the  promises  of 
better  times.  Among  these  are  the  good  ef- 
fects destined  to  flow  from  the  opening  of  the 
new  overland  railway  from  San  Francisco  to 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

The  writer  has  recently  passed  over  this  road 
from  end  to  end,  and  can  speak  from  his  own 
observation  and  experience. 

The  Southern  Pacific  proper  starts  from  San 
Francisco  and  forks  to  Tres  Pinos  and  Soledad. 
Thence  to  Huron  is  an  uncompleted  gap  of 
eighty  miles.  From  Huron  the  road  runs  to 
Goshen,  where  it  forks  northwardly  into  the 
Central  Pacific  to  Lathrop  and  beyond,  while 
southwardly  it  continues  as  the  Southern  Pacific 
to  Fort  Yuma. 

This,  however,  is  not  the  present  route  for 
through  travel,  The  route  is  by  the  Central 
Pacific  from  San  Francisco  to  Lathrop,  and 
thence  down  the  San  Joaquin  Valley  to  the 
junction  of  the  road  with  the  Southern  Pacific 
at  Goshen.  From  Goshen  to  Fort  Yuma  and 
beyond  there  is  but  a  single  line. 

Near  Goshen  the  traveler  enters  the  rich 
lands  of  Tulare  County.  Farther  south  the 
road  rises  into  the  Valley  of  Kern  River,  which 
valley  it  follows  to  its  southern  extremity,  where 
the  Sierra  Nevada  and  Coast  Range  unite  and 
form  the  Tehachepi  Mountains.  Passing  these 
mountains,  it  enters  the  western  extension  of  the 
Mojave  Desert,  which  it  crosses  from  north  to 
south.  This  desert  is  elevated  high  above  the 
present  sea -level,  and  the  road,  after  passing 
through  it,  makes  a  long  and  great  descent  be- 
fore it  again  enters  a  fertile  country.  When  it 
does  so,  it  sweeps  through  the  lovely  huertas 


of  San  Fernando,  Los  Angeles,  Riverside,  and 
San  Bernardino.  Rising  from  these  immense 
gardens,  it  ascends  and  surmounts  the  Pass  of 
San  Gorgonio,  where  it  leaves  behind  every 
farm  this  side  of  Texas.  There  are  plenty  of 
good  grazing  lands  in  Arizona  and  New  Mex- 
ico, and  a  few  sites  for  ranches  in  river  bottoms 
and  cienagasj  but  from  San  Bernardino  to  mid- 
dle Texas  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  at  least  for  some 
time  to  come,  the  plow  will  be  an  implement  in 
little  request.  As  will  presently  be  shown,  this 
fact  has  much  to  do  with  the  future  prosperity 
of  California. 

The  Pass  of  San  Gorgonio  is  the  north-west- 
ern, and  the  Colorado  River  the  south-eastern, 
portal  of  the  Colorado  Desert.  Between  the  two 
portals  lies  little  else  than  one  vast  sheet  of 
shifting  sand. 

From  the  Colorado  River  to  the  Rio  Grande 
the  road  winds  through  a  mesa  country  flanked 
by  mountain  ranges.  In  many  places  the  mesa 
is  cut  by  ctenagas,  or  drainage  valleys,  with 
marshy  bottoms.  Quite  commonly  the  road 
enters  these  denagas,  always  to  emerge  again 
upon  the  mesa  a  few  miles  beyond.  You  cross 
many  small  rivers,  which  are  always  dry  in 
summer  except  during  a  "cloud  burst,"  and  a 
few  that  flow  perennially.  Among  the  former 
is  the  Rio  Grande,  where,  at  present,  your  jour- 
ney terminates.  You  are  now  in  a  little,  sleepy 
Spanish -American  town,  where  vegetables  are 
two  bits  a  pound  and  water  is  unfit  to  drink; 
but  you  are  reading  a  San  Francisco  paper  only 
three  days  old,  and  are  satisfied  that  in  the  course 
of  another  week  the  shipments  of  food  from  that 
metropolis  will  bring  the  coster -mongers  of  El 
Paso  to  their  senses. 

At  El  Paso  you  have  left  behind  you  eight 
hundred  miles,  first  of  desert,  and  then  of  uncul- 
tivated, and  apparently  uncultivable,  country. 
Ahead  of  you  lie  four  hundred  miles  of  the 


208 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


naked  Llanos  Estacados.  Here  are  twelve  hun- 
dred miles  of  country  to  supply  with  flour, 
grain,  vegetables,  fruits,  liquors,  hardware,  dry 
goods,  saddlery,  clothing,  machinery,  mining 
supplies,  groceries,  lumber,  furniture,  wooden 
wares,  and  endless  other  articles.  All  these 
articles  must  come  from  California;  they  are 
being  supplied  from  California  now.  Lumber 
from  Truckee  is  delivered  at  the  Tombstone 
mines,  thirty  miles  south  of  the  railroad,  for 
$50  a  thousand.  Groceries,  canned  goods, 
liquors,  furniture,  clothing,  machinery,  and  a 
great  variety  of  other  merchandise,  is  obtained 
exclusively  from  San  Francisco.  Fruits  are 
shipped  from  Los  Angeles,  grain  from  the  San 
Joaquin.  There  are  not  many  buyers  now,  but 
there  will  be  soon.  Arizona  and  New  Mexico 
are  among  the  greatest  mining  countries  in  the 
world.  A  rush  to  these  countries  is  beginning, 
and  California  will  not  fail  to  profit  largely  by  it. 

El  Paso  is  within  three  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  of  the  head  of  steamboat  navigation  on 
the  Rio  Grande,  so  that,  were  it  desirable,  a 
through  line  of  steam  communication  between 
California  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  could  be 
opened  before  the  middle  of  next  year;  but  the 
new  overland  route  will  not  change  its  course. 
The  Rio  Grande  is  too  long  and  too  shallow  to 
serve  the  vast  commerce  which  this  line  is  ex- 
pected to  organize.  It  will  be  pushed  on  at 
once  to  the  eastward  until  it  connects  with  one 
of  the  several  roads  now  being  run  from  eastern 
to  western  Texas.  One  of  these  roads  has  six 
hundred  miles  of  rail  down.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  on  or  before  January  i,  1882,  San 
Francisco  and  New  Orleans  will  join  hands; 
the  States  of  California,  Arizona,  New  Mexico, 
Texas,  and  Louisiana  will  become  closely  knit 
by  new  bonds  of  commercial  interest;  the  trade 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
will  be  united. 

These  connections  indicate  some  of  the  gen- 
eral advantages  to  be  derived  from  the  comple- 
tion of  this  new  overland  route.  It  will  form 
the  shortest  all-rail  line  across  our  country  from 
ocean  to  ocean  ;  it  will  shorten  the  journey  from 
India,  China,  Japan,  Australia,  and  Polynesia 
to  the  Eastern  States  and  Europe,  and  attract 
much  of  the  trade  that  now  passes  through  the 
Suez  Canal  and  the  Mediterranean  Sea;  it  will 
open  new  markets  to  those  manufactures  of  the 
Eastern  States  which  their  peculiar  advantages 
will  always  enable  them  to  control ;  it  will  dis- 
tribute the  sugars,  cotton,  rice,  tobacco,  and 
other  products  of  the  Southern  States  through- 
out so^wide  a  world  that  new  life  will  be  impart- 
ed to  the  energies  of  that  section  ;  it  will  afford 
a  tremendous  impetus  to  the  mining  industries, 
now  so  rapidly  being  developed,  of  Arizona  and 


New  Mexico;  it  will  create  a  new  California. 
Yes,  so  numerous  and  important  are  the  ad- 
vantages to  be  derived  by  this  State  from  the 
completion  of  the  new  transcontinental  railway, 
that,  like  the  Erie  Canal  of  New  York,  it  will 
in  effect  re-create  the  commonwealth.  To  be 
able  to  recognize  the  justice  of  this  conclusion, 
it  is  first  necessary  to  extend  a  rapid  glance 
over  the  history  of  this  State,  and  the  circum- 
stances that  have  hitherto  influenced  its  wel- 
fare. This  review  will  show  : 

(i.)  That  California,  unlike  the  other  States 
of  this  Union,  was  not,  and  could  not  have  been, 
developed  by  men  of  small  capitals.  This  arises 
from  certain  conditions  of  climate,  the  absence 
of  navigable  rivers,  the  conditions  of  land  ten- 
ure upon  which  the  State  was  admitted  to  the 
Union,  and  the  peculiarities  of  its  natural  re- 
sources. 

(2.)  That  these  large  capitals  did  now  grow 
and  could  not  have  grown  up  here  as  capital 
grew  up  in  the  other  States  —  from  agriculture 
and  other  industries  favorable  to  slow,  equal, 
and  widely  diffused  accumulations.  They  grew 
up  from  mining  for  the  precious  metals,  an  ex- 
ceedingly hazardous  pursuit,  which  keeps  a  great 
many  people  poor,  and  makes  a  very  few  excep- 
tionally rich. 

(3.)  Hence,  California  was  developed  by  a 
few  exceptionally  rich  men,  whose  investments 
in  lands,  water-rights,  railways,  manufactories, 
etc.,  gave  employment  to  workingmen,  but  not 
opportunities  to  yeomen.  This  relation  between 
employer  and  employed  became  so  unattractive 
to  the  latter,  that,  combined  with  the  depression 
in  the  widely  diffused  "Comstock  shares,"  it 
gave  rise  to  serious  discontent. 

(4.)  But  this  relation  was  only  temporary, 
and  it  is  already  beginning  to  disappear.  It  is 
being  destroyed  by  the  competition  of  capital, 
chiefly  the  capital  invested  in  railways ;  for 
these,  by  tapping  new  sources  of  supplies  and 
opening  new  markets,  are  affording  to  poor  men 
— to  others  beside  great  rancheros,  stock  farm- 
ers, ditch  and  water  companies,  and  manufact- 
urers— an  opportunity  to  make  a  living  by  agri- 
culture or  trade. 

( 5.)  This  dawn  of  better  times  will  be  greatly 
hastened  by  the  new  overland  route  to  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico.  Already  the  southern  part  of  Cali- 
fornia is  feeling  its  beneficial  influence.  In  a 
short  time  the  whole  State  will  feel  it,  and  the 
existing  gloom  and  depression  will  pass  away. 

Let  us  examine  the  bases  for  these  conclu- 
sions by  going  into  details  : 

The  gold  discoveries  of  1849,  and  their  effects 
in  colonizing  this  State,  may  or  may  not  have 
been  of  benefit  to  mankind  at  large.  They  were 
indisputably  of  benefit  to  this  State,  for,  without 


A   NEW  CALIFORNIA. 


209 


these  discoveries,  the  State  would  probably  not 
have  been  settled  until  after  every  available 
acre  of  public  lands  in  the  Mississippi  Valley 
had  been  taken  up  and  occupied.  The  reason 
of  this  is  that  California  was  a  remote  State;  a 
great  portion  of  it  was  arid ;  it  lacked  navigable 
rivers;  it  was  covered  by  Spanish  grants  of 
great  extent,  and  often  of  indefinable  limits ;  it 
was  not  surveyed,  and  the  laws  made  it  more 
profitable  for  the  surveyors  to  map  oufthe  des- 
erts than  the  cultivable  lands;  its  resources  of 
fuel  (cheap  power),  so  far  as  then  developed, 
were  inferior  to  those  of  the  States  which  were 
then  prepared  to  compete  with  it  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  manufactures;  it  had  no  foreign  com- 
merce. 

California  is  so  remote  from  the  Eastern 
States  and  Europe  that,  before  the  Union  and- 
Central  Pacific  railways  were  constructed,  the 
danger  and  expense  of  emigration  were  suffi- 
cient to  deter  all  but  the  most  hardy  and  ad- 
venturous persons. 

In  all  the  valleys  of  the  State  east  of  the 
Coast  Range  and  south  of  the  latitude  of  San 
Francisco,  the  lack  of  sufficient  rain-fall  renders 
artificial  irrigation  necessary.  Hence,  until  this 
could  be  supplied,  a  great  portion  of  the  State 
was  closed  against  settlement  by  immigrants 
with  limited  means. 

Substantially,  the  Sacramento  River — and 
this  only  for  a  comparatively  short  distance — is 
the  only  navigable  one  in  the  State.  Califor- 
nia, therefore,  lacks  that  cheap  and  readily  avail- 
able means  of  transit  which  has  contributed 
so  largely  to  develop  the  States  of  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley. 

The  Spanish  territorial  grants,  which  were 
recognized  as  valid  under  the  treaty  of  cession 
from  Mexico,  covered  the  best  portions  of  the 
State.  They  were  each  of  great  extent,  and 
so  much  subject  to  litigation  regarding  their 
origin  and  bounds  that  no  person  of  limited 
means  could  afford  to  purchase  and  improve 
the  lands  which  they  included.  Some  of  these 
grants  have  been  declared  void  by  the  courts ; 
others  have  been  confirmed  only  after  thirty 
years  of  expensive  litigation,  while  still  others 
are  as  yet  unsettled. 

The  laws  relating  to  the  surveys  of  public 
lands  left  it  to  the  discretion  of  the  surveyors 
to  choose  the  lands  which  they  should  first  sur- 
vey, and  awarded  them  so  much  per  acre  for 
surveying.  Under  these  circumstances,  they 
naturally  selected  the  easiest  work,  and  this 
was  upon  the  deserts.  The  first  surveys  made 
in  this  State  were  of  the  vast  desert  of  the  Col- 
orado, where  the  eye  can  take  in  at  a  single 
glance,  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  miles  of  land. 
Even  now  a  great  portion  of  the  cultivable 


parts  of  the  State  is  unsurveyed,  and  therefore 
cannot  be  located  by  the  industrious  poor. 

Coal  was  not  known  to  exist  in  >  California  at 
the  time  of  the  gold  discoveries,  and  even  now 
our  resources  in  this  respect  are  but  at  the 
threshold  of  their  development.  The  quantity 
of  timber  at  that  time  available  for  motive  power 
in  this  State  was  exceedingly  limited.  South  of 
San  Francisco  the  Coast  Range  was  but  sparse- 
ly timbered,  and  no  streams  existed  by  which 
cord-wood  could  be  cheaply  transported  to  any 
desirable  manufacturing  center;  nor  would  it 
have  paid  to  fetch  it  from  the  northern  Coast 
Range.  The  valleys  possessed  no  available  re- 
sources of  this  character.  The  foot-hills  were 
too  remote  from  the  centers  of  trade  to  enable 
their  fuel  product  to  compete  with  the  cheaper 
mechanical  powers  employed  in  the  Eastern 
States.  Manufactures  could  have  had — and,  in 
point  of  fact,  had — no  footing  in  California  until 
many  years  after  its  colonization  by  Americans. 

As  for  foreign  commerce,  it  had  no  footing, 
and  could  have  had  none  until  a  commercial 
outlet  to  the  East  was  furnished  by  the  Central 
and  Union  Pacific  railways.  The  early  com- 
merce of  California  was  confined  to  obtaining 
supplies  from  the  East,  and  laborers  from  China 
and  the  Sandwich  Islands.  This,  with  the  vis- 
its of  a  few  Arctic  whalers,  constituted  our  whole 
trade.  We  had  nothing  to  sell,  either  as  pro- 
ducers or  middle-men ;  we  had  no  markets  to 
sell  in ;  substantially,  we  had  no  commercial  re- 
sources upon  which  our  population  could  have 
depended  for  support. 

We  had  only  the  mines,  and  the  mines  event- 
ually gave  us  all  the  other  resources,  which  we 
now  possess ;  only  it  gave  them  to  us  in  a  pe- 
culiar way.  It  did  not  distribute  them  as  agri- 
culture, or  manufactures,  or  commerce  would 
have  distributed  them.  It  did  not  distribute 
them  as  they  have  been  distributed  in  countries 
which  depended  originally  upon  one  or  more  of 
these  resources  for  support.  It  did  not  distrib- 
ute them  fairly,  nor  evenly,  nor  universally. 

The  mines  made  many  men  poor  and  a  few 
men  rich ;  and  it  is  the  rich  who  have  develop- 
ed the  agricultural,  the  manufacturing,  the  com- 
mercial resources  of  the  State.  Not  only  were 
these  resources  not  developed  by  the  poor  as  in 
other  States ;  but  we  have  shown  that,  owing  to 
the  peculiar  circumstances  that  existed  in  this 
State,  the  poor  could  not  have  developed  them ; 
poor  men  could  not  have  constructed  irrigation 
ditches;  could  not  have  supplied  the  want  of 
navigable  rivers  with  railways ;  could  not  have 
purchased  Spanish  grants ;  could  not  have  ob- 
tained a  good  title  to  unsurveyed  lands ;  could 
not  have  established  successful  manufactures ; 
could  not  have  built  up  a  lucrative  foreign  com- 


210 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


merce.  It  would  have  been  easier  and  cheaper 
for  them  to  have  prosecuted  these  industries  in 
the  Eastern  States,  and  there  they  would  have 
remained. 

The  opening  of  the  mines  changed  all  this, 
and  conferred  upon  the  State  certain  artificial 
advantages  which  it  could  have  gained  in  no 
other  way.  It  rilled  the  country  with  a  class  of 
hardy  adventurers,  ready  to  risk  the  chances 
of  immediate  fortune  or  failure  in  the  placers. 
When  the  placers  were  exhausted  for  hand  la- 
borers, the  State  had  gained  enough  men  with 
exceptional  capitals  to  promote  its  further  de- 
velopment. These  capitals  irrigated  the  valley 
lands,  they  drained  the  marshes,  they  opened 
coal  mines,  they  established  manufactories,  they 
built  railways,  they  opened  commerce  with  dis- 
tant countries,  they  planted  great  vineyards  and 
orchards.  All  these  enterprises  were  set  afoot 
by  the  rich,  purely  with  a  view,  it  is  to  be  pre- 
sumed, to  their  own  advantage ;  but  at  the  same 
time,  such  are  the  paradoxical  and  inscrutable 
laws  of  our  social  existence,  they  inured  as 
much  or  more  to  the  advantage  of  the  poor. 

Without  the  mines,  the  exceptional  capitals 
they  organized,  and  the  artificial  advantages 
conferred  by  these  capitals,  California  could 
not  have  become  the  home  of  poor  men.  With 
these  artificial  aids,  its  settlement  became  feasi- 
ble to  all  classes.  The  competition  of  capital 
has  had  the  effect  of  conferring  all  the  advan- 
tages of  such  capital  upon  the  public.  Hun- 
dreds of  miles  of  ditches,  constructed  to  wash 
out  the  placers,  and  costing  millions  of  dollars, 
have  been  surrendered  to  the  humbler  service 
of  irrigation.  Costly  roads,  buildings,  reser- 
voirs, and  other  improvements  constructed  to 
promote  the  development  of  mines  or  minister 
to  the  expected  wants  of  mining  populations, 
have  fallen  almost  without  price  to  the  after- 
comers. 

Prominent  among  these  competing  capitals 
was  that  represented  by  the  overland  railway. 
This  capital  was  organized  by  men  who  were 
once  poor.  No  sooner  was  this  railway  com- 
pleted than  it  at  once  broke  down  a  great  num- 
ber of  exacting  and  oppressive  monopolies — 
stage-coach  monopolies,  freight-wagon  monop- 
olies, pack-mule  monopolies,  and  monopolies  of 
supplies.  Coal  which,  when  monopolized,  was 
sold  in  San  Francisco  for  $25  a  ton,  is  now  free- 
ly offered  at  $10,  and  with  the  further  help  of 
railways  in  developing  new  mines  may  soon  be 
sold  for  $5.  With  cheaper  fuel,  small  manu- 
factories have  arisen  on  all  sides,  and  the  peo- 
ple who  previously  paid  tribute  to  a  hundred  or 
more  great  monopolies  are  now  producers  at 
rates  that  enable  them  to  supply  the  home 
market,  and  also  to  ship  their  goods  abroad. 


Before  the  railway  was  completed,  when  the 
coast  had  to  depend  for  its  supplies  upon  the 
chance  arrivals  of  sailing  vessels  and  the  chance 
freights  of  steamers,  "corners"  were  effected 
every  few  days  upon  some  article  or  another  of 
common  consumption,  and  the  price  run  up  to 
most  exacting  figures.  Corners  were  effected 
on  pork,  hams,  flour,  cheese,  dry  goods,  and  a 
great  variety  of  articles.  Common  iron  tacks 
were  sold  on  one  occasion  at  $3.50  per  paper, 
scythe  blades  at  $25  each,  and  so  forth. 

The  competition  of  capital  has  broken  all  this 
down — capital  which  originally  came  into  the 
possession  of  the  "few  fortunate"  miners,  and 
which,  finding  the  channels  of  high  commercial 
profits  filled,  flowed  into  those  of  lower  and 
lower  profits ;  capital  from  high  and  low  com- 
mercial profits  flowing  into  railway  construc- 
tion and  thus  breaking  down  farm  and  trade 
monopolies;  capital  from  the  East  and  other 
countries  to  share  and  lower  the  profits  of  mo- 
nopolies already  established  here. 

This  State  is  strewn  with  the  wrecks  of  great 
capitals  which  were  once  highly  productive,  but 
which  have  since  been  entirely  abandoned  to 
the  public.  These  great  capitals,  originally  or- 
ganized by  the  mining  discoveries,  were  an- 
tagonized by  the  transcontinental  railway,  and 
forced  to  break  each  other  down.  By  this 
means  the  railway  has  served  the  cause  of  the 
public  and  opened  the  State  to  settlement  by 
an  industrial  population.  Without  the  railway 
the  population  of  California  would  have  con- 
sisted of  a  horde  of  poor  but  sanguine  miners, 
and  a  few  bonanza  kings,  favored  farmers,  and 
"cornering"  merchants — the  former  impover- 
ished by  the  trade  exactions  of  the  latter,  whom 
they  would  not  dare  to  drive  away  for  fear  of 
cutting  off  their  own  subsistence  and  last  hope 
of  fortune.  With  the  railway  the  State  has 
measuredly  freed  itself  of  trade  monopolies, 
and  maintains  a  population  relying  for  their 
support  not  alone  upon  the  mines,  but  upon  ag- 
riculture, manufactures,  and  foreign  commerce. 

The  beneficial  agency  thus  exercised  by  the 
Union  and  Central  Pacific  will  be  continued 
and  extended  by  the  Southern  Pacific.  I  am 
not  composing  a  railway -anthem;  I  am  not 
singing  the  praises  of  the  rich,  nor  am  I  dis- 
cussing the  history  of  railway  legislation  ;  I  am 
simply  calculating,  coldly  and  dispassionately, 
the  advantages  which  the  people  of  my  State 
will  derive  from  the  opening  of  the  overland 
route  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico;  and,  I  repeat,  it 
will  create  a  new  California. 

A  single  railway  cannot  do  everything.  The 
first  transcontinental  road  broke  down  a  great 
many  of  the  trade  monopolies  which  were  es- 
tablished by  the  exceptional  capitals  that  arose 


A   NEW   CALIFORNIA. 


211 


out  of  the  mines.  That  it  did  not  break  them 
all  down  is  sufficiently  evinced  by  the  general, 
though  mistaken  and  misdirected,  discontent 
that  manifested  itself  at  the  Constitutional  elec- 
tion. But,  judging  from  analogy,  these,  too,  will 
be  weakened  or  destroyed  when  the  new  over- 
land road  is  completed. 

Not  only  will  this  road  break  down  monopo- 
lies, it  will  build  up  new  trades ;  and  it  is  chief- 
ly from  this  source  that  we  have  a  right  to  ex- 
pect improvement  in  oui  industrial  affairs. 

The  principal  products  of  this  State,  and 
those  in  the  supply  of  which  every  man  not  en- 
tirely indigent  can  now  take  part,  are :  Wheat, 
wool,  wine,  iron,  lumber,  bark,  fish,  meats, 
game,  hay,  vegetables,  and  fruits.  The  for- 
est, the  sea,  the  game  marshes,  are  substan- 
tially open  to  all;  the  hay  and  grain  lands  of 
the  Sacramento  and  San  Joaquin,  the  valleys 
of  Sonoma  and  Napa,  the  nooks  of  the  Sierra, 
and  the  hitertas  of  Los  Angeles,  are  measured- 
ly  open  to  cultivation  by  anybody.*  Land  is 
cheap  and  productive,  and  water  for  irrigation 
is  getting  to  be  within  easy  reach.  Besides 
these  products,  California  manufactures  ma- 
chinery and  supplies  for  mines  better  adapted 
for  the  purpose  and  more  in  request  than  simi- 
lar products  from  other  States. 

The  new  overland  road  will  throw  open  all 
of  Arizona,  Sonora,  and  Chihuahua,  and  parts 
of  New  Mexico,  Southern  Mexico,  and  Texas, 
as  markets  for  these  commodities.  In  other 
words,  it  will  give  us  two  millions  of  additional 
customers  for  our  productions.  El  Paso  is  the 
center  of  a  circle  which  passes  alike  through 
the  cities  of  San  Francisco,  St.  Louis,  New  Or- 
leans, and  the  City  of  Mexico.  They  are  each 
distant  about  one  thousand  miles  from  that 
natural  railway  center,  San  Francisco  being 
somewhat  the  nearest  of  them  all.  Neither  of 
the  others  can  successfully  compete  with  her  in 
the  supply  of  the  various  products  named.  St. 
Louis  and  the  intervening  country  may,  indeed, 
take  part  in  the  hay  and  grain  supplies  for  Ari- 
zona, and  Texas  in  the  supplies  of  cattle,  but 
that  is  all.  The  rest  will  be  supplied  by  Cali- 
fornia. 

Not  only  this,  but,  as  California  is  the  near- 
est cultivated  country,  the  profits  and  savings 
of  the  luckier  miners  will  be  invested  within 
her  borders.  The  dream  of  the  Arizonan  miner 
is  to  own  an  orange  grove  in  the  semi-tropi- 
cal region  of  Los  Angeles,  San  Bernardino,  or 
Riverside.  Already  several  of  them  have  made 
purchases  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Edward  Shiefflin, 

*  As  going  to  show  the  extraordinary  and  little  suspected 
sources  of  wealth  latent  in  this  State,  it  should  be  mentioned 
that  recently  a  single  ship  took  three  hundred  tons  of  so  strange 
a  commodity  as  di  ted  shrimps  from  Calfornia  to  China. 


discoverer  of  the  Toughnut  mine  at  Tombstone, 
has  bought  a  ranch  near  Los  Angeles  for  $23,- 
ooo.  Mr.  Richard  Gird,  one  of  the  owners  of 
the  Toughnut,  has  bought  the  Warner  ranch 
for  $80,000,  and  so  on.  Not  only  the  Tomb- 
stone, but  also  the  Patagonia,  Silver  King, 
Globe,  and  other  productive  mining  districts 
of  Arizona,  have  contributed  a  material  portion 
of  their  profits  to  investments  in  California. 
The  southern  portion  of  our  State  already  feels 
the  stimulus  which  this  new  capital  has  im- 
parted. Los  Angeles,  San  Bernardino,  and  the 
southern  part  of  Kern  Valley  were  never  so 
prosperous  before,  and  their  present  prosperity 
is  all  due  to  the  new  markets  thrown  open  to 
them  by  the  Southern  Pacific.  As  time  ad- 
vances, this  stimulus  will  be  felt  farther  and 
farther  north  until  it  reaches  San  Francisco. 
Old  California  has  passed  away,  and  a  new 
California  begins  to  appear  in  its  place. 

Another  notable  effect  of  the  new  route  will 
be  the  transfer  of  capital  from  the  Comstock 
lode,  where  it  has  of  late  been  unproductive,  to 
the  new  and  rich  mines  of  Arizona,  New  Mexi- 
co, and  Sonora,  where  it  will  be  productive,  and 
whose  future  is  now  well  assured.  This  change 
has  already  begun  to  take  place,  and  its  move- 
ment will  be  accelerated  every  day  as  the  new 
mines  more  and  more  establish  their  perma- 
nent character.  Over  confidence  in  the  Com- 
stock lode  has  led  the  people  of  California  into 
serious  losses,  and  kept  them  so  drained  of  capi- 
tal as  to  dampen  and  retard  progress  in  agri- 
culture and  commerce.  The  superior  attract- 
iveness and  profitable  character  of  the  Arizonan 
mines  will  tend  to  reverse  this  condition  of  af- 
fairs, and  if  it  shall  not  substitute  dividends  for 
assessments,  will  at  least  stop  the  leak  through 
which  a  great  portion  of  our  social  energies  of 
late  years  has  drained. 

The  trade  into  California  from  the  new  re- 
gions to  be  opened  by  the  railway  will  be  no 
less  profitable  to  the  State  than  the  increased 
outward  trade.  These  new  regions  comprise  a 
strictly  mining  country,  and  their  entire  prod- 
uct must  come  to  San  Francisco  for  a  market, 
for  at  San  Francisco  are  located  the  nearest, 
largest,  and  best  refineries  for  the  precious  met- 
als, as  well  as  a  Government  mint — a  mint  that 
means  a  market  at  full  value  for  the  precious 
metals,  and  a  market  which  it  is  impossible  to 
satiate. 

Not  only  this,  but  as  the  precious  metals 
product  of  the  new  region  will  consist  mainly 
of  silver,  San  Francisco,  which  is  the  nearest 
port  to  China,  and  has  a  large  direct  trade  with 
that  country,  affords  the  greatest  facilities  for 
disposing  of  it  to  advantage.  In  a  word,  the 
precious  metals  product  of  the  regions  named, 


212 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


which  will  soon  amount  to  some  $10,000,000 
a  year,  is  already  beginning  to  make  its  way 
hither  to  market.  Add  to  this  the  amount  of 
Eastern  capital,  which  is  annually  finding  its 
way  into  those  regions  for  investment,  and  we 
may  safely  reckon  upon  $15,000,000  a  year, 
soon  to  be  expended  in  the  purchase  of  Cali- 
fornian  products. 

But  this  is  only  a  small  portion- of  the  ad- 
vantages which  California  is  destined  to  de- 
rive from  the  new  road.  From  San  Francisco 
to  New  Orleans  is  about  two  thousand  miles; 
from  Wilmington  on  the  Pacific  to  New  Or- 
leans on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  is  about  fifteen 
hundred  miles.  By  both  of  these  routes,  chief- 
ly from  San  Francisco,  on  account  of  the  facili- 
ty for  obtaining  return  freights,  a  vast  com- 
merce is  destined  to  spring  up  between  India, 
China,  Japan,  Australia,  and  the  Pacific  Isl- 
ands on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Southern  and 
Eastern  States  of  America  and  all  Europe  on 
the  other. 

The  Tehuantepec  route,  if  indeed  it  is  ever 
completed,  cannot  compete  successfully,  either 
for  freight  or  passengers,  with  the  Southern  Pa- 
cific. It  involves  two  ocean  voyages,  and  thus 
is  little  better  than  the  Panama  railway;  it  lacks 
good  ports  on  either  ocean.  The  climate  of  Nic- 
aragua is  too  hot,  and,  above  all,  too  humid  for 
many  classes  of  goods  to  pass  through  it  un- 
harmed; it  has  no  back  country  with  railway 
connections  to  add  any  local  traffic  to  the 
through  traffic ;  it  is  subject  to  the  caprices  of 
an  unstable  and  insecure  government,  to  the 
vicissitudes  of  almost  incessant  war  and  revo- 
lution, and  to  pillage  by  bandits. 

The  Guaymas  route  is  open  to  all  the  same 
objections  except  the  first  named,  and  to  the 
further  one,  that  it  will  have  no  Eastern  outlet 
nearer  than  New  York. 

The  Panama  Canal  is  still  in  the  air. 

As  before  stated,  the  Southern  Pacific  is  the 
shortest  land  route  between  the  Pacific  and  At- 
lantic Oceans,  which  lies  wholly  within  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  United  States.  This  is  a  geo- 
graphical fact,  which  practically  settles  the 
question  of  through  trade  between  Asia  and 
Polynesia  on  the  west  and  the  Atlantic  States 
and  Europe  on  the  east,  and  it  must  settle  it  for 
a  long  time  to  come. 

To  wind  up  the  long  list  of  benefits  which 
the  new  overland  route  premises  to  confer  upon 
our  State,  it  should  be  mentioned  that  it  offers 
a  direct  land  route  to  Europe  for  Californian 
grain.  Shipping  cannot  always  be  obtained  at 
San  Francisco  to  load  with  grain.  At  the  pres- 
ent time,  for  example,  there  is  a  great  dearth 
of  vessels.  The  result  is  that  our  grain  lacks  a 
quick  market.  To  ship  it  to  New  York  or  Eu- 


rope via  the  Central  and  Union  Pacific  rail- 
ways is  impracticable;  the  price  of  transpor- 
tation, even  if  lowered  to  cost,  would  almost 
equal  the  value  of  the  grain  at  its  place  of  des- 
tination. To  ship  it  via  the  Isthmus  is  equally 
impracticable.  Cape  Horn  is  the  only  practi- 
cable route  now  open.  When  the  Southern  Pa- 
cific possesses  a  continuous  line  of  rail  to  New 
Orleans,  the  problem  of  a  grain  market  for  the 
Pacific  Coast  will  be  solved.  It  will  cost  no 
more  to  ship  grain  from  this  coast  than  from 
Minnesota  or  Kansas  to  Europe. 

To  the  prospect  which  this  great  public  work 
opens  for  the  creation  of  a  new  and  prosperous 
industrial  era  in  California,  but  a  single  objec- 
tion has  yet  been  offered. 

It  has  been  claimed  that  the  Atchison,  To- 
peka,  and  Santa  F£  Railway,"after  its  junction 
with  the  Southern  Pacific,  which,  it  is  expected, 
will  take  place  within  a  few  weeks  and  a  little 
west  of  the  Rio  Grande  River,  will  be  contin- 
ued south-westwardly  by  a  branch  to  Guaymas, 
and  north-westwardly  by  another  to  San  Fran- 
cisco; and  that,  when  thus  completed,  it  will 
secure,  through  the  first  named  branch,  a  por- 
tion of  the  Asiatic  trade,  and,  through  the  last 
named,  a  portion  of  the  San  Francisco  trade. 
So  far  as  the  latter  contingency  is  concerned, 
San  Francisco  has  nothing  to  fear.  Whether 
her  products  are  conveyed  to  a  market  by  one 
route  or  another,  can  be  a  matter  of  little  con- 
sequence to  her.  What  she  wants,  what  the 
entire  State  wants,  is  new  markets ;  and  if  we 
possessed  a  dozen  means  of  reaching  them,  in- 
stead of  two,  it  could  do  us  no  harm. 

The  loss  of  the  Asiatic  through-trade  would,, 
however,  be  a  great  misfortune  to  us.  This 
trade  yields  considerable  profit  to  our  capital- 
ists, and  affords  employment  to  large  mercan- 
tile and  industrial  classes  of  our  citizens.  We 
cannot  well  afford  to  lose  it.  The  prospect  of 
such  a  contingency  is,  therefore,  well  worth 
considering. 

Up  to  its  point  of  junction  with  the  Southern 
Pacific,  the  Atchison  and  Topeka  Railway  will 
doubtless  prove  a  valuable  franchise.  It  will 
place  within  reach  of  south-eastern  Colorado - 
and  New  Mexico  the  farm  products  of  the 
Western,  and  the  manufactures  of  the  Eastern 
States,  and  open  the  mining  product  of  Colo- 
rado and  New  Mexico  to  the  markets  of  the 
world.  And  it  is  the  prospect  of  this  valuable 
trade  that  has  enabled  the  enterprising  project- 
ors of  this  line  to  favorably  market  their  stocks 
and  bonds  in  the  East.  Any  attempt  to  extend 
the  line  beyond  this  limit  must,  however,  prove 
disastrous.  There  is  no  trade  to  support  an 
extension  south-westwardly  to  Guaymas,  nor 
westwardly  to  California;  and  should  such  ex- 


INTEROCEANIC   COMMUNICATION. 


213 


tensions  be  completed,  the  losses  upon  them 
will  hardly  make  good  the  profits  on  the  main 
line.  Guaymas  cannot,  under  any  circum- 
stances, compete  with  San  Francisco  as  a  port 
for  the  through  trade  to  Asia  and  Polynesia. 
As  a  harbor  for  vessels,  it  is  greatly  inferior ;  it 
is  a  long  distance  up  the  Gulf  of  California,  so 
difficult  of  navigation;  it  is  out  of  the  way;  it 
cannot  offer  any  return  freights  for  vessels ;  a 
railway  line  from  Guaymas  to  the  East  would 
be  too  long  to  compete  with  either  of  the  San 
Francisco  roads.  An  extension  of  the  Atchi- 
son  line  west  to  San  Francisco  would  traverse 
little  else  except  deserts,  including  those  of  New 
Mexico,  Arizona,  and  the  Mojave.  Such  an 
enterprise  will  necessarily  prove  disastrous,  and, 
if  carried  out,  will  rob  the  stockholders  of  the 
Atchison  line  of  all  the  advantages  they  will 
gain  up  to  the  point  of  junction  with  the  South- 
ern Pacific. 

San  Francisco  has,  however,  little  to  fear 
from  such  a  contingency.  Railway  capital, 
whether  of  Boston  or  other  origin,  is  not  so 
plentiful  as  to  be  ready  to  spend  $3  for  $i  worth 
of  road,  and  an  extension  of  the  Atchison  and 
Topeka  line  to  California  is  not  likely  to  be  at- 
tempted. Notwithstanding  the  preparations 


now  being  made  at  Guaymas,  an  extension  to 
that  port  will,  as  likely  as  not,  be  abandoned. 
It  has  no  footing  as  a  legitimate  enterprise,  and 
its  only  apology  will  be  the  object  of  making  a 
profit  through  the  sale  of  securities  for  which  a 
market  will  have  been  afforded  by  the  success 
in  placing  the  stocks  and  bonds  of  the  only  por- 
tion of  the  line  that  can  hope  to  prove  self-sus- 
taining—war., that  to  the  junction  with  the 
Southern  Pacific. 

These  considerations  reduce  the  whole  sub- 
ject to  within  the  compass  of  a  nut-shell.  The 
Atchison  and  Topeka  will  secure  the  trade  of 
Colorado  and  New  Mexico  to  Kansas  and  Mis- 
souri. The  Southern  Pacific  will  give  the  trade 
of  Arizona  and  the  surrounding  country  to  San 
Francisco;  it  will  secure  the  Asiatic  through- 
trade  to  California;  it  will  afford  a  short  and 
easy  outlet  for  Californian  grain,  wool,  and  wine 
to  Europe.  There  is  no  fear  that  the  Golden 
State  will  be  deprived  of  these  advantages;  and 
if  it  secure  them,  as  probably  it  will,  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  a  new  era  of  prosperity 
awaits  the  State — an  era  so  active,  so  progress- 
ive, and  so  promising,  that  it  will  substantially 
create  a  new  California. 

ALEXANDER  DEL  MAR. 


INTEROCEANIC   COMMUNICATION. 


The  subject  of  this  paper  is  older  than  Amer- 
ican civilization.  '  Since  the  day  that  Nunez  de 
Balboa,  from  the  summit  of  the  isthmus  cor- 
dillera,  for  the  first  time  gazed  on  the  vast  Pa- 
cific, the  question  of  an  interoceanic  canal  has 
at  various  times  agitated  the  greatest  minds  of 
the  world.  Now  that  "the  dream  of  centuries" 
is  undoubtedly  on  the  eve  of  fulfillment,  it  is 
eminently  proper  that  the  people  of  the  Pacific 
Coast,  who,  of  all  others,  are  the  most  interest- 
ed in  this  great  work,  should  carefully  inform 
themselves  as  to  the  merits  of  the  three  proj- 
ects claiming  public  attention,  whereby  the  Pa^ 
cific  Coast  is  to  be  brought  thousands  of  miles 
nearer  the  great  marts  of  Europe. 

That  the  reader  may  the  more  readily  com- 
prehend the  subject,  it  will  be  presented  under 
five  heads,  viz. : 

( i.)  A  topographical  description  of  the  Nica- 
ragua Interoceanic  Canal  route. 

(2.)  A  like  description  of  the  Panama  Inter- 
oceanic Canal  route,  with  explanations  of  the 
American  and  French  surveys  therefor. 

(3.)  A  like  description  of  the  Eads  Ship  Rail- 
way project  across  the  Tehuantepec  Isthmus. 

VOL.  III.- 14. 


(4.)  The  effect  of  the  completion  of  either  of 
these  three  projects  upon  the  interests  of  our 
Pacific  Coast,  and  upon  the  commerce  of  the 
world. 

( 5.)  The  political  consideration  of  the  ques- 
tion as  it  affects  the  interests  of  our  country, 
and  the  application  thereto  of  the  "Monroe 
doctrine." 

It  will  be  perceived  readily  that  a  full  discus- 
sion of  these  points  would  far  exceed  the  limits 
of  a  magazine  article ;  but  it  will  be  the  aim  of 
the  writer  to  concisely  state  the  leading  features 
in  connection  therewith  in  such  a  manner  that 
the  general  reader  will  derive  a  fair  idea  of  the 
whole  question,  and  thus  be  able  to  deal  with  it 
intelligently  hereafter. 

The  interoceanic  canal  projected  by  the  Nica- 
ragua Maritime  Canal  Company,  of  which  Gen- 
eral Grant  is  the  President,  has  its  initiative 
point  on  the  Atlantic  at  San  Juan  del  Norte,* 
Nicaragua,  this  port  being  situated  at  the  mouth 

*  Called  by  the  English,  "Greytown,"  a  name  not  used  in 
Nicaragua,  where  it  is  commonly  called  "  Del  Norte,"  as  dis- 
tinguished from  San  Juan  del  Sur,  on  the  Pacific,  commonly 
called  "Del  Sur." 


214 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


of  the  San  Juan  River,  which  connects  Lake 
Nicaragua  with  the  Caribbean  Sea.  This  har- 
bor, as  late  as  1858,  was  an  excellent  one,  with 
an  entrance  deep  enough  to  float  the  largest 
ships.  The  San  Juan  is  a  large  river,  averag- 
ing about  six  hundred  yards  in  width,  and  nav- 
igable for  light  draught  steamers  during  the 
entire  year,  while  during  the  rainy  season,  steam- 
ers of  four  hundred  tons  can  ascend  through  it 
to  Lake  Nicaragua.  It  empties  into  the  Carib- 
bean Sea  through  two  principal  channels,  each 
about  twenty  miles  in  length  (the  Colorado 
branch  and  the  San  Juan  proper),  and  also 
through  a  secondary  branch  leaving  the  San 
Juan  below  its  junction  with  the  Colorado,  call- 
ed the  Tauro  branch.  In  former  years  the  San 
Juan  River  proper  carried  most  of  the  water, 
and,  while  this  was  the  case,  its  current  scoured 
the  harbor  of  San  Juan  del  Norte,  and  main- 
tained a  depth  of  twenty -eight  to  thirty  feet  at 
its  entrance. 

Since  1858,  the  volume  of  water  going  down 
the  San  Juan  proper  has  gradually  diminished, 
and  has  been  diverted  to  the  Colorado  branch, 
which  now  carries  seven -eighths  of  the  water 
from  Lake  Nicaragua  to  the  sea.  The  result 
of  this  change  has  been  destructive  to  the  har- 
bor of  San  Juan  del  Norte.  The  loss  of  a  scour- 
ing current  has  caused  a  very  serious  shoaling  of 
the  harbor,  and  nearly  destroyed  its  entrance. 
The  restoration  of  this  harbor  is  the  most  diffi- 
cult problem  in  the  Nicaragua  Canal  project; 
and,  while  willingly  admitting  that  it  can  be 
made  a  good  harbor,  I  am  .inclined  to  the  belief 
that  it  may  cost  double  the  amount  allowed  for 
in  the  estimates,  which  is  placed  at  $2,822,630. 
The  plan  adopted  for  this  purpose  is  to  turn  the 
entire  water  of  the  San  Juan  River  down  its 
Colorado  branch — a  point  easy  of  accomplish- 
ment, since  nature  has  already  almost  com- 


pleted the  work — thus  isolating  the  harbor, 
which  is  then  to  be  dredged,  and  its  outer  line 
protected  by  an  artificial  work,  which  fortunate- 
ly finds  below  the  shifting  river  sand  a  solid 
clay  foundation.  This  obstacle  overcome,  the 
rest  of  the  work  offers  nothing  that  modern  en- 
gineering cannot  easily  and  safely  accomplish. 
Indeed,  nature  meets  man  more  than  half  way 
on  the  rest  of  the  projected  canal  line. 

From  the  port  of  San  Juan  del  Norte  the 
canal  line  reaches  the  San  Juan  River  just 
above  where  the  San  Carlos  River  empties  into 
it  from  the  Costa  Rica  side.  The  San  Juan, 
above  the  mouth  of  the  San  Carlos,  has  no 
streams  of  consequence  emptying  into  it.  Be- 
low the  San  Carlos,  this  latter  and  the  Serapa- 
qui  River  (also  emptying  into  the  San  Juan 
from  the  Costa  Rica  side)  render  the  main 
river  liable  to  sudden  freshets  and  unadapted 
to  canal  purposes.  Above  the  San  Carlos  River 
the  San  Juan  is  subject  to  only  such  moderate 
increase  of  volume  as  may  arise  from  an  in- 
creased hight  of  the  level  of  Lake  Nicaragua 
during  the  rainy  reason.  In  fact,  it  becomes  a 
natural  drainage  channel  from  the  lake,  with  a 
fall  of  only  nine  inches  to  the  mile. 

Where  the  canal  joins  the  San  Juan  River, 
just  above  the  mouth  of  the  San  Carlos,  a  per- 
manent stone  dam,  49  feet  high,  is  to  be  con- 
structed, which  at  once  raises  the  river  above 
it. two  feet  higher  than  the  present  high-water 
level  of  the  lake,  and  over  this  dam  the  San 
Juan  is  allowed  to  find  its  way  to  the  Atlan- 
tic. There  is  nothing  especial  about  this  dam, 
either  in  hight  or  length  (2,000  feet)  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  works  of  a  similar  character 
elsewhere.  The  abrupt  banks  of  the  river  af- 
ford excellent  abutments.  From  San  Juan  del 
Norte  to  the  dam  the  canal  runs  mostly  through 
an  alluvial  soil,  where  dredging  machinery  will 


INTEROCEANIC    COMMUNICATION. 


215 


do  most  of  the  work  with  advantage.  The  hight 
of  the  lake  and  river  above  the  dam  being  then 
109  feet  10  inches  above  sea  level,  locks  (prob- 
ably seven  in  number)  must  be  constructed  to 
attain  this  level.  It  is  proper  here  to  state  that, 
in  the  matter  of  locks,  the  Nicaragua  Canal 
survey  requires  only  what  experience  has  al- 
ready demonstrated  as  practicable — a  lock  hav- 
ing been  three  years  in  use  on  the  St.  Mary's 
Canal,  constructed  by  General  Weitzel,  Engi- 
neer United  States  Army,  with  a  length  of  515 
feet,  and  a  lift  greater  than  will  be  needed  in 
Nicaragua.  It  is  in  this  respect  principally  that 
the  Nicaragua  survey  differs  from  the  Panama 
French  survey.  The  elevation  of  109  feet  10 
inches  in  Nicaragua  is  overcome  by  locks,  while 
at  Panama  the  De  Lesseps  survey  surmounts 
an  elevation  of  294.7  feet  by  a  low-tide,  ocean- 
level  cut.  The  merits  of  the  two  schemes  will 
appear  more  in  detail  hereafter.  From  the  San 
Carlos  dam  to  the  lake  the  river  will  need  a 
large  outlay  to  fit  it  for  uninterrupted  slack- 
water  navigation.  Its  most  abrupt  sinuosities 
must  be  removed,  and  its  channel  cleared  of 
rocks.  Above  the  San  Carlos  dam  are  four  rap- 
ids— the  Machuca,  the  Balas,  the  Castillo,  and 
the  Toro.  Of  these  only  the  Castillo  deserves 
the  name,  and  I  have  often  run  over  all  of  them 
in  river  steamers  of  light  draft,  while,  as  before 
stated,  lake  steamers,  built  in  the  United  States, 
have  always  reached  Lake  Nicaragua  by  pass- 
ing over  them  in  the  rainy  season.  Of  course, 
the  improvement  of  the  river-bed  would  be 
made  before  the  completion  of  the  dam,  and 
offers  no  obstacles  that  cannot  be  readily  over- 
come. From  the  Toro  Rapids  to  the  lake  (28 
miles)  the  San  Juan  flows  in  majestic  silence — 
a  wide  and  deep  natural  canal,  needing  little 
expenditure  to  fit  it  for  heavy  navigation.  Lake 
Nicaragua*  is  a  magnificent  fresh-water  inland 
sea,  with  an  area  of  over,3,ooo  square  miles, 
no  miles  long,  and  about  35  miles  wide,  aver- 
aging from  9  to  15  fathoms  deep,  and  its  sur- 
face 107  feet  10  inches  above  the  sea-level,  Sit- 
uated north  of  it,  17  miles  distant  and  22.3  feet 
higher,  is  Lake  Managua,  about  30  miles  long, 
which  it  is  intended  to  connect  with  Lake  Nic- 
aragua by  a  light  draft  canal,  as  subsidiary  to 
the  ship  canal.  The  length  of  interoceanic 
canal  navigation  on  Lake  Nicaragua  is  56^ 
miles,  from  the  junction  of  lake  and  river  to 
the  lake  end  of  the  Pacific  division  of  the  canal, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  little  River  Lajas ;  and  the 
only  labor  necessary  thereon  is  the  dredging  of 
the  soft  mud  for  about  seven  miles  from  the 
junction  of  lake  and  river,  where,  by  the  grad- 

*  Derived  from  "Nicarao"—  an  Indian  chief  discovered  by 
the  Spaniards  residing  on  the  shores  of  the  lake — with  the  ad- 
dition of  the  Spanish  "agua,"  or  water. 


ual  current  into  the  river,  the  lake  has  been 
shoaled  by  "silt"  deposit  to  a  depth  of  about 
twelve  feet  at  low  water.  Lake  Nicaragua  is 
the  great  feature  of  this  route.  Its  immense 
area  prevents  any  floods,  as  the  extreme  differ- 
ence from  its  low-water  level  at  the  end  of  the 
dry  season  and  its  high-water  level  at  the  end  of 
the  rainy  season  is  only  twelve  feet.  It  furnishes 
far  more  water  than  can  ever  be  used  for  lock- 
age, while  it  constitutes  an  excellent  inland  har- 
bor, and  by  its  extent  and  connection  with  Lake 
Managua  will  render  subsidiary  to  the  ship  ca- 
nal the  territory  of  the  republic,  than  which 
there  is  no  richer  in  natural  resources  in  the 
world. 

The  Pacific  division  of  this  canal  is  I7X 
miles  long,  from  the  mouth  of  the  Lajas  on  the 
lake  (before  alluded  to)  to  the  Pacific  seaport 
of  Brito.  The  elevation  above  lake  level  is  42 
feet,  which,  with  the  lake  level  above  the  sea, 
107  feet  10  inches,  makes  the  lowest  summit 
at  present  known  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pa- 
cific oceans,  150  feet.  There  is  nothing  special 
in  this  cut  between  the  lakeN  and  the  Pacific. 
The  only  obstacle  of  note  is  the  diversion  of  the 
small  stream  called  the  Rio  Grande,  which  is  a 
mere  brook  in  the  dry  season,  and  never  swells 
to  respectable  dimensions  at  any  time.  This 
diversion  is  necessary  to  prevent  the  interfer- 
ence of  the  stream  with  the  canal,  which  is  con- 
structed mostly  through  a  wooded  country  and 
solid  ground. 

At  the  little  port  of  Brito  the  Nicaragua  Ca- 
nal enters  the  Pacific.  The  harbor  is  mere- 
ly a  small  indentation  in  the  coast  line,  with 
good  anchorage,  but  insufficiently  protected 
seaward.  Partly  by  the  excavation  of  the  low 
sandy  land  at  the  head  of  the  harbor,  and  by 
the  construction  of  a  short  breakwater  from 
the  bluff  forming  its  northern  limit,  a  good  har- 
bor can  be  made  sufficient  in  size  to  answer 
every  purpose,  and  as  large  as  many  important 
European  ports.  Of  course,  a  duplicate  sys- 
tem of  locks  must  be  constructed  in  these  17^ 
miles  to  overcome  the  difference  between  lake 
and  sea  level,  already  stated  as  being  107  feet 
10  inches.  The  original  United  States  survey 
was  made  for  ten  locks,  each  of  10^  feet  lift, 
but  it  is  now  proposed  to  increase  the  lift  and 
diminish  the  number  of  locks  to  seven,  which 
will  save  expense  and  economize  time. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  work  I  have  de- 
scribed is  not  only  an  interoceanic  canal,  but 
forms  a  system  of  internal  improvement  which 
will  insure  a  rapid  development  of  the  republic 
of  Nicaragua,  and  thereby  materially  add  to 
the  revenues  of  the  canal  company. 

On  the  various  advantages  justly  claimed  for 
this  route — climatic,  engineering,  commercial, 


2l6 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  meteorological — it  is  foreign  to  the  purpose 
of  this  paper  to  comment,  and  I  close  this  de- 
scription of  the  Nicaragua  Canal  route  with  the 
following  figures,  which  the  reader  should  refer 
to  hereafter  for  comparison  : 

Total  length  of  interoceanic  navigation,  173.57  miles. 

Canal,  from  San  Juan  del  Norte  to  San  Carlos  dam, 
35.90  miles. 

Slack-water  river  navigation,  from  San  Carlos  dam  to 
lake  junction,  63.90  miles. 

Lake  navigation,  from  lake  junction  to  lake  end  of 
Pacific  division  of  canal,  56.50  miles. 

Extreme  summit  level,  between  Pacific  and  Atlantic 
oceans,  150  feet. 

Total  length  of  canal  to  be  constructed,  53. 15  miles. 

Engineer's  estimate  of  cost,  $52,577,718. 

Engineer's  estimate  of  time  for  construction,  5  years. 

Mercantile  estimate  of  possible  cost,  San  Francisco 
Board  of  Trade,  $100,000,000. 

THE  PANAMA  CANAL  ROUTE. 

There  have  been  two  surveys  made  at  the 
Panama  Isthmus  for  an  interoceanic  canal: 
First,  a  United  States  Government  survey,  un- 
der the  superintendence  of  Captain  E.  P.  Lull 
and  Civil  Engineer  Menocal,  both  ranking  at 
the  head  of  their  profession  in  the  United  States 
navy,  and  forming,  with  other  officers  and  men 
of  the  naval  service,  about  the  same  party  which 
had  previously  made  the  Government  survey  in 
Nicaragua ;  second,  the  survey  lately  made  by 
French  engineers,  under  the  control  of  Count 
de  Lesseps.  The  United  States  survey  is  for 
a  lock  canal,  with  an  elevation  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-four  feet,  and  the  French  survey  for 
a  low-tide  level  canal,  without  locks,  through  a 
summit  level  of  two  hundred  and  ninety -five 
feet  above  its  surface.  The  Panama  Railroad 
is  forty  -  seven  and  a  half  miles  long,  and  both 
surveys  follow  its  track  approximately.  I  will 
first  describe  the  American  lock  canal  project. 
Leaving  the  Atlantic  at  Aspinwall  about  one 
mile  inside  the  present  railroad  wharf,  the 
canal  enters  a  low,  swampy  region,  densely  cov- 
ered with  tropical  vegetation.  Through  this 
region  and  to  the  river  Chagres  there  are  two 
engineering  difficulties  to  be  contended  with : 
First,  the  maintenance  of  the  banks  of  the  canal 
through  a  soil  of  such  consistency,  especially 
during  the  rainy  season,*  that  it  may  fill  in  as 
fast  as  dredged,  which  difficulty  could,  if  neces- 
sary, be  overcome  by  training  walls;  second, 
between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Chagres  River 
there  are  thirteen  streams  running  across  the 
canal  line,  of  small  dimensions  during  the  dry 
season,  but  troublesome  when  swollen  by  heavy 
rains.  The  American  survey  provides  for  these 

*  At  Aspinwall,  during  the  year  1872,  the  enormous  precipi- 
tation of  170.18  inches  was  registered. 


by  thirteen  culverts,  which  carry  them  under 
the  canal,  to  resume  their  channels  on  the  other 
side  of  it.  Besides  the  provision  made  for  the 
thirteen  small  streams,  there  are  in  this  section 
three  minor  branches,  turned  into  side  drains. 

An  examination  of  the  map  will  show  that 
this  section  of  the  work  runs  nearly  parallel 
with  a  range  of  hills  inland,  from  which  these 
streams  start.  Disposing  of  these  -minor  ob- 
stacles, and  raising  the  canal  level  by  twelve 
locks,  at  convenient  intervals,  the  work  ap- 
proaches the  key  of  the  Panama  Canal  survey, 
— the  River  Chagres.  Where  the  canal  crosses 
the  Chagres,  near  the  present  railroad  bridge, 
it  has  a  channel  nineteen  hundred  feet  wide — 
frequently  insufficient  to  carry  its  waters,  which, 
only  a  year  since,  inundated  the  valley,  swept 
the  iron  bridge  down  the  river,  and  covered  the 
railroad  track  for  days.  In  fact,  the  Chagres 
is  a  violent,  rapid  stream  during  the  rainy  sea- 
sons, and  has  been  known  to  rise  forty -eight 
feet  in  one  night.  Over  the  Chagres,  on  a  via- 
duct built  on  twelve  arches,  the  canal  is  car- 
ried, leaving  the  river  to  find  its  way  unvexed 
to  the  sea.  This  work,  practical  and  perma- 
nent, although  necessarily  expensive,  solves  the 
problem  of  the  Panama  Canal.  A  feeder,  for 
locking  purposes,  is  run  from  the  Chagres,  tap- 
ping it  twelve  miles  up  the  river,  and  there  ap- 
pears no  doubt  of  the  capacity  of  the  river  to 
furnish  all  the  necessary  lockage  water,  al- 
though it  might  tax  it  seriously,  with  a  large 
traffic,  during  the  dry  season.  Past  the  Chag- 
res, the  character  of  the  work  in  not  formida- 
ble, although,  owing  to  the  high  summit,  the 
excavation  through  the  Culebra  division  is  very 
heavy,  even  with  the  reduction  made  by  the 
elevation  of  the  canal,  which,  again  seeking 
sea -level  by  thirteen  locks,  finally  finds  the 
Pacific  quarter  of  a  mile  east  of  the  present 
railroad  wharf;  whence,  owing  to  the  large  rise 
and  fall  of  tide,  it  is  carried  about  two  miles  out 
into  the  bay  until  it  meets  deep  water.  The 
survey  for  the  Panama  Canal  above  described 
is  considered  by  the  best  engineering  talent  in 
this  country  as  the  only  manner  in  which  the 
difficulties  of  the  project  can  be  surmounted  at 
any  cost  within  commercial  limits. 

Count  de  Lesseps  has  decided  that  he  must 
have  a  low-tide  level  canal  across  the  Panama 
Isthmus,  and,  while  he  may  over-value  its  ad- 
vantages, his  opponents  must  concede  their 
existence.  The  French  survey  leaves  the  At- 
lantic at  Navy  Bay  at  the  same  place  as  the 
United  States  survey — in  fact,  both  surveys  fol- 
low the  railroad  approximately,  and  both  en- 
counter the  same  obstacles,  but  surmount  them 
differently.  Both  surveys  include  a  breakwater, 
in  Navy  Bay  (Aspinwall),  protecting  the  end  of 


INTEROCEANIC    COMMUNICATION. 


217 


the  canal  from  the  northers  experienced  there 
at  times,  also  making  a  safe  anchorage  near  the 
entrance.  Of  course,  a  depth  of  twenty -eight 
feet  below  low -tide  level  involves  vastly  in- 
creased excavation,  and  the  streams  before  de- 
scribed as  crossing  the  canal  line  before  it 
reaches  the  Chagres  are  taken  care  of  by  a  lat- 
eral canal,  also  used  to  carry  the  surplus  waters 
of  the  Chagres,  as  will  be  hereafter  described. 
On  reaching  the  Chagres,  De  Lesseps  attempts 
the  stupendous  task  of  entirely  obliterating  that 
river  before  it  reaches  the  canal,  the  surface  of 
which  crosses  the  river-bed  forty -two  feet  be- 
low its  bottom.  At  Gamboa,  about  two  miles 
above  the  canal  line,  an  enormous  dam  is  con- 
structed across  the  whole  valley  of  the  Chagres, 
creating  a  large  artificial  lake,  which  is  to  hold 
the  entire  volume  of  the  river,  the  waters  of 
which  are  gradually  to  be  drawn  off  by  the  lat- 
eral canal  before  alluded  to,  and,  to  a  limited 
extent,  into  the  canal  itself.  To  judge  of  the 
character  of  this  work,  the  following  estimate 
from  the  French  survey  is  given  herewith : 

Length  of  dam,  feet 5,ooo 

Hight  above  bed  of  the  Chagres,  feet 130 

Hight  above  canal  level,  feet 172 

Hight  above  canal  bottom,  feet 199 

Estimated  cost,  10  per  cent,  contingency.  .$20,000,000. 

It  will  be  noted  that  the  bottom  of  the  canal 
passes  in  front  of  the  dam,  seventy  feet  below 
the  river  bed,  and  that  the  Chagres  River  is 
wiped  out  of  existence  between  the  canal  and 
the  Atlantic.  When  the  enormous  rain-fall,  the 
violent  freshets,  and  the  large  amount  of  sedi- 
ment and  floatage  brought  down  by  floods  are 
considered,  one  begins  to  realize  the  enormous 
difficulties  of  the  project,  the  doubtful  results 
of  the  attempt,  and  the  impossibility  of  estimat- 
ing additional  cost  which  may  be  caused  by 
contingencies  liable  to  occur.  Presuming  its 
completion,  will  this  dam  not  be  a  standing 
menace  to  the  canal,  passing  in  modest  silence 
two  hundred  feet  below  its  top?  What  will  be 
the  result  of  a  moderate  earthquake  shock,  or 
of  seepage  during  the  rainy  season?  Thus  ob- 


literating the  Chagres,  the  canal  passes  on  into 
the  Culebra  division,  cutting  through  an  eleva- 
tion a  few  inches  less  than  three  hundred  feet, 
of  course  with  an  immensely  increased  excava- 
tion as  compared  with  the  United  States  sur- 
vey, but  encountering  otherwise  no  formidable 
engineering  obstacles,  and  finally  reaching  the 
Pacific  through  the  valley  of  the  little  Rio 
Grande,  about  six  miles  west  of  the  city  of  Pan- 
ama, and  there  meeting  deep  water  about  four 
miles  outside  the  high-water  mark.  The  mean 
sea  level  of  both  oceans  is  now  known  to  be 
the  same,  but  while  at  Aspinwall  the  tide  ebbs 
and  flows  from  one  and  a  half  to  two  feet,  at 
Panama  the  tidal  movement  is  eighteen  to 
twenty-six  feet. 

The  American,  as  well  as  the  French  survey, 
overcome  the  difficulty  by  placing  a  tidal  lock 
at  the  Pacific  end  of  the  canal,  which  complete- 
ly controls  the  question.  Such  is  the  French 
survey  for  a  sea -level  Panama  canal.  The  at- 
tention of  the  reader  is  called  to  the  following 
comparative  figures : 

Length  of  Panama  Railroad,  47.5  miles. 

Length  of  United  States  Panama  lock  canal,  41.7 
miles. 

Length  of  French  sea  level  canal,  45  miles. 

Engineers'  estimate  of  cost  of  United  States  lock 
canal,  including  20  per  cent,  contingency,  $94,511,360. 

Engineers'  estimate  of  French  sea  level  canal,  includ- 
ing 10  per  cent,  contingency,  843,000,000  francs  ($168,- 
000,000). 

Mercantile  estimate  of  probable  cost  of  French  low- 
tide  level  canal,  San  Francisco  Board  of  Trade,  $300,- 
000,000. 

Summit  level  of  Panama  Canal  survey,  295.7  feet. 

Engineers'  estimate  of  time  for  construction,  8  years. 

THE  EADS  TEHUANTEPEC  SHIP  RAILWAY. 

The  survey  for  this  interoceanic  project  has 
not  been  made,  and  it  is  accordingly  impossi- 
ble to  give  an  accurate  description  of  the  line 
or  its  exact  length.  The  Tehuan tepee  Isthmus 
United  States  Canal  survey 'is  144  miles  long, 
to  which  is  to  be  added  about  28  miles  of  river 


218 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


navigation,  making  a  total  of  172  miles,  and 
former  surveys  for  railway  and  canal  purposes 
have  found  the  lowest  practicable  summit  at 
754  feet.  The  canal  project  for  this  route  was 
abandoned  because  of  the  high  summit  neces- 
sitating a  large  number  of  locks,  with  a  scant 
water  supply,  while  a  tide-level  canal  is  impos- 
sible at  any  admissible  cost.  For  a  ship  rail- 
way it  offers  advantages  over  any  American 
isthmus,  and  an  ordinary  railway  is  now  being 
constructed  there  by  an  American  company. 
The  Coatzacoalcos  River  is  a  stream  of  respect- 
able magnitude,  running  northerly  across  the 
northern  slope  of  the  isthmus,  with  12  to  13 
feet  of  water  on  its  bar,  which  it  is  proposed  to 
deepen  sufficiently  to  admit  the  largest  ships, 
which  can  ascend  the  river  about  25  miles — 
how  far  before  arriving  at  the  Atlantic  end  of 
the  proposed  railway,  I  presume  Mr.  Eads  him- 
self has  not  decided.  There  are  no  formidable 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  building  an  ordinary 
railroad  across  the  isthmus  beyond  the  heavy 
cuts  and  fills  usually  found  in  a  country  of  that 
character,  and  the  railroad  finds  its  Pacific  ter- 
minus at  Salina  Cruz,  near  Ventosa,  at  the  head 
of  the  Gulf  of  Tehuantepec,  where  a  port  must 
be  constructed.  Probably  Captain  Eads  can 
improve  the  Coatzacoalcos  River  for  heavy  nav- 
igation 25  to  28  miles,  and  his  railroad  will  be 
about  123  miles  long.  He  estimates  the  cost  at 
$75,000,000.  It  has  been  my  purpose  to  avoid 
a  discussion  of  the  merits  of  the  three  routes 
here  described,  but  it  will  be  impossible  to  do 
so  in  the  case  of  this  project,  if  the  reader  is  to 
acquire  an  intelligent  idea  of  it.  My  high  re- 
spect for  the  ability  of  Captain  Eads,  my  es- 
teem for  him,  founded  on  a  slight  personal  ac- 
quaintance, and  the  fact  that  I  can  lay  claim  to 
no  technical  knowledge  of  civil  engineering,  are 
good  reasons  for  approaching  this  subject  with 
deference,  and  I  must  regard  myself  as  merely 
a  student  of  the  project. 

Captain  Eads  takes  the  ship  out  of  water  by 
a  submerged  inclined  track,  on  which  the  cra- 
dle is  run  deep  enough  to  allow  the  ship  to  be 
placed  upon  it,  properly  lined  and  blocked,  aft- 
er which  a  stationary  engine  hauls  cradle  and 
ship  out  of  water  to  the  railroad  >proper,  where 
four  "Mogul"  locomotives  are  placed  ahead  of 
it  on  a  twelve-rail  track,  which  haul  ship  and 
cradle  to  the  other  end  of  the  track,  where,  by 
a  reverse  process,  the  ship  is  again  placed  in 
the  water.  Of  course,  there  must  be  a  cradle  in 
use  for  each  ship  being  transported  simultane- 
ously. The  grades  are  overcome  by  tipping  ta- 
bles and  the  curves  by  turn-tables^  as  can  readi- 
ly be  imagined,  of  gigantic  size.  How  many  of 
these  he  will  need  cannot  be  known  until  sur- 
veys are  completed,  but  I  fear  the  Tehuantepec 


Isthmus  will  give  him  many  grades  and  curves. 
He  at  first  estimated  the  cost  of  such  a  railway 
at  half  the  cost  of  a  ship  canal,  but  his  present 
idea  is  that  it  will  cost  $75,000,000,  which  at 
once  detracts  from  his  scheme  the  principal 
merit  heretofore  claimed  for  it,  which  was  com- 
paratively small  cost,  for  there  is  every  pros- 
pect that  the  Nicaragua  Canal  can  be  constuct- 
ed  for  a  like  amount ;  and  while  the  deprecia- 
tion, and  wear  and  tear  of  his  railway,  sub- 
jected to  the  action  of  a  tropical  climate,  will 
necessarily  be  great,  a  ship  canal  improves  with 
age — considerations  of  no  little  importance. 

That  Captain  Eads  can  construct  a  ship  rail- 
way across  Tehuantepec,  there  is  little  doubt ; 
that  he  can  so  construct  it  as  to  meet  all  the  re- 
quirements of  the  case,  is  another  considera- 
tion. His  mechanical  appliances  for  overcom- 
ing the  objections  I  was  able  to  point  out  to 
him  appeared  complicated,  while  the  engineer- 
ing obstacles  of  curves,  grades,  etc.,  his  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  his  profession  had  already 
indicated  methods  placing  them  under  his  con- 
trol. He  was  willing  to  handle  a  loaded  ship 
as  carefully  as  I  demanded,  while  it  was  my 
object  not  to  allow  previous  prejudices  to  affect 
my  judgment  of  the  merits  of  the  scheme.  In 
one  respect,  however,  I  fear  he  has  underrated 
the  difficulty  of  his  project.  I  doubt  if  at  Te- 
huantec,  or  on  any  tropical  American  isthmus, 
he  can  find  a  foundation  for  such  a  road  as  he 
wishes  to  build.  The  "cuts"  may  support  it, 
but  the  "fills"  may  fail  to  do  so.  The  suc- 
cess of -the  scheme  depends  on  extreme  rigid- 
ity of  road  and  cradle,  and  if  in  tropical  coun- 
tries foundations  are  always  troubling  railroad 
engineers  under  ordinary  tracks,  what  are  we 
to  expect  under  a  weight  of  fifteen  or  twenty 
thousand  tons  concentrated  within  the  limits  of 
the  cradle  carrying  the  loaded  ship?  Captain 
Eads  is  one  of  the  greatest  living  engineers, 
and,  if  capitalists  will  furnish  funds,  he  may 
build  his  railway ;  but  unless  it  is  cheaper  than 
a  canal  what  advantage  does  it  offer?  Why 
try  an  experiment  when  a  certainty  offers  the 
same  results?  However,  in  the  absence  of  a 
survey  with  instruments  of  precision,  it  is  prob- 
ably unfair  to  discuss  the  project  at  all,  and  I 
dismiss  it,  with  great  respect  for  the  ability  and 
resources  of  the  illustrious  projector. 

COMMERCIAL  RESULTS  ANTICIPATED. 

That  an  American  interoceanic  canal  will  ef- 
fect great  changes  in  the  world's  commerce 
none  can  doubt,  but  what  little  I  shall  have  to 
say  on  this  branch  of  the  subject  will  refer  to 
the  effect  it  will  have  upon  American  commer- 
cial interests  generally,  and  especially  upon 


INTEROCEANIC    COMMUNICATION. 


219 


the  interests  of  the  Pacific  Coast  of  our  coun- 
try, commercial,  agricultural,  and  social.  A 
project  which  brings  this  coast  nearly  nine 
thousand  miles  nearer  our  Atlantic  sea -board 
and  the  great  marts  of  Europe  cannot  fail  to 
work  great  changes  in  our  commercial  position. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  Pacific  Coast  must  for 
a  long  period  continue  rather  a  producing  than 
a  manufacturing  people,  and  what  manufactur- 
ing we  are  able  to  accomplish  will  be  from  our 
own  products.  The  saving  in  time,  insurance, 
depreciation,  and  freights,  applicable  to  Oregon 
and  California,  alone  will  amount  in  ten  years 
to  the  cost  of  the  Nicaragua  Canal.  The  sav- 
ing above  named,  applied  to  this  year's  Oregon 
and  California  wheat  crop,  can  be  placed  with 
sob.er  truth  at  fully  eight  million  dollars  !  When 
our  wool,  wine,  and  other  growing  industries 
are  considered,  it  will  easily  be  seen  that  the  pro- 
ducers of  our  coast  should  strain  every  nerve 
to  insure  the  success  of  an  interoceanic  canal. 

Nor,  as  might  at  first  sight  appear,  will  the 
canal  injure  our  local  railroads.  While  it  would 
undoubtedly  at  first  deprive  them  of  the  through 
freights,  or  force  upon  them  a  reduction  which 
would  be  a  great  benefit  to  our  State,  jn  a 
short  time  after  its  completion  their  local  traf- 
fic would  far  surpass  all  the  through  traffic  they 
can  hope  to  control,  and,  with  our  other  inter- 
ests, they  would  reap  the  benefit  of  our  rapidly 
increasing  development,  carrying  all  the  pro- 
ducts of  our  soil  to  tide-water,  and  securing  a 
greatly  increased  passenger  traffic.  Meanwhile 
they  have  probably  six  years  during  the  period 
of  construction  to  accommodate  themselves  to 
the  change. 

The  completion  of  the  canal  will  make  San 
Francisco  the  distributing  point  for  the  pro- 
ducts of  China,  Japan,  and  Central  America  as 
far  east  as  the  Missouri,  for  it  will  then  be  to 
the  interest  of  our  railroads  to  secure  this  dis- 
tribution rather  than  allow  it  to  be  made  west- 
ward from  Atlantic  sea-board  cities  after  reach- 
ing them  through  the  canal.  A  rapid  develop- 
ment of  the  Central  American  States  and  west 
Mexican  coast  would  ensue,  and  those  markets 
would  increase  their  demand  upon  us  for  the 
commodities  we  are  already  sending  there  in 
limited  quantity.  Our  merchant  steam  marine 
would  rapidly  increase,  for  the  commerce  be- 
tween our  eastern  sea-board  and  our  west  coast 
being  coastwise,  and  shut  out  from  European 
competition,  we  should  need  a  large  steam  ton- 
nage under  American  colors  to  carry  our  freights 
eastward,  while  they  would  also  compete  with 
foreign  steamers  for  European  freights.  It  will 
be  a  glorious  day  for  our  State  when  San  Fran- 
cisco wharves  shall  be  crowded  with  four  and 
five  thousand  ton  screw  steamers  flying  our  flag 


and  loading  with  our  products,  and  with  the 
completion  of  the  canal  this  day  will  surely 
come.  Cheap  communication  with  Europe  will 
bring  to  us  desirable  European  immigration  to 
settle  up  our  lands  and  displace  the  unassimilat- 
ive  Chinese  who  are  trying  to  crowd  in  upon 
us.  Shall  we  not  tend  to  keep  them  out  by  fill- 
ing the  places  they  would  occupy  with  a  class 
of  immigrants  that  can  be  Americanized?  An 
intelligent  mind  investigating  this  subject  finds 
the  grand  results  unfolding  themselves  until  an 
interoceanic  canal  appears  the  greatest  boon  our 
coast  can  ask  for,  and  to  the  names  that  are  as- 
sociated therewith  their  country  and  the  world 
will  accord  undying  luster. 

POLITICAL   CONSIDERATIONS    OF    THE    CANAL 
QUESTION. 

Primarily,  it  would  appear  that  it  matters  lit- 
tle who  constructs  a  canal  if  our  country  is  ac- 
corded the  unrestricted  use  of  it,  in  common 
with  other  nations.  A  further  inquiry,  however, 
must  satisfy  us  that  if  we  do  not  build  this  work 
we  must  acquire  a  controlling  interest  therein. 
We  cannot  afford  so  important  a  link  in  our 
coastwise  communication  to  remain  in  the 
hands  of  any  European  organization,  which 
would  naturally  consult  foreign  interests  rather 
than  our  own.  The  Central  American  repub- 
lics are  now  friendly  to  us,  although  sparsely 
inhabited  and  without  development.  The  com- 
pany constructing  and  managing  an  interoce- 
anic canal  would  soon  wield  an  influence  para- 
mount to  the  local  government,  and  the  policy 
of  the  latter  might  become  subservient  thereto 
and  inimical  to  us. 

During  the  existence  of  the  Panama  Railroad 
it  has  been  deemed  a  necessity  for  our  govern- 
ment to  keep  armed  forces  almost  constantly  at 
both  ends  of  the  transit,  and  these  forces  have 
often  been  landed  and  kept  on  shore  indefinitely 
for  the  protection  of  life  and  property.  If  this 
has  been  the  case  with  a  railroad  managed  by 
permanent  employes  and  with  a  small  native 
population,  what  may  we  expect  when  five  to 
ten  thousand  laborers  of  various  nationalities 
are  congregated  there,  subject  to  a  lax  police 
control,  suffering  from  malarial  fevers,  discon- 
tented, mutinous,  and  with  a  free  supply  of  na- 
tive agua  ardiente?  Add  thereto  a  greatly 
increased  native  population,  and  we  have  all 
the  elements  needing  military  power  to  control 
them  in  emergencies. 

When  Count  de  Lesseps's  company  have  pur- 
chased the  Panama  Railroad,  which  they  have 
agreed  to  do  as  a  preliminary  step,  we  no  longer 
have  large  American  interests  to  protect  there. 
It  will  be  natural,  and  indeed  necessary,  for  him 


220 


THE   CAL1FORN1AN. 


to  call  upon  the  French  Government  to  protect 
the  enterprise,  as  we  have  protected  the  rail- 
road company  on  many  occasions.  The  French 
Government,  both  during  and  after  construc- 
tion, will  find  it  necessary  to  station  armed 
forces  at  both  ends  and  on  the  line  of  the  canal. 
After  landing  these  forces  a  few  times,  what 
more  natural  than  that  they  should  see  the  ad- 
vantage and  economy  of  having  these  troops 
in  barracks  on  shore — always  within  call !  If 
it  is  claimed  that  the  French  Government  ac- 
cepts no  responsibility  in  this  connection,  why 
has  it  already  appointed  an  official  agent  to 
oversee  the  initiation  of  the  work?  If,  at  the 
end  of  our  late  internal  war,  our  Government 
deemed  it  necessary  to  request  the  French  to 
promptly  leave  Mexico — merely  contiguous  ter- 
ritory— how  much  more  important  that  they 
should  not  be  placed  in  a  position  completely 
controlling  our  coastwise  commerce,  and  estab- 
lishing, first  their  influence,  then  their  power, 
and  lastly,  if  we  are  quiescent,  their  flag  on  the 
American  Isthmus  !  Are  the  American  people 
prepared  for  this?  The  late  William  H.  Sew- 
ard,  than  whom  no  brighter  intellect  ever  graced 
American  history,  was  wont  to  say  that  the  Pa- 
cific Ocean  is  to  be  the  scene  of  man's  greatest 
achievements.  Are  we  prepared  to  have  the 
key  thereto  in  foreign  hands?  Every  Ameri- 


can heart  will  say  nay,  and  honor  the  patriot- 
ism of  President  Hayes  and  General  Grant 
when  they  foresee  these  results  and  point  them 
out  to  their  countrymen. 

Nor  is  a  large  army  and  navy  a  necessity  in 
the  maintenance  of  the  Monroe  doctrine ;  on 
the  contrary,  both  would  become  a  necessity 
were  it  to  be  disregarded.  The  United  States 
have  a  moral  prestige  sufficient  to  create  a  re- 
spect for  our  rights  and  interests,  and  it  is  far 
better  to  meet  attempted  European  domination 
on  this  continent  with  a  decisive  negative  now 
than  to  object  thereto  after  it  has  passed  the 
initiative.  It  matters  little  where  the  capital 
comes  from  to  construct  an  interoceanic  canal, 
but  a  due  respect  for  our  national  and  traditional 
policy,  as  well  as  for  our  national  pride,  should 
indicate  the  propriety  of  its  accomplishment 
through  an  American  organization ;  and  it  is  a 
poor  compliment  to  our  discernment  that  we  are 
to  be  kept  quiescent  by  an  "American  Branch? 
which  can  any  day  be  voted  out  of  existence  at 
the  headquarters  of  the  Panama  Canal  Com- 
pany in  Paris !  Americans  will  not  fail  to  ap- 
preciate the  words  of  one  who  has  proved 
himself  worthy  of  their  patriotic  regard:  "I 
commend  an  American  canal,  on  American  soil, 
to  the  American  people  !" 

WM.  LAWRENCE  MERRY. 


A   NIGHT   OF   STORM. 


The  night  shuts  down  with  falling  rain, 
That  drapes  the  world  in  double  pall; 

The  loud  blast  battles  with  the  pane, 
And  fierce  and  far  the  breakers  call. 

Down  the  long  room,  grown  weird  and  grim, 
Strange  shadows  hover,  waveringly; 

I  move  among  the  folios  dim, 

And  count  the  hours  till  I  am  free. 

Free — and  for  what?     Ah  me!  for  whose 
Soft  voice,  and  gentle  touch  and  smile, 

The  day's  dull  burden  to  unloose, 
And  lull  my  cares — a  little  while? 

Free,  to  recross  the  threshold  dark 
Of  the  four  walls  I  name  my  home; 

To  change  of  toil ;  then,  sleepless,  mark 

The  long,  slow  hours  till  dawn  shall  come. 

By  loving  presences  made  sweet 

In  other  homes  on  nights  like  these, 

What  matters  how  the  storm  may  beat ! 

What  wild  winds  lash  the  quivering  trees ! 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


221 


For  them  the  firelight's  ruddy  bloom, 
The  laugh,  the  song,  the  dear  caress : 

For  me  the  labor  and  the  gloom, 
The  silence,  and  the  loneliness. 

O  my  one  friend — unfailing,  sure, 

Through  life's  young  years!   how  far  indeed 
The  way,  the  barriers  how  secure 

That  hold  thee  from  my  earnest  need! 

From  this  thy  dear  abiding  place 

What  undreamed  mysteries  divide — 

Else  love,  supreme  o'er  death  and  space, 
Would  bring  thee,  helpful,  to  my  side. 

Away,  vain  thoughts!     Ye  do  but  take 
The  strength -I  crave  for  daily  tasks; 

And  this  (what  though  the  heart  should  break,!) 
Is  all  that  now  my  spirit  asks. 

The  manna  of  a  kindly  word 

By  chance  may  feed  me,  now  and  then; 
At  times  Faith's  silent  chords  be  stirred 

By  note  of  robin  or  of  wren ; 

Upon  some  flower-face,  lifted  mute 
The  road  beside,  my  eyes  may  read, 

Sweeter  than  voice  of  bird  or  lute, 
A  message  fitting  to  my  need: 

Or,  haply  nearer  than  I  see, 

Than  this  a  darker  threshold  passed, 

An  opening  door  may  welcome  me 
To  home,  to  light  and  love,  at  last. 


INA   D.    COOLBRITH. 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

On  the  production  by  Garratt  of  the  alleged 
note  from  Judge  Simon,  Casserly  hung  his  head 
in  shame.  Though  he  was  capable  of  misrep- 
resenting facts — a  prominent  trait  of  detectives 
generally,  and  considered  by  them  legitimate — 
he  could  not  have  stooped  to  a  forgery  under 
such  circumstances.  He  was  on  the  point  of 
protesting,  but  Garratt  hurried  matters  forward, 
fearing  to  trust  him.  Casserly  hesitated  until 
it  was  too  late.  Besides,  he  was  almost  ready 
to  believe  that  the  end  justified  the  means;  for 
if,  through  careless  detective  work,  he  had  per- 
mitted Howard,  an  innocent  man,  to  bear  the 
burden  of  guilt,  he  would  have  been  disgraced 
as  a  detective ;  and  Casserly,  be  it  remembered, 
had  certain  noble  aspirations  in  that  direction. 


After  all,  however,  Casserly  was  uneasy.  Had 
the  young  man  been  permitted  to  secure  his 
mother's  cooperation  in  the  theory  of  accident- 
al killing,  the  whole  matter  would  have  rested 
there,  and  the  scaffold  would  have  been  useless. 
Once  it  had  been  nearly  knocked  down;  now 
the  grim  shadow  of  its  beam  fell  upon  the  floor 
of  the  woman's  cell.  True  to  his  promise,  Gar- 
ratt had  made  the  woman  speak;  true  to  his 
reasoning,  she  was  the  criminal. 

"Garratt,"  said  Casserly,  when  they  had  left 
the  cell,  "I  am  very  sorry  you  forged  that  note." 

"Nonsense,  Casserly!  I  can't  imagine  what 
is  coming  over  you  of  late.  I  suppose  you  un- 
derstand the  whole  scheme  now." 

"I  don't  know,"  replied  Casserly,  in  a  tone 
that  implied  a  desire  to  have  as  little  to  do  with 
Garratt  as  possible.. 


222 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Nevertheless,  Garratt,  always  zealous,  made 
an  explanation : 

"Old  Simon  has  espoused  the  cause  of  these 
people,  and  is  working  against  you." 

Casserly  leaned  against  the  wall  at  the  head 
of  the  stairs,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and 
made  no  reply.  This  disappointed  Garratt,  who 
saw  that  Casserly  took  no  interest  in  what  he 
said. 

"I  discovered,"  continued  Garratt,  "tha]t  he 
had  gained  her  confidence,  and  was  going  to 
befriend  her." 

Casserly  rattled  some  coin  in  his  pocket,  con- 
tinued to  look  at  the  floor,  and  said  nothing. 

"I  knew,  Casserly,  that  a  note  from  him 
would  settle  everything." 

"How  about  a  prosecution  for  forgery?" 
t  "I  studied  that  over  carefully.  He  will  not 
bring  suit,  because  by  doing  so  he  would  pub- 
lish the  fact  of  his  connivance  with  her.  This 
would  be  all  right  if  she  had  regularly  employed 
him  as  an  attorney.  But  not  only  did  he  quit 
the  practice  of  law  many  years  ago,  but  he 
avowedly  was  your  assistant  in  this  matter.  He 
would  blow  out  his  brains  sooner  than  let  these 
facts  become  known.  And,  then,  as  to  the  le- 
gal question  involved :  you  know  well  enough 
in  what  forgery  consists,  as  defined  by  the  code. 
A  forgery  of  this  kind  does  not  come  under  that 
definition;  for  it  was  not  uttered  with  the  in- 
tention, nor  did  it  in  fact  have  the  effect,  of 
injuring  him  to  any  extent  whatever.  So  you 
see  he  is  bound  hand  and  foot." 

Casserly,  looking  weary  and  bored,  com- 
menced to  descend.  He  was  followed  by  Gar- 
ratt, who  was  greatly  annoyed  at  Casserly's  si- 
lence. 

They  met  Judge  Simon  on  the  lower  landing. 
The  old  man's  eyes  looked  bright,  and  his  man- 
ner was  cheerful. 

"I  have  just  come  from  Howard,"  he  said. 

Garratt  regarded  Casserly  reproachfully,  for 
Casserly  had  neglected  the  injunction. 

"He  said  he  told  you  all  about  it,"  continued 
Judge  Simon,  in  a  manner  that  indicated  un- 
speakable gratification.  "I  knew  all  along 
that  there  was  a  misunderstanding.  The  whole 
thing  is  as  plain  as  daylight  now,  Casserly,  and 
I  wonder  that  I  allowed  my  first  impression  to 
leave  me  for  an  instant.  The  young  man  states 
the  case  clearly.  Now,  the  whole  trouble  has 
consisted  in  this :  The  mother  thought  her  son 
was  guilty,  and  consequently  rescued  him,  and 
endeavored  to  conceal  him — simply  because  he 
never  informed  her.  Learning  that  they  were 
imprisoned  and  suspected,  he  hastened  to  sur- 
render himself  and  clear  up  the  mystery — even 
hesitating  to  change  his  original  confession  into 
one  of  accidental  killing. .  You  know,  Casser- 


ly, that  I  told  you  that  such  a  man  as  you  de- 
scribed Howard  to  be  would  naturally  take  a 
desperate  step  at  first,  being  crushed  and  heart- 
broken, and  that  soon  nature  would  assert  it- 
self, and  he  would  come  back  to  his  normal 
condition.  You  remember  that,  don't  you?" 

"Yes,"  replied  Casserly,  wearily,  and  dread- 
ing to  tell  what  he  knew. 

"Then  it  is  all  right.  'Doctor,"  said  the  old 
man,  turning  to  Garratt,  "of  course  you  will 
hold  the  inquest  immediately,  and  relieve  these 
persons  of  the  stigma  resting  upon  them — but 
hasn't  it  been  a  strange  affair?  To  think  that 
all  this  trouble  and  anxiety  should  have  arisen 
out  of  a  mere  misunderstanding !  Why,  it  is 
remarkable,  Casserly.  And  you  were  put  to  so 
much  trouble,  all  for  nothing,  Casserly.  That 
was  a  good  joke,"  and  the  old  man  laughed 
heartily.  "And  to  think  there  should  be  a  riot 
about  it !  I'll  tell  you  what  /  think :  that  hard- 
headed  youngster  ought  to  be  soundly  thrashed 
for  putting  everybody  to  so  much  trouble,  and 
getting  his  mother  and  sweetheart  into  jail  just 
because  he  was  insanely  stubborn."  The  old 
man  was  so  happy  that  he  laughed  at  his  own 
humor. 

"Have  you  been  up  to  see  his  mother?"  he 
asked. 

Garratt  waited  for  Casserly  to  reply ;  but  the 
latter  gentleman  merely  looked  at  the  floor, 
and  rattled  the  coin  in  his  pocket. 

"Yes,"  said  Garratt. 

"How  did  she  take  it?  Considerably  sur- 
prised, wasn't  she?" 

"We  didn't  tell  her." 

"Why?" 

Garratt  looked  at  Casserly,  who  seemed  im- 
patient, and  desirous  that  the  conversation 
should  terminate.  Garratt  felt  it  a  task  to 
make  the  disclosure;  but  he  bravely  nerved 
himself  for  it,  and  said  : 

"Howard  did  not  kill  the  girl." 

"What!"  exclaimed  Judge  Simon,  snapping 
him  up  sharp  and  quick. 

"I  say,"  repeated  Garratt,  "that  Howard  did 
not  kill  the  girl." 

Judge  Simon's  face  assumed  a  degree  of  pal- 
lor. "What  do  you  mean?"  he  asked. 

"Just  what  I  say.  We  have  discovered  the 
guilty  party." 

"Nonsense!" 

"We  congratulate  ourselves  that  it  is  a  fact 
nevertheless,  and  that  suspicion  no  longer  rests 
on  the  wrong  person." 

This  was  having  a  strange  effect  upon  the 
old  man,  who  seemed  stunned  and  bewildered ; 
and  his  pallor  was  increasing. 

"For  my  part,"  continued  Garratt,  "I  am 
thankful  that  a  way  has  been  discovered  where- 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


223 


by  justice  may  be  wrought.  Mrs.  Howard  has 
made  a  full  and  free  confession  of  the — the 
killing  of  Rose  Howard.  She  says  she  fired 
the  pistol." 

The  old  man  had  been  listening  with  bated 
breath  and  distended  eyes.  When  Garratt  fin- 
ished, Judge  Simon  was  crushed'  and  beaten. 
His  stout,  generous,  cheery  heart  sunk  down — 
down,  and  a  choking  feeling  in  his  throat  pre- 
vented utterance.  Garratt  was  alarmed  at  his 
appearance;  but  Casserly  seemed  utterly  in- 
different, looking  at  neither.  Garratt,  taking 
advantage  of  the  old  man's  helpless  condition, 
turned  to  leave,  but  was  surprised  to  find  him- 
self caught  by  the  arm  in  a  quick,  strong,  nerv- 
ous grasp,  and  violently  thrown  backward  to 
the  wall.  Judge  Simon's  face  was  undergoing 
a  wonderful  change.  Anger  now  flashed  from 
his  eyes,  and  speech  returned. 

"Garratt,"  he  said,  in  a  thick  voice,  "you 
have  done  this.  It  is  like  your  sneaking,  cow- 
ardly nature.  Garratt,  I  denounce  you  as  a 
murderer.  I  denounce  you  as  a  man  who  has 
dishonored  his  manhood's  birthright,  and  sold 
it  for  blood.  Garratt " — and  his  voice  was  husky, 
while  he  shook  with  emotion — "if  there  is  a 
God  in  heaven,  I  call  upon  him,  in  the  name  of 
human  justice  and  divine  right,  to  curse  you;  to 
pursue  you  with  misfortune,  disease,  poverty, 
and  death;  and,  finally,  to  damn  you  as  only 
the  meanest  of  heaven's  enemies  should  be 
damned.  Go !" 

Trembling  as  a  man  palsied,  the  old  Judge 
pointed  to  the  door,  the  most  intense  scorn  and 
loathing  appearing  in  every  line  of  his  face. 

Garratt  meekly  turned  away,  and,  joining 
Casserly,  left  the  jail.  His  step  was  hurried 
and  nervous,  for  he  dreaded  the  result  of  the 
disclosure  that  would  follow  Judge  Simon's  en- 
trance of  the  cell ;  and,  besides,  there  was  not 
so  much  contentment  and  gratification  in  his 
face.  Rather  was  there  gathering  gloom  and 
darkness,  and  an  apparent  realization  of  having 
done  too  much.  In  spite  of  him,  he  could  not 
banish  from  his  memory  a  woman  kneeling  on 
the  floor  in  anguish,  and  calling  on  God  for 
mercy  on  her  soul. 

The  two  men  walked  along  moody  and  si- 
lent; and'  Garratt  saw  that  he  had  forfeited 
Casserly's  esteem,  for  Casserly  paid  no  more 
attention  to  him,  and  suddenly  turned  into  St. 
John  Street,  leaving  him  alone. 

Casserly  was  in  a  bitter  mood,  and  it  was 
caused  not  alone  by  Garratt's  despicable  act. 
But  this  was  enough  to  set  Judge  Simon  against 
him  forever,  and  he  was  unhappy  at  the  pros- 
pect of  losing  the  old  man's  friendship.  This 
was,  at  that  time,  a  stronger  feeling  in  Casser- 
ly's breast  than  sorrow  that  the  criminal  had 


been  discovered  and  run  to  earth.  This  trou- 
bled him,  also.  Yet  there  was  another  feeling, 
and  one  showing  Casserly's  weaker  side.  It 
was  chagrin  and  mortification  that  Garratt  had 
solved  the  problem,  and  not  he;  that  Garratt 
had  shown  more  sagacity  and  cunning;  that 
Garratt  had  discovered  things  that  he  had  not ; 
that  Garratt  had  treated  him  like  a  child,  in  not 
trusting  him  enough  to  confide  in  him.  The 
former  was  his  reason  for  despising  Garratt  \ 
the  latter,  for  hating  him. 

Perhaps  in  all  his  life  Judge  Simon  had  never 
before  experienced  so  severe  a  shock.  Besides 
grief  occasioned  by  the  woman's  confession, 
there  was  profound  mortification  and  humilia- 
tion that  she  had  so  completely  ignored  him, 
and,  instead  of  trusting  in  him,  confided  her  life- 
and-death  secret  to  men  who  were  hunting  her 
without  mercy. 

But  the  old  man  was  a  philosopher.  Anger 
and  resentment,  so  far  as  feeling  for  her  was 
concerned,  found  no  place  in  his  heart.  Before 
he  trusted  himself  to  see  her,  he  studied  the 
subject  from  every  point  of  view.  He  had  al- 
ready analyzed  her  disposition,  and  now  con- 
fessed inwardly  that  he  had  mistaken  her.  It 
was  possible,  however,  he  thought,  that  her 
great  strength  of  character  had  finally  suc- 
cumbed to  weariness  and  exhaustion. 

Could  he  yet  save  her?  That  was  the  only 
question  that  finally  shaped  itself.  If  the  most 
cunning  subtlety  of  the  law  could  effect  any- 
thing, he  would  resort  to  it.  If  the  District  At- 
torney, intrenched  behind  towering  battlements 
of  facts,  piled  high  and  cemented  strongly, 
could  resist  an  untiring  siege  that  might  extend 
through  years,  then  the  battle  was  lost  already. 
But  Judge  Simon  had  enemies  in  his  own  camp. 
The  prize  for  which  he  fought  eluded  and  be- 
trayed him. 

After  a  long  time  he  entered  the  cell.  The 
unhappy  woman  was  kneeling  at  the  bed-side, 
weeping.  All  her  strength  was  gone ;  nothing 
but  tenderness  remained,  and  womanly  depend- 
ence, and  hope  that  had  changed  from  earthly 
to  heavenly. 

She  did  not  move  when  he  entered.  He 
stood  beside  her,  but  she  did  not  look  at  him; 
she  cared  no  more  for  his  friendship,  he  thought. 

"My  friend,"  he  said,  softly  and  kindly. 

She  recognized  his  voice,  and  buried  her  face 
deeper  in  her  arm,  and  wept  more  violently.  He 
waited  until  she  was  more  composed,  and  then 
took  her  by  the  arm,  and  gently  raised  her  and 
seated  her.  The  tenderness  of  his  manner 
touched  her  deeply;  and  when  she  saw  his 
face,  there  was  not  a  trace  of  reproach — noth- 
ing but  pity  and  sorrow;  sorrow  so  great  that 
it  deepened  the  wrinkles  in  his  face,  and  made 


224 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


him  look  older.  He  spoke  with  all  kindness : 
'My  dear  friend,  I  am  grieved  to  see  you  in 
so  much  trouble." 

Her  tears  started  afresh  at  this. 

"However,"  he  continued,  "we  must  not  de- 
spair. You  don't  think  it  indelicate  in  me  to 
still  insist  on  being  your  friend,  do  you?" 

"Oh,  no — oh,  no  !  Your  kindness  is  a  severer 
rebuke  than  reproaches  could  be.  But  you 
don't  understand — you  don't  understand." 

"I  think  I  do.  They  entrapped  you  in  some 
way.  Tell  me  all  about  it." 

With  an  effort  she  controlled  her  feelings. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "they  showed  me  a  note 
from  you — " 

"A  note  from  me  !     To  whom?" 

"To  me — advising  me  to  tell  everything." 

He  rose  from  his  seat  in  astonishment  and 
anger,  his  eyes  flashing  angrily. 

"It  is  a  forgery!"  he  exclaimed.  "I  never 
wrote  such  a  note." 

"I  knew  it  was  a  forgery,"  she  said,  calmly. 
"It  did  not  deceive  me  in  the  least — after  I  had 
considered  it  a  while." 

He  was  as  greatly  astonished  at  this  as  at  the 
other. 

"Then  why,  in  the  name  of  heaven,  did  you 
make  that  confession?" 

This  was  rather  abrupt,  for  she  sunk  under  it. 

"I  had  to— I  had  to,"  she  sobbed.  "And 
hen,  a  confession  following  such  a  note  from 
you,  when  I  suspected  that  they  had  learned  of 
your  friendship  for  me,  would  have  greater 
weight.  They  did  not  entrap  me.  I  under- 
stood every  word  and  movement." 

Judge  Simon  was  puzzled  more  and  more, 
and  for  the  first  time  he  realized  her  superior 
tact.  If  her  every  appearance  had  not 'given 
unmistakable  evidence  of  all  hope  abandoned, 
he  would  have  believed  that  she  was  managing 
a  scheme  beyond  his  comprehension. 

To  make  this  belief  in  her  despair  a  matter 
beyond  doubt,  he  asked  : 

"Did  they  tell  you  that  your  son  now  says 
hat  he  fired  the  shot  accidentally?" 

There  could  be  no  dissembling  in  the  look 
of  astonishment  in  her  face  that  instantly  dried 
up  every  trace  of  tears. 

"Did  he?"  she  asked,  breathlessly. 

"It  is  a  fact." 

And  then,  when  she  saw  the  mistake  that  she 
ad  made,  it  crushed  her  lower  than  ever.  At 
ength,  between  her  sobs,  she  asked  if  she  might 
be  permitted  to  see  her  son. 

"I  think  so,"  replied  Judge  Simon.  "I  will 
peak  to  Casserly." 

"And  Emily,  too,  if  you  please." 

Judge  Simon  dispatched  a  messenger  for  Cas- 
erly,  who  came,  and  willingly  consented,  there 


being  nothing  more  to  be  gained  by  keeping 
them  apart. 

Strange  as  it  may  appear,  the  young  man 
showed  little  sign  of  pleasure  when  the  jailer 
came  to  conduct  him  to  his  mother's  cell.  He 
hesitated,  and  then  passed  silently  out. 

With  Emily,  however,  it  was  very  different. 
Her  eyes  lighted  with  intense  pleasure.  She 
was  kept  in  ignorance  of  the  confession.  Judge 
Simon  himself  accompanied  the  eager,  trem- 
bling girl. 

Howard  entered  the  cell  first.  Only  his 
mother  and  Casserly  were  within.  Mrs.  How- 
ard had  been  standing  with  parted  lips,  and 
every  nerve  strung  to  its  utmost  tension,  while 
the  door  was  being  unlocked.  When  her  son 
appeared  on  the  threshold,  she  started  toward 
him  with  a  suppressed  sob  of  joy  and  extended 
arms.  Then  she  suddenly  halted,  and  seemed 
turned  to  stone ;  for,  plainly  enough  to  her  keen 
sight,  appeared  in  her  son's  face  the  merest 
shadow  of  a  look  of  repulsion. 

"My  son!"  she  stammered,  inarticulately. 

"Mother!"  was  his  reply — but  not  in  the 
warm  tone  that  every  circumstance  seemed  to 
require;  for  he,  also,  was  in  ignorance  of  her 
confession.  It  is  true  that  he  put  his  arm 
around  her  and  kissed  her;  but,  for  all  that,  it 
was  in  a  manner  that  so  went  to  the  mother's 
heart,  congealing  the  warm  blood  there,  that 
she  shrunk  away,  and  cowered  in  a  chair.  The 
young  man  exhibited  no  surprise  at  this  move- 
ment of  humiliation  and  despair. 

Just  at  this  time  Judge  Simon  entered  with 
Emily.  The  timid  girl  cast  an  eager  and  in- 
describably longing  look  upon  the  young  man, 
who  took  a  step  toward  her;  but  she  saw  Mrs. 
Howard,  and  went  to  her,  and  put  her  arms 
around  her  with  affectionate  tenderness. 

"My  darling  mother!"  she  said. 

The  poor  woman  took  the  girl  in  her  arms, 
and  held  her  close  to  her  heart,  kissing  her 
and  weeping  bitterly. 

"Mother,"  whispered  the  girl  eagerly,  "may 
I  speak  now?" 

"No!"  replied  Mrs.  Howard,  a  terrible  fear 
checking  her  tears. 

But  Casserly  overheard  them.  He  gently 
raised  the  girl,  and,  taking  her  aside,  in  a  kind 
manner,  said : 

"It  is  not  necessary  to  say  anything  now. 
She — she  has  confessed  everything." 

"Who  has?"  asked  the  girl  aloud,  greatly 
startled. 

Casserly  replied  by  pointing  to  Mrs.  How- 
ard, and  added : 

"  Hush  !  She  has  told  the  whole  story — how 
they  were  talking — how  she  fired  the  pistol — 
everything." 


A   STRANGE    CONFESSION. 


225 


"Who  fired  the  pistol?"  asked  the  girl,  in  a 
loud  voice. 

Casserly  was  annoyed.  Her  voice  had  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  all  present.  Casserly's 
annoyance  led  him  to  say  aloud : 

"Mrs.  Howard  has  confessed  that  she  killed 
the  girl." 

Emily's  eyes  opened  wide  with  unbounded 
astonishment,  and  her  look  was  one  of  utter 
helplessness.  Howard  was  electrified.  His  face 
blanched,  his  heart  stopped  beating.  The  mo- 
mentary silence  was  terrible.  Then  Howard  re- 
gained his  composure,  and,  stepping  forward, 
said,  in  an  excited  manner : 

"  My  mother  is  innocent !  Oh,  mother,  moth- 
er !  why  do  you  want  to  sacrifice  yourself  to 
save  me?  I  solemnly  swear,  in  the  presence  of 
God,  that  I  alone  am  guilty.  Casserly " 

"John!"  Emily  had  sprung  forward,  and 
grasped  him  by  both  arms,  looking  up  into  his 
face  with  such  a  startled,  frightened  look,  that 
he  thought  she  was  insane — such  a  wild,  un- 
earthly look — so  unlike  the  Emily  that  he  knew. 
Her  exclamation  and  strange  manner  checked 
him;  and  he  put  his  hands  upon  her  shoulders, 
and  looked  wistfully  into  her  eyes. 

"John !"  she  exclaimed  again,  in  absolutely  a 
meaningless  tone,  gazing  at  him  wildly. 

Then  she  released  his  arms,  and  ran  to  Mrs. 
Howard. 

"Mother !"  she  stammered,  her  cheeks  flush- 
ed and  her  eyes  staring.  "Mother!  I  will — 
speak.  You  are  innocent !  I — I — don't — don't 
— look  at  me  so.  I  will  speak.  Don't  let  her 
— look — at  me.  Don't  let  her — speak — to  me. 
I  will  speak !  I  have  it  here — in  my  bosom — 
don't — don't  look  at  me — don't  come — near  me 
— gentlemen,  gentlemen,  don't  let  her  touch  me! 
Hold  her  back !  Now — don't  let  her  speak — I 
have  it  here — right — here  ! " 

These  wild,  broken  remarks  were  made  while 
Mrs.  Howard  was  endeavoring  to  check  her; 
and  the  girl,  in  a  frenzied  manner,  pulled  at  her 
dress,  and,  in  her  nervous  excitement,  failing  to 
loosen  it.  Every  eye  was  fastened  upon  her, 
and  it  was  thought  the  trouble  and  excitement 
of  the  last  few  days  had  destroyed  her  reason. 
She  seemed  actuated  by  an  uncontrollable  de- 
sire, amounting  to  frenzy,  to  disclose  some- 
thing, in  spite  of  Mrs.  Howard's  wish  and  ef- 
forts to  prevent  her.  She  tugged  nervously  at 
her  dress,  as  she  said : 

"I — I — have  it  safe — here.  I  will  speak  ! 
It  is  here— I  tell  you  it  is  here!  O  God! 
There — don't  let  her  look  at  me  !  Gentlemen, 
gentlemen,  don't  let  her !  John  !  I  will  speak 
— it  is  here  !  There — read  it !  read  it,  I  say ! 
Quick !  You  must  read  it !  Don't  let  her  pre- 
vent you!" 


She  opened  her  dress.  Eagerly  she  handed 
Casserly  an  unsealed  letter.  As  she  did  so, 
Mrs.  Howard  ceased  her  endeavors  to  si- 
lence the  girl,  and  all  were  astounded  at  the 
course  events  had  taken.  Casserly  glanced  at 
it,  examined  the  signature,  read  a  few  lines, 
and  then  looked  up,  bewildered. 

"Read  it!"  exclaimed  Emily.  "Read  it 
aloud!" 

As  Casserly  proceeded  to  comply,  the  look 
of  astonishment  on  his  face  was  caught  by  "the 
mother,  and  son,  and  Judge  Simon. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
The  letter  was  as  follows  : 

MY  DARLING,  DARLING  MOTHER: — With  a  broken 
heart,  I  thank  you  for  all  the  kindness  you  have  shown 
me.  When  you  read  this  you  will  already  know  that 
your  home  has  been  disgraced.  But  I  cannot  help  it. 
I  believe  that  I  have  tried  with  all  my  strength  to  spare 
you  this  last  blow.  I  have  struggled  with  all  the  strength 
of  a  woman's  nature,  and  am  beaten.  And  I  have 
.prayed  as  you  taught  me  years  ago.  But  that  was  a 
long,  long  time  ago,  mother,  when  the  sky  was  bright, 
and  when  I  was  happy — so  happy  !  And  I  think  now, 
in  the  bitterness  of  my  sorrow,  and  in  the  poignancy  of 
my  grief  and  humiliation,  that  Heaven  does  not  help  us 
when  most  we  need  assistance ;  that  God  can  mend  only 
hearts  that  are  torn  and  bruised,  and  not  hearts  that  are 
broken.  You  have  already  guessed  the  cause  of  my  de- 
spair. But  it  is  so  much  better  that  I  should  die — so 
much  better,  mother !  Yes ;  I  have  loved  him  all  my 
life.  I  loved  him  so  tenderly — so  devotedly — so  madly! 
I  beg  you  will  not  show  him  this  letter.  I  could  not 
bear  that  this  trouble  should  come  upon  him  in  addi- 
tion to  the  tragedy ;  for  I  want  him  to  think  that  I  mad- 
ly and  rashly  took  the  fatal  step — in  a  moment  of  selfish 
desire  to  end  my  own  troubles  at  the  sacrifice  of  so  much 
that  concerns  the  pride,  and  perhaps  the  happiness,  of 
others— of  you,  at  least,  dear  mother ;  for  if  he  thinks 
that,  he  will  care  less.  Let  him  remain  in  ignorance  of 
this  letter.  And  even  tell  him  for  me — will  you  not, 
dear  mother? — that  I  was  an  impetuous,  rash,  incon- 
siderate girl,  who  did  this  act  merely  in  desperate  spite 
or  anger.  Ah,  I  am  not  suited  to  him  !  God  gave  me 
so  passionate  a  love,  and  so  noble  an  object  of  love,  and 
did  not  make  me  to  win  the  reward  !  I  do  not  wish,  my 
dear,  dear  mother,  to  say  anything  now  to  wound  you ; 
but  I  must  make  you  aware  of  things  you  never  knew. 
I  write  it  not  in  a  feeling  of  bitterness  or  reproach,  but 
merely  to  make  you  more  reconciled.  You  feared  that 
he  loved  me  better,  and  that  my  nature  won  upon  him 
more,  and  that  he  preferred  me  because  of  my  greater 
strength.  But  it  is  not  the  case.  The  orphan  girl,  who 
now  writes  you  her  thanks  for  all  the  years  of  tender 
patience  that  you  have  devoted  to  her,  never  aspired  to 
win  him — your  idol;  never  hoped  that  she  would  be 
called  his  wife,  and  would  hold  his  children  to  her  breast 
— oh,  no ;  not  that.  But  she  lived  on  in  a  dream  of 
enchantment — happy  that  he  was  only  near  her.  She 
would  not,  if  she  could,  have  been  a  burden  or  a  hin- 
derance  to  him.  He  is  ambitious,  and  would  not  marry 


226 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


such  as  I.  Ah,  in  my  despair  1  have  written  it !  It  is  a 
reproach  upon  him,  and  is  false  !  I  seek  for  excuses  for 
my  own  short-comings,  and  selfishly  and  unjustly,  in 
my  weariness  and  pain,  accuse  him.  He  is  the  soul  of 
honor.  It  is  not  his  fault. 

Do  you  know,  dear  mother,  what  I  would  have  done 
rather  than  marry  him?  I  would  have  committed  the 
deed  that  will  follow  the  writing  of  this  letter,  and 
which  I  cannot  name.  Why?  Because,  in  his  generos- 
ity and  unselfishness,  knowing,  perhaps,  that  I  loved 
him  better  than  my  own  life,  he  might  have  offered  to 
marry  me,  and  thus  sacrifice  his  happiness.  For  I 
knew  that  he  did  not  love  me  as  I  would  have  my  hus- 
band to  love  ;  and  I  knew  that  I  would  not  be  an  honor 
to  him.  I  would  not  have  allowed  him  to  sacrifice 
himself. 

Then  why  this  rash  act,  you  will  call  it?  Because  I 
realize,  as  I  never  have  before,  that  I  am  no  dearer  to 
him  than  a  sister.  I  knew  it  all  along,  but  I  still  was 
happy  until  I  saw  that  I  did  not  enter  into  his  life.  I 
cannot  explain  this,  mother,  as  I  feel  it.  I  am  tired — so 
tired,  and  cannot  think  clearly. 

No  ;  my  nature  is  too  strong  for  his.  You  have  al- 
ways been  mistaken.  He  must  have  a  tender  vine 
clinging  to  him  and  depending  upon  him,  like — 

Ah,  how  sad  it  is,  mother  !  As  I  write  this,  the  tears 
so  dim  my  sight  that  I  can  hardly  see.  But  I  am  not 
acting  rashly.  I  have  thought  it  all  over  carefully,  and 
now  believe  that,  although  the  pain  and  disgrace  that  _ 
you  will  feel,  and  the  sorrow,  too,  I  hope,  dear  mother, 
will  be -great,  they  will  be  justified  in  the  securing  of  his 
consciousness  of  perfect  freedom.  I  might  leave,  to  re- 
turn no  more ;  but  he  would  be  distressed,  and  would 
hunt  the  world  over  to  find  me.  He  will  not  look  for 
me  now  to  return.  I  will  pass  out  of  his  life — out  into 
eternity ;  so  far  away  that  he  may  be  grieved,  but  not 
anxious.  There  is  only  one  thing  beyond  the  reach  of 
anxiety,  and  that  is  death. 

Have  I  written  anything  that  wounds  you?  If  so. 
forgive  me,  for  I  did  not  intend  it.  I  believe  that  you 
love  me  now,  as  you  always  have  loved  me.  I  have  all 
rriy  life  tried  very,  very  hard  to  deserve  your  love ;  but  I 
know  that  frequently — very  frequently — I  have  failed. 
I  know  that  I  have  often  annoyed  and  distressed  you. 
I  have  always  been  such  an  impetuous  child !  But 
whenever  I  did  anything  you  disliked,  I  suffered  keenly 
and  deeply.  At  this  supreme  moment  of  my  life,  I 
turn  to  you,  and  open  my  heart  to  you,  of  all  others. 
I  love  you  so  dearly,  my  mother,  my  mother  !  And 
were  it  not  that  this  is  my  only  alternative,  in  every 
sense  of  justice  and  right,  I  would  struggle  bravely 
through  life  to  the  grave  rather  than  subject  you  to  this 
pain.  I  rather  would  have  them  say  that  my  mind  was 
wrong,  and  that  no  other  cause  be  assigned;  for  if 
there  were,  it  would  stand  forever  as  a  reproach  to  him, 
and  be  a  lasting  pain  in  his  conscience.  He  may  dis- 
cover or 'suspect  the  cause,  but,  even  if  he  does,  I  can- 
not help  it.  I  must  do  it.  You  do  not  know,  my  dear 
mother,  the  great  strength  that  impels  me  to  it  with  a 
force  that  nothing  can  resist ;  and  then,  I  believe  it  is 
right.  I  believe  that,  as  I  act  conscientiously,  I  will  be 
forgiven.  I  believe  that  when  the  power  of  God  is  not 
directed  to  save  a  breaking  heart,  it  is  intended  the  heart 
shall  perish. 

Mother,  will  you  plant  flowers  on  the  spot  where  they 
lay  me — mignonette,  mother,  and  violets,  and  let  the 
sun  shine  full  and  warm  upon  them?  Farewell,  mother 
— and  farewell— John.  ROSE  HOWARD. 


During  the  reading  of  this  sad  solution  of  the 
mystery,  the  mother  and  son — he  had  avoided 
her  look  before — regarded  each  other  with  such 
profound  surprise  and  pain  that  it  was  touching 
to  see ;  then,  before  Casserly  had  read  far,  the 
young  man  went  to  her,  and  put  his  arms  around 
her,  and  buried  his  face  in  her  shoulder,  while 
she  clasped  him  tenderly  about  the  neck,  and 
kissed  him  again  and  again.  And  Emily,  when 
she  saw  that  there  had  been  a  great  and  almost 
fatal  misunderstanding,  and  that  she  had  done 
right  to  produce  the  letter  against  Mrs.  How- 
ard's wishes,  succumbed  under  the  relaxation 
of  long  suspense  and  suffering,  and  fell  across 
the  bed,  and  wept  softly. 

A  strange  quiet  followed  the  reading.  Judge 
Simon  was  looking  through  the  window  to  hide 
the  tears  that  streamed  down  his  cheeks  in  spite 
of  his  efforts  to  restrain  them,  and  that  suppress- 
ed all  power  of  utterance. 

And  Casserly?  It  is  difficult  to  describe  his 
feelings.  He  might  have  been  grateful  that 
the  innocence  of  all  suspected  was  established, 
but,  if  he  was,  he  was  unconscious  of  it ;  for, 
above  it,  and  mastering  it,  and  stifling  it,  arose 
deep  and  painful  disappointment  and  chagrin. 
And  yet  Casserly  was  not  a  hard-hearted  man ; 
he  was  simply  ambitious.  His  pride  had  a  ter- 
rible fall.  For  this,  then,  had  he  followed  up 
this  clue  and  that  suspicion ;  for  this  had  he 
lain  awake  and  studied  the  matter  so  thorough- 
ly and  exhaustively;  for  this  had  he  shown  the 
keenest  acumen  of  detective  skill  and  instinct ; 
for  this  had  he  worked,  and  planned,  and  strug- 
gled. It  was  no  consolation  that  not  another 
soul  had  even  dreamed  of  the  truth ;  for  Cas- 
serly was  a  detective,  and  detectives  must  know 
even  things  that  are  hidden  from  heaven.  He 
had  resorted  to  lying  and  cruelty — and  what  had 
he  won?  The  hatred  of  his  dearest  friend  and 
the  jibes  of  the  world.  His  mind  went  back 
and  reviewed  it  all.  The  woman  had  outwitted 
him  by  effecting  the  escape  of  Emily ;  the  son 
had  effectually  deceived  him  by  confessing  a 
crime  of  which  he  was  innocent ;  the  mob  had 
fooled  and  cheated  him  by  stealing  the  prisoner 
from  his  very  grasp ;  the  mother  had  out -man- 
aged him  by  rescuing  her  son ;  his  ruse  to  extort 
a  confession  from  Emily  had  failed ;  and  last;  but 
greater  than  all,  the  mother  had  imposed  upon 
him  her  confession.  Casserly  was  disgraced. 
Why  had  he  not  thought  of  the  possibility  of 
suicide?  It  was  a  simple  and  natural  thing. 
He  did  not  even  question  the  authenticity  of 
the  letter,  nor  desire  to  know  how  it  came  to 
Emily's  possession.  Everything  established  its 
truth,  and  that  was  sufficient — the  surprise  of 
the  mother  and  son,  and  their  silent  reconcilia- 
tion— everything. 


A   STRANGE   CONFESSION. 


227 


It  was  almost  more  than  Casserly  could  bear. 
He  stepped  silently  to  the  door,  and  rapped. 
The  jailer  soon  appeared.  As  he  did  so,  Judge 
Simon  advanced  toward  Casserly,  and  said,  in 
a  constrained  voice : 

"Of  course,  you  will  order  their  release." 

Casserly  halted,  but  did  not  look  at  the  old 
man.  He  hesitated  a  moment,  and  replied,  in 
such  strange  and  altered  tones  that  Judge  Si- 
mon hardly  recognized  them  as  Casserly's : 

"Yes." 

He  passed  out,  leaving  the  door  open.  The 
jailer  was  about  to  close  it,  when  Casserly 
checked  him,  and  the  two  walked  away  to- 
gether. Thus  had  Casserly  so  Completely  ig- 
nored the  Sheriff,  the  proper  custodian  of  the 
jail,  in  order  that  none  but  Casserly  should 
solve  the  mystery  of  Rose  Howard's  death.  It 
might  be  asked,  Why  did  not  Casserly  seek  to 
ascertain  the  reason  for  the  two  confessions, 
and  have  every  hidden  thing  cleared  up?  But 
Casserly  did  not  care  to  know.  He  thought 
very  little  about  it. 

Judge  Simon  now  felt  himself  an  intruder. 
He  had  accomplished  nothing ;  the  whole  mat- 
ter had  worked  itself  out  in  quite  a  natural  man- 
ner, and  entirely  without  the  exercise  of  the 
great  legal  talent  he  thought  to  bring  to  bear; 
but  to  say  that  he  was  gratified  and  happy,  and 
that  not  a  trace  of  consciousness  of  his  inutility 
disturbed  his  happiness,  as  it  would  Casserly's 
under  such  circumstances,  would  be  a  state- 
ment of  but  a  meager  part  of  the  truth;  for, 
though  it  would  have  been  an  inestimable  pleas- 
ure to  have  assisted  his  new  friends,  whatever 
natural  disappointment  there  might  have  been 
on  this  account  was  swallowed  up  in  his  grati- 
tude that  the  danger  had  not  been  so  great  as 
to  require  legal  perspicacity  and  skill — that  the 
trouble  was  so  entirely  cleared  away  that  even 
the  pretense  of  making  a  defense  became  un- 
necessary. 

The  three  silent  figures  in  the  cell  had  better 
be  left  alone.  He  was  crossing  the  threshold  to 
leave,  when  Mrs.  Howard  called  to  him.  He 
reentered,  and  she  silently  grasped  his  hand. 

"My  friend,"  he' said,  his  voice  husky  with 
emotion,  "I  congratulate  you  from  my  heart — 
and  you,  too,  young  man,"  he  added,  warmly 
wringing  John's  hand.  "I  hope  you  will  not 
think,  my  friends,  that  I  was  leaving  you  with- 
out speaking  simply  because  I  was  not  happy 
at  this  termination  of  your  troubles.  I — I  felt 
an  intruder,  and  —  " 

"I  know  your  nature  too  well,  sir,"  replied 
Mrs.  Howard,  "to  entertain  such  an  idea.  Is 
it  not  all  so  strange? — the  misunderstanding, 
and  my  son's  noble  willingness  to  sacrifice  him- 
self? John,  you  thought  I  did  it,  and  you  were 


anxious  to  give  up  your  life  to  save  mine,  and 
to  protect  me  from  disgrace." 

John  hung  his  head.  His  triumph  was  not 
unalloyed ;  for  he  bitterly  remembered  that  his 
own  life  had  become  precious,  and  that  he  had 
concocted  a  story  of  accidental  killing,  which 
would  not  jeopardize  his  life.  John  would  have 
been  a  hero  now  if  he  had  never  done  that ;  but 
as  it  is,  he  was  little  removed  from  a  coward — 
a  thing  he  held  in  the  utmost  contempt.  Still, 
there  was  cause  for  pride — he  had  shown  a  wil- 
lingness to  lay  down  his  life  for  his  mother's 
sake.  Ah,  human  nature  ! — frail,  weak  human 
nature  !  And  his  pride,  too,  must  have  a  fall. 

"John,"  said  Judge  Simon,  "such  a  mother 
as  yours  is  worthy  of  any  sacrifice  that  her  son 
might  make.  She,  too,  as  you  already  know, 
confessed,  and  solely  to  save  you.  It  was  not 
enough  that  she  ran  the  risk  of  untold  danger 
to  effect  your  escape ;  but  she  convinced  Cas- 
serly, with  a  statement  that  would  put  to  the 
blush  the  shrewdest  legal  talent,  that  she  alone 
was  the  guilty  one.  She  would  have  cheerfully 
died  for  you,  John." 

The  young  man  almost  broke  down  under 
his  great  emotion.  He  silently  pressed  his 
mother's  hand,  and  realized,  to  its  full  extent, 
her  superiority  over  him  in  every  noble  trait. 

"But  why  is  it,"  asked  Judge  Simon,  "that 
this  strange  misunderstanding  arose?  It  is  a 
great  mystery  to  me." 

"Well,"  answered  John,  looking  somewhat 
confused  and  embarrassed,  "I  thought  —  I 
thought — but  mother  has  guessed  it." 

"Yes,"  she  said;  "you  felt  sure  that  I  had 
done  it;  and  I  was  equally  positive  that  the 
poor  child  had  angered  you,  and  that  you  mad- 
ly killed  her." 

John  was  aghast  at  this  explanation. 

"Thought /did  it!" 

"Yes;  you  acted  so  strangely  —  " 

"Why— why,  it  was  because  I  thought  you 
were  guilty.  And  that  is  the  reason  you  dark- 
ened the  hall,  and  urged  me  to  leave — and  all 
that.  I  never  thought  of  it.  I  believed  you 
wanted  me  to  leave  in  order  that  your — forgive 
me,  mother! — your  disgrace  would  not  reflect 
upon  me,  or  that  you,  perhaps,  were  afraid  that 
I  might  testify  against  you." 

"My  son !" 

"It  is  all  clear  now.  What  a  pity  we  never 
understood  each  other.  Emily!" 

The  girl,  whose  face  until  then  had  been 
buried  in  the  pillow,  though  her  sobs  had 
ceased,  arose,  and  seemed  very  guilty  and  de- 
cidedly foolish  as  she  stammered  : 

"I — I  didn't  understand  your  mother.  I  saw 
the  letter  on  her  bureau  just  before  the  shot 
was  fired,  and — and  I  recognized  the  handwrit- 


228 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ing,  and  saw  the  envelope  was  not  sealed,  and 
— I — thought  it  wouldn't  be — wrong  to — to  read 
it,  and  so  I  thrust  it  into  my  bosom,  and — and 
then  there  was  so  much  excitement  that  I  for- 
got it,  and  thought  there  was  something  terri- 
bly wrong,  and  that  I  had  to  obey  everything 
your  mother  said,  and —  " 

Then  she  broke  down.  And  so  it  was  her 
woman's  jealousy  after  all  that  brought  on  the 
terrible  misunderstanding. 

"I  didn't  read  it,"  she  sobbed,  "until  I  ar- 
rived at  Santa  Cruz;  but  I  thought  I  must 
obey  every  word  your  mother  said.  I  thought 
it  was — so  strange — John — that  you  told  that 
man  I  did  it.  How  could  you,  John !  Oh, 
John,  how  could  you  !"  and  she  sobbed  so  vio- 
lently that  John  himself  could  hardly  keep  from 
crying,  and  then  he  picked  her  up  and  took  her 
in  his  arms,  and  pressed  her  close  to  his  heart, 
kissing  her — oh,  it  is  impossible  to  say  how 
many  times. 

"Why,  you  little  goose,"  he  said,  "I  never 
told  a  soul  anything  of  the  kind.  Don't  you 
know,  simpleton,  that  Casserly  adopted  that 
ruse  to  make  you  speak?" 

"Oh!"  she  exclaimed,  as  the  truth  dawned 
upon  her;  and  she  added:  "John,  don't  you 
know  that  I  never  would  have  said  anything, 
even  if  you  had  been  guilty?" 

John  laughed,  and  kissed  her  again — many 
times. 

Their  great  joy  was  tempered  by  the  sad  oc- 
currence of  a  few  days  ago,  and  they  spoke  in 
low  tones,  and  with  reverence  for  the  poor  dead 
girl.  It  made  John  an  older  man. 

It  must  have  been  amusing  to  Judge  Simon 
to  see  the  timid  girl  nestle  in  John's  strong 
arms,  and  fit  into  them,  and  into  his  heart,  as 
though  she  were  made  especially  for  that  pur- 
pose. Young  people  are  so  ridiculous ! 

They  left  the  jail,  and  Judge  Simon  parted 
with  them  at  their  gate.  They  entered,  and 
the  door  closed  upon  them.  The  old  man  went 
slowly  homeward,  wondering  if  it  were  all  true ; 
and  at  times  he  suddenly  would  look  up,  as 
though  he  were  prepared  to  see  the  sky  turn 
green,  or  the  trees  to  be  growing  in  an  inverted 
position.  He  would  have  been  surprised  at 
nothing.  "The  strangest  thing !"  he  would  say 
aloud  to  himself — "the  strangest  thing!" 

About  ten  o'clock  the  next  morning  John  en- 
tered a  saddler's  shop  on  First  Street,  and,  af- 
ter making  a  trifling  purchase,  asked  to  be  di- 
rected to  the  Coroner's  office.  This  was  done, 
and  he  proceeded  thither,  at  the  same  time 
deftly  slipping  something  up  his  left  coat-sleeve. 

He  entered  the  office.  Garratt  was  alone, 
and  sat  on  a  high  stool  at  his  desk,  looking 
crestfallen. 


"Good  morning,  Dr.  Garratt,"  said  Howard, 
gravely. 

Garratt  turned,  and  recognized  his  visitor, 
and  felt  his  heart  sink. 

"Ah,"  he  exclaimed,  "Mr.  Howard!  I  — I 
am — am — very  happy  to  see — to  see — you  free 
— and — and —  " 

The  official  was  choking  with  fright.  Never- 
theless, Howard  was  so  grave  and  calm  that  he 
lioped  there  was  no  danger. 

"  I  didn't  come  to  have  you  say  that,"  How- 
ard replied,  quietly.  "I  come  simply  on  a  mat- 
ter of  business.  Have  you  held  the  inquest?" 

"  Oh,  certainly ;  last  night,  you  know,  as  soon 
as  Casserly  showed  me  the  letter  and  told  me 
everything.  Oh,  yes;  that  is  all  right ;  verdict 
of  suicide,  you  know.  Very  unfortunate  and 
sad,  wasn't  it?" 

"I  do  not  care  to  hear  you  say  so,  Dr.  Gar- 
ratt. I  am  here  simply  on  business." 

"I  shall  be  happy  to  accommodate  you,  Mr. 
Howard,"  replied  Garratt,  briskly. 

"I  do  not  wish  to  be  accommodated,  sir. 
My  visit  is  a  matter  of  business.  Do  you  think 
any  one  will  be  apt  to  come  in  and  interrupt 
us?" 

"Oh,  no;  certainly  not.  We  are  perfectly 
private  here." 

"Still,  it  will  be  safer,"  said  Howard,  "to 
close  the  door" — which  he  did  at  once,  and 
turned  the  key. 

Then  Garratt  was  thoroughly  alarmed;  for, 
though  the  young  man  was  in  no  wise  excited, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  was  calm  and  grave,  this 
act  was  unaccountable  to  Garratt,  who  was  on 
the  point  of  crying  out  for  help.  But  Howard's 
manner  appeared  easier,  as  if  he  were  relieved 
to  think  there  could  be  no  interruption,  and 
Garratt  waited. 

"I  wish  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  Dr.  Gar- 
ratt, that  throughout  this  whole  matter  you 
have  exhibited  a  zeal  that,  to  say  the  least,  was 
highly  unbecoming." 

"Say  nothing  about  that,  Mr.  Howard,  I 
pray.  No  one  regrets  it  more  than  I.  You 
see,  what  could  I  do?  I  had  to  do  my  duty, 
and  you  know  well  enough  that  circumstances 
were  very  strong — very  strong,  sir.  You  will 
admit  that.  You  must  understand  my  position. 
Such  things  are  very  unpleasant  and  distaste- 
ful, but  my  duty  is  plain.  I  could  not  help  it." 

"Was  it  your  duty  to  be  harsh  with  my  moth- 
er at  your  first  interview  with  her?" 

"  I  was  not  harsh,  Mr.  Howard.  I  was  sim- 
ply performing  a  duty." 

"Was  it  your  duty  to  ransack  her  house,  and 
pry  into  her  correspondence,  and  read  all  the 
letters  you  saw,  and  have  a  mob  in  the  house 
to  assist  you?" 


DOUBTING   AND    WORKING. 


229 


"You  must  be  reasonable,  Mr.  Howard.  I 
was  compelled — " 

"Was  it  your  duty  to  forge  a  note  from  Judge 
Simon,  and  thus  attempt  to  entrap  her  into  a 
statement?" 

"Mr.  Howard,  I  assure  you — "  . 

"Answer  the  question,  sir!"  demanded  How- 
ard, in  a  terrible  voice,  and  with  a  dangerous 
look  in  his  eyes. 

"Mr.  Howard,  I—" 

"Answer  the  question.     Was  it  your  duty?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Well,  then,  it  is  my  duty  to  thrash  you,  for 
the  contemptible  hound  that  you  are  !" 

As  he  thundered  out  this  dread  sentence,  he 
seemed  to  Garratt  to  dilate  to  enormous  dimen- 
sions, while  the  Coroner  became  ghastly  pale. 

"You  have  me  at  a  disadvantage,"  he  said, 
trembling  in  every  joint  and  fiber.  "You  are 
armed." 

"Yes,"  replied  Howard,  in  a  lower  tone  and 
with  more  calmness ;  "  I  am  armed  to  the  teeth." 
Saying  which,  he  drew  a  riding -whip  from  his 
sleeve — a  keen  and  cruel-looking  whip.  "This 
is  my  weapon,"  he  said. 

He  struck  Garratt  across  the  face  with  it, 
and  the  blood  started.  Garratt  shrieked,  and 
writhed;  and  rolled  upon  the  floor  in  agony; 
but  the  furious  young  man  caught  him  by  the 
collar,  and  dragged  him  to  his  feet,  and  held 
him  while  he  whipped  him  unmercifully — whip- 
ped him  systematically  from  head  to  feet ;  laid 
it  on  heavily  and  at  regular  intervals ;  whipped 
him  as  he  would  whip  a  dog ;  twisted  his  hand 
into  Garratt's  collar,  and  held  him  at  arm's 
length,  and  plied  the  whip;  held  him  in  spite 
of  Garratt's  fierce  struggles  from  the  madden- 
ing pain;  whipped  him  until  he  had  finished; 
and  then  he  contemptuously  flung  him  aside, 
streaming  with  blood  where  the  whip  had  cut 
through  the  skin  in  a  dozen  places,  unlocked 
the  door,  and  went  quietly  away. 

He  had  another  duty  to  perform.  Casserly 
must  be  attended  to,  for  he  had  aided  and  abet- 


ted Garratt  and  had  frightened  Emily.  The 
young  man  did  not  for  a  moment  hesitate  at 
Casserly's  gigantic  strength;  the  thought  of 
danger  did  not  occur  to  him. 

He  found  Casserly  in  the  police  station,  sit- 
ting before  the  desk.  Casserly  looked  up,  and, 
on  recognizing  Howard,  his  face  brightened. 
At  the  same  time  he  caught  sight  of  blood  on 
Howard's  hand. 
•  "Hello!"  he  said,  "what's  that?" 

"I  have  just  given  Garratt  a  thrashing  with 
this  whip,  and  I  come — " 

"To  give  yourself  up!"  exclaimed  Casserly, 
rising,  and  showing  unmistakable  evidence  of 
immense  satisfaction.  Then  he  burst  into  a 
laugh — a  gleeful,  hearty  laugh — and  said  to  the 
astonished  young  man,  "I'm  glad  you  did,  ha 
ha!  Arrest  you?  I  wouldn't  touch  a  hair  of 
your  head.  Give  me  your  hand.  He  has  need- 
ed that  thrashing  for  five  years — ha,  ha,  ha!" 

If  ever  there  was  an  astonished  man,  it  was 
Howard ;  if  ever  there  was  disarmed  vengeance, 
it  was  Howard's.  He  silently  grasped  Casser- 
ly's hand,  and  felt  ashamed  at  his  contemplated 
act,  and  never  mentioned  it  to  any  one.  He 
was  forced  to  like  Casserly,  for  the  latter  made 
him  sit  down,  and  was  so  cheerful  that  Howard 
imbibed  his  feeling.  They  talked  for  some  time, 
and  Casserly  modestly  related  his  efforts  to  save 
the  young  man  from  the  violence  of  the  mob, 
and  how  he  was  ashamed  and  disgraced  by 
Garratt's  forgery.  Then  Casserly  spoke  bitterly 
of  the  forfeiture  of  Judge  Simon's  friendship 
through  this  disgraceful  act  of  Garratt's;  and 
Howard  promised  that  he  would  explain  it,  and 
effect  a  reconciliation,  which  afterward  he  did. 

About  a  year  thereafter,  there  was  a  quiet 
and  happy  wedding  at  Mrs.  Howard's  residence. 
Judge  Simon  was  there,  for  he  had  become  al- 
most as  one  of  the  family;  and  it  was  with  im- 
mense pride  and  satisfaction  that  he  gave  Em- 
ily to  John,  and  then  blessed  them. 

W.  C.  MORROW. 


THE  END. 


DOUBTING   AND   WORKING. 


There  is  a  well  known  speculation  of  Dr. 
Holmes  as  to  the  number  of  people  who  really 
are  concerned  in  a  conversation  between  any 
two  men.  Each  one  of  these  men  has  a  real 
and  true  character — is  what  he  is.  Each  one  of 
the  men  has  a  notion  of  the  other's  character, 

VOL.  III.— 15. 


and  probably  thinks  his  notion  a  very  fair  one. 
And  each  one  has  a  still  more  distinct  and  fixed 
idea  as  to  his  own  character.  Now,  the  words 
of  each  man  are  determined  by  what  he  him- 
self really  is,  by  what  he  thinks  of  himself,  and 
by  what  he  holds  of  the  other.  So  that  in  fact 


230 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


six  people,  two  real  and  four  imaginary — to  wit, 
the  two  real  men,  their  ideas  of  themselves  and 
their  ideas  of  each  other — take  part  in  this  sim- 
plest form  of  human  society.  How  complicated 
then  must  be  the  state  of  things  when  a  whole 
group  of  people  are  concerned,  each  one  speak- 
ing forth  his  own  true  nature,  but  affected  in 
his  words  by  what  he  supposes  his  own  nature 
to  be,  and  by  the  way  in  which  he  fancies  his 
sayings  will  impress  the  ghostly  images  that 
are  what  he  takes  to  be  his  real  companions. 

This  speculation  suggests  a  like  one  as  to  the 
number  of  partly  imaginary  worlds  that  form 
subjects  of  study  and  amusement  for  the  myri- 
ads of  human  beings  in  the  one  actual  world. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  in  some  sense  every 
man  may  be  said  to  move  in  a  world  of  his 
own.  Yet  the  consequences  of  this  common- 
place are  not  always  considered.  Think  of  them 
a  moment.  Here  is  an  ordinary  person  before 
us,  taken  as  a  type  of  humanity.  His  view  of 
the  world  might  be  taken  as  an  example,  so  it 
would  seem,  of  the  way  in  which  the  people  of 
this  planet  know  and  appreciate  the  universe. 
Yet,  no.  Could  you  look  into  his  soul  for  a  min- 
ute it  is  probable  that  you  would  find  very 
much  in  his  consciousness  that  would  be  strange 
to  you  and  to  other  men.  Think  first  of  his 
senses  themselves.  Experience  has  shown  that 
common  men  can  go  through  the  world  for  a 
very  long  time  without  suspecting  or  showing 
that  they  have  some  very  important  defect  of 
the  senses.  Cross-eyed  men,  I  have  heard, 
sometimes  by  a  painless  process  lose  the  sight 
of  one  eye,  and  yet  go  for  years  without  finding 
out  their  defect  until  chance  or  necessity  brings 
them  under  the  skilled  examination  of  an  ocu- 
list. Late  statistics  make  a  basis  for  the  claim 
that  as  many  as  one  in  every  twenty-five  male 
persons  will  be  found  to  be  color-blind.  Yet 
only  by  careful  tests  are  color-blind  people  to  be 
distinguished  from  people  with  normal  vision. 
It  is  probable  that  there  are  often  somewhat 
similar  defects  in  the  sense  of  hearing  which 
go  unnoticed  for  a  long  time,  Yet  more,  the 
researches  of  men  like  Helmholtz  have  proved 
that  there  are  many  optical  illusions  common  to 
most  or  to  all  of  us,  which  are  unnoticed  or  un- 
consciously corrected  our  lives  long,  and  which 
never  could  become  known  without  skillful  ex- 
periment. And  if  all  this  is  true,  how  can  we 
ever  feel  sure  that  in  the  field  that  lies  beyond 
the  reach  of  possible  experiment,  in  the  field  of 
each  man's  own  primary  sensations  themselves, 
there  are  not  entirely  mysterious  sources  of  va- 
riety, so  that  the  ultimate  sensations  of  one  per- 
son may  be  of  their  nature  not  comparable  at 
all  with  the  ultimate  sensations  of  his  neighbor? 
Thus,  then,  our  normal  man  may  be  in  fact  a 


creature  of  entirely  peculiar  constitution;  yet 
we  may  not  know  the  fact.  His  world  may  be 
one  that  would  be  inconceivably  strange  to  us. 
Yet  we  talk  with  him  in  common  fashion  day 
after  day.  But,  leaving  the  field  of  conject- 
ure and  coming  back  to  the  point  where  it  is 
possible  to  judge  and  compare,  I  say  that  we 
may  very  probably  find  upon  examination  that 
there  are  peculiarities  in  the  mind  of  the  per- 
son we  are  considering  which  may  make  the 
simplest  operation  of  his  thought  such  as  we  can 
neither  imitate  nor  easily  understand.  Take, 
for  example,  his  memory.*  There  seem  to  be 
two  somewhat  different  kinds  of  memories  in 
the  world.  I  suppose  that  there  are  all  the  gra- 
dations between  the  two  extremes,  but  at  the 
extremes  the  contrast  is  very  marked.  One 
kind  of  memory  is  that  which  is  especially 
helped  by  images,  which  is  in  fact  largely  a 
re-imaging  in  the  mind  of  things  past,  so  that 
they  appear  much  as  they  actually  seemed  when 
they  were  presented  to  the  outward  senses,  only 
fainter.  The  other  is  a  memory  moving  less 
in  distinct  and  vivid  images  than  in  faint  and 
broken  incomplete  mind -symbols  that  come 
up  one  after  another,  as  association  or  volition 
calls  them  into  consciousness.  How,  for  exam- 
ple, do  you  remember  that  seven  multiplied  by 
seven  equals  forty -nine?  If  you  have  the  im- 
age-memory, you  may  picture  well  before  you 
a  bit  of  the  multiplication  table,  as  you  once 
saw  it,  with  figures  of  some  definite  color,  on  a 
ground  of  some  definite  color.  Clearly  stand 
out  the  images  in  your  mind  as  soon  as  you 
think  of  the  numbers.  You  simply  read  off  the 
result.  If  you  have  the  other  kind  of  memory, 
probably  there  arises  a  confused  and  faint  form 
of  the  figures,  curiously  mingled  with  a  mem- 
ory somewhat  more  well  defined,  of  the  sound 
of  the  names  of  these  numbers.  The  imaging 
is  so  obscure  that  you  doubtless  are  inclined  to 
say  that  you  know  not  how  you  do  remember 
at  all,  but  merely  know  that  you  remember. 
Plainer  becomes  the  contrast  between  the  two 
kinds  of  memory  when  we  come  to  speak  of 
what  happened  to  us  at  any  time.  The  images 
of  past  scenes  that  arise  in  our  various  minds 
differ  much  as  to  completeness  of  detail  and  as 
to  definiteness  of  outline.  For  one,  forms  are 
clear  in  memory ;  for  another,  colors.  One  re- 
members the  positions  of  things,  another  faces 
and  expressions.  One  knows  when  a  passage 
in  some  book  is  referred  to  or  quoted  whether 
he  saw  that  passage  printed  on  the  right  or  on 
the  left  side  of  the  open  page  of  the  book  where 
he  .read  it.  Such  a  one  will  remember  on  what 


*  See  concerning  the  following:  The  communications  of  Mr. 
Francis  Gallon  to  the  journal,  Nature,  at  various  times  within 
the  past  two  years,  and  his  article  in  Mind  for  July,  1880. 


DOUBTING   AND    WORKING. 


231 


shelf  of  a  library  he  found  a  certain  work.  To 
another  all  these  things  are  vague,  but  he  can 
remember  nearly  a  whole  play,  passage  after 
passage,  after  witnessing  the  play  twice  on  the 
stage,  or  a  whole  piece  of  music  after  one  or 
two  performances.  Yet,  perhaps,  such  a  one 
could  not  remember  the  demonstration  of  a 
theorem  in  geometry  long  enough  to  repeat  it 
in  a  class-room.  Now,  if  you  reflect  what  a 
great  part  memory  plays  in  our  actual  con- 
sciousness, I  think  you  must  readily  admit  that 
when  memories  differ  so  much,  not  merely  in 
power,  but  in  nature,  the  thoughts  of  men,  their 
ideas  of  the  world  about  them,  their  whole  con- 
scious lives,  must  differ  very  much  also. 

I  have  mentioned  differences  in  men's  views 
of  the  world  as  thus  exemplified  in  the  more 
elementary  activities  of  mental  life.  What  shall 
we  say  when  we  come  to  the  more  complicated 
structures  of  the  human  mind,  to  those  vague 
forms  of  consciousness  in  which  are  expressed 
our  sense  of  the  value  of  life  and  of  the  world, 
and  to  our  opinions?  Who  shall  serve  for  our 
normal  specimen  man  here?  How  vastly  we 
differ  in  all  these  things.  How  hard  it  is  for  us 
to  come  to  an  understanding.  How  the  de- 
lights of  one  man  appear  as  the  most  hateful  of 
things  to  another,  and  the  ideals  of  one  party 
seem  inventions  of  the  devil  to  their  opponents. 
All  this  illustrates  the  fact  that  we  live  in  worlds 
differing  far  more  from  one  another  than  we 
commonly  like  to  think.  Our  normal  man  would 
surely  be  hard  to  choose.  If  we  chose  him,  we 
should  hardly  comprehend  him.  To  be  more 
particular  in  our  study,  let  us  glance  briefly  at 
the  wide  range  of  what  I  may  call  purely  gen- 
eral impressions,  such  as  we  in  some  wise  get 
of  life  and  of  the  universe,  and  which  we  so 
keep  without  analyzing  or  being  well  able  to 
analyze  them,  although  such  impressions  influ- 
ence all  our  acts. 

Every  one  has,  I  suppose,  some  ideal,  some 
notion  of  what  he  anticipates  and  desires  in  his 
life  and  in  the  world  about  him.  To  every  one 
this  world  appears  as  an  excellent  or  as  an  evil 
place,  and  every  one  has  some  highest  good 
which  he  seeks  here  in  life,  though  he  may 
never  have  formulated  his  aim.  Now,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  any  man's  creed,  and  the  extent  of  the 
knowledge  he  is  to  acquire  (and  so  what  we 
have  called  above  this  man's  world),  will  de- 
pend on  the  way  in  which  this  general  view  of 
the  aims  and  conditions  of  life  leads  him. 
Against  the  fundamental  prejudices  of  a  man 
you  will  argue  in  vain.  Time  may  change  them ; 
you  cannot.  And  these  prejudices  make  for 
him  his  world.  To  a  man  who  defined  poetry 
as  "misrepresentation  in  verse,"  and  to  the  poet 
Shelley,  how  was  it  possible  to  look  on  this  uni- 


verse of  forms  and  colors,  of  lights  and  shad- 
ows, of  land  and  water  and  infinite  space,  and 
to  see  in  it  the  same  world  ?  To  the  one  it  must 
be  a  complex  of  determinate  relations;  to  the 
other  a  scene  of  grand  conflicts,  of  divine  life, 
and  of  supernatural  beauty.  The  difference  be- 
tween Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  Cardinal  New- 
man, or  between  Professor  Huxley  and  Mr.  Rus- 
kin,  or  between  Hegel  and  Heinrich  Heine — 
shall  we  call  it  merely  a  difference  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  recorded  facts  of  experience? 
No ;  evidently  there  are  here  different  kinds  of 
experience  concerned,  actually  different  worlds, 
different  orders  of  truth.  These  men  cannot 
come  to  a  good  understanding,  because  they 
have  qualitatively  different  minds,  irreconcila- 
bly various  mental  visions.  Each  of  two  such 
individuals  may  be  inclined  to  regard  the  other 
as  perverse.  Both  are,  in  fact,  shut  up  within 
the  narrow  bounds  of  a  poor  individual  experi- 
ence. They  will  never  understand  one  another 
so  long  as  they  remain  what  they  are— finite 
minds  full  of  fallacy  and  self-confidence,  and 
of  a  darkness  that  is  broken  only  here  and  there 
by  flashes  of  light. 

If  the  world's  leaders  are  thus  such  narrow 
men,  what  are  we  who  follow?  How  poor  and 
narrow  and  uncertain  must  our  world -pictures 
be.  Glance  inward  at  your  own  experience  for 
a  moment.  You  often  say  that  a  color,  or  odor, 
or  melody,  or  place,  or  person  is  associated  in 
your  minds  with  some  event,  or  feeling,  or  idea. 
You  cannot  think  of  one  without  the  other. 

Now,  a  study  of  mental  life  convinces  us  that 
these  vague  associations  of  which  you  speak 
tend  to  combine  and  multiply  in  manifold  wise. 
When  an  association  is  itself  forgotten,  the  ef- 
fect of  it  lives  on  in  the  form  of  some  liking,  or 
aversion,  or  mental  pre-judgment.  By  combi- 
nation these  associations  form  foundations  on 
which  yet  higher  structures  can  be  built.  All 
go  to  make  up  your  picture  of  the  universe. 
Yet  many  such  associations  are  purely  per- 
sonal. You  can  but  ill  describe  them.  Still 
more,  you  inherit  from  your  ancestors  not  mere- 
ly the  general  mass  of  common  tendencies  that 
belongs  to  humanity  as  a  whole,  but  you  also 
inherit  certain  peculiar  tendencies,  associations, 
and  feelings  that  influence  your  whole  life,  and 
that  make  you  in  a  sense  incomprehensible  to 
those  whose  disposition  is  different  from  your 
own.  If  we  could  see  one  another's  minds  open 
before  us,  and  study  them  at  our  leisure,  how 
many  singular  phenomena  we  should  witness. 
No  museum  of  curiosities  could  approach  in 
variety  and  oddness  a  museum  in  which  some 
hundred  minds  were  preserved  and  bottled  up, 
or  dissected  and  laid  out  for  inspection  under 
glass  cases;  or,  better  still,  left  alive  behind 


232 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


bars,  and  allowed  to  exhibit  their  whole  action 
for  our  benefit.  As  it  is,  the  study  of  the  inner 
workings  of  men's  individual  minds  is  obscured 
by  the  complexity  of  each,  by  the  lack  of  the 
virtue  of  frankness,  by  the  impossibility  of  find- 
ing in  most  cases  a  skilled  observer.  Every 
one  has  nooks  and  corners  in  his  own  mind  to 
which  he  is  himself  more  or  less  a  stranger. 
Every  man  is  an  enigma  to  every  other.  And 
this  variety  in  our  minds,  what  does  it  mean 
but  vagueness  and  uncertainty  and  obscurity  in 
all  our  opinions? 

But,  now  (coming  to  the  study  of  the  opin- 
ions themselves),  every  one  of  these  many 
minds  sets  itself  up  as  a  measure  of  truth.  Dis- 
torted by  the  heterogeneous  medium  into  which 
the  light  falls,  the  images  given  by  experience 
must  still  serve,  poor  as  they  are,  to  fill  up  for 
us  the  picture  of  our  world.  Exposed  to  the 
largest  errors  of  observation,  to  the  greatest 
defects  of  memory,  to  the  incalculable  interfer- 
ence of  passion  and  prejudice,  to  the  disadvan- 
tage of  being  surrounded  by  numberless  ob- 
scure associations,  we,  the  thinking  beings,  live 
in  this  amusing  chaos  of  our  fleeting  conscious 
states  and  spend  our  time  in  making  assertions 
about  the  universe.  What  does  this  fool-hardi- 
ness mean  ?  What  right  have  we  to  hold  opin- 
ions at  all?  Why  must  we  not  be  perfect  skep- 
tics? What  in  a  short  life  of  mistake  and  con- 
jecture can  we  be  supposed  to  learn  about  the 
nature  of  things?  What  can  be  the  truth,  that 
we  should  look  for  it  ? 

To  this  problem  we  are  led  then  irresistibly. 
Here  is  a  chaos  of  various  minds  whose  sim- 
pler ideas  seem  to  vary  very  greatly,  whose 
feelings  grow  so  far  asunder  that  each  man  be- 
comes a  mystery  to  his  neighbor,  whose  con- 
flicting opinions  in  consequence  are  all  the  re- 
sults largely  of  accident,  and  certainly  of  nar- 
rowness of  view.  Yet  it  seems  to  be  thought 
an  excellent  thing  for  each  one  of  them  to  form 
fixed  opinions  about  at  least  some  matters,  a 
sane  undertaking  for  them  to  look  for  some  sort 
of  abiding  truth,  and  a  grand  act  to  suffer  loss, 
or  even  death,  for  the  sake  of  the  strongest  and 
highest  at  least  among  one's  beliefs.  Why  should 
this  be  the  case  ?  What  is  the  use  of  truth- 
seeking  when  so  little  truth  will  ever  be  found 
on  this  planet?  What  is  the  worth  of  remain- 
ing true  to  one's  opinions  when  everything  tends 
to  make  them  fleeting?  These  questions  must, 
I  think,  come  into  the  mind  of  every  active  per- 
son at  some  time  during  his  life.  I  have  not  in 
the  foregoing  stated  the  skeptic's  case  nearly 
as  strongly  as  I  could  state  it.  The  more  you 
consider  human  knowledge,  the  more  you  will 
see  that  some  of  its  dearest  pretenses  are  found 
upon  examination  to  be  only  pretenses.  And 


when  you  see  this,  you  are,  if  of  vigorous  men- 
tal constitution,  once  for  all  aroused  from  what 
a  great  philosopher  called  the  "dogmatic  slum- 
ber," and  sent  out  upon  a  new  search.  The 
questions  you  then  propose  to  yourself  can  thus 
be  stated :  What  kind  of  truth  may  I  hope  to 
discover?  In  what  spirit  ought  I  to  search  for 
truth?  Am  I  to  hope  for  much  success?  Am 
I  to  bear  myself  as  one  to  whom  truth  will  cer- 
tainly be  revealed  if  he  but  work  for  it?  Or 
shall  I,  in  a  humbler  spirit,  say  that  I  am  prob- 
ably to  remain  in  doubt  so  long  as  I  live?  Or, 
finally,  shall  I,  neither  confident  of  success  nor 
resigned  to  defeat,  rise  with  all  my  strength  and 
declare  that,  whether  finding  or  baffled,  whether 
a  wanderer  forever,  or  one  who  at  last  is  to 
reach  a  secure  harbor  of  faith,  I  will,  through 
confidence  and  through  doubt,  through  good 
and  through  evil  report,  search  earnestly  for 
truth,  though  I  never  find  anything  that  it  is 
worth  my  while  to  call  abiding?  Some  sugges- 
tions about  the  answer  to  this  whole  series  of 
questions  form  my  subject  in  the  rest  of  this 
paper.  And,  first,  what  is  the  spirit  in  which 
we  should  search  for  the  truth  that  now,  from 
this  skeptical  point  of  view,  seems  so  far  away 
from  us  ? 

The  first  answer  to  this  question  seems  an 
obvious  one.  We  must  begin  our  undertaking 
in  a  spirit  of  self-distrust.  For  our  former  con- 
fidence in  our  chance  opinions  we  must  substi- 
tute complete  skepticism.  We  must  doubt  every 
belief  that  we  possess  until  we  have  proved  it. 
This  answer,  I  say,  seems  the  obvious  one  aft- 
er the  foregoing  discussion.  Is  it  a  good  one? 

Note  just  here,  if  you  please,  that  the  pre- 
cept, begin  to  look  for  truth  by  doubting  all 
you  formerly  believed,  does  not  imply  irrever- 
ence or  mere  rashness.  On  the  contrary,  this 
doubt  means  simply  modesty,  self-distrust,  and 
is  founded  not  on  a  whim,  but  on  a  persuasion 
that  all  one's  former  beliefs  have  been  largely 
the  result  of  accident.  The  precept  says  such 
and  such  a  belief  that  you  have  may  indeed  be 
very  dear  and  sacred,  and  may  have  to  do  with 
very  high  and  holy  things.  But  consider — it  is 
your  opinion,  is  it  not?  Yes.  The  question  is 
not  the  loftiness,  or  the  sacredness,  or  the  dear- 
ness  of  the  objects  about  which  your  faith  con- 
cerned itself,  but  the  worth  of  that  particular 
belief  you  have  about  these  objects.  When  we 
say  question  your  belief,  we  do  not  mean  that 
this  or  that  subject  that  seemed  to  you  holy 
ground  before  shall  not  seem  holy  ground  now. 
Not  in  the  least  is  it  desired  to  affect  your  emo- 
tions as  emotions.  We  are  talking  of  your  in- 
dividual opinions.  If  this  ground  is  holy,  so 
much  the  better  reason  that  you  should  not  pro- 
fane it  with  your  narrow-mindedness  and  mis- 


DOUBTING    AND    WORKING. 


233 


takes.  Better  that  you  should  say,  "Here  is  a 
subject  of  awful  and  sacred  import,  but  I  know 
very  little  about  it,"  than  that  you  should  proud- 
ly affirm,  "Of  this  sacred  theme  my  mind  is  so 
full  that  I  know  whole  volumes  of  truth  about 
it" — should  affirm  this  and  yet  should  really  be 
in  gross  error  about  the  theme.  The  loftier,  the 
more  worthy  of  reverence  the  subject  of  your 
belief,  the  more  necessary  it  is  that  you  exam- 
ine skeptically  the  faith  in  which  you  by  acci- 
dent have  grown  up,  lest  where  the  highest 
interests  are  concerned  your  mind  should  be 
farthest  away  from  harmony  with  reality.  If 
you  understand  the  precept  in  this  way,  as  a 
precept  to  doubt  yourself  and  all  beliefs  that 
have  grown  up  in  you  uncriticised,  then  I  am 
sure  that  you  will  not  find  the  precept  in  its 
nature  irreverent  or  over-hasty. 

Yet  this  precept  itself  has  often  been  called 
in  doubt.  In  answer  to  the  arguments  just 
urged,  it  has  been  set  forth  that  truth-seeking 
never  ought  to  begin  with  a  doubt  universal — 
that  doubting  is  dangerous  when  it  touches 
upon  certain  sacred  matters,  and  that  such 
truth-seeking  as  I  have  described  is  only  fit 
for  those  who,  like  Nihilists,  undertake  to  up- 
set the  whole  existing  order  of  things,  in  law, 
in  morality,  and  in  religious  belief.  This  coun- 
ter-argument, to  the  effect  that  unlimited  doubt- 
ing is  idle  and  often  wicked,  I  ought  to  mention 
and  to  consider.  Let  us  be  careful,  when  we 
speak  of  truth-seeking  itself,  against  taking  too 
much  of  any  kind  of  assertions  for  granted.  I 
examine  then  forthwith  the  precept  given  above. 
The  object  of  your  universal  doubt,  says  one, 
is,  as  you  declare,  to  lead  you  to  a  knowledge 
of  the  truth.  You  doubt  because  you  desire  to 
learn.  Your  doubting  is  to  be  a  transition  stage. 
You  must  assert  then  that  truth  is  an  end  suffi- 
ciently valuable  to  be  worth  attaining  through 
all  the  pain  and  toil  of  your  search.  The  truth 
then  would  be  something  very  well  worth  know- 
ing. Is  it  not  so?  To  complete  your  own  in- 
dividual narrow  world-picture,  and  so  to5?  get 
the  only  proper  world-picture,  this  you  hold 
would  be  a  great  end  gained.  All  this  seems 
certain  enough. 

Now,  continues  the  objector,  how  can  you 
know  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  be 
possessed  of  the  truth,  in  case  you  do  not 
know  whether  the  world  you  live  in  is  a  good 
world,  and  whether  the  life  you  live  in  it  is  one 
that  is  worth  living?  In  other  words,  earnest 
truth -seeking  implies  a  persuasion  that  the 
truth,  if  known,  would  be  not  disheartening, 
dreadful,  inhuman,  but  inspiring,  lovely — of  a 
nature  to  satisfy  the  best  cravings  of  the  human 
heart.  If  this  is  so,  the  objector  goes  on — if, 
in  order  to  make  the  search  for  truth  a  worthy 


quest,  we  must  assume  that  the  world  of  truth  is  a 
world  of  excellence — where  shall  we  then  first  of 
all  look  for  an  ideal  picture  of  this  world,  such 
that,  by  contemplating  the  ideal  picture  of  what 
truth  must  be,  we  shall  be  inspired  to  search 
for  what  truth  is?  The  answer  is,  we  must 
search  in  that  system  of  belief  which  expresses 
in  the  clearest  form  to  our  minds  the  highest 
cravings  of  our  hearts.  If  that  system  of  belief 
is  substantially  true,  then  the  search  for  more 
truth  is  well  founded.  If  we  must,  however,  be- 
gin by  doubting  the  truth  of  this  system  along 
with  all  our  other  beliefs,  then  we  must  begin 
to  search  for  truth  by  doubting  that  it  is  worth 
while  to  search  for  truth  at  all.  What  will  be- 
come of  our  earnestness?  In  short,  says  the 
objector,  either  the  foundations  of  my  religious 
belief  are  sure  beyond  a  doubt,  or  else  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  make  any  extended  search  for 
truth  beyond  the  bounds  of  this  faith.  For 
either  my  faith  agrees  with  reality — and  then 
why  doubt  it? — or  this  faith,  wherein  are  em- 
bodied the  highest  longings  and  ideals  of  my 
nature,  is  at  variance  with  the  reality.  Then  the 
world  is  a  hopeless  maze  to  me.  Nothing  is 
worth  the  trouble  of  living  at  all.  Still  less  is 
it  worth  my  while  to  enter  upon  any  ardent 
quest,  to  search  for  a  far  off  and  difficult  truth, 
that  will  be,  when  found,  simply  intolerable.  I 
decline  to  seek  truth,  and  prefer  to  remain 
where  I  am. 

Such  is,  in  brief,  the  case  of  those  who  hold 
that  seeking  for  truth  must  be  begun  in  a  spirit 
of  faith,  and  not  in  a  spirit  of  doubt ;  that  we 
must  first  hold  fast  that  which  is  plainly  good, 
and  then  prove  all  else.  Yet  I  cannot  feel  sat- 
isfied that  I  have  stated  this  case  strongly 
enough.  Because  I  am  myself  inclined  to  the 
opinion  that  the  truth -seeker  must  begin  by 
doubting  all  his  old  beliefs,  and  must  then  fol- 
low his  thought  wherever  research  leads  him,  I 
may  have  failed  in  justice  in  the  statement  of  a 
view  which  has  the  sanction  of  many  of  the 
world's  ablest  minds.  Let  me  translate,  there- 
fore, the  words  of  a  noted  German  thinker  of 
our  day,  Hermann  Lotze,  a  philosopher  who 
among  his  great  qualities  has  certainly  no 
omitted  the  virtue  of  ceaseless  self-criticism, 
but  who  yet  holds  fast  by  the  faith  that  we 
study  the  world  because  we  believe  it  to  be  a 
ood  world.  Lotze  says  in  the  preface  to  his 
Dook,  called  the  Mikrokosmos  ( I  translate  with 
some  omissions  and  condensations) : 

'The  growing  self-consciousness  of  science,  which, 
after  centuries  of  wavering,  sees  indubitable  laws  reigning 
n  some  at  least  of  the  classes  of  phenomena,  threatens 
o  distort  the  true  relation  between  the  heart  and  the  in- 
;ellect.  We  are  no  longer  content  to  postpone  the 
questions  with  which  our  dreams  and  hopes  disturb  us 


234 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


when  we  set  about  our  investigations.  We  deny  our 
duty  to  pay  any  attention  to  these  questions  at  all.  We 
say  that  science  is  a  pure  service  of  truth  for  the  sake  of 
truth,  and  need  not  care  whether  the  truth  satisfies  or 
wounds  the  selfish  wishes  of  the  heart.  And  so  here, 
as  elsewhere,  the  human  spirit  changes  its  tone  from 
hesitation  to  defiance,  and  after  it  has  once  felt  the 
pride  of  independent  investigation,  throws  itself  into 
the  arms  of  that  false  heroism  which  takes  credit  for 
having  renounced  what  never  ought  to  be  renounced  ; 
and  thus  the  mind  estimates  the  amount  of  truth  in  its 
new  belief  according  to  the  degree  of  hostility  with 
which  this  belief  offends  everything  that  appears  to  the 
living  emotional  nature  of  man  outside  of  science,  too 
sacred  to  be  touched.  This  worship  of  truth  seems  to 
me  unjust.  Could  it  be  the  only  concern  of  human  re- 
search to  picture  in  the  mind  the  precise  state  of  things 
in  the  outer  world,  what  would  then  be  the  worth  of 
this  whole  trouble,  which  would  end  only  in  an  empty 
repetition,  so  that  what  was  before  outside  the  soul  now 
would  be  found  again  imaged  in  the  soul  ?  What  sig- 
nificance would  there  be  in  the  empty  play  of  this  du- 
plication, what  necessity  that  the  thinking  mind  should 
be  a  mirror  for  whatever  is  unthinking,  in  case  the  dis- 
covery of  truth  were  not  always  at  the  same  time  the 
creation  of  some  good  thing,  that  would  justify  the 
trouble  of  winning  it?  Individual  seekers  may,  ab- 
sorbed in  their  toil,  forget  the  great  fact  that  all  their 
efforts  have  in  the  end  only  this  significance,  that,  in 
company  with  the  efforts  of  numberless  others,  they 
may  draw  such  a  picture  of  the  world  as  shall  tell  us 
what  we  have  to  reverence  as  the  true  end  of  existence, 
what  we  have  to  do,  and  what  we  have  to  hope.  As 
often  as  a  revolution  in  science  drives  out  old  fashions 
of  opinion,  the  new  organization  of  belief  will  have  to 
justify  itself  by  the  enduring  or  growing  satisfaction 
that  it  offers  to  the  invincible  demands  of  our  emo- 
tional nature." 


So  far,  then,  for  the  opinion  of  those  who 
hold  that  truth  is  sought  not  for  its  own  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  the  good  it  carries  to  man- 
kind— and  carries  not  merely  because  it  is  truth, 
but  because  the  world  of  which  it  is  the  truth 
is  a  good  world.  Such  persons  must  conclude 
that  all  earnest  and  considerate  search  for  truth 
is  based  on  the  postulate  that  our  world  is 
a  good  world.  If  we  shall  accept  this  view,  we 
will  always  carry  with  us  our  religious  faith 
whenever  we  set  about  an  investigation  of  nat- 
ure's mysteries.  But  is  this  view,  with  its  ob- 
jections to  the  precept  wherewith  we  set  out,  a 
true  view?  For  my  part,  I  am  inclined  to, hold 
fast  by  my  former  precept.  I  admit  that  look- 
ing for  truth  implies  a  postulate  that  truth  is 
worth  the  looking  for,  and  a  postulate  that  the 
world  is  such  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to 
know  the  nature  of  the  world.  Yet  I  still  cling 
to  my  rule,  and  say,  begin  to  search  for  truth 
by  doubting  all  that  you  have  without  criticism 
come  to  hold  as  true.  If  you  fail  to  doubt 
everything,  doubt  all  you  can.  Doubt  not  be- 
cause doubting  is  a  good  end,  but  because  it  is 
a  good  beginning.  Doubt  not  for  amusement, 


but  as  a  matter  of  duty.  Doubt  not  superfi- 
cially, but  with  thoroughness.  Doubt  not  flip- 
pantly, but  with  the  deepest — it  may  be  with  the 
saddest — earnestness.  Doubt  as  you  would  un- 
dergo a  surgical  operation,  because  it  is  neces- 
sary to  thought-health.  So  only  can  you  hope 
to  attain  convictions  that  are  worth  having.  If 
you  do  not  wish  to  think,  then  I  have  nothing  to 
say.  Then  indeed  you  need  not  doubt  at  all, 
but  take  all  you  please  for  granted.  But  who 
then  cares  at  all  what  you  happen  to  fancy 
about  the  world? 

Why  do  I  persist  in  this  terrible  precept,  with 
all  the  objections  before  me?  Why,  if  doubting 
is  dangerous  and  almost  certainly  transient,  and 
very  probably  agonizing,  should  I  still  be  de- 
termined to  doubt  and  to  counsel  doubting  of 
every  uncriticised  and  unproved  opinion  ?  Let 
me  tell  you. 

If  one  says  I  must  begin  my  thought  by  cling- 
ing fast  to  my  faith,  because  only  that  gives  me 
assurance  that  there  is  anything  in  the  world 
worth  seeking,  then  we  reply :  to  what  faith  ? 
What  is  the  one  persuasion  that  gives  to  hu- 
man life  a  worthy  aim?  Is  it  the  faith  of  Con- 
fucius, or  of  Buddha,  or  of  Plato,  or  of  St. 
Paul,  or  of  Savonarola,  or  of  Loyola,  or  of 
Luther,  or  of  Calvin,  or  of  Wesley,  or  of  Les- 
sing,  or  of  Kant,  or  of  Fichte,  or  of  Emerson, 
or  of  Schopenhauer,  or  of  Spencer,  or  of  Car- 
dinal Newman,  or  of  Auguste  Comte  ?  These 
names  stand,  some  indeed  near  together,  but 
others  not  for  small  differences  of  opinion,  but 
for  widely  distinct  mountain  peaks  of  human 
faith,  separated  sometimes  by  dreadful  abysses 
of  doubt.  Which  shall  you  ascend  ?  Merely 
the  one  at  whose  base  you  happen  to  have  been 
born?  Where  shall  you  find  an  abiding  place? 
If  you  say,  but  some  of  these  leaders  are  in 
close  agreement,  some  are  disciples  of  others, 
I  reply  well  and  good,  but  some  are  so  far  from 
the  others  that  there  is  no  understanding,  al- 
most no  tolerance  possible.  Surely,  there  are 
some  great  highest  beliefs  that  are  worthy  of 
intelligent  following  on  the  part  of  all  men. 
But  what  are  those  beliefs?  How  do  you  know 
what  they  are  till  you  examine,  and  examine  not 
with  a  foregone  conclusion  awaiting  you  smil- 
ingly at  the  other  end  of  a  course  of  reasoning 
upon  which  you  start  already  convinced,  but 
with  genuine  skepticism  that  refuses  to  be  sat- 
isfied with  anything  short  of  reasoned  convic- 
tion. 

I  have  touched  upon  something  that  really 
involves  the  whole  nature  of  this  work  of  truth- 
seeking.  I  have  said  that  there  is  incongruity 
in  accepting  a  faith  as  true  simply  because  you 
happen  to  feel  it  agreeable  or  satisfying  to  even 
your  highest  interests,  for  other  men  have  felt 


DOUBTING   AND    WORKING. 


235 


other  opposing  faiths  equally  satisfying.  What 
faith  is  there  that  is  not  regarded  as  cold  and 
dreary,  as  opposed  to  the  highest  nature  of 
man,  by  one  who  fails  to  sympathize  with  it? 
What  earnest  and  conscientious  faith  is  there 
that  may  not  seem  inspiring  to  the  one  who 
has  formed  or  accepted  it?  There  are  limits 
no  doubt.  There  are  earnest  faiths  that  are 
unable  to  give  comfort  to  the  possessors.  But 
that  fact  of  itself  is  no  test  of  truth.  For  what 
was  our  object  in  setting  out  to  search  for  truth 
at  all?  Our  starting-point,  you  remember,  was 
the  fact  of  the  narrowness  of  all  men,  of  their 
powerlessness  to  see  beyond  a  very  limited 
range.  This  narrowness  resulted  in  strife.  This 
strife  of  opinion  meant  discontent.  Now,  what 
would  be  the  abiding  and  satisfactory  truth  if 
we  found  it?  Evidently,  this  truth  would  have 
one  great  characteristic.  It  would  be  of  a  nature 
to  demand  acceptance  from  all  men.  It  would 
be  the  one  faith  opposed  to  the  many  opinions, 
and  certain  to  conquer  them.  It  would  be  the  one 
reality  that  could  wait  for  ages  for  a  discoverer. 
So,  at  least,  we  suppose.  That  is  our  ideal  of 
truth.  What,  then,  is  the  practical  aim  in  seek- 
ing tor  truth?  Evidently,  the  practical  aim  is 
to  harmonize  the  conflicting  opinions  of  men, 
to  substitute  for  the  narrowness  and  instability 
of  personal  views  the  broadness  of  view  that 
should  characterize  the  free  man.  And  so  we 
come  to  the  real  core  of  the  matter.  You  may 
not,  you  dare  not,  if  it  is  your  vocation  to  think 
at  all — you  dare  not  accept  a  faith  simply  for 
the  satisfaction  it  gives  you.  You  dare  not,  I 
say,  because  as  a  thinker  your  true  aim  is  not 
to  please  yourself,  but  to  work  for  the  harmon- 
izing of  the  views  of  mankind,  to  do  your  part 
in  a  perfectly  unselfish  task.  This  is  the  one 
great  argument  against  all  uncritical  faith.  If 
you  accept  an  opinion  because  it  seems  pleas- 
ing to  you  before  criticism,  then  you  choose 
rather  your  selfish  satisfaction  than  the  good 
of  mankind.  You  ought  to  work  not  to  increase 
the  variety  of  human  opinions,  to  render  closer 
the  limits  of  personal  experience,  but  to  extend 
the  field  of  harmony  and  to  unite  men,  so  that 
they  may  cease  their  endless  warfare  and  have 
a  common  experience.  The  sight,  I  say,  of 
the  mass  of  conflicting  opinions  of  men  in  the 
world  ought  to  nerve  one  to  do  his  best  in  a 
task  that  interests  all  men,  that  needs  the  com- 
bined efforts  of  millions,  and  that  needs  above 
all  the  sacrifice  of  personal  comfort.  Your  faith 
seems  agreeable  to  you — well  and  good.  Other 
men's  faith  seems  agreeable  to  them.  Is  this 
lack  of  sympathy,  this  strife  of  opinions,  with 
all  the  intolerance  that  springs  from  it,  a  good 
thing?  No,  indeed!  Then,  ought  you  to  in- 
crease it  by  simply  staying  blindly  shut  up  in 


your  own  narrow  faith?  No,  this  is  selfish.  For 
your  own  comfort  you  will  then  sacrifice  the 
good  you  might  do  to  the  world  by  joining  the 
great  company  of  the  honest  doubters,  whose 
end  is  to  reach  a  universal  and  abiding  human 
creed. 

But,  you  say,  is  it  not  true  that  all  opinions 
are  finally  accepted  because  they  are  satisfying 
to  some  mental  want?  Yes,  and  this  is  the  real 
meaning  of  the  doctrine  that  we  seek  for  truth, 
because  we  believe  truth  to  be  good.  Our  high- 
est object  of  search  is  no  doubt  some  state  of 
consciousness.  Our  universal  creed,  if  ever 
reached,  will  be  universally  acceptable  to  the 
real  intellectual  needs  of  all  men  educated  up 
to  its  level.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  what 
is  acceptable  to  my  intellectual  needs  must  be 
the  truth.  My  needs  are  narrow  and  changing. 
It  is  humanity  in  its  highest  development  to 
which  the  truth  will  be  acceptable.  I  must 
give  up  my  desires  that  the  unity  of  all  human 
spirits  may  be  sooner  attained.  For  the  sake 
of  perfect  tolerance,  I  must  be  perfectly  critical 
of  myself.  I  must  doubt,  in  order  that  by  doubt- 
ing and  working  I  may  bring,  perhaps,  not  my- 
self to  certainty,  but  mankind  a  little  nearer  to 
the  truth. 

But  this  assumption  we  still  are  making  that 
truth  is  a  good  thing,  what  is  the  sense  of 
that?  Must  we  not  assume  at  the  outset  some- 
thing as  already  certain  about  the  world  we 
live  in?  Must  we  not  assume  that  the  world  is 
a  good  world,  and  the  truth  by  nature  so  satis- 
fying that  it  is  worth  while  for  each  and  all 
to  make  great  sacrifice  therefor?  And  is  this 
not  a  creed,  a  faith  somewhat  vague,  but  very 
intense?  How  can  we  say  that  we  are  to  be- 
gin by  doubting  everything  when  we  do  not 
doubt  that  it  is  worth  while  to  search  for  truth  ? 
I  reply,  at  the  outset  we  are  not  certain  that  it 
will  turn  out  worth  while  to  search  for  truth. 
We  doubt  that  as  well  as  everything  else.  But 
consider:  Our  condition  is  not  this,  that  being 
possessed  of  a  good  in  itself  satisfactory,  we 
leave  this  good  without  knowing  whether  we 
are  to  reach  anything  better.  If  that  were 
what  we  did,  we  might  be  wrong.  On  the  con- 
trary, what  we  do  is  to  flee  from  an  evil  condi- 
tion in  which  we  are.  We  know  that  difference 
of  opinion,  and  narrowness  of  view,  and  intol- 
erance are  bad.  We  know  that  even  if  we  in- 
dividually are  content  with  our  creed,  the  mass 
of  mankind,  being  of  different  creed,  is  in  a  pit- 
iable condition  of  error  or  doubt.  In  the  serv- 
ice of  humanity,  then,  we  must  seek  to  get  rid 
of  this  evil,  and  our  only  way  of  being  certain 
that  we  are  doing  the  best  work  of  which  we 
are  capable  is  to  begin  with  universal  and  gen- 
uine doubt.  Now,  indeed,  we  cannot  be  sure 


236 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


that  by  taking  this,  the  only  right  course,  we 
shall  be  successful.  The  search  for  truth, 
though  prosecuted  earnestly  and  in  the  best 
spirit  known  to  us,  may  be  a  fruitless  search. 
But  our  object  is  good.  We  do  not  seek  that 
profitless  duplication  of  the  world  by  a  copy  in 
our  own  souls  of  which  Lotze  spoke.  Against 
that  kind  of  truth-seeking  his  argument  is  con- 
clusive. No ;  in  seeking  truth  we  want  to  make 
human  life  better,  because  we  see  that  men  want 
large-mindedness  and  peace,  while  error  means 
narrow-mindedness  and  war.  Since  our  object 
is  good,  we  have  not  first  to  ask  whether  we 
are  certain  of  getting  it.  Our  business  is  to  do 
what  we  can,  and  fail  if  we  must.  Truth-seek- 
ing is  merely  like  the  rest  of  life — a  search  after 
ideal  goods  that  are  perhaps  unattainable,  a 
conflict  in  which  victory  is  never  secure  so  long 
as  life  itself  lasts.  Therefore,  without  contra- 
diction we  can  say  that  we  set  out  on  the  search 
for  truth,  doubting  even  whether  our  search  will 
turn  out  profitable,  but  feeling  sure  that  it  is 
morally  required.  We  determine  that  there 
shall  be  significant  truth.  We  are  not  sure 
a  priori  that  there  is  any  attainable. 

But,  you  say,  then  at  the  outset  we  at  least 
know  that  we  ought  to  do  what  is  right — that 
we  ought,  for  example,  to  serve  mankind  as 
best  we  can  by  our  thoughts  as  by  our  actions. 
I  reply,  you  cannot  be  said  to  know  at  the  out- 
set that  it  is  well  to  do  right  and  to  serve  man- 
kind. I  suppose  only  that  you  feel  that  it  is 
excellent  or  desirable  to  do  right  and  to  serve 
mankind.  If  you  choose  to  be  selfish,  and  to 
do  your  thinking  solely  for  your  own  amuse- 
ment, I  cannot  prove  to  you,  at  least  at  the  be- 
ginning, that  you  ought  not  to  be  selfish.  It  is 
your  choice ;  you  are  judges.  If  you  want  to 
do  good  by  your  opinions,  then  the  best  way  to 
do  good  is  to  question  and  criticise  these  opin- 
ions unsparingly,  to  hold  none  of  them  as  opin- 
ions sacred.  That  you  should  think  it  a  desira- 
ble thing  to  do  good  to  mankind,  how  am  I, 
how  is  any  one  else,  to  bring  you  to  this  point 
by  argument?  Your  moral  judgments  belong 
to  you  in  particular,  and  are  not  convictions 
about  the  world,  but  expressions  of  your  own 
character. 

In  what  spirit  we  should  search  for  truth  has 
been  at  some  length  discussed.  It  remains  for 
us  to  consider  very  briefly  the  immediate  con- 
sequences of  truth -seeking.  They  have  been 
indicated  in  what  has  been  already  said.  First, 
we  have  seen  that  the  purpose  of  truth-seeking 
is  the  aiding  in  the  great  process  of  emancipat- 
ing men's  minds  from  those  states  of  narrow- 
ness, intolerance,  and  instability  which  are  so 
painful  to  all  concerned.  I  think  it  wrong  to 
say  that  in  seeking  for  truth  we  desire,  first  of 


all,  to  duplicate  in  our  own  minds  the  things 
and  relations  that  are  outside  us.  Lotze's  ar- 
gument is  here  sufficient.  The  thinking  mind 
ought  not  to  have  as  its  sole  object  conformity 
to  things  that  do  not  think.  That  is  not  our 
highest  aim.  Mistake  and  disagreement  and 
cruel  intolerance  and  superstition  are  evil  states 
of  mind.  They  may  content  or  please  this  or 
that  man  for  a  while.  They  mean  injury  and 
anguish  to  the  mass  of  mankind.  Therefore 
the  desire  for  ideal  harmony  of  belief.  There- 
fore the  unselfish  eagerness  to  be  at  one  with 
all  men  by  making  all  men  at  one  with  what 
we  hold  to  be  true.  If  this  is  the  purpose  of  our 
truth  -  seeking,  an  evident  consequence  is  that 
we  ought  in  fact  to  reverence  the  business  of 
truth -seeking  as  we  reverence  all  toil  for  the 
good  of  mankind.  We  ought  to  regard  truth- 
seeking  as  a  sacred  task.  Perhaps  it  is  our 
calling  to  do  good  in  other  ways  than  by  truth- 
seeking.  Let  us,  however,  in  that  case  see  in 
the  truth-seeker  a  fellow- worker,  and  honor  an 
earnest  and  thorough -going  doubter  as  we 
honor  any  one  who  undertakes  a  painful  task 
for  the  good  of  his  fellows.  For  honest  and 
thorough -going  doubters  are  much  rarer  than 
you  might  suppose. 

Another  consequence  is  this,  that  we  must  be 
content  to  take  a  very  subordinate  place  in  the 
great  work  of  human  thought,  and  to  concen- 
trate our  attention  on  a  small  part  only  of  the 
field  of  truth.  As  millions  of  brains  must  toil 
doubtless  for  centuries  before  any  amount  of 
ideal  agreement  among  men  is  attained  or  even 
approximated,  we  must  be  content  if  we  do  very 
little  and  work  very  hard.  We  can  be  tolera- 
bly certain  that  in  a  world  where  so  much  is 
dark  nearly  the  whole  of  our  labor  will  be 
wasted.  But  this  is  natural.  There  is  the  de- 
light of  activity  in  truth-seeking ;  but  when  you 
compare  your  hopes  and  claims  with  the  shad- 
owy and  doubtful  results  that  you  will  probably 
reach,  or  with  the  exact  but  very  modest  con- 
clusions to  which,  if  you  are  a  successful  scien- 
tific investigator,  you  may  in  time  be  led,  the 
comparison  cannot  seem  otherwise  than  melan- 
choly. Through  the  failures  of  millions  of  de- 
voted servants,  the  humanity  of  the  future  may 
possibly  (we  cannot  know  that  it  will  certainly) 
be  led  to  a  grand  success.  This  far -off  divine 
event  to  which,  for  all  we  know,  the  whole  cre- 
ation may  be  moving,  but  which  at  any  rate 
we  regard  with  longing  and  delight,  constitutes 
the  whole  end  and  aim  of  our  action.  It  is  good 
to  strive. 

But  I  must  conclude  this  imperfect  study  of 
a  great  subject.  We  began  with  the  fact  that 
every  individual  is  a  creature  of  peculiar  con- 
stitution, with  possibly  indefinitely  great  idio- 


ONE   STORMY  NIGHT. 


237 


syncrasies  of  senses  and  feeling.  We  have  been 
led  from  this  on  to  think  of  ideal  truth  as  it 
would  appear  in  the  mind  of  one  who  was  not 
bound  by  accidents  of  sense  and  emotion  to  a 
narrow  range  of  conflicting  opinions.  To  ap- 
proach this  perfect  individual,  I  have  said  that 
we  must  begin  our  efforts  with  conscientious 
and  thorough -going  doubt  of  all  that  we  find 
uncriticised  and  yet  claiming  authority  in  our 
minds.  I  have  tried  to  justify  this  doubting  by 
showing  that  it,  is  not  merely  a  privilege,  but  a 
duty,  of  any  one  who  proposes  to- do  the  least 
bit  of  genuine  thinking  for  the  good  of  his  fel- 
low-creatures. 

I  have  stated  at  length  the  argument  accord- 
ing to  which  at  least  our  religious  persuasions, 
as  the  expressions  of  the  highest  needs  of  our 
minds,  must  be  exempted  from  even  provisional 
doubts.  In  answer  to  this  argument,  I  have 
tried  to  show  that  in  so  far  as  one's  own  com- 
fort is  concerned,  truth  -  seeking  ought  not  to 
regard  personal  comfort  at  all,  and  that  in  so 
far  as  humanity  is  concerned,  religious  beliefs 
can  be  made  in  the  highest  sense  useful  only 
when  they  have  stood  the  test  of  doubt  and 
study.  As  my  discussion  is  purely  general,  I 
would  not  be  understood  as  bringing  the  least 
material  argument  to  bear  against  the  particu- 
lar convictions  of  anybody.  If  you  have  rea- 
soned fairly  and  earnestly,  have  criticised  con- 
scientiously, and  still  retain  your  religious  be- 
lief, you  have  no  doubt  a  glorious  possession, 
worth  far  more  than  it  ever  could  have  been 
worth  to  you  if  you  had  not  reasoned  about  it. 
Perhaps  you  are  still  in  error.  Perhaps  the 
highest  truth  is  already  within  your  grasp,  and 


you  have  solved  in  your  own  person  the  puzzles 
of  ages.  If  so,  you  are  to  be  congratulated. 
Your  treasure  is  worth  more  to  you  than  all  the 
wealth  in  the  world  would  be.  But  remember, 
no  man  liveth  to  himself.  Remember  your 
duty  to  mankind.  Remember  that  your  per- 
sonal satisfaction  with  your  creed  is  nothing, 
your  desire  to  bring  all  mankind  to  the  truth 
everything.  Never  rest  quiet  with  your  belief, 
therefore,  until  every  means  has  been  taken  by 
you  to  purify  it  from  all  taint  of  your  own  nar- 
row-mindedness. If  any  one  of  us  has  so 
purified  his  belief,  he  is,  I  am  persuaded,  the 
greatest  genius  that  the  world  ever  saw.  If  he 
has  not,  it  is  his  duty  in  the  service  of  human- 
ity to  be  in  so  far  skeptical.  If  he  has  attained 
the  perfect  belief,  then  he  must  never  rest  in  his 
efforts  to  teach  it  to  others.  I  should  fear  as  a 
general  thing  to  have  power  given  me  to  ordain 
for  other  human  beings  what  their  lives  should 
be.  But  I  wish  that  just  for  this  moment  it 
were  given  me  to  summon  every  man  to  a  call- 
ing that  should  remain  his  calling  for  life,  and 
to  which  he  should  willingly  devote  himself.  I 
should  summon  every  one  to  a  life  of  unswerv- 
ing devotion  to  this  one  end — the  making  of 
human  life  broader,  fuller,  more  harmonious, 
better  possessed  of  abiding  belief.  As  it  is,  I 
can  only  recommend  that  you  be  ceaselessly 
active  for  this  great  end.  And  as  for  the  end 
itself,  I  know  not  if  it  will  ever  be  attained  in 
any  great  measure,  but  I  know  that  if  it  ever  is 
attained  it  will  be  by  the  self-sacrifice  of  count- 
less millions,  who,  through  their  own  failures, 
shall  secure  the  success  of  those  that  come  after 
them.  J.  ROYCE. 


ONE    STORMY    NIGHT. 


A  stormy  night,  indeed, 


"  High  up  on  the  lonely  mountains  ;  " 

the  rain  came  down  in  streams,  as  if  the  sky 
were  a  great  sieve,  and  not  a  ray  of  light  found 
its  way  through  the  black  clouds.  The  giant 
fir  trees  bent  and  swayed  in  the  fierce  wind, 
and  sent  their  wild,  wailing  voices  down  through 
gulch  and  canon  to  mingle  with  the  roar  of 
creek  and  cataract,  or  fell  before  the  rocks  that 
crashed  down  the  mountains  sides.  The  terri- 
fied cattle  lowed  and  cried  in  their  corrals,  hud- 
dling together  for  warmth  and  sympathy.  In- 
doors people  drew  near  together,  crowding 
around  the  hearth -fires  that  blazed  in  a  fitful, 
almost  uncanny  way. 


In  a  wayside  inn,  on  the  mountain  road,  a 
little  company  sat  thus  gathered  about  an  im- 
mense fire-place  that  glowed  and  flamed  like 
a  bonfire,  and,  not  content  with  cheering  the 
great  room,  sent  its  beacon  light  out  at  the  win- 
dows to  defy  the  night  and  the  storm. 

There  was  Mike  Malone,  the  landlord,  and 
Kitty,  his  fat,  funny  wife ;  little  Maria,  the  Span- 
ish girl  whom  Mike  and  Kitty  had  "rared;" 
Jake,  the  stable  man,  and  last,  because  most 
important,  "Bat,"  the  French  Canadian  wood- 
cutter. There  was  nothing  in  the  young  fel- 
low's appearance  to  suggest  the  winged  horror 
whose  name  he  bore.  It  was  merely  a  sobriquet 
for  Baptiste.  Jake  seldom  availed  himself  of 
the  abbreviation,  but,  slowly  and  emphatically, 


238 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


styled  him  "Canuck,"  usually  prefixing  a  de- 
scriptive that  had  more  force  than*  elegance. 

It  was  ill  natured,  to  say  the  least,  for  Bat 
was  one  of  the  kindest  fellows  in  the  world, 
"and  the  ways  of  him,"  as  Kitty  said,  "was  wan 
sthrame  o'  sunshine;  but  sure,"  she  added, 
"Jake  is  that  jealous  that  he  can't  trate  him 
dacent,  though  I'd  sooner  see  Maree  quiet  in 
her  grave  nor  married  to  likes  av  him.  Av  she's 
in  love  wid  the  Frinchman  ?  There  ye  have  me 
now.  She's  that  quare  and  shy,  Maree  is,  that 
ye  niver  can  tell  her  mind  till  she  plazes  to  let 
ye  know,  and  on  this  subjict  she  hasn't  plazed 
yit." 

•  And  that  was  quite  true,  for  when  Bat's  blue 
eyes,  sparkling  with  fun  and  deep  with  the  light 
of  love,  beamed  upon  the  little  dark-eyed  beau- 
ty, her  long  lashes  swept  her  cheeks ;  sometimes 
not  until  the  quick  eyes  of  Jake  had  seen  the 
outspringing  of  an  answering  love,  though  not 
all  Bat's  gallant  wooing  could  bring  a  word  of 
it  to  her  lips — silent,  cautious  little  Maria,  who 
doubted  the  gay  manners  of  this  rollicking 
knight  of  the  ax. 

"Did  ever  yees  listen  to  the  loike  o'  that!" 
exclaimed  Mike,  at  a  sudden  crashing  sound. 

Kitty  and  Bat  crossed  themselves  fervently, 
but  Jake,  with  unmoved,  sullen  face,  sat  and 
glowered  at  the  fire.  Suddenly  Maria  sprang 
up,  excitedly.  "It  is  a  voice !"  she  cried. 

"Indade,  thin,  it's  the  voice  of  manny  wa- 
thers,"  laughed  Kitty,  though  rather  nervously. 

"It  is  a  human  voice;  it  is  calling  for  help." 

"By  golly,  it's  de  debble  den,"  said  Bat. 
"Dat's  nobody  helse'll  be  on  de  road  such  a 
night  like  dat.  I'll  bet  he's  call  for  Jake,"  he 
added,  roguishly. 

A  deeper  glower  was  Jake's  only  reply,  but 
soon,  lifting  his  head,  he  said : 

"She's  right,  Maree  is;  ther  is  some  one 
callin'." 

"Out  wid  yees,  men,  till  the  riscue!"  cried 
Kitty,  seizing  Mike's  hat  and  coat  and  thrust- 
ing them  upon  him. 

"Sure  ye're  spakin',"  said  Mike,  ruefully  pre- 
paring to  leave  the  cheery  hearth. 

Bat,  aroused  by  the  light  in  Maria's  flashing 
eyes,  sprang  up  with  enthusiasm,  for,  low  be  it 
spoken,  his  was  not  a  grand  heroic  soul.  His 
brave  deeds  were  mostly  born  of  impulse  and 
nourished  by  the  approbation  of  others. 

Jake  sullenly  joined  them,  but  before  they 
reached  tbe  door  it  opened,  and  full  in  the  fire- 
light appeared  a  tall  form,  and  handsome,  yel- 
low-bearded face — a  striking  picture,  with  the 
dark  night  for  a  background. 

"By  me  sowl,  it's  the  docther.  In  the  name 
o'  the  owld  divil,  who  brings  ye  out  in  the  loike 
o'  this?" 


"I  don't  go  abroad  in  the  devil's  name, 
Mike,"  laughed  the  doctor,  making  his  way  to 
the  fire,  and  taking  the  chair  that  Kitty  had 
hastened  to  place  for  him. 

"No  more  ye  don't,  Docther;  it's  Hiven's 
own  sarvent  ye  are,"  she  said,  earnestly.  "Be- 
stir yersilf,  Mike,  and  bring  him  somethin'  hot 
to  drink,  for  indade,  Docther,  ye're  the  color  of 
a  ghost." 

"I've  had  a  pretty  tough  time  to  get  here, 
and  a  few  minutes  ago  I  was  more  likely  to  ar- 
rive at  the  bottom  of  the  gulch,  where  my  poor 
horse  is  now." 

The  Doctor's  voice  trembled,  and  his  eyes 
were  wet  with  not  unmanly  tears,  for,  as  the 
little  company  well  knew,  the  horse  was  a  pet 
and  a  beauty. 

"Ah,  woe's  the  night !"  wailed  Kitty.  "Ye'll 
niver  find  a  betther  baste  nor  a  handsomer 
wan — and  so  proud  he  samed  to  bear  ye,  the 
poor  faithful  crature  ! " 

"Yes,  we've  pulled  through  many  a  tough 
place  together,  and  he  never  flinched  nor  failed 
me.  The  almost  human  cry  he  gave  when  he 
went  down  that  horrible  place  will  ring  in  my 
ears  as  long  as  I  live,"  said  the  Doctor,  shud- 
dering. "But  who's  going  to  show  me  the  way 
to  Eraser's  ?  There's  a  trail  over  the  mountain, 
isn't  there?" 

"Begorry,  there  was  wan,"  said  Mike,  with 
great  hesitation,  "but  a  very  divil  of  a  way  ye'll 
foind  it  now — the  traas  do  be  crackin'  and 
fallin'  and  the  rocks  a-rowlin'  down  in  jest  an 
infarnal  manner.  It's  as  much  as  yer  loife  is 
worth  to  ye  to  get  there." 

"And  who's  ailin'  over  there,  annyway?" 
asked  Kitty. 

"I  think  it's  the  baby.  Some  one  left  word 
at  my  office  that  they  feared  one  of  Eraser's 
children  was  dying." 

"Durned  if  I'll  risk  my  neck  fur  one  of  Fra- 
ser's  kids,"  said  Jake,  emphatically,  going  back 
to  his  seat  by  the  fire. 

"  No  great  risk,  thin,"  retorted  Kitty.  "  Thim 
as  is  born  to  be  hanged  '11  niver  be  dhrowned." 

"An'  sure,"  said  Mike,  glancing  at  Kitty, 
"  I'm  thinkin'  we're  as  safe  outside  as  in  afther 
this.  We're  in  for  it,  annyhow ;  but  danged  if 
I'm  anxious  to  drag  my  owld  rheumaticky  legs 
over  anny  trail  to-night." 

The  Doctor  looked  at  Bat.  Maria,  too,  had 
looked  at  him,  and  that  look  had  fired  his  soul 
with  the  courage  of  an  old  warrior,  whatever 
the  risk  or  the  terror. 

"Le  ciel  en  est  le  prix,"  thought  Bat,  thrill- 
ing beneath  that  look. 

"Well,  a  guess  a  know  dat  way  pretty  well, 
an'  if  hany  ting  is  happen  I  got  de  doctor,  ain't 
it?"  said  Bat,  gayly  brushing  back  his  brown 


ONE  STORMS   NIGHT. 


239 


curls,  and  drawing  over  them  the  veritable  blue 
toque  that  he  had  worn  in  the  backwoods  of 
Canada. 

Then,  in  his  droll  way,  he  took  solemn  leave 
of  Kitty  and  Mike,  imploring  them,  if  anything 
should  prevent  his  return,  to  be  good  to  Jake. 
Over  Maria's  little  brown  hand  he  lingered  long 
enough  to  say,  unheard  by  all  but  her : 

"I  come  again  to  thee — je  t'aime." 

And  in  a  language  understood  by  all,  the 
dark  eyes  answered  : 

"I  love  thee." 

And  in  a  language  known  and  taught  by  the 
Father  of  Evil,  sullen  Jake  replied  to  his  laugh- 
ing, "Good-bye,  my  Jake — pray  for  me,"  with  a 
look  of  hatred  and  a  sullen  "Go  to  hell !" 

"Behind  you,  my  dear,"  answered  Bat,  with  a 
profound  bow. 

Out  into  the  black  and  terrible  night  went 
the  two  men — one  obeying  the  mandate  of  his 
noble  profession,  filled  with  the  sympathy  it 
had  taught  him  to  give  to  sorrow  and  suffer- 
ing everywhere;  the  other,  his  heart  glowing 
with  chivalric  passion,  to  prove  himself  a  hero 
in  the  eyes  of  her  he  loved — followed  by  the 
voluble  blessings  of  Mike  and  Kitty,  by  the 
half  proud,  half  anxious,  and  altogether  loving, 
gaze  of  Maria,  and  also  by  the  malignant  glare 
of  Jake's  evil  eyes. 

"And  Satan  came  also,"  thought  the  Doctor, 
observing  the  look. 

Maria,  too,  turned  in  time  to  see  the  expres- 
sion. It  was  just  as  Mike  was  telling  them  to 
look  out  for  the  bridge  over  Fraser's  Creek. 

Then  the  door  closed,  and  while  the  wind 
and  the  rain  beat  furiously  against  it,  and 
Mike  and  Kitty  speculated  anxiously  upon  the 
chances  of  their  safe  arrival  at  Fraser's,  Maria 
studied  Jake's  face  as  he  gazed  intently  in  the 
fire,  where,  from  a  pine-knot,  the  lurid  jets  of 
flame  darted  out  and  leaped  wildly  up  the 
black  vault,  as  if  eager  to  join  their  kindred 
spirits  in  the  storm. 

Suddenly  Jake  arose,  and,  muttering  some- 
thing in  the  way  of  a  good-night,  slouched  out 
of  the  room.  Maria,  too,  went  softly  out,  retir- 
ing to  her  own  apartment. 

Meanwhile,  safely  on  their  way  through  wind 
and  rain  and  thick  darkness,  over  fallen  trees 
and  raging  waters,  went  the  two  men,  Bat's 
jubilant  heart  overflowing  in  droll  speeches  and 
songs  that  he  sang  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  to 
scare  away  evil  spirits,  he  said — and  the  Doctor 
said  he  should  think  it  would.  But  it  did  not, 
for  behind  them  crept  one  whose  intent  was 
blacker  than  the  night,  more  cruel  than  the  an- 
gry streams. 

Yet  on  they  went  along  the  narrow  path,  with 
the  overhanging  rocks  on  their  right,  and  on 


their  left  the  fearful  precipice;  yet  gayly  on- 
ward, with  cautious  steps,  until  they  reached 
the  cottage,  whose  light  shone  out  like  a  star  in 
the  black  night. 

"By  golly,  we've  got  here,  don't  it?"  said  Bat, 
drawing  a  long  breath,  as  they  paused  at  the 
door. 

Is  there  anything,  I  wonder,  that  stirs  a  phy- 
sician's heart  more  deeply  than  that  look  of 
mingled  thankfulness  and  mute  appeal  that 
greets  him  on  his  first  arrival  where  life  and 
death  are  struggling  together? 

"God  bless  you!"  cried  Fraser,  who,  alone 
with  his  wife,  was  watching  the  little  one  that 
lay  flushed  with  fever  and  moaning  with  pain, 
"God  bless  you,  Doctor — we  didn't  think  you 
could  get  here." 

"There's  a  special  providence  for  doctors, 
you  know,"  he  answered,  smiling. 

The  mere  sound  of  his  pleasant  voice  seem- 
ed to  give  them  courage,  and  the  mother,  with 
a  gleam  of  hope  in  her  eyes  and  a  deep  sigh  of 
relief,  laid  her  baby  in  his  arms,  that  clasped 
and  bore  the  tiny  burden  with  the  tenderness 
of  a  woman.  When  a  man  has  a  gentle  heart, 
tender  not  merely  "toward  his  own,  but  with  a 
sympathy  that  reaches  to  all  helpless,  suffering 
creatures,  how  great  it  is ! 

"I  was  t'inkin',"  said  Bat,  gravely,  "'bo't  dat 
providence  you  been  spikin'  abo't  it,  why  it 
ain't  take  care  of  doctor's  horses  de  same 
time." 

After  the  Doctor  and  Bat  had  crossed  Fra- 
ser's Creek,  the  stealthy  figure  that  had  follow- 
ed them  thus  far,  with  something  in  his  hand, 
stopped,  cowering  beneath  a  fir  tree,  till  the 
gleam  of  their  lantern  was  like  a  firefly  in  the 
distance ;  then  he  approached  the  bridge,  and, 
with  eyes  grown  accustomed  to  the  darkness, 
examined  the  end  that  lay  upon  the  bank.  He 
could  see  sufficiently  well  for  his  purpose,  which 
was  soon  apparent,  for,  taking  up  his  pick,  he 
commenced  digging  into  the  bank  and  displac- 
ing the  rocks,  working  with  a  fiendish  energy. 

"Curse  him,"  he  said,  between  his  teeth,  "I'll 
fix  him  so  that  no  doctor  can't  save  him." 

And  so/with  muttered  curses,  with  the  hoarse, 
bellowing  torrent  beneath,  and  the  shrieking 
pines  above,  the  work  was  done,  and  the  tim- 
ber left  in  such  position  that  one  attempting  to 
cross  upon  it  would  cause  its  fall.  It  was  hor- 
rible to  think  of — plunged  into  that  hell  of  wa- 
ters and  whirling  debris,  to  be  dashed  against 
the  sharp  rocks  or  carried  swiftly  down  the  dark 
ravine  to  a  death  as  sure  and  cruel  if  not  as 
sudden. 

"There,  you  infernal  Canuck,"  said  the  man, 
"you  bet  you've  done  yer  last  love-makin'.  I'll 


240 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


take  that  little  business  off  yer  hands,"  he  added, 
with  an  ugly  laugh. 

"But  first  you'd  better  repair  that  bridge." 

It  was  Maria,  with  her  lantern  suddenly  turn- 
ed full  upon  him. 

He  uttered  one  fearful  oath,  and  shrank  trem- 
bling like  the  coward  that  he  was  before  the 
girl's  gleaming  eyes  as  she  held  her  light  aloft. 

"I  know  what  you  have  been  doing,  and 
what  it  is  for.  Now,  go  to  work  and  make  it 
safe  again." 

"I'll  be  damned  if  I  do,"  growled  Jake. 

The  only  answer  was  the  click  of  a  revolver 
that  her  little  firm  hand  held  steadily  enough. 
She  knew  how  to  use  it;  Jake  was  well  aware 
of  that.  More  than  once  he  had  seen  her  bring 
down  her  game,  with  a  skill  that  many  an  old 
hunter  might  envy. 

"If  this  fails,  I  have  something  else  at  my 
belt.  Do  as  I  tell  you,  or  I  will  kill  you  as  I 
would  a  wild  beast  that  threatened  me." 

"She'd  do  it,  the  little  Spanish  devil." 

"I'm  tempted  to  do  it  now" — click.  "Oh,  how 
quickly  I  could  send  you  down  there  where 
you  meant  to  send  him.  I  can  hardly  keep 
from  doing  it,  I  hate  you  so ;  but  I'd  scorn  to 
have  such  dirty  blood  on  my  hands.  Now  go 
to  work." 

Stung  through  and  throifgh  with  her  con- 
tempt, cowed  and  unnerved  by  the  threats  that 
he  knew  were  not  idle  ones,  Jake  set  about  the 
work,  and  it  was  soon  completed. 

"Now  go  home!"  she  said,  sternly. 

There  was  no  choice  but  to  obey,  and,  still 
under  cover  of  the  girl's  revolver,  he  went  be- 
fore her  like  a  sulky  convict  driven  to  his  dark 
cell. 

"I'll  release  you  in  the  morning,"  she  said,  as 
she  drove  him  into  a  snug  out-building,  and, 
fastening  the  door  securely,  left  him  to  his  med- 
itations. 

The  rain  had  ceased.  Up  through  the  green 
canons  floated  the  mists  of  the  morning.  Tinged 
with  rosy  light,  they  sailed  away  through  the 
blue  ether.  Up  rose  the  sun,  shining  grand- 
ly on  the  mountains,  and  through  those  floods 
of  gold  came  the  Doctor,  and  Bat  caroling  his 
gay  song,  proud  as  a  troubadour  home  from 
the  war  going  to  kneel  at  his  lady's  feet. 

"By  golly,  we're  save  dat  baby,"  he  cried, 
springing  through  the  open  door.  "And  how 
is  Jake?  A  bet  he's  ben  most  sick  of  lonesome 
widout  me.  Eh,  where  he  is,  dat  Ja-k-e?"  he 
shouted. 

But  Jake  did  not  appear. 

"And  thou,  Marie,  my  little  one,"  he  mur- 
mured in  his  own  language  that  she  had 
learned  in  childhood,  "hast  thou  no  smile  for 


me?  Those  beautiful  eyes,  have  they  nothing 
to  say  to  me  this  morning?  They  were  so  elo- 
quent last  night,  my  heart  was  aching  with  joy. 
Look  at  me,  Marie — but  thou  art  pale.  Wert 
thou  troubled  for  me,  my  little  love?" 

Swiftly  the  color  rose  to  cheek  and  brow, 
slowly  the  long  lashes  were  uplifted,  and  from 
dewy  eyes  and  parted,  rosy  lips  smiled  the 
glad  welcome  home.  Jake,  just  then  appearing 
at  the  door,  saw  it  all,  and  with  a  stifled  groan 
of  jealous  passion  and  defeat,  he  turned  and 
fled,  half  blind  with  rage,  he  knew  not  where 
— to  get  away  from  that  maddening  sight,  that 
was  all  his  thought — away  to  the  caves  of  the 
mountains  where  he  could  crouch  like  a  wound- 
ed wolf  and  howl  out  his  despair. 

Crash  !  down  through  the  treacherous  bridge 
of  poles  and  bark !  Down,  down  the  shudder- 
ing depths  he  whirled,  and  the  stream,  scorn- 
ing to  bear  such  a  burden,  hurled  him  aside 
upon  the  jagged  rocks,  where  the  long  ferns 
trailed  their  broken  plumes  and  the  ivy  wound 
its  poisonous  bands. 

"They'll  never  find  me,"  he  thought,  "but  it's 
right — it's  just.  It's  what  I  was  goin'  to  do 
to  him,  curse — no,  I  can't  die  cursin',"  and, 
with  bleeding,  untaught  lips,  he  tried  to  pray, 
"O  Lord — I  don't  know  how,"  he  whispered, 
faintly.  "But  didn't  he  say  forgive?  What 
was  it  mother  used  to  make  me  say?  'If  I 
should  die — my  soul  to  take — Jesus' — sake.' " 

His  head  drooped  lower,  his  lips  were  still. 
The  water  swept  across  his  breast,  the  long 
ferns,  waving,  brushed  his  bleeding  hands,  and 
through  the  laurel  branches  the  sunshine  fell 
upon  his  ghastly  face. 

"Jake,  my  poor  feller,  look — hope  you  heyes 
— you  ain't  dead,  don't  it?  Sapre,  wake  up, 
mon  gdf  cried  Bat,  in  an  agony  of  terror  and 
compassion,  as,  with  trembling  hands,  he  dash- 
ed the  water  in  his  face  and  rubbed  his  hands, 
and  from  Jake's  pocket -flask  poured  whisky 
down  his  throat.  At  last  Jake  slowly  unclosed 
his  eyes  and  feebly  moved  his  lips. 

"Dat's  right,  by  golly,  swear  if  you  want  to, 
but  keep^you  heyes  hopen ;  dat'll  scare  de  deb- 
ble  when  dey're  shut.  Now,  how  you  tink  I'll 
got  you  hout  of  dis?  Here,  embrace  me,  mon 
cherj  put  you  harms  ron  ma  neck,  comme  $a — 
ho  done!  You  are  more  heavy  dan  a  black- 
oak  log,  but  keep  to  me — now,  hup  we  go. 
Dere,"  laying  his  burden  safely  on  the  bank, 
"you  better  bath  yourself  in  de  stable  next  time, 
young  feller." 

But  Jake  had  fainted  again,  and  Bat  ran  to 
the  house  for  help. 

"Yes,  I  meant  to  kill  you,  Bat,  as  true  as  you 
live,"  said  Jake,  in  his  first  penitence.  "I'm 


AN  OLD   STORY. 


241 


sorry  now,  for  you're  a  brick,  and  you  deserve 
the  girl ;  but  I  couldn't  stay  round  and  see  her 
smilin'  like  that  on  no  man,  not  if  he'd  saved 
my  life  a  hundred  times ;  I  might  be  tempted 
agin ;  it's  in  my  nater,  Bat.  I'm  a  mean  cuss, 
that's  a  fact;  but  as  soon  as  I'm  on  my  pins 
agin,  I'll  git." 

And  he  did.  And  Maria  and  Bat  were  mar- 
ried one  day  when  Father  Sheridan  came  to 
celebrate  mass  in  the  little  mountain  chapel, 
The  pines  and  the  waterfalls  played  the  wed- 
ding march ;  and  if  the  trees  could  not  quite 


banish  the  mourning  from  their  voices — there  is 
a  little  that  is  sad  in  everything ;  but  the  happy 
lovers  heard  only  sounds  of  joy. 

The  Doctor  was  there  to  kiss  the  bride,  and 
Baby  Fraser,  cooing  and  crowing  and  waving 
her  dimpled  hands,  and  Mike  and  Kitty,  all 
tearful  and  smiling  and  eloquent  with  Irish 
words  of  blessing  and  endearment. 

But  to  this  day  Bat  cannot  comprehend  Jake's 
malice,  and  says,  with  puzzled  look : 

"  I'll  never  tought  he'll  done  dat  proppus." 
JULIA  H.  S.  BUGEIA. 


AN   OLD   STORY. 


Fisherman  John  is  brave  and  strong — 
None  more  brave  on  the  coast  than  he; 

He  owns  a  cottage  and  fishing  smack, 
As  snug  as  ever  need  be; 

And,  what  is  truer  than  I  could  wish, 
Fisherman  John  loves  me. 

Often  and  often  when  day  is  done, 
With  smiling  lips  and  eager  eyes •• 

He  comes  to  woo  me.     In  every  way 
That  a  man  may  try,  he  tries 

To  win  me — but  that  he  can  never  do, 
Though  he  woo  me  till  he  dies. 

Fisherman  Jack  is  a  poorer  man  — 

He  owns  not  cottage  nor  fishing  smack; 

But  a  winning  voice  and  smile  is  his, 
And  a  brow  that  is  never  black. 

Why  sh&uld  I  break  my  heart  to  tell — 
But  I  love  Fisherman  Jack. 

/ 
He  loves  not  me,  but  every  night 

He  sits  at  the  feet  of  Kate  Mahon; 
Never  a  heart  has  she  for  him, 

For  she  loves  Fisherman  John, 
Who  cares  no  more  for  love  of  hers 

Than  the  sea  he  sails  upon. 

Often  we  wonder,  do  Kate  and  I, 

That  fate  should  cross  us  so  cruelly. 

We  think  of  the  lovers  we  do  not  love, 
And  dream  of  what  life  would  be 

If  only  Fisherman  John  loved  her 
And  Fisherman  Jack  loved  me. 


CARLOTTA  PERRY. 


242 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


A   LITERARY   SHRINE. 


My  stand-point  of  view  was  the  battlements 
of  the  Round  Tower  at  Windsor.  A  small  com- 
pany of  visitors  had  just  been  ushered  through 
a  series  of  state  apartments  in  the  palace  be- 
low. A  slight  weariness  rested  upon  some  of 
us,  which  the  prolonged  winding  ascent  of  steep 
stone  steps  that  we  had  just  made  did  not  fully 
explain.  Mere  magnificence  exercises  no  long 
continued  charm.  The  glitter  and  weight  of 
bullion  fringe  and  frame  do  not  long  detain 
those  at  least  who  have  not  the  seductive  apti- 
tude for  reckoning  the  cost  of  crimson  ottoman 
and  malachite  vase.  Gobelin  tapestry  wrought 
with  figures  of  life  size,  lofty  walls  and  broad 
floors  inlaid  with  mosaics  of  ambitious  pattern, 
faience  essaying  to  rival  the  delicate  lines  and 
colors  of  the  canvas,  or  the  exquisite  contours 
of  sculptured  marble,  excite  admiration,  abated 
by  some  sense  of  disappointment.  Each  artist, 
as  well  as  artisan,  has  a  superb  and  peculiar 
province;  but  the  needle,  the  shuttle,  and  the 
lathe  do  often  with  a  painful  conventionality 
what  the  chisel  of  the  sculptor  or  the  brush  of 
the  painter  performs  magnificently  and  freely. 

Thus  there  was  a  sense  of  advantage  gained 
as  we  looked  down  upon  the  circle-girt  floor  of 
nature's  building  and  up  to  the  blue  arch  above. 
And  well  there  might  be,  for  the  day  was  one 
of  perfect  loveliness,  and  the  prospect  at  any 
time  can  scarcely  be  rivaled  in  the  world.  The 
beauties  of  the  landscape  easily  surpass  the 
treasures  that  any  castled  chamber  holds.  At 
the  foot  of  the  tower  are  St.  George's  Chapel 
and  the  Albert  Memorial  Chapel.  Ascot  and 
Epsom  Downs  are  in  sight.  Runnymede  attests 
and  quickens  a  love  for  liberty.  A  long  avenue 
gleams  in  the  distance,  known  as  Queen  Anne's 
Road.  The  Long  Walk,  passing  down  double 
avenues  of  elms,  two  centuries  old,  leads  to  a 
dense,  ancient  forest,  with  a  circuit  of  fifty -six 
miles,  that  gives  to  the  view  its  magnificent 
masses  of  grateful  green.  Through  the  trees 
flashes  a  white  glimpse  of  the  Albert  Mauso- 
leum, and  from  this  one  involuntarily  turns  to 
the  Victoria  Tower,  situated  in  an  opposite  an- 
gle of  the  castle  walls,  where  the  Prince  died. 
The  silver  sickle  of  the  Thames  cuts  the  grassy 
plains.  Near  the  opposite  bank  glow  the  stain- 
ed windows  of  Eton  Chapel.  In  the  distance, 
and  nearly  in  the  same  direction,  is  clearly  seen 
Stoke  Park,  once  the  residence  of  William  Penn. 
On  the  boundary  of  the  park,  through  an  open- 


ing among  the  trees,  a  modest  white  spire  is 
disclosed.  It  is  the  steeple  of  Stoke  Poges 
Church,  the  church  of  Gray's  "Elegy  in  a 
Country  Church -yard,"  where  the  poet  himself 
is  buried.  And  now  memory  suggests  his 
beautiful  address  to  the  towers  of  Eton  and 
Windscr.  A  sudden  thrill  runs  round  the  little 
circle,  though  we  are  all  strangers  to  each 
other.  There  is  within  the  sweep  of  vision 
many  a  chapel  tapestried  with  the  emblazoned 
banners  of  romance — many  a  shrine  rich  with 
the  old  gold  of  history.  And  yet,  for  the  time 
being,  yonder  slender  spire  draws  to  itself  the 
interest  of  the  whole  scene,  like  a  diamond  set 
among  jewels  more  showy  but  less  bright. 

I  hurried  down  the  winding  stairs,  and  en- 
tered a  railway  carriage  just  departing  to 
Slough,  the  nearest  railway  station  to  the 
church.  From  this  point  the  church  is  three 
miles  distant  by  the  road,  but  a  foot-path  across 
the  fields  abridges  the  distance  to  two  miles. 
A  cab  lingered  near  the  station,  but  on  such  a 
journey  one  wishes  to  be  alone  and  to  avoid 
the  annoyance  of  feeling  that  any  one  else  is 
awaiting  his  movements.  It  is  also  a  natural 
sentiment  that  a  pilgrimage  on  foot,  demand- 
ing some  exertion,  should  be  made  to  a  shrine 
so  hallowed  by  associations  at  once  literary 
and  sacred.  The  sun  smiled  upon  the  earth 
as  it  rarely  does  in  England,  and  the  earth  re- 
turned the  silent  greeting  with  equal  cheer,  for 
the  varied  green  of  the  landscape  was  as  bright 
as  the  blue  overhead,  while  dimpling  road-side 
brook  and  distant  Thames  showed  a  sheen  like 
threaded  diamonds  and  molten  silver.  The  full 
rays  of  the  sunlight,  though  not  oppressive,  were 
pleasantly  intercepted  by  clouds  from  time  to 
time,  that  agreeably  deepened  as  they  passed 
the  many-hued  mosaic  of  the  prospect.  Its 
beauty  of  water  and  wood  and  field  was  sub- 
stantially the  same  that  had  entranced  the  eyes 
when  viewed  from  the  distant  castle  in  the 
morning.  There  was,  however,  a  great  variety 
of  shades  of  brown  noticeable  for  the  first  time 
in  the  wide  vista  of  ripening  grain  and  stubble 
ground,  haystack  and  winding  road,  and  up- 
turned field,  and  tiled  roofs  of  farm-houses  with 
their  clustering  sheds.  Sobriety  and  pensive- 
ness  dwell  in  the  brightest  English  scenes. 
There  is  an  atmosphere  of  thought  and  senti- 
ment that  rests  upon  every  hill,  and  gently 
qualifies  the  charm  of  the  most  radiant  vista. " 


A   LITERARY  SHRINE. 


243 


Picturesque  France  is  always  bright  and  exhila- 
rating, with  no  aesthetic  arriere-pensee  of  senti- 
ment in  the  depth  of  her  perspectives,  and  is 
thus  as  different  from  English  landscape  as  is 
the  golden  material  magnificence  of  gorgeous 
Italy.  Nature,  then,  this  afternoon  was  in  ac- 
cord with  the  errand  on  which  I  was  bent. 
From  an  inn  door  close  to  the  railway  bridge, 
a  farmer  pointed  out  more  particularly  the  easily 
pursued  journey.  The  sinuous  road  that  had 
already  crossed  the  bridge  was  to  be  followed 
a  little  beyond  the  bold  and  wooded  curve  where 
it  disappeared  from  sight;  then  I  should  turn 
to  the  left  along  the  first  highway  which  branch- 
ed from  the  former  road,  and  at  about  forty 
yards'  distance  from  the  point  of  intersection  a 
stile  would  introduce  me  to  a  path  that  leads 
straight  to  the  church. 

English  roads  are  not  only  excellent  for  the 
passage  of  vehicles,  but  many  of  them,  like  this 
road,  have  at  least  one  broad,  well  built  and 
drained  causeway  for  the  convenience  of  pe- 
destrians. From  the  stile  the  narrow  path  led 
past  blossoming  clover  on  the  one  side,  while 
on  the  other  a  red  field  of  beets  was  succeeded 
by  waving  oats  almost  ready  for  the  sickle. 
The  fragrance  of  freshly  mown  grass  filled  the 
air  as  I  traversed  a  field  where  lads  and  lasses 
were  turning  the  windrows  to  the  sun.  The 
straight  path  stretched  through  many  fields  and 
across  several  roads.  At  last,  when  I  had 
crossed  a  highway  bordered  with  low  trees,  a 
few  steps  brought  me  from  a  thicket -shaded 
stile  directly  before  the  poet's  monument. 

Although  its  form  is  inartistic,  its  site  is  well 
chosen.  The  ground  suddenly  sinks  into  an 
almost  circular  hollow,  and  then  rises  as  soon, 
and  displays  a  level  surface  of  green  sward  for 
many  yards.  In  the  center  of  this  natural  ped- 
estal rises  the  cenotaph,  for  the  structure  does 
not  contain  or  cover  the  body  of  the  poet,  and 
is  even  at  some  little  distance  from  the  ceme- 
tery. It  is  a  cubical  structure  of  stone,  sur- 
mounted by  a  cumbrous,  shallow,  and  unshapely 
vase.  Of  course,  no  other  inscription  than  his 
own  is  found  upon  the  tablets,  except  a  short 
one,  on  the  least  conspicuous  face  of  the  mon- 
ument, stating  that  the  fabric  was  erected  in 
the  year  1799  by  many  admirers  and  friends. 
The  familiar  lines  exerted  a  new  and  unsus- 
pected power  as  I  read  : 

' '  One  morn  I  missed  him  on  the  accustomed  hill ; 

Along  the  hea-th,  and  near  his  favorite  tree, 
Another  came  ;   nor  yet  beside  the^rill, 

Nor  up  the  lawn,  nor  at  the  wood  was  he. 

"The  next,  with  dirges  due,  in  sad  array, 
Slow  through  the  church-way  path  we  saw  him  borne; 

Approach  and  read  (for  thou  canst  read)  the  lay 
Graved  on  the  stone  beneath  yon  aged|thorn." 


On  the  opposite  side  of  the  monument  are 
engraved  the  opening  lines  of  the  poet's  "Ode 
on  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College:" 

"Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers, 
That  crown  the  watery  glade — 
Ah,  happy  hills  !  ah,  pleasing  shade  ! 

Ah,  fields  beloved  in  vain ! 
Where  once  my  careless  childhood  strayed 

A  stranger  yet  to  pain." 

On  the  fourth  tablet  are  found  these  verses  : 

"Beneath  those  rugged  elms,  that  yew  tree's  shade, 
Where  heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  moldering  heap, 

Each  in  his  narrow  cell  forever  laid, 

The  rude  forefathers  of  the  hamlet  sleep. 

"The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power, 
And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 

Await  alike  the  inevitable   hour: 

The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave." 

Four  yew  trees  are  planted  around,  reared 
from  slips  that  had  been  taken  from  the  vener- 
able trees  of  the  cemetery.  Although  the  monu- 
ment is  heavy  and  tasteless  in  design,  its  situa- 
tion is  one  of  unrivaled  beauty.  Behind  the 
urn  rises  a  dark  and  dense  grove,  with  open 
fields  stretching  out  on  every  other  side.  The 
inscription  of  the  last  tablet  directs  the  eye 
across  a  sunny  rpeadow,  where  stands  the 
church  in  full  view,  mantled  with  its  ivy  and 
surrounded  by  its  dead. 

I  drew  slowly  near  and  passed  the  little  stile 
of  entrance.  The  cemetery  is  very  small,  and 
shut  in  on  three  sides  by  a  high  brick  wall  that 
divides  it  from  Stoke  Park.  There  are  several 
graves  which  have  long  borne  the  name  of 
Penn,  and  testify  to  the  former  possession  of 
the  estate  by  that  family.  The  property  has 
been  now  for  many  years  in  other  hands.  Al- 
though the  grave -yard  is  so  humble  and  lim- 
ited, there  are  two  mausoleums  within  it  of  an- 
cient and  titled  families — one  bearing  the  name 
of  Douglas,  and  the  other  being  the  resting 
place  of  the  ducal  family  of  Leeds.  The  name- 
less mounds  and  sunken  stones  unnoticed  at 
first  in  the  long  grass,  and  recent  wooden 
crosses  already  broken,  bearing  inscriptions 
soon  to  be  obliterated,  recall  vividly  the  lines 
that  have  echoed  for  a  hundred  years  from  the 
arches  of  time,  and  have  yet  just  begun  to  be 
immortal. 

The  poet  himself  lies  in  an  altar-shaped  tomb 
close  to  the  church  and  near  its  chancel.  A 
slab  affixed  to  the  church-wall  marks  the  spot. 
As  he  did  not  leave  an  epitaph  for  his  grave,  it 
would  seem  that  no  one  else  dared  to  write 
elegiac  verse  in  his  honor,  or  even  to  inscribe 
the  poet's  name  upon  the  tomb.  The  absence 
of  such  epitaph  and  token  even  excited  a  doubt 


244 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


some  years  ago  whether  the  lyrist  rested  there. 
This  uncertainty  was  dispelled  by  an  examina- 
tion of  the  vault  beneath.  The  walls  of  the  fab- 
ric are  of  brick,  and  the  flat  stone  which  rests 
upon  them  has  been  broken,  and  the  fragments 
have  been  clamped  together  by  iron  bolts.  The 
vandalism  which  mars  unguarded  shrines  is 
apparent  here.  Many  rude  initials  have  been 
deeply  cut  in  the  tomb.  The  few  sentences  en- 
graved here  are  read  with  difficulty,  and  will 
soon  be  recut  in  the  stone.  An  aunt  and  the 
mother  of  the  poet  are  buried  in  the  crypt  be- 
neath. After  a  few  lines  in  memory  of  the  first, 
the  poet  has  added  : 

' '  In  the  same  pious  confidence  beside  her  friend  and 
sister  sleep  the  remains  of  Dorothy  Gray,  widow,  the 
careful  tender  mother  of  many  children,  one  of  whom 
alone  had  the  misfortune  to  survive  her.  She  died 
March  n,  1753,  aged  72." 

The  mural  tablet  near  states  that  the  son 
passed  through  the  same  portal  of  death  July 
30,  1771,  and  was  buried  August  6th  following 
in  the  same  grave. 

After  long  lingering  over  the  moss- filled  let- 
tering and  crumbling  stone,  I  reluctantly  turned 
away,  but  not  before  I  had  picked  and  care- 
fully put  away  in  memory  of  the  moment  a  lit- 
tle globe  of  white  clover  at  the  foot  of  the  grave, 
which,  while  I  was  yet  standing  there,  a  gen- 
tle wind  had  swayed  against  the  tomb.  As  I 
stepped  into  the  well  worn  path  that  leads  to 
the  church  door,  a  little  English  sparrow,  with 
cherubic  roundness  of  body,  and  but  partially 
fledged,  was  traversing  an  old  tombstone  in 
a  succession  of  fluttering  hops.  Presently  he 
stopped  upon  a  broken  ledge  of  the  monument, 
and  chirped  forth  his  limited  little  song  with  a 
self-abandonment  and  rapture  as  great  as  if 
the  whole  world  were  listening,  and  he,  too, 
were  immortal.  Those  beautiful  lines  rose  to 
my  lips,  which  none  but  their  author  would 
have  excluded  from  his  stately  verse : 

' '  There  scattered  oft,  the  earliest  of  the  year, 

By  hands  unseen,  are  showers  of  "violets  found; 
The  redbreast  loves  to  build  and  warble  here, 
And  little  footsteps  lightly  print  the  ground." 

There  are  two  ancient  yews  at  the  church 
porch.  The  older  one  has  been  greatly  scathed 
by  time,  and  has  but  one  green  branch.  The 
other  has  begun  to  decay,  and  drops  its  limbs 
feebly  upon  the  ground.  The  boughs  were  long 
held  up  by  chains,  and  every  precaution  has 
been  taken  to  prolong  the  life  of  the  aged  tree. 
But  its  long  existence  is  slowly  drawing  near 
its  close.  There  are  two  doors  that  give  imme- 
diate entrance  into  the  church.  They  are  both 
ancient,  and  the  older  portal  is  protected  by  a 


low  and  rather  long  porch.  The  second  door 
is  a  very  low  one,  and  few  persons,  except  chil- 
dren, would  not  be  obliged  to  stoop  under  the 
lintel.  It  recalls  to  mind  the  door 'of  entrance 
into  the  church  where  Shakspere  is  buried,  and 
it  was  evidently  the  design  of  the  mediaeval 
architect  that  persons  should  bow  when  enter- 
ing the  house  of  God.  Through  the  consider- 
ate kindness  of  the  church  authorities,  the  main 
door  stands  open,  although  entrance  is  inter- 
cepted by  a  lattice-work  of  iron.  A  great  part 
of  the  interior  can  thus  be  seen  by  any  one  who 
passes  or  pauses  there. 

A  noise  now  arresting  my  attention,  I  turned 
and  saw  a  young  man  about  twenty  years  of 
age  approaching  the  church  door.  He  proved 
to  be  a  son  of  the  vicar  of  the  parish,  and  he 
offered  to  show  me  the  interior  of  the  building, 
and  to  give  me  such  information  about  the  spot 
as  he  himself  possessed.  This  very  kind  offer 
was  eagerly  accepted.  He  told  me  that  many 
Americans  come  here  in  the  course  of  a  year, 
and  express  great  interest  and  enthusiasm  in 
their  visit.  The  seating  capacity  of  the  church 
is  very  limited,  and,  together  with  the  contract- 
ed area  of  the  cemetery,  shows  the  smallness  of 
the  parish,  which  embraces  a  rural  farming  dis- 
trict. The  adjoining  cloisters  are  very  small 
also,  and  are  lighted  with  narrow  old  stained 
windows,  that  at  some  later  period  have  been 
reset  with  broad  borders  of  more  modern  glass 
in  the  enlarged  casements.  One  window  bears 
the  dates  of  1532  and  1537,  and  another  of 
equal  age  depicts  a  singular  male  figure  seated 
upon  a  vehicle  resembling  a  rude  velocipede, 
which  excites  much  curiosity  and  speculation 
among  antiquarians.  In  an  angle  of  the  church 
walls  outside,  close  by  the  church  tower,  is  a 
well  of  ancient  date.  There  was  no  door,  ap- 
parently, which  could  have  given  to  the  former 
occupants  of  the  cloisters  convenient  access  to 
this  well.  But  as  we  passed  to  another  win- 
dow, we  discovered  beneath  the  low  casement 
two  round  knobs  of  oak,  indicating  that  the 
halves  of  the  window,  now  solidly  joined,  were 
formerly  disunited;  and,  stooping  down,  I  dis- 
covered the  rusty  traces  of  two  bolts  that  an- 
ciently fastened  the  two  leaves  of  the  entrance 
to  the  floor.  The  pavement,  however,  is  more 
modern  than  the  gateway,  as  there  is  no  recep- 
tacle cut  in  it  for  the  passage  of  the  bolts.  My 
companion  said  that  he  had  never  noticed  this 
place  of  exit  before.  The  low  round  arches  of 
the  nave  betray  the  antiquity  of  their  origin. 
When  the  present  vicar  of  the  parish  assumed 
his  office  here,  fifteen  years  ago,  the  chancel 
floor  was  covered  by  a  carpet.  Having  re- 
moved this,  he  found  small  flat  bronze  figures 
upon  the  floor  affixed  to  grave -stones.  Four 


A   LITERARY  SHRINE. 


245 


figures  are  in  excellent  preservation.  The  ef- 
figy of  a  knight  in  full  armor,  and  that  of  his 
wife  attired  in  the  fashion  of  a  very  early  pe- 
riod, with  an  inscription  beneath  them  in  quaint 
characters,  were  in  the  corner  of  the  chancel, 
and  next  them  a  priest  in  full  canonicals,  with 
hands  joined  in  prayer.  A  female  figure  stands 
beside  him. 

There  were  several  other  similar  monuments, 
as  the  indentations  and  outlines  which  are 
cut  in  other  stones  plainly  show;  but  in  some 
time  of  peril  and  disorder,  probably  during  the 
wars  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  bronze  relics 
were  torn  from  the  flagging,  doubtless  to  be 
sold  for  old  metal,  and  only  the  bronze  letter- 
ing of  one  epitaph  is  left.  We  now  found  our- 
selves in  the  more  modern  portion  of  the 
church,  to  some  extent  secluded  from  its  wider 
areas,  which,  with  a  special  entrance,  the  noble 
family  of  Hastings  caused  to  be  erected  for 
their  own  accommodation.  These  titled  people 
have  disappeared  from  the  parish  records  for 
many  years.  No  descendant  or  representative 
of  the  family  resides  in  the  neighborhood.  A 
few  headstones  of  the  cemetery  bear  the  name. 
There  is  a  strange  mural  monument  in  this  part 
of  the  church,  composed  of  two  black  oval  tab- 
lets, bordered  by  white  marble  and  resting  on 
three  stone  skulls.  No  inscription,  or  device, 
or  tradition  adds  to  the  mute  intimation  that 
at  some  time  some  one  died  and. was  buried 
here. 

Near  the  portico  are  placed  two  boxes — one 
of  them  for  the  receipt  of  alms,  the  other  for 
a  more  special  contribution.  It  is  generally 
known  that  a  window  has  recently  been  inserted 
in  the  walls  of  the  parish  church  at  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  which  throws  its  light  directly  upon 
the  tomb  of  Shakspere.  It  illustrates,  by  cor- 
responding scriptural  figures  in  stained  glass, 
the  "Seven  Ages"  of  Shakspere.  It  is  called 
the  American  window,  as  the  expense  of  its 
construction  was  defrayed  solely  by  Ameri- 
cans. 

The  proposal  has  been  made  that  the  Old  and 
the  New  World  should  unite  in  a  similar  me- 
morial to  the  poet  Gray,  and  the  second  box  at 
the  church  door  prefers  its  silent  and  unobtru- 
sive request  to  this  effect.  A  considerable  sum 
has  already  been  obtained,  and  it  is  hoped  that 
during  the  present  year  the  amount  will  become 
sufficient  for  the  carrying  out  of  the  noble  de- 
sign. ' 

We  clambered  up  a  narrow  and  dark  stair- 
case to  the  belfry,  which  shelters  an  old  chime 
of  bells.  The  swallows  fluttered  and  twittered 
about  "the  ivy-mantled  tower,"  as  if  practicing 
the  melodies  which  so  often  have  floated  out 
through  the  air.  The  spire  bears  a  curious 
VOL.  III.-'i6. 


miniature  resemblance  to  the  loftier  steeple  of 
Trinity  Church,  Stratford-on-Avon.  A  square 
tower,  in  each  structure,  at  a  little  distance 
from  the  roof  is  suddenly  contracted  into  a 
slender,  tapering,  and  unadorned  spire.  The 
difference  of  dimensions  suggests  the  relative 
positions  in  literature  of  the  lyrical  and  the 
dramatic  poet.  As  we  descended,  we  passed  a 
second  time  through  the  little  forest  of  bell- 
ropes,  and  peeped  into  the  oaken  gallery  where 
the  ringers  sit  during  service. 

The  key  turned  in  the  door  of  the  low-linteled 
porch.  The  sound  was  a  grating  suggestion 
that,  though  I  was  passing  into  the  clear  air 
and  the  outer  world,  yet  this  world  is  in  some 
sense  a  crypt  dusty  with  distasteful  memories 
and  incrusted  with  the  rust  of  common  cares. 
We  paused  again  at  the  poet's  grave,  where  I 
bade  my  companion  good-bye.  May  his  life 
be  the  brighter  for  his  kindness  to  a  stranger 
on  that  day.  I  stopped  again  at  the  stile,  with 
retrospective  glance ;  and  then,  the  sinking  sun 
threatening  "to  leave  the  world  to  darkness  and 
to  me,"  I  hastily  returned  to  the  railway  station, 
threading  the  dim  path  which  had  led  me  to 
the  realization  of  one  of  the  dreams  of  boy- 
hood. 

On  the  eve  of  leaving  England,  I  wrote  to  the 
Vicar  of  Stoke  Poges,  requesting  further  details 
respecting  the  projected  memorial  to  the  poet. 
A  reply,  inclosing  a  circular,  was  received,  both 
of  which  are  here  given  : 

[CIRCULAR.] 

"THOMAS  GRAY,  the  poet,  is  buried  in  the  'country 
church-yard'  of  Stoke  Poges,  Buckinghamshire,  amid 
the  scenes  which  he  has  made  dear  to  all  who  read  the 
English  language. 

' '  The  only  record  which  indicates  the  spot  of  his  in- 
terment is  a  small  stone  inserted  opposite  to  his  grave, 
and  beneath  the  east  window  of  the  Hastings  Chapel. 
"  It  is  proposed  to  erect  in  the  Church  of  Stoke  Poges 
a  Memorial  which  shall  more  adequately  express  the  rev- 
erence and  affection  of  his  country  for  one  who  has 
adorned  her  poetry  with  some  of  its  choicest  gems.  It 
has  been  thought  that  this  tribute  may  most  fittingly  be 
offered  in  the  form  of  a  Memorial  Window. 

' '  A  subscription  for  this  purpose  has  been  commenced, 
and  the  proposal  has  been  so  warmly  received  that  it  has 
been  decided  to  invite  public  attention  to  it,  in  the  hope 
not  only  of  erecting  a  worthy  Memorial  to  the  poet,  but 
of  completing  the  restoration  of  the  picturesque  church 
beside  whose  wall  he  rests. 

"The  Committee  for  carrying  out  the  proposal  con- 
sists of 

"His  GRACE  THE  DUKE  OF  LEEDS, 
"The  Right  Rev.  THE  LORD  BISHOP  OF  OXFORD, 
"The  Rev.  VERNON  BLAKE,  Vicar  of  Stoke  Poges, 
"Colonel  R.  HOWARD  VISE,  Stoke  Place, 
"E.  J.  COLEMAN,  Esq.,  Stoke  Park, 
"THE  CHURCHWARDENS  OF  THE  PARISH." 


246 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"  STOKE  POGES  VICARAGE,         ) 
Slough,  10  Nov.,  1880.  j 

"DEAR  SIR  :  I  am  sorry  I  missed  the  opportunity  of 
meeting  you  when  you  called  here  during  your  visit  to 
England,  but  was  glad  that  one  of  my  sons  was  at  home 
and  able  to  show  you  the  church  and  give  you  all  the 
information  he  could  with  regard  to  the  proposed  Me- 
morial to  Gray.  It  is  not  intended  to  restrict  it  so  as 
to  be  only  an  offering  from  his  admirers  in  America,  but 
to  make  it  as  general  and  liberal  as  we  can.  If  only 
sufficient  is  collected  for  a  window,  it  will  take  that 
form ;  but  if  more  should  be  subscribed  than  is  enough 
for  that  purpose,  the  Memorial  will  take  some  larger 
form  in  connection  with  the  church.  f 

"Since  your  visit  I  have  given  directions  for  the  slab 
on  his  tomb  to  be  cleaned,  and  the  inscriptions  cut  out 
again  and  re-lettered,  both  on  the  tomb  and  the  tablet 
under,  the  east  window  of  Hastings  Chapel,  opposite  to 
the  grave. 

"Should  you  be  able  to  interest  some  of  your  friends 
who  are  admirers  of  Gray's  works,  you  would  indeed  be 
a  benefactor  to  the  cause.  The  fund  collected  is  in  the 


Bank  of  England  in  the  name  of  Trustees.     Any  other 
information  I  will  most  gladly  give  you.    Thanking  you 
for  your  polite  note  and  its  friendly  contents,  and  hop- 
ing to  hear  again  from  you,  believe  me 
.  "  Yours  faithfully, 

"VERNON  BLAKE, 

"Vicar  of  Stoke  Poges. 
"To  Mr.  N.  W.  MOORE. 

"P.  S. — It  is  contemplated  that  the  window  should  be 
the  one  opposite  to  the  tomb,  under  which,  you  will  re- 
member, is  the  inscription." 


It  is  my  belief  that  many  Californians  will 
be  glad  to  learn  of  this  opportunity  to  honor 
the  memory  of  one  who  has  enriched  our  com- 
mon literature  with  the  elaborate  and  exquisite 
verses  which  are  quoted  so  frequently  and  ten- 
derly as  to  be  in  a  sense  the  Scripture  of  secu- 
lar song.  NATHAN  W.  MOORE. 


IN    THE   SKYLAND   OMNIBUS. 


If  any  one  supposes  that  this  is  an  irreverent 
name  for  the  fiery  chariot  which  carried  the  an- 
cient prophet  heavenward,  it  is  a  great  mistake. 
The  vehicle  of  my  tale  was  of  an  entirely  earth- 
ly character — simply  an  ordinary  carry-all,  with 
canopy  top,  and  arranged  to  seat  a  double  row 
of  passengers,  six  on  each  side,  and  of  course 
facing  each  other.  The  steeds  also  were  not 
fiery,  even  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the 
term,  but  four  unhappy-tempered  ancient  horses, 
one  of  whom  at  least  showed  unmistakably  vi- 
cious tendencies,  and  needed  much  urging  and 
scourging  to  keep  him  in  the  path  of  rectitude. 
The  driver,  too,  far  from  being  a  seraph,  was  a 
one-eyed  Jehu,  with  a  somewhat  sinister  expres- 
sion and  a  strong  tendency  to  save  his  beloved 
team  by  making  his  passengers  walk  up  all  the 
long  hills.  The  passengers,  however,  came 
nearer  to  being  of  an  angelic  character,  each  one 
of  them  doubtless  at  some  period  of  her  history 
having  been  thus  characterized  by  an  adoring 
swain.  But  they  were  really  a  dozen  mortal 
women  of  varying  size  and  mien,  maiden  and 
matron,  young  and — not  old,  of  course,  but 
verging  that  way.  Most  of  them  were  done  up 
past  recognition  in  linen  ulsters  and  thick  veils, 
but  one  placid  and  venerable  lady  wore  the  dis- 
tinctive and  time-honored  garb  of  the  Society 
of  Friends. 

The  road  over  which  this  precious  feminine 
load  was  being  transported  wound  through  a 
pass  in  the  Santa  Cruz  Mountains — its  general 


direction  southward,  and  its  trend  upward — 
decidedly  upward.  The  omnibus  had  started 
from  the  Garden  City  in  the  early  dawn  of  a 
perfect  June  day,  and  its  destination  was  "Sky- 
land" — not  the  celestial  city,  but  a  beautiful 
camping-ground,  twenty-seven  miles  distant,  on 
the  summit  of  the  mountains,  recently  pur- 
chased by  the  party  of  ladies  now  seated  in  the 
omnibus,  and  who  were  on  their  way  thither  to 
look  over  their  new  possessions,  choose  loca- 
tions, and  make  other  arrangements  for  the 
summer's  campaign.  Now,  we  have  the  time, 
the  place,  and  the  dramatis  persona. 

The  conversation  was  decidedly  brisk  at  first 
as  they  bowled  along  over  the  comparatively 
level  road.  There  was  great  rallying  of  each 
other  on  the  subject  of  their  unwontedly  early 
rising,  and  lively  details  were  given  of  the  vari- 
ous breakfasts  which  had  been  eaten,  like  the 
old  Israelitish  passover,  in  haste  and  standing, 
with  hats  and  dusters  on,  and  lunch -baskets, 
packed  over  night,  conveniently  near.  Many 
averred  that  they  had  tried  to  sleep  with  watches 
under  their  pillows  and  night-lamps  burning, 
and  consequently  had  not  slept  at  all.  Others 
had  succeeded  better  by  simply  sleeping  with 
one  eye  open ;  others  still  had  trusted  to  alarm- 
clocks,  which  had  "gone  off"  at  all  sorts  of  un- 
seasonable hours.  One  only,  the  quiet  school- 
mistress, a  member  of  the  almost  extinct  spe- 
cies of  human  beings  possessing  sound  minds 
in  sound  bodies,  frankly  acknowledged  that  she 


IN  A   SKYLAND   OMNIBUS. 


247 


had  merely  gone  to  bed  a  little  earlier  than 
usual,  and  slept  placidly  till  the  needful  hour 
for  waking.  Consequently,  she  brought  to  this 
day's  enjoyment,  as  is  her  wont,  fresh,  keen 
powers  of  observation  and  reflection,  which 
shone  like  a  lovely  sunrise  in  her  tranquil  gray 
eyes. 

These  varied  experiences  having  been  duly 
compared,  the  company  fell  to  admiring  the 
landscape  with  its  cool  long  morning  shadows 
and  general  air  of  repose  and  freshness.  Some 
discerning  eye  was  sure  to  discover  each  little 
wayside  flower  and  bird,  while  a  chorus  of  ohs  ! 
and  ahs !  greeted  the  appearance  of  any  pictur- 
esque bit  of  scenery  in  sky  or  landscape — the 
enthusiasm  culminating  over  the  mists  drifting 
up  the  hill -sides,  where  it  was  caught  and  held 
entangled  by  the  forests  like  great  fleeces  of 
snowy  wool  stripped  from  cloudland  flocks. 

The  omnibus  rolled  through  the  beautiful  lit- 
tle town  of  Los  Gatos,  and  then  over  a  long 
bridge  and  on  into  the  hills.  Then  the  road 
grew  rough  and  wild,  and  wound  along  the 
edge  of  mighty  precipices  on  a  shelf  of  appall- 
ing narrowness.  Along  the  bottom  of  the  canon 
a  railroad  train  went  thundering.  Nerves  grew 
tense,  exclamations  took  on  an  awe-struck  tone, 
and  audible  sighs  of  relief  greeted  each  hair- 
breadth escape  in  passing  other  wagons,  or  in 
going  around  curves  which  actually  seemed 
to  lean  over  toward  destruction.  Occasionally 
they  encountered  heavily  loaded  wood-wagons, 
chained  together,  and  drawn  by  four  or  six 
patient  dust  covered  horses.  On  these  poor 
animals  the  gentle  dames  expended  much  sym- 
pathy, far  more  than  on  the  equally  dusty 
driver,  who,  perched  aloft  in  his  perilous  seat, 
looked  stolidly  down,  while  his  great  wheels 
went  creaking  and  pounding  along  within  an 
inch  of  the  awful  abyss. 

Fortunately  for  the  Skyland  omnibus,  it  had 
by  legal  right  the  inside  track  in  these  nerve-try- 
ing encounters ;  but,  as  it  is  almost  as  alarming 
to  witness  the  peril  of  others  as  to  be  in  danger 
one's  self,  many  of  the  ladies  adopted  the  plan 
of  shutting  their  eyes  when  there  was  any  turn- 
ing-out to  be  done,  thus  sealing  at  least  one 
avenue  to  the  inner  citadel  where  Fear  dwells. 

The  pretty  little  hostelry  of  L was  soon 

passed;  then  the  neat  wayside  school-house, 
with  its  open  door  and  windows  showing  "small 
heads  all  a-row."  In  the  grove  about  the  build- 
ing half  a  dozen  ponies  were  tethered,  on  which 
the  little  people  had  ridden  to  school  "bare- 
back," and  often  two,  or  even  three,  on  one 
pony.  Then  the  charming  little  railway  sta- 
tion of  Alma  shone  amid  the  trees — a  Tadmor 
in  the  wilderness.  A  pause  was  made  at  the 
picturesque  "Forest  House,"  where  the  gentle 


hostess  gave  cordial  greeting  to  her  well  known 
friends — the  Skyland  folk — who  could  scarcely 
tear  themselves  away  from  so  attractive  a  spot. 
But  horses  and  people  had  drunk  their  fill  of 
the  delicious  water,  the  sun  was  getting  warm 
and  high,  and  so  they  murmured,  with  a  sigh, 
"Excelsior!"  and  clambered  in.  Now  the  road 
ran  through  a  beautiful  forest  and  over  clear 
mountain  streams.  Conversation  brightened 
perceptibly. 

"Now  is  the  time  for  stories,"  asserted  an 
animated  voice. 

"Yes,  by  all  means,  let  us  tell  stories,"  re- 
sponded a  chorus. 

"Stories  of  adventure,"  suggested  some  one. 

"Let  Penelope  begin,"  said  another.  "She 
is  our  story-teller  par  excellence? 

So  Penelope  began — dear  Penelope !  who  is 
ever  industriously  weaving,  like  her  namesake 
of  old,  only'  a  far  more  wonderful  web,  the 
woof  of  which  is  the  tangled  skein  of  circum- 
stance as  seen  by  her  discerning  and  trans- 
muting eye,  and  the  warp  the  golden -hued 
thread  of  her  fancy. 

Ah,  if  only  the  rich,  sweet  tones,  the  glowing 
face,  the  dramatic  gesture,  the  wonderful  mag- 
netism of  her  presence  could  be  transferred  to 
paper ! 

PENELOPE'S  STORY. 

"I  was  a  young  girl,"  she  said,  "when  my 
parents,  who  lived  in  Frederick,  Maryland,  re- 
ceived a  visit  from  a  cousin,  Madame  Fairfield, 
who  lived  over  the  mountains  in  Virginia  on  an 
estate  nearly  a  hundred  miles  away.  She  was 
a  stately  lady  of  the  ancien  regime,  and  trav- 
eled in  her  family  coach,  with  her  black  coach- 
man in  livery  on  a  high  seat  in  front.  An  air 
of  immense  respectability  hovered  about  the 
entire  establishment,  from  the  high -stepping 
horses  in  their  silver -mounted  harness  to  the 
substantial  leather  trunks  and  portmanteaus  in 
the  boot  behind.  We  lived  in  simpler  fashion 
at  our  house  than  our  cousin  was  accustomed 
to  in  her  own  domains ;  but  my  mother  was  a 
lady  born,  and  my  father  a  chivalrous  gentle- 
man, so  all  deficiencies  which  Madame  Fair- 
field  might  discover  were  amply  compensated 
by  the  fine  flower  of  courtesy.  She  had  a  de- 
lightful visit  of  several  weeks,  receiving  much 
attention  socially,  and  greatly  enjoying  all  the 
hospitalities  extended  to  her.  Nor  did  she  fail 
to  approve  and  avail  herself  of  that  which  is 
ever  dear  to  the  heart  of  woman — the  shopping 
privileges  of  Frederick.  Among  other  things, 
she  added  largely  to  her  stock  of  silver  plate, 
which  was  duly  packed  and  securely  nailed  up 
in  a  box  by  itself. 


248 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"And  now  Madame  Fairfield  began  to  urge 
that  I  be  allowed  to  return  with  her  for  a  win- 
ter's visit  at  her  home  in  Cressonburg.  I  need 
not  say  that  I  joined  in  the  entreaty,  for,  al- 
though I  loved  home  dearly,  like  other  nest- 
lings I  was  eager  to  try  my  wings ;  and  my 
dear  parents,  with  many  doubts  and  misgivings, 
at  last  consented  to  the  arrangement.  It  was 
just  the  old  experience  over  again  : 

"'The  young  heart  hot  and  restless, 
The  old  subdued  and  slow.' 

"At  length  the  day  for  our  departure  came, 
and,  all  tears  and  smiles,  I  found  myself  en- 
sconced in  the  soft,  cream  -  colored  cushions 
and  linings  of  the  Fairfield  traveling  carriage. 
There  were  now  four  in  the  company,  for  an 
older  and  much  more  elegant  young  lady  cousin 
was  also  to  be  a  visitor  at  Cressonburg,  and  my 
dear  boy  cousin,  Oliver  Fairfield,  who  had  been 
at  school  near  Frederick,  was  returning  home 
for  a  vacation.  So  we  made  a  nice  coachful, 
Madame  Fairfield  and  Miss  Cecilia  on  the  back 
seat,  Oliver  and  I  facing  them.  How  beautiful 
the  world  looked  to  me  that  delightful  summer 
morning!  The  brisk,  inspiriting  motion,  Oli- 
ver's overflowing  spirits,  even  the  delicate  odors 
which  escaped  from  Miss  Cecilia's  reticule,  are 
all  stamped  ineffaceably  on  my  memory.  We 
passed  through  what  I  shall  always  think  the 
most  beautiful  country  in  the  world — across  no- 
ble rivers  and  over  picturesque  hills,  following 
the  old  stage  road  from  Frederick  over  a  spur 
of  the  Alleghanies  to  our  Virginian  destination. 
Part  of  the  road  over  the  summit  was  through 
an  almost  unbroken  forest  of  pines,  and  there 
is  where  we  had  our  adventure.  We  stopped, 
just  before  beginning  the  ascent,  at  a  little  way- 
side inn  for  an  hour  of  rest  and  refreshment, 
and  noticed  a  man  lounging  on  the  piazza,  who 
made  some  inquiries  of  our  black  driver,  Pom- 
pey,  as  to  where  we  were  going,  and  volunteer- 
ed some  advice  about  a  shorter  route  which  we 
might  make  at  a  certain  crossing. 

" '  1  am  going  the  same  way,'  he  added,  with 
a  good-natured  air  of  comradeship. 

"But  our  stately  old  Pompey  knew  better 
than  to  trust  much  to  an  unfledged  acquaint- 
ance, and  so  paid  little  attention  to  his  remarks 
or  suggestions. 

"Soon  we  were  on  the  way  again,  and  as  I 
glanced  down  the  winding  ascent  which  we 
were  just  beginning  I  saw  that  we  were  follow- 
ed by  our  new  acquaintance,  who  kept  near  us 
with  apparently  little  effort.  By  and  by  the 
forest  darkened  about  us,  and  as  we  stopped  to 
let  our  horses  breathe,  he  overtook  us,  nodded 
pleasantly,  and  passed  on.  Soon  we  again 


caught  up  with  him,  and  now  he  quickened 
his  pace,  and  as  he  trudged  along  beside  us 
again  began  talking  of  the  more  direct  road. 
As  he  talked  he  laid  his  hand  familiarly  on  the 
open  window  of  the  coach,  and  I  noticed  a  long 
red  scar  across  its  back.  A  shudder  ran  over 
me  involuntarily  as  I  thought  what  a  terrible 
blow  it  must  have  taken  to  leave  such  an  ugly 
and  abiding  mark.  He  now  grew  even  more 
loquacious,  and  began  to  tell  us  how  in  early 
days  he  was  a  drover,  and  had  brought  many  a 
big  drove  of  cattle  along  this  same,  road,  and 
what  a  wild,  rough  life  it  was. 

"'Why,  right  about  here,"  said  he,  'there's 
been  awful  murders  done  and  no  end  of  rpb- 
bin'.  Why,  onc't  I  was  a^goin'  along  here  with 
a  lot  o'  sheep  an'  cattle  for  the  Frederick  mar- 
ket, an'  it  was  just  at  dark,  an'  I  heerd  the  aw- 
fullest  yell  ye  ever  heerd ;  an'  I  rode  back  as 
fast  as  I  could  a  quarter  of  a  mile  or  so  whar 
the  sound  seemed  to  come  from,  and  thar  lay  a 
man  right  in  the  road,  butchered — jest  butch- 
ered, an' — ' 

"'Oh,  stop,  pray,'  cried  Madame  Fairfield, 
'I  don't  wish  these  young  people  terrified  by 
such  dreadful  stories.' 

"But  ere  she  had  finished  her  sentence,  Oli- 
ver leaned  from  the  opposite  window  of  the 
coach — to  see  if  we  were  pursued  by  a  ghost,  he 
afterward  acknowledged — when,  to  his  amaze- 
ment, he  saw  a  man  cutting  the  straps  which 
held  the  trunks.  He  uttered  a  sudden  cry  of 
alarm. 

"'Oh,  mamma,  there's  a  robber  behind  us!' 

"'Whip  the  horses,  Pompey — whip,  whip!' 
ordered  Madame  Fairfield,  leaning  forward  and 
growing  white  with  terror. 

"The  horses  sprang  forward  with  great 
bounds,  but  with  the  first  leap  the  trunks  rolled 
heavily  to  the  ground,  while  the  sharp  crack  of 
a  pistol  rang  on  the  air,  and  at  the  same  in- 
stant a  ball  whizzed  by  my  ear  and  buried  itself 
in  the  cushion  behind  me,  against  which  a  mo- 
ment before  I  had  been  leaning.  It  was  a  part- 
ing salute  from  our  friend,  no  doubt  meant  for 
old  Pompey,  but  falling  below  the  mark.  The 
horses  galloped  furiously  on,  and,  after  a  mo- 
ment, Pompey,  looking  back,  said  reassuringly 
to  us  poor  women  crouching  in  the  bottom  of 
the  coach  half  dead  with  fear : 

"  'Don't  be  scared,  ladies.    Dem  poh  sinners 
is  busy  wid  your  trunks.     Dey's  done  given  u 
us  up,  suah.' 

"After  a  little,  he  chuckled : 

"'Dey's  done  missed  gettin'  missus's  silver. 
Here  it  am,  all  safe  under  dis  chile's  feet.' 

"In  half  an  hour,  though  it  seemed  an  endless 
time  to  us,  we  were  at  the  half-way  house,  and 
received  every  possible  kindness  and  attention, 


IN  A   SKYLAND   OMNIBUS. 


249 


but  we  did  not  resume  our  journey  till  the  next 
day,  and  then  with  a  well  armed  man  on  the 
seat  by  Pompey.  Meanwhile,  the  alarm  had 
spread,  and  a  dozen  men  were  in  pursuit  of  the 
robbers.  Our  broken  and  rifled  trunks  were 
found  by  the  roadside  where  they  fell.  Madame 
Fairfield's  costly  jewelry  and  velvets  were  gone, 
Miss  Cecilia's  laces  and  jewels  also,  while  my 
poor  possessions  were  slighted,  excepting  a 
beautiful  cashmere  shawl,  which  was  my  moth- 
er's, but  which  she  had  lovingly  insisted  on 
adding  to  my  wardrobe.  I  had  also,  like  any 
school  girl,  put  my  purse  with  its  precious  con- 
tents into  my  trunk,  and  that  of  course  was 
taken. 

"There  is  just  a  little  sequel  to  my  story. 
About  two  months  after  my  arrival  at  Cresson- 
burg,  one  day  an  officer  appeared  at  Madame 
Fairfield's  and  requested  us  to  go  over  to  the 
court-house  and  help  identify  a  man  who  had 
been  arrested,  and  who  was  supposed  to  be  the 
highwayman  who  had  attacked  us.  Cecilia  and 
I  turned  pale  at  the  thought,  for  he  had  haunt- 
ed our  dreams  ever  since;  but  Madame  Fair- 
field  thought  best  for  us  all  to  go,  and  so  we 
drove  over  and  went  timidly  up  the  long  flight 
of  steps  and  into  the  great  bare  court -room. 
There  was  to  be  an  informal  examination  of  the 
prisoner,  and  as  we  entered  we  saw  a  group  of 
men  gathered  about  a  wretched,  haggard  look- 
ing man,  heavily  handcuffed,  and  sitting  in  a 
corner  of  the  room,  with  an  officer  in  close  at- 
tendance. 

"We  drew  nearer  and  looked  at  the  man 
in  a  sort  of  terrified  fascination.  Yes,  it  was 
the  same  one  who  had  stood  so  near  me  on 
that  memorable  evening.  There  was  no  mis- 
taking him,  but  assurance  was  made  doubly  sure 
when  I  looked  down  at  his  manacled  hands  and 
saw,  with  a  cold  chill  of  horror,  that  sickening 
long  red  scar.  He  was  too  stolid  and  hardened . 
to  show  the  slightest  recognition  of  us;  but 
months  afterward,  when  he  was  serving  out  his 
sentence  in  the  State's  prison,  he  confessed  that 
he  had  been  prowling  around  Frederick,  and 
had  been  in  the  silversmith's  when  Madame 
Fairfield  made  her  purchases.  He  had  then 
followed  her  home,  and  ascertained  in  various 
ways  who  she  was  and  when  she  would  start 
on  her  homeward  journey.  He  and  his  accom- 
plice had  hoped  to  take  off  the  trunks  unob- 
served from  the  back  of  our  coach,  and  so  be- 
come possessors  of  the  silver.  The  plan  was 
evidently  for  him  to  engage  us  in  such  interest- 
ing conversation  that  we  would  take  no  notice 
of  affairs  behind  us.  It  was  only  when  this  de- 
vice failed  that  he  resorted  to  his  pistol,  and 
came  so  near  adding  my  innocent  blood  to  the 
other  crimes  of  that  red-scarred  hand." 


Penelope's  story  was  received  with  great  ap- 
preciation, and  now  she  turned  gracefully  to- 
ward the  Quaker  lady,  and,  unconsciously  adopt- 
ing the  plain  language,  said  : 

"Now,  friend  Wise,  tell  us  thy  robber  story." 

Then  the  gentle  old  lady  cast  down  her  eyes 
a  little  deprecatingly,  and  said  : 

"Why,  Penelope,  if  thee  means  the  little  in- 
cident which  I  once  mentioned  to  thee  as  hav- 
ing befallen  me  on  this  road  over  which  we  are 
now  going,  it  seems  hardly  worth  repeating." 

But,  being  strongly  urged,  she  began. 

FRIEND   JANE  WISE'S   STORY. 

"  It  befell  me  on  this  road  over  which  we  are 
now  journeying  with  so  much  security,  and  it 
hardly  seems  possible  that  such  a  thing  could 
have  happened  here  and  only  six  years  ago. 
Yes,  right  about  this  very  spot  it  occurred,  and 
it  was  six  years  ago  the  first  day  of  last  fourth 
month.     Four  or  five  passengers,  of  whom  I 
was  one,  were  in  the  regular  stage  running  over 
the  mountain  to  Santa  Cruz.     One  of  the  pas- 
sengers was  a  young  man,  .who  seemed  even 
more  than  the  average  youth  of  the  present  day 
inclined  to  join  in  the  conversation,  and  I  was 
not  pleased  with  his  manner  of   speech.     It 
seemed  to  me  both  bold  and  frivolous,  as  if  he 
had  been  indulging  too  freely  in  intoxicating 
liquor;  so  I  maintained  a  serious  and  marked 
silence  toward  him.    There  was  but  one  woman 
besides  myself  in  the  company,  and  she  was 
the  wife  of  the  driver  and  sat  beside  him.    The 
stage  carried  the  mail,  and  also  express  matter. 
Just  as  we  reached  a  clump  of  trees,  suddenly 
a  roughly  dressed  man  sprang  from  behind  one, 
and,  seizing  the  horses  by  the  bits,  pointed  a 
pistol  at  the  driver  and  ordered  him  to  throw 
out  the  express-box.    At  the  same  time  he  step- 
ped to  the  side  of  the  stage  and  told  the  pas- 
sengers to  take  out  their  money.     All  were  so 
taken  by  surprise  that  there  was  no  time  for  a 
man  to  draw  a  weapon,  and  there  was  no  re- 
sistance made.     The  driver  assured  the  man 
that  he  had  no  express  matter,  but  tossed  down 
the  mail  bag.     Among  the  passengers  the  first 
to  take  out  his  money  was  the  talkative  youth. 
He  made  quite  a  show  of  getting  out  two  dol- 
lars, which  he  said  was  all  he  had,  at  the  same 
time  urging  the  rest  to  'shell  out,'  as  he  said, 
there  being  no  kind  of  use  in  refusing.   The  pis- 
tol was  cocked,  and  pointed  right  into  the  stage, 
and  the  robber  ordered  us  to  be  quick.    If  there 
was  the  least  hesitation,  the  murderous  looking 
weapon  came  nearer,  and  so  the  men,  even  to 
the  driver,  took  out  their  wallets,  and  the  poor, 
frightened  woman  meekly  pulled  out  her  little 
purse.    The  wretched  man  took  it  all,  and  then, 


250 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


with  an  oath,  kicked  the  mail -bag  up  to  his 
hand,  shook  it,  and  tossed  it  into  the  stage, 
saying  there  was  nothing  in  that  which  he 
wanted — he  was  after  money.  Now,  it  so 
chanced  that  I  had  quite  a  large  sum  of  money 
in  my  purse  which  I  was  conveying  for  another 
person,  but  I  gave  it  very  little  thought,  neither 
was  I  greatly  moved  by  fear.  One  feeling 
alone  was  borne  in  upon  my  mind — that  of 
great  pity  for  the  poor  wretch  who  took  so  base 
a  way  to  obtain  that  which  he  might  so  easily 
have  earned  by  honest  labor.  I  also  felt  a 
moving  of  the  spirit  to  bear  testimony  against 
his  great  wickedness.  But  while  I  was  in  this 
frame  of  mind  I  thought  I  detected  a  glance  of 
understanding  between  the  young  man  in  the 
stage  and  the  robber  without,  as  if  telling  him 
that  he  had  overlooked  me.  Still  I  maintained 
my  composure,  and  looked  intently,  and  no 
doubt  with  great  compassion,  at  this  poor,  mis- 
guided being.  Suddenly  his  eyes  met  mine, 
and  without  speaking  roughly  to  me  or  de- 
manding my  money  (which  I  would  not  have 
given  him  except  under  great  compulsion,  I 
may  say  violence),  strange  to  say,  his  counte- 
nance fell,  and  he  turned  away  from  me,  bade 
the  driver  whip  the  horses,  and  himself  disap- 
peared in  the  woods.  It  has  always  been  a 
matter  of  regret  to  me  that  I  did  not  speak 
plainly  to  him  of  his  sin  and  folly,  but  perchance 
he  read  it  all  in  my  countenance. 

"As  we  pursued  our  way,  there  was  of  course 
much  talk  among  the  passengers  of  what  had 
happened,  in  which  this. youth,  of  whom  I  have 
spoken,  took  great  part.  He  kept  asserting 
that  if  he  had  only  had  a  pistol  he  would  have 
killed  the  robber  on  the  spot,  and  he  appealed 
to  me  several  times  to  know  if  I  did  not  think 
that  the  deed  would  have  been  justifiable.  At 


first  I  kept  silence,  but  as  he  pressed  the  ques- 
tion I  finally  said : 

"'Does  thee  think  he  was  prepared  to  stand 
before  his  Judge?' 

"He  made  no  answer,  and  I  now  felt  it  to  be 
my  turn  to  insist;  so  I  repeated  my  question 
several  times,  and  at  last  he  reluctantly  an- 
swered, 'No.' 

"  I  reached  my  destination  safely,  and  deliv- 
ered the  money  to  its  owner;  feeling  greatly 
thankful  to  the  kind  Providence  which  had 
protected  me  in  so  great  a  peril. 

"Two  weeks  afterward  the  stage  was  again 
robbed  in  nearly  the  same  place,  and  this  time 
there  were  two  highwayman.  But  their  career 
was  a  short  one.  They  were  soon  captured  by 
our  sheriff  and  his  men,  and  brought  to  justice. 
I  visited  them  in  jail,  as  it  is  my  custom  to  labor 
with  prisoners,  hoping  they  may  be  snatched 
as  brands  from  the  burning.  Like  Penelope, 
I  recognized  the  robber,  and  in  his  accomplice 
I  also  found  the  unprincipled  youth  who  rode 
beside  me  in  the  stage.  I  talked  with  them, 
and  gave  them  Testaments,  but  I  know  not 
whether  the  seed  fell  on  stony  places,  or  bore 
fruit.  I  must  leave  that  till  the  great  harvest. 
I  once  told  this  tale  to  a  sister  in  the  convent, 
and  she  said, ' It  was  thy  holy  dress  saved  theeS 
but  I  think  it  was  the  good  care  of  my  Father 
in  Heaven. " 

The  gentle  voice  ceased,  and  a  great  quiet 
fell  upon  the  company  for  a  few  moments;  but 
just  as  the  story-telling  was  about  to  be  renew- 
edj  the  driver  broke  in  upon  the  order  of  pro  - 
ceedings  by  saying  that  his  horses  were  "nigh 
about  tuckered  out,  and  would  the  heaviest  of 
the  load  be  so  obliging  as  to  git  out  and  walk 
a  spell?"  MARY  H.  FIELD. 


UNCLE   SAM   AND   THE   WESTERN    FARMER. 


Uncle  Sam  was  seated  in  his  comfortable 
parlor,  thinking,  as  he  is  wont  to  do,  of  the  wel- 
fare and  happiness  of  his  numerous  family. 
Around  him  on  every  hand  were  scattered  the 
many  signs  of  prosperity  and  wealth.  The 
costly  furniture  and  rich  carpets  of  the  apart- 
ment, the  lines  of  well  bound  volumes  on  the 
shelves,  the  pair  of  stately  horses  that  waited 
at  the  door,  the  beautiful  and  well  ordered 
grounds  in  which  his  mansion  stood — all  these 
things  told  their  own  tale.  Uncle  Sam  was  a 
rich  man, 


Many  were  the  visitors  this  noble  man  had 
received  during  the  day  on  which  the  Western 
farmer  ventured  to  present  himself  in  that  ven- 
erable presence,  and  many  the  words  of  coun- 
sel, wisdom,  and  kindness  which  had  fallen  from 
his  lips.  It  was  not  his  habit  to  measure  men 
by  their  external  appearance.  Freely  he  poured 
forth  the  wealth  of  his  cultivated  mind,  of  his 
rich  experience,  of  his  large  and  noble  heart, 
for  the  good  of  all. 

Yet,  as  the  farmer  approached  him,  he  look- 
ed with  a  sharp  glance  of  surprise  from  under 


UNCLE  SAM  AND    THE    WESTERN  FARMER. 


his  shaggy  eyebrows,  where  the  weight  of  in- 
tellect seemed  too  heavy  for  the  somewhat  spare 
and  feeble  frame  that  supported  it.  Uncle  Sam 
had  no  contempt  for  poverty.  He  loved  the 
poor,  and  it  had  been  the  labor  of  his  life  to 
protect  them.  But  in  the  man  that  stood  be- 
fore him  something  more  than  poverty  was  ap- 
parent. There  was  disappointment,  sorrow,  re- 
proach— almost  despair. 

He  stood  with  his  head  bent  heavily  forward, 
his  chin  resting  upon  his  breast.  His  slouched 
and  weather-beaten  hat  was  crushed  together 
under  his  right  arm,  and  his  hands  were  folded 
before  him.  Standing  first  uneasily  on  one  foot, 
and  then  on  the  other,  his  ragged  pants  drawn 
above  the  disreputable  boots,  he  looked  rather 
like  a  beggar  seeking  alms  than  a  citizen  of  the 
great  republic.  Uncle  Sam  loved  not  the  beg- 
gar. He  believed  in  honest  toil,  and  he  knew 
what  toil  can  do.  His  lips  were  open  to  ad- 
monish and  rebuke,  but  the  farmer  was  too 
quick  for  him.  Suddenly  lifting  his  head  and 
looking  straight  into  the  eyes  of  the  stern  and 
gentle  old  man,  he  said  : 

"I  have  come  to  seek  your  counsel,  Uncle.  I 
want  to  know  how  I  am  to  live  and  be  honest?" 

Uncle  Sam  liked  that  l6ok  of  the  farmer,  and 
he  liked  the  question.  The  look  was  one  of 
sturdy  independence,  and  told  plainly  enough 
that  this  was  the  son  of  a  free  soil.  The  ques- 
tion was  one  to  which  it  seemed  only  too  easy 
to  give  a  satisfactory  reply.  Uncle  Sam  an- 
swered : 

"  To  live,  my  son,  you  must  work ;  to  be  hon- 
est, you  must  pay  your  debts." 

"I  have  worked  and  yet  I  cannot  live,  nor 
can  I  pay  my  debts." 

"Sit  down,  my  son — sit  down,  and  let  us  talk 
the  matter  over.  You  want  a  little  start  in  life, 
no  doubt.  I  am  owner  of  vast  lands,  where 
as  yet  the  plow  has  never  traveled.  You  look 
strong  to  work  and  brave  to  meet  a  little  pres-. 
ent  hardship  with  resolution.  Let  us  look  now 
over  some  of  these  beautiful  maps  that  I  have 
here.  I  can  find  a  little  spot  where  you  will 
easily  make  yourself  comfortable,  and  will  let 
you  have  it  on  easy  terms.  Some  seed  can  be 
readily  supplied  to  you,  for  wheat  is  abundant. 
And,  I  dare  say,  I  can  do  something  toward  a 
team,  and  so  on,  to  start  you.  I  have  many 
friends  who  are  willing  to  help  the  industrious." 

"Uncle,  you  have  mistaken  me,"  said  the 
farmer.  "  I  did  not  come  to  ask  alms,  nor  even 
to  receive  the  land  you  so  freely  give.  I  already 
have  a  farm  which  is  all  my  own,  and  my  barns 
are  full  of  grain,  yet  I  cannot  live  or  be  honest. 
I  want  your  counsel." 

"Oh,  I  see — I  see,"  said  the  old  man;  "you 
do  not  understand  business,  and  you  want  me 


to  assist  and  instruct  you  in  managing  your  af- 
fairs. I  shall  be  very  glad  to  do  so — very  glad, 
indeed.  Many  a  poor  fellow  have  I  helped  out 
of  difficulties  in  this  way.  Old  as  I  am,  I  have 
lost  none  of  my  powers.  I  can  master  a  diffi- 
cult account  as  easily  to-day  as  I  could  when 
quite  a  young  man.  What  is  the  trouble?" 

"The  trouble,  Uncle,  is  this:  That  I  grow  my 
wheat,  and  hay,  and  corn,  of  which  I  have  al- 
ways had  abundant  harvests;  that  I  pay  my 
laborers  such  wages  as  will  enable  them  just  to 
live ;  that  I  feed  my  stock,  and  live  myself,  with 
my  family,  in  as  humble  and  quiet  a  way  as  it 
is  possible  to  do ;  but  when  the  crops  are  sold, 
I  have  less  than  nothing  left — I  am  in  debt. 
What  am  I  to  do?" 

"What  are  you  to  do !"  said  Uncle  Sam,  be- 
ginning to  get  excited  as  he  saw  the  chance  of 
a  difficult  business  problem  presenting  itself  for 
solution — "what  are  you  to  do,  my  good  man ! 
Don't  you  see  that  all  your  trouble  has  come 
from  your  not  understanding  the  first  principles 
of  business?  Now,  let  us  begin  at  once  and  see 
whether  you  cannot  this  morning  master  the 
alphabet  of  sound  business  relations.  Try  and 
commit  this  little  sentence  to  memory  now,  re- 
peating after  me :  ' In  all  commercial  transac- 
tions it  is  necessary  to  buy  in  the  cheapest  mar- 
ket and  to  sell  in  the  dearest?  " 

The  farmer  repeated  these  words  after  Uncle 
Sam,  and  then  pondered  a  minute.  Then  he 
answered : 

"Uncle,  that  is  just  what  I  have  been  doing 
all  along." 

This  grand  old  man — a  shrewd  observer  of 
character — thought  he  detected  something  in 
the  attitude  and  bearing  of  the  farmer  that 
looked  a  little  suspicious. 

"Come,  my  fine  fellow,"  he  said,  "let  us  have 
the  truth  now.  You  know  I  am  accustomed  to 
hear  all  sorts  of  confessions  from  the  people  I 
wish  to  help;  but  I  can  do  nothing  until  I 
know  all  of  the  case.  Has  not  there  been  a  lit- 
tle extravagance  now? — a  little  too  much  of  the 
— of  the  whisky  bottle,  you  know?  Speak  out ! " 

"I  never  touch  a  drop,  sir." 

"Well  —  don't  be  angry  —  I  only  want  the 
truth,  you  know.  Let  us  see  what  can  be  done. 
I  don't  quite  understand  the  case.  It  is  a  little 
difficult  to  see  how  a  man  with  his  barns  full  of 
wheat  can  be  ruined  and  in  debt.  Are  you 
quite  sure  that  you  have  always  attended  to 
that  rule  I  gave  you?  Have  you  always  sold 
in  the  dearest  market?" 

"I  have  always  sold  in  San  Francisco,  which 
is  my  best  market.  And  this  year,  when  I' have 
paid  my  laborers  and  my  store  bills,  I  shall  not 
have  enough  to  pay  my  taxes — and  I  cannot 
get  the  money.  What  am  I  to  do  ?" 


252 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


"Ahem !  Yours  is  a  rather  difficult  case.  I 
don't  exactly  see  my  way;  but  something  can 
be  done,  I  dare  say." 

Uncle  Sam  paced  the  room  in  some  anxiety, 
having  come  upon  a  "problem  in  civilization" 
which  was  new  to  him.  His  kind  heart  was 
pained  to  think  that  he  was  no  longer  able  to 
give  help  in  the  grand  free-handed  way  to 
which  he  had  been  accustomed  all  his  life.  Al- 
ways in  former  years  he  had  advised  the  needy 
to  "go  on  the  land,"  being  well  assured  that  the 
producer  could  never  want  bread.  Here  was 
a  man  whose  labor  was  destroying  him ;  whose 
farm  was  eating  him  up ;  whose  splendid  limbs, 
and  power  of  endurance,  and  toil  were  of  no 
avail,  for  the  fruits  of  the  earth  which  he  tilled 
would  no  longer  pay  for  the  clothing  of  his 
body,  or  taxes  of  the  State  in  which  he  lived. 

But  Uncle  Sam  was  never  yet  beaten  by  a 
difficulty,  and  now,  as  always,  he  rose  to  the 
occasion. 

"You  have  your  wheat  still  in  hand,  you 
say?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"That  is  good.  You  shall  come  with  me — I 
am  going  to  make  a  short  visit  to  the  good 
'Brother  John.'  It  is  a  little  journey  across  the 
water,  but  it  will  not  take  us  long.  John  is  a 
fine  old  gentleman  in  his  way — a  little  narrow, 
but  with  a  good  heart.  He  and  I  quarreled 
long  ago,  but  we  are  quite  friendly  now.  And 
the  great  thing  about  him  is  this :  That  he  has 
a  numerous  family  to  support,  and  a  great  many 
work-people  to  feed.  So  he  is  a  large  buyer  of 
wheat,  and  ready  to  give  a  fair  price.  Many  a 
man  in  trouble  have  I  sent  to  him.  Go  you 
now  and  fetch  your  produce.  We  will  take  it 
over  to  Brother  John  and  get  the  worth  of  it." 

It  does  not  take  a  Western  man  long  to  pre- 
pare for  a  journey.  Our  farmer  slouched  on 
his  hat,  and  threw  his  great  coat  over  his  shoul- 
ders. Orders  were  given  to  ship  the  wheat, 
and  in  a  few  hours  the  travelers  were  on  their 
journey. 

Brother  John,  a  short,  round  man,  with  a  rosy 
face  and  a  countenance  full  of  good  will,  hearti- 
ly welcomed  his  visitors.  There  was  no  diffi- 
culty about  the  quality  of  the  wheat,  or  the  price 
to  be  given  for  it.  The  cash  should  be  paid 
down  on  the  spot. 

The  countenance  of  the  farmer  beamed  with 
delight  when  he  saw  the  little  pile  of  gold  be- 
fore him.  He  had  regarded  himself  as  a  ruined 
man.  He  was  now  saved — saved  by  the  skill 
and  business  knowledge  of  Uncle  Sam,  who 
had  not  only  told  him  where  to  sell  his  produce 
in  the  dearest  market,  but  had  taken  him  to 
it.  He  strolled  up  and  down  the  streets  of  the 
little  town  in  which  the  good  John  had  estab- 


lished himself,  and  was  not  a  little  astonished 
at  what  he  saw. 

"Uncle  Sam,"  said  he,  "has  done  well  for 
me.  He  has  brought  me  to  the  market  where 
I  can  'sell  the  dearest,'  and  to  the  place  of  all 
others  in  the  world  where  I  can  'buy  the  cheap- 
est.' Here  will  I  spend  the  money  I  have  got. 
It  is  fair  that  I  should  do  so.  What  a  roll  of 
flannel  at  twenty-five  cents  the  yard  for  my 
good  wife  who  has  never  a  thread  of  flannel  on 
her  back !  What  knives  that  will  really  cut  ! — 
made  of  a  material  something  harder  than  a 
rusty  hoop-iron.  What  boots  and  shoes  for  my 
little  girls  and  boys  at  no  more  than  fifty  cents 
the  pair !  How  many  hundred  per  cent,  shall 
I  not  save  in  the  buying  as  I  have  gained  in 
in  the  selling  by  this  most  fortunate  visit  to  the 
little  town  which  John  built." 

He  returned  to  the  office  in  which  Uncle 
Sam  was  still  sitting  with  Brother  John.  The 
pile  of  money  lay  on  the  table  before  them. 

"Uncle  Sam,"  said  he,  "you  have  been  a 
kind  friend  to  me.  You  have  brought  me  to 
the  market  where  I  have  best  sold  my  wheat. 
But  you  have  done  more  than  this.  For  it  is 
here,  also,  I  find  that  I  can  'buy  the  cheapest,' 
as  you  advised  me  to  do.  I  will  now  take  my 
money  and  spend  it  in  this  home  of  industry 
and  cheapness." 

As  the  Western  farmer  thus  spoke,  he  no- 
ticed a  sudden  and  remarkable  change  pass 
over  the  benevolent  countenance  of  Uncle  Sam. 
He  looked  like  a  man  who  had  suddenly  come 
upon  a  great  danger  and  knew  not  how  to  face 
it,  or,  let  us  say  rather,  like  one  whose  char- 
acter for  honor  and  uprightness  had  been  put 
in  jeopardy  by  some  unexpected  complication 
in  the  management  of  his  affairs.  He  stood  up 
and  his  hand  twitched  nervously  as  he  looked 
down  upon  the  money  which  the  farmer  was 
about  to  grasp. 

"Stop,  my  friend  —  stop.  I  have  something 
to  say." 

But  the  farmer  did  not  stop,  and  his  fingers 
were  about  to  seize  the  cash.  Then,  in  a  mo- 
ment, the  broad  right  hand  of  Uncle  Sam  clos- 
ed upon  the  pile  of  bright  sovereigns  on  the  ta- 
ble, as  he  said,  sternly: 

"You  must  not  spend  your  money  here,  sir. 
It  is  against  my  rules  to  allow  you  to  do  so." 

Will  our  farmer  ever  forget  that  moment  to 
the  last  day  of  his  life?  His  dream  of  redemp- 
tion from  debt  vanished. 

"Against  your  rules,  sir, "  he  answered ; 
"what  am  I  to  understand  by  that?  Was  it  not 
you  who,  but  two  or  three  days  ago,  gave  me 
the  fullest  instructions,  and  caused  me  to  com- 
mit them  to  memory,  that  if  I  wished  to  be  hon- 
est, to  pay  my  debts,  and  support  my  family, 


UNCLE  SAM  AND    THE    WESTERN  FARMER. 


253 


I  must  learn  before  all  things,  first,  to  sell  in 
the  dearest  market^  and  second,  to  buy  in  the 
cheapest?  This,  you  said,  must  be  the  first 
great  rule  of  my  life.  How,  then,  can  I  be  act- 
ing contrary  to  the  law  in  following  counsel  so 
just  and  wise?  Already,  I  have  found  a  ship- 
master who  is  going  to  San  Francisco,  and,  as 
it  were,  will  pass  my  very  door  with  an  empty 
ship,  who  is  willing,  on  this  account,  to  take 
my  goods  at  a  most  moderate  charge.  He  is 
going,  indeed,  on  no  other  errand  than  to  bring 
the  wheat  out  of  my  neighbor's  barns,  and  will 
deliver  it  to  this  excellent  little  town  of  John's 
where  cash  is  paid  for  everything.  If  he  does 
not  take  my  goods  with  him,  he  will  have  to 
load  down  his  vessel  with  sand,  for  ballast,  ex- 
pensive to  do,  and  utterly  worthless  when  there, 
while  my  unfortunate  neighbor  will  have  to  pay 
double  freight." 

Uncle  Sam  was  getting  wroth. 

"Come,  come,  my  fine  fellow,"  said  he,  and 
he  drew  himself  up  to  his  full  hight  and  looked 
with  some  indignation  at  the  farmer  before  him, 
"this  sort  of  language,  addressed  to  me,  does 
not  become  you.  There  are  deep  reasons  of 
State  which  it  is  not  possible  to  explain  to  a 
man  so  illiterate  and  untaught  as  you  are.  I 
have  other  interests  to  think  of  besides  those 
of  a  few  obscure  farmers  on  the  borders  of  my 
estate — the  interests,  especially,  of  my  three 
friends,  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  with  their  nu- 
merous children  and  dependants.  These  men 
have  been  faithful  to  me  through  many  years 
of  struggle,  and  in  all  my  endeavors  to  build  up 
a  family  have  never  deserted  me.  They  are  be- 
ginning now  to  form  quite  an  aristocracy.  I 
value  their  influence  very  highly,  for  I  am  sure 
they  are  giving  a  tone  to  society  which  is  com- 
manding the  respect  of  people  outside,  and  of 
good  Brother  John  here.  It  will  be  best  for 
you  not  to  trouble  yourself  with  any  of  these 
abstruse  questions.  You  can  take  your  money 
if  you  like,  but  you  must  carry  it  across  the 
water  with  you.  I  will  give  you  an  introduction 
to  my  friends  who  will  sell  you  all  you  need  at 
very  reasonable  rates,  I  am  sure.  But  I  must 
absolutely  forbid  you  spending  your  money 
here  —  I  must  indeed.  I  have  pledged  my  hon- 
or to  protect  these  gentlemen,  and  I  shall  not 
break  my  word." 

"Do  you,  now,  sir,  reverse  the  instructions 
you  gave  me?  After  having  told  me  to  buy  in 
the  cheapest  market,  do  you  now  tell  me  that 
I  must  buy  only  where  you  please?  I  do  not 
know  your  fine  friends,  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry, 
to  whose  store  you  recommend  me  to  go.  But, 
now  I  come  to  think  of  the  matter,  it  is,  in  all 
probability,  from  these  very  men  that  I  have 
been  buying  all  my  life,  and  who  have,  by  the 


shameful  prices  they  have  exacted  for  their 
goods,  brought  me  to  the  verge  of  ruin.  How 
can  you  seriously  advise  me,  poor  man  that  I 
am,  to  return  to  my  dealings  with  these  merci- 
less extortionists?  It  is  with  difficulty  I  can 
believe  my  own  ears  when  you  tell  me  that  you 
thus  claim  the  right  to  control  my  actions  in  a 
matter  so  seriously  affecting  my  own  welfare. 
The  money,  for  which  I  have  worked  so  hard, 
is  my  own.  It  is  my  undoubted  right  to  spend 
it  where  I  please.  Until  this  moment,  I  had 
always  supposed  that  in  being  permitted  to  live 
on  your  estates  I  was  a  free  as  well  as  a  privi- 
leged man.  In  this,  it  appears,  I  was  mistak- 
en. Are  you,  after  all,  no  better  than  kings 
and  princes,  of  whom,  in  childhood,  I  have  oft- 
en heard  my  father  speak — men  who  governed 
their  lands,  not  in  the  interests  of  the  people 
who  dwelt  in  them  and  tilled  the  soil,  but  for 
the  benefit  of  a  few  indolent  and  pampered  no- 
bles ?  Who  are  these  great  friends  of  yours  of 
whom  you  speak,  and  why  am  I  obliged  to  take 
my  money  to  them  alone?" 

Our  farmer's  blood  was  rising. 

"Stop,  stop,"  said  the  old  gentleman;  "you 
are  going  much  too  fast,  and  talking  about 
what  you  do  not  understand.  It  is  true  that  I 
am  pledged  to  guard  the  interests  of  my  friends, 
and  this  is  why  I  said  you  must  go  to  their 
store  with  your  money.  But  this  is  not  all. 
These  friends  of  mine,  with  their  children, 
their  work-people,  and  their  servants,  make  up 
altogether  quite  a  considerable  number  of  peo- 
ple ;  all  of  whom  are  benefited  by  your  money. 
They  are  engaged  in  every  kind  of  manufacture 
and  trade.  If  I  were  to  permit  you  to  bring 
your  money  to  this  little  town  here  where  they 
buy  your  wheat,  instead  of  taking  it  to  them, 
all  these  good  people  would  suffer.  I  am 
obliged,  you  know,  to  look  after  the  welfare  of 
every  part  of  my  estate.  Now  you  understand." 

"Ah  ! "  said  the  farmer — and  then  he  thought 
for  a  moment.  When  he  recommenced  his  face 
had  something  of  the  puzzled  look  of  one  who 
has  got  a  nut  between  his  back  teeth  a  little 
too  hard  and  slippery  to  crack. 

"'That  is  good  hearing,  uncle.  I  am  glad  to 
know  that  as  I  am  to  be  ruined  by  being  com- 
pelled to  buy  all  my  goods  in  the  dearest  shop 
in  the  world,  somebody  else  besides  your  noble 
friends,  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  will  get  the 
benefit  of  it.  It  is  pretty  hard  to  bear,  any- 
how. But,  then,  I  love  my  fellow -laborer  in 
my  native  land,  no  matter  at  what  sort  of  work 
he  labors ;  and  if  it  cannot  be  fixed  any  other 
way,  I  am  glad  to  think  that  some  good  will 
come  to  him  as  the  result  of  the  ruin  that  is  to 
come  on  me.  You  are  quite  sure  about  the 
facts?" 


254 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


"Perfectly,  my  man,  perfectly.  There  is  no 
doubt  whatever  that  if  I  were  to  permit  you  to 
to  spend  your  money  where  you  pleased,  my 
noble  friends  would  be  quite  ruined,  and  all 
their  work-people  thrown  out  of  employ." 

"  I  do  not  want  that  to  happen,  any  way.  I 
suppose  that  as  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  are  able 
to  sell  their  goods  for  such  very  high  prices  (four 
or  five  hundred  per  cent,  more  than  Brother 
John  here  can  ever  get),  they  can  get  along 
very  comfortably  together,  workmen  and  all — 
a  sort  of  'happy  family,'  I  guess.  I  should  like 
to  hear  how  it's  fixed.  I  reckon  they  must  have 
a  regular  day  for  dividing  the  profits  between 
them  all,  share  and  share  alike.  That  is  a 
good  plan,  and  they  must  be  getting  rich  pretty 
fast,  both  employers  and  employed." 

But  here  the  patience  of  the  noble  old  man 
became  entirely  exhausted.  He  sprang  from 
his  seat  in  anger. 

"How  dare  you  to  suppose,"  he  said,  "miser- 
able fool  that  you  are,  that  my  noble  friends, 
the  manufacturers,  are  affected  by  the  danger- 
ous communistic  doctrines  which  are  disturb- 
ing the  peace  of  the  world?  They  are  men  of 
solid  worth  and  sound  moral  character,  who 
know  how  to  conduct  their  business,  according 
to  the  unvarying  laws,  which,  as  I  have  told 
you  before,  must  regulate  all  business  relations. 
They  share  their  large  profits  with  their  labor- 
ers, indeed !  They  know  better  than  to  begin 
upon  a  course  so  dangerous  to  the  welfare  of 
the  community.  They  attend  carefully  to  the 
principle  I  gave  you  only  a  few  days  since,  but 
which  you  seem  quite  unable  to  comprehend. 
They  buy  their  labor  in  the  cheapest  market, 
and  sell  their  produce  in  the  dearest.  They 
give  the  laborer  all  that  his  labor  can  command, 
and  not  a  cent  more.  And  they  would  be  great 
fools  to  do  otherwise." 

"Ah!"  again  said  our  Western  farmer,  rub- 
bing his  forehead  uneasily;  "then  nobody  gets 
any  good  of  my  being  ruined  only  Tom,  Dick, 
and  Harry?  I  thought  that  was  what  it  would 
come  to  when  I  got  to  the  bottom  of  the  thing. 
I  seem,  somehow,  to  have  heard  about  my  fel- 
low-laborer in  the  manufacturing  States  that  he 
was  not  getting  along  so  very  much  better  un- 
der the  government  of  Uncle  Sam  than  he  does 
anywhere  else  in  the  world.  No  wonder,  poor 
fellow,  if  he  too  is  obliged  to  sell  his  labor  in 
the  cheapest  market  and  buy  everything  else 
that  he  wants  in  the  dearest.  I  am  sorry  for 
him.  But  I  tell  you  what  I  mean  to  do,  Uncle. 
I  mean  to  rebel." 

"You  mean  to  rebel!" 

"Yes;  I  don't  like  to  do  such  a  thing,  but  I 
am  driven  to  it.  There  is  no  other  course  open 
to  me.  I  shall  rebel." 


"You  are  going  to  get  up  a  rebellion,  are 
you?"  said  Uncle  Sam.  A  severe  smile  played 
around  'his  mouth  as  he  spoke. 

"No,  I  am  not  going  to  get  up  a  rebellion, 
Uncle,  but  I  shall  rebel  myself.  I  shall  take 
my  money  and  spend  it  here  with  John.  I  am 
sorry  to  go  against  you,  but  I  feel  compelled  to 
do  it.  After  all,  you  cannot  stop  my  doing  as 
I  like  with  my  own  money." 

"I  cannot  stop  you,  eh!"  said  Uncle  Sam, 
and  he  smiled  again. 

"No;  I  don't  see  as  you  can." 

Again  Uncle  Sam  smiled,  and  this  time  his 
smile  was  not  pleasant  to  look  at. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  custom-house  offi- 
cer?" he  said. 

"Yes,  I  think  I  have  heard  something  about 
them.  What  are  they  for?" 

"They  are  to  keep  you  from  spending  your 
money  at  any  other  shop  than  the  one  in  which 
I  choose  that  you  shall  spend  it,  my  fine  fellow. 
They  are  established  to  protect  the  interests 
of  my  good  friends  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry.  I 
have  got,  I  believe,  between  two  and  three  hun- 
dred thousand  of  them,  first  and  last,  scattered 
throughout  my  estates." 

"You  have,  eh!"  said  the  thunder-struck 
farmer.  "What  do  they  cost  you?" 

"They  don't  cost  me  anything,  my  son." 

"Who  pays  for  them  then?" 

"  They  are  maintained  out  of  the  taxes  of  the 
people,  sir.  I  could  not,  of  course,  support  so 
large  a  body  of  men  from  my  own  private  re- 
sources." 

"Naturally  you  could  not  do  that,  Uncle. 
Even  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  could  not  expect 
so  much  of  you.  Three  hundred  thousand! 
Quite  a  standing  army,  isn't  it?  Why,  that  must 
be  one  of  the  'deep  reasons  of  state'  which  you 
could  not  explain  to  me.  Is  John  here  obliged 
to  keep  such  a  lot  of  men  in  pay  to  protect  the 
interests  of  his  friends?  I  don't  see  any  of  them 
round  here  to  stop  the  wheat  from  being  land- 
ed, and  I  cannot  help  feeling  something  obliged 
to  him,  else  I  should  not  have  been  able  to  fol- 
low even  half  of  your  good  advice,  Uncle,  and 
'sell  in  the  dearest  market.'  I  suppose  that  is 
the  reason  why  he  is  able  to  sell  so  much 
cheaper  than  anybody  else— he  has  not  got  to 
'protect'  the  'interests'  of  any  of  his  friends?" 

"Well — no,  no.  I  believe  he  lias  not.  You 
see,  John's  circumstances  are  a  little  different 
from  my  own.  He  has  many  friends,  indeed, 
but  they  are  all  of  them  pretty  well  provided 
for,  so  that  the  maintenance  of  their  several  es- 
tablishments is  no  charge  upon  his  revenue. 
They  have,  most  of  them,  large, landed  estates 
and  other  properties  scattered  over  the  world, 
and  the  rents  of  these  lands  amply  supply  their 


UNCLE  SAM  AND   THE   WESTERN  FARMER. 


255 


needs.  He  is  obliged,  of  course,  to  keep  up  a 
considerable  army,  for  he  has  some  very  treach- 
erous enemies,  and  many  who  envy  his  wealth 
and  greatness." 

"So  John  has  given  all  his  lands  away  to  his 
friends!  And,  as  they  have  got  the  rents  of 
their  land  always  coining  in,  no  doubt,  they 
are  pretty  comfortable.  Herein  lies  the  great 
difference  between  you  and  John.  I  can  see 
that  pretty  plain  now.  You  are  obliged  to  tax 
the  people  to  keep  your  friends  going,  and  he 
is  not.  That  is  how  he  manages  to  'sell  every- 
thing' so  cheap.  He  is  obliged  to  maintain  a 
large  standing  army  to  keep  off  his  enemies. 
But  you  are  obliged  to  keep  an  army  nearly  as 
large  to  'protect'  your  friends.  That  is  pretty, 
hard  to  bear,  Uncle,  and  I  am  sorry  for  you.  I 
hope  your  'friends'  don't  increase  on  you  too 
fast?" 

"Quite  as  fast  as  I  know  how  to  manage — 
and  a  little  faster.  Now,  there  are  the  ship- 
owners— a  very  wealthy  and  influential  class. 
They  tell  me  that  they  cannot  get  along  at  all 
without  some  assistance  from  me,  and  I  sup- 
pose I  must  do  something  for  them.  A  'bonus' 
will  probably  be  the  best  form  in  which  to  put 
the  help  I  shall  have  to  give  them — a  'bonus' 
upon  each  shipload — say  of  wheat  or  other  car- 
go they  may  carry.  I  hope  that  may  satisfy 
them,  and  put  the  shipping  interests  on  a  sound 
footing  once  more." 

"Who  will  pay  the  'bonus,'  Uncle  Sam?" 

"All  these  expenses  come  out  of  the  taxes, 
my  good  fellow,  as  I  told  you  before." 

Our  farmer  put  his  horny  hand  into  the  pock- 
ets of  his  pants  and  grasped  instinctively  the 
two  or  three  remaining  dollars  there.  "How 
much  of  the  three  dollars  still  left  me,"  thought 
he,  "will  have  to  go  to  pay  the  'bonus.'  " 

"Ah,"  said  he,  aloud,  "I  have  heard  some- 
thing about  the  'shipping  interest'  being  very 
bad  just  now,  and  I  know  well  enough  that  the 
freights  are  awful.  It  struck  me,  perhaps,  that, 
when  the  ships  have  brought  the  wheat  here  to 
Brother  John,  if  they  could  load  up  with  some 
of  these  cheap  things  and  carry  back  to  the 
poor  farmers,  it  would  not  be  a  bad  plan.  It 
might  help  to  put  things  straight  for  the  un- 


fortunate ship-owners,  as  it  must  be  very  ex- 
pensive taking  in  a  cargo  of  worthless  sand 
every  time,  and  it  might  bring  down  the  price 
of  freights  as  well.  But,  then,  of  course,  I  don't 
understand  these  things,  not  being  raised  to  it. 
Well,  I  guess  I  must  say  good-bye,  Uncle.  I 
am  much  obliged  to  you  for  bringing  me  to  the 
best  market  to  sell  my  wheat.  I'll  take  my 
money  back  to  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  as  you 
won't  allow  me  to  spend  it  anywhere  else.  They 
must  be  very  fine  men." 

The  door  closed  upon  our  farmer,  and  he 
walked  sadly  down  the  wharf,  where  the  sand- 
loaded  vessel  that  was  to  take  him  home  was 
lying. 

"Oh,  Uncle  Sam— Uncle  Sam,"  he  meditated, 
"are  you  already  in  your  dotage?  Or  do  you 
think  that  the  millions  of  your  toiling  sons  scat- 
tered over  the  wide  lands  that  are  well  nigh 
half  a  world  are  still  in  their  babyhood  that 
you  thus  trifle  with  their  affection?  Your  over- 
taxed people  will  not  much  longer  bear  to  see 
you  playing  thus  into  the  hands  of  the  rich,  and 
despoiling  the  laborer  of  his  hire.  By  a  mean 
trick  of  the  hand,  which  any  tyro  in  the  art 
of  government  can  detect,  you  are  taking  the 
money  (which  means  the  labor)  of  the  poor 
and  passing  it  under  the  table  into  the  hands 
of  the  capitalist.  You  tax  labor  to  increase  the 
already  too  great  power  of  wealth,  and  compel 
the  laborer  to  pay  the  wages  of  the  officer  that 
deprives  him  of  his  hire.  Well  you  know  that 
the  millions  of  small  farmers,  whose  toil  and  in- 
dustry have  built  up  the  greatness  of  your  king- 
dom, can  no  longer  face  the  world  with  the 
falling  prices  of  produce.  They  will  go  out 
hungry  from  the  homes  where  they  have  spent 
the  labor  of  half  their  lives.  You  should  be  the 
leader  among  free  nations.  As  your  ships  bear 
away  to  all  lands  the  immense  wealth  created 
by  the  labor  of  your  people,  they  would  bring 
back — at  even  reduced  prices — the  fruits  of  the 
industries  of  the  world  were  they  not  fettered 
by  your  narrow  and  destructive  laws.  Have  a 
care,  Uncle  Sam.  Your  foolish  protection  of 
the  interests  of  the  rich  against  the  right  and 
the  might  of  the  laborer  will  bring  you  into- 
trouble  yet."  LEIGH  MANN. 


256 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


THE   OLIVE   TREE. 


Among  the  vegetable  substances  which  min- 
ister to  the  daily  wants  of  man  throughout 
Southern  Europe,  Egypt,  and  sub-tropical  Asia, 
the  olive  and  its  products  hold  the  next  place 
after  cereals  and  vines  in  economic  and  com- 
mercial importance.  So  remunerative  has  the 
culture  of  the  olive  been  considered,  that,  even 
in  portions  of  a  country  where  it  does  not  form 
the  principal  aim  of  the  cultivator,  it  is  deemed 
his  most  valuable  secondary  or  subsidiary  re- 
source. Where  the  land  is  suited  for  wheat, 
especially  on  low  hill -sides,  the  olive  trees  are 
planted  at  considerable  distances  asunder  all 
through  it,  and  need  no  care  beyond  that  be- 
stowed on  cultivating  the  ground  for  ordinary 
crops.  The  cereals  may  perish  by  blight  or 
fire,  but  the  olive  crop  is  certain.  Land  in 
Southern  Europe,  with  soil  and  climate  very 
nearly  the  same  as  those  of  California,  when 
cut  up  into  very  small  holdings,  still  supports 
dense  populations  in  reasonable  comfort.  The 
people  are  frugal,  industrious,  thrifty,  and  yet 
enjoy  life  with  a  keenness  but  little  felt  in  the 
hurry  and  bustle  of  activity  in  new  countries 
like  California  or  Australia. 

Lands  of  every  quality,  suitable  for  every  va- 
riety of  sub -tropical  produce,  are  abundant  in 
California — so  abundant  and  cheap  that  the 
cultivation  is  generally  slovenly,  and  nearly  al- 
ways cropped  with  the  same  cereals,  or  roots, 
till  it  gradually  becomes  exhausted,  and  a  prey 
to  mere  weeds.  Like  many  other  things  which 
are  plentiful  and  cheap,  little  respect  is  paid  to 
land  beyond  its  present  use.  Not  so,  however, 
in  countries  like  Belgium  and  Lombardy,  Italy. 
There  every  inch  is  turned  to  account,  and 
kept  in  uniform  fertility  from  generation  to 
generation  through  thousands  of  years.  No 
people  better  understand  and  practice  irriga- 
tion than  the  Lombards ;  and  there  is  many  a 
useful  hint  to  be  gathered  out  of  their  experi- 
ence which  would  amply  repay  the  Californian 
cultivator,  if  he  only  knew  it.  Now  that  atten- 
tion is  being  turned  to  the  establishment  of  ru- 
ral colonies,  with  a  view  to  special  industries, 
such  as  small  vineyards,  the  making  of  raisins, 
drying  of  fruit,  and  the  like,  these  remarks,  and 
others  thrown  out  as  occasion  may  offer  in*these 
pages,  have  a  pregnant  meaning  for  those  who 
are  entertaining  the  notion  of  settling  on  coun- 
try lands,  or  have  already  so  settled.  In  fact, 
it  is  chiefly  for  them  that  I  write.  In  certain 


highly  favored  localities,  such  as  the  districts 
about  Fresno,  the  system  of  agricultural  colo- 
nies has  been  tried,  where  the  holdings  are 
small,  say  from  twenty  to  perhaps  one  hundred 
acres,  and  the  result  so  far  is  encouraging. 
Still,  the  land  is  as  yet  not  reduced  to  its  full 
bearing  capacity,  whether  as  to  vineyards,  grain 
crops,  root  crops,  such  as  the  sweet  potato,  or 
hay,  which  form  the  staple  industries  at  the 
present  time. 

OTHER  SUITABLE  INDUSTRIES. 

On  a  thirty  or  forty -acre  farm  the  eye  of  a 
Belgian  or  of  a  Lombard  would  at  a  glance 
perceive  where  the  support  of  the  family  might 
be  obtained,  with  little  or  no  additional  outlay 
or  labor  than  such  as  could  be  done  by  children 
in  odd  hours.  Bees  are  frequently  kept,  it  is 
true ;  but  where  do  we  find  the  natural  accom- 
paniment of  them? — aromatic  plants,  such  as 
rosemary,  lavender,  lemon,  thyme,  etc. — the 
money  value  of  which  for  their  essential  oils 
would  be  considerable.  Fig  trees  are  begin- 
ning to  be  thought  about  for  their  fruit,  but  as 
yet  we  nowhere  see  them  planted  out  in  vine-, 
yards,  as  they  should  be — here  and  there,  espe- 
cially in  the  lowest  and  dampest  parts,  because 
there  they  serve  the  excellent  purpose  of  at- 
tracting small  birds  and  flies  which  would  other- 
wise play  havoc  among  the  grapes.  The  shade 
is  grateful,  and  the  fruit,  ripening  as  it  does 
weeks  before  the  grapes,  effectually  gathers 
those  mischievous  pests  to  itself  alone,  for  they 
prefer  the  ripe  fig  to  all  other  fruit. 

Nearly  every  expense  attending  on  house- 
keeping is  got  out  of  these  secondary  indus- 
tries. Nay,  more ;  in  the  vicinity  of  Lisbon,  in 
former  years  the  crop  of  olives  grown  in  the 
wheat  field  paid  probably  more  than  the  whole 
expense  of  cultivating  the  land  and  securing 
the  harvest.  Of  course,  these  secondary  in- 
dustries vary  in  different  localities,  and  not  un- 
frequently  in  the  same  district.  Some  situa- 
tions have  acquired  a  reputation  for  the  excel- 
lence of  their  figs;  others  for  their  walnuts, 
chestnuts,  or  hazel  nuts;  others  again  for  the 
abundance  and  excellence  of  herbs,  such  as 
saffron,  pimento,  mint,  licorice,  etc. — all  of 
which  have  a  certain  market  value.  By-prod- 
ucts, such  as  those  enumerated,  together  with 
eggs  and  chickens,  which  they  raise  in  quantity 


THE   OLIVE    TREE. 


257 


for  sale,  and  perhaps  a  goat  or  two  for  milking, 
keep  the  family  in  what  among  them  is  con- 
sidered quite  reasonable  comfort  and  respecta- 
bility. Again,  in  the  sub-Apennine  Mountains 
the  chestnut  is  the  principal  stand-by.  So  im- 
portant is  the  chestnut  as  an  article  of  food 
and  nourishment,  that  even  should  a  mother 
lose  her  milk,  or  has  had  but  little  or  none,  she 
has  only  to  have  recourse  to  her  store  of  chest- 
nut meal,  however  tender  her  babe  may  be, 
when  a  spoonful  of  it  made  into  pap  and 
strengthened  with  a  small  quantity  of  wine  will 
answer  all  the  ends  required,  as  many  a  sturdy 
Italian  now  living  in  California  can  testify. 

In  places  in  Southern  Europe,  where  every 
bit  of  land  is  turned  to  account,  it  not  unfre- 
quently  happens  that  there  is  a  steep,  rocky 
corner  where  vines  could  not'be  profitably  cul- 


grown  along  fences  and  hedge-rows,  or  other- 
wise worthless  stony  places. 

(6.)  Being  an  evergreen,  when  planted  around 
fences  it  forms  a  capital  shelter  for  more  deli- 
cate fruits,  vineyards,  etc. 

(7.)  Last,  but  not  least,  because  when  once 
brought  into  bearing,  it  will  not  need  to  be  re- 
newed, but  will  be  still  yielding  its  annual  crop 
when  the  last  ounce  of  gold  or  silver  shall  have 
been  wrung  from  the  bowels  of  the  earth. 

THE   LONGEVITY  OF  THE  OLIVE  TREE 

Is  wonderful.  Its  life-period  is  not  certainly 
known.  The  tree  above  ground  will,  of  course,, 
die  out.  In  fact,  in  the  long  course  of  years  it 
becomes  a  mere  shell/Tor  it  begins  to  die  at 
the  core,  but  the  root  does  not  perish.  Out  of 
this  springs  the  new  tree.  In  the 
very  old  olive  groves  about  Palma, 
near  Lisbon,  in  Portugal,  I  have 
noted  this  circumstance  oftener 
than  once.  Travelers  most  com- 
petent to  judge  are  agreed  that  the 
present  olive  trees  on  Mount  Oli- 
vet, near  Jerusalem,  are  the  same 
that  Christ  prayed  under  and  his 
disciples  fell  asleep  under  nine- 
teen hundred  years  ago,  and  they 
are  even  now  yielding  their  annual 
crop  of  fruit. 

GROUND   FOR  A  PLANTATION, 


TERRACING  VINES  AND  OLIVE  TREES. 

tivated,  in  which  case  rough  terracing  is  had 
recourse  to  to  keep  the  soil  together,  and  allow 
some  cultivation,  as  is  shown  in  the  engraving. 

One  might  naturally  ask  why  the  olive  tree 
has  ever  been  such  a  favorite  in  Southern  Eu- 
rope, Asia,  and  Africa  with  men  who  have  an 
eye  to  economic  industries?  It  certainly  is 
not  a  very  ornamental  tree.  To  reply  briefly, 
I  should  say  : 

(i.)  Because  of  the  ease  with  which  it  can  be 
raised  from  seed;  or,  better  still,  propagated 
from  large  cuttings. 

(2.)  The  little  attention  the  plant  requires 
when  once  it  has  broken  into  leaf. 

(3.)  Because  when  properly  planted,  trun- 
cheon fashion,  it  will  usually  begin  to  bear  the 
fourth  year — not  unfrequently  a  few  berries  the 
third  year. 

(4.)  The  certainty  of  a  crop.  It  usually  bears 
in  alternate  years  a  heavy  and  a  light  crop. 

(5.)  The  fact  that  no  great  breadth  of  land  is 
needed  for  a  plantation  since  it  can  be  readily 


When  the  purpose  is  to  form  an 
olive  grove  to  be  devoted  to  the 
growth  of  the  olive  tree  for  fruit 
alone,  then  all  experience  points  to  a  moder- 
ately strong  soil  such  as  would  bear  wheat,  with 
a  rather  moist  subsoil,  as  the  best.  Drainage 
will  be  found  necessary  where  there  is  any  dan- 
ger of  stagnant  water  lodging  about  the  roots. 
These  conditions  have  been  found  in  the  great- 
est perfection  on  low  hills  and  slopes  exposed 
more  or  less  to  sea  breezes.  From  my  own  ex- 
perience and  observation  deep  trenching  was 
not  needed,  but,  of  course,  very  advantageous 
when  labor  and  cost  are  of  little  consideration. 
If  the  holes  for  the  plants  be  dug  three  feet 
in  diameter  by  about  the  same  in  depth,  that 
will  be  sufficient  to  give  them  a  good  hold  on 
the  ground,  and  for  the  rest  they  will  take  care 
of  themselves.  In  this  connection,  I  gladly 
avail  myself  of  remarks  made  by  Mr.  B.  B. 
Redding,  of  San  Francisco,  in  the  course  of  an 
interesting  paper  on  olive  growing  read  two 
years  ago  before  the  Academy  of  Sciences : 

"This  tree  will  grow  in  almost  any  soil  except 
that  containing  much  moisture.     Marsh  states 


258 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


'that  it  prefers  a  light  warm  ground,  but  does 
not  thrive  in  rich  alluvial  land,  and  grows  well 
on  hilly  and  rocky  surfaces.'  Bernays  says 
1  that  it  thrives  and  is  most  prolific  in  dry  cal- 
careous schistose,  sandy,  and  rocky  situations. 
The  land  must  be  naturally  or  artificially  well 
drained.  Its  great  enemy  is  excess  of  moisture. 
It  rejoices  in  the  mechanical  looseness  of  sandy, 
gravelly  and  stony  soils,  and  in  freedom  from 
stagnant  moisture.'  Brande  asserts  that  it  only 
grows  well  and  yields  large  crops  'in  a  warm 
and  comparatively  dry  climate.'  Dr.  Robinson 
says  'it  delights  in  a  stony  soil,  and  thrives 
even  on  the  sides  and  tops  of  rocky  hills  where 
there  is  scarcely  any  earth ;  hence  the  expres- 
sion in  the  Bible,  "oil  out  of  the  flinty  rock." ' 
Hillhouse,in  his  article  on  this  tree  in  Michaux's 
Sylva,  says :  'The  olive  accommodates  itself  to 
almost  any  variety  of  soil,  but  it  shuns  a  re- 
dundancy of  moisture,  and  prefers  loose  cal- 
careous fertile  lands  mingled  with  stones,  such 
as  the  territory  of  Attica  and  the  south  of 
France.  The  quality  of  its  fruit  is  essentially 
affected  by  that  of  the  soil.  It  succeeds  in 
good  loam  capable  of  bearing  wheat,  but  in  fat 
lands  it  yields  oil  of  an  inferior  flavor,  and  be- 
comes laden  with  a  barren  exuberance  of  leaves 
and  branches.  The  temperature  of  the  climate 
is  a  consideration  of  more  importance  than  the 
nature  of  the  soil.'  Downing,  in  writing  of  this 
tree  in  Southern  Europe,  says :  'A  few  olive 
trees  will  serve  for  the  support  of  an  entire 
family  who  would  starve  on  what  could  other- 
wise be  raised  on  the  same  surface  of  soil ;  and 
dry  crevices  of  rocks  and  almost  otherwise  bar- 
ren soils  in  the  deserts,  when  planted  with  this 
tree,  become  flourishing  and  valuable  places  of 
habitation.' " 

CLIMATE  OF  THE  OLIVE  TREE. 

The  olive  tree,  like  most  other  sub-tropical 
trees,  has  a  wide  range  within  which  it  will 
thrive  and  be  fruitful,  though  the  fruit  grown  at 
either  of  the  extreme  points  of  the  range  will 
generally  be  of  inferior  quality.  In  the  warmer 
parts  of  Northern  Italy  it  thrives  and  produces 
freely.  About  Lago  di  Como  and  Lago  Mag- 
giore  it  seems  to  touch  the  outermost  limit  of 
warmth.  There  the  fruit  is  not  unusually  gath- 
ered when  the  snow  is  lying  six  inches  thick 
over  the  ground.  No  one  would  advise  the 
planting  of  it  in  California  under  the  conditions 
last  mentioned. 

I  am  again  glad  to  be  able  to  avail  myself  of 
the  patient  industry  of  Mr.  Redding,  for  it  re- 
quires much  perseverence  and  zeal  to  work  out 
climatic  details  such  as  will  be  found  in  the 
-subjoined  table  and  its  introductory  remarks. 


It  is  matter  for  regret  that  his  interesting  paper 
has  not  been  thrown  out  in  a  less  perishable 
form  than  publication  in  the  columns  of  a  news- 
paper. 

"For  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  where  with- 
in this  State  the  olive  can  be  successfully  culti- 
vated, I  have  gathered  from  the  tables  of  tem- 
perature of  the  Smithsonian  Institution  and 
the  Chief  Engineer's  Department  of  the  rail- 
road companies,  a  list  of  all  the  places  whose 
temperatures  fall  within  those  limits  which 
Humboldt  states  have  been  found  to  be  essen- 
tial. The  regions  which  this  list  represents 
could,  without  doubt,  be  extended,  had  more 
attention  been  given  in  different  parts  of  the 
State  to  observing  and  recording  the  variations 
in  temperature.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
the  requisites  of  successful  and  profitable  culti- 
tion  are,  that  for  the  year  it  must  be  as  warm 
as  57.17°.  The  mean  for  the  coldest  month 
must  be  as  warm  as  41.5°,  and  at  no  time  must 
the  temperature  fall  below  14°.  I  cannot  find 
in  any  authority  how  high  a  temperature  it  will 
bear,  but  as  it  is  successfully  grown  in  Algeria 
and  Egypt,  it  could  hardly  be  injured  by  the 
highest  temperatures  that  occur  at  the  places 
mentioned  in  the  following  list : 


if 

hr 

il 

Lowest   temperature 

Places. 

•  1 

n 

It 

shown  by  thermom- 

: 1 

If 

II 

eter  in  any  year. 

i  1 

i! 

a_8 

San  Diego  
Los  Angeles  

457 

62.49 
67.69 

53-30 

58-95 

26  —  December,  1854 
39  —  December,  1876 

Soledad  

182 

59.08 

45-23 

24  —  January,      1877 

Salinas  

44 

57.95 

48.25 

24  —  December,  1874 

Hollister  

284 

61.46 

46-53 

27  —  December,  1874 

Gilroy  
San  Jos<£  

'i 

59.07 

44-45 
46.58 

21  —  January,      1877 
28  —  December    1874 

Livermore  

485 

61.49 

49-52 

28  —  December,  1870 

Benicia  

64 

^s.?? 

4.7    A1 

19  —  January       1854 

Vallejo  

0 

D1-**  /  / 
58.77 

T-/  *TO 
47.41 

29  —  December,  1877 

Fort  Tejon  

3240 

58.03 

42.05 

22  —  December,  1855 

Sumner  

415 

68.29 

46.  71 

27  —  December,  1876 

Delano  ,  •.  

313 

68.64 

52.46 

30  —  January,      1876 

Borden  

274 

66.37 

45-44 

24-  —  January,      1877 

Fort  Miller  
Merced 

402 

171 

66.56 
63.16 

.47-47 
48.  14 

23  —  January,      1854 
28  —  January        1876 

Modesto  

L  I  X 
91 

63.68 

47  .  69 

22  —  December,  1874 

Ellis 

46.46 

20—  December    1872 

Stockton  

23 

61.99 

47-43 

21—  December,  1872 

Sacramento  .... 

60.48 

46.21 

28  —  December,  1849 

Auburn  

1363 

60.7! 

45.88 

27  —  January,      1871 

Colfax  
Marysville  

2421 
67 

60.  o5 
63-62 

45-49 
48.70 

26  —  January,      1873-4 
27  —  December,  1876 

Chico  

62.46 

45  •I9 

23  —  December,  1872 

Tehama 

222 

/:_    T_ 

47.OI 

23  —  December    1871 

Red  Bluff...... 

3°7 

66!  22 

/  *IJ-L 

48.29 

26  —  December,  1873 

Redding. 

46.  72 

27  —  January       1876 

-I 

"For  the  purpose  of  comparing  the  tempera- 
tures of  the  above  named  places  in  California 
with  those  of  regions  in  which  the  produce  of 
the  olive  is  among, the  articles  of  the  first  agri- 
cultural and  commercial  importance,  I  have 
compiled  from  Blodgett's  Climatology  the  mean 
annual  and  the  mean  winter  temperatures,  as 


THE    OLIVE    TREE. 


259 


also  the  mean  temperature  of  the  coldest  month 
of  the  following  prominent  places  in  Italy, 
Spain,  Portugal,  France,  Egypt,  and  Palestine : 


Places. 

Mean  temperature 
for  the  year.  

Mean  temperature 
for  winter  

Mean  temperature 
of  coldest  months 

6  o 

Naples 

A 

Madrid  

58.03 

Marseilles  

s8  03 

2 

Jerusalem  

;?4'°3 
62.06 

66  08 

eg   (X 

"  A  comparison  of  the  above  tables  will  show 
that  so  far  as  they  relate  to  the  mean  for  the 
year  and  the  mean  for  the  coldest  month,  the 
climate  of  Rome  and  Sacramento  is  nearly  the 
same.  So  is  Alexandria  and  Los  Angeles ; 
Florence  and  Fort  Tejon ;  Lisbon  and  Liver- 
more;  Marseilles  and  Benicia;  Algiers  and 
San  Diego,  and  Jerusalem  and  Merced.  In 
but  one  case  for  the  year  is  there  a  difference 
of  more  than  one  degree,  and  in  but  one  case 
more  than  three  degrees  for  the  difference  of 
the  coldest  month. 

THE  WARM   BELT  OF  THE   FOOT-HILLS. 

"Another  fact  worthy  of  notice  which  has 
been  suspected,  but  for  the  proof  of  which  the 
data  has  not  before  been  attainable,  is  that  the 
zone  in  the  Sierra,  known  as  the  foot-hills,  is  as 
warm  for  the  year,  and  as  warm  for  the  coldest 
month,  as  the  Sacramento  Valley  in  the  same 
latitudes.  This  warm  belt  certainly  extends  to 
an  elevation  of  2,500  feet,  Colfax,  with  an  ele- 
vation of  2,421  feet,  has  a  mean  for  the  year  of 
60.5°,  and  a  mean  for  the  coldest  month  of 
45.49° :  while  for  the  same  periods  Sacramento 
has  for  the  year  60.48°,  and  for  the  coldest 
month  46.21°.  Fort  Tejon,  on  the  Tehachepi 
Mountains,  elevation  6,240  feet,  for  the  year,  is 
but  six  degrees  colder  than  Tulare,  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  valley,  3,000  feet  below;  while  the 
temperature  for  the  winter  months  is  nearly  the 
same,  Fort  Tejon  having  42.5°,  and  Tulare 
42. 7°.  This  zone  of  warm  temperature  ex- 
plains the  success  in  the  growth  of  oranges 
and  other  semi-tropical  fruits,  wherever  planted 
below  an  elevation  of  2,000  feet  in  the  foot-hills 
of  the  Sierra.  There  have  been  omitted  from 
the  list  of  stations  in  California,  San  Francisco, 
Monterey,  Pajaro,  San  Mateo,  Petaluma,  Vi- 
salia,  and  Tulare,  for  the  reason  that  in  the 
mean  annual  temperature,  or  in  the  mean  for 


the  coldest  months,  they  fall  below  57°  or  41°. 
Without  doubt  the  olive  could  be  grown  in 
these  places,  but  its  cultivation  could  hardly 
be  made  profitable."  There  is  a  very  generally 
received  opinion  that  sea  air  is  peculiarly  fa- 
vorable to  the  olive  tree,  and  I  respectfully  in- 
dorse it  from  the  observations  I  have  been  able 
to  make.  I  know  it  flourishes,  and  is  very  pro- 
lific, far  beyond  the  ordinary  range  of  sea  air,  as 
in  Egypt,  Arabia,  and  Persia ;  but  there  seems 
to  be  a  confusion  of  terms  here.  No  one  surely 
denies  the  fact  of  its  growth,  but  disputes  the 
goodness  of  its  produce  for  human  food.  Did 
any  one  ever  meet  such  an  advertisement  as 
this  in  the  shop  windows,  or  newspaper  col- 
umns? The  following  appeared  not  very  long 
ago  as  an  advertisement : 

"SOMETHING  NEW  AND   DELICIOUS. 

"Messrs.  Brown  &  Co.,  importers  of  groceries,  oil- 
men's stores,  etc. ,  etc. ,  have  just  received  from  Suez  a 
consignment  of  olive  oil  from  Central  Egypt  of  most 
superior  quality  for  salads,  for  cooking  fish,  etc.  This 
oil  has  the  merit  of  having  been  grown  in  a  region  re- 
mote from  sea  air,  and  consequently  has  never  been  un- 
der saline  influence.  Far  superior  to  the  Lucca  ar- 
ticle ! "  * 

Vast  quantities  of  olive  oil  are  imported  into 
England  from  those  eastern  countries,  well 
enough  suited  for  use  in  the  manufacture  of 
broackloth.  It  is  used  mainly  for  that  purpose, 
and  is  as  useful  as  the  best,  and  procurable  at 
a  low  figure — say  sixty  cents  per  gallon.  But 
the  fine  table  oils  of  Southern  Europe  are  very 
dear  in  comparison — from  $1.25  to  $2  per  gal- 
lon. The  contention  is  that  sea-air,  from  what- 
ever cause,  has  been  found  most  beneficial  in 
producing  the  finest  fruit  and  oil.  I  shall  have 
to  remind  the  reader  again  of  these  remarks 
when  I  come  to  deal  with  the  method  of  olive 
planting.  Still  it  may  be  as  well  to  say  in  this 
connection  once  for  all  that  very  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  all  the  writers  on  olive  trees  and  their  oil 
refer  only  to  the  best  kinds  for  human  food,  and 
the  methods  of  their  cultivation.  But  it  must 
be  kept  in  view  that  the  consumption  of  olive 
oil  in  the  form  of  food  is  only  a  fraction  of  the 
whole ;  and  in  countries  where  butter  is  excel- 
lent, plentiful,  and  cheap,  oil  will  never  become 
more  than  a  condiment — so  to  speak — or  a 
relish.  The  real  consumers  of  olive  oil  are  the 
woolen  mills.  When  the  yolk  has  been  taken 
out  of  the  wool,  it  must  be  soaked  in  olive  oil 
for  all  finer  kinds  of  cloths,  and  this  oil  need 
not  be  better  than  the  worst  yield  of  the  berry. 
In  this  country  such  would  be  yielded  by  the 
second  pressing,  or  third,  and  abundantly  by 


*  The  man  who  wrote  the  above  was  either  an  ignoramus  or 
a  cheat. 


260 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


trees  planted  in  the  fences,  or  on  waste  bits  of 
land,  or  for  shelter  in  vineyards  and  orchards, 
and  here  and  there  on  cultivated  lands,  etc. 
This  is  the  oil  which  in  Europe  brings  less  than 
a  dollar  per  gallon,  yet  here  worth  more  than 
wine. 

MANURING. 

If  the  ground  be  of  the  description  above 
mentioned,  not  much  will  be  required  in  the 
way  of  manure  unless  it  be  impoverished  by 
some  means,  such  as  planting  vegetables  too 
near  the  olive  trees.  For  such  as  are  set  out 
in  wheat  fields  the  ordinary  cultivation  and  ma- 
nuring will  suffice,  and  the  same  may  be  said 
in  respect  to  gardens  and  orchards.  If  manure 
of  any  kind  is  to  be  applied,  it  ought  to  be  just 
before  the  fall  of  the  annual  rains.  But,  under 
any  circumstances,  in  this  climate,  there  ought 
to  be  placed  immediately  around  the  plant,  or 
truncheon,  a  good  mat  of  grass,  dead  weeds, 
leaves,  or  in  fact  any  kind  of  light  rubbish,  to 
prevent  evaporation,  and  to  keep  the  ground 
cool  and  damp  during  the  hot  weather.  In 
Australia  this  kind  of  protection  has  long  been 
found  most  beneficial  for  all  sorts  of  young 
trees,  and  is  now  in  universal  use. 

Having  now  said  nearly  all  that  needs  be  said 
about  soil,  climate,  and  one  or  two  precaution- 
ary matters,  we  will  proceed  to  describe  the 
methods  of  raising  olive  plants. 

The  first,  then,  would  naturally  be  by  means 
of  the  fruit,  and  that  is  easily  disposed  of.  It 
must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  it  is  de- 
sirable to  crush  the  berries  lightly,  so  that  the 
juice  may  soon  run  away,  as  it  seems  to  endan- 
ger the  success  of  the  seed.  If  the  seed  (hard 
kernels)  be  soaked  in  lukewarm  water  for  three 
or  four  days  previous  to  planting,  they  are  likely 
to  germinate  sooner.  Large  birds,  such  as  tur- 
keys, by  eating  them  and  partially  digesting  the 
stones,  or  kernels,  have  in  this  way  distributed 
the  olive  in  many  countries.  The  most  suitable 
plan  for  these  countries  is  to  make  a  seed-bed 
in  a  warm,  sheltered  nook,  where  the  soil  is 
rich  and  fine,  covering  it  lightly  with  a  loam  or 
fine  mold,  and  over  this  a  pretty  fair  covering 
of  decaying  leaves  and  small  twigs,  so  as  to 
protect  the  seed  from  frost,  severe  winds,  and 
such  vermin  as  mice.  Laid  out  this  way  in 
October  or  November,  they  will  germinate  in 
April  or  May.  Of  course,  there  will  be  differ- 
ences in  the  time  of  starting,  according  to  the 
preparation,  or  sometimes  the  kind  of  seed.  In 
olive  countries  this  method  is  rarely  resorted 
to ;  partly  because  where  more  than  one  varie- 
ty is  cultivated  in  a  grove  the  seed  is  sure  to  be- 
come hybridized,  and  because  there  are  other 


methods  more  certain  of  rapidly  yielding  a  re- 
turn and  less  expensive.  There  being  in  Cali- 
fornia already  abundance  of  the  "Mission" 
olive,  two  methods  of  rapidly  rearing  the  olive 
grove  present  themselves.  The  first  is  by  split- 
ting up  the  root  of  an  old  or  useless  tree ;  cut 
the  stem  a  few  inches  above  the  ground,  chop 
the  root  out  of  the  ground  and  split  it  into 
pieces  two  or  three  inches  in  diameter,  and 
plant  these  in  the  places  where  they  are  to  re- 
main permanently,  keep  them  free  from  weeds, 
and  otherwise  handle  them  as  if  they  were  seed- 
lings. Where  a  tree  can  be  spared  for  the 
purpose,  this  method  is  of  great  use,  as,  if  left 
to  its  natural  growth  and  not  worked  back  by 
pruning,  it  will  yield  both  fruit,  and,  what  is  of 
more  importance,  abundance  of  branches  (thick 
sticks,  in  fact)  which  we  call  "truncheons." 

TRUNCHEON   PLANTING. 

This  method  is,  by  far,  the  safest,  easiest, 
most  economical,  and  certain  to  preserve  the 
kind  of  fruit  in  purity.  It  cannot  be  otherwise,, 
unless  it  be  grafted  to  other  varieties,  since  it 
is  only  the  continuation  of  the  parent  tree.  To 
this  method,  then,  I  wish  to  invite  very  especial 
attention,  while  I  describe  the  particulars  to  be 
observed  in  order  to  insure  success.  And  as  I 
have  had  considerable  experience  in  this  way 
of  raising  olive  trees,  and  know  about  the  suc- 
cess which  has  attended  it  under  my  own  di- 
rection, I  can  speak  with  perfect  confidence. 
I  cannot  do  so  better,  I  think,  than  by  making 
an  extract  from  the  report  which  I  furnished, 
to  the  Government  of  Victoria,  Australia : 

"Having  been  intrusted  by  the  commission 
with  the  duty  of  procuring  plants  of  the  olive 
tree,  and  superintending  the  planting  of  them, 
I  have  now  the  honor  to  report  upon  the  sev- 
eral steps  I  have  taken,  and  the  methods 
adopted  in  selecting  cuttings  and  preparing 
them  for  planting,  as  well  as  the  actual  process 
from  first  to  last  of  placing  the  plants  in  situ. 
Besides  planting  at  the  industrial  schools 
ground  at  Sunbury,  where,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
the  boys  will  in  future  be  familiarized  with  olive 
cultivation,  and  a  few,  as  hereinafter  mentioned, 
set  out  near  Sunbury  and  at  Essendon  for  the 
purpose  of  trying  a  special  method  of  planting 
in  those  localities,  the  principal  experiments 
on  a  large  scale  are  being  carried  out  at  the 
Acclimatization  Society's  Gardens,  Royal  Park, 
and  within  easy  reach  of  persons  visiting  or  re- 
siding in  and  near  the  city.  I  procured  in  the 
first  instance  one  hundred  truncheons  of  at 
least  five  feet  in  length,  and  from  two  to  three 
inches  in  diameter,  from  South  Australia,  from 
olive  trees  which  I  saw  in  bearing  in  April. 


THE    OLIVE    TREE. 


261 


"These  five-foot  long  truncheons  were  planted 
in  holes  about  three  feet  in  diameter,  and  two 
feet  six  inches  deep.  Some  good  topsoil  and 
occasionally  a  little  rich  loam  was  placed  in  the 
bottom,  and  on  the  top  of  this  a  handful  of  per- 
fectly sound  barley,  such  as  would  germinate 
as  far  as  it  could  soon  after  the  planting  was 
completed.  Before,  however,  the  truncheon 
was  placed  in  position  the  thick  end  was  cut 
with  some  sharp  instrument,  such  as  a  saw,  into 
four  or  five  nicks,  about  one-third  of  an  inch 
deep,  and  these  nicks,  or  saw  cuts,  were  filled 
with  grains  of  barley  thrust  carefully  into  them, 
for  the  obvious  purpose  of  supplying  plant  food 
as  soon  as  the  truncheon  might  need  it.  Being 
prepared  in  this  manner,  it  was  placed  firmly 
upon  the  barley  already  placed  in  the  bottom 
of  the  hole,  and  filled  up  in  the  usual  way,  the 
best  soil  first,  and  well  trodden  about  the  root 
end.  Great  care  is  taken  lest  the  plant  should 
become  loose  through  shrinkage  of  the  soil, 
especially  the  clay.  Finally  it  would  have  to 
be  watered,  had  the  weather  not  been  very  wet, 
and  last  of  all  grass  was  placed  about  the  stem 
to  keep  heat  out  and  moisture  in.  Distance 
asunder,  forty  feet. 

"The  above  comprises  the  detail  of  trun- 
cheon planting  except  in  one  particular.  The 
Italians  cut  the  small  end  slanting  that  water 
may  not  lodge  upon  it ;  but  the  Portuguese  saw 
it  fairly  across,  and  place  on  the  top  a  little 
finely  tempered  clay,  as  in  grafting,  and  secure 
it  by  means  of  a  rag  tied  over  it ;  or,  better  still, 
paint  the  top  and  large  knots  with  shellac,  or 
other  such  material. 

"In  this  way,  as  I  have  said,  several  hun- 
dreds have  been  already  planted  at  the  Royal 
Park  Gardens. 

"Considering  that  it  is  a  primary  object  with 
the  commission  to  afford  practical  evidence  of 
the  advantage  of  one  kind  of  cultivating  the 
olive  tree  over  another,  I  proceeded  to  cause 
several  hundreds  to  be  planted  of  two  feet  six 
inches  in  length,  in  a  way  not  distantly  resem- 
bling the  one  just  detailed.  They  are  put  ou.t 
a  foot  or  two  asunder  in  rows,  in  beds  of  rich 
sandy  loam,  and  excellently  sheltered  from  the 
hot  north  winds. 

"Then  I  caused  another  lot,  comprising  sev- 
eral hundreds,  to  be  planted,  of  lengths  varying 
from  two  feet  to  fifteen  inches,  in  the  same  soil, 
but  closer  together  and  of  varying  thickness, 
say  from  two  and  a  half  inches  to  half  an  inch. 

"There  was  only  one  other  way  which  I  have 
not  directed  to  be  tried — that  of  taking  a  root 
and  splitting  into  bits,  from  the  upper  part 
downward,  and  planting  these.  It  is  said  this 
plan  never  fails.  But  the  difficulty  was  in  this 
country  to  find  a  root  of  any  considerable  size ; 

Vol.  III.— 17. 


so  the  idea  was  abandoned  for  the  present. 
The  advantages  of  truncheon  planting  are, 
that  the  plant  is  put  once  for  all  in  its  perma- 
nent situation ;  that  it  needs  little  or  no  care 
when  once  it  begins  to  grow ;  that  it  bears  fre- 
quently the  second  year,  nearly  always  the 
third,  and  forms  a  regular  tree,  as  it  should  do, 
not  a  bush,  and  secures  the  identity  of  a  given 
variety,  which  cannot  be  depended  upon  in 
seedlings. 

"All  the  other  methods  necessarily  take  more 
time.  A  year  is  always  lost  in  the  setting  of 
the  plants  out ;  and  it  is  rarely  under  from  six 
to  nine  years  that  they  come  into  full  bearing, 
and  in  this  colony  especially  they  are  liable  to 
grow  into  scrubby  bushes.  I  would  mention 
here  that  I  have  had  a  number  of  truncheons 
planted  in  situations  most  fully  exposed  to  the 
north  winds,  and  others  under  the  most  com- 
plete shelter,  with  a  view  of  affording  instruc- 
tion as  to  exposure.  For  hill -side  planting 
Sunbury  must  answer,  for  gentle  slopes  Essen- 
don,  while  the  land  at  the  Royal  Park  is  rather 
flat. 

"The  cost  of  purchase  and  of  planting  over 
one  thousand  six  hundred  olive  cuttings  was 
about  $225,  or  about  seven  pence  each,  taken 
one  with  another.  The  commission  paid  six- 
pence each  for  truncheons  five  feet  long. 

"Sea  air  is  known  to  be  beneficial  to  the  per- 
fection of  the  olive ;  and  that  we  have  in  per- 
fection. So  beneficial  is  a  touch  of  salt  to  the 
tree  that  in  planting  in  Portugal  it  is  considered 
advantageous  to  put  down  a  spadeful  of  sea 
sand  obtained  from  near  low-water  mark." 

GATHERING  FRUIT. 

In  gathering  the  olives  when  quite  ripe  (in 
October  or  November  in  this  State),  the  Portu- 
guese spread  tarpaulins,  canvas,  etc.,  around 
the  root  of  the  tree,  and  then  thresh  off  the  ber- 
ries with  long  light  sticks.  This  seems  to  do 
the  tree  no  harm.  In  South  Australia  they  are 
generally  gathered  by  children. 

CONSUMPTION  OF  OLIVE  OIL. 

During  the  year  ending  June  30,  1877,  there 
were  imported  into  the  United  States  348,431 
gallons  of  olive  oil,  valued  at  $491,431,  on  which 
a  duty  was  paid  of  $232,7^6.75.  The  quantity 
and  value  of  pickled  olives  imported  during  the 
same  period  are  not  given  in  the  published 
Treasury  reports,  as  this  article  is  free  from 
duty. 

Of  the  above,  San  Francisco  imported  47,- 
192  gallons,  valued  at  $97,118,  on  which  a  duty 
was  paid  of  $i  per  gallon,  or  $47,192.  The 


262 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


value  of  pickled  olives  imported  into  San  Fran- 
cisco for  the  year  was  $13,892. 

Great  Britain  imports  annually  almost  5,000,- 
ooo  gallons.  Nearly  all  of  this  comes  direct- 
ly or  indirectly  from  ports  on  the  Mediterra- 
nean, and  was  produced  on  land,  the  rivers  and 
streams  of  which  flow  into  that  sea. 

PRUNING  OLIVES. 

This  process  is  adequately  shown  by  the  sub- 
joined figures.  Fig.  I  shows  the  young  tree  to 
be  cut  off  at  c.  Six  branches,  three  on  each 
side,  are  left,  and  the 
lower  twigs  shorten- 
ed. Each  branch  is 
developed  during  the 
year,  as  shown  in  Fig. 
2,  which  is  then  cut 
at  c  again,  and  the 
shoots,  B  and  D,  are 
shortened.  The  up- 
per shoot  is  started 
out  by  this  process, 
and  it  appears  the  fol- 
lowing year  as  A  in 
Fig.  3,  and  it  is  again 
cut  at  c.  This  causes 
the  two  upper  shoots 
to  develop,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  year  they 
appear  as  shown  at 
B  B  in  Fig.  4.  This 
is  their  position  at  the 
fourth  year's  pruning, 
and  each  of  them  is 
cut  at  C,  and  A  is 
shortened,  and  D  is 
allowed  to  develop. 
By  this  time  the  tree 
has  a  spherical  or  vase  form,  and  exposes  much 
surface  to  the  sun,  which  is  desirable. 

THE   HOME  OF  THE   OLIVE. 

While  the  olive  is  found  wild  in  a  certain 
climatic  zone  of  the  Himalaya  Mountains,  and 
is  supposed  to  have  been  transported  in  some 
former  age  from  there  to  Europe,  yet  practi- 
cally all  of  the  olive  oil  of  commerce  comes 
from  Italy,  Spain,  France,  Greece,  Algeria,  Mo- 
rocco, and  other  countries  which  have  coasts  on 
the  Mediterranean. 

Bocardo  says  that  Italy  has  1,235,000  acres 
planted  to  the  olive,  producing  annually  30,560,- 
ooo  gallons  of  oil.  Simmons  gives  the  exports 
in  1854,  of  that  part  of  Italy  and  Sicily  then 
composing  the  Kingdom  of  Naples,  at  36,333 
tons,  valued  at  $11,263,230.  Nieman  gives  the 


FIG. 


FIG.  2. 

export  from  Spain  for  1873  as  valued  at  $10,- 
425,600.  In  1874,  in  consequence  of  the  Carl- 
ist  war,  it  fell  off  to  $3,716,000. 

France,  according  to  Prudent,  produces  but 
a  small  proportion  of  the  olive  oil  which  it  con- 
sumes, yet  annually  exports  to  the  value  of  $2,- 
000,000. 

George  P.  Marsh,  United  States  Minister  to 
Italy,  says  "that  in  the  olive,  walnut,  chestnut, 
cork-oak,  orange,  lemon,  fig,  and  other  trees, 
which,  by  their  fruit  and  other  products  yield 
an  annual  revenue,  nature  has  provided  South- 
ern Europe  with  a  partial  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  the  native  forest,"  and  adds:  "Some 
idea  of  the  importance  of  the  olive  orchards 
may  be  formed  from  the  fact  that  Sicily  alone, 
an  island  scarcely  exceeding  10,000  square 
miles  in  area,  of  which  one -third  at  least  is 
absolutely  barren,  has  exported  to  the  single 
port  of  Marseilles  more  than  2,000,000  pounds 
weight  of  olive  oil  per  year  for  the  last  twenty 
years." 

EXPRESSING  THE  OIL. 

In  the  south  of  France,  where  the  most  care 
is  given  in  the  preparation  of  oil  for  market,  the 


FIG.  3. 


THE   OLIVE   TREE. 


263 


olive  ripens  in  November  and  December. 
The  fruit  is  gathered  before  being  fully 
ripe,  but  is  allowed  to  remain  a  few  days 
for  the  evaporation  of  any  moisture.  It 
is  then  crushed  in  an  edge -wheel  mill  of 
stone,  commonly  drawn  by  horse -power. 
The  stone  resembles  a  large  grindstone 
with  the  edge  serrated,  and  the  mill  is 
not  unlike  the  bark  mills  in  use  in  the 
United  States  thirty  years  since.  The 
object  in  serrating  the  edge  of  the  stone 
is  to  avoid  crushing  the  seeds  or  kernels, 
which  contain  tannin  and  a  little  inferior 
oil.  The  virgin  oil  is  dipped  from  the 
mill,  and  is  almost  invariably  kept  to  en- 
rich poorer  qualities  of  oil.  The  pom- 
ace is  placed  in  coarse  linen  bags  about 
eighteen  inches  in  diameter.  Several  of 
these  are  put  into  a  screw -press  and  the 
power  applied.  The  oil  expressed  runs 
into  a  tank.  This  gives  the  first  quality 
of  oil.  The  pomace  is  now  taken  from 
the  bags,  broken  up  finely,  and  again  put 
under  the  screw -press  for  a  second  and  third 
time,  on  each  occasion  yielding  less  oil  and  of 
an  inferior  quality.  After  the  third  pressing,  the 
pomace  is  again  broken,  and  a  half  gallon  of 
boiling  water  poured  into  each  bag.  It  is  again 
pressed,  yielding  an  inferior  oil  used  for  burn- 
ing, lubricating,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  cas- 
tile  soap.  Even  the  virgin  oil  when  first  press- 
ed is  turbid,  but  clears  itself  by  standing  in 
vessels  not  open  to  the  air.  It  should  be  kept 
'in  places  having  an  even  temperature.  The 
product  of  all  of  the  pressings  is  about  three 
gallons  of  oil  to  the  bushel  of  olives. 

PICKLED   OLIVES. 

The  best  olive  for  pickling  is  the  Picholine 
(Oleo  oblonga).  In  the  south  of  France  it  is 
gathered  in  October,  just  before  the  fruit  has 
commenced  to  turn  brown.  The  finest  are  se- 
lected and  placed  in  a  weak  solution  of  soda, 
to  which  lime  has  been  added.  After  remain- 
ing in  this  solution  about  ten  hours,  or  until 
the  pulp  can  be  readily  detached  from  the  ker- 
nel, they  are  removed  and  placed  in  cold  water, 
which  is  daily  changed  for  a  week.  The  pro- 
cess removes  the  tannin  from  the  unripe  fruit. 
When  they  cease  to  be  bitter,  they  are  bottled 
in  brine,  which  is  usually  made  aromatic  with 
coriander  or  fennel.  The  next  best  variety  for 
pickling,  is  the  Olea  minor  lucensis,  ninth  varie- 
ty in  New  Duhamel.  This  is  also  valuable  for 
oil. 

In  Portugal  the  ordinary  larger  kind  grown 
for  oil  is  used  to  a  vast  extent  as  food,  and  the 
experience  of  ages  in  that  country,  and  of  the  , 


FIG. 


whole  Hebrew  race  (the  healthiest  race  of  men 
in  the  world),  everywhere  bears  testimony  to 
its  value.  If  he  had  to  go  one  hundred  miles 
for  his  olives,  the  Jew  would  have  them. 

Without  attempting  to  give  the  details  of 
treating  the  Spanish  olive  for  long  preserva- 
tion, for  export,  etc.,  I  may  in  this  place  men- 
tion that  the  olive  plays  no  inconsiderable  part 
in  the  ordinary  food  of  the  people  of  Portugal ; 
and  the  experience  of  ages  has  shown  it  to  be 
both  grateful  to  the  palate  and  wholesome. 
Now  the  common  practice  is  to  allow  the  larger 
and  more  fleshy  kinds  to  become  ripe,  i.  e.} 
black,  when  they  lose  a  good  deal  of  their  as- 
tringent and  acrid  taste.  These  are  then  scald- 
ed in  water  considerably  under  boiling,  into 
which  an  ounce  or  so  of  soda  to  the  gallon  is 
dissolved,  and  let  stand  in  it  for  three  or  four 
hours — in  fact,  till  it  is  cold.  They  are  then 
taken  out  and  well  washed  in  cold  water  sev- 
eral times  over,  and  finally  put  into  a  clean 
wooden  or  large  earthenware  vessel,  and  com- 
pletely covered  with  a  pretty  strong  brine  of 
salt  and  water,  and  covered  up  from  the  air. 
Another  lot,  first  treated  as  above,  is  put  down 
as  a  pickle  in  moderately  strong  vinegar  and 
used  as  required. 

When  I  allude  to  the  preparation  of  Spanish 
olives  for  export,  I  only  mean  the  plans  adopted 
in  packing,  in  pickle,  oil,  bottling,  etc.  The 
preparation  of  the  fruit  is  alike  in  all  cases — 
save  that  when  dealing  with  the  full  ripe  ones 
we  remove  the  salt-water  pickle  three  or  four 
times  at  intervals  of  a  week  or  so,  and  each 
time  the  berries  are  rendered  more  mellow.  I 
have  kept  them  in  ordinary  large  earthenware 


264 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


jars,  merely  covered  by  the  lid,  for  more  than 
two  years,  in  Melbourne,  without  appearing  to 
change  for  the  worse. 

When  engaged  in  the  duties  of  the  Royal 
Commission  for  Foreign  Industries  and  For- 
ests in  Victoria  during  1870-1, 1  endeavored  to 
obtain  as  much  information  as  I  could  from 
botanists,  and  from  gentlemen  experienced  in 
the  growth  of  the  tree  in  Australia,  for  such 
practical  knowledge  is  often  preferable  in  new 
countries  to  aught  that  can  be  obtained  from 
books.  Accordingly,  I  obtained  the  following 
from  my  illustrious  friend,  the  Government  Bot- 
anist : 

NOTES  FROM  BARON  VON  MUELLER. 

"For  grafting  seedling  olives  there  are  at  the 
Botanic  Gardens,  Melbourne,  four  renowned  va- 
rieties, obtained  from  the.  Honorable  Samuel 
Davenport,  of  Adelaide,  who,  for  a  series  of 
years,  has  given  much  attention  to  this  branch 
of  cultural  industry,  studied  this  with  other  ru- 
ral questions  during  a  stay  in  South  Europe, 
and  wrote  last  year  an  instructive  little  publica- 
tion on  the  cultivation  of  the  olive.  These  va- 
rieties are : 

"(i.)  Verdale — Available  for  a  good  table 
oil,  as  well  as  for  green  conserve.  This  and 
the  next  following  are  early  and  abundant  bear- 
ers. 

"(2.)  Blanquet  —  Adapted  for  dry  ground. 
The  oil  is  of  a  particularly  sweet,  delicate  taste, 
and  more  pale  than  other  kinds,  but  does  not 
keep  so  long.  This  and  the  Verdale  produce 
the  fruit  on  low-growing  branches,  so  as  to  be 
accessible  for  hand-picking. 

"(3.)  Bouquettier — For  superior  oil. 

"(4.)  Redounaou  —  Eligible  for  colder  re- 
gions; produces  table  oil,  and  is  also  esteemed 
for  conserves. 

"Some  other  kinds  are  locally  available, 
among  them  the  Olivier  de  Grasse,  the  latter 
yielding  an  excellent  table  oil  and  oil  for  per- 
fumery, but  the  plant  is  high  of  growth,  and 
the  gathering  of  the  fruit  more  expensive.  It 
is  of  a  weeping  habit.  Baron  Von  Mueller  has 
also  entered  into  arrangements  with  corre- 
spondents in  various  parts  of  South  Europe  to 
obtain  other  superior  varieties  which  as  yet  are 
not  introduced  into  Australia.  The  American 
system  of  establishing  at  regular  distances  lines 
of  shelter  plantations  of  trees  on  farm  land, 
might  be  adopted  for  planting  olives.  In  such 
cases  quick-growing  timber  trees  may  be  chosen 
in  the  first  instance  along  with  the  olives  to  pro- 
vide shelter  earlier  than  otherwise  possible. 

"Whenever  olive  fruits  cannot  well  be  locally 
utilized,  they  should  not  be  allowed  to  go  to 


waste,  but  be  sown  with  a  view  of  obtaining  a 
copious  stock  of  seedlings,  to  be  grafted,  a 
proviso  which  is  easily  accomplished  a  very 
few  years  later.  Seedlings  under  the  cover  of 
decaying  foliage  spring  up  spontaneously  in 
masses  from  dropped  fruits. 

"The  planting  of  olives  cannot  be  sufficiently 
impressed  on  proprietors  of  arable  soil,  the  cli- 
mate of  most  parts  of  Victoria  having  proved 
singularly  well  adapted  for  richly  productive 
olive  culture,  as  in  a  multitude  of  places  near 
Melbourne  and  elsewhere  may  be  seen.  While 
a  gold-field  becomes  exhausted,  an  olive  plan- 
tation increases  in  value  for  a  long  series  of 
years,  and  becomes  a  lasting  source  of  revenue 
to  its  possessor.  The  yield  is  annually  at  once 
salable,  while  it  is  for  many  small  farmers 
more  readily  remunerative  than  grapes,  if  the 
latter  are  to  be  converted  into  wine.  The  olive, 
moreover,  is  a  hardy  plant,  and  hardly  subject 
to  any  diseases  which  might  render  the  yield 
precarious.  The  processes  of  gathering  the  fruit 
and  preserving  the  oil  are  of  the  simplest  kind, 
and  do,  therefore,  not  necessitate  the  applica- 
tion of  skilled  labor. 

"Mr.  Davenport's  management  of  truncheons 
is  to  bury  them  horizontally  in  the  ground 
about  four  inches  below  the  surface,  in  a  good 
vegetable  mold,  neither  subject  to  dryness  nor 
too  much  moisture.  After  two  years  the  young 
trees,  then  three  to  five  feet  high,  are  trans- 
planted to  permanent  positions,  the  month  of 
May  being  the  time  chosen  for  the  purpose. 
Olive  oil  produced  in  Adelaide  this  year  was 
sold  at  twelve  shillings  the  gallon  to  grocery  es- 
tablishments, the  fruit  being  mostly  from  seed- 
ling trees.  Careful  hand-picking  costs  in  Ade- 
laide four  pence  per  bucket.  The  work  gives 
good  employment  to  children,  who  manage  to 
pick  six  buckets  a  day,  and,  if  experienced,  may 
gather  more.  Any  simple  structure  will  an- 
swer the  purpose  of  pressing,  coir  matting  bags 
being  used  for  the  crushed  olives  for  successive 
piles  under  the  press.  The  first  oil  obtained  by 
gentle  pressure  is  the  best.  It  is  not  at  all  un- 
likely that  the  olive  plant  would  thrive  in  many 
parts  of  the  salt-bush  country  on  the  Murray 
River,  now  not  utilized  for  any  cultural  pur- 
poses." 

Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  of  Bankside,  near  Ade- 
laide, South  Australia,  writes : 

"  My  knowledge  of  the  olive  is  very  limited; 
the  oldest  trees  I  have  were  planted  in  1858, 
and  have  borne  fruit  five  years.  They  were 
planted  as  seedlings  of  one  year's  growth,  and 
have  never  been  grafted.  I  have  never  tried 
growing  them  from  truncheons,  but  I  know  that 
Mr.  Samuel  Davenport  has  succeeded  in  grow- 


THE   OLIVE    TREE. 


265 


ing  them  in  moist  ground  from  cuttings  fifteen  to 
eighteen  inches  long,  and  from  one-half  to  one 
inch  through.     They  are  planted  very  sloping 
in  the  ground,  with  a  very  small  portion  left 
above.     These  mostly  root  enough  in  one  year 
to  remove  the  next  for  planting  out.     I  have 
also  seen  large  limbs  of  old  trees  planted  partly 
in  the  ground,  and  a  mound  of  earth  three  or 
four  feet  high  piled  up  round  above  the  surface, 
but  they  did  not  do  well;  the  climate  here  is 
too   dry  in   the   summer.      The   favorite   way 
seems  to  be  to  plant  seedlings,  which  are  very 
abundant,  and  can  be  bought  for  about  £\  per 
one  thousand.     These  are  large  enough  to  graft 
in  two  years,  and  can  be  planted  out  the  follow- 
ing season  with  a  pretty  sure  prospect  of  suc- 
cess.    I  am  not  acquainted  with  the  different 
kinds  of  olives  grown  here,     Mine  are  all  seed- 
lings, and  produce  pretty  fair  sized  fruit,  but  I 
find  I  have  two  or  three  trees  very  much  su- 
perior to  the  rest,  and  shall  graft  them  all  to 
those  kinds  if  I  find  I  can  succeed  by  grafting 
in  the  larger  branches,  which  I  shall  try  this 
season.     My  olives  bear  more  abundantly  every 
second  year,  and   I  do  not  see  that  the  hot 
winds  have  any  bad  effect  on  them;  I  never 
find  the  fruit  drop  off  after  them,  like  oranges 
do.     I  managed  to  keep  my  olives  three  years 
by  spreading  them  on  the  trays  I  use  for  fruit 
drying.     I  had  them  all  crushed  at  the  goal  by 
the  prisoners,  and  the  oil  from  the  dried  berries 
was  considered  quite  equal  to  that  got  from 
fresh  fruit.     I  have  no  knowledge  of  the  pro- 
duce per  tree  of  mine,  but  a  friend,  Mr.  Quick, 
of  Marden,  last  year  made  two  gallons  of  fine 
oil  from  a  tree  in  his  garden ;  he  has  promised 
to  give  me  the  age  of  the  tree,  etc.,  and  if  I  get 
it  I   will  inclose  it.      I  notice  that  the  olive 
grows  well  here  in  all  soils,  even  in  salty  land 
that  will  not  grow  any  fruit  tree.     I  have  my 
olives  gathered  by  children,  and  pay  them  two 
shillings  per  hundred- weight  for  gathering ;  they 
earn  about  one  shilling  per  day.     I  do  not  let 
them  beat  the  trees,  but  let  them  get  up  and 
shake  the  branches,  or  stand  on  the  ground 
with  a  long  light  pole  with  a  crook  fixed  at  the 
end  to  seize  hold  of  the  branches ;  the  crook  is 
made  of  iron  of  a  particular  shape,  and  is  cov- 
ered with  soft  stuff  to  prevent  it  barking  the 
branches.     The  trees  have  to  be  gone  over  sev- 
eral times,  as  the  olives  do  not  all  come  off  with 
the   first   shaking.     The   olive   should  not   be 
planted  less  than  twenty  feet  apart,  and  that 
will  be  too  close  on  good  land." 

The  following  is  from  my  correspondent,  Mr. 
P.  A.  Gugeri,  now  of  Western  Australia,  where 
he  is  now  engaged  in  cultivating  olive  trees  and 
vines : 


"The  olive  is  a  tree  that  ought  to  be  culti- 
vated wherever  it  will  grow.  The  labor  of 
gathering  the  olives  is  not  so  much  as  some 
think.  If  the  trees  are  so  pruned  as  not  to 
grow  above  fourteen  or  sixteen  feet  high,  the 
olives  are  easily  beaten  off  the  trees  with  long 
sticks,  large  cloths  or  tarpaulins  having  been 
spread  under  the  trees  to  receive  the  berries. 
A  man  could  easily  knock  down  five  hundred- 
weight a  day,  which  would  make  nearly  four 
gallons — at  least,  three  and  a  half— of  oil. 

"The  process  of  oil-making  is  very  simple  in 
expressing  the  oil.  It  can  be  done  with  a  hy- 
draulic, or  any  large  screw-press,  the  olives  be- 
ing placed  in  a  perforated  cylinder  and  pressed. 
Oil  and  water  will  come  over.  This  should  be 
received  in  a  tub,  the  oil  rising  to  the  top  in 
half  an  hour  or  so,  when  it  is  skimmed  off  and 
put  into  a  cask,  or  other  convenient  wooden  or 
earthen  vessel,  and  let  stand  where  the  light 
cannot  reach  it  to  clear  itself.  Great  care 
should  be  taken  to  skim  off  all  the  oil  before 
fermentation  of  the  fruity  juice  of  the  olive  sets 
in,  or  it  will  be  re-absorbed  and  lost.  We  con- 
sider this  the  very  finest  oil. 

"The  stones  that  remain  at  the  end  of  this 
process  may  then  be  ground  under  a  heavy 
stone,  such  as  a  millstone,  to  pulp,  mixed  with 
hot  water,  placed  in  a  strong  bag  of  canvas,  or 
like  material,  and  pressed  as  before." 

As  to  the  best  time  for  gathering  the  fruit,  it 
seems  to  be  just  when  it  approaches  natural 
ripeness;  but  about  Lisbon  they  were  left  on 
the  trees  till  fully  ripe. 

Pliny  condemned  the  practice  of  leaving  the 
fruit  over  long  on  the  trees,  as  he  considered 
that  by  so  doing  the  next  year's  crop  is  injured. 
"Haerendo,  enim,  ultra  suum  tempus  absumunt 
venientibus  alimentum." 

The  following  is  from  the  paper  of  B.  B. 
Redding,  Esq.,  already  mentioned,  and  well 
deserves  to  be  recorded  here.  My  warmest 
thanks  are  due,  and  tendered,  to  him  for  his 
kindness  and  urbanity  in  allowing  me  to  use 
his  labors. 

INTRODUCTION     OF    THE    OLIVE     INTO     CALI- 
FORNIA. 

"I  have  found  it  very  difficult  to  obtain  the 
history  of  the  introduction  of  the  Mission  olive 
into  California.  It  was  first  brought  to  Amer- 
ica by  Antonia  Ribora,  who  took  it  from  Spain 
to  Lima  in  1560.  Frezier  speaks  of  the  olive 
being  used  for  oil  in  Chile  as  early  as  1700. 
Frank  A.  Kimball,  of  San  Diego,  in  an  article 
on  the  olive  in  the  Southern  California  Horti- 
culturist, states  that  the  first  olive  trees  were 
planted  by  the  Spanish  missionaries  at  that 


266 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


place  in  1769.  If  this  is  correct,  they  are  from 
seed  forwarded  from  San  Bias  in  Mexico  by 
Don  Joseph  de  Galvez,  who  fitted  out  an  expe- 
dition by  virtue  of  a  royal  order  to  're-discover 
and  people  the  port  of  Monterey,  or  at  least 
San  Diego,'  which  expedition  accompanied 
Father  Junipero  Sera  in  his  missionary  efforts 
'to  extend  the  spiritual  conquest  of  the  North.' 
Fifty  years  later  it  is  recorded  'that  all  the 
seeds  that  Galvez  had  been  so  provident  in 
sending  up  took  root  and  prospered.  The 
fathers  built  new  missions,  and  continually  re- 
plenished their  stock  of  converts,  which,  at  one 
time,  were  about  twenty  thousand.  They  plant- 
ed vineyards,  orchards,  and  the  olive.'  From 
San  Diego  the  tree  was  transplanted  to  nearly 
all  the  other  missions,  and  from  these  missions 
to  various  places  throughout  the  State.  Other 
than  those  at  San  Diego,  Santa  Barbara,  and 
San  Luis  Obispo,  I  cannot  learn  that  this  tree 
has  as  yet  been  planted  in  orchard  form,  with 
the  object  of  making  profit  from  its  fruit. 

THE   MISSION  OLIVE. 

"H.  N.  Bolander,  who  had  charge  of  the 
botany  of  the  geological  survey  of  the  State,  in- 
forms me  that  in  all  of  the  missions  there  was 
but  one  variety  of  the  olive,  one  of  pear,  and 
one  of  grape. 

"I  have  made  considerable  effort  to  learn 
the  name  of  this  particular  olive,  and  to  ascer- 
tain if  this  variety  is  cultivated  in  Europe,  but 
without  success.  John  Ellis,  who  has  charge  of 
the  horticultural  grounds  at  the  University,  in- 
forms me  that  the  seeds  of  the  Mission  olive 
'come  correct,  and  produce  fruit  of  the  same 
kind  as  the  parent.'  From  the  fact  that  the 
seeds  produce  trees  bearing  the  same  kind  of 
fruit  as  the  parent,  it  would  be  safe  to  conclude 
that  it  is  the  original  stock  of  the  wild  olive  of 
Europe  or  Africa.  It  is  a  shy  bearer,  and  has 
fruit  very  much  smaller  than  the  varieties  culti- 
vated in  Italy  and  the  south  of  France.  It  is 
probably  very  valuable  as  a  stock  on  which  to 
graft  or  bud  more  prolific  kinds.  It  has,  how- 
ever, demonstrated  that  the  best  varieties  can 
be  successfully  grown  over  a  wide  range  in  Cali- 
fornia. 

A  USEFUL  AND   PROFITABLE  TREE. 

"  I  can  find  no  other  tree  so  useful  and  pro- 
fitable that  will  grow  and  thrive  with  so  small 
an  amount  of  moisture.  If,  as  many  believe, 
the  annual  rain -fall  of  a  given  place  can  be  in- 
creased by  the  planting  of  trees,  I  do  not  know 
so  useful  a  tree  to  recommend  for  this  purpose. 
If  it  should  fail  in  adding  to  the  rain,  it  will  be 


certain  to  thrive  on  what  rain  does  fall,  and  be 
sure  to  yield  oil  whether  cultivated  or  neglected  \ 
for  what  Virgil  wrote  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago  is  still  true.  After  having  described  the 
continuous  culture  necessary  for  the  vine,  he 
adds  :  'On  the  other  hand,  the  olives  require  no 
culture,  nor  do  they  expect  the  crooked  pruning- 
hook  and  tenacious  harrow,  when  once  they 
are  rooted  in  the  ground  and  have  stood  the 
blasts.  Earth  of  herself  supplies  the  plants  with 
moisture  when  opened  by  the  hooked  tooth  of 
the  drag,  and  weighty  fruits  when  opened  by 
the  share.  Nurture  for  thyself,  with  this,  the 
fat  and  peace  delighting  olive.'" 

The  following  is  from  a  most  ably  written  and 
interesting  article  by  Augustus  L.  Hillhous,  in 
Michaux's  North  American  Sylva,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
130  et  seq.: 

"The  olive  has  been  called  the  polypus  of 
trees,  for  it  is  propagated  by  all  the  known 
methods  of  propagating  trees — by  sowing  the 
seed,  by  layers,  by  slips,  by  cuttings  of  the  root, 
by  sprouts  separated  from  the-  trunk,  or  from 
roots  of  the  parent  stock.  Seed  planting  is 
generally  rejected  on  account  of  the  length  of 
time  before  bearing.  When  it  is  resorted  to 
the  best  sorts  only  are  selected,  of  these  the 
Gros  Kibe's  being  considered  the  best.  The 
pulp  is  removed  and  the  berries  cleaned  in  an 
alkaline  solution,  and  planted,  in  March,  in  well 
manured,  rich,  deep  soil,  in  a  sheltered  locality, 
two  or  three  inches  deep  in  trenches."  [For 
convenience  of  removing,  the  seeds  should  be 
six  inches  asunder,  unless  "thinning  out"  be 
contemplated.]  "To  accelerate  the  germination, 
the  stones  may  be  kept  in  fine  mold  during  the 
summer  and  autumn,  and  sown  in  the  begin- 
ning of  January.  They  soon  germinate,  and  are 
strong  enough  to  bear  removal  the  next  winter. 
These  will  have  to  be  grafted,  and  the  best 
method  is  by  inoculation,  and  the  safest  time 
for  it  is  the  close  of  winter  or  the  opening  of 
spring." 

OIL  MILL,  AND  THE  WORKING  OF   IT. 

The  oil  mill  retains  nearly  its  primitive  form. 
It  consists  of  a  basin  raised  two  feet  from  the 
ground,  with  an  upright  beam  in  the  middle, 
around  which  a  massive  millstone  is  turned  by 
water,  or  by  a  beast  of  burden.  The  press  is 
solidly  constructed  of  wood,  or  of  cast-iron,  and 
is  moved  by  a  compound  lever.  The  berries, 
after  being  crushed  to  a  paste,  are  put  into  sacks 
of  coarse  linen,  or  of  feather  grass,  and  submit- 
ted to  the  press. 

The  virgin  oil,  which  is  the  first  discharged, 
is  the  purest,  and  retains  most  sensibly  the 
taste  of  the  fruit.  It  is  received  in  vessels  half 


THE    OLIVE    TREE. 


267 


filled  with  water,  from  which  it  is  taken  off  and 
set  apart  in  earthenware  jars.  To  separate  any 
vegetable  fibers  and  other  impurities,  it  is  fre- 
quently decanted.  When  no  more  flows,  the 
paste  is  broken  up,  treated  with  hot  water,  and 
pressed  again.  This  is  often  done  a  third  time. 
The  best  oil  for  domestic  purposes  is  made 
from  the  pulp  only.  A  machine  has  been  made 
for  pulping  without  smashing  the  stones,  which 
contain  a  little  tannic  acid.  All  the  inferior 
qualities  find  their  uses  in  machinery,  in  soap- 
making,  lamps,  etc. 

Two  things  occur  to  me  to  mention  in  this 
connection,  viz: 

(i.)  If  the  crushed  matter  be  allowed  to  stand 
for  any  considerable  time — say  three  or  four 
hours — fermentation  will  have  set  in  if  the  oil 
cellar  be  warm,  and  the  loss  of  oil  will  be  quite 
considerable. 

(2.)  Wherever  the  oil  cellar  is  situated  and 
the  various  operations  of  purifying  are  con- 
ducted, direct  sunlight  must  be  excluded  if  the 
oil  is  to  remain  good.  It  must  never  for  one 
minute  see  sunlight,  or  it  is  spoiled. 

A  list  of  seven  favorite  kinds,  from  a  note  in 
Michaux : 

(i.)  Olivier  Pleureur — Fourteenth  variety  of 
the  New  Duhamel;  a  fine  tree,  somewhat  re- 
sembling a  weeping  willow;  good  both  for  ta- 
ble and  oil;  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  of  Bankside, 
South  Australia,  has  it. 

(2.)  Olivier  a"  fruit  arrond&  (Olea  spherica) 
— It  requires  moisture,  good  soil,  and  plenty  of 
manure.  Good  for  oil. 

(3.)  Olivier  de  Lucque  (Olea  minor  lucensis) 
— Hardy,  and  yields  fruit  for  preserving. 

(4  and  5.)  Aglandeon — Are  good  for  oil,  and 
prefer  dry  and  elevated  grounds. 

(6.)  Olivier  Amygdalin — Much  prized  about 
Montpelier  for  its  fine  and  abundant  oil. 

(7.)  Picho\in(0tea  oblonga)— Yields  the  most 
celebrated  pickled  olives.  This  variety  is  not 
delicate  in  its  choice  of  soil  and  climate. 

The  following  extracts  from  Busby's  Journal 
are  both  interesting  and  useful : 

"About  a  mile  from  the  town  we  struck  off 
into  a  plantation  of  olives.  Few  of  the  trees, 
however,  contained  any  considerable  quantity, 
and  some  were  altogether  without  fruit.  Such 
olives  we  pulled  were  universally  rotten.  I  was 
afterward  told  by  Mr.  Gordon  that  all  olives  are 
rotten  this  year,  and  that  this  is  invariably  the 
case  every  second  year.  A  little  farther  we  saw 
a  new  plantation  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
road,  and  luckily  found  a  peasant.  To  our 
questions  respecting  the  olives,  he  informed  us 


that  the  plants  bear  a  little  fruit  even  the  first 
year ;  but,  in  the  second  and  third  years,  they 
bear  a  considerable  crop  in  proportion  to  their 
size.  Some  of  what  we  saw  had  been  eighteen 
months,  some  only  six  months.  The  former 
appeared  healthy  young  trees,  covered  with  a 
considerable  quantity  of  foliage.  The  latter 
had  only  a  few  slender  shoots,  and  some  of 
them  indeed  stood  in  their  original  nakedness. 
The  olive  plants  were  nothing  else  than  large 
limbs  of  old  trees  from  eight  to  ten  feet  in 
length  and  from  two  to  three  inches  in  diame- 
ter. They  are  sunk  about  four  or  five  feet  in 
the  ground,  and  the  part  of  the  plant  above 
ground  is  covered,  during  the  first  summer,  with 
a  cone  of  earth  or  clay  to  the  hight  of  from  two 
to  three  feet. 

"The  olive  having  been  mentioned,  we  were 
shown  two  trees  which  supported  a  wheel  for 
drawing  water  from  the  well.  Two  posts  hav- 
ing been  required  for  this  purpose  when  they 
were  clearing  the  ground  of  some  olive  trees 
three  years  ago,  they  took  two  of  the  trunks  of 
these,  which  were  respectively  ten  or  twelve 
inches  in  diameter;  they  nevertheless  took 
root,  and  are  now  covered  with  strong  branches, 
affording  a  proof  of  the  great  facility  with  which 
the  olive  takes  root.  The  vinador  said  that  an 
olive  would  produce  a  crop  three  years  after  its 
plantation,  but  not  a  full  crop  till  its  fifth  year, 
and  would  reach  its  greatest  perfection  in  its 
tenth  year.  He  s.aid  a  plant  ought  to  be  the 
limb  of  a  tree  of  the  thickness  of  a  man's  arm. 
Being  asked  how  long  it  would  take  before  a 
slip  such  as  we  plant  in  New  South  Wales 
would  bear  a  crop,  he  appeared  to  consider  the 
proposal  as  ridiculous,  and  said  he  thought 
twenty  years.  He  did  not  consider  the  oil  of 
young  olives  inferior  to  that  of  the  old;  the 
only  difference  in  their  value  arises  from  their 
quantity.  The  trees  are  planted  with  consider- 
able regularity,  at  the  distance  of  thirty-six  or 
forty  feet.  An  average  crop  is  from  one  and  a 
quarter  to  one  and  a  half  arrobas — that  is  from 
five  to  six  English  gallons  each  tree. 

"When  rain  falls  in  August,  the  olives  always 
suffer  from  it.  All  the  ground  we  saw  was  a 
light  sandy  loam.  It  is  plowed  once  a  year. 
They  plow  an  aranzada  of  the  olive  ground  in 
a  day,  but  not  more  than  half  that  quantity  of 
the  meadow  or  corn  land  below.  There  are 
five  kinds  of  olives  on  the  estate ;  one  of  them, 
the  'La  Reyna,'  is  of  "a  very  large  size,  and  is 
pickled  for  eating.  The  tree  of  this  variety 
produces  but  little  fruit,  and  the  fruit  when 
pressed  yields  very  little  oil,  but  is  highly  prized 
for  eating,  being  as  large  as  a  good  sized  plum. 

"After  having  been  brought  home,  the  olives 
lie  in  a  heap  on  an  average  about  fifteen  days 


268 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


before  they  are  crushed.  After  having  been 
crushed,  they  are  put  into  the  press,  and  it  is 
the  common  practice  tc  pour  hot  water  upon 
them  in  order  to  extract  the  oil.  They  are 
pressed  thrice,  and  each  time  with  addition  of 
boiling  water.  The  fluid  runs  from  the  press 
to  a  cistern,  and  when  it  is  filled,  the  oil  flows 
over  the  top,  leaving  the  water  below,  which  is 
cleared  away  as  necessary.  The  peasant  said 
that  all  the  difference  between  the  fine  and 
common  oil  was,  that  the  former  was  the  virgin 
juice  drawn  off  with  cold  water,  and  not  mixed 
with  the  second  and  third  pressings.  The  trees 
on  this  property  are  reckoned  very  young  for 
olives,  although  they  are  sixty  years  old.  They 
are  pruned  every  year.  But  olive  trees  are  said 
not  to  require  pruning  at  all  till  they  are  twen- 
ty-five or  thirty  years  old.  Two  hundred  aran- 
zadas  are  equal  to  one  hundred  and  ninety-one 
English  acres;  and  three  thousand  arrobas  of 
oil  (the  average  annual  produce)  are  equal  to 
twelve  thousand  seven  hundred  and  thirty -five 
English  gallons,  old  measure — about  sixty-three 
and  three-quarter  gallons  per  English  acre.  I 
do  not  know,  however,  whether  there  was  not 


included  in  this  estimate  forty  aranzadas  that 
are  entirely  planted  with  the  '  La  Reyna,'  which 
are  never  pressed  for  oil.  Even  with  this  de- 
duction the  produce  would  fall  very  far  short 
of  what  the  trees  of  the  Hieronomites  were  said 
to  produce,  viz:  from  three  to  four  fanegas  of 
olives  each  tree,  z&c\\fanega  yielding  an  arroba 
of  oil.  An  English  acre  will  contain  sixty  trees 
twenty-seven  feet  apart,  and  sixty  was  said  by 
the  peasant  to  be  the  number  on  each  aran- 
zada.  One  hundred  and  fifty-three  acres,  bear- 
ing sixty  trees  each,  will  contain  nine  thousand 
one  hundred  and  eighty  trees,  and  the  produce 
being  three  thousand  arrobas,  it  is  scarcely  one- 
third  of  an  arroba  for  each  tree.  This  comes 
nearer  to  Don  Jacobo  Gordon's  statement,  that 
from  one  and  a  quarter  to  one  and  a  half  arroba 
is  reckoned  a  good  return  from  each  tree.  The 
trees  of  the  Hieronomites,  as  well,  indeed,  as 
the  most  of  those  I  saw  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Xeres,  were  planted  on  a  richer  soil,  and  were 
of  much  larger  dimensions;  but  this  could 
never  cause  such  a  difference  as  to  reconcile 
the  different  statements." 

JOHN  I.  BLEASDALE,  D.  D. 


LEARNED    BY   THE   WAY. 


The  blackbirds  perch  on  my  apple  tree, 
With  chirp  and  twitter,  unfearingly, 
The  bare  boughs  seeming  to  keep  them  still 
Lest  the  guests  take  flight,  as  birdlings  will.    , 
'Tis  the  dearest  fruit  the  tree  has  held 
Since  its  lofty  top  the  Storm -king  felled. 

And  I,  who  look  from  my  window  out 

On  merry  chatter  and  wanton  rout, 

Take  up  a  lesson  to  read  at  ease 

Some  time,  when  the  green  leaves  fill  the  trees, 

Or  when  the  birds  shall  have  flown  away 

And  dry  brown  twigs  in  the  breezes  sway. 

The  glowing  chapter  of  hearty  cheer, 
Whate'er  the  tide  or  the  time  of  year, 
The  smile  that  lightens,  the  song  that  aids, 
And  brave  endeavor  that  never  fades — 
Oh,  where  is  gloom  when  the  skies  are  dun, 
If  ever  the  heart  was  glad  with  sun? 

The  jonquils  bright  that  my  table  grace 
Are  just  as  sweet  in  their  china  vase 
This  day,  when  the  blue  is  overcast, 
As  those  which  I,  in  the  summers  past, 
Have  lifted  up  from  my  garden  bed 
With  loving  touch  on  each  golden  head. 


THE  PRESENT  HOUSE  OF  STUART. 


269 


And  poets,  crowned  by  the  hand  of  God, 
Should  sing  as  sweetly  beneath  the  rod, 
I  may  not  doubt,  as  they  do  in  pride 
When  joy  flows  up  with  her  warmest  tide; 
For  no  sad  thing  is  a  gift  like  this, 
But  comfort  ever,  and  light,  and  bliss. 

Then  sing  no  more  of  to-morrow,  bard — 
Each  has  a  day  to  himself  most  hard ; 
Each  has  one  grief  that  is  just  his  own, 
And  none  but  each  to  his  woe  is  known. 
To-day,  with  blooms  and  the  song  of  birds, 
Is  better  fit  for  your  rhythmic  words. 

So  chirp  and  twitter,  ye  rout,  that  fill 
My  apple  tree  and  my  window-sill; 
And,  jonquil  flowers,  that  came  to  me 
From  some  kind  hand  with  its  sympathy, 
Ye  leave  your  breath  in  my  room  for  aye 
Through  lessons  taken  to  heart  this  day. 


JAMES  BERRY  BENSEL. 


THE    PRESENT    HOUSE    OF   STUART. 


On  Christmas  morning  last  there  expired  on 
board  of  a  French  steamer,  between  Bordeaux 
and  Portsmouth,  or  Southampton,  a  nobleman 
much  esteemed  for  his  high  merit  and  many 
virtues,  and  known  as  Charles  Edward  Stuart, 
Count  d'Albanie,  descendant  of  the  royal  house 
of  Stuart,  and  pretender  to  the  throne  of  Great 
Britain.  He  had  sought  the  beautiful  and  sunny 
resort  of  Biarritz  to  avoid  the  sudden  changes  of 
temperature  incident  to  his  London  home,  and 
was  returning  as  far  as  Bordeaux  when  death 
overtook  him.  My  acquaintance  with  the  late 
venerable  Count  carries  me  back  a  full  decade 
of  years,  to  a  time  when,  though  he  had  already 
passed  three  score  and  twelve  winters,  he  ap- 
peared to  be  still  in  the  very  prime  of  manhood. 

Ten  years  ago  the  neighborhood  of  Warwick 
Street,  in  London,  was  not  so  unfashionable  a 
place  of  residence  as  at  the  present  day.  It 
still,  however,  possesses  certain  advantages 
from  being  in  the  West  End  of  town,  and  with- 
in that  famed  district  with  undefined  limits 
known  as  Belgravia.  Many  great  families,  par- 
ticularly in  the  vicinity  of  Eccleston  and  War- 
wick Squares,  still  resist  the  infatuation  which 
has  caused  so  many  of  the  inhabitants  on  the 
opposite  side  of  Buckingham  Palace  Road  to 
follow  the  tide  of  fashionable  emigration  toward 
South  Kensington.  South  Belgravia,  in  the 
year  1871,  turned  out  very  many  fine  equipages. 
There  were  high-mounted  carriages,  with  ar- 


morial panels,  and  footmen  behind ;  dog-carts 
drawn  by  high-steppers,  and  driven  by  young 
gentlemen  with  expectations ;  some  of  the  la- 
dies drove  themselves  out  in  little  basket -car- 
riages, while  others  reclined  at  their  ease  in 
barouches,  or  rode  in  small  broughams  drawn 
by  ponies.  In  fact,  nearly  all  kinds  of  fashion- 
able vehicles  flashed  out  of  this  neighborhood 
in  the  afternoon  of  a  London  season  to  join  the 
long  and  dreary  line  in  Hyde  Park.  Pedestri- 
ans, like  myself,  walked  across  to  Rotten  Row, 
or  into  the  "Ring,"  where  all  the  fashion  of 
London  passed  in  review.  The  striped  awn- 
ings that  covered  the  windows  of  the  two  prin- 
cipal squares  of  South  Belgravia  were  bright 
then,  and  the  echoes  of  voices  wafted  across  the 
green  plats  were  very  gay.  From  the  open  win- 
dows the  perfume  of  flowers  fell  upon  the  passer- 
by as  he  stopped  to  listen  to  the  sound  of  music 
from  within. 

At  the  time  just  mentioned  I  occupied  lodg- 
ings in  South  Belgravia,  and  in  my  walks  to 
and  from  the  city  I  occasionally  encountered 
two  elderly  looking  gentlemen,  who,  from  the 
peculiarity  of  their  costume,  attracted  my  atten- 
tion, and  whom  from  their  resemblance  to  each 
other  I  judged  to  be  brothers.  They  usually 
came  from  the  direction  of  Warwick  Street, 
turned  down  Buckingham  Palace  Road,  and 
walked  across  St.  James's  Park  into  Pall  Mall. 
Here  our  ways  led  us  in  different  directions, 


270 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  they  passed  out  of  mind  until  met  again. 
In  appearance  they  were  majestic  and  dignified, 
and  walked  very  erect.  One  was  habited  in  a 
suit  of  black,  his  frock-coat  buttoned  high  up, 
leaving  just  enough  of  his  scarf  exposed  to 
show  a  small  pin  mounted  with  a  crown  of 
bronze.  The  other  wore  the  undress  uniform 
of  the  Royal  Guards  of  Austria,  except  the 
trowsers,  which  were  of  black.  He  also  wore 
spurs,  but  without  the  rowel,  or  little  wheel,  as 
if  to  indicate  that  he  had  won  them  in  some 
distinguished  service.  They  wore  their  hair 
something  after  the  fashion  of  the  cavaliers  of 
the  reign  of  Charles  II. 

One  afternoon,  on  returning  from  one  of  the 
Inns  of  Court,  my  attention  was  attracted  to  a 
picture  in  the  window  of  a  gallery  of  paint- 
ings in  Buckingham  Palace  Road.  I  correctly 
thought  it  a  copy  of  one  of  Van  Dyck's  paintings 
of  Charles  I.,  and  yet  it  appeared  so  much  like 
the  image  of  some  one  I  had  seen  that  I  stepped 
inside  to  ask  the  proprietor,  Mr.  Vanbrugh,  an 
intelligent  and  polite  gentleman,  if  he  knew 
any  living  person  who  bore  a  resemblance  to 
the  Van  Dyck  picture. 

"There  are,"  he  said,  "two  gentlemen  who 
pass  here  almost  daily,  and  for  either  of  these 
the  portrait  might  easily  be  taken." 

I  immediately  recalled  the  features  of  the  two 
gentlemen  I  have  just  described. 

"But,"  said  I,  "how  do  you  account  for  the 
strong  likeness?" 

"Easily  enough,"  he  answered;  "they  are 
Stuarts,  and  lineal  descendants  and  representa- 
tives of  the  royal  house." 

A  few  days  subsequent  to  this  incident  I 
found  at  my  lodgings  an  invitation  to  an  "after- 
dinner"  at  Lady  L 's,  in  Mayfair,  where,  I 

was  informed,  I  would  have  an  opportunity  of 
becoming  acquainted  with  the  representatives 
of  the  deposed  family  of  Stuart.  The  party  at 

Lady  L 's  was  small.  The  hostess  herself 

was  a  handsome  lady,  with  enchanting  man- 
ners. She  was  vivacious,  and  exceedingly  art- 
ful and  judicious  in  the  way  she  selected  topics 
of  conversation  in  which  every  one  seemed  to 
be  at  his  ease.  She  listened,  too,  with  appre- 
ciative attention  to  all  that  was  saidj  and  while 
she  really  directed  the  whole  order  of  conversa- 
tion, she  did  not  have  the  appearance  of  doing 
so.  It  seemed  obvious  that  her  own  happiness 
consisted  in  making  each  of  her  guests  show  to 
the  best  advantage.  Among  the  visitors  the 
Stuarts  were  the  central  figures.  John  Sobieski, 
the  elder  of  the  brothers,  was  skilled  in  society 
matters  and  politics;  while  the  other,  Charles 
Edward,  who  had  passed  much  of  his  life 
abroad,  was  brilliant  in  his  little  stories  and 
episodes  of  continental  life  and  courts,  some- 


times giving  way  to  his  love  of  humor,  and  in- 
dulging in  a  running  stream  of  English  small 
talk.  I  returned  to  Belgravia  in  company  with 
these  representatives  of  the  royal  Gaels.  My 
acquaintance  with  Charles  Edward  continued, 
with  greater  or  less  intimacy,  for  a  period  of 
seven  years,  and  when  in  London  I  frequently 
spent  hours  in  conversation  with  him.  These 
Stuarts  were  both  aids  to  Napoleon  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Waterloo,  and  their  superior  knowledge 
of  the  battle-field  aided  the  emperor  materially, 
after  the  defeat  of  the  veterans  of  Wagram  and 
Austerlitz,  in  making  his  escape,  while  the  Old 
Guard,  forming  themselves  into  squares  to  stem 
the  tide  of  disorder,  were  pierced  through  in 
every  direction,  and  cut  down  or  made  prison- 
ers. John  Sobieski  and  Charles  Edward  both 
received  from  the  hands  of  Napoleon  the  cross 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor  for  their  fidelity  to  his 
person  and  their  bravery  upon  the  field  of  bat- 
tle. John  Sobieski  died  in  the  winter  of  1871- 
72,  leaving  his  brother  Charles  Edward  his 
heir  and  representative  as  head  of  the  royal 
house,  and  successor  to  the  title  of  Count  d'Al- 
banie. 

There  is  a  difference  of  conviction  among  the 
legitimists  in  Great  Britain,  as  well  as  on  the 
Continent,  respecting  the  legitimacy  of  the  pres- 
ent house  of  Stuart.  The  history  of  the  family 
is  surrounded  by  romance  and  mystery,  and,  as 
related  by  John  Sobieski  and  Charles  Edward, 
would  form,  without  embellishment,  one  of  the 
most  interesting  tales  of  the  century.  But  the 
narration  would  be  unsatisfactory  without  the 
additional  light  that  it  is  possible  to  throw  upon 
the  subject,  and  which,  I  feel  sure,  will  give  a 
vastly  greater  interest  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  reader  may  arrive  at  respecting  the  secret 
history  which  has  been  so  carefully  guarded  for 
a  hundred  years. 

After  the  battle  of  Culloden,  Prince  Charles 
Edward  wandered  unattended  through  the  coun- 
try. He  found  refuge  in  caves  and  cottages,  or 
lay  in  the  forest,  sometimes  in  great  distress, 
and  in  sight  of  the  pursuing  troops.  A  reward 
of  $150,000  was  offered  by  the  government  for 
his  capture,  dead  or  alive.  During  his  wander- 
ings of  six  months  in  the  Highlands,  he  trusted 
his  life  to  more  than  fifty  individuals,  not  one  of 
whom,  for  even  so  large  a  sum  as  the  offered 
reward,  could  be  induced  to  betray  him.  At 
last,  with  a  Highland  plaid  secured  around  him 
by  a  belt,  to  which  was  fastened  a  pistol  and 
dagger,  he  made  his  escape  on  a  privateer  to 
the  coast  of  France.  The  English  government 
much  of  the  time  subsequent  to  this  kept  spies 
in  or  near  his  household,  and,  as  long  as  he 
lived,  his  life  was  one  of  continual  fear  and  ap- 
prehension. 


THE  PRESENT  HOUSE   OF  STUART. 


271 


On  the  road  between  Parma  and  Florence, 
in  Italy,  is  the  convent  and  church  of  Saint  Ro- 
salie. A  small  stream  flows  near  trie  convent 
grounds,  and,  passing  through  a  gently  undulat- 
ing country,  empties  itself  into  the  sea.  To- 
ward the  north  and  west  is  a  level  plain  which 
slopes  gradually  from  the  base  of  the  Apen- 
nines, whose  highest  peaks  are  plainly  visible. 
Beyond  the  beautiful  grounds  of  Saint  Rosalie 
are  groves  of  olive  trees,  orchards,  and  vine- 
yards, and,  though  the  golden  age  of  Italy  has 
long  since  disappeared,  there  is  here  every  in- 
dication of  plenty,  and  of  the  growth  of  the  arts 
of  civilized  life. 

It  is  now  more  than  a  century  since  a  cer- 
tain Dr.  Beaton  passed  some  time  in  the  vicini- 
ty of  Saint  Rosalie.  He  was  a  descendant  of 
the  Cardinal  Beaton,  an  eminent  Scottish  eccle- 
siastic, statesman,  and  chancellor  in  the  days  of 
the  young  Queen  Mary.  Dr.  Beaton  was  with 
the  Prince  Charles  Edward  at  CuUoden,  cele- 
brated as  the  battle  which  extinguished  the 
hopes  of  the  house  of  Stuart.  When  the  day 
was  lost,  he  escaped  with  the  Pretender,  sep- 
arated from  him,  and,  after  months  of  conceal- 
ment in  the  mountains  of  Glengarry,  fled  in  a 
small  vessel  to  the  shores  of  Holland.  The 
Doctor  seemed  to  have  a  lingering  fascination 
for  Saint  Rosalie  that  prevented  him  from  leav- 
ing the  neighborhood.  Although  a  foreigner, 
he  spoke  well  the  language  of  the  country.  In 
his  appearance  he  was  thoughtful  and  care- 
worn, and  his  face  was  furrowed  over  by  more 
than  three-score  years.  He  was  accustomed  to 
walk  for  hours  in  the  deep,  quiet  shades  of  the 
neighboring  groves,  as  if  ruminating  upon  his 
native  country,  and  upon  those  important  past 
events  which  seemed  to  have  made  an  ineradi- 
cable impression  upon  his  mind. 

In  the  neighborhood  of  Saint  Rosalie  a  king 
and  queen,  for  so  they  were  called  by  their  fol- 
lowers, had  passed  some  weeks  in  profound  re- 
tirement, on  account  of  her  majesty's  health. 
One  evening  Dr.  Beaton  was  walking  in  the 
avenue  of  Saint  Rosalie,  plunged  in  profound 
thought,  when  he  was  suddenly  aroused  by  the 
rapid  sound  of  wheels.  Immediately  a  calash 
and  four,  with  scarlet  liveries,  turned  into  the 
alley,  and  came  whirling  along  the  broad  drive 
at  full  speed.  As  it  approached  he  observed 
that  it  contained  a  lady  and  gentleman,  and,  in 
the$  momentary  glance  as  it  went  past,  he  rec- 
ognized Prince  Charles  Edward. 

"And  how  did  he  look?"  asked  Mackintosh 
of  Aldourie  at  a  later  day. 

"I  knew  him  at  once,"  said  the  Doctor,  "for, 
though  changed  with  years  and  care,  he  was 
still  himself.  And,  though  no  longer  the  Bon- 
nie Prince  Charlie  of  our  faithful  beau  ideal,  he 


was  yet  the  same  eagle-eyed  royal  bird  I  had 
seen  on  his  own  mountains  when  he  spread  his 
wings  toward  the  south." 

In  that  brief  moment  a  world  of  visions  pass- 
ed before  him — the  field  of  Culloden,  the  keen 
glance  of  the  Prince's  eye,  the  star  on  his 
breast,  the  beautiful  golden  hair,  the  bland  fair 
face,  and  lofty  forehead — and  once  more  he  felt 
the  thrilling  charm  of  his  presence,  a  feeling 
deeply  rooted  in  the  hearts  of  all  Highlanders 
who  have  ever  worshiped  their  Tearlach  Rich 
nan  Gae/,  Saxon  Charles,  King  of  the  Gaels. 

Dr.  Beaton  was  a  good  Catholic,  and,  after 
recovering  from  his  reverie,  turned  his  steps 
toward  the  church  of  Saint  Rosalie  and  entered 
its  sacred  portals.  He  advanced  to  the  front  of 
the  altar,  took  from  his  bosom  a  rosary,  and 
prostrated  himself  before  the  image  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin.  Fifteen  times  he  had  repeated 
the  pater  noster,  and  had  counted  nearly  a 
hundred  angelic  salutations  on  his  beads,  when 
he  was  aroused  by  a  heavy  step  and  the  jingle 
of  spurs  upon  the  pavement,  and  a  tall  man  of 
superior  appearance  strode  up  the  cloister.  The 
dress  of  the  stranger  was  not  in  keeping  with 
his  bearing,  and  as  the  faint  light  glanced  be- 
neath the  broad  hat  upon  his  stern,  pale  cheek, 
piercing  eye,  and  large  mustache,  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  doctor,  for  they  were  alone,  was 
greatly  disturbed  by  a  sudden  recollection  of 
the  noted  and  dreadful  Torrifino.  With  a  slight 
salutation,  the  unknown  demanded : 

"3E  ella  il  Signer  Dottore  Betoni  Scozzese?" 

As  soon  as  the  Doctor  was  able  to  control  his 
speech,  he  replied  affirmatively,  whereupon  he 
was  requested  to  give  his  assistance  to  one  in 
need  of  immediate  attendance.  He  did  not 
know  that  his  profession  was  known  at  the  Pa- 
lazzo, and,  with  hesitation,  inquired  concerning 
•the  nature  of  the  required  services  : 

"The  relief  of  the  malady  and  not  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  patient  is  the  province  of  a 
physician,"  replied  the  stranger;  "and,  for  the 
present,  you  will  best  learn  by  an  inspection  of 
the  individual." 

"Show  me  the  way,"  said  the  Doctor. 

"My  carriage  stands  in  the  avenue,"  respond- 
ed the  stranger,  "and  I  must  beg  you  to  ex- 
cuse what  may  seem  to  be  an  unpardonable  re- 
straint ;  but  there  is  occasion  for  such  inviola- 
ble secrecy  as  to  the  circumstance  of  your  visit, 
that  it  will  be  necessary  for  the  blinds  of  the 
vettura  to  be  closed,  and  that  your  eyes  should 
be  covered  when  you  are  introduced  into  the 
house  of  your  patient." 

"No,"  said  the  Doctor;  "then  I  will  not  go. 
You  must  resort  to  some  other  than  a  Scottish 
gentleman  if  you  would  procure  an  accessory 
to  acts  which  require  such  concealment." 


272 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


"Signer?  replied  the  cavalier,  "I  respect 
your  doubts.  By  a  single  word  I  could  dispel 
them,  but  it  is  a  secret  that  would  be  embar- 
rassing to  the  possessor.  It  concerns  the  in- 
terest and  safety  of  one — the  most  illustrious 
and  unfortunate  of  Scottish  Jacobites." 

"What,  him!"  exclaimed  the  Doctor. 

"I  can  say  no  more,"  replied  the  stranger. 

"Let  us  go,"  said  the  Doctor,  and  they  hur- 
ried toward  the  door;  and,  traveling  by  road 
and  water,  reached  the  palace. 

They  proceeded  through  a  long  range  of 
apartments,  when  they  suddenly  stopped,  and 
the  Doctor's  mask  was  removed.  He  looked 
around  on  a  splendid  saloon,  hung  with  crim- 
son velvet,  and  blazing  with  mirrors  which 
reached  from  the  ceiling  to  the  floor.  At  the 
farther  extremity  a  pair  of  folding  doors  stood 
open,  and  showed  the  dim  perspective  of  a  long 
conservatory.  The  Doctor's  guide  rang  a  sil- 
ver bell  that  stood  upon  a  table,  and  a  little 
page,  richly  dressed  in  scarlet,  ran  into  the 
room,  and  spoke  eagerly  to  him.  The  dark 
countenance  of  the  cavalier  glared  suddenly, 
and,  giving  some  hasty  command  to  the  page, 
said,  as  he  quitted  the  saloon : 

"Signer  Dottore,  the  most  important  part  of 
your  occasion  is  past ;  the  lady  whom  you  have 
unhappily  been  called  upon  to  attend  met  with 
an  alarming  accident  in  her  carriage  but  a  short 
time  before  I  found  you  in  the  church,  and  the 
unlucky  absence  of  her  physician  leaves  her 
entirely  under  your  charge.  Her  accouchement 
is  over,  apparently,  without  any  worse  effect 
than  exhaustion;  but  of  that  you  will  be  the 
judge." 

They  proceeded  through  a  long  range  of 
apartments,  and  were  met  by  a  page,  who  spoke 
to  the  cavalier : 

"Signor?  said  the  latter  to  the  Doctor* 
"they  await  you,"  and,  preceded  by  the  page, 
the  Doctor  was  conducted  through  a  splendid 
suite  of  apartments  until  he  came  to  a  small 
ante-room  decorated  with  several  portraits,  and 
among  them  was  one  of  the  Duke  of  Perth, 
•and  another  of  King  James  VII.,  both  of  which 
the  Doctor  immediately  recognized.  The  page 
crossed  the  room  on  his  tip-toes,  and  gently 
opened  a  door  at  the  opposite  extremity,  and  as 
the  Doctor  passed  in  it  closed  silently  behind 
him,  and  he  found  himself  in  a  magnificent  bed- 
chamber. What  took  place  here  is  an  impor- 
tant part  of  the  Doctor's  own  statement,  and 
must  be  related  with  exactness.  The  still  sul- 
try light  of  a  single  taper  shed  a  dim  glimmer 
through  the  apartment  and  upon  the  curtains 
of  a  tall  crimson  bed  that  stood  behind.  But 
.he  had  scarcely  glanced  around  him  when  the 
rustle  of  drapery  called  his  attention  to  the 


couch,  and  a  lady  stepped  from  the  shadow,  sa- 
luted him  in  English,  and  conducted  him  toward 
the  bed.  The  curtains  were  almost  closed ;  by 
the  side  of  the  bed  stood  a  female  attendant, 
holding  an  infant  enveloped  in  a  mantle,  and  as 
she  retired  the  lady  drew  aside  the  curtain,  and 
by  the  faint  light  he  imperfectly  distinguished 
the  pale  features  of  a  delicate  face,  which  lay, 
wan  and  languished,  almost  enveloped  in  the 
soft  white  pillow.  The  shadow  of  the  curtains 
afforded  but  a  faint  trace  of  the  countenance, 
but  a  single  gleam  of  the  taper  glanced  over 
the  dark  blue  counterpane  and  across  the  slen- 
der arm  and  hand  that  lay  upon  the  velvet,  still 
and  pale,  and  passive  as  an  alabaster  model. 

The  lady  addressed  the  patient  a  few  words 
in  German,  at  which  she  slowly  raised  her 
head,  and,  opening  her  large  eyes,  endeavored 
to  lift  her  hand  toward  the  Doctor.  The  latter 
placed  his  fingers  upon  her  pulse,  but  they  could 
scarcely  feel  the  low  intermittent  throb.  For 
several  moments  he  vainly  endeavored  to  count 
the  vibrations,  while  the  lady  in  waiting  stood 
motionless  beside  him,  her  eyes  fixed  intently 
upon  his  face. 

"If  you  will  give  me  leave,"  said  the  Doctor, 
endeavoring  to  suppress  any  indication  of  dan- 
ger to  which  he  felt  sensible,  "I  will  write  a 
prescription,  for  which  no  time  should  be  lost." 

The  lady  conducted  him  in  silence  to  a  writ- 
ing-cabinet; upon  which  she  placed  a  taper,  and 
retired  to  the  couch.  In  momentary  reflection 
the  Doctor  glanced  upon  a  toilet  which  stood 
beside  him. 

The  light  of  the  taper  reflected  down  upon  a 
number  of  jewels,  which  lay  loosely  intermixed 
with  the  scent-bottles  showing  evident  haste  and 
confusion,  and  his  surprise  was  great  when  he 
recognized  a  miniature  of  the  unfortunate  and 
exiled  prince,  Charles  Edward.  It  was  sus- 
pended from  a  rich  diamond  necklace,  and 
represented  the  prince  with  the  same  look  and 
in  the  same  dress  he  had  seen  twenty -eight 
years  before  as  he  rode  into  the  battle  of  Cul- 
loden.  Overcome  with  the  recollection,  he 
gazed  upon  it  until  the  features  on  the  minia- 
ture swam  away  in  a  glimmer  of  tears.  An  ap- 
proaching step  aroused  him,  and,  passing  his 
hands  hastily  over  his  eyes,  he  began  to  write 
as  the  lady  approached  the  toilet,  and,  as  if 
looking  for  some  object  among  the  ornaments, 
placed  herself  between  him  and  the  table.  .  She 
retired  almost  instantly,  but  when  the  Doctor 
again  glanced  toward  the  jewels  the  miniature 
was  turned. 

Dr.  Beaton,  having  completed  the  service 
for  which  he  had  been  brought  to  the  palace, 
was  sworn  on  the  crucifix,  "never  to  speak  of 
what  he  had  seen,  heard,  or  thought  that  night 


THE  PRESENT  HOUSE    OF  STUART. 


273 


unless  it  should  be  in  the  service  of  his  King — 
King  Charles."  He  was  required  to  leave  Italy 
at  once,  and  the  following  morning  took  a  lin- 
gering farewell  of  the  beautiful  Saint  Rosalie, 
and  departed  for  the  nearest  sea-port.  The 
third  evening  of  his  arrival,  at  about  sunset, 
while  waiting  for  an  Italian  vessel  in  which 
he  intended  to  procure  a  passage  to  the  shores 
of  France,  he  took  a  walk  along  the  beach 
some  distance  from  the  town.  His  attention 
was  attracted  to  an  English  frigate  lying  near 
by.  Her  name  was  the  Albion,  and  her  com- 
mander was  Commodore  Allan.  He  seated  him- 
self, in  deep  thought,  underneath  the  branches 
of  a  tree.  Here  he  remained  until  the  rising 
of  the  moon,  when  suddenly  a  horseman  ap- 
proached, followed  by  a  close  carriage.  They 
passed  within  a  very  short  distance  of  him,  and 
his  astonishment  was  great,  when,  as  the  moon- 
light fell  through  the  trees  upon  the  group,  he 
recognized  the  figure  of  his  mysterious  guide 
from  Saint  Rosalie. 

The  little  party  stopped  full  in  the  moonlight 
near  the  margin  of  the  water,  and  the  cavalier, 
having  glanced  around,  blew  a  loud  shrill  whis- 
tle. The  echo  had  scarcely  died  away  along 
the  cliff,  when  the  dark  shadow  of  a  man-of- 
war's  galley  shot  from  behind  a  reef  of  rocks 
at  the  western  entrance  of  a  small  estuary,  and 
was  pulled  to  the  spot  where  the  vettura  stood. 
The  cavalier  alighted,  and,  opening  the  door 
of  the  carriage,  lifted  down  a  lady,  closely  muf- 
fled in  a  white  mantle.  She  bore  an  object  in 
her  arms,  which  she  held  with  great  solicitude. 
At  the  same  time  an  officer,  wearing  double 
epaulets,  leaped  from  the  boat,  and,  making  a 
brief  but  profound  salute  to  the  lady,  conducted 
her  toward  the  galley.  The  Doctor  heard  the 
faint  cry  of  an  infant,  and  distinguished  the 
glisten  of  a  little  white  mantle  and  cap  as  she 
laid  her  charge  in  the  hands  of  her  companion. 
The  officer  lifted  her  into  the  boat,  and  the 
cavalier  redelivered  to  her  the  child,  which  she 
carefully  folded  in  her  cloak.  After  a  brief 
word  and  a  momentary  grasping  of  the  hand 
between  the  lady  and  the  cavalier,  the  officer 
raised  his  hat,  the  oars  fell  into  the  water,  and 
the  galley  glided  out  into  the  gloom  of  the  gray 
tide.  Before  midnight  the  shadow  of  the  frigate 
swung  round  in  the  moonshine,  her  sails  filled 
to  the  breeze,  and  she  bore  off,  slow  and  still 
and  steady,  toward  the  west.  And  here  for  the 
present  I  will  leave  the  infant  charge  in  the 
custody  of  the  gallant  commodore,  and  return 
to  the  land  of  the  Gaels,  at  a  period  just  previ- 
ous to  the  last  Stuart  rising. 

A  short  time  before  the  battle  of  Culloden, 
the  Prince  Charles  Edward  was  a  guest  at  the 
house  of  Sir  Hugh  Patterson  of  Bannockburn, 


where  was  fought  the  memorable  battle  that 
secured  the  independence  of  Scotland,  and  es- 
tablished Bruce,  the  heroic  ancestor  of  Prince 
Charles  Edward,  on  the  throne.  Here  still  re- 
mains a  fragment  of  the  "bore-stone"  in  which 
the  royal  standard  was  placed.  At  Sir  Hugh's 
Charles  Edward  met  Miss  Clementina  Walkin- 
shaw,  a  young  lady  for  whom  he  formed  a  pas- 
sionate attachment,  and  who  in  after  life  exer- 
cised an  important  influence  over  his  actions. 
Miss  Walkinshaw  was  a  niece  of  Sir  Hugh, 
and  daughter  of  John  Walkinshaw  of  Barrow- 
field,  one  of  the  old  Scottish  manorial  barons, 
who  was  descended  from  the  hereditary  For- 
esters of  the  High  Steward  of  Scotland  in  Ren- 
frewshire. 

It  was  at  that  period  of  the  year  when  the 
blithesome  spring  had  shaken  off  the  dull  and 
dreary  robes  of  a  Scotch  winter,  and  the  young 
couple  daily  walked  unattended  through  the 
lawns  and  glades  with  which  the  grounds  and 
park  of  Sir  Hugh  were  interspersed,  oblivious 
of  the  rapidly  passing  hours,  and  undisturbed 
in  their  musings  save  by  the  flight  of  a  fright- 
ened roe  or  timid  hare,  till  twilight  warned  them 
to  return.  But  these  pleasures  were  not  to  be 
of  long  continuance,  for  one  morning  before 
dawn  the  trumpets  of  Prince  Charlie's  follow- 
ers summoned  him  from  the  society  of  his  love 
and  the  tranquillity  of  Bannockburn  to  the 
field  of  Mars. 

After  the  battle  of  Culloden,  and  the  flight 
of  the  Prince  to  the  Continent,  his  mysterious 
incognito  alarmed  the  English  government ;  and 
on  his  return  to  Flanders,  from  Prussia,  Swe- 
den, and  Poland,  where  he  had  urged  plans  for 
the  recovery  of  the  crown,  Miss  Walkinshaw, 
whom  the  Prince  had  now  almost  forgotten,  was 
sent  to  be  a  spy  in  his  household.  This  was 
accomplished  through  the  instrumentality  of 
Clementina's  sister,  Catherine,  who  had  been 
Woman  of  the  Bed-chamber,  and  was,  at  the 
time,  housekeeper  to  the  Princess,  mother  of 
George  III.,  at  Leicester  House.  Clementina, 
it  was  said,  communicated,  through  her  sister, 
all  the  affairs  of  the  Prince  to  the  English  min- 
isters. That  the  Prince  had  but  little  thought 
of  Clementina  since  the  battle  of  Culloden,  ap- 
pears from  the  fact  that  four  years  passed  with- 
out there  being  any  correspondence  between 
them;  and  when  Miss  Walkinshaw  went  to- 
join  the  Prince  in  Flanders,  as  soon  as  he  re- 
ceived an  intimation  of  her  presence  near  him, 
instead  of  expressing  any  ardor  for  the  meet- 
ing, he  sent  her  word  to  retire  to  Paris,  and 
there  to  await  his  arrival.  They  afterward  re- 
turned together  to  Ghent,  and  took  such  nom 
de  voyage  as  suited  them.  Their  residence  was 
for  some  time  at  Liege,  where  they  lived  as  the 


274 


THE    CALIFORNIA  N. 


Comte  and  Comtesse  Johnson,  Miss  Walkin- 
shaw  giving  her  maiden  name  as  Caroline  Pit; 
for  in  most  Continental  countries,  when  the  lady 
is  of  noble  birth,  the  maiden  name  is  usually 
added  to  that  of  her  husband  upon  her  visiting 
cards.  In  Liege,  Clementina  became  the  moth- 
er of  a  son  who  died  in  infancy,  and  in  1753 
she  gave  birth  to  a  daughter  who  was  baptised 
as  Caroline.  The  next  month,  after  the  bap- 
tism of  Caroline,  the  Prince  wrote  a  letter  to 
Colonel  Goring,  the  original  draft  of  which,  in 
the  Prince's  handwriting,  is  among  the  Stuart 
papers,  telling  him  that  "Clementina  has  be- 
haved so  unworthily  that  she  has  put  me  out  of 
patience,  and  I  discard  her."  But  the  power 
of  woman,  in  that  case,  was  greater  than  the 
will  of  man,  and  the  separation  did  not  take 
place. 

Catherine  Walkinshaw  came  to  be  in  high 
favor  with  the  Hanoveran  court  and  family; 
and  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  and  others,  who, 
after  the  battle  of  Culloden,  knowing  of  the 
liaison  of  her  sister  Clementina  with  Charles 
Edward,  at  Bannockburn  House,  had  sternly 
urged  Catherine's  immediate  dismissal,  became 
at  a  later  period  her  warmest  friends.  She  was 
in  fact  one  of  the  great  favorites  at  St.  James's 
and  Windsor.  The  final  separation  between 
the  Prince  and  Clementina  did  not  take  place 
until  July,  1760.  After  the  separation,  Miss 
Walkinshaw  continued  to  live  at  Paris  under 
tlje  name  of  Comtesse  d'Albertoff,  conferred 
upon  her  by  the  King  of  France.  On  the  sup- 
pression of  the  convent  where  she  resided,  at 
the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  she  remov- 
ed to  Friburg  in  Switzerland,  where  she  died 
in  1805.  The  Walkinshaw  family  insist  that 
Charles  Edward  and  Clementina  were  married 
at  Ghent,  but  of  this  there  is  not  sufficient  evi- 
dence ;  and  others  deny  the  marriage,  but  claim 
that  the  present  family  of  Stuart  are  descended 
from  the  Walkinshaw  liaison. 

The  Prince  did  not  again  see  Clementina 
after  the  separation ;  but  twenty-five  years  later, 
when  he  had  separated  from  his  wife,  the  Prin- 
cess Louisa  of  Stolberg,  he  recalled  his  daugh- 
ter Caroline,  who  continued  to  reside  with  him 
at  Rome  until  his  death.  Caroline  had  been 
created  Duchesse  d'Albanie,  and  married  to  the 
Swedish  Baron  de  Rowenstart,  by  whom  she 
had  a  son.  When  the  Duchesse  d'Albanie 
went  to  live  at  the  house  of  Charles  Edward, 
her  son,  then  a  mere  child,  was  given  in  charge 
of  some  old  Highlanders  who  had  followed  the 
Prince.  He  was  placed  under  a  Gaelic  tutor, 
and,  with  a  great  appearance  of  secrecy,  was 
sent  out  of  the  country. 

In  the  Highlands,  at  a  later  period,  Macdon- 
ald  of  Glendulochan  had  listened  to  stories 


about  a  certain  mysterious  stranger,  who  had 
arrived  in  a  "great  king's  ship,"  and  who  had 
hired  as  a  residence  the  "grand  auld  house  of 
Dundarach."  Macdonald,  in  conversation  with 
a  Highland  herdsman  by  the  name  of  Alaister, 
who  had  on  several  occasions  seen  the  stranger, 
asked : 

"Does  he  wear  the  Highland  dress?" 

"On  ye  never  seed  the  like,  except  Glen- 
garve,"  replied  Alaister. 

"And  what  did  you  call  him?"  asked  Mac- 
donald. 

"The  folk  call  him  'lolair-dhearg'  (the  Red 
Eagle)  for  his  red  tartan  and  the  look  o's  ee, 
which  was  never  in  the  head  o'  man  nor  bird 
but  the  eagle  and  Prince  Charlie.  But  Muster 
Robison,  the  post -mister  in  Port  Michael,  says 
his  name  is  Captain  Allan,  and  that  he  is  son 
o'  ane  grand  admiral  in  the  suthe  enew ;  but  I 
dinna  think  it,  for  the  auld  French  servant  ca's 
him  whiles,  'munsenur'  and  'halts-rile'  (altesst 
royale),  and  other  names  that  I  canna  mind." 

The  "lolair-dhearg"  was  introduced  to  an 
aged  Highlander,  who  mistook  him  for  the  bon- 
nie  Charlie  himself,  and  told  him  that  the  last 
time  he  saw  him  was  on  the  morning  of  Cullo- 
den. 

In  the  year  1790,  the  "lolair-dhearg,"  who 
had  come  to  be  known  as  Thomas  Allan,  and 
at  a  later  day  as  James  Stuart  Allan,  rescued 
Katharine  Manning,  a  beautiful  English  lady, 
from  the  hands  of  some  smugglers,  who  had 
captured  the  vessel  in  which  she  had  taken  pas- 
sage for  the  Highlands.  James  Stuart  was  at 
this  time  almost  always  accompanied  by  the 
Chevalier  Graeme,  the  same  person  who  con- 
ducted Doctor  Beaton  from  the  church  of  Saint 
Rosalie  to  the  chamber  of  the  Prince,  and  who 
was  the  latter's  chamberlain.  The  Chevalier 
often  addressed  James  Stuart  as  "my  Prince," 
and  with  Admiral  Allan  endeavored  to  prevent 
him  from  injuring  the  prospects  of  his  house  by 
such  a  mesalliance  as  they  considered  his  union 
with  Katharine  Manning  would  be,  and  his 
royal  birth  was  spoken  of  without  concealment. 
But  this  youth  of  lion  heart  refused  to  smother 
his  passion  for  the  lady  he  had  rescued,  and 
they  were  finally  married  on  the  second  day  of 
October,  1792.  James  Stuart  left  two  sons — 
John  Sobieski  and  Charles  Edward.  The  for- 
mer is  the  author,  under  the  nom  de  plume  of 
John  Hay  Allan,  of  a  number  of  pretty  poems. 
In  the  "Bridal  of  Coaichairn"  there  is  an  inti- 
mation that  the  author  is  descended  from  the 
Stuarts : 

"And,  sooth,  there  was  a  time,  howe'er  'tis  now, 

O'er  thy  wide  realm  they  held  the  regal  sway; 
The  blood  which  yet  beneath  this  breast  doth  flow 
Was  from  thy  Stuarts  drawn  in  olden  day." 


THE  RIVAL    CITIES. 


275 


Charles  Edward  Stuart,  on  the  ninth  day  of 
October,  1822,  married  Ann,  daughter  of  the 
Right  Honorable  John  Beresford,  then  Mem- 
ber of  Parliament  for  Waterford.  This  Charles 
Edward  leaves  surviving  him  another  Charles 


Edward  (who  in  1874  married  Lady  Alice  Hay), 
and  also  the  Countess  Clementina,  whose  hus- 
band is  an  officer  in  the  Royal  Guards  of  the 
Emperor  of  Austria. 

EDWARD  KIRKPATRICK. 


THE    RIVAL  CITIES. 


Nowadays  in  Boston  and  New  York  a  fre- 
quent topic  for  the  chit-chat  of  breakfast  ta- 
bles, evening  receptions,  and  tete-a-tetes^  is 
whether  the  balance  of  power  in  literature  and 
art  is  really  shifting  from  the  old  Puritan  city 
to  the  great  metropolis  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Hudson.  The  subject  is  a  delicate  one,  and 
hardly  capable  of  dispassionate  treatment,  ex- 
cept by  one  who  is  a  native  of  neither  city. 
In  Boston  the  subject  is  handled  with  gloves  by 
those  who  know  the  facts.  The  bourgeois,  who 
is  ignorant  of  the  facts,  but  dimly  feels  that 
something  is  wrong,  scouts  at  the  very  idea  of 
a  shifting  of  power,  with  that  provincial  arro- 
gance and  egotism  that  everywhere  distinguish 
the  cockney. 

Now,  nobody  is  going  to  be  injured  by  firmly 
facing  the  true  logic  of  the  situation.  The  truth 
never  hurts  anybody  in  the  end.  Let  us  have 
this  matter  cleared  up.  Let  each  city  know 
its  cue — clearly  understand  the  part  it  is  to  play 
in  the  future  development  of  the  national  life, 
To  say  that  the  two  cities  are  not  and  never 
have  been  alike,  either  in  outward  complexion 
or  inner  spirit,  is  only  to  utter  a  truism.  What 
the  Germans  call  the  tried  of  the  two  cities  is 
different,  and  is  so  by  the  inexorable  necessity 
of  circumstances.  Until  latterly,  New  York, 
forming  the  eastern  gateway  of  the  continent, 
has  been  so  overwhelmed  and  submerged  by 
the  rushing  currents  of  commerce  as  to  make 
it  impossible  for  the  literary  interest  to  more 
than  maintain  a  precarious  and  doubtful  foot- 
hold in  such  out-of-the-way  nooks  and  corners 
as  it  could  possess  itself  of.  Thus,  New  York 
has  been  distinctively  commercial,  while  Bos- 
ton has  always  been  distinctively  intellectual. 
But  a  change  has  been  taking  place  within  the 
last  decade.  New  York  has  been  striding  rap- 
idly forward  in  respect  of  art  culture,  book- 
publishing,  engraving,  and  the  cultivation  of 
pure  literature,  while  her  New  England  rival 
has  been  advancing  much  more  slowly  in  these 
respects.  Boston,  it  is  true,  is  still  distinctively 
the  city  of  culture,  of  intellectuality.  We  have 
there  still  the  ancien  regime  of  courtly  and  pol- 


ished manners.  The  corporations  of  Boston, 
her  municipal  government,  and  her  society  at 
large,  are  all  permeated  and  vivified  by  ideals 
as  heretofore.  The  intellectual  class  still  con- 
trols and  dominates,  and  gives  solidity  and 
unity  to  the  corporate  life  of  the  city.  And  in 
the  special  matter  of  the  cultivation  of  decora- 
tive and  ideal  art,  Boston  is  now  more  enthusi- 
astic and  determined  than  ever.  Indeed,  the 
conditions  for  producing  fine  and  enduring 
work  are  better  there  than  in  any  other  part  of 
the  country. 

Yet,  after  all,  not  much  that  is  great  or  world- 
stimulating  is  being  produced  nowadays  in  East- 
ern Massachusetts.  Boston  is  not  now  mak- 
ing national  opinion  as  in  the  anti-slavery  and 
transcendental  days.  She  is  not,  as  then,  think- 
ing for  the  world,  at  least  not  to  any  great  ex- 
text.  Her  great  statesmen  and  her  great  gen- 
uises  are  nearly  all  either  dead  or  living  in  the 
retirement  of  old  age.  Her  literature,  while 
scholarly  and  recherche,  is  largely  colored  by 
the  over-strained  conceits  and  frigid  artificiali- 
ties of  the  drawing-room;  in  a  word,  is  not  fused 
and  animated  by  enthusiastic  purpose;  is  too 
timid,  and  hollow,  and  bloodless.  About  the 
only  really  intense  intellectual  enthusiasm  to 
be  found  in  Boston,  outside  of  business  circles, 
is  in  three  or  four  pulpits,  which  are  still  ani- 
mated by  the  old  Puritan  traditions  and  feel- 
ings— the  old  ethical  propagandist  spirit,  which 
(as  history)  is  the  glory  of  Boston.  Something 
is  evidently  the  matter.  We  shall  see  presently 
what  it  is.  But  we  may  first  look  at  the  liter- 
ary and  art  status  of  New  York  City  and  briefly 
review  the  evidences  of  the  (at  least  temporary) 
literary  hegemony  of  that  city,  after  which  we 
may  consider  the  rationale  of  the  whole  mat- 
ter. The  census  of  1870  shows  that  the  print- 
ing and  publishing  business  of  New  York  is 
just  double  that  of  Boston.  The  value  of  the 
books  manufactured  is  not  much  less  in  Boston 
than  in  New  York.  But  not  much  reliance  is  to 
be  placed  on  these  statistics,  as  General  Walker 
admits,  owing  to  the  almost  insuperable  diffi- 
culty in  getting  publishers,  as  well  as  all  other 


276 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


manufacturers,  to  state  how  much  capital  they 
have  actually  employed  in  business.  But  statis- 
tics are  not  needed.  The  facts  are  patent  to 
everybody.  Most  of  the  great  magazines  of  the 
country  are  published  in  New  York  City. 

The  daily  newspapers  of  New  York  every- 
body knows  to  be  the  most  powerful  in  the 
country.  Literati  of  all  sorts  are  much  better 
paid  in  New  York  than  they  are  in  Boston. 
Painting,  the  opera,  the  drama,  are  all  in  proc- 
ess of  vigorous  growth.  Engraving,  as  re- 
spects technique,  or  the  mechanical  process, 
has  reached  a  degree  of  excellence  which  places 
it  on  an  equality  with  the  finest  work  of  Europe. 
Two  or  three  great  Boston  publishing  houses 
are  still  doing  a  thriving  trade  in  publishing 
editions  of  the  standard  New  England  classics 
(the  copyrights  of  which  they  own);  but  the 
great  bulk  of  legal,  ecclesiastical,  medical,  philo- 
sophical, and  miscellaneous  books  is  published 
in  New  York  City.  In  pure  literature  New 
York  has  not  so  many  illustrious  names  as  Bos- 
ton; but  still  she  has  a  large  and  respectable 
list.  Upon  it  are  four  or  five  of  our  classic 
writers.  Such  are  the  facts  respecting  the  in- 
tellectual status  of  New  York.  We  may  now 
seek  to  discover  the  causes  of  this  change  of 
roles  of  the  two  cities,  and  point  out  the  hidden 
forces  that  have  been  at  work  in  each.  Let  us 
begin  with  Boston.  Assuming  at  once  that  Bos- 
ton has  produced  the  largest  number  of  great 
literary  geniuses  and  great  reformers,  and  al- 
most as  many  great  statesmen  as  the  South,  we 
have  to  inquire  why  she  no  longer  produces 
them.  It  would  seem  that  there  are  two  funda- 
mental reasons — the  lack  of  the  inspiration  that 
comes  from  a  great  cause,  and  the  absence  of 
what  may  be  called  the  cosmopolitan  breeze. 
Boston  has  not  now  distinctly  presented  to  her 
a  great  cause  to  which  she  can  devote  her  en- 
ergies. The  days  of  transcendentalism  are 
numbered,  and  the  momentum  derived  from 
the  anti- slavery  movement  has  now  ceased  to 
be  an  impelling  force.  If  Boston  has  not  a 
great  reform  on  hand,  she  is  nothing.  It  is  aut 
Ccesar  aut  nullus  with  her.  It  takes  a  great 
deal  to  heat  up  to  the  fusing  point  the  cold  and 
massive  intellectuality  of  the  pure-blooded  Yan- 
kee. He  must  drink  his  whisky  raw,  or  he  is 
not  affected.  This,  then,  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  with  Boston  it  is  now  the  diastole  of  the 
intellectual  pulsations;  why  on  her  particular 
shore  it  happens  to  be  now  ebb  tide.  The  proc- 
cessess  of  life  are  rhythmic — the  intellectual 
and  social  no  less  than  the  physical.  There  is 
harvesting  time  and  sowing  time,  renascence 
and  decadence.  Of  course,  there  are  no  in- 
trinsic reasons  why  Boston  shall  not  produce 
more  great  geniuses.  On  the  contrary,  the 


bracing  air,  the  vigorous  stock,  and  the  poetic 
landscape  of  Eastern  Massachusetts  make  it 
certain  that  she  will  do  so — when  the  time 
comes.  The  second  grand  reason,  doubtless, 
why  Boston  is  now  leading  a  rather  lethargic 
existence  is  that  she  has  not  the  cosmopolitan 
breeze,  as  it  may  be  called.  Anybody  who  has 
been  in  New  York  knows  what  that  means.  It 
is  a  very  simoom,  a  furnace  heat,  this  cosmo- 
politan glow,  for  the  melting  away  of  antiquated 
superstitions  and  the  brazen  cerements  of  social 
mummydom.  There  is  no  use  in  denying  it — 
Boston  is  getting  just  the  least  bit  provincial, 
compared  with  New  York.  A  flourishing  com- 
merce, great  wealth,  and  cosmopolitan  life  do 
a  great  deal  even  for  literature.  History  proves 
it.  Athens  was  great,  divinely  great;  but  so 
was  Rome.  Athens  had  a  good  deal  of  money, 
but  Rome  has  always  had  a  vaster  cosmopoli- 
tanism and  greater  wealth,  both  in  the  days  of 
the  empire  (when  all  her,  great  literature  was 
produced)  and  in  the  days  of  Leo  X.,  Raphael, 
and  Angelo.  Edinburgh  has  had  some  wealth, 
and  produced  a  few  great  men.  But  London 
has  had  more  wealth,  got  by  her  world -com- 
merce ;  and  her  litterateurs,  scholars,  and  states- 
men rule  the  world.  It  is  a  melancholy  truth, 
which  those  who  have  lived  in  Boston  know  too 
well,  that  the  city  (including  Cambridge)  is 
suppressing  a  good  deal  of  genius  through 
sheer  lack  of  endowments  and  opportunities  for 
the  pursuit  of  higher  culture.  Boston  has  a 
good  deal  of  wealth,  but  it  is  hoarded  up  too 
carefully.  Extreme  caution  and  timidity,  ex- 
treme conservatism,  are  the  faults  of  character 
in  Boston  men  that  are  injuring  the  city's  busi- 
ness prosperity,  as  well  as  its  literary  life.  This 
caution,  this  timidity,  this  close -fistedness,  is 
that  once  excusable  Puritan  virtue  which,  now 
that  the  broadening  national  life  has  burst  the 
bounds  of  New  England,  and  is  seeking  its  cen- 
ter further  west,  reveals  itself  to  be  a  vice — a 
virtue  that  "o'erleaps  itself  and  falls  on  the 
other."  Boston  must  venture  more ;  must  adopt 
a  bolder  and  more  generous  commercial  policy. 
She  must  have  more  railways  to  the  West,  and 
cease  to  hamper  those  she  has  by  meddlesome 
legislation,  which,  in  forbidding  the  natural  prin- 
ciple of  competition  to  have  free  play  by  fixing 
arbitrarily  the  per  cent,  that  railways  may  earn, 
thereby  disheartens  and  renders  them  careless 
of  the  interests  of  the  public,  and  in  every  way 
retards  the  free  and  spontaneous  development 
of  the  native  resources  of  the  State.  When 
Boston  determines  to  have  three  or  four  well- 
managed,  instead  of  two  poorly  managed,  grand 
trunk  lines  to  the  West ;  when  she  comes  to  see 
that  she  cannot  afford  to  let  New  York  attract 
so  much  of  the  raw  and  manufactured  products 


NOTE  BOOK. 


277 


of  the  great  West;  when  her  wharves  shall 
multiply,  and  be  doubly  and  trebly  crowded 
with  ships ;  or  when  some  great  social  upheaval 
shall  occur  which  shall  stir  up  into  flame  the 
slumbering  fires  of  her  moral  life — then,  and  in 
either  case,  may  we  look  for  a  turbulent,  and 
passionate,  and  enthusiastic  activity,  which 
shall  not  only  make  her  equal  in  enterprise  and 
power  to  her  sister  city  of  New  York,  but  which 
might  well  make  her  superior  to  that  city  in 
every  respect,  such  are  the  indomitable  cour- 
age and  energy — ay,  and  religious  faith — that 
lie  slumbering  beneath  her  impassive,  and  often 
finical,  exterior  life. 

The  forces  that  have  produced  the  new  tidal 
wave  of  intellectual  life  in  New  York  are  not 
far  to  seek.  They  have  been  indirectly  men- 
tioned, indeed,  in  this  article.  It  has  been  in- 
timated that  it  is  the  great  wealth  of  New  York, 
the  ever  fresh  currents  of  foreign  thought,  for- 
eign art,  and  foreign  blood  that  surge  continu- 
ally through  the  arterial  channels  of  her  life, 
that  give  the  metropolitan  dash  and  energy, 
the  cosmopolitan  breadth  of  view,  and  far-see- 
ing mercantile  acumen  that  spread  as  by  con- 
tagion through  all  classes  of  the  city,  and,  while 
increasing  civic  splendor  and  wealth  stimu- 
late also  by  inevitable  nervous  sympathy  all  de- 
partments of  intellectual  and  artistic  life.*  New 


York,  if  she  be  true  to  her  trusts,  is  destined  to 
be  the  London  of  the  new  world,  the  home  of 
the  oppressed  of  every  hand,  a  haven  of  refuge 
for  daring  freedom -loving  souls,  the  world's 
bulwark  of  civil  liberty,  and  the  haunt  of  many 
great  men  who  will  spring  up  out  of  American 
democracies  and  societies.  The  city,  however, 
will  probably  never  have  a  unitary  life  like  that 
of  Athens  and  Boston.  As  it  is,  to-day,  there 
are  whole  quarters — great  literary,  and  musical, 
and  art  clubs,  and  coteries  of  all  kinds  in  the 
city — that  are  well  nigh  ignorant  of  the  existence 
of  each  other.  It  is  impossible,  apparently,  for 
the  colossal  cities  of  the  world  to  reach  per- 
fect unity  and  solidarity  of  action  under  the 
present  system  of  things  at  any  rate. 

New  York  will  not,  perhaps,  have  a  union  of 
all  her  interests — a  union  cemented  by  such  a 
single-purposed  idealism  as  that  of  Athens  or 
Boston ;  but  there  is  no  reason  why  she  may 
not  be  honey-combed  with  intellectual  and  ethi- 
cal life.  Indeed,  she  must  be  so  if  she  will 
not  perish.  It  is  probable  that  as  long  as  the 
American  flag  shall  fly  over  the  continental  re- 
public, New  York,  situated  as  she  is  in  the  great 
storm-track  of  cosmopolitan  life,  will  possess 
enough  Attic  salt  to  preserve  her  material 
grandeur  from  decay. 

WILLIAM  SLOANE  KENNEDY. 


NOTE   BOOK. 


AT  THE  LAST  MEETING  OF  THE  HARVARD  CLUB,  of 

San  Francisco,  it  was  announced,  by  the  committee  ap- 
pointed at  a  previous  meeting  to  communicate  with 
President  Eliot,  that  arrangement  had  been  made  with 
the  authorities  of  Harvard  University  to  hold  admission 
examinations  in  California  during  the  coming  summer. 
The  committee  were  of  the  opinion  that  quite  a  number 
of  young  men  would  avail  themselves  of  this  opportuni- 
ty to  avoid  the  expense  of  going  East  upon  an  uncer- 
tainty, would  present  themselves  for  examination,  and, 
if  successful,  would  then  take  the  regular  course  at 
Harvard.  This  innovation  by  an  Eastern  institution  of 
learning  is  noted  here  because  at  this  time  it  seems  to 
"point  a  moral."  Why  are  these  young  men  not  fitting 
themselves  for  the  University  of  California  instead? 
How  does  it  happen  that  there  are  enough  of  them  to 
induce  Harvard  to  send  a  professor  across  the  continent 
to  conduct  examinations  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  attention 
of  the  Californian  youth  is  being  turned  away  from  Cali- 
fornia and  toward  Massachusetts?  Our  university  is 
magnificently  endowed  for  a  young  institution.  In  lo- 

*  Perhaps,  on  profound  analysis,  it  would  be  found  that  an- 
other potent  stimulus  to  great  achievement  is  furnished  by  the 
contracted  insular  situation  of  the  city.  Competitive  struggle 
is  more  intense  in  such  places. 

VOL.  III.— 18. 


cation  and  facilities  it  has  unrivaled  advantages.  From 
the  veiy  first  it  interested  some  of  the  leading  minds  of 
the  nation.  Horace  Bushnell  was  a  notable  instance. 
Auspicious  stars  seemed  to  conjoin  at  its  birth.  But  now 
it  has  fallen  into  lethargy  and  inaction.  It  has  drunk  of 
mandragora  and  drowsy  syrups.  It  has  lost  its  way 
among  scientific  formulae.  It  has  wandered  up  to  the 
foot  of  Grizzly  Peak,  and  there,  like  Rip  Van  Winkle,  it 
has  gone  to  sleep.  A  supreme  opportunity  is  being  lost. 
The  impression  is  gaining  ground  that  the  experiment 
is  a  failure.  This  conclusion  may  be  illogical ;  it  may 
be  unfounded ;  it  may  be  unreasonable.  We  think  it 
is.  But  it  exists.  Outside  of  a  limited  circle  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  man  who  has  optimistic  views  in  regard  to 
the  future  of  the  University  of  California.  A  few  years 
ago  there  were  hundreds  of  them.  Now,  this  universi- 
ty is  an  institution  in  which  every  good  citizen  should 
feel  an  interest.  It  is  closely  identified  with  the  destiny 
of  the  State.  In  the  nature  of  things  only  a  small  pro- 
portion of  the  young  men  born  on  this  coast  can  go 
across  the  continent  for  an  education.  They  must  get 
it  here,  or  not  at  all.  The  intellectual  future  of  Califor- 
nia is  in  no  small  degree  dependent  upon  its  university. 
At  its  head  should  be  a  man  with  administrative  ca- 
pacity. Our  note  upon  this  subject  last  month  has  met 
with  very  general  approval.  There  is  too  great  an  in- 


278 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


terest  at  stake  here  for  mere  motives  of  delicacy  to  pre- 
vent a  plain  statement  of  the  truth.  A  learned  profes- 
sor may  or  may  not  be  a  go'od  president.  The  chances 
are  that  he  will  not  be.  It  is  nothing  against  his  learn- 
ing, his  ability,  or  the  integrity  of  his  intentions,  if  he 
does  not  succeed  in  an  office  which  requires  executive 
capacity.  The  average  business  man  is  not  expected  to 
know  much  science.  Why  should  the  scientist  be  ex- 
pected to  understand  business?  And  yet  upon  the  ma- 
terial prosperity  of  the  university  its  whole  existence 
depends.  What  is  needed  is  not  more  learning,  but 
more  energy.  If  President  Eliot  of  Harvard  is  pushing 
the  influence  of  that  institution  across  a  broad  conti- 
nent, the  University  of  California  must  at  least  make  a 
showing  of  activity  in  every  part  of  its  own  venue. 


THE  DEATHS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  CARLYLE 
within  so  recent  a  period  seem  to  create  an  intellectual 
hiatus.  In  their  departments  of  human  thought  no  one 
stands  ready  to  continue  their  work.  There  is,  per- 
haps, but  one  point  of  similarity  between  them — the 
sturdy  element  of  a  common  nationality.  For  Carlyle, 
although  a  Scotchman,  was  yet  more  than  mere  Scotch- 
man. He  was  British  in  the  wide  modern  sense  which 
makes  England  and  Scotland  one  in  all  material  and 
intellectual  progress.  And  not  all  his  love  for  German 
philosophy,  nor  yet  his  affectation  of  German  manner- 
ism, could  conceal  the  fact  that  the  mind  back  of  both 
philosophy  and  mannerism  was  a  high  development  of 
that  amalgamated  Scotch  and  English  intellect  which 
we  call  "British."  It  is  sturdy,  firm,  self-reliant,  sham- 
hating,  truth-loving ;  stubborn  in  conviction ;  despising 
rather  than  pitying  weakness  and  imbecility.  In  the 
intellectual  forest  it  is  the  oak.  And  projected  in  a  dif- 
ferent direction,  with  the  tendencies  of  a  different  sex, 
the  mind  of  George  Eliot  possessed  the  same  quality. 
It  is  questionable  whether  either  of  these  minds  c6uld 
have  been  produced  outside  of  Great  Britain.  They  are 
the  resultants  of  the  progressive  intellectual  evolution 
of  a  progressive  and  intellectual  people,  who,  owing  to 
race  peculiarities  and  insular  position,  have  developed  a 
peculiar  individuality.  As  a  novelist,  pure  and  simple, 
George  Eliot  was  inferior  to  Dickens  or  Thackeray.  As 
a  thinker  she  was  superior  to  both.  Her  philosophy 
vras  deeper  but  her  characters  were  less  clearly  drawn. 
As  a  philosopher  Carlyle  was  inferior  to  Hamilton.  As 
a  commentator  on  human  life  he  was  unsatisfactory, 
compared  to  our  own  Emerson.  His  style  was  irre- 
trievably vicious.  But  among  the  men  of  his  day  and 
nation  he  was  a  tower  of  strength.  To  those  who  can 
master  his  involved  style  his  works  are  full  of  suggest- 
iveness.  From  every  hill  surmounted  is  disclosed  a 
higher  mountain.  Both  Carlyle  and  George  Eliot,  it 
cannot  be  doubted,  will  have  an  enduring  place  in  liter- 
ature so  long  as  the  English  speech  shah1  hold  its  pre- 
eminence as  a  medium  of  thought  and  communication. 


THE  CARRYING  TRADE  of  any  region  is  one  of  its 
most  important  industries.  In  fact,  to  an  extent  every- 
thing else  depends  upon  it.  If  the  farmer  cannot  get 
his  produce  to  market  for  a  reasonable  tariff  he  is  de- 
barred from  a  competition  with  neighbors  more  fortu- 
nately situated.  Just  at  present  the  subject  of  commu- 
nication between  California  and  the  rest  of  the  world  is 
receiving  much  attention  because  of  the  several  routes, 
both  by  canal  and  road,  which  are  under  discussion. 
In  accordance  with  our  policy  of  presenting  both  sides 


of  living  issues,  we  print  this  month  two  articles  upon 
this  important  question.  The  first,  by  Mr.  Del  Mar, 
discusses  at  length  the  commercial  results  likely  to  fol- 
low the  opening  of  the  new  Southern  Pacific  Railroad. 
The  second,  by  Captain  Merry,  considers  very  fully  the 
several  proposed  canal  routes  and  the  ship  railway  sug- 
gested by  Captain  Eads,  and  also  discusses  the  commer- 
cial and  political  considerations  connected  with  the 
same.  Together,  these  two  articles  cover  the  entire 
field,  and  present  all  the  obtainable  information  in  a 
compact  form. 


THE  MAN-GOSSIP  is  a  most  despicable  creature — the 
tattler,  the  babbler,  the  tale-bearer,  the  mischief-maker. 
And  yet  some  men  are  so  constituted  as  to  have  an  in- 
ordinate, burning  desire  to  repeat  what  they  hear,  es- 
pecially if  there  is  some  element  in  it  likely  to  make 
trouble.  Incautious  words  uttered  in  a  moment  of  an- 
ger are  eagerly  caught  up  by  them  and  rehearsed  in  the 
very  place  where  they  will  do  the  most  harm.  Ever  so 
many  pleasant  things  might  be  said  which  would  never 
be  repeated.  But  say  a  word  that  may  possibly,  dis- 
torted and  disconnected,  estrange  a  friend,  and  one  of 
these  mischief-mongers  will  carry  it  to  him  directly.  Such 
men  are  a  pest  to  any  community.  They  will  do  more 
harm  in  a  day  than  can  be  repaired  in  a  year.  One 
may  criticise  another  in  the  spirit  of  the  utmost  friend- 
ship, yet  if  that  criticism  be  repeated  it  will  inevitably 
sound  cold,  calculating,  and  unfriendly.  Chaucer  says  : 

"Who  so  shall  telle  a  tale  after  a  man, 
He  moste  reherse,  as  neighe  as  ever  he  can, 
Everich  word,  if  it  be  in  his  charge, 
All  speke  he  never  so  rudely  and  so  large  ; 
Or  elles  he  moste  tellen  his  tale  untrewe 
Or  feinen  things,  or  finden  wordes  newe." 

But  this  rehearsal  of  every  word,  of  the  circumstances 
and  the  explanations,  is  precisely  what  your  gossip  does 
not  do.  The  perfume  of  the  rose  may  fill  thp  air,  but 
for  him  the  bush  bears  only  the  thorn.  If  there  be  any- 
thing which,  segregated  from  its  connection,  will  ap- 
pear to  be  prompted  by  malice,  rest  assured  that  that 
germ  will  be  carried  by  the  gossip  to  whatever  spot  it 
may  develop  into  the  most  malignant  disease. 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  LEGISLATITE  COUP  D'ETAT  dur-- 
ing  the  late  debate  on  the  Irish  Question  has  subjected 
him  to  much  unfavorable  comment.  Such  course,  if 
not  entirely  without  precedent,  is  at  best  supported  by 
the  authority  of  precedents  long  since  forgotten.  But 
it  seems  to  be  assumed  by  those  who  criticise  Mr.  Glad- 
stone that  the  peremptory  closing  of  debate  by  a  ma- 
jority is  of  itself  an  act  of  injustice.  The  arbitrary  and 
unreasonable  exercise  of  such  power  is  doubtless  unjust. 
But  the  power  must  exist,  in  one  form  or  another,  as  a 
means  of  simple  self-protection.  And  this  has  always 
been  recognized  in  American  legislative  bodies,  where 
the  "previous  question  "  is  given  a  different  effect  from 
that  which  it  has  in  England — namely,  the  immedi- 
ate and  peremptory  shutting  off  of  debate.  That  this 
power  may  be  abused  by  a  corrupt  majority  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  But  that  the  power  must  exist  for  occa- 
sional use  in  preventing  valuable  time  being  willfully 
wasted  seems  also  clear.  And  it  can  make  little  differ- 
ence whether  its  exercise  be  by  a  motion  for  the  ' '  pre- 
vious question,"  or  by  a  motion  that  the  opposition 
"be  not  heard." 


SCIENCE  AND  INDUSTRY. 


279 


SCIENCE   AND    INDUSTRY. 


HOUSEHOLD    FURNITURE— ANCIENT    AND 
MODERN. 

We  are  sometimes  told  that  before  the  middle  ages 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  household  furniture ;  there 
was  a  bed,  and  a  chair  (more  like  a  throne),  and  there 
was  a  table,  but  very  little  else.  But  ancient  sculpture, 
monumental  records,  and  written  history,  when  care- 
fully scanned  and  studied,  give  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary. The  ancient  Egyptians  and  Assyrians  sat  on 
chairs  like  Europeans  of  the  present  century.  Stools, 
and  low  seats,  and  settees  were  also  used.  The  men 
alone  reclined  at  meals  ;  the  women  and  children  sat 
in  chairs.  Square  sofas,  or  ottomans,  with  leathern  or 
embroidered  cushions,  were  among  the  usual  fittings  of 
a  well  furnished  room.  Carpets  were  also  in  use  in  the 
more  elegantly  furnished  dwellings — one  specimen  of 
which,  at  least,  has  been  handed  down  to  the  present 
time.  It  is  made  with  a  warp  of  linen  woven  with 
woolen,  with  figures  in  blue  and  red  on  a  yellow  ground. 
The  people  of  those  early  days  had  tables — round, 
square,  or'  oblong — and  often  supported  by  a  single 
shaft,  or  leg,  beautifully  carved  into  artistic  forms. 
Those  ancient  people  reclined  upon  elegant  lounges, 
very  similar  in  construction  to  our  own,  with  one  end 
raised,  receding  to  the  other  extremity  in  a  graceful 
curve,  and  supported  upon  feet  usually  carved  to  repre- 
sent those  of  wild  animals.  Of  their  bed-room  furni- 
ture we  know  less.  But  we  do  know  that  those  who 
were  able  slept  upon  bedsteads  elaborately  made  of 
wood,  ivory,  bronze,  or  iron.  The  Egyptian  belles  ad- 
mired their  forms  and  dresses  in  mirrors  often  of  costly 
construction,  and  wrought  from  burnished  metal,  both 
to  hang  upon  the  wall  and  with  handles  for  more  con- 
venient use.  All  the  furniture  of  the  wealthy  was  made 
in  a  highly  ornamental  and  costly  manner,  ivory  en- 
tering largely  into  its  construction.  They  had  little  use 
for,  and  do  not  appear  to  have  given  much  attention  to, 
book-cases,  secretaries,  desks,  or  other  writing  and  read- 
ing conveniences.  Their  lamps  and  candelabrums  were 
ornamental,  and  always  so  constructed  that  the  flame 
could  be  fed  with  an  open  or  floating  wick.  Their 
kitchen  utensils  were  various  and  convenient.  Neither 
knives  nor  forks  were  used  in  eating,  but  a  knife  was 
most  undoubtedly  employed  in  carving  ;  and  we  know 
that  ladles  were  employed  for  dishing  out  liquids,  and 
spoons  for  conveying  the  same  to  the  mouth.  Plates, 
bowls,  cups  of  various  kinds,  and  vases  were  among  the 
every-day  table  furniture.  The  latter  were  also  largely 
used  for  ornament  and  for  sacred  purposes,  and  were 
variously  made  of  plain  or  richly  colored  glass,  of  porce- 
lain, alabaster,  silver,  and  gold.  Great  numbers  of  little 
elegancies,  for  toilet  and  parlor,  testify  to  the  influence 
and  taste  of  female  presence,  even  from  the  very  ear- 
liest days  of  ancient  civilization.  Of  statuary  and  paint- 
ings there  is  no  need  to  speak.  The  loftiest  genius  and 
skill  of  modern  artists  would  be  proud  to  equal  in  exe- 
cution the  works  of  ancient  Greece.  The  monumental 
records  of  the  Egyptians  abound  more  than  do  those  of 
the  Assyrians  in  details  of  a  domestic  character.  The 
•latter,  a  conquering  and  aggressive  people,  seem  to  have 


taken  more  delight  in  recording  and  emblazoning  the 
incidents  of  war  and  the  chase.  These  adverse  tastes 
were  strongly  depicted  in  the  ornamental  detail  of 
couches,  chairs,  tables,  chariots,  and  even  in  the  orna- 
mentations of  the  most  common  articles  for  use  or  dis- 
play. The  Greeks  derived  their  first  ideas  of  aesthetic 
taste  in  household  ornamentation  from  Assyrian  art; 
but  whatever  they  borrowed  -was  so  rapidly  advanced, 
through  the  transforming  influence  of  a  native  culture 
never  equaled  by  any  other  people,  that  it  soon  be- 
came most  eminently  their  own.  But  with  them  orna- 
mentation and  splendor  was  lavished  more  upon  tem- 
ples and  public  buildings  than  upon  private  residences. 
The  Romans  borrowed  chiefly  from  the  Greeks,  and 
vrith  so  little  effort  at  originality  that  Greek  art  ever  re- 
tained its  predominance  in  Italy  under  Roman  rule. 
The  library  first  appears  as  a  separate  apartment  in  Ro- 
man dwellings  of  the  Augustan  age,  but  with  very  little 
appropriate  furniture.  Their  books  (rolls  of  papyrus 
and  parchment)  were  kept  in  movable  presses  or  closets 
arranged  upon  shelves,  but  the  room  was  almost  bare 
of  furniture — no  writing  desks,  or  tables,  or  cabinets 
are  known  to  have  been  used.  The  tables  of  the  wealthy 
Romans  were  generally  of  costly  foreign  wood,  resting 
on  marble  or  ivory  columns.  The  curule  chairs,  or 
seats  of  state  used  by  the  patricians,  were  elaborately 
wrought  in  ivory.  With  the  decline  of  Roman  sway, 
the  aesthetic  in  art  gradually  fell  away;  but  so  much 
as  was  retained  throughout  the  European  States  par- 
took almost  exclusively  of  the  Roman  form.  From 
A.  D.  500  to  1500,  a  -great  ecclesiastical  common- 
wealth grew  up,  and  with  it  a  purely  ecclesiastical 
style — not  only  in  church  architecture  and  household 
furniture,  but  also  in  every  other  species  of  industrial 
art  culminating  in  the  fourteenth  century,  with  the  dec- 
orated Gothic — a  new  and  quite  unique  style  of  archi- 
tecture and  decoration.  The  furniture  of  this  period 
was  heavy  and  cumbrous,  with  but  little  variety.  With 
the  fifteenth  century  a  new  departure  was  commenced 
in  household  furnishing  and  decoration.  Remarkable 
progress  was  made,  and  a  considerable  degree  of  splen- 
dor began  to  appear.  Apartments  expanded  in  area 
and  hight.  Embroidered  hangings  and  curtains,  daz- 
zling with  scarlet,  blue,  and  gold,  were  added  to  the 
Gothic  paneling,  on  wall  and  chair,  on  screen  and  bed- 
stead. Book  cabinets,  and  reading  and  writing  desks, 
made  their  appearance  with  the  introduction  and  mul- 
tiplication of  printed  books  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Interior  decorations  everywhere  harmonized  to  the  rich 
glow  of  color  and  jeweled  light  which  flowed  through 
the  richly  colored  glass  of  storied  windows,  of  bower, 
and  hall,  and  temple.  About  these  mediaeval  times  all 
further  progress  in  this  direction  was  checked  by  the 
sudden  revival  of  old  Roman  literature  and  Grecian  art, 
which  soon  began  also  to  manifest  itself  in  architecture 
and  decoration,  finally  culminating  in  the  style  known 
as  Renaissance,  so  called  because  it  was  a  going  back 
again,  or  renewal,  of  the  former  classic  styles.  The 
term  was  not  confined  to  architecture  alone,  but  was 
also  employed  to  designate  ornamental  art  of  every  de- 
scription wrought  in  that  style.  In  Renaissance  the 


280 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


leading  nations  had  each  a  style,  or  modification,  pecu- 
liarly their  own,  which  was  known  respectively  as  French 
Renaissance,  German,  Italian,  English,  etc. — the  latter 
being  more  commonly  known  as  Elizabethan.  France 
at  this  time  became  largely  the  arbiter  in  art  furniture, 
and  the  style  known  as  "Louis  Quinze,"  with  its  pro- 
fusion of  gilding  and  florid  decoration  held  sway  until 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  polished 
woods,  and  severe  or  classic  outlines,  took  the  place  of 
the  grotesque  carving,  gay  gilding,  and  other  protuse 
ornamentation  which  preceded  it.  England  was  es- 
pecially slow  in  the  introduction  of  furniture  into  her 
dwellings.  For  two  or  three  hundred  years  after  the 
conquest  a  bed  and  chest  were  the  chief  appendages 
of  the  bed-room  of  the  Anglo-Normans.  Tables  and 
benches  constituted  the  furniture  of  hall  and  dining- 
room.  The  floors  were  usually  covered  with  dried  rushes 
in  winter,  and  green  fodder  or  leaves  in  summer.  Chairs 
were  large  and  cumbrous,  and  usually  fixtures.  The 
dining-room  table  generally  consisted  of  boards  on 
trestles,  while  a  large  salt-cellar  constituted  the  most 
conspicuous  ornament  of  the  board.  Dishes  and  plates, 
and  sometimes  silver  goblets,  were  used  on  the  tables 
of  the  nobles  ;  but  in  ordinary  dwellings  wooden  bowls 
and  huge  trenchers  constituted  the  usual  table-ware. 
Clocks  began  to  appear  about  the  time  of  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII.  A  little  later  a  species  of  hand-organ 
made  its  appearance,  which  was  soon  followed  by  the 
primitive  forms  of  various  other  modern  wind  and  string 
instruments.  About  one  hundred  and  seventy  years 
ago  furniture  made  from  mahogany — a  valuable  wood 
indigenous  to  Central  America  and  the  West  Indies — 
made  its  entry  into  the  salons  of  Europe  and  our  own 
country — not  through  Parisian  influence,  but  directly 
from  the  shops  of  London,  where  that  wood  was  first 
shaped  into  useful  forms.  For  a  century  and  a  half 
this  wood,  with  very  little  variety  in  form  and  style  of 
manufacture,  has  survived  all  the  changes  of  a  usually 
fluctuating  fashion.  The  only  other  woods  which  have 
rivaled  mahogany  in  public  favor  are  rosewood — an- 
other beautiful  product  of  Central  American  forests — 
and  the  black  walnut,  which,  by  a  peculiar  treatment,  is 
made  to  receive  a  very  fine  polish,  and  which  is  also 
well  adapted  for  the  display  of  carved  work.  A  curious 
feature  in  recent  American  furniture  manufacture  may 
be  mentioned  in  what  is  technically  known  as  ' '  knock- 
down furniture,"  which  consists  of  complete  sets  so 
made  as  to  come  entirely  apart  for  convenient  transpor- 
tation. This  class  of  manufacture  is  now  being  largely 
shipped  to  all  parts  of  South  America  and  the  East  In- 
dies. During  the  last  decade  there  is  evidence  of  a  new 
outbreak  of  "taste"  in  household  furnishing  and  dec- 
oration, which  has  not  yet  taken  any  definite  character. 
The  theory  underlying  this  new  movement  seems  to  be 
that  art  and  artistic  feeling  should  be  as  much  shown  in 
the  designs  of  furniture  and  its  accessories  as  in  the 
higher  or  fine  arts  of  sculpture  and  painting.  A  natu- 
ral and  practical  corollary  to  this  assumption  may  be 
found  in  the  existence,  at  the  present  time,  of  numerous 
establishments  devoted  especially  to  the  production  of 
what  is  termed  "art  furniture."  It  is  true  that  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  term  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
"art  furniture,"  considered  as  apart  from  other  articles; 
but  whatever  is  truly  workmanlike  is  almost  always 
artistic,  and,  inversely,  that  which  is  unworkmanlike  is 
inartistic — unsatisfactory  to  our  sense  of  beauty  and  fit- 
ness. In  that  sense  all  furniture  should  be  art  furni- 
ture ;  but  what  is  usually  meant  in  the  present  use  of 


the  term  is  something  analogous  to  Renaissance  in  archi- 
tecture— a  going  back  to  olden  styles,  as  that  of  the 
"Queen  Anne"  period,  or  the  Elizabethan,  or  "Louis 
Quatorze"  style.  This  growing  taste  is  to  be  depre- 
cated. It  is  not  in  keeping  with  the  progress  of  the 
age.  It  would  be  better  to  encourage  originality.  Let 
our  furniture  and  other  accessories  represent  the  thought 
and  genius  of  the  skilled  workman  rather  than  the  un- 
educated taste  of  the  purchaser,  who  is  usually  but  a 
mere  copyist  in  his  choice.  What  would  be  the  result 
if  the  same  rule  we  apply  to  house  decoration  should 
be  applied  to  the  fine  arts?  We  would  bring  down 
painting  and  sculpture  to  the  level  of  furniture  manu- 
facture. When  people  are  progressive — when  they  are 
really  in  earnest — they  do  not  stop  to  copy  ;  they  do 
not  care  for  borrowed  decorations.  Art,  in  every 
line,  should  be  an  expression  of  the  highest  thoughts 
and  aspirations  of  a  people.  We  should  ever  study 
what  is  best  and  noblest  in  art.  That  will  lead  us  to 
idealize  not  only  every  work  we  do,  "  but,  most  of  all, 
our  own  character  and  lives."  If  we  pursue  the  other 
course,  we  shall  feel  to  lament  with  Wadsworth,  at  an 
early  period  of  the  present  century,  that  ' '  plain  living 
and  high  thinking  are  no  more." 


THE   POTATO. 

The  precise  locality  where  the  potato  was  first  dis- 
covered by  Europeans  is  a  matter  of  uncertainty.  It 
has  been  found  indigenous  in  northern  Chile,  through- 
out Peru,  Central  America,  and  as  far  north  as  the 
southern  boundary  of  Mexico.  In  its  native  state  this 
plant  grows  without  tubers,  and  flourishes  both  in  the 
humid  forests  of  the  equatorial  region  and  among  the 
central  mountains  of  Chile,  where  no  rain  falls  for  six 
months  of  the  year.  Europe  is  indebted  to  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  for  this  vegetable ;  but  it  is  not  probable  that 
he  found  it  indigenous  in  Virginia,  as  generally  sup- 
posed. If  he  found  it  there  at  all,  it  was  as  an  exotic. 
Herriot,  who  went  out  from  England  with  the  early 
Virginia  colonists,  was  one  of  the  earliest  writers  who 
mentions  this  vegetable.  In  his  book  of  travels  he  men- 
tions, under  the  head  of  "Roots,"  the  "openawk." 
"These  roots,"  he  says  "are  round,  some  as  large  as  a 
walnut,  and  others  much  larger.  They  grow  in  damp 
soil,  many  hanging  together,  as  if  fixed  on  ropes.  They 
are  good  for  food,  either  boiled  or  roasted."  This 
"root"  was  undoubtedly  the  potato,  which  about  that 
time  (1586)  had  been  transplanted  from  its  native  soil 
in  the  tropics  to  Virginia,  where  it  was  beginning  to  de- 
velop into  a  food-bearing  plant.  Transferred  to  the  still 
cooler  and  more  moist  summers  of  Ireland,  the  plant 
further  improved  in  its  edible  qualities,  and  finally  de- 
veloped into  the  full  grown,  delicious  "Irish  potato  "- 
a  vegetable  now  second  to  no  other  in  economic  value. 
Its  first  introduction  for  food  met  with  much  opposi- 
tion, especially  from  learned  men,  and  several  books 
were  written  to  prove  its  poisonous  and  consequently 
dangerous  character.  Both  the  potato  and  the  tomato 
belong  to  the  deadly-nightshade  and  mandrake  fami- 
ly ( 'SolanactB ) ',  all  of  which  are  poisonous  in  stem, 
leaf,  and  flower,  and  from  them,  especially  the  former, 
a  very  powerful  narcotic  may  be  extracted ;  but  this 
poisonous  property  does  not  extend  to  the  tuber  of  the 
one  nor  to  the  fruit  of  the  other.  It  may,  however,  be 
remarked  that  solanine  —  the  poisonous  principle  of 
this  family  of  plants — is  always  more  or  less  developed 


ART  AND  ARTISTS. 


281 


In  the  potato,  if  the  tubers,  while  growing,  are  uncov- 
ered so  as  to  expose  them  to  the  direct  action  of  sun- 
light, under  the  influence  of  which,  as  is  well  known, 
they  turn  green,  and  are  always  avoided  by  both  man 
and  beast  on  account  of  their  bitter  taste.  The  same 
effect,  only  less  in  degree,  is  produced  in  the  potato 
during  its  time  of  sprouting.  When  sprouted  potatoes 
are  to  be  prepared  for  the  table,  they  should  be  cut  into 
thin  slices,  placed  in  cold  water,  and  suffered  to  remain 
there  an  hour  or  two  before  being  cooked.  Otherwise, 
they  are  unwholesome  food.  As  already  intimated,  the 
potato  is  a  tropical  plant,  and  its  tuber -producing 
character  is  only  a  modification  of  the  plant  brought 
about  by  its  propagation  in  northern  latitudes.  If  the 
potato  is  carried  to  the  tropics  and  propagated  there 
from  its  own  tubers,  it  will  in  a  few  years  return  to  its 
native  condition  of  a  non-tuberous  plant.  Most  people 
are  familiar  with  its  deterioration  when  cultivated  in  even 
the  Southern  States  of  the  Union.  A  similar  effect  is 
produced  when  its  cultivation  is  attempted  as  far  north 
as  Sitka,  where  the  tubers  grow  only  to  about  the  size 
of  walnuts.  This  latter,  however,  is  due  to  the  short- 
ness of  the  season,  which  does  not  give  time  for  the  full 
development  of  the  vegetable. 


INFLUENCE  OF  A  TUNING  FORK   ON  THE 
GARDEN  SPIDER. 

A  correspondent  of  Nature,  C.  V.  Boys,  of  the  Phys- 
ical Laboratory  of  South  Kensington,  England,  gives  an 
account  of  some  new  and  very  interesting  observations 
which  he  has  recently  made  in  regard  to  the  influence  of 
a  tuning  fork  on  the  common  garden  spider,  which 
spins  the  beautiful  geometric  web  with  which  all  are  so 
familiar.  On  sounding  an  A  fork  and  lightly  touching 
with  it  any  leaf  or  other  support  of  the  web,  or  any  por- 
tion of  the  web  itself,  the  spider,  if  at  the  center,  imme- 
diately turns  to  the  direction  of  the  fork  and  feels  for 
the  radial  thread  along  which  the  vibration  travels. 
Having  found  it,  the  insect  immediately  darts  along 
that  line  until  it  reaches  the  fork.  If  the  fork  is  not  re- 
moved he  immediately  embraces  it  and  runs  about  on 
the  prongs,  evidently  thinking  it  legitimate  prey  for  food, 
being  deceived  by  the  buzzing  noise.  If  the  spider  is 
not  at  the  center  of  its  web  it  is  evidently  at  loss  which 
way  to  go  until  it  goes  to  the  center  for  the  information. 
If  when  the  spider  has  been  thus  enticed  to  the  edge  of 
the  web  the  fork  should  be  withdrawn,  it  will  reach  out 
with  its  fore  feet  as  far  as  possible  in  the  direction  from 


which  the  sound  comes.  By  means  of  the  fork  the 
spider  may  be  made  to  eat  what  it  otherwise  would 
avoid.  A  fly  drowned  in  paraffine  was  placed  upon  the 
web.  The  spider  was  attracted  by  the  touch,  but  im- 
mediately left,  with  the  evident  conclusion  that  the  fly 
was  not  proper  for  its  food.  Being  again  attracted  to 
it  by  the  sound  of  the  fork,  it  again  refused  to  eat ;  but 
after  several  repetitions  of  the  act,  it  seemed  to  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  was  all  right,  and  would  make  its 
usual  meal.  House  spiders  do  not  seem  to  appreciate 
the  tuning  fork ;  but  retreat  to  their  hiding  places,  as 
when  frightened.  The  writer  remarks  that  ' '  the  sup- 
posed fondness  of  spiders  for  music  must  surely  have 
some  connection  with  these  observations ;  and  when 
they  come  out  to  listen,  is  it  not  that  they  cannot  tell 
which  way  to  proceed?" 


BOTANIZING  IN  THE  CITY. 

There  is  no  more  interesting  or  pleasurable  study  in 
which  a  person  of  leisure  can  engage  than  in  that  of 
botany.  Even  the  resident  of  a  crowded  city,  with  no 
opportunity  to  go  abroad  into  the  open  fields  of  the 
country,  need  not  be  without  opportunity  to  pursue  his 
favorite  search  after  the  new  and  beautiful  in  nature. 
Much  encouragement  in  this  direction  may  be  afforded 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  amount  of  botanical  work  re- 
cently executed  by  a  gentleman  on  a  few  vacant  lots  in 
the  city  of  New  York.  Last  summer  a  quantity  of  earth 
was  hauled  in  to  grade  certain  lots  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Manhattan  Square,  in  that  city,  which  resulted  in  the 
introduction  of  a  large  array  of  plants  that  soon  cov- 
ered the  ground  with  a  waving  mantle  of  luxuriant  vege- 
tation. Mr.  L.  P.  Gratacap  resolved  upon  a  careful 
botanical  examination  of  that  vegetation,  which  finally 
showed  a  result  of  thirty-five  orders,  ninety-nine  genera, 
and  one  hundred  and  seventeen  species  of  plants. 


IMPORTANT  DISCOVERY  IN    TELEGRAPHY. 

According  to  Nature,  an  important  discovery  in  teleg- 
raphy has  recently  been  made  by  a  cable  manufactur- 
ing company  in  Neuchatel.  The  statement  is  to  the 
effect  that  after  a  long  and  expensive  series  of  investi- 
gations and  experiments,  the  company  has  succeded  in 
devising  a  method  of  preparing  and  laying  cables,  where- 
by the  induction  of  the  electric  current  from  one  wire 
to  another  is  prevented,  notwithstanding  the  wires 
may  be  at  the  same  time  in  juxtaposition. 


ART   AND   ARTISTS. 


"THE  LAST  SPIKE." 

The  only  noteworthy  event  in  the  way  of  art,  in  San 
Francisco,  during  the  last  month,  has  been  the  exhibi- 
tion of  Mr.  Thomas  Hill's  historical  picture,  commem- 
orating the  driving  of  the  last  spike  in  the  overland 
railroad,  which,  with  allowable  oratorical  license,  was 
said  to  "have  united  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific.  "  The 
public  advent  of  this  picture  was  heralded  in  the  usual 
way.  Rather  unfortunately,  for  the  artist,  the  fact  was 


liberally  advertised  that  five  years  of  his  time  had  been 
given  to  its  perfection.  When  people  came,  at  last,  to  be- 
hold a  group  of  gentlemen,  standing  with  that  stiff  awk- 
wardness inherent  in  the  male  sex  upon  a  railroad  track 
in  the  midst  of  the  desert,  there  was  an  inevitable  sense 
of  disappointment.  And  the  reason  is  plain.  Let  us 
grant  all  that  would  probably  be  claimed  for  the  sub- 
ject—  the  vast  importance  of  the  enterprise  just  com- 
pleted ;  the  skill,  ability,  and  energy  of  the  individuals 
present ;  the  future  suggested  by  the  scene.  But  back 


282 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


of  all  this  remains  the  fact  that  the  scene,  however  inter- 
esting in  a  historical  point  of  view,  is  not  essentially 
artistic. 

Most  historical  pictures  are  predestined  to  be  fail- 
ures. Here  and  there  are  exceptions,  where  events 
are  depicted  that  are  full  of  intense  and  tragic  move- 
ment, suggesting  some  passion  deeply  aroused  and  por- 
trayed at  the  climax  of  its  force.  In  such  case  there 
is  opportunity  for  artistic  posing,  for  artistic  effects 
which  shall  bring  the  spectator  into  sympathy  with  the 
intense  feelings  suggested  by  the  painting.  A  battle- 
field, or  some  event  full  of  movement,  may  be  a  success- 
ful theme  for  a  historical  painting.  And  even  in  such 
case,  the  fewer  the  figures,  the  more  powerful  the  pict- 
ure. Now,  "The  Last  Spike"  is  subject  to  all  these 
objections.  The  event  was  one  of  great  commercial 
importance,  and  its  celebration  was  meet  and  proper. 
But  it  contained  very  little  of  the  artistic  element. 
Large  groups  of  gentlemen,  all  arrayed  in  the  modern 
stiff  black  suit,  are  not  even  graceful.  There  is  no  ap- 


peal to  any  of  the  higher  passions.  There  is  no  action. 
It  is  simply  a  canvas  crowded  with  black  coats  and 
pants.  The  attention,  instead  of  being  drawn  irresisti- 
bly to  one  center,  which  is  the  climax  of  the  scene,  is 
dissipated  by  a  multitude  of  figures,  each  of  which  aims 
to  be  a  portrait.  And  candor  compels' us  to  admit  that 
many  of  them  are  not  successful  portraits. 

When  it  comes  to  the  landscape  part  of  the  picture, 
Mr.  Hill  is  more  at  home,  and  it  is  here  that  his  best 
work  is  done.  The  alkali  soil  is  admirable,  and  veritable 
sagebrush  springs  from  it.  A  realistic  Utah  sky  hangs 
over  the  whole,  and  in  the  distance  (and  it  is  a  very  good 
impression  of  distance)  the  mountains  show  with  their 
tops  of  snow.  In  the  immediate  foreground  are  some 
picks,  a  keg  of  nails,  and  the  track.  These  are  admira- 
bly done.  But  the  feeling  aroused  by  this  picture,  as  a 
whole,  is  one  of  disappointment  that  the  artist  had  not 
spent  his  five  years  in  that  field  of  art  with  which  his 
best  reputation  is  connected,  and  to  which  his  own 
taste  as  well  as  his  talents  naturally  incline. 


DRAMA   AND   STAGE. 


Wedded  by  Fate,  the  maiden  drama  of  Mr.  Henry  B. 
McDowell  and  Captain  Edward  Field,  of  San  Francisco, 
was  produced  at  the  Baldwin  Theater  on  January  lyth, 
and  held  the  boards  for  one  week  and  a  half.  All  the 
town  went  to  see  it,  and  the  management  reaped  a 
profit  of  more  than  a  thousand  dollars  for  the  first 
week's  performances.  Noteworthy,  first  of  all,  as  a  dis- 
tinct claim  by  the  authors  to  the  rank  of  dramatists, 
the  play  was  almost  equally  interesting  for  the  revela- 
tions it  effected  in  other  quarters.  It  compelled  "so- 
ciety," for  example,  which  is  always  afraid  to  express 
an  opinion  that  is  not  the  opinion  of  somebody  else,  to 
make  a  great  many  ridiculous  remarks.  It  forced  the 
newspapers,  which  had  no  cut-and-dried  criticisms  of 
the  play  from  Eastern  sources  at  hand,  to  show  on  all 
sides  their  ignorance  of  the  elementary  principles  of 
dramatic  art.  It  taxed  the  capacities  of  the  Baldwin 
company  to  such  a  lamentable  extent,  that,  whatever 
the  merits  of  the  play,  it  was  plainly  beyond  their  pow- 
ers to  do  it  justice. 

But  we  have  more  to  say  in  favor  of  Wedded  by  Fate 
than  that  it  is  a  better  play  than  the  actors  could  act  or 
the  newspapers  appreciate.  The  diction  was  excellent, 
and  at  times  reminded  us  of  the  light,  but  sufficient, 
touch  of  the  skillful  hand  of  Mr.  Henry  James,  Jr.  The 
action,  too,  was  remarkable  for  its  entire  freedom  from 
sensationalism.  Every  effect,  we  mean,  was  a  consist- 
ent development  from  the  original  motives  of  the  play, 
and  was  not,  as  in  sensational  dramas,  introduced  for 
its  own  sake,  or,  like  a  deus  ex  machina,  to  help  out 
the  action.  To  have  avoided  this  error  in  a  maiden 
dramatic  effort  deserves  no  small  credit  in  a  country 
like  America,  in  which  sensationalism  in  plays,  as  in 
many  things  else,  is  everywhere  cultivated  to  satisfy  the 
dominant  popular  taste.  That  other  dramatic  nuisance 
of  our  day,  the  tendency  to  sacrifice  a  whole  play  to  the 
exaggerated  development  of  one  character,  was  also  fort- 
unately absent ;  and  the  success  which  certain  parts  of 
the  play  in  our  opinion  attained  was  won  by  genuinely 
artistic  means. 


Here  our  praise  ends.  However  creditable  we  may 
consider  much  that  was  done  and  much  that  was  left 
undone,  we  cannot  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  the  authors 
of  Wedded  by  Fate  have  produced  an  uneven  piece  of 
work,  which  in  its  present  state  cannot  endure.  The 
play  makes  a  wrong  beginning,  it  progresses  with  un- 
equal power,  it  ends  in  an  anti-climax,  and  the  devel- 
opment of  character  which  should  justify  the  termina- 
tion is  merely  indicated  instead  of  being  convincingly 
wrought  out.  The  authors  have  clearly  failed  to  per- 
ceive that  the  limits  of  dramatic  art  are  different  from 
the  limits  of  narrative  art.  In  putting  their  story  on 
the  stage,  they  have  followed  the  order  a  novelist  might 
have  followed  in  narrating  the  same  events.  But  a 
story,  merely  because  it  is  told  in  dialogue  and  di- 
vided into  scenes  and  acts,  does  not  on  that  account 
become  a  drama.  Goethe  set  to  work  in  this  fashion 
when  he  wrote  his  first  play,  Goetz  -von  Berlichingen, 
and  the  result  was,  that,  in  spite  of  much  subsequent 
tinkering,  the  piece  could  never  be  made  suitable  for 
the  stage.  A  countryman  of  Goethe's  has  since  learned 
to  avoid  his  errors,  and  in  Richard  Wagner's  Tristan 
und  Isolde  the  reader  will  find  as  splendid  an  example 
of  dramatic  form  as  any  century  has  produced.  From 
that  work  the  reader  may  discover  that  the  author's 
stnseofthe  right  beginning  of  the  drama  is  the  keystone 
of  its  whole  construction.  The  drama  begins  after  the 
events  which  supply  the  motive  of  the  drama  have  taken 
place.  To  depict  those  events  first  is  permissible  to  the 
novelist,  but  the  dramatist  must  begin  with  action  which 
is  already  immediately  connected  with  his  drama's  cul- 
mination. Events,  therefore,  which  the  novelist  may 
begin  by  describing,  the  dramatist  must  cause  (by  such 
means  as  his  ingenuity  may  devise)  to  be  narrated,  not 
acted,  after  his  drama  has  begun.  In  this  way  the  spec- 
tator is  made  aware  what  events  underlie  and  have 
given  rise  to  the  dramatic  action,  and  its  progress  is 
thenceforth  intelligible. 

A  brief  account  of  the  plot  of  Wedded  by  Fate  will 
show  how  much  it  loses  through  the  want  of  this  strictly 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


283 


dramatic  method.  The  scene  is  laid  in  Venice  in  1866. 
The  city  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Austrians,  toward  whom 
the  Italian  nobles  of  the  place  stand  in  the  relation  of 
suppressed  enmity.  The  play  opens  at  a  masked  ball. 
An  Austrian  colonel,  Count  von  Stettenheim  (well  acted 
by  Mr.  Grismer),  and  the  chief  of  the  Austrian  police 
in  Venice,  Baron  Falkenberg,  are  present.  In  the 
course  of  conversation  Stettenheim,  who  has  no  belief 
in  the  virtue  of  women,  persuades  Falkenberg  into  a 
wager  that  he  can  insult  any  lady  in  the  room,  and  then 
win  her  forgiveness  within  three  months.  Stettenheim, 
accordingly,  snatches  the  mask  from  the  face  of  a  lady, 
who  turns  out  to  be  the  Italian  countess,  Vittoria  Con- 
tarini.  Her  young  brother,  Marco,  at  once  brands 
Stettenheim  as  a  scoundrel,  a  duel  is  arranged,  and  the 
curtain  falls.  The  second  scene  takes  place  at  Stetten- 
heim's  lodgings.  Vittoria,  in  spite  of  the  compromising 
nature  of  such  a  visit  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  calls,  and 
begs  Stettenheim  to  spare  the  life  of  her  brother  in  the 
coming  duel,  as  he  is  no  swordsman.  Stettenheim 
finally  consents.  The  third  scene  discloses  Vittoria  and 
her  father  at  home.  Contarini  (a  conventional  father 
and  conventional  Italian,  atrociously  acted)  takes  leave 
of  Marco,  who  goes  forth  with  his  second,  Count  Gri- 
mani,  to  fight  his  duel,  but  returns  unharmed.  The 
three  Italians  then  agree  upon  a  plan  of  murdering  most 
of  the  Austrian  officers.  Baron  Falkenberg  is  to  give 
them  a  dinner  at  a  certain  cafe".  There  they  can  be  cut 
off,  and  the  Austrian  garrison  without  them  will  soon 
yield.  Having  heard  this,  Vittoria  determines  to  save 
Stettenheim,  who  had  spared  her  brother.  Despairing 
how  to  effect  this,  she  hits  upon  the  plan  of  writing  to 
him  to  call  upon  her  at  the  very  hour  she  knows  is  set 
for  the  dinner,  and  adds  that  her  father  and  brother  will 
be  away.  In  the  next  scene — the  most  powerful  one  of 
the  play,  and  sufficient  evidence  of  the  authors'  abilities 
— Stettenheim  calls.  Ignorant  of  the  plot,  with  his  low 
estimate  of  women  he  presumes  on  the  impurity  of  Vit- 
toria's  motive  in  writing  to  him.  He  addresses  her  ac- 
cordingly, and  is  repulsed.  The  scene  becomes  a  strug- 
gle on  his  part  to  go  away,  on  hers  to  detain  him,  with- 
out disclosing  her  motive,  until  the  hour  of  the  massacre 
shall  have  struck.  The  hour  strikes,  she  explains  every- 
thing ;  at  the  same  instant  a  panel  opens,  and  her  father, 
brother,  and  Grimani  enter  with  drawn  pistols.  The 
dinner  had  not  taken  place.  They  accuse  Vittoria  of 
guilt  with  Stettenheim,  and  treachery  to  them.  They 
are  on  the  point  of  putting  an  end  to  Stettenheim,  when 


Falkenberg  bursts  into  the  house  with  a  squad  of  police. 
The  Italians  are  carried  off  to  prison,  but  not  before 
Contarini  had  cursed  and  cast  off  forever  his  daughter. 
The  next  scene  is  at  Falkenberg's  house.  Stettenheim, 
deeply  affected  by  the  self-sacrifice  of  Vittoria,  wishes  to 
put  her  under  the  protection  of  the  Baroness  Falken- 
berg. Falkenberg  declines  to  believe  Stettenheim's  ver- 
sion of  Vittoria's  conduct,  and  the  request  is  refused. 
In  the  last  scene  the  prisoners  are  about  to  be  led  to  ex- 
ecution. Stettenheim  has  done  everything  to  get  them 
a  reprieve,  but  without  success.  As  a  last  resort,  he 
gives  Vittoria  a  plan  of  escape,  which  she  is  to  com- 
municate to  them  in  prison.  Before  she  can  enter, 
they  are  led  forth  to  execution,  and  at  the  last  moment 
comes  a  dispatch  that  Prussia  has  conquered  at  Sadowa, 
Austrian  domination  of  Venice  is  at  an  end,  and  amnes- 
ty is  extended  to  all  political  prisoners.  Vittoria  and 
her  father  are  reconciled,  and  she  is  given  into  the 
arms  of  Stettenheim. 

Here  was  the  opportunity  for  a  powerful  drama.  But 
the  authors  made  a  wrong  beginning.  The  events  of 
their  first  scene  are  not  strictly  a  part  of  the  action  of 
the  drama,  but  prefatory  to  it.  The  action  properly 
begins  after  the  insult  to  Vittoria,  arising  from  the 
wager,  has  taken  place.  The  play,  therefore,  should 
have  opened  with  the  second  scene,  and  the  events  that 
preceded  should  have  been  narrated.  This  would  have 
intensified  the  interest  at  the  outset,  and  avoided  the 
present  appearance  of  weakness.  In  like  manner  the 
dissipated  interest  of  the  last  two  scenes  should  have 
been  concentrated.  The  authors  needed  every  moment 
of  their  time  to  define  the  transformation  in  the  charac- 
ter of  Stettenheim.  The  opening  of  the  play  showed 
him  as  a  libertine ;  the  end-  was  to  disclose  in  him  the 
spirit  of  reverence  for  the  purity  of  womanhood.  To 
effect  this,  compactness  and  masterly  strokes  were  neces- 
sary ;  and  instead  of  introducing  the  Baroness  Falken- 
berg and  her  pleasant  platitudes,  the  last  two  scenes 
should  have  been  reduced  to  one.  The  highest  praise 
we  can  give  Wedded  by  Fate  is,  that  it  left  us  with  a 
feeling  of  surprise  at  how  near  it  escaped  being  an  ex- 
cellent play.  That  a  first  attempt  at  dramatic  writing 
should  produce  even  this  effect  is  no  small  credit  to  its 
talented  authors.  Their  aims  are  so  much  higher  than 
the  general  playwright's,  and  the  quality  of  their  work 
so  far  above  most  plays  applauded  by  the  American 
public,  that  we  shall  await  with  interest  the  appearance 
of  fresh  work  from  their  hands. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


UNITED  STATES  CONSULATE  GENERAL,     ) 
Kanagawa  (Yokohama),  Japan,  Jan.  14,  1881.  ) 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Calif ornian,  San  Francisco: 

DEAR  SIR  : — I  have  been  greatly  interested  in  the 
contents  of  a  few  of  your  issues  that  have  lately  fallen 
under  my  notice,  and  am  glad  to  find  so  able  a  period- 
ical published  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  my  old  home. 

Your  October  number  contains  an  article  from  the  pen 
of  Marie  Howland,  entitled  "Education  in  Japan," 
which  naturally  attracted  my  attention,  as  the  subject 
is  one  of  interest  to  all  dwellers  in  the  East.  The  writ- 
er opens  with  a  sweeping  denunciation  of  the  ignorance 


prevailing  in  the  world  as  to  the  nomenclature  of  Japan- 
ese islands  and  cities,  and  says  that  "all  our  writers, 
without  exception,  have  fallen  into  gross  errors,"  and 
that  "all  our  geographies  and  maps  must  at  once  be 
changed."  The  leading  and  unpardonable  error  in  the 
catalogue  is  stated  to  consist  in  ' '  calling  the  main  isl- 
and Niphon  or  Nippon,"  and  she  adds  :  "There  is  no 
island  having  such  name.  Dai  Nippon  or  Dai  Nihon 
(Great  Japan)  is  the  name  of  the  empire  —  the  entire 
Japanese  Archipelago.  The  official  name  of  the  largest 
island,  which  we  have  been  taught  to  call  Niphon  or 
Nippon,  is  Hondo." 


284 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


This  statement  having  been  copied  from  Griffis,  he 
(Griffis)  must  be  exempted  from  the  charge  of  falling 
into  the  error,  and  therefore  we  have  one  exception 
among  our  writers,  and  one  at  least  is  not  as  ignorant 
as  all  are  alleged  to  be. 

Is  not  the  whole  criticism,  however,  a  little  hypercriti- 
cal and  an  unnecessary  display  of  learning?  Griffis, 
whose  interesting  and  excellent  work,  The  Mikado's 
Empire,  is,  or  ought  to  be,  in  every  library,  says  that 
the  name  of  Hondo,  as  applied  by  him  to  the  main  isl- 
and, he  found  in  the  Military  Geography  of  Japan,  pub- 
lished by  the  War  Department  in  1872. 

One  of  the  most  learned  scholars  in  Japan  writes  me : 
"Hondo  would  mean  literally  'mainland,' — 'do'  being 
the  Chinese  for  'tsuchi'  (earth);"  and  he  adds,  "But 
I  doubt  very  much  if  any  Japanese  recognizes  '  Hondo ' 
or  anything  else  as  the  name  of  the  main  island.  Not 
long  ago  I  read  in  an  English  review  that  all  the  world 
knows  'Hon-shin'  to  be  its  proper  appellation.  The 
truth  is  that  the  Japanese  never  bothered  themselves 
about  the  question,  having  already  arranged  another 
method  of  denoting  geographical  position,  and  it  was 
only  when  foreigners  teased  about  the  want  of  a  name, 
that  some  replied,  'Oh,  call  it  Hondo,1  and  others  said, 
'Will  Hon-shin  do?'  "  Oyashima,  meaning  "the great 
many  islands"  and  one  of  the  ancient  names  of  the 
Japanese  realm,  I  have  also  heard  applied  to  this  island, 
and  so  have  I  often  known  the  natives  speak  of  it  as 
"Nippon,"  which  Mrs.  Howland  says  is  so  radical  an 
error.  So,  "the  United  States"  is  spoken  of,  through- 
out most  of  the  world,  as  "America,"  and  her  citizens 
as  "Americans." 

Japan  is  at  present  divided  into  ten  large  divisions, 
and  these  into  fu  and  ken,  and  the  map  published  by 
the  War  Department  in  1877,  does  not  give  the  name 
"Hondo"  to  the  main  island.  I  may  also  add,  that 
another  meaning  of  the  word  "do,"  which  I  have  said, 
in  connection  with  "hon,"  means  probably  land,  is 
road,  and  the  different  provinces  of  the  empire  are  now 
all  "do's,"  which  are  translated  in  Mr.  Brunton's  excel- 
lent map,  now  hanging  in  my  office,  as  circuits.  Thus 
"Hokai-do,"  northern  sea  circuit,  being  the  island  of 
Yezo;  "Tokai-do,"  eastern  sea  circuit;  "Nankai-do," 
southern  sea  circuit ;  "Saikai-do,"  western  sea  circuit, 
etc. 

The  next  error  which  is  said  to  be  misleading  our 
youth  is  naming  on  our  maps  the  "Liu  Kiu"  group  of 
islands  "Loo  Choo."  These  islands  are  written  by  the 
Japanese  "Riu  Kiu,"  and  not  "Liu  Kiu,"  as  they  have 
no  /  sound  in  their  language;  and  "Loo  Choo,"  as 
written  by  us,  is  the  exact  Chinese  pronunciation  of  the 
name.  In  all  our  maps  of  Europe  I  think  it  will  be 
found  that  "Bruxelles"  is  called  "Brussels,"  "Wien" 
"Vienna,"  "Firenze"  "  Florence,"  etc.,  and  yet  no  one 
has  thought  the  error  fatal  to  education  in  America. 

"The  name  of  the  old  capital  of  Japan,"  says  your 
contributor,  "is  'Kioto/  not  ' Miako, '  miako  being  a 
common  noun."  Well,  so  is  kioto  a  common  noun, 
the  one  being  Japanese  and  the  latter  Chinese,  and 
both  meaning  simply  capital,  or  chief  city.  "  The  Mi- 
ako" was  the  designation  of  the  city  for  a  long  time, 
which  was  finally  displaced  by  "Kioto,"  its  Chinese 
equivalent.  When,  however,  "Yedo"  was  named 
"Tokio" — eastern  capital — "Kioto"  was  officially  des- 
ignated "Saikio,"  or  western  capital,  but  now,  the  only 
capital  being  Tokio,  the  name  of  Kioto  is  again  used  to 
designate  the  old  imperial  city  and  the/#,  of  which  it 
s  a  part.  "Hokodadi,"  she  says,  "should  be  Hoko- 


date."  I  am  charitable  enough  to  believe  this  to  be  a 
misprint,  as  no  such  place  as  "Hokodate"  exists  in 
Japan.  It  is  Hakodate. 

Coming  to  education,  the  writer  states  the  number  of 
schools  in  Japan  to  be  5,429 — 3,630  of  which  are  public 
and  1,799  private,  and  the  number  of  pupils,  338,463 
males  and  109,637  females.  It  is  not  clear  of  what  time 
she  is  writing,  but  if  of  the  present,  her  figures  are  en- 
tirely erroneous.  In  a  late  voluminous  report  upon 
"Labor  in  Japan,"  which  I  had  the  honor  to  make  to 
my  government,  I  gave  the  figures  taken  from  the  report 
of  the  Minister  of  Education  for  the  year  1879,  as  fol- 
lows: 

"  Number  of  elementary  schools 25,479 

Number  of  teachers 59,825 

Number  of  school  population 5,251,807 

Number  of  pupils 2,066, 566 

' '  The  per  cent,  of  pupils  to  school  population,  there- 
fore, seems  to  be  about  39.3.  There  are  389  schools  of 
a  higher  grade,  with  910  teachers  and  20,522  scholars, 
and  also  96  normal  schools,  with  766  teachers  and  7,949 
students,  and  two  (so  called)  universities.  The  whole 
amount  of  school  expenditure  was  5,364,870  yen,  of 
which  2,640,629  yen  were  paid  in  salaries,  the  salary  of 
each  teacher  being  an  average  of  44  yen  72  sen  a  year," 
a  sum  hardly  sufficient  to  secure  competent  services  in 
the  United  States. 

Mrs.  Howland  states  that  the  Emperor  and  Empress 
of  Japan  take  great  interest  in  the  new  system  of  educa- 
tion, and  that  the  latter  lately  visited  a  girls'  school  in 
Yezo  and  had  her  photograph  taken  in  a  group  with  the 
two  Dutch  ladies,  who  have  charge  of  the  school.  The 
Empress  has  never  been  at  Yezo,  the  incident  referred 
to  having  taken  place  at  a  school  at  Shiba,  in  Tokio. 

"It  does  seem  lamentable,"  continues  your  contribu- 
tor, "that  the  Japanese,  with  their  intense  desire  to  ac- 
quire European  science,  should  not  be  able  to  secure 
teachers  who  have  mastered  the  language,  but  this  is 
well  nigh  impossible." 

To  procure  competent  teachers  is  not  impossible,  and 
indeed  is  not  difficult.  The  chief  difficulty  with  the 
Japanese,  in  all  kinds  of  education,  is  their  vanity  and 
disinclination  to  steady,  continuous  application.  They 
learn  rapidly,  and  quickly  come  to  believe  they  have  ac- 
quired everything  worth  knowing,  and  their  foreign 
teachers  and  assistants  are  gotten  rid  of  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible. The  well  known  incident  of  the  steamer  in  Kobe 
harbor,  which  had  dispensed  with  her  foreign  engineer, 
is  an  illustration.  The  native  engineer  (so  the  story 
goes)  started  the  engines,  but  could  not  stop  them,  and 
the  pilot  was  obliged  to  run  the  vessel  in  a  circle  until  a 
foreigner  could  board  her  and  bring  her  to.  It  must 
not  be  understood  from  this  that  I  undervalue  the  abil- 
ity, quickness,  and  capacity  of  the  people  of  Japan. 
They  have  accomplished  too  much  to  have  either  ques- 
tioned, and  their  many  amiable  and  estimable  qualities 
have  raised  up  friends  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  ' '  The 
Japanese  Government,"  it  is  added,  "appears  to  be 
generous  in  the  matter  of  salaries  to  foreign  teachers. 
The  circular  of  our  Bureau  of  Education,"  she  contin- 
ues, "from  which  most  of  the  facts  of  the  paper  are 
taken,  does  not  give  the  salaries  of  the  foreign  teachers 
at  Yedo.  As  it  is  the  capital,  no  doubt  they  are  higher 
than  at  Yokohama,  where  they  are  from  $600  to  $4,200 
a  year." 

Passing  by  the  fact  stated  by  the  writer  at  the  begin- 
ning of  her  article,  that  the  name  "  'Yedo'  for  the  cap- 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


285 


ital  had  not  been  used  either  officially  or  popularly  in 
Japan  since  1868,"  the  designation  in  use  being  Tokio, 
I  desire  to  say  that  there  are  no  foreign  teachers  em- 
ployed by  the  government  at  Yokohama,  and  I  think 
there  never  has  been  one  there  paid  at  the  rate  of  $4,200 
a  year.  No  such  salaries  are  now  paid  by  the  govern- 
ment, with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  to  one  or  two  pro- 
fessors in  Tokio ;  and,  as  I  have  said,  competent,  skill- 
ful, and  experienced  men  are  constantly  being  dis- 
charged. No  less  than  fourteen  at  once  were,  a  few 
days  since,  discharged  from  the  Engineering  Depart- 
ment alone,  leaving  all  its  affairs  in  the  hands  of  youths 
who,  however  excellent  as  students,  cannot  be  expected 
to,  and  certainly  do  not,  have  that  practical  acquaint- 


ance with  the  science  which  has  been  gained  by  their 
teachers  in  an  experience  of  from  ten  to  twenty -five 
years. 

There  are  other  statements  in  the  article  which  I 
should  like  to  notice,  but  this  paper  has  grown  to  too 
great  length.  The  changes  being  wrought  in  Japan 
are,  as  all  know,  wonderful,  and  many  of  them  are  un- 
doubtedly improvements. 

As  popular  education  becomes  more  and  more  ex- 
tended, we  may  look  for  an  increased  appreciation  of 
practical  knowledge  and  of  reforms  in  many  things  yet 
foul  with  Eastern  immorality. 

I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

THOS.  B.  VAN  BUREN. 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


THE  LETTERS  OF  WOLFGANG  AMADEUS  MOZART. 
1769-1791.  Translated,  from  the  collection  of  Lud- 
wig  Nohl,  by  Lady  Wallace.  Boston  :  Oliver  Ditson 
&  Co.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  at  Gray's  Music 
Store. 

The  letters  of  this  man  of  genius,  from  his  boyhood 
to  maturity,  whose  phenomenal  development  is  without 
parallel  in  the  history  of  music,  will  always  command 
the  interest  of  a  world-wide  circle  of  readers.  Born  at 
Salzburg,  January  17,  1756,  he  evinced  at  the  age  of 
three  years  an  extraordinary  love  and  aptitude  for  mu- 
sic, and  soon  began  to  compose  little  melodies  which 
his  delighted  father  noted  down.  His  father,  an  excel- 
lent musician  and  composer,  devoted  himself  with  un- 
tiring assiduity  to  the  development  of  his  son's  remark- 
able gifts.  By  the  time  Wolfgang  was  six  years  old, 
his  career  as  a  musical  prodigy  was  fairly  begun.  From 
that  time  forth  his  life  for  years  was  made  up  of  a  suc- 
cession of  visits  to  all  the  principal  cities  of  Europe, 
where  the  most  distinguished  reception  invariably  await- 
ed him,  and  everybody,  from  crowned  heads  downward, 
listened  with  delight  to  his  playing,  his  improvisation, 
and  his  compositions.  After  seven  years  of  this  life,  in 
the  midst  of  which  his  studies  were  continually  prose- 
cuted, his  father  took  him  to  Italy  in  December,  1769. 
At  this  point  the  letters  in  these  volumes,  which  cover  a 
period  of  twenty-two  years,  begin.  Most  of  them  are 
addressed  to  his  father  and  are  written  with  the  minute- 
ness and  regularity  of  a  journal.  They  contain  not  only 
a  statement  of  his  daily  occupation,  his  hopes  and  aspi- 
rations, but  also  many  suggestions  and  criticisms  of  in- 
terest both  to  the  amateur  and  the  professional  mu- 
sician. The  letters  are  divided  into  six  parts.  Part  I 
consists  principally  of  letters  addressed  to  his  sister 
during  his  visits  to  Italy.  There  Wolfgang,  who  was 
just  entering  his  fifteenth  year,  perfected  himself  in  the 
Italian  language,  having  previously  devoted  himself  as- 
siduously to  the  study  of  Latin  and  the  composition  of 
masses.  His  great  ambition  was  to  write  Italian  op- 
eras. The  letters  of  this  period  are  written  in  true  boy- 
ish style,  amid  the  exuberant  enjoyment  of  new  scenes, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  awakening  genius,  although  they 
give  evidence  also  of  a  judgment  and  intelligence  be- 
yond his  years.  It  is  remarkable  that  he  preserved  to 
the  end  of  his  life  much  of  this  child-like  ingenuousness 
and  playful  fancy,  which  is  so  marked  a  characteristic  of 


his  pure  and  exquisite  melodies.  Parts  II  and  III  cover 
an  important  period  in  Mozart's  life.  He  was  now 
twenty-one  years  old,  and  had  been  for  five  years  in  the 
service  of  an  unappreciative  and  tyrannical  prince,  with- 
out opportunities  for  the  expansion  of  his  musical  plans 
or  the  full  development  of  his  artistic  ambition.  His 
father  felt  that  the  time  had  come  for  his  son  to  take  a 
higher  position  and  seek  in  other  places  a  juster  appre- 
ciation of  his  talents.  Permission  to  accompany  him 
was  denied  the  father  by  the  prince  in  whose  service  he 
was,  and  Wolfgang  started  out  with  his  mother.  He 
visited  Munich,  Augsburg,  Mannheim,  Paris,  where  his 
mother  died.  Part  IV  contains  his  letters  from  Mu- 
nich, to  which  city  he  returned  after  a  period  of  seclu- 
sion in  Salzburg  devoted  to  unremitting  industry.  A 
succession  of  grand  instrumental  compositions  were  the 
fruits  of  this  period,  two  masses,  the  splendid  music  of 
"Kcenig  Thames "  and  the  operetta  Zaide.  In  parts 
V  and  VI  we  come  to  details  of  the  culmination  of  a 
life  of  struggle.  These  letters  cover  the  period  of  his 
residence  at  Vienna,  his  married  life,  and  the  successive 
production  of  his  greatest  works,  Nozze  de  Figaro,  Don 
Giovanni,  and  finally  his  sublime  Requiem.  The  wor- 
riment  of  pecuniary  difficulties,  combined  with  his  deli- 
cate organization,  then  broke  down  his  health  ;  and  on 
December  5,  1791,  when  not  yet  thirty-six  years  old,  in 
the  flower  of  his  age  and  at  the  hight  of  his  artistic 
work,  he  died  and  was  buried  in  an  unknown  grave. 


NESTLENOOK.  By  Leonard  Kip,  author  of  CEnone, 
Under  the  Bells,  etc.  New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons.  1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A.  L. 
Bancroft  &  Co. 

A  summer  afternoon  story,  redolent  of  lotus  flowers, 
and  breathing  a  spirit  of  dolcefar  niente,  with  the  fee- 
blest thread  of  plot  woven  through,  is  a  fair  summary 
of  Mr.  Kip's  latest  work.  It  appears  as  one  of  the 
Knickerbocker  Novels,  which  have  been,  heretofore, 
characterized  as  strong,  vigorous  romances,  as  witness 
the  "Breton Mills"  and  "The  Leavenworth  Case,"  and 
possibly  marks  a  new  departure,  or  an  appeal  to  a  dif- 
ferent class  of  readers.  Silas  Vickerage,  the  narrator 
of  the  story,  is  on  his  way  to  the  river  country  of  New 
York,  in  search  of  the  house  where  he  was  born,  and 
which  he  had  left  when  a  mere  child.  He  makes  the 


286 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


acquaintance  of  John  Bayard,  the  dweller  in  Nestle- 
nook,  whom  he  subsequently  discovers  to  be  his  cousin 
— Vickerage  himself  being  the  rightful  owner  of  Nestle- 
nook,  having  descended  from  the  family  ghost,  one 
Petrus  Bayard,  an  elder  brother  of  John  Bayard's  ances- 
tor. Of  course,  Vickerage  and  his  sister,  Grace,  who, 
being  dead  in  the  early  chapters,  reappears  in  the  lat- 
ter, do  not  disturb  Bayard's  possession ;  but,  on  the 
wedding  morning  of  a  still  later  generation,  whom  we 
have  not  mentioned,  deed  the  property  to  the  Bayards ; 
and  everything  is  peaceable.  The  faults  of  Mr.  Kip's 
work  are  few  but  grievous.  The  book  is  tedious  and 
commonplace,  not  at  all  up  to  the  standard  which  Mr. 
Kip's  earlier  writings  showed  that  he  had  set  for  him- 
self. It  seems  a  pity,  too,  if  trifles  are  of  any  conse- 
quence, that  the  author  should  be  led  into  so  careless  a 
use  of  language,  as  to  write  "on  either  arm"  [p.  74] 
when  he  meant  "on  each  arm.  "  Per  contra,  for  the 
admirers  of  the  Ik  Marvel  style  of  writing,  this  book  is 
not  without  its  charm.  The  descriptions  of  Hudson 
scenery  are  lazily,  dreamily  beautiful — the  quiet  sajtire 
upon  the  Studlum  will  case  and  "Facias  on  Adjourn- 
ments" is  appreciable — but  the  book,  on  the  whole  is 
decidedly  disappointing — leaves,  not  fruit. 

MEFISTOFELE.  Opera,  in  four  acts.  By  Arrigo  Boito. 
Boston  :  Oliver  Ditson  &  Co.  For  sale  in  San  Fran- 
cisco at  Gray's  Music  Store. 

This  opera  was  the  musical  sensation  of  the  last  Lon- 
don season.  It  is  the  leading  novelty  this  winter  at  all 
the  principal  theaters  of  Germany,  and  it  has  recently 
been  performed  with  success  in  New  York.  It  is  an- 
other attempt  to  make  the  story  of  Goethe's  great  poem 
the  basis  of  an  opera ;  but  we  fear  that  the  efforts  of 
Boito  are  not  destined  to  meet  with  the' same  enduring 
success  as  those  of  Gounod.  The  Italian  has  certainly 
made  original  use  of  his  materials.  He  begins  with 
the  prologue  in  heaven  ;  the  first  act  ends  with  the  com- 
pact between  Faust  and  Mephistopheles  ;  the  second  act 
begins  with  the  garden  scene,  and  ends  with  Faust  and 
Mephistopheles  visiting  the  witches  of  the  Brocken  ;  the 
third  act  makes  them  witness  the  death  of  Gretchen 
in  prison  ;  the  fourth  transplants  them  to  the  vale  of 
Tempe,  and,  following  the  second  part  of  Faust,  intro- 
duces Helen  and  the  night  of  the  classical  Sabbath. 
Finally,  in  the  epilogue,  Faust  dies  a  true  believer,  and 
Mephistopheles  loses  the  wager  he  had  made  in  the  pro- 
logue with  the  Deity.  In  presenting  these  scenes  the 
composer  has  signally  failed  to  give  his  work  dramatic 
unity.  The  scenes  are  simply  strung  together.  The 
music  does  not  seem  to  us  to  betray  any  remarkable 
power  of  melodic  invention.  If  Gounod's  Mephisto- 
pheles fell  far  below  the  conception  of  Goethe,  this  is 
still  more  strikingly  the  case  with  Boito's.  His  Mefis- 
tofele  is  a  bombastic  character  without  depth  or  dignity. 

Miss  PARLOA'S  NEW  COOK  BOOK.  A  Guide  to  Mar- 
keting and  Cooking.  By  Maria  Parloa.  Illustrat- 
ed. Boston :  Estes  &  Lauriat.  1881.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

To  those  captious  people  who  cannot  see  the  subtile 
appropriateness  of  reviewing  a  cook  book  in  a  literary 
magazine,  it  is  necessary  to  say  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  in  the  Chinese  theory  which  locates  the  seat  of  in- 
tellectual power  in  the  stomach.  There  is  a  school  of 
pessimists  who  think  that  literature  is  on  the  decline. 
If  they  shall  succeed  in  establishing  their  deductions, 
it  will  be  then  in  order  for  them  to  consider  how  far 
this  decline  is  due  to  the  fact  that  our  mothers  and 


grandmothers — what  cooks  they  were,  to  be  sure  ! — 
have  abdicated  their  culinary  functions  in  favor  of  the 
latter-day,  irresponsible,  irrepressible,  and  un- teacha- 
ble servant -girl.  What  plentiful  dyspepsia  is  the  re- 
sult; what  soured,  unlovely  dispositions;  what  divine 
melancholy  transmuted  to  indigestion;  what  inspira- 
tion untimely  checked  by  the  uncooked  biscuit  that  lies 
like  a  weight ;  what  poetry,  what  music,  what  art,  have 
been  forever  lost  to  the  world — all  this  the  world  will 
never  know.  Sensible  of  the  responsibilities  which  she 
assumes,  Miss  Parloa  comes  to  the  front  to  stay  the  de- 
generacy of  the  human  race.  And  she  should  be  wel- 
comed as  a  public  benefactress.  The  study  of  this  work 
should  be  made  compulsory.  From  every  kitchen 
should  come  the  delicate  fragrance  of  chocolate  dclairs; 
while  a  thousand  dainty  aproned  figures  should  bend 
over  Miss  Parloa's  book  to  solve  the  mystery  of  omelette 
souffle".  Miss  Parloa  is  the  Principal  of  the  Boston 
School  of  Cooking,  and  is  well  qualified  for  this  work  of 
regeneration.  Her  book  is  full  of  simple  recipes,  and 
the  last  excuse  for  poor  cooking  is  finally  unavailing. 

THE  PIRATES  OF  PENZANCE  ;  or,  The  Slave  of  Duty. 
Comic  Opera,  in  two  acts.  Written  by  W.  S.  Gil- 
bert. Composed  by  Arthur  Sullivan.  Boston  :  Oli- 
ver  Ditson  &  Co.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  at 
Gray's  Music  Store. 

The  words  and  music  of  Pinafores  successor  are  at 
last  published,  and  will  doubtless  find  their  way  at  once 
into  scores  of  musical  households,  where  they  are  sure 
to  give  much  innocent  delight.  The  English-speaking 
world  owes  Messrs.  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  a  large  debt  of 
gratitude  for  supplying  it  with  a  wholesome  form  of 
comic  opera  in  place  of  the  questionable  ope'ra  boufle. 
The  Pirates  has  not  the  charming  freshness  of  Pina- 
fore. The  fun  of  its  plot  is  frequently  forced  and  spoiled 
by  mannerisms  and  extravagance.  The  music,  too,  is 
not  always  happily  inspired.  But  it  would  be  unreason- 
able to  demand  a  success  as  marked  as  Pinafore  after  so 
brief  an  interval,  and  we  must  be  thankful  for  what  we 
have  got. 

JUDGE  AND  JURY.  A  Popular  Explanation  of  Leading 
Topics  in  the  Law  of  the  Land.  By  Jacob  Vaughn  Ab- 
bott. New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1880.  For 
sale  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

This  work,  although  not  a  professional  treatise,  as 
its  title  would  indicate,  is  written  in  the  full  knowledge 
of  legal  science.  It  is  more  a  narrative  of  facts  gathered 
from  actual  decisions  than  a  consideration  or  discussion 
of  abstract  legal  principles.  Its  range  is  wide,  touching 
as  it  does  upon  matters  of  moment  and  every-day  inter- 
est, which  are  liable  to  come  before  the  State  and  na- 
tional tribunals.  As  a  book  of  reference  it  is  valuable, 
and,  notwithstanding  the  inference  to  be  drawn  from 
its  title,  it  contains  much  interesting,  and  even  enter- 
taining, reading  matter.  Merchants,  farmers,  travelers, 
and  even  the  ladies  will  find  much  in  it  to  repay  them 
for  its  perusal,  and  the  hints  and  suggestions  which  it 
contains  are  worthy  of  careful  consideration  by  all  who 
desire  to  keep  out  of  legal  toils. 

How  I  FOUND  IT  NORTH  AND  SOUTH.  Together 
with  Mary's  Statement.  Boston :  Lee  &  Shepard. 
1880.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Doxey  &  Co. 

The  author  of  this  book,  who  calls  himself  by  the 
euphonious  name  of  David  Bias,  is  to  be  congratulated 
upon  having  discovered  something  new  under  the  sun  ; 
namely,  how  to  fill  three  hundred  pages  of  print  with  a 


OUTCROPPING^. 


287 


history  of  farming  in  Massachusetts,  which  cannot  be  of 
any  possible  interest  to  any  one  outside  the  author  and 
his  immediate  family.  He  gives  the  reader  various  ex- 
tracts from  his  annual  balance-sheets  to  show  how  much 
he  made,  and  how  he  made  it.  And  that  is  about  all. 
Subsequently  he  goes  to  Florida  to  engage  in  orange 
culture,  but  chills  and  fever  are  too  many  for  him,  and 
he  comes  North  again,  and  there  his  portion  of  the  book 
ends.  Then  Mary,  his  wife,  takes  up  the  wondrous 
tale,  and  narrates,  for  the  last  hundred  pages,  how  she 
and  David  fell  in  love  with  each  other,  and  were  mar- 
ried ;  and  how  David  was  chosen  highway  surveyor  at 
town  meeting,  and  then  some  more  balance-sheet ;  and 
how  their  son  George,  who  had  been  learned  (sic)  by 


other  boys  to  smoke  straws,  set  the  barn  on  fire ;  and 
how  they  sold  the  place  and  moved  away ;  and  then  she 
gets  tired  and  stops.  And  the  luckless  reader,  after  all, 
can  only  wonder  why  David  and  Mary  did  not  stop  be- 
fore they  began.  Their  joint  effort  is  utterly  purpose- 
less, rambling,  and  inconclusive,  and  leads  the  reader  to 
wonder  why  a  publisher  would  be  bold  enough  to  under- 
take such  a  production.  Two  things,  however,  can  be 
said  for  the  book.  The  typography  is  excellent,  and 
the  binding  neat  and  substantial.  Great  advances  have 
been  made,  of  late  years,  in  these  two  arts ;  and  in  these 
respects  this  little  book  reflects  credit  alike  upon  printer 
and  binder.  Would  we  could  say  as  much  for  the  au- 
thors, but  the  eternal  verities  sternly  forbid  it. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


QUEEN  OF  THE  ANGELS. 

Nuestra  Senora,  Reina  de  los  Angeles. 

Our  Lady,  Queen  of  the  Angels, 

That  rulest  the  valley  of  bliss, 
The  saints  and  the  holy  evangels 

Salute  thee  to-night  with  a  kiss. 

Most  favored  of  all  the  immortals — 
Lo,  what  doth  Thy  Majesty  lack? 

Saint  Peter  stands  guard  at  thy  portals. 
Saint  Gabriel  waits  at  their  back. 

Saint  Monica,  child  of  the  ocean, 

Most  youthful,  and  winsome,  and  fair, 

Makes  the  end  of  her  every  devotion 
To  beguile  thee  of  wish  or  care. 

And  Barbara,  blessed  hand -maiden, 
Stays  but  for  thy  royal  command, 

And  she  sendeth  a  cloud,  rain -laden, 
To  water  the  teeming  land. 

Francisco,  the  friar  of  gray  orders, 

His  benison  sends  from  afar, 
And  the  saints  that  dwell  over  the  borders 

Most  faithful  of  servitors  are. 

Diego  contributes  his  portion 

To  make  thy  enjoyment  complete; 

And  Buenaventura,  good  fortune, 
Doth  ever  repose  at  thy  feet. 

Bernardino,  the  monk  of  the  mountains, 
Makes  humble  obeisance  as  well, 

And  the  patron  of  rivers  and  fountains 
Hath  come  to  thy  valley  to  dwell. 

And  I  doubt  not,  fair  Queen,  if  another — 
Saint  Benedict — dwelt  in  this  land, 

Unable  his  passion  to  smother, 

He'd  proffer  his  heart  and  his  hand. 

O  Queen  !  I  bow  down  before  thee 

Allegiance  unfailing  to  prove ; 
'Midst  the  mortals  and  saints  who  ador«  thee, 

I  offer  my  tribute  of  love. 

For  aye  be  our  Lady  Queen  regnant 
In  this  land  of  the  orange  and  vine, 

Where  the  sun  shineth  ever  benignant, 
And  where  Nature  is  all  but  divine; 


Where  the  bee  stores  its  crystalline  treasure, 
The  mockingbird  pipes  the  day  long, 

And  where  life  is  as  smooth  as  the  measure 
That  runs  through  the  poet's  song. 

And  our  Lady,  Queen  of  the  Angels, 

That  rulest  the  valley  of  bliss, 
The  saints  and  the  holy  evangels 

Salute  thee  to-night  with  a  kiss. 

WM.  A.  SPALDING. 


A  FOREIGN   FORAY. 

Not  as  Cook's  guerrilla  bands  of  wholesale  sight-see- 
ers,  nor  as  the  hurried  slave  of  business  eager  to  return 
to  his  ledger,  did  Cash  and  I  invade  Europe.  Rather 
might  we  be  compared  to  the  helmeted  Germans,  who, 
through  aid  of  maps  and  plans,  knew  every  foot  of 
ground  in  France  before  they  traversed  its  fair  fields. 
So  it  happened  that  while  ours  was  a  condensed  edition 
of  the  foreign  tour,  yet  into  our  three  months'  college 
vacation  we  compressed  many  times  the  average  quota 
of  incident  and  observation,  and  more  than  bird's-eye 
views  of  the  most  alluring  parts  of  England,  France, 
and  Germany. 

That  neither  bridge  nor  balloon  transported  us  over 
the  water  will  be  readily  surmised  ;  and  that  the  monot- 
onous record  of  a  sea  voyage  forms  interesting  reading 
is  often  assumed,  but  rarely  is  the  expectation  realized. 
Let  it  be  taken  for  granted,  therefore,  that  we  had  the 
usual  qualms  caused  by  bidding  farewell  to  one's  native 
land  and  by  the  violence  of  the  ocean's  heavings,  and 
picked  up  the  usual  stock  of  undigested  nautical  phrases. 
In  days  when  all  are  athirst  for  novelty,  it  cannot  even 
be  supposed  that  anybody  is  curious  about  the  docks 
or  smoke  of  grimy  Liverpool,  which  is  so  much  like  any 
American  sea-port.  Rather  does  interest  center  on 
quaint  Chester,  only  an  hour  away  by  rail,  yet  quite  off 
the  beaten  track  of  transatlantic  travel.  Behold  the  em- 
bodiment of  ancient  England — a  town  of  the  middle 
ages  preserved  intact  like  the  cities  buried  by  Vesu- 
vius. No  wonder  this  impersonation  of  the  antique  was 
enchanted  ground  to  the  Salem  weaver  of  weird  ro- 
mances and  to  the  modern  passionate  pilgrim  enrapt- 
ured at  setting  foot  where  a  storied  past  gives  scope  to 


288 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


the  imagination.  But  poet  and  artist,  as  well  as  the 
browsing  antiquarian  attracted  by  mold  and  cobweb, 
would  delight  to  linger  about  the  ivy-clad  ruins  of  the 
cloistered  priory  where  the  mediaeval  monks  kept  vigil, 
and  the  bats  and  owls  are  now  the  tenants  ;  or  to  prom- 
enade for  a  mile  or  so  along  the  sturdy  walls,  which,  like 
an  unending  fortification,  encircle  the  city,  and  note  the 
occasional  towers  built  by  Briton  and  Saxon,  and  the 
crumbling  masonry  which  tells  of  the  victorious  Twen- 
tieth Legion  of  the  Romans.  The  sixteenth  century 
addresses  you  from  the  fantastic  gables,  the  crossed  iron 
girders,  the  scarred  and  carved  fronts  of  half-timbered 
houses  steeped  in  age,  yet  little  changed  by  tooth  of 
time. 

Talk  of  hanging  gardens  and  elevated  railways,  but 
here  you  have  a  street  in  the  air.  Ascending  a  steep 
staircase,  you  reach  the  higher  levels,  where  you  may 
walk  on  a  pavement  composed  of  the  line  of  pillar-sup- 
ported canopies  that  shade  the  shops  below.  On  this 
extended  piazza,  you  may  stroll  as  on  the  deck  of  a  ves- 
sel, past  show  windows  of  establishments  whose  dis- 
play of  varied  wares  indicate  that  trade  has  not  been  en- 
tirely stifled  by  the  shifting  sands  of  the  adjacent  River 
Dee.  Could  you  see  no  more  of  England,  you  might 
now  depart  contented,  for  where  will  you  find  any  sin- 
gle town  which  concentrates  so  much  that  is  typical  of 
the  country  ?  But,  as  an  impetuous  American,  can  you 
conceive  of  such  a  sin  of  omission  as  a  failure  to  make 
a  pilgrimage  to  the  spot  which  is  the  center  of  attraction 
to  your  countrymen,  eager  to  approach  the  home  of  the 
world's  master  dramatist  ?  What  wonder  that  to  Strat- 
ford-on-the-Avon  you  urgently  speed  to  see  the  bust  of 
Shakspere  which  characterizes  him  as  the  trim,  robust, 
round-faced,  mellow  looking  Englishman  of  his  period, 
instead  of  the  Italian  of  long,  curling  locks  and  classic 
mold  embodied  in  the  current  portraits  ;  to  roam  about 
the  relic-laden  hulk  of  a  house  where  he  was  born  ;  to 
pluck  a  leaf  from  the  scion  of  the  mulberry  tree  he 
planted  about  his  later  home  so  recently  unearthed  ;  to 
accept  a  sprig  of  lavender  from  the  garden  of  Anne 
Hathaway's  cottage,  and  perchance  hear  the  warblings 
of  the  lark  whose  throbbing  notes  our  South  Sea  idylist 
has  echoed  in  Shelley's  most  entrancing  vein  ! 

Being  now  in  the  heart  of  "  merrie  England,"  as  the 
thick-set  hedges  and  the  flowery  paths  betoken,  we  can 
take  the  finest  walk  in  the  kingdom,  toward  the  three 
spires  of  Coventry.  There  an  accommodating  red-coat, 
whose  tiny  cap  miraculously  fails  to  fall  off  his  capacious 
head,  leads  us  through  the  winding  streets  and  past  the 
odd-looking  houses.  Not  only  the  alcoved  images  of 
Peeping  Tom,  but  innumerable  pictures  in  the  shop- 
windows,  silk-worked  book-marks  for  which  the  place  is 
famous,  and  queer  pamphlets  thrust  into  our  hands, 
continually  remind  of  the  legend  of  Godiva  preserved  in 
the  chiseled  verse  of  Tennyson.  Our  scarlet-breasted 
soldier  shows  us  the  way  to  Leamington,  the  most  fash- 
ionable spa  in  England,  but  we  are  less  allured  by  its 
rejuvenating  waters  than  by  the  distant  turrets  of  War- 
wick Castle,  that  looks  on  Bosworth  Field,  where  the 
hump-backed  Richard  fell,  and  is  said  to  be  not  only 
the  best  preserved  castle  in  England,  but  the  only  one 
still  occupied  by  the  lineal  descendants  of  the  original 
possessors.  At  Kenilworth;  so  near  the  home  of  the 
king-making  earl,  nought  remains  of  the  scenes  of 
Elizabethan  pageantry  save  adobe  ruins.  In  their  shad- 
ow the  fruit-women  offer  gooseberry  balloons,  and  lus- 
cious monster  strawberries  which  almost  eclipse  the  Cal- 
ifornian  favorites. 


But  magnetic  powers  are  reserved  for  the  domes  and 
cupolas,  towers  and  steeples,  that  arise  with  oriental 
frequency  from  Oxford's  gray,  massive,  moss-covered 
structures  of  stone,  half  castles,  half  cathedrals.  Lin- 
geringly  we  make  the  tour  of  these  clusters  of  colleges, 
over-loaded  with  grotesque  carvings,  which  adorn  the 
weather-stained  walls  and  the  ornate  gateways  that  open 
into  courts  and  quadrangles  and  lead  to  pleasant  groves 
for  academic  walks  and  broad  meadows,  whence  the  boat 
houses  come  into  view.  A  patriotic  porter,  in  whom  the 
payment  of  the  Alabama  claims  is  a  rankling  thought, 
crows  over  the  recent  defeat  of  the  Harvard  crew.  A 
"fellow"  deep  in  local  and  traditional  lore,  who  still 
haunts  the  deserted  halls  of  learning,  shows  us  the  less 
obvious  treasures  of  the  place,  not  forgetting  to  call  our 
attention  to  the  picture  of  commemoration  day  in  the 
olden  time.  The  Bodleian,  with  its  horn-books  and 
parchments,  and  models  of  the  historic  buildings  of  Eu- 
rope, gives  us  a  foretaste  of  the  precious  literary  accumu- 
lations of  labyrinthine  London.  In  that  human  hive 
we  met  Hyacinth,  another  collegiate  wanderer,  who 
said : 

"You  are  fresh  from  the  cosy  provincial  inns.  You 
will  pay  high  for  discomfort  if  you  follow  the  popular 
hotel  current.  Come  with  me  to  one  of  those  private 
hotels  near  the  Thames.  You  will  be  away  from  the  re- 
gion of  fashion,  but  you  will  be  in  the  center  of  the  city, 
with  all  the  sights  you  care  for  close  at  hand." 

But  we  suggest  that,  grammar  aside,  he  is  our  Mutual 
Friend  ;  then  what  does  he  mean  by  guiding  us  to  the 
resorts  of  desperate  characters,  the  murky  river-side  ? 

"Oh,  you  musn't  forget,"  he  laughed,  "that  all  that 
is  changed,  since  the  Thames  embankment,  with  its 
broad  walk  and  granite  piers,  is  the  bulwark  of  our  lib- 
erties. Why,  it  is  the  safest  part  of  the  metropolis." 

So  we  lived  in  retirement  in  the  focus  of  bustle,  and 
sallied  forth  past  crumbling  Temple  Bar  to  the  dingy 
Inns  of  Court,  Fleet  Street,  and  the  Strand — in  fact,  to 
all  the  historic  spots  of  the  neighborhood.  We  could 
even  penetrate  into  the  interesting  lanes,  alleys,  and  by- 
ways which  Boz  has  fixed  in  popular  memory,  and  May- 
hew  has  photographed  in  his  minute  accounts  of  the  Lon- 
don street-folk  ;  for  at  every  hand  we  were  guarded  and 
guided  by  the  vigilant  policemen,  whose  bearing  and 
actions  protest  against  the  caricatures  of  Punch  and 
the  burlesques  of  Gilbert.  They  have  stores  of  informa- 
tion, which  they  are  glad  to  communicate,  and  are  not 
devoid  of  sentiment,  if  we  might  judge  from  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  force,  who  seemed  utterly  over-awed  by 
his  surroundings  in  the  gardens  of  the  Temple.  Out  of 
the  novelist's  pages  he  seemed  to  have  stepped,  as,  with 
light  tread,  bated  breath,  and  much  bemoaning  of  his 
ignorance  of  history,  he  pointed  out  the  resting-place  of 
Goldsmith  and  thew  alleged  wooing-chair  of  one  of  the 
Henrys. 

We  were  untiring  in  the  exploration  of  unending 
London,  footing  it  through  the  mazes  of  interminable 
thoroughfares,  indulging  in  omnibus  views  of  people 
and  places,  or  directing  our  summons  to  that  swiftest 
of  conveyances,  the  hansom -cab,  with  the  master  of 
the  ribbons  perched  behind  almost  like  a  footman;  and 
penetrating  whither  we  could  be  carried  by  underground 
railway,  or  black  puffing  ferry-boat,  bridge,  tunnel,  sub- 
way, or  viaduct.  "Here  you  are  at  last,"  remarked  one 
of  my  companions,  "in  the  home  of  the  misplaced  'h,'  in 
the  capital  of  the  land  of  ale  and  roast-beef,  where  your 
biscuits  are  muffins,  your  pies  are  tarts,  and  your  can- 
dies are  sweets;  your  popcorn  and  mixed  drinks  but  ac- 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


289 


climatized,  your  steak  belittled  by  the  chop,  your  hotel 
system  barely  introduced,  while  '  tips '  and  chamber- 
maids flourish.  Here  pea-soup  fog  turns  day  into  night, 
children  are  buried  beneath  tall  silk  hats,  lawyers  still 
put  on  wigs  when  they  plead,  and  everybody  on  prom- 
enade wears  a  rose-bud  in  his  button-hole.  Then,  what 
are  these  facts  I  read  gathered  by  the  grim  masters  of 
figures?  Here  are  7,000  miles  of  streets  spread  out 
over  an  area  of  nearly  700  miles;  here  there  is  a  birth 
every  5  minutes,  a  death  every  8  minutes,  and  7  acci- 
dents every  day ;  and  here  there  may  be  found  beer- 
shops  and  gin  palaces  that  would  stretch  over  73  miles. 
Here  are  1,000  ships  and  9,000  sailors  in  port  every  day; 
here  are  9,000  new  houses  built  every  year,  and  238,- 
000,000  letters  delivered;  here  are  117,000  habitual  crim- 
inals on  the  police  register,  and  paupers  enough  to  fill 
a  large  city.  The  food  supply  for  one  year  has  been 
whimsically  calculated  to  require  72  miles  of  oxen,  10 
abreast;  120  miles  of  sheep,  ditto;  7  miles  of  calves, 
ditto ;  9  miles  of  pigs,  ditto ;  50  acres  of  poultry,  close 
together  ;  20  miles  of  hares  and  rabbits,  100  abreast ;  a 
pyramid  of  loaves  of  bread,  600  feet  square  and  thrice 
the  hight  of  St.  Paul's,  whose  summit  is  as  many  feet 
above  the  ground  as  the  year  has  days;  and  1,000  col- 
umns of  hogsheads  of  beer,  each  a  mile  high.  Here 
are  over  4,000,000  of  inhabitants,  including  100,000  for- 
eigners from  every  part  of  the  globe.  Here  they  have 
more  Roman  Catholics  than  Rome,  more  Jews  than 
Palestine,  more  Irish  than  Dublin,  more  Scotchmen 
than  Edinburgh,  and  more  thieves  than — Chicago." 
To  which  might  be  added  that  London  contains  a  read- 
ing-room whose  rotunda  is  rivaled  in  diameter  only  by 
the  Pantheon  at  Rome,  a  library  and  museum  cover- 
ing seven  acres  of  ground,  and  wherein  rest  the  Rosetta 
stone,  the  Elgin  marbles,  and  over  800,000  volumes, 
perhaps  the  largest  collection  of  books  and  manuscripts 
in  the  world,  a  concert  hall  which  holds  nearly  10,000 
persons,  and  not  a  monument  of  Shakspere  !  Enough 
to  notice  in  this  center  of  the  club-houses,  with  its 
promenaders  of  the  Zoo  and  its  mounted  aristocracy 
of  Rotten  Row,  its  crown  jewels  amid  the  glittering 
armor  and  gloomy  cells  of  that  royal  dungeon,  the 
Tower;  its  book-sellers'  focus  in  Paternoster  Row;  its 
memories  of  the  learned  in  Mitre  Court  and  innumer- 
able cul-de-sacs,  by-ways,  and  ancient  buildings  ;  its 
haunts  of  the  litigant  in  Chancery  Lane  and  Doctors' 
Commons;  its  mausoleum  of  the  illustrious  dead  of  the 
nation  ;  its  crystal  palace  where  the  sculpture  and 
architecture  and  natural  productions  of  the  world  are 
illustrated  by  models  and  specimens;  its  botanic  gar- 
dens where  the  foliage  of  the  tropics  flourishes  ;  its  Al- 
bert memorial,  whose  gothic  spire  rises  from  the  midst 
of  huge  marble  figures  symbolic  of  the  countries  of  the 
world,  and  surmounts  bas-relief  carvings  of  the  re- 
nowned men  of  the  centuries.  But  for  columns,  obe- 
lisks, and  fountains,  it  is  necessary  to  see  whirling  Paris 
— say  from  the  triumphal  arch  fde  I'EtoileJ,  whence 
radiate  the  tree -lined  avenues  in  stellar  magnificence. 
Here  you  are  in  the  city  of  cafts  and  boulevards,  of 
elysian  fields  and  summer  gardens,  where  the  illumi- 
nating agency  consists  of  suspended  festoons  of  tiny 
white  lamps,  whose  splendor  suggests  the  Arabian 
Nights.  Yon  is  the  Latin  Quarter  of  the  students,  not 
far  off  the  "  suffering  quarter,"  where  burrow  the  blou- 
sards  of  the  Commune  and  the  barricades.  Here  you 
sip  your  morning  chocolate  at  a  creamery,  or  at  noon 
are  served  by  nun-like  attendants  at  the  broth -houses, 
or  indulge  in  a  siphon  of  raspberry  syrup  or  aerated 


water,  if  you  are  willing  to  startle  the  waiter  by  saying, 
"  No  wine."  You  take  the  successive  trains  of  the  cir- 
cular railways,  which  carry  you  completely  around  this 
embodiment  of  France,  resting  in  a  vast  amphitheater 
inclosed  by  sturdy  hills,  although  the  stationary  pano- 
rama of  Paris  will  reveal  all  this  to  you  with  the  fidelity 
of  a  mirror.  If  you  are  tired  of  the  treasures  of  the  im- 
perial library,  or  the  conservatory  of  arts  and  meas- 
ures, you  may  find  relief  in  the  splendor  of  the  palaces 
at  Versailles.  If  you  have  wandered  long  enough 
through  the  endless  galleries  of  the  Louvre,  you  may 
rest  in  the  purple  light  thrown  into  the  vault,  which  is 
Napoleon's  tomb,  or  gaze  at  the  overcarved  front  of 
Notre  Dame.  Here  are  objects  of  interest  multiplying 
on  every  hand — the  sewers  which  Jean  Valjean  pene- 
.trated,  the  morgue  for  the  morbid,  the  markets,  and  the 
laundries,  and  the  toy-makers  headquarters.  Fiction's 
spell  will  induce  you  to  particularly  note  the  rag-pickers 
and  the  street-gamins,  and  to  peep  into  the  wine-shops 
to  see  if  still,  as  of  yore,  you  can  find  women  in  charge 
knitting  names  for  the  guillotine ;  but  instead  you  will 
observe  the  colored  liquors  and  the  fantastic  bottles 
pictured  in  the  realistic  novels  of  the  day.  Then  you 
may  visit  the  Garden  of  Plants,  where  we  met  a  Cana- 
dian comrade,  fresh  from  the  exploration  of  Italy,  un- 
der guidance  of  the  American  humorists,  who  could  not 
refrain  from  quoting  Bret  Harte's  "Ballad  of  the  Emu," 
as,  turning  from  the  bear-cage,  we  note  the  antics  of 
the  strange  birds  of  far  lands,  and  watch  the  school- 
children out  for  a  holiday. 

But  we  leave  this  home  of  the  butterfly-chasers  to 
take  a  sail  along  the  Rhine,  which  is  muddier,  narrower, 
and  less  romantic  in  natural  surroundings,  than  the 
Hudson,  but  offsets  all  with  castles  and  legends.  There 
our  poetical  guides,  Byron,  Heine,  and  Longfellow,  were 
more  often  consulted  than  Baedeker  or  the  fat-witted 
peasant,  who,  after  a  breakfast  of  black  bread  and 
blacker  coffee,  led  us  to  the  Seven  Mountains  which 
turned  out  to  be  nothing  but  hillocks.  In  these  primi- 
tive villages  the  barber  announces  his  execrable  scrap- 
ing by  the  cymbals  of  the  brass  band,  nailed  to  his 
door;  and  the  national  sausage  is  moistened  with  wine 
from  the  hillsides.  Deeper  in  the  interior,  beer  and 
pretzels  and  pipe -smoke  reign.  But  of  the  closing 
scenes  of  our  trip,  mere  outlines  can  be  here  given.  At 
Heidelberg  we  see  the  most  picturesque  of  sites  for  the 
most  romantic  of  terra-cotta  castles,  the  box-like  build- 
ings of  the  university,  the  wreathed  inn  of  the  duelists, 
and  the  giant  tun  of  the  topers  ;  at  Frankfort  we  note 
Goethe's  statue  and  the  sculptured  Ariadne;  at  Leipsic, 
the  fair  and  the  book-publishing  houses,  the  Napoleonic 
battle-fields,  and  the  shabby-genteel  students  of  Bare- 
foot Hill;  at  Berlin,  the  spiked  hemlet  and  the  column 
cf  victory ;  at  Brussels,  a  miniature  Paris ;  at  home — the 
old  faces.  THANNA. 


HOW  HE  LIVED  SO  LONG. 

For  several  years  past  I  have  had  living  with  me  an 
old  negro,  a  very  industrious  and  faithful  servant,  but 
quite  illiterate  and  exceedingly  superstitious.  Having 
formerly  been  a  sailor  and  navigated  every  sea,  and  a 
miner  in  the  early  days  of  California,  he  has  a  store  of 
information,  some  real  and  some  imaginary,  on  very 
many  subjects.  Fact  and  fiction,  however,  are  so  curi- 
ously mingled,  his  notions  about  things  are  apt  to  be 
so  grotesquely  different  from  the  generally  received 


290 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


views,  his  mispronunciation  so  droll — in  short,  he  comes 
out  so  strong  in  such  unexpected  places — that  he  affords 
a  constant  fund  of  entertainment.  A  few  days  ago  some 
one  had  been  telling  him  the  predictions  of  a  French 
astrologer,  who  has  been  prophesying  the  almost  entire 
destruction  of  animal  life  on  the  earth  by  1887  from 
pestilence  and  famine.  He  recounted  the  story  to  me 
with  much  solemnity,  and  at  the  end  he  said : 

"I  'specks  it's  true,  for  there's  a  great  many  more 
folks  dyin'  now  than  there  used  to  be." 

Although  I  had  not  observed  any  such  marked  in- 
crease in  the  death-rate,  I  ventured  the  remark  that  per- 
haps he  was  right,  as  I  had  noticed  many  dying  this 
year  that  never  died  before.  The  joke  was  stale  enough. 
It  answered  the  purpose,  however,  and  he  replied,  with 
considerable  emphasis : 

"That's  so."  Then  he  asked  me :  "  How  long  is  it 
since  Columbus  discovered  America?" 

"Almost  four  hundred  years." 

"Fo"  hundred  years  !"  said  he,  in  a  half  musing, 
half  questioning  sort  of  manner.  "I  'specks  there's  no 
pusson  livin'  now  that  was  alive  in  them  days." 

I  thought  not. 

"Well,"  he  continued,  "I  knowed  the  fust  man  that 
ever  was  born'd  in  America." 

"Where  was  that?" 

1 '  Oh,  back  in  the  States,  in  New  Hampshire,  when  I 
was  a  boy." 

"Was  he  an  Indian?" 

"Oh,  no  ;  he  was  a  white  man." 

"What  kind  of  looking  man  was  he?" 

"A  little,  old,  withered-up  man." 

"I  should  think  he  would  have  been  very  feeble." 

"Oh,  no.  He  was  mighty  spry — spryer  than  a  good 
many  young  pussons." 

"How  did  he  live?"  ^ 

"Oh,  he  lived  off  the  Gov'ment :  he  had  a  Gov'ment 
office."  H.  W.  T. 


A  MONTH  AGO. 
"OH  sont  les  neiges  d'autan." 

I  was  all  Love's  and  yours  a  month  ago. 
A  month — no  more? — a  little  month  since  this 
Great  joy  put  forth  its  deep  red  bloom  of  bliss? 
The  full-blown  blossom  of  thy  lips  to  kiss 

Had  heaven  been  to  me  a  month  ago. 

Thou  wert  a  sovereign  queen  a  month  ago — 
A  queen  of  boundless  and  unquestioned  power, 
And  I  thy  fettered  slave.     Thy  body's  flower 
Perfumed  the  breath  I  drew.     Ah,  woe's  the  hour 

You  stepped  down  from  your  throne  a  month  ago. 

A  goddess  I  adored  a  month  ago, 
Before  all  things  on  earth  or  e'en  above — 
For  thou  to  me  wert  Hope,  and  Faith,  and  Love. 
Ah,  goddess,  -vrhy  to  earth  from  heaven  move 

And  be  of  clay  like  us  ?    Woe  is  me  ! — woe  !     • 

What  more  !    'Tis  a  long  time — a  month  ago. 
The  goddess  altarless,  without  a  throne 
The  queen,  the  slave  unfettered — shall  I  moan 
Such  change  ?    Ah,  no  !    I  am  no  more  Love's  own, 

But  life  is  sweeter  than  a  month  ago. 

Days  dawn  and  close,  and  loves  will  come  and  go. 
Thou  lov'dst  me  then— I  thee.     Lips  drank  before 
Will  drink  the  bliss  yours  held,  still  hold  in  store, 
For  him— for  me— for  them ;  but  love  no  more 

Will  you  and  I  love  as  a  month  ago. 

MAX  MALT. 


LIGHT  A  SYMBOL  OF   PROGRESS. 

"The  use  that  man  makes  of  light  in  his  material  en- 
vironment," says  the  author  of  Solutions  Societies,  "is 
an  index  to  his  moral  and  spiritual  development."  Few 
people  of  reflective  habits  will  question  the  truth  of  the 
aphorism.  Among  all  the  cities  and  villages  the  world 
over  we  find  that  those  which  are  the  best  lighted  are 
the  most  advanced  in  institutions  of  art  and  learning  ; 
and  that,  in  any  given  city,  ignorance  and  crime  are 
most  prevalent  in  the  dark  or  ill -lighted  streets ;  learn- 
ng  and  moral  order  in  the  best  lighted  portions.  The 
lowest  creatures  of  the  animal  kingdom  live  in  the  dark 
caverns  of  the  earth  or  of  the  sea.  Birds  and  the  higher 
quadrupeds  rejoice  in  the  full  light  of  day.  The  "prim- 
tive  man,"  the  troglodyte,  dwelt  in  dark  caves,  and  the 
lowest  savages  of  the  present  time  shelter  themselves  in 
caves  or  windowless  huts  and  sleep  a  great  deal  of  the 
time.  The  lowest  grades  of  civilized  humanity  live  in 
hovels  without  windows  worthy  of  the  name,  and,  hav- 
ing little  or  no  artificial  light,  go  to  sleep  at  dusk  like 
the  beasts. 

It  has  been  said,  and  by  many  believed,  that  crime  is 
increasing  instead  of  decreasing.  This  cannot  be  true. 
The  amount  of  crime  in  earlier  times  was  unrecorded ; 
only  striking  cases  were  brought  to  light  and  handed 
down  to  posterity.  To-day  the  police  records  of  a  cent- 
ury, at  least,  are  open  to  the  curious  in  all  large  cities 
where  organized  and  trained  police  forces  are  supported 
by  the  commonwealth.  The  daily  press,  the  telegraph, 
the  telephone,  and  steam  locomotion  are  the  servants 
of  the  police  in  ferreting  out  the  haunts  of  crime  and 
bringing  offenders  to  justice.  If  we  seem  to  have  more 
crime  in  these  days  it  is  because  it  cannot  hide  itself  as 
it  could  in  the  ages  significantly  called  "dark." 

A  grand  impulse  has  been  given  to  the  intellectual 
progress  of  the  world  by  the  discovery  and  use  of  illu- 
minating gas  and  by  the  abundance  and  cheapness  of 
kerosene,  now  used  all  over  the  civilized  world.  The 
improved  kerosene  lamp  with  a  tubular  burner,  permit- 
ting a  current  of  air  inside  as  well  as  outside  of  the 
wick,  gives  a  splendid,  unflickering  white  light,  better 
for  the  eyes,  on  the  whole,  than  the  common  gas  light. 
The  current  of  cold  air  through  the  center  of  the  burner 
prevents  the  heating  of  the  lamp  and  the  danger  of  ex- 
plosion. Moreover,  the  little  ring  with  its  safety-valve 
to  screw  on  below  the  burner  costs  but  a  few  cents,  and 
it  renders  explosion  impossible,  even  with  cheap  kero- 
sene. With  kerosene  at  twelve  cents  a  gallon — the 
present  price — and  a  good  lamp  and  burner  for  one  dol- 
lar or  less  that  will  last  for  years,  families  in  very  mod- 
est circumstances  can  afford  good  lights  for  every  room 
of  the  house.  The  great  impulse  that  these  increased 
facilities  for  light  must  give  to  reading  and  study  can  be 
readily  perceived.  This  impulse  is  specially  notable  in 
the  northern  countries  of  Europe — northern  Russia, 
Sweden,  Norway,  Finland,  and  Iceland— where  the 
long,  poorly  lighted  nights  of  former  times  induced  an 
amount  of  sleep  unnecessary  to  health  and  stupefying  to 
the  intellect. 

St.  Petersburg,  Stockholm,  and  Christiana — capitals 
of  Russia,  Sweden,  and  Norway— all  lie  on  or  near  the 
sixtieth  parallel  of  north  latitude,  and  the  longest  night 
there  is  about  twenty-two  hours  long ;  while  in  Iceland 
and  the  northern  parts  of  the  countries  just  named,  the 
sun  disappears  altogether  or  just  peeps  over  the  horizon 
once  in  twenty-four  hours  during  a  great  part  of  winter. 
Yet  these  countries  are  rapidly  advancing  in  education 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


291 


and  general  refinement.  Common  schools,  schools  of 
music,  painting,  carving,  and  other  arts,  flourish  during 
the  long,  well  lighted  winter  nights  that  used  to  be  de- 
voted to  games,  rude  songs,  drinking,  and  story  telling 
around  the  huge  hearths  where  great  logs  of  fir  and  pine 
blazed  and  crackled.  "Ah!  those  good  old  times!" 
sighs  the  gray  old  Swede  or  Norwegian  who  sees  the 
utter  destruction  of  moral  order  and  religion  in  the  in- 
novations of  modern  times. 

In  these  changes,  which  are  for  the  better,  despite 
the  croaking  of  the  dear  old  octogenarians,  no  one 
factor  is  of  so  great  importance  as  the  increase  of  artifi- 
cial light,  rendered  possible  by  the  advent  of  kerosene 
oil.  Great  quantities  of  this  are  being  shipped  to  for- 
eign ports  from  this  country.  A  gentleman  employed 
in  the  clearance  department  of  the  Philadelphia  custom- 
house mentioned  in  a  recent  conversation  that  a  ship 
had  just  left  that  port  freighted  with  ten  thousand  bar- 
rels of  kerosene ;  and  that  millions  upon  millions  of 
gallons  are  yearly  sent  from  that  port  alone  to  Bremen, 
Antwerp,  Hamburg,  Dunkerque,  to  ports  on  the  Gulf 
of  Bothnia,  and  indeed  to  nearly  all  the  ports  of  the 
world. 

There  is  one  curious  fact  touching  the  long  retarded 
moral  and  intellectual  development  of  semi-civilized  peo- 
ples— its  remarkable  rapidity  upon  receiving  the  proper 
stimulus  from  outside ;  for  whenjengendered  within  its 
own  boundaries  this  stimulus  is  slower  in  action,  and 
more  gradual  in  effecting  practical  results.  Witness  the 
case  of  Japan — a  country  set  down  on  our  maps  as 
"half -civilized.  "  This  country  within  a  few  years  has 
established  schools  for  teaching  Western  science ;  sent 
hundreds  of  students  to  Europe  and  America  to  be  ed- 
ucated; built  railroads,  telegraphs;  established  the  news- 
paper, adopted  Western  customs  and  Western  institu- 
tions by  wholesale,  as  it  were,  and  fairly  astonished  the 
civilized  world  by  the  rapidity  of  its  moral  and  intellect- 
ual progress.  But  the  Japanese  were  always  a  light- 
loving  people,  and  the  homes  even  of  the  poorer  classes, 
though  built  in  a  frail  and  bandboxy  style,  at  least  to 
Western  eyes,  were  never  without  openings  to  admit 
the  sun's  rays  and  the  fresh  air  ;  while  the  homes  of  the 
poor,  even  in  civilized  France,  show  a  terrible  condi- 
tion in  this  respect.  Windows  are  taxed  in  France, 
and,  therefore,  the  government  statistics  afford  us  accu- 
rate knowledge  upon  this  point.  In  1870  there  were  in 
that  country  three  hundred  thousand  thatched  cottages 
having  only  a  single  door  and  no  windows — one  or  two 
little  panes  of  glass  hidden  in  the  thickness  of  the  clay 
walls,  and  serving  scarcely  more  than  to  make  the 
'.'darkness  visible"  within,  not  being  counted  by  the 
revenue  laws  ;  one  million  eight  hundred  thousand 
dwellings  with  two  openings,  one  door  and  one  win- 
dow ;  one  million  five  hundred  thousand,  having  three 
openings,  one  door  and  two  windows.  There  are  many 
other  houses  having  a  door  and  three  windows,  or  four 
openings.  Out  of  the  seven  million  five  hundred  thou- 
sand homes  of  France,  more  than  four  million  five  hun- 
dred thousand  have  less  than  five  openings — cabins  and 
thatched  cots  in  which  dwell  nearly  two-thirds  of  the 
entire  population ! 

It  would  be  interesting  to  have  like  statistics  of  Eng- 
land, Germany,  Italy,  Spain,  the  United  States — all 
countries,  indeed;  for  "other  things  being  equal, "  as 
the  phrenologists  say,  it  would  be  found  that  the  small- 
er the  proportion  of  mean  dwellings  with  few  openings, 
the  greater  the  amount  of  light  among  the  people,  liter- 
ally and  figuratively. 


During  the  middle  ages,  the  cabins  of  peasants  and 
serfs  were  without  windows  or  lattices,  as  a  rule  ;  and 
the  feudal  castle  itself,  though  constructed  with  a  cer- 
tain luxury,  and  of  the  strongest  and  most  durable  ma- 
terials, had  no  windows  worthy  of  the  name — only  nar- 
now  openings  through  the  heavy  stone  walls,  the  width 
being  specially  designed  to  prevent  the  passage  of  a 
man's  body ;  for  the  business  of  life,  of  the  nobles  at 
least,  was  besieging  or  defending  strongholds.  The  first 
impression  of  the  tourist,  upon  entering  any  of  the  old 
feudal  castles,  is  that  of  wonder  that  the  people  could 
have  lived  in  such  somber  abodes.  All  the  houses  of 
the  nobles  in  the  middle  ages  had  the  same  miserable 
windows.  Joscelin  de  Brakelonde  says  that  the  Abbot 
of  Bury,  in  the  year  1182,  while  lodging  in  a  grange  or 
manor  house  belonging  to  his  abbey,  came  near  being 
burned  to  death,  because  the  only  door  leading  to  the 
upper  story  where  he  was  was  locked,  and  the  windows 
being  too  narrow  to  permit  his  escape. 

Window-glass  was  first  manufactured  in  England  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  and,  of  course,  up  to  that  time, 
glazed  windows  must  have  been  a  luxury  beyond  the 
reach  of  all  but  the  opulent.  The  window  openings 
were  naturally  made  small  to  facilitate  warmth,  lat- 
tice-work,  or  frames  covered  with  thin  fabric,  permitted 
some  light  to  enter  in  summer  and  mild  weather ;  but 
in  severe  weather,  thicker  and  less  translucent  material 
had  to  be  used.  Even  in  the  homes  of  those  counted 
rich  there  was  but  one  fire — that  on  the  big  hearth  of 
the  principal  room.  The  cooking  was  done  usually  out 
of  doors,  over  braziers  of  live  coals,  or  the  roasting  be- 
fore burning  logs.  In  the  grander  houses  there  was  a 
big  oven;  that  of  feudal  castles  was  frequently  large 
enough  to  roast  an  ox  entire.  The  lights  were  torches 
held  in  the  hands  of  servants  ;  and,  later,  torch -holders 
of  many  designs  were  fixed  to  the  walls.  A  torch -bear- 
er preceded  the  guest  to  his  sleeping -room.  The  com- 
mon people  went  to  bed  at  dusk,  and  the  custom  of 
all  classes  was  to  sleep  entirely  nude  ;  that  is,  without 
gowns  or  night  -shirts  of  any  kind.  The  first  lamp  was 
an  open  dish  of  oil,  or  grease  of  any  kind,  with  a  rag  in 
it  for  a  wick — an  implement  used  to  this  day,  in  the 
backwoods,  when  the  oil,  or  candles,  give  out — at  least, 
such  a  one  has  been  seen  by  the  writer,  in  New  Eng- 
land, among  the  indigent  and  shiftless. 

The  use  of  gas  and  the  manufacture  of  improved 
lamps  are  everywhere  increasing.  Still,  the  people  are 
looking  forward  to  better  and  more  brilliant  light — to 
the  electric  light,  so  much  discussed  recently,  which 
will  render  our  cities  almost  as  light  as  day.  We  are 
always  asking  for  "more  light,  "  like  the  dying  Goethe, 
and  probably  we  shall  not  be  satisfied  until  the  time 
predicted  by  one  of  the  savants  of  France,  when  our 
earth  shall  have  another  moon.  Even  then,  we  shall 
need  artificial  light  at  night,  which  can  hardly  be  the 
case  on  Saturn  with  its  eight  moons  and  its  double  ring 
of  light.  Who  has  not  speculated  on  the  splendors  of 
the  nights  in  that  world  ?  Crescent  moons  in  the  west, 
moons  of  different  phases  above,  and  two  or  more  full 
moons  rolling  up  in  the  eastern  sky  !  At  the  same  time, 
the  rings  "must  appear  like  two  gorgeous  arches  of 
light  spanning  the  whole  heavens  like  a  stupendous 
rainbow.  "  In  equatorial  regions,  these  rings  arch  the 
heavens  from  east  to  west,  and,  on  the  equator,  they 
must  appear  as  one  belt ;  at  the  poles  always  double, 
and  extending  all  around,  and  not  far  above  the  horizon. 

Considering  light  as  the  symbol  of  progress,  and  the 
gauge  of  moral  and  spiritual  development,  what  a  glo- 


292 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


rious  world  must  Saturn  be!  Its  people  should  have 
reached  a  degree  of  development  higher  than  anything 
we  know.  Perhaps  they  have  reached  their  millennium, 
and  are  "like  unto  angels"  in  moral  greatness,  and  in 
beauty  of  form  and  face.  It  is  easy  to  suppose  that 
they  have  terraced  and  cultivated  all  their  mountains, 
reduced  all  wastes  and  swamps  to  lovely  groves  and 
gardens,  and  made  their  whole  earth  "blossom  as  the 
rose. "  MARIE  ROWLAND. 


THE  HEART'S  CHOICE. 

A  Painter  quickly  seized  his  brush, 

And  on  the  canvas  wrought 
The  sweetest  image  of  his  soul — 

His  heart's  most  sacred  thought. 

A  Minstrel  gently  struck  his  lyre, 

And  wondrous  notes  I  heard, 
Which  thrilled, 'and  burned,  and  soothed  by  turns, 

And  all  my  being  stirred. 

A  Singer  sang  a  simple  song — 

An  echo  of  his  soul ; 
It  vibrates  still  through  all  my  life, 

And  woos  me  to  its  goal. 

A  Poet  took  his  pen  and  wrote 

A  line  of  Hope  and  Love. 
It  was  a  heaven -born  thought,  and  breathed 

Of  purest  joys  above. 

A  Man  of  God,  what  time  my  heart 

Was  weighed  with  sorrow  down, 
Spoke  golden  words  of  Faith  and  Trust, 

And  they  became  my  crown. 

I  see  the  Painter's  picture  still, 

I  hear  the  Minstrel's  lyre ; 
The  Singer's  song,  the  Poet's  thought 

Still  glow  with  sacred  fire. 

But  in  my  heart's  most  hallowed  realm 

The  good  man's  words  do  live, 
And  round  my  life  a  perfume  breathe 

That  naught  of  earth  can  give. 

HENRY  ALEXANDER  LAVELY. 


A   BEWILDERED  TOURIST. 

To  the  right  of  the  stage -road  leading  from  Glen- 
brook  to  Carson,  at  a  point  on  the  old  overland  route 
in  the  valley,  are  the  ruins  of  a  mill,  including  two  boil- 
ers, which  lie  side  by  side.  Last  summer  as  the  vera- 
cious Henry  Monk  was  tooling  his  four-in-hand  with  a 
full  load  of  tourists  past  the  old  mill,  a  venerable  Eng- 
lish gentleman,  who  sat  by  his  side  on  the  box,  inquired : 

"Aw,  Mr.  Monk — they  said  your  name  was  Monk,  I 
believe?" 

"Yaas,"  drawled  Hank. 

"And  you  once  drove  Horace  Greeley  ?  " 

"They  say  so,  but  I  never  b'lieved  that  ere  yarn." 

"  What  is  that  object  in  the  valley  that  looks  like  an 
enormous  opera-glass  ?  "  continued  the  inquisitive  tour- 
ist, who  was  a  baron  in  his  own  country,  and  likewise 
here — of  ideas. 

"  Them  is  an  opery-glass,"  replied  the  Munchausen 
of  Tahoe,  "  and  the  finest  glasses  you  ever  see.  They're 


out  of  repair  now  ;  but  I've  known  the  time  when  you 
could  look  through  'em  at  Saints'  Rest  and  see  Elliott 
and  his  Chinamen  piling  lumber  in  the  Carson  yard." 

"  Bless  my  soul !    Is  it  possible  ?  " 

"Yaas,"  resumed  Hank — "steady  there,  Doc;  you 
Frank,  git,"  as  he  touched  up  the  leaders.  "  That  was 
a  powerful  fine  invention  of  Rigby's — same  principle  as 
an  opery-glass  with  a  reef-acting  mirror.  Them  things 
you  saw  were  the  tubes.  They  were  mounted  on  stilts 
just  below  the  Saints'.  Old  Baxter  used  to  keep  the 
hotel,  and  you  bet  the  pilgrim's  progress  was  slow  after 
sampling  his  refreshments." 

"Wonderful,"  said  the  Englishman.  "This  is  a 
great  country.  I  am  rather  inquisitive  about  these 
things,  and  have  a  curiosity  to  see  the  famous  crooked 
railroad." 

"We'll  soon  be  there,"  said  Hank,  "and  I'll  intro- 
duce you  to  a  conductor  who  likes  nothin'  better  than 
answerin'  questions." 

"Aw,  guard,  they  tell  me  this  is  a  very  crooked 
road,"  said  the  tourist  when  he  boarded  the  local  for 
Virginia. 

"Well,  rather,"  was  the  reply.  "There  are  several 
places  between  here  and  Virginia  where  a  passenger 
can  hand  a  cigar  to  the  engineer." 

"By  Jove,  that's  astonishing.  I  must  watch  out  for 
those  curves,  you  know." 

He  watched,  and,  though  snaked  around  pretty  well 
between  the  tunnel  and  Scales,  failed  to  swing  such  a 
tremendous  circle. 

"  Look  here,"  said  he  to  Follett  when  they  arrived  at 
Virginia,  "where  was  the  place  where  a  passenger  in 
the  rear  car  could  hand  a  cigar  to  the  engineer?" 

"Why,  one  point  was  Mound  House.  There  is  a 
good  saloon  there,  and  there  is  plenty  of  time  for  any 
passenger  to  get  a  cigar  and  hand  it  to  the  engineer." 

Even  an  Englishman  can  appreciate  a  joke  sometimes. 
He  treated  all  hands  and  acknowledged  the  sell. 


LOVE,   AS  THE  NIGHTINGALE. 
From  the  German  of  Geibel. 

Love,  as  the  nightingale, 

In  a  rose-bush  sat  and  sang, 
His  clear  entrancing  strains 

Through  the  quiet  greeenwood  rang. 

The  brooklet  ceased  its  flashing, 
Hushed  was  the  torrent's  moan, 

The  red  deer  in  the  thicket 
Listened  to  that  sweet  tone. 

And,  while  he  sang,  like  incense 
Rose  the  fragrance  of  the  flowers, 

And  a  sympathetic  murmur 

Was  heard,  mid  forest  bowers. 

And  clearer  yet  and  purer 

I  saw  the  sunbeams  grow, 
And  wood,  and  rock,  and  mountain 

Golden  and  rosy  glow. 

Upon  the  path  I  lingered 

And  longed  to  hear  again — 
In  my  heart  there  echoes  only 

A  sad  and  sweet  refrain. 

ALICE  GRAY  COWAN. 


THE  CALIFORNIAN 


A   WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  III.— APRIL,  1881.— No.  16. 


THE    ENDOWMENT   OF   SCIENTIFIC   RESEARCH. 


What  claim  for  assistance  has  science  upon 
the  people  and  upon  the  State? 

The  question  is  plain  and  simple  enough,  but 
the  more  it  is  turned  the  more  far-reaching 
does  it  prove.  The  idea  which  it  embodies  is 
so  intimately  interwoven  with  the  prosperity  of 
nations,  and  the  happiness,  intellectuality,  and 
morality  of  the  peoples,  that  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree  science  fairly  enters  into  the  every -day 
business  of  one  and  all.  As  the  air  we  breathe, 
it  surrounds  and  supports  us ;  without  its  vital- 
izing power  we  should  soon  suffer  intellectual 
death. 

It  bears  directly  upon  the  prosperity  of  States, 
because  it  elucidates  the  natural  laws  which  un- 
derlie all  great  engineering  projects,  as  well  as 
the  principles  of  sociology.  It  comes  to  the  aid 
of  commerce,  because  it  develops  the  model 
of  the  ship,  the  prevalence  of  winds  and  the 
strength  and  direction  of  currents,  and  marks 
out  the  pathways  over  the  oceans.  For  the  man- 
ufacturer it  establishes  the  economy  of  motive 
power,  and  the  best  means  of  using  raw  prod- 
ucts and  utilizing  waste  materials.  It  informs 
the  agriculturist  of  the  qualities  of  his  soil  and 
its  fitness  for  special  productions,  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  plants,  and  the  necessity  for  partic- 
ular fertilizers :  and  to  the  miner  it  certifies  the 
character  and  richness  of  the  ores  in  his  ledge. 
It  advises  the  governments  in  grave  subjects 
of  sanitary  engineering,  of  prospective  discov- 
ery, of  serious  adulterations  in  imports,  in  foods, 
in  manufactures.  It  gives  you  to-day  the  vari- 
ation of  the  compass,  and  assures  the  highest 
tribunals  what  it  was  at  any  given  date.  It 


demonstrates  the  millionth  part  of  an  inch  as  a 
tangible  quantity,  and  it  gives  the  metes  and 
bounds  of  states  and  empires.  It  predicts  the 
coming  storm,  and  millions  of  dollars  and  thou- 
sands of  lives,  ready  for  sea,  promptly  obey  its 
warning.  It  yearly  fixes  its  stamp  upon  the 
coinage  of  the  country,  and  makes  it  redeem- 
able for  its  face  the  world  over ;  it  indorses  the 
authenticity  of  the  standards  of  weight,  volume, 
and  length,  and  its  verdict  is  universally  ac- 
cepted. Yet  these  are  a  mere  glimpse  of  its 
manifold  ramifications  as  a  nerve  system  in  the 
body  politic. 

There  are  those  who  have  eyes  that  see  not, 
but  to  those  who  honestly  use  them  the  influ- 
ence of  scientific  investigation  is  paramount  in 
every  department  of  the  governments,  in  every 
avenue  of  human  industry,  in  the  moral  growth 
of  the  race. 

To  the  mechanic,  the  manufacturer,  the  mer- 
chant, the  engineer,  the  miner,  the  agriculturist 
— as  individuals  seeking  for  worldly  prosperity 
— science  comes  in  a  thousand  subtile  shapes 
now  so  wide-spread  and  permeating  every  busi- 
ness that  its  direct  bearing  is  too  frequently 
overlooked  or  quietly  ignored.  And  in  fact 
many  specialists  do  not  themselves  have  the 
breadth  of  view  which  is  necessary  to  measure 
and  appreciate  the  vast  and  diversified  amount 
of  scientific  knowledge  which  has  advanced  all 
modern  improvement. 

To  thoroughly  comprehend  its  importance,  it 
is  essentially  necessary  to  trace  the  growth  of 
the  Great  Ideas,  which,  springing  from  some 
germ  of  thought  centuries  ago,  have  been  slow- 


Vol.  III.— 19.      [Copyright  by  THK  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors.] 


294 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ly  and  laboriously  evolved,  and  have  in  recent 
days  been  applied  to  all  industries  and  investi- 
gations. These  will  recur  to  you  in  the  history 
of  the  laws  of  motion,  of  thermotics,  optics, 
biology,  astronomy,  physics,  etc.,  with  their 
epochs  of  activity  and  unusual  progress  as 
marked  by  the  brainwork  of  some  exceptional 
man  or  men. 

If  we  examine  the  subject  carefully  and  can- 
didly we  shall  be  satisfied  that  the  broad  claim 
for  assistance  to  scientific  research  rests  upon 
the  general  law  of  evolution.  This  law  we  rec- 
ognize as  pervading  all  nature,  whether  in  the 
illimitable  field  of  the  cosmos,  or  in  the  nar- 
rower field  of  our  own  world,  or  our  own  coun- 
try. It  has  placed  in  our  hands  a  formula  of 
investigation  as  invaluable  as  the  calculus  to  the 
mathematician  and  to  the  engineer ;  when  more 
fully  understood,  it  will  give  us  prevision,  as 
observation  and  theory  have  done  to  the  as- 
tronomer. Many  thinkers  assert  that  "more 
liberal  assistance  in  the  prosecution  of  original 
scientific  research  is  one  of  the  recognized  wants 
of  our  times;"  but  I  fancy  they  have  generally 
failed  to  see  that  there  is  any  law  at  the  basis 
of  the  intimate  relation  between  discovery  and 
its  practical  results,  and  its  means  of  support. 
Yet  in  the  history  of  research  we  find  that  ma- 
terial assistance,  in  some  shape  or  other,  has 
been,  through  all  time,  afforded  to  original 
workers — not  in  a  systematic  manner,  and  per- 
haps largely  prompted  at  irregular  periods  by 
some  unusual  discovery,  or  even  actuated  by 
merely  mercenary  or  vain  motives.  There  have 
been  epochs  in  human  history  marked  by  out- 
bursts of  intellectual  activity — periods  appear- 
ing as  great  waves  of  rapidly  advancing  devel- 
opment. As  for  example  the  high  speculative 
fever  of  the  twelfth  century,  say  from  1150  to 
1250,  out  of  which  arose  the  universities;  again, 
the  Italian  renaissance  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
marked  by  wonderful  progress  in  geographical 
discovery,  and  whose  influence  in  that  respect 
has  never  been  adequately  displayed. 

In  all  of  these,  and  in  the  smaller  waves  of 
intellectual  movement,  either  rich  individuals 
or  powerful  lords  gave  of  their  wealth  and  ex- 
tended the  influence  of  their  position  to  assist 
and  patronize  those  engaged  in  original  thought 
and  discovery.  Many  examples  in  the  history 
of  the  last  few  centuries  will  present  themselves; 
and  we  may  even  go  farther  back  and  call  to 
mind  where  classical  poets  and  writers  and 
philosophers  were  aided  and  befriended  by 
wealthy,  powerful,  and  liberal  patrons.  Every 
school -boy  will  remember  the  assistance  re- 
ceived by  Columbus  in  his  fitting  out  the  expe- 
dition for  the  discovery  of  a  new  route  to  the 
Indies,  but  to  us  this  was  something  beyond 


ordinary  aid  as  measured  by  the  consequences. 
It  was  an  endowment  for  original  discovery 
which  has  led  to  an  advancing  and  accumu- 
lating wave  of  free  action,  and  free  thought, 
and  mental  activity  far  above  the  general  sur- 
face of  human  intellectuality.  Isabella's  name 
should  be  emblazoned  for  her  assistance  to 
original  and  daring  discovery  that  yet  survives, 
that  is  still  progressive,  and  still  aggressive. 
We  who  are  in  the  midst  of  this  restless  activ- 
ity and  investigation — as  he  who  is  borne  by  a 
great  tideway — can  hardly  measure  the  wonder- 
ful impetus  which  this  discovery  has  given  to 
human  actions,  or  the  great  hight  which  its 
onrushing  crest  reaches  above  the  dead-level 
condition  of  Europe  but  a  few  centuries  since. 
All  that  we  know  of  the  intellectual  brightness 
of  Egypt,  and  Greece,  and  Rome  occurred  with- 
in limited  localities,  and  among  few  in  num- 
bers; now  we  have  the  movement  pervading 
nearly  the  whole  earth. 

I  think  that  due  weight  has  never  been  ap- 
portioned to  the  influence  exerted  by  the  sud- 
den opening  of  nearly  half  the  world's  area  as 
the  fresh  field  for  human  activity.  The  horizon 
of  the  first -comers  to  the  New  World  was  un- 
limited, yet  for  a  long  time  they  were,  with  oth- 
er drawbacks,  hampered  by  old  traditions,  and 
confined  to  the  old  ruts  of  early  education.  But 
as  the  pioneer  and  the  hunter,  the  restless  discov- 
erer and  the  keen  seeker  for  wealth,  stepped 
across  the  narrow  boundaries  which  restrained 
them,  they  became  self-reliant,  self- sustained, 
and  finally  aggressive.  They  cleared  the  path- 
way of  empire ;  their  successors  expanded  their 
views,  braced  themselves  for  fresh  efforts,  shook 
off  more  of  the  bindings  of  prejudice,  and  com- 
menced their  march  of  discovery  over  the  con- 
tinent. From  this  ceaseless  activity,  from  the 
necessity  of  rapidly  traversing  great  distances, 
from  the  influence  of  easily  acquired  wealth 
and  power,  from  freer  thought  and  clearer  vis- 
ion, from  persistent  and  vitalized  research,  arose 
in  great  measure  the  marvelous  discoveries  of 
the  last  five  or  six  decades.  This  has  reacted 
upon  civilization ;  learning  and  commerce  now 
have  footholds  throughout  the  earth ;  and  in  the 
countries  of  modern  enlightenment  the  liberal- 
ity and  vitality  of  thought  has  found  expression 
in  a  higher  culture  that  seeks  to  coordinate 
the  laws  governing  this  movement  for  the  bet- 
terment of  the  race  itself. 

This  broad  and  active  mentality  pervades  in 
greater  or  less  intensity  all  ranks  and  condi- 
tions of  society,  and  necessarily  reaches  the 
halls  of  legislation.  So  that  to-day  we  have 
the  general  government  fostering  research,  even 
though  it  be  done  in  an  irregular  and  frequent- 
ly unsystematic  manner,  and  although  it  may 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  SCIENTIFIC  RESEARCH. 


be  sometimes  done  wholly  from  the  cold-blood- 
ed utilitarian  view  of  the  matter. 

The  exploring  expedition  of  1838-45  under- 
taken by  the  United  States  was  a  great  step 
forward  in  the  assistance  of  original  discovery, 
especially  as  it  recognized  branches  of  science 
usually  considered  as  having  no  application 
whatever  to  the  useful  arts.  The  earlier  ex- 
plorations to  and  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains 
were  sporadic,  but  latterly  the  lines  of  research 
have  grown  more  consistent  and  more  persist- 
ent, embrace  most  of  the  cognate  sciences,  and 
will  eventuate  in  systematic  methods  and  rec- 
ognized support.  Quite  naturally  the  principal 
course  of  discovery  has  been  over  the  vast  un- 
known areas  of  our  own  country,  but  the  as- 
tronomical expedition  to  Chile,  for  the  ;deter- 
mination  of  the  sun's  parallax  by  observations 
upon  Mars  at  and  near  his  opposition,  was  as- 
sistance for  a  purely  scientific  object.  So,  also, 
were  the  total  solar  eclipse  expeditions  of  1869, 
1870,  1878;  but  the  most  systematic,  best  or- 
organized,  and  most  liberally  supported  of  all 
the  scientific  expeditions,  was  that  for  the  ob- 
servation of  the  transit  of  Venus  in  1874.  Then, 
for  mere  commercial  purposes,  we  have  Perry's 
expedition  to  Japan,  the  Rodgers  expedition  to 
the  North  Pacific,  and  the  deep  sea  soundings 
in  the  Atlantic  and  across  the  Pacific,  and  yet 
even  these  furnished  their  quota  of  scientific 
knowledge.  For  a  more  immediately  practical 
object,  we  have  the  various  explorations  made 
throughout  Central  America  for  the  purposes  of 
a  ship  canal  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pa- 
cific. 

In  all  these  expeditions,  and  in  a  hundred 
others,  the  assistance,  or  support,  which  the 
general  government  has  given  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  endowment  for  original  research, 
although,  as  we  have  already  said,  in  a  gener- 
ally unsystematic  manner,  and  not  distinctly 
recognized  as  such.  Nevertheless,  it  has  its 
influence  for  good,  and  year  by  year  it  fixes  it- 
self upon  the  thought  and  legislation  of  the 
country  as  a  necessary  and  remunerative  ex- 
penditure. 

In  certain  special  lines  this  assistance  is  more 
pronounced,  as  for  example,  in  the  yearly  ap- 
propriations to  the  West  Point  Military  Acad- 
emy, and  to  the  Naval  School  at  Annapolis. 
Here  the  assistance  may  be  said  to  be  com- 
plete, for  the  cadets  not  only  receive  their  edu- 
cation at  the  expense  of  the  nation,  but  they 
receive  therefrom  a  liberal  support  during  their 
term  of  study,  and  adequate  salaries  afterward 
to  continue  their  studies  and  services  in  pre- 
scribed lines  of  duty.  The  nations  of  Europe 
continue  the  same  policy;  but  we  may  hope  that 
the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  other  lines  of 


study,  and  other  investigations  more  germane 
to  the  broad  course  of  intellectual  and  moral 
development,  shall  receive  similar  support,  and 
even  heartier  acknowledgment.  In  a  faint  way 
Great  Britain,  France,  and  Germany  appreciate 
the  position,  by  educating  boys  of  exceptional 
merit  from  the  national  schools.  France,  at 
first  doubtful,  has  at  length  liberally  endowed 
scientific  research  into  the  devastation  caused 
by  the  phylloxera,  and  only  scientific  investiga- 
tion, study,  and  methods  have  produced  certain 
and  tangible  results.  Empirical  remedies  have 
been  useless,  as  well  as  ridiculous. 

Among  the  acts  of  men  and  women  who  are 
largely  blessed  with  riches,  and  at  the  same 
time  with  intellectual  culture,  we  see  chroni- 
cled the  noble  bequests  which  they  make  to 
colleges  and  seats  of  learning,  as  embodying 
their  practical  views  of  endowing  research.  Now 
and  then  we  know  that  such  men  as  Smithson 
arise  to  leave  for  all  time  legacies  for  the  diffu- 
sion of  knowledge  among  men.  And  the  influ- 
ence which  such  an  institution  as  the  Smith- 
sonian exerts  upon  original  research,  and  its 
practical  application  to  every -day  life,  is  al- 
most incalculable.  In  earlier  days  the  great 
universities  of  England  were  richly  endowed 
that  men  might  pursue  their  studies  undis- 
turbed. Within  our  own  ken  we  know  that  the 
true  sentiment  of  endowment — or  any  other 
name  by  which  you  choose  to  specify  it — is 
pervading  the  atmosphere  wherever  wealth  and 
intellectuality  perceive  the  influence  which  orig- 
inal research  has  upon  the  prosperity  of  the 
State  and  the  morality  of  the  people.  In  the 
older  parts  of  our  own  country,  as  in  the  older 
countries,  where  restless  activity  has  gravitated 
to  more  thoughtful  quiet,  yet  sustained  force, 
we  note  the  humanizing  influence  of  the  higher 
and  broader  education  in  the  large  endowments 
to  colleges  and  universities;  and  we  ourselves 
are  the  beneficiaries  of  this  appreciation  of 
original  research  when  we  were  almost  crushed 
by  restricted  means. 

Many  more  instances  exist  than  come  to  our 
knowledge,  where  munificence  has  modestly 
aided  original  investigators  without  permitting 
its  name  to  be  heralded,  as,  recently,  in  Stock- 
well's  masterly  and  thorough  investigations  of 
the  lunar  theory,  and  Michelson's  practical  and 
successful  experiments  upon  the  velocity  of 
light,  now  held  by  some  to  be  the  best  means 
of  determining  the  solar  parallax.  I  think  that 
whosoever  aids  research  in  this  way  should  re- 
ceive full  and  ample  credit  therefor,  because 
they  not  only  merit  public  recognition  for  such 
praiseworthy  liberality  on  its  own  account,  but 
also  because  their  examples  may  stimulate  and 
sway  the  hesitating  to  imitate  them.  To  my 


296 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


mind  it  is  as  creditable  for  the  benefactor  to  re- 
ceive such  honor  and  recognition  as  it  is  for  the 
soldier  who  has  defended  his  country  with  his 
sword ;  and  certainly  it  indicates  that  amid  the 
all  exciting  pursuit  of  wealth  a  higher  sense 
has  been  developed  in  the  endower. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  heretofore,  even  in 
enlightened  countries,  the  higher  education  was 
merely  casual,  or  traditional  among  a  few,  or 
formal,  as  in  medicine  and  among  the  priest- 
hood. But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
area  of  enlightenment  was  far  from  extensive, 
that  the  whole  population  was  comparatively 
small,  and  that  the  mass  of  the  people  was  in 
absolute  subjection,  soul  and  body.  The  last 
statement  we  can  only  realize  in  its  full  force 
when  we  correct  our  historical  judgment  by 
personally  viewing  the  ruined  castles  of  Eu- 
rope, where  warlike  and  robber  barons  held 
almost  as  beasts  of  the  field  the  toilers  of  the 
soil,  and  when  we  see  the  mighty  cathedrals, 
even  yet  unfinished,  which  merely  succeeded 
these  feudal  strongholds,  and  whose  priesthood 
kept  the  people  in  mental  servitude.  This 
higher  education,  having,  however,  slight  claims 
as  such  in  comparison  with  the  learning  of  to- 
day, naturally  existed  among  the  powerful  and 
privileged  classes,  although  the  leaven  of  evo- 
lution was  doing  its  work  even  here  as  well  as 
among  the  more  ignorant  masses,  from  whose 
ranks  occasionally  arose  men  of  deep  thought 
and  original  investigation.  When  these  pow- 
erful classes  were  disrupted — and  in  part  dis- 
persed among  the  people,  in  part  developed  as 
the  leaders  and  rulers  of  the  great  nations  of 
Europe  that  were  emerging  from  a  hundred 
smaller  nationalities — and  when  the  disrup- 
tion of  the  power  of  the  priesthood  gave  an 
opportunity  for  individual  and  independent 
thought,  the  educational  forces  acquired  am- 
pler scope,  and  reacted  impulsively  as  a  com- 
pressed spring  relieved. 

The  change  is  almost  magical,  and,  notwith- 
standing it  appears  to  have  occurred  only  from 
such  means  as  have  been  mentioned,  yet  it  is, 
in  large  measure,  due  to  the  bfoad,  free  field  of 
the  American  continent  so  suddenly  and  unex- 
pectedly opened  to  human  civilization  and  hu- 
man enlightenment.  It  is  a  phase  of  evolu- 
tion under  peculiarly  favorable  circumstances. 
When  once  investigators  had  struck  the  right 
trail  in  any  branch  of  knowledge,  their  discov- 
eries seemed  to  react  in  every  direction,  to  ag- 
gregate new  relations — almost  to  evolve  the  very 
law  of  progress;  and,  through  the  persistent 
efforts  of  the  larger  thinkers  and  experiment- 
ers guided  thereby,  the  methods  of  research 
have  been  wholly  changed.  The  chemist  has 
supplanted  the  visionary  alchemist;  the  as- 


tronomer has  confounded  the  astrologer;  the 
physicist  has  penetrated  the  arcana  of  matter 
and  force;  the  biologist  and  the  geologist,  the  ar- 
chaeologist and  the  palaeontologist,  have  arisen 
as  from  an  unknown  world.  The  newer  methods 
stimulate  youth  and  mature  age  to  the  prolong- 
ed effort  now  absolutely  essential  to  enable  one 
to  grapple  with  any  special  branch  of  knowl- 
edge. Wherever  they  have  been  even  imper- 
fectly formulated,  the  mind  appears  to  assimi- 
late all  that  has  been  prepared,  and  from  its 
yet  undemonstrated  mode  of  action  to  suggest, 
create,  and  exhibit  new  conditions  and  fresh 
phases  of  knowledge.  It  does  more  than  re- 
peat— it  adds  to  the  experience  of  yesterday. 
With  this  approach  to  harmony  between  the 
means  and  the  end,  scientific  teaching  has  de- 
veloped a  higher  moral  standard — refuses  to 
recognize  the  false,  and  seeks  only  the  true.  It 
builds  the  superstructure  upon  a  stable  founda- 
tion, and  all  parts  of  the  fabric  must  be  coher- 
ent and  symmetrical.  One  faulty  process,  or 
one  indeterminate  condition,  would  weaken  and 
eventually  destroy  all  above  it.  It  yearns  to 
discover  the  truth  just  as  the  financier  seeks  to 
increase  his  wealth,  as  the  soldier  struggles  for 
glory,  and  one  is  impelled  by  his  mental  con- 
stitution to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  law  of 
his  being,  another  (by  his  slightly  different  brain 
organization)  to  seek  happiness  in  physical  lux- 
ury or  in  the  exhibition  of  power. 

It  is  within  our  own  experience  that  there 
has  been  a  remarkable  evolution  of  special  apt- 
itude in  the  student  and  investigator,  and  per- 
haps most  notedly — or,  rather,  I  should  say, 
most  popularly — in  the  departments  of  chem- 
istry and  physics,  and  in  education  itself. 

The  great  advances  made  in  manufacturing 
processes  have  been  effected  by  the  newer  meth- 
ods of  chemistry ;  and  now  all  large  establish- 
ments avowedly  employ  the  services  of  orig- 
inal investigators — in  fact,  it  is,  perhaps,  the 
one  branch  of  scientific  research  that  literally 
"pays;"  and  wealth  thus  endows,  under  an- 
other name,  those  who  are  searching  for  the 
yet  unknown.  In  physics,  many  large  manu- 
facturing establishments  employ  specialists; 
notably  in  the  undeveloped  fields  of  electric- 
ity, magnetism,  and  the  associated  branches. 
Writers  have  shown  in  detail  the  great  improve- 
ments and  money  value  which  these  services 
have  produced  in  the  material  wealth  of  the 
countries,  and  which  have  their  reactive  in- 
fluence upon  the  happiness  and  increased  in- 
telligence of  the  people. 

To  strain  a  point  in  the  restricted  meaning 
of  the  word,  we  might  almost  assert  that  even 
in  the  manufacture  of  products  which  inaugu- 
rate new  industries  and  new  processes,  all  gov- 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  SCIENTIFIC  RESEARCH. 


297 


«rnments  have  more  or  less  endowed  their  dis- 
coverers in  various  ways ;  principally  by  grant- 
ing patent  rights  to  original  inventors,  and  by 
protection  against  similar  productions  imported 
from  other  countries— in  special  cases  by  grant- 
ing annuities  or  by  bestowing  titles  of  honor. 
Of  course,  it  must  be  understood  that  the  in- 
ventor and  the  scientific  investigator  may  be 
widely  separated.  There  is,  for  example,  a 
very  great  difference,  somewhat  difficult  to  for- 
mulate, between  the  investigators  who  deduced 
the  principles  and  laws  of  electricity  and  mag- 
netism, and  the  inventors  who  have  devised 
and  almost  perfected  the  working  telegraph. 
The  two  faculties  may  be  combined  in  one  in- 
dividual, but  very  rarely  so.  The  inventor  usu- 
ally receives  a  great  part  of  the  popular  glory 
and  most  of  the  material  benefits ;  the  original 
investigator  may  possibly  be  recognized  after 
death.  The  financiers,  who,  with  another  fac- 
ulty remarkably  developed,  win  millions  upon 
millions  in  their  manipulation  of  these  indus- 
trial and  commercial  necessities,  forget  that 
either  investigator  or  inventor  ever  lived. 

In  education  you  have  watched  the  rapid  im- 
provements being  evolved  from  older  methods, 
although  so  much  remains  to  be  accomplished. 
For  there  must  be  specialties  in  education  as 
in  all  other  methodical  work  and  investigation ; 
and  when  we  thoroughly  understand  that  spe- 
cial aptitude  is  absolutely  essential  in  order  to 
obtain  the  largest  results,  we  shall  then  recog- 
nize the  economy  and  the  higher  law  for  its  in- 
troduction in  selecting  instructors  for  schools 
and  seats  of  learning.  It  will  banish  the  mere- 
ly routine  teacher,  and  discard  textbooks,  ex- 
cept as  bases  for  oral  demonstration  and  pri- 
vate study;  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  afford  to 
the  learner  not  only  knowledge  ready  at  his 
fingers'  ends  for  practical  application  in  a  thou- 
sand various  ways,  but,  more  important  still, 
it  will  have  imparted — to  the  capable — meth- 
od to  investigate  the  newer  and  cognate  prob- 
lems. 

The  wide-spread  and  broader  range  of  educa- 
tion has  led  to  the  exhibition  of  power  among 
the  people ;  and  the  states  (in  the  old  world  as 
well  as  the  new),  speaking  for  them,  have  liber- 
ally endowed  the  educational  system  by  direct 
taxation  for  that  purpose.  This  development 
of  popular  power,  and  the  value  and  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  principle,  is  directly  proven 
in  England  by  the  recent  changes  effected  in 
the  endowments  of  the  colleges  of  the  great 
universities.  For  nearly  two  hundred  years  the 
colleges  had  used  the  largely  multiplied  endow- 
ments, left  by  patrons,  without  interference, 
check,  or  question  from  the  outside.  With  the 
clear  understanding  of  some  of  the  laws  of  mo- 


tion that  marked  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century,,and  the  deep  studies  made  in  mathe- 
matical subjects,  with  the  newer  sciences  emerg- 
ing and  expanding  as  the  years  progressed, 
there  was  awakened  the  demand  for  a  change 
in  the  objects  of  study  in  the  universities.  The 
fresher  mental  life  had  traversed  richer  and 
broader  fields  than  traditional  theology  and  the 
classics,  and  called  for  a  change  of  direction  of 
part  of  the  endowments  to  aid  the  more  active 
and  more  human  sciences.  The  advocates  of 
change  rationally  argued  that  those  who  had 
been  so  far  seeing  and  generous  as  to  endow 
study  in  the  only  learned  professions  then  rec- 
ognized, would  certainly,  with  the  clearer  light 
of  to-day,  bestow  of  their  bounty  to  science. 
They  admitted  that  there  is  a  deep  object  in 
the  science  of  philology,  because  we  here  learn 
to  trace  backward,  upon  a  given  pathway,  the 
history  of  the  human  race  and  the  evolution  of 
language  and  thought ;  but  they  asserted  that 
the  study  of  two  dead  languages  could  not  take 
us  far  in  the  research,  and  therefore  the  spe- 
cial objects  of  the  endowers  should  themselves 
be  reconsidered  from  a  much  higher  standpoint. 
Moreover,  as  the  endowments  specifically  made 
for  study  in  theology  were  for  the  bettering  of 
the  moral  condition  of  the  race,  science  could 
assert  a  particularly  strong  claim  for  sharing 
the  endowments,  because  it  is  Truth  personified, 
and  cannot  advance  one  step  without  improv- 
ing the  moral  character  of  all  who  come  under 
its  influence.  After  much  agitation  of  the  ques- 
tion, the  representatives  of  the  people,  in  par- 
liament, made  their  first  attack  on  the  wealthy 
and  powerful  colleges  in  1854.  It  ended  in  a 
drawn  battle,  but  the  prospective  result  was 
easily  predicted.  The  advocates  of  the  newer 
and  .higher  education  were  unceasingly  in  ac- 
tion; their  arguments  pervaded  the  very  at- 
mosphere, and  twenty  years  later  the  attack 
was  renewed  and  the  battle  won.  To-day,  at 
Oxford,  the  colleges  may  elect  persons  distin- 
guished for  literary  or  scientific  work  to  Fel- 
lowships, tenable  for  a  term  of  years,  during 
which  the  Fellows  shall  devote  themselves  to 
definite  and  specified  research;  and  at  Cam- 
bridge the  School  of  Mechanism  and  Engi- 
neering already  compels  enlargement,  which 
has  been  liberally  granted.  Watching  the  ed- 
ucational movement  in  our  own  country,  we 
hardly  appreciate  the  influence  of  such  a  change 
in  the  conservative  thought  of  England ;  but  I 
hold  that  it  is  a  noted  illustration  of  the  evolu- 
tionary law  upon  the  subject  of  endowment  of 
research,  as  well  as  an  acknowledgment  of  the 
righteousness  of  the  demand  of  science  therefor. 
It  is  within  the  memory  of  some  of  us  when  the 
public  school  system  of  the  United  States  be- 


298 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


gan  to  grow  through  the  country.  In  some 
States  it  was  solely  intended  for  the  children  of 
those  who  could  not  afford  to  pay  for  their 
schooling;  but  it  soon  broke  this  bondage  of 
servility,  and  then  rapidly  spread  as  a  vast  sheet 
of  water  over  a  parched  region.  The  first  as- 
sistance was  grudgingly  given  by  the  State; 
to-day  we  are  lavish  in  our  support.  Call  it  by 
any  name  you  please,  it  is  proof  positive  of  the 
progress  of  the  idea  of  endowment. 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  the  schools,  the 
colleges,  and  the  universities  are  not  the  proper 
fields  for  original  research.  The  teacher  and 
the  professor  have  their  time  fully  occupied 
with  prescribed  and  legitimate  duties.  So  with 
the  man  of  business,  the  active  practitioner, 
the  lawyer,  the  engineer ;  their  time  is,  or  should 
be,  wholly  consumed  in  their  professions.  The 
exceptions  notedly  mark  the  rule.  To  the  ar- 
dent specialists,  governed  by  one  pervading 
idea  and  burning  to  discover  new  relations  in 
science,  belongs  the  duty  of  adding  to  the  stock 
of  knowledge — an  empty  glory  too  frequently, 
as  we  learn  now  and  then,  of  the  battle  for  life 
which  they  make  while  pursuing  their  investi- 
gations. 

These  are  the  men  and  women  who  found 
our  academies  and  our  philosophical  societies ; 
and  these  are  the  institutions  which,  before 
.all  others,  demand  the  support  of  the  State. 
Unfortunately,  the  drift  of  popular  opinion,  or 
rather  of  popular  education,  has  been  adverse 
to  them,  for  to  be  considered  a  scientific  inves- 
tigator was  to  be  railed  at  as  one  who  pottered 
among  fish,  beetles,  weeds,  or  stones ;  or  dab- 
bled in  electrical  experiments ;  or  burrowed  for 
the  roots  of  the  dead  languages.  And  yet  from 
these  discoverers  the  fresh  knowledge  in  every 
branch  of  learning  is  utilized  by  the  teacher  and 
pirated  by  the  manufacturer.  The  commercial 
instinct  may  temporarily  and  selfishly  assist,  by 
paid  employment,  the  chemist  or  the  physicist, 
but  the  broader  proposition  that  all  scientific 
investigation  should  be  systematically  aided 
has  not  yet  been  clearly  understood  in  our  edu- 
cation. In  the  New  World,  the  growth  and 
increase  of  wealth  have  been  so  immediate, 
and  so  astonishingly  great,  that  the  need  of 
scientific  research  and  the  advantages  of  scien- 
tific methods  are  wholly  unknown  to  the  great 
majority  of  the  people.  By  personal  labor  in 
the  wide  fields  open  to  discovery  we  must  exert 
our  influence  in  developing  the  idea  of  the  jus- 
tice of  systematic  assistance,  and  cease  not 
working  until  it  compels  recognition.  I  believe 
the  time  is  rapidly  approaching  when  the  States 
themselves  will  directly  and  systematically  aid 
and  assist  original  investigation;  but,  pending 
that  millennium,  we  must  wrestle  with  the  gen- 


erous and  the  wealthy — the  poor  we  have  with 
us  always. 

There  are  other  relations  which  scientific  re- 
search bears  to  the  state  and  the  individual, 
and  I  shall  make  but  brief  reference  thereto, 
because  they  have  already  been  incidentally 
mentioned.  We  have  long  traded  upon  the  dic- 
tum that  "knowledge  is  power ;"  suppose  we  put 
it  in  a  modern  and  utilitarian  dress,  and  assert 
that  Science  is  Wealth.  This  brings  the  subject 
directly  within  the  purview  of  political  econo- 
my ;  but  unfortunately  the  relation  of  scientific 
research  to  the  production  of  wealth  has  never 
been  adequately  expounded.  We  have  been 
told  that  science  has  no  proper  marketable 
value,  except  in  its  direct  application  to  the 
useful  arts,  because  it  cannot  be  interchanged 
or  bodily  transferred  from  one  person  to  an- 
other; and,  unlike  every  other  commodity,  it 
cannot  be  consumed.  It  is  not  easy  to  contra- 
vene the  fallacies  which  envelope  the  question 
when  viewed  solely  and  wholly  from  the  pres- 
ent popular  standard  of  what  the  wealth  of  a 
nation  really  consists;  but  we  know  of  our 
own  consciousness  that  there  must  be  another 
and  truer  standard  than  that  gathered  from  the 
"mighty  dollar."  But  from  even  that  restrict- 
ed outlook  we  know  that  many  great  enterprises 
fail  as  direct  commercial  ventures,  yet  add  to 
the  general  wealth  of  the  community  and  the 
state.  You  will  recollect  that  in  my  papers 
upon  the  irrigation  of  Europe  and  India,  I 
fairly  established  the  proposition  that,  as  com- 
mercial undertakings,  the  great  irrigation  canal 
projects  had  all  been  financial  failures,  and 
some  of  them  disastrously  so;  but  when  the 
state  undertook  to  carry  them  out,  and  even 
inaugurated  others,  the  benefits  to  the  popula- 
tions and  to  the  states  were  as  certain  as  a 
demonstration  in  geometry.  The  burden  had 
been  too  heavy  for  the  few  to  carry ;  it  was  not 
felt  when  divided  among  millions.  So  in  the 
domain  of  science  every  iota  of  knowledge 
delved  from  the  unknown  and  the  inert,  is  a 
positive  addition  to  the  wealth  and  happiness 
of  the  people  and  the  state.  When  once  pro- 
duced it  is  indestructible ;  and  if  indestructible, 
it  certainly  adds  to  the  wealth  of  the  nation,  as 
additional  gold  in  the  vaults  of  a  bank.  It 
continually  increases ;  and  susceptibility  of  ac- 
cumulation is  essential  to  the  idea  of  wealth. 
But  the  burden  of  originating  this  increased 
prosperity  should  not  be  borne  wholly  by  the 
original  discoverers :  the  whole  people,  through 
their  agent,  the  state,  should  share  the  cost. 
This  seems  to  me  so  self-evident  that  it  is  need- 
less to  expand  the  proposition. 

The  very  nature  of  scientific  research  de- 
mands continuous  study  in  any  given  line  of 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  SCIENTIFIC  RESEARCH. 


299 


thought,  and  an  absence  of  disturbing  influ- 
ences. Just  as  the  rich  become  so  by  special 
adaptability  and  persistent  attention  to  accu- 
mulation, so  the  student  becomes  rich  in  knowl- 
edge by  his  unremitting  investigation.  Special 
aptitude  in  examination  follows  the  good  me- 
chanical dictum — make  a  machine  do  its  own 
specific  work  perfectly ;  universal  machines  are 
inherently  faulty.  The  specialist  cannot  serve 
two  masters  with  his  whole  heart ;  he  obeys  the 
law  of  his  mental  organization  in  worshiping 
one  only — so  he  must  suffer  physical  starvation 
unless  a  helping  hand  stretches  forth  to  his  as- 
sistance. 

When  the  investigator  makes  a  discovery  in 
science  of  great  value  in  its  application  to  any 
industry,  or  as  giving  birth  to  a  new  industry, 
his  very  ability  as  a  discoverer  incapacitates 
him,  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  for 
the  mercantile  part  of  the  transaction;  while 
the  business  man,  from  his  ability  and  capacity 
as  such,  seizes  the  discovery  and  develops  its 
money  value — for  himself.  He  (the  business 
man)  may  not  yet  have  reached  the  hight  of 
cultivation  which  would  prompt  him  to  pay  a 
fair  price  for  the  discovery,  and  yet  he  may 
have  such  purely  aesthetic  tastes  that  he  will 
spend  large,  almost  fabulous  sums,  for  a  beau- 
tiful painting,  or  a  noble  piece  of  sculpture. 
These  have  a  direct  marketable  value.  The 
painter,  from  his  years  of  study  and  labor,  has 
brought  into  existence  a  historical  picture ;  the 
sculptor  has  obeyed  the  law  of  special  aptitude, 
and  brought  into  life  a  statue  that  may  speak 
of  our  civilization  a  thousand  years  hence. 
Fortunately  for  them,  and  happily,  too,  for  our 
enlightenment,  their  work  had  a  special  de- 
mand. This,  too,  follows  a  general  law,  and 
we  may  but  rejoice  in  its  fulfillment.  Let  us 
continue  our  labors — the  demand  for  knowl- 
edge will  be  universal;  and  when  the  princi- 
ples of  political  economy  become  themselves 
evolved  from  the  crudities  which  now  envelope 
them,  our  claim  for  assistance  will  be  surely 
acknowledged. 

While  some  of  the  writers  on  political  econ- 
omy deny  the  claim  of  science  to  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  because  it  does  not  possess 
certain  qualifications  which  are  empirically  re- 
quired, there  are  those  that  apparently  appre- 
ciate the  full  value  of  scientific  knowledge. 
Mill,  in  his  Principles  of  Political  Economy, 
says  :  "In  a  national  or  universal  point  of  view, 
the  labor  of  the  savant  or  speculative  thinker  is 
as  much  a  part  of  production  in  the  very  nar- 
rowest sense  as  that  of  the  inventor  of  a  prac- 
tical art,  many  such  inventions  having  been  the 
direct  consequences  of  theoretic  discoveries, 
and  every  extension  of  knowledge  of  the  power 


of  nature  being  fruitful  of  application  to  the 
purposes  of  outward  life  [reference  to  telegraph, 
etc.]  No  limit  can  be  set  to  the  importance, 
even  in  a  purely  productive  and  material  point 
of  view  of  mere  thought.  Inasmuch,  however, 
as  these  material  fruits,  though  the  result,  are 
seldom  the  direct  purpose  of  the  pursuits  of 
savants,  nor  is  their  remuneration  in  general 
derived  from  the  increased  production  which 
they  cause  incidentally,  and  mostly  after  a  long 
interval,  by  their  discoveries,  this  ultimate  in- 
fluence does  not,  for  most  of  the  purposes  of 
political  economy,  require  to  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration ;  and  speculative  thinkers  are  gen- 
erally classed  as  the  producers  only  of  the 
books  or  other  usable  or  saleable  articles  which 
directly  emanate  from  them.  But  when  (as  in 
political  economy  one  should  always  be  pre- 
pared to  do)  we  shift  our  point  of  view,  and 
consider  not  individual  acts  and  the  motives  by 
which  they  are  determined,  but  national  and 
universal  results,  intellectual  speculation  must 
be  looked  upon  as  a  most  influential  part  of  the 
productive  labor  of  society,  and  the  portion  of 
its  resources  employed  in  carrying  on  and  re- 
munerating such  labor  as  a  highly  productive 
part  of  its  expenditure." 

All  existing  legislation  concedes,  in  a  quali- 
fied, restricted,  and  erroneous  manner,  a  prop- 
erty right  in  the  author,  but  no  law  has  ever 
approached  the  consideration  of  the  property 
right  of  Oersted,  Ampere,  Steinheil,  Henry,  in 
their  deduction  of  the  scientific  principles  upon 
which  the  telegraph  and  its  congeners  of  to- 
day are  based.  And  as  it  cannot  be  contro- 
verted, for  an  instant,  that,  even  from  a  purely 
selfish  and  utilitarian  view,  original  scientific 
research  through  a  thousand  varied  channels 
adds  to  the  material  wealth  of  a  nation,  it  must 
be  possible  and  practicable  to  devise  some 
means  by  which  those  honestly  engaged  in  dis- 
covery shall  be  assisted. 

Another,  and  perhaps  the  very  highest,  claim 
which  original  research  has  for  endowment,  is 
in  the  moral  dignity  which  it  necessarily  im- 
parts to  the  race.  It  is  itself  the  very  Embodi- 
ment of  Truth.  Its  search  and  methods  of  in- 
vestigation, and  its  checks  upon  every  step  in 
the  processes  employed,  demonstrate  the  intrin- 
sic value  of  Evidence.  The  doubtful  and  the 
untrue  can  never  enter  into  its  discussions — 
they  are  emphatically  unknown  quantities.  It 
forgets  the  individual  and  applies  its  examina- 
tions to  the  universal;  it  builds  upon  certain- 
ties; it  sweeps  away  the  unproven.  The  highest 
authority  is  never  accepted,  save  on  probation. 
Tradition  must  bear  direct  critical  and  unpreju- 
diced examination ;  the  good,  because  it  is  true, 
will  be  received;  the  false  and  the  irrational 


300 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


will  disappear.  These  are  in  part  the  tests  by 
which  the  individual  measures  and  compares 
his  practice  in  life.  He  has  a  special  horizon 
of  his  own,  and  his  view  is  restricted.  He  rare- 
ly extends  his  method  into  other  fields.  But 
when  he  steps  upon  the  vantage  ground  of 
scientific  investigation,  he  rises  from  the  par- 
ticular to  the  general,  from  the  finite  to  the 
infinite.  He  sees  the  beauty  in  the  law  of 
method,  the  thoroughness  of  exhaustive  exam- 
ination, the  truthfulness  and  certainty  of  evi- 
dence, and  the  symmetry  and  harmony  of  the 
conclusions.  He  submits  to  its  judgments  as 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  Truth.  He  molds  his 
moral  life  upon  the  laws  of  nature  which  that 
tribunal  expounds  and  announces.  Henceforth, 
whatever  is  offered  for  his  acceptance  and  be- 
lief must  stand  the  crucial  trial  of  scientific  in- 
vestigation. A  people  made  familiar  with  the 
processes  and  object  of  science,  the  fullness  and 
oneness  of  its  evidence,  and  the  absoluteness  of 
the  truths  it  demonstrates,  must  be  richer  in  the 
vital  element  of  human  happiness;  they  must 
be  higher  in  the  scale  of  human  development. 
Reflect  for  a  moment  what  would  happen  to  the 
wealth,  the  intellectuality,  and  the  morality  of  a 
people,  of  the  race,  should  all  future  research 
by  scientific  methods  be  absolutely  cut  off. 

In  conclusion,  there  seems  no  valid  reason 
to  doubt  the  soundness  of  the  proposition  which 


I  made  at  the  outset — that  endowment  for  origi- 
nal scientific  research  follows  the  general  law 
of  evolution,  for  it  has  existed  throughout  the 
historic  period ;  has  grown  with  the  enlighten- 
ment which  it  developed;  has  been  markedly 
active  at  the  epochs  of  mental  activity;  is  fos- 
tered in  various  ways  by  the  governments  of  all 
enlightened  countries;  is  aided  by  the  broad- 
minded  and  far-seeing;  is  commercially  ac- 
knowledged to-day  in  special  lines;  is  an  ac- 
knowledged factor  in  the  material  wealth  of  a 
nation ;  establishes  the  highest  moral  standard 
of  a  people;  and  is  an  absolute  necessity  for 
future  systematic  discovery  and  progress. 

The  assistance  rendered  by  the  endowments 
of  the  few  is  too  uncertain,  insufficient,  and  irra- 
tional. Moreover,  it  is  an  unequal  tax  upon  the 
generous;  but  science  is  compelled  to  accept 
and  beg  for  it,  because,  in  our  newer  State  es- 
pecially, the  public  has  not  yet  been  educated 
to  realize  the  pervading  importance  of  its  un- 
selfish work.  From  my  standpoint  there  ap- 
pears but  one  proper  and  rational  source  of  en- 
dowment, and  that  is  the  State  itself.  For 
there  certainly  is  a  justness  and  a  fitness  in  the 
State  disbursing  a  percentage  of  its  income  for 
continued  labor  in  original  investigation  and 
discovery  that  adds  so  surely  to  the  material 
wealth  and  moral  grandeur  of  its  people. 

GEORGE  DAVIDSON.' 


GEORGE    ELIOT   AS   A   RELIGIOUS   TEACHER. 


The  great  woman  who  lately  died  will  no 
doubt  be  remembered  in  the  next  century 
chiefly  as  a  literary  artist,  who  knew  mankind 
well,  and  held  an  almost  perfect  mirror  up  to 
nature  whenever  she  chose  to  portray  charac- 
ter. And  in  the  minds  of  many  it  is  an  unim- 
portant task  to  try  to  piece  together  from  the 
writings  of  a  great  artist  anything  like  a  system 
of  general  philosophy,  or  even  of  ethics.  Why 
should  the  words  of  those  who  spoke  so  well  the 
rich  flexible  language  of  the  living  human  soul 
be  translated  into  the  poor  dry  speech  of  meta- 
physics? If  George  Eliot,  some  one  may  say, 
ever  lost  sight  of  her  vocation  as  artist,  and,  as 
in  Daniel  Deronda,  filled  pages  with  tedious 
disquisitions,  why  should  we  try  to  follow  her 
in  her  wanderings?  Her  best  teachings  are 
her  great  creations;  and  from  a  truly  poetic 
product  you  may  get  inspiration,  but  you  must 
not  try  to  deduce  a  formula. 

Of  course,  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  a  work  of  art  is  always  far  more  than  a 


theory,  nor  ignore  the  truth  that  artists  do  in- 
justice to  their  art  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  mix 
abstractions  with  their  concrete  creations.  But 
we  must  also  remember  that  not  all  art  is  alike 
remote  from  the  world  of  thought.  The  man 
who  writes  an  abstract  account  of  the  ethical 
teachings  conveyed  'in  the  works  of  some  mu- 
sical composer  may  indeed  keep  within  the 
bounds  of  reason,  but  he  is  at  least  in  great 
danger  of  talking  nonsense.  But  if  one  writes 
a  commentary  on  the  doctrines  of  the  Book  of 
Job,  the  fact  that  his  subject  is  a  work  of  art, 
and  not  merely  a  treatise,  does  not  render  his 
undertaking  less  appropriate.  Poetry  is  not  al- 
ways, but  yet  very  often,  aptly  to  be  named 
molten  thought,  thought  freed  from  the  chill 
of  the  mountain  summits,  its  crystalline  perfec- 
tion of  logical  form  dissolved,  no  longer  ice, 
but  gathered  into  tumultuous  streams  that 
plunge  down  in  musical  song  to  the  green 
fields  and  wide  deserts  of  the  world  where  men 
live,  far  below.  He  who  follows  a  stream- 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AS  A   RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 


301 


course  upward  to  the  glaciers  whence  it  has 
sprung  leaves  indeed  behind  him  many  of  the 
fairest  scenes  of  the  lowlands,  but  he  has  the 
satisfaction  of  assisting  at  the  birth  of  a  river. 
Mists  that  have  risen  from  the  whole  of  that 
great  world  of  the  plains — from  far  beyond,  too, 
in  the  infinite  ocean  itself — have  come  up  here 
to  be  frozen  that  they  might,  by  melting  again, 
produce  this  stream.  To  suppose  that  poetry 
is  altogether  thought  is  to  see  dead  forms  where 
one  ought  to  see  life ;  but  to  refuse  altogether 
to  look  for  the  sources  in  thought  whence  the 
stream  often  comes,  is  to  commit  the  mistake 
of  the  king  of  Burmah,  and  to  deny  that  water 
can  ever  have  been  frozen. 

George  Eliot,  furthermore,  was  by  nature 
quite  as  much  a  reflective  as  a  poetical  genius, 
and  by  training  much  less  a  poetical  than  a  re- 
flective writer.  We  should  have  supposed  be- 
forehand that  she  would  never  have  produced 
other  than  "novels  with  a  purpose."  Artist  as 
she  actually  was,  theory  was  constantly  in  her 
mind.  The  thought  of  her  time  governed  her. 
She  had  occasional  glimpses  above  and  beyond 
it ;  but  if  she  was  Shaksperian  in  the  portrayal 
of  character,  she  was  unlike  Shakspere  in  her 
regard  for  formulas,  and  no  future  century  will 
ever  be  in  doubt  whether  she  was  Protestant  or 
Catholic.  In  fine,  she  certainly  wished  to  teach 
men,  and  it  is  therefore  our  right  and  duty  to 
attempt  the  not  very  arduous  task  of  formu- 
lating and  of  tracing  to  their  chief  sources  the 
teachings  that  she  often  but  thinly  veiled  be- 
neath the  garment  of  fiction.  In  doing  this  we 
shall  not  study  the  loftiest  or  the  most  interest- 
ing aspect  of  her  work,  but  our  task  will  not  be 
void  of  significance. 

Let  us  first  sum  up  what  little  we  as  yet 
know  about  George  Eliot's  growth  as  a  thinker. 
We  know  that  she  was  an  unwearied  student  of 
science,  of  literature,  of  history,  and  of  philos- 
ophy. We  know  that  she  sympathized  in  great 
measure  with  what  is  called  modern  positivism. 
We  know  also,  however,  that  she  was  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  thoughts  and  beliefs  of  a 
class  of  English  men  and  women  who  know 
and  care  nothing  about  modern  thought,  but 
who  have  ideals  that  she  never  mentions  with 
contempt,  and  that  she  in  fact  never  wholly 
outgrew.  All  these  elements  went  together  to 
the  making  up  of  her  doctrine  of  life.  When 
her  biography  is  written,  we  shall  know  more 
of  their  separate  growth  and  of  the  fashion  of 
their  union.  But  even  now,  from  the  facts  that 
are  known,  we  may  conjecture  much,  and  the 
temptation  to  conjecture  about  so  beloved  a 
teacher  is  irresistible. 

Marian  Evans,  according  to  the  account  of 
her  early  life  published  in  the  Pall  Mall  Ga- 


zette, grew  up  in  an  orthodox  family,  and  in 
the  Christian  faith.  With  years  she  developed 
remarkable  powers  of  reflection,  and  the  first 
result  of  reflection  was  to  make  her  a  very 
strict  Calvinist.  The  discomfort  of  this  faith 
urged  her  to  further  thought.  We  do  not  yet 
know  just  what  influences  made  her  a  free- 
thinker. At  all  events,  she  never  rested  in  the 
early  crude  delight  of  negation,  but  sought  in 
all  directions  for  more  light.  In  1850  we  find 
her  in  London,  already  in  the  possession,  so 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  tells  us,  of  the  wide  learn- 
ing and  many-sided  thought  that  have  since 
made  her  famous.  She  was  now  not  far  from 
thirty  years  of  age.  She  had  as  yet  made  no 
attempts,  at  least  in  public,  to  write  novels. 
She  was  simply  a  quiet  and  interesting  literary 
woman,  with  extraordinary  talents  and  acquire- 
ments. Acting  under  advice,  she  translated 
Strauss's  Leben  Jesu,  and  Feuerbach's  Essence 
of  Christianity.  She  became  the  sub-editor  of 
the  Westminster  Review,  and  buried  a  great 
deal  of  work  in  its  brief  quarterly  notices  of 
contemporary  literature.  Between  1854  and 
1860  she  also  published  several  essays  in  the 
same  review,  whereof  the  titles  have  been  giv- 
en in  a  late  number  of  the  London  Academy. 
These  essays  all  show  rather  the  conscientious 
reviewer  than  the  ambitious  genius.  Nothing 
but  the  style  reminds  you  of  Silas  Marner  or 
of  Romola.  One  becomes  almost  angry  in 
reading  work  that  must  have  cost  such  a  mind 
so  much  labor  and  that  yet  must  of  necessity 
have  but  a  transient  interest.  Why  wait  here, 
one  says,  in  this  den  of  book -worms,  O  great 
teacher?  Time  is  flying,  the  day  is  far  spent, 
and  the  words  thou  art  to  speak  to  all  the  world 
are  yet  but  voices  in  thy  dreams.  To  thy  task, 
before  old  age  comes  !  Alas !  they  were  well 
spent  and  yet  ill  spent  years.  Happy  were  the 
world  if  full  of  such  workers.  But  yet  unhap- 
py the  world. in  which  such  spirits  are  confined, 
even  for  only  half  their  lives,  to  such  tasks. 
George  Eliot  was  nearly  forty  years  of  age 
when  her  first  tales  were  published. 

But  to  understand  the  origin  and  nature  of  her 
later  religious  views,  we  must  analyze  as  well 
as  we  are  able  the  influences  that  during  these 
years  must  have  been  forming  our  author's 
creed.  When  a  strong  faith  has  left  a  man,  he 
must  do  one  of  two  things :  either  he  must  fly 
to  the  opposite  extreme  of  pure  and  scornful 
negation,  or  he  must  try  to  find  some  way  in 
which  to  save  for  himself  what  was  essential  to 
the  spirit  of  the  old  faith,  while  he  rejects  its 
accidental  features,  such  as  its  ritual,  its  claim 
to  give  power  over  physical  forces,  its  promises 
of  material  good  fortune,  or  its  asserted  mira- 
cles. Now,  George  Eliot  belonged  too  much 


302 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


to  the  nineteenth  century  to  fall  under  the 
power  of  the  purely  negative  tendency.  She 
might  be  an  unbeliever,  but  she  never  could  be 
a  scoffer ;  and  so  the  search  after  the  essential 
in  the  religious  consciousness  became  for  her  a 
practical  necessity.  This  search  it  was,  with- 
out doubt,  that  led  her  to  the  translation  of 
Strauss  and  of  Feuerbach.  To  understand  the 
effort  that  runs  all  through  George  Eliot's  life- 
work — the  effort  to  find  and  to  portray  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  as  it  exists  in  men's  minds 
independently  of  the  belief  in  supernatural  agen- 
cies— we  must  glance  at  the  views  of  these  Ger- 
mans whose  thought  she  first  transferred  to 
English  soil.  They  expounded  theories  that 
she  afterward  sought  to  test  by  an  appeal  to 
living  human  experience. 

Let  us  speak  first  of  Strauss  and  of  the  posi- 
tive element  in  religion  that  this  thinker,  in  the 
early  Hegelian  period  when  the  first  Leben 
Jesu  was  written,  tried  to  separate  from  the 
supernatural  elements  of  tradition.  To  under- 
stand this  matter  we  must  look  back  a  little. 
German  philosophy,  ever  since  Lessing's  tract 
on  the  Ersriehung  des  Menschengeschlechts,  had 
been  trying  to  discover  the  ultimate  significance 
of  religion,  natural  and  revealed.  Lessing  him- 
self, in  the  mentioned  tractate,  saw  in  revelation 
the  process  by  which  God  taught  the  race  from 
its  infancy  up.  The  doctrines  of  a  revelation  are, 
therefore,  for  him  absolute  truth,  but  not  all  the 
truth,  and  by  the  ignorant  race,  to  whom  they 
are  at  first  revealed,  they  are  only  half  under- 
stood, and  therefore  often  misunderstood.  But 
the  purpose  of  the  revelation  is  not  to  reveal 
what  is  beyond  all  human  insight.  The  pur- 
pose of  revelation,  like  the  purpose  of  individ- 
ual education,  is  to  hasten  and  make  definite  a 
process  of  development  that  could  conceivably 
have  gone  on  without  external  aid.  "Revela- 
tion gives  the  race  nothing  that  human  rea- 
son, left  to  itself,  would  not  attain ;  but  it  gave 
and  gives  to  the  race  the  weightiest  of  these 
things  earlier  than  they  would  otherwise  be  at- 
tained" {ErziehungdesMenschengeschlechtS)  §  4). 
Therefore,  on  the  other  hand,  nothing  in  reve- 
lation is  to  be  free  from  the  investigations  of 
reason ;  and  the  work  of  reason  is  to  trans- 
late into  the  language  of  thought  the  figurative 
or  obscure  doctrines  of  revelation.  In  every 
such  doctrine  reason  is  to  see  not  a  stumbling- 
block,  but  a  guide ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  not 
an  incomprehensible  mystery,  but  an  intelligi- 
ble truth,  kindly  revealed  beforehand  that  we 
may  know  whither  to  direct  our  thought.  That 
revelation  is  not  all  truth,  or  that  it  is  dark  truth, 
proves  nothing  against  it,  since  all  teachers 
give  the  pupil  only  what  helps  him  to  work  for 
himself,  and  do  not  explain  to  him  everything. 


On  the  other  hand,  the  darkest  truth  is  revealed 
that  it  may  in  time  become  clear  to  reason. 
Revelation  is  given  to  the  end  that  man  may 
outgrow  it.  There  will  come  "the  time  of  com- 
pletion when  man,  however  persuaded  he  is  of 
a  better  future,  will  have  no  need  to  borrow  of 
that  future  motives  for  his  actions,  since  he 
will  do  good  because  it  is  good,  not  because 
arbitrary  rewards  are  offered;  for  these  rewards 
were  but  intended  in  the  foretime  to  fix  and 
strengthen  his  wavering  sight  to  know  the  inner 
and  better  rewards  of  goodness.  It  will  come, 
the  time  of  the  new  Everlasting  Gospel,  prom- 
ised even  in  the  New  Testament  books"  (Erzie- 
hung  des  Menschengeschlechts,  §§  85,  86). 

These  thoughts  of  Lessing  worked  as  a  fer- 
ment in  the  great  philosophic  movement  of 
subsequent  years.  Lessing's  own  point  of  view 
was  forsaken  for  others,  but  his  spirit  domi- 
nates nearly  all  later  German  thought  on  this 
subject.  Religion,  according  to  one  view,  is  the 
veiled  utterance,  the  imperfect  and  poetical 
grasping  of  truth  that  can  be  and  must  be  other- 
wise expressed  and  justified.  Religion  is,  there- 
fore, the  necessary  path  to  the  higher  insight 
that  is  to  come  through  philosophy.  Or,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  Schleiermacher  has  it,  re- 
ligion is  an  expression  of  a  feeling ;  viz.,  of  the 
sense  of  dependence,  of  finite  incompleteness, 
of  need  of  God.  This  sense,  as  pure  feeling, 
is  the  essential  element  of  religion,  and  the 
work  of  philosophical  reflection  is  to  find  this 
essential  element  in  all  faith,  to  purify  the  re- 
ligious sense  from  all  disturbing  doubt,  and  to 
prepare  the  soul  to  stand  alone  with  God  in 
the  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  the  satisfaction 
of  its  greatest  want.  These  two  views — the  one 
for  which  religion  is  largely  theoretical  in  con- 
tent, the  expression  of  an  intuitive,  uncriticised, 
impure,  or  else  poetically  veiled  knowledge ;  the 
other  for  which  religion  is  the  effort  to  express 
an  emotion,  a  felt  need  of  support,  or  of  some- 
thing to  worship — both  contend  for  the  suprem- 
acy in  modern  German  religious  philosophy. 
Both  have  in  common,  first,  the  effort  to  tran- 
scend the  uncritical  faith  of  unlearned  piety, 
and,  secondly,  the  discontent  with  the  nega- 
tions of  pure  rationalism.  The  two  differ  often 
very  widely  in  the  consequences  that  are  drawn 
from  them. 

Now  Strauss,  in  the  Leben  Jesu,  after  apply- 
ing criticism  to  the  gospel  histories,  found  their 
content  to  be  throughout,  as  he  held,  mythical. 
His  work  completed,  the  question  arose,  What 
must  we  do  with  the  faith  whose  support  seems 
thus  taken  away?  The  answer  was,  Religion 
has  not  deserted  us ;  only  the  perishable  form 
in  which  our  thought  clothed  itself  has  dis- 
solved. The  hidden  inner  sense  is  revealed 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AS  A   RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 


3°3 


more  clearly  when  we  see  the  mythical  element 
in  the  popular  faith.  To  determine  this  inner 
sense  of  Christianity,  Strauss  had  recourse  to 
the  doctrines  of  his  master,  Hegel,  which  he  in- 
terpreted— not  as  Hegel  would  have  done,  but 
as  at  least  one  great  tendency  of  the  Hegelian 
philosophy  suggested.  From  the  point  of  view 
that  Strauss  adopts,*  the  religious  conscious- 
ness appears  as  largely  theoretic;  viz.,  as  in  the 
intuitive  knowledge  of  the  infinite,  the  recogni- 
tion in  nature,  in  mind,  in  history,  of  the  pres- 
ence of  an  all  pervading,  all  governing  reason, 
of  an  absolute  spirit  in  whom  are  all  things. 
Not  as  a  philosophic  theory,  but  as  a  purely 
immediate  sense  or  belief  the  religious  soul 
makes  and  accepts  this  doctrine.  But  if  this  is 
the  essence  of  religious  faith,  it  is  not  the  whole 
of  faith.  Unphilosophic  as  the  religious  con- 
sciousness is,  it  necessarily  embodies  its  faith 
in  a  mythical  form.  The  direct  consciousness 
of  the  infinite  is  expressed  in  the  documents  of 
the  faith  as  if  it  were  a  particular  historical 
revelation,  occurring  at  some  point  of  time. 
The  presence  of  the  infinite  reason  in  the  uni- 
verse is  conceived  as  the  action  of  a  law-giver, 
working  after  the  fashion  of  men.  The  prog- 
ress of  the  race,  or  the  growth  of  the  religious 
consciousness  in  the  individual,  is  related  as  if 
it  were  a  series  of  miracles.  The  eternal,  in 
short,  is  conceived  under  the  form  of  the  tran- 
sient, the  infinite  is  mythically  made  to  appear 
finite.  So,  again,  in  particular  with  the  Chris- 
tian doctrines.  The  knowledge  that  the  human 
spirit  is  in  essence  one  with  the  divine  spirit, 
that  man  is  to  rise  to  the  actual  sense  of  his 
unity  with  God,  is  veiled  under  the  myth  of  a 
historical  incarnation.  The  understanding  of 
the. myth  is  the  revealing  of  its  essential  con- 
tent. We  do  not,  reasons  Strauss,  lose  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  infinite,  nor  of  our  essential  unity 
with  it,  when  we  learn  the  mythical  nature  of 
the  religious  doctrine.  This  mythical  form  was 
an  absolute  necessity  to  train  men  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth.  We  must  reject  the  shell 
of  the  dogma,  but  the  kernel  of  the  dogma  is 
our  eternal  treasure. 

It  is  certain  that  George  Eliot  must  have 
been  influenced  by  these  views.  She  looked 
everywhere  for  teaching,  and  we  may  be  sure 
that  she  did  not  translate  Strauss  merely  for 
the  sake  of  disturbing  her  countrymen's  faith. 
Of  course,  she  did  not  accept  the  Hegelian 
metaphysic ;  but  just  as  little  is  she  in  her  nov- 
els willing  to  express  perfect  satisfaction  with 
the  flat  negations  of  many  of  the  English  posi- 
tivists.  Nearer,  in  some  respects,  to  her  actual 

*  V.  Pfleiderer,  Religionsphilosophie,  p.  238.  Cf.  the  ac- 
count in  Hausrath,  D.  F.  Strauss  u.  d.  Theologie  Seiner  Zeit, 
vol.  i,  the  chapter  on  the  first  Leben  Jesu. 


views,  because  less  given  to  transcendent  spec- 
ulation than  Strauss,  may,  perhaps,  have  been 
Feuerbach,  whose  Wesen  des  Christenthums 
she  also  translated.  Feuerbach  has,  at  present, 
little  more  than  historical  interest.  What  he 
has  concluded  as  a  consequence  of  his  early 
Hegelianism  others  have  said  or  thought  inde- 
pendently of  him.  The  following  account  de- 
pends upon  that  in  Pfleiderer's  late  work,  Re- 
ligionsphilosophie  auf  Geschichtlicher  Grund- 
lage.  Feuerbach's  view  of  religion  is  intensely 
skeptical,  and  yet  not  wholly  unappreciative. 
He  sees  in  religion  the  expression  of  a  sub- 
jective want,  which  assumes  the  deceptive  guise 
of  knowledge.  See  through  this  disguise,  and 
religion  has  no  truth;  and  yet  the  disguise  is 
not  the  one  essential  thing  in  religion,  for  the 
want  creates  the  disguise.  Man  in  religion 
treats  his  own  being  as  if  it  were  another.  Dis- 
satisfied with  a  world  that  oppresses  him,  he 
creates  in  his  despair  a  supernatural  all-power- 
ful being,  enthroned  over  the  world,  and  wor- 
ships this  ideal  Self  as  the  perfect  one.  The  ideal 
has  no  truth,  but  the  indefinite  variety  of  its 
forms,  the  strength  of  the  want  that  creates  it, 
make  its  power  over  life  prodigious.  In  the 
thought  "there  is  a  God,  an  image  of  Me,  a 
perfect,  an  unlimited  Self,  outside  of  the  sphere 
of  change  and  misery"  religion  begins.  But 
this  thought  is  not  enough.  God  must  be  put 
in  relation  to  the  world.  Only  as  God  the  Son, 
as  God  appealing  to  the  human  heart,  knowing 
our  frailties,  sympathizing  with  our  needs,  hear- 
ing our  prayers,  does  the  infinite  ideal  become 
truly  divine.  And  it  is  but  an  objectifying  of 
the  unhappy  world-weary  consciousness  of  dis- 
appointed humanity  to  conceive  this  God  as 
himself  suffering  and  overcoming  suffering,  as 
the  risen  and  exalted  Self,  that  has  overcome 
the  world. 

But  in  all  this  Feuerbach  finds  only  a  stu- 
pendous phantasm.  He  will  admit  nothing  in 
religion  as  religion  that  can  endure  criticism. 
Yet  see  what  after  all  will  remain  to  one  who 
accepts  Feuerbach's  premises,  but  regards  this 
purely  fantastic  exercise  of  the  religious  spirit 
as  after  all  intensely  and  eternally  significant. 
Such  a  one  will  say,  Men  did  indeed  make  to 
themselves  ideals  of  God,  and  these  ideals  were 
phantasms ;  but  the  spirit  of  religion  that  pro- 
duced the  phantasm  is  still  ours.  We  reject 
the  product  that  made  the  world  seem  so  sub- 
lime and  significant,  but  we  work  as  if  we  were 
in  a  world  where  such  things  were  true.  We 
know  ourselves  to  be  but  strangers,  who  find 
in  the  whole  real  universe  nothing  that  quite 
satisfies  these  our  highest  longings;  but  then, 
we  can  and  will  try  to  make  the  world  as  much 
as  possible  the  realization  of  our  longings.  Ours 


3°4 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


it  will  be  to  give  life  a  divine  significance,  even 
if  no  Providence  has  already  done  this  for  us 
before  our  birth.  Did  George  Eliot  draw  this 
conclusion  herself?  We  shall  have  reason  to 
believe  that  she  did. 

By  training,  then,  as  we  may  say,  our  author 
was  at  least  in  part  identified  with  the  great 
characteristic  thought  -  movement  of  the  first 
half  of  our  century,  with  the  movement  that 
aimed  at  the  understanding  and  appreciation 
of  the  essential  elements  of  religion.  This 
movement  was  not  one  of  harmony,  but  of  vig- 
orous and  often  bitter  discussion,  and  no  origi- 
nal thinker  would  be  apt  to  submit  himself  to 
the  mere  formulas  of  any  one  of  its  representa- 
tives. Yet  in  it  all  there  was  the  one  easily 
appreciated  effort  to  decipher  this  strange,  beau- 
tiful language  of  the  pious  heart,  and  to  see 
whether  the  writing,  once  deciphered,  would 
furnish  any  one  word  that  the  enlightened  mind 
can  accept  as  eternal  truth.  With  this  effort 
George  Eliot  was  in  deep  sympathy. 

Another  influence  on  George  Eliot's  religious 
philosophy  must  be  mentioned,  but  I  see  at 
present  no  good  reason  to  lay  much  stress  upon 
it.  This  is  the  influence  of  Comte  and  of  his 
formulated  Religion  of  Humanity.  When  some 
one  of  the  most  straitest  sect  of  the  religious 
positivists,  who  is  at  the  same  time  acquainted 
with  German  thought,  shall  have  made  clear  to 
us  just  what,  if  any,  was  Comte's  original  and 
genuine  contribution  to  the  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion, beyond  his  theory  of  the  three  stages  of 
the  human  mind,  we  shall  be  able  to  appreciate 
the  importance  of  a  general  sympathy  with 
positivism  for  the  mind  of  one  who  knew  Ger- 
man religious  philosophy  so  well.  Till  this  in- 
formation is  given  I  do  not  see  why  George  El- 
iot need  have  been  much  other  than  she  was 
had  Comte  or  his  later  period  of  thought  never 
existed.  She  did,  as  we  are  told,  sympathize 
with  the  Positivist  sect.  But  of  the  ritual  and 
the  observances,  the  fanatical  solemnity,  and 
the  pharisaical  vanity  of  that  sect,  she  certain- 
ly never  in  her  printed  works  showed  any  signs. 
The  religion  of  humanity  she  did  profess,  but 
she  exhibits  in  her  writings  no  tendency  to 
accept  the  inhuman  exclusiveness  of  any  arbi- 
trary dogmatic  system  of  living.  If  the  Posi- 
tivists were  her  friends,  we  may  be  sure  that 
freedom  was  a  greater  friend. 

But  still  another  influence  remains  to  be  men- 
tioned here,  the  influence  of  the  study  of  Spi- 
noza upon  George  Eliot's  life -theory.  Of  this 
influence  we  may  be  sure ;  for  it  has  been  an- 
nounced since  her  death  on  good  authority  (in 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette}  that  a  translation  of  the 
whole  of  the  Ethics  exists  in  manuscript,  pre- 
pared by  her  own  hand  during  this  early  period 


of  apprenticeship.  But  just  what  the  influence 
of  Spinoza  was  it  will  be  her  biographer's  duty 
to  discover  and  tell  us.  Meanwhile  there  seems 
to  be  an  inviting  field  open  for  philological  in- 
vestigation in  the  comparison  of  Spinoza's  fa- 
mous treatise  on  the  passions  and  their  control 
(Ethics,  books  iii-v),  with  George  Eliot's  own 
numerous  remarks  on  the  same  subject.  In 
reading  this  part  of  the  Ethics  one  may  notice 
the  great  likeness  of  many  of  the  observations 
in  style  and  in  matter  to  George  Eliot.  This 
likeness  ought  to  be  examined  and  tested. 
Spinoza  is,  after  all,  one  of  the  fathers  of  re- 
ligious philosophy.  His  direct  influence  upon 
the  first  religious  philosopher  that  ever  wrote 
great  novels  would  be  a  problem  of  no  little  in- 
terest. 

Leaving  the  study  of  the  causes,  let  us  go  on 
to  the  effects.  Not  long  before  the  publication 
of  the  Scenes  from  Clerical  Life,  we  find  in  the 
Westminster  Review  an  essay  under  the  title, 
"Worldliness  and  Other-worldliness :  the  Poet 
Young."  This  essay  is  by  George  Eliot.  The 
poet  Young  is  here  reviewed  with  a  good  deal 
of  severity.  The  article  has  in  it  something  of 
that  dash  and  boldness  in  speaking  of  serious 
subjects  that  endeared  the  Westminster  of  those 
days  to  the  radical  mind,  and  to  young  radicals 
in  particular.  But  the  hand  is  the  hand  of  Ma- 
rian Evans.  Nor  do  we  fail  to  find  in  pas- 
sages her  own  more  moderate  tone,  such  as 
she  used  when  not  in  the  editorial  chair. 
Young  is  described  in  this  essay  as  "a  poet 
whose  imagination  is  alternately  fired  by  the 
'Last  Day,'  and  by  a  creation  of  peers,  who 
fluctuates  between  rhapsodic  applause  of  King 
George  and  rhapsodic  applause  of  Jehovah." 
One  of  Young's  "most  striking  characteristics 
is,"  says  the  essayist,  "his  radical  insincerity  as 
a  poetic  artist.  No  writer  whose  rhetoric  was 
checked  by  the  slightest  truthful  intention  could 
have  said : 

'  An  eye  of  awe  and  wonder  let  me  roll, 
And  roll  forever.'  " 

Furthermore,  Young  wants  genuine  emotion. 
" There  is  hardly  a  trace  of  human  sympathy, 
of  self  -  forgetfulness  in  the  joy  or  sorrow  of  a 
fellow -being"  in  all  of  the  Night  Thoughts  out- 
side of  passages  in  "Philander,"  "Narcissa," 
and  "Lucia."  As  a  consequence,  Young's  the- 
ory of  ethics  lacks  the  element  of  sympathy, 
and  finds  a  basis  for  morality  only  in  the  belief 
in  an  immortality  of  rewards  and  punishments. 
And  here  the  personal  views  of  the  essayist 
burst  forth:  "Fear  of  consequences  is  only  one 
form  of  egoism  which  will  hardly  stand  against 
half  a  dozen  other  forms  of  egoism  bearing  down 
upon  it In  proportion  as  a  man  would 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AS  A  RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 


305 


care  less  for  the  rights  and  the  welfare  of  his 
fellow  if  he  did  not  believe  in  a  future  life,  in 
that  proportion  is  he  wanting  in  the  genuine 
feelings  of  justice  and  benevolence,  as  the  mu- 
sician who  would  care  less  to  play  a  sonata  of 
Beethoven's  finely  in  solitude  than  in  public, 
where  he  was  to  be  paid  for  it,  is  wanting  in 
genuine  enthusiasm  for  music."  "Certain  ele- 
ments of  virtue,  ....  a  delicate  sense  of  our 
neighbor's  rights,  an  active  participation  in  the 
joys  and  sorrows  of  our  fellow-men,  a  magnan- 
imous acceptance  of  privation  or  suffering  for 
ourselves  when  it  is  the  condition  of  good  to 
others — in  a  word,  the  extension  and  intensifi- 
cation of  our  sympathetic  nature — we  think  it 
of  some  importance  to  contend  that  they  have 
no  more  direct  relation  to  the  belief  in  a  future 
state  than  the  interchange  of  gases  in  the  lungs 
has  to  the  plurality  of  worlds.  Nay,  to  us  it  is 
conceivable  that  in  some  minds  the  deep  pathos 
lying  in  the  thought  of  human  mortality — that 
we  are  here  for  a  little  while  and  then  vanish 
away,  that  this  earthly  life  is  all  that  is  given  to 
our  loved  ones  and  to  our  many  suffering  fel- 
low-men—  lies  nearer  the  fountains  of  moral 
emotion  than  the  conception  of  extended  exist- 
ence." The  thought  of  mortality  then  is  favor- 
able to  virtue  as  well  as  the  thought  of  immor- 
tality. "Do  writers  of  sermons  and  religious 
novels  prefer  that  men  should  be  vicious  in  or- 
der that  there  may  be  a  more  evident  political 
and  social  necessity  for  printed  sermons  and 
clerical  fictions?  Because  learned  gentlemen 
are  theological,  are  we  to  have  no  more  simple 
honesty  and  good -will?  We  can  imagine  that 
the  proprietors  of  a  patent  water  supply  have  a 
dread  of  common  springs ;  but  for  our  own  part 
we  think  there  cannot  be  too  great  a  security 
against  a  lack  of  fresh  water  or  of  pure  moral- 
ity. To  us  it  is  matter  of  unmixed  rejoicing 
that  this  latter  necessary  of  healthful  life  is  in- 
dependent of  theological  ink,  and  that  its  evo- 
lution is  insured  by  the  interaction  of  human 
souls  as  certainly  as  the  evolution  of  science  or 
of  art,  with  which  indeed  it  is  but  a  twin  ray, 
melting  into  them  with  undefinable  limits." 
The  principal  sources  of  our  author's  quarrel 
with  Young  are  thus  indicated.  But  yet  more 
to  our  present  purpose  are  her  criticisms  on 
his  conception  of  religion.  "Young  has  no 
conception  of  religion  as  anything  else  than 
egoism  turned  heavenward;  and  he  does  not 
merely  imply  this — he  insists  on  it."  "He 
never  changes  his  level  so  as  to  see  beyond 
the  horizon  of  mere  selfishness."  And  again : 
"He  sees  Virtue  sitting  on  a  mount  serene,  far 
above  the  mists  and  storms  of  earth.  He  sees 
Religion  coming  down  from  the  skies,  with  this 
world  in  her  left  hand  and  the  other  world  in 


her  right.  But  we  never  find  him  dwelling  on 
virtue  or  religion  as  it  really  exists — in  the  emo- 
tions of  a  man  dressed  in  an  ordinary  coat,  and 
seated  by  his  fireside  of  an  evening,  with  his 
hand  resting  on  the  head  of  his  little  daughter; 
in  courageous  effort  for  unselfish  ends,  in  the 
internal  triumph  of  justice  and  pity  over  per- 
sonal resentment,  in  all  the  sublime  self-renun- 
ciation and  sweet  charities  which  are  found  in 
the  details  of  ordinary  life."  At  the  end  of  the 
essay  Young  is  contrasted  with  Cowper,  much 
to  the  advantage  of  the  latter.  "In  Young  we 
have  the  type  of  that  deficient  human  sympa- 
thy, that  impiety  toward  the  present  and  the 
visible,  which  flies  for  its  motives,  its  sancti- 
ties, and  its  religion  to  the  remote,  the  vague, 
and  the  unknown.  In  Cowper  we  have  the 
type  of  that  genuine  love  which  cherishes 
things  in  proportion  to  their  nearness,  and 
feels  its  reverence  grow  in  proportion  to  the 
intimacy  of  its  knowledge." 

The  transition  in  mood  is  but  slight  from  the 
last  words  of  this  essay  to  the  Scenes  from  Cler- 
ical Life.  As  one  reads  these  one  is  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  George  Eliot  has,  for  the 
time,  resolutely  turned  away  her  mind  from  the 
learning  and  speculation  with  which  she  is  so 
familiar,  and  has  determined  to  seek  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  the  higher  life  in  the  world  of 
simple  ignorance,  doing  penance,  as  it  were, 
for  too  much  philosophy  by  refusing  at  pres- 
ent to  portray  a  character  capable  of  abstract  f 
thought,  or  perhaps  rather  seeking  rest  from 
the  heated  war  of  ideas  in  a  refreshing  bath  in 
the  secluded,  slowly  flowing  river  of  common- 
place human  life.  In  the  Scenes,  artistic  mo- 
tives seem  nevertheless  to  be  struggling  still 
with  didactic  motives,  and  the  author  stops  too 
often  to  justify  herself  for  thus  leaving  culti- 
vated life  behind  her.  The  born  story-teller — 
such  a  man  as  Chaucer,  or  William  Morris,  or 
Paul  Heyse,  or  Turgeneff,  or  Heinrich  von 
Kleist — never,  unless  in  the  absence  of  the 
Muse,  is  guilty  of  excusing  himself  for  having 
chosen  a  given  subject,  any  more  than  the  pop- 
ular ballad -maker  of  the  Middle  Ages  thought 
of  explaining  why  just  this  tale  of  all  tales 
must  over  his  lips.  In  fact,  the  great  curse  of 
George  Eliot's  art,  from  Amos  Barton  to  Daniel 
Deronda,  is  her  tendency  to  speak  in  her  own 
name  to  the  reader  for  the  sake  of  explaining 
why  she  does  thus  and  so.  But,  apart  from 
their  artistic  faults,  the  Scenes  are  full  of  sug- 
gestive thoughts.  "These  commonplace  peo- 
ple," she  says  (in  an  often  quoted  passage  in 
Amos  Barton,  speaking  of  the  mass  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation), —  "many  of  them — bear  a  con- 
science, and  have  felt  the  sublime  prompting 
to  do  the  painful  right;  they  have  their  un- 


306 


THE    CALIFORNIA!*. 


spoken  sorrows  and  their  sacred  joys;  their 
hearts  have  perhaps  gone  out  toward  their  first- 
born, and  they  have  mourned  over  their  irre- 
claimable dead.  Nay,  is  there  not  a  pathos  in 
their  very  insignificance — in  our  comparison  of 
their  dim  and  narrow  existence  with  the  glori- 
ous possibilities  of  that  human  nature  which 
they  share?"  In  the  minds  of  these  men,  then, 
we  are  to  find  the  religious  life  in  its  essence 
exemplified.  Here  is  simple  human  nature.  A 
religious  philosophy  that  would  be  universal 
must  bear  the  test  of  finding  whether  these  in- 
stances fall  within  the  scope  of  its  sounding 
universal  premises. 

In  Amos  Barton  we  meet  with  a  few  sugges- 
tions bearing  directly  on  this  point.  A  story 
intended  by  the  pathos  of  its  unromantic  events 
to  appeal  directly  to  our  sense  of  the  interest  of 
life  as  life  cannot  go  very  deeply  into  problems. 
But  the  author  does  not  avoid  giving  hints  of 
her  doctrines.  Thus,  for  example,  after  telling 
of  Mrs.  Barton's  funeral,  she  speaks  of  our  an- 
guish, when  we  mourn  over  our  own  dead,  at 
the  thought  that  "we  can  never  atone  for  the 
little  reverence  that  we  showed  to  that  sacred 
human  soul  that  lived  so  close  to  us,  and  was 
the  divinest  thing  God  had  given  us  to  know." 
What,  then,  the  reader  asks,  are  we  to  worship 
those  that  stand  or  that  have  stood  nearest  us, 
and  is  this  to  be  our  religion?  This,  the  author 
seems  to  say,  is  the  religion  death  teaches. 

But  one  suspects  all  teachings  that  are  found- 
ed on  death  alone.  The  emotions  suggested 
by  death,  one  might  reply  to  George  Eliot,  are 
among  the  highest  we  know,  and  yet  it  is  hard 
to  draw  any  ethical  conclusions  from  them. 
Quite  apart  from  our  beliefs  or  doubts  about 
immortality,  we  say  when  a  good  man  dies,  "It 
is  well,  his  work  is  nobly  done;"  and  when  a 
bad  man  dies,  "It  is  well,  the  world  is  rid  of 
him."  If  an  old  man  dies,  we  say,  "The  debt 
of  nature  is  paid,  let  us  not  mourn;"  if  a  young 
maiden,  we  still  say,  "Death  has  saved  this  fair 
life  from  pain  and  decay,  let  us  cease  mourn- 
ing." Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  in  the  famous  pas- 
sage at  the  end  of  his  history,  calls  death  elo- 
quent. One  might  well  rejoin  that  death  is 
rather  the  great  sophist :  argue  as  we  will,  he 
refutes  us.  He  is  an  evil ;  but  who  would  live 
always?  a  good;  but  who  would  forsake  life? 
Death  as  the  seeming  end  of  desire  appears  at 
once  undesirable,  and  yet  perfectly  satisfying ; 
at  once  a  sacred  presence  that  sanctifies  what- 
ever it  touches,  so  that  we  naturally  worship 
the  memory  of  the  dead,  and  a  horrible  night- 
mare that  pursues  the  living,  so  that  the  free 
man  becomes  free  only  when,  as  Spinoza  said, 
he  learns  to  think  not  at  all  of  death,  but  solely 
of  life.  What  doctrine  shall  then  be  founded 


on  our  contemplation  of  death  ?  Death  is  the 
infinite  night,  wherein,  as  the  rough -voiced 
adage  had  it,  all  cows  are  black.  Let  us  disre- 
gard it,  and  ask  our  teacher  what  she  has  to 
tell  us  about  life.  What  shall  we  worship  in 
world  of  the  living? 

In  "Janet's  Repentance,"  the  third  of  the 
Scenes,  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  one  of 
the  problems  that  have  most  interest  for  the 
mind  of  George  Eliot.  It  is  the  problem  after- 
ward treated  in  Romola.  Suppose  a  soul,  capa- 
ble of  higher  life,  but  shut  out  for  years  from 
the  thought  of  it,  living  in  worldliness.  Suppose 
a  trouble  that  arouses  in  this  soul  a  sense  of 
wrong,  of  loneliness,  of  the  desolation  of  the 
universe  when  there  is  no  object  in  it  that 
seems  worth  our  striving.  How  shall  such  a 
soul  become  reconciled  to  life?  How  shall  it 
attain  religious  earnestness,  and  strength,  and 
peace?  Janet,  a  high-spirited,  self-reliant  girl, 
is  persistently  ill  treated  by  her  husband.  At 
first  she  cannot  bear  to  think  that  their  love 
should  have  all  come  to  this.  Then  she  takes 
refuge  in  sullen  defiance,  broken  by  passionate 
outbursts.  Now  and  then  she  upbraids  her 
mother  fiercely,  and  without  reason ;  but  most 
of  the  time  she  tries  to  keep  silence.  She  never 
thinks  of  religious  solace ;  her  one  hope  is  that 
in  some  way  her  husband  may  come  to  love 
her  again.  If  he  is  jovial  and  good  humored 
for  a  day,  she  is  happy.  But  such  times  are 
rare.  At  last  she  falls  into  the  habit  of  drink- 
ing secretly,  to  forget  her  troubles.  And  so 
bad  becomes  worse,  until  a  climax  is  reached 
in  her  husband's  temper,  and  he  turns  her  out 
of  the  house  at  midnight.  She  takes  refuge  with 
a  neighbor.  The  next  day  her  husband  drinks 
enormously,  drives  alone,  meets  with  a  serious 
accident,  and  is  brought  home  to  his  death-bed, 
raving  in  delirium  trcmcns.  Meanwhile,  Janet 
has  had  time  to  review  her  life ;  her  despair  is 
complete;  the  world  is  dark,  her  conscience 
bad,  her  future  inconceivable.  At  this  point, 
the  day  of  her  husband's  fatal  drive,  she  is  vis- 
ited by  the  new  evangelical  parson,  a  hard- 
working, somewhat  fanatical  consumptive,  who 
has  the  ascetic  sincerity  of  a  mediaeval  saint. 
Remorse  for  a  youthful  crime  had  driven  him 
into  his  present  life ;  and  his  special  task  is  the 
seeking  out  of  great  sinners  and  of  despairing 
souls  of  all  classes.  Janet's  husband  had  been 
this  man's  bitterest  enemy,  and  she  herself  had 
always  before  scorned  his  very  name.  Now, 
at  the  first  sight  of  him,  at  the  first  experience 
of  his  earnestness  and  kindness,  she  feels  that 
here  is  a  new  influence.  She  soon  pours  out 
to  him  her  whole  heartful  of  misery  and  of 
longing:  "I  thought  that  God  was  cruel.  I  sup- 
pose it  is  wicked  to  think  so I  feel  as 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AS  A   RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 


307 


if  there  must  be  goodness  and  right  above  us, 
but  I  can't  see  it;  I  can't  trust  in  it.  And  I 
have  gone  on  that  way  for  years  and  years. 
„  .  .  .  I  shall  always  be  doing  wrong,  and 
hating  myself  after;  sinking  lower  and  lower, 
and  knowing  that  I  am  sinking.  Oh,  can  you 
tell  me  of  any  way  of  getting  strength?  Have 
you  ever  known  any  one  like  me  that  got  peace 
of  mind  and  power  to  do  right?  Can  you  give 
me  any  comfort,  any  hope?"  To  answer  to 
this  appeal  the  parson  gathers  all  his  strength. 
He  sees  in  this  woman  his  own  old  despairing 
self.  He  speaks  to  her  out  of  the  fullness  of 
an  experience  of  torture.  He  uses  the  conven- 
tional terms  of  orthodoxy,  to  be  sure;  but  we 
feel,  as  we  read,  that  the  force  is  not  intended 
by  the  author  to  be  in  them.  Janet  accepts 
the  message;  but  why?  Not  because  of  the 
essential  might  of  the  orthodox  formula.  The 
devil  is  not  cast  out  in  the  name  of  any  power, 
but  by  the  force  of  direct  present  sympathy. 
Janet  feels  that  here  is  another,  with  like  nat- 
ure, tried,  tempted,  fallen  also,  but  enabled  to 
rise  by  seeing  the  vast  world  of  human  life 
about  him  in  which  there  is  so  much  to  be 
done,  in  which  there  is  such  a  mass  of  suffer- 
ing and  sin,  to  which  his  life  is  but  a  drop,  and 
for  which,  as  he  sees,  he  must  work,  "As  long," 
he  tells  her,  "as  we  live  in  rebellion  against 
God,  desiring  to  have  our  own  will,  seeking 
happiness  in  the  things  of  this  world,  it  is  as  if 
we  shut  ourselves  up  in  a  crowded,  stifling 
room,  where  we  breathe  only  poisoned  air ;  but 
we  have  only  to  walk  out  under  the  infinite 
heavens,  and  we  breathe  the  pure,  free  air  that 
gives  us  health,  and  strength,  and  gladness.  It 
is  so  with  God's  spirit.  As  soon  as  we  submit 
ourselves  to  his  will,  as  soon  as  we  desire  to 
be  united  to  him,  and  made  pure  and  holy,  it 
is  as  if  the  walls  had  fallen  down."  This  is 
language  that  men  of  a  hundred  nations  and 
creeds  might  understand.  Wherein  lies  its 
force?  What  is  the  religious  idea  at  the  bot- 
tom of  it?  Hear  the  author : 

"Blessed  influence  of  one  true  loving  human 
soul  on  another!  Not  calculable  by  algebra, 
not  deducible  by  logic,  but  mysterious,  effective, 
mighty  as  the  hidden  process  by  which  the 

tiny  seed  is  quickened Ideas  are  often 

poor  ghosts.  Our  sun-filled  eyes  cannot  discern 
them ;  they  pass  athwart  us  in  thin  vapor,  and 
cannot  make  themselves  felt.  But  sometimes 
they  are  made  flesh.  They  breathe  upon  us 
with  warm  breath ;  they  touch  us  with  soft,  re- 
sponsive hands ;  they  look  at  us  with  sad,  sin- 
cere eyes,  and  speak  to  us  in  appealing  tones ; 
they  are  clothed  in  a  living  human  soul,  with 
all  its  conflicts,  its  faith,  and  its  love.  Then 
their  presence  is  a  power;  then  they  shake  us 


like  a  passion,  and  we  are  drawn  after  them 
with  gentle  compulsion,  as  flame  is  drawn  to 
flame." 

Religious  knowledge  and  life  come  to  us  then, 
our  author  teaches,  through  the  influence  of  in- 
dividual souls,  whose  sympathy  and  counsel 
awaken  us  to  a  new  sense  of  the  value  of  life, 
and  to  a  new  earnestness  to  work  henceforth 
not  for  self,  but  for  the  Other  than  self.  This 
Other,  as  you  see,  is  always  at  least  negatively 
infinite ;  it  takes  in  this  philosophy  the  place 
of  the  supernatural.  You  know  not  its  bound- 
aries. This  grand  ocean  of  life  stretches  out 
before  you  without  discovered  shore.  You  are 
brought  to  the  strand.  Will  you  embark?  To 
embark  and  to  lose  yourself  is  religion  ;  to  wait 
on  the  shore  is  moral  starvation.  Such  seems 
to  be  our  author's  life-doctrine.  The  infinite  is 
conceived  as  known  only  in  this  world  of  fel- 
low-beings. 

For  Janet  this  new  insight  means  acceptance, 
and  so  new  life.  Her  dying  husband  is  to  be 
nursed,  and  then  afterward  her  neighbors  are 
to  be  helped.  Her  religion  sustains  her.  What, 
then,  in  her  own  consciousness,  is  this  religion? 
A  sense  of  the  value  and  beauty  of  life,  a  trust 
in  the  parson,  a  wish  to  do  good,  a  looking  out 
into  the  world  with  trust  and  resignation.  All 
must  be  well,  for  are  we  not  willingly  at  work? 
So  lambs  think,  no  doubt,  as  they  look  up  from 
the  tender  grass  they  are  cropping.  And  of 
such  kind,  as  it  seems,  George  Eliot  conceives 
to  be  the  state  of  the  soul  when  raised  to  the 
plane  of  this  higher  life.  There  is  an  indefinite 
sense  of  worship  arising  from  the  depths  of  a 
peaceful  mind  that  feels  at  home  in  the  world, 
and  that,  while  so  feeling,  contemplates  life. 
Call  this  worship  by  what  name  you  will. 

But  the  process  of  the  religious  life  is  not  yet 
fully  described,  for  one  of  the  hardest  prob- 
lems remains  untouched.  Given  the  awakened 
soul,  a  Janet  after  her  first  conversation  with 
the  parson,  a  Romola  when  Savonarola  has 
sent  her  back  to  her  husband  and  has  called 
upon  her  to  live  for  the  Florentines  even  if  she 
cannot  live  for  her  own  home,  such  a  soul,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  largely  under  the  influence  of 
the  person  that  has  been  the  awakener.  But 
this  person  is  only  a  man,  whose  breath  is  in 
his  nostrils.  He  may  represent,  but  he  is  not 
humanity.  He  will  die,  or,  worse  than  that,  he 
will  show  weakness  or  will  betray  some  hidden 
sinful  tendency.  What,  then,  is  to  be  done  for 
the  poor  soul  that  has  depended  upon  this  mor- 
tal prop?  Must  the  reclaimed  fall  whenever 
the  helper  stumbles?  This  problem  is  more 
fully  developed  in  Romola.  The  heroine  here 
is  by  nature  enthusiastic,  but  by  training  a  Neo- 
pagan,  caring  for  none  of  these  things.  Aroused 


308 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


when  in  great  trouble  and  despair  to  the  value 
of  the  higher  life  through  the  words  of  Savona- 
rola, Romola  leans  spiritually  upon  him,  makes 
of  him  the  human  deity.  What  is  the  result? 
It  is  brought  bitterly  home  to  her  that  her  spir- 
itual father  is  not  perfect,  that  he  is  selfish  like 
other  men,  and  can  on  occasion,  misled  by  am- 
bition, do  her  and  others  irreparable  wrong. 
Thus  the  one  support  is  taken  away.  There  is 
nothing  worth  the  trouble  of  life.  What  is 
Florence  if  its  best  man  is  such  a  man?  Rom- 
ola flees  into  the  wilderness,  caring  not  what 
becomes  of  her.  Coming  to  the  sea,  she  em- 
barks alone,  and  the  wind  bears  her  to  another 
shore,  where  she  finds  a  plague  -  stricken  vil- 
lage. The  sight  of  suffering  arouses  the  old 
fervor.  As  George  Eliot  remarks  in  substance 
elsewhere,  in  presence  of  pain  you  need  no  the- 
ories, you  have  but  to  work,  and  with  the  work 
the  old  faith  comes  back.  The  world  needs 
me,  and  it  is  good  to  be  needed.  Such  seems 
Romola's  thought ;  and  so  the  faith  in  human- 
ity, the  sense  that  life  is  significant,  is  made  in- 
dependent of  the  trust  in  the  one  master  who 
first  opened  her  eyes.  He  may  not  be  what  he 
seemed  or  aspired  to  be ;  but  the  light  is  still 
there. 

The  first  teacher,  the  awakener,  is  therefore 
often  necessary ;  but  the  awakened  soul  must 
learn  to  live  without  this  personal  presence,  in 
the  power  of  self -sustained  enthusiasm.  The 
very  faults  of  the  teacher  are  then  seen  in  a 
new  light,  not  as  disheartening  chasms  in  our 
way  that  cannot  be  overleaped,  but  as  incite- 
ments to  more  earnest  work.  We  are  all  weak, 
teachers  as  well  as  taught ;  so  much  the  greater 
is  the  demand  for  unwearied  exertion.  The 
process  thus  indicated  reminds  one  of  the  well 
known  Platonic  myths  in  the  Phcedrus  and  the 
Symposium,.  The  idea  of  the  beautiful,  says 
Plato,  is  the  only  one  of  the  eternal  ideas  that 
has  an  earthly  representative  directly  appeal- 
ing to  the  senses.  At  the  sight  of  a  beautiful 
being  the  soul  is  awakened  from  the  dreamy 
life  of  nature,  and  a  longing  for  the  old  home 
in  the  heavens  is  aroused.  This  longing  is 
human  love.  Followed  upward,  love  leads  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  eternal,  of  which  itself  is 
the  beginning.  But  because  love  is  divine,  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  love  of  the  one  earthly 
object  is  enough.  No ;  the  object  is  nothing  of 
itself.  As  a  thing  of  sense  it  may  not  with 
safety  be  pursued  or  possessed.  Only  as  point- 
ing the  soul  to  the  eternal,  only  as  arousing  us 
to  look  beyond  itself  and  to  forget  what  is  tran- 
sient in  it  and  in  everything  else,  is  the  beloved 
object  of  true  worth.  Just  so  now  in  George 
Eliot  the  knowledge  of  the  enduring  and  sig- 
nificant in  life  comes  to  us  in  the  words  and 


deeds  of  perhaps  a  single  human  teacher.  But 
we  must  learn  to  outgrow  the  direct  influence 
of  the  teacher,  as  Janet  outgrows  the  need  of 
her  pastor,  as  Romola  outgrows  Savonarola,  as 
Deronda  learns  to  do  without  the  prophetic 
voice  of  Mordecai,  or  as  Gwendolen  hopes  to  do 
without  the  personal  magnetism  of  Deronda. 
We  must  even  learn,  as  Maggie  learns,  in  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss,  to  endure  when  everything 
forsakes  us,  and  when  there  is  no  thought  left 
but  that  we  once  did  our  duty  and  destroyed 
our  earthly  happiness.  From  the  transient  we 
must  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  abiding; 
from  trusting  in  a  teacher  we  must  come  to 
trust  in  the  worth  of  the  higher  life.  From  re- 
vering the  man  we  must  come  to  revere  the  in- 
finity of  consciousness  whereof  he  was  a  repre- 
sentative. 

So  much,  then,  for  a  brief  account  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  as  a  process.  We  come 
next  to  speak  of  this  same  consciousness  as  a 
present  fact  in  the  minds  of  all  earnest  men  and 
women,  whether  or  no  their  life  has  risen  or  can 
rise  to  a  very  high  conscious  plane.  Silas  Mar- 
ner,  the  weaver,  crushed  by  early  disappoint- 
ment, loses  all  faith,  almost  forgets  religion,, 
and  becomes  a  miser.  His  gold  is  stolen,  but 
the  child  is  found  on  his  hearth,  the  little  girl 
whose  mother  had  been  frozen  in  the  snow.  In 
bringing  up  this  child  the  weaver  learns  to  live 
again;  she  means  for  him  his  religion.  Now 
again,  with  time,  he  becomes  known  to  his  fel- 
low-men and  awakened  to  the  memory  of  what 
he  was.  Life  as  a  problem  rises  before  his  un- 
learned mind,  and  with  it  the  old  puzzles  of 
destiny.  Why  was  it  that  I  was  thus  tried  and 
tortured?  What  did  Providence,  if  there  is 
any,  mean  with  me?  Hear,  then,  the  weaver 
reasoning  high  with  Dolly  Winthrop,  a  village 
matron  whose  religion  is  a  matter  of  faith  only, 
and  sometimes  of  wavering  faith,  too.  "It  al- 
'ays,"  she  says,  "comes  into  my  head  when  I 
am  sorry  for  folks,  and  feel  as  I  can't  do  a  pow- 
er to  help  'em,  not  if  I  was  to  get  up  i'  the  mid- 
dle o'  the  night — it  comes  into  my  head  as 
Them  above  has  got  a  deal  tend'rer  heart  nor 
what  I've  got — for  I  can't  be  any  better  nor 
Them  as  made  me ;  and  if  anything  looks  hard 
to  me,  it's  because  there's  things  I  don't  know 
on ;  and  for  the  matter  o'  that,  there  may  be 
plenty  o'  things  I  don't  know  on,  for  it's  little  as 
I  know — that  it  is.  And  so,  while  I  was  think- 
ing o'  that,  you  come  into  my  mind,  Master 
Marner,  and  it  all  came  pouring  in ;  if  /  felt  i' 
my  inside  what  was  the  right  and  just  thing  by 
you,  isn't  there  Them  as  was  at  the  making  on 
us  and  knows  better  and  has  a  better  will? 
And  that's  all  as  ever  I  can  be  sure  on,  and  ev- 
erything else  is  a  big  puzzle  to  me  when  I 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AS  A   RELIGIOUS  TEACHER. 


309 


think  on  it.  For  there  was  the  fever  come  and 
took  off  them  as  were  full-growed,  and  left  the 
helpless  children,  and  there's  the  breaking  o' 

limbs Eh,  there's  trouble  i'  this  world, 

and  there's  things  as  we  can  niver  make  out 
the  rights  on.  And  all  as  we've  got  to  do  is  to 
trusten,  Master  Marner — to  do  the  right  thing 
as  fur  as  we  know,  and  to  trusten.  For  if  us  as 
knows  so  little  can  see  a  bit  o'  good  and  rights, 
we  may  be  sure  as  there's  a  good  and  rights 
bigger  nor  what  we  can  know — I  feel  it  i'  my 
own  inside  as  it  must  be  so.  And  if  you  could 
but  ha'  gone  on  trustening,  Master  Marner,  you 
wouldn't  ha'  run  away  from  your  fellow-creat- 
ures, and  been  so  lone." 

"You're  i'  the  right,"  is  Marner's  answer. 
"There's  good  i'  this  world  —  I've  a  feeling  o' 
that  now ;  and  it  makes  a  man  feel  as  there's  a 
good  more  nor  he  can  see,  i'  spite  o'  the  trouble 
and  the  wickedness.  The  drawing  o'  the  lots 
is  dark ;  but  the  child  was  sent  to  me :  there's 
dealings  with  us — there's  dealings."  Here  then 
is  the  elementary  philosophy  of  religion,  the 
knowledge  that  in  all  the  obscurity  and  mys- 
tery of  the  universe  the  confidence  in  the  su- 
preme value  of  duty  and  of  love  remains  to  us. 
Dolly  Winthrop  in  working  for  the  suffering, 
Silas  Marner  in  caressing  the  little  girl's  golden 
hair,  have  they  not  both  of  them  found  a  crude 
elementary  religion,  wherein  there  is  nothing 
of  sentimentality,  but  merely  a  plain,  matter- 
of-fact,  every -day  recognition  of  the  true  ob- 
ject of  life?  One's  mind  is  borne  by  the  strange 
contrast  of  subjects  to  the  words  of  Ernst  Re-, 
nan,  in  his  London  lecture  on  Marcus  Aurelius: 
"The  religion  of  Marcus  Aurelius  is  the  abso- 
lute religion,  that  which  results  from  the  sim- 
ple fact  of  a  high  moral  consciousness  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  universe.  This  religion 
is  of  no  race,  nor  of  any  country.  No  revolu- 
tion, no  change,  no  discovery  will  be  able  to 
change  it."  Is  not  this,  one  asks,  the  religion 
of  Dolly  Winthrop  as  well  as  of  the  Roman  em- 
peror? 

But  we  cannot  wait  to  give  more  examples. 
I  have  tried  to  show  that  George  Eliot's  effort 
to  express  the  religious  consciousness  in  terms 
of  natural,  not  of  supernatural,  facts  is,  in  part, 
a  sequence  from  the  philosophical  movement 
of  her  age,  the  movement  that  began  with  Les- 
sing  and  is  not  yet  ended.  But  our  investiga- 
tion has  led  us  to  see  certain  peculiarities  of 
George  Eliot's  own  mind  and  method  in  view- 
ing these  things.  She  was  an  appreciative 
student  of  many  systems,  but  she  let  none  of 
them  rule  her.  She  heard  what  they  had  to 
say,  and  then  she  went  to  actual  human  life  to 
see  whether  the  theory  held  good.  In  studying 
the  life  the  theory  was  not  permitted  to  inter- 

Yol.  III.— 20. 


fere ;  unless,  to  be  sure,  we  must  make  excep- 
tion of  the  unhealthy  predominence  of  analy- 
sis, of  reflection,  and  of  preconceived  opinion 
over  emotion  and  art  in  Daniel  Deronda,  or  in 
some  of  those  insufferable  dissections  of  human 
weakness  that  fill  the  first  part  of  Theophrastus 
Such.  On  the  whole,  we  must  see  throughout 
in  George  Eliot's  works  an  intense  earnestness, 
and  a  conscientious  effort  to  comprehend  the 
realities  of  the  human  heart.  She  feels  what 
she  tells,  and  to  her  the  religious  consciousness 
whereof  she  writes  is  a  fact  of  her  own  heart. 
The  sermons  of  Dinah  in  Adam  Bede  were, 
as  she  said  in  a  private  letter  published  since 
her  death,  written  in  hot  tears,  were  the  out- 
come of  personal  experience,  and  not,  as  some 
have  supposed,  merely  a  cold  study  from  ob- 
servation. Thus  in  her  writings  the  best  pow- 
er of  analytic  vision  is  joined  with  depth  of 
emotion.  She  is,  then,  the  best  possible  wit- 
ness to  her  own  doctrines.  She  has  seen  and 
felt  what  she  describes  as  the  true  religious 
life.  When  Deronda  says  to  Gwendolen,  "The 
refuge  you  are  needing  from  personal  trouble  is 
the  higher,  the  religious  life,  which  holds  an 
enthusiasm  for  something  more  than  our  own 
appetites  and  vanities,"  he  speaks  less  from  his 
own  experience  (for  he  has  not  yet  had  the  in- 
terviews with  Mordecai)  than  from  the  author's 
experience. 

George  Eliot  never  finished  an  abstract  state- 
ment of  doctrine,  partly  because  she  was  at 
her  best  an  artist,  not  a  philosophic  systema- 
tizer,  and  partly  because  she  was  too  intensely 
skeptical  to  accept  easily  any  one  formula.  In 
Theophrastus  there  is  a  chapter  of  conversation 
with  an  evolution  philosopher  on  the  probable 
practical  consequences  of  indefinite  progress, 
which  shows  how  critical  our  author  remained, 
to  the  very  last,  of  even  the  most  familiar  doc- 
trines of  the  school  with  which  she  was  affiliat- 
ed. And  this  skeptical  element  is  one  of  the 
most  significant  features  in  her  works.  Noth- 
ing has  done  more  harm  in  the  history  of  reli- 
gion than  the  dead  formula,  held  to  notwith- 
standing its  failure  as  an  expression  of  life. 
And  even  the  successful  formula,  the  true  ex- 
pression of  life,  is  dangerous  as  soon  as  we  try 
to  substitute  it  for  the  life,  or  to  imagine  that 
salvation  can  come  through  preaching  alone. 
The  destruction  of  the  letter  is  the  great  pur- 
pose of  .skepticism.  The  skeptical  spirit  is  the 
Mephistopheles  of  the  religious  conciousness, 
the  companion  that  this  Faust  "no  more  can  do 
without."  And  so  we  welcome  the  spirit  that 
could  look  with  the  Germans  for  the  abiding 
element  in  religious  life,  without  cramping  po- 
etical freedom  from  the  very  beginning  by  an 
acceptance  of  some  cut -and -dried  system.  If 


3io 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ever  we  have  a  religious  philosophy,  the  poets 
on  the  one  hand,  the  merciless  skeptics  on  the 
other,  will  have  helped  the  speculator  at  every 
step  in  his  search  for  a  theory.  Without  them 
speculation  is  a  tale  told  by  an  idiot,  full  of 
sound  and  fury,  yet  signifying  nothing.  George 
Eliot  is  at  once  speculative,  skeptical,  and  po- 
etic. Whatever  she  has  done  best,  depends 
upon  the  successful  union  of  these  three  facul- 
ties. When  the  speculative  tendency  triumphs 
she  becomes  mystical  and  wearisome;  when 
the  skeptical  triumphs  she  becomes  wearisome 
and  excessively  analytic;  while  the  poetical 
tendency  may  be  said  never,  in  her  writings, 
to  free  itself,  for  more  than  a  moment  at  a 
time,  from  the  influence  of  the  other  tenden- 
cies. And  so,  the  constant  presence  of  self- 
criticism  makes  us  more  confident  of  whatever 
we  find  in  our  author  in  the  way  of  positive  re- 
sult. 

And  now,  to  leave  the  work  of  simple  expo- 
sition, and  to  estimate  our  author's  accomplish- 
ment in  the  direction  of  an  .understanding  of 
religion,  what  is  the  one  fact  of  human  nature 
that  is  brought  into  prominence  in  all  these 
particular  instances?  It  is,  as  we  may  make 
sure  upon  reflection,  the  fact  of  the  self -sur- 
rendering, of  the  submissive  moment  in  the 


action  of  free  human  beings  when  they  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  world  of  life. 
Man,  especially  the  higher  man,  is  not  even  by 
original  nature  altogether  selfish.  Before  all 
training  he  is  prone  to  submission  whenever 
he  meets  another  being  whom  he  regards  as 
higher,  better,  more  admirable  than  himself. 
Training  makes  definite  and  potent  this  origi- 
nal tendency.  The  soul  into  which  has  come 
the  wealth  of  knowledge  that  springs  from  feel- 
ing ourselves  to  be  but  atoms  in  a  great  stream 
of  life,  is  aroused  to  an  essentially  new  exist- 
ence. The  main -spring  of  such  a  nature  is 
conscious  submission  to  the  demands  of  the 
world  of  sentient  existence.  This  motive  needs 
no  supernatural  faith,  but  may  express  itself  in 
the  language  of  a  hundred  faiths.  The  spirit 
involved  in  it  is  neither  optimism  nor  pessi- 
mism, but  simply  earnestness,  determination  to 
make  the  world  significant.  It  is  a  fact,  we 
see,  that  such  consciousness  is,  and  can  be. 
Call  this  spirit  what  you  will.  A  sound  relig- 
ious philosophy,  such  as  Lessing  dreamed  of  in 
Nathan,  such  as  our  century  has  been  strug- 
gling to  attain,  will,  we  need  not  doubt,  see  in 
this  spirit  the  essential  element  of  that  great- 
est of  higher  human  agencies,  Religion. 

JOSIAH  ROYCE. 


WASHINGTON    TERRITORY. 


A  land  that  man  has  newly  trod, 
A  land  that  only  God  has  known, 
Through  all  the  soundless  cycles  flown. 

Yet  perfect  blossoms  bless  the  sod, 
And  perfect  birds  illume  the  trees, 
And  perfect  unheard  harmonies 

Pour  out  eternally  to  God. 

A  thousand  miles  of  mighty  wood, 

Where  thunder-storms  stride  fire -shod; 

A  thousand  plants  at  every  rod, 
A  stately  tree  at  every  rood; 

Ten  thousand  leaves  to  every  tree, 

And  each  a  miracle  to  me; 
Yet  there  be  men  who  doubt  of  God ! 


JOAQUIN  MILLER. 


SEEKING  SHADOWS. 


SEEKING   SHADOWS. 


"SAN  FRANCISCO,  Nov.  7,  3  P.  M.,  1876. 
"To  SAMUEL  McQuEER : — I've  struck  it.     Come 
right  along.  JOHN  JOHNS.  " 

Now,  when  a  quiet  country  resident  receives 
a  telegram  like  that,  upon  election  day,  from  a 
man  known  to  him  to  be  one  of  the  sort  who 
do  strike  strange  and  improbable  things,  there 
is  nothing  for  it  but  to  vote  early  and  then  take 
the  first  train  that  runs  toward  the  saintly  city. 

It  would  not  be  right,  I  thought,  as  I  sat  in 
the  car,  to  leave  in  the  midst  of  a  heated  con- 
test upon  such  a  summons  from  an  unknown 
party;  but  then  John  Johns  is  not  a  man  to  be 
unheeded,  for  did  he  not  discover  the  great  Con- 
solidated Silver  Mine  right  in  the  trail  where 
many  silver -seeking  feet  had  trod  for  years? 
Did  not  John  Johns  trace  a  murderer  in  the 
eye  of  the  most  polished,  pious,  and  polite  man 
in  the  camp  at  Rocky  Ridge?  In  fact,  had  not 
J.  J.  done  more  important,  improbable  things 
than  any  man  I  ever  knew  ?  Of  course  he  had. 
Then  roll  on,  iron  wheels.  Rip -rip -rip  on  the 
ringing  rail.  Yell  out,  bright  engine,  as  you 
cleave  the  air  like  a  flashing  dragon,  flying  low 
and  fast,  and  bear  me  away  from  the  seething 
thought  of  a  nation's  life — away  and  away  from 
the  feverish  ballot-box — to  the  quiet  haunts  of 
the  ingenious  John  Johns. 

Not  much  time  is  consumed  in  rail -riding 
from  my  house  to  the  South  Depot,  because  at 
evening  of  the  same  day  on  which  I  viewed  the 
glancing  lights  of  the  winding  train  playing  a 
boo -peep  game  among  the  darkening  hills,  I 
came,  at  last,  grandly  down  the  slope  whose 
other  flank  drives  back  the  noisy  craving  of  the 
great  salt  waves;  and,  with  clanging  bell  and 
warning  yell  which  marshal  the  way  through 
gathering  lights,  and  crossing  streets,  and  clus- 
tering suburbs,  o'er  bridge,  and  ditch,  and  oozy 
armlets  of  the  bay,  where  smells  arise  as  pasty 
in  their  plenitude  of  power  as  though  we  breath- 
ed the  air  of  all  creation's  offal  —  and  then  — 
here  we  are  at  the  dingy  little  house  where  the 
train  stops,  and  the  hackman  begins: 

"Whans  scarriage?"     "Whans  scarriage?" 

"Hotel,  'otel, 'tel,  'el!" 

Being  a  quiet  man,  and  prone  to  be  frugal 
withal,  I  glide  through  this  jargon  of  energetic 
cupidity,  and,  satchel  in  hand,  soon  sit  quietly 
down  in  the  middle  of  the  street — taking  care, 
however,  to  be  inside  a  street  car  before  sitting 
down.  As  the  car  rapidly  fills,  the  "ching- 


ching"  of  the  conductor's  bell  summons  the  low 
rumble  of  the  wheels,  and,  finding  we  are  off, 
I  glance  from  right  to  left  upon  the  passengers 
who  seem  to  be  going  to  a  perpetual  Centennial 
show,  from  all  lands  under  the  sun,  and  to  be 
forever  in  a  hurry  to  get  there.  Many  of  them 
have  come  from  "Cipango  and  far  Cathay," 
while  to  others  the  sunset  glories  of  the  South 
Sea  Isles  are  infant  memories.  As  I  sit,  a  shy 
man,  with  my  satchel  between  my  feet,  I  seem 
to  sniff  the  odors  of  opium,  sandal -wood,  the 
bread-fruit  tree,  and  to  see  Marco  Polo  shak- 
ing hands  with  Captain  Cook  in  a  social  circle 
of  the  "friendly  natives"  of  many  islands,  for, 
notwithstanding  the  onward  rumble  of  the 
crowded  car  through  the  clattering  bedlam  of 
collective  wheels,  and  the  increasing  movement 
of  gathering  heads  across  the  gaudy  front-lights 
of  bright  traffic's  staring  halls,  I  am  away  in 
the  region  where  the  book -world  lies — outside 
the  harbor  of  our  daily  life — and  the  conductor, 
staggered  by  the  lurching  car,  drops  his  iron 
heel  promptly  on  my  rheumatic  toe,  and,  by 
way  of  apology,  says,  with  extended  hand, 
"Fare,  sir?" 

Thus  I  come  back  from  dreamland  to  find 
myself,  fingering  for  a  ten -cent  piece,  far  in  the 
heart  of  the  city.  The  unspeakable  noise  of 
the  city — the  echo  of  unrest — hovers  heavier 
and  heavier  in  the  air  as  I  step  out  of  the  car, 
and  walk,  by  a  few  paces,  into  the  hotel.  I  do 
not  like  hotels,  and  have  never  been  intimate 
enough  with  such  places  to  know  if  any  of  them 
admire  me.  They  are  too  much  like  incorpo- 
rated graveyards,  where  all  are  received  who 
pay  the  price — but  those  are  best  received  who 
come  with  greatest  pomp.  Mine  host,  being  a 
fair  fat  man  with  a  weary  repose  of  manner, 
whirled  the  registry  book  upon  its  pivot,  and 
took  my  baggage.  I  wrote  my  autograph.  He 
wrote  some  arithmetical  figures  opposite  my 
writing,  and  banged — one  bang — on  a  bell; 
saying  to  the  ready  youth  who  answered  the 
bang,  and  to  whom  he  presented  my  satchel 
and  a  key : 

"Take  gen'l'm'n  55." 

Following  the  young  man,  who  rattled  the 
key  and  its  tag  as  he  went,  I  soon  found  my- 
self in  "my  own  room."  Alas,  how  fictitious  is 
language !  Not  my  own  room,  but  the  room  of 
thousands.  As  well  may  the  infant  born  to- 
night exclaim,  "Here  I  am  in  my  own  world !" 


312 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


For  truly  this  is  the  room,  or  one  of  the  rooms, 
in  which  the  unhonored  and  ungilded  have 
dreamed  away  their  weary  nights  since  first  this 
house  cast  the  light  of  its  evening  eyes  on  the 
stony  street 

The  landlord  was  not  aware  of  my  heavy 
wealth,  nor  of  my  great  renown,  for  the  natural 
shyness  of  my  manner  conveys  no  hint  of  my 
importance.  The  landlord  did  not  know  of  my 
mines  of  silver,  my  leagues  of  land,  nor  of  the 
rich  argosies  which  float  upon  my  private  seas, 
or  he  would  have  been  more  solicitous  of  my 
comfort.  The  landlord  does  not  know  that  I 
am  acquainted  with  greater  men  than  he  ever 
associated  with,  and  lastly,  as  well  as  mostly, 
he  does  not  know  that  I  am  the  former  mining 
partner,  and  present  intimate  friend,  of  John 
Johns.  What  care  I  for  the  landlord  ?  What's 
he  but  the  head -waiter?  Let  him  cringe  be- 
fore governors,  and  other  great  acrobatic  per- 
formers. Let  him — let  him — but  pshaw !  why 
should  I  enrage  myself  about  the  landlord, 
when  I  am  washed,  brushed,  dusted,  and  ready 
to  dine,  though  a  little  late? 

The  waiter  at  dinner,  in  a  brogue  that  is  pleas- 
ant and  soft,  though  palpably  Irish,  says : 

"We've  had  a  payceable  'lection,  afther  all, 
sir." 

"  Yes  ?"  interrogatively. 

"Yis,  sir;  no  distarbance  whativer. " 

"Big  vote?" 

"Powerful,  sir!  Forty  towsan',  or  more,  sir, 
they  sez." 

"Ah?" 

"Yis,  sir.  Dimmicrats  dizzn't  loike  the  luks 
of  it." 

"Why  not?" 

"Frawd,  sir." 

"On  whom?" 

"Poiper,  sir." 

"Ah?" 

"Yis,  sir.     Poiper's  difayted. " 

This  conversation  brought  me  back  to  that 
terrible  North  American  annoyance — the  bal- 
lot-box and  election  day;  so  that,  when  I  had 
finished  my  dinner  and  passed  out  into  the 
street,  I  was  not  astonished  to  find  the  way 
blocked  by  noisy  people  of  the  sex  male. 

A  man  up  in  a  balcony  window  had  just  read 
telegrams  from  various  States,  and  the  crowd 
was  hip-hipping  and  hurrahing.  Presently,  a 
fine  looking,  mellow -voiced  young  orator  with 
a  waxed  black  mustache  came  to  the  window, 
and  said  he :  "Fellow -citizens  !  Do  you  know 
what  this  news  means?  [Cheers,  cheers,  and 

more  cheers.]  It  means [Cheers.]  It 

means [Cheers.]  It  means " 

[Cheers.]  etc.  He  had  so  much  to  say  about 
means  that  he  seemed  the  chairman  of  some 


committee  on  ways  and  means  making  a  final 
report. 

I  worked  my  way  around  this  crowd  so  that 
I  came  about  where  the  new-comers,  attracted 
by  the  cheering,  approached  the  skirts  of  the 
great  mass. 

"What's  the  news?"  says  new-comer. 

"  Ohbegod  wegotem. " 

"Got 'em?" 

"Yes,  dammerhearts,  we  got  'em." 

More  chee'rs,  and  more  repetitions  of  how,, 
"We've  got 'em." 

"  Got  'em  sure !     Deader'n  a  fish. " 

"Deader'nhell!" 

"'Rah  for  Til'n." 

"Three  cheers  for  Tilden,  Hendricks,  and, 
Reform  !" 

"Tiger!" 

It  does  not  become  a  quiet  rural  citizen  to  re- 
main long  in  such  a  turmoil ;  so  I  pushed  out 
and  proceeded  away  from  the  noisy  centers  to- 
ward the  quieter  regions  of  Mr.  Johns's  abode. 

The  contrast  would  have  been  grateful  to  my 
feelings  as  I  passed,  in  the  foggy  dark  alone, 
along  streets  where  only  the  rolling  car  and  an 
occasional  footman  disturbed  the  repose,  were 
it  not  for  the  fact  that  I  feared  to  find  in  the 
occasional  footman  a  foe  to  my  financial  com- 
fort. 

At  the  residence,  or  rather  the  lodging  place, 
of  Mr.  John  Johns — for  he  is  unmarried — I 
found  that  he  was  "down  to  his  shop." 

"Where  is  his  shop?" 

"Don't  know." 

"What  sort  of  a  shop?" 

"Don't  know." 

"Who  does  know?" 

"Don't  know." 

"What  time  does  he  come  in?" 

"  Don't  know.  Lately  he  don't  come  for  days. 
Inventin'  something,  I  guess. " 

"Why  do  you  think  he  is  inventing?" 

"Because  he  talks  of  big  discoveries,  and  of 
fortunes  made  out  of  brains.  And  them  kind's 
'most  always  inventors,  if  they  ain't  crazy. " 

I  could  only  thank  madam  for  her  informa- 
tion and  proceed  back  toward  the  noisy  throngs. 

It  is  my  usual  treat  to  go  to  the  theater  or 
concert  when  I  am  in  the  city,  because  then  I 
am  in  the  familiar  country  of  dreamland,  where 
I  have  many  warm  friends,  and  some  valuable 
real  estate.  But  this  night  I  could  not  con- 
clude to  go  to  any  indoor  show,  so  long  as  my 
brother  sovereigns  were  wearing  the  cap  and 
bells  in  the  streets,  and  striving  to  knock  each 
other  on  the  head  with  that  imaginary  bauble 
— the  ballot. 

To  a  rural  stranger  a  shouting,  seething  cityr 
after  night,  is  a  great  exhibition — particularly 


SEEKING  SHADOWS. 


when  all  the  toads  in  the  political  pool  are 
croaking  in  'full  chorus.  It  is  almost  funny  to 
see  how  they  work  themselves  up  to  the  belief 
that  they  are  honestly  in  earnest  search  after 
good  government,  when  really  they  only  desire 
a  chance  to  jeer  and  cheer  at  each  other.  It 
comes  near  being  melancholy,  when  we  compre- 
hend that  after  all  the  talk  of  proud  intelligence, 
high  civilization,  modern  improvement,  and  all 
such,  that  the  whole  question  of  which  it  shall 
be — Hayes  or  Tilden — may  turn  upon  a  town- 
ship of  ignorant  Africans,  or  even  upon  the  sol- 
itary vote  of  the  Chinaman  who  polled  on  Tues- 
day. 

I  returned  to  my  hotel,  passing  the  noisy 
throng  in  the  street,  and  hearing  on  the  night 
air  above  the  blinking  eyes  of  the  houses,  the 
hoarse  roaring  of  the  crowd,  but  I  passed  on 
without  noting  what  was  said,  further  than  that 
men  still  met  each  other  with  extended  con- 
gratulatory hands  and — 

"We've  got  'em !" 

"You  bet  your  life  we've  got  'em !" 

"Got 'em  this  time!" 

"Sure  as  hell  we've  got  'em!" 

"'RahforTil'n'n'endrix!" 

Tired,  excited,  disappointed,  amused,  the  lit- 
tle room  in  the  large  hotel,  with  its  one  win- 
dow looking  out  into  a  chimney -flue  sort  of 
court  -  yard,  into  whose  profound  depth  the  pity- 
ing sun  cast  just  one  glance  per  diem,  seemed 
like  an  asylum  where  the  timid  man  might  hide 
away  from  the  roaring  monster  with  the  pop- 
ular voice,  and  be  at  peace ;  as  much  so  as  the 
criminal  who  welcomes  the  granite  cell  of  dur- 
ance vile  as  an  escape  from  the  rage  of  indig- 
nant citizens.  "Alas,"  I  said,  as  I  sat  at  the 
open  window,  seeking  for  air,  and  viewing  the 
shadows  and  rain -stains  on  the  opposite  wall, 
"  I  still  hear,  in  a  muffled  murmur,  the  roaring 
of  the  multitudes— those  twin  monsters  of  our 
loud  misrule  who  are  ready  to  trample  friend 
or  foe  under  the  eager  stride  for  power.  Roar 
on — shout — yell — I  have  heard  you  both,  once 
in  each  four  years  since  1840,  boasting  of  your 
desire  and  ableness  to  save  the  country,  while 
at  each  triumph  of  either  of  you  it  has  gone 
worse. 

"If  'we,  the  people,'  had  no  more  sagacity, 
thrift,  and  industry  than  we,  the  party  voters, 
the  owls  of  melancholy  would,  years  agone, 
have  sat  brooding  over  the  ruins  of  our  institu- 
tions. Then  again,"  I  said  to  myself,  very  pro- 
foundly, as  I  sat  by  that  lonesome  window,  "the 
reason  why  we,  the  party  voters,  have  so  much 
less  sense  than  'we,  the  people,'  is  because  'we, 
the  people,'  are  more  than  half  women,  while 
we,  the  party  voters,  are  no  women  at  all. "  I 
knew  that  was  a  profound  remark,  and  I  chuck- 


led a  solitary  chuckle  as  I  got  into  my  solita- 
ry bed.  And,  ah !  how  solitary  is  a  hotel  bed 
to  a  virtuous  family  man,  when  traveling  alone. 
To  such  a  man  it  is  a  boundless  wilderness  be- 
tween life  and  eternity.  As  I  closed  my  eyes 
to  sleep,  it  seemed  to  me  that  some  critic  might 
sneer  at  my  profound  remark  regarding  the  dif- 
ference between  the  sense  of  the  people  and 
the  sense  of  the  voters,  and  the  last  I  can  re- 
collect of  wakefulness  that  evening  was  my 
half  dreamy  effort  to  whisper  into  my  imagi- 
nary critic's  imaginary  ear  this : 

"A  wise  motherhood  is  the  soul  of  good  gov- 
ernment. " 

The  next  day — not  exactly  morning — I  awak- 
ened, and  called  me  gently  to  arise,  because, 
in  the  absence  of  the  cock's  shrill  clarion,  or 
the  whistle  of  the  birds,  and  the  breath  of  the 
sun's  morning  kiss,  I  was  compelled  to  call  my- 
self, or  I  should,  perhaps,  have  slept  on  and  on 
with  folded  hands  on  a  pulseless  bosom,  like  a 
brass  monarch  in  his  vault  on  top  of  his  own 
tomb. 

In  due  time,  fortified  for  the  day's  duty,  I 
was  again  upon  the  street  seeking  the  where- 
abouts of  John  Johns;  but  now,  the  spirit  of 
the  street  was  changed  to  "'Rah  for  Hayes!" 
but  the  same  pass -words  answered  the  change 
of  sentiment. 

"We've  got 'em!" 

"You  bet  we've  got  'em  !" 

"'Rah  for  Hayes  an'  Weeler  !" 

"Yah-ah-ah!" 

"Tiger!" 

Evidently,  somebody  had  met  the  enemy 
somewhere,  and  somehow  had  got  'em,  but  to 
a  rural  person,  the  city  situation  as  a  political 
issue  was  perplexing ;  so  I  marched  sturdily 
on  my  way,  taking  care  to  avoid  collision  with 
the  excited  passers  on  the  sidewalk.  Looking 
up  and  out,  toward  the  persons  in  a  passing 
throng  of  motley  vehicles,  I  saw  John  Johns, 
standing  up,  in  an  express  job  wagon,  holding 
on  to,  and  steadying,  a  large,  old-fashioned, 
carved  gilt -framed  looking-glass.  Impulsive- 
ly and  loudly,  I  fairly  howled  out:  "Hello, 
Johns!" 

Clinging  to  his  treasure,  he  twisted  his  head 
about  in  a  bewildered  sort  of  way,  till,  at  last, 
his  eyes  fell  upon  me.  The  wagon  could  not 
stop  in  the  moving  throng,  nor  could  Johns  let 
go  of  his  frail  property;  so  I  followed  along, 
meekly  smiling,  like  an  outside  boy  at  a  village 
funeral. 

Down  the  street  I  marched,  keeping  my  eye 
from  time  to  time  upon  Johns  as  we  passed 
through  the  massive  crowd  upon  Montgomery 
Street,  where  the  printing  offices  are,  and  where 
thousands  of  anxious  voters  were  staring  and 


314 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


hurrahing  for  Hayes  and  Wheeler,  while  a 
coarse -featured,  leathery -skinned  heavy  man, 
with  much  cheek  and  good  teeth,  was  making 
gigantic  gesticulations  from  an  open  second- 
floor  window,  and  working  his  heavy  features, 
from  which  gleamed  the  white  array  of  his  pol- 
ished incisors  like  flashes  of  indignation;  but 
all  I  could  hear  of  his  remarks  was,  "  .  .  .  . 
this  great  victory  vouchsafed  ....  Almighty 
God  ....  nation  ....  Hayes  and  Wheeler 
....,"  mingled  with  the  buzzing  of  the  crowd, 
whooping,  shouting,  yelling,  bah-hahing,  rattling 
of  wagons,  rumbling  of  cars,  and  all  other 
noises,  which  go  to  make  up  an  impromptu 
mass  meeting  of  excited  anxiety.  In  course  of 
time  we  got  out  of  the  jam,  and  Johns  called 
to  me  to  get  up  into  the  job-wagon.  I  do  not 
admire  that  style  of  conveyance  for  an  easy 
and  stylish  city  ride,  but  to  gratify  my  friend  I 
climbed  up  beside  him,  and  used  one  hand  to 
assist  him,  while  he  let  one  hold  go  to  give  me 
a  welcome  shake,  as  he  remarked : 

"Glad  you  came.  Mighty  glad  you  came.  I 
will  astonish  you  when  we  get  to  my  den." 

It  did  not  take  us  long  to  get  there,  where 
Johns,  and  the  carman,  and  myself  carried  his 
big  looking-glass  carefully  up  two  flights  of 
steps,  and  deposited  it  in  a  large  carelessly  kept 
room  among  many  other  mirrors  of  all  shapes, 
sizes,  and  conditions. 

"There,"  said  J.  J.,  when  he  had  paid  the 
departing  expressman  and  closed  the  door — 
"there,  sir.  What  do  you  think  of  this  line  of 
business?" 

"Well,  if  this  is  the  auction  business,  I  think 
the  stock  on  hand  lacks  variety." 

"But  this  is  not  the  auction  business,"  said 
Johns,  as  he  looked  into  my  eyes  with  a  superi- 
ority expression  in  his  own. 

"Then  I  give  it  up — unless  you  propose  to 
play  the  role  of  Old  Mortality  to  dilapidated 
mirrors." 

"No!  No  Old  Mortality  forme.  Take  a 
seat,  I've  got  some  chairs  here— yes,  here's 
one.  Sit  down  here  at  this  old  table,  and  I'll 
make  you  open  your  eyes  wider  than  you  did 
when  I  found  the  Great  Consolidated." 

I  sat  down  by  the  old  table,  which  was  burn- 
ed all  over  with  acids  and  caustics,  while  the 
room  smelled  like  a  drug -store  which  had  just 
entertained  a  mad  bull,  and  Johns  went  away 
to  a  part  of  the  great  room  which  he  had  at 
some  time  fenced  off  into  darkness  by  housing 
it  in  with  heavy  painted  canvas.  I  was  about 
to  make  some  reflections,  but,  on  looking  around 
upon  the  multitude  of  mirrors,  I  at  once  saw 
that  no  reflections  were  needed. 

Johns  returned  from  his  bower  of  mystery, 
he  called  it,  and  threw  upon  the  table  before 


me  a  collection  of  those  crisp,  curling,  ugly 
pieces  of  paper  which  the  photographers  call 
proofs. 

"There!"  said  he.  "Cast  your  philosophic 
eyes  over  that  mess  of  human  history."  And 
he  looked,  I  must  say,  as  triumphant  as  a  de- 
mon of  mischief. 

I  uncurled  the  papers  one  after  another,  and 
found  them  to  be  scenes  and  broken  glimpses 
of  scenes  in  the  life  of  one  man — pictures 
which  the  man,  whoever  he  was,  and  he  seemed 
wealthy  and  well  bred,  would  not  wish  to  have 
taken ;  pictures  which  gave  to  the  world,  if  the 
world  should  ever  see  them,  some  part  of  his 
life  which  he  would  not  wish  to  draw  across 
his  own  memory  even  in  the  hours  of  solitude. 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  now?"  said  Johns, 
when  I  looked  up  at  him  as  he  stood  opposite 
to  me  across  the  table. 

"  I  think  this  is  a  most  salacious  lot  of  trash." 

"Of  course  it  is.  I  bought  that  mirror  from 
the  former  mistress  of  a  high-up  gentleman.  It 
cost  me  big  money.  That's  it  over  there — large 
heavy  French  plate,  with  massive  carved  frame. 
I'll  sell  the  frame,  but  I'm  not  done  with  the 
glass  yet." 

"A'n't  you  a  little  crazy,  John?"  I  said,  some- 
what sadly. 

"Certainly;  that's  just  what's  the  matter  with 
me,"  he  replied,  with  the  least  hint  of  a  sneer 
in  his  voice,  and  a  heavy  accent  on  the  word 
"me." 

"There's  a  different  story,"  he  said,  as  he 
withdrew  the  papers  I  had  just  looked  over, 
and  threw  upon  the  table  another  batch. 

Here  I  had  before  me  various  scenes  in  the 
life  of  a  woman  and  two  children.  She  was  a 
young,  pretty  woman  in  these  natural — yea,  too 
natural — pictures,  dressed  in  the  simplest  form 
of  chaste  night -clothing.  The  children  were 
very  pretty,  and  also  dressed  in  sleeping  clothes. 
In  some  scenes  they  said  their  prayers  at  their 
mother's  knee,  or  stood  upon  the  dressing-table 
at  right  and  left  of  the  woman,  with  their  cheeks 
against  her  cheeks,  showing  three  happy  faces 
in  the  glass,  or  climbed  for  kisses,  or  slept 
while  she  looked  into  their  sleeping  faces ;  and 
one  line  of  pictures  showed  the  oldest  ill  and 
dying,  with  the  mother  constantly  by  its  side, 
and  after  that  there  was  but  one  child  in  the 
scenes,  with  more  kisses  and  fewer  smiles.  The 
tears  came  into  my  eyes  as  my  imagination 
rapidly  filled  out  this  little  history,  with  its  love, 
its  sorrow,  its  care,  its  funeral,  its  empty  little 
dresses  and  unused  shoes,  its  aching  blank  in 
a  happy  life;  and  as  I  drew  out  my  handker- 
chief, with  the  cowardly  make-believe  of  blow- 
ing my  nose,  Johns,  who  had  been  pacing  the 
room,  whirled  upon  his  heel,  and  said : 


SEEKING  SHADOWS. 


"What  do  you  think  now,  old  fellow?" 

"I  do  not  think— I  wonder;  and  I  ask  you 
what  is  the  object  of  all  this?" 

"I  got  that  history  out  of  yon  plain  oval- 
topped  mirror  which  you  see  there.  I  bought 
it  at  auction.  It  is  interesting,  but  there  is  no 
money  in  it.  I  shall  send  it  again  to  be  sold." 

"Well,  well!"  I  said,  something  hastily. 
"What  is  the  object  of  it  all,  and  why  am  I 
summoned  to  appear?" 

"The  object  of  it  all  is  to  make  money,  and 
that  is  why  I  summoned  you.  I  want  a  partner 
in  this  business  with  a  capital  of  $5,000.  I 
knew  you  had  the  money,  and  I  know  there  is 
a  princely  fortune  for  both  of  us." 

"Well,  supposing  the  fact  of  my  having  the 
money,  what  part  am  I  to  play  in  this  business, 
which  is  to  me  as  yet  all  mystery?" 

"You  need  play  no  part,  but  put  up  your 
money  and  divide  the  results.  I'll  run  the 
thing." 

"What  is  this  which  you  propose  to  run?" 

"Why,  can't  you  guess?  It's  the  simplest 
thing  in  the  world." 

"Simple  or  not,  I  do  not  guess.  Indeed,  it 
is  the  simplest  things  which  make  the  hardest 
guessing.  What's  it  all  about,  anyhow?" 

"It's  this,"  said  Johns,  as  he  paced  the  echo- 
ing room  with  nervous  energy :  "  While  I  was 
analyzing  and  assaying  the  combined  salts, 
acids,  earths,  etc.,  of  the  alkali  flats  of  Nevada, 
in  the  search  for  borax,  etc.,  I  developed  some 
curious  chemicals,  which  have  magical  effects 
in  fixing  lights  and  shadows  when  played  upon 
a  quicksilvered  background. 

"Now,  you  can  believe  that  quicksilver  is  the 
picture-making  power  of  all  modern  mirrors. 
I  have  discovered  a  process  by  which  a  mirror 
is  made  to  give  up  all  its  old  reflections,  one 
after  the  other,  like  a  keen  living  memory.  I  re- 
duce these  reflections  by  chemicals  under  elec- 
tric action  to  photographs,  and  by  that  means 
I  hold  a  mastery  of  all  that's  true  in  art— I  be- 
come the  great  detective;  and,  by  buying  old 
mirrors,  I  propose  to  levy  a  tax  upon  the  con- 
science of  evil  pride  and  thereby  to  enjoy  a 
princely  income, 

"No  man  can  deny  his  own  face,  his  own 
form,  his  well  known  costume,  nor  the  photo- 
graph of  his  former  private  haunts.  Such  a 
man  in  the  weakness  of  his  pretended  integrity 
becomes  my  vassal,  my  tributary — and  yours,  if 
you  wish  to  join  me  in  this  discovery.  Talk 
about  the  power  of  the  press,"  continued  Johns, 
as  he  still  strode  nervously  up  and  down  the 
room,  "the  lever  of  Archimedes,  the  Catholic 
confessional,  the  police  espionage  of  tyrants — 
all,  all  is  the  play  of  a  child  compared  to  this." 

"It  seems  a  wondrous  wicked  power,"  said  I. 


"Wicked  to  the  wicked  only." 

"You  would  literalize  Shakspere  and  'hold 
the  mirror  up  to  Nature?'  " 

"No  ;  hold  Nature  up  to  the  mirror.  To  me 
the  orator,  the  actor,  the  poet,  the  painter  must 
come  to  learn  the  unstrained,  unconscious  pos- 
ing and  grouping  of  men  and  women." 

"And  I  suppose  you  will  be  delighted  to  see 
humanity  blush  and  quiver  at  the  home-thrust 
pictures  of  its  own  petty  weaknesses." 

"  I  do  not  see  any  home-thrusting  about  it,  so 
far  as  I  am  concerned." 

"Do  you  not  call  it  home-thrusting  when  you 
can  convince  a  man,  even  to  utter  dumbness, 
that  he  has  made  an  ass  of  himself  at  some 
time?  Is  not  memory  a  more  hurtful  weapon 
than  steel  to  a  sensitive  soul?  And  if  your  vic- 
tim of  memory  is  not  sensitive,  if  he  is  a  pig- 
headed, bull -necked,  pachydermatous  brute, 
your  weapon  falls  harmless  from  his  hide.  Yet 
you  delight  in  wounding  those  who  have  al- 
ready wounded  themselves." 

"Delight !  Certainly.  Does  a  man  think  for 
triumph  and  labor  for  success,  and  then  not 
thrill  with  delight  when  triumph  comes?" 

"  I  grant  that." 

"Does  not  the  successful  wealthy  man  hug 
himself  with  triumph  before  my  impecunious 
eyes?" 

"But  he  does  not  get  his  wealth  out  of  your 
ash-pile  without  paying  you  for  it." 

"The  devil  he  doesn't.  I  am  entitled  to  wood, 
water,  and  grass  by  God— I  don't  mean  to  curse 
— but  your  wealthy  man  takes  advantage  of  my 
lack  of  legal  alertness,  and  flaunts  his  proprie- 
tary statutes — his  laws  of  domain — in  my  face, 
contravenes  the  gift  of  God,  and  asks  me 
'  what'll  you  do  about  it?' " 

"Well— but  that  is  the  result  of  long,  well 
considered,  wise  usage  upon  which  man  has 
advanced  to  his  present  proud  position.  It  is 
the  substitute  for  Nature's  grab  game." 

"If  time  and  usage  make  sacredness,  I'm  all 
right,  because  I  suspect  this  thing  of  tell-tale 
shadows  is  as  old  as  the  sun.  Yes,  sir,"  he 
added,  with  a  resolute  emphasis  on  the  "sir"- 
"yes,  sir,  I  expect  some  day  to  be  able  to  re- 
call any  shadow  that  ever  fell  across  the  path 
of  time.  I'll  give  you  yet,"  he  said  it  with  a 
smile,  "a  photographic  group  of  Adam  and 
Eve  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  if  there  ever  were 
any  such  people  to  cast  a  shadow  on  the  earth, 
provided  I  can  find  that  famous  truck-patch." 

"Ay,  I  see  there  is  no  use  talking  when  you 
go  off  on  your  visions ;  but  do  you  think  it  fair 
to  go  about  hunting  the  skeletons  in  people's 
closets?" 

"I've  nothing  to  do  with  people's  skeletons 
or  their  closets.  If  there  is  an  idiot  or  a  natu- 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ral  monster  in  a  family,  I'd  cut  off  this  hand 
sooner  than  trade  upon  the  misfortune;  but 
does  your  beautiful  priest,  or  preacher,  or  par- 
son, or  whatever  you  call  him,  lend  a  listening 
ear  and  a  bright  imagination  to  the  recital  of 
my  sinful  life  for  nothing?  He  wants  to  point 
a  moral,  does  he?  All  right — so  do  I.  He 
wants  his  salary  and  his  little  perquisites  for 
the  use  of  his  gigantic  and  graceful  intellect. 
So  do  I  for  mine." 

"But  it  seems  to  me  your  new  business  is 
likely  to  involve  the  innocent  with  the  guilty. 
Here  you  take,  say  for  instance,  some  scenes 
in  the  early  career  of  a  to-day  respectable  man 
or  woman  who  each  have  innocent  children, 
and  you  involve  the  whole  family  connection  in 
your  revelations,  making  things  disagreeable 
all  round.  You  used  to  be  tender  and  chival- 
rous toward  women  and  children." 

"I'm  open  to  flattery,"  said  Johns,  with  a  sad, 
withered  smile,  "but  not  to  the  extent  of  former 
years.  I  should  not  like  to  see  a  child  hurt, 
much  less  should  like  to  feel  I  had  hurt  it ;  but 
men  and  women  are  my  lawful  prey." 

"Have  you  come  to  that,  John?"  I  said, 
somewhat  sadly.  He  took  several  hasty  tramps 
around  his  room,  and  then  answered  as  he 
marched  on : 

"Yes,  I've  come  to  that.  Does  not  wealthy 
woman  look  out  of  her  carriage  windows  in  a 
sick,  old,  mawkish,  languid  scorn  upon  the 
struggling  unsuccessful  multitude ;  or  does  she 
not  trail  the  dust  with  her  wasteful  wealth  of 
martyred  silks  across  my  clouted  shoes  as  she 
paces  and  pitilessly  smiles  by  me  in  the  street? 
If  she  does  not  delight  in  her  triumph  over  my 
poverty  and  weakness,  why  don't  she  go  ride  or 
walk  in  private  ?  She  can  afford  the  expense  of 
a  private  ride.  If  she  will  triumph,  I  will  con- 
test her  right  to  triumph.  Delight  in  my  dis- 
covery !  I  should  say  I  did  delight  in  it.  Will 
you  go  in  with  me?  That  is  what  I  want  to 
know,"  concluded  J.  J.,  as  he  stopped  suddenly 
in  his  excited  march. 

"This  is  a  delicate  business,"  replied  I,  after 
a  pause,  "and  I  cannot  see  my  way  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice ;  and,  with  the  newness  of  it  all, 
you  keep  up  such  an  excited  and  excitable 
tramping  over  the  naked  floor  of  this  echoing 
room  that  I  cannot  think " 

"I'll  stop!  I'll  stop!"  exclaimed  Johns,  quick- 
ly, taking  the  only  other  chair  in  the  room. 
"I've  got  myself  a  good  deal  worked  up  on  this 
subject;  I'm  away  ahead  and  must  give  you 
time  to  catch  up,  and,  by  the  way,"  he  added, 
looking  at  his  watch,  "I'm  hungry.  Let  us  go 
to  lunch,"  and  he  placed  his  hand  on  the  door- 
knob in  the  act  of  going  out  into  the  hall ;  but 
the  knob  turned  in  his  grasp,  the  door  opened, 


and  an  humble  citizen  of  the  Chinese  Empire 
showed  his  peculiar  smiling  face  at  the  open- 
ing. 

"Well,  what  the  hell  do  you  want?"  asked 
Johns. 

"You  likee  one  man  wo'kee  you?" 

"What  do  you  want  to  do?" 

"Wantee  job — allee  same — no  talkee  what 
do.  Washaman,  him  telle  me  mebbe  so  one 
a -man  top  side  a -house  likee  man  wo'kee. 
Vellee  good  man  ahme ;  no  stealee,  no  bleakee 
glass,  no  go  China -house  allee  time,  gammel 
fan-tan." 

"You're  a  pretty  good  talker,"  said  Johns, 
coldly,  looking  the  while  at  the  pagan  with 
quizzical  gaze. 

"Vellee  talkee  me.  No  got  job,  vellee  good 
talkee — heap  got  job,  talkee  no  got,"  answered 
the  Celestial,  with  confident  firmness  and  the 
smile  of  his  ancestors. 

"And  you  don't  steal?" 

"No  stealee — no  takee  nodding;"  then,  hav- 
ing insinuated  himself  more  nearly  into  the 
room  so  that  he  saw  the  strange  array  of  mir- 
rors, he  pointed  to  that  lot  of  property,  saying, 
"Me  heap  muchee  sabbe  him.  Sabbe  washee 
him — sabbe  cleanah  him  vellee  good — no  bleak 
him  'tall." 

"Well,  you  come  to-morrow.  I  haven't  time 
to  talk  to  you  now." 

"All  light— to-molla.     What  time  come  ?" 

"  Eight  o'clock  in  the  morning." 

"All  light.  To-molla,  eigh'  galock,  me 
come;"  and  he  departed  down  stairs  to  the 
music  of  the  clip  -  clap  -  clatter  of  his  curious 
shoes. 

Johns  and  myself  followed  the  Celestial  me- 
nial down  into  the  streets,  leaving  the  door  of 
the  mirror  hospital  locked  behind  us. 

The  dining-room  toward  which  Johns  direct- 
ed his  steps  being  down  in  the  cardiac  regions 
of  the  city,  we  soon  found  ourselves  in  the 
midst  of  the  to-and-fro  goers  and  news-seeking 
idlers,  and  could  again  feel  the  political  pulse 
of  the  nation  throbbing  against  the  gates  of 
sundown.  Johns  paid  no  attention,  being  ac- 
customed to  city  sights  and  sounds;  while  I 
could  not  but  feel  and  note  the  excitement. 
Already  there  began  to  be  a  sense  of  sullen  de- 
fiance in  men's  faces.  The  loud,  lifting  shout 
and  eager  hand -clasping  were  gone,  and  men 
gazed  upon  the  variations  of  bulletin  black- 
boards with  firm,  grim  countenances.  Men 
felt,  but  did  not  reason  out,  that  there  was  a 
hitch  in  the  election  machinery  somewhere. 
The  ballot  failing — what  then  ?  Anarchy.  Let 
us  wait.  So  the  great  turmoil  settled  down  to 
grim  repose;  and  the  "posterity  of  the  Consti- 
tution" quailed  before  their  own  engine  of  peace 


SEEKING  SHADOWS. 


As  we  walked  along  among  and  through  the 
passing  crowds  I  could  feel  that  the  elective 
franchise  was  weakening  among  men.  I  could 
scent  the  failure  of  the  many,  and  easily  divine 
how  that  the  ballot  power,  starting  with  the 
few,  then  being  battled  about  to  amuse  the 
many,  may  come  back  to  its  starting  point,  and 
be  again  the  instrument  of  the  few.  At  length, 
as  we  neared  the  restaurant,  I  asked : 

"Johns,  are  you  glad  that  we  captured  Corn- 
wallis  at  Yorktown?" 

"What?" 

I  repeated  my  question. 

"Well !  well !  We  did  capture  Cornwallis— 
didn't  we?"  responded  Johns.  "Well,  now, 
don't  you  know,"  he  continued,  "that's  the  first 
I've  heard  about  Cornwallis  for  at  least  twenty 
years  ?  Why  don't  we  say  more  about  that  vic- 
tory?" 

"One  reason  is,  it  did  not  occur  in  New  Eng- 
land; but  are  you  glad  we  did  it?" 

"I  suppose  so.     Why  not?" 

"Oh,  nothing." 

"Well,  but  it  is  something,  too.  The  old 
rooster  ought  to  have  kept  his  red -coats  at 
home." 

"Does  it  make  any  difference  what  color  the 
army  coat  is,  if  the  army  rules?" 

"Why,  yes — of  course." 

"Not  to  me,"  I  said,  as  we  entered  the  room 
where  tables,  dishes,  and  white-aproned  waiters 
abound. 

I  suppose  nearly  all  men  and  many  women 
know  what  .is  done  in  a  restaurant,  and  yet  to 
me  the  entrance  into  a  strange  place  of  that 
kind  is  ever  a  sort  of  surprise,  not  to  say  em- 
barrassment. 

The  confident  manner  and  emphatic  tread  of 
the  waiter  seems  a  sort  of  menace  to  my  shy 
nature,  while  the  bold  stare  of  the  old  habitue 
of  the  place,  as  he  lowers  his  newspaper  and 
looks  steadily  at  me  over  the  tops  of  his  pinch- 
nose  eye-glasses,  gives  me  the  feeling  of  being 
accused  of  something  green ;  all  of  which,  add- 
ed to  my  ever -futile  attempts  to  unravel  that 
gastronomic  charade,  the  "bill  of  fare,"  puts 
upon  me  an  impressive  sense  of  my  own  little- 
ness and  rural  homeliness.  On  the  matter  of 
the  bill  of  fare  I  appeal  to  my  rustic  country- 
men to  say  if  it  is  not  a  delusion  and  a  snare  to 
the  empty  stomach  of  the  man  who  is  accus- 
tomed to  have  his  food  placed  before  him,  like 
a  Democratic  State  Convention  with  every  well 
known  delegate  in  his  place  andjthe  country 
fully  represented. 

By  the  time  my  nerves  were  somewhat  com- 
posed the  waiter  brought  our  order,  and  in  a 
rattling,  banging,  homeless,  heartless  rapidity 
placed  before  me  an  array  of  small  dishes,  each 


of  which,  by  the  smallness  of  its  contents,  seem- 
ed to  say,  "Meat  for  one,"  "Stew  for  one"— in 
fact,  everything  or  anything  only  for  one;  a 
state  of  things  calculated  to  make  a  family  man 
feel  lost.  What  chance  with  such  dishes  is 
there  for  the  yearling  who  sits  in  his  little  high 
chair  at  my  right,  or  the  three -year  old  at  my 
left,  to  reach  their  chubby  greasy  hands  fondly 
around  my  plate  and  call  for  a  divide?  I  al- 
most dropped  tears  into  the  black  adulterous 
coffee  as  I  momentarily  thought  of  the  restau- 
rant isolation  and  dreamed  of  "my  young  bar- 
barians at  play."  A  restaurant  is  no  good 
place  for  the  family  father  of  a  numerous  prog- 
eny. The  place  is  not  redolent  of  the  family 
virtues..  These  little  oblong  dishes  with  their 
units  of  grub  seem  to  sing  a  solitary  song  like 
this: 

"  No  one  to  love,  no  love  to  fight, 
No  one  to  weep  if  a  fellow  gets  tight." 

We  could  not  talk  while  lunching  of  anything 
but  politics,  because  there  was  a  political  epi- 
demic, and  at  the  numerous  tables  were  men 
gesticulating  with  knife,  fork,  or  fingers  while 
talking  through  working  jaws,  and  the  absorb- 
ing subject  was  the  ballot ;  hence,  like  a  true 
ruminant,  I  chewed  in  silence  and  wondered 
inwardly  as  to  the  effect  of  these  political  epi- 
demics on  the  health  of  the  republic.  Is  the 
political  spasm  which  we  have  each  four  years 
a  healthy  orgasm,  or  does  it  lead  to  softening 
of  the  political  brain?  Does  it  indicate  a  sen- 
sible love  of  country,  or  is  it  only  a  maudlin, 
senile  passion?  Is  it  the  ragged  remainder  of 
what  we  have  been,  or  is  it  the  swelling  germ 
of  a  better  life?  If  at  this  point  I  had  not 
strangled  on  a  misdirected  gulp  of  coffee  there 
is  no  telling  what  fearful  conundrum  I  would 
have  put  to  myself. 

We  finished  our  lunch,  and  Johns  and  I  pass- 
ed out  once  again  into  the  streets  of  America. 
I  could  not  then,  nor  can  I  now,  dispossess  my 
mind  of  the  overpowering  shadow  of  "our  in- 
stitutions" as  the  politician  pleases  to  call  them 
— "our  American  institutions" — hence  all  the 
streets  that  ever  I  saw,  having  seen  streets  in 
no  other  country,  are  to  me  American  streets. 
Real  provincialism  has  no  abiding  place  in  our 
republic.  The  out -door  impression  is  every- 
where the  same.  The  people  are  clothed  alike ; 
the  horses  are  harnessed  alike ;  the  heavy  wag- 
ons are  painted  alike;  the  light  wagons  and 
carriages  have  all  the  same  glitter  of  varnish ; 
the  buildings  vary  only  as  to  the  relative 
amount  of  bricks,  woods,  stones,  and  irons 
which  enter  into  their  construction.  There  is 
the  merest  faint  odor  of  antiquity  in  the  oldest 
street — no  quaint  or  curious  footways  from  the 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


long  forgotten  past ;  and  when  you  throw  over 
all  this  the  presidential  glamour  of  the  ballot- 
box  which  you  know  is  on  the  same  day  every- 
where throughout  the  entire  land,  you  cannot 
resist  the  impulse  to  forget  the  name  of  the 
town  you  happen  to  be  in  and  think  of  it  all 
only  as  America — the  land  of  the  free,  etc. 

We  pursued  our  way  without  aim  or  object 
along  the  streets,  Johns  not  seeming  just  then 
to  wish  to  return  to  his  looking-glasses,  but  by 
a  sort  of  instinct  common  to  bees,  ants,  and 
men  we  drew  toward  the  center  of  the  hive  and 
found  ourselves  once  more  in  the  midst  of  the 
anxious  inquirers,  who,  though  ever  changing 
faces  by  the  coming  of  one  and  the  going  of 
another,  wore  still  the  same  sullen  expression 
of  countenance  as  they  tried  to  figure  some  sat- 
isfaction out  of  the  fragmentary  contradictions 
chalked  up  before  their  eyes  as  information  to 
the  passing  public. 

Johns  and  I  talked  very  little  as  we  walked 
among  the  people.  At  length,  when  we  had 
walked  out  of  the  throngest  of  the  throng,  I 
said,  "Johns,  does  it  make  your  eyes  ache  to 
have  so  many  people  pass  and  repass  across 
your  vision?" 

"No,  not  now." 

"Did  it  ever?" 

"Oh,  yes.  When  I  first  came  to  the  city  I 
tried  to  see  everything  at  once." 

"And  that  tired  your  eyes?" 

"Of  course  it  did.  I  took  in  so  many  im- 
pressions that  the  internal  machinery  of  my 
eyes  gave  out  and  broke  down  from  over- 
work." 

"I  guess  that  must  be  it,  for  my  eyes  do  not, 
for  days  after,  get  over  a  visit  to  the  city. 
When  I  return  home  to  the  farm,  the  green  of 
the  fields  and  trees  comes  into  my  eyes  like  the 
cooling  spray  of  a  woodland  water -fall,  and  I 
have  a  desire  to  lie  down  for  hours  and  close 
my  eyes  without  sleeping." 

"Well,"  said  Johns,  with  an  amused  expres- 
sion in  his  face,  "there  is  a  photographer  in 
every  intelligent  eye,  and  when  you  come  to  the 
city  you  are  hungry  for  new  views  and  new 
faces;  and  these  views  and  faces  come  before 
you  so  fast  that  you  overwork  your  photographer, 
and  when  you  go  home  he  wants  to  rest,  and  he 
persuades  you  to  close  up  the  windows  of  your 
head,  lock  the  front  door  of  your  observation 
shop,  and  let  him  take  a  sleep." 

"I  suppose,  then,  you  think  I'm  staring  my 
eyes  out  like  a  gawk !" 

"No,  not  like  a  gawk  particularly,  for  every 
observant  body  does  it  until  the  newness  wears 
off." 

"Do  you  think  people  notice  me  staring  at 
things?" 


"  Oh,  no.  People  who  are  minding  their  own 
lawful  business  pay  no  attention,  but  the  beg- 
gar, the  bummer,  the  bunko-boy,  and  the  strap- 
gamester  have  an  eye  on  you ;  the  harlot,  also, 
may  possibly  be  aware  of  your  arrival  in  town." 

"  I  should  think  they  would  know  a  stranger 
by  his  clothing,  or  perhaps  by  his  walk." 

"Not  much.  You  may  get  the  newest  and 
nobbiest  outfit,  from  boot-heels  to  hat-crown — 
you  may  hire  a  fancy  vehicle  with  a  driver  and 
footman  to  ride  you  about — and  still  your  hun- 
gry eyes  will  tell  the  sharps  and  experts  that 
you  are  a  non-resident." 

"That's  curious." 

"Not  at  all.  If  you  will  notice  that  man  in 
front  of  us  you  will  see  that  he  scuds  along, 
paying  not  the  least  attention  to  anything 
above  or  below,  right  or  left ;  and  you  see  now 
how  he  swings  around  the  corner  of  the  streets, 
without  seeming,  to  note  where  he  is  going  or 
what  is  ahead  of  him ;  the  usual  noises  of  the 
streets  no  more  distract  him  than  the  ticking 
of  a  clock  in  his  room.  He  is  at  home  and  his 
every  move  shows  it." 

"Then  I'm  not  at  home,  and  my  every  move 
shows  that,  too?" 

"That's  about  it,"  said  Johns,  laughing. 

Just  at  this  point  Johns  stopped  suddenly  in 
front  of  a  photographer's  show-case  at  the  foot 
of  a  stairway. 

"Excuse  me  for  five  minutes;"  and  he  went 
up  those  steps  clear  out  of  my  sight,  three  steps 
at  once,  like  a  young  hoodlum  getting  up-stairs 
on  a  Saturday  night  to  a  popular  soubrette 
benefit  at  the  theater. 

In  a  short  time  he  came  down  again  accom- 
panied by  a  male  attache"  of  the  photograph 
gallery. 

"This  one,"  said  Johns,  pointing  to  a  full 
length  female  picture  in  the  show-case. 

"We  cannot  part  with  that,"  remarked  the 
attache". 

"Give  me  a  copy  then,  or  lend  it  to  me,  and 
I'll  copy  it." 

"Come  up  into  the  gallery,"  said  the  attache", 
removing  the  picture  from  the  case. 

"Only  a  moment,"  Johns  said,  apologetically, 
to  me  as  he  went  up  stairs,  following  the  pho- 
tographer's man. 

Presently  he  came  hurriedly  down  again,  re- 
marking : 

"All  right  now.  Come— go  back  with  me  to 
my  place— that  is,"  he  hesitatingly  added,  "un- 
less you  want  to  walk  farther,  or  go  to  some 
other  place." 

"No;  I  am  at  your  service,"  I  replied,  and 
we  moved  toward  the  business  place  of  John 
Johns.  As  soon  as  we  were  in  the  room  where 
the  looking-glasses  were,  Johns  said  to  me : 


SEEKING  SHADOWS. 


"Sit  down."  Then,  throwing  his  hat  upon 
the  chemically  stained  table,  he  rushed  to  his 
dark  corner,  and  almost  instantly  came  out 
again  with  a  roll  of  those  crisp  paper -proofs  in 
his  hand.  These  he  laid  upon  the  table.  Then, 
sitting  down  at  the  same  table,  he  took  from 
his  pockets  two  things — one  of  which  was  the 
photograph  we  saw  in  the  gallery  show-case, 
while  the  other  was  a  magnifying  glass.  For  a 
few  minutes  he  absorbed  his  attention  by  look- 
ing through  the  glass  alternately  at  the  proofs 
and  the  photograph  from  the  gallery.  Then, 
striking  the  table  with  the  soft  side  of  his 
clenched  hand,  he  exclaimed,  "The  identical 
same,  by  heaven." 

"The  same?"  I  echoed. 

"Yes,"  said  he,  again  looking  through  the 
glass  at  the  pictures.  "She's  older  and  grander 
looking  now,  but  she's  the  same  'girl'  she  was 
at  least  twenty  years  ago.  Just  take  this  glass 
and  look  at  her.  You  see  in  my  pictures,  which 
came  out  of  yon  old  mirror,  she  is  all  of  the 
Italian  painter's  fancy  of  the  Madonna,  less  the 
holy  nimbus,  while  in  this  picture  she  is  the 
Roman  matron,  beatified  by  the  snows  and 
spring-flowers  of  Saxon  Europe.  Perhaps  you 
will  not  see  in  the  photographic  black  and  white 
the  sense  of  color  which  I  feel." 

I  took  the  pictures.  I  looked  at  them  through 
the  glass. 

"Noble  female  animal,"  I  exclaimed;  "and 
yet,  withal,  great  of  intellect,  too.  Johns,"  I 
added,  while  still  looking  through  the  glass  at 
the  face  and  form  of  the  picture,  "if  I  were  not 
the  well  wedded  father  of  a  numerous  interest- 
ing progeny,  I  should  desire,  at  this  moment, 
to  go  somewhere  to  find  a  woman  like  this  and 
fall  in  love  with  her  with  all  my  might." 

"You  will  go  a  long  way  before  you  find  a 
woman  like  that,  and  when  you  do  find  her,  she 
will  be  mortgaged,  body  and  soul,  to  some  other 
fellow." 

"Do  you  think  so  strong  a  nature  as  this 
would  be  so  mortgaged  to  anybody?" 

"Yes;  I  have  an  idea  that  a  great  woman — 
a  really  great  one — clings  greatly  to  her  accept- 
ed love,  as  she,  also,  does  to  her  children." 

At  this  point,  a  new  thought  coming  into 
John's  head,  he  popped  off  toward  his  dark 
room,  with  the  photograph  in  his  hand,  saying 
as  he  went,  "Ah,  excuse  me." 

When  John  Johns  goes  off  in  that  manner,  I 
know  by  old  experience  with  his  kind  that  I 
may  see  him  again  in  an  hour,  or  a  week,  as 
the  humor  takes  him.  So,  after  waiting  some 
time,  I  said: 

"Excuse  me — I'm  going  down  town." 

"All  right,"  said  Johns,  from  his  den,  "I'll 
see  you  soon." 


Going  down  stafrs  into  the  street,  I  felt  re- 
lieved from  the  incubus  of  Johns's  mesmeric 
force.  These  highly  concentrated  and  com- 
pressed people  always  fascinate  me.  Highly 
polished  steam  engines  have  the  same  effect 
upon  me  when  I  watch  them  running  rapidly, 
with  that  simmering  hint  of  a  broken  silence 
which  may  end  in  explosion. 

I  went  about  my  own  little  business  among 
the  thousands  and  thousands  of  other  nameless 
people  who,  like  myself,  were  seeking  to  bring 
together  the  incongruous  items  of  daily  human 
life.  I  had  not  further  converse  with  J.  J.  for 
more  than  a  week,  though  each  day,  sometimes 
more  than  once,  I  called  at  his  place  only  to 
find  his  Mongolian  servitor  responding  to  my 
call  with : 

"Him  all  light.  Allee  time  catchee  photo- 
glap.  No  talkee  him.  Him  tellee  me,  him  flen' 
come,  me  talkee — by  um  by  all  light." 

I  did  not  call  upon  my  old  former  partner 
again  for  more  than  another  week,  and  when  I 
did  then  call,  his  servant  said : 

"Him  go  tlavel.  No  tellee  me  nodding.  Me 
no  know." 

"How  long  is  he  gone?  How  many  days 
gone?" 

"Thlee  day — no  see  h,im." 

Becoming  weary  with  waiting  on  the  eccen- 
trics of  my  friend,  I  wended  my  way  to  the  de- 
pot, and  took  the  cars  for  home. 

When  I  arrived  at  home,  I  found  an  epistle 
of  some  length,  addressed  to  me,  in  my  village 
post-office  box.  I  carried  the  letter  home, 
and,  after  I  had  looked  about  my  place,  and 
spoken  a  pleasant,  friendly  piece  to  the  cows, 
horses,  pigs,  and  fowls,  and  made  myself  other- 
wise sociable  and  comfortable  among  my  own, 
or,  rather,  among  the  things  to  which  I  belong, 
I  settled  down  to  a  perusal  of  my  correspond- 
ence. The  long  epistle  ran  thus : 

MY  DEAR  MAC.  : — You  are  the  only  sensible 
man  I  was  ever  really  acquainted  with.  You 
are  the  one  go-ahead  man  that  knows  when  to 
quit.  Not  knowing  that,  I  am  both  a  fool  and 
a  beggar. 

I  "hunted"  the  woman  whose  photograph  you 
know  I  got  from  the  photographer.  I  found 
her.  With  my  new  power  I  made  her  hunt  me. 
I  sent  her,  in  part,  the  pictorial  history  of  her 
old  times.  She  came  to  my  place,  dressed  like 
a  dignified  duchess,  having  with  her  a  four- 
year  old  girl  dressed  like  a  princess. 

She,  with  the  child,  climbed  the  dusty,  dark 
stairs  to  my  studio.  I  offered  a  chair — she 
took  it,  and  sat  down — the  child  clinging  about 
her  knees  as  it  followed  me  with  its  eyes.  The 
woman  took  from  her  satchel  the  pictures  I 


320 


THE   CAL1FORN1AN. 


had  sent  her  with  my  note,  in  which  I  had  writ- 
ten, "if  it  is  important  to  you  to  know  more  of 
this  matter,  call  upon  John  Johns,  No. —  J  — 
Street,"  and  laid  them  in  her  lap,  under  her 
hand. 

"You  sent  me  this  note  and  these  photo- 
graphs?" 

"Yes,  madam,"  I  answered,  taking  a  chair 
at  a  respectful  distance  in  front  of  her. 

"What  do  you  want?"  she  asked,  dryly,  while 
the  child,  quitting  her  knees,  came  over  to  my 
own,  and  began  softly  smoothing  down  the  ends 
of  my  beard. 

"I  want  to  know  if  it  is  to  your  interest  to 
have  the  means  of  making  those  pictures  de- 
stroyed?" 

"No,  it  is  not  to  my  interest,"  she  answered, 
calmly. 

"Very  well,  madam,  then  the  means  will  not 
be  destroyed, "  I  said,  coolly,  as  I  half  uncon- 
ciously  took  the  child  upon  my  knee. 

"You  look  like  my  mamma,"  said  the  child, 
gazing  steadily  up  at  my  face. 

At  this  speech  of  the  child,  the  mother  cast 
a  startled  half  glance  at  me,  yet  remarked  : 

"  It  is  my  desire  to  have  everything  connect- 
ed with  these  pictures  destroyed — but  I  can- 
not say  it  is  to  my  interest." 

"You  know  best,  madam." 

"I  am  not  certain  that  I  do,"  she  said,  "but 
I  wish  to  tell  you  (however  you  came  by  your 
knowledge,  and  I  do  not  ask  how  you  came  by 
it)  that  I  am  not,  and  never  have  been,  the 
thing  which  your  pictures  in  some  degree  indi- 
cate." 

"It  is  your  face,  is  it  not?" 

"It  is  my  face." 

"It  is  your  form?" 

"  It  was  my  form.     I  was  a  girl  then." 

"Very  good,  madam,  I  seek  no  explanations." 

"But  you  should  not  be  harder  with  me  than 
the  facts." 

"I  am  not." 

"But,  pardon  me,  sir,  you  are." 

"If  the  pictures  say  less,  or  say  more,  I  am 
content.  I  shall  add  nothing." 

"You  looks  like  a  good  man,"  said  the  little 
one,  laying  her  head  contentedly  against  my 
vest. 

"But  that  will  not  do,  sir.  I  believe  in  fol- 
lowing the  truth,  cost  what  it  will,  but  I  am 
not  willing  to  submit  to  more  or  less  than  the 
truth.  Now,  there  are  only  two  ways  that  you 
can  add  to  your  fortunes  by  making  me  asham- 
ed; one  is  that  I  pay  you  money — the  other  is 
that  you  sell  what  appears  to  be,  but  is  not,  the 
story  of  my  shame  to  the  public.  In  either  case 
it  would  bring  grief  upon  my  house.  I  deny 
no  fact — which  do  you  propose  to  do?" 


"Whichever  you  desire,  madam." 

"But  I  desire  neither." 

"I  think  we  understand  each  other." 

"No,  sir,  I  think  you  do  not  understand  me. 
I  have  come  at  your  summons  to  say  to  you 
that  I  am  a  woman  who  cares  not  one  straw 
for  her  own  life,  if  it  could  be  disconnected 
from  those  who  are  dearer  than  life,  and  to  ask 
you,  if  you  should  seem  to  be  a  gentleman,  not 
to  injure,  through  me,  those  who  never  did  them- 
selves or  others  any  wrong." 

"What  shall  be  my  compensation  for  this 
gentlemanly  condescension?" 

"A  gentleman's  clear  conscience,  sir." 

I  laughed. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  the  madam,  rising,  "I  have 
asked  all  I  came  to  ask,  and  I  tell  you  now, 
without  anger  or  alarm,  that  when  I  was  a  girl 
alone  in  this  wild  country  over  twenty  years 
ago  I  was  wild  as  the  country  was — wild  as  an 
old  Californian ;  but,"  and,  taking  her  child  by 
the  hand,  she  stood  erect — "but  I  never  was, 
nor  will  I  now  be,  a  hypocrite  or  a  liar." 

Something  in  the  woman's  proud  attitude,  as 
she  uttered  these  last  words,  brought  me  the 
slightest  reminder  of  long,  long  ago;  but  be- 
fore I  could  have  time  to  locate  the  reminder 
in  its  rightful  place,  the  madam  continued : 

"You  must  see,  sir,  it  is  no  use — no  use  for 
me  to  buy  your  accusation  if  you  are  not  at 
bottom  a  gentleman ;  and,  if  you  are  a  gentle- 
man, it  cannot  be  for  sale." 

I  thought  this  a  pretty  keen  bluff,  but  you 
know  that  I  am  not  easily  bluffed.  Yet  I  ad- 
mitted to  myself  that  she  was  playing  against 
one  of  the  weakest  combinations  in  my  hand. 

"  I  am  complimented,  madam,  for  the  liberal 
offer  to  class  me  among  gentlemen." 

"But  you  do  not  accept  it?" 

"No,  madam.  I  have  not  yet  had  cause  to 
agree  with  the  Honorable  Thomas  H.  Benton, 
of  Missouri,  who  advised  his  young  friend  to 
'perjure  yourself  like  a  gentleman,  sir,'  rather 
than  swear  to  the  truth  of  a  lady's  character." 

"Yet  you  are  an  American  born?" 

"  I  have  that  honor,  madam." 

"And  have  sisters,  I  may  suppose?" 

"Not  in  the  plural.  Perhaps  not  now  any 
sister,  but  one  I  did  have  long  ago." 

"Suppose  I  were  that  sister?" 

"Pshaw,  madam;  all  this  is  away  from  the 
matter  in  hand." 

"Very  good,  sir.  If  no  appeal  can  reach 
your  gentlemanly  instincts,  my  mission  here  is 
entirely  ended.  I  will  not  buy  you — let  the  con- 
sequences be  what  they  may,"  and  she  opened 
the  door  toward  going  out. 

"Perhaps,  madam,  in  proof  of  the  courage 
you  wish  to  evince  in  refusing  to  'buy  me,'  you 


REMINISCENCES  OF  THE  PACIFIC  COAST  TELEGRAPH.       321 


will  give  me  the  name  of  the  maiden  who  fig- 
ures in  these  poor  photographs  of  mine." 

"My  maiden  name?  Yes,  sir.  It  was  Hen- 
rietta Moidorn." 

She  passed  the  door,  closed  it  behind  her, 
and  was  gone.  I  did  not  call  after  her.  The 
room  seemed  riding  on  the  pulse  of  an  earth- 
quake. Everything  was  mixed.  I  sank  into  a 
chair  by  the  table  utterly  nerveless.  I  was 
pursuing  and  trying  to  shame  my  own  flesh 
and  blood — my  own  and  only  sister.  I  could 
feel  the  place  warm  on  my  vest  where  the 
child's  head  had  rested. 

There  is  little  more  to  tell,  old  man.  Long 
as  you  have  known  me,  much  as  I  have  talked 
to  you  alone  in  the  mountains  of  the  sage-land, 
faithful  as  you  have  been  to  me,  and  truly  as  I 
have  respected  and  trusted  you,  there  is  one 
chapter  of  my  personal  history  I  never  have 
told  to  you,  and  now  never  will. 

My  great  discovery  looks  to  me  now  like  a 
crime.  I  shall  bury  myself  and  it  together. 


Good-bye,  old  man.  There  is  nothing  you 
can  do.  There  is  nothing  worth  doing  for  your 
old  friend,  John  Johns.  You  may  write  or  tell 
what  you  like  about  me,  as  I  shall  then  be  out 
of  the  way  forever,  where  nothing  human  can 
affect,  Yours  truly,  in  fact, 

JOHN  JACOB  MOIDORN. 

I  finished  reading  the  epistle.  I  wrote  this 
sketch.  I  have  reflected  over  the  whole  mat- 
ter, but  as  I  am  not  the  heir  of  John  Johns,  or, 
more  correctly  in  the  new  light,  of  John  Jacob 
Moidorn,  I  did  not  look  after  its  effects,  al- 
though I  read  myself  thin  of  flesh  over  the  daily 
papers  hunting  accidents,  suicides,  mysterious 
disappearances,  and  morgue  reports.  I  do  not 
know  what  became  of  my  old  friend,  or  of  his 
sister,  or  of  the  Chinaman.  I  do  not  know 
why  Tilden  was  not  elected  President  in  1876, 
nor  why  "Poiper  was  defayted,"  and  I  don't 
believe  anybody  else  does. 

J.  W.  GALLY. 


EARLY   REMINISCENCES  OF   THE    TELEGRAPH    ON 
THE    PACIFIC   COAST. 


During  the  early  period  of  its  history,  say 
from  1849  to  I^53)  California  was  isolated  from 
the  rest  of  the  world,  there  being  no  telegraphic 
communication  on  the  Pacific  Coast  whatever. 
The  first  movement  to  put  a  line  of  telegraph 
in  operation  was  made  in  1852,  when  Messrs. 
Allen  and  Burnham  obtained  from  the  Legislat- 
ure of  California  a  franchise  giving  them  the 
right  to  operate  a  line  between  San  Francisco 
and  Marysville,  via  San  Jose",  Stockton,  and 
Sacramento,  for  a  term  of  fifteen  years — this 
right  to  be  exclusive,  provided  that  the  line  was 
completed  by  the  first  of  November,  1853.  The 
company  was  organized  under  the  name  of  the 
California  Telegraph  Company;  but,  owing  to 
disastrous  fires  in  1852,  it  was  found  impossible 
to  carry  out  the  construction  of  the  line  under 
the  first  organization.  In  1853,  the  company 
was  reorganized,  and  called  the  California  State 
Telegraph  Company.  The  stock  was  fully  paid 
up,  and  the  Directors,  in  order  to  secure  the 
charter,  energetically  set  to  work  to  complete 
the  line  within  the  time  specified  in  the  original 
franchise.  W.  B.  Ransom  was  appointed  Su- 
perintendent, and  W.  M.  Rockwell,  who  for 
many  years  after  was  a  prominent  hardware 
merchant  in  San  Francisco,  had  the  contract  for 


the  construction  of  the  line.  I  had  at  that  time 
just  returned  to  Sacramento  from  the  mines, 
where  I  had  been  trying  my  hand  at  mining, 
and  by  accident  met  Mr.  Ransom,  who  learned 
from  my  conversation  that  I  was  a  practical 
telegrapher,  and  immediately  engaged  my  serv- 
ices to  take  charge  of  the  wire  party  then  be- 
ing fitted  out  at  San  Francisco.  I  at  once  left 
for  that  city,  where  on  my  arrival  I  took  com- 
mand of  the  men  employed  to  string  the  wire, 
at  the  same  time  learning  that  the  pole  -  setters 
were  already  many  miles  in  advance. 

The  party  numbered  five  besides  myself — 
our  means  of  transportation  being  the  running- 
gear  of  a  wagon,  on  which  were  placed  loose 
boards  enough  to  carry  our  meager  outfit.  This 
consisted  of  a  coffee-pot,  small  sheet-iron  boiler, 
tin  plates,  tin  cups,  knives,  forks,  and  blankets. 
The  wagon,  drawn  by  a  pair  of  well  broken 
mustangs,  in  addition  to  carrying  our  camp 
equipage,  served  the  purpose  of  carrying  the 
reel  and  running  out  the  wire.  It  was  then  the 
thirteenth  of  September,  1853,  when  work  was 
commenced;  and  as  the  line  had  to  be  com- 
pleted and  in  operation  over  a  distance  of  two 
hundred  miles  before  the  first  of  November 
following  (six  weeks),  there  was  no  time  to  lose. 


322 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


Our  little  party  worked  energetically,  and  on 
the  first  day  we  strung  up  about  three  miles, 
camping  for  the  night  at  what  was  known  as 
the  Abbey,  a  wayside  house  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  city.  The  next  day  we  made  about  six 
miles,  having  commenced  early  in  the  morning 
and  working  until  dark.  The  day  had  been  a 
very  foggy  one,  and  as  the  country  at  that  time 
was  but  sparsely  settled,  and  but  little  land 
fenced  in  in  any  direction,  we  found  ourselves, 
when  the  day's  work  was  over,  lost  in  the  fog. 
Toward  the  close  of  the  day,  and  shortly  be- 
fore leaving  off  work,  we  had  noticed,  as  we 
came  along,  a  squatter's  cabin,  to  which,  hav- 
ing no  tent  with  us,  we  had  decided  to  return 
and  seek  shelter  for  the  night.  To  find  this 
cabin  was  now  our  great  desire,  that  we  might 
be  protected  from  the  cold  winds  and  fog.  Sep- 
arating, but  with  the  understanding  that  we 
should  keep  within  hailing  distance  of  each 
other,  we  groped  in  the  dark  and  fog  for  more 
than  an  hour,  but  without  success.  The  squat- 
ter's cabin  seemed  to  be  a  sort  of  befogged 
"Will  o'  the  Wisp"— with  this  difference,  we 
were  *sure  that  it  was  there  somewhere,  but 
to  save  our  lives  none  of  us  could  find  it.  We 
finally  determined  to  give  up  the  search,  roll 
ourselves  up  in  our  blankets,  and  make  the 
best  of  it  on  the  ground.  In  our  eagerness  to 
find  the  cabin  we  had  overlooked  our  supper. 
This  had  now  to  be  prepared.  It  took  but  a 
few  moments  to  decide  what  it  should  consist 
of.  Our  larder  was  so  limited  as  to  dispose 
quickly  of  all  controversy  on  that  head.  But 
simple  as  the  meal  was,  it  could  not  be  pre- 
pared without  fuel,  and,  while  searching  for  suf- 
ficient wood  to  make  a  fire,  one  of  our  party 
ran  up  against  the  cabin  we  had  so  long  and 
axiously  sought,  and  which  all  this  time  was 
within  a  few  hundred  feet  of  the  spot  we  had 
selected  as  our  camping  ground.  Worn  out  as 
we  were  with  a  long  and  hard  day's  work,  the 
prospect  so  unexpectedly  opened  up  of  passing 
the  night  under  shelter,  and  in  the  warmth  of  a 
cheerful  fire,  was  received  by  all  with  feelings  of 
unlimited  satisfaction.  A  kind-hearted  squat- 
ter received  us  most  hospitably,  and  welcomed 
us  to  the  shelter  of  his  cabin,  which  our  party, 
small  though  it  was,  completely  filled.  Coffee 
was  soon  made,  and  this,  with  some  canned 
meats  and  vegetables,  soon  satisfied  the  inner 
man.  A  few  minutes'  chat  sufficed  to  tell  the 
news  of  the  day,  and,  then,  rolling  up  in  our 
blankets,  we  sought  and  quickly  found  a  well 
earned  repose. 

All  this  to  me  at  that  time  was,  in  reality, 
but  little  hardship.  My  journey  across  the 
plains  had  thoroughly  broken  me  in  to  the 
roughness  and  simplicity  of  camp-life,  and  as  I 


stretched  out  that  night,  and  often  afterward,  in 
my  blankets  on  the  "soft  side  of  a  plank,"  I 
enjoyed  a'  rest  rarely  experienced  by  any  even 
when  surrounded  by  the  greatest  luxuries. 

The  next  morning  we  made  an  early  start, 
breakfast  being  finished  before  daylight.  There 
was  no  eight-hour  law  at  that  time,  and  as  the 
work  had  to  be  pushed  forward  rapidly,  our 
time  was  from  daylight  to  dark.  In  these  days 
we  put  up  from  five  to  seven  miles  of  wire  a 
day.  On  the  fifth  day  out  we  reached  a  ravine 
known  as  the  Canada  Diablo,  near  what  is  now 
Belmont,  and  the  site  of  what  was  afterward 
noted  as  the  Ralston  mansion.  Here  the  first 
attempt  was  successfully  made  to  open  up  com- 
munication by  telegraph  with  San  Francisco. 
On  testing  the  line  I  found  a  good  current  from 
the  San  Francisco  battery,  and,  after  having 
connected  my  instruments,  placed  myself  in  di- 
rect communication  with  that  office,  then  es- 
tablished in  what  is  now  the  old  City  Hall. 
This  was  the  first  message  ever  transmitted  on 
the  Pacific  Coast  over  a  telegraph  line.  After 
this,  regular  communication  was  opened  up  ev- 
ery evening  between  our  camp  and  the  city, 
and  the  progress  of  the  work  reported. 

The  telegraph  at  that  time  was  a  source  of 
great  curiosity  to  almost  every  person  along  the 
route,  particularly  to  the  native  population,  who 
looked  upon  the  construction  of  the  line  with 
the  greatest  wonder.  Many  of  them  in  igno- 
rance of  its  real  purpose  and  not  understanding 
the  use  of  the  poles  erected  along  the  road  at 
regular  intervals,  strung  with  wire  with  a  cross- 
arm  on  each  pole,  conceived  the  idea  and  ex- 
pressed it  as  their  belief  that  the  Yankees  were 
fencing  in  the  country  with  crosses  to  keep  the 
devil  out. 

From  this  period  the  work  was  successfully 
carried  on  without  any  incident  of  importance 
until  we  reached  San  Jose*.  At  this  place  the 
first  regular  station  was  opened.  The  office 
was  fitted  up  on  the  day  following  our  arrival, 
and  I  soon  had  it  prepared  for  business.  While 
these  preparations  were  being  made  the  portion 
of  the  street  fronting  the  office  had  rapidly  fill- 
ed up  with  a  crowd  of  people,  a  large  propor- 
tion of  whom  were  native  Californians,  all  man- 
ifesting the  greatest  interest  and  desiring  to 
know  what  was  going  on.  The  day  being 
warm,  the  windows  of  the  office  were  wide 
open.  As  they  opened  on  the  sidewalk  all  that 
I  was  doing  inside  was  plainly  visible  to  those 
standing  without.  Observing  the  anxious  and 
inquiring  expression  on  the  faces  of  those  who 
had  managed  to  get  near  enough  to  thrust  their 
heads  through  the  open  window,  it  occurred  to 
me  to  act  in  a  very  mysterious  manner  in  order 
to  see  what  effect  it  would  have  upon  my  spec- 


REMINISCENCES   OF  THE  PACIFIC   COAST  TELEGRAPH.      323 


tators.  I  had  just  received  the  first  message 
from  San  Francisco,  which,  after  it  had  been 
copied,  I  placed  in  an  envelope.  On  seeing  me 
do  this  my  audience  thought,  as  I  supposed,  I 
was  preparing  the  message  for  transmission.  I 
took  it  from  the  table  on  which  I  had  placed  it, 
and  instead  of  handing  it  to  the  boy  for  deliv- 
ery, I  put  it,  holding  it  in  my  hand,  under  the 
table  which  was  provided  with  sides  sufficient- 
ly deep  to  hide  the  envelope  from  their  view. 
As  I  did  this  I  kept  my  eyes  fixed  on  the  wire, 
while,  with  my  right  hand,  I  took  hold  of  the 
key  and  began  working  it.  The  moment  the 
crowd  heard  the  first  click  of  the  instrument 
they  all  rushed  from  under  the  veranda  out  into 
the  street  to  see  the  message  in  the  envelope 
pass  along  the  wire.  On  seeing  them  rush*  out 
tumbling  one  over  the  other  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  message,  we  on  the  inside  burst  out  into 
one  long  and  continued  roar  of  laughter.  Our 
laughing  seemed  to  puzzle  them  still  more. 
But  little  by  little  they  began  to  realize  that 
they  had  been  made  the  victims  of  an  innocent 
joke.  They  at  first  manifested  signs  of  disap- 
pointment that  their  expectations  had  not  been 
realized;  but  instead  of  passing  any  time  in 
vain  regrets,  they  immediately  set  to  work  to 
find  out  what  really  had  become  of  the  myste- 
rious message.  And,  after  all,  their  conception 
of  this,  although  a  mistaken  one,  was  a  very 
rational  one.  To  one  who  had  neither  heard 
of  the  telegraph  and  electricity,  nor  conceived 
the  possible  existence  of  the  latter,  what  could 
be  more  natural  than  to  suppose  that  the  en- 
velope and  its  contents  were  propelled  under 
the  agency  of  a  motive  power  along  the  wire 
from  one  point  to  another.  As  they  had  failed 
to  see  it  pass  along  the  wire  their  second  sup- 
position was  that  the  wire  was  hollow  and  that 
the  envelope  with  its  message*  inclosed  was 
forced  through  the  hollow  part,  and  with  this 
idea  they  asked  whether  such  was  not  the  case ; 
nor  would  they  believe  the  contrary  until,  for 
themselves,  they  had  examined  the  end  of  the 
wire.  Conviction  on  this  point  put  an  end  to 
their  conjectures.  The  telegraph  was  to  them 
the  very  hardest  kind  of  a  conundrum.  It  was 
impossible  of  solution.  Their  final  conclusion 
was  that  it  was  an  enchained  spirit — but  wheth- 
er a  good  one  or  an  evil  one  they  could  not 
quite  determine — over  which  I  had  such  con- 
trol that  it  was  obliged  to  do  my  bidding.  Un- 
der this  impression  they  departed  one  by  one, 
looking  upon  both  the  telegraph  and  myself  as 
something,  as  the  Scotchman  would  say,  "un- 
canny." 

After  having  fully  equipped  the  office  at  San 
Josd  for  business  and  placed  it  in  regular  tele- 
graphic communication  with  San  Francisco,  I 


prepared  to  push  on  the  next  day  for  Stockton, 
when,  just  as  we  were  on  the  point  of  starting, 
I  discovered  that  the  coils  of  wire  that  had  been 
stored  at  San  Josd  were  much  larger  than  those 
we  had  used  between  San  Francisco  and  that 
point,  and  were  consequently  more  difficult  to 
handle  without  changing  the  reel.  We  made 
only  three  miles  that  day,  camping  at  night  in 
front  of  a  farm-house,  the  occupant  of  which 
had  left  the  Eastern  States  before  the  advent 
of  the  telegraph.  When  supper  was  over  he 
visited  our  camp  and  appeared  much  interest- 
ed, watching  me  attentively  while  I  was  com- 
municating with  San  Josd  and  San  Francisco. 
He  could  not  realize  that  it  was  possible  for  me 
to  hold  a  conversation,  through  the  medium  of 
a  little  ticking  instrument,  with  persons  so  far 
distant.  In  fact,  he  expressed  grave  doubts  as 
to  the  truthfulness  of  my  assertion  that  I  was 
speaking  with  any  one  at  all,  saying  that  it  was 
impossible  for  any  one  to  read  or  interpret  the 
clicks  made  by  the  little  instrument  in  front  of 
me.  And  so  satisfied  was  he  of  the  correctness 
of  his  views  that  he  stated  his  willingness  to 
back  them  up  by  a  wager.  He  then  requested 
me  to  tell  him  what  it  was  I  had  just  commu- 
nicated. I  told  him  I  had  informed  the  ope- 
rator at  San  Josd  that  the  machinery  I  was 
using  for  paying  out  the  wire  needed  some  al- 
terations, and  that  I  would  return  there  the  next 
morning  to  have  the  necessary  changes  made. 
He  thereupon  very  kindly  volunteered  on  cer- 
tain conditions  to  take  me  to  San  Jose'  in  his 
wagon.  The  conditions  were  that  I  would  ac- 
cept his  offer  to  furnish  watermelons  for  the 
whole  party  on  its  being  proved  that  the  com- 
munication I  had  stated  as  having  been  sent  by 
me  to  San  Josd  had  been  received  at  that  office 
over  the  line.  But  to  make  sure  that  no  advan- 
tage should  be  taken  of  him,  he  requested  me 
to  send  another  message  to  the  effect  that  on 
our  arrival  at  San  Josd  in  the  morning  the  op- 
erator must  promptly  appear  at  the  door  of  the 
office  and  say  "Watermelons."  My  agreement 
to  do  this  seemed  to  increase  the  interest  my 
rancher  friend  held  in  me,  and  he  very  gen- 
erously tendered  me  the  hospitality  of  his  house, 
in  which  I  enjoyed  the  luxury  of  an  excellent 
bed.  After  a  hearty  breakfast  in  the  morning,  a 
good  pair  of  horses  were  brought  out  and  at- 
tached to  a  buggy,  in  which  was  placed  my 
reel,  and  we  started  for  San  Josd  Drawing  up 
in  front  of  the  office  we  were  met  by  the  oper- 
ator at  the  door,  who  promptly  saluted  us  with 
"  Where  are  the  watermelons?"  My  compan- 
ion slapped  me  on  the  back,  delighted  at  being 
fully  convinced  of  the  reality  and  importance  of 
the  telegraph.  The  watermelons  were  quickly 
provided,  and  as  they  were  worth  at  that  time 


324 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


a  dollar  or  more  apiece,  they  were  considered  a 
great  treat.  When  the  feast  was  over,  he  made 
many  inquiries  about  the  telegraph,  examining 
into  the  mysteries  of  its  working ;  after  which, 
the  changes  in  the  wire-reel  having  in  the  mean- 
time been  made,  we  set  out  on  our  return  to 
the  camp,  where,  on  our  arrival  in  the  after- 
noon, work  was  again  resumed. 

Nothing  worthy  of  note  occurred  after  this 
time  until  we  reached  Sunol  Valley  in  the 
mountains  east  of  the  San  Jose"  Mission.  On 
the  night  of  our  arrival  there  I  was  taken  down 
with  fever,  brought  on  by  fatigue  and  exposure 
to  the  night  air  and  fog.  I  had  not  slept  under 
a  roof  since  leaving  San  Francisco,  except  in 
the  few  cases  I  have  mentioned.  Near  the 
spot  where  we  camped  was  a  rough  Mexican 
hut  containing  some  two  or  three  rooms,  in  one 
of  which  was  a  bar  where  liquors  were  sold, 
and  principally  patronized  by  the  native  popu- 
lation. There  were  none  but  Mexicans  about 
the  place,  and  not  one  of  these  understood  my 
language.  But  notwithstanding  this,  I  en- 
deavored to  make  them  comprehend  that  I 
was  ill  and  desired  a  bed  and  shelter  for  the 
night.  This,  after  some  difficulty,  I  succeeded 
in  doing,  and  one  of  them  finally  conducted  me 
to  a  shed  at  the  end  of  the  building,  where  a 
cot  was  pointed  out  to  me  as  my  bed  for  the 
night.  It  was  a  rude  and  cheerless  looking 
place,  but  feeling  that  even  that  was  better 
than  further  exposure  to  the  night  air,  I  reluc- 
tantly accepted  it.  As  it  was  already  dark 
when  I  arrived  at  this  point,  I.  could  see  and 
judge  but  little  of  the  surroundings;  so  after 
having  arranged  for  my  lodgings,  I  returned  to 
camp  in  order  to  consult  with  my  foreman  for 
pushing  on  the  work  the  next  day,  knowing 
well  that  while  the  fever  lasted  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  me  to  accompany  the  party.  I 
certainly  felt  little  inclination  to  remain  in  the 
lonely  and  miserable  spot  that  had  been  assign- 
ed to  me  as  a  bed,  with  no  one  near  to  whom 
I  could  speak  or  make  known  my  wants.  But 
it  was  a  case  of  Hobson's  choice — that  or  noth- 
ing. The  choice  was  perhaps  less  inviting 
than  the  one  presented  to  "Hobson,"  for  it 
was  in  reality  that  or  an  aggravated  fever.  I 
realized  the  fact  that  the  occurrence  of  the  lat- 
ter might  not  only  endanger  my  life,  but  also 
the  success  of  the  whole  enterprise,  in  failing  to 
have  the  line  built  and  in  operation  within  the 
time  prescribed.  In  addition  to  the  loneliness 
of  the  place  there  was  the  uncertainty  as  to 
whether  my  life  was  safe  with  these  Mexicans, 
there  being  at  that  time  a  good  deal  of  ill  feel- 
ing between  the  Americans  and  the  native  pop- 
ulation, in  consequence  of  the  former  squatting 
on  lands  supposed  to  belong  to  the  latter. 


That  these  were  no  idle  fears  was  established 
by  the  fact  that  but  a  few  days  previous  we  had 
learned  of  two  Americans  who  had  been  lariated 
and  dragged  to  death  by  the  natives.  The 
question,  therefore,  of  my  remaining  alone  with 
these  Mexicans  was  discussed  in  camp  with 
considerable  feeling.  We  none  of  us  carried 
arms,  and  so  were  poorly  prepared  for  defense 
in  the  event  of  any  attack  being  made  on  us  or 
any  of  our  party.  But  as  we  were  not  in  the 
land  business  I  concluded  there  was  no  risk  in 
remaining,  and  the  fever  from  which  I  was  suf- 
fering produced  such  a  depression  on  me  that, 
to  tell  the  truth,  my  feelings  were  those  of  ut- 
ter indifference  as  to  where  I  stayed  so  long  as 
I  could  obtain  some  repose.  I,  therefore,  de- 
termined to  accept  the  situation  and  make  the 
best  of  it,  taking  the  precaution,  however,  to 
hint  to  my  party  that  if  they  heard  any  unusual 
noises  in  the  night  they  had  better  be  on  hand. 
I  then  returned  to  my  "hotel,"  where,  taking  a 
seat  in  the  bar-room,  I  passed  a  couple  of  hours 
before  retiring  to  my  lonely  cot  in  the  corner  of 
the  shed.  During  my  stay  in  the  bar-room 
several  very  ugly-looking  natives  rode  up,  their 
arrival  announced  by  their  jingling  spurs. 
They  would  dismount,  take  their  drink,  smoke 
their  cigarette,  remount,  and  disappear  in  the 
dark.  They  were  all  well  armed  with  pistol 
and  knife,  and  seemed  to  me  as  cut -throat  a 
looking  lot  as  I  had  ever  set  eyes  on.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  my  nerves,  which,  owing  to 
the  fever,  were  in  a  very  shaky  condition,  may 
have  magnified  the  look  of  villainy  in  the  faces 
of  those  fellows,  but  the  appearance  of  them  as 
they  entered  the  room  was  not  such  as  was 
calculated  to  inspire  peace  and  quietness  in  the 
mind  of  one  situated  as  I  was  at  that  moment. 
I  could  not,  however,  sit  up  all  night,  so  at  last 
concluded  to  go  and  make  a  more  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  my  cot.  And  concerning  that 
cot  let  me  say  a  word  more.  I  had  a  keen  ap- 
preciation of  what  the  upper  side  of  a  crockery 
crate  was  as  a  mattress;  my  trip  across  the 
plains  had  initiated  me  into  the  mysteries  of 
what  a  sack  of  flour  was  as  a  pillow ;  my  early 
journeyings  through  California  had  made  per- 
fectly clear  to  me  the  very  doubtful  delights  of 
a  sand-hill  as  a  bed;  but  that  Mexican  cot 
positively  combined  the  tortures  of  all  three. 
From  that  night  I  had,  I  think,  a  much  clearer 
idea  of  the  Spanish  rack  and  Inquisition. 

On  rising  in  the  morning,  the  first  thing  I 
noticed,  to  my  great  surprise,  was  that  I  was 
in  sight  of  a  rather  pretentious  looking,  new 
frame  building,  about  which  I  observed  signs 
of  American  civilization.  It  did  not  take  me 
long  to  make  a  closer  investigation  of  it  nor  to 
find  out  who  were  the  occupants.  They  turn- 


REMINISCENCES   OF  THE  PACIFIC   COASI    TELEGRAPH.      325 


ed  out  to  be  a  very  clever  Yankee,  his  wife  and 
several  children,  with  whom  were  quartered 
some  carpenters  engaged  in  completing  the 
building  only  recently  occypied  by  the  family. 
I  was  welcomed  to  the  house  and  provided 
with  comfortable  quarters,  finding  also  there, 
what  at  that  moment  was  of  importance  to  me, 
a  well  assorted  medicine  chest.  Concluding 
to  remain  there  some  days,  until  the  fever  was 
broken,  I  gave  full  instructions  to  my  party  to 
proceed  with  the  work,  and  in  the  event  of  any- 
thing unusual  occurring  to  send  back  at  once 
and  let  me  know.  The  house  was  well  fur- 
nished with  fire-arms.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  small 
arsenal,  there  being  rifles,  shot-guns,  and  re- 
volvers enough  to  arm  the  entire  family,  car- 
penters included;  and,  as  the  proprietor  in- 
formed me,  every  member  of  it,  down  to  the 
youngest  child,  knew  how  to  fire  and  load,  they 
were  well  prepared  to  defend  themselves  in 
case  of  an  attack.  This  they  were  living  in 
daily  expectation  of,  having  been  notified  by 
the  natives  that  they  must  vacate  the  premises. 
As  I  afterward  knew,  they  were  never  obliged 
to  do  this.  The  house  contained  too  many  ri- 
fles and  revolvers  to  suit  the  native  complex- 
ion. I  remained  with  them  two  days,  when, 
feeling  stronger  and  improved  in  health,  I  be- 
gan to  investigate  for  some  means  of  leaving, 
there  not  being  any  public  conveyance  through 
that  part  of  the  country.  I  was  told  that  if  I 
would  go  to  Livermore's,  some  twelve  miles 
distant,  I  would  very  probably  be  able,  at  that 
point,  to  intercept  teams  traveling  between 
Stockton  and  San  Francisco — they  being  oblig- 
ed at  that  time  to  go  through  Livermore's  Pass. 
As  there  was  no  hotel  at  the  place,  my  only 
chance  of  shelter,  after  reaching  Livermore's 
ranch,  was  to  ask  quarters  of  him ;  and  this,  I 
was  assured,  would  be  promptly  refused,  as 
owing  to  his  early  settlement  in  the  country  he 
had  become  thoroughly  Mexicanized.  At  that 
time,  in  1853,  he  had  already  been  in  Califor- 
nia over  twenty  years,  had  married  a  native  and 
raised  a  large  family.  A  Scotchman,  I  believe, 
by  birth,  it  was  said  that  in  early  life  he  was  a 
sailor,  and  that  the  vessel  in  which  he  sailed 
had  been  wrecked  or  he  had  been  left  on  the 
coast.  In  any  event  he  must  have  arrived  here 
as  early  as  1830,  for  at  the  time  of  my  visit  to 
his  place,  in  1853,  some  of  his  children  were 
already  more  than  twenty  years  of  age.  As  it 
was  necessary  for  me  to  reach  Livermore's,  in 
order  to  find  there  some  conveyance  that  would 
take  me  to  town,  I  looked  about  and  found  an 
old  Texan,  living  at  a  short  distance  from  the 
house  of  the  American  in  which  I  had  been 
made  so  comfortable.  This  Texan  agreed,  for 
a  proper  consideration,  to  take  me  in  his  ox- 

VOL.    III.-2J. 


cart,  which  was  something  after  the  style  of 
Father  Tom's  curriculus^  consisting  of  two 
wheels,  with  a  platform  delicately  balanced, 
and  drawn  by  a  pair  of  oxen.  It  took  us  the 
entire  day  to  make  the  distance  to  Livermore's 
ranch,  which  we  reached  as  the  sun  was  set- 
ting. I  put  on  a  bold  front,  walked  into  the 
house  and  called  for  the  proprietor.  As  the 
employes  about  the  place  were  all  Mexicans 
and  did  not  understand  any  English,  it  was 
some  time  before  I  succeeded  in  making  known 
my  wants.  The  old  gentleman  finally  made 
his  appearance,  and  desiring  to  know  what  I 
wanted,  I  introduced  myself,  stating  who  I  was 
and  the  nature  of  my  business.  He  took  a  gen- 
eral and  very  suspicious  survey  of  my  person. 
The  "telegraph"  to  him  was  a  mystery.  He 
had  seen  the  poles  crossing  his  lands  with 
many  misgivings.  Still,  he  had  heard  and  read 
something  of  the  telegraph,  and  now,  that  it 
had  come  so  near  to  him,  he  became  inter- 
ested. He  began  questioning  me  as  to  its  work- 
ing, in  a  manner,  I  thought,  rather  to  prove 
that  I  was  not  an  imposter,  trying  to  thrust  my- 
self upon  his  hospitality  as  many  roaming  min- 
ers had  done  in  those  early  days.  But  when 
I  exhibited  to  him  the  little  box  instrument  I 
carried  with  me  under  my  arm,  he  became  at 
once  very  much  interested,  cordially  inviting 
me  into  his  house. 

My  old  Texan  friend,  after  seeing  me  safely 
ensconced,  bade  me  "good  evening"  and  pre- 
pared to  turn  his  oxen's  heads  homeward,  which 
he  hoped  to  reach  by  midnight.  The  old  fel- 
low was  well  prepared  for  defense  and  said  he 
had  no  fears  of  the  road.  I  paid  him  a  good 
fee  for  his  services,  and  he  left  apparently  well 
satisfied  with  his  day's  work.  Being  still  fee- 
ble and  with  little  appetite,  I  felt,  when  supper 
was  announced,  in  poor  trim  for  a  regular  Mex- 
ican meal,  composed  of  jerked  beef  stewed  with 
peppers  and  other  spices,  Mexican  beans,  and 
tortillas,  a  species  of  pancake  something  like 
what  miners  call  "slap-jacks."  Although  Liv- 
ermore  was  at  that  time  considered  one  of  the 
richest  men  of  California,  his  lands  comprising 
all  the  plains  of  the  valley  bearing  his  name, 
covered  with  horses  and  cattle  to  the  number 
of  some  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  of  which  he  was 
the  sole  owner,  the  interior  and  household  ar- 
rangements were  of  the  most  primitive  char- 
acter. The  food  was  badly  served  without  a 
cloth,  rude  benches  for  seats,  and  although  pos- 
sessing thousands  of  cows  there  was  neither 
butter  nor  milk  on  the  table.  After  supper  was 
over,  I  entertained  the  old  gentleman  with  an 
explanation  of  the  working  of  the  telegraph, 
his  wife,  a  full-blooded  Mexican  woman,  and 
children  making  up  the  party.  From  time  to 


326 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


time  he  would  interpret  my  explanation  to  his 
family,  none  of  whom  understood  a  word  of 
English.  They  all  appeared  greatly  interested 
in  what  I  had  to  say,  and  on  separating  for  the 
night,  it  was  with  many  kind  wishes  on  his 
part  that  I  should  enjoy  a  comfortable  night's 
sleep. 

At  that  period  there  was  no  land  in  the  val- 
ley fenced  in.  Here  and  there  could  be  seen  a 
corral,  but  nothing  to  show  that  the  land  was 
made  use  of  except  for  grazing  purposes.  Liv- 
ermore  himself  had  none  under  cultivation  with 
the  exception  of  a  small  garden  patch  irrigated 
by  a  stream  near  the  house.  At  a  short  dis- 
tance from  this  I  overtook  my  party,  and,  after 
giving  further  directions  to  my  foreman,  I  de- 
cided to  remain  where  I  was  until  such  time 
as  I  could  procure  a  conveyance,  or  some 
means  of  transportation  to  San  Francisco. 
This  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  obtain  the  next 
day.  An  acquaintance  on  his  way  back  from 
Stockton  kindly  offered  me  a  seat  in  his  buggy. 
We  reached  Hayward's  that  evening  and  re- 
mained there  all  night,  arriving  the  next  day  in 
San  Francisco. 

In  the  meantime,  and  while  my  party  was 
working  toward  the  north,  Colonel  Baker,  at 
present  of  the  firm  of  Baker  &  Hamilton,  had 
charge  of  the  wire  party  working  from  Marys  - 
ville  south,  and  as,  notwithstanding  the  diffi- 


culties encountered,  and  the  fact  of  the  men 
being  inexperienced,  the  work  was  pushed  vig- 
orously forward,  the  line  was  completed  and  in 
operation  through  to  Marysville  by  the  25th  of 
October.  This  was  in  time  to  save  the  fran- 
chise which  would  have  expired  on  the  3ist  of 
that  month.  This  franchise,  as  I  have  stated, 
gave  the  company  the  exclusive  right  of  tele- 
graphing for  fifteen  years  from  the  date  of  the 
completion  of  the  line,  and  proved  to  be  a  very 
valuable  one.  The  opening  of  that  line  placed 
all  the  large  cities  of  California  in  direct  com- 
munication, and  as  money  was  plentiful,  and 
time  valuable,  the  telegraph  was  largely  made 
use  of.  The  tariff  between  San  Francisco  and 
San  Jose",  a  distance  of  fifty  miles,  was  seventy- 
five  cents  for  ten  words,  and  twenty-five  cents 
for  every  additional  five  words  or  fraction  there- 
of. From  San  Francisco  to  Stockton,  Sacra- 
mento, and  Marysville,  the  rate  was  two  dollars 
per  ten  words ;  as  much  as  it  now  costs  to  send 
a  telegram  of  similar  length  from  San  Fran- 
cisco to  any  part  of  the  United  States.  Still, 
no  complaint  was  made  by  the  public  that  the 
rates  were  too  high.  They  seemed  glad  to 
have  the  use  of  the  line  at  any  price,  and  prob- 
ably no  line  in  the  world,  of.  the  same  length, 
has  ever  done  so  large  and  profitable  a  busi- 
ness as  that  of  the  old  California  State  Tele- 
graph Company.  JAMES  GAMBLE. 


A  VERSE-PAINTER   OF   STILL   LIFE. 


A  Dutch  painting  in  verse !  j&This  aptly  de- 
scribes other  poems  in  Edgar  Fawcett's  volume 
of  Fantasy  and  Passion,  besides  that  which 
shows  us  a  quaint  old  chamber  hung  with 
"time-touched  arras,"  wherein  sits  a  lady 

.  .  .  .   "  large  and  fair, 
In  luminous  satin  whitely  clad, 
With  mild  pearls  in  her  auburn  hair." 

It  is  still  life,  but  the  touches'"are~\ealistic. 
We  see  every  peculiarity  of  the  room — the 
wainscot  woods,  "rich  with  dark  shapes,  odd  of 
mold;"  the  gleaming  walls  dimly  pictured  in 
mediaeval  designs ;  even  the  gorgeous,  massive 
table-cloth,  whose  thick,  stiff  cloth 

' '  Wears  in  its  mossy  woof  what  seem 
A  hundred  splendid,  tangled  dyes." 

"There,  too,  fruits  in  luscious  color  glow;" 
filled  with  garnet  wine  is  the  "frail,  (fantastic 


crystal  flask;"  while,  crouching  at  the  lady's 
feet,  the  hound, 

"Lean,  sleek,  and  pale  gray  like  a  dove, 
Whines  wistfully,  and  seeks  her  face 
With  starry  eyes  that  look  their  love." 

Of  course,  there  are  tastes  which  are  not 
touched  by  one  of  Brookes's  paintings  of  fish 
out  of  the  water,  but  long  for  a  battle  picture ; 
and  these  call  for  less  fantasy  and  more  pas- 
sion, instead  of  portraits  too  tamely  photo- 
graphic. But  would  not  such  dissenters  find 
the  same  fault  with  an  entire  school  of  modern 
poets  who  delight  to  "paint  nature  with  over- 
dye of  detail?"  Against  all  these  pre-Raphael- 
ites  may  be  invoked  the  teachings  of  Lessing 
in  his  Laocoon,  touching  the  difference  between 
such  instruments  of  art  as  the  pen  and  the 
brush,  or  chisel.  Caspar  Hauser,  cry  the  disci- 
ples of  the  dramatic  regenerator  of  Germany, 
sees  the  landscape  flattened  on  the  window- 


A    VERSE-PAINTER   OF  STILL  LIFE. 


327 


pane,  but  why  should  the  unconfined  mortal 
have  his  vision  so  distorted?  If  we  must  look 
through  transparent  mediums,  they  continue, 
let  us  use  the  stereoscope,  at  least,  and  get 
solid  views.  But,  better  still,  let  us  examine 
the  world  of  outdoors  for  ourselves. 

With  this  contention  it  is  not  our  province  to 
deal.  What  matters  the  fashion  of  the  lyre  if 
its  chords  be  but  touched  with  skill?  We  are 
not  discussing  "the  poet  of  the  future;"  wheth- 
er prose  poetry  or  poetic  prose  be  preferable  as 
a  vehicle  of  original  ideas  is  a  problem  for 
Wordsworth  to  grapple  with,  and  his  latter-day 
followers  to  settle,  each  according  to  his  own 
sweet  will.  The  strains  of  melody  are  enticing, 
and  we  do  not  always  stop  to  inquire  how  the 
warbling  was  produced.  So  we  ask  no  ques- 
tions, but  attentively  listen  to  the  address  to 
the  oriole. 

"How  falls  it,  oriole,  thou  hast  come  to  fly 
In  tropic  splendor  through  our  northern  sky? 
At  some  glad  moment  was  it  nature's  choice 
To  dower  a  scrap  of  sunset  with  a  voice? 
Or  did  some  orange  tulip,  flaked  with  black, 
In  some  forgotten  garden,  ages  back, 
Yearning  toward  heaven  until  its  wish  was  heard, 
Desire  unspeakably  to  be  a  bird?  " 

Here  may  not  be  the  ecstasy  of  Shelley's 
"Skylark,"  or  the  pensiveness  of  Bryant's  "Wa- 
terfowl," but  there  is  a  splendor  of  imagination 
and  power  of  compression  which  would  atone 
for  many  noddings  of  the  muse. 

Nor  do  we  find  in  these  poems,  often  of 
dainty  texture,  the  tumult  of  nature,  or  that  re- 
morselessness  of  hers  which  stirred  John  Stuart 
Mill  to  cry  out  against  her  works.  True,  the 
earthquake  may  appear,  as  the  giant  dreams  in 
his  troubled  sleep,  but  the  play  of  heat-lightning 
is  the  strongest  token  of  storm  and  stress.  It 
is  the  hovering  sea-gull,  not  the  petrel  of  the 
ocean  wastes,  which  swoops  past  us.  But  the 
quieter  moods  of  nature,  which  have  ever  at- 
tracted the  race  of  poets,  are  mirrored  with 
fidelity  and  reflected  in  all  their  variety.  Thom- 
son could  not  exhaust  the  seasons;  and  why 
should  we  not  again  hear,  as  the  author  of 
"Thanatopsis"  insists  we  ever  should,  of  the 
clouds,  the  winds,  the  dew,  the  sea-shore,  and 
the  spring-time?  Can  the  treasures  of  the  gar- 
den tire  us?  Can  wealth  of  epithet  be  lavished 
too  freely  on  those  visitors  to  our  grounds? — the 
hummingbird,  whose  "dim  shape  quivers  about 
some  sweet,  rfch  heart  of  a  rose,"  while  from  its 
"palpitant  wings"  steal  sounds  "like  the  eerie 
noise  of  an  elfin  spinning-wheel,"  or  the  butter- 
fly, "satrap  of  the  air,  pirate  of  a  floral  sea,"  in 
whose  fluttering  wings 

....   "dull  smoldering  color  lies, 
Lit  richly  with  two  peacock  eyes." 


Flower  and  fruit  pieces,  though  not  of  the 
Jean  Paul  Richter  type,  abound  in  this  book, 
which  is  so  full  of  the  prevailing  tints  of  the 
age.  It  is  not  novel,  though  it  be  pleasant,  to 
find  again  the  grapes  "droop  their  dusty  globes 
of  wine,"  or  the  winter  violets  lifting  their  heads 
from  earth's  white  covering.  Grasses,  and 
mosses,  and  fern,  and  ivy,  and  trees,  and  weeds, 
all  thrive  in  this  over-luxuriant  field,  and  these, 
like  the  blushing  roses,  appear  in  satiating  pro- 
fusion, as  in  the  wondrous  land,  which  is  also 
described,  where  a  solitary  daisy  was  welcome 
as  a  relief  from  the  "monotony  of  magnifi- 
cence." 

But  more  characteristic  of  this  poet's  imagery 
is  the  allegorical  form  in  which  his  ideas  are 
embodied.  The  moth  flutters  about  the  lamp 
as  the  type  of  singed  sin ;  the  stainless  water- 
lilies,  bursting  from  soilure  and  decay,  symbol- 
ize the  saving  grace  of  some  dark  spirit.  Even 
the  toads  awaken  dreams 

"Of  thick-lipped  slaves,  with  ebon  skin, 
That  squat  in  hideous  dumb  repose 
And  guard  the  drowsy  ladies  in 
Their  still  seraglios." 

Inanimate  objects  arouse  teeming  fancies 
like  those  to  which  Dickens,  if  Taine  be  trust- 
ed, gave  too  much  rein.  The  "cool  benedic- 
tions of  the  dawn"  suggest  the  many  hearts 
that  vainly  plead  for  the  dew  of  affection ;  fire 
is  the  slave  that  longs  to  "revel  a  while  in  red 
magnificence."  The  "fragrant  silkiness"  of  the 
"roseate  thistle"  holds  visions  of  calamitous 
battles,  "of  treachery  and  intrigue,  revolt  and 
brawl,"  and  mournful  fate  of  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots.  The  willow  tree  recalls  meek  Desde- 
mona  raising  her  sad  song,  or  the  poet  finds 
"mad  Ophelia,  just  before  her  doom,"  hang 
on  its  "treacherous  branch"  her  "wild wood 
sprays."  Even  the  satin's  sheen  makes  the 
observer  see 

.  .  .  .   "  rash  Romeo  scale  the  garden  wall, 
While  Juliet  dreams  below  the  dying  stars." 

Gaudier  fabrics,  covered  with  flowery  devices, 
wrought  intricately  with  pearly  spray  and 
wreath,  arabesques  and  scrolls  and  leaf -like 
ornaments,  bring  before  us 

.  .  .  .   "  courtly  gentlemen  with  embroidered  hose, 
And  radiant  ladies  with  high  powdered  hair, 
Stepping  through  minuets  in  colonial  days  I" 

Reminiscent  this  of  Tennyson's  figure  of  Enid 
in  her  faded  silk  "beside  the  ancient  dame  in 
dim  brocade." 

Least  attractive  are  those  stanzas  in  which 
verse  seems  to  become  a  mere  mechanic  exer- 
cise, and  an  enlarged  edition  of  the  rhyming 


328 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


dictionary  appears  to  be  foreshadowed.  But 
even  here  epithets  grotesque  and  varied,  origi- 
nality of  phrase  and  aptness  of  illustration,  re- 
deem that  semblance  of  jingle  which  involves 
even  the  later  productions  of  the  poet  laureate 
in  coils  of  musical  but  meaningless  repetition, 
and  in  Swinburne  makes  richest  melody  mo- 
notonous and  dissonance  doubly 'welcome.  The 
refrain,  however,  is  managed  with  masterly  pow- 
er in  the  picture  of  one  who  in  death  is  seen 

....  "  to  repose  with  placid  eyes, 
And  know  not  of  the  wild  world  that  it  cries,  cries, 
cries  ! " 

For  his  reviewers,  however,  our  poet  of  cult- 
ure has  a  shaft  worthy  of  Lothair.  The  author 
of  In  Memoriam  said  of  his  imitators  : 

' '  All  can  raise  the  flower  now, 
For  all  have  got  the  seed." 

In  the  same  vein  this  dainty  verse -maker  dis- 
poses of  the  critical  wasps  : 

"  Crude,  pompous,  turgid,  the  reviewers  said  ; 

Sham  passion  and  sham  power  to  turn  one  sick  ! 
Pin-wheels  of  verse  that  sputtered  as  we  read — 
Rockets  of  rhyme  that  showed  the  falling  stick." 

Yet  these  missiles  did  not  prevent  the  book 
from  being  loved  by  those  who  do  not  put  their 
love  in  print ;  and,  though  the  poet  quivered  at 
the  stings  of  this  buzzing  band, 

"White  doves  of  sympathy  o'er  all  the  land 

Went  flying  with  his  fame  beneath  their  wings. 

"And  every  fresh  year  brought  him  love  that  cheers, 
As  Caspian  waves  bring  amber  to  their  shore; 
And  it  befell  that  after  many  years, 

Being  now  no  longer  young,  he  wrote  once  more. 

"  'Cold,  classic,  polished,'  the  reviewers  said — 

'A  book  you  scarce  can  love,  howe'er  you  praise. 
We  missed  the  old  careless  grandeur  as  we  read — 
The  power  and  passion  of  his  younger  days.'" 

Nor  do  we  fail  to  learn  the  poet's  views  of 
men  of  literary  note.  Poe  and  Whittier  are 
contrasted  as  antipodes.  The  former  prowls — 


....   "where  fancy's  owl 
Sent  long  lugubrious  hoots  through  somber  air." 

The  tatter's  words  are  like  pearls;  his  thoughts 
suggest  the  aureoled  angels: 

"We  seem  to  have  felt  the  falling,  in  his  song, 
Of  benedictions  and  of  sacred  balms." 

Memory  brings  before  us  Dickens's  scenes 
in  "Life's  Masquerade,"  and  Thackeray's  pict- 
ures of 

"Dowagers,  in  rouge,  feathers,  and  brocade, 
Sneering  at  life  across  their  cards  and  tea." 

We  are  shown,  too,  the  palatial  brain  of 
Herbert  Spencer,  while  the  poisonous  myrtles 
that  bind  the*  hair  of  Baudelaire's  muse,  his 
poesy's  morbid  splendors,  wake  a  thought  of 
some  toad-haunted  humid  brake,  where 

"Some  rank  red  fungus,  dappled  like  a  snake, 
Spots  the  black  dampness  with  its  clammy  bloom." 

Hans  Christian  Andersen's  "flower-cradled 
fairies"  enchant  us,  though  not  more  than  ro- 
mance's monarch,  Dumas  perey 

"Pillaging  history's  mighty  treasure-chest." 

Keats's  sad  fate  is  bewailed,  and  the  brief 
career  during  which 

' '  He  dropt  before  the  world  those  few  flowers 
Whose  color  and  odor  brave  all  blight  of  years." 

Finally  Gustave  Dore  passes  before  our  view: 

"How  rare  the  audacious  spirit  that  invokes 

These  shadowy  grandeurs,  and  can  bid  appear 
All  horror's  genii,  awful  and  austere, 
And  paint  infinity  with  a  few  strong  strokes." 

No  multiplication  of  specimens  could  more 
completely  show  the  field  worked  by  one,  who, 
while  not  free  from  the  current  faults  of  the 
time,  has  furnished  us  quiet  pictures  and  por- 
traits in  admirable  tints,  touched  with  a  glow 
which  gives  them  the  aspect  of  reality. 

NATHAN  NEWMARK. 


'49   AND   '50. 


CHAPTER  V. 


James,  the  invalid,  was  first  to  open  his  eyes 
next  morning  at  "The  Oro."  He  had  retired 
much  earlier  than  his  cousin.  Moreover,  his 
New  Hampshire  habits  still  clung  to  him  in 
spite  of  his  change  of  climate  and  condition. 


It  might  naturally  be  supposed  that  his  first 
thoughts  would  be  directed  toward  Blair,  still 
sleeping  soundly  in  an  adjoining  bunk.  This 
was  not  the  case,  however.  Neither  was  he  to 
begin  the  day  by  dwelling  on  fond  remem- 
brances of  his  Mary  far  away.  Was  it  Andy, 
then,  or  the  murdered  Judge,  or  the  clergyman 


V?  AND 


329 


who  had  fallen  from  grace?  Who  or  what  was 
it  that  occupied  the  morning  reverie  of  the  Yan- 
kee boy?  After  leaving  him  to  an  unmolested 
two  hours  of  profound  deliberation,  we  will  let 
him  discover  the  subject  at  his  heart,  in  his 
own  time  and  manner. 

When  he  could  no  longer  keep  his  feelings 
secret,  he  slowly  raised  himself  to  an  upright 
position,  and,  adjusting  his  glasses,  sat  peering 
around  him  from  out  his  humble  bed  like  a  re- 
juvenated Don  Quixote.  Marks  of  care  and 
hardship  were  discernible  upon  his  face,  and 
there  was  in  his  mien  somewhat  of  sadness, 
but  over  all  played  a  light  that  bespoke  a  mixt- 
ure of  wonderment  and  quiet  happiness. 

"Cousin  Mortimer,"  he  called,  presently,  in 
gentle  but  rather  anxious  tones,  "isn't  it  time 
that  we  had  a  little  breakfast?" 

"Ho,  Jim,  have  you  and  your  appetite  made 
up?"  responded  Blair,  drowsily. 

"We  are  on  the  best  of  terms,  I  believe,"  re- 
plied the  other;  "but  that  is  not  all.  I  have 
something  very  strange  to  tell  you." 

"One  of  your  fearfully  elaborate  and  compli- 
cated dreams,  I  will  warrant." 

"If  it  were  a  dream  it  would  be  less  inter- 
esting. On  first  wakening  I  took  it  for  such 
myself,  but  having  thought  it  over  and  over  for 
two  hours  or  more,  I  now  pronounce  it  a  real- 
ity." 

"Byron,  you  remember,  had  a  dream  that, 
after  all,  was  wholly  destitute  of  the  subtile  ma- 
terial of  which  dreams  are  composed,"  said 
Blair,  now  sufficiently  awake  to  have  a  hearty 
laugh  at  the  gaunt,  angular  figure  of  James, 
braced  stiffly  up,  and  clothed  with  a  liberal 
woolen  shirt  dyed  a  flaming  red. 

"Byron  would  have  been  glad  enough,  had 
he  been  favored  as  I  was  last  night,  to  suffer  all 
the  torments  that  have  harassed  me  since  we 
landed." 

"Is  your  brain  right  clear  this  morning, 
Cousin  Swilling?" 

"That  it  is.  Come,  let  us  rise,  and,  after 
breathing  a  few  sniffs  fresh  from  the  bay,  'I 
will  a  tale  unfold'  that  shall  touch  your  Stoic's 
heart." 

"Good !  You  are  going  to  be  eloquent.  That 
means  that  your  story  is  to  deal  with  the  ten- 
der passion." 

Blair's  curiosity  was  not  greatly  excited ;  but 
he  rose,  and  the  two  were  soon  seated  at  their 
morning  meal,  when  James  began  : 

"You  had  not  been  gone  more  than  an  hour 
last  night  when  I  was  awakened  by  the  gentlest 
voice  that  ever  spoke  in  the  ears  of  man." 

"Oh,  James  !"  interrupted  Blair.  "Treason ! 
The  fair  maid  of  Swansea  shall  be  instantly  in- 
formed." 


"Mary's  voice  is  sweet  enough  for  me,  Cousin 
Mortimer;  but  if  I  tell  the  truth  I  must  ac- 
knowledge that  this  one  surpassed  it." 

"You  are  mad,  man — mad!" 

"On  the  contrary,  I  am  perfectly  calm  and 
sane ;  but  if  you  will  not  listen  I  may  as  well 
desist  from  my  story." 

"Proceed.     I  will  not  interrupt  again." 

"Upon  hearing  the  voice  I  opened  my  eyes, 
and  by  the  dim  light  shining  through  from  the 
next  room  discovered  a  female  form,  clad  in 
black,  bending  over  me." 

"Zounds!"  ejaculated  Blair,  forgetting  his 
promise.  "What  did  you  say  to  her? 

"I  rallied,  and  said,  'good  evening,  mad- 
am.' " 

"Ye  gods !  Was  that  the  best  you  could  do?" 

"  I  thought  you  were  not  to  break  in  upon  me 
again,"  answered  the  speaker,  pausing  to  give 
his  glasses  a  brisk  rubbing  and  a  careful  read- 
justment before  his  mild,  gray  eyes. 

"I  know;  but  what  a  chance  for  a  scene!" 

"Of  course  it  was;  but  I  am  no  man  for  a 
' scene.'  In  the  first  place  I  could  see  very  in- 
distinctly, and  had  I  been  able  to  get  a  good 
view  of  her  face,  though  it  might  have  been 
that  of  an  angel,  I  should  have  thought  that 
more  than  likely  her  errand  was  not  one  to  be 
encouraged." 

"Well,  hang  it!  What  next?  I  hope  the 
woman  was  not  as  dumb  as  you  seem  to  have 
been." 

"Perhaps  I  was  dumb,  and  perhaps  I  was 
only  judiciously  reserved.  She  did  not  seem 
to  wish  me  to  say  anything  further,  for  she  be- 
gan talking  herself:  'I  learn  that  you  are  ill,' 
said  she.  I  thanked  her,  and  replied  that  I 
was  not  in  my  usual  health,  but  trusted  that  I 
should  be  restored  by  morning.  '  You  have  very 
recently  come  among  us,'  she  continued,  'and 
it  is  but  to  be  expected  that  you  would  suffer 
from  the  exposure  of  your  journey — from  the 
radical  change  of  climate  and  mode  of  living.' 
Just  at  this  moment  I  fancied  that  I  could  see 
the  face  of  my  visitor,  and  I  suppose  she  be- 
came aware  of  my  desire  and  effort  to  do  so. 
At  any  rate,  she  drew  her  veil,  which  appeared 
to  be  very  thick  and  black,  more  closely  over 
her  features,  and  sought  to  divert  me  with  some 
of  the  prettiest  and  kindest  talk  about  old  scenes 
at  home,  the  heart-sickness  of  wanderers,  and 
so  on,  that  one  could  imagine." 

"In  the  name  of  all  gallantry,"  cried  Blair, 
"did  you  keep  mum  and  let  the  sphinx  monopo- 
lize the  thousand  graces  of  language  that  might 
have  been  evoked  in  return?" 

"Why  shouldn't  I?    She  was  by  far  the  best 
talker." 
"Oh,  James!" 


330 


THE    CALIFORNIA!?. 


"When  she  had  finished,  I  again  thanked  her 
for  her  seeming  interest  in  my  welfare,  and 
begged  to  know  who  she  was." 

"Now  you  begin  to  show  your  colors,"  said 
Blair,  maintaining  the  teasing  attitude  that  he 
delighted  in  assuming  toward  his  simple-heart- 
ed relative.  "Who  did  she  say  she  was?" 

"Her  reply  was  this:  'It  would  do  you  no 
good  to  know  who  I  am — so  please  let  that 
pass,  and  accept  instead  this  litttle  vial  of 
medicine,  which,  if  you  take  as  directed,  will,  I 
am  confident,  keep  you  in  health  until  you  have 
become  acclimated.' " 

"Merciful  heavens!  a  doctor  in  woman's 
clothes,"  exclaimed  Blair.  "You  thanked  her 
again  cordially  for  the  cordial,  I  presume,  and 
let  her  go." 

"It  was  the  only  course  left  me;  for  no  sooner 
had  she  advised  me  to  take  her  prescription  be- 
fore going  to  sleep,  than,  as  sweetly  as  she  had 
roused  me,  she  bade  me  farewell,  and  glided 
noiselessly  from  the  room." 

"James,  I  am  half  inclined  to  believe  that 
you  have  recovered  your  bodily  health  at  the 
expense  of  that  of  your  mental  faculties.  Why 
did  not  your  cautiousness,  your  thrice -virginal 
fear -and -trembling,  prevent  you  from  tasting 
the  contents  of  the  vial?" 

"Any  one  would  have  felt  perfect  confidence 
in  such  a  visitor.  'It  is  not  possible  that  she 
can  wish  to  do  me  harm,'  I  said  to  myself;  and, 
first  examining  the  directions  as  best  I  could 
by  striking  a  dozen  matches,  I  acted  in  accord- 
ance with  them." 

"And  you  attribute  your  improved  condition 
to  the  mysterious  benefactress,  do  you?" 

"Yes,  I  must  say  that  I  do.  Certainly  I  am 
feeling  right  well  at  this  moment,  and  I  had  no 
hopes  last  night  of  getting  out  of  bed  to-day. 
The  sleep  that  I  enjoyed  after  taking  the  drops 
was  very  different  from  that  I  first  fell  into." 

"Where  is  the  enchanted  vial?" 

"Here  it  is,"  answered  James,  drawing  the 
article  from  his  vest-pocket  and  passing  it  to 
his  inquisitor. 

"I  thought  it  would  say  'Elixir  of  Life,'"  ex- 
claimed Blair,  "but,  by  Jove,  it  is  a  modest 
label,  and  the  handwriting  is  both  pretty  and 
honest.  James,  you  need  not  be  surprised  if, 
to-night,  I  am  dangerously  ill  myself." 

Having  finished  their  breakfast  and  the  con- 
versation that  has  just  been  recorded,  our  young 
friends  bent  their  steps  down  to  the  new  Broad- 
way wharf.  "What  do  you  suppose  became  of 
the  Judge's  mule  team  yesterday  ?"  asked  James. 
"You  remember  how  he  boasted  that  no  one 
would  dare  molest  it." 

"It  is  a  question  of  far  greater  importance 
to  know  what  became  of  the  Judge,"  replied  the 


other.  "It  must  lessen  the  torments  of  a  lost 
soul  somewhat,  I  think,  to  go  to  perdition  di- 
rectly from  California.  The  change  cannot  be 
very  violent — and  that  reminds  me  that  I  have 
not  told  you  my  last  evening's  experience;  your 
strange  tale  having  almost  made  me  forget  that 
I  had  had  any." 

"  Sure  enough,  it  is  your  turn." 

Blair  now  began  a  recapitulation  of  the  facts 
obtained  from  Marshall;  and  was  still  so  en- 
gaged when  they  had  been  some  little  time 
upon  the  wharf.  At  length,  threading  their 
way  along  the  planks,  between  the  piles  of  boxes 
and  scattered  groups  of  traders,  they  came  to 
a  spot  somewhat  apart  from  the  busier  scenes 
of  action.  Here  their  attention  was  suddenly 
arrested  by  the  groan,  seemingly  of  a  human 
being  in  distress.  They  stood  still  and  listened. 
Hearing  it  a  second  time,  though  fainter  than 
before,  they  advanced  in  the  direction  whence 
the  sound  came.  Again  the  groan  was  heard, 
and  after  a  close  search  among  the  bales  and 
barrels  filled  with  various  merchandise,  they 
found  the  body  of  a  man  wedged  in  between 
two  great  boxes,  over  the  top  of  which,  to  serve 
as  a  roof,  was  stretched  a  hide  still  wet  with  re- 
cent rains.  The  body  lay  face  downward,  and 
it  was  not  without  much  prying  and  lifting  that 
access  was  gained  to  it,  its  position  changed, 
and  its  features  exposed  to  view.  When  this 
was  finally  accomplished,  the  horror-stricken 
young  men  recognized  the  lineaments  of  the 
imbecile,  Andy  Wheeler.  Every  effort  was 
made  to  nourish  the  little  life  that  was  left,  but 
in  vain.  One  more  groan,  a  slight  convulsive 
twitch  of  the  emaciated  frame,  and  death  had 
put  an  end  to  the  wretched  wanderer's  woes. 

"Thank  God!"  exclaimed  James,  tears  ob- 
scuring his  vision.  "To  see  him  live  I  could 
not,  but  I  can  follow  him  to  his  grave  with  com- 
parative relief  of  mind." 

"Yes,  it  is  better  so,"  said  Blair,  mournfully. 
"Poor  fellow!  he  is  cared  for  now;  but  the 
news  will  be  bitter  to  those  at  home." 

"It  will  crush  his  old  mother,  Cousin  Morti- 
mer. Every  day  she  has  been  anxiously  look- 
ing for  his  return.  Well,  we  must  give  him 
decent  burial,  and  break  the  news  as  gently  as 
possible  to  his  family,  by  the  next  mail." 

"I  am  positive,"  said  Blair,  "that  this  is  un- 
known to  Ensign.  He  promised  to  see  that 
the  unfortunate  was  made  comfortable  if  care 
could  effect  it.  Undoubtedly,  in  a  fit  of  de- 
lirium he  gathered  strength  enough  to  escape 
from  his  room,  and  straying  to  this  place,  here 
made  his  own  death -bed  unaided  and  alone." 

"In  all  probability, like  occurrences  are  com- 
mon. Before  you  were  awake  this  morning,  I 
heard  two  men,  outside  my  window,  telling 


AND   '50. 


331 


about  the  body  of  a  young  man  that  was  found 
two  hours  previous,  among  the  bushes  on  the 
hill  yonder.  Grown  despondent  with  misfort- 
une, he  sought  that  locality,  equally  desolate 
with  this,  and  took  his  life  by  cutting  his  throat 
with  a  razor." 

"I  thought  you  chicken-hearted,  James," 
said  Blair,  "because  you  grew  faint  in  the  El 
Dorado,  but  I  must  say,  that  there  is  evidence 
of  true  courage  in  your  demeanor  at  this  time. 
It  is  not  good  for  us  to  dwell  upon  these  dis- 
tressing incidents.  After  having  done  our  duty 
by  the  dead,  we  will  forget  the  past  and  en- 
gage our  minds  in  the  pursuit  that  turned  us 
to  this  inhospitable  shore." 

"That  is  the  proper  course.  To  think  that 
we  are  near  a  place  called  'Happy  Valley,'  and 
yet  are  witnesses  of  such  scenes  as  these  ! 
Only  heaven  can  forgive  like  inconsistency." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Has  the  reader  said  to  himself  that  events 
crowd  too  quickly  upon  our  adventurers  in  the 
Land  of  Gold?  Has  he  thought  that  the  most 
ludicrous  and  the  most  solemn  experiences 
would  not  be  likely  to  visit  the  same  breasts  in 
so  rapid  succession  at  any  period  or  in  any  lo- 
cality? If  so,  it  is  an  error  that  does  not  call 
for  censure.  It  only  reveals  the  need  of  a  closer 
study  of  the  remarkable  days  now  under  con- 
templation. The  period  of  '49  and  '50  in  Cali- 
fornia remains  unique,  and  unique  it  must  en- 
dure. The  danger  is  not  that  its  peculiarities 
will  be  overdrawn,  but  that  they  will  not  be 
struck  out  in  characters  sufficiently  bold  and 
incisive.  History  will  not  say  too  much;  it 
will  rather  content  itself  with  depicting  too  lit- 
tle. Where  men  are  so  situated  that  they  nec- 
essarily live,  as  it  were,  a  year  in  the  space  of  a 
day,  to  the  pen  that  would  follow  them  exagger- 
ation is  well  nigh  impossible. 

When  our  sojourners  from  New  England  had 
laid  away  the  mortal  part  of  Andy  Wheeler, 
Blair  found  that,  simple  as  the  preparations  had 
been,  he  had  expended  one  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  in  gold.  The  body  was  buried  in  a  box. 
The  digging  of  the  grave  and  the  carrying  of 
the  body  to  it  were  the  main  sources  of  expense, 
but  these  services  could  not  be  procured  with- 
out the  startling  outlay  before  mentioned.  Not 
that  every  man  in  the  community  was  so  mer- 
cenary, so  indifferent  to  the  common  decencies, 
not  to  say  politenesses,  of  civilized  society,  but 
this  was  the  case  with  the  class  to  whom,  in  the 
great  haste,  application  for  assistance  was  made. 
Even  Rev.  Joshua  Johnson  hinted  that  the 
prayer  that  he  offered  after  the  plain  box  had 


been  lowered  into  the  earth  was  not  intended 
as  a  gratuity.  Blair,  incensed  beyond  measure, 
gave  the  renegade  a  sharp  reprimand,  together 
with  a  gold  piece.  The  rebuke  could  not  have 
gone  very  deeply  into  the  preacher's  conscience, 
for  before  the  sun  was  down  the  gold  piece 
adorned  one  of  the  tables  of  a  prominent  gam- 
bling-house. "The  dominie  is  a  little  too  drunk 
— that's  all,"  whispered  the  winner,  as  he  quiet- 
ly slipped  the  piece  in  his  own  pocket. 

"Well,  what  next,  Cousin  Mortimer?"  asked 
Tames,  as  the  shadows  of  his  second  night  in 
San  Francisco  descended,  finding  him  much 
wiser  than  when  he  landed,  though  his  school- 
ing had  been  of  so  short  duration.  "To  the 
mines  without  further  delay!  What  is  your 
voice?" 

"I  am  agreed,"  was  the  response;  "and  if 
you  will  write  to  the  Wheelers,  I  will  meanwhile 
go  out  and  ascertain  the  necessary  particulars 
for  our  journey." 

The  friends  had  not  been  long  separated 
when  Blair  returned. 

"I  have  it  all  arranged,"  said  he.  "We  will 
take  passage  in  the  Pioneer,  a  little  iron  boat 
constructed  in  my  glorious  old  Boston.  The 
boats  between  here  and  Sacramento  have  just 
begun  to  make  regular  trips,  and  I  think  we 
shall  have  a  speedy  and  pleasant  voyage.  We 
ought  to  have  good  accommodations,  for  the 
fare  is  something  of  an  item." 
'  "How  much?" 

"Thirty  dollars." 

"Well,  we  will  convert  some  of  our  coin  into 
dust,  and  when  paying  our  fare,  balance  the 
scales  with  my  jackknife  instead  of  the  cap- 
tain's. It  may  prove  a  saving.  I  will  propose 
it,  anyway." 

"It  surpasses  human  ingenuity  to  match  else- 
where the  audacity  of  California  prices.  I  have 
it  in  mind  to  prepare  a  schedule  for  the  benefit 
of  the  restaurateurs  and  hack -drivers  of  New 
York.  But  I  have  some  further  news  for  you. 
As  I  passed  the  El  Dorado,  I  spied  a  graceful 
female  about  entering.  Thinking  that  some- 
thing novel  might  be  learned  by  following  her, 
I  did  so.  The  moment  she  made  her  appear- 
ance, all  the  tables  being  occupied  by  deeply 
interested  players,  the  whole  house  rose  to  a 
man,  and  with  a  politeness  you  would  hardly 
credit,  she  was  ushered  to  what  proved  to  be 
the  place  of  honor.  'That  woman  cannot  have 
come  here  to  play,'  I  remarked  to  a  by-stander. 
'Wait  a  few  minutes,  and  you'll  see,'  was  the 
reply.  And,  sure  enough,  I  did  see.  There 
seemed  to  be  magic  in  the  woman's  every 
move.  When  she  came  to  throw  her  cards 
with  the  male  players,  'twas  done  with  match- 
less ease  and  elegance." 


332 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"It  was  she — it  was  my  visitor!"  exclaimed 
James  Swilling,  his  countenance  animated,  and 
his  head  thrown  up  like  a  giraffe  prepared  to 
browse  in  the  top  of  some  green  tree. 

"I  thought  you  would  recognize  her,"  return- 
ed Blair.  "I  did,  in  a  moment,  from  your  de- 
scription. She  was  dressed  in  neat -fitting, 
plain  black,  and  her  heavy  veil  was  closely 
drawn  down  over  her  face." 

"Did  she  speak?" 

"Not  once  that  I  could  hear." 

"Had  you  heard  her  voice,  you  would  have 
pronounced  it  a  fit  accompaniment  for  such  an 
attractive  person." 

"I  enjoyed  enough,"  returned  Blair,  careless- 
ly, as  if  perhaps  he  had  been  exhibiting  too 
great  an  interest  in  the  mysterious  stranger. 
"Graceful  form  and  motion,  finely  turned  hands 
without  a  blemish  and  sparkling  with  diamonds 
—  these  I  saw,  these  only;  and  what  do  they 
all  amount  to?" 

"  I  think  they  go  a  great  way  toward  making 
life  pleasant,"  responded  artless  James,  little 
suspecting  the  use  he  would  one  day  make  of 
the  words  last  spoken  by  Blair.  "See  what  an 
influence  they  exerted  over  those  wild  creatures 
by  whom  she  was  surrounded." 

"You  may  be  in  error  as  to  the  cause  of  the 
woman's  power  over  her  male  companions. 
The  manner  in  which  she  swept  up  the  piles  of 
gold  and  silver,  one  after  another,  was  enough 
to  insure  her  respect  from  the  very  coins  them- 
selves." 

"Who  can  she  be?  She  was  evidently  well 
known  in  the  evil  place  where  you  found  her. 
But  why  should  a  woman  that  frequents  gam- 
bling-houses seek  poverty-stricken  me  out,  come 
to  my  sick-bed,  and,  having  counseled  me  as 
gently  and  wisely  as  my  mother  ever  did,  leave 
me  medicine,  unasked  and  unrewarded  ?" 

"There  is  no  accounting  for  people's  eccen- 
tricities. A  kind  heart  and  vile  practices  are 
not  infrequently  united  in  one  and  the  same 
person." 

"There  is  nothing  too  strange  in  this  wild 
land.  I  had  already  made  up  my  mind  not  to 
be  surprised  at  anything;  but  this  is  an  ex- 
tremely severe  test  of  the  strength  of  my  reso- 
lution." 

"Stripping  the  case  of  all  glamour,  James, 
this  angelic  being  is,  beyond  all  question,  a  bad 
character." 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  answered  the  other, 
stoutly.  "My  candid  opinion  is  that  she  is 
good.  She  has  some  doubtful  habits,  very 
true,  but  may  be  she  is  driven  to  them  by  ne- 
cessity. No,  sir;  I  am  bound  to  think  the 
lady's  face  is  as  fair  as  were  her  words  and  her 
deed  to  me ;  furthermore,  that  despite  the  sus- 


picious practice  of  gaming,  her  soul  is  as  pure 
and  beautiful  as  her  face." 

"Well  done,  Jimmy.  I  never  saw  a  man  im- 
prove faster  than  you  have  since  you  sipped 
from  the  enchanted  vial.  Another  visit  from 
the  unknown  benefactress,  and  you  would  take 
to  writing  love  sonnets  so  fast  that  there  would 
be  no  time  left  in  which  to  delve  for  the  pre- 
cious metal." 

"At  this  particular  instant,  I  own  to  feeling 
very  much  changed  for  the  better  in  spirit  and 
in  body ;  but  no  love  matters  will  deter  me  from 
the  mines.  I  am  growing  very  anxious  to  pick 
up  my  first  nugget." 

"  Can't  I  prevail  upon  you  to  remain  another 
day,  just  for  the  sake  of  finding  out  who  this 
this  lovely  apparition  is?"  asked  Blair,  a  smile 
at  the  same  time  playing  on  his  handsome  feat- 
ures. 

"I  fear  it  was  your  own  curiosity,  cousin, 
that  prompted  that  question." 

"Do  you,  indeed?  Then  what  would  you 
say  should  I  tell  you  that  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
an  introduction  to  the  lady?" 

"I  should  say  that  it  was  no  more  than  I 
could  reasonably  expect." 

"Well,  I  didn't  have  it;  and  let  us  make  an 
end  of  this  sable -clad  beauty  by  my  telling  a 
few  facts  that  I  learned  concerning  her.  And 
after  that  I  have  still  further  news  to  commu- 
nicate." 

"  Let  me  hear ;  but  if  I  had  known  what  you 
were  enjoying,  I  should  not  have  been  here, 
meanwhile,  tracing  these  pages,  to  be  washed 
blank  again  by  tears  from  the  eyes  of  poor 
Andy  Wheeler's  mother.  Yes,  I  would,  too. 
I'll  take  it  back.  But  go  on,  and  give  me  your 
account." 

"One  of  a  group  of  eager  spectators,  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  watching  the  lady  play  for  about 
a  half-hour.  During  this  time,  scarcely  a  loud 
word  was  spoken.  A  spell  seemed  to  have  fall- 
en upon  all  present.  The  roughest  miner  put 
on  gentle  behavior;  and  his  weather-beaten 
face  lighted  up  with  a  kind  of  fatherly  affection 
as  in  deferential  silence  he  followed  the  game. 
The  players  all  appeared  to  be  experts.  I  can- 
not understand  how  the  lady  could  see  through 
the  black  veil  (for  it  completely  hid  her  face), 
but  she  did  see,  and  that  most  accurately.  At 
first  luck  ran  against  her.  •  At  this  stage  of  the 
game,  it  would  have  interested  you  to  see  the 
solemn  looks  that  gathered  upon  the  features  of 
nearly  all  present.  It  was  as  if  the  fair  player's 
loss  was  their  own.  Suddenly  the  tide  turned, 
and,  sir,  when  there  were  eight  thousand  dollars 
at  stake,  she  gave  one  exquisite  toss  of  her  white 
hand,  the  winning  card  dropped  from  it,  and 
the  money  was  her  own.  Wild  uproar  follow- 


V?   AND 


333 


ed.  The  miners  cheered,  threw  up  their  hats, 
and  cried,  'Long  live  the  Gazelle!'  The  din 
continued  several  minutes,  when  a  gentlemanly 
looking  person  taking  charge  of  her  spoils,  the 
favorite  player  passed  from  the  tent  as  noise- 
lessly as  she  came." 

"Good!  glorious!  So  say  I,  'Long  live  the 
Gazelle  !'  "  cried  James,  spreading  out  his  long 
arms  and  rising  hastily  from  his  seat.  "  *  Ga- 
zelle I*  "  he  continued,  striding  round  the  room, 
"Oh,  what  a  pretty  name  !" 

"  I  know  of  but  one  that  is  sweeter,"  respond- 
ed Blair. 

"Never!    What  is  it?" 


James  was  again  trapped.  He  shut  himself 
up  like  an  umbrella  ;  and,  his  face  covered  with 
confusion,  dropped  back  on  the  three-legged 
stool  from  which  he  had  arisen.  Blair  took 
great  delight  in  this  harmless  mischief.  It 
may  be,  too,  that  he  thought  such  jocose  re- 
proof wholesome  for  James's  excitable,  easily 
influenced  temperament  and  character.  James 
would  often  feel  hurt,  sorely  hurt,  for  a  moment  ; 
but  the  next  found  him  uttering  expressions  of 
forgiveness  for  the  wrong  committed  against 
him. 

"Cousin  Mortimer,"  said  he,  on  the  present 
occasion,  "I  am  at  a  loss  to  know  why  you 
must  indulge  in  so  many  jests  at  the  expense 
of  my  affection  for  the  sweetest  creature  on 
earth." 

"What  !"  exclaimed  Blair.  "How  long  is  it 
since  you  believed  this  of  the  little  gambler  in 
black?" 

"No,  no,"  answered  the  other.  "Perhaps  I 
expressed  myself  too  strongly  ;  but  I  never,  for 
a  second,  thought  of  comparing  her  with  my 
Mary.  I  only  meant  that  she  was  pretty,  and 
had  been  very  kind  to  me." 

"Well,  well,  Jimmy,"  said  Blair,  going  up  to 
him  and  rubbing  his  hand  softly  over  James's 
closely  shaven  head,  "I  did  abuse  you  this 
time.  You  are  one  of  the  best  fellows  in  the 
world.  You  love  your  Mary,  and  she  loves 
you.  Consequently  all  my  nonsense  ought  to 
pass  you  by  like  the  empty  wind.  Now,  look 
up.  Do  you  know  what  night  of  the  week  it 
is?" 

"  I  declare  I  have  forgotten,"  answered  James, 
trying  to  feel  again  at  ease. 

"It  is  Saturday  night,  boy.  To-morrow  will 
be  Sunday,  the  great  gala  day  in  California. 
The  Pioneer  does  not  make  her  next  trip  until 
Monday,  and  I  think  I  shall  find  little  difficulty 
in  convincing  you  that  it  is  best  for  us  to  re- 
main over.  Hear,"  continued  Blair,  taking  a 
circular  from  his  pocket,  and  beginning  to  read 
as  follows  : 


FUN  BREWING—  GREAT  ATTRACTION! 

HARD  FIGHTING  TO  BE  DONE  !  —  TWO  BULLS  AND  ONE 
BEAR. 

The  citizens  of  San  Francisco  and  vicinity  are  re- 
spectfully informed  that  at  four  o'clock,  Sunday  after- 
noon, Oct.  5th,  at  Mission  Dolores,  a  rich  treat  will  be 
prepared  for  them,  and  that  they  will  have  an  opportu- 
nity of  enjoying  a  fund  of  the  raciest  sport  of  the  sea- 
son. Two  large  bulls  and  a  bear,  all  in  prime  condi- 
tion for  fighting,  and  under  the  management  of  experi- 
enced Mexicans,  will  contribute  to  the  amusement  of 
the  audience. 

PROGRAMME—  IN  TWO  ACTS. 

ACT  I. 

Bull  and  Bear  —  Hercules  and  Trojan  —  will  be  con- 
ducted into  the  arena,  and  there  chained  together,  where 
they  will  fight  until  one  kills  the  other. 


ACT  II. 

The  great  bull  Behemoth  will  be  let  loose  in  the  arena, 
where  he  will  be  attacked  by  two  of  the  most  celebrated 
and  expert  picadors  of  Mexico,  and  finally  dispatched 
after  the  true  Spanish  method. 

Admittance,  $3.     Tickets  for  sale  at  the  door. 
TOAQUIN  VATRETO,  )  ,» 
JESUS  ALVAREZ,       \  Managers. 

"More  blood  to  be  spilled  !"  spoke  James,  as 
Blair  laid  down  the  paper,  with  a  pompous 
flourish.  "Undoubtedly  we  ought  to  see  the 
wicked  exhibition,"  he  continued;  "but  do  you 
think  it  would  be  a  proper  way  to  spend  our 
first  Sabbath?" 

"That  is  to  be  thought  of.  We  shall  proba- 
bly not  have  the  opportunity  again,  however, 
and  I  fear  we  should  not  be  much  better  em- 
ployed did  we  remain  here  in  our  quarters." 

"Couldn't  we  go  to  church  first?"  asked 
James,  his  mind  seeming  to  be  occupied  by 
thoughts  of  an  exceedingly  solemn  character. 

"Never!"  was  the  quick  response.  "Let  us 
not  play  the  hypocrite  —  saint  one-half  the  day 
and  devil  the  other." 

"Perhaps  you  are  right,  Cousin  Mortimer; 
but,  somehow,  the  thing  sets  hard  on  my  con- 
science," sighed  James.  "Nevertheless,"  he 
continued,  brightening  up  a  little,  "we  ought 
to  be  forgiven  this  one  transgression." 

"Yes,"  answered  Blair,  "on  the  whole,  I  feel 
willing  to  take  my  chances;"  and  here  the  dis- 
cussion ended.  Blair  lit  his  pipe  and  fell  to 
reading  Montaigne,  an  author  that  accompanied 
him  in  all  his  travels  ;  while  James,  reminded 
anew  of  certain  promises  made  to  his  mother, 
carefully  opened  a  pocket  Bible  (which,  by  the 
by,  had  seen  little  use  of  late)  and  sought, 
among  its  pages,  pardon  for  what  he  knew  to 
be  a  wrong  resolve  for  the  employment  of  the 
morrow.  It  was  very  late  when  our  Yankee 


334 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


boys  retired  for  the  night ;  but  long  after  they 
dropped  asleep  the  sound  of  revelry  rose  and 
died  away,  and  rose  again,  in  the  brilliant  sa- 
loons and  the  dark,  treacherous  streets  of  San 
Francisco  of '49. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Sabbath  morning  dawned,  giving  promise  of 
a  calm,  clear  day.  In  no  land  could  the  sky  be 
of  a  purer  blue  or  the  air  filled  with  a  more  de- 
lightful and  invigorating  freshness.  Nature  ap- 
peared to  be  aware  of  the  presence  of  the  day 
of  sacredness  and  rest.  The  bay  lay  bright  and 
smooth  from  shore  to  shore ;  while  its  scattered 
islands,  like  grave  and  respectful  giants,  sat 
spell -bound  on  their  watery  thrones,  their  ad- 
miration divided  between  the  cloudless  azure 
above  and  the  still,  lucid  depths  at  their  feet. 
With  nature  it  was  Sabbath ;  man  alone  remain- 
ed untouched  by  the  divine  sympathy.  The 
cousins  rose  and  went  forth  into  the  air.  It 
was  the  hour  for  the  familiar  warning  of  the 
church  bell — it  did  not  sound ;  the  hour  for  the 
slow  procession  of  elderly  worshipers,  for  the 
happy  but  hushed  bands  of  cleanly-attired  chil- 
dren to  be  moving  toward  the  sanctuary — these 
did  not  appear.  Visions  of  the  little  New 
England  village  where  James  was  born,  and 
where  he  had  always  lived,  stole  into  his  mind 
and  would  not  depart.  He  tried  to  banish  them, 
and  Blair  made  effort  to  assist  him ;  all  was  in 
vain. 

"I  know  you  will  laugh  at  me,"  sighed  the 
homesick  boy,  "but  my  eyes  see  only  Mary, 
with  her  hymn-book  in  her  hand,  waiting  for 
service  to  begin  in  the  old  church  on  the 
green." 

"If  that  is  the  sum  total  of  the  scene  before 
those  glistening  spectacles,"  exclaimed  Blair, 
"then,  Jimmy,  you  are  done  for.  I  who  stand 
by  your  side  have  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in 
seeing,  even  to  its  secret  recesses,  the  most  for- 
saken-looking medley  of  tents  and  sheds  that 
was  ever  permitted  to  cumber  the  ground." 

At  this  explosion  James  stretched  forward 
his  long  neck,  as  if  to  take  in  the  entire  town 
at  a  glance;  and,  suddenly  smitten  with  the 
justice  and  appropriateness  of  Blair's  outburst, 
despite  his  despondency,  laughed  outright. 
That  moment  the  sound  of  fife  and  drum  rose 
on  the  air,  and  a  huge  vehicle  drawn  by  four 
mettlesome  horses  rolled  into  sight.  Upon 
nearer  approach,  it  was  perceived  that  a  mam- 
moth grizzly  bear  was  being  borne  about  the 
streets  in  his  cage;  upon  the  sides  of  which 
were  fastened  posters  whereon  could  be  read, 
in  large  letters,  the  advertisement  before  given. 


"He  looks  as  if  he  could  not  wait  till  four 
o'clock  for  his  combat,"  remarked  James. 

"I  am  growing  impatient  myself,"  responded 
the  other.  "What  shall  we  do  to  occupy  the 
time  between  this  and  the  conflict  in  the 
arena?  Upon  thinking  it  over,"  continued 
Blair,  after  a  pause,  "I  fear  that  my  objections 
made  last  night  against  going  to  church  did 
not  fully  satisfy  you.  If  such  is  the  case,  I  had 
much  rather  you  would  attend  service.  You 
know  my  action  is  no  criterion  for  the  conduct 
of  another." 

"I  think  I  should  feel  better  to  go  to  church," 
returned  James,  "though  I  have  decided  to  be- 
have badly  after  coming  out." 

There  was  a  little  strategy  in  this  advice  of 
Blair.  What  it  was  need  not  be  now  reveal- 
ed. Suffice  it  to  say  that  James  went  to  morn- 
ing meeting,  and  his  companion — elsewhere. 
So  separated,  we  will  leave  our  friends  until 
they  again  found  themselves  together,  on  the 
way  to  the  battle  of  the  animals. 

Having  traveled  about  two  miles  south-west 
from  San  Francisco,  they  came  to  a  decayed 
little  village,  composed  of  a  few  one-story  adobe 
buildings,  when  they  were  informed  that  they 
had  arrived  at  Mission  Dolores.  The  town 
presented  a  singularly  melancholy  aspect,  which 
its  drowsy  inhabitants  of  Spanish  and  Indian 
blood  intermingled  rather  increased  than  re- 
lieved. These  languid  people,  steeped  in  the 
sluggishness  and  superstition  of  years,  having 
attended  the  mummery  of  the  monks  and  friars 
at  mass  a  few  hours  previous,  were  now  ready 
to  dream  somewhat  more  actively  over  the 
scene  of  carnage  about  to  be  enacted.  Four 
o'clock  came,  the  musicians  plied  their  instru- 
ments, and  soon  the  amphitheater,  directly  in 
front  of  the  church,  was  occupied  by  some  three 
thousand  people,  who  had  paid  for  their  admis- 
sion to  the  elevated  seats  the  sum  of  three  dol- 
lars apiece.  As  the  reader  may  imagine,  all 
nationalities  appeared  to  have  sent  their  dele- 
gates to  this  assembly.  From  all  ranks,  with 
skins  of  every  hue  and  tongues  of  every  accent, 
they  came ;  men  and  women,  youths  and  maid- 
ens— yes,  and  children. 

The  moments  passed  slowly ;  the  eager  crowd 
could  not  brook  delay.  The  clamorous  brass 
band  blew  its  loudest,  but  soon  as  it  paused  the 
shouting  and  stamping  of  the  multitude  was 
renewed.  At  length,  all  grew  suddenly  silent. 
An  attendant  stood  at  the  door  of  the  pen  of 
"Hercules."  Another  instant,  and  the  furious 
animal,  being  loosed,  bounded  into  the  arena. 
With  lowered  head,  his  tail  madly  lashing  his 
great  sides,  his  eyes  burning  with  wrath,  he 
glanced  angrily  at  the  crowd,  then  bellowed 
and  pawed  the  earth  as  if  to  declare  his  utter 


V?  AND    '50. 


335 


defiance  of  the  forthcoming  foe.  At  this  junct- 
ure the  mounted  Mexicans,  lassos  in  hand, 
made  their  appearance  before  him.  Instanta- 
neously he  rushed  toward  one  of  them,  when 
the  other,  with  surprising  quickness,  threw  the 
lasso  over  his  horns.  This  was  no  sooner  done 
than  the  rider  first  attacked  found  opportunity 
to  hurl  his  lasso  also.  It,  too,  fastened  itself 
round  the  bull's  horns,  and  he  was  thus  made 
stationary  midway  between  the  nimble  pica- 
dors. A  third  man  now  hastened  in,  and, 
grasping  the  imprisoned  beast  by  the  tail, 
twisted  it  until  he  was  brought  to  the  ground. 
While  so  prostrate,  a  second  assistant  lost  no 
time  in  securing  his  right  hind  leg  with  a  long 
chain.  This  done,  the  other  end  of  the  chain, 
by  a  process  of  equal  dexterity,  was  bound  with 
thongs  to  the  left  fore -leg  of  the  bear,  the  leg 
having  been  first  artfully  drawn  from  beneath 
the  partially -lifted  trap  of  his  cage,  which  was 
close  at  hand.  The  trap  was  now  drawn  com- 
pletely up,  when  " Trojan,"  an  enormous  griz- 
zly, weighing  some  fourteen  hundred  pounds, 
slid  carelessly  out  into  the  open  space.  He 
had  dispatched  three  foes  of  the  family  of  the 
one  before  him,  and  only  a  sullen  growl,  rather 
of  indifference  than  of  rage,  indicated  that  he 
was  aware  of  an  approaching  encounter.  The 
bull,  on  the  contrary,  immediately  manifested 
his  eagerness  for  the  fray.  Moving  backward 
the  length  of  the  chain,  he  so  gave  the  bear  a 
ierk  of  warning,  and  rushed  upon  him. 

"Now,  ye  gods  of  the  ancient  gladiators  ! — 

Blair  had  not  time  to  finish  his  invocation 
before  the  bull  had  struck  the  bear  like  a  thun- 
derbolt, and  rolled  him  headlong  in  the  dust. 

"Glorious!"  cried  James,  excited  out  of  his 
wits.  "Glorious!" 

"Keep  your  seat  —  sit  down!"  responded 
Blair,  seizing  his  comrade  by  the  extremity  of 
his  rather  short  coat.  "You  are  worse  than  a 
woman." 

"Look  at  him,  look  at  the  bull  get  ready 
again  !"  continued  James,  mechanically  resum- 
ing his  place.  "He  isn't  hurt.  At  him  again, 
old  fellow!" 

And  the  horned  beast  did  "at  him"  with  re- 
doubled fury.  This  time,  however,  Bruin  was 
ready  to  give  him  a  more  suitable  reception. 
As  he  dashed  against  him,  he  clapped  his  arms 
around  the  neck  of  Taurus,  and  hugged  him 
like  a  huge  vice.  The  bull,  choking,  struggled 
desperately  to  free  himself.  Finding  this  im- 
possible, he  sought  to  drive  his  sharp  horns 
into  the  ribs  of  his  antagonist.  This  he  suc- 
ceeded in  doing,  goring  a  horrible  gash.  But 
Bruin  was  now  prepared  to  return  the  injury 
with  a  yet  more  terrible  retaliation.  A  moment 
these  mighty  foes  writhed  in  close  struggle; 


when  the  bear,  seizing  in  his  massive  jaws  one 
entire  side  of  the  bull's  face,  crushed  it  as  if  it 
had  been  made  of  paper.  The  cracking  of  the 
bones,  as  Bruin  ground  them  between  his  great 
teeth,  brought  the  first  grand  demonstration 
from  the  audience.  Now  rose  cheers  from 
hundreds  of  throats,  and  resounded  the  deaf- 
ening clapping  of  hundreds  of  hands.  The 
dreamy -eyed  daughters  of  Spain  were  not  less 
enthusiastic  than  the  male  members  of  the  as- 
sembly. They,  too,  cried  "bravo!"  and  with 
their  own  peculiar  grace,  waved  their  handker- 
chiefs in  expression  -of  unmistakable  delight. 
As  for  James  Swilling,  he  was  entirely  beside 
himself  with  the  general  excitement,  but  par- 
ticularly because  of  his  intense  sympathy  for 
the  worsted  combatant. 

"Thunderation  to  Jupiter!"  he  shouted;  "let 
go  of  that." 

"I  don't  believe  the  bear  hears  ye,"  answered 
a  clownish  boy,  from  the  next  tier  of  seats  be- 
low. 

James  certainly  did  not  hear  the  observa- 
tion of  the  boy;  for  with  clenched  hands  and 
firmly  closed  teeth,  he  continued  to  rivet  his 
gaze  upon  the  exhausted,  bleeding  brutes  in 
the  arena.  These  had  now,  from  sheer  inabil- 
ity to  longer  grapple,  arrived  at  a  suspension 
of  hostilities.  They  drew  themselves  apart 
the  length  of  the  chain,  and  stood  peacefully 
eyeing  one  another  as  if  to  say,  "We  are  very 
equally  matched;  let  us  call  it  a  draw  game, 
and  attend  to  our  wounds." 

This  would  seem  a  very  commendable  course 
under  the  circumstances ;  but  it  was  altogether 
too  dull  for  the  audience.  The  managers  had 
promised  a  fight  to  be  terminated  only  by  death; 
accordingly  they  leaped  into  the  inclosure  and 
goaded  the  bleeding  brutes  with  spears  until, 
remaddened  with  pain,  they  again  rushed  upon 
each  other.  It  was  a  brief  close,  for  the  bull, 
summoning  all  his  strength,  struck  the  bear  on 
the  lower  jaw  and  shivered  it. 

"There,  there,  now  you've  got  it,  old  fellow !" 
cried  James,  the  boy  who  turned  pale  at  the 
sight  of  blood  in  the  El  Dorado.  The  hard 
side  of  him  was,  at  present,  uppermost ;  indeed 
he  was  wholly  changed — so  much  so  that  he 
would  not  have  known  himself  had  he  stopped 
to  consider  his  feeling  and  conduct. 

"Bravo!  Bravo  !"  shouted  the  spectators. 

The  air  was  filled  with  this  exulting  cry. 
The  contest  was  ended ;  both  combatants  were 
prostrate  in  the  dust,  neither  of  them  ever  to 
rise  again.  Immediately  the  chain  was  re- 
moved from  their  limp  and  useless  limbs,  and 
I  horses  being  hitched  to  them,  groaning  and 
weltering  in  their  own  and  one  another's  blood, 
they  were  mercilessly  dragged  out  of  the  arena. 


336 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


James  Swilling  was  very  much  like  a  wind- 
mill. There  was  something  in  his  awkward, 
flapping  motions  that  reminded  one  of  that 
unique  instrument.  But  still  more  did  he  re- 
semble it  in  character.  Whenever  the  wind 
blew,  then  would  James  become  active;  and 
just  in  proportion  to  its  power  would  be  regu- 
lated the  number  of  his  revolutions.  In  a  word, 
he  was  wholly  dependent,  in  thought  and  ac- 
tion, upon  the  breezes  and  gales  of  fortune. 
He  had  more  good  intentions,  had  made  more 
excellent  resolves,  and  forgotten  them  with 
more  astonishing  rapidity,  than  any  fifty  boys 
of  his  age  and  cultivation.  As  has  been  said, 
he  had  received  only  a  common -school  educa- 
tion; but  in  certain  branches  he  was  uncom- 
monly proficient.  When  thoroughly  engrossed 
in  a  congenial  subject,  James  frequently  prov- 
ed himself  in  possession  of  sound  judgment 
and  of  the  raw  material  for  a  logician.  Again, 
when  his  emotional  nature  (it  was  this  that 
played  such  havoc  with  him)  gained  ascend- 
ency, all  his  wisdom  and  sobriety  of  thought 
would  be  overthrown.  Blair  knew  that  he  was 
not  the  boy  to  leave  home.  Daily,  he  expect- 
ed that  some  tidal  wave  of  excitement  would 
overtake  him  and  hurry  him  away  beyond  re- 
call. On  the  present  occasion,  after  the  re- 
moval of  the  antagonists,  James  came  to  him- 
self as  quickly  as  he  went  out  of  himself  upon 
their  entrance. 

"Cousin  Mortimer,"  said  he,  "I  don't  know 
as  I  care  about  staying  to  see  the  other  fight." 
So  saying,  he  rose  as  if  to  shake  the  dust  off 
his  feet  as  a  testimony  against  the  profane 
place,  when,  missing  his  footing,  he  fell  through 
between  the  tier  of  seats  where  he  had  been  sit- 
ting and  the  one  next  below.  A  straggling  fall 
of  several  feet,  and  he  found  himself  sprawled 
on  the  ground,  considerably  bruised  and  shaken. 
It  was  high  time  for  James  to  meet  with  an 
accident,  and  Blair  was  not  at  all  surprised. 
Hastening  to  his  ill-starred  companion's  assist- 
ance, he  got  him  once  more  in  an  upright  posi- 
tion, and  was  about  leaving  the  amphitheater 
with  him,  when  this  windmill  of  humanity  spied 
"Behemoth"  bounding  into  the  arena. 

"I'm  all  right,"  he  shouted.  And,  forthwith 
scrambling  back  to  his  seat  so  unceremonious- 
ly vacated,  awaited  with  unabated  eagerness 
the  second  act  of  the  cruel  play. 

Presently  two  mounted  picadors,  armed  with 
swords,  entered,  and  faced  the  formidable  bull. 
These  were  no  sooner  in  sight  than  the  animal, 
made  frantic  by  their  presence,  charged  upon 
them.  The  trained  horses  and  riders  avoided 
his  onset,  only  to  be  ready  for  a  more  sudden 
bout  immediately  to  follow.  This,  too,  they 
evaded  with  great  adroitness.  The  bull,  having 


now  become  exasperated  by  his  failures,  bespat- 
tering the  ground  with  the  foam  of  his  wrath, 
and  rushed  a  third  time  upon  the  riders  with 
deadly  aim. 

One  of  the  horses  slipped  and  fell.  His 
rider  leaped  aside  unhurt,  but  the  poor  horse 
was  in  an  instant  gored  to  death.  Quickly  the 
other  picador  dismounted  and  gave  fight  to  the 
bull,  while  the  first  led  the  remaining  horse 
outside.  At  this  juncture,  a  third  Mexican, 
dressed  in  fancy-colored  tights,  entered  the  in- 
closure;  and,  with  a  sword  in,  his  right  hand 
and  a  red  flag  in  his  left,  saluting  the  enthusi- 
astic audience,  he  took  upon  himself  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  battle.  Waving  the  flag 
tauntingly  in  the  face  of  the  bull,  the  angry  an- 
imal dashed  down  upon  it  only  to  find  that  his 
enemy  was  not  behind  it,  but  standing  safely 
on  one  side.  Again  and  again  the  flag  waved 
and  the  bull  charged — the  matador,  as  he  was 
called,  still  remaining  unharmed.  This  irritat- 
ing process  was  continued  for  some  minutes, 
when,  having  thoroughly  exasperated  the  foiled 
animal,  the  matador  began  throwing  into  his 
shoulders  small  darts  of  steel,  on  the  blunt  ends 
of  which  were  fastened  little  flags.  A  half 
dozen  of  these  torturing  instruments  being  driv- 
en into  the  flesh  of  the  bull,  he  prostrated  him- 
self in  the  dust  and  rolled  over  and  over,  sting- 
ing with  the  sharp  pains  they  inflicted.  Finding 
no  relief  from  this  effort,  he  rose  to  his  feet 
again  and  made  a  final  charge  against  his  foe. 
It  was  too  swift  and  furious  for  the  eye  to  fol- 
low; but  no  sooner  was  it  accomplished  than 
the  matador  was  to  be  seen  standing  beside  the 
deceived  animal,  his  sword  plunged  to  the  hilt 
into  its  breast.  One  grand  cheer  went  up  from 
the  multitude,  and  the  Sabbath  sport  at  Mission 
Dolores  was  ended. 


.CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  morning  following  the  bloody  day  at 
Dolores  our  young  friends  took  passage  on  the 
Pioneer  for  Sacramento.  Ensign,  having  called 
the  evening  previous,  was  prevailed  upon  to 
make  one  of  their  company.  He  had,  as  he 
supposed,  placed  Andy  Wheeler  in  safe  keep- 
ing ;  but  the  man  left  in  charge  proved  truant, 
and  the  result  was  as  the  reader  has  already 
learned.  Ensign  brought  with  him  two  newly 
made  acquaintances — one  Dr.  Durgin  and  his 
young  wife,  a  lately  married  couple,  recent 
comers  to  this  coast.  There  were,  besides  a 
number  of  miners,  several  boys  on  board. 
These  youthful  spirits  gave  life  to  the  trip  by 
incessant  volleys  of  mother-wit  and  frequent 


AND   '50. 


337 


outbursts  of  song,  their  favorite  words  for  mu- 
sic being  : 

"Oh,  California!    That's  the  land  for  me. 
I'm  bound  for  the  Sacramento 
With  the  wash-bowl  on  my  knee." 

As  the  little  boat  moved  along  up  the  bay 
into  the  Sacramento,  it  was  through  water  very 
different  in  appearance  from  that  which  is  found 
in  the  same  locality  to-day.  The  river  was  clear, 
and  gleamed  like  a  tortuous  band  of  gold  be- 
neath the  morning  sun.  For  miles  inland,  upon 
either  bank,  the  level  land  stretched  away  with- 
out a  break,  and  vast  herds  of  wild  cattle  roam- 
ed at  pleasure  over  its  rich  pasturage.  It  was 
not  the  time  of  year  when  this  valley  appears 
most  pleasing ;  but  it  was  easy  to  imagine  the 
oak,  sycamore  and  willows,  the  grapevines  and 
varied  shrubbery  that  clustered  on  the  banks  at 
intervals,  glowing  in  the  green  of  early  spring. 
Particularly  simple  was  this  effort  of  mind  for 
the  only  lady  on  board,  the  pretty  and  girlish 
wife  of  Dr.  Durgin.  She  revealed  this  fact  to 
Blair  very  soon  after  his  introduction  to  her. 
Indeed,  she  seemed  disposed  to  devote  her 
time  and  talents  to  the  handsome  Bostonian 
for  the  remainder  of  the  passage. 

"Is  not  this  a  most  romantic  world?"  said 
she.  "What  land  could  be  more  suitable  for 
the  loves  of  the  children  of  the  wild?  We  have 
not  passed  a  group  of  quiet  trees  that  did  not 
compel  me  to  see  there  some  dusky  maiden 
leaning  upon  her  young  warrior's  arm.  Yonder, 
for  instance — isn't  that  the  sweetest  place  in 
the  world  for  the  runaway  daughter  of  some 
frowning  brave  to  step  into  the  canoe  with  her 
lover  and  glide  in  secret  bliss  upon  the  bosom 
of  the  river?" 

"She  don't  know  much  about  Injuns,  I  reck- 
on," whispered  a  miner,  at  Blair's  elbow. 

"I  can  appreciate  your  mood,  madam,"  re- 
turned the  Bostonian;  "but  the  rank-thistle- 
nodding-in-the-wind  element,  I  fear,  is  more  at- 
tractive viewed  (as  you  seem  to  see  it)  in 
poetry  than  when  an  actual  occurrence  in  nat- 
ure." 

"Ah,  Mr.  Blair,"  replied  the  other,  "you  men 
are  determined  to  decry  the  gentlest  and  ten- 
derest  scenes  of  earth.  In  so  doing  you  abuse 
the  poets  not  only,  but  the  facts.  Do  you  not 
suppose  there  is  genuine  affection  in  the  red 
man's  breast?" 

"  I  know  very  little  about  the  haunts  of  affec- 
tion ;  but  I  had  never  entertained  the  idea  that 
it  paid  much  attention  to  epidermis  or  cutis 
vera?  returned  Blair,  with  a  smile  intended  to 
be  not  altogether  disagreeable. 

"Then,"  continued  the  lady,  "the  Indian 
hunter's  wooing  of  his  ' dusky  mate'  was  more 


beautiful  in  itself  than  the  finest  thing  that  could 
be  possibly  said  of  it." 

"The  conclusion  is  reached,  and  I  do  not  see 
that  words  of  mine  could  unsettle  it,  so  I  shall 
be  compelled  to  acquiesce,"  responded  Blair, 
with  a  slight  inclination  of  his  uncovered  head. 

A  pretty  blush  creeping  over  the  fair  cheeks 
of  Mrs.  Durgin  did  not  escape  Blair's  notice, 
though  it  appeared  to  have  much  less  effect, 
upon  him  than  upon  the  miner  before  alluded 
to.  This  honest -faced  fellow,  not  having  seen 
a  really  attractive  woman,  perhaps,  for  a  twelve- 
month before,  did  not  feel  like  losing  an  oppor- 
tunity to  inspect  one  at  his  leisure.  So  he  had 
remained  near  enough  not  only  to  see  advan- 
tageously, but  also  to  hear  the  greater  part  of 
the  conversation.  Upon  discovering  the  blush, 
he  was  so  elated  that  he  could  not  forbear  ut- 
tering a  compliment. 

"Stranger,"  said  he  to  Blair,  "if  a  remark  o' 
mine  had  fetched  that  thar  tincter  to  the  lady's 
countenance,  I  should  call  it  the  richest  lead  I 
had  struck  since  I  made  my  hundred  dollars  a 
day  .on  Scarecrow  Bar." 

This  tribute  to  her  beauty  caused  Madame 
Durgin  to  exhibit  a  much  deeper  color  than  at 
first.  She  was  quite  disconcerted,  not  to  say 
offended ;  and  it  is  not  known  how  many  shades 
more  she  would  have  presented  had  not  the 
Doctor  approached  in  the  nick  of  time  to  re- 
strain her  from  further  feats  of  facial  alchemy. 
Ensign  was  now  through  with  his  smoke  and 
chat  with  the  Doctor;  so  Blair  ingeniously 
yielded  his  place  to  his  not  unwilling  friend. 
Madame  Durgin  was  not  overjoyed  with  the 
exchange,  but  she  and  her  new  companion  were 
soon  on  apparently  good  terms. 

Blair's  indifference  to  women  in  general  has 
already  been  alluded  to.  It  will  also  be  re- 
membered that  while  James  was  at  church  the 
day  before  he  himself  was  elsewhere.  He  kept 
his  whereabouts  and  his  errand  a  secret  from 
his  comrade;  but  that  is  no  reason  why  the 
reader  should  not  be  let  into  enough  of  his  pri- 
vacy to  learn  the  fact  that  the  object  of  his 
perambulations  and  inquiries  was  none  other 
than  the  "Gazelle."  So  it  may  have  been  par- 
tially for  the  reason  that  he  could  not  entertain 
thoughts  of  two  women  at  a  time  that  he  now 
determined  to  think  of  none  at  all ;  and,  seating 
himself  in  a  remote  quarter  of  the  boat,  em- 
ployed the  time  in  writing  to  an  old  chum  in 
Boston.  An  extract  from  his  letter  may  prove 
welcome  to  one  interested  in  our  story : 

"Greatly  to  my  surprise  the  old  ship  brought  us  safe- 
ly to  port.  On  the  whole,  the  voyage  was  a  comforta- 
ble one ;  but  I  would  not  advise  you  to  run  a  like  risk 
of  wind  and  wave.  I  write  so  soon  after  my  arrival  be- 
cause it  is  exceedingly  uncertain  how  long  I  may  be 


338 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


able  to  identify  myself  as  your  quondam  friend.  Changes 
are  so  violent  here,  and  follow  in  so  rapid  succession, 
that  whatever  a  man  may  be  one  hour  is  no  guarantee 
as  to  what  he  may  be  before  the  expiration  of  the  next. 
Scientists,  I  believe,  allow  seven  years  for  the  system  to 
effect  a  complete  change.  This  time  may  be  applicable  to 
Boston ;  but  in  San  Francisco  as  complete  and  thorough 
a  renovation  is  brought  about  easily  in  seven  months. 
If  my  hair  is  not  white  before  you  get  another  letter 
from  me,  it  will  be  for  the  reason  that  I  have  found  a 
region  where  one's  brain  need  not  spin  like  a  top  with 
excitement,  and  where  one  can  breathe,  eat,  and  sleep 
halfway  secure  against  startling  interruptions.  I  am 
anxious  enough  to  get  at  the  gold,  but  this  is  not  the 
cause  of  the  perturbation  of  which  I  speak.  Disturb- 
ance is  bred,  as  it  were,  in  the  very  air.  Everything  is 
wild.  No  law  of  man  or  nature  that  I  have  been 
familiar  with  extends  its  jurisdiction  to  this  coast.  Hu- 
manity has  run  riot ;  and,  as  Dr.  Johnson  would  say, 
'there's  an  end  on't.'  Only  two  or  three  days  in  San 
Francisco ;  but  let  me  give  you  a  hint  of  a  few  of  the 
more  prominent  episodes  with  which  so  brief  a  career 
has  been  favored. 

' '  No.  i.  A  murder  committed  before  my  very  eyes  not 
only,  but  the  victim  being  a  man  with  whom  I  was  in 
conversation  at  the  time ;  and  what  is  worse,  Ensign,  our 
common  friend,  being  the  perpetrator  of  the  deed.  He 
(Ensign)  is  excusable,  however,  as  things  go  here,  and 
is  sustained  by  the  better  portion  of  the  community. 

"No.  2.  Found  a  miserable  wretch,  without  shelter 
or  friend,  down  among  some  old  boxes  by  the  water, 
grappling  with  death.  Arrived  just  in  tirne  to  see  him 
draw  his  last  breath.  He  was  an  acquaintance  of  my 
companion  ;  so,  with  the  help  of  two  men  and  a  drunk- 
en clergyman,  we  buried  him. 

"No.  3.  Have  seen  an  angel  gambling.  Saw  her 
reduce  to  her  own  possession  $8,000  in  the  space  of 
thirty  minutes. 

"No.  4.  Have  expended  from  my  own  private  purse 
nearly  $300,  having  so  gained  no  more  than  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  and  the  satisfaction  of  having  done  my 
duty. 

' '  These  four  enumerations  are  sufficient  to  convey  an 
idea  of  what  life  is  here ;  I  might  add  many  more. 

"Every  nation  on  earth  has  sent  a  vagabond  here. 
To-day  he  is  begging,  but  to-morrow  he  may  command 
his  thousands.  Hopes  and  fortunes  go  up  and  down 
almost  too  quickly  to  realize  what  has  taken  place. 
Uncertainty  is  the  presiding  deity,  and  all  men,  high  or 
low  elsewhere,  here  find  themselves  upon  a  dead  level  of 
equality.  Ministers  of  the  gospel  turn  porters  (most 
dissipated  ones  at  that) ;  doctors,  lawyers,  judges  drive 
mule -teams,  shovel  dirt,  or  become  menials  in  the  ho- 
tels and  saloons.  But,  believe  me,  not  for  poor  pay. 
A  man  that  we  wouldn't  employ  to  superintend  the  ash- 
barrel  at  home  can  here  get  his  eight  dollars  a  day  as  a 
carpenter,  a  shoveler,  or  master  of  whatever  task  he  may 
be  willing  to  undertake.  Money  comes  so  easily  and  is 
so  plentiful  that  it  is  really  good  for  nothing,  after  all. 
Unless  one  does  as  did  a  Virginian  a  day  or  two  since 
— shoulder  his  gold  and  hurry  home — he  is  as  well  off 
with  one  dollar  as  he  is  with  a  thousand.  It  is  of  no 
use  to  try  to  fill  up  pockets  already  full  of  holes.  Some 
men,  of  course,  are  too  cunning  to  fall  into  the  preva- 
lent ruinous  habits.  I  am  informed  that  certain  gam- 
blers from  the  mother  country  manage  to  send  home 
the  average  sum  of  $17,000  each  per  month.  It  is  into 
the  coffers  of  such  bankers  as  these  that  the  earnings  of 


the  reckless  miners  go.  For  weeks  together  these 
thoughtless  gold-diggers  will  take  out  of  the  earth  from 
three  to  five  hundred  dollars  a  week ;  then  drag  their 
rheumatic  limbs  down  here  and  throw  all  away  in  as 
many  days — yes,  in  as  many  hours.  If  worse  comes  to 
worse,  why  one  sure  remedy  remains  :  a  man  can  cut 
his  throat,  shoot  or  hang  himself,  at  any  time  or  place, 
without  fear  of  interference. 

''And  yet,  what  is  stranger  than  all,  amid  this  con- 
fusion and  subversion  of  every  recognized  canon  of  civ- 
ilized life,  there  is  a  certain  degree  of  order,  and  a  sub- 
stratum of  solid,  reliable,  vigorous  manhood.  You 
would  be  astounded  at  the  amount  of  business  transact- 
ed in  San  Francisco.  The  town  can't  stow  away  one- 
tenth  part  of  its  merchandise.  Some  twenty  ships  are 
used  at  this  date  as  warehouses.  Fate  has  undoubtedly 
singled  out  this  rampant  mud-hole  for  greatness.  Some- 
times glorious  visions  of  its  future  pass  before  my  eyes ; 
but  they  vanish  as  soon.  I  would  not  for  the  world  do 
injustice  to  this  immortal  band  of  pioneers.  Their  faults 
are  great,  but  great  faults  are  the  counterparts  of  great 
virtues.  Already  there  is  a  church  and  school  in  opera- 
tion ;  and  in  many  other  ways  the  seeds  of  order  and 
peace  are  being  sown.  Recklessness  so  extreme  cannot 
continue.  Innumerable  lives  and  fortunes  must  yet  be 
lost  before  the  end  is  attained ;  but  I  firmly  believe  that, 
one  day,  this  land  will  be  spoken  of  with  pride  by  Amer- 
icans and  by  the  people  of  all  nations  that  recognize 
the  prosperity  that  is  achieved  through  perilous  toil  and 
the  sacrifice  of  whatever  is  dearest  to  the  heart  of  man. 

"After  this  strain  of  eloquence,  I  know  you  expect  a 
spurt  of  the  ridiculous.  Well,  allow  me  to  present  you 
with  a  list  of  liquids,  the  majority  of  which  may  be  pro- 
cured at  one  of  San  Francisco's  countless  saloons.  The 
business  of  these  places  sufficiently  attests  this  baby 
settlement's  strides  toward  the  prosperity  of  adult  years. 
The  one  now  in  point  is  a  canvas  structure,  but  behold 
the  treasure  it  contains  : 

"Scotch  Ale,  English  Porter,  American  Brandy,  Irish 
Whisky,  Holland  Gin,  Jamaica  Rum,  French  Claret, 
Spanish  Sack,  German  Hockamore,  Persian  Sherbet, 
Portuguese  Port,  Brazilian  Arrack,  Swiss  Absynthe, 
East  India  Acids,  Spirit  Stews  and  Toddies,  Lager 
Beer,  New  Cider,  Soda  Water,  Mineral  Drinks,  Ginger 
Pop,  Usquebaugh,  Sangaree,  Perkin,  Mead,  Metheglin, 
Eggnog,  Capilliare,  Kirchwasser,  Cognac,  Rhenish 
Wine,  Sauterne,  Malaga,  Muscatel,  Burgundy,  Haul 
Bersae,  Champagne,  Maraschino,  Tafia,  Negus,  Tog, 
Shambro,  Fisca,  Virginia,  Knickerbocker,  Snifter,  Ex- 
change, Poker,  Agent,  Floater,  I  O  U,  Smasher,  Cura- 
foa.  Ratafia,  Tokay,  Calcavalla,  Alcohol,  Cordials, 
Syrups,  Stingo,  Hot  Grog,  Mint  Juleps,  Gin  Sling,  Brick 
Tops,  Sherry  Cobblers,  Queen  Charlottes,  Mountaineers, 
Brandy  Smashes,  Whisky  Punch,  Cherry  Bounce,  Sham- 
perone,  Drizzles,  Our  Own,  Red  Light,  Hairs,  Horns, 
Whistler,  White  Lion,  Settler,  Peach  and  Honey, 
Whisky  Skin,  Old  Sea- Dog,  Peg  and  Whistle,  Eye- 
Opener,  Apple  Dam,  Flip  Flap,  One-Eyed  Joe,  Cooler, 
Cocktails,  Tom  and  Jerry,  Moral  Suasion,  Jewett's 
Fancy,  Ne  Plus  Ultra,  Citronella  Jam,  Silver  Spout, 
Veto,  Dracon,  Ching  Ching,  Sergeant,  Stone -Wall, 
Rooster  Tail,  Vox  Populi,  Tug  and  Try. 

"Of  course,  bowie-knives  and  pistols,  cigars  and  to- 
bacco, are  the  unfailing  companions  of  these  spiritual 
pleasures.  How  would  you  enjoy  setting  out  with  the 
determination  to  go  through  such  a  list  at  the  modest 
expense  of  twenty-five  cents  per  indulgence?  As  before 
intimated,  not  every  one  of  these  elixirs  of  delight  ad- 


AN  AMERICAN   TRAVELER. 


339 


vertised  is  to  be  procured  just  at  present ;  but  the  go- 
ahead  proprietor  informs  me  that  if  the  rush  to  this  port 
continues,  and  the  gold  holds  out,  he  will  have  every 
article  named  behind  his  bar  at  the  expiration  of  an- 
other twelvemonth. 

"I  haven't  said  a  word  about  women.  Knowing  me 
so  well,  you  may  attribute  my  silence  on  this  point  to 
obedience  to  my  natural  bias ;  not  altogether.  There 
are  no  women  to  talk  about.  A  few  females  of  Spanish 
extraction  are  to  be  met  with,  wrapped  in  gay-colored 
shawls  ;  but  it  will  be  some  time  before  I  make  love  to 
any  of  'em.  They  waltz  elegantly,  I  am  informed,  and, 
to  my  own  knowledge,  they  have  lustrous  and  rather 
pretty  black  eyes ;  but  their  teeth  are  yellow  with  to- 
bacco smoke,  and  their  stockingless  feet  exhibit  heels 
that  could  be  much  improved  by  the  brisk  application 
of  a  rough  cloth  saturated  with  warm  soap-suds.  A 
few  civilized  Americans  have  their  wives  and  daughters 
with  them,  though  I  have  been  honored  as  yet  with  the 
acquaintance  of  only  one  of  them,  and  that  acquaint- 
ance is  not  more  than  an  hour  old. 

' '  I  heard  a  good  story  yesterday  ( and  it  is  undoubt- 
edly true),  illustrating  the  demand  for  respectable  fe- 
male companions.  A  lady  from  Virginia  lost  her  hus- 
band shortly  after  her  arrival  at  San  Francisco.  Before 
a  week  passed  she  had  received  three  offers  of  marriage. 

"Notwithstanding  the  fair  objects  of  song  are  absent, 
the  poets  of  this  land  sing  to  them  as  if  their  charms 
were  actually  before  their  eyes.  The  favorite  song- 
writer of  all  the  region,  several  months  since,  sang  his 
own  ballads,  interspersed  with  recitation  and  character 
acting  (the  name  of  no  other  performer  appearing  upon 
the  programme)  to  a  house  large  and  appreciative  enough 
to  yield  him  a  net  profit  of  $500.  I  append  one  of  his 


efforts,  clipped  from  a  newspaper,  that  you  may  gain 
something  of  an  idea  of  his  skill  in  versification.  The 
muses  seem  to  be  very  partial  to  this  bard.  He  first 
makes  his  verses,  then  sets  them  to  music,  then  renders 
them,  so  conjoined,  with  his  own  mellifluous  voice : 


'To 


"  'Oh,  lady,  take  these  buds  and  flowers 

And  twine  them  in  thy  nut-brown  hair, 
And  I  will  weave  for  thee  a  wreath 

Richer  than  any  queen  could  wear. 
For  thou  shouldst  have  a  coronet 

Not  glittering  with  costly  gem ; 
The  primrose  and  the  violet 

Shall  be  thy  queenly  diadem  ! 

' '  '  The  jessamine  bank  shall  be  thy  throne, 

The  hawthorn  blossomings  for  thee 
Shall  breathe  their  fragrance,  while  the  song 

Of  nightingale  and  humming  bee 
Shall  be  thy  music,  and  the  shade 

Of  leafy  bower  and  myrtle  green 
Shall  yield  for  thee  a  sanctuary 

Where  thou  shall  dwell  in  peace  serene. 

"  'Then,  lady,  take  these  buds  and  flowers 

And  twine  them  in  thy  nut-brown  hair, 
And  I  will  weave  a  fragrant  wreath 

Richer  than  any  queen  could  wear. 
For  offerings  of  gold  and  gems, 

Lady,  I  would  not  bring  to  thee ; 
But  weave  a  wreath  whose  blossomings 

May  bloom  in  immortality !'  " 

JOHN  VANCE  CHENEY. 


[CONTINUED   IN   NEXT   NUMBER.] 


AN    AMERICAN    TRAVELER. 


The  "globe-trotter"  has  become  a  familiar 
apparition.  He  is  here  to-day  and  gone  to- 
morrow, but  his  species  is  ever  present.  The 
individual  changes,  but  the  type  is  fixed.  It  is 
not  so  much  in  the  field-glasses  slung  at  his 
side,  the  decanter  tied  to  his  knapsack,  the  In- 
dian hat — nor  yet  in  the  pride,  pomp,  and  cir- 
cumstance of  baggage  and  bundle — as  it  is  in  a 
certain  air  of  traveled  condescension,  a  sort  of 
cosmopolitan  patronage  of  the  provincial  hu- 
man fixtures  who  have  never  been  "abroad" 
that  one  can  distinguish  the  typical  tourist. 

You  can  tell  him  almost  at  a  glance,  and  yet 
he  is  as  multiform  as  Proteus.  He  is  English, 
French,  German,  Swiss,  Russian — even  Chi- 
nese. Sometimes  he  is  American ;  in  which 
case  you  can  pay  him  no  higher  compliment 
than  by  mistaking  him  for  an  Englishman.  He 
has  been  everywhere,  and  is  really  an  enter- 
taining companion.  Last  summer  he  scaled  the 
dizzy  hights  of  the  Jungfrau,  picked  his  way 


over  the  slippery  surface  of  the  Mer  de  Glace, 
yachted  in  the  North  Sea,  and  listened  to  the 
weird  Norwegian  songs  as  the  fisherman  pulled 
out  into  the  open  fiords.  Last  winter  he  stud- 
ied the  Eastern  Question  on  the  Bosphorus, 
sought  of  the  Sphinx  the  solution  of  her  im- 
penetrable mystery,  climbed  Mount  Sinai,  and 
walked  in  the  storied  paths  of  Gethsemane. 
For  such  a  man  one  must  feel  respect,  even  ad- 
miration. He  knows  the  customs  of  many  peo- 
ples. He  is  possessed  of  much  curious  and 
unique  information.  His  views  are  comprehen- 
sive. Travel  has  given  him  intellectual  length, 
breadth,  and  altitude.  There  is  an  amplitude 
in  his  views  that  is  refreshing.  He  sees  beyond 
the  horizon.  He  is  a  citizen  of  the  world. 

But  there  is  one  sort  of  tourist — be  he  of 
what  nation  he  may,  and  be  he  possessed  of 
what  unlimited  learning — for  whom  this  writer 
cannot  command  a  feeling  of  respect.  It  is  the 
man  whose  wealth  and  position  have  given  him 


340 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


opportunities  of  travel,  and  who  has,  therefore, 
climbed  the  revolving  globe,  but  who  has  never 
made  himself  acquainted  with  the  scenery,  the 
characteristics,  the  capacities  of  his  own  coun- 
try. An  Englishman  who  knows  every  land 
except  England,  a  Frenchman  who  has  learned 
everything  that  is  not  French,  an  American 
who  has  drunk  of  every  inspiration  save  the 
broad  democracy  of  his  native  land — these  are 
creatures  who  have  thrown  away  the  corn  of 
life  that  they  might  preserve  the  silken  tassels 
and  the  golden  husks. 

Perhaps  the  most  powerful  story  which  has 
been  produced  by  any  of  the  latter-day  school 
of  Boston  writers  is  Mr.  Edward  Everett  Male's 
The  Man  Without  a  Country.  Philip  Nolan, 
a  young  army  officer  of  the  United  States,  be- 
came entangled  in  the  conspiracies  of  Aaron 
Burr,  was  arrested,  and  tried  before  a  court- 
martial.  At  the  close  of  the  trial  the  President 
of  the  Court  asked  Nolan  if  he  desired  to  offer 
any  proof  of  his  loyalty  to  the  United  States. 
In  a  fit  of  anger  he  cried  out,  with  an  oath,  "  I 
wish  I  may  never  hear  of  the  United  States 
again." 

The  Court  President  was  one  of  the  most 
loyal  in  those  loyal  days  that  followed  the  Revo- 
lution, and  was  terribly  shocked  at  these  words. 

"He  called  the  Court  into  his  private  room,  and  re- 
turned in  fifteen  minutes,  with  a  face  like  a  sheet,  to  say: 

"  'Prisoner,  hear  the  sentence  of  the  Court.  The 
Court  decides,  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  President, 
that  you  never  hear  the  name  of  the  United  States  again. ' 

"Nolan  laughed.  But  nobody  else  laughed.  Old 
Morgan  was  too  solemn,  and  the  whole  room  was 
hushed  dead  as  night  for  a  minute.  Even  Nolan  lost 
his  swagger  in  a  moment.  Then  Morgan  added  : 

"  'Mr.  Marshal,  take  the  prisoner  to  Orleans  in  an 
armed  boat,  and  deliver  him  to  the  naval  commander 
there.' 

"The  Marshal  gave  his  orders,  and  the  prisoner  was 
taken  out  of  Court. 

"  'Mr.  Marshal,'  continued  old  Morgan,  'see  that  no 
one  mentions  the  United  States  to  the  prisoner.  Mr. 
Marshal,  make  my  respects  to  Lieutenant  Mitchell  at 
Orleans,  and  request  him  to  order  that  no  one  shall 
mention  the  United  States  to  the  prisoner  while  he  is 
on  board  ship.  You  will  receive  your  written  orders 
from  the  officer  on  duty  here  this  evening.  The  Court 
is  adjourned  without  day.'  " 

This  sentence  was  rigorously  executed.  No- 
lan was  put  on  a  man-of-war  bound  for  a  long 
voyage.  When  this  ship  was  ready  to  return 
he  was  transferred  to  another.  Fifty  years 
came  and  went,  but  he  never  saw  his  country 
again.  No  one  was  allowed  to  mention  the 
United  States  to  him,  or  to  give  him  the  least 
intelligence  from  home.  No  newspapers  were 
allowed  him  until  every  paragraph  and  every 
advertisement  that  alluded  to  America  had  been 


cut  out.  He  was  a  shunned  man.  He  grew 
shy  and  reserved.  He  choked  down  an  almost 
irresistible  longing  to  learn  something  of  his 
native  land.  Remorse  and  despair  preyed  upon 
him  as,  year  after  year,  he  floated  upon  the 
ocean  without  a  country  or  a  home.  Great 
changes  took  place,  of  which  he  knew  nothing. 
From  thirteen  small  colonies  the  nation  ex- 
panded until  the  seas  alone  checked  its  further 
progress.  States  and  territories  were  added, 
and  cities  were  built,  of  which  he  had  never 
heard. 

At  last  he  lay  upon  his  death-bed,  and  a  com- 
rade, taking  pity  upon  the  poor  fellow,  disobey- 
ed orders  and  told  him  of  the  wonderful  prog- 
ress, of  the  additions  and  annexations,  of  the 
discoveries,  the  great  names,  the  heroic  deeds, 
the  books,  the  speeches,  the  wars ;  in  short,  epit- 
omized as  best  he  could  the  events  which  had 
taken  place  in  the  fifty  years  in  which  the  na- 
tion had  been  sweeping  on  to  its  splendid  des- 
tiny. After  Nolan's  death  they  found,  on  a  slip 
of  paper  that  he  had  written,  the  following  di- 
rections : 

1 '  Bury  me  in  the  sea ;  it  has  been  my  home,  and  I 
love  it.  But  will  not  some  one  set  up  a  stone  for  my 
memory  at  Fort  Adams  or  at  Orleans,  that  my  disgrace 
may  not  be  greater  than  I  can  bear?  Say  on  it : 

'IN  MEMORY  OF 

PHILIP  NOLAN, 

LIEUTENANT  IN  THE  ARMY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

He  loved  his  country  as  no  other  man  has  loved  her  ;  but  no 
man  deserved  less  at  her  hands.' " 

It  is  a,  great  pity  that  every  American  does 
not  read  this  story — often.  Here  is  a  land  with 
a  population  of  fifty  millions,  and  with  an  area 
(if  we  include  Alaska)  nearly  as  great  as  all 
Europe.  Upon  its  broad  acres  every  vegetable 
product  known  to  man  may  be  raised.  As  an 
agricultural  nation  it  stands  at  the  head  of  the 
world.  In  manufactures  it  is  disputing  prece- 
dence with  European  countries,  and  in  many 
arts  and  industries  is  already  far  in  advance  of 
them.  The  laws  of  political  economy  have  a 
wide  play,  affording  unusual  opportunities  for 
generalizations.  To  the  thoughtful  mind,  there- 
fore, no  people  will  seem  better  worth  studying 
than  this  restless,  progressive  American  popu- 
lace. But  not  alone  to  the  student  are  there 
attractions.  The  scenery  is  unrivaled.  Eu- 
rope has  no  Yellowstone,  and  the  world  cannot 
match  Yosemite.  And  yet  it  is  rapidly  coming 
about  that  the  only  people  who  have  not  seen 
Yosemite  are  Californians. 

The  immediate  incitement  to  the  writing  of 
this  article  was  the  casual  meeting  by  the  writ- 
er in  San  Francisco,  during  the  last  summer,  of 


AN  AMERICAN  TRA  VELER. 


a  gentleman  whose  life -note  sounds  the  anti- 
phone  to  that  of  poor  Nolan — a  quiet,  well  in- 
formed, modest,  unobtrusive,  Christian  citizen, 
who  loves  his  native  country,  and  who  has 
traveled  more,  perhaps,  than  any  other  living 
man  over  its  length  and  breadth.  So  keen  was 
his  observation,  so  extensive  his  information 
respecting  the  arts  and  industries,  the  life  and 
customs,  the  wants  and  needs  of  every  part  of 
the  Union,  that  I  determined  to  use  his  life  as 
a  text  to  preach  a  sermon  to  American  citizens, 
and  particularly  to  that  class  who  have  seen 
every  land  except  their  own.  I  allude  to  Mr. 
Alfred  S.  Gillett,  of  Philadelphia.  I  take  the 
liberty  to  give,  briefly,  and  as  accurately  as  I 
can  remember  them  from  several  disconnected 
conversations;  such  events  of  Mr.  Gillett's  life 
as  bear  upon  the  subject  in  discussion. 

When  he  was  about  eight  years  of  age,  his 
father,  a  New  England  clergyman  of  the  Pres- 
byterian denomination,  removed  to  one  of  the 
new  States  of  the  West,  where  for  several  years 
the  members  of  the  family  had  a  taste  of  that 
primitive  frontier  life  which  has  been  the  stim- 
ulus of  so  much  that  is  good  and  ennobling  in 
American   manhood.     Young  as  he  was   the 
sturdy  lessons  of  these  early  days  were  not  lost 
upon  the  successful  business  man  of  later  years. 
After  a  time  young  Gillett  returned  to  New  Eng- 
land for  a  short  period  at  school,  after  which  he 
entered  the  mercantile  establishment  of  an  old- 
er brother,  where  he  remained  until  1837.     He 
then  went  to  Georgia  as  bookkeeper  for  a  large 
house,  which  soon  after  determined  to  establish 
a  branch  of  their  business  in  Texas  and  sought 
to  induce  Gillett  to  enter  into  a  partnership 
with  them  in  that  enterprise.     But  like  most 
self-reliant  natures  the  young  man  had  begun 
to  feel  a  desire  to  stand  by  himself  and  for  him- 
self, and  he  had  also  acquired  by  this  time  a 
love  of  travel  and  change.     He  again  returned 
to  New  England  and  invested  the  small  capital 
saved  from  his  earnings  in  such  merchandise 
as  he  believed  to  be  salable  in  the  young  Tex- 
an Republic.     This  was  in  1840.     Four  years 
before,  Texas  had  revolted  from  Mexico  and 
set  up  a  government  of  her  own.    The  war  with 
the  mother  country  was  still  in  progress,  and 
the  tenure  of  property  was  uncertain.     Mova- 
bles were  held  at  the  owner's  risk.     But  Gillett 
was   successful  in  his  ventures  and  realized 
handsomely  from  his  goods.     Among  valuable 
acquaintances  made  at  this  time  was  that  with 
Samuel  Houston,  then  President  of  the  infant 
republic — an  acquaintance  which  ripened  into 
the  friendship  of  a  life-time. 

Returning  after  a  period  to  Georgia,  Gillett 
engaged  in  business  on  his  own  account  near 
his  former  location.  Charles  A.  Wickliffe  was 

Vol.   III.— 22. 


then  Postmaster-General  of  the  United  States, 
and  appointed  him  postmaster  for  the  district 
in  which  he  resided.  For  a  while  he  prospered 
in  business.  But  the  portentous  cloud  of  civil 
war  was  already  casting  its  shadows  over  the 
land.  Gillett's  pronounced  Northern  senti- 
ments made  it  uncomfortable,  even  dangerous, 
for  him  to  remain,  and  at  a  sacrifice  of  business 
interests,  he  left  the  south  and  took  up  his  abode 
in  Pennsylvania. 

In  1850,  he  engaged  in  the  business  of  under- 
writing in  Philadelphia.  For  this  calling,  his 
energy,  his  early  experience  in  mercantile  life, 
and  his  knowledge  of  the  different  parts  of  the 
Union,  eminently  fitted  him.  He  rallied  to  his 
support  men  whose  names  will  be  recognized 
by  all  Philadelphians ;  among  others  Hon.  Joel 
Jones,  first  President  of  Girard  College ;  Chief 
Justice  George  W.  Woodward,  Judges  Loring 
and  Strong,  and  Messrs.  Cunningham,  Shep- 
pard,  Swain,  and  Simmons.  The  result  of  this 
association  was  the  organization  of  the  Girard 
Fire  Insurance  Company,  with  which  Mr.  Gill- 
ett has  been  continuously  connected  until  the 
present  time,  now  holding  the  office  of  Presi- 
dent. This  position  has  been  particularly  con- 
genial to  him,  because  it  has  given  him  oppor- 
tunity to  gratify  his  taste  for  travel  and  obser- 
vation. It  is  not  within  the  limits  of  our  pur- 
pose to  follow  up  the  details  of  his  career.  It 
will  be  sufficient  to  state  the  general  fact  which 
bears  upon  the  object  of  this  article. 

Within  the  last  thirty  years,  Mr.  Gillett  has 
visited,  and  traveled  through,  and  carefully 
studied,  every  State  in  the  American  Union, 
and  every  Territory  except  two.  He  has  been 
in  every  city  in  the  United  States  which  has  a 
population  of  more  than  twenty  thousand. 
Many  of  these  trips  have  been  on  business, 
but  the  great  majority  were  undertaken  for  his 
own  profit  and  pleasure.  His  last  excursion 
was  a  visit  to  this  coast,  during  which  he  went 
to  Oregon  and  Washington  Territory,  returning 
overland,  by  way  of  southern  California,  through 
Arizona  and  New  Mexico.  The  railroads  do 
not  yet  connect,  and  the  journey  through  the 
last  named  Territories  is  considered  peculiarly 
hazardous,  especially  by  stage  or  private  con- 
veyance. One  of  the  New  York  papers,  in  no- 
ticing this  "jaunt,"  speaks  as  follows : 

"It  is  a  fact  not  generally  known,  that  to  the  insur- 
ance profession  belongs  the  honor  of  having  one  of  the 
best,  if  not  the  very  best,  traveled  American  citizen ; 
that  is,  one  who  has  seen  quite  as  much,  if  not  more,  of 
this  country  than  any  other  American.  We  refer  to 
Alfred  S.  Gillett,  the  well  known  and  accomplished 
President  of  the  Girard  Insurance  Company  of  Phila- 
delphia. On  trips  of  business  and  pleasure  from  time 
to  time,  it  has  been  the  good  fortune  of  Mr.  Gillett  to 


342 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


visit  every  State  in  the  Union,  and  every  one  of  the  Ter- 
ritories, except  Montana  and  Idaho.  We  know  of  no 
other  person  who  can  boast  so  thorough  an  acquaint- 
ance with  the  country,  or  who  has  a  better  appreciation 
of  the  extent  of  Uncle  Sam's  farm.  Within  the  last 
ninety  days  Mr.  Gillett  has  traveled  about  ten  thousand 
miles  in  journeying  from  Philadelphia  to  Chicago,  San 
Francisco,  and  the  whole  length  of  the  Pacific  Coast, 
going  from  San  Francisco  to  Portland,  Oregon,  thence 
to  Puget  Sound  and  out  through  the  Strait  of  Juan  de 
Fuca,  thence  by  ocean  steamer  to  Santa  Barbara,  Los 
Angeles,  and  San  Diego,  thence  by  sail  and  stage  to 
Santa  Fe,  thence  to  Topeka  and  Chicago  en  route  for 
Philadelphia.  Making  such  a  trip  at  this  season  of  the 
year  was  a  most  arduous  and  venturesome  undertaking, 
and  one  from  which  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  in- 
dividuals would  shrink.  The  Puget  Sound  region  was 
found  full  of  points  of  interest,  and  such  as  well  repay 
a  visit.  The  journey  through  New  Mexico  was  more 
perilous  than  interesting,  and  was  calculated  to  deter 
one  from  selecting  that  route  for  a  pleasure  excursion. 
A  special  escort  was  provided  and  ready  to  accompany 
Mr.  Gillett  on  his  way  through  the  Territory,  but  owing 
to  telegraphic  interruptions  was  not  furnished,  and  the 
journey  was  made  alone  and  unattended  through  the 
most  dangerous  part  of  the  route  by  stage.  On  arriving 
at  Santa  Pe",  he  was  met  by  General  Hatch,  of  the  reg- 
ular army,  who  rendered  courteous  attention,  and  af- 
forded valuable  aid  for  the  rest  of  the  journey  to  Tope- 
ka. The  General  declared  Mr.  Gillett  the  only  person 
who  had  dared  to  make  the  trip  unattended.  The 
Santa  Fe"  New  Mexican,  of  January  18,  in  noting  his 
arrival  at  that  point,  said,  'His  trip  was  one  that  is 
rarely  taken  by  Americans  for  any  purpose,  and  Mr. 
Gillett  is  probably  the  only  man  who  has  ever  made  it 
in  the  winter  for  pleasure,'  and  we  will  add,  either  in 
summer  or  winter,  or  for  either  business  or  pleasure." 

In  round  numbers,  this  gentleman  has  trav- 
eled more  than  two  hundred  thousand  miles, 


all  within  the  confines  of  our  common  country. 
The  result  is  not  only  a  marvelous  amount  of 
accurate  information ;  a  clear  insight  into  so- 
cial and  political,  financial  and  industrial  mat- 
ters ;  but  a  high  and  absorbing  degree  of  pa- 
triotic feeling  like  that  which  prevailed  in  the 
early  days  of  the  republic,  but  which  of  late  has 
become  enervated  into  a  ^/^/cosmopolitanism. 
It  is  a  great  pity  that  biographies  are  writ- 
ten only  of  the  great.  The  real  lessons  of  life 
are  not  learned  on  the  battle-field  or  in  the 
Senate  Chamber.  There  are  hundreds  of  bus- 
iness men  in  their  counting-rooms,  hundreds 
of  artisans  in  the  factories,  hundreds  of  labor- 
ers at  the  plow -handles,  whose  lives  are  more 
full  of  wholesome  example  than  many  whose 
names  are  cherished  by  the  gaping  world. 
Just  at  present,  I  believe,  we  need  a  lesson  on 
our  snobbery ;  on  our  aping  of  foreign  ways ; 
on  our  bowing  and  scraping  to  foreign  lords, 
who,  for  all  we  know,  are  barbers  in  disguise ; 
on  our  rolling  of  foreign  words,  like  sweet  mor- 
sels, under  our  clumsy  and  mispronouncing 
tongues;  on  our  liveried  coachman  and  our 
ridiculous  ancestral  trees ;  on  our  going  abroad 
to  "finish"  the  education  which  never  has  been 
begun  at  home.  Here,  around  us  is  Democ- 
racy— the  dream  of  the  world.  Here  is  broad 
and  liberal  thought.  Here  is  nervous,  world- 
moving  progress.  And  the  man,  who  by  ex- 
ample or  precept  teaches  us  to  observe  and 
respect  the  mighty  energies  that  are  moving 
with  resistless  force  on  every  side,  has  given  us 
a  lesson  upon  which  it  were  well  to  ponder. 
JOHN  C.  BARROWS. 


A  DREAM    OF    DEATH. 


"What  I  have  borne  on  solemn  wing 
From  the  vast  regions  of  the  grave." 

— WM.  BLAKE. 

All  night  I  toiled  across  a  boundless  plain — 
A  moving  speck  beneath  the  sky; 

I  heard  afar  the  pouring  of  the  surf, 
And  from  the  sea  of  death  a  cry. 

Ah,  deep  and  solemn  is  this  realm  of  death, 
A  vast  and  dim  and  weary  land! 

And  tall  and  pale  are  its  flowers  sweet, 
And  fiery  red  its  wild  sea -strand. 

Crimson  the  sea,  crimson  the  burning  stars, 
The  lagging  moon's  a  disk  of  blood, 

And  black  are  the  forests  of  moaning  trees, 
And  dark  their  shadows  in  the  flood. 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


343 


Sometimes  a  wind  blows  through  the  gloomy  sky, 

The  furious  billows  strike  the  clouds, 
And  wildly  then  the  phantom  ship  of  death 

Sweeps  by,  with  spectral  shrouds. 

For  masts,  three  giant  jinn  as  black  as  night 

Stand  up,  and  spread  their  wings; 
For  ropes,  the  braided  tresses  of  their  hair, 

Afloat,  or  woven  into  rings. 

Black  is  the  whistling  cordage,  black  the  sails, 

And  black  the  giants'  streaming  crests; 
No  crew  is  seen,  but  well  the  ship  obeys 

The  ghostly  pilot's  stern  behests. 

Aloft,  two  grinning  skulls  at  stern  and  bow 

Flash  fire  from  out  their  hollow  eyes, 
And  ever  forward  lean  the  living  masts, 

And  fast  the  bounding  vessel  flies. 

Crimson  the  sea,  crimson  the  burning  stars, 

The  lagging  moon's  a  disk  of  blood, 
And  black  are  the  forests  of  moaning  trees, 

And  dark  their  shadows  in  the  flood. 

WILLIAM  SLOANE  KENNEDY. 


GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT. 


CHAPTER  I. 

It  was  going  to  rain.  Franky  Wilkins  got 
the  young  ones  in  and  counted  them.  She  ran 
her  bright,  sunshiny  eyes  over  the  rollicking 
troop,  and  her  smile  faded. 

"Where's  Good-for-naught?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  ma,  should  think  you'd  know  'thout 
askin',:}  said  Bill.  "She's  round  to  Marvinses." 

"I'd  like  to  know  what  takes  her  there  so 
often,"  said  Mrs.  Wilkins. 

"Why,  she  helps  Mrs.  Marvin  take  care  of 
the  baby  and  do  the  work." 

"Her  a  helphv  anybody,"  ejaculated  Mrs. 
Wilkins;  "think  o'  that  now,  when  she'd  ruther 
die  than  do  a  hand's  turn  at  home." 

"Mother,"  said  Mr.  Wilkins,  "you  may  be 
sure  its  mighty  little  help  she  gives.  You'd 
better  look  into  the  matter,  and  see  that  she 
don't  pester  Mrs.  Marvin's  life  out  of  her,  hang- 
in'  round  there  so  much." 

"Her  a  helpin'  anybody,"  repeated  Mrs.  Wil- 
kins. She  laughed.  The  idea  of  Good-for- 
naught  making  herself  useful.  She  laughed 
again — such  a  meaning,  intelligent  laugh ;  an 
indulgent,  kindly  laugh ;  a  laugh  that  had  moth- 
erly pride  in  it,  too.  Mr.  Wilkins  understood 
the  full  meaning  of  that  laugh,  and  there  arose 


before  him  a  perfect  vision  of  his  absent  daugh- 
ter— a  comprehensive  vision  that  covered  her 
whole  life  from  the  moment  the  nurse  laid  the 
fair,  twelve-pound  baby  in  his  arms  down  to 
the  present  morning,  when,  as  he  phrased  it, 
she  "got  away  with  the  whole  family — mother 
and  father  included — in  a  general  blow  up." 

Mr.  Wilkins  sat  forward,  bolt  upright  in  his 
chair,  and  scratched  his  head  smilingly.  His 
thoughts  were  exhilarating. 

" Hit"  he  said,  meaning  Good-for-naught, 
"do  you  mind,  Franky,  when  we  went  to  Conys- 
burg  to  see  your  sister  how  the  little  divil  would 
stand  up  in  the  kerrige  all  the  time,  and  how 
she  fought  you  for  trying  to  hold  her?  She 
wouldn't  let  you  even  tech  her  dress  on  the  sly 
like.  She  kept  a  lookin'  round  and  a  snatchin' 
her  little  frock  outen  your  hands  till  pretty  soon 
the  kerrige  took  a  bump  and  stood  still,  and 
out  she  pitched  into  dust  a  foot  deep." 

"And  its  mighty  fortunate  the  dust  was  so 
deep,"  said  Mrs.  Wilkins.  "  But  wasn't  she  a 
pickle  when  you  took  her  up?" 

"And  do  you  mind,  after  that,  how  you 
couldn't  hold  her  tight  enough  to  satisfy  her? 
But  wasn't  she  scared,  though?  'Twas  the 
richest  thing  I  ever  see.  That  was  the  day  she 
called  you  'an  old  sinner.'  'Hold  me,  ma,'  she 


344 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


said.  'Now,  ma,  take  hold  o!  me  dwess,'  and 
she  gathered  up  a  little  piece  of  her  dress  and 
crowded  it  into  your  hand.  'Now,  if  oo  let  doe 
of  me,  ma,  me'll  be  awfy  mad.  Me  don't  want 
to  pall  out  adain.' " 

"Yes ;  and,  being  as  she'd  tormented  the  life 
out  of  me  before  she  fell  out,"  said  Mrs.  Wil- 
kins,  "I  thought  I'd  torment  her  a  little  after- 
ward. So  I  pretended  to  be  very  indifferent, 
and  would  let  her  dress  slide  through  my  fin- 
gers till  she  got  so  worked  up  she  gave  me  a 
piece  of  her  mind.  'You  mean  old  tinner,'  she 
said.  'Me'll  trade  you  off  and  det  anuder  ma. 
Where  did  me  dit  you,  anyhow?'  'I  expect 
the  Lord  give  me  to  you,'  says  I.  'I  wish  he 
hadn't  a  done  it,'  says  she,  as  quick  as  a  flash, 
a  flingin'  me  a  look  backward  over  her  shoulder 
— 'I  wish  he  hadn't  a  done  it;  nor  he  wouldn't 
neider,  only  you're  so  mean  he  didn't  want  you 
hisself."' 

Mr.  Wilkins  laughed  hilariously. 

"She  got  away  with  you  there,  old  woman," 
he  said.  "Fact  is,  she's  been  getting  away  with 
us  all  ever  since,  too.  But  wa'n't  she  the  pret- 
tiest baby  that  ever  lived?" 

"  Now,  pa,"  exclaimed  a  babel  of  voices,  "you 
said  Nett  was  the  prettiest,  and  Sally,  and 
Bill,  and— and— " 

"You  was  all  the  prettiest,"  said  he,  kindly — 
"each  in  his  or  her  turn." 

And,  indeed,  such  another  bright,  handsome 
lot  of  children  it  would  be  hard  to  find,  and  so 
many  of  them — eight  in  all — and  all  in  a  bunch. 
Good-for-naught,  the  eldest,  was  barely  four- 
teen, and  Sally,  the  baby,  was  two  years  old. 
Next  to  Good-for-naught,  whose  name  was 
Hope,  came  a  quiet,  gentle,  obedient  girl  called 
Netty.  The  space  between  Netty  and  Sally 
was  occupied  by  five  boys  —  Milton,  Byron, 
Leonidas,  Alexander,  and  William  Henry  Har- 
rison, whose  every-day  name  was  Bill. 

Now,  two  peas  were  never  more  alike  than 
Bill  and  his  sister  Hope — in  consequence  of 
which  they  resolved  themselves  into  a  small 
mutual  admiration  society,  and  fought  each 
other's  battles  against  the  other  combined  six. 
Bill,  however,  being  the  younger,  had  a  way  of 
revealing  Hope  to  herself  (not  always  pleas- 
antly) by  copying  her  actions  and  her  sayings, 
and  even  of  projecting  himself  along  the  line  of 
her  character  into  absurdities  and  follies,  which 
it  was  in  her  to  commit,  but  from  which  pride 
and  good  taste  restrained  her.  This  sometimes 
brought  a  volley  of  wrath  upon  his  head  from 
his  precious  ally,  which  he  bore  with  great 
meekness,  but  which  he  would  in  no  wise  have 
borne  from  any  other  number  of  the  family. 

After  Bill  was  born  and  began  to  develop  his 
ruling  peculiarities,  he  out-heroded  Herod  to 


such  an  extent  that  his  father  began  to  think 
he  had  been  premature  in  bestowing  the  name 
of  "Good-for-naught"  on  the  first  child.  Still, 
in  cogitating  the  matter,  as  he  often  did  jocu- 
larly, he  concluded  that  "Bill"  was  the  next 
best  thing  he  could  do. 

"They  ain't  neither  of  them  much  account," 
he  would  say  to  his  wife,  with  evident  pride; 
"but  you  bet  they  can  just  furnish  music  for  the 
rest  of  'em  to  dance  by." 

Mrs.  Wilkins  had  done  her  duty  (as  she  be- 
lieved) by  Hope  in  trying  to  bring  her  up  to  be 
a  useful  woman ;  but  either  her  system  was  at 
fault,  or  there  was  that  in  Hope  that  would  not 
yield  to  other  people's  ideas  of  usefulness.  If 
sent  to  wash  the  dishes  she  would  slip  up  into 
the  attic  with  Pilgriirts  Progress,  and  there, 
lying  on  her  stomach  with  the  book  beneath 
her  face,  would  go  with  Christian  to  the  Holy 
City,  rarely  reaching  home  again  before  night. 
All  during  this  delightful  trip  she  gave  mo- 
mentary flashes  of  thought  to  the'  probable 
fate  that  would  befall  her  on  going  again  into 
her  mother's  presence.  But  her  mother  never 
whipped  hard,  and  never  whipped  at  all  if  the 
culprit  could  turn  her  anger  aside  by  some 
witty  remark ;  and  a  little  wit  from  one  of  the 
children  went  a  long  way  with  Mrs.  Wilkins. 

But  let  us  follow  our  heroine  to  the  "Mar- 
vinses,"  as  Bill  called  them,  and  see  her  for 
ourselves.  Mr.  Jack  Marvin  —  Dr.  Marvin 
rather  —  was  educated  for  a  physician.  He 
thought  himself  a  mechanical  genius.  In  re- 
ality, he  was  fit  for  nothing  at  all — unless  it 
might  be  an  angel.  It  is  not  positively  asserted 
that  he  was  fit  for  that.  If,  however,  the  ab- 
sence of  evil,  the  negative  virtue  of  harmless- 
ness,  together  with  a  very  happy  disposition, 
are  the  requisite  attributes,  the  idea  occurs 
that  he  might  have  been  intended  "to  loaf 
around  the  Throne,"  as  John  Hay  expresses  it, 
and  that  he  would  have  answered  in  that  ca- 
pacity as  well  as  a  better  man.  At  all  events, 
he  had  no  faculty  for  getting  along  in  this 
wooden  world.  He  was  a  busy  little  fellow, 
always  working  at  something  of  no  possible 
utility,  and  neglecting  his  practice  to  do  so. 

He  made  models  of  impossible  machines. 
He  had  a  model  quartz-mill  with  ever  so  many 
stamps  in  it.  It  came  in  time  to  be  used  as 
the  family  coffee-mill — the  whole  family  col- 
lecting about  it  every  morning  to  watch  the  little 
stamps  as  they  pounded  the  grains  of  coffee — 
those  immense  bowlders — into  powder.  He 
had  a  model  reaping-machine  which  could  be 
made  to  mow  its  way  through  a  cabbage-head,  in 
consequence  of  which  cold-slaw  became  a  favor- 
ite dish  among  them.  He  had  a  model  steam- 
ship, and  many  other  models,  constructed  out 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT.t 


345 


of  cigar -boxes  principally,  and  nearly  all  of 
them  unfinished,  or  finished  so  hurriedly  that 
the  latter  end  of  each  one  had  appeared  to  for- 
get the  beginning. 

Now,  the  Doctor,  poor  little  soul,  made  the 
same  impression  on  an  observant  person  that 
his  models  did.  He  was  unfinished.  And  worse 
still,  nature  seemed  to  have  forgotten  the  origi- 
nal intention  of  his  design.  He  had  the  bright- 
est, most  interested,  and  innocent  eyes  ever 
seen.  His  forehead  was  very  bare;  and  as  he 
had  but  the  segment  of  a  nose,  and  a  rudimen- 
tary mouth  like  a  tadpole's,  he  created  the  be- 
lief that  he  had  been  born  prematurely,  and  had 
never  caught  up. 

At  an  early  age,  while  yet  a  college  student 
in  one  of  our  Western  cities,  he  had  run  away 
with  and  married  a  pretty  school  girl,  who  had 
never  been  inside  of  a  kitchen  in  her  mortal 
life.  When  the  boy's  father  heard  of  it,  and 
went  after  the  little  fools,  he  found  them  up 
four-flights,  in  a  seven  by  nine  room  under  the 
roof,  vowing  eternal  constancy  throughout  all 
the  heavenly  future  without  enough  money  be- 
tween them  to  buy  a  scuttle  of  coals.  The 
sight  of  his  helpless  boy  and  the  beautiful 
"child-wife"  disarmed  his  anger,  and,  being  a 
jolly  old  soul,  he  took  his  vengeance  out  in 
laughter. 

"Here's  richness,"  quoth  he.  "Married  in 
Lilliput  and  keeping  house  under  a  cabbage- 
leaf." 

He  did  what  he  could  for  them  time  and 
again,  and  finally  rid  himself  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  their  support  by  sending  them  to  Cali- 
fornia. 

"I  guess  you'll  not  starve,  Jack,"  he  said. 
"There's  a  special  providence  for  fools  and 
children,  and  you  can  claim  protection  under 
either  clause  of  the  provision." 

So  by  hook  or  crook  they  drifted  into  a  pop- 
ulous and  prosperous  neighborhood,  where  the 
Doctor  tinkered  the  neighbors'  bodies  when  he 
could  spare  time  from  his  toys,  which  was  a 
great  annoyance  to  him ;  so  great  that  he  was 
frequently  known  to  hide  under  the  bed,  or  in 
the  closet,  when  a  knock  that  sounded  at  all 
ominous  came  upon  the  door,  while  his  little 
wife  met  the  visitor  and  serenely  lied  about 
her  husband's  absence. 

Now,  this  little  wife  kept  house,  or  rather  she 
lived  in  a  house  that  kept  itself.  She  was  about 
seventeen  years  old  by  this  time,  and  her  ven- 
erable husband  was  approaching  the  dotage  of 
twenty-three. 

There  was  a  baby,  of  course,  and  a  ventur- 
some  infant  he  must  have  been  to  come  into 
life  under  the  guardianship  of  those  other  in- 
fants— his  parents.  And  yet,  with  what  must 


be  regarded  as  an  inherited  recklessness  of 
consequences,  he  had  made  his  appearance, 
even  laughing  at  the  forebodings  of  the  'wise, 
and  conducting  himself  with  an  irrepressible 
jollity  highly  reprehensible  under  the  circum- 
stances. 

Mrs.  Marvin,  who  had  a,  great  dread  of  the 
mature  matrons  of  the  place,  clung  to  Hope 
Wilkins  with  an  intensity  of  girlish  affection 
characteristic  of  the  sex  in  its  early  develop- 
ment. Hope  was  surprised  and  flattered  by  this 
preference,  and  secretly  thought  Mrs.  Marvin 
was  the  loveliest  and  brightest  of  human  be- 
ings. Indeed,  it  is  no  wonder  she  captivated 
the  awakening  fancy  of  the  undeveloped  girl. 
She  was  a  new  revelation  to  Hope.  She  could 
play  the  piano,  though  there  was  not  one  within 
twenty  miles  of  them — yet  she  could  play  it, 
and  that  was  something.  She  could  compose 
poetry — really  sweet,  touching  little  verses. 
She  had  a  box  of  water-colors,  and  could  pain  t 
pictures.  She  took  a  portrait  of  Hope,  and  it 
looked  very  like  her,  indeed.  Her  little  hands 
flew  over  the  paper,  and  the  beautiful  forms  of 
nature  sprang  like  magic  from  beneath  them. 
Hope  also  had  a  natural  talent  for  drawing, 
and  this  Mrs.  Marvin  discovered,  and  proceed- 
ed to  develop.  She  was  a  strangely  gifted 
creature,  this  young  wife,  without  one  practi- 
cal idea  in  the  world.  She  knew  nothing  about 
cooking,  housekeeping,  or  the  care  of  her  child. 
Hope,  having  been  brought  up  in  an  orderly 
family,  knew  all  these  things  theoretically, 
though  so  far  she  had  refused  to  apply  her 
knowledge.  But  now,  here  was  some  one  who 
seemed  in  a  measure  dependent  on  her  supe- 
rior ability — who  regarded  her  few  practical 
accomplishments  as  evidences  of  amazing  wis- 
dom. This  flattered  Hope,  and  caused  her 
to  attempt  the  dizziest  hights  of  housewifery. 
Sometimes,  when  pressed  by  necessity,  she 
even  attempted  bread -making.  However,  as 
she  felt  all  her  efforts  in  this  department  to  be 
failures,  she  preferred  smuggling  it  to  the  fami- 
ly from  her  mother's  pantry. 

It  is  inconceivable  to  what  an  extent  Franky 
Wilkins  would  have  opened  her  bright  eyes 
could  she  have  seen  "Good-for-naught"  so  in- 
dustriously employed.  At  home  she  could  not 
stir  up  a  spoonful  of  thickening  without  "mak- 
ing such  a  muss"  her  mother  would  rather  do 
it  herself  than  clean  up  after  her.  Another  duty 
Hope  shouldered  was  making  the  family  clothes, 
Had  any  person  related  this  as  a  fact  to  Mrs. 
Wilkins  the  statement  would  have  been  re- 
ceived with  laughing  derision.  Still  it  was  true. 
Hope  could  not  be  trusted  to  hem  a  dish-towel 
at  home ;  but  here  she  boldly  cut  into  the  raw 
material  and  brought  forth  dresses  for  the  baby 


346 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  his  mother  also.  It  is  true  the  little  one's 
dresses  were  mere  slips  puckered  into  shape, 
with  a  drawing-string  about  the  top,  and  sleeve- 
less. It  was  a  style  of  dress  to  be  appreciated 
in  hot  weather,  and  little  Jack  frequently  show- 
ed his  appreciation  of  it  by  snaking  it  off  over 
his  head  at  the  risk,  of  choking  himself  and  go- 
ing naked.  It  seerhs  hard  to  believe,  but  this 
young  iconoclast,  this  breaker  of  customs,  if  not 
of  images,  was  so  thoroughly  imbued  with  the 
family  traits  as  to  be  perfectly  satisfied  in  the 
garb  of  Cupid,  and  but  for  the  compulsion  put 
upon  him  by  Hope  would  never  have  suffered 
himself  to  be  dressed  at  all.  "Paint  me,  mam- 
ma," he  used  to  say;  "paint  me  in  boo  and  wed 
stweaks,  and  make  me  pooty." 

And  then  this  venerable  and  dignified  mother 
would  get  down  on  the  floor  with  her  paint- 
box, and,  laughing  at  the  various  devices  sug- 
gested by  her  prolific  imagination,  would  paint 
his  fair,  fat  little  body  in  all  the  colors  of  the 
rainbow ;  often  streaking  one  leg  in  rings,  and 
the  other  in  perpendicular  bars  or  long  spirals. 
This  afforded  her  infinite  amusement — this  and 
a  hundred  other  little  ideas — so  that  her  ring- 
ing laugh  was  not  long  silent  in  the  house.' 

It  was  no  rare  thing  for  Hope,  in  her  fre- 
quent visits,  to  find  the  child  in  the  condition 
described.  She  made  it  her  first  business  in 
such  a  case  to  wash  him  all  over,  and  compel 
him  to  submit  to  the  tyranny  of  clothes,  even 
if  she  had  to  slap  him  a  very  little  in  order  to 
accomplish  her  purpose.  So  it  came  about 
that  he  looked  up  to  Hope  and  respected  her 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  respect  he  had  for 
any  one  else.  He  took  very  little  notice  of  his 
father  at  all,  but  his  mother  was  his  chief  play- 
mate. She  sang  hundreds  of  songs  to  him,  and 
to  Hope  as  well — Scotch,  German,  and  Eng- 
lish ballads ;  all  the  nursery  rhymes ;  snatches 
from  Moore,  Campbell,  and  Scott  never  yet  set 
to  music.  She  told  them  fairy  stories  and  love 
stories,  and  when  her  supply  gave  out  she  made 
others  and  went  ahead. 

And  this  was  Hope's  education.  Better  than 
all  the  books  in  the  world,  with  more  unerr- 
ing precision  liberating  the  latent  faculties  of 
this  gifted  girl,  was  the  unconscious  teaching 
of  this  child-woman.  In  this  the  whole  family 
combined.  It  was  not  alone  what  was  said  and 
done,  but  what  was  unsaid  and  undone,  that 
helped  to  teach  her.  It  was  the  helplessness 
of  the  family  that  gave  character  and  strength 
to  those  about  them ;  not  only  to  Hope,  but  to 
Stephen  Whitehall,  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Marvin, 
who  had  followed  his  sister  to  this  State,  after 
she  had  been  here  a  year  or  two. 

Stephen  Whitehall  was  a  cripple  and  an  inva- 
lid. He  was  Mrs.  Marvin's  twin  brother.  He 


had  missed  his  sister  and  almost  his  only  com- 
panion so  much  after  her  marriage  that  he 
could  hardly  live  without  her.  His  parents 
thought  he  might  recover  his  health  in  the  per- 
fect climate  of  California,  and  saved  up  money, 
by  slow  economy,  to  send  him  here.  He  could 
not  remain  long  in  her  family  without  coming 
into  the  same  relations  with  them  that  Hope 
did.  He  saw  their  inability  to  do  anything 
useful,  and  this  prompted  him  to  make  an  ef- 
fort for  their  support.  He  had  been  a  student 
always,  and  had  no  difficulty  in  passing  an  ex- 
amination and  getting  the  position  of  assistant 
teacher  in  the  village  school.  And  so  the  boy 
toiled  for  this  family  and  saved  for  them,  and 
week  after  week  grew  thinner  and  paler,  until 
he  looked  as  if  a  breath  would  blow  his  light 
out  forever.  Thus  it  came  about  that  Hope 
and  Stephen  Whitehall  were  the  special  prov- 
idence to  these  "fools  and  children,"  and  all 
went  well  with  them.  But  it  was  little  Hope's 
mother  dreamed  of  her  growing  capability  for 
usefulness,  as  she  did  not  choose  to  reveal  it  at 
home,  where  it  would  be  in  too  much  demand; 
so  she  passed  in  her  family  for  the  same  "Good- 
for- naught"  as  ever. 

Hope  was  like  her  mother,  though  few  peo- 
ple knew  it,  and  the  mother  was  a  remarkable 
woman.  A  woman  of  great  heart  and  intellect, 
and  of  the  happiest  disposition.  Her  physical 
organization  was  almost  perfect.  She  was  large 
and  fair.  Her  muscles  were  firm,  her  step  elas- 
tic, and  her  whole  appearance  magnetic  and 
grand.  She  was  a  woman  who  laughed;  not 
as  ordinary  laughers,  but  with  intelligence  and,, 
meaning.  Her  laugh  was  jolly,  witty,  satirical^ 
humorous,  indulgent,  kind,  loving;  sometimes 
meaning  yes,  sometimes  meaning  no;  some- 
times it  was  pitiful  and  covered  a  world  of 
pathos  swelling  in  her  sympathetic  breast.  It 
was  ever  ready,  spontaneous,  and  beautiful,  and 
so  full  of  meaning  that  no  one  could  mistake 
any  one  of  its  manifold  expressions.  Her  chil- 
dren were  all  more  or  less  like  her,  though, 
perhaps,  none  so  much  as  Hope  and  Bill.  In 
her  management  of  these  olive  branches  she 
was  little  less  inconsistent  than  the  average 
mother.  She  petted  and  spanked  them  alter- 
nately, and  they  were  all  more  or  less  rebellious, 
and  generally  had  their  own  way.  So  far, 
Hope  had  been  the  most  troublesome,  and,  as 
Mrs.  Wilkins  said,  had  "egged"  the  others  on. 
When  the  first  children  were  small,  Mrs.  Wil- 
kins had  ideas  on  the  subject  of  diet  and  start- 
ed out  with  the  intention  of  feeding  them  mush 
and  milk  for  supper.  The  rebel  Hope  fought 
this  measure  unsuccessfully  for  ten  years  and 
then  abolished  it.  Almost  every  night,  if  not 
too  tired  and  sleepy,  she  would  have  some 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


347 


new  complaint  against  her  supper.  "There  is 
pizen  in  it,"  she  would  say;  upon  which  the 
other  children  would  refuse  to  eat  it.  Nor 
could  the  assurance  of  their  mother  to  the  con- 
trary remove  their  fears  until  Hope  had  been 
forced  to  recant ;  which  she  rarely  did  until  the 
ever  ready  switch  made  its  appearance  upon 
the  scene  of  action.  Another  dodge  was  "the 
cow  had  put  her  foot  in  the  milk;"  another, 
it  made  her  sick,  it  gave  her  the  colic,  it  gave 
her  the  headache,  it  killed  Mrs.  Smith's  little 
boy,  made  him  "have  fits  so's  he  tore  up  his 
ma's  things  and  beat  his  ma  and  then  died; 
and  his  ma  felt  so  sorry  she  cried  seven  leven 
days,  and  then  she  couldn't  stop,  and  served 
the  mean  old  thing  just  right,  too.  One  night, 
during  a  temporary  absence  of  her  mother,  she 
told  the  younger  children  she  positively  would 
not  eat  it;  she  intended  to  starve  to  death 
right  off.  The  little  things  flocked  about  her 
in  great  alarm  and  begged  her  to  eat.  Highly 
gratified  by  the  sensation  she  was  creating,  she 
went  still  further;  she  laid  on  the  floor  and 
pretended  to  be  in  the  death  throes  of  starva- 
tion. She  pitched  her  body  about  with  amaz- 
ing energy,  considering,  the  character  of  her 
disease,  and  reminded  her  audience  of  the  dy- 
ing struggles  of  a  headless  chicken,  thereby 
making  her  acting  all  the  more  forcible  to 
them.  Her  sister  Netty  and  the  other  children 
sent  up  the  wildest  screams  of  dismay,  which 
so  pleased  her  that  she  quit  kicking,  rolled  her 
eyes  up  out  of  sight,  crossed  her  hands  and 
died.  At  this  juncture,  the  most  dismal  and 
frantic  howls  rent  the  air,  and  in  the  midst  of 
them  Mrs.  Wilkins  marched  in  and  performed 
the  miracle  of  restoring  the  dead  to  life  by  the 
use  of  a  small  rattan  kept  for  that  and  similar 
purposes. 

As  Hope  grew  up  she  was  prolific  in  means 
by  which  to  gain  her  own  way,  and  in  this 
manner  succeeded  in  rendering  herself  a  per- 
petual torment.  She  was  noisy  and  self-assert- 
ing at  one  time,  and  gentle  and  reticent  at  an- 
other. She  was  adventurous,  full  of  strange 
experiments,  always  amusing  herself  and  often 
amusing  the  other  children,  though  without  any 
intention  of  doing  so. 

Instead  of  studying  her  school-books,  she 
illustrated  them.  Along  the  margin  of  every 
page  she  drew  pictures  innumerable  of  all  pos- 
sible and  impossible,  animate  and  inanimate 
things — whole  caravans  of  absurdities.  They 
meandered  down  one  side  of  the  page  and  up 
the  other  all  through  her  books.  She  was 
scolded  and  whipped  for  it  again  and  again. 
She  took  all  the  scoldings  and  whippings, 
wiped  her  pretty  eyes,  pulled  the  hair  down  over 
her  flushed  face,  scowled  on  all  the  world  from 


behind  her  straggling  locks  of  tawny  gold,  then 
catching  up  book  and  pencil,  another  moment 
would  find  her  wreathed  in  smiles  and  pursu- 
ing her  endless  work  of  illustration.  She  was 
a  natural-born  author;  only,  instead  of  writing 
her  thoughts,  she  expressed  them  in  pictures. 

One  of  her  idiosyncrasies  was  her  dislike  of 
boys.  They  interfered  with  her.  She  did'nt 
understand  them.  She  was  hard  to  under- 
stand herself,  but  there  was  method  in  her  mad- 
ness. There  was  none  in  that  of  boys.  To 
her,  they  were  an  incongruous  scramble  of  in- 
sane noises,  dreadful  cruelties,  and  senseless, 
mischievous  sports.  She  avoided  them  except 
in  cases  of  necessity,  and  then  she  handled 
them  without  gloves.  Many  a  miserable  dog  she 
rescued  from  their  tormenting  hands.  Club- 
bing her  slat  sun -bonnet,  she  would  swoop 
down  upon  a  crowd  of  them,  striking  right  and 
left,  dealing  vigorous  kicks,  "darkening  the 
sun"  with  flying  hair  clawed  from  their  aston- 
ished pates,  and  doing  it  all  with  such  incredi- 
ble rapidity  as  to  leave  the  impression  that  a 
cyclone  had  passed  that  way.  It  is  true,  her 
young  teacher  was  scarcely  more  than  a  boy, 
and  yet  she  felt  for  him  nothing  but  kindness. 
He  was  but  four  years  older  than  she  was,  and 
sickness  had  made  him  appear  effeminate.  He 
was  tall  enough,  but  slender  and  pale,  with  a 
gentle,  pathetic  face,  molded  to  an  expression  of 
suffering.  It  was  his  condition  that  aroused 
Hope's  sympathies  in  his  favor,  and  caused  her 
to  make  him  the  one  exception  in  her  rule  of 
universal  dislike  for  boys.  She  was  always 
kind  to  him,  and  he,  in  return,  felt  a  strong  de- 
sire to  assist  her  in  her  studies,  even  at  recess ; 
for  it  gave  him  acute  pain  to  see  the  bright,  in- 
dependent young  thing  so  frequently  punished 
by  the  head  teacher.  It  soon  became  appar- 
ent, however,  that  she  permitted  him  to  instruct 
her  only  because  she  thought  it  conduced  to  his 
pleasure.  For  her  part,  she  had  no  intention 
of  giving  any  particular  thought  to  her  books. 
Could  she  have  expressed  herself  she  would 
have  said  that  books  were  an  impertinence  to 
her;  being  a  child,  her  expressions  were  ac- 
tions. Stephen,  at  last,  got  a  glimmering  idea 
of  the  true  state  of  the  case,  and  his  first  regret 
that  she  should  be  a  dull  scholar  changed  to 
an  unexplained  admiration  based  upon  what 
he,  and  every  one,  considered  her  chief  defect. 
So  truth  bores  its  way  through  mountains  of 
prejudice,  and  makes  itself  felt  even  while 
scorning  to  give  its  reasons.  Stephen  admir- 
ed the  strong,  beautiful  child  and  clung  to  her. 
Always,  at  recess,  she  sat  by  him  instead  of 
playing  out  of  doors,  showing  him  her  pictures 
and  weaving  a  romance  in  explanation  of  them. 
No  reference  to  his  health,  nor  to  the  crutch 


348 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


he  walked  with,  was  ever  made  by  either  of 
them;  and  Hope  was  too  thoughtless  to  ob- 
serve his  increasing  weakness.  But  one  day 
he  was  absent  from  his  post  and  then  the 
school-room  looked  deserted  to  her.  She  had 
no  thought  of  being  in  love  with  him,  but  yet 
she  loved  him  most  tenderly  in  her  innocent, 
sympathetic,  half  motherly  way.  She  felt  un- 
easy about  him.  She  reflected— for  the  first 
time  consciously — on  his  sickly  condition,  and 
wondered  she  had  never  been  uneasy  about  him 
before.  As  the  day  wore  on,  she  grew  more 
and  more  indifferent  to  the  passing  events,  and, 
when  school  was  dismissed,  she  went  straight 
to  Dr.  Marvin's.  Stephen  was  in  bed.  He 
promised  to  be  better  to-morrow,  but  to-mor- 
row found  him  still  weaker ;  and  the  days  came 
and  went  and  weeks  and  months  slipped  past, 
and  all  the  time  he  was  growing  weaker  and 
his  suffering  was  becoming  more  intolerable, 
until  his  life  was  one  prolonged  agony. 

Hope's  services  now  became  acceptable  in- 
deed in  the  Marvin  family.  She  managed  to 
escape  from  school  nearly  half  the  time,  and 
scarcely  ever  spent  an  hour  at  home  except  at 
night.  She  was  growing  into  great  useful- 
ness. Her  quick  sympathies  were  driving  her 
out  of  herself.  She  was  developing  into  a 
grand  woman.  She  and  Mrs.  Marvin,  when 
not  otherwise  engaged,  would  draw  the  table 
to  Stephen's  bedside  and  there  paint  their  end- 
less fancies,  while  he  looked  on  and  enjoyed  it 
as  well  as  his  suffering  condition  would  permit. 

It  was  about  this  time  a  distinguished  look- 
ing stranger  made  his  appearance  at  the  village 
hotel  He  was  from  New  York,  and  came  to 
California  on  a  trip  of  recreation.  His  health, 
he  said,  was  threatened  by  reason  of  much  close 
application  of  business.  He  was  pleasant  and 
sociable,  but  not  overly  communicative.  It  was 
evident  that  he  loved  nature.  He  was  enthusi- 
astic about  the  scenery  and  climate,  and  lin- 
gered among  the  hills  and  canons  with  glowing 
eyes  and  inexhaustible  love.  He  made  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  children. 

"Nothing  in  all  the  world,"  he  said,  "could 
exceed  the  beauty  of  California  children." 

After  a  while  he  began  to  wonder  how  he 
could  ever  go  home  again  without  taking  the 
angelic  children,  the  hills,  the  shadowy  gulches, 
tree  canopied,  vine  garlanded,  fern  carpeted — 
in  short,  the  whole  beautiful  State— with  him. 

One  day  he  was  intercepted  in  his  evening 
walk  by  a  troop  of  sparkling,  beaming'fays,  all 
carrying  school-books.  They  knew  by  this  time 
that  he  loved  them,  and  so  they  surrounded 
him,  talking  to  him  in  the  most  unrestrained 
manner.  Presently  a  little  girl  opened  her 
book  to  show  him  her  treasures :  a  new  thumb- 


paper,  a  number  of  small  paper  dolls  dressed 
in  hollyhock  leaves,  a  sheet  of  foolscap  cover- 
ed with  hieroglyphics,  bird,  beast,  and  reptile, 
gnarled  old  trees,  leaves  and  flowers,  things  in 
form  and  out  of  form — such  objects  as  start  up 
from  the  moving  darkness  of  night  beneath  the 
closed  lids  and  reveal  an  antecedent  world  of 
half  organized  beings.  Strange  fancies  surely 
— suggestive,  puzzling,  full  of  crude  genius. 

"Where  did  you  get  this,  my  dear?"  Mr. 
Brownell  asked. 

"Good-for-naught  made  it,"  came  from  half 
a  dozen  voices. 

Mr.  Brownell  continued  to  look  at  the  draw- 
ing. His  eyes  glowed  with  unusual  warmth. 

"Good-for-naught?  And  who  is  Good-for- 
naught?" 

"Why,  Hope  Wilkins ;  that's  her  name ;  only 
she's  no  'count  at  home,  nor  at  school,  and  so 
everybody  calls  her  'Good-for-naught?'" 

Now,  Mr.  Brownell's  answer  to  this  was  in- 
comprehensible to  his  hearers,  and  would  have 
been  equally  so  had  the  whole  town  been  pres- 
ent. What  he  said  was  this  : 

"/#  the  latter  days  angels  will  walk  the 
earth  unawares.  And  where  does  this  girl 
live,  my  dears?" 

Any  of  them  could  answer  this  question. 
They  showed  him  the  house,  the  top  just  visi- 
ble over  the  hill. 

That  evening  a  cold  wind  came  through  the 
tree -tops  from  the  north.  Franky  Wilkins 
thought  a  fire  in  the  sitting-room  would  im- 
prove the  looks  of  things.  A  fire  suggested 
apples  and  nuts  to  the  youngsters.  And  so 
the  children,  five  boys  and  a  baby  girl,  sat 
around  the  blazing  logs  cracking  nuts,  with  Bill 
talk-talk-talking,  making  what  seemed  to  be  a 
living  business  by  the  energy  he  devoted  to  it 
— talking  with  his  breath  coming  in  and  going 
out,  and  occasionally  getting  choked  on  a  syl- 
lable, and  going  instantly  into  a  nervous  spasm 
for  fear  some  one  of  his  brothers  would  edge  a 
word  in  before  he  recovered  his  use  of  speech. 
He  had  just  struggled  through  a  masterly  ef- 
fort in  the  way  of  unchoking  himself  when  the 
clock  began  a  little  grumble,  preparatory  to 
striking  seven.  Now,  this  clock  had  a  very 
weak  voice,  and  not  much  command  of  what  it 
had.  It  would  grunt  and  grunt,  and  then  give 
a  feeble  "ting,"  and  grunt  again  for  some  sec- 
onds, and  articulate  another  "ting."  This  it 
did  quite  fairly  on  the  small  hours.  As  the 
number  of  strokes  lengthened  toward  twelve, 
however,  it  became  discouraged,  and  usually 
gave  itself  up  for  a  bad  job  somewhere  be- 
tween eight  and  ten. 

"Her's  a  going  to  strike,  boys,"  said  Bill; 
"let's  help." 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


349 


So  they  all  grunted  in  chorus  as  she  grunted, 
came  in  unanimously  on  the  "ting,"  grunted 
again,  and  so  on  to  the  end. 

"Bully  for  her,"  said  Bill.  "I  believe  her 
could  a  done  it  by  herself  this  time.  Her 
talked  it  off  as  fluent  as  a  duck  pickin'  up 
dough.  Somebody's  a  comin'  to  bring  good 
news.  Now,  you'll  see ;  that's  a  sign." 

At  this  moment  the  gate-latch  clicked. 

"Told  you  so,"  said  Bill,  jumping  up  in  the 
air,  and  sitting  down  again  instantly  with  his 
face  to  the  door. 

Sally  gave  a  little  sympathetic  squeak  of  joy, 
that  sounded  as  if  it  came  through  a  very 
small  gimlet  hole  in  the  top  of  her  head,  and 
turned  her  bright,  expectant  face  to  the  door 
also. 

When  the  word  "Come  in"  was  given, 
Mr.  Brownell  lifted  the  latch  upon  what  to 
him  was  a  beautiful  tableau.  Six  lovely  child 
faces,  each  one  an  interrogation  point,  gathered 
around  the  fire ;  back  of  these  a  responsible, 
motherly  looking  little  girl,  with  smooth  brown 
hair  and  Madonna  features,  sewing  by  the 
light  of  a  lamp  on  a  round  table.  This  was 
Netty.  Then  came  Franky's  grand  head,  with 
its  crown  of  gold  and  her  beaming  smile  of 
welcome.  Last  of  all,  Mr.  Wilkins,  bluff,  hon- 
est, stanch  old  fellow  that  he  was,  and  a  very 
handsome  man  withal. 

For  a  moment  Mr.  Brownell's  heart  stood 
still  in  the  presence  of  this  lovely  group,  and 
and  then  beat  again  in  pain  and  gloom.  He 
recalled  his  own  family  circle  before  death  had 
claimed  wife  and  children  one  by  one,  leaving 
him  a  lonely  man  with  nothing  but  his  business 
for  amusement. 

Then  he  introduced  himself,  and,  taking  a 
paper  out  of  his  pocket,  asked  if  this  little  girl 
was  the  one  who  drew  the  figures  on  it. 

"That's  Hope's  work,"  said  Mr.  Wilkins. 
"Hope  is  two  years  older  than  this  one— in 
fact,  she  is  fifteen  now,  I  believe.  She  is  visit- 
ing at  a  neighbor's  to-night." 

"Is  she  much  in  the  habit  of  doing  this  sort 
of  thing?"  asked  Mr.  Brownell. 

"Her'll  do  it  all  the  time  if  her  gets  the 
chance,"  said  Bill,  who  now  pressed  forward  to 
do  the  family  talking. 

Mr.  Brownell  took  the  small  man  on  his  knee, 
and  again  addressed  Mr.  Wilkins. 

"You  have  a  very  talented  daughter,"  he  said, 
"and  her  talent,  unlike  that  of  many  other 
people,  possesses  a  money  value.  I  was  a  me- 
chanic in  my  youth,  trained  to  the  trade  of  pat- 
tern making.  As  I  grew  older  I  began  to  work 
for  myself,  and  in  time  built  up  a  great  busi- 
ness. I  especially  succeeded  in  beautiful  de- 
signs for  molding  and  carving.  After  a  while, 


as  my  taste  ran  in  that  vein,  I  began  the  manu- 
facture of  wall  paper,  drawing  many  of  the  pat- 
terns myself.  I  left  New  York  about  three 
months  ago,  first  placing  my  business  in  expe- 
rienced hands,  to  take  the  only  recreation  I 
have  had  since,  as  a  boy,  I  was  apprenticed  to 
my  trade.  I  have  been  fortunate — in  busi- 
ness? 

Here  he  paused  and  looked  around  upon  the 
handsome  children,  sighing  deeply.  Some  in- 
visible tendril  went  out  from  his  heart  in  that 
sigh,  and  drew  the  little  Sally  to  his  side.  He 
took  her  upon  his  unoccupied  knee,  apparently 
without  seeing  her,  as  if  it  was  the  habit  of  his 
life  to  care  for  and  protect  children. 

"I  have  employed  many  persons  of  talent  to 
assist  me  in  this  department  of  my  work,  but 
none  who  gave  evidence  of  such  native  genius 
as  the  young  lady  who  made  these  drawings." 

Then  he  looked  at  the  paper  in  his  hand  a 
long  time,  seemingly  forgetful  of  the  presence 
of  every  person  in  the  room.  Presently  he 
looked  up. 

"Where  is  your  daughter  Hope,  Mr.  Wil- 
kins?" he  said.  "I  would  like  to  see  her." 

"Her's  at  Marvinses,"  said  Bill.  "I'll  go  and 
get  her." 

But  he  suddenly  thought  about  its  being  dark 
outside,  and  amended  his  proposition  by  offer- 
ing one  of  his  brothers  as  a  substitute,  where- 
upon a  discussion  arose. 

"*Fraid  to  go,  you  are,"  said  Aleck  derisively, 
"and  thafs  what's  the  matter  with  you." 

Bill  denied,  and  Aleck  affirmed,  and  for 
about  a  minute  nothing  could  be  heard  but  "I 
ain't,"  "You  are,"  gradually  sliding  into "Y'ain't," 
"Y'ar',"  each  boy  cleaving  fast  to  his  own  word, 
until  Mrs.  Wilkins  silenced  them  by  asking 
which  one  of  them  would  go  for  their  sister. 
Aleck  was  perfectly  willing  to  start,  on  the 
strength  of  his  mother's  request,  he  wished  it 
understood,  and  not  because  Bill  wanted  to 
send  him.  Then  Mr.  Brownell  said  he  would 
like  to  go  there  himself.  He  had  made  Dr. 
Marvin's  acquaintance,  and  had  been  wonder- 
fully pleased  with  his  many  original  ideas.  So 
he  and  Mr.  Wilkins  walked  there  together. 

Now,  the  evening  was  chilly,  if  not  cold. 
There  was  a  fire  burning  in  the  wide  chimney 
as  the  visitors  entered,  though  the  family  were 
as  far  from  it  as  possible.  The  room  was  long 
and  large,  as  if  in  its  construction  it  had  been 
intended  for  two  rooms,  and  the  partition  had 
been  omitted.  In  the  back  part  of  this  long 
room  there  was  a  bed,  in  which  some  one  was 
lying,  and  near  the  bed  a  table  where  Mrs. 
Marvin  and  Hope  were  sitting,  with  little  Jack 
between  them  in  a  high  chair.  It  was  hard  to 
tell  whether  they  were  working  or  playing. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


They  were  surrounded  by  drawing  materials, 
and  Hope  was  busy  with  her  brushes,  but 
laughing  a  little,  apparently  at  some  of  the 
child's  nonsense.  Mrs.  Marvin  seemed  to  be 
making  a  business  of  laughing,  as  Bill  did  of 
talking.  She  had  just  completed  the  picture  of 
a  wasp  on  her  child's  arm,  so  natural  as  to 
make  him  a  little  nervous  about  it,  though  un- 
derstanding its  nature  perfectly  well.  On  one 
of  the  pretty  boy's  snowy  shoulders  perched  a 
humming-bird,  or  rather  it  hovered  above  it,  so 
consummate  had  been  the  skill  that  created  it. 
Around  his  neck  was  painted  an  elaborate  coral 
necklace  and  cross,  and  about  his  wrists  were 
bracelets  to  match.  So  here  he  was,  as  fine  as 
a  king,  his  mother  affirmed  upon  her  introduc- 
tion to  Mr.  Brownell,  with  never  a  dollar's  out- 
lay, and  only  a  yard  of  ten-cent  muslin  for  his 
royal  robe.  He  was  perfectly  clean,  thanks  to 
Hope,  and  the  brightest,  jolliest  little  beggar 
ever  seen.  He  kept  time  to  his  uproarious 
laughter  by  kicking  the  table  underneath,  mak- 
ing the  cups  and  paint-boxes  jingle.  It  was 
only  after  much  persuasion  he  consented  to  sit 
on  Mr.  Brownell's  lap,  and  then  it  was  a 
glimpse  of  the  gentleman's  watch  that  decided 
him. 

Mr.  Brownell  apparently  took  little  notice 
of  Hope  at  first,  directing  all  his  attention  to 
Mrs.  Marvin;  however,  he  was  drawing  his 
own  conclusions  of  her. 

"What  an  earnest  face,"  he  thought.  "There 
is  power  of  concentration  there,  and  depth  of 
character.  She  is  a  true  artist.  She  has  en- 
thusiasm and  a  noble  imagination." 

Hope  was  working  away  at  her  picture,  but 
presently  an  invisible  messenger  from  Mr.  Brow- 
nell's inmost  thought  touched  her,  and  she 
raised  her  calm,  truthful  eyes  and  bent  them 
with  a  look  of  beautiful  innocence  and  modest 
intelligence  upon  him. 

As  he  met  this  look  he  arose  from  his  seat 
with  quiet  dignity,  and  stood  by  her  side.  He 
had  no  thought  of  asking  permission  to  exam- 
ine her  work,  neither  was  he  presuming  on  her 
as  a  child.  Indeed,  he  did  not  think  of  her  in 
relation  to  her  age,  but  as  one  to  be  deeply  re- 
spected, whether  child  or  woman.  Hope  rec- 
ognized the  thought  that  prompted  his  action, 
and  pushed  the  picture  on  which  she  was  work- 
ing a  little  space  toward  him.  He  looked  at  it 
earnestly  for  some  moments,  and  then  turned 
his  eyes  upon  the  exquisite  profile  of  the  young 
artist.  Before  he  spoke,  he  subdued  a  thrill 
that  sought  an  outlet  through  his  voice,  and 
said,  calmly : 

"You  design  admirably" —  he  paused,  not 
knowing  whether  to  call  her  "Hope,"  as  from 
her  wonderful  naturalness  he  felt  it  would  be 


appropriate  to  do,  or  whether  to  adopt  the  more 
polite  phraseology  of  "Miss  Wilkins."  It  really 
seemed  a  consideration  of  deep  importance  for 
the  moment,  but  the  pause  was  growing  awk- 
ward, and  he  compromised — "Miss  Hope,"  he 
said,  "and  your  execution  is  really  remarka- 
ble." 

He  waited  for  her  to  speak,  but  she  also 
seemed  waiting  for  him  to  continue. 

"I  saw  a  page  of  your  sketching  to-day  for 
the  first  time,  and  it  is  in  consequence  of  see- 
ing it  that  I  came  to  see  you  this  evening." 

She  turned  her  face  more  toward  him  and  a 
little  up,  but  her  eyes  did  not  yet  meet  his. 

"Came  to  see  me!"  she  said,  in  a  surprise  of 
which  her  words  and  tone  would  have  conveyed 
only  the  faintest  idea  to  an  unobservant  person. 
But  Mr.  Brownell  noted  a  touch  of  hoarseness 
in  the  limpid  purity  of  her  voice,  and  rightly 
attributed  it  to  concealed  emotion — an  emotion 
quite  new  and  inexplicable  to  Hope  herself. 
What  dreams  had  she  been  cherishing  whose 
realization  lay  in  the  words  of  this  noble  look- 
ing stranger?  None  that  she  knew  of;  and  yet 
the  answer  to  her  question  stood  revealed  in- 
stantaneously. The  very  atoms  of  her  being  had 
been  silently  shaping  themselves  all  through  her 
life  up  to  this  point,  and  far  beyond  this — to  a 
realm  of  indefinite  and  shadowy  beauty  to  be 
revealed  to  her  step  by  step  as  she  should  go 
on.  He  thought  she  was  waiting  for  him  to 
speak. 

"Yes,  I  came  to  see  you,"  he  said;  and  then 
he  told  her  substantially  what  he  had  told  her 
father,  and  named  the  monthly  amount  she 
would  receive  if  she  consented  to  go  and  work 
for  him — an  amount  so  large  in  comparison 
with  anything  she  had  ever  dreamed  of  that 
it  almost  took  her  breath  away.  It  was  twice 
as  much  as  her  hard-working  father  could  earn, 
and  yet  he  kept  his  large  family  on  his  earnings 
— kept  them  though  in  much  privation,  and  re- 
frained from  going  in  debt. 

"And  poor  pa  works  like  a  dog,"  she  said. 

It  was  easy  to  trace  the  current  of  her  thought 
from  this  remark;  and  Mr.  Brownell,  with  a 
touch  of  shrewdness  inseparable  from  business 
men,  smiled  a  little,  saying  to  himself,  as  he 
went  to  his  seat,  "Let  well  enough  alone — she'll 
go;  that's  the  leaven  that  will  work."  Then 
he  opened  conversation  with  Mrs.  Marvin  and 
Mr.  Wilkins  in  a  brisk,  lively  tone,  never  once 
turning  to  glance  again  at  Hope,  who  sat  like 
a  statue,  unmindful  of  the  talk,  her  eyes  large 
and  intense,  her  thoughts  indistinguishable,  be- 
ing feelings  rather  than  thoughts,  while  the 
leaven  worked  and  worked. 

Mr.  Wilkins  and  Mrs.  Marvin  were  as  yet 
unaware  that  Mr.  Brownell  had  made  Hope  an 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


35* 


offer  that  would  probably  affect  her  whole  fut- 
ure, though  Mr.  Wilkins  had  reason  to  suppose 
that  the  offer  would  be  made  in  time.  But 
there  was  one  in  the  room  who  had  heard  every 
word,  and  noted  the  full  effect.  And  while 
Hope  sat  lost  in  dreams  of  the  future,  a  pair  of 
dark  eyes  looked  upon  her  from  the  pillows — 
eyes  holding  in  their  dim  shadows  the  awful 
despair  of  death.  It  must  have  been  a  half- 
hour  she  sat  in  perfect  stillness  before  the 
beautiful  picture  her  imagination  was  painting 
— the  generous  plans  she  was  proposing  for 
those  she  loved,  the  happy  surprises  she  could 
bring  her  brothers  and  sisters ;  but  at  last,  with 
a  start  and  an  irrepressible  impulse,  she  turned 
to  the  bed — turned  to  meet  the  awful  look  of 
those  dark  eyes,  to  catch  with  both  her  hands 
the  now  outstretched  hand  of  the  crippled  and 
suffering  boy. 

Her  movement  had  been  so  sudden  and  im- 
pulsive as  to  cause  the  disarrangement  of  some 
light  articles  of  furniture  near  the  bed,  thus 
producing  a  noise  that  attracted  the  attention 
of  those  who  were  sitting  around  the  fire. 

"  I  can't  go,"  she  said ;  "oh,  I  can't  go."  Her 
words  were  a  groan.  The  whole  family  moved 
toward  her. 

"Oh,  Stevey,"  she  was  saying,  "I  can't  leave 
you — I  can't  leave  you." 

Then,  when  she  saw  her  conduct  was  noted, 
she  shrunk  away  to  the  foot  of  the  bed,  bend- 
ing down  upon  it  as  if  anxious  to  escape  obser- 
vation, but  unable  to  control  her  emotion,  and 
repeating,  "I  can't  leave  Stevey — I  can't  leave 
Stevey,"  uttering  the  words  to  those  about  her 
in  a  child-like  tone  of  apology,  whose  purity 
and  innocence  touched  every  heart  in  the 
room. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Mr.  Wilkins  did  what  he  could  to  soothe  his 
daughter,  and  presently  took  her  home,  leav- 
ing Stephen  to  explain  the  situation  to  Mrs. 
Marvin. 

Mr.  Brownell  was  much  surprised  at  this  new 
revelation  of  Hope,  and  cast  about  in  his  mind 
for  a  suitable  explanation.  Could  she  be  in 
love  with  that  poor  creature  so  evidently  on  the 
verge  of  the  grave,  he  wondered.  It  seemed 
impossible.  What  then  could  have  caused  her 
emotion  at  the  idea  of  separation  from  him? 
He  reviewed  each  incident,  every  word  she  ut- 
tered ;  he  acknowledged  to  himself  a  deep  in- 
terest in  her,  and  he  wished  to  get  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  feelings  that  agitated  her  so.  He 
found  it  impossible  to  gain  his  own  consent  to 
the  idea  of  her  being  in  love  with  him.  He 


thought  of  the  leading  expression  of  her  face, 
an  expression  betokening  enlargement,  sympa- 
thy, an  expanded  benevolence,  and  this  seemed 
to  give  him  a  clue. 

"The  mother -feeling,"  he  said,  "is  upper- 
most in  all  of  'em  from  the  time  they  are  born. 
See  how  they  love  dolls,  especially  after  their 
arms  and  legs  are  broken  off.  The  more  you 
cripple  'em  up  the  more  tenderly  they  cling  to 
'em.  I  don't  believe  I  know  any  more  about 
them  now  than  the  day  I  was  born.  However, 
I  don't  think  Hope  is  in  love  with  'Stevey,'  as 
she  calls  him.  Her  manner  was  too  open  and 
frank  for  that.  No,  no — he  is  her  playmate 
and  friend.  She  has  ministered  to  his  wants 
so  much  since  he  was  sick  he  is  even  more 
necessary  to  her  than  she  to  him.  He  is  the 
engrossing  object  of  her  tender  sympathy  and 
loving,  motherly  commiseration.  Why,  bless 
the  girl's  heart — what  a  heart  she  has !  She 
pities  him  and  has  that  love  for  him  that  is 
born  of  pity.  She  would  feel  the  same  if  he 
were  a  girl  instead  of  a  boy." 

He  went  to  see  Hope  a  number  of  times,  and 
found  her  usually  at  Dr.  Marvin's,  where  he 
often  followed  her.  He  soon  saw  that  his  per- 
suasions had  no  effect  on  her.  She  did  not 
argue  the  point  with  him  at  all;  but  when 
pressed  for  a  decision  would  shake  her  head  a 
little  as  if  unwilling  to  say  "no"  to  him.  He 
felt  her  delicacy  on  this  point ;  he"  also  felt  that 
any  undue  pressure  on  his  part  would  elicit  a 
firm  refusal.  There  was  a  vein  of  iron  under- 
lying the  soft  and  unruffled  surface  of  her  char- 
acter. 

He  was  at  Dr.  Marvin's  so  much  he  came 
at  last  to  know  positively  that  no  love  relations 
existed  between  Hope  and  Stephen.  He  spent 
many  an  hour  by  the  invalid's  bedside,  and  be- 
gan, first,  to  pity  him,  and  then  to  love  him. 

"Here  is  a  strange  development,"  thought 
he;  "a  boy,  who,  if  he  were  well  and  active, 
would  be  nothing  but  a  strong,  loving,  sweet- 
natured  girl,  so  far  as  character  goes.  But 
what  a  lovable  creature  he  is  !" 

Then  Mr.  Brownell  would  pause  in  his 
thought,  quite  lost  for  expression.  It  was  im- 
possible to  analyze  the  charm  of  Stephen's 
disposition,  for  he  seemed  to  have  been  born 
without  the  selfish  impulse ;  and  with  what  for- 
titude he  bore  his  awful  suffering  !  Sometimes, 
after  hours  of  extreme  torture,  he  would  turn 
his  face  to  the  wall  and  weep  silently,  but  he 
never  uttered  a  word  of  complaint.  And  the 
responsibility  of  his  sister's  family,  that  he  had 
carried  so  long,  was  still  on  his  shoulders,  a 
constant  weight  that  he  could  not  put  off.  "Oh, 
to  be  tied  down  here,"  he  thought,  "and  want 
in  the  house." 


352 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


Unconsciously  to  himself,  Mr.  Brownell  was 
coming  into  strong  sympathy  with  all  this  fam- 
ily. Its  cares  were  becoming  his  cares,  its 
pleasures  his  pleasures.  Several  times  he  had 
shared  their  queer  little  incongruous  dinners, 
in  which  the  lack  of  dainties  was  made  up  by 
the  excess  of  fun ;  even  poor  Stephen  contrib- 
uting his  share  of  nonsense. 

By  slow  degrees  the  feeling  that  Stephen 
must  not  die  was  taking  possession  of  this  kind- 
hearted  man.  His  strong  will  arrayed  itself 
against  such  a  possibility. 

"What,"  thought  he,  "so  much  beauty  and 
goodness  to  drop  out  of  this  world  where  it  is 
so  needed  !  No,  never — it  must  not  be" 

In  the  meantime,  Stephen  was  using  all  his 
influence  to  pursuade  Hope  to  go  to  New  York 
with  Mr.  Brownell.  He  was  made  wretched 
by  the  thought  that  it  was  for  him  she  was  sac- 
rificing so  good  a  position.  One  day,  he  made 
his  voice  very  steady — indeed,  almost  jocular  in 
its  tone — as  he  talked  with  her  about  it. 

He  thought  it  would  take  him  only  about 
three  months  longer  to  peg  out,  he  said,  at  the 
rate  he  was  traveling ;  and  then  a  second-class 
funeral,  and  a  record  in  the  town  paper  of  his 
manifold  virtues,  would  wind  up  his  affairs. 

"And  you  see,  Hope,"  he  added,  "it  won't 
pay  you  to  wait  for  the  drop-curtain  when  you 
lose  so  much  by  it."  Then,  in  a  deeper  voice, 
he  said,  "  Let  me  persuade  you  to  go.  You  are 
a  strange  girl  if  you  refuse  to  listen  to  the  in- 
junction of  a  dying  friend.  Oh,  Hope." 

Hope  turned  toward  him  with  a  gesture  al- 
most of  fierceness,  as  if  it  were  in  her  thought 
to  strike  him ;  then  she  ran  out  of  the  room, 
and  came  again  no  more  the  whole  day. 

But  Mr.  Brownell  came  and  stayed  with  him 
for  hours.  Mr.  Brownell  began  to  see — to  feel, 
rather — why  Hope  would  not  leave  him.  He 
was  growing  into  this  condition  himself.  One 
day  he  asked  Dr.  Marvin  the  nature  of  his  dis- 
ease. He  had  been  hurt  when  a  child,  the  doc- 
tor said,  and  the  wound  had  never  properly 
healed.  An  abcess  or  some  foreign  growth  had 
developed  slowly,  first  causing  him  to  lose  the 
use  of  his  leg,  and  afterward  consuming  his 
strength,  gradually  killing  him. 

"Could  nothing  be  done  for  him?"  Mr.  Brow- 
nell asked. 

"Had  it  been  taken  in  time  it  might  have 
been  cured,"  the  Doctor  thought.  "It  is  too 
late  now." 

Mr.  Brownell  looked  at  this  little,  limp  doc- 
tor, and  drew  his  own  conclusions  of  him  and 
his  opinions. 

"  The  Doctor's  ideas  on  the  state  of  society 
in  the  next  world  are  probably  as  good  as  any- 
body's," reasoned  he;  "but  he  is  too  slack 


twisted  physically  to  be  able  to  hold  physical 
facts.  His  medical  knowledge  I  wouldn't  give 
a  fig  for,  though,  to  be  sure,  he  may  know  it  all 
for  all  I  know ;  yet  I'll  not  take  his  word  in  the 
case  of  this  boy." 

Then  he  broached  his  half  developed  plan  to 
the  Marvin  family.  He  wanted  to  take  Stephen 
to  New  York  with  him,  where  he  could  have 
him  properly  treated.  There  was  a  chance  of 
his  recovery.  He  could  not  find  it  in  his  con- 
science, he  said,  to  abandon  that  chance.  He 
should  feel  himself  little  better  than  a  murderer 
if  he  did.  He  could  not  tell  how  it  was  the 
thought  had  taken  such  a  hold  on  him,  but  it 
was  there,  and  that  was  all  he  knew  about  it. 

When  Stephen  heard  of  Mr.  Brownell's  prop- 
osition he  gained  new  life  instantly.  His  apa- 
thy vanished.  His  spirit  grew  strong  enough  to 
triumph  over  his  miserable  body  for  the  time, 
and  compel  it  to  a  certain  amount  of  helpful- 
ness. He  was  far  too  sick  for  this  to  last  long, 
but  the  family  looked  upon  it  as  an  augury  that 
he  would  get  well.  So  the  plans  were  all  laid, 
and  Mr.  Brownell,  and  Hope  and  Stephen,  were 
to  start  to  New  York  on  a  fixed  day. 

Franky  Wilkins  was  doing  some  thinking  in 
these  times.  She  was  going  to  lose  her  girl. 
It  was  all  right,  so  her  head  told  her,  but  her 
head  could  not  reason  her  heart  down  on  the 
subject.  Her  laughter  was  infrequent  now,  and 
when  she  treated  her  family  to  its  sound  its 
tunefulness  was  tremulous  and  suggestive  of 
tears.  This  peculiarity  in  it  brought  her  hus- 
band into  the  secret  place  of  her  mother -life, 
and  he  found  it  an  uncomfortable  place  indeed. 

The  children  of  the  family  were  easily  recon- 
ciled to  the  idea  of  Hope's  going.  She  would 
send  them  things ;  she  would  come  back  again 
some  time,  and  then  it  would  all  be  so  grand — 
they  would  have  such  a  good  time  then.  But 
Bill  took  the  matter  quite  seriously.  He  want- 
ed Mr.  Brownell  to  take  Sally  instead  of  Hope. 
Sally  was  no  account,  he  said,  and  anyhow  he 
wanted  Hope  himself. 

There  was  quite  a  little  stir  of  preparation 
going  on  in  the  house.  Mrs.  Wilkins  and  Netty 
were  busy  sewing  for  Hope.  The  boys  all 
went  to  school  except  Bill,  and  it  fell  upon  him 
to  do  all  the  small  errands  in  the  family.  Now, 
this  state  of  affairs  he  resented,  and  he  wailed 
until  his  life  became  a  burden  to  him. 

"I'm  tired  of  work,  ma,"  he  often  said. 

His  mother  thought  work  was  good  for  boys. 
"It  would  loosen  up  his  skin  and  let  him  grow." 

"I  don't  want  to  grow,  ma,"  he  informed  her. 
"I  want  to  be  like  Tom  Thumb,  and  get  money 
easy.  I  don't  want  to  work,  and  I  won't  work, 
either.  I'll  kill  myself  first." 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


353 


"Bless  us  and  save  us,"  laughed  his  mother. 
"It  runs  in  the  blood." 

And  then  she  told  him  how  Hope  tried  to 
die,  and  was  brought  back  to  life  with  a  switch. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "but  Hope  didn't  know  how. 
I'll  die  dead  and  fast.  I'll  make  a  sure  enough 
die  out  of  it,  and  then  you'll  feel  awful  bad  'cos 
you  worked  me  so  hard." 

Scarcely  a  day  passed  without  this  threat  in 
one  form  or  another,  and  it  became  a  stand- 
ing joke  among  the  brothers.  Of  an  evening, 
on  their  return  from  school,  they  would  profess 
great  surprise  at  finding  him  alive. 

"Ain't  Bill  dead  yet?"  was  the  standing  ques- 
tion among  them.  Each  morning  their  leave- 
taking  was  most  affecting,  as  not  expecting  to 
see  him  again  in  the  flesh,  the  dearth  of  tears 
on  these  occasions  finding  compensation  in  the 
endless  "woo-hoo"  they  howled  in  unison. 

This  jocular  way  of  treating  the  matter 
strengthened  Bill's  resolution,  until  a  day  came 
when  he  had  been  worked  so  terribly  human 
nature  could  hold  out  no  longer.  He  had 
brought  in  three  baskets  of  chips,  had  set  the 
chairs  up  to  the  table  twice,  and  gone  once  to 
a  neighbor's  to  borrow  a  sleeve-pattern. 

"Durned  if  I'll  stand  this  any  longer,"  he 
said  ^jp  himself  as  he  sauntered  into  the  parlor 
to  be  out  of  the  way  of  work.  "  I  ain't  a  goin' 
to  let  ma  run  this  caravan  any  more.  I'm  tired 
of  life;  it  don't  pay.  Ma  says  Hope  tried  to 
die  and  couldn't.  I  know  she  could  a  died  just 
as  nat'ral  as  life  if  ma'd  only  had  gumption 
enough  to  let  her  alone.  But  ma's  never  haves 
any  sense  no  how.  Course  Hope  couldn't  stay 
dead  when  they  was  a  whippin'  her.  She's  too 
gritty  for  that.  Nobody'd  stay  dead  and  take 
a  poundin'.  Catch  'em  at  it !  They'd  get  up 
and  pitch  in  unless  they  was  too  awful,  mis'ble 
dead,  and  then  nobody  wouldn't  whip  'em. 
Now,  then,  I'm  a  goin'  to  die  dead.  I  ain't  got 
nothin'  to  live  for.  Ma  ain't  got  no  sense — 
she's  a  eejot.  Sally's  meaner  than  anybody — 
squack,  squack,  squack,  if  you  just  crook  your 
finger  at  her,  and  run  and  tell  ma — that's  her. 
And  there's  them  boys — durn  'em — boo-hoo, 
boo-hoo — good-bye,  Bill;  give  my  love  to  the 
divil  when  you  die.  I  wish  there  was  a  sure 
enough  divil,  and  he  had  every  one  of  'em. 
And  there's  Hope  a  goin'  away,  and  Stevey; 
everybody  I  love  a  going  off,  and  everybody  I 
hate  stayin'  to  home.  That's  just  my  luck. 
Durn  things,  anyhow.  I'm  a  goin'  to  lay  me 
down  and  die,  and  I  mout  as  well  do  it  now 
before  ma  wants  any  more  chips.  Won't  she 
be  'sprized  when  she  comes  in  and  finds  me 
dead.  She'll  feel  awful  bad,  too — good  on  her 
head.  She'll  feel  so  bad  that  she'll  just  paw  up 
the  ground  and  make  things  howl  all  day  and 


all  night.  Now,  here  goes  this  caravan  for  a 
a  long  journey" — stretches  himself  out  on  his 
back,  and  folds  his  hands  on  his  breast;  won- 
ders if  there  really  is  a  devil,  and  comes  to  a 
sitting  posture  instantly ;  decides  that  there 
nothing  in  it,  "'cos  if  there  was  he'd  a  had  ma 
long  ago;"  lies  down  again  and  composes  him- 
self to  his  last  sleep ;  cranes  his  neck  up  and 
looks  along  the  line  of  his  body.  "  Durn  that 
hole  in  my  knee — it  spoils  the  looks  of  the 
corpse;  makes  it  undignant."  Then  he  makes 
up  his  epitaph.  "'Here  lies  William  Henry 
Harrison  Wilkins.  He  was  the  goodest  little 
feller  ever  lived — only  nobody  didn't  know  it. 
He'd  a  made  the  smartest  man  in  the  world  it 
he'd  a  lived,  but  his  ma  made  him  do  things  he 
didn't  want  to  do  till  she  killed  him.'  That'll 
make  her  squeak,"  said  he;  "that's  the  pizen 
that'll  fetch  her."  Then  his  thoughts  went  back 
to  the  devil.  "Guess  I'd  better  pray  a  little  to 
make  it  safe,  anyhow" — rolls  his  eyes  upward 
and  launches  out.  "O  Lord,  I'm  a  dyin';  don't 
let  the  devil  get  me.  I  should  a  thought  you'd 
a  put  a  end  to  him  long  ago.  Maybe  you  hev. 
If  so,  bully;  if  not,  why  then  you  can't  do  it 
too  soon,  'cos  you  know  nobody's  safe  with  him 
a  rummagin'  round  loose — not  even  me,  and 

I'm  the  goodest  little  boy  there  is What's 

that?" 

He  had  sprung  to  his  feet  with  a  very  red 
face.  The  object  of  his  excited  exclamation 
was  a  dragon-fly — his  special  abhorrence.  It 
had  flown  in  through  the  open  door,  touched 
his  little  clasped  hands  a  moment  and  fluttered 
against  the  window-pane. 

"Now,  I've  got  you  just  where  I  want  you," 
said  he.  So  he  took  a  small  leather  sling  out 
of  his  pocket  and  some  shot,  and  began  to  fire 
at  it.  He  had  almost  emptied  his  pocket  of 
shot — his  mouth  rather,  for  it  was  in  this  con- 
venient receptacle  he  deposited  them — when  the 
dragon-fly  careered  backward  in  mid-air,  made 
a  side  swoop,  almost  touching  his  tormentor's 
head,  and  darted  from  the  room.  At  this  mo- 
ment the  sound  of  his  mother's  voice  reached 
him.  She  was  calling  him  by  name. 

"You  can  Oh  Bill,  and  Oh  Bill,  till  you're 
tired,"  said  he,  stretching  himself  once  more 
upon  the  carpet  and  composing  his  limbs  in 
death.  "There  ain't  no  Bill  as  I  knows  on,  or 
won't  be  pretty  soon.  I'm  as  good  as  dead  al- 
ready." 

He  had  scarcely  assumed  this  position,  how- 
ever, when  he  started  up  in  horror,  shouting  so 
lustily  that  he  soon  brought  the  family  about 
him. 

"I'm  shooted!— I'm  shooted!"  he  yelled, 
jumping  up  and  down  in  intense  excitement — 
"I'm  shooted!— I'm  shooted!" 


354 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


His  mother  began  to  examine  his  body,  tear- 
ing his  clothes  off  in  extreme  consternation. 
At  last  it  was  apparent  that  there  was  no  hurt 
on  him,  but  still  he  roared,  "I'm  shooted! — 
I'mshooted!" 

"You  little  dunce,"  said  she;  "there's  noth- 
ing the  matter  with  you." 

"Oh,  there  is— there  is,"  he  cried.  "I'm 
shooted ;  I  swallered  a  shot." 


And  this  was  the  outcome  of  his  suicidal  in- 
tention. He  was  so  glad  when  he  found  himself 
safe  that  he  brought  in  an  immense  pile  of  chips 
for  his  mother  without  being  asked,  and  he 
gave  Sally  two  of  his  handsomest  marbles  that 
same  afternoon.  To  be  sure,  he  took  them 
from  her  the  next  day ;  but  let  us  not  mention 
it.  The  "goodest  little  boy"  that  lives  cannot 
be  good  all  the  time.  HELEN  WILMANS. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


LUCRETIA    MOTT. 


The  Island  of  Nantucket,  situated  on  the 
south-eastern  coast  of  Massachusetts,  was  pur- 
chased from  the  Indians  for  thirty  pounds  and 
two  old  beaver  hats  by  Thomas  Macey.  Whit- 
tier  tells  in  his  Exile  that  Macey  sheltered  an 
aged  Quaker  from  the  pursuit  of  the  parson 
and  sheriff,  and  for  thus  breaking  the  laws 
against  banished  Quakers  was  obliged  himself 
to  flee  from  the  mainland  of  Massachusetts. 
He  took  up  his  abode  on  the  Island  of  Nan- 
tucket,  where  neighbors  gathered  around  him, 
and  the  place  soon  became  brisk  in  fishery. 

On  this  little  island  was  born  Lucretia  Mott, 
on  January  3, 1793,  the  same  year  that  Madame 
Roland  perished  on  the  scaffold.  But  the  babe 
might  lie  yet  awhile  as  unconscious  of  human 
storms  as  of  the  storms  of  wind  and  wave  about 
her  island  home.  There  were  happy  childhood 
days  before  her,  when  she  should  gather  many 
a  sea  treasure,  listen  to  the  tales  of  the  fisher- 
men, and  watch,  maybe,  the  great  spiders  hang- 
ing in  their  webs  about  the  wharves  and  in  the 
fishy-smelling  warehouses.  Her  childhood  also 
was  a  useful  one,  for  the  father  was  often  away 
on  trading  expeditions,  and  as  the  children 
grew  old  enough  they  were  taught  to  aid  their 
mother  in  keeping  a  small  store. 

Mrs.  Mott's  parents  were  in  comfortable  cir- 
cumstances, and  might  easily  have  sent  their 
children  to  a  select  school,  as  was  the  fashion 
with  their  neighbors;  but  the  father  was  a 
Quaker,  and  decided  to  send  his  children  to 
the  common  schools,  thinking  that  the  select 
schools  tended  to  a  feeling  of  caste.  This  act 
of  her  father  Mrs.  Mott  remembered  gratefully 
in  after  years,  saying  that  it  had  given  her  a 
sympathy  for  the  poor.  Her  education  was 
completed  in  a  Quaker  school  is  Boston,  where 
she  taught  for  two  years  after  her  graduation  in 
-order  that  a  younger  sister  might  have  the  ad- 
vantages she  had  herself  enjoyed. 


A  sketch  of  her  life,  which  she  furnished  to 
Eminent  Women  of  the  Age,  a  book  written 
some  years  ago,  best  tells  of  her  thoughtful 
youth.  She  says  of  herself : 

' '  My  sympathy  was  early  enlisted  for  the  poor  slaves 
by  the  class-books  used  in  our  schools,  and  the  picture 
of  the  slave-ship  published  by  Clarkson." 

She  speaks  of  her  interest  in  temperance  and 
labor  reforms,  and  of  women  she  says  :  •» 

"The  unequal  condition  of  women  in  society  early 
impressed  my  mind.  Learning  while  at  school  that  the 
charge  for  the  education  of  girls  was  the  same  as  that 
for  boys,  and  that  when  they  became  teachers  women 
received  but  half  as  much  as  men  for  their  services,  the 
injustice  of  this  was  so  apparent  that  I  resolved  to  claim 
for  my  sex  all  that  an  impartial  Creator  had  bestowed." 

One  who  so  soon  called  into  question  the 
usages  of  the  society  in  which  she  lived  could 
not  avoid  coming  into  collision  with  them  later. 

She  became  an  ordained  minister  in  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends,  and  traveled  in  the  Northern 
States  and  a  few  of  the  Southern,  preaching 
against  slavery  and  intemperance.  Her  inter- 
est was  for  the  moral  questions  of  the  day  rather 
than  for  dogmas,  but  when  the  schism  occurred 
in  the  Quaker  church  she  took  her  stand  with 
the  Hicksite,  or  Unitarian  division. 

Her  separation  from  the  body  of  the  church 
cost  her  many  of  her  oldest  and  most  trusted 
friends;  and  even  thirteen  years  afterward,  when 
she  went  to  England  as  a  delegate  to  the 
"World's  And -Slavery  Convention,"  she  was 
made  to  feel  on  one  occasion  the  dislike  with 
which  the  orthodox  Quakers  still  regarded  her. 
She  made  many  friends  among  the  cultured 
people  of  London,  and  among  them  the  Duch- 
ess of  Sutherland.  The  circumstance  of  which 
we  speak  occurred  at  a  fete  given  to  the  Ameri- 
can delegates  by  Samuel  Gurnsey,  brother  of 


LUCRETIA   MOTT. 


355 


Elizabeth  Fry.  This  well  known  woman  was 
an  orthodox  Quaker.  She  showed  herself  most 
cordial  to  all  the  delegates  except  Mrs.  Mott, 
whom  she  took  pains  to  avoid  by  passing  into 
the  house  whenever  Mrs.  Mott  came  into  the 
garden,  and  returning  to  the  garden  when  Mrs. 
Mott  happened  to  be  in  the  house. 

Mrs.  Mott's  nature  was  most  free  from  big- 
otry. At  her  hearthstone  all  questions  of  the 
day  might  freely  be  discussed ;  and  it  was  one 
of  the  lovable  traits  of  her  character  that  a 
limp  feather,  a  dress  in  which  a  rent  was  ex- 
changed for  a  pucker,  could  never  hide  from 
her  appreciation  any  good  quality  the  wearer 
might  possess. 

The  next  struggle  of  Mrs.  Mott's  life  was  in 
the  anti- slavery  cause;  and  as  she  had  before 
fallen  under  the  displeasure  of  the  orthodox 
Quakers  for  opinion's  sake,  so  she  now  seemed 
likely  to  be  cast  out  from  among  the  Hicksites 
for  her  work  in  the  new  reform.     During  the 
fugitive  slave  days  her  house  was  one  of  the 
principal  stations  of  the  underground  railway, 
and  for  many  years  she  refrained  as  far  as  pos- 
sible from  using  anything  produced  by  slave 
labor.     In  1833,  she  joined  with  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  and  others   to    form  the   first  anti- 
slavery  society.     Public  opinion  was  most  bit- 
ter against  the  Abolitionists  in  the  early  days 
of  the  movement.     A  writer  of  that  time,  not 
an  Abolitionist,  declared  that  the  circulation  of 
a  journal  depended  upon  the  abuse  it  heaped 
upon  the  Abolitionists.    This  abuse  fell  doubly 
upon  the  women  engaged  in  the  work.     They 
were  not  only  the  hated  Abolitionists,  but  wom- 
en "out  of  their  sphere."     So  exercised  over 
it  were  the  clergy  of  Massachusetts  and  Penn- 
sylvania, that  they  felt  called  upon  to  public- 
ly rebuke  "this  most  unwomanly  proceeding." 
But  neither  a  mob  of  arms  or  of  tongues  could 
daunt  these  women.     In  1838,  Mrs.  Mott  pre- 
sided over  a  Woman's  Anti-Slavery  Convention 
in  Philadelphia.     The  mob  surged  about  the 
building,  threatening  every  moment  to  over- 
whelm them.     In  spite  of  the  commotion  out- 
side, and  the  shattering  of  window-panes,  Mrs. 
Mott  succeeded  in  holding  the  convention  to 
its  work,  and  brought  it  to  a  successful  close. 
That  night  the  hall  was  burned  to  the  ground, 
with   the  connivance  of  the  city  authorities. 
Collyer  relates  an  instance  of  her  tact.     One 
night  when  a  mob  was  driving  the  Abolitionists 
out  of  a  hall,  and  the  moment  was  one  of  great 
peril,  Mrs.  Mott  said  to  one  of  the  unprotected 
women : 

"Take  this  friend's  arm;  he  will  take  care  of 
thee  through  the  crowd." 

"And  who  will  protect  you,  Lucretia?"  said 
the  woman. 


"This  man,"  she  returned,  touching  the  arm 
of  one  who  was  of  the  mob,  "will  see  me  safely 
through  the  crowd." 

And  rough,  red-shirted  ruffian  as  he  was, 
there  was  an  American  gentleman  beneath  the 
rough  exterior.  He  gave  her  his  arm  and  car- 
ried her  safely  out,  protecting  her  life  like  a 
good  "white  knight." 

As  before  mentioned,  Mrs.  Mott  was  a  dele- 
gate to  the  World's  Anti -Slavery  Convention 
held  in  London  in  1840.  The  leaders  of  the 
anti-slavery  cause  in  England  had  invited  all 
the  nations  to  send  delegates  to  this  conven- 
tion ;  but  when  the  American  delegates  arrived 
it  was  found  that  some  of  them  were  women, 
and  the  first  three  days  of  the  convention  were 
spent  in  discussing  whether  they  should  be  al- 
lowed to  take  their  seats.  In  England,  Eliza- 
beth Herrick's  voice  had  been  the  first  to  cry, 
"Immediate  Emancipation  !"  and  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau  had  written  against  slavery,  but  still  the 
eloquence  of  Wendell  Phillips  and  others  in  be- 
half of  women  was  unavailing,  and  their  cre- 
dentials were  refused.  William  Lloyd  Garri- 
son arrived  too  late  to  take  part  in  the  discus- 
sion, and  hearing  what  had  happened  to  his 
countrywomen,  he  would  not  present  his  cre- 
dentials, but  sat  a  silent  spectator  of  the  pro- 
ceedings. Henry  B.  Stanton  was  one  of  the 
delegates,  and  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  then  a 
bride,  accompanied  him.  Thus,  two  able  wom- 
en— Lucretia  Mott  and  Elizabeth  Cady  Stan- 
ton — met  for  the  first  time.  Long  afterward 
Mrs.  Stanton  was  asked  what  most  impressed 
her  in  her  London  visit,  and  she  answered, 
"Lucretia  Mott." 

They  both  felt  the  humiliation  which  had 
been  meted  out  to  women  by  this  convention, 
and  they  decided  that  when  they  should  reach 
home  they  would  call  a  convention  to  discuss 
the  social  condition  of  women.  Accordingly, 
in  1848  a  convention  was  held  at  Seneca  Falls, 
July  iQth  and  2oth.  The  topics  were  the  social, 
political,  and  religious  position  of  women,  and 
the  most  important  step  of  the  convention  was 
its  demand  that  suffrage  be  extended  to  women. 
The  reform  met  with  the  contemptuous  mirth 
of  the  nation,  but  earnest  people  are  not  to  be 
turned  aside  by  sneers.  Year  after  year  the 
woman  suffragists  have  held  conventions,  talk- 
ing to  a  few  thoughtful,  and  many  curious,  peo- 
ple— their  audiences  usually  being  fringed  by  a 
number  of  rowdies,  ready  alike  with  boisterous 
applause  and  hisses.  Slowly,  but  surely,  how- 
ever, the  enfranchisement  of  women  has  come 
to  be  a  question  of  the  day,  until,  in  1876,  the 
Republicans  thought  it  of  enough  importance 
to  give  it  a  place  in  their  Presidential  platform 
for  the  centennial  year.  True,  the  question  is 


356 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


not  yet  popular,  but  still  we  think  Mrs.  Mott 
has  died  in  sight  of  the  "promised  land" 
whither  she  sought  to  guide  the  womanhood  of 
America.  In  Wyoming  women  have  voted  for 
some  years.  Governor  Cornell,  of  New  York, 
in  his  message  for  1881,  speaks  cordially  of  the 
law  passed  last  year  by  which  women  of  that 
State  were  admitted  to  the  school  suffrage.  In 
the  State  of  Massachusetts  women  vote  on 
school  questions,  and  Governor  Long,  in  his 
annual  address,  has  just  recommended  that 
women  shall  receive  the  full  franchise,  a  course 
which  the  poet  Whittier  cordially  commends 
through  the  columns  of  the  Boston  Advertiser. 
Nor  is  this  a  question  of  our  country  alone. 
Both  France  and  England  are  discussing  the 
matter.  Surely  we  have  little  need  to  feel  faint- 
hearted when  our  cause  commends  itself  to  such 
men  as  Whittier,  Herbert  Spencer,  Victor  Hugo, 
and  Dumas. 

The  last  meeting  over  which  Mrs.  Mott  pre- 
sided was  held  at  Philadelphia  on  the  fourth  of 
July,  1876.  On  that  day,  while  the  men  were 
celebrating  the  hundredth  birthday  of  the  na- 
tion by  reading  sonorously  from  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  that  "taxation  without  repre- 
sentation is  tyranny,"  the  woman  suffragists 
assembled  in  Dr.  Furness's  church,  and  held  a 
meeting  of  protest.  Mrs.  Mott  was  then  eighty- 
three  years  old,  but  in  spite  of  the  intense  heat 
of  the  day  she  presided  over  the  meeting  for 
eight  hours.  It  was  in  this  summer  that  the 
writer  met  Mrs.  Mott — a  memory  that  is  like  a 
benediction.  Her  forehead  was  high  and  broad, 
the  eyes  kindly,  and  the  features  delicate.  On 


her  mother's  side  she  was  a  kinswoman  of  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  to  whom  her  face  was  thought 
to  bear  a  likeness.  Combe,  the  phrenologist, 
said  that  hers  was  the  finest  woman's  head  he 
had  ever  seen.  She  was  small  of  stature,  never 
in  her  life  weighing  over  ninety  pounds.  At 
the  protest  meeting,  some  one  in  the  audience 
said  that  Mrs.  Mott  could  not  be  seen  on  the 
platform,  and  requested  that  she  should  sit  in 
the  high  pulpit. 

"Well,  friends,"  said  she,  "I  am  not  high- 
minded,  but,  like  Zaccheus  of  old,  'who  climbed 
the  tree  his  Lord  to  see,'  I  am  small  of  stature, 
and  shall  have  to  go  up  for  thee  to  see  me." 

Although  growing  too  old  the  last  few  years 
to  be  abroad,  she  still  felt  an  interest  in  the  do- 
ings of  the  busy  world.  We  have  heard  Mrs. 
Stanton  tell  that  one  day  Mrs.  Mott  had  been 
reading  a  paper-money  tract.  Finally,  she  took 
off  her  spectacles,  and,  turning,  said,  in  her 
measured  way : 

"Elizabeth,  does  thee  understand  this  ques- 
tion?" 

At  Philadelphia,  November  nth,  1880,  Mrs. 
Mott  closed  her  useful  life,  and  passed  without 
fear  into  the  unknown.  From  ten  o'clock  until 
the  hour  of  the  funeral,  one  person  after  an- 
other stood  for  a  moment  beside  the  sleeper, 
and  then  passed  on  with  noiseless  footsteps. 
She  was  buried  in  a  quiet  Quaker  grave -yard, 
where  the  unpretentious  head -stones  scarcely 
show  above  the  green  grass.  It  is  said  that  a 
thousand  people  gathered  about  the  open  grave, 
there  being  a  noticeable  number  of  colored  peo- 
ple in  the  throng.  ELLEN  C.  SARGENT. 


BLIGHTED. 


"The  sun  hath  seared  the  wings  of  my  sweet  boy." 


You  who  have  forgotten  your  own  childhood 
— you  from  whose  hearts  have  passed  all  sym- 
pathy with  such  childlike  aspirations  as  make 
up  the  sum  of  our  early  years — read  no  further. 
For  you  this  history  of  a  few  episodes  in  a  brief 
young  life  will  have  neither  point  nor  pathos. 
It  is  intended  only  for  such  as  still  remember 
the  first  feeble  struggles  and  growing  power  of 
those  inborn  predilections  that  bud,  long  unsus- 
pected for  what  they  are,  in  some  young  hearts, 
sending  forth  strong,  clinging  roots,  which  quick- 
ly enwrap  the  whole  inner  nature,  while  through 
the  outer  crust  of  rough  thwarting  or  careless 
disregard  they  stoutly  fight  their  way,  gradually 
springing  into  flourishing  existence,  and  assert- 


ing their  divine  right  to  live  no  longer  as  sim- 
ple predilections,  but  united  and  combined  as 
the  vocation  of  a  lifetime. 

I  was  returning  home  one  afternoon  many 
dollars  richer  than  I  had  ever  dared  to  dream 
of  being  but  a  few  hours  before.  The  flush  and 
glow  of  success  was  upon  me.  I  felt  the  hap- 
piest of  men.  All  the  weary  past  was  forgotten 
— the  lonely  hours  when  I  had  toiled  in  quickly 
changing  moods  that  alternated  from  dull  de- 
spondency to  brightening  hope;  the  seemingly 
insurmountable  obstacles  which  it  had  taken 
all  my  energy  to  battle  with ;  the  stinging  dis- 
appointment of  frequent  failure  in  getting  near- 
er the  desired  goal ;  the  bitter  sense  of  wrong 


BLIGHTED. 


357 


when  my  work  was  unjustly  criticised,  when  my 
best  efforts  were  unappreciated,  misinterpreted. 
In  the  days  gone  by  it  had  seemed  to  me  that 
I  had  been  chosen  for  the  butt  of  fate.  Now  I 
felt  that  I  had  merely  been  serving  the  usual 
apprenticeship  to  art,  and  it  was  with  a  glori- 
ous sense  of  relief,  as  from  an  incubus,  that  I 
mentally  threw  off  the  yoke  of  servitude,  and 
girded  up  my  loins  to  stretch  forward  on  the 
road  to  fame  that  lay  seemingly  so  straight  and 
smooth  before  me. 

And  what  had  created  this  revolution  in  my 
life?  Only  the  sale  of  a  picture.  My  last  ef- 
fort had  appeared  at  the  annual  exhibition,  had 
taken  the  second  prize,  and  been  purchased 
since  for  five  hundred  dollars. 

Five  hundred  dollars  !  Ah,  what  a  fortune 
it  seemed,  and  what  would  I  not  do  with  it !  In 
the  first  place,  I  should  take  my  sister  and  her 
children  to  the  sea-side.  They  needed  a  whiff 
of  pure  air,  poor  things,  and  Alice  had  been 
very  good  to  me  in  the  old  time.  How  long, 
long  ago  that  "old  time"  seemed,  by  the  way! 
In  the  second  place — 

"Uncle  Frank,  Uncle  Frank!"  broke  in  a 
shrill  young  voice  upon  my  reverie. 

I  was  nearer  home  than  I  had  thought,  and 
my  little  six-year  old  nephew,  Jamie,  his  sailor 
hat  stuck  on  the  back  of  his  curly  head,  was 
bounding  to  meet  me.  His  glad  young  heart 
was  scarcely  lighter  than  mine  as  I  caught  him 
up  in  my  arms,  and,  laughing  into  his  smiling 
face,  said,  merrily : 

"Ah,  Jamie,  it  is  well  to  be  bright  and  young 
like  you,  but  it  is  a  still  finer  thing  to  be  a  suc- 
cessful painter." 

His  face  sobered  quickly  as  I  spoke.  He 
clutched  my  hand  tightly  as  I  put  him  down, 
and  trotted  on  beside  me  with  a  strangely  seri- 
ous air. 

"You're  a  painter,  ain't  you,  Uncle  Frank? 
Mamma  says  so.  Can  everybody  be  a  painter, 
too,  if  they  like?" 

"No,  indeed,"  I  answered,  with  considerable 
pride  in  my  own  superior  gifts.  "It  takes  a 
very  smart  man  to  make  a  painter." 

"Doesn't  little  boys  ever  be  painters?" 

"  Of  course  they  are,"  I  replied,  thoughtlessly. 
"Why,  I  myself  used  to  be  always  dabbling  with 
paints  when  I  was  a  boy.  And  some  rather 
creditable  things  I  did,  too,"  I  went  on,  mus- 
ingly, "considering  my  tender  years." 

I  was  beginning  to  forget  my  small  compan- 
ion in  thoughts  of  my  first  efforts  with  the 
brush,  when  I  was  brought  back  abruptly  to  the 
present — so  abruptly,  in  fact,  that  I  almost  lost 
my  balance.  A  pair  of  small  arms  thrown  im- 
petuously around  my  legs  had  brought  me  with 
such  suddenness  to  a  stand -still  as  nearly  to 

Vol.  III.- 23. 


destroy  my  equilibrium,  while  a  childish  voice, 
piteously  imploring,  sounded  in  my  ears. 

"Oh,  Uncle  Frank,"  it  cried,  "let  me  be  a 
painter,  too !" 

"You  a  painter,  you  midget?  I  think  your 
own  little  person  would  be  better  covered  than 
the  canvas.  Let  go,  child.  You  should  not  do 
that  in  the  street." 

"I'll  never,  never,  never  let  you  go  till  you 
tell  me  I  can  be  a  painter.  Please,  Uncle 
Frank." 

How  big  and  bright  his  eyes  looked  in  that 
small  baby  face,  away  down  there  by  my  knee. 

"Please,  oh,  please,  let  me  be  a  painter,  Un- 
cle Frank." 

"What  put  such  an  idea  into  your  head, 
child?  Your  mother  would  not  thank  me  much 
if  she  thought  I  was  responsible  for  it." 

"My  mamma  won't  care  if  you  let  me  be  a 
painter.  She  always  says  I  must  do  jess  what 
you  tell  me." 

"Indeed!  Then  I  tell  you  now,  you  young 
rascal,  to  loose  those  vice -like  hands  of  yours 
and  let  me  walk  on." 

My  logic  had  no  effect  upon  the  boy. 
<  "Will  you  let  me  be  a  painter,  Uncle  Frank? 
Please,  oh,  please,  let  me  be  a  painter,"  pleaded 
pertinaciously  this  would-be  artist. 

He  still  held  me  prisoner,  and  I  did  not  wish 
to  risk  hurting  him  by  any  great  exertion  of 
strength,  while  I  was  in  far  too  good  humor  to 
effect  my  release  by  a  show  of  anger. 

"Perhaps  you  are  not  aware,  my  dear  neph- 
ew, that  a  promise  made  under  duress  is  not 
considered  binding  by  a  court  of  law." 

The  expression  of  utter  blankness  called  into 
his  face  by  this  unintelligible  remark  lasted  but 
a  moment,  for  his  mind  quickly  grasped  the 
one  word  "promise,"  and  turned  it  rapidly  to 
account. 

"You  will  promise  to  let  me  be  a  painter, 
Uncle  Frank?  If  you  promise,  I'll  let  you  go." 

"Very  well,  then,  Jamie,  I  promise.  But  re- 
member," I  added,  with  mock  solemnity,  "it  is 
a  promise  made  under  duress." 

And  then,  I  was  so  light-hearted  that  even- 
ing, I  enjoyed  a  good  laugh  at  the  boy's  puzzled 
look. 

Very  reluctantly,  as  though  doubting  his  own 
comprehension,  he  released  my  legs,  and  we 
walked  on  side  by  side. 

"And  you'll  teach  me  to  be  a  painter?"  he 
queried,  anxiously,  as  if  not  quite  satisfied  with 
the  promise  obtained. 

"Well,  perhaps  I  may  some  day,  Jamie,"  I 
answered,  wishing  to  please  the  boy  by  gratify- 
ing with  this  indefinite  assurance  what  I  con- 
sidered a  mere  childish  whim  of  the  moment, 
at  the  same  time  that  I  postponed  the  fulfill- 


358 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ment  of  my  promise  until  he  should  have  had 
time  to  forget  it.  "But  you  must  first  learn  to 
be  a  very  good  little  boy.  You  must  not  tease 
poor  Towser,  nor  chase  the  chickens,  nor  pull 
the  flowers  without  leave,  and  you  must  go  to 
bed  every  night  at  seven  o'clock  without  beg- 
ging your  mother  for  another  minute." 

"You'll  not  teach  me  'fore  I  does  all  that?" 
— very  earnestly. 

"  No,  not  before  you  teach  yourself  to  be  a 
very,  very  good  little  boy." 

The  child  gave  a  sigh — a  most  unchild-like 
sigh — and  trotted  on  in  silence.  What  a  fine 
boy  he  was,  to  be  sure.  I  had  never  noticed 
before  what  a  good  head  and  open  brow  he  had. 
My  sister  Alice  should  be  proud  of  her  one  son. 

When  we  reached  the  house  I  had  plenty  to 
talk  about  to  this  sister  of  mine  in  regard  to  my 
plans  for  the  future,  and  I  thought  no  more  of 
Jamie,  who  had  run  off  to  play.  But  at  seven 
o'clock  precisely  in  he  walked,  as  solemnly  as 
the  proverbial  judge,  and  said  very  seriously: 

"Mamma,  I's  ready  for  bed  now,"  and  whis- 
pered in  my  ear  as  he  clasped  my  neck  tightly 
after  the  manner  of  affectionate  youngsters, 
"Remember,  Uncle  Frank,  I's  going  to  be  a 
painter — some  day." 

Alice  was  dumb  with  surprise.  It  had  long 
been  one  of  the  innumerable  petty  troubles  of 
her  busy  life  to  get  her  children  early  to  bed, 
and  here  was  the  most  rebellious  of  them  grown 
suddenly  docile.  She  could  not  understand  it. 

Early  the  next  morning  I  was  in  my  studio 
preparing  a  canvas  for  work,  when  I  heard  a 
clatter  of  little  feet  upon  the  stairs  without,  fol- 
lowed by  a  tap — a  very  small  tap — low  down 
upon  my  door. 

"Come  in,"  I  said,  and  the  door  opened  a 
very  little,  scarcely  more  than  enough  to  admit 
a  man's  arm,  I  should  think,  and  in  slid  side- 
ways my  small  nephew,  Jamie.  "Hullo,  young 
man !  Some  one  to  see  me?"  for  the  children 
never  came  near  my  den  in  the  attic  except  to 
announce  a  visitor. 

How  bright  the  boy's  face  was  as  he  came 
across  the  floor,  holding  himself  as  straight  as 
a  soldier,  and  there  was  not  a  vestige  of  sheep- 
ishness  or  timidity  in  his  manner  as  he  looked 
up  in  my  face  and  said,  with  a  little  gasp  of 
satisfaction : 

"Now  I's  come  to  be  a  painter,  Uncle 
Frank." 

"Oh,  you  have,  have  you,"  I  replied,  in  as- 
tonishment; "and  pray  who  gave  you  permis- 
sion, you  young  rogue,  to  come  to  uncle's 
room?" 

"Why,  you  did,"  he  said,  reproachfully.  "You 
said  when  I  was  a  good  boy,  if  I  didn't  tease 
Towser,  or  chase  the  chickens,  or  pull  the  flow- 


ers, and  went  to  bed  at  seven  o'clock,  you'd 
teach  me  to  be  a  painter.  Las'  night  I  went  to 
bed  at  seven  o'clock,  and  I'll  never  no  more  do 
nuffin  naughty.  I's  a  good  boy  now,  Uncle 
Frank." 

"So  you  expect  me  to  put  faith  in  a  reform 
twelve  hours  old,  do  you?  Ah,  Jamie,  unluckily 
for  you  experience  forbids.  My  child,  you  must 
be  good  for  a  much  longer  time  before  I  can 
teach  you  to  paint.  One  day  is  not  enough, 
nor  two  days,  nor  three,  but  a  great,  great 
many  days." 

His  face  fell  as  I  spoke.  He  was  sadly  dis- 
appointed, poor  little  fellow,  and  I  wished  with 
all  my  heart  that  he  were  ten  years  older  so 
that  I  should  not  have  to  refuse  him.  Chil- 
dren's troubles  are  so  short-lived  though,  was 
my  next  thought,  that  perhaps  it  was  better  for 
him  he  was  not  any  older;  for  now  I  came  to 
consider  it  seriously  it  would  never  do  to  have 
another  artist  in  the  family.  My  sister,  so 
practical  in  all  her  ideas,  would  be  decidedly 
opposed  to  such  a  choice  of  a  profession  for 
her  only  son. 

"How  long  then,  Uncle  Frank?"  broke  in  a 
pitiful  little  voice  upon  my  meditations.  "Ten 
million  thousand  days?" 

"'Not  quite  so  many  as  that,  Jamie,"  I  an- 
swered, smilingly. 

"Three  days?"  with  a  sudden  brightening  of 
expression. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you  you  must  wait  longer  than 
three  days?" 

"One  week  then,  Uncle  Frank?  Oh,  yes; 
one  week  is  plenty,  plenty  long  enough  for  me 
to  learn  to  be  good.  Say  one  week,  Uncle 
Frank,  please." 

With  rosy  mouth  pursed,  dimpled  chin  drop- 
ped, and  pleading  eyes  looking  up  so  prettily 
from  under  their  long  dark  lashes,  little  Jamie 
was  an  irresistible  petitioner. 

"And  do  you  really  expect  me  to  believe  that 
you,  the  most  mischievous  boy  in  the  square, 
could  be  good  for  one  whole  week?" 

"You  try  me  and  see,"  drawing  himself  up 
proudly.  "If  I'm  good  for  one  week  you'll 
teach  me  then,  sure,  Uncle  Frank?" 

"Let  me  see — one  week."  Before  its  ex- 
piration, I  thought,  he  will  have  forgotten  all 
about  this  new  fancy.  "Well,  yes,  Jamie.  If 
your  mother  tells  me  that  you  have  been  a  good 
little  boy  for  one  entire  week,  I  will  make  a 
painter  of  you,  if  a  painter  can  be  made  with- 
out being  born  one." 

He  was  quite  happy  again. 

"All  right.  You  won't  forget?  I  must  go 
shell  peas  now — good-bye."  And  away  he 
scampered,  innocent  little  soul,  his  heart  no 
doubt  lighter  than  a  feather. 


BLIGHTED. 


359 


Four  days  later  my  sister  told  me  in  confi- 
dence that  she  did  not  know  what  had  come  to 
Jamie — he  was  turning  out  an  angel  instead  of 
a  child.  I  had  almost  forgotten  our  compact, 
when  her  words  brought  it  back  to  my  remem- 
brance, but  some  one  called  her  away  before  I 
could  mention  it,  and  afterward  I  quite  forget 
it  again.  By  the  end  of  the  week  my  mood  was 
changed.  I  found  that  the  money  I  had  re- 
ceived was  not  elastic  enough  to  cover  all  that 
I  had  thought  of  doing  with  it.  How  it  dwin- 
dled and  dwindled  when  I  came  to  portion  it 
out !  I  was  in  my  studio,  feeling  very  blue  over 
the  impossibility  of  making  it  stretch  as  far  as 
I  wished  it  to,  when  I  heard  the  quick  halting 
step  of  a  child  who  was  making  frantic  efforts 
to  advance  rapidly,  with  the  same  foot  always 
ahead,  upon  the  stairs  without. 

"Hang  it,"  I  muttered,  crossly.  "Why  can't 
Alice  keep  those  infernal  youngsters  of  hers  in 
the  nursery." 

I  must  have  looked  rather  forbidding,  for  the 
youthful  ardor  of  little  Jamie,  who  came  tum- 
bling noisily  into  the  room,  was  suddenly  check- 
ed when  he  caught  sight  of  my  face,  and  he 
paused  abruptly  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

"What  do  you  want?"  I  cried,  angrily.  "I 
can't  be  bothered  to-day.  Bundle  out  of  this 
now — quick!" 

"Please,  Uncle  Frank,"  he  gasped,  "you 
p-promised  me.  I's  been  good  for  one  whole 
week,  and  now  you — you — " 

"Well,  I  what?" 

"You  are  to  teach  me  to  be  a  painter." 

"Painter  be  hanged  !"  Then,  rather  asham- 
ed of  my  temper,  1  added,  morosely,  "You  don't 
know  what  you're  asking,  child.  You'd  curse 
me  all  your  life  if  I  aided  you  to  an  existence 
like  mine.  Better  quick  death  than  slow  tort- 
ure. Just  enough  encouragement  to  be  tantal- 
izing— advancement  at  a  snail's  pace— hopes 
continually  deferred — it  is  an  enviable  life, 
truly.  Go  away,  boy,  and  don't  bother  me 
again  with  such  nonsense." 

I  imagine  the  only  intelligible  words  of  my 
harangue  were  the  last  few,  for  when  I  uttered 
them  his  hands  fell  away  from  the  apron  he 
had  been  fingering,  and  his  short  upper  lip 
quivered.  But  he  turned  away  without  a  word 
and  left  the  room. 

I  went  on  gloomily  with  my  work  for  about 
half  an  hour,  wholly  unconscious  of  having  done 
any  wrong,  and  quite  absorbed  in  my  own  mor- 
bid thoughts,  when,  as  I  moved  toward  the 
door  to  see  the  effect  of  a  cloud  I  had  put  in,  I 
fancied  that  I  heard  a  strange  noise  outside. 
Again — a  choking  sound.  I  opened  the  door 
hurriedly  and  looked  out.  There,  upon  the  top 
stair,  crying  as  though  his  little  heart  would 


break,  sat  Jamie.  My  conscience  gave  a  re- 
proachful twinge.  Poor  baby — he  was  too 
young  for  sorrow.  I  picked  him  up,  and  tried 
to  comfort  him,  but  he  would  not  be  consoled. 
His  tears  still  flowed,  and  his  little  frame  quiv- 
ered, while  his  sobbing  cry  was  to  be  a  painter, 
a  painter — only  a  painter.  It  could  do  no  harm, 
I  thought,  to  humor  the  boy.  He  would  soon 
tire  of  his  fancy,  like  other  children,  if  he  did 
not  possess  the  heaven-born  spirit  of  genius. 

I  have  always  maintained,  and  now  more 
stoutly  than  ever  do  I  uphold  the  opinion,  that 
a  child  should  be  humored,  to  a  reasonable  ex- 
tent, in  its  choice  of  amusements.  For  what 
we  of  maturer  mind  may  look  upon  as  a  mere 
pastime,  is  often  to  a  child  occupation  as  seri- 
ous as  the  pursuits  of  riper  years.  And  what 
in  one  instance  is  but  the  exhibition  of  a  mim- 
icry, common  to  extreme  youth,  of  that  which  it 
sees  done  by  others,  may  in  another  be  the  de- 
mand of  embryo,genius  for  such  employment  as 
nature  wills  shall  be  the  vocation  of  after  years. 
Now  that  I  realized  how  seriously  the  boy  felt, 
I  could  no  longer  conscientiously  deny  him 
that  which  he  had  so  evidently  set  his  heart 
upon ;  and  what  surer  way  to  destroy  the  charm, 
thought  I,  if  he  were  merely  possessed  of  the 
desire  of  imitation,  than  by  placing  the  brush 
at  once  in  his  fingers?  So  I  got  an  old  saucer, 
mixed  some  water- colors  thereon,  and  gave 
him  an  old  book  full  of  wood-cuts  to  ornament 
to  his  liking.  His  tears  were  quickly  dried.  A 
few  applications  of  a  pair  of  dirty  white  apron- 
sleeves,  a  finishing  sniffle  or  two,  and  he  was 
smiling  as  brightly  as  ever.  All  that  morning 
he  sat  by  the  window,  daubing  away  at  the 
wood-cuts,  happier  than  most  kings,  and  quieter 
than  any  mouse.  For  several  successive  days 
he  came  up  to  my  room  for  his  "painter-les- 
son," as  he  called  it,  and  I  soon  began  to  feel 
lonely  during  the  hours  when  my  noiseless  lit- 
tle pupil  was  not  perched  on  the  rickety  chair 
by  the  small  table  in  the  window. 

Poor  little  Jamie!  It  was  not  long  before 
he  got  himself  and  me  into  disgrace  with  his 
mother,  whom  I  had  as  yet  failed  to  inform  of 
her  son's  newly  developed  taste  for  art. 

I  was  putting  on  my  overcoat  in  the  front 
hall  one  afternoon,  when  I  heard  from  the  par- 
lor my  sister's  voice,  loud  and  angry,  followed 
by  two  or  three  sounding  slaps. 

"Hullo,"  thought  I,  "what's  up  now?  Alice 
doesn't  usually  administer  her  punishments  in 
there." 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened,  and  out 
came  little  Jamie,  his  small,  dimpled  fists  being 
ground  tight  into  his  eyes.  As  a  natural  con- 
sequence he  stumbled  and  fell  headlong  over 
the  door-mat. 


360 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"What  is  the  matter,  Jamie?"  I  asked. 

He  picked  himself  up  quickly,  hung  his  head 
to  hide  his  woeful  scarlet  face,  and  tried  to  dart 
past  me.  I  caught  his  sleeve,  but  he  struggled 
and  twisted  away,  glided  out  of  my  hands,  and 
was  off  like  a  flash,  his  baby  mouth  set  as  firm- 
ly as  a  grown  man's,  and  not  a  sob  escaping 
from  his  tortured  little  heart.  Tortured  with 
childish  shame,  deep  sorrow,  and  keen  appre- 
hension I  knew  it  to  be,  when  Alice,  putting  her 
hot,  angry  face  out  of  the  door,  called  me  into 
the  parlor  and  stood  pointing  tragically  at  the 
piano-cover.  Truly  it  was  a  trying  sight,  that 
ruined  green  cloth,  spotted  and  streaked  with 
yellow  ochre.  Nor  had  the  piano  itself  escaped. 
Sticking  closely  to  one  polished  corner  was  a 
cake  of  vermilion  paint  that  had  been  taken 
surreptitiously  from  my  box  of  colors.  Poor 
Alice !  This  was  a  serious  matter  with  people 
of  our  scanty  means,  and,  indeed,  the  sight  be- 
fore us  would  have  tried  the  patience  of  even 
the  wealthiest  of  saints.  Yet  my  sister  did  not 
blame  the  child,  she  said,  half  as  much  as  she 
blamed  me.  It  was  I  who  had  been  the  pri- 
mary cause  of  the  mischief,  I  had  put  it  in  his 
power  to  do  the  harm.  Half  his  aprons  and  his 
best  dress  had  likewise  been  destroyed,  and 
not  even  to  please  me  could  she  consent  to  his 
being  allowed  to  spoil  the  balance  of  his  very 
limited  wardrobe,  much  less  the  few  presentable 
articles  of  furniture  we  possessed.  Then  and 
there  she  forbade  me  to  leave  brush  or  paint 
again  within  his  reach,  and  placed  her  veto  at 
once  upon  any  more  "painter-lessons." 

I  was  not  sorry  that  afternoon  to  escape 
from  the  house.  Not  till  the  next  morning  did 
I  see  Jamie  again.  He  came  creeping  up  stairs 
and  into  my  sanctum,  looking  so  woeful  and 
crest-fallen  that  I  had  scarcely  the  heart  to  tell 
him  his  lessons  must  cease.  Scold  him  I  could 
not.  I  remembered  too  well  my  own  first  at- 
tempt at  frescoing  the  walls  of  my  nursery,  and 
the  wounded  pride  that  had  kept  me  from  cry- 
ing when  I  was  whipped  for  naughtiness  in- 
stead of  being  praised,  as  I  had  fondly  hoped, 
for  industry.  I  took  pity  on  the  sorrowful  lit- 
tle face,  that  grew  yet  more  woe  -  begone  when 
I  told  him  he  was  still  too  young  to  paint  pict- 
ures like  his  uncle — that  he  must  wait  till  he 
was  an  older  and  a  larger  boy. 

"But,  Jamie,"  I  added,  "if  I  can  get  your 
mother's  permission,  and  if  you  will  promise  to 
be  very  quiet  and  make  no  noise  to  disturb  me, 
I  will  give  you  another  kind  of  lesson.  What 
do  you  say  to  that,  young  man?" 

"I  don't  want 'nuther  kind  of  lesson — I  want 
painter-lesson,"  he  answered,  neither  petulantly 
nor  pleadingly,  but  in  a  mournfully  pathetic 
tone  of  resignation. 


"Uncle  means  another  kind  of  painter-les- 
son." 

"Oh!" 

What  a  rapid  change  of  expression  in  that 
tiny  countenance. 

"I  can't  let  you  touch  any  more  paints,  mon- 
key, because  your  mother  says  I  must  not,  but 
you  may  sit  here  and  watch  how  I  make  pict- 
ures ;  and  then,  if  you  look  at  everything  I  do, 
you  will  be  able  to  do  the  same  yourself  by 
and  by." 

There  never  was  a  happier  child  than  Jamie 
was  then.  He  laughed  and  jumped  and  danced, 
clapping  his  chubby  hands  in  glee.  He  was 
wise  enough  to  understand  that  he  could  not 
again  be  trusted  to  handle  colors,  and  was 
quite  satisfied  to  stand  by  my  easel,  hour  after 
hour,  day  in  and  day  out,  watching  with  never 
tiring  eye  the  progress  of  my  work;  and  to 
this  I  overcame  Alice's  objections  by  represent- 
ing that  it  kept  him  out  of  mischief  and  would 
do  no  injury  to  his  clothes. 

Very  soon  he  fell  into  the  habit  of  asking  me 
every  morning  when  he  came  into  the  room: 

"Uncle  Frank,  how  soon  now  do  you  think 
I'll  be  a  painter?" 

And  the  answer  was  invariably  more  encour- 
aging than  truthful : 

"Very  soon  now,  Jamie — very  soon." 

When  he  was  going  away  he  would  purse  up 
his  mouth  and  say,  proudly : 

"I'll  be  a  painter  to-morrow." 

Sometimes  he  would  ask,  "Don't  you  think 
so,  Uncle  Frank?"  And  I  would  reply,  "Per- 
haps, Jamie,  if  you  keep  on  being  a  good  boy." 

Once  I  briefly  answered,  "  Yes,"  when  I  was 
thinking  about  something  else,  and  after  that 
he  would  never  go  away  contented  until  I  had 
assured  him  that  I  was  quite  certain  to-morrow 
would  see  him  a  full-fledged  artist.  But,  as 
he  strangely  enough  seemed  satisfied  that  "to- 
morrow" should  remain  in  the  future  and  never 
claimed  its  presence  in  to- day ',  I  rejoiced  in 
having  discovered  this  effectual,  yet,  as  I  con- 
sidered it,  simple  and  harmless  method  of  ward- 
ing off  childish  importunities. 

So  a  couple  of  months  went  by,  and,  having 
sold  another  painting,  which  had  long  hung 
neglected  at  a  picture -dealer's,  down  town,  I 
was  preparing  to  start  on  a  sketching  tour  of  a 
few  weeks,  during  which  time  my  sister  would 
be  able  at  last  to  take  her  children  to  the  sea- 
side. About  a  week  before  we  were  all  to  leave 
town  I  was  invited  to  join  an  excursion  party 
upon  the  river.  I  rose  early  and  did  a  little 
painting  before  breakfast.  How  hot  the  weath- 
er was  getting.  Time,  indeed,  that  we  were  off 
to  a  cooler  spot.  I  should  find  it  excessively 
warm  on  the  water,  I  feared.  Had  I  a  linen 


BLIGHTED. 


361 


waistcoat  to  wear?  Yes.  I  remembered  some 
that  had  lain  in  my  drawer  since  the  previous 
summer.  I  went  to  my  bed-room  to  look  them 
up ;  found  them,  slipped  one  on,  congratulating 
myself  the  while  upon  its  being  so  presentable. 
Placing  the  forefinger  of  the  left  hand  in  the 
top  button-hole,  I  moved  my  thumb  about  in 
the  approved  fashion,  searching  for  the  corre- 
sponding button.  Alas!  where  was  it?  Gone. 
That  would  not  have  mattered  much  though 
if  the  second  and  also  the  third  button  had  not 
been  absent.  And  what  was  my  chagrin  to  find 
all  the  waistcoats  in  the  same  condition.  I  re- 
member then  that  Alice  had  ripped  off  the 
buttons  some  time  during  the  winter  to  use  for 
another  purpose,  intending  to  replace  them  with 
new  ones.  This  was  the  way  in  which  she  ful- 
filled her  intentions  and  took  care  of  my  ward- 
robe. 

Just  then  came  Jamie  tearing  up  the  stairs, 
and  shouting  lustily  to  "Uncle  Frank"  that 
Mr.  Turner  had  come  for  him,  and  was  waiting 
outside  in  his  buggy.  The  message  flurried 
me,  for  there  was  no  time  to  spare.  I  felt  pro- 
voked beyond  measure  at  my  disappointment, 
for  the  heat,  early  as  it  was,  had  already  begun 
to  oppress  me.  So  I  pulled  off  the  offending 
garment  angrily,  gathered  it  into  a  small  lump, 
and,  with  an  effort  that  would  have  carried  a 
cricket-ball  half  a  mile,  sent  .it  flying  into  the 
farthest  corner  of  the  room.  The  exertion  nat- 
urally made  me  still  hotter,  and  the  warmer  I 
grew  the  more  ill  tempered  I  became,  till,  I'm 
ashamed  to  confess,  I  worked  myself  into  a 
passion  that  could  find  vent  only  in  language  of 
doubtful  propriety.  Jamie,  in  affright,  slipped 
out  of  the  door  and  ran  away, 

I  was  in  the  worst  of  tempers,  when,  on  my 
way  out,  I  looked  into  the  parlor  which  Alice 
was  dusting  to  demand  of  her  what  she  meant 
by  leaving  my  clothes  in  such  a  dilapidated 
condition. 

"Oh,  Frank,  I  have  been  so  busy  lately  that 
I  forgot  all  about  them!"  she  said,  regretfully. 
"Is  it  too  late  now — " 

"Too  late?  Turner's  been  waiting  half  an 
hour  already,"  I  asserted,  with  trifling  exagger- 
ation. 

"I'm  very,  very  sorry,  Frank.  I'll  see  to 
them  to-morrow,  and  you'll  have  them  fresh 
and  clean  for  your  trip." 

"  Yes,  to  -  morrow ! "  I  growled.  "  Easy  to  get 
out  of  a  tight  place  by  help  of  to-morrow. 
Just  as  if  we  didn't  all  know  that  to-morrow 
never  comes." 

I  turned  hastily  from  the  room.  In  the 
door -way  stood  Jamie  looking  up  at  me  with 
eyes  and  mouth  wide  open,  an  expression  on 
his  wee  face  as  though  he  had  been  suddenly 


soused  in  cold  water.  I  pushed  him  roughly 
aside.  Ah,  that  I  had  been  less  rough,  that  I 
had  turned  at  the  summons  of  his  pleading 
voice,  so  full  of  earnestness,  when  I  heard  it 
behind  me  just  before  I  passed  out  and  slam- 
med the  hall -door — a  door  that  his  weak  little 
hands  could  not  open. 

"Uncle  Frank,  Uncle  Frank,"  he  had  cried. 
"Oh,  wait  a  minute,  one  minute.  To-mor- 
row—" 

I  heard  no  more.  Turner  had  gone  across 
the  street,  a  little  higher  up,  to  water  his  horse. 
I  waited  in  the  shade  until  the  animal  was  sat- 
isfied and  his  master  came  back  for  me.  As 
I  jumped  into  the  buggy,  after  a  little  delay  to 
fasten  a  buckle  of  the  harness,  I  chanced  to 
look  up  at  the  house  and  saw  little  Jamie  stand- 
ing hatless  upon  the  upper  front  porch,  in  the 
full  glare  of  the  fiery  sun. 

"Jamie,"  I  called,  "go  into  the  house.  It  is 
too  hot  for  you  there  without  a  hat.  You'll  get 
a  sunstroke." 

He  looked  down  at  me  wistfully,  but  gave  no 
answer. 

"Your  mother  will  be  angry  if  you  stay  there. 
Go  in  like  a  good  boy,  or  you  will  be  ill  to-mor- 
row." 

The  child  opened  wide  his  big  wise -looking 
eyes,  and  drew  down  the  corners  of  his  rosy 
mouth  while  he  answered  slowly: 

"  We  all  know  to-morrow  never  comes" 

My  friend  Turner  burst  out  laughing  at  the 
strange  reply,  and  I  laughed  in  concert — laugh- 
ed, when  my  heart  should  have  smote  me.  For, 
I  only  perceived  in  my  nephew's  lengthened, 
reproachful  visage,  in  the  parrot -like  solemnity 
of  his  infant  voice,  that  the  tables  were  being 
finely  turned  upon  me.  I  guessed  nothing  then 
of  the  grave  meaning  my  thoughtless  words 
had  had  for  him,  poor  little  fellow;  detected 
nothing  of  reproach  in  his  lisping,  childish  ut- 
terance. 

"You  will  see  if  to-morrow  doesn't  come 
when  you  find  yourself  lying  ill  in  bed,  young 
man,"  I  said,  still  laughing.  "Do  as  I  tell  you. 
Go  in  this  minute,  child — "  and  away  we  drove. 

"Your  sister's  youngster,  I  suppose,"  remark- 
ed my  friend.  "A  fine  boy.  You  must  be 
proud  of  him." 

Very  proud  of  him  I  certainly  was  as  I  look- 
ed back,  frowning  authoritatively,  though  my 
crossness  was  now  quite  banished,  and  waving 
him  into  the  house,  just  before  Turner  whipped 
up  his  horse  and  we  were  whirled  round  a  cor- 
ner into  another  street. 

When  I  returned  home  late  that  night,  there 
was  weeping  and  wailing  where  I  had  left  sun- 
shine and  happiness.  A  blow,  sharp  and  fa- 


362 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


tal,  had  fallen  upon  the  sorrowing  household. 
Unheralded  in  its  approach,  it  had  descended 
silently,  mercilessly,  in  the  full  light  of  day. 
There  had  been  none  prepared  to  ward  it  off, 
no  loving  hand  outstretched  to  turn  it  aside. 
It  had  come  without  presage  and  struck  down 
its  victim  swiftly  and  surely.  Jamie  —  sturdy, 
healthy  little  Jamie,  who  had  been  all  life  and 
spirits  but  a  few  hours  before — Jamie,  who  had 
come  bounding,  strong  and  happy,  into  my 
room  that  morning,  who  had  fled  from  my  an- 
ger agile  as  a  deer,  who  had  looked  after  me 
with  clear,  bright,  intelligent  eyes,  from  the 
porch  where  he  stood,  upright  and  sound  in 
body,  beneath  the  treacherous,  destroying  sun 
— this  little  Jamie  was  dead. 

Ay,  dead !  "The  only  son  of  his  mother  and 
she  was  a  widow;"  the  tender  sapling  that  was 
to  have  formed  the  stout  staff  which  should 
support  her  old  age,  and  he  was  taken  from  her. 

Where  I  had  seen  him  last  they  had  found 
him  later,  shelterless  beneath  the  fierce  heat  of 
the  noonday  sun,  and  when  they  brought  him 
in  he  had  staggered  and  fallen  lifeless  against 
his  mother's  knee,  blighted  by  that  cruel  sun's 


hot  rays.  They  led  me  to  the  room  where  he 
lay,  so  white — so  still — as  droops  some  frag- 
ile flower  that  has  been  ruthlessly  plucked  from 
its  waving  stalk,  and  now  lies  passive,  still  ex- 
quisitely fair,  in  the  delicate  beauty  that  will 
so  soon  have  vanished.  With  woe  unuttera- 
ble, I  looked  upon  the  little  figure,  and,  peep- 
ing from  under  the  pillow  where  rested  the 
curly  head,  I  saw  a  crumpled  paper.  Mechan- 
ically I  drew  it  forth.  Only  a  newspaper  cut — 
a  group  of  Indians  daubed  with  highly  colored 
paints  by  a  small  white  hand  that  would  never 
hold  a  brush  again — but  it  whispered  to  me  of 
genius  blighted  in  the  bud.  It  disclosed  to  me 
the  agony  that  young  heart  had  suffered  with 
its  first  disappointment.  It  revealed  the  weight 
of  crushed  hope  that  had  fallen  upon  the  boy's 
bright  spirit  when  his  immature  mind  began 
vaguely  to  realize  the  fact  that  his  Uncle 
Frank — his  oracle — had  been  deceiving  him  ; 
had  promised  the  fruits  of  a  day  that  would 
never  come.  I  bowed  my  head  beside  the 
sweet  dead  face  and  sobbed  like  a  child  in 
agony  of  spirit. 

CONSTANCE  MAUDE  NEVILLE. 


FOUR  GERMAN   SONGS. 

I.— WINTER   SONG. 

From  the  German  of  Emil  Ritterhaus. 

There  hangs  a  crafty  ivy -vine 

Close -wrapped  about  a  leafless  tree. 

She  talks  to  him  of  spring-time  dreams, 
When  all  his  harms  shall  healed  be. 

And  if  it  come,  the  spring-time  dream, 
The  tree's  lost  blooming  will  it  bring? 

My  Heart,  thou  art  the  naked  tree, 
And  ivy -vines  the  songs  I  sing! 


II.— NIGHT  GREETING. 

From  the  German  of  Franz  Kugler. 

Before  my  window  darkles 

The  moonlight  sad  and  wan; 

The  watch  upon  my  little  stand 
Unrestingly  beats  on. 

There  rings  out  through  the  silence 

A  hasty  footstep's  beat, 
Alone,  and  echoing  backward, 

Along  the  empty  street. 


PESSIMISTIC  PESTILENCE. 


363 


Their  wings  of  dreams  expanding, 
My  longings  rise  up  free; 

And,  O  my  Life !  in  secret, 
I  dream  me  hence  to  thee. 


III.— SONG. 

From  the  German  of  Bernhard  Endrulat. 

Why  look  up  to  the  heavens? 

Ah  cease,  my  heart,  for  see, 
The  stars  fall  from  the  heavens — 

No  joy  falls  thence  for  thee. 

And  comes  the  sun  with  morning, 

So  be  it,  day  by  day; 
He  shines  and  lights  the  others — 

Thou  must  in  shadow  stay. 

And  many  a  fragrant  flower 
Unfolds,  the  light  to  see; 

Love  weaves  them  in  a  garland, 
But  Love  thinks  not  of  thee. 

But  hush!  there  comes  an  evening; 

There  waits  a  long,  dumb  line 
Of  cold  beds,  all  made  ready, 

And  one  of  them  is  thine. 


IV.— IN   THE   BOAT. 

From  the  German  of  Julius  Sturm. 

High  above  me  the  glory  of  stars, 

My  boat  by  the  waves  is  shaken, 
And  would  I  might  sleep  in  the  silent  night 

And  never  again  awaken ! 

O  Life,  how  empty  of  joy  thou  art ! 

O  Heart,  how  art  thou  betrayed ! 
And  would  that  above  me,  asleep  in  the  sea, 

The  loud  waves,  pitying,  swayed. 

MILICENT  WASHBURN  SHINN. 


PESSIMISTIC   PESTILENCE. 


The  world  has  been  amused  by  the  chromo, 
after  Toby  Rosenthal,  of  the  boy  bawling  be- 
cause a  goose  hisses  at  him.  But  it  might  be 
amused  much  more  by  a  witty  delineation 
(which  I  wish  I  could  give)  of  the  bawling  pes- 
simists who  are  made  miserable  by  the  hisses 
of  their  own  disappointed  vanity  or  supersti- 
tions of  various  kinds,  and  are  loudly  lament- 
ing that  the  universe  is  on  the  high  road  to  per- 
dition. 


These  sham  philosophers,  ignorant  of  the 
ends  as  well  as  of  the  methods  of  the  higher 
philosophy,  belong  to  three  main  classes,  the 
communistic,  literary,  and  sacerdotal.  The 
growth  of  the  secular  spirit,  the  accumulation 
of  knowledge  and  experience,  the  spread  of  ed- 
ucation, the  increase  of  independent  thought, 
the  exaltation  of  reason  over  tradition  and  of 
self-respect  over  slavish  humiliation,  the  con- 
tempt for  asceticism,  the  admiration  of  prog- 


364 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ress  in  the  past  and  confidence  in  it  for  the 
future,  have  contributed  to  weaken  the  influ- 
ence of  the  ecclesiastical  profession  in  human 
affairs,  and  the  losers  cry  out  that  the  grand 
collapse  is  at  hand.  Such  complaints  have 
been  heard  in  all  ages.  Every  large  organiza- 
tion claims  to  be  the  advocate  of  the  only 
course  that  will  secure  national  prosperity,  and 
measures  the  evil  of  its  defeat  by  the  magni- 
tude and  confidence  of  its  own  expectations. 
It  imagines  that  the  present  is  worse  than  the 
past,  and  the  near  past  than  the  remote  past, 
with  the  general  conclusion  that  humanity  has 
passed  far  beyond  the  best  period  of  its  exist- 
ence, and  is  rapidly  rushing  through  the  final 
stages  of  decay  to  final  extinction.  It  is  not 
strange  that  the  sacerdotal  caste,  now  looking 
back  with  envy  on  the  time  when  their  prede- 
cessors ruled  court  and  camp,  literature  and 
art,  state  as  well  as  church,  and  sincerely  be- 
lieving themselves  the  exclusive  representatives 
of  the  divine  power  which  ought  to  be  predom- 
inant in  all  departments  of  life,  should  imagine 
that  they  see  proofs  everywhere  around  them 
of  rapid  demoralization.  Cyprian  saw  similar 
signs,  as  he  thought,  sixteen  centuries  ago,  and 
wrote  thus : 

"Infants  are  born  bald.  Life,  instead  of  reaching 
old  age,  begins  with  decrepitude.  Population  is  dimin- 
ishing ;  the  soil  lacks  cultivators ;  there  are  few  ships  on 
the  seas ;  the  fields  have  become  deserts.  Morality  has 
suffered  a  similar  decline.  There  is  no  innocence,  no 
justice,  no  friendship ;  even  intelligence  is  decreasing. 
Such  is  the  general  tendency  of  nature.  The  rays  of 
the  setting  sun  are  pale  and  cold ;  the  moon  is  growing 
perceptibly  smaller,  and  preparing  to  disappear ;  the 
trees  which  formerly  refreshed  us  with  their  verdure  and 
fruit  are  dying  out ;  the  springs  which  poured  out  large 
streams  are  drying  up,  and  now  yield  only  a  few  drops 
in  a  day.  God  made  it  a  law  of  creation  that  whatever 

has  a  beginning  must  grow,  decline,  and  die 

We  must  not  expect  a  diminution  of  the  evils  that  now 
afflict  the  world.  They  will  increase  till  the  last  judg- 
ment." 

All  communists  are  pessimists.  If  they  should 
admit  that  the  world  is  growing  better,  they 
would  deprive  themselves  of  an  excuse  for  de- 
manding the  abolition  or  revolutionary  reorgan- 
ization of  all  political  and  social  institutions. 
They  tell  us  that  material  progress  is  impover- 
ishing and  degrading  the  mass  of  mankind, 
who  will  never  obtain  temporal  salvation  till 
they  put  the  communistic  agitators  in  power. 
These  gentlemen  are  of  course  right,  as  well  as 
sincere,  in  saying  that  they  alone  can  save  the 
country.  Otherwise,  they  would  not  say  so. 

The  literary  pessimists  are  rhetoricians,  whose 
power  of  expression  far  outruns  their  judgment, 
and  who  are  disgusted  by  finding  that  the  world 


refuses  to  make  their  nonsense  the  rule  of  its 
life.  Rousseau  first  attracted  attention  in  the 
literary  world  by  his  argument  to  prove  that 
the  savage  leads  a  nobler  and  happier  life  than 
the  civilized  man.  To  a  person  familiar  with 
the  material  facts,  notwithstanding  the  brill- 
iancy of  its  declamation,  this  essay  is  absolute- 
ly ludicrous  in  the  multitude  and  magnitude  of 
its  errors. 

Of  the  English  literary  pessimists,  perhaps 
the  greatest  is  Carlyle,  a  very  chief  of  the  can- 
ters, windbags,  and  unrealities,  which  he  made 
it  his  claim  and  pretense  to  denounce.  Within 
the  limits  of  a  peculiar  style  original  to  him- 
self, he  is  a  great  rhetorician,  and  thousands  of 
young  men  have  imagined,  while  reading  his 
striking  words,  that  they  had  encountered  great 
ideas.  Like  Ruskin  he  has  a  wonderful  genius 
for  words,  and  makes  a  great  display  of  gen- 
erous impulse,  but  lacks  common  sense;  and 
though  in  matters  of  taste  he  may  often  be 
right,  you  can  never  put  the  least  trust  in  his 
judgment.  He  knew  little  of  polity  or  evidence, 
and  never  in  his  life  made  a  comprehensive 
statement  of  the  material  facts  which  must  be 
taken  into  consideration  before  a  respectable 
opinion  could  be  formed  on  an  important  ques- 
tion. Claptrap  rhetoric  is  the  chief  feature  of 
his  argument.  He  imagined  that  England  was 
much  nobler  and  happier  in  the  thirteenth  than 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  undertook  to 
prove  it  by  telling  the  story  of  an  abbot  who 
ruled  over  the  convent  of  St.  Edmunds  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  II.  The  logical  conclusion  is 
as  clear  as  it  would  be  in  the  proposition,  "I 
have  the  toothache,  and  therefore  judgment 
day  is  at  hand."  Past  and  Present,  which,  as 
well  as  Carlyle's  other  books,  and  especially 
Sartor  Resartus,  I  read  with  intense  admira- 
tion in  my  beardless  days,  though  I  now  turn 
from  them  with  a  feeling  akin  to  nausea,  con- 
tains the  following  pessimistic  sentences  : 

'  "Many  men  eat  finer  cookery,  drink  dearer  liquors. 
....  Are  they  better,  beautifuler,  stronger,  braver? 
Are  they  even  what  they  call  happier?  Do  they  look 
with  satisfaction  on  more  things  and  human  faces  on 
this  God's  earth?  Do  more  things  and  human  faces 
look  with  satisfaction  on  them?  Not  so.  Human  faces 
gloom  discordantly,  disloyally,  on  one  another.  To 
whom  then  is  this  wealth  of  England,  wealth?  Who 

is  it  that  it  blesses?  ....  As  yet  none A  world 

now  verging  toward  dissolution,  reduced  now  to  spasms 
and  death  throes." 

Among  the  Germans  Schopenhauer  is  the 
funniest  pessimist.  He  luxuriated  in  misery. 
He  claimed  to  be  a  philospher,  and  the  world 
treated  him  with  neglect.  He  denounced  soci- 
ety, which  laughed  at  him,  and  he  grew  furious. 


PESSIMISTIC  PESTILENCE. 


365 


The  following  is  a  translation  of  some  of  his 
lachrymose  nonsense : 

' '  Enjoyments  are  negative  :  that  they  give  pleasure  is 
a  delusion  which  envy  cherishes  to  make  itself  miser- 
able. Pains,  on  the  other  hand,  are  felt  positively,  and, 
therefore,  their  absence  is  a  measure  of  happiness. 
If  the  lack  of  tedium  occurs  with  freedom  from  pain, 
the  summit  of  good  fortune  has  been  attained ;  all  the 

rest  is  chimera It  is  the  greatest  absurdity  to 

try  to  convert  this  scene  of  suffering  into  a  place  of  de- 
light, and  to  make  joy  instead  of  painlessness  the  ob- 
ject of  ambition.  He  errs  least  who  regards  this  world 
as  a  kind  of  hell  and  gives  all  his  attention  to  the  con- 
struction of  a  fire -proof  room  in  it.  The  fool  runs 
after  the  pleasures  of  life  and  is  deluded  ;  the  wise  man 

avoids  the  evil If  suffering  is  not  the  nearest 

and  immediate  purpose  of  our  life,  then  our  existence  is 

the  thing  most  contrary  to  purpose  in  the  world 

The  most  effective  consolation  in  every  suffering  is  to 

see  others  suffer  still  more,  as  we  always  can 

We  are  like  lambs  frisking  in  the  meadow  while  the 
butcher  picks  out  those  to  be  slaughtered  before  sun- 
set." 

I  can  imagine  that,  puffed  up  with  an  ex- 
travagant overestimate  of  his  own  talent,  as- 
tonished at  the  refusal  of  the  world  to  accept 
him  as  the  greatest  teacher,  and  embittered  by 
the  disappointment  of  his  ambitious  vanity, 
Schopenhauer  wrote  such  stuff  sincerely,  but 
when  he  read  over  his  own  philippic,  and  pol- 
ished its  point,  did  he  not.have  a  feeling  of  sat- 
isfaction and  even  of  enjoyment?  Did  he  not 
think  the  world  was  lucky  to  have  him  to  pro- 
nounce an  anathema  on  it?  To  be  logical,  he 
ought  to  have  denied  the  existence  of  any  such 
words  as  enjoyment  and  happiness,  or  should 
have  asserted  that  the  definitions  given  to  them 
are  false.  He  should  have  said  that  laughing 
is  a  hypocritical  movement  of  the  muscles ;  that 
books  (except  perhaps  his  own)  do  not  pay  for 
perusal;  that  the  poet  has  no  pleasure  in  his 
pen,  nor  the  painter  in  his  brush,  nor  the  phi- 
lanthropist in  his  kindness. 

Though  many  of  the  pessimists  do  not  at- 
tempt to  apply  their  ideas  to  the  practical  re- 
lations of  life,  they  are  really  giving  aid  and 
comfort  to  the  two  great  tendencies  which  assail 
and  obstruct  the  growth  of  humanity.  Medi- 
aevalism,  hoping  to  reestablish  political  eccle- 
siastical tyranny,  on  one  side,  and  Communism 
with  its  crazy  anarchy  on  the  other,  are  the 
great  enemies  of  Progress,  which  they  agree 
to  denounce  as  a  failure,  and  must  denounce 
before  they  can  find  an  excuse  for  their  own 
existence.  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Matthew  Arnold, 
Schopenhauer,  and  the  literary  dandies  who 
represent  machinery  and  dollar-worship  as  pre- 
dominating and  brutalizing  features  of  our  civ- 
ilization, are  the  allies  and  confederates — in 
some  cases  the  blind  tools— of  Nihilism  and 


Ultramontanism.  In  his  recent  book  advocat- 
ing a  communistic  confiscation  of  all  property 
in  land,  Henry  George  devotes  half  his  space 
to  the  proposition  that  material  progress  im- 
poverishes and  degrades  mankind ;  but  instead 
of  sustaining  his  historical  averment  by  histor- 
ical evidence,  the  only  proof  he  has  to  offer  is 
politico -economical  theory.  He  might  as  well 
argue  from  his  imagination  that  wheat  can  be 
cultivated  with  profit  on  clouds. 

It  is  of  vast  importance  that  the  pessimism 
now  common  in  the  writings  of  superficial 
thinkers,  whose  shallowness  of  thought  con- 
tributes perhaps  as  much  to  their  popularity 
with  a  certain  class  of  readers  as  the  polish  of 
their  style,  should  not  be  allowed  to  capture 
the  judgment  of  the  ignorant,  foolish,  and  in- 
experienced. Folly  is  dangerous  in  the  mass 
armed  with  votes.  Literary  grumblers  become 
fellow -conspirators  with  the  tramps,  the  politi- 
cal assassins,  and  the  incendiaries.  Shutting 
their  eyes  to  the  generally  satisfactory  circum- 
stances of  civilized  life,  and  refusing  to  adapt 
themselves  to  the  beneficent  toils  and  econo- 
mies needed  for  success,  they  demand  idleness 
and  extravagance  as  their  natural  rights,  and 
if  refused  threaten  a  general  overturn.  They 
denounce  as  intolerable  the  progressive  free- 
dom which  all  the  leading  nations  of  Christen- 
dom now  enjoy.  They  have  the  utmost  confi- 
dence that  any  possible  change  must  be  for  the 
better.  Such  are  the  teachings  of  pessimism, 
and,  if  potent,  they  would  be  very  dangerous 
and  pernicious. 

The  prevalence  of  such  errors  must  be  partly 
charged  to  the  defects  of  our  historical  litera- 
ture, which  has  been  a  record  of  courts  and 
camps  almost  exclusively.  Our  Grotes,  Gib- 
bons, Sismondis,  Humes,  and  Martins  have 
given  us  admirable  stories  of  Greece,  Rome, 
Italy,  England,  and  France,  and  yet  have  not 
told  us  how  the  people  lived.  Industrial  art, 
the  main  force  of  culture,  the  chief  element  of 
progress,  the  leading  source  of  popular  com- 
fort, the  indispensable  basis  of  all  the  refined 
pleasures  of  high  intellectuality,  has  been  passed 
by  as  unworthy  of  notice.  Some  of  the  great- 
est heroes  of  popular  progress  are  treated  by 
our  current  literature  with  the  completest  neg- 
lect. Does  the  name  of  Henry  Cort,  or  of  J. 
B.  Neilson,  convey  an  idea  to  the  intelligent 
readers  who  peruse  this  magazine?  Probably 
not  to  one  in  five  hundred.  And  yet  the  latter 
made  a  saving  of  fifty  per  cent,  in  the  cost  of 
producing  cast-iron,  and  the  former  an  equal 
saving  in  wrought -iron  —  improvements  of  in- 
estimable value,  destined  to  be  recognized  uni- 
versally as  two  of  the  greatest  blessings  ever 
given  to  humanity. 


366 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


It  is  impossible  to  justly  estimate  the  pres- 
ent without  comparing  its  domestic  life,  its  in- 
dustrial art,  its  securities  of  life  and  proper- 
ty— in  short,  the  general  condition  of  the  mass 
of  the  people — with  that  in  previous  times; 
and  the  ordinary  history  furnishes  us  with 
very  scanty  material  for  comparisons.  And 
such  material  is  found  with  great  difficulty. 
After  having  devoted  much  labor  to  the  sub- 
ject, I  venture  to  assert  that  the  more  familiar 
the  student  shall  become  with  the  condition  of 


the  Greeks  in  450  B.C.,  the  Romans  in  250 
B.  c.  and  250  A.  D.,  the  Italians  in  1000  and 
1400  A.  D.,  the  French  in  1550  and  1750,  and 
the  English  in  1450  and  1800,  as  compared 
with  the  condition  of  the  inhabitants  of  their 
countries  now,  the  more  he  will  be  astonished 
at  the  vast  changes  for  the  better,  and  at  the 
wonderful  misrepresentation  implied  in  the  as- 
sertions that  Progress  is  a  failure  and  that  the 
world  is  going  to  the  bad. 

JOHN  S.  HITTELL. 


AN    AGRA    BAZAAR. 


There  are  few  more  quaint  or  striking  scenes 
than  an  Indian  bazaar.  Every  nationality, 
dress,  and  feature  has  there  its  representative. 
The  bold  and  haughty  European,  the  mild, 
well  featured  Hindu,  the  eagle-eyed  Moham- 
medan, the  burly  Afghan,  the  flat -nosed  Tar- 
tar, and  fair,  delicate  Persian,  all  busily  pa- 
rade the  lanes,  highways,  and  by-ways  on  busi- 
ness or  pleasure  bent. 

It  is  seldom  that  the  Agra  bazaars  are  silent. 
Noise  forever  seems  to  have  taken  there  its 
abode.  Wranglings  and  vociferations  of  the 
buyer  and  seller  echo  loudly  from  each  niche, 
and  from  the  quaint  upper  windows  of  the 
houses  can  be  faintly  heard  the  twanging  of 
many  instruments,  while  ever  and  anon  peer 
forth  the  faces  of  fair  ones,  who  surreptitiously 
glance  at  the  gay,  thronging  market-place,  and 
exchange  looks  full  of  meaning  with  those  of 
the  opposite  sex  who  are  fortunate  enough  to 
catch  their  bright  eyes.  Walking  is  accompa- 
nied with  difficulty,  for  no  Indian  bazaar  road 
engineer  ever  dreamed  of  making  a  pathway. 
There  is  one  single  road,  crowded  with  its  het- 
erogeneous masses.  Animals  and  human  be- 
ings, pony  and  bullock  carts,  are  ever  mingled 
in  the  most  inextricable  confusion,  and  the 
gazer  is  likely  to  be  pronged  by  an  impatient 
bullock  or  be  run  over  by  a  speeding  cam- 
el. Occasionally  a  lumbering  elephant  paces 
through  the  narrow  streets,  and  scatters  to  the 
right  or  left  the  readily  yielding  crowd.  Then 
may  be  seen  a  covered  bullock  cart,  jealously 
curtained,  while  through  certain  slits  can  be 
distinguished  the  blue-black  eye  of  some  houri 
hastening  to  the  trysting  place,  or,  perhaps,  the 
1  wife  of  some  high-born  Brahmin.  Around  this 
throng  her  faithful  servitors,  who  are  ever  on 
the  watch  for  such  delinquency.  Curiously 
clad  are  these  men.  Their  head-dress,  which, 


by  the  way,  serves  for  most  of  their  costume,  is 
generally  formed  of  long,  bright  colored  strips 
of  cotton  cloth.  This  is  bound  jauntily  round 
the  head,  and  is  called  a  turban.  When  a  man 
wishes  to  appear  to  advantage,  he,  like  the 
English  artillery  soldier,  balances  it  with  geo- 
metrical accuracy  on  one  side  of  his  head.  His 
black  beard  is  carefully  parted  in  the  middle, 
and  the  corners  are  twisted  round  his  ear.  His 
mustache  is  curled  to  a  degree,  and  his  lips 
are  red  from  chewing  the  betel.  In  cold  weath- 
er he  wears  a  thickly  wadded  coat,  strangely 
buttoned  on  one  side.  For  instance,  the  Hin- 
du buttons  his  jacket  on  the  right,  and  the 
Mohammedan  on  the  left  breast.  This  gar- 
ment is  not  of  European  manufacture,  nor 
after  European  fashion.  Its  construction  would 
puzzle  any  decent  tailor  in  the  United  States, 
and  would  drive  M.  Worth  frantic.  But  the 
"mild  Hindu"  cares  not  for  fashion,  and  as 
his  ancestors  during  the  Flood  wore  a  similar 
coat,  he  wears  the  same;  and  on  identically 
the  same  principle,  his  nether  garment  is  one 
huge  sheet  twisted  around  and  between  his 
limbs.  From  the  knee  downward  his  calf  is 
bare,  but  for  this  he  cares  not  a  jot.  Beauty 
of  limb  troubles  not  our  Aryan  friend.  His 
shoe  is  a  perfect  symbol  of  art.  The  upper  is 
generally  a  bright  green,  liberally  bespattered 
with  gold  tinsel,  with  a  pointed,  up-turned  toe. 
No  more  diabolical  invention  exists.  The  sole 
is  thick,  and  clumsily  attached  to  the  upper. 
A  grand  creaking  goes  forth  when  he  walks, 
and  as  the  leather  is  badly  tanned,  the  smell 
arising  therefrom  is  unpleasant  if  within  a 
mile's  distance.  But  the  native  of  India  looks 
not  upon  the  shoe  as  an  article  of  use,  but  orna- 
ment. When  he  approaches  a  stream  or  mud- 
dy road  he  gravely  sits  down,  pulls  off  his  boots, 
and  slings  them  over  his  shoulder.  In  his  hand 


AN  AGRA   BAZAAR. 


367 


he  carries  a  huge  staff,  which  he  religiously  ab- 
stains from  using  unless  on  unoffending  ani- 
mal or  boy.  This  generally  is  the  kind  of  man 
who  follows  about  a  caravan  of  zenana  ladies. 
He  is  either  a  better-class  retainer  or  poor  re- 
lation. Usually  he  is  not  city  bred,  and  his 
gaping,  unconscious  stare  excites  the  witti- 
cisms of  numerous  gamins.  To  this  he  pays 
not  the  slightest  heed. 

Native  houses  present  an  indescribable  scene. 
They  are  either  of  brick,  stone,  or  mud.  No 
wood  is  permitted  in  the  city.  They  are  ex- 
tremely high,  with  flat  roofs,  and  the  private 
dwellings  of  the  rich  never  have  windows  facing 
the  main  street,  so  that  no  lady  fair  can  beguile 
her  leisure  hours  by  gazing  on  the  crowd.  Run- 
ning along  the  sides  of  the  houses  are  built 
rickety  staircases.  These  are  simply  pieces  of 
unhewn  stone,  loosely  fitted  into  the  wall,  and 
at  uneven  distances.  Climbing  this  is  danger- 
ous in  the  extreme,  and  many  are  the  deaths 
caused  by  sudden  slips.  These  lead  to  the  roof, 
where  at  evening-prime  the  Hindu  lords  of  cre- 
ation sit,  smoke,  and  eat  the  air.  Either  rich 
carpets  are  spread,  and  the  company  sit  cross- 
legged,  or  morahs,  chairs  made  from  a  peculiar 
reed,  are  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  guests. 
But  the  genuine  Hindu  despises  and  dislikes 
such  innovation.  The  ground,  he  argues,  was 
made  before  chairs,  and  therefore  God  never 
intended  us  to  sit  on  aught  else  but  mother 
earth.  The  hukahs,  or  long  pipe,  is  smoked 
gloomily  for  a  while,  till  one  starts  a  song  or 
story.  The  rest  listen  attentively,  and  mark 
their  approval  by  lengthened  whiffs,  accompa- 
nied with  the  exclamation,  "God  be  praised." 
Thus  they  sit  till  late  in  the  early  morning. 
But  we  must  hie  to  the  busy  street,  and  mark 
the  panoramic  change  of  scene  and  feature. 
Let  us  glance  at  the  sweetmeat  shop,  so  dear 
to  the  heart  of  every  native. 

Squatting  in  the  center  of  piles  of  various  del- 
icacies is  the  vender.  And  curious  are  these 
sweets.  Milky  cream  and  coarse  brown  sugar 
are  their  chief  ingredients.  No  attempt  is  made 
at  decoration.  In  fact,  the  native  would  not 
appreciate  anything  which  savored  of  delicacy. 
His  cookery  is  always  strong.  Horrid  garlic, 
greasy  ghi,  or  clarified  butter — condiments  at 
which  the  European  would  sicken — are  the 
bonnes  bouches  of  their  culinary  efforts.  The 
quantity  of  sweets  a  strong  man  consumes  bor- 
ders upon  the  marvelous.  The  reason  is  of 
easy  account.  A  Hindu,  by  his  religion,  is  for- 
bidden to  eat  meat,  and  the  most  nourishing 
food  he  can  then  obtain  is  saccharine  matter. 
A  sweetmeat  called  jellabi  is  in  high  esteem. 
This  is  made  in  imitation  of  a  hollow  coil  of 
rope,  and  filled  with  treacle.  A  mouthful  to  a 


tender  stomach  is  provocative  of  cholera  or  bil- 
iousness for  at  least  a  month.  But  the  English 
schoolboy  has  been  known  to  compete  with  the 
Hindu  in  such  gastronomic  feat;  for  one  boy 
has  been  known  to  eat,  at  a  sitting,  about 
twelve  solid  pounds.  The  doctors  prophesied 
of  him  immediate  death,  but  he  smiled  sickly 
and  thought  a  draught  of  milk  would  set  him 
right.  In  all  great  native  feasts  confectionary 
takes  an  important  place.  First,  as  the  guests 
arrange  themselves,  is  handed  round  in  a  silver 
tray  the  attar,  a  scent  procured  from  the  rose. 
This  is  rubbed  into  the  clothes  of  the  guests. 
Then  follow  l\it  pan  and  betel.  This  is  the  nut 
of  the  areca  pounded,  and  with  lime  inclosed 
in  a  large,  green,  succulent  leaf.  It  is  an  appe- 
tizer, and  eaten  in  the  same  manner  as  a  Euro- 
pean would  drink,  just  before  dinner,  sherry  and 
bitters.  The  taste  is  acid,  but  withal  pleasant, 
and  the  lime  brightly  reddens  the  lips.  This  is 
greatly  admired  by  the  native.  Then  follow 
rice,  sugar,  and  milk,  and  pound  upon  pound  ot 
the  coarsest  lollypops.  Not  a  word  is  spoken 
during  the  feast.  Each  man  is  bent  upon  his 
meal,  and  those  who  wish  to  highly  honor  their 
host  tie  around  their  stomach,  before  sitting 
down,  a  tender  thread.  When  this  breaks  the 
gentleman  thinks  he  has  satisfied  his  appetite. 
As  when  in  olden  times  in  Europe  a  lady 
thought  she  paid  a  compliment  to  her  host 
when  she  said  she  had  been  so  drunk  as  to  for- 
get how  she  reached  home,  so  a  native  of  a  cer- 
tain caste  thinks  he  is  courteous  when  he  says 
the  repast  was  so  good  as  to  cause  severe  indi- 
gestion. It  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  after  a 
grand  feast  that  at  least  two  or  three  people  die 
from  over -gorging;  and  then  another  feast 
has  to  be  given,  at  which,  probably,  some  more 
die.  Thus  is  Death's  sickle  not  permitted  to 
rust.  A  sweetmeat  shop  is  a  frequented  place, 
not  only  by  the  younger  members  of  the  com- 
munity, but  by  the  sage  and  hoary.  But  noth- 
ing can  be  bought  without  wrangling.  Though 
a  man  may  buy  one  p6und  of  the  self-same  arti- 
cle for  ten  years  running,  he  would  each  time 
try  to  reduce  the  price,  and  the  seller,  knowing 
this  peculiarity,  invariably  asks  about  double 
the  real  price. 

But  the  crowd  thickens,  and  loud  vocifera- 
tion is  heard.  Eager  the  questioning,  "What 
is  it?"  "What  is  it?"  resounds  from  all  sides. 
The  excitement  is  intense,  and  the  angry  shouts 
of  men  and  the  timid  wail  of  women  sound 
dolefully  through  the  narrow  street.  The  stran- 
ger, paralyzed,  thinks  a  general  mutiny  has 
broken  out.  The  fierce  look  of  the  big  men 
is  something  terrible.  The  people  flock  round 
a  native  liquor  shop,  where  stands  a  rascally 
native  upbraiding  the  past  and  future  female 


368 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


generations  of  all  Europeans.  The  cause  is  sim- 
ple. An  inebriated  but  gallant  soldier  has  drunk 
his  fill  of  native  manufactured  brandy,  and  also 
taken  as  many  bottles  as  his  pockets  could 
hold.  When  asked  for  payment,  he  has  broken 
a  bottle  over  the  shopman's  head,  and  kicked 
the  man  for  his  supposed  insult.  The  crowd 
and  the  injured  make  the  way  to  barracks  easy 
for  the  son  of  Mars,  but  when  he  is  well  out 
of  hearing  relieve  their  feelings  with  choice 
abuse.  Often  a  little  cluster  of  amused  but 
grave  natives  attracts  the  traveler's  notice.  The 
most  perfect  decorum  prevails.  A  question  is 
now  and  then  asked,  and  few  whispers  are  here 
and  there  interchanged.  In  the  center  stands 
a  European.  His  garments  are  of  dingy  black, 
his  long  black  coat  is  rusty,  and  his  huge  cork 
hat  indicates  the  missionary.  A  peculiar  "chin 
beard"  proclaims  him  from  the  United  States, 
as  also  an  utterly  unanglicised  pronunciation 
of  Hindustani  shows  him  to  be  an  American. 
There  he  stands  the  picture  of  eloquence.  A 
huge  white*  umbrella  overhead,  green  glasses, 
bible  in  hand,  and  gesticulatory  demeanor, 
stands  the  Indian  padre.  The  harangue  of  the 
man  of  peace  is  strangely  combative.  He 
promises  to  each  of  his  heathen  hearers  a  hap- 
py abode  forever,  if  he  but  renounce  Pagan- 
ism; if  obstinate,  the  torments  of  hell.  He 
then  draws  an  elaborate  picture  of  the  bet- 
ter social  standing  of  Europeans,  and  of  their 
better  qualities  he  speaks  lovingly.  But  the 
native  is  astute,  and,  though  he  has  heard  of 
and  seen  officers  drunk,  judges  cruel  and  pas- 
sionate, he  agrees  with  the  padre.  This  flat- 
ters that  gentleman,  while  it  amuses  the  "ig- 
norant Hindu." 

As  the  padre  is  preaching,  a  loud  sounding 
trumpet  blows,  a  silver  conch  clangs,  and  the 
crowd  disperse  to  the  various  temples,  and 
above  is  heard  the  voice  of  the  muezzin,  call- 
ing to  prayer  the  Faithful.  The  streets,  how- 
ever, are  still  busy,  and  the  sound  of  the  buyer 
and  seller  is  not  hushed.  Coming  down  the 
street  are  native  maidens  dressed  in  semi-Eu- 
ropean fashion.  They  walk  jauntily,  and  are 
not  embarrassed  by  any  stare  or  unpleasant  re- 
mark. Their  petticoats  are  of  gay  material, 
and  a  huge  sheet  covers  the  head,  leaving  the 
face  bare.  They  are  Protestant  converts,  and 
are  the  lowest  of  the  Hindu  or  Mohammedan 
nations. 

But  the  monarch  of  all  that  he  surveys  is  the 
Brahmin  bull.  At  grain-stores  he  can  be  seen, 
eating  as  if  all  belonged  to  him.  These  creat- 
ures are  the  objects  of  reverential  worship. 
Fat  and  well  fed,  they  march  the  streets  with  a 
conscious  air  of  dignity,  and  thrust  aside  those 
who  interrupt  their  passage.  They  often  visit 


the  grain -store  of  a  Mohammedan.  It  is  well 
enough  if  the  merchant  be  a  Hindu,  but  should 
he  be  Moslem,  he  dare  not,  for  fear  of  exciting 
the  wrath  of  his  coreligionists,  drive  off  the  in- 
truding animal. 

The  Hindu  is  a  peculiar  animal,  and  his  wor- 
ship would  be  to  any  other  nationality  a  curse. 
For  instance,  a  gentleman,  whose  business  took 
him  into  the  warehouses  of  some  native  dealer, 
was  told  to  pick  his  ground  carefully,  as  it  was 
there  the  merchant  domiciled  his  household 
god,  the  cobra.  A  cobra,  by  the  way,  is  the 
most  dangerous  snake  in  existence.  His  bite  is 
fatal.  A  young  snake  possesses  enough  virus  to 
kill  twenty  men.  Imagine  the  brokers  of  San 
Francisco  having  to  conduct  sales  under  these 
terrible  conditions.  Imagine  that  the  sacks  or 
bales  you  inspected  were  the  secret  resting 
places  of  poisonous  snakes.  A  cobra  disturbed 
means  death.  But  the  worthy  gomastha  cared 
naught  for  that.  He  believed  in  snake  grati- 
tude— not  in  snake  turpitude. 

One  of  the  most  noticeable  men  in  an  Indian 
bazaar  is  the  devotee.  These  are  men  who 
have  consecrated  their  lives  to  a  certain  pur- 
pose, often  as  not  to  laziness.  One  will  extend 
the  right  arm  straight  above  his  head  till  that 
limb  withers  and  remains  forever  in  that  posi- 
tion. One  will  place  his  hand  over  his  heart, 
and  keep  it  there  till  the  nails  pierce  the  flesh. 
Others  will  promenade  the  streets  all  but  nude. 
The  paternal  government,  however,  interferes 
with  such  practices  and  insists  upon  decency. 

The  idol-shops  are  worth  a  visit.  There  the 
religious  Hindu  disposes  of  his  gods,  and  the 
greater  the  deity  the  worse  the  art ;  for  he  ar- 
gues that  no  one  pays  for  it  as  an  ornament, 
but  as  a  necessity.  Consequently,  he  charges 
exorbitantly  for  the  rank  of  the  god,  and  not 
for  workmanship. 

But  it  is  along  by  the  river  banks  that  the 
Hindu  is  seen  to  advantage.  With  the  first 
rays  of  the  morning's  sun  he  hastens  to  the 
performance  of  his  ablution  and  to  devotion. 
With  the  fine  muslin  sheet  gracefully  thrown 
over  his  shoulders,  he  walks  to  the  river  and 
commences  his  religious  rites.  For  "cleanli- 
ness is  next  to  godliness"  is  the  precept  of 
every  Hindu,  and  in  fact  forms  part  of  his 
creed.  With  bright  brass  burnished  vessel  in 
hand,  a  coil  of  fine  string,  and,  perhaps,  some 
fine  white  sand,  his  bathing  apparatus  is  com- 
plete. He  then  reverentially  dips  in  the  water, 
lathers  himself  with  this  peculiar  mud,  and 
rises  clean  and  holy.  After  he  has  bathed,  he 
washes  his  clothes  and  proceeds  to  prayer. 
With  face  turned  toward  the  rising  sun,  or 
idol,  he  exhorts  his  god  and  his  genii  to  protect 
him.  He  then  pours  out  a  libation  to  the  deity 


THE    VIEW  FROM  MONTE  DIABLO. 


369 


and  walks  round  the  image  three  times,  mutter- 
ing an  incantation,  for  it  must  be  understood 
that  the  Hindu  has  a  trinity.  After  this  he  is 
free  for  the  day,  and  walks  with  a  clear  con- 
scious and  a  ready  lie  to  his  business. 

Before  the  houses  of  the  poor  the  preparation 
for  the  daily  meal  is  in  progress.  A  well  washed 
platform  and  grinding -stone  is  set  ready,  and 
the  lady  of  the  house  kneads  on  the  stone  the 
wheaten  dough.  A  fire,  made  from  cow's  ma- 
nure, is  then  lit,  and  the  cake  is  baked.  A  lit- 
tle vegetable  curry  or  sugar  is  the  only  season- 
ing, and  this  constitutes  the  Hindu's  meal  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end.  The  men  rarely  cook 
their  own  food.  It  is  done  by  the  women  of 
their  household  ;  and  while  the  lord  of  crea- 
tion eats,  his  wife  stands  conveniently  out  of  the 
way. 

The  lot  of  a  woman  in  the  East  is  but  cheer- 
less. The  Hindu  respects  and  cares  more  for 
his  cow,  horse,  and  ass,  than  he  does  for  his 
helpmate.  Never  being  permitted  out  of  the 
four  walls  of  her  domicile,  she  is  little  better 
than  a  simpleton.  Childish  and  fond  of  child- 
ish intrigues,  she  has  no  hand  in  the  training 
of  her  children.  Her  husband  places  no  con- 
fidence in  her,  and  his  love  is  shared  by  many. 
She  is  accustomed  to  hear  fearful  tales  as  to  the 
doings  of  the  strange  white  man — of  his  horri- 
ble appetite,  of  his  tremendous  strength,  and  of 
his  imperious  ways.  Like  all  women,  she  has 
much  curiosity ;  and  if  by  any  chance  she  pays 
a  visit  to  a  European  house,  or  a  European 
lady  pays  her  a  visit,  her  eager  questions  about 
her  fair  sister's  social  standing  elicits  from  her 
expressions  of  wonder.  Government  closes  on 
certain  days  to  the  European  and  male  native 
the  gardens  and  places  of  public  resort,  and  we 
are  glad  to  say  that  some,  though  very  few, 
native  gentlemen  have  so  far  overcome  their 


superstitions  as  to  take  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters on  that  pleasure  trip.  But  a  woman  may 
live  from  youth  to  old  age  and  never  see  the 
paving-stones  of  the  street  on  which  stands  her 
house. 

But  night  is  setting  in,  and  bright  lights 
come  flickering,  one  by  one,  into  existence. 
The  noise  grows  less  as  fewer  carts  rattle  over 
the  wretched  pavements.  But  the  shops  are 
bright.  Then  come  those  who,  after  a  hard 
day's  toil,  buy  their  common  necessaries.  And 
if  the  season  of  the  year  be  warm,  the  men 
drag  from  their  lairs  their  wooden  beds  and 
coolly  proceed  to  sleep.  Many  throw  them- 
selves down  on  the  bare  ground,  and  try  to  for- 
get in  slumber  the  world  and  its  many  troubles. 
Frugal  and  hard-working,  fond  of  his  sons, 
ambitious  of  their  well-being,  never  a  drunk- 
ard, the  Hindu  might  be  cojfied  to  advantage 
by  men  belonging  to  nations  that  are  called 
civilized.  His  cities,  his  manners,  his  dress, 
and  his  form  of  religion  were  exactly  the  same 
thousands  of  years  ago — long  before  Harold 
died  at  Hastings,  long  before  the  Roman  Re- 
public was  founded,  long  before  the  Grecians 
under  Alexander  penetrated  to  the  banks  of 
the  Indus  and  there  conquered  Porus.  The 
Indian  bazaar  has  not  a  whit  changed  from 
that  day;  and,  though  India's  rulers  be  Eng- 
lishmen, the  native  bazaar  will  remain  the 
same,  and  be  ever  dear  to  the  heart  of  every 
native,  be  he  Hindu  or  Mohammedan,  as  an 
excellent  place  for  gossip,  for  smoking  and  chat- 
ting, and  for  displaying  the  glories  of  gorgeous 
dress.  Though  no  ladies  promenade  the  streets 
arrayed  in  silk  and  velvet,  a  common  Indian 
bazaar  is  as  interesting,  from  its  quaintness,  as 
is  Kearny  Street  for  the  bright  happy  faces  of 
our  ladies  of  San  Francisco. 

JNO.  H.  GlLMOUR. 


THE   VIEW   FROM    MONTE    DIABLO. 


There  were  four  in  our  party.  We  left  the 
city  by  the  half  past  eight  o'clock  boat,  and  by 
ten  we  were  well  beyond  Oakland.  Through 
little  villages,  close  by  farm  houses  nestled 
among  the  Alameda  hills,  across  picturesque 
ravines  and  valleys,  we  hurried  along,  and  by 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon  we  were  in  the  val- 
ley of  San  Ramon.  Who  has  not  seen  the 
valley  of  San  Ramon  has  not  seen  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  spots  in  California.  Long  and 
narrow,  bordered  by  the  Contra  Costa  Ridge 


and  the  Diablo  Divide,  its  surface  is  covered 
with  luxuriant  vegetation,  and  its  gay  parterre 
of  wild  flowers  contrasts  strangely  with  the  bar- 
ren hills  beyond.  Towering  above  and  beyond 
to  the  east  is  Diablo,  standing  out  like  some 
giant  sentinel  in  the  foreground,  lording  it  no- 
bly over  the  brown  hills  of  the  Coast  Range, 
and  presenting  a  magnificently  long  outline 
against  the  sky,  like  some  mighty  vestibule  lead- 
ing up  to  the  altar  of  the  Most  High.  How  it 
cheated  us  as  to  distance  !  We  seemed  to  look 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


at  the  mountain  through  a  transparent  medium 
which  reflected  only  its  image,  and  the  gigan- 
tic crests  folded  themselves  up  in  veils  of  mist, 
and,  like  the  Arab,  stole  silently  away  at  our 
approach. 

At  Walnut  Creek  we  turned  east,  drove  rap- 
idly, by  way  of  Alamo,  to  Danville,  and  then 
changed  our  course  directly  toward  the  mount- 
ain. A  ride  through  a  Californian  valley,  on  a 
sunny  afternoon,  will  show  a  profusion  of  ru- 
ral beauties  scarcely  elsewhere  surpassed.  The 
heat  of  the  sun  is  tempered  by  cooling  breezes 
from  the  ocean,  the  fields  and  meadows  are 
vocal  with  the  songs  of  the  lark,  and  the  sur- 
rounding hills  show  more  varied  tints  than  the 
pictures  of  the  best  artists.  Park -like  groves 
of  oaks  with  masses  of  intensely  dark  green 
foliage,  mixed  with  sycamores,  willows,  and 
other  trees,  fringfc  the  rapid -flowing  streams, 
and  wild  flowers,  blooming  in  blue  and  gold, 
scent  the  air  with  a  delightful  fragrance.  Huge 
birds,  hovering  aloft,  send  their  shadows  across 
the  landscape  like  tiny  clouds,  and  the  waters 
of  placid  pools  and  lakes  flash,  like  shields  of 
silver,  in  the  sunlight.  Goethe  tells  us  that  on 
being  presented  with  a  basket  of  fruit  he  was 
in  such  raptures  at  the  sight  of  the  loveliness 
of  form  and  hue  which  it  presented,  he  could 
not  persuade  himself  "to  pluck  off  a  single 
berry,  or  to  remove  a  single  peach  or  fig;" 
so  he  who  beholds  a  Californian  valley,  when 
Nature  is  in  one  of  her  most  brilliant  and  sug- 
gestive moods,  will  see  such  a  symmetrical 
union  of  sloping  and  gentle  surface,  of  tender 
tints,  accurate  perspective  and  artistic  color, 
that  scarcely  a  tree  or  shade  could  be  omitted 
without  marring  the  whole.  It  is  a  painting, 
in  the  great  picture  gallery  of  nature,  whose 
beauty  cannot  be  adequately  translated;  it  is 
a  feast  of  scenery  endowed  with  the  Creator's 
art. 

By  half  past  four  we  were  at  the  Railroad 
Ranch,  at  the  foot  of  Diablo,  but  yet  a  good 
five  miles  from  the  summit.  Here  we  saw  one 
of  the  best  private  race -tracks  in  the  State,  and 
the  magnificent  residence,  surrounded  by  grav- 
el walks  and  flower  beds,  and  shaded  by  great 
trees,  seemed  a  fit  introduction  to  the  great 
spectacle  which  we  were  to  witness  beyond. 
We  wanted  to  reach  the  summit  before  sunset, 
and  up  we  started  with  all  the  speed  our  already 
wearied  horses  could  command.  The  road  was 
steep,  narrow,  and  seldom  traveled.  Thickets 
of  greasewood  and  chaparral  hemmed  us  in  on 
every  side,  huge  rocks  were  poised  overhead, 
and  gulches  and  canons  yawned  precipitously 
underneath.  It  was  the  wild  desolation  of  the 
mountain  succeeding  the  luxuriant  vegetation 
of  the  valley  we  had  just  left,  while  above  it 


all  was  a  sky  just  taking  on  the  deep  red  tints 
of  sunset  splendor,  and  challenging  the  intel- 
lect of  mankind  to  mimic  the  magnificence  with 
which  the  world  was  about  to  be  adorned.  We 
had  come  prepared  to  spend  the  night  upon 
the  summit,  but  our  horses  being  wearied,  on 
our  arrival  at  the  hotel,  we  concluded  that  a 
cheerful  shelter  was  better  than  the  fierce  winds 
we  should  encounter  farther  up,  and  accord- 
ingly we  found  ourselves  comfortable  for  the 
night. 

It  was  one  of  those  wild  summer  nights 
which  are  read  about  in  books,  but  seldom  ex- 
perienced in  the  world.  The  wind  blew  fierce- 
ly from  every  point  of  the  compass,  and  as  it 
whistled  about  the  doors,  and  through  the 
cracks  and  crannies  of  the  walls,  it  sounded 
strangely  weird,  like  the  solemn  requiem  masses 
which  travelers  hear  in  the  old  cathedrals  of 
Europe,  or  like  the  music  of  Ossian,  "pleasant, 
but  mournful  to  the  soul."  Never  before  were 
Shelley's  lines  so  forcibly  recalled : 

"Listen,  listen,  Mary  mine, 
To  the  whisper  of  the  Apennine. 
It  bursts  on  the  roof  like  the  thunder's  roar, 
Or  like  the  sea  on  a  northern  shore, 
Heard  in  its  raging  ebb  and  flow 
By  the  captives  pent  in  the  cave  below. 
The  Apennine  in  the  light  of  day 
Is  a  mighty  mountain,  dim  and  gray. 
****** 
But  when  night  comes,  a  chaos  dread 
On  the  dim  starlight  then  is  spread, 
And  the  Apennine  walks  abroad  with  the  storm." 

Down  through  the  great  drifting  clouds  of 
fog  the  stars  sometimes  shone,  while  the  beacon- 
lights  on  the  bay  and  ocean  flashed  in  the  dark- 
ness like  jewels  in  the  crown  of  night.  Just  as 
visitors  to  Rome  will  sometimes  stand  amid  the 
ruins  of  the  Colosseum  at  midnight,  when  the 
dim  specters  of  other  days  are  called  up  with  a 
strangely  impressive  force,  and  when  the  Eter- 
nal City  becomes  more  eloquently  the  monu- 
ment of  past  glory  and  greatness,  so  a  night 
view  from  Diablo,  when  the  wind  howls,  and 
the  fog  drifts,  and  the  stars  shine,  and  the 
world  below  seems  annihilated  from  time  and 
space,  arouses  in  the  spectator  an  intense  feel- 
ing of  terror  and  awe,  and  brings  him  into  a 
closer  connection  with  the  Creator  and  his 
works. 

We  wanted  to  see  the  sun  rise  from  the  sum- 
mit, and  cold  and  spiritless  we  left  the  hotel  at 
five  in  the  morning.  It  was  a  good  two  miles 
and  a  half  from  the  place  of  starting,  and  by 
the  time  we  had  reached  our  destination,  and 
had  built  a  huge  fire,  the  great  spectacle  was 
even  ready  to  commence.  The  two  mountain 
chains  of  the  Pacific  Coast  in  grandeur  and 


THE    VIEW  FROM  MONTE  DIABLO. 


sublimity  surpass  in  many  respects  the  Appa- 
lachians and  the  Alps.  Their  course,  in  gen- 
eral parallel  to  the  coast  line,  gives  to  the  to- 
pography of  California  a  grand  simplicity,  and, 
interlocking  on  the  north  and  south,  the  great 
Sacramento -San  Joaquin  basin  is  included  be- 
tween, the  luxuriant  vegetation  of  this  section 
contrasting  strangely  with  the  wild  desolation 
of  the  mountains  by  which  it  is  surrounded. 
The  Monte  Diablo  range,  which  is  but  a  spur 
of  the  lesser  of  the  main  chains,  extends  in  a 
south-easterly  direction  from  the  Straits  of  Car- 
quinez  and  San  Pablo  Bay,  and  is  bounded  on 
the  west  by  the  bay  of  San  Francisco  and  the 
valley  of  Santa  Clara,  and  on  the  east  by  the 
San  Joaquin  plains.  The  Monte  Diablo  peak 
upon  which  we  stood  rises  in  isolated  grandeur 
from  the  surrounding  valleys,  and  is  about  six 
miles  long  by  one  and  a  half  in  width.  The 
main  peak  is  separated  from  that  on  the  north 
by  a  narrow  ridge  a  little  more  than  a  mile  in 
length,  and  the  shape  of  the  whole  is  that  of  an 
irregular  crescent,  the  concave  side  being  turn- 
ed to  the  north-east.  The  aborigines,  accord- 
ing to  the  legend  related  by  Professor  Whitney 
and  other  writers,  called  the  great  mountain 
Kah  Woo  Koom,  or  the  mighty  mountain,  the 
Spaniards  called  it  Sierra  de  los  Gorgones, 
while  the  present  name,  really  belonging  to  a 
hill  seven  miles  to  the  north,  is  accounted  for 
by  the  above  mentioned  author  substantially  as 
follows:  About  1815,  or  sixty -six  years  ago,  a 
party  of  Spanish  soldiers  went  from  the  Pre- 
sidio near  San  Francisco  to  chastise  the  In- 
dians of  the  Coast  Range.  In  the  fight  which 
occurred,  several  Spaniards  having  been  killed, 
the  remainder  repaired  to  a  little  hill,  and  there 
prepared  to  defend  themselves  against  their 
enemies.  At  night  the  sentry,  half  asleep,  fan- 
cying he  saw  a  spectral  figure  of  colossal  pro- 
portions flying  through  the  air  toward  the  hill 
where  his  comrades  were  sleeping,  and  terri- 
fied at  the  approach,  cried  out,  "El  diablo,  el 
diablo!"  The  Spaniards,  more  afraid  of  the 
devil  than  the  Indians,  fled  from  the  spot,  and 
the  mountain  was  afterward  known  as  Monte 
Diablo. 

Shortly  after  our  arrival  upon  the  summit  the 
mist  of  the  earlier  morn  in  a  measure  disap- 
peared, and  faint  streaks  shooting  out  behind 
the  Sierra  betokened  the  rising  of  the  sun. 
There  are  objects  in  nature,  as  there  are  occa- 
sions, which  must  inevitably  strike  the  traveler 
with  impressions  that  are  indelible,  and  which 
become  landmarks  in  the  retrospect  of  personal 
romance;  so  as  the  spectator  stands  at  early 
morn  upon  the  summit  of  Diablo,  and,  looking 
off  into  the  unfloored  chambers  of  mid-air,  sees 
the  great  plains  of  California  sinking  away  like 


huge  landscapes  into  the  bosom  of  the  earth, 
and  the  entire  world  resplendent  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  rising  sun,  then  it  is  that  his 
personality  is  lost  in  the  universe  about  him, 
and  he  is  conscious  of  that  great  and  sublime 
nature  which  awes  and  uplifts  like  the  presence 
of  God  himself.  As  we  turned  in  silent  admi- 
ration toward  the  east, 

"...  a  great  globe 
Of  burning  gold,  flashing  insufferably, 
And  warming  all  the  scene  with  ardent  ray, 
Heaves  into  view  above  the  mountain's  line, 
Darts  golden  arrows  through  the  dusky  aisles 
Of  thickly  columned  cedar,  pine,  and  fir, 
Transmutes  the  common  dust  to  shining  haze, 
Licks  up  the  rising  mists  with  tongues  of  flame, 
Gilds  the  'pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchemy,' 
And  down  the  shaggy  slope,  for  scores  of  miles, 
Pours  forth  a  cataract  of  tremulous  light 
That  floods  the  valley  at  its  rolling  base, 
Making  the  arid  plain  a  zone  of  tropic  heat." 

Then  was  the  time,  as  Starr  King  once  wrote, 
for  the  miracle  of  Joshua,  for  some  artist-priest 
like  Turner  to  bid  the  sun  stand  still,  that  such 
gorgeousness  might  be  a  garniture  of  more 
than  a  few  rapid  moments  upon  the  cloud- 
flecked  pavilion  of  the  air.  About  us  and  be- 
yond us  the  Coast  Range  was  stretched  out  from 
Mount  Hamilton  to  St.  Helena  and  the  far  re- 
gions of  the  north,  and  a  score  of  peaks  flashed 
back  a  miniature  sunrise  from  their  hoary  crests 
and  sides.  Some  of  these  were  bare  and  tree- 
less ;  some  were  of  a  delicate  mauve  color 
above  the  timber  line;  some  were  light  and 
airy  like  the  fabled  palaces  of  ancient  story ; 
some  were  round  and  full  like  the  Pantheon  at 
Rome;  some,  like  Tamalpais,  held  banks  of 
mist  in  their  hollows  like  fleecy  clouds ;  some 
were  like  the 

"...  great  world's  altar  stairs 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God;" 

some  were  castellated;  some  took  the  form  of 
gnomes  and  demons ;  some  showed  more  spires 
and  pinnacles  than  the  marble  structure  at 
Milan.  It  was  the  Coast  Range  in  full  perspec- 
tive; it  was  not  beauty,  but  sublimity;  it  was 
not  power,  nor  order,  nor  color,  but  awe  and 
majesty;  it  was  not  man,  but  God,  who  was 
above  and  before  us. 

Looking  directly  west  from  the  summit  we 
could  see  the  ocean  stretching  afar  in  billowy 
swells  until  sky  and  water  seemed  to  join,  and 
the  huge  breakers  lashing  the  long  white  beach 
as  if  the  eternal  war  on  earth  had  been  de- 
clared. Like  a  silvery  thread  between  the  bay 
and  ocean  was  the  Golden  Gate,  its  bold  rocky 
cliffs  on  one  side  and  the  tall  mountain  on  the 
other,  showing  a  feast  of  color  not  less  intense 


372 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


than  the  view  to  the  east,  and  the  deep,  bright 
heavens  overcasting  the  waters  with  a  baptism 
of  splendor  seldom  known  upon  Como  or  Lu- 
cerne. To  the  left  of  the  Golden  Gate  was  the 
long  and  gaunt  peninsula  upon  which  the  city 
stands,  and  the  houses,  covering  more  hills  than 
Rome  itself  can  boast,  were  overshadowed  by 
a  softening  haze,  which  enhanced  the  charm 
like  the  gauzy  veils  which  women  wear.  Tel- 
egraph and  Russian  Hills,  the  blue  ridge  of 
San  Bruno  on  the  south,  with  the  villa-crowned 
and  serpentine  cliffs  between,  stood  out  like 
landmarks  on  the  western  horizon,  and  beyond 

"...  the  sky  bent  round 
The  awful  dome  of  a  most  mighty  temple, 
Built  by  omnipotent  hands  for  nothing  less 
Than  infinite  worship." 

In  front  of  us,  in  full  length  and  perspective, 
was  the  bay  of  San  Francisco,  the  waters  of 
the  Sacramento  and  San  Joaquin  pouring  in  at 
its  upper  end,  its  two  arms  of  San  Pablo  and 
Suisun  joined  by  the  narrow  band  of  Carquinez, 
and  its  waters  flashing  in  trie  sunlight  like  a 
sheet  of  molten  metal.  There  were  before  us 
ships  of  almost  every  nation  and  clime — some 
anchored,  with  sails  furled;  some,  with  sails 
spread,  passing  in  and  out  to  sea ;  tugs  appear- 
ing like  children's  toy  boats ;  steamers,  ferry- 
boats, yachts,  and  crafts  innumerable  were 
there,  and  commerce  and  the  handiwork  of 
man  hightened  and  rendered  more  glorious  the 
splendor  which  nature  afforded. 

From  our  distant  hight  we  could  see  Alcatraz 
bristling  with  its  fortifications  like  some  Gib- 
raltar or  Ehrenbreitstein  at  the  harbor ;  Angel 
Island,  with  its  cone-like  top  rising  like  a  mound 
of  velvet  abruptly  from  the  water ;  Goat  Island, 
and  the  other  smaller  islands,  with  their  rocky 
bluffs  and  crowns  of  chapparal  standing  out  in 
bold  relief,  and  reflecting  their  charms  in  the 
surrounding  depths  like  a  beauty  in  the  bath. 
On  every  side  of  us  valleys  followed  each  other 
in  quick  succession.  Amador,  San  Ramon, 
and  Walnut  Creek  showed  an  unbroken  line  of 
luxuriant  vegetation  at  our  feet,  while  the  bor- 
dering mountains,  changing  their  color  as  the 
sun  ascended  higher,  were  but  one  broad  field 
of  glittering  and  tremulous  brightness.  Napa, 
long  and  narrow,  rich  in  verdure,  and  with  a 
sky  fading  through  varied  tints,  led  up  to  St. 
Helena  like  a  prelude  to  a  sacred  service,  while 
other  valleys  faded  off  in  the  distance  like  some 
fairy  landscape  of  ancient  story.  There  were 
valleys  with  level  and  valleys  with  sloping  sur- 
faces ;  some  like  a  lawn,  relieved  by  clumps  of 
oaks,  like  an  old  English  park ;  some  separated 
by  abrupt  and  treeless  ridges,  others  blending 
or  divided  by  gentler  elevations.  There  were 


valleys  like  those  of  Italy  and  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean.  Some  were  fertile  and  lovely, 
set  like  gems  in  the  mountains ;  others  led  up 
to  Diablo,  just  as  the  heart  soared  above  Nature 
to  Nature's  God.  It  was,  as  Avery  expressed 
it,  the  Madonna  of  a  religion  without  dogma, 
whose  creed  is  written  only  in  the  hieroglyphics 
of  beauty,  sung  only  in  the  triple  language  of 
voice,  color,  and  sound. 

The  view  seemed  to  grow  apace  as  we  gazed. 
The  sense  was  bewildered  at  the  mighty  pros- 
pect around.  Forty  thousand  square  miles  of 
land  was  tossed  into  a  tempest.  Chaos,  wild 
and  fearful,  reigned  supreme.  Towns,  with 
church  spires  and  shady  streets,  stood  out  pict- 
uresquely to  view ;  passes  among  the  Coast 
Range  were  flanked  with  peaks  from  one  to  two 
thousand  feet  in  hight ;  rivers  narrowed  in  the 
distance  like  silver  threads  on  the  horizon; 
wild  wagon-roads  led  up  the  canons,  into  whose 
depths  the  sun  never  penetrated ;  inner  ridges 
were  covered  with  grain,  which  rolled  its  sur- 
face in  rippling  light  and  shade  under  every 
breeze;  lakes  glared  and  sparkled  like  "the 
eyes  of  the  landscape  in  the  countenance  of  the 
world;"  precipitous  cliffs  and  splintered  crags 
and  debris  of  past  ages  rose  high  aloft  in  their 
awful  grandeur — the  whole  a  magnificent  bou- 
quet of  scenery  on  the  earth,  with  a  high  carnival 
of  light  in  the  heavens.  It  is  related  of  Sydney 
Smith  that  he  once  looked  upon  a  small  pict- 
ure of  an  eminent  artist  in  company  with  an 
enthusiastic  connoisseur : 

"Immense  breadth  of  light  and  shade,  sir,  in 
this  picture,"  said  the  artist. 

"Yes,"  said  the  wit,  greatly  to  the  critic's  dis- 
gust, "about  half  an  inch." 

What  a  vast  prospect  in  comparison  as  the 
eye  turned  to  the  east  from  the  summit  of  Di- 
ablo !  There  we  beheld  the  great  heart  of  Cal- 
ifornia, stretching  from  the  north-east  to  south- 
west, nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in 
length,  and  the  entire  region  was  spread  out 
before  us  like  a  map.  It  was  the  great  Sacra- 
mento-San Joaquin  grain  producing  section  of 
the  world ;  and  as  the  two  mighty  rivers,  flank- 
ed with  highly  cultivated  fields  and  fringed  with 
trees  of  intensely  colored  foliage,  appeared  at 
intervals  to  the  sight,  their  waters,  set  in  green, 
flashed  like  diamonds  set  in  emeralds.  Over  a 
part  of  this  great  region  hung  a  huge  mass  of 
fog,  forming  a  wall,  through  which  the  rays  of 
the  rising  sun  could  not  penetrate,  and  above 
which  the  distant  snow-clad  mountains  appear- 
ed like  icebergs  in  the  midst  of  a  frozen  ocean. 

Beyond  the  plains,  and  crowning  the  view  to 
the  east,  was  the  Sierra,  rising  in  its  majesty 
like  the  terraces  of  the  Rhine,  its  peaks  fol- 
lowing in  quick  sucession  as  if  sky  and  earth 


NOTE  BOOK. 


373 


were  dove -tailed  together,  and  its  four  hun- 
dred miles  or  more  of  granite  battlements, 

"...  rearing  their  sunny  capes, 
Like  heavenly  Alps  with  cities  on  their  slope, 
Built  amid  glaciers." 

It  was  the  western  terminus  of  the  backbone 
of  the  continent  which  was  before  us  in  all  its 
wild  and  solemn  grandeur,  and  as  the  eye  fell 
upon  peak  after  peak,  rivaling  Mount  Blanc  and 
the  Jungfrau  in  glory  and  splendor,  each  pre- 
sented a  front  of  "etherial  softness,  like  a  vast 
shadow  projected  against  the  heavens,  or  like  a 
curtain  let  down  from  the  Infinite."  The  sun 
rose  higher  and  higher  toward  the  zenith,  and 
a  flood  of  golden  light  was  changed  into  that  of 
softer  hue.  Mountains,  bristling  with  towers, 


and  jagged  with  turrets,  and  crowned  with 
domes,  glowed  as  if  heated  by  internal  fires, 
while  the  clouds  sailing  aloft,  arrayed  in  their 
cloaks  of  azure  and  caps  of  gold,  reflected  back 
statues  in  nature  far  grander  than  those  sculpt- 
ured by  Phidias  or  Praxiteles,  and  landscapes 
more  glorious  than  those  painted  by  Ruysdael 
or  Claude.  There  may  be  other  views,  like 
that  of  the  Alps  from  the  Rigi  Kulm,  which 
will  show  loftier  mountains  and  more  fantastic 
shapes,  Yosemite  may  show  more  frightful 
chasms  and  more  god -like  power,  but  in  a 
combination  of  that  which  is  soft  and  pict- 
uresque with  that  which  is  wild  and  sublime,  in 
the  extent  and  color  and  glory  of  the  spectacle, 
the  view  from  Monte  Diablo  is  not  surpassed 
elsewhere  in  the  world.  A.  R.  WHITEHILL. 


NOTE   BOOK. 


IT  IS  STATED  UPON  GOOD  AUTHORITY  that  the  San 

Francisco  High  School  will  this  year  send  more  stu- 
dents to  Harvard  than  to  the  University  of  California. 
In  the  natural  course  of  things  the  majority  should  be 
overwhelmingly  the  other  way.  San  Francisco  is  the 
metropolis  of  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  should  be  the  great 
source  of  supply  for  the  home  institution.  It  has 
come  to  a  bad  pass  if  the  University  cannot  hold  its 
own  on  its  own  ground.  And  it  is  not  alone  Harvard 
for  which  the  young  men  of  California  are  fitting  them- 
selves. Yale  and  Princeton  also  hold  examinations 
here  this  summer,  and  between  the  three  the  best  minds 
in  our  schools  will  be  diverted  to  Eastern  colleges.  Cal- 
ifornia has  a  population  of  nearly  nine  hundred  thou- 
sand. From  this  source  and  from  Oregon,  Washing- 
ton, Nevada,  and  Arizona,  the  University  should  gather 
in  at  least  a  thousand  students.  But  in  place  of  this 
number  the  total  roll  of  the  four  classes  is  one  hundred 
and  sixty-nine,  not  all  of  whom  are  in  actual  attend- 
ance. In  addition  there  are  some  occasional  students, 
special  students,  and  students  at  large,  bringing  the 
nominal  attendance  up  to  two  hundred  and  forty-five. 
This  is  a  decrease  from  the  attendance  of  former  years. 
Many  primary  schools  in  a  single  ward  make  a  better 
showing.  Now,  no  sensible  person  wants  to  harm  the 
University.  It  is  closely  connected  with  all  that  is  best 
in  our  intellectual  and  material  progress.  But  the  lack 
of  activity  at  present  displayed  is  distressing  to  its  best 
friends.  The  Regents  owe  it  to  the  public  to  put  some 
man  at  the  head  of  the  University  who  shall  bring  to 
his  work  both  energy  and  enthusiasm,  who  shall  be  a 
scholar  of  respectable  attainments,  but,  above  all,  who 
shall  possess  executive  and  administrative  capacity  in  a 
high  degree.  If  it  be  necessary  to  bring  a  man  from 
the  East,  as  most  probably  it  will  be,  no  time  should  be 
lost.  It  is  senseless  to  say  that  the  general  demand  for 
reform  in  this  matter  is  prompted  by  enmity  to  the  Uni- 

VOL.   III.- 24. 


versity  or  to  any  person.  If  it  were  opposition  to  the 
University  it  would  not  take  the  form  of  demand  for  an 
extension  of  the  influence  and  activity  of  that  institu- 
tion. Nor  is  it  opposition  to  any  person.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  a  feeling  of  delicacy  and  consideration  has 
prompted  silence  until  the  lethargy  seems  to  have  be- 
come settled.  It  is  not  a  question  for  personal  motives, 
either  for  or  against.  It  does  not  make  the  slightest 
difference  who  it  is  that  is  President  so  long  as  he  has 
the  executive  capacity  to  build  up  the  institution  to  its 
true  greatness.  Unfortunately  that  is  not  the  case  at 
present. 


THE  APPOINTMENT  OF  MR.   WILLIAM  D.  HOWELLS 

as  United  States  Minister  to  the  republican  court  of 
Switzerland  is  a  graceful  compliment  to  American  let- 
ters. No  appointments  have  ever  been  more  fruitful 
than  those  which  have  been  conferred  upon  the  class 
known  to  politicians  as  "literary  fellows."  Haw- 
thorne's stay  abroad  gave  the  world  The  Marble  Faun. 
Irving  lingered  around  the  Alhambra,  and  pictured  it 
in  his  matchless  diction.  Lowell  at  the  court  of  St. 
James,  Motley  at  the  Netherlands,  Bancroft,  Bayard 
Taylor,  and  White  in  Germany,  have  shed  luster  upon 
our  foreign  service  that  a  generation  of  ex-Congressmen 
and  "  statesmen  "  had  failed  to  impart.  To  Mr.  How- 
ells's  previous  sojourn  abroad  as  United  States  Consul 
at  Venice  may  be  traced  some  of  his  most  charming 
works — notably,  Italian  Journeys,  Venetian  Life,  and 
A  Foregone  Conclusion.  The  appointment  of  literary 
men  as  foreign  representatives  insures  not  only  a  higher 
degree  of  respect  to  the  service,  but,  as  a  general  thing, 
a  more  efficient  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the  office. 
And  even  if  these  things  are  equal,  the  world  is  largely 
the  gainer  if  an  occasional  result  is  the  production  of 
such  works  as  those  which  have  been  mentioned. 


374 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


SCIENCE   AND    INDUSTRY. 


CORALS  AND  CORAL -MAKERS. 

Much  interest  has,  for  a  long  time,  been  attached  to 
corals  and  their  formation,  but  it  is  only  quite  recently 
that  we  have  been  accustomed  to  hear  these  wonderful 
productions  spoken  of  without  the  qualifying  adjective 
"mysterious."  Many  fanciful  ideas  have  been  put  forth 
in  regard  to  the  mysterious  "coral -workers,"  as  they 
have  been  called,  and  numerous  writers  have  discoursed 
most  poetically  upon  the  wonderful  structures  which 
have  been  "built  up"  beneath  the  sea  by  the  united 
"labors"  of  these  curious  insects.  How  many  a  trav- 
eler has 

"...  wandered  where  the  dreamy  palm 
Murmured  above  the  sleeping  wave, 
And  through  the  waters,  clear  and  calm, 
Looked  down  into  the  coral  cave," 

and  beheld  with  wonder  and  admiration  the  beautiful 
and  diversified  forms  there  displayed.  The  forms  and 
hues  exhibited  by  the  different  varieties  of  coral  are  al- 
most endless,  and  often  rival  in  outline  and  color  the  most 
gorgeous  flower  gardens.  One  writer  very  correctly  re- 
marks :  "There  is  scarcely  a  form  of  vegetation,  either 
trunk,  branch,  leaf,  flower,  or  fern,  moss,  lichen,  or 
fungus,  that  is  not  imitated  with  striking  exactness  by 
these  wonderful  animals  of  the  sea."  From  such  re- 
markable resemblance  to  plants,  living  organisms  of 
this  class  were  formerly  regarded  as  vegetable  forms, 
and  later  as  partaking  of  the  nature  of  both  plants  and 
animals.  Indeed,  it  is  only'  quite  recently  that  any  very 
general  and  correct  information  in  regard  to  corals  and 
the  way  in  which  they  are  built  up  has  been  spread  be- 
fore the  public.  Until  within  a  few  years  many  other- 
wise well  informed  persons  have  supposed  that  coral 
builders  were  mechanical  builders ;  that  coral  forms  were 
constructed  for  tenements  in  a  manner  much  as  bees 
build  up  their  honey  cells,  and  that  in  these  tenements 
the  builders  swarmed  like  ants  in  a  hillock.  But  science, 
as  in  many  other  departments  of  modern  research,  has 
fully  penetrated  into  the  mysteries  of  coral  insects  and 
coral-building,  and  can  now  tell  us  all  about  it.  It  tells 
us  that  the  coral  insect,  or  polyp,  does  not  "build"  at 
all.  It  simply  aggregates.  It  is  only  when  the^insect 
dies,  withers,  and  its  perishable  part  disappears  that  we 
see  the  substance  which  we  call  coral.  The  polyp  first 
comes  into  existence  fixed  to  some  stationary  nucleus, 
lives  its  short  life,  with  no  other  occupation  than  feed- 
ing and  growing,  and  when  it  dies  leaves  its  bones  as 
a  base  upon  which  its  successor  may  fasten  and  fatten, 
and  so  on  until  the  skeleton  remains  of  innumerable 
myriads  of  these  insects  aggregate  into  vast  reefs  and 
mountains  beneath  the  sea.  Often  in  the  process  of 
time  these  masses  of  coral,  by  natural  forces,  are  raised 
above  the  surface  until  they  form  large  islands  or  exten- 
sive regions  of  sea-coast.  The  skeleton  which  the  polyp 
leaves  is  not  a  shell  like  the  cast-off  covering  of  a  mol- 
lusk,  but  a  genuine  skeleton  as  of  bones.  It  is  no  more 
difficult  of  comprehension  that  a  polyp  should  form  an 
internal  structure  of  stone  (carbonate  of  lime)  than  that 
quadrupeds  should  form  a  similar  structure  of  bones 


(chiefly  phosphate  of  lime)  to  strengthen  their  bodies, 
or  mollusks  cover  themselves  with  shells  (carbonate 
of  lime)  to  protect  their  boneless  bodies.  In  either 
case  it  is  simply  an  animal  secretion  from  the  aliment 
which  is  taken  into  the  system  for  nourishment.  This 
power  of  secretion  is  entirely  independent  of  either  the 
will  or  instinct  of  the  animal  itself,  and  is  one  of  the 
most  common  things  inherent  in  all  living  tissues. 
Coral  is,  therefore,  no  more  the  result  of  the  handiwork 
of  an  insect  than  are  the  bones  of  a  man  the  result  of 
his  handiwork.  All  the  fine-spun  theories  and  poetic 
ideas  which  have  been  given  to  the  world  about  the 
"labors"  of  the  "coral-builders"  fade  away  before  the 
light  of  scientific  investigation.  There  is  neither  "toil" 
nor  "skill"  connected  with  their  existence.  Neither  do 
the  coral  cells  form  the  "dwellings"  or  "sepulchers"  of 
the  "builders."  They  are  simply  aggregations  of  bones 
— nothing  more,  nothing  less.  The  organisms  which 
thus  result  in  coral  formations  consist  of  four  quite  dif- 
ferent classes:  (i.)  Polyps — the  most  numerous  and 
important  of  coral -forming  animals.  (2.)  Hydroids — 
which  form  the  very  common  corals  known  as  mille- 
pores.  (3.)  Bryozoans — the  lowest  tribe  of  mollusks, 
which  produce  the  finest  and  most  delicate  corals,  gen- 
erally branching  and  moss-like,  but  sometimes  in  broad 
plates  and  thin  incrustations.  (4.)  Nullipores — which 
are  true  algae,  or  sea-weeds,  and  do  not  belong  to  the 
animal  kingdom  at  all,  but  form  thick  or  thin  stony 
(lime)  incrustations  over  dead  corals,  or  coral  rock,  but 
without  cells.  There  is  a  variety  of  this  class  of  coral 
which  is  known  as  corallines,  the  secretions  of  which 
contain  only  small  proportions  of  lime,  the  balance  be- 
ing made  up  of  plant  tissue.  The  different  varieties  of 
nullipores  grow  so  abundantly  on  some  coasts  that 
when  broken  up  they  accumulate  along  the  shore  and 
finally  aggregate  into  quite  thick  calcareous  deposits. 
In  the  earlier  age  of  the  world — the  limestone  period — 
the  bryozoans,  or  third  species  named,  were  much  more 
numerous  than  latterly,  and  so  abounded  in  broad  plates, 
or  masses  over  the  sea-bottom,  that  many  beds  of  lime- 
stone are  half  composed  of  them.  Most  corals  have  a 
hardness  a  little  above  that  of  common  limestone  or 
marble.  The  ringing  sound  given  out  by  the  coral 
when  struck,  higher  in  tone  than  the  sound  from  a  blow 
upon  limestone,  indicates  this  superior  hardness. 


CURIOUS    FACTS    IN    REGARD    TO    FISHES. 

Mr.  E.  T.  Sacks  sends  some  notes  to  Nature  from 
Batavia,  in  which  he  refers  to  what  he  calls  ' '  a  very  in- 
teresting, if  not  remarkable,  discovery."  A  short  time 
previous,  while  on  the  Island  of  Billiton,  some  two  hun- 
dred miles  from  Batavia,  he  found  a  fresh-water  fish 
which  produces  its  young  living  from  its  mouth.  He 
conducted  his  observations  very  carefully  with  living 
specimens  and  with  closed  doors.  He  states  with  much 
positiveness  that  "the  eggs  are  hatched  in  the  lower 
portion  of  the  head  of  the  fish,  and  are  projected  alive 
out  at  the  mouth,  and  from  nowhere  else."  In  order 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


375 


to  set  the  matter  fully  at  rest  before  the  scientific  world, 
Mr.  Sacks  had  secured  a  number  of  living  specimens, 
which  he  proposed  to  send  to  Dr.  Giinther  for  confirma- 
tion of  his  own  observations.  It  may  be  remarked,  in 
this  connection,  that  much  interest  is  now  being  taken 
by  scientists  in  regard  to  the  habits,  instincts,  and  emo- 
tions of  fishes.  Naturalists  have  generally  accepted  Cu- 
vier's  view,  that  the  existence  of  fishes  is  a  silent,  emo- 
tionless, and  joyless  one,  but  recent  observations  tend  to 
show  that  many  fishes  emit  vocal  sounds,  and  that  they 
are  susceptible  of  special  emotions,  particularly  such  as 
regard  for  their  young,  attachment  between  the  sexes, 
and  for  locality.  Among  monogamous  fishes  there  is 
often  seen  decided  evidence  of  watchfulness  over  their 
young,  in  which  the  males  not  infrequently  act  an  im- 
portant part.  Among  nest -building  fishes  the  male 
often  prepares  the  nest.  Among  some  who  do  not  build 
nests  the  eggs  are  carried  about  in  the  cheek-hollows  of 
the  male.  Cases  have  been  noticed  where  male  fishes 
have  remained  in  the  same  spot  in  the  river  from  which 
the  female  had  been  taken.  A  case  is  noted  where, 
after  a  pair  had  been  separated,  both  appeared  misera- 
ble and  seemed  nigh  unto  death,  but  on  being  united 
again  both  became  happy.  In  fish  battles  it  is  some- 
times noticed  that  the  conquerer  assumes  brilliant  hues, 
while  the  defeated  one  sneaks  off  with  faded  colors,  the 
change  evidently  being  brought  about  by  emotional  feel- 
ings. There  are  certain  classes  of  fish  that  are  capable  of 
a  kind  of  organization  for  acting  in  concert  for  common 
defense  or  to  attack  a  common  enemy.  The  remarka- 
ble success  which  has  of  late  attended  the  breeding  of 
fish  has  shown  that  as  a  matter  of  economy  an  acre  of 
good  water  is  worth  more  to  a  farmer  than  the  same 
area  of  the  best  arable  land.  This  subject,  in  all  its 
bearings,  is  one  that  deserves  even  more  attention  than 
it  has  hitherto  received. 


BURIED  CITIES. 

Valuable  information  of  much  historic  and  general 
interest  is  being  brought  to  light  by  the  progress  of 
work  undertaken  to  uncover  the  sites  of  ancient  cities 
which  have  been  long  buried  beneath  the  ddbris  result- 
ing from  volcanic  or  other  more  or  less  rapid  action  of 
natural  forces.  Volumes  have  been  written  detailing 
important  discoveries  among  the  ruins  of  such  buried 
cities  in  the  Euphrates  Valley,  in  ancient  Phoenicia,  and 
on  the  peninsulas  of  Greece  and  Italy.  Our  readers  are 
also  familiar  with  the  expedition  which  has  recently 


been  sent  out  from  New  York  to  uncover  some  Mexican 
Pompeiis,  from  which  important  results  are  expected. 
At  the  Prehistoric  Congress  which  lately  met  at  Lisbon 
an  interesting  report  was  read  in  regard  to  some  discov- 
eries recently  made  among  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  Por- 
tuguese city,  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  of  Celtic 
origin.  The  city  must  have  been  quite  extensive.  Mass- 
ive circular  walls,  streets,  squares,  large  architectural 
monuments,  and  many  dwellings  have  already  been 
unearthed,  which,  for  more  than  twenty  centuries,  have 
been  buried  deep  below  accumulated  dtbris,  soil,  and 
rich  vegetation.  The  explorers  among  these  ruins  are 
fast  laying  open  to  the  world  the  habitations  of  ancient 
people,  among  which  quite  a  primitive  state  of  civiliza- 
tion must  have  existed,  but  one  whose  architecture,  plas- 
tic ornamentations,  sculptured  monuments,  and  profuse 
inscriptions  point  to  a  somewhat  advanced  state  of  art 
and  industry,  and  recall  in  many  of  their  characteristics 
the  civilization  and  religious  ceremonies  of  India  and 
China.  The  question  naturally  arises,  Is  it  possible 
that  the  tribes  who  built  this  and  other  neighboring 
cities,  whose  ruins  are  known  to  exist,  emigrated  origi- 
nally from  central  or  eastern  Asia,  passed  westward 
through  alt  the  intermediate  nations  of  western  Asia 
and  eastern  Europe,  until  they  arrived  at  the  impassable 
barrier  of  the  broad  Atlantic  before  they  finally  settled 
down  to  build  new  and  permanent  homes  ? 


JAPANESE  SKILL  AND  DESIGN. 

A  writer,  who  appears  to  be  quite  well  posted  in  re- 
gard to  decorators  and  artisans  in  Japan,  says  that  ar- 
tists and  workmen  there  utterly  discard  the  happy-go- 
lucky  or  rule-of- thumb  method  in  their  work.  Before 
being  received  as  proficients  or  masters  of  their  work 
they  have  to  undergo  a  thorough  training  in  the  art  or 
skill  which  they  propose  to  adopt  as  their  calling.  Books 
of  instruction,  with  elaborate  and  progressive  lessons, 
are  placed  before  the  learners  by  experienced  and  com- 
petent instructors.  From  the  first  strokes  to  the  finished 
drawing  everything  is  done  in  the  most  thorough  man- 
ner, and  for  each  class  or  style  of  design  there  are  many 
elaborately  illustrated  works  of  reference  to  be  found  in 
circulating  libraries,  which  are  numerous  and  free  to  all. 
It  may  not  be  generally  known  that  the  new,  quaint, 
and  popular  designs  on  illuminated  title  pages,  on  bus- 
iness cards,  on  fancy  handbills,  and  even  on  our  or- 
dinary signboards,  are  mostly  borrowed  from  the  Jap- 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


ILIOS.  The  City  and  Country  of  the  Trojans.  By  Dr. 
Henry  Schliemann.  New  York:  Harper  &  Broth- 
ers. 1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot, 
Upham  &  Co. 

As  our  readers  already  know,  Dr.  Schliemann  is  in 
some  sense  a  Californian;  and  we,  his  fellow-citizens, 
may  well  feel  a  special  interest  in  this  great  work  on 
ancient  Troy.  The  subject  is  one  made  forever  mem- 
orable and  fascinating  by  the  Homeric  poems.  The 
ignorance  of  ages  has  rendered  its  problems  difficult. 


The  zeal  and  success  of  this  new  explorer  have  thrown 
a  flood  of  light  on  many  questions  of  greater  or  less  im- 
portance. 

It  will  reward  any  young  man  to  borrow  this  book, 
or  to  hire  it  at  a  round  price,  for  the  sake  of  Dr.  Schlie- 
mann's  autobiography.  Here  is  another  instance  of  the 
all-conquering  power  of  pluck  and  patience.  A  poor 
and  enthusiastic  boy  pushed  his  business  chances  in 
such  a  way  as  to  win  an  early  competence.  He  learned 
new  languages  by  persevering  study  in  hours  snatched 


376 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


from  a  clerk's  hard  work.  No  obstacle  discouraged 
him.  His  energies  were  not  scattered,  but  directed  to- 
ward a  single  object  in  life,  early  chosen  and  passion- 
ately pursued.  As  we  read  Dr.  Schliemann's  achieve- 
ments we  feel  that  he  is  no  exceptional  genius,  but  a 
man  like  thousands  of  others — only  these  others  lack 
his  resolute  and  tireless  persistence. 

Dr.  Schliemann  first  "prospected"  for  ancient  Troy 
in  1868,  and  fixed  on  Hissarlik  as  the  probable  site.  In 
1870,  he  made  preliminary  excavations.  Work  was 
prosecuted  during  portions  of  the  three  following  years; 
and  the  remarkable  discoveries  then  made  were,  pub- 
lished in  1874,  in  a  work  entitled  Troy  and  Its  Remains. 
During  three  following  years  the  explorer  was  at  work 
in  other  interesting  fields,  notably  at  Mycenae.  In  1878 
and  1879,  excavations  were  again  made  in  the  Troad. 
The  present  ample  volume  gives  us  the  matured  con- 
clusions of  Dr.  Schliemann,  and  many  appendices 
from  other  hands.  Professor  Virchow  contributes  two 
of  these,  as  also  a  preface.  Two  are  by  Professor 
Brugsch-Bey,  one  by  Professor  Mahaffy,  and  one  by 
Professor  Sayce.  The  work  is  well  provided  with  maps 
and  diagrams,  and  has  an  extraordinary  number  of 
representations  of  objects  of  ancient  art  dug  out  of 
this  one  little  site.  The  book  is  dedicated  to  Premier 
Gladstone. 

Many  classes  of  readers  will  be  interested  in  this 
splendid  volume.  As  a  picture  book,  it  has  something 
to  attract  juvenile  eyes.  Lovers  of  pottery  will  find 
curious  vases,  cups,  jugs,  and  seals.  Jewel-fanciers  will 
study  the  rich  ornaments  of  gold  and  silver.  Imple- 
ments of  stone  and  bronze  call  for  scientific  adjustment 
in  the  series  of  "ages."  Archaeologists  have  a  whole 
new  field  for  investigation  and  comparison.  Students 
of  ancient  and  modern  geography  will  dwell  on  the 
questions  of  locality.  Ethnologists  will  seek  light  on  the 
relations  of  the  people  of  the  Troad — not  only  to  the 
Greek  races,  but  also  to  the  Phrygians,  the  Lydians,  the 
Assyrians,  and  even  the  Egyptians.  Lovers  of  Homer 
will  catch  eagerly  at  the  evidence  that  there  was  a  Troy, 
and  that  the  Iliad  is  not  all  a  mythology. 

Dr.  Schliemann  believes  that  the  Iliad  describes  a 
real  Ilium,  and  that  he  has  found  its  site.  All  critics 
agree  that  the  contest  of  the  Greeks  and  the  Trojans 
was  not  described  by  an  eye-witness.  If  the  account  in 
the  Iliad  be  received  as  a  veritable  history,  it  is  still  a 
history  of  long  past  generations.  But  it  is  not  a  his- 
tory. The  Iliad  is  prehistoric  to  us:  the  Trojan  war 
must  have  been  prehistoric  to  the  Iliad  author.  So  the 
poet's  description  of  Troy  could  not  be  scientifically  ex- 
act. No  such  poet  is  held  to  minute  accuracy.  The 
bard  of  the  Iliad  doubtless  saw  the  Troad  of  his  day,  and 
depicted  its  main  features  in  his  immortal  poem.  But 
there  was  no  Schliemann  to  dig  underneath  the  surface, 
to  say  how  many  cities  lay  in  perpendicular  alignment, 
or  to  what  extent  the  seaward  flowing  streams  had 
changed  their  channels.  So  the  "Scaean  gate"  of  the 
Iliad  might  not  be  found  by  using  the  poet's  divining 
rod  ;  the  house  of  Priam  might  be  inaccurately  de- 
scribed. What  Dr.  Schliemann  contends  for  is  that  on 
the  whole  the  Troy  of  the  poem  has  its  counterpart  in 
one  of  the  buried  cities  at  Hissarlik.  Rich  treasures 
lay  covered  there.  There  are  abundant  evidences  of 
such  a  civilization  as  the  story  of  Troy  presupposes.  It 
is  most  probable  that  in  this  corner  of  Asia  Minor,  on 
the  borders  of  Europe,  different  races  should  have  come 
in  collision,  and  that  the  supreme  Greeks  should  here 
have  won  a  decided  victory,  and  have  helped  to  decide 


the  type  of  eastern  European  and  western  Asiatic  civili- 
zation. In  later  days  there  was  an  almost  greater  Greece 
on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor.  The  Troad  corner  could 
hardly  have  escaped  the  early  conflicts  of  adjacent  and 
restless  races.  This  book,  by  the  way,  in  its  incursions 
into  Egyptology,  gives  additional  countenance  to  Pro- 
fessor Curtius's  brilliant  theory  of  the  early  Ionian 
migration — a  very  early  Greece  east  of  the  ^Egean. 

Dr.  Schliemann  found  at  Hissarlik  distinct  remains  of 
seven  different  cities,  the  lowest  from  forty-five  to  fifty- 
two  and  a  half  feet  below  the  surface.  The  stratum  of 
the  next  city  is  twelve  feet  in  thickness.  Then,  at  the 
depth  of  twenty -three  to  thirty-three  feet,  are  the  re- 
mains of  a  burnt  city  which  he  identifies  with  the  Ho- 
meric Ilios.  This  third  city  is,  of  course,  the  one  of  spe- 
cial interest,  and  that  which  is  most  fully  described.  In 
the  seventh  and  uppermost  city — the  historic  Ilium  of 
the  Greeks — were  found  many  interesting  remains,  in- 
cluding sculptures,  coins,  and  inscriptions.  That  His- 
sarlik marks  the  true  site  of  the  ancient  Ilium  our  author 
has  not  the  slightest  doubt.  Grote  and  others  decided 
thus  before  Schliemann's  discoveries.  Lenormant,  Glad- 
stone, Sayce,  and  Philip  Smith  are  among  the  many 
whom  Schliemann  has  convinced.  But  many  distin- 
guished names  are  on  the  other  side — mostly  in  favor  of 
Bounarbashi.  We  can  only  say  that  Dr.  Schliemann 
makes  out  a  very  good  case.  We  wish  he  had  more 
book-making  skill,  so  that  he  might  have  put  his  dis- 
coveries in  a  more  compact  and  systematic  form.  But 
we  will  not  criticise  a  man  who  has  done  so  much,  and 
has  done  it  so  well.  We  are  glad  that  he  happened  to 
be  in  California  when  it  became  a  State,  and  so  was  en- 
rolled as  our  fellow-citizen.  If  he  and  his  enthusiastic 
Greek  wife  were  to  visit  us  now,  we  think  they  would 
find  that  we  know  of  the  Scamander  as  well  as  of  the 
Sacramento,  and  that  Homer  is  more  to  us  than  our 
poets  of  the  lariat  and  the  mining  camp. 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE.  By  Henry  James,  Jr.  New 
York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San 
Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

Mr.  James's  new  book  belongs  eminently  to  the  small 
class  of  works  of  art  whose  execution  is  well  nigh  perfect, 
and  whose  design  is  a  blunder.  The  blunder  of  design 
in  Washington  Square  is  that  of  handling  tragedy  by 
the  dispassionate,  realistic  method.  A  more  completely 
tragic  history  ( if  we  may  be  allowed  to  use  the  adjec- 
tive with  regard  to  a  calamity  wrought  out  by  purely 
psychologic  methods,  and  devoid  of  external  incidents ) 
could  hardly  be  conceived  than  this  of  Catherine  Sloper. 
The  author  has  started,  like  a  spiritualized  Zola,  with 
the  assumption  that  the  legitimate  subject-matter  of 
tragedy  is  the  infliction  of  suffering  on  a  human  being. 
He  has,  therefore,  created  with  a  marvelous  skill  and 
delicacy,  with  an  all  but  infallible  accuracy  both  of  ana- 
lytic and  constructive  power,  a  character  endowed  with 
the  utmost  receptivity  to  pain  and  the  least  resources  or 
defenses  against  it ;  has  subjected  her  to  precisely  those 
experiences  holding  the  utmost  possibilities  of  pain  to 
the  temperament  in  question,  and  has  filled  in  even 
minor  details  with  an  almost  complete  avoidance  of  any 
alleviation.  All  this  is  most  excellently  done.  Mr. 
James  is  not  usually  at  his  best  in  portraiture.  He  ana- 
lyzes too  much — overloads  with  detail,  and  obscures  the 
broad  lines  that  impress  our  memories.  But  in  ' '  Cather- 
ine Sloper"  he  has  given  us  a  fine  portrait,  all  the  finer 
because  it  is  in  the  very  extreme  of  the  "low-toned" 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


377 


method.  The  artists  are  few  indeed  who  can  pain 
character  in  neutral  colors,  and  Mr.  James  has  no 
merely  painted  "Catherine"  in  neutral  colors.  He  has 
with  a  fine  artistic  feeling  for  quietude,  put  her  agains 
as  neutral  a  background  as  possible.  He  has  hardb 
allowed  to  her  whole  history  a  single  outwardly  dra 
matic  moment.  The  drama  consists  solely  of  her  own 
mental  experience,  and  affects  no  one  else  especially 
not  even  her  supposed  lover,  while  this  drama  remains 
to  the  end  unexpressed  by  speech,  action,  or  even  look 
except  in  the  merest  fragments.  So  far  as  the  skillfu 
description  of  the  way  in  which  such  a  girl  was  made 
the  victim  of  life  goes,  Mr.  James  has  left  little  to  be 
asked.  Nothing  could  round  out  the  quiet  desolation 
of  her  fate  more  perfectly  than  the  summary  of  her  life 
ten,  fifteen,  twenty  years  after  her  brief  romance  : 

' '  From  her  own  point  of  view,  the  great  facts  of  her 
career  were  that  Morris  Townsend  had  trifled  with  her 
affections,  and  that  her  father  had  broken  its  spring. 
Nothing  could  ever  alter  these  facts.  They  were  always 
there,  like  her  name,  her  age,  her  plain  face.  Nothing 
could  ever  undo  the  wrong  or  cure  the  pain  that  Mor- 
ris had  inflicted  on  her,  and  nothing  could  ever  make 
her  feel  toward  her  father  as  she  felt  in  her  younger 
years.  There  was  something  dead  in  her  life,  and  her 
duty  was  to  try  and  fill  the  void." 

No  delicate  touch  is  omitted  that  could  highten  the 
tragedy  (always  assuming  that  tragedy  means  intensity 
and  completeness  of  misfortune).  "Catherine's"  per- 
fect blamelessness,  not  only  in  action,  but  in  the  most 
subtile  refinements  of  spirit  and  motive,  and  the  fact  that 
the  hardest  part  of  her  misfortune,  if  not  the  whole,  was 
the  logical  result  of  her  very  blamelessness,  is  an  ele- 
ment in  her  fate  that,  while  true  enough  to  nature, 
verges  on  the  intolerable. 

Now,  we  repeat,  with  all  these  elements  of  tragedy  at 
hand,  and  all  most  finely  managed,  Mr.  James  has  not 
written  anything  in  the  least  resembling  a  tragedy.  He 
would,  no  doubt,  repudiate  with  horror  the  idea  of  ever 
doing  such  a  thing.  A  dignified  quietude,  a  masterly 
dispassionateness,  and  a  matter-of-fact  realism,  are  qual- 
ities without  which  he  would  find  it  as  impossible  to  ap- 
pear in  print  as  he  would  find  it  to  appear  in  the  street 
without  his  coat  and  shoes.  And  these  qualities  we, 
for  our  part,  should  be  utterly  unwilling  to  lose  from  his 
writings.  But  he  ought  not  to  try,  under  their  bonds, 
to  treat  of  such  things  as  love  at  its  utmost  depth, 
crushed  hearts,  spoiled  lives.  Not  that  he  makes  him- 
self ridiculous,  as  if  he  were  playing  Hamlet  in  an  im- 
maculate shirt-bosom  and  studs.  His  taste  is  too  per- 
fect for  that.  On  the  contrary,  he  makes  the  very  men- 
tion of  love  and  heart-break  in  a  passionate  way  seem 
ridiculous.  It  is  more  as  if  some  accomplished  psy- 
chologist, who  knew  the  details  about  Hamlet,  sat  down 
and  told  us  in  smooth  tones  and  with  a  genuine  scien- 
tific interest  all  that  the  royal  Dane  had  suffered  ;  told 
it  so  well  and  appreciatively  that  we  realized  perfectly 
all  that  was  distressing  in  the  story,  and  yet  were  not 
lifted  above  the  painfulness  of  it  by  any  passion  of  sym- 
pathy or  any  tragic  fervor. 

The  result  is  that  Washington  Square  is  painful  read- 
ing, and  leaves  an  unpleasant  taste  in  the  mouth.  One 
is  inclined  to  look  for  a  volume  of  Mark  Twain  after 
laying  Washington  Square  down,  to  take  the  taste  out. 
It  is  quite  as  if  Mr.  James,  with  the  most  admirable 
skill,  had  performed  a  difficult  vivisection  for  us  to  wit- 
ness. If  we  are  psychologists  enough  to  appreciate  the 
skill,  and  not  sensitive  to  pain  ( in  others  ,  our  admira- 


tion is  unmixed  ;  otherwise,  we  feel  that  the  piercing  of 
live  flesh  in  cold  blood  is  bad  art,  and  only  justifiable 
when  some  beneficent  end  is  to  be  gained.     If  young 
men  were  to  be  made  less  unscrupulous,  old  ladies  less 
silly,  clever  fathers  more  sympathetic,  and  loving  girls 
more  shrewd  by  this  book,  it  would  be  worth  while  to 
make  the  reader  uncomfortable  ;  but  we  need  hardly 
say  that  it  is  not  calculated  to  have  any  such  effect. 
The  breaking  of  hearts,  again,  in  Turgeneff,  Shakspere, 
and  George  Eliot,  is  more  analogous  to  the  cutting  of 
flesh  and  shedding  of  blood  in  warfare  than  in  vivisec- 
tion.    No  matter  how  true  to  life  the  psychology,  how 
close  the  realism,  there  is  always  the  passion  and  fervor, 
the  sound  of  trumpets,  and  the  great  onward  movement 
of  something  irresistible.     The  author  is  always  in  a 
subjective  attitude  (without  necessarily  quitting  the  ob- 
jective ) ;  there  is  always  a  certain  fitness  and  necessity 
in  the  result  that  warrant  a  "  piling  up  "  of  suffering  to 
any  hight  in  such  tragedies  as  "  Prometheus"  or  "CEdi- 
pus"   or  "Lear."     In  Mr.  James's  other  books  that 
"turn  out  badly  " — The  American  and  Daisy  Milter — 
there  is  such  a  necessity  in  the  very  nature  of  things  for 
the  result,  and  the  result  itself,  though  sad  enough,  falls 
so  far  short  of  intolerableness,  and  is  so  lightly  sketch- 
ed, that  we  accept  it  as  the  right  thing.     Nevertheless, 
in  general  Mr.  James's  exceeding  cleverness  is  of  too 
unemotional  a  character  to  be  employed  on  pain  and 
misfortune.     Mr.  Howells,  whose  cleverness  is  as  great, 
and  of  a  warmer  and  richer  quality,  sets  a  wise  example 
in  the  avoidance  of  tragedy. 

Mr.  James  is  strongest,  in  all  his  books,  in  ' '  clever 
talk."  He  sometimes  slips  into  the  habit  of  making  all 
his  characters  talk  with  equal  cleverness  and  similar  dic- 
tion. In  Washington  Square  the  cleverness  is  distrib- 
uted to  the  right  people,  though  it  must  be  remarked 
that  the  three  clever  ones — the  Doctor,  Mrs.  Almond, 
and  Morris  Townsend — say  bright  things  of  a  precisely 
similar  cast,  and  turn  their  epigrams  in  just  the  same 
way,  and  it  may  be  further  added  that  it  is  remarkably 
similar  to  the  way  in  which  the  distinctively  clever  peo- 
ple in  all  Mr.  James's  other  books  turn  their  epigrams. 
Nevertheless,  the  individualities  in  Washington  Square 
are  all  clear.  The  book  is  brief  and  sketchy  enough  to 
have  all  its  characters  drawn  more  or  less  in  outline, 
and  Mr.  James  can  always  make  a  consistent  and  clear 
sketch  of  character.  It  is  elaborate  portraits  that  he  ob- 
scures. The  book  is  in  charming  English,  crammed 
with  keen  and  discriminating  observation  of  society 
and  of  human  nature,  thoroughly  original,  and  is  per- 
raded  by  the  author's  own  refined  good  taste  and  edu- 
cated intelligence,  and,  for  these  reasons,  is  good  read- 
ng,  an.d  earns  the  comment  so  often  made  on  Mr. 
[ames's  books,  "  Whether  it  is,  on  the  whole,  a  success 
or  not,  I  like  to  read  it,  it's  so  cleverly  written." 


BEN-HUR.  A  Tale  of  the  Christ.  By  Lew  Wallace. 
New  York :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1880.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

The  success  of  The  Fair  God  has  induced  General 
Wallace,  politician,  lawyer,  soldier,  and  now  author,  to 
ry  again.  This  time  the  scene  is  laid,  not  in  ancient 
Mexico,  but  in  Judea,  in  the  time  of  Herod.  The  hero 
s  a  prince  of  the  house  of  Hur,  one  of  the  oldest, 
vealthiest,  and  most  honorable  families  in  Israel. 

While  yet  a  boy,  he  has  the  misfortune  to  dislodge  a 
ile  from  the  roof  of  his  father's  palace,  which  strikes, 
n  falling,  the  commander  of  a  passing  troop  of  Roman 


378 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


soldiers.  For  this  the  palace  is  confiscated,  his  mother 
and  sister  are  thrown  into  a  dungeon,  and  he  himself  is 
sentenced  to  the  galleys  for  life.  His  manly  bearing  as 
a  galley-slave  attracts  the  attention  of  Arrius,  the  tri- 
bune and  captain  of  the  Roman  fleet,  whose  life  Ben- 
Hur  afterward  saves  in  a  battle  with  pirates  in  the 
^Egean  Sea.  Arrius  then  adopts  Ben-Hur,  makes  him 
a  Roman  citizen,  and  leaves  him  heir  to  his  immense 
estates.  But  his  heart  is  with  his  native  land.  He  be- 
comes celebrated  at  Rome  for  his  skill  in  martial  exer- 
cises and  for  feats  of  arms.  His  secret  purpose  is  to 
one  day  turn  this  to  account  in  an  effort  to  free  Jerusa- 
lem from  the  Roman  yoke.  He  goes  to  Antioch,  then 
the  second  city  of  the  Roman  world.  There  he  finds 
that  Simonides,  formerly  a  slave  of  the  house  of  Hur, 
has  become  one  of  the  merchant  princes  of  the  earth. 
Simonides  admits  his  bondage  and  his  stewardship,  and 
offers  to  turn  over  his  vast  estates  to  the  rightful  heir  of 
his  former  master.  This  sacrifice  is  not  accepted,  but 
they  are  united  in  a  common  hatred  of  Rome,  and  to- 
gether they  lay  plans  and  consecrate  their  fortunes  to 
the  deliverance  of  Israel  from  the  second  bondage. 

About  this  time  Ben-Hur  happens  to  meet  at  the 
Fount  of  Castalia,  in  Antioch,  Balthasar,  an  Egyptian, 
who  proves  to  be  one  of  the  three  magi  who  had  fol- 
lowed the  star  of  Bethlehem,  and  had  seen,  a  quarter  of 
a  century  before,  the  infant  Jesus  in  the  manger.  Baltha- 
sar's  story  inflames  the  mind  of  Ben-Hur.  He  resolves 
to  go  at  once  to  Jerusalem  and  seek  out  the  Messiah. 
While  arranging  his  departure  he  triumphs  over  his  en- 
emy, Messala,  a  haughty  patrician,  in  a  chariot  race, 
on  which  the  whole  fortune  of  Messala  had  been  staked. 
The  description  of  this  event  is  very  spirited.  Here 
also  he  falls  in  love  with  Esther,  the  daughter  of  Simon- 
ides, and  thus  becomes  the  object  of  the  jealous  rage  of 
the  beautiful  daughter  of  Balthasar,  who  loves  him. 

The  last  scene,  like  the  first,  opens  at  Jerusalem. 
Thither  Ben-Hur  has  gone,  full  of  hope  and  confidence, 
in  search  of  the  Great  Captain  who  should  set  Israel  free, 
and,  having  found  him,  to  enlist  under  his  all  conquer- 
ing banner,  and  with  the  sword  drive  the  Roman  legions 
from  Judea.  The  portrayal  of  the  meeting  with  the  Naza- 
rene,  and  the  bitter  disappointment  of  Ben-Hur,  is  the 
admirable  feature  of  the  book,  and  redeems  other  points 
not  so  excellent — the  improbability  of  many  of  the  inci- 
dents of  the  story,  and  the  overcrowding  of  the  pages 
with  characters  and  digressions,  which  might  well  be 
spared. 

Ben-Hur  had  as  his  rightful  inheritance  the  traditions 
and  prophecies  of  his  religion  and  his  race — a  race 
which  had  watched  for  ages  for  the  coming  of  the  Mes- 
siah almost  as  earnestly  as  Prometheus  looked  for  the 
coming  of  his  deliverer.  At  the  time  of  Christ  nothing 
remained  of  the  glory  of  Israel  but  the  memories  of  the 
past  and  this  great  hope  of  the  future. 

The  Jews  were  ground  down  and  oppressed  by  Ro- 
man despots  and  tax-gatherers;  the  temple  had  been 
despoiled  and  their  altars  desecrated.  How  natural, 
then,  that  their  imagination  should  clothe  the  promised 
Redeemer  in  armor,  and  place  in  his  hand  the  sword  of 
David,  from  whose  Royal  House  he  was  to  come !  How 
natural  that  they  should  think  of  him  as  a  resistless 
conquerer,  who  should  free  Israel  from  the  Roman 
yoke  and  bring  forth  from  its  hiding  place  "the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant!"  It  is  not  suprising,  viewed  in  this 
light,  that  "the  Prince  of  Peace,"  "the  Man  of  Sor- 
rows," whose  message  was  peace  on  earth  and  good 
will  to  men,  should  have  been  mocked  and  reviled,  and 


at  last  crucified  between  two  thieves.  Ben-Hur  became 
a  witness  of  the  later  scenes  in  the  life  of  Christ,  and  of 
the  final  tragedy  on  Mount  Calvary,  events  which  the 
author  has  had  the  good  taste  to  describe  in  almost  the 
language  of  the  Evangelists ;  and  it  must  be  said  that 
he  has  been  careful  to  put  no  words  in  the  mouth  of 
the  Savior  which  have  not  the  warrant  of  Holy  Writ. 


THE  PERSONAL  LIFE  OP  DAVID  LIVINGSTONE.  From 
his  unpublished  journals  and  correspondence.  By 
W.  G.  Blaikie,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.  New  York:  Har- 
per &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

The  purpose  of  this  volume  is  well  stated  in  the  pref- 
ace— to  make  the  world  better  acquainted  with  the  char- 
acter of  Livingstone.  His  public  exploits,  his  wonder- 
ful discoveries  and  researches  in  that  terra  incognita, 
Central  Africa,  are  known  and  appreciated  in  every 
civilized  country  of  the  globe.  But  with  the  man  him- 
self, with  his  purposes  and  plans,  with  his  unwavering 
determination  and  indomitable  courage,  with  his  life- 
long service  of  that  Master  whom  he  had  early  chosen 
and  consistently  followed,  little  has  been  known  before 
the  publication  of  the  volume  under  consideration. 

The  leading  idea  of  Livingstone,  as  shown  by  his 
biographer,  was  his  thoroughness.  Whatever  his  hand 
found  to  do  he  did  it  with  his  might.  He  was  not  only 
missionary  and  explorer — he  was  physician,  surgeon, 
botanist,  geologist,  geographer,  and  astronomer;  and 
all  these  things  he  did  well.  The  Astronomer  Royal  at 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  said  of  him  that  his  observa- 
tions were  marvels  of  accuracy  and  exactitude.  At  one 
time  we  find  him  building  a  house,  at  another  com- 
manding a  steamer,  again  instructing  the  natives  in  the 
science  of  irrigation,  and  all  to  the  greater  glory  of  God, 
as  well  as  to  the  amelioration  of  the  physical  condition 
and  surroundings  of  those  among  whom  he  had  cast  his 
lot. 

The  sixth  sense,  as  it  is  sometimes  called — common 
sense — was  possessed  in  a  high  degree  by  Livingstone. 
To  certain  ones  of  his  Missionary  Board  who  com- 
plained of  the  few  conversions  following  his  labors,  he 
pithily  and  forcibly  explained  that  the  first  step  toward 
christianizing  was  civilizing;  that  no  man  could  raise 
beautiful  flowers  from  wild  land  until  the  ground  was 
first  cleared  and  prepared  for  the  seed.  He  saw,  as 
those  in  England  could  not,  that  the  gospel  of  Christ, 
first  pure,  then  peaceable,  could  not  effect  a  lodgment 
in  the  hearts  of  men  whose  first  article  of  faith  was  ta 
kill  and  eat  their  enemies,  or,  under  some  conditions, 
their  friends,  among  whom  life  and  liberty  had  no  sa- 
credness  and  little  value,  and  where  the  curse  of  curses, 
the  slave-trade,  was  in  a  flourishing  state,  and  that,  too, 
accompanied  by  such  horrors  as  are  sickening  in  their 
details.  What  greater  or  more  Christ-like  work,  then, 
could  Livingstone  have  done  than  to  devote  his  life  to 
the  destruction  of  this  infamous  traffic  in  human  bodies 
and  souls?  And  yet  we  find  him  censured  by  those 
wise  in  their  own  conceit  because  he  did  not  found 
churches  and  Sunday-schools,  large  in  numbers  and 
zealous  in  attendance,  among  a  race  steeped  in  super- 
stition and  idolatry. 

Dr.  Blaikie  has  done  his  work  well  and  faithfully. 
He  has  wisely  preferred  to  let  Livingstone  for  the  most 
part  reveal  his  own  character  and  ideas,  and  has  only 
added  the  finishing  touches  to  the  monumentum  art 
ferennius  which  David  Livingstone  has  constructed  for 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


379 


himself  wherever  a  love  of  human  freedom  exists,  and  a 
pure  devotion  to  down-trodden  humanity,  a  life  of  tire- 
less exertion  and  self-sacrifice,  and  a  pure,  exalted,  and 
Christian  heroism,  are  known  and  appreciated. 


PASTORAL  DAYS  ;  or,  Memories  of  a  New  England 
Year.  By  W.  Hamilton  Gibson.  Illustrated.  New 
York:  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San 
Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

It  will  seem  but  a  short  time  to  some  of  those  who 
read  this  notice  since  "annuals"  and  "gift  books"  were 
the  most  advanced  specimens  of  the  typographer's  art. 
Possibly  no  better  evidence  of  the  progress  made  in  the 
way  of  book-making  could  be  obtained  than  that  af- 
forded by  the  contrast  of  one  of  those  same  works,  now 
so  long  gone  out  of  vogue,  with  such  a  volume  as  this 
one  lying  before  us. 

The  "Pastoral  Days"  are  divided  into  "Spring," 
' '  Summer, "  ' '  Autumn, "  and  ' '  Winter, "  representing  re- 
spectively, in  the  text  and  designs,  Nature's  awakening, 
consummation,  waning,  and  sleep.  To  say  that  the  en- 
gravings in  this  book  are  chaste  and  elegant  would  con- 
vey only  a  very  general  impression  of  some  of  the  most 
exquisite  work  which  any  artist  has  given  to  the  Ameri- 
can public.  They  are  admirably  subordinated  and  har- 
monized to  the  plan  of  the  book,  and  yet  each  in  itself 
is  individual,  unique,  and  complete.  In  the  softer,  more 
hazy,  and  delicate  delineations  of  Nature's  moods,  Mr. 
Gibson  is  particularly  happy.  But,  in  addition  to  being 
an  artist  of  high  merit,  Mr.  Gibson  is  possessed  of  a 
felicitous  literary  style,  and  Pastoral  Days  in  that  re- 
spect is  different  from  those  volumes  where  the  text  is 
intended  as  nothing  more  than  a  running  explanation 
of  the  plates.  The  matter  of  Mr.  Gibson's  book  is  ad- 
mirable. It  brings  back  to  one  scenes  long  forgotten, 
the  earlier  and  happier  days  of  life. 

Without  intending  to  draw  invidious  distinctions  as 
to  previous  publications,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  say- 
ing that  a  more  exquisite  volume  has  never  been  issued 
from  an  American  press. 


THE  CALIPH  HAROUN  ALRASCHID  AND  SARACEN 
CIVILIZATION.  By  E.  H.  Palmer.  New  York :  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

So  far  as  Mr.  Palmer's  book  purports  to  relate  to  Sar- 
acen civilization  it  is  somewhat  disappointing.  There 
is  little  or  no  light  thrown  upon  the  subject  except  such 
as  comes  indirectly  from  the  consideration  of  other 
themes.  But  as  a  personal  history  of  the  great  Com- 
mander of  the  Faithful  the  book  is  full  of  interest  and 
instruction.  The  idea  which  nine  persons  out  of  ten 
entertain  concerning  Haroun  Alraschid  is  derived  from 
The  Arabian  Nights,  and  is  that  of  a  benevolent  sover- 
eign visiting  his  subjects  in  disguise  and  performing  no 
end  of  good  deeds.  History  unfortunately  does  not 
justify  this  view  of  the  great  Caliph.  There  can  be  lit- 
tle doubt  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  arbitrary,  luxuri- 
ous, and  fickle  rulers  that  ever  misgoverned  an  unfortu- 
nate people.  That  his  dominion  extended  over  so  great 
an  area  was  due  largely  to  the  wise  and  vigilant  states- 
manship of  the  Barmek  family,  commonly  called  the 
Barmecides.  Of  these  Yahya  was  Grand  Vizier,  and 
his  two  sons,  El  Fadhl  and  Jaafer  (usually  spelled  Jaffar), 
were  his  ministerial  associates.  Upon  the  Barmecides 
Haroun  lavished  his  favors  without  stint.  Jaafer  was  his 


especial  favorite,  and  the  Caliph  could  not  bear  to  be 
absent  from  him.  Haroun  was  equally  attached  to  his 
own  sister,  and  in  order  that  he  might  enjoy  the  con- 
stant society  of  both  favorites  without  violation  of  court 
etiquette  he  had  them  married,  with  the  understanding 
that  the  union  should  be  one  in  name  only.  It  is  sup- 
posed that  it  was  Haroun's  discovery  of  the  fact  that 
children  had  been  born  of  this  marriage  which  led  to 
the  downfall  of  the  Barmecides.  How  sudden  and  how 
great  was  this  fall  may  be  imagined  from  the  fact  men- 
tioned by  El  Amraniy,  the  historian,  that  a  certain  per- 
son, happening  to  go  into  the  office  of  the  treasury,  saw 
the  following  item  on  the  ledger  :  ' '  For  a  dress  of  honor 
and  decorations  for  Jaafer,  son  of  Yahya,  400,000  gold 
dinars,"  about  $1,000,000.  A  few  days  after  he  saw  on 
the  same  ledger  the  entry  :  "  Naphtha  and  shavings  for 
burning  the  body  of  Jaafer,  son  of  Yahya,  10  kirats,"  a 
kirat  being  about  one  twenty-fourth  of  a  dinar.  Jaafer, 
by  all  accounts,  was  a  lovable  character,  and  the  fall  of 
the  Barmecides  greatly  weakened  Haroun's  hold  upon 
his  empire.  Those  who,  through  The  Arabian  Nights, 
are  interested  in  the  story  of  Haroun  Alraschid  and  the 
unfortunate  Barmek  family,  as  well  as  those  who  are  in- 
terested in  the  peculiar  customs  of  those  early  Moslem 
years,  will  find  Mr.  Palmer's  book  full  of  instruction 
and  entertainment.  But  readers  must  prepare  for  the 
shock  of  having  another  illusion  dispelled,  for  Mr. 
Palmer  pronounces  the  story  of  "The  Forty  Thieves," 
as  well  as  that  of  "Aladdin,"  in  The  Arabian  Nights, 
to  have  been  interpolated,  neither  being  found  in  the 
original  Arabic. 


WOMANHOOD.  Lectures  on  Woman's  Work  in  the 
World.  By  R.  Heber  Newton.  New  York :  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco 
by  Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

This  volume  consists  of  a  series  of  essays  upon  wom- 
an and  her  work  in  the  world.  Upon  such  a  subject  it 
is  impossible  to  avoid  being  trite  at  times.  Mr.  New- 
ton does  not  attempt  to  make  woman  dissatisfied  by 
pointing  out  alleged  indignities  under  which  she  is  la- 
boring. He  rather  assumes  that  her  mission  is  a  noble 
one,  and  that  it  rests  with  her  to  find  her  happiness  in 
using  her  influence  and  doing  her  work  to  the  best 
advantage.  "Advanced  thinkers"  would  no  doubt  pro- 
nounce this  work  a  trifle  "goody-goody."  But  persons 
who  are  "in  advance"  of  their  fellow-creatures  must  not 
expect  that  the  majority  will  agree  with  them  in  this  or 
indeed  other  respects. 


A  HISTORY  OF  MODERN  EUROPE.  By  C.  A.  Fyffe. 
Vol.  I.  From  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolutionary  war 
in  1792  to  the  accession  of  Louis  XVIII.  in  1814. 
New  York :  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  1881.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

The  last  few  years  have  been  particularly  fruitful  in 
histories  of  the  current  century,  several  of  them  being 
of  marked  ability.  Green  and  McCarthy  have  now 
been  followed  by  Mr.  Fyffe,  who  summarizes  the  history 
of  Europe  from  1792  to  1814  in  the  volume  before  us. 
The  second  volume,  soon  to  be  published,  will  bring  the 
reader  down  to  the  year  1848 ;  the  third  down  to  the 
present  time.  These  recent  historical  publications  have 
gone  far  to  demolish  the  theory  that  a  contemporary 
history  must  perforce  be  more  imperfect  or  more  parti- 
san than  one  written  at  a  later  epoch.  All  great  his- 


380 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


tories,  fortunately  or  unfortunately,  have  been  more  or 
less  partisan  in  regard  to  the  important  events.  Emi- 
nent personages  in  one  history  have  been  paragons  of 
goodness  ;  in  another,  monsters  of  iniquity.  Mr.  Fyffe 
has  avoided,  so  far  as  possible,  exaggeration  in  the  di- 
rection either  of  praise  or  blame.  His  estimates  are 
fair  and  candid. 

In  compressing  the  history  of  a  century  within  the 
limits  of  three  volumes,  rejection  is  a  more  important 
process  than  selection.  To  know  what  is  really  impor- 
tant is  one  of  the  first  attributes  of  a  historian,  and  to 
this  title,  judging  from  the  volume  before  us,  Mr.  Fyffe 
may  prefer  a  just  claim. 


BENJAMIN  PEIRCE.  A  Memorial  Collection.    By  Moses 
King.     Cambridge,  Mass.     1881. 

This  little  memorial  pamphlet  on  the  great  mathema- 
tician and  astronomer  is  made  up  chiefly  of  the  eulo- 
gies pronounced  upon  him  in  pulpit  and  press  about 
the  time  of  his  death.  It  contains  also  the  exquisite 
poem  written  in  honor  of  the  deceased  scientist  by  Dr. 
O.  W.  Holmes.  The  frontispiece  is  a  fine  portrait  of 
Professor  Peirce. 


THIRTY  YEARS.  Being  Poems,  new  and  old.  By  the 
Author  of  John  Halifax,  Gentleman.  Boston  : 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  1881.  For  sale  in  San 
Francisco  by  Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

That  the  author  of  John  Halifax,  Gentleman,  will 
always  be  better  known,  by  her  prose  writings  than  by 
her  poetry  may  be  safely  assumed.  But,  for  all  that, 
these  poems  are  not  without  a  certain  quiet  power,  as 


well  as  purity,  which  will  commend  them  to  many. 
The  pervading  tone  is  a  trustful  one — a  restful,  abiding 
faith  in  ultimate  truth,  goodness,  and  mercy.  Many  of 
them  are  religious  verses,  full  of  faith  and  hope.  They 
are  certainly  not  great  poems,  but  they  are  far  above 
mediocrity,  and  the  purity  of  their  sentiment  will  leave 
men  and  women  better  for  their  perusal. 


ILLUSTRATED  CATALOGUE  OF  THE  PARIS  SALON. 
Published  under  the  direction  of  F.  G.  Dumas,  au- 
thorized and  approved  by  the  Minister  of  Public  In- 
struction and  Fine  Arts.  London  :  British  and  For- 
eign Artists'  Association.  New  York :  J.  W.  Bouton. 
1880. 


CATALOGUE  ILLUSTRE  DE  L'EXPOSITION  HISTORIQUE 
DE  L'ART  BELGE  ET  DU  MUSEE  MODERNE  DE  BRU- 
XELLES  (1830-1880.)  New  York:  J.  W.  Bouton. 
1880. 


THE  CAUSE  OF  COLOR  AMONG  RACES,  AND  THE  EVO- 
LUTION OF  PHYSICAL  BEAUTY.  By  William  Sharpe, 
M.D.  New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1881. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Billings,  Harbourne 
&  Co. 

BORDER  STATES  OF  MEXICO.  A  complete  guide  for 
travelers  and  emigrants.  By  Leonidas  Hamilton. 
San  Francisco :  Bacon  &  Co.  1881. 

A  VILLAGE  COMMUNE.  A  Story.  By"Ouida."  Phila- 
delphia: J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co.  1881.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

MOTHER  MOLLY.  By  Frances  Mary  Peard.  New 
York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1880.  For  sale  in  San 
Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 


DRAMA   AND   STAGE. 


THE  PAST  MONTH  has  not  been  an  encouraging  one 
either  to  the  manager  or  the  theater-goer.  There  has 
been  a  complete  surrender  to  sensationalism,  without 
any  very  satisfactory  results.  A  round  of  gallery  plays, 
of  the  class  denominated  "strong,"  has  been  produced 
only  to  increase  the  managerial  debt  and  a  long  suf- 
fering public's  distrust.  On  the  one  hand  we  hear, 
"The  times  are  hard,"  "  The  people  are  too  poor ;"  on 
the  other,  ' '  It's  too  bad  ;  but  there's  really  nothing 
worth  going  to  see."  Here  is  a  difference  of  opinion, 
and  one  which  managers  would  do1  well  to  study.  In 
this  city  there  is  a  theater-going  population  of  twenty 
thousand  souls.  Many  towns  throughout  the  Union, 
whose  total  population,  all  told,  does  not  exceed  this 
figure,  give  regular  support  to  a  theater.  In  fact,  in  a 
small  place  intelligent  management  is  a  necessity — a 
condition  of  existence.  And  here  the  theater  has  sur- 
vived only  through  the  indulgence  of  a  public  who  have 
been  in  the  past  peculiarly  hospitable  to  dramatic  art. 
We  feel  it  perfectly  useless  to  expect  of  the  men  to 
whose  lot  it  has  fallen  to  manage  theaters  that  they 
should  do  so  from  any  high-art  stand-point.  We  have 
long  ago  given  that  up.  But  we  have  a  right  to  expect 
ordinary  business  sagacity,  and  that  the  managers  of 


San  Francisco  have  not  displayed.  Though  in  many 
respects  the  most  prosaic  of  mortals,  they  have  managed 
their  theaters  at  least  on  a  highly  emotional  plan.  Their 
managerial  life  has  been  a  series  of  blind  experiments. 
Conducting  their  business  on  no  fixed  principles,  they 
cannot  have  faith  in  themselves,  and,  having  no  faith  in 
themselves,  they  naturally  lose  faith  in  their  public. 
An  amusing  feature  of  this  is  that  they  feel  injured  if 
an  increased  outlay  does  not  immediately  bring  in  in- 
creased receipts.  They  have  omitted  from  their  calcu- 
lations one  important  element  that  enters  into  all  com- 
mercial transactions,  and  to  which  things  theatrical  are 
no  exception — credit.  They  have  cried  "wolf"  too 
often.  The  people  will  not  come.  Managers  complain 
that,  owing  to  the  geographical  isolation  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, they  are  cut  off  from  the  country  element  that 
does  so  much  to  fill  metropolitan  theaters.  It  does  not 
probably  occur  to  them  that  this  is  not  an  unmixed  evil. 
As  we  are  not  in  any  theatrical  circuit,  Eastern  man- 
agers will  readily  part  with  their  novelties  at  nominal 
prices.  Moreover,  they  have  only  to  wait  for  the  suc- 
cess of  a  play  in  London,  Paris,  or  New  York,  and 
they  are  partially  insured  against  failure  at  the  start. 
A  good  company  and  some  enterprise  would  make  the 


0  UTCR  OP  PINGS. 


rest  secure.  And,  above  all,  the  theaters  should  not, 
as  in  the  past  month,  be  subordinated  wholly  to  the 
public  taste.  The  public,  on  the  contrary,  should  be 
brought  to  look  up  to  the  theater  for  a  standard  and 
rule  of  criticism. 


THE  ADVENT  OF  Miss  ROGERS  as  a  star  (heaven 
save  the  mark!)  occasioned  a  new  programme  at  the 
Baldwin,  which  was  inaugurated  by  Mr.  A.  C.  Gunter's 
play  of  Two  Nights  in  Rome.  Miss  Mutton,  Daniel 
Rochat,  The  American  Lady,  and  The  Baffled  Beauty 
are  to  follow.  We  are  informed  by  the  management 
that,  owing  to  the  limited  engagement  of  Miss  Rogers, 
each  of  these  plays  is  restricted  to  a  week's  run.  Now, 
a  week  is  not  sufficient  for  the  adequate  rehearsal  of  a 
play.  We  are  not  prepared  to  say  that  any  amount 
of  rehearsal  could  save  The  American  Lady  and  The 
Baffled  Beauty.  But  Daniel  Rochat  is  a  gem,  and  de- 
serves better  treatment.  As  for  Mr.  Gunter's  play,  it 
has  been  so  much  discussed  and  criticised  already  that 
what  we  have  to  say  may  seem  almost  trite.  Two 
Nights  in  Rome  possesses  a  delusive  strength,  which 
comes  from  its  situations.  In  fact,  it  is  a  play  of  situa- 
tions. The  incidents  are  selected  not  to  illustrate  the 
dominant  idea,  if  it  can  be  said  to  have  a  dominant  idea, 
but  to  keep  up  a  certain  factitious,  unnatural  interest. 
Morever,  these  very  situations  are  deliberately  imported 
from  two  undeniably  strong  plays — Forget  Me  Not  and 
Diplomacy.  But  they  have  suffered  in  the  carriage. 
This  simple  recipe  for  writing  a  good  play — viz.,  bor- 
rowing from  successful  plays — would  seem  discouraging 
to  those  who  have  only  their  own  brains  to  draw  from, 
were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  this  offense  carries  with  it 
its  own  punishment.  Every  situation  has  its  appropriate 
surroundings,  which  are  necessary  to  its  full  effect.  This 


is  nowhere  more  clear  than  in  the  play  in  question.  The 
situation  of  Count  Orloff  in  the  great  trio  scene  in 
Diplomacy  is  truly  pathetic.  For  if  Orloff  had  known 
that  the  woman  whom  he  felt  had  betrayed  him  was 
his  friend's  wife,  not  only  would  he  have  been  silent, 
but  with  perfect  propriety  ;  whereas,  in  the  same  situa- 
tion in  Two  Nights  in  Rome,  Herr  Franz,  as  he  is 
strangely  styled,  has  the  sympathy  of  the  audience 
against  him  in  his  refusal  to  answer  when  put  to  the 
question,  for,  unpleasant  as  it  is  to  tell  a  man  that  he 
has  another  wife  living,  it  is  plainly  his  duty  to  do  so. 
To  settle  any  doubt  as  to  where  Mr.  Gunter  got  this 
situation,  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  the  similarity 
between  Herr  Franz's  leave-taking  of  Gerald  and  Count 
Orloff 's  of  Dora.  In  both  cases  they  give  a  complicated 
route  of  travel.  Of  course,  in  Orloff 's  case  it  was  very 
important  to  the  action  that  this  route  should  be  em- 
phasized, because  Dora's  knowledge  of  it  was  the  damn- 
ing circumstance  in  the  chain  of  evidence  against  her. 
Moreover,  it  was  quite  natural  that  Orloff,  a  proscribed 
fugitive  returning  to  the  land  of  his  proscription  under 
the  surveillance  of  Russian  spies,  should  explain  the 
route  by  which  he  would  elude  their  vigilance.  But 
why  Herr  Franz,  bound  on  almost  a  pleasure  trip,  and 
quite  safe  from  anybody's  interference,  should  give  the 
audience  the  benefit  of  every  projected  step  in  a  pro- 
posed route  of  travel,  the  development  of  Mr.  Gunter's 
story  did  not  show.  Even  the  very  actors  caught  the 
spirit  of  Diplomacy  in  Mr.  Gunter's  lines.  And  it  was 
not  their  fault  that  what  was  intensity  in  one  became 
bathos  in  the  other.  The  plagiarisms  from  Forget 
Me  Not  were  even  more  outrageous,  not  only  in  the 
central  idea  in  the  dressing  of  the  heroine,  but  in  the 
very  "business."  We  are  sorry  that  Mr.  Gunter,  who 
does  unquestionably  possess  dramatic  instincts,  should 
exhibit  such  literary  laziness  in  borrowing  from  others 
instead  of  relying  upon  his  own  powers. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


THE  DELIGHT  OF   MELANCHOLY. 
From  tlie  German  of  Goethe. 

Restrain  not, 
Restrain  not 

The  tears  of  unhappy  love. 
To  one  through  half-shed  tears 
How  empty,  how  dead,  the  world  appears  ! 
Restrain  not, 
Restrain  not 
The  tears  of  unhappy  lore. 

ALICE  GRAY  COWAN. 


ISLAND   PHANTOMS. 

Among  the  great  number  of  islands  on  the  coast  of 
Maine,  there  are  very  many,  which,  though  beautiful  and 
delightfully  located,  are  as  yet  unknown  to  those  who 
seek  the  rest  and  quiet  during  the  hot  months  not 
found  in  those  places  open  to  the  general  public,  where 
dress,  dancing,  and  the  hubbub  of  coming  and  going 
disturb  the  mental  as  well  as  the  physical  comfort  of 
the  seeker.  These  little  emeralds  of  the  sea  are  inhab- 


ited by  the  hardy,  homely,  honest  men  and  women 
whose  livelihood  is  gained  from  the  waters,  which,  in  a 
measure,  isolate  them  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  Their 
cottages  have  carpetless  floors  and  rude  furniture  for 
the  most  part,  but  are  models  of  neatness.  These  rug- 
ged, quaint -phrased  people  are  hospitable,  and  earnest, 
whether  it  be  in  the  pursuit  of  their  hard  and  danger- 
ous vocation,  or  in  telling  the  stranger  some  curious 
legend  connected  with  their  island  homes.  On  one  of 
these  islands,  and  among  these  people,  a  summer's  va- 
cation, which  I  shall  long  remember,  was  passed.  I 
roamed  at  will,  took  refreshing  naps  when  the  cool 
breezes  and  ceaseless  lapping  of  the  waves  lulled  me  to 
sleep,  and  once  met  with  an  adventure,  the  memory  of 
which  is  still  as  vivid  as  the  wild  scene  of  which  it  was 
a  part. 

I  wandered  one  afternoon  to  a  point  which  formed  a 
miniature  cape  on  one  side  of  the  island,  and,  seated 
high  up  on  the  rocks,  became  entranced  in  watching  a 
gathering  storm.  "Old  Mother"  Davis,  in  whose  neat 
little  cottage  I  had  been  sojourning  for  a  few  weeks, 
had  told  me,  in  her  own  homely,  but  expressive  way,  of 
the  terrible  fury  of  the  tempests  which  sometimes  visited 


382 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  locality.  I  knew  that  the  storm  would  soon  come, 
but  I  was  so  infatuated  with  watching  the  terrible  grand- 
eur of  the  scene  that  I  could  no  more  move  than  the 
paralytic  can  run  from  the  flames  burning  the  house 
over  his  head.  I  drank  in  a  strange,  weird  music  from 
the  trooping  waves  as  they  dashed  against  the  sharp, 
jagged  rocks  far  below  me.  I  saw  in  the  distance  specks 
of  the  white  sails  of  vessels,  watched  clouds  of  white 
sea-gulls  as  they  tirelessly  circled  about,  saw  the  sky 
growing  blacker  than  the  darkness  of  despair,  felt  the 
wind  growing  stronger,  knew  that  both  danger  and  dis- 
comfort attended  my  remaining,  but  resolved  to  stay. 
The  gulls  soon  began  to  disappear,  the  sullen  roar  of 
the  sea  became  almost  deafening,  the  muttering  thun- 
der grew  nearer,  zigzag  flashes  of  lightning  grew  more 
and  more  lurid,  and  the  wind,  now  a  giant  in  its  fury, 
compelled  me  to  sit  with  my  back  against  a  rock  to  pre- 
vent being  overblown.  The  rain  which  began  to  fall 
soon  drenched  me  to  the  very  bone,  but  the  gigantic 
fury  of  the  storm  now  prevented  me  from  moving  with- 
out risk  of  injury,  and  I  sat  watching,  listening,  and 
shivering.  To  me,  the  rolling  boom  of  the  thunder, 
the  blinding  flashes  of  lightning,  the  deep,  hoarse  roar 
of  the  sea,  suggested  the  storming  of  some  strong  for- 
tress at  night.  The  sensation  I  experienced  was  grand, 
terrible,  uncomfortable. 

I  had  sat  perhaps  an  hour  in  the  midst  of  this  strange, 
wild  scene  of  fury,  when  I  was  startled  at  hearing  a 
hoarse  voice,  which  sounded  above  the  raging  storm, 
shouting,  "Ahoy!  Ahoy!"  at  brief  intervals,  the  wind 
bearing  back  the  words  as  if  they  wished  to  mock  the 
strength  of  him  who  uttered  them.  Once  again  I  heard 
the  stentorian  shout,  and  thinking  I  might  be  the  ob- 
ject of  it,  was  about  to  return  it,  when  a  prolonged  flash 
came,  and  I  saw  on  the  rocks  below  a  stalwart  man, 
dressed  in  the  ever  present  "oil-skins"  which  constitute 
so  important  a  part  of  the  fisherman's  outfit.  He  stood 
at  an  angle,  so  that  I  saw  beneath  the  old  ' '  sou'-west- 
er,"  which  was  tightly  buttoned  under  his  chin,  a  deep- 
furrowed,  weather-beaten  face,  partly  covered  by  a  close- 
cropped,  iron-gray  beard,  and  which  bore  a  look  of 
mingled  defiance  of  the  storm  and  anxiety  for  some- 
thing out  o'n  the  seething  waters.  Several  times  that 
sonorous  shout  met  and  fairly  pierced  the  driving  tem- 
pest. I  did  not  answer  his  "hail,"  but  to  this  day  can 
assign  no  reason  for  my  silence. 

It  was  after  one  of  these  prolonged  shouts  that  I  saw 
approaching  a  light  boat,  her  tiny  sail  and  jib  down, 
and  driven  madly  on  by  the  storm  toward  the  very  spot 
where  stood  the  author  of  that  shout  which  had  so 
startled  me.  The  flashes  of  lightning  had  now  become 
almost  continuous,  the  peals  of  thunder  echoed  and  re- 
echoed till  my  ears  ached,  the  water  rushed  higher  up 
the  rocks  and  threw  its  salt  spray  in  my  face — still  I  re- 
mained inactive.  Soon  I  saw  again  the  frail  boat,  in 
which  was  a  supple  youth  vainly  trying  to  steer,  and 
clinging  to  the  mast  in  a  crouching  attitude  a  girl, 
whose  face,  blanched  with  terror,  I  could  see  was  as 
beautiful  as  an  artist's  ideal.  Now  I  saw  the  old  man 
walk  out,  firmly  maintaining  his  footing,  till  the  waves 
fairly  broke  over  his  shoulders.  I  saw  his  brawny  hands 
outstretched  to  grasp  the  bow  of  the  boat  driven  so  mad- 
ly toward  those  cruel  rocks.  I  saw  him  seize  it.  It 
seemed  to  pause  an  instant ;  then  the  lightning,  in  a 
chain-like  flash,  seemed  to  touch  the  tiny  mast,  the  girl 
fell  backward,  the  old  man  was  overborne ;  it  was  dark 
a  moment,  there  was  a  shriek,  a  grinding  of  the  little 
boat  on  the  rocks,  and  all  was  over. 


Though  I  saw  all  this,  it  was  enacted  while  I  was 
clambering  down  the  rocks,  and  when  I  reached  the 
spot  where  the  old  man  had  stood  I  forgot  my  lacerated 
hands,  bruises,  and  torn  clothes  ;  but  nothing  of  the  boat 
or  the  three  victims  of  the  storm  was  to  be  seen.  I  stood 
horror-stricken,  but  only  for  an  instant ;  for  I  saw  the 
body  of  the  girl  borne  toward  me  on  the  crest  of  a  terri- 
ble wave,  which  brought  it  to  my  feet.  Instantly  I 
seized  the  long  hair,  and  braced  myself,  that  I  might 
hold  fast  till  the  water  for  an  instant  receded,  when  I 
could  remove  it  to  the  rocks  above.  The  foamy  waters 
rushed  back;  then  came  a  sheet  of  flame,  a  terrific 
crash,  and  I  stood  petrified  with  fear,  grasping  only  a 
handful  of  slimy  sedge-grass,  while  far  out  on  the  waves 
I  heard  again  that  piercing  shriek  of  despair. 

How  long  I  stood  I  never  shall  know,  but  I  was 
finally  roused  from  my  lethargy  of  indefinable  fear  by  see- 
ing borne  toward  me  the  body  of  the  old  man,  and  on  a 
wave  beyond  it  the  dim  outline  of  another  form.  Again 
shaking  off  my  fear,  I  prepared  to  make  a  sure  grasp 
and  rescue  the  body  of  at  least  one  of  the  victims  of  the 
wrathful  storm.  At  my  very  feet  came  the  body.  I 
even  heard  the  dull  thud  produced  as  it  was  thrown 
against  the  rock  on  which  I  stood.  I  seized  with  all  my 
frenzied  power  upon  the  strong  oil-skin  jacket  which  he 
had  on.  Then  I  felt  the  waters  receding.  With  great 
difficulty  I  kept  my  feet,  and  held  firmly  to  the  coat.  A 
flash  of  lightning  came.  I  saw  far  out  on  the  waves 
three  bodies,  and  stood  there  holding  in  my  grasp  a 
monstrous  kelp-leaf.  Again  that  awful  shriek  rang  in 
my  ears.  Trembling  now  with  a  terrible  dread,  I  stood 
rooted  to  the  spot.  Soon  I  felt,  rather  than  saw,  that 
again  one  of  those  bodies  had  been  thrown  against  my 
feet.  Mechanically  I  seized  some  part  of  the  clothing 
on  it,  and  started  to  clamber  up  the  rough  rocks.  A 
flash  and  a  crash !  I  held,  alas,  only  an  old  piece  of 
rotten  canvas.  Yet  again  came  that  shriek,  and  I  saw 
three  bodies  tossed  by  waves  a  hundred  yards  from 
where  I  stood.  I  sat  down  on  a  jutting  rock. 

The  storm  was  passing  far  off  to  the  north  when  I 
roused  myself,  clambered  up  the  slippery  rocks,  and, 
dripping  wet,  hastily  started  for  "Mother"  Davis's  cot- 
tage. The  good,  kind  old  soul  first  laughed,  then  curi- 
ously shook  her  head  when  I  told  her  where  I  had  been 
during  the  tempest.  She  hurried  me  away  to  change 
my  clothes,  and  on  my  return  had  ready  for  me  one  of 
her  nice,  warm  suppers.  We  were  silent  during  the 
meal,  and  now,  though  years  have  passed  since  and  she 
is  quietly  sleeping  in  the  little  burial-lot  of  the  island,  I 
can  see  the  strange,  far-off  look  that  was  in  her  eyes. 
After  the  evening  work  was  done,  and  she  was  seated 
by  the  little  table  with  her  knitting,  I  told  her  of  my 
strange  experience,  and  she  told  me  in  her  quaint  way 
the  following  story : 

Fifteen  years  before  there  came  to  the  island  a  silent, 
gray  haired,  gray  bearded  man,  who  purchased  and 
fitted  up  luxuriously  a  fisherman's  cottage  and  lot. 
Soon  after,  he  brought  to  his  new  home  a  beautiful  boy 
and  a  wild-eyed  little  fairy  of  a  girl,  and  these  three 
constituted,  with  a  negro  woman,  who  cared  for  the 
house,  the  family.  The  children  always  addressed  the 
taciturn  man  as  father,  and  the  old  colored  woman  as 
"Massa  Cap'n,"  while  among  the  islanders  he  was 
known  as  "Skipper"  Ring,  except  when  they  spoke 
with  him,  and  then  he  was  called  Captain  Ring.  Over 
the  children  he  exercised  a  stern  care,  but  for  all  his  ap- 
parent harshness  he  was  as  tender  as  a  woman  with 
them.  As  they  grew  up  in  the  free  air  of  the  island 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


383 


they  became  more  and  more  beloved  of  all.  Yet  no  in- 
habitant ever  saw  the  inside  of  the  cottage  after  the 
family  took  up  their  abode  there,  nor  could  anything  be 
learned  from  either  the  children  or  the  otherwise  gar- 
rulous colored  woman,  as  to  their  previous  history,  or 
where  tney  came  from,  and  gradually  all  curiosity  died 
out.  One  day,  a  day  which  all  who  dwelt  on  the  island 
will  never  forget,  the  boy  and  girl,  who  were  inseparable 
companions,  took  the  light  sail -boat  which  the  old 
"skipper"  used  and  started  to  sail  round  the  island. 
During  their  absence  there  came  up  a  terrific  tempest, 
such  as  I  had  watched.  Some  of  the  people  saw  old 
"Skipper"  Ring  in  his  "bad-weather  rig"  going  to  the 
shore  where  he  kept  his  boat.  They  thought  no  more 
about  it  at  the  time,  but  next  day  it  was  recalled  to 
them  in  a  sad  way.  When  the  morning  came,  his  house 
was  not  to  be  seen.  The  little  community  soon  gath- 
ered about  the  spot.  Only  a  heap  of  smoldering  ruins 
remained,  amid  which  they  found  a  few  bones,  which 
they  gathered  up  as  the  only  remains  of  the  four  who 
had  lived  so  quietly  and  mysteriously  among  them. 
These  were  buried  next  day,  and  all  speculation  as  to 
the  cause  of  the  fire,  which  had  destroyed  life  and  home, 
led  to  one  opinion — lightning.  It  was  late  the  next  aft- 
ernoon, when  the  simple  people  were  again  thrown  into 
a  great  excitement  by  a  breathless  fisherman,  who  told 
them  that  on  the  point  he  had  found  three  dead  bodies, 
horribly  mangled,  and  the  splintered  remains  of  a  boat. 
Again,  the  community  was  gathered  to  witness  the  evi- 
dence, painful,  horrible  evidence,  of  death.  Thrown 
far  up  on  the  rocks  they  found  the  body  of  the  girl,  the 
features  marred  only  by  a  blue  stripe  from  the  top  of 
the  head,  continuing,  as  was  afterward  discovered,  the 
entire  length  of  the  body.  This  mark  and  the  condition 
of  the  corpse  showed  that  one  death  was  by  a  stroke  of 
lightning.  The  bodies  of  the  "Skipper"  and  the  boy 
were  horribly  cut  and  broken.  They  were  all  taken 
away  and  afterward  buried,  but  nothing  upon  their 
persons,  or  that  Could  be  discovered  about  the  ruins  of 
their  home,  ever  added  anything  to  the  knowledge  these 
simple  islanders  had  of  them. 

Every  time  one  of  these  north-east  storms  comes  up, 
the  islanders  say  the  scene  I  had  witnessed  is  reenacted. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  my  own  theory — that  the  house 
was  struck  by  lightning,  which  killed  the  old  negro 
woman,  and  burned  it  up  just  at  dark,  and  at  the  same 
time  with  the  death  of  old  "Skipper"  and 'the  chil- 
dren, as  I  saw  it  in  phantom  form  fifteen  years  later — 
is  the  correct  one.  As  to  who  the  people  were,  or  their 
antecedents,  I  have  no  theory.  A.  E.  MEIG. 


PLAN  OF    A  NOVEL. 

It  is  amusing  to  notice  such  a  statement  as  this, 
gravely  made  by  a  critic :  ' '  This  novel  is  out  of  the 
common  plan,  and  hence  is  refreshing.  It  is  a  too  gen- 
erally followed  idea  that  a  novel  is  not  a  novel  unless  it 
deals  with  the  inception,  trials,  and  final  happy  termi- 
nation of  love.  The  book  before  us  takes  up  the  life- 
history  of  its  principal  characters  at  the  real  beginning 
of  life — marriage.  Dating  from  that  epoch,  life  settles 
into  reality — the  reality  of  constant  affection,  or  bitter 
disappointment ;  human  nature  deepens  and  broadens ; 
the  sterner  stuff  of  which  men  and  women  are  made 
shows  itself;  hope  is  enlivened;  ambition  receives  an 
impetus;  thought  is  deeper,  application  more  sure,  and 
purpose  stronger ;  greater  and  better  things  are  accom- 


plished. It  is  time  that  novelists  should  understand 
these  things,  and  act  upon  them." 

There  a,re  not  many  critics  who  fail  to  fall  into  this 
error.  They  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  most  suc- 
cessful novels  have  been  those  which  followed  the  old 
plan.  There  is  reason  for  this  success,  and  philosophy 
in  it.  With  the  exception  of  critics,  scientists,  and  phi- 
losophers, who  are  supposed  to  occupy  the  highest 
plane  of  intelligence ;  and  the  most  ignorant  and  un- 
cultivated, who  occupy  the  lowest  plane  ;  the  former 
suppressing  sentiment  and  tender  feelings  by  habit  and 
force  of  mind,  as  being  superfluous  and  obstructive, 
and  the  latter  having  never  experienced  any  cultivation 
and  elevation  of  such  feelings — besides  these  two  classes 
are  the  mass,  the  heart,  the  core  of  the  people.  There 
is  a  strong  undercurrent  of  romance  and  sentiment  in 
these  persons.  It  was  developed  in  childhood  at  the 
mother's  knee  by  prayer ;  by  the  touching  story  of  Christ, 
or  the  mysterious  beginning  of  creation;  by  nursery 
rhymes  and  songs;  by  fairy  tales  and  The  Arabian 
Nights.  It  was  latent,  and  was  cultivated;  and  the 
cares  of  life  were  insufficient  to  suppress  it.  Further- 
more, the  unmarried  of  this  great  class  constitute  the 
mass  of  novel -readers.  Their  tenderer  feelings  have 
suffered  no  depression  from  business  troubles  and  anx- 
ieties. They  love,  and  love  envelops  them  in  a  halo  of 
romance.  They  sympathize  with  lovers.  People  are 
naturally  match-makers.  Nothing  is  more  natural. 

Such  persons  look  upon  marriage  as  the  most  impor- 
tant epoch  in  life,  and  doubtless  they  are  right.  In  a 
literary  composition  the  most  important  thing  is  climax. 
Reasoning  is  of  two  kinds — a  priori  and  a  posteriori. 
The  one  leads  up  to  a  climax,  and  the  other  from  it. 
But  logic  is  cold-blooded,  mathematical,  and  comes  en- 
tirely without  the  pale  of  the  subject  in  hand.  It  is  the 
lever  of  science,  and  the  lamp  of  philosophy.  It  has 
no  kinship  with  romance,  and  cannot  be  brought  to 
bear  on  story-writing.  The  most  important  epoch  in 
life  is  the  climax — marriage.  From  youth  to  marriage, 
that  is  the  ultimatum;  and  whatever  may  be  the  aim 
of  subsequent  life,  it  can  never  have  the  tenderness,  and 
fervor,  and  opening  up  of  better  and  purer  thoughts 
that  courtship  brings. 

The  novel,  then,  which  has  for  its  plan  love,  court- 
ship, obstacles,  and  a  final  happy  wedding,  is  the  plan 
that  appeals  to  the  great  human  heart.  W.  C.  M. 


A   LITTLE  LIFE. 

Lowly  there  bendeth 
A  waxen-white  lily, 

Deep  hid  in  the  grass ; 
Perfume  it  sendeth 
On  night-air  so  stilly 
To  lovers  that  pass. 

Honey  it  holdeth 

In  sun-brightened  hour 

For  vagrant  wild  bees; 
Beauty  enfoldeth 

This  dainty  white  flower 
O'ershadowed  by  trees. 

Blessings  it  giveth 

And  hints  of  meek  duty — 

It  cheereth  alway. 
Silent  it  liveth 

In  perfect,  sweet  beauty- - 
Then  passeth  away. 

JEAN  BARRY. 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


DOMINUS   REGNAT. 

MISERERE  NOSTRI,    DEUS. 

Daily  we  toil,  and  go  our  labored  way  ; 

And  daily  with  sore  pain  and  weariness, 

And  sad  distress, 

We  turn  us  to  the  heavens  dull  and  gray, 

And  moan,  and  pray, 

And  cry,  with  lifted  hands,  our  bitter  cry. 

And  then 

We  turn  us  back  again, 

Hopeless, 

In  pain, 

Scared  by  the  leaden  sky,  that  answers  not, 

And  moan,  "Hath  God  forgot?" 

The  bitter  cry 

Dieth  within  our  throats,  and  silently 

We  take  again  the  weight  of  toil  and  strife 

Upon  us  ;  and  the  day, 

The  woesome  day,  the  day  with  sorrow  rife, 

Wears  slowly  by. 

And  when  the  darkness  falls, 
Through  all  the  lonely  watches  of  the  night 
We  pray  the  morning  light 
May  hasten ;  for  the  fear 
Of  loneliness  is  on  us,  and  the  drear, 
Still  midnight,  with  a  hushed  and  bated  breath, 
Whispers  of  pain  and  death- 
Whispers  of  them  who  lie 
Where  the  sable  raven  calls, 
And  the  cease  and  end  of  life. 

DIXIT  INSIPIENS. 

And  then  we  sicken, 

And  the  place  that  knew  us  knoweth  us  no  more. 

And  then  we  die. 

And  the  stranger  passing  by 

Heareth  the  voice  of  mourning  in  our  door, 

And  seeth  the  sable  garments,  and  the  tears, 

And  seeth,  mayhap,  a  grief  that  hath  no  tears, 

But  turneth  stricken. 

And  the  scoffer  crieth  from  the  street,  "Aha ! 

Death  is  the  end  of  all — of  all — aha  ! 

He  trusted,  and  his  trust  was  vain  ; 

He  trusted,  and  the  reed  again 

Is  broken, 

Is  broken. 

To  eat,  and  drink,  and  have  no  care  is  best, 

And  the  dance  and  jocund  jest, 

And  the  wine-cup  and  the  song. 

Deus  non  est. 

Lo,  as  the  beasts  we  die, 

Or  the  grain  of  buried  corn ! 

And  the  grave  is  strong  and  deep. 

We  drink  to  the  grim  old  grave — 

To  the  yawning,  hungry  grave ; 

To  the  grave  and  endless  sleep. 

Death  is  the  end  of  all— of  all— aha !" 

.  RESURGAM. 

Is  it  as  naught  that  the  waving  grain 
Beareth  and  giveth  at  last  of  its  fruitage? 
Is  it  in  vain  that  the  dews  and  rain 
Have  fed  it,  and  all  the  summer  days 


With  tender  eye  hath  the  oving  sun 

Smiled,  as  a  mother  anear  her  babe — 

Smiled  and  looked  with  fruitful  gaze 

Upon  the  earth?    And  lo  ! 

A  wonder  the  corn-fields  know; 

And  the  husbandman  cometh  forth  from  the  village 

And  reapeth,  and  eateth,  and  is  made  glad : 

Is  it  in  vain? 

Nay,  it  is  not  in  vain  ! 

And  death? 

Nay !  not  for  the  reaper's  sickle, 
Nor  for  the  gleaner,  nor  the  threshing  floor, 
Groweth  the  corn  that,  full  and  overripe, 
Bendeth  to  earth.     For  this  it  lived  and  grew — 
For  this — that,  dying,  it  might  anew 
Give  life  and  strength  ;  and  evermore, 
Upon  the  earth, 
Should  death  and  birth 
Be  not  as  a  thing  of  chance  and  fickle. 
No  !  not  in  vain 
Liveth  and  dieth  the  grain. 
When  falleth  the  golden  corn 
It  liveth  again,  new-born 

JUBILATE  DEO. 

Gloria,  gloria  in  excelsis  ! 

The  scoffer  is  confounded  ! 

We  know  that  not  in  vain, 

Amid  our  pain, 

We  lifted  up  our  voices  ;  and  our  tears, 

Through  all  the  bitter  years, 

Were  wasted  not.     Again, 

Dawn  of  a  mighty  gladness  draweth  nigh. 

At  last,  at  last,  we  cry, 

Triumphant  through  the  years, 

Oh! 

Gloria,  gloria  in  excelsis ! 

Lo! 

Unto  earth 

A  hope  hath  birth, 

And  the  peace  of  God  and  pity  of  His  kiss. 

Cantet  mundus ! 
Jubilet  profundus ! 
Gaudeamus,  gaudeamus ! 
Te  Deum  laudamus ! 
Jubilate,  jubilate  Deo ! 

'Domine,  refugium  factus  es  nobis,  a  generatione  in 

generationem. 

Prinsquam  montes  fierent,  aut  formareter  terra  et  or- 
bis :  a  sseculo  et  usque  in  saeculum,  tu  es  Deus." 

J.  P.  WlDNEY. 


A  LETTER  FROM   SIAM. 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  recently  received 
from  a  well  known  citizen  of  San  Francisco,  now  mak- 
ing a  trip  around  the  world,  gives  a  glimpse  of  a  curious 
and  interesting  country  : 

BANGKOK,  SIAM,  January  i,  1881. 
On  the  29th  of  December,  at  8  p.  M. ,  our  ship  Dale, 
six  and  a  half  days  from  Hongkong,  dropped  anchor 
at  the  head  of  the  Gulf  of  Siam,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Bangkok,  or  Me-nam  River.  The  next  morning,  at 
6:30,  four  of  us  Americans  looked  out  of  the  port-holes 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


at  the  banks  of  the  river.  The  first  object  which  greet- 
ed me  from  this  land  of  the  lotus  was  a  wat,  or  temple, 
with  its  satellite prachidees  (kind  of  pagoda)  and  sdlds, 
or  disembarking  canopies.  The  tallest  prachidee  was 
ornamented  by  red  bands  or  rings.  The  wat  had  a 
green,  yellow-bordered  tile  roof,  with  the  convex  roof- 
combs.  All  was  white,  set  in  the  water  as  on  an  invisi- 
ble isle,  a  hundred  feet  from  shore  and  sixty  feet  away. 
Beyond  this  the  mangoes  limited  the  water,  and  above 
the  green  clustered  mango  rose  the  cocoa-nut  and 
arced,  or  betel-nut  palm.  A  half  mile  away  down  the 
river  a  high  stern  canoe,  paddled  by  a  dusky  pair,  fol- 
lowed the  line  of  the  river,  approaching  the  silent  wat. 
A  romantic  introduction  to  a  land  around  whose  very 
name  my  boyhood  fancy  had  clustered  thoughts  of  Ori- 
ental splendor  and  a  dreamy  Arcadian  existence. 

As  we  steamed  up  the  broad,  placid  river,  we  passed 
the  palm-leaf  huts  and  villages  of  the  natives,  and  the 
klongs,  or  creeks,  whose  still  waters  could  be  traced  a 
few  hundred  feet  beneath  the  overhanging  boughs  of 
the  tropical  trees.  At  the  mouths  of  some  of  these 
klongs,  which  are  the  highways  of  most  of  Siam,  were 
congregated  scores  of  canoes  filled  with  all  kinds  of 
tropical  fruits.  And  these  markets  afforded  us  a  fair 
glimpse  of  the  common  people  of  Siam.  Like  all  bar- 
barous and  Oriental  nations,  these  people  fancy  strik- 
ing colors.  Their  national  costume  is  the  pah  nung,  a 
three-foot  band  of  cloth  wound  around  the  waist,  the 
ends  twisted  together  in  front,  and  then  turned  between 
the  legs  and  tucked  within  the  waist  at  the  back,  form- 
ing a  sort  of  pantaloon  reaching  just  below  the  knees. 
The  women  also  usually  wear  a.  pah  home,  an  eigh teen- 
inch  strip  of  cloth  wound  around  over  one  shoulder  and 
under  the  other  arm,  the  end  thrown  over  the  left  shoul- 
der. The  women  of  the  wealthier  class  also  wear  a 
white  bodice,  shoes,  and  stockings.  The  dress  of  the 
market  people  was  of  scarlet,  crimson,  green,  brown, 
and  yellow,  and  many  of  them  wore  immense  palm-leaf 
hats,  flat-topped  and  basin  or  pan-shaped.  Here  and 
there  we  caught  glimpses  of  immense  paddy  fields  ex- 
tending into  the  far,  level  distance,  rimmed  by  the  ever 
present  palm  and  mango.  Orange  orchards  and  ba- 
nana yards,  mangosteens  and  betel  orchards,  vary  the 
interest  in  tropical  landscape.  Here  and  there  are 
streamers  of  red  and  of  white  floating  at  the  end  of  a 
bamboo  tied  to  a  tree-top,  and  through  the  openings  in 
the  foliage  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  wats  below.  At 
the  river  bank  the  landing  to  each  wat,  or  temple,  is  a 
canopy  with  seats,  called  scild,  and  occasionally  shaved 
priests,  in  their  long  yellow  robes,  are  seated  in  the 
sdlds,  laughing  and  chatting  the  happy  morning  away. 
At  about  10  A.  M.  our  vessel  cast  anchor,  and  we  were 
told  we  were  in  Bangkok.  An  hour  later  we  landed  at 
our  hotel,  on  the  river's  bank.  A  few  hundred  low, 
sharp-gabled  houses  on  the  water,  extending  a  mile  or 
two  up  and  down  the  river,  was  all  we  could  see,  except 
a  dozen  or  two  of  Italian  houses  in  large  lots  under  ex- 
tensive foliage — the  homes  of  the  foreigners.  We  met 
Colonel  Sickels,  ex-United  States  Consul,  who  kindly 
offered  to  show  us  the  sights  of  Bangkok,  and  invited 
us  to  visit  some  of  the  officials  with  him  when  he  should 
pay  his  farewell  visit  prior  to  his  departure  for  the  United 
States. 

After  tiffin,  which  we  enjoyed  (the  first  good  meal 
for  a  week ),  we  took  gharries  with  Colonel  Sickels,  and 
drove  a  mile  and  a  half  up  the  broad,  well  paved  street 
into  the  walled  city,  and,  after  a  short  delay,  we  were 
admitted  to  the  palace  ( the  same  where  Grant  was  en- 


tertained )  of  the  second  and  favorite  full  brother  of  the 
King.  The  Prince  received  and  greeted  us  cordially, 
inquired  our  impressions  of  Siam,  whence  we  came, 
of  the  weather  and  our  good  fortune  to  have  come 
at  this  time,  of  his  trip  to  India  with  the  King,  his  im- 
pressions, and  so  forth.  He  could  understand  some 
English,  but  spoke  through  an  interpreter.  He  offered 
cigars  and  tea,  and,  after  fifteen  minutes'  stay,  we 
shook  hand  and  bade  him  good-bye.  We  drove  thence 
to  the  royal  palace.  As  Mr.  Sickels  had  paid  his  fare- 
well visit  to  the  King,  he  thought  it  improper  to  call 
again ;  so  we  wandered  around  the  palace  grounds. 
These  are  about  thirty  acres,  inclosed  by  walls,  and 
containing  the  old  and  new  palaces,  barracks,  a  mu- 
seum building,  the  temple  of  the  sapphire  god,  four 
most  handsome  monumental  buildings  erected  to  the 
dead  king  of  this  reigning  dynasty,  the  building  used  as 
a  receptacle  of  the  royal  crown  and  heirlooms,  the  hoa 
tamma  sangwet  (sacred  resting  place),  where  royal 
bodies  await  the  time  of  cremation  after  death,  houses 
for  slaves,  and  stables  for  the  royal  elephants,  etc. 

We  inspected  nearly  all  these  buildings,  and  lingered 
among  these  places  for  some  time,  expecting  the  oppor- 
tunity of  seeing  the  King.  Finally,  a  bugle  sounded, 
three  hundred  soldiers  fell  into  line  and  guarded  the 
approaches  to  the  road  to  be  passed  by  the  King,  the 
royal  band  played  the  national  air,  and  shortly  after  fifty 
yellow-robed  priests  came  marching  down  the  way,  a 
dozen  attendants,  the  chair,  or  rather  seat,  on  the  golden 
platform  of  the  King,  borne  by  four  men  on  their  shoul- 
ders. A  white,  large  umbrella  was  raised  by  an  attend- 
ant or  two  over  the  King.  Two  of  his  children  sat  on 
the  platform.  Attendants  surrounded  the  platform  ; 
the  royal  gold  tea-pot  and  betel-box  were  borne  by 
slaves  ;  thirty  or  forty  princes  followed  the  King's  car 
on  foot,  many  having  their  tea-pots  and  betel-boxes 
borne  by  slaves.  Priests  closed  the  rear.  The  proces- 
sion disappeared  in  the  temple  of  the  sapphire  god  for 
a  half  hour.  We  awaited  its  return,  and  found  a  place 
only  a  few  feet  from  where  the  King  would  pass.  When 
the  King  came  out,  and  as  he  passed  us,  he  recognized 
and  politely  saluted  Mr.  Sickels,  so  we  had  a  good  view 
of  his  face.  He  is  a  good  looking,  small  young  man,  of 
about  thirty,  who  sits  erect  and  looks  a  king.  He  is 
greatly  respected  by  all  people  here  ;  has  made  innova- 
tions on  the  customs  of  his  people,  adopted  some  foreign 
improvements,  and  yet  has  retained  all  distinctive  of 
Siamese  usage.  He  was  on  his  way  to  inspect  the  mag- 
nificent building  wherein  his  deceased  favorite  wife 
and  child  are  to  be  cremated  next  March.  This  Queen 
fell  overboard  with  her  child  from  a  barge,  or  yacht,  on 
the  way  to  the  inland  palace.  None  of  the  attendants 
dared  to  rescue  them,  although  they  could  easily  have 
done  so,  from  religious  scruples  on  the  divinity  of  her 
person,  and  so  they  were  drowned.  Their  bodies  are 
deposited  in  two  immense  gold  urns  in  the  hoa  tam- 
ma sangwet  above  referred  to,  and  which  we  viewed 
with  much  interest,  both  an  account  of  the  strangeness 
of  their  use  and  their  purpose,  and  the  great  wealth  of 
gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones,  of  which  they  were 
composed  and  adorned.  Yellow-robed  and  begemmed 
priests  chant  their  doleful,  monotonous  prayers  day  and 
night,  and  impart  their  blessings  to  the  silver  ribbon 
which  leads  from  the  incense  pedestal  of  the  urns  to 
their  tops,  day  and  night.  Indeed,  this  was  a  regal 
resting  place,  and  with  knowledge  of  its  purpose,  its  si- 
lence, save  as  broken  by  the  priests'  chant,  and  the 
black,  pendent  drapery  which  circled  the  walls,  broken 


386 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


here  and  there  by  K  and  S  (King's  Sorrow),  touched 
the  heart  of  the  beholder  with  such  sadness  as  the  gen- 
uine mourning  for  the  dead  always  stirs. 

Yesterday,  with  our  guide,  Colonel  Sickels,  and  a  Mr. 
Bradley,  an  American  in  Siam  Government  employ- 
ment, we  visited  two  of  the  great  wats  of  Bangkok, 
Wat  Chang  and  Wat  Poh,  both  of  which  are  built  in 
the  Siamese  style  of  architecture,  both  original  and 
handsome.  In  the  latter  is  the  reclining  gilt  Buddha, 
one  hundred  and  sixty  feet  long,  by  which  our  distin- 
guished, but  ambitious,  fellow-citizen,  General  Grant, 
said  he  was  "impressed."  An  immense  four-sided 
building,  whose  walls  are  painted  in  scenes  illustrating 
the  events  of  Buddha's  ( Gautama )  life,  surrounds  this 
figure  of  Buddha  in  Nirvana.  I  must  confess  that  I  was 
"impressed"  by  the  size  of  this  figure,  but  there  is 
comparatively  little  to  command  one's  sense  of  awe  in 
any  reclining  figure. 

Down  the  river  by  a  four-chow  (  oared )  boat,  past  the 
hundreds  of  houses  floating  on  heaped  bamboo  rafts, 
past  the  betel  and  chunam  boats  and  hundreds  of  the 
chewers  of  betel  and  chunam  ( tumeric )  with  their  hid- 
eous black  teeth,  to  our  eighty-degree  hotel.  A.  R. 


IDA. 

She  sauntered  through  the  perfumed  air, 
Her  bonnet  dangling  from  its  strings; 

The  sunlight,  gleaming  on  her  hair, 
Seemed  like  the  gold  of  angels'  wings. 

As  down  the  dewy  path  she  tripped 
No  fresh-blown  daisy  nodding  there, 

Or  meadow-lily,  iris-tipped, 

Was  half  so  sweet  or  half  so  fair. 

Oh,  she  was  pure  as  is  the  chaste. 

Sweet  breath  of  morning,  as  it  creeps 

From  Night's  cold  arms,  that  have  embraced 
And  borne  it  o'er  his  icy  steeps. 

A  maiden  in  the  bloom  or  youth, 

A  type  of  purity  and  worth ; 
The  living  synonym  of  truth, 

The  sweetest  thing  that  treads  the  earth  ! 

The  breezes  fanned  her  as  she  went, 
Played  hide-and-seek  among  her  curls ; 

To  her  pale  cheeks  a  color  lent 

That  blended  roses  with  her  pearls. 

The  wild-flowers  crushed  beneath  her  feet 
With  subtile  fragrance  filled  the  air, 

And,  dying,  deluged  her  with  sweet 
Delicious  scents,  divinely  rare. 

But  this — ah,  this — was  years  ago, 

And  now  no  more  the  path  she  haunts; 

She  died  as  flowers  do  ere  they  blow, 
A  bud  of  hope,  despoiled  by  chance. 

ALVAH  PENDLETON. 


DOG  STORIES. 

"Speakin"  of  dogs,"  remarked  an  up-country  Assem- 
blyman as  he  dexterously  hit  a  mangy  yellow  dog  be- 
tween the  eyes  with  an  enormous  quid  of  exhausted  to- 
bacco, his  hearers  the  meanwhile  drawing  closer  to  the 
stove  ;  "speakin"  of  dogs,  thet  was  a  purty  good  yarn, 
Jake ;  but  I  reckin  none  o'  you  fellers  down  hyar  'roun' 
Sacramenty  hez  hearn  the  only  genuwine  up  an'  up,  out 


an*  out,  vertical  grain,  tongue-an '-groove  dog  yarn  thet 
I'm  about  to  motion  from  the  file  fer  immediate  action. " 

"Open  yer  head-gate,  Gunnel,  an'  let's  hev  it,"  beg- 
ged a  lobbyist  from  across  the  mountains. 

"The  wust  of  it  is,"  resumed  the  Colonel,  "that  it's 
gospel  truth." 

The  lobbyist  looked  faint,  and  a  low  moan  went  up 
from  a  weak-eyed  little  man,  who  cast  a  despairing  look 
upon  the  bar-keeper. 

"Yes,  sir — gospel  truth." 

Then  he  mused  a  moment,  and  came  slowly  to  his 
feet. 

"Mr.  Speaker — ah,  gentlemen,  I  should  hev  said. 
We  public  men,  yer  know — habit,  an"  all  thet  sort  o' 
thing,"  said  the  Colonel,  waving  his  hand  as  if  to  dis- 
pel the  momentary  embarrassment  caused  by  the  men- 
tal lapse,  after  which  he  proceeded : 

"Well,  I  tuck  the  Horn  fer  it,  an'  when  I  struck 
Frisco  I  didn't  lose  much  time  in  settin1  my  compass  fer 
the  mountings  fer  to  dig  gold.  Went  alone.  Been 
about  a  week  out  when  night  overtook  me  in  the 
mountings.  I  was  lost — lost  bad.  Ever  been  lost  in 
the  mountings?  No?  Well,  you  feel  lost  all  over — 
clar  through  an'  through.  I  was  aridin'  a  good  bronco, 
an'  the  moon  was  a  shinin'.  Purty  soon  I  see  a  dog. 
He  was  kind  o'  yaller  like,  an'  I  see  he  looked  lean 
and  starved. 

"  'Well,'  sez  I  to  myself,  feelin'  mighty  good  over  it, 
ez  I  wanted  to  reach  a  camp  and  tackle  some  grub, 
bein'  ez  how  I  hadn't  teched  a  mouthful  since  mornin' 
— 'well,'  says  I,  Til  foller  this  dog,  an'  he'll  take  me 
home  with  him. ' 

"I  called  to  him,  an'  whistled,  but  he  kind  o' 
slunk  back,  an'  looked  at  me  queer.  I  started  to- 
wards him.  He  just  scampered  off  a  little  ways, 
an'  when  I  stopped  he  stopped.  But  I  kep'  up  the 
lick.  I  follered  him.  He  would  run  a  little  ways  ahead, 
an'  then  stop  an'  look  at  me.  I  kep'  on.  I  hed  made 
up  my  min'  to  foller  thet  dog,  an'  I  did  foller  him. 
Stuck  to  him  all  night.  About  daybreak  he  kicked  up 
his  heels  an'  give  me  the  dirty  shake.  Left  me  to  starve 
in  the  mountings.  Well,  I  lost  all  faith  in  dogs.  I 
struck  a  camp  about  noon,  all  knocked  up.  When  I 
got  straightened  out  I  tol'  the  boys  the  racket  the  dog 
hed  played  on  me.  One  of  'em  looked  kind  o'  knowin', 
an'  axed  me  to  describe  the  animule,  which  I  done. 
Which  the  boys  then  laughed  an"  yelled  in  a  way  I 
didn't  like. 

"'Why,  you  dern  fool,'  said  one  old  chap,  'that 
warn't  no  dog.' 

"'What  was  it?'  sez  I. 

"He  tol'  me." 

"Well,  what  was  it?"  asked  the  little  man  with  weak 
eyes,  intensely  interested. 

"Coyote."        » 

A  painful  silence  followed  this  sad  disclosure.  It  was 
finally  broken  by  the  weak-eyed  little  man,  who  said : 

' '  Reminds  me  of  what  happened  right  here  in  this 
town  about  ten  years  ago.  I  was  in  the  fishing  busi- 
ness then.  I  had  several  lines  across  the  river.  One 
day  I  baited  a  line  with  fresh  meat.  That  line  carried 
about  forty  hooks — big  ones.  I  had  just  got  it  baited, 
and  left  it  a  laying  on  the  ground  till  I  got  the  boat. 
As  soon  as  my  back  was  turned  a  mangy  cur  gobbled 
one  of  them  baited  hooks.  The  hook  took  a  liking  to 
him  and  wouldn't  leave  him.  When  the  dog  see  he 
was  caught  he  raised  a  healthy  old  howl,  and  of  course 
that  fetched  every  dog  in  that  neighborhood.  The 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


387 


hooked  dog  started  on  a  dead  run,  a  dragging  the  line 
after  him.  Then  another  dog,  seeing  all  that  fine  meat 
a  going  to  destruction,  surrounded  one  piece  with  his 
individual  carcass.  The  hook  froze  on  to  him.  Then 
the  other  dogs  snailed  on  to  the  bait  until  there  was 
forty  dogs  on  that  line.  Then  the  circus  commenced. 
Every  dog  had  his  own  private  inclinations  as  to  the  place 
he  wanted  to  visit  next.  Such  a  tearing  and  fighting 
has  never  been  approached  in  modern  times.  They  fell 
on  to  each  other,  and  bit  and  tore.  At  last  they  took 
up  the  street  at  a  furious  rate,  knocking  people  down, 
tripping  on  the  line,  rolling  themselves  over  and  over, 
and  being  dragged  by  the  other  dogs.  Pretty  soon  the 
citizens  were  aroused  by  the  infernal  clatter ;  the  Leg- 
islature took  a  recess,  thinking  the  levee  had  busted. 
The  whole  town  turned  out  with  clubs,  pistols,  and  shot- 
guns, and  finally  killed  the  dogs — not  to  mention  two  or 
three  policemen,  and  three  or  four  assemblymen." 

The  silence  on  this  occasion  was  so  depressing  that 
the  Colonel,  with  badly  shattered  nerves,  looked  meekly 
around  upon  the  assemblage,  and  faintly  asked : 

"What'll  yer  take,  gentlemen?" 


A  RURAL  RHYMER  DARES  FATE. 

0  Spring  ! 

1  sing. 

And  perhaps  some  o'  you  editorial  fellows  don't  like  this  sort 

of  thing ; 
But  I  do,  and  I'm  going  on  with  the  racket,  if  it   kills  me, 

by  jing. 

You  talk  about  kicking  Spring  poets  down  stairs. 
And,  where  police  are  plenty,  you  put  on  airs; 
But  I  dare  you  to  come  out  along  the  flowery  mead, 
Where  no  stars  of  interruption  can  illuminate  the  deed, 
Where  you  can  have  a  chance,  if  your  valor's  true,  to  show  it 
By  a  rough-and-tumble  tussel  with  a  simple  rural  poet. 
I  shame  myself,  however, 

That  I  offer  you  the  chance, 
I  am  forty  times  too  clever 
To  a  duelist  of  France — 
Of  those  popping  desperadoes 
Who  go  to  fight  with  toys, 
And  return,  unhurt  bravadoes, 
Like  a  tournament  of  boys. 

O  Spring,  sweet  season  of  the  frog, 
The  toad,  and  eke  the  pollywog  ! 
Season  of  grass  and  garden  sauce, 
How  should  we  suffer  in  thy  loss — 
Thy  eternal  loss!    Ah,  we  would  die. 

The  scurvy  would  assail  us  one  by  one. 
We  couldn't  escape  it — ah,  no  need  to  try— 
We  would  be  everlastingly  undone. 
Come,  then,  sweet  Spring, 

Kick  Winter  from  your  lap, 
And  hear  me  sing, 
And  watch  me  swing 

My  storm-worn,  tattered  cap 

Among  the  early  blowing  of  the  blooms ; 
For  never  maid  was  fairer 
In  a  season  brighter,  rarer, 
Than  thou  art,  pretty  maiden, 
With  thy  bosom  blossom  laden 

In  odor  of  the  orchard  when  it  booms. 

There,  now,  dern  your  miserable  skin, 

If  you  don't  like  that,  come  out,  put  up — 
I  mean  your  hands.     Don't  fall  back  on  chin. 

Come  out  with  a  gun — a  Galling  or  a  Krupp; 
But  come  out  far  enough  so  you  can't  halloo, 

"Police  !  Police!" 
To  come  and  arrest  a  fellow 

And  "keep  the  peace."  G. 


A  STRANGE  INDICTMENT. 

It  is  not  unfrequently  the  case  that  lawyers  are  better 
informed  in  law  and  in  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages 
than  in  plain  old-fashioned  English.  Having  become 
acquainted  with  legal  terms,  they  use  them  indiscrimi- 
nately, frequently  in  profound  ignorance  of  the  sub- 
tile meaning  of  such  terms.  Sometimes  they  make 
glaring  blunders  in  the  use  of  simple  and  familiar  ex- 
pressions. One  law  firm  has  printed  blanks  for  deeds, 
commencing  thus : 


"THIS  INDENTURE,  made  the  .  .  . 
in  the  year  A.  D.  one  thousand,"  etc. 


.    day  of  . 


It  can  only  be  inferred  that  they  are  ignorant  of  the 
meaning  of  the  abbreviatons,  "A.  D." 

The  district  attorney  of  an  interior  county  has  filed 
an  information  of  murder,  from  which  the  following  re- 
markable extract  is  taken : 

"  .  .  .  .  That  the  said  A.  B.  did  willfully,  malicious- 
ly, and  with  malice  aforethought,  assault  the  person  of 
the  said  X.  Y.  with  a  deadly  weapon,  to  wit,  a  knife, 
and  then  and  there  did  willfully,  maliciously,  and  with 
malice  aforethought,  cut  and  stab  said  X.  Y. ,  and  then 
and  there  did  inflict  upon  X.  Y.  one  mortal  wound,  of 
which  wound  the  said  X.  Y.  did  die  contrary  to  the 
force  and  effect  of  the  statute  in  such  cases  made  and 
provided,  and  against  the  peace  and  dignity  of  the  Peo- 
ple of  the  State  of  California." 

It  would  seem  that  it  is  an  abnormally  sensitive  peo- 
ple which  takes  affront  at  a  man  for  dying. 


COLLEGE    RECOLLECTIONS    AND    STORIES. 

Under  the  above  head  The  Harvard  Register  for  Feb- 
ruary has  the  following : 

'Tis  thirty  years  since,  and  more,  too.  The  story  ran 
through  the  newspapers  at  the  time — but  perhaps  it  may 
be  new  to  your  readers,  and  so  I  will  venture  to  give  it, 
as  I  was  "there." 

Samuel  M.  Felton  (1834)  was  the  leader  of  the  party, 
which  comprised,  among  others,  C.  C.  Felton  ( 1827), 
John  B.  Felton  (1847),  Thomas  Hill  (1843),  Arnold 
Guyot,  Louis  Agassiz,  Benjamin  Peirce  (1829),  and 
Alexander  Agassiz  (1855),  then  a  boy  not  knowing  a 
word  of  English,  and  armed  with  a  muslin  bag  on  the 
end  of  a  pole,  to  catch  butterflies — with  which,  boy  as 
he  was,  he  was  quite  well  acquainted. 

While  we  waited  at  South  Acton  for  an  express  train, 
Agassiz  saw  a  butterfly,  and,  having  no  net  himself, 
called,  "Alexe,  vite !  beau  papillon!"  and  the  game 
was  soon  bagged.  A  moment  afterward  S.  M.  Felton 
kicked  over  a  large  chip,  and  saw  a  huge  beetle  under 
it.  Thinking  it  might  be  valuable,  he  called  to  the  boy, 
"Alexe,  beau  papillon  !"  When  he  came  up,  his  merry 
laugh  at  finding  a  beetle  called  a  fine  butterfly  was  in- 
fectious, and  none  laughed  more  heartily  than  the  one 
who  had  audaciously  ventured  on  the  misnomer.  From 
that  moment,  "un  beau  papillon"  was  the  watchward 
of  the  party,  and  every  living  thing  which  we  thought 
Agassiz  could  possibly  like  to  take  to  his  '^toad  factory 
on  the  Charles,"  as  his  incipient  museum  was  called, 
was  named,  in  as  good  French  as  we  could  master,  a 
fine  butterfly. 

We  came  to  Bethlehem,  N.  H.,  and  in  going  up  a 
long  hill,  approaching  from  Littleton,  we  all  got  out 


388 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


and  walked  except  C.  C.  Felton,  who  remained  with  the 
driver,  on  the  box.  As  we  walked  up  the  hill,  running 
here  and  there,  sweeping  with  the  muslin  net,  turning 
over  logs  and  stones,  pouncing  on  frogs,  etc.,  the  driver 
said  to  Professor  Felton  : 

"  Who  are  these  men  you  have  with  you  ?  " 
"Oh,"  replied  he,  "they  are  a  set  of  naturalists  from 
an  institution  near  Boston." 

In  the  stage  was  a  man  not  of  our  party.  He  walked 
solemnly  up  the  hill  in  front  of  us.  He  had  preserved 
from  his  entrance  into  the  stage,  a  dozen  miles  back,  a 
profound  silence  and  a  very  austere  countenance,  min- 
gled with  melancholy.  Suddenly  he  was  observed  to 
take  off  his  hat,  make  various  frantic  swoops  therewith, 
and  finally,  as  the  butterfly  rose  over  a  clump  of  tall  al- 
ders, he  sprang  high  in  the  air  after  it,  making  a  last  des- 
perate swoop  with  his  hat,  and  screaming,  for  the  first 
time,  the  watch  ward,  "Beau  papillon!"  at  the  top  of 
his  lungs  and  top  of  his  compass.  At  that  moment  the 
down  stage  met  ours,  and  as  they  passed  they  both  stop- 
ped an  instant.  The  other  driver  gazed  down  the  hill 
in  astonishment,  and  said  : 

"What  sort  of  a  lively  freight  have  you  there?" 
Our  driver,  leaning  over,  answered  in  a  loud,  confi- 
dential whisper : 

"They  are  a  set  of  naturals  from  the  asylum  near 
Boston.  Their  keeper  just  told  me  so." 

The  next  day  Peirce  and  Agassiz  were  together  on  the 
shores  of  Echo  Lake.  The  latter  had  borrowed  his 
boy's  net,  and  was  interested  to  catch  a  particular  species 
of  dragon-fly.  The  two  friends  had  separated  a  few 
paces,  when  Peirce  saw  one  of  the  coveted  dragon-flies, 
and,  in  his  eagerness  to  have  it  secured,  called  it  by  the 
name  which  he  had  heard  it  called  in  his  boyhood : 

"Here,  Agassiz,  quick  !  Here's  one  of  those  devil's- 
needles." 

At  that  moment  he  became  aware  that  the  melan- 
choly man  of  the  day  before  was  close  behind  him.  The 
austere  man,  as  if  to  rebuke  Peirce  for  using  a  word  bor- 
dering, in  his  mind,  on  profanity,  asked  in  the  most 
solemn  and  deliberate  manner : 

' '  Sir,  can  you  tell  me  the  proper  botanical  designation 
of  that  insect?" 

And,  for  the  rest  of  the  time  that  our  party  was  to- 
gether, we  could  not  say  "proper  name"  or  "real 
name. "  The  fascinating  absurdity  of  ' '  botanical  desig- 
nation" was  applied  to  every  kind  of  subject  and  object. 


MORE  ABOUT  CRITICISM. 

Nature  is  self-accommodating  to  surroundings.  In 
localities  where  severe  storms  and  winds  abound,  the 
trees  are  gnarled,  knotty,  and  strong.  If  by  chance, 
a  tree  of  tall  and  slender  growth  finds  its  way  into  such 
a  locality,  it  is  destroyed  before  it  arrives  at  maturity. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  elaborate  on  this  proposition.  Ev- 
idence establishes  it.  It  is  an  accepted  fact.  Among 
men  there  is  the  operation  of  the  principle :  no  man  can 
successfully  prosecute  an  undertaking  for  which  he  is 
not  in  some  manner  qualified. 

A  writer  vrho  has  not  in  his  nature  that  self -conscious- 
ness of  power  that  places  him  above  and  beyond  the 
discouraging  effect  upon  him  of  adverse  criticism,  was 
not  intended  for  a  writer,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he 
lacks  independence  and  self-reliance.  If  a  young 
writer  drops  his  pen  on  account  of  adverse  criticism,  he 


has  done  the  wisest  thing  in  his  power.  Conviction  is 
bravery — the  bravery  of  right.  No  battle  was  ever 
fought  without  opposition.  It  is  nerve  and  power  that 
win  the  victory.  Frequently  it  is  a  persistent  renewal 
of  the  attack  after  repeated  defeats.  Writers  are,  in  a 
certain  sense,  leaders.  A  leader,  without  the  requisite 
qualities  of  a  commander,  deserves  to  be  thrust  aside 
for  one  of  better  nerve.  The  theory  of  demand  and 
supply  is  the  theory  of  nature.  The  theory  of  supply 
and  demand  is  subordinate,  changeful,  and  political. 
It  is  the  latter  theory  under  which  the  young  writer  pro- 
ceeds, for  his  work  is  political.  When  his  popularity 
becomes  established,  the  former  theory  operates.  He 
sustains  the  latter;  whereas  the  former  sustains  him. 
To  bear  a  thing  requires  more  nerve  than  to  be  borne 
by  a  thing. 

Furthermore,  that  writer  who  prefers  the  silence  of 
critics  to  their  condemnation  places  himself  in  a  humil- 
iating attitude.  It  is  a  self -consciousness  of  lack  of 
power.  It  is  the  number  of  sales  a  writer's  authorship 
effects  that  establishes  his  popularity.  F. 


THE  CONTENTED  FARMER. 

Once  upon  a  time,  Frederick,  King  of  Prussia,  sur- 
named  "Old  Fritz,"  took  a  ride,  and  espied  an  old 
farmer  plowing  his  acre,  cheerily  singing  his  melody. 

"You  must  be  well  off,  old  man,"  said  the  King. 
' '  Does  this  acre  belong  to  you  on  which  you  so  indus- 
triously labor?" 

"No,  sir,"  replied  the  farmer,  who  knew  not  that  it 
was  the  King.  "  I  am  not  so  rich  ;  I  plow  for  wages." 

"How  much  do  you  get  a  day?"  asked  the  King. 

"Eight  groschen,"  said  the  farmer. 

"That  is  not  much,"  replied  the  King.  "Can  you 
get  along  with  this?" 

"Get  along  and  have  something  left." 

"How  is  that?" 

The  farmer  smiled,  and  said:  "Well,  if  I  must  tell 
you.  Two  groschen  for  myself  and  wife ;  and  with  two 
I  pay  my  old  debts  ;  two  I  lend  away ;  and  two  I  give 
away  for  the  Lord's  sake." 

"This  is  a  mystery  I  cannot  solve,"  replied  the  King. 

"Then  I  will  solve  it  for  you,"  said  the  farmer.  "  I 
have  two  old  parents  at  home,  who  kept  me  when  I  was 
weak  and  needed  help ;  and  now  that  they  are  weak 
and  need  help,  I  help  them.  This  is  my  debt,  toward 
which  I  pay  two  groschen  a  day.  The  third  pair  of 
groschen,  which  I  lend  away,  I  spend  for  my  children, 
that  they  may  learn  something  good,  and  receive  a 
Christian  instruction.  This  will  come  handy  when  I 
and  I  my  wife  get  old.  With  the  last  two  groschen  I 
maintain  two  sick  sisters,  whom  I  would  not  be  com- 
pelled to  keep.  This  I  give  for  the  Lord's  sake." 

The  King,  well  pleased  with  his  answer,  said: 

"Bravely  spoken,  old  man.  Now  I  will  give  you 
something  to  guess.  Have  you  ever  seen  me  before?" 

"Never,"  said  the  farmer. 

"In  less  than  five  minutes  you  shall  see  me  fifty  times, 
and  carry  in  your  pocket  fifty  of  my  likenesses." 

"This  is  a  riddle  I  cannot  unravel,"  said  the  farmer. 

"Then  I  will  do  it  for  you,"  replied  the  King. 

Thrusting  his  hand  into  his  pocket,  and  counting  him 
fifty  brand  new  gold  pieces  into  his  hand,  stamped  with 
his  royal  likeness,  he  said  to  the  astonished  farmer,  who 
knew  not  what  was  coming : 

"The  coin  is  genuine,  for  it  also  comes  from  our 
Lord  God,  and  I  am  His  paymaster.  I  bid  you  adieu." 


THE  CALIFORNIAN. 


A   WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  III.— MAY,  1 88 1. —  No.  17. 


THE    MONROE    DOCTRINE   AND   THE    ISTHMIAN 

GANAL. 


There  is  no  subject  more  deserving  of  judi- 
cious consideration,  and  which  challenges,  in 
a  higher  degree,  fair  and  impartial  treatment, 
than  one  growing  out  of  those  rules  and  regu- 
lations which  govern  nations  in  their  intercourse 
with  each  other,  or  out  of  those  principles  which 
guide  a  single  nation  or  people  in  its  own  de- 
velopment. 

We  are  never  more  susceptible  to  the  influ- 
ence of  prejudice  or  bias  than  when  considering 
a  great  question  in  which  our  own  country  is 
interested,  and  of  which,  as  with  the  one  before 
us,  she  has  been  the  originator  and  most  con- 
spicuous advocate. 

When  we  recall,  for  instance,  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  or  any  other  monument  of 
liberty  and  progress,  we  instinctively  feel  a  thrill 
of  exultation  which,  unless  guarded  against,  un- 
consciously incapacitates  us,  to  some  extent, 
for  that  serene  temper  necessary  to  the  just  ap- 
preciation of  the  subject. 

Sir  James  Mackintosh  rose  to  the  highest 
reach  of  this  desirable  mental  condition,  and 
indicated  in  glowing  words  the  broad  and  ele- 
vated ground  upon  which  inquirers  after  truth 
in  such  matters  should  place  themselves.  In 
closing  his  introduction  to  a  course  of  lectures 
delivered  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Hall,  on  the  law-  of 
nature  and  of  nations,  he  said  : 

"  I  know  not  whether  a  philosopher  ought  to  confess 
that,  in  his  inquiries  after  truth,  he  is  biased  by  any 
consideration,  even  the  love  of  virtue  ;  but  I,  who  con- 
ceive that  a  real  philosopher  ought  to  regard  truth  itself 


chiefly  on  account  of  its  subserviency  to  the  happiness 
of  mankind,  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  I  shall 
feel  a  great  consolation,  at  the  conclusion  of  these  lect- 
ures, if,  by  a  wide  survey  and  exact  examination  of  the 
conditions  and  relations  of  human  nature,  I  shall  have 
confirmed  but  one  individual  in  the  conviction  that  jus- 
tice is  the  permanent  interest  of  all  men  and  of  all  com- 
monwealths. To  discover  one  new  link  of  that  eternal 
chain  by  which  the  Author  of  the  Universe  has  bound 
together  the  happiness  and  the  duty  of  his  creatures, 
and  indissolubly  fastened  their  interests  to  each  other, 
would  fill  my  heart  with  more  pleasure  than  all  the  fame 
with  which  the  most  ingenious  paradox  ever  crowned 
the  most  ingenious  sophist." 

Aside  from  the  bias  referred  to,  the  impor- 
tance of  this  subject  is  also  worthy  of  prelimi- 
nary remark.  Our  position  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth  is  no  longer,  if  it  ever  was,  an  iso- 
lated one.  Our  rapidly  increasing  population 
and  the  prodigious  development  of  our  resources 
render  us,  as  a  nation,  more  and  more  conspic- 
uous. Twenty  years  ago  we  had  thirty  millions 
of  inhabitants ;  now  we  number  fifty  millions. 
Twenty  years  hence  the  present  population  may 
be  doubled.  Probably  before  that  time  not  only 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  other  tenets  peculiar 
to  our  system,  will  have  been  not  merely  an- 
nounced, but  asserted  with  vigor  and  effect. 
Principles  and  doctrines  essential  to  us,  which, 
in  the  soil  of  theory,  have  attained  luxuriant 
growth,  may  in  the  near  future  be  put  to  the 
severest  practical  test. 

In  the  councils  of  the  world  we  are  destined 
to  have  a  voice,  while  we  are  bound  by  every 


Vol.  III.—  25.      [Copyright  by  THE  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors.] 


39° 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


sentiment  of  national  honor  and  pride  to  teach 
and  encourage  by  our  example  the  rising  re- 
publics of  the  western  continent. 

We  cannot,  without  humiliating  retrogres- 
sion, shirk  the  duty  of  maintaining,  with  that 
dignity  and  resolution  becoming  a  great  com- 
monwealth, our  position  as  the  first  of  the  re- 
publics of  the  New  World,  and  one  of  the  first 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

In  order  to  appreciate  still  further  this  sub- 
ject and  its  growing  importance,  an  allusion  to 
the  intellectual  and  moral  conditions  of  Ameri- 
ca, in  certain  respects,  may  not  be  unprofita- 
ble. These  have  always  been  propitious  for  the 
growth  and  development  of  ideas.  Even  the 
discovery  of  America  was  the  result  of  an  idea 
rationally  conceived  and  tenaciously  adhered 
to  in  spite  of  contradiction  and  ridicule.  Here 
also  ideas,  uprooted  as  noxious  in  the  Old 
World,  have  been  freely  planted  and  cultivated: 
Nearly  every  colony,  from  Massachusetts  Bay 
to  Georgia,  brought  its  peculiar  idea  of  civil  or 
religious  liberty,  or  both,  which  it  came  here  to 
develop  and  enjoy.  The  names  of  Oglethorpe, 
Lord  Baltimore,  William  Penn,  and  others,  are 
significant  of  those  ideas.  But  the  greatest 
of  these  was  that  of  liberty  and  equality  ex- 
pressed on  that  memorable  occasion,  when, 
for  the  first  time,  the  object  of  the  "civil  body 
politic"  was  announced  as  "to  enact,  consti- 
tute, and  frame  such  just  and  equal  laws,  or- 
dinances, acts,  constitutions,  and  offices,  from 
time  to  time,  as  shall  be  thought  most  meet  and 
convenient  for  the  general  good  of  the  colony." 
This  was  the  first  written  constitution  of  gov- 
ernment in  human  history,  and  the  corner-stone 
of  the  American  Republic, 

These  ideas,  thus  planted,  have  at  last  found 
their  highest  expression  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  the 
Thirteenth  Amendment. 

There  is  a  material  distinction  between  the 
civilizations  of  Europe  and  America  which  it  is 
important  in  this  connection  also  to  consider. 
In  some  respects  they  are  alike,  in  others 
radically  different.  Both  have  access  to  the 
same  fountains  of  knowledge.  They  profess 
the  same  religion,  and  study  the  same  philos- 
ophies. We  find  in  our  system  no  objection 
to  adopting  and  assimilating  whatever  excel- 
lence in  literature,  whatever  advancement  in 
science,  whatever  refinement  or  polish,  Euro- 
pean society  may  produce.  But  we  have  no 
sympathy,  and  never  can  have,  with  the  harsh 
principles  of  government,  or  rather  of  mastery 
over  the  governed,  which  sustain  the  mon- 
archies of  Europe,  which  infringe  the  rights  and 
check  the  progress  of  mankind.  All  those  doc- 
trines were  left  in  the  Old  World  by  the  settlers 


of  the  New,  and  every  attempt  by  the  mother 
countries  to  introduce  them  here  has  met  with 
resistance  and  final  defeat.  Any  idea  of  liberty 
planted  in  Europe  is  at  once  repressed  by  the 
weight  of  those  doctrines  of  government  which 
are  established  to  strengthen  certain  dynasties 
and  tighten  the  fetters  of  mankind.  In  the  New 
World  the  influences  are  the  reverse.  Hence, 
America,  by  her  example  and  her  hospitality  to 
the  oppressed  of  other  nations,  has  done  more 
to  relieve  and  succor  the  world  in  one  century 
than  Europe  has  done  in  a  millennium.  While 
it  is  not  just  to  say  that  Europe  makes  no  prog- 
ress toward  popular  government,  it  must  be 
conceded  that  European  advancement  in  that 
respect  is  almost  fatally  impeded.  It  resem- 
bles the  imperceptible  movement  of  the  glacier, 
while  that  of  America  is  like  the  rapid  river. 
America,  therefore,  is  the  true  field  to  which 
the  world  must  resort  for  the  cultivation  of 
those  ideas  of  government  which  give  the  gov- 
erned their  choice  as  to  who  shall  wield  the 
governing  power  and  assure  them  the  greatest 
security  consistent  with  the  least  restraint.  The 
duty,  therefore,  of  preserving  those  influences 
uncontaminated  is  peculiarly  cast  upon  Amer- 
ica. 

With  these  preliminary  observations  we  ap- 
proach the  subject  under  consideration.  It 
naturally  divides  itself  into  three  parts  : 

First.  The  origin  and  history  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine. 

Secondly.  The  principles  it  involves. 

Thirdly.  Is  it  applicable  to  the  Isthmian 
Canal? 

FIRST. — The  origin  and  history. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  was  first  formally 
enunciated  in  1823,  when  Spain  sought,  through 
the  Holy  Alliance,  to  resubjugate  her  rebellious 
American  colonies.  Previous  to  that  time,  in 
the  year  181 5,  a  league  had  been  formed  at  Lay- 
bach  by  the  sovereigns  of  Russia,  Austria,  and 
Prussia,  called  the  "Holy  Alliance" — a  name 
given  it  by  Alexander  of  Russia.  Its  ostensible 
object  was  to  regulate  the  relations  of  the  States 
of  Christendom  by  the  principles  of  Christian 
charity,  but  its  covert  and  real  purpose  was  to 
preserve  the  power  and  influence  of  existing 
dynasties.  Most  of  the  other  European  pow- 
ers acceded  to  it,  and  the  treaty  was  formally 
published  in  the  Frankfurt  Journal,  February 
2,  1816. 

The  doctrines  avowed  in  this  treaty  were 
that  the  high  contracting  parties  had  the  right 
to  interfere  in  the  concerns  of  another  State, 
and  reform  its  government  in  order  to  prevent 
the  effect  of  its  bad  example.  By  this  bad  ex- 
ample was  meant  the  example  of  free  govern- 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  AND   THE  ISTHMIAN  CANAL.        391 


ment,  or,  as  expressed  by  Mr.  Lincoln  at  Get- 
tysburg, "government  by  the  people,  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  for  the  people? 

In  the  fall  of  1822,  the  allied  powers  held  a 
Congress  at  Verona  on  the  principles  previ- 
ously laid  down  at  Laybach.  The  great  con- 
sideration was  the  condition  of  Spain,  that 
country  being  then  under  the  government  of 
the  Cortes.  The  question  was  whether  Ferdi- 
nand should  be  reinstated  in  all  his  authority 
by  the  intervention  of  armed  force.  Russia, 
Prussia,  France,  and  Austria  were  inclined  to 
that  measure,  but  England  dissented  and  pro- 
tested. 

That  course  was,  however,  finally  agreed 
upon,  and  it  was  further  determined  "to  under- 
take an  effective  crusade  for  the  suppression, 
throughout  Europe  and  her  dependencies  in 
America,  of  what  those  styling  themselves  the 
friends  of  order  regarded  as  a  recrudesence  of 
the  destructive  revolutionary  ideas  of  1789." 
Austria  agreed  to  prosecute  the  work  in  Italy, 
and  France  the  work  in  Spain. 

The  armies  of  Austria  were  therefore  march- 
ed into  Italy  to  put  down  the  liberal  movement 
in  Piedmont  and  Naples.  In  the  spring  of 
1823,  a  French  army  was  sent  into  Spain.  It 
was  hailed  with  rejoicing  by  the  priests  and 
lower  classes,  and  its  success  was  complete. 
The  popular  government  was  overthrown,  and 
Ferdinand  reestablished  in  all  his  power. 

These  invasions  were  undertaken  and  exe- 
cuted precisely  on  the  doctrines  which  the  al- 
lied monarchs  had  before  proclaimed  at  Lay- 
bach. 

As  those  doctrines  were  not  limited  to  the 
continent  of  Europe,  Ferdinand,  as  soon  as  he 
was  completely  reinstated,  invited  the  coop- 
eration of  his  allies  in  regard  to  South  Amer- 
ica. In  the  month  of  December,  1823,  a  formal 
invitation  was  addressed  by  Spain  to  the  courts 
of  St.  Petersburg,  Vienna,  Berlin,  and  Paris,  to 
attend  a  conference  at  Paris,  to  aid  in  reconcil- 
ing to  the  mother  country  the  revolted  colonies 
in  Spanish  America,  after  the  manner  so  suc- 
cessful in  Spain. 

The  King  of  Spain,  in  his  correspondence 
with  the  members  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  argued 
as  might  have  been  expected.  He  cited  the 
doctrines  of  Laybach.  He  pointed  out  the  per- 
nicious example  of  the  United  States,  and  re- 
minded them  that  their  success  in  Spain  had 
paved  the  way  for  similar  successes  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic. 

Great  efforts  were  made  to  seduce  England 
into  this  project,  and  offers  were  even  conveyed 
to  the  Court  of  St.  James  of  an  eventual  coop- 
eration of  the  Continental  powers  with  Great 
Britain  to  first  curb,  and  then  crush,  the  rising 


power  of  those  revolted  British  colonies  in  the 
west,  which,  as  the  United  States  of  America, 
had  already  extended  their  dominion  far  be- 
yond the  limits  recognized  by  the  treaties  of 
1783,  and  which  were  making  serious  inroads 
throughout  the  world  upon  the  mercantile  pre- 
dominance of  Great  Britain. 

The  policy  of  England  in  this  matter  was 
dictated  by  a  two -fold  motive.  George  Can- 
ning was  then  the  English  Foreign  Secretary, 
and  virtually  the  head  of  the  Government. 
While  he  shared  the  alarm  of  the  extreme  to- 
ries,  caused  by  the  agitation  of  Parliamentary 
reform,  and  regarded  the  democratic  institu- 
tions of  America  with  extreme  aversion,  he 
could  not  close  his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in  the 
liberated  countries  of  Spanish  America  Eng- 
land had  found  a  market  from  which  she  had 
long  been  shut  by  the  jealousy  of  Spain. 

The  commercial  importance  to  England  of 
the  independence  of  Spanish  America  was  alone 
sufficient  to  throw  the  whole  British  influence 
against  the  reestablishment  in  the  Western 
Hemisphere  of  that  exclusive  policy  under 
which,  for  three  centuries,  Spain  had  closed 
the  ports  of  either  ocean  against  the  traffic  of 
the  world,  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  Cape 
Horn. 

England  was  also  at  this  time  virtually  elim- 
inated as  a  constitutional  monarchy  of  Eu- 
rope, and  had  less  than  her  former  influ- 
ence among  European  nations.  Mr.  Canning 
was  therefore  desirous  not  only  of  retaining 
England's  commercial  advantages  which  flow- 
ed from  opening  the  ports  of  the  South  Ameri- 
can States,  but  also  of  regaining  her  former 
position  in  the  councils  of  Europe.  He  be- 
lieved he  saw  the  opportunity  for  compassing 
those  objects  in  the  growing  importance  of 
American  affairs;  that,  by  skillful  diplomacy, 
he  could  decoy  the  United  States  into  an  alli- 
ance with  England,  and,  thus  aided,  dictate  re- 
garding the  future  of  the  Western  World. 

England  therefore  declined  the  invitation  to 
attend  the  congress  at  Paris,  and  again  dis- 
sented from  the  project  of  the  Continental  pow 
ers.  Not  only  this,  but  she  took  a  decided 
course  against  them.  Early  in  October,  Mr. 
Canning  advised  the  French  Minister  in  Lon- 
don that  England  would  regard  any  foreign  in- 
tervention, by  force  or  by  menace,  in  the  dis- 
putes between  Spain  and  the  colonies,  as  a  mo- 
tive for  recognizing  the  latter  without  delay. 
He  also  at  this  juncture,  to  accomplish  his  end 
with  America,  imparted  to  the  American  Min- 
ister information  of  so  much  of  what  was  going 
on  between  his  Government  and  those  of  St. 
Petersburg,  Paris,  Berlin,  and  Vienna  as  he 
thought  would  awaken  the  fears  of  the  Ameri- 


392 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


can  people,  and  urged  him  to  promote  some 
such  demonstration  as  would  give  the  Conti- 
nental powers  reason  to  expect  active  opposi- 
tion from  the  United  States  in  the  execution  of 
their  designs  upon  Mexico,  New  Granada,  and 
the  other  Spanish-American  States. 

Mr.  Canning  put  the  question  to  the  Ameri- 
can Minister  with  consummate  adroitness,  and 
in  such  words  as  he  thought  would  touch  and 
rouse  the  American  pride.  He  said,  "Are  the 
great  political  and  commercial  interests  which 
hang  upon  the  destinies  of  the  New  World  to  be 
canvassed  and  adjusted  in  Europe  without  the 
cooperation  or  even  the  knowledge  of  the  Uni- 
ted States?"  Of  course,  he  expected  that  the 
American  Government,  piqued  by  such  an  in- 
terrogatory, and  emboldened  by  the  proffered 
friendship  of  England,  would  reply  with  some 
announcement  regarding-  the  great  political 
and  commercial  interests  that  hung  upon  the 
destinies  of  the  New  World  which  would  commit 
her  to  an  alliance  with  England.  It  was  in  an- 
ticipation of  this  expected  response  from  the 
American  Government  that  Mr.  Canning  made 
his  remarkable  boast  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons that  he  had  called  a  new  world  into  ex- 
istence to  redress  the  balance  of  the  old.  He 
fondly  believed  that  the  United  States  would 
become  a  subservient  ally  to  England  in  assert- 
ing European  supremacy  in  the  affairs  of  the 
New  World. 

In  order  to  ascertain  the  real  principle  which 
actuated  the  United  States  in  this  affair,  it  must 
also  be  borne  in  mind  that  Mexico  regarded  her 
with  unfriendliness,  on  account  of  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Florida  and  Louisiana,  and  the  feeling 
and  attitude  of  Mexico  were  not  such  as  to  en- 
gender cordial  regard  for  her  by  the  United 
States.  There  had  been  nothing  in  the  im- 
mediate past,  nor  was  there  anything  in  the  ap- 
parent immediate  future,  of  the  Spanish-Amer- 
ican States  to  prepossess  the  United  States 
in  favor  of  a  policy  intended  to  develop  the 
power  of  those  countries.  But  it  concerned  her 
vastly  that  the  commerce  of  those  States  should 
not  again  be  monopolized  by  Spain,  for  Ameri- 
can goods  and  the  American  flag  were  then 
more  widely  known,  both  on  the  Atlantic  and 
the  Pacific  coasts  of  Spanish -America,  than 
they  are  to-day.  It  concerned  the  United  States 
still  more  deeply  to  prevent  the  transfer  to  the 
New  World  of  the  mighty  struggle  between  the 
arbitrary  and  the  popular  systems  of  govern- 
ment by  which  Europe  had  so  long  been  con- 
vulsed ;  and,  indeed,  it  concerned  her  most  vi- 
tally that  the  growth  of  republican  principles 
in  America  should  not  be  menaced,  that  their 
extension  over  the  American  continent  should 
not  be  checked. 


Such  was  the  posture  of  affairs  thrust  at  this 
time  upon  the  consideration  of  American  states- 
men, and  which  evoked  that  celebrated  pro- 
nunciamento  known  as  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 
It  was  not  only  an  interesting  event  in  England, 
but  a  momentous  one  in  American  history. 
The  questions  were  whether  republican  or  mon- 
archical doctrines  should  triumph  in  America, 
whether  courage  or  pusillanimity  should  prevail. 
It  was  a  crisis  which  demanded  patriotism,  an 
undaunted  courage,  and  a  deep  insight  into  the 
workings  of  those  principles  which  promote  or 
retard  the  progress  of  the  world. 

It  is  a  curious  and  most  interesting  circum- 
stance in  the  history  of  our  Government  that 
in  every  time  of  danger  the  instrument  of  res- 
cue has  appeared.  When  a  constitution  was 
needed,  a  Hamilton  was  present  to  devise  one, 
and  recommend  it  with  unanswerable  argu- 
ment. When  it  required  expounding,  a  Mar- 
shall stood  ready  for  the  task.  When  it  was 
attacked  by  false  interpretation,  a  Webster 
sprung  forth  and  defended  it,  with  the  com- 
bined weapons  of  logic  and  passion.  So  in  this 
particular  exigency  the  interests  of  America 
were  in  the  hands  of  a  man  adequate  to  the 
occasion. 

The  President,  Mr.  Monroe,  was  an  extreme 
partisan,  and,  therefore,  a  man  of  contracted 
views.  He  possessed  that  quality  of  mind  which 
perceives  minute  things  with  clearness  and  ad- 
heres to  narrow  convictions  with  tenacity,  but 
fails  to  appreciate  the  broader  principles  that 
mark  a  free  and  progressive  nation.  He  did 
not  rise  to  the  altitude  of  the  statesman. 

But,  happily  for  the  destiny  of  this  republic 
and  the  best  interests  of  mankind,  the  Secretary 
of  State,  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams,  saw  in  the 
issue  of  these  events  not  only  the  impairment 
of  American  commerce — from  a  war  to  protect 
which  the  nation  had  but  recently  emerged,  the 
reestablishment  of  Spanish  domination  in  the 
Spanish-American  States,  the  intermeddling  of 
European  powers  in  the  concerns  of  America, 
but  a  serious,  if  not  a  fatal,  menace  to  republi- 
can institutions  in  the  New  World.  Nor  was 
he  ambitious  of  making  his  country  a  subaltern 
to  England,  but  he  aimed  to  strengthen  her 
independence  and  exalt  her  to  a  higher  posi- 
tion among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  He  also 
fully  appreciated  the  incompatibility  of  Eu- 
ropean influence  in  the  New  World  with  the 
growth  and  development  of  those  ideas  of  gov- 
ernment of  which  his  own  country  was  the  lead- 
ing illustration.  It  was  with  obvious  reference 
to  England's  lust  of  conquest  and  interposition 
in  the  affairs  of  the  New  World  that  he  induced 
the  President,  in  his  message  of  December  2, 
1823,  touching  the  Anglo-Russian  questions  of 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  AND    THE  ISTHMIAN  CANAL. 


393 


our  north-western  boundary,  to  pronounce  that 
the  American  continents,  by  the  free  and  inde- 
pendent condition  which  they  had  assumed  and 
maintained,  were  henceforth  not  to  be  consid- 
ered as  future  subjects  for  colonization  by  any 
European  power. 

The  President  then,  in  the  same  message, 
of  course  under  the  inspiration  of  Mr.  Adams, 
states,  in  cool  and  measured  terms,  the  differ- 
ences between  the  political  system  of  the  allied 
powers  in  Eulfcpe,  and  that  of  the  United 
States,  and  sets  forth  the  attitude  of  the  Uni- 
ted States  in  clear  and  unmistakable  language. 

He  says:  "We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor, 
and  to  the  amicable  relations  existing  between 
the  United  States  and  those  powers,  to  declare 
that  we  should  consider  any  attempt  on  their 
part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of 
this  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and 
safety.  With  existing  colonies  or  dependen- 
cies of  any  European  power  we  have  not  in- 
terfered, and  shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the 
governments  which  have  declared  their  inde- 
pendence, and  maintained  it,  and  whose  inde- 
pendence we  have,  on  great  considerations  and 
on  just  principles,  acknowledged,  we  could  not 
view  any  interposition,  for  the  purpose  of  op- 
pressing them,  or  controlling,  in  any  other 
manner,  their  destiny,  by  any  European  power, 
in  any  other  light  than  as  the  manifestation  of 
an  unfriendly  disposition  toward  the  United 
States." 

This  wise  and  patriotic  announcement  was 
quite  at  variance  with  what  Mr.  Canning  had  so 
confidently  hoped  for.  No  exception  being 
made  in  the  declaration  of  any  European  power, 
he  was  given  distinctly  to  understand,  not  only 
that  the  United  States  would  not  permit  "the 
political  and  commercial  interests  which  hung 
upon  the  destinies  of  the  New  World  to  be 
canvassed  and  adjusted  in  Europe  without  the 
cooperation  or  even  the  knowledge  of  the 
United  States,"  but  that  any  attempt  at  "can- 
vassing and  adjusting"  those  interests  at  any 
European  capital,  not  excepting  London,  would 
be  regarded  as  proof  of  unfriendly  feeling  to- 
ward the  United  States. 

The  doctrine,  thus  announced,  was  worthy 
of  a  great  statesman  and  a  great  nation.  It 
met  with  spontaneous  and  hearty  approval 
from  all  Americans.  There  was  one  univeral 
feeling  of  pride  and  satisfaction  over  the  high 
ground  taken  by  the  Government,  which  at 
once  raised  it  from  a  subordinate  position  to 
one  of  rank,  independence,  and  authority,  and 
promised  to  make  the  United  States  the  arbiter 
of  the  destinies  of  the  western  world.  There  was 
one  glow  of  exultation  that  much  had  been  done 
for  civil  liberty,  and  in  the  hope  and  belief  that 


the  principles  of  free  government  had  become 
firmly  intrenched  in  America,  and  would  event- 
ually, like  the  grain  of  mustard  seed,  overspread 
the  continent.  But  this  feeling  was  not  confin- 
ed to  the  United  States.  England  felt  that  the 
young  nation  of  the  West  was  worthy  of  its  an- 
cestry. The  declaration  was  received  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  not  merely  with  commen- 
dation, but  rejoicing.  Mr.  Canning,  though  dis- 
appointed and  chagrined  by  the  frustration  of 
his  plans,  acted  with  wisdom  and  magnanimity. 
He  expressed  his  entire  concurrence  in  the  sen- 
timents and  opinions  of  the  American  Pres- 
ident ;  and  his  distinguished  competitor  in  that 
body,  less  restrained  by  official  decorum,  and 
more  at  liberty  to  give  utterance  to  the  feelings 
of  the  occasion,  declared  that  no  event  had 
ever  created  greater  joy,  enthusiasm,  and  grat- 
itude among  all  the  freemen  of  Europe;  that 
he  felt  pride  in  being  connected  by  blood  and 
language  with  the  people  of  the  United  States; 
that  the  policy,  disclosed  by  the  message,  be- 
came a  great,  a  free,  and  an  independent  na- 
tion; and  that  he  hoped  his  own  country  would 
be  prevented  by  no  mean  pride,  or  paltry  jeal- 
ousy, from  following  so  noble  and  glorious  an 
example. 

Three  years  afterward,  Mr.  Webster,  in  his 
speech,  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  on 
the  Panama  Mission,  adverting  to  this  declar- 
ation, said : 

"Sir,  I  look  upon  the  message  of  December,  1823, 
as  forming  a  bright  page  in  our  history.  I  will  neither 
help  to  erase  it,  nor  tear  it  out.  Nor  shall  it  be,  by  any 
act  of  mine,  blurred  or  blotted.  It  did  honor  to  the 
sagacity  of  the  government ;  and  I  will  not  diminish 
that  honor,  It  elevated  the  hopes  and  gratified  the 
patriotism  of  the  people.  Over  those  hopes  I  will  not 
bring  a  mildew,  nor  will  I  put  that  gratified  patroti- 
ism  to  shame." 

The  result  of  this  announcement  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  was  most  propitious  for  the 
prosperity  of  the  United  States,  and  for  the 
cause  of  popular  government.  It  gave  Ameri- 
can commerce  an  impulse  which  it  never  before 
felt,  and  made  it  secure  in  every  sea.  The 
Holy  Alliance  did  not  undertake  to  reconcile 
the  Spanish -American  States  to  the  mother 
country.  The  United  States  did  not  /become 
the  proteg&  of  England,  but  sprung  to  the  im- 
portance of  a  leading  nation.  No  European 
power  (has  since  sought  to  impair  the  American 
system,  except  once,  when  an  unprincipled  sov- 
ereign, under  the  pretext  of  a  debt,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  occasion,  imposed  upon  Mexico, 
by  armed  force,  a  foreign  prince  at  a  time  when 
the  United  States  was  groaning  under  the  bur- 
den and  anguish  of  civil  war,  and  when  all  she 


394 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


could  do  in  vindication  of  the  principle  was  to 
utter  an  indignant  protest.  No  effort  has  since 
been  made,  by  any  European  power,  to  check 
the  growth  of  republican  institutions  on  this 
continent,  or  to  extend  to  the  Western  Hemi- 
sphere that  system  which  is  generally  known 
in  the  Old  World  as  the  International  Law  of 
Europe. 

The  United  States  has  for  nearly  sixty  years 
maintained  the  position  she  then  assumed,  with 
but  one  deviation — the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty. 
This  was  a  direct  and  inexcusable  departure 
from  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  occupies  one  of 
the  most  humiliating  pages  in  our  history,  one 
which  we  cannot  read  without  a  blush.  It  was 
denounced  by  President  Buchanan  as  "fraught 
with  misunderstanding  and  mischief  from  the 
*  beginning,"  and  has  often  been  stigmatized  as 
the  relinquishment  of  a  principle.  With  this 
exception,  the  policy  of  the  United  States  on 
this  question  has  been  firm,  consistent,  and 
dignified. 

SECONDLY.  — From  this  sketch  of  the  rise 
and  progress  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  we  read- 
ily perceive  the  principles  it  involves.  It  will 
not  be  necessary  to  analyze  it  exhaustively,  but 
it  will  suffice  to  explore  it  to  such  an  extent  as 
will  aid  in  treating  the  third  division  of  the  sub- 
ject— viz.,  its  effect  upon  the  Isthmian  Canal. 

It  is  manifest,  from  the  language  in  which 
the  doctrine  was  promulgated,  as  well  as  from 
the  attitude  assumed  and  since  maintained  by 
the  United  States,  from  the  recession  of  the 
Holy  Alliance  from  its  proposition  regarding 
America,  and  the  abandonment  by  Europe  of 
all  attempt  to  regulate  the  destinies  of  any 
American  State,  with  the  exception  already 
noted,  that  the  Monroe  Doctrme  was  a  denial 
of,  and  a  protest  against,  the  doctrines  of  Lay- 
bach—namely,  that  it,  the  Holy  Alliance,  had 
a  right  to  interfere  in  the  concerns  of  another 
State,  although  apprehending  no  disturbance 
or  danger  from  that  State,  and  reform  its  gov- 
ernment, in  order  to  prevent  the  effect  of  its 
bad  example.  Or,  to  state  the  difference  more 
clearly :  The  doctrine  of  Laybach  favored  mon- 
archical government  throughout  both  hemi- 
spheres, to  be  maintained  by  the  sword,  if  nec- 
essary, and  the  supremacy  of  the  Old  World 
in  the  affairs  of  the  New.  The  Monroe  Doc- 
trine contended  that  monarchical  government 
should  be  confined  to  the  Old  World,  and  that 
the  New  World  should  be,  in  every  respect, 
free  to  develop  its  own  forms  of  government, 
and  exempt  from  the  domination  and  disturb- 
ances of  the  Old. 

But  further:  The  declaration  says,  among 
other  things,  "we  should  consider  any  attempt 


on  the  part  of  European  nations  to  extend  their 
system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as 
dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety?  Thus  it  is 
clear  that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  involves — 

First — The  principle  of  self-preservation — a 
principle  common  to  all  nations  and  individu- 
als, founded  in  the  deepest  instincts  of  human 
nature.  It  is  this  alone  which  obtains  in  Euro- 
pean councils.  The  principle  upon  which  Eu- 
ropean powers  interfere  with  the -concerns  of 
each  other,  and  upon  which^  congress  of  dep- 
uties from  all  is  convoked  to  settle  the  disputes 
of  any  two,  is  merely  that  of  self-preservation. 
Their  object,  whatever  the  pretext,  is  not  to 
ameliorate  or  encourage  struggling  humanity, 
but  to  prevent  one  nation  from  gaining  some 
ascendancy  over  another,  to  soothe  national 
jealousies,  and  preserve  the  equipoise  of  Eu- 
rope. 

The  instances  are  rare,  if  they  exist  at  all, 
where  European  diplomatists,  in  adjusting  Eu- 
ropean complications,  have  been  actuated  by 
any  sentiment  above  that  of  selfishness. 

But  the  Monroe  Doctrine  contains  all  this 
and  more.  It  implies  higher  and  nobler  aspi- 
rations. It  not  only  has  in  view  the  integrity 
of  the  nation,  its  security  against  foreign  en- 
croachment, and  its  commercial  prosperity,  but 
it  avows,  and  insists  upon,  something  for  man- 
kind; namely,  the  supremacy  on  this  continent 
of  popular  government ;  that  America  shall  re- 
main a  sanctuary  for  the  development  of  that 
institution.  \ 

But,  inspecting  the  subject  still  further,  we 
perceive  that  it  involves  one  of  the  most  useful 
and  cherished  principles  of  American  govern- 
ment— the  principle  of  self-government  in  local 
affairs  enlarged  to  those  of  the  New  World. 
Instead  of  applying  it  minutely,  as,  for  instance, 
to  a  township  or  city  organization,  it  is  extended 
to  the  entire  system  of  a  continent.  As  the 
obscurest  township  in  Massachusetts  insists 
that,  since  she  understands  her  individual  needs 
and  wishes  better  than  the  city  of  Boston,  the 
latter  shall  have  no  voice  in  her  local  admin- 
istration ;  and  as,  to  rise  higher,  the  common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts  says  to  the  other 
States,  that,  since  she  comprehends  her  wants 
and  aspirations  better  than  her  neighboring 
States  or  the  Federal  Government,  she  will 
choose  her  own  officers  and  make  and  exe- 
cute her  own  laws — so,  on  the  same  princi- 
ple, the  United  States  proclaims  to  the  world 
that,  as  the  American  Continent  comprehends 
its  necessities  and  requirements,  its  own  disputes 
and  complications,  more  clearly  than  the  rest 
of  the  world,  it  will  supply  those  necessities, 
comply  with  those  requirements,  settle  those 
disputes,  and  adjust  those  complications  after 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  AND   THE  ISTHMIAN  CANAL.      395 


its  own  methods  and  under  the  direction  of  its 
own  principles. 

This  idea,  as  already  remarked,  is  exclusively 
American.  There  is  none  which  Americans 
understand  better,  whose  beneficence  in  the 
business  of  government  they  prize  more  highly, 
or  to  which  they  adhere  more  tenaciously. 
They  will  relinquish  it  only  with  the  severance 
of  the  last  ties  which  bind  them  together  as  a 
nation.  It  is  this  which  makes  the  American 
States,  to  use  ^ae  beautiful  simile  of  the  poet 
Montgomery, 

"Distinct,  as  the  billows;  yet  one,  as  the  sea." 

And,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  that  which  is 
cherished  here  as  an  essential,  in  Europe  is 
condemned  as  a  heresy. 

The  European  policy  concentrates  all  the 
authority  in  a  few  hands;  the  American  dis- 
tributes it  among  those  upon  whom  it  is  to  be 
exercised.  The  former  is  the  product  of  a  dark 
and  feudal  age,  the  latter  of  an  enlightened 
and  free  people. 

When  the  United  States,  therefore,  referring 
to  the  "governments  which  have  declared  their 
independence  and  maintained  it,  and  whose 
independence  she  has,  on  great  considerations 
and  on  just  principles,  acknowledged,"  an- 
nounces to  the  world  that  she  would  not  view 
any  interposition  by  any  European  power  for 
the  purpose  of  oppressing  them,  or  controlling 
in  any  other  manner  their  destiny,  in  any  other 
light  than  as  the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly 
disposition  toward  her,  she  merely  affirms,  in 
the  highest  sense,  and  with  a  firmness  becom- 
ing a  great  nation,  the  same  principles  which 
permeate  the  entire  American  system,  from 
the  Federal  Government  to  the  New  England 
township. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine,  then,  besides  being  a 
protest  against  the  doctrines  of  Laybach,  in- 
volves three  distinct  principles : 

(i.)  That  of  self-preservation,  common  to  all 
nations. 

(2.)  The  reservation  of  the  American  conti- 
nent for  republican  government. 

(3.)  That  the  American  system  shall  be  reg- 
ulated exclusively  by  American  governments. 

It  is  not  assumed  that  this  is  a  thorough 
analysis  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  it  may 
serve  to  indicate  the  duty  incumbent  upon  the 
United  States  at  the  present  juncture. 

THIRDLY. — Is  the  Monroe  Doctrine  applica- 
ble to  a  ship  canal  across  the  Isthmus  of  Pan- 
ama? 

That  such  a  canal  will  be  constructed,  and 
in  the  near  future,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Com- 
merce requires  it.  The  progress  of  the  age  de- 


mands it.  Statesmen  are  giving  it  their  great- 
est consideration.  Even  the  poet,  if  we  give 
credence  to  a  fugitive  publication,  predicted  it 
in  language  as  fervid  as  his  song.  Fifty-four 
years  ago  the  poet  Goethe,  at  Weimar,  was 
thus  reported  in  the  diary  of  his  young  protege, 
Eckerman : 

February  21,  1827. — Dined  with  Goethe.  He  spoke 
much  and  with  admiration  of  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt,  whose  work  on  Cuba  and  Colombia  he  had  be- 
gun to  read,  and  whose  views  as  to  the  project  of  mak- 
ing a  passage  through  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  appear- 
ed to  have  a  particular  interest  for  him. 

"  Humboldt,"  said  Goethe,  "has,  with  a  great  knowl- 
edge of  his  subject,  given  other  points  where,  by  mak- 
ing use  of  some  streams  which  flow  into  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  the  end  may  be,  perhaps,  better  attained  than 
at  Panama.  All  this  is  reserved  for  the  future  and  for 
an  enterprising  spirit.  So  much,  however,  is  certain, 
that  if  they  succeed  in  cutting  such  a  canal  that  ships  of 
any  burden  and  size  can  be  navigated  through  it  from 
the  Mexican  Gulf  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  innumerable 
benefits  would  result  to  the  whole  human  race,  civilized 
and  uncivilized. 

' '  But  I  should  wonder  if  the  United  States  were  to 
let  an  opportunity  escape  of  getting  such  a  work  into 
their  hands.  It  may  be  foreseen  that  this  young  na- 
tion, with  its  decided  predilection  to  the  West,  will,  in 
thirty  or  forty  years,  have  occupied  and  peopled  the 
large  tract  of  land  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It 
may,  furthermore,  be  foreseen  that  along  the  whole 
coast  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  where  Nature  has  already 
formed  the  most  capacious  and  secure  harbors,  impor- 
tant commercial  towns  will  gradually  arise  for  the  fur- 
therance of  a  great  intercourse  between  China  and  the 
East  Indies  and  the  United  States.  In  such  a  case  it 
would  not  only  be  desirable,  but  almost  necessary,  that 
a  more  rapid  communication  should  be  maintained  be- 
tween the  eastern  and  western  shores  of  North  Amer- 
ica, both  by  merchant  ships  and  men-of-war,  than  has 
hitherto  been  possible  with  the  tedious,  disagreeable, 
and  expensive  voyage  round  Cape  Horn.  I  therefore 
repeat  that  it  is  absolutely  indispensable  for  the  United 
States  to  effect  a  passage  from  the  Mexican  Gulf  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  and  I  am  certain  that  they  will  do  it. 

' '  Would  that  I  might  live  to  see  it ! — but  I  shall  not. 
I  should  like  to  see  another  thing — a  junction  of  the 
Danube  and  the  Rhine.  But  this  undertaking  is  so  gi- 
gantic that  I  have  doubts  of  its  completion,  particularly 
when  I  consider  our  German  resources.  And  thirdly, 
and  lastly,  I  should  wish  to  see  England  in  possession 
of  a  canal  through  the  Isthmus  of  Suez.  Would  I  could 
live  to  see  these  three  great  works  !  It  would  be  well 
worth  the  trouble  to  last  some  fifty  years  more  for  the 
very  purpose." 

Assuming,  therefore,  that  such  a  canal  will 
be  built,  any  discussion  as  to  its  feasibility, 
and  all  speculation  as  to  the  choice  of  routes, 
are,  so  far  as  the  object  of  this  essay  is  con- 
cerned, "from  the  purpose."  The  question  is, 
What  position  should  the  United  States  at  this 
juncture  assume? 

It  has  been  recently  said,  by  a  contributor  to 
the  Southern  Law  Review,  to  show  the  inap- 


396 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


plicability  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  an  inter- 
oceanic  canal,  that  the  circumstances  which 
evoked  the  Monroe  Doctrine  are  totally  unlike 
those  of  the  present  time — that  those  were  war- 
like, and  these  are  peaceful.  Granted ;  but  is 
it  therefrom  deducible  that  the  principle  is 
wrong  or  not  suited  to  the  present  conditions. 

A  principle  or  rule  of  policy  of  government 
may  be  applicable  in  peace  as  well  as  in  war. 
By  applying  it  in  time  of  peace  war  may  be 
averted. 

It  is  contended  also  that  an  interoceanic  ca- 
nal will  be  a  commercial  enterprise,  and  can 
have  no  political  significance. 

It  will  undoubtedly  be  vastly  in  the  interest 
of  commerce,  but  the  conclusion  sought  to  be 
drawn  is  not  sound.  On  the  contrary,  it  will 
be  of  immense  political  importance.  That  the 
greatest  political  questions  frequently  arise  from 
commercial  interests  is  too  well  known  to  ad- 
•mit  discussion.  That  such  issues,  thus  arising, 
are  often  submitted  to  the  arbitrament  of  war, 
is  equally  certain. 

But  it  is  demonstrable,  from  a  slight  exami- 
nation of  the  nature  of  this  project,  that  it 
comes  within  the  principles  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine. 

The  magnitude  of  the  enterprise,  the  vast 
capital  employed,  and  its  immense  revenues, 
will  render  it  one  of  the  most  important  com- 
mercial institutions  in  the  world.  Its  facilities 
for  commerce  will  be  enjoyed  by  all  maritime 
nations.  It  is,  therefore,  destined  to  be  a  most 
important  factor  in  the  system  of  the  New 
World.  Hence,  even  under  the  most  favorable 
circumstances,  it  will  lead  to  complications. 

The  entire  ownership  of  the  canal  by  Amer- 
ican citizens  will  tend  to  lessen  those  complica- 
tions, while  its  ownership,  or  any  interest  in  it, 
by  Europeans,  will  deepen  those  complications. 
Such  ownership  will  give  European  powers 
not  merely  a  pretext,  but  the  right,  to  "canvass 
and  adjust  the  great  political  and  commercial 
interests  which  hang  upon  the  destinies  of  the 
New  World."  The  management  of  so  great 
an  agent  of  commerce  must,  either  directly  or 
indirectly,  affect  the  destiny  of  every  nation  on 
the  American  continent.  Suppose  the  United 
States  had  any  considerable  interest  in  the  Suez 
Canal,  would  she  not  demand  to  be  heard  in 
the  settlement  of  the  "Eastern  question"  and 
of  other  questions  which  will  grow  out  of  it? 

It  is,  therefore,  obvious  that  anything  less 
than  entire  ownership  of  the  canal  by  citizens 
of  the  United  States,  or  at  least  exclusive  con- 
trol of  it  by  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  under  treaties  with  those  countries  whose 
citizens  may  desire  to  participate  in  the  enter- 
prise, will  eventuate  in  an  "interposition  in  the 


affairs  of  those  governments  which  have  de- 
clared their  independence  and  maintained  it," 
if  not  "for  the  purpose  of  oppressing  them," 
at  least  for  that  of  "controlling  their  destiny? 

Such  are  the  consequences  which  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  was  intended  to  prevent.  Even 
a  partial  ownership  by  Europeans  in  such  a 
canal,  unaccompanied  by  such  absolute  control, 
will  be  a  direct  violation  of  that  doctrine. 

But  ownership  to  any  considerable  extent 
will  further  result  in  the  maintenance  of  an 
armed  force  to  protect  it.  We  would  then  see 
the  repulsive  spectacle  of  an  armed  foreign 
force  stationed  on  American  soil.  Not  only 
this,  but  it  would  be  a  palpable  violation  of  two 
essential  principles  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
which  declares  that  republican  principles  shall 
dominate  America,  and  says,  in  plain  words, 
"that  with  respect  to  those  governments  whose 
independence  we  have  recognized,  we  could 
not  view  any  interposition  for  the  purpose  of 
.  .  .  .  controlling  in  any  manner  their  destiny 
in  any  other  light  than  as  a  manifestation  of 
an  unfriendly  disposition  toward  the  United 
States." 

The  establishment  of  a  foreign  armament  on 
the  American  continent  so  near  us,  or  in  Amer- 
ican waters,  would  be  a  violation  of  the  princi- 
ple of  self-preservation — one  of  the  essential 
elements  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  would 
be  a  constant  menace  to  our  own  peace  and 
safety. 

It  is  conclusive,  therefore,  that  any  proprie- 
tary interest  in  European  citizens  in  a  canal 
across  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  without  the  stip- 
ulated control  of  it  by  the  United  States,  or 
any  conjunction  of  circumstances  which  might 
impair  that  control,  will  result  in  the  violation 
of  our  most  essential  and  sacred  principles. 

Therefore,  the  question  now  propounded  to 
the  American  people  is  whether  they  will  re- 
linquish those  principles,  ignore  the  past,  reject 
its  inspiration,  and  rescind  their  former  policy. 
In  the  light  of  the  firm  attitude  taken  by  Mr. 
Adams,  at  a  time  when  a  combination  of  the 
most  powerful  nations  of  Europe  threatened 
the  overthrow  of  popular  government  on  this 
continent,  and  the  courageous  conduct  of  Mr. 
Seward  in  refusing  to  recognize  the  government 
of  Maximilian,  thereby  incurring  the  risk  of  of- 
fending one  of  the  most  powerful  nations  on  the 
earth  at  a  time  when  our  own  country  was 
struggling  for  its  existence,  we  cannot  now,  in 
time  of  peace,  with  every  energy  and  resource 
of  the  country  unemployed,  wielding  an  influ- 
ence more  potent  than  armies  or  navies,  recede 
from  the  high  ground  taken  by  those  states- 
men in  such  perilous  times  without  the  most 
abject  self-stultification. 


THE  POETRY  OF  THEOPHILE    GAUTIER. 


397 


There  is  but  one  course  for  the  United  States 
to  pursue.  Assuming  the  indispensability  of  the 
canal,  she  must  construct  it  by  the  enterprise 
of  her  own  citizens  and  with  their  money.  She 
must  then  control  and  protect  it  with  her  own 
influence,  and,  if  necessary,  by  her  own  guns. 
By  so  doing  she  will  keep  pace  with  the  prog- 


ress of  the  age,  she  will  facilitate  national  in- 
tercourse, and  supply  the  needs  of  commerce. 
At  the  same  time,  she  will  discharge  a  duty, 
peculiarly  incumbent  upon  her,  as  the  foremost 
republic  of  the  globe,  of  seeing  "that  govern- 
ment by  the  people,  of  the  people,  and  for  the 
people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 

JOHN  C.  HALL. 


THE  POETRY  OF  THEOPHILE  GAUTIER. 


It  may  be  truthfully  said  that  the  positiveness 
of  certain  excellences  in  an  author  sometimes 
acts  disadvantageously  as  regards  a  just  and 
even  estimate  of  his  general  literary  value. 
Whatever  special  trait  of  originality  or  power 
preponderates  over  other  less  remarkable  gifts 
not  seldom  dulls  our  critical  sense  to  the  ex- 
istence of  these  same  less  prominent  attributes. 
We  admire  a  certain  novelty  of  pattern,  so  to 
speak,  and  do  not  reflect  that  the  groundwork 
on  which  this  pattern  is  wrought  would  possi- 
bly win  our  deep  admiration  were  it  the  char- 
acteristic of  some  other  less  brilliantly  adorned 
texture.  The  passionate  lyric  fire  of  Shelley,  for 
example,  is  widely,  conceded  to  be  his  most 
striking  element  of  strength  ;  the  somber  depth 
of  Coleridge's  imagination  is  usually  considered 
its  most  admirable  quality ;  while  the  soft  ethe- 
reality of  Wordsworth,  the  turgid,  yet  beautiful, 
disdain  of  Byron,  the  caustic  wit  of  Pope,  the 
virile  morality  of  Dryden,  are  all  ideas  indis- 
solubly  linked  with  these  names,  stamping  each 
with  the  world's  particular  verdict  upon  the 
genius  of  its  possessor.  The  truth  of  such  ver- 
dicts it  would  be  idle,  at  this  late  hour,  to  gain- 
say. The  sole  point  urged  at  present  is  that 
they  may  sometimes  blind  us  to  the  recognition 
of  other  charms  and  graces,  perhaps  equally 
solid,  in  not  so  conspicuous  a  degree. 

Outside  of  his  own  country,  at  least,  it  would 
seem  as  if  Theophile  Gautier  had  not  been  fair- 
ly judged — the  exquisite  art,  which  is  every- 
where so  manifest  in  his  poetry,  having  blinded 
criticism  to  a  proper  appreciation  of  his  gen- 
uine spirituality,  depth,  fire,  and  tenderness. 
Not  long  ago  a  prominent  American  review 
published  a  very  brilliantly  written  discussion 
of  his  works,  in  which,  however,  some  of  his 
more  ardent  admirers  may  have  been  some- 
what shocked  to  find  it  stated  that  the  whole 
spirit  of  his  peculiar  genius  was  to  be  found  in 
the  following  line  from  one  of  his  sonnets,  de- 
scriptive of  a  porcelain  flower-pot : 

"One  de  dragons  bleus  et  de  bizarres  fleurs." 


Undoubtedly  a  passionate  love  of  words, 
merely  for  their  own  sakes,  and  a  tendency  to 
use  them  as  some  colorist  of  most  luxurious 
taste  would  use  his  warmer  pigments,  always 
gave  a  very  distinctive  impulse  to  Gautier's 
genius.  In  this  respect  he  bore  a  decided  re- 
semblance to  our  English  Keats,  who  looked 
at  things  in  much  the  same  way,  and  with  no 
broader  vision  than  Gautier  at  his  best.  Keats 
could  find  in  as  remote  a  poetic  ancestor  as 
Spenser  excuse  for  his  rich  voluptuous  tintings, 
even  if  it  must  be  conceded  by  his  truest  lovers 
that  he  did  not  always  use  his  resources  with 
the  best  assimilative  tact..  Gautier,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  a  determined  revolutionist  in  the 
field  of  letters.  He  had,  in  a  certain  sense,  no 
ancestry,  although  from  the  first  he  possessed 
a  few  stanch  supporters.  He  was  a  kind  of 
colonel  in  a  small  body  of  literary  rebels,  over 
whom  Victor  Hugo  held  the  undisputed  posi- 
tion of  general-in-chief.  The  French  romantic 
movement,  as  it  is  called,  in  which  a  sort  of 
intellectual  barricade  suddenly  was  thrown  up 
against  all  established  forms  both  of  drama  and 
poem,  is  too  well  known  to  deserve  more  than 
passing  mention  at  the  present  time.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  Victor  Hugo,  The'ophile 
Gautier,  Dumas,  Balzac,  and  certain  others  of 
less  originality,  were  the  leaders  of  this  singu- 
lar revolt.  Gautier  was  always  an  ardent  fol- 
lower and  a  devout  admirer  of  Victor  Hugo, 
whom  he  unquestionably  believed  the  greatest 
poet  of  modern  times.  Among  his  prose  writ- 
ings he  gives  an  account  of  his  first  visit  to  one 
whose  genius  he  sincerely  revered.  The  in- 
tense trepidation  from  which  he  suffered  repre- 
sents the  young  author  in  rather  a  creditably 
modest  light  when  we  consider  the  weight  of 
his  subsequent  achievements.  He  was  not  only 
willing,  but  glad,  to  accept  the  gracious  patron- 
age of  Hugo,  his  humility  partaking  somewhat 
of  the  same  spirit  which  the  young  Charles 
Baudelaire  afterward  manifested  toward  Gau- 
tier himself,  when  dedicating  to  the  now  well 


398 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


recognized  author  of  La  Comtdie  de  la  Mort 
his  own  extremely  remarkable  volume.  It  is 
related  of  Gautier  that  his  early  ambitions  were 
all  in  the  direction  of  becoming  a  great  painter, 
and  that,  while  a  young  man,  he  would  pass 
hours  among  the  famed  galleries  of  Paris,  thrill- 
ed with  delight  by  certain  pictures  and  statues. 
But,  although  the  best  theories  of  painting  soon 
held  no  secrets  from  him,  he  at  length  discov- 
ered that  fine  executive  skill  was  never  to  rank 
among  his  attainments.  "Decide'ment,  se  dit 
Gautier  (according  to  one  of  his  biographers, 
Eugene  de  Mirecourt),  la  peinture  est  plus  facile 
avec  la  plume  qu'avec  le  pinceau."  He  accord- 
ingly took  to  writing  verses,  and  in  1828  pre- 
sented himself  before  the  illustrious  Sainte- 
Beuve,  requesting  permission  to  read  that  gen- 
tleman a  poetic  composition  of  his  own,  enti- 
tled-Ztf  TeU  de  Mort.  The  somberness  of  the 
title  pleased  Sainte-Beuve  rather  ill.  He  doubt- 
less expected  a  work  of  much  crudity  and  slight 
power.  Gautier  had  only  read  a  few  lines,  how- 
ever, when  the  famous  critic  admiringly  stop- 
ped him.  "It  is  not  in  studying  the  rhythms 
of  Lamartine,"  exclaimed  Sainte-Beuve,  "that 
you  have  grown  able  to  write  verses  like  these. 
You  must  have  been  reading  Cle'ment  Marot, 
Saint -Gelais,  and  Ronsard."  "Yes,"  replied 
Gautier,  "but  I  have  also  read  and  studied 
Bai'f,  Desportes,  Passerat,  Bertaut,  Duperron, 
and  Malherbe."  In  this  answer  of  the  youth- 
ful poet,  Sainte-Beuve  at  once  discovered  the 
explanation  of  Gautier's  extraordinary  metrical 
freshness.  When  he  had  finished  reading  his 
poem  he  found  the  critic  in  mild  ecstasies. 
"Voila  de  la  poe'sie  substantielle,"  declared 
Sainte  -  Beuve.  "Je  trouve  un  homme  qui 
sculpte  dans  le  granit  et  non  dans  la  fumee. 
Demain  je  vous  pre'sente  chez  Victor  Hugo." 

On  the  following  day  the  introduction  in 
reality  took  place,  Gautier  himself  describes 
this  interview  as  a  mixture  of  intense  delight 
and  painful  embarrassment.  He  calls  Hugo 
"le  Jupiter  romantique,"  and  compares  himself 
in  the  presence  of  one  whom  he  so  reverently  re- 
spected to  Henri  Heine  before  Goethe.  "Like 
Heine,"  he  says,  "I  was  embarrassed  enough 
to  ask  whether  plums  were  not  good  to  quench 
one's  thirst  on  the  way  from  Jena  to  Weimar." 
Hugo  received  the  young  poet  with  marked 
kindness,  and  their  subsequent  friendship  dated 
from  that  hour.  Being  possessed  of  immense 
personal  strength,  Gautier  chose  to  exert  it  in 
his  friend's  behalf  on  that  famous  night  when 
the  struggle  took  place  at  the  Theatre  Frangais 
between  romanticists  and  classicists  over  the 
production  of  Hugo's  Hernant.  It  has  been 
stated  on  excellent  authority  that  during  this 
struggle  Gautier  fought  for  the  romantic  school 


with  a  muscular  vehemence  that  must  have  told 
rather  disastrously  upon  numerous  adversaries. 

From  the  earliest  period  of  his  poetical  ca- 
reer Gautier  was  an  eager  student  of  the  dic- 
tionary. It  was  his  ambition  to  make  almost  a 
new  language  in  which  to  write  his  poems. 
Old  words,  long  ago  fallen  into  disuse,  he 
excavated  from  forgotten  burial-places.  He 
searched  with  keen  diligence  for  all  sorts  of 
strange  and  most  striking  adjectives.  Turns  of 
phrase,  too,  that  had  long  ago  passed  out  of 
fashion,  he  rescued  from  their  neglect.  He  was 
an  archaeologist,  a  stylish,  a  fearless,  and  deter- 
mined innovator.  Occasionally  he  created  au- 
dacious neologisms,  many  of  which  are  to  this 
day,  both  in  his  prose  and  poetry,  regarded 
with  severity  by  a  certain  class  of  readers.  It 
is  said,  indeed,  that  he  possessed  not  less 
than  fifty  dictionaries,  each  of  a  special  charac- 
ter, from  those  of  the  painter  and  sculptor  to 
those  of  the  carpenter  and  mason.  These  he 
is  said  constantly  to  have  studied,  and  no  doubt 
many  of  them  were  of  great  service  to  him  in 
his  assiduous  construction  of  feuilletons  for  the 
press  of  Paris.  But,  although  he  was  a  volu- 
minous writer  in  several  different  species  of 
prose,  it  is  the  object  of  the  present  article  to 
deal  with  his  poetry  alone. 

In  1830,  during  the  month  of  July,  Gautier's 
first  volume  of  poems  appeared.  De  Mirecourt 
speaks  of  this  event  as  a  mauvaise  chance,  and 
adds,  referring  to  the  well  known  revolution  of 
this  date,  that  political  occurrences  exclusively 
occupied  the  public  mind,  and  that  the  praises 
of  Gautier's  friends  lost  themselves  amid  the 
widely  prevailing  clamor  of  public  excitement. 

A  year  later,  however,  Albertus  appeared. 
This  poem,  which  now  heads  the  large  collect- 
ed edition  of  Gautier's  poems  published  as  re- 
cently as  1870,  is  one  of  extraordinary  power, 
possessing  a  rich  quaintness  that  was  in  many 
respects  a  prophecy  of  finer  similar  work  to 
come.  It  lacks  the  admirable  art  that  Was  so 
conspicuous  in  its  author  a  few  years  later,  and 
its  fantastic  element  sometimes  becomes  rather 
unpleasant  extravagance ;  but  no  one  can  read 
Albertus  without  being  impressed  by  its  glow- 
ing picturesqueness  and  its  delightful  mediae- 
val coloring.  The  first  scene  opens  within  the 
garret  of  a  sorceress.  Midnight  sounds;  it  is 
the  hour  of  weird  conjurations,  and  the  sorcer- 
ess, an  old,  decrepit,  and  hideous  creature, 
transforms  herself,  thanks  to  her  magic  pow- 
er, into  a  marvelous  young  beauty.  She  also 
changes  her  black  cat  into  an  elegant  cavalier. 
Her  escort  conducts  her  to  a  magnificent  ball 
which  is  then  taking  place  at  the  residence  of 
the  Landgrave  of  Gotha.  The  sorceress,  whose 
name  is  Ve'ronique,  turns  the  heads  of  all  the 


THE  POETRY  OF  THEOPHILE   GAUTIER. 


399 


German  princes  and  potentates  who  flock  about 
her.  She  intoxicates  them  with  her  beauty  and 
charming  grace. 

"  Une  brise  a  propos  faisait  onder  ses  franges, 
Les  plumes  palpitaient  ainsi  que  des  oiseaux 
Qui  vont  prendre  1'essor  et  qui  battent  des  ailes  ; 
Une  invisible  main  soutenait  ses  dentelles 
Et  se  jouait  dans  leurs  reseaux." 

Vdronique  disdains  all  the  gallants  who  be- 
siege her  with  devotions.  She  desires  to  gain 
the  soul  of  Albertus,  a  young  painter  devoted 
to  his  art.  Albertus  at  first  regards  her  with 
indifference,  but  afterward  falls  under  the  power 
of  her  deadly  charms.  A  passion  of  the  warm- 
est sort  completely  sways  Albertus,  whose  good 
angel  now  deserts  him. 

But  another  bell  at  length  sounds.  It  tells 
the  hour  at  wlych  the  second  transformation  of 
Veronique  is  to  take  place.  She  once  more 
becomes,  in  the  presence  of  her  lover,  the 
frightful  crone  which  we  have  already  seen  her. 
Veronique  now  conducts  Albertus,  who  is  inca- 
pable of  freeing  himself  from  her  clutch,  to  the 
Witches'  Sabbath.  In  the  descriptions  which 
here  ensue  the  more  weird  and  grotesque  parts 
of  Gautier's  imagination  are  seen  with  almost 
amazing  effectiveness. 

In  the  midst  of  appalling,  demoniac  diver- 
sions, Albertus,  himself  a  most  unwilling  par- 
ticipant, pronounces  the  name  of  God,  a  cir- 
cumstance producing  the  effect  of  instantly 
banishing  the  whole  frightful  pageant.  The 
strange,  grim  humor  of  the  poem  is  shown 
forcibly  in  this  same  passage,  descriptive  of 
how  the  Devil  sneezed  and  Albertus  treated 
the  fact  with  polite  recognition  : 

"Le  Diable  e"ternua.     Pour  un  nez  fashionable 
L'odeur  de  l'assemble"e  £tait  insupportable. 
Dieu  vous  benisse,  dit  Albertus  poliment. 
A  peine  eut-il  lache"  le  saint  nom  que  fantomes, 
Sorcieres  et  sorciers,  monstres  follets  et  gnomes 
Tout  disparut  en  1'air  comme  un  enchantement. " 

The  poem  really  ends  with  the  following 
words,  although  two  stanzas  of  elegant  drollery 
succeed  them.  Albertus  now  feels 

"...  des  griffes  ace"re"es, 
Des  dent  qui  se  prolongeaient  dans  ses  chairs  lacere"es, 

II  cria;  mais  son  cri  ne  fut  point  entendu 

Et  des  contadini  le  matin,  pres  de  Rome, 
Sur  la  \oie  Appia  trouverent  un  corps  d'homme, 
Les  reins  cassis,  le  col  tordu." 

Some  readers  might  condemn  Albertus  for 
being  mere  polished  trifling  and  wholly  with- 
out raison  detre.  Trifling  it  undoubtedly  is,  but 
of  a  character  that  makes  us,  for  the  time  at 
least,  in  love  with  such  delicious  foolery.  The 


poem  is  disfigured  by  several  atrociously  im- 
pure stanzas,  and  it  must  be  added,  in  justice 
to  Gautier,  that  this  passage  is  the  sole  notable 
instance  of  real  grossness  throughout  all  his 
poetical  writings ;  however  recklessly  he  may 
have  tilted  against  the  proprieties  in  Mademoi- 
selle de  Maupin  and  other  prose  works,  his  po- 
etry, with,  the  single  exception  just  mentioned, 
is  uniformly  free  from  mere  lewdness.  One 
might  say  of  Albertus  that  it  is  a  peculiarly 
Gothic  poem ;  its  humorous  touches  make  us 
think  of  the  heads  grinning  amid  the  dark 
sculpture  of  Notre  Dame  ;  the  local  coloring 
is  one  of  intense  German  romanticism ;  the 
machinery  is  a  kind  of  sardonic  burlesque  upon 
that  of  Faust  and  other  medievally  tinged 
poems;  and  then,  too,  these  brilliant  comic 
flashes  that  relieve  the  somber  imaginative- 
ness of  the  work,  are  not,  in  their  effect  upon 
the  reader,  unlike  bright -stained  windows  illu- 
minating some  interior  of  dusky  cloister  and 
solemn  chancel. 

It  would  not  seem  strange  if  we  saw  in  the 
poems  of  Gautier  a  certain  amount  of  lawless 
abandonment  as  a  kind  of  natural  reaction 
against  the  classic  exactitude  of  older  models. 
On  the  contrary,  however,  we  find  in  him,  be- 
sides his  few  pet  mannerisms  and  neologisms, 
only  the  most  careful  art,  the  most  patient  and 
nice  elaboration.  Merely  artistic,  however,  it 
is  unfair  to  call  him.  He  has  been  accused  of 
looking  only  at  the  surface  of  things,  and 
wholly  neglecting  their  essence,  but  his  exqui- 
site poems  on  nature,  which  he  calls  Paysagesy 
might  alone  refute  such  a  charge  as  this.  If 
he  deals  with  all  the  variable  beauties  of  land- 
scape as  a  painter  -might  deal  with  them,  we 
must  admit  that  these  beauties  are  treated  aft- 
er the  fashion  of  no  ordinary  painter,  but  one 
in  whom  technical  skill  blends  with  the  rarest 
poetic  insight.  The  prose  of  Gautier  may 
often  be  hard  and  cold  as  a  pre-Raphaelite 
picture  of  the  most  pitiless  school;  but  his 
verses  seldom  possess  such  drawbacks  to  en- 
joyment. 

It  needs  but  a  slight  familiarity  with  English 
poetry  to  know  that  the  majority  of  our  own 
poets  are  at  their  maximum  of  tediousness 
when  they  make  nature  the  sole  subject  of  any 
work.  This  fault  has  not  been  avoided,  either, 
by  French  singers ;  but  in  the  case  of  Gautier, 
it  might  almost  be  said  that  he  never  touches 
any  purely  natural  theme  without  throwing 
around  it  an  atmosphere  of  the  most  delicate 
and  irresistible  fascination. 

Sometimes  his  love  of  charming  details  may 
be  said  to  carry  him  away,  but  even  then  he 
gives  us  an  enrapturing  list  of  items  and  shows 
himself  a  kind  of  inspired  cataloguist.  Wit- 


400 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ness,  for  example,  the  following  lovely  bit  from 
another  group  of  his  poems  called  Interieurs: 

' '  Quand  je  vais  poursuivant  mes  courses  poe"  tiques, 
Je  m'arr£te  surtout  aux  vieux  chateaux  gothiques  ; 
J'aime  leurs  toits  d'ardoise  aux  reflets  bleus  et  gris, 
Aux  faites  couronn^s  d'arbustes  rabougris, 
Leurs  pignons  anguleux,  leurs  tourelles  aigues, 
Dans  les  reseaux  de  plomb  leurs  vitres  exigues, 
L6gendes  des  vieux  temps  ou  les  preux  et  les  saints 
Se  groupent  sous  1'ogive  en  fantasques  dessins. 
Pare'  de  souvenirs  d'amour  et  de  faerie, 
Le  brillant  moyen  age  et  la  chevalerie." 

What  artist  has  ever  made  us  acquainted 
with  the  stateliness,  solemnity,  and  quaintness 
•of  old  French  architecture  as  do  these  few 
lines,  full  of  such  marvelously  vivid  touches? 

Perhaps  one  of  Gautier's  most  remarkable 
gifts  can  be  found  in  his  power  to  bring  before 
us  pictures  that  abound  in  local  color.  His 
passion  for  the  East  is  constantly  evident  in 
his  poetry,  and  his  extraordinary  familiarity 
with  Oriental  life  and  customs  makes  many  of 
his  poems  glow  like  the  costly  cachemires  and 
carpets  of  which  he  sings.  The  indolent  splen- 
dors of  the  harem  are  his  especial  delight,  but 
all  phases  of  Eastern  civilization  seem  to  have 
had  a  supreme  charm  for  him. 

For  the  blending  of  Gautier's  intellectuality 
and  spirituality  with  his'  striking  picturesque- 
ness  of  style,  we  must  look  to  such  poems  as 
La  Chanson  de  Mignon,  Notre  Dame,  Magda- 
lena, and  (probably  the  most  praiseworthy  of 
his  sustained  works)  La  Comedie  de  la  Mort. 
These  achievements  may  be  said  literally  to 
abound  in  proof  that  their  author,  if  not  the 
greatest,  is  perhaps  one  of  the  truest  poets 
which  modern  times  have  produced.  The  pa- 
thos of  La  Chanson  de  Mignon  is  sometimes 
intense,  and  its  vein  of  exquisitely  real  senti- 
ment cannot  be  denied.  Notre  Dame  is  a  mar- 
vel of  elegance  and  descriptive  force.  In  these 
lines  we  have  a  piece  of  mere  word -manage- 
ment (viewing  it  only  from  that  stand -point) 
which  is  almost  unsurpassed  in  all  French  lit- 
erature, and  which  certainly  eclipses  those 
somewhat  similar  passages  in  Tennyson's  Pal- 
ace of  Art: 

' '  La  nef  e"panouie,  entre  ses  cotes  minces 

Semble  un  crabe  geant  faisant  mouvoir  ses  pinces, 

Un  araign6e  e"norme  ainsi  que  des  re"seaux 

Jetant  au  front  des  tours,  au  flanc  noir  des  murailles, 

En  fils  aeriens,  en  dedicates  mailles, 

Ses  tulles  de  granit,  ses  dentelles  d'arceaux." 

Magdalena  is  a  poem  that  throbs  with  feel- 
ing. English  readers  may  not  be  wholly  pleased, 
in  many  cases,  with  the  suggestion  of  the  clos- 
ing lines,  but  it  must  be  conceded  that  they  are 
expressed  with  a  wonderful  delicacy  and  skill. 


Perhaps  both  the  main  idea  and  its  treatment 
are  too  "peculiarly  French,"  as  the  phrase  goes, 
even  to  bear  a  downright  English  explanation  ; 
but  undoubtedly,  if  any  future  poet  be  capable 
of  translating  Gautier  into  our  own  tongue,  it 
will  be  well  for  him  to  exclude  the  superb  au- 
dacities of  Magdalena.  They  are  radically  un- 
translatable. 

La  Comedie  de  la  Mort  is  Gautier's  longest 
and  most  ambitious  poem.  It  is  divided  into 
several  portions,  all  of  which  discuss  the  gloomy 
and  unanswerable  problems  of  why  the  human 
race  has  been  born  and  of  what  worth  is  the 
brief  life  enjoyed  by  mankind.  Gautier's  phi- 
losophy is  that  of  bitter  skepticism.  The  poem 
is  evidently  written  by  one  who  distrusts  human- 
ity, believes  in  nothing,  and  has  become  per- 
meated with  moral  and  mental  weariness.  This 
attitude  has,  especially  among  French  writers, 
grown  so  extremely  usual  during  the  past  few 
years  that  its  assumption  now  partakes  most 
drearily  of  commonplace,  not  to  say  vulgarity. 
The  Comedie  de  la  Mort,  however,  may  be  said 
to  harp  upon  a  worn-out  theme  with  truly  mag- 
nificent effect.  If  beauty  was  Gautier's  only 
God,  he  certainly  knew  how  to  worship  her 
grandly,  and  this  last  named  poem,  it  is  no  ex- 
aggeration to  state,  absolutely  teems  with  su- 
perb tours  des  forces  of  poetry.  From  first  to 
last  the  mingled  loveliness  and  ascerbity  of  the 
poem  maintains  one  even  current  of  strength ; 
every  page  is  crowded  with  quotable  lines; 
every  line  is  a  model,  one  might  almost  say,  of 
incomparable  finish.  Whether  the  poem  will 
interest  future  ages  it  is  hard  to  tell,  but  it  has 
certainly  the  most  brilliant  reasons  for  delight- 
ing and  astonishing  this. 

A  volume  of  poems,  entitled  Emaux  et  Ca- 
me'es,  was  published  by  Gautier  in  1866.  These 
are  his  final  poems,  and,  though  possessed  of 
strong  beauties,  cannot  rank  with  the  larger 
preceding  volume.  Their  sole  fault  is  that  they 
are  indeed  enamels  and  cameos ;  they  have  the 
hardness  and  coldness  of  both.  No  one  but 
Gautier  (if  we  expect  the  all  accomplished  Vic- 
tor Hugo)  could  have  written  them.  They  are 
triumphs  of  art,  but  their  fault  is  probably  that 
the  art  is  often  too  conscious  of  its  own  fault- 
less excellence.  Gautier  has  reined  in  his  Peg- 
asus with  such  a  controlling  grip,  his  seat  in 
the  saddle  is  so  undeniably  sure,  he  has  won 
from  his  steed  such  irreproachable  obedience, 
that  we  are  almost  inclined  to  cavil  at  this  very 
perfection  of  mastery.  Still,  this  kind  of  judg- 
ment is  doubtless  self-confessed  hypercriticism. 
Let  us  select  a  single  specimen  from  the  Emaux 
et  Camees,  one  of  its  briefest  songs,  though  per- 
haps by  no  means  its  best.  I  have  made  a  trans- 
lation of  this  song,  which  I  now  submit  to  the 


AND   '50. 


401 


reader's  indulgence,  with  a  due  sense  of  its 
short-comings : 

ANACREONTIC. 

O  poet !  do  not  fright  my  love 

By  ardor's  too  impassioned  flame, 

Until  it  flies,  a  timid  dove, 

And  leaves  me  bathed  in  rosy  shame. 

The  bird  that  through  the  garden  sings 
Before  the  least  vague  sound  will  flit; 

My  passion  that  is  dowered  with  wings 
Will  vanish  if  you  follow  it. 

Mute  as  a  marble  Hermes  cold, 

Below  the  arbor  linger  here, 
And  from  his  bower  you  shall  behold 

The  bird  descending,  freed  from  fear. 


Soon  shall  your  brows  beside  them  feel, 
While  airy  waftures  charm  the  sense, 

A  fluttering  of  soft  wings  that  reel 
In  white  aerial  turbulence. 

And  on  your  shoulder,  tamely  meek, 
The  dove  at  last  will  perch  in  bliss, 

And  quaff  with  his  pink  balmy  beak 
The  dizzying  rapture  of  your  kiss. 

Time  has  yet  to  pass  an  ultimate  verdict 
upon  the  poetical  genius  of  Theophile  Gautier. 
Much  of  his  elaborate  delicacy  of  finish  mayi>e 
lost  upon  future  readers,  but  even  after  such 
inevitable  change  there  will  doubtless  be  left  a 
residue  of  surpassing  worth — a  monument  of 
such  beauty  and  strength  that  time  will  not 
readily  allow  it  to  perish. 

EDGAR  FAWCETT. 


'49   AND   '50. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

The  sun  was  sinking  rapidly  from  sight  when 
our  party  landed  at  a  little  settlement  on  the 
eastern  bank  of  the  river  just  below  its  con- 
fluence with  that  famous  tributary,  the  Rio  de 
los  Americanos.  This  town,  surveyed  only 
eleven  months  before,  and  having  not  more 
than  one  hundred  and  fifty  inhabitants,  includ- 
ing those  residing  at  the  Fort,  on  April  first  of 
the  year  under  review,  had  increased  in  size 
very  rapidly  during  the  summer  months  ;  and 
now,  with  its  irregular  canvas  and  wood  archi- 
tecture, presented  the  appearance  of  a  pros- 
perous settlement.  The  land  in  every  direc- 
tion lay  level  as  a  floor ;  and  the  embryo  city 
certainly  possessed  the  advantage  of  possi- 
bility of  unlimited  extension.  Various  crafts 
were  beating  their  way  by  it  up  into  the  Ameri- 
can Fork,  leading  toward  the  Fort ;  while, 
moored  directly  in  front  of  it,  the  old  Senator 
was  proudly  resting  for  her  return  trip  to  San 
Francisco  on  the  morrow. 

"And  this;"  exclaimed  Blair,  "is  Sacramen- 
to, the  majestic  center  from  which  branch  glit- 
tering paths  to  the  gold -beds  and  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  fortune  -  seeker's  dreams!" 

"Yes,  sir,  we  are  here,"  roared  Dr.  Durgin; 
and  plunging  frantically  about,  like  a  whale  on 
dry  land,  in  pursuance  of  half  a  dozen  distinct 
orders  given  by  his  good  lady  in  one  and  the 
same  breath,  he  repeated  the  words  with  in- 
creased emphasis;  finally  bursting  into  one  of 
his  thunder -clap  laughs,  which  must  have  been 


heard  from  one  end  of  the  settlement  to  the 
other. 

"I  believe  the  Doctor  would  laugh  at  a  fu- 
neral," said  the  lady,  anxious  for  the  fate  of  her 
boxes  and  bundles,  "if  he  did  not  know  that  his 
practice  would  be  injured  by  the  proceeding." 

"I've  been  at  funerals,  Mrs.  Durgin,"  spoke 
James,  breaking  in  upon  the  gentle  censure  of 
the  good  wife,  "where  no  man  could  have 
manufactured  the  faintest  smile." 

"My  worthy  cousin,"  said  Blair,  "is  subject  to 
most  lugubrious  moods,  and  once  started  upon 
this  subject  he  will  fill  your  ears  with  a  more 
mournful  tale  than  any  to  which  you  have  ever 
listened." 

A  suspicious  sound  attracted  the  attention 
of  Mrs.  Durgin  at  this  moment,  and  turning 
her  eyes  in  the  direction  of  the  sound,  she  dis- 
covered that  her  hilarious  husband  had  drop- 
ped her  satchel,  scattering  its  contents  in  the 
muddy  street. 

"Oh,  my  poor—" 

She  did  not  finish  the  sentence;  but,  from 
the  very  fact  that  she  could  not  pronounce  the 
name  of  the  valuable,  or  valuables,  so  ill  usedr 
much  commiseration  was  immediately  bestow- 
ed upon  her  by  all  the  party  with  the  excep- 
tion of  him  that  was  responsible  for  the  acci- 
dent. This  gentleman,  having  found  another 
excellent  opportunity  to  vent  his  immense  flow 
of  geniality  in  laughter,  had  seized  it  and  was 
doing  his  reputation  full  justice. 

"Never  mind,  Madeline,"  he  shouted,  "you 
can  sleep  in  mine." 


402 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


It  was  too  bad ;  but  the  bride  did  not  suffer 
more  than  James  Swilling.  That  modest  boy 
instantly  grew  a  half- head  taller  than  his  nat- 
ural elevation  of  six  feet,  and  gazed  into  the 
far  distance  in  an  opposite  direction  from  the 
scene  of  the  mishap,  urging  his  defective  vis- 
ion toward  the  remote  Sierra. 

"Where  is  the  Fort  anyway?"  he  asked. 

Poor  James  !  He  meant  well,  but  his  strain- 
ed attitude,  and  untimely  inquiry  only  added 
to  the  ludicrousness  of  the  occasion.  Re- 
straint was  no  longer  possible  ;  Ensign,  Blair, 
and  the  embarrassed  lady  herself,  now  joined 
in  with  the  Doctor,  and  the  uproar  became  gen- 
eral. As  the  party  were  about  recovering  them- 
selves, a  smart -stepping  negro  approached  and 
inquired:  "What's  de  fun  ?" 

"The  fun  is,"  answered  Blair,  "that  we  can't 
find  the  Fort." 

"De  Fort,  massa?  Dis  nigger  can't  see  de 
pint  ob  de  hilaritiousness ;  but  de  Fort  is  way 
ober  dar." 

"Well,  how  are  we  going  to  get  to  it?"  asked 
Ensign,  with  greater  sternness  than  was  to  be 
expected  from  so  docile  and  delicate  looking  a 
man. 

"Please,  sah,"  replied  the  wily  darky,  as  if, 
instead  of  having  a  carefully  digested  plan,  he 
were  the  recipient  of  an  instantaneous  revela- 
tion, "I  s'pose  I  might  fetch  you  out  in  dat 
cart  what  you  see  across  de  street," 

"What  is  the  distance?"  asked  Ensign. 

"It  am  'bout  a  mile,  sah." 

"Sure  it  is  that  far?"  hallooed  the  Doctor. 

"Sure  as  dar  is  wool  on  de  crown  of  dis  old 
anti-bellum." 

"Wool  on  de  crown  of  your  old  what?" 

"My  cerebelligerency.  You  jes  ax  any  an- 
astromatist  what  dat  means,  an'  he'll  know  it 
has  referencuation  to  de  head." 

"See  here,  sir,"  interrupted  Ensign,  "  what 
will  be  your  charges  should  we  hire  you  to 
drive  us  to  the  Fort?" 

"Lem  me  see,"  replied  the  cunning  rascal. 
He  had  counted  them  all  thrice  over  before 
appearing  to  their  view.  "One  lady  and  four 
gemmen.  Well,  sah,  I'se  gwine  to  put  de  price 
widin  de  reach  of  de  most  horror-stricken.  I 
would  be  efficiently  renumerated  wid  five  dol- 
lars—" 

"  It  is  a  bargain,"  spoke  Blair,  knowing  that 
was  a,Jow  figure  for  California. 

"Yes,  sah,  it's  cheap,  an'  I'll  take  you  out  in 
quick  time,  too.  Ye  see,  it's  mighty  bad  place 
here  in  de  town ;  heap  o'  sickness.  De  Lord 
am  visitin'  dis  people  for  der  compilation  of 
his  commandments.  I  b'lieves  in  'ligion." 

With  this  introduction  of  his  gift  of  language 
and  pious  inclinations,  the  sprightly  negro 


|  brought  up  the  great  wagon  drawn  by  four 
mules,  and,  taking  in  the  party  and  their  bag- 
gage, began  an  exceedingly  deliberate  move- 
ment eastward. 

As  our  pilgrims  to  the  shrine  of  Mammon 
crept  into  one  of  the  main  streets  of  the  hamlet 
by  the  river,  they  heard  merriest  music  echoed 
from  an  adjacent  street  running  parallel  with 
the  one  they  were  on. 

"What  is  that  fiddling  and  piping  we  hear?" 
asked  the  Doctor. 

"Dat  am  de  glorification  of  'Round  Tent,'" 
responded  the  driver. 

"Church,  I  suppose  you  mean,"  returned  the 
Doctor,  ready,  by  this  time,  for  another  side- 
wrenching  laugh. 

"Call  it  church,  if  you  ain't  partic'lar  in 
weighin'  your  words.  De  priv'lege  is  yourn. 
Mighty  sight  o'  preachin',  no  doubt,  twixt  de 
sweat-cloth  and  monte  what  dey  hab  dar." 

"It  is  some  dreadful  gambling  house,  I 
know,"  spoke  Madame  Durgin.  "Now,  Doc- 
tor, for  pity's  sake,  don't  explode." 

"I  thought  you  said  you  were  going  to  hurry 
us  through,"  continued  the  snubbed  physician, 
looking  out  on  to  the  plains  specked  with 
groups  of  cattle  and  low,  wide -topped  trees. 

"I  b'lieve  I  did  probablize  suffin  o'  dat  natur' ; 
but  I  sees  I  mistookified  de  ambition  ob  de 
mules." 

"Why,  don't  you  know  the  character  of  your 
own  team?" 

"Please,  sah,  dis  string  o'  brutes  ben't  my 
property." 

"Well,  you  drive  'em  every  day,  don't  you?" 

"Bless  my  soul,  dis  is  de  fust  crack  o'  de 
black  snake  ebber  I  had  at  'em." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Golly,  I  means  what  I  says.  I'se  specifi- 
cous  in  my  language.  /  borrowed  dis  team  for 
de  occasion" 

At  this  announcement,  the  fleshy,  red-haired, 
red -faced  physician  resigned  his  post  of  inquis- 
itor for  fear  something  would  yet  come  out 
that  would  cause  him  to  again  forget  himself, 
and  possibly  be  productive  of  further  damage 
to  the  person  or  possessions  of  the  idol  of  his 
affections.  The  loquacious  African,  however, 
was  not  to  be  deterred  from  publishing  his 
trick;  and,  in  his  own  hifalutin  manner,  con- 
tinued the  disclosure: 

"Ye  see,1'  he  went  on,  letting  the  mules  take 
their  own  way,  "it  wasn't  among  the  propossi- 
bilities  dat  a  professional  driver  could  under- 
take dis  vast  job  wid  his  own  riggin'.  I  nebber 
see  dis  rig  o'  beasts  afore  in  my  born  days. 
Dat's  why  I  could  work  so  cheap.  De  gemmen 
what  owns  dis  coach  is  playin'  cards,  and  there 
ain't  no  sense  in  good  healthy  mules  standin' 


AND   'so. 


403 


to  a  stump  all  de  arternoon,  doin'  noffin.  Be- 
sides, dis  am  a  free  country — what's  mine  is 
yours,  and  what's  yours  is  mine.  When  I  gits 
back  wid  dis  turn-out,  why  I'll  splain  the  dis- 
tress o'  de  circumstancibilities,  and  de  DOSS 
will  be  satisfied.  If  he  exemplifies  any  dis- 
cordament,"  added  the  new-made  muleteer, 
with  a  grin  of  evident  composure,  "why  we'll 
enjoy  a  little  walk -around,  dat's  all." 

Ensign,  who  could  not  brook  the  use  of  the 
least  deception,  felt  like  tipping  the  black  joker 
out  of  the  wagon ;  but  he  was  doing  them  a 
service,  and  providing  the  party  ( particularly 
the  Doctor)  with  merriment,  so  he  was  allowed 
to  discourse  until,  with  the  assistance  of  kind 
fortune,  he  had  brought  his  charge  safely  to 
their  stopping-place. 

Sutter's  Fort,  as  it  rose  to  the  view  of  our 
travelers,  was  a  fortress  of  adobe  walls,  in  the 
shape  of  a  parallelogram.  These  walls  were 
five  hundred  feet  long  by  one  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  wide,  and  fifteen  feet  high.  Through 
these  were  cut  port -holes;  while  at  their  cor- 
ners stood  short  towers  mounted  with  cannon. 
Within  these  outer  walls  were  others  of  similar 
construction  connected  with  the  former  by  a 
roof;  the  space  between,  which  had  been  pre- 
viously used  as  a  place  of  storage,  being  now 
occupied  by  stores  rented  to  merchants  at  sixty 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  in  the  aggregate.  In 
the  center  of  the  grounds  stood  a  comfortable 
dwelling,  built  for  a  citadel  and  officers'  head- 
quarters, at  present  the  Captain's  residence. 
Situated  on  a  hill,  at  the  base  of  which  a  creek 
ran  by  to  join  the  waters  of  the  American 
Fork,  Sutter's  Fort,  thus  constructed,  presented 
an  aspect  truly  formidable;  though,  at  this 
time,  its  warlike  mien  had  yielded  to  the  milder 
appearance  of  a  place  of  thriving  trade.  The 
voice  of  the  guns  had  grown  silent  amid  the 
noise  and  bustle  of  business.  Boatmen  were 
tugging  and  swearing  on  the  launches  deliver- 
ing their  cargoes  down  on  the  river ;  teamsters 
were  cursing  equally  loud,  as  they  urged  their 
overloaded  teams  to  the  various  trading  houses 
within  the  Fort's  inclosure;  while  scores  of 
men,  mounted  on  mustangs  or  hastening  hither 
and  thither  on  foot,  completed  the  scene  of  gen- 
eral activity.  It  was  now  the  close  of  day,  but 
the  many  duties  begun  in  the  morning  were 
not  all  performed.  Even  at  this  late  hour,  the 
z^noble  red  man  and  his  still  more  indifferent 
squaw  were  the  only  visible  objects  of  indo- 
lence. 

Sutter's  Fort!  To  remember  it  as  it  was, 
and  to  look  upon  it  as  it  is  in  this  year  of 
our  Lord  eighteen  hundred  and  eighty -one! 
It  would  seem  as  if  the  ghosts  of  its  flourish- 
ing past  ought  to  haunt  it  with  such  persist- 


ence as  to  make  the  very  swine  and  goats  trem- 
ble that  now  root  among  and  scramble  over 
its  pitiable  ruins. 

While  search  was  being  made  for  the  hospi- 
table proprietor  of  this  thriving  trading  post, 
Blair,  who  had  become  much  interested  in  their 
guide  as  a  character -study,  took  occasion  to 
make  certain  inquiries  of  him  as  he  rewarded 
him  for  his  services. 

"I'se  seventy -five  years  old,  sah,  and  my 
name  is  Mose,"  responded  the  darky.  "I'se 
a  cook  by  profession,  and  been  in  California  but 
'bout  six  months.  Come  from  ole  Virginy  wid 
massa,  an'  he  made  me  a  free  man  de  bery  in- 
stantaneousness  we  set  heel  down  on  dis  soil." 

Blair  would  undoubtedly  have  learned  much 
more  of  Mose's  history  had  not  the  narrator 
suddenly  discovered  that  he  had  a  sterner  duty 
to  perform.  A  strapping  Indian  strode  care- 
lessly up  and  stood  nearer  Mose  and  his  list- 
ener than  the  sensitive  African  considered  po- 
lite or  proper. 

"What  you  lookin'  at?"  demanded  Mose. 

The  red  man  made  no  response.  Quick  as 
a  trained  pugilist  in  the  supple  days  of  his 
youth,  Mose  bent  his  woolly  head  like  a  stag 
about  to  do  battle,  and,  dashing  forward,  at 
one  leap  struck  the  inoffensive  child  of  the 
wood  in  the  pit  of  his  stomach,  sending  him 
sprawling,  breathless,  on  the  ground. 

"I'll  instructate  you  better  than  to  'suit  an 
American  citizen,"  said  Mose;  and,  wishing 
the  party  "good  ebenin',"  he  mounted  his 
wagon,  and  allowed  the  mules  to  make  their 
way  back  to  the  place  whence  they  had  been 
"  borrowed." 


CHAPTER  X. 

"Yes,"  said  the  tall,  well  favored  host,  of 
military  mien,  "yes,  Mr.  Blair,  I  know  who  you 
are,  and  am  glad  to  see  you.  Marshall  put  me 
on  the  lookout.  He  took  quite  a  notion  to  you. 
No  knowing  what  for;  he  is  a  queer  fellow, 
and  independent  in  his  likings." 

"My  friends  here,  Captain,"  responded  Blair, 
"I  have  made  bold  to  bring  along;  but  all  of 
us  do  not  propose  to  throw  ourselves  upon  your 
hospitality.  If  you  can  accommodate  the  Doc- 
tor and  his  wife,  the  rest  of  us  will  camp  out- 
side." 

"  Nonsense,"  replied  the  hearty  Captain,  ad- 
vancing toward  Mrs.  Durgin.  "Of  course, 
this  bit  of  preciousness  shall  have  first  chance 
at  all  the  good  things  to  be  found ;  but  I  reckon 
a  plate  of  pork  and  beans  to  stay  the  appetite, 
and,  at  least,  a  good  soft  redwood  board  to 
sleep  on,  may  be  procured  for  each  one  remain- 


404 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


ing.  It  would  give  me  great  pleasure  to  do  the 
becoming  thing  by  you,  friends,"  he  continued, 
leading  the  way  into  his  own  private  quarters ; 
"but  the  truth  is,  not  only  my  house  is  full,  but 
nearly  every  nook  and  corner  of  all  these  stores 
and  sheds  you  see  is  crowded  with  bales,  boxes, 
and  barrels.  How  the  stuff  got  here  is  not 
much  of  a  mystery,  as  you  will  see  when  to- 
morrow's teaming  begins.  I  wonder  that  there 
is  not  more  confusion  than  there  actually  is." 

His  guests  being  introduced  to  his  wife  and 
daughter  (two  amiable  and  interesting  French 
ladies,  who  were  unfortunately  obliged  to  be  ab- 
sent during  the  evening),  the  Captain  excused 
himself  and  requested^Dr.  Durgin  to  accom- 
pany him. 

"It  is  my  time  to  make  a  visit  to  the  hospi- 
tals, Doctor,"  said  he,  "and  I  thought  perhaps 
you  would  find  something  to  interest  you  in 
such  an  excursion." 

"I  certainly  should,"  replied  the  benevolent 
physician. 

"Now,"  said  Mrs.  Durgin,  after  they  had  gone 
out,  "the  Doctor  has  sallied  forth  with  a  full 
determination  to  laugh  some  poor,  disease- 
stricken  fellow  back  to  health  —  or  into  his 
grave,  I  can't  say  which." 

"Are  you  not  rather  severe,  madam,  upon 
your  husband's  bursts  of  good  nature?"  spoke 
Ensign,  who  sat  in  a  corner  looking  almost  as 
much  like  a  girl  as  the  bride  herself. 

"If  I  am  it  is  his  own  fault.  Why  should  one 
roar  in  order  to  convince  himself  and  others 
that  he  is  temporarily  happy?" 

"The  necessities  of  our  organisms  diverge 
widely.  It  is  lordly  in  the  lion  to  roar.  He 
would  belie  his  nature  and  demean  his  race 
did  he  vent  his  joy  or  anger  in  the  puny  squeal 
of  the  mouse." 

"Lawyers,  lawyers  !"  returned  the  lady,  rais- 
ing her  little  hands  in  simulation  of  despair. 
"  I  have  been  argued  out  of  a  score  of  veritable 
truths  already  since  we  left  San  Francisco  this 
morning.  At  this  rate,  I  shan't  have  a  particle 
of  sense  left  by  the  time  we  reach  the  mines." 

"When  one  can  supply  the  place  of  sound- 
ness of  mind  with  gold  filling,  its  loss  is  lightly 
felt,"  responded  Ensign,  with  provoking  com- 
posure. 

"Mr.  Blair,"  said  the  lady,  looking  archly  up 
into  his  face,  "am  I  to  be  persecuted  with  all 
this  logic  and  philosophy  simply  because  I  ob- 
ject to  my  husband's  fairly  braying  when  he  is 
pleased?" 

"Mr.  Ensign,"  replied  Blair,  "I  know  did  not 
intend  to  harass  you ;  but  the  fact  is,  so  close 
a  student  of  German  metaphysics — : 

"Enough,  enough  !"  exclaimed  the  bride,  set- 
tling back  in  her  chair.  "That  very  word  alone 


throws  me  into  a  state  of  complete  bewilder- 
ment. Whenever  I  find  it  in  a  book  I  skip  the 
next  twenty  pages,  and  if  it  occurs  a  second 
time  I  drop  the  book,  never  to  take  it  up 
again," 

"I  fear,"  spoke  Ensign,  "that  your  dislike  of 
the  word  has  prevented  you  from  a  thorough 
understanding  of  the  glorious  science  of — 

"Oh,  pray  don't  repeat  the  dreadful  name,' 
interrupted  the  fair  one.  "I  have  given  you 
warning  what  it  would  do  to  me,  and  the  Doc 
tor  is  not  here,  you  know.  Think  of  it,  Mr. 
Blair :  those  that  follow  up  this  unmentionable 
study  eat  opium !  Yes,  every  man  of  them. 
Poor  Coleridge!  I  nearly  cried  my  eyes  out 
when  I  learned  the  wicked  habits  of  thought 
he  contracted  in  Germany." 

"But  we  were  discussing  the  subject  of  laugh- 
ter, not  of  tears,"  said  the  handsome  Bostonian. 
"Sometimes  I  find  that  nothing  but  a  hearty 
laugh  will  relieve  me  from  a  very  uncomforta- 
ble state  of  mind." 

"  You  may  laugh  as  much  as  you  please,  Mr. 
Blair,"  replied  the  other,  a  very  soft  light  beam- 
ing in  her  large  blue  eyes.  "I  have  not  the 
slightest  fault  to  find  with  your  conduct  except 
your  persistent  refusal  to  let  me  have  my  ro- 
mance of  the  dusky  braves  and  their  wild,  untu- 
tored maidens." 

"It  was  far  from  my  purpose  to  interfere  with 
your  privileges  in  that  direction.  Really  I  must 
beg  your  pardon  if  I  was  guilty  of  so  reprehen- 
sible behavior." 

Blair  was  handsome.  He  knew  it,  and  he 
knew,  too,  that  there  was  the  magnetism  in  his 
presence  that  is  very  dangerous  to  susceptible, 
pretty  young  women,  whether  they  be  still  the 
lawful  possessor  of  their  own  hearts  and  attend- 
ant charms,  or  whether,  as  in  this  instance,  they 
have  intrusted  them  to  the  keeping  of  another. 
Though  he  sought  no  conquests,  be  it  repeated 
that  Blair  was  well  aware  of  his  ability  to  effect 
them.  Consequently,  indifferent  as  was  his 
bearing  toward  the  bride,  the  prudent  reader 
may  convict  him  of  censurable  carelessness  of 
conduct.  However  this  may  be,  the  events  of 
this  story  must  be  recorded  as  they  actualjy  oc- 
curred, and  each  and  every  character  must  ac- 
cept the  consequences.  Perhaps  Blair  will  im- 
prove as  we  follow  him  further. 

"I  grant  you  full  and  free  forgiveness,"  re- 
sponded Mrs.  Durgin  to  the  Bostonian's  hum- 
ble suit  for  continuance  of  grace  in  her  inno- 
cent regard.  "But  you  must  remember  that 
one  cannot  be  romantic  alone  •  and  unaided. 
You  refused  to  help  me — that  was  all  my 
charge." 

Blair  now  became,  for  some  reason,  suddenly 
conscious  of  the  absence  of  James,  and,  with 


AND  '50. 


405 


the  skill  of  which  he  was  master,  managed  to 
make  his  escape  from  the  room  without  sus- 
picion on  the  part  of  the  lady  as  to  the  true 
cause  of  his  departure. 

It  was  now  dusk  when  Blair  began  his  neces- 
sitated search  for  his  lost  comrade.  He  passed 
the  woolen  factory,  the  pisco  distillery,  walked 
slowly  round  the  blacksmith  shop  and  the  build- 
ing where  the  wheelwrights  worked,  and  finally 
brought  up  at  the  guard-house.  Nothing  was 
to  be  found  of  James.  At  last,  discerning  a 
group  of  human  forms  under  a  tree  a  short  dis- 
tance away,  he  proceeded  thither,  and,  much 
to  his  gratification  and  amusement,  found  the 
wanderer  calmly  seated  among  a  band  of  ad- 
miring Indians. 

"What,  James,"  greeted  Blair;  "a  twilight 
flirtation  with  the  tawny  belles  of  the  forest  so 
soon?" 

"Cousin,"  answered  the  other,  "that  misera- 
ble Mose  dealt  this  native  here  a  most  cruel 
blow.  I  believe  if  I  had  not  administered  a 
drop  from  my  vial  he  would  have  gone  with- 
out ceremony  to  follow  the  chase  in  the  happy 
hunting  ground." 


"  'By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues — 
The  hunter  and  the  deer  a  shade,'  " 


repeated  Blair,  in  solemn  tones,  casting  his 
eyes  over  the  swarthy  group  crouching  in  si- 
lence before  him. 

"There  would  have  been  no  poetry  in  the 
proceeding  to  this  poor  creature,"  returned 
James,  patting  the  injured  redskin  upon  his 
blanketed  shoulders.  "The  worst  of  it  is  he 
can't  understand  a  syllable  of  English,  and  I 
had  great  difficulty  in  getting  him  to  take  the 
medicine." 

"James,"  said  Blair,  conducting  the  young 
philanthropist  toward  the  Fort,  "if  you  continue 
to  manifest  so  frequent  symptoms  of  mental  de- 
rangement I  shall  be  obliged  to  lodge  you  in 
the  guard -house  and  proceed  to  the  mines 
minus  your  company." 

"Why,  was  there  anything  crazy  in  trying  to 
lessen  the  suffering  of  a  fellow -creature?  Is  a 
man  to  be  left  to  ache  and  groan  it  out  just  be- 
cause he  has  the  misfortune  to  be  an  Indian?" 

"You'd  better  discuss  such  matters  with  the 
Doctor's  wife — that  is,  for  the  present.  Before 
many  days  you  will  discover  certain  phases  of 
the  red  men's  gratitude  for  white  men's  favors 
of  which  you  now  seem  to  be  ignorant." 

"That  is  unchristian,  Cousin  Mortimer.  We 
are  to  do  good  whether  we  be  rewarded  with 
good  or  with  evil  in  return." 

Vol.  III.— 26. 


"  Sound  morals,  no  doubt ;  but  what  conceiva- 
ble aid  think  you  a  drop  from  that  vial  would 
bring  to  a  creature  that  had  been  struck  in  the 
abdomen  with  a  sledge-hammer?" 

"Perhaps  it  didn't  bring  him  much  relief 
after  all  my  pains,"  answered  James,  in  a  sub- 
dued voice ;  "but  upon  my  word  I  cannot  see 
that  there  was  any  harm  in  attempting  to  suc- 
cor a  human  creature  in  distress." 

"James,"  said  Blair,  giving  his  cousin  a  good- 
natured  shake,  "I  am  anxiously  looking  for- 
ward to  the  time  when  you  will  enjoy  twenty- 
four  consecutive  hours  of  what  the  doctors  term 
a  'lucid  interval.'" 

Having  escorted  the  Yankee  boys  back  into 
the  presence  of  Mrs.  Durgin  and  the  metaphy- 
sician, let  us  follow  for  a  few  moments  Captain 
Sutter  and  the  uproarious  physician. 

"The  thousands  that  have  poured  in  here 
during  the  summer,"  the  Captain  is  saying, 
"travelers  by  sea  via  Cape  Horn  and  the  Isth- 
mus, from  the  Pacific  Islands  and  the  seaports 
of  Asia,  augmented  by  the  thousands  of  fam- 
ished emigrants  that  dragged  their  way  across 
the  plains — all  these  reached  our  valley  city, 
with  systems  impaired  not  only,  but  frequently 
wasting  in  advanced  stages  of  disease.  Since 
August,  Sacramento  has  been  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  an  ill  managed  hospital.  The  rains, 
setting  in  the  first  of  last  month,  made  matters 
worse  than  they  would  otherwise  have  been. 
Hundreds  have  died  from  exposure  that  might 
have  survived  under  proper  treatment.  Several 
of  us  have  sought  to  resist  the  progress  of  the 
various  disorders,  but  the  majority  of  the  peo- 
ple have  been  astonishingly  indifferent.  Num- 
bers of  families  have  forsaken  one  another  in 
the  hour  of  need,  without  the  least  compunc- 
tion of  conscience.  Mad  in  the  pursuit  of  gold, 
they  have  outraged  the  prime  decencies  of  civ- 
ilized life.  Let  me  give  you  an  instance :  An 
old  man,  having  first  given  his  two  sons  money 
to  purchase  passage  to  California,  folio  wed  them 
by  way  of  the  Horn.  When  he  reached  here, 
after  a  long  journey  of  great  suffering,  he  was 
in  the  last  stages  of  a  loathsome  and  fatal  dis- 
order. Can  you  believe  that  those  two  sons  left 
their  dying  father  to  perish  alone  on  the  banks 
of  a  slough?  Well,  sir,  they  did  it ;  and  he  per- 
ished without  even  the  consolation  that  his  al- 
ready decomposing  body  would  be  honored 
with  a  covering  of  earth.  What  with  scurvy 
and  miasmatic  affections,  particularly  low  and 
virulent  types  of  fever,  we  have  had  a  serious 
season.  Many  of  the  places  occupied  by  the 
sick  have  afforded  almost  as  poor  shelter  from 
the  sun  as  from  the  rains ;  and  the  charges  for 
the  miserable  privilege  of  staying  in  them  have 
been  so  enormous  as  to  put  them  out  of  the 


406 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


reach  of  the  majority.  Men  without  a  dollar 
cannot  afford  from  sixteen  to  fifty  dollars  a  day 
for  hospital  services.  Our  doctors,  too,  have 
demanded  exorbitant  fees — sixteen  to  thirty-two 
dollars  a  visit." 

Dr.  Durgin,  although  a  loud  laugher,  was  a 
capable  physician,  and  a  man  of  generous  dis- 
position. He  was  boisterous,  but  possessed  of 
many  noble  qualities.  The  above  doleful  nar- 
ration of  the  Captain  threw  him  into  a  more 
thoughtful  mood  than  any  in  which  the  reader 
has  before  found  him.  He  passed  from  bed  to 
bed  among  the  sufferers  lying  in  the  two  hos- 
pitals within  the  bastions  of  the  Fort,  making 
many  useful  hints,  which  the  kind  Captain  was 
glad  to  obtain. 

"This  is  not  my  business,  Doctor,  you  un- 
derstand," continued  the  latter  as  the  two  bent 
their  steps  toward  the  house.  "I  really  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  management  of  the  hos- 
pitals, but  I  like  to  know  what  is  going  on  on 
my  own  premises,  especially  when  the  transac- 
tion involves  the  comfort  of  helpless  fellow-be- 
ings. The  Odd  Fellows  (God  bless  them!), 
though  imperfectly  organized  as  yet,  have  done 
much  toward  the  amelioration  of  suffering ;  and 
I  cannot  omit  to  mention  the  services  of  a  cer- 
tain young  woman — a  sweet  little  mystery — that 
has,  from  time  to  time,  appeared  among  us.  She 
has,  I  believe,  effected  more  permanent  cures 
than  any  of  our  physicians." 

"You  surprise  me,  indeed,"  exclaimed  his 
listener. 

"'The  Gazelle,'  as  the  miners  call  her,  has 
astonished  us  all.  She  appears  to  have  no 
friends  or  acquaintances  in  the  country — that 
is,  with  whom  she  associates.  She  stays  but  a 
short  time  in  a  place,  and,  wherever  she  is,  is 
seldom  seen,  except  when  engaged  in  some 
work  of  mercy,  or,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  on  great 
occasions,  at  the  tables  of  the  gamblers." 

"Strange  enough,"  said  the  Doctor.  "I  can 
not  exactly  reconcile  the  apparent  inconsist- 
ency of  her  conduct.  Has  she  studied  medi- 
cine, think  you?" 

"She  must  have  a  knowledge  of  many  of  the 
essentials  of  practice,  for  the  reason  that  she 
meets  with  success.  She  is  fairly  idolized  by 
all  classes.  Probably  not  one  in  fifty  to  whom 
she  has  rendered  invaluable  service  has  caught 
a  glimpse  of  her  features.  She  always  wears 
a  heavy  veil." 

"You  must  tell  this  story  to  my  wife,  Cap- 
tain. She  will  not  rest  until  she  has  ferreted 
out  the  young  lady  not  only,  but  her  entire  an- 
cestry for  several  generations." 

"Yes,  yes,  that  reminds  me.  We  are  con- 
suming too  much  time  out  here  by  ourselves. 
But  let  me  give  you  one  point  more,"  said  the 


gallant  and  brave  pioneer.  "I  once  had  the 
pleasure  of  looking  squarely  and  fairly  into  the 
face  of  this  indescribable  creature,  and  I  de- 
clare to  you,  upon  my  honor  as  a  soldier,  that 
there  is  none  fairer  among  the  daughters  of 
men." 

"Good !"  exclaimed  the  physician.  "That  is 
as  it  should  be.  The  story  is  perfect,  and  my 
wife  must  have  it  the  first  moment  that  you  are 
at  leisure  and  will  condescend  to  bestow  the 
favor." 

The  host  and  his  guest  were  now  at  head- 
quarters, and  the  two  came  in  upon  the  re- 
mainder of  the  company  as  a  strong  fresh  breeze 
enters  an  apartment  too  long  closed. 

"Now,  my  little  lady,"  spoke  the  Captain, 
approaching  Mrs.  Durgin,  who  had  just  recov- 
ered from  the  last  sentence  of  quiet  intricacy 
launched  against  her  from  the  lips  of  the  meta- 
physician— "now  it  is  time  for  you  and  the 
other  friends  to  partake  of  some  good,  sub- 
stantial food.  Have  these  young  men  done  the 
honors  as  they  should  during  my  own  and  your 
husband's  absence?" 

"  Not  as  perfectly,  I  am  bound  to  say,  as  our 
worthy  host  would  have  acquitted  himself,"  re- 
turned the  other,  with  a  bewitching  smile  di- 
rected toward  Ensign,  but  intended  for  Blair. 

"Bravo!"  cried  the  hero.  "That's  right- 
stand  up  for  the  old  Captain." 

A  brief  season  of  sharp  firing  here  ensued 
between  the  rebuked  young  men  and  the  bride, 
when  the  Captain,  as  became  a  gallant  mili- 
tary officer,  commanded  a  retreat  to  the  dining- 
room,  himself  bringing  up  the  rear,  with  the  ob- 
ject of  his  protection  leaning  upon  his  arm. 

"I  have  a  bit  of  news  for  you,  friends,"  he 
began,  after  having  served  bountiful  rations  all 
round,  "To-morrow  night  the  citizens  are  go- 
ing to  come  as  near  as  possible  to  having  what 
is  known  in  civilized  countries  as  a  Grand  Ball. 
They  have  given  me  a  special  invitation,  and  I 
am  going  to  take  my  visitors  with  me." 

"But  my  party  dress,  Doctor!"  exclaimed 
Madame  Durgin.  "I  told  you  that  we  ought 
not  to  have  stored  it  in  San  Francisco." 

"Dress !"  shouted  the  Captain.  "Bless  your 
heart,  the  most  unpretending  outfit  will  be 
welcome.  The  desire  is  to  see  a  few  women. 
What  they  wear  is  of  slight  importance.  Or- 
ders have  gone  out  that  every  white  woman 
within  a  radius  of  fifty  miles  must  be  in  attend- 
ance. No  excuse  short  of  sickness  or  death  of 
near  relatives/' 

"  I  shall  act  in  accordance  with  your  wishes, 
Captain,"  said  Mrs.  Durgin,  with  another  smile 
bestowed  in  the  opposite  direction  from  where 
it  belonged,  "at  whatever  risk  of  criticism,  or 
of  personal  inconvenience." 


AND 


407 


"There  are  those  garments,  dear,  that  met 
with  the  accident  down  at  the  landing.  Per- 
haps those  — —  " 

The  Doctor  could  not  finish  his  sentence 
without  foregoing  one  of  his  long  -  neglected 
laughs.  So  he  dropped  it  (having,  however, 
given  as  much  of  it  as  was  necessary),  and 
yielded  to  an  unrestrained  indulgence  of  his 
favorite  pastime.  The  uproar  was  catching,  and 
soon  became  general.  In  this  happy  mood  we 
will  leave  our  party  until  the  morrow. 


CHAPTER  XL 

The  gentleman  of  our  party  were  stirring 
early  in  the  morning.  The  scene  in  the  camp- 
ing-ground outside  the  fort  inspired  them  with 
fresh  zeal  and  courage.  They  there  beheld 
several  companies  making  final  preparations  to 
start  for  the  long  -  talked  -  of  mines.  Breakfast 
was  already  over,  and  they  were  hastily  sad- 
dling their  horses  or  hitching  them  to  the  great 
wagons  heavily  loaded  with  provisions  and  the 
necessary  implements  for  the  coming  work. 
Many  had  been  at  the  mines  during  the  sum- 
mer months,  and  were  now  on  a  visit  to  the  Fort 
for  the  purpose  of  renewing  their  exhausted  sup- 
plies. It  was  not  the  busy  season,  for  the  early 
rains  had  somewhat  checked  the  general  rush 
to  the  diggings.  Nevertheless,  there  still  re- 
mained many  that  were  determined  to  secure 
at  least  a  small  fortune  before  the  winter  should 
compel  them  to  desist  from  labor.  As  the 
caravan  at  last  moved  slowly  away,  it  was 
not  without  difficulty  that  those  behind  could 
refrain  from  following.  It  looked  to  them  as  if 
the  little  army  that  had  taken  its  leave  was  in 
a  short  time  to  seize  upon  certain  indefinite  but 
rich  possessions  that  they  would  fain  fall  heir  to 
themselves. 

"Fie  on  our  party!"  cried  James  Swilling. 
"We  ought  to  be  on  the  road  to  the  diggings. 
There  is  one  English  chap  in  that  first  company 
that  will  be  as  rich  as  a  king  inside  of  three 
days." 

"Be  patient,  James,"  spoke  Blair.  "Here  is 
a  band  of  your  copper-colored  friends  that  may 
need  you  for  a  day  or  two  yet.  See  the  be- 
seeching countenance  of  the  old  squaw  next  the 
tree,"  continued  the  speaker,  directing  the  phil- 
anthropist's attention  to  a  neighboring  group  of 
Indians.  "She  seems  to  take  no  notice  of  the 
gaudy-hued  handkerchiefs  and  scarlet  blankets 
that  the  braves  are  inspecting  with  apparent 
delight.  I  warrant  she  has  dug  her  share  of 
the  gold  that  has  been  bartered  for  them ;  con- 
sequently her  indifference  argues  distemper  of 
mind  or  body.  Go  to  her,  benevolent,  pharma- 


ceutical youth,  and,  vial  in  hand,  minister  to 
her  comfort." 

James  stood  still,  sharpening  his  wits  for  a 
retort;  but,  as  was  sometimes  the  case  with 
him,  he  delayed  a  little  too  long.  An  approach- 
ing cart  that,  in  his  self  -  absorption  and  amid 
the  general  bustle,  he  did  not  notice,  struck  him 
with  one  of  its  shafts,  seriously  disturbing  his 
equilibrium,  and  inflicting  a  by  no  means  con- 
temptible bruise. 

"  Keep  courage,  my  good  fellow,"  shouted  Dr. 
Durgin,  who  witnessed  the  accident  with  com- 
mendable subjugation  of  his  risibilities;  "I'll 
have  you  all  right  in  a  few  minutes." 

"I'm  not  much  hurt,"  replied  the  sufferer, 
rubbing  his  side  in  an  attitude  resembling  a 
gymnast  preparing  to  turn  what  is  known  among 
professionals  as  a  "cart-wheel." 

"That  was  not  the  legitimate  effect  of  my 
banter,  Jimmy,"  said  Blair,  hastening  to  concil- 
iate his  injured  relative. 

"I  forgive  you,  cousin,"  answered  James; 
and  without  further  delay  he  hobbled  away  with 
the  Doctor,  while  Blair  and  Ensign  continued 
upon  their  round  of  inspection. 

The  Indians,  in  their  various  styles  of  dress, 
ranging  from  the  covering  of  a  single  rag  to  re- 
spectable cotton  shirts  and  trowsers  obtained 
at  a  stupendous  price,  were  perhaps  the  greatest 
novelty.  Next  to  them  the  Oregon  trappers, 
clothed  in  buffalo  hides,  were  the  wildest  and 
most  striking  in  appearance.  But  the  sharp- 
nosed  Yankee  traders,  attired  in  loose  blue 
frocks,  with  broad -brimmed  straw  hats  upon 
their  heads,  were,  after  all,  the  chief  curiosity. 
The  trades  they  drove  for  the  bags  of  dust, 
handed  in  by  purchasers  to  be  exchanged  for 
dollars,  were  simply  amazing.  One  would  buy 
the  dust  and  lumps  of  ore  at  his  own  estimate ; 
then  send  the  buyer  to  his  partner,  who  would 
take  the  dollars  again  in  exchange  for  miners' 
tools  or  provisions.  It  required  a  startling 
number  of  dollars  at  these  stores  to  buy  a  mod- 
erate supply  of  breadstuff,  brandy,  or  tobacco. 
When  one  considers  the  class  of  men  with 
whom  Captain  Sutter  had  to  deal  in  the  super- 
intendence of  his  trading-post  and  great  farm, 
sixteen  hundred  acres  of  which  was  under  cul- 
tivation, it  is  net  surprising  that  he  should  style 
himself  "the  busiest  man  in  the  world."  Every 
few  days  a  number  of  his  most  important  labor- 
ers would  threaten  to  throw  up  their  occupa- 
tion and  start  for  the  mines.  Only  an  increase 
of  wages  and  a  double  supply  of  pisco  and 
whisky  could  reverse  this  purpose.  The  Indi- 
ans were  not  the  source  of  the  Swiss  soldier's 
care  and  anxiety.  For  eight  or  ten  years  he 
had  held  the  red  man  in  subjection  with  com- 
parative ease.  The  Indians  had  dug  the  ditches 


408 


THE   CAL1FORN1AN. 


in  his  wheat-fields  and  made  the  bricks  for  his 
fort.  It  was  the  after-coming  white  man  that 
proved  uncontrollable,  and  darker  days  were  in 
store  for  the  distinguished  pioneer  because  of 
him  than  he  now  dreamed  of. 

Blair  and  Ensign,  having  made  the  best  of 
their  opportunity  at  breakfast,  obtained  from 
the  Captain  much  valuable  information  as  to 
the  proper  outfit  for  the  mines.  He  was  not  to 
be  found  again,  in  all  probability,  till  afternoon ; 
so  the  two,  having  consulted  with  the  Doctor 
and  his  patient,  who  proved  to  be  rapidly  im- 
proving, went  to  town  to  effect  such  purchases 
as  could  not  be  made  at  the  Fort. 

Busy  scenes,  very  like  those  they  had  left  in 
San  Francisco,  now  met  their  eyes.  Front 
Street  was  another  Broadway  wharf  on  a  small- 
er scale.  The  river  bank  was  lined  with  vessels 
used  for  the  purpose  of  storing  vast  accumula- 
tions of  merchandise.  Lumber  was  scarce,  and 
brought  from  half  a  dollar  to  a  dollar  and  a  half 
per  foot,  thus  causing  enormous  rents  for  every 
building  that  contained  wood  in  its  composition. 
Teaming  and  packing  the  goods  and  effects 
of  the  immigrants  to  the  mines  was  yielding  a 
princely  revenue  to  many,  while  others  were 
earning  from  a  dollar  and  a  half  an  hour  to  six- 
teen dollars  a  day  building  houses,  making 
rockers,  butchering,  making  bread,  or  engaged 
in  other  less  eminent  employments.  The  same 
grand  scale  of  prices  adopted  in  San  Francisco 
was  also  here  adhered  to  with  equal  uniformity. 
Ensign  and  Blair  solaced  themselves  with 
cigars  at  fifty  cents  apiece,  while  making  their 
tour  of  inspection.  Liquor,  at  a  dollar  a  glass, 
they  abstained  from  on  principles  of  economy 
as  well  as  of  abstinence.  An  astonishing  amount 
of  gold,  through  one  channel  and  another,  was 
constantly  changing  hands,  but  nowhere  else 
with  the  rapidity  to  be  observed  at  the  gaming 
tables.  Our  friends  witnessed  a  minister  of 
the  gospel,  a  physician,  and  two  lawyers  ab- 
sorbed in  the  grand  test  game  of  poker,  the 
"ante"  being  no  less  than  one  hundred  dollars. 
The  "Round  Tent"  vied  in  corrupt  splendor 
with  the  famous  El  Dorado  down  on  the  bay. 
While  within  its  wicked  inclosure,  who  should 
enter  and  salute  Blair  with  profound  suavity 
but  Mose,  the  teamster -cook.  His  politeness 
compelled  him  to  raise  his  hat — in  doing  which 
he  revealed  an  ugly  gash  at  the  top  of  his  fore- 
head. 

"Ye  see,  sah,"  said  Mose,  by  way  of  apology, 
"the  gem'men  what  owned  the  mules  got  disre- 
spec'ful.  I  remonstratized  wid  'im,  but  he 
wouldn't  hear  me.  Eventually  I  skipped  at  him, 
when  he  dodged,  and  was  the  means  o'  my  up- 
setting a  new  post  wid  de  crown  o'  my  head. 
Dat's  all,  sah,  'bout  dat.  But,  ye  see,  when  I'd 


got  my  hand  in  I  pitched  into  another  feller 
for  de  sake  of  gittin'  eben  wid  de  fust ;  and  de 
consequenciousness  of  de  whole  matter  am  dat 
dis  nigger  is  discharged." 

"Well,  Mose,"  said  Blair,  "how  would  you 
like  to  accompany  me  as  my  servant  to  the 
mines?" 

"Fust  rate,"  replied  Mose,  rolling  up  his  eyes, 
"provided  the  and -so -forth  would  be  satis- 
faxtory  to  us  bofe." 

"You  come  out  to  the  Fort  early  this  evening, 
and  I  guess  we  can  make  terms." 

"  I'll  be  dar,"  was  the  response ;  and  the  next 
moment  the  belligerent  darky  was  standing, 
arms  akimbo,  back  of  the  clergyman's  chair, 
watching  with  the  eye  of  a  connoisseur  the 
progress  of  the  game." 

"We  shall  want  him,  Ensign,"  said  Blair; 
and  the  two  retired  to  complete  their  purchases. 
The  party  was  already  well  provided  with 
strong  and  durable  outer  clothing,  flannel  un- 
derwear, and  high  water -proof  boots  ;  so  that 
their  list  of  articles  bought  at  this  time,  ran 
as  follows : 


Rocker $50.00 

Four  spades n  .00 

Three  pickaxes 36 .00 

Two  pans 8 .  oo 


Total. 


$105.00 


"By  the  time  we  have  paid  for  our  groceries, 
tent,  cooking  utensils,  horses,  and  saddles," 
said  Ensign,  running  his  eye  over  these  figures, 
"my  opinion  is  that  we  shall  need  all  the  gold 
that  can  be  found  for  the  purpose  of  replenish- 
ing our  treasury." 

"Very  true,  but  I  propose  a  good  ready,  at 
whatever  expense,"  replied  Blair.  "The  expe- 
rience will  be  hard  enough,  even  if  we  take  the 
precaution  to  provide  every  reasonable  con- 
venience. I  doubt  if  I  should  have  the  cour- 
age to  start  as  ill  equipped,  broken  down  in 
body,  and  as  nearly  penniless  as  the  thousands 
of  poor  devils  do  that  pass  through  here  weekly. 
I  mean  to  keep  my  health,  though  I  sink  what 
money  I  have  with  me,  and  am  debarred  even 
the  fortune  of  replacing  actual  expenditures." 

"My  sentiments,  exactly,"  responded  Ensign. 
"And  do  you  know  it  is  time  we  were  getting 
back?  The  Doctor  has  had  time  to  annihilate 
the  Fort  with  one  of  his  explosions;  and  your 
ward,  James,  I  doubt  not,  has  met  with  some 
new  and  disastrous  adventure." 

"You  have  not  forgotten  the  lady  who  is  so 
interested  in  mental  speculation,  I  trust." 

"No,  indeed.  Nor  have  the  Captain's  wife 
and  daughter.  If  she  has  not  afforded  them 
some  new  glimpses  of  life  in  America,  my 
judgment  miscarries." 


V?   AND    'jo. 


409 


"She  ought  to  have  married  a  man  that 
could  train  her,"  said  Blair,  moving  toward  a 
poster  tacked  up  in  front  of  the  Horse  Market. 

"  The  girl  is  well  enough,  but  her  mother  ad- 
vised her  to  join  hands  with  the  wrong  partner. 
And  the  deuce  of  a  mistake  it  ever  is.  Here, 
what  is  this?"  and  he  began  to  read : 

"Proclamation  to  the  People  of  Sacramento  City,  by 
order  of  the  President  and  Council." 

"That  sounds  grand  enough  for  New  York 
or  Boston.  Guess  it  will  pay  to  peruse  the 
whole  document." 

"On  the  ist  day  of  August,  1849,  we  were  elected 
Councilmen  of  this  city,  and  our  powers  or  duties  were 
not  defined.  On  the  i3th  of  September  following,  we 
presented  to  you  a  charter  for  your  consideration,  which 
you  have  seen  fit  to  reject  by  a  majority  of  146  votes. 
Since  then  we  have  been  unable  to  determine  what  the 
good  people  desire  us  to  do ;  and  being  republicans 
in  principles,  and  having  every  confidence  in  the  abil- 
ity of  the  people  to  govern  themselves,  we  again  re- 
quest the  residents  of  Sacramento  City  to  meet  at  the 
St.  Louis  Exchange,  at  7%  o'clock,  on  Wednesday 
evening,  October  loth,  1849,  then  and  there  to  declare 
what  they  wish  the  City  Council  to  do.  If  you  wish  us 
to  act  under  the  Mexican  laws  now  in  force,  however 
inapplicable  they  may  be  to  our  condition,  then  we 
must  do  the  best  we  can ;  if  you  have  objections  to  par- 
ticular features  of  the  charter,  then  strike  out  the  ob- 
jectionable features,  -and  insert  such  as  you  desire. 
The  health  and  safety  of  our  city  demand  immediate 
action  on  your  part ;  for  in  our  primitive  condition,  and 
in  the  absence  of  legislative  authority,  we  can,  in  fact, 
be  of  no  service  to  you  without  your  confidence  and 
consent." 

"I'm  sure  that's  fair,"  remarked  the  lawyer, 
taking  a  long  breath. 

"If  the  monte  boys  had  not  played  thunder 
at  the  polls,  ye  would  not  have  been  after  read- 
in'  that  same,"  shouted  a  fellow  that  passed  at 
the  moment,  leading  a  mule  carrying  an  im- 
mense pack. 

"How  so,  my  friend?"  returned  Ensign  ;  but 
the  informant  moved  on,  declining  explana- 
tion. 

"I  don't  wonder  that  the  'boys'  frown  upon 
the  advent  of  law  and  order,"  said  Blair.  "One 
must  admit  that  there  is  a  charm  about  this 
free-and-easy,  happy-go-lucky  life,  where  every 
man  is  for  himself  and  responsible  to  nobody. 
But  it  can't  last.  Man,  left  to  himself,  proves 
the  most  unruly  animal  in  creation.  No,  my 


gay,  thoughtless,  reckless  fellows,  you  must 
soon  feel  the  stern  grasp  of  the  law,  and  its 
hold  will  not  thereafter  be  loosed." 

Upon  the  return  of  our  friends  to  the  Fort,  the 
Captain  met  them,  attired  in  undress  uniform. 

"Ho!"  he  cried,  "what  luck?  Now  let  an 
old-timer  see  what  you  have  done." 

The  list  was  shown  him,  at  which  he  laughed 
good-naturedly,  saying  : 

"You  must  learn  as  you  go.  It  would  have 
been  better  to  have  made  your  own  rocker,  but 
with  you  a  few  dollars  are  neither  here  nor 
there.  The  pick  and  spade  are  the  main  tools. 
I  am  going  to  present  you  with  some  excellent 
sheath -knives  and  horns  for  crevicing.  Every- 
thing that  I  promised  is  in  readiness,  and  one 
very  valuable  addition." 

"Yes,  sir,"  exclaimed  James,  striding  up  in 
time  to  catch  the  speaker's  last  words;  "and  I 
have  had  a  glorious  old  talk  with  him." 

"  Has  my  friend  been  dipping  into  the  pisco 
vats,  Captain?"  asked  Blair,  by  way  of  apology 
for  James's  unintentional  rudeness. 

The  fact  is  the  boy  was  excited  beyond  con- 
trol. "Uncle  Lish,"  the  "valuable  addition," 
had  been  telling  him  his  trapper's  yarns  about 
gold,  Indian -fighting,  and  bear -catching,  until 
his  listener's  head  was  set  fairly  whirling. 

"The  boy  is  perfectly  excusable,"  returned 
the  Captain,  "for  Elijah  Harrington  is  a  very 
interesting  talker.  Unlike  many  men,  however, 
he  acts  full  as  well  as  he  talks.  He  has  prom- 
ised me  that  he  will  accompany  you  for  moder- 
ate wages,  and  serve  you  both  as  hunter  and 
guide.  But  come — I  see  Mrs.  Durgin  is  beckon- 
ing. I  promised  her  that  I  would  repeat  the 
story  of  the  gold  discovery  for  the  benefit  of 
herself  and  party.  It  will  be  the  thousandth, 
and,  I  was  going  to  say,  the  last  time.  Were 
it  not  that  so  many  ridiculous  forgeries  have 
been  published,  I  don't  know  that  I  could  be 
persuaded,  even  by  a  lady,  to  again  give  the 
true  version.  Let  us  make  haste.  I  have  only 
an  hour  to  spare,  and  to-night,  you  know,  comes 
the  grand  dissipation  of  the  season." 

In  a  few  moments  the  stalwart  pioneer  was 
seated  among  a  group  of  admiring  hearers, 
and,  after  a  happy  tribute  paid  to  the  persua- 
sive power  of  women  over  the  sternest  soldier, 
with  a  final  affectionate  glance  at  his  wife  and 
daughter,  he  began  his  story. 

JOHN  VANCE  CHENEY. 


CONTINUED  IN   NEXT   NUMBBR.J 


4io  THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


RUBY-THROAT. 

Emerald  -  plumed,  ruby  -  throated, 

Flashing  like  a  fairy  star 
Where  the  humid,  dew-becoated, 

Sun -illumed  blossoms  are — 
See  the  fleet  humming-bird! 
Hark  to  his  humming,  heard 
Loud  as  the  whirr  of  a  fairy -king's  car! 
Sightliest,  sprightliest,  lightest,  and  brightest  one, 
Child  of  the  summer  sun, 
Shining  afar ! 

Here  and  there,  near  and  far, 
Like  a  red  shooting -star; 
Back  and  forth,  south  and  north, 
Now  to  east,  now  to  west, 
Flames  little  Ruby -breast! 
Jasmine  is  swinging,  stirred 

As  thou  dost  by  her  float, 

Green -plumaged  fire -coat, 
Little  swift  -  winging  bird ! 

Sweet  is  the  merry  note 

Of  the  wild  singing -bird, 
Echoing  wildly  the  greenwood  amid; 
Glad  is  the  cheery  note 

Of  the  upspringing  bird, 

Leaving  the  copse  where  her  nestlings  are  hid; 
Yet  the  blithe -ringing  note 

Does  not  so  merry  come 

As  the  soft  fairy  hum 
Where  thou  dost  winging  float  — 
As  the  low  humming  heard 
From  the  swift -coming  bird! 

Brave  little  humming-bird! 

Every  eye  blesses  thee; 

Sunlight  caresses  thee; 
Forest  and  field  are  the  fairer  for  thee. 
Blooms,  at  thy  coming  stirred, 

Bend  on  each  brittle  stem, 

Nod  to  the  little  gem, 
Bow  to  the  humming-bird,  frolic  and  free. 
Now  around  the  woodbine  hovering, 
Now  the  morning-glory  covering, 
Now  the  honeysuckle  sipping, 
Now  the  sweet  clematis  tipping, 
Now  into  the  blue -bell  dipping; 
Hither,  thither,  flashing,  bright'ning, 
Like  a  streak  of  emerald  lightning; 

Round  the  box,  the  milk-white  phlox; 
Round  the  fragrant  four  -  o' -  clocks ; 
O'er  the  crimson  quamoclit, 
Lightly  dost  thou  wheel  and  flit; 

Into  each  tubed  throat] 

Dives  little  Ruby -throat. 


RUBY-THROAT.  411 


Bright -glowing  airy  thing, 
Light -going  fairy  thing, 

Not  the  grand  lyre-bird 
Rivals  thee,  splendid  one! — 
Fairy -attended  one, 

Green -coated  fire -bird! 

Shiniest  fragile  one, 
Tiniest  agile  one, 

Falcon  and  eagle  tremble  before  thee! 
Dim  is  the  regal  peacock  and  lory; 

And  the  pheasant  iridescent 
Pales  before  the  gleam  and  glory 
Of  thy  jewel -change  incessant, 
When  the  sun  is  streaming  o'er  thee! 

Ruby -throat  peerless, 

Fragile,  but  fearless, 
Shimmering,  glimmering,  vanishing,  coming; 

Brave  little  sunny -coat, 

Dive  in  the  honey -throat 
Of  the  white  lily-cup  held  for  thy  plumbing ! 

Starry  birds  of  Paradise, 
Shining  like  their  native  skies, 
Splendid  as  the  sun  that  smiles 
On  their  spice -embowered  isles', 
They  must  yield  the  palm  to  thee, 
Flying  blossom,  jewel -bee! 

Thou  art  the  one  bird 

Surpassing  the  sun -bird; 
Vainly  the  bird -fly  has  copied  thy  wing; 

Let  the  gay  butterfly 

Airily  flutter  by — 
Brighter  art  thou  than  the  blossoms  of  spring ! 

Light -floating  brilliant  one, 

What  is  the  name  for  thee? 

Flower -bird,  jewel -bee, 

All  are  too  tame  for  thee ! 
Plumage -vermilioned  one, 
Sunny -bred,  honey -fed,  flower  -  pavilioned  one, 
What  is  the  name  for  thee? 

Hear  the  soft  humming, 
Like  a  sylph's  drumming! 
Pinions  so  airy -light, 
Waving  in  fairy  flight, 
Rich  as  a  butterfly,  swift  as  a  bee; 
Floating  so  airily, 
Flitting  so  fairily, 
Flashing  so  starrily  over  the  lea! 
Nigher  and  nigher  float, 
Wheeling  and  hovering, 
Gay  little  rover -king, 
Coming  and  going  on  thy  wings  lyrical ; 
Glancing  and  glowing,  beautiful  Fire -throat! 
Summer's  sweet  loverling, 
Bright  little  miracle ! 

L.  H.  BARTRAM. 


412 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


IS    THE   JURY   SYSTEM    A   FAILURE? 


Among  the  most  singular  of  the  customs  of 
old  England  which  accompanied  the  emigrants 
from  that  country  to  the  wilds  of  America  was 
that  of  trial  by  jury.  The  origin  of  the  custom 
is  traced  certainly  to  an  uncultivated  ancestry, 
and  to  rude  and  barbarous  ages;  but  whether 
this  method  of  settling  disputes  was  germane 
to  the  Saxon  polity,  or  was  imported  by  the  Nor- 
mans, and  by  them  derived  from  more  ancient 
and  still  more  uncivilized  peoples,  is  a  question 
not  likely  ever* to  be  settled;  nor  is  it  a  ques- 
tion of  any  importance  in  the  discussion  of  the 
present  value  of  the  jury  system.  It  is  here 
the  established  law  of  the  land,  preserved  by 
both  Federal  and  State  constitutions,  and  reg- 
ulated by  laws  of  Congress  and  Legislatures. 
We  are  to  deal  with  it  as  we  find  it.  The  past 
history  of  its  development  may  illustrate  in 
some  degree  the  arguments  of  its  advocates  or 
enemies,  and  when  well  authenticated  may  be- 
come in  some  of  its  phases  itself  an  argument. 

In  the  American  history  of  the  system  we 
find  a  curious,  and  in  some  respects  an  instruct- 
ive event.  In  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  as  originally  submitted  and  adopted, 
there  is  no  guarantee  of  the  right  of  trial  by- 
jury  in  civil  cases.  The  absence  of  such  guar- 
antee was  one  of  the  many  grounds  or  pre- 
tenses upon  which  the  opponents  of  that  in- 
strument urged  its  defeat  and  rejection.  The 
necessities  of  the  times  led  to  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution,  but  the  prejudices  of  the  peo- 
ple were  so  strongly  enlisted  on  the  side  of  jury 
trials  that  this  objection  to  it  had  great  weight. 
The  Constitution  carefully  provided  for  juries 
in  criminal  cases,  and  its  omission  to  do  so  in 
civil  cases  can  hardly  be  supposed  an  over- 
sight. It  was  an  omission  ex  industria.  Yet 
in  the  hot  discussions  which  occurred  during 
the  suspense,  which  followed  the  promulgation 
of  the  Constitution  and  preceded  its  final  ac- 
ceptance, no  one  of  its  defenders  had  the  te- 
merity to  uphold  that  omission  on  the  ground 
of  its  inherent  propriety.  And  when  the  Con- 
stitution was  finally  adopted,  a  large  number  of 
the  States  which  voted  in  its  favor  recommend- 
ed at  the  same  time  an  amendment  to  supply 
the  omission,  and,  in  accordance  with  that  rec- 
ommendation, an  additional  article  was,  in  1791, 
engrafted  on  that  instrument,  declaring  that 

"In  suits  at  common  law,  where  the  value  in  con- 
troversy shall  excted  twenty  dollars,  the  right  of  trial 
by  jury  shall  be  preserved." 


It  is  thus  noticeable  that  trial  by  jury  in  civil 
cases  is  one  of  the  rights  of  a  citizen  under  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States — not  by  the 
voice  of  the  statesmen  who  framed  that  instru- 
ment, but  by  force  of  popular  clamor. 

The  right  of  trial  by  jury  has  been  and  is 
the  subject  of  more  undiscriminating  panegyric 
than  any  other  of  our  laws  or  customs.  It  is 
not  at  all  difficult  to  find  eulogies  of  the  system, 
and  it  is  not  at  all  easy  to  find  arguments  in  its 
favor  which  at  all  justify  the  encomiums  lav- 
ished upon  it.  The  searcher  for  such  argu- 
ments is  apt  to  have  an  unsatisfactory  excur- 
sion through  the  realms  of  literature,  to  find  at 
last  that  the  discussions  of  the  subject, /r<?  and 
con,  are  buried  for  the  most  part  in  forgotten 
pages  of  unindexed  magazines,  or  have  floated 
out  to  the  sea  of  oblivion  in  company  with 
countless  thousands  of  pamphlets  derelict  and 
abandoned.  Yet  some  of  the  eminent  gentle- 
men who  have  been  believers  in  the  system  have 
left  on  record  their  reasons  for  the  faith  that 
was  in  them. 

Lord  Loughborough  said,  in  1770: 

' '  In  all  our  legal  system  there  is  nothing  that  can 
boast  a  preference  to  the  institution  of  juries.  The  plan 
is  great,  noble,  and  comprehensive,  and  well  worthy  of 
its  royal  founder.  Judges  may  err,  judges  may  be  cor- 
rupt, their  minds  may  be  warped  by  interest,  passion, 
and  prejudice,  but  a  jury  is  not  liable  to  the  same 
misleading  influences.  Twelve  men  of  the  vicinage, 
chosen  as  they  are,  can  have  no  bias,  no  motive  to  show 
favor  or  malice  to  either  party.  They  must  find  a  ver- 
dict according  to  evidence  and  conscience."  (7  Lives 
of  Lord  Chancellors,  p.  277.) 

Lord  Camden  said,  in  1792 : 

' '  The  jury  are  the  people  of  England  :  the  judges  are 
independent  men?  Be  it  so.  But  are  they  totally  be- 
yond the  possibility  of  corruption  from  the  crown?  Is 
it  impossible  to  show  them  favor  in  any  way  whatever? 
The  truth  is,  they  may  possibly  be  corrupted.  Juries 
never  can."  (7  Lives  of  Lord  Chancellors,  p.  399.) 

Thomas  Jefferson,  in  a  letter  to  the  Abbe" 
Arnond,  in  July,  1789,  says: 

' '  We  think  in  America  that  it  is  necessary  to  intro- 
duce the  people  into  every  department  of  government, 
so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  exercising  it,  and  that  is 
the  only  way  to  insure  a  long  continued  and  honest  ad- 
ministration of  its  powers.  ....  They  are  not  qualified 
to  judge  questions  of  law,  but  they  are  very  capable  of 
judging  of  questions  of  fact.  In  the  form  of  juries, 
therefore,  they  determine  all  matters  of  fact,  leaving  to 
the  permanent  judges  to  decide  the  law  resulting  from 


IS   THE  JURY  SYSTEM  A   FAILURE* 


413 


those  facts.  But  we  all  know  that  permanent  judges 
acquire  an  esprit  de  corps;  that,  being  known,  they 
are  liable  to  be  tempted  by  bribery  ;  that  they  are  mis- 
led by  favor,  by  relationship,  by  a  spirit  of  party,  by  a 
devotion  to  the  executive  or  legislative  power ;  that  it  is 
better  to  leave  a  cause  to  the  decision  of  cross  and  pile 
than  to  that  of  a  judge  biased  on  one  side,  and  that  the 
opinion  of  twelve  honest  jurymen  gives  still  a  better 
hope  of  right  than  cross  and  pile  does.  It  is  in  the 
power,  therefore,  of  juries,  if  they  think  permanent 
judges  are  under  any  bias  whatever  in  any  cause,  to  take 
on  themselves  to  judge  the  law  as  well  as  the  fact.  They 
never  exercise  this  power  but  when  they  suspect  par- 
tiality in  the  judges,  and  by  the  exercise  of  this  power 
they  have  been  the  firmest  bulwarks  of  English  liberty." 
(3  Jeff-  Works,  p.  81.) 

Men  of  less  eminence  have  advanced  other 
arguments  in  support  of  the  system,  and  the 
positions  of  the  various  advocates  of  that  sys- 
tem may  be  summarized  under  the  following 
general  formulae : 

( i.)  The  jury  system  is  of  great  antiquity.  It 
descended  to  us  from  time  immemorial.  Its 
age  entitles  it  to  reverence. 

(2.)  Facts  must  be  tried  by  a  jury,  or  by  a 
judge,  or  judges.  The  habit  of  deciding  facts 
and  the  continual  investigation  of  facts  result 
in  peculiarities  of  mind  which  disqualify  a  man 
from  correctly  deciding  facts.  Therefore,  the 
more  unaccustomed  men  are  to  passing  on  evi- 
dence, the  better  qualified  they  are  to  determine 
facts  from  evidence. 

(3.)  Juries  are  certainly  honest,  and  judges 
may  be  corrupt. 

(4.)  The  jury  may  take  the  law  in  their  own 
hands,  and  by  their  verdicts  entirely  disregard 
the  law  as  given  to  them  by  the  court,  and  may 
thus  nullify  laws  which  in  their  estimation  are 
impolitic  and  unjust,  and  by  so  doing  become 
great  conservators  of  liberty. 

(5.)  The  jury  system  is  a  sort  of  common 
school  of  law  and  polity,  wherein  the  jurors, 
and  through  them  others,  receive  an  education. 

These  being  the  reasons  assigned  by  its  de- 
fenders why  trial  by  jury  should  be  preserved, 
let  us  examine  them  seriatim: 

FIRST. — As  to  the  antiquity  of  the  system. 

This  is  an  iconoclastic  age,  and  peculiarly  an 
iconoclastic  nation.  The  argument  of  antiquity 
has  much  greater  weight  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Atlantic  than  with  us.  But,  were  it  other- 
wise, in  this  country  and  particularly  in  this 
State,  it  is  impossible  to  find  any  historical 
facts  in  support  of  the  antiquity  of  the  jury  sys- 
tem as  we  now  know  it.  Our  present  jury  sys- 
tem, while  doubtless  evolved  from  precedent 
systems  bearing  the  same  name,  is  not  beauti- 
fied by  clinging  ivies  of  ancient  planting,  and 
is  not  hallowed  with  the  veneration  due  to  an 
extreme  age  following  a  well  spent  youth. 


Our  jury  system  is  a  plant  of  exceedingly 
modern  growth.  While  produced  from  ancient 
seeds,  the  plant  we  now  know  by  that  name 
presents  variations  from  its  ancestor  so  great 
that  no  unskilled  observer  could  trace  any  re- 
semblance between  the  two. 

Jury  trial  as  exhibited  to  us  by  the  earliest 
records  of  English  courts  was  a  trial  by  wit- 
nesses. The  jury  was  drawn  from  the  vicinage 
because  the  neighbors  of  the  parties  would 
probably  know  of  the  transactions,  and  could 
therefore  be  the  better  judges  of  the  facts.  We 
still  adhere  to  the  rule  of  trial  by  jury  from  the 
vicinage,  and  have  abolished  all  reason  for  it 
by  providing  that  any  juror  who  knows,  or  has 
heard,  or  has  read,  of  the  facts  upon  which  he 
is  called  to  pass,  and  has  an  opinion  thereon, 
is  thereby  rendered  incompetent  to  serve. 

In  these  days  of  many  newspapers  and  wide- 
spread discussion  of  public  and  private  affairs, 
our  "jury  of  the  vicinage"  in  all  cases  involv- 
ing matters  of  public  interest  means  twelve 
men  chosen  from  the  least  intelligent  portion 
of  the  community — men  either  unable  to  read 
or  incompetent  to  comprehend. 

It  is  only  within  comparatively  modern  times 
that  the  doctrine  that  juries  were  to  decide  ac- 
cording to  the  evidence  became  a  fixed  princi- 
ple in  law.  That  point  was  reached  only  after 
many  centuries  and  by  changes  so  gradual  as 
to  be  almost  imperceptible  to  any  one  genera- 
tion. In  1596,  Lord  Bacon,  in  his  maxims  of 
the  law,  alludes  to  the  fact  "that  a  jury  may 
take  knowledge  of  matters  not  within  the  evi- 
dence ....  but  are  not  compellable  to  supply 
the  defect  of  evidence  out  of  their  own  knowl- 
edge, though  it  be  in  their  liberty  to  do  so." 
Still  later,  in  1670,  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas 
in  England  charged  a  jury  that  they  were  di- 
rected to  find  for  the  plaintiff  unless  they  knew 
payment  was  made  of  their  own  knowledge. 
(BushnelPs  case,  4  Vaughn,  135). 

It  is  impossible  to  fix  any  precise  date  when 
the  ancient  theory  and  practice  of  jury  trials  in 
this  respect  became  entirely  obsolete.  But  it 
was  certainly  long  after  the  year  1700.  From 
the  earliest  times  to  the  present  the  system  has 
been  subject  to  changes,  wrought  by  varying 
customs  and  positive  statutes.  Burke  mentions 
forty -three  acts  of  Parliament  modifying  the 
jury  system  from  1215  to  1756. 

In  this  country  and  in  this  State  the  altera- 
tions in  the  law  of  trial  by  jury  have  been  nu- 
merous and  marked.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  in 
the  United  States  to-day  there  is  no  general 
custom  or  law  on  the  subject  which  merits  the 
term  of  "system."  In  this  State  trials  by  jury 
in  a  State  court  and  in  a  United  States  court 
are  proceedings  so  fundamentally  differing  that 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


they  can  scarcely  be  classed  under  the  same 
head.  In  the  latter  the  judge  may  review  the 
evidence,  classify  it,  comment  upon  the  cred- 
ibility or  incredibility  of  particular  portions 
thereof,  and  may,  if  he  choose,  direct  the  jury 
to  find  one  way  or  another  upon  the  evidence 
before  them.  A  unanimous  verdict  alone  can 
there  be  received. 

The  modern  defenders  of  a  jury  system  lay 
great  stress  upon  the  fact  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  trial  by  jury,  but  that  the  trial  is  by 
judge  and  jury,  and  that  the  court,  by  its  com- 
ments on  evidence  and  intimations  of  opinion, 
will  always  keep  the  jury  within  due  bounds. 
But  in  California  we  have  changed  all  that.  In 
our  Constitution  of  1849  we  declared  that 

"Judges  shall  not  charge  juries  with  respect  to  mat- 
ters of  fact,  but  may  state  the  testimony  and  declare  the 
law." 

The  section  is  reenacted  in  the  Constitution 
of  1879.  Under  it  no  judge  dare  attempt  to 
state  the  evidence  lest  from  his  manner  of  state- 
ment his  opinion  might  possibly  be  discerned. 
Under  it  an  unlimited  and  irresponsible  power 
is  conferred  upon  juries  utterly  foreign  to  any 
present  or  past  theory  or  practice  in  the  nation 
from  which  we  derive  the  system,  and  which 
materially  changes  the  character  and  nature  of 
that  instrument  of  so-called  justice. 

In  only  one  respect  has  the  system  of  jury 
trial  preserved  any  semblance  of  consistency 
during  its  exercise  from  those  remote  times 
during  which  historical  truth  is  lost  in  obscu- 
rity, and  that  is  in  the  requirement  of  unanimity 
for  a  verdict.  That  requirement  is  in  Califor- 
nia finally  abolished ;  and  at  the  present  day 
trial  by  jury  bears  so  little  resemblance  to  its 
ancestor  of  the  same  name  that  it  can  hardly 
be  deemed  legitimate  progeny. 

As  it  exists  to-day  it  most  certainly  has  no 
claims  for  veneration  on  account  of  any  pre- 
vious existence,  and,  as  to  its  ancestry,  can 
claim  no  greater  exemption  from  condemnation 
than  could  a  larcenous  son  of  an  honest  cler- 
gyman— not  even  so  great  a  claim,  because  it 
is  at  least  open  to  doubt  whether  the  jury  sys- 
tem can  claim  even  an  honest  ancestry. 

SECOND. — As  to  the  argument  that  juries  are 
more  likely  to  decide  honestly  than  judges. 

No  facts  can  be  adduced  in  support  of  that 
argument.  In  truth,  the  argument  from  expe- 
rience is  all  the  other  way.  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  mere  theory,  but  of  fact.  The  equity 
and  admiralty  systems  of  law  have  stood  for 
centuries  side  by  side  with  the  common  law 
practice,  have  developed  with  it,  and  not  infre- 
quently contested  with  it  questions  of  jurisdic- 


tion. Cases  in  equity  and  admiralty  involve 
most  intricate  and  important  questions  of  fact, 
and  the  amounts  involved  in  equity  suits  are, 
on  the  average,  very  much  larger  than  those  in 
actions  at  law,  and  in  admiralty  cases  will  aver- 
age quite  as  large.  But  a  search  for  a  respect- 
able advocate  for  the  introduction  of  a  jury  sys- 
tem in  those  courts  would  be  absolutely  in  vain. 
There  is  no  such  advocate.  From  a  remote 
period  equity  and  admiralty  judges  have  pass- 
ed on  questions  of  fact  coming  before  them, 
and  I  have  yet  to  learn  that  it  has  ever  even 
been  contended  that  the  introduction  of  a  jury 
would  add  to  the  efficacy  of  either  of  those 
courts. 

THIRD.— That  a  judge,  by  the  habit  of  de- 
ciding upon  evidence,  becomes  incompetent  to 
do  so,  is  said  to  be  a  paradox.  Mr.  Forsyth,  in 
his  defense  of  the  system  of  trial  by  jury,  says  : 

"  Although  it  may  sound  paradoxical,  it  is  true,  that 
the  habitual  and  constant  exercise  of  such  an  office 
tends  to  unfit  a  man  for  its  due  discharge." — ( Forsyth, 
P-  443-) 

We  cannot  confess  the  paradox,  because  we 
deny  the  truth  of  the  assertion.  When  it  shall 
be  held  as  an  admitted  principle  in  law  and 
logic  that  a  carpenter  in  the  habit  of  judging  of 
the  length  of  boards  becomes  by  his  habit  in- 
capable of  giving  a  correct  judgment  upon  the 
subject ;  that  a  physician  who  has  for  a  lifetime 
devoted  himself  to  the  diagnosis  of  diseases  be- 
comes thereby  incompetent  to  render  a  correct 
diagnosis ;  that  an  adjuster  of  losses  in  an  in- 
surance company  is  by  his  experience  rendered 
incapable  of  making  a  correct  adjustment ;  that 
a  veterinary  surgeon  is  by  the  fact  of  his  skill 
incompetent  to  pass  correct  judgment  on  the 
ailments  of  a  horse;  that  a  professional  ac- 
countant is  by  his  learning  rendered  incompe- 
tent to  pass  upon  a  disputed  set  of  books ;  that 
a  lifetime's  experience  of  a  seaman  in  battling 
the  winds  and  waves  renders  him  less  compe- 
tent than  a  committee  of  lubbers  to  decide  upon 
a  question  of  seamanship ;  that  in  a  search  for 
historical  truth  among  masses  of  contradictory 
contemporary  evidence  the  labors  of  a  foreman 
of  an  ordinary  petit  jury  is  apt  to  surpass  in 
value  the  investigations  of  a  Gibbon,  a  Ma- 
caulay,  or  a  Froude — when  these  matters  are 
settled  as  we  have  intimated,  and  not  before, 
will  we  be  willing  even  seriously  to  discuss  the 
proposition  that  a  judge  whose  business  it  is, 
and  for  years  has  been  (and  this  proposition  is 
aimed  only  at  experienced  judges),  to  study 
witnesses  and  weigh  testimony,  is  less  capable, 
or  is  not  more  capable,  of  estimating  it  at  its 
true  value  than  a  man  or  number  of  men  who., 


SS   THE  JURY  SYSTEM  A   FAILURE? 


however  skillful  in  their  respective  vocations, 
or  respectable  in  character,  assume  for  the  first 
time  the  duty  of  arriving  at  conclusions  of  fact 
from  testimony. 

The  only  excuse  we  have  for  noticing  this 
argument  is  that  it  has  been  very  seriously  ad- 
vanced and  elaborately  argued  by  the  advocates 
of  trial  by  jury. 

FOURTH. — The  next  argument  is  that  juries 
are  certainly  honest  and  judges  may  be  corrupt, 

The  first  proposition  of  this  argument  is  stur- 
dily advanced  by  men  who  should,  and  do, 
know  its  utter  falsity.  There  never  was  a  time 
when  it  was  even  a  general  presumption  that 
honesty  or  impartiality  was  a  common  ingre- 
dient in  the  verdict  of  a  jury.  One  of  the  ear- 
liest cases  on  record  of  jury  trial  is  an  amus- 
ing commentary  upon  this  claim.  It  occurred 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  TL,  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  twelfth  century.  It  was  a  dispute  between 
the  inhabitants  of  Wallingford  and  the  Abbot 
of  Abingdon,  respecting  the  right  to  a  market, 
and  was  referred  to  a  jury  of  the  county,  who 
brought  in  a  verdict  in  favor  of  the  abbot ;  but 
it  being  represented  to  the  king  that  some  of 
the  jurors  were  retainers  of  the  abbey  he  grant- 
ed one  of  the  first  new  trials  on  record,  and 
ordered  a  new  jury  summoned  from  three  dif- 
ferent localities.  The  result  was  a  hung  jury — 
the  jurors  being  divided  into  three  parties,  each 
favoring  a  different  right  of  market.  The  king 
finally  decided  the  case  himself  on  the  testi- 
mony of  the  Earl  of  Leicester.  The  question 
of  fact  was  a  very  simple  one — whether,  with- 
in their  memory,  a  right  of  market  had  been 
exercised  at  a  certain  place.  And  yet  we  see 
that  even  in  those  primitive  times  of  virtue, 
jurors  were  capable  of  deciding  a  case  as  their 
individual  interests  dictated.  That  the  gen- 
eral character  of  juries  has  greatly  improved 
since  those  days  can  hardly  be  seriously  as- 
serted. This  subject  of  the  comparative  hon- 
esty of  juries  and  judges  I  shall  allude  to  here- 
after. 

FIFTH. — The  next  proposition  is  that  the  jury 
may  take  the  law  in  their  own  hands,  disre- 
gard the  rulings  of  unjust  judges,  and,  by  their 
verdict,  nullify  obnoxious  laws. 

The  fact  is  undoubted;  as  is  also  the  fact 
that  they  may,  by  their  verdicts,  nullify  the 
most  just,  equitable,  and  salutary  laws,  and  dis- 
regard the  rulings  of  the  most  upright  judges. 
This  is  the  argument  of  a  demagogue,  and  finds 
appropriate  place  in  the  writings  of  Thomas 
Jefferson. 

Under  our  system  of  government,  Congress 
and  the  various  State  Legislatures  are  made 


the  sole  judges  of  the  justice,  wisdom,  and  pol- 
icy of  any  law.  Respect  for  law  is  one  of  the 
main  foundations  of  our  popular  institutions. 
No  law  can  be  respected  the  enforcement  of 
which  depends  on  popular  prejudice  or  local 
animosities.  No  law-making  power  can  be  re- 
spected if  the  execution  of  the  laws  can  be,  and 
is  in  practice,  nullified  by  the  exercise  of  any 
agency  whatever.  The  fact  that  juries  have  it 
in  their  power  to  thus  abrogate  the  laws,  is  an 
argument  against  their  existence ;  the  fact  that 
they  sometimes  do  exercise  that  power  is  in 
itself  an  appeal  for  the  abolition  of  the  power 
to  do  so.  If  juries  generally  exercised  that 
privilege,  we  would  find  ourselves  in  the  posi- 
tion of  having  a  different  set  of  laws  for  every 
differing  constituency — nay,  in  the  same  con- 
stituency, and  the  same  court,  and  before  the 
same  jury,  what  would  be  law  in  a  controversy 
between  A  and  B,  would  not  be  law  in  a  con- 
troversy between  C  and  D.  If  it  were  a  fact, 
as  Jefferson  gratuitously  observes,  that  juries 
never  exercise  this  power  without  good  reason, 
the  inherent  vice  of  the  system  would  not  be 
cured,  or  even  ameliorated.  If  the  existence  of 
our  laws  is  to  depend  upon  the  opinion  of  ju- 
ries as  to  their  justice,  or  as  to  the  probity  of 
the  judge  who  administers  the  laws,  anarchy  or 
despotism  is  an  inevitable  final  result. 

The  final  argument,  much  dwelt  upon  by  De 
Tocqueville,  and  other  theorists,  is  that  the  jury 
system  is  an  efficient  educator  of  the  people. 
If  that  were  true,  and  there  is  very  little,  if  any, 
truth  in  it,  it  is  no  argument  in  favor  of  the 
system.  Judicial  processes  and  proceedings 
have  for  their  sole  end  the  attainment  of  truth 
and  justice.  If  a  jury  trial  is  a  means  adequate 
to  that  end,  that  fact  is  a  sufficient  vindication 
of  its  existence.  If  it  is  conducive  to  untruth 
and  injustice,  that  is  a  sufficient  reason  why  it 
should  be  abolished.  If  it  were,  in  fact,  a  pub- 
lic educator,  and  at  the  same  time  not  adapted 
to  the  attainment  of  the  ends  for  which  courts 
are  established,  it  would  be  too  expensive  and 
unequal  a  system  of  education  for  a  free  peo- 
ple. We  have  common  schools  and  colleges 
for  educational  purposes.  For  their  support, 
the  people  are,  in  theory  at  least,  equally  taxed, 
and  the  burden  is,  for  the  most  part,  cheer- 
fully borne.  But  the  educational  influences 
of  a  jury  are  exercised  at  the  expense  of  some 
one  individual  or  corporation.  When  an  in- 
dividual loses  a  large  amount  of  property  by 
a  false  or  stupid  verdict,  it  is  poor  consolation 
to  know  that  the  court,  to  which  he  resorted 
for  justice,  is  a  great  educator  of  the  people, 
and  that  the  very  verdict  under  which  he 
groans,  was  the  result  of  an  elementary  course 
of  legal  education,  which  would  fit  the  same 


416 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


jurymen  to  form  a  more  correct  judgment  in 
the  future.  He  might  well  object  that  he  was 
compelled  to  pay  more  than  his  fair  share  of 
the  expenses  of  popular  education. 

But,  in  fact,  the  argument  is  hostile  to  that 
common  sense  which  regulates  human  affairs 
out  of  courts.  The  most  strenuous  advocate  of 
the  educational  advantages  of  the  jury  system 
would  find  no  inducement  for  the  employment 
<of  a  blacksmith  to  fill  a  decayed  tooth  in  the 
argument  that  by  such  employment  he  would 
help  to  educate  the  blacksmith  to  fill  some  one 
else's  tooth.  No  ship -master  employs  a  land- 
lubber to  command  his  vessel  with  a  view  to 
educating  him  to  his  business.  If  the  end  to 
be  attained  is  the  building  of  a  house,  the  open- 
ing of  a  mine,  the  making  out  of  an  abstract  of 
title,  or  the  examination  thereof,  the  adjust- 
ment of  an  insurance  loss,  the  building  of  a 
sewer,  or  the  digging  of  a  ditch,  the  employ- 
ment of  men  unskilled  in  those  matters  to  ef- 
fect the  desired  end  with  a  view  to  popular  or 
individual  education  would  be  considered  so 
erratic  an  exercise  of  the  right  of  the  individual 
to  make  a  fool  of  himself  as  to  qualify  the  em- 
ployer for  a  residence  at  Stockton.  Skill  in  all 
occupations,  from  the  highest  to  the  humblest, 
is  the  result  of  labor.  The  greater  the  skill  re- 
quired, the  greater  the  labor  to  acquire  it.  As 
has  been  wittily  said,  "Inexperienced  jurors  do 
not,  like  students  of  medicine,  practice  first 
upon  the  dead  subject,  but  may  have  the  duty 
on  his  first  essay  of  amputating  a  living  suitor's 
character,  or  removing  his  purse  to  his  oppo- 
nent's pocket." 

And  yet  it  is  gravely  advanced  and  argued 
in  extcnso  that  ignorant  men  should  be  allowed 
to  sit  in  judgment  upon  intricate  questions  of 
mingled  law  and  fact,  relative  to  business  whose 
nature,  and  scope,  and  rules  are.  to  them  as  un- 
intelligible as  a  chapter  in  Sanscrit  or  the  com- 
putations of  Leverrier,  because,  forsooth,  the 
system  is  a  means  of  popular  education. 

It  would  not  be  an  advantage  either  to  the 
cause  of  justice  or  of  education  to  add  the  func- 
tions of  courts  to  those  of  public  schools.  To 
detract  from  the  efficiency  of  courts  of  justice 
with  a  view  to  incidental  advantages  to  the 
cause  of  education,  is  an  idea  worthy  of  the 
man  who  invented  roast-pig,  and  burned  a 
house  every  time  he  wanted  one.  The  objects 
and  methods  of  schools  and  courts  are  separate 
and  distinct.  Any  attempt  to  confound  or  com- 
bine them  must  work  injury  to  both. 

It  is  urged  on  behalf  of  trial  by  jury  that  in 
times  past  juries  have  been  conservators  of  po- 
litical liberty,  or  in  the  inspired  words  of  the 
Fourth  of  July  orators  that  the  system  is  the 
•"  palladium  of  liberty."  If  the  fact  were  in  ac- 


cord with  the  assertion  it  would  be  an  argument 
in  favor  of  the  system  only  in  a  certain  class  of 
cases — where  the  government  is  prosecuting  the 
individual  for  a  political  offense. 

The  argument  that  a  jury  may  take  the  law 
in  their  own  hands,  and  acquit  a  man  indicted 
for  a  political  libel  of  which  he  is  undoubtedly 
guilty,  and  thereby,  in  some  undefined  way,  be- 
come the  conservators  of  popular  liberty,  is  not 
easily  construed  into  a  reason  why  a  question 
arising  between  dry -goods  merchants,  in  the 
course  of  their  dealings,  should  be  submitted  for 
decision  to  twelve  impartial  gentlemen,  whose 
life -long  energies  have  been  devoted  to  other 
pursuits ;  or  why  it  is  essential  to  the  preser- 
vation of  a  free  government  that  a  citizen  who 
has  stolen  a  horse  shall  be  exempt  from  pun- 
ishment until  twelve  other  citizens,  who  may, 
or  may  not,  have  stolen  horses  in  their  time, 
unanimously  decide  that  the  particular  horse 
named  was  stolen  by  the  particular  citizen  in- 
dicted. In  either  case,  the  judge  on  the  bench 
is  fairly  presumable  to  be  more  learned  and 
skillful  in  the  investigation  of  the  question  of 
fact  involved  than  any  average  of  twelve  men 
taken  from  their  various  and  diverse  voca- 
tions. The  judge  has  time  to  consider  and  re- 
flect ;  the  jury,  if  they  are  impartial  and  honest, 
consider  their  service  a  grievance,  and  are  in 
haste  to  return  to  their  legitimate  business.  If 
ever  so  desirous  to  do  exact  justice,  the  nature 
of  their  enforced  servitude  forbids  proper  at- 
tention and  investigation.  The  merchant  juror 
whose  note  is  falling  due,  the  contractor  whose 
workmen  may  be  shirking  a  job,  the  laborer 
who  may  be  losing  a  chance  of  continuous  em- 
ployment, the  clerk  whose  slender  salary  may 
be  cut  down,  or  who  may  be  discharged  by 
reason  of  his  absence  from  his  duties,  the  stock 
speculator  whose  margins  may  be  in  danger, 
are  necessarily  thinking  more  of  their  own 
troubles  and  perplexities  than  of  those  of  the 
strangers  whose  disputes  they  are  unwillingly 
called  upon  to  decide. 

It  has  been  confessed  by  even  the  warmest 
advocates  of  the  jury  system  that  if  it  were 
something  entirely  new,  a  proposition  to  sum- 
mon twelve  men  indiscriminately  from  the  com- 
munity— men  skilled  in  measuring  tape,  mak- 
ing horse-shoes,  shoveling  sand,  driving  horses, 
manufacturing  cotton,  iron,  or  other  material, 
good  men  and  honest  men  in  their  various 
walks  in  life — to  sit  in  judgment  on  disputes  as 
to  business  and  transactions  with  which  they 
were  entirely  unfamiliar,  and,  without  any  ex- 
perience in  weighing  testimony,  to  sift  the  one 
kernel  of  truth  from  the  bushel  of  chaff  and 
contradiction  which  makes  up  the  mass  of  hu- 
man testimony,  it  would  be  considered  gro- 


IS   THE  JURY  SYSTEM  A   FAILURE? 


tesquely  absurd.  On  the  face  of  it  the  theory 
of  the  system  is  undeniably  absurd.  We  must 
find  something  then  in  the  advantages  which 
follow  its  practice  to  warrant  a  decision  in  fa- 
vor of  its  continuance.  In  civil  cases  the  pro- 
priety of  a  jury  system  is  much  more  extensive- 
ly doubted  and  questioned  than  in  criminal 
cases.  In  fact,  both  in  England  and  in  this 
country,  the  jury  system,  as  applicable  to  civil 
cases,  has  been  much  modified.  In  England, 
the  salutary  control  of  courts  over  juries,  by  in  a 
manner  advising  or  directing  their  verdict,  is 
still  retained,  but  in  a  large  class  of  cases 
juries  may  be  dispensed  with  by  consent  of  both 
parties,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  county 
courts  in  England  they  usually  are  dispensed 
with.  In  this  country  a  jury  may  always,  by 
consent  of  parties,  be  dispensed  with  in  civil 
cases,  and  in  practice  not  twenty  per  cent,  of 
cases  which  might  be  tried  by  jury  are  in  fact 
so  tried. 

In  this  State  we  have  made  a  long  step  to- 
ward their  entire  abolition,  in  the  way  of  what 
the  logicians  call  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  It 
is  an  indisputable  fact  that  among  the  best 
juries  but  a  very  small  proportion  of  jurors 
are  fitted  by  education,  business  knowledge  and 
habits,  mental  peculiarities  and  sound  common 
sense,  to  pass  upon  the  questions  submitted  to 
them ;  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  such  men  in  any 
average  jury  would  be  a  very  large  proportion. 
We  have  abolished  the  requirement  of  unanim- 
ity, and  substituted  for  it  a  three-fourths  ver- 
dict. In  other  words,  we  have  provided  by  law 
that  the  large  average  of  three  competent  men 
on  a  jury  shall  have  no  voice  in  the  verdict; 
that  the  men  best  qualified  to  judge  shall  not 
be  allowed  to  sit  in  judgment.  There  is  ground 
for  sanguine  hopes  that  the  practical  effects  of 
this  system  will  prepare  the  public  mind  for  the 
entire  abolition  of  juries  in  civil  cases.  Al- 
ready it  is  beginning  to  be  observed  that  when 
a  majority  verdict  is  rendered  in  the  courts  the 
only  men  on  the  jury  whom  any  business  men 
would  accept  as  arbitrators  are  usually  in  the 
minority. 

The  objections  to  a  jury  in  civil  cases  are  so 
numerous  and  so  apparently  convincing  that  it 
is  strange  that  it  still  retains  so  tenacious  a 
hold  on  life.  They  may  be  summed  up  as  fol- 
lows : 

A  jury  not  only  is  apt  to  be,  but  almost  inva- 
riably is,  ignorant  of  the  business  out  of  which 
the  controversy  in  question  arose ;  it  is  unskill- 
ed in  determining  questions  of  fact  or  weighing 
matters  of  evidence ;  it  is  liable  to  be  misled  by 
clap -trap  arguments  of  counsel,  and  to  give 
controlling  weight  to  unimportant  facts.  No 
individual  responsibility  attaches  to  the  ver- 


dict. Each  juror  is  one  of  many,  and  shields 
himself  behind  the  skirts  of  a  majority.  The 
jury  is  always  in  a  hurry  to  get  through,  and 
cannot  and  does  not  devote  the  requisite  time 
to  the  investigation  of  the  cases  before  them. 
Most  cases  of  importance  involve  an  intricate 
mixture  of  law  and  fact,  and  while  the  jury  is 
supposed  to  receive  the  law  from  the  court,  it  is 
a  fact  that  in  an  important  case,  where  the 
charge  of  the  court  is  necessarily  elaborate,  the 
jury  receive  so  much  law  at  once  that  they  re- 
tire to  their  deliberations  with  a  very  imperfect 
idea  of  any  of  it.  They  are  in  a  good  deal  the 
same  position  as  a  lawyer  would  be,  if,  after  re- 
ceiving a  half -hour's  lecture  on  the  principles 
of  mechanism,  he  was  put  into  a  room  and  re- 
quired to  designate  the  proper  method  of  re- 
pair of  some  complicated  piece  of  machinery. 
The  condition  of  the  jury  under  such  circum- 
stances was  portrayed  by  the  poet  Dryden,  two 
centuries  ago,  in  the  following  lines : 

"The  man  who  laughed  but  once — to  see  an  ass 
Mumbling  to  make  the  gross-grained  thistles  pass — 
Might  laugh  again  to  see  a  jury  chaw 
The  prickles  of  unpalatable  law." 

A  jury  gives  no  reasons  for  its  verdict.  In 
cases  depending  upon  distinct  facts,  or  inde- 
pendent chains  of  facts,  it  is  impossible  to  as- 
certain whether  there  ever  was  an  agreement 
among  the  jurors.  A  unanimous  verdict  may 
be  rendered  by  a  jury  not  at  all  in  harmony 
in  their  views  of  the  facts. 

Suppose  action  is  brought  upon  a  policy  of 
fire  insurance.  The  defenses  are  : 

(i.)  Arson  by  the  insured. 

(2.)  A  fraudulent  representation  of  the  situa- 
tion of  the  building. 

(3.)  Insured  did  not  own  the  premises. 

Each  one  of  these  defenses  would  be  good. 
Four  of  the  jury  may  believe  in  the  first  and 
disbelieve  all  others.  A  second  four  may  be- 
lieve the  second  defense  only.  A  third  four  ac- 
cept only  the  last  defense.  In  such  a  case  there 
would  be  a  unanimous  verdict  for  the  defend- 
ant, while  in  fact  no  five  of  the  jurymen  were 
convinced  of  the  truth  of  any  one  defense. 

Again,  suppose  a  suit  is  brought  on  a  prom- 
issory note,  and  the  defense  is  that  it  is  a  for- 
gery. The  execution  of  the  note  is  attempted 
to  be  proven  to  the  jury  by  three  distinct 
classes  of  testimony : 

( i.)  A  witness  swears  he  saw  it  executed. 

(2.)  Experts  swear  it  is  a  genuine  signature. 

(3.)  A  witness  swears  he  heard  defendant  say 
he  executed  it. 

Either  of  these  lines  of  evidence,  if  it  satisfies 
a  jury  of  the  fact,  is  sufficient  to  warrant  a  ver- 
dict. One-third  of  the  jury  believe  in  the  first 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


class  of  evidence  and  reject  the  others  alto- 
gether. One -third  are  convinced  solely  by  the 
second  class  of  evidence;  and  one-third  entire- 
ly disagree  with  their  associates,  and  think  the 
third  class  of  evidence  is  such  as  to  entitle 
plaintiff  to  recover.  There  is  a  unanimous  ver- 
dict for  plaintiff,  and  not  even  a  majority  of  the 
jury  agree  upon  any  one  point  in  the  case. 

A  jury  is  more  liable  than  a  judge  to  be  in- 
fluenced by  passion,  prejudice,  .self-interest, 
class  jealousies,  local  or  political  considera- 
tions, and  national  or  party  antipathies.  This 
article  is  already  too  long  to  multiply  illustra- 
tions. They  will  readily  occur  to  every  ob- 
server of  the  workings  of  the  system.  This 
truth  is  recognized  in  part  by  the  law  of  almost 
every  State  in  the  Union,  and  the  power  is 
given  to  judges  to  set  aside  the  verdicts  of  ju- 
ries, when  it  is  proven  that  such  verdicts  were 
rendered  under  the  influence  of  passion  or  prej- 
udice. But  many  things  as  to  which  there  can 
be  no  moral  doubt  are  incapable  of  legal  proof. 

We  have  heretofore  considered  the  question 
on  the  basis  of  the  supposition  of  an  honest 
jury.  But  is  that  a  reliable  basis  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  present  jury  system  ?  That  there 
was  a  time  in  California  when  it  was  not,  let 
the  events  of  1856  bear  witness.  In  the  good 
old  times  of  Shakspere  it  was  by  no  means 
even  a  presumption  that  juries  were  honest. 
That  unrivaled  portrayer  of  human  character 
and  events  notices  the  peculiarities  of  juries  : 

"The  jury,  passing  on  the  prisoner's  life, 
May  in  the  sworn  twelve  have  a  thief  or  two 
Guiltier  than  him  they  try." 

The  danger  of  having  a  thief  or  two  on  the 
jury  has  by  no  means  diminished  with  the 
progress  of  civilization.  Jury  duty  with  us  is 
unpopular  and  oppressive.  Many  a  man  sum- 
moned on  a  jury  will  stretch  his  conscience  to 
find  an  excuse  to  be  relieved;  who  would  not, 
even  if  interested,  deviate  an  iota  from  the  truth 
in  order  to  be  retained  on  a  jury. 

Many  years  ago,  seated  in  the  old  County 
Court-room,  we  overheard  a  conversation.  The 
Court  was  impaneling  a  jury  in  a  petty  criminal 
case.  Our  next  neighbor  whispered  to  a  gen- 
tleman sitting  near  him : 

"What  is  this  case?  What  is  it  all  about? 
Tell  me  quick!" 

"Well,"  was  the  answer,  "this  fellow  is  in- 
dicted for  burglarizing  the  house  of  a  man  by 
the  name  of  Smith  in  the  Western  Addition. 
He " 

The  conversation  was  interrupted  by  a  call 
for  the  querist  to  take  his  seat  in  the  jury-box. 
In  answer  to  questions  of  counsel,  he  stated  he 


had  heard  of  the  case,  had  talked  about  it,  and 
had  an  unqualified  opinion  as  to  its  merits.  Of 
course,  he  was  excused,  and  went  about  his 
business  rejoicing.  Who  that  has  observed 
the  impanelment  of  juries  in  our  courts  doubts 
that  our  friend  of  the  County  Court  has  many 
imitators  ? 

But  it  is  certain  that  no  man  will  testify  false- 
ly in  order  to  be  retained  as  a  juror  in  a  case 
as  to  which  he  is  impartial,  and  it  is  equally 
certain  that  hired  and  bribed  jurors  will  testify 
falsely  in  order  to  be  so  retained.  The  result 
is  that  the  system  affords  facilities  for  obtain- 
ing corrupt  verdicts  by  those  who  are  willing 
and  able  to  pay  the  price.  The  facility  for  cor- 
ruption tends  to  produce  corruption  among  ju- 
rors and  suitors.  Let  it  be  once  understood 
that  verdicts  are  a  matter  of  merchandise,  he 
who  seeks  a  verdict  will  deal  in  the  market. 
If  the  time  shall  come  that  when  men  go  into 
court  to  seek  justice  they  find  that  justice  must 
be  purchased,  there  will  be  no  lack  of  buyers. 
We  deplore  the  fact,  but  it  is  incontrovertible. 
It  is  a  matter  of  common,  general,  and  current 
belief  that  verdicts  of  juries  in  important  cases, 
civil  and  criminal,  have  been  influenced  by 
monetary  considerations.  Some  extraordinary 
verdicts  which  have  been  rendered  are  inex- 
plicable on  any  other  theory. 

The  abolition  of  jury  trial  in  civil  cases  is 
only  a  matter  of  time.  The  sooner  it  comes 
about  the  better.  The  judge  of  a  court  is  pre- 
sumably a  man  learned  in  the  law.  The  re- 
sults of  our  popular  elections  sometimes  make 
the  presumption  a  violent  one.  But  a  judge, 
ignorant  of  law,  is  at  least  as  capable  of  deal- 
ing with  facts  as  a  jury  equally  ignorant,  and 
in  time  he  learns  his  business,  while  the  juror 
attends  only  to  the  business  of  other  people, 
and  never  learns  it.  But  ignorant  judges  are 
an  exception,  while  incompetent  jurors  are  the 
rule.  The  least  qualified  of  judges  is  less  dan- 
gerous as  an  arbiter  of  facts  than  the  same  man 
would  be  in  the  jury-box.  As  a  juror,  he  may 
take  the  law  and  facts  in  his  own  hands,  and 
make  such  indiscriminate  slaughter  of  the  case 
that  there  will  not  be  enough  left  of  it  to  ap- 
pear at  that  other  day  of  judgment  in  the  Su- 
preme Court.  But  as  a  judge  he  can  render- 
no  general  verdict.  He  must  file  his  findings 
of  law  and  fact  which  will  usually  disclose  any 
glaring  error  in  his  decision,  and  which  puts  it 
in  a  proper  shape  to  be  reviewed.  That  a  man 
whose  sole  daily  business  it  is  to  observe  wit- 
nesses, take  note  of  their  demeanor,  draw  con- 
clusions from  testimony,  and  render  judgment 
accordingly,  should  be  better  qualified  than  a 
tyro  to  perform  that  duty,  is  self-evident 
That  he  is  better  qualified  is  manifest  by  the 


IS   THE  JURY  SYSTEM  A   FAILURE? 


419 


further  fact  that  there  is  no  feeling  against  the 
opinions  of  judges  on  facts,  although  they  de- 
cide four  cases  where  juries  do  one,  while  there 
is  a  wide -spread  distrust  and  antagonism  to 
the  verdicts  of  juries. 

As  to  the  argument  that  judges  may  be  cor- 
rupted, we  do  not  deny  the  possibility.  We 
fear  that  even  in  these  United  States  there 
have  been  judges  who  have  been  corrupted. 
But  a  corrupt  judge  is  the  natural  product  of  a 
vicious  constituency.  The  men  who  elect  him 
to  and  try  to  keep  him  in  office  are  the  very 
ones  who  would  form  the  "honest"  juries  on 
which  the  advocates  of  the  system  would  have 
us  rely  for  justice.  'But  in  this  country  the  char- 
acter of  our  judiciary  is  a  reason  for  just  pride. 
It  is  a  fact  that  a  venal  judge  is  very  rarely 
heard  of,  and  such  a  one  is  quickly  retired  to 
the  obscurity  of  private  life.  Not  even  his  con- 
stituency can  long  maintain  him  on  a  polluted 
bench ;  and  even  such  a  judge,  acting  in  the 
blare  of  publicity  thrown  upon  him  by  the 
press,  with  an  individual  responsibility  for  his 
demeanor,  and  with  the  review  of  an  appellate 
court  threatening  him  in  the  future,  is  more 
likely  to  render  exact  justice  than  a  jury  of  the 
electors  from  whom  he  sprung. 

The  esprit  de  corps  which  Jefferson  anathe- 
matizes is  calculated  to  preserve  in  judges  a 
moral  dignity  and  uprightness  of  conduct  and 
purity  of  action  which  exalts  the  office,  and 
which,  in  many  cases,  is  an  exaltation  of  the 
moral  character  of  him  who  holds  the  office. 

Finally,  as  to  the  usefulness  of  juries  in  crim- 
inal cases;  and  we  now  come  to  a  considera- 
tion of  their  claims  to  be  conservators  of  lib- 
erty, palladiums  of  that  boon,  etc. 

The  claim  is  this  :  that  in  times  past,  in  con- 
troversies between  the  English  Government 
and  individuals,  juries  have  found  verdicts 
against  the  Government  and  in  favor  of  the 
individuals,  upon  political  questions  involving 
in  some  way  the  liberty  of  the  subject,  and  thus 
became  conservators  of  public  liberty. 

Their  claim  in  this  respect  is  very  much  ex- 
aggerated, and  is  founded  on  surprisingly  few 
facts.  As  a  general  thing,  juries  have  been  pli- 
ant and  submissive  tools  of  government,  and  al- 
most invariably  so  when  the  government  was 
popular  or  strong.  In  the  history  of  England, 
up  to  the  accession  of  the  house  of  Stuart, 
there  were  very  few  instances  of  acquittal  by 
jury  upon  political  accusations.  During  the 
troubled  reigns  of  the  Stuarts  there  were  sev- 
eral such  instances,  but  not  sufficient  in  number 
to  give  character  to  jury  trials.  Even  under 
that  dynasty,  far  from  being  conservators  of 
public  liberty,  they  were,  for  the  most  part,  ab- 


ject tools  of  the  crown,  and  rendered  verdicts  of 
guilty  upon  indictments  for  political  offenses  al- 
most as  a  matter  of  course,  and  often,  if  not 
usually,  with  small  regard  to  evidence  or  justice. 
During  those  periods  when,  according  to  the  eu- 
logists of  juries,  they  became  palladiums  of  lib- 
erty, the  records  of  history  fail  to  substantiate 
the  claim.  The  Catholic  victims  of  the  Gates 
conspiracy,  from  1678  to  1680,  found  no  defend- 
ers of  their  liberties  and  lives  in  the  juries  of 
their  country,  although  the  nature  of  the  testi- 
mony against  them  called  loudly  for  a  vigorous 
vindication.  The  Protestant  victims  of  the  Rye 
House  plot  were  in  1683  equally  unable  to  con- 
vince a  jury  of  their  countrymen  of  their  inno- 
cence. Although  history  has  since  vindicated 
their  names,  their  lives  were  sacrificed  by  ver- 
dicts of  juries.  In  1685,  Jeffries,  of  infamous 
memory,  had  no  difficulty  in  procuring  pliant 
juries  to  render  verdicts  on  which  in  a  single 
circuit  three  hundred  and  twenty  men  were 
hanged  and  eight  hundred  and  forty -one  trans- 
ported and  condemned  to  perpetual  slavery  for 
alleged  participation  in  the  Monmouth  rebel- 
lion. 

The  memorable  trial  of  the  Seven  Bishops 
for  seditious  libel  took  place  in  1688,  and  the 
verdict  of  the  jury  in  that  case  is  glorified  as  a 
conspicuous  instance  of  the  value  of  the  system 
in  the  conservation  of  liberty.  If  as  to  that 
trial  the  claim  fails,  it  cannot  be  bolstered  up 
by  any  other.  That  verdict  was  one  of  the  cul- 
minating events,  in  the  struggle  between  the 
King  on  one  side  and  Parliament  and  people 
on  the  other,  which  led  to  the  final  establish- 
ment of  constitutional  liberty  in  England.  Mo- 
mentous results  followed  the  verdict,  but  the 
verdict  was  in  itself  an  effect  produced  by  an- 
tecedent causes.  In  itself  it  is  not  an  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  the  jury  system,  and  no  such 
argument  can  be  legitimately  drawn  from  it. 
It  was  a  time  of  wild  political  and  religious 
excitement.  The  nation  was  inflamed  to  mad- 
ness, and  was  on  the  verge  of  revolution.  "It 
was,"  says  Macaulay,  "the  first  and  last  occa- 
sion on  which  two  feelings  of  tremendous  po- 
tency— two  feelings  which  have  generally  been 
opposed  to  each  other,  and  either  of  which  when 
strongly  excited  has  sufficed  to  convulse  the 
State — were  united  in  perfect  harmony.  Those 
feelings  were  love  of  the  Church  and  love  of 
freedom."  The  approaching  trial  had  been  the 
subject  of  hot  and  acrimonious  discussion.  In 
all  the  land  of  England  and  Scotland  the  peo- 
ple were  intensely  interested  and  excited.  The 
court-room  was  crowded  with  partisans  of  the 
prisoners,  who  cowed  the  judges,  jeered  the 
representatives  of  the  crown,  and  applauded 
every  incident  favorable  to  the  defense.  A 


420 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


dense  concourse  of  numberless  thousands,  clam- 
orous for  an  acquittal,  filled  the  streets  and  sur- 
rounded the  hall  of  justice.  The  prosecution 
was  weak,  and  labored,  and  imbued  with  dire 
forebodings.  The  defense  was  bold,  skillful, 
sagacious,  and  vigorous.  The  judges  were  di- 
vided in  opinion,  and  two  of  the  four  charged 
in  favor  of  an  acquittal. 

Under  such  circumstances,  and  under  such 
tremendous  outside  pressure,  it  would  have 
been  wonderful  indeed  if  a  jury  had  dared  to 
resist  the  popular  demand.  But  such  was  the 
influence  of  an  unpopular  sovereign  on  a  totter- 
ing throne  that  three  of  the  jury  at  first  voted 
for  a  conviction.  Their  verdict  does  not  enti- 
tle that  jury  to  the  proud  appellation  of  cham- 
pions of  freedom.  It  is  not  by  floating  with  an 
irresistible  current  that  such  honorable  titles 
are  achieved.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  under  such 
pressure  the  clamors  of  the  multitude,  whether 
they  demand  the  release  of  Barabbas  or  the 
Son  of  Man,  will  usually  prevail.  If  the  mul- 
titude decide  in  favor  of  the  saint  and  against 
the  sinner,  the  credit  is  to  them  and  not  to  a 
jury  that  records  their  opinions. 

There  have  been  juries  that  have  deserved 
some  of  the  encomiums  lavished  upon  the  jury 
in  the  Bishops'  case.  The  trial  of  Sir  Nicho- 
las Throckmorton,  in  the  first  year  of  the  reign 
of  Queen  Mary,  presented  an  example  of  such 
a  one.  Unsupported  by  popular  clamor,  press- 
ed hard  by  the  judges  on  the  bench,  liable  to 
pains  and  penalties,  which  they  braved  and  duly 
suffered,  they  dared  to  find  a  verdict  against 
the  crown.  But  that  verdict  is  one  of  the  bright 
exceptions  that  only  proves  the  rule  of  sub- 
serviency of  juries.  In  the  reigns  pf  the  Georges 
there  were  some  few  refusals  to  convict  of  po- 
litical libels,  and  the  jury  took  the  law  into  their 
own  hands,  which  in  the  case  of  the  Bishops 
they  did  not  do.  But  the  gain  to  the  cause  of 
liberty  by  reason  of  an  acquittal  in  violation  of 
law  is  exceedingly  problematical.  The  con- 
tempt for  law,  which  is  the  result  of  such  ver- 
dicts, is  more  dangerous  to  freedom  than  the  en- 
forcement of  the  most  unjust  law.  In  England 
and  the  United  States  the  people  make  the  laws. 
Bad  laws  should  be  repealed,  not  nullified  by 
juries. 

In  England,  two  and  three  centuries  ago, 
judges  who  received  their  appointments  from 
the  crown,  and  looked  solely  to  the  crown  for 


preferment,  were  doubtless  in  political  cases 
more  or  less  partisan  on  the  bench — some  of 
them  outrageously  and  indecently  so.  It  was 
in  the  power  of  juries  to  render  good  service  in 
the  cause  of  justice,  and  in  strict  accordance 
with  law,  by  giving  the  verdicts  on  evidence 
only.  But  they  had  not  the  moral  stamina  to 
do  so. 

In  this  country  political  prosecutions  are  a 
thing  of  the  past.  They  became  obsolete  when 
the  most  tremendous  rebellion  the  world  ever 
knew  was  quelled  and  no  man  was  put  on  his 
trial  for  treason.  Our  judges  are  not  to  be  in- 
fluenced by  either  State  or  Federal  Govern- 
ments. The  United  States  judges  are  appoint- 
ed for  life,  and  outlive  the  administrations  which 
appoint  them  and.  even  the  political  parties  to 
which  they  have  belonged.  From  the  Govern- 
ment they  have  nothing  to  hope  or  fear.  Their 
interest  and  their  ambition  is  confined  to  the 
conscientious  discharge  of  their  duty. 

Our  State  judges  are  obliged  to  apply  at 
stated  periods  of  time  to  the  people  for  reelec- 
tion. Their  best  hope  of  succeeding  themselves 
is  to  obtain  the  confidence  of  the  people  by  an 
upright  administration  of  their  high  office.  No 
blow  at  popular  liberty  is  at  all  likely  to  be 
struck  by  any  judge,  either  Federal  or  State. 
With  us  the  jury  system  cannot  be  a  palladium 
of  Liberty.  If  that  goddess  is  ever  attacked  in 
this  country  it  will  not  be  through  the  courts. 

The  verdicts  of  juries  in  criminal  cases  have 
become  the  disgrace  of  our  age  and  country. 
They  daily  bring  the  administration  of  the  law 
into  disrepute  and  contempt.  It  would  be  for 
the  advancement  of  civilization,  would  tend  to 
secure  the  benefits  of  good  government  to  all, 
and  would  promote  the  administration  of  jus- 
tice, if  juries  were  utterly  abolished.  To  bor- 
bow  the  epigrammatic  words  of  a  recent  es- 
sayist : 

"'The  jury  is  the  clown  of  the  law.  It  is  constantly 
inventing  new  and  ingenious  tricks  for  the  evasion  of 
duty.  It  is  the  patron  of  the  joke  called  '  temporary 
insanity,'  and  the  author  of  numberless  other  jests  of 
a  like  character.  It  is  a  never  failing  source  of  amuse- 
ment to  all  except  its  victims.  There  is  nothing  certain 
about  it  but  its  uncertainty.  It  has  been  sneered  at,  and 
satirized,  and  lampooned,  and  caricatured.  Judges  have 
snubbed  it,  and  legal  wits  like  Curran  have  riddled 
it  with  sarcasm  in  open  court.  Yet  a  mistaken  con- 
servatism suffers  it  to  continue  its  blundering  way  un- 
challenged." 

E.  W.  McGRAW. 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


421 


GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  time  came  when  Mr.  Brownell  was  to 
start  to  New  York  with  Hope  and  Stephen. 
There  was  evidently  an  effort  at  self-control 
throughout  the  family  when  it  came  to  saying 
good-bye.  It  seemed  a  preconcerted  thing  that 
no  emotion  should  appear  on  the  surface.  One 
unexpected  event  occurred,  however,  that  broke 
Hope's  heart  for  many  a  long  day.  Bill  had 
been  hiding  away,  apparently  sulky,  but  really 
in  a  bitter  struggle  with  grief.  When  the  stage 
came  to  the  door,  he  rushed  out  from  some 
hiding-place  and  climbed  in  it.  No  persuasion 
could  get  him  out.  He  was  going  with  Hope, 
he  said.  He  clung  to  the  sides  with  the  grip 
of  death  when  they  attempted  to  remove  him 
forcibly;  and  when  at  last  he  was  lifted  out, 
and  Hope,  quite  overcome  by  tears,  had  climb- 
ed to  her  place  and  fallen  all  a  limp  heap  in  her 
seat,  a  last  glance  as  she  was  whirled  away 
showed  her  the  little,  loving  brother  freed  from 
the  restraint  of  his  father's  arms  and  wildly  fol- 
lowing them  on  foot. 

It  was  no  easy  task  to  capture  the  young  man 
and  bring  him  back.  But  the  grief  of  chttdren, 
though  bitter,  is  brief,  and  long  before  Hope's 
tears  were  dry,  and  before  that  whisper  in  her 
heart,  "Oh,  poor  little  thing!  oh,  poor  little 
thing!"  had  ceased  its  plaint,  Bill  had  forgot- 
ten all  the  troubles  of  this  mundane  sphere, 
and  was  playing  a  game  of  "keeps"  with  John- 
ny Miller,  with  luck  on  his  side,  and  making 
the  biggest  run  of  the  season. 

There  were  intervals,  however,  in  the  weeks 
following,  when  he  would  lament  her  absence 
in  roars  of  grief  that  were  audible  a  half  mile 
away.  These  outbursts  were  all  brought  about 
by  some  persecution  from  the  different  mem- 
bers of  his  family.  Perhaps  it  was  his  mother 
who  had  offended  him,  or  his  father.  His  feel- 
ings were  very  sensitive  on  the  subject  of  chips. 
Perhaps  one  of  his  brothers  had  outwitted  him 
in  a  trade  or  had  conquered  him  in  a  fight. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  occasion,  he 
would  then  mingle  his  anger  with  his  grief  for 
Hope,  and  threaten  to  run  off  and  go  to  her. 

One  day  he  found  by  comparing  notes  with 
Johnny  Miller,  a  cub  of  his  own  age,  that  he 
also  suffered  untold  agonies  from  the  cruelty  of 
parents  and  elder  brothers  and  sisters.  So  the 
two  youngsters  proposed  to  run  off  together. 

VOL.  III.- 27. 


Sally  overheard  their  plans,  and  rushed  in  dis- 
may to  her  mother  with  the  startling  news. 
Mrs.  Wilkins  laughed,  and  threw  no  obstacles 
in  their  way.  This  was  a  new  view  of  the  case, 
and  Sally  began  to  think  it  might  be  a  nice 
thing  for  her  to  run  away,  too. 

When  the  boys  were  ready  to  go,  Bill  slipped 
into  the  house,  watching  his  mother  furtively 
while  he  wrapped  up  a  few  of  his  clothes,  to- 
gether with  some  bread  and  meat.  Little  Sally 
followed  him  everywhere  with  great  interest. 
It  is  a  noticeable  fact  that  if  a  little  girl  has  a 
brother  just  older  than  herself  she  regards  him 
as  the  greatest  of  living  men.  No  influence 
from  any  one  else  can  weaken  her  confidence 
in  him.  So  it  was,  as  Sally  watched  her  won- 
derful brother,  she  became  convinced  that  run- 
ning away  was  a  great  performance,  and  the 
one  thing  desirable  above  all  other  things ;  so 
she  informed  him  that  she  was  "doin5  to  wun 
off,  too." 

"Lawful  sakes  !  You!"  said  he,  contemptu- 
ously, straightening  himself  up  and  looking  like 
a  prince  of  the  blood  in  this  young  lady's  eyes. 
"Why,  y oii! re  a  baby.  You  ain't  got  sense 
enough  to  take  care  of  yourself  yet." 

Sally  was  deeply  abashed  by  this  announce- 
ment, but  rallied  a  little  presently,  and  asked, 
meekly : 

"Tant  'oo  take  tare  of  me,  Bill?" 

This  was  putting  a  new  face  on  the  matter. 
Bill  thought  perhaps  he  could.  So  Sally  be- 
gan to  pack  up  her  wardrobe.  She  went  to  the 
dirty -clothes  basket,  and  got  one  of  Nettie's 
aprons  and  a  dish -towel.  These  she  pinned 
together  in  one  of  the  most  demoralized  bun- 
dles ever  seen.  She  exhausted  the  pin-cushion 
in  disposing  of  its  stray  ends,  and  even  then  the 
result  was  extremely  shaky  and  uncertain,  be- 
sides being  so  "stickery"  she  was  afraid  to 
touch  it.  Mrs.  Wilkins  found  this  bundle  the 
next  day  at  the  wood-pile,  and  with  a  laugh,  the 
sound  of  which  ought  to  have  cured  the  most 
confirmed  dyspeptic,  she  brought  it  in  and  put 
it  on  the  mantel-piece  for  exhibition. 

When  the  two  babies  had  joined  the  other 
baby  waiting  outside,  there  arose  a  dispute 
about  the  propriety  of  taking  Sally.  Johnny 
Miller  told  Bill  quite  plainly  that  he  didn't  pro- 
pose working  to  help  support  her. 

"Yes,"  said  Bill,  "but  don't  you  see  she'll 
help  us  more'n  all  the  dogs  and  the  pigs  throw- 


422 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ed  in.  She'll  be  better'n  a  Shetland  pony.  She 
can  dance,  and  sing  a  song,  and  make  two 
speeches,  and  she's  just  the  thing  we  want  for 
our  circus.  Should  think  you'd  have  gumption 
enough  to  see  that  for  yourself.  'Sides  that, 
she's  the  prettiest  little  girl  in  the  world — 'most 
as  pretty  as  Hope." 

Johnny  seemed  to  be  doubtful  of  Sally's  ac- 
complishments, so  Bill  proposed  to  put  her 
through  her  paces  and  show  him  what  she 
could  do.  Sally  by  this  time  began  to  see  that 
she  was  going  to  star  it  in  a  traveling  circus, 
and  became  wildly  elated.  She  sang  her  song 
in  such  a  joyous,  caroling,  sweet  little  voice 
she  really  would  have  brought  down  the  house 
in  the  best  theater  in  the  world.  But,  as  it  often 
happens  with  superlative  genius,  her  pearls 
were  cast  before  swine.  Johnny  gave  a  sniff  of 
contempt. 

"Her  can't  talk  plain,"  he  said ;  "her's  nothin' 
but  a  baby." 

The  tears  came  into  her  eyes,  but  Bill  order- 
ed her  peremptorily  to  "dry  up  and  cut  loose 
in  a  dance."  So  she  brushed  her  tears  away, 
and,  beginning  a  little  tune,  she  kept  step  to  it 
very  accurately,  beating  time  by  clapping  her 
hands  together.  This  was  so  pretty  and  grace- 
ful that  even  Johnny  applauded.  Then  Bill  or- 
dered her  to  "  come  on  with  her  speeches."  The 
first  of  these  was  from  Mother  Goose.  The  em- 
phasis with  which  she  delivered  it  is  quite  inim- 
itable, and  only  a  feeble  attempt  at  its  expres- 
sion can  be  conveyed  on  paper.  She  stepped 
out  before  her  audience  with  her  curly  head  well 
up  and  her  whole  bearing  proud  as  a  peacock ; 
then  she  began  with  her  exquisite  baby  lisp, 
not  to  be  rendered  in  type : 

' '  Hokey,  pokey,  hanky  panky, 
I'm  the  Queen  of  Swinky  Swanky, 
And  I'm  pretty  well,  I  thank  'ee." 

At  the  last  word  she  swept  them  a  courtesy, 
like  a  real  queen,  and  retired  modestly  back- 
ward, waiting  for  another  call. 

Johnny  did  not  approve  of  the  speech.  The 
same  criticism  with  which  he  condemned  the 
song  was  in  force  here.  But  the  dance  was 
"bully,"  he  said ;  so  he  thought  they  would  take 
her.  Then  they  revealed  their  plans.  They 
had  three  dogs  and  a  pig  and  Sally,  and  were 
starting  out  for  a  "show."  They  were  going  to 
work  their  way  to  New  York,  where  they  in- 
tended to  stop  and  live  with  Hope  in  a  gold 
house  with  diamond  windows,  and  have  all  the 
fine  things  they  wanted,  and  go  riding  every 
day  on  Shetland  ponies. 

It  was  now  getting  on  toward  the  middle  of 
the  afternoon,  and  they  declared  themselves 
ready  to  start.  At  this  juncture,  Mrs.  Wilkins, 


who  had  been  watching  them  from  behind  a 
blind,  and  enjoying  their  performances  very 
much,  sent  Nettie  to  them  with  an  invitation  to 
remain  to  dinner. 

But  "no,"  they  did  not  care  for  dinner.  They 
had  plenty  with  them,  and  when  that  gave  out 
they  would  have  a  "show,"  and  buy  more. 

"Ah,  yes,"  said  Nettie,  "but  we  are  going  to 
have^zV,  and  ma's  got  a  cake  with  raisins  in  it 
as  big  as  your  thumb,  How's  that  for  high?" 

Bill's  eyes  dilated. 

"That's  way  up/'  he  said. 

So  they  held  a  consultation,  and  decided  to 
wait  until  after  dinner.  As  they  sat  on  the 
wood-pile  pending  that  pleasant  event,  the  time 
seemed  interminable  to  them ;  and  it  was  a  very 
long  hour  indeed  before  they  were  called  in. 

After  dinner,  the  sun  was  actually  going  out 
of  sight  behind  the  tall  mountain  in  the  west, 
and  they  held  another  consultation  about  start- 
ing; the  result  of  which  was  that  they  would 
camp  out  in  a  broken-down  wagon  on  the  edge 
of  town,  while  Sally  remained  in  the  house  that 
night,  where  they  would  call  for  her  in  the  morn- 
ing and  take  an  early  start.  They  had  a  long 
walk  to  the  wagon,  and  when  they  got  there 
found  to  their  evident  surprise  that  there  were 
no  sleeping  accommodations  in  it.  This  put 
them  to  thinking.  Finally,  they  stole  an  old 
horse -blanket  from  a  convenient  barn  in  the 
neighborhood.  Then  they  thought  of  their 
three  dogs  and  one  pig  tied  up  with  bale -rope 
clear  out  on  the  other  side  of  the  village,  and  it 
came  into  their  heads  that  these  "stock  actors" 
might  possibly  be  hungry.  The  next  thing  in 
order  was  to  feed  them.  They  had  almost  reach- 
ed the  place  where  they  had  left  them,  when 
they  found  out  they  had  brought  no  food.  Here 
was  an  emergency.  They  were  almost  discour- 
aged. It  was  getting  dark.  They  were  begin- 
ning in  a  dumb  way  to  realize  something  of  the 
total  depravity  of  inanimate  things.  Finally, 
as  it  must  be  done,  they  retraced  their  steps  to 
get  the  bread  and  meat  out  of  their  bundles. 

"This  is  'most  lightnin',  Bill,"  said  Johnny. 
"Now,  what  are  we  to  do  for  grub  till  we  get  a 
start?" 

"I  can  get  more  at  ma's,"  said  Bill. 

"It's  a  goin'  to  be  a  devil  of  a  trip  this  is," 
said  Johnny.  "I'm  nearly  tired  to  death  now." 

But  they  trudged  on,  and  got  their  provisions 
and  returned  with  them  to  the  spot  where  their 
hungry  dependants  were  stationed.  Here  they 
were  surprised  and  disgusted  to  find  the  dogs 
had  all  gone.  The  renegades  had  not  had  the 
charity,  however,  to  liberate  their  cousin  in 
bonds,  for  he  was  still  there,  sitting  back  on  his 
tether  with  the  obstinacy  of  a — of  a  pig.  He 
was  very  ill-natured,  but  did  not  refuse  the  sol- 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


423 


ace  of  bread  and  meat.  He  ate  up  all  they 
had,  and  even  then  eyed  them  ungratefully  and 
reproachfully. 

By  this  time  it  was  quite  dark,  and  they  had 
a  good  half-mile  to  travel  back  to  the  wagon. 
They  now  took  each  other  by  the  hand  for  pro- 
tection, and  scampered  rapidly  away. 

They  did  not  undress  that  night;  and,  so 
strong  is  the  force  of  habit,  they  did  not  know 
how  to  go  to  bed  without  undressing,  especially 
as  they  had  no  bed  to  go  to.  Even  after  they 
were  in  bed  they  could  not  sleep,  but  lay  star- 
ing in  the  dark  for  many  hours,  as  they  sup- 
posed. 

The  time  in  reality  was  not  nearly  so  long 
as  they  imagined.  They  were  nervous  and  rest- 
less— preternaturally  alive  to  every  sound  that 
moved  the  leaves  and  every  sigh  of  the  night- 
wind.  But  after  a  while,  as  they  listened  in 
this  state  of  intensity,  they  heard  an  unmistak- 
able groan  under  the  wagon.  With  a  simulta- 
neous movement  they  popped  the  blanket  over 
their  heads,  where  they  had  to  hold  it  by  main 
force,  so  great  was  the  capillary  attraction  that 
impelled  it  upward;  and  then  they  heard  an- 
other groan.  This  time  it  was  plainer.  It  came 
up  through  the  cracks  in  the  bottom  of  their 
bed -room,  and  the  blanket  above  them  gave 
them  an  idea  that  they  were  bottled  in  with  this 
ghastly  horror. 

This  could  not  be  endured  for  an  instant; 
and  so,  with  another  simultaneous  impulse — 
or,  to  avoid  needless  repetition,  let  us  say  with 
two  impulses  that  were  Siamese  twins  in  their 
kinship — they  sprung  over  the  side  of  the  wagon 
and  ran  for  their  lives.  There  was  no  holding 
hands  now.  It  was  "every  fellow  for  himself, 
and  devil  take  the  hindmost."  Bill  was  ahead. 
Johnny's  roars  were  unheeded,  and  gradually 
died  out  in  the  distance.  He  said  afterward 
that  one  of  his  legs  was  scared  so  bad  it  went 
back  on  him,  and  left  him  nothing  to  travel 
with  but  the  other  one  and  his  head,  with  a  lit- 
tle help  from  his  two  hands.  Bill  reached  home, 
where  he  found  the  family  still  up.  His  ap- 
pearance among  them  was  decidedly  tumultu- 
ous. 

He  took  his  seat  quietly,  however,  and  to 
the  questions,  "What  you  been  doin',  Bill?" 
"What  makes  you  look  so  pale,  Bill?"  he  an- 
swered but  one  word : 

"Nothin5." 

The  next  morning,  when  Sally  opened  those 
blue  forget-me-nots,  her  sweet  eyes,  she  scream- 
ed lustily  for  that  mighty  man,  her  owner  and 
proprietor,  and  when  he  came  informed  him 
that  she  was  ready  to  start ;  and  great  was  her 
wonder  when  he  told  her  to  shut  up,  and  not 
bother  him  about  such  nonsense  any  more. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Hope's  first  letter  after  reaching  New  York 
was  to  Bill.  It  was  written  in  easy  words,  with 
printed  letters,  so  that,  with  some  assistance,  he 
was  soon  able  to  read  it  himself.  After  this, 
letters  came  frequently  to  various  members  of 
the  family  and  to  Mrs.  Marvin. 

Stephen  had  stood  the  first  part  of  the  trip 
well,  but  had  quite  failed  on  the  latter  part,  and 
did  not  rally  in  the  least  after  they  reached 
home.  His  mother,  Mrs.  Whitehall,  soon  came 
to  him,  and  was  with  him  day  and  night.  Hope 
was  necessarily  away  from  him  a  good  deal, 
though  she  often  took  her  drawing  materials  to 
his  room  and  worked  where  he  could  watch  her. 
At  last  it  seemed  that  all  the  life  he  had  was 
embodied  in  her,  and  her  absence  left  him  dead, 
or  so  nearly  dead  as  to  be  incapable  of  either 
speech  or  motion.  He  was  now  under  the  care 
of  a  physician  who  had  no  hope  of  .his  life,  and 
whose  only  effort  was  to  deaden  his  pain  with 
morphine. 

At  last,  Hope  was  aroused  to  a  sense  of  his 
condition  by  coming  unexpectedly  upon  Mrs. 
Whitehall  at  a  moment  when  she  was  in  utter 
despair  for  the  life  of  her  boy;  and  this  emo- 
tion on  the  part  of  his  mother  filled  her  with 
surprise  and  dismay.  She  had  never  believed 
that  Stephen  could  die  until  the  day  he  men- 
tioned it  to  her  in  connection  with  her  leaving 
him  to  go  with  Mr.  Brownell.  After  that,  her 
fears  had  been  allayed  by  the  decision  to  take 
him  to  New  York.  But  now  it  was  evident  she 
had  the  worst  to  anticipate.  She  went  to  her 
room  all  in  a  tremble.  There  she  passed  many 
moments  without  any  conscious  thought,  except 
"if  Stevey  died  it  would  kill  her."  She  had 
never  stood  face  to  face  with  strong  emotion  be- 
fore, nor  did  she  recognize  its  strength  now. 

"If  Stevey  dies,  it  will  kill  me." 

She  did  not  speak  these  words.  They  spoke 
themselves  from  her  inner  being  to  her  outer 
consciousness.  They  had  been  enscrolled  in 
the  layers  of  her  organism ;  they  had  shaped 
or  modified  the  atoms  of  her  body,  and  now 
they  stood  revealed  to  her  thought.  There  was 
no  feeling  that  shaped  itself  into  a  confession 
of  love  for  him ;  there  was  no  question  of  his 
loving  her;  neither  was  there  a  single  retro- 
spective glance  to  see  if  the  past  contained  any- 
thing that  threw  its  light  upon  the  present  mo- 
ment. There  was  nothing  but  those  few  words 
standing  as  the  exponent  of  her  life — its  per- 
fect aggregation,  the  one  strong,  yet  simple, 
summing  up  of  herself: 

"If  Stevey  dies,  it  will  kill  me." 

She  passed  the  evening  by  his  bedside  in  a 
daze,  and  when  she  went  to  her  own  room  she 


424 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


was  far  above  the  possibility  of  sleep.  Sleep 
is  a  negative  condition,  and  Hope,  unknown  to 
herself,  was  in  a  state  so  absolutely  positive 
that  Stephen,  whose  life -springs  she  held  em- 
bodied, appeared  better  for  the  time.  The  next 
day  as  she  was  taking  some  of  her  work  to  the 
foreman's  office,  she  passed  a  doctor's  sign  that 
had  often  attracted  her  attention  by  the  beauty 
and  taste  of  its  modest  design.  Without  stop- 
ping to  consider  she  went  in,  traced  him  to  his 
rooms,  and  stood  in  his  presence.  He  was  a 
young  man,  with  eyes  of  intelligence  and  beau- 
tiful repose.  She  told  him  about  Stephen,  and 
asked  him  to  come  and  see  him.  He  set  a 
time  to  do  so,  and  kept  his  appointment,  never 
questioning  the  young  girl's  authority  in  the 
matter,  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  prelimi- 
naries had  been  adjusted  before  the  family  had 
sent  for  him — nor  did  he  ever  know  better ;  for 
Hope  reached  home  before  he  got  there  and 
wrote  a  not£  discharging  the  physician  in  at- 
tendance, and  afterward,  on  the  arrival  of  the 
young  gentleman,  went  with  him  to  Stephen's 
room, 

It  was  several  days  before  Dr.  Morrel  made 
up  his  mind  with  regard  to  the  case.  At  first 
there  seemed  to  be  no  hope — Stephen  was  so 
low,  and  his  recuperative  power  so  apparently 
gone.  Presently  he  found  he  had  much  of  this 
to  charge  to  the  use  of  the  morphine,  with  which 
they  had  deadened  his  pain  and  almost  killed 
him.  The  first  thing  he  did  was  to  try  and 
break  him  of  the  morphine  habit.  In  this 
attempt  his  system  would  immediately  show 
whether  it  still  possessed  the  power  of  recuper- 
ation. He  began  to  lessen  the  doses,  and  found 
that  he  could  live  and  bear  it.  This  was  so  far 
hopeful,  but  his  suffering  increased  as  the  mor- 
phine decreased,  and  it  seemed  a  stand-off  be- 
tween the  two  situations. 

Dr.  Morrel  had  made  up  his  mind  to  operate 
on  his  leg.  There  could  never  be  any  perma- 
nent improvement  while  that  tumor  remained. 
The  operation  was  more  than  dangerous  while 
his  patient  was  so  weak,  and  to  build  up  his 
constitution  under  the  circumstances  was  im- 
possible ;  but  it  was  the  one  chance.  This  he 
told  the  family,  who,  in  a  modified  way,  told  it 
to  Stephen. 

.  "  Then  there  is  still  hope,"  said  Stephen,  who 
had  evidently  given  up  the  idea  of  recovery. 

He  was  not  afraid,  he  told  them — he  wanted 
it  done  right  away ;  and  yet,  as  the  time  ap- 
proached, every  fiber  of  his  enfeebled  system 
shrank  from  the  thought  in  horror.  Hope,  who 
now  entered  consciously  into  his  feelings,  shared 
this  horror,  and  by  sharing  it  (she  being  strong) 
uplifted  him  to  the  extent  at  least  of  keeping 
life  in  him.  When  the  day  came,  and  Dr.  Mor- 


rel and  his  two  assistants  had  arrived,  it  was 
decided  that  he  could  not  take  chloroform  or 
any  other  anaesthetic  agent  without  the  almost 
certain  prospect  of  death.  Hope  was  wild  when 
she  heard  this,  but  Stephen,  in  sheer  despera- 
tion, anxious  only  to  have  it  over  as  soon  as 
possible,  told  them  to  proceed.  It  was  decided 
to  have  Mr.  Brownell  in  the  room,  while  Hope 
and  Mrs.  Whitehall  were  excluded.  They  were 
in  the  parlor  just  below  Stephen's  room.  Dr. 
Morrel,  before  going  up -stairs,  at  the  last  mo- 
ment had  pointed  to  the  clock. 

"In  less  than  a  half  hour,"  he  said,  "it  will 
be  over,  and  he  will  be  comfortable.  You  will 
probably  suffer  more  than  he  does,  and  you 
can  surely  bear  it  just  a  half  hour." 

Mrs.  Whitehall  sat  in  a  large  chair,  appar- 
ently numb,  and  Hope  walked  the  floor.  Both 
ladies  watched  the  clock.  The  minutes  were 
hours ;  but  at  last  fifteen  were  gone,  and  every- 
thing above  was  still  as  death.  They  began  to 
hope  that  it  was  over,  when  there  was  a  cry  in 
Stephen's  room ;  at  first  low,  but  increasing  in 
volume  and  hoarseness  to  a  sound  perfectly  un- 
earthly in  horror,  and  breaking  at  length  into 
a  succession  of  short  exhausted  screams — that 
last  protest  of  overtaxed  nature  that  resembles 
nothing  on  earth  so  much  as  the  harsh  barking 
of  a  dog. 

Mrs.  Whitehall  sunk  all  limp  and  nerveless 
into  the  depth  of  her  chair.  Hope  made  one 
bound  from  where  she  stood  and  flew  up-stairs 
like  a  winged  creature.  She  went  through  the 
door  of  the  invalid's  room  as  if  she  had  been  a 
spirit,  and  bolts  were  as  nothing  to  her.  She 
only  saw  an  agonized  face  and  two  great  eyes 
in  which  the  tortured  soul  was  poised  for  its 
outward  leap  into  eternity.  Stephen  lifted  him- 
self toward  her  as  she  dropped  on  her  knees 
beside  him.  Their  arms  clasped  each  other, 
their  faces  met.  The  surgeon  paused  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  went  on  with  the  operation — 
went  on  to  its  conclusion.  When  the  knee  was 
bandaged,  and  every  one  began  to  feel  the  sense 
of  relief  that  follows  intense  excitement,  Mr. 
Brownell  moved  toward  Hope,  and  would  have 
lifted  her  up,  but  she  slipped  through  his  arms 
to  the  floor.  They  carried  the  unconscious  girl 
to  her  room,  when  it  was  her  turn  to  be  the 
chief  object  of  anxiety  for  the  next  hour.  At 
her  first  symptom  of  returning  life  they  carried 
the  news  to  Stephen. 

"Thank  God!— thank  God!" 

These  were  all  the  words  he  could  speak, 
but  he  pressed  his  hands  upon  his  eyes,  and 
through  fast-coming  tears  he  saw  her  again  as 
he  had  seen  her  when  she  came  flying  toward 
him  with  outstretched  arms  like  an  angel  of  de- 
liverance— a  veritable  angel  of  deliverance  he 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


425 


would  ever  believe,  piecing  out  his  waning  life 
with  her  own  strong  vitality,  and  banishing  his 
pain  with  the  invincible  energy  of  her  mighty 
love. 

And  now  followed  days  of  happy  convales- 
cence with  Hope,  and  Mrs.  Whitehall,  and  Mr. 
Brownell — sometimes  one,  and  sometimes  all 
three,  about  him.  Hope  still  brought  her  draw- 
ing materials  to  his  room,  and  worked  there  for 
hours  each  day;  and  Stephen  watched  her  with 
his  bright,  happy  eyes,  seeming  never  to  de1 
sire  an  object  of  greater  interest.  Once  when 
he  was  just  aroused  from  a  light  sleep,  he  tried 
to  tell  her  some  of  his  thoughts. 

"Often  when  I  am  lying  here  so  peacefully, 
looking  at  you,"  he  said,  "it  seems  to  me  that 
I  have  died  and  gone  to  heaven — and  you,  too, 
Hope,  dear.  The  world  is  made  over  new  to 
me  now." 

"Suppose  you  had  gone  to  heaven,  Stevey, 
wouldn't  that  have  been  better?" 

"Not  to  me,"  he  said.  "This  is  my  home 
now,  my  school,  my  workshop,  where  I  want  to 
go  through  with  my  apprenticeship.  I  don't 
want  to  leave  this  world  until  I  have  earned 
my  diploma  here.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  tackle 
the  whole  course,  and  not  wish  to  lop  off  or 
dodge  a  single  study.  And  then  you  are  here, 
Hope,  and  likely  to  remain  as  long  as  any  of 
us?  Why  shouldn't  I  prefer  this  world?" 

Weeks  passed.  Stephen  recovered  rapidly. 
He  could  go  about  his  room,  even  bearing  some 
weight  on  the  lame  leg.  Dr.  Morrel  said  it 
would  ultimately  be  as  strong  as  the  other. 
When  he  was  well  enough  to  travel,  his  mother 
took  him  home,  and  many  months  passed  be- 
fore Hope  saw  him  again. 

At  Mr.  Brownell's  suggestion,  the  handsome, 
cozy  library  was  turned  into  the  common  work- 
room, where  he  wrote  and  made  occasional 
drawings,  and  where  Hope  worked  out  her  end- 
less fancies  to  his  entire  satisfaction.  In  find- 
ing an  outlet  for  her  inspirations,  Hope  had 
also  found  a  certain  happiness  of  which  no 
vicissitude  in  life  could  ever  deprive  her.  Love, 
that  heaven  or  hell  of  a  woman's  existence, 
might  come  or  go — it  could  never  leave  her 
quite  shipwrecked  while  the  love  of  her  art  re- 
mained. Added  to  this,  she  had  her  mother's 
sunshiny  disposition,  and  her  mother's  laugh. 
She  was  dangerously  attractive  to  Mr.  Brow- 
nell without  her  resemblance  to  Mrs.  Wilkins, 
whom  he  considered  the  most  superb -natured 
woman  he  ever  saw.  Always  as  they  sat  to- 
gether, and  there  was  silence  between  them,  as 
there  often  was  for  hours  each  day,  the  nature 
of  their  pursuits  being  very  engrossing,  in  his 
thought  he  was  warning  himself  against  falling 
in  love  with  her. 


"Thirty  years  older  than  she  is,"  he  would 
think.  "  Is  it  possible  she  should  ever  love  me 
in  return  ?  And  even  if  such  a  thing  were  pos- 
sible, could  a  marriage  with  her  prove  anything 
but  disastrous  to  both  of  us?" 

And  then  he  considered  her  temperament  and 
disposition,  both  so  admirable  as  to  dispel  his 
doubt. 

"A  disparity  of  years  is  no  great  obstacle 
where  there  is  a  similarity  of  tastes  and  pur- 
suits." 

Again,  he  reflected  on  her  probable  fate  if  he 
should  withdraw  himself  from  her  entirely. 

"  She  will  marry  some  man  who  may  make 
her  wretched,"  he  said.  "There  is  almost  every 
chance  that  she  will  do  so." 

But  he  turned  from  this  view  of  the  case, 
feeling  his  argument  to  be  one-sided  and  unfair. 

"If  I  could  just  hear  from  the  opposing  coun- 
sel," he  thought. 

It  was  in  vain  to  attempt  a  dismissal  of  the 
matter;  it  pursued  its  endless  round  through 
his  head  over  and  over,  his  fancy  spinning  an 
unbroken  web  of  her,  crossed  and  recrossed — 
the  tissue  gradually  thickening  to  a  filmy  veil 
that  wrapped  its  folds  about  him  until  he  was 
blind  and  helpless  in  its  power. 

And  Hope  knew  it,  though  no  word  had  been 
spoken,  and  a  vague  unhappiness  began  to  per- 
vade her.  Sitting  in  his  presence,  yet  apart 
from  him,  the  atmosphere  of  his  one  thought 
permeated  the  entire  room ;  it  became  a  part  of 
her  breath,  she  could  .not  evade  it.  It  made 
her  weak,  tremulous,  sick.  Her  soul  confessed 
its  bonds  of  life -long  gratitude  to  this  man. 
She  had  no  thought  of  ignoring  them.  The 
thoughts  of  Stephen,  so  long  cherished,  began 
to  be  a  condemnation  to  her ;  each  of  his  let- 
ters an  accusation  from  her  conscience. 

So  other  months  passed  until  the  day  fixed 
for  Stephen's  return.  He  had  written  to  Mr. 
Brownell  many  letters  full  of  undying  gratitude 
and  affection,  and  was  coming  back  to  work 
for  the  man  he  loved  better  than  all  the  men 
on  earth.  Hope  and  Mr.  Brownell  were  in  the 
library  waiting  for  him;  Mr.  Brownell  with 
pleasurable  anticipation,  Hope  in  a  tumult  of 
contending  emotions ;  neither  of  them  prepared 
for  the  revelation  of  magnificent  beauty  that 
presently  stood  before  them  in  the  shape  of 
Stephen.  Mr.  Brownell  greeted  him  with  af- 
fectionate cordiality,  Hope  with  impenetrable 
reserve  and  a  flicker  of  pain  in  her  raised  eyes. 
And  yet  those  eyes,  filmy  with  tears,  he  held 
as  if  spellbound.  To  her  enthused  ideality,  art- 
ist that  she  was,  he  seemed  a  young  Apollo, 
roseate  as  the  dawn,  crowned  with  the  beams 
of  morning.  The  months  had  given  him  hight 
and  breadth,  and  the  flesh  tint  of  perfect  health. 


426 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


There  was  no  crutch  now,  and  not  even  the 
shadow  of  lameness.  The  grace  of  strength 
crowned  every  movement.  His  eyes,  once  un- 
naturally large  and  pathetic,  like  those  of  some 
tortured  animal,  were  soft  and  bright,  and  full 
of  love  and  content ;  and  time  had  set  the  fin- 
ishing seal  of  manhood  on  the  upper  lip  in  a 
silken  line  of  sunny  dark  hair.  For  many  mo- 
ments, Hope,  forgetful  of  the  spell  that  bound 
her  apart  from  him  upon  whom  she  looked  with 
such  glowing  admiration,  yielded  to  the  swelling 
love  of  her  undisciplined  heart,  and  then  her 
consciousness  recalled  her  with  a  reactionary 
wave  of  sickening  pain  that  left  her  cheeks 
white  as  the  lilies  on  the  window-ledge  behind 
her. 

And  so  gratitude — noble  attribute  of  noble 
natures — was  in  this  instance  becoming  the 
murderer  of  that  nobler  and  mightier  god,  who 
in  his  divine  mission  was  born  to  be  the  ruler 
of  all  things. 

When  Hope  went  to  her  room  that  night, 
after  hours  spent  in  the  intoxication  of  Ste- 
phen's presence,  a  sort  of  frenzy  took  posses- 
sion of  her.  It  was  far  in  the  night  before  her 
thoughts  were  sufficiently  calm  for  the  action 
of  her  reason ;  and  then  not  until  her  pillow 
was  wet  with  tears  could  she  put  herself  and 
her  own  mad  desires  so  far  away  as  to  see  the 
claims  of  others. 

"But  for  him,"  she  said,  meaning  Mr.  Brow- 
nell, "noble  creature  that  he  is,  my  beautiful 
boy  would  have  been  in  his  grave  long  ago. 
And  now  must  all  his  goodness  and  generosity 
react  on  him,  to  separate  him  from  me,  whom 
he  loves  with  a  love  that  places  his  very  life 
almost  at  my  disposal.  And  I !  Oh,  I  should 
feel  proud  and  happy,  as  I  am  surely  honored, 
by  the  love  and  confidence  of  such  a  man. 
And  yet — God  help  me !  After  all,  it  is  Stevey 
for  whom  I  suffer  more  than  myself." 

Then  her  thoughts  went  back  to  his  last  let- 
ter: "To  tear  you  from  my  heart  would  be  to 
unravel  the  stitches  in  which  Time  has  knit  me." 

•'These  are  his  very  words,"  she  said. 

And  then  something  spoke  to  her,  the  voice 
of  the  tempter,  saying : 

"Suppose  Stevey  had  remained  a  cripple, 
and  yet  with  sufficient  strength  to  drag  through 
years  of  existence,  would  you  have  married  Mr. 
Brownell?" 

"No,"  she  said.  "No;  I  would  have  mar- 
ried Stevey." 

"But  suppose,"  continued  the  voice,  "Mr. 
Brownell  had  brought  him  here,  and  had  lav- 
ished money  and  time  and  affection  on  him  all 
the  same,  but  with  a  different  result,  would  not 
your  obligations  and  Stevey's  have  been  as 
great  as  now?" 


"Yes,  yes,"  said  Hope;  "but  I  would  have 
married  Stevey." 

"And  ignored  the  undying  gratitude  you  owe 
your  benefactor?" 

"  I  would  have  ignored  it,"  she  said.  "  More ; 
I  would  have  spurned  its  claims  and  trampled 
them  in  the  dust,  even  at  the  risk  of  blotting 
my  soul  out  of  existence.  I  would  have  mar- 
ried Stevey." 

"Then  why  don't  you  marry  him  now?" 

She  waited  some  moments  before  an  answer 
came  to  this  question,  and  then  the  thought 
shaped  itself  slowly:  "In  the  case  supposed,  a 
sacrifice  had  to  be  made;  it  was  Mr.  Brownell 
or  Stevey.  I  could  not  sacrifice  Stevey  with 
the  odds  against  him.  Now  they  are  against 
Mr.  Brownell,  and  Stevey  must  go." 

"But  you  also  must  be  sacrificed;  it  is  two 
against  one.  Moreover,  it  is  two  young  lives 
with  many  years  to  fill  with  bitterness  and  re- 
gret. Is  that  strict  justice?" 

No  answer. 

"Would  you  call  it  justice  if  you  were  decid- 
ing it  for  other  parties?" 

"  I  could  never  decide  it  correctly  for  others." 

"Why?" 

"Because  I  could  not  enter  into  the  claims 
of  gratitude  in  any  case  not  my  own ;  and  not 
knowing  their  weight,  I  would  not  know  how 
to  balance  them." 

"And  in  your  own  case,"  said  the  voice,  "you 
sacrifice  yourself  and  Stevey  to  liquidate  this 
claim.  Don't  you  see  that  this  is  not  justice, 
but  generosity?  And  generosity  is  as  far  from 
justice  on  one  side  as  selfishness  is  on  the 
other.  Go  to  Mr.  Brownell,  and  tell  him  your 
perplexities." 

"No,  never!"  she  cried,  starting  up  in  bed,, 
her  thoughts  groping  blindly  for  the  right  path 
out  of  this  dilemma. 

"Why,"  she  said  presently,  "no  one  can  pay 
a  debt  of  gratitude.  It  is  something  that  comes 
outside  the  sphere  of  justice.  Generosity  must 
be  met  and  counterparted  by  generosity,  and 
so  my  instincts  were  right  after  all."  And  then 
her  thoughts  ran  on:  "I  am  not  to  be  consid- 
ered at  all,"  she  said;  "only  Stevey— he  will 
get  over  it.  Oh,  yes,  he  will  get  over  it,  pray 
God!  He  ought  to  marry  a  queen,  young 
splendor  that  he  is,  and — and —  O  my  God! 
keep  me  from  thinking — or,  rather,  let  me  have 
but  one  thought :  Mr.  Brownell,  my  dear,  dear, 
dear  husband  that  is  to  be." 

She  turned  on  her  face ;  she  pressed  the  pil- 
low over  her  eyes  and  ears,  as  if  by  shutting 
the  outer  senses  she  could  stop  her  thoughts  as 
well.  And  so  the  dismal  night  wore  away. 

How  it  came  about  no  one  can  tell :  there 
was  a  cloud  between  Stephen  and  Hope.  Ste- 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


427 


phen  now  filled  an  important  position  in  Mr 
Brownell's  trust  and  confidence.  His  circum 
stances  justified  him  in  thinking  of  the  realiza- 
tion of  his  dreams.  He  could  afford  to  marry 
the  girl  who  had  been  literally  his  life  for  four 
years.  But  something  had  come  over  Hope 
She  was  no  longer  the  calm,  strong,  loving 
creature  of  his  trust  and  faith;  she  was  quite 
altered  now ;  she  seemed  impulsive  and  incon- 
sistent, often  cold  and  often  repentant,  then 
cold  again  instantly. 

At  last  he  got  the  clue.  It  reached  him 
through  some  inadvertent  words  on  the  part  of 
the  housekeeper,  an  old  lady  afflicted  with  over- 
fluency  of  speech,  who  occasionally  gave  utter- 
ance to  startling  truths  without  knowing  it. 
Then  the  thing  opened  to  him  like  a  revelation, 
and  he  wondered  how  it  had  been  possible  to 
breathe  the  air  of  that  house  so  pregnant  with 
Mr.  Brownell's  secret  thought  and  not  know  it. 
Then  he  felt  Hope's  hapless  condition,  and  en- 
tered into  it. 

To  go  away  from  there — to  get  board  else- 
where— was  his  first  thought.  This  he  did,  mak- 
ing such  explanation  to  his  benefactor  as  he 
deemed  proper.  And  yet  it  seemed  impossible 
to  detach  himself  from  the  place  entirely.  Mr. 
Brownell  was  coming  across  him  every  day, 
and  had  a  way  of  taking  him  by  the  arm  and 
walking  him  around  to  his  home  without  asking 
his  consent.  And  so  he  still  met  Hope  frequent- 
ly, and  these  meetings  were  maddening  to  both. 
"I  must  go  still  farther,"  he  said  to  himself  at 
last.  "I'll  go  to  California.  My  home  shall  be 
with  my  sister.  Her  family  shall  be  my  family. 
She  needs  me  more  than  any  one,  and  if  there 
is  happiness  for  me  anywhere  in  this  world  I'll 
find  it  with  her." 

So  he  fixed  a  day  for  his  departure. 
He  had  no  expectation  of  seeing  Hope  alone, 
even  for  one  moment,  before  he  left,  though  he 
deeply  desired  to  do  so;  and  fate,  generous 
sometimes,  favored  him  on  this  point  without 
any  effort  of  his. 

It  was  the  night  before  his  departure.  Hope 
was  resolved  not  to  say  good-bye  to  him.  As 
it  grew  late,  she  left  the  room  in  order  to  avoid 
it.  In  her  own  chamber  she  could  not  rest  a 
moment,  however.  She  stepped  into  the  hall, 
resolved  to  seek  the  outer  air.  At  the  lower 
end  of  this  hall  there  was  a  door  opening  on  an 
upper  balcony  at  the  back  of  the  building. 
Here  the  calm  night  confronted  her.  The  maj- 
esty of  the  heavens  quieted  her.  The  repose  of 
the  God -mind  was  manifest.  Its  works  and 
its  peacefulness  sent  her  a  message  of  rest.  All 
that  was  good  within  her  responded  to  this  mes- 
sage, and  the  aroma  of  her  soul  ascended — an 
unspoken  prayer. 


Presently  the  door  through  which  she  had 
reached  the  balcony  opened  and  shut,  and 
Stephen  was  beside  her.  He  had  no  thought 
of  finding  her  there.  He  was  leaving  the  house, 
and  before  going  had  yielded  to  an  impulse  to 
visit  the  spot  where  he  had  spent  so  many  hap- 
py hours  of  his  convalescence  with  her.  And 
the  girl  was  before  him ;  but  neither  spoke  for 
a  moment.  His  first  words  seemed  like  a  re- 
proach : 

"And  you  would  not  say  good-bye,  Hope, 
when  you  know  it  is  forever !" 

The  word  "forever"  struck  her  like  a  blow. 
She  had  never  felt  its  force  before.  She  actu- 
ally staggered,  and  would  have  fallen. 

"Sit  in  this  window-ledge,"  he  said,  leading 
her  farther  on.     "There,  now,  you  can  talk  to 
me  about  it,  or  would  you  rather  not?" 
"Oh,  Stevey,  it  can  do  no  good." 
"But  surely  you  must  love  him.    Think  how 
good  and  noble  he  is." 

"I  never  cease  for  one  moment  to  think  of 
it,"  she  said.     "I  should  be  lost  if  I  did." 
"You  will  be  happy  after  a  while,  Hope." 
"Oh,  Stevey,  I  can't  think  it.     Can  you  real- 
ize that  you  will  be  happy?" 

"If  I  knew  you  were  happy  I  would  ask  noth- 
ing else.  Control  yourself,  and  give  me  the  as- 
surance before  we  part  that  you  will  try  to  be 
happy  at  least." 

"What  can  I  do?"  she  cried;  "what  can  I  do?' 
She  was  breaking  down  utterly.  "How  can  I 
be  happy  in  marrying  Mr.  Brownell  and  loving 
you?  Haven't  I  loved  you  always — since  I  was 
a  child?  Have  I  ever  had  a  thought  of  any  one 
Ise?  You  and  your  dear  sister  I  hoped  to  be 
with  always.  Why,  Stevey,  it  was  like  parting 
with  half  of  my  soul  to  part  with  her,  and  now 
I  must  lose  you,  too." 

Her  sobs  were  convulsive.  Presently  she 
mastered  her  voice. 

"Go,  Stevey,"  she  said.     It  seemed  from  her 
ntonation  that  her  only  hope  of  self-control  lay 
n  these  words.     "  Go,  Stevey — go  now.     I  am 
not  sorry  you  came  to  me;  I  am  not  sorry  to 
show  you  all  there  is  in  my  heart.    You  will  re- 
member always  that  I  loved  you,  and  the  re- 
membrance will  comfort  you  as  the  thought  of 
four  love  will  comfort  me.    But  do  not  stay  any 
onger.     I  will  be  true  and  faithful  to  our  ben- 
efactor.   I  will  give  my  life  to  make  him  happy. 
There,  now,  don't  say  good-bye,  Stevey,  but  go." 
His  arm  supported  her  as  she  sat  in  the  win- 
dow, and  without  another  word  he  touched  her 
rembling  lips  with  his  and  rose  to  his  feet. 
When  he  reached  the  door  he  turned  to  look 
again.     Better  for  him  had  he  gone  his  way 
without  that  backward  glance.     The  image  of 
icr  shrinking,  grief -laden  form,  bowed  to  the 


428 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


ground  in  abject  despair,  never  left  his  mind, 
sleeping  or  waking,  for  many  a  weary  day  and 
night.  And  so  he  went  his  way. 

The  next  day  Hope  and  Mr.  Brownell  sat  to- 
gether at  work  as  usual.  No  trace  of  the  emo- 
tion that  had  rent  her  young  heart  the  night 
before  was  visible.  Her  cheeks  were  somewhat 
wanting  in  color,  and  her  eyes,  though  heavy, 
were  bent  upon  her  work,  and  therefore  unob- 
served. 

There  was  a  new  element  pervading  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  room.  Hope  felt  it,  and  knew 
what  was  coming.  All  these  last  months  of 
Mr.  Brownell's  life,  so  filled  with  thoughts  of 
Hope,  had  been  evolving  toward  a  climax  that 
might  never  have  been  reached  but  for  Ste- 
phen's departure.  He  had  loved  both  of  these 
young  people  with  his  whole  heart.  He  had 
never  known  that  there  was  anything  but  the 
love  of  brother  and  sister  between  them.  It  is 
true  the  thought  that  it  might  be  had  been  often 
before  him.  He  never  forgot  Hope's  passion- 
ate exclamation  at  the  prospect  of  parting  with 
Stephen  on  that  first  night  of  his  seeing  her : 

"I  can't  leave  Stevey,  I  can't  leave  Stevey !" 

He  had  reasoned  this  down  at  the  time,  and 
that,  too,  independent  of  any  personal  consid- 
eration. Indeed,  he  had  afterward  himself  so 
loved  the  boy  that  the  time  came  when  he  used 
the  same  words — practically,  at  least — and  did 
not  leave  him.  And  again,  on  the  day  Dr. 
Morrel  performed  the  surgical  operation,  how 
she  had  burst  the  barred  door  and  flown  to- 
ward him  with  an  intensity  of  purpose  perfect- 
ly irresistible!  But  then  he  had  been  at  no 
loss  to  account  for  her  impetuosity.  At  the  mo- 
ment that  agonized  scream  filled  the  air  he  felt 
that  he  would  give  his  very  life  to  purchase  ease 
for  the  boy,  and  he  neither  wondered  at  her 
sympathy  nor  its  exhibition.  That  which  caused 
him  wonder  was  that  after  all  Hope's  interest 
in  him  and  affection  for  him  during  his  sick- 
ness, she  should  care  so  little  for  him  when  he 
got  well.  He  felt  almost  certain  that  Stephen 
loved  her,  and  he  thought  it  probable  that  this 
unrequited  love  had  driven  him  from  the  State. 
But  how  was  it  that  Hope  could  not  love  him? 
There  was  no  one  in  the  world  worthy  of  her  if 
Stephen  was  not,  and  surely  there  had  never 
been  a  more  lovable  creature  born.  In  all  his 
thoughts  on  this  subject  he  only  tangled  him- 
self more  and  more,  and  in  the  end  was  fain  to 
go  to  thinking  of  something  else. 

That  something  else  was  only  Hope  again  in 
a  different  relation.  He  thought  of  her  in  her 
relation  to  his  own  happiness.  She  had  never 
given  him  a  token  of  love — not  one.  He  had 
builded  an  altar  for  her  in  his  heart,  but  he  had 
no  reason  to  believe  that  her  love  would  ever 


be  enshrined  within  it.  Perhaps  she  was  cold 
— given  up  to  her  art,  with  no  thought  of  love 
about  her.  It  was  said  that  women  of  genius 
were  hybridized  creatures,  destitute  of  the  love 
element.  He  almost  hoped  this  was  so.  On 
no  other  theory  could  he  justify  himself  in  lay- 
ing claim  to  her.  To  be  sure,  it  was  a  theory 
that  operated  against  him,  too;  but  then  he 
argued  that  the  North  Pole  with  her  was  better 
than  the  Tropics  with  another. 

He  was  resolved  on  one  thing :  now  that  the 
coast  was  clear,  he  would  speak  frankly  about 
his  love,  and  give  her  a  chance  to  refuse  him. 

And  this  was  the  new  element  that  pervaded 
the  library  atmosphere  after  Stephen  left  for 
California.  Hope  knew  what  was  coming. 
She  neither  sought  to  hasten  or  retard  the  de- 
noument,  but  bided  her  time  in  gentle  sweet- 
ness and  sorrowful  content. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  the  ninth  day  after 
Stephen  left  that  Mr.  Brownell  detained  her  in 
the  drawing-room  later  than  usual.  She  had 
been  thinking : 

"Stevey  is  at  home  to-night.  He  is  with  his 
sweet  sister,  whom  he  loves  so  dearly.  Little 
Jack  is  climbing  over  his  lap,  and  they  are  all 
happy,  I  know." 

She  was  so  glad  to  think  of  Stephen  as  be-: 
ing  happy  her  eyes  were  bright  and  her  step 
buoyant  beyond  her  usual  habit.  Filled  with 
these  thoughts,  the  hour  for  retiring  came,  and 
she  arose  to  leave  the  room ;  but  Mr.  Brownell, 
with  quite  a  new  and  beautiful  look  in  his  deep- 
set  gray  eyes,  put  out  his  hand  toward  her.  It 
was  with  something  almost  like  impetuosity 
that  she  approached  him  and  knelt  on  the  cush- 
ion by  his  chair ;  then  she  put  her  arms  about 
him,  and  laid  her  innocent  cheek  on  his  breast. 

"Hope,"  he  said;  "why,  Hope,  do  you  mean 
it,  my  child?  Is  it  possible  you  have  seen  my 
love  for  you  all  these  months?  Are  you  crying, 
Hope?" 

"No,"  she  said,  raising  her  face  that  he  might 
see. 

"And  have  I  really  worn  my  heart  on  my 
sleeve,  so  that  every  one  in  the  house  could  see 
how  I  loved  you?" 

She  was  laughing  now — actually  laughing; 
a  little  hysterical  laugh,  that  trembled  over  a 
fountain  of  tears. 

"  I  saw  it,"  she  said. 

"And  you  loved  me?  Oh,  Hope,  don't  an- 
swer that  question.  My  precious  child,  think 
this  all  over,  and  if  you  can  indeed  come  to  my 
arms  with  some  degree  of  pleasure  and  content, 
you  will  make  me  happier  than  I  ever  expected 
to  be." 

As  she  rose  from  the  cushion  he  rose  with 
her,  holding  her  hand.  He  looked  at  the  taper- 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


429 


ing,  beautiful  hand,  with  its  dimples  and  its 
wax -like  finish,  and  then  he  met  her  eyes. 
How  gladly  he  would  have  raised  that  busy  lit- 
tle hand  to  his  lips,  but  a  strange  feeling  of 
reticence  withheld  him.  He  more  than  feared 
that  her  love  was  not  what  it  should  be,  and 
that  out  of  their  positions  some  compulsion, 
not  yet  understood  by  him,  had  arisen  to  send 
her  to  his  arms.  He  had  never  thought  of  this 
before.  The  thought  came — an  unbidden  guest 
in  his  first  delicious  moment  of  close  contact 
with  her ;  and  as  he  pondered  it,  still  looking 
at  the  delicate  hand  he  clasped,  he  raised  his 
eyes  to  her  face  again,  and  relinquished  it  with 
a  sigh.  Hope  wondered  at  his  conduct.  The 
charming  delicacy,  the  gentle  reticence,  the 
modest  self-assertion,  the  manly  bearing,  pro- 
claimed his  true  character.  Hope  was  not 
versed  in  the  ways  of  the  world,  nor  was  she 
competent  to  judge  men  in  the  aggregate,  but 
she  gauged  the  man  before  her  without  a  doubt. 
His  nobleness  filled  her  with  grateful  warmth. 
Her  eyes  were  beautifully  kind  and  affectionate 
as  they  rested  upon  him ;  and  then  she  put  her 
hands  on  his  shoulders,  and  raised  her  lips  to 
his  face  with  an  innocence  altogether  angelic. 

"Bless  your  little  heart,"  he  said;  "bless 
your  little  heart,"  and  he  clasped  her  in  a  ten- 
der embrace. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  noble  impulses  of 
women  rarely  crystallize  into  principles.  With- 
out attempting  to  disprove  this  libel  in  its  gen- 
eral application,  it  must  be  admitted  that  Hope 
had  undertaken  a  duty  that  seemed  likely  to 
crush  her.  As  the  days  sped  on,  she  became 
apathetic.  She  no  longer  worked  with  pleased 
alacrity.  Her  thought -life  was  silent,  her  in- 
spirations were  dead.  Her  drawings  were  char- 
acterless and  uncertain.  She  liked  Mr.  Brow- 
nell,  and  even  sought  his  presence — sought  it, 
alas,  as  a  refuge  from  herself. 

When  I  say  she  had  given  herself  away,  I 
mean  it  literally.  She  had  given  herself,  and 
that  gift  was  obliteration  to  her.  She  received 
nothing  in  exchange.  It  is  true  Mr.  Brownell 
wasted  the  best  love  of  his  nature  on  her — 
wasted  it,  indeed.  There  was  nothing  within 
her  that  opened  to  receive  it.  She  could  not 
appropriate  it,  no  matter  how  much  she  might 
desire  to  do  so.  Therefore,  in  giving  herself 
away,  she  tore  herself  from  love  and  became 
naught.  Love  is  life,  and  she  had  divorced  her- 
self from  life. 

And  still  the  days  sped  onward — dead  days 
to  Hope,  but  full  of  sweet  content  to  Mr.  Brow- 
nell. The  new  glow  in  his  heart  had  wrought 
its  bloom  in  his  face.  His  eyes  were  soft  and 
luminous,  and  his  voice  full  of  tenderness. 
Hope's  conduct,  such  as  it  was,  awakened  no 


lasting  doubt  within  him.  In  his  self-deprecia- 
tion he  wondered  how  she  could  love  him,  but 
he  accepted  the  fact  with  thankfulness,  almost 
with  humility.  And  so  the  time  set  for  the  mar- 
riage approached.  Day  after  day  slipped  down 
the  thread  of  time  and  dropped  into  the  silent 
past;  and  at  last  but  twenty-four  hours  stood 
between  Hope  and  that  other  dreadful  hour, 
when  she  should  take  the  false  vow  that  would 
bind  her  to  a  loveless  marriage.  Up  to  this 
point  her  apathy  had  deepened  continually. 
She  had  lost  the  power  of  thought,  and  was 
drifting — drifting  to  the  verge  of  some  cataract 
it  seemed  to  her,  and  its  roar  was  beginning  to 
deafen  her.  A  vague,  yet  awful,  fright  was 
struggling  for  the  mastery  of  her  benumbed 
faculties.  At  last  the  chaos  of  her  soul  was 
pierced  by  one  ray  of  light,  and  by  that  ray  she 
saw  Stephen  standing,  an  impenetrable  bar- 
rier, between  her  and  Mr.  Brownell.  Her  wed- 
ding garments  were  spread  out  in  her  room, 
and  the  sight  of  them  made  her  wild. 

"My  God!  my  God!"  she  cried,  with  clasp- 
ed hands  raised  wildly  above  her  head,  "what 
shall  I  do?  Oh !  what  shall  I  do?" 

Her  dressmaker  was  with  her,  surprised,  be- 
yond everything,  at  the  outburst  of  this  calm, 
self-contained  girl. 

"What  ails  you,  Miss  Hope?"  she  asked. 
"Is  anything  wrong?" 

"Everything  is  wrong,"  cried  Hope,  her  arms 
thrown  out  distractedly,  her  eyes  uplifted  in  an 
awful  despair ;  and  so  she  stood  transfixed  like 
a  statue,  until  an  awful  pallor  crept  over  her 
face,  neck,  and  hands,  and  she  fell  on  the  floor 
like  one  stricken  with  sudden  death. 

A  terrified  scream  from  the  dressmaker 
brought  the  whole  family  to  the  room.  Mr. 
Brownell  was  frightened,  and  quite  beside  him- 
self with  anxiety.  But  there  was  one  present — 
the  old,  kind-hearted,  motherly  housekeeper — 
who  was  calmness  itself  amid  the  excitement. 

"Better  death,"  she  thought,  "than  an  un- 
loved marriage." 

There  was  no  death  for  Hope,  however.  She 
soon  opened  her  eyes;  her  intelligence  clear- 
ed, and  the  old  condition  returned  with  a  feel- 
ing of  incomparable  heart-sickness.  She  saw 
the  eyes  of  the  housekeeper  fixed  upon  her  with 
an  expression  she  recognized.  It  was  as  if  her 
own  mother  looked  at  her.  Then  all  that  day 
she  clung  to  this  kind,  loving  woman,  and  not 
for  a  moment  would  she  willingly  bear  her  ab- 
sence. There  was  no  conversation  between 
them — nothing  but  a  deeply  understood  sympa- 
thy. There  were  no  confidences,  and  no  need 
of  any. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  on  the  night 
Stephen  found  Hope  in  the  balcony,  in  the  mo- 


43° 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


ment  her  form  yielded  to  a  temporary  faintness 
as  the  word  "forever"  had  been  spoken,  she 
found  rest  in  a  window  near  by.  Now,  it  was 
summer  weather,  and  the  window  was  open; 
and  moreover,  just  inside  the  window,  sat  the 
housekeeper,  in  the  soft  night  air,  dreaming 
dreams  such  as  lonely  women  dream  to  the 
last  hour  of  their  dim  old  lives.  And  lo !  as 
she  dreamed,  her  vision  was  reproduced  to  her 
in  the  words  of  those  young  things  who  were 
breaking  their  hearts  from  a  sense  of  gratitude 
to  another;  and  when  at  last  they  went  away 
in  grief,  they  left  an  added  grief  in  her  sym- 
pathetic breast. 

From  the  very  first  this  dear  old  woman  had 
loved  Hope,  but  after  this  it  was  worship  more 
than  love  she  felt  for  her. 

"Poor  child,"  she  would  say,  pausing  in  the 
midst  of  her  duties— "poor,  poor  child!"  But 
never  once  had  it  occurred  to  her  that  she  had 
either  the  power  or  the  right  to  use  her  knowl- 
edge of  the  facts  to  save  Hope  from  the  mis- 
ery she  was  bringing  on  herself. 

This  night,  however,  as  she  sat  by  Hope's 
bedside,  and  a  stillness  crept  over  the  house, 
she  questioned  herself  whether  she  had  not  bet- 
ter avert  this  sacrifice — not  only  for  Hope's 
sake,  but  out  of  her  love  for  Mr.  Brownell  as 
well. 

"The  truth  is  always  best,"  was  her  conclu- 
sion. "  No  action  founded  on  an  error  can  be 
correct.  Such  things  produce  complications 
and  snarls  without  end.  Oh,  dear,  it  was  my 
duty  to  have  told  him  long  ago." 

Then  she  went  down  to  the  library  where 
Mr.  Brownell  was  sitting.  Once  in  the  room 
with  him,  her  heart  misgave  her.  She  felt  light- 
headed, and  when  he  spoke,  asking  her  to  sit 
down,  his  voice  sounded  far  off  and  unnatural. 

"What  is  it,  Mrs.  Hildreth?"  he  asked.  "Is 
Hope  worse?" 

"No,  no,  no — not  that,"  she  said;  "it  is  not 
that.  Hope  is  sleeping  quietly.  God  send  she 
may  have  many  nights  of  such  quiet  sleep." 

"It's  the  sleep  of  exhaustion,  Mrs.  Hildreth. 
She  will  be  well  to-morrow,  I  am  sure;  and 
yet  you  seem  to  be  uneasy.  Is  there  anything 
seriously  wrong  with  her?" 

"  No— not  with  her  body." 

"With  her  mind,  then?  There  is  nothing  the 
matter  with  her  mind.  What  could  be  the  mat- 
ter with  her  mind,  Mrs.  Hildreth?" 

There  was  no  answer.  Mrs.  Hildreth's 
thoughts  were  struggling  for  some  form  of  ex- 
pression that  would  convey  her  meaning  with- 
out pain.  It  was  as  if  she  sought  to  disguise  a 
corpse  in  some  covering  less  horrible  than  a 
winding-sheet :  her  mind  was  in  a  state  in  which 
words  flew  away,  refusing  to  serve  her  purpose. 


"Tell  me,"  he  said,  "what  can  be  the  matter 
with  Hope." 

But  she  only  turned  her  eyes,  filled  with  pain, 
slowly  and  solemnly  upon  him,  and  spoke  no 
word.  There  was  but  one  word  she  could  com- 
mand, and  that  word  would  pierce  him  like  a 
knife.  He  went  to  her,  taking  her  hand. 

"My  good  friend,"  he  said;  "my  dear,  true 
friend,  tell  me  what  you  have  on  your  mind. 
If  it  concerns  Hope  I  have  a  right  to  know  it. 
She  will  be  my  wife  to-morrow.  Tell  me  in 
one  word  what  ails  her." 

"One  word.  Ah,  me  !"  she  was  thinking,  "it 
is  many  words  I  need."  And  still  only  the  one 
word  came  to  her,  and  she  dared  not  speak  it. 

"Tell  me,"  he  said  "tell  me."  His  manner 
was  impatient  now.  "I  must  know.  Tell  me 
what  is  the  matter  with  Hope." 

She  tried  to  turn  her  eyes  from  his  face, 
hoping  in  this  way  to  escape  the  compulsion  of 
using  that  one  word,  and  to  gain  time  to  frame 
a  sentence.  But  the  undaunted  firmness  of  his 
look  held  her  fast ;  she  could  do  nothing  but 
obey. 

"Tell  me,"  he  was  repeating;  "tell  me  what 
ails  Hope." 

"Stephen." 

The  word  did  strike  him  like  a  blow,  because, 
for  the  moment,  it  carried  absolute  conviction 
with  it.  But  he  rallied. 

"Is  that  so?"  he  questioned.  "Oh,  can  that 
be?  I  think  you  are  mistaken.  I  can  prove 
to  your  satisfaction  that  you  are  mistaken. 
Look  here,  why  did  Stephen  leave  but  for 
Hope's  coolness?  I  tell  you  it  was  her  inabil- 
ity to  respond  to  his  love  that  drove  him  away." 

"Did  Hope  tell  you  that?  asked  Mrs.  Hil- 
dreth, hoping  sincerely  that  she  had  done  so, 
and  deciding  in  that  moment  to  refrain  from 
any  further  meddling,  if  the  girl  whom  she  so 
pitied  had  shown  herself  capable  of  falsehood. 
It  was  not  yet  too  late;  she  was  not  actually 
committed.  "Did  Hope  tell  you  that?" 

"No,"  he  admitted  with  apparent  reluctance; 
"she  told  me  nothing.  It  was  my  inference, 
but  what  could  be  more  plausible?" 

His  eyes  had  regained  their  confidence  now, 
and  again  she  wavered  in  her  resolution  to  tell 
him.  "It  is  not  too  late  to  back  out  yet,"  she 
thought ;  but,  like  the  writing  on  the  wall,  came 
once  more  the  vision  of  the  pale,  sleeping 
young  face,  up -stairs,  with  all  the  despair  its 
calm  surface  covered.  Then  she  rose  to  her 
feet. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Brownell,"  she  said,  "what  I  am 
going  to  tell  you  I  know  to  be  true,  and  may 
the  Lord  help  you !  I  have  no  right  to  keep  it 
from  you.  You  must  know  it.  If  Hope  were 
your  child,  would  you  forgive  one  who  with- 


CORONATION. 


held  some  knowledge  that  might  save  her  a 
life  of  misery?  Tell  me,  would  you?" 

"No,"  he  said,  "neither  for  my  own  daughter, 
nor  the  daughter  of  any  man ;  such  criminality 
is  not  easily  forgiven." 

"Then  I  must  tell  you  the  truth,  and  how  I 
know  it." 

And  she  did  tell  him.  And  when  she  had 
finished  he  did  not  speak,  but  looked  steadily 
before  him  with  such  a  gentle,  pathetic  look  in 
his  face,  she  could  hardly  bear  it.  She  remem- 
bered to  have  seen  that  same  look,  years  be- 
fore, when  wife  and  children  were  taken  from 
him.  It  had  been  habitual  in  the  time  of  those 
long  past  trials.  She  had  rejoiced  when  all 
trace  of  it  passed  away  ;  and  now  it  had  come 
again.  Would  it  remain,  she  wondered. 

"Have  I  done  wrong  in  telling  you?"  she 
asked. 

"No,"  he  said,  "but  I  wish  you  had  told  me 
sooner.  You  had  better  go  back  to  Hope, 
now." 

In  the  morning,  when  Mrs.  Hildreth  came 
again  to  the  library,  she  found  Mr.  Brownell 
still  there.  He  had  not  been  in  bed  all  night. 

"Is  Hope  awake?"  he  asked. 

"Yes." 

"Have  you  told  her  anything?" 

"Not  yet." 

"Then  don't  say  a  word  to  her  now — nor 
ever.  Take  what  measures  you  please  to  let 
it  be  known  that  there  will  be  no  wedding  here 
to-day;  and  tell  Hope  so,  and  let  her  come  to 
me  when  she  chooses." 

And  this  was  all  the  world  saw  "of  the  strong 
man's  disappointment. 

Hope  met  him  at  breakfast,  wondering. 
Unconsciously  to  herself,  there  was  relief  in 


her  face,  and  he  saw  it.     He  stifled  his  pain, 
and  kissed  her  with  a  smile. 

"What  does  it  mean?"  she  asked,  clinging 
to  him. 

"It  means  that  I  have  changed  my  mind 
about  getting  married  at  present,"  he  answered, 
"and  possibly  forever.  I  have  considered  this 
matter  deeply,  Hope;  you  are  too  young  a 
woman  to  be  my  wife.  Be  my  daughter,  rather; 
let  us  content  ourselves  with  that  relation. 
Whatever  slight  disappointment  there  may  be 
on  either  side  will  soon  wear  off,  and  our  true 
relations  will  easily  adjust  themselves." 

Hope  felt  her  reprieve  in  these  words ;  and 
his  acting  was  so  perfect  she  was  completely 
deceived.  "'Whatever  slight  disappointment 
there  may  be  on  either  side.'  Did  he  indeed 
care  so  little,  then?  Well,  thank  God,  thank 
God !"  The  fervor  of  her  whole  soul  went  into 
these  words.  And  then,  being  of  that  compli- 
cated and  "gyrotwistive"  sex  whose  rapid  trans- 
its of  feeling  have  puzzled  mankind  even  from 
the  beginning,  she  came  down  from  her  thanks- 
giving, and  went  off  on  a  side  issue. 

"But  Mr.  Brownell,"  she  cried,  "there's  the 
wedding  dress,  you  know." 

"Save  it,"  he  said,  "it  will  do  for  a  ball  dress 
when  you  go  back  to  Diamond  Spring  City, 
Won't  it  astonish  the  natives  in  your  Califor- 
nian  home?" 

"In  my  Californian  home,"  she  repeated  in 
wild  elation.  "Oh,  what  makes  you  mention 
that?" 

"Hope,"  he  said,  "your  roses  have  been  fad- 
ing for  some  time.  You  must  go  home  and 
recuperate." 

And  then  they  sat  down  to  breakfast,  and  he, 
at  least,  went  through  the  motions  of  eating. 
HELEN  WILMANS. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


CORONATION. 


A  Poet's  fancies  rise  and  throng — 
Then  works  he  patiently  and  Jong, 
And  gives  the  world  a  goodly  Song; 

And  men  applaud  and  clap  their  hands, 
And  send  the  Song  through  many  lands 
But  who  the  Poet  understands? 

While  nations  shout,  he  sits  apart, 
Crying,  in  weariness  of  heart, 
"  Alas !  the  limits  of  my  Art ! " 


HENRIETTA  R.  ELIOT. 


432 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


CALIFORNIA    UNDER   THE    FRIARS. 


From  1769,  when  the  first  white  settlement 
was  made  at  San  Diego,  until  1835,  when  the 
property  of  the  missions  was  subjected  to  the 
control  of  the  civil  or  secular  authorities  by  the 
decree  of  "secularization,"  California  was  un- 
der the  dominion  more  or  less  qualified  of  the 
friars  or  brothers  of  the  Order  of  St.  Francis. 
Until  after  the  American  conquest,  the  Jesuits 
never  had  any  establishments  within  the  terri- 
tory now  covered  by  our  State ;  but  for  nearly 
a  hundred  years  they  had  been  at  work  among 
the  savages  of  the  peninsula  of  Lower  Califor- 
nia, when  in  June,  1767,  they  were  surprised  by 
the  decree  sent  secretly  to  all  parts  of  the  Span- 
ish Empire  that,  without  warning  or  delay,  with- 
out individual  accusation,  without  a  hearing, 
without  a  judicial  sentence,  and  without  com- 
pensation, they  should  all  be  arrested  and  ban- 
ished. Their  expulsion  from  the  viceroyalty  of 
New  Spain,  as  Mexico  was  then  called,  was 
accompanied  by  an  instruction  that  the  Fran- 
ciscans should  take  charge  of  the  missions  in 
Lower  California. 

Soon  afterward  reports  were  received  that 
Great  Britain  (which  had  recently  issued  with 
great  triumph  from  the  Seven  Years'  war,  and, 
besides  conquering  Hindostan  and  Canada,  had 
secured  her  commercial  and  naval  supremacy) 
was  preparing  to  send  an  exploring  expedition 
to  the  Pacific ;  and,  as  the  English  had  already 
planted  great  colonies  on  the  Atlantic  shore  of 
North  America,  fears  were  entertained  that  they 
might  seize  part  of  the  Pacific  side  of  the  con- 
tinent. The  Spanish  Cabinet  thought  that  the 
cheapest  method  of  averting  the  danger  was  to 
occupy  the  most  desirable  country  in  advance. 
Before  Cook  sailed  on  his  first  voyage,  orders 
were  issued  to  Junipero  Serra,  the  head  of  the 
Franciscans  in  Lower  California,  to  plant  addi- 
tional missions,  as  soon  as  convenient,  near  the 
harbors  at  San  Diego  and  Monterey,  and  at 
such  other  immediate  points  as  he  should  con- 
sider most  suitable.  Friars,  soldiers,  ships,  and 
supplies  were  furnished  to  enable  him  to  com- 
ply, and  he  gladly  undertook  the  task  imposed 
on  him.  He  started  without  delay,  and  en- 
countered no  serious  obstacle.  The  country 
was  open,  the  soil  was  fertile,  the  climate  was 
the  most  genial  he  had  found  anywhere,  the 
Indians  met  the  strangers  in  a  friendly  manner, 
and,  though  stupid,  they  seemed  to  be  not  un- 
fit for  conversion. 


At  the  end  of  the  first  five  years,  five  mis- 
sions had  been  established,  and  the  average 
distance  from  each  to  its  nearest  neighbor  by 
the  traveled  trails  was  about  one  hundred  and 
twenty  miles.  As  there  were  only  two  friars 
together,  and  usually  thousands  of  Indians  in 
the  vicinity,  some  of  them  disposed  to  steal, 
and  even  to  murder,  ten  soldiers  were  stationed 
at  each  mission  to  serve  as  guards,  messengers, 
and  herdsmen. 

These  soldiers  were  under  the  superior  com- 
mand of  a  "governor,"  even  if  he  had  no  higher 
rank  in  the  army  than  that  of  a  captain,  but 
his  governorship  did  not  raise  him  beyond  the 
control  of  the  president  of  the  missions.  These 
were  the  chief  objects  of  governmental  care, 
the  military  department  being  considered  as  a 
mere  auxiliary  and  subordinate.  Such  few  con- 
troversies as  arose  between  the  friars  and  the 
governors  resulted  from  the  maltreatment  of 
the  Indians  by  the  soldiers,  and  if  referred  to 
the  Viceroy  were  always  decided  in  favor  of 
the  friars,  who,  however,  were  generally  mod- 
erate in  their  demands  and  conciliating  in  their 
conduct. 

So  long  as  the  Spanish  dominion  was  main- 
tained, all  the  missionaries  were  natives  of 
Spain  or  of  the  Spanish  islands  in  the  Medi- 
terranean. Most  of  them  had  reached  middle 
life  before  coming  to  California,  and,  so  far  as 
we  can  learn  from  their  writings  and  the  books 
of  others,  all  were  sincerely  devout,  humble, 
and  ascetic  men.  Serra  himself  made  a  near 
approach  to  the  ideal  of  Franciscan  perfection, 
and  he  found,  or  at  least  publicly  expressed,  no 
cause  of  serious  complaint  against  any  of  his 
companions.  The  military  officers  made  no 
charges  against  the  missionaries  except  mis- 
takes of  policy  in  governing  the  Indians ;  and 
Vancouver  and  La  Pdrouse,  who  landed  on  our 
coast  in  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century,  while 
criticising  the  management  of  the  missions,  had 
nothing  to  say  against  the  character  of  the  mis- 
sionaries. The  first  notable  scandals  about  the 
conduct  of  ecclesiastics  in  California  arose  after 
the  authority  of  Spain  had  been  overthrown, 
and  natives  of  Mexico,  who  had  assumed  the 
habit  without  adopting  the  ascetic  spirit  of  St. 
Francis,  succeeded  their  brethren  of  the  Old 
World,  who  had  left  the  country  or  died. 

In  1774,  orders  were  issued  for  the  establish- 
ment of  two  towns  or  pueblos  in  California,  and 


CALIFORNIA    UNDER    THE  FRIARS. 


433 


the  results  were  San  Jose\  founded  in  1777  by 
fourteen  families,  and  Los  Angeles,  founded  in 
1781  by  twelve  families,  most  of  the  adult  male 
settlers  in  each  case  being  men  who  had  come 
to  the  territory  as  soldiers,  and  who  were  still 
under  obligation  to  render  military  service 
whenever  they  might  be  summoned  to  resume 
their  arms.  These  towns  were  separated  from 
each  other  by  a  distance  of  four  hundred  miles 
along  the  traveled  road,  and  each  was  known 
in  its  own  region  as  el  pueblo,  or  "the  town;" 
and  San  Jose'  was  generally  designated  by  that 
title  by  all  the  Spanish -speaking  population 
north  of  Gilroy  as  late  as  1852.  The  law  may 
have  recognized  the  existence  of  pueblos  at 
Yerba  Buena  or  Sonoma,  but  common  speech 
did  not. 

The  judgment  shown  in  the  selection  of  the 
sites  of  the  Spanish  pueblos  has  been  approved 
by  time.  San  Josd  and  Los  Angeles  are  now 
the  largest  two  cities  in  California  south  of  San 
Francisco  Bay,  and  also  the  largest  in  the  State 
not  situated  on  the  edge  of  navigable  water. 
Both  are  remarkably  beautiful  places — garden 
cities,  centers  of  horticultural  skill  and  activity. 

These  were  the  only  towns  that  Spain  found- 
ed in  California ;  nor  did  she  make  much  effort 
to  increase  their  population.  She  did  not  sur- 
vey the  unoccupied  lands  and  throw  them  open 
to  settlement.  She  did  not  invite  immigration 
from  foreign  countries,  nor  aid  any  large  num- 
ber of  Mexicans  to  cross  the  Colorado  Desert 
from  Sonora.  She  did  not  adopt  any  plan  of 
civilian  colonization.  She  offered  no  prizes  in 
California  to  the  industrious  or  ambitious.  She 
did  nothing  to  advertise  the  attractions  or  make 
known  the  resources  of  the  country.  One  town 
was  built  fifty  miles  from  the  anchorage  of  San 
Francisco,  and  the  other  one  hundred  miles 
from  San  Diego.  The  two  magnificent  bays 
of  the  coast  were  avoided,  thus  proving  that  the 
sites  were  not  selected  for  their  commercial  ad- 
vantages. The  situations  had  no  fitness  for 
military  strongholds.  It  is  evident  that  the 
main  objects  of  the  Spanish  Government  in  es- 
tablishing these  pueblos  were  to  obtain  a  small 
indigenous  population,  Spanish  in  sympathy, 
and  partly  Spanish  in  blood,  to  produce  soldiers 
for  the  missions  and  presidios  (fortifications)  at 
the  sea-ports,  and  to  plant  the  germs  of  a  future 
Spanish-American  province. 

After  the  recognition  of  Mexican  independ- 
ence in  California,  the  last  and  most  northern 
mission  was  founded  at  Sonoma,  making  the 
twenty -first  in  number.  The  entire  list,  with 
some  abbreviation,  may  be  designated  thus, 
commencing  at  the  south :  Diego,  Rey,  Cap- 
istrano,  Gabriel,  Fernan€o,  Buenaventura,  Bar- 
bara, Inez,  Purissima,  Obispo,  Miguel,  Antonio, 


Soledad,  Carlos,  Bautista,  Cruz,  Clara,  Josd, 
Francisco,  Rafael,  and  Solano.  These  mis- 
sions, about  1830,  had  20,000  Indians,  210,000 
neat  cattle,  150,000  sheep,  and  30,000  horses, 
and  in  average  years  harvested  about  100,000 
bushels  of  grain,  including  wheat,  maize,  bar- 
ley, beans,  and  peas. 

The  missions  prospered  till  1810  when  the 
Mexican  revolution  broke  out.  Then  the  power 
of  Spain  in  California  was,  crippled,  never  to 
recover.  The  appropriations  were  not  paid 
promptly,  and  the  friars,  unable  to  supply  their 
convents  with  the  customary,  but  simple,  food 
and  clothing  without  an  annual  contribution 
from  the  government  treasury,  lost  their  zeal. 
They  disliked  the  Mexican  people,  and  hated 
the  revolution.  Discord  arose  between  the 
military  and  ecclesiastical  departments ;  the  In- 
dians and  soldiers  became  insubordinate ;  till- 
age was  neglected ;  the  cattle  were  slaughtered 
improvidently,  and  some  of  the  converts  fled 
to  the  mountains.  Two  or  three  times  the  sub- 
sidies were  paid  for  periods  of  several  years,  and 
the  statistics  show  an  increase  of  the  herds  and 
converts  at  some  of  the  missions,  but  the  dis- 
cipline never  was  restored,  and  the  decay  that 
began  with  the  outbreak  of  the  revolution  in- 
creased till  the  final  dissolution. 

The  project  of  secularizing  the  missions,  first 
proposed  in  Spain  while  Joseph  Napoleon  was 
on  the  throne,  was  agitated  by  the  Mexicans 
soon  after  they  achieved  their  independence. 
They  considered  it  a  first  step  toward  a  rapid 
development  of  California.  They  imagined 
that  the  adoption  of  a  government  republican 
in  name  would  give  to  their  country  a  growth 
as  rapid  and  marvelous  as  that  of  "The  Co- 
lossus of  the  North,"  as  they  styled  the  Uni- 
ted States.  One  of  their  first  legislative  acts 
was  a  colonization  law,  but  this  could  not  be 
enforced  in  California  until  the  land  had  been 
taken  from  the  friars,  for  they  owned  nearly 
everything,  as  guardians  of  the  Indians.  The 
discussion  of  the  secularization  scheme,  and  the 
certainty  that  it  would  be  adopted  at  no  very 
distant  time,  had  a  demoralizing  influence  on 
the  missions,  and  when  the  officers  of  the  law 
arrived  with  their  commissions  to  take  charge 
of  the  property,  little  was  found.  The  native 
Californians  of  Spanish  descent  in  the  vicinity 
had  helped  themselves  to  the  calves  and  colts 
which  were  a  large  part  of  the  wealth  of  the 
ecclesiastical  institutions.  The  distribution  of 
cattle,  agricultural  implements,  and  land  to  the 
Indian  converts  was  a  sham.  Little  was  given, 
and  that  little  was  either  of  no  marketable 
value,  or  was  soon  wasted.  In  a  few  years  the 
white  men  owned  everything,  and  the  Indians 
nothing.  The  red  men,  left  without  restraint 


434 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


or  guidance,  generally  abandoned  the  custom 
of  tilling  the  ground ;  and  many,  migrating  to 
the  mountains  or  interior  valleys,  where  they 
could  be  far  from  the  whites,  relapsed  into 
complete  savagism. 

The  Franciscans  were  about  as  successful  in 
educating  the  Indians  as  the  Jesuits  had  been 
previously  in  the  peninsula,  and  as  the  Protes- 
tants have  been  in  our  State  under  the  Ameri- 
can dominion.  But  the  civilization  of  the  red 
men  was  a  mere  varnish.  There  is  not  one 
well  educated  Indian  family  in  California  or 
Lower  California;  not  one  village  or  rural  neigh- 
borhood where  an  Indian  population  lives  com- 
fortably in  civilized  style.  Whether  the  failure 
of  the  red  men  to  learn  the  industrial  arts  of 
Europe,  and  his  rapid  disappearance  when  in 
contact  with  the  Anglo-American,  are  results  of 
congenital  mental  deficiency  or  of  defective 
methods  of  instruction,  is  a  question  that  allows 
plausible  argument  on  either  side,  and  I  shall 
not  attempt  to  discuss,  much  less  decide  it,  in 
this  paper.  We  have  conclusive  evidence  that 
the  Indians  have  been  dying  out  ever  since 
1769,  so  that  their  disappearance  since  the  dis- 
covery of  gold  is  only  a  continuation,  under  ac- 
celerating influences,  of  changes  that  were  ob- 
served, and  perhaps  commenced,  soon  after  the 


standard  of  the  Cross  was  first  permanently 
planted  at  San  Diego. 

Such  is  a  brief  account  of  the  dominion  of 
the  Franciscan  friars  in  California.  A  few 
adobe  buildings,  and  some  trees  and  musty  re- 
cords, are  the  chief  results  preserved  to  our  day 
of  their  arduous  and  self-  sacrificing  labors. 
Though  many  thousand  manuscript  pages  writ- 
ten by  the  friars,  including  much  from  the  ear- 
liest years,  have  been  preserved  and  are  ac- 
cessible to  students,  the  materials  for  a  history 
of  the  missions  are  scanty.  The  Franciscans 
of  California  were  not  men  of  high  learning  or 
acute  observation.  Their  letters  and  records 
are  generally  devoted  to  mere  matters  of  dull 
routine.  They  left  no  good  description  of  the 
country,  of  the  Indian  manners  and  customs, 
or  of  their  system  of  ruling  the  neophytes. 
Only  one  of  their  number,  Francisco  Palou,  as- 
pired to  authorship ;  and  his  life  of  Serra,  and 
his  notes  (Notidas)  of  the  exploration  and  first 
settlement  of  the  Territory,  are  decidedly  infe- 
rior in  literary  art,  as  well  as  in  fullness  of  in- 
formation, to  the  works  of  Alfred  Robinson,  R. 
H>  Dana,  Commodore  Wilkes,  Duflot  de  Mo- 
fras,  and  Alexander  Forbes,  most  of  them  trav- 
elers who  had  spent  only  brief  periods  in  Cali- 
fornia before  the  American  conquest. 

JOHN  S.  HITTELL. 


THE    TEACHERS   AT    FARWELL. 


Miss  Bruce  walked  down  one  of  the  four  dus- 
ty streets,  dustily  shaded  by  midsummer  locust 
trees,  that  made  up  the  town  of  Farwell.  The 
sun-bonneted  children  across  the  street  had  no 
hesitation  in  shaping  their  comments  on  the  un- 
known lady  in  gray  linen  according  to  the  the- 
ory that  she  was  the  new  teacher :  Miss  Bruce 
was  always  recognized  as  a  teacher  at  the  first 
glance.  She  had  the  worn  face,  the  anxious 
expression,  the  constrained  manners  of  an  ex- 
perienced lady  teacher.  She  had  taught  school, 
however,  but  three  years,  and  was  only  twenty 
years  old ;  but  since  she  had  spent  those  three 
years  in  abject  terror  of  school -children,  par- 
ents, trustees,  and  principals,  she  passed  for 
twenty -five.  Miss  Bruce  never  could  keep  a 
school  in  decent  order,  and  was  helpless  before 
any  ordinary  boy ;  nevertheless,  by  one  of  those 
complete  divorces  between  fact  and  theory  not 
uncommon  in  the  public  mind,  she  had  some- 
how stumbled  into  the  reputation  of  being  a 
most  efficient  disciplinarian,  and,  so  much  more 
potent  is  reputation  than  reality,  she  had  kept 


it.  "Get  a  name  for  rising  early,  and  you  may 
lie  abed  till  noon."  When  she  came  to  Far- 
well,  some  one  who  had  known  her  before  had 
summed  her  up  by  saying  to  Mr.  Farwell : 

"A  regular  old  maid — no  acquisition  to  your 
society.  But  she  can  manage  any  school." 

The  school-yard  gate  yawned  open,  and  Miss 
Bruce  entered  it  in  full  sympathy  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Dantean  inscription,  and  walked  across 
the  white,  hard-trodden  yard.  A  group  of  boys, 
falling  back  a  little  from  her  path,  greeted  her 
with  a  chorus  of  perfectly  gratuitous  yelling  and 
jeering. 

She  had  not  taught  school  three  years  with- 
out learning  what  such  a  salutation  meant.  She 
looked  at  the  impish  group  with  dismay  that 
amounted  to  a  positive  sense  of  physical  ill- 
ness, and  thought,  "A  bad  principal !  I'm  in 
for  it  now."  She  even  conceived  the  possibil- 
ity of  retreating  and  throwing  up  her  position  ; 
but,  with  a  consciousness  of  necessity  upon  her, 
she  walked  on  across  th«  barren  yard.  The  dead 
and  seedy  mallows  in  the  corners  looked  very 


THE   TEACHERS  AT  FAR  WELL. 


435 


dead  indeed;  the  whitish  August  sky  stooped 
over  a  stretch  of  dusty  cottages,  and  mown 
fields,  and  a  road  edged  with  blue -gums  in  the 
ghastly  color  of  their  second  year's  growth ;  the 
school -house,  new -painted,  with  a  main  build- 
ing for  the  principal  and  a  little  wing  for  the 
assistant,  confronted  her  as  uninvitingly  as  a 
dentist's  chair. 

She  found  Mr.  Farwell  in  the  entry  before 
her,  standing  against  a  background  of  tin  pails 
and  girls'  straw  hats.  Mr.  Farwell  was  the 
leading  trustee.  There  was  a  stranger  with 
him — a  good-looking,  youngish  man,  with  pleas- 
ant brown  eyes. 

"This  is  rather  a  surprise  to  you,  Miss  Bruce," 
Mr.  Farwell  said. 

He  used  the  bland  tone  that  Miss  Bruce 
associated  with  the  first  day  of  school,  as  if 
trustees  were  polite  spiders,  ushering  her  into 
their  parlors. 

"I  had  a  telegram  this  very  morning,  after 
breakfast,  saying  that  Mr.  Drake,  whom  you 
have  met,  and  whom  we  liked  so  much,  isn't 
coming  back.  I  see  by  the  paper  that  the  stock 
he's  been  in  is  up,  and  I  presume  he's  made  a 
good  deal,  and  that's  why  he  deserts  us.  I 
went  to  hunt  up  the  other  trustees,  and  at  Mar- 
tin's I  found  his  wife's  cousin,  just  out  from  the 
East,  and  thinks  of  teaching  a  year  or  two.  So 
we  engaged  him  on  the  spot,  and  here  he  is. 
Mr.  Graham,  this  is  Miss  Bruce.  He's  new  to 
the  business,  Miss  Bruce ;  so  you,  being  a  vet- 
eran, must  put  him  up  to  the  tricks  of  the  trade." 

Miss  Bruce  took  it  entirely  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  she  should  be  the  one  presented. 
She  acknowledged  the  introduction  with  her 
usual  stiff  shyness,  and  Mr.  Farwell  departed 
to  preside  over  a  special  meeting  of  his  Grange, 
which  was,  at  that  time,  acting  under  a  deep 
sense  of  responsibility  about  the  affairs  of  the 
State  University.  After  the  function  of  the 
higher  education  had  been  settled  satisfactorily 
and  the  meeting  dissolved,  he  reverted  to  the 
lower  education,  and  remarked  informally  to 
his  neighbors : 

"We've  got  a  teacher  now  that's  going  to 
manage  those  boys.  You  should  have  seen  the 
look  she  gave  the  Riley  and  Carter  boys,  and 
the  rest  of  that  set,  when  they  hollered  at  her 
as  she  came  into  the  yard." 

But  when  Miss  Bruce  and  her  principal  had 
walked  into  the  little,  ill  lighted  assistant's 
room,  where  the  crowded  desks,  the  table,  and 
blackboards,  and  charts,  had  a  familiarly  de- 
pressing effect,  Mr.  Graham  said : 

"Was  the  regretted  Mr.  Drake  a  friend  of 
yours,  Miss  Bruce!" 

Miss  Bruce  had  taken  off  her  hat  and  hung 
it  on  a  chalky  nail  by  the  blackboard.  She  sat 


down  now,  behind  the  chalk -boxes,  the  big 
Webster,  and  the  bell,  that  were  ranged  on  the 
table. 

"No,  sir,"  she  said,  respectfully;  "I  didn't 
know  him." 

Mr.  Graham  looked  down  into  her  face  with 
the  gentleness  of  manner  acquired  in  a  society 
where  women  are  protected  and  petted  and  de- 
ferred to.  Miss  Bruce's  "sir,"  and  her  appar- 
ent consciousness  of  subordination,  struck  him 
as  rather  pathetic,  and  somewhat  emphasized 
his  manner. 

"Then  I  may  say  what  I  think  about  his 
training  of  his  pupils.  If  you  can  only  overlook 
it  for  a  few  days,  you  sha'n't  be  annoyed  by  any 
more  impertinence  in  a  school -yard  where  I 
have  authority.  I  should  be  sorry  not  to  pro- 
tect a  lady  who  teaches  with  me  better  than 
our  predecessor  seems  to  have  done." 

Protection  was  quite  out  of  the  line  of  Kate 
Bruce's  experience.  She  looked  up  quickly, 
and  met  a  reinforcing  kindliness  of  eyes  and 
lips.  The  tone  and  look  were  no  more  than 
the  every-day  experience  of  some  women  ;  but 
it  was  actually  the  first  time  Kate  Bruce  had 
been  looked  at  or  spoken  to  in  just  that  way, 
and  there  sprung  to  her  face  in  response, 
through  all  her  fixed  expression  of  anxious  re- 
serve, a  quick  appeal — as  if  she  had  cried, 
"Ah,  yes,  do  be  good  to  me!"  Mr.  Graham 
continued  to  look  at  her,  with  a  deepening  sense 
of  pathos.  His  mental  comment  on  this  self- 
reliant  and  efficient  assistant  of  his  was,  "Poor 
child !" — and  his  intentions  for  the  coming  term 
responded  exactly  to  her  unspoken  appeal. 

School -teaching  was  no  such  dreadful  mat- 
ter after  all,  Miss  Bruce  found,  when  there  is 
an  authoritative  kindness  between  one  and  all 
the  bugbears.  Week  after  week,  and  month 
after  month,  in  the  intimate  intercourse  of  a 
work  that  isolated  them  together — there  could 
be  but  one  result.  Kate  Bruce  wanted  from 
the  bottom  of  her  heart  to  be  taken  care  of,  and 
Mr.  Graham  took  care  of  her.  She  had  all  her 
life  known  none  but  people  who  were  neither 
wise,  nor  witty,  nor  well  bred,  and  Mr.  Graham 
was  all  three.  It  was  as  inevitable  as  that  two 
and  two  should  come  to  four  that  she  should 
find  in  him  the  Lord's  intention  in  making  man- 
kind illustrated.  In  time,  his  unvarying  gen- 
tleness and  sympathy  won  her  out  of  her  fright- 
ened stiffness  into  a  pretty  openness.  When 
the  last  boy  had  recited  his  deficient  lesson 
and  gone  shame-facedly  away,  or  the  last  be- 
crimped  girl  liad  exhausted  her  excuses  for 
lingering,  Kate  would  slip  into  Mr.  Graham's 
school-room,  and  he  would  come  and  sit  on 
one  of  the  desks  and  she  in  the  pupil's  vacant 
seat  behind  it ;  and  as  she  laughed,  and  color- 


436 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


ed,  and  chatted,  at  once  shyly  and  confidingly, 
admired  his  jokes  immensely,  and  accepted  his 
advice  implicitly,  the  five  extra  years  dropped 
away  from  her,  and  she  looked  both  young  and 
pretty.  But  it  was  for  Graham  alone.  Ex- 
cept with  him  she  was  faded,  dull,  and  twenty- 
five. 

To  Geoffrey  Graham  it  was  a  very  different 
matter.  He  had  not  come  to  his  thirty-second 
year  without  knowing  many  women  prettier, 
wittier,  and  in  every  way  more  charming  than 
Kate  Bruce.  Nevertheless,  to  hold  the  power 
to  create  for  yourself  out  of  an  uninteresting, 
fading  school-mistress  a  pretty,  bright  young 
girl,  and  to  be  the  one  person  in  the  world  who 
does  hold  it,  is  fascinating;  and  Graham's  in- 
tention to  be  very  kind  to  his  assistant  kept  his 
conscience  so  clear  that  he  let  the  fascination 
carry  him  pretty  far — so  far,  indeed,  that  the 
ready  village  gossip  decided,  before  the  end  of 
the  year,  that  "it  was  a  match." 

"Funny  taste,"  Mr.  Farwell  said.  "Miss 
Bruce  was  cut  out  for  an  old  maid.  Pity  for  a 
likely  young  man  like  Graham  to  pick  that  sort 
of  a  woman.  I  can't  make  out  what  he  sees  in 
her." 

But  Mrs.  Farwell  liked  the  match.  She  re- 
sponded rather  warmly : 

"She's  a  dear,  good  girl,  if  she  is  old-maid- 
ish and  not  pretty.  I  hope  she  will  get  a  good 
husband,  and  I  know  she'll  make  a  good  wife. 
She  isn't  exactly  bright  company,  but  I'm  real 
fond  of  her." 

Middle-aged  and  old  women  always  liked 
Kate  on  close  acquaintance ;  and,  as  she  board- 
ed with  Mrs.  Farwell,  there  had  been  opportu- 
nity enough  for  such  acquaintance. 

But  the  school-year  came  to  an  end,  and  the 
engagement  between  the  teachers  was  still  only 
a  matter  of  inference.  The  last  day  of  the  ses- 
sion passed,  and  the  children  were  dismissed 
for  two  months.  Graham  walked  home  with 
Kate,  and  sat  down  with  her  on  Mr.  Farwell's 
broad  stone  door-step.  The  summer  afternoon 
winds  had  begun  to  blow,  and  a  big  cherry  tree 
by  the  step  rustled  steadily  and  showed  its 
heavy  dark-red  clusters.  The  gravel  walk,  bor- 
dered with  shrubs,  bent  before  it  reached  the 
gate,  so  the  low-drooping  apple,  plum,  and  pear 
trees  that  stretched  away  from  the  walk  on 
either  side  hid  the  street  from  view;  but  the 
children  scattered  along  it  made  their  sense  of 
freedom  exultantly  audible. 

Graham  sat  looking  at  Kate,  as  he  often  did, 
in  a  way  that  seemed  to  imply  that  he  was 
thinking  a  good  many  things  about  her  that  he 
did  not  expect  her  to  understand.  When  she 
met  his  eyes,  however,  his  look  became  less  ob- 
servant and  more  definitely  friendly. 


"Are  you  going  to  stay  here  all  vacation?" 
he  said. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so."  Kate's  voice  was  not 
quite  steady,  for  she  was  having  the  new  ex- 
perience of  a  melancholy  side  to  the  close  of  a 
school-term. 

Graham  continued  to  look  at  her  musingly. 

"I  have  a  little  piece  of  business  to  see  to  up 
country.  A  friend  of  mine  East  wants  me  to  go 
and  talk  to  a  man  in  Shasta  about  some  infor- 
mation he  can  give  in  an  important  will  case. 
It  will  only  take  two  weeks  or  so  at  most  if  I 
don't  find  him  readily."  He  paused,  with  a 
certain  indecision  of  manner.  Then  he  said, 
with  an  air  of  making  up  his  mind  as  he  spoke: 
"Then  I  shall  come  back  and  spend  the  rest 
of  the  vacation  in  Farwell.  And  so  your  ad- 
dress will  be  Farwell  any  time  in  the  next  two 
weeks?" 

He  rose,  and  she  rose,  too,  and  they  stood  a 
few  minutes  without  speaking.  Then  he  said, 
with  a  slightly  artificial  accent : 

"Good-bye,  then,  for  a  week  or  two.  I  shall 
take  the  early  train  to-morrow." 

He  took  her  hand  in  both  his,  without  wait- 
ing for  her  to  hold  it  out.  She  raised  her  eyes 
to  his  with  the  most1  undisguised  intensity  of 
expression.  He  made  a  little  movement,  then 
stopped  himself,  and  laid  down  the  hand  he 
held  with  an  especially  gentle  motion,  said 
again  "Good-bye,"  and  turned  away  almost 
simultaneously  with  her  hardly  audible  answer. 

As  soon  as  he  had  turned  the  bend  in  the 
path  Kate  went  to  her  upper  window  and  watch- 
ed him  walk  up  the  street,  past  the  school- 
house,  till  the  street  became  a  road  stretching 
far  away,  between  the  two  lines  of  bluish  euca- 
lyptus, toward  the  foot-hills.  About  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  up  the  road  he  passed  in  among  Mr. 
Martin's  orchard  trees  and  disappeared.  She 
was  crying  a  little,  but  she  rather  enjoyed  do- 
ing so,  and  her  mind  was  much  occupied  with 
the  suggestion  conveyed  by  that  question  about 
her  address. 

But  Graham  was  in  a  much  less  comfortable 
frame  of  mind,  and  one  that  would  have  much 
surprised  her  if  she  could  have  seen  into  it.  As 
she  watched  him  along  the  road,  he  was  say- 
ing to  himself,  with  a  sudden  reaction  of  alarm  : 

"Good  heavens,  I've  been  going  confound- 
edly far!" 

And  the  next  morning,  during  the  monotony 
of  the  railroad  trip,  he  went  uncomfortably 
enough  over  the  whole  affair. 

"How  did  I  ever  let  that  little  girl  get  such  a 
hold  on  me?"  he  meditated.  "Why,  it  is  in- 
credible." 

He  returned  to  that  "incredible"  afresh  at 
every  period  of  his  thoughts.  It  was  incom- 


THE   TEACHERS  AT  FAR  WELL. 


437 


prehensible  to  him  how  this  insignificant  lit- 
tle school -mistress,  ignorant  according  to  his 
standards,  utterly  without  social  prestige,  as 
she  was,  could  move  him  as  other  women  had 
not.  There  was  Kittie  Bradford,  who  read  a 
dozen  Greek  dramas  with  him  one  summer,  and 
Isabel  Halyburton,  who  carried  in  her  blue  eyes 
and  little  dimpled  hands  more  social  potency 
than  any  dozen  other  women,  and  Caryl  Fair- 
fax, who  showed  in  every  motion  that  her  blood 
had  been  brought  to  perfection  by  a  sort  of 
straining  through  the  veins  of  innumerable  high- 
bred ancestors — and  at  this  point  Graham  flush- 
ed darkly.  What  of  Kate  Bruce's  ancestors  and 
antecedents?  He  had  never  asked  her  any 
questions  about  them,  nor  had  she  offered  any 
information.  It  did  not  follow  that  because 
Graham  had  a  cousin  who  had  married  Mr. 
Martin  of  Farwell,  he  was  himself  at  all  like 
Mr.  Martin.  He  had  himself  regarded  the  con- 
nection with  some  amusement,  as  one  of  the 
incongruities  that  will  creep  into  American  fam- 
ilies. His  own  antecedents  were  of  a  sort 
that  made  the  probable  commonness  of  Kate's 
something  intolerably  annoying  to  him.  There 
was  no  disguising  the  fact  that  he  had  some- 
how let  her  become  so  much  to  him  that  if  she 
had  come  out  of  such  a  past  as  he  should  wish 
his  wife's  past  to  be,  he  would  have  asked  her 
to  marry  him  without  hesitation. 

"  So,  there's  the  question,"  he  thought.  "Shall 
I  follow  my  fancy,  and  woo  a  woman  who,  del- 
icate as  she  seems,  may  show  in  time  traces  of 
all  sorts  of  vulgar  early  influences — or  shall  I 
throw  up  the  whole  thing  like  a  sensible  man?" 
Nevertheless,  he  fulfilled  his  tacit  promise, 
and  wrote  to  her  a  few  days  after  reaching 
Shasta,  and  allowed  himself,  in  writing,  an  un- 
dertone of  tenderness  that  produced  afterward 
in  himself  another  reaction  of  alarm  and  in- 
clination to  be  shy  of  Miss  Bruce. 

Meanwhile,  Kate  began  to  wonder  if  he 
might  not  write  twice,  and  went  very  punctu- 
ally to  the  post-office.  The  office  was  in  a  gro- 
cery, hardware,  dry -goods,  and  general  store, 
and  there  were  always  men  gossiping  there. 
One  day,  as  Kate  asked  for  her  mail,  two  stran- 
gers stood  leaning  over  the  counter,  renewing 
acquaintance  with  the  clerk.  The  taller  one 
straightened  up  and  stared  at  Kate  as  she  re- 
ceived her  mail  at  the  farther  end  of  the  counter. 
"By  George,  do  you  know  who  that  is,  Joe?" 
he  asked,  speaking  just  low  enough  to  escape 
Kate's  ear. 

The  other  man  stared  too. 
"Rose  Hever,  by  thunder!"  he  exclaimed 
with  much  emphasis. 

"Rose  Hever,  that's  sure!"  the  tall  man  re- 
peated. 

Vol.  III.- 28. 


The  clerk  had  returned  to  his  place  in  time 
to  catch  the  point  of  what  was  said. 

"No,  you're  out  there,  Banting,"  he  said. 
"That's  the  school-teacher,  Miss  Bruce.  Been 
here  a  year ;  seems  to  be  engaged  to  the  prin- 
cipal— clever  fellow,  name  Graham." 

The  two  strangers  glanced  sympathetically 
at  each  other. 

"Now,  if  that  ain't  Rose  ^Jever  all  over!" 
Banting  exclaimed;  and  then  went  on,  explan- 
atorily, "Not  much  'Miss'  about  her — been  a 
married  woman  this  five  years." 

He  turned  for  corroboration  to  his  less  volu- 
ble companion,  who  answered  the  look  by  say- 
ing: 

"Heard  long  ago,  up  at  Stockton,  that  she 
was  down  country  somewhere,  sailing  under 
another  name.  Oh,  that's  the  girl.  Somebody 
had  ought  to  tell  that  fellow  she's  engaged  to 
before  he  gets  himself  into  a  scrape." 

All  the  men  in  the  store  were  gathered 
around.  It  was  much  more  interesting  that 
Miss  Bruce  should  be  some  one  else  than  that 
she  should  be  Miss  Bruce.  Into  the  circle 
walked  Mr.  Farwell. 

"Hear  that,  Farwell?"  the  clerk  called,  eager 
to  be  the  first  to  tell ;  and  in  a  minute  the  story 
was  repeated  to  him,  Banting  adding,  in  a  sort 
of  postscript : 

"Oh,  I  knew  her  well.  Up  at  Stockton,  five 
years  ago,  she  married  a  fellow  by  the  name  of 
Wilkinson — she  was  Rose  Hever  then ;  and  in 
about  eight  months  she  ran  off  with  a  quack 
doctor.  Then  the  doctor  left  her  in  a  month 
or  two ;  so  then  we  heard  she  got  a  certificate, 
some  four  years  ago,  under  another  name,  and 
went  to  teaching.  Wilkinson  himself  don't  know 
where  she  is ;  but  there's  never  been  a  divorce, 
for  I  know  the  man  well — been  his  commission 
merchant  for  years — and  Joe,  here,  raised  ducks 
with  old  Hever.  I've  seen  her  with  her  hus- 
band often.  She  looks  older  now,  of  course. 
How  old  is  she?" 

"She  was  twenty-five  when  we  engaged  her," 
Mr.  Farwell  said,  positively;  "she  must  be  twen- 
ty-six now." 

He  had  set  her  down  at  that  age  in  his  mind, 
and  could  not  have  been  more  certain  about  it 
if  he  had  been  her  father. 

"Old  Hever  told  me  Rose  was  twenty -one 
when  she  married — that's  five  years  ago,"  said 
"Joe." 

One  of  the  larger  school-boys  contributed  his 
item:  "Miss  Bruce's  certificate  is  dated  four 
years  ago.  I  saw  it  in  the  report  in  the  school 
library." 

"Rough  on  Graham,"  two  or  three  said. 
Mr.  Farwell  looked  intensely  out  of  temper. 
He  prided  himself  on  his  selection  of  teachers. 


438 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"She's  an  excellent  teacher,"  he  said.  He 
had  two  distinct  methods  of  diction,  one  when 
he  spoke  as  an  officer,  and  one  when  he  spoke 
as  a  man,  and  he  used  his  official  diction  now. 
"But  of  course  this  unfits  her  for  our  school. 
Her  husband  should  be  communicated  with." 

"He's  just  gone  East — I  don't  know  where- 
abouts— and  the  Hevers  have  moved  to  Oregon 
somewhere." 

Mr.  Farwell  turned  away. 

"I  will  speak  iHth  the  other  trustees,"  he 
said. 

When  the  other  trustees  were  found,  Mr. 
Martin  was  ready  enough  to  be  outraged  at  the 
position  into  which  his  wife's  cousin  was  put. 

"We  always  thought  Goeffrey  was  throwing 
himself  away  on  that  old  maid,"  he  said.  "We 
never  could  see  what  he  saw  in  her;  but  it 
seems  he's  just  been  roped  in.  Such  women 
know  how  to  go  to  work.  I'll  write  to  him,  sure 
as  a  gun,  by  the  very  next  mail." 

Kate  knew  very  soon  that  something  was 
wrong.  Her  pupils  met  her  with  an  insolent 
manner,  every  one  spoke  to  her  with  constraint. 

"There  is  some  dissatisfaction;  I  am  going 
to  lose  my  position,"  she  thought,  using  the 
words  that  have  become  a  mournful  formula  in 
school -teaching  ranks.  Her  courage  had  all 
gone  with  Graham,  and  trustees  and  parents 
and  school -children  were  again  terrible.  But, 
most  alarming  of  all,  the  allotted  two  weeks 
had  passed,  and  Graham  had  neither  returned 
nor  sent  her  any  explanation  of  his  absence. 

The  two  weeks  had  become  three  before  any 
one  "spoke  to  her;"  for  vacation  time  cost 
nothing,  and  Mr.  Farwell  was  trying  to  get  his 
wife  to  do  the  speaking.  But  Mrs.  Farwell 
steadily  refused. 

"You'll  have  to  speak  to  her  yourself.  I 
won't  have  anything  to  do  with  it.  I  suppose 
she  can't  keep  on  in  the  school  after  being  talk- 
ed about  so ;  but  it's  my  belief  that  if  the  poor 
girl  did  run  away  from  her  husband  there  was 
more  to  it  than  we  know  and  she  had  good 
reason.  Maybe  she's  told  Mr.  Graham  all 
about  it." 

So  Mr.  Farwell  at  last  called  Miss  Bruce 
into  the  parlor,  sat  down  opposite  her,  prefaced 
his  business  with  something  about  disagreeable 
duty,  and  told  her  the  trouble. 

"You  must  see,  Miss  Bruce,"  he  ended,  "that 
even  if  the  story  is  not  true,  as  we  all  hope, 
still,  what  we  have  to  think  of  is  the  good  of 
the  school,  and  you  could  hardly  teach  here 
successfully  now.  You  must  see  how  people 
would  feel." 

Kate  simply  sat  looking  at  him  in  a  way  that 
suggested  she  had  not  presence  of  mind  enough 
to  make  things  a  little  less  unpleasant  by  look- 


ing away.  He  waited  a  few  moments,  looking 
uncomfortable  as  he  sat  bolt  upright  with  fold- 
ed arms.  Since  she  offered  no  denial,  he  was 
not  quite  insensitive  enough  to  ask : 

"Is  it  true?    Of  course,  if  you  can  disprove 

it "  he  said.     "  There  must  be  a  great  many 

people  who  knew  you  five  years  ago." 

She  did  not  answer  at  once ;  then  she  said, 
not  indifferently,  but  still  with  a  manner  as  if 
she  thought  what  she  was  saying  of  no  great 
importance : 

"We  lived  in  a  mining  town.  My  father 
taught  me.  When  he  died  I  went  away  and 
taught  school.  The  mine  failed,  and  every  one 
is  scattered,  I  don't  know  where." 

"That  is  bad,"  Mr.  Farwell  said,  coldly,  and 
looked  at  the  toe  of  his  boot.  After  a  pause  he 
said,  "May  I  ask  your  age?" 

"Twenty-one,"  said  Kate,  indifferently. 

His  face  hardened,  and  he  gave  her  a  look 
of  disgust.  She  was  not  looking  at  him,  but 
she  turned  her  head  in  a  moment,  and  faced 
him  with  a  certain  intense  expectancy  of  ex- 
pression, but  without  speaking.  He  was  re- 
flecting that  delicacy  was  wasted  on  such  a 
woman. 

"Martin  has  written  to  Mr.  Graham,  of 
course,"  he  said,  in  his  hardest  tones. 

She  kept  her  eyes  on  him  for  an  appreciable 
time;  then  she  rose  and  went  to  the  window. 

"How  long  since?"  she  asked.  Her  voice 
sounded  thin  and  unnatural. 

"Nearly  two  weeks." 

She  did  not  turn.     Mr.  Farwell  rose. 

"You  will  send  in  your  resignation,  then?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

It  was  a  somewhat  awkward  interview  to 
close.  He  hesitated,  then  said  stiffly, 

"Then  I  will  say  good -day." 

"Good -day,"  she  said,  without  turning. 

She  did  not  move  till  she  heard  his  steps  on 
the  gravel  outside,  then  she  went  up  to  her 
room  and  locked  the  door.  She  threw  herself 
down  on  the  floor,  and  lay  on  her  face,  her 
clasped  hands  lying  limply,  thrown  above  her 
head.  She  did  not  cry;  what  was  the  use  in 
crying?  She  only  lay  still  till  the  room  flushed 
a  little  with  the  sunset  reflected  from  the  east, 
and  then  darkened,  and  the  brown  dress  and 
thin  white  hands  on  the  red  carpet  grew  indis- 
tinguishable. Mrs.  Farwell,  at  the  door,  beg- 
ged her  to  come  to  dinner,  and  had  no  answer. 
The  room  grew  darker,  and  then  the  moon  rose, 
and  a  great  patch  of  white  light  overspread  the 
prostrate  girl;  there  were  shadows  of  leaves 
on  her  hair  from  the  cherry  tree  by  the  stone 
step.  Nellie  Farwell  came  and  sat  on  the  step 
to  recite  a  Scripture  lesson  to  her  father,  for 
Mr.  Farwell  was  a  religious  man,  the  sole 


THE   TEACHERS  AT  FAR  WELL. 


439 


Elder  of  the  little  Presbyterian  Church;  her 
clear  childish  voice  came  up  to  Kate. 

" For  a  small  moment  have  I  forsaken  thee; 
but  with  great  mercies  will  I  gather  thee 

0  thou  afflicted,  tossed  with  tempest  and  not 
comforted!  behold  I  will  lay  thy  stones  with 

fair  colors,  and  lay  thy  foundations  with  sap- 
phires? 

She  did  not  know  it  very  well,  and  kept  re- 
peating it. 

"O  thou  afflicted,  tossed  with  tempest  and 
not  comforted!  behold  I  will  lay  thy  stones 
with  fair  colors,  and  lay  thy  foundations  with 
sapphires." 

Kate  rose  up  from  the  floor,  drew  her  cur- 
tain, bathed  her  eyes  and  lighted  her  lamp. 
After  all,  what  was  there  to  despair  over?  Was 
it  not  the  natural  resource  in  trouble  to  appeal 
to  Mr.  Graham  and  have  everything  straight- 
ened? She  knew  his  address ;  she  could  write 
as  well  as  Mr.  Martin. 

"MR.  GRAHAM: — They  say  that  I  am  some  one 
else — a  woman  that  was  married  and  ran  away.  And 

1  can't  prove  that  I  am  not.     I  shall  have  to  go  away 
from  here.     But  you  won't  believe  it,  will  you?    You 
have  always  been  so  good  to  me ;  you  won't  leave  me 
now?    Forgive  me  if  I  oughtn't  to  write  this — it  is  be- 
cause you  are  so  kind,  and  I  need  help  so  much. 

"KATE  BRUCE." 

She  thought  she  had  made  an  irresistibly 
strong  appeal ;  it  was  the  first  great  transgres- 
sion of  her  habitual  reticence  and  shyness  that 
she  had  ever  made.  And  it  was  so  impossible 
to  regard  Graham  as  anything  but  a  source  of 
all  good,  that  she  met  people's  looks,  after  mail- 
ing her  little  note,  with  a  triumphant  conscious- 
ness of  a  secret  resource. 

Four  days  was  ample  time  for  an  answer; 
but  none  came.  She  was  fairly  ill  with  sus- 
pense every  time  the  mail  came  in.  One  week 
passed,  and  two  weeks,  and  no  letter. 

"Miss  Bruce  looks  ten  years  older  since  that 
story  came  out,"  people  said.  Indeed  they  did 
not  find  her  very  agreeable  to  look  at,  for  she 
went  about  in  dead  silence,  without  the  least 
effort  to  disguise  the  expression  of  her  face, 
and  let  her  eyes  and  lips  wear  as  wild  and 
strained  a  look  as  if  she  were  under  a  surgeon's 
knife.  She  was  not  so  much  willing  that  others 
should  see  her  feelings,  as  absolutely  indiffer- 
ent to  the  existence,  almost  unaware  of  the 
existence,  of  any  one  in  the  world  except  Mr. 
Graham;  she  stared  at  the  pssser-by  witrrthe 
same  open  blankness  of  misery  as  at  the  chairs 
and  table  in  her  room.  She  left  the  Farwells, 
and  went  to  the  little  hotel,  where  she  was  un- 
der no  obligation  to  be  civil  to  any  one.  There 
she  cowered  in  her  room  from  morning  to 


night,  and  waited  vaguely  for  Graham's  return. 
One  evening  some  one  spoke  her  name  close 
under  her  window. 

"What  can  be  Miss  Bruce's,  or  Mrs.  Wil- 
kinson's, idea  in  staying  in  Farwell?" 

It  was  Mr.  Martin's  voice  that  answered. 

"Why,  she's  waiting  for  Geoffrey  Graham,  of 
course ;  but  he  knows  all  about  her  now,  to 
my  knowledge,  and  he  won't  come  back  as 
long  as  she's  here.  I've  let  him  know  she's 
hanging  round,  and  I  shall  let  him  know  when 
she  goes." 

They  passed  on  in  the  twilight;  they  had 
not  known  it  was  her  window  they  were  near. 
Inside  the  room,  Kate  sprung  up  from  her  chair, 
and  threw  up  her  arms  with  an  abandon  that 
solitude  and  a  culmination  of  feeling  will  betray 
the  most  undemonstrative  people  into.  She 
felt  so  overwhelmingly  hurt  that  she  hardly 
knew  if  it  was  in  mind  or  body.  She  paced  the 
room  half  the  night.  It  was  evident  enough 
that  she  must  go ;  but  where  ?  To  the  bottom 
of  the  bay?  She  played  with  that  idea.  The 
name  she  would  leave  behind  was  a  matter  of 
perfect  indifference  to  her.  What  had  a  girl  to 
do  with  self-respect  who  had  written  such  a  let- 
ter and  had  it  depised?  She  pictured  that  wom- 
an meeting  Mr.  Graham  some  time,  when  she 
herself  had  been  years  dead,  and  then  he  would 
know  that  it  was  not  she,  and  he  would  be  sor- 
ry for  her.  But  she  knew  very  well  that  she 
would  never  voluntarily  leave  the  world  while 
he  was  in  it.  Somehow,  Nellie  Farwell's  Bible 
lesson  was  repeating  itself  in  her  head  to  the 
time  of  her  pacing  feet — over  and  over — "O 
thou  afflicted,  tossed  with  tempest  and  not  com- 
forted!— tossed  with  tempest  and  not  comforted! 
— behold  I  will  lay  thy  stones  with  fair  colors ', 
and  lay  thy  foundations  with  sapphires" 

The  next  afternoon  Kate  was  ready  to  leave 
Farwell.  It  was  so  nearly  time  for  school  to 
open,  that  she  was  seized  with  a  dread  of  their 
coming  to  ask  her  to  go  that  Mr.  Graham  might 
come  back,  and  she  hurried  to  be  away  before 
they  should  come;  but,  just  as  she  locked  her 
trunk,  Song's  soft  step  came  along  the  passage, 
and  his  rap  sounded  at  the  door.  She  opened 
to  the  clean,  white  drilling-apron  and  smiling 
face. 

"Oh,  Mi'  Bluce,  one  man  wan'  see  you — in 
him  parlor." 

Well,  it  did  not  matter  much  after  all.  She 
walked  down  the  narrow  passage  and  into  the 
stuffy  little  parlor — all  in  dark  gray,  with  thin 
cheeks  and  drawn  lips,  and  great  purple  hol- 
lows under  her  eyes.  She  looked  like  an  in- 
valid thirty-five  years  old.  She  came  languid- 
ly into  the  room,  and  did  not  raise  her  eyes. 
Some  one  turned  around  from  the  window  and 


440 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


stepped  quickly  forward — some  one  with  kind 
brown  eyes  and  both  hands  extended. 

"Did  you  think  I  had  settled  in  Shasta? 
Such  a  time  as  I  have  had  chasing  that  man 
through  post  -  officeless  wilds  and  trackless 
mountains!  I  found  him  among  the  Indians  in 
Modoc  County." 

He  must  have  deliberately  ignored  her^ap- 
pearance,  for  it  was  impossible  not  to  notice  it. 
But  when,  instead  of  answering,  she  shrunk 
back  and  stared  at  him  wildly,  it  was  impossi- 
ble to  pretend  not  to  notice  it.  He  dropped 
his  air  of  not  knowing  that  anything  was  the 
matter,  and  came  close  to  her.  He  took  her 
two  hands  in  his,  very  softly,  and  held  them. 

UI  did  not  dream  I  should  be  gone  so  long," 
he  said,  giving  the  words  an  intonation  that  im- 
plied that  there  was  a  great,  deal  of  meaning  in 
them  somehow.  Kate  stood  passive  for  nearly 
a  minute,  and  kept  her  eyes  on  his,  while  the 
rigidity  of  her  face  slowly  relaxed.  Suddenly 
coloring  painfully,  she  pulled  away  her  hands. 

"Have  you  heard?"  she  said,  almost  in  a 
whisper. 

He  looked  straight  into  her  eyes  and  smiled. 

"I  heard  something  at  the  station  that  made 
me  come  straight  to  find  you,"  he  said.  "I  al- 
ways knew  you  needed  somebody  to  take  care 
of  you,  and  I'm  surer  than  ever  now." 

She  looked  at  him  in  a  bewildered  way. 

"But— Mr.  Martin  wrote." 

"I've  been  out  of  reach  of  post-offices.  His 
letters  will  bring  up  at  the  dead -letter  office." 

She  stood  and  thought  it  over  a  moment; 
and  then  she  suddenly  broke  down,  and  sank 
into  a  chair,  trembling  and  sobbing. 

"Oh,  I  thought  you  believed  it,  I  thought  you 
believed  it!"  she  cried,  "You  didn't  come — 
and  I  wrote  to  you.  I  couldn't  bear  it." 

"You  wrote,"  he  cried,  regretfully,  "about 
this?  And  I  was  away  off  in  the  mountains !" 

He  came  closer  to  her,  and, -as  she  rose  in- 
stinctively, he  took  her  in  his  arms.  "You  poor 
little  girl,"  he  said;  "you  poor  little  girl!" 


She  clung  to  him  tightly,  and  drew  a  long 
breath.  He  stood  and  looked  down  at  her  a 
few  moments. 

"Child,  I  will  tell  you  the  truth,"  he  said. 
"I  could  not  make  up  my  mind—  I  had  not 
made  it  up  when  I  got  off  the  train  to-day. 
But  when  the  men  there  came  to  me  with  their 
foolish  story,  the  thought  of  my  little  girl  wan- 
dering round  in  this  cruel  world  without  me, 
and  being  abused,  came  over  me  so  intolerably 
that  I  knew  there  was  nothing  I  should  ever 
care  for  so  much  as  the  right  to  take  care  of  her 
always." 

Kate  looked  up  at  him  in  awe. 

"Then,  if  it  hadn't  been  for  this " 

He  laughed  and  kissed  her. 

"Who  knows?  As  to  the  Stockton  woman, 
and  the  question  if  you  be  you,  don't  waste  an- 
other thought  on  that.  It  will  be  straightened 
out  quickly  enough.  You  can't  get  along  with- 
out me,  can  you?" 

There  was  a  little  noise  at  the  door,  and  Song 
stood  there  with  dust-pan  and  broom. 

"Oh,  Mi3  Bluce.  I  gue'  now  you  go  'way, 
le'  me  sweep,"  he  said. 

Servants  were  not  well  trained  in  Farwell. 

Graham  laughed,  and  he  drew  Kate's  arm 
through  his,  keeping  her  hand.  They  walked 
out  together,  and  stood  on  the  door-step.  West- 
ward, across  miles  of  yellow  stubble-field,  the 
rim  of  bay  showed  white  in  the  afternoon  sun, 
and  the  mountains  beyond  were  almost  hidden 
in  a  thin,  warm  haze.  Nellie  Farwell  came  by, 
with  her  hands  full  of  red  roses.  Kate  reached 
out  her  hand,  and  put  it  detainingly  on  the 
child's  shoulder. 

"Nellie,"  she  said,  "can  you  repeat  for  Mr, 
Graham  the  Bible  lesson  you  had  several  weeks 
ago,  about  1O  thou  afflicted,  tossed  with  tempest 
and  not  comforted!' " 

Nellie  fixed  her  round  eyes  on  Mr.  Graham, 
and  recited  the  rhythmical  prophecy  in  her  un- 
comprehending, ten-year-old  voice,  and  went  on 
homeward  to  ask  her  mother  what  it  all  meant. 
MILICENT  WASHBURN  SHINN. 


TWELVE    DAYS   ON   A   MEXICAN    HIGHWAY.— I. 


Of  all  the  ports  on  the  western  coast  of  the 
Republic  of  Mexico  that  of  Acapulco  is  prob- 
ably best  known  to  travelers.  This  is  due  not 
so  much  to  its  commercial  importance  or  local 
attractions  as  to  its  geographical  position.  Sit- 
uated directly  on  the  line  of  communication  be- 
tween San  Francisco  and  the  Isthmus,  it  has 


long  been  used  by  the  Pacific  Mail  Steamship 
Company  as  a  coaling  station.  Ships  of  war 
make  it  convenient  to  drop  in  and  out,  and  sail- 
ing crafts  of  all  descriptions  find  no  snugger  lit- 
tle port  on  the  western  main.  Backed  up  by  a 
fine  country,  as  yet  undeveloped,  and  possess- 
ing a  harbor  unsurpassed  for  beauty  and  secur- 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A  MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


441 


ity,  the  future  of  Acapulco  is  as  certain  as  the 
advancement  of  civilization  and  modern  enter- 
prise among  the  Mexican  people.  This  cer- 
tainty is  made  surer,  if  possible,  by  the  fact 
that  Acapulco  has  a  healthy  climate.  Being  in 
a  low  latitude,  it  is  warm,  but  the  deadly  fevers 
which  devastate  the  gulf  coast  of  the  Republic 
are  here  unknown,  and  life  is  easy  and  enjoya- 
ble. A  railroad  is  already  pointing  this  way 
from  the  heart  of  the  country,  and  not  many 
years  will  go  by  before  the  dreamy,  sleepy  Aca- 
pulco of  the  past  will  be  gone  forever.  Of  the 
thousands  of  travelers  who  have  visited  this 
port  during  the  past  thirty  years  the  greater 
portion  of  them  have  remained  but  a  few  hours. 
Their  recollections  are  confined  to  a  glimpse 
of  land-locked  water,  fringed  with  cocoa-nut 
and  palm,  and  steep  blue  mountains  in  the 
background.  They  remember  a  ramble  on 
shore,  a  maze  of  leaf-thatched  huts,  queer  peo- 
ple, and  strange  sights — and  then  the  sharp 
whistle  of  the  impatient  steamer,  and  the  vis- 
ion vanishes.  Many  an  adventurous  youth  has 
doubtless  looked  wistfully  back  from  the  steam- 
er's deck,  and  wondered  what  lay  beyond  those 
blue  mountains — what  strange  people,  what 
dark  forests  and  wide  rivers ;  and  as  he  felt  him- 
self borne  farther  away,  and  saw  the  land  grow 
dim  and  sink  into  the  sea  behind  him,  the  mys- 
tery deepened  into  romance.  I  would  not  dis- 
pel the  charm;  but  if  the  wistful  youth  with  a 
longing  for  adventure  in  his  soul  and  Mexico 
in  his  eye  will  accompany  the  writer  a  little 
way  on  his  wanderings  in  this  strange  land,  he 
may  learn  somewhat  of  the  pathway  before 
venturing  upon  it. 

In  the  month  of  September,  1874,  I  was  a 
passenger  on  board  the  steamer  Montana  bound 
from  San  Francisco  to  Panama.  My  traveling 
companion  was  a  young  Mexican  student,  an 
old  schoolmate  of  mine.  He  had  spent  seven 
years  in  the  schools  of  Oakland  and  Berkeley, 
and  was  now  returning,  after  this  long  absence, 
to  his  native  land.  Fearing  that  he  might  ob- 
ject to  publicity  in  this  connection,  I  will  call 
him  Marion,  after  one  of  his  favorite  heroes. 
It  was  at  his  instigation  that  I  had  undertaken 
the  adventure.  He  was  full  of  hope  and  enthu- 
siasm, and  so  certain  was  he  that  a  fortune  await- 
ed us  in  the  land  of  Anahuac  that  I  imbibed  his 
spirit  and  did  not  doubt.  Our  immediate  des- 
tination was  Acapulco;  our  ultimate  goal  was 
the  City  of  Mexico.  The  objects  we  had  in 
view  were  vague  and  undefined.  This  gave  us 
no  uneasiness,  however.  We  were  going  some- 
where. The  heyday  flush  of  youth  was  upon 
us,  and  no  thought  of  the  morrow  brought  care 
or  anxiety.  On  the  passage  down  we  made  the 
acquaintance  of  several  persons  who  were  go- 


ing over  the  same  road  we  proposed  to  take, 
and  it  was  agreed  that  we  should  travel  in  com- 
pany. Among  these  was  a  German  adventurer, 
a  Mexican  poet,  and  a  Philadelphia  merchant. 
The  latter  was  off  on  his  summer  vacation. 
He  had  purchased  his  ticket  in  San  Francisco 
for  the  round  trip  to  New  York,  but  decided  a  t 
the  last  moment  to  leave  the  steamer  at  Aca- 
pulco and  accompany  us  overland  to  the  capital. 
On  reaching  Acapulco  our  party  was  increased 
by  the  addition  of  a  number  of  native  mer- 
chants who  were  journeying  toward  the  inte- 
rior; so  that  our  caravan,  when  ready  to  start, 
consisted  of  about  a  dozen  persons,  including 
the  muleteers,  or  arrieros.  The  communication 
between  this  port  and  the  interior  is  by  pack- 
animal  alone.  Such  a  thing  as  a  wagon  road 
is  not  encountered  until  reaching  the  city  of 
Cuernavaca,  fifty  miles  distant  frornjhe  capi- 
tal. The  remaining  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
know  no  other  road  than  a  rough  mountain 
trail,  washed  out  by  rushing  torrents  and  over- 
hung in  many  places  by  dense  tropical  vegeta- 
tion. There  was  a  time  when  Acapulco  was 
connected  with  the  City  of  Mexico  by  a  royal 
road.  We  discovered  patches  of  it  here  and 
there  in  the  mountains,  and  were  often  sur- 
prised to  come  upon  the  remains  of  a  bridge 
or  broken  archway  in  the  most  unexpected  and 
abandoned  places.  The  old  road  must  have 
cost  immense  labor  and  time  in  its  construc- 
tion, for  it  was  solidly  paved  the  whole  distance. 
Sections  of  it  would  occasionally  be  found  intact 
for  fifty  or  a  hundred  yards,  where  the  streams 
and  the  land-slides  had  not  struck  it,  and  it 
looked  like  a  city  street.  This  road  was  never 
designed,  however,  for  wheeled  vehicles,  as  is 
indicated  by  its  grading.  It  was  an  imperious 
road,  which  never  turned  out  of  its  way  for  an 
obstacle.  If  a  mountain  stood  in  its  track,  it 
went  square  over  it,  regardless  of  the  angle,  and 
the  modern  habit  of  beating  tamely  around  in 
search  of  an  easy  incline  was  entirely  beneath 
its  dignity.  Plebeian  roads  might  squirm  about 
and  try  to  let  themselves  down  easily,-  but  this 
was  the  royal  highway  of  the  King  of  Spain. 
Along  its  rocky  way  his  royal  mules  went  groan- 
ing to  the  sea,  laden  with  silver  for  the  royal 
galleon  which  sailed  yearly  from  the  port  of 
Acapulco.  Why  should  such  a  road  turn  out 
for  a  mountain?  But  pride  must  sooner  or 
later  have  a  fall.  With  the  overthrow  of  the 
colonial  government  came  strife  and  internal 
discord.  The  road  was  neglected,  no  repairs 
were  attempted,  and  the  elements  have  almost 
obliterated  it. 

Travelers  bound  inland  from  Acapulco  gen- 
erally wait  until  a  company,  or  caravan,  is  form- 
ed, as  the  journey  is  thus  made  pleasanter  and 


442 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


safer.  The  wily  bandit  still  haunts  the  mount- 
ain passes  and  dark  ravines,  and  a  show  of 
force  is  prudent  and  salutary.  There  are  men 
who  make  a  business  of  traveling  back  and 
forth  over  this  road  with  caravans  of  mules  and 
horses,  carrying  passengers  and  freight.  They 
are  in  port  on  the  arrival  of  every  steamer, 
waiting  for  traffic,  and  will  take  you  through  to 
the  City  of  Mexico  for  about  twenty-five  dollars. 
As  every  caravan  is  on  the  road  from  nine  to 
fifteen  days,  and  all  the  expense  and  care  of 
the  animals  fall  upon  the  chief,  or  conductor, 
the  price  is  very  low.  Aside  from  his  horse, 
however,  each  passenger  pays  his  own  ex- 
penses, and  these,  for  the  best  food  and  lodg- 
ing the  road  affords,  need  never  exceed  fifty 
cents  a  day.  Passing  over  the  incidents  of  land- 
ing, so  familiar  to  all  who  have  entered  these 
southern  ports,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  my 
friend  and  I  found  ourselves  one  exceedingly 
hot  forenoon,  in  the  month  and  year  before 
mentioned,  safely  landed  on  Mexican  soil  and 
domiciled  in  a  low-eaved  house,  with  wide  ve- 
randas and  bare  stone  floors,  which  set  up  the 
claim  of  being  Acapulco's  best  hotel.  So  slow- 
ly does  everything  move  in  this  sleepy  town,  that 
it  was  two  days  before  our  party  was  ready  to 
start  for  the  interior,  and  this  interval  was  spent 
in  the  most  delightful  manner,  exploring  the 
town  and  the  harbor,  and  observing  the  cus- 
toms of  the  natives.  They  struck  me  as  being 
a  happy  people.  I  was  just  from  the  bustle 
and  roar  of  San  Francisco;  but  here  all  was 
quiet — no  noisy  carts  and  drays,  no  pushing, 
impatient  crowds,  no  stock-boards,  no  politics. 
I  almost  wished  I  was  an  Acapulcan.  A  wide 
straw  hat  and  a  cotton  shirt,  bare  feet,  and  a 
palm-thatched  roof— what  else  could  a  mortal 
wish?  The  citizen  works  here  when  he  feels 
like  it,  and  if  he  never  feels  like  it,  he  has  the 
assurance  of  Mother  Nature  that  he  shall  be 
neither  starved  nor  frozen  out.  There  is  always 
fruit  on  the  banana  trees,  and  the  sun  is  always 
warm.  At  night  these  lazy  fellows  sit  at  their 
front  doors  and  thrum  stringed  instruments,  or 
go  skylarking  round,  making  love  to  each  other. 
What  do  they  care  for  wealth  and  power,  or 
the  greedy  struggles  of  the  outside  barbarian? 
Why  should  they  want  a  railroad  to  come  tear- 
ing through  their  little  town,  bringing  innova- 
tion and  unrest?  It  was  on  the  second  day 
after  our  arrival,  and  while  I  was  considering 
these  propositions,  and  trying  to  determine 
whether  or  not  I  should  renounce  my  birth- 
right and  become  a  bare -legged  loafer  on  the 
strands  of  Acapulco,  that  Marion  approached 
and  tapped  me  on  the  shoulder.  I  turned  and 
saw  that  he  was  accompanied  by  a  stranger, 
whom  I  took  at  first  sight  for  a  pirate.  He 


was  dressed  in  leather,  jacket  and  pantaloons, 
and  wore  spurs  and  an  immense  sombrero.  At 
his  side  hung  a  long,  heavy  knife,  or  machete, 
and  a  horse-pistol  looked  out  from  beneath  his 
red  sash.  From  head  to  knee  he  was  bespan- 
gled with  glittering  silver  buttons,  and  his  boots 
were  yellow. 

"Now,  that  is  a  man  after  my  own  heart,"  I 
thought,  as  Marion  introduced  him  as  the  con- 
ductor of  our  caravan,  "but  I  will  wager  ten  to 
one  he  will  cut  somebody's  throat  before  we 
reach  Mexico."  It  affords  me  pleasure  to  say 
that  I  was  wronging  the  pirate.  He  turned  out 
to  be  a  capital  good  fellow,  kind  and  obliging, 
as  we  had  abundant  opportunity  to  prove  on 
our  long  ride  to  the  capital.  Alejandro  was  his 
name,  and  at  that  time  he  was  the  most  famous 
arriero  on  the  road.  A  few  years  afterward  I 
met  him  in  the  City  of  Mexico,  ragged  and  de- 
spondent. The  revolution  had  broken  out,  and 
the  pronunciados  had  stolen  all  his  horses  and 
mules.  Such  are  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  en- 
terprising Mexican  citizen.  On  this  occasion, 
however,  he  was  in  all  his  glory,  and  as  he 
headed  the  little  band  of  adventurers  which 
filed  out  that  afternoon  from  the  streets  of  Aca- 
pulco, and  the  sunlight  glistened  and  sparkled 
on  his  polished  buttons,  he  would  have  made  a 
picture  for  an  artist. 

We  did  not  make  a  start  until  late  in  the  aft- 
ernoon, on  account  of  the  heat,  our  purpose 
being  to  make  the  station  of  La  Venta  that 
night,  which  is  over  the  mountain  about  five 
leagues  distant.  The  ride  up  the  zigzag  trail 
afforded  us  a  lovely  prospect.  Below  lay  the 
bay  of  Acapulco,  completely  outlined  with  its 
semi -lunar  passages  to  the  ocean.  A  steamer 
could  be  seen  in  the  far  distance  steering  north- 
ward, and  directly  at  our  feet  was  the  town,  em- 
bowered in  lemon  shade  and  palm.  Around 
and  about  us  on  every  hand  the  vegetation  was 
rank  and  dense,  and  thousands  of  little  green 
parrots  seemed  to  be  chattering  and  quarreling 
in  the  tree-tops.  "Adios,  old  Ocean,"  cried  the 
Mexic  poet,  as  he  turned  in  his  saddle  and 
gazed  wistfully  back  from  the  last  eminence — 
"adios,  adios!" 

"Is  not  this  rooster  on  his  own  soil?"  asked 
the  German  adventurer,  who  rode  behind  me. 
"Why  so  much  emotion  on  so  slight  a  provoca- 
tion?" 

"He  is  thinking  of  his  sweetheart,"  said  Mar- 
ion. And  then  we  learned  a  tale  of  wild  devo- 
tion, and  were  told  of  a  tender  parting  which 
took  place  behind  the  piled  up  boxes  and  bales 
on  the  far  off  San  Francisco  wharf.  So  we  did 
not  chide  him,  for  other  hearts  in  that  little 
party  felt  a  tinge  of  homesickness  at  seeing  old 
Ocean  disappear.  Night  soon  came  down,  and 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A  MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


443 


we  were  threading  our  way,  single  file,  through 
a  maze  of  overhanging  trees  and  brushwood. 

It  was  dark  and  we  could  not  see;  but  the 
novelity  of  our  position  grew  upon  us.  In  ad- 
vance could  be  heard  the  tinkle  of  the  leader's 
bell  and  the  hoarse  arr-r-re  of  the  muleteers 
as  they  urged  the  pack-animals  along.  Myr- 
iads of  fire-flies  began  to  dart  about  in  the 
bushes  and  across  the  trail.  Sometimes  a  le- 
gion of  them  would  flash  out  at  once  as  though 
under  the  guidance  of  a  leader,  and  then  the 
woods  were  peopled  with  a  thousand  fantastic 
things. 

"They  look  like  the  lights  of  a  city  in  the 
distance,"  said  the  Philadelphian. 

"Yes,"  answered  Marion,  and  I  knew  the 
boy  was  thinking  of  Berkeley  and  the  lights  of 
San  Francisco  seen  so  often  across  the  star-lit 
bay.  About  eight  o'clock  the  barking  of  dogs 
announced  that  we  were  approaching  a  human 
habitation,  and  a  little  later  our  cavalcade  filed 
in  among  a  cluster  of  cane  huts,  situated  on 
the  banks  of  a  broad  but  shallow  stream,  and 
we  were  informed  that  we  had  reached  the 
station  of  La  Venta.  This  is  a  genuine  Indian 
village.  The  huts  are  made  of  poles  heavily 
thatched  to  turn  the  rain,  but  open  all  around. 
They  reminded  me  of  chicken  houses.  A  light 
burned  inside  of  every  house,  and,  as  we  rode 
through  the  town,  we  could  see  right  into  the 
bosoms  of  families.  No  domestic  operation 
was  hidden  from  human  view,  and  for  a  while 
I  felt  like  an  eavesdropper.  We  soon  learned, 
however,  that  they  were  not  at  all  sensitive  on 
this  point.  We  stopped  in  front  of  one  of  the 
larger  huts,  and  a  dusky  damsel  came  out  to 
bid  us  welcome.  She  was  bare  armed  and 
bare  breasted,  and  her  clothing  was  scanty  and 
poor,  but  as  she  stood  there  holding  a  blazing 
pine  knot  above  her  head,  its  light  reflected 
from  her  white  teeth  and  flashing  eyes,  her 
braided  hair  falling  low  down  her  back,  and 
her  voice  as  soft  and  sweet  as  that  of  Laughing 
Water,  we  all  fell  in  love  with  her  to  a  man, 
and  our  envy  of  Alejandro,  with  whom  she  was 
talking,  would  have  frightened  that  individual 
if  he  had  known  it.  Our  arrival  was  soon 
known  to  the  whole  village,  and  while  our  host- 
ess was  preparing  our  supper  of  tortillas,  eggs, 
and  black  beans,  the  neighbors  dropped  so- 
cially in  and  gazed  upon  us.  I  think  we  had 
the  honor  of  receiving  the  whole  town  that 
night,  men,  women,  and  children,  with  the  dogs 
thrown  in,  and  it  set  us  up  immensely  in  our 
own  conceit.  While  the  levee  was  in  process 
we  lounged  around  on  the  horse -blankets  and 
cane  stretchers,  and  smoked  and  were  amused ; 
and  we  have  always  felt,  in  thinking  of  the 
matter  since,  that  the  entertainment  was  mut- 


ually agreeable.  Germany,  as  we  called  our 
Teutonic  companion,  contributed  vastly,  but 
without  premeditation,  to  the  amusement  of  our 
visitors.  In  attempting  to  climb  into  a  ham- 
mock which  swung  from  the  rafters  of  the  shed, 
he  lost  his  balance  and  fell,  turning  a  com- 
plete somersault,  and  landing  on  the  flat  of 
his  back  in  the  midst  of  the  landlady's  cooking 
utensils.  The  shout  of  laughter  which  followed 
this  achievement  must  ring  in  poor  Germany's 
ears  until  this  day. 

It  so  happened  that  we  reached  La  Venta  on 
a  festive  occasion.  A  fandango  was  in  full 
blast  but  a  short  distance  from  our  quarters, 
and  a  large  number  of  strange  Indians  from 
the  surrounding  country  were  in  the  village. 
Our  advent  had  caused  a  temporary  suspension 
of  the  festivities,  but  the  people  soon  began  to 
drift  that  way  again,  and  by  the  time  we  had 
finished  our  supper  the  music  of  harp  and  ban- 
dolon  could  be  heard,  and  the  dance  was  once 
more  in  progress.  Alejandro  told  us  that  the 
village  would  probably  grow  lively  toward  mid- 
night, as  the  dance  continued,  for  the  Indians 
were  drinking  a  good  deal  of  mescal,  arid  many 
of  them  were  still  coming  in  from  the  country. 
He  informed  me  that  the  Alcalde  of  the  town 
had  already  hidden  himself,  as  is  the  custom 
on  such  occasions,  and  that  we  must  be  on  our 
guard,  for  the  Indians  were  bad  men  when 
drunk,  and  inclined  to  dislike  strangers.  We 
were  all  armed  to  the  teeth,  however,  and  felt 
no  apprehensions.  After  supper,  Marion  and 
I  sallied  out  into  the  dark  street,  and,  follow- 
ing the  sound  of  the  music,  soon  found  our- 
selves in  the  midst  of  the  crowd  of  wild,  half- 
naked  revelers.  The  dancing  was  carried  on 
under  a  shed  which  was  lit  up  by  pine -knots, 
throwing  out  a  weird  glare  over  the  dusky 
crowd.  A  number  of  men  and  women  would 
step  into  the  open  space  and  shuffle  slowly 
around,  each  one  apparently  on  his  own  re- 
sponsibility, and  with  no  regard  to  figure.  In 
the  meantime,  those  who  were  not  dancing 
would  squat  in  a  circle  around  the  open  space, 
and  sing  monotonously  in  time  with  the  music 
of  the  instruments.  The  dancers  would  finally 
retire,  and  others  take  their  places,  the  process 
being  repeated  with  little  or  no  variations. 
But  it  was  in  the  outer  rim  of  the  circle  that 
the  real  fun  seemed  to  be  going  on.  Little 
groups  were  gathered  here  and  there,  drinking, 
singing  and  carousing,  and,  as  we  left  the  crowd 
and  picked  our  way  back  to  our  lodgings,  we 
noticed  one  of  our  men,  Ponciano  by  name, 
ogling  a  dusky  maiden,  and  treating  her  to  a 
drink  of  orchata. 

"  That  rascal  will  be  drunk  before  morning," 
said  Marion,  as  we  passed  him;  but  the  poor 


444 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


fellow's  fate  was  more  tragic,  as  will  be  seen. 
Spreading  our  blankets  upon  cane  benches  on 
our  landlady's  porch,  the  excitement  and  novel 
experiences  of  the  day  were  soon  forgotten, 
and  we  were  fast  asleep. 

About  midnight  a  fearful  racket  awakened 
me,  and,  starting  hurriedly  up,  I  could  see  by 
the  light  of  the  moon,  which  had  risen  late,  a 
group  of  ten  or  twelve  half  naked  Indians, 
charging,  as  I  thought,  right  down  upon  the 
porch  where  my  friends  and  I  were  sleeping. 
They  were  bare-headed,  and  carried  their  long 
wicked -looking  knives  in  their  hands,  ready  to 
strike.  My  first  impression  was  that  these  wild 
citizens  were  coming  for  our  midnight  scalps, 
and  I  made  a  hasty  dive  for  my  revolver. 
Marion,  Germany,  and  the  Philadelphian  did 
likewise,  but  fortunately  our  trepidation  was 
unnecessary.  The  Indians  swept  past  us  with 
loud  cries,  and  disappeared  in  the  direction  of 
the  river.  A  straggling  crowd  of  men,  women, 
and  children  soon  followed,  and  from  them  we 
learned  that  there  had  been  a  fight.  Somebody 
had  been  killed,  and  the  friends  of  the  murder- 
ed man  were  seeking  the  slayer  to  avenge  the 
act.  It  would  certainly  have  gone  hard  with 
any  man  if  he  had  fallen  into  the  clutches  of 
those  angry  dispensers  of  justice;  but  the  mur- 
derer had  the  start,  and  escaped  in  the  brush. 

"This  is  a  pleasant  little  town  to  live  in,"  re- 
marked the  Philadelphian,  as  we  composed 
ourselves  once  more  to  rest;  but  the  poet  de- 
clared that  the  man  from  the  Quaker  City  was 
inclined  to  be  facetious. 

The  next  morning  we  discovered  that  the 
murdered  man  was  no  other  than  our  muleteer, 
Ponciano.  His  head  was  nearly  severed  from 
the  trunk  by  a  machete  stroke,  and  death  must 
have  been  instantaneous. 

"That's  what  he  gets,"  said  Alejandro,  as  we 
stood  over  the  ghastly  corpse,  "that's  what  he 
gets  for  making  love  to  another  man's  woman." 

The  poet  and  Germany  exchanged  glances. 
They  had  been  rivaling  each  other,  on  the 
evening  before,  to  gain  the  smiles  of  our  brown 
Hebe,  the  landlady;  and  that  glance  seemed 
to  say,  "We  will  not  do  so  any  more." 

Owing  to  this  accident  we  did  not  get  away 
from  La  Venta  until  late  on  the  following  morn- 
ing, and  shortly  after  starting  it  began  to  rain. 
I  say  very  mildly  it  began  to  rain,  but  that  falls 
far  short  of  expressing  the  thought  which  is 
in  my  mind.  It  deluged  for  about  two  hours 
without  a  tremor.  It  soaked  us  to  the  skin, 
and  almost  drowned  us.  And  then  the  fickle 
clouds  slipped  away  and  disappeared  as  though 
othing  had  happened,  and  the  sun  came  out 
blazing  hot  and  set  the  whole  world  to  steaming 
and  sweating. 


But  we  were  not  to  be  discouraged  by  such 
trifles  as  these.  All  day  we  kept  bravely  on 
through  a  densely  wooded  country,  now  under 
arches  of  tangled  vines,  now  skirting  a  foaming 
water -course,  and  occasionally  emerging  into 
picturesque  glades  and  openings  of  the  forest. 
Strange  birds  and  flowers  caught  the  eye  on 
every  hand,  and  we  were  constantly  met  by 
bare-legged  natives  driving  their  little  donkeys 
before  them  loaded  with  fruits  and  vegetables. 
These  Indians  always  took  off  their  hats  and 
politely  saluted  as  they  passed,  little  acts  which 
strongly  prepossessed  us  in  their  favor.  With 
all  their  faults,  there  is  the  making  of  good  cit- 
izens in  these  dusky  sons  of  Guerrero,  and  we 
believe  the  time  is  fast  approaching  when  their 
manhood  will  have  a  chance  to  assert  itself. 

Toward  evening  we  reached  the  town  of  Dos 
Arroyos,  twenty -four  miles  distant  from  La 
Venta.  This  is  a  more  pretentious  place  than 
the  latter,  and  has  better  houses  and  more 
comfortable  accommodations  for  travelers.  As 
we  rode  into  the  place  we  were  surprised  to 
notice  that  no  one  was  in  sight.  The  streets 
and  houses  were  deserted,  and  an  air  of  deso- 
lation seemed  to  hang  over  the  village.  On 
passing  the  church  we  discovered  that  the  peo- 
ple of  the  town  were  all  inside,  devoutly  kneel- 
ing upon  the  hard  mud  floor,  while  a  priest 
went  solemnly  through  the  mysteries  of  the 
mass.  It  was  an  unusual  hour  for  such  a  serv- 
ice, and  as  soon  as  we  could  find  any  one  we 
asked  the  occasion  for  it.  The  answer  filled 
us  with  astonishment.  It  revealed  most  vividly 
that  dark  phase  of  Mexican  history — lawless- 
ness and  bloodshed — which  we  sincerely  trust 
has  gone  by  forever. 

Two  days  before  a  company  of  Federal  sol- 
diers marched  into  the  village  and  demanded 
of  the  Alcalde  a  quantity  of  supplies.  As  the 
demand  was  illegal  and  arbitrary,  the  Alcalde 
refused  to  comply,  upon  which  he  was  insulted 
by  the  soldiers  and  their  officers,  knocked 
down,  and  dragged  by  the  hair  out  of  the  court- 
room. Seeing  their  chief  treated  in  this  man- 
ner, the  principal  men  of  the  town  interfered 
and  remonstrated  with  the  soldiers  for  their 
barbarity.  This  remonstrance  was  interpreted 
as  a  hostile  demonstration,  and,  acting  under 
the  order  of  their  superior  officer,  the  soldiers 
deliberately  fired  into  the  unarmed  crowd,  in- 
stantly killing  ten  men  and  mortally  wounding 
a  woman  and  child  on  the  street.  The  Alcalde 
himself  was  cruelly  butchered  by  the  hand  of 
the  superior  officer.  This  tragedy  took  place 
inside  the  court -room,  an  apartment  about  fif- 
teen by  twenty -four  feet  in  dimensions.  The 
remaining  citizens  in  the  room,  seeing  that  they 
were  penned  up  and  were  to  be  killed  like 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A   MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


445 


dogs,  made  a  desperate  effort  to  break  out,  and 
in  doing  so  had  the  satisfaction  of  killing  two 
soldiers  with  their  machetes.  No  wonder  the 
town  was  in  mourning,  and  that  the  widows  and 
orphans  were  kneeling  sadly  on  the  hard  mud 
floor  at  the  foot  of  the  cross,  seeking  such  con- 
solation as  their  religion  might  afford  them.  If 
such  an  act  had  occurred  anywhere  else  it 
would  have  rung  through  the  world;  but  here 
it  passed  almost  unnoticed,  and  I  never  learn- 
ed that  any  of  the  guilty  parties  were  ever 
brought  to  justice.  We  visited  the  desecrated 
court -room,  and  found  blood  still  fresh  upon 
the  floor  and  benches,  and  the  walls  riddled 
and  broken  by  the  bullets.  Filled  with  sad 
thoughts  of  "man's  inhumanity  to  man,"  we 
went  to  sleep  that  night  somewhat  depressed 
in  spirits,  wondering  if  our  onward  march  to 
Mexico  was  thus  to  be  signaled  day  after  day 
by  acts  of  violence  and  sights  of  human  blood. 
The  next  morning  it  was  raining  again,  and 
all  day  long  the  showers  came  and  went.  We 
pushed  ahead,  however,  and  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon  brought  us  to  Agua  de  Perro.  This 
was  the  most  forlorn  of  all  the  stations  we  had 
so  far  seen.  It  consisted  of  a  single  open  shanty, 
far  up  in  the  heart  of  the  mountains.  It  had 
for  its  presiding  genii  a  tall,  black  Indian,  with 
no  clothing  upon  his  person  but  a  breech-cloth, 
and  a  short,  black  woman,  with  no  other  gar- 
ments about  her  person  than  a  dirty  shirt  and  a 
ragged  cotton  skirt.  I  say  nothing  of  the  little 
imps  which  I  could  not  count.  There  were 
children  naked  as  the  day,  pigs,  chickens,  dogs, 
and  donkeys.  All  of  these  lived  in  harmony 
beneath  the  one  thatched  roof  of  Agua  de  Per- 
ro— which,  being  interpreted,  means  Dog  Wa- 
ter— and  furthermore  there  was  always  room 
and  a  welcome  beneath  this  twelve  by  fourteen 
roof  for  the  stranger  and  the  wayfarer,  how- 
ever numerous  he  might  be.  There  were  twelve 
in  our  party,  but  the  naked  host  greeted  us 
cordially,  and,  in  the  spirit  of  genuine  hospital- 
ity, invited  us  in,  and  told  us  to  make  his  house 
our  own.  It  was  raining  dismally,  and  there 
was  no  alternative ;  so  we  went  inside  with  the 
pigs  and  the  chickens  and  tried  to  be  comfort- 
able. A  donkey  was  domiciled  in  one  corner 
of  the  hut,  and  as  we  stepped  in  he  brayed; 
but  whether  it  was  done  in  a  spirit  of  hospital- 
ity or  defiance  we  could  never  determine.  Our 
advent  made  it  necessary  to  kill  a  hog,  which 
the  tall  host  at  once  proceeded  to  do  in  our 
very  midst,  and  in  the  course  of  a  couple  of 
hours  the  hostess  came  in  from  a  little  back 
shed,  and  placed  our  supper  upon  a  mat  in  the 
middle  of  the  floor.  There  were  no  chairs, 
knives,  forks,  or  spoons,  and  all  the  eatables 

[CONTINUED  IN 


were  in  one  earthern  dish.  We  were  required 
to  sit  down  upon  the  ground,  and  help  our- 
selves with  our  ringers  from  the  common  plate. 
Having  already  learned  the  necessity  of  laying 
aside  all  scruples  in  journeying  through  the  In- 
dian country,  and  being  exceedingly  hungry, 
we  complied,  and  a  more  enjoyable  meal  I 
never  ate.  It  consisted  of  pork  steaks,  beans, 
tortillas,  and  coffee.  During  the  progress  of 
the  meal  two  of  the  larger  dogs  got  into  a  fight 
over  a  bone  and  waltzed  across  our  table,  but 
it  did  not  disturb  our  equanimity  further  than 
to  occasion  a  regret  on  the  part  of  the  poet  that 
his  coffee  had  been  upset.  The  night  which 
followed  this  meal  will  be  ever  memorable.  It 
was  a  night  of  fleas  and  horrors.  I  had  tried 
in  vain  to  suspend  myself  from  the  rafters  in  a 
very  narrow  hammock,  and,  having  fallen  out 
two  or  three  times,  finally  concluded  to  lie  still 
upon  the  ground  and  give  the  fleas  a  chance. 
I  was  just  beginning  to  doze  a  little  after  the 
formation  of  this  resolution,  when  a  stentorian 
grunt  awakened  me,  and  I  felt  myself  violently 
turned  over.  Scrambling  to  my  feet,  I  peered 
through  the  darkness  and  discovered  that  my 
enemy  was  a  hog.  He  had  not  intended  to  be 
uncivil,  but  had  accidentally  rooted  me  over  in 
his  search  for  a  comfortable  place  in  which  to 
lie  down.  This,  at  least,  was  the  charitable  con- 
struction which  I  put  upon  it,  for  I  felt  humble. 
For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  admitted  that 
"man  and  beast  are  brothers;"  nor  could  I 
persuade  myself  under  the  circumstances  that 
I  had  any  rights  which  that  hog  ought  to  re- 
spect. Only  the  third  day  out,  and  this  was  the 
state  of  demoralization  which  I  had  reached ! 

Every  one  was  tired  the  next  morning,  ex- 
cept the  hardy  natives,  who  can  sleep  any- 
where, and  as  the  rain  was  still  falling,  we  were 
afraid  we  should  have  to  spend  another  day  and 
night  in  this  uncomfortable  place.  The  prospect 
was  rendered  more  gloomy  by  the  fact  that  be- 
tween us  and  the  next  station  lay  a  deep  and 
rapid  river,  which  would  probably  be  so  swollen 
by  the  rains  as  to  be  impassable,  in  which  case 
we  would  have  to  remain  at  Agua  de  Perro  for 
an  indefinite  time,  or  camp  on  the  bank  of  the 
river,  without  food  or  shelter  of  any  descrip- 
tion, until  the  water  went  down.  About  noon 
the  sun  came  out,  and  we  urged  Alejandro  to 
push  on.  He  shook  his  head,  and  told  us  if  we 
went  forward  we  would  probably  have  to  sleep 
that  night  on  the  wet  sand  of  the  river  bank 
without  supper  or  shelter.  He  did  not  think 
we  could  cross  the  stream ;  but  when  we  "pluck- 
ed at  him"  to  go,  he  finally  consented,  and  the 
result,  as  will  be  seen,  verified  his  direst  predic- 
tions. D.  S.  RICHARDSON. 

NE*T    NUMBER.] 


446 


1*HE    CALIFORNIAN. 


SOUTHERN    CALIFORNIA. 


In  March  of  this  year,  an  excursion  party, 
composed  of  several  editors  of  San  Francisco 
and  interior  journals,  together  with  a  number  of 
accredited  correspondents  and  reporters,  visited 
the  citrus  fairs  of  Riverside  and  Los  Angeles, 
and  were  shown  in  part  the  toils  and  the  suc- 
cesses in  the  fair  domain  of  Southern  Califor- 
nia. The  writer  at  the  time  contributed  a  series 
of  letters  to  a  well  known  evening  paper,  giv- 
ing in  some  degree  his  impressions  of  the  coun- 
try and  the  people.  The  time  for  minute  de- 
scriptions of  citrus  fair  exhibits  has  now  gone 
by  with  the  event,  but  a  certain  amount  of  gen- 
eralizing upon  the  possibilities  of  the  south-land 
communities  may  perhaps  be  pardoned.  The 
writer  has  always  had  faith  in  and  a  liking  for 
Southern  California  and  its  people,  counting 
many  warm  personal  friends  among  its  pleas- 
ant settlements,  and  keeping  track,  through 
the  toils  of  editorial  work  on  a  daily  journal, 
of  the  growths  and  gains  of  that  region.  So 
these  glimpses  of  the  present  and  prophecies 
of  the  future  are  a  gift  of  good -will  to  friends 
who  shall  here  be  nameless.  The  real  difficulty 
which  one  encounters  is  to  avoid  understating 
the  large  and  pregnant  facts  of  the  new  devel- 
opments of  the  five  southern  counties  under 
consideration.  Taken  together,  they  form  a  re- 
gion of  unique  and  magnificent  capabilities,  an 
empire  in  itself,  and  plainly  entering  upon  a  ca- 
reer of  commercial,  industrial,  and  agricultural 
achievements  which  must  greatly  advance  the 
prosperity  of  the  whole  coast. 

In  entering  upon  the  subject,  let  us  see  what 
sort  of  a  land  this  Southern  California  is.  It  is-a 
realm  of  beauty  and  strength,  shut  apart  from  the 
northern  lands  by  great  and  glorious  mountain 
barriers,  and  crags  about  whose  snowy  pinna- 
cles the  songs  and  raptures  of  a  mighty  people 
shall  some  day  oling.  The  grand  Sierra  Madre, 
the  rugged  Cucamonga  range,  the  blue  San 
Bernardino  peaks,  are  as  fit  themes  for  pen  of 
poet  and  pencil  of  artist  as  are  the  Carpathians 
and  Apennines,  or  the  silver  dome  and  gla- 
cial rivers  of  Mount  Blanc  and  the  Rigi.  The 
time  will  come  when  vales  like  Montecito  and 
Ojai  will  have  equal  fame  with  Tempd  and 
Cashmere.  It  is  a  burden  upon  the  spirit  that 
one  cannot  name  in  this  paragraph  all  the  lovely 
valleys  of  these  southern  counties.  By  each 
stream,  and  nestling  in  each  mountain  range, 
are  nooks  fit  for  colonies — are  dimpled  hollows, 


windless,  glad,  unhaunted,  waiting  for  the  home- 
seekers  of  strong  arms  and  eager  souls  to  make 
the  wilderness  bloom  and  ripen  apples  of  gold, 
fruits  of  the  four  -  rivered  garden  of  Eden. 

In  spring-time  journeyings  through  Southern 
California  two  pictures  rise  before  one's  dreams 
in  mingling  suggestions.  One  vision  is  that  of 
the  mountain-girded  Abyssinian  vale  of  Rasse- 
las,  shut  in  from  the  bitter  pains  and  noisy  ter- 
rors of  the  striving  world ;  a  dreamy,  quiet,  un- 
troubled land,  full  of  fair  sights  and  gentle 
sounds,  and  murmurous  tones  of  reeds  and 
lutes  and  twilight  singing.  Another  dream  is 
that  of  Plato's  Atlantis,  the  imperial  island 
where  endless  summer  reigned,  and  the  people 
were  rich  and  wise  and  pure;  the  realm  of 
which  the  Antilles  and  the  Cuban  mountains 
are  the  fragmentary  summits ;  the  land  where 
the  dragon -watched  garden  of  the  Hesperides 
grew  in  the  morning  of  the  world  and  ripened 
its  shining  fruit,  quest  of  heroes  and  guerdon  of 
kings.  The  dream-gardens  of  ancient  tales  are 
being  planted  now  in  our  own  California.  Not 
a  single  city  or  province  of  the  countries  about 
the  Mediterranean  can  longer  feel  secure  in  its 
peculiar  products.  The  irrepressible  American 
has  entered  a  new  field' — that  of  intensive  hor- 
ticulture, in  a  semi-tropic  land,  assisted  by  the 
experience  and  warned  by  the  failures  of  other 
communities.  One  need  not  be  a  prophet,  nor 
the  son  of  a  prophet,  to  foretell  grand  results  in 
the  immediate  future. 

When  one  speaks  of  Southern  California,  it 
is  with  a  feeling  of  pride  and  hopefulness.  So 
much  has  been  already  done  by  the  busy  peo- 
ple of  those  sunland  counties,  and  there  are  so 
many  as  yet  undeveloped  resources  in  that  re- 
gion, that  the  subject  grows  upon  and  over- 
whelms the  honest  searcher  for  facts.  In  the 
outset,  it  must  be  said  that  both  overpraise  and 
overblame  have  fallen  to  the  unfortunate  lot  of 
Southern  Californians  during  the  past  twenty 
years.  The  people  of  that  section  have  known 
alternate  coaxing  and  bullying.  Though  they 
love  their  land  with  passionate  fervor,  they  have 
been  told  that  it  was  a  desert;  because  they 
have  an  almost  ideal  climate,  of  Grecian  purity 
and  Italian  sweetness,  they  have  been  called 
climate -mad;  though  their  horticultural  tri- 
umphs are  many  and  marvelous,  they  are  too 
often  asked  whether  any  good  can  come  out  of 
Nazareth  ?  Their  true  strength  has  often  been 


SOUTHERN  CALIFORNIA. 


447 


misapprehended ;  the  meaning  of  their  peace- 
ful colonies  has  not  been  rightly  read;  the  work, 
which  is  surely  given  to  their  hands  among  the 
coming  communities  of  the  Pacific  Coast,  is  not 
yet  fairly  conceived.  Flippant  writers  on  the 
subject  read  of  occasional  seasons  of  drought, 
against  which  the  water -reservoirs  of  the  fut- 
ure will  guard,  and  straightway  deride  South- 
ern California.  They  hear  that  there  are  in  the 
single  county  of  Los  Angeles  sixty  thousand 
orange  and  lemon  trees  in  bearing,  and  one 
hundred  thousand  more  trees  planted,  and  at 
once  they  wilt,  weep,  collapse,  and  indulge  in 
jeremiads  about  the  woeful  overdoing  of  the 
citrus  fruit  crops !  It  is  always  the  men  who 
have  nothing  to  sell  that  are  afraid  of  commer- 
cial crises,  and  it  is  men  who  have  neither  trees 
nor  vines  planted  that  gush  over  the  certain 
overdoing  of  oranges  and  grapes.  There  are 
problems  enough  before  the  Saxons  of  South- 
ern California,  but  their  true  friends  will  ever 
urge  them  on  in  their  distinctive  pursuits,  bid- 
ding them  plant  more  trees,  build  more  can- 
neries, found  more  colonies  in  lowland  vales, 
near  the  smiling  sea,  and  on  sunlit  uplands, 
under  the  shadowing  peaks. 

Many  horticultural  products,  which  give  great 
promise  of  future  profit,  are  now  in  a  merely  ex- 
perimental stage  in  Southern  California.  Oth- 
ers, which  certainly  are  successful,  have  not  yet 
been  extended  sufficiently.  What  is  now  want- 
ed to  give  these  Southern  counties  their  des- 
tined place  in  wealth  and  population,  is  that 
they  shall  so  develop  their  distinctive  industries 
as  to  virtually  control  the  world's  markets.  To- 
ward this  goal  the  united  efforts  of  whole  com- 
munities must  be  directed.  Let  us  suppose,  for 
instance,  that  after  years  of  struggle  and  in- 
tense, but  temporary,  rivalries,  the  best  horti- 
cultural products  of  each  separate  valley,  dis- 
trict, colony,  or  county,  gain  a  world-wide  rep- 
utation. One  place  will  grow  what  are  con- 
fessedly the  best  oranges;  another,  the  best 
lemons;  a  third,  the  choicest  limes;  a  fourth, 
will  be  an  olive  center.  Here  fresh  fruits  will 
be  a  specialty;  there,  dried  fruits,  such  as 
prunes  and  apricots.  Canneries  will  exist  every- 
where, but  a  few  will  take  rank  as  putting  up 
the  best  flavored  fruits.  A  few  spots  will  fur- 
nish the  costliest  brands  of  raisins,  surpassing 
even  the  best  Malagas.  Of  course,  by  the  time 
these  places  of  peculiar  excellence  for  fruits  are 
discovered,  and  their  fame  sent  abroad,  there 
will  be  thousands  of  acres  of  high-grade  fruit 
lands  occupied.  Before  the  half  a  dozen  vine- 
yards that  will  produce  the  diamond  drops  of 
Chateau  Laffitte  have  been  found,  the  sunny 
slopes  for  leagues  will  be  clad  in  royal  purple 
of  autumn  vintages  each  year.  In  brief,  the 


proper  development  of  Southern  California's 
horticultural  interests  must  come  in  part  from 
the  ardent  devotion  of  each  community  to  that 
which  it  can  grow  best,  until  the  great  mer- 
chants of  the  world  are  forced  to  come  here 
to  bid  upon  our  products. 

When  the  Nicaragua  ship-canal  is  completed, 
let  us  hope  that  Riverside  can  load  ships  with 
oranges,  San  Diego  with  lemons,  Sierra  Madre 
with  limes,  San  Gabriel  with  pomegranates  and 
guavas,  Pasadena  with  canned  fruits,  citrons, 
jellies,  and  marmalades,  Ventura  with  apricots, 
Santa  Barbara  with  olives,  essences,  and  per- 
fumes, Anaheim  and  Cucamonga  with  casks  of 
wine.  The  list  grows  too  long.  There  are  fifty 
other  places,  of  musical  names  and  ardent  am- 
bitions, worthy  rivals  with  each  of  those  we 
have  named. 

Culturists  of  semi -tropic  fruit  are  too  apt  to 
talk  eloquently  about  the  London  and  Conti- 
nental market.  Beyond  a  doubt  the  natural 
growth  of  the  United  States  will  make  it  hard 
to  fully  supply  the  markets  of  the  great  Ameri- 
can cities.  But  this  is  precisely  the  task  set  be- 
fore us  at  present.  The  American  people  must 
drink  Californian  wines,  and  eat  Californian 
canned  and  dried  fruits,  figs,  raisins,  jams,  jel- 
lies, crystallized  fruits,  and  delicate  confections 
of  innumerable  sorts.  The  quality  of  these 
products  must  be  so  unimpeachable,  and  the 
business  energy  displayed  in  their  introduction 
so  great,  that  no  other  State  can  successfully 
compete  with  us.  Nor  is  this  an  exaggerated 
hope.  Soil,  climate,  and  location  combine  to 
make  the  semi -tropic  fruit  center  of  the  world 
in  Southern  California.  The  time  may  come 
when  the  table -lands  of  Mexico  and  Central 
America  will  be  rivals  in  certain  fruits,  but  for 
most  of  that  region  coffee  and  other  plants  not 
successful  here  are  best  adapted.  There  is  less 
danger  from  that  direction  than  people  imag- 
ine. Orange  groves  are  not  planted  in  a  day, 
nor  will  New  England  colonies  choose  waste 
wildernesses  under  a  foreign  flag  when  they  can 
live  in  Southern  California  on  the  border  lands 
of  two  climatic  zones,  and  grow  in  the  same 
field  apples  and  lemons,  pines  and  palms,  snow- 
drops and  camellias. 

Now,  much  of  this,  to  one  who  is  unac- 
quainted with  the  sober  prose  of  horticulture, 
may  seem  like  a  mere  fragment  of  exuberant 
optimism.  Few  men  have  yet  dared  to  print 
what  they  believe  to  be  fair  estimates  of  the 
future  wealth  of  California  from  this  class  of 
products.  The  total,  after  all  possible  deduc- 
tions, is  so  enormous  as  to  stagger  belief.  Six 
thousand  acres  of  vines  in  Los  Angeles  County 
are  said  to  have  produced  a  crop  worth  $1,000,- 
ooo  last  year,  and  the  vineyards  as  yet  planted 


448 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


scarcely  make  a  showing  in  the  wide  areas 
which  might  be  devoted  to  this  industry.  In 
the  whole  State  there  are  now  sixty -five  thou- 
sand acres  of  vineyards,  besides  those  planted 
this  season,  but  only  a  small  part  of  this  acre- 
age is  yet  in  full  bearing.  It  is  thought  that 
forty  million  acres  of  land  in  California  is  fit 
for  vineyard  purposes.  Much  of  this  can  be 
used  for  other  fruits,  also ;  some  of  it  is  too  dry 
for  anything  but  grapes.  The  phylloxera  has 
not  yet  been  found  in  the  southern  counties,  and 
may  be  kept  out  for  an  indefinite  period  by 
united  action  on  the  part  of  those  interested. 
Olive  orchards  have  paid  at  the  rate  of  $1,000 
per  acre,  and  the  quantity  produced  in  the  State 
is  only  a  drop  in  the  bucket— not  enough  yet 
to  be  quoted  in  a  market  report.  The  young 
man  who  will  plant  out  an  olive  grove  will  never 
regret  his  action.  It  is  one  of  the  safest,  most 
permanent  branches  of  horticulture.  Decidu- 
ous fruits,  considered  as  a  class,  are  of  equal 
importance  with  the  famed  citrian  beauties. 
Pears  for  Eastern  shipment,  and  peaches,  nec- 
tarines, plums,  and  apricots  for  canning,  are 
not  least  among  the  great  coming  industries. 
The  whole  subject  must  be  dismissed  with  the 
remark  that  there  is  land  enough  and  energy 
enough  in  this  State  to  raise  the  fruit  supply  of 
a  continent.  The  divisions  of  this  fascinating 
field  of  horticulture  are  so  numerous  that  each 
man  may  choose  that  branch  best  adapted  to 
his  tastes,  and  develop  it  into  its  fullest  results. 
And  we  may  confidently  look  for  scientific 
horticultural  triumphs  in  Southern  California. 
Some  are  already  evident;  more  may  be  ex- 
pected. New  varieties  of  fruit  will  be  produced, 
and  new  methods  of  culture  established.  We 
shall  have  hundreds  and  thousands  of  enthusi- 
asts to  make  patient  experiments  and  report 
results  to  the  world  at  large.  There  will  be 
new  horticultural  journals,  or  the  old  ones  must 
waken  into  newer  life,  keeping  step  with  the 
new  era.  Looking  upon  the  many  signs  of 
horticultural  progress  already  shown,  the  day- 
dawn  is  so  bright  that  no  joy  is  misplaced,  no 
enthusiasm  foolish. 

This  coming  land  of  Southern  California  is 
to  be  a  land  of  almost  ideal  homes.  We  shall 
leave  to  the  northwest,  sea -like  with  its  prai- 
ries reaching  to  the  Arctic  shores,  the  league- 
long  wheat-fields  of  the  future ;  the  ancient  buf- 
falo ranges  of  the  Rockies  must  become  the  cat- 
tle-producing centers  of  the  continent,  and  grow 
black  with  their  stormy  herds;  Arizona,  New 
Mexico,  Utah,  Colorado,  may  pour  out  their 
precious  metals,  and  build  up  mining  cities 
greater  than  Freiberg  and  Swansea — all  these 
are  peaceful  victories  of  our  brother -men  and 
fellow-citizens,  and  everywhere,  over  the  regions 


we  have  named,  there  will  assuredly  be  quiet 
hamlets,  and  busy  cities,  and  happy  homes. 
But  for  us  of  California,  north  and  south,  and 
wherever  horticulture,  the  fair  goddess  who  is 
making  the  world  young  once  more,  is  crowned 
as  queen  and  welcomed  as  friend,  there  are  to 
be  homes  for  rich  and  poor.  Whole  communi- 
ties of  men  shall  rest,  each  one  under  his  own 
orange  tree,  and  blessed  in  his  own  garden. 
Thus,  in  our  own  way,  we  are  solving  a  prob- 
lem which  has  perplexed  the  world.  We  are 
shaping  a  reply  to  warrior,  and  social  reformer, 
and  nihilist. 

When,  under  the  system  of  intensive  horti- 
culture which  is  being  developed  in  Southern 
California,  a  person  can  live  in  peace  and  com- 
fort, and  support  his  family  on  ten  acres  of 
land,  the  suburban  life  is  made  possible  for 
thousands.  Intellectual  culture  and  all  the  re- 
finements of  life  must  flourish  in  such  commu- 
nities. Here  the  arts  and  sciences  will  pros- 
per ;  here  temples  of  white  marble  will  be  built, 
and  filled  with  worshipers  ages  hence.  Let  us 
hope  that  in  Southern  California  there  will  be 
no  million-peopled  metropolis,  crime-laden,  ter- 
ror-haunted by  specters  of  infamy,  and  shaken 
by  thousand  -  spindled  machineries.  May  her 
fair  villages  and  towns  grow  to  be  still  fairer 
cities,  and  extend  their  realm  of  gardens  con- 
tinually wider  until  the  suburbs  of  one  melt 
imperceptibly  into  another ;  until  the  circuit  of 
the  year  shall  be  fragrant  with  roses,  white  with 
miles  of  magnolias ;  until  sweet -faced  children 
and  glad  lovers  walk  through  avenues  of  palms, 
arecas,  and  auricarias ;  and  until  it  becomes  a 
land  to  which  pilgrims  journey  from  the  con- 
fines of  the  world,  forgetting  the  princely  capi- 
tals of  Europe.  This  future  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  people  of  California.  Faith,  toil,  and  pa- 
tience must  make  it  real.  The  foundations 
have  been  nobly  laid  by  people  whom  we  de- 
light to  honor,  brave,  silver-haired  heroes  yet 
with  us.  Let  the  young  men  and  maidens  of 
the  State  go  forward  to  carve  the  pillars,  raise 
the  arches,  and,  in  shining  alcoves,  place  the 
statues  of  peace  and  plenty,  of  hope,  love,  and 
purity. 

This  California  of  which  I  dream  as  best- 
loved  of  earthly  paradises,  in  these  coming 
years,  is  enough  to  move  the  dullest  heart  to 
fervor.  It  is  a  glorious  empire,  as  yet  undevel- 
oped, from  that  southern  city  on  the  hills,  where 
the  San  Diegans  wait  for  the  treasure -ships  of 
Cathay  and  the  steel  giants  of  Boston's  rail- 
road, to  where  the  herders  of  Modoc  corral  their 
cattle  on  the  shores  of  Eagle  Lake,  and  the 
light -house  keepers  of  rain-swept  Mendocino 
trim  their  savior -lamps.  Three-quarters  of  a 
million,  all  told,  are  we,  on  these  western 


THE  PARISH  PRIMARIES. 


449 


shores,  keeping  the  borders  of  a  continent.  In 
unity,  in  friendship,  in  brotherly  affection,  these 
fifty  counties  of  this  imperial  State  should  be 
linked  each  with  each,  and  with  the  central 
thought  of  best  developing  our  realm  for  those 
who  are  to  take  our  places. 

If  it  be  true  that  there  is  springing  up  in  the 
southern  counties  of  California  a  sentiment  in 
favor  of  dividing  the  State  at  some  future  time, 
it  is  none  the  less  true  that  the  people  of  north- 
ern and  central  California  are  realizing  more 
and  more,  year  after  year,  the  beauty  and 
strength  of  the  tropic  south -land.  Our  love 
for  it  widens  and  deepens  as  our  knowledge  of 
its  virtues  increases.  Only  when  convinced 
that  a  separation  is  best  for  the  interests  of 
these  counties  would  the  judgment  of  thought- 
ful men  approve  such  a  step.  The  time  may 
come  when  separate  State  governments  will 
seem  desirable.  But,  without  entering  into 
any  lengthy  argument  upon  this  complex  and 
highly  interesting  subject,  our  view  at  least  may 
be  presented. 

This  France -like  empire,  named  a  State,  is, 
in  its  present  form  and  location,  admirably 
suited  to  be  the  commercial  autocrat  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean  and  the  countries  that  border 
upon  it.  If  we  can  but  develop  a  perfect  friend- 
liness between  the  various  sections  of  the  State, 
and  work  together  harmoniously,  our  capital- 
ists will  more  and  more  control  the  forests, 
fisheries,  and  fur  trade  of  the  North,  and  the 
mines  of  the  South,  until  we  draw  tribute  from 
the  shores  of  the  whole  continent,  from  Cape 
Horn  to  the  Aleutians,  and  from  Saghalien  to 
Madagascar,  That  much  of  a  future,  if  we  are 
true  to  our  better  natures,  one  may  perceive 
dimly  looming  up  from  the  slowly  shaping 
present.  But  first,  before  any  of  these  outer 
conquests  are  won,  we  must  settle  certain  fun- 
damental problems,  which,  if  we  do  not  sub- 
stantially vanquish,  it  will  be  the  worse  for  us 


in  the  end.  Plain  enough  it  is  that  if  South- 
ern California  be  governed  well  and  cheaply, 
and  be  shown  sympathy  and  helped  effectively, 
she  will  stay  by  us  forever. 

Now,  after  all  that  has  been  said  in  this  ar- 
ticle about  the  future  colonies  of  that  region, 
it  remains  to  be  stated  that  the  problem  of 
water-supplies  and  riparian  rights  lies  the  near- 
est to  the  needs  of  the  people.  Nor  is  this  a 
problem  of  the  southern  counties  only,  for,  in 
one  form  or  another,  it  has  general  signifi- 
cance. There  are  hardly  half  a  dozen  coun- 
ties in  the  State  where  the  use  of  water  from 
springs,  wells,  or  streams,  is  not  at  times  de- 
sirable. I  have  seen  irrigation  ditches  in  Trin- 
ity and  Shasta,  and  along  the  foothills  on  both 
sides  of  the  upper  Sacramento.  Semi -tropic 
California  needs  a  system  of  catchment  reser- 
voirs, on  a  large  scale,  similar  to  those  in  use 
in  India.  Sub -irrigation  must  be  used  in  many 
cases.  This  work  should  be  taken  up  by  the 
people  of  the  whole  State,  and  considered  con- 
jointly with  the  debris  problem,  each  being  of 
immediate  and  unspeakable  importance. 

If  we  face  these  twin  problems,  strong  with 
a  sense  of  our  own  resources,  not  faltering,  nor 
shrinking,  nor  dividing  our  dominion,  I  am 
sure  that  England's  earlier  empire  of  the  At- 
lantic will  be  but  a  type  of  our  later  supremacy 
over  the  Pacific  coasts  and  islands.  But  final- 
ly, if  our  southern  kinsfolk  think  they  must  be 
a  separate  people,  we  will  not  worry,  nor  vitu- 
perate, but  bid  them  God -speed,  and  fairly  di- 
vide our  household  possessions.  Whatever 
happens,  they  are  blood  of  our  blood,  equal  in- 
heritors of  name  and  fame.  In  their  lovely 
homes  and  wide,  most  musical  cities,  may  art 
and  literature  win  the  brightest  triumphs  of 
American  thought.  May  their  citrus  groves 
and  warm,  welcoming  friendships,  then,  as  now, 
be  an  unfailing  charm  and  perpetual  blessing 
for  tourists  from  Northern  California. 

CHARLES  H.  SHINN. 


THE   PARISH    PRIMARIES. 


Rev.  John  Ellis  was  the  Rector  of  St.  Paul's 
Church  at  Newhall,  California.  This  old  gen- 
tleman had  an  abiding  confidence  in  his  fel- 
low-men which  amounted  to  a  weakness,  and 
a  hatred  of  politics  which  amounted  to  a  mania. 

To  his  theological  mind  election  day  was  a 
dreadful  visitation  of  hell,  and  he  would  as  soon 
have  thought  of  eloping  with  the  leading  so- 
prano of  his  choir  as  of  exercising  his  rights  as 


an  American  citizen  and  voting  even  at  the 
county  election  for  a  school  trustee. 

With  all  these  peculiarities  of  early  educa- 
tion and  training,  the  old  gentleman  was  thor- 
oughly honest  in  his  views,  and  did  not  hesitate 
to  openly  proclaim  them  from  the  pulpit.  Still, 
his  blunt  remarks  on  these  subjects  did  not  in 
the  least  offend  those  of  his  congregation  who 
held  opposite  views. 


45° 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Other  agencies  were  at  work,  however,  which 
made  him  unpopular  with  a  parish  over  which 
he  had  presided  faithfully  for  fifteen  years. 

Rev.  Mr.  Ellis  had  somehow  got  to  be  too 
.commonplace  for  Newhall.  His  flock  began 
to  get  wearied  of  his  discourses,  although  not 
one  in  twenty  could  have  repeated  a  single  one 
of  his  texts,  of  which  he  had  at  least  thirty. 
To  them  the  bread  of  life  which  he  had  admin- 
istered that  he  might  keep  his  own  larder 
stocked  began  to  have  a  moldy  smell.  In  short, 
it  was  time  that  a  fresh  hand  was  at  the  helm. 

A  number  of  busy-bodies  who  had  determined 
on  his  going  set  about  the  work  of  undermin- 
ing his  character  in  the  most  business-like  man- 
ner possible. 

One  day  he  performed  the  funeral  rites  for  a 
poor  outcast  woman,  and  went  so  far  as  to  ex- 
press the  opinion,  as  he  stood  over  her  coffin, 
that  beneath  the  sheltering  arms  of  Christ 
there  was  still  room  for  the  soul  of  the  depart- 
ed. This  expression  of  confidence  in  the  infi- 
nite forgiveness  of  God  went  through  half  a 
dozen  mouths,  and  presently  passed  current  to 
the  effect  that  the  Rector  considered  the  out- 
cast a  good  deal  more  likely  to  be  saved  than  a 
large  majority  of  women  in  his  own  parish.  So 
the  wretched  mongers  of  scandal  mined  and 
sapped  the  character  of  the  poor  man  until  the 
whole  structure  was  ready  to  fall  to  pieces  at  a 
touch.  While  pouring  hot  shot  at  the  world, 
the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  he  little  realized  that 
his  worst  enemies  were  in  his  own  camp. 

It  was  determined  at  the  annual  Easter  elec- 
tion to  request  Mr.  Ellis  to  resign. 

There  happened  to  live  in  the  town  of  New- 
hall  a  politician  named  Seth  Johnson,  by  com- 
mon consent  called  "Boss  Johnson,"  by  reason 
of  his  generally  acknowledged  ability  to  connu- 
biate  in  politics  and  successfully  conduct  the 
ceremonies  incidental  to  the  primary  elections. 
His  "slate  factory"  was  an  establishment  which 
inspired  respect,  and  the  wares  he  turned  out, 
either  for  city  or  county  purposes,  were  "hard 
to  smash." 

Johnson  had  a  habit  of  keeping  an  eye  and 
ear  open  to  the  drift  of  passing  events,  and  the 
job  to  oust  the  Rector  of  St.  Paul's  had  not  es- 
caped his  notice.  Like  the  Melter  Moss  of 
stage  tradition,  he  loved  to  be  able  to  spoil 
somebody's  little  game.  The  idea  of  taking  an 
active  hand  in  a  church  election  had  a  novelty 
about  it  that  pleased  Johnson  mightily,  and  he 
rubbed  his  hands  together  at  the  prospect  of 
such  diversion.  The  regular  county  election 
would  not  come  off  for  a  year  yet,  and  he  must 
do  something  to  keep  his  hand  in. 

Having  made  up  his  mind,  he  proceeded  im- 
mediately to  business  according  to  his  usual 


custom,  and  went  straight  to  the  Rector's  stu- 
dio. When  Rev.  Mr.  Ellis  opened  his  door  in 
response  to  the  ring,  and  saw  the  hardened  and 
disreputable  politician,  he  was  at  first  overcome 
with  astonishment,  but  recovered  sufficiently  to 
invite  him  in,  supposing  that  perhaps  a  funeral 
was  on  the  tapis.  There  was  probably  no  man 
in  the  town  toward  whom  the  Rector  of  St. 
Paul's  entertained  a  more  deeply  rooted  dislike 
than  Boss  Johnson,  not  realizing  that  politi- 
cians, like  preachers,  are  apt  to  be  foully  slan- 
dered and  that  reputations  are  more  artificial 
than  real. 

After  opening  the  ball  with  a  few  preliminary 
remarks  on  the  prospect  of  rain  before  morning, 
the  "Boss"  proceeded  directly  to  the  business 
in  hand. 

"Mr.  Ellis,  I  think  some  of  joining  your 
church,  and  as  I  am  not  much  acquainted  with 
the  organization,  I  thought  I'd  just  step  in  and 
gather  some  information  on  the  subject." 

The  Rector  was  almost  dazed  by  the  frank 
and  outspoken  utterance  of  Mr.  Johnson. 

"The  door  of  the  tabernacle  is  always  open, 
and  the  vilest  sinner  may  enter." 

"You  will  understand,  perhaps,  that  I  haven't 
been  much  of  a  religious  man  of  late  years,  but 
I  have  a  family.  My  wife  likes  your  church, 
and  I  want  to  send  my  little  girls  to  Sunday- 
school." 

"A  very  commendable  procedure,  Mr.  John- 
son, I  am  sure.  The  church  alone  can  furnish 
them  with  the  consolation  of  true  religion." 

"My  idea  exactly.  Now,  if  I  join  your  party 
— that  is,  your  church — and  subscribe  to  the 
constitution  and  by-laws,  will  that  make  me  eli- 
gible?" 

"Do  you  wish  to  become  a  full  member  by 
the  rites  of  baptism  and  confirmation?" 

"Don't  you  let  a  man  come  in  on  trial  for  a 
year  or  so — let  him  sort  o'  feel  his  way?  Can't 
I  just  take  a  pew  and  listen  to  the  sermons? 
Can't  I  vote  at  the  church  elections  unless  I 
hold  all  the  degrees?" 

"Ah,  in  that  case  any  man  who  pays  his  pew 
rent  can  vote  at  the  Easter  election." 

At  this  information  the  eye  of  the  Boss  bright- 
ened, and  he  began  to  see  his  way  ahead. 

"  I  don't  want  to  do  things  with  a  rush,  Mr. 
Ellis.  I'll  just  take  a  pew  for  a  starter,  and  go 
a  little  slow  at  first  until  I  get  confidence  in  the 
game.  That'll  do  me  for  the  first  year.  I've 
always  been  in  the  habit  of  having  a  little  some- 
thing to  say  in  the  management  of  any  organi- 
zation I'm  connected  with.  I  like  to  feel  that  I 
have  a  hand — a  little  of  the  'say  so,'  as  it  were." 

"I  am  glad  to  see  you  take  such  a  commend- 
able interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  parish.  I 
never  like  to  see  men  lukewarm  in  the  service." 


THE  PARISH  PRIMARIES. 


"Perhaps  I  can  induce  some  more  of  the 
boys  to  join  the  ranks.  Just  let  me  know  the 
charges  on  some  of  your  second-class  pews. 
We'll  put  up  with  a  few  back-seats  for  a  spell. 
We  don't  want  to  crowd  ourselves  to  the  front, 
you  know." 

"People  are  not  obliged  to  pay  for  the  lower 
pews  at  all,  but  any  contributions  will  be  ac- 
ceptable." 

"All  these  contributors  vote  at  the  regular 
election,  Mr.  Ellis?" 

"All  vote  who  wish,  Mr.  Johnson." 

"When  do  the  primaries  come  off?" 

"Eh?" 

"That  is,  the  election?" 

"In  two  weeks.  It  is  only  a  formality.  Of 
course,  there  is  no  opposition.  I  am  elected 
year  after  year  by  a  unanimous  vote.  We  have 
none  of  the  fierce,  and  I  may  say  unseemly, 
struggles  which  characterize  your  political  elec- 
tions. Heaven  forbitt  that  the  church  should 
ever  be  disgraced  by  such  unchristian  strife ! 
The  unscrupulous  connubiations  of  worldly  pol- 
itics never  find  a  footing  in  the  tabernacle  of 
the  Lord." 

The  Boss  smiled  a  broad  and  continuous 
smile  at  this  speech,  and  put  down  a  ten-dollar 
piece  for  his  pew,  after  which  he  bade  his  new 
spiritual  guide  good  evening,  and  as  he  left  was 
shaken  warmly  by  the  hand. 

Inside  of  half  an  hour,  Boss  Johnson  was 
closeted  with  a  half  dozen  of  his  political  hench- 
men in  the  private  card -room  of  Jack's  Ex- 
change, and  there  outlined  his  plan  to  his  as- 
tonished listeners  for  capturing  the  election  of 
St.  Paul's  Church,  and  running  the  parochial 
machinery  "their  way."  The  shout  of  laughter 
which  greeted  the  proposal  can  well  be  imag- 
ined. The  idea  tickled  the  fancies  of  these 
men  immensely. 

"Let's  don't  bother  with  the  /election,  Boss. 
Turn  loose  the  sack  and  buy  up  a  majority  of 
the  vestry ;  that's  the  business,"  said  one  of  the 
group,  to  whom  Johnson  always  intrusted  the 
placing  of  money  where  its  fruits  would  assume 
tangible  shape. 

"  No  corruption,  Billy.  This  is  a  church  elec- 
tion, and  the  vestry  come  high — awful  high." 

It  was  finally  decided  that  twenty  men  should 
take  pews  in  the  church,  pay  their  slip -rent, 
and  vote  at  the  Easter  election,  Johnson  fur- 
nishing the  necessary  coin. 

On  the  following  Sunday,  the  worthy  pastor 
was  astonished  to  see  such  an  influx  of  the 
"worldly"  element  come  to  hear  him  preach, 
and  delighted  with  the  marked  attention  paid 
to  his  discourse.  On  the  following  Saturday 
evening  the  election  took  place  in  the  church. 
The  opposers  of  the  Rector  were  out  in  full 


force,  and  confident  of  being  able  to  "oust  the 
present  administrator."  The  Johnson  crowd 
were  also  there  "well  bearded,"  except  one,  who 
had  been  wounded  in  a  scrimmage  over  a  min- 
ing claim,  but  he  sent  a  proxy  in  due  form. 

After  the  leader  of  the  ousting  faction  made 
the  vestry  nominations,  Mr.  Johnson  rose,  and, 
in  a  solemn  voice,  as  if  addressing  a  county 
convention,  said : 

"Gentlemen,  I  rise  to  place  in  nomination 
five  men,  whose  course  in  standing  pat  with 
the  regular  straight  ticket  has  always  been  the 
one  prime  object  of  their  lives.  They  have  al- 
ways bowed  to  the  deliberations  of  the  caucus, 
and  never  voted  but  one  ticket  since  they  were 
— baptized.  They  never  bucked  or  kicked,  gen- 
tlemen. I  mean  that  whatever  was  the  result  of 
good  square  work,  and  had  the  stamp  of  the 
church's  approval  on  its  face,  was  current  coin 
with  them.  We  propose  to  organize  this  church 
on  the  solid  foundation  of  free  speech,  a  fair  bal- 
lot, and  good  will  to  men.  I  may  have  slightly 
digressed  from  some  of  the  points  in  issue,  but 
you  all  know  what  I  mean.  We  will,  after 
choosing  our  leader  and  officers  for  the  ensu- 
ing year,  fall  to  work  with  a  will,  and  plant  the 
banners  of  the  true  faith  on  the  outer  walls  of 
every  sect  that  grows.  I  think  that  if  we  pull 
together  this  year  we  can  run  the  Presbyterians 
out  of  the  burg  by  next  fall,  and  close  up  the 
mortgage  on  the  old  Methodist  Theology  Works 
by  Christmas." 

Quelling  the  symptoms  of  applause,  which 
seemed  about  to  come  from  his  forces,  Johnson 
made  his  vestry  nominations,  and  when  the 
ballot  was  taken  elected  them  by  twelve  ma- 
jority. He  then  took  the  chair,  declared  the 
proceedings  unanimous,  reflected  the  old  pas- 
tor by  a  viva  voce  vote,  and  raised  his  salary 
by  the  same  course — all  inside  of  five  minutes. 
The  astonishment  of  Mr.  Ellis  was  equaled  only 
by  the  chagrin  of  his  enemies,  who  had  so  sig- 
nally failed  in  carrying  their  plans  into  effect. 

After  this  little  episode,  there  was  naturally 
enough  somewhat  of  a  falling  off  in  attendance 
among  the  politicians  who  had  temporarily 
joined  St.  Paul's;  but  Johnson  took  a  profound 
interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  church,  finally  be- 
coming a  vestryman,  and  one  of  the  most  active 
members  of  the  flock.  He  so  continued  until 
the  death  of  the  Rector,  and,  although  he  held 
the  good  man's  memory  in  the  deepest  rever- 
ence, neither  this  nor  the  services  of  the  church 
ever  had  sufficient  effect  upon  him  to  wean  him 
from  the  habits  of  worldliness ;  and  to  this  day 
he  delights  to  pack  a  primary  or  put  up  a  com- 
bination to  capture  a  county  convention  as  of 
old,  not  neglecting  to  take  an  active  part  in  the 
parish  elections. 


452 


THE   CAL1FORN1AN. 


For  the  last  seven  years  he  never  failed  to 
have  the  vestry  his  way,  and,  according  to  the 
more  generally  accepted  theory,  he  will  con- 
tinue to  maintain  his  control  as  long  as  the 
parish  shall  exist.  He  thinks  that  as  he  ad- 


vances in  years,  and  retires  from  the  turmoil 
and  excitement  of  active  political  life,  he  will 
find  the  annual  church  election  sufficiently  ex- 
hilarating to  afford  the  pastime  which  his  spirit 
craves.  SAM  DAVIS. 


PARTED. 

Can  I  believe,  what  yet  mine  eyes  have  seen, 

That  we  are  parted  who  were  once  so  near? 
That  far  behind  us  lie  the  meadows  green, 

Where  we  no  more  may  greet  the  early  year, 
And  praise  the  dewy  crocus -buds,  while  yet 

More  happy  in  each  other  than  in  spring? 
If  I  remember,  how  should  you  forget, 

And  leave  me  lonely  in  my  wandering? 

Can  I  believe,  what  yet  mine  ears  have  heard, 

That  severed  is  our  sweet  companionship? 
An  autumn  wind  among  the  woodlands  stirred 

And  blew  your  kisses  from  my  grieving  lip; 
Time  stepped  between  us,  and  unclasped  our  hands 

That  reach  in  vain  across  the  widening  days ; 
Life  met  our  wistful  looks  with  stern  commands, 

And  led  us  coldly  down  divided  ways. 

Can  I  believe,  what  yet  my  heart  has  felt, 

That  never  more  our  paths  will  be  the  same? 
That  even  now  your  joyous  musings  melt 

To  tenderer  longing  at  a  dearer  name? 
Then  say  farewell,  since  that  must  be  the  word. 

In  life's  strange  journey  I  may  yet  rejoice, 
But  still  through  all  its  voices  will  be  heard 

The  lingering  echo  of  your  vanished  voice. 

KATHARINE  LEE  BATES. 


WHAT    IS   A   UNIVERSITY? 


The  different  uses  of  the  terms,  "  university," 
"college,"  "professional  school,"  etc.,  are  one 
indication  of  the  different  views  as  to  the  'whole 
question  of  university  education.  In  Germany 
these  terms  mean  one  thing,  in  England  an- 
other, and  in  this  country  any  one  of  several 
different  things.  Underlying  these  different 
uses,  however,  there  is  discoverable  an  effort 
to  express  a  more  or  less  clearly  recognized  dis- 
tinction, which,  in  accordance  with  the  best 
usage  in  this  country,  may  be  conveyed  by 
some  such  definitions  as  follow: — a  college  is 
an  organized  body  of  teachers  and  students, 


collected  together  for  instruction  and  study, 
having  special  reference  on  the  part  of  the  pu- 
pils to  the  attainment  of  a  complete  liberal 
education ;  a  professional  school  is  such  an  or- 
ganized body,  having  special  reference  on  the 
part  of  the  pupils  to  the  acquirement  of  a  pro- 
fession ;  a  university  is  a  union  of  such  organ- 
izations, whatever  their  plan  or  purpose,  and 
whether  few  or  many.  The  distinction,  then, 
between  a  college  and  a  professional  school  is 
one  of  aim  on  the  part  of  the  pupils.  The  aim 
of  a  college  is  chiefly  educative,  or  in  the  di- 
rection of  an  education :  the  aim  of  a  profes- 


WHAT  IS  A   UNIVERSITY? 


453 


sional  school  is  chiefly  occupative,  or  in  the 
direction  of  an  occupation. 

In  the  University  of  California  certain  of  the 
professional  schools  (those,  namely,  at  Berke- 
ley) are  also  called  "colleges,"  as  well  as  the 
College  of  Letters,  which  is  the  only  one  an- 
swering to  what  is  usually  so  called  in  this 
country.  That  is  to  say,  the  College  of  Letters 
is  a  body  of  professors,  instructors,  and  stu- 
dents, with  a  four  years'  course  of  instruction 
having  for  its  aim  the  attainment  of  a  liberal 
education.  While  the  so-called  "scientific  col- 
leges" have  courses  which  are  chiefly  occupa- 
tive  in  their  aim,  answering  to  those  of  what 
are  elsewhere  called  professional  schools,  they 
are,  in  fact,  parallel  to  the  schools  of  medicine 
and  law ;  except  that  the  students  of  these  lat- 
ter (unfortunately,  perhaps,  for  those  profes- 
sions) do  not  necessarily  spend  any  time  in 
previous  collegiate  residence  and  instruction, 
whereas  the  students  of  the  "scientific  colleges" 
in  their  first  two  years  of  residence  share  some 
of  the  studies  of  the  College  of  Letters.  It 
should  be  added  that,  the  faculties  of  the  Uni- 
versity being  by  no  means  full,  some  of  the 
professors  in  the  various  professional  schools 
give  instruction  to  the  students  of  the  College 
of  Letters,  and  vice  versd. 

The  origin  of  the  University  of  California 
may  be  said  to  date  back  to  the  first  constitu- 
tional convention,  in  1849.  The  "argonauts," 
apparently  seeing,  after  all,  where  the  true 
"golden  fleece"  was  to  be  looked  for,  provided 
expressly  in  the  Constitution  for  the  establish- 
ment of  "a  university  for  the  promotion  of  lit- 
erature, the  arts,  and  sciences."  Thus  liberal 
and  broad,  from  the  very  beginning,  was  the 
plan  of  the  University.  The  next  step  was  the 
grant  by  Congress  of  seventy -two  sections  of 
land  for  the  support  of  the  institution  thus  plan- 
ned. The  same  Congress  also  gave  ten  sections 
of  land  to  provide  suitable  buildings.  In  1862, 
Congress  made  a  third  grant  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  acres  of  land,  to  furnish 
funds  for  (in  the  language  of  this  so-called 
"Morrill  Bill")  the  maintenance  of  "liberal  and 
practical  education."  The  bill  stipulates  that 
there  shall  be  maintained  "at  least  one  college 
where  the  leading  object  shall  be,  without 
excluding  other  scientific  and  classical  studies, 
and  including  military  tactics,  to  teach  such 
branches  of  learning  as  are  related  to  agricult- 
ure and  the  mechanic  arts,  in  such  manner  as 
the  Legislature  may  prescribe,  in  order  to  pro- 
mote the  liberal  and  practical  education  of  the 
industrial  classes  in  the  several  pursuits  and 
professions  of  life."  Nothing  could  be  more 
generously  comprehensive  than  the  language  of 
this  "Morrill  Bill,"  securing  as  it  does  that  the 

Vol.  III.- 29. 


children  of  the  industrial  classes  shall  have  op- 
portunities to  prepare  for  all  the  different  pro- 
fessions in  life,  and  that  they  shall  be  offered  a 
full  liberal  education,  including  all  the  scientific 
and  classical  studies.  It  wisely  guards,  also, 
against  any  narrow  interpretation  of  agricult- 
ure and  the  mechanic  arts,  as  subjects  of  study, 
by  requiring  not  the  teaching  of  mere  manual 
dexterities,  but  the  "branches  of  learning,"  the 
scientific  facts  and  principles,  relating  to  these 
subjects.  The  College  of  Agriculture  in  the 
University  fulfills  these  requirements  by  its  di- 
rect instruction  and  by  means  of  its  connection 
with  the  courses  of  the  other  professional 
schools,  and  of  the  College  of  Letters. 

The  present  beautiful  domain  of  the  Univer- 
sity at  Berkeley  was  a  gift  from  the  old  Col- 
lege of  California,  which  at  the  establishment 
of  the  University  was  merged  into  it,  with  a 
sole  stipulation  as  to  the  breadth  and  grade  of 
the  proposed  institution,  which  must  include, 
among  other  things,  "an  academical  college  of 
the  same  grade  and  with  courses  equal  to  those 
of  Eastern  colleges." 

The  liberal  intention  of  all  these  successive 
plans  and  gifts  was  well  carried  out  by  the  Act 
of  Legislature  incorporating  the  University,  ap- 
proved March  23,  1868,  which  reads  as  follows  : 
"A  State  University  is  hereby  created,  pursu- 
ant to  the  Constitution  of  the  State  of  Califor- 
nia, and  in  order  to  devote  to  the  largest  pur- 
poses of  education  the  [above  Congressional] 

benefaction The  University  shall  have 

for  its  design  to  provide  instruction  and  com- 
plete education  in  all  the  departments  of  sci- 
ence, literature,  art,  industrial  and  professional 
pursuits,  and  general  education,  .  .  .  ."  This 
Act  of  Incorporation  was  accompanied  by  an 
appropriation  of  $200,000. 

All  the  subsequent  gifts  to  the  University 
(and  they  have  been  many,  both  from  public 
and  private  beneficence)  have  been  given  with 
the  understanding  that  the  broad  and  liberal 
plan  of  the  institution  should  not  be  narrowed 
or  interfered  with.  This  understanding  has 
now  become  law,  by  incorporation  in  an  article 
of  the  Constitution,  forever  forbidding  any  in- 
terference with  its  permanent  organization  and 
natural  development. 

Thus,  it  will  be  seen  that  we  have  in  Cali- 
fornia an  institution  of  learning  based  on  an 
unusually  broad  and  substantial  foundation. 
Nothing  could  be  freer  and  wider  than  its  scope, 
and  the  State  has  itself  become  responsible  for 
its  permanence  and  steady  progress.  There 
has  been  in  past  time  some  apprehension  of 
danger  lest  this  broad  intention  should  be  mis- 
understood. Dissatisfaction  was  expressed  by 
one  and  another  person  of  captious  disposition, 


454 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


or  of  eccentric  notions,  and  not  well  acquainted 
with  the  facts  of  its  history,  that  the  whole  Uni- 
versity was  not  turned  into  a  school  for  the  pur- 
suit of  this  or  that  particular  study,  or  occupa- 
tion. Some  ill  informed  persons  asserted  that 
the  "Morrill  Bill"  had  called  for  a  technical 
school  merely,  and,  being  ignorant  that  this 
grant  was  only  one  among  many  sources  of  its 
income,  were  querulous  as  to  the  broad  organ- 
ization of  the  University.  Some  have  thought 
it  should  be  only  a  classical  college;  others 
that  it  should  be  only  a  cluster  of  professional 
schools.  Others,  again,  forgetting  that  the  Uni- 
versity was  an  accomplished  fact,  holding  large 
properties  for  the  expenditure  of  whose  income 
according  to  a  particular  plan  the  State  had  be- 
come responsible,  were  heard  to  declare  their 
doubts  as  to  the  propriety  of  having  any  such 
institution  at  all,  or  any  other  than  sectarian 
methods  of  education.  But  it  is  by  this  time 
pretty  well  understood  what  was  and  must  con- 
tinue to  be  the  comprehensive  plan  of  the  Uni- 
versity ;  and  that  the  only  question  now  is,  how 
best  can  this  plan  be  carried  on  to  complete 
fulfillment?  In  other  words,  the  plan  of  the 
University,  from  its  very  first  inception  in  the 
minds  of  the  argonauts  of  1849,  through  the 
successive  acts  and  appropriations  of  the  Leg- 
islature, and  the  different  Congressional  grants, 
and  the  gifts  of  private  munificence,  has  been 
to  provide — not  a  college  alone,  nor  a  profes- 
sional school  alone,  nor  any  small  cluster  of 
such,  but  a  great  university,  "for  the  promo- 
tion of  literature,  the  arts,  and  sciences;"  for 
"liberal  an4  practical  education ;"  for  "instruc- 
tion and  complete  education  in  all  the  depart- 
ments of  science  and  literature ;"  with  "courses 
equal  to  those  of  Eastern  colleges;"  with  "sci- 
entific and  classical  studies,"  and  with  such 
"branches  of  learning"  as  may  fit  for  "the  sev- 
eral pursuits  and  professions  of  life." 

Not  only  has  the  foundation  of  a  great  insti- 
tution been  thus  wisely  laid,  but  something  of 
the  superstructure  has  been  already  built :  more, 
it  may  be,  than  many  persons  suppose,  unless 
they  have  given  some  attention  to  the  matter. 
The  work  of  building  a  university  is  not  noisy, 
nor  is  its  daily  operation  such  as  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  public.  The  Legislature  has 
carefully  but  constantly  made  appropriations 
for  one  and  another  good  purpose.  There  have 
been  many  large  gifts,  such  as  that  of  Mr.  Har- 
mon of  a  gymnasium  and  audience  room,  that 
of  Mr.  Bacon  of  an  art  building,  and  that  of 
Mr.  Reese  of  $50,000  to  the  library.  The  Re- 
gents have  worked  faithfully,  and  have  made 
few  mistakes,  and  had  few  things  to  undo  and 
do  over  again.  There  are  at  present  eleven 
chairs  filled :  namely,  the  professorships  of  Lat- 


in, Greek,  Mathematics,  English  Language  and 
Literature,  History  and  Political  Economy, 
Physics,  Mechanics,  Geology  and  Natural  His- 
tory, Chemistry,  Agriculture,  and  Engineering 
and  Astronomy.  Besides  the  tutorial  work  of 
additional  instructors  in  these  branches,  there 
is  instruction  in  Rhetoric  and  Logic,  Botany, 
Mineralogy,  Mining  and  Metallurgy,  the  Mod- 
ern Languages  and  Hebrew.  There  are  also 
laboratories,  valuable  apparatus,  collections  in 
natural  history,  and  a  library  of  some  twenty 
thousand  volumes.  The  number  of  students  is 
not  so  large  as  it  would  be  if  there  were  more 
high  schools  and  academies  throughout  the 
State.  But  they  are  earnest  and  vigorous  young 
men  and  women.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  there  is 
not  a  college  community  in  the  United  States 
that  is  more  orderly,  more  moral,  more  earnest- 
ly at  work  than  that  of  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia.* 

Already,  therefore,  a  student  has  large  op- 
portunities opened  to  him  at  Berkeley.  There 
are,  however,  great  gaps  in  the  broad  plan  not 
yet  filled.  Many  chairs  remain  to  be  endowed, 
and  some  important  subjects  of  study  are  not 
yet  at  all  represented  except  in  their  literature. 
There  is  a  fine  opportunity  for  some  man  of 
wealth  and  culture  to  endow  a  professorship  of 
mental  philosophy,  or  one  of  moral  philosophy, 
or  one  of  the  modern  languages,  or  one  of  fine 
art,  or  one  of  the  science  of  government,  or  one 
of  many  other  important  branches.  Not  but 
that  some  of  these  subjects  are  represented  by 
tutorial  work,  but  there  needs  to  be  a  full  pro- 
fessor— the  foremost  man  in  the  country,  if  pos- 
sible, as  the  recognized  head  of  each  of  these 
departments  :  a  man  who  shall  be  known  as  an 
authority  in  his  subject,  and  who  is  pushing  on 
the  progress  of  the  world's  knowledge  in  that 
subject;  having  under  him  as  many  instructors 
as  may  be  necessary  to  assist  him  in  efficient 
work  with  his  pupils. 

Having  said  so  much  of  one  particular  insti- 
tution, let  us  take  up  again  the  general  ques- 
tion :  what  is  a  university  ? 

The  derivation  of  the  word  "university"  is 
often,  but  erroneously,  supposed  to  indicate  the 
universality  of  its  teachings.  The  true  ety- 
mology points  to  the  old  Latin  law  term,  uni- 
versitas,  which  signified  any  corporation  hold- 
ing a  charter  from  the  government  and  there- 
by assuming  an  official  and  permanent  exist- 
ence. The  earliest  institutions  of  learning  were 
not  in  this  sense  universities;  for  whatever 


*  We  are  glad  to  see  by  recent  advices  from  England  that 
Cambridge  University  has  at  last  caught  up  with  the  Universi- 
ties of  California  and  Michigan  on  the  question  of  admitting 
both  sexes  equally.  It  will  not  be  long,  probably,  before  all 
our  principal  American  colleges  are  abreast  of  the  times  on  this 
point. 


WHAT  IS  A   UNIVERSITY? 


455 


powers  were  granted  to  them  were  temporarily 
bestowed  upon  the  individual  men  at  their  head. 
But  when  multitudes  of  youth  and  valuable  ac- 
cumulations of  property  came  to  be  gathered 
together,  the  need  was  felt  of  some  stable  sys- 
tem of  authority.  It  was  not  sufficient  to  grant 
to  certain  individuals  personal  powers  which 
would  expire  at  their  death,  but  a  charter  was 
given  to  the  organization  as  a  permanent  whole, 
a  univcrsitaS)  a  stable  universe,  secured  against 
vicissitudes  of  change,  whatever  men  might 
happen  to  fill  its  offices  and  chairs. 

There  are  evidently  two  aspects  in  which  to 
regard  such  an  organization  :  first,  as  a  place 
for  instruction;  secondly,  as  a  place  for  study 
and  research. 

As  a  place  for  instruction,  a  university  must 
include  opportunities  both  for  a  general  educa- 
tion, and  for  special  and  professional  training. 
It  must  therefore  have,  first  of  all,  and  as  a  nu- 
cleus and  center  for  everything  else,  a  college ; 
thoroughly  equipped,  so  as  to  give  young  men 
and  women  a  complete,  liberal  education.  In 
this  college  there  must  be  instruction  in  every 
one  of  those  great  subjects  which  the  best  edu- 
cational experience  of  the  world  has  found  to  be 
serviceable  for  intellectual  development.  The 
college  is  a  place,  above  all  things,  for  develop- 
ing the  power  of  thought.  Not  so  much  what 
a  man  can  seem,  not  what  he  can  get  and  have 
in  the  world,  but  what  he  can  be — is  the  ques- 
tion here  to  be  determined.  The  studies  and 
exercises  are  chosen  with  reference  to  their 
power  to  produce  the  large  natured,  full-mind- 
ed, forceful-minded  man.  Hence,  among  other 
studies,  the  attention  in  all  colleges  of  the  first 
rank  to  the  Latin,  Greek,  and  English  litera- 
tures: because  these  are  the  three  great  intel- 
lectual peoples  of  the  world ;  and  it  is  by  close 
contact  with  their  greatest  minds  that  one 
learns  what  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  well  points 
out  as  the  important  thing  to  learn — "the  capa- 
bilities and  performances  of  the  human  spirit." 
And  the  college  above  all  holds  fast  to  the  study 
of  philosophy :  because  a  liberal  education  con- 
sists largely  in  the  ability  to  partake  of  and  per- 
petuate the  great  flowing  stream  of  human 
thought. 

The  instruction,  moreover,  should  be  of  the 
highest  quality  in  every  department.  We  have 
called  such  a  college  the  nucleus  of  the  whole 
university,  because  its  chief  aim  is  liberal  edu- 
cation, that  is  to  say  the  building  of  men.  The 
work  of  the  professional  schools  comes  after- 
ward. You  must  first  have  educated  men; 
and  then  lawyers,  physicians,  farmers,  engi- 
neers, and  so  on.  But  the  building  of  men  is 
not  such  a  simple  process,  in  our  complex  mod- 
ern world,  as  it  is  often  conceived  to  be.  It 


must  be  a  large,  as  well  as  a  deep  education. 
There  must  be  many  subjects  of  study.  For 
everything  involves  everything  else.  No  man 
who  knows  only  one  thing,  can  know  even  that ; 
for  at  least  half  its  circumference  is  sure  to  lie 
within  some  other  circle.  Moreover,  there  must 
be  many  teachers.  No  one  mind  is  many-sided 
enough  to  impart  the  greatest  possible  power 
to  another  and  developing  mind.  The  stu- 
dent's education  is  what  he  himself  does ;  and 
what  he  does  will  depend  partly  on  what  sub- 
jects, but  chiefly  on  what  minds  he  is  in  vital 
contact  with.  To  be  sure  the  library  partly 
supplies  this  need.  Many  eminent  men  in  look- 
ing back  over  their  college  life  have  said  that 
the  library  was  their  best  professor.  But  books 
are  after  all  only  a  make-shift  for  men.  There 
must  be  the  daily  contact  with  the  living  mind. 
Therein,  after  all  our  talk  of  apparatus  and 
methods,  lies  the  secret  of  education.  If  there 
were  collected  together  the  foremost  men  of  the 
world  in  every  important  subject  of  intellectual 
effort,  every  man  a  master  in  his  subject,  it 
would  be  a  great  university  though  they  sat  on 
the  bare  hill-side  and  taught. 

And,  above  all,  these  men  must  be  men  of 
native  intellectual  power.  No  other  sort  of 
man  has,  or  can  possibly  have,  any  fitness  to 
be  in  a  university  as  a  teacher.  He  may  know 
an  indefinite  quantity  of  facts,  he  may  be  a 
cyclopedia  incarnate,  but  he  is  no  fit  teacher 
for  intellectual  young  men  unless  he  himself  be 
an  intellectual  man.  But,  besides  this,  he  must 
be  a  trained  man,  in  mind  and  in  character; 
and  he  must  know  many  things.  Mere  empty 
force  can  only  help  to  sow  the  wind. 

Around  this  central  college  of  complete  and 
liberal  education,  there  should  be  clustered 
schools  of  all  the  great  professions  of  modern 
society.  I  do  not  say,  of  all  the  occupations  of 
civilized  men ;  but  of  those  pursuits  which,  on 
the  one  hand,  are  indispensable  to  civilized  so- 
ciety, and  which,  on  the  other  hand,  are  only 
to  be  competently  entered  through  much  intel- 
lectual training  and  a  wide  acquisition  of  knowl- 
edge and  power.  Besides  those  ordinarily  pro- 
vided for,  there  should  be,  on  both  these  grounds, 
some  provision  for  the  profession  of  teaching,  and 
for  that  of  journalism,  and  for  that  of  politics. 
If  there  can  be,  as  yet,  no  complete  school  for 
the  thorough  study  of  these  professions  on  high 
levels,  there  should  at  least  be  a  chair  of  each, 
as  a  nucleus  for  such  a  school,  and  to  impart 
instruction  to  one  and  another  who  might  as- 
pire to  be  something  more  than  the  ordinary 
journeyman  teacher  or  editor  or  politician. 

The  first  need,  then  (I  had  almost  said,  the 
only  need),  of  a  university  considered  as  a  place 
for  instruction,  is  of  a  body  of  intellectual  and 


456 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


educated  men.  If  there  be  any  man  on  its 
staff  who  does  not  fulfill  these  requirements,  he 
is  not  merely  of  no  use, — one  who  sees  only 
that,  sees  the  matter  but  superficially ;  he  is  of 
the  greatest  harm,  and  that  continually.  For 
if  the  daily  contact  with  intellect  and  character 
is  capable  of  imparting  these  qualities  by  a  cer- 
tain fine  contagion,  so  the  daily  contact  with 
feebleness  and  meanness  can  impart  these  qual- 
ities, equally  well.  If  fools  and  knaves  had  no 
power  of  intellectual  propagation,  the  world 
would  move  somewhat  faster  than  it  does  at 
present.  An  intelligent  boy  is  better  off  left 
alone  to  the  clean  earth  and  skies,  especially  if 
he  be  possessed  of  a  rusty  volume  or  two,  than 
if  shut  up  in  contact  with  a  weakling  in  under- 
standing or  a  profligate  in  character. 

But  there  is  one  other  thing  necessary,  con- 
sidering a  university  as  a  place  for  instruction  : 
and  that  is,  pupils  to  be  instructed.  For  this 
there  is  need  of  secondary  schools.  And  here 
we  touch  upon  a  matter  that  concerns  our  own 
university,  and  our  State.  The  great  want  of 
California  at  the  present  time  is  the  establish- 
ment of  good  high  schools  or  free  academies 
throughout  the  State.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how 
a  man  could  earn  a  seat  among  the  benefactors 
of  the  race  more  easily  or  cheaply  than  by  en- 
dowing such  schools.  There  should  be  at  least 
one  in  every  county.  The  Pacific  Coast  can 
never  hope  for  more  than  spasmodic  gleams  of 
prosperity  till  the  country  homes  are  intelligent 
homes.  This  can  never  be  till  we  have  free 
public  education  of  a  high  grade ;  and  hardly 
otherwise  can  we  have  any  considerable  body 
of  educated  men  and  women,  except  -as  some 
inadequate  supply  continues  to  be  imported 
from  abroad.  The  University  might  be  of 
great  assistance  in  furthering  this  whole  proc- 
ess of  public  education.  In  the  first  place,  by 
supplying  a  certain  number  of  educated  young 
men  and  women,  some  of  whom  will  themselves 
become  teachers,  and  others  of  whom  will  be 
members  of  school-boards  and  in  other  ways 
will  be  centers  of  civilizing  influence  through- 
out the  State.  In  the  second  place,  by  coopera- 
tion between  its  faculty  and  other  teachers;  In 
the  third  place,  by  showing  its  appreciation  of 
the  best  schools,  facilitating  entrance  from 
these  into  its  courses,  and,  gradually  raising  its 
own  standard,  by  raising  at  the  same  time  that 
of  the  schools  most  nearly  connected  with  it. 

Finally,  there  is  the  second  aspect  in  which 
to  regard  a  university :  namely,  as  a  place  for 
original  investigation  and  research  on  the  part 
of  the  professors.  There  is  no  place  where 
this  pushing  forward  of  the  world's  knowledge 
on  all  the  great  lines  of  inquiry  can  be  so  well 
done  as  at  a  university.  For  here  are  books, 


collections,  apparatus,  laboratories,  beyond  any 
man's  private  means  to  accumulate ;  and  here 
is  the  constant  stimulus  and  assistance  of  num- 
bers of  fellow -workers.  Moreover,  the  teach- 
ers make  everywhere  the  best  students.  And, 
accordingly,  we  find  that  much  of  the  best  work 
in  philosophy,  literature,  and  science  has  al- 
ways been  done  at  the  colleges  and  universi 
ties.  Nothing  so  clarifies  one's  conceptions  of 
truth  as  the  constant  effort  to  impart  them  to 
others.  Nothing  so  invigorates  and  freshens 
the  mind  as  the  contact  with  youthful  ardor 
and  enthusiasm  in  a  body  of  students.  Of 
course  if  a  man  is  overworked  in  teaching  (as> 
unfortunately,  many  teachers  are  in  all  grades 
of  educational  work)  so  as  to  be  under  a  wor- 
rying strain,  his  work  as  an  investigator  and 
writer  cannot  be  fruitful ;  but  neither  can  his 
work  as  a  teacher  be  good  for  much  under  such 
circumstances.  The  man  must  be  fresh  and 
hopeful  for  either  part  of  his  duty.  And  cer- 
tainly when  the  conditions  are  favorable  for 
the  one,  they  are  for  the  other.  He  would  be 
but  a  wretched  sort  of  teacher  who  should  be 
making  no  progress  himself.  In  fact,  he  is  the 
best  teacher  as  a  rule  who  is  the  best  student  ; 
nor  can  any  man  who  is  not  a  vigorous  and 
constant  student  teach  at  all  to  profit.  ' 

Besides,  there  is  an  enormous  advantage  to 
a  man  who  is  pursuing  special  studies,  in  being 
surrounded  by  other  earnest  investigators,  in 
his  own  line  or  in  other  kindred  lines.  No- 
where can  this  happen  but  at  a  university.  It 
would  be  well  worth  all  the  expense  to  the 
State  to  have  such  an  institution,  though  there 
were  not  a  pupil  within  its  boundaries.  Be- 
cause no  otherwise  can  the  State  so  well  con- 
tribute to  that  progress  in  thought  and  knowl- 
edge which  is  the  necessary  condition  of  an 
advancing  civilization. 

In  short,  in  whatever  aspect  we  view  it,  a 
university  is,  essentially, — not  so  much  build- 
ings, or  collections,  or  apparatus,  or  any  exter- 
nal adjuncts  whatever — important  aids  as  these 
doubtless  are ;  but  it  is  a  body  of  educated  and 
intellectual  men.  And  they  are  serving  the 
State  in  two  ways  :  first,  by  imparting  their 
knowledge  and  their  force  of  mind  and  charac- 
ter to  young  persons  gathered  around  them  as 
students ;  and,  secondly,  they  are  ( with  the  aid 
of  libraries  and  laboratories  and  collections, 
and  mutual  help,  such  as  alone  can  be  found 
at  this  common  center)  pushing  on,  each  in  his 
own  line  of  investigation,  the  knowledge  of  the 
world. 

Why  should  we^not  have  here  in  California 
a  university  equal  to  any  in  the  country?  Nay, 
if  you  come  to  that,  there  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  have  here  the  greatest  university  in 


THE  STATE    VS.  THE   CHRISTIAN  UNIVERSITY. 


457 


the  world.  The  judicious  reader  smiles  and 
shakes  his  head,  and  replies  that  we  are  a 
young  community.  But  what  does  that  phrase 
mean,  under  analysis?  A  community  is  made 
up  of  individuals,  and  individual  men  are  not 
any  younger  here  than  elsewhere.  Children 
are  not  born  any  younger  here,  I  suppose,  than 
in  the  East,  or  in  Europe.  The  man  in  the 
maturity  of  his  strength  is  at  that  maturity 
here,  as  elsewhere;  nor  has  mere  geographical 
removal  cut  him  off  from  whatever  is  good  in 
the  heritage  of  the  past.  Those  older  commu- 
nities have  many  hindrances  and  restrictions 
which  ours  has  not.  In  one  sense  they  stand 
upon  their  past  as  on  a  vantage-ground:  in 
another  sense  their  past  lies  on  them  as  a  dead 
weight.  We  have  not  to  begin  back  and  come 
through  all  their  stages  of  development :  we  be- 
gin where  they  leave  off.  California  has  hope, 
energy,  ability  to  plan  and  build.  If  we  have 
not  men,  we  have  wealth,  and  men  will  come 
whenever  the  call  is  loud  enough.  There  is 
nothing  to  prevent  our  having  the  foremost  men 


in  the  world  in  every  great  region  of  intellect- 
ual attainment.  Is  this  a  mere  dream?  But 
everything  was  once  a  dream  before  it  was  ac- 
complished. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  any  one  man 
can  make  a  great  university  out  of  nothing; 
though  he  were  Julius  Caesar,  and  Richelieu, 
and  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  and  Arnold  of  Rugby, 
rolled  into  one.  A  university  is,  above  all 
things,  the  body  of  men  composing  its  faculty. 
Nor  can  any  handful  of  men,  though  they  were 
the  wisest  on  the  planet,  constitute  a  great  uni- 
versity. Yale  numbers  over  a  hundred  men 
on  her  staff;  so  also  does  Harvard;  and  the 
foreign  universities  a  still  larger  number. 

There  is  room  in  California  for  such  a  body 
of  scholars  and  thinkers.  But  they  will  not 
come  for  our  sitting  down  and  wishing  for  them. 
When  they  do  come,  there  will  be  a  radiant 
center  of  philosophy  and  science  and  learning 
and  literature,  the  beginning  of  a  new  world, 
the  star  in  the  West  that  Berkeley  saw  and 
tried  to  follow.  E.  R.  SILL. 


THE   STATE   VS.    THE   CHRISTIAN    UNIVERSITY. 


When  our  fathers  framed  the  American  Gov- 
ernment they  had  no  previous  model.  Democ- 
racies had  existed  before,  and  some  imperfect 
examples  of  representative  government,  but 
none  similiar,  either  in  their  complexity  or  com- 
pleteness, to  that  which  times  demanded  here. 
It  was  not,  therefore,  to  be  expected  that  all 
things  would  at  once  be  wisely  and  permanent- 
ly adjusted.  Among  other  subjects  then  left 
open  was  the  question  of  education.  It  was 
not  as  pressing  as  others,  and  hence  was  ad- 
journed to  quiet  times  and  periods  of  greater 
leisure.  The  features  of  this  problem  which 
have  since  most  agitated  the  public  mind  seem 
not  to  have  been  thought  of  in  the  beginning : 
shall  the  subject  be  intrusted  to  the  church? — 
shall  it  be  controlled  by  the  State? — or  shall  it 
be  remanded  to  private  enterprise  and  benevo- 
lence? Washington,  indeed,  in  his  last  address 
to  Congress  recommended  a  national  universi- 
ty, but  beyond  this  nothing  was  done. 

No  single  person  or  paper  can  determine  this 
question.  It  involves  too  many  interests,  and 
has  too  many  sides — the  expenditure  of  mill- 
ions of  money,  the  welfare  of  our  children,  and 
the  stability  of  our  institutions.  Nevertheless, 
every  one  should  feel  obliged  for  a  frank  and 
thorough  discussion  of  any  phase  of  a  subject 
so  important. 


Burke  has  said  that  "man  is  a  religious  ani- 
mal." This  is  as  true  as  that  man  is  a  physical 
and  intellectual  being.  From  the  beginning, 
our  race  has  cherished  religious  beliefs.  The 
burial  rites  and  remains  of  geologic  man  show 
that  he  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
The  remains  of  the  great  stone-builders  of  west- 
ern Europe  evince  that  they  had  a  religious 
worship,  and  erected  buildings  for  the  practice 
of  its  rites.  The  scanty  remains  of  early  Hin- 
du, Persian,  Egyptian,  Chaldean,  as  well  as 
Greek  and  Latin  literature,  show  in  some  cases 
the  elevation  of  their  faith,  and  in  others  the 
opulence  of  their  pantheon,  but  in  every  case 
the  prevalence  of  religious  belief  and  worship. 
The  remotest  travels  of  the  most  daring  ex- 
plorers of  modern  times  have  failed  to  discover 
races  or  tribes  without  religious  ideas  and  wor- 
ship. In  the  most  skeptical  nations  or  periods 
of  the  world  unbelief  has  been  the  rare  excep- 
tion— belief  the  rule.  The  avidity  with  which 
the  masses  of  France  returned  from  the  intoxi- 
cation of  the  Reign  of  Terror  to  their  Sabbaths 
and  their  churches  proves  that  the  most  faith- 
less of  nations  at  the  time  of  its  extremest  de- 
parture from  the  faith  could  not  long  withstand 
the  powerful  tendency  of  human  nature  to  faith 
and  worship.  The  loftiest  minds,  as  well  as 
the  lowliest,  and,  if  possible,  in  still  higher  de- 


458 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


gree,  are  under  the  control  of  this  religious  nat- 
ure. The  greatest  names  in  the  sublimest  of 
sciences  belonged  to  men  of  deep  religious  con- 
victions. Galileo,  Copernicus,  Newton,  Kep- 
ler, and  Herschel,  equally  with  beginners  in  as- 
tronomy, worshiped  a  god  beyond  the  stars. 
Milton  and  Shakspere  in  England,  Bryant, 
Longfellow,  and  Whittier  in  the  United  States, 
are  poets  of  deep  religious  natures.  Cuvier  and 
Agassiz,  equally  with  McCosh,  believe  in  a  god 
behind  the  typical  forms  and  special  ends  in 
organic  life.  Our  own  Dana  and  Le  Conte  deal 
with  the  relations  of  religion  and  geology  with 
such  reverence  that  the  sensibilities  of  the  most 
devout  need  not  be  offended.  The  greatest 
statesmen  of  the  world  tread  in  the  footsteps  of 
its  greatest  scientists.  Bismarck  avows  that 
he  stands  in  his  present  lot  because  of  the  as- 
signment of  Providence.  Gladstone's  consecra- 
tion to  religion  is  equaled  only  by  his  devotion 
to  the  best  interests  of  his  country  and  genera- 
tion. If  we  turn  to  the  United  States  we  are 
met  by  examples  equally  illustrious — the  au- 
gust Washington,  who  fought  through  the  Revo- 
lution on  his  knees;  the  astute  and  far-seeing 
Hamilton,  who,  in  all  his  life,  made  but  one 
grave  blunder,  and  that  his  last;  the  god -like 
Webster,  perhaps  the  greatest  intellect  of  mod- 
ern times,  whose  legal  pleas,  and  occasional  ad- 
dresses, and  elaborate  orations  all  breathe  the 
spirit  of  reverence  for  the  word  of  God  and  de- 
votion to  the  religious  institutions  of  the  coun- 
try. And  even  among  men  of  special  training, 
and,  therefore,  of  less  philosophical  elevation 
and  breadth— the  Darwins,  the  Huxleys,  and 
the  Tyndalls  of  the  day — if  we  do  not  meet  with 
explicit  recognition  of  God  and  his  worship, 
their  sensitiveness  to  the  imputation  of  atheistic 
sentiments  evinces  the  presence  and  strength 
of  the  religious  nature. 

The  Christian  consciousness  of  the  church 
affords  a  conclusive  evidence  from  a  less  famil- 
iar field.  Consciousness  is  a  court  of  last  re- 
sort. We  know  of  the  external  world  through 
a  consciousness  of  sensations;  of  our  mental 
states  through  a  consciousness  of  mental  proc- 
esses ;  of  our  own  existence  even  through  self- 
consciousness.  Cogito,  ergo  sum,  is  as  signifi- 
cant to-day  as  when  Descartes  first  uttered  it. 
Hence,  all  knowledge  is  derived  through  sensa- 
tions and  other  mental  processes  of  which  we 
are  conscious.  But  millions  of  persons  in  the 
United  States  attest  the  reality  of  Christian  ex- 
perience. Hence,  as  the  consciousness  of  all 
of  our  farmers  assures  them  of  the  common 
facts  of  agriculture,  the  Christian  consciousness 
of  the  church  places  the  existence  of  the  relig- 
ious nature  and  the  beneficent  effects  of  the 
Christian  religion  upon  the  same  solid  footing 


as  the  best  established  facts  of  agriculture,  or 
the  best  authenticated  truths  of  science.  In 
this,  Christianity  takes  its  place  among  the  most 
assured  of  the  inductive  sciences.  It  rests  upon 
a  solid  continent  of  fact.  Then  man  is  a  relig- 
ious being. 

Neither  government  nor  society  could  exist 
without  the  cultivation  of  morality  and  relig- 
ion. True  morality  depends  on  religion.  On 
this  point  quotations  may  be  made  from  men 
whose  mature  experience  and  elevated  charac- 
ters should  carry  conviction  to  all  candid  minds. 
Guizot,  quoting  Vinet,  says:  "To  distinguish 
morality  from  dogma,  is  to  attempt  to  distin- 
guish a  river  from  its  source." 

It  is  well  known  that  the  farewell  address  of 
Washington  was  first  outlined  by  himself,  sub- 
mitted to  Hamilton  and  other  advisers,  and 
then,  with  emendations,  published.  In  that 
immortal  document,  coming  to  us  with  such 
high  sanctions,  he  says : 

"And  let  us  with  caution  indulge  the  supposition  that 
morality  can  be  maintained  without  religion.  What- 
ever may  be  conceded  to  the  influence  of  refined  educa- 
tion on  minds  of  peculiar  structure,  reason  and  experi- 
ence both  forbid  us  to  expect  that  national  morality  can 
prevail  in  exclusion  of  religious  principle." 

The  expressions  of  Daniel  Webster  are  equal- 
ly emphatic.  In  his  famous  Plymouth  Rock 
oration,  he  says : 

"Our  ancestors  established  their  system  of  govern- 
ment on  morality  and  religious  sentiment.  Moral  hab- 
its, they  believed,  cannot  safely  be  trusted  on  any  other 
foundation  than  religious  principle,  nor  any  govern- 
ment be  secure  which  is  not  supported  by  moral  truth. 

"Whatever  makes  men  good  Christians,  makes  them 
good  citizens. 

"Our  fathers  came  here  to  enjoy  their  religion  free 
and  unmolested,  and,  at  the  end  of  two  centuries,  there 
is  nothing  upon  which  we  can  pronounce  more  confi- 
dently, nothing  of  which  we  can  express  a  more  deep 
and  earnest  conviction,  than  the  inestimable  importance 
of  that  religion  to  man,  both  in  regard  to  this  life  and 
that  which  is  to  come." 

Let  us  cherish  these  sentiments  and  extend 
this  influence  still  more  widely,  in  the  full  con- 
viction that  that  is  the  happiest  society  which 
partakes  in  the  highest  degree  of  the  mild  and 
beneficent  spirit  of  Christianity. 

Guizot,  Hamilton,  Washington,  Webster — 
what  a  constellation ! 

In  view  of  these  quotations,  how  very  frothy 
seem  the  words  "moral  instructor"  sometimes 
heard  in  connection  with  our  State  institutions. 
Moral  instructors  for  the  penitentiary,  or  in- 
deed for  sinners  anywhere  else  !  As  well  prat- 
tle of  arnica  salve  for  the  smallpox,  or  bread 
poultices  for  the  leprosy. 


THE  STATE    VS.    THE   CHRISTIAN  UNIVERSITY. 


459 


But  this  morality  and  religion,  so  inseparably 
connected,  are  essential  to  the  purity  of  society 
and  the  existence  of  the  State.  Doctor  Frank- 
lin's warning  to  Thomas  Paine,  when  consulted 
concerning  the  publication  of  The  Age  of  Rea- 
son, against  "unchaining  the  lion,"  shows  how 
profoundly  the  mind  of  that  great  philosopher 
had  been  affected  by  the  results  following  the 
rupture  of  the  bonds  of  religious  restraint  in 
France.  And  on  this  subject  the  opinions  of 
Mr.  Huxley  possess  peculiar  significance.  In 
an  address  upon  education  he  says  : 

' '  I  have  always  been  strongly  in  favor  of  secular  ed- 
ucation, in  the  sense  of  education  without  theology,  but 
I  must  confess  that  I  have  been  no  less  seriously  per- 
plexed to  know  by  what  practical  measures  the  religious 
feeling,  which  is  the  essential  basis  of  conduct,  was  to 
be  kept  up  in  the  present  utterly  chaotic  state  of  opin- 
ion on  these  matters  without  the  use  of  the  Bible 

By  the  study  of  what  other  book  could  children  be  so 
much  humanized?" 

Perhaps  others  are  as  much  impressed  as  the 
distinguished  scientist  by  the  "chaotic  state  "of 
opinion  respecting  the  Bible.  Nevertheless,  the 
strength  of  his  conviction  adds  to  the  weight  of 
his  opinion. 

No  system  of  education  is  complete  which 
does  not  respect  all  the  powers  of  the  man  and 
all  the  demands  of  the  State.  But  let  this  word 
complete  be  properly  understood.  A  complete 
education  in  astronomy  might  be  held  to  em- 
brace a  full  course  in  the  primary  and  higher 
studies  of  descriptive  and  mathematical  astron- 
omy. Should  this  course  terminate  in  the  use 
of  the  telescope  to  be  erected  on  Mount  Ham- 
ilton, the  astronomical  education  might  be 
called  complete.  So,  a  knowledge  of  all  the 
elements  of  matter  and  their  combinations,  to- 
gether with  a  complete  course  in  qualitative 
and  quantitative  analyses,  might  be  called  a 
complete  education  in  chemistry.  Or  we  may 
add  to  these  single  branches  groups  of  studies, 
and  include  courses  in  literature  and  the  arts ; 
and  this  group  of  attainments  may  be  called  a 
complete  education.  A  system  may  be  framed 
on  this  ideal,  and  ascend  through  all  the  grades 
to  the  State  and  National  University ;  but  this 
system  of  education  is  not  complete  in  its  full- 
est sense.  It  still  leaves  out  the  education  of 
the  moral  and  religious  nature,  and  for  neither 
the  individual  nor  the  State  is  this  a  complete 
system.  It  has  omitted  to  make  provision  for 
a  predominant  element  of  man — the  moral  nat- 
ure ;  it  has  failed  to  guard  against  an  imminent 
peril  of  the  State. 

The  system  of  education  coming  into  vogue 
in  the  United  States  is  complete  in  this  partial, 
but  not  in  any  comprehensive,  sense.  On  the 
one  hand,  religion  is  not  to  be  taught  in  the 


schools.  Morals  may  be,  but  the  Bible,  the 
basis  of  morals,  is  excluded.  In  a  message  to 
Congress,  December  7,  1875,  President  Grant 
recommended  the  adoption  of  an  amendment 
to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  forbid- 
ding the  teaching  in  the  public  schools  of  "re- 
ligious, atheistic,  or  pagan  tenets."  On  the 
other  hand,  the  churches  must  not  share  in  the 
school  fund.  On  this  subject  the  declarations 
of  the  dominant  political  party,  through  its 
standard-bearers  and  conventions,  are  explicit 
and  authoritative.  The  National  Convention 
of  1876  said: 

"We  recommend  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  forbidding  the  application  of  any 
public  funds  or  property  for  the  benefit  of  any  schools 
or  institutions  under  sectarian  control." 

This  action  was  reaffirmed  in  1880  in  the  fol- 
lowing language : 

' '  We  recommend  that  the  Constitution  be  so  amend- 
ed as  to  forbid  the  appropriation  of  public  funds  to  the 
support  of  sectarian  schools." 

Ex-President  Grant  says : 

"Let  us  encourage  free  schools,  and  resolve  that  not 
one  dollar  appropriated  for  their  support  shall  be  ap- 
propriated to  the  support  of  sectarian  schools." 

The  utterances  of  President  Garfield  are  in  a 
similar  vein : 

"It  would  be  unjust  to  our  people  and  dangerous  to 
our  institutions  to  apply  any  portion  of  the  revenues  of 
the  nation  to  the  support  of  sectarian  schools." 

J.  G.  Elaine,  the  present  Secretary  of  State, 
declares  that 

' '  The  only  settlement  that  can  be  final  is  the  com- 
plete victory  of  non-sectarian  schools." 

These  quotations  are  not  made  for  the  pur- 
pose of  criticism,  but  that  the  present  status  of 
this  question  may  be  clearly  understood. 

Shall  moral  and  religious  education,  then, 
be  neglected?  No  real  statesman  or  lover  of 
his  country  would  answer  this  question  in  the 
affirmative.  Nevertheless,  the  best  method  of 
providing  for  this  instruction  is  not  clear.  Some 
assert  that  this  is  a  Christian  Government  by 
the  will  of  its  founders,  by  the  decisions  of 
common  law,  and  by  the  preponderance  of  the 
religious  sentiment,  and  that  the  Church  should 
assert  its  rights  and  maintain  the  Bible  and  re- 
ligious instruction  in  the  schools.  Others  say 
that  the  schools  are  too  vital  to  the  welfare  of 
the  country  to  be  periled  by  arraying  against 
them  the  Hebrew,  the  infidel,  and  all  other  ele- 
ments of  society  hostile  to  the  Christian  script- 
ures. This  practical  consideration  is  reinforced 


460 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


by  that  sentiment  of  justice  which  is  unwilling 
to  force  men  to  pay  taxes  for  what  they  cannot 
indorse  and  use.  But  the  prevailing  judgment 
is  that,  for  children  and  youth,  religious  in- 
struction may  be  remitted  to  the  Church  on 
Sundays,  while  secular  is  imparted  by  the  State 
during  the  week. 

At  this  stage  of  the  discussion  the  example 
of  the  German  system  of  education  in  encoun- 
tered-, and  the  question  is  asked  why  ours  may 
not  be  modeled  after  theirs.  The  reply  is  at 
hand.  It  need  not  be  made  by  the  writer.  It 
should  spring  at  once  to  the  lips  of  every  care- 
ful student  of  government.  The  church  and 
the  system  of  education  in  Germany  are  sus- 
tained and  regulated  by  the  State.  There  the 
religious  education  of  the  young  is  as  much 
provided  for  as  the  secular,  and  by  the  same 
authority.  Such  a  comprehensive  system  as 
this,  embracing  the  church  and  the  school,  the 
genius  of  our  Government  forbids. 

But  may  not  morals  and  religion  be  excluded 
from  higher  education,  as  well  as  from  the  com- 
mon schools?  Since  this  is  so,  and  since  we 
have  solved  the  difficulty,  so  far  as  the  common 
school  is  concerned,  by  remitting  the  secular 
instruction  to  the  State  and  religious  to  the 
Church,  may  not  the  same  policy  prevail  in  all 
higher  education?  We  shall  then  have  a  com- 
plete system  of  secular  instruction  supervised 
by  the  State,  and  a  system  of  religious  instruc- 
tion, more  or  less  complete,  supervised  by  the 
Church.  If  the  elements  of  the  problem  were 
the  same,  this  solution  might  be  the  best  pos- 
sible. But  the  differences  are  marked  and  vital. 
In  the  first  place,  higher  education  is  acquired 
between  the  ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty -one. 
The  receptive  mind  of  childhood  has  given 
place  to  the  inquisitive  and  doubting  mind  of 
boyhood  and  young  manhood.  The  problems 
presented  to  the  advancing  student  are  strik- 
ingly portrayed  by  Dr.  Cocker,  of  Michigan 
University: 

"The  problems  of  science  are  becoming  more  and 
more  genetic  problems — that  is,  they  have  ceased  to  be 
questions  of  classification,  and  have  come  to  be  ques- 
tions of  origin — origin  of  force,  of  life,  of  species,  of 
mind,  of  language,  of  society,  of  civilization,  of  religion. 
It  is  as  clear  as  noonday  that  the  science  professor  can- 
not discuss  these  questions  without  abutting  on  the  final 
issue,  and  pronouncing  for  a  God  or  no  God,  a  Provi- 
dence or  no  Providence,  a  soul  or  no  soul.  There  is 
now  no  alternative ;  science  must  henceforth  be  materi- 
alistic or  spiritualistic,  theistic  or  atheistic.  God  or  no 
God  is  the  question  of  the  hour ;  and  it  is  astonishing, 
sometimes  even  appalling,  to  observe  how  scientists 
themselves  are  dividing  into  antagonistic  camps.  Be- 
tween the  Scylla  and  Charybdis  of  opposite  faiths  and 
opposite  teachings,  how  are  State  colleges  and  univer- 
sities to  be  steered?  This  is  the  question  which  is  now 


upon  us,  and  it  is  our  wisdom  and  duty  to  look  it  full 
in  the  face.  Who  is  to  decide  whether  our  ethics,  our 
philosophy,  our  science,  shall  be  theistic  or  atheistic? 
Shall  the  State  Legislature  decide?  Shall  it  send  its 
biennial  committees  of  investigation  to  learn  whether 
a  theological  or  an  anti- theological  animus  prevails  in 
the  State  schools?  Is  the  State  the  proper  arbiter  of 
these  questions?  Until  these  questions  have  a  final 
settlement  we  had  better  keep  open  our  church  col- 
leges." 

In  the  second  place,  the  college  student  is 
away  from  home,  from  its  religious  atmos- 
phere, its  wholesome  restraints,  its  Sabbath 
schools  and  its  churches.  All  of  these  bonds 
have  been  severed  at  once.  What  now  is  to 
hold  him  steady?  He  is  thrown  into  the  in- 
tense, inquisitive  life  of  the  college,  where  ques- 
tions of  Cause,  Force,  Providence,  Duty,  Des- 
tiny, are  up  for  discussion,  and  will  not  down. 
Who  is  to  guide  him  in  his  inexperience  and 
danger?  He  is  surrounded  by  young  spirits, 
buoyant  with  a  new  sense  of  liberty,  unsobered 
by  a  sense  of  responsibility.  If  religion  is  ever 
needed  in  society  to  curb  and  control  men,  is 
it  not  here?  In  such  a  community  as  this,  un- 
leavened by  a  religious  atmosphere,  two  things 
will  certainly  follow :  Skeptics  will  be  con- 
firmed in  their  unbelief,  and  believing  students 
will  become  ashamed  of  their  faith.  The  sense 
of  freedom  from  the  usual  outward  restraints 
will  tend  to  license,  roystering,  and  insubordi- 
nation. In  this,  the  reference  is  not  to  the  stu- 
dents who  have  passed  through  this  critical 
age  under  good  influences,  and  come  out  so- 
bered and  steadied  into  the  professional  school 
of  a  university  proper  (however  necessary  relig- 
ion may  be  for  them).  I  am  speaking  of  under- 
graduates, with  a  novel  experience  of  liberty, 
but  untrained  in  its  proper  exercise.  Hence, 
trie  inference  is  irresistible  that  in  all  higher 
education,  and  in  unprofessional  schools  espe- 
cially, moral  and  religious  instruction  is  nec- 
essary for  the  safety  of  the  student,  and  for  the 
good  order  of  the  institution.  But  moral  and 
religious  instruction  is  necessary  in  order  to 
the  complete  equipment  of  the  student  for  aft- 
er life.  No  other  class  of  ideas  or  sentiments 
is  more  liberalizing  or  elevating. 

At  the  head  of  these  I  place  a  proper  con- 
ception of  God,  filling  immensity  and  inhabit- 
ing eternity.  A  great  prelate  remarks  that  no 
one  could  open  his  mind  far  enough  to  take  in 
the  idea  of  God  without  admitting  a  troop  of 
lesser  ideas  at  the  same  time.  Note  the  effect 
of  the  vivid  preaching  of  a  pure  theism  upon 
the  Saracen  mind.  It  aroused  that  torpid  Se- 
mitic race,  and,  while  its  inspiration  lasted, 
made  them  all -conquering.  Indeed,  we  can 
almost  grade  the  civilization  of  a  people  by 
their  notion  of  God. 


THE  STATE    VS.    THE   CHRISTIAN  UNIVERSITY. 


461 


Next  to  the  conception  of  God  may  be  plac- 
ed that  of  immortality.  The  extent  of  one's 
forecast  and  plans  for  the  future  gauges  the  ca- 
pacity of  the  mind.  The  child  thinks  for  the 
moment,  and  is  pleased  with  a  rattle ;  the  boy 
is  satisfied  with  bat  and  ball  and  plans  for  the 
day ;  a  little  further  on  his  thoughts  and  plans 
include  the  coming  vacation  and  its  pleasures. 
At  last,  the  young  man  casts  his  eye  forward 
and  takes  in  all  of  this  life.  But  the  Christian 
includes  this  world  and  the  world  to  come  in 
his  survey. 

Take  these  two  conceptions  of  God  and  im- 
mortality, and,  almost  alone,  they  have  devel- 
oped characters  as  elevated  as  the  studies  of  a 
Herschel  or  a  Humboldt.  These  conceptions 
enlarge  the  sympathies  at  the  same  time  that 
they  elevate  the  mind.  They  make  men  large 
hearted  as  well  as  large  minded.  It  is  some- 
thing to  be  a  Great  Heart ;  and  the  pulsations 
of  the  heart,  the  sympathies,  impel  the  mind — 
the  man.  We  have  seen  the  man  dead  to  ev- 
ery interest  beyond  that  of  the  family.  This 
is  the  man  of  smallest  heart — purely  selfish. 
Next  comes  the  man  of  neighborhood  sympa- 
thies— the  neighbor.  Then  comes  the  man  of 
State  ideas  and  sympathies — the  citizen.  Fi- 
nally, the  man  of  national  ideas  and  sympa- 
thies— the  statesman  and  patriot.  Above  all 
rises  the  man  of  world -wide  sympathies,  the 
true  Great  Heart,  whose  affections  embrace  hu- 
manity. Herein,  more  than  anywhere  else, 
may  be  found  the  secret  of  truly  elevated  char- 
acter— character  that  enables  one  to  live  above 
the  world,  to  encounter  calmly  and  bravely  the 
trials  of  life,  to  stand  against  all  temptations. 

These  two  elements  of  the  intellectual  and 
the  religious  instruction  should  be  combined 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  education. 
Bishop  Thomson,  in  his  college  lectures,  relates 
the  case  of  a  selfish  Southerner,  who  owned 
one -half  of  a  slave  named  Harry.  At  his  de- 
votions he  was  accustomed  to  pray  for  himself 
and  his  wife,  his  son  John  and  his  wife,  and  his 
half  of  Harry.  This  prayer  fairly  illustrates 
the  grotesque  notion  of  some  respecting  the 
education  of  the  child — the  secular  half  is  to  be 
cared  for,  the  spiritual  half  must  shift  for  itself. 
Such  theories  of  education  ignore  the  fact  that 
the  moral  nature  needs  specific  and  judicious 
training  as  much  as  the  observing  and  reason- 
ing faculties.  We  do  not  expect  to  make  math- 
ematicians by  a  course  of  belles-lettres^  nor 
logicians  by  the  study  of  geology.  Education 
has  advanced  beyond  the  hap-hazard  stage — 
that  is,  all  education  save  that  of  the  moral 
nature.  Elsewhere  a  definite  aim  is  expected 
to  reach  a  definite  result.  The  moral  nature 
alone  is  permitted  to  run  wild  until  the  subject 


can  choose  for  himself,  and  then  men  expect  to 
gather  grapes  of  thorns  and  figs  of  thistles.  By 
parity  of  reasoning  the  student  should  be  per- 
mitted to  select  his  own  school  and  course  of 
studies,  to  accept  or  reject  any  theory  or  fact 
of  science,  or  finally  to  discard  all  mental  train- 
ing and  follow  the  dictates  of  his  own  sweet 
will.  The  hard  sense  of  this  practical  age  does 
not  decide  thus  respecting  any  branch  of  cult- 
ure save  the  moral.  Parents  hold  themselves 
responsible  for  the  education  of  their  children. 
The  teacher  instructs,  and  the  pupil  accepts 
the  instruction  until  he  can  investigate  for  him- 
self. The  cultivation  of  the  moral  nature  should 
be  no  exception  to  the  rule. 

This  cultivation  of  the  moral  nature  reacts 
upon  the  mental.  Many  a  giant  has  slumbered 
until  the  springs  of  his  moral  nature  were 
touched.  Luther  had  never  moved  Germany 
and  the  world  had  he  not  first  been  moved  by 
the  love  of  Christ.  His  own  testimony  was 
that  he  studied  best  when  he  prayed  most. 
Fellowship  with  God  gave  him  mental  strength 
and  moral  courage  to  stand  alone  against  the 
intellectual  and  royal  array  of  the  Emperor  of 
Germany.  John  Wesley  might  have  been  a 
pragmatic  failure  all  his  days  if  God  had  not 
touched  him.  The  divine  anointing  made  him 
the  greatest  reformer  of  his  times.  Moral  and 
religious  revivals  have  always  led  to  intellect- 
ual. The  master  spring  of  the  man  is  the 
moral  nature.  Touch  that  and  the  mind  bounds. 
Cultivate  the  two  together,  and  the  strongest 
intellect,  as  well  as  the  most  symmetrical  man, 
is  the  result.  This  is  the  reason  why  boys  train- 
ed by  Arnold  of  Rugby  have  become  England's 
most  illustrious  men  in  this  generation.  He 
laid  in  their  boyhood  the  foundation  of  a  com- 
plete manhood.  Their  later  eminence  was  but 
the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

Where,  then,  is  this  complete  education  for 
the  entire  man  to  be  provided?  If  the  Ameri- 
can idea  be  correct,  that  there  is  to  be  a  com- 
plete divorce  of  religion  from  the  State,  and  of 
religious  from  secular  instruction  in  the  State 
schools,  it  cannot  be  provided  there.  This 
theory  forever  commits  them  to  mediocrity, 
when  the  highest  ideal  of  education  is  con- 
sidered. State  schools  may  furnish  complete 
courses  in  the  physical  sciences,  but  they  must 
enter  cautiously  into  the  region  of  metaphysics. 
Therefore,  higher  philosophy  will  be  forever  be- 
yond their  range.  It  may  seem  strange  at  first 
that  the  suggestion  of  narrowness  and  incom- 
pleteness should  be  made  respecting  a  system 
of  education  which  affects  so  much  of  elevation 
and  breadth.  But  a  system  which  is  compelled 
to  ignore  the  oldest  and  most  influential  book 
in  existence,  a  belief  in  which  has  been  for 


462 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


eighteen  centuries,  and  is  to-day,  the  most  po- 
tent factor  in  civilization,  and  an  element  in  hu- 
man nature  more  profound  than  any  other,  can- 
not lay  claim  to  breadth  or  completeness. 

The  ideal  university,  as  well  as  college,  for 
America,  then,  must  be  projected  by  private 
benevolence,  and,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  his- 
tory of  such  institutions  elsewhere,  placed  under 
the  shelter  of  the  Christian  church.  It  cannot 
be  denied  that  in  new  countries  these  will  la- 
bor under  special  disabilities.  Church  schools 
of  high  grade,  like  the  oaks,  are  of  slow  growth; 
but  like  them,  too,  they  survive  the  ages.  And 
it  should  be  recorded  in  their  favor  that  even  in 
the  days  of  their  severest  struggles  they  render 
great  service  to  the  cause  of  education.  By  far 
the  greater  portion  of  higher  education  in  this 
country  is  imparted  in  these  institutions;  and 
most  of  those  who  graduate  in  schools  of  great- 
er name  receive  here  their  first  impulse  toward 
a  lofty  career.  It  has  been  fashionable  to  char- 
acterize them  as  sectarian  rather  than  Chris- 
tian or  religious — apparently  with  the  sinister 
purpose  of  suggesting  the  thought  of  narrow- 
ness in  their  curriculum  or  bigotry  in  their  spirit. 
Indeed,  a  racy  writer  on  this  subject  in  the  old 
country  has  ridiculed  the  notion  of  "evangeli- 
cal geology,"  "high  church  chemistry,"  "broad 
church  physics,"  "Baptist  hydrostatics,"  and 
"Presbyterian  psychology."  But  he  should  be 
a  brave  man  who  would  intimate  that  Harvard, 
or  Yale,  or  Boston,  or  Brown,  or  Princeton,  as 
well  as  many  other  institutions  of  lesser  name, 
do  not  teach  as  pure  science  as  Cornell  or  Mich- 
igan. 

They  appreciate  at  a  higher  valuation  the 
manhood  of  their  students  than  can  be  reached 
by  those  who  ignore  the  religious  nature  and 
immortal  destiny  of  the  race.  When  Christ 
asked,  "  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain 
the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul? — or 
what  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for  his  soul?" 
he  took  into  account  all  present  possibilities 
and  all  future  duration.  This  places  man  at 
his  highest  appraisal.  No  teacher  can  be  in- 
different to  the  consequences  of  present  instruc- 
tion who  goes  into  his  classes  under  that  lofty 
inspiration.  He  is  about  to  strike  chords  that 
will  vibrate  through  eternity.  What  wondrous 
skill  should  endow  his  fingers!  He  is  about  to 
stamp  impressions  upon  imperishable  natures. 
What  supernatural  persuasion  should  dwell 
upon  his  lips ! 

In  the  religious  schools  meager  appliances 
and  limited  lists  of  students  are  compensated 
by  close  personal  contact  between  teacher  and 
pupil.  The  influence  of  a  strong  religious  nat- 
ure upon  the  opening  life  of  a  student  is  beyond 
computation.  It  was  the  strong  personality  of 


Arnold  that  lifted  Rugby  from  a  secondary  place 
and  made  it  the  leading  preparatory  school  of 
England.  In  our  own  country  the  influence  of 
such  men  as  Theodore  Woolsey,  Bishop  Thom- 
son, and  Dr.  .Hopkins,  has  been  scarcely  less 
marked.  Apropos  of  this,  read  the  language  of 
our  present  chief  magistrate  when  once  address- 
ing a  convention  of  teachers. 

"  It  has  long  been  my  opinion  that  we  are  all  edu- 
cated, whether  children,  men,  or  women,  far  more  by 
personal'influence  than  by  books  or  the  apparatus  of 
the  schools.  If  I  could  be  taken  back  into  boyhood  to- 
day, and  had  all  the  libraries  and  apparatus  of  a  uni- 
versity, with  ordinary  routine  professors,  offered  me  on 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other  a  great,  luminous,  rich- 
souled  man,  such  as  Dr.  Hopkins  was  twenty  years  ago, 
in  a  tent  in  the  woods  alone,  I  should  say,  give  me  Dr. 
Hopkins  for  my  college  course  rather  than  any  univer- 
sity with  only  routine  professors.  The  privilege  of  sit- 
ting down  before  a  great,  clear-headed,  large-hearted 
man,  and  breathing  the  atmosphere  of  his  life,  and  being 
drawn  up  to  him,  and  lifted  up  by  him,  and  learning  his 
methods  of  thinking  and  living,  is  in  itself  an  enormous 
educating  power.  But  America  is  running  too  much  to 
brick  and  mortar.  Let  us  put  less  money  in  great 
school-houses,  and  more  in  the  salaries  of  great  teach- 
ers. Smaller  schools  and  more  teachers,  less  machin- 
ery and  more  personal  influence,  will  bring  forth  fruits 
higher  and  better  than  any  we  have  yet  seen." 

Admit  that  all  teachers  are  not  such  as  these, 
they  all  exert  an  influence  according  to  the 
strength  and  quality  of  their  personality  and 
the  directness  with  which  it  can  be  brought  to 
bear  upon  their  pupils.  But  this  personal  in- 
fluence is  impossible  in  great  schools.  Much 
of  the  work  of  the  institution  must  be  done  by 
tutors,  so  that,  however  eminent  in  their  re- 
spective chairs  the  professors  may  be,  the  stu- 
dent does  not  feel  the  impulse  and  inspiration 
of  their  personal  presence. 

Institutions  of  this  kind  have  had  a  long  and 
brilliant  history.  Passing  by  schools  eminent 
in  letters  and  science  in  Spain,  Italy,  France, 
and  Germany,  all  more  or  less  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  clergy,  let  us  devote  attention  to 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  in  England;  Dublin 
in  Ireland;  St.  Andrews,  Edinburgh,  and  Glas- 
gow in  Scotland;  and  Harvard,  Yale,  Brown, 
Williams,  Union,  Boston,  Princeton,  and  Mid- 
dleton,  and  a  host  of  others  in  the  United 
States.  From  what  other  source  can  an  equal- 
ly brilliant  constellation  of  intellectual  lights  be 
marshaled  ?  Whatever  may  be  said  in  dispar- 
agement of  the  Christian  institutions  of  the 
Old  World,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they  pre- 
served learning  during  the  dark  ages ;  that  they 
were  the  source  of  the  revival  of  letters  when  it 
came;  and  that  they  have  been  large  contrib- 
utors to  the  volume  of  modern  culture.  The 
denominational  schools  of  the  New  World  took 


A    CLOUDED  SUMMER. 


463 


culture  under  their  sheltering  wings  when  it 
was  prostrate  and  patronless.  Many  of  the 
men  who  now  flout  them  were  educated  in  their 
classes.  Subtract  their  contributions  from  the 
general  sum  of  modern  culture,  and  the  remain- 
der would  not  be  worth  preserving.  What  could 
the  State  institutions  do  to-day  toward  supply- 
ing the  want  of  students  seeking  higher  educa- 
tion? We  have  in  this  country  three  hundred 
and  fifty -eight  colleges  and  universities,  with 
fifty-seven  thousand  nine  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven  students.  Of  these  not  one -tenth  are 
State  institutions,  and  what  are  these  among  so 
many?  If  we  would  estimate  the  value  of  the 
work  performed  by  the  church  schools  in  the 
discipline  of  mind  and  the  development  of 
character,  we  have  but  to  take  a  list  of  our 
great  scientists,  scholars,  educators,  and  states- 
men, and  trace  their  history  back  to  their  col- 
lege days.  While  this  paragraph  is  being  pen- 
ned, a  copy  of  Harpers  Weekly,  of  March 
26th,  containing  the  likenesses  and  a  sketch  of 
the  lives  of  the  members  of  President  Garfield's 
Cabinet,  is  laid  upon  the  table.  It  is  observed 
that  Mr.  Garfield  is  a  graduate  of  Williams, 
Mr.  Elaine  of  Washington  and  Jefferson,  Mr. 
MacVeagh  of  Yale — all  denominational  schools. 
Mr.  Frye,  who  succeeds  Mr.  Elaine  as  Sen- 
ator from  Maine,  was  educated  in  Bowdoin, 
also  denominational.  Where  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  present  Cabinet  were  educated  is 
not  stated.  And,  however  widely  this  examina- 
tion be  extended,  similar  results  will  be  reach- 
ed. Even  the  Presidents  of  the  leading  State 
Universities  of  the  country  have  been  select- 
ed from  the  graduates  of  the  denominational 
schools.  Grant,  then,  that  they  are  a  little  slow 
to  cast  aside  the  traditions  of  the  past  and  fall 
in  with  new  methods,  they  have  a  mighty 
past  to  remember,  venerable  with  age  and  full 
of  great  achievements. 

Seeing,  then,  that  these  institutions  are  vital 
to  our  system  of  education,  and  the  source  of 
such  untold  benefits,  what  are  the  obligations 
of  the  State  toward  them? 

Let  it  be  premised  that  they  do  not  ask  for 
subsidies.  The  settled  policy  of  the  party  now 
dominant  in  our  politics  has  foreclosed  that 


question  for  the  present;  and  it  is  as  certain 
as  any  political  event  can  be,  that  this  policy 
will  be  permanently  ratified  by  the  people. 

Eut  they  should  be  freed  from  taxation. 
The  argument  in  favor  of  such  exemption  ex- 
ists upon  the  same  basis  as  that  in  favor  of  the 
freedom  of  the  church  from  these  unjust  ex- 
actions. Religion  and  education  are  essential 
to  the  permanence  of  republican  institutions. 
The  State  supports  the  school  as  an  institu- 
tion vital  to  its  own  safety,  and  exempts  all 
school  property  from  taxation.  If  the  Church 
and  the  church  school  were  not  supported  by 
voluntary  contributions,  the  State,  for  its  own 
safety,  would  be  obliged  to  sustain  them.  In 
that  case,  of  course,  the  State  would  not  tax 
its  own  property.  But  the  fact  that  they  are 
supported  by  voluntary  contributions,  and  that 
the  State  is  wholly  freed  from  this  burden,  is  a 
conclusive  reason  why  it  should  not  make  a 
gain  of  the  benevolence  of  its  citizens.  Per- 
haps a  remark  on  this  subject,  made  to  the 
writer,  by  President  Eliot,  of  Harvard,  during 
a  brief  visit  last  summer  to  that  noble  insti- 
tution, may  serve  to  clinch  this  conclusion^ 
On  being  told  that  the  great  State  of  Califor- 
nia taxed  the  grounds,  the  buildings,  and  the 
funds  of  all  private  institutions  of  learning,  this 
eminent  educator  replied,  with  raised  hand  and 
lifted  brow,  that  such  a  policy  was  "ghastly? 

Finally,  the  State  should  recognize  and  in- 
dorse the  work  of  the  church  schools.  True,, 
they  are  private  institutions  in  the  sense  of  be- 
ing supported  by  private  benevolence,  and 
controlled  by  private  management.  But  they 
are  doing  necessary  work — work  which,  under 
any  circumstances,  the  State  could  not  do,  with- 
out great  additional  expense,  and,  as  our  gov- 
ernment is  constituted,  cannot  do  at  all.  So, 
their  private  character,  in  large  measure,  dis- 
appears. They  are  not  so  much  for  personal  or 
denominational  ends,  as  in  the  interest  of  gen- 
eral intelligence,  Christianity,  and  good  morals. 

Should  their  recognition  demand  a  certain 
measure  of  supervision,  in  order  to  insure  thor- 
oughness, every  meritorious  institution  would 
seek,  rather  than  shun,  the  most  thorough  in- 
spection. C.  C.  STRATTON. 


A   CLOUDED   SUMMER. 


It  was  a  handsomely  furnished  room,  com- 
fortable, and  even  elegant.  A  generous  fire 
burned  in  the  grate,  and  the  breakfast  -  table 
was  luxurious  in  its  appointments ;  but  on  the 
faces  of  the  two  occupants  of  the  room  discon- 


tent was  plainly  marked.  An  elderly  lady,  with 
a  haughty,  well  preserved  face  that  had  an  un- 
mistakable frown  upon  it,  was  sitting  in  a  low 
chair  by  the  fire,  impatiently  glancing  at  the 
other  occupant,  who  stood  looking  discontent- 


464 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


-edly  out  of  the  window.  At  last,  as  if  impatient 
of  the  silence,  the  elderly  lady  spoke  : 

"Now,  Helen,  dear,  do  be  reasonable,  and 
accept  the  Josselyns'  invitation  to  visit  Yo- 
semite  with  them." 

"But,  Aunt  Elinor,"  came  in  clear,  decided 
tones  from  the  window,  and  in  a  manner  that 
gave  evidence  of  a  certain  degree  of  independ- 
ence of  character,  "I  have  been  to  Yosemite, 
and  I  do  not  like  the  Josselyns;  and,  then,  I 
have  not  seen  Nel  for  six  months." 

"But  the  idea  of  burying  yourself  in  the  Santa 
Cruz  Mountains  on  a  ranch !  You  are  foolish 
to  give  up  such  an  opportunity.  And,  then, 
what  will  Ralph  say?'" 

"He  will  probably  say  I  am  romantic  and 
•erratic;  but  I  have  determined  to  visit  Nella, 
and  I  am  not  going  with  the  Josselyns." 

Mrs.  Lawton  sighed,  but  said  no  more.  There 
was  resignation  in  the  sigh,  some  anger,  and  a 
little  bitterness.  Indeed,  there  was  no  more  to 
be  said;  for  when  Helen  announced  anything 
in  that  determined  tone  she  generally  meant  it. 

Helen  Morton  was  the  adopted  child  of  her 
aunt.  Having  always  been  indulged  in  every 
wish,  she  was  self-willed  and  headstrong.  A 
.spoiled  child  is  a  selfish  child. 

It  had  been  Mrs.  Lawton's  cherished  desire 
that  Helen  should  marry  Ralph  Reade.  He 
was  the  son  of  one  of  her  husband's  friends, 
and  was  a  rising  lawyer ;  and  it  was  with  grat- 
ification and  pride  that  she  had  received  Helen's 
announcement  of  her  engagement  some  three 
months  previous.  True,  she  wished  that  Helen 
had  displayed  a  trifle  more  warmth,  for  her 
niece  had  told  her  without  any  girlish  blushes 
or  hesitancy.  Mrs.  Lawton  had  consoled  her- 
self, however,  with  the  reflection  that  Helen 
was  "so  sensible  and  not  given  to  romance." 

Ralph  Reade  was  not  a  man  for  one  to  weave 
romances  about,  to  be  sure.  He  was  not  very 
tall,  and  was  rather  stout,  with  a  face  only  re- 
lieved from  absolute  plainness  by  earnest  dark 
eyes.  He  was  honest  and  true,  and  loved  Helen 
with  a  fervor  of  which  she  scarcely  dreamed. 
He  was  quiet  and  self-contained. 

It  was  the  last  of  July.  Helen  had  been  with 
her  friend,  Mrs.  Wilton,  a  week.  There  were 
boarders  at  the  house — among  them  a  widow, 
Mrs.  McGregor,  with  her  son,  Roger,  who  was 
delicate,  consumption  bearing  its  imprint  on  his 
face.  With  them  was  Mrs.  McGregor's  ward, 
Annie  Lundie,  a  sweet,  brown-eyed,  fragile  lit- 
tle thing,  who  loved  Roger  McGregor  with  all 
the  strength  of  her  tender  heart. 

McGregor  was  not  unmindful  of  her,  for  in 
all  his  strolls  she  was  his  constant  companion. 
He  was  improving  and  beginning  to  talk  cheer- 
jfully  of  his  plans  for  the  winter,  and  Annie 


would  listen  with  a  more  hopeful  expression 
than  her  face  had  worn  for  many  a  weary  day. 

Miss  Morton  took  them  all  by  storm.  She 
was  tall,  slender,  and  graceful.  She  was  thor- 
oughbred from  the  crown  of  her  well -shaped 
head  to  the  tip  of  her  dainty  French  boot.  She 
was  beautiful  and  entertaining ;  and,  withal,  she 
possessed  a  fascination  that  people  could  not 
define  and  did  not  attempt  to  resist.  She  per- 
formed and  sang  like  an  artist,  and  McGregor 
turned  the  music.  Her  superior  self-confidence 
was  evident  in  every  movement. 

"Who  is  that  delicate  looking  girl?"  she  ask- 
ed Mrs.  Wilton  during  a  quiet  chat  together. 

"Oh,  that  is  Annie  Lundie.  She  is  Mrs.  Mc- 
Gregor's ward.  She  and  Roger  are  engaged. 
She  doesn't  flirt  with  him" — this  with  a  sidelong 
glance  at  Helen. 

"Nonsense,  Nel !  He  is  only  a  boy,  and  she 
is  a  mere  child." 

"Nonsense  or  not,  he  is  twenty -two  and  she 
is  eighteen.  I  believe  it  will  break  her  heart 
when  he  dies." 

"No,  Nella,  hearts  don't  break  that  easily," 
said  Helen,  lightly.  "He  isn't  going  to  die,  is 
he?" 

"Well,  his  mother  and  Annie  have  hope  for 
him,  I  know,  but  he  has  had  severe  hemor- 
rhages, and  I  don't  think  he  will  ever  be  strong 
again." 

The  days  passed  swiftly.  There,  was  always 
an  excursion  to  some  point  of  interest,  and  long 
walks  and  rambles.  Croquet  was  also  a  never- 
failing  resource,  and  every  evening  there  was 
music  in  the  long  parlor.  At  first  Roger  Mc- 
Gregor remained  by  Annie's  side,  but  gradu- 
ally he  became  Helen's  constant  attendant, 
leaving  Annie  to  his  mother.  At  times  his 
heart  smote  him  for  his  neglect  of  Annie,  and 
he  would  answer  her  pleading  look  and  remain 
with  her.  This  did  not  please  Helen,  and  she 
would  summon  him  to  her  side  by  some  pre- 
text. At  last  he  stifled  his  good  impulses,  and 
yielded  entirely  to  Helen's  fascination  and 
charm,  for  she  was  not  one  to  accept  a  divided 
homage.  They  promenaded  on  the  long  piazza 
in  the  moonlight,  and  Helen  sang  tender  little 
ballads  to  him,  until  her  power  over  him  became 
complete.  Not  without  effort,  for  Roger's  con- 
science and  Annie's  pale,  wistful  face  distressed 
him,  and  he  struggled  against  the  fascination. 

Poor  little  Annie  grew  pale  and  troubled. 
She  was  timid  and  shrinking  by  nature,  and 
could  not  compete  with  this  woman  of  the 
world.  She  took  long  walks,  unaccompanied 
save  by  tiny  Daisy  Wilton  and  the  faithful  dog. 
She  was  anxious  about  Roger,  too.  He  was 
taxing  his  strength  too  much  in  the  long  walks 
and  drives  with  Helen.  Once  she  playfully  at- 


A    CLOUDED  SUMMER. 


465 


tempted  to  chide  him  for  his  neglect,  but  he 
interrupted  her. 

"You  really  must  excuse  me,  Annie,  but 
Miss  Morton  is  waiting  for  me  under  the  big 
oak.  I  promised  to  read  her  the  'Idyls  of  the 
King.'  Another  time." 

Annie  turned  away  to  hide  her  tears,  and 
murmured  to  herself : 

"I  am  afraid  I  shall  hate  Miss  Morton." 

Mrs.  Wilton  watched  Helen  dubiously.  She 
was  very  fond  of  her,  but  little  Annie  was  dear 
to  her  as  well.  No  one  could  help  loving  her. 
She  was  dainty  and  sweet,  and  the  big  brown 
eyes  had  of  late  taken  quite  a  pathetic  look. 

Mrs.  Wilton  resolved  to  speak  with  Helen; 
but  her  heart  quaked  inwardly,  for  she  was  just 
the  least  bit  afraid  of  her,  too. 

She  chose  the  opportunity  one  day  just  after 
the  mail  came.  She  went  to  Helen's  room 
with  a  letter  from  Mr.  Reade  in  her  hand.  She 
found  Helen  sitting  by  the  window,  listlessly 
watching  some  placid  clouds  which  were  sail- 
ing in  the  sky. 

Helen  took  the  letter  with  an  impatient  sigh, 
and  laid  it  on  the  window,  from  which  it  pres- 
ently fell  unheeded  to  the  floor.  Mrs.  Wilton 
felt  that  it  was  an  inopportune  moment,  for 
Helen  looked  bored  and  cross ;  but  a  thought 
of  Annie's  face  decided  her,  and  she  gave  a  lit- 
tle premonitory  cough.  Helen  turned  instantly. 

"What  is  it,  Nella?  I  recognize  the  danger 
signal.  That  was  always  the  way  you  prefaced 
your  lectures  at  the  seminary.  What  have  I 
been  doing  now?" 

Mrs.  Wilton  crossed  the  room  and  knelt  by 
Helen's  side  at  the  window,  and  took  her  hand, 
and  caressed  it  while  she  talked. 

Helen  listened  patiently,  with  an  absolutely 
expressionless  face.  When  Mrs.  Wilton's  voice 
ceased,  Helen  laughed  a  low,  rippling  laugh — 
a  heartless  laugh  it  was — and  said  : 

"Now,  Nella,  dear, get  up.  The  role  of  Men- 
tor does  not  sit  gracefully  upon  you.  The  boy 
amuses  me,  and  I  am  doing  him  a  favor,  really. 
He  would  die  with  ennui  if  I  did  not  cheer  him." 

"But,  my  dear,  you  forget  he  had  Annie  Lun- 
die  before  you  came — and  think  of  the  reac- 
tion." 

"She  is  better  off  without  him  if  she  is  too 
weak  to  hold  him." 

"What  will  Mr.  Reade  say  to  your  flirting?" 

"Now,  Nella,  that  is  too  bad!  I  am  not 
flirting.  Ralph  will  be  pleased  to  have  me 
amuse  an  invalid." 

"Rather  dangerous  amusement  for  Roger,  I 
fear,  Helen,"  said  Mrs.  Wilton,  sadly. 

"There;  don't  say  any  more  about  it.  Really, 
there  is  no  cause  for  Miss  Lundie  to  be  jealous. 
I  do  not  want  her  lover." 


"I  know  you  do  not;  but  it  is  apparent  that 
he  is  interested  in  you.  True,  you  do  not  care 
for  him.  But  are  you  sure  he  is  safe?" 

"Nella,  you  are  positively  tiresome.  I  am 
older  than  he.  There;  don't  be  cross  any 
more,  please.  Look  at  those  lovely  clouds." 

Mrs.  Wilton  turned  away.  She  thought,  as 
she  went  slowly  down  the  stairs : 

"I  wish  Helen  would  be  more  considerate. 
I  almost  regret  that  she  chose  this  time  for  her 
visit." 

Then,  feeling  as  if  in  her  heart  she  had  done 
her  friend  injustice,  she  gathered  some  roses 
and  sent  them  up  to  Helen  by  Daisy  with  mam- 
ma's love.  Helen  smiled  as  she  took  the  fra- 
grant peace-offering,  and,  thanking  her  little 
visitor,  dismissed  her  with  a  kiss. 

But  the  smile  died,  and  a  look  of  weariness 
replaced  it  as  she  took  up  her  neglected  letter. 
Evidently,  its  contents  did  not  please  her,  for 
she  tore  it  into  fragments,  with  a  scornful  ex- 
pression on  her  proud  face.  She  sat  by  the 
window  and  reflected  upon  Mrs.  Wilton's  words, 
and  half  resolved  to  take  no  more  notice  of 
Roger  McGregor,  and  for  a  day  or  two  she 
rather  avoided  him,  affecting  not  to  see  the 
pained  look  in  his  eyes  at  some  heartless  reply 
she  made  to  him.  But  life  at  the  ranch  was 
dull  and  uneventful,  and  Helen  was  fond  of  ad- 
miration and  society.  She  found  both  in  Mc- 
Gregor; for,  laugh  at  the  idea  as  she  might, 
Miss  Morton  saw  what  he  no  longer  attempted 
to  conceal — his  intense  admiration. 

She  came  down  early  one  morning — it  was 
the  first  day  of  August — dressed  for  walking.' 

"Who  wants  to  go  with  me  for  the  mail?  I 
am  tired  of  our  prescribed  walks  and  drives, 
and  long  for  a  change.  Besides,  I  want  to 
make  a  purchase  at  the  station." 

"I  will  go  with  you,  Miss  Morton,"  said  Mc- 
Gregor, with  eager  haste.  "I  have  been  think- 
ing of  taking  a  walk." 

"But,  Roger,"  said  Annie,  timidly,  "isn't  it 
too  far  to  the  station  for  you?  You  know  you 
coughed  so  hard  last  night." 

"Nonsense,  Annie!  Don't  be  absurd,"  said 
Roger,  impatiently.  Then,  in  a  gentler  tone, 
he  added:  "I  am  all  right.  I  could  walk  a 
dozen  miles." 

"I  know,  but  the  path  is  so  steep,  and  it  is 
up  hill  nearly  all  the  way." 

"Really,  Miss  Lundie,  Mr.  McGregor  ought 
to  be  the  best  judge  of  his  strength.  It  is  in 
fact  but  a  short  distance,"  said  Helen  in  her 
most  icy  tones. 

"Certainly,  Miss  Morton,  it  was  foolish  for 
me  to  attempt  to  detain  him.  Excuse  me,  pray," 
and  Annie  went  rapidly  away  to  hide  her  defeat 
in  her  own  room. 


466 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


It  was  a  perfect  day.  Above,  through  the 
overhanging  branches,  the  sky  was  bright  and 
clear,  without  one  cloud.  The  path  wound 
round  the  canon,  and  lost  itself  ever  and  anon 
in  a  tangle  of  brush  and  vines.  The  birds  sang 
in  the  tree-tops,  and  far  down  below  them  they 
could  hear  the  gentle  ripple  of  the  stream, 
whose  windings  the  road  followed. 

They  walked  along  in  silence  until  the  sta- 
tion was  reached,  and  the  mail  secured,  and 
Helen's  purchases  made.  As  they  proceeded 
homeward,  McGregor  asked  : 

"Did  you  get  your  letter?" 

"What  letter?'" 

"Oh,  the  big  thick  one.     May  I  read  it?" 

"  I  fear  it  would  scarcely  interest  you." 

"Everything  about  you  interests  me.  Let  us 
sit  down  on  that  fallen  tree.  I  want  you  to 
sing  for  me." 

Helen  sang  for  him  as  he  desired.  Roger 
sat  with  his  head  resting  against  the  tree,  a 
faint  flush  coming  into  his  pale  cheeks.  As  the 
last  note  died  away,  he  said,  abruptly : 

"Miss  Morton,  do  you  believe  in  fate?" 

Helen  smiled  a  slow,  sweet  smile  as  she  an- 
swered : 

"To  a  certain  extent,  yes." 

"  I  am  a  stanch  believer  in  it.  I  think  it  was 
fate  that  sent  me  here  from  Scotland  to  meet 
you  and  know  you.  Miss  Morton — Helen," 
and  his  voice  trembled  despite  his  efforts  to 
keep  it  steady,  "I  know  I  am  only  a  boy  in 
your  eyes — a  feeble  boy — but  I  love  you.  You 
have  not  been  indifferent  to  me.  Pardon  me  if 
I  offend,  but  I  have  fancied  that  you  cared  for 
me.  Will  you  not  tell  me  that  you  do?  I  am 
not  strong,  I  know,  but  with  your  love  to  help 
me  I  will  be.  Since  I  have  known  you  I  have 
been  fighting  with  death,  and  with  your  love  to 
aid  me,  I  can  baffle  him,  I  know." 

There  was  a  half -embarrassed  look  in  his 
eyes,  and  a  painful  flush  in  his  cheeks. 

"And  Annie?"  interrupted  Helen. 

It  was  cruel.  She  did  not  care  for  him.  She 
did  not  want  his  love ;  and  yet  she  required  a 
complete  surrender.  Had  she  no  heart? 

"Oh,  that  was  boyish  folly,"  he  said.  "I 
have  known  Annie  all  my  life.  I  never  really 
loved  until  I  knew  you.  She  is  my  mother's 
ward,  you  know." 

"Yes;  but  she  loves  you." 

"I  know;  but  she  is  aware  of  my  love  for 
you." 

"Roger,"  said  Helen,  "I  will  not  say  that  I 
was  not  aware  of  your  regard  for  me,  but  I 
thought  the  knowledge  that  I  was  older  than 
you  would  keep  you  silent.  I  thought  we  were 
but  friends.  Did  you  not  notice  this  ring?" 
holding  up  her  left  hand,  on  which  a  diamond 


sparked  bright.  "It  is  the  badge  of  my  servi- 
tude." 

"It  means,  then,  that  I  am  to  congratulate 
you,  Miss  Morton?" 

He  said  this  without  a  tremor  in  his  voice, 
but  with  a  death-like  pallor  in  his  face. 

"Roger,"  faltered  Helen,  frightened  by  his 
deadly  whiteness,  "forgive  me.  I  should  have 
told  you,  but  I  thought  you  would  understand. 
Don't  look  at  me  so,  Roger.  Surely  I  did  not 
know  you  would  misconstrue  my  friendship  into 
love?" 

There  was  a  long  silence.  The  young  man 
sat  stupefied.  Presently  he  said : 

"I  have  been  stupid,  Miss  Morton,  else  I 
would  have  understood.  I  knew  there  were 
women  in  the  world  that  played  at  love  when 

they  only  meant  friendship So,  it  was 

your  summer  amusement.  I  have  served  to 

relieve  the  monotony  of  the  long  days 

Shall  we  go  on  now,  Miss  Morton?"  rising 
slowly  to  his  feet,  and  offering  his  hand  to  as- 
sist her. 

"But,  Roger,  you  must  not  think  so  hard  of 
me.  I  —  I  do  care  for  you  very  much.  I  can- 
not marry  you,  for  I  have  promised  to  become 
Mr.  Reade's  wife  in  January.  I  have  given  my 
word.  Don't  be  angry  with  me,  Roger.  Let 
us  be  friends,  at  least." 

Her  voice  was  low  and  sweet.  Her  face  was 
temptingly  near  his.  Obeying  an  ungoverna- 
ble impulse,  Roger  seized  her  in  his  arms  and 
clasped  her  passionately  to  his  heart,  and  rain- 
ed a  shower  of  kisses  on  her  face.  He  released 
her  suddenly,  and  with  a  powerful  effort  re- 
gained his  self-control. 

"Pardon  me,  Miss  Morton;  I  was  mad  fora 
moment.  I  am  sane  now.  I  forgive  you  free- 
ly, but  I  cannot  accept  the  shadow  you  hold 
out  to  me.  We  had  better  meet  as  seldom  as 
possible.  Shall  we  walk  on  now?" 

Helen  declined  the  proffered  arm,  and  they 
walked  on  in  silence.  McGregor  was  review- 
ing in  his  mind  the  past  month,  and  he  thought 
of  his  cruel  neglect  of  Annie,  and  he  resolved 
to  seek  her  and  beg  her  forgiveness. 

As  they  reached  the  house  they  saw  Annie 
Lundie  seated  on  the  piazza,  and  as  Miss  Mor- 
ton entered  the  house,  Roger  said  to  Annie : 

"Come  out  under  the  oak  with  me,  Annie.  I 
want  to  speak  with  you." 

Annie  followed  him,  wondering.  Seating  him- 
self beside  her,  he  said: 

"Annie,  I  have  wronged  you  cruelly.  I  have 
neglected  and  slighted  you.  I  dare  not  hope 
for  your  forgiveness.  If  you  spurn  me  with 
contempt  it  will  be  my  just  desert.  But,  An- 
nie, dear  little  Annie,  in  the  old  days,  back  in 
our  dear  old  Scotland  home,  you  were  ever 


A    CLOUDED  SUMMER. 


467 


gentle  and  forbearing.  I  have  tried  your  pa- 
tience and  your  love  so  often — so  often.  In 
your  love  I  have  ever  found  a  sweet  haven  of 
rest.  You  have  been  my  guiding  star.  I  have 
wandered  away  for  a  time — I  have  been  lost — 
but  I  return  to  you  now,  crushed,  broken,  hu- 
miliated, to  beg  forgiveness  at  your  feet.  Don't 
cast  me  off,  Annie." 

But  Annie  was  sobbing  as  if  her  heart  would 
break. 

"Annie,"  he  said,  lifting  her  tear-stained  face, 
"will  you  not  speak  to  me — not  one  word?" 

"  Oh,  Roger,"  came  in  broken  tones  from  An- 
nie, "I  forgive  you  all — everything.  I  have 
been  so  miserable — utterly  miserable — but  now 
I  am  so  happy  !" 

And  to  prove  the  truth  of  her  assertion,  she 
fell  to  sobbing  again.  But  Roger  would  not 
let  the  tears  fall. 

For  a  long  time  they  sat  there.  Roger  con- 
fessed everything,  and  Annie  forgave  all.  Their 
reconciliation  was  complete. 

When  the  bell  for  luncheon  rang  they  went 
slowly  to  the  house.  At  the  foot  of  the  stairs, 
Roger  said : 

"Annie,  tell  my  mother  that  I  will  not  be 
down  to  luncheon.  I  am  very  tired,  and  will 
lie  down  for  a  while." 

And,  smiling  in  answer  to  her  anxious  inquiry 
if  he  felt  ill,  he  went  on  to  his  room. 

Lucheon-time  passed — heavily,  it  seemed. 
The  afternoon  dragged  slowly  by.  Still  Roger 
did  not  appear.  The  sun  went  down.  The 
clouds  rested  on  the  Pacific,  seen  from  afar. 
They  were  red — red  as  blood.  The  ocean  was 
calm — calm  as  death. 

A  stealthy  breeze  came  up  the  canon,  and 
whispered  mysteriously  through  the  redwoods 
— going  on  and  telling  its  secret;  sighing  and 
wringing  its  hands,  and  softly  sobbing;  pass- 
ing on  to  a  group  of  oaks  and  making  them 
shiver,  and  the  younger  branches  to  hide  them- 
selves through  terror;  telling  it  everywhere  in 
awful  confidence,  and  begging  that  it  be  not 
repeated ;  confiding  it  to  other  stealthy  noctur- 
nal winds  that  it  met  on  the  way,  which  in  turn 
whispered  it  to  others,  and  thus  they  told  it  far 
and  wide— through  dark  canons  and  gorges — 
over  fields,  and  knolls,  and  hills,  and  mount- 
ains— away  beyond  them  over  the  plains — tell- 
ing it  everywhere. 

"Mother,"  said  Annie,  timidly,  "do  you  think 
Roger  is  ill?" 

"  I  will  go  and  see,  my  child." 

"Mother " 


"Well,  my  dear." 

"  Let  me  go." 

"Very  well." 

The  timid  girl  rapped  softly  at  his  door. 
There  was  no  answer.  She  rapped  again.  Still 
all  was  quiet. 

"Roger!" 

There  was  no  reply. 

"Roger!" 

Her  own  voice  appalled  her. 

"Are  you  ill,  Roger?" 

The  silence  was  death -like.  She  tried  the 
latch.  The  door  yielded.  She  gently  opened 
it,  hoping  that  he  slumbered,  and  fearing  to 
wake  him.  She  peered  into  the  gloom. 

Sure  enough,  there  sat  Roger  with  his  arm 
on  the  table,  and  his  head  resting  on  his  arm  — 
asleep.  She  softly  approached  him,  and  stood 
behind  his  chair,  in  doubt.  She  placed  her 
hand  on  his  shoulder.  It  did  not  rouse  him. 
He  slumbered  very  soundly. 

"Roger,"  she  called,  in  a  low  tone. 

Still  he  slept.  Then  she  peered  into  his  face. 
His  eyes  were  closed.  His  lips  were  slightly 
parted.  At  that  moment  she  nearly  fell.  Her 
foot  had  slipped  upon  something  in  which  she 
trod.  She  glanced  at  the  floor,  and  found  that 
she  was  standing  in  a  pool  of  blood. 

"Roger,"  she  screamed,  in  agony. 

Still  he  slumbered  on  —  slumbered  soundly. 
Inspired  with  the  courage  of  supreme  agony 
and  terror,  she  raised  his  head  in  her  arms; 
and  the  blood  started  afresh  from  his  mouth. 
There  was  a  shriek — a  rush  of  persons  to  the 
room — a  young  girl  holding  her  lover's  head 
in  her  arms,  while  madness  stared  from  her 
eyes — and  yet  Roger  McGregor  did  not  awake; 
he  slumbered  on  forever. 

And  Helen?  Why,  her  wedding  with  Ralph 
Reade  was  quite  a  brilliant  affair.  He  is  nat- 
urally proud  of  his  bride — for  is  she  not  beau- 
tiful, and  graceful,  and  accomplished?  Is  she 
not  everything  that  a  good  man  could  honor 
and  love?  Certainly  she  is  an  ornament  to 
society,  and  to  her  home.  She  has  the  best 
wishes  of  a  large  number  of  friends,  who  con- 
gratulate Mr.  Reade  on  his  success  in  securing 
a  pearl  of  such  worth. 

Clytemnestra  carried  the  dagger  in  her  hand. 
Other  women  carry  it  in  their  eyes,  in  their 
tongues.  The  former  was  called  a  murderess. 
There  is  a  polite  name  for  the  latter,  but  a  less 
dignified  name.  A  dagger  in  the  heart  is  fatal 
whether  from  the  one  or  the  other. 

LYDIA  E.  HOUGHTON. 


468 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


A   BARBARY   COAST   CITY. 


The  town  of  Algiers,  situated  on  the  slope  of 
a  range  of  hills  overlooking  the  waters  of  the 
Mediterranean,  presents  a  ^very  fine  prospect 
when  viewed  from  the  sea.  Standing  on  the 
deck  of  the  steamer,  after  a  gloomy  and  stormy 
passage  across  from  Marseilles,  undertaken  dur- 
ing the  early  winter  months,  the  city,  bathed  in 
African  sunlight,  its  snow-white  buildings  stand- 
ing out  in  sharp  relief  against  the  green  back- 
ground of  the  hills  and  the  intensely  deep  blue 
sky,  is  like  a  beautiful  painting. 

At  first  view,  Algiers  bears  a  slight  resem- 
blance to  Genoa;  but  in  the  Italian  city,  the 
houses  are  farther  apart,  with  clumps  of  trees 
between  them.  The  hill -side  is  also  steeper. 
The  first  thing  that  strikes  the  notice  of  the 
tourist,  when  observing  Algiers  from  the  har- 
bor, is  a  broad  roadway  forming  a  frontage  to 
the  town.  Built  solidly  on  arched  vaults,  it  has 
a  stone  balustrade  and  paved  sidewalk  over- 
looking the  harbor.  On  the  farther  side  are  sev- 
eral fine  cafe's,  restaurants,  and  fancy  stores. 
This  street,  now  called  Boulevard  de  la  Repub- 
lique  (previous  to  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  in  1870, 
the  Boulevard  de  1'Impe'ratrice),  was  built  about 
seventeen  years  ago  by  the  English  contractor, 
Sir  Morton  Peto,  and  forms  an  important  addi- 
tion to  the  city.  Underneath  the  roadway  are 
numerous  store-houses  for  goods,  the  fish  mar- 
ket, the  Anglo-American  Bank,  where  visitors 
mostly  change  their  money,  and  have  the  use 
of  a  small  reading-room,  furnished  with  several 
newspapers.  Opening  on  the  boulevard  is  a 
large  square,  or.  plaza,  called  the  Place  du  Gou- 
vernement,  one  side  being  formed  by  a  large 
mosque,  with  a  dome,  much  frequented  by  the 
Arabs.  To  the  extreme  right,  on  the  brow  of 
another  hill,  is  the  fine  church  of  "Our  Lady  of 
Victories,"  erected  to  commemorate  the  con- 
quest of  Algeria  by  the  French  army  in  1832. 
This  church,  of  mixed  Byzantine  and  Moorish 
architecture,  is  on  an  elevated  site,  and  forms  a 
prominent  object  from  the  bay. 

To  the  left  of  the  town  one  sees  the  pretty 
suburb  of  Mustapha  Supe*rieur,  with  its  villas 
dotted  among  the  trees.  Most  of  these  houses 
are  rented  by  wealthy  English  and  American 
visitors  for  the  winter  months.  Still  farther 
eastward,  the  hills  slope  away  gradually,  end- 
ing in  a  promontory  about  fifteen  miles  distant ; 
and  behind,  in  the  far  distance  and  visible  only 
on  clear  days,  the  snowy  peaks  of  the  D'jura 


Mountains,  a  spur  of  the  Atlas,  remind  one  of 
the  Sierra  Nevada;  but  the  African  mountains 
are  treeless,  and  the  outlines  more  jagged  and 
uneven. 

No  sooner  is  the  steamer  anchored  in  the 
harbor  than  it  is  surrounded  by  a  host  of  small 
boats,  rowed  by  men  of  various  nationalities — 
Arabs,  Maltese,  Spaniards,  Italians — all  eager 
to  make  a  few  sous  by  landing  the  passengers 
and  their  numerous  articles  of  baggage.  The 
charge  made  is  about  two  cents  for  each  pack- 
age, and  about  ten  or  twelve  for  each  person. 
These  porters  are  generally  men  of  fine  phy- 
sique, especially  the  Arabs,  and  resemble  beasts 
of  burden  in  the  ease  and  facility  with  which 
they  haul  or  carry  tremendous  loads  of  trunks 
or  merchandise  about  the  wharves.  This  is  the 
"baggage  transfer  company"  of  Africa,  and  the 
arrangements  are  primitive  to  a  degree.  Once 
on  board,  the  most  energetic  of  these  porters  in- 
stantly seizes  several  articles  of  your  baggage, 
his  comrade  shoulders  the  rest  with  astonish- 
ing facility,  beckoning  to  you  to  follow,  and  the 
articles  and  yourself  are  soon  deposited  in  one 
of  the  flotilla  of  boats,  amid  much  chattering 
and  gesticulation ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  the 
traveler  finds  himself  once  more  on  terra  Jirma, 
and  on  African  soil.  Hired  carriages  are  in 
waiting  to  convey  the  new  arrivals  to  the  ho- 
tels. The  three  principal  ones  are  the  hotels 
"d'Orient,"  "de  la  Regence,"  and  "de  1'Oasis," 
At  each  of  these  the  charges  are  moderate — 
about  ninety  cents  per  diem,  if  boarding  by 
the  week ;  and  the  cuisine  is  excellent,  and  in- 
cludes all  the  game  and  fruit  in  season.  The 
meals  are  taken  table  d^hote,  and  at  regular 
hours.  Besides  these  hotels  in  the  city,  there 
are  two  or  three  boarding-houses  at  Mustapha, 
kept  by  French  and  Italians,  and  they  also  are 
well  patronized. 

In  front  of  the  Hotel  de  la  Re'gence,  over- 
looking the  Place  du  Gouvernement,  is  a  cluster 
of  palm  trees,  which  form  an  agreeable  shade, 
underneath  which  the  guests  of  the  hotel  sit  or 
lounge  around,  watching  the  motley  crowd,  com- 
posed of  every  nation  from  Europe,  intermin- 
gled with  Arabs,  Moors  from  Barbary,  Jews, 
Kabyles,  or  mountain  tribes,  and  many  others. 
Here,  also,  are  brought  for  sale  beautiful  bou- 
quets of  flowers;  in  December  and  January, 
geraniums,  roses,  heliotrope,  narcissus,  sweet 
violets,  making  one  forget  there  is  such  a 


A   BARBARY  COAST  CITY. 


469 


thing  as  severe  winter  in  other  countries  not 
far  away.  A  good  assortment  of  bouquets  can 
almost  always  be  found  early  in  the  morning  at 
the  market-place  in  the  Place  de  Chartres,  and 
can  be  bought  for  very  little,  twenty-five  to  forty 
cents  being  the  usual  prices. 

An  excellent  military  band  plays  twice  a 
week  in  the  square,  and  is  well  attended  by  the 
visitors  and  many  of  the  French  residents. 
The  Zouaves  are  generally  the  performers,  and 
are  a  fine-looking  set  of  men  in  their  picturesque 
dress. 

On  every  hand,  a  striking  contrast  attracts 
you.  On  one  side  of  the  public  square,  French 
cafe's,  French  fashions  and  manners;  on  the 
other,  the  fine  Moorish  mosque,  in  dazzling 
whiteness,  dating  from  centuries  back,  when 
Algiers  was  the  citadel  of  the  Dey,  and  his  pi- 
ratical corsairs  were  the  terror  of  the  merchant- 
men of  Europe.  Even  so  late  as  the  com- 
mencement of  the  present  century,  Christian 
captives  languished  in  the  dungeons  of  the 
Kasbah,  the  Dey's  citadel,  or  worked  out  their 
existence  in  a  life-long  bondage,  unless  by  some 
happy  chance  their  friends  became  aware  of 
their  fate  and  were  rich  enough  to  pay  a  heavy 
ransom  for  them.  At  this  time,  Lord  Exmouth 
was  sent  by  the  British  Government  with  two 
men-of-war  to  demand  the  release  of  some  Eng- 
lish captives,  which,  being  refused,  he  shell- 
ed the  town,  inflicting  severe  damage  on  the 
Dey's  palace,  causing. him  at  last  to  surrender 
the  captives  then  in  his  power.  But  even  after 
that  the  consuls  of  the  different  European  pow- 
ers were  subjected  to  various  petty  insults  and 
annoyances,  until  at  last  an  insult  offered  to  the 
French  Consul,  during  an  audience  with  the 
Dey,  caused  the  French  Government  to  retali- 
ate by  sending  an  army  to  conquer  the  country 
and  dethrone  the  despot  who  had  so  long  mis- 
used his  power.  The  town  was  quickly  taken, 
but  it  was  some  time  before  the  warlike  mount- 
ain tribes  were  forced  to  surrender;  and  they 
have  within  the  last  ten  years  at  times  revolted 
and  attempted  to  throw  off  the  French  yoke, 
but  without  success,  although  they  harassed  the 
French  troops  considerably.  Now  the  Arabs 
seem  to  have  resigned  themselves  to  their  fate. 
They  say  "it  is  the  will  of  Allah,"  .and  they  re- 
main quiet,  and  watch  the  course  of  events. 
But  in  many  of  them  there  is  still  lurking  a 
deep  hatred  to  their  Christian  conquerors. 

The  names  of  the  streets  present  a  strange 
mixture  of  Oriental  and  modern  French.  The 
Rue  "Bab-el-Oued,"  "Bab  Azoun,"  "Street  of 
the  Kasbah,"  take  one  back  to  the  tales  of  The 
Arabian  Nights  \  while  others,  such  as  the 
Place  du  Theatre,  Jardin,  Marengo,  etc.,  recall 
modern  France.  The  upper  part  of  the  town 

VOL.  III.- 30. 


is  entirely  Arab;  the  lower,  French.  In  the 
market-place  a  solemn  Arab  in  white  burnoose, 
with  bare  feet  and  legs,  selling  dates  from  the 
Oasis  of  Biskra  or  oranges  from  the  interior, 
sits  side  by  side  with  an  old  French  peasant 
woman  seated  under  a  huge  cotton  umbrella, 
behind  a  pile  of  fresh  vegetables.  And  how 
cheap  they  are !  Fine  cauliflowers,  as  large  as 
a  man's  head,  for  four  cents  apiece,  and  green 
peas  at  Christmas  and  New  Year's  days  selling 
at  about  seven  cents  the  pound !  Afterward,  in 
the  spring,  about  April,  the  prices  are  greatly 
reduced.  Once  we  were  offered  in  the  street, 
by  an  Arab  fruit-seller,  fourteen  or  fifteen  ex- 
quisite, delicately  flavored  and  scented  Man- 
darin oranges  for  two  cents.  How  these  men 
live  is  a  mystery  to  the  newly  arrived  visitor, 
but  after  a  short  stay,  and  close  observance  of 
their  frugal  and  temperate  habits,  one  can  un- 
derstand it  better. 

An  Arab  of  the  lower  classes  is  content  with 
one  meal  a  day,  consisting  either  of  broken 
wheat  ground  between  two  mill -stones  by  the 
women,  or  bruised  in  a  stone  mortar  and  mixed 
with  some  broth,  in  which  perhaps  may  be  some 
fragments  of  fish  or  meat,  and  a  handful  of 
dates.  When  traveling,  a  round,  flat  cake  of 
bread  and  some  fruit,  and  a  drink  of  pure  wa- 
ter from  a  stream,  are  all  he  requires.  On  that 
spare  diet,  with  a  cup  of  strong  black  coffee  at 
the  close  of  the  day's  work,  and  perhaps  a 
cracker  or  two,  he  thrives.  These  Arabs  have 
the  hardiness  of  constitution  and  endurance  of 
an  animal,  and  undertake  long  journeys  on  foot, 
especially  those  living  in  the  country,  walking 
barefooted,  clad  only  in  the  white  wool  bur- 
noose  reaching  to  the  knees,  with  peaked  hood 
sheltering  alike  from  scorching  suns  and  win- 
ter winds,  and  voluminous  white  cotton  breech- 
es, gathered  round  the  waist  and  knees,  and  re- 
sembling a  bag  in  duplicate,  and  consuming 
about  eight  yards  of  material  to  make  up. 

The  Moorish  women  seen  from  time  to  time 
in  the  more  retired  streets  attract  the  notice  by 
their  costume,  their  fine  dark  eyes  and  marked 
eyebrows  being  all  of  the  face  which  is  visible. 
The  jealous  adjar,  a  fine  strip  of  white  lawn  or 
muslin,  not  transparent,  is  fastened  over  all 
the  lower  part  of  the  face,  just  across  the  nose, 
below  the  eyes.  Covering  the  head  is  a  mantle 
or  wrapper,  called  the  haik — among  the  bet- 
ter classes  composed  of  dazzlingly  white  silk 
and  wool  interwoven  in  stripes,  sometimes  with 
gold  thread  or  pale  blue,  and  drawn  over  the 
forehead  so  as  to  conceal  the  hair.  This  is 
held  around  the  figure  in  graceful  folds  by  the 
hand.  Underneath  this  the  dress  consists  of  a 
richly  embroidered  silk  jacket  of  some  bright 
color ;  and  the  toilet  is  completed  by  a  pair  of 


470 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


extremely  baggy  pantaloons  gathered  in  around 
the  ankles,  and  a  pair  of  wide  and  peculiarly 
shaped  open  shoes,  Some,  however,  of  ad- 
vanced opinions,  have  invested  in  French  shoes 
of  modern  style,  with  heels;  but  this  is  rare. 
These  women,  if  respectable,  are  always  attend- 
ed by  a  duenna,  an  old  woman,  or  else  they  are 
closely  watched  and  followed  by  their  lord  and 
master  (in  every  sense  of  the  word),  to  see  that 
none  of  the  Christian  races  scrutinize  too  close- 
ly their  veiled  charms.  I  had  opportunities  of 
seeing  some  of  these  women  afterward  in  their 
homes,  and  found  them  refined,  good-natured, 
and  child-like  in  their  enjoyment  of  conversa- 
tion with  a  European.  They,  as  well  as  the 
men,  are  scrupulously  clean  in  their  persons 
and  dwellings  (of  course  I  refer  to  the  better 
classes ),  and  in  that  respect  are  a  bright  exam- 
ple to  their  Christian  sisters  —  French,  Italian, 
and  Spanish — who,  with  few  exceptions,  are 
lacking  in  that  virtue. 

The  only  "outing"  the  Mauresque  ladies  are 
allowed  is  a  weekly  trip  to  the  cemeteries, 
where  repose  the  bones  of  their  male  ancestors. 
There  they  resort  in  great  numbers  with  their 
children,  accompanied  always  by  their  watch- 
ful attendants,  and  may  be  seen  sitting  on  the 
tombs  enjoying  an  out -door  repast,  and  seem- 
ingly having  "a  good  time"  in  spite  of  the  mel- 
ancholy surroundings.  The  entrance  to  the 
cemetery  is  guarded  by  a  male  official,  who 
warns  off  the  inquisitive  unbeliever  if  of  the 
male  sex.  Two  Englishmen  tried  to  enter  one 
Friday  (the  Arab's  Sunday*),  and  came  into 
violent  collision  with  the  door-keeper.  At 
last,  by  appealing  to  a  French  police  officer, 
they  were  permitted  to  enter,  but  with  little  re- 
sults to  them,  for  the  women  closely  veiled 
themselves,  and  most  of  them  left  the  cemetery 
as  speedily  as  possible.  The  wealthy  Maur- 
esques  have  begun  to  patronize  the  horse-cars, 
which  run  from  one  end  of  the  city  to  the 
other,  along  the  sea-wall,  but  the  women,  in 
that  case,  are  always  accompanied  by  their 
husbands. 

Leading  from  the  public  square  are  two  cov- 
ered passages,  on  each  side  of  which  are  the 
stalls  kept  by  the  venders  of  Algerian  jewelry, 
basket  work,  daggers,  and  many  other  curios- 
ities. The  competition  is  great  between  these 
merchants.  They  vie  with  each  other  for  the 
custom  of  the  visitors,  who,  before  their  stay  in 


the  town  is  over,  have  generally  parted  with  a 
good  deal  of  their  surplus  cash  to  these  Orien- 
tal store -keepers.  Some  of  the  articles  sold 
here  are  really  beautiful  and  artistic  in  work- 
manship— table-covers  richly  embroidered  in 
colored  silks,  silk  haiks  and  scarfs,  finely  chas- 
ed trays,  and  articles  in  various  metals,  besides 
pure  attar  of  roses  and  other  perfumes. 

The  Governor's  palace  is  well  worth  a  visit,  as 
it  is  a  splendid  specimed  of  Moorish  architect- 
ure. Receptions  are  given  there  quite  fre- 
quently during  the  winter  months,  to  which 
the  elite  of  the  foreign  visitors  receive  invita- 
tions. 

For  those  wishing  to  make  excursions  to  the 
suburbs  of  the  town,  and  to  the  country  beyond, 
there  are  several  kinds  of  voitures  for  hire  at 
moderate  fares;  four  francs  (or  about  eighty 
cents)  will  take  you  perhaps  three  miles  out 
of  town.  The  drivers  are  generally  civil  and 
obliging.  The  small  fee  of  five  cents,  over 
and  above  the  fare  to  which  they  are  entitled, 
they  receive  gratefully,  rather  to  the  surprise 
of  Americans  fresh  from  experiences  with  New 
York  and  Niagara  hackmen. 

A  few  miles'  drive  out  of  the  town  at  Staouli 
is  the  monastery  of  the  Trappist  monks,  who 
still  adhere  to  the  rigid  rules  of  life  prescribed 
by  the  order  in  France.  No  woman  is  allowed 
to  enter  the  doors,  and  none  but  the  lay  broth- 
ers are  ever  permitted  to  hold  conversation  with 
any  of  the  despised  sex.  However,  male  visit- 
ors are  always  welcomed  most  hospitably,  and 
frequently  offered  a  rest  and  frugal  repast  of 
fruits  and  bread,  together  with  wine,  made  by 
the  brothers  on  their  lands.  The  wine  is  of 
good  quality,  and  is  sold  to  families  residing 
around  Algiers,  a  lay  brother  being  deputed  to 
drive  the  wagon  and  hold  the  necessary  busi- 
ness intercourse.  It  is  said  that  the  ex -Em- 
press Eugenie  once  paid  a  visit  to  the  monas- 
tery with  some  lady  attendants,  and  was  enter- 
tained in  a  detached  building  outside  the  mo- 
nastery, and  that  afterward  the  stone  pavement 
over  which  the  ladies'  feet  had  trodden  was 
taken  up  by  the  monks.  This  industrious  fra- 
ternity weave  all  the  material  for  their  clothing 
and  make  it  up,  grind  their  own  wheat,  grow 
all  the  natural  products  they  require  for  food, 
and  art  thus  independent  of  the  outer  world, 
whose  wars  and  turmoils  are  unheeded  by  them 
in  their  complete  retirement  and  isolation. 

A.  M.  MORCE. 


SCIENCE  AND  INDUSTRY. 


SCIENCE   AND    INDUSTRY. 


CURIOUS   BIRD   MIGRATION. 

A  recent  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post  gives  some  particulars  in  regard  to  a  curious 
method  of  bird  migration,  which  appears  to  have  pre- 
viously escaped  the  observation  of -naturalists  or  even  of 
the  most  observant  travelers.  While  spending  a  few 
weeks  in  the  Island  of  Crete,  during  the  autumn  of  1878, 
his  attention  was  several  times  directed  by  a  Greek 
priest,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  made,  to  a  lively 
twittering  and  singing  of  small  birds  whenever  a  flock 
of  sand-cranes  passed  over,  as  they  frequently  do  there 
at  that  season  of  the  year,  and  at  but  little  elevation 
above  the  earth,  on  their  southward  journey  into  Africa. 
As  he  could  not  see  any  small  birds,  he  suggested  to  his 
friend  that  the  sound  came  from  the  motion  of  the  wings 
of  the  crane.  The  priest  assured  him  that  such  was  not 
the  case — that  the  sound  came  from  small  birds  who 
were  sitting  upon  the  backs  of  the  cranes.  The  Greek 
had  frequently  seen  them  fly  up  from  their  sitting  posi- 
tions and  alight  again.  The  traveler's  interest  and  cu- 
riosity was  so  much  aroused  that  thereafter,  whenever 
he  saw  a  flock  of  cranes  approaching,  he  watched  them 
with  the  closest  attention,  and  on  several  occasions  be- 
held himself  the  temporary  flight  of  the  small  birds  from 
the  backs  of  their  friends.  On  one  occasion  he  noticed 
such  a  flight  when  on  a  sailing  yacht  fully  fifteen  miles 
from  the  shore.  At  that  time  the  birds  were  fright- 
ened by  the  discharge  of  a  jjun  in  the  direction  of  the 
flock.  They  were  so  near  that  there  could  be  no  mis- 
take as  to  the  fact.  He  subsequently  found  that  this 
mode  of  bird  passage  was  well  known  to  both  the  peas- 
ants and  the  more  educated  of  the  common  people  both 
at  Crete  and  in  Egypt.  The  bird  which  employs  this 
novel  mode  of  conveyance  is  known  there  by  a  name 
which  signifies  "  wagtail,"  from  the  peculiar  way  it  has 
of  "wagging "  its  tail.  The  bird  is  much  too  weak  to 
make  the  long  sea  journey  by  its  own  strength,  and 
therefore  instinctively  watches  for  the  migration  of 
cranes,  storks,  and  other  large  birds,  and  is  borne  over 
the  sea  as  above  described.  The  large  birds  appear  to 
submit  to  their  burden  willingly,  and  give  evidence  of  a 
liking  for  their  tiny  guests,  who,  by  their  merry  twitter- 
ings, no  doubt  help  to  kill  time  and  make  the  long  and 
otherwise  monotonous  voyage  more  pleasant.  The  only 
other  mention  of  any  similar  circumstance  is  made  in 
Peterman's  well  known  book  of  travels,  who  states  that, 
while  in  Jerusalem,  the  Swedish  traveler,  Hedenborg, 
related  to  him  what  appears  to  have  been  a  similar  ob- 
servation ;  but  the  birds  were  observed  at  such  a  dis- 
tance that  he  was  uncertain  as  to  the  absolute  correct- 
ness of  his  observation.  The  article  from  the  Evening 
Post,  having  been  copied  into  Nature  of  February  24, 
1881,  attracted  the  attention  of  John  Rae,  of  the  Royal 
Institute,  London,  who,  in  the  issue  of  Nature  of  March 
3d  last,  says  that  the  Indians  around  the  south-western 
portion  of  Hudson's  Bay  tell  a  similar  story  in  regard  to 
a  small  bird  of  \.\\tfringillidce,  which  takes  its  passage 
northward  every  spring  on  the  back  of  the  Canada 
goose,  as  it  passes  that  point  about  the  last  of  April.  It 


is  only  the  Canada  goose  that  these  little  migrants  use 
for  their  aerial  conveyance.  The  same  story  is  also  told 
by  the  Indians  about  the  Great  Slave  Lakes.  The  above 
facts  will  no  doubt  prove  a  matter  of  much  interest  to 
naturalists  everywhere. 


MICROSCOPIC   STRUCTURE  OF  METALS. 

Considerable  attention  has  been  given  of  late  to  the 
minute  structure  of  minerals  and  metals,  by  aid  of  the 
microscope.  Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  the 
microscopic  study  of  minerals  in  these  columns  [vol.  ii, 
page  184].  The  same  method  of  study  has  also  recent- 
ly been  applied  to  the  structure  of  metals.  J.  Vincent 
Elsden  communicates  some  interesting  information  in 
this  direction  to  Nature  of  February  24,  from  which 
we  condense:  Notwithstanding  the  great  opacity  of 
metals,  it  is  quite  possible  to  procure,  by  chemical  means, 
metallic  leaves  sufficiently  thin  to  be  examined  with  the 
microscope  by  transmitted  light.  Silver  leaf,  when 
mounted  on  a  glass  slide,  and  immersed  for  a  short 
time  in  a  solution  of  perchloride  of  iron  or  potassium 
cyanide,  becomes  so  reduced  in  thickness  that  its  struct- 
ure may  be  readily  examined.  A  very  satisfactory  ex- 
amination of  silver  leaf  may  also  be  made  by  first  con- 
verting into  a  transparent  salt  by  the  action  of  chlorine 
or  iodine.  Most  of  the  other  metals  may  also  be  ex- 
amined by  the  use  of  similar  means.  Such  examina- 
tions of  metals  show  two  general  types  of  structure, 
one  being  essentially  granular,  the  other  fibrous.  The 
granular  metals,  such  as  tin,  present  the  appearance  of 
exceedingly  minute  grains,  each  one  being  perfectly 
isolated  from  its  neighbors  by  still  smaller  interspaces. 
The  cohesion  of  such  leaves  is  very  slight.  The  fibrous 
metals,  such  as  gold  and  silver,  have  a  very  marked 
structure,  and  appear  to  consist  of  a  mass  of  fine,  elongat- 
ed fibers  matted  and  interlaced  in  a  manner  much  resem- 
bling mats  of  hair.  This  fibrous  structure  is  more  mark- 
ed in  silver  than  in  gold.  The  fibrous  structure  is,  no 
doubt,  developed  by  pressure.  Their  molecules,  when 
forced  to  spread  out,  seem  to  glide  over  one  another  in 
direct  lines — such  being  the  lines  of  least  resistance. 
This  peculiar  development  of  fibrous  structure,  Mr.  Els- 
den  thinks,  may  serve  to  illustrate  the  probable  origin  of 
the  fibrous  structure  of  the  limestone  of  the  Pyrenees, 
Scotland,  and  the  Tyrol. 


A  NOVEL  THEORY. 

It  is  well  known  that  connected  with  all  organisms 
there  are  certain  gaseous,  volatile  substances  (odorous 
substances),  which  must  play  a  very  important  part  in 
human  economy,  but  one  hitherto  quite  undefined. 
Professor  Jaeger,  a  German  chemist  of  some  note,  who 
has  been  pursuing  investigations  in  this  direction,  has 
quite  recently  advanced  a  novel  theory  in  regard  to  the 
matter.  He  endea\ors  to  show  that  the  actions  of  the 


472 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


human  mind  are  largely  influenced  by  these  substances, 
as  they  are  given  off  in  the  acts  of  breathing  and  per- 
spiring. He  divides  them  into  two  groups — emanations 
or  substances  of  pleasure,  and  substances  of  dislike — 
"lust  und  unlust  stoffe."  The  first  are  exhaled  during 
a  joyful  and  gleeful  state  of  mind,  and  he  further  holds 
that  they  produce  a  similar  state  of  mind  if  inhaled  by 
another.  Just  the  reverse  is  true  of  the  other.  Who- 
ever, he  says,  will  take  the  pains,  can  discover  for  him- 
self that  the  effluvia  from  the  body  differs  as  much  from 
the  varied  condition  of  the  mind  as  from  that  of  the 
body.  During  seasons  of  joy  and  happiness  the  odor  of 
perspiration  is  not  generally  disagreeable,  while  during 
periods  of  anguish  and  unpleasant  nervous  excitement 
it  is  always  offensive.  In  an  atmosphere  charged  with 
the  substance  of  dislike  the  vitality  of  the  system  is 
lowered  and  disadvantageously  influenced.  This,  he 
holds,  accounts  for  the  acknowledged  fact  that  in  a  state 
of  anguish  and  fear  the  body  is  more  susceptible  to  con- 
tagious diseases.  The  inhalation  of  the  substance  of 
pleasure  hightens  the  vital  action  and  improves  the 
power  of  the  body  to  resist  disease.  Professor  Jaeger 
further  announces  that  wool  fiber  has  a  natural  attrac- 
tion for  substances  of  pleasure,  apart  from  its  natural 
capacity  for  absorbing  odors  generally,  while  plant-fiber 
favors  the  absorption  of  substances  of  dislike.  Woolen 
garments,  the  Professor  says,  even  in  summer,  when 
evaporation  is  large,  take  on  only  the  sour  smell  due  to 
continued  perspiration,  and  never  accumulate,  to  any 
considerable  extent,  other  offensive  odors,  while  cotton 
and  linen  clothing,  after  long  wear,  assume  a  marked 
repulsive  smell.  If  the  truth  of  this  theory  should  be 
fully  established,  it  could  not  fail  to  be  of  immense  value 
to  medical  science  in  devising  ways  and  means  to  most 
effectually  protect  the  human  system  from  contagious 
and  other  diseases. 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    THEORY— CONNECT- 
ING LINKS. 

One  by  one  the  gulfs  which  have  hitherto  separated 
the  existing  species  of  fish,  amphibians,  reptiles,  and 
birds  are  fast  being  filled  up,  or  quite  conclusively 
bridged  over.  Recent  researches,  mostly  in  the  new 
fossil  fields  of  the  great  central  regions  of  our  own  North 
American  continent,  have  made  the  scientific  reader 
familiar  with  the  remains  of  birds,  with  lizard-like  tails, 
or  with  teeth  in  their  jaws — of  saurians,  with  well  devel- 
oped wings,  and  with  two,  three,  four,  and  five-toed 
horses.  Quite  recently  Professor  Owen  has  brought  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  scientific  world  another  important 
connection  between  widely  different  classes  of  animals, 
which  would  seem  to  form  the  hitherto  "missing  link" 
between  the  mammals  and  cold-blooded  vertebrates. 
The  fossil  remains  in  question  were  discovered  in  South 
Africa,  and  possess  some  points  of  resemblance  to  the 
living  "duck-mole"  of  Australia — a  creature  familiarly 
known  as  "the  beast  with  a  bill,"  or  "the  fur-covered 
animal  which  lays  eggs. "  The  scientific  name  of  this 
Australian  bird  or  beast  is  "platypus,"  and  Professor 
Owen,  from  the  similarity  between  the  two,  calls  his 
new  discovery  by  the  formidable  name  of  ' '  platypodo- 
saurus,"  which,  to  the  scientific  mind,  properly  sums  up 
its  characteristics  as  "a  lizard-like  reptile,  with  a  ten- 
dency toward  certain  low  forms  of  mammalian  struct- 
ure." While  there  are  still  certain  points  to  be  filled,  in 
order  to  fully  establish  the  theory  of  evolution,  it  may 


quite  safely  be  claimed  that  between  the  living  and  ex- 
tinct forms  here  noticed  the  gap  between  the  mamma- 
lia and  cold-blooded  vertebrates  is  now  pretty  surely 
bridged  over.  According  to  Professor  Owen  :  "Among 
living  or  extinct  forms  we  now  have,  first,  the  primi- 
tive reptile;  then  a  rep  tile  with  nascent  mammalian  ten- 
dencies ;  next  a  still  more  mammalian,  but  ovovivipa- 
rous  form;  then,  again,  a  group  of  pouched  mammals; 
then  a  few  closely  allied,  but  pouchless  mammals ;  and 
finally  the  various  lines  of  descent,  culminating  in  our 
highest  existing  creatures.  And  the  geological  succes- 
sion in  which  all  these  various  forms  are  found  is  ex- 
actly what,  on  the  theory  of  evolution,  one  would  ex- 
pect to  find  it. " 


NEW   MINERALS. 

"A  New  American  Gem"  formed  the  subject  of  a 
short  paper  read  at  a  late  meeting  of  the  New  York 
Academy  of  Sciences.  The  new  mineral  which  consti- 
tutes this  gem  was  recently  found  in  North  Carolina, 
by  Mr.  William  E.  Widden.  It  is  of  the  emerald  class, 
and  will  be  known  to  the  world  as  lithia-emerald,  owing 
to  the  presence  of  lithia  as  one  of  its  chemical  constitu- 
ents. These  gems  are  described  as  very  beautiful,  hav- 
ing a  pure  green  tint,  with  a  liquid  brilliancy  that  is 
quite  distinctive  and  remarkable.  They  are  selling  at 
about  the  same  price  as  the  diamond.  The  mineral  is 
found  in  a  narrow  chimney  in  a  hard  rock  formation, 
geological  character  not  given.  The  chimney  is  two 
feet  one  way  by  two  and  a  half  inches  the  other,  and  de- 
scending at  an  angle  of  about  seven  degrees  from  the 
perpendicular.  Another  new  sidereal  mineral  has  also 
been  found  by  Professor  J.  Lawrence  Smith  while  ana- 
lyzing a  meteorite  which  fell  in  Emmett  County,  Iowa,  in 
May,  1879.  He  has  named  it  Peckhamite,  and  de- 
scribes it  as  essentially  different  from  any  mineral  here- 
tofore found  associated  with  meteorites.  It  is  a  silicate 
of  iron  and  magnesia,  opalescent,  of  a  light  greenish- 
yellow  color,  of  greasy  aspect  and  cleaves  scalily.  Two 
or  three  specimens  obtained  projected  from  the  outer 
surface  of  the  stone,  with  a  dingy  yellow  color  and  a 
fused  exterior.  The  meteorite,  surrounded  by  a  large 
number  of  fragments,  lay  upon  the  wet  prairie  for  near- 
ly a  year  before  being  discovered,  still  bright,  like  a  nug- 
get of  platinum,  and  with  no  appearance  of  rust.  Still 
another  new  mineral  is  reported,  which  has  been  named 
siderophyllite,  in  allusion  to  the  large  percentage  of  iron 
which  it  contains.  In  composition  it  is  an  iron-allu- 
mina  mica,  and  was  found  near  Pike's  Peak,  in  Colo- 
rado. 


POSSIBLE  REVELATIONS  OF  THE  MICRO- 
SCOPE. 

Much  speculation  and  no  inconsiderable  experiment- 
al study  has,  of  late,  been  devoted  to  the  query,  ' '  Can 
we  hope  that  the  microscope  will  reveal  to  our  vision  an 
atom  or  molecule?"  The  highest  magnifying  power 
that  has  yet  been  obtained  is  the  distinct  revelation  of 
the  stria  upon  the  Amphipleura pellucida,  which  num- 
ber one  hundred  and  thirty -two  thousand  to  the  inch. 
The  highest  artificial  markings  which  can  be  resolved, 
by  ordinary  microscopic  experts,  are  ninety  thousand 
lines  to  the  inch  ;  but  Helmholtz,  about  a  year  ago,  an- 
nounced that  he  had  been  able  to  distinguish  Nobert's 


SCIENCE  AND  INDUSTRY. 


473 


lines  ruled  one  hundred  and  twelve  thousand  to  the 
inch — and  yet  the  same  eyes,  aided  by  the  same  instru- 
ment, failed  to  define  the  individual  atom  or  molecule. 
Fasoldt  has  devised  a  ruling  machine  so  superior  to 
that  employed  by  Helmholtz,  that,  with  it,  he  claims 
that  he  can  rule  ten  millions  of  lines  to  the  inch.  These 
lines  are  ruled  so  close  that  no  microscope  has  yet  been 
able  to  reveal  them  to  the  human  eye  ;  yet  Fasoldt  says 
they  must  be  there,  for  his  machine  must  make  them,  and 
he  is  now  waiting  for  some  instrument  powerful  enough 
and  some  eye  keen  enough  to  reveal  them.  Prof.  Rog- 
ers says  that  the  probable  limit  of  the  eye's  capacity 
for  seeing  is  about  four  million  lines  to  the  inch.  It 
would  seem  now  to  be  in  order  that  Fasoldt  should 
make  a  machine,  with  progressive  powers  of  ruling,  to 
determine  the  ultimate  capacity  of  the  human  eye. 
Whatever  that  may  be,  however,  it  is  certain  to  stop  far 
short  of  the  power  to  define  the  ultimate  molecule ;  for 
Helmholtz  asserts  that  the  molecule  of  water  cannot  be 
far  from  an  approximation  to  two  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  to  an  inch.  Leibig  says  that  "the  chemist 
merely  maintains  the  firm  foundation  of  his  science, 
when  he  declares  the  existence  of  physical  atoms  and 
molecules  as  an  incontrovertible  truth."  Yet,  like  Fas- 
oldt and  his  lines,  he  has  never  seen  them,  but  just 
knows  they  are  there.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the 
improved  microscope  of  the  future  will  have  to  be  con- 
structed with  diamond  or  sapphire  lenses — materials 
possessing  greater  refractive  power  than  glass,  but  that 
even  then  the  molecule  will  be  a  hidden  mystery,  even 
though  Fasoldt's  ten  million  of  lines  to  the  inch  should 
be  plainly  visible. 


SOLIDIFIED  OIL. 

A  new  article  of  manufacture  has  recently  been  intro- 
duced in  England  in  the  form  of  "solidified  oil"  for 
lubricating  purposes.  This  new  substance  is  said  to 
possess  some  valuable  and  special  characteristics.  Al- 
though solid,  the  oil  is  soft  and  to  a  large  extent  unaf- 
fected by  cold  or  heat.  It  does  not  become  fluid  until 
the  temperature  to  which  it  is  exposed  reaches  212°  F. , 
the  boiling  point  of  water ;  and  it  can  be  made  to  reach 
a  still  higher  melting  point  if  required.  It  contains  no 
acid,  and  leaves  no  deposit  in  steam  cylinders.  When 
passed  into  the  feed  water,  through  the  exhaust  pipe, 
it  has  the  effect  of  preventing  incrustation  in  steam 
boilers.  It  neither  gums  nor  clogs  on  exposure  to  air 
or  heat.  It  is  applicable  to  all  purposes  where  tallow 
can  be  used,  and,  weight  for  weight,  will  last  four  times 
as  long  and  is  three  times  as  economical.  It  is  said  to 
possess  considerable  power  of  cohesion,  which  renders 
it  peculiarly  well  fitted  for  perpendicular  surfaces. 


INDIAN   RAILWAYS. 

In  looking  over  the  great  industries  of  the  world,  rail- 
way construction  in  India  is  something  especially  notice- 
able. The  progress  of  this  industry  there  has  been  far 
greater  than  in  England,  especially  since  the  sleepy 
regime  of  "the  Company"  has  been  superseded  by  the 
more  active  home  rule,  which  now  ( since  1858 )  directs 
the  financial  and  governmental  policy  of  that  vast  em- 
pire. These  railways  are  designed  to  have  an  immense 
strategic  and  commercial  bearing,  not  only  upon  In- 
dia, but  an  important  influence  as  well  upon  the  indus- 
try of  the  parent  country.  While  England  is  rapidly 


losing  her  trade  in  railway  plant  with  other  countries, 
the  demand  for  such  materiel  in  India  is  constantly  in- 
creasing, and  will  continue  for  many  decades  to  provide 
largely  for  the  employment  of  a  most  profitable  branch 
of  British  mechanical  industry.  The  railways  of  India 
are  built  as  joint  stock  enterprises,  with  a  guarantee  of 
five  per  cent. ,  which  Cannon  Row  has  punctually  made 
good.  They  also  present  a  special  feature  of  interest  to 
the  English  coal  trade,  inasmuch  as  their  supply  for 
fuel  is  chiefly  drawn  from  the  parent  country  and  trans- 
ported in  English  ships.  The  development  of  the  min- 
eral resources  of  Central  India  is  now,  however,  doing 
much  to  render  her  railways  independent  of  English 
coal,  and  no  doubt  the  time  will  soon  come  when  the 
superior  iron  ores  of  India  and  imported  mechanical 
skill  will  provide  also  the  plant  and  supply  the  constant 
wear  and  tear  of  this  immense  system  of  railway  trans- 
portation. 


TRANSMITTING  ELECTRICITY  THROUGH 
WATER. 

Much  speculation  has  been  indulged  in,  and  some 
experiments  have  been  made  to  test,  the  practicability 
of  transmitting  electric  currents  to  a  distance  through 
the  medium  of  water,  but  as  yet  no  very  satisfactory  re- 
sults have  been  obtained  either  way.  During  the  siege 
of  Paris  some  few  experiments  were  made  in  the  River 
Seine  over  a  short  distance  within  the  limits  of  the  city. 
It  appears  that  these  experiments  were  so  satisfactory 
that  it  was  determined  by  the  Government  to  make  a 
trial  on  a  large  scale  to  establish  communication  through 
the  medium  of  the  river  between  the  city  of  Paris  and 
the  country  beyond  the  German  lines,  a  distance  of 
some  fifty  or  seventy-five  miles.  In  furtherance  of  this 
idea,  M.  de  Almeida,  who  had  conducted  the  experi- 
ments within  the  city,  was  dispatched  by  balloon  to  the 
provinces  to  endeavor  to  establish  this  novel  mode  of 
telegraphy  without  connecting  wires.  He  was  to  place 
upon  the  banks  of  the  river,  as  near  to  Paris  as  was 
practicable,  a  powerful  battery,  to  be  connected  with  the 
water,  the  current  from  which,  so  much  of  it  as  should 
not  be  dissipated,  was  to  be  received  by  delicate  gal- 
vanometers placed  in  the  river  within  the  city.  M.  de 
Almeida  effected  a  successful  descent  outside  the  Ger- 
man lines,  and  immediately  made  preparations  for  the 
experiment,  but  met  with  various  delays,  principally  in 
his  efforts  to  procure  proper  apparatus  from  England. 
He  finally  had  everything  nearly  in  readiness,  when  the 
Government  was  compelled  to  capitulate  and  hand  over 
the  city  to  the  Germans.  This  put  an  end  to  further 
proceedings.  He  was  delayed  a  few  days  too  long,  and 
the  world  missed  a  most  important  experiment,  which, 
in  its  results,  might  have  been  the  chief  among  those 
scientific  exploits  which  render  the  siege  of  Paris  so 
notable. 


NEW  PYRAMIDS  DISCOVERED. 

It  is  announced  among  the  latest  reports  from  Cairo 
that  two  pyramids,  hitherto  unknown  to  European 
travelers,  have  recently  been  discovered  to  the  north  of 
Memphis  and  near  Saggarah.  These  pyramids  bear 
evidence  that  they  were  constructed  by  kings  of  the 
sixth  dynasty.  The  rooms  and  passages,  so  far  as  they 
have  been  explored,  are  more  profusely  than  any  others 
covered  with  inscriptions. 


474 


THE    CALIFORNIA!*. 


ART  AND   ARTISTS. 


Our  local  artists  have  plenty  left  to  hope  for.  San 
Francisco  sadly  needs  a  class  of  intelligent  art  patrons. 
The  artistic  fraternity  in  this  city  were  pretty  thoroughly 
spoiled  during  bonanza  times.  Our  community,  never 
a  critical  one  at  best,  was  then  less  so  then  ever,  owing 
to  the  unlimited  number  of  nouveaux  riches.  These 
bought  prodigally  right  and  left,  shining,  like  the  sun, 
with  equal  warmth  on  good  and  bad.  They  could  not 
be  blamed  for  being  destitute  of  taste  or  judgment ; 
they  were  kind  to  a  fault,  and  royally  liberal  with  the 
shining  twenties.  There  was  money  in  it.  Unsuccess- 
ful artisans  of  all  kinds  flew  to  the  profession  like  flies 
to  molasses. 

When  our  rich  men  buy  pictures  they  are  obliged,  as 
a  class,  to  take  the  artist's  word  as  to  their  merit.  It  is, 
unfortunately,  not  always  the  most  meritorious  who  is 
most  ready  to  proclaim  himself.  The  consequence  has 
been  the  undeserved  success  of  a  number  of  incompe- 
tent upstarts,  and  a  deterioration  in  the  methods  of 
the  better  class,  when  they  found  there  was  in  San 
Francisco  neither  an  art  standard  nor  an  appreciation 
of  anything  save  clap -trap  and  self -laudation.  This 
rule,  like  any  other,  is  not  without  its  exceptions.  Still, 
our  best  artists  have  often  put  before  the  public  pict- 
ures which  show  a  contempt  for  public  opinion,  and 
small  fear  of  the  detection  of  carelessness.  Changes 
have  come,  and  greater  are  to  be  expected.  In  the  first 
crash  of  hard  times,  two  years  ago,  bonanza  art  pa- 
trons disappeared  with  the  surprising  swiftness  of  a 
young  politician's  first  scruples.  They  melted  away 
like  first  love,  and  left  not  a  dime  behind.  For  two 
long  years,  times  have  been  cruelly  hard  with  the  artists, 
especially  with  the  better  class,  who  have  too  much  dig- 
nity and  self-respect  to  solicit  patronage.  Purchasers 
have  been  as  rare  as  eclipses,  and  as  uncertain  as  a 
tenor's  high  C.  Dealers  in  artist's  materials  have  been 
extortionate  in  proportion  to  the  humble  impecunious- 
ness  of  the  artist,  and  the  sympathetic  footfall  of  the 
creditor  has  often  relieved  the  death -like  stillness  of  the 
studio  door.  Somehow,  there  seems  to  be  a  fatal  fasci- 
nation about  the  profession.  Men  and  women  who 
once  adopt  it  seem  willing  to  bear  the  ills  it  entails  for- 
ever, rather  than  adopt  a  less  aesthetic,  but  more  lucra- 
tive calling.  At  last  there  is  a  rift  in  the  storm-cloud 
that  has  hung  over  the  profession  so  long,  and  a  bit  of 
blue  in  the  sky  that  betokens  happier  weather.  The 
bright  sunshine  of  the  buyer's  face  is  yet  to  come,  but 
it  is  hoped  for.  Our  artists  have  realized  that  to  fold 
the  hands  and  wait  for  another  bonanza  means  starva- 
tion— that  their  only  road  to  success  is  the  legitimate 
path.  Now  there  is  hope. 

The  last  art  exhibition  is  full  of  significance.  An  un- 
written history  is  in  the  air,  and  something  more  than 
paint  on  the  canvas,  that  fairly  speak  of  hopes  and 
fears — almost  a  last  hope  with  some,  unless  times  change 
for  the  better.  The  establishment  of  a  Rejection  Com- 
mittee in  connection  with  the  Annual  Art  Exhibition  is 
the  healthiest  of  all  signs.  Happily  there  is  room  to 
spare  on  the  walls  this  time.  No  doubt  but  the  stan- 
dard, having  been  established,  will  be  raised  from  year 


to  year.  A  gradual  extermination,  and  the  survival  of 
the  fittest,  will  then  ensue.  The  artists,  having  taken 
matters  into  their  own  hands,  are  working  out  their 
own  salvation.  Great  credit  is  due  the  Rejection  Com- 
mittee for  having  so  bravely  carried  out  their  programme, 
as  it  requires  no  little  nerve  to  initiate  a  reform  of  that 
kind.  They  have  erred,  if  at  all,  on  the  side  of  mercy, 
as  is  fit  enough  the  first  time. 

At  no  previous  exhibition  has  there  been  so  much  hon- 
est work  or  so  little  of  the  meretricious  or  inanely  pretty. 
Of  all  the  older  local  artists,  Robinson,  Rix,  Deakin, 
and  Von  Perbrandt  are  the  only  ones  who  have  paid  the 
Art  Association  and  the  public  the  compliment  of  ex- 
hibiting the  best  that  they  can  do.  Bradford,  Perry, 
and  Tojetti  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  Kunath, 
who  has  shone  in  former  exhibitions,  has  nothing  save 
a  few  sketches  in  the  small  room.  Hill's  one  picture, 
"  Birch  Forest,  Autumn,"  is  attractive,  skillfully  han- 
dled, and  full  of  color,  but  it  is  a  meager  showing  com- 
pared to  his  exhibits  of  former  years.  Keith  is  always 
good,  but  we  are  disappointed  after  the  wonderfully  fine 
sketches  brought  from  the  East  that  he  has  not  given  us 
more  that  was  new.  His  picture,  "  The  Old  Mill,"  is  a 
close  and  charming  study  of  one  of  those  apparent  con- 
tradictions of  nature  which  the  true  artist  loves  to  note, 
and  which  entirely  upset  the  critics  because  they  are  un- 
conventional. His  three  other  pictures  are  in  the  vein 
in  which  he  is  always  happy  and  in  which  we  know  him 
best.  Of  the  three,  "Showery  Weather"  is  the  best. 

Tavernier's  "  In  the  Redwoods"  is  an  unsatisfactory 
picture.  It  possesses  many  undeniable  merits  of  draw- 
ing and  handling,  it  gives  an  admirable  idea  of  the  size 
and  character  of  the  redwoods,  is  striking  and  brilliant, 
yet,  for  all  that,  it  has  a  slightly  theatrical  air,  and  lacks 
sincerity  and  feeling.  Tavernier  does  not  often  honor 
us  by  doing  his  best  and  working  con  amore.  When  he 
does,  the  pictures  are  to  be  sought  after. 

Denny  has  evidently  not  over-exerted  himself,  and 
neither  of  his  two  pictures  will  increase  his  reputation. 
"Morning,  Little  Lake  Valley,"  by  Holdredge,  is  full 
of  the  artist's  own  peculiar  mannerisms,  and  strongly 
suggestive  of  the  German  school,  and  a  liberal  use  of 
the  palette  knife  in  lieu  of  brush.  Hahn's  one  picture 
is  not  up  to  his  usual  standard. 

"Cypress  Point,  Monterey,"  by  Cleenewerck,  is  not 
in  the  artist's  best  vein,  and  is,  moreover,  obscured  by 
its  close  proximity  to  Rix's  "  Pollard  Willows. "  His 
"Monterey  Whale  Fishery"  is  a  better  and  more  at- 
tractive picture,  while  his  sketches  in  the  small  room  are 
more  interesting  than  either.  These  last  show  him  to 
be  a  versatile  and  talented  artist  and  a  close  student  of 
nature. 

Bouvy  gives  us  the  extremes  of  his  ability  in  "The 
Lesson  of  Catechism"  and  "A  Holiday  at  the  Con- 
vent." In  the  former  an  unctuous  but  badly  drawn 
monk,  backed  by  an  impossible  landscape,  administers 
religious  instruction  to  a  barefooted  young  woman 
whose  unprepossessing  development  of  heel  betokens 
an  unmistakable  African  ancestry.  ' '  A  Holiday  at  the 
Convent "  is  a  much  more  pretentious  work,  and  shows 


ART  AND  ARTISTS. 


475 


care  and  ability.  It  represents  an  interior,  a  religious 
procession  of  chanting  monks  descending  a  stairway. 
They  are  preceded  by  altar  boys  strewing  flowers,  and 
in  the  right  of  the  foreground  a  lusty  bell-ringer  pulls 
his  rope  and  sings.  In  composition  it  is  not  unlike 
David  Neal's  ' '  Marie  Stuart. "  The  figures  are  interest- 
ing and  fairly  drawn.  The  otherwise  somber  array  of 
brown-robed  Capuchins  is  happily  relieved  by  a  scarlet 
banner.  , 

Virgil  Williams,  who  is  probably  more  thoroughly  ed- 
ucated in  his  profession  than  any  other  local  artist,  ex- 
hibits but  one  small  picture,  a  souvenir  of  Italy.  It  is 
a  correct  and  charming  picture,  but  Mr.  Williams,  as 
Director  of  the  Art  School,  has  not  had  time  to  do  him- 
self justice  in  any  exhibition  of  late  years.  While  his 
devotion  to  the  school  is  an  inestimable  benefit  to  the 
community  in  one  way,  it  is  a  corresponding  loss  in  an- 
other. Of  all  the  pupils  who  have  studied  under  Mr. 
Williams  in  the  Art  School,  none  have  been  more  dili- 
gent and  attentive  than  Miss  Lotz  and  Miss  Foster. 
The  result  could  not  be  more  flattering  than  it  is  to  mas- 
ter and  pupils.  Miss  Lotz,  with  all  her  superb  talents, 
could  never  have  achieved  so  brilliant  and  speedy  a 
success  had  she  not  been  instructed  in  the  very  best 
methods  before  going  abroad.  Her  ' '  Study  of  a  Calf  " 
holds  deservedly  the  post  of  honor  in  the  present  ex- 
hibition. It  is  painted  with  a  breadth  and  solidity  that 
women  rarely  attain,  and  promises  a  most  brilliant  fut- 
ure for  this  simple,  unpretending  young  girl.  Miss  Fos- 
ter, who  has  talent,  is  a  splendid  example  of  what  in- 
dustry and  a  well  laid  foundation  are  worth.  It  is 
amusing  to  note  the  attitude  of  the  local  critics  toward 
her.  They  would  have  to  be  blind  not  to  see  that  her 
picture  on  the  line  is  among  the  best  of  the  exhibition  ; 
but  she  is  young — almost  an  amateur — and  they  praise 
her  with  plenty  of  reservations,  fearing  there  is  a  mis- 
take somewhere.  When  a  young  fledgling  does  such  a 
strikingly  excellent  piece  of  work  in  drawing  and  color 
as  her  "Stolen  Pleasures"  she  deserves  liberal  praise, 
and  should  put  some  of  the  older  artists  to  the  blush. 

Rix,  Robinson,  Deakin,  and  Von  Perbrandt,  as  has 
been  said  before,  have  never  done  better  work  than  they 
exhibit  this  year.  Robinson  has  given  us  larger  and 
more  pretentious  pictures,  but  never  anything  so  good 
as  his  "Cabo  de  San  Lucas."  It  is  a  poem  on  canvas. 
It  bears  the  marks  of  earnestness  and  enthusiasm,  is 
exquisitely  delicate  in  handling  and  color,  and  full  of 
sentiment  and  beauty.  "Carmel  Valley,"  by  C.  Von 
Perbrandt,  is  a  modest,  unobtrusive  picture,  but  strange- 
ly enough  its  merits  seemed  to  be  quite  generally  rec- 
ognized by  the  fashionable  first-night  throng.  It  is  a 
characteristic  bit  of  Californian  landscape,  broadly  and 
simply  painted,  true  to  nature,  and  full  of  honest  feeling. 
In  fact,  it  is  so  good  one  almost  wishes  there  were  more 
of  it. 

Deakin's  two  pictures,  "Notre  Dame"  and  "The 
Choir,  Westminister  Abbey,"  show  that  his  forte  lies  in 
reproducing  the  beauties  of  architecture.  The  elaborate 
intricacies  of  both  display  a  wonderful  amount  of  pa- 
tient industry.  The  light  is  agreeably  handled.  They 
are  impressive,  and  not  without  sentiment — a  thing  that 
could  never  have  been  said  of  his  landscapes.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  Mr.  Deakin's  pictures  excite  a  great  deal 
of  admiration  from  the  many  visitors  to  the  exhibition. 


There  are  two  pictures  by  Rix.  His  "Nightfall"  is 
rich  in  color,  romantic  and  beautiful,  but  his  "Pollard 
Willows"  is  perhaps  the  very  best  picture  in  the  exhibi- 
tion. It  is  simple  in  composition,  representing  an  ave- 
nue of  old  willows  leading  toward  the  right ;  at  the  left  a 
wide  stretch  of  meadow  land  and  a  glimpse  of  a  distant 
town.  It  is  an  honest,  straightforward  picture — true  to 
nature  and  destitute  of  trickery.  The  tree  drawing  is 
fine,  and  the  perspective  admirably  handled.  There  is 
a  sense  of  space  and  distance  in  the  canvas  that  makes 
all  the  pictures  about  look  cramped  for  room.  The 
color  is  that  of  late  summer  time,  and  characteristic  of 
the  locality.  The  picture  is  at  once  full  of  sentiment 
and  of  character — intensely  realistic,  yet  poetic.  It  is  a 
great  stride  forward  for  Mr.  Rix,  being  by  far  the  best 
work  he  has  ever  done. 

Mr.  Humphrey  Moore  has  on  exhibition  two  charm- 
ing little  pictures — '  'The  Stolen  Pleasure"  and  '  'Au  Ren- 
dezvous"— either  of  which  would  be  a  most  desirable 
addition  to  any  collection.  Mr.  Moore,  who  is  a  stranger 
and  a  guest,  has  been  rather  roughly  handled  by  the 
local  critics.  He  belongs  to  a  brilliant  and  popular 
school  of  art  of  which  most  of  our  people  see  little  and 
know  less.  He  is  not  the  first  of  his  school,  which  in- 
cludes the  most  illustrious  artists  of  the  age ;  neither  is 
he  by  any  means  the  least.  There  are  schools  of  art 
diametrically  opposed  to  each  other,  yet  equally  valu- 
able. It  is  as  absurd  not  to  recognize  the  fact  as  to  ex- 
pect that  all  writers  shall  use  the  florid  style,  all  singers 
the  operatic,  or  that  all  actors  shall  play  comedy.  Mr. 
Moore  is  no  longer  among  us,  but  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
the  next  new  comer  who  does  not  follow  in  our  beaten 
paths  may  be  judged  a  little  more  broadly. 

We  are  decidedly  behind  the  times  in  the  matter  of 
water-color  painting.  Mrs.  Virgil  Williams  exhibits  two 
flower  studies  in  water-color,  which  show  some  excellent 
work.  There  is,  with  this  exception,  absolutely  nothing 
exhibited  in  water-colors.  It  is  a  pity  that  we  have  not 
at  least  a  few  artists  who  would  attempt  this  kind  of 
work,  which  is  in  high  favor  with  connoisseurs  both  in 
the  Eastern  States  and  in  Europe. 

The  present  exhibition  may,  on  the  whole,  be  consid- 
ered a  success.  That  it  is  so,  is  due  somewhat  to  the 
Rejection  Committee,  and  not  a  little  to  the  remarkable 
promise  shown  by  some  of  the  younger  members  of  the 
profession.  Two  young  gentlemen,  Latimer  and  Espey, 
at  present  pupils  of  the  School  of  Design,  are  remarka- 
ble for  their  vigorous  and  surprisingly  successful  at- 
tempts. 

If  there  are  any  rich  men  in  the  community  who  ever 
intend  to  do  anything  for  local  art,  now  is  the  time  for 
them  to  appear.  If  there  are  any  who  have  a  pride  or 
a  desire  that  we  shall,  as  a  community,  keep  or  acquire 
any  artistic  cultivation,  let  them  now  come  forward  and 
patronize  the  deserving  ones  of  the  profession.  It  is  a 
disgrace  to  the  community,  for  which  the  wealthy  class 
is  responsible,  if  we  cannot  support  the  little  talent 
worth  supporting  that  is  among  us.  Artists  of  merit 
and  ability  cannot  remain  in  San  Francisco  and  live  on 
air,  when  there  is  both  appreciation  and  bread  and  but- 
ter waiting  for  them  elsewhere.  The  present  exhibition 
may  be  regarded  as  the  artists'  supreme  last  effort  to  in- 
terest the  public.  If  it  is  not  successful,  there  will  soon 
be  but  the  dregs  of  the  profession  left  among  us. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


DRAMA   AND    MUSIC. 


After  dosing  the  public  for  two  months  with  much 
trashy,  sensational  stuff,  which,  in  spite  of  the  shame- 
less puffing  of  the  newspapers,  failed  of  any  consider- 
able pecuniary  success,  the  manager  of  the  Baldwin 
Theater,  by  some  chance  or  other,  hit  upon  the  plan 
of  giving  a  series  of  eight  concerts  by  "  European  art- 
ists," and  there  was  an  immediate  response  in  the 
shape  of  full  houses.  The  long  musical  fast  undergone 
by  San  Francisco  had,  no  doubt,  sharpened  the  popu- 
lar appetite  for  these  concerts,  but,  probably,  quite  as 
much  of  their  success  resulted  from  the  presence  of  one 
of  the  leading  violinists  of  the  world,  Herr  August 
Wilhelmj.  A  year  had  barely  elapsed  since  his  first 
visit,  and  the  tall  compact  figure,  the  phlegmatic  im- 
passive face,  the  dull  eye,  which  no  tones  of  music  seem 
ever  able  to  brighten,  were  again  before  us.  That  his 
playing  gave  a  great  deal  of  pure  delight  to  a  great 
many  people,  there  is  no  need  to  say.  But  the  pleas- 
ure of  listening  to  him  was  not  unmixed  with  annoy- 
ances. He  indulged  repeatedly  in  the  unwarrantable 
caprice  of  putting  a  piece  down  on  his  programme,  and 
playing  an  altogether  different  one  at  the  concert.  This 
practice  is  of  decidedly  questionable  honesty  toward  a 
public  which  accepts  promises  in  good  faith,  and  dis- 
likes to  find  itself  treated  to  pieces  it  had  heard  only  a 
night  or  two  before.  It  is  a  disappointment,  also,  to 
those  who  go  with  the  object  of  hearing  some  special  com- 
position which  is  then  omitted.  Still  less  is  the  practice 
to  be  overlooked  on  the  part  of  a  musician  who  is  con- 
tent with  a  most  limited  repertoire,  made  up  for  the 
most  part  of  solitary  examples  of  the  styles  of  Bach, 
Paganini,  Mendelssohn,  Chopin,  Laub,  Wagner,  and 
Wilhelmj,  all  diligently  played  to  us  a  year  ago.  We 
fear,  if  the  truth  were  spoken,  it  would  have  to  be  said 
that  Herr  Wilhelmj,  in  his  money -making  American 
life  of  the  past  three  years,  has  relinquished  something 
of  the  strict  habit  of  an  artist.  This  business  of  being 
carried  around  the  country  by  a  professional  agent, 
having  one's  portrait  placarded  on  the  street  walls,  and 
playing  across  America  to  provincial  hearers  of  rudi- 
mentary musical  taste,  is  never  serviceable  to  the  best 
art.  Herr  Wilhelmj 's  playing  showed  traces  of  these 
influences  in  the  shape  of  tricks  which  he  would  never 


have  ventured  upon  in  Germany.  In  the  Chopin  Noc- 
turne, played  by  him  on  the  first  night  (which,  by  the 
way,  was  written  for  the  piano,  and  for  nothing  else), 
he  took  the  liberty  of  leaving  out  a  constantly  recurring 
and  highly  characteristic  chromatic  figure  (difficult  for 
the  violin),  and  substituted  a  few  twirls  of  his  own,  the 
result  being  a  decided  blot  on  the  composition  to  every- 
body who  knew  it  as  Chopin  wrote  it.  He  also  indulg- 
ed in  the  cheap  bit  of  clap -trap  of  ending  many  of  his 
pieces  with  a  superfluous  octave,  for  no  other  purpose 
than  that  of  taking  a  high  note.  This  practice  has  been 
so  long  a  favorite  resource  of  third-rate  singers,  that  it 
is  surprising  to  find  it  adopted  by  Wilhelmj ,  especially 
as  his  octave  was  more  than  once  a  quarter  of  a  tone 
flat.  At  times,  also,  the  depth  and  purity  of  his  tone 
was  marred  by  the  ugly  rasping  of  his  bow,  and  in 
rapid  passages  there  was  sometimes  a  marked  want  of 
precision.  For  the  sake  of  his  art,  if  not  of  his  pocket, 
Herr  Wilhelmj  will  have  no  cause  for  regret  when  he 
finds  himself  once  more  in  Germany.  Of  the  Russian 
pianist,  Herr  Sternberg,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  he 
played  with  more  than  ordinary  technical  skill,  but 
without  much  feeling  or  sympathetic  interpretation  of 
what  he  was  playing.  A  thoroughly  Russian  ( or  quasi- 
Oriental)  love  of  display  showed  itself  in  a  tendency  to 
embellish  simple  passages  by  additions  of  his  own;  add- 
ing, for  instance,  thirds  or  fifths  where  Chopin  had 
written  only  single  notes,  and  giving  innumerable  flour- 
ishes to  the  simple  accompaniment  of  Gounod's  Bach's 
Am  Maria.  For  all  which  Herr  Sternberg  deserves 
the  reverse  of  thanks.  Miss  Fritch  proved  to  be  a  singer 
with  what  might  once  have  been  a  fair  voice,  now  spoil- 
ed by  bad  training.  But  as  an  example  of  complete 
and  absolute  self-complacency  united  to  just  as  com- 
plete and  unmistakable  second-rate  ability,  Miss  Fritch 
was  a  great  success,  and  did  her  part  in  supplying 
amusement.  We  cannot  close  our  notice  without  a 
word  of  hearty  praise  to  Herr  Vogrich  for  the  delicate, 
almost  poetic,  feeling  with  which  he  played  the  accom- 
paniments. The  beautiful  manner  in  which  he  kept 
the  piano  subordinate  to  the  singer  or  the  violinist  is 
worthy  of  thankful  remembrance  by  musicians  and 
amateurs. 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


SIGHT.  An  Exposition  of  the  Principles  of  Monocular 
and  Binocular  Vision.  By  Joseph  Le  Conte,  LL.D. 
New  York :  Appleton  &  Co.  1881. 

Professor  Le  Conte  has  given  us  an  interesting  and 
intelligible  account  of  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of 
vision,  based  upon  a  great  variety  of  scientific  experi- 
ments, which  may  be  verified  by  any  intelligent  reader 
of  his  book.  Although  it  is  an  analysis  and  exposition 
of  very  complex  phenomena,  it  is  written  in  so  lucid  a 
style  as  to  attract  those  whose  minds  have  not  been 


trained  to  scientific  thought,  and  is  therefore  a  valuable 
aid  to  culture,  and  a  preparation  for  the  study  of  other 
departments  of  mental  science  to  which  the  subject  of 
vision  has  been  considered  introductory  by  philoso- 
phers of  all  ages. 

In  the  introduction  we  have  the  relation  of  general 
sensibility  to  special  sense  exhibited  in  the  general  dif- 
ferentiation of  structure  for  special  ends  as  taught  by 
the  natural  history  of  animals,  especially  the  differentia- 
tion of  nerve-structure.  The  special  senses  are  regard- 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


477 


ed  as  refinements  of  common  sensation,  each  a  more 
refined  touch.  Coarse  vibrations  are  perceived  as  a  jar- 
ring. If  there  are  sixteen  vibrations  in  a  second,  the 
auditory  nerves  are  impressed,  and  we  call  the  sensa- 
tion sound.  Vibrations  which  are  so  rapid  that  they 
can  only  be  conveyed  by  an  ethereal  medium  are  per- 
ceived through  the  optic  nerve  as  light.  It  must  be  re- 
membered, however,  that  while  the  undulatory  theory 
of  sound  is  capable  of  positive  demonstration,  the  ex- 
istence of  the  ether  and  of  vibrations  in  it  is  purely  hy- 
pothetical. While  the  optical  phenomena  thus  far 
known  are  wholly  in  accord  with  the  theory  of  ethereal 
undulation,  future  facts  or  reasoning  may  render  the 
existence  of  the  ether  improbable  or  unnecessary. 

The  first  part  of  the  work  is  devoted  to  monocular 
vision,  and  contains  an  admirable  rtsumd  of  the  struct- 
ure of  the  eye.  The  wonderful  rods  and  cones  of  the 
retina  and  their  probable  functions  are  briefly  yet  clear- 
ly displayed,  and  the  most  common  defects  of  the  eye, 
as  myopy,  presbyopy,  hypermetropy,  and  astigmatism, 
pointed  out.  With  respect  to  the  question,  how  can 
we  see  objects  erect  when  the  image  on  the  retina  is  in- 
verted, we  are  referred  to  the  law  of  visible  direction : 
' '  Every  impression  on  the  retina  reaching  it  by  a  ray- 
line  passing  through  the  nodal  point  is  referred  back 
along  the  same  ray-line  to  its  true  place  in  space.  Thus 
ffor  every  radiant  point  in  the  object  there  is  a  corre- 
spondent focal  point  in  the  retinal  image  ;  and  every 
focal  point  is  referred  back  along  its  ray-line  to  its  own 
radiant,  and  thus  the  external  image  (object)  is  recon- 
structed in  its  proper  position."  Professor  Le  Conte 
tells  us  that  ' '  this  question  has  puzzled  metaphysicians, 
and  many  answers  characteristic  of  this  class  of  philos- 
ophers have  been  given.  The  true  scientific  answer  is 
found  in  what  is  called  the  law  of  visible  direction." 
This  seems  to  imply  some  antagonism  between  meta- 
physics and  true  science  which  the  history  of  ancient 
and  modern  thought  will  scarcely  justify.  There  have 
been  various  theories  both  among  reasoners  and  exper- 
imentalists, but  all  explanations  of  this  question,  as  of 
many  others,  have  been  metaphysical.  Vision  itself, 
after  all  our  optical  experiments  and  histological  dissec- 
tions, transcends  physics,  and  is,  therefore,  metaphysi- 
cal. The  Platonists  and  Stoics  believed  that  vision  was 
caused  by  emission  of  rays  from  the  eyes  to  the  object- 
ive point  in  space,  and  which  were  thence  reflected  again 
to  the  eye.  Descartes,  and  after  him  Newton,  consid- 
ered vision  better  explained  by  rays  flowing  from  a 
luminous  body  through  a  transparent  medium.  To  this 
succeeded  the  theory  of  ethereal  vibrations  excited  by  a 
luminary,  and  reflected  or  refracted  by  various  ob- 
jects. The  theory  of  Professor  Le  Conte  of  the  mind 
referring  back  the  impression  on  the  retina  along  the 
same  ray-line  to  its  true  point  in  space  was  also  the  the- 
ory of  Dr.  Reid  in  his  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind. 
He  says  :  "Every  point  of  the  object  is  seen  in  the  di- 
rection of  a  right  line  passing  from  the  picture  of  that 
point  on  the  retina  through  the  center  of  the  eye. "  The 
doctrine  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton — that  we  are  conscious,  or 
immediately  cognizant,  not  only  of  the  affections  of  self, 
but  of  the  phenomena  of  something  different  from  self, 
both,  however,  always  in  relation  to  each  other;  in 
other  words,  objects  are  neither  carried  into  the  mind, 
nor  the  mind  made  to  sally  out  to  them,  and  we  per- 
ceive, through  no  sense,  naught  external  but  what  is  in 
immediate  relation  and  contact  with  its  organ — seems 
to  us  more  reasonable.  Through  the  eye,  therefore,  we 
perceive  nothing  but  the  rays  of  light  in  relation  to,  and 


in  contact  with,  the  retina.  The  erection  by  the  mind 
of  the  inverted  image  on  the  retina  is  capable  of  differ- 
ent explanations.  Helmholtz  says,  "Our  natural  con- 
sciousness is  completely  ignorant  of  even  the  existence 
of  the  retina  and  of  the  formation  of  images:  how 
should  it  know  anything  of  the  position  of  images 
formed  upon  it?"  The  mind  does  not  see  retinal  im- 
ages ;  this  would  require  another  eye.  The  manner  of 
mental  perception  is  quite  beyond  our  comprehension. 
The  beautiful  mechanism  for  bringing  the  mind  in  con- 
tact with  the  external  world,  and  the  fact  of  the  percep- 
tion of  that  world,  are  separated  by  an  inexplicable 
mystery — a  chasm  which  no  refinement  of  science  can 
bridge  over. 

Part  II,  relating  to  binocular  vision,  is  quite  elaborate. 
It  relates  to  single  and  double  images,  the  superposi- 
tion of  external  images,  binocular  perspective,  and  judg- 
ment of  distance,  size,  and  form.  The  original  investi- 
gations of  the  author  increase  the  interest  in  this  depart- 
ment. His  theory  of  binocular  vision  combines  and 
reconciles  the  theories  of  Wheatstone  and  Briicke.  It 
is  thus  briefly  stated :  "The  eye  (or  the  mind)  instinct- 
ively distinguishes  homonymous  from  heteronymous 
images"  [i.  e.,  those  on  the  nasal  sides  of  the  retinae 
from  those  on  the  temporal  sides],  "referring  the  former 
to  objects  beyond  and  the  latter  to  objects  this  side  of 
the  point  of  sight."  In  other  words,  the  mind  perceives 
relief  instantly  by  means  of  double  images,  although  the 
relief  is  made  clearer  by  a  ranging  of  the  point  of  sight 
back  and  forth.  The  phenomena  of  binocular  vision 
depend  on  the  law  of  corresponding  points,  and  the 
latter  half  of  the  work  is  occupied  in  exhibiting  this  con- 
nection. The  numerous  original  experiments  and  illus- 
trations render  this  the  most  important  part  of  the  book. 
The  last  chapter,  on  the  comparative  physiology  of  bi- 
nocular vision,  is  one  of  the  most  important  and  inter- 
esting of  all.  It  shows  that  invertebrates  and  fishes  do 
not  possess  the  binocular  faculty.  "The  property  of 
corresponding  points,  from  which  all  the  phenomena  of 
binocular  vision  are  derived,  is  something  peculiar  to 
the  eye  of  the  higher  animals.  Nothing  analagous  ex- 
ists in  the  other  senses.  Binocular  vision  in  its  perfec- 
tion, as  it  exists  in  man  and  the  higher  animals,  is  the 
last  result  of  the  gradual  improvement  of  that  most  re- 
fined of  all  the  sense  organs,  the  eye,  specially  adapting 
it  to  meet  the  wants  of  the  higher  faculties  of  the  mind." 


A  PERFECT  DAY,  and  other  poems.  By  Ina  D.  Cool- 
brith.  Author's  special  subscription  edition.  San 
Francisco.  1881. 

AH  lovers  of  good  literature  will  be  glad  to  know  that 
the  poems  of  Miss  Coolbrith  have  at  last  been  collected 
into  permanent  form.  Among  the  writers  who  have  at- 
tracted attention  upon  this  coast  for  the  real  merit  of 
their  productions,  none  has  enjoyed  a  larger  degree  of 
appreciation  than  the  author  of  this  little  volume,  whose 
poems  have  been  copied  and  read  wherever  the  Eng- 
lish language  is  spoken.  It  was  a  somewhat  invidious 
distinction  to  name  the  volume  after  a  single  poem,  in- 
asmuch as  it  assumes  a  superiority  in  favor  thereof.  "A 
Perfect  Day"  is  certainly  worthy  of  its  wide  popularity, 
but  the  volume  contains  other  poems  equally  meritorious 
and  equally  popular. 

Miss  Coolbrith  is  fortunate  in  being  almost  a  pioneer 
in  one  respect.  She  has  felt  the  life  of  a  new  land  and 
given  it  utterance  with  the  grace  and  finish  of  an  older 
literature.  There  are  a  few  crudities  in  her  work.  There 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


is  no  distressing  effort  to  be  new  or  madly  original  in 
expression  as  well  as  in  thought.  There  is  better  art 
than  that.  Miss  Coolbrith  has  seen  new  things,  has 
felt  new  thoughts,  has  been  part  of  a  new  social  devel- 
opment ;  and  in  giving  these  "a  local  habitation  and  a 
name  "  she  has  yet  been  able  to  preserve  that  conserva- 
tism to  which  her  poems  owe  their  exquisite  finish. 

In  this  completeness  of  art  Miss  Coolbrith  loses  none 
of  her  nearness  to  Nature.  She  looks  into  the  cloudless 
sky  and  sees 

"A  day  too  glad  for  laughter — nay, 

Too  glad  for  happy  tears  ! 
The  fair  earth  seems  as  in  a  dream 

Of  immemorial  years : 
Perhaps  of  that  far  morn  when  she 

Sang  with  her  sister  spheres. 

"It  may  be  that  she  holds  to-day 

Some  sacred  Sabbath  feast; 
It  may  be  that  some  patient  soul 

Has  entered  to  God's  rest, 
For  whose  dear  sake  He  smiles  on  us 

And  all  the  day  is  blest." 

Her  longing  scorns  the  "foolish  wisdom  sought  in 
books,"  and  turns  ever  to  the  repose  of  Nature, 

"  For  there  the  grand  hills,  summer-crowned, 

Slope  greenly  downward  to  the  seas ; 
One  hour  of  rest  upon  their  breast 

Were  worth  a  year  of  days  like  these." 

The  opening  lines  of  the  later  commencement  poem 
contain  the  invitation  of  Nature  to  the  poet  : 

"Into  the  balm  of  the  clover, 

Into  the  dawn  and  the  dew, 
Come,  O  my  poet,  my  lover, 
Single  of  spirit  and  true ! 

"Sweeter  the  song  of  the  throstle 

Shall  ring  from  its  nest  in  the  vine, 
And  the  lark,  my  beloved  apostle, 
Shall  chant  thee  a  gospel  divine. 

"Ah  !  not  to  the  dullard,  the  schemer, 

I  of  my  fullness  may  give ; 
But  thou,  whom  the  world  calleth  dreamer, 
Drink  of  my  fountains  and  live." 

The  two  commencement  poems,  "California"  and 
"From  Living  Waters,"  are  admirable  conceptions. 
"In  Memoriam"  (Hon.  B.  P.  Avery)  has  these  lines: 

"God  rest  thy  soul ! 

O  kind  and  pure, 

Tender  of  heart,  yet  strong  to  wield  control, 
And  to  endure  ! 

"Close  the  clear  eyes. 

No  greater  woe 

Earth's  patient  heart,  than  when  a  good  man  dies, 
Can  ever  know." 

In  the  way  of  delicate  fancies,  Miss  Coolbrith  is  par- 
ticularly happy.  Here  is  one : 

"I  think  I  would  not  be 

A  stately  tree, 
Broad  boughed,  with  haughty  crest  that  seeks  the  sky. 

Too  many  sorrows  lie 

In  years— too  much  of  bitter  for  the  sweet. 
Frost-bite,  and  blast,  and  heat, 
Blind  drought,  cold  rains,  must  all  grow  wearisome 

Ere  one  could  put  away 

Their  leafy  garb  for  aye 
And  let  death  come. 


"Rather  this  wayside  flower, 

To  live  its  happy  hour 
Of  balmy  air,  of  sunshine,  and  of  dew, 
A  sinless  face  held  upward  to  the  blue  j 

A  bird  song  sung  to  it, 

A  butterfly  to  flit 

On  dazzling  wings  above  it,  hither,  thither, 
A  sweet  surprise  of  life — and  then  exhale 
A  little  fragrant  soul  on  the  soft  gale, 

To  float— ah,  whither?" 

Space  forbids  extending  these  extracts,  taken  here 
and  there  to  illustrate  the  character  of  the  work.  It 
would  be  quite  impossible,  without  reproducing  the 
complete  volume,  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of  the  beau- 
ty of  these  poems.  And  it  is  equally  impossible,  with- 
out the  appearance  of  over-praise,  to  characterize  them. 
Typographically  the  book  is  in  keeping  with  its  con- 
tents, and  is  a  credit  to  the  workmanship  of  Messrs. 
John  H.  Carmany  &  Co.,  whose  imprint  it  bears. 


THE  LIFE  OF  CICERO.  By  Anthony  Trollope.  In  two 
volumes.  New  York :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

Not  only  is  it  true  that  we  moderns  are  greatly  in- 
debted to  Rome,  it  is  also  true  we  take  a  great  interest 
in  the  old  Roman  men.  The  practical  modern  world 
finds  much  that  is  congenial  in  the  eminently  practical  • 
nation  which  grew  up  by  the  Tiber — which  showed  such 
business-like  qualities  in  consolidating  the  varied  peo- 
ples of  its  growing  empire,  in  developing  its  system  of 
law,  and  in  extending  its  unique  and  powerful  style  of 
government.  Even  its  literature  was  subordinated  to 
practical  uses.  Virgil  and  Horace  wrote  in  the  interest 
of  the  Augustan  imperial  idea.  Oratory  was  directed 
to  the  most  practical  of  ends.  By  it  the  statesman  was 
to  sway  the  Senate  or  the  populace,  and  rise  to  influence 
and  power.  Caesar's  speeches  were  useful  adjuncts  to 
Caesar's  victories  in  the  provinces.  These  practical 
qualities  appeal  to  us.  The  men  of  mark  at  Rome  in  the 
last  century  before  Christ  have  been  much  talked  about 
and  written  about  within  the  last  half  century.  Louis 
Napoleon  wrote  a  Life  of  Ccesar.  M.  Froude  has  taken 
the  same  great  man  for  a  special  subject.  Mommsen 
and  Merivale,  and  Ihne,  not  to  mention  other  historians, 
have  fully  discussed  the  leading  names  of  the  closing 
era  of  the  Roman  Republic.  Cicero  has  come  in  for 
special  notice.  German  editors  have  arranged  and  ex- 
plained his  correspondence.  An  English  barrister,  M. 
Forsyth,  has  written  an  elaborate  Life  of  Cicero,  pub- 
lished in  1863.  And  now  comes  the  facile  and  graceful 
pen  of  Anthony  Trollope  to  retouch  the  great  orator's 
career,  and  demand  for  him*  a  retraction  of  adverse 
judgments.  Certainly,  if  classical  learning  is  nowadays 
disparaged,  some  classical  names  have  lost  none  of 
their  interest.  There  is  significance  in  the  fact  that  a 
popular  novelist  and  leading  man  of  letters  turns  aside 
from  his  remunerative  work,  and  throws  himself  hearti- 
ly, almost  passionately,  into  the  life  of  men  who  lived 
nearly  two  thousand  years  ago. 

Mr.  Trollope  writes  with  the  special  purpose  of  vin- 
dicating Cicero  from  the  harsh  judgments  of  numerous 
critics.  Cicero  has  in  one  way  been  the  most  unfortu- 
nate of  men,  in  having  a  great  public  career  subjected 
to  the  cross-light  of  the  frankest  possible  utterances  in 
private  letters.  Demosthenes  left  no  such  betraying 
correspondence.  Caesar's  letters  were  not  preserved. 
But  Cicero's  correspondence  was  so  full  and  interesting, 
so  fascinating  in  style,  so  charming  in  humor,  that  it 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


479 


was  caught  up  and  fixed  forever  in  the  gaze  of  the 
world.  His  most  private  plaints,  and  most  despondent 
self-reproaches,  and  most  incautious  confessions  stand 
written  on  the  margin  of  his  public  services.  No  other 
statesman  was  ever  so  turned  inside  out  and  held  up  to 
unsympathetic  criticism.  Cicero  was  ambitious,  egotist- 
ic, self-laudatory.  He  was  not  a  great  warrior,  nor  had 
he  the  nerve  to  face  such  men  as  Caesar  in  the  hot  strife 
of  politics.  But  other  Romans  were  ambitious,  egotist- 
ic, self-laudatory  (for  the  last  mentioned  point  see  the 
biographies  of  Cato  and  Scipio).  And  in  practical 
service,  Cicero  was  no  coward.  He  attacked  favorites 
of  Sulla  when  that  great  dictator  was  a  terror  to  the 
state.  He  faced  Catiline  and  his  co-conspirators,  and 
even  outran  the  bounds  of  prudence  in  visiting  punish- 
ment upon  them.  In  the  last  sad  epoch  of  his  public 
career  he  showed  a  stern  face  toward  Antony,  and  when 
Antony's  minions  came  to  execute  his  bloody  command, 
Cicero  died  with  a  courage  worthy  of  his  great  name. 

We  are  glad  to  see  Mr.  Trollope  come  forth  as  cham- 
pion to  so  noble  a  man.  Cicero  has  been  inexcusably 
underrated  and  reproached  by  such  historians  as  Momm- 
sen  and  Froude.  Mr.  Trollope  believes  that  the  great 
orator  was  one  of  the  purest  and  best  men  of  his  time. 
We  believe  so,  too.  He  believes  that  Cicero  was  always 
faithful  to  the  idea  of  the  old  Republic  ;  that  his  seem- 
ing vacillations  and  inconsistencies  were  in  the  line  of 
this  life-long  devotion.  He  hesitated  between  men  be- 
cause he  could  not  tell  who  would  do  best  for  the  Re- 
public. He  was  a  lawyer,  and  used  an  advocate's  elas- 
lic  liberty  of  speech,  now  on  one  side  of  a  personal  case, 
now  on  the  other.  But  to  the  grand  and  dear  old  com- 
monwealth he  was  never  untrue. 

Mr.  Trollope  treats  of  Cicero  as  a  man  of  letters  and 
as  a  philosopher.  Latin  prose  was  almost  the  creation 
of  the  great  orator.  Through  him  the  Greek  philoso- 
phy was  popularized  at  Rome.  His  principles  of  con- 
duct were  in  the  highest  degree  praiseworthy.  In  a  pre- 
Christian  age,  he  seemed  almost  to  have  caught  the  es- 
sential spirit  of  Christian  ethics.  Such  a  man  is  a 
worthy  subject  for  any  biographer,  and  Mr.  Trollope 
has  given  us  a  popular  and  interesting  book.  It  is  not 
profound,  but  it  is  not  dry.  It  is  worth  the  scholar's  at- 
tention, and  to  the  common  reader  it  may  be  commend- 


ed as  at  once  the  freshest  and  fairest  representation  of  a 
man  foremost  among  the  really  great  names  of  Roman 
and  ancient  history. 

SUNRISE.  A  Story  of  these  Times.  By  William  Black, 
author  of  MacLeod  of  Dare,  etc.  New  York  :  Har- 
per &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

All  readers  of  Sunrise  are  in  duty  bound  to  accept 
the  statement  on  its  title  page  that  it  is  written  by  the 
author  of  The  Princess  of  Thule,  White  Wings,  etc., 
but  surely  the  admirers  of  Black,  and  their  name  is  le- 
gion, would  not  have  guessed  it  from  the  book  itself. 

It  is  seldom  that  an  author  who  is  so  prolific  as  Mr. 
Black  has  been  can  depart  so  completely  from  the  beaten 
track  and  seek  new  paths  in  literature  with  the  success 
which  this  author  has  done  in  his  latest  work.  In  Sun- 
rise he  has  dropped  the  idyllic  style  of  his  earlier  works, 
and  has  written  a  novel  dealing  with  the  most  vital  ques- 
tion of  the  day — namely,  socialism — in  a  remarkably 
vigorous  and  interesting  manner.  He  has  lost  none  of 
his  former  skill  in  delineation  of  character  and  analysis 
of  motive,  but  he  has  transferred  his  word  painting  to  a 
larger  canvas.  Sunrise  contrasts  with  such  works  as 
Three  Feathers,  as  a  painting  by  Raphael  with  the  mi- 
croscopic paintings  of  the  Dutch  school  of  artists. 

The  leading  characters,  Ferdinand  Lind,  the  Interna- 
tionalist, his  daughter  Natalie,  George  Brand,  the  young 
Englishman,  and  Calabressa,  the  Italian  carbonaro,  are; 
living,  breathing  persons;  and  while  a  captious  critic 
might  suggest  that  the  mysterious  power  of  life  and 
death  claimed  by  the  "Council  of  the  Seven  Stars" 
smacks  too  strongly  of  the  Vehmgericht  of  the  middle 
ages  of  Germany,  yet  the  recent  assassination  of  the 
Czar  of  Russia  goes  far  to  confirm  Mr.  Black's  view  of 
the  terrible  strength  and  unwavering  determination  of 
the  element  in  European  politics  of  which  he  has  writ- 
ten. As  a  whole,  we  think  the  book  one  of  the  best  of 
the  day,  and  we  congratulate  the  author  upon  the  abil- 
ity which  he  has  shown  to  deal  with  broader  questions, 
than  those  to  which  he  has  hitherto  devoted  himself. 

[A  number  of  other  publications  have  been  received,, 
too  late  for  notice  in  this  number.] 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


SO  COMETH  THE  RAIN. 

Out  of  my  window  I  watch  the  rain, 

A  blank-white  mist  driven  through  the  gate 
Of  the  mountain-chains,  swept  on  by  a  great 

Resistless  force  till  the  far  hills  wane 

And  melt  from  view;  now  the  pines  are  tossed, 

And  the  oaks'  brown  limbs  writhe  in  the  gale; 

The  dark  madrono  is  growing  pale, 

For  the  blast  has  turned  the  hidden  side 

Of  the  glossy  leaves  to  the  storm's  wild  pride ; 

The  white  drops  are  driven  against  the  pane — 
So  cometh  the  rain. 

The  eaves  are  pouring  a  deluge  down, 

The  shrubs  are  bent  by  the  wild  white  spray, 
The  room  is  in  twilight,  as  if  the  day 


Was  shrinking  away  from  the  Storm-King's  frown. 

Each  hollow  is  hidden  beneath  the  flood, 
Each  footprint  filled  with  the  rushing  drops, 

And  all  through  the  wind-rocked,  wild,  wet  wood. 
The  trees  are  bowing  their  heavy  tops ; 

The  storm  beats  in  at  the  window-pane — 
So  falleth  the  ruin. 

But  lo  !   in  the  distance  a  yellow  light 

Rifts  through  the  clouds,  and  the  far  hills  rise, 
Dividing  the  veil,  to  the  golden  skies ; 

And  the  storm,  as  one  wounded  in  his  might, 

Trails  northward,  and  mutters  beneath  his  breath,. 
And  departs  with  the  majesty  of  death. 

The  drops  still  glitter  on  twig  and  leaf, 

But  a  hidden  thrush  pipes  a  sweet  relief; 
The  sun  shines  in  at  the  window-pane— 
So  ceaseth  the  rain. 

MAY  N.  HAWLEY.. 


480 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


SIMON  AND   AMELIA  AT  THE  THEATER. 

They  were  at  the  theater.  They  consisted  of  an  el- 
derly countryman  and  his  old  fashioned  wife.  We  were 
— well,  it  does  not  matter  who  we  were ;  suffice  it  to  say, 
that  we  were  all  there  for  the  same  purpose,  as  well  as 
several  hundred  others  who  thronged  the  house.  The 
drama  to  be  produced  was  the  passionate  love  tragedy 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  the  part  of  the  fair  Juliet 
was  to  be  taken  by  a  young  and  beautiful  lady,  who 
made  her  debut  that  evening. 

We  immediately  learned  from  the  conversation  of  our 
country  couple,  that  he  was  Simon  and  she  was  Amelia. 
He  seemed  one  of  these  slow,  good-natured  men,  whom 
we  often  meet  and  seldom  dislike ;  while  she  was  evi- 
dently the  Major  General  of  the  Amelia -Simon  firm. 
Her  nose  and  chin  were  pointed,  and  she  carried  an 
air  of  decided  authority  about  her.  She  had  a  comely 
face  indicating  excellent  sense,  but  the  contrast  between 
her  appearance  and  that  of  the  meek  Simon  was  strik- 
ing. These  good  people  had  evidently  been  unaccus- 
tomed to  the  theater,  and  the  conversation  and  criti- 
cisms that  passed  between  them  were  novel  and  enter- 
taining. We  will  not  attempt  to  give  their  conversa- 
tion -verbatim,  as  it  would  fill  a  small  book. 

The  drop-curtain,  hiding  the  stage,  represented  an 
emigrant  train  crossing  the  plains.  Amelia's  eyesight 
was  still  good. 

"What  a  lot  o'  wagons  all  in  a  row,"  she  remarked, 
as  she  gazed  at  the  painting,  "and  under  'em  it  says 
'49.  I  reckon  ther  must  be  forty-nine  on  'em ;  who'd 
a  thought  ther  was  thet  many  !" 

"I  can't  see  "em,"  meekly  responded  Simon,  with  a 
crestfallen  countenance. 

"Law  sakes !  can't  you,  though?  .What  a  pity  now 
you  didn't  fetch  your  specks.  Jes  like  you.  How'd 
you  spect  to  see  anything  without  'em.  Your  eyesight 
want  never  so  good  as  mine,  nohow,"  she  complacently 
added. 

"Thet's  so,  mother,"  said  he. 

He  looked  so  uncomfortable,  that  we  leaned  over, 
and,  offering  an  opera  glass,  said: 

"Take  this,  sir;  it  may  enable  you  to  see." 

Amelia  turned  upon  us  a  quick,  searching  look,  and, 
then  scrutinizing  the  glass  sharply,  and  raising  no  ob- 
jections, she  looked  the  fact  to  her  obedient  spouse, 
who,  taking  it  awkwardly,  said,  in  a  blunt  manner : 

"Waal,  now,  I  hold  thet's  right  clever.  I  thought 
these  folks  were  all  on  'em  too  stuck  up  to  speak  to 
country  folks,  let  alone  handin'  this  "ere  thing  to  look 
through." 

"Be  still,  will  you?"  said  his  wife,  cautiously,  with 
the  characteristic  readiness  of  her  sex;  "how  are  they 
to  know  we  hain't  city  folks?  I  never  wore  this  gown 
but  once  before,  an'  my  bonnet  is  as  spick  span  new 
as  when  Samanthy  put  it  on  the  tree  for  me,  thet  Christ- 
mas; and  you  know  right  well  you  got  them  clothes 
new,  out  of  the  store,  this  very  day.  Folks  can  tell 
they  are  new  by  the  folds,"  she  proudly  added. 

Simon  had  been  busily  examining  the  opera -glass, 
and  good  Amelia's  worldliness  had  not  affected  the  old 
man  very  much,  for  he  musingly  spoke,  as  he  turned 
the  glass  over  and  around. 

"I  seen  the  place  where  they  was  givin'  on  'em  away, 
down  stairs,  when  we  come  in." 

"Givin'  'em  away,  indeed!  A  pretty  lot  they  was 
a  givin'  'em  away!  I  reckon  ef  they  had  been,  I'd  a 
hedashare."  [We  believed  her.]  " They  was  sellin' 


"em,"  she  asserted,  as  if  she  knew  for  a  certainty,   "I 
listened  mighty  sharp." 

Poor  Simon,  he  had  turned,  and  twisted,  and  shaken 
the  opera -glass  until  he  struck  the  happy  medium  that 
suited  his  eyes.  Be  it  known  that  it  was  wholly  an  ac- 
cident, however,  as  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  were  not  good  for  much,  but  he  so  dreaded  to 
hear  the  voice  of  his  lady,  assuring  him  that  "nothing 
was  the  matter,  only  thet  he  didn't  know  how,"  that  he 
kept  on  fussing  until  the  happy  accident  occurred. 
After  a  brief  pause,  the  exclamation  that  startled  us  was : 

"Why,  'Melia,  them  wagons  thet  you  talked  about, 
all  in  a  row,  is  meant  for  a  emigrant  train,  Blest  ef 
it  don't  look  kinder  nateral,  too,"  mused  the  old  man. 
"Yes,  I've  been  across  them  plains  twice.  Tough  times 
we  had  them  days ;  them  ox  teams  don't  look  much 
like  the  teams  we  hed ;  they  never  put  less'n  six  or  eight 
yoke  on  sech  a  big  wagon,  and  there  they've  only  got 
one.  They  never  have  their  heads  hoisted  up  like  that 
ere  yoke  ;  they  allers  lop  'em  down." 

Another  prolonged  gaze  left  the  pause  uninterrupted, 
and  then  the  following  information  was  elicited  from 
the  good  man,  who  little  guessed  how  many  he  was  en- 
tertaining. 

"Ho,  I  see  thet  '49,  thet  you  said  meant  the  number 
of  teams.  You  wan't  right  thet  time,  sure.  Why,  it 
means  the  spring  of  '50,  when  I  come  over.  Umph, 
jest  like  women  folks,  sich  calkelations  ! " 

The  lights  suddenly  grew  dim,  the  bell  tapped,  and 
the  whole  emigrant  train,  with  the  '49  and  the  ox  teams, 
began  rolling  over  and  over  into  a  confused  mass  with- 
in the  curtain  folds,  as  it  arose  to  the  top  of  the  stage. 
After  the  introduction  of  a  number  of  characters,  the 
gentle  Romeo  made  his  appearance.  His  costum$  one 
of  the  day  in  which  he  was  supposed  to  have  flourished, 
was  composed  of  a  gracefully  flowing  cape,  and  closely 
fitting  garments,  of  rich  green  cloth,  trimmed  in  gold. 
Upon  his  curly  head  rested  a  jaunty  cap  with  a  charm- 
ing plume  waving  over  the  crown. 

"Can  you  hear  what  the  play  actors  is  a  sayin,"  said 
'Melia,  sotto  voce. 

"No,  I  reckon  they  hain't  begun,  yet,"  he  innocently 
answered. 

"Yes,  they  hev,  too.  Thet  ther  chap  is  Romeo,  an' 
he  goes  a  courtin'  Juliet,  an'  her  folks  an'  his  folks  don't 
speak,  an'  he  marries  Juliet  an'  kills  her  cousin  an'  is 
banished,  an'  pisins  himself,  an'  she  takes  somethin 
'nother  thet  puts  her  asleep,  an'  then  when  she  comes 
awake  agin  an'  finds  him  dead,  she  stabs  herself." 

After  this  blast  of  words  rattled  off  by  'Melia  without] 
a  pause  for  breath,  poor  Simon  looked  aghast.  Perhaps 
he  was  endeavoring  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  the  con- 
densed recital.  My  friend  had  been  sketching  the  play 
for  the  old  lady  in  a  hasty  way,  and  we  were  wonder- 
fully amused  to  hear  her  enlighten  her  partner  as  to 
what  was  coming. 

"Waal,"  said  Simon,  reflectively,  "thet's  a  queer 
lookin'  sort  of  a  dress  to  go  a  courtin'  in.  It's  purty 
snug.  I  reckon  he  didn't  hev  to  climb  the  pastur'  fence 

as  I  used  to  when  I  went  a  cour "    A  severe,  but 

flattered,  look  from  his  companion  caused  him  to  change 
his  sentence  into  "when  I  went  a  callin'  on  Farmer 
Brown." 

There  was  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  as  he  smoothed  off  his 
chin,  and  the  old  lady  fanned  herself  vigorously  and 
looked  hard  at  the  stage.  When  Mercutio  was  stabbed 
and  was  jesting  and  laughing  with  his  last  breath,  Simon 
said: 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


481 


"Now,  'Melia,  look  a  here;  a  feller  wouldn't  feel 
much  like  jokin'  at  sech  a  time.  I  don't  more'n  half 
like  that.  He  ought  to  plump  right  off  without  talkin'. " 

But  when  Romeo  avenged  the  wanton  murder  of  his 
friend  by  stabbing  in  turn  the  slayer,  Tybalt,  and  when 
the  sword  suddenly  slipped  out  of  sight  up  to  the  sock- 
et, and  the  victim  fell  dead,  and  a  number  of  ladies 
partly  arose  from  their  seats,  and  several  screamed,  no 
wonder  the  good  Amelia  grasped  Simon's  knees  in  sup- 
pressed pain  as  she  gazed  on  the  scene. 

"Oh,  Simon,"  said  she,  "did  h«  really  kill  him?" 

Simon  wore  a  broad  grin  on  his  face,  and  slowly 
drawled  out : 

"Why,  'Melia,  I  hain't  seen  you  so  pestered  and 
worked  up  like  for  nigh  on  twenty  years.  Thet  chap 
did  get  killed  rather  sudden  like,"  he  added  in  a  philo- 
sophic tone.  ' '  I  thought  the  other  did  too  much  talkin'. 
It  wasn't  so  blamed  sudden  as  this,  though.  I  like  a 
leetle  talkin'." 

Juliet  quite  stole  the  heart  of  the  old  man  in  the  very 
first  part  of  the  drama,  when  the  dance  of  the  minuet 
was  introduced. 

' '  I  don't  believe  I  could  drop  sech  a  peart  curtsy  as 
thet  now,  nor  move  round  so  spry,"  remarked  Amelia. 

"No,  I  jes'  bet  you  couldn't!"  bluntly  retorted  Si- 
mon. "You'd  git  yer  feet  all  mixed  up  in  them  long 
skirts,  and  tumble  down,  thet's  what  you'd  do." 

"  Ef  I  hedn't  hed  the  rheumatics  so  much  from  doin' 
your  housework,  and  got  all  stiffened  up  before  my  time, 
I'd  be  spry  enough,"  hotly  retorted  the  insulted  lady, 
with  red  cheeks. 

"Waal,  'Melia,  lets  not  argy,"  placidly  remarked 
Simon. 

As*  the  evening  advanced  in  lateness,  the  curtain  rose 
and  fell,  and  our  old  folks  were  getting  tired. 

' '  I  think  ther's  too  much  love  smackin'  in  it.  Folks 
don't  do  ther  courtin"  thet  way  nowadays,  and  I  never 
rec'lect  knowin"  nobody  thet  did,"  sleepily  yawned 
Simon. 

"So  much  the  worse  for  'em,"  tartly  answered  the 
peppery  Amelia,  for  she  still  smarted  under  the  cruel 
dig  given  her  by  her  lord. 

"Umph,"  said  the  provokingly  calm  Simon,  with  a 
chuckle,  "I  reckon  now,  you'd  jest  be  the  one  what 
would  like  to  have  a  chap  spookin'  round  under  your 
winder  after  candle-light,  a  pawin*  over  yer  flower 
garden  and  a  blowin'  kisses  up  at  yer  winder. " 

Amelia  vouchsafed  no  reply  to  this  bit  of  pleasantry. 
The  last  act  had  come.  The  fatal  poison  was  begin- 
ning to  work  throughout  the  veins  of  the  unhappy 
Romeo  just  as  Juliet  awoke  from  her  long  sleep,  and 
so  real  seemed  his  agony  at  the  approach  of  the  death 
that  he  knew  to  be  irrevocable,  and  that  gradually  but 
surely  seemed  tearing  his  Juliet  from  his  arms,  that 
good  Amelia  murmured,  half  aloud : 

"The  whites  of  eggs  is  a  good  antidote." 

But  all  was  over.  The  curtain  fell,  and  the  people 
surged  out.  Amelia  and  Simon  sat  looking  at  the  cur- 
tain even  after  it  had  fallen,  and  then,  recollecting 
themselves,  made  preparations  to  move  out. 

"Waal,  now,"  commenced  Simon,  "I  think  they 
hedn't  oughter  died,  both  on  'em  leastways.  Now, 
why  didn't  thet  gal  take  a  shine  to  some  other  chap, 
and  git  married,  and  be  happy — gals  is  so  romantic." 

As  they  moved  off,  he  was  heard  to  say,  with  a  drawl : 
"I  reckon  you  hain't  too  proud  to  hev  me  take  a 
chew,  now,  be  you?    I've  felt  sort  o'  lonesome  all  the 
evenin',  in  ther." 


"Oh,  no,  chew  away,"  sharply  replied  his  better  half. 
"You  allers  was  bound  to  be  more  like  a  cow  than  a 
mortal  man,  whatever  I  could  do  or  say;  cows  allers  hev 
ther  cuds  along  with  "em." 

"Waal,  Mely,  I—" 

They  turned  a  corner,  and  we  lost  sight  of  them  at 
this  point  in  the  conversation.  We  really  felt  sorry  to 
part  with  the  chief  actor  in  the  side  drama  that  had  af- 
forded us  so  much  amusement  during  the  evening. 
They  kept  the  glass  in  good  faith  until  the  very  end, 
but  we  had  not  the  heart  to  even  feel  reproach  fully  to- 
ward them  for  their  lack  of  conformity  to  the  rules  of 
propriety,  as  their  honesty  counterbalanced  all  else. 
MARCIA  D.  CRANE. 


RONDEL. 

Imperial,  she  wears  the  haughty  frown 
Of  supreme  sovereignty ;  her  regal  crown 

Her  own  gold  locks.     No  realm  material 
She  rules,  but  loving  hearts,  that,  bowing  down,. 

Worship  her  humbly,  as  she  wills  they  shall, 
Imperial. 

What  of  the  robe  that  wraps  my  lady's  frame? 
What  of  its  texture  and  its  fashion's  name, 

Its  heavy  folds  that  chaste  and  ample  fall? 
No  hue  should  please  her  save  the  dye  that  came 

From  ancient  Tyre — that  purple  that  men  call 
Imperial. 

What  man  shall  win  my  lady's  lofty  love? 
What  demi-god,  sired  by  omnamorous  Jove? 

Nay,  that  man  walks  not  this  terrestrial  ball — 
Unless  so  mighty  shall  one  conqueror  prove 
As  to  himself  the  world  to  bind  in  thrall- 
Imperial. 

PHILIP  SHIRLEY. 


AN   ENTERTAINING  GAME. 

"Between  the  dark  and  the  daylight, 

When  the  night  is  beginning  to  lower, 
Comes  a  pause  in  the  day's  occupation 
That  is  known  as  the  children's  hour." 

Have  any  of  the  readers  of  THE  CALIFORNIAN  ever 
been  importuned,  day  after  day,  by  certain  small  but 
urgently  solicitous  members  of  the  family,  for  "stories?" 
And  have  these  "grown-up"  people  ever  been  at  a  loss 
to  satisfy  their  little  petitioners  ? 

The  gray-haired  poet  of  Cambridge  knew  how  to 
gratify  his  "blue-eyed  banditti;"  and  everybody  re- 
members the  beautiful  eulogy  one  great  story-teller  of 
England  paid  to  another  when  he  said,  "  Lucky  is  he 
who  has  such  a  charming  gift  of  nature  as  this,  which 
brings  all  the  children  in  the  world  trooping  to  him  and 
being  fond  of  him." 

Unfortunately,  but  few  of  us  possess,  even  in  a  very 
small  degree,  the  marvelous  gift  of  Mr.  Dickens  ;  and  yet 
I  doubt  if  the  person  lives  who  cannot  secure  the  ready 
attention  and  devotion  of  children.  I  am  not  speaking 
now  of  prodigies  or  precocious  geniuses,  but  of  ordinary 
boys  and  girls  just  waking  up  to  think  about  this  won- 
derful world  they  have  come  into,  and  about  which  their 
chief  sentiment  is  an  insatiable  curiosity.  In  many 
homes,  when  evening  comes,  and  dinner  has  been 
served,  and  the  little  children  gather  around  the  fire-place 
for  their  hour  before  bed-time,  how  often  the  question 


482 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


arises,  "What  shall  we  do  to  amuse  them?"  Into  a 
ready  limbo  have  gone  the  school-books  "till  to-mor- 
row," toys  delight  not,  the  noisy  games  of  out-door  life 
are  tabooed  in  the  drawing-room  and  library,  and  if 
Papa  sits  down  to  enjoy  his  fragrant  cigar  and  the  even- 
ing paper,  and  Mamma  occupies  herself  with  the  latest 
magazine  or  a  bit  of  Kensington  embroidery,  what  is  to 
become  of  the  restless  little  boys  and  girls  to  whom  this 
pleasant  post-prandial  hour  by  right  belongs  ? 

No  one  can  spend  an  hour  in  the  society  of  a  mod- 
erately intelligent  child  without  remarking  how  extraor- 
dinary a  peculiarity  of  his  mind  is  a  craving  after  infor- 
mation. I  have  two  small  nephews  who  have  just 
completed  their  first  decade,  and  have  arrived  at  that 
interesting  age  of  inquiry  when  it  seems  as  if  their  raven- 
ous youthful  maws  would  never  be  supplied  with  aliment 
in  the  shape  of  tales  and  stories  which  delight  the  heart 
of  boyhood.  This  love  of  the  marvelous  and  exciting 
is  like  a  child's  craving  for  sweetmeats,  and  it  is  a  taste 
which  cannot  be  ignored. 

I  have  been  experimenting  latterly  in  the  art  of  enter- 
taining children,  and  my  simple  efforts  have  been  crown- 
ed with  so  much  success  as  to  make  it  seem  almost  sel- 
fish to  keep  to  myself  such  an  easy,  efficacious  remedy  for 
the  ennui  of  children. 

I  cannot  claim  for  this  amusement  any  novelty  of  de- 
sign. The  game — if  one  may  call  it  such — in  different 
ways  is  already  played  on  many  a  winter's  evening. 
There  are  few  limitations  to  its  scope  or  opportunities. 
Our  modus  operandi  is  this  :  The  children  and  I  (and 
any  of  the  others  who  may  be  enticed  into  our  group ) 
gather  around  the  library  table,  our  only  implement  of 
warfare  being  a  box  of  alphabet  letters,  with  which  is 
commonly  played  the  game  called  "Logomachy." 

Each  player  draws  at  random  a  letter,  and,  thinking 
of  a  character  conspicuous  either  in  history,  art,  or  lit- 
erature, whose  name  begins  with  that  letter,  selects  from 
another  box  enough  letters  to  spell  the  name  thus 
chosen,  and  having  arranged  the  word  upon  the  table, 
his  right-hand  neighbor  is  called  upon  to  describe  brief- 
ly the  character  selected. 

For  example :  Last  evening  we  agreed  to  limit  our- 
selves to  the  names  of  poets  and  authors,  and  the  first 
letter  drawn  was  "  H."  Homer  was  the  result  of  a  few 
moment's  thought  upon  the  part  of  one  of  the  small 
boys,  and  it  fell  to  my  lot,  sitting  next  to  him,  to  tell,  in 
the  old  "  once-upon-a-time  "  fashion,  about  the  Greek 
poet's  life,  and  incidentally  to  introduce  some  of  the 
pretty  stories  about  Hector  and  his  dazzling  helmet,  the 
frightened  Andromache  and  the  fair  Helen,  until  the 
time  was  up  and  it  was  my  turn  to  draw  a  letter. 

By  chance,  I  selected  the  first  letter  of  the  alphabet, 
and  I  gave  my  right-hand  neighbor  an  easy  subject  to 
talk  about,  by  placing  Andersen  upon  the  board.  What 
boy  or  girl  does  not  know  all  about  dear  old  Hans 
Christian,  and  the  stories  of  the  Vikings,  the  Beetle,  the 
Goblin,  and  the  Huckster. 

The  dictionary  of  authors  had  to  supply  the  dates, 
but  we  had  a  dainty  bit  of  biography  from  a  boy's  stand- 
point which  was  not  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  Danish 
lover  of  children.  The  letter  "  I  "  was  chosen  next,  and 
soon  Irving  graced  the  table,  while  picturesque  views  of 
"Sunnyside"  and  the  Hudson,  and  the  charming  story 
of  Rip  Van  Winkle  delighted  the  children. 

Before  the  hour  had  passed  we  had  a  goodly  number 
of  names  before  us  of  the  great  writers  of  different  coun- 
tries and  ages.  It  seemed  almost  anachronistic  to  see 
Homer  and  Browning  jostling  each  other,  and  to  let 


the  funny  music  of  the  "Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin"  follow 
so  closely  upon  the  wail  of  Helen  of  Troy.  It  was  quite 
a  leap  in  time  from  Una  and  the  Red  Cross  Knight  to 
Little  Nell  and  Oliver  Twist,  but  it  was  not  diffi- 
cult to  make  the  children  discriminate  between  the  early 
and  the  later  English  authors.  Thus  we  supplemented 
the  outlines  of  our  authors'  lives  with  bits  of  their  per- 
manent works,  names  of  their  fictitious  characters,  and 
bright  little  fragments  from  their  poems  or  stories  as 
they  came  to  our  memories. 

One  evening  we  confined  ourselves  to  Shaksperian 
characters,  and  every  name  on  the  table  represented 
some  one  of  the  great  dramatist's  characters.  Imagine 
what  a  charming  evening  we  had  with  the  love-making 
of  Bassanio  and  Portia  in  the  picturesque  villa  at  Bel- 
mont,  with  avaricious  old  Shylock,  all  ready,  with  his 
glittering  scales  and  sharpened  knife,  to  weigh  the  pound 
of  flesh.  How  pleasantly  we  escaped  from  the  tears 
and  entreaties  of  poor  little  Prince  Arthur  to  laughter 
over  the  irresistibly  fat  and  funny  old  Falstaff,  the  mock 
play,  and  the  seven  men  in  buckram.  Gouty  old  Cap- 
ulet  and  witty  Mercutio,  the  brave  and  gallant  Hotspur, 
and  the  melancholy  Prince  of  Denmark  were  not  more 
interesting  to  the  children  than  poor  old  King  Lear, 
bareheaded  in  the  howling  storm,  or  the  remorseful 
Lady  of  Inverness  with  her  little  blood-stained  hand. 

So  we  have  taken  up  historical  characters,  and  names 
of  cities,  mythological  personages,  and  names  of  artists 
and  inventors,  until  we  may  hope  these  children  are  now 
fairly  afloat  upon  that  enchanted  ocean  of  literature 
which  henceforth  to  them  may  never  have  a  boundary. 

In  this  and  similar  pleasant  ways  the  bright  fancies  of 
the  nursery  may  be  turned  into  a  love  for  all  that  is  best 
and  purest  in  art  and  literature,  and  these  childish^,  im- 
pressions of  scenes  and  characters  gained  in  hours  of 
amusement  may  outlast  many  pursued  in  the  study  and 
strife  of  later  life.  KATHERINE  CONGER. 


L'AMITIE  EST   L' AMOUR  SANS  AILES." 

If  it  be  true,  as  poets  sing, 
That  Love  will  spread  his  snowy  wing, 
And  haste  his  flight  to  distant  spheres, 
Forgetting  lovers'  vows  and  tears, 
'Twere  wiser  far,  we  all  must  own, 
To  let  the  rosy  god  alone, 
And  lay  our  gifts  on  Friendship's  shrine, 
Where  Mem'ry's  choicest  wreaths  entwine. 
Her  altars,  fixed  as  granite  rocks,  - 
Will  stand  despite  Time's  rudest  shocks; 
Her  flames,  once  kindled,  warmly  glow 
While  starlight  gleams  or  waters  flow. 

M.  P.  W. 


SNOW-SHOEING  IN  THE  NORTH-WEST. 

To  the  average  "mountaineer"  snow-shoeing  is  a  de- 
lightful pastime.  Although  it  is  attended  with  any  num- 
ber of  dangers  while  traveling  down  steep  declivities, 
through  belts  of  timber,  and  among  the  intricate  wind- 
ings of  rocky  canons,  there  is  a  fascination  about  it  that 
knows  neither  danger  nor  fear.  In  the  northern  part 
of  the  United  States,  confined  within  the  rugged  mount- 
ain ranges,  we  find  numerous  mining  camps,  with  their 
rough -looking,  but  warm-hearted,  inhabitants,  whose 
only  pleasures  consist  in  playing  cards  and  snow-shoeing 
during  the  short  days  of  an  eight  months'  winter.  Their 


O  UTCROPPINGS. 


483 


rough  pine  log -cabins — which  they  would  not  leave  for 
a  palace — are  furnished  with  curious  shaped  chairs  and 
stools.  Some  are  made  from  gnarled  and  storm-twisted 
trees ;  others  from  the  head  and  horns  of  the  mountain 
ram — "Big  Horn,"  or  mountain  sheep.  Their  tables 
and  shelves  are  made  from  lumber  "whip- sawed"  from 
a  tree  cut  while  clearing  a  site  for  the  cabin ;  bunks 
fi&m  hewn  fir  poles,  straight  as  an  arrow,  with  boughs 
from  the  same  tree  neatly  spread  upon  them,  and  form- 
ing a  soft,  and  by  not  any  means  unpleasant,  couch. 
Upon  broad  shelves  in  the  most  secluded  corner  are 
piled  the  annual  winter  supply  of  provisions,  consisting 
of  flour,  bacon,  coffee,  sugar,  beans,  etc.,  which  were 
no  doubt  brought  on  the  backs  of  mules  from  some 
small  town  forty  or  fifty  miles  distant.  A  broad  fire- 
place, within  which  is  heaped  a  pile  of  cheerfully  blazing 
pitch-pine  logs,  bids  the  stranger,  or  fellow-miner,  sit 
down  and  enjoy  its  warmth. 

There  is  an  amusing,  as  well  as  dangerous,  side  to 
snow-shoeing.  For  instance,  the  new  beginner  has  a 
tendency  to  travel  ahead  of  his  shoes,  thereby  coming 
to  grief,  head  foremost,  in  a  snow-bank.  In  some  cases 
he  finds  that  his  shoes  have  gone  down  the  mountain 
without  him,  leaving  him  no  alternative  but  to  wallow 
through  the  deep  snow  after  them,  or  return  home  and 
make  another  pair.  On  Poverty  Flat,  Idaho  Territory, 
where  the  writer  of  this  article  resides,  every  pleasant 
Sunday  afternoon  from  five  to  fifteen  miners  go  out 
coasting  on  the  neighboring  mountains,  and  it  puts  one 
in  mind  of  a  lot  of  school  boys  at  play  to  hear  them 
laugh  and  whoop  as  They  fly  over  the  snow  at  the  rate 
of  twenty  miles  an  hour.  The  breaking  of  a  strap  or 
guiding-pole  is  nearly  always  attended  with  from  one  to 
fifty  somersaults  and  total  immersion  in  the  soft  snow. 
Sometimes  while  the  luckless  adventurer  is  trying  to 
pick  himself  up  he  is  knocked  off  his  feet,  and  perhaps 
run  over,  while  a  yell  of  delight  echoes  from  one  to  an- 
other of  his  more  fortunate  companions  as  they  pass 
him,  and  as  soon  as  he  can  brush  the  snow  out  of  his 
mouth  and  eyes  he  joins  in  the  general  merriment  at 
his  expense. 

Away  from  the  main  roads  the  snow  is  generally  very 
deep,  and  the  mails,  or  any  not  too  heavy  packages,  are 
carried  by  men  on  snow-shoes. 

Several  years  ago,  in  some  parts  of  Idaho  and  Mon- 
tana, winter  commenced  about  two  months  earlier  than 
usual,  and  the  wagon-trains  containing  supplies  were 
blockaded  with  snow  so  that  it  was  impossible  for  them 
to  move  to  their  destination  until  the  following  spring. 
Provisions  becoming  very  scarce  in  some  of  the  camps, 
snow-shoeing  parties  were  organized,  some  of  the  men 
carrying  one  hundred  pounds  of  flour  seventy-five  miles 
in  five  days.  At  this  time,  upon  the  arrival  of  a  snow- 
shoe  train,  flour  was  sold  as  high  as  one  dollar  and  a 
half  a  pound,  and  everything  else  in  like  proportion. 
In  these  days  of  railroads  and  cheap  transportation  the 
same  thing  frequently  happens  for  a  short  time,  but  the 
same  amount  of  suffering  and  hardship  is  not  entailed 
that  those  hardy  pioneers  were  forced  to  endure. 

One  of  the  old  pioneers  of  the  north-west  gravely  in- 
formed me  that  he  and  his  partner  lived  one  winter  on 
snow-balls  and  coffee,  coming  out  like  bears,  sleek  and 
fat,  in  the  spring. 

Poverty  Flat  being  one  of  the  highest  points  in  the 
Salmon  River  Mountains — nearly  eleven  thousand  feet 
above  the  sea-level — the  view  of  the  surrounding  coun- 
try from  this  lofty  eminence  is  grand.  To  the  south- 
west the  smoky -looking,  spire-like  peaks  of  the  Saw- 


tooth Range  rear  their  heads,  seemingly,  above  the 
clouds,  and  the  intervening  mountains,  though  of  no 
mean  hight,  look  like  mere  foot-hills  in  comparison. 
The  crystal  waters  of  Salmon  River,  flowing  majestically 
within  the  narrow  limits  of  the  rocky  walls  of  Crompt 
Canon,  lends  an  enchantment  to  the  scene,  which  I  am 
utterly  unable  to  describe.  To  the  east  is  the  almost 
inaccessible  Pah-Simari  and  Lost  River  ranges,  with 
their  huge  limestone  faces  growing  whiter  each  day 
from  a  continual  whirl  of  snow -laden  clouds,  whose 
stormy  mantle  clings  to  them  until  the  July  sun  softens 
their  icy  hearts.  CLARENCE  P.  TALBOT. 


SONG. 

Within  a  tangled  forest,  a  dark  and  dismal  place, 
I  spied  a  velvet  pansy,  with  its  golden  upturned  face. 

I  questioned,  for  I  wondered:  "How  cam'st,  thou,  floweret, 

here, 
All   covered   with   this   dewdrop    like   childhood's   glistening 

tear? 

Down  'neath  these  forest  branches,  'neath   trees  all  gnarled 

and  old, 
Thou  hidest  all  thy  beauty,  as  a  miser  hides  his  gold. 

Say,  did'st  thou  look  around  thee  to  find  this  lonely  place, 
Thou  who,  with  all  thy  beauty,  the  richest  bower  might  grace? 

Or  did  some  angel  tell  thee  to  hide  thy  golden  light? 
I   fain  would  hear   thy   secret,  with   that  face  so  calm  and 
bright. 

Then  the  eyes,  still  beaming  brightly,  with  a  shy  air  seemed 

to  say, 
"Thou   wilt  never  find  true  beauty  where  the   idle   throng 

may  stray." 

Then  I  thought,  as  on  I  wandered,  that  life's  fairest  flowers 

are  they 
That  are  found  by  sheltered  firesides,  in  our  home-life  day 

by  day. 

MARY  F.  BROWNE. 


CHARLES  SUMNER  AND   HIS   BOOKS. 

Charles  Sumner  (1830)  had  a  passion  for  book -col- 
lecting, and  George  W.  Smalley  makes  this  fact  the  text 
for  an  entertaining  letter  to  the  New  York  Tribune  re- 
cently. Mr.  Smalley  was  very  often  with  Mr.  Sumner 
during  his  last  visit  to  Europe  in  1872.  One  day  Mr. 
Sumner  said  to  him :  "  I  make  it  a  rule  never  to  buy  a 
useful  book."  He  explained  this  by  saying  that  he  had 
the  great  public  libraries  at  his  command,  and  that 
neither  he  nor  any  other  private  student  could  afford  to 
buy  all  the  books  they  wanted  to  refer  to.  He  had  the 
range  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  the  Public  Library, 
the  Harvard  Library,  the  library  of  Congress,  etc.  Mr. 
Smalley  says  that  Mr.  Sumner  bought  extravagantly, 
paying  larger  prices  than  he  could  afford  to  pay,  and 
often  much  more  than  his  purchases  were  worth,  for, 
like  a  true  American,  he  would  never  haggle  about  a 
price.  Mr.  Sumner  was  rather  omnivorous  in  his  book- 
collecting  tastes,  and  he  made  his  purchases  for  the  va- 
rious qualities  which  they  possessed.  Latterly  he  took 
an  interest  in  bindings,  but  Mr.  Smalley  says  he  had 
not  given  the  time  and  trouble  to  the  history  of  bind- 
ings which  a  man  who  wishes  to  be  a  judge  must  give. 
"I  doubt,"  he  continues,  "whether  he  knew  the  history 


484 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


of  the  art  of  binding  accurately  or  could  have  named 
the  great  binders  off-hand  in  their  chronological  order. 
It  is  certain  that  he  had  no  such  minute  acquaintance 
with  the  styles  of  the  great  artists  of  the  past  times  as 
a  man  should  have  in  order  to  buy  skillfully.  But  Mr. 
Sumner  knew  very  well  what  interested  him,  and  what 
he  liked  he  was  keen  to  possess  and  ready  to  pay  a  very 
long  price  for.  So  of  modern  work.  He  wanted  spec- 
imens of  Trautz-Banzonnet,  the  only  binder  of  the 
present  century  whose  name  and  work  will  be  treasured 
by  the  next.  He  bought  several.  They  are  in  Har- 
vard College  Library  now,  and  they  are  good  examples 
of  one  or  two  styles  of  the  master,  but  not  of  his  best 
style.  It  was  characteristic  of  Mr.  Sumner  that  he 
bought  them  without  stopping  to  consider  how  much 
he  was  paying  for  the  binding,  which  was  what  he 
wanted,  and  for  the  book  itself,  which  he  did  not  want 
at  all.  Occasionally,  when  I  was  asked,  I  took  the  lib- 
erty of  saying  I  thought  some  purchase  which  he  med- 
itated was  too  dear,  upon  which  he  would  put  it  down 
reluctantly,  and  go  to  something  else.  But  when  I  went 
to  see  him  the  next  morning  the  book  in  question  was 
tolerably  sure  to  be  on  his  table.  If  he  saw  me  looking 
at  it  he  would  say :  'Yes,  I  know  I  paid  too  much,  but 
it  gives  me  pleasure,  and  why  should  I  not  indulge  my- 
self?'" 


AN   INDIAN'S  SKULL. 

Deserted  chamber  !  desolate  shell ! 

Thou  grim  convexity  of  crumbling  bone, 

Did  e'er  the  monarch  Thought  set  up  a  throne 

In  such  a  palace  as  this  sounding  cell? 

Send  through  those  grinning  jaws  some  words  to  tell, 
To  what  fair  hunting-ground  thy  soul  has  flown, 
In  what  far  place,  within  the  world  unknown, 

Thy  liberated  spirit  now  doth  dwell. 

Or  was  there  no  "to-morrow"  for  thy  spirit? 
Is  this  poor  shattered  citadel  the  end 

And  destiny  or  man?    Does  life,  then,  die 

When  stops  the  beating  heart?    Shall  we  inherit 

No  palaces  beyond?    Ah,  thoughts  that  tend 

To  lunacy  !    Thou  canst  not  tell,  nor  I. 

ALVAH  PENDLETON. 


EPH'S  INSURANCE. 

Eph  had  his  life  insured  for  five  hundred  dollars,  in 
favor  of  his  little  boy  of  four  or  five  summers.  Subse- 
quently, Eph's  wife  left  him,  taking  the  boy  with  her. 
Eph  continued  sawing  wood  as  usual,  laying  up  a  few 
dollars  each  month,  thinking  he  would  soon  go  and 
bring  back  his  little  boy,  and  care  for  him  without  the 
aid  of  his  wife. 

About  six  weeks  after  the  wife  and  boy  had  gone, 
there  came,  in  a  roundabout  way,  the  report  that  Eph's 
boy  was  dead.  Eph  was  wild  with  grief  for  a  few  days ; 
then  concluded  that  the  boy  was  better  dead  than  with 
his  mother,  who  really  was  a  worthless  sort  of  creature. 

One  day  Eph  was  hard  at  work  on  a  big  pile  of  maple 
wood,  when  suddenly  an  idea  struck  him,  and,  drop- 
ping his  saw,  he  made  a  bee-line  for  Mr.  J.'s  insurance 
office.  Arriving  there,  he  doffed  his  cap,  and,  approach- 
ing the  agent,  he  sputtered  out : 

"Mistah  J.,  I's  cum  fur  dat  'surance  money." 

"What  insurance  money,  Eph?  I  don't  know  what 
you  mean." 


"W'y,  don't  yah  'member,  sah,  dat  I  got  my  life 
'sured  for  my  boy  'bout  six  monts  ago?  An'  now,  sah, 
de  little  fellah's  gone,  an'  I's  cum  fur  to  git  de  'surance 
money  'fore  my  wife  gits  here  an'  frauds  me  of  it,  sah." 

And  it  took  the  obliging  insurance  man  an  hour  to 
satisfy  Eph  that  there  was  no  money  due  him. 

C.  L.  C. 


COLLEGE   RECOLLECTIONS. 

We  find  the  following  in  The  Harvard  Register: 
Timothy  Boutelle  (1800)  used  to  relate  many  anec- 
dotes in  regard  to  Rev.  Dr.  Willard,  the  President  of 
Harvard  College.  Dr.  Willard  was  a  man  of  rare  in- 
tellectual endowments  and  scholarship,  and  excelled 
specially  in  the  science  of  astronomy.  Being  called 
upon  often  to  officiate  at  ordinations,  he  naturally  drew 
illustrations  from  his  favorite  department.  When  the 
candidate  possessed  great  abilities,  and  perhaps  in  gen- 
eral, he  would  pray  that  he  might  be  a  star  of  the  first 
magnitude.  On  one  occasion,  the  candidate  not  prom- 
ising to  reach  a  very  high  position  in  his  profession,  the 
conscientious  President  felt  constrained  to  modify  his 
petition  thus.  With  an  unusual  hesitation  he  prayed, 
"May  thy  servant  be  a  star — a  star — of  pretty  consid- 
erable magnitude." 

With  a  formality  not  unaccustomed  in  the  college 
presidents  of  that  period,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  intro- 
ducing his  remarks  to  the  students  with  the  phrase,  ' '  It 
is  expected."  Being  on  a  vessel ^rom  which  he  unhap- 
pily fell  overboard,  in  his  distress  he  cried  aloud,  "It  is 
expected  some  one  will  extend  a  rope  to  me." 


LACONICS   BY  TOM   BROWN   (1663-1704). 

Though  a  soldier  in  time  of  peace  is  like  a  chimney 
in  summer,  yet  what  wise  man  would  pluck  down  his 
chimney  because  his  almanac  tells  him  it  is  the  middle 
of  June? 

Covetousness,  like  jealousy,  when  it  has  once  taken 
root,  never  leaves  a  man  but  with  his  life.  A  rich  bank- 
er in  Lombard  Street,  finding  himself  very  ill,  sent  for 
a  parson  to  administer  the  last  consolations  of  the 
church  to  him.  While  the  ceremony  was  performing, 
old  Gripewell  falls  into  a  fit.  As  soon  as  he  was  a  little 
recovered,  the  doctor  offered  the  chalice  to  him.  ' '  No, 
no,"  cries  he ;  "I  can't  afford  to  lend  you  above  twenty 
shilling  upon't — upon  my  word  I  can't,  now." 

Though  a  clergyman  preached  like  an  angel,  yet  he 
ought  to  consider  that  two  hour-glasses  of  divinity  are 
too  much  at  once  for  the  most  patient  constitution. 
In  the  late  civil  wars,  Stephen  Marshal  split  his  text 
into  twenty-four  parts.  Upon  this,  one  of  the  congre- 
gation immediately  runs  out  of  church.  ' '  Why,  what's 
the  matter?"  says  a  neighbor.  "Only  going  for  my 
night-gown  and  slippers,  for  I  find  we  must  take  up 
quarters  here  to-night." 

If  your  friend  is  in  want,  don't  carry  him  to  the  tav- 
ern, where  you  treat  yourself  as  well  as  him,  and  entail 
a  thirst  and  headache  upon  him  next  morning.  To  treat 
a  poor  wretch  with  a  bottle  of  Burgundy  or  fill  his  snuff- 
box is  like  giving  a  pair  of  lace  ruffles  to  a  man  that 
has  never  a  shirt  on  his  back.  Put  something  into  his 
pocket. 


THE  CALIFORNIAN. 


A   WESTERN  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  III.— JUNE,  1881.— No.  18. 


MR.   WALLACE'S    "ISLAND    LIFE." 


It  is  perhaps  not  generally  known  that  Mr. 
Wallace  shares  with  Mr.  Darwin  the  honor 
of  having  laid  the  corner-stone  of  the  mod- 
ern theory  of  evolution,  in  the  doctrine  of  "ori- 
gin of  species  by  variation,  struggle  for  life, 
and  survival  of  the  fittest."  On  the  same  day 
there  was  read  before  the  Linnean  Society  two 
papers,  one  by  Mr.  Wallace,  on  "The  tendency 
of  varieties  to  depart  indefinitely  from  their 
original  type,"  and  the  other  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
on  "The  tendency  of  species  to  form  varieties," 
in  both  of  which  this  idea  was  brought  out  from 
independent  points  of  view.  This  fact  induced 
Mr.  Darwin  to  hasten  the  publication  of  his 
epoch-making  book,  The  Origin  of  Species. 
The  principle  above  stated  was  therefore  un- 
doubtedly developed  wholly  independently  by 
the  two  men,  but  the  difference  was  this :  It 
was  struck  out  by  Mr.  Wallace  as  a  bare  sug- 
gestion, a  happy  thought,  a  flash  of  intuitive 
genius ;  while  in  Mr.  Darwin's  mind  it  had  lain 
and  been  worked  upon  in  silence  for  many 
years,  until  it  had  assumed  the  form  of  a  con- 
sistent theory.  In  the  presence  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
great  work,  therefore,  Mr.  Wallace,  with  rare 
modesty,  waived  all  claim  as  founder  of  the 
modern  theory  of  evolution.  His  friends,  how- 
ever, rightly  insist  on  giving  him  credit  for  his 
wholly  original  suggestion.  It  is  not  surpris- 
ing, then,  that  Mr.  Wallace  has  embraced  the 
the  theory  of  evolution  with  enthusiasm,  and 
made  it  the  basis  of  all  his  subsequent  work. 
For  more  than  a  century  past  the  diversity 


of  faunas  and  floras  of  different  countries  has 
been  observed  and  speculated  upon;  but  the 
facts  seemed  to  be  utterly  without  law  and 
without  assignable  cause  other  than  the  Divine 
Will,  until  the  theory  of  evolution  furnished  the 
key.  The  life-work  of  Mr.  Wallace  has  been, 
and  will  be  to  the  end,  the  investigation  of  the 
laws  of  geographical  distribution  of  species  un- 
der the  light  of  this  theory.  In  fact,  he  may 
almost  be  said  to  have  created  this  as  a  dis- 
tinct science.  The  principles  upon  which  Mr. 
Wallace  attempts  to  solve  the  problem  of  geo- 
graphical distribution  of  species  are:  (i.)  the 
tendency  of  each  species  to  indefinite  increase 
and  dispersal;  (2.)  the  tendency  of  each  spe- 
cies to  vary  slowly,  but  indefinitely,  under  the 
pressure  of  changing  conditions  and  compet- 
itive struggle  with  other  species;  (3.)  the  ten- 
dency of  migrations,  whether  voluntary,  as  in 
the  higher  animals,  or  involuntary,  as  in  the 
lower  animals  and  in  plants,  to  increase  the 
rate  of  change  by  increasing  the  competitive 
struggle;  (4.)  the  tendency  of  isolation  to  pre- 
serve species  once  formed  by  preventing  inva- 
sions by  other  species.  All  these  may  be  called 
evolution  principles.  But  ( 5.)  extensive  migra- 
tions are  enforced  by  changes  of  climate  and 
permitted  by  changes  of  physical  geography, 
opening  gateways  previously  closed  ;  while  iso- 
lations of  faunas  and  floras,  once  formed,  are 
effected  by  the  closing  of  gateways  previously 
open.  Such  changes  of  climate  and  physical 
geography,  such  openings  and  closings  of  high- 


Vol.  III. — 31.      [Copyright  by  THE  CALIFORNIA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY.     All  rights  reserved  in  trust  for  contributors.] 


486 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


ways,  and  therefore  such  enforced  migrations 
and  isolations,  are  known  to  have  occurred  re- 
peatedly in  geological  times. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  problem  of 
the  present  distribution  of  species  is  a  very 
complex  one.  Its  solution  involves  the  discus- 
sion of  a  great  variety  of  collateral  questions, 
and  therefore  requires  the  widest  comprehen- 
siveness of  knowledge.  Not  only  does  it  re- 
quire complete  mastery  of  the  principles  of  evo- 
lution, but  also  a  knowledge  of  the  more  recent 
geological  changes  in  climate  and  physical  ge- 
ography ;  and  these  last,  in  their  turn,  necessi- 
tate a  discussion  of  that  most  difficult  subject, 
the  causes  of  geological  climates,  and  especially 
the  causes  of  the  climate  of  the  Great  Ice  Age. 
Several  years  ago  Mr.  Wallace  wrote  his  great 
work  on  "Geographical  Distribution  of  Spe- 
cies," in  which  all  these  subjects  were  taken  up 
and  dicussed  in  a  masterly  way.  The  pres- 
ent work  is  the  result  of  further  reflection  on 
the  same  subject,  but  taking  a  wider  range  and 
addressed  to  a  larger  public.  In  what  follows, 
we  will  suppose  the  reader  to  be  already  ac- 
quainted with  the  previous  work. 

Mr.  Wallace's  book  is  divided  into  two  parts, 
In  Part  I,  he  discusses  the  principles  above 
stated.  In  Part  II,  he  applies  them  to  the  ex- 
planation of  the  phenomena  of  insular  life. 
Doubtless  the  first  part  will  create  the  deeper 
interest,  for  there  is  a  wide  interest  in  these 
general  principles  aside  from  their  application ; 
but  for  many  there  will  also  be  a  peculiar 
charm  in  the  second  part. 

In  the  first  part,  after  giving  with  remarkable 
clearness  the  elementary  facts  of  distribution 
on  continents,  he  occupies  several  chapters  in 
showing  how  these  may  be  explained  by  evolu- 
tion, dispersal,  and  survival  under  changing 
conditions.  We  cannot  follow  him  here ;  we 
will  only  take  one  case,  as  an  example.  The 
puzzling  phenomenon  of  discontinuity — i.  e., 
of  a  genus  or  a  species  existing  in  widely  sep- 
arated localities;  as,  for  example,  in  England 
and  Japan,  or  in  Asia  Minor  and  China,  or  in 
the  Eastern  States  and  the  Pacific  Coast,  but 
not  in  the  intervening  region — he  explains  by 
survival  in  isolated  spots  of  species  or  genera 
which  were  once  widely  diffused  and  abundant. 
Similarly  explained  are  cases  of  a  very  pecu- 
liar genus,  with  only  one  or  perhaps  two  spe- 
cies, and  found  only  in  one  little  spot  on  the 
earth's  surface  ;  as,  for  example,  Sequoias,  only 
two  species,  Big  Tree  and  Redwood,  and  found 
only  in  California  ;  Sweet  Gum,  only  one  spe- 
cies, and  found  only  in  the  Eastern  States. 
These  were  once  widely  diffused"all  over  Amer- 
ica and  Europe,  but  are  now  ^confined  to  small, 
isolated  spots.  All  such  species^and  genera  are 


dying  out.  We  may  compare  the  process  to 
the  drying  away  of  an  extensive  lake,  like  that 
which  once  covered  the  whole  of  Nevada,  until 
only  small,  isolated  brine  pools  are  left. 

He  next  discusses  the  subject  of  the  substan- 
tial permanency  of  the  great  features  of  the 
earth's  surface ;  viz.,  continents  and  ocean  ba- 
sins, which  he  rightly  regards  as  a  necessary 
basis  of  all  safe  reasoning  on  the  subject  of  dis- 
tribution. The  older  geologists,  following  the 
lead  of  Lyell,  believed  that  the  oscillations  of 
the  earth's  crust  in  geological  times  have  been 
so  extreme  that  continents  and  ocean  bottoms 
have  frequently  changed  places.  But  among 
the  most  advanced  geologists  of  the  present 
day,  both  in  this  country  and  in  England,  the 
conviction  is  growing  that  these  oscillations 
were  sufficient  only  to  affect  the  form  of  the 
borders  of  the  continents,  but  not  to  destroy 
the  continents  themselves ;  that  there  has  been 
throughout  all  geological  times  a  gradual  de- 
velopment of  continents  to  greater  size  and 
hight ;  that,  speaking  broadly,  continents  have 
always  been  continents  and  ocean  basins  ocean 
basins.  Mr.  Wallace  adopts  this  view,  but  does 
not  give  credit,  as  he  ought,  to  American  geol- 
ogists. The  gradual  evolution  of  the  American 
continent  is  so  clear  that  American  geologists, 
under  the  leadership  of  Dana  and  Agassiz,  have 
for  thirty  years  past  held  this  view.  English 
geologists,  on  the  contrary,  are  only  now  wak- 
ing up  to  its  certainty  and  importance. 

In  the  next  chapter  is  taken  up  the  subject 
of  changes  of  geological  climate  as  a  cause  of 
migration,  and  this  compels  the  discussion  in 
the  two  following  chapters  of  the  causes  of  geo- 
logical climates,  especially  of  the  Great  Ice 
Age,  or  glacial  epoch.  Mr.  Wallace's  discus- 
sion of  this  subject  is  certainly  the  most  com- 
plete and  satisfactory  we  have  seen.  He  ac- 
cepts Croll's  theory — viz.,  that  it  was  caused  by 
the  coincidence  of  a  period  of  greatest  eccen- 
tricity of  the  earth's  orbit  with  an  aphelion 
winter — but  supplements  it  by  geographical 
causes ;  viz.,  elevation  in  high  latitude  regions. 
In  other  words,  he  combines  the  two  causes 
which  are  now  admitted  to  be  the  most  proba- 
ble. Moreover,  he  shows  that  this  modifica- 
tion of  Croll's  theory  is  not  subject  to  the  fatal 
objections  which  have  been  brought  against  its 
original  form.  If  the  glacial  epoch  was  due 
to  astronomical  causes  alone,  then  there  must 
have  been  frequent  recurrences  of  glacial 
epochs  in  geological  times,  and  the  followers 
of  Croll  have  sought  diligently  for  evidences  of 
such.  Some  bowlder  drifts  have,  indeed,  been 
found  in  various  places  and  on  various  geolog- 
ical horizons,  which  are  probably  really  due  to 
glacial  agency;  but  the  testimony  of  fossils  is 


MR.    WALLACE'S  "ISLAND  LIFE." 


487 


so  uniformly  and  demonstrably  indicative  of 
warm  climates  even  in  polar  regions,  in  all 
geological  periods  previous  to  the  glacial  epoch, 
that  we  are  compelled  to  regard  these  bowlder 
drifts  of  earlier  periods  as  local  phenomena  con- 
fined to  the  vicinity  of  high  mountains,  and, 
therefore,  as  not  indicative  of  a  glacial  epoch. 
But  Mr.  Wallace  skows  that  astronomical 
causes  will  not  produce  a  glacial  epoch  without 
the  cooperation  of  geographical  causes,  and  that 
these  latter  have  been  favorable  only  for  warm 
and  uniform  climates  in  all  geological  times 
until  the  glacial  epoch.  At  that  time  there  was 
a  remarkable  coincidence  of  the  highest  effi- 
ciency of  astronomical  and  geographical  causes, 
and,  therefore,  the  climate  of  this  epoch  may  be 
regarded  as  unique. 

During  the  glacial  epoch  the  great  changes 
of  climate  enforced  migrations  north  and  south, 
and  the  attendant  changes  of  physical  geogra- 
phy, by  opening  gateways,  permitted  migrations 
in  many  directions.  The  result  was  an  intense 
struggle  for  mastery  of  indigenous  species  with 
migrants  from  other  regions.  The  distribution 
of  species  at  the  present  time  has  been  the  re- 
sult of  these  migrations  and  these  struggles. 
Thus,  geological  changes  are  the  causes  of 
present  distribution ;  and,  conversely,  present 
distribution  furnishes  the  key  to  the  most  recent 
geological  changes. 

As  an  example  of  the  operation  of  these 
causes,  we  may  take  the  fauna  of  Central  Afri- 
ca. This  fauna  is  composed  of  a  mixture  of 
true  African  indigenes  not  found  elsewhere,  with 
many  other  species  found  either  in  Asia  now  or 
abundantly  in  Europe  and  Asia  in  late  tertiary 
times.  These  latter  are  by  far  the  most  numer- 
ous. Now,  the  explanation  is  as  follows :  Dur- 
ing tertiary  times  Africa  was  a  great  island- 
continent  isolated  by  a  sea  occupying  the  place 
of  Sahara. 

The  tertiary  fauna  of  Europe  -  Asia  and 
of  Africa  developed  independently  of  each 
other,  and,  therefore,  with  species  peculiar  to 
each.  By  the  abolition  of  the  dividing  sea 
(which  took  place  during  glacial  epoch)  and 
the  increasing  rigor  of  the  climate  the  animals 
of  Europe-Asia  were  driven  southward,  and  in 
the  struggle  with  the  African  indigenes  which 
ensued  many  of  the  latter  were  destroyed,  and 
the  migrants  remained  masters  of  the  field, 
though  somewhat  changed  by  the  struggle.  On 
the  return  of  more  temperate  conditions  these 
migrants  were  prevented  from  returning  north- 
ward, and  were  isolated  in  Africa  by  the  forma- 
tion of  the  desert  and  the  Mediterranean. 
Meanwhile,  such  of  their  relatives  of  Europe 
as  did  not  migrate  were  exterminated  by  the 
glacial  climate. 


In  Part  II,  Mr.  Wallace  applies  these  princi- 
ples to  the  explanation  of  the  actual  distribu- 
tion of  species,  confining  himself  in  the  present 
volume  to  the  phenomena  of  insular  life  as  af- 
fording the  clearest  demonstration.  He  divides 
islands  into  two  groups — viz.,  continental  isl- 
ands and  oceanic  islands.  Continental  islands 
are  fragments  of  continents  dissevered  mostly 
by  subsidence.  Oceanic  islands,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  built  up  from  mid-ocean  bottom  by 
volcanic  agency  in  recent  geological  times. 
They  are  not  the  highest  points  of  submerged 
continents  as  has  been  supposed,  for  they  never 
contain  any  paleozoic  or  mesozoic  rocks,  but 
consist  either  wholly  of  volcanic  ejections  or  of 
these  with  recent  tertiary  strata.  The  charac- 
ter of  the  fauna  and  flora  also  show  the  same 
origin,  as  will  presently  appear.  Of  the  Indo- 
Pacific  islands,  Borneo,  Sumatra,  Java,  etc.,  are 
continentals  appended  to  Asia;  New  Guinea, 
New  Zealand,  etc.,  to  Australia ;  while  the  small 
islands  which  over- dot  the  mid -Pacific  (Poly- 
nesian) are  oceanic.  In  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
the  West  Indian  and  the  British  Isles  are  good 
examples  of  continentals — the  one  group  be- 
longing to  America  and  the  other  to  Europe — 
while  the  Bermudas  and  the  Azores  are  excel- 
lent examples  of  oceanics. 

The  fauna  and  flora  of  continental  islands 
are  allied  to  those  of  the  neighboring  continent, 
because  thence  derived,  yet  more  or  less  differ- 
ing, because  isolated  and  subject  to  different 
conditions ;  the  degree  of  difference  being  pro- 
portioned to  the  amount  of  difference  in  physi- 
cal conditions,  and  the  length  of  time  during 
which  these  have  operated  —  i.  <?.,  the  length  of 
time  since  the  isolation  was  effected.  The 
British  Isles  are  an  example  of  continental  isl- 
ands recently  separated,  and  in  which, therefore, 
the  species  are  nearly,  though  not  wholly,  iden- 
tical with  those  of  the  continent.  The  diver- 
gence has  in  most  cases  reached  only  the  extent 
of  varieties,  and  only  in  a  few  cases  to  that  of 
species.  Madagascar  on  the  other  hand  is  an 
admirable  example  of  an  island  much  longer 
separated.  The  Madagascar  species  are  very 
peculiar,  and  yet  decidedly  related  to  what  we 
have  called  the  indigenes  of  Africa,  but  not  to 
the  African  migrants  from  Europe.  Therefore, 
Madagascar  was  separated  from  Africa  before 
the  latter  was  temporarily  joined  to  and  re- 
ceived migrants  from  Europe. 

Oceanic  islands  having  originated  in  mid- 
ocean  in  comparatively  recent  time  have  no 
indigenes,  but  their  fauna  and  flora  are  made 
up  wholly  of  species  which  have  come  to  them 
as  waifs  from  continents  or  from  other  islands. 
They  are,  therefore,  destitute  of  mammals  and 
amphibians,  except  such  as  have  been  intro- 


488 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


duced  by  man,  while  their  birds  are  such  as 
reach  them  by  flight,  or  are  carried  to  them  by 
storms,  and  their  reptiles,  insects,  and  land  mol- 
lusca  reach  them  on  floated  logs,  or  are  carried 
as  ova  on  the  feet  of  birds.  The  species  of 
oceanic  islands  are,  therefore,  waifs  from  many 
regions,  though  usually  mostly  from  some  one 
region,  depending  on  the  direction  of  oceanic 
currents  or  of  winds;  but  by  isolation  these 
may  have  been  changed  so  as  to  make  new  va- 
rieties or  new  species ;  or  else  species  may  be 
preserved  on  these  islands  which  have  become 


extinct  in  the  mother  country.  Finally,  the 
intrinsic  interest  of  the  subject  is  greatly  en- 
hanced, and  the  value  of  the  work  increased 
by  a  series  of  entirely  new  and  really  admi- 
rable illustrative  maps,  and  especially  is  this 
true  of  the  maps  of  the  ocean  bottoms  about 
continental  islands  showing  the  changes  in 
physical  geography  which  have  probably  taken 
place  in  recent  geological  times.  In  a  word, 
the  book  is  one  which  the  intelligent  general 
reader  will  not  neglect  and  the  biologist  cannot 
do  without.  JOSEPH  LE  CONTE. 


OLD   COLLEGES   AND   YOUNG. 


Shall  our  young  men  go  East  for  a  college 
education  ?  This  is  a  question  of  some  impor- 
tance to  Californians.  If  they  go,  it  is  usually 
to  one  of  the  older  institutions.  A  few  may  stop 
at  Ann  Arbor  or  at  Ithaca,  but  the  large  ma- 
jority go  to  such  venerable  centers  of  learning 
as  Cambridge,  New  Haven,  or  Princeton;  go 
because  they  find  there  older  colleges  than  are 
possible  in  a  new  State  like  ours.  It  is  just 
those  colleges  that  are  seeking  to  gain  students 
from  the  whole  country,  and  are  now  making  a 
special  bid  for  the  youth  of  this  coast  by  send- 
ing out  examiners  to  San  Francisco.  Ought 
our  young  Californians  to  accept  the  bid? 

In  considering  this  question,  one  important 
concession  may  be  made  at  the  outset;  viz., 
that  some  of  the  older  colleges  afford  certain  ad- 
vantages, enjoy  certain  stimulating  influences, 
in  which  younger  colleges  are  wanting.  This 
follows  from  the  nature  of  the  case.  A  college 
like  Harvard  or  Yale  has  the  benefits  of  a  long 
experience.  It  is  a  growth  of  centuries.  If  an 
old  college  keeps  up  with  the  times,  it  adds 
what  of  new  is  worth  having  to  an  already  rich 
equipment  of  the  old.  And  if  it  do  not  excel 
in  its  formal  outfit  and  equipment,  it  cannot 
but  excel  in  certain  subtile  influences  which 
have  power  over  student  life.  There  is  a  fine 
aroma  about  a  place  hallowed  by  the  memories 
of  many  generations  of  scholars.  Harvard  and 
Yale  must  surpass  our  own  colleges  in  this  re- 
spect, just  as  they  themselves  are  thrown  quite 
into  the  shade  by  the  older  foundations  of  the 
English  Cambridge  and  Oxford. 

Other  reasons  may  have  weight  in  individ- 
ual cases.  A  man  who  was  graduated  at  an 
Eastern  college  feels  a  pride  in  sending  his  son 
to  the  same  Alma  Mater;  the  son  feels  a  pride 
in  renewing  his  father's  college  career.  One 


who  is  not  himself  a  graduate  may  have  near 
relatives  in  an  academic  town,  and  wishes  his 
son  to  make  a  home  with  them.  But  such 
considerations  affect  comparatively  few.  For 
most  of  our  young  men  on  the  road  to  college, 
the  decisive  reason  for  going  East  is  to  enter 
an  older  institution. 

This  reason  may  be  in  many  cases  good  and 
sufficient.  If  the  older  college  has  some  points 
of  superiority,  if  there  is  no  lack  of  means  for 
distant  travel  and  more  expensive  living,  and 
if  the  young  man  himself  is  likely  to  receive 
more  good  than  harm  by  his  temporary  expa- 
triation, then  let  the  better  advantages  be  cho- 
sen without  hesitation.  At  a  certain  period  of 
a  young  man's  life,  there  is  a  positive  benefit 
in  going  far  from  home,  and  coming  under  the 
influence  of  a  different  style  of  society,  especi- 
ally one  more  highly  intellectual.  A  young  man 
going  from  here  to  Harvard  or  Yale  broadens 
his  view.  He  gains  somewhat  the  same  ad- 
vantage that  an  Eastern  graduate  gains  in  going 
for  further  study  to  Oxford  or  Berlin. 

But  the  contingencies  implied  in  the  forego- 
ing statement  need  very  careful  attention.  It 
certainly  costs  more  to  go  to  Cambridge  or  New 
Haven  than  it  does  to  come  to  Berkeley.  It 
is  expensive  to  get  there;  and  the  student  of 
restricted  means  must  stay  from  home  four 
long  years,  or  spend  in  vacation  railroading 
enough  to  buy  him  a  choice  library.  Living 
expenses  are  greater  there  than  here.  Society 
outlays  are  much  larger.  The  requirements  of 
dress  and  social  reciprocity  are  much  more  ex- 
tensive. If  traveling  expenses  be  included,  it 
is  safe  to  say  that  it  will  cost  a  young  man 
spending  his  four  years  at  the  East  twice  as 
much  as  it  would  cost  him  here.  A  few  wealthy 
citizens  can  afford  to  disregard  these  consider- 


OLD   COLLEGES  AND    YOUNG. 


489 


ations.  Many  who  are  well  to  do,  who  can  send 
their  sons  away  if  it  is  best,  carefully  count  the 
cost.  All  of  lesser  means  are  forced  to  do  so. 

Especially  wise  is  this  counting  of  the  cost, 
in  view  of  the  financial  influence  of  college  life 
on  the  student  himself.  A  young  man  who 
lives  among  those  who  spend  freely,  where  it 
is  "good  form"  to  be  generous  or  even  lavish  of 
money,  contracts  habits  of  expenditure  which 
affect  his  whole  after  life.  It  is  hardly  the  best 
preparation  for  the  ups  and  downs  of  a  new 
community.  Some  of  us  have  known  high- 
toned  Eastern  graduates  who  have  been  quite 
unfit  for  the  struggles  of  this  Californian  life, 
who  soon  became  genteel  but  unmistakable 
"bummers." 

The  risk  of  deterioration  in  character  is  one 
that  cannot  be  overlooked.  A  young  man  of 
college  age  ought  to  be  of  well  settled  princi- 
ples, able  to  stand,  anywhere,  erect  and  firm, 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  often  yields  to  evil  in- 
fluences. Now,  other  things  being  equal,  where 
will  a  companionable,  generous,  good -hearted 
young  fellow  of  sixteen  or  eighteen  be  safest — 
three  thousand  miles  from  a  home  which  he 
visits  but  once  in  two  years,  or  near  by,  where 
every  year's  vacation  weeks,  if  not  every  week's 
day  of  rest,  brings  him  again  to  the  home  circle, 
the  father's  corrective  oversight,  the  mother's 
loving  encouragement?  The  question  answers 
itself.  Certainly  there  is  a  great  and  needless 
risk  in  letting  a  young  heart  break  its  silken 
tether. 

Is  it  said  that  our  own  University  is  a  worse 
place  for  young  men  than  the  old  colleges  of 
which  I  have  spoken?  That  may  be  flatly  de- 
nied. Look  at  two  sets  of  students — one,  say 
in  Harvard;  the  other,  in  the  colleges  of  our 
own  University.  The  Harvard  company  is 
much  more  numerous,  and  contains  in  all  a 
much  larger  number  of  bad  men.  The  bad  men 
of  a  college  gravitate  toward  one  another  and 
form  a  united  down-pulling  weight  for  those  on 
whom  they  fasten  their  grappling-irons.  And 
relatively,  I  venture  to  say,  there  are  more  bad 
students  and  bad  men  at  Harvard  than  here. 
Many  are  kept  there  by  their  parents  against 
their  wishes,  for  the  mere  sake  of  graduating. 
It  is  not  so  in  California.  Few  students  remain 
through  a  four -years'  course  to  whom  that 
course  is  distasteful.  More  rich  men  patronize 
Harvard;  and  young  collegians  with  plenty  of 
money  are  already  on  the  verge  of  a  precipice. 
In  Berkeley  there  are  few  rich  men's  sons. 
Most  of  the  students  are  in  moderate  circum- 
stances, expecting  to  earn  their  own  living,  and 
gaining  an  education  with  a  view  to  qualifying 
themselves  for  useful  occupations.  A  few  are 
not  scholarly;  they  abuse  their  opportunities, 


waste  their  time,  make  a  show  of  dissipation, 
and  after  a  while  drop  out.  Every  college  has 
some  such  members ;  but  I  believe  that  the  col- 
leges of  our  University  have  fewer  of  this  bad 
sort  and  keep  them  a  less  time  than  such  a 
dignified  old  college  as  Harvard.  The  charac- 
ter of  the  constituency  is  decisive  on  this  point. 
A  college  abounding  in  rich  men's  sons,  who 
have  free  habits  of  spending  money  and  lack 
the  stimulus  of  anticipated  self-support,  must 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  develop  influences 
worse  than  those  which  exist  here.  We  have 
had  occasional  proceedings  of  which  we  are 
ashamed.  We  may  hope  to  improve  in  reputa- 
tion as  the  years  go  on.  But  impartial  observ- 
ers who  have  lived  in  Berkeley  and  in  other 
academic  towns  testify  that  they  never  knew  a 
body  of  students  so  well  behaved  as  this  body 
of  students  in  Berkeley.  A  few  black  sheep 
must  not  condemn  the  whole  flock.  As  a  body, 
the  students  of  this  university  are  here  for  study, 
and  are  earnest,  faithful,  and  successful  in  their 
work.  But  suppose  the  Eastern  colleges  on  the 
whole  could  be  proved  to  have  a  little  better 
influences  than  our  own,  would  that  offset  the 
great  disadvantage  I  have  mentioned,  of  sever- 
ing a  young  man  from  the  powerful  home  in- 
fluence by  which,  after  all,  character  is  chiefly 
shaped? 

Another  point  needing  careful  inquiry*is  this: 
Which  college  course  will  best  fit  a  young  man 
for  success  in  California?  When  the  pioneers 
came  to  this  State  all  were  alike  of  foreign  ed- 
ucation. Now  that  we  have  institutions  of  our 
own,  is  there  any  advantage  of  adjustment  and 
affiliation  gained  by  growing  up  here  and  pur- 
suing one's  chief  studies  here  on  the  ground? 
I  think  there  is  such  an  advantage,  and  one  of 
no  small  moment.  The  future  lawyer,  or  legis- 
lator, or  public  man  in  any  career,  needs  to  be 
in  sympathy  with  the  people  among  whom  he 
lives.  He  must  know  their  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings. He  must  be  able  to  put  his  finger  on 
their  pulse.  There  are  subtile  influences,  inde- 
scribable, but  very  powerful,  which  place  one 
en  rapport  with  his  fellow -citizens.  If  he  lose 
his  connection  with  these  influences  he  will  be 
always  more  or  less  an  alien.  Men  of  the  peo- 
ple, of  much  less  power  and  much  poorer  edu- 
cation, will  attract  the  sympathies  of  the  peo- 
ple and  far  outstrip  him  in  the  race  of  life.  It 
has  long  been  conceded  that  an  American  boy 
ought  not  to  spend  all  or  most  of  his  forming 
years  in  Europe.  The  best  continental  educa- 
tion is  to  him  a  misfortune,  if  he  is  at  the  same 
time  made  un-American,  unfit  to  live  .in  his  na- 
tive land.  It  has  been  found,  too,  that  a  pro- 
tracted residence  in  our  mother  country — Eng- 
land— often  gives  one  a  distaste  for  American 


49° 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


institutions  and  American  habits  of  thought  and 
feeling.  The  older  country  naturally  looks  with 
something  of  depreciation  on  the  younger.  The 
same  principle  holds  good,  in  its  proper  degree, 
of  the  far  West  and  the  Atlantic  East.  We  be- 
long to  the  same  country  as  the  men  of  New 
England  and  New  Jersey.  We  are  under  the 
same  government,  and  have  many  of  the  same 
sympathies.  But  there  is  after  all  a  difference 
between  us.  The  older  States  cannot  quite  ap- 
preciate the  newer.  One  who  is  too  long  away 
from  California  will  find  himself  out  of  sympa- 
thy with  the  rough  and  hard  work  of  ordinary 
Californian  life.  Being  out  of  sympathy  with  it, 
he  will  be  at  a  disadvantage  among  the  people 
who  grow  up  here  and  are  nothing  but  Califor- 
nians  in  feeling.  This  is  their  State.  What- 
ever its  drawbacks,  they  feel  proud  of  it.  They 
are  not  likely  to  give  their  best  regards  to  those 
who  have  become  un-Californian.  It  is  a  sort 
of  family  feeling  that  is  in  question,  irrespective 
of  the  comparative  merits  of  this  new  commu- 
nity, Every  public  worker  ought  to  try  to  ele- 
vate the  community  where  he  dwells;  and  he 
can  do  this  most  successfully  whose  sympathies 
with  that  community  are  closest. 

Another  question  has  to  do  with  the  State 
pride  of  us  all :  it  has  most  to  do  with  the  State 
pride  of  the  younger  Californians,  who  are  chil- 
dren o*r  foster-children  of  the  soil.  The  ques- 
tion is  this :  Shall  our  State  have  as  good  col- 
leges as  the  Eastern  States?  If  our  brightest 
young  men  are  all  sent  to  the  East  for  their 
education,  the  call  for  a  high  standard  of  in- 
struction here  will  be  less  imperative.  If  it  be- 
comes the  fashion  to  patronize  Eastern  institu- 
tions rather  than  our  own,  our  own  will  inevi- 
tably be  neglected.  Suppose,  on  the  contrary, 
that  all  young  Californians  look  for  their  col- 
lege education  to  their  own  State.  They  will 
demand  facilities  and  advantages  equal  to  the 
best.  Demand  produces  supply.  If  a  chair  of 
mental  and  moral  philosophy  remains  unfilled, 
and  if  all  collegians  in  the  State,  and  all  their 
parents,  demand  that  it  be  filled  for  their  use, 
that  chair  will  be  speedily  provided  for.  So 
with  any  department  that  may  be  lacking. 
So  with  the  standard  of  any  department  that 
may  now  be  too  low.  A  general  use  of  home 
advantages,  and  a  united  claim  that  these  ad- 
vantages be  the  very  best,  will  soon  put  our 
own  colleges  on  a  level  with  the  highest.  But 
if  the  best  men  turn  their  backs  on  our  own 
colleges,  how  can  these  ever  ripen  to  the  choicest 
maturity  ?  If  all  older  college  men  look  back 
longingly-  to  the  leeks  and  onions  of  Egypt,  and 
feel  as  if  they  were  only  traveling  through  a 
wilderness  for  the  last  forty  years  of  their  life — 
if  they  send  their  sons  back  to  the  old  academic 


halls,  and  refuse  to  build  new  halls  in  a  new 
home,  when  will  California  have  colleges  to  be 
proud  of?  The  Massachusetts  man  has  a  State 
pride  in  Harvard,  the  Connecticut  man  in  Yale, 
the  New  Jersey  man  in  Princeton.  Michigan 
has  wisely  fostered  her  own  university,  till  it, 
too,  has  become  a  thing  to  glory  in.  Shall 
Californians  have  no  such  pride  in  their  own 
institutions?  If  the  fathers  do  not  care  for 
themselves,  they  should  have  a  care  for  their 
sons,  born  and  reared  in  this  new  State,  that 
when  a  generation  has  passed  these  sons  may 
not  be  ashamed  of  the  only  State  they  can  call 
home.  To  some  extent,  as  all  must  acknowl- 
edge, there  is  a  duty  of  patronizing  home  in- 
stitutions, that  these  may  grow  strong  and  fruit- 
ful for  good.  We  cannot  selfishly  ignore  the 
claims  of  the  future.  In  coming  decades,  few 
comparatively  can  go  to  the  far  East  for  their 
higher  culture.  Shall  they  have  in  their  own 
State  access  to  the  best  means  of  culture? 

Such  are  some  of  the  points  needing  careful 
attention  before  one  decides  to  go  to  the  far 
East  for  his  early  college  education.  Further 
on,  when  he  has  got  the  best  he  can  get  at. 
home —  when  his  principles  are  more  estab- 
lished— when  he  has  learned  what  to  seek  for 
in  the  older  libraries  and  amid  the  time -hon- 
ored shades  of  world-renowned  universities — 
at  some  point  in  his  advancing  manhood,  which 
maturer  judgment  will  help  him  determine  on — 
let  the  young  man  go  East,  to  broaden  his  out- 
look and  enlarge  his  opportunities.  The  point 
of  departure  must  be  settled  for  each  student 
individually.  It  may  be  before  he  has  taken 
a  first  degree  in  California.  From  many  West-* 
ern  colleges  have  gone  advanced  students  ta 
take  a  last  year,  or  two  years,  at  Harvard  or 
Yale.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  most  who  come  to 
our  own  University  wish  to  stay  through  the  four 
years  before  going  elsewhere.  It  may  be  point- 
ed to  as  a  good  sign  of  the  hold  which  our 
courses  take  on  those,  who  faithfully  pursue 
them.  After  a  first  degree  here,  it  is  often  use- 
ful to  seek  a  Change,  for  two  or  three  years  of 
advanced  literary  or  scientific  study,  or  profes- 
sional training.  That  is  a  good  point  at  which 
to  leave  for  Yale  or  Harvard ;  or  for  a  new  in- 
stitution which  has  suddenly  taken  a  foremost 
place  in  advanced  studies,  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University ;  or  for  some  German  center  of  ripest 
science  and  learning.  For  one  who  knows  how 
to  appreciate  and  use  such  later  advantages, 
they  may  be  of  great  value. 

I  may  be  allowed  to  put  some  of  these  sug- 
gestions in  a  condensed  form,  as  follows : 

(i.)  It  is  a  good  thing  for  a  student  to  go,  at 
some  time,  to  study  for  a  while  at  some  East- 
ern or  European  university. 


TOBY. 


491 


(2.)  A  young  man  should  not  go  so  far  from 
home  till  his  character  is  formed  and  his  prin- 
ciples are  well  established. 

(3.)  A  Californian  should  not  be  so  long  away 
from  the  field  of  his  life-work  as  to  become  un- 
Californian. 

(4.)  Few  of  our  young  men  can  afford  to  con- 
tract the  habits  of  expenditure  of  money  fos- 
tered in  some  Eastern  colleges. 

(5.)  To  most,  the  greater  cost  of  going  for  a 
college  education  to  the  East  is  an  important 
consideration. 


(6.)  To  all,  it  should  be  a  matter  of  State  pride 
to  develop  our  own  colleges. 

Two  or  three  corollaries  may  be  added : 

(i.)  Whatever  the  educational  advantages  af- 
forded here  may  be,  let  us  insist  on  making 
them  equal  to  the  best. 

(2.)  Every  rich  man  who  sends  a  son  East 
should  give  a  round  sum  to  the  colleges  here, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  many  who  have  no  option. 

(3.)  No  one  who  gets  both  his  collegiate  and 
his  professional  training  wholly  in  California 
need  fear  he  will  be  distanced  in  the  race  of  life. 
MARTIN  KELLOGG. 


TOBY. 


She  was  the  most  nervous  women  I  ever  met. 
Not  nervous  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the 
term ;  she  did  not  scold,  or  fret,  or  worry,  and 
lay  it  to  the  state  of  her  nerves ;  nor  was  she 
fidgety,  or  cross,  or  irritable.  But  she  would 
grow  pale  at  an  unexpected  knock  at  the  door, 
or  flush  painfully  red  if  she  heard  a  quick  foot- 
step behind  her,  I  have  seen  her  grasp  the 
banister  for  support,  if,  looking  down  the  stairs 
into  the  hall- way,  she  discovered  a  form  not  in- 
stantly familiar  to  her  eye ;  and  at  night,  when 
she  first  came  to  our  house,  she  used  to  beg 
piteously  that  I  should  leave  the  door  between 
her  room  and  mine  open,  so  that  I  could  rouse 
her  quickly  when  her  cries  for  help  told  that 
she  was  dreaming  the  one  dream  over  and  over 
again. 

We  were  as  good  friends  as  two  women  get 
to  be  after  a  six  months'  acquaintance ;  she  told 
me  many  things  of  her  past  life,  but  I  felt  that 
she  did  not  tell  me  all  there  was  to  be  told. 
She  said  she  abhorred  a  "woman  with  a  his- 
tory;" yet  I  knew  she  had  a  history  if  ever  wom- 
an had.  Long  after  we  had  parted  I  was  sur- 
prised, one  day,  to  find  that  she  still  thought 
of  me — nay,  that  she  even  missed  me.  I  give 
you  the  letter  as  I  received  it  from  her : 

You  have  often  asked  me,  dear  Edith,  what 
became  of  Toby,  the  horse  I  so  loved  in  my 
"cavalry  days."  As  often  have  I  answered  that 
I  could  not  tell  you  this  without  telling  you  at 
the  same  time  a  somewhat  lengthy  story.  Since 
you  have  gone  abroad  I  have  so  missed  you 
that  I  think  I  can  best  find  time  now  to  write 
what  you  always  wanted  to  know. 

Though  I  have  an  idea  that  you  are  not  a 
devoted  reader  of  "Reports  and  Statistics,"  you 


may  still  have  seen  or  heard  something  of  the 
"Personal  Narrative"  of  J.  R.  Bartlett,  of  the 
Boundary  Commission  of  the  United  States 
and  Mexican  Boundary  Survey.  On  page  227 
of  this  book  you  will  find  a  charming  little  cut 
of  the  Santa  Rita  del  Cobre,  the  ancient  New 
Mexico  copper  mine,  about  which  there  has 
been  so  much  talk  and  trouble.  This  place  was 
selected  for  the  head-quarters  of  the  Bound- 
ary Commission  in  1850-51;  and  fifteen  years 
later,  in  1866,  after  the  close  of  the  war,  the 
United  States  troops  (regulars)  to  which  my 
husband  belonged,  were  sent  by  General  Carle- 
ton  to  build  a  fort  where,  during  the  war,  a  camp 
had  been  established  by  the  California  Volun- 
teers— within  eight  miles  of  these  famous  old 
mines. 

It  is  one  of  the  loveliest  spots  the  sun  ever 
shone  upon.  Grand  as  well  as  lovely  :  a  pleas- 
ant valley,  the  low  green  hills  surrounding  it 
overshadowed  by  the  Mimbres  mountain  range, 
in  which  the  copper  mines  are  lying;  while  the 
Sierra  Diavolo,  holding  the  treasures  of  the 
Pinos  Altos,  was  blue  in  the  distance ;  and  far 
off,  like  a  misty  dream,  the  outlines  of  the 
Three  Brothers,  mountains  in  Mexican  terri- 
tory, rose  phantom-like  against  the  horizon. 

We  had  the  clear  blue  sky  of  California  there, 
but  as  I  had  not  then  been  in  this  blessed  land 
of  ours,  I  hailed  it  as  a  boon  and  a  compensa- 
tion to  those  who  were  cut  off  from  civilization 
and  home  comforts  at  a  lonely  frontier  post. 
Every  morning  seemed  to  me  a  fresh  spring 
day  breaking  over  the  camp.  Our  tents  were 
comfortable,  the  commissary  well  supplied; 
game  could  be  easily  found;  fresh  fheat  was 
always  abundant,  as  we  carried  a  large  herd  of 
cattle  with  us;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  cook 


492 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  waiter,  whom  we  drew  from  the  company, 
were  both  faithful  and  diligent.  The  consider- 
ation of  commissary  supplies  may  seem  "of  the 
earth,  earthy,'"  to  an  ethereal  being  like  your- 
self ;  but  a  few  months'  residence  in  a  country 
where  Apache  Indians,  a  few  scattered  sheep- 
herds,  and  fat  tarantulas  are  the  chief  agricult- 
ural productions,  would  effectually  cure  you  of 
turning  up  your  delicate  little  nose  at  the  con- 
tents of  the  commissary  department. 

The  company  laundress  was  an  Irishwoman, 
and  the  only  white  woman  except  myself  with- 
in a  distance  of  over  a  hundred  miles.  Though 
my  husband  was  not  commanding  officer,  I  en- 
joyed all  the  privileges,  benefits,  and  amenities 
that  generally  fall  to  the  commanding  officer's 
wife ;  for  this  gentleman  was  not  married,  and 
I  was  the  only  lady  in  camp.  So,  whatever 
there  was  of  comfort,  convenience,  or  pleasure 
to  be  found  in  or  about  this  isolated  post,  was 
lavishly  bestowed  upon  me;  and  all  that  could 
make  life  pleasant  or  enjoyable  was  literally  at 
my  tent  door.  For,  as  I  looked  out,  the  fair 
land  lay  bathed  in  sunshine  before  me;  the 
laughing  waters  of  the  tiny  brook  that  flowed 
through  the  camp  flashed  into  my  dazzled  eyes ; 
the  soft  winds  stirred  the  live  oak  by  my  tent, 
and  Toby,  saddled  and  bridled,  came  up  with  a 
whinnied  greeting  to  bear  me  off  up  into  the 
mountains. 

Dilapidated  mining-shafts,  covered  by  the 
growth  of  half  a  century  of  gnarled  trees  and 
mountain  shrubs,  were  explored;  in  the  ra- 
vines and  gulches  we  came  upon  old  arastras, 
and  remnants  of  habitations  of  a  later  date,  but 
moldering  and  in  ruins,  too,  with  the  skull  of 
an  Indian  unearthed  here  and  there,  and  a  half- 
hidden  grave  to  show  that  the  victims  of  treach- 
ery or  savage  ambuscade  had  been  decently 
buried  by  those  who  had  escaped  the  Indian's 
scalping  knife.  They  were  dreary  enough, 
some  of  these  places,  down  by  the  waters  of 
the  little  camp-brook,  which  here  had  turned 
into  a  brawling,  rapid-running  stream,  hemmed 
in  by  steep  banks,  from  which  hung  blackberry 
vines  and  the  wild  growth  of  the  country. 
Then  up  again  a  steep  ascent,  that  taxed  all 
Toby's  strength  and  agility — though  it  was  not 
a  heavy  burden  under  which  he  labored — and 
having  by  this  rough  pilgrimage  gained  several 
miles  in  a  "cut-off,"  the  clear  stream  that  runs 
through  the  canon  leading  to  the  copper  mines 
winds  bright  and  sparkling  before  us. 

How  Toby  loved  this  stream  !  "Whitewater" 
we  called  it,  for  "Coppermine  Creek"  did  not 
seem  pretty  enough.  Its  bed  was  paved  with 
pebbles  glistening  in  a  thousand  different  hues — 
Pescadero  and  its  pebble-beach  could  not  have 
vied  with  it  in  wealth  of  color.  The  old  Pre- 


sidio at  the  copper  mines  was  then  invaded. 
Half  fort,  half  smelting-works,  as  it  had  been 
off  and  on  since  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century,  there  could  be  found  in  and  about  it 
the  traces  of  murderous  Apache  arrows,  and 
the  rank  growth  of  the  vine  and  the  peach 
tree,  planted  and  cultivated  once  by  the  Span- 
iards, later  by  Mexicans,  and  destined  to  be  re- 
planted and  nurtured  by  "us  Americans."  For 
the  iron  horse  now  goes  snorting  and  shrieking 
by  a  strip  of  fair  country  which  in  those  days 
lay  so  entirely  outside  the  reach  of  civilization 
that  in  my  wildest  dreams  I  should  never  have 
foreseen  its  connection  with  the  rest  of  the 
world. 

Here  lunch  was  spread,  the  extensive  works 
were  inspected,  the  enormous  piles  of  copper 
gazed  at,  and  regret  at  the  thought  that  the 
grand  old  place  had  been  abandoned  and  was 
falling  into  ruins  was  uppermost  in  every  mind. 

Before  the  shadows  grew  long  we  had  re- 
mounted, for  these  mountain  canons  were  not 
pleasant  in  the  gloaming,  and  more  than  once 
have  I  been  startled  by  the  trunk  of  a  tree, 
which,  with  its  turning  leaves,  looked  like  the 
blanketed  form  of  a  lurking  Apache.  On  these 
occasions  Toby  was  my  sole  reliance.  He 
seemed  to  have  the  same  kind  of  shuddering 
horror  of  an  Indian  that  I  had,  and  I  think  he 
would  have  saved  me  by  his  swift  feet  without 
my  ever  drawing  rein  on  him;  and  wherever 
we  dismounted  he  was  always  beside  me.  Any- 
where near  the  water  I  could  take  off  his  bridle 
and  let  him  go.  He  would  splash  in  the  water, 
drink  his  fill,  and  come  back.  The  saddle  al- 
ways remained  on  him ;  but,  though  he  had  no 
respect  for  the  gay  saddle-cloth,  and  would 
come  back  with  it  dripping,  he  never  once  at- 
tempted to  roll  with  the  saddle  on  him. 

There  was  something  human  in  his  affection 
for  me.  Many  a  time  did  he  stand  beside  me 
while  I  poured  all  my  trouble  and  my  fears  into 
his  ear,  which  he  seemed  to  bend  nearer  to  me, 
stamping  the  ground  sometimes  as  if  to  say, 
"Too  bad! — too  bad!  Come,  let's  up  and 
away." 

When  we  got  tired  exploring  the  copper- 
mine  region  and  the  abandoned  shafts  lying 
about  it,  we  would  wend  our  way  in  the  direc- 
tion almost  opposite — to  Finos  Altos,  as  well 
known  for  its  wealth  of  gold  as  was  the  Santa 
Rita  del  Cobre  for  its  inexhaustible  treasures  of 
copper.  In  former  years,  before  the  war,  there 
were  only  the  rich  placer  diggings  worked  here, 
but  now,  since  the  returning  troops  had  once 
more  given  at  least  nominal  protection  to  the 
place,  there  had  been  a  saw -mill  established, 
and  many  of  the  magnificent  tall  pines  from 
which  the  Mexicans  had  named  the  place  were 


TOBY. 


493 


being  felled  and  fed  to  the  horrid  buzzing  mon- 
ster with  the  sharp,  insatiable  teeth  that  seem- 
ed always  crying  for  more — more ! 

The  mountains  we  climbed  to  reach  the  spot 
were  called  the  Diavolo  Range,  though  I  failed 
to  see  anything  about  them  that  was  diabolical. 
The  miners,  perhaps,  who  battled  with  the  In- 
dians here  after  the  troops  had  been  withdrawn 
from  the  Territory  at  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
may  have  had  a  different  opinion.  To  me  the 
country  seemed  very  grand  and  beautiful — dif- 
ferent in  character  from  the  copper-mine  region, 
a  little  sterner  in  feature,  I  thought,  but  the 
same  cloudless  sky  smiling  above  it,  and  the 
same  deep,  unbroken,  eternal  silence  brooding 
over  it.  I  cannot  realize  that  the  hum  and  traf- 
fic of  a  growing  settlement  are  now  awakening 
echoes  that  have  slept  for  centuries.  Yet  they 
tell  me  that  Silver  City  has  been  established 
within  ten  miles  of  the  very  spot  that  once 
looked  so  hopelessly  death -like  and  so  desert- 
ed to  me  in  my  despair.  For  I  was  in  despair. 
Beautiful  as  was  the  country,  pleasant  as  seem- 
ed my  surroundings,  in  spite  of  the  devotion 
shown  me  by  the  soldiers  who  composed  the 
garrison,  the  respect  and  attention  of  the  of- 
ficers, and  last,  but  not  least,  the  undivided 
affection  of  my  white  horse,  Toby,  I  was  not 
only  in  despair — that  is  too  mild  a  term — I 
was  living,  day  and  night,  in  sunlight  or  dark- 
ness, in  a  state  of  terror,  fear,  and  suspense, 
such  as  cannot  be  described.  In  the  midst  of 
apparent  safety  and  protection,  death  stared 
me  constantly  in  the  face — not  the  swift,  sud- 
den death  that  the  Indian's  arrow  or  the  ball 
of  an  assassin  grants,  but  the  slow  tortures  with 
which  the  cunning  of  the  maniac  puts  its  victim 
to  the  rack;  for  my  husband  was  'a  madman 
and  a  murderer,  and  I  was  given,  helpless  and 
without  defense,  into  his  hands. 

I  think  the  discovery  must  have  paralyzed 
me,  for  I  cannot  now  explain  to  myself  the 
dazed,  unresisting  state  in  which  I  remained  for 
months  after  I  knew  the  whole  truth.  Partly, 
perhaps,  the  consciousness  that  I  was  thou- 
sands of  miles  away  from  where  help  could 
reach  me  from  my  own  people,  the  natural  re- 
luctance of  a  wife  to  disclose  her  misery  and 
wretchedness  to  strangers,  and  the  knowledge 
of  the  power  which  to  a  certain  degree  my  hus- 
band possessed,  at  least,  over  his  immediate 
subordinates — all  these  considerations,  a  mixt- 
ure of  fear  and  pride,  held  me  in  thrall  for  long, 
long  days.  Another  thing,  ridiculous  as  it  may 
seem,  prevented  me  from  seeking  protection  at 
the  hands  of  my  husband's  superior  officers. 
Months  afterward,  when  I  had  at  last  made  my 
escape,  one  of  the  ladies  at  Fort  Union  asked 
me : 


"Why  did  you  not  call  on  the  Captain  for 
protection?" 

"How  could  I?"  I  asked  in  return.  "You 
see,  whenever  Mrs.  Mack  (that  was  our  laun- 
dress) had  had  a  hand-to-hand  misunderstand- 
ing with  her  husband,  Dennis,  overnight,  she 
always  went  to  the  Captain  to  complain  of  him 
in  the  morning.  Dennis  got  three  days  in  the 
guard -house,  and  straightway  on  coming  out 
got  drunker  than  he  had  been  before.  Now,  I 
could  not  go  and  complain  to  the  Captain  of  my 
husband  as  Mrs.  Mack  did  of  hers — could  I  ?" 

No  !  But  I  would  tie  a  strip  of  flannel  around 
my  throat  and  complain  of  a  bad  cold,  in  order 
to  hide  the  marks  that  his  fingers  had  left  where 
he  had  strangled  me  just  one  degree  short  of 
suffocation.  With  what  feelings  of  gratitude  I 
used  to  step  to  the  tent -door  in  the  morning — 
when  my  liege  lord  gave  permission — to  take 
one  more  look  at  the  sky  above  me,  after  a 
night  passed  waking,  in  momentary  expectation 
of  a  blow  from  a  hatchet  he  had  concealed 
about  the  tent  during  the  day,  or  with  the  silent 
horror  of  the  situation  growing  on  me  till  I  was 
ready  to  shriek  out,  "Be  merciful!  Kill  me  at 
one  blow,  or  pull  the  trigger  the  next  time  you 
hold  the  death-cold  muzzle  of  your  pistol  to  my 
head" — for  you  must  know  it  was  a  favorite  way 
he  had  of  amusing  himself.  He  would  hold  the 
revolver  pressed  close  against  my  temple  and 
let  that  horrid  "click-click"  sound  in  my  ears 
till  I  was  fairly  numb  with  terror.  Then  he 
would  explain  to  me  in  a  low  voice  how  utterly 
impossible  it  would  be  for  any  help  to  reach 
me  in  time  if  I  screamed  for  help ;  would  dilate 
upon  the  numerous  strings  and  loops  he  him- 
self had  added  to  the  fastenings  of  the  tent, 
and  would  describe  how  he  could  cut  me  into 
small  bits,  and  roast  the  bits  in  the  fire,  before 
being  discovered,  if  I  ever  so  much  as  dared  to 
breathe  what  passed  in  those  quiet,  peaceful- 
looking  quarters  of  ours.  For  our  tent  had  really 
a  cheerful  home-look  about  it.  Strictly  speak- 
ing, there  were  two  tents  set  up  close  together 
in  one,  and  the  soldiers,  in  their  solicitude  for 
my  comfort,  had  built  a  wall  some  four  feet 
high  about  it,  and  the  canvas  had  been  partly 
removed  at  either  end  to  make  room  for  a  fire- 
place they  had  built  of  mud  and  stones,  the 
chimney  reaching  high  above  the  tent.  So  that 
in  reality  we  had  two  rooms,  a  fire-place  in 
each ;  and  altogether  our  quarters  were  looked 
upon  as  exceedingly  fine  and  comfortable,  ex- 
citing surprise  and  envy  in  the  minds  of  the 
few  stray  visitors  that  passed  through  camp. 

That  these  visitors  were  few  and  far  between 
was  a  great  blessing,  as  I  soon  found ;  for  after 
my  husband  had  once  admitted  to  me  that  he 
had  been  a  murderer  and  had  fled  from  justice, 


494 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


he  was  seized  with  an  insane  idea,  whenever  an 
arrival  was  announced  in  camp,  that  the  offi- 
cers of  the  law  had  tracked  him  here  from 
Texas,  where  the  crime  had  been  committed 
years  ago,  and  that  /  had  communicated  to 
them  where  he  could  be  found.  He  had  cut  a 
round  opening  in  the  top  of  the  tent  and  through 
the  fly — as  if  the  space  had  been  intended  for 
the  passage  of  a  stove-pipe — and  from  this 
point  of  observation  he  could  see  the  dust  fly- 
ing up  in  the  road  when  any  one  approached 
the  camp.  Then  he  would  make  a  spring  at 
me — as  a  tiger  springs  upon  his  prey — grasp 
my  throat  with  both  his  murderous  hands,  and 
urge  me  to  confess  for  whom  I  had  sent,  and 
by  whom  I  had  sent  the  message,  swearing 
direst  vengeance  on  all  concerned  did  he  but 
discover  them.  If,  however,  the  Orderly  came 
to  the  door  the  next  moment  to  announce  that 
Mr.  So-and-so,  or  Such-a-one,  had  arrived  and 
desired  to  see  the  Lieutenant,  this  gentleman 
was  all  good  nature  and  condescension,  send- 
ing an  immediate  invitation  to  the  visitor  to 
come  to  our  tent,  or  going  in  person  to  meet 
him.  I  had  to  smooth  my  ruffled  feathers  then 
as  best  I  might,  for  I  knew  that  the  least  fail- 
ure to  appear  happy  and  cheerful  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  guest  would  be  rigorously  punished 
as  soon  as  the  stranger's  back  was  turned. 

Oh,  the  abject,  trembling  misery  of  that  time! 
Often  when  the  Captain  saw  us  as  we  left 
camp  without  escort — as  the  Lieutenant  was  in- 
clined to  do — he  remonstrated  with  us,  telling 
my  husband  how  wrong  it  was  to  risk  my  life, 
even  if  he  chose  to  expose  his  own,  to  an  In- 
dian ambuscade.  Little  did  the  kind  man  think 
that  I. was  actually  praying — God  forgive  me! 
— that  an  arrow  or  a  bullet  should  come,  quick 
and  painless,  and  put  an  end  to  my  wretched 
existence. 

LiTO,  too,  did  he  know  that  these  lonely 
excursions  were  undertaken  because  his  Lieu- 
tenant deemed  it  necessary,  or  at  least  expedi- 
ent, to  find  a  place  of  shelter  where  he  could 
hide — when  that  dreaded  sheriffs  posse  came 
from  Texas — till  he  could  be  supplied  by  me 
with  means  and  ways  for  his  escape.  How  is  it 
possible  that  a  crazy  man  can  have  the  sense,  or 
at  least  the  cunning,  to  plan  and  prepare  every 
detail  and  particular  for  his  own  flight,  and  for 
the  baffling  of  his  pursuers?  And  yet  he  was 
crazy;  for  in  the  muster  of  arguments  that 
could  be  used  for  his  defense  should  he  be  tried 
for  murder,  he  placed  his  main  reliance  on  the 
fact  of  his  having  been  for  two  years  the  inmate 
of  a  Philadelphia  lunatic  asylum. 

Not  over  three  miles  from  the  camp,  on  the 
left  of  the  road  that  comes  up  from  the  Mim- 
bres  River  crossing,  there  was  a  dreary,  flat, 


table-like  rock,  without  a  trace  of  verdure  or  a 
sign  of  life  about  it.  Underneath  this,  amid 
broken  stones  and  drifted  sand,  was  a  small 
opening  into  which  a  man  could  crawl,  where 
there  was  a'  small  cave  or  burrow.  This  spot 
he  selected ;  and  here  I,  who  was  afraid  of  the 
very  darkness  itself,  was  to  come  every  night 
and  bring  him  food,  water,  and  everything  he 
needed,  until  he  should  find  a  chance  to  quit 
the  country.  You  must  remember  there  was 
nothing  in  this  country  then  save  military  posts 
at  long  intervals  and  a  very  few  poverty  stricken 
Mexican  towns  and  settlements,  separated  by 
hundreds  of  miles  of  waterless  sand-deserts  and 
barren  rocks,  with  Indians  of  different  tribes, 
but  all  alike  hostile,  sprinkled  over  the  whole  ad 
libitum.  And  yet  I  was  often  on  the  point  of 
braving  all  these  horrors  to  escape  the  terrors 
of  my  captivity  and  torture.  Often  when  Toby 
came  whinnying  around  our  quarters,  I  was 
sorely  tempted  to  cut  the  fastenings  of  the  tent 
and  make  a  bold  dash  for  liberty  or  death :  for 
you  must  understand  that  during  the  Lieuten- 
ant's absence  from  the  tent  I  was  never  per- 
mitted to  go  to  the  entrance  under  any  excuse. 
I  might  have  taken  an  opportunity  of  that  kind 
to  appeal  for  help,  or  send  word  of  my  wretched 
condition  to  the  commanding  officer  by  a  pass- 
ing soldier — don't  you  see?  And  this  he  was 
determined  to  prevent.  Poor  Toby,  never  cor- 
ralled or  hobbled  as  the  other  horses  were, 
would  clatter  around  the  tent  for  hours,  pawing 
the  ground,  tugging  at  the  ropes  and  scratching 
at  the  entrance;  but  never  till  the  Lieutenant 
made  his  appearance  was  I  permitted  to  give 
him  the  lump  of  sugar  or  other  tidbit  I  had 
ready  for  him. 

Day  by  day  my  life  grew  more  intolerable, 
and  I  don't  know  how  soon  it  might  have  been 
ended,  either  by  that  man's  hand  or  my  own, 
had  he  not  finally  bethought  him  of  a  way  in 
which  I  could  perhaps  benefit  him.  He  had 
been  placed  under  arrest  for  some  trifling  neg- 
lect of  duty  soon  after  we  reached  camp,  and, 
though  this  might  have  been  all  the  more  pleas- 
ant under  ordinary  circumstances  as  giving 
him  more  time  to  pursue  his  own  pleasure,  he 
began  to  chafe  under  this  inactivity,  and  at  last 
concluded  that  it  was  a  deep,  underhanded 
plot  of  his  superior  officers  to  injure  and  annoy 
him.  If  the  conception  of  this  idea  strongly 
suggested  one  of  the  common  fancies  of  the  in- 
sane, the  remedy  he  concluded  to  adopt  cer- 
tainly afforded  proof  conclusive  that  his  brain 
was  turned.  As,  however,  I  saw  in  it  a  possi- 
ble means  of  escape,  I  grasped  at  it  as  a  drown- 
ing man  grasps  at  a  straw. 

His  plan  was  this :  I  was  to  apply  to  the 
commanding  officer  for  an  ambulance  and  es- 


TOBY. 


49* 


cort  as  far  as  Santa  F£,  and  there  I  was  to  lay 
his  grievances  personally  before  General  Carle- 
ton,  and  ask  at  his  hands  redress  and  protec- 
tion for  my  husband.  Redress  and  protection 
for  him!  The  bitter  irony  and  humor  of  the 
thing  was  not  lost  upon  me  even  in  the  abject 
state  of  mind  I  was  then  in;  but  I  took  good 
care  to  allow  no  trace  of  my  real  feelings  to  ap- 
pear upon  my  face. 

The  purpose  was  quickly  carried  out.  Next 
day  the  Orderly  bore  a  note  from  me  to  the 
Captain,  written,  I  need  hardly  say,  under  the 
eyes  of  my  tormentor;  and  in  a  little  while 
after,  a  polite  note  from  him  assured  me  that 
my  train  would  be  ready  at  the  hour  mention- 
ed, the  following  morning.  Very  gladly  had 
this  kind-hearted  man  consented  to  my  request; 
for,  as  I  learned  later,  something  of  the  true 
condition  of  affairs  at  our  quarters  had  become 
known  to  him  through  our  Orderly  and  the 
cook,  and  the  Captain  felt  but  too  happy  to 
grant  me  safe  escort  on  my  way  back  to  my 
friends,  which  he  thought  I  was  now  taking. 

Women,  however,  are  the  most  foolish,  un- 
accountable, soft-hearted  idiots  in  creation. 
The  night  preceding  my  departure  was  spent 
in  great  part  by  the  Lieutenant  on  his  knees, 
imploring  my  forgiveness,  vowing  reform,  and 
explaining  how  it  was  only  his  great  love  for 
me  that  had  made  him  at  times  a  little  tyran- 
nical. Then,  the  outrageous  treatment  under 
which  he  had  been  suffering  at  the  hands  of 
his  superior  officers  had  well  nigh  driven  him 
mad,  he  said.  To  be  sure,  I  had  seen  nothing 
of  this  "outrageous  treatment,"  except  that 
Uncle  Sam  paid  his  salary  as  regularly  as  that 
of  the  other  officers;  that  the  commissary  sup- 
plied him  with  the  best  there  was;  that  his 
brother  officers  showed  him  all  the  courtesy  he 
allowed  them  to,  and  that  his  time  was  entirely 
at  his  own  disposal.  Only  in  one  direction  had 
any  restraint  been  used.  The  commissary 
clerk  had  been  restricted  to  a  certain  quantity 
of  commissary  whisky  to  be  issued  to  him. 
To  this  restriction  I  think  I  owe  my  life.  A 
madman  pure  and  simple  is  bad  enough,  in  all 
conscience ;  but  let  this  same  madman  intoxi- 
cate himself  with  liquor,  and  a  demon  would 
blush  to  own  him  for  a  brother.  I  know  where- 
of I  speak. 

At  last  the  morning  dawned.  The  ambu- 
lance stood  at  the  door ;  our  Orderly  was  seat- 
ed beside  the  driver;  six  mounted  men  and  a 
Sergeant  had  been  detailed  as  escort.  Much 
as  I  had  begged,  the  Lieutenant  had  not  allow- 
ed Toby  to  accompany  me ;  the  Indians  would 
see  me  if  I  rode  Toby,  whereas  they  would 
never  know  that  a  woman  was  inside  the  am- 
bulance. The  Captain,  who  came  to  take  leave 


of  me,  said  my  husband  was  right,  that  the  es- 
cort was  not  large  and  that  it  would  be  like 
tempting  Providence — and  the  Indians — for 
me  to  ride  through  the  country  on  horseback. 

Toby,  poor  fellow,  had  been  confined  in  the 
corral,  and  his  whinnies  grew  first  rebellious 
and  then  heart-breaking,  as,  dragging  at  his 
chain  and  wildly  pawing  the  ground,  he  saw 
the  train  moving  out  and  leaving  him  behind. 
My  heart  smote  me  at  the  horse's  cries — for 
they  were  cries,  if  it  was  only  a  horse ;  but  the 
Lieutenant  had  got  into  the  ambulance  with 
me,  to  go  as  far  as  the  limits  of  the  post,  and 
was  giving  me  his  parting  instructions,  and 
making  his  parting  promises  of  repentance  and 
reform,  and  I  did  not  even  dare  to  express  my 
grief  at  leaving  my  dear,  devoted  friend.  Pin- 
kow,  the  Orderly,  for  whom  the  Lieutenant  had 
obtained  the  Captain's  permission  to  accom- 
pany me  all  the  way  to  Santa  F£  and  back,  sat 
beside  the  driver  of  the  ambulance,  as  I  said,, 
while  the  Lieutenant  and  I  sat  in  the  seat  be- 
hind. My  mounted  escort  was  to  return  when 
we  reached  a  post  where  a  fresh  escort  could  be 
conveniently  furnished  —  either  at  Fort  Cum- 
mings,  Fort  Selden,  or  Fort  Craig.  Fort  Mc- 
Rea,  but  lately  established  at  a  distance  of  a 
mile  or  two  from  the  Rio  Grande,  and  to  be 
reached  only  by  turning  aside  some  eight  or 
nine  miles  from  the  straight  road  across  the 
much  dreaded  Jornada  del  Muerto,  had  no 
soldiers  to  spare.  There  had  been  a  line  of 
picket  posts  established  near  the  river,  to  pro- 
tect from  the  ever -lurking  Apache  those  com- 
ing here  for  water,  on  their  weary  journey  or 
prospecting  tour,  and  it  required  all  the  men 
they  had  to  keep  the  Indians  in  check  and  af- 
ford the  necessary  protection.  But  the  Cap- 
tain felt  confident  that  at  either  of  the  other 
posts  I  could  exchange  my  escort  and  draw- 
fresh  mules  for  the'  ambulance. 

Hardly  had  the  Lieutenant  left  the  ambu- 
lance and  vanished  from  sight  when  Pinkow 
turned  in  his  seat  and  faced  me  with  an  eager, 
questioning  look  in  his  eyes.  I  was  startled 
by  the  man's  sudden  movement,  and  asked  in 
some  alarm : 

"What  is  it,  Pinkow?" 

"Thank  God !"  he  cried,  with  a  great  sigh  of 
relief.  "You  are  free,  madam.  I  have  count- 
ed the  moments  since  the  Lieutentant  came 
into  the  ambulance  with  you,  dreading  that  he 
would  change  his  mind  at  the  last  minute  and 
drag  you  back  to  that  horrid  tent,  to  murder 
you  at  his  leisure." 

"Why— Pinkow— "  I  protested,  "the  Lieu- 
tenant—" 

" — is  my  commanding  officer  and  has  detail- 
ed me  to  wait  on  you,  with  secret  instructions  to 


.496 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


bring  you  back  from  Santa  T6  dead  or  alive. 
Alive,  if  possible ;  dead,  should  you  refuse  to 
return  of  your  own^free  will  to  the  prison  he 
has  prepared  for  you.  Do  you  think,  madam, 
that  because  your  silent,  uncomplaining  endur- 
ance of  the  Lieutenant's  tyranny  was  honored 
by  the  Captain  and  the  other  officers,  it  is  not 
known  at  head  -  quarters  ?  And  in  the  company 
there  is  not  a  man  who  has  forgotten  your 
courage  and  kindness  on  the  long  march  out 
here.  All  these  men  here  will  go  into  Santa 
Fd  with  you  if  you  say  but  the  word,  and  once 
under  the  General's  protection  the  Lieutenant 
can  never  more  approach  nor  harm  you.  The 
Captain,  though  not  advised  of  your  intention, 
feels  convinced  that  you  will  never  return  to 
our  camp  or  the  Lieutenant  again.  I  have  his 
orders  to  see  that  everything  you  may  need  on 
your  journey  in,  whether  undertaken  with  a 
military  escort  or  on  the  overland  stage,  be  fur- 
nished you;  though  indeed  the  General  him- 
self will  see  to  that,  and  the  Captain  also  thinks 
that  some  of  the  other  officers'  wives  are  at 
Fort  Marcy  (Santa  F£)  at  present." 

"But,  Pinkow,"  I  remonstrated,  tremblingly, 
"  I  promised  to  come  back ;  he  will  come  after 
me  if  I  break  my  promise ;  I  know  he  will,  and 
kill  me  wherever  he  finds  me." 

"Do  you  suppose  the  Captain  will  give  him 
permission  to  leave  camp  to  follow  you?  Not 
while  he  thinks  that  you  will  seize  upon  this 
opportunity  to  make  your  escape.  He  is  under 
the  firm  impression  that  you  are  anxious  to  get 
out  of  that  madman's  clutches,  and  would'  be 
surprised  if  he  heard  that  you  had  conscien- 
tious scruples  about  breaking  your  word  with 
him.  Do  you  know,"  he  continued,  in  a  low- 
ered voice,  "that  he  is  a  condemned  criminal, 
that  he  escaped  the  gallows  only  by  flight,  and 
lives  in  hourly  dread  of  being  recognized  and 
handed  over  to  the  civil  authorities  by  his 
brother  officers?  And  to  such  a  man's  power 
you  would  return?" 

"  It  will  break  his  heart  if  I  go  and  leave  him 
in  his  trouble,"  I  cried,  thinking  of  his'parting 
appeals  and  promises.  "He  is  not  bad,  Pin- 
kow ;  he  was  young  and  hot-headed  when  that 
man  in  Texas  enraged  him,  and  he  shot  him  in 
a  fit  of  passion.  It  has  been  kept  secret  so 
long;  why  raise  up  that  dread  ghost  now?  And 
think  of  Toby — I  should  never  see  Toby  again, 
and  you  heard  how  he  cried,  I  must  go  back, 
Pinkow — oh,  I  must  go  back!"  and  I  burst 
into  tears. 

It  was  not  so  much  the  recollection  of  the 
horse  that  made  me  cry — my  nerves  were  sud- 
denly unstrung ;  the  prospect  of  life  and  liberty 
before  me  was  overpowering ;  I  feared  to  give 
room  to  the  flattering  hope  that  tried  to  take 


possession  of  me.  It  looked  so  utterly  impos- 
sible that  I  could  really  become  free  once  more ; 
that  I  could  ever  again  breathe  without  fear 
and  dread,  as  other  people  did. 

"That  is  just  what  the  Lieutenant  counted 
on,"  pursued  Pinkow;  "he  knows  how  you  love 
the  horse,  and  told  me  to  insinuate  to  you,  in 
case  you  should  refuse  to  come  back,  that  I 
thought  he  would  beat  and  starve  the  poor 
brute  to  death.  I  do  not  doubt  that  he  would 
if  he  got  the  chance,  but  I  have  posted  both  the 
Captain  and  the  men,  and  they  would  look  after 
Toby  for  your  sake,  if  not  for  his  own." 

The  farther  away  I  got  from  the  post,  the 
higher  my  spirits  rose.  I  dried  my  tears  at  last 
and  asked  the  faithful  fellow  if  he  really  and 
truly  thought  I  could  get  away  and  reach  my 
friends  in  safety.  He  made  it  appear  so  plain 
that  it  depended  on  my  own  wish  alone,  that  I 
began  to  breathe  more  freely,  and  at  last  said : 

"Be  it  so;  I  will  at  least  try  for  my  life." 

Then  I  made  him  promise  to  say  nothing  of 
my  intention  till  I  had  reached  Santa  ¥6 — 
partly  because  my  pride  rebelled  against  being 
looked  upon  as  a  runaway  wife,  and  partly  be- 
cause I  so  dreaded  my  husband's  pursuit  that 
I  felt  as  if  a  word  spoken  aloud  might  be  car- 
ried back  to  him  on  the  passing  breeze. 

Once  determined  on  gaining  my  freedom, 
I  could  not  travel  fast  enough.  I  urged  the 
driver  to  hurry  his  mules  to  the  utmost,  telling 
him  I  was  anxious  to  reach  Fort  Cummings 
before  nightfall.  Though  I  gave  no  hint  of  my 
real  intentions,  I  felt  that  he,  as  well  as  the  sol- 
diers of  the  escort,  knew  why  I  hurried  them ; 
and  all  through  the  day  we  traveled  briskly 
over  that  silent  and  desolate  portion  of  the 
country  where  the  Southern  Pacific  now  runs 
its  daily  trains.  Not  a  human  soul  did  we 
meet ;  a  herd  of  antelope  came  scudding  down 
the  broad  valley  of  the  Mimbres  River  while 
we  were  passing  through ;  and  in  the  mount- 
ains, toward  where  the  copper  mines  lay,  one 
of  the  soldiers  suddenly  spied  a  thin,  blue  col- 
umn of  smoke  arising.  The  Sergeant  grew 
alarmed  for  my  safety,  and  asked  whether  I 
preferred  turning  back  to  the  post,  as  there  was 
no  doubt  that  the  Indians  had  discovered  us 
and  were  communicating  our  presence  on  the 
road  to  some  distant  portion  of  their  tribe. 
But  the  sun  was  still  riding  high  in  the  heav- 
ens, and  I  felt  that  I  would  rather  brave  death 
out  here,  under  the  blue  sky,  than  encounter  it 
in  the  gloomy  darkness  of  that  dreadful  tent. 
So  I  told  the  Sergeant  to  keep  on,  asking  if 
there  were  an  extra  revolver  I  could  have.  Pin- 
kow had  prepared  for  everything,  and  a  neat 
deringer  proved  to  me  that  the  Captain  had  been 
consulted  on  this  point,  too.  Then  we  hasten- 


TOBY. 


497 


ed  on,  stopping  only  long  enough  at  the  cross- 
ing of  the  Mimbres  River  to  refresh  the  horses 
and  mules,  and  at  nightfall  we  entered  the 
rocky  canon  which  takes  its  name  from  the 
spring  that  has  gladdened  the  heart  of  many  a 
weary  traveler  on  this  road.  Cook's  Canon  has 
an  unpleasant  sound  in  connection  with  Apache 
reminiscences,  and  even  the  spring,  a  large, 
square  sheet  of  water,  surrounded  by  a  low, 
hand-built  wall  of  rock,  looked  black  and  in- 
hospitable in  the  darkening  night. 

The  commanding  officer  of  Fort  Cummings 
received  and  entertained  me  with  all  possible 
kindness,  saying  it  was  no  surprise  to  him  that 
a  lady  should  grow  weary  of  the  solitude  and 
hardships  of  camp  life.  But  I  hastened  to  ex- 
plain that  indeed,  indeed,  I  was  not  tired  of  liv- 
ing in  camp;  that  I  was  only  going  to  Santa 
¥6  to  urge  General  Carleton  to  grant  my  hus- 
band an  early  trial  by  court-martial,  as  he  wish- 
ed to  be  restored  to  duty,  and  that  I  intended 
returning  without  delay  as  soon  as  my  object 
was  accomplished.  Whether  he  believed  me 
or  not,  I  don't  know ;  but  he  offered  me  fresh 
mules  for  my  ambulance  and  an  exchange  of 
escort  when  I  refused  to  remain  the  next  day 
and  rest  before  continuing  my  hard  journey. 
I  declined  both  offers,  from  an  insane  fear  that 
the  very  mules  in  the  ambulance  might  have 
caught  a  whisper  of  the  word  "Flight." 

The  first  day's  journey  had  really  not  been  a 
severe  one,  and  I  felt  that  it  was  neither  cruel 
nor  selfish  to  order  an  early  start  the  next 
morning.  We  had  nearly  sixty  miles  before 
us,  and  no  water  to  be  had  till  we  struck  the 
Rio  Grande ;  but  I  did  not  want  to  carry  water- 
kegs  till  it  was  absolutely  necessary ;  we  would 
have  to  come  to  that  soon  enough. 

I  had  no  eyes  for  scenery  or  surroundings. 
Magdalena  Pass  was  to  me  only  something  to 
be  hurried  through  in  order  to  reach  a  place  of 
safety,  as  I  felt  Fort  Selden  would  be  to  a  cer- 
tain degree,  for  I  knew  that  I  should  find  a  lady 
there — an  old  friend  she  seemed  to  me,  for  we 
had  met  at  Carlisle  Barracks,  and  her  husband, 
like  mine,  belonged  to  the  Third.  He  was  com- 
manding officer  at  the  time,  Captain  Tilford  hav- 
ing not  yet  arrived  in  the  Territory.  And  this 
lady  I  had  determined  to  take  into  my  confi- 
dence. Good,  warm-hearted  woman!  How  she 
wept  over  me  and  deplored  the  vanishing  of  all 
my  hopes  and  illusions  !  We  had  been  so  happy 
together  at  Carlisle — I  had  looked  so  hopefully 
and  fearlessly  into  the  future  ! 

A  plucky  little  woman  she  was,  too ;  and  she 
declared  that  if  my  tormentor  should  really 
evade  the  vigilance  of  the  officers  at  our  camp, 
she  would  never  allow  him  to  pass  through 
theirs.  He  was  under  arrest  and  had  no  right 


to  leave  camp,  and  a  transport  of  soldiers  should 
carry  him  back  to  Fort  Bayard  if  necessary  by 
force,  she  vowed.  We  deemed  it  best  to  send 
back  the  escort  from  here,  and  the  Sergeant  of 
my  new  escort  was  instructed  as  far  as  neces- 
sary by  the  post  commander.  This  escort  was 
to  remain  with  me  till  I  reached  Santa  F£; 
there  were  no  married  officers  at  any  other  post 
between  here  and  Santa  FC",  except  at  Fort 
McRea,  and  I  shrank  from  making  the  neces- 
sary explanation  to  any  but  a  women,  while  I 
knew  they  could  spare  no  soldiers  from  the  last- 
named  post.  Having  fresh  mules  I  could  start 
early  in  the  morning,  and,  kindly  as  I  had  been 
treated,  tenderly  as  I  had  been  cared  for,  I  was 
eager  to  shake  the  dust  of  Fort  Selden  from 
my  feet. 

It  was  a  terrible  day's  journey  we  had  before 
us.  No  soldier  who  has  ever  crossed  the  dreary, 
hopeless  stretch  of  ninety -five  miles,  where 
neither  water  nor  shade  can  be  found,  called 
the  Jornada  del  Muerto,  speaks  of  it  without  a 
shudder.  A  scorching  sun  above,  a  barren 
waste  beneath ;  a  chain  of  dull  brown  mount- 
ains on  the  right,  a  ridge  of  low  hills  far  to  the 
left.  Thus  the  road  winds,  drearily,  silently, 
changelessly  along.  Hour  after  hour  you  gaze 
upon  this  blank,  vast  monotone,  never  daring 
to  hope  that  one  bright  spot  may  greet  the  eye, 
but  dreading  ever  that  the  brooding  stillness  of 
the  heavy  air  be  rent  in  sudden  horror  by  the 
Indian's  savage  cry.  Oh,  the  long,  slow  hours 
that  dragged  their  leaden  wings  across  this 
waste !  To  me,  there  were  twin  demons  lurk- 
ing in  every  isolated  clump  of  lance -weed  that 
we  passed.  Where  the  men  looked  for  only  one 
enemy,  I  feared  two — the  Indian's  painted  vis- 
age was  not  more  dreaded  by  me  than  the  di- 
abolical smile  I  had  seen  on  that  madman's 
face.  And  I  could  not  shake  off  the  feeling 
that  he  was  pursuing  me — that  he  was  even 
now  on  the  road  I  had  just  passed^over. 

Though  it  was  still  daylight  when  we  turned 
off  from  the  direct  line  across  the  desert  into  the 
road  that  leads  to  Fort  McRea,  it  was  nearly 
dark  when  we  reached  this  desolate  post ;  and 
the  uninviting  features  of  the  spot  looked  still 
more  repulsive  in  the  heavy  gloom  of  the  com- 
ing night.  The  Captain's  wife  was  extremely 
kind  to  me.  Captain  Horn — of  the  Volunteers 
— himself  was  absent  at  one  of  the  picket-posts 
on  the  river  I  spoke  of  before.  There  was  a 
band  of  white  marauders  making  the  country 
unsafe  at  that  time,  which  were  as  much  to  be 
dreaded  as  the  red  Indians;  and  therefore  these 
pickets  by  the  river  were  constantly  inspected 
personally  by  the  Captain. 

The  next  day's  journey  was  a  short  one,  and 
we  reached  Fort  Craig  while  it  was  yet  day- 


498 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


light.  I  am  unable  to  explain  why  it  was  that 
a  Volunteer  officer,  Colonel  Gerhardt,  was  in 
command  of  this  post  at  that  time,  though  to 
be  sure  it  was  months  before  the  Volunteer 
forces  in  the  Territory  were  everywhere  replac- 
ed by  regular  troops.  Doctor  Day  also  be- 
longed to  the  Volunteers,  and  his  wife  had  the 
coziest  quarters  in  all  this  large  fort.  The 
Colonel,  young  and  full  of  life,  called  at  the 
Doctor's  quarters  and  grew  enthusiastic  over 
the  prospect  of  the  pleasant  day  we  should  all 
pass  together  to-morrow,  Sunday.  The  tire 
had  come  off  the  ambulance  wheel,  and  he  was 
rejoiced  to  say  that  there  was  not  another  am- 
bulance at  the  post  that  could  be  got  ready  in 
less  than  forty -eight  hours'  time. 

I  felt  the  color  leaving  my  face  at  this  dis- 
closure, but  hoped  it  might  only  be  a  pleasant 
little  ruse  of  the  Colonel's,  when  suddenly  Pin- 
Icow's  woe -begone  countenance  appeared  at  the 
door  to  report  that  the  blacksmith  had  pro- 
nounced the  wheel  in  urgent  need  of  a  soaking, 
or  a  scraping,  or  some  other  like  attention — I 
have  forgotten  what,  but  I  knew  we  could  not 
proceed  in  that  ambulance.  I  sat  dumb  with 
dismay,  and  I  fear  the  Colonel  thought  me  very 
dull  and  stupid.  I  spent  a  restless  night,  was 
up  by  six  o'clock,  and  summoned  Pinkow. 

" Pinko w,"  I  said  "we  must  go  on.  All  last 
night  I  dreamed  of  the  Lieutenant;  he  had 
overtaken  us,  and  everywhere  around  me  was 
blood — blood.  I  am  going  on;  if  there  is  no 
ambulance  to  be  had  they  can  give  me  a  horse, 
or  I  will  ride  one  of  the  ambulance  mules. 
Somehow,  I  feel  that  the  Lieutenant  knows  by 
this  time  that  I  mean  to  escape,  and  if  he 
catches  up  with  us  now,  he  will  kill  me  sure." 

Pinkow  could  have  replied  that  even  if  one 
of  the  "L"  Company  soldiers  had  known  of 
my  design  he  could  not  have  yet  imparted  it  to 
the  Lieutenant  had  he  been  so  inclined,  as  the 
escort  was  to  rest  for  two  days  at  Fort  Selden; 
and  the  probabilities  were  all  against  any  of 
the  soldiers  playing  traitor  toward  me.  But 
the  poor  fellow  was  himself  so  thoroughly  im- 
pressed with  the  unhesitating  wickedness  of 
the  gentleman  in  question,  that  he  believed  him 
capable  of  all  sorts  of  unheard-of  deeds. 

"You  are  right,  madam,"  he  said;  "and  I 
was  only  afraid  they  would  persuade  you  to 
stay.  I  have  discovered  that  the  post  sutler 
has  a  very  handsome  ambulance,  more  like  a 
carriage,  but  very  strong.  If  we  could  get 
that." 

The  sutler  was  known  to  me  by  reputation 
as  a  well  bred  man,  one  of  the  prominent  men 
of  the  Territory,  a  personal  friend  of  the  Gen- 
eral; and  when  I  had  at  last  prevailed  upon 
the  Colonel  to  ask  for  his  carriage,  of  course 


it  was  gladly  given.  Nevertheless,  it  was  elev- 
en o'clock  before  we  could  set  out  on  our  jour- 
ney, and  we  had  agreed  in  the  council  held 
that  I  should  stop  at  San  Antonio,  where  a  dis- 
charged soldier  kept  the  government  station. 
Doctor  Day  said  I  looked  as  if  I  needed  rest, 
and  Mrs.  Day,  dear  soul !  packed  me  a  splen- 
did lunch — which  my  soldiers  relished  exceed- 
ingly. 

For  my  part  the  anxiety  I  had  undergone 
since  the  previous  night,  the  fear  of  being  delay- 
ed one  whole  day,  had  completely  prostrated  me 
with  nervous  head -ache,  and  all  through  that 
blowing,  blustering  autumn  day  I  lay  back 
half- unconscious  in  the  cushioned  seat  of  the 
ambulance.  I  had  tenaciously  clung  to  my 
Fort  Selden  escort,  though  the  Colonel  had 
wanted  to  replace  them  with  men  from  his  own 
command.  I  knew  that  Sergeant  McBeth  had 
been  made  acquainted  to  a  certain  extent  with 
the  real  object  of  my  hasty  journey,  and  he 
seemed  to  be  such  a  manly,  kind-hearted  young 
fellow  that  I  felt  great  reliance  on  him.  They 
were  all  good  men.  Indeed,  who  ever  heard 
of  an  unworthy  act  on  the  part  of  a  soldier, 
whether  he  wear  bullion  epaulettes  or  the  coarse 
cloth  of  the  rank  and  file  ? 

When  we  reached  the  station  at  San  An- 
tonio, Pinkow  and  Sergeant  Brown,  who  kept 
the  station,  an  elderly  bronze-faced  man,  lifted 
me  out  of  the  ambulance  and  helped  me  into 
the  house.  It  was  an  adobe  built  in  the  regu- 
tion  frontier  New  Mexican  style — the  house  the 
base  of  a  hollow  square,  high  adobe  walls  form- 
ing the  other  three  sides,  with  a  heavy  gate  op- 
posite the  house,  and  never  a  door  or  a  window 
to  be  seen  on  the  outside  of  the  entire  struct- 
ure. The  court-yard  was  bare  of  foliage,  flower, 
or  fountain,  such  as  are  sometimes  found  in  the 
habitations  of  the  wealthier  residents  along  th% 
Rio  Grande.  But  the  interior  of  the  house  was 
kept  faultlessly  neat,  as  might  be  expected  of  an 
old  soldier  like  the  Sergeant.  A  number  of 
very  comfortable  beds  were  kept  for  the  offi- 
cers and  their  families  who  passed  by  this 
place  at  long  intervals ;  and  on  the  most  com- 
fortable of  these  beds  I  threw  myself,  without 
removing  any  article  of  my  clothing  for  fear  of 
being  unable  to  replace  it  in  the  morning — I 
was  so  completely  exhausted,  so  thoroughly 
convinced  that  I  was  pursued,  and  so  firmly 
determined  to  continue  my  journey  at  daylight. 
I  remember  well  that  good  Sergeant  Brown 
brought  broiled  chicken  to  my  bedside — an  un- 
heard-of luxury — and  tea,  and  the  sweetest  kind 
of  Mexican  bread.  In  one  corner  of  the  room 
was  a  queer,  triangular  little  fire-place,  and  in 
the  grate  was  burning  a  bright  fire  of  coal 
brought  up  from  the  bowels  of  the  Soledad 


TOBY. 


499 


Mountain,  in  whose  somber  shadow  we  had 
but  yesterday  been  traveling. 

Day  had  hardly  dawned,  when  Pinkow  knock- 
ed at  my  door  to  know  if  I  was  able  to  resume 
the  journey.  I  convinced  him  of  my  determi- 
nation by  ordering  a  cup  of  coffee  and  the  am- 
bulance, which,  to  satisfy  me,  was  at  once  drag- 
ged out  of  the  court -yard  and  left  in  front  of 
the  open  gate  where  I  could  see  it.  The  mules 
had  not  yet  been  fed,  and  I  actually  scolded 
Pinkow  for  being  so  tardy.  I  said  he  wanted  to 
see  me  murdered  right  there ;  I  knew  the  Lieu- 
tenant was  close  on  our  heels.  The  good-nat- 
ured fellow  protested — not  against  my  injustice, 
but  against  my  wearing  myself  out  with  un- 
necessary fears. 

"They  will  not  allow  him  to  pass  any  of  the 
posts,"  he  said,  "for  they  all  know  he  is  under 
arrest ;  and  where  else  could  he  find  anything 
for  himself,  his  escort,  or  his  animals  to  sub- 
sist on?" 

But  who  ever  succeeded  in  reasoning  a  wom- 
an out  of  her  determination  to  be  afraid?  So 
I  clambered  into  the  ambulance,  bade  Pinkow 
fasten  back  the  curtains,  and  looked  out  upon 
the  dreary  scene.  Truth  to  tell,  I  was  more 
dead  than  alive,  and  nothing  save  the  most  ab- 
solute terror  could  have  given  me  strength  to 
venture  out  in  the  bleak,  raw,  blustery  morning. 

San  Antonio  was  more  name  than  habitation 
at  that  time.  The  two  or  three  wretched  adobe 
houses  that  made  up  the  place  were  a  fitting  re- 
lief to  the  dry,  barren  country.  Sluggish,  gray, 
and  sullen,  the  Rio  Grande  passed  at  a  little 
distance  from  the  spot;  and  while  I  lay  back 
in  the  cushions,  peering  anxiously  in  all  direc- 
tions that  my  eye  could  reach,  a  strange  corttge 
came  slowly  gliding  down  the  stream.  Was  it 
the  funeral  barge  of  Lily  Maid  Elaine  drifting 
across  the  River  Usk  of  Mexico?  Ah,  no! 
Something  sadder  far  than  this.  The  Indians 
in  making  another  raid  on  a  large  herd  of  sheep 
had  killed  the  herder  and  driven  off  the  sheep, 
and  this  was  the  funeral  procession.  His  moth- 
er, a  widow,  had  crossed  the  stream  the  night 
before,  and  was  now  bringing  back  with  her  the 
body  of  the  murdered  man — her  only  son. 

The  sight  struck  a  chill  to  my  heart,  and  I 
turned  to  Pinkow,  who  was  hovering  near. 

"A  terrible  omen  that,"  I  cried.  "Oh,  Pin- 
kow, if  we  were  only  safe  in  Santa  Fe',  I  should 
tell  the  General  all  I  have  suffered,  and  I  know 
he  will  protect  me.  Why  don't  we  start?"  I 
asked  in  conclusion,  trying  to  raise  myself  to 
look  back  into  the  court. 

Sergeant  Brown  was  just  crossing  it  with  a 
lunch  for  me,  and  the  mules  were  led  up  to  the 
ambulance  at  the  same  time,  while  the  escort 
prepared  to  mount. 


A  cold  wind  swept  over  the  hard  ground, 
whirling  up  small  clouds  of  sand  and  red  adobe 
dust,  and  a  dull  gray  sky  made  everything 
around  look  inexpressibly  dreary.  There  was 
something  heavy  and  oppressive  in  the  atmos- 
phere in  spite  of  the  keen  air,  and  the  falling 
in  line  of  the  escort  reminded  me  of  the  military 
funerals  I  had  seen.  Sergeant  Brown  lent  a 
hand  while  the  driver  was  putting  in  the  mules, 
and  when  they  were  ready  he  wished  me  a  last 
"good-bye."  His  hand  was  still  raised  to  his 
cap,  when,  as  the  ambulance  felt  the  first  im- 
petus of  the  straining  mules,  one  of  the  springs 
snapped,  and  the  whole  cavalcade  was  thrown 
into  momentary  confusion.  Pinkow  was  on  the 
ground  in  an  instant,  and  the  driver  had  just 
reined  in  his  frightened  mules,  when  a  commo- 
tion among  the  escort,  a  low  exclamation  from 
Pinkow,  caused  me  to  turn  my  eyes  in  the  di- 
rection to  which  they  all  pointed. 

A  horseman,  indeed  a  stranger  of  any  kind, 
was  an  unusual  sight  here  in  those  days ;  but 
the  sight  of  this  horseman  turned  my  heart  to 
stone,  and  paralyzed  every  nerve  in  my  body. 

"The  Lieutenant !"  said  Pinkow,  faintly;  and 
involuntarily  Sergeant  McBeth  urged  his  horse 
closer  up  to  my  ambulance. 

I  did  not  faint,  but  there  was  a  blank  of  sev- 
eral minutes  in  my  memory,  and  then  I  heard 
a  hissing  whisper  close  to  my  ear. 

"So  you  tried  to  get  away  from  me,  did  you? 
But  you  see  I  have  overtaken  you,  and  alive 
you  will  never  get  away  from  me  again.  Don't 
scream  or  call  on  those  men  for  help — I  have 
two  revolvers  with  me.  I  would  kill  them  all, 
and  then  tie  you  to  Toby's  tail  and  let  him  drag 
you  to  death.  Do  you  hear  me?" 

There  must  have  been  something  death -like 
in  my  wide-open  eyes,  for  he  bent  over  me'with 
sudden  apprehension ;  but  I  had  heard  him. 
Every  word  of  his  had  burned  itself  into  my 
brain  as  with  a  searing -iron.  The  words  are 
there  to  this  day — the  Lord  help  me! — and  I 
answered,  hardly  above  a  breath : 

"I  hear  you." 

Not  that  I  wanted  to  whisper  or  speak  in  a 
low  tone.  I  could  not  have  spoken  a  loud  word 
if  my  life  had  depended  on  it,  as  perhaps  it 
might. 

"Come  back  into  the  house  with  me,"  he  said 
in  a  louder  tone;  "I  am  hungry  and  tired; 
neither  Toby  nor  I  have  had  rest  or  food  since 
leaving  camp,  except  what  we  could  get  at  a 
Mexican  ranch  back  there.  I  knew  that  they 
would  keep  me  back  at  the  posts,  in  order  to 
give  you  a  good  start."  He  lowered  his  voice 
again,  and  his  strong  yellow  teeth  gleamed 
viciously  behind  his  drawn  lips.  His  hollow 
eyes  were  burning  with  the  fire  of  madness,  and 


500 


THE    CALlFORhlAN 


strands  of  long,  uncut  hair  were  hanging  wildly 
about  his  face.  He  laid  his  talon-like  hand  on 
my  arm. 

"Come,"  he  continued  aloud;  "we  shall  not 
be  able  to  go  from  here  to-day ;  the  ambulance 
will  need  an  overhauling.  Come  into  the  house 
with  me." 

"  Never ! "  I  said,  speaking  low,  and  trying  to 
speak  firmly.  "  Kill  me  right  here,  if  you  want 
to—  I  shall  not  go  into  the  house  with  you." 

"Then  you  insist  upon  bloodshed  and  open 
disgrace."  He  spoke  close  to  my  ear  again. 
"Remember  that  I  promised  to  reform,  and  that 
you  promised  to  be  patient  with  me  and  aid  me. 
Is  this  what  your  promise  is  worth?  You  want 
to  deliver  me  into  the  hands  of  my  enemies — 
to  see  me  wronged  and  murdered.  Come  with 
me  and  I  will  forgive  you." 

He  to  forgive  me! 

"But  refuse  and  I  will  kill  you  and  the  rest 
here  on  this  spot." 

And  he  raised  me  from  my  reclining  post- 
ure and  lifted  me  from  the  ambulance  to  the 
ground. 

Pinkow  stood  by,  pale  and  motionless  with 
suspense,  but  Sergeant  McBeth  had  dismount- 
ed and  stepped  up  to  me. 

"Madam,"  he  said,  touching  his  cap,  "the 
damage  to  the  ambulance  can  be  repaired  in 
half  an  hour's  time ;  you  need  not  even  alight, 
for  we  shall  not  take  the  mules  out  at  all." 

"Have  the  mules  taken  out,  Sergeant,"  the 
Lieutenant  interposed  sharply,  "and  let  your 
men  dismount.  My  wife  will  not  continue  her 
journey  to-day." 

But  the  Sergeant  approached  still  nearer, 
and  with  an  inclination  of  the  head  replied  as 
sharply : 

"My  instructions  are  to  obey  madam's  or- 
ders, and  I  see  none  of  my  superior  officers 
here  who  could  countermand  the  order.  As 
soon  as  madam  signifies  her  wishes,  I  shall 
hold  my  men  in  readiness  to  carry  out  her  com- 
mands." 

Every  man  of  the  escort  had  dismounted, 
and  they  stood  clustered  about  me  as  if  ready 
and  eager  to  carry  out  any  order  I  might  give. 
I  saw  an  appealing  look  in  Pinkow's  eye,  and 
noted  the  gleam  of  hate  and  fury  that  flashed 
on  him  from  the  Lieutenant's  blood-shot  orbs, 
while  with  a  quick  movement  he  threw  back 
the  old  soldier  overcoat  he  had  on  and  dis- 
played the  shoulder-straps  on  the  cavalry  jacket 
he  wore  under  it.  But  even  now  the  gallant 
Sergeant  would  not  submit. 


"Your  orders,  madam?"  he  asked  with  eager 
eyes  and  glowing  cheeks. 

"I  have  none  to  give,  Sergeant,"  I  replied 
sadly,  "except  that  you  take  the  best  care  of 
the  outfit  in  your  command.  I  thank  you  and 
the  men  for  their  attention  and  obedience,  and 
I  want  them  all  to  have  a  rest  after  their  long 
journey." 

"Stand  aside,  Sergeant,"  the  Lieutenant  said 
harshly ;  "  I  will  now  take  charge  of  the  com- 
mand, and  herewith  relieve  you  of  all  further 
responsibility.  You  will  consider  yourself  un- 
der orders  to  me." 

He  gave  me  his  arm  and  led  me  back  into 
the  court-yard,  where,  somehow,  all  the  escort 
had  collected,  and  again  I  was  reminded  of  a 
military  funeral  as  I  passed  through  the  file  of 
sober-faced,  heavily  armed  men. 

Entering  the  low  door  which  I  had  left  but 
an  hour  ago  forever,  as  I  thought,  I  turned  my 
head  wistfully  back,  and  there,  at  the  foot  of 
the  court-yard,  near  the  gate,  stood  Sergeant 
McBeth,  the  wind  blowing  about  the  folds  of 
his  short  soldier's  cape,  his  hand  resting  on  the 
hilt  of  his  cavalry  saber,  and  his  eyes  following 
me  with  a  questioning,  pitying  look.  Sergeant 
Brown  stood  gravely  holding  the  door  open  for 
us,  offering  the  Lieutenant  a  military  salute ; 
but  I  vainly  sought  Pinkow  with  a  last,  de- 
spairing look. 

Suddenly  his  voice  came,  rough  and  broken, 
from  the  open  gate  of  the  court-yard. 

"Madam,"  he  cried  in  evident  distress,  "mad- 
am— oh  !  it  is  too  late.  Toby  is  here,  but" 

Toby !  True,  had  I  not  seen  him  totter  un- 
der the  Lieutenant's  cruel  spurring  when  he  was 
urging  him  up  to  the  ambulance  a  while  ago? 
Swiftly  and  with  sudden  strength  I  snatched 
my  hand  out  of  the  Lieutenant's  encircling  fin- 
gers and  was  flying  back  across  the  yard  and 
outside,  where  I  saw  Pinkow  leaning,  sobbing 
against  Toby's  neck.  The  animal  was  trem- 
bling in  every  limb,  but  when  he  spied  me  a 
low  whinny  struck  my  ear,  and  he  moved  for- 
ward a  step  to  reach  my  side.  I  rushed  to- 
ward him,  but  before  I  could  reach  him  he  had 
tottered  and  fallen  at  my  very  feet,  with  a  deep, 
almost  human  groan. 

I  cried  out  with  grief  and  knelt  by  his  side, 
stroking  his  white,  silky  mane  and  trying  to  bed 
his  shapely  head  in  my  lap.  But  his  eyes  broke 
even  while  I  was  caressing  him,  and  I  bent  over 
the  faithful,  long-suffering  animal,  and  my  tears 
fell  hot  and  fast — tears  as  honest  and  sincere 
as  any  I  ever  shed  for  a  human  being. 

JOSEPHINE  CLIFFORD. 


GEORGE  ELIOT'S  LATER    WORK. 


DIVIDED. 

Once,  long  ago,  in  meadows  far  away, 
There,  side  by  side,  sprung  up  two  blossoms  bright, 
When  sweet  wild  flowers  were  thronging  to  the  light, 

Smiling  above  the  sod  to  make  the  May; 

And  these  two  loved  each  other  many  a  day. 
But  worthless  weeds  seek  light  and  sunshine  too, 
And  so,  between  the  loving  blossoms,  grew 

An  odious  plant  that  pushed  its  selfish  way. 
It  grew  so  tall  it  hid  the  very  light; 

It  spread  its  hateful  leaves  so  far  and  wide, 
That,  hidden  even  from  each  other's  sight, 

The  broken-hearted  blossoms  drooped  and  died. 
Oh,  ugly  weed,  that  parted  mate  from  mate, 
In  the  world's  meadows  they  have  named  thee — Fate! 

S.  E.  ANDERSON. 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    LATER  WORK. 


The  culmination  of  George  Eliot's  popularity 
seems  to  have  followed  the  publication  of  Mid- 
dlemarch.  Before  that  time  manuals  of  Eng- 
lish literature  put  her  name  into  supplementary 
paragraphs  with  Mrs.  Mulock-Craik  and  An- 
thony Trollope.  After  it,  the  parallel  between 
her  and  Shakspere  became  a  commonplace  of 
criticism.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  this  popularity 
accredited  itself  back  to  her  earlier  works  quite 
as  often  as  to  Middlemarch^  and  since  the  cool- 
ness with  which  Daniel  Deronda  was  received 
has  thrown  a  sort  of  retrospective  chill  on  Mid- 
dlemarch,  it  has  become  increasingly  the  thing, 
in  the  best  class  of  criticisms,  to  account  George 
Eliot's  early  work  her  soundest,  artistically. 

Indeed,  a  writer  in  the  New  York  Nation 
has  just  achieved  the  extreme  possibility  in  that 
line  by  declaring  for  The  Sad  Fortunes  of  the 
Reverend  Amos  Barton  as  her  greatest  work. 
Daniel  Deronda,  it  was  on  all  sides  agreed,  sub- 
tracted decidedly  from  her  success  —  not  that 
it  showed  any  falling  off,  but  rather  an  over- 
shooting of  the  mark  of  absolute  perfection, 
as  if  perfection  were  a  point  somewhere  in  the 
air,  and  George  Eliot  had  been  approaching  it 
like  an  arrow,  in  proportion  as  her  insight,  sub- 
tlety, width  of  view,  and  religious  strength  of 
conviction  increased,  until  suddenly,  by  the 
mere  continuance  of  her  course,  she  had  passed 
it,  and  given  us  too  much  of  these  qualities. 
The  course  her  genius  has  taken  has  indeed 
been  something  like  an  arrow-flight,  steadily 
VOL.  III.—  Sa. 


along  one  line,  without  pause  or  fluctuation. 
The  determining  traits  of  her  first  book  are 
conspicuous  in  her  last ;  those  of  her  last  in  her 
first ;  but  they  have  changed  places  in  relative 
importance.  The  theme  upon  which  she  began 
to  write  was  the  intrinsic  interest  and  impor- 
tance of  the  individual  human  life.  To  this  she 
more  and  more  added  (what  was  hinted  in 
Amos  Barton]  the  theme  of  the  relative  insig- 
nificance of  the  individual  life  until  it  assumed 
at  the  last  the  dominant  place. 

This  is  the  essential  difference  between  her 
earlier  and  later  work.  A  less  essential  but 
more  conspicuous  difference  is  that  in  her  first 
books  she  made  a  point  of  demonstrating  the 
value  of  the  individual  life  to  the  utmost  by  con- 
fining herself  to  the  commonplace  in  character 
and  event.  In  Amos  Barton  and  in  Brother 
Jacob  (which,  though  published  late,  was  pre- 
sumably written  early)  she  is  uncompromising- 
ly faithful  to  the  most  unbroken  and  realistic 
commonplace,  and  she  is  perfectly  successful 
in  demonstrating  its  artistic  value.  No  critic 
can  overrate  the  perfection  of  her  "gray-toned 
pictures."  But  this  theory  of  the  value  of 
commonplace  was  no  new  discovery  of  hers. 
Wordsworth  entered  on  art  in  precisely  the 
same  spirit,  and  just  as  the  novelist  who  began 
with  Amos  Barton  ended  with  Daniel  Deronda, 
the  poet  who  began  with  "We  are  Seven" 
ended  with  such  sonnets  as  "The  World  is  too 
Much  with  Us." 


502 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


The  truth  is  (however  much  sentiment  one 
must  go  counter  to  in  saying  so)  that  "the 
poetry  and  the  pathos,  the  tragedy  and  the 
comedy"  of  common  souls,  though  real,  are  not 
equal  to  those  of  uncommon  souls.  Herrman 
and  Dorothea  is  good,  but  Faust  is  better. 
Shakspere's  clowns  are  good,  but  his  kings  are 
better.  Without  ever  surrendering  a  jot  of  their 
belief  in  commonplace,  both  Wordsworth  and 
George  Eliot  found  it  inadequate  to  the  deep- 
ening power  of  their  genius.  However  real  the 
life  experiences  of  the  Amos  Bartons,  they  are 
shut  within  far  narrower  limits  than  those  of 
the  Daniel  Derondas ;  they  are  fewer,  simpler, 
less  intense,  and,  written  in  a  coarser  character, 
the  more  high -wrought  nature  has  a  myriad 
points  of  contact  with  the  life  of  the  universe ; 
it  vibrates  to  influences  that  would  not  be  a 
feather's  weight  to  the  other.  Influences  walk 
into  the  door  of  the  narrow  house  in  visible 
form,  and  do  nothing  with  its  owner  unless  they 
have  brute  strength  enough  to  take  him  by  the 
shoulder  and  compel  him ;  but  they  pass  in  im- 
palpable shoals  through  the  very  walls  of  the 
wide  house,  and  work  with  subtle  chemistry 
in  the  air,  and  food,  and  brain  of  the  dweller 
therein.  In  these  souls,  so  open  to  large  ex- 
perience and  wide  relations  with  all  that  is,  the 
natural  field  of  the  loftiest  and  largest  art  lies ; 
and  so  it  was  that  George  Eliot's  steadily  deep- 
ening insight  and  more  impassioned  feeling  to- 
ward life  led  her  inevitably  into  this  region  of 
more  subtile  and  high-wrought  experience,  and, 
like  every  artist  that  ever  wrote,  she  risked 
something  in  perfection  of  execution  when  she 
entered  on  work  of  larger  conception  and  loftier 
reach.  As  a  matter  of  course,  she  left  a  large 
part  of  her  audience  behind  her — not  the  part 
who  care  for  the  "gray -toned  pictures"  and 
"colorless  characters,"  but  the  part  who  care 
simply  for  the  narrative  of  common  incidents 
and  realistic  talk.  It  is  curious  that  any  critic 
should  urge  her  unquestionable  superiority  over 
all  writers  who  have  ever  written  in  the  fine 
handling  of  these  unemphatic  characters  as  a 
superiority  of  her  earlier  over  her  later  work, 
for  she  continues  them,  as  subordinate  charac- 
ters, to  the  very  end.  Anna  Gascoigne  is  as 
much  one  of  them  as  Lucy  Deane.  Certainly, 
Grandcourt  is  as  fairly  ranked  among  them  as 
Tom  Tulliver  (on  whom  one  critic  fixes  as  the 
author's  best  character  of  this  class),  and  is  a 
finer  portrait. 

The  transition  then  has  been  two -fold — an 
increasing  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  rela- 
tions of  the  individual  life  to  life  in  general,  and 
the  commonplace,  simply  related  lives  have 
sunk  to  subordinate  positions,  while  the  larger 
and  more  complex  lives  have  come  to  the  front. 


The  whole  course  of  the  change  indicates  that 
as  the  author  proceeded  further  and  further  in 
her  study  of  humanity,  she  gave  us  from  time 
to  time  the  results,  becoming  subtle  and  com- 
plex just  in  proportion  as  the  world  became  so  to 
her  sight,  as  if  she  had  simply  followed  a  thread 
of  insight  where  it  led  her,  into  deeper  laby- 
rinths, while  her  following  dropped  away.  This 
faithful  following  of  a  clue  has  saved  her  to  the 
end  from  turning  back  and  imitating  herself,  as 
she  would  inevitably  have  done  had  she  stayed 
on  the  plane  of  Adam  Bede  as  her  critics  wish. 
Repeat  herself  she  does— constantly,  frankly, 
insistently,  implying  that  she  finds  all  human 
life  only  a  variation  on  a  few  themes — but  imi- 
tate herself,  never. 

With  the  increase  in  subtilety  of  the  charac- 
ters she  deals  with,  the  history  of  their  psycho- 
logical experience  becomes  more  important  than 
ever,  and  that  of  external  occurrences  only  val- 
uable for  its  bearing  on  this.  In  Middlemarch^ 
therefore,  she  throws  aside  all  plot  beyond  what 
is  actually  necessary  to  the  inner  history.  With 
Middlemarch,  also,  a  conspicuous  change  in  the 
method  of  treatment  marks  the  important  place 
that  the  relative  view  of  the  individual's  life  has 
come  to  hold  in  her  writings;  for  it  is  with  Mid- 
dlemarch  that  she  ceases  to  follow  out  lives  only 
so  far  as  they  touch  the  central  one,  and  takes 
the  more  difficult  task  of  following  out  a  group 
of  lives  and  their  complex  interaction  independ- 
ently. In  both  these  respects  Middlemarch 
and.  Daniel  Deronda  stand  distinctly  apart,  and, 
therefore,  are  fairly  to  be  considered  her  "later 
writings,"  as  distinguished  from  all  her  other 
novels. 

But  between  Daniel  Deronda  and  Middle- 
march  there  is  another  wide  step ;  and  whether 
it  marked  another  stage  in  George  Eliot's  meth- 
od, or  whether  it  was  only  incidental,  and  an- 
other book  might  have  resembled  Middlemarch 
more  nearly  than  Daniel  Deronda,  we  shall 
never  know.  It  is  chiefly  in  the  tone  of  impas- 
sioned feeling  that  Daniel  Deronda  differs  from 
Middlemarch;  and  in  this  respect  it  differs 
hardly  less  from  everything  else  she  has  writ- 
ten, unless,  perhaps,  the  curious  sketch  called 
the  Lifted  Veil.  The  change  is  so  entirely  in 
accordance  with  her  progress  toward  the  high- 
est regions  of  art  that  I  incline  to  think  it  a  real 
step,  making  Daniel  Deronda  the  legitimate 
representative  of  the  latest  stage  of  her  genius. 

Up  to  this  point,  George  Eliot  had  written 
with  an  air  of  holding  her  material  fully  under 
control ;  but  in  Daniel  Deronda  she  throws  her- 
self into  the  current  of  the  story  with  an  im- 
passioned abandon.  All  her  other  books  rise 
to  this  intense  pitch  in  their  scenes  of  greatest 
power;  but  this  one  is  written  throughout  on 


GEORGE  ELIOT  S  LATER    WORK. 


503 


the  tragic  plane.  The  other  books  loiter  along 
through  the  lighter  scenes  with  an  undisturbed 
relish ;  in  this  one,  all  such  scenes  are  haunted 
by  a  consciousness  of  tragedy  somewhere,  as 
though  you  sat  among  people  that  were  talking 
lightly,  and  thought  of  a  decisive  battle  that 
you  knew  was  in  progress  on  the  other  side  of 
the  world.  The  sense  of  life  as  something 
somber  and  tremendous  never  quite  leaves  the 
author,  even  in  the  presence  of  those  who  re- 
gard it  as  the  most  simple  and  every -day  affair 
imaginable ;  even  when  she  sits  with  unsenti- 
mental people  at  their  lamp -lighted  tea-table, 
in  their  familiar  room,  she  keeps  a  window 
open  on  vague  reaches  of  starlight  and  dark- 
ness. Mordecai  is  such  a  window  among  the 
Cohens ;  Deronda  and  Mirah  among  the  Mey- 
ricks;  Gwendolen  in  her  home  circle  and  so- 
cial surroundings.  This  pervading  seriousness 
has  caused  the  book  to  give  a  somewhat  op- 
pressive feeling  to  its  readers,  much  as  a  reli- 
gious remark  in  general  company  would  do. 
In  various  other  ways  besides  the  slight  heavi- 
ness of  the  lighter  scenes,  the  intense  mood  of 
Daniel  Deronda  has  resulted  in  more  minor 
flaws  than  any  other  book  of  George  Eliot's 
contains;  for  both  in  real  life  and  in  art  the 
sense  of  the  ridiculous  and  the  fitting  is  blunt- 
ed in  proportion  to  the  abandon  of  feeling.  It 
was,  perhaps,  the  natural  dimming  of  humor 
with  advancing  age  that  made  such  jests  as 
"nonsense — which  had  undergone  a  mining 
operation"  possible;  certainly  her  humor  was 
never  so  thin,  nor  her  wit  so  keen,  as  in  Dan- 
iel Deronda  and  Theophrastus  Such. 

But  more  important  than  all  this  is  the  ex- 
tent to  which  the  higher  tragic  pitch  of  emotion 
enters  into  the  fundamental  construction  of 
Daniel  Deronda.  George  Eliot's  altruistic  phi- 
losophy is  too  well  understood  by  this  time  to 
need  any  comment ;  but  the  more  extreme  and 
thorough -going,  as  well  as  more  impassioned 
form  of  it  here  developed,  has  thrown  all  read- 
ers completely  off  the  track  except  those  that 
were  prepared,  both  by  teaching  and  temper- 
ament, to  take  the  author's  own  standpoint. 
For  she  insists  here  not  merely  upon  the  con- 
forming of  conduct  to  others'  claims,  and  the 
going-out  of  interest  into  others'  lives.  She 
assumes  in  the  first  place  that  man  should  see 
himself  in  his  actual  relative  position  to  the  rest 
of  the  universe,  estimate  himself  at  his  actual 
value,  as  an  impartial  daimon  might  estimate 
it ;  and  should,  moreover,  not  only  act,  but  feel, 
accordingly.  This  involves  a  claim  on  any  one 
morally  and  intellectually  capable  of  under- 
standing it ;  lays  him  under  obligation  to  enter 
into  an  attitude  of  complete  humility,  and  of 
loving,  self -prostrating  allegiance  toward  the 


ideals  he  recognizes,  and  under  responsibility 
of  sin  if  he  refuses.  There  is  in  this  concep- 
tion of  "sin"  and  "duty"  an  unreservedness  of 
meaning  equal  to  that  of  the  Hebrew  or  Puri- 
tan. Hans  Meyrick  is  under  no  further  obli- 
gation than  to  behave  honorably  on  special  oc- 
casions ;  Anna  Gascoigne  need  have  no  sense 
of  any  other  claim  life  has  on  her  than  her  nat- 
ural affections  make  a  matter  of  course;  but 
Gwendolen  Grandcourt  must  choose,  not  sim- 
ply to  do  right  instead  of  wrong,  but  to  strug- 
gle up  to  a  higher  plane  of  existence,  to  the 
attitude  of  self- annihilating  allegiance  that  is 
demanded  of  her  by  the  frame  of  things.  Now 
this  struggle  is  much  further  from  the  compre- 
hension of  even  intelligent  readers  than  any 
parallel  experience  in  George  Eliot's  books. 
Maggie  Tulliver's  rejection  of  love,  Dorothea 
Casaubon's  visit  to  Rosamond,  Romola's  ac- 
ceptance of  Savonarola's  spiritual  guidance,  all 
have  to  do  with  definite  action;  so  it  would 
have  been  if  Gwendolen's  experience  had  turned 
only  on  the  refusal  or  consent  to  marry  Grand- 
court.  But  the  long  experience  of  repentance 
and  terror  afterward,  during  which  she  cries  to 
Deronda  to  save  her,  not  merely  from  the  pos- 
sibility of  murder,  but  from  some  state  of  exist- 
ence, some  condition  of  character — this  be- 
comes intelligible  only  in  view  of  "the  higher, 
the  religious  life,"  whose  claim  on  her  was  so 
imperative  that  the  mere  living  outside  it  be- 
came a  sin. 

Now,  any  one  who  accepts  this  version  of 
altruistic  philosophy  with  full  sympathy,  or  is 
able  even  to  put  himself  temporarily  into  sym- 
pathy with  it,  and  judges  Gwendolen  by  the 
same  standards  she  judged  herself  by,  will  find 
the  apparent  confusion,  weakness,  and  morbid- 
ness of  Daniel  Deronda  fall  into  a  fine  har- 
mony. The  reader  must  needs  be  of  a  tem- 
perament to  which  the  beauty  of  utter  loyalty, 
and  the  righteousness  of  exacting  it,  appeal 
forcibly;  then,  accepting  the  author's  stand- 
point, he  will  recognize  a  fine  fitness  in  all 
Gwendolen's  experience,  he  will  enter  heartily 
into  her  abasement,  sharing  her  own  feeling, 
and  will  acquiesce  in  her  final  loving  submis- 
sion to  her  forsaken  lot,  as  right  and  fitting; 
and  in  all  this  he  will  be  far  more  in  sympathy 
with  her  than  if  he  resented  her  fortunes  as  un- 
just. By  the  same  standards,  Deronda  be- 
comes, if  not  the  ideal  man,  still  ideal  enough 
to  make  her  attitude  toward  him  entirely  fitting, 
and  their  mutual  relation  one  of  the  finest 
things  in  literature.  The  union  of  the  deepest 
personal  love  with  a  religious  adoration  is  nec- 
essarily rare,  for  it  can  only  occur  when  the 
objects  of  religious  worship  are  more  or  less 
identified  with  the  object  of  human  love;  but 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


when  it  does  occur  it  is  the  most  beautiful  form 
of  the  passion.  And,  on  the  other  side,  the  ex- 
treme difficulty  of  the  position  in  which  De- 
ronda  was  placed,  and  the  way  in  which  he  ac- 
cepted it,  justify  Gwendolen's  reverence  for 
him  far  more  thoroughly  than  the  critics  have 
admitted,  and  may  certainly  be  allowed  to  out- 
weigh his  somewhat  heavy  method  of  express- 
ing himself. 

Again,  a  perception  of  the  artistic  construc- 
tion of  Daniel  Deronda  depends  entirely  on 
sympathy  with  George  Eliot's  ideas  of  perspec- 
tive. There  is  a  point — which  I  believe  no 
critic  yet  has  found — from  which  the  whole  in- 
congruous mass  falls  into  a  perfect  symmetry. 
There  is  no  doubt  whatever  in  my  mind  that 
George  Eliot  had  a  distinct  artistic  purpose  in 
the  "Jew  business,"  and  that  she  was,  more- 
over, right  in  it,  for  in  Daniel  Deronda,  as  in 
Middlemarch,  the  presentation  of  life  in  its  true 
perspective  is  her  dominant  aim.  As  far  as 
possible,  she  has  taken  the  whole  world  and  all 
life  for  her  scene;  has  undertaken  the  stupen- 
dous task  of  setting  forth  at  the  same  time  the 
vastness  of  a  single  life,  the  importance  of  suf- 
fering, sinning,  striving,  enjoying,  shut  up  within 
one  human  frame,  and  the  littleness  of  a  single 
life  among  the  myriads  like  it  and  the  vaster 
movements  of  the  world.  This  combination  is 
what  I  call  her  vision  of  life's  true  perspective, 
equally  distant  from  the  dwarfing  of  everything 
looked  down  on  from  a  mountain,  and  the  un- 
due importance  of  immediate  surroundings  seen 
at  the  heart  of  a  crowd.  It  is  Gwendolen's 
story,  not  Mordecai's,  nor  Mirah's,  nor  even 
Deronda's,  that  is  told;  but  it  is  Gwendolen's 
true  story  seen  from  an  outside  standpoint. 
Therefore,  we  must  see  her  life  in  among  others 
— others  of  wider  range  and  greater  value.  It 
would  not  be  enough  to  have  Deronda  go  off 
into  a  vaguely  wider  world  of  which  we  had 
heard  nothing;  that  would  put  us  into  Gwen- 
dolen's own  point  of  view.  We  must  be  realiz- 
ing all  along  how  the  world  is  going  on  around 
and  above  her,  and  how  utterly  outside  her  con- 
ception are  the  currents  of  events  that  bring 
momentous  results  to  her  as  incidentally  as  a 
stream,  going  about  its  own  business,  turns  or 
breaks  a  boy's  water-wheel.  Therefore,  it  is 
according  to  George  Eliot's  design,  not  against 
it,  that  the  main  human  interest  remains  with 
Gwendolen.  The  fact  that  it  does  is  a  tribute 
to  the  successful  management  of  the  difficult 
scheme.  To  this  end  the  "Jew  part"  of  the 
story  is  an  intellectual  study,  all  whose  feeling 
is  in  a  region  out  of  the  reach  of  any  but  intel- 
lectual sympathy.  The  Klesmer  episode,  too, 
falls  admirably  into  place  in  carrying  out  the 
same  scheme.  But  it  is  an  obvious  corollary 


that  all  this  part  of  the  book  is  blank  to  those 
whose  intellectual  sympathies  do  not  reach  the 
subject. 

Daniel  Deronda,  then,  shuts  out  from  appre- 
ciation all  below  a  certain  grade  of  intellect — 
all,  even  of  the  best  intellectual  rank,  who  know 
nothing  of  altruism;  all,  even  of  those  who 
know  all  about  altruism,  who  are  not  able  to 
put  themselves  into  sympathy  with  the  impas- 
sioned form  of  it  in  this  book.  Yet,  in  writing 
a  book  that  could  be  great  and  admirable  to 
only  a  few,  the  author  has  not  committed  a 
blunder,  for  she  has  not  in  the  least  deviated 
from  truth  to  nature ;  and  this  truth  is  entirely 
independent  of  her  point  of  view;  for  the  stand- 
ards that  George  Eliot  holds  and  that  Gwen- 
dolen accepted  are  those  that,  true  or  not,  un- 
der the  given  circumstances  she  would  have  ac- 
cepted. No  detail  of  the  story  would  be  differ- 
ent if  the  author's  whole  basis  of  judging  its 
significance  were  a  blunder.  Nevertheless,  the 
fact  that  Gwendolen  and  Deronda  are  influ- 
enced in  exactly  the  way  they  would  have  been 
in  real  life  can  only  be  known  by  those  who 
understand  something  about  the  influences  at 
work.  The  unintelligibility  of  the  book  is,  there- 
fore, no  result  of  false  or  over -learned  treat- 
ment, but  simply  of  having  laid  her  scene,  so  to 
speak,  in  mental  and  moral  regions  that  are 
not  even  empirically  known  except  to  a  small 
group.  If  one  can  once  fall  into  the  right  atti- 
tude, there  is  an  overwhelming  sublimity  about 
the  book — the  most  sublime  form  of  love  in  the 
relation  with  Deronda;  the  most  sublime  part  of 
all  forms  of  religion  in  the  relation  to  the  ideals 
of  her  creed ;  and  the  largest  conception  possi- 
ble of  the  vastness  of  interacting  force  in  socie- 
ty in  the  relation  to  the  world.  Middlemarch 
is  the  more  perfectly  executed  and  the  wider  in 
range ;  but  Daniel  Deronda  is  a  grander  and 
more  difficult  conception,  and  has  more  passion 
and  power,  and  an  insight  more  miraculously 
subtle.  Theophrastus  Such  ought  hardly  to  be 
counted  either  as  a  later  or  earlier  work,  for  the 
reason  that  it  seems  to  be  merely  a  collection 
of  sketches  in  which  she  had  noted  down  from 
time  to  time  certain  results  of  her  observation. 
It  gives  the  impression  of  being  rather  a  col- 
lection of  memoranda  for  her  own  use  than  a 
work  by  itself,  and  its  dates  of  writing  no  doubt 
extend  over  a  long  period. 

George  Eliot's  later  novels  may  violate  all 
the  rules  of  art  for  the  novel.  They  may  even 
be  no  novels  at  all.  Nay,  further,  since  their 
purpose  is  so  frankly  psychological  study  rather 
than  pleasure,  since  they  have  given  the  world  a 
distinct  system  of  morals,  they  may  be  no  art 
at  all.  One  may  readily  grant  that  her  earlier 
works  are  the  best  novels,  even  that  they  are 


AND   'jo. 


505 


the  best  art,  and  yet  maintain  that  the  later 
ones,  call  them  novels  or  call  them  psycholog- 
ical treatises,  are  her  greatest.  Whether  she 
has  introduced  philosophy  into  fiction,  or  fiction 
into  philosophy,  she  has  produced  books  con- 
taining more  truth,  more  power,  more  actual 


bearing  on  life,  more  wisdom,  and  more  com- 
prehension of  human  nature  than  either  fiction 
or  philosophy  from  any  other  hand  ever  con- 
tained, and  in  all  these  qualities  her  later  work 
surpassed  her  earlier. 

MILICENT  W.  SHINN. 


'49   AND   '50. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

"I  was  sitting  one  afternoon,"  said  Captain 
Sutter,  "just  after  my  siesta,  engaged  in  writ- 
ing a  letter  to  a  relative  residing  at  Lucerne, 
when  I  was  interrupted  by  Mr.  Marshall  (a 
gentleman  with  whom  I  had  frequent  business 
transactions,  and  whom  Mr.  Blair  met  in  San 
Francisco)  bursting  hurriedly  into  the  room. 
From  the  unusual  agitation  in  his  manner,  I 
imagined  that  something  serious  had  occurred, 
and,  as  we  involuntarily  do  in  this  part  of  the 
world,  I  at  once  glanced  to  see  if  my  rifle  was 
in  its  proper  place.  You  should  know  that  the 
mere  appearance  of  Mr.  Marshall  at  that  mo- 
ment in  the  Fort  was  enough  to  surprise  me, 
as  he  had  but  two  days  before  left  the  place  to 
make  some  alterations  in  a  mill  for  sawing  pine 
planks,  which  he  had  just  run  up  for  me,  some 
miles  higher  up  the  American.  When  he  had 
recovered  himself  a  little,  he  told  me  that,  how- 
ever great  my  surprise  might  be  at  his  unex- 
pected reappearance,  it  would  be  much  greater 
when  I  heard  the  intelligence  he  had  to  com- 
municate. 'Intelligence,'  he  added,  ' which,  if 
properly  profited  by,  will  put  us  both  in  pos- 
session of  unheard-of  wealth — millions  of  dol- 
lars, in  fact!'  I  frankly  own,  when  I  heard 
this,  that  I  thought  something  had  touched 
Mr.  Marshall's  brain,  but  suddenly  all  of  my 
misgivings  were  put  an  end  to  by  his  flinging 
on  the  table  a  handful  of  scales  of  pure  virgin 
gold.  I  was  thunderstruck,  and  asked  him  to 
explain  what  all  this  meant ;  when  he  went  on 
to  say,  that,  according  to  my  instructions,  he 
had  thrown  the  mill-wheel  out  of  gear  to  let 
the  whole  body  of  water  in  the  dam  find  a  pas- 
sage through  the  tail-race,  which  was  previouly 
too  narrow  to  allow  the  water  to  run  off  in  suffi- 
cient quantity,  whereby  the  wheel  was  prevent- 
ed from  efficiently  performing  its  work.  By 
this  alteration  the  narrow  channel  was  consid- 
erably enlarged,  and  a  mass  of  sand  and  gravel 
carried  off  by  the  force  of  the  torrent.  Early 
in  the  morning  after  this  took  place,  he  (Mr. 


Marshall)  was  walking  along  the  left  bank 
of  the  stream,  when  he  perceived  something 
which  he  at  first  took  for  a  piece  of  opal — a 
clear,  transparent  stone,  very  common  here — 
glittering  on  one  of  the  spots  laid  bare  by  the 
sudden  crumbling  away  of  the  bank.  He  paid 
no  attention  to  this ;  but  while  he  was  giving 
directions  to  the  workmen,  having  observed 
several  similar  glittering  fragments,  his  curios- 
ity was  so  far  excited  that  he  stooped  down  and 
picked  one  up.  'Do  you  know,'  said  Mr.  Mar- 
shall to  me,  '  I  positively  debated  within  myself 
two  or  three  times  whether  I  should  take  the 
trouble  to  bend  my  back  to  pick  up  one  of  the 
pieces,  and  had  decided  on  not  doing  so,  when, 
farther  on,  another  glittering  morsel  caught  my 
eye — the  largest  of  the  pieces  now  before  you. 
I  condescended  to  pick  it  up,  and,  to  my  aston- 
ishment, found  it  was  a  thin  scale  of  what  ap- 
pears to  \>zpure gold?  He  then  gathered  some 
twenty  or  thirty  similar  pieces,  which,  on  exam- 
ination, convinced  him  that  his  suppositions 
were  right.  His  first  impression  was,  that  this 
gold  had  been  lost  or  buried  there  by  some 
early  Indian  tribe — perhaps  some  of  those 
mysterious  inhabitants  of  the  West,  of  whom 
we  have  no  account,  but  who  dwelt  on  this  con- 
tinent centuries  ago,  and  had  built  those  cities 
and  temples,  the  ruins  of  which  are  scattered 
about  these  solitary  wilds.  On  proceeding, 
however,  to  examine  the  neighboring  soil,  he 
discovered  that  it  was  more  or  less  auriferous. 
This  at  once  decided  him.  He  mounted  his 
horse  and  rode  down  to  me,  as  fast  as  it  would 
carry  him,  with  the  news." 

Here  James's  spirit  began  to  groan  within 
him,  like  that  of  a  hound  when  he  dreams  of 
the  chase ;  but  he  clasped,  with  both  hands,  the 
sides  of  his  chair,  and  held  himself  down  in 
silence.  The  features  of  the  narrator  were 
lighted  by  an  animation  that  not  only  became 
them,  but  suffused  the  room,  not  omitting  to 
dwell  its  very  prettiest  on  little  Mrs.  Durgin, 
seated,  kitten -like,  at  the  Captain's  feet.  It 
was  an  hour  of  genuine  excitement,  manifested 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


by  intense  silence  that  is  more  impressive  than 
the  most  clamorous  attempt  at  expression.  The 
speaker's  voice  was  modulated  with  clear  ac- 
cent and  musical  cadence,  increasing  as  the 
story  proceeded : 

"At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Marshall's  account, 
and  when  I  had  convinced  myself,  from  the 
specimens  he  had  brought  with  him,  that  it  was 
not  exaggerated,  I  felt  as  much  excited  as  he. 
I  eagerly  inquired  if  he  had  shown  the  gold  to 
the  work-people  at  the  mill,  and  was  glad  to 
hear  that  he  had  not  spoken  to  a  single  person 
about  it.  We  agreed,"  continued  the  Captain, 
smiling,  "not  to  mention  the  circumstance  to 
any  one,  and  arranged  to  set  off  early  the  next 
day  for  the  mill.  On  our  arrival,  just  before 
sundown,  we  poked  the  sand  about  in  various 
places,  and,  before  long,  succeeded  in  collect- 
ing between  us,  more  than  an  ounce  of  gold, 
mixed  with  a  good  deal  of  sand." 

Mrs.  Durgin,  it  was  evident  from  the  deli- 
cate pout  upon  her  lips,  was  greatly  disappoint- 
ed ;  but,  looking  up  furtively  at  Blair,  and  per- 
ceiving that  he  was  not  concerned,  she  again 
dropped  her  eyes  on  the  plain,  uncarpeted  floor. 

"I  stayed  at  Mr.  Marshall's  that  night,  and 
the  next  day  we  proceeded  some  little  distance 
up  the  South  Fork,  and  found  that  gold  ex- 
isted all  along  its  course,  not  only  in  the  bed 
of  the  main  stream,  where  the  water  had  sub- 
sided, but  in  every  little  dried -up  creek  and  ra- 
vine. Indeed,  I  think  it  was  more  plentiful  in 
these  latter  places,  for  I  myself,  with  nothing 
more  than  a  small  knife,  picked  out  from  a  dry 
gorge,  a  little  way  up  the  mountain,  a  solid 
lump  of  gold  which  weighed  nearly  an  ounce 
and  a  half.  On  our  return  to  the  mill,  we  were 
astonished  by  the  work-people  coming  up  to 
us  in  a  body,  and  showing  us  small  flakes  of 
gold  similar  to  those  we  had  ourselves  procured. 
Marshall  tried  to  laugh  the  matter  off  with  them 
and  to  persuade  them  that  what  they  had  found 
was  only  some  shining  mineral  of  trifling  value; 
but  one  of  the  Indians,  who  had  worked  at  the 
gold  mine  of  La  Paz,  in  Lower  California,  cried 
out,  'Oro!  oro!'" 

James  could  not,  this  time,  resist  some  slight 
utterance  of  emotion.  It  had  nothing  to  do, 
however,  with  gold,.  The  word  oro  brought 
up  the  tender  visit  made  to  him  while  lying  ill 
in  the  San  Francisco  shanty  bearing  that  name. 

"The  Gazelle,"  he  whispered  to  Blair. 

A  trivial  occurrence  is  often  of  great  signifi- 
cance. It  would  not  have  been  difficult  for  any- 
one to  perceive  that  the  something  whispered 
in  Blair's  ear  disturbed  his  customary  compos- 
ure. The  company  were  so  interested  in  the 
Captain's  narrative,  however,  that  Blair's  per- 
turbation escaped  notice.  He  was  a  man  of 


strong  self-  control  and  with  no  trace  of  super- 
stition in  his  nature ;  but,  for  some  reason,  the 
airy  form  of  the  "Gazelle"  had  been  flitting 
before  his  mind  all  day,  and  when  her  name 
was  pronounced,  though  it  came  from  the  lips  of 
one  of  the  humblest  of  oracles,  it  startled  him. 
The  Captain  then  continued  : 

"We  were  disappointed  enough  at  this  dis- 
covery, and  supposed  that  the  work-people 
had  been  watching  our  movements,  although 
we  thought  we  had  taken  every  precaution 
against  being  observed  by  them.  I  heard  aft- 
erward, that  one  of  them,  a  sly  Kentuckian, 
had  dogged  us  about ;  and  that,  looking  on  the 
ground  to  see  if  he  could  discover  what  we  were 
in  search  of,  had  lighted  on  some  flakes  of  gold 
himself.  The  next  day  I  rode  back  to  the  Fort, 
organized  a  laboring  party,  set  the  carpenters 
to  work  on  a  few  necessary  matters,  and  the 
next  day  accompanied  them  to  a  point  of  the 
Fork,  where  they  encamped  for  the  night.  By 
the  following  morning,  I  had  a  party  of  fifty 
Indians  fairly  at  work.  The  way  we  first  man- 
aged was  to  shovel  the  soil  into  small  buckets, 
or  into  some  of  our  famous  Indian  baskets 
then  wash  all  the  light  earth  out,  and  pick  away 
the  stones ;  after  this,  we  dried  the  sand  on 
pieces  of  canvas,  and,  with  long  reeds,  blew 
away  all  but  the  gold. — I  have  now  some  rude 
machines  in  use,  and  upward  of  one  hundred 
men  employed,  chiefly  Indians,  who  are  well 
fed,  and  who  are  allowed  whisky  three  times 
a  day. — The  report  soon  spread.  Some  of  the 
gold  was  sent  to  San  Francisco,  and  crowds  of 
people  flocked  to  the  diggings.  Added  to  this, 
a  large  emigrant  party  of  Mormons  entered 
California  across  the  Rocky  Mountains,  just 
as  the  affair  was  first  made  known.  They  halt- 
ed at  once,  and  set  to  work  on  a  spot  some 
thirty  miles  from  here,  where  a  few  of  them 
remain.  When  I  was  last  up  at  the  diggings, 
there  were  full  eight  hundred  men  at  work,  at 
one  place  and  another,  with,  perhaps,  some- 
thing like  three  hundred  more  passing  back- 
ward and  forward  between  here  and  the  mines. 
I  at  first  imagined  the  gold  would  soon  be  ex- 
hausted by  such  crowds  of  seekers,  but  subse- 
quent observations  have  convinced  me  that  it 
will  take  many  years  to  bring  about  such  a  re- 
sult, even  with  ten  times  the  present  number  of 
people  employed.  What  surprises  me  is  that 
this  country  should  have  been  visited  by  so 
many  scientific  men,  and  that  none  of  them 
stumbled  upon  these  treasures ;  that  scores  of 
keen -eyed  trappers  should  have  crossed  this 
valley  in  every  direction,  and  tribes  of  Indians 
have  dwelt  in  it  for  centuries,  and  still  the  gold 
remain  undiscovered.  I  myself  have  passed 
the  very  spot  above  a  hundred  times  during  the 


'49  AND 


5°7 


last  ten  years,  but  was  just  as  blind  as  the  rest 
of  them ;  so,  after  all,  I  must  not  wonder  at  the 
discovery  not  having  been  made  earlier." 

The  Captain  had  finished  this  now  famous 
narrative ;  and,  their  hearts  beating  faster  with 
encouraged  hope,  the  little  company  thanked 
him  for  another  marked  favor  added  to  the 
number  already  extended  to  them. 

"Long  live  Captain  Sutler,"  cried  Blair;  "and 
may  his  prosperity  be  proportionate  to  his  dis- 
tinguished merits !" 

"The  same  to  you,  young  man,  and  to  all  be- 
fore me.  As  for  me,  already  they  are  begin- 
ning to  say  that  my  lands  are  not  my  own." 
So  spake  the  Captain ;  and,  with  a  touch  of 
wounded  pride  upon  his  noble  countenance,  he 
passed  out  of  the  room. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  famous  City  Hotel  was  originally  intend- 
ed, by  Captain  Sutter,  for  a  saw  and  grist  mill. 
As  finally  constructed,  it  became  a  three  -  story 
building,  thirty -five  by  fifty -five  feet  in  ground 
measurement.  Its  situation  was  on  Front  Street 
between  I  and  J  Streets.  At  the  time  of  which 
we  speak,  it  had  been  recently  completed  at  an 
expense  of  $100,000,  and  was  leased  at  a  rent 
of  $5,000  per  month.  It  was  to  this  structure, 
grand  for  those  days,  that  our  friends  now  re- 
paired to  participate  in  the  novel  festivities  of 
a  Californian  ball. 

They  were  conveyed  to  the  scene  of  pleasure 
in  a  large  wagon  which  belonged  to  Captain 
Sutter.  The  vehicle  was  profusely  cushioned 
and  ornamented  with  the  skins  of  various  wild 
animals,  and  drawn  by  four  spirited  horses. 
The  Captain  and  his  guests  were  in  the  mer- 
riest of  moods,  and  the  dashing  ride  to  town, 
though  of  short  duration,  was  one  not  soon  to 
be  forgotten. 

As  has  been  said,  this  ball  was  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  an  ingeniously  devised  plan  for 
feasting  the  eyes  of  hungry  man  with  the  sight 
of  as  many  fellow -creatures  as  could,  by  the 
furthest  stretch  of  lenity,  lay  claim  to  the  magic 
title  of  "woman."  Accordingly,  the  country  had 
been  thoroughly  canvassed  for  miles  around, 
by  persuasive  embassadors,  to  this  worthy  end. 
The  result  may  be  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
when  our  party  were  ushered  into  the  midst  of 
the  gay  throng  to  be  so  brilliantly  illuminated 
by  feminine  brightness,  their  countenances  fell, 
as  had  those  of  many  that  had  preceded.  The 
men,  not  to  be  deterred  by  the  thirty -two -dol- 
lar ticket  of  admission,  numbered  nearly  three 
hundred ;  while  the  charms  of  a  little  band  of 


twenty-five  women  were  to  withstand  the  fam- 
ished gaze  of  this  expectant  male  multitude. 
Madame  Durgin  immediately  discovered  that 
she  was  to  be  the  center  of  attraction.  Not- 
withstanding her  appropriate  attire  for  such  an 
occasion  was  lying  idle  (and  a  smart  storage 
price  being  paid  for  its  safe -keeping  in  San 
Francisco  besides),  she  was  soon  resigned  to 
her  loss. 

The  men,  as  a  whole,  were  very  plain  of 
feature,  and  their  dress  corresponding.  Some, 
indeed,  presented  a  decidedly  rough  appear- 
ance. The  sturdy,  weather-beaten  face  of  the 
pioneer  could  not  disguise  itself,  had  it  been  so 
inclined,  with  any  of  the  tricks  of  fashion ;  the 
lean,  blue  face  of  the  sufferer  from  fever  and 
ague  was  not  to  be  painted  and  plumped  into 
youth  and  beauty;  while  those  that  had  been 
for  some  time  unused  to  the  society  of  women 
could  not  suddenly  bring  back  their  former  ease 
and  grace  for  this  special  occasion.  After  all, 
there  was  something  more  pleasing  in  the  as- 
pect of  these  men  than  in  that  of  the  sleek- 
haired  gamblers,  stroking  their  carefully  culti- 
vated mustachios  with  fingers  overladen  with 
gold.  There  were  two  native  Californians  pres- 
ent, in  whom  Mrs.  Durgin  found  traces  of  gen- 
uine gentility.  She  also  looked  with  admiration 
upon  a  solitary  Spanish  Don  of  the  old  school. 
An  army  officer,  too,  passed  muster;  but,  all 
in  all,  the  assembly  struck  the  young  lady  as 
tame  and  uninteresting.  Uninteresting  it  may 
have  been,  but  the  judgment  of  tameness  was 
pronounced  too  soon.  As  yet,  these  homely, 
poorly  dressed  lords  of  creation  were  spell- 
bound. They  were  absorbed  in  trying  to  re- 
call the  looks  of  wives,  mothers,  and  sisters  left 
behind,  by  a  conscientious  study  of  the  few 
specimens  of  alien  femininity  before  them. 

"Well,  she  is  pretty,"  said  one;  staring  un- 
interruptedly at  a  girl  that  could  pretend  to  no 
charms  but  an  abundant  display  of  gold. 

She  was  nearly  all  necklace,  and  bracelets, 
and  rings ;  but  she  resembled  a  loved  daughter 
far  away.  Why  should  she  not  be  an  object 
of  admiration?  It  was,  after  all,  the  girl  at 
home  that  the  pioneer  saw — not  the  one  in  his 
presence. 

"I'll  be  derned,  but  she's  right  down  slick!" 
said  another,  blinking  upon  fair  Mrs.  Durgin. 

This  fact  was  not  to  be  questioned.  It  would 
have  been  agreed  upon  anywhere. 

But  the  bride  was  not  to  pass  the  entire  even- 
ing without  a  rival.  Presently  entered  a  gen- 
tlemanly mannered  man,  upon  whose  arm  lean- 
a  lady  several  years  the  senior  of  Mrs.  Durgin. 
She  was  tall,  well  formed,  and  of  that  lily  com- 
plexion that  is  seldom  found  unassociated  with 
hair  of  a  rich  yellow  shade  inclined  toward 


508 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


auburn.  The  new -comer  was  not,  in  the  strict 
sense,  beautiful ;  but  she  was  very  comely, 
handsome,  if  you  choose,  and  there  was  some- 
thing in  her  manner  that  bespoke  the  lady. 

It  was  now  time  for  Blair  and  Ensign  to  pass 
complimentary  remarks.  Up  to  this  time,  they 
had  been  soundly  berating  the  over- dressed, 
over  ornamented  daughters  of  the  West ;  who, 
if  they  were  not  well  favored  and  modest  enough 
to  meet  the  fastidiousness  of  the  Bostonians, 
were,  nevertheless,  very  much  at  home,  exceed- 
ingly impartial  in  their  manifestations.of  happy 
temper,  and  wholly  independent  of  whatever 
criticism  might  be  passed  upon  them. 

"And  who  can  the  radiant  creature  be?"  ask- 
ed Blair. 

"  I  know  not,"  answered  Ensign;  "but  I  begin 
to  appreciate  the  condition  of  this  eager  crowd 
of  men,  banished  so  long  from  the  presence  of 
the  refined  and  beautiful.  There  is  nobility  in 
the  nature  of  these  starved  beings.  There  is 
hope  of  them  when  they  can  thus  stand,  like 
huddled  sheep,  in  contemplation  of  anything 
that  wears  the  form  of  woman." 

"See,"  spoke  the  other;  "she  is  being  led  to- 
ward the  Captain's  wife.  It  will  not  be  long 
before  the  Captain  himself  will  request  an  in- 
troduction. He  is  a  thorough  soldier  in  spirit 
and  in  mien.  I  really  entertain  great  admira- 
tion for  him.  It  will  be  a  downright  disgrace 
to  our  people  if  any  man  or  set  of  men  be  per- 
mitted to  disturb  him  in  the  enjoyment  of  his 
well  earned  possessions.  He  fears  it,  I  know, 
by  the  way  in  which  he  responded  to  my  wishes 
for  his  future  peace  and  happiness." 

"Ho,  ho,  here  you  are !" 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  Doctor. 

"Isn't  that  a  group  for  an  artist?  For  heav- 
en's sake,  look  yonder!" 

The  Doctor  was  to  be  excused  for  a  certain 
degree  of  consternation,  and,  considering  the 
peculiarity  of  his  composition,  for  an  unlimited 
amount  of  laughter.  Seated  on  three  stools, 
apart  from  the  main  body  of  the  guests,  sat 
three  forms.  Two  of  them  were  those  of  utter 
strangers,  the  third  was  familiar.  The  former 
were  females  of  dark,  rich  complexion,  black 
hair  and  eyes,  and  clad  in  scant  garments  that 
admitted  of  a  generous  display  of  voluptuous 
form.  Their  skirts  fell  scarcely  below  their 
knees,  and  the  white  bodice  above  stopped  as 
shockingly  short  of  their  well  turned  necks  ; 
while  over  their  heads  were  thrown  silken  scarfs 
that  drooped  in  graceful  folds  upon  their  naked 
shoulders.  Between  these  two  beaming  daugh- 
ters of  La  Paz,  sat,  in  smiling  composure,  the 
only  son  of  Ebenezer  Swilling,  of  Swansea, 
New  Hampshire.  Oblivious  to  all  the  world 
besides,  he  sat,  nodding  and  gesturing  in  re- 


sponse to  the  graceful  movement  of  hands  and 
lips  that  greeted  him  upon  either  side. 

"The  nincompoop,"  shouted  the  Doctor, 
laughing  as  if  his  sides  would  burst,  "they  can't 
understand  a  word  he  says.  Behold  the  pains 
he  evidently  takes  to  present  his  points  clearly." 

"What  ridiculous  feat  is  there  left  for  that 
boy  to  attempt ! "  spoke  Blair,  laughing  as  lust- 
ily inside,  as  the  physician  was  laughing  both 
inside  and  out.  "We  must  get  him  away  from 
that  doubly  dangerous  temptation,  or  it  will  be 
the  last  of  him.  Here,  Ensign,  you  are  the 
man  to  go  to  his  rescue.  Just  step  up  behind 
him,  and  say,  in  a  careless  voice,  as  if  you  were 
addressing  no  one  in  particular,  'Blair  wishes 
to  see  you.' " 

Ensign  was  about  setting  out  upon  this  chari- 
table errand,  when  Captain  Sutler  came  for- 
ward, and,  capturing  the  three  gentlemen,  has- 
tened them  into  the  presence  of  his  wife,  of 
the  blue -eyed  bride,  and  of  the  strangers,  Pro- 
fessor Monroe  and  lady. 

A  brisk  and  agreeable  conversation  ensued, 
which  consumed  the  time  of  this  little  group 
until  the  hour  of  refreshment.  Poor  James, 
together  with  the  other  guests,  had  been  lost 
sight  of.  He  made  his  appearance,  however, 
when  the  viands  were  introduced.  He  was  still 
alive  and  in  good  health,  and  unaccompanied 
by  the  Spanish -speaking  ladies  with  whom  he 
had  been  left  in  unintelligible  conversation. 
The  evening  had  passed,  so  far,  very  quietly. 
This  was  as  it  should  be ;  for  only  calm  minds 
can  contemplate  with  benefit  the  scenes  that 
may  engage  their  attention.  When,  however, 
the  supper  was  served,  a  change  began  to  creep 
over  the  assemblage.  It  was  a  sumptuous  re- 
past, fit  for  the  royalty  of  an  old  people.  The 
wine,  at  $16  a  bottle,  was  the  crowning  glory. 
It  flowed  like  water  from  the  mountain  springs ; 
and  before  its  warming  tide  all  stiffness  and 
diffidence  vanished  as  if  by  magic.  The  old 
became  young ;  the  modest,  bold ;  the  glow  of 
health  returned  to  the  pallid  ch'eek,  and  the 
heart  of  youth  beat  again  in  the  breast  oppress- 
ed with  care.  The  women  who  appeared  come- 
ly before,  in  spite  of  all  facts  to  the  contrary, 
now  shone  with  seraphic  beauty.  The  stern 
pioneer  drank  to  the  charms  of  as  many  females 
as  would  take  the  trouble  to  receive  his  com- 
pliments, and,  when  the  inviting  music  sound- 
ed from  the  instruments  of  players  inspired  by 
deep  potations,  the  scene  grew  to  be  one  of  the 
most  lively  imaginable.  Stiff,  labor -strained 
arms  clasped  the  waists  of  willing  partners,  and 
rheumatic  limbs  went  spinning  into  the  swift 
whirl  of  the  dance  as  if  they  had  never  experi- 
enced the  fetters  of  pain.  Our  more  cultivated 
friends  could  not  refrain  from  participation 


'49  AND 


509 


in  the  general  exuberance,  though  they  were 
obliged  to  be  somewhat  guarded  in  the  grant- 
ing of  favors  solicited  with  unusual  fervor. 

The  mirth  was  rising  higher  and  higher,  when 
suddenly  a  sharp  cry  was  heard  in  the  direction 
of  the  bar-room  (conveniently  adjoining  the 
apartment),  and  several  ran  to  discover  the 
cause  of  the  disturbance. 

"Back,  back — everybody!" 

It  was  the  deep,  drawling  command  of  none 
other  than  James  Swilling.  But  the  reckless 
throng,  instead  of  obeying  the  warning,  pressed 
precipitantly  forward.  Crash — crash — crash! 
came  a  succession  of  sounds  indicating  a  dem- 
olition of  the  costly  tables,  chairs,  and  glass- 
ware of  the  bar.  James  continued  to  shout,  but 
to  no  purpose.  It  was  not  until  he  was  raised 
from  the  floor,  bleeding  profusely,  that  those  in 
the  foremost  positions  took  measures  to  stay 
the  onward  rush  of  excited  human  beings. 

Blair,  an  unusually  powerful  man,  did  fierce 
work  in  his  endeavor  to  reach  the  position 
whence  James's  voice  proceeded.  He  well 
knew  that  his  comrade  would  secure  vastly 
more  than  his  proportion  of  bodily  injury.  At 
length  he  succeeded,  arriving  just  in  season, 
probably,  to  save  James's  life  and  the  lives  of 
several  others. 

It  proved  that  a  vaquero,  having  mounted  a 
wild  horse  for  the  purpose  of  subduing  it  ac- 
cording to  the  true  Mexican  fashion,  after  dash- 
ing madly  about  town  had  attempted  to  pass 
the  door  of  the  bar-room  opening  into  the  street. 
The  frenzied  animal,  for  reasons  best  known 
to  itself,  suddenly  determined  otherwise,  and, 
leaping  upon  the  veranda,  bounded  on  into  the 
apartment.  As  it  entered,  the  rider's  head  was 
driven  violently  against  the  upper  casing  of 
the  door,  felling  him,  insensible,  to  the  floor. 
The  room  was  occupied  by  those  of  the  guests 
that  felt  more  at  home  there  than  within.  Of 
this  number,  prompted,  undoubtedly,  by  his 
love  of  exploration,  at  the  opportune  moment 
of  danger  came  unfortunate  James.  All  but 
this  hero  instantly  quitted  the  room,  one  of  the 
retreating  guests  insanely  closing  the  door  after 
him.  The  infuriated  horse,  being  thus  impris- 
oned, no  sooner  discovered  that  it  was  sole 
proprietor  of  the  premises  than  it  began  to  con- 
duct itself  accordingly.  Seeing  its  own  distin- 
guished figure  reflected  in  the  splendid  mirror, 
it  rushed  against  it  with  all  the  fury  of  which 
it  was  capable.  Emboldened  by  this  success, 
it  then  proceeded  to  shiver  the  glistening  de- 
canters ranged  behind  the  bar.  Plunging  hith- 
er and  thither,  it  at  last  effected  the  destruc- 
tion of  everything  perishable  within  reach  of 
its  elastic  heels — the  last  piece  of  expensive 
glass -ware  being  dashed  from  its  hoofs  against 


the  brow  of  the  only  witness  of  its  iconoclastic 
efforts.  It  was  at  this  stage  of  the  proceedings 
that  Blair  obtained  an  entrance,  and,  quickly 
opening  the  outside  door,  permitted  the  enraged 
equine  destroyer  to  escape. 

Some  three  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  prop- 
erty had  been  ruined ;  but  James  Swilling  was, 
of  course,  the  only  one  that  suffered  personal 
injury,  with  the  exception  of  the  vaquero.  This 
latter  unfortunate  received  the  slighter  hurt,  as 
he  was  up  on  his  feet  in  time  to  catch  the  horse 
as  it  came  out,  and  soon  after  was  seen  tear- 
ing, as  before,  up  and  down  the  streets.  Dr. 
Durgin  had  a  second  professional  service  to 
proffer  his  patient  of  the  morning.  His  skull 
remained  intact,  however,  and  the  labor  con- 
sisted simply  in  sewing  up  the  flesh-wound 
upon  the  forehead.  It  was  an  ugly  gash,  but 
James  stood  the  torture  bravely.  Draining  the 
first  glass  of  liquor  that  had  ever  passed  his 
lips,  he  laid  himself  down  on  a  hastily  prepared 
bed,  and  refused  to  be  carried  home  until  his 
comrades  should  have  exhausted  the  pleasures 
of  the  long-remembered  ball  at  the  City  Hotel. 

In  any  other  country  this  strange  freak  of 
the  mustang  would  have  interrupted  the  unity 
of  such  pleasures  as  are  at  present  being  de- 
scribed. In  this  locality,  and  at  this  time,  it 
was  regarded  rather  in  the  light  of  a  welcome 
episode.  Not  that  the  most  reckless  partici- 
pant in  the  excitement  would  have  wished  the 
cut  on  James's  brow,  but  that  was  a  trifle  hard- 
ly worth  considering  in  view  of  the  great  use- 
fulness of  the  entertaining  accident  through 
which  it  occurred. 

The  musicians  having  resumed  their  places 
now  struck  up  a  martial  strain,  and  heroic  meas- 
ures resounded  within  the  high  walls  of  the 
hotel  by  the  river.  A  fresh  supply  of  wine  fol- 
lowed ;  and  it  was  not  long  before  the  merri- 
ment of  the  Valley  City  rivaled  the  historic 
revelry  of  Belgium's  capital.  The  speaking 
eyes  (always  the  most  dangerous  of  dangerous 
elements)  were  there,  and  the  chivalry  was  by 
no  means  wanting.  The  wildness  of  the  hour 
was  contagious;  not  one  remained  uninfected, 
while  many  were  exhilarated  beyond  the  point 
of  decorum.  Among  our  special  friends,  Blair 
and  Ensign,  though  men  of  cautious  behavior 
on  all  occasions,  exhibited  signs  of  uncommon 
elevation  of  mood.  As  for  the  robust  Doctor, 
if  the  thing  were  possible,  his  laugh  had  nearly 
doubled  in  length  and  sonority.  The  ladies, 
even,  had  partaken  enough  of  the  stimulus  per- 
vading the  very  air,  to  prevent  them  from  no- 
ticing the  unusual  hilarity  of  their  protectors. 
Mrs.  Durgin  did  not  believe  it  easy  for  a  man 
to  do  anything  worse  than  roar  as  did  the  Doc- 
tor habitually;  so  she  really  had  no  cause  for 


THE    CALIFORNIA?]. 


anxiety.  Moreover  she  was  very  much  pleased 
with,  and  entertained  by,  her  newly  made  ac- 
quaintance, sunny -haired  Mrs.  Monroe. 

This  amiable  and  attractive  lady  manifested 
something  like  partiality  toward  her,  telling  her 
that,  if  the  arrangement  could  be  agreeably 
made,  her  husband  desired  to  join  the  party  in- 
tending to  start  for  the  mines  in  the  morning. 

"I  shall  gladly  avail  myself  of  your  counsel 
and  protection,"  said  the  delighted  young  wife. 
"  I  will  make  of  you,  if  you  will  let  me,  an  old- 
er sister.  In  truth,  I  ought  to  regard  you  as  a 
mother,  for  I  plainly  see  that  you  are  well  fitted 
for  the  position.  Mrs.  Monroe,"  continued  the 
speaker,  her  face  as  fresh  as  a  spring  blossom, 
"this  is  the  most  dreadful  region  of  the  world 
imaginable.  Only  men  ought  to  be  allowed  to 
come  here.  I  dream  of  Indians  and  bears  ev- 
ery night ;  but  do  not,  by  any  accident,  allow 
the  fact  to  reach  the  ears  of  the  Doctor.  I 
never  should  hear  the  last  of  it.  Don't  you 
think  men  are  the  queerest  creatures  in  exist- 
ence?" 

"I  do  not  know,"  replied  the  other,  pleasantly 
smiling  at  the  freedom  of  the  language  address- 
ed to  her.  "Perhaps  you  will  not  find  them  so 
strange  after  having  made  a  longer  study  of 
them.  No  doubt  they  will  prove  very  accept- 
able companions  during  the  frontier  life  we  are 
to  lead  for  some  time  to  come.  I  must  con- 
gratulate you  upon  having  so  genial  and  youth- 
ful hearted  a  husband." 

"Oh,  he  is  as  good  as  good  can  be,"  inter- 
rupted sprightly  Mrs.  Durgin,  "but  very  queer. 
I  must  call  him  queer.  There  is  not  any  harm 
in  so  doing,  is  there?" 

"Let  us  shape  the  statement  a  little  different- 
ly," was  the  gentle  response.  "Would  it  not  be 
better  to  say  that  he  is  very  unlike  you  or  me?" 

"That  is  exactly  what  I  mean,  I  guess,"  an- 
swered the  bride,  more  thoughtfully.  Then, 
with  bewitching  ingenuousness,  she  added: 

"  And  you  are  just  the  nice  lady  that  I  sus- 
pected from  the  moment  my  eyes  fell  upon  you. 
In  a  few  weeks  you  will  have  smiled  all  the 
naughtiness  out  of  my  composition.  I  am  go- 
ing to  write  as  much  to  my  mother  this  very 
night.  I  forgot — there  are  no  mails  oftener 
than  two  or  three  times  a  year." 

While  friendship  was  thus  being  inaugurated 
between  these  two  ladies  with  whom  we  shall 
hereafter  become  better  acquainted,  the  din 
about  them  was  growing  "fast  and  furious." 
The  light-footed  daughters  of  La  Paz  were  now 
to  be  seen  in  the  midst  of  the  floor  executing 
the  measures  of  an  intricate  Spanish  dance. 
Their  partners  appeared  to  have  wings  on  their 
heels;  but  the  olive -hued  belles  of  Lower  Cal- 
ifornia far  excelled  them.  The  graceful  undu- 


lations of  their  hands,  as  they  frequently  raised 
their  fingers  to  their  lips  or  gave  some  new  turn 
to  the  folds  of  the  flowing  reboso,  added  an  ir- 
resistible charm  to  the  wondrous  nimbleness  of 
their  feet.  The  electrified  by-standers  threw 
gold  and  silver  coins,  and  even  sprinkled  the 
boards  they  trod  with  handfuls  of  precious  dust. 
On,  on  they  whirled,  amidst  ever  deafening  ap- 
plause. They  finished,  at  length,  and  retired 
to  their  seats.  They  had  scarcely  reached  them 
when  a  young  man  of  angular  build,  his  head 
bandaged,  and  his  steps  noticeably  uncertain, 
rushed  up  to  one  of  them,  and,  throwing  his 
long  arms  around  her  neck,  rained  upon  her 
glowing  cheeks  a  profusion  of  kisses.  The  re- 
cipient of  this  unexpected  tribute  of  admira- 
tion struggled  for  freedom ;  but  in  vain.  The 
applause  that  had  been  loud  before,  was  now 
tempestuous.  Ensign  and  Blair  had  gone  out- 
side the  building  to  take  a  breath  of  the  cool 
night  air;  and  it  was  not  until  the  former  re- 
turned that  this  astonishing  exhibition  was 
brought  to  a  close.  Quickly,  as  his  eye  caught 
the  situation,  Ensign,  advancing  and  taking  the 
offender  by  the  arm,  marched  him  unceremo- 
niously out  of  sight.  Poor  James  Swilling  had 
been  induced,  on  the  score  of  his  injury,  to  in- 
dulge excessively  in  the  alleviating  cup.  Ris- 
ing from  the  place  where  he  lay,  he  returned  to 
the  scene  of  festivities  in  a  condition  of  mind 
to  give  full  play  to  his  generous,  affectionate 
nature.  An  inviting  opportunity  was  afforded 
him  in  the  person  of  one  of  the  charming  dan- 
cers with  whom  he  had  endevored  to  form  an 
acquaintance  in  the  early  part  of  the  evening. 
He  seized  it,  and  the  result  was  the  untimely 
embrace. 

We  left  Blair  on  the  veranda  of  the  hotel. 
As  he  stood  there,  looking  out  upon  the  river, 
a  female,  clad  in  garments  blacker  than  the 
night,  approached  from  the  bank.  Pausing  a 
moment  before  him,  she  said  : 

"And  you,  too,  will  go  down  into  the  depths 
of  dishonor  with  this  reckless  throng  of  seekers- 
after-gold!" 

Blair  would  not  have  been  more  astonished 
had  an  angel  spoken.  Could  he  be  mistaken? 
Was  it  the  influence  of  the  wine  that  made  him 
believe  he  had  seen  the  form  of  the  speaker 
before?  No.  None  other  could  be  so  like  her. 
It  was  the  "Gazelle." 

"Pray,  lady,  let  me  speak  with  you  !"  he  an- 
swered ;  but  too  late.  He  was  again  alone  with 
the  river  and  the  silent  stars. 

The  hoarse  cheering  of  the  riotous  assem- 
blage within  was  no  longer  endurable ;  and  he 
was  glad  to  learn,  upon  rejoining  his  party,  that 
they  were  already  making  preparations  to  re- 
turn to  the  Fort. 


AND 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

It  was  a  cloudy,  chilly  morning  when  our 
party  prepared  for  their  departure.  As  soon 
as  it  was  light  the  men  were  stirring.  Notwith- 
standing the  dissipation  of  the  night  previous, 
all,  with  the  exception  of  James,  were  in  high 
spirits.  Breakfast  was  soon  over,  and  the  train 
packed. 

It  was  no  small  undertaking  to  securely  fast- 
en the  store  of  provisions  and  the  various  min- 
ing utensils  upon  the  backs  of  the  horses. 
These  numbered  fourteen  in  all ;  eight  of  them 
to  carry  the  packs,  four  to  go  under  the  sad- 
dle, and  two  to  draw  the  wagon  occupied  by 
the  ladies  and  their  husbands.  Uncle  Lish, 
with  the  assistance  of  several  of  the  Captain's 
men,  performed  the  greater  part  of  the  labor, 
while  the  proprietors  of  the  train  looked  atten- 
tively on  in  order  to  learn  the  process.  The 
flour,  dried  meat,  beans,  coffee,  brandy,  sugar, 
and  other  stores,  together  with  the  cooking 
utensils,  mining  implements,  the  tent,  the  hides 
and  blankets — all  were  at  length  bound  firmly 
in  their  places.  The  Doctor,  Blair  and  Ensign, 
Uncle  Lish  and  Mose  mounted  their  horses, 
Professor  Monroe  and  James,  invalided  by  his 
wound  and  by  shame,  took  their  seats  in  the 
wagon  beside  the  ladies ;  and,  with  three  cheers 
for  the  hospitable  Captain  and  his  wife,  the  lit- 
tle caravan  moved  slowly  away. 

Upon  the  trapper  devolved  the  duty  of  man- 
aging the  baggage  horses.  This  he  did  by 
tying  their  heads  together  in  teams,  allowing 
a  long  rope  to  trail  after  each  team,  and  driving 
them  on  before  him.  Mose  knew  no  more  about 
horses  than  if  he  had  never  seen  one.  His 
experience  with  teams  was,  in  all  probability, 
mainly  derived  from  the  practice  with  the  mules 
he  "borrowed"  for  the  purpose  of  conveying 
the  party,  of  which  he  was  now  a  member, 
from  Front  Street,  Sacramento,  to  Suiter's  Fort. 

Progress  was  necessarily  slow.  When  the 
sun,  striving  to  peer  through  the  clouds,  an- 
nounced the  hour  of  noon,  but  ten  miles  had 
been  traveled.  A  pleasant  grove  of  evergreen 
oaks  inviting  a  halt,  it  was  resolved  to.  stop  and 
allow  Mose  to  exhibit  his  qualifications  as  cook. 
Professor  Monroe  had  amused  himself  shoot- 
ing quail,  which  were  plentiful  at  intervals  ; 
and  upon  these  Mose  began  at  once  to  exercise 
his  skill.  The  horses  were  sufficiently  unbur- 
dened to  gain  rest  as  well  as  food ;  and  while 
Mose  was  preparing  the  meal,  each  hungry 
gold -hunter  sought  such  diversion  as  best  suit- 
ed his  inclination.  Blair  walked  apart,  Ensign 
rolled  himself  in  his  blankets  for  a  nap ;  while 
the  Professor  and  Mrs.  Durgin  passed  the  time 
poking  inquiringly  about  certain  rocks  that 


might  conceal  hidden  treasures.  Peace  reigned 
in  all  but  two  breasts.  Blair  could  not  expel 
from  his  mind  thoughts  of  the  "Gazelle;"  but 
his  was  a  slight  uneasiness  compared  to  that  of 
his  cousin.  Honest,  simple-hearted  James  had 
been  a  constant  sufferer  from  the  hour  of  his 
waking,  early  in  the  morning.  Managing  to 
keep  his  grievances  to  himself  until  this  time, 
he  could  do  so  no  longer. 

"Mrs.  Monroe,"  he  began,  following  the  lady 
a  short  distance  out  of  hearing  of  the  others, 
"  I  must  beg  your  pardon  before  we  go  any  far- 
ther." 

"  I  do  not  think  I  would,"  returned  the  other, 
"until  some  cause  for  such  a  proceeding  has 
arisen." 

"Oh,  madam,  you  are  too  kind.  You  well 
know  that  I  have  cause  enough.  How  shame- 
fully I  conducted  myself  last  night !  I  could 
have  borne  it  as  far  as  my  disgrace  in  the  eyes 
of  the  others  was  concerned;  but  you  saw  me. 
Now,  tell  me,  didn't  you?" 

"I  suppose  I  know  to  what  you  allude;  but 
really,  Mr.  Swilling,  if  you  committed  an  of- 
fense toward  any  one,  it  was  not  toward  me. 
Why  give  yourself  particular  uneasiness  on  my 
acccount." 

"Because,"  replied  James,  "because — "  and 
there  he  made  an  end.  The  reason  was  not 
forthcoming. 

"  I  don't  understand  it,"  he  continued,  as  if  the 
omitted  explanation  were  of  no  importance. 
"If  any  ridiculous  thing  happens  anywhere  in 
my  vicinity,  it  always  falls  upon  me.  Before 
last  night  I  never  tasted  a  drop  of  liquor  or 
wine  or  whatever  the  hateful  stuff  was.  I  took 
it  then  because  the  Doctor  and  others  advised 
me  to  do  so.  Feeling  better  for  the  first  glass, 
I  took  another  after  a  time ;  and  I  have  a  vague 
recollection  of  something  of  the  same  sort  oc- 
curring still  later.  But  what  is  the  use  in  go- 
ing over  the  wretched  performance?  I  only 
wish  to  say  that  I  am  sorry  that  I  ever  was 
born ;  and  I  trust  you  will  forgive  me." 

"Yes,"  replied  the  lady  confessor;,  "I  will  for- 
give you  for  being  born,  and  for  all  the  naughty 
deeds  you  have  since  committed." 

The  smile  on  the  speaker's  face  sent  a  faint 
streak  of  happiness  into  the  darkness  of  James's 
mind.  Feeling  the  full  revelation  that  he  had 
intended  unnecessary,  he  dismissed  the  subject, 
and  introduced  one  that  he  knew  much  more 
about ;  namely,  the  splendid  qualities  and  mas- 
terly attainments  of  his  Cousin  Mortimer. 

At  length,  a  shout  from  the  Doctor  greeted 
all  ears.  Mose  had  spread  his  meal  of  quail 
and  toast  upon  the  clean  grass ;  and,  standing 
proudly  by  the  place  in  which  he  proposed  to 
seat  his  temporary  master,  awaited  the  coming 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


of  those  for  whom  the  feast  was  set.  Blair  was 
evidently  pleased  with  the  efforts  of  his  servant; 
for  he  made  no  derogatory  comments.  Mose 
had  already  learned  with  what  sort  of  a  man 
he  had  to  deal;  and  to  discover  that  he  had 
satisfied  him  in  the  first  effort  directly  in  the 
line  of  his  "profession"  made  the  old  darky  si- 
lently happy. 

During  the  journey  of  the  afternoon,  the 
clouds  gathered  darker  and  darker,  until  Uncle 
Lish  decided  that  rain  must  fall  before  night. 
This  was  not  an  inviting  prospect  for  the  first 
night  of  camp  life;  but  the  ladies  declared 
themselves  ready  for  any  emergency.  The 
scenery  now  began  to  grow  more  varied ;  and 
occasionally  the  keen  eye  of  the  trapper  caught 
sight  of  a  deer.  Every  hour,  too,  brought  the 
party  nearer  to  the  gold  deposits.  This  was 
the  main  cause  of  the  increasing  buoyancy  of 
spirit.  The  trapper,  notwithstanding  the  ne- 
cessity for  constant  attention  to  the  pack  horses, 
found  opportunity  to  inflate  Mose's  mind  with 
narrations  of  adventure  that  caused  the  latter 
to  respond  in  language  indescribably  entangled. 

"Where  did  you  git  sich  a  drove  of  all -fired 
frisky  words?"  asked  Uncle  Lish. 

"I'se  been  among  gemmen  ever  since  my 
youthfulness,"  responded  Mose ;  and  he  spoke 
the  truth. 

"Is  that  the  way  they  talked !" 

"To  be  sure;  didn't  ye  nebber  listen  to  gem- 
men  conviviatating  at  a  feast  of  soul?" 

"Big  folks  down  South  must  be  very  different 
critters  from  what  we  raise  up  North,"  replied 
the  trapper,  cracking  his  whip  so  sharply  that 
Mose  jumped  in  his  saddle. 

"  Powerful  rough  road !"  exclaimed  the  darky, 
attributing  his  undignified  start  to  quite  another 
than  its  real  cause. 

"You  better  jist  slip  a  piece  of  paper  twixt 
you  and  the  saddle ;  and  p'rhaps  it  would  be  as 
well  for  ye  to  stuff  a  leetle  cotton  in  your  ears," 
was  the  reply. 

The  trapper  spoke  with  deliberation,  his  face 
wearing  an  expression  of  habitual  gravity. 
Mose  did  not  quite  know  how  to  interpret  his 
meaning.  If  he  could  have  reasonably  con- 
strued Uncle  Lisher's  advice  into  an  insult,  an 
immediate  challenge  to  combat  would  have  fol- 
lowed. He  was  too  uncertain  about  it,  how- 
ever, and,  though  fighting  was  his  standard 
relaxation  from  the  labors  of  a  lowly  life,  he 
resolved,  for  this  once,  to  deny  himself.  More- 
over, Mose,  having,  for  some  reason,  conceived 
a  high  idea  of  Blair's  severity  of  temper  and 
physical  ability,  felt  unwilling  to  test  it  upon 
so  short  an  acquaintance. 

A  scene  of  interest  was  now  in  store.  As 
our  travelers  approached  a  level  spot  by  the 


banks  of  a  small  stream,  a  cluster  of  cone- 
shaped  huts  attracted  their  attention.  These 
were  found  to  be  constructed  of  saplings,  cov- 
ered with  grass  and  tule. 

"That  is  an  Indian  rancheria"  said  Uncle 
Lish  to  his  black  comrade. 

The  latter,  wheeling  his  horse  about  so  quick- 
ly that  he  nearly  lost  his  balance,  rode  up  to 
the  wagon  and  exclaimed : 

"Dat,  ladies,  am  an  Injun  abodement." 

Mose  had  no  more  than  made  this  announce- 
ment before  the  Doctor  was  off  his  horse,  and 
bringing  forward  in  his  arms  a  naked  child, 
with  skin  of  tawny  hue  and  a  ludicrously  dis- 
tended abdomen.  Tossing  it  in  the  air,  and  ac- 
companying his  movements  with  hallooes  that 
must  have  deafened  the  little  savage's  ears,  he 
finally  dropped  it  squarely  in  the  lap  of  the 
bride.  Notwithstanding  its  inelegant  outline  of 
form  and  generous  coating  of  dirt,  there  was 
something  pleasing  in  the  wee  animal's  face. 
Mrs.  Durgin  eyed  it  a  moment,  and  first  strok- 
ing it  cautiously  with  her  gloved  hand,  finally 
removed  her  glove  and  fell  to  carressing  it  in  a 
truly  motherly  manner. 

"How  would  you  like  him  for  a  pet,  Made- 
line?" asked  the  Doctor,  extracting  solid  enjoy- 
ment from  the  sight  of  his  wife's  perplexed 
countenance,  and  particularly  from  her  kind  of- 
fer to  restore  the  child  to  its  mother. 

Upon  receiving  it  again,  the  parent,  moving 
toward  a  dam  formed  in  an  adjacent  stream, 
plunged  it  into  the  water.  Down  it  went  below 
the  surface,  and  simultaneously  rose  two  screams 
from  the  vehicle  occupied  by  the  ladies. 

"She  has  drowned  it,"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Dur- 
gin— "drowned  it  just  because  you  took  it  in 
your  hands." 

"No,  no,"  spoke  Mrs.  Munroe.  "There  it  is 
again." 

"This  is  to  entertain  us,"  continued  the  Pro- 
fessor. "The  Indian  mothers  teach  their  babes 
to  swim  as  soon  as  they  can  walk.  This  little 
fellow  cannot  be  five  years  old,  but  you  see  that 
he  is  at  home  where  he  now  is." 

"Poor  creature !  He  will  take  his  death-cold 
if  he  does  not  drown,"  said  Mrs.  Durgin.  "The 
Doctor  always  makes  people  do  just  such  in- 
sane things,  and  the  more  crazy  they  are  the 
better  he  enjoys  himself." 

The  Doctor,  paying  no  attention  to  this  re- 
buke, now  introduced  a  second  feature  of  inter- 
est. Seeing  an  old  squaw  pounding  acorns  into 
the  flour  of  which  these  people  make  their  bread, 
he  prevailed  upon  her  to  bring  it  forward  and 
allow  the  ladies  to  taste  it.  This  they  did ;  but 
what  was  their  horror  a  moment  later,  to  see 
the  squaw  dropping  in  angle-worms  and  grind- 
ing them  together  with  the  acorns. 


AND    '50. 


"What  have  we  done?"  exclaimed  the  bride. 
"Nothing  to  contravene  the  customs  of  the 
tribe,  I  think,"  quietly  responded  the  other. 

'"'The  discovery  of  a  new  dish  does  more  for 
the  human  race  than  the  discovery  of  a  con- 
stellation,' says  Brillat-Savarin,"  added  the  Pro- 
fessor. "This  bread  is  after  all  not  unpalatable. 
It  has  a  bitter  taste,  as  you  perceived  from  the 
flour;  but  a  man  that  I  once  met  assured  me 
that  it  tasted  sweet  to  him,  he  having  been  for 
three  days  unable  to  procure  food.  I  wish  that 
we  might  see  something  of  the  process  of  bak- 
ing. First,  a  hole  is  dug  in  the  ground  and  a 
fire  built  in  it.  When  the  wood  has  burned  to 
ashes,  these  are  removed  and  the  bread  is  put 
in  and  covered  with  them  while  they  are  still 
hot." 

"Deliver  me  from  the  Diggers  !" 
Mrs.  Durgin  knew  the  voice,  and  raising  her 
head  from  its  hiding  place,  responded : 

"Thank  you — thank  you,  Mr.  Blair.  That 
is  the  first  proper  sentiment  that  I  have  yet 
heard  concerning  them." 

"But  if  my  memory  serves  me  right,  Mrs.  Dur- 
gin, you  had  lately  some  lovely  imaginings  of 
these  'wild  children  of  the  wood.'  Did  you  not, 
with  a  poet's  eye,  see  the  dusky  maiden  leaning 
upon  her  lover's  breast,  stepping  lightly  into  the 
canoe  behind  him,  et  caetera,  et  caetera?" 

"These  are  not  genuine  red  men,"  returned 
the  other.  "They  are  unnameable  brutes.  I 
spoke  of  the  noble  lords  of  the  forest — the  tall, 
handsome  warriors,  with  plumed  heads  and  ele- 
gant robes;  the  first  and  the  rightful  owners  of 
the  soil  where  the  white  man  found  them." 

"We  may  meet  some  of  this  order;  but 
should  that  be  the  case,  I  fear  you  will  think 
the  Diggers  the  more  agreeable  associates  after 
all."  So  saying,  Blair  spurred  on. 

"Don't  you  see,  Mrs.  Monroe,"  continued  the 
sprightly  speaker  at  her  side,  "how  it  is?  These 
men — are  they  not  queer?  First,  they  disgust 
one,  and  when  that  is  done,  the  next  thing  in 
order  is  to  frighten  one.  Women  do  not  act  so." 
"Whoa — whoa!"  came  a  cry  from  the  ad- 
vance division  of  the  party.  Simultaneously  a 
horse  came  in  to  view,  rearing  and  plunging  in  a 
manner  that  made  it  very  uncomfortable  for  its 
rider  to  keep  his  seat. 

"  Goodness ! "  exclaimed  Mrs.  Durgin.  "  That 
unfortunate  young  man  will  certainly  be  killed 
before  we  reach  our  destination.  See  him ! — 
see!" 

The  sight  was  one  worthy  of  attention.  It 
seems  that  the  horse  ridden  by  James,  upon  his 
temporary  exchange  of  places  with  the  Doctor, 
was  one  of  those  Spanish  animals  that  retain 
their  peculiar  traits  of  character,  though  they 
have  been  long  in  the  service  of  masters  re- 


nowned for  their  gentle  and  forbearing  treat- 
ment. 

"The  bucking  devil!"  screamed  Uncle  Lish. 
"Stick  the  spurs  into  him  the  whole  length. 
Take  care,  he'll  fling  you." 

Up,  down — down,  up;  splash,  whisk,  flip, 
and  flurry  went  James ;  now  in  the  saddle,  now 
in  mid-air,  until  at  last  he  descended  very  un- 
ceremoniously from  some  unknown  hight  and 
sprawled  his  length  on  the  ground.  It  chanced 
to  be  a  soft,  miry  spot,  and  the  hero  of  a  hun- 
dred close  escapes  proved  more  greatly  dis- 
turbed in  mind  than  in  body. 

"  I'll  fix  him,  massa,"  said  Mose  to  Blair.  "  Jis3 
let  dis  chile  take  a  turn  wid  him." 

"Very  well,"  was  the  response.  "You  may 
get  on  to  him,  Mose." 

Though  seventy  years  of  age  at  least,  Mose 
became  young  as  a  boy  at  the  prospect  of  a 
trial  of  physical  strength  and  agility.  He  knew 
nothing  about  riding,  but  that  made  no  differ- 
ence. Walking  up  to  the  horse  with  a  cat  -  like 
tread,  he  sprung  into  the  saddle.  No  sooner 
had  he  done  so  than  he  sprung  out  again.  This 
performance  was  repeated  several  times,  when 
the  dauntless  darky  requested  to  be  strapped 
fast  to  the  animal.  This  plan  was  encouraged 
by  the  Doctor,  who  foresaw  a  glorious  chance 
for  a  laugh,  and  he  assisted  Blair  in  the  opera- 
tion. When  Mose  was  at  length  securely  roped 
on,  the  gentlemen  stepped  aside  and  left  him 
to  his  fate.  The  horse  whirled  about,  and,  de- 
spite all  the  efforts  of  his  rider,  followed  the 
back  track  homeward  with  a  swiftness  that  soon 
carried  him  out  of  sight. 

"We've  lost  him,"  roared  the  Doctor,  slap- 
ping his  fleshy  legs  with  the  unconstrained  de- 
light of  an  overgrown  school-boy. 

"He  will  return  in  time  to  prepare  supper," 
replied  Blair.  "Let  us  push  on.  I  will  vouch 
for  Mose.  When  the  horse  gets  tired  he  will 
dismount,  and,  with  his  frosty  pate,  butt  him 
into  enduring  subjection." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  added  James,  still  breathing 
loudly  and  trying  to  scrape  the  mud  off  his 
corduroys.  "I  don't  believe  the  Indian  that  he 
ran  against  at  the  Fort  will  ever  again  be  a  well 
man." 

"Is  Mose  a  first-rate  feller  in  a  tussle?"  in- 
quired Uncle  Lish  of  Ensign. 

"Be  careful  that  he  does  not  find  occasion  to 
hammer  you  with  his  head,"  answered  the  Doc- 
tor. "He  knocks  a  cavity  in  his  antagonist  as 
easily  as  a  woodpecker  hammers  a  hole  in  the 
bark  of  a  pine  tree." 

"You're  jokin',  I  guess." 

"Not  a  bit  of  it." 

"Well,  you  wait  a  few  days,  and  if  things 
turn  out  as  I  expect  'em  to,  we'll  give  Mose  a- 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


little  circus  that  will  satisfy  him  for  one  while. 
But  there  comes  the  rain.  We  have  but  an 
hour  more  to  travel  in." 

As  rapidly  as  possible  the  horses  were  urged 
forward.  The  trapper  was  right.  At  the  ex- 
piration of  an  hour  the  drops  began  to  fall ;  so, 
bringing  the  train  to  a  halt,  the  men  immediate- 
ly commenced  unpacking  the  tent.  There  was 
nothing  inviting  about  the  place  for  a  camp, 
with  the  exception  of  a  large  spring  of  clearest 
water.  This  was  too  valuable  a  possession  to 
pass  by,  even  had  the  weather  continued  fair. 
The  ladies  looked  rather  forlorn  as  they  stood 
one  side  watching  the  erection  of  their  shelter 
for  the  night,  but  they  enjoyed  several  hearty 
laughs  before  the  structure  was  declared  ready 
for  habitation.  Five  times  did  the  tent  collapse 
and  bury  James  Swilling,  bumping  him  rudely 
with  its  poles,  before  it  was  made  steadfast  in 
an  upright  position. 

"Tents  is  a  fashionable  nuisance,"  said  Uncle 
Lish.  "I  don't  know  nothin'  'bout  'em,  and 
wish  I  knowed  less." 

"The  rest  of  you  help  Uncle  Lish  unpack 
the  horses,  and  I  will  make  a  fire  to  keep  off 
the  bears?  So  spoke  the  jolly  Doctor,  empha- 
sizing the  last  word  for  the  edification  of  the 
partner  of  his  joys  and  sorrows. 

"Are  you  afraid  of  them,  Mrs.  Monroe?"  im- 
mediately inquired  her  companion. 

"Not  in  the  least,"  was  the  reply.  "You  and 
I  will  take  the  safest  place  we  can  find,  and  so 
arrange  it  that  if  a  bear  does  see  fit  to  attack 
us  the  courageous  gentlemen  shall  stand  the 
brunt  of  the  battle." 

"I  think  a  good  position  for  the  Doctor  would 
be  right  in  the  middle  of  the  tent  entrance." 

The  rain  began  to  descend  faster,  and  it  was 
growing  night.  Still  the  sable  cook  was  missing. 

"My  wife  is  a  good  cook,"  spoke  the  Pro- 
fessor. "We  shall  have  to  call  upon  the  ladies 
to  superintend  supper." 

"I  can  make  the  coffee,  at  least,"  said  Mrs. 
Durgin. 

"I  will  answer  for  the  remainder,"  added 
Mrs.  Monroe;  "but  I  feel  anxious  for  the  safety 
of  Mose." 

"Have  no  fear  on  his  account,  madam,"  said 
Blair.  "Look  yonder,  please." 

In  a  moment  all  eyes  were  turned  in  the  di- 
rection indicated.  There,  at  a  most  deliberate 
pace,  came  a  horse  and  rider.  On  nearer  ap- 
proach they  were  recognized  as  being  the  same 
that  had  vanished  some  hours  before.  A  more 
subdued -looking  steed  never  bore  worse  be- 
spattered knight.  Both  were  plastered  with 
mud  and  foam. 

"Dah,  gemmen,"  said  Mose,  dismounting, 
"that  beast  am  tamed.  He  took  dis  nigger 


clear  back  in  sight  of  de  Fort  'fore  he  surren- 
dered, but  he's  mighty  sorry  'bout  it  now,  I 
reckon.  If  I'd  knowed  it  was  so  late  I  would 
a  hurried  up,"  concluded  Mose,  as  dignified 
and  pompous  as  if  every  bone  in  his  body  was 
not  aching  hard  enough  to  distract  his  senses. 
"Massa  Blair,  what  would  be  relishous  for  de 
ebening  repast?" 

The  shelter  of  two  large  trees  afforded  our 
friends  opportunity  to  house  their  baggage  and 
stores,  while  the  horses  were  tethered,  a  short 
distance  beyond  the  camp,  by  an  old  hollow 
log,  wherein  Uncle  Lish  and  the  exhausted 
equestrian  proposed  to  take  up  their  narrow 
quarters.  The  night  was  far  from  pleasant,  but 
the  fatigue  of  the  day's  journey  brought  sound 
repose.  Snugly  wrapped  in  their  blankets, 
some  dreamed  of  gold;  others  of  Indians  or 
bears.  Only  Blair  saw  in  his  midnight  visions 
a  form  as  graceful  as  that  of  the  "Gazelle." 


CHAPTER   XV. 

The  morning  following  the  rainy  first  night 
in  camp  was  one  of  the  clearest  and  the  most 
delightful  for  many  days.  One  and  all  were 
awakened  at  an  earlier  hour  than  was  agreed 
upon  the  evening  previous.  The  trapper,  steal- 
ing from  his  hollow  log,  found  two  of  his  horses 
missing.  At  first  he  thought  they  had  broken 
loose  and  strayed  away ;  but  upon  examination 
of  the  baggage,  he  discovered  that  certain  val- 
uable articles  were  not  to  be  found.  He  now 
roused  the  men  and  stated  to  them  the  situation. 

"I  thought  I  heared  suthin'  'fore  it  was  light," 
said  he;  "so  I  crawled  out  and  gin  a  sharp 
look.  I  made  up  my  mind  that  the  noise  was 
nothin'  but  a  bear  tracking  back  into  the  bushes 
arter  takin'  a  sniff  around  camp.  I  think,  now, 
that  was  what  woke  me — for  here  is  the  marks 
of  a  bear,  and  they  weren't  there  last  night. 
But  them  hosses  and  the  stuff  are  stole,  and 
we  haven't  a  minute  to  lose." 

"Would  we  stand  any  chance  of  regaining 
them  by  giving  chase?"  asked  the  Professor. 

"In  course  we  would,"  answered  the  trapper; 
"but  we  must  be  quick." 

"We  may  have  to  do  some  fighting,  I  sup- 
pose," said  Blair. 

"In  course  we  will,"  again  answered  the  trap- 
per. "We  have  got  to  overhaul  the  rascals, 
whip  'em  out,  capture  'em,  and  then  hang  or 
shoot  'em,  just  which  we  find  is  the  easiest." 

"But  may  they  not  outnumber  us?"  asked 
Ensign. 

"No;  never  fear  about  that.  Thar  is  two 
Indians  and  one  Mexican.  I  know  by  the 


AND  'jo. 


tracks,  and  by  the  amount  and  kind  o'  things 
they  laid  hold  of." 

"  Would  it  not  be  better  to  let  the  lost  prop- 
erty go  than  to  peril  our  lives  in  attempting  its 
recovery?" 

"No,  Professor;  that  never  will  do.  If  we 
don't  begin  by  settin'  our  foot  squar'  down,  we 
won't  have  a  hoss  or  a  pound  of  baggage  left 
in  the  course  of  a  few  days.  Thar's  plenty  of 
help  round  here.  Jest  let  the  firing  be  heard, 
and  you'll  see  we  are  not  alone." 

"Well,  who  will  go?"  demanded  Blair.  "We 
must  leave  a  guard  for  the  ladies  and  be  off." 

"The  Professor  and  James  had  better  stay  be- 
hind," spoke  the  Doctor,  "and  the  rest  of  us 
move  upon  the  enemy." 

"I  am  a  fair  shot,  gentlemen,"  replied  the 
Professor,  "and  I  don't  feel  like  shirking  my 
duty." 

"I  think  your  duty  is  to  remain  with  your 
wife,"  said  Blair.  "The  Doctor  we  ought  to 
have  with  us,  in  case  we  should  require  any 
surgical  aid.  James  is  in  no  condition  to  go. 
And  now,  if  the  matter  is  settled,  we  have, 
as  Uncle  Lish  says,  not  a  moment  to  spare." 

By  this  time  the  ladies  were  peering  out  of 
the  tent,  wondering  what  could  be  the  cause  of 
the  early  council. 

"Give  my  wife  to  understand  that  we  are  aft- 
er venison,  Professor,"  said  the  Doctor,  examin- 
ing his  weapons.  "I  don't  know  but  I  ought 
to  go  and  give  her  a  parting  squeeze.  I  guess 
I  will." 

The  Doctor  had  no  more  than  performed 
this  ceremony,  which  was  looked  upon  by  the 
recipient  as  one  of  the  physician's  freaks  of 
overflowing  kindness,  when,  everything  being 
in  readiness,  the  five  men  sprung  into  their 
saddles  and  dashed  out  of  sight.  All  were  well 
armed  with  rifles,  pistols,  and  knives ;  and  the 
horses,  particularly  those  ridden  by  Blair  and 
the  trapper,  were  sure-footed  and  fleet.  By 
common  consent  Blair  was  chosen  captain  of 
the  little  compny ;  while  to  Uncle  Lish  was  in- 
trusted the  responsibilities  of  guide  and  gen- 
eral counselor.  Blair  desired  him  to  take  com- 
mand, but  he  would  not  do  so. 

"Natur'  cut  you  out  for  giving  orders,  Mr. 
Blair,"  said  he.  "I'll  scent  'em  to  their  holes, 
and  what  shall  come  afterward  is  for  you  to 
say." 

Our  friends,  as  they  rode  forth  into  the  hills 
in  the  gray  of  the  morning,  were  a  picturesque 
looking  band,  and  formidable,  considering  the 
smallness  of  their  number.  The  trapper,  in 
his  slouched  hat  and  faded  brown  blouse,  rode 
by  the  side  of  Blair.  The  latter's  handsome 
features  were  plainly  distinguishable  beneath 
a  snug -fitting  cap — a  woolen  jacket  of  bright 


blue  setting  off  his  erect  form.  Behind  these 
came  the  Doctor  puffing  along  in  his  shirt 
sleeves,  the  companion  of  quiet  Ensign,  a  man 
whose  appearance,  as  has  been  said,  did  not 
suggest  his  firmness  of  character  and  surprising 
efficiency  in  the  hour  of  trial.  Last,  in  his  own 
distinguished  and  solitary  grandeur,  galloped 
Mose.  His  attire  was  so  striped  and  check- 
ered that,  had  it  not  been  for  his  black  face, 
shining  like  polished  ebony,  he  might  have  been 
taken  for  an  escaped  circus  clown.  He  was 
not  altogether  happy.  The  ride  of  the  day 
previous  was  still  remembered  by  his  old  bones 
and  muscles;  moreover,  the  prospect  was  not 
good  for  a  hand-to-hand  fight  with  no  other 
weapons  than  those  endowed  by  nature. 

"We  can't  be  far  off,"  said  the  trapper,  glanc- 
ing quickly  from  side  to  side.  "The  red  devils 
didn't  know  there  was  a  chap  along  that  had 
done  fighting  on  this  very  ground  before. 
There's  only  one  place  where  they  would  think 
of  hiding,  and  that  is  over  that  hill  thar,  in  a 
little  ravine.  We  must  split  up  and  surround 
'em.  Let  us  ride  as  close  as  we  can,  then  slip 
off  and  play  their  own  game  —  crawl  up  and 
draw  bead  on  'em  under  cover  of  the  bushes 
on  the  top  o'  the  hill." 

Blair  made  known  the  plan  of  operations  to 
the  others,  and  selecting  the  Doctor  to  go  with 
the  trapper,  struck  off  to  the  right,  accompa- 
nied by  Ensign.  Mose  was  to  follow,  first  one 
division,  then  the  other,  and,  after  all  had  dis- 
mounted, to  bring  the  horses  together  into  a 
spot  midway  between. 

"Dey  won't  git  de  hosses,  Massa  Blair,"  said 
Mose.  "I  nebber  see  any  Injuns  yit  that  liked 
to  come  and  git  gemmen's  hosses  when  dis 
nigger  was  holdin'  'em." 

"Wait  until  they  come  close  up,  Mose,"  said 
Blair.  "Don't  you  fire  until  you  can't  help  hit- 
ting. Mind  what  I  tell  you,  or  you  will  pay 
the  penalty  of  disobedience." 

"Dey  won't  git  de  hosses,  Massa  Blair,"  said 
the  darky  with  his  usual  confidence. 

Arrangements  being  completed,  the  party  di- 
vided and  crept  cautiously  around  to  opposite 
sides  of  the  hill.  They  had  barely  separated 
when  the  trapper  caught  the  sound  of  horses' 
feet  immediately  in  the  rear  of  himself  and  the 
Doctor.  He  turned  and  saw  a  horseman  close 
upon  them.  With  the  attention  of  both  him- 
self and  the  physician  thus  diverted,  opportu- 
nity was  given  to  an  Indian  that  suddenly 
dashed  up  in  front  of  them  to  fling  his  lasso. 
Another  instant  and  the  Doctor,  his  arms  being 
pinned  to  his  side,  was  drawn  from  his  horse. 
This  did  not  take  place,  however,  before  the 
trapper  had  sent  a  bullet  through  the  breast  of 
the  foe  that  had  made  the  attack  from  behind. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


There  was  no  time  for  him  to  reload.  Leaping 
from  his  horse,  he  attempted  to  seize  another 
rifle  from  the  hands  of  the  Doctor  struggling 
vainly  upon  the  ground.  A  third  party  now 
fired  upon  him  from  the  spot  where  the  first 
horseman  fell.  Fortunately,  the  bullet  missed 
him  and  entered  his  saddle.  The  situation  was 
now  most  desperate. 

"For  God's  sake,"  roared  the  Doctor,  "don't 
let  him  fire  upon  me  !  Cut  this  rope  !" 

"The  Injun  ain't  armed,"  answered  the  trap- 
per, who  was  himself  in  the  greater  peril.  The 
next  bullet  from  the  marksman  in  ambush 
would  undoubtedly  terminate  his  life.  With 
the  utmost  caution  he  began  to  edge  his  way, 
under  cover  of  his  horse  (which  acted  as  if  he 
comprehended  the  danger  as  well  as  his  mas- 
ter), toward  a  neighboring  thicket. 

Where  were  Blair  and  Ensign  all  this  time? 
Why  did  they  not  hasten  to  the  spot,  warned 
by  the  report  of  the  rifles?  These  were  the 
trapper's  queries.  If  he  could  but  get  safely 
into  the  brush,  both  himself  and  the  Doctor 
would  be  saved.  He  could  cover  the  ground 
where  the  Doctor  lay  with  his  rifle,  but  it  was 
not  yet  loaded.  The  physician  himself  had 
almost  come  to  the  conclusion  that  his  days 
were  numbered,  when  he  heard  a  shot,  and 
immediately  afterward  saw  the  Indian's  horse 
fall  and  roll  completely  over  its  rider.  "  Con- 
sarn  ye !  that's  good  for  ye  !"  muttered  the  trap- 
per, who  had  now  reloaded  and  reached  the 
bushes. 

"Don't  let  the  man  below  pass  the  clearing 
yonder,"  cried  Blair,  dashing  by  at  that  mo- 
ment. 

"I'm  ready  for  him,"  again  soliloquized  the 
trapper.  "I  thought  the  boys  would  be  on 
hand  'fore  meetin'  was  out." 

So  saying,  he  crept  upon  his  hands  and  knees 
toward  the  place  where  the  Indian's  horse  fell 
and  rolled  over  its  rider.  He  reached  it,  but 
the  enemy  had  vanished. 

"  Must  have  cracked  his  ribs  some,  I  reck- 
on— the  derned  copperhide !" 

Uncle  Lish  was  now  at  liberty  to  return  to 
the  Doctor.  He  found  the  corpulent  medical 
gentleman  puffing  tremendously,  but  not  seri- 
ously hurt.  The  lasso  being  loosed  by  the  fall 
of  the  Indian  who  held  it,  he  was  once  more 
restored  to  the  use  of  his  arms,  when  he  made 
it  his  first  business  to  find  an  object  upon 
which  to  wreak  his  revenge. 

"Blair  has  gone  down  one  way  and  Ensign 
the  other,"  said  he,  "and  there  is  no  escape  for 
that  other  devil.  Blast  it !  I  guess  I  never  shall 
get  my  breath." 

'  "There's  one  chick  I  knows  on  will  be  longer 
about  it  than  you  be,  Doctor,"  replied  the  trap- 


per. "  Hold  !  Thar's  a  rustle  in  that  thar  leetle 
clump  o'  shrubs." 

Both  men  covered  the  spot  with  their  rifles. 

"Don't  shoot,"  spoke  Uncle  Lish,  lowering 
his  weapon  ;  "it  is  Cap.  Blair !  I'll  be  swinged 
if  he  and  Ensign  haven't  corralled  the  cuss 
that  bored  a  hole  in  my  saddle.  Ha,  ha!  I 
thought  so.  One  of  those  chaps  with  a  broad 
hat." 

"What  !  Is  he  a  Mexican  ?"  asked  the  Doc- 
tor. 

"He's  nothin'  else,"  was  the  reply.  "But 
where  is  that  Mose?  I'll  bet  my  old  shootin'- 
iron  the  copper-skin  will  pick  the  best  of  the 
hosses  and  get  away  with  it.  Here,  you  just 
let  me  take  your  rifle  along  with  mine,  and  I'll 
take  a  turn  to  find  him." 

The  trapper  mounted,  but  did  not  move  the 
horse  out  of  his  tracks.  Scampering  over  the 
hills,  far  in  the  distance,  he  saw  Ensign's  horse 
bearing  away  the  escaped  brave;  and  at  the 
same  time  Mose  appeared  to  view,  hastening 
towards  them  at  full  speed. 

"I  told  you  so  !"  said  the  trapper.  "What 
have  you  done  with  that  thar  other  hoss?"  he 
demanded  of  Mose,  who  had  now  arrived  and 
sat  before  him  motionless  with  astonishment. 

"Ye  see,  gemmen,"  began  Mose,  "I  was  in- 
specjin'  a  region  whar  de  hosses  would  be  most 
best  retired,  when  all  a  sudden  I  heared  a 
crackin',  an'  lookin'  behind  me,  I  seed  Massa 
Ensign's  steed  was  makin'  off  wid  a  gemmen — 
a  perfeck  stranger  to  me — on  his  back." 

"Pity  he  didn't  shoot  a  dent  in  that  skull  of 
yours,"  remarked  the  angry  trapper. 

"You  see  dis?"  responded  Mose,  laying  hold 
of  his  pistol.  "Well,  de  gemmen  he  seed  it, 
too." 

"Then  why  in  tunket  didn't  you  fire?"  again 
inquired  Uncle  Lish,  stung  with  the  thought 
that  anything  had  been  allowed  to  fall  into  the 
enemy's  hands. 

"Hold  your  bref,"  continued  Mose,  solemnly. 
"I  was  so  busy,  ye  see,  watchin'  to  see  if  the 
gemmen  was  goin'  to  fire  fust  that  I  didn't  take 
'tic'lar  notice  o'  what  I  was  up  to  myself.  And 
agin,  how  did  dis  nigger  know  who  the  gem- 
men  was?  I  had  bringin's  up — I  did." 

It  appeared  as  if  Mose  would  be  obliged  to 
make  amends  finally  for  his  failure  with  the  In- 
dian by  an  attack  upon  the  trapper.  But  Blair 
and  Ensign  had  now  arrived  with  their  pris- 
oner, which  was  a  signal  for  at  least  temporary 
peace. 

"Waal,  you  got  the  drop  on  him,  didn't  you, 
Captain?"  spoke  the  trapper- 

"Here  is  the  offender,  disarmed  and  peni- 
tent," replied  Blair.  "What  is  the  pleasure  of 
the  company  concerning  him?" 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A   MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


"Run  him  up,"  cried  the  trapper. 

"Set  him  up,  and  lem  me  have  a  bunt  at 
him !"  shouted  Mose. 

"What  is  your  verdict,  Doctor?" 

"  I  say,  give  the  poor  devil  a  sound  drubbing 
and  then  discharge  him,"  was  the  response. 

"Never!"  again  spoke  Uncle  Lish.  "Noth- 
in'  but  the  rope.  That  is  the  law  o'  the  mines. 
We  shall  git  into  trouble,  Captain,  if  we  don't 
stand  by  the  code." 

"We  barely  saved  our  own  lives,  men,"  said 
Blair.  "We  shall  probably  save  the  lives  of 
others  by  putting  this  wretch  out  of  the  way. 
He  is  a  villain,  no  question  about  that." 

"He  must  swing,"  declared  Ensign,  in  low 
but  decided  tones. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  physician,  "in  order  that 
the  vote  may  be  unanimous,  I  will  consent." 

"Can  you  tie  a  hangman's  knot,  Uncle  Lish?" 
asked  Blair. 

"Knot  be  derned!"  muttered  the  trapper, 
tossing  the  lasso  left  by  the  Indian  over  the 
captive's  head. 

The  Mexican,  who  had  understood  nothing 
of  the  conversation,  now  perceiving  that  he  was 
to  be  executed,  dropped  upon  his  knees — not  to 
ask  pardon  of  those  about  him,  but  to  make 
his  peace  with  the  Powers  unseen. 


"That'll  do,"  said  the  trapper.  "You  and 
the  devil  can  talk  the  matter  over  arterwards." 

"Make  haste,  Uncle  Lish,"  spoke  Blair. 

Such  was  the  culprit's  brief  trial.  He  was 
now  led  to  the  nearest  tree,  where,  the  free  end 
of  the  lasso  being  thrown  over  a  stout  limb,  he 
was  drawn  up.  The  little  party  stood  by  until 
life  was  extinct,  when,  leaving  the  body  sus- 
pended, they  followed  the  trapper  to  the  ravine, 
where  he  had  predicted  the  lost  property  would 
be  found.  Sure  enough  it  was  there.  A  more 
valuable  horse  than  that  captured  by  the  In- 
dian was  secured  from  the  Mexican  at  the  time 
of  his  seizure,  so  that  really  our  friends  re- 
turned to  camp  not  only  without  loss  of  prop- 
erty, but  with  a  small  increase.  The  trapper, 
it  ought  to  be  stated,  arrived  several  moments 
later  than  the  rest. 

"Not  a  word  of  all  this  to  the  ladies,"  said 
Blair. 

Silence  was  promised,  and  it  was  left  for  ac- 
cident to  reveal  to  them  the  bloody  hour's 
work  of  the  first  morning  in  the  hills  should  it 
ever  come  to  their  knowledge. 

"  Mose,"  said  Blair,  "  I  am  ashamed  of  you." 

"Massa  Blair,"  replied  the  irrepressible  Afri- 
can, "I  seems  to  'spect  myself  that  Injuns  am 
not  my  forte."  JOHN  VANCE  CHENEY. 


[CONTINUED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


TWELVE    DAYS   ON   A   MEXICAN    HIGHWAY.— II. 


It  is  about  ten  miles  from  the  station  of  Agua 
de  Perro  to  the  river  Papagallo,  and  the  trail, 
which  passes  over  a  wooded  mountain,  is  one 
of  the  roughest  in  Mexico.  In  many  places  the 
rains  had  washed  out  all  semblance  of  a  track, 
and  it  became  necessary  for  the  Indians  to  go 
ahead  and  cut  a  virgin  pathway  through  the 
brush  with  their  machetes. 

Occasionally,  our  caravan  would  wind  around 
the  slippery  brow  of  a  precipice,  or  force  its 
way  through  narrow  passages,  where  the  rocks 
on  either  side  threatened  to  crush  one's  feet. 
For  fully  half  of  the  distance  we  toiled  labori- 
ously up  and  down  the  rocky  beds  of  water 
courses,  from  which  the  animals  would  emerge 
with  cut  and  bleeding  legs.  It  was  slow  and 
painful  traveling,  the  discomforts  of  which  were 
only  partially  mollified  by  glimpses  of  beautiful 
scenery  and  the  novelty  of  the  surroundings. 
There  was,  however,  but  one  spirit  animating 
the  party,  and  that  was  the  desire  to  push  for- 
ward. Alejandro,  it  is  true,  was  grave  and  si- 

VOL.   III.— 33. 


lent,  but  the  horrors  of  Agua  de  Perro  were  too 
fresh  in  our  minds  to  permit  of  our  being  influ- 
enced by  his  moods.  Nothing  could  be  worse 
— not  even  sleeping  without  shelter  in  the  wet 
brush ;  and  as  for  food,  it  was  infinitely  better 
to  go  supperless  to  bed  than  to  endure  the  fleas 
and  crawling  things  of  our  late  inn.  So,  with 
many  a  slip  and  stumble,  our  groaning  steeds 
were  urged  onward,  the  Philadelphian  and  the 
German  occasionally  relieving  the  tedium  by 
wild  bursts  of  song,  which  set  the  canons  a-ring- 
ing,  while  the  rest  shouted  and  chattered  along 
the  winding  file,  which  sometimes  extended  far 
down  the  mountain  side. 

On  leaving  Agua  de  Perro  the  storm  had  ap- 
parently cleared  away,  and  the  sun  was  shining 
brightly,  but  it  was  not  long  before  the  sky  again 
became  overcast  and  the  rain  began  to  fall  in 
torrents.  The  forest  was  soon  dripping,  and 
wet  overhanging  boughs  switched  us  in  the  face 
and  trailed  across  our  saddle-bows.  With  the 
exception  of  one  or  two  of  the  Mexicans,  who 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


had  been  over  the  road  before,  none  of  us  was 
prepared  for  the  water,  and  in  a  very  short  time 
we  were  soaked  through.  So  persistently  and 
heavily  did  the  water  come  down  that  I,  for  my 
own  part,  abandoned  all  effort  to  keep  dry.  It 
appeared  to  beat  into  and  through  me,  and  I 
could  feel  it  running  down  my  body  in  little 
rivulets  into  my  boots.  All  horsemen  are  agreed 
that  no  experience  is  more  uncomfortable  than 
that  of  feeling  one's  saddle  wet  and  soggy  be- 
neath him.  This  discomfort  was  ours  in  full 
that  afternoon,  and  the  situation  was  not  en- 
livened by  the  reflection  that  neither  change  of 
clothing  nor  warm  fire  awaited  us  at  our  jour- 
ney's end. 

"No  crossing  the  river  this  night,"  called 
Alejandro  from  the  head  of  the  file,  and  the 
rascal  seemed  to  cheer  up  and  grow  jolly  as  our 
spirits  went  down. 

He  had  proved  himself  to  be  a  man  of  wis- 
dom, and  as  the  situation  was  all  the  result  of 
our  own  persistent  disregard  of  his  advice,  he 
doubtless  felt  that  it  served  us  right.  We  had 
come  too  far  to  think  of  retracing  our  steps  to 
Agua  de  Perro,  even  if  so  inclined.  So  there 
was  nothing  to  do  but  to  spend  the  night  on  the 
bank  of  the  river. 

For  several  hours  we  rode  on  in  silence 
through  the  dripping  wilderness,  gloomily  con- 
templating the  prospect  before  us,  and  then  the 
trail  emerged  suddenly  from  the  obscurity  of 
the  forest,  and  we  found  ourselves  on  a  steep 
bluff  overlooking  a  wide  and  swiftly  flowing 
stream.  Its  banks  were  bold  and  precipitous, 
and  the  waters,  swollen  and  turgid  from  the 
long  continued  rains,  ran  angrily  past,  bearing 
logs  and  drift-wood,  or  springing  high  into  the 
air  wherever  a  rock  was  bold  enough  to  stem  its 
fury.  From  our  point  of  view  the  scene  was 
one  of  wild  grandeur,  and  for  a  few  moments 
we  forgot  that  we  were  wet,  and  hungry,  and 
homeless.  Just  across  the  stream  could  be  seen 
the  longed-for  haven.  It  was  only  an  Indian 
rancho,  with  bare  poles  and  a  thatched  roof, 
nestled  in  under  the  trees,  which  everywhere 
came  down  to  the  river's  edge.  It  was  simply 
another  Agua  de  Perro,  so  to  speak.  But  many 
a  time  during  the  dismal  night  which  followed 
did  we  cast  longing  glances  across  the  rushing 
waters  to  its  beacon-light  and  wish  that  we  were 
snug  within  its  fold  with  the  other  dogs,  and 
fleas,  and  donkeys. 

Making  our  way  down  the  bluff,  the  border 
of  the  stream  was  reached.  Two  or  three  naked 
fellows  on  the  opposite  bank  ran  up  and  down 
the  wet  sand,  gesticulating  wildly  and  shouting 
to  us  over  the  water.  It  was  not  possible,  how- 
ever, to  hear  their  voices.  Alejandro  signaled 
them  to  come  over  in  their  canoe.  To  attempt 


such  a  thing  seemed  to  me  the  hight  of  folly. 
Two  of  them,  nevertheless,  made  the  venture, 
and  came  very  near  losing  their  lives.  Their 
canoe  was  swept  violently  down  stream  among 
bowlders,  and  it  was  only  by  the  most  desper- 
ate efforts  that  they  steered  their  frail  craft  into 
an  eddy  and  reached  the  bank  from  which  they 
started. 

Night  came  down,  dark  and  cheerless.  We 
had  nothing  to  eat,  and  all  efforts  to  make  a 
fire  failed.  There  was  nothing  dry  to  burn. 
From  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  until  mid- 
night the  rain  fell  steadily,  and  through  the 
long  hours  of  that  memorable  night  we  lay  on 
the  wet  sand,  or  paced  up  and  down  the  river 
bank,  hungry,  wet,  and  altogether  miserable.  It 
seemed  as  though  morning  would  never  come. 
Sleep  was  out  of  the  question,  and  the  memory 
of  Agua  de  Perro  came  uppermost  to  haunt  us 
like  a  nightmare.  How  we  had  defamed  and 
derided  that  blessed  haven !  What  dire  male- 
dictions had  been  pronounced  upon  its  humble 
shelter  and  homely  fare !  This  was  our  pun- 
ishment. We  had  said  in  the  pride  of  the 
morning,  "Nothing  can  be  worse."  WThat  would 
we  give  now  for  a  fragrant  pork -steak,  or  a 
steaming  tortilla  ?  How  cheery  and  pleasant 
the  old  Indian  woman's  back -shed  would  be 
with  its  fire,  and  smoke,  and  yelping  curs! 
And  the  naked  host !  Why,  he  grew  to  be  a 
hero  in  our  eyes  that  night,  and  twice  when 
slumber,  in  feverish  snatches,  fell  upon  my  tired 
eyelids  did  his  tall  form  emerge  from  the  brush, 
and  I  could  hear  his  honest  voice,  as  he  point- 
ed to  his  humble  dwelling: 

"Senors,  eslacasade  Vds." 

So  much  for  wasted  opportunities.  We  were 
tardy  in  gratitude,  but  from  that  time  forward 
felt  kindlier  toward  our  native  hosts. 

All  experience  demonstrates,  however,  that 
the  longest  night,  even  in  a  Mexican  chaparral, 
must  have  an  end.  The  gray  dawn  found  the 
poet,  Marion,  and  the  writer  sitting  disconso- 
lately upon  the  river  band,  gazing  out  over  the 
rushing  water.  It  had  grown  chilly  toward 
daylight,  and  our  wet  clothes,  clinging  to  our 
bodies,  made  rest  and  comfort  impossible. 
Here  and  there  along  the  ground  lay  the  pros- 
trate forms  of  our  companions,  some  under  the 
shelter  of  rocks  and  bushes,  others  curled  up 
in  holes  scooped  out  of  the  sand,  and  a  few 
stretched  among  the  saddles  and  horse-blank- 
ets where  the  animals  were  tethered  in  the 
brush.  Wet,  half- exhausted,  and  hungry,  as 
we  were,  there  was  a  humorous  phase  to  the 
situation  which  the  three  melancholy  watchers 
by  the  river-side  could  not  ignore.  As  the  light 
increased,  and  one  by  one  our  woeful-looking 
comrades  crawled  out  from  their  various  hid- 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A  MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


5*9 


ing-places,  they  were  greeted  with  shouts  of 
laughter  and  raillery. 

"Hello,  Germany  !"  called  the  poet,  as  that 
demoralized  individual  emerged  from  a  clump 
of  bushes  to  our  left ;  "  where  is  your  tooth- 
brush?" 

"He  hasn't  polished  his  boots  this  morning," 
chimed  in  Marion.  "No  man  gets  hot  cakes 
for  breakfast  who  comes  down  without  making 
his  toilet." 

"Where  is  Philadelphia?"  asked  the  Teuton, 
as  he  shook  himself  like  a  terrier  and  gazed 
anxiously  about. 

There  was  an  upheaval  in  the  sand  near  by, 
and  the  benumbed  and  sorry-visaged  Pennsyl- 
vanian  stood  before  us. 

"He  comes  up  from  the  sand  like  a  crab," 
cried  the  poet ;  "let  us  eat  him." 

Happily,  the  disposition  to  make  the  most  of 
our  unfortunate  predicament  was  everywhere 
prevalent,  and  many  were  the  jokes  and  good- 
natured  jibes  that  morning  bandied  about. 

The  storm  seemed  to  be  over,  and  the  sun 
came  up  hot  and  sultry.  Under  the  touch  of 
his  rays  the  forest  began  to  steam  and  our  wet 
clothing  dried  out  as  if  by  magic.  Eight,  nine, 
and  ten  o'clock  came  and  went.  We  were  get- 
ting hungry,  and  the  river  fell  slowly.  Twenty- 
four  hours  had  slipped  away  since  the  last 
square  meal  at  Agua  de  Perro,  and  in  those 
ante-Tanner  days  the  flesh  rebelled.  Unfort- 
unately for  my  ideal,  the  poet  seemed  to  be  the 
hungriest  man  in  the  party.  He  roamed  about 
with  a  wild  look  in  his  eye,  or  stood  stolidly 
gazing  at  the  German,  as  though  struggling 
with  some  dark  problem.  It  was  noticed  also 
that  he  paused  occasionally  to  feel  of  that  gen- 
tleman's pulse,  much  to  the  latter's  surprise, 
after  which  he  would  walk  away  and  talk  in  an 
aside  to  Marion.  Whether  or  not  he  contem- 
plated cannibalism  was  never  known,  for  an 
unexpected  incident  interposed  just  here  to 
change  the  current  of  events. 

A  loud  shout  went  up  from  the  river  bank 
below,  and  looking  around,  a  calf  was  seen  to 
dart  out  of  the  bushes  and  make  straight  for 
our  position  at  full  speed.  It  was  closely  pur- 
sued by  one  of  our  arrieros,  on  foot,  who  strove 
to  catch  it  with  a  riata. 

"Stop  it !  stop  it !"  the  cry  went  up,  and  in  a 
twinkling  we  were  ail  rushing,  pell-mell,  like 
wolves  to  the  chase. 

It  was  quickly  over.  The  frightened  animal 
turned  to  the  river.  Confused  by  our  cries, 
and  seeing  itself  surrounded,  it  hesitated  a  mo- 
ment on  the  brink  of  the  stream,  and  one  of 
the  Indians,  springing  quickly  forward,  dropped 
his  riata  dexterously  over  the  poor  creature's 
head,  and  the  game  was  ours.  Germany  was 


saved  and  breakfast  was  secured.  The  arrieros 
killed  the  calf,  and  within  an  hour  we  were 
busily  gnawing  its  tender  roasted  ribs.  There 
was  neither  salt  nor  pepper,  nor  was  there  lack 
of  gusto.  All  questions  were  barred  as  to  the 
ownership  of  the  unfortunate  beast,  and  this  is 
the  first  confession  of  our  sin.  If  the  owner  of 
the  murdered  calf  should  ever  see  this  article — 
and  I  trust  I  am  treading  on  safe  ground  in 
thus  making  the  amende  honorable — let  him 
send  up  his  bill.  Indemnification,  long  defer- 
red, shall  at  last  be  his. 

It  was  not  until  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
that  the  river  had  fallen  sufficiently  to  warrant 
the  Indians  on  the  other  bank  in  making  an- 
other attempt  to  come  over  in  the  canoe.  Even 
then  the  passage  was  attended  with  much  dan- 
ger, and  it  was  only  by  the  most  skillful  man- 
agement that  disaster  was  avoided.  The  black 
boatmen  were  powerful  fellows,  naked  to  the 
waist,  and  armed  each  with  a  wide,  strong  pad- 
dle. One  stood  up  in  either  end  of  the  light 
craft,  and  there  was  then  room  in  the  center 
for  two  passengers.  The  canoe  itself  was  an 
oak  log  hollowed  out  and  rudely  shaped.  To 
transport  our  party  and  baggage  it  was  neces- 
sary to  make  eight  or  ten  trips  through  the 
whirling  water,  all  of  which  were  accomplished 
in  safety.  Starting  far  up  the  stream,  the  little 
craft  would  catch  the  current  and  go  bounding 
off  at  a  long  angle,  like  a  chip  in  a  mill-race, 
up  and  down,  through  riffle  and  eddy,  careen- 
ing and  pitching  like  an  untamed  mustang,  but 
always  held  steadily  in  hand  by  the  gallant 
black  pilots  at  either  end.  They  lifted  her  over 
rocks  and  steered  her  through  shoots  where  the 
spray  sprung  high  in  air,  but  never  a  break  or 
a  flutter  of  steady  nerve.  Little  by  little  the 
fragile  thing  edged  over  to  the  other  bank  and 
landed  safely  far  below  the  point  of  starting. 
It  was  an  exciting  experience,  which  the  poet 
afterward  commemorated  in  fitting  verse  and 
read  to  us  on  a  reunion  occasion  in  the  City  of 
Mexico.  Unfortunately,  the  English  version  of 
the  same  was  lost  in  the  course  of  my  muta- 
tions in  the  Aztec  land. 

Our  animals  did  not  fare  so  well  in  crossing 
the  stream.  Immediately  after  being  driven 
into  the  water,  two  of  them  were  caught  by  the 
current  and  swept  away.  Nothing  could  be 
done  for  them,  and  the  poor  creatures  were 
dashed  against  the  rocks  and  drowned.  The 
others  struggled  bravely  and  made  the  pas- 
sage, we  standing  on  the  bank  meanwhile,  yell- 
ing and  whooping  to  encourage  them — all  of 
which  Alejandro  pronounced  a  piece  of  idiotic 
folly ;  but  he  was  out  of  humor  on  account  of 
the  two  that  went  down  stream.  By  the  mid- 
dle of  the  afternoon  everything  was  over  the 


520 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


river.  Short  work  was  made  of  such  eatables 
as  could  be  found  in  the  shanty  on  the  other 
shore ;  the  boatmen  were  generously  feed,  and 
once  again  we  were  in  the  saddle,  with  our 
faces  to  the  north. 

Although  suffering  from  lack  of  rest  and 
sleep  we  made  eighteen  miles  that  afternoon 
over  a  rough  and  slippery  trail,  and  reached 
the  town  of  Dos  Caminos  shortly  after  dark. 
This  was  the  best  place  we  had  seen  since  leav- 
ing Acapulco,  and  here  for  the  first  time  it  was 
possible  to  obtain  a  good  night's  rest.  The 
light  of  the  following  morning  revealed  a  pict- 
uresque little  town  romantically  situated  in  a 
depression  of  the  mountains.  A  musical  brook 
babbled  through  the  village,  and  tall,  wooded 
peaks  looked  down  on  every  hand.  The  houses 
were  better  and  the  people  cleaner  and  more 
intelligent  than  any  we  had  yet  seen.  Hardy, 
happy  mountaineers  they  seemed,  and  further- 
more they  wanted  us  to  stay  with  them.  What 
we  lost  by  declining  their  hospitality  and  push- 
ing on  must  ever  remain  an  open  question ;  but 
we  were  not  so  wise  then  as  we  have  since  be- 
come. 

For  four  or  five  days  longer,  with  varying  in- 
cident and  adventure  our  journey  continued. 
The  hardships  of  the  road  gradually  lost  all 
terror,  and  each  night  brought  boisterous  spec- 
ulation as  to  what  the  morrow  would  produce. 
We  got  used  to  sleeping  on  the  ground  and 
eating  Indian  fare.  Fleas  and  yelping  curs 
ceased  to  annoy  or  make  us  afraid ;  and  treach- 
erous showers  and  wet  clothes  became  matters 
of  indifference.  Steadily  onward,  at  a  snail's 
gait,  over  mountain  and  stream,  through  forest 
and  canon  and  native  village  we  held  our  way. 
There  was  ever  something  new  before  us  or 
something  novel  in  prospect;  and  the  best  of 
good-fellowship  prevailing  in  our  little  band, 
discomforts  were  made  light  of  and  all  miser- 
ies were  voted  a  source  of  merriment. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  the  tenth  day  out 
from  Acapulco  that  our  mud -bespattered  and 
now  sorry  looking  caravan  filed  into  the  town 
of  Ixtla,  a  place  of  some  pretensions,  situated 
about  forty  miles  from  the  city  of  Cuernavaca. 
We  had  been  on  the  road  ten  days,  but  had 
only  made  a  little  over  two  hundred  miles. 
The  City  of  Mexico  was  still  thirty  leagues  be- 
fore us,  and  Marion  I  and  began  to  grow  im- 
patient. Three  days  hence  there  was  to  be  a 
grand  celebration  in  the  Mexican  capital  which 
we  were  desirous  of  witnessing.  We  had  set 
our  hearts  upon  it,  in  fact,  and  were  greatly  dis- 
appointed when  it  became  evident  that  our 
creeping  gait  would  not  take  us  there  in  time. 
Alejandro  came  to  the  rescue.  He  informed 
us  that  fresh  mules  and  a  guide  could  be  pro- 


cured at  Ixtla,  if  we  so  desired,  and  that  we 
might  push  on  that  night  to  Cuernavaca  and 
catch  the  stage  leaving  the  latter  place  on  the 
following  morning  for  the  City  of  Mexico.  The 
distance  was  about  forty  miles,  but  we  were  as- 
sured that  the  road  was  good,  and  that,  with 
fresh  animals,  the  trip  could  easily  be  made  by 
two  or  three  o'clock.  It  was  decided  to  adopt 
this  course,  and  arrangements  were  made  at 
once.  Fresh  mules  were  procured,  a  guide 
employed,  and  about  dark,  after  eating  a  hearty 
supper  and  saying  good-bye  to  the  boys,  we 
were  once  more  in  the  saddle.  One  of  the  Mex- 
ican merchants  decided  to  accompany  us  at  the 
last  moment,  so  that  we  made  a  party  of  four, 
counting  Reiner,  the  guide. 

For  about  two  hours  all  went  well,  and  then 
our  troubles  commenced.  Since  sundown  the 
sky  had  been  filling  up  with  ominous  looking 
clouds.  Little  by  little  they  crept  over  the 
whole  heavens  until  the  last  star  was  shut  out 
and  we  were  feeling  our  way  through  a  dark- 
ness that  was  absolute.  Far  out  on  the  mount- 
ains the  lightning  broke  in  zig-zag  flashes 
across  the  sky,  and  then  grew  nearer  and  more 
vivid  until  we  were  blinded  and  dazed,  and  the 
terrific  crashes  of  thunder  half  stupefied  us. 
It  was  only  possible  to  keep  together  by  con- 
stantly calling  one  another  by  name  and  keep- 
ing a  sharp  lookout  when  the  flashes  came.  In 
the  meantime  the  rain  descended  in  sheets. 
We  thought  we  had  seen  it  rain  before;  but 
this  deluge  outdid  any  thing  previously  experi- 
enced. How  the  guide  kept  his  way  in  the 
inky  darkness  was  then,  and  always  will  be,  a 
marvel.  He  had  a  red  blanket  thrown  around 
him  and  was  mounted  on  a  white  mule.  As  I 
caught  occasional  glimpses  of  him  in  the  lurid 
glare  of  the  lightning,  his  head  bowed  to  the 
storm  and  his  iron  heel  buried  in  the  flank  of 
his  mule,  it  seemed  that  he  must  be  in  league 
with  all  the  devils. 

As  for  myself  I  was  so  blinded  and  bewilder- 
ed by  the  lightning  that  my  head  swam,  and 
for  a  time  it  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that 
I  retained  my  seat  in  the  saddle.  Both  Mar- 
ion and  I  were  mounted  on  mules  which  had 
not  been  broken  to  the  bit,  and  they  were  stub- 
born and  unmanageable.  This  added  greatly 
to  our  perplexity.  My  own  mule,  in  addition 
to  his  other  vices,  had  a  propensity  to  stumble. 
He  fell  not  less  than  six  times  that  night,  and 
twice  I  was  thrown  completely  over  his  head, 
fortunately  landing  on  each  occasion  in  a  soft 
place. 

For  over  two  hours  we  groped  our  way  along 
through  the  darkness,  and  then  the  guide  sud- 
denly stopped.  By  the  flashes  of  light  we  could 
see  that  we  were  on  a  species  of  causeway, 


TWELVE  DAYS  ON  A  MEXICAN  HIGHWAY. 


521 


flanked  on  either  hand  by  swamp  land  and  rank 
tule  grass.  Directly  in  front  and  across  our 
path  were  drawn  up  two  rude  ox -carts,  appar 
ently  barring  all  further  progress.  It  was  while 
endeavoring  to  get  around  this  obstacle  that  we 
discovered  that  our  companion — the  Mexican 
merchant — was  not  with  us.  In  vain  we  yellec 
and  shouted.  No  response  came  back  from  the 
blackness  of  darkness,  and  there  was  nothing 
to  do  but  send  Reiner  back  to  look  for  him 
For  an  hour  we  waited  in  the  dismal  storm,  and 
neither  guide  nor  merchant  put  in  an  appear- 
ance. Midnight  came  and  went,  and  still  we 
sat  there,  wet  and  anxious.  Marion  finally  pro- 
posed that  we  should  get  around  the  carts  and 
move  along  the  causeway  a  short  distance  to 
see  where  it  led.  Acting  on  this  suggestion, 
the  mules  were  put  in  motion,  and,  feeling  our 
way  carefully  around  the  obstructing  carts,  we 
rode  forward.  Not  over  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
had  been  made  in  our  uncertain  groping,  when 
a  voice  spoke  up,  sharp  and  threatening,  from 
the  darkness  before  us : 
"Alto  hay!"  it  said. 
"Who's  there?"  answered  Marion. 
"No  les  importa,"  came  the  response;  "pero 
no  den  un  paso  mas  adelanto  porque  son  muer- 
tos"  (none  of  your  business;  but  don't  come  a 
step  nearer,  or  you  are  dead  men ). 

There  was  an  omnious  clicking  in  the  dark- 
ness, and  one  of  the  invisibles  struck  a  match. 
It  did  not  burn  for  over  half  a  minute,  but  that 
was  time  enough.     Standing  squarely  across 
our  track  were  three  or  four  armed  men,  and  we 
found  ourselves  looking  into  the  barrels  of  as 
many  cocked  revolvers.     The  match  went  out, 
and  once  more  we  were  shrouded  in  darkness. 
"What  do  you  want?"  asked  Marion. 
"We  want  you  to  clear  out  of  here,  and  be 
spry  about  it,"  came  the  answer.   "Honest  men 
don't  ride  for  pleasure  on  such  nights  as  this." 
"But  we  are  peaceful  travelers  on  our  way  to 
Cuernavaca,"  Marion  insisted.     "Why  do  you 
stop  us?" 

"We  don't  believe  it;  you  are  robbers.  Move 
on,  or  we  will  fire  upon  you,"  came  the  reply. 

Seeing  that  it  was  useless  to  parley,  and  not 
being  anxious  under  the  circumstances  to  fight, 
we  backed  our  mules  slowly  away,  getting  our 
pistols  out  in  the  meantime  for  any  unexpected 
developments.  As  good  fortune  would  have  it, 
a  shout  went  up  about  this  time  in  our  rear, 
and  we  had  not  gone  far  back  on  the  causeway, 
when  we  were  met  by  the  guide  and  the  mer- 
chant. The  latter  had  wandered  far  off  the 
road,  and  when  found  by  Reiner  was  mired 
down  and  hopelessly  lost  in  the  swamp. 

We  explained  to  them  the  status  of  things  in 
advance,  and  a  hurried  consultation  was  held 


as  to  what  should  be  done.  There  was  a  vil- 
lage just  beyond,  the  guide  informed  us,  and  it 
would  not  be  possible  to  go  around  it.  We 
must  move  forward  on  this  causeway,  or  give 
up  the  idea  of  reaching  Cuernavaca  until  the 
next  day.  He  thought,  however,  that  he  could 
persuade  the  villagers  to  let  us  pass  without  any 
serious  difficulty,  and  so  we  moved  forward 
once  more  and  hailed  the  warlike  guardians  of 
the  pathway.  They  would  only  let  us  pass,  they 
said,  on  one  condition.  Our  presence  and  our 
actions  were  very  suspicious,  but  if  we  would 
come  forward  one  at  a  time  and  place  ourselves 
in  their  hands  they  would  escort  us  through  the 
village  and  let  us  depart.  Their  terms  were 
accepted,  and  one  by  one  we  were  marched 
through  the  town  and  told  to  "skip  out"  at  the 
farther  gate. 

It  is  not  a  pleasant  experience  to  ride  through 
a  Mexican  town  like  this  at  midnight  under  any 
circumstances;  but  when  you  chance  to  be- 
stride a  Guerrero  mule  with  a  tendency  to  go 
tail  first,  and  a  blanketed  rascal  runs  along  on 
either  side  with  a  revolver  at  your  ear,  and  the 
rain  and  the  lightning  blind  you,  and  you  feel 
helpless  and  at  the  mercy  of  all  things  diabol- 
ical, such  experience  becomes  grim  and  loses 
all  sentiment. 

Safely  reunited  at  last  beyond  the  borders  of 
the  hostile  village,  we  once  again  pushed  eager- 
ly forward  on  our  journey.  Three  hours'  valu- 
able time  had  been  lost,  but  as  the  storm  now 
showed  signs  of  abating,  we  did  not  give  up  all 
hope  of  getting  through  to  Cuernavaca  in  sea- 
son for  the  stage.  The  delay,  however,  was 
not  to  be  easily  made  good,  as  we  soon  discov- 
ered. Three  hours'  steady  rain  had  set  all  the 
streams  booming,  and  we  had  proceeded  not 
more  than  two  miles  beyond  the  town  before 
we  were  stopped  on  the  bank  of  a  sheet  of  wa- 
ter, the  opposite  shore  of  which  no  man  could 
see.  It  did  not  seem  to  have  a  very  swift  cur- 
rent, but  the  guide  said  it  was  deep  and  wide, 
and  that  it  would  swim  the  mules  for  fifty  yards 
at  least.  What  should  we  do? 

The  merchant  did  not  want  to  venture  it. 
He  had  had  enough  water  for  one  night,  he 
said.  Marion  and  I,  however,  were  desperate. 
We  did  not  propose  to  spend  the  rest  of  the 
night  in  inaction  on  the  bank  of  the  stream. 
We  insisted  on  going  ahead.  Reiner  was  in- 
different, but  inclined  to  go  with  the  majority. 
Seeing  that  he  would  be  left  alone  if  he  did  not 
follow  us,  the  merchant  finally  relented,  and  we 
all  spurred  our  reluctant  animals  into  the  dark 
water.  High  and  higher  it  rose,  over  stirrup 
and  knee,  and  into  the  saddle,  and  then  we 
were  afloat — the  current  took  us — and  we  were 
drifting  we  know  not  where. 


522 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


Although  troublesome  and  stubborn  on  land, 
the  little  mules  seemed  to  rise  to  the  occasion 
when  once  fairly  afloat,  and  their  conduct  in 
the  water  that  night  atoned  in  our  eyes  for 
many  a  dark  mulish  sin.  Left  entirely  to  their 
own  instincts,  they  struck  bravely  out  for  the 
unseen  shore,  and  with  many  a  snort  and  ear- 
wag  took  us  safely  over.  Twice  again  that 
night  it  was  necessary  to  swim  in  the  dark  in 
order  to  prosecute  our  journey.  And  then  the 
gray  dawn  broke;  and  wet,  hungry,  and  ex- 
hausted, we  were  told  that  Cuernavaca  was  still 
three  leagues  away.  One  last  grand  spurt  was 
made,  but  it  availed  us  not.  The  mules  were 
tired  out,  and  their  riders  tottered  in  their  sad- 
dles. When,  at  last,  we  dragged  ourselves  into 
the  drowsy  town,  we  learned  that  the  stage 
had  already  gone,  and  our  night  of  toil  and 
peril  was  all  for  naught.  We  were  just  one 
hour  too  late, 


Our  comrades,  on  coming  up  the  following 
day,  were  surprised  to  find  us  waiting  for  them 
at  the  gates  of  Cuernavaca,  but  we  were  so 
humble,  and  looked  so  disconsolate,  that  they 
had  compassion  upon  us  and  received  us  back 
with  open  arms. 

The  next  day  we  climbed  the  last  grand  bar- 
rier and  stood  upon  the  southern  wall  of  the 
Valley  of  Mexico.  As  we  looked  out  over  the 
beautiful  landscape,  with  its  lakes,  and  streams, 
and  cities,  and  realized  that  the  goal  was  at 
hand — the  consummation  of  so  many  fond 
dreams — the  discomforts  and  hardships  of  the 
road  were  forgotten  and  forgiven.  This  was 
recompense,  and  we  were  satisfied.  Our  mis- 
take had  been  in  undertaking  the  trip  during 
the  rainy  season.  I  afterward  went  over  the 
same  road  in  the  spring  of  the  year,  and  from 
Acapulco  to  the  City  of  Mexico  it  was  one  long 
pleasure  drive.  D.  S.  RICHARDSON. 


THE    ROYAL   WINE. 


The  year  was  one  of  plenty.     Every  field 
Had  borne  its  fullest  store  of  golden  grain; 
And  merry,  frolic -loving  girls  and  boys, 
That,  every  harvest,  plucked  the  rosy  fruits, 
Or  skillfully,  with  one  well  rounded  arm, 
Poised  on  their  heads  the  baskets  full  of  grapes, 
This  year  had  double  time  of  merriment. 

A  little  valley,  high  among  the  hills, 
Whose  sunny  slopes  were  darkened  here  and  there 
By  thrifty  vineyards  in  well  ordered  rows, 
Afar  and  near  was  famed  for  goodly  wines. 
Yet  one  there  was  that  far  surpassed  the  rest, 
Sparkling  and  sweet  and  clear  as  drink  of  gods, 
The  secret  of  whose  making  no  man  knew 
Except  one  aged  vintner, 

Now,  although 

Never  before  was  known  such  luscious  yield 
Of  purple  grapes  untouched  by  frost  or  rain, 
This  year  men  sought  in  vain  the  royal  wine; 
And  all  who  questioned,  wondering,  received 
The  single  answer,  "Nay,  the  wine  you  ask 
I  cannot  make,"  and  wondered  yet  the  morej 
Till  one  fair  youth  besought  the  aged  man: 
"Pray  tell  us,  father,  why  you  cannot  press 
In  such  a  bounteous  year  the  choicest  wine?" 
Then  answer  came,  "Except  the  purpling  grape 
Be  touched  with  chilling  dews  and  autumn  frost, 
The  purest,  goodliest  wine  of  all  must  fail." 

O  Heart,  count  not  too  high  thy  summer  days: 

The  royal  wine  comes  only  after  frost!  ALICE  E.  PRATT. 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


523 


GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT. 


CHAPTER  V. 

Word  had  come  to  Hope  in  a  letter  from 
Bill  that  little  Jack  Marvin  had  got  to  wearing 
pants : 

"The  quarest  things  you  ever  saw ;  his  mother  made 
'em,  and  oh,  my  eyes,  was'nt  they  too  funny  !  He  look- 
ed like  a  hoppin'  toad  in  'em.  Ma  laughed  so  at  'em 
Jack  got  mad  and  said  he  was  '  doin  to  dit  a  dun  and 
tchoot  her.'  And,  Hope,  he  can't  talk  any  plainer  now 
than  when  you  left ;  and  that's  cos  his  ma  and  pa's 
never  talked  any  thing  but  baby -talk  to  him;  but,  oh, 
them  pants  !  They  make  him  look  like  the  fattest  little 
old  man  ever  was  ;  his  legs  don't  look  two  inches  long 
behind,  but  he  thinks  they's  hunkydora,  you  bet.  Net- 
tie took  'em  off  n  him  and  altered  'em.  She  cut  'em 
higher  in  the  crotch,  and  took  about  a  mile  of  slack 
out'n  'em  behind,  and  still  he  looks  like  he  was  stuffed 
with  a  piller.  He  had  four  fights  the  first  day  he  wore 
'em  with  boys  makin'  fun  of  him ;  he  got  whipped 
every  time,  but  he  wasn't  skeered,  and  he  continered  to 
be  spunky  and  to  strike  every  feller  that  laughed  till 
pretty  soon  they  let  him  alone.  Ma  says  he's  an  awful 
cunnin'  man ;  but  if  he's  a  man,  a  man  is  queer  mixin's. " 

This  letter  came  two  days  before  Hope's 
wedding  that  was  never  to  be.  It  made  no  im- 
pression on  her  mind  at  the  time,  she  being  dead 
to  feeling  then.  But  on  the  day  of  that  morn- 
ing when  Mr.  Brownell  said  to  her,  "you  shall 
go  home  again  in  quest  of  the  lost  roses,"  she 
came  across  this  remarkable  document  and 
read  it  with  the  warmest  feelings. 

"Oh,"  she  said;  "I'll  take  Jack  a  suit  of 
clothes." 

And  then  she  thought  of  other  things  she 
meant  to  take  to  all  of  them.  She  was  in  a 
state  of  great  mental  excitement,  her  mind  fly- 
ing from  one  subject  to  another  with  such  ra- 
pidity as  to  leave  no  impression  that  could  be 
remembered  long.  Often,  however,  a  flash  of 
something  like  curiosity  arose  as  to  why  Mr. 
Brownell  refused  to  marry  her;  and  why — see- 
ing he  did  refuse — he  had  not  done  so  before. 
It  was  a  puzzle  she  could  not  work  out ;  and 
even  in  her  joy  at  being  released  it  gave  her 
pride  a  twinge  to  think  he  had  treated  her  so. 

It  was  several  days  before  her  arrangements 
were  completed  for  starting.  In  the  meantime 
she  avoided  Mr.  Brownell  as  if  he  were  her 
arch  enemy ;  she  treated  him  with  a  distant  yet 
gentle  politeness,  and  hastened  her  departure 
in  every  way. 

"How  could  I  have  been  so  happy  here,"  she 
thought;  "how  could  I  have  had  a  moment's 


content  in  the  society  of  that  whimsical  man 
who  has  used  me  as  a  plaything  and  is  now 
tired  of  me?  Well,  at  least  let  me  be  thankful 
for  his  capriciousness.  I  am  free,  and  that,  too, 
without  self-reproach. 

And  Mr.  Brownell  was  thinking  also.  The 
night  he  sat  all  through  the  long,  silent  hours 
until  dawn  in  the  library  planning  how  to  re- 
lease Hope — what  method  or  pretext  he  could 
resort  to  that  would  give  her  least  pain,  or, 
rather,  that  would  be  the  least  drawback  on 
her  joy — it  had  not  occurred  to  him  that  her 
pride  would  revolt  in  a  way  to  destroy  her  in- 
nocent, childish  love  for  him  in  the  course  he 
finally  adopted.  He  saw  it  now  and  felt  it. 

"After  all,"  he  said  to  himself,  "it  is  well;  I 
had  to  choose  between  two  evils.  I  had  better 
bear  any  construction  she  can  put  upon  my  con- 
duct than  have  her  feel  anything  like  sorrow 
for  me  or  remorse.  The  young  should  be  hap- 
py, at  least." 

Some  day,  perhaps,  he  would  tell  her,  he 
thought.  But  then  he  knew  when  that  day 
came  his  pain  would  be  dead  and  his  love  for 
her  dead,  and  nothing  could  make  him  realize 
that  this  would  ever  be. 

"Better,"  he  said,  "keep  up  her  delusion 
with  regard  to  my  motive  until  she  goes." 

He  sighed  to  think  how  glad  she  would  be 
to  leave  him,  and  how  desolate  the  house  would 
be  without  her. 

"  I  had  no  right  to  think  for  one  moment  of 
ever  making  her  my  wife — so  young  a  girl — 
and  I'm  getting  old ;  I'm  getting  old." 

Indeed,  in  these  days  his  appearance  was 
almost  haggard.  The  gentle,  pathetic  look  in 
his  eyes  was  deepened,  and  his  hair  was  whiter. 
Ever  since  Hope  knew  him  his  hair  had  been 
stationary  at  a  certain  intermediate  shade  of 
gray,  where  its  prevailing  tint  was  dark  rather 
than  light;  but  now  it  seemed  to  have  crossed 
the  line,  and  was  light  rather  than  dark.  Hope 
noticed  this,  but  was  so  taken  up  with  her  side 
of  the  case,  together  with  preparations  for  home, 
that  she  scarcely  thought  of  it.  If,  for  a  mo- 
ment, a  feeling  of  the  old,  kind  love  she  had 
felt  for  him  came  into  her  heart,  her  pride 
crushed  it,  saying,  "Remember  how  he  treated 
you." 

When,  however,  the  time  came  to  say  good- 
bye, her  joy  at  getting  away,  her  exhilaration 
at  the  prospect  of  the  trip  and  her  anticipation 


524 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


of  the  meeting  of  her  friends,  unexpected  to 
them,  altogether  overcame  her  pride.  She  had 
hugged  and  kissed  Mrs.  Hildreth  to  her  heart's 
content ;  and  was  come  up  from  the  kitchen, 
where  she  had  been  particularly  effusive  in  her 
leave-taking  of  everybody,  even  the  coal-heaver 
and  the  scullery  girl,  when  she  paused  a  mo- 
ment at  the  library  door. 

"He  doesn't  like  me,"  she  said;  "I  have  dis- 
appointed him  some  way;  I  am  not  the  girl  he 
took  me  for;  he  rated  me  too  high,  and  now 
he  rates  me  too  low.  Yet  I  must  go  and  thank 
him  for  all  his  goodness ;  yes,  I  must  do  it,  al- 
though I  know  he  doesn't  like  me." 

Then  she  opened  the  door  and  stood  in  his 
presence,  He  was  lying  on  the  lounge,  very 
pale  indeed,  and  apparently  too  weak  to  rise. 
Now,  in  an  instant,  Hope's  heart  intuitively 
came  into  perception  of  the  fact  that  no  insult 
had  been  put  upon  her,  though  no  ray  of  an 
explanation  reached  her  reason.  In  obedience 
to  the  loving  impulse  prompted  by  this  intui- 
tion she  went  to  him  quickly,  and  kneeling 
down  encircled  him  with  her  arms.  Then  she 
kissed  him  many  times. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "you  are  good;  you  are  so 
good;  and  I  love  you  even  if  you  are  disap- 
pointed in  me  and  cannot  love  me.  I  knew 
always  you  had  placed  me  too  high;  you  did 
not  know  what  common  clay  I  was  made  of. 
But  I  love  you,  Mr.  Brownell;  I  love  you  just 
as  well  as  if  I  had  been  everything  your  imag- 
ination thought  me.  I  am  as  grateful  to  you 
for  your  generosity  to  me  and  Stevey  as  the 
greatest  genius  could  be ;  indeed,  indeed  I  am. 
I  can  never  forget  nor  cease  to  bless  you.  I 
can  love  and  appreciate  even  if  I  can't  realize 
your  other  expectations  of  me.  Oh,  if  you  could 
only  forgive  me  for  not  being  what  you  thought 
me,  and  let  me  be  just  as  I  am  and  like  me  all 
the  same,  I  should  go  away  from  here  so  much 
happier." 

A  flush  had  come  into  Mr.  Brownell's  face 
and  died  away  again,  leaving  him  very  pale. 
It  was  with  difficulty  he  suppressed  his  tears. 

"I  do  love  you,  Hope,"  he  said;  "I  do,  indeed; 
and  I  am  not  disappointed  in  you.  You  have 
all  the  genius  I  ever  supposed  you  had,  and 
more,  too.  It  was  through  no  fault  of  yours 
that  I  broke  off  our  marriage.  There  was  noth- 
ing in  that  to  hurt  your  pride  if  I  should  tell 
you  all.  I  will  tell  you  some  time,  my  dear, 
when  you  are  a  happy  wife;  for  I  don't  mean 
to  lose  sight  of  you  by  any  means.  Write  to 
me  when  you  get  home,  and  remember  always 
that  I  love  you  with  a  tender  love — as  if  you 
were  my  own  child." 

And  so  she  left  him  with  very  different  feel- 
ings from  what  she  anticipated,  and  carried 


away  with  her  a  sorrowful  sentiment  she  did 
not  try  to  explain.  But  never  from  that  day 
did  she  believe  herself  the  toy  of  his  caprice  as 
she  had  once  thought.  That  version  of  the 
affair  escaped  from  her  as  easily  as  it  had  come, 
and  in  as  unreasoning  a  manner.  Young  peo- 
ple do  not  investigate  nor  analyze  their  ideas; 
they  receive  thought  by  impression,  and  one 
impression  remains  until  another  overlays  it. 

Hope  had  been  placed  in  the  care  of  a  friend 
of  Mr.  Brownell  on  her  passage  to  California, 
and  thus,  being  free  from  care  and  in  a  frame 
for  enjoyment,  the  trip  was  delightful  to  her. 
One  evening  she  reached  home  just  after  dark. 
Her  trunks  were  placed  on  the  porch,  and  she 
herself  lifted  from  the  stage.  The  house  seem- 
ed very  quiet  and  dull.  She  tried  the  door  and 
found  it  locked;  then  she  rapped  loudly.  At 
this  there  was  a  great  scampering  inside,  but 
no  response.  She  knocked  again  and  rattled 
the  door  convulsively.  More  scampering  and 
suppressed  giggling. 

"Let  me  in,"  said  Hope. 

"'Black  or  white?'"  came  from  the  inside. 

Hope  recognized  that  voice  and  responded 
accordingly : 

" '  Fee,  fy,  fo,  fum,  I  smell  the  blood  of  an 
Englishman ;  dead  or  alive  I  must  have  some.' " 

At  this  juncture  there  was  great  tittering  and 
much  scurrying  of  feet ;  after  that,  silence,  but 
not  long.  There  now  came  a  fearful  scram- 
bling toward  the  door,  and  the  voices,  though 
still  suppressed  and  broken  by  laughter,  be- 
came audible. 

"Bill,  you  go  first." 

"No,  I'm  afraid;  you  go  first,  Aleck." 

When  at  length  the  door  was  opened,  Hope 
saw  a  line  of  boys,  one  behind  the  other,  all 
united  in  the  effort  to  keep  the  first  boy  in  his 
place  and  push  him  forward.  Each  one  held 
about  a  half  yard  of  Bologna  sausage  in  his 
hand  and  seemed  prepared  to  meet  an  enemy. 
Little  Sally  stood  back  in  the  room  holding  a 
candle.  There  was  a  momentary  pause  when 
they  saw  Hope;  and  then  they  overwhelmed 
her.  It  was  with  difficulty  she  kept  her  feet 
under  their  charge;  she  was  forced  to  cry 
"quarter,"  and  even  then  they  would  hardly  re- 
lease her.  There  was  nobody  but  the  children 
at  home. 

"Where's  pa  and  ma  and  Nettie?"  asked 
Hope,  "and  why  didn't  you  let  me  in?" 

"Oh,  Hope,  they're  at  Marvinses,"  cried  two 
or  three  voices  at  once;  "and  Dr.  Marvin  was 
drowned  yesterday,  and  the  reason  we  didn't 
let  you  in  we  was  talkin'  about  him  and  thought 
may  be  you  were  his  ghost  come  back ;  so,  we 
thought  we'd  teach  him  to  stay  dead  when  he 
was  dead,  and  not  be  comin'  round  any  more." 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


525 


"Dr.  Marvin  dead  !"  she  exclaimed. 

"And  Mrs.  Marvin  fainted  when  she  heard 
it,  too,  and  all  day  yesterday  they  was  a  rollin' 
him  on  a  barrel,  and  a  heatin'  things  to  wrap 
him  in;  but  it  wasn't  no  go.  He  was  dead 
enough,  you  bet." 

"Oh,  mercy,  mercy!"  she  kept  repeating 
compassionately.  "And  what  made  you  afraid 
of  him?  Suppose  he  should  come  back,  do 
you  think  he  would  hurt  you?" 

"Oh,  as  to  that,"  answered  the  elder  brother, 
in  a  voice  full  of  the  uncouth  inflections  that 
mark  the  transitional  period  from  boyhood  to 
manhood,  "as  to  that,  it  was  just  our  nonsense. 
We  wanted  to  see  how  brave  Aleck  and  Bill 
were." 

"And  where  did  you  get  that  army  of  Bologna 
sausage?"  asked  Hope,  in  whom  even  the  sur- 
prise and  pity  she  felt  for  her  old  friend  could 
not  quite  extinguish  her  curiosity  as  to  the 
strange  weapons  the  children  had  drawn  upon 
her  when  the  door  was  first  opened,  and  which 
they  were  now  clipping  each  other  over  the 
head  with,  in  the  exuberance  of  their  delight  at 
her  unexpected  return. 

"The  butcher -man  asked  ma  to  let  him 
smoke  it  in  our  smoke-house,"  said  Bill;  "and 
he  took  it  down  this  morning  to  take  it  away ; 
and  then  somebody  borrowed  his  wagon  to  go 
to  the  funeral  and  he  left  it  here  till  to  -morrow. 
But  I  say,  Hope,  hadn't  we  better  go  and  bring 
pa  and  ma  home?" 

"What!  and  leave  Mrs.  Marvin  alone  with 
her  dead  husband?" 

"Why,  he  was  buried  to-day.  That  is  the 
reason  all  this  Bologna  and  a  heap  more  is  here 
now.  He  was  buried  this  afternoon,  and  Ste- 
phen is  with  her." 

The  last  word  was  scarcely  out  of  his  mouth 
before  he  had  passed  the  garden -gate  and  was 
flying  over  the  road  with  the  joyful  news. 
Then  every  other  boy  started  in  hot  pursuit; 
each  was  anxious  to  tell  of  Hope's  return  first. 
They  ran  like  a  pack  of  young  savages,  tum- 
bling against  each  other,  tripping  each  other 
up  with  the  sausages,  and  filling  the  few  pedes- 
trians whom  they  met  on  the  way  with  astonish- 
ment and  fright. 

In  the  progress  of  our  story,  we  have  neg- 
lected to  keep  the  readers  posted  concerning 
our  friends  of  Diamond  City.  Long  before 
Stephen  and  Hope  went  to  New  York,  it  began 
to  be  suspected  that  Dr.  Marvin  had  taken  to 
drink.  This  habit  soon  manifested  itself  most 
unmistakably;  he  even  became  overbearing 
and  brutal  to  his  wife.  Gradually,  as  the  time 
went  on,  all  her  sources  of  pleasure  and  amuse- 
ment died  out.  The  paint-box  and  its  con- 
tents disappeared.  The  huge  black  chest  un- 


der the  bed  filled  with  her  sketches  was  rifled 
by  Jack,  and  the  pictures  traded  off  for  mar- 
bles, jack-knives,  goose  eggs  and  other  treas- 
ures dear  to  the  boyish  heart.  There  was  no 
ring  of  laughter  in  the  house  any  more,  and  the 
long,  lonely  nights  were  filled  with  sobs  and 
stifled  groans.  As  she  went  about  her  wretch- 
ed home,  her  gentle  dark  eyes  were  raised 
slightly  upward  as  if  seeking  escape  in  that  di- 
rection from  the  trials  that  so  woefully  beset 
her  here.  Her  sweet  face,  once  so  girlish  and 
happy,  was  prematurely  grave  and  faded ;  and 
that  metamorphosis,  so  wonderful  in  youth,  so 
almost  incredible  anywhere  outside  of  Califor- 
nia, had  come  to  her — a  change  in  the  color  of 
her  hair  from  dark  brown  to  snowy  white.  It 
was  pitiful.  It  had  filled  her  brother  with  such 
sorrow,  when  he  beheld  her  for  the  first  time 
after  his  return,  that  added  to  his  other  sorrows 
it  overwhelmed  him,  so  that  he  wept  like  a  girl. 

In  all  respects  the  family  had  fared  badly  in 
Stephen's  absence.  Many  a  time  they  would 
have  gone  without  food  but  for  the  kindness  of 
the  neighbors.  Stephen's  return  was  most  op- 
portune, though  for  a  while  it  looked  dark  about 
his  getting  anything  to  do  to  support  them. 
Three  years  had  altered  the  face  of  Californian 
society  somewhat.  Times  were  harder ;  work 
was  scarce,  particularly  the  kind  of  work  to 
which  he  was  adapted.  Dr.  Marvin  had  be- 
come a  most  pitiable  sot,  and  his  death  was 
looked  upon  as  a  release  by  all  except  her  to 
whom  it  was  the  greatest  possible  release. 
When  she  saw  his  face  cold  in  death,  she  for- 
got the  years  of  privation  and  cruelty  she  had 
endured  for  him,  and  straightway  enshrined 
him  as  chief  in  her  calendar  of  saints,  to  be 
worshiped  through  all  time. 

Little  change  had  come  to  the  Wilkins  fam- 
ily. They  were  no  richer  than  when  Hope 
left  home.  Another  child  had  been  added  to 
the  handsome  group,  a  little  girl  just  a  year  old 
when  Hope  saw  her  for  the  first  time.  Hope 
had  sent  her  a  name  from  New  York  fresh 
from  the  latest  novel,  and  had  brought  her 
more  toys  than  she  could  break  in  a  month. 

It  was  now  getting  toward  winter,  and  the 
boys  left  in  charge  of  the  house  had  permitted 
the  fire  to  go  down.  Little  Sally,  feeling  the 
responsibility  of  the  occasion,  had  placed  her 
candle  on  a  chair,  and  was  bringing  in  wood 
and  trying  in  every  way  to  start  the  fire  and 
brighten  up  things  generally.  She  was  very 
modest  in  her  demeanor  toward  Hope,  and 
answered  her  questions  with  a  shy  little  "yes 
ma'am"  and  "no  ma'am." 

"Oh,  what  a  sweet  little  thing  she  is!"  thought 
Hope,  restraining  the  impulse  to  snatch  her  up 
and  kiss  her  breath  away ;  "  what  a  sweet  moth- 


526 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


erly  little  thing,  just  like  Nettie.  How  I  wish 
they  would  come." 

She  had  not  long  to  wait.  There  came  an 
earthquake  on  the  front  porch,  the  door  burst 
open  and  in  tumbled  four  boys,  pitching  over 
each  other  and  hitting  right  and  left  with  the 
Bolognas.  Directly  behind  them  was  Franky, 
bare-headed  and  out  of  breath,  but  beaming, 
beautiful,  and  benignant.  Mother  and  daugh- 
ter rushed  together  and  for  the  time  melted 
into  one,  like  two  clouds  driven  by  opposite  cur- 
rents of  air.  Then  Nettie  came  with  her  Ma- 
donna face  wearing  the  radiance  of  sweet  sis- 
terly welcome;  and  next  Mr.  Wilkins,  Mrs. 
Marvin,  and  Jack,  all  together.  Last  of  all,  and 
some  moments  later  was  Stephen,  with  the 
baby  so  wrapped  it  was  impossible  to  guess 
what  it  was. 

"Dear  me,"  cried  Mrs.  Wilkins,  "I  forgot  I 
had  a  baby." 

"Oh,  ma,  I  forgot  her,  too,"  said  Nettie. 

"How  could  you  be  so  thoughtless?"  asked 
Mr.  Wilkins,  unwrapping  the  bundle  with  care, 
and  feeling  it  cautiously  to  see  which  end  was  up. 

"Why  didn't  you  bring  her,  pa?"  asked  Net- 
tie. 

"Well,  really,  I  was  very  much  excited  at 
the  moment  and — and — " 

"So  was  I  excited,  pa;  so  was  ma  excited; 
so  was  Mrs.  Marvin  and  Jack;  all  of  us  in  fact, 
except  Stephen.  How  did  you  come  to  think 
of  her,  Stephen?" 

"I  stopped  to  secure  the  fire,"  said  he;  "and 
somehow  I  chanced  to  see  her  as  she  lay  asleep 
on  the  bed  so  I  bundled  her  up  and  brought 
her." 

By  this  time,  a  bright  face,  with  eyes  round 
from  sudden  waking,  came  into  view,  and  Hope 
rushed  for  the  baby ;  but  the  smiling  little  face 
fell  into  sudden  gravity,  and  she  pushed  away 
from  her  stranger  sister,  dropping  her  eyes 
bashfully.  Hope  was  disappointed,  and  every- 
body sympathized  in  her  disappointment.  Had 
baby  known  it  she  would  have  trembled  for  her 
queenship  in  that  first  moment  of  public  dis- 
approval ;  but  she  did  not  know  it  and  in  that 
fact  lay  her  safety. 

It  was  many  days  in  this  reunited  family  be- 
fore the  excitement  of  meeting  had  passed,  and 
more  days  yet  ere  they  were  done  recounting 
the  incidents  that  had  transpired  to  all  of  them. 
Mrs.  Wilkins  brightened  her  memory  with  re- 
gard to  Bill's  escapades,  and  laughingly  told 
them  to  Hope. 

Shortly  after  the  failure  of  the  young  man's 
circus  business,  in  which  Sally  was  to  star  it 
over  the  country  as  the  chief  attraction,  he  se- 
cretly plotted  another  attempt  to  run  away  and 
go  to  Hope,  which  might  have  proved  disas- 


trous, but  did  not  in  consequence  of  that  ubiq- 
uitous law  of  special  providence  which  operates 
solely  for  the  benefit  of  such  youngsters  as 
Bill.  Having  evolved  his  plan  he  kept  very 
quiet  about  it  until  circumstances  favored  him 
in  executing  it.  One  day  his  time  came.  He 
saw  a  mettlesome,  high -lived  horse,  all  equip- 
ped for  riding,  tied  to  a  neighboring  fence. 

"I'll  git  on  it  and  ride  to  New  York  right  off 
when  nobody  ain't  a  lookin',  cos  what's  the  use 
of  waitin',"  he  said. 

And  he  did  get  on  it.  However,  "man  pro- 
poses and  God  disposes." 

Mrs.  Wilkins  was  ironing.  Bill  came  in, 
climbed  up  on  the  far  corner  of  her  table,  and 
sat  very  still  indeed.  Presently  his  quietness 
attracted  her  attention.  Quiet  and  Bill  did 
not  usually  live  in  the  same  house  at  the  same 
time  without  awakening  the  parental  anxiety. 

"What's  the  matter?"  his  mother  asked. 

"Nothin'." 

"Are  you  sick?" 

"No,  'm.» 

"What  makes  you  so  pale?" 

"Nothin'." 

"Do  you  want  a  piece  of  cake?" 

"No—  yes,  if  it's  got  currents  in  it." 

The  cake  was  produced,  but  his  appetite  was 
not  so  sharp  as  usual. 

"What  you  been  up  to?"  asked  his  mother. 

"Nothin'." 

"Where  you  been?" 

"Nowhere." 

"I  lay  you've  been  hatchin3  devilment,  if  a 
body  could  only  find  it  out.  Tell  me  now, 
haven't  you?" 

"Haven't  I  wha-at?" 

"What  you  been  doin'?" 

"Nothin'." 

"Where  you  been?" 

"Nowhere." 

At  this  moment  there  was  a  tumult  on  the 
front  porch.  Two  or  three  men  rushed  in. 

"Where's  Bill?"  they  cried  in  a  breath. 

Then  they  saw  him  and  explained.  He  had 
climbed  on  one  of  the  most  dangerous  horses 
in  the  county,  they  said;  and  it  had  run  off 
with  him,  kicking  and  plunging  awfully.  Sev- 
eral men  had  mounted  other  horses  standing 
round  and  given  chase.  They  had  overtaken 
the  horse  and  brought  it  back,  but  could  find 
no  trace  of  Bill.  Half  the  town  was  out  novr 
looking  for  his  remains,  and  the  greatest  con- 
sternation prevailed. 

"Where  did  he  throw  you,  Bill?"  was  asked. 

"Who  throw  me?"  said  Bill. 

"The  horse;  where  did  the  horse  throw 
you?" 

"Wot  horse?" 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


527 


"The  horse  you  got  on  round  by  Myer's 
store." 

"Didn't  get  on  no  horse." 

"You  must  be  mistaken,"  said  Mrs.  Wilkins 
to  the  man. 

"Is  it  possible  that  it  was  some  other  child?" 
queried  one. 

Bill  munched  his  cake  silently.  More  peo- 
ple were  coming.  All  of  them  questioned  him. 
Many  went  away  doubting ;  others  were  certain 
their  eyes  had  not  deceived  them.  Presently 
the  school -master  arrived.  He  was  deeply 
versed  in  the  hidden  ways  of  boys.  A  life  -  time 
spent  in  ferreting  out  the  crooked  paths  and 
dark  mysteries  of  this  labyrinthine  institution, 
aided  by  recollections  of  his  own  boyhood,  had 
made  him  almost  omniscient  with  regard  to 
them.  He  asked  no  questions.  He  walked 
about  the  floor,  talking  to  Mrs.  Wilkins  and 
Nettie  on  all  manner  of  subjects  except  the 
subject.  Bill  began  to  feel  neglected.  At  last, 
the  subject  under  discussion  was  good  horse- 
manship. The  school -master,  it  seemed,  was 
a  good  rider;  had  performed  wonderful  eques- 
trian feats  in  his  boyhood,  and  passed  many 
a  hair -breadth  escape. 

"Thinks  he's  the  only  feller  in  the  world 
that  dares  ride,"  thought  Bill. 

"Now,"  said  the  school -master,  "the  boy 
that  rode  that  horse  to-day  knew  nothing  at 
all  of  the  science  of  riding.  To  be  sure,  I  did 
not  see  him  as  he  rode  through  town ;  but  I  am 
informed  on  good  authority  that  he  was  actu- 
ally  frightened  so  that  his  hair  stood  on  end." 

Bill  raised  his  hand  and  smoothed  his  hair 
down. 

"And  his  tongue  clove  to  the  roof  of  his 
mouth." 

Bill  put  out  his  tongue  and  felt  it. 

"And  that,  instead  of  pulling  on  the  reins, 
as  a  brave  boy  would,  he  clung  to  the  horn  of 
the  saddle  like  grim  death.  I  wonder  if  that 
could  be  possible ;  if  the  boy  did  actually  drop 
the  reins  like  a  coward,  and — " 

"  No,"  said  Bill,  "you  bet,  that's  a  lie.  I  pull- 
ed on  him  hard  enough  to  break  his  durned 
neck,  and  he  wouldn't  stop." 

Franky  looked  at  the  youngster  as  he  sat 
there  on  the  corner  of  the  table  with  his  knees 
drawn  up  and  his  hands  clasped  around  them, 
He  might  have  been  covered  with  a  good  sized 
water-bucket,  and  there  he  was,  saying:  "I 
pulled  on  him  hard  enough  to  break  his  durned 
neck,  and  he  wouldn't  stop." 

It  was  too  comical. 

"I'd  give  a  hundred  dollars  if  his  father 
could  see  him  now,"  she  chuckled,  with  irre- 
pressible pride  and  merriment.  The  school- 
master laughed ;  everybody  laughed. 


"Did  the  horse  know  you  was  there,  Bill?" 
asked  Aleck. 

"If  he  didn't  know  more  than  you  do,  he 
didn't  know  nothin',"  was  the  brotherly  rejoin- 
der. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Stephen  and  Hope  were  very  happy  in  these 
days.  They  had  nothing  to  face  worse  than 
poverty,  and  they  were  not  afraid  of  it.  Ste- 
phen had  a  clerkship  at  a  small  salary ;  but  it 
was  enough  for  his  sister's  household  needs, 
and  as  yet  he  saw  nothing  better ;  so  he  made 
the  best  of  it. 

Hope  felt  an  irreparable  loss  in  the  fact  that 
her  occupation  was  gone.  She  had  contributed 
largely  to  the  wants  of  her  family  while  she 
was  in  New  York,  and  now  she  was  back  again 
to  add  to  their  burden.  A  taste  of  independ- 
ence had  spoiled  her  for  the  dependent  position 
of  womankind.  She  would  have  been  more 
restless  under  this  change  but  for  her  love  of 
Stephen.  She  made  up  her  mind  to  accept  the 
position  of  cook  and  maid  of  all  work  for  the 
sake  of  the  man  she  loved,  and  to  perfect  her 
knowledge  of  housekeeping  in  order  to  do  so. 
One  evening,  after  she  had  been  a  few  months 
at  home,  they  were  sitting  together  in  the  edge 
of  the  wood  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain.  Spring 
had  returned ;  the  weather  was  divine ;  a  rivu- 
let poured  down  its  rocky  bed  near  them,  and 
an  early  moon  shone  brightly  overhead.  Hope 
was  beautiful;  her  mother's  wonderful  charms 
were  all  renewed  in  her,  polished  and  refined 
by  a  course  of  education,  desultory  and  irregu- 
lar to  be  sure,  but  preeminently  the  thing  for  a 
girl  who  did  her  own  thinking  and  repudiated 
the  cut-and-dried  thoughts  of  others.  She  was 
telling  Stephen  some  of  her  housekeeping  ex- 
periences. 

"And  so  you  actually  made  bread,"  he  was 
saying. 

"No,  Stevey,  I  actually  didrit? 

"But  I  thought — didn't  you  tell  me  the  night 
before  I  went  to  the  city  [Stephen  was  a  clerk 
in  Myer's  store,  and  had  been  sent  to  San  Fran- 
cisco on  business,  whence  he  had  just  returned] 
that  you  intended  to  try  your  hand  on  a  batch 
of  bread.  I  thought  of  it  several  times  while 
I  was  gone,  and  wondered  how  you  came  out." 

"I  came  out  with  my  life,  Stevey — barely 
though,  I  can  tell  you — and  the  bread.  Did 
you  read  that  fearfully  scientific  article  in  the 
Diamond  City  Forum  this  week?" 

"Yes,  I  did— that  is,  I  didn't— I  know  what 
you  mean,  though.  Go  on  with  your  bread 
story." 


5*8 


THE   CALIFORNIA^. 


"But,  Stevey,  all  that  article  with  all  those 
jaw-breaking  words  grew  out  of  my  experiment 
in  bread.  Dr.  Thomlinson  wrote  it,  and  really 
it  scares  me  to  think  of  it." 

"How  could  that  article — it  was  something 
of  a  scientific  nature,  wasn't  it? — grow  out  of 
your  bread  making?  I  wish  now  I  had  read  it." 

"I'll  tell  you  all  about  it,  and  then  you  can 
advise  me  about  what  I  ought  to  say  to  Dr. 
Thomlinson.  You  see  it  was  this  way :  ma  was 
gone,  and  had  taken  Sally  and  the  baby  with 
her;  Nettie  was  out  riding  with  Mr.  Moreton; 
the  boys  were  at  school,  and  pa  was  at  work ; 
so  I  thought  it  would  be  the  best  time  I  could 
find  to  learn  how  to  make  bread.  You  see  that 
as  much  as  I  wish  to  work  now,  and  to  help 
ma,  she  won't  let  me,  and  Nettie  won't  let  me ; 
they  all  act  as  if  I  were  too  good  and  too  re- 
fined to  touch  my  hands  to  anything,  and  so  I 
am  hindered  from  learning  the  things  necessary 
for  me  to  know  in  order  to  be  a  poor  man's 
wife.  Well,  I  got  some  flour  in  a  very  small 
pan,  because  I  wanted  to  make  only  a  little, 
and  I  put  some  yeast  in  it  and  some  water,  and 
stirred  it  up.  But  there  was  too  much  water, 
and  so  I  put  in  more  flour  and  yeast.  This 
made  the  pan  too  full,  and  I  put  it  in  a  bigger 
one ;  then  I  got  in  too  much  water  once  more, 
and  after  that  too  much  flour  again.  I  didn't 
like  to  do  it,  but  I  had  to,  Stevey :  I  got  the 
great  big  dish -pan,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "So 
far  and  no  farther" — for  you  see  a  chain  of 
things  was  beginning  to  run  in  my  head,  like 
this:  Little  pan,  middle  pan,  dish -pan,  wash- 
tub,  wood -box,  clear  on  up  to  the  house  itself. 
I  went  at  it  very  carefully;  but,  Stevey,  flour 
is  awful  stuff  to  fly  around,  and  when  you  wet 
it  it  is  the  most  aggravating  compound  in  the 
world;  it  sticks  to  everything  but  just  what  you 
want  it  to  stick  to.  After  a  while,  however,  I 
had  most  of  it  flattened  down  in  the  pan,  and 
it  did  really  look  like  very  respectable  dough. 
Then  I  put  it  in  a  warm  place  on  the  floor  near 
the  stove,  and  after  that  I  went  into  the  parlor 
and  forgot  it;  though  I  must  say  that  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  wretched  stuff  didn't  leave 
my  mind  for  one  instant  if  it  was  seemingly 
forgotten ;  it  was  like  an  incubus — like  a  night- 
mare. I  couldn't  read,  I  couldn't  sew,  I  fidgeted 
and  fidgeted,  and  when  I  went  into  the  kitchen 
after  a  long  time  to  get  a  drink  of  water  I  knew 
what  was  the  matter  with  me.  That  bread 
had  swelled  up  beyond  all  belief.  There  was  a 
mountain  of  it— a  volcano,  rather,  for  it  had 
run  over,  and  was  spreading  about  the  floor  in 
a  manner  to  create  an  impression  of  a  cloud- 
burst in  the  dough  department  of  the  heavens. 
Well,  I  was  utterly  discouraged  about  that 
Jbread;  I  was  disgusted  with  it  and  sick  of  it. 


It  had  weighed  on  me  until  I  was  feverish,  and 
my  head  was  bursting  with  pain.  A  fearful 
thought  crossed  my  mind.  I  don't  exactly  see 
the  connection,  but  somehow  I  felt  like  Blue- 
beard; I  wanted  a  chamber  in  which  to  hide 
my  dead.  I  ran  into  the  next  room  and  found 
my  purse.  I  didn't  like  the  thought  of  wasting 
so  much  of  pa's  flour  unless  I  could  buy  some 
more,  and,  you  see,  I  was  resolved  on  the  de- 
struction of  that  obnoxious  dough.  It  was  too 
much  for  me.  It  had  got  beyond  my  power  to 
handle,  and  that  swelling  propensity  was  so 
suggestive  of  infinity  it  scared  me.  An  infin- 
ity of  dough — just  think  of  that,  Stevey! — in 
which  we  would  all  live,  and  move,  and  have 
our  being.  I  believe  it  almost  gave  me  the 
hysterics.  I  was  so  nervous  I  felt  as  if  I  had 
killed  somebody,  and  had  very  little  time  to 
dispose  of  the  body.  I  caught  up  the  shovel 
and  threw  all  the  surplus  dough  back  in  the 
pan  and  hammered  it  down.  It  was  meander- 
ing about  the  floor  in  the  most  exasperating 
manner,  and  I  had  stepped  in  it  two  or  three 
times,  and  the  soles  of  my  shoes  had  got  so 
sticky  I  could  hardly  walk.  Then  I  picked  up 
the  pan  and  ran  with  it  down  to  the  deserted 
lot  back  of  our  garden  and  emptied  it  out,  and 
piled  no  end  of  stones  on  top  of  it.  After  that, 
I  went  home  and  tried  to  obliterate  the  traces 
of  the  tragedy ;  but  I  was  like  Lady  Macbeth 
— was  it  Lady  Macbeth?— I  couldn't  get  the 
blood  off  my  hands;  I  couldn't  get  rid  of  the 
dough ;  it  was  everywhere  even  after  I  washed 
the  pan  and  scrubbed  the  floor.  All  the  next 
day  and  the  day  after  I  would  hear  somebody 
asking,  'Where  did  this  dough  come  from?' 
and  *  Where  did  this  dough  come  from?'  And 
only  yesterday  Nettie  found  a  piece  of  it  in  the 
folds  of  my  dress;  and  this  morning  I  found 
quite  a  little  chunk  of  it  in  my  trunk.  And 
Professor  Thomlinson  ?  Oh,  yes.  He  has  done 
more  to  render  that  dough  ubiquitous  than  any 
one.  He  has  embalmed  its  memory  in  a  scien- 
tific article.  Really,  Stevey,  all  that  stuff  he 
wrote  about  a  new  kind  of  fungus  with  its  in- 
numerable peculiarities  and  its  queer  acid  smell 
was  on  the  strength  of  finding  my  dough.  You 
see  it  couldn't  lay  still  in  its  grave  like  a  well 
behaved  corpse,  but  swelled  up  among  the 
stones  I  put  on  it  and  showed  itself  like  mush- 
rooms— like  a  small  mountain  of  mushrooms. 
And  that  acid  smell?  It  must  have  been  very 
sour  by  the  time  he  found  it,  and  dried  all 
through.  And,  now,  would  you  tell  him  about 
it  if  you  were  me?  Being  a  scientific  article,  I 
guess  it  doesn't  make  much  difference,  does  it? 
All  that's  necessary  in  a  scientific  article  is  just 
to  make  it  so  that  nobody  can  understand  it — 
isn't  it,  Stevey?  In  that  case  I  had  better  let 


GOOD-FOR-NA  UGHT. 


529 


it  go.  But  the  funniest  thing  of  all,  is  that  he 
has  got  some  of  it  in  his  glass  case  of  strange 
specimens." 

The  delicious  days  wore  into  weeks  and 
months,  and  the  young  lovers  scarcely  heeded 
their  flight.  Indeed,  the  days  were  dropping 
into  a  gap  they  were  anxious  to  see  filled  up, 
and  the  faster  they  dropped  the  better  it  pleased 
them;  but  at  last  the  gap  was  nearly  full.  Hope 
had  taken  out  the  wedding  dress  made  for  Mr. 
BrownelFs  bride,  and  had  tried  it  on  every  per- 
son in  the  house. 

"  I  certainly  will  not  wear  it,  ma,"  she  had 
said  at  least  a  dozen  times.  "I  don't  know 
what  to  do  with  it.  I  want  somebody  to  wear 
it  the  night  of  my  wedding ;  and  its  too  small 
for  you,  and  too  large  for  Nettie,  what  on  earth 
shall  I  do  with  it  ?  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  it  would 
just  fit  Mrs.  Marvin.  Oh,  dear,  I  must  find  out. 
I  want  to  see  Mrs.  Marvin  dressed  beautifully 
for  once  in  her  life.  I  do  think  she  would  look 
angelic  with  her  young  face  and  snowy  hair.  It 
is  time  she  came  out  from  her  old  crushed  life, 
and  began  to  be  interested  in  people  and  have 
people  interested  in  her;  and  ma " 

"Well,  what  is  it?" 

"Do  you  think  it  sounds  very  wicked  for  me 
to  say  that  I  hope  the  dear  little  thing  will  find 
somebody  to  love  her  and  marry  her  and  be 
good  to  her  always;  or  don't  you  believe  in 
second  marriages?  At  all  events,  I  am  going 
to  give  her  this  dress  and  coax  her  to  wear  it." 

When  Mrs.  Marvin  saw  the  dress  her  eyes 
sparkled.  Every  atom  of  her  being  was  attun- 
ed to  beauty  in  all  its  forms ;  and  as  her  life 
had  been  spent  out  of  the  city,  she  was  warped 
by  no  conventionality  that  forbade  her  follow- 
ing her  own  taste  in  such  matters. 

"Oh,  Hope,"  she  said,  smiling,  "I  never  had 
so  fine  a  dress  in  my  life.  Oh,  what  a  lovely 
thing  it  is!" 

And  so,  the  evening  of  the  wedding  arrived; 
the  house  was  crowded  with  guests.  The  long 
back  porch  had  been  curtained  for  the  occasion, 
and  the  supper -table  set  there  with  its  load  of 
good  things. 

Presently,  the  event  so  long  anticipated  was 
realized,  and  Stephen  and  Hope  were  pro- 
nounced husband  and  wife.  Then,  everybody 
crowded  around  them  with  congratulations; 
and  when  they  had  shaken  hands  with  a  great 
many  friends,  most  of  whom  Hope  scarcely  saw 
at  all,  she  was  startled  by  a  voice  that  spoke 
her  name,  and,  looking  up  with  a  quick  flutter 
of  excitement  in  her  eyes  and  a  glad  little  cry, 
she  threw  herself  into  Mr.  Brownell's  arms. 

Yes,  Mr.  Brownell  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
"come  and  see  the  youngsters  married,"  so  he 
told  his  housekeeper.  The  place  had  never 


seemed  like  home  to  him  after  Hope  left.  The 
sadness  faded  out  of  his  face  as  the  months 
slipped  past,  but  still  he  wanted  Hope.  He 
wanted  Stephen,  too ;  he  did  not  separate  them 
in  his  mind  any  more.  He  wanted  them  both ; 
he  needed  both  of  them  in  his  business  and  in 
his  affections. 

A  little  while  after  his  greetings  with  Hope, 
and  Stephen,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wilkins,  a 
lady,  who  had  attracted  his  notice  by  the  pecul- 
iarity of  her  beauty,  the  metropolitan  appear- 
ance of  her  queenly  attire,  and,  also,  by  an  ex- 
pression that  seemed  familiar,  came  toward 
him  with  outstretched  hand  and  a  sweet  touch- 
ing smile — a  smile  full  of  chastened  sadness, 
yet  bright  with  kindly  remembrance — claiming 
old  acquaintanceship  and  desiring  recognition. 
But  she  had  to  explain. 

"I'm  Stephen's  sister,"  she  said ;  "I  am  Mrs. 
Marvin;  it  was  at  our  house  you  first  saw 
Hope." 

"Is  it  possible!"  he  exclaimed,  involuntarily. 

She  felt  instantly  that  the  change  in  her  hair 
had  caused  his  ejaculation ;  and  the  past  rose 
before  her.  She  turned  her  eyes  upward  and 
away,  and  for  a  moment  the  old  pain  tore  at 
her  heart,  and  her  sweet,  patient  face  showed 
it  plainer  and  more  pitifully  than  any  words 
could  have  expressed  it. 

"A  poor  wounded  gazelle,"  he  thought. 

He  took  her  to  supper  that  night  and  sat  be- 
tween her  and  Hope;  and  somehow,  he  was 
not  nearly  so  heart-broken  as  he  expected  to 
be.  The  wine  circulated  freely ;  everybody 
knew  everybody,  and  it  was  the  jolliest  supper 
ever  eaten.  At  its  conclusion  Mr.  Wilkins  vol- 
unteered a  song. 

"A  song  from  Wilkins,"  roared  a  dozen 
voices.  "Stand  up,  Jimmy,  and  put  the  style 
in  it." 

Mr.  Wilkins  stood  up,  but  could  not  get  the 
tune  started;  he  pitched  it  too  low,  at  first, 
and  then  too  high ;  and  then  proposed  to  "  sell 
out  the  job  cheap  and  on  long  credit,"  and  sat 
down.  Little  Sally  seemed  to  feel  sorry  for 
him ;  she  patted  him  on  the  arm  and  said : 

"I'll  sing  it  for  you,  poor  pa,  and  you  can 
hold  my  grapes  and  flowers  while  I  do  it." 

"That's  the  ticket,"  cried  Mr.  Wilkins ;  "one 
of  the  loveliest  ladies  in  Diamond  City  is  going 
to  sing  it  for  me." 

It  was  something  supposed  to  be  appropriate 
to  the  occasion,  about  a  young  bride,  in  which 
bride  was  made  to  rhyme  with  cried ;  it  began 
pathetically,  but  ended  quite  cheerfully. 

"Stand  up  on  the  chair,  honey,"  said  Mr. 
Wilkins,  "and  let  it  ring." 

So,  Sally  stood  up  on  the  chair,  and,  in  a 
clear,  tuneful  child's  voice,  and  in  the  most 


53° 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


modest  manner  possible  to  imagine,  sung  the 
song  through.  The  last  verse  was  in  praise  of 
marriage,  and  advised  "all  the  young  swains 
and  fair  damoselles"  to  get  married  before  it 
was  too  late ;  and  to  old  people  out  of  wedlock, 
it  conveyed  the  intimation  that  it  was  better 
late  than  never. 

Now,  Mr.  Brownell  and  Mrs.  Marvin,  pleas- 
ed with  the  modest  appearance  and  pretty  voice 
of  the  sweet  little  singer,  were  looking  at  each 
other  and  at  the  child  with  faces  full  of  smiling, 
loving  kindness ;  but  when  the  last  verse  rang 
out  so  crystal  clear  their  eyes  dropped  away 
from  each  other,  and  the  smile  changed  to  a 
look  of  quiet  dignity.  Is  it  not  possible  that 
the  words  were  too  literal  a  translation  of  their 
secret  thought? 

My  story  is  nearly  finished.  Stephen  did  not 
take  the  school ;  and  though  Hope  had  learned 
to  make  the  most  elegant  bread  in  the  world, 
her  accomplishment  fell  useless.  It  was  only  a 
month  from  the  wedding  until  they  began  to 
make  preparations  to  go  to  New  York  with  Mr. 
Brownell.  There  was  Stephen  and  Hope  to 
go,  and  Mr.  Brownell  and 

But  let  us  record  a  conversation  between 
Mrs.  Marvin  and  her  hopeful  son  a  week  or 
two  before  the  final  departure. 


Scene — the  lonely  cabin  where  Mr.  Brown- 
ell first  met  Hope.  The  widow  is  holding  her 
little  boy  on  her  lap. 

"How  would  my  dear  little  son  like  to  have 
a  papa  to  love  him,  and  be  good  to  him?"  she 
asked. 

"Would  he  buy  me  lots  of  marbles,  and  a 
top,  and  a  knife  full  of  blades,  and  a  tin  horn, 
and  a  sure -enough  gun,  and  a  pair  of  boots, 

and  a  steamboat,  and  a  stove-pipe  hata  and 
a » 

"  He  would  get  you  all  you  need." 

"Then  I  want  him,  ma,  you  can  bet  your 
life  on  that.  Have  you  got  him  picked  out, 
ma?  Who  is  he,  ma?" 

"Mr.  Brownell." 

"  Oh,  ma,  ma,  what  a  'plendid  idear  that  is  I 
Oh,  let  me  go  quick,  ma,  let  me  go." 

"Where  are  you  going?" 

"I'm  going  to  tell  Mr.  Brownell  that  you  are 
going  to  marry  him,  ma.  He'll  be  so  glad. 
He  tell'd  me  the  other  day  that  he  wanted  me 
for  a  little  son  for  never  and  never ;  and  I  want 
to  run  and  tell  him  I'm  going  to  be." 

The  lights  are  turned  down;  the  curtain 
drops.  It  only  remains  to  say  good -night  and 
happy  dreams.  HELEN  WILMANS. 


THE  END. 


THE    LITERATURE    OF    UTOPIA. 


Mr.  Henry  George  is  regarded  in  some  quar- 
ters as  the  founder  of  a  new  scheme  of  social 
reconstruction,  under  which  poverty  and  mis- 
ery are  to  be  banished  from  the  world.  I  read 
in  the  American  criticisms  on  his  book,  Prog- 
ress and  Poverty,  that  it  "is  not  a  work  to  be 
crushed  aside  with  lofty  indifference  or  co61 
disdain;"  that  "in  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature  no  more  radical  book  was  ever  writ- 
ten;" and  that  it  "is  the  most  remarkable  book 
on  political  economy  it  has  ever  been  our  fort- 
une to  read."  The  New  York  Herald  caps 
the  climax  of  this  favorable  comment  with  the 
declaration  that  "Progress  and  Poverty  is  not 
merely  the  most  original,  the  most  striking  and 
important  contribution  which  political  economy 
has  yet  received  from  America,  but  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  in  these  respects  it  has 
no  equal  since  the  publication  of  the  Wealth  of 
Nations,  by  Adam  Smith,  a  century  ago,  or  at 
least  since  Malthus  formulated  his  theory  of 
population  and  Ricardo  his  theory  of  rent." 


The  proposition  which  has  drawn  forth  thesa 
favorable  notices  is  one  to  place  all  the  taxes 
on  land.  The  Government  is  practically  to  as- 
sume the  proprietorship  of  all  the  land,  and 
make  use  of  the  taxes  which  it  levies  upon  it  in 
whatever  way  it  pleases.  Mr.  George  intimates 
that  after  it  has  raised  enough  for  its  own  sup- 
port, it  can  go  on  levying  taxes  for  any  other 
purpose  it  may  resolve  upon.  Land  by  this 
process  is  to  become  the  property  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  the  taxes  extracted  from  it  are  to 
take  on  the  form  of  rent.  But  this  is  not,  by 
any  means,  an  original  notion.  De  Gournay 
and  Quesnay,  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  formu- 
lated a  doctrine  similar  in  character  to  that  we 
are  considering.  According  to  them,  all  the 
taxes  were  to  be  placed  on  the  land.  Speak- 
ing of  it  in  his  Maxims,  Quesnay  says :  "Let  not 
the  tax  be  destructive,  nor  disproportioned  to 
the  total  revenue  of  the  nation ;  let  its  increase 
follow  the  increase  of  the  revenue;  let  it  be 
assessed  directly  on  the  net  product  of  the 


THE  LITERATURE   OF  UTOPIA. 


landed  property,  and  not  on  the  wages  of  men 
nor  on  provisions,  where  it  would  multiply  the 
expenses  of  collection,  be  prejudicial  to  com- 
merce, and  destroy  annually  a  part  of  the  wealth 
of  the  nation." 

I  am  willing  to  accord  to  Mr.  George  all  the 
merit  that  attaches  to  rediscovery.  The  fact 
that  Eric  the  Red  planted  a  colony  in  this  coun- 
try in  the  tenth  century  and  traveled  down  the 
Atlantic  coast  as  far  as  New  Jersey,  does  not 
seem  in  the  least  to  detract  from  the  glory  of 
Columbus.  Aristotle  is  still  revered,  though 
the  Hindu  Guatama  was  the  discoverer  of  the 
syllogism  of  the  organon.  August  Comte  has 
his  admirers,  though  in  the  doctrine  of  rela- 
tivity Pyrrho  clearly  preceded  him.  But  Mr. 
George's  critics  would  seem  to  demand  some 
other  kind  of  treatment.  When  they  were 
awarding  to  his  work  the  merit  of  originality, 
they  should  have  known  what  they  were  talk- 
ing about.  It  is  not  a  little  singular  also,  in 
this  connection,  that  the  circumstances  under 
which  the  School  of  the  Economists  was  found- 
ed, in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV.,  were  very  similar 
to  those  which  prevailed  in  this  State  when 
Mr.  George  launched  his  Progress  and  Pov- 
erty. The  explosion  of  Law's  system  left  France 
prostrate. 

While  it  lasted  fortunes  were  made  in  a  day. 
Lacqueys  took  the  places  of  their  masters.  The 
economists,  after  the  collapse,  turned  public  at- 
tention to  land,  as  the  kind  of  property  that  is 
not  dissipated  in  a  night.  JThe  tableau  eco- 
nomique  was  regarded  for  a  time  as  a  veritable 
revelation — much  in  the  same  way  as  Progress 
and  Poverty  is  now  by  a  certain  class  of  read- 
ers. Mr.  George's  book  made  its  appearance 
after  the  eclipse  which  has  fallen  on  the  Corn- 
stock.  The  circumstances  under  which  he 
wrote  were  precisely  analogous  to  those  which 
engaged  the  attention  of  Quesnay  and  the  Abbe" 
Terray.  But  the  question  is  not  one  as  to  who 
is  the  real  originator  of  the  scheme,  but  wheth- 
er it  enunciates  a  good  social  law  by  which  the 
happiness  of  humanity  is  likely  to  be  promoted. 

When  we  come  to  the  consideration  of  this 
branch  of  the  subject,  it  is  apparent  that  Mr. 
George  is  satisfied  that  as  soon  as  all  the  taxes 
are  placed  on  land,  the  whole  burden  of  sup- 
porting the  Government  will  fall  on  the  pro- 
prietors. In  one  sense  land  is  an  excellent  dis- 
tributor of  taxes.  When  taxes  are  placed  on 
land  they  are  transferred  to  the  products  of 
land.  They  go  into  wheat  and  barley — into 
bread  and  beer.  They  enter  meat  and  vegeta- 
bles. They  get  into  wool  and  the  clothes  we 
wear.  They  are  present  in  wine  and  fruit. 
Taxes  placed  on  land  will  ultimately  be  paid 
by  the  consumer.  Taxes  are  shifted  from  shoul- 


der to  shoulder.  They  are  usually  paid  by  the 
last  man  in  the  "line" — the  man  who  consumes 
the  article.  It  seems  to  me,  under  this  view  of 
the  case,  that  Mr.  George  proposes  that  under 
his  system  humanity  shall  lift  itself  up  by  its 
boot-straps.  The  landed  proprietor  will  shed 
his  taxes  us  a  duck  sheds  water.  He  will  be  a 
tax-gatherer  and  not  a  tax -payer.  But  Mr. 
George  is  evidently  of  the  opinion  that  in  time 
the  burden  will  become  too  heavy  for  him,  and 
that  he  will  as  a  consequence  greatly  relax  his 
hold  on  the  land.  If  he  does  not,  he  hints  that 
it  can  be  made  too  heavy  for  him.  More  taxes, 
which  are  now  to  be  called  rent,  can  be  placed 
on  him  than  are  necessary  for  the  support  of 
Government.  Mr.  George  chuckles  in  advance 
over  the  fund  that  can  be  accumulated  in  this 
way.  He  says  in  his  last  publication,  The  Irish 
Land  Question^  which  may  be  regarded  as  a 
sequel  to  Progress  and  Poverty:  "We  could 
do  with  our  great  common  fund  many,  many 
things  that  would  be  for  the  common  benefit — 
many,  many  things  that  would  give  to  the  poor- 
est what  even  the  richest  cannot  now  enjoy. 
We  could  establish  free  libraries,  lectures,  mu- 
seums, art  galleries,  observatories,  gymnasiums, 
baths,  parks,  theaters ;  we  could  line  our  roads 
with  fruit  trees,  and  make  our  cities  clean  and 
wholesome  and  beautiful;  we  could  conduct 
experiments,  and  offer  rewards  for  inventions 
and  throw  them  open  to  public  use."  In  a 
foot-note  on  this  subject,  Mr.  George  volunteers 
the  information  that  "a  million  of  dollars  spent 
in  premiums  and  experiments  would,  in  all  prob- 
ability, make  aerial  navigation  an  accomplished 
fact." 

Evidently,  the  author  is  of  the  opinion  that 
all  that  is  necessary  to  complete  the  happiness 
of  the  denizens  of  his  Utopia  is  to  be  able  to 
fly  through  the  air.  But,  apart  from  this  at- 
tachment, it  is  surprising  that  the  paradise 
which  a  writer  of  such  powers  of  imagination 
has  sketched  should  bear  such  a  striking  re- 
semblance to  the  pandemonium  which  we  now 
occupy.  We  have  now  "free  libraries,  lect- 
ures, museums,  art  galleries,  observatories,  baths 
and  parks,"  maintained  by  taxation  or  private 
beneficence.  We  have  not,  it  is  true,  free  the- 
ters,  nor  fruit  trees  along  the  roads.  But  we 
offer  rewards  for  inventions  by  securing  to  the 
inventor  for  a  limited  time  the  sole  right  to 
manufacture  his  invention.  We  find,  then,  that 
the  only  real  difference  between  the  good  time 
coming,  according  to  Mr.  George,  and  the  pres- 
ent evil  time,  consists  in  a  universal  deadhead- 
ism  at  the  theaters,  and  free  strawberries  all  the 
year  round  in  the  public  highways.  I  am  a  lit- 
tle skeptical  as  to  whether  it  would  be  altogeth- 
er wise  to  overturn  society  for  the  accomplish- 


532 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


ment  of  this  object.  What  Mr.  George  has 
really  before  his  mind  is  the  French  revolution, 
with  the  main  factor  in  that  upheaval  left  out. 
He  thinks  that  when  all  the  taxes  are  placed  on 
land  the  present  proprietors  will  miraculously 
disappear,  and  those  who  are  now  landless  will 
take  their  places.  To  be  logically  complete,  he 
should  have  provided  some  efficient  means  for 
removing  from  the  scene  or  killing  off  the  for- 
mer unpleasant  class.  But,  as  nothing  seems 
to  be  farther  from  his  thoughts,  the  land-owners 
will  remain.  The  taxes  levied  upon  them  they 
will  transfer  to  the  consumers  of  the  products 
of  land,  who  are  simply  the  whole  community. 
The  Government  will  be  supported  by  the  per- 
sons of  all  sexes  who  eat  food  or  wear  clothes. 
Mr.  George's  common  fund,  which  is  to  set  up 
free  theaters  and  provide  free  fruit  for  all,  will 
come  out  of  the  pockets  of  those  for  whose  ben- 
efit these  beneficent  institutions  are  to  be  pro- 
vided. It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  his  system 
would  have  some  effect  on  surplus  and  unoccu- 
pied lands.  Capitalists  would  not  indulge,  by 
reason  of  the  taxes,  in  any  long-range  specula- 
tion in  relation  to  them.  But  when  a  demand 
for  more  acreage  was  likely  to  arise,  they  would 
be  on  the  ground  first.  They  would  be  able  to 
pay  taxes  for  a  year  or  two  before  there  was 
any  market  for  the  property.  Land  specula- 
tion is  something  that  is  always  present  with 
us.  The  Fathers,  as  they  are  called,  as  soon 
as  the  independence  of  the  republic  was  ac- 
knowledged, broke  themselves  at  it.  Pretty 
near  all  the  land  speculation  on  a  large  scale, 
which  has  since  taken  place,  has  traveled  the 
same  road.  The  calculations  that  were  made 
as  to  the  time  when  the  lands  so  secured  would 
be  salable  have,  nearly  in  all  cases,  proved  de- 
lusive. Something  unexpected  is  always  hap- 
pening to  retard  or  divert  the  movement,  no 
matter  how  clearly  it  may  appear  to  be  out- 
lined. 

But  while  Mr.  George's  plan  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  social  edifice  can  be  followed 
with  tolerable  clearness  in  the  country  parts, 
much  confusion  and  uncertainty  is  encountered 
when  it  is  applied  to  cities.  There  are  ele- 
ments which  determine  value  in  farms  that  are 
wholly  wanting  in  city  lots.  The  land  in  the 
interior  is  arable  or  sterile;  it  is  capable  of 
producing  wheat  or  wine;  or  it  is  only  good  for 
pasturage ;  or  it  is  marshy  and  needs  draining. 
But  the  element  of  use  cannot  well  become  a 
factor  in  fixing  the  value  of  town  lots.  To  try 
to  do  so — that  is  to  say,  to  fix  values  according 
to  the  use  to  which  the  land  is  devoted — is  to 
introduce  a  factor  which  the  system  plainly  ex- 
cludes; that  is  to  say,  the  improvements.  There 
are  some  minor  elements  of  value  in  town  lots, 


such  as  accessibility,  grade,  character  of  the 
foundation,  etc.     But  the  main  factor  must  un- 
der these  circumstances  be  area.     The  milk  or 
the  hog  ranch,  therefore,  in  the  outskirts  of  a 
town  would  have  to  pay  about  as  much  taxes 
as  the  lot  upon  which  a  vast  and  magnificent 
hotel  stands.     If  the  market  gardener  and  the 
hotel  proprietor  occupied  equal  space,   they 
would  have  to  pay  equal  taxes.     It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  forecast  what  effect  such  a  policy  would 
have  on  the  social  organism.     The  occupation 
of  land,  except  when  it  could  be  used  as  a  dis- 
tributor of  taxes,  would  be  impossible,  except 
in  the  case  of  the  rich.     The  hotel  keeper  and 
the  market  gardener  would  be  in  a  position  to 
shift  the  burden  from  their  own  shoulders — the 
former  to  the  persons  who  lodged  with  him,  and 
the  latter  to  those  who  ate  his  turnips  or  aspar- 
agus.   The  only  difference  would  be  that  vege- 
tables would  be  higher  in  their  relation  to  lodg- 
ings than   they  are  now;    but  the  moderate 
homestead  would  sink  out  of  sight  under  the 
weight  of  the  taxation.     If  all  the  taxes  had  to 
come  out  of  the  land  the  people  would  be  driven 
to  live  in  barracks  or  tenement -houses.     They 
would  have  to  live  huddled  together  much  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Chinese.     There  would  be 
great  vacant  spaces  in  the  suburbs  of  all  cities 
covered  with  rubbish  and  dtbris,  for  no  one 
would  pay  taxes  on  them  till  there  was  a  certain- 
ty that  they  could  be  utilized.     I  do  not  think 
it  will  be  necessary  to  waste  much  time  seeking 
to  determine  what  benefit  is  likely  to  accrue  to 
the  cause  of  humanity  from  such  an  arrange- 
ment.    There  is  nothing  discernible  here  but  a 
blind  blow  at  the  family  relation.     Probably 
nothing  was  farther  from  the  mind  of  the  au- 
thor of  this  scheme  for  the  amelioration  of 
mankind  than   that  we  are  considering;   but 
such  would  clearly  be  the  effect  of  what  he 
proposes.    The  owner  of  the  homestead  could 
not    shift  his  taxes   to   any  other   shoulders. 
They  would  fall  with  crushing  weight  on  him. 
Mr.  George's  system  in  cities  is  calculated  to 
tax  the  home  out  of  existence,  and  substitute  in 
its  place  the  tenement -house.     This  living  in 
common  would  certainly  be  a  step  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  more  repulsive  forms  of  commu- 
nism.    But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  any  such 
results  were  contemplated  in  the  theory  under 
consideration. 

But  it  occurs  to  me  that  Mr.  George  would 
have  considerably  modified  his  theory  if  he  had 
only  taken  the  pains  to  apply  it  to  existing 
facts.  He  seemed  to  be  totally  unaware  of  the 
circumstance  that  we  have  been  on  the  road  to 
tiis  paradise  in  this  city  for  some  time  past.  Our 
career  in  that  respect  has  only  been  arrested 
3y  the  party  with  which  he  admits  more  or  less 


THE  LITERATURE   OF  UTOPIA. 


533 


sympathy.  Previous  to  the  adoption  of  the  New 
Constitution  real  property  bore  about  79  per 
cent,  of  all  the  taxation  in  San  Francisco.  We 
would  have  only  to  get  over  21  per  cent,  to 
reach  that  state  of  human  happiness  which  he 
so  vividly  portrays.  The  New  Constitution  ar- 
rested the  tendency  to  put  all  the  taxes  on  real 
estate.  It  created  a  reaction  in  the  direction 
of  personal  property  to  the  extent  of  atiout  1 1 
per  cent.  But  still  the  fact  must  not  be  ignored 
that  we  are  even  now  within  31  per  cent.,  or 
thereabouts,  of  the  bliss  which  he  seeks  to  con- 
fer upon  us.  More  than  that,  in  New  York, 
where  Mr.  George  is  now,  the  advance  to  his 
millennium  is  still  more  pronounced.  There 
real  estate  pays  87  per  cent,  of  all  the  taxes. 
A  little  stride  of  13  per  cent,  would  land  that 
metropolis  fairly  in  Mr.  George's  Utopia.  It 
must  be  forever  regarded  as  a  marvel  that  the 
founder  of  the  latest  school  of  economic  philos- 
ophy got  so  near  his  own  promised  land  with- 
out, to  all  appearances,  having  the  least  con- 
sciousness of  the  fact.  On  the  contrary,  he 
draws  some  very  affecting  pictures  in  his  pam- 
phlet, The  Land  Question  in  Ireland^  about  the 
misery  which  prevails  in  that  great  commer- 
cial center.  He  has  something  very  affecting 
to  say  of  tenement-house  life  and  the  squalor  of 
its  surroundings.  But  lodging  in  crowds  is  the 
result  of  the  high  rents  which  prevail  on  Man- 
hattan Island.  High  rents,  again,  are  the  prod- 
uct of  high  taxation  of  real  estate.  That  tax- 
ation, as  we  have  already  seen,  reaches  87  per 
cent,  in  the  city  in  question ;  but,  according  to 
Mr.  George,  if  13  per  cent,  more  could  be  clap- 
ped on,  the  scene  would  at  once  be  changed, 
The  very  least  to  be  expected  is  that  the  deni- 
zens of  the  Five  Points  would  be  moved,  bag 
and  baggage,  to  the  Fifth  Avenue.  This  is  a 
transformation  that  might  have  been  worked  by 
Cagliostro,  but  it  will  be  a  tough  job  for  a  mere 
economist  to  carry  out.  An  explanation  is 
needed  of  the  phenomenon  that,  whereas  87 
per  cent,  tax  on  real  estate  consigns  the  work- 
ing classes  to  tenement -houses,  100  per  cent. 
will  lodge  them  in  palaces.  It  is  true  that  the 
taxation  which  we  are  now  examining  in  this 
city  and  New  York  includes  improvements. 
For  instance,  the  naked  land  in  this  city  was 
valued  last  year  at  $122,029,868,  and  the  im- 
provements at  $42,968,640.  The  proportion 
which  improvements  bear  to  land  in  New  York 
is  probably  larger.  But  the  elimination  of  the 
the  improvements  would  rather  aggravate  than 
lessen  the  expense  of  lodging.  Certainly,  there 
is  no  view  that  can  be  taken  of  it  in  which  a 
reduction  is  possible.  The  taxes  would  all 
come  out  of  the  lodgers,  for  few,  as  already 
stated,  but  the  rich  could  occupy  land  as  a 
VOL.  III.- 34. 


homestead.  The  elementary  proposition  in 
taxation,  which  Mr.  George  does  not  seem  to 
have  mastered,  is  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
roughly  estimated,  the  person  assessed  for  a  tax 
is  not  a  tax-payer,  but  a  collector  of  taxes.  He 
collects  for  the  government  which  imposes  it, 
usually  with  a  percentage  for  his  trouble. 

Nor  is  Mr.  George  more  fortunate  in  his 
historical  researches  than  he  is  in  the  applica- 
tion of  his  economic  principles.  In  the  pam- 
phlet on  the  "Irish  Land  Question"  (p.  50),  he 
says,  "The  putting  of  property  in  land  in  the 
same  category  as  property  in  things  produced 
by  labor  is  comparatively  modern.  In  Eng- 
land as  in  Ireland  and  Scotland,  as  in  fact 
among  every  people  of  whom  we  have  any 
knowledge,  the  land  was  originally  treated  as 
common  property;  and  this  recognition  ran 
all  through  the  feudal  system.  The  essence 
of  the  feudal  system  was  in  treating  the  land- 
holder not  as  an  owner,  but  as  a  lessee."  The 
first  property  known  among  men  was  the  prop- 
erty in  land.  The  archaic  form  is  found  in  the 
Hindu  village  community.  A  certain  piece  of 
land  is  cultivated  by  a  family.  To  each  mem- 
ber was  assigned  a  piece  for  himself.  The 
only  tie  recognized  by  primitive  man  was  that 
of  relationship.  Into  the  Hindu  village  commu- 
nity strangers  could  be  admitted  by  adoption. 
When  so  admitted,  they  became  technically 
members  of  the  family.  Sir  Henry  Sumner 
Maine  states  that  there  are  some  communi- 
ties in  Russia  where  this  form  still  survives. 
The  only  addition  made  to  it  is,  that  at  stated 
intervals  there  is  a  redistribution  of  the  lands 
among  the  members  of  the  family,  tribe,  or 
clan.  In  Greece  and  Rome  we  have  the  same 
system,  but  modified  by  what  was  known  as 
the  patria  potestas.  The  ownership  of  the 
land  was  in  the  father,  who  had  also  control 
over  the  lives  of  his  children  and  dependants. 
In  the  feudal  system,  the  patriarch  was  con- 
verted into  the  chief.  The  lands  were  held  by 
the  vassals  on  condition  of  personal  and  mil- 
itary service.  In  the  early  form  the  chief  held 
simply  a  larger  share  than  the  other  clansmen. 
In  the  middle  ages,  on  the  decay  of  central  au- 
thority, many  independent  communities  sought 
protection  by  voluntary  infeudation.  As  the 
relationship  between  the  chief  and  the  clans- 
men became  more  and  more  attenuated,  the 
former  grew  in  power.  The  common  lands 
were,  in  course  of  time,  appropriated  by  him. 
When,  afterward,  a  reaction  toward  a  common 
central  authority  took  place,  the  serfs  and  vas- 
sals were  released  from  the  payment  of  feudal 
dues,  which  had  taken  on  the  form  of  rent. 
But  they  lost  their  lands  in  the  process,  appar- 
ently without  any  knowledge  of  the  wrong  in- 


534 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


flicted  upon  them.  The  dues  which  they  had 
formerly  rendered  to  the  feudal  chief  were 
simply  transferred  to  the  central  government. 
They  were  not  taken  directly  and  in  kind,  as 
under  the  feudal  system,  but  in  the  shape 
mostly  of  indirect  imposts.  Taxes  were  taken 
from  the  man  when  he  bought  a  hat  or  drank 
a  cup  of  coffee  or  tea,  without  his  knowing 
anything  of  the  process  by  which  he  was  being 
divested  of  his  hard  earnings.  Nor  was  he  re- 
leased from  military  service.  He  was  still  sub- 
ject to  draft  by  the  central  authority  whenever 
he  was  required  in  the  field.  Directly  and  in- 
directly, all  he  had  formerly  given  or  paid  to 
the  feudal  chief  was  exacted  by  the  central  au- 
thority which  had  superseded  the  lord.  But, 
in  the  transfer,  he  was  stripped  of  his  land,  and 
turned  out  naked  into  the  world.  Wherever 
this  great  transformation  has  taken  place  it  has 
been  announced  as  one  of  the  great  triumphs  of 
civilization.  It  has  been  labeled  emancipation 
and  other  high-sounding  names.  But,  wher- 
ever it  has  been  accomplished,  the  peasant  has 
been  changed  from  a  coproprietor  into  a  tenant 
at  will,  and  he  has  been  simply  cheated  out  of 
his  land.  The  land  was  never  treated  any- 
where as  common  land.  The  notion  that  land 
should  be  as  free  as  air  or  water  is  purely  chi- 
merical. There  is  not  the  least  analogy  be- 
tween them.  Nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  re- 
duce air  to  ownership.  In  a  modified  sense  the 
history  of  water  is  the  same.  Land,  however, 
is  totally  different.  There  is,  perhaps,  not  an 
acre  of  land  worth  the  having  in  civilization 
which  has  not  been  stolen,  so  to  speak,  a  dozen 
times  over.  Invaders  have  dispossessed  abo- 
rigines and  seized  their  lands.  This  is  the  his- 
tory of  nearly  all  nations.  The  present  occu- 
pants have  always  come  from  some  other  place. 
Social  transformations,  in  which  the  sharp  and 
acute  have  taken  advantage  of  the  ignorant  and 
confiding,  have  also  played  their  part  in  the 
changes  of  ownership.  There  are  only  two 
methods  of  acquiring  and  holding  land — buy- 
ing it  or  taking  it  by  force  or  fraud. 

Furthermore,  it  is  not  altogether  correct  to 
say  that  the  effect  of  modern  civilization  is  to 
place  property  in  land  on  the  same  equality  as 
property  in  things.  Nor  is  it  that  what  Mr. 
George  himself  is  trying  to  do.  His  scheme  is 
to  release  property  in  things  from  its  share  of 
taxation,  and  place  it  all  on  property  in  land. 
Besides,  the  evolution  of  property  was  exactly 
the  reverse  of  what  he  supposes.  The  first 
property  was  in  land.  For  ages  a  tedious  cer- 
eremony  was  necessary  for  its  transfer.  The 
libripens  had  to  attend  with  his  scales  to  weigh 
the  money.  A  certain  number  of  witnesses 
had  also  to  be  present.  Every  step  in  the  cer- 


emony was  minutely  prescribed.  This  was  in- 
tended to  fix  the  memory  of  the  transaction  in 
so  many  minds  that  no  question  could  after- 
ward be  raised  about  the  transfer,  In  the  old 
long-winded  deeds  we  had  a  survival  of  this 
system.  All  this  time  personal  property  passed 
readily  from  hand  to  hand  without  much  for- 
mality. The  tendency  of  modern  times  is  to 
make  the  transfer  of  real  property  just  as  easy 
as  that  of  personal  property.  With  this  view 
much  of  the  old  verbiage  in  deeds,  especially 
in  this  country,  has  been  eliminated.  In  Aus- 
tralia alone  perfect  equality  in  the  transfer  of 
the  different  kinds  of  property  has  been  reached. 
There  the  title  to  land  is  transferred  by  simple 
indorsement,  much  as  a  note  is  with  us.  The 
recorder's  office  takes  the  place  of  the  libripens 
and  the  witnesses.  The  tendency,  therefore,  of 
modern  times  is  to  place  property  in  land  on  an 
equality  with  property  in  things,  and  not  as  Mr. 
George  has  stated  it.  This  property  in  things 
has  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  breaking  down 
the  old  monopoly  in  land.  It  accomplished 
that  purpose  to  a  large  extent  in  ancient  Greece. 
The  wealth  acquired  by  the  Grecian  merchants 
placed  them  soon  on  an  equality  with  the  old  ex- 
patrid  owners.  The  same  phenomenon  was  wit- 
nessed in  Rome  in  the  case  of  the  Licinii  and 
the  great  contractors.  It  was  by  acquisition 
of  personal  property  that  they  worked  their 
way  into  the  senate  and  secured  a  share  in  the 
legislation  of  the  republic.  The  gentlemen  of 
the  period  were  those  who  had  a  gens,  or  fam- 
ily. The  gens,  or  family,  was  always  the  owner 
of  lands  in  greater  or  less  area.  It  was  by  the 
accumulation  of  money  that  plebeians  succeed- 
ed in  breaking  down  these  barriers.  Much  the 
same  condition  of  things  is  now  observable  in 
England.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  personal 
property  has  done  much  to  break  down  the  old 
land  monopoly.  It  has  done  much  to  promote 
the  freedom  and  equality  of  the  human  race. 
But  it  has  since  acquired  such  power  and  prom- 
inence that  it  needs  checking  itself.  By  mod- 
ern inventions  it  has  built  up  monopolies  be- 
side which  those  of  Greece,  Rome,  or  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  sink  into  insignificance.  The 
great  feudal  lords  of  the  epoch  are  the  railroad 
magnates,  the  cotton  lords,  and  the  manufact- 
urers. They  have  succeeded  in  feudalizing  la- 
bor and  reducing  it  to  subjection.  Their  pal- 
aces and  equipages  in  all  monarchical  countries 
throw  those  of  the  old  nobility  into  the  shade. 
They  take  toll  of  everything  that  passes  along 
their  highways.  They  are  silent  partners  in 
the  profits,  but  not  the  losses,  of  most  commer- 
cial ventures.  They  control  absolutely  many 
of  the  necessaries  of  life.  They  have  practi- 
cally the  power  of  life  and  death  over  their  de- 


THE  DREAM-PLANT  OF  INDIA. 


535 


pendants,  for  they  can  reduce  their  wages  or 
discharge  them.  But  this  is  the  class  which 
Mr.  George  would  release  from  all  the  burdens 
of  government. 

It  is  not 'monopoly  in  land  that  confronts  us, 
at  least  in  this  country.  There  may  be  some 
trouble  on  that  head  in  parts  of  Europe,  but 
there  is  none  here.  There  are  no  large  estates 
of  long  standing  anywhere.  The  only  one  I 
can  call  to  mind  now  is  that  of  the  Astors  in 
New  York.  But  the  possessions  of  the  old 
patroons  have  long  since  melted  away.  San 
Francisco  was  once  practically  owned  by  less 
than  fifty  persons.  There  are  now  not  less  than 
forty  thousand  property  owners.  Accumulations 
of  land  disappear  almost  as  quickly  as  they  are 
secured.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  being  land- 
poor  with  us.  The  man  with  the  most  land  is 
often  the  man  who  is  the  worst  off  in  the  com- 
munity. The  Fathers  went  to  the  wall  on  land 
speculations.  Their  sons  have  followed  fre- 
quently in  their  footsteps.  Putting  all  the  taxes 
on  land  will  not  cure  anything.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  will  aggravate  corporate  exaction. 

It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  determine  the  place 
to  which  Mr.  George's  scheme  is  to  be  assigned 
in  the  literature  of  Utopia.  All  of  them,  from 
Plato's  Model  Republic  to  Shaeffle's  Quintes- 
sence of  Communism,  present  a  complete  sys- 
tem. In  Sir  Thomas  More's  Utopia  we  have 
little  more  than  Plato's  notion,  adapted  to  a 
more  complex  form  of  society,  with  some  geo- 
graphical accessions.  In  Campanella's  City  of 
the  Sun  there  is  a  variation  in  the  original 
theme  and  no  more.  In  most  modern  schemes 
confiscation  of  the  land  is  an  incident  rather 
than  the  main  operation.  In  Fourier's  plan 
the  proprietors  of  land  are  to  be  paid  off  in 
means  of  enjoyment.  In  Shaeffle's  Quintes- 
sence the  same  rule  is  proposed,  but  with  the 
addition  that  if  they  shall  refuse  they  are  to  be 
expropriated.  Mr.  George  proposes  that  the 
state  shall  recover  possession  of  the  land.  In 
his  opinion  the  state  was  originally  owner  of  all 
the  soil.  But  no  such  condition  of  things  ever 
existed.  States  grew  out  of  the  amalgamation  of 


feudalities.  King  John  was  known  in  England 
as  John  Lackland.  Conquered  territory  was 
vested  in  the  king  as  it  used  to  be  in  the  feudal 
chief.  He  parted  with  it  principally  on  condi- 
tions of  service.  But  having  got  hold  of  the  land, 
Mr.  George  is  evidently  of  the  opinion  that  noth- 
ing more  is  to  be  done.  Corporations  will  grow 
mild  and  beneficent  when  nobody  owns  the  soil. 
All  the  new  questions  which  are  now  puzzling 
society  will  instantly  disappear.  There  will  no 
longer  be  any  trouble  about  currency.  I  am 
inclined  to  think  also  that  "three -hooped  pot 
will  have  ten  hoops."  Sparta  is  the  only 
state  in  which  communism  was  ever  practically 
put  to  the  test.  There  the  land  was  divided 
into  portions.  There  was  a  common  dining-ta- 
ble,  to  which  every  citizen  could  repair  when- 
ever he  chose,  provided  he  brought  his  contri- 
bution of  bread  or  vegetables.  The  children 
were  brought  up  at  the  expense  of  the  state. 
They  were  taught  to  steal  fruit,  and  were  pun- 
ished only  when  they  were  found  out.  There 
was  no  money  in  Sparta.  When  it  was  once 
resolved  to  reward  allies,  a  fast  for  twenty-four 
hours  for  men  and  animals  was  decreed,  so  as 
to  raise  a  gift.  But  the  system  was  short-liv- 
ed and  repressive  of  progress.  Sparta  left  no 
monuments.  All  the  efforts  to  carry  out  the 
same  principles  privately  have  likewise  failed. 
There  was  no  reason  why  the  communistic  es- 
tablishments set  up  at  various  times  should  not 
have  flourished,  if  they  were  based  on  sound 
principles.  The  fact  that  the  notion  was  car- 
ried out  on  the  larger  stage  of  a  state  would  not 
have  secured  any  better  demonstration.  All 
these  theories  are  schemes  of  the  improvident 
to  get  control  of  the  possessions  of  the  prov- 
ident. It  is  quite  clear  that  they  will  have  to 
exhibit  a  wonderful  power  of  fascination  before 
they  can  succeed.  If  the  world  were  to  be 
turned  upside  down  for  these  dreamers,  the 
parties  who  had  the  nearest  and  strongest  hold 
on  property  would  soon  bring  about  a  reaction. 
The  landless  is  quite  certain  to  give  up  his  no- 
tions of  communism  the  moment  he  gets  land 
of  his  own.  M.  G.  UPTON. 


THE    DREAM-PLANT   OF    INDIA. 


For  some  years  it  has  been  a  mooted  ques- 
tion whether  opium  cultivation  would  be  profit- 
able in  California;  but  as  yet  no  extended  nor 
scientifically  conducted  attempt  has  been  made. 
Though  poppy  plants  have  been  produced  and 
have  attained  good  growth,  promising  an  abun- 


dant yield,  the  project  has  not  received  that  at- 
tention which  those  who  have  had  experience 
with  the  plant  are  confident  would  be  given  if 
proper  care  were  bestowed  upon  its  culture. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  opium  could  be  pro- 
duced in  California,  and  in  such  quantity  as  to 


536 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


prove  not  only  profitable  to  private  speculators, 
but  to  the  Government. 

The  poppy  was  early  cultivated  in  India,  and 
formed  an  important  item  in  the  revenues  of 
the  ancient  Mogul  emperors.  It  was  from  time 
immemorial  a  monopoly ;  and  in  the  sixteenth 
century  the  old  Mohammedan  chroniclers  con- 
sidered that  only  as  a  monopoly  could  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  drug  be  profitable.  For  many 
years  the  most  lax  management  prevailed.  Lit- 
tle or  no  account  of  the  area  under  poppy  was 
registered,  and  as  an  inducement  to  the  Gov- 
ernment officers  a  commission  was  offered  cm 
the  sales,  which  then  were  not  held  regular- 
ly once  a  month.  These  commissions  often 
amounted  to  twice  the  amount  of  salary  paid  to 
the  opium  officers  during  the  year,  and  it  was 
not  uncommon  for  the  Government  to  reduce 
these  perquisites  to  a  reasonable  sum. 

It  was  not  till  Lord  Dalhousie's  viceroyalty 
that  the  Opium  Department  was  placed,  to  use 
a  military  expression,  upon  an  effective  footing. 
The  first  Agency,  as  it  is  termed,  was  started  in 
1797  at  the  pleasant  little  station  of  Qhazipur. 
This  is  on  the  borders  of  the  North-west  Prov- 
inces and  Bengal,  and  it  is  here  that  the  Opium 
Agent,  chief  of  the  department,  has  his  head- 
quarters. In  1821-22,  another  change  was  ef- 
fected; for  we  learn  that  a  regular  Opium  Agent 
was  appointed,  who  was  aided  by  several  as- 
sistants in  charge  of  the  various  districts  where- 
in poppy  was  cultivated.  These,  in  their  turn, 
supervised  the  labors  of  native  gomasthas,  offi- 
cers on  inferior  pay  and  of  inferior  grades. 
Again,  in  1835-36,  further  changes  were  effect- 
ed in  the  department;  but  it  was  not  till  1852 
that  those  important,  as  well  as  beneficial, 
measures  were  introduced,  which  resulted  in 
making  the  Opium  Department  the  "backbone" 
of  the  Indian  revenue. 

The  machinery  of  the  government  is,  from 
the  nature  of  circumstances,  expensive.  The 
staff  of  European  officers  is  enormous,  as  a  con- 
stant check  has  to  be  maintained  upon  the  na- 
tive subordinates,  who  are  unrestrained  by  the 
considerations  of  honesty.  Notwithstanding 
this,  and  the  immense  extent  of  territory  over 
which  the  poppy  is  grown,  and  over  which  the 
department  has  control,  Mr.Rivett-Carnac  suc- 
ceeds in  working  this  department  at  a  surpris- 
ingly low  cost.  This  officer  has  not  only  an  In- 
dian, but  a  European  reputation,  as  a  scien- 
tist, litterateur,  and  man  of  culture.  His  mon- 
ographs on  numismatology  and  his  researches 
into  Indian  archaeology  have  stamped  him  as  a 
man  of  no  ordinary  genius.  Descended  from 
an  ancient  family  of  Bretagne,  Mr.  Rivett- 
Carnac  is  well  fitted,  not  alone  by  study  and  in- 
clination, but  also  by  descent,  for  the  pursuits 


so  dear  to  the  heart  of  those  who  love  the  his- 
toric past. 

A  great  "howl"  has  been  periodically  raised 
against  England  for  her  "iniquitous  conduct" 
in  importing  opium  into  China  through  Hong- 
kong. Many  have  asserted  that  were  it  not  for 
Great  Britain,  China  would  never  have  known 
the  influence  of  the  deleterious  drug.  This  is 
entirely  false.  Mr.  Turnbull,  a  well  known  au- 
thority on  opium,  affirms  that  China  is  indebt- 
ed to  Nipal  for  the  introduction  of  the  Indian 
drug.  This  statement  is  open  to  correction, 
for  the  earliest,  as  well  as  most  reliable,  authors 
declare  that  opium  was  first  brought  to  China 
by  the  Portuguese,  and  unshipped  at  the  port 
of  Canton.  Again,  leaving  aside  the  question  of 
introduction,  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
question  of  the  baneful  effects  springing  from 
the  use  of  the  drug.  No  authority  of  any  weight 
has  as  yet  been  given  to  prove  that  the  popular 
way  of  thinking  is  correct,  while  there  are  many 
who  have  long  tried  to  dispel  the  public  fallacy. 
Notably  among  these  stands  the  name  of  Mr. 
Colborne  Baber,once  British  Resident  at  Chun- 
king. In  one  of  Mr.  Baber's  reports  to  the  Gov- 
ernment he  speaks  of  the  Chinese  who  smoke 
opium  as  the  "flower  of  the  Mongol  race,"  and 
asserts  that  he  has  traveled  thousands  of  miles 
with  men  who  were  in  the  practice  of  smoking, 
and  never  noticed  that  they  suffered  in  the 
least. 

No  good  would  result  if  the  British  Govern- 
ment were  to  stop  the  importation  of  Indian 
opium  into  China.  Indeed,  evil  would  be  the 
immediate  consequence,  for  the  opium  pre- 
pared in  India  is  of  the  best  quality — the  great- 
est care  being  taken  that  the  standard  adopted 
by  the  Government  shall  be  maintained,  and 
for  this  sole  reason  a  department  has  been 
formed.  If  the  British  Government  were  actu- 
ated by  a  mere  money-making  desire,  it  could 
easily  import  opium  into  China  either  in  a  crude 
or  farinaceously  adulterated  state.  Would  the 
Chinese  be  any  the  wiser?  Not  a  single  chest 
of  opium  finds  its  way  into  China  which  has 
not  been  chemically  tested,  thoroughly  manip- 
ulated, scientifically  manufactured  and  prepared 
by  the  officers  of  the  Opium  Department.  The 
pay  of  the  officials,  the  maintenance  of  a  scien- 
tific body  of  men,  and  the  expenses  involved  in 
establishing  "weighing  stations,"  could  be  at 
once  done  away  with  if  the  British  Government 
entered  into  the  opium  traffic  as  a  speculation. 

If  we  descend  to  the  calm  logic  of  facts,  we 
shall  find  that  the  British  are,  in  a  manner,  ben- 
efiting the  Chinese.  No  one  will  have  the 
hardihood  to  deny  that  opium,  in  large  quanti- 
ties, is  cultivated  in  many  a  province  of  the 
"flowery  land."  Baron  von  Richthofen  and 


THE  DREAM-PLANT  OF  INDIA. 


537 


several  other  writers  on  Chinese  matters  have 
shown  a  formidable  array  of  statistics  relating 
to  the  extent  of  the  culture.  Mr.  Colborne 
Baber  has  given  many  an  instance  proving  the 
infatuation  the  Chinese  peasant  has  for  opium 
cultivation.  The  Imperial  Government  ful- 
minates terrible  and  barbarous  denunciations 
against  the  poppy;  but,  if  we  are  to  believe 
Mr.  Baber,  little  or  no  heed  is  paid  to  the  de- 
crees'emanating  from  the  Imperial  Court. 

There  is  another  broad  fact  to  consider.  The 
Emperor  and  his  advisers  are  strongly  averse 
to  the  culture  of  opium  within  their  territories ; 
yet  they  could,  by  fostering  the  cultivation  of  it, 
limit  the  import  of  Indian  opium.  If  England 
ceased  her  export,  an  inferior  quality  would,  at 
once,  be  placed  in  the  Chinese  markets,  both 
of  home  and  foreign  manufacture.  Persia  with- 
in the  last  few  years  has  largely  increased  her 
export.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  Indian 
opium  is  far  superior  to  that  made  either  by 
the  Persians  or  the  Chinese.  As  the  case  now 
stands,  if  harm  accrues  to  smokers,  that  harm 
is  limited  to  the  smallest  possible  extent  by  the 
superiority  of  the  drug.  The  Chinese  and  Per- 
sians have  not  the  science,  the  appliances,  nor 
the  opportunities  that  are  possessed  by  the  In- 
dian Government.  And,  further,  it  is  an  estab- 
lished fact  that  no  Asiatics  can  be  trusted  to 
maintain,  without  European  supervision,  any 
honesty  in  their  dealings,  or  to  keep  in  good 
order  any  machinery ;  or,  above  all,  to  abstain 
from  palming  off  rotten  wares,  especially  where 
the  liability  to  detection  is  small. 

Before  attempting  any  elaborate  description 
of  poppy  culture,  it  will  be  as  well  on  my  part 
to  give  brief  explanation  of  the  land  tenure  of 
India,  and  the  relations  existing  between  the 
raiat  and  the  British  Government.  Four-fifths 
of  India  belongs  to  the  Government ;  that  is,  the 
Government  is  the  actual  possessor  and  land- 
lord. Leases  of  thirty  years  only  are  granted, 
known  as  the  "thirty  years'  settlement."  At 
the  expiration  of  that  time  every  rood  of  land 
is  liable  to  be  reassessed  at  higher  valuation, 
according  to  the  experiments  effected  by  the 
landlord.  In  no  country  in  the  world  is  the 
raiat,  or  petty  landlord,  so  miserable  as  in  In- 
dia. The  most  varied  of  causes  conduce  to 
this ;  not  least,  the  system  of  land  tenure  in- 
troduced by  the  British.  It  is  acknowledged 
that  the  old  Mohammedan  emperors  managed 
to  secure  a  larger  revenue  from  the  land  in  the 
sixteenth  century  than  do  the  British,  with  all 
their  boastings  of  improvement,  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  No  landlord,  be  he  European 
or  Asiatic,  would  care  to  put  himself  to  the  ex- 
pense of  digging  wells  and  constructing  works 
necessary  for  irrigation  simply  to  be  addition- 


ally taxed  at  the  expiration  of  thirty  years.  It 
is  on  this  account  that  many  of  the  irrigation 
works  maintained  in  the  days  of  native  rule  by 
the  people,  at  their  own  cost,  have  been  so  neg- 
lected and  otherwise  destroyed  that  the  Gov- 
ernment has  had  to  step  in  and  take  them  in 
charge,  thus  involving  great  outlays  of  money, 
which  could  easily  be  avoided  if  a  different 
land  tenure  were  adopted.  Many  changes  have 
been  suggested,  but  the  one  advising  a  ninety 
and  nine  years'  lease  seems  to  be  the  simplest 
and  most  effective.  Famine  in  some  years  has 
been  the  only  harvest  reaped  by  the  Govern- 
ment, as  a  reward  for  its  obtuseness — injustice 
would  be  too  harsh.  However,  the  average  In- 
dian official  is  an  obstinate  animal,  and  is  more 
conservative  than  the  most  conservative  Brah- 
min. And  it  is  to  be  feared  that  it  will  be  long, 
if  ever,  before  any  radical  change  will  be  ef- 
fected in  the  present  system. 

The  holdings  are,  as  a  general  rule,  ridicu- 
lously small.  Many  do  not  exceed  one-twelfth 
of  an  acre.  It  is  such  tiny  plots  of  land — re- 
sembling a  cottage  garden — that  the  Indian 
raiat  will,  year  after  year,  toil  over  and  culti- 
vate, raising  barely  sufficient,  after  all  dues  are 
paid,  to  keep  body  and  soul  together.  Rarely 
is  nature  satisfied.  He  is  equally  defenseless 
against  the  fiery  loo  (the  hot  west  wind)  of  the 
spring,  the  dreadful  rains  of  summer,  and  the 
biting  frosts  of  winter.  His  single  garment  is 
a  ragged  sheet  thrown  over  his  shoulders,  and 
twisted  between  his  legs ;  his  children  run 
naked,  his  wife  wears  a  thin  petticoat  and  a 
still  thinner  shawl.  Yet  uncomplainingly  he 
labors  from  the  first  glimpse  of  dawn  to  the 
hour  when  night  with  her  black  mantle  casts 
sudden  darkness  over  the  wide  -  stretching 
plains,  the  broad  rivers,  and  high  mountains  of 
Hindustan.  His  lot  is  little  better  than  that  of 
the  cattle  he  employs  in  plowing  and  water- 
ing the  land.  Other  assistance  he  has  none. 
His  wife  and  children  take  the  place  of  hired 
labor.  The  juvenile  members  of  the  family 
pick  weeds,  scare  off  the  hungry  crows  and 
minas,  and  perform  other  light  work  suited  to 
their  tender  age  and  slender  physique.  The 
wife,  too,  assists ;  but  her  time  is,  perhaps,  bet- 
ter occupied  in  kneading  into  unwholesome 
bread  the  dough  made  from  the  coarsest  ce- 
reals. This  is  their  only  food.  It  is  occasion- 
ally garnished  with  a  little  garlic,  a  few  chillies, 
and  in  seasons  of  extraordinary  festivity  with 
jagrec,  or  solid  treacle.  Their  only  drink  is 
water.  Little  wonder  is  it  then  that  the  aver- 
age native  of  India  is  a  sickly,  miserable  creat- 
ure, dragging  through  a  few  short  years  of 
wretched  and  half- starved  existence.  Yet  it 
may  be  said,  and  with  justice,  that  no  country 


538 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


in  the  world  shows  a  more  frugal,  hard-working, 
and  law-abiding  peasantry  than  India.  The 
terrible  scenes  that  were  enacted  in  1857-58 
were  the  outburst  of  long  pent  up  wrongs,  suf- 
fered through  generations,  till  the  evil  became 
unendurable  and  the  worm  turned  for  ven- 
geance. It  has  ever  been  England's  fatal  pol- 
icy to  exasperate  willing  subjects.  And  it  seems, 
too,  that  individual  Englishmen,  however  high 
souled  and  right  minded  they  may  be,  think 
that  they  should  in  their  respective  commands 
follow  the  course  of  "blind  folly"  dictated  by 
the  home  authorities. 

The  poppy  plant  is  exclusively  cultivated  by 
natives,  aided  by  money  advances  from  the 
British  Government,  and  under  the  supervision 
of  its  officers.  The  cultivation  is  exceedingly 
popular,  for  the  money  advance  is  always  lib- 
eral, and  the  price  paid  for  the  opium  when  de- 
livered leaves  a  handsome  surplus,  even  after 
all  advances  and  other  dues  have  been  deduct- 
ed. The  natives  enter  into  contract  with  the 
Government  officers,  relating  to  the  acreage  of 
land  they  intend  to  devote  to  poppy  culture. 
This  is  for  the  purpose  of  determining  the 
money  advance;  and  it  is  during  the  months 
from  July  to  October  that  the  "settlements,"  as 
they  are  termed,  are  arranged.  No  sooner  are 
these  settlements  determined,  than  native  sur- 
veyors are  sent  to  the  opium  districts,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  survey  such  lands  sown  with  poppy 
seed,  check  any  attempts  at  short  cultivation, 
and,  in  fact,  keep  the  raiats  to  the  terms  of  their 
contract.  To  simplify  matters,  the  cultivators, 
with  whom  the  Government  enters  into  agree- 
ment, appoint  one  of  their  own  body  as  lam- 
bardar,  or  agent,  and  should  there  be  any  short- 
comings on  the  part  of  the  raiats,  the  govern- 
ment holds  the  lambardar  responsible.  For 
this  duty  he  is  allowed  a  commission  of  one 
rupee  (fifty  cents)  for  each  eighty  pounds  of  the 
opium  delivered  by  the  class  of  men  he  repre- 
sents. 

The  European  officers  proceed  into  the  dis- 
tricts in  November,  and  remain  till  March.  It 
is  their  business  to  supervise  the  settlements, 
report  upon  the  fields,  the  state  of  the  crops, 
and  the  prospects  of  the  season.  About  the 
end  of  January  the  plant  commences  to  flower, 
and  continues  until  March.  The  petals  are 
watched,  and  are  carefully  collected  in  the  fol- 
lowing manner.  The  forefinger  and  thumb  en- 
circle the  stem  just  beneath  the  pod,  and  with 
the  other  fingers  drawn  inward  a  kind  of  tube 
is  formed;  the  tube  is  then  gently  raised  straight 
over  the  pod,  and  if  the  petals  are  matured 
h  ey  come  off;  they  are  never  plucked  off  as  it 
would  injure  the  pod.  These  petals  are  used 
for  the  manufacture  of  "flower  leaves"  in  which 


are  packed  the  opium  balls  when  ready  for 
transport,  and  are  valuable  for  that  purpose. 
Their  manufacture  is  simple  and  inexpensive. 
A  circular  ridged  earthen  plate,  about  twelve 
inches  in  diameter,  is  placed  over  a  slow  fire. 
The  required  quantity  of  petals  is  then  placed 
in  it  and  pressed  with  a  damp  cloth  pad  until 
they  adhere  together;  the  flower  leaf  is  then 
removed  and  allowed  to  dry. 

In  February,  the  plant  is  so  far  matured  that 
an  estimate  of  the  probable  out-turn  can  be 
made.  The  second  advance  is  now  made,  as 
also  one  for  flower  leaves.  Toward  the  end  of 
January  and  beginning  of  February,  the  plant 
comes  to  maturity,  and  then  commences  the 
operation  of  lancing  the  pods.  This  is  really 
the  main  difficulty  in  the  cultivation  of  opium, 
as  the  plant  is  hardy  and  requires  but  little, 
and  that  ordinary,  care.  Good  irrigation,  a 
not  very  liberal  supply  of  manure,  and  ground 
clear  of  weeds,  are  all  sufficient  to  procure  a 
fair  standing  crop.  But  the  lancing,  so  as  to 
procure  the  juice,  is  quite  a  different  matter. 
And  it  is  on  this  account  that  cultivators,  when 
first  engaged  in  the  task,  are  exceedingly  nerv- 
ous as  to  the  result  of  their  experiments. 

The  pods  are  lanced  in  the  afternoon,  the 
opium  being  allowed  to  exude  till  next  morning, 
when  it  is  carefully  taken  off  with  an  iron 
scraper.  At  the  same  time  precaution  is  taken 
to  close  the  incisions  by  running  a  finger  over 
the  cuts.  About  five  or  six  incisions  suffice  for 
the  drawing  of  the  juice.  The  opium  that  has 
been  collected  is  placed  in  brass  vessels,  slight- 
ly tilted,  so  as  to  drain  off  the  dew  or  any  other 
watery  substance.  It  is  then  manipulated  and 
placed  in  a  new  earthern  vessel,  and  is  thus  kept 
till  it  is  brought  to  the  godowns  to  be  weighed. 
After  the  opinm  has  been  gathered  the  poppy 
pods  are  broken  off,  allowed  to  dry,  and  the 
seeds  collected  for  the  next  year's  sowing. 
Should  there  be  a  surplus  it  is  disposed  of  ta 
traders. 

The  time  of  the  "weighments"  depends  en- 
tirely on  the  season.  If  the  weather  is  dry, 
with  the  hot  west  winds,  work  is  begun  early 
in  April ;  if  not,  it  is  delayed  till  May.  The 
date  is  fixed  by  the  opium  officers;  and  notice 
is  immediately  given  to  the  cultivators,  in  order 
that  they  present  themselves  with  their  opium 
at  the  different  stations.  No  sooner  do  the 
cultivators  receive  their  orders  than  they  start 
for  the  weighing  stations.  Along  the  pictur- 
esque lanes  and  roads,  with  crates  laden  with 
earthen  pots  containing  opium,  crowds  of  raiats 
hurry  to  the  spot  where  the  sahib  logues  hold 
the  "weighments."  They  travel  only  by  night. 
The  heat  of  the  day  is  too  fierce  to  permit  ex- 
posure. When  the  day  is  done  whole  families 


VENUS    VICTRIX. 


539 


commence  their  weary  pilgrimage,  bare-footed 
and  half -naked,  but  bearing  on  their  heads 
sufficient  to  make  them  comfortable  if  they  re- 
ceived anything  like  a  proper  value.  During 
the  day  they  seek  the  grateful  shade  of  the  no- 
ble groves  that  are  so  liberally  planted  over  all 
north-western  India;  and,  encamping  under  the 
spreading  branches  of  the  famous  mango  tree, 
they  make  ready  their  simple  meal  and  pre- 
pare for  the  day's  rest.  Under  the  care  of  a 
zilladar,  or  Government  officer,  who  has  charge 
of  those  representing  a  district,  they  arrive  at 
the  weighing  stations,  and  have  in  turn  to  pre- 
sent their  opium  to  be  weighed  and  tested  as 
to  quality.  The  cultivators  are  generally  igno- 
rant, and  many  of  them  have  never  in  their 
lives  seen  Europeans.  The  dread  they  evince 
of  Englishmen  is  ludicrous  as  well  as  painful. 
They  tremble  as  they  approach,  and  regard  the 
sahib  much  in  the  same  manner  as  more  civil- 
ized men  do  a  tame  lion  or  tiger.  Their  fears 
are  enhanced  through  the  play  made  on  them 
by  rascally  peons  and  petty  employes  of  the 
Government  who,  for  purposes  of  extortion,  rep- 
resent that  if  paid  they  will  "make  it  all  right" 
with  the  sahib,  who,  on  account  of  such  good 
offices,  will  treat  them  well. 

At  sunrise,  the  beating  of  a  gong  announces 
that  work  for  the  day  has  commenced,  and  the 
raiats  are  ranged  in  long  lines  before  the  ex- 
amining officers  who  test  the  opium.  Though 
it  looks  very  simple  to  the  outsider,  it  is  only 
by  long  experience  that  one  can  become  a  clever 
tester.  The  quality  is  ascertained  by  the  con- 
sistency and  color.  First-class  opium  has  a 
rich  deep  brown  color,  and  is  very  thick  and 
glutinous;  the  more  inferior  the  quality  the 
blacker  the  color  and  thinner  the  consistency. 
The  officer,  with  the  aid  of  a  knife,  turns  the 
opium  and  smells  it,  marking  the  quality  on  the 
side  of  the  earthen  basin.  This  is  then  carried 
to  the  place  where  further  chemical  experiments 
are  made ;  and  to  prove  that  the  opium  is  not 
adulterated  with  farinaceous  matter,  tincture  of 


iodine  is  applied.  If  the  raiat  has  been  mix- 
ing flour,  the  iodine  immediately  discovers  the 
attempted  deception  by  giving  the  opium  a 
bluish  color.  For  punishment,  the  whole  is 
confiscated  by  the  Government. 

Beyond  weighing,  classifying,  testing,  and 
making  payment,  the  weighing  stations  have 
nothing  further  to  do  with  the  opium.  The 
actual  manufacture  and  preparation  are  reserv- 
ed for  the  central  or  manufacturing  station, 
where,  under  scientific  superintendence,  the 
drug  is  made  into  balls,  packed,  and  dispatch- 
ed to  Calcutta.  For  instance,  Ghazipur  is  the 
central  station  for  the  North-west  Provinces  and 
Patna  for  Behar.  To  these  two  places  all  the 
opium  that  is  grown  in  India  must  be  sent ;  and 
it  is  only  from  their  godowns  that  the  "delete- 
rious, death-dealing  drug,"  as  it  has  been  face- 
tiously termed,  is  sent  for  the  use  of  the  "poor 
deluded  Chinese." 

The  out-turn  of  opium  per  acre  depends  en- 
tirely upon  the  soil.  Very  carefully  cultivated 
land  will  produce  thirty  pounds  to  a  bigha,  but 
the  most  that  can  be  hoped  for  is  about  twenty- 
four  pounds.  When  we  come  to  consider  that 
twenty -four  pounds  of  opium  is  the  produce  of 
a  bigha  which  has  been  cultivated  for  years, 
and  on  which  comparatively  little  manure  has 
been  expended,  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  is 
a  splendid  average.  In  California,  where  the 
soil  is  virgin,  the  climate  favorable,  and  irriga- 
tion easily  supplied,  the  profits  arising  from  the 
culture  would  be  incalculable.  It  would  be  folly 
to  attempt  the  cultivation  and  preparation  un- 
less it  were  trusted  to  those  who  understand  the 
business.  But  that  is  of  secondary  importance, 
as  there  are  men  in  San  Francisco  who  have 
gained  experience  in  opium  cultivation  as  well 
under  the  Indian  Government  as  in  China;  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that,  under  careful  super- 
vision, an  important  industry  might  be  fostered 
in  California,  and  an  impetus  imparted  to  a  new 
department  of  the  foreign  trade  o*f  the  United 
States.  JNO.  H.  GILMOUR. 


VENUS    VICTRIX. 


Winter  had  come,  swiftly  and  silently,  in 
Berne,  shrouding  the  Alpine  hights  in  mists  of 
snow,  covering  the  face  of  earth  with  a  pure 
white  pall,  fascinating  in  its  beauty,  but  fatal  as 
the  charms  of  Lady  Holle  of  Eisenach,  when 
by  the  gleam  of  her  golden  hair  and  the  witch- 
ery of  the  love-light  in  her  eyes  she  lured  Tann- 
hauser  into  her  mount  to  his  destruction. 


For  days  the  wind  from  the  north  had  blown 
cold  and  freezing.  It  ran  riot  through  the  long 
streets,  whistled  round  the  corners  of  the  great 
houses,  and  beat  on  the  window-panes  as  if  de- 
manding entrance.  The  comfortable  burgher 
only  rubbed  his  hands,  and  said,  "A  fearful 
night  truly.  Fill  up  the  wine -cups,  Heinrich. 
Sing  us  a  song  of  the  Southland,  Rita." 


540 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


The  shrill  wind  and  the  driving  sleet  respect- 
ed not  the  homes  of  the  poor,  for  they  beat 
down  their  chimneys  like  evil  ones  pursued  by 
the  avenging  fury  of  the  Eumenides,  puffed  at 
their  feeble  glimmer  of  fire  as  if  to  extinguish 
it,  and  chilled  the  good  Mutter's  hands  at  her 
knitting  until  she  was  forced  to  lay  down  little 
Bertol's  sock  with  a  sigh,  for  her  stiffened  fin- 
gers refused  to  move.  The  father  sat  in  the 
corner  with  an  empty  pipe  in  his  mouth,  and 
thought  moodily  and  bitterly  until  his  forehead 
was  furrowed  with  lines  like  the  cornfields 
when  the  farmer  lads  have  gathered  the  harvest 
and  turned  up  the  earth  in  ridges,  leaving  it 
without  yield. 

The  wind  shrieked  itself  hoarse.  Clouds 
gathered  around  the  Alps,  dimming  their  out- 
line. Again,  a  steady,  noiseless  fall  of  snow 
covered  the  earth.  Each  flake  chilled  like  the 
icy  touch  of  death,  and  all  Berne  lay  under  the 
whiteness.  Icicles  glistened  like  jewels  from 
the  eaves  of  the  houses,  and  the  hoar-frost 
traced  mystic  pictures  on  many  a  window-pane. 
The  birds  huddled  close  together,  hoping  for 
warmth  from  companionship,  but  the  Erl  King 
breathed  on  them  and  they  fell  dead. 

Little  Bertol  would  sob  every  morning  when 
he  found  one  on  the  doorstep : 

"Mutter,  I  must  give  my  bread  to  the  bird- 
lings." 

"Nein,  nein,"  she  answered,  shaking  her 
head  sorrowfully.  "The  cold  has  frozen  the 
rich  men's  hearts  as  it  has  the  birdlings,  lieb- 
ling,  and  we  might  want." 

The  high  mountains  looked  down  upon  the 
city  nestling  at  their  feet  like  a  mother  upon  a 
child,  and  their  heads  seemed  lifted  into  heaven 
as  if  in  supplication  for  its  needs.  The  Jung- 
frau  was  clothed  as  a  bride  in  virgin  white,  and 
as  the  sun  kissed  her  forehead  ere  he  went  to 
rest,  she  blushed  in  rosy  glow,  and  all  the  love- 
ly valley  of  Lauterbrunnen  reflected  her  beau- 
tiful color,  the  echo  of  the  "Ranz  des  Vaches" 
was  hushed  on  the  hights;  the  sweet  sounds 
of  the  lioba,  lioba,  were  stilled,  for  the  cattle 
had  been  driven  to  shelter,  or,  belated,  lay 
frozen  in  the  snows.  Alpine  flowers  shivered, 
folded  their  petals,  and  died.  The  pale  edel- 
weiss alone  lifted  her  pure  cup  amid  the  white 
ness. 

It  was  Christsmas  Eve.  Sounds  of  mirth  and 
laughter,  mingled  with  wails  and  groans,  filled 
the  town.  The  rich  danced  and  feasted;  the 
poor  starved  and  wept. 

"The  snow  is  like  marble,"  Bertol  exclaimed. 
"I  have  made  a  man.  Would  that  it  were 
stone  so  it  might  last." 

"Hush,  child,"  the  Mutter  replied.  "We 
must  think  of  bread,  not  stone." 


"We  will  take  our  savings  and  go  to  Ameri- 
ca," the  father  said.  "The  lad  will  be  done 
with  his  dreaming  then." 

Bertol  was  a  tall,  slender  lad,  with  great 
dreamy  eyes.  He  worked  with  his  father  on 
homely  sabots,  ofttimes  inserting  delicacy  in  the 
arabesque  patterns  he  traced  upon  them.  The 
neighbors  shook  their  heads,  and  said  : 

"Some  day  our  Bertol  will  be  great."  But 
the  Berne  peasants  were  ignorant  folk,  and 
knew  nothing  of  the  great  world  beyond. 

Bertol  went  to  school,  and  learned  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  His  heart  beat  at  their  names  as 
an  old  soldier's  would  when  strains  of  martial 
music  fill  the  air,  causing  him  to  dream  of  a 
Marathon  or  Waterloo.  Genius  was  the  plant 
hidden  in  his  heart,  stirring  every  fiber  of  his 
being.  Its  yield  was  a  mystery  still,  its  flower 
nameless.  Once,  in  passing  a  shop,  he  saw  a 
cast  of  the  Venus  of  Melos,  an  Aphrodite,  who 
sprung  from  an  unknown  hand.  The  sea  foam 
was  incarnate  in  her  being.  Her  master,  wheth- 
er a  Phidias  or  Alcamenes,  was  one  whom  gen- 
ius inspired. 

Bertol  dreamed  of  the  Venus.  Her  features 
were  engraved  on  his  memory ;  her  image  was 
ever  before  him  in  its  divinity.  But  her  arms 
were  wanting.  That  marred  her  perfectness. 

"When  I  am  grown,"  he  sighed,  "I  shall 
search  all  Greece  until  I  find  them." 

The  time  was  set  for  their  journey.  The 
night  before  Bertol  stole  softly  out.  The  wind 
was  cold  and  bitter.  The  large  white  moon 
shone  with  a  clear  light  over  the  sleeping  world. 
He  went  to  the  shop  window ;  pressed  his  face 
close  to  the  pane.  It  hurt,  but  he  felt  it  not, 
for  the  moonbeams  were  shining  on  the  face  of 
the  Venus.  She,  too,  looked  cold  and  white  as 
the  world. 

"Good-bye!"  he  murmured  fondly,  as  to  a 
human  being.  "  I  shall  never,  never  forget." 

His  heart  ached  when  he  saw  the  poor,  mu- 
tilated arms,  and  she  seemed  to  smile  at  him  so 
pityingly ! 

Old  Hans  shook  the  snow  from  his  feet  joy- 
fully, and  they  sailed  over  the  seas  to  a  new 
world,  and  traveled  many  weary  miles,  until 
they  reached  the  Golden  State. 

"We  will  go  up  to  the  mountains,"  Hans  said, 
"where  we  may  have  land  for  the  taking." 

"It  is  heavenly!"  Bertol  exclaimed  as  they 
neared  the  Sierra.  "It  is  our  Alps,  only  more 
beautiful.  It  is  our  mountains  new-born  in  the 
spring-time!" 

"Yes ;  but  in  the  winter,  snow  covers  them, 
too,"  Hans  replied. 

"But  is  the  weeping  of  youth,  not  age,  father." 

Their  worldly  possessions  were  few — so  few, 
when  they  left  the  train,  they  were  easy  to  carry. 


VENUS    VICTRIX. 


Hans  was  a  fatalist  In  his  simple  fashion,  and 
literally  carried  out  his  beliefs.  It  is  not  a  bad 
sort  of  philosophy  for  wiser  heads.  Man  strives 
and  frets  against  fortune ;  yet,  after  all,  what  is 
written  shall  be,  and,  like  a  caged  bird,  he 
breaks  his  wings  in  beating  against  the  bars. 

Some  one  at  the  wayside  station  told  him  he 
would  find  a  deserted  miner's  cabin  some  miles 
up  the  gulch ;  so  he  exultingly  said  to  the  good 
Mutter : 

"It  is  the  finger  of  Providence." 

They  walked  along  the  fern-bordered  brook, 
past  beds  of  rose-tinted  rhododendrons,  sweet 
red  buds  and  myriads  of  flower  blooms  cover- 
ing the  hillside. 

At  sunset  they  reached  the  rude  log  cabin. 
Dead  ashes  were  in  the  open  fireplace,  and  a 
loaf  of  bread,  hardened  almost  to  stone,  lay  on 
the  table,  as  if  the  occupant  had  just  stepped 
out — and,  indeed,  the  owner  had  stepped  into 
another  world  scarce  a  year  ago. 

"The  soil  is  rich  as  the  mud  of  Aar,"  Hans 
said,  as  he  turned  it  over  with  a  stick.  "We 
will  plant  and  work.  The  man  told  me  of  a 
farmer  above  here  who  will  let  us  have  every- 
thing needful.  You  will  not  find  time  for  dream- 
ing, my  lad." 

The  Frau  simply  answered  : 

"I  shall  miss  our  old  neighbors;"  then  com- 
menced dusting  the  floor  to  hide  her  rising 
tears. 

The  farmer,  with  true  mountain  friendliness, 
sold  them  a  cow,  helped  them  plow  a  few  acres 
of  sloping  land,  and  taught  them  the  simple 
customs  of  agriculture. 

Little  May,  the  farmer's  daughter,  played, 
walked  with  Bertol,  and  loved  him,  as  the  years 
passed. 

"I  was  so  lonely  before  you  came !"  she  said 
archly  one  day  as  they  sat  by  the  stream,  idly 
talking.  "The  dolls  father  used  to  bring  me 
were  nothing  but  sawdust." 

"It  was  like  people  in  the  world,"  Bertol  an- 
swered sadly — "hearts  and  brains  nothing  but 
sawdust.  Helen  must  have  been  like  that  to 
have  left  Menelaus  for  Paris.  Achilles  was 
killed ;  it  availed  nothing." 

He  thought  to  himself,  dreamily,  as  he  carved 
a  bit  of  soapstone,  "If  it  had  been  my  Venus, 
it  would  have  been  well." 

May  became  impatient  of  his  silence  and 
slipped  away,  hoping  he  would  follow,  but  Ber- 
tol's  thoughts  wandered  far  away.  The  knife 
fell  from  his  hand  as  he  lay  on  the  grass,  his 
face  upturned  to  the  sky. 

May  was  a  flower  that  had  sprung  up  in  bar- 
ren soil,  as  the  crimson  snow -plant  does  amid 
depths  of  ice.  Her  parents  were  ruddy  pio- 
neers, and  when  she  came  to  them  in  the  May 


they  named  her  after  the  month,  and  all  the 
joy  of  spring-time  bubbled  up  in  her  nature, 
breaking  into  coquettish  little  ways  and  graces. 
She  loved  the  cfelicate  Swiss  lad,  though  he  did 
not  seem  of  the  world. 

"His  head  is  wrong,"  the  farmer  declared, 
roughly ;  "but  he  is  a  good  lad." 

The  thought  of  Venus  and  his  mission  sunk 
deeper  and  deeper  in  his  heart.  He  was  twenty 
notf,  and  longed  to  go  out  into  the  world  and 
fulfill  his  quest.  He  was  startled  from  his  rev- 
erie by  a  voice,  and,  looking  up,  saw  an  old 
man  regarding  him  steadily. 

"Boy,"  he  laughed,  "you  are  young  to  be  in- 
stilling truisms  of  the  hollowness  of  the  world 
in  a  maiden's  ears.  What  do  you  know  of  it 
here  in  this  solitude?  Let  the  people  dissect 
the  dolls  for  themselves." 

Bertol  started  to  his  feet  in  confusion. 

"Where  under  the  sun  have  you  imbibed  the 
wisdom  of  Thoth?  Are  you  a  Dryad,  or  an 
Adonis  wandered  from  the  classic  shores  to  the 
Sierra,  or  an  Endymion  by  the  brook?"  he 
asked,  quizzically,  with  a  gleam  of  amusement 
as  he  watched  the  boy's  reddening  face. 

"I  am  a  simple  peasant  boy,  sir,  who  would 
be  a  sculptor,"  he  said,  proudly. 

The  stranger  laughed  heartily. 

"I  am  a  wanderer,  boy,  who  also  would  be 
great.  The  would  be's — 'ay,  there's  the  rub !' 
A  shepherd  and  a  wanderer  with  aspirations ! 
It  is  a  joke  at  which  the  world  would  shake  its 
sides  and  scream  in  laughter.  Ambition  is  for 
the  palace,  not  the  hut,  lad.  Fame  can  be 
bought.  The  laurel  weighs  heavy  on  the  brow, 
still  we  rush  recklessly  on,  ransoming  our  lives 
for  a  mere  sprig  of  the  victor's  shrub.  Sappho 
won  it,  but  the  sea  vanquished  it.  Leonidas's 
laurels  budded  in  blood ;  Homer's  grew  in  pain. 
Nonsense!  The  fire  has  taken  hold.  It  will 
burn  in  victory  or  in  death." 

Bertol  looked  dazed.    He  did  not  understand. 

"You  would  work  in  marble,"  the  stranger 
continued.  "Your  friends,  the  Greeks,  have 
monopolized  that  art.  Sculpture  has  been  born, 
lived  well,  and  died." 

"To  all  things  there  comes  a  resurrection," 
Bertol  added,  devoutly. 

The  stranger  appeared  not  to  notice,  and 
continued : 

"Sculpture  has  a  limit.  Science  is  bound- 
less as  the  sea.  The  Greeks  reached  the  acme 
of  perfection  in  the  Discobulus,  their  Venus. 
The  present  age  is  a  mere  copyist — a  chipper 
in  stone.  Give  up  your  dreams  of  greatness." 
The  stranger's  dark  eyes  looked  far  away  over 
the  mountains.  "The  range  of  science  is  infi- 
nite. Men  are  to  come  who  will  be  its  masters.'* 

"Do  you  know  the  Venus?"  Bertol  asked. 


542 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


"Which?"  he  demanded.  "The  Medici  is 
affected ;  d' Aries,  human ;  the  Melos  is  the  only 
one  who  impresses  you  as  a  goddess  in  pose 
and  figure." 

"Have  you  seen  her?"  he  asked,  breathlessly. 

"No;  only  casts,"  the  man  replied.  "But  I 
have  seen  Spencer  and  Carlyle,  and  met  John 
Stuart  Mill." 

The  interest  died  out  of  Bertol's  face ;  these 
names  were  empty  sound  to  him. 

"  I  am  examining  the  rock  formations  in  this 
range,"  the  stranger  said.  "If  you  live  near,  I 
would  like  to  stay  with  you  a  while." 

Bertol  guided  him  to  the  cabin,  which  looked 
very  different  from  five  years  before.  The  Frau 
stood  in  the  doorway,  feeding  a  brood  of  chick- 
ens, looking  happy  and  well  content.  She 
welcomed  the  guest  heartily,  and  Hans  bade 
him  stay  as  long  as  he  would.  Day  after  day 
Bertol  accompanied  him  on  his  walks,  carrying 
his  mallet,  listening  eagerly  to  every  word  he 
uttered,  entirely  forgetting  little  May. 

"Every  cat  must  put  his  own  paw  in  the  fire." 
The  stranger  laughed  and  said  to  Hans,  "Your 
lad  was  not  made  to  chop  wood  and  mind  cows. 
You  must  send  him  to  Rome  to  satisfy  him." 

"I  am  poor,"  the  old  man  replied.  ''Every 
one  carves  in  Switzerland.  It  is  nothing." 

"The  boy  will  die  here,"  the  stranger  said. 
"I  am  not  rich,  but  I  shall  send  him  to  the 
Mecca  of  sculptors."  He  turned  to  Bertol. 
"The  Borghese  is  full  of  what  you  dreamers 
fancy." 

Bertol  listened  with  dilated  eyes ;  he  did  not 
dare  to  ask. 

"Surely,"  he  thought,  "Venus  must  be  with 
Eros." 

Preparations  were  hurried.  Bertol  was  now 
embarked  on  a  sea  of  happiness.  The  good 
Mutter  clung  round  his  neck  and  sobbed.  Tears 
streamed  down  little  May's  cheeks  when  she 
kissed  him,  giving  him  a  wild  rose  blossom, 
which  she  bade  him  keep  for  her  sake. 

The  stranger  muttered,  "Fool,  to  forsake  this 
for  a  phantom !" 

Bertol  seemed  scarcely  human  and  capable 
of  feeling,  he  was  so  happy. 

"If  you  fail,  come  back,"  the  stranger  warn- 
ed. "Crowned  or  a  failure,  we  will  welcome 
you." 

Rome  in  the  summer  time;  Rome  with  her 
deep  blue  skies,  and  glorious  sunshine  flood- 
ing the  palace  of  the  Csesars,  arch  of  Constan- 
tine,  column  of  Trajan,  and  Coliseum ;  Rome, 
with  her  flower -decked  Campagna  overflowing 
with  scarlet  poppies  that  Nausicaa  might  have 
offered  Ulysses,  dark  olive  trees,  long  lines  of 
broken  aqueducts,  clustered  with  trailing  vines; 


with  her  Alban  hills  stretching  in  long  line,  and 
her  yellow  Tiber  rolling  sluggishly. 

What  a  host  of  memories  the  name  of  Rome 
recalls.  She  saw  a  religion  flourish  and  die. 
She  heard  the  death  knell  of  Olympus;  wit- 
nessed nations  overturned,  monarchs  dethron- 
ed, poets,  artists  live,  conquer,  and  pass  away. 
Raphael  wandered  in  her  ilex  groves.  Virgil 
sung  his  poems  by  her  river.  Now  she  remains 
"the  Niobe  of  nations  " — her  very  air  burdened 
with  dust  of  the  past,  memories  and  ruins. 

Bertol  was  bewildered  by  the  strangeness. 
He  procured  a  poor  lodging,  hastened  to  the 
Borghese.  Only  in  dreams  had  he  known  such 
joy.  He  passed  Canova's  Venus  in  scorn  and 
pitying  contempt,  to  think  so  mean  a  thing 
should  represent  his  goddess  and  be  so  near  to 
her  throne.  The  blood  ran  fast  in  his  veins. 
New  life  filled  his  being.  He  had  come  so  far, 
hoped  so  long;  now  the  suspense  was  to  be 
ended. 

"Where  is  the  Venus  of  Melos?"  he  asked 
the  custodian,  in  awed  tones. 

"  In  the  Louvre,"  the  old  man  replied.  "They 
have  not  left  her  to  us." 

Bertol  staggered  as  if  some  one  had  dealt 
him  a  sharp  blow.  A  mist  came  before  his 
eyes;  he  turned  ghastly  pale.  It  was  as  if 
death  had  come  to  him.  He  had  dedicated 
his  life  to  this  mission  as  a  nun  renounces  home 
and  love  for  her  religion.  The  dream  and  hope 
of  beholding  her  had  grown  with  him;  had 
been  nurtured  in  silence  and  had  taken  strong 
hold  of  his  sensitive  heart.  The  same  impulse 
that  gave  the  world  a  Phidias,  Angelo,  and 
Thorwaldsen  stirred  his  soul.  His  money  was 
almost  spent.  He  could  go  no  farther.  France 
was  as  distant  to  him  as  the  Kingdom  of  Thule. 
He  shuddered.  A  dirge  for  life,  ambition,  fame 
seemed  tolling  in  his  ears. 

As  he  stumbled  blindly  over  the  threshold 
with  bleeding  heart,  a  young  girl  spoke  to  him 
kindly,  thinking  he  was  a  stranger  and  ill.  She 
offered  him  a  handful  of  ripe,  purple  figs. 

"Who  are  you?"  he  asked,  abruptly,  passing 
his  hand  over  his  eyes  as  if  to  brush  away  a 
mist.  "You  have  her  features." 

"I  am  lo,  from  Melos,"  she  answered,  sim- 
ply. "A  great  lady  was  traveling  there,  saw 
me,  and  took  me  with  her." 

"And  you  left  Greece?"  he  asked  in  a  half 
reproachful  tone. 

"  Surely,"  she  laughed,  "white  bread  is  better 
than  black,  figs  than  olives." 

"Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  Venus?  Have 
they  found  her  arms?" 

She  replied,  carelessly: 

"I  know  nothing  about  it.  It  is  all  sky,  wa- 
ter, and  ruins  in  Melos.  Father  used  to  dig  up 


VENUS    VICTRIX. 


543 


pieces  of  marble  in  the  vineyard  and  sell  to 
travelers.  They  were  ugly  things.  I  like  Rome 
better,  and  the  shops.  I  will  ask  madame  ;  she 
is  a  great  English  lady  and  knows  everything." 

Bertol  thanked  her,  then  walked  to  his  lodg- 
ings. He  counted  the  money  in  his  purse.  It 
was  very  little,  and  the  pieces  pitifully  small. 
A  package  of  withered  rose  leaves  fell  from  his 
pocket,  and  the  petals  lay  strewn  over  the  floor 
forgotten.  He  bowed  his  head  in  his  bitter- 
ness and  sobbed. 

Voices  of  liquid  Italian  floated  up  to  him 
from  the  streets.  Merry  laughter,  mingled  with 
snatches  of  love  songs,  sounded  in  the  air.  He 
heard  nothing,  felt  nothing  but  the  great  agony 
of  disappointment.  Venus  had  lured  him  by 
her  spells  as  she  had  snared  the  heart  of  Vul- 
can only  to  break  it. 

Toward  morning,  all  Rome  was  astir  in  the 
coolness.  Bertol  woke  from  his  dreams,  hag- 
gard and  weak.  He  had  eaten  nothing  but  the 
figs  pretty  lo  had  given  him.  He  went  out 
into  the  streets,  satisfied  his  hunger  and  search- 
ed for  the  sculptors'  studios  to  find  work.  One 
after  another  they  shook  their  heads  when  they 
glanced  at  his  small  designs  and  saw  his  slen- 
der figure  and  pale  face. 

"We  want  workmen,"  they  all  said. 

Weary  and  broken  hearted,  he  reached  the 
last  door.  An  old  man  was  modeling  in  clay. 
He  looked  around  as  he  bade  the  lad  enter,  ex- 
amined his  figures,  listened  to  him  patiently, 
and  said : 

"If  you  could  find  another  Hadrian  for  a  pa- 
tron, the  world  would  have  another  Antinous. 
I  have  no  work  you  could  do;  only  you  can 
stand  as  a  model." 

Bertol  consented,  for  he  knew  he  must  work 
to  live.  In  the  afternoon  he  wandered  again  to 
the  Borghese  and  saw  lo  coming  toward  him. 

"  Have  you  found  anything  about  the  Venus  ?" 
he  demanded,  eagerly. 

She  pouted. 

"Am  I  not  more  important  than  the  Venus?" 

"You  are  like  her,"  he  answered,  sadly. 
"Your  expression  and  form  are  like.  But  she 
was  a  goddess.  You  are  only  a  woman." 

"Yes?"  She  looked  coquettishly  under  her 
long,  dark  lashes.  "We  have  always  lived  in 
Melos,  in  Kaesdon.  Maybe  my  ancestress  was 
the  Venus.  Madame  says  they  cannot  find  her 
arms,  and  she  is  better  without  them.  Imag- 
ine [she  held  out  her  own  bare,  brown  arms, 
from  which  the  linen  sleeve  had  slipped  back, 
revealing  their  shapely  outline]  how  one  would 
look  without  them.  Madame  always  raves 
about  those  things  without  arms,  legs,  or  heads. 
They  make  me  shudder." 

"A  torso,  you  mean,"  Bertol  explained. 


She  sat  by  him  in  the  grove  all  the  day, 
chattering  in  her  pretty  broken  English,  until 
Bertol  half  forgot  his  marble  divinity,  and  her 
presence  was  quite  replaced  by  a  human  sister. 
May's  rose-leaves  were  swept  up  by  the  con- 
tadino  and  lay  unheeded  among  the  ashes, 
lo's  face  shared  half  the  victory  with  the  Ve- 
nus in  Bertol's  heart. 

Day  by  day  he  went  to  the  studio,  earning  a 
miserable  pittance,  his  hand  aching  to  mold  the 
clay  he  must  not  touch.  lo  was  his  only  com- 
fort. She  laughed  and  ridiculed  his  dreams, 
but  he  never  heeded  her.  He  saved  a  little  by 
almost  starving  himself,  modeled  her  image  in 
clay,  and  longed  for  marble  to  perpetuate  it. 
Something  whispered  to  him,  "It  is  good." 

The  winds  from  the  Apennines  blew  more 
chill  as  winter  approached.  The  imperial  city 
was  full  of  life  and  merriment.  Bertol  loved 
lo  devotedly,  but  she  deserted  him  with  the 
summer,  because,  she  said  : 

"Baptista,  the  wine  merchant,  does  not  moon 
all  the  day  over  goddesses." 

It  hurt  Bertol  sorely,  and  now  he  was  quite 
alone,  and  lived  hoping  his  work  would  suc- 
ceed, and  he  could  go  to  France.  He  wrote 
cheerful  letters  to  the  old  Frau,  and  she  talked 
proudly  to  the  farmer's  wife  of  her  son,  the 
sculptor. 

At  last  Bertol  was  out  of  work.  His  eyes 
grew  large  and  hollow;  his  frame  gaunt.  The 
blue  veins  stood  out  like  network  on  his  pale 
forehead,  and  his  face  was  white  as  the  marble 
in  his  master's  workshop.  One  day  he  went  to 
the  old  studio  and  begged  the  sculptor  to  come 
home  with  him.  Bertol  took  him  to  the  poor 
room  and  threw  the  cloth  off  the  face  of  his 
statue. 

The  sculptor  gazed  astonished. 

"Did  you  do  this,  boy?"  he  asked. 

Bertol  did  not  answer.  Worn  nature  had 
given  way  under  the  strain,  and  he  fell  in  a 
white  heap  on  the  floor. 

"You  will  be  famous,"  the  sculptor  said. 

Bertol  did  not  hear  nor  heed.  A  physician 
was  sent  for.  He  said  gravely : 

"It  is  hunger  and  fever.  Two  deadly  foes 
that  are  hard  to  vanquish." 

"  I  must  go  to  Florence,"  the  sculptor  replied. 
"But  care  for  him  well.  I  will  repay  you.  L 
never  imagined  the  lad  had  stuff  in  him." 

Bertol  raved  all  the  day  ceaselessly.  Night 
came  and  he  recovered  partial  consciousness. 
The  woman  who  watched  by  him  said : 

"They  say  you  will  be  great." 

"Great !"  Bertol  started  up  suddenly  in  the 
bed.  "This  is  the  joy  that  kills.  They  say  L 
may  see  my  Venus,"  he  cried,  his  eyes  spark- 
ling with  excitement. 


:544 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"  Si,  si !"  the  old  woman  cried,  soothingly. 

He  fell  back  quietly,  as  if  asleep,  with  a  smile 
on  his  face,  and  she  crept  noiselessly  away. 
Bertol  stole  from  the  bed  cautiously  after  all 
was  quiet  and  dressed  quickly.  The  fever 
mounted  into  his  head.  His  eyes  shone  with 
an  unearthly  light. 

"Good-bye!"  he  whispered, pressing  his  lips 
on  the  cold  clay  ones  of  his  statue.  "Good- 
bye forever,  lo  !  Venus  has  conquered.  She 
must  have  no  rivals. 

He  crept  stealthily  down  the  stairs  out  into 
the  air,  singing  softly  to  himself  the  notes  of 
the  "Ranz  des  Vaches." 

"I  will  walk  to  the  Louvre,"  he  muttered. 
"Venus  will  tell  the  world  I  am  great." 

His  feet  unconsciously  guided  him  to  the  Bor- 
ghese.  The  custodian  had  left  the  door  un- 
locked. He  wandered  around  among  the  stat- 
ues, falling  at  the  feet  of  an  Ariadne. 

"At  last!"  he  murmured.  "The  miles  have 
been  so  weary,  my  Venus !"  He  smiled.  "You 
are  worth  it  all."  He  laid  his  head  on  the  mar- 
ble base,  and  in  his  delirium  he  fancied  it  the 
Venus  of  Melos. 

"It  is  you  who  have  made  me  great,"  he  cried. 

His  brain  was  on  fire.  He  sprang  to  his  feet. 
In  imagination  he  still  saw  the  beloved  features. 

"The  stranger  said  'the  laurel  would  hurt,'" 
he  cried,  grasping  his  forehead.  "  It  is  burn- 
ing, scorching."  His  brain  was  in  a  whirl. 
He  staggered  and  fell,  striking  his  head  against 
the  stone.  The  great  moon  came  out  from  be- 


hind the  clouds,  shining  upon  the  faces  of  the 
gods  and  goddesses,  and  they  seemed  to  look 
with  pity  on  the  cold  form  lying  among  them, 
white  as  they  were,  with  his  life-blood  coloring 
the  base  of  the  Ariadne. 

The  drowsy  custodian  rubbed  his  eyes  sleep- 
ily in  the  morning  as  he  went  his  rounds,  and 
he  found  Bertol  stilled  in  death.  The  marble 
had  killed !  He  washed  the  blood-stains  away 
and  sent  for  the  monks,  who  bore  the  body  to 
to  the  church. 

The  sculptor  returned  from  Florence  and 
searched  for  Bertol  in  vain.  He  moved  the 
statue  to  his  studio.  A  few  saw  and  praised. 
The  laurel  lay  waiting  for  him  at  last. 

The  sculptor  passed  by  a  church  where  a  mass 
for  the  dead  was  being  chanted.  He  entered 
and  saw  Bertol.  The  laurels  were  useless,  for 
the  brow  was  cold.  Immortelles  alone  could 
avail  him  now,  and  the  world  forgets.  Like 
Lacedemonian  Ladas,  he  won  only  to  die. 

Spiders  wove  their  webs  over  the  face  of  the 
statue  in  the  sculptor's  garret.  The  world  nev- 
er knew.  What  matter  if  a  young,  sensitive 
life  had  given  away  on  the  threshold  of  success ! 
What  mattered  it  if  gray-haired  mother  or  fair 
young  maiden  stretched  longing  eyes  toward  the 
Orient  in  weary  quest !  On  with  the  masque ! 
Let  music,  wine,  and  bright  smiles  from  brighter 
lips  chase  serious  thoughts  into  outer  darkness. 
King  Carnival  reigns  supreme.  The  clay  that 
misses  the  laurel  by  a  hair's  breadth  crumbles 
unheeded  to  dust !  MARY  W.  GLASCOCK. 


DEFRAUDED. 


I  told  you,  friend,  that  the  good  gods  meant 

That  your  path  and  mine  should  be  one,  not  twain; 

You  cheated  us  both  when  their  fair  intent 
By  your  foolish  wisdom  you  made  in  vain. 

Call  it  aright,  and  call  it  a  sin — 

A  sin  that  has  saddened  the  long  years  through; 
You  know  it  now — what  these  years  had  been 

Had  you  only  dared  to  be  truly  true. 

Alas,  alas,  for  the  joys  that  have  flown ! 

Alas,  alas,  for  the  pain  that  endures! 
But  oh,  I  do  not  suffer  alone — 

The  loss  that  is  mine  is  also  yours. 


CARLOTTA  PERRY. 


THE  EARL   OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS    WORK. 


545 


THE   EARL   OF   BEACONSFIELD   AND    HIS   WORK. 


The  death  of  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  K.  G., 
at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-six,  was  the  most 
noteworthy  event  of  the  past  month.  Under 
ordinary  circumstances  the  death  of  an  Eng- 
lish nobleman  would  excite  no  interest  beyond 
his  own  immediate  circle;  but  in  this  case  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  the  century  has 
passed  away.  Let  us  see  who  and  what  this 
man  was  in  his  lifetime,  and  consider  the  part 
he  played  in  the  world's  affairs,  that  we  may 
form  a  just  estimate  of  his  character. 

The  Parliamentary  Companion  has  a  brief 
mention  of  the  deceased  statesman.  Born  in 
1805,  he  sat  continuously  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons from  1837  till  1876,  when  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  and  Vis- 
count Hughenden,  in  the  County  of  Bucks ;  a 
Privy  Councilor ;  Knight  of  the  Garter;  D.C.L, 
of  Oxford,  and  LL.  D.  of  Edinburgh  and  Glas- 
gow; an  Elder  Brother  of  the  Trinity  House; 
was  three  times  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
twice  Prime  Minister,  and  once  (1876)  Lord 
Privy  Seal ;  was  Commissioner  of  Education  for 
Scotland,  and  one  of  the  committee  of  the  Coun- 
cil on  Education ;  also,  Rector  of  the  University 
of  Glasgow,  etc.;  and,  let  us  add,  that  at  the 
time  of  his  death  he  was  leader  of  Her  Majes- 
ty's opposition — in  other  words,  keeper  of  the 
Government  conscience.  How  well  or  how  ill 
he  performed  this  function  latterly,  it  is  not  for 
us  to  say.  His  opportunities  for  pricking  the 
Government  conscience  were  not  numerous 
since  the  accession  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  office; 
but  if  he  had  lived  longer,  we  may  be  sure  he 
would  not  have  allowed  it  to  sleep  on  guard. 

A  mere  recital  of  these  dignities  and  honors 
shows  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  no  ordinary 
man.  To  be  three  times  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer and  twice  Prime  Minister  of  England 
is  a  distinction  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  few  men, 
however  exalted  their  birth  or  distinguished 
their  talents  may  be.  But  when  these  dignities 
and  honors  have  been  fairly  won  and  honora- 
bly worn  by  a  man  who  had  nothing  behind 
him  in  the  battle  of  life  but  his  own  audacious 
talent,  and  who,  moreover,  belonged  to  a  pro- 
scribed race,  the  wonder  becomes  all  the  great- 
er, and  he  rises  superior,  in  all  the  qualities  of 
leadership,  to  contemporary  statesmen,  to  whom 
he  has  been  a  source  of  mingled  admiration  and 
distrust.  Benjamin  Disraeli,  the  Jew  advent- 
urer (for  such  he  was,  although  professing 


Christianity),  had  no  peer  as  a  parliamentary 
leader.  He  was  a  self-made  man,  and  con- 
sciously so.  At  no  time  during  his  long  and 
checkered  career  did  he  fail  to  stand  on  guard. 
He  knew  that  success  was  the  price  of  unflag- 
ging vigilance.  His  own  party  distrusted  him 
while  obeying  his  mandates;  and  more  than 
once  the  existence  of  the  Conservative  party 
was  jeopardized  by  defections  within  the  Minis- 
try, caused  by  antipathy  toward  him  and  dis- 
trust of  his  methods.  But  that  which  would 
have  proved  almost  fatal  to  a  Liberal  statesman 
did  not  appear  to  weaken  him  in  the  least. 
Thus,  when  Lords  Derby  and  Carnarvon  re- 
signed office  in  the  very  crisis  of  the  Eastern 
question,  the  Premier,  Lord  Beaconsfield,  at 
once  presented  a  bolder  front,  and  strengthen- 
ed his  Cabinet  by  appointing  Earl  Derby's 
brother  and  heir  as  Secretary  of  War,  and  giv- 
ing the  seals  of  the  Foreign  Office  to  the  Mar- 
quis of  Salisbury,  who  had  been  his  bitterest 
opponent  within  the  Conservative  party,  and 
the  recognized  rival  of  Lord  Derby.  As  Lord 
Robert  Cecil,  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury  had  per- 
sistently assailed  Mr.  Disraeli  in  the  Quarterly 
Review;  and  at  a  subsequent  period,  when  Lord 
Cranbourne,  he  led  the  bolt  from  Earl  Derby's 
second  administration  on  the  celebrated  "Ten 
Minutes  Reform  Bill,"  in  which  he  was  followed 
by  Earl  Carnarvon  and  General  Peel.  Except- 
ing the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  and  the 
Premier,  these  were  by  far  the  ablest  members 
of  that  Government,  but  their  places  were  filled 
by  men  of  higher  social  position. 

Thus,  the  Ministry  was  strengthened  instead 
of  weakened  by  this  defection,  just  as  in  later 
years  the  resignation  of  the  two  Earls,  Carnar- 
von and  Derby,  already  mentioned,  strengthen- 
ed Lord  Beaconfield's  political  influence,  and 
led  up  to  the  short-lived  but  remarkable  popular 
outburst  known  as  Jingoism.  Personal  changes 
within  the  Cabinet  are  nearly  always  fatal  to 
Liberal  administrations,  as  witness  the  Adul- 
lamite  episode,  and  the  disintegration  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  government  in  1874,  after  he  had 
carried  the  Irish  Church  Disestablishment  Bill 
and  the  Irish  Land  Bill.  The  explanation  is 
found  in  the  totally  different  conditions  under 
which  the  Tory  and  Liberal  governments  of 
England  have  existed  since  the  overthrow  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1846.  The  Liberal  party 
represents  principles,  and  the  Liberal  Govern- 


546 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


ment  is  always  composed  of  men  of  strong  in- 
dividuality and  directness  of  purpose.  Liberal 
statesmen  are  conscientious.  They  feel  that 
they  have  a  mission  to  fulfill,  and  mere  party 
exigencies  are  not  a  featherweight  in  the  scale 
of  their  judgment  when  balanced  against  prin- 
ciple. Hence,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  a 
Liberal  Government  cannot  be  permanent  in 
the  present  transition  stage  of  English  politics. 
Conflicts  of  opinion  will  arise  within  the  Cab- 
inet; cabals  will  be  formed  within  the  party; 
pressure  from  without  will  influence  the  "inde- 
pendent" wing;  and  then,  when  a  crisis  arises, 
instead  of  standing  back  to  back  and  showing 
an  unbroken  front  to  the  enemy,  the  Liberals 
present  the  humiliating  spectacle  of  a  divided 
power,  and  the  field  is  lost. 

The  Tories,  since  the  defeat  of  Peel,  have  be- 
come a  party  of  expediency.  The  Tory  party 
represents  no  principle.  It  has  formulated  no 
plan  of  progress.  It  was  the  creation  of  one 
mind,  and  it  became  the  slave  of  that  superior 
and  subtle  intelligence  which  thought  for  and 
led  it — Benjamin  Disraeli. 

When  the  parliamentary  history  of  the  reign 
of  Queen  Victoria  comes  to  be  written,  we  think 
it  will  be  found  that  this  judgment,  harsh  as  it 
may  seem,  is  correct.  The  landed  gentlemen 
of  England,  dull  of  thought,  averse  to  change, 
and  in  their  innermost  heart  and  soul  despising 
their  leader,  yet  followed  him  blindly  whither- 
soever he  led.  He  was  a  bold  leader,  and  un- 
derstood the  fox-hunting,  wine-drinking,  hard- 
headed,  chivalrous  pack  which  obeyed  the  crack 
of  his  whip.  They  were  educated  in  the  belief 
that  the  legislative  power  was  theirs  of  right, 
and  that  the  trading  classes  were  parliament- 
ary interlopers.  They  felt  instinctively  that 
Benjamin  Disraeli  was  an  aristocrat  at  heart; 
they  knew  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
common  people — that  he  did  not  understand, 
and  that  he  had  no  wish  to  understand  them. 
To  Disraeli,  as  to  them,  the  people  were  useful 
merely  as  pawns  in  the  game  of  government, 
but  not  otherwise  to  be  thought  of  or  mention- 
ed. A  party  so  led  and  disciplined  had  at  least 
cohesive  power.  It  did  not  think  for  itself; 
and  when  one  or  two  of  the  leading  men  be- 
came restive  and  resented  their  contemptuous 
treatment,  they  were  left  without  a  following. 
The  Tories  stood  stanch  by  their  leader,  for 
they  had  the  sense  to  know  that  without  him 
they  would  soon  lose  their  political  influence 
and  be  swept  over  the  rapids  of  radical  inno- 
vation by  the  constantly  swelling  wave  of  pop- 
ular demands.  Hence  it  has  happened  that  the 
Tory  party  in  England,  although  numerically 
far  weaker  than  the  liberal  and  progressive 
element  there,  has  managed  to  hold  its  own, 


and  in  some  respects,  to  be  mentioned  further 
on,  even  surpassed  the  Liberals  in  the  breadth 
and  scope  of  its  legislative  achievements. 

But  the  task  of  the  Tory  chief  was  a  hard 
one.  It  admitted  of  no  rest  from  scheming,  no 
respite  from  intrigue.  It  suited  his  restless  and 
ambitious  spirit.  In  early  life  he  confessed  that 
his  forte  was  sedition.  He  was  cynically  can- 
did. Being  invested  with  the  responsibilities 
of  state,  however,  his  natural  bias  for  sedition 
was  directed  into  another  and  less  dangerous 
channel,  and  he  became  an  adept  in  party  man- 
agement. His  tact  and  vigilance  were  unwea- 
ried, and  he  never  failed  to  offset  the  defection 
of  one  great  noble  by  securing  the  adhesion  of 
another  of  equal  social  influence  and  political 
consideration.  In  this  art  of  management  he 
was  without  a  rival.  It  was  natural  to  him, 
perhaps,  to  judge  men  accurately,  but  the  ne- 
cessities of  his  position  sharpened  his  wits  and 
greatly  emboldened  him.  He  must  act  prompt- 
ly, if  at  all ;  hence  his  social  successes  were  al- 
most invariably  the  foundation  for  his  political 
triumphs. 

Never  did  a  responsible  Minister  of  the  Crown 
in  England  venture  to  dispense  its  honors,  in 
the  sovereign's  name,  with  such  lavish,  and 
withal  so  judicious,  a  hand.  He  enlarged  the 
peerage  by  many  additions.  His  creations  in 
every  case  strengthened  his  hold  upon  the  gov- 
erning families  of  the  kingdom,  and  commend- 
ed themselves  to  the  popular  imagination.  He 
had  a  weakness  for  strawberry  leaves,  and, 
therefore,  did  not  hesitate  to  create  dukes.  No 
one,  for  example,  could  take  exception  to  the 
Marquis  of  Abercorn  being  advanced  to  a  duke- 
dom. As  heir  male  of  the  princely  house  of 
Hamilton,  his  social  position  and  political  serv- 
ices in  Ireland  alike  entitled  him  to  this  dis- 
tinction. Moreover,  he  had  been  badly  treated 
by  the  French  Emperor.  The  Marquis  of  Aber- 
corn had  established  in  the  French  courts  his 
right  to  the  ducal  title  of  Chatelherault,  which 
had  been  in  the  Hamilton  family  for  centuries; 
but  Napoleon  1 1 1.,  by  virtue  of  his  prerogative, 
refused  to  recognize  his  claim,  and  confirmed 
the  title  to  his  own  relative  by  marriage — the 
Duke  of  Hamilton.  Thus,  the  Tory  chief  com- 
pensated the  Marquis  of  Abercorn  for  the  loss 
of  his  French  title  by  an  Irish  one  of  equal 
rank,  and  more  substantial  privileges.  Neither 
could  any  fault  be  found  with  the  revival  of  the 
ducal  title  of  Gordon  in  the  person  of  the  Duke 
of  Richmond,  a  Tory  peer,  who  now  leads  the 
party  in  the  House  of  Lords.  His  dukedoms  of 
Lennox  in  Scotland  and  Daubigny  in  France 
were  sufficient  vouchers  for  his  respectability 
outside  of  his  English  title.  In  truth,  however, 
this  was  an  exercise  of  the  prerogative  which 


THE  EARL    OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS    WORK. 


547 


only  a  political  Bohemian  like  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli would  have  ventured  upon,  because  the 
gright  to  the  ducal  title  of  Gordon  was  stoutly 
contested  by  another  powerful  family,  and  with 
superior  claims  to  those  which  the  Duke  of 
Richmond  could  urge;  but  the  daring  Minister 
settled  this  momentous  social  controversy  by 
rewarding  his  own  political  ally  and  friend,  who 
is  now  encumbered  with  four  ducal  titles  and 
all  the  prestige  thereto  belonging.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  always  rewarded  his  friends;  he  never 
forgave  his  enemies.  In  the  selection  of  men 
for  administrative  appointments  his  nominees 
invariably  turned  out  well,  to  the  surprise  and 
gratification  of  the  country.  He  read  men  and 
their  motives  like  an  open  book,  but  while  prob- 
ing the  secrets  of  others  he  always  wore  a  mask, 
and  no  man  ever  knew  his  secret  thoughts. 

To  go  back,  however,  to  the  beginning,  Ben- 
jamin Disraeli  was  born  in  London,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1805,  of  Jewish  parents.  His  father  was  a 
man  of  culture  and  ability,  and  is  famous  as  the 
author  of  The  Curiosities  of  Literature,  and 
several  other  works  of  a  like  character.  He 
was  also  a  D.  C.  L.  of  Oxford.  The  elder  Dis- 
raeli paid  more  attention  to  his  literary  work 
than  to  his  family,  and  there  was  some  danger 
of  the  subject  of  this  sketch  growing  up  desti- 
tute of  a  polite  education  but  for  the  interven- 
tion of  friends,  among  whom  was  the  poet 
Rodgers,  through  whose  influence  he  was  bap- 
tized, and  became  nominally  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Thenceafter,  Benjamin 
Disraeli  observed  the  forms  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, but  he  never  forgot  his  race  or  its  strik- 
ing vicissitudes,  and  his  speech  in  support  of 
the  Jewish  Disabilities  Bill  in  after  years,  as 
leader  of  the  House  of  Commons,  did  much  to 
insure  the  success  of  that  measure.  He  was 
articled  to  a  city  attorney  at  his  father's  request, 
but  soon  abandoned  the  study  of  law  as  uncon- 
genial to  his  tastes.  His  peculiar  training  and 
straightened  circumstances  sharpened  his  wits, 
and  he  very  early  chalked  out  for  himself  the 
career  to  which  he  adhered  strictly  throughout 
life.  He  resolved  to  make  a  literary  reputation, 
on  the  strength  of  which  he  should  get  into  Par- 
liament; and  once  there,  he  felt  satisfied  that 
he  could  make  his  way.  Fortune  favored  him, 
but  not  until  he  had  compelled  her  to  smile 
upon  him. 

In  his  twenty -third  year  Benjamin  Disraeli 
published  Vivian  Grey,  a  work  of  undoubted 
genius,  in  which  he  sketched  his  own  character 
and  ambition.  This  was  followed  at  intervals 
by  The  Young  Duke,  Henrietta  Temple,  Con- 
tarini  Flemming,  Alroy,  and  other  works  of 
imagination.  He  took  a  higher  flight  than  mere 
fiction.  Disraeli  had  the  ambition  to  be  regard- 


ed as  a  great  dramatist,  and  published  a  trage- 
dy of  which  nobody  now  ever  thinks  or  hears, 
and  A  Revolutionary  Epic  in  1834 — the  latter 
political.  It  was  the  subject  of  criticism  in  the 
House  of  Commons  in  the  Stanfeld-Mazzini  de- 
bate, by  Mr.  Bright,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later,  and  gave  him  very  great  annoyance.  It 
is  full  of  absurd  passages,  and  the  following 
lines  were  alluded  to  by  Bright  as  justifying 
tyrannicide : 

"The  spirit  of  her  strong  career  was  mine; 
And  the  bold  Brutus  but  propelled  the  blow 
Her  own  and  Nature's  laws  alike  approved." 

Disraeli  denied  that  there  was  anything  at 
all  justifying  Bright's  charge,  and  published  a 
revised  edition,  in  which  this  passage  is  very 
materially  changed.  In  fact,  it  is  emasculated. 
The  best  known  of  all  Disraeli's  books  perhaps 
are  his  latest  two  novels — Lothair  and  Endym- 
ion.  His  Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck  and  a 
biography  of  his  father  are  of  no  special  inter- 
est. Suffice  it,  however,  that  the  young  author 
attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention  at  home  and 
abroad  by  his  writings,  and  numbered  among 
his  admiring  correspondents,  Heinrich  Heine 
and  Goethe.  He  was  a  prolific  writer,  but  his 
books  were  not  then  regarded  as  likely  to  hold 
a  permanent  place  in  standard  literature.  So- 
ciety opened  its  arms  to  this  remarkable  young 
man.  His  appearance  was  quite  as  striking  as 
his  manners  were  oddly  eccentric.  He  dressed 
elaborately.  Indeed,  he  was  always  overdress- 
ed in  the  most  showy  fashion,  and  covered  with 
rings  and  chains.  His  hair  hung  in  dark  ring- 
lets over  his  left  brow;  his  face  was  pale  and 
immobile,  save  for  the  fire  and  vivacity  of  his 
piercing  black  eyes.  The  face  was  a  typical 
Jewish  face — not  of  the  handsomest  perhaps, 
but  strong,  resolute,  and  with  clear-cut  features. 
His  conversation  was  bright  and  sparkling,  full 
of  exaggeration  and  the  most  extravagant  as- 
sertion, but  always,  and  at  all  times,  entertain- 
ing. He  was  an  amusing  puzzle  to  some;  to 
others  he  was  a  mystery,  which  time  was  only 
partially  to  unravel.  He  owed  much  to  the 
celebrated  Countess  of  Blessington,  who  intro- 
duced him  to  fashionable  society,  and  was  his 
stanch  friend  during  her  lifetime.  Beckford, 
the  eccentric  author  of  Vathek,  was  also  an  ad- 
mirer of  young  Disraeli,  who  went  abroad  and 
made  a  long  tour  through  Italy,  Greece,  Al- 
bania, Syria,  Nubia,  and  Egypt.  His  impres- 
sions upon  this  tour  colored  all  his  subsequent 
writings. 

The  period  had  now  arrived  when  Disraeli 
thought  he  should  take  part  in  public  affairs. 
England  was  convulsed  by  the  Reform  agita- 
tion. In  1831,  a  vacancy  having  occurred  in 


548 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


the  pocket -borough  of  High  Wycombe,  which 
had  thirty -five  registered  voters,  Disraeli  stood 
for  the  seat  on  ultra -Radical  principles,  but 
was  defeated  by  Colonel  Grey,  son  of  Earl  Grey, 
the  Premier.  Twelve  votes  only  were  cast  for 
the  political  adventurer,  and  the  son  of  the  Re- 
form Premier  took  his  seat.  But  time  brings 
around  its  revenges  to  him  that  can  wait.  In 
1868,  when  the  late  Lord  Derby  resigned,  the 
Queen's  letter  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  commanding 
him  to  form  a  Ministry,  was  brought  to  him  by 
her  equerry,  General  Grey,  who,  thirty -seven 
years  before,  had  defeated  him  in  the  Wy- 
combe election.  Their  respective  positions  had 
changed  somewhat  in  the  interval,  the  odds 
now  being  with  the  literary  adventurer,  who,  on 
being  asked  at  Wycombe  upon  what  he  stood 
for  Parliament,  answered  that  he  stood  upon 
his  head. 

Benjamin  Disraeli,  having  once  made  up  his 
mind  to  do  a  thing,  was  not  easily  baffled.  A 
general  election  having  followed  soon  after  his 
first  defeat,  he  stood  for  Wycombe  a  second 
time,  and  was  again  beaten  by  a  Whig.  This 
exasperated  him,  and  he  never  after  forgave 
the  Whigs.  He  perceived  that  there  was  more 
noise  than  substance  in  the  Radical  party,  and 
resolved  to  abandon  Daniel  O'Connell,  Joseph 
Hume,  and  W.  J.  Fox,  under  whom  he  had 
trained  for  Parliament,  and  secure  more  sub- 
stantial backing.  Accordingly,  he  stood  for 
Marylebone  the  first  opportunity  as  a  Tory, 
and  defended  his  apostasy  from  Liberalism  in 
the  following  audacious  words : 

"A statesman  is  the  creature  of  his  age,  a  child  of 
circumstances,  the  creation  of  his  times.  A  statesman 
is  essentially  a  practical  character,  and  when  he  is 
called  upon  to  take  office  he  is  not  to  inquire  what  his 
opinions  may  have  been  upon  this  or  that  subject ;  he  is 
only  to  ascertain  the  needful,  the  beneficial,  and  the 
most  feasible  manner  in  which  affairs  are  to  be  carried 
on.  I  laugh,  therefore,  at  the  objections  to  a  man  that 
at  a  former  period  of  his  career  he  advocated  a  policy 
different  from  the  present  one." 

This  apostasy  exasperated  O'Connell,  who 
had  done  his  best  to  get  Disraeli  into  Parlia- 
ment, and  in  a  speech  at  Dublin  he  scarified 
the  young  political  renegade.  "Having  been 
twice  defeated  by  the  Radicals,"  he  exclaimed, 
"this  miscreant  was  just  the  fellow  for  the  Con- 
servatives." Then,  after  a  glowing  tribute  to 
the  Hebrew  race,  he  alluded  to  the  apostasy  of 
his  victim,  and  said:  "It  will  not  be  supposed, 
therefore,  that  when  I  speak  of  Disraeli  as  a 
Jew,  I  mean  to  tarnish  him  on  that  account. 
His  life  is  a  living  lie.  The  Jews  were  once 
the  chosen  people  of  God.  There  were  mis- 
creants among  them,  and  it  must  have  been 
from  one  of  these  that  Disraeli  descended.  He 


possesses  all  the  qualities  of  the  impenitent 
thief  who  died  on  the  cross,  and  for  aught  I 
know  the  present  Disraeli  is  his  true  heir- at j 
law."  This  tirade  was  followed  by  a  challenge 
from  Disraeli  addressed  to  O'Connell's  son, 
Morgan,  who  refused  to  accept  it,  and  who  was 
sustained  by  public  opinion.  In  his  letter,  Dis- 
raeli says:  "Words  fail  to  express  the  utter 
scorn  in  which  I  hold  your  father's  character, 
and  the  disgust  with  which  his  conduct  inspires 
me.  I  shall  take  every  opportunity  of  holding 
up  his  name  to  public  contempt,  and  I  fervent- 
ly pray  that  you,  or  some  of  your  blood,  may 
attempt  to  assuage  the  inextinguishable  hatred 
with  which  I  shall  pursue  his  existence." 

The  code  was  then  in  fashion,  and  Disraeli,, 
although  he  never  had  a  hostile  meeting,  al- 
ways expressed  his  readiness  to  fight  if  called 
to  account.  This  was  almost  necessary,  be- 
cause he  was  in  the  habit  of  using  the  most  vi- 
olent and  abusive  language  toward  his  political 
antagonists.  Sir  James  Graham  described  him, 
after  he  had  become  Chancellor  of  the  Excheq- 
uer, as  the  red  Indian  of  debate,  who  had 
scalped  his  way  into  power  with  a  tomahawk, 
and  was  determined  to  retain  power  by  the 
same  means. 

In  1835,  Disraeli  stood  for  Taunton  in  the 
Tqry  interest,  and  was  again  defeated.  On 
the  hustings  he  kept  up  the  quarrel  with  O'Con- 
nell, whom  he  denounced  as  "a  bloody  traitor." 
His  perseverance  was  at  length  rewarded.  In. 
1837  he  was  returned  to  Parliament  for  Maid- 
stone  through  the  influence  of  Wyndham  Lewis, 
whose  money  had  enabled  him  to  contest  three 
elections,  and  whose  widow  he  married  in  1839. 
This  was  the  turning  point  in  his  life.  His 
marriage  brought  him  fortune  and  social  in- 
fluence. It  gave  him  also  the  love  and  solici- 
tude of  a  noble  woman,  older  than  himself  by 
ten  years,  but  entirely  devoted  to  him.  And  to 
his  honor  be  it  said  that  he  returned  her  affec- 
tion. 

The  Queen  having  offered  him  a  peerage  in 
1868,  he  refused  it  for  himself,  but  accepted  it 
for  his  wife,  who  was  created  Viscountess  Bea- 
consfield  in  her  own  right.  Her  death,  some 
years  ago,  was  a  severe  blow  to  him,  besides 
involving  a  large  pecuniary  loss,  as  her  life  in- 
terest in  her  former  husband's  estates  passed  to 
the  Lewis  family. 

In  his  first  session,  in  1837,  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli followed  O'Connell  in  a  debate  in  which 
that  consummate  orator  had  attacked  Sir 
Charles  Burdett  for  deserting  the  Liberal  party. 
The  scene  has  become  historical.  Disraeli's 
exaggerated  style,  his  foppish  attire,  his  theatri- 
cal gestures  and  ludicrous  remarks  excited  the 
House  to  the  most  uproarious  mirth,  and  he 


THE  EARL   OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS    WORK. 


549 


was  rudely  laughed  down.  Before  resuming 
his  seat,  he  turned  to  the  Liberal  party,  and 
exclaimed,  with  passionate  energy  : 

"I  have  begun  several  times  many  things, 
and  I  often  succeed  at  last ;  ay,  sir,  and  though 
I  sit  down  now  the  time  will  come  when  you 
will  hear  me." 

The  prediction  came  true.  He  spoke  often 
and  well  after  this,  but,  somehow,  the  House 
paid  no  heed  to  him.  From  1841  to  1847  he 
sat  for  Shrewsbury;  but  although  a  frequent 
and  aggressive  speaker  he  possessed  no  weight. 

At  the  general  election  in  1847,  he  was  re- 
turned for  the  county  of  Bucks,  for  which  he 
sat  continuously  until  the  night  of  August  n, 
1876,  which  was  his  last  appearance  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  was  upon  that  last 
great  occasion  that  he  outlined  and  defended 
the  "imperial  policy  of  England."  Next  morn- 
ing the  country  was  astounded  by  the  an- 
nouncement that  Mr.  Disraeli  had  been  cre- 
ated Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  and  would  hence- 
forth lead  the  peers  of  England.  He  had  fairly 
won  his  title,  and  no  one  grudged  him  it. 
Only,  men  of  all  shades  of  party  regretted  that 
the  great  name  of  Benjamin  Disraeli,  and  his 
peculiar  reputation,  should  be  lost  under  the 
new  and  unknown  title  of  Earl  of  Beacons- 
field.  But  those  who  thought  so  misjudged 
the  man.  It  was  as  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield 
that  he  won  his  highest  laurels  as  a  statesman 
and  became  a  great  historical  character  in 
Europe. 

Let  us  return  once  more  to  the  thread  of  our 
narrative.  In  1841,  and  for  several  years  aft- 
erward, Disraeli  was  recognized  as  the  leader 
of  the  Young  England  party — a  party  which 
did  no  good  to  any  thing  or  any  cause,  and 
which  had  no  element  of  good  in  it.  In  1846 
Sir  Robert  Peel  introduced  his  famous  Corn 
Law  Bill,  and  it  was  then  Disraeli  saw  the 
great  opportunity  of  his  life  and  boldly  seized 
upon  it.  The  protectionist  policy  had  been 
successful  at  the  polls ;  and  it  was  with  amaze- 
ment and  rage,  therefore,  that  the  Conserva- 
tives (as  Peel  styled  the  Tories)  heard  the 
Premier  announce,  almost  the  first  day  of  the 
session,  that  he  had  adopted  a  free  trade  policy 
and  would  introduce  a  bill  repealing  the  corn 
law.  They  were  speechless ;  but  one  man  was 
neither  speechless  nor  amazed,  and  that  man 
was  Benjamin  Disraeli.  He  arose  and  assailed 
Peel  in  tones  of  such  bitter  invective  as  had 
never  before  been  heard  in  the  House.  It  was 
a  remarkable  speech  on  a  remarkable  occasion, 
and  it  was  the  making  of  the  despised  political 
adventurer.  Suddenly,  without  their  sec  .dng, 
a  man  arose  to  lead  the  squirearchy  of  Eiv  land, 
and  they  rallied  around  him  with  the  bspira- 
VOL.  ill.— 35. 


tion  of  hope  that  in  this  political  Arab  they 
had  found  their  Moses.  And  they  really  had 
done  so,  though  they  were  slow  to  believe  the 
fact,  despite  their  loyalty  to  him.  "The  coun- 
try party"  was  the  political  issue  of  that  speech; 
and  before  the  session  closed,  Disraeli  gave 
the  Tories  their  revenge  by  combining  with 
the  Irish  members  to  defeat  the  Coercion  Bill. 
The  very  day  which  saw  the  Corn  Law  Bill 
pass  the  House  of  Lords,  witnessed  Peel's  de- 
feat and  final  downfall  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. That  great  statesman  fell  in  the  very 
hour  of  triumph,  to  rise  no  more.  He  soon 
afterward  died  from  the  effects  of  a  fall  from 
his  horse.  But  Disraeli's  time  had  not  yet  fully 
come.  The  coalition  which  turned  out  Peel 
could  not  hold  together.  The  Whigs  came 
into  office  and  remained  in  power  until  1852, 
when  Earl  Derby's  first  and  short-lived  admin- 
istration was  formed,  of  which  Disraeli  was 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and  leader  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  He  had  succeeded  to  the 
leadership  of  the  country  party  on  the  death 
of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  who  died  suddenly,  it 
was  supposed  from  poison  administerd  by  Pal- 
mer, a  country  physician  and  sporting  man, 
who  owed  Lord  George  money  on  bets,  and 
who,  soon  afterward,  poisoned  one  Cooke,  to 
get  rid  of  a  similar  obligation,  for  which  crime 
he  was  tried  and  hanged.  But,  in  truth,  Dis- 
raeli was  the  brains  of  the  country  party ;  al- 
though it  suited  him  to  make  a  son  of  the  Duke 
of  Portland  the  figurehead.  As  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer,  Disraeli's  first  duty  was  to  re- 
nounce the  heresy  of  protection,  for  abandon- 
ing which  he  had  denounced  Peel  so  terribly. 
Facts  and  figures  were  not  to  be  controverted, 
however.  Sophistry  and  assertion  could  not 
get  rid  of  them.  Yet  strange  as  it  may  seem, 
the  squirearchy  followed  him  like  lambs.  The 
short  session,  in  which  Earl  Derby  found  him- 
self in  office  very  much  against  his  will,  passed 
off  without  any  serious  incident,  and  a  good 
deal  of  useful  work  was  done.  Next  session, 
when  Disraeli,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
introduced  a  financial  scheme,  he  was  replied 
to  on  the  spot  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  despite  the 
very  advanced  hour  of  the  night  when  he  closed 
his  budget.  This  impromptu  speech  by  Glad- 
stone crushed  the  Chancellor,  who,  truth  to 
say,  never  professed  to  understand  finance. 
The  House  and  country  recognized  the  inher- 
ent worthlessness  of  Disraeli's  scheme,  and 
the  Government  went  out  of  office.  This  was 
the  first  round  in  the  long  and  fiercely  fought 
battle  between  Disraeli  and  Gladstone;  and, 
by  a  singular  chance — say,  rather,  by  a  won- 
derful dispensation  of  Providence — Gladstone 
was  the  victor  first  and  last.  Thus  Peel  and 


55° 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


his  principles  were  vindicated  by  his  great  pu- 
pil, and  the  Tories  were  thrust  once  more  into 
the  background. 

Owing  to  the  political  vicissitudes  of  the 
times,  Lord  Derby  again  took  office  in  1858, 
with  Disraeli  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
and  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He 
had  made  the  place  for  himself  in  his  party, 
and  he  insisted  upon  filling  it.  Reform  was 
then  the  paramount  question,  and  Disraeli  in- 
troduced a  comprehensive  bill  dealing  with  the 
subject,  providing  all  kinds  of  fancy  suffrage. 
This  was  too  absurd  for  the  common  sense 
Commons  of  England,  and  the  Tories  went  out 
in  1859  on  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence.  The 
Palmerston- Russell  Government  succeeded  to 
power,  and  remained  in  office  till  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  death  in  October,  1865,  when  the  Rus- 
sell-Gladstone Government  was  formed ;  but  in 

1866  it  was  defeated  on  a  no-confidence  motion. 
For  the  third  time  Lord  Derby  took  office,  with 
Disraeli  as  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

The  Russell -Gladstone  Government  having 
been  ousted  for  the  insufficiency  of  its  Reform 
Bill,  Disraeli  felt  that  the  Tories  must  do  some- 
thing to  settle  it ;  and  it  was  during  this  con- 
juncture they  took  the  celebrated  "leap  in  the 
dark,"  which  was  to  do  them  so  much  political 
service  subsequently.  Disraeli  claimed  after- 
ward to  have  "educated  his  party  up  to  it;" 
but,  in  truth,  their  education  was  undertaken 
by  the  Liberal  party  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  it  was  completed  by  promptly  abandoning 
their  own  measures  and  adopting  those  of  the 
opposition.  The  history  of  the  Reform  Bill  of 

1867  is  one  of  the  most  amusing  and  instructive 
incidents  in  the  course  of  English  Parliament- 
ary Government,  and  was  a  triumph  of  liberal 
principles  brought  about  by  the  most  unlooked 
for  and  unnatural  of  political  conjunctions.   But 
the  point  of  the  incident,  for  the  purpose  of  this 
review,  was  the  masterly  and  unscrupulous  way 
in  which  Disraeli  adapted  himself  to  the  will  of 
the  majority,  changing  front  almost  daily,  and 
dragging  his  party  with  him  from  pillar  to  post 
of  inconsistency.     His  motive  was  a  personal 
one.     He  wanted  to  be  the  Minister  which  had 
settled  the  Reform  question — not  because  he 
favored  an  extension  of  the  suffrage  (for  he  did 
not),  but  because  that  by  so  doing  he  would 
strengthen  his  hold  upon  the  English  people 
and  increase  his  popularity.     He  felt  secure  of 
his  followers.     He  knew  the  Tories  could  not 
afford  to  desert  him,  and,  therefore,  when  he 
boldly  conceded  the  demands  of  "The  Tea- 
Room  Party,"  which  went  far  beyond  anything 
Gladstone  or  Bright  proposed,  or  even  consid- 
ered politic,  he  conciliated  the  ultra -Radicals, 
and  compelled  the  Liberal  leaders  to  sustain 


him  also  on  pain  of  political  extinction.  The 
Tories  took  the  leap  in  the  dark  after  their 
leader,  and  the  Liberals  helped  to  make  the 
Reform  Bill  a  really  valuable  and  progressive 
measure.  It  is  in  this  way  the  Tories  claim  to 
be  more  Liberal  than  the  Liberal  party,  and 
the  workingmen  of  England  at  a  general  elec- 
tion ratified  this  claim  by  their  votes.  But  the 
fact  remains  that  the  resolutions  and  two  re- 
form bills  introduced  by  Disraeli  during  that 
session  were  the  veriest  shams  every  attempted 
to  be  palmed  upon  a  legislative  body. 

Lord  Derby  resigned  in  February,  1868,  ow- 
ing to  failing  health,  and  the  Queen  sent  for 
Mr.  Disraeli.  This  was  the  supreme  moment  in 
his  long  and  successful  career.  The  wild  dream 
of  his  boyhood  was  now  to  be  realized.  The 
prize  for  which  he  schemed  and  toiled  as  a 
man,  and  which,  but  for  his  inspirational  attack 
on  Sir  Robert  Peel,  never  would  have  fallen  to 
his  lot,  was  now  within  his  grasp.  Benjamin 
Disraeli,  "the  Jew  adventurer,"  "the  political 
juggler,"  and  a  score  of  other  equally  opprobri- 
ous, and  perhaps  equally  truthful,  characteriza- 
tions, was  now  the  foremost  man  in  England, 
possessing  the  confidence  of  his  sovereign,  and 
receiving  her  command  to  form  a  government. 
When  a  foppish,  flippant,  vanity-smitten  youth, 
Disraeli  was  introduced  to  Lord  Melbourne,  the 
most  genial  of  men,  and  a  model  Premier.  That 
nobleman  inquired,  with  amused  curiosity,  what 
the  young  man  meant  to  become  should  he  ever 
get  into  Parliament.  "I  mean  to  be  Prime 
Minister,"  was  the  prompt  reply.  As  likely, 
perhaps,  at  the  time,  as  to  become  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  who  is  in  matters  ecclesiastical 
the  English  Pope.  And  here  he  was  about  to 
become  not  only  Premier,  but  one  of  the  great- 
est Ministers  England  ever  produced — a  Minis- 
ter whose  achievements,  for  good  or  for  ill,  far 
eclipse  those  of  Lord  Melbourne,  and  who  will 
be  remembered,  and  spoken  of,  and  quoted, 
when  the  memory  of  that  Minister  will  have 
been  utterly  forgotten. 

To  the  surprise  of  the  great  Tory  nobles, 
Earl  Derby  recommended  the  Queen  to  intrust 
the  formation  of  a  government  to  his  intriguing 
and  capable  lieutenant.  His  own  son,  Lord 
Stanley,  the  present  Earl  of  Derby,  was  then  a 
Secretary  of  State,  and  would  have  been  ac- 
ceptable to  the  country.  The  young  and  able 
Foreign  Minister  was  thought  to  be  the  polit- 
ical heir -general  of  the  Tory  party.  But  Lord 
Derby  knew  far  better.  He  knew  that  the 
Tory  party  was  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  that  without 
him  it  would  cease  to  be  any  party  at  all.  So 
Mr.  Disraeli  was  sent  for,  and  Mr.  Disraeli 
obeyed  Her  Majesty's  command  and  formed  a 
government.  His  task  was  not  an  easy  one, 


THE  EARL    OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS    WORK. 


55' 


because  he  must  make  changes  within  his  own 
party.  In  other  words,  he  was  compelled  to 
dispense  with  some  of  his  colleagues  and  take 
in  new  men. 

The  Tories  were  weakest  in  debating  power- 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  although  numerically 
the  strongest.  Above  all,  they  were  weakest 
in  their  Lord  Chancellor.  The  new  Premier, 
therefore,  intimated  to  Lord  Chelmsford,  an  old 
and  comparatively  useless  man,  that  he  must 
step  down  from  the  woolsack  to  give  place  to 
Lord  Cairns — an  Irishman  in  the  prime  of  life, 
who  had  forced  his  way  to  the  front  rank  as  a 
parliamentary  debater  and  lawyer  without  any 
adventitious  aids  from  fortune.  He  was  at  the 
time  quietly  shelved  as  Lord  Justice  of  Appeal, 
and,  being  a  personal  friend  of  Disraeli,  he 
made  no  scruple  about  accepting  the  great  seal. 
And  here  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  relate  an 
incident  in  Lord  Cairns's  early  career.  He  was 
one  of  the  members  for  Belfast,  and  had  intro- 
duced a  motion  in  favor  of  law  reform.  As  a 
junior  member  of  the  Chancery  Bar,  Hugh 
McCalmont  Cairns  was  known  in  the  profession 
as  one  of  the  most  thorough  equity  lawyers  in 
the  kingdom ;  but  until  he  made  the  speech  in 
question,  he  did  not  give  promise  of  such  mark- 
ed parliamentary  ability,  rising  to  statesman- 
ship. The  venerable  Lord  Brougham  occupied 
a  seat  in  the  Lords'  gallery,  and  listened  at- 
tentively to  Mr.  Cairns's  exposition  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  law  reform.  Brougham  turned  to  an- 
other law-lord,  who  sat  beside  him,  and  said, 
"The  man  who  delivered  that  speech  will  be 
the  youngest  Lord  Chancellor  that  ever  sat  on 
the  woolsack" — a  prediction  which  was  about 
to  be  verified.  Lord  Chelmsford's  friends  were 
indignant,  but  they  could  not  venture  to  set 
him  in  competition  with  the  brilliant  young 
Irishman.  In  due  time  Lord  Cairns  became 
an  Earl,  and  Lord  Chelmsford's  son,  who  in- 
herited his  title,  commanded  the  British  troops 
in  the  disastrous  Zulu  war,  and  only  saved  his 
honor  by  the  very  hazardous  experiment  of 
risking  everything  in  a  pitched  battle  just  be- 
fore Sir  Garnet  Wolseley  arrived  in  camp  to 
take  the  command.  While  on  the  subject  of 
Lord  Cairns's  accession  to  the  woolsack,  an- 
other anecdote  occurs  to  us  at  the  moment, 
which  was  an  open  secret  in  Ulster  about  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago.  The  young  lawyer 
was  an  aspirant  to  the  hand  of  Miss  McNeil,  an 
Antrim  heiress  of  ancient  lineage,  who  steadily 
refused  to  become  his  wife  until  he  could  give 
her  a  title.  This  was  the  only  thing  which 
could  reconcile  the  proud  daughter  of  John  Mc- 
Neil to  marry  the  son  of  a  Belfast  tradesman. 
Spurred  on  by  love,  the  young  lawyer  sought 
entrance  into  Parliament  and  became  Solicitor 


General  in  Lord  Derby's  first  administration, 
an  office  which  carries  with  it  knighthood  from 
the  hand  of  the  sovereign,  and  the  haughty 
Irish  beauty  soon  after  became  Lady  Cairns, 
and  is  now  a  countess. 

Disraeli  led  the  House  of  Commons  as  Prime 
Minister,  and  during  the  remainder  of  the  ses- 
sion he  achieved  some  successes.  But  the 
Nemesis  of  party  stalked  behind  him,  and 
Gladstone  threw  him  into  a  minority  on  the 
Irish  Church  Disestablishment  Resolutions. 
This  was  a  thrust  at  Disraeli's  vital  part.  He 
was  a  champion  of  Church  and  State  if  he  was 
anything,  and  he  had  always  regarded  the  Irish 
Church  as  an  appenage  of  the  English  Church 
Establishment.  Anyhow,  it  was  a  field  in  which 
political  services  could  be  indirectly  rewarded 
by  the  Crown ;  and  therefore  this  rude  assault 
by  "Church -and -State  Gladstone,"  who  had 
turned  iconoclast,  upon  church  patronage,  was 
one  to  be  resisted  to  the  last  moment.  Al- 
though in  a  minority  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  Disraeli  declared 
that  he  would  not  resign  without  an  appeal  to 
the  country.  He  fancied  that  the  heart  of  the 
people  was  sound  on  the  Church  question ;  but 
the  elections  soon  showed  him  that  a  Liberal 
reaction  had  set  in.  Without  waiting  for  Par- 
liament to  reassemble  he  resigned,  and  his 
successful  rival  took  office  as  Premier  in  1868. 
Gladstone  carried  his  Irish  Church  Disestab- 
lishment Bill;  he  also  carried  an  Irish  land  bill, 
which  is  the  basis  of  the  Land  Bill  of  1881; 
but  he  fell  a  victim  to  sectarianism  on  the  Irish 
University  question.  The  Tories  coalesced  with 
the  Home  Rulers  and  the  Irish  party  gen- 
erally, and  Gladstone,  who  appealed  to  the 
country,  was  defeated  at  the  general  election 
of  1874.  The  borough  and  county  franchise, 
which  Disraeli  claimed  to  have  created,  and 
which  then  for  the  first  time  came  into  general 
operation,  proved  the  salvation  of  the  Tory  par- 
ty. The  workingmen  in  the  boroughs  voted 
for  Tory  candidates.  The  clergy  worked  like 
Trojans  to  avenge  themselves  on  Gladstone; 
and  the  beer-sellers,  and  the  brewers,  and  the 
malsters,  who  had  been  antagonized  by  the  Lib- 
eral Government,  joined  hands  with  the  par- 
sons and  overthrew  it.  The  Tory  reaction  had 
set  in  once  more.  The  two  spiritual  powers — 
Rum  and  Religion — had  carried  the  day;  and 
the  work  of  legislative  reform  in  England  re- 
ceived a  set-back  from  which  it  will  not  recover 
for  many  years.  Gladstone  resigned  office,  and 
he  also  threw  up  the  lead  of  the  Liberal  party 
in  disgust.  Disraeli  was  once  more  in  power, 
and  stronger  than  ever.  He  retained  office  un- 
til 1880,  when,  his  majority  having  begun  to 
slip  away  from  him,  he  appealed  to  the  coun- 


552 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


try,  to  realize  in  his  own  case  the  fickleness  of 
the  constituencies.  The  majority  was  over- 
whelmingly against  him.  He  was  beaten  worse 
than  Gladstone  had  been,  and  beaten  by  the 
indomitable  will  and  splendid  talents  of  that 
great  English  statesman.  It  was  Mr.  Glad- 
stone single-handed,  and  not  the  Liberal  party 
leaders,  that  turned  the  tide  of  popular  opinion 
against  the  popular  idol ;  and  it  was  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, to  Disraeli's  great  chagrin,  and  contrary 
to  the  wish  of  the  Queen,  who  succeeded  him. 
Thus  the  open  political  account  was  balanced 
between  these  two  great  but  dissimilar  men. 

In  1870,  while  out  of  office,  Disraeli  publish- 
ed the  politico-religious  novel,  Lothair.  Eighty 
thousand  copies  of  this  book  were  sold  in  Amer- 
ica. It  served  a  threefold  purpose.  It  revived 
his  literary  reputation,  kept  his  name  in  a  phe- 
nomenal way  before  the  public,  and  furnished 
him  with  money,  of  which  he  then  stood  greatly 
in  need.  In  1876,  as  already  stated,  Benjamin 
Disreali  was  created  Earl  of  Beaconsfield.  He 
was  then  in  the  zenith  of  his  power  and  fame, 
and  no  one  could  have  anticipated  his  sudden 
fall.  But  there  were  causes,  unseen  though 
potent,  at  work  which  sufficiently  account  for 
it.  The  Tories  had  utterly  neglected  social 
questions.  They  had  allowed  the  Irish  ques- 
tion to  develop  proportions  menacing  to  the 
monarchy,  through  the  combined  influence  of 
famine  and  rack-rents.  They  had  done  noth- 
ing to  mitigate  the  agricultural  depression  in 
England  and  Scotland  consequent  upon  a  suc- 
cession of  bad  crops  and  American  compe- 
tition. They  had,  on  the  contrary,  kept  the 
public  mind  occupied  and  the  popular  imagi- 
nation dazzled  by  a  succession  of  foreign  sur- 
prises. But  the  time  had  now  fully  come  when 
the  country,  wearied  with  a  sensational  foreign 
policy,  involving  heavy  expenditures  and  wars 
without  glory,  insisted  upon  a  return  to  sober 
domestic  legislation,  and,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
Disraeli's  power  and  popularity  disappeared  like 
a  morning  cloud  in  the  fierce  rays  of  the  sun. 

The  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  as  has  been  al- 
ready shown,  was  a  great  party  leader — the 
greatest,  perhaps,  of  any  since  Chatham's  time. 
He  understood  Parliament ;  he  understood  the 
aristocracy ;  and  he  used  this  knowledge  skillful- 
ly to  his  own  personal  advantage.  He  was  also 
a  great  Minister.  This  character  contemporary 
history  concedes  to  him,  and  the  judgment  of 
posterity  will  justify  it.  But  his  methods  were 
not  English  methods.  His  genius  was  purely 
Semitic,  and  herein  lay  the  secret  of  his  great 
success.  He  took  risks  which  no  other  English 
constitutional  Minister  would  ever  think  of  tak- 
ing, and  fortune,  which  is  so  often  propitious 
to  the  daring,  was  very  kind  to  him.  It  was 


so  in  his  case,  when  he  had  all  to  gain  and 
nothing  to  lose.  He  was  a  "lucky  man,"  but 
he  made  his  own  good  luck.  His  name  thus 
comes  to  be  identified  with  the  most  successful 
administrative  speculations  of  modern  times. 
Disraeli  was  the  Minister  who  purchased  the 
telegraph  system  of  the  United  Kingdom  and 
consolidated  it  with  the  Postoffice  Department. 
This  was  a  bold  speculative  operation,  which 
the  result  fully  justified ;  but  it  is  of  far  more 
importance  politically,  as  giving  the  Govern- 
ment, in  certain  contingencies,  the  control  of 
all  avenues  of  information,  and  preventing  the 
creation  of  a  dangerous  monopoly.  Benjamin 
Disraeli  was  the  great  telegraph  consolidator. 
Jay  Gould  simply  works  upon  the  lines  laid 
down  by  the  British  Minister  as  a  measure  of 
public  policy,  and  usurps  a  power  which  should 
alone  be  exercised  by  responsible  executive  au- 
thority. More  audacious,  and  yet  more  specu- 
lative, was  the  purchase  by  Disraeli,  on  behalf 
of  the  British  Government,  of  the  Khedive's  in- 
terest in  the  Suez  Canal,  calling  for  the  pay- 
ment of  ^4,000,000  sterling,  or  twenty  million 
dollars.  There  was  no  precedent  for  such  an 
act,  no  warrant  or  authority  for  pledging  the 
credit  of  the  State  for  such  a  purpose ;  yet  Dis- 
raeli quietly  arranged  for  payment  through  the 
Rothschilds,  and  trusted  to  Parliament  to  ap- 
propriate the  money.  This  purchase  was  com- 
pleted on  the  25th  of  November,  1875,  and  in- 
stead of  impeachment,  to  which  the  Minister 
was  liable,  he  was  lauded  to  the  skies.  It  gave 
England  control  of  the  short  route  to  India, 
and  made  her  mistress  of  the  situation  in  the 
East.  Steadily  Disraeli's  sun  kept  rising  in  the 
European  firmament,  and  as  steadily  his  am- 
bition kept  mounting.  The  climax  was  reached 
when  Parliament  was  informed,  upon  its  assem- 
bling in  1876,  that  the  title  "Empress  of  India" 
had  been  added  to  the  royal  style  of  the  Queen. 
This  was  the  enunciation  of  "  the  imperial  pol- 
icy," which  has  been  fruitful  of  so  much  trouble 
already,  and  which  will  cause  England  infinitely 
more  trouble  in  the  hereafter.  There  are  con- 
stitutional reasons  for  this,  but  they  need  not  be 
discussed  in  this  place.  The  Prince  of  Wales 
had  been  sent  to  India  to  impress  upon  the  na- 
tive princes  and  sovereigns  the  personality  of 
that  power  which  held  them  in  its  iron  grip,  but 
which  had  hitherto  been  a  mere  abstraction  to 
them.  They  saw  and  did  homage  to  their  fut- 
ure Emperor,  and  thenceforward  must  asso- 
ciate the  man  with  the  sovereign  authority. 
This  was  Disraeli's  conception.  It  was  nat- 
ural to  a  man  of  his  race,  but  it  would  not  have 
occurred  to  a  purely  English  statesman,  whose 
constitutional  instincts  and  training  would  have 
impelled  him  to  avoid  artifice  in  government. 


THE  EARL   OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS  WORK. 


553 


It  was  a  mere  trick,  but  it  was  a  very  success- 
ful one.  It  was  not  approved  generally  in  Eng- 
land, because  personal  government  is  distaste- 
ful to  Anglo-Saxon  sentiment,  while  it  is  of  the 
essence  of  Semitic  thought,  which  is  formulat- 
ed in  the  ancient  demand:  "Give  us  a  king  to 
rule  over  us."  As  a  step  in  the  imperial  pol- 
icy, however,  the  visit  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  to 
India  was  a  very  important  one.  It  was  lead- 
ing up  straight  to  what  was  soon  to  follow — the 
proclamation  of  the  Indian  Empire. 

Benjamin  Disraeli,  the  political  and  literary 
waif,  had  done  many  surprising  things.  He 
had  conferred  titles  and  honors  with  a  lavish 
hand;  but  what  were  these  social  distinctions 
compared  with  encircling  the  brow  of  his  sov- 
ereign mistress  with  the  diadem  of  empire? 
Peerages,  ribbons,  and  stars  sink  into  insignif- 
icance when  compared  with  this  august  crea- 
tion. To  create  a  ducal  title,  which  conferred 
limited  social  prestige,  was  a  very  little  thing 
in  comparison  to  charging  the  sovereign  style 
of  a  constitutional  kingdom  with  the  addition  of 
"Empress,"  which  carried  with  it  a  precedence 
above  kings  and  the  idea  of  absolutism.  This 
was  his  work.  In  the  whirl  of  active  life,  its 
audacity  and  grandeur  have  been  overlooked, 
but  in  time  to  come  it  will  certainly  be  regard- 
ed as  the  greatest  achievement  of  his  life,  and 
in  many  respects,  also,  of  the  century.  The 
possibilities  of  what  it  involves  were  only  slight- 
ly disclosed  to  Europe  during  the  later  phases 
of  the  Eastern  question,  when  the  Queen  of 
England,  as  Empress  of  India,  brought  her  In- 
dian troops  to  the  Mediterranean,  outside  the 
charter  limits,  without  the  consent  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  when  it  was  argued  by  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Cairns  that  as  Queen,  by  virtue  of  her 
prerogative,  she  might  quarter  them  in  Scot- 
land and  Ireland,  because  they  had  independ- 
ent legislatures  when  the  Bill  of  Rights  was 
enacted,  and  were  not  parties  to  it.  In  other 
words,  that  the  following  provision  of  the  Bill 
of  Rights — "that  the  raising  or  keeping  a  stand- 
ing army  within  the  kingdom  in  time  of  peace, 
unless  it  be  with  the  consent  of  Parliament,  is 
against  law" — applies  only  to  the  ancient  realm 
of  England,  and  not  to  the  United  Kingdom  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  or  to  any  colonial 
dependency  thereof.  It  was  made  the  subject 
of  a  very  dignified  protest  by  the  Russian  rep- 
resentatives at  the  Berlin  Congress,  and  was 
bitterly  resented  by  the  Liberals  in  Parliament. 
But  the  presence  of  the  Indian  battalions  at 
Malta,  outside  the  charter  limits  of  India,  in  a 
time  of  peace,  and  without  the  knowledge  or 
consent  of  Parliament,  proved  that  the  title, 
"Empress  of  India,"  was  not  an  empty  one. 
The  British  people  disliked  the  imperial  style ; 


Queen  Victoria  liked  it  exceedingly,  and  she  re- 
warded her  Minister  with  an  earldom,  and  ex- 
tended to  him  a  measure  of  personal  confidence 
greater  than  had  ever  before  been  enjoyed  by 
any  of  her  constitutional  advisers. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  in  detail  the  de- 
velopment of  this  imperial  policy.  In  South 
Africa  it  was  enforced  by  the  annexation  of  Ba- 
sutoland  and  Transvaal,  involving  three  costly, 
bloody,  and  humiliating  wars — the  Zulu  war,  in 
which  the  Prince  Imperial  was  killed ;  the  war 
in  Basutoland,  still  in  progress ;  and  the  Trans- 
vaal war.  Previous  to  this,  Abyssinia  had  been 
invaded  and  its  ruler  killed,  at  the  cost  of  many 
millions  of  treasure;  and  the  savage  king  of 
Ashantee  was  driven  out  of  his  capital  by  Brit- 
ish bayonets.  These  wars  were  the  outgrowth 
of  the  imperial  idea,  which  had,  through  Dis- 
raeli, permeated  the  Tory  ranks.  British  blood 
in  purple  streams  enriched  the  soil  of  the  Dark 
Continent  in  warfare  which  was  destitute  of  all 
possibilities  of  honor,  and  which  was  unjust  in 
the  extreme.  What  matter?  It  was  in  pursu- 
ance of  a  policy  which  placed  the  imperial 
crown  of  India  upon  the  brow  of  Queen  Victo- 
ria. But  imperialism  was  not  safe  in  India 
without  "a  scientific  frontier,"  and  accordingly 
a  quarrel  was  fixed  upon  the  British  pensioner, 
Sheer  Ali,  Ameer  of  Afghanistan,  who  was  driv- 
en direct  into  Russia's  arms.  India  invaded 
Afghanistan,  and  here,  too,  British  blood  was 
poured  out  like  water  in  a  doubtful,  and  as  it 
proved,  a  losing  and  useless  cause.  A  scien- 
tific frontier  was  fixed  by  the  treaty  of  Gunda- 
muk,  but  all  that  remains  of  it  now  is  the  mem- 
ory of  the  Cabul  massacre,  the  annihilation  of 
General  Burrows's  command  by  Ayoob  Khan, 
the  brilliant  achievements  of  General  Roberts, 
and  a  dangerous  state  prisoner  in  the  person 
of  Yakoob  Khan,  the  puppet  sovereign  set  up 
by  the  Indian  Government  by  direction  of  Dis- 
raeli. 

The  Eastern  question  was  seized  upon  by 
Disraeli  as  an  occasion  for  testing  the  imperial 
policy  in  European  affairs.  He  boldly  swung 
England  into  the  front  rank  of  European  pow- 
ers in  opposition  to  Russia,  which  was  pressing 
hard  upon  Turkey,  and  abandoned  the  policy 
of  non-intervention,  which  had  been  accepted 
by  several  administrations  as  the  wisest  one  for 
an  insular  power.  That  non-intervention  had 
sometimes  been  carried  to  an  extreme,  to  the 
prejudice  of  national  honor,  is  undoubted;  but 
Disraeli  displayed  a  spirit  of  recklessness,  on 
the  other  hand,  which  might  have  involved  the 
country  in  great  disasters.  It  was  his  imperi- 
alism, however,  which  was  at  the  root  of  all. 
During  that  great  controversy  of  the  nations, 
whatever  men  may  think  of  the  wisdom  of  his 


554 


THE   CALIFORNIAN. 


policy,  thus  much  must  be  admitted,  that  in 
no  single  particular  did  he  lose  sight  of  the 
grandeur  and  dignity  of  England.  The  en- 
trance of  the  Dardanelles  by  the  British  fleet 
was  an  act  of  war,  although  it  was  convenient 
for  Russia  not  to  so  regard  it,  and  it  saved 
Constantinople  when  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas 
was  prepared  to  enter  it.  This  closed  the  Rus- 
so-Turkish  war.  Fighting  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion then,  unless  Russia  was  prepared  to  fight 
England,  and  the  ironclads  were  at  the  Gold- 
en Horn,  and  the  trained  battalions  of  India 
were  at  Malta,  and  would  soon  be  in  Armenia 
and  Turkey.  Moreover,  the  British  mob  had 
become  intoxicated  with  imperialism,  and  the 
Jingo  furor  was  the  infallible  symptom  of  it. 
To  fight  England,  thus  aroused  and  prepared, 
after  a  severe  struggle  with  Turkey,  was  impos- 
sible. Russia  knew  this.  The  Czar  tore  up  the 
treaty  of  San  Stefano  at  the  dictation  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  and  consented  to  submit  the  set- 
tlement to  a  congress  of  the  great  powers.  Not 
thus  did  Germany  when  it  crushed  the  French 
Empire ;  not  thus  did  Prussia  when  it  trampled 
on  the  gallant  Dane ;  not  thus  France  when  its 
Emperor  dictated  terms  to  Austria  at  Solferino; 
but  on  those  occasions  England  stood  aloof. 
It  was  out  of  the  European  circle,  and  the  con- 
querors did  as  they  pleased.  England  now 
threw  its  sword  into  the  scale,  and  Russia  lis- 
tened to  reason.  Nay,  it  consented  to  humil- 
iating terms  for  the  sake  of  peace. 

Although  Bismarck  convened  the  Berlin  Con- 
gress, Lord  Beaconsfield  was  its  real  author, 
and  he  adopted  the  unusual  course  of  going 
himself  in  person  as  chief  representative  of 
England,  accompanied  by  the  Marquis  of  Sal- 
isbury as  second  commissioner.  Never  before 
had  a  British  Premier  left  the  realm  on  such  a 
mission  while  Parliament  was  in  session;  but 
this  man  did  not  stop  at  anything  which  would 
increase  his  personal  influence  and  importance, 
and  add  to  the  luster  of  his  administration. 
He  had  passed  the  stage  of  adventure ;  his  po- 
sition and  status  were  now  fixed.  He  was  a 
peer  of  Parliament,  an  English  Earl,  and  the 
Premier  of  a  powerful  nation.  His  ambition, 
therefore,  took  a  wider  scope  than  formerly. 
His  political  reputation  had  been  exclusively 
British.  He  had  now  an  opportunity  of  making 
a  name  for  himself  as  a  diplomatist  in  the  field 
of  European  politics.  The  occasion  was  one 
of  empire.  The  issues  involved  the  weightiest 
questions  of  sovereignty  and  administration. 
It  was  no  paltry  matter  the  Berlin  Congress  had 
to  decide,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  resolved  that 
it  should  be  decided  as  he  had  predetermined. 

No  man  in  that  distinguished  assemblage 
filled  the  public  eye  so  completely  as  the  Earl 


of  Beaconsfield.  The  world  instinctively  felt 
that  he  was  master  of  the  situation,  while  Bis- 
marck, the  great  state  artificer  of  Germany, 
was  playing  for  time.  His  first  act  was  charac- 
teristic. He  declared  at  the  outset  that  the  de- 
liberations should  be  in  English.  This  point 
was  conceded.  Very  soon  it  became  apparent 
that  combinations  were  formed  to  baffle  him, 
but  his  subtle  intellect  had  anticipated  this,  and 
he  tore  the  diplomatic  web  into  a  thousand 
pieces.  Never  was  surprise  so  complete,  never 
indignation  more  intense,  than  when  Lord  Sal- 
isbury announced  that  England  had  made  a 
convention  with  Turkey  by  which  she  obtained 
Cyprus,  together  with  the  protectorate  of  Asia 
Minor  in  certain  contingencies.  Here  was  a 
new  and  unlocked  for  complication — one  of 
those  things  which  could  not  be  foreseen,  and, 
therefore,  could  not  be  guarded  against.  The 
only  thing  to  be  done  was  to  get  through  the 
business  on  hand,  and  obtain  as  large  conces- 
sions as  this  arbiter  of  the  destinies  of  Europe 
chose  to  make.  This  plan  succeeded,  and  the 
British  plenipotentiaries  made  greater  conces- 
sions to  Russia,  on  the  Roumanian  boundary 
question,  and  to  Austria,  than  was  consistent 
with  sound  policy  or  judgment.  But  Beacons- 
field  and  his  distinguished  colleague  could  af- 
ford to  be  generous  with  other  people's  terri- 
tory, so  it  fell  out  that  the  seed  was  planted  for 
another  European  war,  when  events  are  ripe 
for  it. 

There  were  other  reasons  why  Lord  Beacons- 
field  made  these  concessions  and  left  the  Greek 
boundary  question  unsettled.  He  desired  to 
disarm  Russia  of  any  hostile  feeling  by  restor- 
ing the  territory  in  Bessarabia  taken  from  it  by 
the  allies  after  the  Crimean  war;  and  he  suc- 
ceeded in  this.  He  wanted  to  attach  the  Aus- 
tro- Hungarian  monarchy  to  the  British  impe- 
rial policy  by  giving  Francis  Joseph  the  rich* 
provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina;  and  in 
this  also  he  was  successful.  He  did  not  want 
to  weaken  Turkey  further,  by  lopping  off  Epirus 
and  Thessaly  in  the  interest  of  Greece,  which 
could  be  of  no  help  to  him  in  furtherance  of 
his  policy.  So  far  as  the  plan  which  Lord  Bea- 
consfield set  before  himself  is  concerned,  there- 
fore, nothing  could  be  more  completely  suc- 
cessful than  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  and  this  is 
the  standard  by  which  he,  at  least,  wished  it 
iudged.  It  is  not  for  us  to  anticipate  the  fut- 
ure. Suffice  it  to  say,  that  where  failure  has 
occurred,  it  has  been  through  the  default  of 
the  Porte  to  discharge  its  part  of  the  contract ; 
wherefore  England  declined  to  shoulder  its  own 
and  Turkey's  obligations. 

During  the  Berlin  Congress,  public  feeling  in 
England  was  worked  up  to  a  white  heat.  The 


THE  EARL   OF  BEACONSFIELD  AND  HIS  WORK. 


555 


nation  had  almost  gone  frantic.  It  had  got  into 
one  of  its  mad  fighting  moods,  and  would  rather 
have  had  war  than  peace.  When  the  annex- 
ation of  Cyprus  and  the  protectorate  of  Asia 
Minor  were  announced,  there  was  a  burst  of 
exultation,  and  millions  of  money  were  ready  at 
call  to  build  "The  Euphrates  Valley  Railroad." 
The  Suez  Canal  might  be  blockaded  by  hostile 
flotillas.  England  wanted  a  land  route  to  In- 
dia, and — 

1 '  We  don't  want  to  fight ;  but,  by  jingo,  if  we  do, 
We  have  got  the  men,  we  have  got  the  ships, 
And  we  have  got  the  money,  too." 

It  was  during  this  popular  frenzy  that  Lord 
Beaconsfield  and  his  colleague  arrived  in  Eng- 
land. Never  was  victorious  general  or  ruler  re- 
ceived with  greater  enthusiasm.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  was  at  that  hour  the  most  popular  man  in 
England.  He  had  "brought  back  peace  with 
honor."  Congratulatory  messages  were  sent 
from  the  remotest  British  colony,  and  the  Brit- 
ish residents  of  San  Francisco  presented  him 
with  an  address  and  casket,  which  he  regarded 
as  the  greatest  compliment  ever  paid  him,  and 
made  its  presentation  the  occasion  for  declar- 
ing bis  foreign  policy  upon  which  he  had  de- 
clined to  speak  explicitly  in  Parliament,  be- 
cause, he  said,  the  British  people  all  over  the 
world  who  sympathized  with  him  had  a  right  to 
know  what  the  Government  meant  to  do.  Thus 
San  Francisco  became  identified  with  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  career  at  the  very  pinnacle  of  his 
fame. 

And  here  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield's  public 
life  may  be  said  to  close.  Events  were  too  strong 
for  him.  The  Zulu  and  Afghan  wars  became 
more  serious  than  he  had  contemplated.  The 
harvests  failed  at  home,  and  Ireland  was  visit- 
ed by  famine.  Trade  declined  and  the  revenue 
fell  off,  while  enormous  expenditures  were  be- 
ing incurred  abroad  for  purposes  which  the 
British  people,  in  their  sober  second  thought, 
did  not  approve.  Everything  went  against'  the 
Government,  and  agitators  and  opponents  did 
not  scruple  to  charge  the  visitations  of  Provi- 
dence to  their  account.  Mr.  Gladstone  threw 
off  all  reserve,  and  boldly  took  the  lead  of  his 
party,  speaking  all  over  the  United  Kingdom, 
and  creating  a  public  opinion  which  swept 
away  the  Tory  Government.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  should  have  appealed  to  the  country  when 
the  Opposition  began  to  press  him  home ;  but 
he  delayed  until  March  24,  1880,  and  then  the 


country  had  been  wrought  to  such  a  pitch  that 
the  Liberals  went  back  into  power  with  a  ma- 
jority of  one  hundred  and  twenty.  The  Tories 
had  fallen ;  their  great  chief  was  defeated ;  and 
the  Queen,  after  vainly  asking  Lord  Harting- 
ton  and  Earl  Granville  to  form  a  Government, 
was  forced  to  send  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  un- 
compromising opponent  of  imperialism,  and  by 
far  the  most  capable  and  most  conscientious 
public  man  in  England.  He  has  had  to  pass 
under  the  harrow  in  the  all  but  hopeless  task 
of  repairing  the  mischief  done  by  "the  impe- 
rial policy"  in  home  affairs.  The  famine  stage 
in  Ireland  has  been  succeeded  by  an  agrarian 
revolt,  in  which  the  champions  of  natural  and 
vested  rights  stand  ready  to  fly  at  each  other's 
throats,  while  Gladstone  stands  in  the  breach 
as  mediator.  American  competition  is  ruining 
the  agricultural  classes  of  England,  added  to 
which  are  foreign  complications  that  may  prove 
serious.  Some  of  these  are  legacies  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  imperial  policy ;  but  they  may, 
and  possibly  will,  overwhelm  the  Liberal  Gov- 
ernment. 

The  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  died  just  at  the 
crisis  when  it  was  possible,  by  a  bold  and  orig- 
inal stroke  on  the  Irish  land  question,  to  have 
pacified  Ireland  and  returned  to  power  strong- 
er than  ever.  It  is  not  for  us  to  discuss  what 
might  have  been.  We  have  simply  to  do  with 
the  has  been.  For  good  or  for  evil,  the  man 
Benjamin  Disraeli  has  finished  his  work.  As 
we  have  endeavored  to  show,  it  has  been  a 
conspicuously  great  work.  And  it  has  been  a 
thoroughly  consistent  work  as  well.  From 
start  to  finish  it  preserved  the  unities.  Benja- 
min Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  lived  up  to 
his  own  ideal.  He  realized  his  dream  of  life. 
He  satisfied  his  ambition  to  the  full.  Such  as 
he  was  by  nature,  such  he  perfected  by  art. 
He  was  a  consummate  actor,  a  natural  leader, 
and  a  man  of  very  brilliant  parts.  He  was  not 
a  great  man,  for  he  lacked  conscientiousness ; 
he  was  not  a  noble  man,  for  he  lacked  sincerity. 
But  he  was  an  original  and  a  successful  man, 
who,  born  out  of  his  natural  element,  an  alien 
and  a  foreigner  by  race  and  sentiment,  had  the 
genius  to  mold  English  thought  and  sentiment 
to  his  will,  and  to  lead  captive  the  most  con- 
servative and  exclusive  social  and  political  ele- 
ments in  European  society.  With  Benjamin 
Disraeli  dies  the  last  and  greatest  of  British 
statesmen  who  sought  to  strengthen  Preroga- 
tive by  weakening  the  Constitution. 

ROBT.  J.  CREIGHTON. 


556 


THE    CALIFORNIA!*. 


WIRING   A   CONTINENT. 


The  establishment  of  telegraphic  communi- 
cation between  the  principal  cities  of  Califor- 
nia had  the  effect  of  making  the  people  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  realize  more  clearly  their  isolated 
position  from  the  rest  of  the  Union,  and  the 
question  of  an  overland  telegraph  was  at  once 
agitated.  The  matter  had  already,  in  point  of 
fact,  been  considered  in  Congress  soon  after 
the  acquisition  of  this  territory  by  the  United 
States.  The  plan  thought  to  be  the  most  fea- 
sible, among  the  several  suggested,  was  one 
by  the  Hon.  Stephen  A.  Douglas.  It  was  for 
the  Government  to  establish  stockades  or  mil- 
itary posts  at  distances  thirty  to  fifty  miles 
apart  across  the  continent.  It  was  thought 
that  such  a  plan  would  have  the  double  advan- 
tage of  protecting  the  emigrants  as  well  as 
opening  up  safe  and  reliable  communication 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Coasts.  A 
careful  examination  into  the  details  of  this 
scheme  showed  that  it  would  prove  too  expen- 
sive, and  nothing  came  of  it. 

It  was  not  until  1860,  when  a  bill  was  intro- 
duced by  Senator  Broderick,  that  the  Senate 
should  authorize  the  Postmaster  General  to  en- 
ter into  a  contract  with  Henry  O'Reilly,  J.  J. 
Speed,  and  T.  P.  Schaffner  for  the  carrying  of 
Goverment  messages  to  and  from  the  Pacific 
States.  The  contract  was  for  ten  years,  and 
the  consideration  $70,000  a  year,  with  a  pre- 
emption of  320  acres  of  land  every  ten  miles 
along  the  route.  This  bill  was  referred  to  the 
committee  of  which  Dr.  Gwin  was  a  mem- 
ber, but,  on  account  of  incompatibility  of  tem- 
per between  the  two  Senators,  it  never  reached 
the  House.  The  year  previous,  1859,  the  State 
Legislature  had  passed  an  act  granting  $6,000 
a  year,  for  ten  years,  to  the  company  that 
should  put  the  first  line  through,  and  $4,000  a 
year  to  the  one  that  would  get  the  second  line 
through.  This  encouragement  gave  fresh  im- 
petus to  the  enterprises  already  commenced — 
one  by  the  way  of  Placerville  and  Carson  Val- 
ley, known  as  the  Placerville  and  St.  Joseph 
Telegraph  Company,  and  another  via  Los  An- 
geles, following  the  route  of  the  Butterfield 
overland  mail  stages. 

Early  in  the  succeeding  year,  several  other 
telegraph  bills  were  introduced  in  the  United 
States  Senate.  An  examination  of  them  in  de- 
tail led  to  the  conviction  that  no  private  com- 
pany would  be  able  to  successfully  build  and 


maintain  telegraphic  communication  across  the 
continent,  the  cost  of  maintenance  after  the 
construction  of  the  line  being  too  great.  Gov- 
erment aid  was  consequently  considered  abso- 
lutely necessary  if  the  enterprise  were  to  be 
carried  out.  A  bill  finally  passed  Congress 
appropriating  $40,000  a  year,  for  ten  years,  to- 
ward the  construction  and  maintenance  of  a 
line  of  telegraph  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pa- 
cific States.  Within  the  appointed  time  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  advertised  for  pro- 
posals. The  Grand  Confederated  North  Amer- 
ican Association  held  a  convention  at  New 
York,  and  agreed,  as  the  Western  Union  Com- 
pany had  more  at  stake  than  any  other  Eastern 
company,  to  refer  the  whole  matter  to  it  and  to 
the  Placerville  and  St.  Joseph  Company.  The 
Western  Union  Company  resolved  to  put  in 
a  bid  at  the  maximum  price  fixed  by  Congress, 
the  bid  to  go  in  Hiram  Sibley's  name,  but  if 
successful,  all  the  California  lines,  so  disposed, 
were  to  share  in  the  benefits.  Several  other 
competing  companies  made  bids,  but  as  before 
the  time  came  around  for  giving  the  necessary 
bonds  they  had  all  withdrawn,  the  contract 
was  awarded  to  the  Western  Union  Company. 
The  parties  whom  Mr.  Sibley  represented 
met  at  Rochester,  New  York,  and  agreed  that 
if  all  the  California  lines  would  consolidate 
they  should  have  construction  of  the  line  from 
Salt  Lake  to  the  Pacific  connection,  while  the 
Western  Union  Company  should  build  from 
Salt  Lake  to  the  eastern  connection.  It  was 
also  agreed  that  the  California  and  General 
Government  subsidies,  together  with  the  re- 
ceipts, should  be  divided  equitably  between 
them.  In  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  1860,  J.  H. 
Wade,  the  representative  of  the  Western  Union 
Company,  came  to  California  to  complete  ar- 
rangements for  the  commencement  of  the  great 
work.  He  brought  the  matter  before  the  sev- 
eral companies  then  in  operation  on  the  Pa- 
cific Coast,  proposing  to  them  a  plan  of  con- 
solidation of  all  their  lines,  which  was  immedi- 
ately carried  out.  The  different  companies 
agreed  to  consolidate  with  the  California  State 
Telegraph  Company,  and  to  create  a  new  com- 
pany called  the  Overland  Telegraph  Company, 
with  a  capital  stock  of  $1,250,000,  to  complete 
a  line  from  San  Francisco  to  Salt  Lake.  This 
company,  on  the  completion  of  the  line,  was 
merged  into  the  California  State  Telegraph 


WIRING  A    CONTINENT. 


557 


Company  (the  capital  stock  being  doubled), 
which,  from  that  time  until  its  later  consolida- 
tion with  the  Western  Union,  owned  and  con- 
trolled the  telegraph  lines  from  San  Francisco 
to  Salt  Lake.  The  Western  Union  had  in  the 
meantime  established  a  similar  organization  on 
the  eastern  side  of  the  continent  to  meet  the 
line  from  this  side  at  Salt  Lake. 

All  preliminaries  having  been  settled,  the 
work  of  construction  was  to  be  commenced 
without  delay.  The  material  was  ordered,  and 
preparations  were  made  to  complete  the  entire 
line  before  the  close  of  1861.  The  work  on  the 
eastern  end  was  under  the  superintendence 
and  general  direction  of  Edward  Creighton, 
while  the  construction  from  this  end  was  di- 
rected by  the  writer.  The  lines  of  the  Califor- 
nia State  Telegraph  Company  had  already 
been  extended  as  far  as  Virginia  City  after  the 
consolidation  of  the  lines,  and  it  was  decided 
that  the  work  of  extending  the  overland  tele- 
graph was  to  commence  at  Carson  City.  Part 
of  the  wire  and  insulators  had  in  the  meantime 
been  ordered  from  the  East,  and  were  shipped 
round  by  Cape  Horn.  The  next  most  impor- 
tant item  of  material  was  the  poles.  These 
had  to  be  hauled  on  wagons  and  distributed 
along  the  route  from  Carson  City  to  Salt  Lake, 
a  distance  of  six  hundred  miles.  As  there  was 
not  a  stick  of  timber  in  sight  throughout  the 
entire  distance,  it  seemed  at  first  a  mystery 
how  they  were  to  be  procured,  and  the  work 
finished  within  the  time  named.  Among  my 
associates  in  the  enterprise  was  James  Street, 
who  had,  previous  to  this,  met  and  made  a 
friend  of  Brigham  Young.  Mr.  Street  was  full 
of  pluck  and  energy ;  and  early  in  the  spring 
he  went  to  Salt  Lake  and  succeeded  in  arrang- 
ing with  the  Mormons  for  the  necessary  poles 
along  that  section  of  the  line. 

On  his  return,  he  made  it  a  point  to  see  some 
of  the  Indian  chiefs,  to  gain,  if  possible,  their 
good  will,  as  well  as  explain  to  them  the  object 
of  the  work.  At  Roberts  Creek,  he  met  Sho- 
kup,  the  head  chief  of  the  Shoshones,  who  re- 
ceived him  in  a  very  friendly  manner.  The 
chief  told  Mr.  Street  that  he  and  his  tribe 
were  desirous  of  knowing  and  understanding 
the  ways  of  the  white  man,  and  to  be  upon 
friendly  terms  with  him.  He  expressed  him- 
self as  anxious  to  do  always  that  which  was  to 
the  good  of  his  own  people,  and  provide  for 
their  wants.  He  added,  with  much  feeling : 

"Before  the  white  men  came  to  my  country, 
my  people  were  happy  and  had  plenty  of  game 
and  roots.  Now  they  are  no  longer  happy,  and 
the  game  has  almost  disappeared." 

Sho-kup  exercised  great  influence,  not  only 
over  his  own  tribe,  but  also  over  the  Goshutes 


and  Pah-Utes.  The  Indians  there,  as  every- 
where, are  very  superstitious  and  put  great  faith 
in  the  teachings  of  their  medicine  men.  At  the 
time  of  the  visit  of  Mr.  Street,  one  of  Sho-kup's 
wives  (he  had  two)  was  dangerously  ill,  and 
one  of  her  doctors  had  said  the  cause  of  it  was 
the  overland  mail.  The  chief  asked  if  this 
was  true.  The  interpreter  replied  in  the  neg- 
ative, and  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Street  invited  Sho- 
kup  to  get  on  the  stage  and  go  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  he  was  assured  he  would  be  kindly 
received,  and  be  as  well  in  all  respects  as  if  he 
had  made  the  journey  on  horseback.  The  chief 
accepted  the  offer  and  started  with  them  the 
next  stage,  but  on  reaching  Carson  City  he  re- 
solved to  return,  as  it  was  taking  him  too  far 
from  home.  The  telegraph  was  explained  to 
him  by  the  interpreter,  and  he  afterward  call- 
ed it  "We-ente-mo-ke-te-bope,"  meaning  "wire 
rope  express."  On  being  pressed  to  continue 
his  trip  to  San  Francisco,  he  said  no ;  he  want- 
ed to  go  back  and  learn  how  his  wife  was.  He 
was  told  that  when  the  telegraph  was  complet- 
ed he  could  talk  to  her  as  well  from  there  as  if 
by  her  side ;  but  this  was  more  than  his  compre- 
hension could  seize.  Talk  to  her  when  nearly 
three  hundred  miles  away !  No ;  that  was  not 
possible.  He  shook  his  head,  saying  he  would 
rather  talk  to  her  in  the  old  way.  His  idea  of 
the  telegraph  was  that  it  was  an  animal,  and  he 
wished  to  know  on  what  it  fed.  They  told  him 
it  ate  lightning ;  but,  as  he  had  never  seen  any 
one  make  a  supper  of  lightning,  he  was  not  dis- 
posed to  believe  that.  During  his  stay  in  Car- 
son City,  Sho-kup  was  kindly  treated,  and,  as 
he  refused  to  go  farther,  he  was  told  he  could 
talk  with  the  Big  Captain  (President  H.  W.  Car- 
pentier)  of  the  telegraph  company  at  San  Fran- 
cisco. Thereupon  he  dictated  the  following  dis- 
patch : 

' '  Sho-kup,  Big  Chief  of  the  Shoshones,  says  to  Big  Cap- 
tain at  San  Francisco,  that  his  Indians  will  not  trouble 
the  telegraph  line.  Sho-kup  is  a  friend  of  the  white  man. 
His  people  obey  him.  He  will  order  them  to  be  friend- 
ly with  the  white  men  and  not  injure  the  telegraph. 
He  would  like  to  see  Big  Captain,  but  must  return  to 
his  tribe,  and  cannot  go  to  San  Francisco." 

On  receipt  of  this  message,  General  Carpen- 
tier,  President  of  the  Company,  sent  Sho-kup 
several  friendly  messages,  and  ordered  pres- 
ents of  food  and  clothing  to  be  made  him. 
The  importance  of  having  a  good  understand- 
ing and  keeping  on  friendly  terms  with  the  In- 
dians was  well  understood,  and  everything  was 
done,  both  then  and  during  the  period  of  the 
construction  of  the  line,  to  prevent  the  occur- 
rence of  anything  that  would  lead  to  trouble 
with  them. 


558 


THE    CALIFORNIA^. 


Mr.  Street's  contracts  with  the  Mormons 
were  for  two  to  three  hundred  miles  of  poles 
for  the  eastern  section  of  the  line  from  Salt 
Lake  west.  I  then  went  myself  to  Carson  City 
and  made  contracts  for  one  hundred  miles  of 
poles,  running  east  from  that  point  to  Ruby 
Valley,  where  other  contracts  had  been  nrade 
with  parties,  familiar  with  that  part  of  the  coun- 
try, to  supply  the  poles  for  the  middle  section, 
I  had  many  misgivings  in  respect  to  these  con- 
tracts for  poles,  especially  regarding  those  for 
the  middle  section.  Along  that  portion  of  the 
route  the  mountains  and  plains  were  treeless 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  viewed  even  from 
the  highest  point.  Where,  then,  the  poles  were 
to  come  from,  I  could  not  conceive.  But  the 
frontiermen  with  whom  the  bargain  had  been 
made  appeared  to  know  their  business,  and,  as 
I  afterward  learned,  they  had  in  their  hunting 
expeditions  discovered  canons  and  gorges  in 
the  mountains  where  stunted  pine  and  quaking- 
asp  cound  be  found  sufficiently  large  for  tele- 
graph poles.  So  far,  then,  all  was  satisfactory. 

The  material  having  been  provided,  the  next 
important  move  was  to  get  it  on  the  ground. 
Early  in  the  spring  of  1861  I  was  authorized  by 
the  company  to  fit  out  an  expedition  and  com- 
mence the  work  of  construction.  It  was  esti- 
mated that  it  would  take  twenty-six  wagons  to 
carry  the  material  and  supplies  across  the  Sier- 
ra Nevada  Mountains,  and  these  I  was  instruct- 
ed to  purchase,  together  with  the  necessary  an- 
imals to  move  them.  This  was  accomplished 
and  the  expedition  was  ready  to  move  on  the 
27th  of  May,  1861.  It  comprised  228  oxen,  26 
wagons,  50  men,  and  several  riding -horses. 
Everything  necessary  for  the  work  and  subsist- 
ence had  to  be  carried  on  the  wagons,  but  as 
there  was  a  fair  road  over  the  mountains,  it  was 
thought  the  crossing  could  be  made  in  about 
twelve  or  fifteen  days.  The  expedition  was 
placed  in  charge  of  I.  M.  Hubbard,  an  experi- 
enced and  energetic  telegraph  man.  Instead 
of  fifteen  days,  as  supposed,  it  took  over  thirty 
days  to  get  across  the  Sierra  Nevada.  The  train 
was  very  long  and  the  road  narrow,  and  it  was 
found  that  many  of  the  wagons  were  too  heav- 
ily laden  for  the  mountain  roads ;  so  it  made 
but  slow  progress.  In  addition  to  this,  the 
train  frequently  blocked  up  the  road,  delaying 
incoming  trains  as  long  as  a  day  at  a  time.  It 
was,  therefore,  finally  concluded  to  cut  up  the 
telegraph  train  into  several  sections,  and  it  was 
not  until  late  in  June  that  the  expedition  reached 
Carson  Valley,  and  the  work  of  construction 
commenced.  In  the  meantime,  the  poles  were 
being  distributed  from  both  ends  of  the  line  of 
route,  and,  as  the  wire  and  insulators  for  the 
eastern  end  had  been  ordered  shipped  from 


the  Missouri  river  to  Salt  Lake,  the  work  be- 
gan energetically  from  both  ends. 

The  route  selected  was  by  way  of  Omaha,  up 
the  South  Platte,  via  old  Fort  Kearney,  Fort 
Laramie,  up  the  Sweet  water  and  through  the 
South  Pass  to  Salt  Lake.  Thence,  to  Deep 
Creek,  Egan  Canon,  and  Ruby  Valley  to  Vir- 
ginia City.  Austin  and  Eureka  were  not  at 
that  time  in  existence.  In  fact,  the  only  settle- 
ment along  that  portion  of  the  route,  was  one 
at  Ruby  Valley,  where  some  troops  were  .sta- 
tioned. 

Mr.  Creighton,  who,  as  I  have  stated,  was 
in  charge  of  the  eastern  section,  and  myself, 
communicated  freely,  advising  each  other  at 
frequent  intervals  of  the  progress  of  the  work. 
His  reports  showed  me  with  what  energy  he 
was  pushing  his  part  forward,  and  so  enthusias- 
tic were  we  both  that  a  wager  was  laid  between 
us  as  to  which  would  first  reach  Salt  Lake, 
ready  to  open  communication  with  San  Fran- 
cisco and  the  East.  In  order  that  all  could  be 
worked  to  the  best  advantage,  the  party,  under 
Mr.  Hubbard's  direction,  was  thoroughly  or- 
ganized and  systematized.  The  line  was  first 
measured  and  staked  off;  the  hole-diggers  fol- 
lowed; then  came  the  pole-setters,  and  next 
the  wire  party.  The  line  was  strung  up  at  the 
rate  of  from  three  to  eight  miles  a  day.  An  ad- 
vance telegraph  station  was  kept  up  with  the 
head  of  the  line,  and  the  progress  of  the  work 
reported  each  day.  At  this  advance  station 
the  news  was  received  on  the  arrival  of  the 
Pony  Express,  and  telegraphed  to  San  Fran- 
cisco and  other  points.  Commercial  dispatch- 
es were  also  sent  and  received  daily,  as  the 
Pony  Express  arrived  at  or  departed  from  our 
camp.  In  this  way  the  newspapers  in  San 
Francisco  were  supplied  with  telegraphic  news, 
and  were  daily  gaining  on  time  as  the  lines  ad- 
vanced east  and  west  across  the  continent  to- 
ward their  meeting  point. 

Among  the  different  working  parties  were 
several  Indians.  They  were  employed  princi- 
pally in  taking  care  of  the  stock,  herding  them 
at  night  where  grass  was  to  be  found,  and  driv- 
ing them  in  at  early  morning.  Another  object 
in  employing  them  was  that  they  might  report 
to  the  different  tribes  how  well  they  were  treat- 
ed, and  in  this  way  favorably  influence  the  In- 
dians toward  the  members  of  the  party  and  the 
telegraph  line.  Those  I  employed  were  in- 
trusted almost  entirely  with  the  stock,  and  I 
never  had  any  reason  to  regret  the  confidence 
I  placed  in  them.  They  were  generally  paid 
in  provisions  and  clothing,  and  always  seemed 
perfectly  satisfied.  That  this  good  feeling  with 
the  Indians  was  maintained  throughout,  was 
also  in  a  measure  due  to  a  general  order  issued 


WIRING  A    CONTINENT. 


559 


at  the  start,  that  any  man  of  the  expedition 
getting  into  trouble  with  the  Indians,  or  their 
squaws,  would  be  immediately  dismissed  from 
the  service,  and  this  rule  was  strictly  enforced. 

An  incident  occurred  once  during  the  con- 
struction of  the  line  that  doubtless  had  a  last- 
ing effect  upon  one  Indian,  at  least,  as  to  the 
power  contained  in  the  wire,  which  to  them 
was  so  great  a  mystery.  While  our  men  were 
engaged  stretching  the  wires  up  to  a  stage  sta- 
tion, about  two  hundred  miles  east  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada,  a  thunder  storm  broke  over  the  valley 
at  some  distance  from  where  they  were  work- 
ing. The  electric  charges  from  the  clouds  were 
so  heavy  that  the  men  were  obliged  to  use  buck- 
skin gloves  to  avoid  the  shocks.  Some  strange 
Indians  coming  up  just  at  that  time,  one  of  the 
men  motioned  to  them  to  come  and  help  him 
pull  at  the  wire.  One  more  willing  than  the 
rest  took  hold  of  it,  and  while  drawing  the  wire 
along,  the  ground  being  moist,  and  the  Indian 
in  his  bare  feet,  he  received  an  electric  charge 
that  doubled  him  up  in  a  knot.  A  more  aston- 
ished Indian  was  probably  never  seen.  He 
sprung  to  his  feet  and  started  on  a  full  run. 
His  companions,  not  knowing  what  had  occur- 
red, looked  on  with  perfect  astonishment.  The 
electrified  Indian  stopped  after  running  a  short 
distance,  and  called  to  his  comrades  to  join 
him,  to  whom,  I  presume,  he  explained  the  ef- 
fect, without  exactly  knowing  the  cause.  He 
and  the  others  spread  the  news  of  this  occur- 
rence, and  after  that  no  Indian  could  be  in- 
duced to  go  near  the  wire  or  touch  the  poles. 
Governor  Nye,  of  Nevada,  who  also  acted  as 
Indian  Agent,  informed  me,  shortly  after  the 
completion  of  the  overland  line,  that  on  his 
meeting  with  the  Indians  in  Ruby  Valley  he 
noticed  that  whenever  they  had  occasion  to 
pass  under  the  wire  they  got  as  nearly  equi- 
distant between  the  poles  as  possible,  and  ap- 
peared anxious  to  keep  as  far  away  from  the 
line  as  they  could.  When  I  told  him  of  the 
incident  I  have  just  related,  he  said  it  was  very 
likely  the  cause  of  what  he  had  observed. 

In  the  meantime  the  construction  of  the  line 
was  being  rapidly  pushed  forward.  Many  se- 
rious difficulties  were,  however,  from  time  to 
time  encountered,  requiring  our  greatest  ener- 
gies to  overcome.  Deserts  had  to  be  crossed, 
which  in  many  cases  taxed  the  efforts  and 
strength  of  the  expedition  to  its  very  utmost. 
In  one  instance  sixteen  miles  of  line  were  built 
in  one  day,  in  order  to  reach  a  point  where  wa- 
ter could  be  obtained.  As  the  weather  was  ex- 
tremely hot,  teams  with  barrels  of  water  had  to 
be  kept  with  the  different  parties  when  crossing 
these  deserts.  Again,  our  pole-contractors  fail- 
ed us,  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  send  our 


own  teams  out  on  the  mountain  tops  to  procure 
and  haul  poles  at  the  different  points  where  an 
insufficient  quantity  had  been  provided.  The 
first  contract  made  with  the  Mormons  was  also 
a  failure.  Brigham  Young  denounced  the  con- 
tractors who  agreed  to  furnish  the  poles  from 
the  pulpit,  and  said  the  work  of  furnishing  the 
poles  should  and  must  be  carried  out.  The 
work  of  getting  them  out  was  intrusted  to  other 
parties.  Some  of  the  poles  had  to  be  hauled 
nearly  two  hundred  miles,  most  of  them  being 
taken  from  the  mountains  in  the  vicinity  of  Salt 
Lake,  there  being  very  few  to  be  had  west  of 
that  point. 

Up  to  the  first  of  October  the  work  had  pro- 
gressed as  well  as  could  have  been  expected,  all 
things  considered.  The  poles  were  nearly  all 
delivered,  and  the  line  completed  with  the  ex- 
ception of  some  fifty  or  sixty  miles  between 
Ruby  Valley  and  Schell  Creek,  about  midway 
between  Carson  City  and  Salt  Lake.  But  at 
that  time  it  began  to  be  apparent  that  the  pole- 
contractors  were  going  to  fail  on  that  section. 
Mountaineers  and  Indians  were  at  once  secured 
to  scour  the  mountains,  and  procure,  if  possible, 
a  sufficient  number  of  poles  to  complete  the  re- 
maining portion  of  the  line.  As  the  season  was 
growing  late,  and  cold  weather  coming  on,  I 
began  to  have  serious  fears  that  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  complete  it  before  winter.  The  men 
were  also  getting  frightened,  and  many  of  them 
wanted  to  return  home,  as  they  feared  we  would 
be  overtaken  by  the  snow.  I  finally  ascertain- 
ed that  poles  could  be  had  on  the  top  of  a  high 
mountain,  about  fifteen  miles  from  a  place  call- 
ed Egan  Canon,  but  that  the  only  way  to  pro- 
cure them  was  with  our  own  men  and  teams. 
This  I  directed  done,  and  with  as  little  delay  as 
possible.  The  teams  left  Ruby  Valley  at  once, 
with  orders  to  go  to  this  mountain,  cut  the  poles, 
and  get  them  down.  Twenty  wagons  started 
in  the  train,  under  the  direction  of  the  wagon- 
master  and  a  foreman  of  construction.  In  a 
few  days,  after  having  had  time,  as  I  judged, 
to  reach  Egan  Canon,  the  stage  brought  me  a 
note  from  the  foreman,  advising  me  that  they 
had  reached  that  point,  but  that  his  workmen 
and  teamsters  refused  to  go  into  the  mountains, 
saying  it  was  too  late  in  the  season  to  attempt 
it,  and  that  they  had  determined  to  leave  and 
go  home.  Matters  were  becoming  serious,  and 
I  saw  that  nothing  but  strong  determination  on 
my  part  would  induce  the  men  to  reverse  their 
decision  and  encounter  the  risks  of  going  into 
the  mountains.  I  held  a  conference  with  my 
assistant,  Mr.  Hubbard,  and  Jasper  McDonald, 
the  commissary  of  the  expedition.  We  decided 
to  take  the  next  stage  for  Egan  Canon,  enforce 
orders,  and,  if  such  a  thing  were  still  possible, 


56° 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


get  out  the  necessary  number  of  poles  for  the 
completion  of  the  line.  On  our  arrival  we  found 
the  men  very  decided  not  to  go  farther.  I  in- 
formed them  they  had  started  on  the  work  un- 
der an  agreement  to  remain  until  it  was  com- 
pleted, and  that  they  would  be  held  to  it,  or 
forfeit  their  pay.  They  continued  to  express 
great  fears  of  being  caught  in  the  mountains  by 
winter  storms,  but  on  the  assurance  that  we 
would  accompany  them  they  agreed  to  go,  and 
early  on  the  morning  after  my  arrival  we  all 
moved  into  the  mountains.  By  sundown  we 
reached  the  timber.  We  had  a  hard  day's 
work  to  do  so,  as  for  a  good  portion  of  the  way 
we  had  to  open  up  and  make  the  road  for  the 
teams  to  pass  over.  The  poles  were  found  at 
a  point  high  up  in  the  mountains.  They  were 
mostly  fire-killed,  hard  and  dry.  The  night  that 
we  reached  this  place  was  dark  and  gloomy. 
Heavy  clouds  overhanging  the  mountains  an- 
nounced the  near  approach  of  a  storm.  Our 
men  had  been  in  the  habit  of  rolling  themselves 
up  in  their  blankets  and  sleeping  on  the  ground 
in  the  open  air.  We  had  tents  with  us,  but 
many  of  them  did  not  think  it  worth  while  to 
put  them  up.  We  were  all  very  tired,  climbing 
the  mountain  being  very  fatiguing,  so  it  was 
not  long  after  supper  before  the  men  were  roll- 
ed up  in  their  blankets  for  the  night.  I  had  a 
tent  put  up,  into  which  I  crawled  with  other 
officers  of  the  expedition.  My  heart  was  filled 
with  many  misgivings  as  to  what  the  morning 
would  bring  forth.  Anything  like  a  heavy  fall 
of  snow  would,  I  knew  well,  seriously  endanger, 
if  not  altogether  destroy,  our  chances  of  getting 
out  the  poles,  obliging  me  to  leave  the  comple- 
tion of  the  line  until  the  following  spring,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  danger  of  being  snowed  up  and 
of  losing  our  lives.  Wearied,  I  soon  fell  asleep, 
and  slept  soundly  until  morning. 

When  I  awoke  and  raised  the  tent  -  door,  my 
worst  forebodings  seemed  fully  realized :  the 
ground  was  white  with  snow.  But  my  atten- 
tion was  quickly  diverted  to  the  strangeness  of 
the  spectacle  offered  in  the  immediate  surround- 
ings of  my  tent.  It  was  similar  to  that  pre- 
sented in  a  snow -clad  churchyard,  minus  the 
headstones.  Hummocks  of  snow,  uniform  in 
size,  and  arranged  with  all  the  silent  precision 
of  a  cemetery,  were  grouped  about  me.  One 
good  loud  shout  of  "Rouse  out!  rouse  out!" 
sufficed,  however,  to  animate  the  scene,  as  the 
men  in  answer  to  my  call  shook  themselves 
from  their  blankets  and  coverlet  of  snow.  The 
rapidity  of  the  change  in  scene  from  the  death- 
like silence  of  the  snow -covered  sleepers,  of 
whom  not  a  vestige  could  be  seen,  to  the  noise 
and  activity  of  the  mountain  camp,  was  pano- 
ramically  grotesque,  and  for  the  moment  made 


me  forget  the  more  serious  part  of  the  business 
on  hand. 

About  six  inches  of  snow  had  fallen  during 
the  night,  and  to  increase  our  troubles  not  a 
single  head  of  stock  was  to  be  found.  They 
had  all  stampeded  down  the  mountain  side. 
The  Indians  were  quickly  rallied  and  started  in 
pursuit.  Instead  of  following  down  the  canon 
in  search  of  the  cattle,  I  was  surprised  to  see 
them  go  up  the  mountain.  It  was  not  long  be- 
fore the  reason  of  their  doing  so  was  made  ap- 
parent. They  got  on  to  the  ridge,  from  which 
point  they  could  obtain  a  full  view  of  the  ra- 
vines and  canons  below,  and  within  a  few  hours 
from  starting  they  had  secured  all  the  animals 
and  driven  them  back  to  camp.  By  this  time 
the  sun  was  out,  shining  brightly,  and  the  snow 
fast  disappearing.  The  poles  were  all  in  sight, 
and  the  men  went  to  work  at  them  with  a  will. 
It  did  not  take  long  to  cut  and  trim  them,  and 
as  fast  as  this  was  done  they  were  "snaked" 
down  the  mountains  by  the  Indians.  In  two 
days  we  had  secured  twenty  wagon-loads,  with, 
which  we  hurried  off  to  lose  no  time  in  placing 
them  on  the  line  of  route. 

Having  now  all  the  poles  necessary  for  the 
completion  of  the  line,  and  having  given  the 
necessary  orders  for  winding  up  all  matters  and 
for  the  return  of  the  expedition,  I  returned  to 
Ruby  Valley  on  my  way  home,  so  as  to  be  in 
San  Francisco  at  the  moment  of  the  opening  of 
the  line.  On  reaching  Ruby  Valley  I  found  a 
number  of  Indians  camped  there,  at  the  head 
of  whom  was  Buck  Soldier,  a  Shoshone  chief. 
He  had  got  this  name  from  always  being  dress- 
ed in  a  military  suit.  Buck  had  shown  himself 
very  friendly  during  the  entire  period  of  the  ex- 
pedition. He  as  well  as  Sho-kup  had  taken 
especial  pains  to  give  us  all  the  aid  possible; 
so,  on  parting,  I  presented  to  him  a  number  of 
sacks  of  flour,  sides  of  bacon,  and  some  cloth- 
ing, and  for  which  he  was  greatly  pleased.  The 
next  morning,  just  as  I  was  mounting  the  box 
of  the  overland  stage  with  the  driver,  he  came 
out  of  his  wik-i-up  (wigwam),  and  presented 
me  with  an  old  daguerreotype  of  himself  in  full 
dress,  taken  in  Salt  Lake  several  years  before, 
begging  me  to  receive  it  as  a  mark  of  his  ap- 
preciation of  the  kindness  I  had  manifested 
toward  him.  This  was  accompanied  by  the  re- 
quest that  on  my  return  home  I  would  send 
him  a  portrait  of  myself.  I  promised  to  do  so, 
and  on  arriving  in  San  Francisco  had  myself 
photographed,  and  also  had  a  copy  taken  from 
Buck  Soldier's  picture.  I  had  them  both  placed 
in  a  gold  double  locket,  with  a  chain,  so  that  it 
could  be  worn  around  the  neck,  and  forwarded 
it  to  him  through  the  Indian  Agent,  who  after- 
ward presented  it  to  Buck  with  great  ceremony. 


WIRING  A    CONTINENT. 


561 


In  connection  with  our  treatment  of  the  In- 
dians during  the  period  of  this  work,  it  might 
be  well  for  me  to  mention  that  the  considera- 
tion we  manifested  toward  them  appeared,  in 
after  years,  to  be  fully  appreciated.  This  was 
instanced  in  1863,  two  years  after  the  comple- 
tion of  the  overland  telegraph  line,  when  "an 
Indian  war  broke  out  on  the  overland  route, 
causing  trouble  between  the  stage  employes  and 
the  Indians.  The  stages  had  to  be  guarded, 
many  of  the  employe's  of  the  company  were 
killed  at  different  points, '  the  coaches  fired 
upon,  and  passengers  frequently  killed.  Sev- 
eral of  the  stage  stations  were  destroyed,  and 
finally  troops  had  to  be  sent  out  to  fight  the 
Indians,  and  several  battles  took  place  before 
peace  for  the  time  was  restored.  During  all 
these  troubles,  the  telegraph  line  was  not  dis- 
turbed, and,  if  my  recollection  serves  me  right, 
no  stage  station  in  which  a  telegraph  office  was 
established  was  ever  burned;  nor  was  an  em- 
ploye of  the  Company  ever  molested  or  injured 
by  the  Indians.  They  seemed  to  look  on  the 
telegraph  people  as  another  tribe  and  against 
which  they  had  no  hostility. 

On  the  eastern  division  some  exceptions  to 
this  manifested  themselves  from  time  to  time, 
where  the  operators  were  obliged  to  aid  in  re- 
sisting the  attack  of  the  Indians  against  the 
employes  of  the  stage  company.  This  was  chief- 
ly the  case  on  the  plains  where  the  Indians 
roamed  about,  not  confining  themselves  to  any 
particular  locality.  The  repair -stations  of  the 
operators  employed  by  the  telegraph  company 
were  established  in  the  huts  occupied  by  the 
stage  company.  These  stations  were  from  forty 
to  fifty  miles  apart.  The  operators  had  noth- 
ing to  do  except  to  see  that  the  line  was  in 
working  order.  In  case  of  a  break  the.  nearest 
operator  was  ordered  out.  He  generally  went 
alone  on  horseback.  It  was  supposed  at  first 
that  it  would  be  difficult  to  procure  operators 
for  this  service  and  retain  them ;  but  such  was 
not  the  case.  They  soon  became  accustomed 
to  the  work — the  danger  and  excitement  of  it 
seemed  to  have  for  them  an  additional  attrac- 
tion. The  risks  they  were  exposed  to  were  con- 
stant and  great,  and  I  cannot  allow  this  oppor- 
turnity  to  pass  without  referring  briefly  to  some 
of  the  many  incidents  constantly  occurring,  as 
showing  the  personal  bravery  of  the  men  en- 
gaged in  the  overland  telegraph  service.  Sweet- 
water  Station,  in  the  South  Pass,  was  attacked 
by  a  band  of  Sioux  Indians.  The  operator  and 
stage  men  entrenched  themselves  as  well  as 
they  could  in  their  dug-out,  a  mud  hut  hollow- 
ed out  in  the  earth,  part  above  and  part  below 
ground.  Being  well  provided  with  rifles  and 
ammunition  they  awaited  the  approach  of  the 


Indians,  and,  seeing  them  preparing  for  an  at- 
tack, gave  them  a  volley.  The  Indians  prompt- 
ly returned  the  fire,  and  the  fight  lasted  for  sev- 
eral days.  At  the  first  moment  of  attack  the 
operator  telegraphed  to  the  nearest  fort  for 
troops  to  come  to  the  rescue.  Shortly  after 
having  done  so,  the  wires  were  cut  by  the  In- 
dians in  the  hope  that  it  would  cut  off  commu- 
nication for  relief.  They  were  knowing  enough 
to  do  that.  The  wire  being  cut  prevented  the 
besieged  operator  and  his  comrades  from  com- 
municating with  their  friends  at  the  adjoining 
stations,  and  it  was  not  until  after  the  troops 
arrived  and  had  dispersed  the  Indians  that  news 
could  be  had  telling  of  their  successful  resist- 
ance. At  another  time  five  hundred  Arrapa- 
hoes  and  Cheyennes  attacked  Fort  Sedgwick, 
where  some  thirty  troops  and  twelve  civilians 
were  established.  The  whites  held  out  bravely, 
but  lost  seventeen  of  their  number  before  as- 
sistance reached  them. 

In  this  attack,  some  of  the  Indians  succeeded 
in  reaching  a  shed,  where,  with  sundry  provis- 
ions, some  carboys  of  nitric  acid  were  stored  for 
use  in  the  battery.  The  acid  had  a  smell  to 
them  something  like  good  strong  whisky.  They 
carried  off  one  of  the  carboys,  to  have,  as  they 
expected,  a  good  time.  Their  good  time  did 
not  last  long.  An  Indian's  "nip"  is  not  a  pony 
glass.  Those  of  them  who  nipped  from  that 
carboy,  did  so  for  the  last  time.  Their  exit 
from  this  world  was  about  as  sudden  as  it  would 
have  been  had  a  bullet  gone  through  their 
brains.  The  effect  produced  on  the  remainder 
of  them  at  the  sight  of  their  dead  "lightning- 
struck"  comrades,  was  for  a  moment  favorable 
to  the  besieged.  They  ceased  their  attack, 
seemingly  lost  in  wonder  and  admiration  in 
the  thought  that  white  men  could  drink  such 
powerful  whisky  and  live. 

The  operators  at  the  stations  on  the  Sierra 
Nevada  had  other  difficulties  and  dangers  quite 
as  formidable  to  contend  with.  The  snow  fre- 
quently fell  to  a  depth  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty- 
five  feet,  completely  covering  both  the  poles  and 
the  wires,  and  snow-slides  were  constantly  oc- 
curring. As  soon  as  the  first  overland  wire  was 
completed,  a  new  and  more  substantially  built 
line  was  constructed  across  the  Sierra  Nevada. 
The  stations  were  established  at  from  twelve  to 
fifteen  miles  apart,  and  men  only  who  were 
fearless  of  danger  and  willing  to  risk  the  mount- 
ain storms  were  employed  as  repairers  of  the 
lines.  They  used  the  Norwegian  snow-shoes, 
twelve  and  sometimes  fifteen  feet  long,  turned 
up  at  the  end  like  sled  -  runners.  Practice  on 
them  soon  rendered  the  repairers  very  expert 
in  getting  over  the  snow.  In  descending  the 
mountains,  they  would  use  the  guiding  stick  as 


562 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


a  brake,  putting  it  between  their  legs,  sitting 
down  on  it,  and  letting  themselves  go.  In 
going  up  the  mountains,  they  would  use  a  piece 
of  woolen  cloth  or  rope  tied  under  the  runners, 
which  prevented  them  from  slipping  back  as 
they  ascended.  Notwithstanding  the  danger 
and  hardship  of  the  work,  no  difficulties  were 
encountered  in  procuring  men  to  engage  in  it. 
They  were  well  paid  and  performed  their  ardu- 
ous task  faithfully,  repairing  the  line  whenever 
broken  with  dispatch. 

I  said  good-bye  to  Buck  Soldier  and  his  In- 
dians, and  mounted  the  box.  The  stage  driver 
cracked  his  whip,  and  I  was  off  for  San  Fran- 
cisco as  fast  as  six  wild  mustangs  could  take 
me.  How  fast  that  is  any  one  who  has  made 
the  overland  stage  trip  well  knows.  You  go  a 
good  deal  faster  than  on  a  railway  train  even  if 
you  do  not  cover  as  much  ground  in  the  same 
space  of  time.  On  the  old  overland  stage 
everything  went — if  I  may  be  allowed  the  ex- 
pression— not  excepting  the  brain,  which,  in 
the  continuous  mental  survey  of  possibilities, 
kept  even  pace  with  the  horses  and  stage.  At 
one  moment  tearing  around  the  edge  of  a  prec- 
ipice at  a  hight  dizzy  to  look  down  from ;  at 
another,  plunging  down  the  side,  at  a  pace  sug- 
gestive of  the  day  of  judgment,  which  a  mount- 
ain slide  or  broken  brake  would  have  ushered 
in  without  further  ceremony.  The  trip  in  those 
days  was  a  constant  whirl  of  excitement,  ren- 
dered still  more  exciting  by  the  always  possible 
appearance  of  road  agents  and  hostile  Indians. 

Yet,  when  I  come  to  look  back,  it  seems 
strange  how  inured  and  hardened  one  became 
to  it.  I  recollect  that  when  I  made  my  first 
overland  trip  my  hand  was  constantly  on  the 
revolver  in  my  belt.  Twenty  and  more  times 
a  day  I  was  ready  to  pull  it  out  on  the  shortest 
possible  notice,  and  lodge  its  contents  in  the 
first  animate  object  that  disputed  our  right  of 
way.  In  later  trips  I  observed  myself  disposed 
to  put  it  under  the  cushion  of  the  seat,  where  I 
believed  it  to  be  more  comfortably  placed  than 
sticking  in  the  middle  of  my  back  or  trying  to 
force  its  way  between  my  lower  two  ribs.  Still 
later,  when  the  trip  had  become  an  "old  story," 
I  seemed  to  think  that  the  best  place  for  my 
revolver  was  at  the  bottom  of  my  carpet-bag. 
Had  any  one  told  me  the  first  night  I  stood 
guard  over  our  camp,  with  my  rifle  and  revolver 
at  full  cock,  when  crossing  the  plains  for  the 
first  time,  that  I  would  cross  them  again  a  few 
years  later  with  my  revolver  at  the  bottom  of 
my  carpet-bag,  I  would  have  considered  it  base 
flattery — more  than  mortal  courage  was  entitled 
to.  But  so  it  is ;  dangers  that  at  first  seem  as 
big  as  mountains  after  a  time  become  as  mole- 
hills. It  is  not  that  the  dangers  are  in  any  way 


lessened,  but  rather  because  our  imagination  at 
first  overrates  them  and  next  underrates  them. 
I  reached  San  Francisco  in  time  for  the  open- 
ing of  the  great  trans-continental  telegraph  line, 
which  took  place  on  the  evening  of  October 
24th,  1861.  The  great  work,  which  had  been 
agitated  so  many  years,  both  on  this  coast,  in 
the  East,  and  in  Congress,  was  completed,  and 
in  the  short  space  of  five  months  from  the  time 
the  expedition  moved  from  Sacramento.  It 
had  been  proposed  to  get  up  a  celebration  in 
honor  of  such  an  important  event,  but  owing  to 
the  uncertainty  as  to  the  exact  time  when  the 
line  would  be  completed,  no  preparation  had 
been  made.  The  employes  of  the  company, 
who  stood  around,  manifested  the  greatest  anx- 
iety, watching  the  first  click  of  the  instrument 
across  the  continent.  At  last  it  came  and  read 
as  follows: 

"SALT  LAKE,  October  24,  1861—5.13  p.  M. 
"To  General   H.   W.  Carpentier: — Line  just  com- 
pleted.    Can  you  come  to  office  ?  STREET." 

This  telegram  was  received  by  the  operator, 
John  Leatch.  This  gentleman  at  that  time  had 
been  in  the  employ  of  the  company  some  six 
years,  and  has  remained  in  its  service  nearly 
ever  since.  At  this  time  he  is  engaged  as  an 
operator  in  the  San  Francisco  office,  and  may 
well  be  classed  among  the  veterans.  The  next 
dispatch  was  from  Brigham  Young,  and  read 
as  follows : 

"GREAT  SALT  LAKE  CITY,  October  24—7  p.  M. 
"To  Hon.  H.  W.  Carpentier,  President  of  the  Over- 
land Telegraph  Company — Dear  Sir  :  I  am  very  much 
obliged  for  your  kindness,  manifested  through  you  and 
Mr.  Street,  in  giving  me  privilege  of  first  message  to 
California.  May  success  ever  attend  the  enterprise. 
The  success  of  Mr.  Street  in  completing  his  end  of  the 
line,  under  many  unfavorable  circumstances,  in  so  short 
a  time,  is  beyond  our  most  sanguine  anticipations. 
Join  your  wires  with  the  Russian  Empire,  and  we  will 
converse  with  Europe. 

"Your  friend,  BRIGHAM  YOUNG." 

This  message  was  received  by  Geo.  S.  Ladd, 
then  a  practical  operator,  who  for  many  years 
after  was  in  the  service  of  the  company  as  Sec- 
retary and  Superintendent,  and  who  is  at  pres- 
ent President  of  the  Gold  and  Stock  Telegraph 
Company  of  California.  The  first  message 
sent  from  San  Francisco  was  as  follows : 

"SAN  FRANCISCO,  Cal.,  October  24,  1861. 
"To  Hon.  Brigham  Young,  Great  Salt  Lake  City:— 
That  which  was  so  long  a  hope  is  now  a  reality.  The 
trans-continental  telegraph  is  complete.  I  congratulate 
you  upon  the  auspicious  event.  May  it  prove  a  bond  of 
perpetual  union  and  friendship  between  the  people  of 
Utah  and  the  people  of  California. 

"H.  W.  CARPENTIER." 


ELEANORE. 


563 


This  message,  the  first  sent  over  this  section 
tion  of  the  overland  line,  I  had  the  honor  to 
manipulate  myself.  The  next  in  order  was  the 
following  message,  containing  the  painful  an- 
nouncement of  the  death  of  Colonel  E.  D. 
Baker.  It  read : 

"GREAT  SALT  LAKE  CITY,  October  24— 7  p.  M. 
"To  H.  W.  Carpentier :— Colonel  Baker  was  killed  in 
battle  on  the  2ist,  while  in  the  act  of  cheering  on  his 
command.     Intense  excitement  and  mourning  in  Phil- 
adelphia over  his  death.  STREET." 

The  street  in  front  of  the  office  was  densely 
crowded  during  the  evening,  and  there  would 
probably  have  been  an  impromptu  celebration 
of  the  great  event  but  for  the  sad  news  above 
mentioned,  which  cast  a  gloom  over  the  city 
and  prevented  any  demonstration  taking  place. 
Other  dispatches  were  sent  during  the  evening, 
and  among  them  the  following  to  the  President  : 

"To  Abraham  Lincoln,  President  of  the  United 
States : — In  the  temporary  absence  of  the  Governor  of 
the  State,  I  am  requested  to  send  you  the  first  message 
which  will  be  transmitted  over  the  wires  of  the  telegraph 
line  which  connects  the  Pacific  with  the  Atlantic  States. 
The  people  of  California  desire  to  congratulate  you  upon 
the  completion  of  the  great  work.  They  believe  that  it 
will  be  the  means  of  strengthening  the  attachment  which 
binds  both  the  East  and  the  West  to  the  Union,  and 
they  desire  in  this — the  first  message  across  the  conti- 
nent—to express  their  loyalty  to  the  Union  and  their 
determination  to  stand  by  its  Government  on  this  its 
day  of  trial.  They  regard  that  Government  with  affec- 
tion, and  will  adhere  to  it  under  all  fortunes. 

"STEPHEN  J.  FIELD, 
" Chief  Justice  of  California." 


There  were  also  received  a  large  number  of 
news  dispatches,  among  which  were  the  partic- 
ulars of  the  death  of  Colonel  Baker,  and  an- 
other announcing — 

"  Beauregard  will  retire  beyond  Bull  Run." 

The  overland  telegraph  was,  then,  an  accom- 
plished fact.  A  few  years  previous  news  from 
the  other  side  was  only  semi-monthly,  and  usu- 
ally from  twenty-five  to  thirty  days  old.  Then 
came  the  semi -weekly  mail  by  the  overland 
route,  with  news  on  an  average  from  eighteen 
to  twenty  days  old.  After  that  came  the  Pony 
Express.  This  latter,  though  a  vast  improve- 
ment on  both  the  first  and  the  second,  only 
made  clearer  that  something  still  remained  to 
be  done  to  bring  California  within  the  sphere 
of  the  other  civilized  countries  of  the  world. 
This  the  telegraph  in  its  first  click  did.  With 
it  disappeared  the  feeling  of  isolation  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Pacific  Coast  had  labored  un- 
der. San  Francisco  was  in  instant  communi- 
cation with  New  York,  and  the  other  great 
cities  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  The  change 
was  a  great  one,  but  it  was  one  the  people  read- 
ily adapted  themselves  to,  having  wished  and 
waited  so  long  for  it.  In  that  moment  Califor- 
nia was  brought  within  the  circle  of  the  sister- 
hood of  States.  No  longer  as  one  beyond  the 
pale  of  civilization,  but,  with  renewed  assur- 
ances of  peace  and  prosperity,  she  was  linked 
in  electrical  bonds  to  the  great  national  family 
union.  JAMES  GAMBLE. 


ELEANORE. 


Upon  a  radiant  morning 
In  dear,  delicious  June, 

Each  woodland  bird  was  singing 
His  sweetest,  wildest  tune. 

The  forest  aisles  were  ringing 
With  their  melodious  trills; 

The  glory  of  the  sunshine 
Enfolded  the  green  hills. 

It  shone  upon  the  meadows, 
It  sifted  through  the  leaves, 

And  fell  among  the  shadows 
Beneath  the  waving  trees. 

The  river  sparkled  gayly 
Its  verdant  shores  between; 

The  clouds,  all  wide  and  stately, 
Moved  on  through  skies  serene. 


564 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


My  love  came  gayly  singing 

Along  the  river  shore — 
In  raiment  white  as  lilies 
.  Walked  fair  Eleanore. 

She  touched  the  swinging  daisies 
That  grew  beside  her  path — 

The  finest  hand  in  all  the  land 
The  dainty  maiden  hath. 

We  sat  beside  the  river 

And  watched  its  rippling  flow; 
The  bending  boughs  above  us 

Moved  slowly  to  and  fro; 

And  if  they  heard  the  promise 
Those  rosy  lips  did  speak, 

Or  saw  the  rose -red  blushes 
That  blossomed  on  her  cheek, 

I  never  knew — but  sometimes 
I  fancy  that  the  breeze 

Repeats  the  same  sweet  story 
We  told  beneath  the  trees. 


JULIA  H.  S.  BUGEIA. 


MR.    HIRAM    McMANUS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

He  was  the  guardian  and  mentor  of  the  Bar. 
I  do  not  think  that  his  occupation  of  this  posi- 
tion arose  from  any  desire  to  exercise  supervi- 
sion over  the  affairs  of  the  camp ;  nor  is  it 
probable  that  the  general  intellect  and  sagacity 
at  Deadman's  Bar  were  so  far  in  want  as  to 
render  such  supervision  necessary.  My  idea 
is  that  he  was  vested  with  the  dignity  without 
choice — had  it  thrust  upon  him  by  force  of  cir- 
cumstances, and  was  pressed  into  it  by  the 
camp  from  the  almost  universal  appreciation  of 
his  fitness  and  usefulness  in  such  a  capacity. 

His  appearance  certainly  did  not  warrant  the 
distinction.  He  was  a  short  fleshy  man,  with 
straight  sandy  hair,  white  eyebrows,  a  flabby 
and  altogether  expressionless  face,  and  an  air 
which  showed  a  constant  and  unmistakable  in- 
clination to  bashfulness.  From  his  talk,  his 
manner,  his  actions,  there  protruded  ever,  a 
habit  of  gentle  self -depreciation,  and  to  a 
stranger,  who  had  never  witnessed  the  practi- 
cal demonstrations  he  had  given  of  coolness 
and  superiority  in  cases  of  emergency,  his  pe- 
culiar humbleness  and  unobtrusiveness  would 
have  stamped  him  as  being  somewhat  of  a  fool. 
It  was  in  the  fall  of  '52  that  his  paternal  inter- 
est first  impressed  itself  upon  the  camp.  Long 


before  that,  he  had  driven  the  stage  between 
Deadman's  and  Oroville.  Indeed,  from  its 
birth,  the  camp  through  him  had  transacted  its 
negotiations,  purchased  its  goods,  mailed  and 
registered  its  letters,  cashed  its  checks  and 
drafts,  and,  in  fact,  carried  on  its  entire  busi- 
ness with  the  outside  world. 

Isolation  hightens  curiosity,  and  it  was  with 
no  small  degree  of  interest  that  the  little  pop- 
ulation of  Deadman's  had  come  together  from 
week  to  week  in  expectation  of  his  arrival. 
Curiosity  begets  regard,  and  following  these 
arrivals  he  was  the  lion  of  the  hour  as  he  dis- 
coursed to  select  circles  of  eager  listeners,  in 
rough,  but  quaintly  garnished  language,  forci- 
ble, if  not  elegant,  of  the  news  that  during  his 
trip  he  had  gathered  from  the  world  beyond 
the  camp. 

This  capacity  as  news-carrier  had  drawn  their 
attention,  but  that  was  all.  The  feeling  thus 
engendered  resulted  merely  from  their  curios- 
ity, and  did  not  in  any  way  tend  to  attach  him 
to  the  Bar ;  and  it  was  not  until  the  fall  of  '"52 
that  the  boys  went  further,  and  began  to  respect 
and  love  him.  He  himself  always  thought  it 
was  Fate.  And,  taking  into  consideration  the 
fickleness  of  the  nature  commonly  ascribed  to 
that  goddess,  together  with  the  fact  that  the  in- 
ducing cause  of  his  position  was  of  a  sex  whose 


MR.   HIRAM  M'MANUS. 


565 


foremost  attribute  is  this  defect,  he  may  not 
have  been  far  from  wrong  in  his  impression. 
At  any  rate,  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  cause 
of  his  guardianship  was  a  woman. 

It  was  Sabbath  in  the  little  town  of  Oroville, 
and  a  peaceful  quiet  floating  in  on  the  sultry 
lightness  of  the  October  breeze  had  settled 
down  on  the  empty  streets  and  enwrapped  the 
place  in  restfulness.  And  out  from  the  still- 
ness came  the  Deadman's  stage,  rocking  and 
swinging  along  the  dusty  road,  which,  winding 
like  a  long  thread  up  over  the  line  of  yellow 
hills,  stretches  out  across  the  willow -fringed 
banks  of  Feather  River  into  the  broad,  brown 
plains,  to  where,  miles  and  miles  away,  the 
red  stained  bluffs  and  dusty  oaks  of  the  nearer 
foothills  lay  indistinct  in  the  morning  haze;  and 
still  other  miles  beyond  is  lost  in  the  dark, 
cool  shadow  which  marks  the  place  of  the  river, 
the  canon,  and  Deadman's  Bar. 

There  was  but  one  passenger — a  woman  — 
and  she  occupied  the  box  with  the  driver. 
Women  were  not  wholly  a  rarity  in  the  mines. 
Indeed,  Mr.  McManus  had  yet  in  his  mind 
certain  amusing  recollections  of  the  loose  free- 
dom and  coarse  jocularity  of  a  frail  represent- 
ative of  the  sex  who  had  served  as  a  dispen- 
sator  of  beverages  at  Stuart's  saloon  the  pre- 
ceding evening.  But  good  women  were,  and 
it  was  with  somewhat  of  a  feeling  of  awe  that 
he  had  taken  his  seat  beside  this  quietly  dress- 
ed figure  on  the  box.  The  warmth  of  the  sun 
and  the  queerness  of  the  associations  stirred 
his  heart.  The  face  of  this  virtuous  woman 
forced  back  upon  him  recollections  of  a  class 
of  her  sisters  which  his  surroundings  had  al- 
most led  him  to  believe  extinct,  and,  ere  long, 
repeated  glances  of  furtive  curiosity  came  to 
alternate  with  an  intermittent  and  wandering 
attention  bestowed  upon  his  reins.  Happily, 
however,  his  face  was  so  devoid  of  all  expres- 
sion, that  for  a  long  time  the  woman  scarcely 
took  notice  of  his  scrutiny.  But  finally  she  be- 
came conscious  of  a  timid  mumbling,  a  sort  of 
undefined,  deprecatory  murmuring  that  seemed 
to  issue  from  somewhere  in  the  depths  of  the 
man  at  her  side.  She  looked  up  quickly,  and, 
so  looking,  realized  that  the  whole  broadside 
of  his  placid  extent  of  features  was  turned  di- 
rectly toward  her. 

"Sir?"  she  said,  inquiringly. 

The  noise  immediately  stopped.  The  figure 
somewhat  collectively  collapsed.  There  was  a 
nervous  lopping  forward  of  the  head  that  al- 
most hid  the  face  in  its  own  shadow,  and  a 
downcast  assumption  of  the  eyes  enforcing  an 
apparently  serious  contemplation  of  a  gener- 
ous sized  boot.  It  was  only  after  some  mo- 
ment's hesitation  that  his  back  intermittently 

Vol.  III.— 36. 


straightened  up;  but  then,  and  on  seeming 
mature  consideration,  the  shock  of  sandy  hair 
concluded  to  follow.  When  it  had  about  reach- 
ed the  perpendicular,  he  ventured  to  bashfully 
raise  his  eyes,  and  so  remained,  timidly  glanc- 
ing into  her  face.  The  inside  again  began  to 
gurgle,  but  beyond  that  there  were  no  intelligi- 
ble attempts  made  at  conversation.  There  was 
a  rague  consciousness  of  something  ludicrous 
to  the  woman  in  his  appearance,  but  she  check- 
ed her  desire  to  laugh,  and  said  : 

"Did  you  speak  to  me,  sir?" 

"You're  a  goin'  somewhere,  Miss?"  said  Hi- 
ram, slowly,  glancing  with  a  palpable  mixture 
of  timid  curiosity  and  masculine  awe  at  the 
dusty  traveling  suit  of  the  figure  at  his  side. 
"You're  a  goin'  somewhere  and  a  travelin'." 

"I  am." 

"Jest  so,"  said  Mr.  McManus,  edging  pain- 
fully on  his  seat,  and  softly  rubbing  the  leg  of 
his  breeches  with  his  hand,  "jest  so." 

The  conversation  flagged  again.  But  after 
a  pause,  he  shifted  his  reins,  passed  his  right 
hand  aimlessly  through  his  hair,  and  continued: 

"Ye  come  all  alone,  mebbe?" 

"Yes,  sir,  all  alone." 

"'Spectin'  to  meet  yer  folks,  perhaps?" 

"Yes ;  one  of  them,  at  least.  As  yet  I  know 
but  one  person  at  Deadman's  Bar,  but  I  expect 
he  will  be  there  to  welcome  me." 

"Oh,  yer  husband  will  be  ther !" 

Mr.  McManus  endeavored  to  throw  an  ex- 
pression of  arch  interrogation  into  his  staring 
face ;  but,  meeting  the  scarcely  concealed  smile 
in  the  unconcerned  gray  eyes  of  his  companion, 
blushed  deeply,  and  vigorously  explored  the 
recesses  of  his  ear  with  his  second  finger. 

"No,  sir — my  brother,"  said  the  woman,  qui- 
etly, and,  beyond  the  demure  smile  on  her  lips 
and  eyes,  without  seeming  conscious  of  his 
craftiness.  "  My  brother,  and  not  my  husband. 
I  cannot  say,  though,  that  he  really  expects 
me,"  she  added,  slowly,  "for  I  hardly  knew 
myself  when  I  should  reach  Deadman's,  and 
so  did  not  write  him." 

"Yes,  jest  so,"  said  Mr.  McManus,  thought- 
fully; "e-e-e-I  forgit,  what  did  you  say  was 
yer  brother's  name?" 

"Rankine,  sir — Jack  Rankine." 

For  th£  moment,  Mr.  McManus  seemed  as- 
tonished, but  the  expression  signally  failed  to 
fix  itself  for  any  length  of  time  upon  his  blank- 
ness. 

"Jack  Rankine — Jack  Rankine's  sister,"  he 
repeated,  slowly. 

He  fell  into  a  sort  of  abstract  reverie  that 
almost  utterly  precluded  speech;  but,  from 
time  to  time,  as  if  communing  with  himself,  he 
softly  observed: 


566 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


"Well,  well,  who'd  a  thought  it?  Jack  Ran- 
kine's  sister!" 

"Then  you  know  my  brother?"  She  turned 
directly  toward  him  and  spoke  somewhat  sharp- 
ly, for  he  had  seemingly  forgotten  her  in  the 
profoundness  of  his  abstraction. 

"E-eh?  Y-yes—  jest  so,"  said  Mr.  McMan- 
ifs,  striving,  with  some  confusion,  to  recover 
his  composure.  Then,  after  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation, he  dropped  his  eyes  searchingly  on  his 
gloves,  tugged  nervously  at  them,  blinked  rap- 
idly once  or  twice,  and  continued : 

"Yes,  miss,  I  does  know  your  brother — 
knowed  him  nigh  onto  two  year.  But  I  never 
knowed  he  hed  a  sister— thet  is,  one  o'  your 
kind." 

He  paused  again,  and  then  said : 

"Miss  Rankine?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Ye're  a  goin'  to  Deadman's— an'  to  stay?" 

"Yes." 

"Ye  don't  think,  now,"  said  Mr.  McManus, 
glancing  furtively  into  her  face,  and 'nervously 
rubbing  the  top  of  his  leg — "ye  don't  think  as 
how  ye  could  go  back,  do  ye  ?" 

"Go  back?"  she  said,  inquiringly.  "I— I 
hardly  understand  you,  sir." 

"Yes,  back  again  with  me  on  the  stage;  not 
all  the  way  back  to  yer  folks,  but  to  Nimshew, 
or  Oroville,  or  some  such  situation?  Not  if  I 
was  to  look  arter  you  an'  get  you  settled  ?  And 
drop  in  occasionally,  and  bring  a  little  money 
and  things,  so  you  could  get  along?"  he  con- 
tinued, still  twisting  and  winking,  as  if  physical- 
ly laboring  to  settle  himself  into  a  fuller  mental 
appreciation  of  the  situation. 

There  was  an  awkward  pause.  The  woman 
edged  a  little  farther  away  from  him,  blushed, 
and  apparently  sought  within  herself  for  self- 
support.  The  feminine  quickness  to  recognize 
an  insult  was  evidently  at  odds  with  the  fem- 
inine disbelief  in  the  motive  or  capacity  of  such 
a  man  to  offer  one. 

"I  am  a  stranger,  sir,  to  your  Californian 
ways,"  she  answered,  somewhat  tremulously, 
"and  I  hardly  know  how  to  understand  you. 
You  surely  do  not  mean " 

Mr.  McManus  left  off  rubbing  his  leg,  trans- 
ferred his  attention  to  his  ear,  carefully  traced 
out  several  folds  in  it  with  his  second  ringer, 
and  quietly  ignored  the  imputation. 

"Miss  Rankine,"  he  said,  slowly  pinching  up 
his  chin  between  his  thumb  and  forefinger  as 
he  spoke,  "  I  will  further  explain  what  I  had  in 
mind.  Ye  see,  ther's  a  house  down  here  at 
Marysville  as  belongs  to  me.  It  ain't  a  very 
purty  house  or  a  very  big  one;  but  if  it  was 
cleaned  up  some,  and  had  a  floor  put  in,  and  a 
little  whitewash  and  furnitur'  invested,  it  ed  be 


quite  gayly  and  cheerful.  And  I  was  a  thinkin' 
that  perhaps  you  would  be  likin'  to  go  back 
with  me  and  take  up  your  residence  there  as 
the  respected  head,  so  to  speak,  of  that  ther 
cabin.  I  don't  have  no  use  fur  money,  and " 

"And  you  would  actually  ask  me  to  share  it 
with  you  ?"  she  broke  in,  excitedly. 

Mr.  McManus's  eyes  blinked  rapidly,  and,  as 
far  as  his  capabilities  allowed,  he  appeared 
somewhat  abashed. 

"I  wouldn't  a  mentioned  it,  Miss,"  he  said 
slowly,  "ef  I  hadn't  thought  it  ed  perhaps  be 
doin'  you  a  favor.  But,  ye  see,  I  ain't  got  no  use 
for  it,  and " 

He  paused  again.  But  the  pause  added  lit- 
tle of  clearness  to  the  aspect  of  the  situation. 
In  truth,  this  generous  avowal  of  pecuniary 
disinterestedness  related,  a  fastidious  frigidity 
seemed  to  diverge  from  the  primness  of  her 
garments  that  no  mute  testimony  of  his  neg- 
ative features  could  satisfactorily  thaw.  Mr. 
McManus  felt  it,  and  meekly  protesting  against 
the  insinuation,  offered  a  feeble  attempt  at  a 
justification. 

"Ye  see,  Miss  Rankine,"  he  said,  "as  I  ob- 
served before,  I  have  knowed  your  brother  for 
some  time,  and  I  had  noticed  some  little  no- 
tions in  him — peculiarities,  you  might  call  'em — 
which  somehow  seemed  to  me  to  onfit  him  for 
the  performance — to  the  fullest  extent — of  the 
onerous  duties  and  labors  devolvin'  upon  a  fam- 
ily man." 

"Jack,"  Miss  Rankine  interrupted,  "always 
bore  a  good  reputaton  at  home,  and  is  no  doubt 
better  than  the  imaginations  of  some  people 
have  pictured  him." 

But  Mr.  McManus's  eyes  were  blinking  into 
vacancy,  and  he  proceeded  as  if  no  interruption 
had  occurred : 

"Yes,  peculiarities — a  habit  of  drinkin'  whis- 
ky and  reposin'  permisquis  in  the  streets;  a 
tendency  to  hold  a  full  hand  at  all  games,  and 
a  disposition  to  fight  if  disturbed  in  'em ;  a  con- 
stitutional delight  in  habitooal  rest  and  medita- 
tion as  compared  with  an  arduous  longin'  for 
continooal  work ;  and  the  onsettled  state  of  his 
income,  as  applied  to  a  regular  livin' — seemed 
to  indicate,"  continued  Mr.  McManus  with  so- 
ber thoughtfulness,  "that  he  wasn't— altogeth- 
er— the  ijeal  purvider  for  a  family  hearth." 

Miss  Rankine,  sitting  rigidly  upright,  with 
her  face  turned  slightly  toward  him,  grew  a 
shade  paler  at  this,  but  did  not  speak. 

"For  these  reasons,"  went  on  Mr.  McManus, 
still  intent  upon  his  gloves,  "and  also  that  the 
we-men  in  that  ther  location  is  somewhat  dif- 
ferent from  you  in  point  of  general  respectabil- 
ity, I  calkerlated  it  would  perhaps  be  better  for 
you  not  to  reside  at  Deadman's." 


MR.  HIRAM  M'MANUS. 


567 


He  stopped  speaking  and  looked  stealthily 
into  her  face.  Miss  Rankine  had  turned  di- 
rectly from  him,  and  in  the  vivid  glare  of  the 
morning  sun  was  shading  her  face  with  her 
hand.  She  sat  there,  leaning  slightly  forward, 
her  eyes  following  the  dusty  perspective  of  the 
road  ahead,  that  now  crept  close  upon  the 
shadow  of  the  nearer  belt  of  pines.  Already 
here  and  there  an  outstraggling  clump  had  cast 
a  fitful  shade  on  her  white  pale  face,  on  her 
gray  dress,  on  her  slender  upraised  hand;  but 
all  this  as  yet  had  been  occasional  and  varying. 
Mr.  McManus's  eyes  left  his  gloves  and  fol- 
lowed her  somewhat  curiously. 

"Well!  "he  said  finally. 

The  straggling  shadows  multiplied — came 
thick  upon  them ;  the  line  of  pines  crept  nearer, 
then  overtook  the  way.  The  last  white  play  of 
direct  light  gleamed  through  the  thickening 
foliage,  rested  lovingly  on  Miss  Rankine's  pure 
young  forehead,  tinged  momentarily  her  eyes 
with  somewhat  of  its  brightness,  lingered  rud- 
dily  on  her  brown  hair,  faltered,  and  slipped 
backward,  and  was  gone.  The  shadow  had 
fallen  utterly  upon  them.  In  the  coolness  and 
quiet,  Miss  Rankine's  voice  sounded  somewhat 
constrained. 

"I  thank  you,  sir — for  your  kindness — but  I 
shall  go  to  Deadman's." 

Mr.  McManus's  face  grew  blank  with  disap- 
pointment. He  would  have  urged  her  further, 
but  he  dared  not.  Discouraged,  he  turned  his 
attention  to  his  horses. 

"Is  there — not  one — good  woman  at  Dead- 
man's?" asked  Miss  Rankine,  suddenly. 

"  Never  hevin' inquired  particular,"  answered 
Mr.  McManus,  with  conscientious  circumspec- 
tion, "  I  can't  say ;  but  there  may  be.  There's 
perhaps  some  we -men  ther  that  I  don't  know. 
But,  speakin'  from  personal  experience,"  he 
added,  thoughtfully,  "  I  should  say  that  the  less 
ye  confided  in  'em  the  better." 

"And  does  my  brother  ever " 

Miss  Rankine's  voice  suddenly  gave  out,  but 
her  earnest  face  was  still  turned  seriously  to- 
ward him.  Mr.  McManus,  struggling  with  his 
gloves,  with  well  meant  sympathy  essayed  mas- 
culine comfort. 

"Ther  ain't  another  woman  in  the  mines, 
Miss  Rankine,  as  ed  do  as  you're  doin',  not  for 
the  moral  salvation  of  a  army  of  brothers.  I 
ain't  exactly  a  woman,  nor  the  style  of  a  man 
that  a  decent  female  ed  be  likely  to  approach 
fur  much  sympathy  or  feelin'.  But,  afore  God, 
Miss  Rankine,  I'll  do  more  for  you  than  for 
any  woman  in  California.  I  can't  tell  ye  as  how 
ye'll  have  an  easy  time  up  ther  at  the  Bar,  but 
here's  my  hand  that  ye'll  never  want,  and  that 
ye  can  depend  on  me  for  help  if  ever  ye  find 


yourself  in  trouble.  And  ez  fur  we -men,"  he 
added  slowly,  "perhaps  the  less  ye  has  to  do 
with  'em  the  better." 

He  turned  abruptly  and  looked  searchingly 
into  the  box  at  his  feet.  When  he  had  seem- 
ingly completed  the  inquiry,  he  turned  again 
and,  with  his  old  diffidence  of  manner,  remark- 
ed that  it  was  "nigh  onto  twenty  mile  to  the 
Bar,"  smiled  vaguely,  gurgled,  and  relapsed  into 
a  total  and  uninterrupted  silence,  that  sternly 
maintained  itself  during  the  remainder  of  the 
journey. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Earlier  than  1852,  before  civilization  stepped 
in  and  spoiled  things,  there  were  few  scenes 
more  rich  in  natural  beauty  and  general  pictur- 
esqueness  of  effect  than  the  one  which  Dead- 
man's Bar  presented  to  the  casual  observer. 
But  even  in  1852  its  inhabitants  said  it  was  a 
pretty  place — a  remarkably  pretty  place — and 
certainly  they  ought  to  know.  It  is  situated  in 
a  saucer -shaped  hollow,  by  a  river,  on  a  side- 
hill  made  up  of  gold-bearing  gravel,  from  which 
side-hill  Deadman's  acquires  a  migratory  min- 
ing population  in  flannel  shirts,  a  tolerably  con- 
stant immigration  of  professional  gamblers  and 
hurdy-gurdies,  a  pleasant  atmosphere  of  onions, 
bacon,  profanity,  and  smoke,  a  numerous  out- 
lay of  abandoned  shafts  in  unlooked-for  places, 
which  cheerfully  and  impartially  take  in  the 
stranger  and  the  unwary,  together  with  a  great 
many  other  commercial  and  social  advantages. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  fine  soil  in  and  about 
Deadman's,  and  yet  it  is  not  altogether  the  kind 
of  a  place  for  agricultural  pursuits  either.  Fine- 
ness in  soil  is  a  very  desirable  quality  in  sta- 
tionary real  estate ;  but  in  ground  that  shifts  its 
features,  so  to  speak,  and  is  guilty  of  occasion- 
ally changing  its  spots,  its  benefits  are  some- 
what more  difficult  to  appreciate.  In  winter  it 
goes  slopping  about  in  oozy,  treacherous  pud- 
dles, and  plashes  with  unwarrantable  freedom 
the  sturdy  boots  and  slip -shod  ankles  of  the 
male  and  female  population,  but  in  summer  it 
parches  and  crumbles  up,  and  becomes  red 
dust.  Now,  red  is  a  very  good  color  in  its  way, 
especially  in  bricks,  but  certainly  it  is  not  be- 
coming to  scenery,  and  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  beauty  of  Deadman's  suffers  somewhat 
in  consequence. 

Deadman's  is  a  social  place — extremely  so- 
cial—a little  broad  in  manners  perhaps,  but  not 
injured  at  all  by  that.  It  is  altogether  a  mis- 
take to  fancy  that  freedom  in  deportment  is  in- 
admissible to  good  manners.  Wheels  run  more 
smoothly  when  they  are  not  clogged  by  a  brake, 


568 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


and  why  shouldn't  society?  The  inhabitants  of 
Deadman's  are  eager  to  assert  that  there  exists 
no  better  class  of  people  in  the  State  of  Cal- 
ifornia, and  are  willing  to  make  good  the  asser- 
tion with  a  revolver,  which  fact,  of  course,  goes 
far  toward  silencing  this  objection.  The  scen- 
ery at  Deadman's  is  peculiarly  striking.  Other 
places  perhaps  may  display  individual  features 
more  picturesque  and  varied.  But  there  are 
some  things  about  the  scenery  at  Deadman's 
that  cannot  be  met  with  in  the  grandest  views 
of  Europe.  Yet  it  is  the  general  effect  rather 
than  the  individual  features  that  challenges  the 
attention.  There  is  such  an  intimate  corre- 
spondence in  its  make-up.  Some  people  might 
call  this  a  sameness,  but  undoubtedly  this  is  a 
mistake,  and  it  is  only  a  remarkable  corre- 
spondence. There  are  no  angular  nor  sudden 
changes  here  to  disturb  the  eye.  The  manner 
in  which  the  color  of  the  dusty  oaks  and  pines 
shades  off  into  the  dry  grass  on  the  slopes,  and 
mingles  with  the  tints  of  the  cracked  and  yel- 
low soil  near  the  river,  is  clearly  a  witness  to 
the  neatness  of  the  way  that  Nature  has  here 
performed  her  work.  Actually  it  can  hardly  be 
told  where  the  foliage  leaves  off  and  the  soil 
begins.  The  effect  is  hightened,  too,  by  the 
assistance  art  has  rendered  nature.  The  idea  of 
fraying  out  the  houses  in  different  directions  so 
that  the  corners  and  eaves  should  stand  to  the 
street  like  saw-teeth  is  uncommonly  unique  in 
design,  and  peculiarly  startling  and  happy  in 
effect.  There  is  a  fine,  free,  devil-may-care  ex- 
pression, too,  about  the  fences  and  roads  that 
is  wholly  in  keeping  with  the  general  effect,  and 
familiarly  suggests  the  appropriateness  of  its 
name. 

Perhaps  it  was  lack  of  appreciative  soul,  or 
perhaps  preoccupation,  that  led  Miss  Rankine, 
on  the  morning  following  her  arrival,  to  turn 
her  back  on  this  aggregation  of  beauties  and 
pursue  one  of  the  outwinding  paths  across  the 
ridge  till  out  of  sight  and  hearing  of  the  Bar. 
There  she  stopped  and  looked  around  her.  She 
was  standing  near  the  hollow  of  a  great  up- 
rooted pine,  and  apparently  no  other  human  be- 
ings were  in  the  world,  except,  perhaps,  the 
men  who  were  busy  below  on  the  river.  She 
walked  slowly  on.  As  she  climbed  the  hill  the 
whole  country  might  have  been  uninhabited — 
so  desolate  and  still  did  it  seem.  She  came 
suddenly  upon  a  cabin,  but  the  doors  were 
open,  the  windows  staring  and  unglazed,  the 
walls  warped  and  brown  with  exposure,  and  the 
whole  habitation  melancholy  with  a  flavor  of 
decay.  A  brown  snow-bird  flitted  silently  down 
and  peered  curiously  in  at  the  open  window ;  a 
chipmunk,  crouched  and  rigid,  halted  expect- 
antly on  the  doorstep ;  the  harsh  quaver  of  a 


locust  floated  lazily  here  and  there  through  the 
heated  atmosphere,  and  the  breeze  bent  faintly 
down  through  the  long  aisles  of  pines  with  the 
hoarse  and  muffled  accent  of  a  human  sigh. 
The  solitude  was  complete.  It  pervaded  every- 
thing and  depressed  everything. 

Miss  Rankine,  full  of  the  loneliness  of  her 
position,  felt  it.  Though  conscious  only  of  the 
stillness,  she  started  timidly.  Vastness  of  sol- 
itude produces  awe.  It  frightens,  and  is  con- 
sequently unbearable.  She  listened  breathless- 
ly. Even  the  companionship  of  the  Bar,  how- 
ever uncongenial,  was  preferable  to  this.  It  at 
least  was  human.  The  breeze  grew  stronger, 
the  trees  bent  lower,  and  the  sigh  breathed 
hoarser  till  it  deepened  into  a  roar.  With  a 
sudden  impulse  of  feminine  fear  she  stooped 
sidelong,  grasped  her  skirts  in  her  hand,  and, 
without  a  glance  to  right  or  left,  fled  precip- 
itately back  toward  the  camp. 

A  return  to  the  Bar,  however,  offered  little  in 
the  way  of  consolation.  A  population  whose 
standard  of  ethics  culminates  in  the  deification 
of  the  man  butchering  the  greatest  number  of 
his  fellow  men,  and  whose  intellect  never  rises 
higher  than  the  columns  of  the  last  newspaper, 
scarcely  presented  the  delicacy  of  perception 
necessary  to  sympathy  with  the  female  mind. 
It  was  well  meaning,  but  too  masculine. 

Miss  Rankine  was  indeed  the  sole  respecta- 
ble representative  of  her  sex  at  Deadman's; 
which  fact,  however,  should  be  construed  as  a 
peculiar  general  deficiency  of  the  times,  rather 
than  a  personal  disadvantage  attaching  to  this 
particular  place.  But,  beyond  this  sense  of 
isolation,  she  had  little  to  complain  of.  True 
to  his  word,  on  reaching  the  Bar,  Mr.  Mc- 
Manus  had  sought  and  found  her  brother.  I 
regret  to  say  that  he  was  discovered  in  a  state 
of  tranquil  inebriety  much  more  creditable  to 
his  physical  than  his  moral  philosophy.  A  lib- 
eral application  of  cold  water  reawakened  in 
him  the  fraternal  feeling  necessary  for  a  con- 
ception of  the  situation.  I  have  no  words  to 
describe  the  meetings  and  greetings  that  fol- 
lowed. Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  professed  pen- 
itence for  the  past,  gave  whole-souled  promises 
for  the  future,  and,  as  earnest  of  the  sincerity 
of  his  intentions,  provided  for  his  sister  and 
applied  himself  somewhat  steadily  to  work. 
Before  the  next  night,  it  was  generally  known 
throughout  Deadman's  Bar  that  John  Rankine 
had  become  an  advocate  of  labor,  being  driven 
to  amend  his  ways  by  the  unexpected  arrival  of 
a  sister  from  the  East.  It  is  to  be  understood 
that  this  was  a  matter  of  no  small  comment  and 
astonishment  among  his  late  sporting  friends. 
At  first,  the  inclination  was  to  think  it  a  mis- 
take. But  later  on,  when  the  novelty  had 


MR.   HIRAM  M'MANUS. 


569 


somewhat  worn  off  and  Miss  Rankine's  stay 
had  grown  into  an  accomplished  fact,  the  feel- 
ing became  prevelant  that  it  was  a  misfortune 
that  had  fallen  upon  him  by  reason  of  some 
occult  moral  iniquity  embodied  in  his  being  at 
all  related  to  a  woman ;  and  which  was,  in  an 
obscure  sort  of  a  way,  a  warning  to  them,  and 
a  judgment  on  him.  The  feeling  ran  high  in 
some  quarters.  In  truth,  there  was  generally 
an  ill  concealed  opinion  that  the  restraint  im 
posed  by  the  female  will,  unused  to  the  little 
freedoms  and  liberties  of  the  West,  presented  a 
spirit  radically  opposed  to  the  proper  develop- 
ment of  California,  and  was  something  no  truly 
independent  masculine  mind  ought  for  a  mo- 
ment to  contemplate  or  allow. 

And  so,  with   many  earnest  promises  and 
many  grave  protestations  of  penitence  for  his 
condition,  did  this  Prodigal  of  Deadman's  Bar 
return  to  the  paths  of  rectitude.     There  were 
occasional  relapses,  involving  the  overthrow  of 
all  his  good  resolutions;  there  were  frequent 
changes  of  base  in  the  nature  and  quality  of 
his  occupations,  involving  uncertain  periods  of 
intermitted  idleness;   there  were  grave  suspi- 
cions that  he  sometimes  played  upon  the  sym- 
pathetic masculinity  of  the  Bar  by  pathetic  al- 
lusions to  his  sister's  sex,  and  direct  appeals 
from  his  own  incompetency  to  their  sympa- 
thetic feelings.     But  through  all  this,  and  in 
spite  of  all  this,  the  certainty  that  he  acted 
with  some  outline  of  thoroughly  honest  effort 
steadily  remained.     Of  course,  in  a  distrustful 
community  like  that  of  Deadman's   Bar  —  a 
community  among  whom  he  had  before  lived 
so  riotously — a  community  untrammeled  by 
the  restraints  of  society  and  wherein  every  man 
was  a  precedent  unto  himself — in  such  a  com- 
munity the  belief  in  Rankine's  reformation  did 
not  obtain  the  fullest  credence.     There  was  but 
one  exception  to  the  general  skepticism — Hiram 
McManus.     It  was  he  who  always  believed  in 
the  purity  of  Rankine's  motives ;  it  was  he  who 
overlooked  the  short -comings  in  his  efforts;  it 
was  he  to  whom  the  story  of  that  sister's  sex  and 
need  were  most  often  pleaded ;  it  was  he  who 
came  to  largely  furnish  the  means  that  served 
for  their  support;   and  it  was  he  who,  driving 
his  team,  alone,  between  Deadman's  and  Oro- 
ville,  feeling  assured  of  her  comfort  through 
his  instrumentality,  reflected  guiltily  on  her 
charms  and  again  and  again  repeated  to  him- 
self, with  reverent  diffidence,  her  name,  until 
the  sound  brought  up  an  unwonted  glow  to  his 
rugged  cheeks  and  sent  the  bashful  color  man- 
tling over  all  his  honest,  homely  face. 

There  was  poverty  at  Deadman's  Bar.  The 
year's  feverish  labor  expended  on  its  soil  had 
failed  in  producing  a  correlative  golden  harvest. 


Its  toil  seemed  fruitlessly  cast  upon  the  waters, 
to  be  profitable,  if  at  all,  only  after  many  days. 
The  American  had  lost  the  "lead"  upon  its 
ledge.  The  river  claims  had  yielded  very  light- 
ly. The  dam  which  was  to  have  brought  fort- 
une to  so  many  hopeful  men,  by  turning  aside 
the  river  from  its  bed  of  golden  sands,  had 
yielded  to  the  assaults  of  a  sudden  autumn 
freshet  and  been  swept  away,  a  hopeless  wreck. 
It  was  broke  times  and  a  hard  year  with 
the  camp.  Prices  rose  and  provisions  became 
scarce.  The  dealers  at  Oroville,  on  whom  they 
were  largely  dependent  for  supplies,  recognized 
afar  off  the  outcroppings  of  their  failure  and  be- 
gan to  strongly  discourage  credit.  With  the 
reverses  of  the  camp  came  an  inclination  to- 
ward emigration. 

"  I've  been  eatin'  these  yere  choke-plums  fur 
three  days,"  remarked  one  unfortunate  citizen, 
"so  as  to  draw  up  my  stomach  to  fit  my  grub. 
There's  places  and  places ;  and  when  it  comes 
to  this,  I'm  a  goin'  to  pull  out." 

The  expression  was  logical  and  the  example 
contagious.  In  the  next  few  weeks,  many  oth- 
ers folded  their  blankets  and  silently  tramp- 
ed away.  Yet,  a  large  number  still  held  out, 
and  finally,  with  starvation  in  their  faces  and 
penury  in  their  claims,  went  stolidly  on  with 
their  work,  in  the  hope  that  something  would 
turn  up  to  change  the  luck  and  save  the  camp 
from  desertion.  And  it  did. 

Hiram  McManus  had  become  more  and 
more  interested  in  Alice  Rankine.  He  had 
pondered  over  his  feeling  of  respect  for  her 
till  it  had  grown  into  one  of  the  warmest  at- 
tachment. But  his  affection  was  so  general  in 
its  nature,  and  there  came  to  be  so  very  much 
of  it,  that  it  stretched  out  far  beyond  the  per- 
son of  its  primary  legitimate  object,  and  end- 
ed finally  by  including  the  whole  of  the  Bar 
wherein  she  resided.  He  still  had  faith  in  the 
value  of  its  resources,  and  watched  with  grief 
the  decadence  of  its  prosperity.  He  had  seen 
matters  go  on  from  worse  to  worst,  and  now 
yearned  over  the  camp  as  a  father  might  over 
a  starving  child.  It  was  he  who  drove  off  si- 
lently from  the  Bar  and  told  to  the  people  of 
Oroville  the  tale  of  an  extraordinary  strike  at 
Deadman's — "the  richest  thing  in  the  country; 
just  full  of  dust  and  any  amount  of  it."  It  was 
he  who  returned  from  that  trip  laden  with  flour 
and  bacon  and  whisky  enough  to  last  the  camp 
a  month  ;  it  was  he  who  negotiated  the  sale  of 
the  American  mine  to  Eastern  speculators — 
the  American,  which  had  never  paid  a  cent  of 
dividends,  and  whose  only  value  lay  in  its  as- 
sessments ;  and  it  was  he  who  carried  words  of 
encouragement  and  pecuniary  aid  to  individual 
sufferers,  tided  over  the  disappointments  of  that 


570 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


winter,  broke  the  streak  of  bad  luck,  and  set 
the  camp  afloat  on  the  spring -tide  that  led  to 
prosperity.  It  is  natural  that  he  should  have 
become  a  center  of  interest  to  the  Bar,  and  I 
think  that  sooner  or  later  the  most  of  them  came 
to  love  him.  Certain  it  was  that  he  came  to  be 
considered  the  camp's  adviser  and  guardian, 
consulted  on  all  matters  of  urgency  and  im- 
portance, and  figured  largely  in  the  character 
of  savior  in  the  tales  recounted  by  the  Bar  of 
their  hardships  lately  past. 

But  Fortune,  that  lines  the  pocket  of  a  man 
with  dollars,  often  robs  his  head  of  common 
sense.  And,  if  the  heaviness  of  Mr.  McMan- 
us's  wallet  had  now  increased,  there  was  a  cor- 
responding lightness  manifest  in  the  weight  of 
his  mental  capacity.  This  was  no  doubt  due 
to  his  being  in  love.  There  is  a  forlornness 
that  comes  with  that  sensation  which  tends  to 
make  a  man  ridiculous  at  any  time.  Mr.  Mc- 
Manus  had  no  particular  love  of  solitude,  as  a 
rule,  but  now  he  found  himself  shunning  all 
companionship  when  not  on  duty.  The  bash- 
fulness  of  his  nature,  and  his  own  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things,  had  shown  him  at  once  the 
impossibility  of  a  material  realization  of  his 
dreams.  Not,  however,  that  this  added  any- 


thing to  his  comfort.  The  pangs  of  unrequited 
love  are  something  that  comes  alike  to  all.  I 
dare  say  that  they  were  pretty  much  the  same 
to  the  princely,  melancholy  Dane,  as  they  were 
to  Mr.  McManus.  Hamlet,  indeed,  had  a  power 
of  eloquence  and  a  gift  of  education  that  Mr. 
McManus  had  not ;  but  the  latter,  staring  gloom- 
ily into  the  future,  with  his  good  qualities  over- 
shadowed by  the  cloud  of  his  coarseness  and 
ignorance,  saw  there  pretty  much  what  his  more 
polished  and  accomplished  fellow -sufferer  ob- 
served under  similar  circumstances — a  sorrow- 
ful, useless  jumble  of  a  world,  in  which  it  cer- 
tainly was  worth  no  sane  man's  while  to  bear 
fardels  any  longer. 

Those  were  drinking  times,  and  most  men 
drank  hard.  Mr.  McManus  had  always  been 
moderate  in  his  indulgences.  But,  as  his  pas- 
sion grew  upon  him,  he  drank  deeply  and  more 
deeply  to  drown  its  bitterness  and  pain.  A 
pure  love  for  a  pure  woman  acted  phenomenal- 
ly to  accomplish  his  degradation.  Each  day 
he  drifted  lower  and  lower.  It  took  some  time 
to  render  him  unreliable.  Finally,  however,  he 
dropped  from  his  position  on  the  stage  line  and 
stranded  completely  in  the  saloons  at  Dead- 
man's  Bar.  WARREN  CHENEY. 


[CONCLUDED  IN  NEXT  NUMBER.] 


NOTE   BOOK. 


IT  is  WITH  A  SATISFACTION,  perhaps  par- 
donable under  the  circumstances,  that  we  note 
the  completion  of  the  third  volume  of  this  mag- 
azine. To  those  pessimists  whose  dismal  fore- 
bodings have  not  been  realized  it  is,  perhaps, 
proper  to  admit  that,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
presence  of  an  unsuspected  amount  of  literary 
talent  on  this  Coast,  their  prognostications 
might  have  been  well  founded.  Any  one  who 
will  take  the  trouble  to  turn  through  the  pages 
of  the  three  volumes  now  published,  will  see 
that  THE  CALIFORNIAN  has  both  found  and 
created  its  field.  That  field  is,  perhaps,  a  more 
modest  one  than  many  of  the  friends  of  the 
magazine  would  have  desired.  And  yet,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  an  ambitious  one.  No  nation  was 
ever  great  which  was  not,  above  all  things,  in- 
dividual. No  literature  was  ever  great  which 
was  not,  above  all  things,  instinct  with  the  life 
and  individuality  of  some  one  people.  It  mat- 
ters little  how  insignificant  the  race,  politically ; 
if  it  is  strong,  healthful,  looking  inward  and 
not  outward  for  its  ideals,  self-reliant,  origi- 
nal— it  is  the  basis  upon  which  may  be  built  a 


literature  equally  strong  and  healthful.  The 
books  of  any  nation  are  the  best  indices  of  its 
character.  And  no  people  who  were  not 
great  ever  produced  a  great  book.  They  may 
not  been  great  in  every  direction,  but  in  the 
elements  which  entered  into  that  book  they  had 
individuality,  and  moral  if  not  intellectual 
grandeur.  And  it  is  a  negation  of  the  moral 
or  intellectual  force  of  a  people  to  assert  that 
they  are  incapable  of  producing  a  creditable 
literature.  It  is  perhaps  this  fact  that  our  pes- 
simistic friends  overlooked.  In  the  assumption 
that  life  on  this  Coast  is  sturdy,  independent, 
and  idiocratic,  and  must  and  will  find  its  ex- 
pression in  literature,  and  eventually  in  art, 
THE  CALIFORNIAN  saw  and  sees  its  opportu- 
nity. 


IN  THIS  ASSUMPTION  it  claims  to  have  been 
justified.  There  are  individuals,  of  course,  here 
as  elsewhere,  who  do  not  stand  for  themselves. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  they  stand 
for  anything.  They  lean.  They  look  always, 


DRAMA   AND  MUSIC. 


"with  supplication  in  their  eyes,"  for  approval. 
They  are  distrustful  of  themselves  and  of  their 
surroundings.  They  import  their  ideals.  The 
sun  rises  in  the  east;  to  them,  therefore,  it 
loses  somewhat  of  its  glory  before  it  shines  in 
the  west.  And,  to  go  back  to  our  pessimistic 
friends,  are  they  not  of  this  sort?  Do  they  not 
imagine  that  a  given  thing  must  be  a  failure  be- 
cause it  is  not  and  can  never  be  what  some 
other  thing  is,  elsewhere  and  under  different 
conditions?  However  this  may  be,  certainly 
the  majority  of  people  here  are  not  of  this 
make. 


A  JUSTIFICATION  OF  SECTIONAL  CONCEIT 
is  not  what  is  attempted.  But  it  cannot  be  too 
often  repeated  that  a  community  which  copies 
another  will  never  amount  to  much.  For  a 
copy  is  never  as  good  as  an  original,  in  char- 
acter, if  in  art.  A  borrowed  ideal  is  nearly  al- 
ways a  sham  ideal.  In  California  there  are 
undiscovered  mines  of  literature.  There  are 
stories  to  tell  and  songs  to  sing.  Our  fauna  and 
flora  are  peculiar.  Our  climate  is  different. 
Our  history  is  romantic  and  suggestive.  Here 
at  least  there  are  new  things  under  the  sun. 
Here  at  least  science  shall  find  new  problems, 
art  shall  find  new  models,  literature  shall  find 
new  studies.  Here  at  least  tradition  should  not 
weigh  down  genius.  But  how  shall  we  get  the 
best  good  from  these  opportunities — by  turning 
to  the  east  in  mute  submission  to  other  stand- 
ards, or  by  working  out  our  own  destiny  by 
virtue  of  our  own  strong  manhood  and  woman- 
hood? There  are  thousands  of  young  men  and 
women  growing  up  upon  the  Coast.  They  are 
of  the  same  stock  that  has  given  us  all  that  is 
best  in  English  literature.  It  is  a  reasonable 
assumption  that  now  and  then  one  will  possess 
the  divine  gift  which  we  call  genius.  Many 
will  possess  talent.  Shall  they  be  taught  that 
success  lies  only  in  writing  of  life  in  conditions 
which  they  have  never  seen?  Or  shall  they  be 
shown  that,  here  and  now,  the  human  senti- 


ments, emotions,  loves,  hatreds,  ambitions,  are 
awaiting,  under  fresh  conditions,  their  vital  em- 
bodiment in  the  pages  of  a  new  literature?' 


THIS  SUGGESTS,  INCIDENTALLY,  one  answer 
to  a  question  which  every  editor  has  propound- 
ed to  him  constantly  by  young  writers:  "Will 
you  kindly  suggest  to  me  what  to  write  about 
and  how  to  treat  it?"  The  asking  of  such  a 
question  indicates  the  uselessness  of  attempt- 
ing to  answer  it,  and  yet  the  post  brings  it  reg- 
ularly. I  can  as  little  conceive  of  one  person 
suggesting  what  another  should  write,  as  of  his 
suggesting  what  the  other  should  think.  But, 
after  all,  that  is  not  infrequent.  There  is  one 
venerable  answer  to  the  above  and  kindred 
questions,  which  is  found  in  most  rhetorics, 
and  which  is  doled  out  to  young  writers  as  the 
highest  wisdom  in  the  formation  of  style*.  It 
is,  substantially,  "Study  the  most  approved 
models,  and  form  your  style  after  theirs."  1 1 
would  not,  perhaps,  be  the  least  favor  one  could 
do  a  young  writer  to  warn  him  to  beware  of 
such  advice.  If  there  is  one  thing  which  is 
more  vicious  than  another,  it  is  "forming  style" 
after  any  one.  The  imitation  weakens  what- 
ever natural  force  there  was  originally  in  the 
imitator.  Better  advice  would  be  to  pay  no  at- 
tention to  style.  Immerse  yourself  in  your  sub- 
ject. Get  a  clear  idea  of  what  you  have  to  say ; 
then  say  it,  not  as  you  imagine  some  one  else 
would,  nor  as  you  think  it  sounds  most  finely, 
but  in  simple,  direct  manner,  as  you  think  it. 
If  you  wish  to  describe  an  object,  think  of  that, 
not  of  the  rhetoric  you  employ.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  estimate  the  damage  writers  do  to  their 
style  by  being  over-careful  of  it,  by  diverting 
their  mind  from  what  they  are  saying  to  the 
consideration  of  how  it  shall  be  said.  The  com- 
monest man  will  use  a  clear  and  direct  style  in 
describing  what  he  knows  thoroughly.  His 
words  come  unconsciously  while  he  is  busy 
with  the  idea.  It  is  better  always  to  let  the 
idea  speak. 


DRAMA  AND   MUSIC. 


It  is  long  since  such  a  musical  treat  has  been 
offered  San  Francisco  as  in  the  recent  concerts 
of  the  Mendelssohn  Quintet  Club  of  Boston. 
Let  us  hope  it  will  be  equally  as  long  before 
distinguished  musical  talent  meets  again  in  this 
city  with  such  indifferent  popular  support.  In 
a  community  in  which  suddenly  acquired  wealth 


has  given  a  great  many  people  the  means  to 
surround  themselves  with  many  of  the  signs  of 
culture,  it  is  always  a  question  how  much  o 
what  is  genuine  there  is  behind  the  show.  In 
music,  for  example,  how  much  of  that  universal 
banging  of  pianos  by  all  our  young  girls  is  dic- 
tated by  a  genuine  love  of  music,  whether  in 


572 


THE    CAL1FORN1AN. 


the  girls  or  in  their  parents?  To  this  question 
the  miserable  attendance  at  the  Quintet  Club's 
concerts  is  a  sufficient  answer.  Of  their  four 
concerts  in  a  small  hall,  not  one  was  played  be- 
fore a  full  house.  Society  as  a  body  does  not 
go  to  concerts  unless  the  musicians,  through 
the  newspapers  or  otherwise,  have  somehow 
become  the  object  of  fashionable  talk,  so  that 
not  to  have  heard  them  becomes  the  dreaded 
sign  of  being  not  up  to  the  fashion.  As  for  the 
general  public,  in  spite  of  the  boasted  cosmo- 
politanism of  San  Francisco,  it  is  now  generally 
conceded  that  for  music  without  beer  they  have 
no  taste.  It  remained,  therefore,  for  a  very 
small  body  of  listeners,  who  lacked  nothing  in 
enthusiasm,  to  enjoy  the  musical  feast  that  was 
offered.  The  nature  of  the  concerted  pieces 
given  is  sufficiently  indicated  when  we  say  that 
among  them  were  Beethoven's  Quintet  in  C, 
Mendelssohn's  Quintet  in  A,  Schubert's  Quar- 
tet in  D  minor,  quartets  by  Raff  and  Rubin- 
stein, and  a  minuet  by  Boccherini — all  truly  in- 
terpreted by  the  players.  Besides  this,  four  of 
the  club  appeared  repeatedly  as  distinguished 
soloists — Mr.  Giese  on  the  violoncello,  Mr. 
Schnitzler  on  the  violin,  Mr.  Ryan  on  the  clari- 
nette,  and  Mr.  Schade  on  the  flute.  Whatever 
one  may  think  of  the  flute  and  the  clarinette,  it 
was  a  pleasure  to  hear  the  full  capacities  of 


those  instruments  brought  out  by  virtuosi  in 
a  manner  highly  instructive  to  any  young  mu- 
sicians who  may  be  studying  among  us.  Mr. 
Schnitzler  came  too  soon  after  Wilhelmj  for 
the  best  effect  of  his  talents.  He  is  an  admi- 
rable artist,  though  not  endowed  with  genius. 
That  quality,  if  it  exist  in  the  club,  belongs  to 
Mr.  Giese.  His  playing  on  the  'cello  was  truly 
wonderful.  Our  only  regret  was  that  he  chose 
rather  to  display  the  difficulties  of  that  instru- 
ment than  its  true  nature  and  deep  emotional 
expressiveness.  His  playing  was,  therefore,  at 
times  more  interesting  to  us  in  concerted  pieces 
than  in  the  solos  by  Servais  with  their  quick 
time  and  acrobatic  nimbleness.  Of  the  sing- 
ing of  Miss  Nellini  we  have  only  space  to  say 
that  the  purity  and  volume  of  her  voice  and 
her  fine  style  made  us  regret  that  she  is  not 
to  stay  permanently  with  us.  She  possesses 
the  uncommon  gift  of  being  alike  at  home  in 
the  execution  of  a  florid  operatic  air,  and  in 
expressing  the  deep  pathos  of  a  simple  ballad. 
Her  singing  does  not  depend  for  its  effect 
merely  upon  being  sweet  and  charming,  it  has 
also  the  power  to  take  command  of  the  listen- 
er's feelings,  and  carry  them  along  with  it. 
Miss  Nellini  will  be  remembered  with  pleas- 
ure by  all  who  attended  these  delightful  con- 
certs. 


ART   AND   ARTISTS. 


"Degrade  first  the  arts  if  you  would  mankind  de- 
grade." 

Not  a  picture  was  sold  at  the  last  art  exhibition. 
The  public  did  not  even  pay  the  artists  the  compliment 
of  going  to  see  their  work,  and,  poor  as  they  may  be, 
appreciation  is  always  worth  more  to  artists  than  money. 
But  money  is  not  to  be  scorned  just  at  present.  Artists 
cannot  live  on  air,  and  a  bit  of  white  lead  on  a  sable 
brush  would  prove  a  deadly  diet  for  the  most  robust  of 
them.  It  is  about  all  any  of  them  will  have  to  eat  soon. 
Local  pride  and  patriotism  have  fallen  below  zero.  We 
may  have  money,  but  we  have  none  but  imported  culti- 
vation, for  even  our  glorious  climate  cannot  cause  the 
home-made  article  to  thrive.  The  artists  who  had  pict- 
ures in  the  last  exhibition  are  vastly  worse  off  than  be- 
fore. The  majority  of  them  are  minus  canvas,  paints, 
and  about  three  months  of  hard  labor,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  internal  wear  and  tear  of  blighted  hopes  and 
blasted  expectations. 

The  Hanging  and  Rejection  Committees  have  had 
the  additional  disadvantage  of  several  solid  columns  of 
abuse  in  the  daily  papers.  A  rejection  committee  is  a 
necessity,  and  the  Art  Association  can  never  give  an- 
other exhibition  without  one.  It  would  be  as  absurd 
and  as  disastrous  to  exclude  no  pictures  as  it  would  be 
for  the  editor  of  a  magazine  to  print  all  the  trash  that 


is  sent  to  him  for  that  purpose.  Judging  from  a  partial 
exhibition  of  the  rejected  pictures  at  a  local  gallery,  no 
artists  were  excluded  this  time  save  a  few  of  the  notori- 
ously incompetent.  ' '  Hell  hath  no  fury  like  a  painter 
scorned,"  and  never  one  yet  was  so  wretchedly  ineffi- 
cient that  he  could  not  prove  himself  in  endless  news- 
paper columns  a  veritable  Michael  Angelo  and  the  vic- 
tim of  envy  and  jealousy.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
small  savage  tribe  of  the  rejected  shall  have  learned  in 
the  course  of  another  year  either  to  do  better  work  or 
to  swallow  their  ignoble  and  impotent  rage  with  gentle 
manly  unconcern. 

There  is,  naturally  enough,  but  little  new  at  the  vari- 
ous local  galleries.  At  Morris  &  Kennedy's  may  be 
seen  the  first  painting  yet  exhibited  by  Mr.  George 
Brush.  Mr.  Brush  is  a  new  comer— young,  talented, 
and  fresh  from  studies  abroad  under  Ge>ome.  Let  us 
hope  that  this  budding  flower  of  genius  is  of  hardy  stock, 
else  he  will  soon  wither  in  this  uncongenial  atmosphere. 
His  picture  brings  to  mind  the  line,  "the  green  lanes  of 
England."  Down  the  winding  lane  comes  the  bridal 
procession  —  first,  a  little  lad  strewing  flowers;  then 
come  the  bride  and  groom;  she  with  sweet  uplifted 
face,  soft  blonde  hair,  and  quaint,  old-fashioned  robe 
of  rich  brocade ;  he  in  the  costume  of  a  hundred  years 
ago,  stiff  and  conscious  as  bridegrooms  are  ever.  After 


ART  AND  ARTISTS. 


573 


them  walk  mother,  father,  and  priest,  while  a  pair  of 
lagging  young  folks  bring  up  the  rear.  The  figures, 
though  interesting,  are  subordinate  to  the  landscape, 
which  is  admirable  in  its  way,  full  of  soft  greens  and 
spring-time  freshness.  The  winding  road  is  lost  to  sight 
in  the  distance  behind  them,  and  the  procession  wends 
its  way  in  the  cool  shadow  of  the  luxuriant,  spreading 
foliage  of  the  trees  by  the  roadside.  Between  the  bars 
of  the  rail-fence  on  the  right  is  seen  a  glimpse  of  daz- 
zling green,  where  the  sun  is  shining  bright  on  the  fields 
beyond.  There  may  be  some  fault  found  with  the  in- 
troduction of  two  wee  toddlers  of  the  Kate  Greenaway 
school,  who,  wandering  by  the  roadside,  rather  disturb 
than  add  to  the  harmony  of  the  composition.  As  a 
whole,  the  picture  is  a  simple  subject,  modestly  treat- 
ed, and  full  of  the  poetry  of  youth,  love,  and  spring- 
time. It  is  said  that  Mr.  Brush's  picture  of  "Miggles" 
will  soon  be  exhibited  here.  The  picture,  having  al- 
ready been  engraved  in  Scribner's  Monthly,  will  be  a  fa- 
miliar acquaintance  to  the  many  readers  of  that  maga- 
zine. There  is  in  the  same  gallery  a  treat  in  store  for 
the  public,  in  the  shape  of  a  "Twilight,"  by  Harvey 
Young,  not  yet  exhibited.  It  is  something  worth  watch- 
ing for,  being  by  far  the  best  treatment  of  the  subject, 
as  well  as  the  best  work  of  that  artist  ever  brought  to 
this  coast. 

The  rooms  of  the  Art  Association,  so  short  a  time 
ago  the  scene  of  the  last  hard  struggle  of  local  art  for 
appreciation  and  a  living,  are  now  given  over  to  the 
loan  exhibition  of  the  Society  of  Decorative  Art.  This 
society  has  a  most  worthy  object,  having  been  organ- 
ized for  the  purpose  of  opening  a  new  and  remunerative 
field  in  the  industrial  arts  for  women  ;  or,  in  the  words 
of  one  of  the  lady  managers,  ' '  we  desire  to  give  ladies 
in  reduced  circumstances  an  opportunity  to  earn  money 
in  a  way  that  shall  be  agreeable  and  appropriate."  To 
those  who  know  the  ups  and  downs  of  life  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, the  object  is  indeed  a  worthy  one.  How  a  wom- 
an, absolutely  incapable  of  any  labor,  mental  or  phys- 
ical, worth  remunerating,  shall  earn  an  honest  living,  is 
one  of  the  problems  of  the  day  that  seems  incapable  of 
solution.  The  ideas  of  the  refined  and  estimable  ladies 
who  have  taken  this  matter  in  hand  are  in  every  way 
worthy  of  them.  They  intend  to  import  competent 
teachers  from  New  York  or  England  to  instruct  indigent 
ladies,  free  of  charge,  in  such  branches  of  art  as  they 
have  any  aptitude  for,  and  to  provide  a  store  where  the 
work  they  produce  may  be  exposed  for  sale.  Every- 
thing seems  to  have  been  nicely  calculated,  save  the  ap- 
parent overlooking  of  the  fact  that  in  the  best  of  times 
there  is  a  very  dull  market  for  such  wares  in  San  Fran- 
cisco. 

The  present  Loan  Exhibition  is  one  of  which  we  may 
well  be  proud.  Its  object  is  to  stimulate  public  interest 
in  the  work  of  the  society,  and  the  proceeds  will  be  de- 
voted to  defraying  the  necessary  expenses  of  their  new 
work.  The  bric-a-brac  exhibited  merits  an  article  by 
itself,  and  is  a  gratifying  proof  of  the  taste  and  cultiva- 
tion of  our  best  people.  The  collection  of  paintings  is 
a  rare  treat  to  all  who  are  interested  in  art.  With  the 
exception  of  a  few  of  the  water -colors  in  the  exhibition 
room,  there  has  been  no  attention  paid  to  their  value  in 
hanging  them.  The  gallery  is  marred  by  two  large 
cases  in  the  center  of  the  room,  which  entirely  prevent 
anything  like  a  general  view  of  this  department.  There 
is  a  good  light  and  ample  space  for  these  cases  in  the 
large  room  adjoining  the  gallery.  The  disposition  of  the 
paintings  is  a  great  disappointment.  The  creations  of 


some  of  the  greatest  masters  of  the  century  have  been 
hung  in  indiscriminate  confusion  around  the  walls,  and 
made  use  of  solely  as  a  background  for  bits  of  bric-a- 
brac,  which  would  be  very  pleasing  did  they  not  inter- 
fere with  the  view  of  something  vastly  more  valuable  and 
interesting.  The  local  critics,  taking  their  cue  from 
the  Hanging  Committee,  have  made  sad  havoc  with  the 
reputations  of  these  European  artists.  One  condescend- 
ingly bestows  upon  G&rome  a  nod  of  approbation,  while 
another  demolishes  him  with  his  little  pop-gun.  The 
great  Vibert's  drawing  is  coldly  criticised  by  one  cruel 
pen,  and  another  connoisseur  instructs  the  masterly 
Schreyer  that  his  picture  is  not  at  all  what  it  purports  to 
be.  Meissonnier  and  Zama9ois  are  hardly  noticed,  and 
the  wonderful  De"taille  is  absolutely  ignored  ! 

The  most  glaring  mistake  of  the  Hanging  Commit- 
tee is  that  of  placing  "The  Halt,"  by  De"taille,  in  an 
obscure  corner,  where  it  is  almost  entirely  concealed  by 
an  immense  Japanese  bronze.  Twelve  years  ago,  when 
this  artist  was  only  twenty  years  old,  the  incomparable 
critic,  The"ophile  Gamier,  pronounced  him  already  a 
master.  His  subsequent  success  and  fame  were  only 
one  of  the  many  proofs  of  the  great  critic's  unerring 
judgment.  The  picture  of  "The  Halt"  is  in  his  best 
style,  and  it  is  unpardonable  to  put  such  a  picture  in  a 
corner,  while  a  prominent  position  is  given  to  a  pearl 
gray  sylph,  by  Voillemot. 

Ge"rome's  "Sword  Dance,"  but  recently  purchased  by 
Charles  Crocker,  Esq.,  is  exhibited  here  for  the  first 
time  in  San  Francisco.  The  picture  is  not  displayed  to 
advantage.  It  is  a  most  fascinating  work  of  art,  the 
entire  painting  being  subordinated  to  the  small  central 
figure  of  the  dancing  girl.  The  walls  and  rafters  of  the 
rude  interior  are  broadly,  almost  carelessly  painted,  and 
the  dim  figures  of  the  three  musicians,  two  men  and  a 
woman,  in  the  somber  background,  are  hardly  more 
than  expressive  suggestions  of  a  master  hand.  The 
face  of  the  woman  is  particularly  good ;  she  is  weary 
and  distrait,  oblivious  of  her  surroundings,  and  one 
can  almost  hear  the  wailing,  monotonous  song  with 
which  she  is  accompanying  the  barbaric  music.  The 
dancing  girl  is  poised  lightly  in  the  center  of  a  small 
square  of  Oriental  carpet,  a  little  to  the  left,  in  the  fore- 
ground. The  dark  interior  is  hardly  lighted  by  the  two 
or  three  slant  rays  of  sunshine  which  fall  from  an  open- 
ing in  the  roof  across  the  figure  of  the  dancer  and  the 
carpet.  The  light  just  touches  a  sword  poised  precari- 
ously across  her  head,  and  flashes  on  another  in  her 
right  hand.  A  dainty  green  gauze  veil  is  wound  round 
the  head,  half -concealing  a  lovely,  luxurious  face,  and 
floating,  almost  visibly  undulating,  in  vapory  folds  on 
the  air.  The  figure  of  the  girl  is  superb  in  its  supple 
grace.  Only  a  master  could  have  painted  the  shapely 
hands  and  the  firm  yet  velvety  texture  of  the  arm,  which 
the  dainty  transparency  of  a  gauze  sleeve  serves  only 
to  reveal,  In  the  language  of  Gautier,  "Gerome  has 
searched  the  Orient  for  characteristic  types,"  and  "has 
applied  himself  to  reproducing  the  sculptural  forms  and 
grand  style  of  the  races  which  have  never  been  de- 
formed by  civilization."  The  dancing  girl's  figure,  the 
flexibility  of  the  waist,  the  perfect  curves  of  the  hips, 
the  poise  of  the  feet,  are  all  beyond  description.  There 
is  a  lovely  bit  of  color  and  handling  in  the  light  that 
flashes  from  the  glittering  mass  of  coins  on  her  bosom. 
The  surroundings  are  bare,  poor,  and  rude;  but,  by 
the  artist's  power,  in  the  one  small  figure  of  the  dancing 
girl  is  epitomized  all  the  sensuous  splendor,  the  undu- 
lating grace,  the  barbaric  beauty  of  the  Orient. 


574 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


The  figure  of  the  "Halberdier,"  by  Meissonier,  is  an- 
other notable  work  of  art,  and  should  be  one  of  the 
features  of  the  exhibition.  It  is  a  small  single  standing 
figure,  and  a  wonderful  thing  to  study  as  an  example  of 
the  master's  style.  This  style,  which  is  his  and  his 
alone,  is  a  combination  of  breadth  of  handling  and  mi- 
nuteness of  detail  that  bewilders  the  beholder  and  is 
the  despair  of  an  artist.  The  picture  well  repays  the 
most  careful  study,  and  it  is  almost  impossible  to  real- 
ize the  breadth  of  the  style  without  observing  it  through 
a  magnifying  glass. 

The  brilliant  satirist,  J.  G.  Vibert,  must  have  rec- 
ognized in  Swift  a  kindred  spirit,  to  have  abandon- 
ed the  priesthood,  the  standing  subject  of  his  subtle 
satirical  paintings,  and  chosen  a  theme  from  Gulli- 
ver's Travels.  That  he  has  appreciated  the  true  in- 
wardness of  this  subject,  may  be  seen  in  his  admir- 
able handling  of  it.  He  calls  his  picture  "Gulliver," 
and  it  represents  that  hero  at  the  moment  when,  fast 
asleep,  he  is  being  bound  hand  and  foot  by  the  Lilli- 
puts.  There  is  a  wonderful  bit  of  foreshortening  in  the 
prostrate  body  of  Gulliver,  lying  feet  foremost  and  body 
at  an  angle.  The  drawing  is  made  to  express  all  that 
drawing  can  do  for  such  a  subject.  In  the  grouping  of 
the  swarms  of  Lilliputian  figures  there  is  much  interest- 
ing detail.  As  is  usual  with  Vibert,  the  greatest  charm 
is  his  humorous  and  satirical  treatment  of  the  subject. 

The  "Duet  of  Love"  and  "The  Smuggler,"  the  lat- 
ter in  black  and  white,  are  the  two  other  pictures  by 
Vibert  on  exhibition,  and  both  are  interesting  examples 
of  his  delightfully  clever  satires  on  the  priesthood. 


There  are  two  pictures  by  Schreyer— "Turkish  Horse- 
man" and  "Winter  in  Russia."  Both  are  fine — the 
latter  superb.  '  •  Winter  in  Russia  "  represents  a  wagon, 
to  which  are  harnessed  a  number  of  horses,  which  are 
being  driven  through  the  forest  in  the  face  of  a  driving 
storm.  The  fine  drawing,  depth  and  richness  of  color, 
wonderful  atmospheric  effect,  and  masterly  expression 
of  sentiment,  make  it  a  picture  to  remember.  It  is  not 
often  our  privilege  to  have  such  a  one  in  San  Francisco. 
"Flowers, "by  Robie,  is  a  perfect  revel  of  pure,  rich, 
lovely  color,  and  merits,  as  does  the  "Cock'Fight,"  by 
Roybet,  an  extended  description,  which  space  will  not 
allow. 

"Three  Friends,"  by  Toulmouche,  is  a  picture  clever 
in  drawing  and  manipulation,  delightful  in  its  way,  but 
of  a  style  which  is  rapidly  going  out  of  date ;  for,  sad  to 
say,  there  are  fashions  even  in  painting,  and  more  es- 
pecially in  this  class  of  work.  It  is  a  pity  there  is  noth- 
ing on  exhibition  by  Kaemmerer,  who  is  much  newer, 
brighter,  and  better. 

"The Tourists,"  by  Madrazo,  is  an  uneven  but  agree- 
able picture.  Some  of  the  figures  are  slighted,  but  it 
contains  some  clever  things — notably,  a  figure  of  an 
urchin  in  the  foreground,  with  the  most  deliciously  droll 
bare  legs  that  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  Madrazo,  like 
Kaemmerer,  is  among  the  rising  people  of  the  new 
school,  and  we  will  doubtless,  in  time,  see  more  of  him 
here.  Much  that  is  interesting  and  deserves  a  special 
mention  will  have  to  be  reserved  for  another  time,  there 
being,  besides  the  many  oil  paintings  in  the  gallery, 
some  gems  in  water -color  in  the  exhibition  room. 


BOOKS    RECEIVED. 


CESAR.  A  Sketch.  By  James  Anthony  Froude,  M.  A. 
New  York :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

Given  so  great  a  man  as  Caesar,  and  so  able  and 
practiced  a  historian  as  Mr.  Froude,  and  we  could 
hardly  fail  to  find  a  volume  of  much  historical  interest. 
But  this  "sketch"  is  far  from  satisfactory.  It  does  not 
impress  one  as  being  an  honest  attempt  to  throw  new 
light  on  a  most  important  period  of  Roman  history.  It 
is  not  a  careful  study  of  character.  It  does  not  sum  up 
the  good  and  the  bad  qualities  of  a  great  man,  and  give 
an  impartial  judgment  on  his  deeds.  It  is  rather  the 
work  of  a  pronounced  admirer  of  the  Roman  dictator, 
who  weighs  no  opposing  evidence,  who  strikes  right 
and  left  at  all  who  refuse  homage  to  his  idol.  Cicero 
especially  comes  in  for  an  immense  amount  of  dispar- 
agement. For  instance:  " So  Cicero  meditated,  think- 
ing, as  usual,  of  himself  first,  and  of  his  duty  afterward." 
"He  had  preferred  characteristically  to  be  out  of  the 
way  at  the  moment  when  he  expected  that  the  storm 
would  break."  When  the  infamous  Clodius,  at  last, 
procured  Cicero's  banishment,  it  was,  as  Mr.  Froude 
blandly  confesses,  with  the  powerful  countenance  of 
Caesar.  And  this  is  the  easy  justification  of  Caesar's 
motive  in  helping  Clodius  :  ' '  Cicero  had  refused  Caesar's 
offered  friendship.  Caesar  had  not  cared  to  leave  so  pow- 
erful a  person  free  to  support  the  intended  attacks  on 
his  legislation."  All  through  the  book  the  chief  author- 
ity cited  is  the  letters  of  Cicero,  and  from  these  frank, 


impulsive  outpourings  of  the  great  orator's  soul  to  a 
most  intimate  friend,  material  is  culled  to  bring  the  au- 
thor of  the  letters  into  contempt.  But  no  charge  against 
his  hero  is  suffered  for  an  instant  to  trouble  Mr.  Froude's 
mind.  He  brushes  them  all  away  with  an  easy  assur- 
ance that  borders  on  downright  impudence.  Caesar  was 
a  great,  an  immeasurably  great  man.  Caesar  was  al- 
ways master  of  the  situation.  Caesar  could  do  no  wrong. 
The  key-note  of  this'persistent  eulogy  is  given  in  one 
of  the  earlier  pages:  "Here  philosophy  is  at  fault. 
Philosophy,  when  we  are  face  to  face  with  real  men,  is 
as  powerless  as  over  the  Iliad  or  King  Lear.  The  over- 
mastering interest  transcends  explanation.  We  do  not 
sit  in  judgment  on  the  right  or  the  wrong.  We  do  not 
seek  out  causes  to  account  for  what  takes  place,  feeling 
too  conscious  of  the  inadequacy  of  our  analysis."  Mr. 
Froude  is  fond  of  philosophizing.  We  see  how  safe  a 
guide  he  is.  In  this  volume  he  is  simply  an  advocate. 
The  cause  he  advocates  is  the  cause  of  one  of  the  great- 
est men  the  world  has  ever  seen — great  as  an  orator,  a 
writer,  a  soldier;  greatest  of  all  as  a  statesman.  But 
this  same  great  man  was  wanting  in  personal  purity,  in 
genuine  patriotism,  in  essential  goodness.  His  ambi- 
tion was  intensely  selfish,  and  it  was  used  to  overthrow 
what  remained  of  Roman  liberty.  If  Caesar's  conduct 
can  be  justified,  so  can  the  first  and  great  Napoleon's, 
as  the  second  and  petty  French  Emperor  seemed  to 
think.  Indiscriminate  praise  of  such  a  man  might  well 
be  left  to  Louis  Napoleon. 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


575 


This  American  edition  of  Mr.  Froude's  sketch  is  not 
up  to  the  Harper's  usual  level.  It  is  in  unfavorable  con- 
trast with  the  fair  volumes  in  which  the  same  publishers 
have  given  us  Mr.  Trollope's  Life  of  Cicero,  as  the 
blurred  character  of  the  unscrupulous  dictator  is  in  ever- 
lasting contrast  with  that  of  the  great  orator,  who,  with 
all  his  weaknesses,  was  a  pure  man,  an  honest  patriot — 
a  man  whom  we  should  like  to  see  transplanted  to  our 
own  times.  Who  could  bear  another  Julius  Caesar? 


REMINISCENCES.  By  Thomas  Carlyle.  Edited  by 
James  Anthony  Froude.  New  York  :  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  A. 
L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

In  spite  of  the  detractions  of  a  great  many  people 
who  have  never  read  his  books,  Thomas  Carlyle  looms 
up  for  all  time  as  one  of  the  greatest  figures  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  The  best  minds  of  England  and  Amer- 
ica have  acknowledged  their  debt  to  him  for  the  power- 
ful stimulus  of  his  works,  and  when  he  died,  on  the  5th 
of  last  February,  the  verdict  of  England  was  that  her 
leading  man  of  letters  had  passed  away.  Even  here  in 
California,  we  know  there  are  men  to  whom  his  death 
was  like  a  personal  bereavement;  men  whom  we  have 
heard  say  that  out  of  Carlyle's  works  they  have  got,  and 
perpetually  do  get,  the  same  sort  of  stimulus  to  right 
living  that  others  get  from  the  Bible.  "From  Carlyle," 
said  one  to  us  not  long  since,  ' '  I  first  learned  the  im- 
perative duty  of  every  man  to  find  out  what  is  best  in 
his  own  nature  and  be  true  to  that.  What  the  eternal 
truth  is  about  himself  and  about  the  world — this  is  the 
inquiry  which  the  reader  of  Carlyle  is  compelled  to  set 
about ;  and  if,  when  the  inquiry  about  the  world  is  over, 
reader  and  author  are  sometimes  found  to  disagree  (as, 
in  the  difficulty  of  collecting  evidence,  they  are  very 
likely  to  do),  let  not  this  diminish  one  particle  of  the 
gratitude  due  the  stirring  impulse  of  Carlyle." 

There  are  doubtless  many  among  our  readers  who, 
though  not  wholly  ignorant  of  Carlyle,  are  yet  unable 
to  acquiesce  in  this  estimate  of  the  moral  stimulus  of  his 
teaching.  To  these  we  recommend,  once  for  all,  that 
instead  of  plunging  into  Latter  Day  Pamphlets,  or  into 
Frederick  the  Great,  works  of  his  matures!  years,  they 
take  up'Carlyle  from  the  beginning.  In  his  Essays,  the 
fruit  of  the  first  ten  years  of  his  mature  literary  life,  they 
will  find  a  body  of  thought  the  freshness  of  which  fifty 
years  have  not  been  able  to  dim.  If  he  had  written 
nothing  else,  his  estimate  of  the  great  English,  German, 
and  French  men  of  letters  at  the  dawn  of  this  century — 
Johnson,  Burns,  and  Scott ;  Goethe,  Schiller,  and  Rich- 
ter ;  Voltaire,  Diderot,  and  Mirabeau — would  have  made 
him  one  of  the  most  potent  spiritual  influences  of  the 
age. 

It  is,  therefore,  intelligible  enough  that  such  a  man's 
Reminiscences  should  have  drawn  upon  them  the  atten- 
tion of  the  world.  Nominally,  the  book  is  divided  into 
four  parts,  devoted  to  Carlyle's  rugged  peasant  father ; 
to  the  stanch  friend  of  his  early  life,  Edward  Irving ;  to 
the  famous  editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Lord  Jef- 
frey ;  and  to  Carlyle's  self-sacrificing  wife.  But  under- 
lying each  of  these  divisions,  and  welding  the  book  into 
an  undivided  whole,  is  the  history  of  Carlyle  himself. 
How  Thomas  Carlyle  fought  with  the  world  and  con- 
quered it — this  is  the  real  subject  of  this  book,  transcend- 
ing in  interest  all  mere  incisive  delineation  of  distin- 
guished people.  Nobody  ever  loved  better  than  Car- 
lyle to  dwell  on  the  valor  of  men  who,  for  the  sake  of 
giving  permanent  form  to  what  was  best  within  them, 


endured  for  years  the  indifference  of  the  world,  and 
finally  wrung  from  it  their  reward.  This  struggle,  and 
the  courage  of  it,  by  Carlyle  himself,  may  now  be  read 
of  in  one  of  the  sincerest  books  thus  far  written  in  the 
English  tongue.  Had  we  more  space,  it  would  be  well 
worth  while  to  give  the  details  of  a  contest  which  is  full 
of  a  meaning  as  universal  as  the  human  race  and  as  en- 
during as  time ;  but  we  must  leave  it  to  the  reader  to 
get  this  book  and  keep  it  near  him. 


THE  NEW  NOBILITY.  A  Story  of  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica. By  John  W.  Forney.  New  York ;  D.  Apple- 
ton  &  Co.  1881. 

Mr.  Forney  is  an  editor  of  too  much  ability  and  ex- 
perience to  have  written  such  a  book  as  the  one  under 
consideration ;  nor  is  the  matter  made  any  better  by 
the  prefatory  statement  that  he  was  assisted  in  it  by  W. 
M.  Baker,  the  author,  we  presume,  of  The  New  Tim- 
othy, Carter  Quarterman,  and  other  books  of  interest. 

This  book  is  simply  a  glorification  of  America  and 
American  ideas,  at  the  expense  of  ' '  the  effete  civiliza- 
tion and  tottering  dynasties  of  Europe,"  as  Colonel 
Elijah  Pogram  would  call  them.  The  author,  or  au- 
thors, certainly  possess  the  merit,  if  merit  it  be,  of  ver- 
satility. The  reader  is  transported  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye  from  a  dinner  party  in  Paris,  given  by  Hop  Fun, 
a  Chinese  mandarin,  at  which  were  present  Hindus,  Per- 
sians, Afghans,  Abyssinians,  Turks,  Americans,  Eng- 
lishmen, and  Frenchmen,  to  the  heart  of  Russia  and 
the  hot -bed  of  Nihilism.  Of  the  various  adventures  of 
Henry  Harris,  the  American,  and  Lord  Conyngham, 
the  Englishman,  of  their  perils  by  flood  and  fire,  their 
dangers  in  the  imminent,  deadly  breach,  their  researches 
among  French  Communists,  English  trades  -  unions, 
German  Socialists,  and  Russian  Nihilists,  suffice  it  to 
say  that  they  could  scarcely  have  had  an  existence,  save 
in  the  active  imagination  of  Messrs.  Forney  and  Baker. 

Had  our  authors  divided  their  subject,  and  made 
about  three  books  out  of  the  materials  at  hand,  instead 
of  one,  it  would  have  been  infinitely  more  agreeable  for 
the  reader  and  more  to  the  credit  of  the  authors.  The 
book  is  especially  lacking  in  two  necessary  characteris- 
tics of  a  good  novel — simplicity  and  directness.  Were 
Mr.  Forney  a  novice  in  the  art  of  writing,  one  might 
well  recommend  to  him  the  Horatian  doctrine  of  the 
labor  lima ;  but  we  fear  such  advice  would  be  thrown 
away  upon  him. 

As  a  whole,  the  book  is  not  a  success,  although  we 
apprehend  it  will  commend  itself  to  a  certain  class  of 
readers,  whose  consciousness  of  its  demerits  will  be 
overshadowed  by  their  admiration  for  the  seemingly 
vast  erudition  and  breadth  of  thought  displayed  by  its 
authors. 


A  CENTURY  OF  DISHONOR.  A  Sketch  of  the  United 
States  Government's  Dealings  with  Some  of  the  In- 
dian Tribes.  By  H.  H.  New  York:  Harper  & 
Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot, 
Upham  &  Co. 

Just  why  Bishop  Whipple  should  have  written  a  '  'pref- 
ace," or  President  Seelye  an  "introduction,"  to  this 
work  it  is  hard  to  conceive,  unless  it  was  to  give  an  air 
of  clerical  sanctity  and  professional  dignity  to  the  cru- 
sade which  the  title  leads  one  to  expect.  The  eminent 
respectability  of  the  book  being  thus  guaranteed,  the 
reader  is  in  some  measure  prepared  for  the  narration  of 
a  series  of  unjust  acts,  of  the  authenticity  of  which,  un- 


'576 


THE    CALIFORN1AN. 


fortunately,  there  can  be  little  doubt.  That  the  book 
contains  the  truth  there  can  be  no  question ;  that  it  con- 
tains \hejvhole  truth  the  author  herself  would  probably 
not  contend.  The  East,  as  a  usual  thing,  prefers  to 
look  upon  the  Indian  question  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  Indian,  and  reproduces  no  end  of  stories  of  fraud 
and  injustice;  the  West  generally  looks  upon  it  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  settler,  and  adduces  innumerable 
instances  of  barbarity  and  cruelty.  And  the  most  that 
any  one  can  do  who  attempts  to  view  the  subject  from 
both  standpoints,  is  to  shake  his  head  and  declare  it 
sorry  business.  And  probably  this  will  be  the  utmost 
that  can  be  done  so  long  as  our  Government,  which  is 
so  jealous  of  its  sovereignty  as  to  repudiate  the  State 
rights  doctrine,  yet  acknowledges  the  separate  nation- 
ality of  wandering  tribes  and  makes  treaties  with  them 
as  with  foreign  nations.  The  Indian  must,  like  the 
white  man,  be  treated  as  an  individual.  He  must  be 
protected  in  his  individual  rights,  and  punished  for  his 
individual  transgressions.  If  he  is  lazy  or  profligate  he 
has  no  more  claim  to  be  supported  than  the  white  or 
colored  citizen.  The  reservation  system — which  pro- 
vides a  place  of  retreat,  a  rendezvous,  an  asylum  in 
winter  from  which  to  raid  in  summer — with  its  concom- 
itants, the  thieving  agents  and  dishonest  contractors, 
has  proved  a  colossal  failure.  It  would  prove  a  failure 
if  the  wards  so  segregated  were  whites  instead  of  In- 
dians. The  most  industrious  classes  would  be  utterly 
ruined  by  being  treated  by  the  Government  as  it  treats 
the  red  men.  President  Seelye  in  his  "  Introduction," 
says  : 

"Such  treaties  have  proceeded  upon  the  false  view — 
false  in  principle,  and  equally  false  in  fact — that  an  In- 
dian tribe,  roaming  in  the  wilderness  and  living  by 
hunting  and  plunder,  is  a  nation.  In  order  to  be  a  na- 
tion there  must  be  a  people  with  a  code  of  laws  which 
they  practice,  and  a  government  which  they  maintain. 
No  vague  sense  of  some  unwritten  law,  to  which  human 
nature  in  its  lowest  stages  doubtless  feels  some  obliga- 
tion, and  no  regulations  instinctively  adopted  for  com- 
mon defense,  which  the  rudest  people  herded  together 
will  always  follow,  are  enough  to  constitute  a  nation. 
These  Indian  tribes  are  not  a  nation,  and  nothing  either 
in  their  history  or  their  condition  could  properly  invest 
them  with  a  treaty -making  power." 


THE  LOST  CASKET.  Translated  from  La  Main  Cou- 
pte  of  F.  de  Boisgobey,  by  S.  Lee.  New  York :  G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco 
by  Billings,  Harbourne  &  Co. 

While  Nihilism  is  undoubtedly  a  misfortune  to  those 
who  experience  its  terrors  and  realities,  it  is  none  the 
less  a  godsend  to  the  sensational  novelist.  Scarcely  a 
novel  of  the  past  or  present  year  has  made  its  appear- 
ance, without  some  reference  more  or  less  direct  to  this 
subject.  M.  de  Boisgobey,  upon  whose  shoulders  the 
mantle  of  the  late  Emile  Gaboriau  seems  to  have  fallen 
has  written  a  very  readable  novel,  with  Nihilism  as  its 
key-note,  The  scene  is  laid  in  Paris,  and  the  attempts 
of  the  Nihilists  to  obtain  possession  of  certain  Russian 
State  papers,  in  the  possession  of  Bousoff,  an  emissary 
of  the  secret  police  of  Russia,  form  the  groundwork  of 
the  book. 

While  the  plot  is  not  so  intricately  involved  as  were 
many  of  Gaboriau's,  the  interest  is  skillfully  kept  up, 
and  the  unity  carefully  preserved  from  the  first  chapter 
to  the  last.  Madame  Yatta,  the  heroine,  is  a  well 
drawn  character,  and  we  think  the  author  might  have 
rewarded  her  courage  and  zeal  better  than  by  allowing 
her  to  fall  a  victim  to  the  rage  of  Dr.  Villages,  whose 


scheme  she  had,  in  a  measure,  frustrated  by  her  exer- 
tions in  favor  of  De  Carnoel.  We  often  long  for  the 
good  old  days  of  novels,  where  the  hero  and  heroine, 
after  overcoming  all  sorts  of  obstacles  were  happily 
married  in  the  last  chapter  to  slow  music  and  blue  fire, 
but  we  long  ^in  vain.  Nowadays,  the  hero  or  heroine 
(and  sometimes  both)  is  bound  to  die  by  consumption, 
or  small  pox,  or  prussic  acid,  without  any  reason  ap- 
parent to  the  average  reader  why  the  "other  fellow" 
shouldn't  have  died  and  let  the  young  couple  be  hap- 
pily married  and  a'  that. 

So  in  the  present  book.  Why  our  author  couldn't 
have  killed  Dr.  Villagos,  and  allowed  Maxime  Dorgeres 
and  the  Countess  Yatta  to  have  been  happy  ever  after, 
we  do  not  see.  However,  the  reader  may  possibly  solve 
the  problem  for  himself  better  than  we  can. 

The  translation  seems  to  be  carefully  made,  although 
there  are  evidences,  in  some  few  places,  of  the  French 
idiom  having  got  rather  the  better  of  the  translator. 
But  this  is  always  so,  as  the  best  translation  is  only  a 
travesty,  more  or  less  agreeable,  of  the  original.  The 
book  is  well  worth  reading  by  those  who  admire  this 
style  of  literature,  and  they  are  many. 


MEMOIRS  OF  PRINCE  METTERNICH.  Edited  by  Prince 
Richard  Metternich.  The  papers  classified  and  ar- 
ranged by  M.  A.  de  Klinkowstrom.  Translated  by 
Mrs.  Alexander  Napier.  In  two  volumes.  New  York: 
Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco 
by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

Few  books  have  been  published  of  late  years  of 
more  interest  than  these  memoirs  of  Prince  Metternich. 
Throughout  the  entire  period  of  a  long  career,  one  of 
the  principal  actors  upon  the  mighty  stage  of  interna- 
tional politics  in  Europe,  at  a  time  when  nations  were 
struggling  for  existence,  no  man  had  ever  a  better  op- 
portunity to  see  that  life  behind  the  scenes  which  is  the 
real  impulse  and  inspiration  of  history.  Metternich's 
natural  inclination  was  for  science,  but  he  was  early  di- 
verted to  the  public  service.  His  memoirs  are  full  of  in- 
cidents and  anecdotes,  relating  to  the  principal  men  of 
the  age.  He  was  on  intimate  terms  with  Napoleon, 
and  throws  much  light  upon  the  real  character  of  that 
imperial  freebooter.  The  portrait  which  he  draws  of 
Bonaparte  is  at  once  impartial,  appreciative,  and  dis- 
cerning, and  is  one  of  the  best  things  in  the  work.  The 
portrait  of  Prince  Metternich,  which  is  revealed  through- 
out the  memoirs,  is  perhaps  more  appreciative  than  im- 
partial or  discerning. 


GLEANINGS  IN  THE  FIELDS  OF  ART.  By  Ednah  D. 
Cheney.  Boston  :  Lee  &  Shepard.  1881.  For  sale 
in  San  Francisco  by  Doxey  &  Co. 

It  is  nothing  against  these  gleanings  that  they  are 
from  familiar  fields;  it  is  something  decidedly  in  their 
favor  that  this  fact  is  modestly  assumed  in  the  title.  So 
much  that  is  new  is  each  year  added  to  that  which  is 
old  in  art  as  well  as  in  science,  that  one  needs  con- 
stantly to  modify,  and,  as  it  were,  readjust  his  most  fixed 
conclusions.  The  book  before  us  opens  with  a  well 
considered  essay  on  art,  which  is  defined  to  be,  in  its 
broadest  sense,  "all  that  which  seeks  to  express  thought 
in  a  material  form,  without  reference  to  its  use  for  any 
material  function."  Art  is  spirit  materialized.  It  is 
thought  embodied  in  matter.  Beauty  and  Use  are 
omitted  from  the  definition  as  not  necessarily  forming 
the  great  objects  in  art,  "any  more  than  'happiness'  is 


BOOKS  RECEIVED. 


577' 


our  'being's end  and  aim.'  "  Art  in  its  relation  to  mor- 
als and  religion  is  considered  at  length  ;  and  the  essay 
concludes  by  pointing  out  that  art  is  great  only  when 
representing  national  individuality. 

"What  we  do  for  Art  directly  is  valuable ;  but  it  is  as 
nothing  to  what  we  do  for  her  indirectly.  If  we  be- 
come a  base,  sordid,  unjust  nation,  caring  only  to  heap 
up  material  wealth,  it  will  be  in  vain  to  attempt  any 
higher  expression  in  Art ;  if  we  forget  the  great  princi- 
ples of  freedom  and  democracy,  and  seek  to  build  up 
an  aristocracy  of  wealth,  or  race,  or  inherited  culture, 
our  Art  will  become  narrow  and  traditional ;  if  we  care 
only  for  the  intellect,  and  neglect  love,  and  faith,  and 
imagination,  we  may  have  a  learned  art ;  but  we  can 
only  have  an  art  that  is  truly  original,  noble,  and  beau- 
tiful, by  cherishing  and  developing  a  national  character 
of  which  it  is  the  fitting  expression." 

Following  this  opening  chapter  on  the  general  sub- 
ject of  art,  there  are  fourteen  chapters  on  special  topics: 
Greek  Art ;  Early  Christian  Art ;  Byzantine  Art ;  Res- 
toration of  Art  in  Italy ;  Michael  Angelo ;  The  Poems 
of  Michael  Angelo  ;  Spanish,  French,  German,  Ameri- 
can, English,  and  Contemporaneous  Art;  David  Scott; 
Albert  Diirer.  The  least  satisfactory  of  these,  perhaps 
necessarily,  is  that  upon  contemporaneous  art.  Some 
felicitous  translations  are  given  in  the  chapter  devoted 
to  "The  Poems  of  Michael  Angelo,"  although,  in  the 
poem  on  the  death  of  his  father,  the  lines, 

"Less  hard  and  sharp  it  is  to  Death  to  bow 

As  growing  age  longs  for  its  needful  sleep, 
Where  true  life  is,  safe  from  the  Senses  now," 

lose  somewhat  of  their  strength  by  comparison  with 
the  rendition  by  Miss  Bunnett  in  her  translation  of 
of  Grimm's  Life  of  Michael  Angelo: 

"Death  is  less  hard  to  him  who  wearily 
Bears  back  to  God  a  harvest  fully  ripe, 
Than  unto  him  in  full  and  freshest  mind." 

But,  on  the  whole,  this  Ruth,  who  has  gleaned  after 
many  reapers,  in  a  field  by  no  means  new,  has  yet 
gathered  "an  epha  of  barley." 


A  DICTIONARY  OF  ENGLISH  PHRASES.    By  Kwong 
Ki  Chiu.     New  York:  A.  S.  Barnes  &  Co.     1881. 

That  a  work  on  English  phrases  should  be  compiled 
by  a  Chinese  scholar  is  an  anomaly  in  literature.  How- 
ever, it  has  been  done,  and  well  done.  The  appendix, 
containing,  among  other  things,  a  selection  of  Chinese 
proverbs  and  maxims,  an  historical  account  of  the  dif- 
ferent dynasties,  and  a  short  biographical  sketch  of 
Confucius,  is  not  the  least  instructive  part  of  the  com- 
pilation. By  the  way,  isn't  the  practice  of  bolstering  up 
a  book  by  publishing  in  it  letters  of  approval  from  ' '  em- 
inent" persons  being  pushed  a  little  too  far? 


THE  LIFE  OF  GEORGE  THE  FOURTH,  including  his 
Letters  and  Opinions,  with  a  View  of  the  Men,  Man- 
ners, and  Politics  of  his  Reign.  By  Percy  Fitzgerald. 
New  York :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in 
San  Francisco  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. 

We  have  here  an  interesting  book  about  a  totally  un- 
interesting character.  It  is  a  little  strange  that  any  one 
should  think  it  worth  while  to  write  a  life  of  the  "first 
gentleman  of  Europe"  after  Thackeray  had  endeavored 
to  analyze  his  character,  and  had  exclaimed  in  despair : 
"I  try  and  take  him  to  pieces,  and  find  silk  stockings, 


padding,  stays,  a  coat  with  frogs  and  a  fur  collar,  a  star 
and  blue  ribbon,  a  pocket  handkerchief  prodigiously 
scented,  one  of  Truefitt's  best  nutty-brown  wigs  reeking 
with  oil,  a  set  of  teeth,  and  a  huge  black  stock,  under- 
waistcoats,  more  under-waistcoats,  and  then  nothing." 
If  it  had  not  been  that  this  man  of  ' '  pad  and  tailor's 
work  "  lived  in  momentous  times,  and  was  surrounded 
by  men  whose  anatomies  did  not  end  with  their  waist- 
coats, Mr.  Fitzgerald  would  not  have  had  the  material 
for  so  entertaining  a  book. 


THECHINESE,  their  Education,  Philosophy,  and  Letters. 
By  W.  A.  P.  Martin.  New  York :  Harper  &  Broth- 
ers. 1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Up- 
ham  &  Co. 

The  light  which  is  thrown  upon  the  subjects  of  edu- 
cation and  competitive  examination  for  civil  service  in 
China  constitutes  the  chief  value  of  this  latest  contribu- 
tion on  the  Orient.  It  is,  perhaps,  worthy  of  mention, 
for  the  benefit  of  would-be  poets,  that  the  Emperor, 
Yungcheng,  addressed  the  members  of  the  Hanlin,  or 
imperial  academy,  in  these  words:  "Literature  is  your 
business ;  but  we  want  such  literature  as  will  serve  to 
regulate  the  age  and  reflect  glory  on  the  nation.  As  for 
sonnets  to  the  moon  and  the  clouds,  the  winds  and  the 
dews — of  what  use  are  they?" 


OCCIDENTAL  SKETCHES.  By  Major  Ben  C.  Truman. 
San  Francisco:  San  Francisco  News  Company. 
1881. 

This  little  volume  is  made  up  of  entertaining  and 
readable  sketches.  Major  Truman  may  congratulate 
himself  upon  having,  in  a  large  measure,  caught  the 
spirit  of  Californian  life.  The  book  is  characteristic  of 
the  Coast,  fresh,  and  full  of  humor  and  vigor.  The 
stories  are  well  told,  and  the  characters  are  admirably 
drawn.  To  those  who  desire  an  hour  of  pleasant  read- 
ing, we  recommend  this  latest  addition  to  the  literature 
of  the  West. 

APPLETON'S  HOME  BOOKS.     New  York :  D.  Appleton 

&  Co.     1881. 

Building  a  Home.     By  A.  F.  Oakey. 
How  to  Furnish  a  Home.     By  Ella  Rodman  Church. 

This  is  the  latest  printed  matter  at  hand  in  sympathy 
with  the  prevailing  aesthetic  craze.  The  series  promises 
to  consider  all  subjects  pertaining  to  Home.  The  first 
two  books,  now  out,  may  be  said  to  be  suggestive,  partic- 
ularly to  a  large  class  who  ' '  would  if  they  could. "  They 
are  inviting  little  books,  and  would  be  tasteful  additions 
to  the  table  of  any  pretty  home  they  describe.  Such 
books  can  no  longer  boast  of  novelty  as  excuse  for 
being ;  however,  all  hints  on  household  art  are  useful, 
at  least  in  helping  people  to  decide  what  they  do  not 
like — a  most  important  hight  to  reach  to  escape  drown- 
ing in  the  inundation  of  new  ideas. 


VALUABLE  COOKING  RECEIPTS.  By  Thomas  J. 
Murrey.  New  York :  George  W.  Harlan.  1881. 

Persons  of  modest  means,  who  desire  to  have  upon 
their  table  some  of  the  delicacies  of  more  pretentious 
boards,  will  find  in  this  little  book  how  simply  and  easi- 
ly the  thing  can  be  done. 

WORDSWORTH.  By  F.  W.  H.  Myers.  New  York : 
Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Fran- 
cisco by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 


578 


THE    CAL1FORNIAN. 


ISLAND  LIFE  ;  or  the  Phenomena  and  Causes  of  Insu- 
lar Faunas  and  Floras,  including  a  Revision  and  At- 
tempted Solution  of  the  Problem  of  Geological  Cli- 
mates. By  Alfred  Russell  Wallace.  New  York: 
Harper  &  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francis- 
co by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

In  place  of  a  review  we  print  elsewhere  an  article  by 
Professor  Joseph  Le  Conte  on  the  subject  of  this  book. 


FKANKLIN  SQUARE  LIBRARY.     New  York :  Harper  & 
Brothers.     1881. 

For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. : 
No.  153. — Love  and  Life.     An  Qld  Story  in  Eighteenth 

Century  Costume.     By  Charlotte  M.  Yonge. 
No.  154.— The  Rebel  of  the  Family.     A  Novel.     By  E. 

Lynn  Linton. 

No.  155.—  Dr.   Worth's  School.     A  Novel.     By  Antho- 
ny Trollope. 

No.  156.—  Little  Pansy.    A  Novel.    By  Mrs.  Randolph. 
No.  -L^J.—The  Deans  Wife.     A  Novel.     By  Mrs.  C. 

J.  Eiloart. 
No.  158.— The  Posy  Ring.     A  Novel.     By  Mrs.  Alfred 

W.  Hunt. 
No.  159.—  Better  than  Gold.     A  Story  for  Girls.     By 

Annie  E.  Ridley. 
No.  160.— Under  Life's  Key,  and  other  Stories.      By 

Mary  Cecil  Hay. 


No.  161.—  Asphodel.  A  Novel.  By  Miss  M.  E.  Brad- 
don. 

For  sale  by  A.  L.  Bancroft  &  Co. : 

No.  lyi.—Ceesar.  A  Sketch.  By  James  Anthony 
Froude. 

Nos.  172-3-4-5.  —Memoirs  of  Prince  Metternich.  Edit- 
ed by  Prince  Richard  Metternich. 

No.  176. — From  Exile.     A  Novel.     By  James  Payn. 

No.  177. — Miss  Williamson's  Divagations.  By  Miss 
Thackeray. 

No.  178.— Thomas  Carlyle;  the  Man  and  his  Books. 
By  Wm.  Howie  Wylie. 

No.  179. — Lord  Beaconsfield.  A  Study.  By  Georg 
Brandes.  Translated  by  Mrs.  George  Sturge. 

NERVOUS  DERANGEMENT.  By  William  A.  Hammond, 
M.  D.  New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1880. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Billings,  Harbourne  & 
Co. 

THE  HUMAN  RACE,  and  other  Sermons.  By  the  late 
Rev.  Frederick  W.  Robertson.  New  York :  Harper 
&  Brothers.  1881.  For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by 
Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 

ANECDOTES  OF  PUBLIC  MEN.  By  John  W.  Forney. 
Volume  II.  New  York  :  Harper  &  Brothers.  1881. 
For  sale  in  San  Francisco  by  Payot,  Upham  &  Co. 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  CHOCOLATE. 

During  a  visit  to  Lima,  South  America,  in  1850,  I  was 
invited  by  Don  Petraco  Massoni,  an  enthusiastic  His- 
pano-Corsican  antiquarian  and  naturalist,  to  join  him 
in  making  explorations  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  an- 
cient Peruvian  city  of  Cuzco.  The  added  persuasions 
of  his  wife  and  daughter  caused  me  to  forego  a  proposed 
expedition  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Rimac  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  being  adopted  as  a  member  of  their  family  during 
the  excursion.  Besides,  I  had  discovered  that  they  were 
equally  zealous  and  capable  of  aiding  as  amateurs  in  the 
Professor's  favorite  specialties,  and  their  fondness  for 
the  study  of  ancient  relic  lore  created  in  me  a  desire  to 
enlist  as  a  neophyte,  that  I  might  participate  in,  and,  if 
susceptible,  realize  in  some  degree  kindred  enjoyment. 
*For  in  the  display  of  their  collected  treasures  their  in- 
terest extended  beyond  the  vague  pride  of  possession, 
as  each  article  was  viewed  in  the  light  of  an  index,  that 
bore  an  inference  relation,  more  or  less  clear,  to  events 
and  the  realities  of  custom  and  habit  that  had  transpired 
in  the  remote  past,  peculiar  to  the  requirements  and  pe- 
culiarities of  the  race  with  whom  they  had  origin.  Al- 
though it  would  revive  many  pleasing  incidents  and 
mirthful  impressions  to  pass  in  review  our  various  dis- 
coveries, which  served  as  keys  to  open  the  gates  of  the 
past  for  the  revelation  of  the  social  relations  of  a  race 
conquered,  and  rendered  in  fact  extinct,  notwithstand- 
ing the  mongrel  remnants  of  mountain  tribes  who  yet 
claim  to  be  descendants  from  the  Children  of  the  Sun, 
I  will  select  one  with  which,  as  a  favorite  beverage,  we 
are  all  familiar.  From  long  acquaintance  with  the 
methods  adopted  by  the  ancient  Peruvians  in  the  ma- 
terial arrangement  of  their  habitations  for  the  manage- 
ment of  their  domestic  affairs,  religious  rites,  and  arti- 
cles rated  as  agents  of  exchange,  Don  Petraco  was  en- 


abled to  direct  his  operations  so  that  they  rarely  led 
astray.  A  favorite  custom  was  to  imbed  jars  filled  with 
nicely  preserved  edibles,  prepared  in  their  customary 
way  for  food,  and  liquid  beverages,  hermetically  closed, 
in  the  walls  of  their  houses.  This  custom,  which  bears 
a  resemblance  to  ours  of  placing  mementoes  beneath 
the  corner-stone  of  public  buildings,  offered  to  the  de- 
scendants of  the  family  or  household  successors,  when 
discovered,  this  expressive  emblematic  salutation  :  "To 
future  friends  or  strangers  to  our  family  name,  we  offer 
you  this  tribute  of  food  and  drink  with  which  we  were 
accustomed  to  support  life  while  living,  with  the  hope 
that  in  kind  it  may  prove  congenial  to  your  tastes  and 
health.  Accept  with  it  our  congratulations. "  We  know 
that  the  Egyptians  were  accustomed  to  inclose  in  jars, 
and  bituminous  sealed  folds  of  the  shroud  underneath 
the  swathing  bandages  of  embalmed  bodies,  seeds  and 
fruits,  which,  although  they  failed  to  fulfill  the  probable 
intention,  served  to  supply  after  generations  with  the 
means  of  renewing  the  exhausted  stamina  of  species  in 
kind ;  and  Don  Petraco  suggested  that  in  the  transmit- 
ted similarity  of  custom  might  be  found  the  link  of  Cuz- 
conian  derivation. 

In  the  wall  of  a  house  which  was  recognized  by  Don 
Petraco  as  the  ancient  habitation  of  a  cacique  of  the 
third  degree,  we  found  a  glazed  jar  so  impermeable  and 
perfectly  closed  that  it  defied  the  test  of  eyes,  nose,  and 
tongue  to  detect  the  savor  of  its  contents.  On  opening 
it,  the  grateful  aroma  of  the  cocoa-nut,  when  roasted 
for  admixture  in  chocolate  combination,  saluted  our 
nostrils.  Upon  inspection,  we  found  it  filled  with  cakes 
of  about  two  ounces  each  in  weight,  and  so  exactly 
adapted  to  the  interior  of  the  vessel  in  form  and  size 
that  it  was  as  compactly  fitted  as  it  could  have  been  if 
the  mass  had  been  introduced  in  a  .plastic  state.  The 
odor  exhaled  was  so  delicious  and  tantalizing  to  our 


OUTCROPPINGS. 


579 


perceptive  tastes  that  we  forthwith  voted  to  subject  it  to 
the  test  of  our  mouths  in  the  usual  style  adopted  by  the 
Peruvians  in  preparing  chocolate  for  the  table.  The 
sipping  trial  that  followed  its  preparation  was  accompa- 
nied with  such  expressive  evidences  of  satisfaction  and 
surprise  at  the  seemingly  improved  condition  or  well 
preserved  qualities  of  the  compound  from  the  superior- 
ity of  artistic  admixture  in  the  first  instance,  that  the 
pride  that  prompted  the  care  shown  in  its  preparation 
and  preservation  would  not  have  been  disappointed  in 
the  measure  or  sincerity  of  its  test  approval,  in  resur- 
rection, after  the  passage  of  centuries.  Whether  de- 
rived from  any  occult  method,  or  material  employed  in 
its  preparation,  or  diffusion  of  volatile  properties  through 
the  mass  during  the  lapse  of  ages,  it  certainly  imparted 
to  us  a  tonic  quality  of  stimulation  in  character  similar 
to  the  effect  produced  from  chewing  cocoa  leaves.  The 
impermeable  quality  of  the  ancient  Peruvian  pottery  is 
shown  from  the  fact  that  jars  of  quicho,  a  spirituous 
liquor  resembling  the  pisco  manufactured  at  the  pres- 
ent day,  inclosed  in  walls,  when  opened  was  found  but 
slightly  diminished  in  quantity  from  the  effects  of  evap- 
oration, although  exceedingly  volatile.  Don  Petraco 
suggested  that  the  delicate  aroma  of  the  chocolate 
might  have  been  imparted  from  a  process  similar  to 
that  by  which  the  grain  is  prepared  for  fermenting 
quicho,  which  the  younger  class  of  antiquarians  allege 
was  chewed  by  young  and  beautiful  maidens,  while  tra- 
dition avers  that  the  old  and  toothless  were  the  opera- 
tors employed;  but  this  innuendo  in  no  way  diminished 
our  zest  of  memory  or  relish  for  a  repetition.  To  those 
who  are  only  acquainted  with  chocolate  prepared  by 
the  ordinary  process  of  venders  and  cooks  the  descrip- 
tion that  I  have  given  may  appear  like  an  ecstatic  eu- 
logy of  imagination,  but  others,  in  after  judgment  of  its 
effects,  were  quite  as  enthusiastic  in  praise  of  its  exquis- 
ite flavor ;  and  some  had  lived  in  Guayaquil,  which  pro- 
duces the  best  cocoa,  and  women  from  an  upland  tribe 
of  Indians  who  are  so  well  skilled  in  preparing  it  for  the 
table  that  their  reputation  adds  an  inducement  to  many 
visitors  to  prolong  their  stay  in  the  city  of  mosquitoes, 
at  an  expense  of  blood  and  money,  for  the  gratification 
of  taste.  Whether  age  or  art,  or  both  combined,  gave 
to  our  ancient  Cuzconian  chocolate  its  delicious  flavor, 
certain  it  is  that  the  Indians  of  the  western  slope  of  the 
Andes,  with  their  primitive  stone  slab  and  pestle  roller 
for  crushing  and  uniting  the  pulp  or  kernel  of  the  co- 
coa-nut with  the  panocha  (fire-caked  sugar),  succeed 
far  better  in  developing  and  retaining  the  peculiar  aro- 
ma than  civilized  nations  have  with  their  extractive  and 
machine  methods  of  preparing  chocolate  to  please  the 
eye  rather  than  the  palate.  The  manufacturer  of  choc- 
olate for  the  market  may  claim  that  the  superiority,  aside 
from  the  effects  of  imagination,  is  mainly  dependent 
upon  the  quality,  ripeness,  and  freshness  of  the  nuts, 
and  the  fact  that  they  are  used  without  being  subjected 
to  the  exposure  incident  to  transportation.  These  have 
undoubtedly  their  influence,  still  they  are  insufficient  to 
balance  the  difference  ;  besides,  there  is  an  inherent 
fatty  principle  or  quality  in  the  kernel  of  the  nut,  after 
being  roasted,  which  protects  it  from  rancidity,  render- 
ing it  in  a  great  measure  proof  to  the  changes  wrought 
by  climate  and  weather.  This  antiseptic  quality  of  the 
"butter  of  cocoa,"  when  extracted  after  the  kernel  has 
been  roasted,  has  been  practically  known  to  the  Indi- 
ans from  time  immemorial,  and  used  as  a  corrective, 
preservative,  and  curative  remedy  for  the  deteriorations 
caused  by  the  hot  climate.  ELTON  R.  SMILIE. 


A  DEL  NORTE  JUSTICE  OF  THE  PEACE. 

Bledsoe,  in  his  recently  published  History  of  Del  Norte 
County,  relates  the  following : 

The  Prosecuting  Attorney  went  on  to  state  ' '  that  on 
such  a  night,  at  such  a  place,  in  such  a  county  and  State, 
Ben  Strong  did,  in  a  quiet  game  of  keards  called  euchre 
with  Joe  Short,  with  malice  aforethought  and  evident 
intention  to  rob,  steal,  and  swindle,  '  turn  up '  a  point 
more  than  he  had  made,  thereby  unlawfully  taking  the 
plaintiff's  money."  Ben  was  also  accused  of  "renig- 
ging."  Two  witnesses  were  examined  as  to  the  charac- 
ter of  the  opposing  parties.  Each  of  the  attorneys 
made  a  speech  and  put  the  case  in  as  strong  a  light  as 
possible.  Then  came  the  ' '  charge : " 

"Gentlemen  of  the  jury,"  commenced  the  Squire, 
very  gravely,  ' '  the  pints  of  this  here  case,  like  angels' 
visits,  are  few  and  far  betwixt.  The  Court  knows  noth- 
ing about  euchre,  and  never  did,  but  she  knows  a  few 
about  law,  gentlemen  of  the  jury.  The  Court  has  went 
through  Blackstone  on  Law  twice,  and  she  has  read 
Snuggs's  Seven-up,  and,  gentlemen  of  the  jury,  she  has 
picked  up  a  good  many  pints  on  poker ;  but  she  ain't 
nowhere  on  euchre,  and  never  was.  But,  gentlemen  of 
the  jury,  the  Court  thinks  she  understands  the  pints  in 
this  case.  Ben  Strong  and  Joe  Short  they  played  at  ten 
dollars  ante,  and  Ben  he  won.  Will  you,  gentlemen  of 
the  jury,  fine  Ben  for  winning?  Who  wouldn't  like  to 
win  ?  Not  even  the  Court  herself.  But  you  kin  do  as 
you  please  about  it.  Then  the  opposite  attorney  says 
that  Ben  he  cheated.  But,  gentleman  of  the  jury,  did 
he  prove  that  pint  ?  No,  he  didn't  begin  to  do  it.  Ben 
Strong  plays  a  fair  game  at  keards.  The  Court  has 
played  old  sledge  and  whisky  poker  with  Ben  for  the 
last  two  years,  and  he  never  ketched  him  stocking  the 
papeis  or  turning  the  jack  from  the  bottom.  But,  gen- 
tlemen of  the  jury,  you  can  do  as  you  please  with  Ben. 
The  pints  in  the  case,  then,  gentlemen  of  the  jury,  are : 
First,  ef  you  find  that  Ben  Strong  won  Joe  Short's 
money,  it  is  clear  that  Ben  hilt  the  best  keards.  Sec- 
ond, ef  you  find  that  Joe  lost  his  money,  it  is  clear  that 
Joe  was  in  thunderin'  bad  luck.  These,  gentlemen  of 
the  jury,  are  all  the  pints  of  the  case,  and  you  kin  re- 
tire— and  don't  be  out  long,  for  Ben  is  going  to  treat 
the  whole  court." 

The  jury,  without  leaving  their  seats,  rendered  a  ver- 
dict of  ' '  not  guilty ; "  after  which  the  winning  side, 
headed  by  the  Court,  adjourned  to  a  saloon  to  imbibe. 
The  "opposite"  side,  headed  by  Joe  Short,  left  in  dis- 
gust. 


MILTON. 

Upon  my  book -case  shelf  I  see  with  shame 
Thy  poems  stand,  their  pages  long  unread, 
And  think  how  oft  my  midnight  lamp  has  shed 

Its  light  on  work  of  far  less  worthy  claim. 

For  thou  art  like  an  eagle — on  the  same 
Exalted  air  thy  mighty  wings  are  spread, 
And  though  dost  turn  upon  the  Fountain-head 

Of  day  thy  steady  gaze.     My  grosser  frame 

With  effort  rises  to  that  lofty  air. 

The  sun  is  blinding  to  my  weaker  sight ; 

And  soon  I  sink  to  lower  regions,  where 
I  find  a  denser  air,  a  softer  light. 

A  thousand  simple  pleasures  charm  me  there, 
And^common  griefs  my  sympathy  invite. 

CHAS.  S.  GREENE. 


THE    CALIFORNIAN. 


MY   BOTANY. 

Out  in  the  morning  very  early, 
Where  the  oaks  grow  bent  and  gnarly, 
I  hunt  for  wild  flowers  sweet  and  bright, 
Finding  iris  and  lady's-delight ; 
But,  far  or  near,  I  cannot  find 
The  flower  so  cherished  in  my  mind — 
Gay  wake-robin,  wake-robin. 

Away  in  the  dewy  hollows 
Grow  the  larkspur  and  the  mallows, 
Azalea,  primrose  and  pimpernel, 
Purple-medick  and  fair  bluebell ; 
But,  high  or  low,  I  cannot  find 
The  flower  so  cherished  in  my  mind — 
Gay  wake-robin,  wake-robin. 

Along  the  uplands  now  I  stroll,% 
Where  lupin  grows  on  sandy  knoll; 
The  sweet  forget-me-not  I  twine 
About  the  trumpet  columbine. 
I  sing  and  sing,  as  on  I  go, 
To  nodding  star-flowers  far  below, 
"Where's  wake-robin,  wake-robin." 

The  birds  pipe,  too,  their  joyous  song ; 
And  echoes  softly  borne  along 
So  stir  the  air  and  touch  my  heart, 
That,  trembling  hi  my  steps,  I  start 
And  fancy  from  afar  I  hear 
An  echo  to  my  song  so  clear — 
' '  Wake-robin,  wake-robin. " 

And  nearer  now  the  echoes  come — 
Not  song  of  birds,  not  wild  bees'  hum ; 
But  from  the  shade  of  madrono  trees 
There  comes  a  voice  borne  on  the  breeze. 
Now  calls  the  voice,  so  clear  and  strong: 
'Change  one  word  in  your  sweet  song; 
Sing,  Wait,  Robin— wait,  Robin  ! " 

Ah !  there's  the  brave  lad,  Robin  Lee, 
So  earnestly  entreating  me  : 
'Will  you,  my  bonnie,  bonnie  Kate, 
Change  one  short  word? — and  then  I'll  wait.' 
My  hands  and  lips  are  quivering, 
And  very,  very  low  I  sing: 
"Wait,  Robin— wait,  Robin!" 

L.  J.  DAKIN. 


SONG. 

Hush  !  hush,  my  heart !    Sing  softly — 

Your  sweet  song  rings  so  clear; 
To  my  happy,  listening  fancy 

It  seems  the  World  must  hear. 
1  He  loves  me — oh,  he  loves  me  ! " 

Rings  out  so  sweet  and  clear; 
To  my  happy,  happy  fancy 

It  seems  the  World  must  hear. 

Shine,  shine  my  eyes  less  brightly ! 

Your  new-born  light  will  be 
A  tell-tale  of  the  story, 

He  whispered  soft  to  me; 
To  my  soul's  most  quiet  shelter 

Its  strange  new  joy  would  flee; 
Then  oh,  shine  not  so  brightly 

For  all  the  world  to  see! 

MRS.  HENRIETTA  R.  ELIOT. 


JUNE. 

I  leave  behind  the  dusty  town, 

I  climb  the  steep  sky-kissing  hill, 
Or  wander  o'er  the  breezy  down 
-   Where'er  my  wayward  fancies  will. 

The  winds  are  heavy  with  perfumes, 
The  woodlands  ring  with  minstrelsy, 

The  meadows,  red  with  clover  blooms, 
Glow  like  the  sunset  on  the  sea. 

The  year  is  in  its  youth,  and  I 
Can  feel  a  thrill  of  joy  divine, 

Born  of  young  flowers  and  sunny  sky, 
Burn  through  my  veins  like  seasoned  wine. 

O  God !  thine  earth  is  bright  and  fair, 
And  fair  and  sweet  is  life  to  me ; 

Why  should  I  grieve  my  heart  with  care, 
And  sigh  o'er  sorrows  yet  to  be? 

Full  well  I  know  that  youth  must  die, 
And  June  her  cup  of  gladness  spill ; 
That  winter's  oriflamme  must  fly 
In  wrath  on  every  wooded  hill. 

But  on  the  margins  of  the  brooks 

The  cardinal  flowers  their  fires  shall  set, 

And  in  the  aster-studded  nooks 
A  smile  of  June  will  linger  yet. 

WM.  W.  GAY. 


SONNET. 

Because  my  sky  was  not  walled  in  by  hills, 
Because  far  inland  all  my  paths  must  be, 
I  longed  for  sight  of  mountains  and  the  sea, 

And  half  despised  familiar  fields  and  rills  ; 

And  then  life  gave  me  what  I  asked.     As  fills 
With  water  some  lone  fountain,  so  in  me 
Welled  up  that  unimagined  ecstasy 

That,  potent,  all  the  soul's  wild  tumult  stills. 

And  now,  with  humble  heart,  I  long  once  more 
For  sight  of  field  and  whispers  from  the  wood, 

For  common  weeds  and  flowers,  half  scorned  before, 
To  cure  this  ache  of  homesick  solitude  ; 

But  still  I  hear  the  ocean's  awful  roar, 

And  sigh  f0r  home,  dear  home,  for  evermore. 
DANIEL  ELLENDORE. 


s: 


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