Skip to main content

Full text of "The Californian and overland monthly"

See other formats 


CLASS 


VOL 


FREE 

PUBLIC  LIBRARY 
DECATUR 

ILLINOIS 


ACCESSION 


Overland 


(FOUNDED  1868  ^  BRET  HARTE) 


TEN   CENTS' 


The  Price  of  Progress 


THE  Panama  Canal  stands  as  one 
of  the  most  marvelous  achieve- 
ments of  the  age.  Into  its  construc- 
tion went  not  only  the  highest  engi- 
neering skill,  but  the  best  business 
brains  of  the  nation,  backed  by 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars. 

Suppose  conditions  not  to  be  fore- 
seen made  it  necessary  to  i  ..place  the 
present  canal  with  a  new  and  larger 
waterway  of  the  sea-level  type,  to  be 
built  in  the  next  ten  years. 

Also  suppose  that  this  new  canal 
would  be  the  means  of  a  great  saving 
in  time  and  money  to  the  canal-using 
public,  because  of  the  rapid  progress 
in  canal  engineering. 

This  sounds  improbable;  yet  it 
illustrates  exactly  what  has  happened 
in  the  development  of  the  telephone, 
and  what  certainly  will  happen  again. 

Increasing    demands    upon    the 


telephone  system,  calling  for  more 
extended  end  better  service,  forced 
removal  of  every  part  of  the  plant 
not  equal  to  these  demands.  Switch- 
boards, cables,  wires  and  the  telephone 
instrument  itself  were  changed  time 
and  again,  as  fast  as  the  advancing  art 
of  the  telephone  could  improve  them. 

It  was  practical  to  do  all  this  because 
it  greatly  increased  the  capacity  of  the 
plant,  reduced  service  rates  and  added 
subscribers  by  the  hundred  thousand. 

In  ten  years,  the  telephone  plant  of 
the  Bell  System  has  been  rebuilt  and 
renewed,  piece  by  piece,  at  an  expense 
exceeding  the  cost  of  the  Canal. 

Thus  the  Bell  System  is  kept  at  the 
highest  point  of  efficiency,  always 
apace  with  the  telephone  requirements 
of  the  public.  And  the  usefulness  of 
the  telephone  has  been  extended  to 
all  the  people. 


AMERICAN  TELEPHONE  AND  TELEGRAPH  COMPANY 
AND  ASSOCIATED   COMPANIES 

One  Policy  One  System  Universal  Service 


The  Overland  Monthly 


Vol.  LXVI— Second  Series 


July-December   1915 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY  CO.,  Publishers 


21  SUTTER  STREET 


SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL. 


5 


i 


N  D  EX 


A    BORN    PIONEER    IN    CULTIVATING    MUSIC 

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 
ACROSS  THE   DESERT  TO  MOENCAPI 

Illustrated  from  photographs  . 

AD    MATREM.      Verse 

A  MEDITATION.      Verse 

A  MOTHER'S  HAND.      Verse 

AN  ANTE  ON  TELEGRAPH   HILL.      Story 

AN   IRISH   LOVE  LILT.     Verse 

ANITA.       Story 

ANOTHER    DAY.      Story 

A  POEM   OF  PEACE.      Verse 

A    REMINISCENCE   OF   NORTH    PLATTE 
A   SHORT-CIRCUITED    LOVE   AFFAIR.      Story 
A    WOMAN'S    TRAMPING    TRIP    THROUGH 
THE    YOSEMITE  . 

Illustrated   from   photographs. 

BREEDING    INSECTS    FOR   THE    USE    OF    THE 
FARMERS  . 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
BRET    HARTE  AND  TRUTHFUL  JAMES 

Illustrated   from    photographs. 
CALIFORNIA    IN    EXPOSITION    ART 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
CALIFORNIA   IN  SEPTEMBER.      Story 
CANADIAN    INDIANS  AND    FUR   TRADE 

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 

CHILI    CON    CARNE.      Story 

CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE   AS    IT    IS 
CHOPIN'S   NOCTURNES.      Verse  . 

CHURCH'S   BIRTH    DUE  NOW 

CIRCLING    TAHITI 

CLAYTON,  HALF-CASTE.     Story  . 

CLIMBING   MT.  WHITNEY  

COMPENSATION.       Verse 

COMPENSATION.       Verse 

CONGRESS  OF  AUTHORS  AND  JOURNALISTS 

Illustrated   from   photographs. 

DAYBREAK.      Verse 

EDWIN    MARKHAM  

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

EMPEROR     NORTON     I 

FATE.      Verse  

FEATURES    OF    THE    PANAMA-PACIFIC 
EXPOSITION  . 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
FOUR    GREAT   COMPOSERS  

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

FRONTISPIECE.— Council    of    Blackfeet    Indians 
FRONTISPIECES 

''Alchemy"     (Verse) 

'Truthful  James  and  His  Partner" 
FRONTISPIECE.      (A  Restful  Arm  of  the  SilentSea) 

Illustrated   from    photographs. 
FRONTISPIECE— Craft  Used  by  Pearl  Smuggler 
FRONTISPIECE.     The  Sand  Dunes  of  Carmel    .. 
GAS,    THE    NESTOR    OF    PUBLIC    UTILITIES 

GOD'S     LIGHT.       Verse 

GOLDEN    AGE   AT    HAND 

GOLDENROD.      Verse 

HESTER'S    HOLLY    HEDGE.       Story 

HUNTING    THE    BUFFALO 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 


JEAN  MAHAN  PLANK 
TESSIE  R.   FERGUSON 

GERALD   CUMBERLAND 
ELLA  FLATT  KELLER 
ELLA  FLATT  KELLER 
LANNIE  HAYNES  MARTIN 
AGNES    LOCKHART    HUGHES 
MAUD   B.    RODGERS 
NELLIE    CRAVEY   GILLMORE 
EMILY  VINCENT  WHITE 
GRACE  A.   SEABECK 
LANNIE  HAYNES  MARTIN 

MARION  RANDALL  PARSONS 

JOHN  L.   COWAN 
ROBERT  L.   FULTON 
JESSIE  MAUDE  WYBRO 

WILLIAM  BOYD  GATEWOOD 
MAX  McD. 

LUCIA  E.   SMITH 
CLIFFORD  .P.   SMITH 
MARIAN  GILKERSON 
C.  T.  RUSSELL 
LEWIS  R.    FREEMAN 
BILLEE  GLYNN 
W.   E.   HUTCHINSON 
ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD 
ARTHUR  POWELL 
MARION  TAYLOR 

AGNES   LOCKHART   HUGHES 
HENRY  MEADE  BLAND 

FRED  EMERSON  BROOKS 
BRET  HARTE 

EDWARD  H.  HURLBUT 
ALMA  D'ALMA 


ARTHUR  WALLACE  PEACH 


C.   S.   S.  FORNEY 

RUTH   E.    HENDERSON 

C.  T.  RUSSELL 

AGNES1  LOCKHART  HUGHES 

AGNES    LOCKHART    HUGHES 

CHARLES    B.   KAUFFMAN 


360 
279 

127 
305 
349 
392 

52 
137 

31 
455 
416 

41 

421 


77 

89 

517 

209 
171 

224 
532 
122 
456 
187 
214 
23 
262 
332 
439 

131 
333 

114 

378 

379 

157 

2 
87-88 


186 

364 
461 
350 
396 
542 
432 
512 
165 


>graph. 


INDEX 


"ICH   DIEN."     Verse 

I    KNOW  A  VALLEY.      Verse 

INA    COOLBRITH     INVESTED    WITH     POET'S 
CROWN  . 

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 
INKEEPER   TO   BIRDS  AND  SQUIRRELS 

Illustrated  from  drawings. 
IN     MARCEAU'S    CABIN.       Story  .... 

IN    MINOR    KEY.      Verse 

IN  THE  PLAZA  DE  PANAMA,     Verse 
IN    THE    REALM    OF    BOOKLAND        . 

IN   QUIET  VALES.      Verse 

IS   CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE    REASONABLE? 
IS   CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE   SCRIPTURAL? 
JOAQUIN     MILLER.       Verse.       (Illustrated) 

JOY.       Verse 

JUWA   AND    AW  ASUS.      Story        .          .          . 
LAD   O'    LAUGHTER.      Verse  .          .          .          . 

LAN  I.      Story 

LEST  WE    FORGET  TO  PLAY       .          .          .          . 

LIL.      Story  

LOVE'S   MOMENT.      Verse 

MEMORIES  OF  MARK  TWAIN  . 

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 

MONTEREY.      Verse 

MOONLIGHT   WINE.      Verse 

MY  EXPERIENCES  ON  A  SINKING  SHIP 
MY    EXPERIENCE    WITH    GERONIMO'S    INDIANS 
IN    THE   SUMMER   OF   1885 

MYTHS  OF   MONTEREY 

MYTHS   OF    MONTEREY.      (Concluded) 

Illustrated    from    photographs. 
MY  YELLOW   BUTTERFLY.     Verse  ..         .         . 

NOCTURNE.      Verse         ..         ....         .   .      . 

ODE  TO  CALIFORNIA.      Verse       .         ... 

ONE    DAY'S    ROMANCE.       Story  . 

PANAMA-CALIFORNIA     EXPOSITION        \.       .V- 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
PANAMA-PACIFIC  EXPOSITION 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
PEARLING    IN    THE   AMERICAS  ..       -.         . 

Illustrated   from  photographs. 

PORTOLA'S    CROSS.      Verse  ...  "'.>       V.         . 

PORTRAIT.      C.  S.  S.   Forney        ,  .         .         . 
REMINISCENCES  OF    BRET    HARTE 

Illustrated   from   photographs. 
SAN    FRANCISCO.      Verse       .         *         .         . 
SAN    FRANCISCO.      Verse        .          .          .          •    .      . 
SANTA  BARBARA  BY  THE  SEA  ,         .          . 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

"SHELLS  OF   MEN."      Verse  .... 

SIDELIGHTS    IN    A    CAFETERIA.       Story 

SKIN    DEEP.      Story 

SLANEY'S  NIGHT  OF  GLORY.     Story 
STERLING,  THE  POET  OF  SEAS  AND  STARS 

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 
STEVENSON'S    TAHITIAN    "BROTHER" 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
SUNSET  ON   SAN    FRANCISCO    BAY.      Verse 

SYMPATHY.      Verse 

TAKING   A   TIMBER    CLAIM  .... 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

TAMALPAIS.     Verse 

TANTALUS.      Verse 

THE  ALTAR   PLACE.      Story 

THE   ANGELUS.      Verse 

THE  ASSIMILATION    OF  THE    IMMIGRANT     . 

THE    AWAKENING.       Verse 

THE    CANYON    TRAIL.      Verse 

THE   CAVES  OF   KAUMANA  .... 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

THE    CLIFF    DWELLERS.  .     Verse        .... 
THE   COWBOY'S    INAMORATA.      Verse 


MARION    TAYLOR 
ELIZABETH  A.  WILBUR 

JOSEPHINE  C.  McCRACKIN 
AMANDA  MATHEWS 

ALEX   GARDINER 
HARRY  COWELL 
EDWARD  ROBINS 

LILLIAN  H.  S.  BAILEY 
C.   T.  RUSSELL 
C.  T.  RUSSELL 
RICHARD  LEW  DAWSON 
EVERETT   EARL   STANARD 
A.  J.  ASHEN 

ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD 
GENEVIEVE    TAGGARD 
JAMES    EDWARD    ROGERS 
GEORGTE  BROOKS 
ARTHUR  WALLACE  PEACH 
WILLIAM  ALFRED  COREY 

MARY   CAROLYN  DA  VIES 
SARAH   HAMMOND   KELLY 
CLARA  M.  NICHOLSON 

G.  W.  MILES 

GRACE  MacFARLAND 

GRACE  MacFARLAND 

THEODORA  A.  EDMOND 
THEODORE  SHAW 
HARRY  COWELL 
JESSIE  WOOD 
LEWIS  H.   FALK 

HAMILTON  WRIGHT 
WM.  A.   REID 
BRET  HARTE 


JOSEPHINE  C.  McCRACKIN 

BRET  HARTE 

ELIZA   JARVIS   NAGLE 

JOSEPHINE    BLACK  WE'LL 

MARY  CAROLYN  DA  VIES 
SARAH  H.   KELLY 
WALDO  R.  SMITH 
WILLIAM  FREEMAN 
HENRY  MEADE  BLAND 

PAUL  GOODING 

ULA  BURFORD  BARRIE 
BELLE  WILLEY  GUE 
MIRIAM  E.  McGUIRE 

WILLIAM   NAUNS   RICKS 
WILLIAM   FRANCIS  MANNIX 
JEANNETTE  TENNYSON 
BRET  HARTE 
FRANK  B.   LENZ 
AGNES   LOCKHART   HUGHES 
MILDRED  C.   TALLANT 
ALFRED    KUMMER 

ST.  GEORGE  BEST 
NEWELL  BATMAN 


404 
268 

448 
258 

115 
541 
503 
546 
420 
269 
363 
363 

56 
142 
358 
401 

83 
306 
511 
263 

208 

37 

329 

44 
418 
535 

278 
86 

234 
38 

451 

244 
365 

462 
277 
463 

12 
136 

70 

69 
389 
319 
323 

475 

64 

160 

82 
147 

197 
391 
301 

288 
240 
170 
227 
428 

427 
516 


INDEX 


Verse 


THE    COMMODORE.       Story 

THE  COSMIC  MOTIF.     Verse 

THE  COURT  OF  THE  UNIVERSE. 

THE  CREED   OF  AH   SING.      Story       .... 

THE   CRIMINAL    IN    THE    DRAMA        .... 

THE  DOOR  OF  YESTERDAY 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

THE   END  OF  THE  TRAIL.      Verse       .... 
THE    END  OF  THE  TRAIL.      Verse 

Illustrated. 

THE   EXPOSITION    BUILDERS.      Verse       . 
THE    FIRST   PETROLEUM    REFINERY    IN    THE 
UNITED   STATES 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
THE  GIRL  WHO  NEVER  WAS.      Story 
THE    GREAT    ORATIONS    OF    THE    EXPOSITION. 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
THE   HARBOR  OF  THE  SUN.      Verse 

THE    HORSETHIEF.       Story 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  WAR  ON  POETRY 

THE    LIGHT    WITHOUT.      Story 

THE   LUCK  OF  ROARING  CAMP  .... 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

"THE    LURE."     Story 

THE   MAKING  OF  THE  WEST.      Verse       . 

THE  MAKING  OVER  OF  CHAS.  BAXTER.    Story     . 

THE    MONTEREY  CYPRESS  

Illustrated  from  a  photograph. 

THE    MOTHER.       Verse 

THE  NEUROTIC.      Story 

THE   NEW    EXECUTIVE   IN    FEMININE  CLUBDOM 

Illustrated   from   a  photograph. 
THE   NIGHT  OF  THE   KONA.      Story  .         . 

THEN  I'LL  COME  BACK  TO  YOU.     Verse 
THE  OFFERING  TO  THE  VIRGIN.     Verse 

THE   OPIUM    FIEND.      Story 

THE   PANAMA-PACIFIC    EXPOSITION    IN    ITS 
GLORIOUS  PRIME 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
THE   PASSING   OF  THE   COWBOY        .... 

THE    PROSPECTOR.      Verse 

THE   RAILROADS  AND  THE   PEOPLE        .          .          . 
THE     REAPER.        Verse  ...... 

THE   RIGHT  OF  WAY.      Story 

THE  SAND   RAT.      Story  .          .          .          .          . 

THE    SCAR.      Story 

THE  SEQUOIA'S  CREED.     Verse  .... 

THE    SHADOW.       Verse 

THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE     RUSSIAN     HUNTERS 

DEVISED 

The  "Song  of  Baranov,"  1799. 
THE  TRAGIC  SEQUEL  TO  THE   FIRST  WHITE 

SETTLEMENT  IN  THE  SITKAN  ARCHIPELAGO 
THE  SONG  OF  THE  TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER 
THE    TIDES    OF    LOVE.       Verse  .... 

THE   TORCH.      Verse 

THE   TWELFTH    MONTH.      Verse        .... 
THE   WAY   OF   UNDERSTANDING.      Verse 

THE    WEB.       Story 

THE  WELL-BELOVED.     Verse 

TO  A  SEA-BIRD.      Verse 
TWILIGHT.       Verse  ... 

TWO    ESCAPE    FROM    HELL 
THE   UNWRITTEN   LAW.      Story 
UTE   FIESTA   IN   GARDEN   OF  THE 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

VALUE  OF  IDEALS 

VASCO  NUNEZ  DE  BALBOA     .... 

Illustrated   from  photographs. 
VASCO,  THE  BANDIT  OF  THE  PINNACLES 

Illustrated    from   photographs. 
WHAT    IS  A    NATIONAL   PARK? 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
WORLD'S  ADVANCE  SHOWN    IN    EXHIBITS  . 

Illustrated   from   photographs. 

YOUR  NEED  OF  ME.      Verse  .... 

Illustrated. 


H.    P.    HOLT 
ARTHUR  POWELL 
JESSIE  MAUDE  WYBRO 
FRANCIS  J.  DICKIE 
ELLA  COSTILLO  BENNETT 
ANNA   BLAKE  MEZQUIDA 

STANTON  ELLIOTT 
ELIZABETH  CRIGHTON 

AMY  W.  HAMLIN 
M.  C    FREDERICK 

ARTHUR  WALLACE  PEACH 
HENRY    MEADE    BLAND 

EMMA  FRANCES   SWINGLE 
ALICE  L.   HAMLIN 
STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 
JOHN  AMID 
BRET    HARTE 

LEWIS  A.   WENTWORTH 
KENNETH  A.  MILLLJCAN 
ELIZABETH  VORE 
LEONORE   KOTHE 

ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD 
NELLIE    CRAVEY  GILLMORE 
ELIZABETH    WHITFORD 

WILLIAM  FRANCIS  MANNIX 
ROSE  DE  VAUX-ROYER 
LANNIE  HAYNES  MARTIN 
W.  R.  WHEELER 

HAMILTON  WRIGHT 

MAX  McD. 

L.    W.    BARTLETT 

WM.   A.   SPROULE 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES 

ALFRED    BRUNK 

HELEN   RICHARDSON    BROWN 

BAILEY  MILLARD 

LUCIA  E.    SMITH 

ARTHUR    WALLACE    PEACH 


LEWIS   R.   FREEMAN 

BELLE  WILLEY  GUE 

ALFRED  NO  YES 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES 

JO.  HARTMAN 

VAN  WAGENEN  HOWE 

VIRGINIA  CLEAVER  BACON 

BRET  HARTE 

EMMA  VESTI  MILLER 

C.   T.   RUSSELL 

YETTA  BULL 

HOWARD  C.  KEGLEY 

C.  T.  RUSSELL 

CAPT.  H.  ROWAN  LEMLY 

W.    W.    CANFIELD 
CLIFFORD  TREMBLY 
BENTLY  PALMER 
DOROTHY  De  JAGERS 


25 
141 
257 
407 
266 
3 

1 

534 

340 
353 

132 
526 

11 
501 
331 

228 
198 

397 
409 
128 
469 

43 
504 
161 

236 
362 

482 
405 

289 

53 
438 
410 
400 
123 
491 
311 
223 
417 

522 


524 

60 
531 
233 
490 
481 
479 
265 

99 
328 

87 
485 

57 

175 
341 

433 

14 

101 

185 


Please   Mention   Overland    Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers. 


Victrola    is    the    life 
of    the    summer   home 

Wherever  you  go  for  the  summer,  you'll  be 
glad  of  the  companionship  of  the  Victrola. 

It  brings  to  you  the  world's  greatest  bands  and 
instrumentalists,  the  most  famous  opera  stars,  the 
popular  comedians  of  the  day,  to  charm  and  cheer 
you  with  their  music  and  mirth;  or  it  becomes  at 
will  the  best  of  dance  orchestras  to  furnish  the 
music  for  the  newest  dances. 

Always,  everywhere,  the  Victrola 
is  a  constant  delight. 

Any  Victor  dealer  will  gladly  play  your  favorite 
music  for  you  and  demonstrate   the  various 
stvles  of  the  Victor  and  Victrola— $10  to  $250. 


Visit  the  Victor  Temple  of  MUSK 

Palace  of  Liberal  Arts 
Panama -Pacific     International 
Exposition,  San  Francisco,  CL!. 


Victor  Talking  Machine  Co. 
Camden,  N.  J.,  U.  S.  A. 

Berliner  firamophon^  Co.,  Montreal,  Canadian  Distribute 


Always  use  Victor  Machines  with  Victor  Records  and  Victor  Needles- 
t*e  r^mbi-Hnfi'n*,.    There  is  no  other  way  to  get  the  unequaled  Victor  ton;. 


New  Victor  Recorcis  demonstrated  at  all  dealers  on  the  28th  of  each  mo^th 


Vol.   LXVI 


No.  1 


OVERLAND     MONTHLY 

An  Illustrated  Magazine  of  the   West 


CONTENTS  FOR  JULY,    1915 


THE   END  OF  THE  TRAIL.      Verse       . 

Illustrated. 

FRONTISPIECE.— Council    of    Blackfeet    Indians 
THE  DOOR  OF  YESTERDAY 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 
THE  HARBOR  OF  THE  SUN.     Verse 

SAN    FRANCISCO.      Verse 

WHAT    IS  A   NATIONAL   PARK?  .... 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

CLIMBING   MT.  WHITNEY  

THE    COMMODORE.       Story  . 

ANOTHER    DAY.      Story  , 

MOONLIGHT   WINE.      Verse  .         .         .         . 

ONE    DAY'S    ROMANCE.       Story  . 

A   SHORT-CIRCUITED    LOVE   AFFAIR.      Story 

THE    MOTHER.       Verse 

MY    EXPERIENCE    WITH    GERONIMO'S    INDIANS 
IN    THE   SUMMER   OF   1885 

AN   IRISH   LOVE  LILT.     Verse 

THE   PASSING   OF   THE   COWBOY 

JOY.       Verse 

UTE   FIESTA   IN   GARDEN   OF  THE  Gv 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

THE  SONG  OF  THE  TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER 
STEVENSON'S    TAHITIAN    "BROTHER" 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

"SHELLS  OF   MEN."      Verse 

SANTA  BARBARA  BY  THE  SEA  . 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

BREEDING    INSECTS    FOR   THE    USE    OF   THE 
FARMERS  . 

Illustrated  from  photographs. 

SYMPATHY.      Verse 

LEST  WE    FORGET  TO  PLAY 

NOCTURNE.      Verse 

TWO    ESCAPE    FROM    HELL 


STANTON  ELLIOTT 


2 

ANNA   BLAKE  MEZQUIDA  3 

EMMA  FRANCES   SWINGLE  11 

BRET   HARTE  12 

CLIFFORD  TREMBLY  14 


W.   E.   HUTCHINSON  23 

H.    P.    HOLT  25 

NELLIE    CRAVEY   GILLMORE  31 

SARAH   HAMMOND   KELLY  37 

JESSIE  WOOD  38 

LANNIE  HAYNES  MARTIN  41 

ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD  43 

G.  W.  MILES  44 

AGNES    LOCKHART   HUGHES  52 

MAX  McD.  53 

EVERETT   EARL   STANARD  56 

HOWARD  C.  KEGLEY  57 

LEWIS   R.   FREEMAN  60 

PAUL  GOODING  64 

MARY  CAROLYN  DA  VIES  69 

JOSEPHINE    BLACKWELL  70 


JOHN  L.  COWAN  77 

BELLE  W1LLEY  GUE  82 

JAMES    EDWARD    ROGERS  83 

THEODORE  SHAW     .  86 

C.   T.   RUSSELL  87 


NOTICE].— Contributions  to  the  Overland  Monthly  should  be  typewritten,  accompanied  by  full 
return  postage  and  with  the  author's  name  and  address  plainly  written  in  upper  corner  of  first 
page. 

Manuscripts  should  never  be  rolled. 

The  publisher  of  the  Overland  Monthly  will  not  be  responsible  for  the  preservation  of  unso- 
licited contributions  and  photographs. 

Issued  Monthly.  $1.20  per  year  in  advance.    Ten  cents  per  copy 

Copyrighted,  1914,  by  the  Overland   Monthly   Company. 

Northwestern  offices  at  74  Hilbour  Building,  Butte,   Mont.,    under   management   of   Mrs.    Helen 
Fitzgerald  Sanders.     Entered  at  the  San  Francisco,  Cal.,  Postoffice  as  second-class  mail  matter. 
Published  by  the  OVERLAND  MONTHLY  COMPANY,  San  Francisco,  California. 

•     21    SUTTER    STREET. 


Please   Mention  Overland  Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


iii 


THE    PICTURESQUE 

SHASTA    ROUTE 

Three  Daily  Trains  to 
Portland,  Tacoma,  Seattle 


SHASTA  LIMITED 

Extra  Fare  $5.00 

Leave  San  Francisco,  Ferry  Station,  ]1:00  A.  M. 


PORTLAND    EXPRESS 

Leave  San  Francisco,  Ferry  Station,  1:00  P.  M. 


OREGON    EXPRESS 

Leave  San  Francisco,  Ferry  Station,  8:20  P. 


Dining  Car   Service   Best  in  America 

SOUTHERN    PACIFIC 

THE    EXPOSITION    LI  NE— 1  9  1  5— F  I  RS  T    IN    SAFETY 


iv 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly    When    Writing    Advertisers. 


HOTEL  CUMBERLAND 

NEW  YORK 
Broadway  at  54th  Street 


Broadway  cars  trom 

Grand 
Central  Depot 

7th  Ave.  Cars  from 
Penna.  Station 

New  and  Fireproof 

Strictly  First-Class 
Rates  Reasonable 

$2.50  with  Bath 
and  up 

Send  for  Booklet 

10  Minutes  Walk  to 
40  Theatres 


H.  P.  STIMSON 

Formerly  with  Hotel  Imperial 

Only  N.Y.  Hotel  Window-Screened  Throughout 


HOTEL    LENOX 

North  St.,  at  Delaware  Ave. 

Buffalo,  N.  Y. 


Patrons  who  visit  this  hotel  once  invariaby  tell  their 
friends  that— for  Fair  Rates,  complete  and  perfect 
equipment  and  unfailing  courtesy 

BUFFALO'S      LEADING      TOURIST      HOTEL 

unquestionably  excels.  Beautifully  located  in  ex- 
clusive section — North  St.  at  Deleware  Ave.  Thor- 
oughly modern— fireproof.  Best  obtainable  cuisine 
— quiet,  efficient  service. 

EUROPEAN  PLAN— $1.5O  per  day  and  up 

Special  weekly  and  monthly  rates.  Take  Elmwood 
Ave.  car  to  North  St.  Write  for  complimentary 
"Guide  of  Buffalo  and  Niagara  Falls,"  also  for  Special 
Taxicab  Arrangement.  C.  A.  MINER,  Manager 


HOTEL   ST.  FRANCIS 

SAN       FRANCISCO 

/ ,000  Rooms  —  Largest  Hotel  in  Western  America 

M AN AGEMEN T — J AM ES     WOODS 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


Three  Refrigerator 
Impr  o vem  en  t  s 

Shown  in  this  Book 


Write  today  for  this  new  book  by  Mr.  Leonard.     Learn  about 


(1) 


(2) 
(3) 


The   new  method   of  lining  that  does  away 
with  corners    n  "hard-to-get-at"  places,  and 
makes  cleaning  easier  than  ever 
The  new  one-piece  door  lining;  and 
The (Self-Closing    Trigger    Lock    that    auto- 
matically shuts  the  door  TIGHT,    ALWAYS 
and  insures  the  efficiency  of  the  refrigerator 


sV  nnrPPiTiVTii^4"*0^"?  the  ^eonar^  is  absolutely  perfect.  Its  beautiful  glistening- white, 
seamiess,  porcelain  lining  makes  it  as  sanitary,  clean  and  easv  to  carp  for  as  n.  HnvilnnH  PhiiTa  Hicv, 
There  is  not  a  nook  or  crevice  in  which  grease  or  dirt can  collect! 

Write  for  book  and  sample  of  Porcelain 

used  in  the  Leonard  Cleanable.    Compare  this  lining  with  any  other  kind.    Put  it  to  hard  tests.     Then 
you  11  understand  why  the  Leonard  Cleanable  outlasts  ten  ordinary  refrigerators  and  is 


Like  a  clean  ckma  cSsk 


5O  styles 
$15.OO  and  up 

This  style 

35x21 x45 

in  Oak  Case 

$35.OO 

Freight  Paid 

to  Ohio  and 

Mississippi 

Rivers 


For  sale  by 
good  dealers 
everywhere,  or 
direct    from 
factory  with 
money-back 
guarantee  if 
not  pleased 


SEE    OUR    EXHIBIT 

at  the  Panama  Pacific  Exposition.    It  is  in  block  11,  Pure  Food  Palace. 

Mangrum  and  Otter,  Agents  -       -       San  Francisco,  Cal. 

Barker  Bros.,  Agents    -       -        Los  Angeles,  Cal.  Benbaugh  Furniture  Co.,  Agents,  San  Diego,  Cal. 

Tull  &  Gibbs,  Agents       -       -       Spokane,  Wash.  John  Breuner  Co.,  Agents      -      Sacramento,  Cal. 

Prael  Hegle,  Agents      -       -       Portland,  Oregon  Seattle  Hardware  Co.,  Agents     -     Seattle,  Wash. 

If  you  can 't  visit  our  Exhibit,  ivrite  today  and  full  information  will  come  by  return  mail.    A.  postal  will  do. 

GRAND     RAPIDS     REFRIGERATOR    CO. 

130    CLYDE     PARK    AVENUE  GRAND    RAPIDS,     MICH. 

\Vorld's  Largest  Refrigerator  Manufacturers 


vi  Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 

Miss  Hamlin's  School 
For  Girls 


Home  Building  on  Pacific  Avenue 
of  Miss  Hamlin's  School  for  Girls 


Boarding  and  day  pupils.  Pupils  received 
at  any  time.  Accredited  by  all  accredit- 
ing institutions,  both  in  California  and  in 
Eastern  States.  French  school  for  little 
children.  Please  call,  phone  or.  address 

MISS  HAMLIN 

TELEPHONE  WEST  546 


2230  PACIFIC  AVENUE 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL. 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing   Advertisers. 


vii 


Hitchcock  Military   Academy 

San  Rafael,   Cal. 


One   of  the  Four  Main  Hall* 


A  HOME  school  for    boys,    separate    rooms,    large 
campus,  progressive,  efficient,  thorough,  Govern- 
ment   detail    and    full    corps     of     experienced 
instructors,   accredited  to  the  Universities. 

Ideally  located  in    the    picturesque    foothills  of 
Marin    County,     fifteen     miles    from    San    Francisco. 

Founded  1878. 
Catalogue  on   application. 

REX  W.  SHERER  and  S.  J.  HALLEY,  Principals 


viii 


Please  Mention  Overland   Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


Welcome  To  Camp  B.V.  D.: 


Copyright,  U.  S.  A.  79/5,  by 
The  B.V.D.  Company. 


FIRST    they    named    it      cCamp    Comfort,'1    but   they've 
changed   it   to     'Camp  B.V.D.",  because    nothing   calls 
up  the  thought  of  Summer  Comfort  so   instantly   as    B.V.  D. 
It's  the    Underwear    of    red-blooded,    right-living    men    who 
find  clean   fun   in   keen   sport,    from   tramping   to   camping. 

You — welcome  to  Camp  B.V.  D.  even  though  you're  desk-bound  and  town- 
chained!  Wear  it,  and  be  cool  and  comfortable  all  summer  long.  It  won't 
bind  or  irritate.  It  lets  the  air  at  your  body.  It  wears  long  and  washes  fine. 
You  are  sure  of  its  quality  of  material,  integrity  of  make  and  true-to-size  fit. 

On  every  B.V.  D.  Undergarment  is  sewed  This  Red  Wo<vcn  Label 


B.V.D.  Union  Suits  (Pat. 
U.S.A.  4-30-07)  $1.00,  $1.50, 
152.00,  $3.00  and  $5.00  the  Suit. 


B.VD. 


BEST  RETAIL  TRADE 


B.V.  D.  Coat  Cut  Undershirts  and 
Knee  Length  Drawers,  50c., 
75c.,$l. 00  and$l. 50  the  Garment. 


{Trade  Mark  Reg.  U  S.  Pat.  Off.  and  Foreign  Countriei) 

Firmly  insist  upon  seeing  this  label  and  firmly 
refuse  to  take  any  Athletic  Underwear  without  it. 

The  B.V.D.  Company,  New  York. 

London  Selling  Agency :    66,  Aldermanbury,  E.  C. 


Equestrian  Statue  by  James  Earl  Fraser  at  the  Entrance  to  the 
Court  of  Palms  in  the  P.  P.  I.  E. 

The  End  of  the  Trail 

By   Stanton  Elliot 


The  hope  that  held  thee  to  thy  course  is  spent, 
As  when  the  sun  has  reached  the  brink  of  day, 
And  weary  night  obliterates  the  way 
That  led  thee  on  a  barren  trail's  descent. 
Resolve  which  spurred  thee  now  is  impotent 
To  stir  thy  shattered  spirit's  blind  dismay, 
And  faith  no  longer  holds  her  tortured  prey 
To  paths  that  fate  has  made  indifferent. 

Thy  race  is  run.    No  longer  shall  a  goal 
Betray  a  sleepless  pulse,  nor  any  meed 
Of  joy  enmesh  desire.    There  is  no  need 
Within  thy  deep  despair  that  could  enroll 
Thee  in  life's  lists,  nor  rouse  thee  to  some  deed 
Of  greatness  that  would  animate  thy  soul. 


Fish  Wolf  Robe  addressing  Blackfeet  Indians  at  a  council.    Right  to  left- 
Cream  Antelope,  Medicine  Owl,  Chief  Gambler,  Lazy  Boy,  Two  Guns  White 
Calf,  and  Fish  Wolf  Robe. 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


JUN2 


MONTHLY 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  July,  1915 


No.  1 


Chief  Three  Bears,  one  hundred  and  two  years  old,  enjoying  a  pipe  of  peace. 

THE  DOOR  OF  YESTERDAY 

An  Intimate  View  of  the  Vanishing  Race  at  the  Panama-Pacific 

International  Exposition 

By  Anna  Blake  Aezquida 


GRASS  DANCES,  medicine  cere- 
monies, pow-wows!  Through  it 
all  a  strange  searching  for  the 
understanding  and    friendship 
of  the  white  man — a  naive,  tragic  pride 
in  the  customs  of  a  day  gone  by. 


In  permitting  six  full-blooded  Black- 
feet  chiefs  to  visit  the  Exposition  as 
delegates  from  their  tribe,  the  United 
States  Department  of  the  Interior 
builded  more  wisely  than  it  knew.  That 
the  descendants  of  the  first  Americans 


The  Circle  Dance :  Blackfeet  Indians  dancing  on  the  sands  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean  a  mile  below  the  famous  Cliff  House,  near  the  Golden  Gate,  San 
Francisco.  The  women  are  allowed  to  join  in  this  special  dance. 


should  be  allowed  to  share  in  celebrat- 
ing America's  greatest  achievement  is 
common  justice.  That  the  latest 
Americans  should  be  given  an  opportu- 
nity to  draw  near  the  heart  of  this  sor- 
rowful race,  whose  moccasined  feet 
are  marking  time  in  the  land  of 
shadow,  is  a  matter  for  rejoicing.  As 
the  author  of  "The  Vanishing  Race" 
has  said,  "We  belong  to  the  last  gen- 
eration that  will  be  granted  the  su- 
preme privilege  of  studying  the  Indian 
in  anything  like  his  native  state." 

From  the  gentle  Pueblos  and  Nav- 
ajos  living  their  life  in  miniature  on 
the  Zone,  to  the  daring  Sioux  in  the 
101  Ranch,  these  North  American  In- 
dians have  a  lesson  for  their  con- 
querors. But  it  is  from  these  friendly 
Blackfeet,  members  of  the  only  tribe 
of  red  men  that  has  ever  shed  the 
blood  of  the  Pale-face,  that  one  may 
learn  most.  Fully  accredited  delegates 
t^  the  Exposition,  brought  here  as  the 


guests  of  Mr.  Louis  W.  Hill,  under 
heavy  bonds  to  the  Government  and  in 
the  personal  care  of  William  Blonder, 
the  Indian  Agent,  these  magnificently 
painted,  feathered  and  beaded  chiefs 
have  erected  their  tepees,  and  entertain 
visitors,  in  the  Glacier  National  Park 
exhibit  of  the  Great  Northern  Rail- 
way. 

So  typically  characteristic,  yet  so 
widely  diversified,  are  the  life  stories 
of  these  Indians,  that  they  might  form 
separate  chapters  in  the  history  of  the 
race  that  is  fading  into  oblivion. 

"Behold!  I  call  Os-kin,  the  Great 
Spirit,  to  witness  that  I  have  a  true 
story  to  tell." 

Hand  flung  upward,  dark  eyes  burn- 
ing, ninety-two-year-old  Many  Tail- 
Feathers  chanted  the  chapter  on  war 
— Many  Tail-Feathers  of  the  wrinkled 
face  and  long  silences,  who  looked 
when  a  child  upon  the  first  white  men 
that  came  among  the  Blackfeet,  and 


Blackfeet    chiefs    depositing    money  in  a  branch  depository  bank    on    the 
Exposition  grounds,  San  Francisco. 


whose  early  life  was  one  long  record 
of  battles  with  hostile  tribes. 

"It  was  many  years  ago  when  Major 
Young  was  the  Indian  Agent,"  he  said 
through  the  interpreter.  "He  let  the 
warriors  go  down  into- the  hills  to  hunt 
game,  and  gave  us  permission  to  search 
other  Indians  for  some  horses  which 
had  been  stolen.  The  tribe  went  down 
and  camped  in  the  Bear  Paw  Moun- 
tains, which  are  south  of  the  Reserva- 
tion and  toward  the  Cheyenne  country, 
for  we  saw  that  it  was  a  good  place  to 
hunt  buffalo.  The  next  morning  it  was 
known  that  more  horses  had  been 
stolen.  The  Blackfeet  followed  the 
tracks  and  came  upon  the  war  party 
of  the  enemy,  the  Yank-ton  Sioux. 
There  were  thirty  Blackfeet  and  seven 
in  the  party  of  the  enemy. 

"When  the  sun  was  quite  a  way 
up  the  battle  started.  The  first  to 
shoot  was  a  Sioux.  The  first  to  die  was 
also  a  Sioux.  Then  the  battle  grew 


fierce.  I,  Many  Tail-Feathers,  was  in 
the  center,  and  both  parties  were 
shooting  pretty  rapidly.  My  horse  was 
shot,  and  I  fell  with  him.  I  rose  and 
chased  the  Sioux  that  killed  my  horse. 
His  name  was  Blue  Cloud.  I  shot  him 
three  times,  so  that  he  was  full  of 
holes.  Weasel  Moccasin  was  the  only 
Blackfoot  killed.  But  we  killed  and 
scalped  all  the  Sioux  save  Blue  Cloud. 
He  was  shot  through  with  holes,  yet  he 
lived.  When  Chief  Strangle  Wolf  of 
the  Blackfeet  saw  this,  he  ordered 
Blue  Cloud  sent  away  alive  to  tell  his 
tribe  about  the  battle,  that  it  might 
serve  the  Sioux  as  a  lesson  forever. 

"This  is  what  happened  to  Blue 
Cloud:  On  his  knees  and  arms  he 
crawled  to  the  river  a  mile  away. 
There  he  found  a  dead  buffalo.  All 
winter  he  lived  on  the  meat  from  this 
skeleton.  Toward  spring,  when  the  ice 
had  melted  and  the  river  was  high,  he 
crawled  on  a  log  and  floated  down 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


stream  until  he  reached  his  home  on 
the  bank  of  the  river.  His  squaw  had 
come  down  to  get  water,  and  when  she 
saw  him  she  was  frightened  and  asked 
if  he  was  Blue  Cloud,  and  he  answered 
'yes.'  So  the  squaw  ran  back,  crying, 
'Blue  Cloud  is  here!'  That  is  the  story 
of  Blue  Cloud.  He  is  living  to-day,  an 
old  man,  shot  through  with  holes. 

"After  the  battle  the  Blackfeet  re- 
turned to  the  Reservation  and  told  the 
agent  what  they  had  done.  Old  Chief 
White  Calf  told  the  agent  that  the 
Blackfeet  were  not  looking  for  trou- 
ble, but  the  Sioux  ought  all  to  have 
been  killed  for  stealing  horses  and  dis- 
obeying the  orders  of  the  United  States 
Government." 

Battle  stick  waving,  low  voice  inton- 
ing, Chief  Many-Tail  Feathers  swung 
backward  and  forward  in  the  peculiar 
hopping  tread  of  the  war  dance. 

The  chapter  on  the  sacred  mysteries 
of  the  race  could  be  given  by  solemn- 
faced,  dreamy-eyed  Medicine  Owl, 
Holy  Man  of  the  Blackfeet.  He  it  is 
who  asks  the  aid  of  the  Great  Spirit  to 
heal  the  sick.  It  is  Medicine  Owl  who 
sucks  the  poison  from  the  wound  and 
applies  the  curative  sweet  grass,  sage, 
juniper  and 'Indian  roots  amid  song 
and  prayer.  He  leads  in  the  song  and 
dance  upon  the  recovery  of  the  sick 
man.  He  is  the  Council  Man  and  the 
holder  of  the  peace  pipe.  Four  times 
in  the  past  he  has  smoked  this  pipe 
with  other  tribes,  and  recently  with  the 
Sioux.  Under  the  leadership  of  Medi- 
cine Owl  the  Blackfeet,  a  short  while 
ago,  ascended  Mt.  Tamalpais  to  pay 
their  weird  ceremonial  tribute  to  the 
long-unhonored  god  of  the  extinct  Ta- 
mal  Tribe. 

The  oratory  of  the  Indian,  with  its 
wonderful  imagery  born  of  his  pure 
nature  worship,  his  love  for  his  kind, 
and  the  imperishable  knowledge  of  the 
justice  of  his  cause,  is  exemplified  in 
the  fiery  speech  of  Two  Guns  White 
Calf.  With  a  magnificent  presence,  a 
face  of  rare  intelligence,  a  voice  of 
great  beauty  and  power,  he  pours  out 
his  soul  to  his  race,  and  pleads  for  his 
people  with  those  who  hold  the  future 
of  the  Indian  in  the  hollow  of  their 


hand.  He  was  present  when  his  father 
— also  a  noted  orator  among  the  red 
men — helped  to  make  the  famous 
treaty  with  the  whites,  by  which  the 
Government,  for  a  million  and  a  half 
dollars,  acquired  the  Sweet  Grass 
Hills  country. 

He  was  likewise  present  at  the  mak- 
ing of  a  later  treaty,  by  which  for  the 
same  price  the  Government  bought  a 
strip  of  land  from  the  Indians  exclu- 
sive of  the  timber,  water  and  game 
upon  it.  This  land  is  now  a  part  of 
the  Glacier  National  Park,  and  one- 
half  of  the  purchase  money  has  been 
invested  at  four  per  cent  interest  in 
'the  United  States  Treasury  for  the  use 
of  the  Indians.  It  is  the  latter  treaty, 
however,  that  worries  White  Calf.  See- 
ing the  encroachment  of  the  whites 
upon  the  timber  land  and  game  pre- 
serves which  belong  to  his  people,  he 
is  awaiting  the  day  when  another 
treaty  shall  be  made,  and  through  his 
eloquence,  which,  unfortunately,  loses 
somewhat  by  interpretation,  he  may 
persuade  the  Government  to  buy  these 
privileges  of  the  red  man,  or  protect 
him  in  his  right  to  them. 

The  chapter  on  the  dance,  with  all 
its  mystery  and  spirituality,  express- 
ing a  thousand  phases  of  Indian  life, 
may  be  inscribed  by  the  swiftly  thud- 
ding feet  of  Fish  Wolf  Robe— Fish, 
who  smiles  with  the  trusting  sweetness 
of  a  child  and  dances  with  the  passion 
and  abandon  of  a  Comanche — and  in 
the  graceful,  rhythmic  stepping  and 
sinuous  swaying  of  Many  White 
Horses,  the  sun  dancer. 

It  is  Fish  Wolf  Robe  who  is  respon- 
sible for  the  revealing  for  the  first  time 
to  the  white  people  of  the  strange  tale 
that  had  been  going  the  rounds  of  the 
Reservation  just  before  the  Indians 
came  to  San  Francisco.  It  is  the  story 
told  by  a  full-blooded  Blackfoot  Indian 
from  the  Alberta  country,  Canada,  the 
original  home  of  the  tribe.  This  In- 
dian was  so  gentle  and  kind-hearted 
that  he  did  not  know  what  quarreling 
was.  About  two  years  ago,  as  he  was 
walking  about  the  earth  hunting  a 
black-tailed  deer,  he  heard  the  noise 
of  a  strong  wind  from  the  heavens.  He 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


looked  up  and  saw  two  women  with 
wings.  They  spoke  to  him,  saying: 
"We  have  come  down  to  tell  you 
something.  Close  your  eyes." 

So  the  Indian  closed  his  eyes,  and 
when  he  opened  them  he  was  standing 
in  a  different  world.  He  saw  a  tepee 
lodge  and  a  person  looking  out,  but 
every  time  it  was  a  different  face. 
Then  the  person  called  to  him,  saying : 
"I  have  sent  the  angels  to  bring  you  to 
heaven  because  you  are  a  good  Indian, 
and  I  have  a  message  for  your  people. 
Tell  them  all  to  wear  feathers  in  their 
hair,  because  there  are  many  people 
on  earth,  and  I  want  to  know  which  are 
Indians."  He  said  to  the  Indian:  "Do 
you  know  me?"  and  the  Indian  an- 
swered, "You  are  the  Great  Spirit." 

The  Great  Spirit  then  told  the  In- 
dian of  the  war  which  would  devastate 
Europe,  how  there  would  be  trouble 
and  fighting  over  all  the  earth,  and  how 
the  white  people  would  continue  killing 
one  another  until  there  were  only  a 
few  left.  The  Great  Spirit  urged  him 
to  gather  all  Indians  together  into  one 
tribe,  that  when  the  white  people  dis- 
appeared the  land  might  be  given  back 
to  the  red  men  to  whom  it  originally 
belonged.  At  the  command  of  the 
Great  Spirit,  the  Indian  closed  his  eyes 
and  went  down  to  earth  on  a  cloud. 

When  he  reached  his  home  he  told 
his  people  all  about  it,  and  every  one 
laughed  at  him  and  said  that  he  was 
crazy.  That  night  he  had  a  vision. 
The  next  day  he  called  all  the  In- 
dians together,  and  he  made  a  pile  of 
dirt  and  stood  on  it,  and  all  his  people 
stood  around  him,  watching.  Four 
times  in  succession  he  went  up  to 
heaven,  and  the  last  time  the  people 
believed. 

"That  Indian,"  said  Fish  Wolf  Robe, 
"is  a  great  man.  He  knows  before- 
hand what  is  going  to  happen  the  next 
day.  This  year  he  has  promised  to 
visit  our  Reservation  in  Montana  and 
tell  our  tribe  what  the  Great  Spirit 
said  to  him.  I  heard  his  story  from  a 
Canadian  Indian  who  knew  him." 

The  chapter  on  the  present,  the  one 
chapter  which  may  seem  to  justify  the 
white  man's  methods,  is  written  in  the 


life  of  Pe-ta-ne-sta,  Chief  Eagle  Calf, 
the  official  interpreter  of  the  Glacier 
National  Park  Indians. 

When  fifteen  years  old,  Eagle  Calf, 
with  eight  other  boys  and  three  girls, 
ran  away  from  the  Reservation  and 
journeyed  on  horseback  one  hundred 
and  forty-five  miles  to  Helena,  Mon- 
tana. Here  they  entered  the  Mission 
Industrial  Training  School  for  Indians. 
"I  was  taught,"  says  Eagle  Calf,  "not 
to  become  intoxicated,  because  that's 
the  bad  life  for  the  Indian,  nor  to  steal, 
because  that's  the  bad  life,  and  not 
to  smoke  nor  chew  tobacco,  because 
that  makes  consumption  and  affects 
the  nervous  system.  To-day  I'm  glad 
that  I  don't  use  this  bad  stuff." 

Eagle  Calf  stayed  in  this  school  two 
and  a  half  years,  and  after  a  year  at 
home,  spent  another  twelve  months  in 
the  Government  boarding  school.  Here 
he  successfully  passed  the  examina- 
tions, physical  and  mental,  which  ad- 
mitted him  to  the  Carlisle  Indian 
School  in  Pennsylvania.  After  two 
years  in  Carlisle,  he  attended  a  high 
school  for  white  boys  in  Trenton,  New 
Jersey.  Since  then  he  has  worked  as 
a  farmer  in  the  agency,  as  a  surveyor 
under  the  Government  civil  engineer 
in  Montana,  as  helper  in  the  Govern-' 
ment  hospital,  and  for  the  last  four 
years  he  has  acted  as  interpreter.  He 
owns  3,900  acres  of  farming  land,  and 
two  lots  and  a  house  in  the  town  of 
Browning.  Since  coming  to  the  Expo- 
sition he  has  been  sending  money  home 
for  the  use  of  his  wife  and  for  the  fur- 
ther education  of  his  two  children,  and 
has  been  depositing  a  goodly  sum  in 
the  bank  on  the  Fair  grounds. 

An  Indian  in  heart,  manner  and  be- 
lief, he  has  acquired  under  enormous 
difficulties  the  best  that  the  Pale-face 
has  to  give.  A  remarkable  man,  this 
Eagle  Calf!  A  blending  of  the  old 
with  the  new,  a  figure  who  shares  the 
aspirations  of  the  white  man,  and 
whose  feet  are  forever  placed  on  the 
lonely  pinnacle  of  the  red. 

There  are  two  squaws  in  the  party 
of  Blackfeet— jolly  Mrs.  White  Calf, 
and  serious  faced  Mrs.  Medicine  Owl. 
They  are  the  cooks,  the  housekeepers, 


Indian  girl  on  the  old  travois  trail  in  the  country  of  the  Blackfeet,  Montana. 


and  burden  bearers,  like  those  of  old 
who  followed  the  travois  trail.  And 
flashing  her  bright  way  into  one's 
heart  is  Ec-p-m-ke,  the  three-year-old 
papoose. 

On  the  day  of  the  dedication  of  the 
building  of  the  Great  Northern,  the 
Indians  were  enthusiastic  participants 
in  one  of  their  native  ceremonies.  The 
Medicine  Lodge  was  erected  in  honor 
of  the  Sun  and  the  Great  Spirit,  and 
the  little  son  and  daughter  of  Mr.  Low 
Hardy  were  admitted  with  due  rites 
into  the  tribe. 

This  unique  ceremony  of  initiation 
was  the  result  of  an  incident  which 
happened  a  short  time  previous.  As 
Chief  Many-Tail  Feathers  was  walk- 


ing on  the  Marina  one  day  he  dropped 
his  battle-stick,  and  little  Lowell  and 
Rosemary  Hardy,  who  were  near,  ran 
and  picked  it  up.  So  pleased  was  the 
old  warrior,  and  so  significant  did  he 
regard  this  small  act  of  courtesy,  that 
he  invited  the  children  into  his  tepee. 
He  then  called  a  council,  at  which  it 
was  decided  to  admit  the  boy  and  girl 
into  the  tribe.  This  meant  that  the 
children  were  to  adopt  Indian  names  in 
place  of  their  own,  and  were  to  agree 
to  aid  the  Blackfeet  whenever  called 
upon  to  do  so. 

The  boy  was  given  the     name  of 

Morning  Star,  from  the  legend  of  the 

Indian  Scar-Face.     This  is  the  story 

as  it  fell  from  the  lips  of  old  Chief 

2 


10 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Many-Tail  Feathers:  Because  of  his 
marred  countenance,  Scar-Face  had 
been  refused  in  marriage  by  the  mai- 
den he  loved.  That  night  he  had  a 
dream,  and  in  the  dream  he  was  told 
to  go  to  the  land  of  the  Sun.  So  he 
went  away,  traveling  day  and  night. 
But  the  paths  were  strange  to  him  and 
he  lost  his  way,  until  Morning  Star,  the 
child  of  the  Sun,  found  him.  Morning 
Star  led  him  in  the  right  direction  un- 
til they  came  to  the  medicine  lodge  of 
the  Sun.  Then  Morning  Star  said  to 
his  father:  "I  am  going  to  have  this 
young  man  for  a  friend."  And  the 
Sun  answered:  "Bring  him  in." 

Scar-Face  went  in  and  told  his  story 
to  the  Sun,  and  the  Sun  promised  to 
try  and  make  the  young  man  beauti- 
ful, although  it  was  a  difficult  task. 
Four  sweat  houses  were  built,  and  four 
times  was  Scar-Face  put  through  the 
ceremonial  sweat-bath,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  fourth  time  he  was  brought  out 
and  placed  beside  Morning  Star.  Then 
the  Sun  asked  Morning  Star's  mother, 
the  Earth,  to  pick  out  her  son.  The 
earth  looked  and  looked,  and  she 
pointed  out  Scar-Face  as  her  son.  Thus 
it  was  that  Scar-Face,  the  ugly,  became 
Morning  Star,  the  beautiful. 

Mr.  Hardy's  little  daughter  was 
named  by  the  Indians  Evening  Star 
after  the  papoose  that  was  born  to 
Scar-Face  and  his  Indian  sweetheart, 
whom  he  married  when  he  returned 
from  the  land  of  the  Sun. 

There  is  one  other  "legend  of  the 
atmosphere,"  as  the  Indians  charac- 
terize it,  that  is  worthy  of  repetition. 
It  is  the  story  of  Sun-woman,  the 
daughter  of  the  Sun.  One  day  when 
her  father  was  entertaining  friends  in 
his  tepee,  Sun-woman  stepped  outside 
and  saw  an  Indian  standing  there,  and 
she  loved  him.  So  they  were  mar- 
ried and  set  up  a  tepee  of  their  own. 
But  Sun-woman  grew  lonely  oftentimes 
and  went  home  frequently  to  visit  her 
father,  the  Sun.  This  made  her  hus- 
band angry;  so  he  hung  a  buffalo  robe 
over  the  door,  that  Sun-woman  might 
never  go  out  again.  This  made  Sun- 
woman  very  sad,  so  when  the  fire  was 
lit  in  the  tepee  she  leaned  over  it,  and 


Ona-Steh-Pa-Kah,    Two    Guns    White 

Calf,  a  famous  Blackfeet  chief 

and  orator. 


as  her  husband  watched,  she  ascended 
in  smoke.  Then  the  husband  bowed 
his  head  and  was  filled  with  grief  to 
think  what  he  had  done.  When  even- 
ing came,  he  went  out  from  his  tepee 
and  stood  looking  up  into  the  heavens, 
and  as  he  looked,  a  strange  new  light 
appeared — the  moon — and  it  was  Sun- 
woman  herself.  Every  night  the  sor- 
rowing husband  went  out  to  look  for 
his  wife,  and  each  night  she  shone 


THE  HARBOR  OF  THE  SUN. 


11 


down  upon  him  to  comfort  him,  but 
she  never  came  back. 

A  hundred  years  from  now  the  de- 
scendants of  those  who  made  possible 
the  Panama  Canal  will  be  performing 
still  greater  feats  for  the  world's  ad- 
vance. "The  door  of  the  Indian's  yes- 
terdays opens  to  a  new  world — a  world 
unpeopled  with  red  men,  but  whose 
population  fills  the  sky,  the  plains, 
with  sad  and  specter-like  memories — 


with  the  flutter  of  unseen  eagle  pin- 
ions. We  have  come  to  the  day  of 
audit — a  swift-gathering  of  all  that  is 
life,  in  the  gloaming,  after  the  sun- 
set." 

He  who  visits  Jewel  City,  and  fails 
to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the 
bronze-faced  Blackfeet  delegation,  has 
missed  knowing  the  most  interesting 
and  the  most  pathetic  figure  at  the  Ex- 
position. 


THE    HARBOR    OF    THE    SUN 


I  walked  beside  the  waters  of  the  "Harbor  of  the  Sun," 

I  saw  the  King  of  Day  go  down  when  the  hours  of  day  were 

done, 

And  the  sea  was  bathed  in  glory,  and  rainbow-hued  the  sky, 
When  like  a  golden  ball  of  fire,  I  watched  the  Day-King  die; 
While  o'er  the  foaming  billows  the  changing  colors  run, 
And  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Heaven  from  "The  Harbor  of  the 

Sun." 

But  the  sunset  splendor  faded ;  and  in  her  silvery  might, 
Over  the  purple  mountains,  up  rose  the  Queen  of  Night; 
While  a  million  stars  looked  downward  and  seemed  to  show 

to  me 

The  shining  face  of  Heaven,  deep  mirrored  in  the  sea; 
And  the  miracles  that  meet  us  when  each  glad  day  is  done, 
Assumed  sublimer  meaning  in  "The  Harbor  of  the  Sun." 

'Neath  the  sunlight  and  the  moonlight  the  tireless  breakers  roar, 
Still  surging,  swelling,  sweeping  the  uncomplaining  shore; 
Eternal,  swift,  unstaying,  forever  on  they  roll, 
Til  the  Voice  of  God  is  sounding  in  the  Harbor  of  the  Soul. 
And  I'm  nearer  to  His  presence  when  the  beauteous  day  is  done, 
As  I  listen  to  the  waters  of  "The  Harbor  of  the  Sun." 

EMMA  FRANCES  SWINGLE. 


San    Francisco 

Prom  the  Sea 
By    Bret   Harte 


This  being  the  Panama- Pacific  Exposition  year,  in  which 
everything  of  merit  in  California  is  being  reviewed  before  the 
world,  the  management  of  Overland  Monthly  has  decided  to 
republish  in  its  pages  the  stories  and  poems  that  made  the 
magazine  famous  through  the  genius  of  Bret  Harte.  He  was 
its  first  editor,  and  it  was  his  keen  discernment  and  originality 
which  gave  the  contents  of  the  magazine  that  touch  of  the 
spirit  of  the  West,  and  especially  of  California,  which  made  it 
distinctive  and  enkindled  the  enthusiasm  of  discerning  readers 
the  world  around.  These  early  contributions  of  his  cover  sev- 
eral years;  they  will  be  published  monthly  in  the  order  in 
which  they  appeared,  beginning  with  the  first  issue  of  Over- 
land Monthly,  July,  1868.  Very  appropriately,  Bret  Harte's 
first  contribution  was  the  poem,  "San  Francisco." 

Serene,  indifferent  of  fate, 

Thou  sittest  at  the  Western  Gate; 

Upon  thy  heights  so  lately  won 
Still  slant  the  banners  of  the  sun; 

Thou  seest  the  white  seas  strike  their  tents, 
O  Warder  of  two  Continents ! 

And  scornful  of  the  peace  that  flies 
Thy  angry  winds  and  sullen  skies, 

Thou  drawest  all  things,  small  or  great, 

To  thee,  beside  the  Western  Gate. 
*  *  *  * 

O  lion's  whelp,  that  hidest  fast 

In  jungle  growth  of  spire  and  mast, 


I  know  thy  cunning  and  thy  greed, 
Thy  hard  high  lust  and  wilful  deed, 

And  all  thy  glory  loves  to  tell 
Of  specious  gifts  material. 

Drop  down,  0  fleecy  Fog,  and  hide 
Her  skeptic  sneer,  and  all  her  pride ! 

Wrap  her,  O  Fog,  in  gown  and  hood 
Of  her  Franciscan  Brotherhood. 

Hide  me  her  faults,  her  sin  and  blame 
With  thy  gray  mantle  cloak  her  shame ! 

So  shall  she,  cowled,  sit  and  pray 
Till  morning  bears  her  sins  away. 

Then  rise,  0  fleecy  Fog,  and  raise 
The  glory  of  her  coming  days ; 

Be  as  the  cloud  that  flecks  the  seas 
Above  her  smoky  argosies. 

When  forms  familiar  shall  give  place 
To  stranger  speech  and  newer  face ; 

When  all  her  throes  and  anxious  fears 
Lie  hushed  in  the  repose  of  years ; 

When  Art  shall  raise  and  Culture  lift 
The  sensual  joys  and  meaner  thrift, 

And  all  fulfilled  the  vision,  we 

Who  watch  and  wait  shall  never  see — 

Who,  in  the  morning  of  her  race, 
Toiled  fair  or  meanly  in  our  place — 

But,  yielding  to  the  common  lot, 
Lies  unrecorded  and  forgot. 


Tourists  resting  on  the  trail 


What   is   a    National    Park? 


By  Clifford  Trembly 


BE  IT  ENACTED,"  even  with  the 
President's  approval  attached, 
doesn't  create  a  National  Park. 
A  thing,  whether  it  is  a  park  or 
a  banking  system,  to  be  "National"  in 
its  scope  and  character,  must  be  for 
the  entire  nation — the  man  of  wealth 
and  the  man  of  modest  means,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  wife,  cousins  and  aunts. 
To  localize  a  so-called  national  park 
destroys  its  purpose  and  functions.  I 
have  no  quarrel  to  pick  against  the 
various  national  parks  in  different 
parts  of  the  country,  or  the  manage- 
ment of  the  government  relating  to 
them,  but  circumstances  often  create 
their  own  opportunities,  and  it  is  for- 
tunate indeed  when  men  and  nature 
can  work  together  and  thus  bring  about 
the  best  results.  This  is  true  of  Gla- 
cier National  Park,  and  I  shall  try  to 


tell  you  why  it  is  a  "National"  park  in 
every  meaning  of  the  word. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  park,  a 
play-ground — not  a  show-place,  al- 
though the  things  are  there  to  be  seen. 
I  mean  by  this  that  a  person  isn't 
taken  there,  told  to  look  at  a  lake,  a 
waterfall  or  glacier,  and  then  told  to 
go  home.  Instead,  you  can  turn  them 
loose  for  a  day,  a  month  or  six  months, 
let  them  look  at  the  wonders  and  beau- 
ties of  the  place  to  their  heart's  con- 
tent, and,  be  they  twelve  or  sixty  years 
of  age,  play.  That  is  what  a  park  or 
recreation  place  is  for — recreation  and 
play.  Those  poor  unfortunates  who 
have  lost  the  spirit  of  play  can  "do" 
the  place  with  all  of  the  comforts  of 
good  hotels,  autos,  stage  and  steamers. 
The  other  kind — and  they  really  make 
up  the  great  bulk  of  the  people — can 


On  the  shores  of  Iceberg  Lake;  summer. 


discard  the  easy  ways  and  just  have  a 
good  time.  It's  a  wonderfully  fine  ar- 
rangement— everybody  gets  just  what 
they  want  and  everybody  is  satisfied. 
It's  a  satisfaction  to  get  into  your 
old  clothes,  and  forget  that  somebody 
is  looking  at  you.  That's  how  we  felt 
one  morning  when  we  started  out  in 
single  file,  on  horseback,  over  the 
winding  trail  from  Lake  Macdonald  to 
Avalanche  Basin.  We  reached  there 
by  noon  and  forgot  everything  else 
save  the  wonderful  blue  lake  set  in  its 
surrounding  walls  of  granite  down 
which  plunged  many  cascades  from 
Sperry  Glacier,  two  thousand  feet 
above — and  the  fact  that  we  were  due 
to  supply  the  trout  for  dinner.  And 
we  got  them,  too.  Can  you  imagine 
that  being  done  at  a  "show"  place? 
And  yet,  everything  of  wonderful 
beauty  was  spread  out  before  us  and 
above  us,  lake,  waterfalls,  snow  capped 
mountain  peaks,  the  deep  green  of  the 
forests,  dashing  mountain  streams  and 
foam-lashed  gorges.  We  were  not  all 
young,  as  years  go,  but  I  know  we 
were  all  boys  on  that  day.  We  clam- 
bered out  on  the  jutting  rocks  by  the 
lake,  intent  on  landing  a  trout,  or 
jumped  from  stone  to  stone  in  the 


brook  casting  into  the  pools.  We 
played. 

Did  you  ever  go  up  a  mountain  trail 
a  straight  mile  in  mid-air  ?  It  is  some- 
thing to  remember.  An  almost  perpen- 
dicular climb  up  a  chute  in  the  rocks 
at  the  summit  landed  us  at  the  edge 
of  Sperry  Glacier,  a  land  of  snow  and 
ice,  sweeping  out  beyond  us  like  a 
Tugged  carpet,  blue-bells  and  Indian 
pinks  nodding  at  our  feet,  and  grim 
December  a  foot  away  from  us.  Over 
all  was  the  blue  of  a  summer  sky;  a 
green  decked  valley  spreading  out  be- 
low us  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see.  A 
snow-ball  game  in  July  is  not  an  ordi- 
nary event  in  this  country,  but  we 
had  it. 

We  had  trailed  along  the  rocky  shore 
of  Lake  Ellen  Wilson  until,  at  the  up- 
per end  of  the  lake,  we  boldly  mounted 
higher  up  on  the  rocks,  waded  through 
the  water  on  a  rocky  ledge  that  broke 
the  fall  of  a  cascade  from  the  snow 
lands  above.  The  sky  was  of  a  blue 
that  was  intense;  below,  the  lake  nes- 
tled like  a  great  green  emerald,  and 
still  up,  up  and  up  we  went.  Winding 
in  and  around  great  boulders,  picking 
each  step  taken,  still  up  into  the  very 
heavens.  Above  was  Gunsight  Pass, 


Top  o'  the  world. 


the  crest  of  the  Continental  Divide, 
which  was  our  goal.  Another  final 
spurt — and  we  were  there.  Before  us, 
all  was  blank;  we  were  in  the  clouds. 
A  region  of  lace  and  gossamer  envel- 
oped us  completely.  Behind  us,  all 
was  fair  and  beautiful — before  us, 
wrapped  in  the  silence  of  the  mists, 
spread  an  unknown  land.  And  then, 
the  miracle  happened.  A  golden  shaft 
of  sunlight  pierced  the  filmy  curtain, 
there  was  a  parting  of  the  draperies  of 
mist,  and  backward  rolled  the  lace  and 
gossamer.  Below  us,  two  thousand 
feet,  slept  Gunsight  Lake,  another  em- 
erald with  a  fringe  of  darker  green  of 
the  forests  Snow-capped  peaks  were  on 
either  side,  a  panorama  of  fully  one 
hundred  miles  spread  behind  and  be- 
fore us,  the  clear  air  enabling  us  to 
see  for  many  miles.  Crag  after  crag, 
some  rugged  and  unkept,  others  clear 
as  those  chiseled  by  a  sculptor,  spread 
their  proud  heads,  not  for  admiration 
or  praise,  but  for  the  worship  and 
homage  which  was  their  due.  Oh,  yes, 
there's  plenty  to  see  there — while  you 
are  playing. 

If  there  is  a  more  beautiful  place 
than  Red  Eagle  Lake  and  Red  Eagle 


Creek  I  would  like  very  much  to  see 
it.  We  camped  out  in  a  meadow  by 
the  creek.  Mountains  hemmed  us  in 
like  a  wall ;  at  our  tent  door  swept  the 
creek,  a  merry,  mad,  irresponsible  kind 
of  a  creek  that  plunged  over  ledges 
every  now  and  then,  and  sang  a  song 
of  forgetfulness  and  abandon  all  its 
own.  Great  green  pools  were  there  be- 
low each  small  cataract,  and  in  those 
pools  were  great  cut-throat  trout. 
Standing  on  the  rocks  by  the  pools  we 
whipped  the  waters  with  our  flies.  A 
four-pound  cut-throat  is  not  to  be 
trifled  with,  I  assure  you.  And  they 
certainly  did  taste  good  when  cooked. 

Early  in  the  morning  we  tramped 
along  the  shore  of  Red  Eagle  Lake. 
Not  a  ripple  disturbed  its  surface,  and 
mirrored  in  its  depths  of  green  and 
blue  the  snow-capped  mountain  peaks 
on  the  opposite  side  stood  upside  down 
as  clear  and  distinct  as  they  stood 
right  side  up  above  it. 

The  nights  were  cool.  We  gathered 
dead  timber,  even  chopped  down  dead 
trees,  and  built  a  fire  that  lighted  up 
the  meadow  and  the  forests  around  it. 
Not  a  conventional  little  camp-fire, 
around  which  one  had  to  crouch — but 


Mirror  reflections  in  Red  Eagle  Lake 


a  great  big  thundering  blaze  of  logs 
and  brush.  Did  you  ever  have  a  sleep 
in  mountain  air  after  sitting  around 
such  a  fire,  with  your  appetite  satisfied 
with  fresh-caught  trout?  There  isn't 
anything  else  like  it  in  the  least.  I 
think  of  it  now,  in  the  city,  and  a 
steam-heated  room  and  a  soft  bed 
seem  like  a  prison  and  a  pillory. 

Cut-Bank  Canyon,  where  one  of  the 
hotel  camps  is  located,  is  a  place  of 
rest,  if  one  can  make  themselves  do 
such  a  foolish  thing  in  that  region.  At 
least,  it  invites  to  rest  if  one  is  so  in- 
clined, although  I  never  saw  anybody 
that  remembered  what  that  word  was 
when  in  the  park.  Cut  Bank  Creek 
tears  through  the  valley,  winding  in 
out  of  the  hills,  around  the  bends 
where  great  green  pools  are  formed  by 
it,  natural  trout  ponds.  I  waded  that 
little  stream  for  many  a  mile,  some- 
times waist  deep  in  the  icy  water,  cast- 
ing many  a  fly  into  an  eddy  below 
some  boulder,  or  in  the  deeper  pools. 
The  cook  heaped  them  on  a  big  plat- 


ter, a  golden  brown,  caught  from  the 
ice-cold  water  an  hour  before — trout 
that  really  were  trout. 

At  Two  Medicine  Lake  we  spent  one 
evening  trying  to  induce  a  mountain 
lion  to  go  into  a  shed  where  we  had 
placed  some  fresh  meat.  We  watched 
in  the  darkness  for  a  couple  of  hours, 
but  he  evidently  understood  our  game, 
for  he  stayed  away.  At  least,  until  we 
were  all  sound  asleep  for  the  night. 
Then  he  amused  himself  by  prowling 
over  the  roofs  of  the  buildings  and 
making  a  general  disturbance. 

One  evening  we  were  out  on  the  lake 
in  a  row  boat,  drifting  around  and  not 
doing  much  of  anything  in  particular. 
The  sun  went  down  behind  the  wall  of 
a  rugged  peak,  and  the  stillness  was 
something  to  remember.  The  lake  was 
like  a  bit  of  polished  glass,  and  it 
seemed  an  act  of  profanity  to  dip  the 
oar  into  its  waters  and  break  the  pic- 
ture of  mountain,  forest  and  waterfall 
reflected  therein.  They  were  all  there, 
the  real  ones  surrounding  the  lake 


18 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


duplicated  in  the  water.  This  has  its 
advantages,  for  nearly  all  of  the  beau- 
ties of  the  park  are  seen  twice;  if  you 
don't  fully  appreciate  them  the  first 
time,  you  surely  will  the  second  time 
they  appear. 

At  The  Narrows,  on  Lake  St.  Mary, 
we  thought  that  we  were  in  another 
land.  The  lake  narrows  at  that  point 
to  a  third  of  its  usual  width,  with  a 
tree-covered  neck  of  rock  extending 
out  into  its  blue.  One  side  of  the  lake 
is  bound  by  solemn  looking  mountain 
peaks,  snow-crested  and  severe,  lined 
up  like  sentinels  to  guard  the  turquoise 
entrusted  to  their  care.  On  the  other 
side,  going-to-the-Sun  Mountain,  with 
its  hanging  glacier,  proudly  proclaims 
that  the  gem  has  nothing  to  fear  from 
that  side  of  its  resting  place.  The 
hotel  camp  is  on  a  bluff  overlooking  all 
of  the  beauties  spread  out  before  one. 
I  cannot  imagine  any  more  beautiful 
place  in  the  world.  I  don't  believe  it 
exists.  It  is  all  there :  mountain,  lake, 
streams,  waterfalls,  forests,  glaciers — 
all  of  the  glory-making  spenders  of  the 
great  outdoors. 

The  trail  from  St.  Mary's  to  McDer- 
mott  is  one  of  especial  charm — at  least 
it  was  for  me.  Over  hills,  down  vales, 
winding  in  and  out  of  little  valleys, 
fording  rushing  mountain  streams  that 
had  a  song  entirely  of  their  own,  and 
altogether  forgetting  that  the  world 
wagged  on.  Whether  afoot  or  on 
horseback  or  by  the  more  prosaic  and 
round-about  stage  line,  it  is  the  same 
wonderful  trip — a  forget-maker  of  the 
world  that  used  to  be. 

It  must  have  been  an  inspiration  that 
selected  the  McDermott  Lake  site  for 
a  chalet  camp.  With  a  rugged,  unkept 
mountain  for  a  background,  the  comfy 
little  chalets  nestle  at  the  base,  or 
boldly  cling  to  its  lower  side.  Below 
the  chalets  runs  the  outlet  to  McDer- 
mott Lake,  a  plunging,  maddened  vor- 
tex of  water  and  foam,  making  five 
wonderful  waterfalls  through  a  rock- 
bound  gorge  ere  it  enters  into  the  tran- 
quility  of  the  sedate  mountain  stream 
below.  McDermott  Lake,  on  a  stilly 
summer  night,  is  a  sight  that  lingers 
long  in  one's  memory.  A  shimmering 


sheet  of  blue  or  green,  flanked  on 
nearly  all  sides  by  towering  mountains, 
a  spill-way  at  the  lower  end  letting  out 
the  surplus  water  for  fear  one  would 
have  too  much  of  beauty,  the  eternal 
thunder  of  McDermott  Falls,  and  over 
all  the  wonder  and  glory  of  a  moun- 
tain night. 

After  one  has  climbed  five  thousand 
feet  in  mid-air,  up  the  rugged  side  of 
some  mighty  mountain,  lashed  the 
foam  decked  stream  for  his  share  of 
trout  or  just  idled  the  time  away,  the 
late  evening,  cool  and  sleep  producing, 
is  a  wonderful  thing.  Just  to  sit  around 
the  great  stone  fireplace  in  a  chalet, 
with  a  few  friends  about — and  every- 
body is  a  friend  there — a  comfortable 
pipe  or  cigar — what  more  could  life 
bring  to  a  fellow  or  a  fellow's  wife  or 
best  girl? 

I  lay  flat  upon  my  stomach  upon  the 
rocks  of  the  rim  of  McDermott  Falls, 
or  rather  the  gorge  down  which  they 


Hooking  a  big  one  in  the  pool  below 
McDermott  Falls 


Ready  for  dinner. 


20 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


tore  their  way,  and  snapped  a  good 
picture  of  them.  Far  below,  one  of  our 
party  was  casting  for  the  four-pound- 
ers that  inhabit  the  lower  pool.  To 
me,  there  is  something  wonderful  in 
the  abundance  of  water  in  Glacier 
Park.  To  lie  there  on  the  brink  of 
that  chasm,  with  a  maddening  torrent 
of  cascades  below  me  fully  two  hun- 
dred feet,  with  the  stars  coming  out 
and  a  wonderful  moon  lighting  up  the 
entire  place,  was  something  that  comes 
to  a  fellow  only  once  in  a  whole  life. 
Beyond  the  lake,  up  on  the  sides  of 
Grinnell  Mountain,  clung  Grinnell  Gla- 
cier, a  land  of  ice  and  snow  only 
equaled  by  Blackfoot  Glacier.  At  our 
hand  was  every  comfort  and  conven- 
ience, good  beds,  comfortable  fires, 
wonderful  big  meals,  and  all  of  the 
things  that  make  life  pleasant;  on  the 
other  hand  was  the  mighty  things  of 
the  Big  Outdoors.  I  often  wonder 
how  man  would  have  arranged  the 
scene  if  he  had  been  consulted — the 
wilderness  of  mountain,  lake,  glacier, 
waterfall,  gorge  and  streams,  surely 
he  could  not  have  gathered  them  all 
together  in  the  wonderful  panorama 
that  is  there  stretched  forth  for  his 
pleasure  and  admiration.  I'd  like  to 
stay  there  twenty  years,  just  taking 
little  trips,  every  now  and  then,  to  the 
near-by  places  of  charm  and  beauty. 
I  think  every  other  day  I  should  go  up 
to  Cracker  Lake. 

It  is  a  fine  hike,  or,  if  you  prefer,  a 
splendid  trip  on  horse.  Through  the 
old,  abandoned  mining  town  of  Altyn, 
over  a  lush  meadow,  and  then — but 
words  are  such  silly  little  things.  Up 
through  a  narrow  gorge  or  valley, 
rimmed  in  on  both  sides  by  towering 
mountains,  some  snow-crested  and 
gaunt,  others  verdure  clad  and  smiling, 
for  some  five  miles  we  went.  The  lit- 
tle stream  that  tore  down  that  valley 
was  the  most  wonderful  thing  I  ever 
saw.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  the 
most  irresponsible  little  stream — it  just 
didn't  care  where  it  went  or  what  hap- 
pened to  it.  It  sang  its  way,  free  from 
care  or  concern,  over  boulders  or 
around  them,  plunging  over  an  endless 
number  of  ledges,  resting  for  a  moment 


in  some  quiet  pool,  and  then  again  on 
its  merry  way.  We  crossed  it  a  num- 
ber of  times,  fished  in  the  pools,  and 
fairly  learned  to  love  it.  I  should  like 
to  spend  a  month,  wandering  up  and 
down  that  little  stream,  fishing  in  the 
pools  below  some  mighty  boulder,  rest- 
ing on  some  friendly  tree-trunk  by  it, 
and  getting  better  used  to  its  ways.  I 
am  sure  that  little  stream  had  a  real 
mission  in  life — the  mission  of  Banish- 
ment of  Care.  One  couldn't  help  for- 
getting, in  its  company,  everything  that 
one  ought  to  remember,  and  remember- 
ing only  that  life  was  fair  and  good, 
and  that  it  was  pleasant  to  be  alive — 
and  there. 

A  rise  in  the  trail  and  before  us  was 
Cracker  Lake.  We  actually  laughed. 
A  lake?  Surely  that  patch  of  blue 
paste,  stuck  in  the  walls  of  granite, 
was  not  a  lake  ?  But  it  was.  About  a 
mile  long,  blue  as  a  turquoise,  smooth 
as  my  lady's  mirror,  Cracker  Lake 
slept  in  the  sun,  walled  in  on  three 
sides  by  towering  mountains  down 
which  tore  mad  little  cascades  from 
the  eternal  snows.  There  is  nothing 
else  like  it;  there  cannot  be  a  duplicate 
anywhere.  It  would  not  be  possible, 
for  I'm  sure  the  model  was  destroyed 
after  Cracker  Lake  was  fashioned. 

They  said  there  were  trout  in  it.  We 
didn't  have  to  be  fishermen  to  prove 
that,  for  we  could  see  them  along  the 
shores,  and  we  saw  them  more  clearly 
on  the  board  table  when  they  were 
turned  to  a  wonderful  brown,  and  the 
bacon  was  smoked  hot  on  their  sides. 
Oh,  life  is  a  wonderful  thing,  and 
Cracker  Lake  is  a  wonderful  thing,  and 
the  two  together  cannot  be  resisted. 

Into  the  shadows  of  the  deep  forests 
we  started  on  another  morning,  lost  in 
the  silence  of  the  wood.  It  was  a  quiet 
and  a  rest  from  the  wildness  of  the 
other  trails  that  was  really  needed.  I 
felt  that  I  could  not  be  alone  with  the 
bigness,  the  mightiness,  of  the  scenes 
I  had  been  a  part  of  without  losing  my 
balance.  So,  the  long  ride  through  the 
woods,  on  the  way  to  Iceberg  Lake, 
was  really  needed  as  a  sort  of  calmer- 
down.  In  and  out  of  the  forest,  now 
on  a  rise  that  overlooked  the  valley, 


1 


3 


22 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


now  on  the  edge  of  Red  Gorge  where 
the  water  foamed  and  hissed  a  hundred 
feet  below  in  its  narrow  confines,  or, 
coming  into  the  open,  we  caught  sight 
of  a  towering  wall  of  granite,  a  mile 
high,  just  beyond  us,  we  trudged  along. 
Then  a  stiff  climb,  up,  up,  the  rugged 
steps  of  a  sharp  incline  where  the 
horses  literally  had  to  climb  a  flight 
of  stone  and  earth  steps,  with  a  mad 
torrent  of  water  dashing  down  the 
rocks  at  our  right,  and 

The  smallness  of  words  almost  ap- 
palls me.  They  are  such  little  things, 
and  things,  themselves,  are  so  big  out 
there.  To  see  Iceberg  Lake,  on  a  sum- 
mer day,  with  the  breath  of  summer- 
time all  around  you,  the  flowers  bloom- 
ing at  your  feet,  and  fantastic  ghost- 
forms  floating  on  the  blue  of  the  lake 
near  by,  is  almost  too  much  for  one 
day.  Iceberg  Lake  is  the  last  and 
final  effort  of  nature  to  outdo  herself. 
And  she  has  succeeded,  too.  An  oval 
lake,  blue  as  indigo,  resting  without  a 
ripple  at  the  base  of  an  immense  cup 
of  granite  nearly  a  mile  high,  sleeps  in 
the  silence  of  her  guardian  rocks.  At 
the  farther  side,  a  glacier  hangs  on  the 
rim  of  the  rocks.  All  through  the  sum- 
mer, as  the  sun's  rays  reach  the  fast- 
ness in  midday,  great  pieces  of  the 
glacier  drop  from  the  parent  ice  field 
and  find  a  lodgment  in  the  lake.  There 
they  float,  white  spirits  of  the  solitude, 
summer  sun  above,  flowers  fringing 
their  grim  coldness,  back  and  forth, 
phantom  ships  of  fairyland  without 
port  or  pilot.  The  real  world,  where 
work  and  toil  and  worry  abound,  has 
ceased  to  exist. 

Far  up  on  the  topmost  ledge  of  the 
mountain  we  saw  a  speck  of  white  out- 
lined against  the  blue  of  the  sky.  Three 
mountain  goats  were  watching  us  from 
their  resting  place,  five  thousand  feet 
above  us — nearly.  They  were  safe, 
and  knew  it.  We  were  happy,  and 
knew  it.  Everybody  was  satisfied. 

From  the  rocky  shore  we  gathered 
great  stones  and  sent  them  skimming 
over  the  lake,  knocking  some  fairy 
ship  to  tatters  or  meeting  an  irresist- 
ible berg  that  sent  the  missile  plung- 
ing to  the  bottom  of  the  lake.  With 


the  tang  of  the  ice  air  in  our  faces,  we 
sat  on  the  rocks  and  ate  our  luncheon, 
our  feet  deep  in  the  lush  grass,  our 
heads  in  the  clouds,  and  our  thoughts 
where  they  had  never  been  before. 

This  is  all  disjointed  and  discon- 
nected. I  know  it :  I  meant  it  to  be  so. 
Vacations  are  all  that  way  if  they 
are  worth  the  while.  Things  in  the 
city  are  connected,  properly  joined — 
and  fearfully  tiresome.  Things  in  Gla- 
cier National  Park  are  directly  the  op- 
posite. 

This  brings  me  back  to  the  question : 
What  is  a  National  Park?  I  believe 
it  is  a  place  for  everybody,  for  the 
man  and  woman  of  wealth  who  wish  to 
see  the  wonderful  things  of  nature 
with  the  least  discomfort,  or,  rather, 
with  all  of  the  comforts;  for  the  man 
and  woman  of  moderate  means  who 
wishes  to  spend  a  reasonable  amount 
of  money,  and  yet  get  full  value  for 
such  expenditure ;  for  the  man  and  wo- 
man of  small  means  who  loves  the 
Great  Outdoors  and  longs  to  play  in  it. 
Ride  through  the  best  part  of  Glacier 
Park  with  your  autos,  or  go  by  stage 
and  boat,  ride  its  trails  on  a  horse,  or, 
I  believe  best  of  all,  "hike"  through 
it  at  your  leisure.  Do  it  on  a  dollar 
a  day,  camp  out  of  doors,  smell  the 
breath  of  the  pines,  feel  the  touch  of 
the  mighty  aspects  of  nature  in  that 
place,  forget  everything  save  that  you 
are  young,  life  is  good,  and  that  it's 
good  to  be  alive.  That  is  a  National 
Park.  A  place  for  everybody  of  the 
nation,  a  playground  that  cannot  be 
duplicated,  a  treasure  house  of  scenic 
wonders  that  Switzerland  cannot  du- 
plicate. 

In  the  office,  with  the  steam  heat 
turned  on  and  all  of  the  silly  little  frills 
of  city  life  close  at  hand,  I  often  turn 
myself,  in  fancy,  back  into  that  re- 
gion, and — 

Then  it's  Ho!  for  the  trail  when  the 
sun's  just  up, 

And  the  dew's  on  the  grass  in  the 
valley — 

When  the  sky's  all  blue  like  a  tur- 
quoise cup, 

And  the  spirit  of  youth  is  our  ally. 


Climbing   At.    Wilson 


By  W.  E.  Hutchinson 


TO  THE  SUMMIT  of  Mt.  Wilson, 
six  thousand  feet  above  sea 
level,  runs  a  narrow  and 
crooked  trail.  The  ascent  may 
be  made  either  by  saddle  horse  or 
burro,  and  even  the  more  fastidious 
may,  if  so  inclined,  take  an  automo- 
bile as  a  modern  mode  of  locomotion, 
and  attain  the  top,  but  he  must  needs 
drive  slow  and  have  his  machine  un- 
der perfect  control,  for  a  false  turn 
of  the  wheel  would  surely  mean  dire 
disaster.  But  a  nature  lover  like  my- 
self decries  the  use  of  the  foregoing, 
and  trusts  to  his  sturdy  legs  to  place 
him  upon  the  very  pinnacle. 

There  are  two  reasons  why  the  lat- 
ter are  to  be  recommended;  first,  you 
are  your  own  master,  and  do  not  have 
to  conform  to  the  wishes  of  a  given 
number  that  make  up  your  party. 
Second,  you  can  make  the  ascent  lei- 
surely, and  if  a  bit  of  scenery  pleases 
your  fancy,  you  can  spend  as  much 
time  as  you  like  over  it  without  in- 
conveniencing the  others,  and  sate 
your  soul  with  the  beauty  of  canyon 
and  peak,  and  study  the  birds,  trees 
and  flowers  at  your  leisure. 

Of  course,  all  this  takes  time,  but 
time  is  of  secondary  consideration  to 
the  nature  lover  while  on  the  trail,  for 
mother  earth  is  his  bed  and  the  stars 
and  his  blanket  are  his  only  coverlet, 
and  he  camps  down  wherever  night 
overtakes  him. 

I  had  often  wished  to  make  the  as- 
cent on  foot,  and  now  that  the  occa- 
sion offered,  I  made  my  hurried  pre- 
parations, donned  my  khaki  suit, 
shouldered  my  well  filled  knapsack, 
and  with  my  good  stout  staff  in  my 
hand,  began  the  ascent. 

A  mockingbird  perched  on  a  tele- 
graph wire  was  pouring  forth  his 


morning  hymn  to  cheer  me  on  my 
journey,  and  a  green- tailed  towhee  on 
a  clump  of  chaparral  sends  forth  his 
rich,  bell-like  music  in  a  manner  dis- 
tinctly his  own. 

As  I  approach  closer,  his  song 
changes  to  a  cat-like  mew,  as  if  in 
protest  at  my  intrusion  on  his  pre- 
serves, but  as  I  pass  on  my  way,  not 
without  first  studying  him  as  best  I 
may  without  seeming  to  be  too  much 
interested  in  his  affairs,  he  bursts 
forth  anew  with  his  thrush-like  mel- 
ody as  if  to  speed  my  lagging  foot- 
steps. 

Toiling  up  the  trail  in  a  leisurely 
way,  for  one  must  of  necessity  go 
slowly  at  this  high  altitude,  wondrous 
formation  of  cliffs  and  dizzy  crags 
confront  me  at  every  turn  of  the  trail. 

Far  across  the  canyon  a  jagged  peak 
rises  out  of  the  purple  haze,  and 
around  its  top  a  sylph-like  cloud  as 
gauzy  as  a  lady's  veil  floats  above  it, 
and  rests  like  a  halo  upon  the  giant 
forehead. 

All  about  is  utter  silence  as  if  the 
massive  mountains  were  brooding  like 
sleeping  sentinels  resting  after  their 
mighty  upheaval,  broken  only  by  the 
querulous  cry  of  the  blue-fronted  jay 
as  he  flashes  across  my  pathway. 

Farther  on  a  mountain  brook  comes 
tumbling  down  among  the  rocks,  sing- 
ing its  plaintive  tremolo,  or  breaks  in- 
to a  deeper  tone  as  it  tumbles  in  glee 
over  a  waterfall.  Its  voice  is  always 
changing  from  a  shrill  treble  to  a 
baritone,  but  always  singing  its  liquid 
melody  and  never  out  of  tune. 

Suddenly,  rounding  a  projecting 
spur,  I  see  the  lights  and  shadows 
working  their  magic  colors  upon  the 
rocks,  transforming  them  into  minar- 
ettes  and  towers  until  they  stand  out 


24 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


with  all  the  beauty  of  a  Turkish 
mosque  against  the  turquoise  blue  of 
the  sky.  A  fleecy  cloud  sails  over- 
head, casting  its  shadow  over  crevice 
and  coulee,  then  floats  away  majesti- 
cally like  some  white  winged  argosy 
to  linger  for  a  moment  around  the 
highest  peak  and  touch  with  trailing 
fingers  its  massive  brow. 

The  evening  shadows  are  beginning 
to  gather  as  the  sun  sinks  below  the 
distant  peaks,  as  I  make  my  camp  in 
a  wooded  dell  where  the  aromatic  odor 
of  bay  tree  and  leafy  mould  rise  like 
incense,  and  here  I  spread  my  blan- 
ket and  sleep  the  sleep  so  refreshing 
to  a  mountain  climber,  with  the  song 
of  the  brook  for  my  lullaby. 

I  am  up  with  the  sun  in  the  morn- 
ing, for  one  who  camps  on  the  trail 
is  no  sluggard.  The  sun  shines  bright- 
ly all  about  me,  but  I  rub  my  eyes  to 
dispel  the  delusion,  for  I  have  awak- 
ened in  a  veritable  fairyland.  Below 
me  everything  is  wrapped  in  a  blanket 
of  fog  that  rolls  and  billows  like  the 
waves  of  the  ocean,  and  a  peak  here 
and  there  push  their  rounded  domes 
above  the  clouds  like  desolate  islands. 

What  a  wonderful  panorama  lies 
below  me,  and  stretches  away  as  far 
as  the  eye  can  reach!  One  can  al- 
most realize  how  the  Omnipotent  might 
have  looked  down  upon  the  world  He 
had  just  fashioned,  and  see  it  slowly 
assume  shape  out  of  the  chaos.  I 
stand  in  awe  and  wonder  at  the  grand 
spectacle,  until  Thor  in  his  onward 
march  cleaves  the  clouds  asunder  and 
scatters  them  like  sheep  before  his 
chariot,  and  as  they  roll  away  to  right 


and  left,  I  gaze  below  me,  and  see  the 
valley  lying  like  an  emerald  at  my 
feet. 

Towns,  vineyards  and  orange  groves 
are  scattered  like  jewels  over  the  land- 
scape, and  gradually  as  the  light  grows 
stronger  away  out  on  the  horizon's 
rim,  the  blue  waters  of  the  Pacific 
break  upon  the  shore. 

All  at  once  it  is  borne  in  upon  me 
that  it  is  the  Sabbath  morn,  and  as  I 
stand  lost  in  reverie  and  wonder  at 
the  grand  spectacle,  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  towering  peaks  whose  top- 
most pinnacles  glow  with  the  gold  of 
morning  sunshine,  there  comes  faintly 
to  my  ears,  wafted  on  the  morning 
breeze  from  some  church  in  Pasadena, 
the  chime  of  church  bells,  and  as  I 
listen  to  catch  the  melody,  I  can  make 
out  the  tune,  though  a  note  here  and 
there  is  lost  by  the  shifting  of  the 
wind. 

"Come  Thou  Almighty  King, 
Help  us  Thy  name  to  sing, 
Help  us  to  praise." 

How  fitting  a  hymn  at  such  a  time 
and  place,  and  one  almost  expects  to 
hear  the  Hallelujah  chorus  echoing 
from  peak  to  peak,  sung  by  an  angel 
chorus;  it  filled  me  with  a  reverent 
mood,  for  who  could  be  otherwise  than 
worshipful  amid  such  surroundings? 
The  fatigue  of  the  trail  is  forgotten, 
weariness  falls  from  me  like  a  gar- 
ment, and  I  bare  my  head  in  homage 
before  the  Ruler  of  the  Universe,  and 
feel  thankful  that  I  have  been  per- 
mitted to  view  His  handiwork  from  an 
exalted  position  on  Mt.  Wilson. 


The    Commodore 


By  H.  P.  Holt 


I  WONDER  what  would  become  of 
you  if  you  were  suddenly  thrown 
on  your  own  resources,"  said  the 
exquisite  Mrs.  Graham. 

Gerald  St.  Vincent  looked  up  lazily 
from  his  deck  chair  and  smiled.  He 
always  had  sufficient  energy  to  smile 
and  to  select  a  fresh  cigarette  from 
the  gold  case  he  carried.  Sometimes 
he  even  went  so  far  as  to  polish  his 
eye-glass,  but  that  was  an  exceptional 
form  of  exercise. 

"Dunno,"  he  replied,  lazy  even  in 
speech.  "It  would  be  a  jolly  experi- 
ment, though,  wouldn't  it?"  Mrs. 
Graham  had  befriended  him,  perhaps 
because  he  seemed  utterly  incapable 
of  looking  after  himself.  She  glanced 
from  him  to  her  husband,  a  leonine 
type  of  creature,  and  for  the  twentieth 
time  found  herself  contrasting  the  two. 
Mr.  Graham  had  a  large  head  and 
shaggy  eyebrows.  He  was  big  physi- 
cally, and  he  had  a  ruthless  will.  For 
twenty  years  he  had  "managed"  ne- 
groes on  his  estate  in  South  America 
with  merciless  precision.  There  were 
stories,  to  which  none  dared  refer  in 
his  presence,  of  brutality — and  worse. 
But  the  life  of  a  black  in  South  Amer- 
ica is  not  as  sacred  as  that  of  an  hon- 
est citizen  in  San  Francisco.  Mrs. 
Graham  shuddered  slightly. 

She  had  known  of  planters  who 
drank  more  heavily  than  her  husband 
— not  much  more  heavily,  it  is  true — 
and  there  were  times  when  he  was 
even  amiable.  Four  years  of  matri- 
mony had,  however,  considerably  mod- 
ified several  of  her  views  on  life,  and 
now,  in  her  twenty-eighth  year,  she 
was  rapidly  developing  into  a  cynic. 
So  far,  her  wonderful  face  had  not 
been  marred  by  sorrow,  but  for  an  elu- 
sive something  which  crept  into  her 


eyes  now  and  again.  In  her  early  life 
she  had  held  happy  ideals,  and  she  re- 
membered a  conversation  with  her 
husband  soon  after  they  were  jnarried 
when,  with  almost  childish  frankness, 
she  had  spoken  of  the  pleasure  a  wo- 
man finds  in  being  mastered  by  her 
strong  mate.  Oh,  yes,  he  had  mas- 
tered her;  he  had  also  mastered  his 
negroes,  and  with  methods  which  did 
not  differ  materially.  From  that  stage 
she  had  gone  to  another,  in  which  she 
became  quietly  self-reliant  for  the  pur- 
pose of  preserving  the  best  that  was 
in  her  and  preventing  constant  asso- 
ciation with  him  from  crushing  out  the 
loftier  part  of  her  nature. 

Gerald  St.  Vincent  was  32 — four 
years  younger  than  the  planter.  It  was 
said  of  him  that  he  only  had  one  real 
vice,  laziness;  but  he  was  so  artisti- 
cally lazy  that  every  one  forgave  him. 
Mrs.  Graham  regarded  him  with  good- 
natured  scorn. 

"I  am  afraid  you  are  hopeless,"  she 
said.  "You  would  positively  expire  if 
you  were  deprived  of  cigarettes  and 
chairs  for  a  day." 

St.  Vincent's  retort  was  a  smile.  He 
generally  disarmed  his  critics  that 
way. 

Mrs.  Graham  turned  to  go  to  her 
cabin,  hoping  to  enjoy  the  first  good 
night's  rest  for  nearly  two  weeks.  The 
steady  beat  of  the  Indian  Queen's  an- 
cient engines  was  a  powerful  consoler. 
Thirteen  days  before,  during  half  a 
gale  in  the  Pacific,  the  propeller  had 
ceased  to  revolve  and  the  chief  engi- 
neer sought  out  the  captain,  told  him 
what  he  thought  of  the  company  for 
sending  a  vessel  to  sea  with  a  bunch 
of  scrap-iron  inside  her,  and  informed 
him  that  it  would  take  the  united  ef- 
forts of  the  engine  room  staff  several 
3 


26 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


days  to  put  things  right.  The  ship 
wallowed  in  heavy  seas,  drifting  like 
a  log  until  she  was  hundreds  of  miles 
out  of  her  course.  When  the  engines 
were  re-started  they  held  together  for 
half  an  hour  and  stopped  with  a  rattle 
and  a  jar.  There  was  a  further  and 
longer  delay,  but  now  the  machinery 
had  been  working  all  day,  and  al- 
though a  heavy  sea  was  running,  the 
spirits  of  every  one  on  board  were  ris- 
ing. 

A  haze  hung  over  the  water,  thick- 
ening towards  midnight.  Gerald  St. 
Vincent  remained  for  some  time  in  his 
deck  chair,  enjoying  the  cool  breeze 
after  a  scorching  day,  and  then  went 
below  to  turn  in.  He  had  barely 
reached  his  cabin  when  a  shock  threw 
him  violently  against  the  door.  There 
came  a  harsh,  rasping  sound,  and  he 
felt  the  vessel  heel  over. 

"Well,  that's  one  way  of  going 
ashore,"  he  murmured  quietly.  "I 
fancy  there  won't  be  much  left  of  the 
Indian  Queen  after  this."  He  turned 
back  along  the  alleyway  and  climbed 
up  the  companion.  The  steamer  lay 
still,  but  for  an  occasional  heavy  bump 
— and  her  deck  sloped  considerably. 
It  was  very  dark,  and  the  fog  made  it 
impossible  for  one  to  see  from  one 
end  of  the  vessel  to  the  other.  The 
sailors  were  attempting  to  lower  a 
boat,  and  the  captain  was  supervising 
the  operations.  St.  Vincent  walked  to 
his  side. 

"Are  we  anywhere  near  land?"  he 
asked. 

"Must  be,"  replied  the  captain.  "I 
reckon  this  is  an  outlying  reef  off  one 
of  the  Marquesas  Islands  we  have 
struck." 

St.  Vincent  went  back  to  his  cabin. 

"And. now,"  he  soliloquized,  "I  sup- 
pose we  shall  all  be  Robinson  Cru- 
soes."  He  put  on  an  overcoat,  in- 
stinctively tucked  his  silk  pajamas  in- 
to the  pockets,  and  picked  up  one  or 
two  things  which  he  considered  might 
prove  useful.  Then  he  returned  to  the 
deck.  The  first  boat  had  just  been 
lowered  into  the  water.  A  few  mem- 
bers of  the  crew  and  a  dozen  or  so 
of  the  passengers  were  helped  or 


jumped  into  it,  and  an  angry  comber 
swept  round  the  ship,  licked  the  small 
craft  up,  and  crashed  it  against  the 
side  of  the  Indian  Queen.  St.  Vincent 
heard  cries — cries  which  it  was  hard 
to  forget  afterwards — and  for  a  while 
he  got  an  occasional  glimpse  of  a 
white  face  in  the  sea.  The  ocean  was 
claiming  its  toll.  The  remaining  pas- 
sengers, all  wearing  lifebelts,  were 
custered  on  the  lee  side  of  the 
steamer.  Some  of  them  had  dressed 
hastily  in  the  first  garments  that  came 
handy.  St.  Vincent's;  overcoat  was 
open;  he  was  still  wearing  his  evening 
dress,  and  his  monocle  was  as  firmly 
planted  in  his  eye  as  ever.  He  wore 
his  lifebelt  over  his  overcoat  and  was 
utterly  unconcerned.  Even  in  such 
desperate  circumstances  Mrs.  Graham, 
when  her  eyes  fell  on  him  in  the  glare 
of  a  lantern,  could  not  resist  the  sus- 
picion of  a  smile.  He  hung  back  as 
the  second  boat  was  being  lowered, 
while  Mr.  Graham  bawled  noisily,  and 
without  any  effect,  at  the  crew.  Mrs. 
Graham's  turn  arrived  to  get  into  the 
dancing  little  craft.  She  wondered 
whether  St.  Vincent  would  lose  his 
last  chance  before  the  Indian  Queen 
broke  up.  She  beckoned  him  and  he 
nodded.  The  woman  did  not  know 
how  he  managed  it,  but  when  the  boat 
was  pushed  off,  St.  Vincent  was  one 
of  her  party. 

Driving  spray  blinded  every  one  in 
the  boat.  The  sailors  began  to  pull, 
going  with  the  gale.  Twice  angry  seas 
lifted  the  craft  like  a  toy;  the  third 
time  it  heeled  over  in  the  hissing  com- 
ber and  capsized.  Mrs.  Graham  could 
hear  her  husband  bellowing  like  an  in- 
furiated bull  as  the  seas  washed  her 
from  the  boat,  and  then  she  felt  a 
strong  hand  grip  her  arm.  There  was 
a  terrific  wrench,  but  the  grip  held. 
Her  throat  was  full  of  sea-water,  and 
she  was  half-choked;  but  as  there 
came  a  lull,  she  saw  that  it  was  St. 
Vincent  who  was  holding  her.  With 
his  other  hand  he  grasped  the  up- 
turned boat.  Then  she  lost  conscious- 
ness. 

Wild  water  swirled  around  the  man. 
The  fog  was  lifting,  but  darkness  re- 


THE  COMMODORE 


27 


mained.  Only  a  glimpse  of  light  was 
visible  now  and  again  when  the  scud- 
ding clouds  swept  clear  of  the  moon 
momentarily.  St.  Vincent  fancied  they 
were  drifting  into  breakers,  but  could 
not  be  sure,  for  the  waves  were  curl- 
ing everywhere.  Suddenly  a  sea  larger 
than  the  others  caught  the  boat  on  its 
crest.  The  man's  arms  were  almost 
torn  from  their  sockets  and  the  breath 
was  beaten  from  his  body,  but  he  held 
on  until  a  gleam  of  moonlight  showed 
that  they  were  almost  on  a  sandy 
beach.  With  a  last  effort  he  carried 
Mrs.  Graham  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
sea,  put  his  overcoat  under  her  head, 
and  then  sat  beside  her  to  regain  his 
breath. 

As  soon  as  he  had  recovered  suffi- 
ciently he  turned  his  attention  to  the 
woman.  He  had  some  knowledge  of 
artificial  respiration,  and  she  quickly 
recovered  consciousness.  He  made 
her  sit  up,  and  then  his  hand  wan- 
dered to  his  cigarette  case,  which  for- 
tunately proved  water  tight.  He  was 
equally  lucky  with  his  match  box. 
Peering  round  into  the  darkness,  and 
adjusting  his  eyeglass  carefully,  he 
blew  a  cloud  of  smoke. 

"And  now,"  he  said  to  himself, 
"where  is  Man  Friday?" 

CHAPTER  II. 

"Feeling  better?"  St.  Vincent  quer- 
ied, after  a  few  moments. 

"Yes,  I'm  all  right  now,  thanks," 
replied  Mrs.  Graham  somewhat  weak- 
ly; "I  suppose  the  worst  is  really 
over?"  she  added. 

"Can't  say  exactly  till  dawn,"  he  re- 
plied. "But  we  aren't  drowned,  so  that 
is  something  to  be  grateful  for.  Will 
you  stop  there  a  little  while?  Some 
of  the  others  are  certain  to  be  washed 
ashore.  They  may  need  help." 

"I  would  rather  come,  too,"  she  re- 
plied, and  they  walked  along  the 
beach.  Mr.  Graham  was  lying  ex- 
hausted on  the  sand.  He  had  been 
swept  through  the  breakers  clutching 
an  oar.  He  growled  when  asked  how 
he  was.  St.  Vincent  passed  on  to  the 
others,  some  of  whom  had  been 
drowned  before  their  bodies  were 


washed  up.  When  dawn  filtered  over 
the  sky  and  the  haze  was  gone,  it  was 
found  that  there  were  fourteen  sur- 
vivors out  of  the  fifty-two  men,  wo- 
men and  children  on  the  Indian  Queen. 
They  included  a  passenger  named  Ben- 
nett, with  his  wife  and  daughter;  the 
second  engineer;  Griggs,  the  carpen- 
ter; two  sailors  and  four  half-caste 
firemen.  Their  clothing  was  varied 
and  wonderful.  Mrs.  Graham  had 
hurriedly  donned  a  tweed  coat  and 
skirt.  Mr.  Bennett  had  on  his  boots, 
trousers  and  an  overcoat. 

As  the  sun  rose  it  revealed  the  re- 
mains of  the  Indian  Queen,  now  settled 
down  and  rapidly  breaking  to  pieces, 
nearly  half  a  mile  from  the  shore ;  and 
it  bathed  in  a  golden  glory  the  slopes 
leading  to  the  higher  part  of  the 
island.  There  was  rich  tropical  foliage 
'everywhere,  and  a  flock  of  parrots, 
startled  by  the  visitors'  appearance, 
screeched  and  hid  themselves  in  the 
trees. 

"It  seems  to  me  the  first  thing  we 
ought  to  do,"  said  St.  Vincent  to  the 
two  sailors,  beaming  through  his  mon- 
ocle, "is  to  haul  the  small  boat  above 
the  high-tide  mark,"  and  the  aid  of 
the  half-castes  being  requisitioned,  this 
was  soon  done. 

"I'm  afraid  it's  knocked  about  too 
much  to  be  very  seaworthy,"  com- 
mented St.  Vincent,  "but  it  will  at 
least  do  as  a  store  room  for  anything 
washed  ashore,  and  later  we  might  be 
able  to  patch  it  up  a  bit.  Will  you 
fellows  come  along  the  edge  of  the  sea 
with  me?  We  might  be  able  to  pick 
up  some  useful  odds  and  ends." 

Mrs.  Graham  surveyed  him  in  quiet 
wonder.  Her  husband,  meanwhile, 
was  sitting  in  taciturnity  on  a  rock, 
gazing  out  to  sea  and  bemoaning  his 
fate. 

The  searchers  reaped  a  rich  harvest. 
Barrels  of  biscuits  and  other  provi- 
sions were  eagerly  rescued  from  the 
waves.  St.  Vincent,  with  his  coat  off, 
worked  as  hard  as  any  of  them.  Every- 
thing was  carried  above  the  high-tide 
mark.  The  work  was  terribly  hard,  and 
the  men  had  eaten  nothing  since  the 
previous  day,  but  St.  Vincent  urged 


28 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


them  on  by  pointing  out  that  they 
might  not  find  a  wreck  at  their  back 
door  every  day.  One  of  the  sailors 
whom  he  sent  with  a  bailing  can  in 
search  of  fresh  water  reported  the  dis- 
covery of  a  clear  brook.  A  cask  of 
biscuits  and  one  of  bully  beef  were 
broached,  and  after  a  rough  and  ready 
meal  all  hands  returned  to  their  labors. 

"That  isn't  half  a  bad  morning's 
work,"  commented  St.  Vincent,  as  he 
surveyed  their  captures  by  the  time 
the  tide  turned.  "Can't  we  rig  up  some 
sort  of  a  tent  with  part  of  this  tar- 
paulin for  the  women  to  sleep  in  to- 
night?" 

The  men  were  weary,  but  they  acted 
on  his  suggestion  as  a  matter  of 
course.  Rough  but  weather  proof 
shelter  was  erected  for  the  women,  and 
later  in  the  day  the  men  were  provided 
with  a  sleeping  place  on  canvas  under 
the  trees.  As  the  sun  slipped  below 
the  horizon  suddenly  in  tropical  fash- 
ion, every  one  turned  readily  to  their 
primitive  couch  with  aching  limbs. 

"Good-night,  Mrs.  Graham,"  said  St. 
Vincent  as  naturally  as  though  they 
were  still  on  the  old  Indian  Queen.  "I 
hope  you  will  be  fairly  comfortable. 
There  has  not  been  time  to  do  much 
yet,  though,  has  there  ?" 

Mrs.  Graham  looked  at  him  thought- 
fully. She  was  developing  a  tinge  of 
shyness  towards  him.  This  was  not 
the  lazy  individual  she  bade  good- 
night to  the  previous  day.  She  was 
still  wondering  when  she  closed  her 
eyes  in  sleep. 

The  moon  rose  over  a  still  crazy 
sea.  St.  Vincent  was  wakeful  in  spite 
of  his  labors.  The  little  camp  was 
silent,  but  for  the  dull,  perpetual  roar 
of  the  breakers  on  the  sand.  He 
walked  along  the  beach  to  the  place 
where  the  wreckage  and  casks  had 
been  salved,  and  ran  his  eye  over  the 
supplies  with  a  feeling  of  satisfaction. 

"Considering  we  are  just  about  as 
far  from  the  track  of  regular  steamers 
as  one  could  possibly  be,"  he  mused, 
"we  shall  probably  be  remarkably 
grateful,  before  we  all  get  home  again, 
for  anything  there  may  be  among  our 
stock." 


He  stopped  suddenly  and  remained 
motionless,  for  a  few  minutes,  his  eyes 
fixed  on  one  portion  of  the  beach.  He 
could  have  sworn  he  saw  something 
moving  in  the  shadow.  So  far  they 
had  seen  no  sign  of  natives  on  the 
island;  at  that  distance  he  could  not 
see  whether  it  was  man  or  beast,  but 
he  meant  to  find  out  what  it  was  that 
had  moved.  Picking  up  a  stout  stick, 
round  which  his  fingers  closed  firmly 
in  readiness  for  emergencies,  he  ad- 
vanced cautiously,  making  no  noise  on 
the  sand.  When  he  got  within  ten 
yards  he  saw  the  figure  of  a  man,  and 
he  thought  he  recognized  something 
familiar  in  the  broad  shape  of  the 
shoulders.  He  was  puzzled,  but  went 
forward  more  quickly. 

"Stopping  out  all  night?"  he  asked 
in  a  cheerful  voice. 

The  man  wheeled  round  clumsily.  It 
was  Graham.  In  his  hand  he  held  a 
small  tin,  at  his  feet  lay  a  cask.  Even 
in  that  uncertain  light  there  was  no 
doubt  what  he  had  been  doing.  He 
brandished  the  tin  in  the  air. 

"That  is  all  very  well,"  said  St.  Vin- 
cent quietly,  "but  you  do  not  seem  to 
realize  that  everything  washed  up,  be 
it  rum  or  anything  else,  is  common 
property." 

"This  is  mine.  I  found  it,"  shouted 
Graham  truculently.  "I  defy  you  or 
any  one  else  to  rob  me  of  it.  We're 
going  to  die  like  rats  in  this  hole." 

"All  right,"  replied  Vincent.  "If 
you  chose  the  alcohol  route  that  is 
your  affair,"  and  he  turned  on  his  heel. 

At  dawn  on  the  following  morning 
he  went  out  to  empty  the  liquor  onto 
the  sands.  Graham,  however,  had 
foreseen  some  such  possibility.  The 
cask  had  vanished. 

CHAPTER  III. 

The  tropical  summer  waxed  and 
waned,  and  the  refugees  remained  on 
their  island  with  only  birds  for  com- 
pany. They  had  suffered  some  hard- 
ships, if  being  deprived  of  luxuries 
constitutes  hardship;  but  for  a  ship- 
wrecked party  they  were  remarkably 
happy.  There  were  but  thirteen  of 


THE  COMMODORE 


29 


them  now:  Graham,  convinced  that 
there  was  no  likelihood  of  escape,  at 
any  rate  for  a  number  of  years,  gave 
way  to  melancholia  and  his  keg  of 
rum.  St.  Vincent  and  Mrs.  Graham  en- 
deavored to  reason  with  him,  but  the 
evil  side  of  his  nature  developed  rap- 
idly. Then  he  disappeared.  One  day 
St.  Vincent,  during  a  ramble,  came 
across  the  body.  When  he  broke  the 
news  to  Mrs.  Graham  she  shivered 
slightly. 

Griggs,  the  ship's  carpenter,  proved 
a  veritable  God-send.  Very  few  of  his 
things  had  been  recovered  from  the 
Indian  Queen,  but  by  sharpening 
pieces  of  iron  taken  from  the  wreck- 
age, he  fashioned  several  useful  tools, 
and  under  the  guidance  of  St.  Vincent 
— whom  they  called  the  Commodore 
by  common  consent — several  rough 
bungalows  sprang  up.  Very  soon  af- 
ter they  were  wrecked  he  and  the  car- 
penter made  bows  and  arrows,  and 
regular  contests  were  instituted.  Be- 
fore long  some  of  the  party  became 
sufficiently  proficient  to  go  in  quest  of 
the  small  wild  pig  and  a  species  of 
guinea  fowl  which  were  found  on  the 
island.  Primitive  fish-hooks  were  eas- 
ily constructed  from  pieces  of  wire, 
and  lines  were  made  from  fibre — 
crude  tackle  which;  however,  answered 
its  purpose  excellently. 

Their  original  attenuated  wardrobe, 
distinctly  unsuited  for  life  on  a  tropi- 
cal island,  had  undergone  such  modi- 
fications that  it  was  no  longer  recog- 
nizable. A  most  precious  thing  found 
among  the  flotsam  was  a  quantity  of 
needles,  and  fortunately  they  had  an 
adequate  supply  of  sail  cloth.  All 
rents  and  tears  were  quickly  put  into 
the  hands  of  one  of  the  sailors,  who 
had  a  profound  belief  in  patches,  and 
by  the  time  he  had  exercised  his  art 
for  the  better  part  of  a  year  on  all  the 
costumes,  from  the  Commodore's 
evening  dress  to  the  half-caste  fire- 
men's garb,  they  had  an  odd  appear- 
ance. 

Through  all  the  period  of  their  cap- 
tivity it  was  St.  Vincent  who  organized 
everything,  He  never  gave  a  word  of 
command,  even  to  the  firemen  and 


sailors.  They  leaned  instinctively  on 
his  quiet  judgment.  If  a  dispute 
arose,  the  fact  was  put  before  the 
Commodore,  who  tactfully  simplified 
matters.  Only  on  one  occasion  did  he 
assert  authority.  On  the  highest  peak 
of  the  cliff  a  constant  look-out  for  a 
sail  was  kept.  A  beacon,  which  could 
have  been  seen  almost  thirty  miles 
away,  was  always  in  readiness  for  sig- 
naling at  night,  and  there  was  also  a 
flagstaff.  Every  man  on  the  island 
took  his  watch  for  four  hours.  There 
was  a  half-caste  named  Svenk  in 
whom  the  Commodore  had  little  faith. 
One  night  he  wandered  to  the  look-out 
point  and  found  Svenk  lying  asleep. 
St.  Vincent  awoke  the  man  and  made 
him  stand  up;  then  gave  him  the 
soundest  thrashing  he  had  ever  had 
in  his  life.  The  Commodore  said 
nothing  about  it  to  the  others,  but  no 
man  was  found  asleep  at  his  post 
again. 

A  curious  change  had  come  over 
Mrs.  Graham  by  the  time  they  had 
been  on  the  island  a  year.  The  ab- 
sence of  things  so  dear  to  the  femin- 
ine heart  did  not  apparently  affect  her. 
The  occasional  look  of  sadness  in  her 
eyes  had  disappeared.  She  was  an 
exceptionally  beautiful  woman  when 
St.  Vincent  first  met  her,  but  a  year's 
life  in  an  atmosphere  of  perfect  peace 
had  almost  restored  her  to  girlhood. 
As  the  months  rolled  on,  she  lost  her 
feeling  of  shyness  towards  St.  Vincent 
— the  new  St.  Vincent,  resourceful  and 
utterly  unlike  the  man  she  first  met  on 
the  Indian  Queen.  He  was  bronzed 
now,  almost  beyond  recognition,  and 
Mrs.  Graham  thought  he  had  grown 
taller  and  broader. 

Latterly  they  had  had  many  serious 
conversations  while  he  was  at  his  post 
near  the  flagstaff.  The  feeling  was 
now  growing  upon  them  that  it  was 
quite  possible  they  might  remain  on 
their  out-of-the-way  island  for  a  dozen 
years  or  more. 

"And  yet,"  said  St.  Vincent  to  her  as 
they  watched  the  early  sun  stain  the 
sky  and  sea  with  brilliant  hues,  "some- 
times I  doubt  whether  I  should  be  glad 
to  leave  the  island." 


30 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"Who  could  fail  to  be  contented 
here.?"  she  replied.  "I  think  this  is 
the  first  time  I  have  been  really  happy 
for  any  length  of  time." 

He  looked  at  her  quickly.  A  suspi- 
cion of  tears  welled  into  her  eyes,  and 
he  knew  she  was  thinking  of  Graham. 
The  man  put  his  hand  on  hers  quite 
naturally. 

"Why  not  let  the  dead  past  bury  its 
dead?"  he  asked. 

"I  think  it  is  forgotten — quite  for- 
gotten now,"  she  said.  There  was 
silence  for  several  minutes  as  the  new- 
born sun  shot  above  the  rim  of  the  sea 
and  steeped  everything  in  his  fiery 
rays. 

Suddenly  the  man  rose  to  his  feet, 
and  going  to  the  flagstaff,  ran  the  bunt- 
ing to  the  top  of  the  mast.  Then  he 
returned  to  the  woman's  side. 

"I  more  than  suspect,  Mrs.  Gra- 
ham," he  said  very  quietly,  "that  this 
may  prove  our  last  day  on  the  island. 
Do  you  see  that  tiny  spot  on  the  hori- 
zon?" 

"Yes,  yes,  a  little  dark  mark,"  she 
cried. 

"I  have  been  watching  it  for  several 
minutes,"  he  added.  "It  has  hardly 
moved  towards  north  or  south,  but  it 
has  been  growing  steadily.  That 
means  the  vessel  is  coming  straight  to- 
wards us,  and  the  curtain  is  being  rung 
down  on — on  our  island  holiday." 

They  watched  the  distant  speck  for 
a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  then  went, 
in  a  strangely  subdued  frame  of  mind, 
to  give  the  good  news  to  the  others. 
Some  of  them  laughed;  others  cried 
hysterically  as  the  vessel  grew  larger. 
St.  Vincent  eyed  the  craft — a  large 


yacht — critically  for  a  long  time,  and 
then  chuckled  quietly  to  himself.  The 
sound  of  the  chain  rattling  as  the  an- 
chor dropped  half  a  mile  from  the 
beach  could  be  heard  distinctly,  and 
a  small  petrol  launch  shot  across  the 
intervening  water.  Every  one  had 
crowded  excitedly  on  the  beach.  A 
man  remarkably  like  the  Commodore 
leaped  ashore  and  gripped  St.  Vincent 
by  the  hand. 

"I  knew  you'd  be  on  one  of  these 
islands,"  he  said.  "We've  been  cruis- 
ing about  for  eight  months  poking  our 
noses  into  all  sorts  of  odd  places." 

"You're  a  brick,  Alec,"  the  Commo- 
dore replied,  still  wringing  the  other's 
hand.  "This  is  my  brother,  Mrs.  Gra- 
ham. He's  been  taking  a  liberty  with 
my  yacht  searching  for  me  in  it  with- 
out my  permission.  Under  the  circum- 
stances, however,  I  forgive  him.  It 

was  a  distinctly  brainy  idea." 

*  *  *  * 

St.  Vincent  and  Mrs.  Graham  leaned 
upon  the  rail  at  the  stern  and  watched 
their  island  home  gradually  disappear. 
Neither  felt  inclined  to  break  the 
silence  for  a  time. 

"Barbara,"  the  man  said  at  last  in  a 
low  voice,  "is  this  to  be  the  parting 
of  the  ways?  Will  you  come  to  San 
Francisco  with  me,  dear?" 

"If  you  promise  not  to  relapse  into 
your  lazy  ways,"  she  replied  softly, 
with  a  smile. 

There  was  nobody  near  them.  St. 
Vincent  took  her  into  his  arms. 

"I  never  could  be  lazy  again  since  I 
found  some  one  who  was  worth  doing 
things  for,"  he  declared  emphatically. 
And  their  lips  met. 


Another  Day 


By  Nellie  Cravey  Gillmore 


THE  mid-winter  heavens,  sagging 
indigo  draperies  throughout  the 
raw,  sunless  morning,  had  just 
opened  their  vaults  and  released 
a  blinding  whirl  of  white  feathers. 

Eunice  hurried  along  the  broad  snow 
mantled  avenue  with  brisk,  buoyant 
footsteps,  the  harsh,  cutting  air  whip- 
ping peonies  into  her  cheeks  and  kind- 
ling blue  flames  in  her  violet-gray  eyes. 

Suddenly  she  halted,  brought  to  a 
pause  by  the  sharp,  strangled  cry  of  a 
woman,  meanly  clad  and  pinched  with 
cold,  leaning  against  the  granite  cor- 
'ner  of  a  bleak  skyscraper.  Out  of  her 
emaciated  face,  the  eyes  haggard  with 
misery,  followed  the  receding  form  of 
a  man,  muffled  up  in  furs  to  his  ears 
and  swinging  with  easy,  satisfied  stride 
toward  the  gayly-lighted  thoroughfare 
beyond.  The  girl  stifled  a  shudder  as 
she  spoke  to  her. 

"You  seem  to  be  in  trouble,"  she 
said  kindly.  "Can  I  help  you  in  any 
way?'"  The  richness  and  warmth  of 
her  own  garments  rebuked  her  strange- 
ly, as  a  fuller  glance  comprehended 
the  stricken  woman's  pitiful  lack  of 
even  the  barely  necessary  clothing  to 
protect  her  against  the  icy  wind.  A 
hotter  shade  of  crimson  flashed  into  her 
cheek  as  she  felt  the  jealous  glare  of 
the  other's  eyes  upon  her,  and  sensed 
the  sickening  odor  of  stale  liquor 
through  her  shivering  lips. 

The  woman  smiled — a  horrible  little 
twisted  smile  of  piercing  irony.  Her 
strained  gaze,  still  fixed  on  the  vanish- 
ing figure  of  the  well  dressed  stranger, 
flickered  and  fell  away  as  he  disap- 
peared in  the  throng.  She  bit  her  pur- 
ple lips  till  the  blood  sprang  through 
them,  shrugged  and  uttered  a  little, 
mirthless  laugh  that  struck  terror  to  the 
girl's  sensitive  heart. 


"I  guess  you're  an  aristocrat  like 
him,"  she  said  sullenly,  jerking  her 
head  in  the  direction  he  had  gone. 
"Maybe  you  saw  him  refuse  me  a  quar- 
ter for  a  drink  to  keep  me  warm  a  min- 
ute ago?  God!  I  used  to  have  all 
those  things  like  you  and  him — until  he 
came  along.  I  was  pretty,  too,  and 
young  and  happy,  though  you  wouldn't 
believe  it  now,  eh  ?  Hell,  ain't  it  ?" 

Eunice  felt  her  eyes  dilate  and  her 
hands,  tucked  snugly  in  her  great  fox- 
skin  muff,  grow  tense  and  cold.  It  was 
by  an  effort  she  spoke  calmly 

"I'm  genuinely  sorry  for  you,"  she 
said  kindly.  "I  can  see  that  you  are 
suffering.  I  am  not  trying  to  patronize 
you  or  to  question  you ;  I  merely  want 
to  do  something  for  you  Here !"  Im- 
pulsively she  whipped  the  long,  thick 
cape  from  her  shoulders  and  folded  it 
about  the  other  woman's  scant  shoul- 
ders She  fumbled  in  her  bag  and  drew 
forth  two  crisp  five  dollar  bills.  "Take 
these  and  get  you  some  warm  gloves, 
any  little  things  you  may  need,  and 
something  to  eat.  I  wish  I  had  more 
to  give  you.  Just — just  please  don't 
drink  any  more — than  you  have  to.  If 
you  are  in  need  of  further  assistance, 
come  to  my  rooms,  313  and  314  Emery 
Apartment."  She  laid  her  hand  with  a 
little  sympathetic  touch  on  the  trem- 
bling arm  of  the  derelict.  The  latter 
looked  up  and  into  her  eyes,  shame  and 
gratitude  battling  for  the  mastery  of 
her  working  features. 

"You  are  good,"  she  said  unsteadily. 
"I  don't  deserve  much,  but  thank  you. 
And  I'll  remember  what  you  ask." 

Eunices  heart  was  beating  very  fast 
as  she  entered  the  elevator  a  few  mo- 
ments later  and  was  whirled  up  to  her 
flat  on  the  third  floor  of  the  apartment 
house.  She  fitted  the  key  to  the  latch 


32 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


with  shaking  fingers,  went  in,  switched 
on  the  light  and  hurriedly  removed  her 
things.  The  cozy  warmth  of  the  steam 
heated  rooms  helped  to  dissipate  the 
inward  chill  of  foreboding  and  to  re- 
store the  normal  color  to  her  face.  She 
slipped  on  a  soft,  lavender  tea  gown, 
adjusted  the  shade  of  the  reading  lamp 
and  seated  herself  by  the  table  with  a 
book.  But  she  could  not  read.  The 
words  on  the  page  rushed  together  in 
a  mocking  blur  and  the  leaves  of  the 
volume  quivered  under  her  nervous 
touch. 

The  woman's  leering  face  haunted 
her ;  the  bitter  abandon  and  naked  des- 
pair shocked  her  to  the  soul.  She  sat 
pale  and  still  on  her  chair,  facing  this 
bare  aspect  of  human  misery — and  its 
eternal  origin — with  startled,  horrified 
gaze.  After  the  roses  the  rue;  after 
the  wine  the  dregs;  the  lilac  lane — 
and  thorns !  Suddenly  within  her  swell- 
ing breast,  the  truth  came  home  to  her. 
She  glanced  up  at  her  exquisite  reflec- 
tion in  the  tiny  oval  mirror  across  the 
room.  That  woman — she  had  once 
been  pretty,  and  happy  and  young. 
She  had  had  her  day  of  pleasure  and 
passion  and  youth  and  beauty,  and  that 
other  day  had  come.  Yes,  there  was 
always  "another  day." 

Some  such  passion,  then,  wrecking 
body,  destroying  soul,  blighting  and 
searing  and  utterly  corroding — some 
such  passion  might  bring  to  her — an- 
other day! 

She  was  thinking  deeply,  quickly, 
clearly,  trying  to  disentangle  the 
gnarled  threads  of  her  old  sophistries 
and  let  daylight  in  on  her  glamoured 
brain.  She  recalled  the  vision  of  this 
broken-up,  wrecked  human  vessel, 
stranded,  battered  by  the  same  gale 
through  which  she  herself  was  riding 
on  the  top  of  its  buoyant  waves!  A 
force  which,  finally  engulfing,  rending, 
would  sweep  on  in  its  course,  leaving 
only  a  quivering  remnant  of  worthless 
flesh  to  .bleed  and  suffer. 

A  short,  sharp  rap  on  the  door  broke 
off  her  reverie. 

Chiswick  entered  briskly,  shaking 
himself  like  a  drenched  terrier. 

"Sleet,  rain,  mud  and  ice!"  he  ex- 


claimed. Ugh !  I  was  headed  at  break 
neck  speed  for  the  club,  but  skidded 
clean  across  the  avenue,  landed  by  act 
of  Providence  at  your  very  door,  so 
rushed  up  for  a  rejuvenating  cup  of 
your  famous  Tokay." 

Eunice  had  gotten  herself  together 
by  a  tremendous  effort.  Bob  Chis- 
wick's  arrival,  with  his  breezy  person- 
ality and  big,  fine  smile,  were  just  what 
she  needed  to  bring  back  her  tottering 
balance.  She  heaved  a  little  sigh  of 
relief  and  gave  him  her  most  winning 
smile — a  smile  most  men  found  it  hard 
to  resist. 

"You  shall  have  the  whole  pot  full  if 
you  wish,"  she  laughed.  "Such  a  com- 
pliment deserves  its  reward."  And  she 
lighted  the  percolater  and  began  to 
busy  herself  among  the  cups. 

Chiswick  slid  out  of  his  coat,  tossed 
his  hat  on  a  chair  and  slapped  his  dis- 
heveled hair  into  shape  with  two  pow- 
erful hands. 

"By  the  way,  I  have  a  letter  here 
from  Tom  Medford.  Funny  fellow, 
Tom — always  up  to  some  new  wrinkle. 
Pretty  good  friend  of  yours,  eh  ?  Want 
to  read  it?" 

Eunice  felt  her  poise  slipping  a  little, 
but  caught  herself  up;  in  Chiswick's 
tone  were  only  friendly  camaraderie; 
his  suggestion,  under  the  circum- 
stances, was  quite  natural.  He  had 
been  a  constant  visitor  at  the  flat  for 
over  two  years,  and  his  meetings  here, 
with  Medford,  had  been  frequent  and 
cordial,  that  was  all.  He  could  not  sus- 
pect their  relation;  it  was  absurd  to 
have  the  color  flying  into  her  face  like 
this!  She  held  out  her  hand,  steady 
enough  now,  received  the  letter  with  a 
little  amicable  smile  and  laid  it  on  the 
table.  Calmly  pouring  two  cups  of 
the  steaming  beverage,  she  dropped 
the  surgar,  two  lumps,  in  each,  and 
seated  herself  opposite.  Then  she 
reached  out  carelessly  for  the  letter. 
With  the  same  careless  abandon,  she 
unfolded  the  sheet  of  business  paper, 
glanced  at  the  superscription  and  read : 

"Chicago,  January  3d. 
Dear  Bob : 

Just  a  line  to  advise  you  that  the  deal 
went  through  without  a  hitch.  Werder 


ANOTHER  DAY 


33 


was  a  little  stubborn  at  the  beginning, 
but  finally  came  around  O.  K.  They 
have  appointed  me  manager  of  the 
Western  office,  and  I  am  making  my 
plans  to  move  out  to  Nevada  by  spring. 

The  prospect  of  the  change  is  very 
exhilarating.  As  you  know,  I  have 
never  relished  the  cramped  existence 
in  New  York  City,  and  have  always 
had  a  leaning  for  the  geographical 
West.  It  is  my  intention  to  cut  out  the 
old  life  altogether  and  start  new.  I 
intend  to  marry,  if  "she"  will  have  me, 
and  settle  down  in  a  home  of  my  own 
in  the  Nevada  hills. 

Wish  me  luck,  old  fellow.  You  can 
safely  do  so,  for  I  see  it  coming  my 
way. 

Shall  arrive  home  about  the  middle 
of  the  month  and  begin  to  make  ar- 
rangements for  pulling  up  stakes. 
Sincerely  yours, 

MEDFORD. 

Eunice  read  the  contents  through 
without  the  moving  of  a  muscle.  A 
frightful  paralysis  of  the  senses 
seemed  to  hold  her  in  grip ;  she  felt  as 
though  enveloped  in  a  cold  ice  wave, 
numbed,  frozen. 

She  sat  quite  still,  hedged  about  by 
a  feeling  of  stunning  dismay,  much  as 
a  helpless  bird  might  crouch  to  the 
earth,  awaiting  the  descent  of  a  vora- 
cious hawk.  Incapable  of  word  or  mo- 
tion, mute,  helpless,  crushed,  she 
crouched  among  the  ruins  of  her  own 
life,  awaiting  the  ravenous  talons  of 
destiny. 

Chiswick's  vibrant  tones  aroused 
her; 

"Another  cup,  lady.  You  promised, 
you  know." 

With  the  smile  that  women  have  al- 
ways, somewhere  hidden,  to  mask 
their  breaking  hearts,  she  accepted  the 
empty  cup  and  quietly  refilled  it.  Af- 
terwards she  returned  the  letter  to  the 
envelope  and  handed  it  to  her  compan- 
ion. Every  drop  of  blood  in  her  body 
seemed  to  have  centered  about  her 
heart,  hanging  in  her  breast  like  a  ton 
of  lead.  But  her  voice,  when  she 
spoke,  was  singularly  clear  and  self- 
controlled. 


"How  fortunate,  indeed!  And  do 
you  really  think  he'll  like  it  out  there 
so  much?" 

"Of  course.  With  a  dear  little  wife 
and  a  home  of  his  own  and  a  get  rich 
quick  job,  who  wouldn't  ?  Seems  queer 
to  think  of  old  Tom  getting  married 
after  all  these  moons.  I  had  about 
figured  him  out  for  a  confirmed  bache- 
lor." 

The  ormolu  clock  on  the  mantle  tin- 
kled merrily.  Chiswick  jerked  out  his 
watch.  "What!  Already?  Well,  this 
is  much  more  than  pleasant,  but  I  must 
be  off  to  my  eight  o'clock  engagement, 
and  it's  twenty  minutes  after  right 
now."  He  rose  and  held  out  both 
hands. 

Eunice  somehow  got  to  her  feet  and 
gave  him  the  tips  of  her  little,  cold 
fingers. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  came  in,  Bob,"  she 
said,  "for  I  was  feeing  blue  and  cross. 
Come  often,  won't  you?" 

Chiswick  crushed  her  fingers  in  his 
big,  warm  palm.  "I'd  come  every  day 
if  I  thought  there  was  any  use,"  he  re- 
plied earnestly.  His  frank  blue  eyes 
sought  her  evasive  gaze  eagerly.  Then 
he  dropped  his  hands  and  turned  away 
shaking  his  head.  "But  I  know  there 
isn't — so." 

Eunice  helped  him  on  with  his  coat, 
fetched  his  hat  and  walked  with  him 
to  the  door.  When  it  had  closed  be- 
hind his  towering  form,  she  stood  still 
in  the  middle  of  the  room,  stricken, 
dazed,  conscious  only  of  the  agonized 
billows  of  torture  sweeping  over  her 
storm-tossed  soul.  At  last  she  got  to 
a  chair  and  dropped  into  it.  Alone,  she 
sat  among  the  wreckage  and  faced  the 
stark,  abysmal  depths  yawning  at  her 
feet. 

It  was  not  a  new  story.  Thomas 
Medford  belonged  to  the  ranks  of  the 
aristocratic  and  influential  few,  while 
she  was  a  mere  dot  among  the  masses 
of  the  less  fortunate  millions.  He  had 
grown  to  love  her,  and  she — well,  she 
cared  for  him  in  a  way  she  had  never 
thought  it  possible  she  could  care  for 
any  man.  She  cared  so  much  that  she 
had  refused  to  hamper  him  in  his  ca- 
reer by  becoming  his  wife.  And  then 


34 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


she  found  she  could  not  give  him  up! 
The  renunciation  was  complete.  Self, 
honor,  reputation,  the  future — all  were 
merged  and  lost  in  the  great  love  she 
bore  him. 

For  four  years  they  had  been  happy, 
without  a  cloud  to  mar  the  sunshine. 
She  had  kept  resolutely  at  her  work, 
winning  a  solid  place  for  herself  in  her 
little  world  of  art;  he,  in  his  public  life 
winning  laurel  after  laurel,  and  adding 
credit  and  honor  to  both  name  and 
position.  His  undivided  confidence 
and  devotion  had  repaid  her  a  thou- 
sand fold  for  the  sacrifice  she  had 
made — and  her  unfailing  sympathy 
and  affection  had  tided  him  triumph- 
antly past  many  a  rugged  boulder. 

That  he  must  some  day  seek  a  wife 
in  his  own  world  was  a  fixed,  though 
vague,  fact  in  Eunice  Waring's  brain. 
Hitherto  it  had  been  a  merely  imper- 
sonal thought,  without  tangible  pro- 
portion. The  hazy  moments  of  form- 
less terror  she  recalled  as  having  vis- 
ited her  in  grisly,  unexpected  hours  of 
the  past,  flashed  back  upon  her  now  in 
all  their  blinding  significance.  Their 
love  was  no  longer  a  vital,  living  qual- 
ity, but  drifting  fast — as  an  exquisite 
dream — into  the  dim,  vast  arena  of  the 
Unreal.  And  yet  his  kisses  seemed 
still  warm  and  sweet  upon  her  lips, 
and  every  nerve  thrilling  to  the  vibrant 
touch  of  his  encircling  arms 

She  buried  her  convulsed  face  in 
her  hands,  shaking  with  racking,  tear- 
less sobs.  Another  day  was  coming. 
It  had  already  come. 

Along  toward  midnight  she  dragged 
herself  to  bed.  The  shutters  were 
turned,  and  a  waning  moon  bursting 
through  the  scattered  clouds  fretted 
the  walls  and  floor  with  pale,  yellow 
light.  For  hours  she  lay  staring  dully 
through  the  half-closed  blinds,  watch- 
ing the  great  planets  burn  and  flash  in 
the  soft,  dark  sky.  Toward  daybreak, 
from  sheer  exhaustion,  she  lapsed  into 
stupid  unconsciousness. 

It  was  broad  daylight  when  she 
roused  with  a  dull,  inexplicable  sense 
of  misery,  the  knife-thrust  of  fuller 
consciousness  wrenching  a  little  cry 
of  the  mortally  wounded  from  her  lips. 


She  rose  and  tottered  across  the  room 
to  her  dressing  table.  A  glance  into 
the  glass  above  it  showed  her  face 
chalky  and  sunken;  her  skin  had  a 
dried,  burnt-up  look  wholly  foreign 
to  her  usual  bloom,  and  the  violet-gray 
eyes  gazed  hopelessly  back  at  her 
from  their  hollow  sockets. 

With  cruel  satire,  her  mind  re- 
verted to  that  other  woman  of  the 
streets:  the  haggard  eyes  and  liquor- 
stained  lips  and  cracked,  sneering 
voice.  She  had  envied  her,  and  called 
her  "good."  Well,  she  would  not  envy 
her  now,  and  she  was  not  one  whit  bet- 
ter than  the  wretched  outcast  to  whom 
she  had  tossed  her  pitiful  alms.  The 
thought  seared  her  like  a  firebrand; 
every  vein  in  her  body  ran  scalding 
blood.  How  she  had  worshiped  him, 
with  that  blind,  unselfish  devotion  that 
seeks  only  the  good  of  its  object, 
deeming  no  sacrifice  too  great  in  the 
greatness  of  its  self.  It  was  her  own 
folly  and  quixotic  notion  of  nobility 
and  bigness  that  had  thus  plunged  her 
to  her  ruin;  left  him  this  chance  to 
wring  her  heart  and  throw  it  aside  as 
a  worn-out  garment.  Well,  he  should 
pay;  she  was  not  a  child  to  be  played 
with  and  dismissed,  nor  the  pariah  he 
would  make  of  her  in  return  for  the 
love  she  had  lavished  upon  him.  She 
was  a  woman  .  .  . 

Yes,  more  a  woman  than  she  knew, 
for  already  the  paroxysm  of  tears  was 
upon  her,  washing  away  all  harshness, 
all  resentment,  all  anger. 

He  had  always  been  good  to  her,  al- 
ways protected  her.  He  had  been 
faithful  while  their  compact  lasted, 
and  what  more  had  she  asked?  She 
had  no  claim,  no  rights.  It  had  been 
her  way,  not  his.  In  her  youth  and  in- 
experience, she  had  done  what  she 
thought  was  brave  and  heroic.  A  wo- 
man, yes — and  she  must  pay  the  wo- 
man's penalty.  A  little  dry  sob  caught 
in  her  throat  as  she  dried  her  tears 
and  began  mechanically  to  put  on  her 
clothes.  She  ordered  her  breakfast 
sent  to  her  rooms,  but  barely  tasted  it. 
She  crossed  the  room  to  her  writing 
desk  and  sat  down  to  frame  her  fare- 
well letter  to  Tom  Medford.  After 


ANOTHER  DAY 


35 


more  than  an  hour,  she  had  evolved 
the  following: 

"Dear  Tom: 

"This  is  good-bye,  dear.  Our  life 
is  all  wrong,  and  it  cannot  go  on.  I 
cannot  be  a  drag  upon  you  for  a  single 
day  longer. 

"They  tell  me  you  are  to  marry  soon 
and  settle  down  to  a  life  and  home  of 
your  own,  out  West.  This  is  as  it 
should  be,  naturally. 

"I  had  hoped  when  the  time  came 
you  would  be  the  first  to  tell  me,  feel- 
ing that  I  would — as  always — under- 
stand. But  the  fact  remains  the  same, 
and  I  want  to  make  everything  easy 
for  you  by  just  dropping  out  of  your 
life  with  this  little  word  of  farewell. 
To  meet  again  would  only  be  painful 
for  us  both,  and  I  go  without  bitter- 
ness, leaving  your  future  unmarred. 

"I  have  been  very  happy  here,  Tom; 
happier  in  these  all  too  short  four  lit- 
tle years  than  most  women  are  in  a 
lifetime.  Why,  it  has  been  all  of  life 
to  me,  and  I  know,  too,  that  you  have 
been  happy  with  me. 

But  another  day  has  come,  the  past 
must  be  fenced  away  and  a  new  life 
begun.  And  so,  again — good-bye. 

"EUNICE." 

She  re-read  the  letter,  folded  it  and 
placed  it  in  an  envelope  bearing  his 
name  in  her  bold  back-hand.  Her  de- 
cision had  lept  sharply  and  clearly  in- 
to her  mind;  there  must  be  no  flimsy 
compromise  with  sentiment  and  condi- 
tions. And  with  a  certain  virility  of 
strength  and  thought  that  was  always 
there,  she  immediately  set  about  mak- 
ing preparations  to  give  up  her  studio 
and  rooms,  and  slip  quietly  out  of  the 
old  life.  What  this  severing  of  old 
ties,  this  frightful  uprooting  of  her 
whole  being  was  going  to  mean  to  her 
— and  bring  to  her — in  the  future  she 
gave  herself  no  time  to  consider.  Life 
was  empty,  unlivable;  yet  somehow, 
somewhere,  it  must  be  lived.  One 

thought  was  paramount :  she  must  go ! 
*  *  *  * 

Medford  did  not  wait  for  the  eleva- 
tor, but  ran  up  the  three  flights  of 


steps,  applied  his  key  to  the  latch  and 
pushed  open  the  door.  He  flung  his 
hat  on  the  rack  and  parting  the  por- 
tierres,  entered  the  little  blue  and  gold 
sitting  room. 

Eunice  lifted  startled  eyes  at  the 
sound  of  the  familiar  step  upon  the 
threshold.  The  book  she  had  been 
trying  to  read  slid  to  the  floor.  Every 
atom  of  color  foresook  her  face.  Eter- 
nities of  suffering  had  cut  lines  of  age 
about  the  soft,  sensitive  mouth;  sunk 
the  violet  eyes  in  purple  shadow  and 
drained  the  life  from  her  limbs.  She 
made  no  move  to  rise,  and  Medford 
stood  there  waiting,  the  light  dying 
out  of  his  face. 

"Eunice!"    He  held  out  his  arms. 

After  the  first  shock  of  recognition, 
she  met  his  eager  gaze  with  one  of  list- 
less sadness.  "You  should  not  have 
come,  Tom,"  she  said. 

Medford's  empty  arms  dropped  to 
his  sides.  "You  did  not  wish  to  see 
me?"  he  asked,  a  sudden  accent  of 
sharpness  upon  the  words.  Then  more 
calmly:  "But  you — waited.  You  re- 
ceived my  telegram?" 

"Yes.  But  it  were  better  not.  You 
should  have  let  me  go  on.  It  is  all  a 
mistake,  our  meeting  again,  as  I  wrote 
you." 

He  checked  a  swift  impulse  to  go 
up  to  her  and  take  her  to  his  heart.  Her 
coldness  struck  a  chill  to  every  nerve. 
Was  she,  after  all,  so  indifferent?  In 
his  self-centered  blindness  he  failed  to 
see  the  quick  quiver  of  her  lips. 

He  came  and  stood  beside  her  chair, 
looking  down  on  her  bowed  head  with 
its  wealth  of  glossy,  waving  hair.  One 
hand  rested  on  her  shoulder,  but  she 
shrank  back  sharply  from  his  touch. 

"All  that  is  past,  Tom.  You  no 
longer  have  the  right  to — to  do  such 
things,  nor  have  I  to  accept  them.  Four 
years  ago  when  you  gave  me  the 
chance  to  become  your  wife,  and  I  re- 
fused— for  reasons  which  you  under- 
stand— a — I  took  the  step  with  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  what  the  future 
would  one  day  bring  to  me.  It  has 
come.  And  it  is  right.  Let  us  build  a 
little  fence  around  the  past — and  start 
another  day." 


36 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Medford  smothered  a  smile.  "What 
a  gigantic  little  philosopher  you  are, 
dear.  Yes,  build  a  fence,  even  though 
it  be  a  prison  fence,  with  broken  bot- 
tles cemented  all  over  the  top,  and 
every  time  you  go  to  climb  out,  you'll 
cut  your  hands  to  pieces  .  .  .  pay  the 
piper  who  is  playing  his  siren  music 
outside  and  bidding  you  rejoice  in  the 
sunshine  which  never  penetrates  your 
dungeon!" 

A  faint  flush  of  color  stole  into  the 
girl's  white  face;  the  muscles  about 
her  mouth  tightened  visibly.  But  she 
made  no  response. 

Medford  bent  quickly  and  folded 
her  in  his  arms. 

"I  love  you,  girl.  I  cannot  give 
you  up!"  he  cried  fiercely. 

But  she  fell  back,  sick  and  trem- 
jlmg  beneath  his  passion. 

"What — what  are  you  saying?  What 
are  you  asking  ?  It  is  horrible.  Think 
of  the  girl  who " 

He  drew  her  to  her  feet  and  crushed 
her  against  his  breast.  "I  think  of 
nothing  but  you.  The  past,  the  future 
— let  them  go.  Now  is  the  time!" 

Gently  but  firmly  she  put  him  from 
her,  drew  him  over  to  a  sofa  and 
pulled  him  down  beside  her.  "Try  to 
be  calm,  Tom.  Now  is  the  time — to 
face  the  situation.  The  time  has  come 
for  you  to  take  up  your  life  openly  in 
the  world,  among  the  men  and  women 
of  your  own  class.  For  four  years  I 
have  been  unspeakably  happy  in  your 
love.  Why,  what  is  a  life  to  give  in 
exchange  for  so  much  happiness?  A 
little  thing.  I  still  have  my  work — " 

"Foolish  child!     Your  work!" 

"Yes.  And  you  have  yours.  I 
have  thought  it  all  out — and — and  I 
hope  you  are  going  to  be  very  happy 
and  very  successful  in  the  new  life. 
That  is  my  whole  wish — now.  You 
know  I  have  loved  you,  though  even 
you  will  never  know  how  much.  I 
could  have  died  for  you  without  a  re- 
gret. I  can  do  even  more,  dear.  I 
can  give  you  up — to  another,  knowing 
it  is  for  your  own  good." 

Medford  was  fighting  hard  for  self- 
control,  for  the  power  to  speak  calm- 
ly, courage  to  conquer  the  breathless 


rush  of  passion  her  very  nearness  in- 
spired. 

"There's  little  doubt  I  shall  be 
"both,"  he  said  matter-of-factly,  "out 
there  in  God's  own  country,  where  a 
man  is  as  free  as  the  blue  sky  above 
him,  with  some  one  to  work  for — and 
a  wife  to  love  him  and  wait  for 
him " 

Eunice  writhed  under  his  carelessly 
spoken  words.  She  thought  that  in  the 
past  two  weeks  she  had  endured  the 
extremity  of  human  suffering;  had  ex- 
piated her  every  wrong;  had  wrested 
strength  from  her  crucible  to  battle 
with  the  future,  but  .  .  the  words 
poured  over  her  soul  in  rivers  of  fire — 
"for  love  is  strong  as  death;  jealousy 
is  cruel  as  the  grave  .  .  .  many  waters 
cannot  quench  love,  neither  can  the 
floods  drown  it  ..." 

She  sat  up,  weak  and  trembling, 
hearing  as  in  a  daze  the  quietly  spoken 
words  of  the  man  at  her  side. 

"It  is  only  too  true  that  I  have  com- 
mitted a  great  sin.  But  it  is  not  too 
late  to  start  afresh.  My  decision  has 
not  been  sudden.  I  have  felt  it  to  be 
the  only  way,  for  a  long  time.  I  have 
asked  her  to  become  my  wife.  But  I 
believe,  I  hope  she  will;  in  this  strug- 
gle for  the  supremacy  of  right,  she  is 
the  One  Woman  in  the  world  who  can 
help  me." 

The  girl's  icy  fingers  twisted  in  her 
lap.  Schooling  herself,  she  raised  her 
eyes  and  looked  into  the  other's  face. 
It  was  wet.  His  own  eyes  were  brim- 
ming, and  the  scorching  tears  had  left 
shining  tracks  on  his  cheeks.  She  laid 
a  row  of  shaking  finger-tips  on  his 
sleeve. 

"Don't,"  she  said.  "I  think  I  under- 
stand, Tom.  It  is  the  eternal  warfare 
between  Duty  and  Desire.  I  shall 
help  you  to  win  the  fight."  She  forced 
a  little  smile  to  her  lips.  "Now,  tell 
me  all  about  her;  is  she  tall  or  short, 
dark  or  fair,  plain  or  pretty?" 

"I  can't  answer  all  that  in  a  breath. 
But — she's  just  a  woman — adorable, 
with  a  woman's  charms,  a  woman's 
weaknesses  and — a  woman's  Soul.  In 
my  pocket  here  I  have  a  picture  of 
her.  Would  you  like  to  look  at  it?" 


MOONLIGHT  WINE 


37 


Eunice  shivered.  A  sickening  dread 
was  upon  her.  Already  he  was  draw- 
ing the  photograph  from  his  pocket; 
now  he  was  holding  it  out  to  her.  A 
terrible  voice  seemed  to  be  shouting 
in  her  ears,  the  Voice  of  Doom,  and 
the  words  beat  their  maddening  way 
into  her  brain  like  successive  blows 
from  a  merciless,  unseen  hand:  "You 
have  had  your  day.  It  is  over.  You 
must  go  on.  You  must  suffer  like  the 
rest  of  humanity.  You  have  trans- 
gressed the  law  and  must  pay  the 
price.  Too  long  you  have  lingered  on 
the  banks  of  Life's  stream,  and 
watched  its  golden  ripples.  Another 
day  has  come.  You  must  plunge  into 
its  turbulent  deeps  and  let  them  toss 
you  along  till  you  strike  the  rocks.  It 
is  irrevocable.  Lay  down  the  prim- 
rose wreath  and  don  the  crown  of 
thorns.  They  are  yours." 

Medford's  keen  gray  eyes  that  had 
so  often  looked  undying  love  into  hers 
were  gazing  rapturously  toward  the  bit 
of  silk  sheathed  cardboard  she  held  in 
her  numb  fingers.  She  slipped  off  the 
covering. 

When  the  girl  came  back  to  con- 
sciousness, the  room  was  purpling  with 
twilight  shadows,  and  she  was  lying 
limp  upon  her  lover's  breast  with  an 


unutterable  sense  of  rest  and  peace  in 
the  pressure  of  the  strong  arms  about 
her.  For  an  instant  the  world  seemed 
to  swim  in  golden  space.  Their  eyes 
met,  clung,  plumbed  the  innermost 
depths  of  one  another's  soul. 

"Dear  Tom!"  she  whispered. 

"You  poor  little  girl,"  he  was  mur- 
muring in  a  low,  tremulous  tone,  vi- 
brant with  emotion,  "did  you  for  one 
moment  think  I  was  the  sort  of  man 
who  would  accept  a  woman's  greatest 
gift,  and  in  return  for  it  cast  her  back 
in  the  mire  into  which  I  had  dragged 
her?  You  do  not  know  me,  dear.  But 
you  will,  you  will.  I  am  crushed, 
shamed,  humiliated.  But  my  fighting 
blood  is  up  and  I  mean  to  retrieve  the 
past — with  God's  help  and  yours,  if 
you  will  give  it  to  me.  For  always 
there  is  a  new  life,  a  new  light,  a  big- 
ger, a  brighter,  a  better  day.  Shall  we 
start — to-night?" 

For  Eunice  a  spoken  word  then 
would  have  profaned  the  sublimity  of 
her  hour.  Through  empty  darkness 
had  burst  transfiguring  light;  out  upon 
Life's  gleaming  highway  a  winged 
soul  had  soared  upward  from  its 
chrysalis. 

With  a  little  cry  of  infinite  joy,  she 
gave  him  her  lips. 


/AOONLIGHT    WINE 

The  fairies  mixed  us  such  a  potent  cup, 
Their  wine  of  moonlight  madness,  on  that  night, 

As  we  but  touched  it  to  our  lips  to  sup, 
The  world  became  a  riot  of  glad  light. 

The  magic  oak  was  silver-green,  and  low 
Down  in  its  branches  softly  'gan  to  play, — 

The  wildest  music  man  may  ever  know, 
Could  not  be  half  so  sad,  so  sweet,  so  gay. 

The  midnight  elves  had  left  their  shelter  soon, 

And  danced,  and  floated,  each  to  each,  and  swayed, 

And  bent — aye,  there  beneath  the  moon, 

They  danced  the  dance  that  hidden  music  played. 

And  we  ? — The  spell  was  perfect — to  the  last, 
We  drained  the  full  cup  of  its  witching  charm. 

God !  had  we  but  heeded  as  that  whisper  past, 

"Who  seeks  the  fairies,  seeks  his  own  soul's  harm." 

SARAH  HAMMOND  KELLY 


One   Day's  Romance 


By  Jessie  Wood 


HOWARD  BRONSON  looked 
across  the  breakfast  table  at 
his  wife,  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders, smiled  grimly,  and 
reached  for  another  piece  of  buttered 
toast.  He  broke  the  toast  into  bits, 
staring  into  forlorn  vacancy,  then 
stirred  his  coffee  savagely. 

"See  here,  Nell,"  his  voice  was  pain- 
fully polite,  "I  should  think  you  could 
let  those  letters  alone  for  a  few  min- 
utes. I  hate  to  eat  breakfast  all  alone 
and  I  won't  see  you  all  day.  And 
Nell,"  his  tone  became  grim  and  de- 
termined, "I  wish  you  wouldn't  wear 
that  thing  on  your  head  to  breakfast. 
You  used  to  have  time  to  comb  your 
hair.  Say,  are  you  paying  any  atten- 
tion to  me?" 

The  pretty  little  woman  in  the  bou- 
doir cap  laid  down  her  letter,  smiled 
vaguely  and  sweetly  across  at  her 
irate  spouse. 

"Did  you  speak  to  me,  darling?" 
Nell's  voice  was  always  liquid  when 
she  asked  a  question:  she  always 
tilted  her  curly  head  to  one  side  and 
pursed  her  smiling  red  lips  in  a  most 
alluring  manner. 

"Oh,  nothing  much,"  Howard  smiled 
back  as  he  always  did,  and  gulped 
down  his  cup  of  luke  warm  coffee. 
"Ugh!  Say,  Nell,  that  coffee  is  cold 
as  ice!" 

"Oh,  I'm  so  sorry,  dear.  Let  me 
get  you  some  more.  Or — all  right,  get 
me  some  more,  too — and  Howard, 
please  be  more  cheerful  about  it.  Are 
you  getting  to  the  'cross  at  breakfast' 
stage?  Thank  you,  dear.  Yes,  two 
lumps.  Oh,  no,  it  doesn't  make  it  a 
bit  syrupy.  I  like  sweet  things.  Kiss 
me,  dear!" 

Howard  Bronson  laughed  as  he  took 
his  seat  at  the  table  again.  "Say,  it's 


a  fright  the  way  you  wind  me  around 
your  finger,  little  girl.  I  was  pretty 
much  riled  at  you  ten  minutes  ago, 
and  here  you've  got  me  so  I'd  eat  out 
of  your  hand.  Oh,  Nell,  eat  your  grape 
fruit  like  a  good  little  girl — don't  read 
those  abominable  letters." 

"Abominable  letters?  Why,  How- 
ard, what  do  you  mean?"  Nell's  big 
blue  eyes  opened  wide,  and  she  looked 
up  in  amazement.  "This  one  is  from 
Ada,  and  she  is  coming  to  see  us  on 
her  way  East,  and " 

"Ada,  coming  here?  Ada!"  How- 
ard rose  quickly  and  flicked  his  nap- 
kin nervously  at  his  chair  back.  "Why 
is  she  coming?  When?  Why?" 

"Why,  Howard,  don't  you  act 
queerly  about  it?  Why  shouldn't  she 
come  ?  She  was  my  best  friend  when 

we  were  in  school,  and Oh,  I  see. 

Oooh!"  Nell's  happy  little  smile 
faded  suddenly.  Her  red  lips  became 
a  straight  line,  her  big  blue  eyes  nar- 
nowed  quickly  at  the  corners.  She 
looked  up  at  Howard  with  a  queer 
breathless  little  quiver,  and  said:  "I 
never  asked  you  and  I  never  wanted 
to  know  before — but  Howard,  were 
you  and  Ada  engaged?  Were  you, 
Howard?" 

Howard  laughed  boyishly,  threw 
down  his  napkin  and  strode  across  to 
Nell's  side.  He  placed  a  hand  on 
either  shoulder,  looking  squarely  into 
her  blue  eyes. 

"Yes,  Nell.  I  never  told  you  be- 
cause— well,  because  it  never  seemed 
necessary.  Oh,  don't  look  like  that, 
dear.  You  know  that  Ada  has  been  en- 
gaged to  most  of  the  men  she  knew. 
She  had  the  habit  in  college.  She  cut 
notches  in  an  old  sombrero  rim — same 
idea  as  collecting  scalps,  you  know. 
Oh,  Nell,  don't  look  like  that.  You 


ONE  DAY'S  ROMANCE 


39 


know  I've  never  asked  you  about  Jim 
Montgomery.  You  and  I  are " 

The  old  clock  in  the  hall  struck  the 
half  after  seven  o'clock  hour,  and 
Howard  looked  quickly  at  his  watch, 
patted  his  dejected  little  wife's  shoul- 
der, kissed  her  lightly  and  turned 
quickly.  "Got  to  catch  that  car  in  two 
minutes.  Good-bye,  dear.  See  you 
to-night.  I'll  bring  some  violets  or 
chocolates  or  something.  Good-bye." 

The  door  slammed.  Nell  heard  the 
interurban  car's  shrill  whistle,  heard  it 
stop  grindingly,  then  start  off  again 
with  a  clatter.  She  stared  unseeingly 
out  of  the  pretty,  long  French  win- 
dow. Her  hands  fell  into  her  lap,  her 
shoulders  drooped  pathetically.  The 
clock  struck  eight — half-past  eight — 
nine.  The  door  bell  rang  suddenly. 
Nell  came  to  herself  with  a  start. 

"Gimine!  it's  nine  o'clock.  What  if 
it  should  be  Ada?  And  the  dishes 
aren't  washed  or — or  anything.  Oh, 
darn  it;  there  goes  that  bell  again.  And 
I  haven't  combed  my  hair  yet." 

Nell  went  to  the  door  slowly  and 
opened  it  furtively.  A  big  motor  car 
stood  out  in  the  road — a  liveried 
chauffeur  stood  cap  in  hand  at  her 
door. 

"Mrs.  Howard  Bronson?"  and  he 
handed  her  a  card.  Nell  gasped  as 
she  read  aloud,  "Mr.  James  Montgom- 
ery." 

"Mercy!  Jim!  Well,  what  a  mess! 
What  on  earth  is  he  coming  here  for? 
Oh,  dear!  Why,  of  course,  come  in, 
Jim.  I'm  glad  to  see  you.  Goodness, 
it's  been  a  long  time.  You're  so  ele- 
gant, Jim — your  big  limousine  and 
chauffeur  and  everything,  almost  scare 
me.  Sit  there  by  the  sun  window. 
Excuse  me  just  a  minute  while  I  call 
Howard  up.  He'll  be  so  glad  that  you 
are  here." 

Nell  hurried  out  of  the  room,  closed 
the  door  firmly,  then  leaned  against  it 
and  clutched  her  hair  dramatically. 
Talk  about  your  problem  plays! 
Why,  I'm  having  one  of  my  own. 
Heavens!"  She  looked  tragically  at 
her  reflection  in  the  long  mirror.  Her 
expression  was  so  hopelessly  forlorn 
that  her  saving  sense  of  humor  came 


to  her  rescue,  and  she  laughed  rue- 
fully. She  hurried  to  the  'phone  and 
called  her  husband's  office  number. 

"Yes,  of  course,  it's  Nell.  Why, 
Howard,  you  sound  so  worried  What's 
the  trouble,  dear?  Oh,  I'm  all  right. 
Listen,  I  want  to  tell  you  something 
awfully  funny.  What?  What  did 
you  say?  Ada!  Why,  Howard!  Why, 
certainly  you  must  take  her  to  lunch- 
eon down  town  if  you  choose.  Oh, 
nothing — only  I  think  it's  queer  she 
stopped  down  at  your  office  before 
coming  out  here.  Shopping  to  do! 
Yes,  I  imagine!  Of  course  I'm  not 
angry,  dear.  No,  I  can't  come,  too.  I 
can't,  I  said,  Howard.  Well,  because 
I  have  company.  That's  why.  Jim 
Montgomery  is  here.  Yes,  he  came  in 
his  limousine.  I'm  sure  I  don't  know 
why  he  should  have  gone  to  your  of- 
fice first.  He  knows  you  are  busy. 
Why,  of  course  we'll  have  a  pleasant 
day.  Good-bye — dear,"  but  he  had 
hung  up  with  a  bang  and  didn't  hear 

the  last  word. 

*  *  *  * 

At  one  o'clock  Nell  and  Jim  Mont- 
gomery sat  down  at  her  daintily  ap- 
pointed luncheon  table.  Nell's  cheeks 
were  flushed,  her  eyes  bright,  her  lips 
smiling,  but  she  was  tremendously  un- 
happy. She  and  Jim  had  had  a  de- 
lightful "old  times"  talk;  he  had  ad- 
mired her  garden,  he  had  compli- 
mented her  upon  her  clever  housekeep- 
ing and  her  splendid  adaptability  as  a 
suburban  wife.  But  all  the  morning 
Nell  had  remembered  that  Howard 
was  displeased  with  her  and  that  he 
and  Ada  were  renewing  old  friendships 
too. 

"This  is  living!"  Jim  took  another 
tiny  hot  biscuit  and  a  heaping  spoon- 
ful of  strawberry  jam.  "Howard  is  a 
lucky  dog,  Nell.  I  tell  you  money  is 
a  paltry  matter.  A  man  can't  buy  hap- 
piness. Now,  this  is  what  I  call " 

"Yes,  Howard  and  I  are  very,  very 
happy.  But  Jim,  isn't  the  war  terri- 
ble. The  English  are " 

"Oh,  hang  the  English!  Nell,  I 
wan't  to  tell  you  something  I  came 
here  just  to  tell  you.  Maybe  I  should 
not — probably  it  is  wrong.  But  Nell" 


40 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


— he  leaned  toward  her  and  looked  in- 
to her  frightened  blue  eyes. 
"Jim!    What  can  you  mean?" 
"I  mean  just  this :  I  am  the  unluck- 
iest  man  in  the  world.     I'm  in  love 
with  the  grandest  little  woman — the 
best — the  cleverest — the  wittiest — the 

dearest Why,  don't  look  like  that, 

Nell;  if  it  distresses  you  I  won't  men- 
tion it  again.  War  in  Europe?  Er — 
yes,  it  is  appalling.  The  English  loss 

has " 

And  the  afternoon  dragged  slowly 
on  toward  dinner  time. 


At  one  o'clock,  Howard  Bronson  es- 
corted his  wife's  attractive  friend,  Ada 
Monroe  into  a  tea  room.  Men  looked 
up  admiringly  and  women  stared  criti- 
cally. Ada  was  as  gay  and  laughing 
as  ever. 

"You  order  it,  Howard.  I  don't  care 
what  I  eat — nothing  ever  tastes  good 
any  more.  Yes,  I'm  in  love.  There's 
no  use  trying  to  deceive  you.  You  al- 
ways did  know  me  better  than  I  knew 
myself.  Oh,  it  seems  good  to  be  sit- 
ting here  with  a  big,  handsome  man 
again." 

"Flatterer!  Nell  says  you  aren't 
Irish,  Ada,  but  you  must  be.  Tell 
me  about  yourself." 

"There's  nothing  to  tell.  Stupid, 
stupid,  stupid!  Oh,  Nell's  a  lucky 
girl.  Just  think  of  how  happy  she  is — • 
and  look  at  me !"  She  sighed  woefully 
and  looked  across  at  him  accusingly. 
"I  can't  help  loving,  can  I?  And  it 
doesn't  do  a  bit  of  good.  The  man 
has  to  take  the  first  step " 

"Oh,  cheer  up,  Ada.  Say,  do  you 
mind  if  I  get  a  war  extra.  That  kid 
is  saying  something  about  the  English 
loss  of " 

"Oh,  yes,  get  a  paper,  of  course. 
Read  it  to  me.  I  didn't  mean  to  inflict 
my  unhappiness  and  loneliness  upon 
you.  Read  about  the  English  loss 
of " 

And  the  afternoon  dragged  on.  How- 
ard went  back  to  his  office  disgruntled 
and  distinctly  uncomfortable.  Ada 
made  him  feel  like  a  villain,  and  Nell 
was  at  home  renewing  old  friendships 


with  the  wealthiest  man  of  her  girl- 
hood days. 

%  %  %  % 

It  was  nearly  six  o'clock.  Nell  had 
dressed  carefully  for  dinner  and  had 
combed  her  pile  of  fluffy  gold  hair  in 
the  way  Howard  liked  it  best.  She 
went  out  on  the  front  porch  and  sat 
down  beside  Jim. 

"His  car  will  be  here  in  just  six 
minutes.  I  always  like  to  be  waiting 
for  him  here."  Her  voice  was  just  a 
wee  bit  anxious. 

"The  lucky  dog.  Does  he  appre- 
ciate  " 

"Oh,  yes,  yes,  of  course.  I  appreci- 
ate him,  too.  Oh,  here  they  are — and 
doesn't  Ada  look  charming?"  Which 
is  the  stock  phrase  a  woman  has  if  she 
is  afraid  she  is  a  little  bit  jealous. 

Jim  turned  quickly  and  looked  down 
the  block.  He  rose  suddenly.  He 
grasped  Nell's  arm.  "Who  is  that? 
Tell  me  quick.  Ada  who?" 

Ada  saw  the  tall  figure  on  the  porch. 
She  stopped  instantly. 

"Howard,"  she  whispered  breath- 
lessly, "who  is  that  man?" 

*  *  *  * 

It  was  several  hours  later  and  Jim 
had  taken  Ada  for  a  spin  through  the 
park  before  Howard  and  his  tired,  be- 
wildered wife  had  an  opportunity  to 
straighten  things  out.  They  sat  silently 
before  the  grate.  Howard  in  his  big 
Morris  chair,  Nell  on  a  stool  at  his 
feet,  her  curly  head  on  his  knee.  His 
fingers  played  caressingly  through  her 
hair. 

"This  has  been  a  deuce  of  a  day!" 
Howard  finally  spoke. 

"Oh,  dreadful!  I'm  so  ashamed!  I 
really  thought  he  cared  for  me,  and 
it  seemed  so  wicked,  and " 

"Yes,  and  I  thought  she — but  let's 
not  talk  about  them.  They  are  per- 
fectly happy.  And  I  guess  I  was 
pretty  cross  this  morning — maybe — " 

"You  don't  know  how  to  be  cross! 
And  lean  down  here.  I  want  to  tell 
you  something.  I  burned  my  boudior 
cap  this  morning,  and,  no,  don't  kiss 
me  for  a  minute — and  I  told  the  post- 
man not  to  bother  with  the  early  de- 
livery." 


A  Short-Circuited  Love  Affair 


By  Lannie  Haynes  Martin 


DEAR  SIR"— the  letter  ran— "I 
am  not  writing  for  myself.  I 
am  not  a  marrying  woman,  and 
am  well  fixed  besides,  but  I 
have  great  sympathy  for  them  that 
has  no  companion  and  wants  one,  and 
seeing  your  advertisement  for  a  wife, 
and  having  a  lady  friend  not  married, 
but  who  would  like  to  be,  I  thought  I'd 
write  and  see  if  I  could  fix  it  up  be- 
tween you  two.  She  is  a  mighty  good 
cook,  and  would  be  awful  kind  to  a 
man.  She  has  brown  hair  and  eyes, 
weighs  185,  and  is  about  45,  and  has 
a  home  of  her  own  with  cow  and 
chickens.  She  don't  know  a  thing 
about  me  a-writing  to  you,  and  prob- 
ably would  not  like  it,  but  I  thought 
that  maybe  if  I  could  talk  it  over  with 
you,  and  we  could  get  kind  of  ac- 
quainted I  could  take  you  over  to  call 
on  her  and  never  let  on  how  I  knowed 
you. 

"She's  a  mighty  fine  woman,  if  I  do 
say  it  myself,  and  any  man  would  be 
doing  well  to  get  her.  She's  got  ex- 
pectations, too,  of  inheriting  money, 
and  she  has  a  lovely  voice  for  singing 
hymns.  You  say  you  have  a  loving 
disposition — well,  that  would  just  suit 
her  fine.  As  the  poet  wrote : 

"There  ain't  no  warbling  in  it 
If  the  nest  ain't  built  for  two, 

If  you  want  a  home  what  is  a  home, 
Git  a  mate  to  sing  with  you ! 

"And  as  Solomon  said :  'It  ain't  good 
for  a  man  to  be  alone.'  This  lady  that 
I  am  a-writing  you  about  has  a  very 
loving  disposition,  too,  and  she  is  very 
fond  of  poetry.  If  you  want  to  get 
her  name  you  will  have  to  write  to  me 
very  soon,  as  I  am  going  away.  But  I 


will  stay  a  day  or  so  and  take  you  to 
see  her,  if  you  are  interested. 
"Address, 

"MRS.  MARY  BLAIR, 
"General  Delivery,  Pikeville." 

The  next  day  the  general  delivery 
clerk  handed  out  a  letter  to  an  eager 
woman  who,  tearing  it  open  in  the 
Post  Office,  read  the  following : 

"My  dear  Mrs.  Blair: 

"I  am  a  rather  shy  sort  of  man  for 
one  of  my  age,  and  expected  to  trans- 
act all  of  my  matrimonial  affairs  by 
letter,  but  the  lady  that  you  describe 
seems  to  be  so  uncommon  fine  I'd  like 
to  meet  her,  but  I  will  first  send  a 
friend  over  to  talk  with  you  about  it, 
and  if  you  will  send  your  address  he 
can  come  right  away.  I  am  not  much 
of  a  hand  to  blow  my  own  horn,  but 
I  think  the  lady  who  gets  me  won't  be 
making  any  mistake.  You  must  be  a 
very  kind-hearted  lady  yourself  to 
take  so  much  interest  in  getting  a  hus- 
band for  your  friend ;  most  women  are 
trying  so  to  get  one  for  theirselves 
that  they  ain't  got  no  time  to  waste  on 
anybody  else.  Now,  this  friend  of 
mine  that  is  coming  to  see  you  is  such 
a  popular  man  with  the  ladies  that  he 
most  has  to  run  from  them;  they  are 
always  a  proposing  to  him,  but  he  is  a 
woman  hater,  and  I  warn  you  in  ad- 
vance, don't  'make-up'  to  him  in  any 
way.  As  soon  as  you  send  your  ad- 
dress I  will  send  him  to  see  you. 
"Very  truly  yours, 

"GIDEON  JONES, 
"Box  79,  Pikeville." 

"P.  S. — My  friend's  name  is  John 
Hunter." 

4 


42 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


A  few  days  later  when  Mr.  "John 
Hunter"  and  Mrs.  Mary  Blair  were  sit- 
ting in  front  of  a  cozy  fire  in  Mrs. 
Blair's  sitting-room,  with  a  canary-bird 
twittering  in  the  window  and  the  odor 
of  cookies  coming  in  from  the  kitchen, 
Mrs.  Blair  hitched  her  chair  a  little 
and  said:  "That  friend  of  your'n  must 
be  powerful  bashful,  not  to  come  his- 
self." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  about  that," 
said  Mr.  Hunter.  "You  see,  he  knows 
I've  got  mighty  good  judgment,  and 
under  the  circumstances  could  look  at 
the  matter  in  a  calmer  kind  of  way. 
I've  known  a  lot  of  women  in  my  day, 
and  you  can't  always  judge  a  woman 
by  the  first  foot  she  puts  out;  you've 
got  to  sort  o'  come;  up  on  the  blind  side 
of  her  and  catch  her  when  she's  not 
thinking  about  the  thing  she's  a-tryin' 
to  make  you  think  she  is.  I  think  if 
you'd  take  me  over  to  see  that  friend 
of  yours  and  pretend  that  we'd  come 
to  buy  some  chickens  or  a  calf  I  could 
find  out  a  lot  more  about  her  than  my 
friend  could  by  callin'  on  her." 

"Oh,  you  don't  need  to  give  yourself 
any  uneasiness  about  my  friend.  She's 
all  right.  It's  your  friend  that  I'm 
wantin'  to  know  the  size  of.  I  wouldn't 
think  of  takin'  no  steps  towards  gettin' 
them  acquainted  unless  I  knowed  he 
was  all  right." 

"Well,  now,  just  what  would  you  call 
all  right?"  said  the  man.  "Would  that 
friend  of  yours  object  to  a  pipe  and  a 
little  toddy  now  and  then?" 

Mrs.  Blair  gave  a  little  gasp  like  a 
pain  had  struck  her  in  the  back.  "Oh, 
no ;  I  guess  not,"  she  said  rather  weak- 
ly; "not  if  your  friend  is  as  good-look- 
ing a  man  as  you  are,"  she  wanned  up 
a  little. 

"Well,  that's  just  a  matter  of  taste," 
said  the  man,  batting  his  squinty  little 
eyes  and  smiling  in  spite  of  the  snag- 
gled  teeth  he  was  trying  to  hide.  "And 
now  supposing,"  he  continued,  "sup- 
posing my  friend  wanted  to  keep  a 
dog  or  two,  your  friend  wouldn't  ob- 
ject to  that,  would  she  ?  You  said  she 
had  a  lovin'  disposition." 

"I  didn't  say  nothin'  about  her  lovin' 
dogs,"  bristled  Mrs.  Blair. 


"Then  she  don't  like  dogs?"  queried 
the  man. 

"No,  I'm  sure  she  don't,"  said  Mrs. 
Blair  emphatically. 

"Well,  I'm  afraid  then  there  won't 
be  anything  doing  with  my  friend.  He 
is  mighty  fond  of  dogs.  He's  got 
about  eight.  He's  got  a  little  goat,  too, 
and  some  guinea  pigs  and  a  little  pet 
bear,  and " 

"For  Heaven's  sake!"  interrupted 
Mrs.  Blair,  "what  do  you  think  a  wo- 
man would  want  with  a  menagerie  like 
that  hangin'  around?"  Red  of  cheek 
and  blazing  of  eye,  Mrs.  Blair  stood  up 
as  if  to  close  the  interview.  "If  your 
friend  wants  a  wife,"  she  said,  "you 
can  tell  him  he  will  have  to  chuck 
some  of  them  animules.  No  woman 
would  stand  for  it." 

"You  think  there's  not  any  use  talk- 
ing any  further  about  the  matter, 
then?"  asked  the  man. 

"Not  if  your  friend  is  as  pig-headed 
as  you  are?" 

"Me  ?  I  haven't  anything  to  do  with 
it!"  exclaimed  the  man. 

"You  could  try  to  persuade  your 
friend,  I  guess,  to  give  up  some  of 
them  varmints,  couldn't  you?" 

"Oh,  no,  I  couldn't  think  of  such  a 
thing.  I  believe  a  woman  ought  to 
love  a  man  well  enough  to  love  any- 
thing he  loves." 

"Oh,  you  do,  do  you?  Well,  I'd 
never  like  him  well  enough  to  be  jest 
crazy  about  the  kind  of  fool  friends 
he's  got,  so  you  might  as  well  clear 
out.  Do  you  hear!" 

Unless  he  had  been  stone-deaf  it 
would  have  been  impossible  not  to 
hear  the  crescendo,  fortissimo  tones 
hurled  at  him  as  he  picked  up  his  hat, 
and,  without  a  word,  walked  from  the 
-room.  "Tell  him  to  advertise  for  a 
Zoo  keeper,"  were  the  last  words  he 
heard  as  he  went  out  the  front  gate. 

The  next  day  a  big  bulky  letter  came 
for  Mrs.  Blair.  As  she  opened  it, 
some  kodak  pictures  fell  out.  One  was 
of  a  goat,  one  of  some  guinea  pigs  and 
another  was  of  a  group  of  dogs.  She 
hastily  began  the  letter.  "These  pic- 
tures," is  said,  "are  the  only  animals 
I  have  got.  Most  women  get  worked 


THE  MOTHER.  43 

up  over  the  pipe  and  toddy,  but  I  had  about  me.  Now  all  the  objections  I've 
to  trot  in  all  the  four  legged  critters  I  got  to  you  is  them  false  bangs  you 
could  think  of  to  get  you  a-going.  I  wear.  You'd  have  to  take  them  off, 
just  love  a  woman  with  brown  eyes  and  and  I'd  expect  you  to  feed  the  chick- 
a  reasonable  amount  of  temper.  And  ens  and  do  the  milking." 
the  mistake  a  man  makes  is  taking  a  The  letter  that  he  got  in  reply  by 
wife  without  ever  seeing  her  mad.  special  delivery  next  day  ran  thus : 
Now  I've  seen  you  mad  and  know  just  "You  ornery  little  end  of  nothing 
what  to  expect.  I  knowed  all  along  whittled  to  a  point,  the  only  objections 
there  warn't  no  friend  concealed  in  the  I've  got  to  you  is  that  you  are  a  bald- 
jack-pot,  but  that  you  was  the  lady  headed,  bow-legged,  snaggled-toothed, 
you  was  a-trying  to  disguise.  But  I  squint-eyed  runt  with  a  wart  on  your 
don't  believe  you  suspicioned  anything  nose  and  laziness  in  your  bones." 


THE     /AOTHER 

She  had  grown  jealous  of  the  years  that  aged  her, 
That  had  made  lover  husband,  husband  lord, 
And  so,  to  woo  again  lost  love  assuaged  her 
Faint-hearted  fears,  and  spent  her  scanty  hoard. 
She  bought  a  bonnet,  surely  'twas  a  beauty, 
Sweet  pale  arbutus  clustered  'neath  its  brim. 
Twas  like  the  one  she  wore  when  Love,  not  Duty, 
Drew  his  eyes  to  her  when  she  walked  with  him. 

Trying  it  on,  of  coming  joy  persuaded, 
Her  feeble  candle  lent  its  friendly  ray. 
"He  will  not  notice  that  my  eyes  are  faded, 
He  will  not  notice  that  my  hair  is  gray." 
Love,  that  had  bloomed  and  faded  with  her  roses, 
Should  her  dull  life  again  with  fragrance  fill. 
Time's  mocking  finger  all  his  scars  discloses, 
But  leaves  the  Heart  of  Woman  hungry  still. 

Old  days  should  come  once  more !    A  stifled  wailing 
Drew  her  swift-footed  to  the  chamber  where 
Her  daughter  wept,  her  girlish  heart  unveiling, 
"Mother,  he  does  not  care,  he  does  not  care !" 
"But  he  shall  care.    See  what  I  hold  above  you. 
And  underneath  it  you  will  bloom  a  rose. 
The  lad  shall  turn  and  look,  and  looking,  love  you. 
Be  comforted,  my  child,  for  Mother  knows." 

When  church  bells  rang  she  donned  her  old  black  bonnet. 
(It  had  turned  brown  in  spots,  but  what  of  that?) 
Her  daughter's  face,  Youth's  lovely  flush  upon  it, 
Glowed  'neath  the  saucy  blossoms  of  her  hat. 
She  prayed  the  heavy  hours  might  hurry  faster — 
The  kind  night  took  her  to  its  breast  once  more. 
But  through  all  heart-break,  crowning  all  disaster, 
She  heard  the  lovers  whispering  at  the  door. 

ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD. 


Ay  Experience   With   Geronimo's 

Indians  in  Arizona  in  the 

Summer  of  1885 


By  G.  W.  Ailes 


I  ARRIVED  in  Silver  City,  New 
Mexico,  on  Monday,  June  2,  1885. 
I  soon  formed  friendships  that 
have  lasted  till  the  present  time. 
Among  them  were  C.  E.  Conway  (Cab 
Conway),  a  retired  grocery  merchant, 
and  Wm.  P.  Dorsey  (Horn  Silver 
Bill),  a  prominent  mining  man  and 
property  owner.  These  two  "gilt- 
edged"  men  were  partners  in  some  sil- 
ver mines  at  Camp  Malone,  a  mining 
camp  about  35  miles  southwest  from 
Silver  City.  I  often  met  Dorsey  and 
his  partner,  "Cab,"  and  soon  realized 
that  I  had  found  friends  in  both,  espe- 
cially "Bill  Dorsey/ 

One  day  Dorsey  made  me  a  propo- 
sition to  go  prospecting  in  Arizona  for 
a  month  or  two. 

An  evening  later  I  was  to  dine  with 
friends,  Judge  and  Mrs.  George  F.  Pat- 
rick— Judge  Patrick  was  a  prominent 
attorney  and  cattle  owner  of  Silver 
City,  and  a  former  school  mate  of 
mine.  We  discussed  matters  concern- 
ing plans  for  the  trip  to  Arizona,  and 
decided  that  it  would  be  a  good  out- 
ing for  me.  "But  how  about  the  In- 
dians?" asked  Mr.  Patrick.  "Chief 
Geronimo  and  his  band  have  left  the 
San  Carlos  Reservation  in  Arizona, 
and  have  killed  over  fifty  people  in 
Grant  County,  New  Mexico,  three  of 
them  near  Silver  City."  "Why,"  said 
I,  "you  know  that  Captain  Lawton 
(later  General  Lawton  in  the  Philip- 
pines) is  on  their  trail  going  south  to 
Mexico.  He  may  capture  them  any 
day." 

Dinner  was  soon  over,  and  as  I  had 


decided  to  see  Bill  that  night,  I  ex- 
cused myself  and  went  to  his  rooms  in 
the  Dorsy  building.  I  found  him  and 
Cab  at  their  rooms,  packing  supplies 
and  arranging  things  necessary  for  the 
trip. 

"Hello,  old  man;  come  right  in," 
said  Cab.  "We  were  just  discussing 
you.  Can  you  go?" 

"Yes;  any  time  after  the  Fourth." 

"Right-o;  we  will  start  Tuesday. 
Now,  professor,  look  over  that  list  of 
things  I've  ordered;  make  any  sugges- 
tions you  can  about  supplies." 

"Have  you  any  'slickers/  Bill?" 

"Slickers  ?  No— that's  so ;  tne  rainy 
season  is  just  beginning.  Put  down 
three  slickers  and  a  horse  shoeing  out- 
fit." 

On  the  list  were  guns  and  ammu- 
nition, bacon,  beans,  flour,  soup, 
matches,  towels,  sugar,  coffee,  canned 
meats  and  vegetables,  potatoes,  tin- 
ware and  cutlery,  salt,  tobacco,  one 
gallon  of  brandy  for  snakebite,  fry- 
ing pans,  Dutch  oven,  water  keg,  axle 
grease,  etc. 

"Great  Scott,  Bill,  are  you  going  to 
open  a  store  at  Malone?" 

"No,"  said  he.  "We  may  make  a 
strike,  and  we  don't  want  to  run  out 
of  grub." 

On  Tuesday  morning  we  started  for 
Malone.  Bill  and  Cab  rode  in  the  light 
wagon,  and  I  rode  the  little  black  mule, 
Jack. 

Malone  is  a  beautiful,  picturesque 
spot,  situated  just  below  the  box  in 
Thompson  Canyon  in  the  foothills  of 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  GERONIMO'S  INDIANS 


45 


the  Burro  Range.  The  massive  walls 
of  the  canyon  are  composed  of  brec- 
cia and  sandstone  overlying  a  bedrock 
of  granite  and  porphyry.  The  camp 
went  down  with  the  fall  in  the  price 
of  silver. 

We  immediately  set  to  work  to  un- 
loading our  goods  and  arranging  the 
small  frame  house  for  a  few  days'  rest 
and  comfort.  Soon  after  our  arrival  an 
Indian  scout  paid  us  a  call.  He  had 
been  shot  through  the  thigh  by  a  hos- 
tile. A  company  of  soldiers  was 
camping  nearby,  waiting  orders  from 
Captain  Lawton  and  expected  to  start 
south  any  day  on  the  trail  of  Geron- 
imo  and  his  band.  The  Apaches  were 
last  seen  going  toward  Skeleton  Can- 
yon, Arizona,  where  Lieutenant  Gate- 
wood,  under  Captain  Lawton,  nearly 
two  years  afterward,  captured  their 
band  after  one  of  the  most  sensational 
campaigns  in  the  history  of  Indian 
warfare.  I  also  heard  that  Judge  Mc- 
Comas,  a  prominent  attorney  and  min- 
ing man,  had  been  killed  by  Indians 
about  two  miles  down  the  canyon,  a 
short  time  before,  and  his  little  son 
carried  off,  probably  alive,  as  his  body 
was  never  found. 

The  wounded  scout  was  an  Arapajo 
Indian  and  spoke  some  English.  Of 
course  I  was  interested  in  hearing  the 
story  of  his  recent  escapade  with  the 
Apache  hostiles.  "How  did  it  hap- 
pen?" 

"You  see,  like  this.  I  see  tree  In- 
dian ;  he  see  me  first,  he  shoot,  kill  my 
horse,  shoot  me.  I  shoot,  kill  'em  one 
horse,  maybe  so,  one  Indian.  No  see. 
He  run,  I  stay  out  all  night;  next  day, 
find  camp.  No  difference,  no  hurt 
much;  soon  I  be  well." 

After  a  night  of  rest  and.  a  good 
sleep,  for  surely  I  slept  well,  notwith- 
standing the  Indian  excitement,  we 
rose  early,  had  a  good  camp  break- 
fast, and  started  out  to  inspect  the 
camp  and  vicinity. 

After  a  few  days  of  preparation  we 
loaded  our  effects  into  the  little  spring 
wagon  and  started  for  the  "Gila 
Country"  in  Arizona.  We  drove  out 
about  twenty  miles,  and  camped  on  the 
plains  about  ten  miles  from  Hart's 


Ranch,  where  the  Lordsburg  road  leads 
into  the  Lower  Gila.  There  we  re- 
mained over  night  on  the  grassy  plains 
with  the  clear  blue  July  sky  for  our 
canopy. 

About  dawn  next  morning  I  was 
awakened  by  a  low,  deep  howl,  not  far 
away.  Raising  myself  cautiously,  at 
the  same  time  grasping  my  Winches- 
ter, I  looked  in  the  direction  of  the 
sound,  and  saw  a  large,  grey  wolf  sit- 
ting on  his  haunches  watching  camp, 
no  doubt  "prospecting,"  but  afraid  to 
approach  nearer.  One  sharp  crack 
from  my  gun,  and  the  Lobo  bounded 
into  the  air  and  fell  dead. 

Both  my  companions  sprang  up, 
each  reaching  for  his  gun.  "What's 
that?"  said  Cab. 

"I  got  a  wolf." 

"By  gum,"  said  Bill,  "a  good  omen. 
That's  the  way  we'll  do  the  Indians." 

"I  am  not  sure,  Bill.  That  wolf  was 
only  prospecting;  we  are  only  pros- 
pecting. Wait."  We  did  not  have  to 
wait  long. 

We  continued  our  journey  westward, 
reaching  Wilson's  ranch  by  noon. 
"Uncle  Billy"  Wilson  treated  us  to 
fresh  butter,  milk,  eggs  and  fruit  for 
lunch,  and  gave  us  a  supply  to  take 
along.  Everybody  in  the  Gila  coun- 
try knew  Uncle  Billy.  He  was  with 
Quantrell  during  the  Civil  War  and 
became  one  of  the  first  settlers  on  the 
Lower  Gila.  The  Indians  knew  him 
and  kept  a  respectful  distance. 

By  nightfall  we  reached  York's  cat- 
tle ranch  a  few  miles  below  Duncan, 
Arizona.  Mr.  York  had  been  killed 
by  the  White  Mountain  Apaches  not 
long  before,  and  his  widow  was  on 
the  ranch,  keeping  an  eye  on  the  busi- 
ness. Mrs.  York  was  very  courteous 
to  us,  and  invited  us  to  stay  over  a 
day  or  two  and  catch  Gila  trout  and 
"fry  fish."  We  remained  till  the  sec- 
ond day,  July  14th,  in  the  afternoon, 
spending  most  of  the  time  in  one  veri- 
table fish  fry. 

But  we  were  bent  on  prospecting. 
About  ten  miles  to  the  north  in  Apa- 
che canyon  were  some  old  copper 
workings  where  an  Eastern  company 
had  spent  a  fortune  and  gained  some 


46 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


experience.  Bill  had  heard  that  there 
were  silver  prospects  in  that  section, 
and  we  decided  to  hunt  for  them. 

We  reached  a  good  spring  near  the 
old  copper  mines  in  time  to  make  our- 
selves comfortable  for  the  night.  As 
there  was  a  little  time  to  spare,  Cab 
and  I  took  a  short  round  in  the  foot- 
hills near  camp  and  killed  enough 
small  game  for  supper,  while  Bill 
looked  for  silver.  He  found  some 
copper  rock  which  he  first  thought 
was  chloride  of  silver  (greenhorn  sil- 
ver.) Cab  called  it  "Green  Eyed  Mon- 
ster." We  kept  a  close  lookout  for 
Indians,  as  they  usually  passed  down 
Apache  Canyon  on  their  way  south 
from  the  San  Carlos  reservation.  But 
they  had  been  reported  some  distance 
south  of  the  Gila  a  week  before  this, 
and  we  considered  ourselves  quite 
safe,  for  the  time,  at  least. 

Next  morning  after  breakfast  I  went 
to  the  brakes  to  hunt  deer.  Bill 
started  out  with  his  pick  in  search 
of  silver  and  Cab  went  fishing  up  the 
canyon.  About  noon  we  all  met,  Cab 
being  the  only  successful  hunter 
among  us.  He  had  a  string  of  nice 
trout,  which  were  soon  ready  for  the 
frying  pan.  We  made  a  meal  of  fish, 
crackers,  fried  potatoes  and  tea,  and 
took  a  rest  through  the  heat  of  the 
day.  About  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon Bill  called  time.  "By  gum,  boys, 
rather  poor  prospect  for  mineral.  I  do 
not  like  the  formation.  I'll  try  it  this 
afternoon  on  the  other  side.  If  there's 
nothing  better  than  I've  found  so  far, 
I  am  ready  to  go  south  to  Ash  Spring. 
There's  a  better  show  over  there." 

"I  saw  some  bear  signs  about  a 
mile  up  the  canyon.  I  believe  I  can 
find  a  bear,"  said  Cab. 

"All  right;  I'll  go  with  you,"  said  I. 
"Lay  out  a  course  for  me.  "See  that 
cedar  brake?"  said  Cab,  pointing  to  a 
motte  of  timber  about  a  mile  up  a 
small  ravine  to  the  northwest.  "You 
go  to  that  and  work  across  east  to  the 
canyon.  I'll  work  across  the  foothills 
east  of  here  and  meet  you  up  the  can- 
yon where  the  running  water  sinks. 
When  you  reach  the  main  canyon,  fol- 
low up  or  down,  as  the  case  may  be, 


till  you  find  where  the  water  sinks,  and 
wait  till  I  come.  If  I  arrive  there 
first  I'll  wait  for  you.  I  saw  bear 
tracks  going  in  all  directions." 

I  found  some  old  signs,  but  no 
bears.  By  five  o'clock  I  found  where 
the  running  water  sank  in  the  sand.  I 
did  not  have  to  wait  long. 

In  about  ten  minutes  after  I  reached 
the  meeting  place  I  was  aroused  by  a 
shot,  a  loud  whoop,  and  the  crashing 
of  breaking  brush  approaching  me 
from  the  canyon.  I  fell  behind  a  pro- 
jecting rock  and  made  ready  for  ac- 
tion. I  expected  to  see  Cab  in  a  run- 
ning fight,  coming  down  the  canyon, 
with  a  dozen  Red  Skins  chasing  him. 
But  instead  he  came  running,  hat  in 
one  hand  and  gun  in  the  other. 
"Bears,"  he  shouted  excitedly;  "four 
of  them." 

Just  then  I  heard  the  rocks  rattling 
down  the  hillside  to  the  west.  Look- 
ing quickly  in  that  direction,  I  saw  a 
large  cinnamon  bear  about  two  hun- 
dred yards  away  running  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  juniper  thicket  which  I 
had  left  about  half  an  hour  before. 
Cab  and  I  both  began  firing,  he  shoot- 
ing twice  and  I  three  times,  when  bruin 
rolled  down  the  hill  into  a  little  ravine 
and  disappeared  from  view. 

"I  hit  him.  I  saw  him  double  up 
when  I  shot  last,"  said  Cab. 

"Yes;  and  I  saw  him  fall  when  I 
shot  last,"  said  I. 

On  reaching  the  spot,  we  found  a 
large  he-bear  which  weighed  probably 
750  pounds.  He  was  hit  twice,  and 
as  the  two  wounds  corresponded  in 
range  respectively  to  the  positions 
which  we  each  held  at  the  time  of 
shooting,  evidently  both  of  us  had  hit 
him. 

We  were  late  returning  to  camp,  and 
found  Bill  waiting  supper  for  us.  We 
broiled  cuts  of  bear  meat  on  the  coals 
and  added  to  the  supper  already  pre- 
pared by  Bill. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  we  en- 
joyed our  supper,  as  we  had  not  en- 
joyed a  meal  since  leaving  Silver 
City.  Cab  related  his  experience  with 
the  bears,  while  Bill  and  I  enjoyed  the 
joke  on  both  Cab  and  the  big  bruin 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  GERONIMO'S  INDIANS 


47 


whose  ill-luck  had  brought  us  so  much 
sport. 

"Say,  boys,  you  remember  that  I 
told  you  when  we  killed  the  wolf  that 
it  was  a  good  omen.  We  are  playing 
in  good  luck.  But  I  am  not  sure  that 
we  are  not  taking  chances  right  now. 
I  saw  some  fresh  horse  tracks  going 
down  the  arroyo  just  over  that  divide 
south  of  here.  You  notice  there  are 
no  range  horses  around  here.  Strikes 
me  that  it's  Indians.  I  don't  like  the 
sign.  I  think  we  had  better  get  out  of 
here  to-morrow.  You  know  this  is 
their  old  hunting  ground,  and  we  are 
liable  to  run  into  a  big  bunch  of  them," 
said  Bill. 

After  some  discussion,  we  put  out 
the  fire  and  retired  for  the  night.  I 
slept  in  the  wagon  and  Cab  and  Bill 
made  their  bed  on  the  wagon  sheet 
and  slept  on  the  ground. 

About  two  o'clock  we  were  aroused 
by  a  hoarse  sound  only  a  few  feet 
away.  We  all  rose  up  simultaneously, 
every  man  reaching  for  his  gun.  Right 
in  camp,  rummaging  among  the  pots, 
was  a  large  dark  object,  evidently  a 
huge  bear.  Cab's  gun  flashed;  while 
Bill  made  for  the  nearest  tree,  and  I 
lay  still,  with  my  finger  on  the  trig- 
ger, considering  myself  safer  in  the 
wagon  than  on  the  ground. 

With  a  snort  and  a  bound,  the  black 
animal  went  hobbling  off  down  the 
canyon.  "Gee  whizz,  boys,  I  believe 
you've  shot  our  mule,"  said  I. 

"Sure.  Couldn't  you  see  that  was 
Jack?"  said  Bill. 

"Guess  you  are  right.  But  it's  too 
late  how,"  said  Cab. 

It  was  all  plain  enough  now  that  it 
was  the  little  black  mule  Jack.  Cab 
and  I  started  out  in  pursuit,  but  al- 
though the  mule  was  hobbled,  he  kept 
out  of  our  reach.  So  we  returned  to 
camp  and  awaited  daylight  to  ascer- 
tain results. 

As  soon  as  light  came  we  were  out 
and  rounded  up  our  stock.  The  mule 
was  not  hurt,  save  a  slight  flesh  wound 
through  the  mane  just  back  of  the  ears. 
However,  he  was  not  at  all  sociable, 
and  it  was  not  till  I  had  saddled  one 
of  the  horses  and  chased  him  some 


time  that  I  was  able  to  catch  him. 

Hurrying  through  breakfast  we 
struck  camp  and  drove  up  as  near  as 
we  could  to  the  place  where  we  had 
left  our  bear  the  night  before.  Every- 
thing was  there  just  as  we  had  left  it. 
The  question  now  was,  could  our  little 
wagon  carry  five  hundred  pounds,  in 
addition  to  the  load  on  it?  There 
was  room  to  pile  it  on  if  the  springs 
would  bear  it.  This  problem  we  soon 
solved  by  cutting  two  poles  and  secur- 
ing them  on  either  side  between  the 
bed  and  hubs  to  prevent  collapse  of 
the  springs.  This  accomplished,  we 
headed  for  York's. 

On  arriving  at  the  ranch  about  9  a. 
m.,  Mrs.  York  and  several  of  the  men 
'greeted  us.  "Glad  to  see  you  alive," 
said  Mrs.  York.  "The  Indians  have 
been  here.  They  chased  our  horses  to 
within  shooting  distance  of  the  house 
^yesterday,  and  the  boys  exchanged 
'several  shots  with  them,  but  no  one 
was  hurt.  We  thought  once  that  they 
"would  get  our  horses." 
•  "How  many  were  there?" 

"We  saw  seven.  There  were  prob- 
ably others.  We  did  not  dare  to  leave 
the  house.  They  crossed  the  river 
about  half  a  mile  above  here  and  went 
south  towards  Ash  Peaks." 

"Is  that  so?  We  want  to  go  to  Ash 
Springs,  too.  How  far  is  it?"  And 
they  told  us,  but  advised  against  the 
trip. 

One  of  the  men  said :  "Three  differ- 
ent men  have  located  Ash  Springs  as 
a  cattle  ranch.  They  have  all  been 
killed  by  Indians.  The  last  one  was 
buried  near  the  door  of  his  cabin  only 
six  months  ago.  You  will  see  the 
the  fresh  grave  if  you  go  up  there. 
About  five  miles  up  Ash  Canyon  you 
will  see  two  large  piles  of  rock.  They 
mark  two  large  graves.  In  one  of 
them  are  the  remains  of  thirteen 
Americans;  in  the  other  seventeen 
Mexicans.  You  will  also  see  the  bones 
of  horses  and  cattle  scattered  along 
the  canyon.  In  April  a  wagon  loaded 
with  mescal  and  sotol  came  up  from 
Casa  Grande,  Mexico,  going  to  Clif- 
ton, Arizona.  Just  as  they  were  pass- 
ing through  the  box  where  you  will 


48 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


see  the  graves,  bones,  etc.,  Victoria's 
Indians  attacked  them  and  killed  the 
last  man  and  animal  in  the  train.  Not 
a  living  thing  escaped.  Don't  go  to 
Ash  Springs,  gentlemen.  But,  if  you 
must,  wait  a  few  days  until  those  In- 
dians get  out  of  the  country.  We 
would  like  to  have  your  company,  any- 
way." 

"By  gum,  boys,"  said  Bill,  "looks 
bad  for  us.  There's  some  good  pros- 
pecting out  there,  but  we'd  better  wait 
a  day  or  two  and  see  what  develops." 

So  we  spent  the  next  two  days  fish- 
ing, near  the  house,  eating  watermel- 
ons, telling  bear  stories,  etc. 

Shortly,  word  came  from  Duncan 
that  a  troop  of  soldiers  and  scouts  had 
gone  to  head  off  the  Indians  in  the 
San  Simon  Valley  and  either  capture 
them  or  chase  them  back  to  the  reser- 
vation. So  supposing  that  the  Indians 
had  had  time  to  clear  the  country  and 
get  out  of  the  way  of  the  soldiers,  we 
decided  to  go  to  Ash  Springs. 

As  we  were  leaving,  Mrs.  York  said : 
"You  know  how  I  dread  Indians.  Since 
the  death  of  Mr.  York,  seems  to  me 
it  has  been  one  continuous  raid  and 
murder.  I  have  a  purchaser  coming 
soon  and  intend  to  sell  all  of  my  prop- 
erty then  and  go  to  California  to 
live." 

With  this  view  of  the  situation,  we 
left  them,  and  arrived  at  the  spring 
about  8  a.  m.  We  observed  the  road 
carefully,  especially  with  a  view  to 
coming  back  in  the  night  or  making 
a  rapid  retreat  to  the  river,  if  neces- 
sary. There  were  no  obstructions  or 
bad  places  we  could  not  easily  get 
around  even  at  night.  It  was  well  for 
.us  that  we  took  these  precautions. 

We  found  plenty  of  good,  cold 
water  near  the  little  rock  house  built 
by  the  last  man,  Jack  Smith,  killed  by 
the  Indians  a  few  months  before.  Af- 
ter a  little  reconnoissance  of  the  camp- 
ing ground,  and  seeing  no  signs  of  In- 
dians, Bill  took  to  the  hills  with  his 
pick.  Cab  made  a  broom  of  brush  and 
long  grass,  and  cleaned  out  the  cabin, 
while  I  put  a  shoe  on  one  of  the  horses 
which  had  been  torn  off  coming  up 
the  canyon.  Together,  we  arranged 


our  goods  comfortably  in  the  house, 
and  had  a  good  dinner  ready  when 
Bill  returned  at  noon.  Bill  brought  in 
some  iron  quartz  showing  small  traces 
of  gold  and  considerable  traces  of  sil- 
ver sulphurets.  He  had  selected  two 
claims  on  a  ledge  which  he  said  he 
would  show  us  later.  (He  never  did.) 
After  dinner  we  lay  down  for  a  little 
rest  before  going  the  rounds  of  the 
afternoon,  which  we  had  not  yet  de- 
cided upon.  The  days  were  long  and 
warm,  and  as  we  had  lost  some  sleep 
over  the  Indian  excitement,  bear  and 
mule  affair,  we  were  far  from  being 
anxious  to  get  out  too  early  in  the  heat 
of  the  afternoon. 

Shortly,  Cab  and  Bill  went  up  to 
clean  out  the  spring,  which  was  full  of 
mud,  and  incidentally  talk  over  plans 
for  a  few  days'  work,  and  I  lay  down 
to  catch  a  little  nap  in  their  absence. 
I  had  not  slept  long  when  I  was  roused 
by  a  rattling  and  scratching  in  the 
rocks  near  my  head,  sounding  like  a 
rattlesnake  about  to  strike  me.  Jump- 
ing up,  I  saw  one  of  the  largest  centi- 
pedes I  ever  saw.  Instinctively  I 
drew  my  pistol  and  shot,  breaking 
both  the  articulate  and  bullet  to  pieces 
on  the  rocks.  Cab  and  Bill  came  run- 
ning to  inquire  the  cause.  I  pointed  to 
the  fragments  of  lead  and  centipede 
and  simply  said  "centipede." 

"Another  good  omen,"  said  Bill. 
"We  are  ready  for  all  comers." 

"Wait,"  said  I,  "the  Indians  have 
not  come  yet."  We  did  not  wait  long. 

The  excitement  having  abated,  Cab 
and  Bill  returned  to  the  spring,  and  I 
concluded  to  take  a  stroll  up  the  can- 
yon in  search  of  "big  game."  I  had 
seen  some  deer  tracks  around  the 
spring  and  saw  a  good  chance  to  get 
one.  Bucking  on  my  revolver  and  tak- 
ing my  rifle  in  my  hand,  I  started  out 
south  up  the  canyon.  I  had  not  gone 
far  when  I  discovered  the  tracks  of 
our  mule  and  horses  going  in  the  same 
direction  that  I  was  going.  It  occurred 
to  me  for  the  first  time  that  I  had  not 
seen  our  live  stock  since  we  turned 
them  loose  in  the  morning.  Further- 
more the  tracks  indicated  that  the  ani- 
mals were  walking  fast  instead  of  graz- 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  GERONIMO'S  INDIANS 


49 


ing  along.  I  became  concerned,  and 
followed  the  trail  probably  a  mile  and 
a  half,  when  it  turned  out  of  the  main 
canyon  and  up  a  ridge  westward  to- 
ward the  foothills.  I  had  not  gone  but 
a  few  hundred  yards  when  the  trail 
turned  to  the  north,  crossing  the  gul- 
lies running  into  the  canyon  eastward. 
This  looked  good  to  me,  because  I 
expected  that  in  a  short  distance  the 
trail  would  turn  down  into  the  canyon 
in  the  direction  of  camp.  But  there 
was  a  discouraging  feature;  it  was 
growing  late  and  rain  began  to  fall 
in  torrents,  and  soon  washed  out  all 
signs  of  the  trail.  I  had  not  taken 
along  my  gum  coat.  I  soon  found  pro- 
tection in  the  form  of  a  large,  leaning 
live-oak  tree.  Fortunately,  the  tree 
was  inclined  from  the  direction  of  the 
wind  and  protected  me  amply  both 
from  the  driving  rain  and  the  fury  of 
the  wind.  My  principal  concern  was 
the  care  of  my  gun.  I  realized  that 
I  might  need  it  seriously  at  any  time, 
and  it  was  important  that  I  should 
keep  it  dry.  Finally,  about  sundown, 
the  rain  ceased  and  the  clouds  began 
to  break  away.  I  was  about  to  leave 
my  shelter  when  suddenly  I  caught 
sight  of  several  deer  coming  out  from 
the  brush  on  the  left  and  moving  slow- 
ly across  the  glade.  I  could  scarcely 
resist  the  temptation  to  shoot,  but 
asked  myself  the  question:  "Are  any 
Indians  lurking  anywhere  near  here?" 
Just  then  I  saw  two  or  three  figures 
slip  around  a  bunch  of  brush  to  get  a 
shot  at  the  deer. 

At  once  I  decided  to  remain  in  hid- 
ing till  dark,  and  then  make  my  way 
toward  camp  as  best  I  could  by  moon- 
rise.  Suddenly  there  came  puffs  of 
smoke  and  the  report  of  guns  from  the 
brush  concealing  the  Indians,  and  one 
deer  dropped  dead,  the  others  disap- 
pearing in  the  brush.  This  was  evi- 
dence that  the  Indians  had  not  seen 
me  or  they  would  not  have  taken  the 
chance  of  shooting  the  deer  and  re- 
vealing themselves.  The  Indians  se- 
cured their  game  and  dived  among  the 
brush  almost  exactly  in  the  direction 
I  had  intended  to  go.  I  decided  to  go 
around  to  the  left;  for  they  seemed  to 


be  traveling  in  the  opposite  direction, 
southward, 

I  did  not  dare  to  leave  my  hiding- 
place  till  dark,  an  hour  later.  Nor  was 
it  really  dark  either;  the  moon  was 
shining  at  about  the  first  quarter. 
Apaches  seldom  seek  their  foe  after 
nightfall,  so  I  felt  comparatively  safe 
in  trying  to  make  my  way  around 
them  in  the  direction  that  I  supposed 
camp  to  be. 

I  worked  my  way  westward  to  the 
opposite  side  of  the  glade  where  I  saw 
the  deer,  and  found  a  narrow  ravine 
with  its  sides  covered  more  or  less  with 
brush.  It  concealed  my  course  fairly 
well  from  the  view  of  any  Indians  that 
might  be  lurking  in  the  vicinity. 

I  was  working  my  way  down  the 
bed  of  the  gulch  when  suddenly  I  came 
on  an  opening  reaching  out  on  a  bench. 
On  the  farther  edge  of  it  I  was  dumb- 
founded to  see  the  shadowy  forms  of 
a  number  of  Indians.  Near  me  was  a 
large  rock  covered  with  vine  and  pro- 
jecting several  feet  in  the  air.  I  crept 
behind  it  and  waited  developments.  In 
a  short  time  I  saw  several  dark  forms 
moving  into  an  open  space  about  fifty 
yards  away.  Among  them  was  a  hu- 
man being  evidently  not  an  Indian. 
They  were  dragging  and  pushing  him 
along;  his  hands  were  bound  behind 
his  back,  and  a  gag  was  tied  over  his 
mouth.  The  prisoner  looked  like  a 
white  man,  and  judging  from  his 
smothered  groans  and  the  actions  of 
the  Indians  they  were  preparing  to  tor- 
ture him.  They  tied  him  to  a  small 
tree  and  began  to  form  a  circle,  about 
a  dozen  of  them  in  all.  They  tor- 
mented the  prisoner  for  some  minutes 
by  brandishing  their  weapons  in  his 
face.  Then  a  tall  Indian  stood  up  and 
mumbled  something.  The  others  bowed 
around  him  in  a  half-bent  posture  and 
repeated  the  gutturals  uttered  by  the 
leader,  their  bodies  swaying  up  and 
down  like  top-heavy  saplings  in  a 
storm.  The  chief  then  raised  the  ob- 
ject which  he  held  in  one  hand  high 
into  the  air  with  both  hands,  and  gave 
a  whoop.  The  others  whooped  also, 
and  began  hopping,  Jumping  and 
shouting  in  an  indescribable  manner. 


50 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


After  looking  on  for  a  while  in  won- 
der, I  realized  that  I  was  witnessing 
an  Apache  Indian  death-dance. 

Suddenly  their  antics  ceased,  and 
the  big  fellow  faced  the  prisoner, 
holding  his  lance  in  a  threatening  po- 
sition, evidently  intent  upon  torturing 
the  victim  as  a  cat  tortures  a  mouse, 
before  striking  the  final  blow.  The 
strain  was  too  much  for  me.  Some  in- 
fluence prompted  me  to  shoot.  The 
Indian  leader  pitched  forward  to  the 
ground.  The  others,  crouching  in 
various  positions,  gathered  around 
him.  I  fired  several  shots  more  in 
rapid  succession  at  the  group.  As  the 
smoke  cleared  away,  I  saw  several 
dark  forms  running  into  the  brush. 
The  prisoner  at  the  tree  tore  at  his 
fastenings,  and  rolling  down  the  slope 
disappeared  in  the  gulch  below.  I 
did  not  dare  go  to  him,  but  turned  and 
ran,  jumping  over  boulders,  blunder- 
ing across  washouts,  till  finally  I  fell 
into  a  deep  wash,  where  I  remained 
some  time,  too  weak  to  pull  myself 
together.  I  noticed  a  small  motte  of 
thick  brush  in  a  little  sa'g  just  to 
the  left  and  crept  into  it,  and  remained 
there  thinking  over  the  situation  till 
the  moon  disappeared  behind  the  crest 
in  the  west.  Then  taking  advantage 
of  the  darkness,  I  started  westward  in 
the  direction  that  I  knew  camp  must 
be.  In  a  little  while  I  found  myself 
in  a  broad,  open  valley  which  I  recog- 
nized as  being  the  way  over  which  I 
had  passed  that  afternoon.  Knowing 
that  the  rock  house  must  be  a  little 
farther  on  down  the  canyon,  I  pushed 
on,  reaching  camp  about  a  mile  below, 
just  before  daybreak.  Cab  and  Bill 
were  standing  guard,  and  gave  me  a 
warm  reception.  They  had  heard  the 
shooting  and  feared  that  the  Indians 
had  "got"  me.  I  related  my  experi- 
ence, while  Cab  and  Bill  prepared  a 
light  breakfast.  We  swallowed  it  hur- 
riedly, and  gathered  our  traps  to  leave 
the  place. 

Bill  and  I  went  out  to  get  the  stock. 
I  had  noticed  a  small  clump  of  brush 
on  the  point  of  the  foothill  about  three 
hundred  yards  away.  Presently  from 
it  came  a  puff  of  smoke,  and  I  fell  to 


the  ground,  yelling  to  Bill:  "Fall 
down !"  Bill  failed  to  understand  what 
had  happened,  and  the  next  bullet 
whizzed  over  me  and  passed  close  to 
Bill's  head.  "I  felt  my  hair  stand  on 
end,"  he  said  later. 

"Look  out,  boys,  that  means  busi- 
ness," said  Bill.  And,  dropping  the 
rope  which  was  tied  to  one  of  the 
horses,  he  ran  to  the  rock  house,  where 
Cab  met  him,  carrying  a  Winchester 
rifle  in  one  hand  and  a  six-shooter  in 
the  other. 

I  lay  on  the  ground  and  called  to  the 
boys  to  open  fire  on  the  clump  of  brush 
where  the  shot  came  from,  till  I  could 
get  into  the  house  for  protection.  The 
boys  climbed  up  back  of  the  rock 
house  where  they  could  get  a  better 
view  of  the  country  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  canyon,  and  began  "shell- 
ing" three  objects  running  up  the  ridge 
towards  the  mountains  west,  about  half 
a  mile  away.  I  soon  joined  in  the 
'sport,  but  saw  that  it  was  no  use.  There 
was  nothing  left  for  us  but  to  get  out 
as  quickly  as  possible. 

We  loaded  everything  into  the 
wagon  and  started  for  the  Gila  River, 
as  fast  as  we  could  travel.  I  rode  the 
little  mule,  Jack,  and  kept  in  the  lead 
about  a  hundred  yards,  while  Cab 
drove  the  team  and  Bill  walked  in 
the  rear,  about  a  hundred  yards  be- 
hind. We  knew  that  the  Indians  were 
more  likely  to  attack  us  if  we  were  all 
together  than  they  would  if  we  were 
scattered  out  a  hundred  yards  apart. 
The  Indians  never  showed  up.  We 
soon  made  our  way  to  the  Gila.  About 
9  o'clock  we  arrived  at  Duncan,  Ari- 
zona, the  nearest  railroad  station,  just 
in  time  to  witness  a  street  duel  be- 
tween old  "Coon  Skin,"  an  old  pros- 
pector who  wore  a  coonskin  cap,  and 
a  cowboy  who  had  started  in  to  shoot 
up  the  town.  The  duel  did  not  last 
long,  and  ended  disastrously  for  the 
cowboy.  Coon  Skin  used  a  shotgun, 
and  the  cowboy  used  a  six-shooter.  At 
the  end  of  the  first  round  the  cowboy 
fell,  with  his  face  badly  mutilated. 

We  had  seen  sufficient  tragedy  for 
one  trip,  so  we  purchased  some  needed 
supplies  and  left  for  Uncle  Billy  Wil- 


MY  EXPERIENCE  WITH  GERONIMO'S  INDIANS 


51 


son's  ranch,  up  the  river,  which  we 
reached  about  noon.  Uncle  Billy  re- 
ceived us  with  a  smile  as  usual,  and 
gave  us  to  understand  that  the  latch 
string  was  always  out.  We  watered 
and  fed  our  team,  had  a  good  dinner 
with  Uncle  Billy,  at  his  expense,  and, 
after  relating  to  him  some  of  our  ex- 
periences on  the  trip,  turned  in  for  an 
afternoon's  rest. 

We  reached  Malone,  35  miles  away, 
next  morning  at  2  o'clock,  July  21st. 
Being  tired  and  sleepy,  we  hurriedly 
moved  our  traps  into  the  cabin,  wat- 
ered and  fed  our  stock  grain,  and  re- 
tired for  a  few  hours'  rest  and  repose. 
In  a  few  minutes  we  were  all  cuddled 
down  in  the  "arms  of  Morpheus."  The 
next  morning  we  decided  to  remain  in 
Malone  a  day  or  two  and  prospect  the 
claims  that  had  already  been  located, 
and  gather  a  few  specimens  to  take 
back  with  us.  As  Lawton's  command 
had  left  Malone  only  a  few  days  be- 
fore our  return,  we  considered  our- 
selves safe  to  move  around  the  hills 
near  camp. 

We  slept  through  the  heat  of  the 
day,  and  about  four  o'clock  we  had  a 
good  dinner  of  bear  meat  and  bread 
and  some  of  the  good  things  that  Un- 
cle Billy  Wilson  had  given  us.  Din- 
ner being  over,  I  left  Bill  and  Cab 
to  "clear  up  things,"  and,  taking  a  pick 
and  sack  under  my  arm  and  my  Colt's 
45  in  my  belt,  went  up  to  the  Big  Wal- 
lipes  mine  about  half  a  mile  away^  to 
gather  some  specimens.  On  arriving 
at  the  mine,  I  took  the  precaution  to 
look  around  the  vicinity  a  little  to 
satisfy  myself  that  there  were  no  In- 
dians anywhere.  Climbing  up  on  a 
high  point  of  rock  near  by,  I  care- 
fully looked  over  the  surrounding 
country,  and  had  about  decided  that 
there  was  no  danger  whatever  of  In- 
dians, for  the  time  being,  at  least. 
Just  then  I  noticed  a  small  group  of 
horses  tramping  around  behind  a  small 
motte  of  bushes,  about  a  half  a  mile 
away.  I  observed  them  carefully  for 
a  few  seconds,  when  I  discovered  that 
there  were  men  standing  on  the  ground 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  horses  from 
me,  apparently  preparing  to  mount. 


To  my  terror,  I  realized  that  they 
were  Indians.  I  waited  a  short  time  to 
see  what  they  would  do,  but  they  re- 
mained almost  in  their  tracks.  I 
dreaded  that  they  had  caught  sight  of 
me,  and  had  sent  a  squad  of  their 
number  to  cut  off  my  retreat  to  camp. 
The  first  impulse  was  to  run  for  camp 
and  take  a  chance  on  fighting  my  way 
through  with  my  revolver.  After  a 
little  reflection  I  decided  to  conceal 
myself  in  a  prospect  cut  near  by, 
where  I  could  see  and  watch  their 
movements  long  enough  to  form  some 
idea  what  they  were  trying  to  do.  For 
some  minutes  they  remained  stationary 
— apparently  deliberating  upon  some 
course  or  waiting  for  something  ex- 
pected to  happen. 

Suddenly  I  heard  the  rustle  of  leaves 
on  the  dump  back  of  me.  I  looked 
quickly  in  that  direction,  and  saw  two 
black,  beady  eyes  under  a  cluster  of 
heavy,  dark  hair,  peering  down  at  me 
from  behind  the  ore  dump.  Instantly, 
with  a  loud  whoop,  the  savage  bound- 
ed up  and,  grasping  a  long  lance  in  his 
hand,  bore  down  upon  me.  But  my 
right  hand  was  too  quick  for  him.  I 
drew  my  revolver,  and  shot  him 
through  the  head.  The  body  rolled 
down  towards  me.  I  rushed  down  the 
path  leading  to  camp,  jumping  or  blun- 
dering over  everything  that  came  in 
the  way,  and  reached  camp  more  dead 
than  alive. 

Cab  and  Bill  were  out  with  their 
guns  and  covered  my  retreat  most  of 
the  way  from  the  mine  to  camp.  They 
lost  no  time  in  pulling  me  into  the 
house  and  securing  everything  against 
attack.  The  question  may  be  asked: 
Why  did  the  Indian  risk  a  lance  when 
he  could  have  used  a  gun  ?  The  reason 
no  doubt  was  this:  there  were  only  a 
few  Indians,  and  they  probably  were 
not  sure  of  conditions  around  Camp 
Malone.  The  soldiers  had  left  there 
only  a  few  days  before,  and  there 
were  still  several  men  in  camp,  and 
the  Indians  did  not  wish  to  risk  detec- 
tion by  firing  a  gun. 

After  a  brief  consultation  we  brought 
in  our  live  stock  and  Bill  and  I  tied 
them  to  trees  near  the  house,  while 


52                                         OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

Cab  went  to  notify  the  other  men  in  early  next  morning.    Our  friends  met 

camp  of  the  nearby  Indians.    Colonel  us  with  open  arms,  and  asked  us  all 

Donohue   and    several   men    stopping  kinds  of  questions  about  our  experi- 

with  him  were  in  camp  at  the  time,  ences. 

and  they  began  preparing  for  a  night  Bill  married  in  the  fall  of  the  same 

drive   to   Lordsburg,   16  miles  south,  year,  and  they  now  have  several  grown 

that  night.  up  sons.    Shortly  afterward  Cab  mar- 

We  were  bound  for     Silver     City,  ried  Miss   Schaublin  of  Las  Cruces. 

and  also  decided  on  a  night  drive.    As  Their  union  brought  them  one  son  who 

we  had  plenty  of  supplies  and  water  is  now  a  man.     Poor  friend  Cab  and 

in  the  house,  we  remained  indoors  till  his  good  wife  have  long  since  passed 

some  time  after  dark.     In  the  mean-  into  that  Realm  of  Many  Mysteries, 

time,  we  prepared  and  ate  a  hearty  May  God  bless  them  all. 

supper,  and  gave  our  horses  all  of  the  I    have    had    some  thrilling  experi- 

grain  they  could  eat.  ences  during  my  long  term  of  life,  but 

About  10  o'clock  p.  m.  we  loaded  nothing   else   will   compare   with   my 

the  wagon  and  set  out  for  Silver  City,  experience  with  Geronimo's  Indians  in 

.arriving  there   in  time  for  breakfast  Arizona. 


AN     IRISH     LOVE     LILT 

It  was  fair  in  dear  old  Erin,  when  the  furze  were  steeped  in 

gold, 

And  heather  buds  spilled  diamond  dew  from  every  purple  fold. 
When  you,  my  blue-eyed  colleen,  with  your  trusting  hand  in 

mine, 
Wandered  o'er  the  flowering  hillside,  where  the  shamrock  trailed 

its  vine. 
Sure  the  lark  that  soared  above  us,  trilled  his  sweetest  song  that 

day — 
For  spring  smiled  through  the  bogland  blooms — and  in  our 

hearts  'twas  May. 

Whist!    Mavourneen,  dear — the  blue  waves  that  danced  along 

our  way, 

Are  dark  with  sullen  longing,  as  they  croon  in  shrouds  of  gray. 
For  an  ocean  rolls  between  the  land  where  blooms  my  Irish 

rose — 
And  the  city  where  I  wonder  lone  'midst  faces  blanched  like 

snows. 

Oh,  there's  not  a  sound  of  laughter — nor  a  song  bird  trills  a  lay, 
For  in  my  heart  'tis  winter,  while  in  Erin,  sure,  'tis  May. 

To-night  I  watched  the  moon,  Colleen,  your  letter  in  my  hand — 
And  laughing  waves  with  caps  of  lace  danced  on  the  glistening 

strand. 
Then  o'er  the  bridge  of  silver  beams  that  spanned  the  waters 

blue, 

In  dreams,  I  sped,  love's  wine  to  quaff,  from  Irish  lips  so  true. 
Now  the  world  with  song  is  ringing,  and  the  bog  with  bloom  is 

gay— 
For  spring,  Mavourneen,  smiles  again,  and  in  our  hearts  'tis 

May. 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 


The  Passing  of   the    Cowboy 


By  /Aax  /AcD. 


EVERY  type  of  man  or  beast  has 
its  value  in  the  make-up  of  the 
history  of  the  world.  The  word 
type  is  here  used  with  reference 
to  character  evolved  from  peculiar 
circumstances  or  conditions.  When 
such  conditions  change,  the  type  natu- 
rally disappears.  In  speaking  of  the 
old-time  life  of  the  western  half  of 
this  continent,  the  international  boun- 
dary line,  needless  to  say  must  be 
largely  disregarded.  The  natural  con- 
ditions which  shaped  the  lives  of  the 
living  beings  that  played  their  parts 
on  that  vast  stage  knew  nothing  of 
man-made  boundaries,  any  more  than 
the  driving  rain  storms  of  summer,  or 
the  blizzards  of  winter,  or  the  migrat- 
ing herds  of  buffalo  knew  or  cared 
that  in  the  years  to  come  there  would 
be  international  boundary  pillars  at 
half-mile  intervals  strung  across  the 
continent  from  Lake  of  the  Woods  to 
the  Rockies. 

First  and  foremost  of  all  the  types 
that  have  made  the  West  famous,  the 
cowboy  must  be  spoken  of  with  all 
honor.  He  has  been  the  most  misrep- 
resented of  all  those  that  have  braved 
the  frontier  in  an  effort  to  establish  le- 
gitimate business.  He  is  the  man  that 
really  carved  the  way  and  proved  that 
the  country  was  one  of  vast  realiza- 
tion. He  lived  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
farthest  police  patrol,  away  from  the 
help  of  the  sheriff  and  guardians  of 
the  law,  herding  stock  and  guarding  it 
against  untamed  Indians  and  the  wild 
beasts  of  the  mountains  and  hills.  Mud 
roofed  shacks  were  his  only  shelter, 
his  food  was  rough,  and  he  had  none 
of  the  luxuries  that  are  to-day  consid- 
ered necessities. 

The  people  of  the  East  have  been 
led  by  ignorant  or  careless  writers, 


or  sculptors  to  confuse  trie  cowboy 
with  the  cattle  "rustler"  or  raider.  He 
has  been  pictured  as  a  desperado,  go- 
ing about  shooting  up  towns  and  leav- 
ing a  trail  of  carnage  behind.  He  was 
not  all  that  writers  of  fiction  and  ro- 
mance would  have  him.  Not  always 
was  he  picturesque  in  hairy  schnapps 
and  wide  sombrero;  always  vicious 
and  dissipated.  Nor  did  he  always 
have  a  dialect.  He  had  a  vernacular 
of  his  own,  the  same  as  a  lawyer  or  a 
doctor  has  a  vernacular  of  his  own.  He 
was  ever  rough  and  ready,  with  many 
of  the  graces  of  an  angel,  and  many 
of  the  attributes  of  a  devil.  His  life 
called  for  hardihood  and  daring,  so 
only  the  hardy  followed  it. 

There  is  a  type  of  the  cowboy  who 
comes  to  the  ranch  in  the  spring  and 
fall,  and  at  all  other  times  is  a  vaga- 
bond, "riding  the  grub  line."  Such 
characters  have  existed  and  do  exist 
in  connection  with  the  cattle  industry 
of  the  West,  but  they  are  not  the  domi- 
nant type.  There  are,  however,  the 
type  that  the  people  of  the  East  have 
had  thrust  upon  them.  If  there  is  any- 
thing that  a  first-class  Western  man 
resents,  it  is  the  assertion  that  this 
particular  type  of  disreputable  cow- 
puncher  belonged  to  his  section  of  the 
country.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  these 
ruffians  were  almost  invariably  drafted 
from  the  cattle-yards  of  the  Eastern 
markets. 

Science  is  crowding  out  the  old  type 
of  desperado  cowboy.  A  better  breed 
of  cattle  is  being  developed,  and  the 
men  selected  to  care  for  them  must 
know  their  business.  The  real  type 
of  cowboy  is  the  man  who  makes  his 
occupation  as  much  a  business  as  the 
farmer  or  the  manufacturer,  and  he  is 
quite  as  much  an  important  factor  in 


54 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  economy  of  the  West  as  either  of 
the  others. 

Probably  the  only  accurate  concep- 
tion of  the  real  cowboy  that  now  can 
be  obtained  may  be  seen  in  the  pic- 
tures of  Russel  and  Remington;  the 
one  a  cowboy  himself,  with  an  artist's 
eye  and  skill;  the  other  a  man  of  the 
schools  and  cities,  but  with  the  in- 
stincts of  an  out-of-door  lover  of 
nature  and  of  Western  life.  Their 
paintings  of  the  camp  and  round-up,  of 
all  that  pertains  to  a  cowpuncher's  life, 
are  duplicated  in  the  memory  of  every 
man  who  has  ever  seen  much  of  life 
upon  the  open  range. 

Colonel  Theodore  Roosevelt  knows 
a  good  deal  about  cowboys.  He  has 
lived  their  life  on  the  Western  plains 
and  written  much  from  his  personal 
knowledge  and  experience.  Of  the 
cowboy  he  says : 

"Cowboys  resemble  one  another 
much  more  and  much  less  than  is  the 
case  with  their  employers  or  ranch 
men.  A  town  in  the  cattle  country, 
where  it  is  thronged  with  men  from 
the  neighborhood  round  about,  pre- 
sents a  picturesque  sight.  Here  are 
assembled  men  who  ply  the  various 
industries  known  only  to  frontier  ex- 
istence, who  lead  lonely  lives,  except 
when  occasion  causes  their  visit  to  the 
"camp."  All  the  various  classes — 
loungers,  hunters,  teamsters,  'stage 
drivers,  trappers,  shepherds,  sutlers, 
and  men  drawn  from  all  classes, 
plainsmen  and  mountain  men — are 
here  to  be  seen.  Most  prominent  of 
all  is  the  cowboy.  Singly  or  in  twos 
or  threes,  they  gallop  the  wild  little 
horses  down  the  street,  their  lithe,  sup- 
ple figures  erect,  or  swaying  slightly 
as  they  sit  loosely  in  the  saddle ;  their 
stirrups  are  so  long  that  their  knees 
are  hardly  bent,  and  the  girdles  not 
taut  enough  to  keep  the  chains  from 
clinking." 

As  picturesque  as  is  the  get-up  of 
the  cowboy,  there  is  not  an  article  en- 
tering into  his  outfit  that  has  not  a 
practicable  and  essential  application 
to  the  comfort  of  the  man  of  the 
plains.  His  extravagance  would  seem 
to  be  shown  in  the  number  and  variety 


of  the  big  silk  handkerchiefs  which  he 
wears  knotted  about  his  neck.  And 
yet  the  handkerchief  is  an  important 
part  of  his  outfit,  covering  his  mouth 
and  nose  when  riding  the  range  be- 
hind a  herd  of  cattle.  Three  thousand 
cattle  make  a  lot  of  dust,  and  the  al- 
kali dust  of  the  Western  ranges  is  not 
very  pleasant  stuff  to  get  into  the 
lungs. 

The  cowboy  likes  a  fancy  bridle,  an 
ornate  saddle,  good  pistols  and  fine 
spurs.  The  heavy  leather  cuffs  are 
usually  most  ornamental,  but  their 
decorative  effect  is  only  incidental. 
When  the  cowpuncher  throws  his  rope 
to  lasso  a  steer,  the  lariat  sometimes 
comes  in  contact  with  his  wrist.  If 
his  arm  should  be  bare  and  that  whirl- 
ing line  should  run  over  it,  the  flesh 
would  be  cut  to  the  bone. 

The  sombrero  is  another  of  the 
plainsman's  pet  articles  of  apparel.  It 
is  extremely  picturesque,  and  it  lends 
the  man  a  romantic  air.  But  he  does 
not  wear  it  for  these  reasons. 

He  uses  the  big-brimmed  hat  be- 
cause it  is  the  only  sensible  thing  for 
him  to  wear.  The  broad  brim  keeps 
the  sun  out  of  his  face  on  his  long 
rides,  and  shelters  him  from  rain  when 
he  runs  into  stormy  weather.  The  hat 
is  held  on  by  a  "G"  string.  Without 
it  the  hat  would  be  off  the  puncher's 
head  as  much  as  on,  and  once  under 
the  hoofs  of  the  herd  there  wouldn't 
be  even  a  ribbon  left.  The  high  heels 
on  his  boots  are  essential  to  his  com- 
fort, as  without  them  his  feet  would 
constantly  be  slipping  through  the  stir- 
rups. 

There  is  the  little  whip  which  the 
boy  has  tied  to  his  left  wrist.  It  isn't 
meant  to  be  used  on  his  horse;  it  is 
for  the  steers,  and  is  called  a  "bull 
whip."  In  a  herd  there  will  be  one  or 
two  ring-leaders  in  mischief  that  will 
stampede  the  herd  on  slight  provaca- 
tion.  One  end  of  the  whip  is  loaded, 
and  when  the  rider  sees  trouble  brew- 
ing, he  spots  the  bad  steer,  and  riding 
up  to  him,  whacks  him  over  the  head 
with  the  butt  end  of  the  whip.  Fre- 
quently it  is  sufficient  to  fell  the  beast 
'and  then  the  cowpuncher  is  off  his 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  COWBOY 


55 


horse  in  a  jiffy,  ties  the  animal's  feet, 
and  so  stops  the  mischief. 

The  fiscal  year  of  the  cowboy  be- 
gins in  the  early  spring,  just  after  the 
snow  has  melted  from  the  hills  and 
the  grass  gets  a  good  start  and  the 
season  for  feeding  the  poor  stock  is 
over.  Then  it  is  that  he  puts  aside  his 
winter  ways  and  recklessness,  and 
buckles  his  belt  to  a  hard  six  months' 
work.  As  soon  as  weather  permits, 
the  "weaners,"  and  old  cows  that 
have  been  feeding  at  the  home  ranch, 
are  driven  to  the  fresh  green  grass  on 
the  hillsides,  and  the  round-up  begins. 

The  range  is  systematically  ridden, 
and  every  beast  accounted  for.  The 
"chuck  wagon"  is  loaded  with  a  "grub 
stake,"  and  follows  after  the  punchers 
as  they  clean  up  miles  of  country  for 
branding.  In  most  sections  of  the 
West  the  spring  round-up  is  a  beef 
round-up  as  well,  for  the  mild  winters 
and  abundant  pastures  of  the  foothills 
make  beef  on  the  range,  while  the 
stall-feds  of  the  East  are  munching 
their  corn  and  roots. 

Corralling  the  saddle  horses  each 
morning  is  an  interesting  part  of  cow- 
boy experience  on  the  round-up.  A 
corral  is  made  of  lariat  ropes  tied  to 
the  camp  wagons,  and  into  this  the 
horses  are  driven.  Each  "buckaroo" 
picks  out  his  string  of  four  or  five,  one 
or  two  of  which  are  usually  bronchos 
fresh  from  the  bunch  grass.  The  well 
known  Remington  picture,  "The  Chuck 
Wagon,"  illustrates  what  often  hap- 
pens when  the  bronc  is  saddled  at  the 
rounci-up  camp. 

One  might  think  that  where  cattle 
are  kept  on  range  within  a  few  days' 
ride  from  the  home  ranch  the  process 
of  searing  an  ugly,  big  brand  deep  into 
their  hide  and  hacking  off  a  big  frac- 
tion of  each  ear  and  cutting  loose  the 
skin  of  the  jaw  or  neck  or  brisket  so 
that  a  bloody  piece  of  themselves 
would  grow  in  a  chin  waddle  or  neck 
waddle  or  "dewlap" — one  might  think 
that  all  this  college  fraternity  initia- 
tion heartlessness  were  useless. 

So  thought  a  historic,  tenderhearted 
man  named  Sam  Maverick,  who  came 
from  Boston  to  Texas  in  an  early  day 


to  scatter  seeds  of  kindness  and  to 
make  his  fortune  in  the  raising  of  cat- 
tle. He  didn't  have  a  close  home 
range,  but  he  trusted  humanity,  and 
his  calves  and  cattle  carried  their  ears 
and  their  hides  whole  as  nature  had 
given  them.  As  the  old  story  goes, 
the  catching  up  of  Maverick's  "slick 
ears"  became  very  popular  among  the 
worldly,  get-rich-quick,  ambitious 
stockmen  of  the  section.  The  story 
became  sectional  parlance,  and  to-day 
Webster  tells  us  that  a  maverick  is  a 
"bullock  or  a  heifer  that  has  not  been 
branded,  and  is  unclaimed  or  wild." 
Also  the  lesson  of  Maverick's  loss  of 
his  herds  seems  to  have  been  remem- 
bered. So  it  is  to-day  that  the  brand 
of  the  cattleman  must  be  registered 
with  the  proof  of  ownership,  unless,  of 
course,  theft  can  be  proved.  But  the 
days  of  stock  rustling  are  over  in  the 
West,  largely  owing  to  the  rigid  brand 
inspection  of  the  larger  market  cen- 
ters. 

Driving  beef  to  the  railway  is,  how- 
ever, the  climax  of  the  cowboy  year. 
Perhaps  it  is  also  the  most  interesting, 
though  physically  wearing,  work  the 
puncher  has  to  do.  Many  of  the  steers 
are  very  wild,  and  a  herd  has  been 
stampeded  by  the  fright  of  one  animal 
that  was  surprised  by  a  bird  flying 
suddenly  from  a  bush.  Every  effort  is 
made  to  keep  the  beef  from  wearing 
away  their  tallow.  It  is  the  greatest 
of  cowboy  sins  ever  to  allow  them 
carelessly  to  go  faster  than  a  slow 
walk.  To  afford  a  better  trail,  the  cat- 
tle are  strung  out  single  file  when  the 
country  is  open.  From  a  high  point 
one  can  then  look  down  the  road  some- 
times for  three  miles  and  see  the  same 
living,  vibrating,  slowly  moving 
thread. 

From  six  to  ten  miles  is  a  day's 
drive,  and  if  the  range  is  good  before 
dark  the  cattle  will  have  satisfied  their 
desire  for  grass  and  water.  Then  they 
are  bunched,  and  soon  lie  down  in  one 
compact,  cud-chewing  mass.  In  the 
early  days  of  the  drive  they  must  be 
night-guarded,  the  men  being  grouped 
in  shifts,  each  to  spend  half  of  the 
night  in  riding  slowly  around  and 


56  OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

around  the  herd  from  one  camp-fire  to  farmer  and  the  railroads.     A     grand 

another.     Later  the  cattle  can  be  left  country,  a  wheat  empire,  the  land  of 

alone  after  they  have  quieted  down,  the  future ;  but  the  ranches  have  gone,, 

and  they  will  not  stir  until  daybreak,  wild  cattle  no  longer  roam     at     will 

But  the  cowboy's  day  is  past.    The  across  the  broad  sweeps  of  the  prai- 

open  ranges  of  the  West  are  no  more,  ries,  and  the  cowboy  has  no  part  in 

and  the    vaquero    of    Argentina  and  this  great  development.    The  old  days 

Mexico  no  more  like  the  real  article  have  passed  into  oblivion  never  to  re- 

than  an  Indian  cayuse  is  like  a  nerve-  turn.     The  days  of  the  cow-punchers 

strained    thoroughbred.    The    rolling  and  lassos  are  forgotten  in  the  ashes 

hills  remain,  the  snug  river  bottoms,  of  the   past,  and  where  the  endless 

the  springs  in  the  hills,  the  streams  herds  of  cattle  grazed,  great  cities  are 

and  rivers,  but  the  range  is  gone  for-  springing  up  and  planning  their  des- 

ever,  cut  up  by  the  fences     of     the  tiny. 


JOY 

When  old  woes  assail  thee, 

And  thy  sorrows  crowd, 
When  thy  dear  friends  fail  thee, 

Low  thine  heart  be  bowed — 
Leave  thy  sorrows,  listen 

To  the  waters  loud, 
See  the  sunshine  glisten 

In  the  silver  cloud. 

Be  a  child  of  Nature, 

Share  her  hymns  of  praise, 
Lift  up  thy  soul's  stature 

To  the  heights  and  ways 
Where  those  hymns  are  thy  hymns, 

Thy  low  voice  upraise 
Saying :  "These  are  my  hymns, 

Joy  hath  crowned  my  days." 

Earth  and  air  and  ocean, 

Flowers  and  leafy  trees, 
Clouds  of  lightest  motion, 

All  work  for  thine  ease. 
Leave  thy  woes  behind  thee, 

Live  like  birds  and  bees, 
Then  will  sweet  Joy  find  thee, 

Calming  life's  rough  seas. 

So,  when  woes  assail  thee, 

And  thy  sorrows  crowd, 
When  all  dear  friends  fail  thee, 

Low  thine  heart  be  bowed- 
Leave  thy  sorrows,  listen 

To  the  waters  loud, 
See  the  sunshine  glisten 

In  the  silver  cloud. 


EVERETT  EARL  STANARD. 


Indians  forming  for  the  parade  in  the  c  elebration,  Garden  of  the  Gods. 


Ute  Fiesta  in  Garden  of  the  Gods 


By  Howard  C.  Kegley 


AMONG  the  historic  fiestas    of 
the  West  to-day,     the     Shan 
Kive   annually   held    in    Colo- 
rado's  far-famed     Garden    of 
the  Gods  holds  well  deserved  promi- 
nence.    Shan  Kive  week  is    a    great 
event  for  the  white  settlers  of  Colo- 
rado, but  it  is  a  greater  epoch  in  the 
life  of  the  Ute  Indian,  for  during  the 
week  of  the  fiesta  he  is  taken  from  his 
reservation  at  Ignacio,  transported  to 
Colorado  Springs  and     permitted     to 
mingle  with  his  tawny  brothers  in  tri- 
bal dances  at  the  Sacred  Springs  of 
Manitou. 

Shan  Kive  is  an  Indian  term  which 
designates  the  carnival  time     of     all 


nation.  The  fiesta  originated  four 
years  ago,  and  in  four  successive 
jumps  it  has  leaped  well  to  the  fore- 
front among  the  great  and  popular 
jubilations  of  the  West.  It  is  the 
spontaneous  outburst  of  glorious, 
healthy  life  in  the  Pike's  Peak  region, 
and  the  one  event  of  the  year  in  which 
rich  and  poor,  aristocrat  and  plebeian 
mingle  on  a  common  level  and  with 
one  purpose  in  the  court  of  King  Car- 
nival. 

Each  year  the  Utes  and  whites  join 
in  celebrating  at  the  Shan  Kive  some 
event  which  had  to  do  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  State.  Two  years  ago  they 
united  in  dedicating  the  Ute  Trail, 
5 


Indians  dancing,  Garden  of  the  Gods.     "Buckskin  Charley"  on  the  left  of 
the  Indians  who  are  drumming. 


which  is  the  oldest  Indian  highway  in 
America.  The  celebration  brought  to 
Manitou  several  hundred  famous  pio- 
neers and  scouts,  who  spent  the  week 
as  guests  of  the  Shan  Kive  committee. 
Last  year  the  Indians  and  cowboys 
erected  a  tablet  in  Colorado  Springs' 
beautiful  Cascade  avenue  to  mark  the 
spot  where  the  last  great  massacre  of 
whites  by  Indians  took  place  on  Sep- 
tember 3,  1868.  The  fiesta  closed 
with  a  mixed  Marathon  race  up  Pike's 
Peak,  both  Indians  and  whites  partici- 
pating. Broncho  busting  and  all  of 
the  varied  kinds  of  Wild  West  per- 
formances common  to  the  Frontier 
Day's  celebration  at  Cheyenne,  and 
the  round-up  at  Pendleton  are  fea- 
tured at  the  Shan  Kive.  The  perform- 
ances are  "pulled  off"  in  the  Garden 
of  the  Gods,  and  when  the  weather 
is  favorable,  as  it  usually  is,  the  vast 
throng  of  spectators  turns  the  hillsides 
into  amphitheatre  seating  sections. 
During  the  frontier  performances,  the 
red  rocks  of  the  Garden  of  the  Gods 
are  usually  hidden  by  spectators,  for 


fifty  thousand  people  visit  the  Shan 
Kive  each  day  while  it  is  in  progress. 

The  rapidly  disappearing  Ute  In- 
dians fit  appropriately  into  the  Shan 
Kive  plans,  for  the  reason  that  they 
have  witnessed  every  epoch  in  the  his- 
tory of  Colorado.  The  Utes,  as  far 
back  as  history  dates,  held  the  region 
around  the  Garden  of  the  Gods — and 
held  it  sacred  because  of  its  health 
giving  soda  springs.  Game  abounded 
in  the  region,  and  the  white  settlers 
were  welcome  to  as  much  of  it  as  they 
cared  for,  because  the  Utes  were  very 
friendly  to  the  whites,  but  life  for  the 
Utes  was  one  never-ending  battle 
against  the  Arapahoes,  Cheyennes  or 
Plain  Indians,  who  constantly  sought 
to  drive  out  the  Ute  and  gain  posses- 
sion of  the  Sacred  Soda  Springs  and 
the  happy  hunting  grounds  of  the 
Pike's  Peak  country.  As  a  manifes- 
tation of  their  friendliness  toward  the 
whites,  one  hundred  Ute  braves  an- 
nually muster  at  the  Shan  Kive  and 
indulge  in  their  tribal  dances  of  peace. 

"Of    all   the   Indians   of   the   great 


Bronco  busting  contest  for  prizes.    The  bucking  horse  on  the  right  is  named 
"Peaceful  Harry."    No  one  has  ever  succeeded  in  riding  him. 


West,"  remarks  an  old  scout  who  has 
lived  among  them  long  enough  to 
know  their  habits  and  customs,  "none 
have  been  more  difficult  to  understand 
than  the  Utes.  Everything  they  do 
or  attempt  to  do  of  a  personal  nature 
is  kept  a  secret  among  themselves. 
They  would  not  permit  an  outsider  to 
learn  anything  about  their  personal 
characteristics  if  they  could  possibly 
help  it. 

"A  Ute  would  not  willingly  tell  his 
name  or  that  of  any  member  of  his 
family,  nor  would  he  mention  the 
price  placed  upon  one  of  his  daugh- 
ters when  she  was  to  become  the  wife 
of  one  of  the.  tribe.  Such  an  item  of 
importance  concerns  the  father  and 
husband  alone.  Everything  a  Ute  does 
seems  to  be  surrounded  with  mystery, 
and  for  that  reason  less  is  known  of  it 
than  of  any  other  Indian  tribe  in  the 
West  to-day.  Before  they  were 
placed  upon  the  reservation  at  Ignacio 
the  Utes  had  one  peculiarity  which 
was  unlike  any  other  nation  or  tribe, 
namely,  the  great  secrecy  they  ob- 


served in  conducting  their  funeral 
ceremonies.  No  white  person,  so  far 
as  I  am  able  to  learn,  ever  witnessed 
the  funeral  of  a  Ute.  Whenever  one 
of  them  died  the  corpse  mysteriously 
vanished. 

"Whether  even  they  themselves 
generally  knew  the  resting  place  of 
their  dead  is  a  question  that  would  be 
difficult  to  decide.  It  is  believed  that 
the  bodies  of  their  dead  use  to  be  re- 
moved during  the  night  and  buried  in 
caves;  though  this  is  merely  a  sur- 
mise. It  is  the  opinion  of  many  that 
the  Utes  used  to  bury  their  dead  rela- 
tives in  deep  holes  in  the  ground,  af- 
ter nightfall,  carefully  covering  '  the 
graves  so  as  to  leave  no  trace  of  the 
burial  places.  The  men  wore  their 
hair  long,  and  sometimes  braided  it  in- 
to queues,  while  the  squaws  cut  theirs 
short.  The  Utes  never  did  paint  their 
features  like  other  Indians  have  done. 
The  men  wore  breechcloths  and  moc- 
casins, and  threw  buffalo  robes  around 
their  bodies  to  protect  them  from  the 
chilling  winds  of  winter." 


The  Song  of  the  Ticket-of-Leavester 

By  Lewis  R.  Freeman 

AUTHOR'S  NOTE. — James  Forbes-Brown  was  once  a  member  of  a  wealthy 
and  prominent  Australian  family,  and  later,  in  turn,  ticket-of-leave  man, 
beachcomber,  slave-trader,  pirate,  cut-throat  and  fugitive  from  justice.  On 
March  18,  1901,  as  a  climax  to  one  of  the  most  remarkable  careers  of  adven- 
ture in  the  history  of  the  South  Pacific,  he  dynamited,  at  its  anchorage  in 
Apia  harbor,  the  yacht  of  a  wealthy  young  German  with  whom  he  had  quar- 
reled over  the  possession  of  a  Caroline  girl  of  great  beauty.  Forbes-Brown 
escaped  in  a  dugout  canoe  to  the  neighboring  island  of  Savaii,  but  in  elud- 
ing a  hot  pursuit,  fell  from  the  rim  of  an  extinct  crater  and  injured  himself 
so  severely  that  further  flight  was  impossible.  As  the  Samoans  and  Germans 
closed  in  upon  him,  he  coolly  opened  an  artery  in  his  wrist  with  a  pen-knife, 
and  died  in  the  midst  of  a  mocking  recitation  of  his  countless  escapades. 
Saving  only  that  of  the  notorious  pirate  and  "black-birder,"  Bully  Hayes, 
the  career  of  Forbes-Brown  is  the  most  remarkable  in  the  picturesque  annals 
of  South  Sea  outlawry. 


I  came  from  the  South  with  a  Ticket-of-Leave, 

A  Ticket,  a  Ticket-of-Leave; 
An'  I  left  a  few  of  'em  there  to  grieve, 

A  few  of  'em  there  to  grieve. 
The  pater,  whose  bank  went  up  in  smoke, 
An'  the  Brisbane  girl  whose  heart  I  broke, 
Are  some  of  the  simple  southern  folk 

That  I  left  with  a  sigh  to  heave. 

I  staked  my  wad  on  the  Melbourne  Sweep, 

The  opulent  Melbourne  Sweep. 
The  bally  favorite  went  to  sleep, 

The  favorite  went  to  sleep. 
The  frisky  wife  of  a  Sydney  bloke, 
An'  the  Pitt  street  girl  I  had  to  choke 
Before  she'd  give  me  her  ring  to  soak, 

Are  some  that  I  left  to  weep. 

They  shipped  me  off  in  a  Blackbird  brig, 

In  the  hold  of  a  Blackbird  brig. 
Bunked  with  niggers  an'  fed  like  a  pig, 

With  niggers  an'  fed  like  a  pig. 
The  Obi  girl  with  the  fuzzy  head, 
The  bo'sun  I  punched  until  he  bled, 
The  mate  that  I  knifed  because  he  said 

That  I  had  the  air  of  a  prig. 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER 


61 


Will  not  forget  that  voyage  for  aye, 

They  will  not  forget  for  aye. 
It  came  to  an  end  in  Suku  Bay, 

In  the  beautiful  Suku  Bay. 
The  anchor  watch  who  I  had  to  hush 
When  he  blocked  the  way  of  my  forward  rush, 
The  black  whose  head  I  had  to  crush 

When  he  blundered  across  my  way ; 

Will  hardly  recall  the  fight  that  I  made, 

The  exquisite  fight  I  made — 
How  I  dropped  the  mate  with  a  paddle  blade, 

The  edge  of  a  paddle  blade; 
How  the  skipper  tripped  on  a  water-pail 
An'  emptied  his  gun  in  half-furled  sail, 
While  I  jumped  over  the  starboard  rail, 

An'  swam  for  a  mangrove  glade. 


I  dodged  a  'gator  and  ducked  a  shark — 

The  rush  of  a  gray-green  shark — 
While  they  used  my  head  for  a  rifle  mark, 

My  head  for  a  rifle  mark. 
The  bullets  fell  in  a  shower  of  lead, 
But  they  splashed  the  'gator  and  shark  instead 
Of  me,  who  dove  to  the  coral  bed, 
An'  made  the  swamp  in  the  dark. 

They  landed  a  boat  at  break  of  day, 

At  the  break  of  a  tropic  day. 
I  soaked  in  the  swamp  till  they  went  away, 

Till  they  cursed  and  went  away. 
Then  I  swam  the  strait  at  the  turning  tide. 
(The  sharks  and  'gators  were  nought  beside 
The  leeches  boring  my  precious  hide 

As  hid  in  the  mud  I  lay.) 

I  made  the  Mission  of  Father  Pete, 

The  genial  Father  Pete; 
With  a  shipwreck  tale  that  was  hard  to  beat, 

A  tale  that  was  hard  to  beat. 
Twas  in  the  days  before  Pete  went  wrong, 
But  he  winked  an  eye  at  my  dance  an'  song, 
An'  bade  me  stay  till  a  ship  came  'long, 

An'  eat  of  his  bread  an'  meat. 


62  OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


c^\ 

r* 

The  world  never  knows  the  good  that  is  hid, 

=*"U"^0 

The  good  that  is  ofttimes  hid; 

An'  I'll  never  forget  the  work  that  I  did, 

The  excellent  work  I  did  — 

I  taught  the  school  of  Pete's  frowsy  flocks, 

An'  hammered  lore  in  their  blowsy  blocks  — 

Till  I  sneaked  the  key  of  his  treasure  box, 

An'  sloped  with  a  half-caste  kid. 

V 

I  lost  the  pearls  on  Makata  Reef, 

When  we  struck  on  Makata  Reef  — 

The  girl  was  nabbed  by  a  Fiji  chief, 

A  cannibal  Fiji  chief; 

Then  over  the  seas  for  a  thousand  miles, 

From  Suva  up  to  the  Bismarck  Isles, 

Where  the  houses  are  built  in  the  sea  on  piles, 

I  left  a  wake  of  grief. 

A 

1 

I  shot  the  chief  of  a  pirate  band, 

Of  a  Papuan  pirate  band; 

i 

An'  took  his  proa,  all  under-manned, 

His  proa  but  half-way  manned; 

\ 

An'  headed  off  to  the  Gilbert  Group, 

V 

Got  next  to  the  King  and  made  a  coup 

Of  a  girl  he  fattened  an'  fed  for  soup 

Because  she'd  refused  his  hand. 

Twas  a  Caroline  girl  with  heart  of  flame, 

A  heart  an'  a  glance  of  flame  ; 

Fair  as  the  islands  from  whence  she  came, 

The  Carolines  whence  she  came  — 

1 

Eyes  of  a  seraphim  when  she  smiled, 

Soul  of  a  devil,  face  of  a  child, 

7 

Movements  lithe  as  a  tiger  wild, 

j 

An'  as  fierce  an'  hard  to  tame. 

Beautiful,  passionate,  strong  of  will, 

V 

A  woman  a  man  must  win  or  kill  — 

I  loved  her  then,  as  I  love  her  still, 

Though  she  went  and  blowed  my  game. 

P 

lii 

THE  SONG  OF  THE  TICKET-OF-LEAVESTER  63 


We  started  south  in  the  King's  canoe, 

In  the  King's  great  war  canoe, 
With  fifty  paddlers  to  drive  it  through, 

Full  fifty  to  drive  it  through. 
I  laid  a  course  for  Apia  Bay, 
Where  the  jade  took  up  with  a  German  jay 
With  a  private  yacht  an'  a  taking  way, 

An'  never  a  thing  to  do. 

I  scuttled  his  schooner  with  dynamite, 

A  barrel  of  dynamite, 
A  blown-up  yacht  is  a  cheerful  sight, 

A  cheerful,  fearful  sight. 
A  keg  of  giant  makes  a  goodly  gash, 
But  the  girl  and  her  lover  escaped  the  crash 
I  felt  the  cut  of  her  curses  lash 

As  I  paddled  into  the  night. 

I  paddled  hard  till  the  sun  was  high, 

Till  the  sun  was  hot  an'  high ; 
An'  crossed  the  channel  to  green  Savaii, 

To  the  beach  of  green  Savaii. 
They  put  a  gunboat  upon  my  track, 
The  natives  came  in  a  swarming  pack 
An'  found  my  trail  where  I  doubled  back, 

For  'twas  sworn  that  I  should  die. 

I  shook  them  off  in  a  bank  of  fog, 

A  sweltering  bank  of  fog ; 
I  fought  my  way  through  a  mangrove  bog, 

A  bottomless  mangrove  bog ; 
I  slashed  a  path  through  the  jungle  dim, 
An'  had  all  but  scaled  the  crater  rim, 
When  I  lost  my  grip  on  a  maupe  limb 

An'  fell  like  a  hard  stuck  hog. 

I've  drained  it  deep,  Life's  full-filled  glass, 

To  its  last,  least  bitter  dreg ; 
I'm  lying  here  with  a  fractured  arm, 

Strained  back  an'  a  broken  leg. 
I'm  drunken,  dissolute,  damned  an'  broke, 
My  girl  has  gone  to  another  bloke, 
So  I  cut  this  vein  with  a  penknife  stroke, 

An'  drink — my — final — peg. 


Stevenson's    Tahitian    4t  Brother* 


By  Paul    Gooding 


Ori  a  On. 


Stevenson's 
brother. 


'Tahitian" 


NO  ADMIRER  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  is  likely  to  feel  that 
a  journey  to  Tahiti  is  complete 
without  a  visit  to  that  spot  on 
Tautira's  bruised  arm  where  the  Terii- 
tera  of  Chief  Ori  a  Ori  lived  for  a 
short  time  before  his  second  and  final 
voyage  to   Samoa,  his     last     earthly 
home.    On  my  first  trip  to  the  Society 
Islands  I  took  particular  pains  to  find 


it.  It  may  be  well  to  say  here  that  if 
the  visitor  does  not  employ  the  novel- 
ist's Tahitian  name  in  his  inquiries,  he 
probably  will  not  be  able  to  locate  the 
place,  unless  accompanied  by  some  one 
who  knows,  for  no  memorial  marks  its 
turfed  green. 

The  disappointment  I  felt  over  the 
absence  of  stone  and  board  to  indi- 
cate the  site  has  led  me  to  believe  that 
if  readers  of  "R.  L.  S."  were  to  raise 
a  simple  monument  to  him  there  it 
would  provide  a  deal  of  satisfaction  to 
Tahiti's  tourists,  who,  within  the  next 
decade,  will  number  thousands.  For 
this  alluring  island  is  now  on  a  world 
trade  route  and  believes  itself  to  be 
the  new  gateway  between  Europe  and 
Eastern  United  States  and  Australasia 
via  the  Panama  Canal. 

It  was  with  Ori,  to  whom  he  dedi- 
cated the  stirring  "Song  of  Rahero," 
that  Stevenson  lodged  for  the  greater 
part  of  his  stay  in  the  island  where, 
with  his  mother,  his  wife,  and  his  step- 
son, Lloyd  Osbourne,  he  arrived  in 
1888,  in  the  yacht  Casco.  The  chief, 
who,  Graham  Balfour  says,  was  "a 
perpetual  delight"  to  the  entire  party, 
had  a  deep  affection  for  his  guest;  and 
the  esteem  in  which  Stevenson  held 
his  host  is  reflected  in  the  dedication 
of  the  song  as  follows : 

"Ori,  my  brother*  in  the  island  mode, 
In  every  tongue  and  meaning  much  my 

friend, 
This  story  of  your  country  and  your 

clan, 

(*Stevenson  was  adopted  into  Ori's 
tribe,  the  Tevas,  and  the  two  ex- 
changed names.  The  chief  called  him- 
self "Rui,"  there  being  no  "L"  in  the 
Tahitian  alphabet.) 


The  Falls  of  Tautaua,  Tahiti 


56 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


(*Stevenson  was  adopted  into  Ori's 
tribe,  the  Tevas,  and  the  two  ex- 
changed names.  The  chief  called  him- 
self "Rui,"  there  being  no  "L"  in  the 
Tahitian  alphabet.) 

When  the  novelist  first  saw  this  ver- 
dant shore,  it  was  the  fairest  of  all  Ta- 
titi's  headlands,  "the  most  beautiful 
spot"  he  had  ever  seen.  I  found  it  a 
patched  ruin.  Years  before  a  hurri- 
cane had  demolished  its  simple  homes, 
ravaged  its  prolific  groves  and  strewn 
it  with  wreckage.  Where  palms,  man- 
goes and  breadfruit  trees  had  dark- 
ened gently  sloping  beach  and  merry 
promenade,  only  stumps  and  stubs  of 
trunks  and  isolated  waving  fronds  re- 
mained. The  single  road  was  over- 
grown with  grass;  it  bore  no  impress 
of  carriage  wheels,  and  no  more  was 
it  trodden  by  festive  youth  foregath- 
ered there  to  chide  and  court.  The 
dwellings,  which,  I  was  told,  had  been 
surrounded  by  pretty  yards,  were  now 
chiefly  makeshifts  of  bamboo,  wood, 
thatch  and  galvanized  iron.  Back  of 
these,  and  to  some  extent  in  their 
midst,  was  a  wilderness  of  grasses, 
pandanus,  vanilla,  bananas  and  palms, 
in  the  case  the  products  of  a  low, 
moist  soil. 

Through  this  coursed  the  Vaitapiha 
River,  draining  a  valley  of  the  same 
name  framed  by  precipitous  moun- 
tains, some  of  singular  form.  Through- 
out this  vale,  oranges,  lemons,  giant 
passion  fruit  and  feis  (plantains)  were 
plentiful,  and  ape  plants,  exposing 
thick  roots  from  three  to  four  feet 
long,  were  abundant.  On  the  lowlands 
and  on  mountain  top  spread  an  un- 
broken canopy  of  trees,  and  at  a 
height  of  two  thousand  feet  the  great- 
est of  the  grass  family,  the  bamboo, 
grew  in  isolated  patches ;  while  equally 
as  high  waved  the  plantain. 

In  Tautira  my  host  was  Oriioehau 
Toofa,  according  to  my  guide's  spell- 
ing. I  reached  his  home  when  he  and 
his  family  were  eating  a  four  o'clock 
dinner  on  the  platform  of  a  dilapi- 
dated kitchen.  Within  an  inclosure  in 
front,  three  pigs  were  fighting  for  the 
scraps  thrown  to  them,  and  hungry,  ill- 


bred  poultry  were  bothering  the  din- 
ers. My  guide  was  a  friend  of  Mrs. 
Toofa's,  and  from  her  he  received  a 
vigorous  kiss.  As  for  myself,  I  was 
surprised  by  a  greeting  in  English 
from  Mary  Evans,  Toofa's  mother, 
spare,  wrinkled  and  old,  who  was  the 
daughter  of  a  white  man  and  a  native 
woman.  I  ungallantly  asked  her  how 
old  she  was,  whereupon  she  hesitated, 
then  said :  "I  think  I  am  fifty-six."  De- 
spite her  years,  this  tottering,  forget- 
ful creature  did  nearly  all  the  house- 
work, though  truly  that  did  not  ap- 
pear to  be  very  burdensome.  During 
my  stay  she  was  very  solicitous  of  my 
comfort,  and  greatly  amused  me  by 
advising  me  several  times  daily  to  go 
to  bed  and  rest. 

At  six  o'clock,  on  a  table  set  with 
dishes  from  the  family  chest,  Mary 
placed  fried  chicken  and  fish  for  my 
guide  and  me.  These  were  followed 
by  raw  fish,  but  since  I  was  unable 
to  appreciate  it  in  the  Polynesian  way, 
I  left  it  all  to  my  pilot,  who  dipped  it 
into  a  sauce  of  cocoanut  milk  and  sea- 
water,  and  ate  it  with  keen  relish. 

In  my  search  for  Stevenson's  for- 
mer home,  I  was  aided  by  Mary,  who 
accompanied  me  to  Ori's  house  as  my 
interpreter.  As  we  left  on  our  mis- 
sion rain  was  falling,  and  I  raised  my 
umbrella  over  the  old  lady.  At  that 
instant  I  was  startled  by  a  hilarious 
commotion  in  our  rear.  Turning,  I 
saw  that  Mrs.  Toofa  and  a  girl  who 
worked  on  her  husband's  plantation 
were  laughing  at  us ;  and  this  they  con- 
tinued to  do  until  we  were  out  of 
hearing,  probably  because  my  intend- 
ed courtesy  was  so  unusual  and  unex- 
pected. 

The  chief's  residence  was  a  wooden 
villa  standing  between  the  public  road 
and  the  sea,  and  was  the  best  dwelling 
in  the  village.  It  had  a  front  door, 
but  Mary  took  me  round  to  the  back, 
just  as  a  native  policeman  had  done 
in  Papeete  when  I  had  sought  the 
home  of  Marau  Salmon,  last  queen  of 
the  Tahitians.  There  we  found  Ori, 
sitting  in  a  chair  on  the  veranda,  with 
his  feet  on  the  railing,  and  smoking  a 
native  cigarette.  On  the  floor  near 


Along  the  beach. 


68 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


him  were  his  wife  and  three  other  wo- 
men, who  were  soon  joined  by  two 
men.  As  I  reached  the  steps  the  chief 
quickly  rose  to  greet  me. 

"Haere  mail"  said  he,  extending  a 
welcoming  hand  and  motioning  me  to 
a  rocker. 

"lorana!"  I  rejoined,  as  I  surveyed 
the  six  feet  and  more  of  dignity  "be- 
fore me.  The  powerfully  built  frame 
of  the  chief  was  clad  in  a  duck  suit, 
completely  buttoned,  and  a  black  kilt; 
the  feet  were  unshod.  The  countenance 
was  thoughtful,  firm  and  wrinkled,  and 
the  expression  honest.  The  high, 
sloping  forehead  met  closely  cropped 
gray  hair,  and  a  spare,  whitening  mus- 
tache adorned  the  lip. 

After  his  greeting,  Ori  sat  down  and 
looked  expectantly  at  his  visitor.  Evi- 
dently he  felt  the  weight  of  his  three 
score  years  and  fifteen,  and  when  I 
saw  him  a  few  days  later  in  the  capi- 
tal, old  age  was  still  further  empha- 
sized by  lagging  feet  and  trembling 
hands. 

"Ask  Ori  if  he  remembers  Terii- 
tera,"  I  commanded  Mary. 

"Yes,"  he  replied  with  brightening 
eyes.  "Teriitera  good  man.  All  the 
people  like  him,  and  come  often  to  see 
him." 

"What  did  he  do  in  Tautira?"  I 
inquired. 

"He  did  much  writing,"  the  chief  re- 
plied. "For  long  time  he  sick  in  bed, 
and  there  he  did  much  work.  Then  he 
got  up  and  went  about  among  the  peo- 
ple." 

Indeed,  Stevenson  had  such  a  good 
time  here,  among  people  whom  he  once 
declared  to  be  the  most  amiable  he 
had  ever  met,  that  he  neglected  his 
journal,  to  the  world's  loss.  But  what 
was  more  natural  for  a  convalescent 
who  went  sea  bathing  daily,  visited 
his  neighbors  frequently,  and  was  of- 
ten entertained  with  native  songs, 
dances  and  traditions  ? 

Continuing  his  remarks  in  a  sad- 
dened note,  "Rui"  said:  "One  day 
Teriitera  go  away  over  the  great  sea. 
I  was  sorry  to  see  him  go,  and  he  said 
he  was  sorry  to  leave  me.  He  wrote 
me  a  letter,  but  it  was  lost  in  the  big 


storm.  This  destroyed  my  house, 
where  Teriitera  lived.  It  was  near  the 
Catholic  Church,  but  you  cannot  find 
anything;  the  sea  swept  it  all  away." 

At  my  request,  Ori  commissioned  a 
young  man  to  show  me  the  site.  There 
was  little  to  see  at  the  place  pointed 
but  to  me.  Where  the  house  had  been 
there  were  only  two  pieces  of  timber, 
fend  on  every  side  were  relics  of  devas- 
tation. Eastward  rose  the  white  stubs 
of  trees ;  south  and  west  stood  patched 
dwellings  built  of  wreckage;  in  front 
only  a  few  palms  breasted  the  north- 
ern winds. 

On  my  return  to  the  chief's  house  I 
besought  him  to  give  me  a  photograph 
of  himself.  This  he  did  not  have,  but 
he  agreed  to  sit  for  me  in  Papeete, 
fifty  miles  distant,  on  a  certain  day. 

Mary's  efforts  as  an  interpreter  had 
fatigued  her.  As  we  started  back  to 
Toofa's,  she  said  to  me  as  we  headed 
for  a  Chinese  store:  "Come.  You  get 
bread  and  tea  for  you  and  me." 

Ori  was  on  hand  in  Papeete  at  the 
appointed  hour.  He  was  dressed  for 
the  occasion,  too.  Although  he  was 
barefooted,  he  made  a  presentable  ap- 
pearance, with  clean  overalls,  white 
coat,  straw  hat  and  a  cane.  With  one 
of  his  friends  or  kinsmen  accompany- 
ing, he  walked  with  me  very  slowly  to 
the  studio.  There  he  was  plainly  un- 
easy, but  his  embarrassment  was 
partly  relieved  by  his  amusement  at 
the  photographer's  efforts  to  get  a  sat- 
isfactory pose.  At  the  ordeal's  con- 
clusion, he  asked  if  he  might  have  a 
copy  of  his  likeness,  and  I  promised 
him  that  he  should. 

Upon  reaching  the  street  again,  I 
invited  Ori  and  his  companion  to  have 
coffee  and  rolls  with  me  at  a  restau- 
rant. The  only  one  open  at  that  hour 
was  conducted  by  Chinese,  and  we 
got  there  about  the  time  employer  and 
employees  were  accustomed  to  break- 
fast, to  my  subsequent  confusion.  We 
were  not  more  than  half  finished  when 
we  were  asked  to  shift  to  another 
table,  for  ours  happened  to  be  a  round 
one,  at  which  our  disturbers  wanted  to 
sit  because  all  their  dishes  would  be 
within  reach  of  every  chopstick.  I 


"SHELLS  OF  MEN." 


69 


thought  we  would  not  be  troubled 
again,  but  there  was  an  overflow,  and 
we  had  to  move  once  more. 

As  we  progressed  with  our  meal,  Ori 
spied  one  of  his  acquaintances  in  the 
street.  Immediately  he  shouted  to 
him  to  join  us,  which  he  did.  Such  is 
the  simple  hospitality  of  the  South 
Seas.  The  old  gentleman  seemed 
thoroughly  to  enjoy  himself.  Clearly 
he  was  hungry,  but  not  more  so  than 
one  of  his  friends,  who,  finishing  his 
own  roll  before  I  had  ordered  another, 
calmly  appropriated  part  of  Ori's.  The 


latter  had  a  penchant  for  sugar.  He 
used  an  astonishing  quantity  in  one 
cup,  and  seeing  that  I  did  not  want  all 
mine,  he  reached  across  the  table  and 
took  what  I  had  left.  True,  he  first 
asked  for  it,  but  had  it  belonged  to 
either  of  his  countrymen,  he  probably 
would  have  dispensed  with  ceremony, 
and  without  giving  offense. 

When  we  were  ending  our  meal 
some  one  called  for  Ori.  Thereupon 
he  rose,  and  grasping  my  hand  as  he 
said  farewell,  he  shuffled  into  the 
street,  and  I  saw  him  no  more. 


"SMELLS    OF    A  EN  " 


Life. and  laughter  have  been  swept 

From  this  face; 
Ants  and  nameless  creeping  things 

Take  their  place. 

Jests  and  kisses  from  these  lips 

Now  have  fled — 
What  a  strange,  sad  thing  this  is, 

Being  dead! 

See  this  little  bloody  curl 

On  his  cheek — 
Would  he  say  a  bitter  thing 

Could  he  speak? 

Would  he  curse  the  men  who  took 

From  him  light, 
Color,  music,  merriment, 

Tore  the  white 

Arms  of  women  from  his  neck ; 

Sent  him  far 
So  to  lie  upon  a  hill 

'Neath  a  star? 


MARY  CAROLYN  DAVIES. 


Santa    Barbara    by   the    Sea 


By  Josephine  Blackwell 


Illustrations  by  the  Author 


"The  mighty  mountains  o'er  it, 
Below,  the  white  seas  swirled — 

Just  California,  stretching  down 
The  middle  of  the  world." 

HAD  the  tower  of  Saint  Barbara 
been  located  on  the  foothills  of 
the  Santa  Ynez  Mountains  she 
would  have  asked  for  more 
than  a  third  window  to  view  the 
beauty  of  her  surroundings — the  chan- 
nel calmly  slumbering  under  a  cloud- 
less sky,  the  islands  of  Santa  Cruz, 
San  Miguel  and  Santa  Rosa  at  peace 
in  the  misty  distance,  the  city  itself 
resting  between  the  ever-lasting  hills. 
The  very  name  of  Santa  Barbara  con- 
veys to  all  who  have  been  there  an 
unmeasured  sense  of  rest  and  peace  to 
be  found  in  few  other  places.  Over 
one  of  the  spacious  fireplaces  of  the 
handsome  new  Arlington  Hotel  is  a 
painting  showing  the  towers  of  the  old 
Mission,  while  in  a  path  at  the  side 
wanders  Santa  Barbara  herself,  much 
as  Palma  Vecchio  painted  her  for  that 
Venetian  altar  on  the  other  side  of 
the  world. 

In  1603,  long  before  the  founding  of 
the  Mission,  Sebastian  Vizcaino  sailed 
into  the  channel  with  his  exploring 
fleet  of  Spanish  vessels,  and  gave  to 
the  broad  passage  between  the  islands 
and  the  mainland  the  name  of  El 
Canal  de  Santa  Barbara,  thus  follow- 
ing the  custom  of  the  time  by  naming 
the  place  from  the  saint  claiming  the 
day  of  his  discovery,  the  4th  of  De- 
cember being  sacred  to  that  saint's 
memory.  Vizcaino  then  had  a  call 
from  an  Indian  who  urged  the  visitors 
to  land,  and  noting  the  absence  of  wo- 
men in  the  party,  offered  ten  for  each 


man,  but  history  does  not  relate  whe- 
ther the  gift  was  accepted.  Nearly 
two  hundred  years  later  the  famous 
old  Mission  was  dedicated  to  Santa 
Barbara,  Virgin  and  Martyr,  the  pa- 
troness of  fortifications  and  the  Span- 
ish army.  It  is  this  Mission  that 
forms  one  of  the  chief  attractions  of 
the  little  city,  for  it  is  not  only  the 
best  preserved  of  all  the  twenty-one 
missions,  but  it  is  the  only  one  in 
which,  since  the  founding,  daily  min- 
istrations have  not  ceased  nor  the  fire 
gone  out  on  the  altar,  its  commanding 
location  along  the  line  of  the  Camino 
Real  making  it  a  beacon  for  many 
sailors  in  the  days  when  lighthouses 
were  unknown  on  the  coast.  In  1812 
a  series  of  earthquakes,  the  severest 
ever  known  in  this  valley,  completely 
destroyed  the  old  adobe  church,  and 
it  was  then  considered  best  to  construct 
the  new  building  of  sandstone,  the 
walls  of  which  are  nearly  six  feet  in 
thickness,  and  are  further  guarded 
against  future  similar  disasters  by 
heavy  stone  buttresses,  thus  making  it 
the  strongest  mission  church  building 
in  California.  A  statue  of  Santa  Bar- 
bara, cut  from  native  sandstone,  was 
placed  in  a  niche  of  the  facade,  while 
at  each  angle  and  at  the  apex  are 
statues  representing  Faith,  Hope  and 
Charity,  the  whole  being  a  pleasing 
composite  of  Roman,  Byzantine,  Span- 
ish and  Moorish  architecture.  In  the 
towers  still  hang  the  ancient  bells 
brought  from  Spain,  and  from  these 
towers  one  gains  a  marvelously  beau- 
tiful view  of  the  city  set  in  an  amphi- 
theatre of  hills,  with  the  sparkling  sea 
at  its  feet,  while  from  the  other  side 
can  be  seen  the  sacred  garden  which 


SANTA  BARBARA  BY  THE  SEA 


71 


no  woman  has  ever  been  allowed  to 
enter,  excepting  only  the  wife  of  Presi- 
dent Harrison  and  the  Princess  Louise 
of  Lome.  Less  than  a  year  after  the 
dedication  of  the  new  building  a  most 
brutal  massacre  occurred  near  the  Mis- 
sion by  the  Mexicans,  and  to-day  the 
spirit  of  an  Indian  with  shaded  eyes 
peering  intently  and  fearfully  into  the 
distance,  or  listening  with  ear  to  the 
ground  for  the  oncoming  foe,  seems  to 
haunt  the  paths  and  the  corridors 
where  once  they  lived  several  hundred 
strong,  learning  the  arts  of  industry 
hand  in  hand  with  their  new  religion. 
One  asks  indeed:  "What  has  become 
of  the  Indians  for  whose  civilization 
and  conversion  the  Mission  was 
founded?"  But  they  are  sleeping, 
four  thousand  of  them,  in  the  ancient 
cemetery  where  long  trenches  were 
dug,  and  they  were  laid  away  four  and 
five  deep.  In  the  vault  are  buried  the 
deceased  members  of  the  brotherhood, 
but  it  is  many  years  since  it  was  used 
as  a  public  cemetery.  The  Mission  is 
filled  with  historic  associations  of  the 
days  of  the  Spanish  and  Mexican  oc- 
cupation. The  chapel  itself  is  most 
interesting,  with  its  carved  Indian  or- 
naments, its  frescoes  and  paintings, 
some  copies  of  the  old  masters,  and 
other  originals  from  Mexico  and 
Spain.  The  beautiful  altar  now  in  use 
has  recently  been  built  entirely  by 
one  of  the  brothers,  and  it  was  used 
for  the  first  time  at  their  last  Christ- 
mas service.  On  removing  the  wain- 
scoting which  had  decayed,  original 
frescoing  was  discovered  and  re- 
touched, thus  restoring  to  the  chapel 
something  of  the  native  air  of  Indian 
art  The  unusual  preservation  of  this 
Mission  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
Franciscan  superior  had  sent  to  Santa 
Barbara  some  priests  who  were  natives 
of  Mexico,  and  not  Spanish,  in  this 
way  keeping  it  in  the  hands  of  the 
Franciscans,  while  other  missions  were 
being  sacked,  their  books  and  records 
burned,  and  valuable  manuscripts  used 
as  gun  wadding.  After  Colonel  Fre- 
mont came  over  the  mountains,  and 
the  town  peacefully  passed  into  the 
hands  of  the  Americans,  the  Mission 


knew  none  of  the  annoyances  due  to 
Mexican  rule,  though  only  a  small  pro- 
portion of  its  once  great  possessions 
now  remains.  Having  established  a 
classical  school  in  1896  for  the  edu- 
cation of  young  men  for  priesthood, 
the  cornerstone  of  St.  Anthony's  Col- 
lege was  laid  three  years  later  on  St. 
Anthony's  day,  the  fathers,  clerics  and 
lay  brothers  living  in  the  building  ad- 
joining the  church. 

•  But  of  fair  Santa  Barbara  itself, 
where  find  the  words  to  picture  it  in 
all  its  lovely  simplicity?  Not  the 
slowly  moving  thoroughfare  of  shops, 
where  one  wanders  at  times  because 
one  must,  but  the  hills,  the  mountains; 
it  is  when  these  heights  are  reached 
and  "the  mists  have  rolled  in  splendor 
from  the  beauty  of  the  hills,"  and  the 
soft-lapping  sea  murmurs  of  cease- 
less summer  delights,  when  unex- 
pected vistas  appear  around  the  sud- 
den turn  of  the  road  and  a  new  glory 
is  revealed,  that  one  feels  the  meagre- 
ness  of  mere  language  to  express  a 
nameless  charm  that  fills  the  air  and 
haunts  the  memory  even  long  after  it 
must  be  numbered  among  our  past  de- 
lights. 

It  has  often  been  called  the  world's 
climatic  capital,  Santa  Barbara,  "just 
around  the  corner  out  of  the  cold,"  for 
running  almost  east  and  west  as  it  does 
the  sun  from  rising  to  setting  shines 
directly  into  the  valley,  and  we  find 
ourselves  traveling  across  the  conti- 
nent to  the  western  sea  to  behold  the 
sun  rise  from  the  ocean!  The  chain 
of  rocky  islands  act  as  breakwaters, 
and  protect  this  sun-kissed  shore  of 
Santa  Barbara  from  the  northwest 
trade  winds  that  blow  with  great  force 
along  Point  Concepcion.  On  this 
twenty-five  mile  wide  channel,  Uncle 
Sam  tests  his  Pacific-built  warships 
for  speed  in  their  trial  run,  and  rising 
high  above  the  coast  are  the  cliffs  that 
make  the  shore  so  picturesque.  On 
the  north  rises  the  rugged  range  of 
the  Santa  Ynez,  with  an  average  height 
of  more  than  3,000  feet  above  the  sea, 
and  at  the  base  stands  the  Mission 
where  the  Franciscan  Fathers  built 
wisely  and  well,  overlooking  this  won- 


72 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


derful   creation  of  mountain,     valley 
and  sea. 

When  the  Spanish  rule  met  its 
Waterloo  in  Mexico,  and  California 
became  a  province  of  the  Mexican  em- 
pire, the  oath  of  allegiance  was  taken 
in  Santa  Barbara.  This  was  in  1812, 
and  Governor  Sola  was  elected  as  dep- 
uty to  the  court  at  Mexico.  But  in  all 
this  golden  State  there  was  then  no 
name  better  known  than  that  of  Don 
Jose  de  la  Guerra,  the  plucky  com- 
mandante,  in  whose  home  visiting 
magnates  were  usually  entertained, 
though  the  Carrillos  and  the  Ortegas 
were  also  among  the  principal  families 


stopped  in  1846.  This  was  the  first 
hotel  built  here,  and  was  much  the 
most  interesting  building  along  the 
whole  length  of  State  street;  yet  no 
photographer  had  considered  it  worth 
taking,  even  though  its  days  were  num- 
bered. The  accompanying  illustra- 
tion was  taken  by  the  writer,  who  saw 
with  much  regret  on  leaving  after  a 
five  weeks'  visit,  that  the  work  of  de- 
vastation had  already  commenced  to 
make  way  for  more  modern  buildings. 
The  fate  of  Fremont's  headquarters 
was  quite  as  deplorable,  for  that  being 
also  of  adobe,  fell  to  pieces  during  an 
attempt  to  move  it.  Nearly  all  of  the 


Old  San  Carlos  Hotel,  where  Colonel  Fremont  stopped  in  1846. 


in  whose  honor  the  streets  of  Santa 
Barbara  are  to-day  named.  Indeed, 
one  needs  a  Spanish  lexicon  to  find 
one's  way  intelligently,  but  there  is  no 
better  method  to  trace  the  footprints 
of  the  pioneers  of  those  early  times. 
Far  too  few  of  the  interesting  adobes 
are  left,  and  absolutely  no  interest  is 
apparently  felt  in  those  that  remain. 
The  writer  will  always  consider  her- 
self fortunate  in  having  visited  Santa 
Barbara  in  time  to  see  the  old  San 
Carlos  Hotel  where  Col.  Fremont 


other  adobe  houses  have  been  des- 
poiled of  their  roof  tiles  by  wealthy 
builders  who  paid  large  sums  for  the 
old  tiles  to  adorn  their  modern  homes, 
replacing  them  with  ordinary  shingles. 
These  adobe  houses  were  generally 
built  in  the  shape  of  a  parallelogram, 
the  more  pretentious  ones  being  after 
the  Spanish  style,  and  if  the  walls 
were  not  all  of  adobe,  they  were  some- 
times made  of  a  framework  of  timber 
filled  in  with  adobe.  In  the  patio  or 
court  of  the  finest  houses  could  be 


SANTA  BARBARA  BY  THE  SEA 


73 


found  plants  and  sometimes  a  foun- 
tain; if  the  owners  were  sufficiently 
wealthy,  there  was  glass  in  the  win- 
dows, but  as  a  rule  only  gratings  were 
used,  while  fireplaces  were  still  a 
dream  of  the  future.  .  The  court  gen- 
erally opened  toward  the  east,  and  the 
kitchen  was  a  separate  shed  or  hut. 
The  poorer  homes  boasted  of  very  lit- 
tle furniture — beds  of  rawhides  spread 
on  the  ground,  a  table  and  stools  or 
benches,  a  handmill  for  grinding  corn, 
which  was  an  indispensable  article, 
and  a  few  pieces  of  pottery  for  cook- 
ing. However,  a  dozen  years  later,  af- 
ter the  earthquakes  that  played  such 
serious  havoc,  we  find  the  richer  fami- 
lies living  in  homes  handsomely  fur- 
nished, with  tables  and  chairs  inlaid 
with  shell  brought  from  Peru  and 
China.  The  wearing  apparel,  too, 
Was  costly,  not  only  that  of  the  women 
but  the  men  as  well,  the  gentleman 
aristocrat  wearing  a  dark  cloak  of 
broadcloth  profusely  ornamented  with 
rich  velvet  trimmings,  for  the  cloak 
was  the  criterion  of  the  rank  of  the 
owner,  as  well  as  the  standard  of  his 
bank  account.  From  this  gay  gar- 
ment of  the  gentleman  there  were  all 
grades  of  cloaks  gradually  descending 
to  the  primitive  blanket  of  the  Indian. 
As  for  the  ladies,  they  arrayed 
themselves  in  rich  and  expensive 
shawls  of  silk,  satin  or  Chinese  crape, 
according  to  the  prevailing  English 
fashion.  The  dainty  shoes  of  velvet 
or  satin  had  points  turned  up  at  heel 
and  toe,  while  the  skirts  were  then — 
as  now — so  narrow  as  to  impede  walk- 
ing with  comfort.  In  those  days,  the 
horse  was  the  only  means  of  commu- 
nication between  the  ranches  or  set- 
tlements, and  for  this  reason  they 
were  constantly  kept  saddled  at  the 
door  of  the  dwelling,  as  well  as  the 
place  of  business.  The  Spaniard  be- 
ing always  a  man  of  leisure  (for  all 
the  hard  work  was  done  by  Indians) 
he  was  likewise  an  expert  rider,  and 
even  to-day  there  are  no  better  riders 
or  better  horseback  trails  than  those 
that  thread  in  and  out  and  around  and 
over  the  rock-ribbed  Santa  Ynez 
mountains. 


As  for  music,  the  guitar  was  the 
only  musical  instrument  in  use  until 
just  previous  to  the  American  occupa- 
tion, when  a  few  harps  were  intro- 
duced. 

Nothing  is  now  left  of  the  presidio 
or  fort  of  Santa  Barbara,  which  was  a 
closed  square  surrounded  with  houses 
of  a  single  story,  the  commandante  oc- 
cupying the  northwest  corner,  which 
was  built  a  little  more  prominently 
than  the  others.  Two  years  after, 
Stockton  raised  here  the  American  flag 
and  left  a  garrison  of  ten  men,  thus 
formally  putting  Santa  Barbara  under 
the  rule  of  the  United  States,  comes 
the  somewhat  amusing  story  of  "the 
lost  cannon."  This  brass  gun,  which 
had  belonged  to  the  "Elizabeth,"  was 
intended  for  the  fortifications  at  Mon- 
terey, but  was  left  on  the  beach  wait- 
ing shipment,  when  suddenly  it  dis- 
appeared. So  great  was  the  excite- 
ment that  Governor  Mason  imposed  a 
military  fine  of  $500  upon  the  town, 
which  sum  was  to  be  repaid  upon  the 
discovery  of  the  guilty  parties.  In  the 
course  of  time  it  was  found  that  five 
men,  with  the  help  of  a  yoke  of  oxen, 
had  dragged  away  the  gun  and  buried 
it  in  the  sand,  but  none  of  the  five  be- 
ing able  to  locate  the  spot,  it  was  not 
until  1858  that  a  heavy  rainstorm 
caused  the  waters  of  the  Estero  to  cut 
through  the  sand  bank  and  thus  dis- 
closed the  protruding  cannon,  still 
bright  and  uninjured  after  its  ten 
years  of  burial.  In  triumph,  they 
hauled  it  up  State  street  to  De  la 
Guerra,  where  it  was  sold  for  $80.  A 
ready  market  for  it  was  found  in  San 
Francisco  at  a  large  profit.  To  com- 
memorate this  event,  three  streets  in 
Santa  Barbara  bear  these  names: 
Mason,  Quinientos  (five  hundred),  and 
Canon  Perdido  (lost  cannon) ;  but  how 
much  better  to  have  kept  the  gun! 

The  accompanying  illustration 
shows  only  half  of  the  Casa  de  la 
Guerra,  which  is  still  occupied  by  the 
descendants  of  Don  Jose  de  la  Guerra, 
who  was  born  in  Spain  in  1776,  the 
other  wing  being  now  used  as  gift  shop 
and  tea  room.  This  gift  shop  was  for- 
merly the  private  chapel  of  that  illus- 


A  portion  of  the  Casa  de  la  Guerra 


trious  family,  and  over  the  door  is  a 
stained  glass  window  representing  the 
coat  of  arms  of  the  de  la  Guerras — 
a  crown  under  crossed  swords  sur- 
mounted by  the  head  of  a  Moor,  while 
the  original  beamed  ceiling  of  Spanish 
wood,  brought  around  the  Horn  one 
hundred  and  five  years  ago,  still  re- 
mains. To  Richard  Henry  Dana  we 
are  indebted  for  a  very  vivid  descrip- 
tion of  a  wedding  celebration  in  this 
very  courtyard.  Don  Jose  de  la 
Guerra  had  married  in  1804  the  daugh- 
ter of  Don  Raymundo  Carrillo,  then 
commandante  of  the  Santa  Barbara 
presidio,  by  whom  he  had  seven  sons 


and  four  daughters.  It  was  his  third 
daughter,  Ana  Maria  Antonio,  whose 
marriage  to  Alfred  Robinson  of  Bos- 
ton, Mr.  Dana  describes  in  his  "Two 
Years  Before  the  Mast,"  during  his 
journey  to  California  on  a  trading  ves- 
sel in  1836-38.  It  is  said  that  a  salute 
of  twenty-three  guns  was  fired  from 
Dana's  ship  when  the  bride  appeared 
in  the  church  doorway  of  the  Mission 
after  the  ceremony;  then  followed 
several  days  of  dancing  and  general 
merry-making,  as  best  described  in 
Mr.  Dana's  book. 

Among  the  homes     of     interest  in 
Santa  Barbara  is  that  of  Stewart  Ed- 


SANTA  BARBARA  BY  THE  SEA 


75 


ward  White,  author  of  "The  Blazed 
Trail,"  "The  Silent  Places,"  "Arizona 
Nights"  and  many  other  Western 
stories.  Nestled  in  a  perfect  bower  of 
many  flowers,  with  Cherokee  roses 
climbing  in  profusion,  the  house  com- 
mands a  splendid  view  of  mountains 
and  valley. 

Seven  miles  eastward  lies  Summer- 
land  on  a  portion  of  the  old  Ortega 
Rancho.  Here  in  1893  oil  was  dis- 
covered. The  oil  industry  now  ex- 
ceeds in  value  all  the  other  products 
of  the  country  combined,  and  the  sub- 
marine wells  form  one  of  the  sights 
for  tourists  to  see.  Summerland 
started  with  the  good  intention  of  be- 
ing a  resort,  but  ended  in  being  an  oil 
center  with  a  colony  of  citizens  of 
spiritualistic  belief.  Near  here,  too, 
is  Carpenteria,  there  having  been,  a 
carpenter  shop  on  the  shore  in  earlier 
days.  Carpenteria  boasts  of  possess- 
ing the  largest  grape  vine  in  the 
world.  The  circumference  of  the  trunk 
of  this  wonderful  vine  is  nine  feet,  and 
it  bears  ten  tons  of  grapes  annually. 
Planted  in  1842,  its  branches  now 
cover  half  an  acre. 

Of  Montecito  and  Miramar,  much 
might  be  written,  of  their  setting  in  a 
flower  garden  of  such  marvelous  color, 
jewel-like,  with  the  placid  summer  sea 
at  their  feet.  All  these  picturesque 
places,  with  many  others,  form  de- 
lightful drives,  nor  must  Hope  Ranch 
be  forgotten.  This  tract  comprises 
two  thousand  acres  of  hill  and  mesa, 
with  canyons  and  groves,  with  moss- 
draped  oaks  and  tablelands  sloping  off 
to  the  high  cliffs  by  the  shore,  beyond 
which  spreads  the  broad  Pacific.  Here 
will  some  day  arise  a  rival  to  Monte- 
cito, though  more  beautiful  than  that 
favored  suburb  of  homes  it  cannot  be. 
Hope  Ranch  is  the  site  of  the  Potter 
Country  Club,  an  adjunct  to  Hotel 
Potter.  Here  are  the  golf  links  and 
polo  field,  and  their  broad  acres  are 
the  rendezvous  for  riding  and  motor- 
ing parties.  With  the  flute-like  notes 
of  meadow  larks  floating  on  the  air, 
one  drives  through  the  exit  where  is 
seen  the  parting  sign:  "Thank  you. 
Come  again" — on  out  along  the  famous 


cliff  drive,  back  to  the  heart  of  slum- 
bering Santa  Barbara  two  miles  away. 
It  is  said  that  there  are  in  Santa 
Barbara  and  its  environs  a  different 
ride  for  every  day  in  the  month,  and 
verily  it  must  be  true.  Monotony  of 
that  kind  is  not  one  of  its  sins.  For 
the  home-seeker  it  has  an  abundance 
to  offer;  for  the  farmer,  still  greater 
opportunities.  The  Santa  Barbara 
Valley  is  the  land  of  the  walnut  and 
the  lima  bean;  indeed,  the  Mission 
fathers  made  of  their  gardens  experi- 
mental stations  in  their  efforts  to  adapt 
the  soil  and  the  climate  to  the  produc- 
tion of.  the  fig,  olive,  grape  and  walnut. 
The  so-called  English  walnut  is  a 
native  of  Persia,  from  which  country 
it  was  probably  introduced  into  Eng- 
land by  the  Romans;  this  being  the 
first  of  its  appearance  commercially,  it 
became  known  to  the  world  at  large  as 
the  English  walnut.  After  tnat  we 
find  it  flourishing  best  in  Italy,  France 
and  Austria-Hungary,  finally  being 
carried  by  the  Spanish  settlers  into 
South  America  and  Mexico,  from 
which  country  it  was,  naturally,  intro- 
duced into  California  by  the  Francis- 
can monks  about  1769,  when  the  mis- 
sions were  founded.  Unlike  the  wal- 
nut of  European  countries,  where  it 
lives  to  a  ripe  old  age,  not  beginning 
to  bear  until  15  or  20  years  old,  the 
walnut  of  California  begins  bearing  at 
about  the  eighth  year,  the  crop  in- 
creasing until  the  tree  is  in  its  prime 
at  15  years  of  age,  thus  making  it  a 
comparatively  short-lived  tree,  as  in 
Persia.  Requiring  but  little  care,  as 
well  as  very  little,  if  any,  irrigation, 
it  is  one  of  the  most  profitable  pro- 
ducts of  the  Golden  State,  much  more 
so  in  this  valley  than  the  orange  in 
comparison  with  the  amount  of  labor 
expended.  With  the  commercial  de- 
mand daily  increasing,  especially  since 
Joseph  Sexton  originated  the  Santa 
Barbara  soft  shell,  the  walnut  still 
bids  fair  to  be  the  basis  of  many  for- 
tunes. The  fact  that  Southern  Cali- 
fornia has  the  most  favorable  climatic 
conditions  for  walnut-bearing  is  a  pro- 
tection to  the  grower,  the  amount  of 
land  planted  to  walnuts  in  the  State 


76 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


being  estimated  at  about  20,000  acres, 
yet  the  consumption  in  the  United 
States  exceeds  the  production. 

The  olive  grows  luxuriantly  in  the 
Santa  Barbara  Valley,  the  first  olive 
oil  produced  in  California  having  been 
made  in  Santa  Barbara  in  1872.  Here 
where  the  winters  are  mild  and  the 
summers  cool,  lemons  also  grow  vig- 
orously, to  which  we  must  add  numer- 
ous other  varieties  of  fruits,  such  as 
pears,  peaches,  prunes,  persimmons, 
apricots,  loquats,  pomegranates,  limes, 
figs,  plums,  strawberries,  raspberries, 
loganberries  and  blackberries. 

Add  to  this  the  fishing  in  the  Santa 
Ynez  river,  where  yellowtail,  albicore 
and  bonita  abound,  as  well  as  the  deep 
sea  fishing  where  large  catches  of  bar- 
racuda, tuna,  sea  bass  and  rock  cod 
delight  the  angler's  heart ;  hunting,  too, 
in  the  fastnesses  of  the  mountains,  and 
the  bathing  in  a  surf  that  is  remarkable 
for  its  absence  of  undertow,  together 
with  the  pleasant  temperature  of  its 
water,  the  current  in  the  channel  be- 
ing the  return  one  from  the  south,  and 
one  can  readily  understand  how  var- 
ied are  the  charms  of  this  city  nestling 
among  the  hills.  The  evenness  of  the 
climate,  where  the  difference  between 
the  mean  temperature  of  summer  and 
winter  is  only  twelve  degrees,  making 
open  air  life  enjoyable  the  year  round ; 
the  rarely  natural  beauty  of  the  scen- 
ery as  God  made  it  and  unmarred  by 
man,  the  marvelous  growth  of  fruit 
and  beautiful  flowers,  exhaust  our 
superlatives. 

Nor  is  one's  bodily  comfort  forgot- 
ten. On  the  site  of  the  historic  old 
Arlington  hotel,  which  was  burned 
three  years  ago,  has  arisen  a  beautiful 
structure  built  after  the  Mission  type, 
forming  with  its  five  acres  of  lawn, 


shrubbery  and  palms  a  pleasing  recol- 
lection, to  which  the  courtesy  of  its 
inmates  adds  not  a  little.  In  bas- 
relief,  on  post  and  pillar,  in  all  con- 
ceivable ways  one  sees  a  Spanish  gal- 
leon to  celebrate  the  coming  of  Juan 
Rodriguez  Cabrillo,  who  cruised  this 
shore  more  than  three  centuries  ago. 
This  forms  the  Arlington  emblem  of 
distinction.  While  crowning  the  knoll, 
once  known  as  Burton  Mound,  stands 
the  Potter,  built  over  a  sulphur  spring 
said  to  be  of  wonderful  medicinal 
quality;  a  thousand  feet  from  the  front 
veranda  dances  the  sea  with  its  soft, 
unending  murmur,  and  northward, 
rear  the  lofty,  sheltering  mountain 
peaks  and  spurs  that  break  the  force 
of  the  trade  winds.  Here,  indeed,  are 
comfort  and  pleasure  combined  in 
their  most  satisfying  form.  The  pity 
of  it  all  is  that  three  thousand  miles 
divide  the  Atlantic  from  the  Pacific. 
But  once  the  wine  of  the  golden  Cali- 
fornia sunshine  enters  the  veins,  it 
means,  as  a  rule,  farewell  to  the  frozen 
East.  From  the  trailing  mists  that 
hover  over  and  shut  away  the  channel 
islands  to  the  mountain  crags  of  the 
Santa  Ynez  and  far  away  over  hill  and 
dale,  over  mountain  pass  and  fertile 
valley,  hovers  the  charm  that  will  not 
rest,  the  charm  of  the  mission  bells, 
the  charm  of  the  sweet-scented  idling 
air,  the  charm  of  God's  great  out-of- 
doors,  that  creates  in  the  heart  an  echo 
forever  calling  and  forever  at  peace. 

"In  thy  valleys  the  winds  are  at  rest, 
On  thy  mountains  the  storms  are 

asleep; 
To  the  soul  comes  the  peace  of  the 

hills, 
With  the  calm  of  their  measureless 

sweep." 


Breeding  Insects  for  the  Use  of  the 

Farmers 

By  John  L.  Cowan 


FROM  TIME  to  time,  the  attention 
of  readers  of  newspapers  and 
other  periodicals  is  called  to  odd 
and  curious  industries,  such  as 
the  Alaskan  fox  farm,  the  Texas  snake 
farm,  the  Iowa  goldfish  farm,  the  tur- 
tle farms  of  Japan,  the  seaweed  farm- 
ing industries  of  Japan,  the  snail  and 
frog  farms  of  France,  the  alligator 
farms  of  Palm  Beach,  Hot  Springs 
and  Los  Angeles,  the  ostrich  farms  of 
California  and  Arizona,  duck  farms, 
pigeon  farms,  pheasant  farms,  goat 
farms  and  others  that  are  striking  be- 
cause of  their  novelty.  Nevertheless, 
it  would  be  difficult  to  find  an  activity 
that  the  average  person  would  regard 
as  more  extraordinary  than  the  sys- 
tematic breeding  of  insects,  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  put  them  to  work 
fighting  other  insects. 

This  remarkable  line  of  effort  is  car- 
ried on  at  the  California  State  Insec- 
tary  on  a  much  larger  scale  than  any- 
where else  in  the  world.  It  represents 
one  of  the  very  newest  of  the  applied 
sciences — the  science  of  parasitism, 
the  object  of  which  is  to  control  insect 
pests  by  means  of  their  natural  insect 
enemies.  These  are  either  parasitic  or 
predacious  in  their  habits,  and  are  al- 
ways small  in  size — sometimes  micro- 
scopic. To  breed  them  in  confinement, 
in  commercially  important  numbers, 
and  distribute  them  to  regions  suffer- 
ing from  the  ravages  of  agricultural 
or  horticultural  pests,  is  the  task  set 
for  the  parasitologist. 

Scientists — or  those  devoted  to  par- 
asitism at  least — now  regard  it  as  a 
well  established  fact  that  every  form 
of  life  has  a  natural  check  that  limits 


its  increase  in  numbers.  Birds  consti- 
tute one  of  nature's  important  checks 
upon  the  multiplication  of  insect  life; 
but  the  extermination  of  many  species 
and  the  decimation  of  the  numbers  of 
nearly  all  species  have  seriously  in- 
terfered with  nature's  scheme  of 
things.  It  appears,  too,  that  every  in- 
sect species  that  feeds  upon  vegeta- 
ble tissues  (and  is,  for  that  reason, 
capable  of  developing  into  a  pest)  has 
its  insect  foes  that  prey  upon  it.  Were 
it  not  for  these  natural  checks  upon 
insects  that  devour  vegetation,  so  great 
are  their  powers  of  reproduction  that 
their  numbers  would  become  so,  vast 
that  they  would  devour  every  green 
thing. 

Some  of  the  checks  upon  plant-eat- 
ing insects  are  predaceous  in  their 
habits — that  is  to  say,  they  pounce 
upon  and  devour  the  pest  insects.  Of 
this  nature  are  the  Coccinelidae,  or 
ladybird  beetles,  of  which  there  are 
about  2,000  species.  These  are  the 
natural  enemies  of  all  forms  of  plant 
lice  and  scale  insects.  Sometimes  the 
insect  foes  of  insect  pests  are  para- 
sitic. That  is  to  say,  they  deposit 
their  eggs  in  the  grub  of  the  pest,  and 
as  the  young  hatch  and  develop,  they 
feed  upon  the  surrounding  tissues,  and 
the  victim  (technically  known  as  the 
host),  is  destroyed  long  before  it 
reaches  maturity.  It  might  be  thought 
that  the  science  of  parasitism  had  to 
do  only  with  the  last  named  class,  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  parasitologists  con- 
cern themselves  with  any  insects  that 
destroy  other  insects  of  an  injurious 
nature,  whether  predaceous  or  para- 
sitic. 


78 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


The  most  common  way  of  fighting 
pests  is  by  means  of  sprays,  washes, 

Twig  infected  with  cottony  cush- 
iony scale  and  the  insects  that  sub- 
dued the  scale. 


m 


Orange  leaves  and  twigs  with  scale 
insects  and  insects  bred  at  the  Cali- 
fornia Insectary  for  their  control. 


dips,  powders  and  gases,  or  by  the 
laborious  method  of  hand-picking  and 
sometimes  even  by  digging  up  plants 
or  trees  by  the  root  and  burning  them. 
In  very  many  cases,  these  methods  are 
the  only  ones  available.  Yet  every  one 
who  has  tried  them  knows  that  they 
are  clumsy,  expensive,  inefficient,  and 
at  best  of  only  temporary  effect.  These 
methods  have  never  yet  resulted  in  the 
extermination  or  permanent  subjection 
of  a  single  insect  pest.  The  orchard 
that  has  been  treated  with  liquid,  pow- 
dered or  gaseous  insecticides  this  year 
must  be  similarly  treated  next  year, 
and  every  year  thereafter.  The  mo- 
ment the  vigilance  of  the  horticulturist 
is  relaxed,  the  pest  multiplies  to  the 
proportions  of  an  all-devouring  army, 
and  sweeps  everything  before  it. 

The  advocates  of  the  new  science  of 
parasitism  claims  that  this  recurring 
annual  expense  is  unnecessary.  His 
remedy  is  to  find  the  natural  foe  of 
the  pest,  even  though  the  uttermost  end 
of  the  earth  must  be  ransacked  to  do 
so.  Then,  when  found,  it  must  be  in- 
troduced, bred  in  confinement  and  dis- 
tributed wherever  needed  to  tight  the 
farmers',  fruit  growers'  and  market 
gardeners'  battles.  In  the  absence  of 
either  natural  or  artificial  checks,  the 
only  limitation  placed  upon  the  multi- 
plication in  numbers  of  an  insect  pest 
is  its  food  supply.  Similarly,  the  only 
limitation  placed  upon  the  increase  in 
the  numbers  of  a  beneficial  species  of 
insect  is  its  food  supply — the  pest  up- 
on which  it  feeds.  Consequently,  the 
more  numerous  and  destructive  the 
pest  insects,  the  more  rapidly  will  its 
natural  check  multiply,  once  it  has 
been  introduced  and  naturalized. 

It  might  be  thought  that  the  benefi- 

Bugs  from  left  to  right — Scutellesta 
Cyanea,  greatly  enlarged,  female  and 
male.  Rhizabins  Ventralis  (black  lady 
bird]  enlarged,  and  larvae.  Black 
scale  on  orange  twig.  Encyrtus  flavus, 
enlarged.  Coccophagus  lecani,  en- 
larged. Comys  fusca.  Leaf  and  twigs 
affected  by  brown  apricot  scale. 

(By  permission  of  California  State 
Commission  of  Horticulture.} 


BREEDING  INSECTS  FOR  THE  USE  OF  FARMERS 


79 


cial  insects  might,  under  certain  con- 
ditions, multiply  until  they  themselves 
became  as  serious  a  pest  as  the  one 
they  were  designed  to  check.  That  is, 
one  might  think  that  after  they  had 
subjugated  the  pest  that  formed  their 
natural  food  supply,  they  might  begin 
to  devour  vegetation.  However,  para- 
sitic insects  thrive  only  upon  the  in- 
sects that  nature  designed  as  their 
hosts,  and  predaceous  insects  have  di- 
gestive organs  that  make  it  impossible 
for  them  to  subsist  upon  vegetable  tis- 
tues.  No  matter  how  numerous  either 
class  may  become,  as  soon  as  their  ap- 
propriate food  supply  is  lessened,  their 
numbers  decline  in  proportion.  When 
the  pest  disappears,  they  disappear  al- 
so, because  there  is  nothing  for  them 
to  eat. 

In  every  life  zone,  nature  has  estab- 
lished a  balance  between  vegetable 
life,  insect  pest  and  parasitic  or  pre- 
daceous foes.  As  long  as  this  balance 
is  undisturbed,  the  insects  that  are  cap- 
able of  developing  into  pests  (and 
this  includes  all  that  feed  upon  vege- 
table tissues)  do  no  appreciable  dam- 
age, owing  to  the  activity  of  their  natu- 
ral checks.  But  man  disturbs  the  life- 
equilibrium  established  by  nature  in 
many  ways.  The  planting  and  cultiva- 
tion of  fruits,  cereals,  vegetables  and 
forage  crops  is  itself  a  disturbance  of 
this  equilibrium.  Then  in  the  newly 
irrigated  regions  of  the  West,  by  irri- 
gation and  cultivation  vegetation  is 
brought  forward  at  a  time  when  des- 
ert conditions  were  natural.  With  an 
abundant  food  supply  thus  provided, 
plant  lice  thrive  at  a  time  when  their 
natural  checks  are  dormant.  This  is 
the  reason  why  the  melon  aphis  gained 
such  a  foothold  in  the  Imperial  Val- 
ley of  California  that  the  entire  de- 
struction of  the  great  industry  of  grow- 
ing melons,  cantaloupes  and  cucum- 
bers for  early  shipment  to  Eastern 
markets  seemed  imminent. 

The  danger  was  met  and  averted  by 
the  scientists  of  the  State  Insectary. 
Field  agents  of  the  Insectary  were  sent 
to  the  canyons  of  the  high  Sierras  in 
midwinter.  Hunting  places  on  the 
sunny  sides  of  the  canyons  where  the 


snow  had  melted,  these  scraped  away 
the  dead  leaves  and  pine  needles,  ex- 
posing to  view  millions  of  hibernating 
ladybird  beetles  (Hippodamia  conver- 
gens.)  These  were  separated  from  the 
rubbish  and  debris,  placed  in  bags, 
and  shipped  by  express  to  the  Insec- 
tary. There  they  were  placed  in  cold 
storage  (in  which  condition  they  re- 
mained dormant.)  Then  when  the 
melon  aphis  appeared  in  the  Imperial 
Valley  in  April,  the  ladybirds  were 
shipped  for  liberation  in  the  melon 
fields. 

During  January,  February  and 
March  of  1910  (the  first  season  in 
which  ladybird  beetles  were  collected) 
1,707  pounds  of  the  insects  were  gath- 
ered in  the  canyons  of  the  Sierras  and 
shipped  to  the  Insectary.  The  actual 
number  of  insects  is  estimated  at  about 
43,000,000.  On  April  6th  of  the  same 
year,  81  cases,  each  containing  60,000 
insects,  were  shipped  from  the  insect- 
ary  to  Brawley  and  Calexico,  in  the 
heart  of  the  melon  fields.  This  ship- 
ment of  more  than  4,800,000  ladybird 
beetles  was  by  far  the  largest  single 
shipment  of  beneficial  insects  that  has 
ever  taken  place  in  the  world.  During 
the  same  month,  11,369,000  ladybirds 
were  shipped  to  the  melon  fields,  and 
millions  more  in  May.  These  saved 
the  melon  crop;  and  ever  since  then 
the  melon  growers  of  the  Imperial  Val- 
ley have  relied  implicitly  upon  the 
scientists  of  the  State  Insectary  in 
times  of  insect  peril.  An  idea  of  what 
the  saving  of  this  minor  industry 
means  may  be  gained  from  the  fact 
that  last  year's  crop  (1911)  of  canta- 
loupes shipped  from  the  Imperial  Val- 
ley amounted  to  2,950  carloads,  worth 
to  the  growers  about  $2,225,000. 

Another  way  in  which  the  natural 
balance  of  all  forms  of  life  in  particu- 
lar regions  is  disturbed  is  by  the  im- 
portation of  foreign  insects.  Practi- 
cally all  the  serious  pests  that  worry 
the  farmer,  the  gardener  and  the  fruit 
grower — such  as  the  cotton  boll  weevil, 
the  San  Jose  scale,  the  Gypsy  moth, 
the  codling  moth,  and  hundreds  of 
others,  have  been  brought  to  America 
frcm  foreign  countries.  In  their  natu- 


80 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ral  homes  these  insects  probably  did 
little  damage,  because  their  natural 
enemies  kept  down  their  numbers.  But 
in  a  new  environment,  with  no  natural 
foes,  and  with  an  abundant  food  sup- 
ply, they  increase  amazingly,  and 
work  widespread  destruction,  some- 
times menacing  the  very  existence  of 
important  fruit  growing  or  market 
gardening  industries. 

In  emergencies  of  this  kind,  all 
known  mechanical  means  of  control 
are  resorted  to;  but  permanent  and 
complete  relief  comes  only  through 
the  introduction  of  the  same  insect 
foes  of  the  pest  that  held  it  in  check  in 
its  natural  habitat.  In  recognition  of 
this  fact,  California  has  for  years  kept 
an  explorer  in  the  field,  ransacking 
every  country  in  the  world  in  search 
of  beneficial  insects.  This  is  Mr.  Geo. 
Compere,  for  years  employed  jointly 
by  the  Horticultural  Commission  of 
California  and  the  Entomological  De- 
partment of  West  Australia,  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  search  the  world 
for  the  insect  foes  of  insect  pests. 

Similar  work  is  performed  by  the 
field  agents  of  the  Federal  Bureau  of 
Entomology,  through  whose  agency 
some  of  the  most  important  beneficial 
insects  have  been  introduced.  How- 
ever, California  has  systematized  this 
work  to  a  greater  extent  than  any  other 
State  or  country,  and  breeds  beneficial 
insects  for  distribution  to  farmers  and 
orchardists  on  a  greater  scale  than  has 
ever  before  been  attempted.  The  real 
"battle  of  the  bugs"  in  that  State  con- 
tinues from  April  until  September.  It 
begins  with  the  sending  of  millions  of 
ladybird  beetles  to  the  canteloupe 
fields.  A  little  late,  millions  of  the 
same  species  are  sent  to  the  apple  and 
peach  orchards  of  the  State  to  combat 
the  aphid  pests  that  infest  them. 
Through  the  month  of  May,  many 
thousands  of  a  parasitic  insect  (Comys 
fusca)  are  shipped  to  the  apricot, 
prune,  peach  and  orange  orchards  to 
combat  the  soft  brown  scale  and  the 
brown  apricot  scale.  So  it  continues 
throughout  the  summer,  each  month 
witnessing  the  culmination  of  the  ac- 
tivities of  particular  pests,  and  calling 


for  the  despatch  of  cohorts  of  benefi- 
cial insects  to  combat  those  pests.  No 
similar  institution  in  the  world  has 
ever  before  attempted  to  carry  on  the 
breeding  and  distribution  of  beneficial 
insects  on  a  scale  of  such  magnitude. 

The  breeding  of  beneficial  insects  in 
captivity  on  any  scale  desired  is  a 
much  simpler  matter  than  might  be 
imagined.  It  is  largely  a  question  of 
supplying  an  abundance  of  the  right 
kind  of  food,  with  the  right  conditions 
of  heat,  light  and  ventilation  for  insect 
development.  The  insectary  consists 
of  glass-walled  rooms  arranged  around 
a  central  court.  Each  room  is  heated 
and  ventilated  independently  of  all  the 
others,  and  so  arranged  that  the  air 
can  be  pumped  out  and  fresh  air  sup- 
plied from  the  basement  at  any  tem- 
perature desired.  The  only  food  upon 
which  the  parasites  flourish  is  the  pest 
that  nature  designed  them  to  control. 
It  is,  therefore,  necessary  to  keep  a 
number  of  pest-infected  leaves,  twigs 
or  fruits  on  hand,  in  order  that  the 
beneficial  insects  may  have  a  suffi- 
cient food  supply. 

Most  insects,  whether  beneficial  or 
injurious,  may  be  kept  in  a  dormant 
condition,  of  practically  suspended  ani- 
mation, simply  by  keeping  them  in  a 
room  with  a  temperature  too  low  to 
promote  their  development.  In  this 
way,  the  breeding  operations  of  the  in- 
sectary are  reduced  to  the  lowest  pos- 
sible terms.  When  a  pest  is  inactive, 
its  parasitic  foes  in  the  insectary  are 
kept  in  a  dormant  condition.  Just  as 
soon  as  word  is  received  that  a  pest 
has  broken  out  in  any  part  of  the 
State,  the  foes  of  that  pest  are  taken 
to  an  apartment  where  the  proper  con- 
dition of  heat,  light  and  ventilation 
may  be  supplied,  and  an  abundance  of 
the  appropriate  food  is  furnished.  Very 
soon  the  dormant  insects  begin  to 
awaken  to  activity;  soon  the  females 
begin  to  deposit  their  eggs;  and  in  a 
very  few  days  the  scientists  in  charge 
of  the  insectary  are  ready  to  make 
shipments  of  thousands  of  insects. 
These  are  distributed  free  wherever 
in  the  State  of  California  their  ser- 
vices may  be  required. 


BREEDING  INSECTS  FOR  THE  USE  OF  FARMERS 


81 


Breeding  is  usually  carried  on  in 
breeding  cages,  made  by  covering  a 
light  wooden  frame  with  insect  netting. 
When  the  matured  insects  issue,  they 
alight  upon  the  walls  of  the  cages.  The 
parasitologist  then  opens  the  door  of 
the  cage,  and  quickly  places  a  wide- 
necked  vial  over  the  tiny  insect.  The 
insect  instinctively  flies  back  into  the 
vial,  and  the  operator  repeats  the  pro- 
cess again  and  again  until  he  has  as 
many  as  he  desires.  Usually  about  25 
insects  constitute  a  "colony,"  but  in 
case  of  a  particularly  destructive  pest 
much  larger  colonies  are  shipped.  The 
colonies  are  released  in  pest-infected 
regions,  where,  of  course,  the  appro- 
priate food  supply  of  the  beneficial  in- 
sect is  superabundant.  Under  such 
conditions,  the  beneficial  insects  mul- 
tiply with  amazing  rapidity,  so  that  in 
a  few  days  each  colony  of  25  insects  is 
represented  by  millions  of  descendants 
— each  one  of  which  attacks  its  natural 
foe  with  inexorable  ferocity. 

In  California,  nearly  all  the  fruits, 
vegetables  and  forest  trees  of  all  tem- 
perate and  semi-tropic  lands  have  been 
naturalized.  The  State,  therefore,  suf- 
fers from  the  ravages  of  pests  intro- 
duced from  almost  every  quarter  of  the 
globe.  To  combat  these  pests,  benefi- 
cial insects  have  been  introduced  from 
Japan,  China,  India,  Australia,  South 
Africa  and  many  other  parts  of  the 
world.  When  a  beneficial  insect  is  re- 
ceived at  the  insectary,  it  is  bred  and 
studied  to  make  sure  that  it  is  really 
beneficent  in  its  operations;  and  also 
that  it  is  not  infested  with  a  secondary 
parasite,  to  prey  upon  it  and  limit  its 
increase,  and  thus  defeat  the  object  of 
its  introduction. 

To  give  a  complete  resume  of  what 
has  been  accomplished  by  the  State  In- 
sectary in  California  would  require 
more  space  than  can  here  be  devoted 
to  the  subject.  It  may  be  well,  how- 
ever, to  mention  a  few  of  the  pests 
that  have  been  subdued. 

More  than  twenty  years  ago  the  cot- 
tony cushion  scale  appeared  to 
threaten  the  very  existence  of  the 
great  industry  of  growing  citrus  fruits. 
Shipments  of  oranges  fell  off  from 


8,000  carloads  in  one  season  to  600  the 
next.  Pest-infested  orange  groves 
looked  as  if  a  snowstorm  had  fallen 
on  them;  and  hedges,  deciduous  fruits 
and  forest  and  shade  trees  were  at- 
tacked, until  it  was  feared  that  large 
sections  of  the  State  were  about  to  re- 
vert to  desert  conditions.  This  terrible 
scourge  was  brought  under  subjection 
by  several  species  of  ladybird  beetles 
imported  from  Australia,  assisted  by 
a  dipterous  parasite,  Lestophonus 
icerya,  and  a  hymenopterous  parasite, 
Ophilosia  crawfordii.  These  insignifi- 
cant appearing  insects  unquestionably 
saved  the  citrus  fruit  growing  industry 
of  California.  That  it  was  worth  while 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  citrus 
fruit  crop  of  the  State,  for  the  season 
ending  October  31,  1911,  amounted  to 
46,585  carloads,  worth  the  sum  of 
$33,737,000  to  the  horticultural  inter- 
ests. Similarly  the  black  scale  that 
threatened  the  ruin  of  the  olive  or- 
chards, and  spread  to  many  other 
varieties  of  fruit,  is  controlled  by  a 
small  ladybird  beetle  (Rhizobius  ven- 
tralis)  and  a  minute  internal  parasite 
(Scutellista  cyanea.)  The  San  Jose 
scale  has  spread  from  ocean  to  ocean, 
and  has  given  rise  to  more  legislation 
among  the  various  States  and  on  the 
part  of  foreign  countries  than  all  other 
insect  pests  combined.  It  is  no  longer 
considered  a  serious  menace  in  Cali- 
fornia, because  when  it  appears  in  any 
part  of  the  State,  the  scientists  of  the 
insectary  ship  colonies  of  its  enemies, 
which  quickly  cause  its  disappearance. 
Several  species  of  ladybird  beetles 
prey  upon  it,  materially  reducing  its 
numbers,  but  its  most  inveterate  foe  is 
Aphelinus  fuscipennis,  a  minute  hyme- 
nopterous parasite.  The  soft  brown 
scale  on  citrus  fruits  and  the  brown 
apricot  scale  are  controlled  by  Encyr- 
tue  flavus  and  Comys  fusca,  two  small 
internal  parasites.  Pulvinaria  innu- 
merabilis,  once  considered  a  menace  to 
the  apple  growing  industry,  has  been 
completely  subjugated  by  Coccopha- 
gus  lecani.  There  are  still  insect 
pests  in  the  State  that  can,  as  yet,  be 
combatted  only  by  means  of  mechani- 
cal checks;  but  it  is  the  confident  be- 


82 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


lief  of  Superintendent  E.  K.  Games  of 
the  State  Insectary,  and  his  able  as- 
sistant, Frederick  Maskew,  that  there 
is  a  natural  check  for  every  insect  pest 
in  existence.  They  mean  to  find  that 
natural  check,  introduce  it  into  Cali- 
fornia, breed  it  in  sufficient  numbers 
to  be  of  economic  value,  and  thus  save 
horticulturists  of  the  State  the  millions 
of  dollars  worth  of  crops  now  de- 
stroyed by  insect  pests,  and  the  other 
millions  of  dollars  now  expended  an- 
nually in  the  application  of  inseccti- 
cides. 

To  prevent  the  introduction  of  new 
pests  is  as  much  a  part  of  the  Califor- 
nia plan  of  campaign  as  to  subjugate 
the  old.  For  that  purpose,  ironclad 
quarantine  laws  are  rigidly  enforced. 
No  vessel  is  permitted  to  enter  any 
port  in  the  State  without  having  its 
cargo  examined  and  inspected  by  the 
horticultural  quarantine  inspectors. 
Trees,  plants,  bulbs,  seeds  and  pack- 
ages of  fruit,  found  to  be  infected 
with  the  eggs  or  larvae  of  injurious  in- 
sects are  either  fumigated  or  burned, 
as  the  circumstances  seem  to  demand. 

Then  each  county  has  a  horticul- 
tural board,  which  appoints  as  many 
local  inspectors  as  may  be  needed.  It 
is  required  that  every  orchard  be  in- 
spected at  least  once  a  year,  and  the 
board  has  authority  at  any  time  to  or- 
der the  inspection  of  any  nursery,  or- 
chard, trees,  plants,  vegetables,  pack- 


ing house,  storehouse,  or  other  place 
suspected  o±  being  affected  with  insect 
pests,  and  to  take  the  necessary  steps 
for  the  suppression  of  such  pests, 
wherever  found. 

In  the  development  and  application 
of  the  science  of  parasitism,  California 
is  far  in  advance  of  any  other  State  in 
the  Union.  This  fact,  no  doubt,  is  due 
to  the  overshadowing  importance  of 
fruit  growing  in  California.  Neverthe- 
less, it  may  be  regarded  as  a  certainty 
that  sooner  or  later  every  other  State 
in  the  Union  will  be  compelled  to  fol- 
low California's  lead,  and  enlist  the 
aid  of  beneficial  insects  to  fight  the 
billions  that  destroy.  It  is  nature's 
way  to  employ  "bugs  to  fight  bugs." 
It  is  the  only  way  that  gives  wholly 
satisfactory  and  permanent  results. 

It  is  estimated  that  the  annual  toll 
levied  by  insect  pests  amounts  to  one- 
tenth  of  all  products  of  the  soil.  It  is 
evident  that  this  is  an  item  that  cuts 
no  small  figure  in  the  much-discussed 
cost  of  living;  and  that  insect  control 
constitutes  a  problem  in  the  conserva- 
tion of  our  national  resources  not  sec- 
ondary to  the  preservation  of  the  for- 
ests, the  safeguarding  of  water  power 
and  the  protection  of  our  mineral  re- 
sources. It  is,  in  fact,  a  matter  more 
worthy  of  thoughtful  consideration 
than  most  of  the  concerns  that  occupy 
the  attention  of  the  solons  of  our  State 
capitols. 


5Y/APATHY 

I  have  seen  the  face  of  a  free,  wild  thing; 

I  have  looked  in  eyes  that  have  not  known  fear; 
I  have  watched  a  spirit  wandering 

Where  it  willed  to  go  with  no  safeguard  near. 

The  steadfast  gaze  of  those  clear,  calm  eyes — 
The  cool  intent  of  unconscious  power — 

Made  the  great,  gray  wolf  kin  to  strength  that  lies 
In  a  lonely  heart  at  the  twilight  hour. 


BELLE  WILLEY  GUE. 


Lest   We    Forget   to    Play 

By  James  Edward  Rogers,  Secretary  oi  the  Recreation  League 

of  San  Francisco 


MAN  is  a  play  animal.     He  is 
not  a  work  animal,  as  some 
Puritans   would  have   us  be- 
lieve.    Indeed,  man   has   al- 
ways played  and  will  always  continue 
to  play. 

Play  is  instinctive,  elemental,  pri- 
mary. The  civic  value  of  this  play  in- 
stinct has  long  been  neglected,  much 
to  the  loss  of  nations.  The  nurturing 
of  this  human  demand  for  amusement 
is  most  vital  to  the  welfare  of  any 
people,  and  Percy  MacKaye,  in  his 
charming  book,  "The  Civic  Theatre," 
tersely  stated  the  problem  when  he  so 
well  said:  "The  use  of  a  nation's  lei- 
sure is  a  test  of  its  civilization."  Pub- 
lic amusement  is  indeed  public  con- 
cern. 

Communities  have  been  quick  in 
this  country  to  realize  that  they  must 
take  care  of  the  leisure  time  of  young 
and  old.  The  great  amount  of  leisure 
that  has  been  thrust  upon  the  working 
classes  is  potent  of  much  good  or  much 
harm.  The  use  of  leisure  is  a  training, 
an  accomplishment,  so  it  behooves  us 
to  bestir  ourselves  to  see  that  these 
new  classes  unused  to  leisure,  rightly 
spend  it  in  healthy  and  wholesome  re- 
creation rather  than  indulging  it  in 
wasteful  and  wild  dissipation. 

Philosophers  and  historians  in  their 
interpretation  of  the  rise  and  fall  of 
nations  fail  to  consider  this  human  de- 
sire for  recreation.  Some  of  these 
wise  men,  like  Kidd,  have  explained 
social  development  through  the  med- 
ium of  religion.  Others,  like  Darwin, 
through  science.  Others,  like  Tarde, 
by  way  of  psychology.  To  the  writer 
the  explanation  is  found  in  how  nations 
have  used  their  leisure  time.  Those 


nations  have  counted  where  the  peo- 
ple have  played  hard  in  healthy  sport 
and  found  intellectual  enjoyment  in 
wholesome  amusements.  Those  nations 
have  fallen  that  have  not  played,  and, 
if  they  did,  played  wrongly. 

In  the  dawn  of  history,  man  was  a 
hunter  and.  fisherman.  This  was  his 
work  and  pleasure.  Work  and  play 
was  one — the  ideal  combination.  In 
the  good  old  days,  man  roamed  the 
hills  and  sailed  his  boats  as  part  of 
his  daily  labor.  Hence  we  find  him 
large  in  frame  and  strong  in  muscle. 
The  human  race  was  vigorous.  That 
individual  or  nation  decays  that  spends 
all  its  time  in  all  play  or  in  all  work. 
The  secret  of  success  is  not  in  making 
your  play  simply  play  or  your  play 
hard  work,  but  in  making  your  work 
play. 

The  Greeks  knew  well  how  to  play 
and  to  exercise.  His  city  state  was 
based  upon  the  physical  education  of 
the  people.  She  rose  to  power  and 
glory  as  the  leading  race  of  the  an- 
cients because  of  her  wise  and  temper- 
ate use  of  leisure,  and  it  was  only 
when  the  Greeks  turned  from  their 
health  giving  recreation  to  their  health 
destroying  vices,  that  the  Greeks 
were  forced  to  give  way  to  the  more 
vigorous  Roman. 

The  Greek  schools  were  her  stad- 
iums; her  teachers  were  her  athletes; 
her  heroes  were  her  Olympic  victors. 
Greece  was  the  abode  of  the  Muses: 
the  home  of  poetry,  dancing,  music 
and  drama.  The  Ivre  of  the  poet  and 
the  harp  of  the  singer  are  always 
found  in  accompaniment  to  the  chisel 
of  the  sculptor  and  the  rule  of  the  ar- 
chitect. The  very  life  of  the  Greek 


84 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


was  his  day  full  of  wholesome  exer- 
cise and  intellectual  amusement  that 
strengthened  his  life  and  filled  it  with 
full  measure. 

Athens  flourished  because  her  peo- 
ple sought  wholesome  pleasures.  The 
Athenians  were  found  at  the  public 
baths,  at  the  Stadium,  at  the  theatres 
and  the  music  halls.  The  Spartans, 
too,  triumphed  because  they  pursued 
a  vigorous  outdoor  life  of  exercise  that 
trained  them  to  be  splendid  soldiers. 

The  fall  of  Greece  came  through 
Alexander  when  her  people  neglected 
to  take  any  interest  in  the  pastimes  of 
the  gymnasia,  and  the  sports  of  the 
Stadium.  It  came  when  they  became 
slaves  to  the  passive  sensual  pleasures 
that  came  from  the  deserts  and  valleys 
of  the  Oriental  East.  It  was  the  in- 
sidious passive  pleasures  of  the  effete 
Oriental  that  overthrew  the  vigorous 
active  sport  of  the  Occidental.  There 
is  perhaps  no  more  unique  bit  of  his- 
tory than  this  conquering  of  the  vigor- 
ous Greek — strong  in  limb  and  manly 
in  character — by  the  pleasure  loving 
Oriental — feeble  in  body  and  weak  in 
morals. 

It  was  the  substitution  of  wine,  of 
sensual  dance,  of  painted  women,  of 
hours  spent  in  useless  debate  and 
pleasures  of  banquet  that  paved  the 
way  for  the  coming  of  the  strong  Ro- 
man, who  found  his  outdoor  life  in  the 
woods,  fields  and  on  the  marches. 
Rome,  too,  at  first  was  untouched  by 
the  vicious  passive  pleasures  of  the 
East,  but  she,  too,  fell  because  in  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  overcome 
with  opulence  and  power,  she  neglected 
to  seek  the  vigorous  outdoor  life  of  the 
field  and  the  woods. 

In  place  of  the  hunter  and  soldier, 
he  becomes  the  habitue  of  dance  hall 
and  public  bath.  He  wants  hot  water 
in  place  of  cold  water.  It  was  with  an 
imperial  army  of  Romans,  trained  to 
the  hardships  of  battle  and  march  that 
permitted  Caesar  to  make  the  world  a 
Roman  Empire.  But  it  was  under  such 
pleasure  loving  emperors  as  Nero  that 
internal  decay  set  in  and  Rome  rapidly 
declined.  They  were  neglecting  the 
vigorous  sports.  They  were  forgetting 


how  to  work.  They  were  forgetting 
how  to  recreate.  In  brief,  their  sport, 
fighting,  work  and  recreation  were  per- 
formed by  slaves.  It  was  the  slave, 
and  not  the  Roman,  that  took  part  in 
the  gladiatorial  combats. 

The  Coliseum  marks  the  decline  of 
Rome.  Here  80,000  Romans  would 
flock  and  sit  for  hours  basking  in  the 
sun  to  watch  two  stalwart  gladiators 
fight  for  life.  These  gladiators  were 
not  Romans,  but  Barbarians.  The  Ro- 
mans only  cared  to  sit  and  watch  and 
to  comment.  Their  taste  degenerated 
into  a  love  for  gruesome  killing  as  a 
form  of  public  amusement.  Like  the 
Greeks,  they  also  were  captured  by  the 
charms  of  riotous  living  and  sensual 
pleasure.  The  banquet  hall  and  the 
public  bath  were  the  undoing  of  the 
Roman  Empire. 

Spain  was  the  next  country  to  rise 
in  glory  and  to  establish  a  world's  em- 
pire at  the  time  of  Ferdinand  and  Isa- 
bella. She,  too,  follows  the  law  "That 
the  test  of  a  nation's  civilization  is 
how  it  uses  its  leisure."  For  in  the 
beginning  its  people  were  strong  and 
virile,  and  interested  in  outdoor  life 
and  healthy,  intellectual  pastimes.  As 
a  consequence,  they  created  a  vigorous 
art  and  literature,  for  her  people  were 
energetic  and  strong.  But  they,  too, 
with  the  growth  of  power  and  wealth, 
turned  away  from  the  active  forms  of 
recreation  and  dissipated  their  energy 
in  foolish  pleasure  and  passive  amuse- 
ment. After  Philip  II,  the  decline  of 
the  Spanish  Empire  is  well  marked, 
and  Spain,  like  the  Greek  and  Roman 
Empires,  rapidly  declined  when  her 
people  ceased  to  play  hard. 
^  Then  in  the  footsteps  following 
Spain  came  France  as  a  world's  em- 
pire. At  the  start,  an  active  people 
full  of  vigor  and  a  love  of  out  of  doors 
— a  race  that  was  playful  and  bub- 
bling with  joyous  pleasures.  Under 
Louis  XIV,  France  rose  to  the  highest 
eminence,  but  soon  after  decadence  set 
in  as  with  the  other  countries,  and  she, 
too  was  forgetting  to  keep  up  the 
healthy,  out-door  recreation  life  of  her 
people,  gave  place  to  England  as  the 
first  power  in  Europe. 


LEST  WE  FORGET  TO  PLAY 


85 


The  people  began  to  overgamble, 
overeat,  overdress  and  overplay.  An 
age  of  self  indulgence  and  passive 
amusement  set  in,  and  seemed  to  take 
possession  of  all  the  upper  classes.  It 
is  during  this  period  of  French  his- 
tory that  the  student  of  society  finds 
all  the  signs  of  weakness  and  degen- 
eracy that  led  finally  to  sending  the 
Star  of  Empire  across  the  English 
Channel  to  the  British  Isles.  It  was 
the  extravagant  and  wasteful  pleasures 
of  the  nobility  that  ushered  In  the 
French  Republic  and  made  possible  a 
Napoleon. 

England  has  persisted  as  the  world's 
great  power  because  her  people  have 
persisted  in  play  and  active  sport.  The 
English  are  a  nation  of  sportsmen,  and 
it  is  their  sports  that  have  saved  them 
from  early  decay.  In  fact,  the  Teu- 
tonic races  of  the  world  dominate  in 
politics  and  power  because  they  enjoy 
the  outdoor  life  and  participate  in  vig- 
orous play.  The  insipid  nations  of  the 
Orient  long  died  with  their  effete 
pleasures.  However,  China,  Japan,  the 
Philippines,  are  rapidly  adopting  west- 
ern civilization  to  the  extent  of  tak- 
ing over  football,  baseball,  cricket, 
golf,  and  the  active  games  of  the  child- 
ren of  the  Occident.  The  Teuton  rows, 
hunts,  swims,  skees  and  fishes  vigor- 
ously. 

Yet  some  people  would  have  us  be- 
lieve that  there  are  symptoms  to-day 
in  England  that  would  transfer  the 
Star  of  Empire  across  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Americas.  They  tell  us  that  she 
is  following  the  footsteps  of  Greece, 
Rome,  Spain  and  France  in  that  her 
people  as  a  whole  are  no  longer  re- 
creating. The  village  green  is  either 
occupied  or  vacant.  The  public  house 
is  filled.  If  this  be  true,  England 
should  hearken  to  the  voice  of  history 
and  should  see  to  it  that  all  her  peo- 
ple actively  participate  in  healthy 
games  and  sports. 

There  are  many  signs  to  point  that 
the  Star  of  Empire  will  settle  on  the 
United  States,  for  the  American  people 
are  young,  active  and  strong.  We  are 
a  nation  of  athletes.  Our  universities 
and  schools  produce  them  by  the  thou- 


sands. We  capture  the  world's  cham- 
pionships. More  than  this,  the  people 
as  a  whole  seek  the  woods,  take  vaca- 
tions, walks,  and  seek  the  pleasures  of 
the  water. 

Yet  we  are  suffering  from  the  bad 
results  of  modern  industrialism  that 
has  ushered  in  the  concentration  of 
large  capital,  large  cities,  the  over- 
crowding of  population  that  has  given 
rise  to  a  host  of  other  evils,  such  as 
tuberculosis,  child  labor,  crime  and 
insanity.  In  many  of  our  large  popu- 
lated centers  there  has  already  leaped 
into  being  many  of  those  same  evil 
signs  of  decay  that  we  find  in  the  na- 
tions gone  before  when  they  began  to 
neglect  their  leisure. 

The  American  cities,  however,  have 
met  the  challenge  and  are  to-day  pro- 
viding recreation  parks,  centers,  pub- 
lic baths,  social  school  centers,  and 
other  forms  of  public  amusement  so  as 
to  provide  for  the  new  leisure  that  has 
been  thrust  upon  the  classes  Not  only 
are  our  cities  providing  all  facilities 
possible  to  keep  the  young  and  old 
actively  at  play,  but  they  are  also, 
through  police  boards,  censor  and 
license  boards,  controlling  and  regu- 
lating all  forms  of  commercial  recrea- 
tion that  cater  to  the  recreation  instinct 
of  the  race,  such  as  motion  pictures, 
pool  rooms,  dance  halls,  skating  rinks 
and  theatres. 

The  recreation  development  in  the 
American  civilization  has  been  most 
remarkable,  and  it  seems  that  the  Star 
of  Empire  will  long  rest  within  our 
borders  until  that  time  shall  come 
when  we  shall  forget  to  play. 

Millions  of  dollars  are  now  being 
spent  out  of  public  taxes  for  play  fa- 
cilities, out  of  door  and  indoor.  Most 
of  our  cities  have  recreation  commis- 
sions and  highly  developed  systems 
with  a  corps  of  trained  experts.  There 
are  over  7,000  men  and  women,  most- 
ly university  graduates,  in  this  new 
profession  of  taking  care  of  the  lei- 
sure hours  of  the  people.  Over  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  dollars  has  been  spent 
by  our  cities  in  the  past  ten  years  for 
public  recreation.  Chicago  alone  has 
spent  over  thirty  million  dollars,  and 


86 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  cities  of  the  Pacific  Coast  fifteen 
millions. 

If  the  Star  of  Empire,  in  obedience 
to  the  law  controlling  nations,  should 
continue  to  move  west  from  the  At- 
lantic to  the  Pacific  borders  of  these 
States,  it  is  destined  to  long  find  re- 
fuge in  California.  California,  per- 
haps more  than  any  other  State  in  this 
country,  through  its  communities  is 
making  ample  and  necessary  provision 
for  the  recreation  of  its  people.  Chico, 
Sacramento,  Stockton,  Kentfield,  Ber- 
keley, Oakland,  Alameda,  San  Fran- 
cisco, San  Jose,  Fresno,  Santa  Bar- 
bara, Los  Angeles,  San  Diego,  and 
many  other  communities  have  a  highly 
developed  recreation  system  that  in- 
cludes schools,  parks,  playgrounds 
and  athletic  fields  under  men  and  wo- 
men as  leaders  with  vision  and  sym- 
pathy. 

At  the  last  assembling  of  the 
State  Legislature,  California  took  the 
first  step  toward  providing  for  a  re- 
creation commission  or  commissioner 
to  develop  and  co-ordinate  the  recrea- 


tional facilities  of  the  State.  No  doubt 
the  next  Legislature  will  permanently 
establish  such  a  commission,  and  it  is 
not  far  distant  when  other  States  will 
follow  suit.  The  recreational  facilities 
in  the  mountains,  rivers,  shores  and 
valleys  of  this  State  are  yet  un- 
touched, and  much  yeoman  work  is  to 
be  dene. 

It  looks  as  if  the  law  of  nations, 
which  says  that  the  Star  of  Empire 
shall  rest  upon  that  nation  that  plays 
long,  hard  and  well,  will  hold  true  in 
California,  and  that  in  the  future  upon 
these  Pacific  shores  will  rise  up  the 
people  who  are  destined  to  rule  the 
world  unless  they  forget,  and  like 
others  before  them  seek  decadent 
pleasures  that  lead  on  to  vice,  disease, 
crime  and  other  civic  disorders.  It 
behooves  us,  therefore,  to  guard  and 
take  care  of  this  great  amount  of  lei- 
sure that  has  been  given  to  people  un- 
accustomed to  it.  California  is  doing 
well,  therefore,  in  building  for  the  fu- 
ture by  taking  care  of  the  leisure  of 
her  people. 


NOCTURNE 

The  lingering  rose  with  faint  reluctance  sighs, 

Resigns  her  petals  to  the  garden  bed, 
Blushing  a  deeper  crimson  ere  she  dies 

For  shame  that  all  her  sweetness  has  been  shed 
Upon  a  vagrant  breeze  that  whispered  soft  above  her  head. 

Kissed  by  the  evening  breeze  the  primrose  shy 

Slowly  unfolds  her  beauty  to  the  sight, 
And  turns  her  eager  chalice  towards  the  sky 

To  stay  some  furtive  dew-drops'  trembling  flight 
And  quench  her  golden  thirst  again  before  the  East  grows  light. 

The  nightingale  with  throbbing  notes  awakes 

The  dreamy  quiet  of  the  charmed  night 
In  quick  response,  an  answering  quiver  shakes 

The  rustling  poplars  wrapped  in  silver  light 
Of  moonbeams  stealing  through  the  web  of  mystery  and  night. 

THEODORE  SHAW. 


Two  Escape  From  Hell—No  Torment 

There ! 

By  C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,  Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 


*7/i  Hell  he  lifted  up  his  eyes." — 
Luke  16:23. 

THOSE  who  wrote  the  Bible  did 
their  duty  well.  The  Old  Tes- 
tament, covering  the  history  of 
over  four  thousand  years,  tells 
us  that  all  mankind  at  death  go  to 
Sheol — the  tomb.  The  New  Testament 
— written  in  Greek — tells  the  same 
story,  using  the  word  Hades  as  the 
translation  of  the  Hebrew  Sheol.  It 
is  in  modern  translations  of  the  Bible 
that  difficulty  is  encountered,  particu- 
larly in  the  English.  Nearly  all  these 
translations  have  been  made  within  the 
last  five  hundred  years.  For  1300  years 
before  the  Bible  had  been  little  known, 
because  not  translated  into  the  lan- 
guages of  the  people,  and  because  few 
could  have  read  it  if  it  had  been  trans- 
lated. 

In  the  Second  Century  the  theory 
prevailed  that  the  bishops  were  as 
much  inspired  as  the  Apostles  and  Je- 
sus; for  they  were  called  Apostolic 
bishops.  Bible  study  was  considered 
unnecessary,  because  these  Apostolic 
bishops  were  on  the  spot  to  give  up-to- 
date  information  and  communications 
from  God.  Then  followed  thirteen 
centuries  of  no  Bible  study,  during 
which  time,  as  the  Apostles  had  fore- 
warned, grievous  wolves  had  come  into 
the  flock,  making  merchandise  of  the 
sheep  for  their  own  profit.  (Acts  20: 
26-31.)  Gradually  the  doctrines  be- 
came so  mingled  with  errors  that  the 


false  teachers  enslaved  the  people  with 
fear,  and  then  extorted  money  for  the 
relief  of  the  fears. 

When  Bible  study  revived  in  the 
Fifteenth  Century,  the  errors  were  so 
intrenched  in  men's  minds  that  their 
thoughts  were  colored  respecting  every 
feature  of  faith.  Those  who  trans- 
lated the  Bible  doubtless  did  their  best 
to  set  forth  its  meaning,  but  uncon- 
sciously gave  little  twists,  in  their  en- 
deavor to  have  the  Bible  say  what  they 
thought  it  meant.  As  an  illustration, 
note  John  5 :29.  There  the  translators 
have  given  us  the  expression,  "resur- 
rection of  damnation,"  when  nothing  in 
the  Greek  justified  the  word  damna- 
tion. The  Revised  Version  renders  it 
properly,  "resurrection  of  judgment" — 
trial. 

When  the  Hebrew  word  Sheol  was 
being  translated,  Hell  was  the  nearest 
word  to  fit  their  ideas.  Hence  they 
translated  it  Hell  as  many  times  as 
possible;  and  only  when  this  was  im- 
possible did  they  give  something  ap- 
proaching the  proper  translation — the 
grave.  There  is  another  word  for 
grave — qeber,  a  sepulchre,  a  mound,  a 
monument.  But  do  their  best  to  make 
Hell  out  of  Sheol,  they  could  only  so 
translate  it  less  than  one-half  of  the 
whole  number  of  occurrences.  The 
Revised  translation  retains  the  He- 
brew Sheol  and  the  Greek  Hades,  say- 
ing, Let  the  reader  find  out  what  it 
means;  doubtless  he  will  think  that 
Sheol  is  the  "hot  place,"  and  so  the 


88 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


common  people  will  not  know  what  an 
eggregious  blunder  was  made  by  the 
theologians. 

Good  men  who  know  better  permit 
their  congregations  to  think  that  they 
believe  in  a  burning  Hell  of  torture, 
when  privately  they  confess  to  the  con- 
trary. But  they  say,  Let  us  not  do 
good,  lest  evil  follow — let  us  not  tell 
the  people,  lest  fewer  would  then  come 
to  church,  and  the  power  of  supersti- 
tion, which  holds  so  many,  be  broken. 
Poor  men!  They  seem  blind  to  the 
fact  that  these  devilish  doctrines  are 
driving  intelligent  people  away  from 
God,  from  the  Bible,  and  from  the 
churches. 

Two  Escape  from  Hell. 

The  Bible  tells  of  several  who  were 
released  from  Sheol,  but  of  two  the 
very  word  is  used.  The  Prophet  Jo- 
nah, swallowed  by  the  great  fish,  was 
in  its  belly  parts  of  three  days.  He 
calls  it  his  tomb-belly — a  sheol-belly. 
While  there  entombed,  he  cried  unto 
the  Lord  in  prayer,  and  the  Lord  de- 
livered him.  Jesus  tells  us  that  Jonah's 
experiences  typified  His  own — that  as 
Jonah  was  buried  in  the  sheol-belly  of 
the  fish,  He  would  be  buried  in  the 
Sheol  of  earth.  As  Jonah  came  forth 
on  the  third  day,  so  Jesus  came  forth. 
St.  Peter  points  out  that  this  was  pro- 
phesied of  Jesus,  saying,  "Thou  wilt 
not  leave  My  soul  in  (Sheol  or) 
Hades"— the  tomb.  He  says  that  God 
fulfilled  this  by  raising  Jesus  from  the 
dead."— Acts  2:27. 

Whoever  gets  the  proper  focus  will 
see  that  all,  good  and  bad,  go  down 
to  the  tomb — to  Sheol,  Hades,  called 
in  our  Bibles  Hell.  The  Scriptures 
very  distinctly  tell  us  that  "the  dead 
know  not  anything;"  that  "their  sons 
come  to  honor,  and  they  know  it  not; 
and  to  dishonor,  and  they  perceive  it 
not  of  them."  Why?  Because,  as 
again  the  Scriptures  say,  "There  is  nei- 
ther wisdom  nor  knowledge,  nor  de- 
vice, in  Sheol,  whither  thou  goest" — 
whither  all  go.  This  exactly  accords 
with  the  divine  statements,  "The  wages 
of  sin  is  death;"  "The  soul  that  sinneth 


it  shall  die."  There  is  not  a  word  in 
the  Bible  for  the  commonly  accepted 
thought  that  those  who  die  go  to 
Heaven  or  Purgatory  or  eternal  tor- 
ment. All  these  teachings  are  found 
in  the  various  creeds;  the  Bible  alone 
tells  the  simple  story,  reasonable,  har- 
monious. 

Gehenna  Fire — Second  Death. 

It  is  true  that  Jesus  used  the  words 
Gehenna  fire,  and  that  our  translators 
mixed  up  the  English  reader  by  trans- 
lating this  word  Hell,  the  same  as 
Hades.  But  as  all  scholars  will  admit, 
Jesus  used  the  word  fire  here  symboli- 
cally, just  as  we  use  it,  to  represent 
destruction.  Thus  our  newspapers 
tell  about  the  great  conflagration  in 
Europe — not  literally  fire,  but  war, 
causing  great  destruction. 

So  Jesus  pointed  out  that,  although 
He  had  come  to  save  men  from  death, 
and  eventually  by  a  resurrection  to  lift 
up  all  who  had  gone  down  to  Hades, 
nevertheless  the  relief  would  be  only 
temporary,  except  to  those  who  would 
conform  to  Divine  Law.  All  others 
under  the  Second  Trial  would  be  con- 
demned as  unworthy  of  everlasting 
life  and  would  die  again.  This  Second 
Death  would  be  everlasting,  because 
Christ  would  not  die  again  for  those 
who  would  sin  wilfully  after  being  re- 
leased from  the  first  sentence. 

Pointing  to  the  valley  outside  of  Je- 
rusalem, used  as  a  garbage  furnace 
and  called  in  the  Greek  Gehenna,  and 
in  Hebrew  Valley  of  Hinnom,  and  also 
Tophet,  Jesus  declared  that  it  illus- 
trated the  fate  of  all  wilful  sinners. 
Dead  cats  and  dogs,  etc.,  were  thrown 
into  the  Valley  of  Hinnom,  Gehenna, 
where  fires  were  kept  burning,  and 
where  brimstone  was  burned  to  kill 
the  germs. 

It  is  said  that  criminals  of  the  worst 
type,  after  execution,  were  thrown  into 
that  valley,  as  intimating  that  they 
would  not  share  in  the  resurrection. 
This  thought  Jesus  emphasized — the 
utter  destruction,  in  the  Second  Death, 
of  any  found  incorrigible  after  hav- 
ing leceived  full  opportunity  of  return 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


ix 


THE 

Paul  Gerson 

DRAMATIC  SCHOOL 

Incorporated  Under  the  Laws  of  the  State  of  California 

The   Largest  Training  School 
of  Acting  in  America 

The  Only  Dramatic  School  on  the  Pacific  Coast 

TENTH  YEAR 

Elocution,  Oratory, 
Dramatic  Art 

Advantages: 

Professional  Experience  While  Study- 
ing. Positions  Secured  for  Graduates. 
Six  Months  Graduating  Course.  Stu- 
dents Can  Enter  Any  Time. 

Arrangements  can  be  made  with  Mr.  Gerson 
for   Amateur   and    Professional    Coaching 

Paul  Gerson  Dramatic  School  Bldg. 
MCALLISTER  and   HYDE  STREET 

San    Francisco,   Cal. 
Write  for  Catalogue. 


Get  This  Set  of  Three 
Calendars  Free 

These  beautiful  calendars  are 
ideal  decorations  for  your 
boudoir,  library  or  den.  They 
are  printed  in  soft,  artistic 
colors  on  heavy  art  paper, 
(Size  4&  by  10) 

Kindly  send  5c  to  cover  wrapping 
and  mailing. 

Gouraud's 

Oriental  Cream 

The  ideal  liquid  face  powder 
has  been  the  favorite  on  two 
Continents  for  nearly  three 
quarters  of  a  century. 

FERD.   T.    HOPKINS  &  SON,  Props. 

37  Great  Jones  Street,  New  York 


EXCLUSIVE  COUNTY  REPRESENTATIVES  WANTED 

BIG  MONEY  FOR  THE  RIGHT  MEN 

We  can  put  1,000  men  to  work  for  themselves 
within  30  days  if  the  right  men  will  only  answer  this 
offer:  If  you  have  just  a  few  dollars  to  invest,  here 
is  your  opportunity  to  get  into  high-class,  profitable, 
permanent  business,  with  a  million  dollar  company 
right  back  of  you  every  minute. 

Write  For  Our  1915  Selling  Contract 

Don't  waste  your  time,  and  ours,  writing,  unless 
you  mean  business.  No  former  selling  experience 
necessary — just  a  clean  character,  a  natural  American  Hustle,  and  a  few  dollars, 
is  all  you  need.  Never  was  there  a  better  time  than  right  now  to  make  this 
start  for  yourself.  Don't  wait — write  at  once. 

If  not  interested  please  show  to  a  friend 


Fox  Typewriter  Co. 

4807-4817  Front  Ave.,  Grand  Rapids,  Mich. 


From  Overland  Monthly  for  July 
Name 


Address 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


to  God  through  the  merit  of  Christ's 
sacrifice.  The  Bible  everywhere  holds 
out  the  thought  that  the  Church  now, 
and  the  world  in  its  trial  Day  future, 
will  be  in  danger  of  Gehenna  destruc- 
tion— the  Second  Death.  Speaking  of 
wilful  sinners  against  full  light,  St. 
Paul  says:  "Who  shall  be  punished 
with  everlasting  destruction."  (2 
Thess.  1:7-9.)  St.  Peter  says,  they 
shall  perish  "like  natural  brute 
beasts."— 2  Peter  2:12. 

Release  from  Sheol,  Hades,  the  Tomb. 

Bible  students  know  that  Sheol 
and  Hades  could  not  be  places  of  eter- 
nal torture;  for  the  Scriptures  say  that 
they  shall  be  destroyed.  If  Sheol  and 
Hades  are  to  be  destroyed,  how  could 
anybody  be  tortured  there  everlasting- 
ly ?  The  clergy  know  these  things  very 
well,  but  hide  them  from  the  people. 
Hosea  13:14  reads,  "0  grave  (Sheol), 
I  will  be  thy  destruction!"  1  Corin- 
thians 15:55,  "O  grave  (Hades), 
where  is  thy  victory?"  Revelation 
20:14,  "Death  and  Hell  (Hades),  shall 
be  cast  into  the  Lake  of  Fire.  This  is 
the  Second  Death." 

These  Scriptures  mean  that  the 
grave  shall  not  always  triumph  over 
the  human  family,  that  mankind  will 
be  delivered  by  Messiah's  Kingdom 
from  the  power  of  the  tomb,  that  we 
can  rely  upon  God's  promise  that  ul- 
timately Hades,  the  tomb,  will  be  de- 
stroyed in  the  Second  Death,  sym- 
bolically represented  by  the  Lake  of 
Fire.  Note  that  the  symbol  is  ex- 
plained— "the  Lake  of  Fire,  which  is 
the  Second  Death." 

In  other  words,  all  that  are  in  their 
graves,  in  the  tomb,  the  prison-house 
of  death,  shall  ultimately  be  set  free 
by  the  great  Deliverer,  the  glorified 
Christ,  who  already  has  laid  down  His 
life  as  the  Ransom-price,  that  sinners 
might  not  perish,  but  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  everlasting  life. 

This  opportunity  has  yet  come  only 
to  the  Church,  and  to  her  by  promise. 
Her  covenant  is  to  follow  in  her  Mas- 
ter's footsteps  unto  death,  and  the 
promise  is  that  she  shall  have  a  super- 


ior resurrection,  because  of  greater 
trials  of  faith  and  obedience  to  sacri- 
fice. "The  gates  of  Hell  shall  not  pre- 
vail against  her."  (Matthew  16:18.) 
That  is,  as  the  Heavenly  Father  raised 
up  Jesus  Christ  from  the  dead,  so  the 
gates  of  death  shall  not  prevail  against 
the  Church.— 1  Cor.  15 :42-44. 

With  the  world  it  will  be  different. 
Everything  under  the  New  Dispensa- 
tion will  prove  that  the  reign  of  sin 
and  Satan  has  terminated,  that  the 
Reign  of  Righteousness  has  begun. 
They  will  find  themselves,  not  only 
coming  back  from  the  tomb,  "every 
man  in  his  own  order,"  but  gradually 
raised  out  of  imperfection  and  weak- 
ness back  to  all  that  was  lost  in  Adam 
and  redeemed  at  Calvary  if  they  will 
follow  instructions.  The  great  prison 
house  will  give  up  the  prisoners;  for 
He  who  died  on  Calvary  obtained  the 
key  of  Hades,  as  He  tells  us.— Isaiah 
49:9;  Revelation  1:18. 

The  Rich  Man  in  Hell. 

The  parable  of  the  Rich  Man  and 
Lazarus  would  seem  very  simple  if  our 
minds  had  not  been  perverted  with 
error;  but,  filled  with  the  perversion, 
many  find  this  parable  difficult  to  un- 
derstand and  are  inclined  to  throw 
away  the  entire  Bible  because  of  it. 
We  hope  to  make  the  matter  very 
plain.  To  be  thorough,  we  must  note 
the  fact  that  lovers  of  the  eternal  tor- 
ment doctrine  insist  that  this  is  not 
a  parable,  but  a  literal  description. 
Let  us  see.  Does  it  seem  reasonable 
to  say  that  with  nothing  said  about 
his  character  as  being  either  mortal  or 
immortal,  but  simply  on  account  of  his 
fine  clothes,  his  sumptuous  food  and 
his  riches,  a  man  should  be  eternally 
roasted?  Is  that  a  logical  interpreta- 
tion? 

Similarly,  it  is  not  said  that  Laza- 
rus was  moral  or  immoral,  but  merely 
that  he  was  poor,  ate  crumbs  at  the 
rich  man's  gate,  and  was  full  of  sores, 
which  dogs  licked.  Is  it  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  sores  and  destitution, 
without  character,  would  be  qualifica- 
tions for  Heaven  ?  Surely  not !  If  all 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xi 


Three  generations 

of  the  Vose  family  have  made  the  art  of  man- 
ufacturing the  Vose  Piano  their  life-work.  For 
63  years  they  have  developed  their  instruments 
with  such  honesty  of  construction  and  materials, 
and  with  such  skill,  that  the  Vose  Piano  of  to- 
day is  the  ideal  Home  Piano. 

Delivered  in  your  home  free  of  charge.  Old  instruments 
taken  as  partial  payment  in  exchange.  Time  Payments 
accepted,  If  interested,  send  for  catalogues  today. 


BORDEN'S 
BETTER  BABIES 

Make  your  baby  a  "better  baby"  by  giving  him  the  food  that 
has  built  three  generations  of  happy  boys  and  girls — 


EAUrf    F" 
JriL.^J  JL-r  JtLf 

^  _       BRAND  -^ 

CONDENSED 

MILK 

THE  ORIGINAL 

OUMMER-TIMEis  danger-time  for  babies. 
0  Protect  your  baby  againstsummer  ailments. 
If  you  cannot  nurse  your  baby  give  him  nour- 
ishing "Eagle  Brand."  He  will  grow  plump 
and  rosy  on  it.  Pure — safe — easy  to  prepare. 
Send  today  for  our  helpful  hook, "Baby's 
Welfare,"  which  tells  how  to  safeguard  your 
baby  against  summer  troubles. 

Borden's  Condensed  Milk  Co. 


"Leaders  of 
Quality" 

108  Hudson  St. 
NEW  YORK 


INCREASE  THE  YIELD  OF  YOUR  FARM 

The  European  war  is  doubling  the  demand  for  American  farm  pro- 
ducts. We  can  increase  our  acreage,  but  this  will  not  meet  the  demand — 
we  must  increase  our  yields  per  acre.  We  must  do  better  farming,  not 
only  in  the  East  and  Middle  West,  but  in  the  great  grain  raising  territory 
west  of  the  Missouri  River. 

Everybody  knows  that  by  following  the  Campbell  System  of  Soil 
Culture  crop  yields  have  been  doubled  in  every  State  of  the  Union  from 
New  York  to  California.  Why  not  learn  what  the  principles  of  the  Camp- 
bell System  are,  and  adopt  them?  You  can  get  all  this  and  a  thorough 
agricultural  education  without  leaving  home  by  taking  a  course  in  the 


CAMPBELL  CORRESPONDENCE  SCHOOL  OF  SOIL  CULTURE 

You  can  have  your  choice  of  eight  courses,  Soil  Tillage,  Soil  Improve- 
ment, Small  Farming,  Horticulture,  Irrigation,  Dry  Farming,  Farm  Engi- 
neering and  Animal  Husbandry,  all  for  a  nominal  tuition  fee,  no  board  to 
pay,  no  books  to  buy,  everything  furnished,  and  you  can  use  your  spare 
time  while  still  running  your  farm  or  holding  your  job. 

We  cannot  tell  you  all  about  these  courses,  the  faculty  and  the  free 
bureau  of  advice  in  this  ad.,  but  we  will  be  glad  to  send  you  full  information 
at  any  time.  Write  and  ask  for  our  free  catalogue  No.  3,  and  a  sample 
copy  of  the  Scientific  Farmer. 

CAMPBELL  CORRESPONDENCE  SCHOOL  MASONIC  TEMPLE,  BILLINGS,  MONTANA 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


rich  people  go  to  eternal  torment,  if  all 
people  who  wear  fine  linen  and  purple 
clothing  and  have  plenty  to  eat  must 
suffer  to  all  eternity,  what  an  aristo- 
cratic place  Hell  would  be,  and  how 
full  it  would  be!  On  the  other  hand, 
if  only  those  who  have  sores  and  dogs 
to  lick  them,  who  lie  at  a  rich  man's 
gate  and  eat  crumbs  from  his  table,  go 
to  Heaven,  how  few  of  us  will  get 
there!  Moreover,  if  it  is  a  literal 
statement,  then  Abraham  here  is  a  lit- 
eral person,  as  well  as  Lazarus;  and 
when  Lazarus  would  get  into  his 
bosom,  how  many  more  could  Abra- 
ham hold  without  letting  some  drop? 
Surely  this  is  not  a  literal  statement, 
but  a  parable.  Let  us  treat  it  from  this 
viewpoint,  remembering  that  a  par- 
able never  means  what  it  says.  For 
instance,  in  the  parable  of  the  Wheat 
and  Tares,  the  wheat  does  not  mean 
wheat,  but  "children  of  the  Kingdom;" 
the  tares,  "children  of  the  Wicked 
One."  Accordingly,  the  Rich  Man 
does  not  mean  a  rich  man,  but  stands 
for  some  class;  and  Lazarus  does  not 
mean  a  poor  man,  but  stands  for  some 
class.  Let  us  thus  apply  the  matter. 

Interpretation  of  the  Parable. 

» 

We  suggest  that  the  Rich  Man  of 
the  parable  represented  the  Jewish 
nation,  rich  in  God's  favor.  They 
"fared  sumptuously"  as  no  other  peo- 
ple did.  To  them  belonged  the  prom- 
ise of  the  Kingdom,  represented  by  the 
purple  raiment  of  royalty.  As  a  peo- 
ple they  had  the  purging  of  their  sins, 
typical  justification,  accomplished  on 
their  annual  Atonement  Day.  This 
was  their  "fine  linen,"  representing 
that  righteousness  was  thus  imputed 
to  them  as  a  people. 

In  A.  D.  70,  the  Rich  Man,  the  Jew- 
ish nation,  died,  when  the  last  vestige 
of  their  government  was  destroyed  by 
Titus,  the  Roman  General.  The  nation 
has  been  asleep  in  Hades  ever  since, 
though  the  Jews  have  been  very  much 
alive  and  have  suffered  many  things, 
especially  amongst  professed  Christ- 
ians of  the  tare  class.  Zionism,  which 
has  sprung  up  within  the  past  thirty 


years,  is  the  revival  of  hope  that  the 
Rich  Man  will  be  resurrected  from 
Hades;  and  present  indications  point 
to  this  as  a  matter  of  speedy  accom- 
plishment— as  soon  as  the  fulness  of 
the  Gentiles  shall  have  come  into"  Spir- 
itual Israel.— Romans  11 :25-32. 

Lazarus  represented  outcasts  who 
desired  favor  with  God,  but  were 
"aliens  and  strangers  from  the  com- 
monwealth of  Israel" — Gentiles.  They 
had  no  table  with  Divine  promises 
from  which  to  "fare  sumptuously  every 
day,"  no  share  in  the  promises  of  roy- 
alty represented  by  the  purple  robes, 
no  "fine  linen,"  representing  justifica- 
tion from  sin.  Those  things  belonged 
to  the  Jew  exclusively,  until  his  na- 
tional rejection  and  the  subsequent 
opening  of  the  door  to  the  Gentiles, 
that  they  might  become  fellow-heirs 
with  the  saintly  Jews,  and  followers 
of  Jesus  in  the  glorious  things  of 
God's  arrangement. 

As  the  Jew  died  to  his  favors,  so  the 
Gentile  died  to  his  disfavor.  As  angels 
carried  Lazarus  to  Abraham's  bosom, 
so  the  early  Jewish  Church,  messen- 
gers of  God  and  Christ,  received  be- 
lieving Gentiles  into  full  fellowship  as 
brethren  of  the  Seed  of  Abraham.  This 
figuratively  is  described  as  Lazarus  in 
Abraham's  bosom — treated  as  his 
child. 

The  Rich  Man  represented  especi- 
ally two  tribes — Judah  and  Benjamin. 
Proportionately,  the  five  brethren 
would  represent  the  ten  tribes.  The 
parable  represents  the  Rich  Man  as 
saying,  I  have  five  brethren.  May  not 
something  be  done  for  them?  The 
answer  shows  that  only  Israelites 
could  be  meant — "They  have  Moses 
and  the  Prophets;  let  them  hear 
them."  Only  the  twelve  tribes  of  Is- 
rael had  Moses  and  the  Prophets.  The 
Gentiles  had  them  not. 

"In  Hell  He  Lifted   Up  His  Eyes." 

The  dogs  licking  the  sores  in  the 
parable  represent  that  the  Lazarus 
•class  were  companions  of  dogs — in- 
deed, "dogs"  was  a  name  which  Jews 
commonly  gave  Gentiles.  Jesus  Him- 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xiii 


American     Open    Air 
School  Journal 

Devoted  to  the  purpose  of  Vitalizing  school  children 
by  means  of  fresh  air  class-rooms  and  Open  Air 
Schools.  Official  organ  of  the  American  Open  Air 
School  Association,  a  national  society  for  the  ex- 
tension of  fresh  air  schools.  Beautifully  printed  and 
profusely  illustrated;  contains  reports  of  practical 
work  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 
Interests  thoughtful  parents,  Health  Officials,  Edu- 
cators, School  Medical  Inspectors,  whole  com- 
munities. Not  a  Juvenile  publication,  but  a  Big 
Man's  Journal.  Issued  monthly  at  $1.00  per  year; 
each  number  worth  ten  times  its  cost.  1140  Eeal 
Estate  Trust  Building,  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.  S.  A. 
Subscribe  for  it  today. 


BMHiBBiaHHBBHntHHIBM 

Leghorn   Breeders! 

Send  in  your  subscription   to   The  2 
Leghorn  Journal  and  keep  posted  on    t 
the  progress  of  the  Leghorn  industry; 
as  it  is  devoted  exclusively  to  the  dif- 
ferent Leghorn  fowls.      Subscription 
price  5Oc.  per  year.      Special  offer- 
Send  us  lOc.  and  the  names  of  five 
^   of  your  neighbors  interested  in  Leg- 
I    horns    and    we    will    send    you     The 
I  Leghorn  Journal  for  three   months. 

5  THE    LEGHORN    JOURNAL 

S  APPOMATTOX,  VA. 

IMKKSSO 


TI  TDS°N  Freight  Forwar^ng:  Co. 

I  ^J  household  goods  to  and  from  all  points  on  the 

**  Pacific  Coast  443  Marquette  Building,  Chicago 

640  Old  South  Bidg.,  Boston  I  1501  Wright  Bldg.,  St.  Louis 
324  Whitehall  Bldg.,  N.  Y.  878 Monadnock Builing, San 
435  Oliver  Bldg.,  Pittsburgh  |  Francisco 

516  Central  Building,  Los  Angeles 
Write  nearest  office 


A  MONTH 

Buys  This  Visible 

OLIVER  Typewriter 


Unusual  offer.  We  are  sell- 
ing the  famous  Oliver 
'No.  5  at  a  greatly  re- 
duced price.  You  save 
$44.00  We  have  no 
salesmen,  no  commis- 
sions, no  branch 
houses.  All  this  extra 
saving  it  yours.  We 
give  you  a  FREE 
TRIAL  first,  before 
you  pay  us  a  cent ! 

FREE  Trial 

Nothing     Down  ! 

If  you  decide  to  keep 
it,  send  us  as  low  as 

$4  per  month.  This  is  the  standard  Oliver,  fresh  from 
ae  factory,  with  all  the  Oliver  features  — visible  writing. 
narginal  releas*,  universal  keyboard,  etc.  Don't  buy  till 
you  have  seen  our  Free  Trial  Offer  and  remarkably  low  price. 
Write  us  now.  before  you  forget  it.  (305) 

TYPEWRITERS  DISTRIBUTING  SYNDICATE      1 510-51  E  Wabash  Ave..  Chicago 


MANZANITA     HALL 

PALO    ALTO,     CALIFORNIA 

Makes  a  specialty  of  preparing  boys  and  young  men 
for  entrance  to  the  universities.  The  location,  adjacent 
to  Stanford  University  and  to  Palo  Alto,  a  town  of  re- 
markable culture,  makes  possible  a  school  life  of  unusual 
advantages  and  opportunities. 

For  catalogue  and  specific  information,  address 

W.  A.  SHEDD,  Head  Master 


Gouraud's  Oriental  Beauty  Leaves 

A  dainty  little  booklet  of  exquisitely  perfumed 
powdered  leaves  to  carry  in  the  purse.  A  handy 
article  for  all  occasions  to  quickly  improve  the 
complexion.  Sent  for  10  cents  in  stamps  or  coin. 
F.  T.  Hopkins,  37  Great  Jones  St.,  New  York. 


IICAI      nC     IRCAC 

MEN  Dr  IDEAS 


and  inventive  ability 
should  write  for  new 
"Lists  of  Needed  Inven- 
tions," Patent  Buyers  and  "How  to  Get  Tour  Patent 
and  Your  Money."  Advice  FREE.  Randolph  &  Co., 
Patent  Attorneys,  Dept.  86,  Washington,  D.  C. 


F.     MARRIOTT,     Publisher 

A  Journal  for  the  Cultured 
Oldest  and  Brightest  Week- 
ly Newspaper  on  the  Paci- 
fic Coast.  10  Cents  Per  Copy 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


self  used  it,  and  gives  an  illustration 
of  how  believing  Gentiles  occasionally 
ate  crumbs  from  the  Rich  Man's 
table.  The  Syrophenician  woman  re- 
quested healing  for  her  daughter,  but 
Jesus  declined,  saying,  "It  would  not 
be  proper  to  take  the  food  from  the 
children's  table  (the  Jews)  and  give  it 
to  dogs  (Gentiles.)  She  answered, 
"Yes,  Lord;  yet  the  dogs  under  the 
table  eat  of  the  children's  crumbs." 
Then  Jesus  said:  "O  woman,  great  is 
thy  faith!"  and  He  gave  her  the  crumb 
of  relief  which  was  not  hers  by  right; 
for  He  testified,  "I  am  not  sent  save 
unto  the  lost  sheep  of  the  House  of 
Israel."  The  time  had  not  yet  come 
for  giving  Gentiles  a  place  in  God's 
family  as  children  of  Abraham. 

Who  cannot  see  in    this    beautiful 
parable  a  teaching    in    full    harmony 


with  God's  Wisdom,  Justice,  Love  and 
Power  as  it  has  applied  during  this 
Gospel  Age?  The  parable  does  not 
show  how  God's  favor  will  return  to 
the  Jew  in  due  time;  other  Scriptures, 
however,  clearly  teach  this,  as  we  have 
pointed  out.  May  our  eyes  of  under- 
standing open  to  a  true  knowledge  of 
God's  Word,  and  to  a  true  appreciation 
of  his  glorious  character!  Then  we 
shall  love  him  better,  and  serve  Him, 
not  from  fear,  but  as  dear  children. 

I  offer  free  of  charge  a  booklet  writ- 
ten with  a  view  to  making  these  figu- 
rative statements  clear.  Whoever  will 
address  me — Pastor  Russell,  Brooklyn, 
N.  Y. — requesting  a  copy  of  a  pam- 
phlet about  Hell,  will  be  promptly 
served  free  of  charge.  That  pamphlet 
will  clearly  and  concisely  settle  all 
your  questions. 


^^  fifiAflteaLg*- 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xv 


The  German  Savings 
and  Loan  Society 

(The  German   Bank) 
Savings  Incorporated   1868  Commercial 

526    California    Street,    San    Francisco,    Cal. 
(Member  of  the  Associated   Savings   Banks  of  San 

Francisco) 

The  following  Branches  for  Receipt  and  Payment 
of  Deposits  only: 
MISSION  BRANCH— S.  E.  CORNER  MISSION  AND 

21ST  STREETS 
RICHMOND   DISTRICT  BRANCH— S.  W.  CORNER 

CLEMENT  AND  7TH   AVENUE 

HAIGHT     STREET      BRANCH— S.      W.      CORNER 

HAIGHT  AND  BELVEDERE 


December  31st,  1914: 

Assets    $58,584,596.93 

Deposits    . .. 55,676,513.19 

Capital  actually  paid  up  in  Cash   1,000,000.00 

Reserve  and  Contingent  Funds 1,908,083.74 

Employees'    Pension    Fund    188,521.05 

Number   of    Depositors    66,442 


Office  Hours:  10  o'clock  A.  M,  to  3  o'clock  P.  M., 
except  Saturdays  to  12  o'clock  M.  and  Saturday 
evenings  from  6  o'clock  P.  M.  to  8  o'clock  P.  M. 
for  receipt  of  deposits  only. 

For  the  6  months  ending  December  31st,  1914,  a 
dividend  to  depositors  of  4%  per  annum  was  de- 
clared. 


Every  parent  should  demonstrate  to  the 
children  at  home,  the  necessity  of  demand- 
ing at  all  times,  a  pure,  certified  pasteurized 
drink  like 

SPARKLING   PINELLA 

made  from  Clark's  pure  Hawaiian  Pine- 
apple Juice,  refined  cane  sugar  and  Water 
from  Shasta  Springs. 

No  preservatives.  No  artificial  coloring. 
Quenches  thirst,  doesn't  create  it. 

Ask  your  dealer. 

Shasta  Water  Company 


CALIFORNIA 

AND  PACIFIC  COAST 

Nature's  Exposition 

and  all-the-year  vacation  ground 

Yosemite  National  Park 
Marjposa  Big  Tree  Grove 
Shasta  Springs  and  Resorts 
Del  Monte  and  Monterey  Bay  Points 

Paso  Robles,    Santa  Barbara   and 
Coast  Country 

Los  Angeles  and  its  Beaches 

Pasadena,  Riverside,  Redlands  and 
San  Bernardino 

Byron,  ParaisoandGilroy  Hot  Springs 

Santa   Clara,    Pajaro   and    Salinas 
Valleys 

Lake  County  Resorts  and  Springs 
Lake  Tahoe  and  Sierra  Region 
Klamath  and  Crater  Lakes 
Kings  and  Kern  River  Canyons 
Santa  Cruz, Mountains  and  Big  Trees 
Sacramento  and  San  Joaquin  Valleys 

San  Francisco,  Oakland,    Berkeley 
and  Bay  Region 

Willamette,     Umpqua    and    Rogue 
River  Valleys 

Portland,  Tacoma  and  Seattle 

For  Fares,  Train  Service  and   Descriptive 
Booklets  ask  Agents 

SOUTHERN 
PACIFIC 

THE  EXPOSITION  LINE-1915-FIRSTIN  SAFETY 


"The  Scarlet  Plague,"  by  Jack  Lon- 
don, author  of  "The  Call  of  the 
Wild,"  "The  Mutiny  of  the  Elsnore," 
etc.  Illustrated  by  Gordon  Grant. 

The  author's  fantastic  conception  in 
this  book  is  the  present  civilization  ef- 
faced by  a  great  plague  which  sweeps 
over  the  earth.  Only  a  few  scattered 
human  beings  survive  the  terrible  ca- 
tastrophe. The  scene  is  laid  in  Cali- 
fornia, and  there  some  score  of  the 
survivors  gradually  meet  each  other, 
intermarry,  and  form  the  nucleus  of  a 
new  civilization.  The  story  opens  with 
one  of  these  survivors  recounting  his 
awful  experience  during  the  plague 
to  one  of  his  grandchildren,  a  lad  clad 
in  skins  and  skilled  in  the  use  of  a 
bow  and  arrows  for  procuring  the 
necessary  food  for  the  family. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  out  of  this 
great  European  war  a  great  pestilence 
may  arise.  The  germs  of  this  plague 
set  free,  penetrate  to  every  clime,  and 
most  of  those  who  have  not  surren- 
dered up  their  lives  in  battle  perish 
with  the  disease.  With  our  present 
specialized  knowledge — one  man,  for 
example,  is  versed  in  letters  but  knows 
nothing  of  machinery,  another  is  a 
skilled  mechanic,  but  is  wholly  ignor- 
ant of  farming — what  would  be  the 
result  when  only  a  few  are  left  to 
grapple  with  the  complexities  of  mod- 
ern culture?  The  relapse  of  civiliza- 
tion into  barbarism  is  a  theme  which, 
as  those  familiar  with  Mr.  London's 
style  will  at  once  see,  is  admirably 
suited  to  his  powers  as  a  novelist.  He 
has  well  realized  its  tremendous  pos- 
sibilities. "The  Scarlet  Plague"  is  not 
only  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  grip- 
ping books  Mr.  London  has  ever  writ- 
ten; it  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  tale  of 
very  great  present  significance. 

Price,  $1  net.  Published  by  The' 
Macmillan  Company,  New  York. 


"Lights  and  Shadows  in  Confederate 
Prisons,"     a     Personal  Experience, 
1864-5,  by  Homer  B.  Sprague,  Ph. 
D.     Bvt-Colonel  13th     Connecticut 
Volunteers,  Sometime  Professor  in 
Cornell,  and  President  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  North  Dakota. 
This  narrative  of  prison  life  differs 
from  the  usual  run  of  such  experiences 
in  that  it  is  careful  to  put  the  best  pos- 
sible construction  upon  the  treatment 
of  Union  prisoners  by  the  Confeder- 
ates, and  to  state  and  emphasize  kind- 
ness and   courtesies  received  by  the 
Confederates   from  their     opponents. 
The  book  is  accurate,  as  it  is  based  on 
a  diary  kept  from  day  to  day  by  the 
writer;  all  his  references  are  from  the 
best  obtainable  records.     The  author 
sheds  illuminating  side  lights  on  the 
terrible  expedients  exercised  in  war, 
where  thousands  of  men  at  a  time  are 
allowed  to  perish.     Read  in  the  light 
of  the  present  war,  this  book  shows 
how  terrible  and  cruelly  exacting  is  the 
toll  of  life  on  the  combatants ;  that  war 
is  Juggernaut  destroying  life  relent- 
lessly to  attain  certain  ends. 

$1.50  net.  Published  by  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons,  New  York. 

"Pals  First,"  by  Francis  P.  Elliott. 

Danny  and  the  Dominie  are  outcasts 
— escaped  convicts  both,  but  both  men 
of  originally  good  antecedents.  The 
Dominie  is  a  graduate  of  an  English 
university  and  was  once  the  pastor  of 
an  English  church.  Danny,  too,  has 
had  a  college  education;  he  was  for- 
merly a  bank  teller,  and  is  now  a  pick- 
pocket. The  Dominie  is  old,  sour, 
and  cynical.  Danny,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  young  and  full  of  the  joy  of 
life;  hardened,  indeed,  to  his  own  kind 
of  wickedness,  but  essentially  clean- 
minded  and  with  something  of  un- 
tainted boyishness  in  him.  The  older 


Please  Mention  Overland  Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


xvii 


In  Service  APRIL   12th  and 
Daily  Thereafter 

THE 

SCENIC  LIMITED 


America's  Latest  Transcontinental  Train 
A  New  Thru  Fast  All-Steel  Train 

'SAN  FRANCISCO 

and 
ST.  LOUIS 

Passing  Thru  The 

Scenic  Sierras  and  Rockies 

By  Daylight 
"EVERY  MILE  A  PICTURE" 

The  Scenic  Way  to  or  from 

'Panama -'Pacific  Exposition 

Be  sure  your  ticket  reads  either 
on   the   going    orf!  return    trip 

Via 

"The  Scenic  Line  of  the  World." 
E.  L.  LOMAX 

Asst.  Passenger  Traffic  Manager 
San  Francisco,  Cal. 


The  Vose  Player  Piano 

is  so  constructed  that  even  a  little 
child  can  play  it.  It  combines  our  superior  player 
action  with  the  renowned  Vose  Pianos  which  have 
been  manufactured  during  63  years  by  three  gene- 
rations of  the  Vose  family.  In  purchasing  this  in- 
strument you  secure  quality,  tone,  and  artistic  merit 
at  a  moderate  price,  on  time  payments,  if  desired. 
Catalogue  and  literature  sent  on  request  to  those 
interested.  Send  today. 

You  should  become  a  satisfied  owner  of  a      ..  ^ 


PLAYER 
PIANO 

VOSE  fc  SONS  PIANO  CO.,  189  BoyUton  St.,  Boston,  M. 


Crossing  the  Plains 

A  Narrative  of  Early  Emigrant 

Travel  to  California,  by  the 

Ox-Team  Method 

AS  A    BOOK 

To  satisfy  the  demand  for  Wm.  Audley 
Maxwell's  instructive  and  highly  interesting 
story  in  form  suitable  for  the  library  and  as 
a  present  to  friends,  this  narrative,  now  run- 
ning as  a  serial  in  the  Overland  Monthly, 
will  appear  as  a  book,  bound  in  stiff  paper 
cover,  with  20  striking  illustrations. 

Retail  50  cents,  postpaid 

The  public  and  the  trade  supplied  by 

San  Francisco  News  Company 


747  HOWARD  STREET 


SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL. 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


man  is  wholly  dependent  upon  the 
younger,  and  between  the  two  there 
exists  an  affection  that  is  genuine  and 
deep.  Plodding  along  a  country  road 
in  Tennessee,  they  find  themselves  at 
nightfall  in  what  seems  a  houseless  re- 
gion. Groping  forward  through  the 
darkness,  they  find  an  iron  fence 
through  which  they  see  first  a  moving 
light  and  then  the  dim  outlines  of  a 
large  manor.  In  response  to  their  hail 
an  old  negro  carrying  a  lantern  comes 
to  the  closed  gate  outside  of  which 
they  are  standing.  Danny  borrows  a 
match  of  him,  and  as  its  flare  lights 
his  countenance  the  negro  in  joyful 
surprise  greets  him  as  the  long-absent 
master  of  the  house,  who  has  been 
given  up  by  some  of  his  friends  for 
dead.  This  effective  beginning  with 
its  immediate  appeal  to  the  reader's 
curiosity,  with  its  suggestion  of  mys- 
tery and  its  complete  surprise,  prom- 
ises an  intriguing  story,  and  the  story 
that  follows  fully  meets  one's  expec- 
tations. 

Published     by  Harper  &  Brothers, 
Franklin  Square,  New  York. 


"Rabindranath  Tagore":  A  Bio- 
graphical Study,  by  Ernest  Rhys. 
Mr.  Rhys  is  a  critic  of  recognized 
standing,  and  more  than  ordinarily 
sympathetic  in  his  appreciation  of 
Tagore's  viewpoint;  he  has  written  a 
volume  that  every  reader  of  Tagore's 
wcrks  will  wish  to  know,  a  volume  that 
not  only  shows  us  the  man  behind 
those  works,  but  one  which  adds  not 
a  little  to  their  own  significance.  Mr. 
Rhys  begins  with  the  story  of  Ta- 
gore's boyhood,  after  which  he  tells 
us  of  his  youth  and  young  manhood, 
and  then  his  later  years.  Interspersed 
with  the  purely  autobiographical  are 
found  interpretations  of  the  books  now 
so  widely  known  and  loved,  with  an 
indication  in  each  case  of  how  they 
express  the  ideas  which  their  creator 
held  on  the  big  matters  of  life  and 
death  at  different  periods.  Mr.  Rhys 
also  shows  Tagore's  relation  to  other 
Indian  writers  and  to  the  civilization 
of  his  own  land.  Illustrated  with 
eight  half-tone  plates,  this  little  study, 


as  Mr.  Rhys  modestly  calls  it,  is  pos- 
sessed of  an  interest  that  is  more  than 
passing  to  all  who  keep  up  with  the 
trend  of  modern  letters. 

Published  by  the  Macmillan  Com- 
pany, New  York. 


"The  Panama  Trade  and  International 
Trade  Competition,"  by  Lincoln 
Hutchinson,  of  the  University  of 
California. 

In  this  volume  the  author  sketches 
in  broad  lines  the  economic  and  com- 
mercial geography  of  the  two  trade 
areas  which  the  new  waterway  con- 
nects. He  analyzes  the  interchange 
of  goods  between  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  Ocean  basins  and  seeks  by  an 
examination  of  the  trade  statistics  of 
the  past  ten  or  fifteen  years  to  illus- 
trate the  tendencies  of  development 
both  as  to  specific  goods  and  specific 
countries.  These  tendencies,  already 
manifest,  will,  in  his  opinion,  be 
modified  or  accentuated  by  the  opening 
of  the  new  route  in  such  a  way  as  to 
offer  opportunities,  especially  to  manu- 
facturers, to  expand  their  foreign  mar- 
kets. The  statistics  which  he  pre- 
sents afford  many  illustrations  as  to 
the  classes  of  goods  in  which  and  the 
countries  with  which  efforts  to  promote 
trade  give  promise  of  greatest  success. 
The  volume  is  one  of  primary  appeal 
to  business  men  and  students  interest- 
ed in  the  commercial  aspects  of  the 
canal.  There  have  been  many  books 
about  Panama,  but  this  is  the  first  one 
of  authority  to  treat  of  its  relation  to 
trade. 

The  Macmillan  Company,  New 
York. 


"Talks  on  Thrift,"  by    T.     D.     Mac- 

Gregor. 

It  will  surprise  many  people  to  learn 
that  there  is  yet  unfinished  in  this 
country  a  campaign  on  Thrift,  which 
was  carried  on  systematically  by  the 
American  Bankers'  Association  thro' 
the  years  1913  and  1414.  It  was  in- 
augurated by  the  Savings  Bank  Sec- 
tion of  that  Association,  which  has 
been  sending  out,  for  weekly  publica- 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xix 


GET  6  NEW  SUBSCRIBERS 
TO  OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

=  AND  — — 


Receive  a  MANDEL-ETTE  CAMERA,  the 
new  one  minute  photographic  creation, 
the  latest  thing  in  cameras. 


The  Mandel-ette  takes  and  finishes  original  post-card  photographs  in  one  minute 
without  plates  or  films.  No  printing;  no  dark  rooms;  no  experience  required. 
Press  the  button,  and  the  Mandel-ette  turns  out  three  completed  pictures  in  one 
minute.  It  embodies  a  camera,  developing  chamber,  and  dark  room  all  in  one — 
a  miniature  photograph  gallery,  reducing  the  cost  of  the  ordinary  photograph 
from  10  cents  to  ll/2  cents.  The  magazine  holds  from  16  to  50  2^x3^2  post 
cards,  and  can  be  loaded  in  broad  day-light;  no  dark  room  necessary.  Simple 
instructions  accompany  each  camera. 

A  child  can  take  perfect  pictures  with  it. 
Price  on  the  market,  $5. 

OVERLAND  MONTHLY  for  one  year  and  a  Mandel-ette  Camera,  $5. 
Get  6  NEW  SUBSCRIBERS  for  OVERLAND  MONTHLY,  and  forward 
subscriptions  and  $9.00,  and  you  will  receive  a  Mandel-ette  Camera  FREE. 

Address,  OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

21  Sutler  Street,  San  Francisco 


the 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


tion  in  several  hundred  newspapers  of 
this  country,  a  series  of  "Talks  on 
Thrift/'  prepared  by  T.  D.  MacGre- 
gor,  of  St.  Paul,  Minn. 

The  book  is  as  rich  in  homely  truth 
as  if  it  had  been  written  by  "Poor 
Richard"  in  his  Almanack  a  hundred 
years  ago.  It  is  more  needed,  this 
homely  truth,  to-day  even,  than  it  was 
then.  "While  saving  alone  is  not 
thrift,"  Mr.  MacGregor  says,  "it  is  an 
indispensable  part  of  it."  He  does 
not  add,  though  he  might  have  done 
so,  that  a  most  important  question — 
for  the  life  of  every  man  runs  quite 
parallel  with  another  which  has  been 
long  enjoined  upon  him — "What  must 
I  do  to  be  saving?"  This  new  book 
answers  this  question  by  a  host  of  ex- 
amples and  pages  of  simple  good 
sense.  If  every  man  would  read  it, 
and  every  man's  wife,  and  every  young 
man  before  he  gets  a  wife — and  pos- 
sibly every  young  woman  who  hopes 
to  be  one — the  savings-banks  would 
see  small  occasion  for  a  Thrift  Cam- 
paign, there  would  be  better  homes  in 
every  community  and  more  of  them, 
and  America's  future  would  be  finan- 
cially assured. 

Published  by  Funk  &  Wagnalls  Co., 
New  York. 

"The  Myths  of  the  North  American 
Indians,"  by  Lewis  Spence,  author 
of  "The  Myths  of  Mexico  and 
Peru."  With  32  plates  in  color  by 
James  Jack. 

Students  of  ethnology  and  folk-lore 
will  at  once  recognize  in  this  volume 
a  work  of  prime  importance.  Although 
treating  a  theme  by  no  means  new  to 
literature,  it  brings  to  bear  a  scientific 
viewpoint,  and  sums  up  the  results  of 
painstaking  investigation,  of  the  North 
American  Indian,  which  will  prove  of 
lasting  value.  The  author  frankly  con- 
fesses his  indebtedness  to  the  United 
States  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  stating 
that  he  has  found  of  utmost  value  its 
treatises,  "written  by  men  who  pos- 
sess first-hand  knowledge  of  Italian 
life  and  languages,  many  of  whom 
have  faced  great  privations  and  hard- 
ships in  order  to  collect  the  material." 


From  this  and  other  authoritative 
sources  the  author  has  produced  an 
extremely  thoughtful  work,  and  also 
one  of  genuine  entertainment.  He 
first  considers  the  divisions,  customs 
and  history  of  the  Indian  race ;  next  its 
mythology;  and  finally  presents  a  ser- 
ies of  Algonquin,  Iroquois,  Sioux,  Paw- 
nee and  other  tribal  legends.  This  is 
followed  by  a  bibliography  of  sources, 
of  twelve  pages — very  valuable  for 
succeeding  investigators — and  a  care- 
ful glossary  and  index.  The  above 
summary  will  serve  to  indicate  the 
thorough-going  character  of  the  book, 
but  gives  no  idea  of  its  exterior  at- 
tractiveness. It  is  well-made  in  every 
respect. 

8vo;  cloth  $3  net;  postage  30  cents. 
Published  by  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  Co., 
New  York. 

"The  American  Girl,"  by  Anne  Mor- 
gan. 

The  author  has  a  shrewd  understand- 
ing of  the  American  girl  as  she  is,  and 
a  clear  conception  of  what  she  lacks. 
Commendable  as  is  the  American 
young  woman  for  her  wonderful  adapt- 
ability, she  has  in  a  marked  degree  the 
fault  of  that  particular  virtue — a  fact 
that  sometimes  becomes  glaringly  ap- 
parent, when  she  is  seen,  as  she  often 
is,  in  a  European  environment.  Her 
rampant  individualism  is  an  American 
trait  that  needs  modification  through 
service  and  through  truer  enlighten- 
ment. Times  have  changed  in  Amer- 
ica, and  the  American  girl  must  change 
with  them.  Through  co-operation  and 
co-education  she  must  learn  to  do  her 
part,  and  to  attain  to  the  fulfillment  of 
an  ideal  based  upon  sex  equality,  but 
by  no  means  upon  sex  similarity. 

Published  by  Harper  &  Brothers, 
Franklin  Square,  New  York. 


"Productive  Vegetable   Growing,"  by 

John  W.  Lloyd. 

Vegetable  growing  shows  up  very 
well  in  comparison  with  gold  mining 
as  a  wealth  producer  in  this  country. 
Its  total  value  in  one  year  is  estimated 
at  $216,257,068.  Of  this  grand  total, 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xx  i 


H ALFTON  E 
ENGRAVINGS 

FOR    SALE 

6  Cents  Per  Square  Inch 


For  Advertising  'Purposes         For  Illustrating  {B 
For  [Newspapers  For  <5%Cagazines 


The  halftone  engravings  that  have  appeared  in 
the  various  issues  of  the  Overland  Monthly  re- 
present subjects  suitable  for  almost  any  purpose. 
Having  been  carefully  used  in  printing,  they  are 

As  Good  As  New 

Prints  of  these  illustrations  can  be  seen  at  the 
office.  Over  10,000  cuts  to  select  from. 


Overland    Monthly 

21  Suffer  Street,  San  Francisco 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


New  York  State  is  credited  with  $15,- 
936,000,  Ohio  with  $11,394,000,  and 
Pennsylvania  with  $10,014,000.  If 
these  States  were  producing  that  much 
gold,  people  would  be  patting  them  on 
the  back  as  important  mining  States. 
The  New  York  State  Department  of 
Agriculture  has  been  one  of  the  most 
efficient  in  the  country,  and  its  Direc- 
tor of  Farmers'  Institutes,  Edward  van 
Alstyne,  is  a  recognized  authority  on 
farm  problems.  His  opinion  of  John 
W.  Lloyd's  "Productive  Vegetable 
Growing"  has  great  weight.  He  says 
of  the  book:  "I  consider  it  intensely 
practical  and  of  great  value  to  both  the 
individual  who  may  be  interested  in 
vegetable  growing  and  also  as  a  text 
book  for  students  in  our  agricultural 
schools."  A  capable  man  can  in- 
crease his  own  prosperity  and  that  of 
his  State  by  applying  Professor 
Lloyd's  methods  of  efficiency  to  the 
business  of  growing  vegetables — there 
is  money  in  it. 

Published   by    J.    B.    Lippincott's, 
Philadelphia,  Pa. 

"In  the  Oregon  Country,"  by  George 
Palmer  Putnam,  author  of  "The 
Southland  of  North  America."  With 
an  introduction  by  James  Withy- 
comb,  Governor  of  Oregon. 
The  mission  of  this  volume  is  to 
convey  something  of  the  spirit  of  the 
out  of  door  land  it  pictures — a  land 
loved  by  those  who  know  it,  and  a 
land  of  limitless  welcome  for  the 
stranger  who  will  knock  at  its  gates. 
The  book  suggests  not  a  few  of  the 
many  attractions  that  may  be  encoun- 
tered in  Oregon  and  the  State  adjoin- 
ing it,  the  references  to  which  attrac- 
tions are  woven  together  with  threads 
of  personal  reminiscence  pertaining  to 
characteristic  phases  of  the  Western 
life  of  to-day.  The  chapters  chronicle 
the  author's  enthusiasm  for  the  land 
they  concern,  hint  the  pleasurable  pos- 
sibilities of  its  out-of-doors,  and  offer 
a  picture  of  the  new  West  of  to-day  in 
the  preparation  for  its  greater  to-mor- 
row. 

Published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons, 
New  York. 


"Germany  in  the  Nineteenth  Century" 

(Second  Series.)  By  A.  S.  Peake  B. 

Bosanquet  and  F.  Bonavia. 

This  Second  Series  of  Lectures  con- 
tains contributions  by  Professor  A.  S. 
Peake  on  Theology;  Dr.  Bernard  Bo- 
sanquet on  Philosophy,  and  F.  Bona- 
via on  Music.  With  a  Prefatory 
note  by  T.  F.  Tout,  M.  A.  The  lectures 
on  these  subjects  were  delivered  in 
the  university  during  the  course  of  last 
spring,  and  by  the  summer  of  this 
year  all  three  studies  were  in  type. 
The  sudden  outbreak  of  the  present 
calamitous  war  frustrated  the  hopes  of 
those  who  had  steadily  believed  that 
the  best  method  to  promote  interna- 
tional good  will  was  to  dispel  the  cloud 
of  suspicion  by  the  spread  of  sound 
knowledge.  If  no  longer  a  friendly 
eirenicon,  the  book  remains  as  an  his- 
torical document,  which  retains  what- 
ever validity  it  ever  possessed,  not- 
withstanding the  frustration  of  the 
hopes  with  which  it  was  originally  put 
forth.  It  may  still  have  its  value  as 
suggesting  what  a  group  of  British 
scholars,  trained  in  various  schools  of 
learning  and  different  branches  of 
knowledge,  thought,  and  in  essentials 
still  think,  was  a  just  tribute  to  pay 
to  the  activities  of  the  German  nation. 

8vo,  $1.25  net.  Published  by  Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co.,  New  York. 


"How  to  Use  New  Thought  in  Home 
Life,  A  Key  to  Happy  and  Efficient 
Living  for  Husband,  Wife  and 
Children,"  by  Elizabeth  Towne. 

Every  one  of  the  thirty-nine  chap- 
ters in  this  book  was  written  in  re- 
sponse to  a  definite  human  need.  Mrs. 
Towne  has  here  answered  almost  every 
conceivable  question  relating  to  the 
home  life,  to  the  problems  of  hus- 
bands, wives  and  children.  She  shows 
how  to  apply  New  Thought  in  the  home 
to  promote  happy  and  efficient  living, 
to  make  the  home  a  successful  and 
happy  co-operative  colony  versus  an 
individualistic  hades.  The  author  is 
the  well  known  editor  of  Nautilus 
Magazine.  Published  by  Elizabeth 
Towne  Company,  Holyoke,  Mass. 


Please   Mention   Overland   Monthly  When   Writing  Advertisers.  xxiii 

FOR  SALE!    $4,000 

40  ACRES  ON  "LAS  UVAS" 

Santa  Clara  County,  Cal. 


The  finest  mountain  stream  in  Santa  Clara 
County,  facing  the  county  Road. 

Situated  9  miles  from  Morgan  Hill,  between 
New  Almaden  and  Gilroy. 

Perfect  climate. 

Land  is  a  gentle  slope,  almost  level,  border- 
ing on  "Las  Uvas." 

Many    beautiful    sites  on  the  property   for 
country  homes. 

Numerous  trees  and  magnificent  oaks. 

Good  automobile  roads  to   Morgan   Hill  9 
miles,  to  Madrone  8  miles,  to  Gilroy  12  miles, 
to  Almaden  11  miles,  and  to  San  Jose  21     . 
miles. 


For  Further  Particulars  Address, 

Owner,  21  Sutler  Street 
San  Francisco          -         -          California 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"The  Modern  City  and  Its  Problem," 
by  Frederick  C.  Howe,  author  of 
"The  City:  The  Hope  of  Demo- 
cracy," "Wisconsin :  An  Experiment 
in  Democracy,"  "European  Cities  at 
Work." 

A  fresh  and  stimulating  study  of 
the  modern  city  in  all  its  phases,  be- 
ginning with  the  study  of  the  city  as 
the  center  of  civilization,  the  ancient 
city  and  the  medieval  town,  and  taking 
up  the  relations  of  the  city  to  the  State, 
the  questions  of  municipal  home  rule, 
the  city  charter,  municipal  adminis- 
tration in  Germany  and  Great  Britain, 
municipal  ownership  in  Europe  and 
America,  police,  fire  and  health  pro- 
tection, the  housing  problem,  sources 
of  city  revenue,  and  countless  inciden- 
tal aspects.  Mr.  Howe's  unquestioned 
authority  and  his  remarkable  clearness 
of  presentation  make  this  book  not 
only  valuable  as  an  exposition  of  the 
subject  but  essential  to  intelligent  citi- 
zenship. 

$1.50  net;  postage  extra.  Published 
by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


"Merry  Andrew,"  by  Keble  Howard, 
author  of  "Lord  London,"  etc. 

Chronicles  the  ups  and  downs  of 
life  in  a  great  metropolis,  as  experi- 
enced by  a  young  college  man  with 


literary  aspirations,  striving  stren- 
uously to  gain  a  foothold  on  the  ladder 
of  fame.  There  is  a  strong  flavor  of 
Dickens  in  the  story,  especially  in  the 
part  which  deals  with  a  country  school 
for  boys,  and  the  hero's  love  affairs 
are  vastly  interesting. 

Published  by  John  Lane  Company, 
New  York. 


"Victoria,"  by  Martha  Grace  Pope. 

Victoria's  development  from  an  un- 
tried girl  into  a  charming  woman  of 
culture  who  justifies  her  husband's 
choice,  is  the  central  theme  of  the 
story.  There  is,  however,  much  of  in- 
terest beside.  The  delineation  of 
homely  types  introduced  is  particu- 
larly well  done,  honest,  slow  moving, 
good  natured  Amos  Greer;  wholesome, 
red  cheeked  Ray,  who  loves  her  more 
sensitive  sister  without  trying  to  un- 
derstand her;  the  unfortunate  Doak 
Tibbs,  whose  avoirdupois  proves  the 
undoing  of  his  romance;  and  Grand- 
mother Greer,  straight-backed,  effi- 
cient, and  tart  of  tongue,  whose  doc- 
trine of  "praise  to  the  face  is  open 
disgrace,"  is  badly  taxed  by  her  pos- 
session of  two  such  comely  and  de- 
sirable granddaughters  as  Ray  and 
Victoria. 

Cloth  8vo,  $1.35  net.  Published  by 
Sherman,  French  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass. 


Attention:  Housewives! 

The  Overland   Monthly  has  arranged  to  deliver  the 
$10.00  NATIONAL  VACUUM  CLEANERS 

to  readers,  old  and  new,  at  the  special  price  of  $3.95, 
when  ordered  in  connection  with  one  year's  subscrip- 
tion to  the 

OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

at  the  regular  subscription  price  of  $1.50  per  year. 
Now  don't  let  anybody  tell  you  that  they  have  a  better 
cleaner,  for  that  is  impossible.  The  National  is  a 
guaranteed  machine,  and  does  the  work  thoroughly. 

If  our  representative  misses  you,  write,  telephone  or 
call:  Overland  Monthly,  Vacuum  Cleaner  Department, 
21  Sutter  Street,  San  Francisco,  California.  Phone 
Kearny  3594. 

Terms:  $1.00  down  and  balance  on  delivery  of  cleaner. 


San  Francisco's  Newest  Hotel 

HOTEL  PLAZA 


FACING  the  PLAZA  of  UNION  SQUARE.       400  ROOMS— 
American  and  European  Plan.     The  Hotel  Plaza  is  in  the 
center  of  the  city's  shopping  and  theatre  district     The  hotel  is  con- 
venient to  mainline  cars  to  all  depots  and  docks — eight  minutes*  ride  to  the 
Exposition  by  car  passing  the  door. 

JOHN  G.  BARKER,  Managing  Prop.  ROBT.  J.  ROBINSON,  Ass't  Manager 


ALCMEAVY 

By  Arthur  Wallace  Peach 

I  hear  the  voice  of  evening  on   the  hills, 

Like  sound  of  pilgrim  pipes  on  distant  ways; 
Sweet  from  the  misty  meadows'  silver  haze 

Brook  answers  brook  with  song,  and  childish  rills 

Are  calling  each  to  each.     There  night  distills 

Her  dews,  and  'mid  the  rushes  each  pool  lays 
Its  chart  of  starry  skies;  there  evening  plays 

Upon  the  trees  a  song  that  soothes  and  thrills. 

At  evening's  summoning,   what  sprites  arise, 
What  pixies,  fairies  in  the  woodlands  meet 

Of  course  cannot  be  known  or  even  guessed, 
For  they  no  more  are  seen  by  profane  eyes; 
But  magic  is  abroad  and  fays  discreet, 

When  common  ways  with  twilight's  charm  are  dressed! 


a 

OQ 


s 

^c; 

CO 

c 

CO 

<j 

</? 

*W 

ct 


o 

Ci. 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


AUGi    • 

MONTHLY 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  August,  1915 


No.  2 


Joseph  T.  Goodwin  in  the  '60's.     James    W.    E.    Towrtsend    (Truthful 

James),   in   the   early   '80*$. 

Bret  Harte  and  Truthful  James 


By  Robert  L.  Fulton 


IN  ONE  of  Bret  Harte's  earliest  and 
wittiest    poems,    Truthful    James 
takes  the  floor  and  introduces  him- 
self to  an  admiring  world  in  these 
lines: 

"I  reside  at  Table  Mountain,  and  my 

name  is  Truthful  James. 
I  am  not  up  to  small  deceit  nor  any 

sinful  games; 
And  I'll  tell  in  simple  language  what 

I  know  about  the  row 


That  broke  up  our  society  upon  the 
Stanislow." 

James  appears,  at  intervals  during 
the  succeeding  dozen  years  as  re- 
porter, author  and  interpreter,  speak- 
ing always  in  the  first  person,  each 
effort  different  in  manner  and  each  of 
high  excellence  in  its  way. 

In  his  all  too  brief  literary  career 
he  drops  no  hint  as  to  his  identity, 
but  it  is  very  evident  that  the  poet  in- 


William  R.  Gillis 


tended  him  to  shine  among  the  Ar- 
gonauts of  California  as  one  of  the 
red-shirted  brotherhood,  made  immor- 
tal by  his  pen.  Harte  himself  gives 
no  suggestion  of  biography,  and  yet 
he  gives  Truthful  James  a  distinct  in- 
dividuality, worthy  a  place  alongside 
the  characters  created  by  Dickens, 
Cooper  and  Washington  Irving.  He 
reflects  his  surroundings  most  vividly 
and  partakes  of  the  pioneer  life  in  a 
manner  both  wholesome  and  genuine. 
He  sums  up  as  a  diamond  in  the  rough 
a  large-hearted,  guileless  child  of  na- 
ture, patient,  generous  and  brave,  with 
a  regard  for  the  realities  and  a  humor 
that  dominated  him  completely.  He 
was  a  healthy  animal  with  faults  on  a 
big  scale,  such  as  should  go  with  his 
boisterous  disposition  and  the  turbu- 
lent times  in  which  he  lived.  In  con- 
stant contact  with  armed  men,  he  rec- 
ognized danger  as  quickly  as  any  one, 
but  was  ever  ready  to  take  a  chance 
in  fun  or  in  earnest,  and  he  measured 
the  outcome  with  a  practiced  eye.  He 
was  no  hypocrite,  no  caterer  to  the 
crowd,  no  fakir.  He  loved  life  and 
never  let  an  opportunity  go  by.  He 


shared  his  confidence  with  all  comers, 
regardless  of  the  conventionalities  of 
polite  society.  He  was  nobody's  fool, 
and  mingled,  a  welcome  guest,  in 
groups  widely  separated  in  interest 
and  taste.  He  had  a  knock-about  edu- 
cation which  stood  him  in  good  stead, 
and  take  him  all  in  all,  he  was  a  man 
of  parts,  a  John  Bunyan,  unconverted; 
an  original  character,  of  great  strength 
and  fine  consistency,  with  an  artless 
method  of  moralizing  all  -his  own. 
That  he  makes  no  mention  of  his  own 
lapses  from  the  straight  and  narrow 
path  is  quite  in  keeping.  He  refers 
to  those  of  his  friends  with  an  entire 
candor,  taking  them  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  doubtless  looked  upon  his 
own  in  the  same  indulgent  way. 

He  did  not  become  addicted  to 
prose,  perhaps  fortunately,  but  in 
Harte's  poems  he  shows  the  even  tem- 
per and  penetrating  mind  of  the  phil- 
osopher. Henry  Childs  Merwin,  in 
his  life  of  Harte,  says: 

'  'Plain  Language  from  Truthful 
James'  is  remarkable  for  the  absolute- 
ly impartial  attitude  of  the  writer.  He 
observes  'The  Heathen  Chinee'  nei- 


Angels  Camp,  Calaveras  County,  Cal. 


ther  from  the  locally  prejudiced  Cali- 
fornia point  of  view,  nor  from  an  ethi- 
cal or  reforming  point  of  view.  His 
part  is  neither  to  approve  nor  condemn 
— but  simply  to  state  the  fact  as  it  is, 
not  indeed  with  the  coldness  of  an 
historian,  but  with  the  sympathy  and 
insight  of  a  poet." 

Whoever  he  was  in  real  life,  it  is 
certain  that  Truthful  James  was  more 
than  a  passing  acquaintance  of  Harte's 
— although  the  latter  nowhere  gives 
the  slightest  intimation  of  the  man 
he  had  in  mind.  A  legend  grew  up, 
a  little  at  a  time,  that  James  Norman 
Gillis,  a  pioneer  miner  operating  near 
Table  Mountain,  was  the  original  of 
the  picture,  and  with  no  one  to  con- 
tradict it,  the  belief  became  general, 
much  to  Mr.  Gillis'  dissatisfaction.  He 
only  heard  of  it  after  it  had  become 
rather  widely  spread,  and  he  did  not 
like  it.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  such 
things  travel.  Mr.  Linscott,  an  am- 
iable farmer  living  near  Tuttletown, 
stood  a  cross-examination  by  the 
writer  quite  patiently  for  awhile,  then 
said: 

"When  anybody  like  you  comes 
along  we  tell  him  what  we  think  he 


wants  to  know.  I  have  told  many  peo- 
ple that  Jim  Gillis  was  Truthful 
James,  and  that  my  children  went  to 
school  to  Bret  Harte  in  the  little  Tut- 
tletown schoolhouse,  although  I  never 
saw  Bret  Harte  in  my  life.  He  left 
here  long  before  I  came,  if  he  was 
ever  here  at  all." 

Harte's  historians,  Merwin,  Clem- 
ens and  Beaseley,  were  led  to  believe 
that  Gillis  was  Truthful  James,  al- 
though his  close  friend,  Pemberton, 
does  not  mention  him  as  such,  nor 
does  Mark  Twain,  who  associated 
with  Harte  just  at  the  time  when  he 
was  working  up  his  materials  for  the 
poems  in  which  he  makes  Truthful  his 
model.  Mark,  who  cabined  with  Gil- 
lis for  four  months,  speaks  of  him  in- 
timately, but  never  as  Truthful  James, 
nor  at  all  in  connection  with  Bret 
Harte.  The  truth  is,  there  was  no  in- 
timacy between  Harte  and  Gillis. 
Steve  Gillis,  the  present  owner  of  the 
Jackass  Hill  mines,  tells  the  tale  ex- 
actly. He  says: 

"Bret  Harte  and  my  brother  made 
but  a  very  slight  impression  upon  each 
other,  and  that  not  very  favorable. 
Their  intercourse  began  when  Harte 


92 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


James  Norman  Gillis  in  the  '80*5. 


limped  along  the  road  one  hot  after- 
noon while  Jim  was  digging  into  a 
pocket  of  gold  quartz  he  had  just  dis- 
covered, right  by  the  wagon  track. 
Harte  was  tired,  sweaty  and  foot-sore. 
He  was  not  dressed  for  the  part,  and 
his  tight  patent  leather  shoes  were 
punishing  him  severely.  He  wore  fine 
linen  and  a  dressy  suit,  surmounted  by 
a  fashionable  hat,  the  most  unsuitable 
gear  he  could  have  found.  After  a 
few  remarks,  Jim  led  the  way  to  his 
cabin  and  invited  Harte  to  make  him- 
self at  home,  which  he  did  for  a  cou- 
ple of  days.  He  said  he  was  looking 
for  a  job  as  teacher,  but  had  about 
made  up  his  mind  to  give  it  up  and 
try  to  get  to  the  Bay.  He  had  no 
money,  and  when  he  took  the  stage  for 
Stockton,  Jim  loaned  him  twenty  dol- 
lars and  gave  him  a  letter  to  me,  as 
I  was  setting  type  in  the  National  of- 
fice. He  was  a  poor  printer,  never 
drawing  down  over  ten  dollars  a  week. 
The  next  time  he  saw  Jim  was  after 
his  appointment  as  Secretary  of  the 
United  States  Mine.  Jim  was  talking 
with  Judge  Hardy,  afterwards  im- 


peached for  treason,  when  Harte 
walked  by.  He  spoke  to  Judge  Hardy 
but  took  no  notice  of  Jim.  The  slight 
piqued  Jim,  and  he  followed  along  to 
the  Mint,  where  he  demanded  the  pay- 
ment of  the  old  loan.  Harte  assumed 
a  lofty  air  and  asked  what  the  amount 
was,  making  a  check  for  it.  When 
Jim  waked  up  to  find  himself  dubbed 
'Truthful  James'  he  was  very  angry, 
and  did  a  lot  of  canvassing  to  stop  it. 
Neither  he  nor  Harte  ever  pretended 
it,  and  Jim  resented  being  placed  in 
that  category." 

Fred  Sutton,  of  Sonora,  a  very  in- 
timate friend  of  Gillis,  says  the  mis- 
take occurred  when  Charley  Parsons, 
another  friend,  gave  a  city  reporter 
the  materials  for  a  write-up  of  the 
men  of  the  mountains,  in  which  he  al- 
luded to  Gillis  as  Truthful  James.  Mr. 
Sutton  says: 

"I  thought  nothing  of  it  at  the  time, 
but  shortly  afterwards  a  brother  of 
mine  visited  me,  and  meeting  Gillis,  I 
said:  'Hello,  here  comes  Truthful 
James,'  and  introduced  him.  He 
opened  up  on  me  with  a  tongue  lash- 
ing, and  wound  up  by  saying,  'Fred, 
I  believe  you  are  a  friend  of  mine,  but 
if  I  thought  you  meant  that  I  would 
never  forgive  you.  You  know  very 
well  that  I  am  not  Truthful  James. 
Bret  Harte  means  Jim  Townsend  be- 
cause he's  the  damndest  liar  in  the 
mountains,  and  you  know  it.  Charlie 
Parsons  put  that  on  me,  and  I  won't 
forget  him/  " 

Following  up  this  clue,  the  first  in- 
quiry reached  the  wrong  Mr.  Parsons, 
who  replied:  "I  don't  know  Jim  Gillis 
and  never  heard  of  Truthful  James." 

The  proper  Mr.  Parsons  said:  "I 
don't  know  how  my  friend  Gillis  came 
to  be  called  Truthful  James.  I  always 
thought  it  was  a  libel." 

At  the  time  of  his  death  the  Sonora 
Democrat  said:  "Jim  Gillis  came  to 
California  in  1850  and  drifted  to  the 
mines.  On  Jackass  Hill  he  built  a 
cabin,  in  which  he,  Mark  Twain,  Pren- 
tice Mulford,  Lyon  Jim  Townsend, 
and  other  brainy  fellows  fraternized. 
Gillis  always  positively  denied  that 
he  was  Truthful  James  of  Table 


V 


Recent  model  of  Bret  Harte 


Mountain,  passing  that  honor  on  to 
Townsend,  a  clever  newspaper  man 
who  made  lying  a  profession  and  a 
fine  art." 

Mr.  Gillis  was  undoubtedly  justified 
in  passing  the  honor  along  to -Town- 
send.  The  latter  was  just  the  man  to 
impress  such  a  one  as  Harte.  He  was 
a  few  years  older,  a  brother  printer 
as  well  as  a  writer,  an  original  genius 
and  an  adventurer  of  class.  He 
claimed  to  be  a  forty-niner,  and  a 
Townsend  does  appear  in  the  list  of 
Argonauts  sailing  from  Boston  and 


landing  in  San  Francisco  in  October, 
1849,  but  no  one  could  trace  Jim  back, 
and  he  did  not  try,  so  it  carried  little 
weight.  He  and  Harte  undoubtedly 
worked  alongside  each  other  at  the 
case  just  after  Harte  came  down  from 
the  mountains,  and  for  him,  at  that 
time  to  put  "Plain  Language  from 
Truthful  James"  and  "The  Society 
Upon  the  Stanislow"  into  the  mouth 
of  Jim  Townsend  seems  the  most  natu- 
ral things  in  the  world  to  the  men 
who  knew  them  both. 

One  thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  that 


94 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Steve  Gillis,  Jackass  Hill,  California. 
The  pistol  at  the  left  is  one  carried 
by  Mark  Twain  all  through  the  mines. 

Bret  Harte  never  saw  nor  took  part  in 
the  times  of  which  he  wrote  so  won- 
derfully. He  got  everything  at  sec- 
ond hand.  By  the  time  he  came  to 
California  the  age  of  romance  had 
passed  into  history,  and  everything 
had  settled  down  to  a  dull  routine. 
The  placer  diggings  had  petered  out 
and  quartz  mining  had  assumed  but 
little  importance.  Farming  was  re- 
ceiving some  encouragement,  and 
manufactures  were  just  beginning  to 
attract  capital.  Journalism  was  at  a 
low  ebb.  and  the  magazines  came 
later.  James  King  of  William  had  only 
recently  been  murdered  for  his  sup- 
port of  law  and  order,  and  the  outlook, 
from  a  literary  standpoint,  was 
gloomy.  Harte  himself  drew  the  pic- 
ture. In  "Bohemian  Days"  he  says: 
"The  press  was  sober,  materialistic, 
practical — when  not  severely  admoni- 
tory of  existing  evils;  the  few  smaller 
papers  that  indulged  in  levity  were 
considered  libelous  and  improper. 
Fancy  was  displaced  by  heavy  arti- 
cles on  the  revenues  of  the  State,  and 
inducements  to  the  investment  of  capi- 
al.  Local  news  was  placed  under  an 
implied  censorship,  which  suppressed 


everything  that  might  tend  to  discour- 
age or  caution  capital.  Episodes  of 
romantic  lawlessness  or  pathetic  in- 
stances of  mining  life  were  carefully 
edited — with  the  comment  that  these 
things  belonged  to  the  past,  and  that 
life  and  property  were  now  as  safe  in 
San  Francisco  as  in  New  York  or  Lon- 
don. Wonder-loving  visitors  in  quest 
of  scenes  characteristic  of  the  civili- 
zation were  coldly  snubbed  with  this 
assurance." 

Under  conditions  such  as  these, 
with  none  of  the  inspiring  influences 
which  would  have  appealed  so  strong- 
ly to  his  imagination,  we  can  imagine 
the  brilliant  Bret  Harte  turning  to  his 
young  men  associates  and  listening 
with  eager  ears  to  their  tales  of  the 
Argonauts,  still  fresh  in  their  memo- 
ries. He  had  seen  just  enough  of  the 
mountains  and  mines  to  inflame  his 
imagination,  and  with  ample  time  and 
an  unoccupied  mind  he  was  hungry  for 
more.  Mr.  Roman,  the  founder  of  the 
Overland  Monthly  of  which  Harte  was 
the  first  editor,  often  said,  and  he  re- 
peated it  when  interviewed  at  the 
time  of  Harte's  death: 

"I  don't  believe  Harte  ever  served 
in  the  mines.  I  have  seen  interviews 
with  men  who  said  they  knew  him  in 
Jimtown,  but  I  never  could  place  him 
in  any  mining  camp.  He  may  have 
walked  through  the  mines  somewhere ; 
I  think  it  quite  possible  he  did.  He 
was  not  a  man  to  go  to  work  or  rustle 
around  and  mix  with  the  miners.  He 
was  a  dandy :  a  dainty  man :  too  much 
like  a  woman  to  rough  it  in  the  mines. 
He  wanted  everything  just  so.  I  fur- 
nished him  far  more  materials  about 
the  mines  than  he  ever  gathered  him- 
self. I  sold  books  through  the  mines 
from  Shasta  to  Mariposa  from  '51  on 
for  several  years." 

Apropos  of  the  belief  of  Mr.  Roman 
and  Steve  Gillis  that  he  had  only 
glimpses  of  the  Sierras,  Harte's  story 
of  the  avalanche  carrying  The  Three 
Truants  down  the  mountain-side,  in 
the  course  of  which :  "They  seemed  to 
be  going  through  a  thicket  of  under- 
brush, but  Provy  Smith  knew  they 
were  the  tops  of  pine  trees,"  shows 


The  Stanislaus  River  below  Jackass  Hill. 


how  innocent  he  was  of  mountain  lore. 
An  avalanche  sweeps  trees  before  it 
like  straws,  breaking  them  off  or 
bending  them  to  the  ground,  never 
gliding  along  gracefully  among  the 
branches,  bimilarly,  his  laulty  geo- 
graphy and  fictitious  names  show  that 
he  knew  but  little  about  the  country. 
That  he  owed  much  to  Truthful  James 
is  very  evident,  though  he  gives  him 
no  credit.  The  man  mentioned  by  so 
many  as  being  the  original  was  James 
W.  E.  Townsend,  who,  himself,  ad- 
mitted the  soft  impeachment.  He  had 
every  qualification,  and  was  consid- 
ered the  genuine  James  by  all  of  the 
old  residents  along  the  Mother  Lode. 
Steve  Gillis  knew  him  well,  and  says : 
"We  stuck  type  together  on  the 
Golden  Era  in  1859.  He  came  to  Cali- 
fornia when  he  was  about  twenty- 
three  years  of  age,  though  he  claimed 
to  be  thirty-five.  That  was  one  of  his 
foibles,  always  pretending  to  great 
age.  He  came  around  the  Horn  in  a 
clipper  ship,  and  claimed  that  she; 
had  been  chased  by  the  Alabama  in 
the  South  Atlantic  Ocean.  He  was  in 
the  Indian  Mutiny,  and  took  gold  from 


the  British.  He  lived  in  Sonora  off 
and  on,  working  as  type-setter,  re- 
porter and  editor,  and  started  a  few 
papers  himself.  He  was  a  great  poser 
— and  would  enjoy  nothing  better  than 
to  be  known  as  Truthful  James.  He 
"had  a  rude  wit  and  a  demonstrative 
manner  which  brought  him  to  the  front 
in  every  crowd." 

William  R.  Gillis,  another  brother 
of  James,  in  a  letter  dated  Tuttletown, 
Nineteen  Fourteen,  says: 

"When  I  became  acquainted  with 
Jim  Townsend,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
sixty  years  ago,  those  who  were  most 
intimate  with  him  speculated  as  to 
whether  he  was  thirty  or  three  hun- 
dred years  old.  From  his  own  ac- 
counts of  his  journeyings  and  experi- 
ences, up  and  down  and  around  the 
world,  many  were  led  to  believe  that 
he  lived  contemporaneously  with  the 
Wandering  Jew,  some  expressing  the 
belief  that  he  was  that  unhappy  indi- 
vidual himself.  But  later  that  sur- 
mise proved  incorrect,  as  he  died  in 
ninety-five  or  six.  He  was  the  origi- 
nal of  Bret  Harte's  Truthful  James. 
His  last  venture  was  the  Homer  In- 


£ 


Joaquin  Miller  in  camp  in  the  Sierra  Nevada  Mountains. 


dex.  He  guaranteed  it  to  be  the 
highest  paper  on  earth,  altitude  thir- 
teen thousand  feet.  Among  the  sam- 
ples of  his  style  I  remember: 

"  It  is  so  dark  in  the  Table  Moun- 
tain Tunnel  that  a  piece  of  charcoal 
looks  white.' 

"  'Our  townsmen  are  complaining 
about  mosquitoes.  Friends,  if  you 
want  to  see  mosquitoes,  go  up  to 
Alaska.  They  are  so  thick  up  there 
that  you  can  swing  a  pint  cup  through 
the  air  and  catch  a  quart.' 

"  'A  tramp  stole  a  pair  of  pants  off 
a  scarecrow  in  a  corn  field.  A  swarm 
of  hornets  had  built  a  nest  in  their 
broadest  part,  and  when  he  tried  them 
on  he  got  out  of  them  in  one  time  and 
two  motions.' 

'  'Some  of  the  butchers  were  brag- 
ging about  their  fat  cattle  when  Lou 
Dean  said :  'Why,  boys,  I  have  a  steer 
down  in  my  pasture,  and  he  is  so  fat 
that  when  he  lies  down  and  breathes 
on  the  grass  I  can  cut  the  timothy  and 
use  the  stalks  for  candles.'  " 

Joseph  T.  Goodman,  the  patron  of 


Mark  Twain,  writes  from  Alabama: 

"I  first  knew  Jim  Townsend  in  1858 
when  I  was  a  compositor  on  the 
Golden  Era.  He  drifted  in  one  day, 
claiming  to  have  been  first  mate  on  a 
sailing  craft  he  had  just  left  after 
sailing  the  seven  seas  for  years.  He 


St.  Ann's  Church,  Columbia,  a  few 
miles  east  of  Table  Mountain.  Truth- 
ful James  was  married  in  this  church. 
The  ground  was  immensely  rich,  and 
'the  miners  dug  out  the  gravel  right  up 
to  the  edge  of  the  graves,  and  it  is  said 
that  some  miners  ivere  caught  tunnel- 
ing under  them. 


Mark  Twain 


may  have  worked  with  Bret  Harte, 
for  I  went  East  in  August,  1859,  and 
when  I  returned,  Harte  was  learning 
to  set  type  at  my  old  case.  The  next 
I  knew  of  Jim  he  held  a  case  on  the 
Enterprise  in  Virginia  City,  Nevada, 
for  some  years.  On  May  1,  1864,  he 
married  Lizzie  Lindsay,  a  beautiful 
girl  from  Dayton,  Nevada.  Lizzie 
and  he  quarreled  and  separated,  and 
I  don't  remember  seeing  him  again  un- 
til I  met  him  in  Carson  in  1888.  He 
was  a  native  of  Portsmouth,  New 
Hampshire.  I  am  positive  of  that,  for 
he  used  to  boast  repeatedly  of  having 
thrashed  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  when 
they  were  schoolmates  there.  This 
would  show  that  he  was  about  Al- 
drich's  age,  and  he  was  born  in  1836, 
though  Townsend  always  claimed  to 


be  an  antediluvian.  He  had  a  wonder- 
ful gift  of  original  expression,  and  was 
about  the  biggest  liar  I  ever  knew." 

The  reader  can  imagine  the  effect 
upon  one  of  Harte's  disposition  of  his 
association  with  a  roysterer  like  Town- 
send — a  world  traveler,  who  knew 
every  country  and  every  people,  a 
free  lance  in  all  matters  intellectual, 
a  natural  entertainer,  with  an  eye  for 
the  picturesque  in  man  and  nature.  He 
must  have  afforded  the  young  writer 
a  stimulating  companionship,  almost 
an  inspiration.  With  no  settled  aim 
in  life,  and  none  of  the  high  literary 
associations  which  came  later,  what 
more  natural  than  that  Harte  should 
pattern  Truthful  James  after  the  bois- 
terous, talkative  boomer,  bursting  with 
epigrams,  with  pithy  anecdotes  and 


98 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


bizarre  comparisons,  with  no  rever- 
ence for  anything  in  this  world  or  the 
other  two? 

That  Harte  was  able  to  develop 
such  materials  into  the  marvelous 
tales  that  he  gave  to  the  world  seems 
even  more  wonderful  than  it  would 
have  been  for  him  to  write  them  from 
his  own  observation.  That  he  re- 
quired some  such  companionship  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  later  on  he 
tried  the  same  methods  upon  the  Con- 
tinental, the  New  Englander  and  the 
British,  with  but  partial  success.  That 
he  concealed  the  sources  upon  which 
he  drew  was  characteristic  of  the  man. 

It  is  not  easy  to  fix  the  extent  of 
his  relationship  with  Townsend,  but  it 
is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  they 
spent  more  than  a  little  time  together. 
Both  had  recently  been  over  the  same 
ground  in  the  interior;  both  were  en- 
gaged in  journalism,  with  ambition  as 
writers ;  both  were  bachelors,  with  idle 
time  on  their  hands. 

Aside  from  any  distinction  reflected 
by  his  more  gifted  associates,  Town- 
send  had  a  most  interesting  personal- 
ity. It  is  no  injustice,  not  even  a  re- 
flection, at  this  late  day,  to  give  a 
true  account  of  Mr.  Townsend  and  to 
picture  him  as  he  really  was.  If  he 
could  be  consulted,  nothing  would 
please  him  better  than  to  contribute  to 
the  gayety  of  nations  in  the  manner  he 
is  made  to  do  in  the  comments  of  his 
former  associates.  He  would  demand 
no  apology  from  those  who  paint  him 


as  he  really  was  in  order  to  set  his- 
tory straight.  In  his  lifetime  no  one 
was  readier  than  he  to  enlighten  his 
hearers  upon  his  own  idiosyncracies 
and  adventures.  Life  seemed  one  long 
joke  to  him,  and  Rabelais  himself 
never  was  quicker  to  see  its  grotesque 
side.  He  was  usually  mellow  by  the 
time  evening  came,  but  never  morose 
or  dull.  No  one  ever  saw  him  dis- 
couraged or  heard  him  complain.  He 
became  very  deaf  toward  the  last,  and 
said  in  cheerful  tones:  "The  damned 
old  ears  have  lost  their  draft." 

During  the  early  eighties  he  was  as- 
sociated with  the  writer  in  Nevada, 
and  at  that  time  he  was  obsessed  with 
the  flying  machine.  Long  before  it 
•came  into  use  he  dwelt  by  the  hour 
upon  the  wonders  it  was  to  perform, 
'carrying  passengers  and  mails,  pick- 
ing up  loads  of  merchandise,  car  and 
all,  razing  cities  and  sinking  ships 
in  time  of  war  were  to  be  only  parts 
of  the  day's  work. 

One  sunny  summer  morning  a  mod- 
ern Yuba  Bill  straightened  his  single- 
line  over  the  backs  of  his  ten  mule 
team,  and  started  his  wagon  train  for 
the  new  gold  camp  of  Bodie,  two  hun- 
dred miles  from  the  railroad.  High 
up  on  the  seat  beside  him  was  perched 
Truthful  James;  wide  awake  as  ever, 
shouting  his  "Good-bye,  boys"  to  the 
early  birds  along  the  sidewalk.  The 
outfit  disappeared  in  the  dust  of  the 
desert,  and  he  was  seen  no  more  in 
Washoe. 


This  being  the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition  year,  in  which 
everything  of  merit  in  California  is  being  reviewed  before  the 
world,  the  management  of  Overland  Monthly  has  decided  to 
republish  in  its  pages  the  stories  and  poems  that  made  the 
magazine  famous  through  the  genius  of  Bret  Harte.  He  was 
its  first  editor,  and  it  was  his  keen  discernment  and  originality 
which  gave  the  contents  of  the  magazine  that  touch  of  the 
spirit  of  the  West,  and  especially  of  California,  which  made  it 
distinctive  and  enkindled  the  enthusiasm  of  discerning  readers 
the  world  around.  These  early  contributions  of  his  cover  sev- 
eral years;  they  will  be  published  monthly  in  the  order  in 
which  they  appeared,  beginning  with  the  first  issue  of  Over- 
land Monthly,  July,  1868. 


To  a  Sea-Bird 

By  Bret  Harte 

Sauntering  hither  on  listless  wings, 

Careless  vagabond  of  the  sea, 
Little  thou  heedest  the  surf  that  sings,* 
The  bar  that  thunders,  the  shale  that  rings — 

Give  me  to  keep  thy  company. 

Little  thou  hast,  old  friend,  that's  new, 
Storms  and  wrecks  are  old  things  to  thee ; 

Sick  am  I  of  these  changes,  too ; 

Little  to  care  for,  little  to  rue — 
I  on  the  shore,  and  thou  on  the  sea. 

All  of  thy  wanderings,  far  and  near, 

Bring  thee  at  last  to  shore  and  me ; 
All  of  my  journeyings  end  them  here, 
This  our  tether,  must  be  our  cheer — 
I  on  the  shore,  and  thou  on  the  sea. 

Lazily  rocking  on  ocean's  breast, 

Something  in  common,  old  friend,  have  we ; 
Thou  on  the  shingle  seek's  thy  nest, 
I  to  the  waters  look  for  rest — 

I  on  the  shore,  and  thou  on  the  sea. 


COLUMN 
OF  PROGRE.TJ1 

ON  THE 
MARINA 

PORTION  OF 
CAL1PORKIA 
STATE  BUILDING 
SHOWING  ON 
RIGHT 


PANAMA-PACIFIC 

INTERNATIONAL 
EXPOSITION 

SAN  FPANG1JCO 

OPENED  FEBRUARY  2O» 
CLOSED 


NICHE    IN  THE  COUPT  OF  THE  TOUR 


World's  Advance    Shown  in   Exhibits 


By  Bently  Palmer 
Illustrations  by  Courtesy  of  Standard  Oil  Bulletin. 


IF  ONE  inquires  what  striking  epoch 
does  the  Exposition  represent, 
what  flaming  progress  does  this 
giant  exposition  predicate,  the  best 
answer  is,  perhaps,  that  it  foreshad- 
ows an  era  of  marvelous  forms  of  in- 
tercommunication and  of  transporta- 
tion. Since  the  Exposition  opened,  on 
February  20th,  the  first  telephone  mes- 
sage across,  the  continent  passed  be- 
tween Mayor  Mitchell  of  New  York 
and  Mayor  Rolph  of  San  Francisco. 
The  conversation  was  made  possible 
by  many  improvements  in  electrical 
installation,  one  of  the  improvements 
being  the  marvelous  audion  amplifier 
which  relays  telephone  messages. 
Many  electrical  experts  are  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  only  a  question  of 
time,  and  possibly  of  a  very  short  time 
when  men  will  be  able  to  utilize  the 
wireless  for  the  long  distance  tele- 
phone. The  utility  of  the  present  long 
distance  telephone  passes  the  bounds 
of  comprehension.  It  is  one  of  the 
important  discoveries  since  man  has 
been  upon  the  earth. 

At  the  time  of  the  great  exposition 
in  St.  Louis  the  aeroplane  was  com- 
paratively new  to  the  world,  and  yet 
in  the  brief  space  of  ten  years  the 
aerial  motor  has  become  a  tremendous 
agent  in  the  most  fearful  conflict  ever 
waged.  Since  the  Louisiana  Purchase 
Exposition  the  utility  of  the  automo- 
bile has  been  developed  until  it  is  to- 
day a  tremendous  factor  in  the  indus- 
trial life  of  the  country.  The  era  of 
the  motor  truck  is  here,  and  it,  too, 
is  a  formidable  agent  in  warfare. 
Throughout  the  nation  the  automobile 


is  becoming  almost  a  part  of  the  rail- 
road. Automobile  freight  and  passen- 
ger lines  are  serving  as  feeders  to  the 
railroads,  bringing  otherwise  remote 
country  districts  into  direct  touch  with 
the  world's  markets.  Of  such  vast 
importance  is  the  motor  truck  industry 
that  it  is  given  recognition  by  a  sepa- 
rate building  at  the  Exposition. 

In  the  domain  of  education  the 
world  has  advanced  as  rapidly.  Child- 
ren are  taught  more  and  more  to  think 
and  to  execute  for  themselves.  In  art 
American  painters  are  producing  work 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  notable  crit- 
ics, will  bear  favorable  comparison 
with  the  many  masterpieces  of  the  Old 
World.  But  there  is  another  form  of 
art  which  finds  distinct  expression  in 
the  Exposition.  Indeed,  several  of  the 
greatest  American  and  European  art 
critics  declare  that  there  is  revealed 
in  San  Francisco  the  birth  of  a  new 
ideal  in  American  art.  The  revolu- 
tion exists  in  the  Exposition  itself, 
in  the  wonderful  co-ordination  of  its 
architecture,  sculpture  and  landscaping 
— and  one  might  also  add  in  the  co- 
ordination of  two  other  notable  fea- 
tures, that  of  the  night  illumination 
and  the  marvelous  use  of  colors  upon 
the  vast  exhibit  palaces.  The  fairy- 
land produced  by  the  exquisite  en- 
semble of  the  color,  illumination, 
sculpture  and  landscaping,  will  no 
doubt  have  its  effect  in  more  beautiful 
cities,  parks,  public  buildings  and  pri- 
vate homes  throughout  the  United 
States.  At  the  World's  Columbian 
Exposition  in  Chicago  sculpture  was 
freely  used  as  a  form  of  outdoor  deco- 


SHERRY 
FRY 

SCULP  TOP 


GROUP  AT  BA/E  OP  FOUNTAIN,  COURT  OF  ABUNDANCE 


ration,  and  there  followed  throughout 
the  country  a  growing  appreciation  of 
its  surpassing  decorative  value  when 
employed  in  conjunction  with  great  ar- 
chitectural works.  Since  the  wonder- 
ful world's  Columbian  Exposition, 
more  and  more  attention  at  each  suc- 
ceeding exposition  has  been  devoted 
not  only  to  sculpture  but  to  the  adorn- 
ment of  public  buildings  and  of  cities. 


TOWER     OF     JEWELS    FROM    THE    PALACE      OF    HORTICULTURE 


l 


GROUP  AT  BATE  OF  FOUNTAIN.  COURT  OF  ABUNDANCE 


The  great  exposition  at  Chicago 
marked  a  Renaissance  in  American  ar- 
chitecture, and  now  it  does  not  seem 
too  much  to  predict  that  the  even  more 
beautiful  Exposition  at  San  Francisco 
will  be  followed  by  a  recognition  of 
the  aesthetic  effect  produced  through 
the  marvelous  co-relation  of  architec- 
ture, sculpture,  color  and  landscaping. 
Is  it  too  much  to  expect  that  we  may 


I 


SHERRY  E 
TRY 

.LPTOTSj 


I 


STATUE  OF   CERE.T    IN  THE      COURT  OF  THE    FOUR    J-EATONJ'.    BY    EVELYN  BEATRICE  LONGMAN- 


AYE  OP  PAlWBETWEEN  EXHIBIT  BUILDING/ .AND  JOUTH  GAT2DE1W 


see  whole  cities  bound  together  in  a 
wonderful  color  scheme  ?  And  if  such 
a  result  may  not  be  accounted  as  one 
of  the  world's  most  notable  achieve- 
ments, what  phase  of  an  art  so  univer- 
sal in  its  application  that  it  may  be 
employed  to  render  their  homes  and 
cities  more  beautiful  may  constitute 
an  achievement? 

In  their  exhibits  the  world's  nations 
display  the  products  in  which  they  ex- 
cel. Grouped  in  eleven  huge  exhibit 
palaces  are  the  examples  of  the  art, 
science  and  industry  of  the  forty-two 
nations  officially  participating,  while 
further  displays  are  presented  by  in- 
dividuals or  groups  of  individuals 
from  every  civilized  country.  The 
eleven  palaces  are  those  devoted  to- 
Fine  Arts,  Education  and  Social 


DETAIL    OF 
FOUNTAIN  IN  THE 
COURT  OF  ABUNDANCE 


OT  PROGPE//    SHOWING    PALACE  OF  MINE/1 


Economy,  Agriculture,  Food  Products, 
Mines  and  Metallurgy,  Transportation, 
Manufactures,  Varied  Industries,  Ma- 
chinery and  Horticulture.  The  art  ex- 
hibit is  notable.  From  Europe  has 
come  an  especially  fine  collection,  em- 
bracing a  loan  collection  of  many 
paintings  of  the  old  masters.  The 
French  exhibit  in  the  Fine  Arts  Pal- 
ace is  the  finest  ever  shown  in  the 
United  States.  Among  the  foreign  ar- 
tists represented  are  Bonheur,  Corot, 
Millet,  Velasquez,  Reynolds,  Romney, 
Tissot,  Gainsborough  and  others.  In 
the  galleries  given  to  American  artists 
is  a  room  for  John  S.  Sargent,  a  James 
McNeil  Whistler  room,  displaying  the 
vivid  and  beautiful  pyrotechnics  of 
that  Bernard  Shaw  among  artists;  the 
late  William  Keith,  master  of  Califor- 


Ate/^          SCULPTURE 

OUTiTIDE 
rf   .       ^     -^  PEJ-TIVAL    HALL 

^ 


DETAIL     OF 
FOUNTAIN"   IN  THE 
COURT  OF  ABUNDANCE 


THE   PACIFIC  OCEAN 
A.  STER.LIKC5 

S   C    U    L    P    T  O 


nia  landscape,  also  has  a 
room,  and  also  Joseph  Pennell, 
the  foremost  etcher  of  the  day. 
Other  famous  Americans  rep- 
resented by  special  rooms  are 
Frank  Duveneck,  William  M. 
Chase,  Childe  Hassam,  Gari 
Melchers,  Alson  Skinner 
Clark.  In  the  Palace  of  Fine 
Arts  the  visitor  becomes  im- 
pressed with  the  frequent  ver- 
satility of  men  of  genius.  Rob- 
ert Fulton,  inventor  of  the 
steamship,  is  shown  to  have 
been  an  artist  of  note,  engrav- 
ings by  Paul  Revere  are  dis- 
played, and  also  sculptures  by 
Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,'  inventor 


ION     TO  TTUR.AL     ON    OPPOSITE      PA6E 


THI/    FRIEZE.   DECORATING 
THE    HL  DORADO  FOUNTAIN" 
THE   WORK  OF  MRJ1.  HARRY  PAYNE. 
WHITNEY 


THE   J-OUTH 

A    STERLING 


of  the  telegraph.  Had  not  this 
famous  man  become  discour- 
aged when  starting  out  in  life 
he  would  assuredly  have  been 
known  as  a  great  sculptor.  A 
section  shows  the  historical 
development  of  art  in  Amer- 
ica. In  the  Palace  of  Fine 
Arts  you  note  the  influence  of 
foreign  schools  upon  Ameri- 
can art,  and  also  of  the  action 
of  American  art  upon  Euro- 
pean and  other  schools.  Our 
inspirations  have  passed 
across  the  oceans.  But  the 
Palace  of  Fine  Arts  is  in  it- 
self an  inspiration,  a  temple 
worthy  to  hold  the  works  of 


"LEAVING      HOME,"      MURAL     DECORATION       BY     FRANK     V      T>U    MOND 


"P12ARRO' 

LEO  LENTILL1 

5CULPTO  RJ 


COLONNADES  OF  FINE  ART/  PALACE, 


the  artists  of  the  day.  In 
the  Palace  of  Liberal  Arts 
behold  the  Audion  Ampli- 
fier, most  extraordinary  of 
innovations,  and  not  more 
imposing  than  a  suit  case, 
which,  as  has  already  been 
mentioned,  plays  a  great 
part  in  the  transcontinental 
telephone.  On  the  opening 
day  of  the  Exposition,  thou- 
sands of  persons  upon  the 
grounds  heard  the  voice  of 
President  Wilson  as  he 
spoke  into  a  telephone  at 
Washington.  By  the  use  of 
the  "amplifier"  the  Presi- 


ITALIATT    TOWER  AT   ENTRANCE, 
OF  COURT  OF  FLOWERJ1 


dent's  voice  was  sent  in  re- 
lays across  the  continent. 

In  the  Liberal  Arts  Pal- 
ace, too,  the  government 
makes  a  noteworthy  exhibit 
of  that  most  enduring  and 
useful  of  engineering  works 
— the  Panama  Canal;  color 
photography,  an  invention 
of  the  present  era,  which  is 
being  rapidly  developed, 
flashes  the  brilliant  hues  of 
nature  into  the  permanent 
records  of  the  camera;  ar- 
tificial limbs  of  such  utility 
that  the  wearer  has  almost 
the  full  use  of  the  fingers, 


END  OF  THE  TRAIL" 

JAMEX  EAUL  FRA.TER. 


TOWER  OF  JEWELS 


PALACE     OF    HORTICULTURE. 


110 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


are  exhibited.  The  United  States  Gov- 
ernment here  occupies  a  fourth  of  the 
entire  floor  space  of  the  huge  struc- 
ture. The  operation  of  the  various 
State  departments,  including  those  of 
the  Treasury,  War,  Navy,  Commerce, 
Civil  Service  Commission,  Department 
of  State  and  the  Commission  of  Fine 
Arts  are  shown. 

Those  who  have  followed  the  work 
of  the  American  Red  Cross  Society 
will  have  an  especial  interest  in  its 
display.  Models  show  the  methods  of 
applying  first  aid  to  the  injured,  field 
camps  and  hospital  equipments,  and 
disclose  the  methods  taken  by  the  so- 
ciety to  remove  unsanitary  conditions 
and  the  spread  of  disease. 

Classified  as  among  the  Liberal 
Arts  exhibits,  though  on  the  "Zone," 
is  a  marvelous  working  model  of  the 
Panama  Canal.  The  exhibition  covers 
five  acres  of  ground.  Its  main  feature 
is  a  huge  topographical  map  of  the 
Panama  Canal  Zone,  giving  a  complete 
ocean  to  ocean  perspective,  such  as 
one  might  obtain  from  an  aeroplane. 
Through  the  center  of  this  giant  relief 
map,  on  which  the  tropical  foliage  of 
Panama,  the  streams  and  lakes  of  the 
Canal  Zone  are  reproduced,  runs  a  re- 
production of  the  Canal  itself.  Tiny 
vessels  seemingly  proceed  under  their 
own  steam  to  the  locks,  but  in  reality 
by  magnets  beneath  the  water.  You 
watch  the  miniature  craft  passing  from 
ocean  to  ocean,  from  a  movable  plat- 
form situated  high  above  the  map, 
and  making  a  complete  circuit  of  the 
five  acre  display  in  twenty-three  min- 
utes. At  each  of  the  theatre  chairs 
upon  the  platform  is  a  telephone  trans- 
mitter, through  which  you  may  hear 
a  lecture  describing  each  object  of  in- 
terest as  you  pass  it.  A  startling  im- 
pression one  gets  of  the  trip  is  a  mat- 
ter of  psychology.  When  first  you 
take  a  seat  on  the  platform,  you  are 
looking  simply  at  a  vast  colored  model 
of  the  Panama  Canal  Zone,  with  its 
miniature  mountains,  rivers,  lakes, 
lighthouses,  steamers,  wireless  tele- 
graph towers  in  operation  and  distant 
vistas.  But  as  you  look  longer  and 
longer,  the  mountains  seem  to  rise, 


the  colors  of  the  panoramas  give  the 
effect  of  mists,  the  distances  become 
increased,  parts  of  the  map  hundreds 
of  feet  away  seem  hundreds  of  miles. 
You  watch  the  tiny  craft  and  locomo- 
tives as  one  gazes  from  the  top  of  a 
mountain.  You  feel  that  you  are  real- 
ly looking  at  the  canal  itself.  You 
leave  the  great  enclosure  with  a  little 
gasp  of  wonder  and  surprise. 

In  the  great  Palace  of  Food  Pro- 
ducts the  visitor  learns  of  new  meth- 
ods not  only  in  cooking  and  preparing 
foods,  but  the  means  taken  by  various 
regions,  the  great  State  of  Washington 
among  others  to  produce  food — Wash- 
ington notably  to  increase  the  supply 
of  fish. 

A  fish  hatchery  is  shown  in  opera- 
tion. The  salmon  is  revealed  in  all 
the  stages  of  its  life,  from  the  spawn 
until  it  is  delivered  to  the  cannery. 
Dozens  of  tanks  containing  living  fish 
of  many  species  are  shown.  There 
are  also  trays  containing  the  fry  sal- 
mon from  the  time  it  develops  from 
the  spawn  until  it  becomes  a  minnow. 
One  marvels  at  the  resourcefulness 
of  nature,  and  also  at  the  supreme  vi- 
tality of  the  breed  which  attains  de- 
velopment from  such  fragile  begin- 
nings. The  Food  Products  Palace  is, 
indeed,  popular  with  women  visitors. 
It  is  even  more  popular  with  the  men. 
It  is  a  Paradise  for  the  children.  A 
young  San  Francisco  lad,  lured  by  the 
glories  of  the  fair,  ran  away  from 
home  and  secured  a  job  on  the  Zone. 
In  the  Palace  of  Food  Products  he 
managed  every  day  to  pick  up  enough 
to  make  three  solid  meals.  Such  a 
boy  eats  the  dishes  of  all  the  world. 
He  becomes  a  cosmopolite  in  menus 
with  no  bills  to  pay  nor  waiters  to  tip. 
He  eats  enchiladas,  tortillos,  tamales 
from  Mexico,  Han  Far  cake  from  Can- 
ton, Hebrew  matzos  and  noodles,  Sen 
Pei  or  tea  cakes  from  Japan,  Perosky 
and  Vereneke  from  Russia,  and  innu- 
merable other  dishes  to  delight  a  far 
more  exacting  critic  than  a  small  boy. 
If  he  wishes  something  in  Southern 
style  he  may  get  from  a  smiling,  ex- 
pansive mammy,  corn  pone,  corn 
bread  and  hoe  cake.  In  the  Food  Pro- 


WORLD'S  ADVANCE  SHOWN  IN  EXHIBITS 


111 


ducts  Palace  is  a  three  story  flour  mill 
in  operation,  and  you  may  see  the 
cooks  of  all  nations.  Without  the  ef- 
forts of  the  types  they  represent,  king- 
doms would  fall,  dynasties  perish 
from  the  earth.  If  the  cooks  of  the 
world  went  on  a  strike  the  European 
war  would  come  to  a  standstill.  In 
this  palace  the  latest  cooking  devices, 
including  fireless  cookers,  are  dis- 
played on  an  elaborate  scale.  The 
foreign  nations  have  made  wonderful 
exhibits  here.  Argentine,  Spain,  Italy, 
France,  Cuba,  Japan,  Greece,  Great 
Britain  and  Portugal  make  elaborate 
displays.  One  of  the  finest  of  the 
Japanese  exhibits  is  a  tea  garden  with 
tea  plants,  and  the  pickers  reproduced 
with  a  fidelity  that  makes  them  seem 
real.  In  this  palace  also  are  shown 
a  thousand  steps  in  the  preparation  of 
food. 

Another  marvel  is  the  mighty  Palace 
of  Transportation.  Here  are  vast  and 
comprehensive  displays  of  the  great 
railroad  and  steamship  companies. 
Here  we  behold  huge  Mogul  locomo- 
tives, giant  electric  engines,  the  air- 
ship that  first  flew  over  the  Panama 
Canal  Zone,  trolley  lines,  switch- 
boards, insulating  cloths  and  papers, 
sections  of  transcontinental  liners, 
showing  the  actual  size  and  furnish- 
ings of  their  first,  second  and  third 
cabin  rooms.  Hundreds  of  models  of 
steamships  attract  the  eye,  an  espe- 
cially interesting  model  being  that  of 
the  Brittanic,  Great  Britain's  hugest 
passenger  carrier,  a  vessel  of  50,000 
tons.  The  epochs  of  transportation 
are  exalted.  An  early  Wells-Fargo 
coach  that  carried  passengers  and 
treasures  across  the  Western  plains 
before  the  railroad  came  suggests  the 
historic  contest  between  the  painted 
warrior  and  the  daring  stage  drivers. 
The  automobile  exhibit  is  a  drawing 
card.  In  one  section  of  the  building 
skilled  mechanics  assemble  an  auto- 
mobile before  your  very  eyes.  So 
rapidly  is  the  machine  put  together 
that  you  do  not  wonder  why  there  are 
so  many  autos.  The  work  goes  hum- 
ming. Each  mechanic  performs  a  dif- 
ferent task.  Each  has  to  finish  his 


part  within  a  given  time,  for  the  ma- 
chine travels  along  a  runway,  and  each 
of  its  parts  must  be  assembled  by  the 
time  it  reaches  a  certain  point  in  its 
course,  when  the  next  man  does  his 
portion.  And  almost  miraculously  the 
whizz  wagon  is  completed.  In  Trans- 
portation Palace,  too,  you  find  a 
United  States  railroad  mail  car,  with 
a  crew  of  Uncle  Sam's  most  efficient 
men  in  charge.  In  another  portion  of 
the  Palace  is  a  giant  globe,  the  world 
in  miniature,  with  the  routes  of  a 
great  railroad  system  shown  on  its  ex- 
terior. By  an  ingenious  method  of 
lighting  the  visitor  may  follow  the 
train  from  San  Francisco  to  St.  Louis. 
Inside  the  globe  is  a  series  of  illumi- 
nated panoramas  of  interesting  places 
along  the  line,  while  the  vault  of  the 
sphere  is  illuminated  with  lights  that 
twinkle  like  stars.  The  visitor  is  al- 
most persuaded  he  is  beneath  the 
heavens.  But  the  marvels  of  the  Pal- 
ace of  Transportation  may  only  be 
hinted.  The  operation  of  giant  loco- 
motives is  shown,  the  exterior  cover- 
ings being  frequently  removed  so  that 
one  may  see  just  how  the  steel  horse 
operates  internally.  All  in  all,  the 
amazing,  whizzing,  moving  exhibits 
thrill  every  visitor.  When  Vincent  As- 
tor,  idling  with  his  bride  up  the  Paci- 
fic coast  in  his  palatial  yacht,  the 
Norma,  finally  dropped  anchor  off  the 
Esplanade,  he  made  a  bee  line  for  the 
'Palace  of  Transportation,  visited  the 
cabs  of  the  great  locomotives,  pulled 
the  throttles  and  asked  questions  of 
the  experts  in  charge  that  would  have 
entitled  a  division  train  master  to 
promotion. 

The  Palace  of  Mines  is  a  wonder. 
One  of  its  most  interesting  and  most 
appropriate  feature  is  a  coal  mine  be- 
neath the  floor  of  the  Palace.  The 
visitor  in  descending  the  shaft  feels 
the  thrill  that  accompanies  the  descent 
into  a  real  mine.  One  feels  himself 
sinking  toward  the  center  of  the  earth 
with  only  a  cable  to  prevent  the  car 
from  plunging  thousands  of  feet  be- 
low. The  mine,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is 
below  the  level  of  San  Francisco  Bay, 
for  the  ground  upon  which  the  Palace 


112 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


stands  was  dredged  in  from  the  har- 
bor. Once  in  the  mine  you  behold 
all  features  of  a  mine's  equipment, 
including  drilling  rigs,  coal  cars,  min- 
ers' lamps  and  miners  at  work.  The 
various  features  of  the  equipment  are 
provided  by  large  mining  corporations 
and  represent  the  last  word  in  the 
methods  employed  in  mining.  Life 
savers,  too,  are  shown  at  work.  Boom! 
That  is  an  explosion!  Gongs  ring,  an 
ambulance  dashes  to  the  portals  of  the 
palace,  and  a  crew  of  life  savers,  clad 
in  non-combustible  suits,  with  faces 
protected  against  deadly  gases,  rush 
to  the  mine  to  save  the  lives  of  the 
victims  imprisoned  far  beneath  the 
earth.  The  scene  is  dramatic,  and  it 
draws  the  crowd.  Thousands  who  do 
not  know  the  daily  program  imagine 
an  accident  and  follow  those  who  are 
rushing  to  the  mine. 

If  you  have  a  boy  who  is  interested 
in  mining  take  him  to  the  Palace  of 
Mines.  He  will  see  the  great  electro- 
lytic refiner  reproduced  in  miniature, 
lead  and  zinc  separated  from  their 
complex  ores  by  every  practical 
method  used — dry  and  wet ;  he  will  get 
a  wonderful  vision  of  the  possibilities 
of  the  mining  industry,  of  its  fascina- 
tion, of  the  vast  mineral  wealth  of  the 
United  States  and  of  many  other 
lands. 

One  could  not  make  a  complete  in- 
spection of  all  the  exhibit  palaces  in 
six  weeks,  and  it  would  take  an  ency- 
clopedia to  describe  them.  If  you 
were  to  spend  five  minutes  at  each  ex- 
hibit it  would  take  you  two  years  and 
three  months  to  view  the  marvels  on 
display  at  San  Francisco.  There  are 
in  the  main  palaces  alone  forty-seven 
miles  of  aisles.  Thus  the  reader  will 
pardon  a  more  abridged  description  of 
the  Palace  of  Horticulture  than  its 
merit  deserves.  The  building  is  to- 
day the  eighth  wonder  of  the  world. 
It  is  surmounted  by  a  colossal  dome 
of  opalescent  glass  186  feet  in  height 
and  152  feet  in  diameter.  Beneath  the 
dome  is  a  vast  conservatory — a  section 
of  tropical  jungle.  Cuban  Royal  palms 
65  to  75  feet  in  height,  Royal  Creole 
palms  50  to  60  feet  in  height,  rise  like 


giant  hairbell  ferns;  their  delicate 
fronds  are  as  exquisite  in  detail  as  the 
traceries  of  hoar  frost  upon  a  winter's 
window.  In  the  shelter  of  the  palms 
rare  tropical  shrubs,  plants  from  the 
far  corners  of  the  world,  brilliant  flow- 
ers and  strange  exotic  growth  trans- 
port the  visitor  to  a  new  realm. 

Opening  into  the  prodigious  conser- 
vatory, huge  enough  to  contain  the 
greatest  palms  that  ever  grew,  are  four 
lesser  conservatories.  Here  are  rare 
orchids  from  the  dark  forests  of  the 
Philippines,  the  Strait  Settlements,  and 
from  the  tangled  jungles  of  Borneo.  In 
other  parts  of  the  palace  is  illustrated 
the  commercial  side  of  the  fruit  indus- 
try, showing  'all  steps  in  the  manipula- 
tion of  the  product  from  orchard  to 
consumer.  Japan  has  an  interesting 
fruit  display.  Americans  show  a  can- 
ning factory  in  operation.  Nearby,  or- 
anges are  boxed  and  crated  and  sent 
to  any  address  you  wish.  Also  in  the 
palace  are  roses,  the  rarest  in  all  the 
world,  entered  in  the  International 
Rose  Growers'  Contest,  with  a  prize  of 
$1,000  for  the  grower  who  originates 
the  finest  new  rose.  Among  the  con- 
testants are  growers  from  France,  Ger- 
many, Scotland,  Ireland,  England  and 
the  United  States. 

In  the  Palace  of  Education  across 
the  Avenue  of  Palms,  you  will  see 
classes  of  school  children  reciting. 
Other  children  are  in  the  palace,  too; 
sick  or  ailing  little  ones  at  the  office 
of  the  United  States  Health  Bureau, 
brought  by  their  parents  to  receive  at- 
tention from  the  Federal  physicians  in 
charge.  One  mother  came  with  her 
child  a  thousand  miles  to  secure  treat- 
ment from  the  Government  physicians. 
Daily  hundreds  of  children  are  brought 
to  this  exhibit.  It  is  the  expression 
of  a  new  thought  in  public  work;  it 
heralds  the  day  when  the  movement 
inaugurated  by  the  United  States  to 
care  for  its  future  citizens  will  find 
expression,  among  other  ways  in  the 
appointment  of  a  resident  physician 
for  every  great  public  school  in  the 
United  States.  The  Department  of 
Immigration,  on  the  other  hand,  shows 
the  care  which  is  taken  of  the  immi- 


WORLD'S  ADVANCE  SHOWN  IN  EXHIBITS 


113 


grant  and  his  family.  In  the  Philip- 
pine section  we  learn  with  what  amaz- 
ing success  the  Government  has  edu- 
cated its  Filipino  wards.  Another  of 
the  absorbing  exhibits  in  the  Educa- 
tion Palace  is  that  of  the  Rockefeller 
foundation.  Here  are  shown,  among 
other  features,  the  steps  taken  by  the 
Rockefeller  foundation  to  eradicate  the 
hookworm  in  the  South.  In  the  past 
three  years,  through  the  efforts  of  the 
foundation,  more  than  one  million 
cases  of  hookworm  have  been  cured, 
and  the  former  patients,  no  longer 
without  vigor  and  shiftless,  approach 
the  tasks  of  life  with  new  confidence 
and  energy.  All  these  features  lead 
to  a  single  goal:  The  keynote  of  the 
Palace  of  Education  and  of  the  whole 
Exposition  is  social  service.  A  fam- 
ous motto,  originated  by  Commodore 
Vanderbilt,  has  been  altered.  "The 
Public  Be  Pleased,"  is  the  shibboleth 
of  to-day.  More  and  more  are  the 
schools  and  other  agencies  dedicated 
to  the  education  of  children.  One  can 
hardly  realize  how  extensive  is  the 
wonderful  work  accomplished  in  this 
field. 

But  we  have  almost  omitted  to  touch 
upon  the  thundering  Palace  of  Machin- 
ery !  Here  giant  motors,  huge  engines, 
great  presses,  turbines,  pumps  and 
endless  batteries  of  other  modern  me- 
chanical devices  employed  in  the 
world's  industrial  conflict  are  exhibited 


in  operation.  One  of  the  most  valu- 
able of  all  is  the  Diesel  engine,  cap- 
able of  propelling  the  largest  steam- 
ship through  the  ocean.  Already  the 
ship  without  the  smoke  stacks  is  mak- 
ing its  appearance  on  all  seas.  Whether 
or  not  it  will  supplant  the  steamer  as 
the  steamer  has  supplanted  the  wind- 
jammer no  one  may  yet  predict  with 
certainty. 

And  now  to  another  building.  Do 
not  neglect  to  visit  the  Palace  of  Ag- 
riculture. It  is  far  from  being  dry  or 
prosaic.  It  holds  some  of  the  most 
interesting,  and,  of  course,  necessary 
exhibits  ever  shown  at  a  world's  ex- 
position. Here  you  see  the  world  of 
agriculture  in  epitome;  here  you  see 
the  basis  of  all  life;  here  you  learn 
not  only  what  the  United  States  has 
accomplished  in  agriculture,  but  what 
the  Argentine,  Australia,  New  Zealand 
and  other  far  away  lands  are  achieving 
that  the  earth  may  yield  more  boun- 
tifully of  her  harvest.  Hundreds  of 
agricultural  implements,  which  operate 
with  almost  human  intelligence,  are 
shown,  among  them  being  a  seeder, 
which  selects  the  seed  for  the  soil,  de- 
posits it  and  covers  the  earth. 

And  at  this  the  most  surpassing  of 
expositions,  you  learn  how  closely  are 
the  nations  related,  and  that  a  great 
invention,  a  wonderful  work  of  art,  or 
the  production  of  the  best  potato  grown 
is  a  work  for  all  humanity. 


Emperor  Norton 


By  Fred  Emerson  Brooks 


Monarch  by  choice  of  the  Golden  West, 

Usurper  by  right  of  his  own  behest, 

What  though  his  reign  was  a  world-wide  jest — 

This  wise  old  Emperor  Norton — 
There  never  was  monarch  so  kindly  as  he, 
So  lordly  in  rags,  democratic  and  free, 
With  never  a  battle  on  land  or  sea — 

Our  good  old  Emperor  Norton. 

His  soldierly  dress  we  can  never  forget, 
With  its  tarnished  and  old-fashioned  epaulette, 
A  white  plug  hat  with  a  side  rosette — 

One  suit  had  Emperor  Norton — 
With  a  monster  cane  as  a  regal  mace, 
Entwined  with  the  serpent  that  tempted  the  race, 
This  monarch  of  mystery  held  his  place, 

Majestical  Emperor  Norton. 

Exacting  no  bounty  but  moderate  need, 

While  the  light  of  his  life  was  an  excellent  creed, 

For  he  never  had  done  an  ignoble  deed, 

This  raggedy  Emperor  Norton. 
There  never  was  tribute  more  modestly  laid, 
By  banker  and  merchant  more  willingly  paid, 
And  never  were  titles  more  cheerfully  made 

Than  those  by  Emperor  Norton. 

All  men  are  usurpers  somewhat  in  their  way, 
But  the  high  and  the  lowly  acknowledged  his  sway, 
And  even  the  children  would  pause  in  their  play 

With  greetings  for  Emperor  Norton. 
No  King  ever  ruled  better  people,  I  vow — 
Those  old  San  Franciscans  were  peers,  anyhow — 
For  none  but  the  noble  would  smilingly  bow 

To  a  mock-regal  Emperor  Norton. 


In  Aarceau's  Cabin 


By  Alex  Gardiner 


THE  WORDING  of  old  Mar- 
ceau's  "night  letter"  made  me 
smile,  for  he  had  thriftily  sent 
the  full  fifty  words  for  his 
money;  but  I  fairly  chuckled  at  its 
meaning,  which  exactly  fitted  but 
three — Trackin'  snow.  Come. 

A  tracking  snow!  Jules  had  prom- 
ised to  v/ire  from  Cedar  Spur  when  he 
judged  the  weather  signs  propitious; 
but  I  had  not  hoped  for  a  tracking 
snow  so  early;  and  now  it  seemed  im- 
possible— looking  from  office  win- 
dows, through  warm,  foggy  rain,  down 
on  a  ridiculous  throng  of  scurrying  um- 
brellas. But  from  Seattle  eastward 
into  the  Cascades  temperature — civi- 
lization, too,  in  a  sense — varies  in- 
versely as  the  square  of  the  altitude; 
and  that  rises. 

I  called  up  Schuller,  who  was  to 
accompany  me  on  this  hunt;  his  big 
voice  boomed  over  the  wires :  "Should 
say  I  can  be  ready!  Meet  you  at  the 
depot." 

Joyously  rough-garbed  and  gun- 
burdened,  we  caught  an  early  morning, 
fussy  little  train,  which  jolted  us  by 
nine  o'clock  into  Cedar  Spur,  where 
Marceau  or  his  pardner,  Ben  Otway, 
was  to  meet  us.  Neither  was  on  hand ; 
but  the  storekeeper  knew  something. 

"Oh,  you're  Mr.  Boman,"  he  said. 
"Why,  Ben  isn't  up  there  right  now. 
He  was  down  and  took  out  some  hunt- 
ers up  to  Fir  Lake ;  but  Jules,  he  aimed 
to  be  in  to-day.  He  sent  that  wire  to 
you  down  by  Joe  Pew,  and  a  list  of 
stuff  he  wants.  It's  all  ready;  but  he 
hasn't  showed  up  yet.  You  just  wait 
around,  though,  gentlemen;  Jules'll 
breeze  in  before  long." 

But  waiting  around  ill  suited  the 
mood  of  two  office  slaves  unchained  on 
a  tracking  snow — a  tracking  snow  in 


the  middle  of  the  open  season.  The 
Lord  had  given  it;  and  with  three 
hours'  "chinook"  the  Lord  might  take 
it  away.  We  took  that  view  of  it,  and 
descending  upon  the  local  liveryman, 
readily  convinced  him  that  we  thought 
aright  and  had  five  dollars. 

As  he  was  cranking  Cedar  Spur's 
one  automobile,  the  storekeeper  came 
running  with  two  lusty  cans  of  to- 
bacco of  a  brand  notoriously  power- 
ful. "Jules  might  not  want  to  come 
down  right  away,"  he  explained, 
"once  you're  up  there;  and  he  might 
"get  along  if  he  run  plumb  out  of  any- 
thing else  of  his  list,  but  not  without 
this ;  so  if  you  can  take  it " 

"Give  us  a  bunch  of  cigars,  too," 
laughed  Schuller.  We  had  little  to 
carry  besides  our  rifles. 

The  machine  rolled  us  merrily  up 
beyond  the  last  logging  outpost,  then 
churned  and  wallowed  through  the  few 
miles  farther  of  alleged  road.  Thence 
we  must  walk,  by  rough  pack  trail, 
winding  up  and  around  the  base  of  a 
timbered  great  mountain,  for  both  Ot- 
wav  and  Marceau,  as  a  side  issue  to 
their  serious  business  of  trapping, 
hunting  and  some  guiding  of  favored 
ones,  were  homesteaders,  bucking  a 
corporation  land  grant  for  their  richly 
forested  claims. 

It  was  a  hard  climb  for  soft  men; 
but  our  hearts  were  light  as  our  pack- 
sacks.  When  leveler  stretches  allowed 
him  to  breathe,  Schuller  lifted  up  the 
voice  that  was  of  the  Teutonic  portion 
of  his  mixed  inheritance  and  poured 
down  the  dark  aisles  of  fire  and  hem- 
locks a  melodious  jumble  of  rag-time 
foolishness  and  German  solemn  song, 
until  I,  too,  must  carol  a  little,  an<* 
both  of  us  cackled  at  the  absurd  anti- 
climax, for  I  am  no  songbird. 

3', 


116 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Beyond  the  snowline  we  were  im- 
peded slightly,  and  for  the  last  two 
miles  the  flakes  were  thickly  falling, 
dimming  the  failing  daylight;  but  we 
could  still  make  out  the  trail  when  we 
came  into  Marceau's  clearing,  and  the 
cabin  loomed  black  before  us,  an  oc- 
casional spark  flickeding  above  the 
flue  of  the  great  stone  fire  place,  and, 
fronting  us,  a  cheery  fire  glow  from 
window  and  open  door. 

Jules  was  at  home,  then.  I  thought 
a  big,  hungry  thought  of  his  biscuits 
and  his  venison.  In  the  schoolboy 
humor  that  had  pervaded  the  whole 
trip  I  signed  to  Schuller;  and  we 
sneaked  in  the  soft,  new  snow  to  the 
doorway;  then  I  leaped  the  step,  and 
with  a  foolish  great  yell,  landed  square 
on  the  threshold. 

As  if  to  the  jar  of  this  boisterous 
entrance,  the  dimly  burning  logs  on 
the  hearth  rolled  together,  sending  up 
a  brilliant  flare  which  lighted  all  the 
cabin  interior  and  revealed  broken 
chairs,  overturned  table,  scattered 
fragments  of  a  smashed  lamp ;  and  be- 
yond this  horrid,  still  disorder,  in  the 
far  corner  under  the  antlers  where 
Jules  racked  his  guns,  some  sprawling 
dead  thing  lay. 

With  a  smothered  "God!"  Schuller 
strode  in  abreast  of  me,  and  together 
we  eased  the  body  over. 

It  was  Jules  Marceau — had  been.  No 
— I  thought  he  still  lived,  though  all 
his  blood  seemed  out  upon  the  floor. 
He  was  badly  cut  on  arm  and  shoul- 
der, and  the  real  trouble  we  soon  found 
in  a  long  slash  on  his  left  side — we 
could  not  tell  how  deep,  but  that 
looked  serious. 

Well  it  was  that  I  knew  the  cabin, 
knew  where  to  jump  for  water,  ban- 
dages, light.  We  jerked  out  his  bunk 
from  the  bedroom  lean-to,  hustled  him 
onto  it,  and  did  what  we  could  with 
the  rough  tools  and  knowledge  at  our 
command ;  for  that  worst  wound  it  was 
not  much.  I  forced  whisky  down  him, 
I  thought,  and  I  thought  he  breathed 
thereafter  more  perceptibly. 

"One  of  us  must  burn  right  out  for 
a  doctor,"  I  said;  and  Schuller  nodded, 
soberly. 


"And  it  had  better  be  me,"  he 
added.  "That  gives  you  the  worst 
end  of  the  job,  and  I  hate  to  suggest 
it;  but  you  know  the  place  here  and 
the  man.  If  he  comes  to,  that  might 
help — especially  if  he  doesn't  eventu- 
ally recover.  You  might  find  out  v/ho 
did  it." 

"I'll  find  out  someway — sometime!" 
I  promised.  "Poor  old  Jules!  A  bet- 
ter-natured  old  cuss  never  breathed." 

"Yes,  you  must  go,  Fred.  Beat  it 
down  to  Pew's  farm — where  the  ma- 
chine left  us.  They'll  give  you  a 
horse  or  go  with  you  on  to  the  log- 
ging camp.  You  can  'phone  from 
there.  Better  wait  there  and  come 
back  with  the  doctor.  Make  him 
hurry." 

Schuller  grabbed  the  lantern  and 
started  without  another  word;  but  at 
the  door  he  paused,  came  back,  and 
with  an  apologetic  lift  of  eyebrov/s, 
got  his  rifle  from  its  case.  Bidding 
me  "good-bye,  then,  and  good  luck!" 
he  departed,  loading  it  as  he  went. 

For  the  first  time,  then,  it  occurred 
to  me  that  danger  might  still  be  upon 
the  mountainside.  The  mystery  of 
this  thing  that  had  befallen  Marceau 
weighed  suddenly  upon  me.  My  first 
thought  when  the  firelight  had  flick- 
ered over  him,  so  sprawled  out  and 
still,  had  been  of  fierce  beasts;  al- 
though there  is  scarcely,  in  the  Cas- 
cades, any  wild  thing  open  to  such 
suspicion.  But  neither  was  murder 
there,  within  the  scope  of  my  imagin- 
ing. Had  it  been  in  the  city,  now;  but 
who  would  come  here  to  kill  this  sim- 
ple hunter — and  so  nearly  succeed? 

Though  old  Jules  was  a  light  wisp  of 
a  man,  he  was  tough,  with  absurdly 
long,  muscular  arms  and  sturdy  legs; 
all  the  disorder  of  things  declared  that 
he  had  defended  himself ;  and  his  own 
rifle  had  been  under  him  where  he 
lay — a  short,  powerful  autoloader,  in 
skilled  hands  nearly  as  handy  at  close 
quarters  as  a  revolver.  I  could  not  im- 
agine any  knife-fighter  rushing  Jules 
while  he  held  that  "gatling."  I  had 
seen  him  perform  with  it. 

I  picked  it  up  now.  It  had  been 
fired,  but  still  held  three  cartridges.  I 


IN  MARCEAU'S  CABIN 


117 


found  one  bullet  hole  in  the  front  wall ; 
I  searched  for  ejected  shells,  and 
found  two,  which  it  seemed  to  me 
would  indicate  that  one  bullet  at  least 
had  hit  its  mark;  and  the  position  on 
the  floor  of  those  empties,  taken  with 
my  knowledge  of  the  rifle's  action,  told 
me  that  Jules  had  fired  from  about 
where  we  found  him. 

But  there  my  detective  ability  ended. 
I  found  a  bloody  palm-print  on  the 
door  jamb,  and  could  make  nothing  ,»f 
it.  I  stepped  outside — still,  I  admit, 
carrying  the  wounded  man's  rifle. 
Snow  was  yet  falling;  and  though  I 
made  out  many  tracks  about  the  cabin, 
covered  but  not  obliterated,  they  might 
have  been  anybody's,  and  probably 
were  mostly  Jules'  own.  Re-entering, 
I  saw  the  knife,  in  a  corner  by  the 
fireplace — a  strong  hunting  blade,  red 
and  wet  to  the  home-made  haft;  but  I 
recognized  it  as  Jules'  property,  and 
his  wounds  were  certainly  not  self- 
inflicted. 

For  the  present,  at  least,  I  gave  it 
up. 

I  built  up  the  fire,  and  set  about 
cooking  myself  a  meal;  but  first  I 
loaded  the  automatic  full,  and  my  own 
gun,  too,  and  laid  them  in  different 
and  equally  handy  places.  I  do  not 
know  what  I  feared — don't  know  that 
I  was  exactly  afraid  as  yet;  but  I — 
well,  my  experience  included  a  little 
battle  once,  in  Cuba,  and  a  big  train 
wreck  nearer  home;  but  there  death 
came  with  a  great,  important  bustle :  I 
had  no  stomach  for  this  business. 

Having  choked  down  what  food  I 
could,  I  loaded  a  corncob,  and  began 
the  all-night  vigil;  and — have  you 
ever  lam  wakeful  in  some  lonely  place, 
near,  but  not  too  near,  to  the  roar  of 
waters  ? 

A  tremendously  energetic  creek 
rolled  down  the  mountain  just  beyond 
that  cabin — so  far  beyond  that  it 
dulled  no  effect  in  my  ears  of  my 
friend's  gasping  breath,  of  any  creak- 
ing of  the  cabin  structure  or  other 
mysterious  night  sound  whatsoever, 
yet  near  enough  that  half-merged  in  its 
rhythmic  tumult  was  every  weird,  un- 
happy sound  my  horror  stimulated 


mind  could  conjure.  I  heard  faint,  far- 
distant  shots,  persistent  and  spaced 
out  in  time,  as  by  some  man  lost  and 
signalling  distress;  I  heard  the  wail 
and  the  sobbing  of  human  grief  and 
the  scream  of  a  tortured  horse.  Again 
it  was  a  woman's  scream,  and  then 
the  lonely,  horrid  cry  of  a  couger;  and 
that  might  be,  but  I  knew  it  was  not. 
I  heard  faintly  the  clamor  of  mis- 
handled bells;  and  then  I  heard  the 
mournful  melody  of  a  hound  cold-trail- 
ing or  lost  from  its  master. 

It  came  to  me  to  wonder  at  the  ab- 
sence of  Marceau's  dog,  for  he  and 
Otway  had  always  each  kept  one  and 
ran  them  together.  I  thought  likely 
that  both  were  with  Otway  on  that  Fir 
Lake  trip,  which  the  storekeeper  had 
said  engaged  him  now;  but  I  listened 
again  and  went  to  the  door. 

When  I  stepped  outside,  the  song 
of  falling  water  gained  much  in  vol- 
ume; but  there  was  no  other  sound. 
The  night  was  but  more  utterly  still 
for  a  whisper  of  air  in  the  tree-tops. 
The  snow  had  ceased;  even  all  clouds 
were  gone  from  a  sky  that  seemed  so 
high  there,  where  the  narrow  horizon 
was  peaks  and  ridges,  right  overhead; 
and  the  tiny  stars  looked  cold  and  far, 
for,  though  no  moon  was  visible  above 
the  mountain  rim,  it  was  moonlight, 
and  with  that  elfin  brilliance  given 
only  when  God  adds  to  his  full  moon 
a  clear  sky,  too,  and  snow  new-fallen. 
Each  near  tree  stood  out  from  its  fel- 
lows, its  sombre  beauty  accentuated 
by  light  drapery  of  snow;  but  the  tim- 
bered mountain  opposite  was  too  far 
off  to  show  its  finery;  it  loomed  blue- 
black  against  the  lighter  sky. 

I  shuddered  and  went  in.  There 
was  no  change  in  Marceau. 

In  effort  to  shut  out  troubling  fancies 
I  sorted  a  dirty  magazine  from  the 
woodbox;  but  common  sense  suggested 
that  it  really  might  be  well  to  watch.  I 
watched — until  the  cheap  little  clock 
on  the  shelf  became  an  insult  in  its 
maddening  sloth.  I  coveted  the  whisky 
but  did  have  just  sufficient  will  to  put 
that  from  me ;  and  presently  I  thought 
I  heard  the  faintest  scratch  upon  the 
cabin  door.  I  knew  this,  too,  wa»<? 


118 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


fancy;  yet  I  listened  with  swift-pound- 
ing heart  beat  until  my  patient  fetched 
a  louder  gasp  than  common,  and 
brought  me  back  to  earth,  for  I  won- 
dered if  he  had  died.  But  he  breathed 
on  as  ever,  and  like  as  ever  to  the  im- 
age of  death.  I  poured  a  little  of  the 
liquor  in  his  throat,  instead  of  mine, 
and  felt  the  better  for  it. 

Again  I  could  not  choose  but  listen. 
Again  I  heard  a  slight  scratch  on  the 
door,  and  it  seemed  very  real;  but  so 
impatient  had  I  become  with  imagi- 
nation's tricks  that  I  could  not  quite 
believe  it  was.  Again  I  sat  forward, 
one  hand  gripping  the  rifle  on  the 
table  before  me,  and  all  my  abnor- 
mally sharpened  senses  projected  into 
the  eerie  moonlight  without  the  walls. 

Some  alien  thing  seemed  rustling 
all  around  the  cabin;  and  then  I 
thought  I  heard  a  low-pitched  whine; 
and  some  of  this  I  knew  was  fancy, 
but  some  I  had  to  think  was  not,  even 
before  a  sudden  soft  shock  came 
against  the  door,  trailing  off  into  pad- 
ding sounds. 

That  brought  me  up  standing,  with 
weapon  poised.  But  all  was  quiet.  I 
think  I  was  less  fearful  now,  in  knowl- 
edge that  I  faced  some  tangible  thing 
to  fear.  I  took  one  forward  step,  but 
paused,  as  from  out  in  the  clearing 
some  little  way  rose  clearly  the  shud- 
dering, long  drawn  howl  of  nothing 
more  alarming  than  a  sorrowful  dog. 

I  damned  myself  quite  cheerfully, 
and,  stepping  outside,  whistled  and 
called  "Cap."  A  gaunt,  huge-looking 
hound  slunk  into  the  moonlit  open,  and 
approached  suspiciously;  it  was  Mar- 
ceau's  dog.  I  coaxed  him  to  me; 
whereupon  another  appeared — a  black 
and  tan  that  I  knew  for  Otway's  pup. 

Could  Ben  be  coming,  I  hopefully 
wondered.  Unlikely  at  this  midnight 
hour;  and  yet  the  pup  behaved  oddly. 
He  refused  to  enter,  although  thor- 
oughly at  home  there,  as  I  well  knew; 
and  it  was  evidently  not  that  he  feared 
me.  Finally,  I  shut  the  door  on  him. 

Cap.,  for  his  part,  took  one  cast 
about  the  room  and  went  snuffling  to 
the  bedside.  There  he  plumped  down, 
aimed  his  muzzle  at  the  rafters,  and 


began  to  howl.  His  disciple  answered 
him  from  outside,  and  again  I  tried  to 
coax  him;  but  though  he  came  several 
times  thereafter  to  scratch  on  the  door 
he  would  not  pass  the  sill. 

I  soon  relinquished  hope  of  Otway's 
coming,  choosing  to  think  that  the 
dogs  had  been  hunting  on  their  own 
account.  Cap.  was  company  enough, 
anyway ;  though  after  his  first  outburst 
he  cried  only  at  intervals,  puttering 
between  whiles  uneasily  about  the 
room.  He  would  not  be  still,  and  I 
certainly  had  no  heart  to  punish  him 
for  his  honest  woe. 

He  had  been  with  me  perhaps  an 
hours,  perhaps  less — with  the  distrac- 
tion of  his  antics,  I  had  been  watch- 
ing the  clock  less  closely — when  at  last 
he  came  to  me  of  his  own  accord;  and 
I  talked  to  him,  as  a  man  will  alone 
with  a  smart  dog,  of  where  he  had 
been  and  of  this  thing  that  had  be- 
fallen Jules,  his  boss;  but  Cap.  cared 
little  for  my  notice.  He  shivered  un- 
der my  hand,  then  raised  his  head  in  a 
low-voiced,  heart-shaking  wail  almost 
in  my  face. 

As  I  straightened  away  from  him, 
my  eyes  came  to  bear  directly  on  the 
tiny  window,  near  beside  the  door.  It 
was  about  the  level  of  a  tall  man's 
head  outside,  and  quite  naked  of  cur- 
tain or  blind. 

Once  more  that  night  my  chair 
crashed  backward,  and  I  was  crouched 
warily  with  cocked  gun  in  my  hands, 
for  gazing  in  at  me,  intently,  through 
that  dark  square  was  a  white,  dis- 
torted human  face,  its  eyes  wide  and 
dull.  It  was  corpselike. 

What  subconscious  hold  on  sanity 
kept  me  from  pumping  bullets  through 
the  wall,  or  whether  I  was  just  too 
horrified  to  crook  a  finger,  I  do  not 
know;  but  I  did  nothing;  and  the  face 
slipped  slowly,  very  slowly,  below  the 
ledge.  Again  came  the  soft  thud  as 
of  some  creature  against  the  door,  and 
the  scratching.  Not  until  it  ceased 
did  I  realize  that  this  was  but  the  pup 
outside.  And  would  he  act  just  so, 
if  any  hostile  thing  were  out  there — 
if  that  thing  were  any  way  uncanny? 

I  turned  to  Cap.     It  occurred  to  me 


IN  MARCEAU'S  CABIN 


119 


that  Cap's  hackles  would  stand  on  end 
to-night  at  the  presence  just  through 
that  wall  of  even  a  living  man  who  was 
strange  to  him;  and,  living  or  dead,  a 
face  I  had  seen;  yet  the  dog  was 
barely  interested.  Like  a  memory  in- 
stead of  recognition  of  a  thing  seen 
but  the  previo'is  ^econd,  it  came  to  me 
that  the  face  in  the  window  had  been 
Ben  Otway's  face. 

Ben  Otway? 

I  bent  over  the  body  slumped  down 
in  the  snow  beneath  the  window  and 
kicked  away  the  crowding  dogs.  It 
was  Otway;  and  his  face  was  indeed 
like  that  of  death.  I  dragged  him  in 
with  difficulty,  for  he  was  heavier  than 
Jules — a  powerful,  big-boned  old  chap. 
He  was  quite  unconscious. 

He  was  shot  below  the  heart.  One 
rib,  at  least,  was  smashed,  but  I 
thought  the  bullet  had  followed  it 
around.  I  was  not  sure.  If  so,  I  rea- 
soned, he  must  be  mighty  tough  and 
mighty  lucky;  perhaps  he  might  prove 
lucky  and  tough  enough  to  live. 

His  dog  consented  to  come  in  now; 
and  I  realized  remorsefully  his  canine 
reasoning  in  staying  out,  yet  appar- 
ently scratching  to  come  in.  It  was  I 
who  had  been  the  "dumb"  one. 

Doubtless  the  dogs  had  found  Ben 
before  I  first  heard  them;  but  where 
had  they  found  him?  I  remembered 
those  shots  I  had  thought  I  heard,  and 
had  set  aside  as  my  own  imagining, 
remembered  the  strange  cries  I  had 
thought,  too,  were  imagined;  but  sure- 
ly, he  could  have  come  no  distance  af- 
ter the  shock  of  such  a  wound.  I 
could  scarcely  credit  my  own  senses 
that  he  had  taken  three  consecutive 
steps  since  receiving  it. 

Soon  as  I  had  the  new  patient 
cleansed  and  bandaged  on  a  second 
bunk,  I  went  out  again.  And  I  went 
armed,  and  this  time  took  no  shame  to 
it.  It  seemed  entirely  possible  that 
Ben  Otway  had  been  shot  somewhere 
on  that  mountain  since  I  had  come 
to  the  cabin. 

But  his  wavering  back-trail  led  from 
the  window  only  some  six  or  eight 
rods,  thence  a  stride  or  two  to  one 
side  the  trail ;  and  there,  like  the  "bed" 


of  some  cruelly  wounded  deer,  was  the 
blood-stained  depression  in  the  snow 
whence  he  had  lately  risen.  I  could 
make  out  no  tracks  coming  into  it; 
but  he  might  have  come  up  the  trail, 
scored  with  the  snowed-over  plowings 
of  Schuller  and  myself ;  he  might  have 
already  been  lying  there  when  we 
came.  There  was  no  way  of  knowing. 
No  way  of  knowing  how  or  at  whose 
hands  either  he  or  Jules  came  to  this 
sorry  pass.  Otway's  presence  here  at 
all?  aside  from  his  hurt,  but  deepened 
the  mystery  that  I  could  not  but  feel 
it  might  be  incumbent  upon  me  to 
solve,  for  these  two  elderly  woods- 
dwellers— Otway  little  less  than  Jules 
— had  given  me  great  measure  of  their 
friendship ;  and  I  believed  neither  had 
a  close  relative. 

I  was  in  no  position  to  say  if  either 
had  an  enemy;  but  they  were  not  men 
to  make  enemies.  Harmless  old  souls 
— at  least  they  seemed  old  to  me.  Both 
were,  I  think,  around  fifty,  but  with 
the  tough  resilience  of  seasoned  forty; 
and  if  both  had  been  present  I  could 
understand  both  getting  hurt  in  the 
quarrel  of  either,  for  they  were  broth- 
ers to  a  degree  blood  brothers  seldom 
are. 

When  I  returned  to  the  cabin,  Jules' 
eyes  were  open,  and  he  spoke  thickly 
in  delirium.  I  caught  references  to 
"cat" — or  "Cap" — and  to  the  Virgin 
Mary,  and,  I  thought,  the  word 
"knife."  But  all  was  incoherent;  I 
could  make  no  clue  of  it,  and  he 
seemed  not  to  know  or  even  notice  me. 
He  was  soon  quiet  again. 

Otway  still  lay  his  great  length  like 
one  dead.  He  looked  grotesquely 
helpless,  with  grizzled,  tobacco-stained 
mustache  against  so  pale  a  leathery 
cheek,  and  his  gangling  limbs  all  a- 
sprawl. 

I  could  really  do  nothing  for  either, 
and  passed  the  remaining  hours  of 
vigil  in  keeping  up  a  fire,  quieting  the 
ever  restless  hounds  and  in  butting  my 
head  against  the  blank  wall  of  what 
could  have  brought  all  this  to  be. 
Looking  back,  I  do  not  wonder  that  I 
failed  to  guess,  nor — so  vivid  is  the 
picture  still  of  the  two  stricken  old 


120 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


fellows — do  I  wonder  that  I  enter- 
tained the  personal  indignation  and  re- 
vengeful plans  that  did  come  to  me. 

It  was  from  an  odd,  unwholesome 
reverie  that  I  was  startled  when,  just 
as  dawn  began  to  pale  the  lamplight,  I 
heard  the  far  off  yell  of  Schuller. 

Two  strangers  accompanied  him, 
one  obviously  the  doctor,  the  other  a 
tallish,  gaunt-faced  man  whom  I 
thought  I  could  place,  too;  and  I  was 
not  mistaken. 

Schuller  introduced  them,  and  we 
moved  inside.  "Good  gosh!"  ex- 
claimed Cales,  the  deputy  sheriff,  "I 
thought  it  was  only  Jules!"  But  Dr. 
Atwood  stripped  off  and  went  to  work 
with  cheerful  industry  good  to  look 
upon. 

He  soon  pressed  me  into  service, 
Schuller,  too,  at  times,  but  Schuller 
was  all  in,  as  he  had  cause  to  be.  By 
simple  arithmetic,  the  deputy  sheriff 
was  cook,  and  I  must  credit  him  that 
for  a  small  county  office  holder  he 
proved  to  be  a  worker. 

His  first  call  to  breakfast  came  when 
the  doctor  still  stitched  and  wrought 
with  Jules ;  and  Atwood  grimly  punned 
that  he  could  scarce  be  expected  to 
make  two  whole  men  before  breakfast. 

I  ventured  to  inquire  what  he  hoped 
for  them.  He  shook  his  head,  but 
then  chuckled  professionally :  "I  know 
Jules,"  he  said.  "Went  hunting  with 
him  once.  You'd  have  to  cut  him  in 
two  to  kill  him;  and  he's  only  cut  half 
in  two.  See  here" — indicating  a  bruise 
on  the  hurt  man's  chin,  which  I  had 
not  previously  noticed — "that's  what 
put  him  out — that  punch  in  the  chin; 
and  he  bled  enough  to  keep  him  out. 
Whoever  rushed  him  the  knife  swung 
in  one  hand  and  his  fist  in  the  other." 

I  gathered  that  he  thought  Jules' 
case  not  quite  hopeless,  and  felt  ac- 
cordingly relieved. 

"Any  idea  who  did  it?"  the  doctor 
asked,  casually. 

"I  can't  figure  out  a  thing,  but  if  they 
live " 

"They  both  ought  to  live — tough  old 
scouts  like  them;  but  they  may  nei- 
ther of  'em  be  conscious,  and  sane, 
too,  for  some  days;  and  meanwhile 


some  one's  gaming  time  to  escape. 

"Now  this  big  fellow" — approach- 
ing Otway  and  surveying  him  with  ar- 
tistic interest — "he's  got  a  worse 
wound  than  all  Jules'  gashes  put  to- 
gether; but  he's  a  man  with  tremen- 
dous hold  on  life.  After  a  smash  like 
that  from  a  high-powered  gun,  you  or 
I  would  have  stayed  put;  yet,  from 
what  you  say,  he  took  at  least  one  little 
stroll  under  his  own  steam.  He's 
stronger  right  now  than  Jules;  but  at 
that  another  shot  won't  hurt  him." 

Atwood  thrust  a  hypodermic  needle 
in  his  patient's  arm,  and  I  thought  I 
could  note  the  strengthened  respira- 
tion he  assured  me  resulted. 

"But  for  all  his  bob-cat  constitu- 
tution,"  asserted  the  doctor,  "I  fear  he 
won't  be  telling  what  he  knows  for 
quite  a  while." 

He  still  held  Ben's  wrist,  but  he  was 
looking  at  me  as  he  spoke ;  but  now  he 
suddenly  turned  with  an  inquiring 
glance  at  the  patient,  which,  of  course, 
I  followed. 

Ben's  eyelids  fluttered,  then  opened 
wide;  and  his  eyes  were  not  the  star- 
ing eyes  of  delirium. 

"Ben,"  I  said.  "Don't  you  know  me, 
Ben?" 

He  tried  to  sit;  and  both  Atwood 
and  I  lunged  forward  to  support  his 
head ;  but  he  fell  back  with  a  writhing 
face.  "How  are  ye,  Boman?"  he 
gasped.  Then,  like  an  after  thought: 
"I  got  shot." 

I  made  what  cheering  reply  I  could 
muster;  but  his  own  remark  must  have 
brought  with  it  full  memory  of  all 
that  had  befallen.  He  attempted  to 
look  toward  that  corner  where  we  had 
first  found  Jules.  His  bed  faced  from 
it,  and  from  where  Jules  now  lay.  He 
could  not  do  it;  but  I  read  his  thought. 

"Jules  is  badly  hurt,  too,  Ben,"  I 
told  him,  "but  the  doctor  says  he  will 
get  well." 

It  seemed  to  ease  his  mind.  He 
contemplated  us  in  silence  for  a  mo- 
ment. 

"Got  any  tobacco?"  he  asked. 

I  turned  to  Atwood  for  answer  to 
this  somewhat  astonishing  request,  and 
found  that  cheerful  surgeon  a  little 


IN  MARCEAU'S  CABIN 


121 


confounded  by  the  resurrection  he  had 
witnessed;  but  his  jaw  snapped  shut 
now,  while  amusement  glimmered  in 
his  eye. 

"Shucks!    Give  it  to  him,"  he  said. 

I  considered  the  powerful  stuff  the 
Cedar  Spur  merchant  had  sent  up  by 
us,  but  compromised  on  a  cigar;  held 
it  to  Ben's  lips  and  lighted  it.  He 
took  a  few  strong  puffs,  then  put  it 
from  him. 

"Don't  taste  very  good,"  he  com- 
mented weakly.  "I  must've  got  shot 
badder'n  I  thought." 

I  declare  he  seemed  stronger  for  the 
smoke.  Why  not  ask  him,  I  thought. 
I  whispered  to  Dr.  Atwood.  He  pursed 
his  lips,  hesitantly;  and  I  opened  mine 
for  further  urging. 

"All  right/  he  sanctioned,  impul- 
sively. "We  must  know  who  did  this 
thing;  and  he  can  stand  it — stand  any- 
thing— confound  him!" 

So  I  addressed  the  witness :  "You're 
pretty  bad  hurt,  Ben;  so  is  Jules.  You 
will  get  well  fine ;  but  you're  going  to 
be  sick  first.  Now  if  you  could  just 
tell  us  while  you're  able  who  did  up 
you  and  Jules  this  way  ?  Tell  me  who 
it  was ;  and  I'll  see  the — the  person  put 
where  he  belongs." 

The  ghost  of  a  smile  flickered  in 
Ben's  eyes.  Then  he  spoke  up: 

"That  there  outfit  I  had  over  to  the 
lake,  they  was  called  off  to  Seattle; 
so  I  just  hunted  acrost  over  the  divide. 
It  taken  me  three  days ;  and  I  lost  my 
tobacco  right  at  the  start." 

The  doctor  would  have  interrupted 
here ;  but  I  shook  my  head  meaningly. 
I  had  heard  old  Ben  tell  hunting  yarns 
and  well  knew  his  exasperating  meth- 
ods of  narration,  also  that  he  could  not 
be  hurried.  Atwood  understood  me 
well  enough  to  subside;  and  he  waved 
back  Schuller  and  the  deputy,  who 
were  crowding  curiously  in  from  the 
kitchen  shed — held  them  with  a  warn- 
ing sign,  beyond  Ben's  range  of  vision, 
lest  their  unexplained  presence  dis- 
tract him. 

The  weak  voice  went  steadily  on, 
and  shorn  of  pauses  and  many  repe- 
titions, this  is  what  we  heard : 

"There  wasn't  none  at  my  cabin;  so 


I  come  on  over  here;  but  Jules,  dog- 
gone him!  was  out,  too,  and  a-want- 
ing  it  worse  than  me.  I  was  for  hit- 
tin'  out  after  some ;  but  Jules  aimed  to 
go  down  so  soon  anyway,  to  meet  you 
boys;  and  he  wanted  to  lay  in  meat 
while  the  trackin'  snow  lasted.  Said 
he  wasn't  no  slave  to  tobacco — reck- 
oned maybe  we  could  get  some  over 
to  Dorffner's  cabin. 

"We  hunted  over  that  way  and 
busted  in ;  but  there  wasn't  none  there. 
Out  all  day,  too,  and  we  ought  to  have 
got  a  deer,  but  we  didn't.  We  was 
right  mad  and  squabbled ;  but  then  we 
laughed. 

"We  aimed  to  go  down  to-day  sure" 
(Otway  meant  the  day  previous.  He 
had  lost  the  night),  "but  when  we 
started,  the  dogs  jumped  a  cat  and 
took  out  up  the  mountain.  We  fol- 
lered  along  a  ways,  and  went  along.  It 
must've  been  a  wise  old  he  one.  We 
follered  along  and  follered  along,  till 
first  we  knew  we'd  plumb  lost  the  dogs 
and  it  was  pretty  late  to  go  down  and 
back  to-day. 

"I  was  for  going  anyway;  but  Jules 
reckoned  you  boys'd  be  up  just  the 
same;  and  you'd  sure  have  tobacco.  I 
knowed  that  was  so,  too,  but  I  hated 
to  take  chances.  We  argued,  and 
knowing  that  Jules  was  right,  o'  course 
I  got  sore. 

"We  set  around  and  set  around,  and 
Jules,  he'd  say  something,  and  I'd  say 
'ha-ow?'  And  I'd  say  something,  and 
Jules'd  say  'wha-at?' 

"It  commenced  getting  dark,  and 
no  one  come ;  so  I  thrown  it  up  to  Jules 
it's  his  fault  we  hadn't  went  down  be- 
fore. I  guess  he  thought  that  was  so 
too- — anyhow,  he  got  awful  sore.  And 
we  hadn't  had  any  tobacco — no  smok- 
in'  nor  no  chewin' — now  for  four  or 
five  days. 

"Jules,  he  called  me  a  liar  and  then 
jumped  for  me,  and  I  jumped  for  him. 
I  had  his  knife,  that  I'd  been  whittlin', 
makin'  us  a  rollin'  pin — but  hell!  I 
didn't  aim  to  use  it.  But  Jules,  he 
jumped  back  for  his  firearms.  I 
started  for  him  again — to  get  the  gun, 
but" — proudly — "you  know  how  nim- 
ble Jules  can  handle  her,  from  the 


122 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


hip?  He  got  me  the  first  time,  and 
like  to  downed  me.  Then  I  got  in 
too  close.  The  old- thirty-five  went  off 
again,  and  I  guess  I  seen  red  then. 

"All  I  know  is,  my  best  friend  a- 
layin'  there  and  I  had  knifed  him — me 
that  always  hated  a  knife-fighter!  I 
was  wabbly,  too;  but  I  reckoned  if  I 
run  right  fast  I  might  meet  you  boys, 
and  you  could  help  Jules,  maybe.  I 
started ;  but  everything  went  a  way  off 


sideways." 

The  old  fellow's  voice  trailed  off  to 
nothing,  and  his  eyes  closed.  I  thought 
he  had  fainted;  and,  wonderingly,  I 
peered  across  the  bed  into  Atwood's 
wondering  face.  But  Otway  was 
speaking  again. 

"It  was  more  my  fault  than  his'n," 
he  stated,  judicially,  "but  we  was  both 
to  blame.  We  was  right  plumb  out  of 
tobacco." 


CHOPIN'S  NOCTURNES 

The  twilight  hour — beside  a  casement  low  a  maiden  waits:  a 

girl  bewitching,  fair, 
Her  dark  eyes  lifted  to  a  distant  star,  a  single  rose  within  her 

unbound  hair. 
When,  hark!  upon  the  perfumed  summer  air,  the  first  faint 

echoes  of  the  light  guitar, 

And  then  a  burst  of  purest  melody,  swift-borne  upon  the  listen- 
ing breeze,  afar. 
And  through  the  open  lattice  window  falls,  as  if  responsive  to 

the  singer's  powers, 
A  tiny,  half-blown  rose  of  crimson  hue,  the  old,  old  symbol — 

Love's  sweet  passion  flower. 
More  confident,  more  weird,  the  music  now,  more  intricate  and 

graceful  the  design, 
Half-filled  with  earth's  young  ecstacies  and  pain,  half-filled  with 

heaven's  own  harmonies  divine. 
A  hush:  a  chord  twice-echoed,  of  despair,  a  martial  strain,  a 

lover's  glance,  a  sigh, — 
A  note  of  pain,  a  hint  of  mystery,  a  moment  of  farewell,  and 

then  good-bye. 

MARIAN  GILKERSON. 


The    Right    of   Way 


By  Alfred  Brunk 


MRS.  COPLIN  sat  on  her  front 
porch  looking  off  to  the  south 
west.  The  sun  was  sending 
his  slanting  rays  out  over  or- 
chard, vineyard  and  stubble  fields.  In 
the  distance  a  mirage  played  upon  the 
plain,  showing  an  illusive  pool  of 
water  in  the  midst  of  which  dwellings 
and  other  buildings  rose  several  times 
their  actual  height  through  the  sheen 
of  waters.  Still  further  to  the  west, 
Mount  Angelo,  his  two  peaks  alter- 
nating brown  and  green,  overlooked 
the  broad  stretch  of  plain  to  the  east, 
and  like  a  hydra-headed  giant,  com- 
manded the  approach  to  the  western 
sea.  Far  to  the  east  the  Loma  Grandes 
range  of  mountains  showed  dim 
through  the  thickening  haze,  while 
here  and  there  a  towering  sentinel 
reared  his  snow-crowned  head,  around 
which  played  the  pine-perfumed 
breezes. 

The  woman  inhaled  a  deep  breath 
of  mingled  satisfaction  and  regret. 
Years  before,  when  she  and  her  hus- 
band were  young,  they  had  migrated 
west,  bought  the  land  and  built  the 
house  where  she  now  sat.  Here  they 
had  reared  their  large  family.  Here 
two  years  ago  her  husband  had  died, 
leaving  her  with  the  care  of  the  child- 
ren and  the  management  of  the  ranch. 
While  she  was  thinking  of  these 
things,  her  daughter  Myra,  aged  sev- 
enteen, came  from  the  other  end  of 
the  porch.  Laying  her  hand  upon  her 
mother's  shoulder,  she  said :  "Mamma, 
there's  an  auto  coming  up  the  drive- 
way." 

The  car  stopped  in  front  of  the 
house.  Two  men  alighted  and  came 
to  the  house.  The  one,  tall,  slender 
and  neatly  dressed,  removed  a  shining 
derby  from  his  head  and  bowed.  The 


other,  clad  in  rough  garments,  without 
coat  or  vest,  pulled  off  a  slouch  hat 
which  he  held  loosely  in  his  left  hand 
while  he  waved  slightly  to  the  ladies 
with  his  uplifted  right  hand,  but  did 
''not  bow. 

"Mrs.  Coplin?"  asked  the  smartly 
dressed  man. 

"That  is  my  name,"  returned  the 
widow. 

He  bowed  again.  "My  name  is  Mil- 
hite,  Joseph  S.  Milhite,  of  the  Moun- 
tain and  Valley  Telephone  Company. 
And  this,"  turning  to  his  companion, 
"is  Sam  Girder,  auto  driver  and  handy 
man." 

Girder  did  not  even  acknowledge 
the  introduction,  but  looked  daggers 
at  Milhite.  "Could  you  let  me  have 
a  drink  of  water?"  he  asked. 

Myra  went  to  a  faucet  on  the  east 
side  of  the  house  and  handed  each  of 
the  men  a  glass  of  water.  Girder 
handed  back  the  glass  without  a  word 
and  went  to  the  car.  Milhite  was  pro- 
fuse in  his  thanks,  praised  the  water, 
the  scenery  and  the  farm. 

"Mrs.  Coplin,"  he  began,  "you  of 
course  know  that  the  Mountain  and 
Valley  Telephone  Company  expect  to 
run  one  of  their  main  lines  from  Santa 
Dorinda  to  San  Jasper.  We  will  come 
through  Rosewood  here,  then  as 
straight  to  San  Jasper  as  possible.  Our 
engineers  have  marked  a  route  right 
through  your  farm,  about  forty  rods 
south  of  the  house  here.  For  a  very 
few  dollars  you  can  connect  with  our 
lines  out  there  and  have  both  local  and 
long  distance  service.  It  will  be  a 
very  great  convenience,  I  assure  you. 
Now,  we  want  a  right  of  way  through 
that  quarter  section,  and  I  know  you 
will  win  the  lasting  gratitude^  of  the 
company,  as  well  as  your  neighbors. 


124 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Besides  that,  we  will  treat  you  right. 
In  fact,  I  am  authorized  to  tell  you 
that  for  the  right  of  way  we  will 
stretch  a  wire  to  the  house  here,  and 
put  in  a  'phone  at  bare  cost  to  us. 
Then  for  a  small  rental  per  month,  you 
will  be  served  by  the  largest  and  best 
company  west  of  the  Rockies." 

"Better  come  up  out  of  the  sun,"  re- 
turned the  woman.  "Tell  Mr.  Girder 
to  come  up  here  on  the  porch  and  not 
sit  out  there.  It  is  more  pleasant  here. 
Myra,  get  chairs  for  the  gentlemen." 

"Mr.  Girder  has  a  grouch  on  to-day 
and  can't  be  civil,"  smiled  Milhite,  as, 
with  a  low  bow,  he  seated  himself  on 
the  porch.  "You  will  excuse  the  slang 
expression,"  he  continued.  "Now,  Mrs. 
Coplin,"  he  resumed,  "you  can  see 
what  it  means  to  your  section  and  to 
you,  personally,  to  be  in  direct  com- 
munication with  the  whole  country. 
And  as  'phoning  across  the  United 
States  is  no  longer  a  mere  possibility, 
but  an  accomplished  fact,  you  may 
yourself  speak  to  friends  in  New  York, 
Washington,  and  all  other  points, 
right  here  in  your  own  home.  Here  is 
our  agreement,  which  you  will  per- 
ceive is  already  made  out,  in  which 
you  give  us  the  right  of  way  through 
this  half-mile  stretch  of  land,  in  con- 
sideration of  which  the  company  guar- 
antees to  bring  a  wire  and  install  a 
'phone  in  your  home  at  cost.  The 
monthly  rental  of  the  'phone  will  be 
very  small,  I  assure  you."  Here  he 
took  his  fountain  pen  from  his  vest 
pocket,  adjusted  it,  and  handed  both 
pen  and  paper  to  her. 

She  took  the  paper  but  ignored  the 
pen.  "You  sign  right  here,"  he  added, 
suavely.  She  looked  at  the  document 
long  and  carefully.  Finally  she  hand- 
ed it  back  to  him. 

"When  did  you  say  the  line  would 
be  put  through?"  she  asked  slowly. 

"We  have  two  large  crews  at  work 
now,"  he  returned.  "One  coming  from 
Santa  Dorinda  and  the  other  from  San 
Jasper.  We  have  the  complete  right 
of  way  from  Santa  Dorinda  to  Rose- 
wood, and  expect  to  be  here  next 
month,"  and  he  looked  out  toward 
Rosewood,  which  glistened  in  the  sun 


about  a  mile  to  the  west.  "Of  course, 
if  we  did  not  have  the  right  of  way 
through  your  place  by  that  time  we 
would  go  south  to  Edgarville,  then 
east  and  north  to  Riverdale,"  he  added 
meaningly.  "But  such  a  contingency 
is  impossible,"  he  continued,  with  a 
bow,  "for  since  you  know  the  very 
liberal  policy  of  our  company,  you 
will  gladly  grant  the  right  of  way." 

"What  do  you  call  liberal?" 

"Why,"  he  replied  in  considerable 
confusion,  "you  understand  that  we 
place  a  'phone  in  your  house — " 

"And  do  you  give  a  contract  for  free 
service  ?" 

He  looked  at  her  searchingly.  "Why, 
as  to  that,  in  some  cases  where  the  sit- 
uation was — ah — peculiar,  we  have 
given  free  service." 

"What  were  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances?" She  looked  steadily  at  him. 

He  had  regained  his  self-possession. 
"Why,  for  instance,  when  we  go 
through  the  heart  of  a  person's  land, 
or  cause  them  any  special  inconven- 
ience, we  add  free  service  along  with 
our  other  munificent  concessions,"  with 
a  smile  and  a  bow. 

She  rose  to  her  feet  and  handed  him 
the  paper.  "I  will  think  it  over,"  she 
slowly  remarked. 

"You  will  do  well  to  sign  now, 
madam,"  and  there  was  a  pleading 
note  in  his  voice. 

"That  is  all  to-day,  thank  you,"  and 
he  knew  by  the  decisive  tone  of  her 
voice  that  the  interview  was  over. 

Whirling  along  to  the  west,  Girder 
turned  his  eyes  for  a  moment  to  Mil- 
hite. "The  next  time  you  introduce 
me  like  you  did  back  there  I  will 
pitch  you  over  the  car,"  he  thundered. 

Milhite  laughed  lightly,  and  slapped 
him  on  the  shoulder.  "All  right,  old 
man.  I  wanted  to  have  a  little  fun 
with  you ;  didn't  know  you  would  take 
it  to  heart  so.  The  introductions  shall 
be  perfectly  prim  and  proper  from 
this  time,  and  henceforth."  A  mock- 
ing smile  was  spread  over  his  face, 
but  Girder  did  not  see  it,  as  his  eyes 
were  upon  the  road  straight  ahead. 

"But  wasn't  that  some  girl  for  you?" 
Milhite  continued. 


THE  RIGHT  OF  WAY 


125 


"Forget  her!"  roared  Girder.  "How 
did  you  come  out  with  the  old  one?" 

"Curse  her!"  exploded  Milhite. 
"She  thinks  she  is  mighty  smart,  but 
I'll  bet  my  hat  against  your  corduroys 
that  I'll  get  her  yet.  The  old  cat?" 

"I'll  take  you,  sonny,"  laughed  Gir- 
der. "Been  a  long  time  since  I  wore 
a  derby.  It's  a  shame,  though,  that 
you  can't  have  these  trousers  and  do 
the  dirty  work  you  were  cut  out  for; 
but  you  are  making  good  most  of  the 
time,  as  it  is." 

The  next  day  Mrs.  Coplin  visited 
her  attorney  in  Lewiston,  the  county 
seat.  She  was  evidently  well  pleased, 
as  she  smiled  all  the  way  home. 

In  a  few  days  Milhite  returned  Bow- 
ing as  politely  as  ever.  "Yes,  ma'am," 
he  was  saying,  "I  took  your  case  up 
with  the  Division  Superintendent  at 
Santa  Dorinda,  and  alter  much  hard 
work  convinced  him  that  you  should 
have  special  recognition.  At  last  he 
very  reluctantly  agreed  to  my  request 
to  pay  you  two  hundred  dollars  for 
the  right  of  way,  with  the  understand- 
ing that  if  you  wished  a  'phone,  we 
will  let  you  connect  with  the  main  line, 
you  paying  for  the  work  and  material. 
I  am  very  glad  for  your  sake  that  I 
have  been  able  to  secure  such  advan- 
tageous terms  for  you.  I  have  the 
check  here,  signed  by  Mr.  Simpson, 
himself,"  and  once  more  he  handed 
the  pen  and  contract  to  her. 

She  refused  to  take  them,  looking  at 
him  intently  all  the  while.  "Are  you 
acquainted  with  Mr.  Pearson,  at  Lewis- 
ton  ?"  she  finally  asked. 

He  frowned,  remembered  himself, 
then  smiled  and  bowed.  "Slightly, 
only  slightly,"  he  lied.  "You  see,  Mrs. 
Coplin,  I  am  so  busy  I  have  little  time 
to  devote  to  social  pleasures." 

"Well,"  and  a  twinkle  of  amusement 
played  in  her  eyes,  "Mr.  Pearson  is 
my  attorney.  Any  business  you  may 
have  with  me  you  can  take  up  with 
him.  I  am  glad  it  is  cooler  than  when 
you  were  here  the  other  day."  She 
looked  at  Mount  Angelo,  whose  two 
peaks  were  crowned  with  fog. 

He  pleaded  with  her  very  earnestly 
for  some  time,  but  in  vain.  "See  my  at- 


torney," was  all  she  would  say. 

"Where  away  now?"  asked  Girder, 
as  they  went  down  the  driveway  to 
the  county  road. 

"To  Santa  Dorinda,  as  fast  as  this 
old  junk  machine  can  take  us.  Never 
mind  speed  laws." 

Turning  into  the  main  road,  Girder 
let  the  car  out,  slowing  down  slightly 
through  towns.  "How  did  my  Lord 
Chesterfield  make  it  with  My  Lady?" 
asked  Girder,  as  they  raced  along. 

"You  attend  to  your  own  business," 
was  the  reply. 

Girder  laughed.  "Take  good  care 
of  that  hat,"  he  bullied.  "Myra  Coplin 
will  think  I  am  some  pumpkins  when 
she  sees  me  in  a  fine  gentleman's  hat. 
For  the  love  of  Mike !"  he  exclaimed, 
whirling  the  car  to  the  left,  and  just 
missing  a  little  girl  who  had  run  into 
the  road  ahead  of  them. 

"That's  enough  for  me,"  he  contin- 
ued, with  a  quiver  in  his  voice,  and 
slowing  down  the  machine.  "No  more 
racing  like  that  if  you  never  get  to 
S.  D." 

Division  Superintendent  Simpson 
sat  at  his  spacious  desk  in  his  spacious 
suite  of  rooms  in  the  spacious  Hutchin- 
son  building  in  Santa  Dorinda.  These 
were  the  offices  of  the  Mountain  and 
Valley  Telephone  Company. 

"So  you  could  do  nothing  with  her," 
he  retorted,  when  Milhite  finished  his 
story.  "Referred  you  to  her  lawyer! 
If  you  would  quit  your  everlasting 
smirking  and  bowing  and  get  down  to 
business  it  would  be  better  for  the  M.  & 
V.  Co." 

"Haven't  I  brought  in  every  con- 
tract but  this  one?"  flashed  Milhite  in 
anger.  "And  I  would  get  this  one  if 
I  had  time.  You  told  me  to  rush  back 
if  she  didn't  sign,  and  you  know  I  lost 
no  time." 

"We  will  see  her  again,"  Simpson 
replied.  "We  must  have  that  contract, 
and  we  fool  with  no  lawyers,  either." 

Next  day  a  large  touring  car  drew 
up  in  front  of  Mrs.  Coplin's  house.  A 
portly,  well  fed  man  alighted,  fol- 
lowed by  the  suave,  bowing  Milhite. 
Girder  remained  at  the  wheel  while  the 
two  men  went  to  the  house. 


126 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"So  you  can  see,  Mrs.  Coplin,  that 
the  extension  of  our  line  through  your 
beautiful  country  will  go  a  long  way 
toward  its  further  development.  It 
means  more  settlers,  and  that  means 
advancing  prices  for  your  real  estate. 
Truly,  it  would  pay  you  to  give  us 
a  bonus  to  run  our  line  through  here; 
but  instead  of  that  we  are  paying  you 
two  hundred  dollars  for  the  right  of 
way,  besides  stringing  a  wire  from 
our  line  to  your  house,  and  installing 
a  'phone.  Really,  the  company  is  very 
generous  with  you."  Having  thus  de- 
livered himself,  and  looking  like  a 
kind  hearted  philanthropist,  Division 
Superintendent  Simpson  leaned  back 
in  his  chair. 

"Sir,"  returned  Mrs.  Coplin,  some- 
what awed  by  the  august  presence, 
"you  will  have  to  see  my  lawyer."  And 
no  amount  of  argument  or  persuasion 
could  shake  her  from  that  determina- 
tion. 

Harold  Pearson  was  a  spare  built, 
hollow  cheeked  man,  with  eyes  that 
bored  their  way  into  the  heart  of 
things.  He  could  spot  a  grafter  two 
blocks  away.  So  when  Milhite  called 
about  the  Coplin  right  of  way  he  said, 
in  his  jerky  fashion:  "Who  are  you 
trying  to  do  this  time?" 

Milhite  spent  no  time  in  bowing  and 
smirking,  but  went  straight  to  the 
point. 

"So  you  offered  Mrs.  Coplin  two 
hundred  dollars  for  the  right  of  way, 
and  to  put  a  'phone  in  her  house  to 
boot,"  Pearson  continued.  "What  a 
lovely  lot  of  grafters  and  crooks  you 
fellows  are!  How  I  would  like  to  put 
the  last  one  of  you  in  the  pen." 

Milhite  smiled.  "When  there's  a 
cleaning  up  in  this  State  you'll  be  first 
to  wear  striped  suits;  but  to  business. 
What  do  you  propose  to  do  ?" 

Pearson  looked  out  the  window  and 
watched  a  river  boat  as  she  glided 
across  Waverly  Bay.  Turning  to  Mil- 
hite, he  replied:  "A  'phone  without 
rental  throughout  Mrs.  Coplin's  natu- 
ral life ;  five  thousand  dollars  in  cash." 

Milhite  bounded  from  his  chair. 
"You — you  hog!"  he  blurted  out.  "Why 
don't  you  ask  us  to  turn  over  the  whole 


works  to  you?  We  won't  pay  it!  We 
will  condemn  it  first." 

"I  scarcely  think  you  will,"  retorted 
Pearson  with  a  grim  smile.  "If  you 
must  go,  good-bye!" 

He  held  out  his  hand  to  Milhite, 
which  that  gentleman  ignored. 

The  company  sent  their  attorney  to 
reason  with  Pearson,  but  to  no  avail. 
Then  Simpson  himself  tried  it.  When 
the  large  touring  car  drew  up  to  Pear- 
son's office  it  contained  only  Simpson 
and  Girder.  Milhite  had  abandoned 
the  fight. 

The  two  men  shook  hands  warmly. 
"Why,  you  skin-and-bones,"  began 
Simpson,  "it's  good  to  see  you  again. 
I  want  you  to  come  and  lunch  with  me. 
Come,"  as  Pearson  glanced  anxiously 
at  a  large  pile  of  papers  before  him, 
"you  don't  get  off  that  way.  Man 
alive!  you  starve  yourself  to  death. 
Throw  those  papers  in  the  fire.  You 
have  enough  now  to  keep  you  if  you 
never  did  another  lick  of  work.  But 
look  at  me  now ;  have  to  work  my  fin- 
gers off  to  keep  the  wolf  away,"  and 
his  huge  body  shook  with  laughter. 

During  lunch  neither  man  broached 
business.  They  talked  of  old  times, 
of  events  both  humorous  and  serious; 
of  politics;  of  the  two  California  Ex- 
positions. Back  again  in  Pearson's 
office  Simpson  began: 

"Pearson,  you  and  I  have  had  our 
battles  to  fight,  and  it  is  pleasant  to 
look  back  at  victories  won,  but  now 
to  business.  You  know  we  are  doing 
great  things  for  the  Rosewood  coun- 
try. Why,  those  people  ought  to  pay 
us  for  going  through  there;  but  as  it  is, 
some  of  them  want  to  hold  us  up.  Now 
about  Mrs.  Coplin.  What's  her  best 
figure?" 

"You  have  already  received  our 
proposition  a  number  of  times;  there 
has  been  no  change,"  and  Pearson  shut 
his  lips  tight. 

Simpson  never  turned  a  hair.  "You 
remember,  Harold,"  he  began,  with  a 
far-away  look  in  his  eyes,  "coming  to 
me  for  help  when  you  were  a  young 
lawyer?  Did  I,  or  did  I  not,  help 
you?" 

"You  did,"  returned  Pearson. 


AD  MATREM  127 

"You  know  I  did.    I  loaned  you  the  not  bring  myself  to  do  it.    I  have  told 

money  and  helped  you  to  get  a  start,  you  what  we  will  do  in  the  Coplin 

Now  you  are  a    successful     lawyer,  matter.    You  can  either  take  it  or  leave 

thanks  to  my  assistance.     And  now,  it  alone." 

when  that  old  hen,  Mrs. "  After  Mrs.  Coplin  had  received  the 

Pearson  stamped  his  foot.     "Hold  company's  check  for  five  thousand  dol- 

on,  Simpson,"  he  exploded,  his  eyes  lars,  Milhite  accosted     Girder    with: 

blazing.    "You  loaned  me  the  money,  "Old  man,  the  hat  is  yours.    Will  you 

yes.     I  paid  it  back  with  compound  take  this  old  Derby  of  mine,  or  would 

interest.     All  told,  about  three  times  a  nice,  soft,  new  Exposition  Special 

as  much  as  I  borrowed  of  you !  And  suit  you  better  ?    That's  the  latest,  you 

you  have  held  it  over  my  head  ever  know." 

since.     More  than  once  I  might  have  "Sure,     the     Exposition     Special," 

prosecuted  you  for  fraud,  but  I  could  laughed  Girder. 


AD      /A  AT  R  E/A 


When  I'm  a  man  full-grown 

You'll  reap  the  joy  you've  sown. 

Your  wrinkled  hand  in  mine  will  rest, 

Your  head  will  lean  upon  my  breast; 

I'll  tell  you  all  my  dreams  that  come 

With  their  brave  pageantry, 

For  you  will  be  too  old  for  dreams — 

Too  old  for  other  worlds  than  this ; 

Whilst  I  shall  still  be  young  and  warm 

And  have  a  hundred  worlds  to  kiss. 

Oh,  mother,  you'll  grow  old,  I  know ; 

Before  the  fire  you'll  sit  and  sew, 

Bringing  to-day  unto  that  far  to-morrow 

To  ease  your  ancient  soul  of  all  its  sorrow. 

And  when  the  window  dulls  with  fading  light, 

I'll  stir  the  fire,  make  ready  for  the  night, 

And  place  my  head  upon  your  knee, 

And  be  the  boy  you'd  have  me  be. 

For  in  that  far-off  wintry  day, 

This  lad  of  yours  will  know  the  way 

To  stir  your  heart  to  memories  of  me 

As  I  am  now,  but  cannot  always  be. 

Dear,  you  have  done  so  much  for  me, 

So  faithfully,  so  joyfully; 

So,  when  you're  old, 

And  laden  with  your  memories, 

I'll  bring  you  gold, 

And  white,  sweet  linen  for  your  wear, 

And  hold  your  hand  and  smooth  your  hair, 

And  gossip  with  you  by  the  fire, 

And  help  you  up  the  stair, 

And  tuck  you  in  your  bed. 

Oh,  mother  mine,  when  you  are  old, 

Pray  God  I  be  not  dead. 

GERALD  CUMBERLAND. 


The  Aaking  Over  of  Charles  Baxter 


By  Elizabeth  Vore 


YES,"  said  the  young  Easterner, 
pushing  his  straw  hat  back  on 
his  crisp,  curly  hair.  "I  came 
to  California  to  buy  land  and 
climate."  He  laughed  pleasantly. 
"The  last  winter  in  the  East  was  too 
much  for  me — came  within  an  ace  of 
finishing  me,  in  fact — pneumonia.  On 
top  of  that  I  went  in  too  deep  on  Wall 
street;  when  stocks  went  down  I  went 
down  also — nervous  prostration,  and 
that  means  rest  for  a  long  time." 

The  older  man  nodded  gravely.  He 
was  a  soldierly  looking  man  with  a 
gray  mustache,  and  an  aristocratic  air. 
When  he  spoke,  his  accent  was  decid- 
edly Southern. 

"It  is  easiah,  suh,  to  break  down 
than  to  recuperate.  But  California  is 
the  right  place  foh  you.  We  make 
ovah  men,  heah.  I  predict  that  you 
will  be  a  new  man.  You  ought  to  try 
ranching,  suh." 

"So  my  physicians  have  assured 
me,"  said  the  young  Easterner.  "But 
I  lost  a  neat  fortune  in  twenty-four 
hours,  and  the  Governor" — he  blushed 
slightly  and  laughed — "my  father,  I 
should  say,  has  allowed  me  just  fifteen 
thousand  dollars  for  this  Western  ven- 
ture. I  want  to  be  cautious  this  time 
and  not  sink  my  capital.  It  is  not  much 
to  begin  with." 

"It  is  not  a  sum  to  be  scorned,  suh," 
said  the  older  man  politely. 

The  young  fellow  removed  his  cigar 
and  leaned  forward  eagerly.  He  was 
very  young,  and  in  spite  of  ill-health 
full  of  the  enthusiasm  of  youth. 

"Frankly,  I  am  extremely  interested 
in  this  deal,"  he  said  confidentially.  "I 
want  to  prove  that  I  am  worth  some- 
thing, for,  to  tell  the  truth,  if  I  had 
not  been  so  ill  and  frightened  my 
father  nearly  to  death,  I  should  be  in 


tremendous  disgrace  at  home.  As  it  is, 
I  am  on  probation — to  be  honest,"  he 
blurted  out.  "I  lost  a  cool  fifty  thou- 
sand. It  was  a  gamble,  I  suppose — 
Wall  street  speculation.  The  Governor 
sums  it  up  at  about  that  estimate." 

The  older  man  regarded  him  with  a 
kindly  twinkle  in  his  deep  eyes. 

"Experience,  suh,  comes  deah,"  he 
said  courteously.  "I  have  a  son  at 
home  about  youh  age — his  ability  foh 
coining  experience,  suh,  I  have  found 
somewhat  expensive."  A  lenient  smile 
illumined  his  fine  old  face. 

The  young  Easterner  held  out  his 
hand  with  a  straightforward  smile. 

"If  he  resembles  his  father,  I  would 
like  to  know  him,  sir,"  he  said  ear- 
nestly. "You  are  a  Southerner,  are 
you  not?" 

The  old  gentleman  squared  his 
shoulders  with  unconscious  pride. 

"Thank  you  kindly,  suh.  Yes,  I  am 
a  Southernah,  by  birth, — something  no 
Southernah  ever  forgets.  But  we  are 
all  Californians  heah.  May  I  ask  if 
you  intend  locating  permanently." 

"That  is  just  the  point  that  troubles 
me,"  said  the  young  fellow.  "Cali- 
fornia real  estate  agents  tell  me  such 
tremendous  tra-diddles." 

"Pahden  me,  suh.  There  are  good 
men  and  bad  in  all  lines  of  business  in 
all  countries.  Wall  street  men  in  New 
York  did  not  all  tra-diddle,  I  sup- 
pose?" he  asked  with  a  shrewd  glance. 

The  young  man  laughed. 

"You  are  right,  sir.  I  deserved  that 
hit.  If  a  fellow's  been  swindled  once 
he  becomes  suspicious  of  everybody." 

"And  yet  that  is  not  wise — nor  just 
right,"  said  the  older  man  kindly.  "It 
a  man  is  square  himself,  suh,  he  knows 
there  must  be  plenty  of  othah  square 
men.  It  is  not  probable  that  the  Al- 


THE  MAKING  OVER  OF  CHARLES  BAXTER 


129 


mighty  incarnated  all  the  principles  of 
integrity  in  you  or  in  me,  suh." 

A  pair  of  startled  but  very  honest 
young  eyes  gazed  back  into  the  kindly, 
shrewd  old  eyes  regarding  them. 

"Thank  you,  sir.  I  never  thought  of 
it  like  that  before,"  said  the  young 
fellow,  earnestly.  The  older  man's 
words  were  like  a  tonic — a  moral  tonic, 
and  he  would  not  forget  them. 

"The  question  that  interests  me 
most  just  now,"  he  continued  after  a 
moment's  silence,  "is  does  farming  pay 
in  California  ?  If  I  followed  my  phy- 
sician's advice  and  my  father's  com- 
mands, I  am  to  be  a  bona  fide 
rancher  for  the  next  two  years.  If  I 
wish  to  retrieve  my  past  blunders  and 
regain  my  father's  confidence  I  have 
got  to  make  a  success  of  it." 

The  Californian  tossed  his  cigar  out 
of  the  window. 

"Have  you  made  a  thorough  investi- 
gation of  ranching  in  the  San  Joaquin 
Valley?"  he  asked.  He  pointed  toward 
the  rolling  fields  of  wheat  seen  from 
the  window  of  the  smoker.  The  train 
sped  onward.  "This  is  where  ranch- 
ing pays.  We  have  all  the  conditions 
conducive  to  successful  farming — sun- 
shine, climate,  the  best  of  soil,  and  the 
most  extensive  irrigation  system  in  the 
State  of  California,  and  with  less  cost 
than  in  the  majority  of  districts. 

"Take  Fresno  County  alone,  suh. 
Here  we  have  a  system  of  canals,  the 
main  canals  oveh  300  miles  in  length, 
with  myriads  of  distributing  canals. 
The  snows  and  glaciers  of  the  Sierras 
feed  this  inexhaustible  water  supply." 

"Have  you  had  personal  experience 
in  California  ranching,  sir?"  asked  the 
young  man,  keenly.  This  cultivated, 
polished  old  gentleman  was  not  his 
idea  of  the  typical  California  rancher. 

The  old  man  smiled  indulgently.  "A 
little,  suh — a  little.  I  own  a  few  thou- 
sand acres  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley. 
I  came  heah  from  Virginia  twenty- 
three  yeahs  ago,  suh,  with  about  as  lit- 
tle experience  as  a  young  man  could 
have — and  not  half  of  youh  capital — 
and  I  have  made  ranching  pay.  I  had 
to  wait  yeahs  before  reaping  the  re- 
ward of  my  labors,  for  the  country 


then  was  not  at  its  present  state  of  de- 
velopment, and  conditions  were  less 
favorable.  The  rancher  of  to-day  has 
the  benefit  of  the  struggles  and  toils  of 
the  old  settlers;  they  do  not  meet  the 
obstacles  and  difficulties  which  we 
have  overcome.  One  great  advantage 
of  the  present  over  the  past  is  the 
transportation  facilities.  The  Southern 
Pacific  Railroad  extends  throughout 
the  entire  length  of  the  San  Joaquin 
Valley,  and  the  rancher  has  a  home 
market  for  his  produce." 

The  young  Easterner  regarded  him 
with  open  admiration. 

"Would  it  be  an  imposition  on  your 
good  nature  to  ask  you  to  give  me  the 
benefit  of  a  little  of  your  experience — 
as  to  the  profits  of  farming  here,  for 
instance  ?  It  means  a  good  deal  to  me 
to  purchase  in  the  right  place,  and  I 
have  confidence  in  you,  sir." 

The  older  man  bowed  gravely. 

"I  trust,  suh,  that  no  one  evah  placed 
confidence  in  Richard  Peyton  who  re- 
gretted it.  It  affords  me  pleasure  to 
give  you  any  information  in  my  power, 
and  on  my  honah  as  a  Southern  gen- 
tleman— and  a  Californian — it  will  be 
a  conservative  statement,  suh. 

"My  ranch  is  located  neah  the  cen- 
ter of  the  San  Joaquin  Valley,  a  little 
nearer  San  Francisco  than  Los  An- 
geles. This  district,  throughout  the 
entire  county,  is  remarkable  for  its 
variety  of  soil  and  climate.  My  home 
is  scarcely  more  than  a  hundred  miles 
from  the  Pacific  Ocean,  which  lies  just 
beyond  the  irregular  line  of  the  Coast 
Range ;  to  the  east  lie  the  lofty  Sierras 
— not  more  than  ten  or  twenty  miles 
distant. 

"For  one  who  seeks  health  I  would 
heartily  recommend  this  valley,  for  in 
but  few  places  in  the  State  can  one 
find  such  unrivaled  health  conditions. 
On  an  average,  out  of  the  365  days  in 
the  year  we  have  275  days  of  sun- 
shine. Sixty  degrees  is  the  average 
mean  temperature.  Our  hottest  days 
are  followed  by  cool  nights. 

"Nervous  people  come  here  because 
they  can  sleep,  and  that  means  health. 
The  man  who  can  sleep  like  an  infant 
all  night  long,  suh,  cannot  be  ill  long 


130 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


— he  is  made  ovah  in  a  mighty  short 
time.  That  is  partly  what  I  meant 
when  I  said  'we  made  men  ovah,  heah.' 

"As  to  the  profits  of  ranching,  suh— 
and  the  best  kind  of  ranching  for  prac- 
tical results,  that  is  a  difficult  question 
to  answer.  Naturally,  every  man 
would  be  inclined  to  answer  it  accord- 
ing to  his  own  experience  in  his  own 
line.  Many  kinds  of  farming  are  en- 
gaged in  heah,  and  each  with  good  re- 
turns according  to  the  industry,  thrift 
and  common  sense  of  those  engaged  in 
them. 

"In  our  county  we  have  wheat,  oats, 
and  barley  ranches;  rye,  broom  corn, 
Indian  corn  and  Egyptian  corn  are  also 
successfully  grown  in  some  parts. 
Many  farmers  are  engaged  in  sheep 
raising  and  cattle  raising.  There  are 
also  a  great  many  dairy  farms  and  bee 
ranches.  Every  sort  of  deciduous 
fruits,  as  well  as  citrus  fruits  are 
raised  heah.  The  Eastern  portions  of 
the  valley  at  the  base  of  the  foothills 
is  particularly  adapted  to  the  raising 
of  oranges,  of  the  highest  qualities, 
which  ripen  six  weeks  earlier  than  in 
any  other  "district  in  the  State,  giving 
us  the  benefit  of  the  highest  Eastern 
prices. 

"Our  vineyards  are  another  promi- 
nent feature,  and  raisins  form  one  of 
the  most  extensive  industries  of  this 
country. 

"How  about  the  profits,  generally 
speaking  of  fruit  raising?"  asked  the 
young  Easterner. 

"Satisfactory,  suh.  Statistics  and 
observation  bear  out  this  statement; 
but  again,  naturally,  a  man  speaks  au- 
thoritatively from  his  own  experience. 
I  have  a  number  of  acres  of  raisin 
grapes,  and  during  the  past  eight 
yeahs  they  have  netted  me  from  $60 
to  $125  to  the  acre.  The  profits  on 
tree  products  are  better.  I  count  at  a 
reasonable  estimate  $100  to  $200  per 
acre  on  such  fruit. 

"In  our  county  alone  we  have  in  the 
neighborhood  of  4,000  ranches.  But 
the  best  way  to  gain  practical  knowl- 
edge in  ranching,  suh,  is  to  see  foh 
yourself — and,  pardon  me,  but  I  no- 
ticed your  name  on  your  suit  case — 


Charles  Baxter — can  it  be  you  are  the 
son  of  the  New  York  banker — Charles 
Baxter,  my  old  chum  at  Yale?" 

The  young  Easterner's  face  was 
aglow  with  surprise  and  delight. 

"By  Jove!  My  father's  friend! 
What  a  pleasure!"  he  exclaimed. 

The  older  man  handed  him  a  card, 
which  bore  the  name  of  Colonel  Rich- 
ard Peyton  engraved  upon  it. 

The  hands  of  the  two  men  met.  In 
the  older  man's  face  was  a  smile,  the 
meaning  of  which  the  younger  man  did 
not  know.  At  that  very  moment  a  let- 
ter was  reposing  in  the  pocket  of  the 
Californian  which  read  as  follows : 

"1-2  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 

"July  6,  19— 
"Dear  Dick: 

"My  son  Charles  has  managed  to  go 
through  with  the  fortune  his  mother 
left  him  in  his  own  right,  and  has 
broken  down  generally  in  the  crash. 
I  have  sent  him  to  California  for  his 
health  and  to  get  a  little  common  sense 
knocked  into  him.  I  have  cut  him  off 
(for  the  present)  with  $15,000,  and 
given  the  heedless  young  beggar  to 
understand  that  he  is  cut  adrift  to  sink 
or  swim.  On  my  advice,  he  will  in- 
vestigate land  in  the  San  Joaquin  Val- 
ley— have  been  reading  this  particular 

section  up.     He  will  be  in  F at 

Hotel  on  the  18th.     Please  call 

on  him  and  give  him  the  benefit  of 
your  experience — he  expects  to  hunt 
you  up  sooner  or  later,  but  don't  wait 
for  him.  Keep  an  eye  on  him,  won't 
you,  and  don't  let  him  make  a  bigger 
fool  of  himself  than  he  necessarily 
would  anywhere. 

"Fraternally  yours, 

"CHARLIE  BAXTER." 

"P.  S.— For  the  Lord's  sake,  Dick, 
be  good  to  the  boy — he  is  all  I  have, 
and  his  heart  is  all  right.  I  don't  care 
for  the  money  he's  lost,  if  he  will  only 
profit  by  his  experience.  I  expect  to 
be  proud  of  him  yet,  if  his  health  im- 
proves. Keep  me  posted  by  wire  or 
mail. 

"c.  B." 

The  Colonel  was  thinking  of  that 
postcsript,  as  he  leaned  forward  and 


DAYBREAK 


131 


said,  with  a  rare  smile  on  his  kind  old 
face: 

"If  you  have  finished  youh  cigar, 
suh,  will  you  come  into  the  Pullman 
and  meet  my  daughter?  Of  course, 
we  shall  expect  you  to  be  our  guest 
while  you  remain  in  this  part  of  the 
country.  Pahdon  me,  suh,  I  will  take 
no  refusal!" 

A  few  minutes  later  the  young  man 
was  in  the  drawing-room  car,  standing 
before  a  radiant  young  creature  with 
the  soft,  dark  eyes  and  gold-blonde 
hair  of  Virginia,  and  the  sun-kissed 
cheeks  and  bewildering  smile  of  Cali- 
fornia's native  daughters. 

"This  is  the  son  of  my  old  college 
friend,  Charles  Baxter,  Dorris — Mr. 
Baxter,  my  daughter." 

Dorris  Peyton  extended  a  slender, 
patrician  hand,  and  the  young  East- 
erner bowed  over  it,  his  eyes  full  of 
unconscious  admiration  were  upon  her 
glowing  face. 

"Mr.  Baxter  is  thinking  of  purchas- 
ing land  in  our  part  of  the  country, 
Dorris,  and  I  have  asked  him  to  be 
our  guest  while  he  remains.  You  will 
join  me  in  the  invitation,  my  deah." 

"We  shall  be  very  glad  to  have  you, 
Mr.  Baxter,  and  I  hope — "  she  raised 
her  soft,  dark  eyes  with  a  radiant  smile 
to  his  own — "that  you  will  decide  to 
purchase  land  here." 

"I  think/'  said  the  young  Easterner, 


with  more  earnestness  than  the  occa- 
sion seemed  to  require,  "that  I'm  al- 
most sure  to." 


That  was  four  years  ago.  The  Bax- 
ter place  lies  near  the  heart  of  the  San 
Joaquin  Valley.  It  is  a  tangle  of  roses 
and  jasamine,  and  the  deep  porches 
are  one  mass  of  bloom  and  color.  Un- 
der the  shade  of  the  trees  a  radiant 
young  woman  with  a  coronet  of  gold- 
blonde  hair  piled  high  upon  her 
queenly  head,  is  sitting  with  arms  ex- 
tended to  a  wee,  dark-eyed  midget  in 
white. 

"The  most  wonderful  child  in  the 
world"  is  contemplating  her  first  jour- 
ney. 

"Just  one  step,  darling,"  comes  the 
young  mother's  voice.  "Dear,  she  has 
taken  it!" 

A  breathless  pause,  a  flutter  of  white 
— and  with  a  crow  of  delight  the  little 
traveler  is  in  her  mother's  arms. 

"Bravo!"  cries  a  deep  bass  voice. 
Charles  Baxter,  the  picture  of  health 
and  happiness,  is  clapping  applause, 
his  eyes,  full  of  adoring  light,  are  upon 
the  faces  of  mother  and  child. 

"I  would  give  a  hundred  dollars  if 
father  could  have  seen  that!"  he  said. 

The  making  over  of  Charles  Baxter 
was  evidently  as  successful  as  his 
Western  ventures. 


DAYBREAK 


Night  glides  away  in  a  silver-rigged  ship — 

With  pearls  gleaming  white  on  her  prow: 
Then,  pale  the  gray  morn  slips  'twixt  quivering  green  leaves, 

Caressing  the  maple  trees'  brow. 
A-tremble  the  meadow  with  clovers  dew-drenched, 

Flaunts  gems  that  gay  elfin  bands  spun — 
And  the  corn  whispers  low  as  her  gold  tassels  sway, 

'Neath  the  glow  of  the  crimson-fringed  sun. 
Uneasy  the  wind  stirs  a  velvet-cheeked  rose, 

And  she  opens  her  bud  with  a  yawn, — 
Then  day  speeds  red  arrows  athwart  the  gray  mist — 

While  birds  trill  Love's  welcome  to  dawn. 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 
4 


The    Girl    Who    Never   Was 


By  Arthur  Wallace  Peach 


MARKS  was  given  credit  in  the 
office  of  the  Merle  Company 
for  possessing  two  attributes : 
one  was  a  nature  so  humble 
and  meek  that  it  never  rebelled  at  the 
most  practical  joke  of  the  office  joker 
or  the  keenest  sarcasm  of  the  office 
head;  another  was  a  face  so  homely 
that  the  younger  and  lighter  minds  of 
the  force  were  led  to  dub  Marks 
"Apollo." 

He  was  the  butt  of  much  fun  in  the 
office,  but  one  day  when  his  lank, 
stooping,  sandy-headed  form  did  not 
appear,  Wellington,  in  charge  of  the 
office,  knew  something  was  wrong,  for 
Marks  had  not  missed  a  day  before  in 
the  seven  years  of  his  service.  Word 
came  later  to  Wellington  that  Marks 
had  been  injured  in  a  street  accident 
that  he  was  in  an  unconscious  condi- 
tion in  the  city  hospital,  and  that  his 
nearest  of  kin  should  be  notified. 

Stafford  and  Barton  were  assigned 
the  duty  of  attempting  to  find  in 
Mark's  room  something  that  might  give 
a  clue  as  to  the  injured  lad's  parents  or 
relatives,  for  no  one  in  the  office  had 
known  him  well  enough  to  gain  such  in- 
formation. 

When  Stafford  and  his  co-searchers 
were  ushered  into  the  little  bare,  un- 
comfortable boarding  house  room, 
which  had  been  Mark's  home  for  the 
lonely  years  in  the  city  Stafford  ex- 
plained the  errand  to  the  landlady,  and 
she  left  them  to  their  search.  But  be- 
fore he  made  any  beginning,  he  looked 
around  the  room  soberly. 

"Bart,  it's  a  shame  the  way  we  have 
treated  the  lad!  Think  of  it — calling 
such  a  place  as  this  a  home;  it's  al- 
most like  a  cell  in  a  jail.  I'm  mighty 
sorry  I  didn't  try  to  do  Marks  a  little 
favor  by  asking  him  to  run  around  with 


me  a  little,"  Stafford  said  regretfully. 

"Yes,  but  you  might  as  well  have 
taken  a  wooden  broomstick  along  for 
company.  Come  on,  let's  hustle  this 
up.  I  don't  imagine  he  had  a  soul  in 
the  world  who  cared  for  him,"  an- 
swered Barton,  carelessly. 

Stafford  started  to  speak,  then  shook 
his  head  as  if  deciding  it  were  better 
to  say  nothing,  and  turned  his  atten- 
tion to  the  room. 

For  a  long  time  they  searched  in 
silence,  finding  nothing  that  gave  them 
any  hint  of  the  knowledge  for  which 
they  were  in  search.  The  room  was 
like  any  man's  room  whose  tastes  are 
limited  as  are  his  means.  Finally, 
however,  Barton  rose  from  a  small  box 
he  had  been  examining,  and  with  a 
packet  of  papers  in  his  hand,  extended 
his  arms  dramatically,  and  exclaimed : 

"Behold!  I  have  it  here — love  let- 
ters! What  do  you  know  about  that, 
Stafford  ?  Apollo  in  love !  Of  all  mir- 
acles !  Come  on,  let's  read  them."  He 
settled  himself  on  the  edge  of  the  bed, 
and  shifted  the  letters. 

Stafford  hesitated.  "I  wonder  if  it 
wouldn't  be  better  to — why,  to  let  Wel- 
lington look  them  over.  I  hate  to 
think  of  reading  anything  of  that  kind." 

"Bosh!  come  on.  Man,  you  may 
stumble  right  on  a  romance,"  Barton 
said,  grinning  and  reading.  "Yep, 
sure  as  you're  born,  here  it  begins — 
My  dear,  dear  Will!" 

Stafford  dismissed  his  scruples  with 
the  thought  that  he  might  be  of  use  to 
the  unconscious  fellow  in  the  great  hos- 
pital, and  with  Barton  he  examined  the 
letters. 

The  letters  had  been  taken  from 
their  envelopes  and  placed  one  upon 
the  other  in  some  attempt  at  order. 
The  letters  were  written  in  a  girlish 


THE  GIRL  WHO  NEVER  WAS. 


133 


hand,  a  little  large  but  perfectly  leg- 
ible, and  were  full  of  the  thousand  lit- 
tle things  that  are  dear  to  the  heart  of 
the  lover  and  his  loved  one.  There 
was  no  over-reaching  in  a  sentimental 
way,  simply  the  happy  expression  of 
hope  and  faith  in  another.  There  were 
little  incidents  mentioned  that  went  to 
show  that,  sometime  or  other,  Marks 
must  have  been  with  her  on  little  ex- 
peditions in  the  country.  As  Stafford 
read,  he  was  touched,  for  in  every 
line  was  the  quiet  note  of  happiness 
tinged  with  a  subtle  echo  of  longing. 

At  last,  with  the  letters  read  and  no 
address  found,  they  were  about  to  con- 
fess themselves  defeated,  and  return 
to  the  office  to  report  the  results  of 
their  fruitless  quest,  but  Barton  sug- 
gested that  they  call  up  the  hospital 
by  telephone  and  see  if  Marks  had  re- 
gained consciousness.  Word  came 
that  he  had,  and  they  decided  that  it 
would  be  a  good  plan  for  one  of  them 
to  go  to  the  hospital,  see  Marks  and 
get  from  him  the  address  of  the  girl. 

Stafford  was  delegated  to  go,  and 
Barton  agreed  to  pack  up  the  few  be- 
longings in  Marks'  room  and  see  to 
the  storing  of  them. 

By  quick  use  of  the  trolley  and  sub- 
way, Stafford  was  able  to  reach  the 
hospital  in  a  short  time.  On  the  way, 
the  pity  that  he  had  felt  for  Marks  in- 
creased as  he  thought  the  man's  situa- 
tion over — alone  and  badly  hurt,  in 
need  of  tender  care  and  love,  if  ever 
a  man  were.  Stafford  felt  a  little  bit- 
ter toward  Barton  for  his  light  accept- 
ance of  Mark's  situation,  and  more  so 
because  of  the  joking  attitude  he  had 
taken  toward  the  crude  little  letters 
that  had  been  examined.  Stafford  de- 
termined to  do  all  that  he  could  to  aid 
the  stricken  man. 

The  surgeon  in  charge  of  the  ward 
gave  Stafford  only  a  few  minutes  in 
which  to  question  Marks. 

When  Stafford  stopped  beside  the 
bed  and  looked  down  into  the  pain- 
filled  face  of  Marks,  he  found  himself 
facing  an  ordeal,  and  to  have  it  over 
with  as  quickly  as  possible,  he  told 
Marks  of  the  finding  of  the  letters,  and 
asked  for  the  address  of  the  girl. 


As  Stafford  spoke,  Marks'  white 
face  flushed  with  the  blood  that  crept 
slowly  to  the  surface.  His  lean,  clumsy 
fingers  picked  nervously  at  the  cover- 
let; his  eyes  were  turned  away. 

Stafford  knew  what  was  wrong;  the 
shy  nature  was  confused  at  the  thought 
of  what  had  happened — the  baring  of 
intimate  secrets  that  heart  keeps  with 
heart,  alone. 

Thinking  to  ease  the  situation,  Staf- 
ford said,  hurriedly: 

"Never  mind,  Marks,  old  chap,  we'll 
never  let  the  secret  out  to  another  soul, 
I  promise  you ;  and — I  want  to  do  any- 
thing under  the  sun  I  can  for  you;  it 
doesn't  make  any  difference  in  the 
world  what  it  is.  Say  the  word " 

The  hurt  eyes  of  the  injured  one 
grew  dim,  and  his  face  set  with  pain. 
It  was  the  first  kindly  word,  sincerely, 
wholeheartedly  offered,  that  Marks 
had  heard  in  the  years  of  his  memory. 

The  nurse  touched  Stafford's  arm, 
as  if  to  tell  him  to  go,  but  the  fingers 
paused  as  Marks,  his  hands  tightening, 
began  to  whisper : 

"Staff,  I'm  glad  to  hear  you  say  that. 
It — it  cheers  me  up.  But  to  tell  the 
truth,  I — I  was  lonely;  evenings  I — I 
wrote  those  letters  myself.  I  just  im- 
agined  " 

"You'd  better  go,"  said  the  nurse, 
gently  but  firmly;  and  Stafford,  his 
senses  reeling  as  he  realized  the  mean- 
ing of  the  sentences,  his  heart  wrung 
by  the  sick  man's  anguish,  was  glad 
to  obey. 

From  the  hospital,  Stafford  went 
directly  to  Barton's  room.  He  found 
that  individual  perched  comfortably  in 
the  window  seat  of  his  bachelor  apart- 
ment, smoking. 

"Bart,  you  are  in  for  a  shock — " 

"I  am?  Well,  you  look  as  if  you 
had  traveled  with  one!" 

"Never  mind:  I'm  hit  hard.  Here 
it  is — I  saw  Marks  for  about  two  min- 
utes. The  surgeon  said  Marks  told 
him  there  was  no  one  who  had  any 
interest  in  him,  but  no  mention  had 
been  made  in  the  conversation  of  a 
girl.  So  I  went  in. 

"Well,  Bart,"  Stafford  went  on, 
turning  his  gaze  from  his  friend  to  the 


134 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


window,  "guess  what  that  poor  chap 
had  been  doing  while  you  and  I  were 
out  having  our  times :  he  was  writing 
a  letter  to  a  girl  who  never  was!" 

"What!" 

"Yes,  that's  it.  Sitting  there  writing 
letters  to  an  imaginary  girl.  Not  a 
soul  in  the  world  to  love  him,  so  he 
made  some  one  whom  he  could  love — " 

"Well,  that's  the  limit.  But  the 
handwriting — that  looked  like  a  girl's." 

"A  little;  but  you  know  he  was 
quite  a  penman.  I've  seen  him,  once 
in  a  while,  writing  in  different  hands 
in  the  office,  while  he  was  waiting  for 
them  to  verify  his  books." 

"Yes,  and  come  to  think  of  it,"  Bar- 
ton went  on,  throwing  down  the  paper 
in  his  hands,  "I  found  a  pen  that  made 
just  the  tracing  that  the  one  did  in 
the  letters,  and  ink  of  the  same  shade. 
I  was  a  little  suspicious,  and  yet, 
Staff " 

"It's  hard  to  believe  it/"  Stafford 
said,  quietly,  "but  there  Marks  is.  I 
wish  I  could  do  something  for  him." 

Barton  sat  in  silence,  evidently  in 
thought.  "We  ought  to  have  done 
something  for  him  before,"  he  said, 
absently.  "If  he  ever  gets  back  I'll 
try  to  reform." 

"That  little  word  'if  was  coined  in 
Hades,"  began  Stafford,  but  he  was 
interrupted  by  the  ring  of  Barton's 
bell. 

Barton  disappeared  and  reappeared, 
holding  in  his  hand  a  yellow  slip  of 
paper,  on  his  keen,  careless  face  a 
smile  that  was  enigmatic.  He  paused 
in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

"I  don't  know  what  I  have  kicked 
up,  chum,  but  I  found  in  a  little  book 
in  Marks'  room  the  name  of  a  person 
— E.  L.  Wait,  and  the  name  of  a  little 
up-country  town.  I  took  a  long  chance 
that  it  was  the  girl,  and  if  not  the 
girl,  some  one  whom  Marks  knew.  It 
may  have  been  a  book  the  chap  bought 
second-hand.  I  hardly  know  what  to 
think.  But  I  sent  a  telegram  to  the 
address  while  you  were  at  the  hospi- 
tal, and  here's  the  reply.  It  simply 
says  that  the  person  I  telegraphed  for 
will  be  here  at  midnight." 

Stafford     looked     dazed.     "But     it 


couldn't  be  a  girl;  Marks  was  never 
known  to  lie,  and  I  shall  hear  those 
broken  words  on  my  own  deathbed;  I 
know  just  what  he  said." 

Barton  rolled  the  telegram  up  and 
tossed  it  into  the  basket.  He  shrugged 
his  shoulders.  "Well,  it  must  be 
some  one  who  knew  Marks." 

"Did  you  give  his  name  in  the  mes- 
sage?" questioned  Stafford. 

Barton  stopped  on  his  way  to  his 
seat,  put  his  hand  to  his  chin,  and 
dropped  into  the  chair.  "By  Jove,  I've 
done  it.  I  just  said,  'A  friend  of  yours 
is  ill.  Come!'  It  dawned  on  me  sud- 
denly that,  of  course,  the  girl  must  be 
Elizabeth  L.  Wait,  with  her  nickname 
'Bess,'  but  I  was  in  too  great  a  hurry 
to  think — and  thinking  isn't  my  long 
suit,"  he  added,  bitterly.  "I'll  bet  it's 
just  my  luck  to  have  some  one  rushing 
here  who  doesn't  know  Marks  from  a 
heathen  Chinee.  That  book  looked 
like  a  second-hand  affair,  come  to 
think  of  it;  rather  worn  out,  as  if  it 
had  been  thumbed  a  lot.  It  was  some 
love  story  or  other.  Gad,  I  guess  I've 
mixed  things  up." 

"Never  mind,  Bart,"  Stafford  said 
to  soothe  his  friend's  distress  and  dis- 
gust. "I  suppose  you  put  your  ad- 
dress in." 

"Yes,  I  did  that— force  of  habit.  I 
suppose  he  or  she  will  show  up  here. 
You  must  be  on  hand,  Staff,"  Barton 
said,  looking  anxiously  at  his  friend. 

"I  shall  be  here.  I  hope  it  will 
prove  to  be  some  one  who  knows 
Marks ;  he  looked  as  if  he  weren't  very 
far  from  the  land  where,  thank  God, 
I  guess  there  is  Some  One  to  love  the 
unloved  of  earth." 

The  great  clock,  which  on  one  of  the 
towers  was  within  the  vision  of  Bar- 
ton's room  told  off  the  hours.  Night 
descended  from  the  great  upper 
spaces,  and  covered  the  city  with  the 
thick  dust  of  darkness.  All  the  other 
myriad  changes  that  mark  day's  pass- 
ing in  a  place  where  men  dwell  in  mil- 
lions took  place.  In  the  room,  Barton 
and  Stafford  watched  the  changes, 
realizing  that  into  their  carefree,  irre- 
sponsible lives  something  was  enter- 
ing that  would  leave  them  different 


THE  GIRL  WHO  NEVER  WAS. 


135 


men;  in  the  hospital  a  life  they  knew 
was  hovering  over  the  gulf  whose 
depths  have  not  been  plumbed;  to- 
ward them  was  speeding  another  life, 
strained  with  anxiety,  with  thoughts 
reaching  ever  forward  faster  than  the 
whirling  express  was  cleaving  the 
shadows;  coming  to  what  purpose? 
On  that  question  neither  of  the  friends 
let  his  mind  dwell. 

It  is  waiting  that  throws  the  spin- 
ning balance  wheels  of  poise  out  of 
alignment;  and  the  waiting  told  on 
the  two  men.  They  thought  of  all  pos- 
sible schemes,  it  seemed,  of  reaching 
the  unknown  "E.  L.  Wait"  and  finding 
out  for  a  certainty  whom  the  name 
represented.  But  the  schemes  which 
they  did  try  failed.  It  was  simply 
waiting  for  them;  waiting  for  time  to 
answer  their  questionings  as  he  an- 
swers all  with  his  moments  and  years. 

A  little  after  midnight  a  taxi-cab 
whirred  into  silence  down  in  the  street 
before  the  building.  Barton,  his  lean 
face  sharper  still,  left  the  room. 

"I'll  see  what's  up,"  he  said, 
briefly. 

Stafford  nodded. 

When  he  came  back  from  the  tele- 
phone, his  face  was  set.  "It's  'E.  L. 
Wait  sure  enough.'  Come  on;  down 
with  me." 

When  the  elevator  left  them  on  the 
first  floor  they  stepped  across  to  the 
reception  room  door;  Stafford  hung 
back  and  let  Barton  go  ahead. 

As  they  stepped  in,  a  figure  rose  to 
meet  them. 

Barton  sighed  audibly.  The  figure 
became,  as  it  advanced  from  the  cor- 
ner of  the  room,  a  girl. 

Swiftly  Barton's  voice  spoke,  giv- 
ing his  own  name,  then :  "I  was  so  hur- 
ried I  did  not  tell  you  whom  I  re- 
ferred to  in  my  message,  and  I  have 
made  a  great  mistake.  The  one  who 
is  ill  is  William  Marks." 

Barton's  voice  was  harsh  with  its 
tension. 

The  girl  straightened  stiffly.  "Oh, 
tell  me,  he  isn't— isn't?" 

Barton  almost  laughed  as  the  ten- 
sion broke;  a  hideous  laugh  it  would 
have  been  in  contrast  to  the  fear  and 


hope  in  the  girl's  voice.  He  checked 
it,  however.  "No,  he  is  living;  and 
we  will  take  you  to  see  him,  if  we  can 
have  permission  from  the  surgeon  in 
charge  of  him." 

"Don't  let  him  know  that  I'm  here. 
Really,  it  is  all  rather  strange,"  she 
said  in  a  half-frightened  way. 

"No,  nothing  will  be  said  to  him.  I 
will  see  to  that,"  Barton  agreed. 

Mystery  was  still  in  the  air,  but 
enough  was  known;  here  was  a  girl 
who  knew  and  wanted  to  be  with 
Marks. 

Quickly  the  necessary  preparations 
were  made,  and  Barton,  his  careless, 
handsome  face  haggard  with  his  care 
and  vigil,  but  ennobled  with  some  in- 
ner light  that  had  been  fanned  into 
being,  started  for  the  hospital  with 
the  girl. 

When  they  had  gone,  Stafford  took 
up  the  watch  in  Barton's  room.  He 
knew  that  Barton  would  bring  back 
from  the  hospital  the  final  solution  of 
what  mystery  there  was  remaining. 
As  Stafford  pondered  the  situation,  his 
theories  did  not  quite  fit  the  facts,  nor 
could  he  make  them,  and  he  gave  up 
his  attempts  to  do  so. 

At  last  when  Barton  appeared,  his 
tired  but  happy  face  told  something 
of  the  outcome.  "Yes,  it  was  all 
right.  He  met  the  girl  when  he  was 
on  his  vacation  last  summer  in  the 
hills — only  one  Wellington  could  get 
him  to  take,  you  remember — and  he 
fell  in  love  with  her ;  but  he  never  got 
up  the  courage  to  propose  to  her — 
doesn't  that  fit  in  with  what  you  know 
of  him?  She  was  a  helper  in  the 
farmhouse  where  he  boarded,  and  she 
is  just  as  shy  as  he  is:  so  they  never 
even  got  near  the  Tm  going  to  tell  you 
I  love  you'  stage.  That  book  was  one 
she  bought  somewhere — second-hand, 
by  the  way.  She  said  she  had  thought 
she  had  lost  it." 

Barton  smiled  a  wistful  smile  at  his 
friend.  "It's  a  case  of  love,  all  right, 
Staff.  He  must  have  kept  the  book 
in  much  the  same  spirit  as  you  have 
a  glove  you  refuse  to  give  up,  and  I 
a  little  trinket.  The  letters  she  wrote 
— that's  the  odd  part  of  it — were  writ- 


136 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ten  as  he  said,  by  himself  to  himself 
from  her." 

"And  in  them  it  seemed  to  appear 
that  she  was  scolding  him  for  calling 
her  beautiful,"  Stafford  continued. 
"She's  as  homely  a  girl  as  he  is  a 
man — even  more  so." 

"What  difference  does  it  make?" 
Barton  asked  a  little  hotly.  Then  his 
tone  changed  and  softened,  and  his 
eyes  darkened  into  the  hue  of  a  misty 


twilight.  "I  was  there  by  Marks'  bed 
just  long  enough,  as  he  recognized 
her,  and  understanding  came,  to  get 
such  an  idea  of  what  Heaven  is  that 
I'm  not  going  to  miss  any  chance  of 
getting  there  if  I  can  help  it.  She 
looked  beautiful  enough  then,  as  she — 
But  what  difference  does  it  make  ?  If 
she  is  beautiful  to  him,  and  he  is  to 
her,  why  the  rest  of  the  world  doesn't 
count." 


SAN     FRANCISCO 


Enthroned  above  a  sapphire  sea — 

Watcher  beside  the  Golden  Gate, 
New-born  from  dust  and  misery, 

Triumphant  over  fire  and  fate — 
Fairer  than  ancient  Rome  she  sits 

Upon  her  many-times  "seven  hills," 
The  strength  of  youth  is  in  her  heart, 

Her  blood  with  Western  vigor  thrills. 

Perpetual  roses  in  her  hair, 
Jewels  of  light  upon  her  breast, — 

Queen  of  the  ocean  and  the  air, 
Her  destiny  is  manifest. 

Her  shimmering  robes  of  sunset  hues 

Fall  in  soft  tints  from  hill  to  shore ; 
White  ships  crowd  up  about  her  feet, 

Her  music  is  the  ocean's  roar. 
Symbols  of  power  are  in  her  hand — 

The  gleam  of  gold  from  hidden  mines; 
The  purple  splendor  of  her  fruits, 

The  fragrant  chalice  of  her  wines. 


ELIZA  JARVIS  NAGLE. 


Anita 


By   Aaud  B.  Rodgers 


IT  WAS  a   dry  year  in  the  Santa 
Clara  Valley.     Anita  Romero  con- 
stantly heard  it  so    declared     on 
every  side,  her  father  and  mother 
looking  out  upon  the  brown,  sere  fields, 
wondered  what  would  follow  all  this 
dire  desolution;  the  padre  prayed  for 
rain. 

She  had  never  fully  realized  the 
seriousness  of  the  situation,  however, 
until  to-day,  when  unexpectedly  two 
travelers  had  crossed  her  path,  as  she 
gathered  lupins  in  the  lane  aglow  with 
these  brilliant  and  deeply  fragrant 
blossoms  for  all  the  drought.  First 
had  come  old  Mr.  Gray,  the  nursery 
man,  returning  from  the  forest  clad 
hills  with  sacks  of  leaf  mold  in  his 
long,  deep  wagon,  and  with  baskets  of 
fern  roots,  yet  fragrant  of  the  woods. 
He  drew  up  as  he  neared  Anita,  and 
noting  the  mass  of  flowers  she  had 
gathered,  shook  his  gray  head  and  re- 
marked in  his  slow,  even  voice :  "There 
are  those  who  are  born  with  great  love 
for  flowers.  You  are  one,  Anita ;  I  am 
another.  Do  not  let  this  passion  pos- 
sess you  until  it  becomes  a  mania,  as 
it  has  become  with  me.  Look  at  my 
gardens.  When  a  rare  palm  dies,  a 
fragile  lily  fades,  it  grieves  me.  When 
the  wind  rends  and  snaps  some  limb  I, 
too,  am  wounded.  When  a  year  of 
drought  like  this  comes,  I  am  driven  to 
extremes,  and  far  beyond  my  strength 
to  save  every  root,"  and  he  glanced  at 
the  sacks  of  leaf  mold  which  were  in- 
tended to  hold  the  moisture  about  the 
roots  of  some  of  his  finest  bulbs.  She 
did  not  reply,  but  gazed  at  the  flowers 
she  held,  the  words  of  the  old  man 
merely  causing  her  to  look  upon  the 
blossoms  with  added  tenderness,  for 
she  was  young,  and  mercifully  the 
young  cannot  fully  comprehend  fa- 


tigue, disappointment  and  hope  long 
deferred. 

As  he  gathered  the  reins  together 
and  bent  over  for  his  willow  switch, 
he  finished  the  conversation: 

"And  my  lily  bulbs:  what  is  to  be- 
come of  them.  I  have  laid  awake 
nights  trying  to  solve  the  problem, 
but  there  is  no  way  out.  Two  hundred 
Bermuda  lily  bulbs,  and  the  spring 
gone  dry.  Not  much  profit  for  me  next 
year. 

He  moved  on,  too  absorbed  in  his 
thoughts  to  notice  that  the  girl  who 
stood  before  him  had  been  rendered 
dumb  by  his  hopeless  statements.  She 
watched  the  old  man,  whom  she  had 
known  since  her  babyhood,  go  out  of 
sight,  and  was  about  to  continue  on 
her  way  home  when  there  came  to  her 
ears  the  resounding  echo  of  approach- 
ing horse's  hoofs — rapid,  persistent, 
as  if  the  rider  traveled  in  the  utmost 
haste. 

In  a  few  minutes,  Antonio  Diaz  ap- 
peared at  the  top  of  the  hill  that  led 
down  into  the  lane,  and  although  Anita 
was  at  the  extreme  end,  he  instantly 
perceived  her,  and  at  once  began  to 
rein  in  the  mad  beast  he  rode.  Even 
from  the  distance,  Anita  could  see  he 
was  not  in  his  usual  frame  of  mind, 
for  his  dark,  handsome  face  wore  an 
harassed,  defiant  expression.  Know- 
ing her  fear  of  his  mustang  he  dis- 
mounted some  little  distance  from  her 
and  approached  leading  the  horse  by 
his  lariat. 

"Antonio,  what  is  the  matter?  Where 
are  you  going?" 

"To  the  dogs,  Anita,  along  with 
everything  else." 

As  his  was  an  entirely  different  tem- 
perament from  that  of  old  Mr.  Gray, 
so  was  his  outlook  upon  life  entirely 


138 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


different.  Her  startled,  inquiring  look 
bade  him  proceed. 

"For  the  dust  is  blowing  up  in 
whirlwinds  in  the  wheat  field  and  the 
springs  have  gone  dry  in  the  pasture. 
I'm  on  my  way  now  to  take  what  I 
can  get  for  the  cattle,  and  that  won't 
be  half  what  they  are  worth." 

"But  the  padre  said  there  would  be 
rain." 

"Bah!  it's  all  right  for  him  to  talk  of 
rain  from  out  his  sheltered  slopes. 
Why,  the  dew  that  gathers  there 
would  raise  all  he  needs." 

"God  will  not  forget  us;  the  rain 
will  come." 

Antonio  broke  into  a  mocking  laugh. 

"God  will  not  forget  us — there  is 
no  God  to  forget!" 

Instantly  he  saw  his  mistake,  for 
the  girl  suddenly  drew  away  from  him 
and  involuntarily  raised  her  armful 
of  flowers  as  a  barrier  between  them. 
Her  eyes  expressed  her  astonishment 
and  her  horror. 

He  spoke  in  a  calmer  voice.  "For- 
give me,  Anita:  I  have  scarcely  slept 
for  two  nights,  for  above  all  that  I 
might  lose  might  be  you.  The  crops 
of  this  year,  had  they  been  fair,  would 
have  finished  paying  for  the  ranch, 
and  try  as  I  may  now,  I  shall  be  two 
hundred  dollars  short  on  the  mortgage. 
Just  think:  a  home  within  my  reach 
and  unable  to  claim  it,  and  I've  earned 
it — yes,  many  times  over.  I  had  even 
made  the  plans  for  you  for  a  house; 
it  was  all  for  you.  I  love  you,  Anita, 
better  than  life  itself!" 

He  still  held  the  horse  with  his  left 
hand;  he  stretched  out  his  right  arm 
to  the  girl  he  loved,  but  without  a 
word  she  turned  and  ran  from  him.  So 
light  of  foot  was  she  that  she  was 
soon  far  up  the  lane,  scattering  the 
lupins  as  she  hurried  on,  leaving  An- 
tonio gazing  after  her  speechless,  and 
as  amazed  at  her  mood  as  she  had 
been  at  the  mood  of  old  Mr.  Gray.  At 
first  his  impulse  was  to  follow  her,  but 
realizing  that  his  words  had  driven 
her  from  him,  he  silently  watched  her 
unlatch  the  gate  opening  from  the 
lane  into  her  father's  home,  and  saw 
her  go  out  of  sight  among  the  orchard 


trees;  then  he  remounted  and  gath- 
ered up  his  reins,  his  brain  in  a  whirl 
as  he  galloped  in  reckless  fashion  on 
to  his  destination. 

On  his  way  back  he  stopped  at  the 
ranch,  but  the  small  house  was  dark 
and  silent,  and  another  disappoint- 
ment was  added  to  the  list  of  the  long 
day  of  Antonio,  for  he  had  fully  ex- 
pected to  see  Anita  for  a  few  minutes 
that  evening.  Days  and  even  weeks 
went  by,  however,  without  his  being 
able  to  find  her ;  often  he  would  snatch 
a  few  hours  from  his  work,  mount  the 
mustang,  and  hurry  down  to  her  home, 
but  she  was  never  there.  He  even  left 
his  dry  fields,  dressed  and  went  to 
Mass.  Each  time  she  had  already 
come  and  gone.  Always  he  asked  the 
same  question  of  Anita's  father,  and 
always  the  kindly  old  man  would  make 
the  same  reply,  as  he  paused  in  his 
work,  removed  his  hat  and  brushed 
his  tired  face  with  a  worn  handker- 
chief: 

"She  works,  all  day  from  morn  un- 
til night.  She  kisses  me  good-bye  at 
sunrise;  at  twilight  she  returns  and 
smiles  at  me.  She  is  happy;  she  does 
not  tell  me  her  life;  her  mother  alone 
knows,  and  she,  too,  will  not  tell!" 

Antonio  gazed  perplexed. 

"Where  does  she  go?"  he  inquired 
eagerly. 

"I  cannot  say.  Somewhere  in  her 
oldest  dress  and  wearing  a  heavy 
apron.  Always  old  Blanco,  the  dog, 
goes  with  her;  many  times  the  little 
neighbor,  little  Manuel." 

"And  he  will  not  tell?  I  would 
make  him  tell!" 

For  an  instant,  Antonio  saw  the 
same  expression  burn  in  the  old  man's 
eyes  that  he  had  seen  in  Anita's  eyes 
the  day  she  had  left  him  in  the  lane. 

As  it  faded  away,  the  old  man  said : 
"It  is  her  pleasure,  her  secret;  some 
day  we  shall  know." 

But  one  day  at  twilight  Antonio 
found  her.  She  was  coming  toward 
the  house,  walking  underneath  the  al- 
mond trees,  whose  overhanging 
branches  were  now  covered  with  fra- 
grant blossoms.  Blanco  was  with  her ; 
on  her  arm  she  carried  a  basket;  in 


ANITA 


139 


her  hand  a  broken  trowel  for  her 
father  to  mend. 

Antonio  clasped  her  suddenly  in  his 
arms.  It  was  as  if  the  long  years  had 
rolled  between  them. 

"Where  have  you  been  all  this  time, 
Anita?  Why  do  you  hide  from  me?" 

"I  do  not  hide  from  you,  Antonio; 
it  is  you  who  are  the  one  who  hides. 
And  you  hide  from  God  himself!" 

She  drew  away  from  him  as  she 
spoke,  and  her  low  voice  sounded  so 
accusing  that  he  stood  silently  re- 
garding her.  He  sought  for  an  answer 
to  her  words. 

"God  has  hidden  His  face  from  me. 
He  has  forgotten  me.  I  cannot  find 
Him." 

The  pity  for  the  disconsolate  that  is 
uppermost  in  the  heart  of  every  wo- 
man stirred  within  her. 

"He  is  always  with  us,  Antonio.  Be- 
cause our  way  is  not  always  easy,  it 
is  not  that  He  has  forgotten  us.  The 
padre  says  we  must  bear  the  cross  to 
gain  the  crown.  If  He  remembers  the 
sparrows  he  will  not  forget  us,  Anto- 
nio." 

"He  has  forgotten  us — look  at  our 
valley,  our  fields,  our  animals." 

"He  is  yet  above  us."  She  lifted  her 
face  to  the  soft,  twilight  sky,  and  from 
the  serenity  of  her  expression  Anto- 
nio gathered  faith. 

"And  He  loves  us,"  he  said  softly, 
almost  to  himself 

"We  cannot  comprehend  his  love,  so 
deep  it  is." 

"But  with  all  my  heart  I  love  you, 
Anita.  I  love  you  better  than  I  love 
God  himself.  I  should  swear  an  un- 
truth did  I  say  differently." 

"Listen,  Antonio,"  she  answered 
slowly,  "before  I  marry  you,  you  must 
come  back  to  God,  else  neither  of  us 
could  be  happy.  Do  you  not  remem- 
ber that  you  once  said  He  had  led  you 
to  this  valley  where  you  found  a  home 
and  me?  You  felt  His  presence  then 
and  you  thanked  Him.  Come  hard- 
ships and  disappointments,  you  turn 
from  Him.  It  has  only  made  me  turn 
to  Him  the  more,  and  I  have  found 
happiness  and  peace." 

"With  all  your  faith  in  God,  Anita, 


you  must  have  a  little  more  faith  in 
me.  When  all  this  blackness  rolls 
away,  I  may  feel  His  love  again.  Love 
me  until  then!"  he  pleaded,  and  his 
face  was  pale  as  she  kissed  him. 

April  arrived  with  a  long  desired 
downpour,  after  which  the  clear,  fresh 
earth,  with  its  many  wild  flowers,  its 
tender  green  blades,  and  its  singing 
larks  emphatically  proclaimed  the 
springtime. 

The  padre  prepared  for  Easter,  and 
he  came  one  day  to  talk  with  Anita. 
She  had  promised  him  an  Easter  lily. 
It  was  waiting  for  him,  and  as  she 
placed  it  before  him,  she  did  not  note 
his  expression  of  surprise  that  she 
had  so  successfully  grown  this  perfect 
flower  and  did  not  hear  his  thanks. 
She  spoke  of  Antonio. 

The  padre  had  many  such  as  he  in 
his  parish ;  the  coming  year  would  find 
him  not  so  tolerant  of  their  indiffer- 
ence. He  returned  to  the  lily.  It  must 
be  well  wrapped;  not  a  petal  must  be 
broken;  one  could  not  rely  upon  the 
perfection  of  a  spring  day,  and  this 
flower  was  perfection  itself.  He  bent 
to  inhale  its  wonderful  perfume.  "And 
I  have  over  two  hundred  such  as  that, 
or  rather  they  are  not  mine.  I  grew 
them  for  old  Mr.  Gray.  He  had  no 
water;  he  could  not  grow  them.  Our 
spring  never  fails." 

The  padre  glanced  through  the  win- 
dow by  which  they  stood,  as  if  ex- 
pecting to  see  the  lilies  standing  in 
the  sheltered  garden  without. 

"Two  hundred,"  he  cried,  in  aston- 
ishment; "where  are  they?" 

"Back  of  the  pasture  is  the  slope 
with  the  spring.  In  the  shelter  of  the 
slope,  where  I  could  make  use  of  the 
water,  I  grew  them  all  underneath  a 
thin  canvas." 

The  padre  thoughtfully  regarded 
her. 

"Two  hundred  lilies!  My  child, 
how  you  must  have  worked." 

"Early  and  late." 

"It  is  coming  night.  I  cannot  go  to 
see  them  now;  to-morrow  I  will  come." 

He  came  as  he  said  he  would  on  the 
morrow,  toiling  up  the  path  that  the 
girl's  feet  had  worn  smooth. 


140 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


In  his  soft,  flat  shoes  he  made  no 
sound ;  he  lifted  the  strip  of  loose  can- 
vas that  marked  the  entrance,  and 
stepped  within  the  lily  house.  Blanco, 
asleep  just  within,  gazed  sleepily  upon 
the  well  known  figure  in  the  old  cas- 
sock, and  slowly  closed  his  eyes 
again.  Anita,  busy  at  the  far  end, 
did  not  perceive  him. 

The  old  man  looked  slowly  about. 
Tall  lilies  stood  on  every  side,  a  soft, 
bright  light  falling  through  the  thin 
white  canvas  rested  upon  the  whiter 
flowers.  A  charming  perfume  filled 
the  air. 

In  the  silence  the  old  padre  spoke 
as  to  himself : 

"It  is  heaven,"  he  said  softly. 

Anita  turned,  undisturbed  by  his 
presence.  She  knew  he  would  appear 
just  so,  and  she  went  on  watering  the 
lilies. 

"Then  you  like  it,  Padre  Anselmo?" 

"Just  so  the  lilies  bloom  in  Paradise. 
He  has  lent  us  these  glorious  flowers 
to  make  us  long  for  those  fadeless 
flowers  of  the  other  world."  He 
passed  softly  from  one  spot  to  another 
comparing,  praising,  wondering  at  the 
girl's  toil  and  patience,  and  finally 
paused  not  far  from  her. 

"Among  these  pure  flowers  the  sin- 
ner could  not  fail  to  turn  to  God  and 
praise  Him.  Looking  upon  their  ma- 
jestic beauty  risen  from  the  dust,  he 
could  never  more  doubt  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  soul." 

From  these  flowers  the  padre  gath- 
ered more  faith,  and  when  he  departed 
he  left  among  them  a  peace  like  a 
benediction.  Anita  stopped  work,  and 
put  down  her  sprinkling  pot,  absorbed 
in  meditation. 

She  believed  all  the  words  of  the 
padre,  and  here  she  now  knew  the 
fierce  and  wayward  soul  of  Antonio 
could  be  brought  back  to  God.  She 
must  bring  Antonio  here,  and  at  once, 
for  very  soon  old  Mr.  Gray  would  call 
to  forward  the  lilies  to  the  florist.  But 
she  had  no  need  of  sending  for  An- 
tonio, for  as  the  padre  was  departing 
he  met  him  entering  the  ranch  gate. 

The  padre  discoursed  upon  the 
beauty  of  the  lily  house,  secretly  be- 


lieving that  Antonio  might  have  had 
a  hand  in  its  construction,  for  his  eyes 
had  grown  too  dim  to  note  that  only 
a  woman's  and  child's  hands  could 
have  constructed  the  canvas  house, 
which  would  have  fallen  long  since 
had  it  not  been  for  the  sheltering 
boughs  of  the  many  old  oak  trees  clus- 
tered all  about.  Antonio  listened  at- 
tentively to  the  padre's  words,  and  to 
his  order  to  appear  at  Mass  the  fol- 
lowing Sunday.  So  deferential  was  he 
to  the  aged  man  that  the  padre  went  on 
his  way  with  his  heart  at  peace,  re- 
garding the  future  of  Antonio,  and  An- 
tonio possessed  of  a  heart  filled  with 
hope  started  for  the  lily  house,  care- 
fully following  the  padre's  directions. 
The  hesitancy  of  the  unbidden  pos- 
sessed him  as  he  neared  the  peaceful 
spot  of  sheltering  bough,  of  drooping 
vine  and  fragrant  flower.  As  he  lifted 
aside  the  canvas  entrance  he  was  sur- 
prised to  see  Anita  just  before  him, 
and  more  surprised  to  hear  her  voice 
filled  with  joy  at  beholding  him  in 
her  little  world  of  silence  and  bloom- 
ing lilies. 

"Antonio!" 

He  took  her  face  in  his  hands  and 
kissed  it. 

"Anita  mia." 

She  stepped  back  and  looked  intent- 
ly at  him. 

"Antonio,"  she  said,  slowly,  "the 
padre  says  that  God  can  be  found  here 
among  the  lilies;  that  these  flowers, 
that  mean  so  much  to  us,  have  been 
lent  to  point  us  the  way  to  the  land 
where  the  flowers  never  fade.  That 
they  represent  all  that  is  most  beauti- 
ful in  life,  and  typify  the  resurrection 
of  the  soul." 

Antonio  looked  out  upon  the  mass 
of  blossoms.  His  face  wore  an  ex- 
pression of  humility  and  shame.  "Did 
you  do  all  this,  Anita,  work  day  after 
day  that  I  might  be  healed  of  my 
faithless  heart.  That  through  your 
sacrifice  and  your  toil  I  might  be 
brought  to  a  realization  of  my  sins?" 

"I  did  not  realize  how  far-reaching 
my  work  would  be — at  first  I  prayed 
that  I  might  be  able  to  help  you,  An- 
tonio. See  how  good  God  has  heard 


THE  COSMIC  MOTIF. 


141 


my  prayer.  I  planted  the  bulbs  so 
carefully,  pot  by  pot,  and  watched 
them  come  slowly  up  and  grow.  Thank- 
ful, as  I  watered  them,  that  each  day 
saw  them  taller  and  finer.  Finally 
came  the  flowers,  and  old  Mr.  Gray 
to  see  them.  Then  I  knew  that  I  had 
succeeded,  that  they  were  valuable. 
And  while  I  knew  they  would  mean 
much  to  old  Mr.  Gray,  I  knew  they 
would  mean  far  more  to  you  and  to  me, 
Antonio.  That  they  would  save  the 
home  you  despaired  of  gaining." 

Antonio,  tall  and  strong  of  frame, 
looked  at  the  slender  girl     with    the 


glowing,  eager  face.  For  once  he 
turned  from  her,  then  he  wiped  his 
eyes,  so  that  he  might  more  clearly 
behold  all  the  light  and  life  and  beauty 
of  her  face  and  of  the  lilies  all  about 
her.  He  reached  out  supplicating 
hands  to  her  and  fell  on  his  knees  be- 
side her. 

"Forgive  me,  Anita,  and  may  God 
forgive  me.  I  almost  wish  it  were  the 
eternal  paradise.  I  could  be  content 
•with  you  for  all  eternity." 

And  with  her  hands  folded  upon  his 
head,  she  bent  and  kissed  his  soft, 
dark  hair. 


THE    COSMIC    AOTI  F 


Once  was  a  boy,  and  wonderful 

The  light  that  dwelt  his  eyes  within. 
Can  Stygian  darkness  quite  annul 

This  glint  of  Jove's  own  javelin? 
Must  yon  high-soaring,  air-borne  gull 

Be  subject  to  malign  chagrin? 

From  eyes  once  young  and  conquering-bright 
Tears,  fed  by  hidden  fonts,  now  start; 

The  spear-glint  wanes  before  the  night ; 
The  arrow  bites  the  sea-gull's  heart. 

Wrong  scorns  the  menace  of  the  Right; 
Greed  tears  the  flesh  and  soul  apart. 

O  Powers  of  Evil,  have  a  care! 

Though  Jove  may  through  the  long  night  nod, 
Jove  and  his  javelin  wait  thee  there, 

And  dawn,  the  huntress,  comes,  wing-shod! 
Youth,  Spring — the  Principle — by  prayer 

Preserved,  lie  sleeping  in  the  clod. 

ARTHUR  POWELL. 


Juwa  and  Awasus 


By  A.  J.  Ashen 


T 


HE  STORY  of  Juwa  and  Awa- 
sus has  been  told  many  times 

at  the  Fort  K Indian  School 

until  it  has  attached  itself  to 
that  institution  as  a  sort  of  legend. 
The  primary  teachers  tell  this  story 
to  their  young  pupils,  and  of  all  the 
stories  they  like  it  the  best.  In  the 
cemetery  just  behind  the  chapel  are 
the  little  graves  of  Juwa  and  Awasus, 
and  once  a  year  on  the  day  set  apart 
for  decorating  the  final  resting  places 
of  the  dead,  the  little  graves  of  these 
Indian  boys  whose  childish  devotion 
for  each  other  caused  them  to  face 
death,  rather  than  be  separated,  are 
strewn  with  flowers — with  the  tender 
care  of  many  hands. 

There  are  only  two  persons  now  at 

Fort  K Indian  School  who  were 

there  when  Juwa  and  Awasus  began 
their  education  at  that  institution,  the 
principal,  grown  old  and  gray,  and  the 
matron,  now  the  principal's  wife.  It 
was  the  matron  who  first  told  me  their 
story,  which  I  have  heard  many  times 
since  from  other  lips,  and  as  she  drove 
me  to  the  station,  after  one  of  my  pro- 
longed visits  in  that  beautiful  valley, 
she  pointed  out  to  me  a  pile  of  rocks, 
on  the  right  side  of  the  road,  as  the 
spot  where  the  shack  had  stood  in 
which  they  found  the  two  little  boys 
on  that  cold,  blizzardy  day — but  I  am 

anticipating  my  story. 

*  *  * 

It  was  almost  dark  on  a  rather  bleak 
autumn  evening  in  the  latter  part  of 
September  when  Awasus  was  led  into 
the  principal's  office  to  be  registered. 
Miss  Ophelia,  the  primary  teacher, 
brought  him  in.  She  had  taken  the 
little  fellow  in  charge  the  moment  the 
supervisor's  wagon  had  left  his  shiv- 
ering form  on  the  parade  ground. 


The  principal,  picking  him  up  and 
seating  him  on  his  desk,  said  he  was 
a  "strapping  little  fellow."  Awasus 
did  not  know  what  a  "strapping  little 
fellow"  was ;  in  fact,  he  cared  not,  for 
many  strange  things  were  attracting 
the  attention  of  his  big  brown  eyes, 
which  roved  from  one  object  to  an- 
other in  open  wonder. 

He  was  entered  in  the  principal's 
large  book.  Name,  Awasus;  age  seven 
years.  Tribe,  Blackfoot.  Father's 
name,  Chief  Awawu. 

"I  see  there's  another  little  fellow 
from  the  same  reservation,"  the  prin- 
cipal said,  as  he  referred  to  the  regis- 
tration book.  "Juwa,  age  eight.  He'll 
make  a  good  companion  for  Awasus. 
Have  the  two  put  together,  Miss  Oph- 
lia.  It  will  help  to  keep  away  home- 
sickness." 

Miss  Ophelia  turned  her  charge  over 
to  the  matron,  and  that  lady,  taking 
him  under  her  wing,  washed,  cleaned 
and  then  dressed  him  in  a  brand  new 
uniform. 

''There  you  are,"  the  matron  said, 
after  completing  his  toilet.  "Now  you 
look  like  a  little  civilized  boy." 

Awasus  merely  blinked  his  eyes  and 
slyly  ganced  down  at  his  new  clothes. 
He  looked  so  sweetly  self-conscious 
and  ill  at  ease  that  the  matron,  with 
her  motherly  soul,  could  not  help  grab- 
bing him  in  her  arms. 

"You  cute  little  thing,  I  could  just 
squeeze  you,"  she  cried,  and  then  held 
him  out  at  arms'  length  half-playfully. 
"We'll  make  a  heap  fine  educated  man 
of  you." 

It  was  after  bed-time  when  she  car- 
ried him  into  the  dormitory  and  tucked 

him  in  beside  Juwa. 

*  *  * 

A  week  before  the  same  buckboard 


JUWA  AND  AWASUS 


143 


had  dropped  Juwa  in  front  of  the  prin- 
cipal's office.  No  warm  greeting  had 
awaited  him  as  in  the  case  of  Awa- 
sus.  Miss  Ophelia  had  taken  him  by 
the  hand  without  a  word,  and  had  led 
him  into  the  principal's  office,  where 
she  had  left  him.  The  principal,  giv- 
ing him  a  cursory  survey  over  his 
eyegless,  had  proceeded  to  take  his 
name  from  the  slip  of  paper  handed 
to  him  from  the  supervisor,  and  then 
had  turned  him  over  to  the  matron 
without  further  ado.  That  lady  had 
dressed  him  in  silence. 

This  cool  reception  was  due  to  a  lack 
of  that  physical  charm  which  the 
Maker  endows  some  children:  for 
Juwa  was  no  physical  beauty.  Large 
of  limb,  rather  high  cheek  bones  and 
with  a  slight  squint  to  his  eyes,  his 
homeliness  was  of  the  commonplace. 

"He's  not  even  homely  enough  to 
be  cute,"  the  matron  had  said. 

He  came  from  the  tribe  that  lived 
in  the  mountains,  whose  rugged  peaks 
you  could  see  on  a  clear  day  ranged 
against  the  blue  sky,  far  to  the  north- 
west. Awasus,  on  the  other  hand, 
came  from  the  tribes  that  roamed  the 
plains,  where  the  sluggish  yellow 
streams  wound  their  way,  snake  like, 
in  between  the  bench  lands.  They 
spoke  the  same  tongue,  and  belonged 
to  the  one  great  Blackfoot  race. 

Those  days,  before  Awasus  came, 
were  lonesome  and  not  at  all  pleasant 
for  Juwa.  The  older  boys  were  rough 
and  talked  only  Whiteman's  tongue, 
which  he  did  not  understand,  and  there 
were  no  other  little  boys  with  whom 
he  could  play.  When  school  was  over 
and  the  other  boys  were  yelling  and 
shouting  at  their  games  on  the  parade 
ground,  he  would  go  off  alone,  trying 
to  amuse  himself  by  throwing  stones 
at  the  great  flock  of  blackbirds  that 
covered  the  stable  yards.  His  little 
heart  was  heavy,  and  in  his  loneliness 
he  thought  of  his  father's  tepee  in 
among  the  mountains;  of  his  dog  that 
used  to  cuddle  up  beside  him  at  night 
and  keep  him  warm;  of  his  pet  deer 
that  his  father  caught  while  hunting 
for  the  caribou  in  the  Rockies.  He 
wondered  if  he  would  ever  see  them 


again;  then  it  was  that  a  large  lump 
would  steal  into  his  throat  and  stick 
there;  big  tears  would  come  to  his 
eyes. 

At  night  when  the  matron  tucked 
him  in  the  immaculate  white  sheets  of 
his  bed,  he  would  softly  cry  himself 
to  sleep,  and  then  he  would  dream — 
dream  of  his  father's  tepee,  and  that 
he  was  once  more  playing  with  his 
little  sisters,  or  trailing  with  the  other 
Indian  boys  through  the  clear  water 
of  the  river.  When  he  awoke,  how- 
ever, and  saw  only  the  white  walls 
of  the  dormitory  that  large  lump  would 
rise  and  stick  in  his  throat,  and  try 
as  he  would  he  could  not  choke  it 
down.  Tears  would  come  to  his  eyes 
and  roll  down  his  cheeks,  big,  scald- 
ing drops;  and  then  burying  his  face 
in  his  pillow  he  would  cry  as  if  his  lit- 
tle heart  would  break.  The  days  were 
long  and  dreary  for  Juwa,  those  days 

before  Awasus  came. 

*  *  * 

The  morning  after  Awasus  arrived 

at  Fort  K ,  Juwa  slowly  became 

conscious  that  there  was  a  little  black 
head  on  the  pillow  beside  him.  He 
lifted  the  blanket  to  get  a  better  look 
at  his  bed  fellow,  and  his  heart  leaped 
with  a  glad  surprise  on  seeing  a  little 
boy  about  his  own  age.  Awasus'  first 
impulse,  on  opening  his  eyes  and  find- 
ing himself  in  a  strange  place,  was  to 
cry. 

"What's  your  name?"  Juwa  asked 
in  Blackfoot. 

Awasus  did  not  answer,  and  the  cor- 
ners of  his  mouth  began  to  drop. 

"What's  your  name?"  Juwa  asked 
again. 

"Awasus,"  came  the  half-timid  re- 
sponse. 

Juwa,  at  first,  could  hardly  believe 
his  ears.  At  last  some  one  to  whom 
he  could  talk. 

"You  come  from  up  there?"  and 
Juwa  pointed  to  the  north. 

Awasus  by  this  time,  recalling  the 
long  ride  in  the  supervisor's  wagon, 
nodded  his  head.  A  few  more  ques- 
tions by  Juwa  and  answers  in  mono- 
syllables on  the  part  of  Awasus,  and 
the  two  became  friends. 


144 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Juwa,  making  faces  at  Awasus  from 
underneath  his  blankets,  or  else  cov- 
ering himself  entirely  and  then  burst- 
ing torth  with  a  loud  "booh"  soon  had 
Awasus  shrieking  with  laughter.  You 
may  be  sure  it  was  a  much  surprised 
matron  that  found  the  heretofore  mo- 
rose Juwa,  laughing  and  playing  with 
his  new  found  companion  in  childish 
glee. 

Having  a  playmate,  some  one  to 
whom  he  could  talk,  made  all  the  dif- 
ference in  the  world  to  Juwa.  The 
skies  became  bluer,  his  loneliness  and 
little  heartaches  vanished  with  the 
coming  of  his  little  friend;  one  to 
whom  he  could  speak  his  thoughts  and 
musings  which  he  had  fostered  in  his 
heart  for  days  and  days. 

School  over  for  the  day,  he  and  Aw- 
asus would  go  off  arm  in  arm,  chat- 
tering like  two  magpies.  They  would 
spend  hours  playing  numerous  little 
games  mostly  of  their  own  invention. 
Never  for  a  moment  were  those  little 
boys  separated.  They  slept  together, 
ate  together,  and  in  school  sat  in  the 
same  seat.  Juwa,  being  the  larger, 
looked  upon  Awasus  as  his  charge, 
and  took  care  of  him  in  a  big  brotherly 
way. 

At  night,  after  lights  were  out,  he 
and  Awasus  would  lie  in  bed,  and  in 
subdued  voices  tell  each  other  of  their 
homes  on  the  reservation.  Awasus,  in 
his  childish  way,  would  relate  the 
stories  that  Wapoosh,  the  medicine 
man,  had  told  him;  of  Muskawah,  the 
bear,  and  Mahiggan,  the  wicked  wolf 
that  ate  small  boys.  Juwa  in  his  turn 
would  tell  of  his  pets. 

"Wait,  Awasus,"  he  would  say. 
"some  day  we'll  go  home  and  become 
great  hunters  like  my  father." 

Alas,  for  Juwa  and  Awasus,  this  hap- 
piness was  not  to  last,  for  even  then 
the  Fates  were  putting  their  heads  to- 
gether and  their  shrouds  were  nesting 
about  you. 

The  principal,  standing  at  his  office 
window  one  day,  watched  the  little 
fellows  as  they  played  near  by.  Miss 
Ophelia  came  in. 

"Did  you  ever  in  your  life  see  such 
childish  devotion,  Miss  Ophelia?"  he 


said.  "The  two  little  fellows  seem 
perfectly  contented." 

Miss  Ophelia  approached  the  win- 
dow and  looked  out  at  the  two  boys 
who  were  making  numerous  little  sand 
mounds,  with  twigs  and  small  sticks 
placed  at  the  top  of  each,  jabbering 
contentedly  as  they  worked. 

"They're  just  too  dear  for  anything," 
was  her  reply.  "I  came  in  to  see  you 
about  them.  I'm  afraid  we'll  have  to 
separate  the  little  fellows.  They  have 
been  in  school  two  months,  and  they 
have  not  made  a  bit  of  progress  in 
their  English.  As  long  as  they  are  to- 
gether they  talk  nothing  but  their  own 
tongue.  For  their  own  good  I  think 
we  ought  to  separate  them  for  a  while, 
at  least." 

"It  would  be  a  shame  to  do  that, 
Miss  Ophelia,"  the  principal  replied, 
without  taking  his  eyes  off  the  two 
boys.  "Poor  little  fellows,  it  would 
break  their  hearts." 

"Yes,  I  realize  that  it  will  be  hard 
on  the  little  fellows,'"  Miss  Ophelia 
went  on.  "But  by  having  them  sepa- 
rated for  two  weeks  at  least  I  believe 
I  could  get  them  started  and  little  in- 
terested in  their  English." 

The  principal  said  nothing  for  a  mo- 
ment, still  keeping  his  eyes  on  the 
little  boys,  and  then  finally  said : 

"Well,  Miss  Ophelia,  you  ought  to 
know.  If  you  think  it's  for  the  best, 
I  suppose  that's  the  thing  to  do." 

It  was  left  to  the  motherly  diplo- 
macy of  the  matron  to  wean  the  two 
boys  from  each  other.  She  waited 
until  they  were  asleep,  then  bundled 
Awasus  away  to  another  bed.  In  the 
morning  she  found  him  crying  for  his 
playmate.  She  tried  to  soothe  him  by 
offering  him  a  cookie,  but  he  pushed 
it  away. 

"Juwa,  I  want  Juwa,"  he  cried  in 
Blackfoot. 

"Don't  cry,  Awasus.  You  must  stay 
away  from  Juwa.  Some  other  day  you 
can  play  with  Juwa,"  pleaded  the  ma- 
tron. Awasus  did  not  understand  these 
tender  solicitations,  and  cried  all  the 
more. 

To  please  him  she  brought  out  a 
large  doll  and  some  other  playthings, 


JUWA  AND  AWASUS 


145 


but  his  interest  was  only  for  the  mo- 
ment, and  try  as  she  would  she  could 
not  expel  the  tears  that  coursed  down 
his  cheeks,  big  glassy  drops.  His 
heart  was  broken,  and  for  the  first 
time  there  came  to  him,  as  it  had  come 
to  Juwa,  the  loneliness  of  a  homesick 
boy. 

The  matron's  motherly  heart  went 
out  to  this  little  child,  and  under  her 
breath  murmured  about  "the  heart- 
lessness  of  some  people." 

Juwa,  left  in  the  care  of  Miss  Ophe- 
lia, was  equally  heartbroken.  She 
tried  to  soothe  him,  in  her  old-maiden- 
ly way,  and  soon  lost  patience,  and  in 
rather  curt  tones  told  him  to : 

"Hush  up,  you  crying  child!" 

It  was  then  that  Juwa  rebelled.  In 
the  school  room  he  refused  to  repeat 
after  her  the  names  of  the  objects  she 
held  in  her  hand.  That  lady,  beside 
herself,  grasped  him  by  the  shoulder 
and  gave  him  a  shaking. 

"You  naughty  boy,  sit  down,"  she 
cried,  and  pushed  him  roughly  in  his 
seat,  much  to  the  delight  of  the  older 
boys. 

Never  before,  Juwa,  had  a  rough 
hand  grasped  you  in  anger.  Down 
deep  in  the  heart  of  this  little  child 
there  kindled  for  the  first  time  the 
.spark  of  hate. 

That  night,  while  lying  sobbing  on 
his  pillow,  an  idea  formulated  in  Ju- 
wa's little  black  head.  He  would  run 
away  and  go  back  to  the  reservation; 
he  would  take  Awasus  with  him  and 
never  again  would  he  be  separated 
from  his  little  friend. 

Two  days  later,  after  classes  were 
dismissed,  when  the  matron  was  busy 
directing  the  preparation  of  the  even- 
ing meal  and  Miss  Ophelia  was  con- 
ferring with  the  principal  about  her 
work,  two  little  forms  stole  away  from 
the  great  white  barn  and  were  soon 
hidden  from  view  by  the  bushes 
along  the  river.  Screened  by  the  wil- 
lows, they  gained  the  bridge,  and  once 
across,  disappeared  with  the  road 
around  a  small  hill. 

They  ran  as  fast  as  their  little  legs 
could  carry  them,  and  amost  out  of 
breath  they  came  to  a  walk.  Awasus 


barely  keeping  up  with  Juwa's  long 
strides,  half  walked  and  half  ran  be- 
side his  companion. 

"Which  way  is  home,  Juwa?"  Awa- 
sus asked. 

"Over  there,  Awasus,"  said  Juwa, 
pointing  to  the  mountains,  but  dimly 
visible  on  account  of  the  hazy  sky. 

"Will  we  be  home  to-morrow?" 

"Yes,  Awasus,  we'll  be  home  to- 
morrow." 

It  was  the  rumbling  of  a  wagon  that 
caused  them  to  leave  the  road,  and  to 
'go  out  into  that  great  expanse  of  yel- 
low rolling  plains.  The  coach  driver, 
seeing  the  two  boys,  shouted  out  to 
them  good-naturedly: 

"Hey,  there,  you  little  rascals!"  and 
as  he  saw  the  little  fellows  terror 
stricken  running  as  fast  as  they  could, 
he  chuckled  at  his  joke  and  rolled  on 
with  his  coach,  puffing  a  cigarette. 

The  two  boys  ran;  fright  was  writ- 
ten on  their  faces.  Every  minute  they 
expected  to  feel  an  arm  reach  out  to 
grasp  them.  At  last,  stumbling  and 
breathless,  they  reached  a  little  de- 
pression where  the  buffaloes  not  many 
years  before  used  to  gather  in  great 
herds  to  wallow  in  the  soft  mud.  See- 
ing that  they  were  not  followed,  they 
sat  down,  weary  and  spent,  on  a  pile  of 
rocks  near  a  prairie  dog  village.  The 
little  denizens  peeped  and  barked  at 
them  from  a  thousand  small  mounds. 
Awasus,  tired  and  sleepy,  dropped  his 
head  on  Juwa's  shoulder,  and  Juwa, 
putting  his  arm  around  his  compan- 
ion, pressed  him  close  to  his  side.  No 
more  would  he  be  separated  from  his 
little  pal.  In  another  day  they  would 
reach  his  father's  tepee  in  among  the 
mountains,  and  there  they  would  be 
as  free  as  the  wind. 

While  the  two  little  boys  sat  thus, 
the  Chinook,  the  warm  wind  of  the 
south,  was  battling  with  its  arch  enemy 
—the  Wind  of  the  North.  All  sum- 
mer the  Chinook  had  been  master,  but 
now  the  North  wind,  waxing  strong, 
was  routing  the  Wind  of  the  South, 
causing  it  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat. 

The  North  Wind,  driving  the  Chi- 
nook before  it,  came  in  short,  sharp 
blasts :  with  it  came  great  black  clouds 


146 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


which  all  but  obscured  the  sun.  Juwa 
as  he  sat  on  the  rocks  with  his  com- 
panion noticed  the  change  in  the  tem- 
perature. A  snowflake  fell  on  his 
hand.  He  watched  it  as  it  slowly 
melted;  then  he  saw  other  flakes.  He 
jumped  to  his  feet.  Koona!  The 
snow — he  knew  what  that  meant.  He 
remembered  how  it  had  piled  around 
his  father's  tepee,  and  also  the  stories 
his  mother  told  him,  about  hunters 
having  been  lost  in  the  snow  and  had 
been  frozen. 

All  around  them  there  was  nothing 
but  prairie.  While  on  top  of  a  knoll, 
just  before  they  had  reached  their 
resting  place,  Jewa  recalled  seeing 
what  appeared  to  be  a  small  shack,  far 
to  the  north. 

"Come,  Awasus,"  he  said.  "We 
must  be  going ;  the  snow  is  falling  up- 
on us. 

He  took  Awasus  by  the  hand  and 
started  in  the  direction  he  had  seen 
the  shack.  The  wind  grew  cold  and 
blew  the  snow,  which  was  flying 
thicker  every  minute,  in  their  faces, 
almost  blinding  them.  Awasus,  who 
was  chilled  by  the  wind,  began  to  cry. 

"I'm  cold,  Juwa,"  he  cried. 

"Hush,  Awasus,  just  a  little  ways 
and  we'll  come  to  shelter,"  Juwa  re- 
plied, trying  to  comfort  the  little  trem- 
bling form  of  his  companion. 

It  grew  dark.  The  wind  became 
fiercer,  sending  the  snow  flying  through 
the  air,  until  they  were  not  able  to 
see  ten  feet  ahead.  With  his  coat 
drawn  up  before  his  face,  and  at  the 
same  time  trying  to  shelter  Awasus  by 
holding  him  close  to  his  side,  Juwa 
struggled  on  in  face  of  the  blinding 
storm.  A  barb  wire  fence  blocked 
their  way.  Juwa  took  hope.  Where 
there  was  a  fence  there  might  be  a 
house.  Crawling  underneath  the  wires 
they  again  faced  the  cold  north  wind. 
Awasus  was  crying. 

"I'm  tired,  Juwa.  Let's  rest  for 
awhile,"  he  whimpered. 

"No,  we  mustn't  do  that.     Just  a 


little  farther,  Awasus.  Just  a  little 
farther."  He  put  his  arm  around  his 
little  friend  and  struggled  on  with 
him. 

They  went  but  a  short  distance, 
when  Awasus  not  able  to  move  another 
step,  sank  to  the  ground.  His  little 
legs  refused  to  move.  Juwa,  losing 
hope,  looked  about  him  and  saw  a 
black  object  outlined  through  the 
whirling  snow.  It  looked  like  a  house 
of  some  sort.  He  reached  down, 
picked  up  the  lifeless  form  of  Awasus, 
and  staggered  on  with  him.  The  cold 
north  wind  cut  his  hands.  His  arms 
became  paralyzed,  and  the  form  of 
Awasus  slipped  through  them  to  the 
ground.  The  shack  was  but  a  few 
feet  away.  He  could  see  the  door. 
Picking  up  the  lifeless  form  of  his 
companion,  and,  with  almost  super- 
natural effort,  reached  the  side  of  the 
building.  He  knocked  at  the  door 
with  his  foot,  and  it  flew  open.  The 
shack  was  empty.  In  a  corner  he  saw 
a  pile  of  old  clothes,  and  dragging  the 
body  of  his  companion  there,  covered 
him  over  with  them.  Lying  down  be- 
side him,  he  drew  some  of  the  clothes 
over  himself  and  cuddled  beside  his 
little  friend  to  keep  him  warm. 

A  gentle  warmness  crept  over  his 
body.  How  drowsy  he  was.  He  felt 
himself  slipping  from  reality.  He  was 
back  on  the  reservation,  playing 
around  his  father's  tepee  with  his  lit- 
tle sisters.  Awasus  was  there.  It  was 
summer;  the  grass  was  green  and  the 
air  was  soft  and  warm.  Thus  he  fell 
asleep. 

They  found  him  two  days  after- 
wards in  a  deserted  cabin  within 
three  hundred  feet  of  the  great  white 
barn.  The  principal,  lifting  up  the  old 
clothes,  disclosed  the  two  little  hud- 
dled forms  locked  in  each  others' 
arms,  and  on  both  their  faces  was  a 
smile  of  perfect  content.  Something 
tightened  around  the  principal's  heart 
as  he  knelt  down  beside  them. 

"Poor  little  chaps,"  was  all  he  said. 


Getting  a  line  on  the  timber  prospect. 


Taking  a  Timber  Claim 


By   /Airiam    E.  AcGuire 


IT  WAS  NOT  a  mere  business  trans- 
action.    Taking  my  timber  claim 
was  an  experience,  an  adventure; 
therefore,  another  memory-treasure 
for  the  Castle-Invisible  where  myself 
and  my  day  dreams  dwell. 

In  my  philosophy  of  life,  every  new 
interest  created  in  any  direction,  each 
bit  of  beauty  etched  indelibly  upon 
the  memory,  or  of  precious  dream- 
fabric  culled  from  human  association, 
Nature  or  books  become  significant  as 
material  to  use  in  the  architecture  or 
furnishing  of  this  Home  of  the  Mind. 
Travel,  observation,  effort,  success, 
failure,  no  longer  end  in  blind  alleys 
of  unrelated  fragments,  but  each  has 
its  fitting  place  in  some  part  of  the 


structure.  Visible  scenes,  ephemeral 
experiences  along  the  way  are  but 
sources  from  which  to  draw  enduring 
memories  and  impressions.  And  so, 
as  I  journey  through  the  days,  I  find 
ever-increasing  pleasure  in  "collect- 
ing" these  immaterial  materials  and  in 
trying  to  fashion  them  into  a  Place- 
Beautiful.  The  idea  lends  new  mean- 
ing to  daily  incidents  and  events.  It 
gives  immediate  purpose  to  life;  it 
becomes  a  fortification  against  ennui 
in  later  years. 

No  doubt  this  habitual  point  of  view 
influenced  my  decision  when,  one 
April  day  away  out  in  romantic  Seat- 
tle, my  friend.  Thelma,  confided  to  me 
her  intention  to  take  a  timber  claim  in 


148 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Northern  California,  and  suggested 
that  I  should  go  along  and  do  likewise. 
I  had  never  "taken  a  claim"  of  any 
kind.  The  Shasta  region,  where  the 
lands  under  consideration  lay,  was  a 
part  of  California  that  I  had  not  vis- 
ited. The  trip  appealed  to  me,  and  so 
did  the  idea  of  calling  my  own  a  tiny 
portion  of  that  vast  stretch  of  virgin 
forest.  Thus  it  came  about  that,  a 
few  days  later  Thelma,  Caroline  Jones, 
an  acquaintance  whom  we  had  per- 
suaded to  go  with  us,  and  I  started  out 
in  high  spirits  on  our  small  pioneering 
expedition. 

Crossing  the  broad  Columbia  river 
was  the  first  special  diversion  that  I 
recall  en  route.  A  delay  of  several 
hours  in  Portland  gave  us  time  to  make 
an  excursion  up  the  winding  trolley 
way  to  Portland  Heights.  The  day 
was  superb.  Snow-covered  Mount 
Hood  and  Mount  Helena  stood  out  in 
clear-cut  silhouette  against  the  blue 
sky  and  even  a  shoulder  of  distant 
Mount  Rainier  could  be  seen  through 
field  glasses  by  any  one  with  an  imagi- 
nation. 

Next  day  at  Shasta  Springs  an 
amusing  incident  occurred.  As  the 
train  stopped  there  only  a  few  minutes 
passengers  poured  from  the  coaches 
with  cup  or  glass  in  hand,  eager  to  get 
a  taste  of  the  famous  Shasta  water. 
Caroline  thoughtfully  brought  out  a 
jar  from  our  lunch  basket  and  filled  it, 
remarking  as  we  went  back  to  the  train 
that  Shasta  water  was  said  to  make 
excellent  lemonade.  Of  course  we  must 
have  lemonade  at  once.  The  porter 
brought  a  table.  Caroline  insisted  up- 
on preparing  the  beverage  herself, 
and  went  about  it  in  a  systematic  man- 
ner, while  Thelma  and  I  contributed 
numerous  helpful  suggestions,  which 
she  calmly  ignored.  She  set  the  jar 
of  Shasta  water  at  one  side,  and 
placed  three  glasses  anticipatively  in 
the  middle  of  the  table.  Then  with 
nice  precision  she  squeezed  the  proper 
amount  of  lemon  juice  into  a  fourth 
glass,  carefully  added  just  enough — 
not  a  spoonful  too  much — sugar,  and 
stirred  the  mixture  with  deliberation. 
So  far  everything  had  proceeded  ac- 


cording to  Hoyle,  the  passengers 
around  us  enviously  watching  the  pro- 
cess. All  eyes  were  following  Caro- 
line's hand  as  she  lifted  the  glass  of 
lemon  juice  and  nonchalantly  turned 
the  contents  into  the  jar.  The  effect 
was  instantaneous  and  startling.  A 
miniature  Shasta  fountain  shot  to  the 
ceiling  of  the  car  and  came  down  in  a 
beautiful  cascade  all  over  us  and  the 
table.  For  an  instant  we  looked  at  one 
another  in  consternation  and  ruefully 
at  the  empty  jar,  but  after  the  first 
gasp  we  joined  in  the  laughter  at  our 
expense,  while  the  porter  rushed  to  the 
rescue  and  mopped  up  with  a  cloth  all 
that  was  left  of  our  precious  lemonade. 
We  resolved  to  take  a  few  private  les- 
sons in  chemistry  before  we  "handed 
a  lemon"  to  any  more  mineral  water. 

A  stalwart  "timber"  cruiser  met  us 
at  Redding,  where  the  U.  S.  Land  Of- 
fice is  located,  and  our  party  was  still 
further  increased  by  two  or  three  more 
prospective  "timber  claimers."  A  "lo- 
cator" took  charge  of  the  party  there, 
and  the  rest  of  our  journey,  a  forty-five 
mile  drive  up  the  gorge  of  the  Sacra- 
mento, we  made  in  carriages. 

This  was  an  interesting  trip  over  the 
"trail  of  the  '49ers,"  first  traced  out 
when  those  pioneer  prospectors  were 
searching  at  fever  heat  for  gold.  We 
passed  through  the  old  town  of  Shasta, 
which  still  bears  suggestive  marks  of 
the  "good  times"  the  miners  had  in 
those  exciting  days.  Most  of  the 
buildings  are  covered  with  sheet  iron. 
The  doors  are  of  iron,  and  the  win- 
dows have  iron  shutters,  all  of  which 
present  a  dented  and  battered  appear- 
ance, challenging  the  imagination  to 
repicture  the  wild-west  scenes  enacted 
there  a  few  decades  ago.  The  dilapi- 
dated old  town  is  silent  enough  now. 

Along  the  winding  gorge  road  the 
scenery  is  wild  and  in  places  rugged. 
The  trail,  now  developed  into  a  very 
good  road,  follows  the  Sacramento 
River  much  of  the  way.  Given  a 
mountainous  landscape,  combined  with 
vegetation  and  water,  the  result  is  us- 
ually pleasing  to  the  eye.  In  the  North- 
western pine  regions  the  vegetation  it- 
self is  not  varied  enough  to  be  as  at- 


In  the  timber  country  of  California. 


tllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllM 


150 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


tractive  as  that  of  countries  further 
south.  Though  the  great  masses  of 
evergreens  against  the  mountain  sides 
are  effective  at  a  distance,  the  individ- 
ual trees  have  a  stiffness  and  monot- 
ony more  readily  translated  in  terms 
of  lumber  and  dollars  than  of  beauty. 
Nature  evidently  used  one  of  her 
coarser  brushes  when  she  portrayed 
these  landscape  scenes. 

I  by  no  means  devoted  all  my  time 
during  that  drive,  however,  to  a  study 
of  the  landscape.  In  many  places  the 
grade  of  the  road  was  steep,  the  curves 
often  short  and  dangerous,  and  our 
driver,  the  stalwart  cruiser  before  men- 
tioned, proved  a  veritable  Jehu.  At 
times  he  cracked  his  whip  and  made 
the  horses  tear  down  abrupt  declines 
and  around  dizzy  corners  in  a  manner 
to  absorb  the  passengers'  whole  atten- 
tion. To  save  myself  from  bouncing 
out  like  a  rubber  ball,  I  clung  to  the 
carriage  with  both  hands  and  shut  my 
teeth  so  hard  together  that  even  if  I 
should  escape  sudden  death,  I  thought 
lockjaw  would  surely  seize  me  before 
the  journey's  end.  But  to  the  cool- 
headed  Jehu  it  was  all  in  the  day's 
work.  The  skill  with  which  he  man- 
aged those  plunging  horses  without 
seeming  to  manage  them  at  all  became 
positively  fascinating.  Der  Erlkonig's 
ride  or  Tarn  O'Shanter's  flight  when 
the  witches  were  after  him  could  hard- 
ly have  seemed  more  exciting  than 
ours.  Yet  in  spite  of  indications  to 
the  contrary,  Jehu,  with  a  jerk  of  the 
lines  and  a  mighty  "whoa!"  that 
brought  the  horses  almost  down  on 
their  haunches,  did  at  last  stop  before 
an  old  inn  that  marked  our  destina- 
tion. 

At  this  inn,  one  of  the  first  houses 
built,  we  were  told,  by  a  successful 
'49er,  our  party  spent  the  night  "fifty 
years  ago"  sounds  like  ancient  history 
on  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  looks  like  it, 
too,  when  compared  with  the  accom- 
plished wonders  found  there  at  the 
present  day.  This  old  house  stands 
in  a  small  valley  closely  shut  in  by 
mountains.  The  place  had  a  cozy, 
home-like  appearance  after  our  long 
ride  through  an  uninhabitable  stretch 


of  country,  and  the  motherly  woman 
who,  with  her  husband  and  sons,  had 
lived  there  for  years,  made  us  very 
welcome. 

After  we  had  eaten  supper  the  whole 
household,  including  the  family  proper 
and  a  .hired  man  or  two,  sat  with  us 
around  a  roaring  log  fire — for  the 
nights  there  in  the  mountains  were  still 
cold — and  tales  galore  of  the  early 
times  were  told.  Before  the  evening 
was  over  I  was  quite  convinced  that 
there  were  giants  in  those  days.  Surely 
there  were  heroes  and  heroines. 

The  following  morning  we  set  out 
with  importance  "to  locate  our  claims." 
We  drove  several  miles  to  the  boun- 
dary line  of  our  prospective  lands, 
where  we  had  to  begin  our  "cruise"  on 
foot,  for  Uncle  Sam  requires  every 
person  who  takes  a  timber  claim  to 
swear  that  he  or  she  has  walked  over 
each  "quarter"  of  the  land  for  which 
application  is  filed.  Before  the  day 
was  over  I  could  most  conscientiously 
have  taken  my  oath  that  I  had  walked 
over  a  good  many  "quarters"  of  some- 
thing, for  it  was  no  small  pedestrian 
feat  to  keep  even  within  sight  of  that 
long  legged  cruiser. 

By  and  bye  our  Forest  Rover — Jehu 
rechristened — did  indulgently  let  us 
all  sit  down  on  the  dry  pine-needle 
carpet  to  get  our  breath.  I  had  heard 
so  much  by  this  time  about  fortunes 
that  had  been  made  out  of  timber 
lands,  and  in  particular  about  the  great 
value  of  the  forests  through  which  we 
were  tramping,  that  I  began  to  see 
dollars  instead  of  "tongues  in  trees." 
The  commercial  spirit  with  which  I 
was  temporarily  imbued  was  respon- 
sible for  the  cold-blooded  manner  in 
which  I  asked  the  cruiser  how  many 
feet  of  lumber  a  tall  yellow  pine  near 
our  resting  place  would  make.  He  re- 
plied by  challenging  me  to  figure  it 
out  for  myself,  giving  me  his  estimated 
height  of  the  tree  and  the  number  of 
logs  it  could  be  divided  into,  while  I 
measured  the  circumference  and  found 
the  diameter.  I  innocently  inquired  if 
the  problem  had  to  be  solved  by  log- 
arithms. To  the  cruiser's  evident  sur- 
prise, however,  I  did  make  the  calcu- 


liliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiH 


•8 


1 

§ 


SP 


£ 

X 


IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN 


152 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


lation  correctly,  and  rose  accordingly 
in  his  estimation. 

Jehu  was  to  me  a  new  genus  of  man. 
From  snatches  of  conversation  between 
himself  and  members  of  the  party  to 
whom  he  talked  indiscriminately  along 
the  way,  I  gathered  something  of  his 
character  and  history.  It  seemed  that 
he  had  grown  up  from  childhood  in 
that  locality.  He  had  been  a  cruiser 
for  a  good  many  years,  and  told  thrill- 
ing tales  of  days  and  nights  spent 
alone,  except  for  his  faithful  dog,  in 
those  mountain  forests,  and  of  his  ad- 
ventures with  rattlesnakes  and  cou- 
gars. Not  a  trace  of  either  of  these 
creatures  did  we  see,  though  he  took 
care  that  we  should  not  forget  their 
possible  presence.  It  was  unsafe,  he 
insisted,  to  tramp  through  those  woods 
without  a  bit  of  whisky  "as  a  remedy 
for  snake  bites."  He  was  unprepos- 
sessing in  appearance,  except  that  he 
was  very  tall,  as  erect  as  an  Indian, 
and  walked  with  the  free  stride  of 
a  born  mountaineer,  yet  romance  had 
not  passed  him  by.  There  was  a  syni- 
cal  reference  now  and  then  to  an  early 
marriage  that  had  ended  unhappily. 
The  woman  was  "beautiful,"  but  she 
very  soon  grew  tired  of  her  absen- 
tee husband  and  had  run  away  with 
another  man.  When  he  again  married 
he  choose  an  Indian  girl,  the  descend- 
ant of  a  chief  not  unknown  to  history. 
With  her  and  a  large  brood  of  child- 
ren he  was  living  at  the  time  of  this 
story.  His  devotion  to  them  all  seemed 
very  real,  and  he  spoke  with  touching 
pathos  of  the  death  of  one  of  his  lit- 
tle girls. 

We  tramped  and  tramped.  My  com- 
panions had  each  decided  upon  a  claim 
but,  so  far  as  I  found,  nothing  that 
came  up  to  my  pre-conceived  ideas  of 
what  a  timber  claim  ought  to  look  like. 
I  wanted  more  trees  and  bigger  ones 
on  mine.  At  last,  when  it  began  to 
appear  that  I  would  have  to  remain 
claimless,  the  cruiser  and  locator  ad- 
mitted that  there  was  a  "dandy  claim" 
farther  on,  which  they  thought  would 
just  suit  me.  And  so  we  tramped  "far- 
ther on." 

For   some  distance  we  followed  a 


small  mountain  stream  that  hurried 
jerkily  down  its  crooked,  rocky  way. 
Finally  the  cruiser  halted,  and  with 
a  wave  of  his  hand  curtly  announced, 
"Here's  the  claim."  I  drew  a  deep 
breath  of  satisfaction.  "Ah,  this  is 
something  like!"  I  said.  There  the 
stately  yellow  pines  stood  sociably 
close  together  and  towered  high.  Prac- 
tically no  undergrowth  existed.  The 
place  looked  almost  as  clean  and  well 
kept  as  a  city  park.  With  the  first 
thought  of  calling  that  beautiful  spot 
my  own,  mercenary  ideas  vanished, 
and  all  my  love  of  trees  returned.  I 
felt  like  a  conspirator  in  a  crime 
against  my  friends,  as  a  sudden  vision 
of  the  one  lumber  camp  I  had  ever 
visited  flashed  through  my  mind,  and 
transferred  itself  to  these  forests  as 
yet  unmarred  by  man's  greed  or  need. 
I  winced  as  again  I  seemed  to  hear 
the  fateful  sound  of  the  woodman's 
axe,  the  never-to-be-forgotten  fall  of 
noble  forest  giants  as  they  went  one 
after  another  crashing  down  to  earth, 
and  the  hideous  shriek  of  fiendish  saws 
as  they  ravenously  ate  their  way 
through  huge  logs  at  the  mill.  Soon, 
doubtless,  a  similar  forest  tragedy 
would  be  enacted  right  there  in  that 
Shasta  region — and  what  desolation 
always  follows  in  the  wake  of  a  lum- 
ber camp! 

The  contrast  between  the  peace  and 
the  beauty  at  that  moment  surrounding 
me,  and  the  depressing  vista  that  would 
meet  the  eye  after  the  life  of  those 
yellow  pines  had  been  sacrificed  for 
yellow  coin,  carried  a  sudden  wave 
of  sadness  over  me. 

Though  the  forest  must  pass,  I  could 
at  least  imprint  upon  my  memory  a 
picture  of  its  present  charm  and  keep 
that  forever.  With  this  thought  upper- 
most, I  began  to  explore,  observing 
every  detail  of  certain  objects  which 
would  occupy  the  foreground  of  my 
"masterpiece;"  that  group  of  three 
very  large  pines,  standing  so  closely 
together  that  their  trunks  touched  at 
the  base  and  their  rich  green  needles 
mingled  in  a  thick  canopy  far  over- 
head; the  large  boulder  at  one  side; 
and  the  tiny  lake  opposite,  with  just 


One  of  the  natives  that  insisted  on  prior  right  to  the  timber  claim. 


154 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


enough  open  space  between  for  a  pic- 
turesque bungalow! 

Treading  softly,  like  a  true  denizen 
of  such  a  sylvan  solitude,  I  ventured 
farther.  Beyond  there  were  stretches 
of  'Tines  and  pines  and  the  shadows 
of  pines,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see." 
Again  I  felt  myself  close  to  the  pul- 
sating heart  of  nature  and  in  the  midst 
of  the  enchanting  mysteries  that  hu- 
man beings  through  all  ages  have  as- 
sociated with  forests.  A  miniature 
gorge  heavily  wooded  and  prettily 
filled  in  with  smaller  trees  and  shrubs 
cut  diagonally  across  one  corner  of 
my  claim,  just  back  of  the  "aerial 
bungalow" — a  pleasing  variation  in 
my  landscape  garden.  It  was  all  quite 
perfect.  I  would  have  no  artificial  im- 
provements. A  bit  of  debris  over 
there,  and  that  dead  limb  which  had 
fallen  into  the  edge  of  the  little  lake 
perhaps  might  be  removed,  but  other- 
wise the  soft  brown  carpet  of  pine 
needles  lay  smooth  and  clean  in  every 
direction.  Going  back  to  "Three-Tree 
Lodge" — as  I  had  concluded  to  name 
my  bungalow — for  a  last  survey,  I 
found  that  on  the  side  from  which  we 
had  approached,  there  were  just 
enough  openings  among  the  trees  to 
command  a  fine  view  out  over  the  nar- 
row, irregular  valley  below  and  the 
hills  on  hills  beyond — the  one  finishing 
touch  which  my  picture  needed. 

I  had  become  so  absorbed  in  my  own 
musings  as  I  wandered  about  that  I 
was  half  oblivious  to  the  presence  of 
my  companions,  though  the  cruiser  was 
beginning  to  show  unmistakable  signs 
of  impatience.  He  had  dutifully  pilot- 
ed me  over  each  quarter  of  my  claim, 
and  could  appreciate  no  further  object 
in  delay.  At  length  he  broadly  told 
me  that  unless  I  had  decided  to  stay 
there  alone  with  the  cougars  and  rat- 
tlesnakes, I'd  better  come  along  down 
the  trail  with  the  rest  of  'em!" 

The  same  old  story!  My  Eden  had 
a  serpent  in  it,  and  worse  still,  there 
was  no  Adam  as  compensation!  With 
a  sigh  of  resignation,  I  reluctantly 
turned  my  back  upon  the  Garden  and 
started  after  the  vanishing  party,  spec- 
ulating as  I  went  upon  what  a  forlorn 


world  this  must  be  to  a  person  with  no 
poetry  in  his  soul.  "Dreams,  just 
dreams"  are  to  me  one  of  the  real  joys 
of  life. 

At  Redding  the  following  day  we 
did  the  necessary  swearing  and  then 
began  our  return  journey  Puget  Sound- 
ward. 

Some  hours  later  I  sat  down  at  a 
desk  in  the  Observation  car  to  write 
letters.  I  looked  at  the  calendar  hang- 
ing before  me.  It  was  Friday  the  13th. 
We  were  then  traveling  over  one  of 
the  most  mountainous  sections  of  the 
road,  and  the  two  powerful  engines  at- 
tached to  our  train  were  asthmatically 
coughing  their  way  up  a  very  steep 
grade.  As  I  glanced  out  of  the  win- 
dow, the  nose  of  the  first  engine  came 
into  sight  around  a  short  curve,  and  I 
began  idly  to  count  the  coaches  as  they 
followed.  I  was  sitting  in  the  thirteenth 
coach.  You  who  may  have  a  super- 
stitious dread  of  Friday  and  the  num- 
ber thirteen,  mark  the  sequel :  we  ar- 
rived in  Seattle  promptly  on  time :  not 
a  mishap  of  any  kind  on  the  way;  and 
we  unanimously  voted  the  whole  trip  a 
success  and  a  pleasure. 

Three  months  afterward,  in  July,  we 
had  to  go  again  to  the  U.  S.  Land  Of- 
fice in  Redding  and  "prove  up"  on  our 
claims.  When  we  arrived,  we  found 
the  thermometer  registered  110  degrees 
in  the  shade.  Naturally  our  chief  con- 
cern this  time  was  to  dispose  of  the 
Land  Office  red  tape  and  get  out  of  To- 
phet  as  speedily  as  possible.  No  one, 
as  good  fortune  would  have  it,  had 
in  the  interval  since  our  first  visit 
entered  any  counter  claim  to  our  trees, 
struck  gold  on  our  lands,  or  otherwise 
complicated  the  proceedings,  and  so 
by  the  next  afternoon  our  business 
was  finished. 

My  friend  Thelma  and  I  intended  to 
take  the  earliest  morning  train  out  of 
Redding,  but  upon  consulting  a  time 
table,  we  found  that  a  local  train  ran 
that  evening  to  a  station  near  Shasta 
Springs.  Impatient  to  be  off,  and 
knowing  that  we  would  find  a  comfort- 
able hotel,  a  higher  altitude  and  a 
lower  temperature  at  the  latter  place, 
we  resolved  to  go.  This  decision 


TAKING  A  TIMBER  CLAIM 


155 


proved  later  to  have  been  a  brilliant 
idea. 

After  a  good  night's  rest  in  the  quiet 
hotel,  we  leisurely  ate  our  breakfast 
and  congratulated  ourselves  that  we 
did  not  have  to  rush  for  an  early  train 
in  sweltering  Redding.  When  we  in- 
quired at  the  hotel  office  how  soon  the 
through  train  would  be  along,  we 
learned  that  an  accident  had  occurred 
a  short  distance  out  from  Redding,  and 
that  the  train  was  reported  three  hours 
late.  Thelma  and  I  gave  each  other 
a  comprehensive  look,  then  turning  to 
the  clerk,  asked  in  a  breath :  "Can  we 
get  a  carriage  to  take  us  to  Shasta 
Springs?"  While  sorrowing  for  those 
poor  souls  stranded  down  in  that  pur- 
gatory, we  would  "do"  the  Springs! 
The  clerk  assured  us  that  we  could  get 
a  carriage,  and  we  promptly  ordered 
one. 

Such  a  morning  drive  as  that  through 
the  cool  woods  to  Shasta  Springs,  and 
the  hours  we  spent  at  that  summer  re- 
sort would  have  been  a  pleasure  at  any 
time.  In  contrast  to  what  we  had  so 
narrowly  escaped,  our  enjoyment  of  the 
experience  was  much  intensified.  We 
had  previously  skirted  the  base  of  Mt. 
Shasta — the  centerpiece  in  the  land- 
scape of  modern  California — but  the 
views  from  the  train  had  been  disap- 
pointing. From  several  places  on  our 
carriage  drive,  however,  the  snow-cov- 
ered peak  towered  grandly  above  the 
lesser  mountains,  and  the  great  white 
cone  with  the  dazzling  sunlight  upon 
it  was  a  magnificent  object. 

Shasta  Springs  hotel  and  the  cot- 
tages clustering  about  it  stand  high 
above  and  almost  overhang  the  rail- 
way station.  We  found  the  pine- 
scented  air  deliciously  cool  and  the 
surroundings  restful.  As  soon  as  we 
had  checked  our  suit  cases,  left  an  or- 
der for  luncheon  later,  and  despatched 
some  post  cards,  we  went  out  to  see 
what  we  could  see.  An  alluring  path 
led  us  down  the  mountain  side.  Down 
and  down  through  shady  woods,  zig- 
zagging back  and  forth  across  a  hurry- 
ing, foaming  stream,  we  followed  it. 
But  the  hurrying  stream  bade  us  to 
loiter  along  its  way,  listen  to  its  music, 


and  feast  our  eyes  upon  the  lovely 
mosses,  lichens  and  ferns  that  decked 
its  banks.  A  rustic  bridge  spanned 
the  stream  at  every  crossing,  and  each 
had  its  special  point  of  vantage  from 
which  to  watch  the  leaping  water  as  in 
frolicksome  mood  it  dashed  spray  over 
the  waving  ferns  and  us,  or  swirled 
swiftly  around  some  obtruding  boulder 
as  if  to  make  up  for  the  time  it  had 
spent  in  play.  We  wanted  to  stay 
there  and  play  forever,  but  the  force 
of  gravitation  gradually  carried  us  as 
well  as  the  sparkling  water  downward, 
until  at  last  we  stood  again  beside  the 
familiar,  cold-boiling  spring  from 
which  we  had  first  drank  three  months 
before.  We  did  not  make  any  more 
lemonade. 

1  How  much  and  how  little  one  sees 
from  the  windows  of  a  fast  express! 
A  rough,  perhaps  impressive  outline  of 
landscape,  a  fleeting  glimpse  of  inter- 
esting objects  in  passing,  a  few  min- 
utes' flirtation  with  coy  beauties  of 
nature  as  the  train  halts  here  or  there, 
but  no  time  to  get  acquainted.  We  were 
"getting  acquainted"  with  Shasta 
Springs,  and  at  every  turn  we  discov- 
ered some  new  attraction.  No  con- 
ductor stood  beside  a  panting  train 
ready  to  shout  "All  aboard!"  and  we 
were  having  as  much  fun  as  any  two 
truants  from  school.  The  fountain  up 
on  the  mountain  side  above  the  station 
seemed  to  shoot  much  higher  and  the 
springs  to  gush  from  a  hundred  more 
places  than  we  had  noticed  when  we 
passed  through  on  the  train.  Eagerly 
our  eyes  tried  to  follow  the  thousand 
rivulets  hurrying,  scurrying,  uniting, 
dividing,  racing  as  if  alive  through 
yielding  green  obstructions,  seeking 
outlets  by  which  they  might  escape  the 
snares  man  had  laid  to  catch  and  im- 
prison them  in  commercial  bottles.  We 
strayed  into  a  curiosity  shop  to  buy 
some  photographs,  but  the  mental  pic- 
tures that  I  had  been  "taking"  all  the 
morning  I  preferred  to  any  work  of  a 
camera. 

Happy  hours  wear  winged  sandals, 
and  we  began  to  realize  that  it  was  high 
time  to  return  to  the  hotel  away  up 
there  somewhere  out  of  sight  in  the 


156 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


sky.  Oh,  no,  we  did  not  have  to  go 
back  by  way  of  the  long,  steep,  zig- 
zag path.  We  went  up  on  a  "rapid 
transit"  in  a  few  of  the  thrilliest  mo- 
ments I  can  recall.  The  iron  track 
runs  altogether  too  near  the  perpen- 
dicular for  the  small  car  to  glide  up  in 
any  sedate,  ordinary  manner,  without 
spilling  the  passengers  all  out  behind, 
and  so  the  daring  little  beast  kicks  up 
its  heels,  and  paws  its  way  up  the  rails 
on  its  front  feet.  Anyway,  that  was 
the  sensation  I  had  as  an  invisible 
something,  apparently  alive  under- 
neath the  saddle-like  construction  in 
which  we  sat  lifted  us  into  the  air 
while  the  tree  tops  around  us  and  the 
mountain  wall  opposite  sank  swiftly 
down  into  a  nether  world.  After  the 
lapse  of  five  centuries — five  minutes,  I 
mean — of  that  heavenward  flight  we 
paused  beside  a  tiny  platform  on  a 
level  with  the  hotel. 

Luncheon  over,  we  were  informed 
that  our  train  was  due  in  a  minute.  No 
time,  then,  to  saunter  down  that  pretty 
zig-zag  path  again  as  we  had  planned. 
Out  we  rushed,  climbed  into  the  little 
car  and  tobogganed  down  to  the  sta- 
tion, just  as  the  belated  train  came 
puffing  in  to  carry  us  on  northward. 
When  I  saw  those  coaches  full  of 


flushed,  tired  and  cross-looking  passen- 
gers, I  felt  half  guilty  over  the  delight- 
ful lark  we  had  been  having. 

In  due  course  of  time  Uncle  Sam 
sent  me  a  "patent"  to  my  timber  claim 
with  "full  right,  title  and  interest"  in 
the  same.  Several  years  have  since 
passed.  From  a  financial  point  of  view 
my  attitude  toward  the  transaction  is 
somewhat  like  that  of  the  darkey  to- 
ward the  lottery  ticket  for  which  he 
had  paid  a  dollar,  and  at  the  end  of 
a  month  drew  a  blank.  Sambo  was 
something  of  a  philosopher,  and  so- 
liloquized thus :  "Anyhow,  I'se  got  a 
dollah's  worth  o'  hope  out  o'  dat  ar 
ticket!"  I  am  still  drawing  hopeful 
financial  returns  from  my  investment 
in  the  form  of  occasional  requests  for 
"options"  on  the  part  of  prospective 
buyers,  but  the  "big  deal"  in  which  a 
few  hundred  thousand  acres  of  that 
Shasta  region  are  to  be  sold  en  bloc  to 
some  multi-millionaire  lumber  king  has 
not  as  yet  been  consummated. 

I  hold  in  permanent  possession,  how- 
ever, all  the  pleasant  associations  with 
the  venture,  and  down  deep  in  my 
heart  there  is  a  secret  satisfaction  in 
knowing  that  "my  trees"  still  proudly 
stand,  unmolested,  in  the  heart  of  those 
virgin  wilds. 


Saint-Saem. 


Giocomo  Puccini. 


Four  Great  Composers 


By  Alma  D'Alma 


THE   COMING  to  the   Panama- 
Pacific     International     Exposi- 
tion    of     Camille  Saint-Saens, 
the      foremost      musician      of 
France,  leads  me  to  believe    that     a 
brief  sketch  about  him  and  three  other 
great  composers  of  the  present  time 
might  be  interesting  to  the  readers  of 
your  fine  monthly. 

The  octogenarian,  Camille  Saint- 
Saens,  as  he  was  born  in  October, 
1835,  aside  from  his  wonderful  musi- 
cianly  qualities,  might  have  won  fame 
in  any  other  calling  of  life.  A  well 


read  man,  with  a  profound  knowledge 
of  science  and  art,  he  is  greatly  ad- 
mired and  respected  by  other  grand 
old  men  of  France,  such  as  the  as- 
tronomer Flammarion,  the  sculptor 
Rodin,  and  others.  He  is  a  great  lover 
of  the  Orient  and  dreads  the  cold 
weather,  passes  his  winters  in  Egypt, 
Algeria,  the  Canary  Islands,  Majorca 
or  Southern  Spain.  The  warm,  sunny 
climes  and  lovely  nature  of  these  coun- 
tries have  been  the  source  of  inspira- 
tion for  many  of  his  innumerable  or- 
chestral and  operatic  works,  including 


158 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


among  his  operas  Samson  and  Delilah, 
Ascanio,  Phryne,  Timbre  d'Argent, 
Prosperine,  Etienne  Marcel,  La  Prin- 
cesse  Juane,  and  Henri  VIII. 

Like  other  composers,  he  has  had 
his  successes  and  non-successes.  His 
greatest  opera  "is,  of  course,  Samson 
and  Delilah,  and  perhaps  La  Princesse 
Jaune  the  least  attractive.  Speaking 
of  these  two  latter  named,  I  don't  think 
this  little  episode  will  be  amiss. 

One  day,  while  walking  up  the  bou- 
levard in  Paris,  Saint-Saens  met  his 
musical  publisher,  attired  in  an  ele- 
gant up-to-date  overcoat,  but  very 
dilapidated  hat;  after  the  usual  greet- 
ing, "Bonjour,  bonjour,  comment  c'a 


the    event,    a    little    manuscript  of  a 
score. 

Saint-Saens  abhors  over-publicity 
and  ostentation,  and  was  greatly  an- 
noyed one  day  by  a  certain  prima 
donna  who  came  to  him  with  a  letter 
of  introduction,  and  at  the  same  time 
introduced  a  gentleman  friend  of  hers, 
who  had  secreted  a  kodak.  While  he 
was  trying  over  one  of  his  composi- 
tions with  Madame  X,  the  prima 
donna,  the  gentleman  in  question 
snappel  the  photo  of  the  distinguished 
master  accompanying  the  lady  singing 
at  his  side.  This  picture  was  after- 
ward circulated  without  the  consent  of 
the  master,  who  has  since  a  profound 


ILLS 


Facsimile  of  an  autograph  score  presented  to  Alma  D'Alma  by  Saint-Saens. 


va,"  etc.,  Saint-Saens,  admiring  his 
friend's  coat,  exclaimed:  "Tres  beau, 
tres  beau!"  "Yes,"  responded  the 
publisher,  pointing  to  his  coat,  "Sam- 
son and  Delilah,"  but,  pointing  to  his 
hat,  "La  Princesse  Jaune." 

The  two  Frenchmen  had  a  great 
laugh,  referring  to  the  master's  success 
and  failure,  which  ended  in  a  good 
dinner  together. 

It  was  one  day  while  in  London  dur- 
ing the  time  of  Saint-Saens'  engage- 
ment there,  that  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
attending  a  luncheon  given  in  his 
honor  at  the  Cafe  Royal.  Among  the 
guests  were  Joseph  Hollman,  the  'cell- 
ist; Johannes  Wolff,  the  violinist;  An- 
dre Messager,  the  composer  and  con- 
ductor, and  his  wife,  Hope  Temple, 
the  song  writer,  from  whom  he  is  since 
divorced,  and  many  others.  It  was 
there  that  he  gave  me  as  souvenir  of 


disgust  for  the  lady  in  particular  and 
kodaks  in  general. 

Massenet,  the  late  lamented  com- 
poser of  Manon,  Werther,  Roi  de  La- 
hore, Herodiade,  Cendrillon,  Esclara- 
monde,  Don  Quixote,  Cleopatra,  The- 
rese,  Sapho,  Navarraise,  Jongleur  de 
Notre  Dame,  Thais,  etc.,  was  most  un- 
affected. I  remember  on  one  occa- 
sion, when  calling  on  him  in  Paris,  I 
told  him  of  the  great  success  in  Amer- 
ica of  his  orchestral  works,  "Scenes 
Napolitaines,"  and  others.  He  said: 
"What!  Do  they  play  my  music  in 
America!" 

I  never  knew  a  more  prolific  com- 
poser and  yet  he  was  ever  ready  to 
extend  a  helping  hand  or  give  advice 
to  a  striving  artist;  ever  courteous  and 
keen  to  recognize  talent,  he  always 
found  time  to  answer  a  letter. 

His  aversion  to  crossing  the  Atlan- 


FOUR  GREAT  COMPOSERS 


159 


tic  was  most  pronounced,  although  any 
number  of  offers  had  been  made  to 
him  for  tours  in  the  United  States  and 
for  whose  people  he  had  great  admira- 
tion, yet  he  was  never  persuaded  to 
cross  the  dreaded  ocean. 

On  one  occasion  his  baggage  was 
all  checked  for  Algiers,  where  he  was 
to  superintend  rehearsals  of  his  Thais. 
Upon  the  arrival  of  the  train  at  Mar- 
seilles, where  he  was  to  take  the  boat, 
he  found  the  sea  so  rough  that  he  im- 
mediately summoned  his  valet  to  have 
his  baggage  placed  on  a  train  which 
he  alighted,  that  was  about  to  leave  for 
Paris. 

I  consider  myself  singularly  fortu- 
nate to  have  had  the  advantage  of 
studying  some  of  his  operas  and  songs 
with  him.  He  was  an  extraordinary 
coach,  and  on  one  occasion,  in  the 
"Navarraise,"  he  thoroughly  electri- 
fied me  with  his  wonderful  portrayal 
of  the  intensely  dramatic  situation  of 
Anita's  scene  at  the  close  of  the  opera. 

It  was  Madonno  Pauline  Viardot 
Garcia,  one  of  my  teachers  in  Paris, 
and  whose  salons  on  the  Boulevard  St. 
Germain  were  frequented  by  1'hante 
Monde  of  Paris,  both  social  and  artis- 
tic, who  created  among  other  roles 
Massenet's  "Marie  Magdalene"  part 
of  the  original  manuscript. 

It  was  during  the  time  that  Maestro 
Giacomo  Puccini  was  composing  that 
very  dramatic  and  melodious  opera, 
"La  Tosca,"  that  he  called  on  me  one 
day  in  my  apartment  on  the  Corso  Ve- 
nezia  in  Milan.  I  had  met  with  an  ac- 
cident while  riding,  and  was  confined 
to  my  room,  with  my  foot  in  a  ban- 
dage and  my  arm  in  a  sling.  I  was 
well  acquainted  with  his  librettist, 
Luigi  Illica,  who  had  read  me  the  li- 
bretto at  a  luncheon  a  week  previous. 
Sitting  down  at  the  piano  and  turning 
to  me,  Puccini  said:  "What  do  you 
think  of  this?"  and  I  heard  the  chim- 
ing of  the  bells  of  old  St.  Peter's 
Cathedral  in  Rome,  intermingled  with 
beautiful  melodious  and  dramatic 
music  splendidly  expressed,  depicting 
the  realistic  situation  of  the  scene  of 
Scarpia  and  Tosca,  at  the  end  of  the 
first  act  of  "La  Tosca."  I  exclaimed : 


"E  immense  Maestro!  have  you  writ- 
ten anything  else?"  "No,"  he  said, 
"lo  faccio  e  taccio"  (I  do,  but  say 
nothing),  meaning  a  retort  for  some 
of  his  colleagues,  who  talk  much,  and 
do  little.  And  so  from'  this  point  was 
developed  the  splendid  three  act  opera 
"La  Tosca." 

Sometimes  the  composer  conceives 
his  music  in  a  certain  tempo  and  often- 
times the  conductor  takes  it  at  an- 
other. This  so  happened  at  the  first 
performance  of  "La  Tosca"  at  the 
Scala  in  Milan,  at  which  I  was  pres- 
ent. When  the  great  Toscanini  took, 
at  this  very  point  of  which  I  speak, 
the  tempo  much  faster  than  the  com- 
poser intended,  eliciting  the  enthusi- 
astic applause  of  the  audience  and  the 
hearty  congratulations  of  the  composer 
himself,  who  was  dragged  out  with 
the  artists  and  the  perspiring  Tosca- 
nini, who  contributed  so  much  to  the 
success  of  this  great  work. 

Maestro  Puccini  has  accrued  a  for- 
tune from  the  successes  of  his  operas, 
Boheme,  Tosca,  Manon  Lescaut,  But- 
terfly and  The  Girl  of  the  Golden 
West.  His  two  earliest  works,  Le 
Villi"  and  "Edgar,"  never  attaining 
great  favor  with  the  public. 

He  is  very  fond  of  wild  duck  shoot- 
ing, and  spends  most  of  his  leisure 
time  in  this,  his  favorite  sport,  upon  a 
lake  near  his  palatial  residence  at 
Torre  del  Lago  near  Lucca  in  Tus- 
cany, Italy. 

Maestro  Umberto  Giordano,  the 
youngest  of  these  four  composers,  was 
fortunate  enough  to  have  his  latent 
opera,  "Madame  Sans  Gene,"  first  pro- 


Facsimile  of  an  autograph  score  pre- 
sented to  Alma  D'Alma  by  Puccini. 


160 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


duced  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House,  New  York,  last  winter.  I  en- 
joyed the  performance  and  beautiful 
production  immensely. 

Giordano,  born  in  Foggia,  Italy,  of 
very  humble  parentage,  was  almost  at 
the  point  of  starvation  before  the  suc- 
cess of  his  first,  and  I  consider  best 
opera,  "Andrea  Chenier."  The  li- 
bretto of  this  work  was  written  by  the 
well  known  author,  Luigi  Illica,  who 
extended  his  hospitality  to  young  Gior- 
dano while  he  was  composing  the 
music.  By  a  very  fortunate  coinci- 
dence, which  decided  the  fate  of  this 
young  composer,  one  day,  while  call- 
ing on  the  venerable  Maestro  Verdi, 
at  the  Hotel  Milan  in  Milan,  he  was  in- 


troduced to  the  daughter  of  the  hotel 
proprietor,  Spatz,  a  very  wealthy  man, 
and  interested  also  in  a  chain  of  hotels 
scattered  throughout  Italy  and  Swit- 
zerland. 

Love  was  kindled  at  first  sight,  and 
the  young  Maestro  lost  no  time  in  woo- 
ing and  winning  the  fair  lady,  whose 
father  thereupon  straightened  out  the 
ardent  suitor's  financial  difficulties. 

"Andre  Chenier"  was  first  produced 
with  very  great  success  at  La  Scala, 
the  famous  opera  house  in  Milan. 
Other  of  his  operas,  Siberia,  Marcella, 
Fedora  (which  is  dedicated  to  his 
wife),  have  all  been  successful,  but 
none  have  obtained  the  popularity  of 
"Andrea  Chenier." 


SUNSET  ON  SAN  FRANCISCO  BAY 

Beyond  the  "Gate"  the  slanting,  Western  sky 

Blazed  with  the  splendor  of  a  forest  fire ! 

A  feast  of  glory!  dazzling  to  the  eye! 

Magnificently  luminous!    The  pyre 

On  which  Time  "offered  up"  the  dying  Day! 

The  "Gate's"  dark  portals  caught  the  ruddy  flame ; 

While  th'  shimm'ring  waters  of  the  noble  Bay 

Mirrored  the  blood-red  stains  within  its  frame. 

A  ship  sailed  in;  bird-like,  so  swift  and  light; 

Her  white  sails  glinted  by  the  crimson  glow; 

She  seemed  the  herald  of  descending  Night; 

Who  dropped,  on  silver  wings,  as  pale  as  snow, 

As  the  last  embers  of  the  fires  died  out 

From  sky  and  "Gate"  and  bay.    Then  day,  more  fair; 

She  scattered  moonlight  magic  all  about; 

On  mountains,  sea  and  bay,  and  in  the  air. 

ULA  BURFORD  BARRIE. 


The  New   Executive  in   Feminine 

Clubdom 

By  Elizabeth  Whitford 


Mrs.  Emily  Hoppin. 

(Photo  by  Bushnell.) 

THE  RECENTLY   elected  presi- 
dent of  the  Federation  of  Wo- 
men's Clubs  of  California  is  a 
clubwoman  of  long  standing,  but 
she  is  far  more  than  that.    No 
idle  city  woman  is  she,  seeking  but  an- 
other diversion  in  club  life,  no  dilet- 
tante in  the  world's  strenuous  work- 
shop, but  rather  a  real  industrial  factor, 
a  woman  who  has  for  years  success- 
fully managed  a  large  ranch ;  and  who 
is,  through  natural  endowment  as  well 
as  experience,  mentally  and  physically 
capable  of  large  things ;  an  efficient  ex- 


ecutive whose  well  laid  plans  are  not 
apt  to  remain  only  pleasant  visions. 

Mrs.  Emily  Hoppin  has  the  forceful 
personality  which  distinguishes  the 
leader,  and  her  intelligent  face  holds 
much  of  cheerful  friendliness.  Emi- 
nently cordial,  but  without  disagree- 
able fulsomeness,  she  seems  of  the  best 
Western  type — Californian,  we  like  to 
call  it,  and  why  not,  since  Mrs.  Hop- 
pin's  years  of  maturity  have  all  been 
spent  in  the  Golden  West,  and  her  in- 
terests have  been  identified  with  those 
of  the  State  for  full  forty  years  ? 

She  was  born  in  Michigan  and  was 
educated  at  the  Kalamazoo  branch  of 
Mt.  Holyoke  Seminary,  for  four  Mt. 
Holyokes  there  were  all  imbued  with 
the  same  atmosphere  as  that  original 
New  England  one  which  was  a  pio- 
neer in  woman's  education.  Her  father 
was  favorably  known  throughout 
Michigan  as  Judge  Bacon,  he  having 
been  judge  of  the  Circuit  Court  for 
seventeen  years  at  the  time  of  his 
death.  Her  mother  came  of  the  Lord 
family  of  Maine,  and  was  a  sister  of 
Dr.  John  Lord,  whose  "Beacon  Lights 
of  History"  is  known  to  every  lover 
of  readable  books  which  are  also  au- 
thoritative. Always  of  a  literary  turn, 
always  interested  in  educational  mat- 
ters, the  Lord  family  has  furnished 
many  well  known  teachers  to  the  coun- 
try, including  one  president  of  Dart- 
mouth College  and  one  executive  head 
of  Harvard  University. 

The  best  of  sturdy  Englishism,  dat- 
ing back  on  the  mother's  side  to  ten 
hundred  and  sixty-six — to  the  time  of 
that  Norman  conqueror  named  Wil- 
liam, and  on  the  father's  to  the  sixteen 
hundreds,  was  transmogrified  into  an 


162 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


even  more  sturdy  and  hardy  New 
Englandism  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century. 

Shifting  the  view  point  to  the  newly 
acquired  territory  of  California,  we 
find  that  with  the  early  Argonauts 
came  to  the  land  of  promise  Charles 
Rossiter  Hoppin,  his  brother  John,  and 
Mat  Harbin — true  forty-niners.  "The 
fierce  rush  for  wealth"  had  carried 
them  along  in  its  course  to  the  golden 
shores  of  their  dreams;  but,  wiser  per- 
haps than  many  of  their  comrades  in 
adventure,  they  did  not  confine  their 
efforts  to  panning  for  dust  and  dig- 
ging for  nuggets.  Such  treasure  is  all 
too  easily  squandered  in  any  primitive 
country,  and  particularly  in  a  mining 
country,  where  generosity  and  open- 
handedness  are  the  accepted  virtues. 
Land  is  not  quite  such  a  universal  me- 
dium of  exchange,  not  quite  legal  ten- 
der. Harder  to  acquire,  it  is  also  a 
thought  harder  to  exchange,  therefore 
a  little  easier  to  retain. 

The  beautifully  rolling  and  forested 
lands  of  the  Sacramento  River  Valley 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  young 
pioneers,  and  in  eighteen-fifty  they 
were  made  happy  by  the  grant  of  a 
tract  of  land  three  leagues  square  on 
picturesque  Cash  Creek.  This  tract, 
called  "El  Rancho  Rio  de  Jesus 
Maria,"  proved  to  be  of  the  finest  and 
deepest  alluvial  soil,  and  now  boasts 
the  prosperous  towns  of  Woodland  and 
Yolo.  It  was  one  of  the  few  old 
grants  of  that  period  the  title  to  which 
has  proved  good,  and  the  present  Hop- 
pin  ranch  of  six  hundred  and  fifty 
acres  is  part  of  the  original  grant. 

To  this  ranch  came  the  bride,  Mrs. 
Emily  Hoppin,  some  forty  years  ago, 
a  mere  girl  in  years  and  in  experience. 
We  can  imagine  with  what  pleasure 
her  vigorous  young  mind  recognized 
the  large  opportunities  of  this  West- 
ern land,  and  with  what  willingness  she 
entered  upon  its  exacting  duties.  Not 
daunted  by  the  novelty  of  farm  life 
and  of  California  conditions,  the 
young  matron  took  up  her  cares  and 
dedicated  herself  with  entire  heart  to 
her  family  and  to  California.  Four 
children  were  born  to  her,  and  many 


happy  years  rolled  by  before  her  hus- 
band's failing  health  unmistakably 
foretold  his  passing.  Thereafter,  the 
Rancho  Rio  de  Jesus  Maria  became  a 
school,  in  which  the  husband,  Chas. 
Rossiter  Hoppin,  was  the  teacher,  and 
the  wife,  Emily  Hoppin,  was  the  pupil. 
There  was  not  a  branch  or  detail  of 
farming  in  which  the  wife  and  mother 
was  not  instructed,  so  that  when  the 
sad  parting  came,  she  was  amply  qual- 
ified to  safeguard  her  own  and  her 
children's  interests. 

How  infinitely  wise  was  this  prepar- 
ation for  stewardship!  How  broad 
the  father's  mind,  how  tender  the 
mother's  heart  that  conceived  it!  How 
foolishly  inane  it  makes  those  women 
who  pride  themselves  on  knowing 
nothing  of  business,  how  wanton  those 
men  who  deliberately  keep  their  wives 
in  ignorance!  We  trust  that  the  new 
awakening  of  woman,  which  is  preced- 
ing and  attending  her  enfranchisement, 
will  teach  her  that  she  is  an  equal 
partner  with  her  husband  in  each  busi- 
ness emprise,  and  has  a  right  to  know 
its  proportion  of  risks — its  chances  of 
success.  For  she  "stands  for"  failure 
as  well  as  he,  and  indeed  failure  and 
the  incident  poverty  are  apt  to  bear 
more  heavily  on  the  wife  than  on  the 
husband.  Hers  usually  must  be  the 
retrenchments;  hers  the  economies; 
hers  the  task  of  keeping  up  the  stand- 
ard of  living  no  matter  how  shrunken 
the  budget. 

Mrs.  Hoppin  disclaims  having  run 
her  ranch  with  "success,"  for  she  says 
the  unpreventable  chances  in  farming 
are  too  great.  I  judge  she  means  by 
her  disclaimer  unqualified  success,  for 
it  is  admitted  that  the  ranch  is  in  bet- 
ter shape  now,  as  to  equipment,  as  to 
productiveness,  and  as  to  finances  than 
it  was  when  she  took  up  her  steward- 
ship. The  ranch  is  now  considered  a 
very  valuable  property.  The  State 
University,  in  fact,  thought  seriously 
of  taking  it  for  its  experimental  farm, 
and  the  Davis  farm  was  selected  in  the 
end,  almost  entirely  because  of  its  bet- 
ter railroad  connections. 

That  Mrs.  Hoppin  has  for  many 
years  been  frequently  called  on  to 


THE  NEW  EXECUTIVE  IN  FEMININE  CLUBDOM 


163 


contribute  papers  to  all  manner  of 
Farmers5  Institutes  is  proof  that  she  is 
generally  accorded  the  very  success 
which  she  modestly  disclaims.  Her 
new  club  duties  will  not  be  allowed  to 
interfere  with  her  interest  in  farm  mat- 
ters, and  she  expects  to  read  a  paper 
before  the  State  Horticultural  Con- 
vention to  be  held  at  Stanford  Uni- 
versity in  June. 

A  few  years  ago,  however,  this  ac- 
complished woman  rancher  resigned 
the  active  management  of  her  ranch, 
wishing  to  devote  more  time  to  work 
for  the  betterment  of  country  life  con- 
ditions. She  is  now,  as  it  were, 
"rancher  emeritus,"  and  only  ex-officio 
chairman  of  a  farmers'  institute,  which 
is  comprised  of  her  four  children, 
each  of  whom  now  manages  a  quarter 
of  the  ranch.  And  here  again  we  see 
that  wise  look  into  the  future,  for  the 
sons  and  daughters  are  getting  most 
practical  training,  and  Mrs.  Hoppin  is 
now  only  the  head  of  the  advisory 
board,  which  is  the  family  conclave, 
but  here  she  still  has  the  deciding  vote 
on  questions  of  large  moment  to  the 
board. 

One  of  this  capable  woman's  many 
activities  has  been  the  editorship  of 
the  "White  Ribbon  Ensign;"  another, 
a  vice-presidency  of  the  Farmers' 
Protective  Association;  still  another, 
the  holding  of  a  position  on  the  Coun- 
try Life  Commission,  together  with 
one  other  woman,  a  number  of  practi- 
cal farmers,  and  such  noteworthy  men 
as  Professor  Hyatt,  Dean  of  the  Uni- 
versity Farm,  and  Prof.  Ware,  of  the 
Chico  Normal. 

"I  attended  every  meeting  of  the 
Commission,"  said  Mrs.  Hoppin,  "and 
helped  by  my  appreciation,  if  not  by 
my  ideas."  When  asked  if  she  thought 
the  Commission  had  accomplished 
anything,  she  said  they  had  made  a 
beginning.  "Some  remarkably  clever 
ideas  were  expressed  and  we  listened 
to  a  number  of  very  good  talks,  but 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  do  anything 
without  funds;  and  that  is  the  reason 
that  I  am  so  determined  our  Federa- 
tion shall  keep  on  working  for  an  en- 
dowment fund.  The  Federation  as- 


sessments are  purposely  kept  small, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  accumulate  a 
sinking  fund  from  them;  therefore, 
we  are  continually  hampered  by  lack 
of  capital.  Fifty  thousand  dollars  does 
not  seem  an  impossible  sum  to  raise 
among  all  the  Federated  Clubs  of  our 
great  State,  and  it  would  make  us  in- 
dependent." 

The  new  Federation  president  thinks 
the  expenses  of  attending  the  conven- 
tions should  be  paid  for  the  Chairmen 
of  the  Departments,  for  many  of  the 
women  most  capable  of  handling  these 
departments  are  not  financially  able 
to  attend  the  meetings,  a  fact  that 
seriously  hampers  the  President  in 
making  appointments. 

This  brought  us  directly  to  the  sub- 
ject of  "patronage."  Mrs.  Hoppin 
laughingly  says  that  she  knows  just 
how  a  new  president  of  the  United 
States  must  feel  with  so  many  hun- 
dreds of  appointments  to  make,  so  de- 
terminedly anxious  is  she  to  put  the 
very  best  possible  woman  in  each 
place. 

"No,"  she  replied,  in  answer  to  a 
question,  "there  are  no  salaried  posi- 
tions in  my  gift,  but  that  makes  the 
competition  no  less  keen,  and  me  no 
less  anxious  for  wisdom  in  the  choos- 
ing." 

And,  with  some  dozens  of  women  to 
appoint  as  the  heads  of  departments 
ranging  from  Education  to  Legislation, 
from  Philanthropy  to  Public  Health, 
from  Home  Economics  to  the  Conser- 
vation of  Forests  and  Waters,  a  con- 
scientious president  may  well  feel  the 
responsibility. 

"I  do  not,"  added  the  new  executive, 
"intend  to  be  guided  entirely  by  my 
own  judgment — still  less  by  my  own 
inclination  in  making  these  appoint- 
ments. I  expect  to  have  the  advice 
of  those  who  know  the  work  and  the 
abilities  of  the  individual  women.  I 
am  looking  for  experts  along  these 
lines,  and  I  do  not  intend  to  be  con- 
tent with  less  than  the  best  possible 
chairman  for  the  head  of  each  de- 
partment." 

Mrs.  Hoppin  has  for  years,  almost 
as  many  as  the  years  of  her  life,  been 
6 


164 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


a  worker  for  temperance.  So  thor- 
oughly consistent  is  she  that  it  is  said 
she  had  all  the  wine  grapes  on  the 
Rancho  Rio  de  Jesus  Maria  uprooted 
many  years  ago,  although  they  had 
been  a  profitable  crop.  It  is  not  her 
intention,  however,  to  endeavor  to 
force  her  convictions  upon  the  club 
women  of  California,  who  have  not,  as 
yet,  taken  action  in  this  matter,  al- 
though the  General  Federation  of  Wo- 
men's Clubs  at  its  last  Biennial  meet- 
ing, which  was  held  in  Chicago,  adopt- 
ed a  resolution  "for  the  controlling 
and  eradication  of  the  drink  evil,  both 
in  State  and  nation."  Although  these 
words  might  be  susceptible  of  slightly 
varying  interpretations,  they  are  still 
strong  enough  to  satisfy  even  an  en- 
thusiast. In  fact,  there  seems  little 
danger,  when  the  aroused  conscien- 
tiousness of  the  nations  is  pronouncing 
the  consumption  of  spirituous  liquors 
a  great  evil  in  the  most  strenuous 
terms  and  measures,  that  the  educated 
women  of  our  progressive  nation  will 
be  anywhere  but  in  the  van  of  the  re- 
form movement. 

"You  may  quote  me  as  saying," 
said  the  new  Federation  President, 
seriously,  "that  I  mean  to  endeavor  to 
work  along  the  lines  of  industrial  and 
economic  reform,  and  at  the  very  bot- 
tom of  all  evils  lies  the  factor  of 
drink. 

"I  believe  that  the  women  of  Cali- 
fornia are  taking-  the  franchise  seri- 
ously and  that  they  are  trying  to  in- 
form themselves  in  matters  of  State 
economics.  I  am  proud  of  the  women 
of  California,  for  they  have  accepted 
the  franchise  intending  to  make  their 
vote  an  influence  for  good.  I  believe 
that  the  women  of  the  State  stand  for 
fairness;  for  straightforwardness  in 
politics ;  for  measures — not  party  lines ; 
for  moral  principles — not  men." 

Mrs.  Hoppin's  forty  years'  experi- 
ence on  the  farm,  her  temperance  work 
throughout  the  State,  and  her  investi- 
gations while  a  member  of  the  Coun- 
try Life  Commission,  make  her  su- 
premely recognize  the  needs  of  the 
country  woman.  She  wishes,  there- 
fore, to  emphasize  this  department, 


hoping  to  bring  the  country  woman  to 
the  front. 

"The  country  woman  greatly  needs 
the  city  woman's  viewpoint,  but  no 
more  strongly,  perhaps,  than  the  city 
woman  needs  the  country  woman's.  It 
is  my  ambition  that  they  shall  become 
mutually  helpful." 

Another  department  in  which  the 
State  president  is  particularly  inter- 
ested is  that  of  conservation  both  of 
waters  and  forests. 

"Water  is  the  very  foundation  (per- 
haps I  should  say  the  very  fountain- 
head)  of  California's  prosperity.  Our 
waters  must  be  conserved  to  the  peo- 
ple. This  I  should  like  to  have  brought 
home  to  the  consciousness  and  the 
conscience  of  every  woman  in  the 
Federation  especially,  and  to  every 
woman  in  the  State,  if  possible;  for 
the  franchise  that  will  make  women  a 
power  with  knowledge  may  make  them 
a  menace  without  it. 

"This  is  very  close  to  my  heart — 
this,  and  the  carrying  out  of  the  ideal 
of  the  Federation,  which  is  service. 
The  Federation  tries  to  serve  not  only 
its  own  members,  but  is  a  practical 
sisterhood  united  for  service  to  the 
world  at  large." 

Mrs.  Hoppin  is  an  optimist,  as  one 
could  but  know  when  looking  into  her 
countenance,  so  cheerfully  animated; 
and  even  in  the  face  of  the  greatest 
war  of  all  ages,  she  still  hopes  that 
work  for  peace,  which  she  feels  must 
be  largely  woman's  work,  will  not — 
cannot — be  in  vain.  She  anticipates 
that  the  condition  we  pray  for,  the 
prevalence  of  an  effective  sentiment 
for  universal  peace,  may  come  about 
suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  likening 
it  to  the  movement  for  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  which  seemed  a  far,  Eutopian 
vision  in  the  minds  of  its  supporters. 
Practically  all  they  dared  hope  for 
was  the  restriction  and  limiting  of  the 
traffic — and  then,  of  a  sudden,  Eman- 
cipation!— more  glorious  than  their 
fondest  dreams!  And  so  she  prays  it 
may  be  with  the  peace  sentiment. 

Let  us  all  join  with  this  gracious 
optimist  in  a  heartfelt  "So  be  it" — a 
sonorous  "Amen." 


Hunting  the  Buffalo 


By  Marian  B.  Kauffman 


For  the  following  description  of  the  buffalo  days  the  writer  is  in- 
debted to  Mr.  James  H.  Hanrahan,  now  of  Lost  River,  Idaho.  "Jim" 
Hanrahan  is  seventy-four  years  old,  and  one  of  the  few  remaining 
plainsmen  who  fought  the  Indians  and  played  an  important  part  in  the 
winning  of  the  Southwest.  It  was  he,  with  Bat  Masterson  and  twenty- 
six  other  buffalo  hunters,  who  defeated  five  hundred  Comanches  and 
Kiowas  at  the  Battle  of  the  Adobe  Walls  in  1874 — one  of  the  fiercest 
Indian  fights  in  the  history  of  Texas. 


UP  TO  1870  there  had  been  little 
demand  for  buffalo  hides 
among  the  white  people,  West 
or  East;  they  had  not  yet 
learned  their  value.  Most  of  the  skins 
had  been  obtained  from  the  Indians 
by  the  post-traders — legitimate  trad- 
ing, so-called.  Besides  the  post- 
traders  there  was  a  class  of  men  who 
lived  chiefly  by  exchanging  with  the 
Indians  for  buffalo  robes,  guns,  am- 
munition and  whisky.  It  is  safe  to 
say  that  both  "outfits"  cheated  the  In- 
dians. The  post  trader  was  recog: 
nized  by  the  post-commander  and  kept 
under  wages  men  familiar  with  the 
Indians  and  their  methods  of  trading. 
These  sub-traders  mingled  with  and 
often  intermarried  with  the  Indians; 
and  were  authorized  to  assemble  the 
chiefs  of  the  tribes  at  intervals  for 
the  purpose  of  fixing  schedules.  Af- 
ter a  feast  furnished  by  the  trader  the 
price  for  each  buffalo  robe  would  be 
agreed  upon,  and  this  price  would  hold 
good  for  the  season — often  longer  in 
times  of  peace.  A  fine  robe  often 
brought  seven  pint  cups  of  brown 
sugar,  or  so  many  pieces  of  pipe  clay 
ornaments  for  the  breast,  or  German 
silver  ornaments  for  the  scalp-lock,  or 
a  couple  of  yards  of  cloth  for  a  breech- 


clout;  a  gaily  colored  blanket  often 
brought  three  or  four  good  hides.  This 
desultory  trading  had  not  diminished 
the  vast  herd  of  the  buffaloes. 

During  the  first  seventy  years  of  the 
past  century  the  buffaloes  ranged  over 
an  enormous  territory — from  the  Gulf 
north  nearly  to  Hudson  Bay,  and  from 
the  Mississippi  westward  to  the  Rock- 
ies. There  were  always  buffaloes  in 
the  Rockies,  but  few  as  compared 
with  the  herds  that  ranged  the  Llano 
Estacado  and  Great  Plains.  The 
plains  with  rich  forage  and  compara- 
tively little  snow  made  an  ideal  home 
for  the  buffaloes.  Before  the  settling 
up  of  the  West  it  is  estimated  that 
there  were  fifty  million  head  of  buf- 
faloes in  this  country — or  more  than 
there  are  domestic  cattle  to-day.  Yet 
it  took  only  seven  years  for  the  white 
hunters  to  wipe  out  the  great  herds  of 
the  Southwest;  and  by  1883  the  north- 
ern bands  were  destroyed.  In  thir- 
teen years  from  the  time  the  destruc- 
tion began,  the  buffaloes  were  almost 
entirely  exterminated;  a  wholesale 
slaughter  of  big  game  that  has  never 
been  equalled.  Now  there  are  not 
more  than  a  few  wild  buffaloes  left  on 
this  continent,  and  most  of  these  live 
under  protection  in  the  National  parks. 


166 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


The  destruction  of  the  buffaloes  was 
chiefly  the  work  of  the  skin  hunters — 
not  the  Indians  or  settlers.  Most  of 
the  killing  by  the  Indians  had  been 
done  from  horseback,  with  very  little 
damage  to  a  herd.  The  Indian  with 
his  native  aversion  to  work,  never 
hunted  on  foot. 

With  the  completion  of  the  Union 
Pacific  Railway  in  1869,  and  the  con- 
sequent inrush  of  settlers  to  the  West 
and  Southwest,  there  sprang  up  an  im- 
mense demand  for  buffalo  robes  and 
hides.  To  meet  this  demand  there 
arose  a  class  of  hunters,  unique  in  the 
history  of  big  game  killing.  These 
men,  killing  buffalo  as  little  for  the 
sport  of  it  as  the  Easterners  who 
slaughtered  them  by  the  hundreds 
from  the  car  windows  of  the  Union 
Pacific  and  left  them  to  rot  on  the 
plains,  hides  and  all,  were  intent  only 
on  the  profit  to  be  made  from  the  sale 
of  the  hides.  Necessarily  they  were 
a  hardy  and  efficient  lot.  A  hunter 
with  sufficient  capital  generally  out- 
fitted himself  with  a  couple  of  wagons, 
ten  or  twelve  head  of  horses,  and  four 
partners  to  skin.  The  outfit  (outfit  is 
one  of  the  most  frequent  words  in  the 
expressive  vocabulary  of  the  West, 
and  it  is  hard  to  find  a  substitute  that 
will  do  as  well)  usually  camped  on 
some  stream  or  near  a  spring,  and  in 
the  early  morning  the  hunter  climbed 
the  highest  point  and  scanned  the 
country.  Having  sighted  a  herd  of 
buffaloes,  he  noted  the  direction  of  the 
wind  and  the  lay  of  the  country,  and 
if  the  distance  were  not  too  great, 
started  out  on  foot,  keeping  himself 
under  cover  and  following  the  course 
of  a  ravine  if  possible.  If  no  cover 
afforded,  it  was  necessary  to  get  down 
on  hands  and  knees  at  once,  and  crawl 
within  range — rather  a  ticklish  job, 
as  more  often  than  not  a  rattlesnake 
barred  the  path.  In  this  event  there 
were  two  alternatives :  stare  the  snake 
out  of  countenance  until  he  retreated, 
or  crawl  slowly  around  him.  The  lat- 
ter was  the  safer  choice ;  with  care  not 
to  get  nervous  and  jump,  for  the  day's 
work  would  then  be  over.  A  crawling 
man  had  a  peculiar  fascination  for 


watching  buffalo,  but  the  sight  of  a 
man  erect  would  stampede  them  in  an 
instant.  The  matter  of  range  depend- 
ed upon  the  judgment  of  the  hunter 
and  his  ability  as  a  shot — anywhere 
from  two  hundred  to  four  hundred 
yards.  The  first  shot  had  to  be  a  dead 
one,  for  then  the  beasts  would  behave 
much  like  cattle,  gathering  around  the 
unlucky  member  of  the  herd,  pawing 
and  bellowing,  but  not,  for  a  few  mo- 
ments, stampeding.  Then  would  come 
quick  work  for  the  hunter,  his  success 
depending  upon  the  number  of  shots 
he  could  get  in  before  the  herd  would 
break  to  run — still  lying  flat  on  his 
stomach  and  shooting  from  that  posi- 
tion. A  buffalo  could  carry  a  surpris- 
ing amount  of  lead,  so  long  range 
shooting  after  the  band  would  stam- 
pede was  not  very  effective. 

In  hunters'  parlance  the  foregoing 
is  known  as  a  "stand,"  and  the  abil- 
ity to  kill  a  large  number  of  buffa- 
loes at  one  stand  made  the  successful 
hunter.  Sometimes  when  a  herd  broke 
from  a  stand  the  hunter's  partners 
came  up  on  horseback  and  gave  chase. 
Their  part  was  to  rope  and  stake  down 
as  many  calves  as  possible,  thus  caus- 
ing the  mothers  of  the  respective  calves 
to  drop  out  of  the  herd  and  stay  with 
their  offspring  whence  they  could  be 
killed  at  leisure.  It  was  useless  to 
follow  a  stampeding  herd  far  on  horse- 
back, as  the  buffalo,  in  spite  of  his 
bulk,  covers  ground  swiftly;  and  on 
a  down  grade  has  considerable  advan- 
tage of  the  horse,  because  of  his  huge 
shoulders  and  short,  stocky  forelegs. 
The  record  for  the  greatest  number 
of  buffaloes  killed  at  one  stand  seems 
to  have  been  held  by  Charlie  Rath  (in 
the  Southwest) — one  of  the  best  hunt- 
ers of  his  day,  and  one  of  the  twenty- 
eight  who  fought  at  Adobe  Walls. 
Rath  shot  107  head  of  buffaloes  at  a 
single  stand  on  the  Canadian  river  in 
73.  Hanrahan's  record  was  52,  and 
no  doubt  many  good  hunters  equaled 
that.  Hanrahan  had  that  year  given 
up  his  position  as  Government  wagon 
master,  to  enter  the  more  lucrative 
field  of  skin  hunting.  His  experiences 
and  those  of  Masterson,  Billy  Dixon 


t 

I 

Qi 


O 


168 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


On  the  Montana    plains,    where    the 

buffalo  once  ranged  by  the  hundreds 

of  thousands. 


and  other  hunters  and  Indian  scouts 
in  northern  Texas  are  romantically 
chronicled  in  Mr.  Alfred  Henry  Lewis' 
book,  "The  Sunset  Trail." 

The  buffalo  hunters  used  the  old 
Sharps  rifle,  55  calibre,  and  weighing 
fourteen  pounds;  the  heaviest  and 
most  accurate  rifle  ever  made.  Now- 
adays a  Sharps  is  very  hard  to  find, 
even  as  a  curiosity.  The  careful 
hunter  always  loaded  his  own  shells. 
Firing  a  heavy  charge,  a  Sharps  would 
kill  at  fifteen  hundred  yards,  a  neces- 
sary power,  for  the  neck  of  a  buffalo 
bull  offers  more  resistance  to  a  bullet 
than  a  pine  board.  Against  an  army 
of  hunters  equipped  with  such  for- 
midable weapons  the  buffaloes  had  lit- 
tle chance.  The  slaughter  was  tre- 


mendous. Hanrahan  says  that  he  has 
often  seen  enough  buffalo  carcasses 
scattered  around  a  single  camp  at  the 
close  of  the  hunting  season  to  keep 
the  city  of  Salt  Lake  in  meat  for  a 
month — and  it  all  went  to  waste.  The 
hides  netted  the  hunters  all  the  way 
from  three  to  five  dollars  apiece, 
rarely  more  than  that  in  the  70's.  Now 
of  course  an  overcoat  made  from  buf- 
falo skins  can  scarcely  be  obtained  at 
any  price.  A  friend  of  mine  has  a 
buffalo  robe  that  he  has  repeatedly  re- 
fused two  hundred  dollars  for. 

The  mercenary  killing  of  the  buf- 
faloes seems  most  unsportsmanlike  to 
the  big  game  hunter  of  to-day.  Yet 
in  the  words  of  Hanrahan,  "No  set  of 
pioneers  from  Boone  down  ever  lived 
in  such  constant  danger  of  their  lives. 
Not  a  day  out  hunting  but  the  two 
uppermost  thoughts  in  their  minds 
were:  to  make  a  big  kill,  and  what 
should  they  do  if  the  Indians  attacked 
them — and  generally  the  latter  was  the 
paramount  idea.  The  hunter  while  ap- 
proaching his  game  always  kept  one 
eye  open  to  the  military  advantage  of 
the  ground  in  the  event  of  an  ambush, 
and  he  felt  safer  after  he  had  killed 
several  buffaloes,  which  might  serve 
as  a  barricade  in  an  emergency."  There 
was  no  little  danger  from  the  buffaloes 
themselves.  A  wounded  bull  some- 
times charged  the  smoke  in  headlong 
anger,  and  it  took  steady  nerve  and 
accurate  shooting  to  finish  him  in  time. 
The  buffalo  is  surprisingly  agile  for 
his  bulk,  and  a  maddened  bull  has 
been  known  to  gore  a  horse  to  death 
before  the  frightened  animal  could 
evade  him.  The  hunters  were  also  in 
danger  from  stampeding  herds.  All 
animals  that  go  in  herds  are  subject 
to  wild  fits  of  terror,  during  which  they 
become  completely  mad  and  rush 
blindly  over  obstacles,  often  to  their 
death.  The  cowboys  were  compelled 
to  be  perpetually  on  guard  against 
stampedes  among  their  cattle.  One  of 
the  Indian's  favorite  methods  of  kill- 
ing buffaloes  was  to  stampede  a  herd 
over  a  cliff,  and  pick  out  the  carcasses 
they  wanted.  Colonel  Roosevelt,  in 
"The  Wilderness  Hunter,"  describes 


Old-time  Indian  method  of  killing  the  buffalo.     (From  an  old  print.) 


the  narrow  escape  of  his  brother  and 
cousin  from  a  buffalo  stampede.  Out 
hunting,  the  two  men  had  just  mounted 
a  low  swell  on  the  prairie,  when  they 
heard  a  low,  rumbling  noise,  like  far- 
off  thunder.  Hurrying  forward  to  the 
top  of  the  rise,  they  saw  the  whole 
prairie  before  them  black  with  madly 
rushing  buffaloes. 

''They  knew  that  their  only  hope  for 
life  was  to  split  the  herd,  which,  al- 
though it  had  so  broad  a  front,  was 
not  very  deep.  If  they  failed,  they 
would  inevitably  be  trampled  to 
death.  Waiting  until  the  beasts  were 
in  close  range,  they  opened  a  rapid 
fire  from  their  heavy  breech-loading 
rifles,  yelling  at  the  top  of  their  voices. 
For  a  moment  the  result  seemed  doubt- 
ful. The  line  thundered  steadily  down 
on  them;  then  it  swayed  violently,  as 
two  or  three  of  the  brutes  immediately 
in  the  front  fell  beneath  the  bullets, 
while  their  neighbors  made  violent  ef- 
forts to  press  off  sideways.  Then  a 
narrow,  wedge-shaped  rift  appeared 
in  the  line,  and  widened  as  it  came 
closer,  and  the  buffaloes,  shrinking 
from  their  foes  in  front,  strove  des- 
perately to  edge  away  from  the  dan- 
gerous neighborhood;  the  shouts  and 
shots  were  redoubled ;  the  hunters  were 


almost  choked  by  the  cloud  of  dust, 
through  which  they  could  see  the 
stream  of  dark,  huge  bodies  passing 
within  rifle  length  on  either  side;  and 
in  a  moment  the  peril  was  over,  and 
the  two  men  were  left  alone  on  the 
plain,  unharmed,  though  with  their 
nerves  terribly  shaken.  The  herd  ca- 
reered on  toward  the  horizon,  save 
five  individuals  which  had  been  killed 
or  disabled  by  the  shots." 

The  only  traces  of  the  buffaloes  to 
be  seen  to-day  are  the  whitened  skulls 
that  dot  the  pains  here  and  there,  and 
the  trails  or  ruts  formed  by  the  pass- 
ing of  countless  individuals  in  single 
file.  Many  of  these  are  so  deep  that 
a  horseman  riding  in  them  can  touch 
their  edges  with  his  stirrups.  These 
old  trails  are  still  followed  in  riding 
across  uneven  country,  because  the 
buffaloes,  like  cattle,  always  took  the 
easiest  course,  instinctively. 

The  encroachment  of  the  white  peo- 
ple after  the  easy  transportation  af- 
forded by  the  railway,  and  the  killing 
of  the  buffaloes  by  the  skin  hunters 
were  bitterly  resented  by  the  Indians. 
The  Indians  of  the  plains  had  been  al- 
most wholly  dependent  upon  the  buf- 
faloes for  their  living.  Buffalo  meat 
was  their  chief  food:  at  the  close  of 


170 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


the  hunting  season  they  cut  it  into 
strips,  dried  it  or  "jerked"  it,  and 
subsisted  on  it  during  the  winter.  They 
used  the  skins  for  their  clothing,  for 
their  beds,  for  covering  their  wicki- 
ups, and  even  for  shields.  The  war 
shield  of  a  brave  was  made  of  two 
thicknesses  of  the  neck  of  a  buffalo 
bull,  so  tough  that  it  would  turn  a  bul- 
let from  any  rifle  but  a  Sharps.  Yet 
the  Indians  had  killed  only  enough 


buffaloes  for  their  needs;  they  had 
never  depleted  the  herds.  Small  won- 
der that  the  red  men  fought  the  com- 
ing of  the  whites  with  such  despera- 
tion, for  the  extermination  of  the  buf- 
faloes meant  the  -loss  of  his  chief 
means  of  subsistence.  Yet  the  passing 
of  both  the  Indian  and  the  buffalo  was 
inevitable.  The  great  development  of 
the  West  could  never  have  begun  un- 
til their  occupancy  ended. 


THE     AWAKENING 


I  built  a  castle  high  in  air 

Deeming  it  firm  and  strong. 

I  peopled  all  its  rooms  with  dreams, 

And  filled  its  halls  with  song. 

Upon  a  throne  I  placed  my  love — 

The  love  I  thought  so  true, 

And  twined  about  my  idol's  brow 

The  fairest  flowers  that  grew. 

Alas!  my  castle  shattered,  fell — 

My  dreams  as  swiftly  fled. 

The  songs  were  hushed — and  silence 

reigned — 

The  silence  of  the  dead. 
Amidst  the  ruins,  then,  I  sought 
My  love — ah,  there  it  lay — 
A  broken,  shapeless  idol — 
And  its  feet,  alas,  were  clay! 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 


Canadian   Indians  and  Fur  Trade 


By  /Aax 


Twenty-five  thousand  Red  Men  are  without  income  owing  to  closing 
of  the  fur  markets  of  Europe,  and  the  refusal  of  trading  companies  to  ad- 
vance the  usual  "debf  of  provisions  for  the  year.  The  Canadian  Gov- 
ernment has  made  grants  of  money  and  food  supplies. 


IN  THE  EARLY  days  of  fur  trade  in 
Canada  the  posts  of  the  fur  com- 
panies depended  chiefly  on  Indians 
for  hunters  and  trappers.  The  pros- 
pects of  good  bartering,  the  advances 
of  goods  and  provisions,  and  the  prom- 
ise of  more,  induced  the  Red  Men  to 
go  forth  in  large  numbers  for  furs  and 
hides. 

What  the  fur  trade  meant  in  these 
far-away  times  may  be  gleaned  from 
reports  of  the  companies  doing  busi- 
ness. As  early  as  1784,  the  Northwest 
Company  had  imported  supplies  for  a 
year's  trade  amounting  to  $125,000, 
and  by  the  close  of  the  century  the 
gross  amount  of  goods  for  barter  in  the 
store  houses  of  Montreal  companies 
was  $600,000.  In  1780,  Mr.  Charles 
Grant,  in  a  letter  to  General  Haldi- 
mand,  stated  that  the  fur  trade,  taking 
one  year  with  another,  was  producing 
an  annual  return  to  Great  Britain  of 
furs  of  $1,000,000. 

The  Hudson's  Bay  Company  was 
trading  in  furs  as  early  as  1670,  and 
about  1800  the  French  firm  of  Revillon 
Freres  entered  into  competition.  Other 
smaller  traders  came  in  later,  and  there 
was  always  keen  rivalry  among  the 
companies.  Spies  were  sometimes 
placed  around  the  habitations  of  new- 
comers and  Indians  and  half-breeds  on 
their  way  with  furs  were  intercepted, 
bribed  and  terrorized.  There  was  much 
drunkenness,  quarreling,  boasting,  and 
the  like  among  these  fur  traders.  The 
union  of  the  companies  in  1821  cut 
adrift  a  large  number  of  Indian  hunt- 
ers and  trappers. 


Some  idea  of  the  frightful  slaughter 
of  fur-bearing  animals  about  this  time 
is  given  in  the  following  figures  which 
represent  the  catch  for  an  average  sea- 
son :  106,000  beavers,  32,000  martens, 
11,800  mink,  17,000  musquash,  and 
other  pelts  that  make  a  total  per  sea- 
son of  not  less  than  184,000  skins. 
Hunting  and  trapping  for  the  fall  of 
1913  and  winter  of  1914  proved  very 
lucrative,  the  income  from  this  source 
amounting  to  $1,176,540  in  the  prov- 
inces of  Canada  alone.  Prices  for  fur 
were  on  the  increase,  and  the  catch, 
compared  with  the  ten  years  previous, 
had  not  perceptibly  diminished.  Musk- 
rat  fur  was  steadily  increasing  in  value, 
and,  apart  from  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany sales,  there  were  4,646,500  skins 
offered  on  the  London  market  in 
March,  1913,  the  price  paid  being  50 
cents  per  skin. 

Farm  products  and  wages  earned  are 
the  only  sources  of  income  to  the  In- 
dians of  Canada  that  exceed  hunting 
and  trapping.  Fishing  amounts  to  only 
about  half;  stock  raising  to  about  a 
quarter;  and  all  other  industries  to 
about  half  that  of  the  fur  industry. 
The  Indians  are  beginning  to  manifest 
an  interest  in  raising  of  foxes  for 
breeding  purposes,  but  fur-farming  has 
but  reached  the  experimental  stage. 

Hudson's  Bay  Company  Breaks  a 
Custom  of  Two  Centuries. 

Last  fall,  when  the  first  news  of  war 
reached  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company, 
it,  with  the  other  fur  companies  in  the 
far  north,  stopped  all  advances  to  the 


172 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


Indians.  It  has  been  the  custom  of 
this  company  for  two  centuries  to  stake 
the  Indians  in  the  fall  in  the  form  of  a 
"debt"  of  provisions,  which  was  fixed 
according  to  the  hunting  abilities  of 
the  debtor.  When  the  season  opened 
the  following  year  the  Indians  and  Es- 
kimos redeemed  the  debt  with  furs.  In 
good  years  a  neat  balance  would  be 
left  over  for  the  Indian  and  his  squaw, 
and  the  family  reveled  in  new  blan- 
kets and  gewgaws,  became  possessed 
of  more  guns  and  traps,  much  powder 
and  many  balls  (for  they  hunted  with 
the  old  ball  and  cap  guns),  and  grew 
fat  from  well-feeding. 

With  these  advances  cut  off,  the  na- 
tives were  in  a  serious  predicament, 
and  if  the  government  had  not  come  to 
their  assistance,  many  would  actually 
have  starved. 

W.  E.  C.  Todd,  of  the  Carnegie  Mu- 
seum, Pittsburg,  spent  six  months  last 
fall  on  the  shores  of  James  and  Hud- 
son's Bay.  On  his  return  to  civiliza- 
tion he  stated  that  the  Indian  trappers 
of  that  region  were  suffering  to  a  great 
extent  through  being  robbed  of  their 
fur  market  and  shut  off  from  supplies 
through  the  fur  companies.  Mr.  Wil- 
son, the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's 
manager  at  James  Bay,  showed  the 
scientist  a  store-house  of  furs,  which 
at  ordinary  times  would  be  worth 
$100,000,  but  which  at  current  market 
prices  could  only  be  sold  for  $17,000. 

At  White  River  the  Indians  were  in 
a  distressing  condition.  When  Mr. 
Todd  arrived  in  a  sailing  boat  the 
natives  came  out  in  canoes  to  meet 
him,  and  by  diverse  means,  mainly  by 
pointing  to  their  mouths,  made  him  un- 
derstand that  they  were  badly  in  need 
of  food.  A  white  whale  and  some  por- 
poises were  caught  later,  which  tided 
them  over  till  a  packet  arrived  with 
government  supplies.  As  it  was,  Mr. 
Todd's  flour  was  confiscated  and  dis- 
tributed among  the  trappers.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  timely  aid  given, 
wholesale  starvation  would  have  pre- 
vailed, for  the  country  bears  but  the 
minimum  of  meat  animals. 

In  the  territories  north  of  Alberta 
and  Saskatchewan,  the  Indians  are  in 


a  very  bad  condition.  Jack  Hughes,  a 
well  known  trader  and  trapper,  has 
just  completed  a  1,000  mile  "mush" 
with  huskies  from  Chippewayan,  north 
of  Great  Slave  Lake,  to  Calgary,  Al- 
berta. Discussing  the  situation  in  his 
country,  the  pioneer  says : 

"I  came  out  because  there  was  noth- 
ing to  do.  The  bottom  has  dropped 
clear  out  of  the  fur  market;  in  fact, 
there  is  no  market  for  furs  at  all,  and 
the  trappers  have  been  in  a  very  bad 
way  this  winter.  The  Indians  are  in 
especially  bad  shape,  as  an  Indian 
never  has  anything  anyway,  and  as  a 
rule  gets  very  little  for  his  furs  at  the 
stores.  This  year  he  has  got  practi- 
cally nothing,  and  would  have  starved 
unless  the  government  had  come  in 
with  supplies." 

Worse  Since  Whites  Came. 

"God  made  the  game  and  the  fur- 
bearing  animals  for  the  Indian,  and 
trade  goods  and  money  for  the  white 
man,"  said  an  old  Indian  recently, 
"and  they  shouldn't  be  fixed,  for  when 
they  do,  the  Indian  always  gets  the 
worst  of  it."  The  situation  could  not 
have  been  more  aptly  summed  up. 

Commenting  on  the  condition  of  the 
Red  Man  to-day,  a  recent  writer  has 
this  to  say: 

"Before  the  white  man  came,  the  In- 
dian lived  successfully  by  what  he 
gained  from  the  chase.  Then,  fur 
gathering  was  merely  a  side  line  with 
him.  With  the  establishing  of  fur 
posts  by  the  white  men  the  Indian  be- 
gan gradually  to  trap  more  and  hunt 
less,  depending  on  the  proceeds  from 
his  fur,  which  would  buy  white  man's 
grub  and  thus  make  up  the  deficit 
caused  from  his  neglecting  the  hunt." 

In  the  old  days,  an  Indian,  to  buy 
one  of  the  old-fashioned  long-barreled 
rifles  known  as  "trade  guns,"  was  re- 
quired to  pile  up  skins  one  upon  the 
other  until  they  reached  in  height 
from  the  butt  to  the  end  of  the  rifle 
barrel.  At  Fort  Nelson,  British  Co- 
lumbia, a  place  far  in  the  interior,  the 
following  prices  were  in  effect  in  Oc- 
tober, 1910:  Flour,  30  cents  a  pound; 
tea,  $1  a  pound;  bacon,  50  cents  a 


174 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


pound;  rolled  oats,  50  cents;  and  sul- 
phur matches,  $2  per  quarter  gross.  At 
Fort  Murray,  much  nearer  civilization, 
1914  prices  were  per  pound:  tea,  $1; 
flour,  20  cents;  sugar,  25  cents. 

Considering  these  prices,  which  are 
a  very  fair  sample  of  prices  charged 
to  the  Indians  in  many  parts  of  the 
North,  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  the 
Indian  is  as  well  off  as  a  trapper  for 
the  white  man  as  he  would  have  been 
by  remaining  an  independent  hunter. 

Fur  Values  by  Provinces. 

There  are  nearly  25,000  Indians  in 
Canada  engaged  in  hunting  and  trap- 
ping. Of  this  number  about  6,000  are 
Indians  and  Eskimos  in  the  far  North 
outside  the  boundaries  of  the  prov- 
inces. Quebec  and  British  Columbia 
each  have  4,660 ;  Northern  Ontario  has 
nearly  4,000;  Manitoba  and  Alberta, 
2,000;  Saskatchewan,  1,200;  and  the 
remainder  are  in  the  Maratime  prov- 
inces. These  hunters  are  equipped 
with  10,000  shot-guns  and  8,500  rifles, 
while  the  trappers  are  using  nearly 
150,000  traps  of  various  sorts. 

The  total  value  of  the  fur  catch  for 
1914  was  estimated  at  $1,176,540. 
Manitoba  led  with  a  trade  estimated 
at  almost  half  a  million  dollars.  The 
Indians  at  Norway  House  alone  had 
$333,500,  and  Fisher  River  $62,000 
from  the  sale  of  furs.  Saskatchewan 
in 'its  northern  reaches  was  responsible 
for  $242,174,  and  the  largest  producers 
were  the  Indians  at  Isle  la  Crosse  with 
$65,000  credited  through  the  sale  of 
skins.  Touchwood  Hills  reserve  fol- 
lowed closely  with  an  income  of  $62,- 
000;  Onion  Lake  had  $42,000;  Carl- 
ton,  $24,000;  and  Duck  Lake,  $20,000. 
The  wilds  of  Northern  Ontario,  which, 
however,  are  sparsely  settled  with  In- 
dian population,  gave  up  to  the  Red 
Men  furs  valued  at  $160,000.  Savanne 
Reserve  is  credited  with  $53,000  of 
this ;  Kenora  and  Fort  Francis,  beyond 
the  Great  Lakes  near  the  Manitoba 
boundary,  each  had  between  $25,000 
and  $30,000;  and  Sturgeon  Falls,  $16,- 
000.  The  province  of  British  Colum- 
bia, while  lying  largely  in  the  Rockies, 


is  not  a  large  producer  of  fur  in  so  far 
as  this  industry  affects  the  Indian.  The 
total  for  the  province  is  $143,700.  New 
Westminster  Indians  trapped  to  the 
value  of  $30,000;  Nass,  of  which  Met- 
lakatla  is  the  Indian  village,  gleaned 
$20,000  from  pelts ;  Stuart  Lake  ran  to 
$20,000  in  value;  while  Babine  and  Up- 
per Skeena  produced  to  the  worth  of 
$15,000.  Quebec  had  $116,000  in 
traps  and  chase,  Bersimis  and  Lake  St. 
John  getting  about  $44,000  each  of  this 
amount. 

Figures  that  would ,  accurately  rep- 
resent a  season's  fur  trade  among  the 
Indians  of  Yukon  territory,  the  North- 
west territories,  and  Ungava,  are  not 
available  and  are  not  included  in  the 
total  estimate  of  the  Indian  fur  trade 
in  Canada.  With  these  outposts  in- 
cluded, the  aggregate  would  probably 
run  to  a  million  and  a  quarter  of  dol- 
lars. With  these  figures  in  one's  mind 
it  will  not  be  difficult  to  realize  the  dire 
results  of  a  dead  fur  market.  The  De- 
partment of  Indian  Affairs,  of  course, 
has  been  able  to  draw  on  a  reserve  or 
"Trust  Fund"  amounting  to  some  $7,- 
653,000,  but  this  is  available  only  for 
treaty  Indians  living  on  reserves  with- 
in the  nine  provinces,  and  $5,000,000 
of  this  is  alloted  to  Ontario  alone. 

The  circumstance  which  makes  the 
situation  unfortunate  is  that  the  In- 
dians most  needing  aid  are  not  treaty 
Indians,  and  so,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  term,  not  wards  of  the  government. 
Provision,  however,  has  been  made  for 
these  by  special  grants  of  money  and 
supplies  distributed  through  agents  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  other 
fur  companies,  the  Royal  Northwest 
Mounted  Police,  and  other  sources. 
With  the  passing  of  winter  in  North- 
ern Canada,  the  suffering  will  not  be 
as  severe,  and  with  lakes  and  rivers 
open  to  navigation,  food  supplies  will 
be  more  easily  secured  and  trans- 
ported to  those  in  need.  The  Canadian 
Government  has  always  made  provi- 
sion for  its  Indian  wards,  and  in  this 
crisis  in  the  experience  of  the  Red 
Men  of  the  gun  and  traps,  the  legisla- 
tors at  Ottawa  have  not  been  found 
wanting. 


Value  of  Ideals  to  Church  and  World 


By   C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,   Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 


"Shapen  in  iniquity,  in  sin  did  my 
mother  conceive  me." — Psalm  61.5. 

BE  FRUITFUL  and  multiply"  was 
the  Divine  commission  to  our 
first  parents  before  they  sinned. 
The  entrance  of  sin  and  its  pen- 
alty, death,  brought  serious  impair- 
ments, mental,  moral  and  physical,  to 
our  race.  It  is  no  longer  natural  to  us 
to  do  right,  but  contrariwise,  as  St. 
Paul  declared,  "We  cannot  do  the 
things  that  we  would."  In  other  words 
we  are  constitutionally  defective,  be- 
cause of  mental  disloyalty  to  God.  Yet 
the  mind  can  rise  to  loftier  heights 
than  it  is  able  to  lift  the  body  and  its 
functions.  "To  will  is  present  with 
me,  but  how  to  perform  I  know  not." 
—Romans  7;  14-25. 

Many  are  grasping  after  this  great 
truth,  and  attempting  human  uplift 
through  eugenics,  etc.,  but  neverthe- 
less imperfectly  appreciate  what  they 
teach,  failing  to  see  the  matter  from 
the  Bible  standpoint.  The  mind,  the 
will,  the  body,  should  be  entirely  sub- 
mitted to  the  will  of  God.  Thus  only 
can  the  highest  good  be  possible.  This 
was  God's  requirement  of  our  first  par- 
ents. In  this  they  failed;  and  in  con- 
sequence mental,  moral  and  physical 
impairment  have  come  to  us  as  a  race. 
"All  have  sinned  and  come  short"  of 
the  glorious  standard  which  God  es- 
tablished. 

Best  Ideals  for  Sinners. 

The  Bible  divides  the  world  into 
two  classes;  the  mass  of  sinners  con- 
demned by  God  and  out  of  relationship 


with  Him;  and  the  few  who  have,  by 
covenant  with  the  Lord,  come  back  in- 
to relationship  with  Him  through  the 
merit  of  Christ.  We  shall  first  address 
the  world  of  sinners,  with  the  sugges- 
tion that,  while  they  cannot  hope  to  lift 
themselves  up  to  perfection  and  ever- 
lasting life,  they  can  do  much  toward 
the  uplift  of  themselves  and  their 
children  by  conforming  to  certain 
Scriptural  ideals.  The  world  already 
recognizes  this  in  considerable  meas- 
ure, but  not  sufficiently. 

All  should  know,  and  do  appreciate 
to  some  extent,  the  value  of  a  good 
example,  good  training  in  the  family. 
The  child  who  continually  hears 
coarse,  rude  expressions  in  the  home 
will  surely  grow  up  not  much  better 
than  those  surroundings,  if  not  worse. 
But  while  encouraging  high  ideals  in 
the  home — cleanliness,  gentleness, 
kindness — we  call  special  attention  to 
the  duty  of  parents  toward  their  child- 
ren before  birth.  Few  seem  to  realize 
that  the  general  attitude  of  a  mother's 
mind  birthmarks  her  child  either  for 
good  or  for  ill.  With  this  fact  recog- 
nized, surely  every  couple  would  feel 
their  responsibility  as  creators  of  a 
family.  If  they  realized  that  coarse, 
brutal,  selfish  words,  acts  and  thoughts 
would  be  impressed  upon  their  unborn 
child,  surely  they  would  strive  to 
avoid  these  before  their  child's  birth 
as  well  as  after  it.  If  they  realized 
that  noble  words,  conduct,  thoughts 
and  ideals  during  the  period  of  gesta- 
tion, would  be  imprinted  upon  their 
child,  how  greatly  would  they  strive 
to  have  children  that  would  be  not  only 


176 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


beautiful  in  appearance,  but  noble  in 
character. 

Horsemen  recognize  this  principle; 
and  when  a  racing  mare  is  in  foal,  her 
intelligent  owner,  desiring  to  breed  a 
fine  colt,  will  give  the  mother  every 
attention.  Her  condition  will  be  hap- 
pifying  and  comfortable.  She  will  be 
led  to  the  race  track,  there  to  see 
other  horses  running,  trotting,  etc., 
that  thus  her  colt  may  be  birthmarked 
for  speed.  How  much  people  will  do 
for  money,  and  how  often  they  forget 
to  do  for  their  own  families  what  they 
think  to  do  for  their  horses!  But  the 
world  is  awakening.  A  New  Dispen- 
sation is  about  to  be  ushered  in,  and 
its  light  has  been  streaming  over  the 
world  during  the  past  forty  years,  giv- 
ing us  increasing  knowledge  and 
higher  ideals  of  the  good,  the  true,  the 
noble,  the  beautiful. 

Our  horticulturists  have  already 
caught  the  fever  of  the  New  Age,  and 
are  presenting  to  us  fruits  and  flowers 
that  are  marvelous.  Our  newspapers 
are  giving  us  beautiful  photogravures. 
Art  is  becoming  cheap.  Every  home 
should  be  well  supplied,  when  the  cost 
need  be  no  more  than  the  time  to  clip 
from  the  paper  and  to  arrange  taste- 
fully upon  the  wall.  Ideal  homes  are 
everywhere  being  arranged,  and  even 
the  poorest  to-day  have  much  in  life 
to  cheer  and  refresh.  Let  us  lift  our 
ideals,  and  make  the  most  of  life, 
however  cramped  our  financial  condi- 
tion. The  will  to  do  is  what  is  needed, 
and  where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a 
way. 

Christian  Ideals  the  Best. 

Before  the  Christian,  our  Lord  sets 
the  very  highest  ideals:  "Be  like  unto 
your  Father  in  Heaven" — not  that 
Christians  can  be  all  that  the  Heav- 
enly Father's  character  expresses,  but 
that  this  is  to  be  their  ideal  or  aim  in 
life.  Only  God  can  know  when  they 
are  doing  their  best;  and  He  assures 
them  that  He  will  judge  them,  not  ac- 
cording to  their  success,  but  according 
to  their  endeavor  to  live  up  to  their 
ideals,  and  the  sacrifices  they  make  in 
order  closely  to  attain  those  ideals. 


What  we  have  said  of  the  home  and 
ideals  of  sinners — of  those  who  have 
not  come  into  relationship  with  God 
through  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ — is  still 
more  true  of  real  Christians,  begotten 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  adopted  into 
the  family  of  God.  Ideal  homes,  ideal 
children,  ideal  relationships  every  way, 
are  pre-eminently  their  privilege  and 
duty;  and  they  have  much  advantage 
over  others  in  respect  to  this  matter. 
Have  they  not  received  the  begetting 
of  the  Spirit?  Have  they  not  become 
followers  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ? 
Have  they  not  been  taught  in  the 
School  %of  Christ?  (Romans  8:9.) 
Have  they  not  knowledge  to  under- 
stand that  the  Spirit  of  Christ  mani- 
fests itself  in  meekness,  gentleness, 
patience,  long-suffering,  brotherly 
kindness,  love !  Have  they  not  learned 
that  any  other  spirit  than  this — such  as 
anger,  malice,  hatred,  envy  and  strife, 
works  of  the  flesh  and  the  Devil — is 
contrary  to  the  Spirit  of  Christ  ?  Have 
they  not  resolved  to  put  away  all  these 
and  to  put  on  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit 
of  Christ?  They  have  adopted  these 
ideals  and  are  working  along  this  line. 

True,  some  of  them  by  nature  may 
be  very  deficient,  very  degraded;  but 
because  God  is  no  respecter  of  per- 
sons, He  accepts  all  who  come  to  Him 
through  Christ.  Those  naturally  de- 
ficient, those  naturally  much  fallen, 
may  have  the  more  difficulty  approxi- 
mating their  ideals,  but  they  will 
surely  be  making  progress;  and  those 
who  have  known  them  before  will  take 
note  of  them,  that  they  have  been  with 
Jesus  and  learned  of  Him.  God  will 
perceive  the  thoughts  and  intents  of 
their  hearts;  and  they  will  have  His 
blessing  in  proportion  as  they  are 
striving  to  be  God-like. 

Let  Us  Awake  to  the  True  Situation. 

The  children  of  Christians  should  be 
pre-eminently  beautiful,  both  in  fea- 
ture and  in  character;  for  Christians 
have  the  highest  ideals,  and  should, 
more  than  others,  put  these  into  prac- 
tice. Moreover,  they  have  Divine  as- 
sistance, through  the  Scriptures  and 
through  God's  providential  direction  in 


VALUE  OF  IDEALS  TO  CHURCH    AND  WORLD. 


177 


their  affairs,  that  they  might  know, 
appreciate  and  use  the  things  freely 
given  to  them  of  God  as  His  children. 

But  alas!  Many  are  Christians  only 
in  name,  having  never  entered  into  a 
covenant  with  the  Lord.  They  have 
neither  part  nor  lot  in  the  things  of 
God.  Others,  who  have  truly  given 
up  themselves  to  the  Lord,  have  been 
sadly  neglected  as  respects  lessons  in 
the  School  of  Christ.  The  great  re- 
ligious institutions  of  the  world  are 
not  teaching  the  highest  ideals,  but  in- 
stead are  separating  the  people  from 
those  highest  ideals  by  misrepresenta- 
tions of  the  Divine  character  and  the 
Divine  Plan. 

Let  us  awake  to  the  true  situation, 
awake  to  our  privileges  as  children  of 
God,  awake  to  the  true  teaching  of  the 
Bible.  These  direct  not  only  that  our 
conduct  toward  men  shall  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  Golden  Rule,  but  that 
we  shall  go  beyond  this  and  have  a 
love  which  will  delight  in  doing  good 
unto  all  men,  as  we  have  opportunity, 
especially  unto  the  Household  of 
Faith.  It  will  go  further,  and  take 
hold  upon  the  very  thoughts  and  in- 
tents of  the  heart.  The  Christian  is 
under  direct  obligation  to  the  Lord 
to  do  His  will ;  and  that  will,  he  is  in- 
formed, takes  notice  not  merely  of  his 
actions  and  words,  but  of  his  very 
thoughts  as  well. — Philippians  4 :8. 

Happy  the  child  who  has  such  par- 
entage, and  especially  so  if  the  par- 
ents have  been  guided  by  an  apprecia- 
tion of  the  fact  that  the  mother's  mind 
during  the  period  of  gestation  will 
mark  the  child  for  life.  Happy  the 
child  who  has  a  mother  thus  fully  com- 
mitted to  God,  intent  upon  doing  His 
will  and  appreciative  of  His  high 
ideals!  Happy  the  child  who  has  a 
father  similarly  devoted  to  God  and 
noble  ideals,  who  will  help  his  wife 
at  this,  the  most  critical  time  of  her 
experience  as  a  mother,  not  only  by 
providing  for  her  comfort  of  body  and 
rest  of  mind,  but  by  assisting  her  to 
noble  sentiments  of  justice,  mercy, 
love,  kindness,  and,  by  drawing  her 
attention  to  things  beautiful,  lovely, 
happifying!  Oh,  what  a  beautiful 


character  might  not  such  a  child  have ! 
What  a  blessing  to  be  born  with  such 
a  heritage,  and  then  to  be  consecrated 
to  God  and  His  service! 

"Forbidding  to  Marry." 

St.  Paul  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  some,  getting  out  of  harmony  with 
the  Divine  arrangement,  will  forbid 
marriage.  Such  should  remember  that 
God  originally  said:  "Be  fruitful  and 
multiply,"  but  we  may  well  urge  upon 
them  the  importance  of  seeing  that  the 
children  they  bring  into  the  world 
come  into  it  with  as  much  blessing  as 
possible — as  free  from  the  curse  of 
sin  as  possible. 

Be  it  remembered,  however,  that  St. 
Paul  pointed  out  that  the  Church  of 
Christ  has  a  different  mission  in  the 
world  from  others.  Her  mission  is  not 
the  propagation  of  the  human  species, 
but  co-operation  with  God  in  the  work 
of  the  present  time ;  namely,  the  devel- 
opment of  the  New  Creation.  The 
coming  Age  will  be  the  time  for  Christ 
and  the  Church,  as  the  Heavenly 
Bridegroom  and  the  Heavenly  Bride, 
to  take  over  the  world  of  mankind  by 
resurrection,  regeneration.  Now,  as 
the  Apostle  suggests,  is  the  time  in 
which  the  Church  is  to  make  her  own 
calling  and  election  sure  to  the  Divine 
nature,  that  she  may  become  "the 
Bride,  the  Lamb's  Wife."  It  is  her 
privilege,  also,  to  carry  the  Message  of 
this  High  Calling  to  those  who  now 
have  ears  to  hear.  Thus  she  becomes 
God's  mouthpiece,  or  ambassador,  in 
finding,  calling,  instructing  and  help- 
ing all  who  accept  the  Divine  invi- 
tation, and  enter  into  covenant  rela- 
tionship with  God  through  Christ  as 
New  Creatures. 

It  is  in  view  of  this  important  work 
that  the  Apostle  suggests  that  those  of 
the  Church  who  can  do  so  should  con- 
sider it  a  privilege  to  forego  marriage, 
that  they  may  live  celibate  lives  as 
Jesus  did,  and  as  St.  Paul  himself  is 
supposed  to  have  done — not  that  celi- 
bacy of  itself  need  be  considered  a 
necessity  for  the  perfecting  of  the 
Divine  character,  but  that  its  practice 
will  give  increased  opportunity  for 


178 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


serving  the  King  of  Kings.  Many 
zealous  Christians  feel,  as  St.  Paul  felt, 
that  the  time  is  short  and  their  oppor- 
tunities few  for  rendering  service  unto 
the  Lord  and  His  Cause.  Hence  if 
marriage  would  interfere  in  any  meas- 
ure with  this,  their  highest  privilege, 
they  would  gladly  forego  a  measure  of 
earthly  happiness  and  privilege,  to  be 
more  efficient  servants  of  the  Lord. 

This  same  thought  is  expressed  by 
Jesus,  saying :  "Some  have  made  them- 
selves eunuchs  for  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven's  sake."  (Matthew  19:12); 
that  is,  have  denied  themselves  their 
privileges  and  rights  as  human  beings, 
in  order  to  render  the  better  service  to 
the  Lord.  But  such  a  matter  is  a  sac- 
rifice, a  privilege,  and  not  a  command, 
not  an  obligation.  Whoever  chooses 
may  sacrifice,  and  should  not  be  criti- 
cised therefor.  Whoever  prefers  not 
to  sacrifice  should  not  be  criticised  on 
that  account.  To  his  own  master  each 
servant  stands  or  falls. 

Business  Ideals. 

We  must  remember  that  the  Bible 
has  no  communication  whatever  for 
those  who  are  not  Christians.  The 
Christian  business  man  may  to  some 
extent  be  copied  by  his  neighbors.  But 
his  own  responsibility  is  the  matter  in 
which  he  is  interested  most.  A  busi- 
ness man's  ideal  is  the  Golden  Rule. 
"Do  unto  others  as  you  would  that 
they  should  do  unto  you,"  applies  to 
his  buying,  his  selling,  to  his  dealing 
with  his  clerks  and  with  his  customers. 
It  includes  his  advertising,  and  the 
ideals  which  he  sets  before  his  clerks. 

We  believe  that  more  and  more  the 
Golden  Rule  is  coming  to  be  appreci- 
ated by  the  public,  and  that  those  who 
follow  it  will  more  and  more  receive 
a  blessing.  We  do  not  mean  that  it 
will  make  them  richer  than  their  neigh- 
bors, who  may  follow  the  other  rule 
sometimes  quoted:  Do  your  neighbors 
as  you  believe  he  would  do  you;  but 
do  him  first,  before  he  can  do  you.  But 
whether  following  the  Golden  Rule 
shall  bring  little  success  or  much  suc- 
cess, the  business  man  who  has  given 
his  heart  to  the  Lord  and  become  a  son 


of  God  must  follow  the  Golden  Rule. 
He  can  do  no  less,  though  he  is  privi- 
ledged  to  do  as  much  more  as  he 
chooses  in  the  way  of  benevolences. 

A  business  man's  ideals  should  have 
some  bearing  upon  his  manner  of  doing 
business,  as  well  as  the  character  of 
the  stock  he  offers  for  sale.  The 
Christian  business  man's  store  should 
be  known  as  a  place  where  trash  and 
injurious  things  would  not  be  found. 

Social  and  Neighborly  Ideals. 

The  true  Christian  is  to  remember 
that  nothing  less  than  the  Golden  Rule 
may  be  followed  by  him  under  any 
circumstances.  He  must  see  to  it  that 
his  children,  his  chickens,  his  dogs, 
etc.,  do  not  disturb  his  neighbors  in 
their  proper  rights.  The  same  Golden 
Rule  requires  of  him  that  he  shall  do 
a  neighbor's  part  for  any  one  in  dis- 
tress, even  as  he  would  have  a  neigh- 
bor do  for  him  if  he  were  in  trouble. 
"Do  good  and  lend,  hoping  for  noth- 
ing again,"  is  to  be  exemplified  in  the 
Christian,  with  the  understanding  that 
he  is  not  to  do  lending  that  would  im- 
pair his  own  credit,  nor  seriously  inter- 
fere with  his  own  obligations  to  his 
family.  Moreover,  proper  lending 
would  be  merely  in  cases  of  necessity. 
He  is  not  to  be  neighborly  because  he 
hopes  the  neighbor  will  return  the 
compliment,  but  because  from  the 
Word  of  God  he  has  received  high 
ideals  of  a  proper  neighbor,  and  be- 
cause he  wishes  to  live  up  to  the  Divine 
requirement,  doing  good  as  he  has  op- 
portunity, and  especially  unto  the 
Household  of  Faith. 

The  Christian  may  not  have  time  to 
waste  in  some  of  the  social  amenities 
common  to  our  day.  He  is  a  repre- 
sentative and  ambassador  of  the  King 
of  kings  and  Lord  of  lords.  His  time, 
his  influence,  his  talents,  are  not  his 
'own.  They  are  to  be  used  according 
to  his  judgment  of  the  Lord's  will.  He 
may  not,  therefore,  seem  to  be  as  so- 
ciable as  some  might  desire.  He  will 
have  no  time  to  kill  in  games  or  amuse- 
ments. He  has  come  to  a  realization 
that  "Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest;"  and 
that  while  there  is  so  much  sin  and 


Please  Mention  Overland  Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


INSIDE  INN 


EXPOSITION 
HOTEL 


Located  Wiihin  the 
Qrounds 


1100 


Rates  $2. 00  per  Day 
and  Upward 


Management  of   ALBERT  BETTENS 


A  PERFECT  TONNEAU  SHIELD  AT  LAST ! 

EASILY  ATTACHED  TO  ANY  CAR — OLD  OR  NEW 

AUSTER    EXTENDING    TONNEAU    SHIELD 

(U.  S.  Patent  1911) 

Affords  absolute  protection  from  wind,  dust, 
rain  and  back  draft.  Makes  an  open  car  com- 
fortable even  on  the  coldest,  windiest,  dusti- 
est day.  Lets  you  "get  the  air  "  without  the 
wind,  and  enjoy  sunshine  and  light  without 
the  dust.  When  fully  extended  with  the  top 
up,  it  practically  converts  an  open  car  into 
a  Closed  Car. 

Easily  fitted  to  ANY  Car;  instantly  adjustable  to  ANY  po- 
sition; absolutely  rigid  where  placed.     Does  not  vibrate  or 
rattle.    Does  not  interfere  with  entrance  or  exit  to  car. 
folded  up  OUT  OF  THE  WAY  when  not  needed. 
The  Auster  is  NO  EXPERIMENT.    It  is  the 
ORIGINAL    adjustable     extending     shield 
which  has  achieved  popularity  in  England 
and  Europe  for  years  past.    Over  50.000  have 
been  sold  in  England  and  France  alone.    No 
other  collapsible  shield  for  Tonneau  CAN  be 
made  without  infringing  our  patents, 

Put  it  on  your  old  car  now.    WHEN  BUY- 
ING A  NEW  CAR  INSIST  on  an  Auster  being 
part  of  your  equipment.    Don't  wait,  order  an 
Auster  TODAY  before  you  forget  it. 
Showing  Shield  Extended  in  Actual  Use 

See  our  exhibit  at  the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition — Rhode  Island  Section 

FRYER-AUSTER     COMPANY 

1547     BROADWAY,     NEW    YORK,     N.     Y.  11     PINE    ST.,     PROVIDENCE,     R.    h 

Sole  Owners  and  Manufacturers  in  U.  S.  A. 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


sorrow  in  the  world,  he  may  not  fritter 
away  his  precious  moments  in  idleness 
or  in  that  which  is  merely  pleasurable, 
but  not  really  profitable.  This  will  not 
mean  that  he  shall  not  take  any  time 
to  look  after  the  interests  of  his  fam- 
ily in  a  social  way  and  to  keep  in  touch 
with  his  social  obligations  as  a  neigh- 
bor. It  would  make  him  dignified,  and 
first  of  all,  loyal  to  God. 

Our  ideals  are  merely  fantasies, 
floating  clouds  without  rain,  until  we 
bring  them  to  the  point  of  determina- 


tion— until  we  consecrate  our  lives  to 
these  ideals  and  resolve  to  live  in  har- 
mony with  them.  Here  the  Christian 
has  much  advantage  every  way,  for 
he  not  only  has  his  ideals  from  the 
Lord,  but  the  promise  of  Divine  over- 
sight, blessing,  guidance  and  assist- 
ance in  working  out  these  ideals  in  his 
own  heart  and  in  his  life. 


On  post-card  request  I  will  loan  my 
readers  a  book  on  "Practical  Eugen- 
ics." Address  me,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 


In   the    Realm   of   Bookland 


"Literary  California,"  by  Ella  Sterling 

Mighels. 

When  Mrs,  Ella  Sterling  Mighels, 
then  Ella  Sterling  Cummins,  issued  the 
"Story  of  the  Files,"  in  1893,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  California  Columbian 
Exposition  Commission,  the  exigencies 
of  space  and  time  prevented  Mrs. 
Mighels  from  giving  as  broad  a  survey 
of  California  letters  as  she  wished. 
The  scope  of  that  work  was,  as  the  title 
indicates,  limited  to  the  files,  meaning 
by  that  the  history  of  the  early  Cali- 
fornian  magazines,  as  well  as  the  daily 
press  of  the  State.  While  to  a  more 
or  less  satisfactory  extent,  the  litera- 
ture of  the  State  was  represented  in  the 
specimens  and  extracts  collected  and 
exhibited  of  the  various  Californian 
writers  whose  name  and  fame  are  in- 
dissolubly  associated  with  the  history 
of  our  State,  nevertheless  the  limita- 
tions indicated  prevented  the  represen- 
tation from  being  as  broad  or  as  thor- 
ough as  could  be  desired. 

From  that  time,  nearly  23  years  ago, 
Mrs.  Mighels  has  been  working  stead- 
ily upon  her  scrap  books,  notes  and 
files.  She  has  always  had  in  mind 
the  project  of  presenting  a  broad  sur- 
vey of  Literary  California,  but  not 
until  the  opening  of  the  Panama-Pacific 
International  Exposition  was  this  hope 
in  any  measure  to  be  fulfilled.  This 
work,  pronounced  by  Mr.  George  Ham- 
lin  Fitch  as  being  perhaps  the  most  im- 


portant literary  achievement  of  any 
Californian  for  Literary  California, 
will  be  dedicated  to  the  Native  Sons 
and  daughters  of  California,  by  per- 
mission accorded  from  those  organiza- 
tions through  Hon.  John  F.  Davis  and 
Mrs.  Margaret  G.  Hill,  their  respective 
Grand  Presidents. 

The  title  selected  for  the  book  is 
"Literary  California;"  portraits,  to- 
gether with  extracts  in  prose  and  poe- 
try of  California  writers. 

Present  plans  contemplate  three  edi- 
tions. The  first  issue,  limited  to  26 
copies,  lettered  from  A  to  Z,  to  be 
known  as  the  Patrons'  Edition.  74 
copies,  from  number  27  to  100,  num- 
bered and  signed,  will  be  known  as 
the  Contributors'  Edition,  no  copies  to 
be  sold  to  other  than  those  whose  work 
appears  in  this  compilation  or  to  the 
relatives  of  those  whose  work  appears 
in  "Literary  California."  Two  thou- 
sand four  hundred  copies  of  the  "Cali- 
fornia Edition"  will  be  issued  for  pub- 
lic sale. 

Published  by  John  J.  Newbegin,  San 
Francisco,  California. 

"The  Near  East  from  Within." 

"The  Near  East"  is  just  now  attract- 
ing the  attention  of  the  world.  The 
Balkans,  Roumania,  Turkey,  Italy  and 
their  relations  to  Austria,  Germany  and 
Russia,  form  a  large  part  of  the  Euro- 
pean war  situation,  and  must  be  con- 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


Leghorn   Breeders ! 

i 


in  your  subscription 
Leghorn  Journal  and  keep  posted  on 
the  progress  of  the  Leghorn  industry; 
as  it  is  devoted  exclusively  to  the  dif- 
ferent Leghorn  fowls.  Subscription 
§-  price  5Oc.  per  year.  Special  offer- 
Send  us  lOc.  and  the  names  of  five 
of  your  neighbors  interested  in  Leg- 
horns and  we  will  send  you  The 
Leghorn  Journal  for  three  months. 

LEGHORN    JOURNAL 

APPOMATTOX,   VA. 


S 
I 
J 

LTHE 
\^**Z 


American     Open    Air 
School  Journal 

Devoted  to  the  purpose  of  Vitalizing  school  children 
by  means  of  fresh  air  class-rooms  and  Open  Air 
Schools.  Official  organ  of  the  American  Open  Air 
School  Association,  a  national  society  for  the  ex- 
tension of  fresh  air  schools.  Beautifully  printed  and 
profusely  illustrated;  contains  reports  of  practical 
work  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 
Interests  thoughtful  parents,  Health  Officials,  Edu- 
cators, School  Medical  Inspectors,  whole  com- 
munities.  Not  a  Juvenile  publication,  but  a  Big 
Man's  Journal.  Issued  monthly  at  $1.00  per  year; 
each  number  worth  ten  times  its  cost.  1140  Real 
Estate  Trust  Building,  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.  S.  A. 
Subscribe  for  it  today. 


ACharming  Complexion 

Preserves,  beautifies  and  purifies 
the  skin  and  complexion.  The 
favorite  for  over  66  years. 

Gouraud's 

Oriental  Cream 

We  will  send  a  complexion  cham- 
ois and  book  of  Powder  leaves 
for  15c.  to  cover  cost  of  mailing 
and  wrapping. 

At   Druggists  and  Department   Stores 
*      FERD.  T.  HOPKINS  &  SON 
37  Great  Jones  St..  New  York  City. 


L. 


EXCLUSIVE  COUNTY  REPRESENTATIVES  WANTED 

BIG  MONEY  FOR  THE  RIGHT  MEN 

We  can  put  1,000  men  to  work  for  themselves 
within  30  days  if  the  right  men  will  only  answer  this 
offer:  If  you  have  just  a  few  dollars  to  invest,  here 
is  your  opportunity  to  get  into  high-class,  profitable, 
permanent  business,  with  a  million  dollar  company 
right  back  of  you  every  minute. 

Write  For  Our  1915  Selling  Contract 

Don't  waste  your  time,  and  ours,  writing,  unless 
you  mean  business.  No  former  selling  experience 
necessary — just  a  clean  character,  a  natural  American  Hustle,  and  a  few  dollars, 
is  all  you  need.  Never  was  there  a  better  time  than  right  now  to  make  this 
start  for  yourself.  Don't  wait — write  at  once. 

If  not  interested  please  show  to  a  friend 


Fox  Typewriter  Co. 

4806-4816  Front  Ave.,  Grand  Rapids,  Mich. 


From  Overland  Monthly  for  August 
Name 


Address 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


sidered  as  vital  elements  entering  into 
the  mighty  problem.  What  influences 
have  been  moving  them,  under  the  sur- 
face of  things,  what  personalities  have 
dominated  them,  by  what  intrigues 
they  have  been  effected,  cannot  fail 
to  be  of  profound  interest;  and  a  book 
revealing  these,  written  out  of  large 
familiarity,  will  certainly  command 
respect  and  popularity.  The  contents 
of  this  new  and  timely  volume  con- 
sist, we  are  told,  "of  the  diplomatic 
reminiscences  of  a  former  political 
agent,"  who  is  said  to  have  been  in 
Constantinople  during  three  separate 
crises,  and  who  claims  to  give  in  "The 
Near  East  from  Within,"  the  under- 
current  facts  about  Turkish  conditions, 
and  about  the  men  responsible  for 
these;  about  Russian  and  German  en- 
tanglements; the  failures  of  Balkan 
and  other  subordinate  nationalities  to 
achieve  their  purposes,  etc.  His 
anonymous  recitals  begin  with  Abdul 
Hamid,  in  1888.  Thirteen  photogra- 
vure illustrations  present  as  many  fig- 
ures notable  among  conspicuous  char- 
acters in  "The  Near  East." 

Published  by  Funk  &  Wagnals,  New 
York. 

"A  History  of  Persia,"  by  Lt.-Colonel 
Sykes. 

According  to  the  author,  just  a  cen- 
tury has  elapsed  since  the  publication 
of  Sir  John  Malcolm's  "History  of 
Persia."  In  this  long  period  the  mys- 
tery of  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  has 
been  solved,  Susa  has  yielded  up  its 
secrets,  and  in  many  other  directions 
a  notable  advance  has  been  effected. 
Each  important  discovery  has  been 
embodied  in  some  work  of  special 
value,  but  no  book  has  been  written 
dealing  with  Persia  as  a  whole  and  em- 
bodying the  rich  fruits  of  this  modern 
research. 

"After  much  hesitation  I  have  at- 
temped  to  fill  what  is  undoubtedly  a 
serious  gap;  for  Persia  has  exercised 
considerable  influence,  extending  over 
many  centuries,  on  Greece,  on  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  and  consequently  on 
Europe.  My  primary  aim  has  been  to 
furnish  fellow  officials  serving  in  Per- 


sia and  adjoining  countries,  and  stu- 
dents, with  a  work  which  is,  as  far  as 
possible,  self-contained  and  complete. 
With  this  object  I  have  focused  what 
is  known  of  the  ancient  empires  in 
their  relations  with  Elam,  Media,  and 
Persia;  and  I  have  dealt  somewhat 
more  fully  than  would  otherwise  have 
been  necessary  with  such  subjects  as 
the  rise  of  Macedonia.  Having  en- 
joyed the  great  advantage  of  twenty- 
one  years'  residence  and  travel  in  Per- 
sia, I  am  able  to  present  certain  facts 
more  vividly  than  would  have  been 
possible,  without  the  special  knowl- 
edge thus  gained.  I  also  claim  to  have 
acquired  to  some  extent  the  Persian 
point  of  view. 

Price,  $15;  by  post  extra.  Published 
by  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


"Bred   in  the   Desert,"     by     Marcus 
Horton. 

This  story  ought  to  satisfy  all  lovers 
of  animals  and  especially  those  who 
love  a  good  horse.  Seldom  is  a  story 
of  this  kind  so  free  from  merely  su- 
perinduced sentiment,  so  genuine  in  its 
feeling,  so  evidently  inspired  not 
merely  by  real  affection,  but  by  real 
and  intimate  knowledge.  Mr.  Horton 
writes  with  a  keenness  of  observation 
and  a  gift  of  sympathetic  interpreta- 
tion that  is  possible  to  few.  He  gives 
us  pictures  of  the  colt,  in  his  kittenish 
pranks,  his  affections,  and  his  dejec- 
tions, that  are  as  lifelike  as  they  are 
freshly  attractive.  He  reveals  his  mo- 
tives, too — his  fears,  his  curiosities, 
his  resentments,  in  a  manner  that  com- 
pletely wins  one's  interest.  And  at  the 
same  time  that  he  keeps  the  horse, 
with  wonderful  naturalness,  almost  al- 
ways in  the  foreground,  he  tells  a  story 
of  human  beings  that  is  well  worth 
reading  in  itself. 

Pat  was  born  in  the  Southwestern 
desert,  the  property  of  a  quite  worth- 
less Mexican.  He  soon  revealed  the 
fact  that  he  was  an  "aristocrat;"  in- 
deed, so  handsome  was  he  that  his 
master  expected  to  realize  what  was 
to  him  a  small  fortune  from  his  sale. 
But  on  the  way  to  market  Pat  man- 
aged to  lose  himself  at  a  crowded 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


Ix 


THE  TURKISH  CIGARETTE 


THOUSANDS  of  smokers  of 
•*•  25  cent  brands  have  tried 


MURADS,  adopted  MURADS, 
and  remained  loyal  to  MURADS  — 
because  they  like  MURADS  better. 


Today  MURADS  are  the  largest-selling 
15  cent  Turkish  cigarette,  not  only 
in  America,  but  in  the  world. 


Makers  of  the  Highest  Grade 
Turkish  and  Egyptian  Cigar- 
ettes in  the  World. 


.UMUhW  July  «0.  I 


F.     MARRIOTT,     Publisher 

A  Journal  for  the  Cultured 
Oldest  and  Brightest  Week- 
ly Newspaper  on  the  Paci- 
fic Coast.  10  Cents  Per  Copy 


OVERLAND   MONTHLY 


crossing.  But  it  was  a  lucky  thing  for 
him,  on  the  whole,  for  now  Pat  was 
adopted  into  a  rich  family,  and  his 
new  mistress,  Helen  Richards,  loved 
him  very  dearly.  How  Pat  grew  and 
found  himself,  how  he  learned  his 
world  and  inspired  respect  both  in  the 
other  horses  and  in  the  stableman,  are 
told  with  sympathy  and  humor. 

Published  by  Harper  &  Brothers, 
Franklin  Square,  New  York. 

"L.  P.  M.,  or  The  End  of  the  Great 
War."     By  J.  Stewart  Barney.     Il- 
lustrated with  frontispiece  in  color, 
by  Clarence  Underwood. 
J.  F.  Edestone,  an  American  million- 
aire  scientist,  who  has  decided  that 
war  must  cease,  succeeds  in  perfecting 
a  startling  invention,  which,  properly 
used,  places  the  controller  of  its  power 
in  a  supreme  position. 

Armed  with  credentials  from  the 
United  States — acquired  after  an  in- 
teresting and  amusing  interview  with 
the  Secretary  of  State — he  sails  for 
Europe  to  gain  a  hearing  from  each  of 
the  belligerent  powers. 

England  receives  him  at  first  skep- 
tically and  then  in  amazement;  finally 
agreeing  to  accept  him  as  a  Minister 
Extraordinary  to  arrange  terms  of 


peace ;  France  also  accepts  him  in  this 
role;  but  in  Germany  he  meets  with 
serious  complications,  culminating  in 
a  word-war  with  the  Kaiser,  followed, 
as  becomes  necessary,  by  a  thrilling 
escape  and  a  demonstration  of  the 
great  power  at  his  command. 

The  author  has  given  us  a  story 
which  really  lives  and  moves.  His 
characters  are  convincing,  many  of 
them  being  evidently  drawn  from  real 
life,  and  his  situations  are  most  plaus- 
ible. The  exposition  of  the  workings 
of  the  German  Secret  Service  in  Eng- 
land is  especially  interesting  and  pro- 
vides the  "peace  at  any  price"  Ameri- 
can with  food  for  thought. 

Published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons, 
New  York. 


"The  Auction  Mart,"  by  Sydney 
Tremayne.  The  story  of  a  girl  of  tem- 
perament, "modern-looking — the  per- 
sonification of  twentieth-century  fem- 
ininity," who,  dissatisfied  with  her 
home  environment,  sets  out  to  earn  her 
living  and  becomes  a  famous  dancer. 
The  end  of  the  story  proves  that  the 
ties  of  home  and  love  were  stronger 
than  she  had  supposed. 

Published  by  John  Lane  &  Co.,  The 
Bodley  Head,  New  York. 


Great  Success  of  the  Swiss-Italian 
Colony  in  /taking  Fine  Champagne 


IN    THE    judgment    of    successful 
California  vineyardists    the     wine 
making  of  this  State  is    only     40 
years  old.    Its  practical  success  be- 
gan when  Arpad  Haraszthy  was  com- 
missioned by  the  Legislature  at  Sac- 
ramento to  visit  Europe  and  select  the 
best  vine  cuttings  to  graft  on  the  home 
stock.    Thereby  Haraszthy  introduced 
the  Zinfandel  grape  wine  that  proved 
so  successful  in  pioneering  the     way 
for  a  better  variety  and  grade.     The 
next  conspicuous  lift  given  the  indus- 
try came   six  years  later,  when  An- 


drea Sbarboro  organized  the  Italian- 
Swiss  Agricultural  Colony,  and  estab- 
lished the  immense  vineyard  and  cel- 
lars at  Asti,  Sonoma  County.  The 
success  of  the  venture  was  so  remark- 
able that  other  vineyards  were  estab- 
lished by  the  company  in  sections  "of 
the  State  where  the  soil  and  sun  ex- 
posure were  best  adapted  for  certain 
varieties  of  rich  wine  grapes. 

This  royal  success  in  wine  making 
was  crowned  recently  in  the  greatest 
of  all  wine  contests  held  in  the  world, 
the  competitive  exhibits  of  wines  at 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xi 


You  Can  Easily  Make 
$25  to  $50  Per  Week 

as  Chauffeur  or  Repair 
Man.     SEND  TODAY 

for  our  FREE  illustrated  Book  re- 
garding our  method  of  up-to-date 
SIMPLIFIED  instruction.  Free 
Models  to  all  students.  We  assist 
-=^  you  to  secure  position.  ( 

"Perfectly  simple.     You         PRACTICAL  AUTO  SCHOOL 
can  do  it.  if  I  can."      66-X  Bearer  St.  New  York 


MANZANITA     HALL 

PALO    ALTO,     CALIFORNIA 

Makes  a  specialty  of  preparing  boys  and  young  men 
for  entrance  to  the  universities.  The  location,  adjacent 
to  Stanford  University  and  to  Palo  Alto,  a  town  of  re- 
markable culture,  makes  possible  a  school  life  of  unusual 
advantages  and  opportunities. 

For  catalogue  and  specific  information,  address 

W.  A.  SHEDD,  Head  Master 


COMFORT  SELF  HEATING  IRONS 

Two  points.  Both  Ends  are 
front  Ends;  Costs  &  cent  per 
hour  to  operate.  Burns  live 
hours  on  one  filling  of  gaso- 
line. Lights  in  30  seconds. 
The  heat  can  be  regulated  to 
any  degree  and  maintained  to 
suit  work  in  hand,  Saves  its 
cost  in  a  few  months,  also 
saves  thousands  of  steps  and 
eliminates  discomfort.  No 
more  hot  stoves  necessary. 
The  Comfort  is  entirely  portable  and  will  operate  outdoors 
or  indoors.  Satisfaction  guaranteed.  Buy  at  your  local 
dealers  or  write  us  direct  and  send  your  dealers  name. 

NATIONAL  STAMPING  &  ELECTRIC  WORKS 
438  S.  Clinton  St. Chicago,  Illinois 

DIVIDEND    NOTICE. 

The    German    Savings    and    Loan    Society 
(The   German    Bank) 

For  the  half  year  ending  June  30,  1915,  a  dividend 
has  been  declared  at  the  rate  of  four  (4)  per  cent 
per  annum  on  all  deposits,  payable  on  and  after 
Thursday,  July  1,  1915.  Dividends  not  called  for  are 
added  to  the  deposit  account  and  earn  dividends 
from  July  1,  1915. 

GEORGE  TOURNY,  Manager. 

Office — 525   California  St.,   San  Francisco. 

DIVIDEND  NOTICE. 

The  Hibernia  Savings  and  Loan  Society. 
For  the  half  year  ending  June  30,  1915,  a  dividend 
has  been  declared  at  the  rate  of  four  (4)  per  cent 
per  annum  -on  all  deposits,  payable  on  and  after 
Thursday,  July  1,  1915.  Dividends  not  drawn  will  be 
added  to  depositors'  accounts,  become  a  part  there- 
of, and  will  earn  dividends  from  July  1,  1915.  De- 
posits made  on  or  before  July  12,  1915,  will  draw  in- 
terest from  July  1,  1915. 

R.  M.   TOBIN,   Secretary. 
Office — Corner  Market,  McAllister  and  Jones  Sts. 


Freight  Forwarding  Co. 

household  goods  to  and  from  all  points  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  443  Marquette  Building,  Chicago 

640  Old  South  Bldg..  Boston  I  1501  Wright  Bldg.,  St.  Louis 
324  Whitehall  Bldg.,  N.  Y.  878  Monadnock Builing,  San 
435  Oliver  Bldg.,  Pittsburgh  I  Francisco 

518  Central  Building,  Los  Angeles 
Write  nearest  office 

Gouraud's  Oriental  Beauty  Leaves 

A  dainty  little  booklet  of  exquisitely  perfumed 
powdered  leaves  to  carry  in  the  purse.  A  handy 
article  for  all  occasions  to  quickly  improve  the 
complexion.  Sent  for  10  cents  in  stamps  or  coin. 
F.  T.  Hopkins,  37  Great  Jones  St.,  New  York. 


Borden's  Better  Babies 

If  your  baby  is  not  gaining  steadily,  if  he  does 
not  sleep  serenely— he  probably  is  not  getting  the 
right  food.  See  how  quickly  he  will  change  from 
a  drooping  little  flower  to  a  sturdy  "  Borden  Better 
Baby"  when  you  give  him 


EAOLE 

n  BRAND     ^ r^ 

CONDENSED 

MILK 

THE  ORIGINAL 

This  long,  hot  month  is  a  dangerous  time  for  your  baby 
His  health  depends  on  his  food.  Give  him  "Eagle  Brand, 
because  it  is  pure— clean— easy  to  digest  — no  trouble  to 

See  our  display  at  the  Panama  Pacific  International 
Exposition,SanFrancisco,C'al.,  Food  Products  Palace. 

Write  for  "Baby's  Welfare  Book." 
Borden's  Condensed  Milk  Co. 
*  'Leaders  of  Quality ' ' 

New  York 


THE 

Paul  Gerson 

DRAMATIC  SCHOOL 

Incorporated  Under  the  Laws  of  the  State  of  California 

The  Largest  Training  School 
of  Acting  in  America 

The  Only  Dramatic  School  on  the  Pacifk  Coast 

TENTH  YEAR 

Elocution,  Oratory, 
Dramatic  Art 

Advantages: 

Professional  Experience  While  Study- 
ing. Positions  Secured  for  Graduates. 
Six  Months  Graduating  Course.  Stu- 
dents Can  Enter  Any  Time. 
Arrangements  can  be  made  with  Mr.  Gerson 
for  Amateur  and  Professional  Coaching 

Paul  Gerson  Dramatic  School  Bldg. 
MCALLISTER  and   HYDE  STREET 

San    Francisco,    Cal. 
Write  for  Catalogue. 


MEN  OF  IDEAS 


and  inventive  ability 
should  write  for  new 
"Lists  of  Needed  Inven- 
tions," Patent  Buyers  and  "How  to  Get  Your  Patent 
and  Your  Money."  Advice  FREE.  Randolph  &.  Co 
Patent  Attorneys,  Dept.  86,  Washington,  D.  C 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition.  The 
Superior  Jury  of  Awards  conferred  on 
the  Italian-Swiss  Colony  five  "Grand 
Prix,"  seven  Medals  of  Honor,  and 
thirteen  Gold  Medals  for  their  unusu- 
ally fine  California  wines.  These 
twenty-five  awards  mark  the  extraor- 
dinary high  position  attained  by  the 
Italian-Swiss  Colony  in  the  production 
of  superior  varieties  of  wines,  the  best 
in  the  State,  and  that  implies  America. 

Golden  State  Extra  Dry  Champagne 
was  declared  the  finest  champagne 
produced  in  California.  It  was  the 
only  white  wine  awarded  a  "Grand 
Prix."  This  award  makes  the  fourth 
"Grand  Prix"  obtained  for  Golden 
State  in  the  past  five  years.  The  prior 
awards  were  granted  at  the  Interna- 
tional Exposition  at  Turin,  Italy,  1911; 
Ghent,  Belgium,  1913;  and  Genoa, 
Italy,  1915. 

The  complete  list  of  prizes  received 
by  the  Italian-Swiss  Colony  at  the 
Panama-Pacific  Exposition  in  the  re- 
cent international  contest  were  as  fol- 
lows: 

"Grand  Prix,"  Golden  State,  Extra 
Dry  Champagne;  Tipo  Red;  Asti 
Rouge  (Sparkling  Burgundy);  Cha- 
teau d'Asti;  Chablis. 

"Medals  of  Honor":    Tipo    White; 
Burgundy;    Muscat;    Madeira;  Ver- 
mouth; Grapinac,  Grape  Brandy  Bot- 
tled in  Bond;  Grape  Brandy  (Cognac.) 

"Gold  Medals":  Claret;  Zinfandel; 
Cabernet;  Gutedel;  Sauternes;  Pinot 
Blanc;  Chateau  d'Asti  Blanc;  Port; 
Sherry;  Angelica;  Marsala;  Grape 
Brandy  (Muscat)  and  Grappa  Brandy. 

Untiring  patience,  perseverence,  in- 
domitable energy,  a  keen  sense  of  the 
fundamental  values  of  vine  and  wine 
values  and  the  expenditure  of  enor- 
mous sums  of  money  in  the  develop- 
ing of  their  original  idea  are  the  base 
which  sustains  these  twenty-five 
awards  of  high  merit.  In  the  experi- 
ence and  successful  development  of 
the  Italian-Swiss  Colony  lies  the  com- 
plete story  of  the  high  accomplish- 
ment of  fine  wine  making  in  Califor- 
nia. Most  of  the  credit  is  due  to  two 
men,  Andrea  Sbarboro,  the  man  with 
the  idea,  and  the  late  P.  C.  Rossi. 


Prior  to  1875  the  wine  industry  had 
been  struggling  along  in  a  haphazard 
way  in  desperate  endeavors  to  develop 
the  old  time  Mission  grape  so  that  it 
would  produce  a  superior  quality  of 
wine.  The  Mission  grape  was  indige- 
nous, and  the  Franciscan  Fathers 
brought  cuttings  from  Spain  for  graft- 
ing purposes  in  order  to  improve  the 
juice.  In  the  '40's  these  grapes  were 
furnishing  a  strong  and  heavy  wine 
that  quickly  developed  intoxication. 
Later  shipments  of  these  heavy  wines 
found  their  way  East  and  gave  Cali- 
fornia such  a  black  eye  in  the  wine  in- 
dustry that  the  trade  languished  for 
fifty  years,  and  it  was  only  through 
the  most  strenuous  efforts  and  the  de- 
velopment of  far  superior  grades  of 
wine  that  this  battered  reputation  was 
gradually  dislodged.  In  1875  came 
the  first  united  attempt  to  elevate  wine 
making  into  a  State  industry.  That 
year  the  Legislature  at  Sacramento 
commissioned  Arpad  Haraszthy  to  go 
to  Europe  and  bring  back  the  best  se- 
lection of  grape  cuttings  to  be  had.  A 
few  years  later  Andrea  Sbarboro,  on 
organizing  the  Italian-Swiss  Colony, 
sent  an  expert  agent  to  bring  back  the 
choicest  cuttings  adaptable  to  the  Cali- 
fornia stock  and  climate. 

Twenty  years  ago  the  Italian-Swiss 
Colony  began  experimenting  with  mak- 
ing champagne.  P.  C.  Rossi,  a  pro- 
found student  of  wine  making,  was 
commissioned  to  go  abroad  to  discover 
the  inside  secrets  of  making  the  best 
brands  of  champagne.  After  a  series 
of  sore  trials  and  disappointments  he 
succeeded,  and  brought  back  with  him 
an  expert  champagne  maker  of  wide 
experience  and  well  versed  in  all  the 
requisites  of  making  the  true  cham- 
pagne. Carte  blanche  was  given  him 
in  expense;  his  orders  were  to  get  re- 
sults. A  big  plant  was  erected  at  Asti, 
and  in  three  years'  time  the  first  sam- 
ples of  Golden  Seal  Champagne,  the 
same  champagne  that  has  since  taken 
four  prizes  at  four  great  expositions, 
was  put  on  the  market,  and  has  been 
rising  in  the  estimation  of  the  best 
connoisseurs  of  champagne  ever 
since. 


YOUR   NEED   OF  AE 

Just  this  I  know: 

Your  need  of  me!    And  that  is  what  has  held 
My  spirit  bound  and  chained  and  witchly-spelled : 
Your  need  of  me ! 

Ah,  you  who  have  thought  that  beauty,  sovereign-sure, 

Or  eager  youth  the  summoning  allure 

That  to  your  shrine  my  footsteps  captive-led, 

Not  knowing,  dreaming  that  it  was  instead 

Your  need  of  me! 

And  when  your  youth's  effulgent  day  has  past, 

And  age's  dingy  dawn  enskied  at  last, 

When  years  have  ravished  beauty's  rose  and  snow, 

You'll  sway  me  yet;  Time's  touchstone  then  shall  show 

The  ageless  essence  of  that  sorcery : 

Your  need  of  me! 

DOROTHY  DEJAGERS. 


A   restful  arm  of  the  silent  sea. 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


U, 

MONTHLY   * 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  September,  1915 


No.  3 


Moonbeams  on  a  passing  night  storm. 


CIRCLING    TAHITI 


By  Lewis  R.  Freeman 


CHIEF  ITEM  in  the  visitor's  pro- 
gram  in  Tahiti — after  he  has 
called  on  the    Governor,     ap- 
peared at  the  club,  and  spent  a 
small  sack  of  Chilean  pesos  to  see  a 
hula  that  has  been  so  completely  ex- 
purgated and  legalized  as  to  make  a 
Maypole  dance  on  the  village  green 
appear  Bacchanalian  in  comparison — 
is  the  hundred-mile  drive  around  the 


island.  The  roads  are  bad  over  half 
the  way,  and  the  vehicles  all  the  way, 
but  the  ride  itself  unfolds  such  an 
unending  panorama  of  sea,  surf  and 
lagoon;  of  beach  and  reef;  of  moun- 
tain, cliff  and  crag;  of  torrent,  cascade 
and  waterfall,  and  of  reckless,  riotous, 
onrushing  tropical  vegetation  as  can 
be  found  along  no  similar  stretch  of 
wagon  road  in  the  world. 


188 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Tahitian  driving  is  pretty  near  the 
most  reckless  thing  of  its  kind  in  ex- 
istence. It  really  isn't  driving  at  all; 
rather  it  should  be  called  "herding."  If 
your  vehicle  has  more  than  one  seat 
there  will  be  three  or  four  horses  to 
haul  it,  driven  "spike"  in  the  former 
case,  by  twos  in  the  latter.  These  ani- 
mals are  attached  to  the  rig  by  traces 
running  to  their  collars,  which,  with 
the  reins,  constitutes  all  of  the  har- 
ness. There  is  nothing  in  the  way  of 
breeching  for  holding  back,  and,  as  a 
Tahitian  vehicle  never  has  a  brake, 
there  is  no  way  the  wheel  horses  can 
save  their  heels  but  by  beating  the 
pursuing  rig  down  the  hills.  A  "good" 
driver  will  handle  two  horses;  beyond 
that  number  a  boy  is  required  on  the 
back  of  each  addition.  With  your 
driver  and  post-boys  wearing  each  a 
gaudy  hibiscus  or  tiare  behind  his  ear, 
with  their  braided  whips  cracking  mer- 
rily at  everything  from  stray  dogs  and 
blossoms  to  their  horses'  ears,  and  with 
all  of  them  raising  their  voices  in  "hi- 
mine"  after  "himine,"  with  the  inde- 
fatigability  of  a  frog-pond  chorus,  your 
progress,  on  the  score  of  picturesque- 
ness,  at  least,  has  no  odds  to  ask  of  a 
Roman  Triumph. 

The  ride  from  Papeete  to  Hiteaea  is 
a  break-neck  performance.  In  a  mile 
or  two  the  last  straggles  of  houses  are 
left  behind,  and  the  road  disappears  in 
the  jungle,  turning  to  two  wavy  yellow 
ruts  enclosing  an  endless  ribbon  of 
velvet  verdance.  If  they  would  only 
keep  to  the  ruts  it  would  be  smooth 
sailing;  the  rig  would  rattle  along  like 
a  railroad  train  on  a  track.  But  this 
is  not  so  easy  as  it  looks.  Tough 
banana  roots  straggle  over  the  ground 
in  a  fashion  that  would  make  a  Cali- 
fornia stage  road  seem  like  an  asphalt 
boulevard.  The  fact,  also,  that  the 
work  has  to  be  done  in  a  sort  of  dusky 
twilight,  a  dim  religious  old  cathedral 
kind  of  a  glow,  makes  it  as  uncertain 
as  exciting.  No  matter  how  highly 
recommended  your  Jehu  comes  to  you, 
his  driving  is  not  a  thing  to  be  de- 
pended upon;  nor  is  the  road  ever 
alike  for  a  week  at  a  time.  Just  as 
your  pilot  gets  to  what  he  remembers 


as  a  smooth,  level  stretch  suitable  for 
speeding  and  puts  his  horses  at  a  gal- 
lop, a  lurking  banana  or  maupe  root 
pushes  its  nose  out,  and  the  old  shay 
brings  up  with  a  jolt  that  sets  your 
ears  to  ringing  and  necessitates  a  half- 
hour's  halt  for  repairs  to  rolling  stock 
or  harness. 

Like  all  the  rest  of  the  South  Pacific 
Islands,  Tahiti  has  an  abnormally 
large  rainfall.  There  is  a  river  tobog- 
ganing down  to  the  sea  for  every  inch 
of  rainfall,  and  the  number,  if  one 
varies,  in  direct  proportion  to  the 
other.  The  precipitation  rarely  falls 
under  a  minimum  of  a  hundred  inches, 
and  there  are  certainly  never  fewer 
than  that  number  of  rivers.  In  wet 
seasons,  both  are  doubled.  The  rivers 
are  as  capricious  as  the  tropical  show- 
ers that  feed  them,  and  change  their 
beds  almost  as  often,  if  less  regularly, 
than  a  professional  hobo.  Once  away 
from  the  district  about  the  capital 
there  is  no  sign  of  a  bridge  at  any 
point.  The  natives  cross  on  logs  and 
stepping  stones,  the  wagons  in  various 
ways.  The  most  approved  plan  is  for 
the  passengers  to  join  the  driver  and 
post-boys  in  their  cannibal  war-whoop 
and  make  the  horses  take  the  stream 
by  storm.  If  all  goes  well — as  occa- 
sionally happens — there  is  a  splash,  a 
sun-shot  halo  of  flying  spray,  and  you 
dive  again  into  the  tunnel  of  the  jun- 
gle, wet  but  unscathed.  If,  as  gener- 
ally happens,  things  do  not  go  right, 
you  miss  the  ruts  of  the  ford,  hit  a 
boulder,  something  gives  way  and  you 
are  marooned  in  mid-river. 

Here  is  where  the  synthetically  con- 
structed harnesses — bits  of  old  straps, 
wire,  tough  lianas  and  vegetable  fiber 
— show  their  usefulness.  A  chain  is 
no  stronger  than  its  weakest  link. 
Nothing  short  of  a  charge  of  dynamite 
will  move  the  boulder  against  which 
the  rear  wheel  is  securely  jammed; 
with  the  horses  going  Berserk  at 
thirty  miles  an  hour,  therefore,  some- 
thing has  to  give  way,  and  the  Tahitian 
has  wisely  figured  that  it  is  easier  to 
patch  a  harness  than  a  wagon.  The 
rig  stops  short,  the  harnesses  dissolve 
like  webs  of  gossamer,  and  the  horses 


190 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


go  right  ahead.  The  driver,  and  any- 
one who  chances  to  be  in  the  front 
seat  with  him,  usually  follows  the 
horses;  those  upon  the  back  seat  tele- 
scope upon  one  another.  Native  as- 
sistance is  almost  imperative  at  this 
juncture,  and,  strangely,  with  the  in- 
fallibility of  St.  Bernard  dogs  in  Al- 
pine stories,  always  seem  to  turn  up 
at  the  psychological  moment. 

From  one  such  predicament  our 
party  was  rescued  by  a  bevy  of  girls 
on  their  way  to  market,  who  manfully 
tucked  up  their  pareos,  waded  into  the 
water,  put  their  sturdy  brown  shoul- 
ders to  the  wheels,  and  literally  lifted 
us  through  to  the  bank.  An  hour  later, 
after  a  similar  mishap,  we  were  all 
carried  ashore  on  the  broad  cocoanut- 
oiled  backs  of  the  half-intoxicated 
members  of  a  party  of  revelers,  who 
left  a  dance  unfinished  to  rush  to  our 
rescue.  They  were  "real  mitinaire 
boys,"  they  said,  and  "ver'  glad  to 
help  Crisyun  white  vis'tor."  And  to 
show  that  these  were  not  idle  words, 
they  offered  to  carry  us  across  the 
stream  and  back  again  in  pure  good- 
fellowship. 

One  of  them,  in  fact,  a  six-foot 
Apollo  with  his  matted  hair  rakishly 
topped  with  a  coronal  of  white  "tiare," 
had  our  lady  guest  over  his  shoulder 
and  half-way  down  the  bank  before 
we  could  convince  him  that  we  were 
fully  assured  of  his  good-will  without 
further  demonstration.  The  lady,  be- 
ing island  bred,  accepted  this  impetu- 
ous gallantry  with  the  philosophical 
passivity  of  the  sack  of  copra  which 
she  might  have  been  for  all  the  Ka- 
naka Lochinvar's  care  in  handling  her. 
This  was  our  only  experience  of  any- 
thing approaching  roughness  in  a  Ta- 
hitian,  and  the  victim's  charitable  in- 
terpretation of  the  act  as  a  mistaken 
kindness  saved  the  offender  from  even 
being  denied  participation  in  the  divi- 
sion of  a  handful  of  coppers. 

Hiteaea,  a  village  situated  half-way 
down  the  windward  side  of  the  island 
from  Papeete,  is  as  lovely  as  a  steam- 
ship company  folder  description;  the 
kind  of  a  place  you  have  always  sus- 
pected never  existed  outside  the  im- 


agination of  a  drop-curtain  painter. 
Half  of  the  settlement  is  smothered  in 
giant  bamboos,  the  remainder  in  flam- 
buoyant,  frangipani  and  hau  trees, 
which  carpet  the  ground  inches  deep 
with  blossoms  of  scarlet,  waxy  cream 
and  pale  gold.  Nothing  less  strong 
than  the  persistent  southeast  trade- 
wind  could  furnish  the  village  with  air 
— nothing  less  bright  than  the  equa- 
torial sun  could  pierce  the  dense  cur- 
tains with  shafts  of  light.  Toward  the 
sea  the  jungle  thins,  and  in  a  palm- 
dotted  clearing,  walled  in  with  flower- 
ing stephanosis  and  tiare,  are  the 
houses  of  the  Chief,  true  Tahitian 
houses — oval  tents  of  bamboo  with 
thatches  of  woven  pandanus  and  sides 
of  reeds  and  interlaced  cocoanut 
leaves.  A  rolling  natural  lawn  leads 
down  to  the  beach  of  shining  coral 
clinkers;  then  the  lagoon  in  blended 
shades  of  lapis  lazuli,  chryoprase  and 
pale  jade,  a  warm,  wide  loop  of  coral, 
a  flashing  necklace  of  reef,  the  shading 
sapphire  of  the  open  sea,  and  the  blue 
hill  of  Teravao  dissolving  in  the  after- 
noon mist. 

The  squealing  of  chased  pigs  and 
the  squawk  of  captured  chickens 
welled  up  to  our  ears  as  we  topped  the 
last  divide  and  saw  the  blue  smoke  of 
the  Hiteaean  flesh-pots  filtering 
through  the  green  curtain  which  still 
hid  the  village  from  our  sight,  sounds 
which,  to  the  trained  ears  of  our  island 
friends,  told  that  our  herald  had  car- 
ried the  news  of  our  approach,  and 
that  fitting  preparations  for  our  recep- 
tion were  being  made.  The  wayfarer 
in  colder,  grayer  climes  sings  of  the 
emotions  awakened  in  his  breast  by 
the  "watch-dog's  deep-mouthed  wel- 
come" as  he  drew  near  home,  or  of 
"the  lamp  in  the  window"  which  is 
waiting  for  him;  to  the  Tahitian  trav- 
eler all  that  the  dog  and  the  lamp  ex- 
press, and  a  great  deal  more  besides, 
is  carried  in  the  dying  wails  of  the 
pigs  and  the  chickens,  the  inevitable 
signal  of  expected  company. 

Our  driver  and  post-boys  answered 
the  signal  with  a  glad  yell,  and  our 
jaded  horses,  a  moment  before  droop- 
ing from  the  stiff  climb  to  the  summit 


I 

•§ 


I 


192 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


of  the  divide,  galvanized  into  life  and 
dashed  off  down  the  serpentine  trough 
of  roots  and  tussocks  which  answered 
for  a  road  at  a  rate  that  kept  the  tugs 
which  connected  them  to  the  madly 
pursuing  chariot  straightened  all  the 
way  to  the  beach.  Some  of  us  were 
yelling  with  excitement,  some  with 
fright,  and  some  of  the  less  stoical — 
at  the  buffets  dealt  them  by  the  half- 
padded  cushions  and  the  swaying  sides 
— even  with  pain.  Most  of  the  unse- 
cured baggage — cameras,  suit-cases, 
hand-bags,  phonograph  records  and  the 
like — went  flying  off  like  nebulae  in 
our  comet  like  wake;  a  man  with  a 
load  of  "feis"  was  knocked  sprawling, 
a  litter  of  pigs  ground  underfoot,  a 
flock  of  ducks  parted  down  the  middle, 
and  a  bevy  of  babies  just  avoided  be- 
fore we  brought  up  in  a  shower  of  tin- 
kling coral  at  the  door  of  the  Chief's 
house.  It  was  as  spectacular  an  entry 
as  even  our  post-boys  could  have  de- 
sired, but  our  natural  pride  in  it  was 
lost  a  moment  later  when  two  grave- 
faced  young  women  in  black  "holo- 
kaus"  came  out  to  tell  us  that  their 
father,  the  Chief,  had  died  the  night 
before. 

The  good  souls,  in  spite  of  their  sor- 
row and  the  endless  amount  of  cere- 
mony and  preparation  incident  to  the 
funeral  of  a  Tahitian  chief,  had  made 
all  the  arrangements  for  accommodat- 
ing us  for  the  night,  and  would  neither 
permit  us  to  take  the  road  again  for 
Teravao,  nor  to  put  up  with  anything 
less  than  the  best  which  Hiteaea  had 
to  offer.  So  the  evening  of  feasting 
which  would  ordinarily  have  been  our 
portion,  was  dispensed  with,  and  we 
spent  the  night  quietly  and  comfort- 
ably in  the  house  of  mourning. 

Beyond  Hiteaea  the  road  dips  into 
the  vanilla  bean  zone,  and  from  there 
to  the  Taiarapu  Isthmus  the  gushing 
trade-wind  smites  the  nostrils  like  a 
blast  from  a  pastry  cook's  oven.  Van- 
illa is  one  of  Tahiti's  budding  indus- 
tries, and  like  everything  else  indus- 
trial in  the  Societies,  seems  likely  not 
to  get  far  beyond  the  budding  stage. 
The  vanilla  vine  requires  little  but 
heat,  moisture,  a  tree  to  climb  upon, 


and  a  little  care.  The  natural  condi- 
tions are  near  ideal  in  the  jungle  sec- 
tions of  Tahiti,  but  the  hitch  has  come 
on  the  score  of  care. 

A  number  of  Chinamen,  with  planta- 
tions sufficiently  small  to  allow  them 
to  do  their  own  work,  are  making  a 
considerable  success  of  vanilla,  but 
where  Kanakas  have  had  to  be  em- 
ployed there  has  been  nothing  but  fail- 
ure. A  native  set  to  pollenize  a  lot  of 
vines  is  more  likely  than  not  to  pick 
the  orchid-like  flower  to  chew  or  stick 
behind  his  ears,  or  to  weave  the  new 
tendrils  into  garlands  for  his  Olympian 
brow.  They  tell  you  in  Papeete  that 
the  vanilla  industry  is  not  flourishing 
because  of  the  increasing  use  of  arti- 
ficial flavoring  extracts  in  America; 
the  real  reason  for  its  backwardness  is 
the  non-use  of  an  artificial — or  any 
other  kind  of  labor  extractor  on  the 
Kanakas. 

At  the  Isthmus  of  Teravao  the  gird- 
ling highway  which  you  have  followed 
swings  back  down  the  leeward  side  of 
the  island  to  Papeete.  Tautira  is 
reached  by  a  spur  which  is,  however, 
much  better  kept  up  than  portions  of 
the  main  road.  The  bush  is  not  so 
dense  in  this  portion  of  the  island  as 
along  the  road  you  have  just  traversed, 
but  the  mountains,  especially  in  the 
vicinity  of  Tautira,  assume  an  even 
wilder  aspect  than  any  down  to  wind- 
ward. Knife-shaped  pinnacles  of  every 
conceivable  shade  of  blue,  green  and 
purple  are  tossed  together  in  an  aim- 
less tumble,  showing  the  skyline  of  a 
battered  saw.  Here  a  mountain  has 
been  rent  by  some  Titan  to  let  a  river 
through;  there  a  mountain  has  refused 
to  rend,  and  a  river  closes  its  eyes  and 
launches  itself  over  a  thousand  foot 
cliff,  paling  with  terror  as  it  realizes 
the  magnitude  of  its  leap  and  changing 
from  a  bar  of  green  jade  to  a  fluttering 
scarf  of  gray  satin,  to  end  up  in  a  rum- 
ple of  white  gossamer. 

Unfathomable  gorges  with  over- 
hanging sides  tunnel  into  the  heart  of 
unclimbable  mountains;  sheer  preci- 
pices drop  curtains  of  creepers  that 
dangle  their  tesselated  skirts  in  the 
quiet  river  reaches  hundreds  of  feet 


The  reefs  of  Tahiti  on  a  moonlight  night. 


below;  ghostly  castles,  scarped  and 
buttressed  and  battlemented,  now  of 
mist-wreathed  rock,  now  of  rock- 
pierced  mist,  fade  and  reappear  with 
the  shifting  of  the  cloud  scenery;  and 
above  is  the  flaming  sun-shot  sky,  be- 
low the  wind-tossed,  diamond-sprin- 
kled ocean.  What  does  the  French- 
man want  of  absinthe  and  the  China- 
man of  opium  when  they  both  have  a 
place  like  this  to  look  at?  It  is  a 
dream  that  nothing  but  a  flying  Tahi- 
tian  chariot  brought  up  short  by  a  four 
foot  mid  river  boulder  can  bring  you 
out  of. 

Tautira,  though  the  second  town  of 
the  island,  is  almost  entirely  a  native 
settlement,  the  foreign  colony  consist- 
ing of  but  one  missionary,  one  trader 
and  one  French  official.  This  does  not 
mean  that  the  town  is  backward  or  de- 
cadent; quite  to  the  contrary.  The 
missionaries,  as  a  pretty  general  rule, 
will  always  be  found  thickest  on  the 
firing  line,  and  where  affairs  are  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  white  or  native 


preacher,  it  may  be  taken  to  indicate 
that  the  natives,  professedly  at  least, 
are  well  within  the  fold.  There  is  but 
one  trader  in  Tautira  because  the  na- 
tives are  shrewd  enough  to  own  their 
own  cutters  and  trade  directly  with 
Papeete.  The  official  is  there  because 
the  majesty  of  France  requires  one 
representative  in  each  district,  not  be- 
cause he  is  really  needed.  As  far  as 
morals  are  concerned,  there  is  more 
mischief  to  the  square  foot — or  should 
I  say  the  rounded  ankle? — in  Papeete 
than  all  of  Tautira. 

Tautira's  chief  claim  to  distinction 
is  Ori,  and  Ori's  chief  claim  to  distinc- 
tion is  the  fact  that  he  was  the  host  for 
a  month  or  more  of  Robert  Louis  Stev- 
enson's party  on  the  novelist's  first 
cruise  to  the  South  Seas  in  the 
"Casco."  Stevenson,  still  weak  from 
overwork  and  hardly  yet  beginning  to 
feel  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  cruise, 
was  ill  during  nearly  all  of  his  stay 
in  Tautira.  No  account  of  this  visit 
appears  in  his  South  Sea  book,  but 
2 


194 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


in  the  published  letters  of  his  mother 
it  is  written  of  at  length,  and  most  en- 
tertainingly. 

From  Mrs.  Stevenson's  account  it 
would  appear  that  the  party  was  ten- 
dered the  usual  round  of  feasts,  dances 
and  gifts,  and  countered  with  feasts 
and  gift-givings  of  its  own.  They  tell 
you  in  Papette  that  Stevenson's  illness 
during  this  visit  made  him  see  their 
island  through  dark  glasses,  and  that 
this  was  the  reason  that  he  ultimately 
settled  in  Samoa  instead  of  Tahiti. 
From  the  standpoint  of  picturesque 
and  tropical  loveliness,  Tautira,  and 
even  Papeete,  is  distinctly  ahead  of 
Apia,  but  it  is  more  likely  that  the 
greater  attractiveness  of  the  incompar- 
able Samoan  native  who,  then  as  now, 
was  much  less  touched  by  white  in- 
fluence than  the  Tahitian,  turned  the 
scale  in  favor  of  the  more  westerly 
location  of  the  novelist's  home. 

Ori — a  wily  old  hypocrite  whose  six 
feet  four  of  stature,  unlike  that  of 
most  Tahitians,  was  not  cumbered  with 
an  ounce  of  superfluous  flesh — made 
a  great  point  of  assuring  our  party  that 
his  whole  plan  of  entertainment  was 
patterned  on  that  which  he  had  pro- 
vided for  the  Stevensons.  We  were 
quartered  in  one  of  the  houses  that  the 
Stevensons  had  occupied;  quite  as 
many  pigs  and  chickens  were  slaugh- 
tered for  our  native  feasts  as  for  those 
of  the  Stevensons;  full  as  many  sing- 
ers were  mustered  for  our  "sing-sings" 
as  turned  out  for  the  Stevensons;  he 
would  lavish  quite  as  rich  gifts  upon 
us  as  he  did  upon  the  Stevensons,  and 
— the  Stevensons  had  given  him  such 
and  such  things,  ad  infinitum.  Inas- 
much as  we  were  paying  for  our  en- 
tertainment at  a  rate  which  we  knew  to 
be  about  a  hundred  per  cent  above  the 
normal,  there  was  little  of  base  in- 
gratitude in  the  remark  of  one  of  our 
number  who,  when  his  knife  blade 
turned  on  the  rubberoid  leg  of  one  of 
Ori's  broilers,  asked  that  venerable 
rascal  if  it  came  from  one  of  the 
chickens  left  over  by  the  Stevensons. 

For  some  reason,  chickens,  like 
wine,  refuse  to  age  properly  in  the 
South  Pacific.  It  may  be  the  heat;  it 


may  be  the  humidity;  at  any  rate,  a 
chicken  of  any  greater  age  than  two 
months,  however  cooked,  makes  a 
piece  de  resistance  in  a  most  painful 
literal  sense.  Luckily,  the  Tahitian 
pig,  cooked  in  island  fashion,  is  as 
much  above  the  average  porker  of  tem- 
'perate  latitudes  as  the  Tahitian  broiler 
falls  below  the  standard  in  his  class. 
Any  kind  of  a  cut  from  a  six  months 
old  cocoanut  fed  pig,  cooked  on  hot 
stones  and  served  with  the  inimitable 
"miti-hari"  sauce,  will  awaken  an  ec- 
stacy  in  the  palate,  the  memory  of 
which  a  year  of  ordinary  food  cannot 
eradicate.  The  recipe  would  go  some- 
thing like  this: 

Dig  a  hole  in  the  ground  big  enough 
comfortably  to  bury  a  pig  in,  and  fill 
it  with  smooth,  round  river  bottom 
stones.  Collect  half  a  cord  or  so  of 
dry  wood  and  start  a  fire  on  the  stones. 
Leaving  a  boy  to  stoke  the  fire,  take 
the  eight  or  ten  hours  in  which  the 
stones  are  coming  to  a  dull  cherry  red 
to  find  just  the  right  sort  of  a  pig. 
From  three  to  six  months  is  the  best 
age,  and,  if  possible,  get  an  animal 
that  has  been  penned  and  fed  on  noth- 
ing but  young  cocoanuts.  If  there  has 
been  a  few  odd  bread-fruits,  bananas, 
mangoes,  papayas,  mamees,  star-ap- 
ples and  the  like,  thrown  in  to  him  oc- 
casionally, it  will  not  make  much  dif- 
ference, but  avoid  the  porker  that  has 
rustled  for  himself  about  the  copra 
shacks  and  along  the  beach. 

Kill  the  pig  and  dress  in  the  usual 
manner,  but  without  cutting  off  the 
head  and  feet,  or  removing  the  skin. 
Wrap  the  body  several  inches  deep  in 
banana  or  plantain  leaves,  and  plas- 
ter the  whole  thickly  with  sticky  mud. 
Now,  if  the  stones  are  red,  remove 
them  with  a  pole,  throw  in  the  pig,  and 
push  back  the  stones  again.  Best  to 
let  a  native  watch  the  progress  of  the 
cooking,  as  a  great  deal  depends  upon 
'taking  it  out  at  the  right  time,  and  it 
requires  a  lifetime  of  experience  to 
forecast  absolutely  the  condition  of  the 
pig  from  a  whiff  of  the  steam. 

You  might  try  your  hand  with  "miti- 
hari"  before  leaving  the  rest  of  the 
feast  for  the  natives  to  prepare.  This 


Expurgated  "hula"  costumes,  specially  arranged  so  as  not  to  shock  tourists. 


is  the  sauce  par  excellence  of  the 
South  Pacific,  and  in  my  own  experi- 
ence, quite  without  a  peer  in  any  other 
part  of  the  world.  Send  for  a  quart 
of  grated  cocoanut  meat  (most  of  the 
native  houses  keep  it  on  hand),  and 
after  soaking  it  for  a  few  minutes  in 
sea  water,  pour  it  out  on  a  square  of 
stout  muslin,  twist  the  corners  of  the 
latter  together  and  bring  all  the  pres- 
sure possible  to  bear  on  the  contents. 
The  result  is  a  cupful  of  thick,  rich 
milk  which,  on  the  addition  of  a  cou- 
ple of  limes  and  a  red  pepper  or  two, 
becomes  the  marvelous  and  transmu- 
tative  "miti-hari." 

I  recall  hearing  in  Papeete  a  story 
of  the  amazing  things  that  tourists 
have  eaten  under  the  gastronomic  in- 
toxication incident  to  a  taste  of  the 
wonderful  "miti,"  with  which  they — 
the  things — were  dressed.  I  believe  a 
piece  of  rubber  blanket  was  on  the  list. 
I  don't  exactly  recall  what  else,  though 
I  do  remember  hearing  some  one  say 


that  a  dash  of  "miti-hari"  on  the  story 
itself  might  make  it  easier  to  swallow. 

The  Tahitian  "native"  feast  does 
not  differ  in  any  salient  particulars 
from  the  often  described  Hawaiian 
"luau."  The  guests  sit  on  the  ground 
and  eat  the  various  "dishes,"  which 
are  spread  before  them  on  banana 
leaves,  from  their  fingers.  In  addition 
to  pig,  chicken  and  the  inevitable 
bread-fruit,  the  menu  always  includes 
a  liberal  supply  of  fish,  both  cooked 
in  wrappings  of  the  fragrant  "ti" 
leaves  and  pickled  raw  in  lime  juice; 
taro,  boiled  and  mashed;  bananas  and 
plantain  of  a  dozen  different  varieties ; 
fillet  of  devil  fish,  very  exquisite 
prawns,  and  a  fruit  list  which,  being 
harder  to  write  than  to  eat,  is  omitted. 

If  the  feast  is  given  you  by  a  per- 
son of  wealth  or  importance,  or  if  you 
are  paying  a  person  like  the  canny 
Ori  a  sum  sufficient  to  make  it  an 
inducement,  you  may  get  a  taste  of 
cocoanut  sprout  salad.  The  raw  fish 


The  natives  on  the  right  are  dancing  the  hula. 


is  good,  the  prawns  distinctly  so,  but 
the  cocoanut  sprout  salad  is  the  only 
dish  of  the  lot  worthy  to  be  mentioned 
in  the  same  breath  with  the  "miti- 
haried"  pig.  Unfortunately,  as  every 
tiny  sprout  in  the  salad  means  the 
death  of  a  young  cocoanut  tree,  the 
dish  is  more  often  discussed  than  di- 
gested. A  substitute,  made  of  the 
tender  fronds  of  young  ferns,  is  itself 
pretty  near  a  high  water  mark  in  sal- 
ads until  you  have  tasted  that  of  co- 
coanut sprouts.  As  for  the  pig  and 
the  "miti-hari,"  if  it  doesn't  prepare 
your  face  for  a  look  of  distant  super- 
iority whenever  again  you  hear  men 
extolling  this  or  that  culinary  achieve- 
ment as  worthy  of  a  place  on  the  top- 
most pinnacle  of  gastronomic  excel- 
lence, it  is  because  you  are  suffering 
from  atrophy  of  the  palate. 

Kava,  so  popular  in  the  Samoas  and 
Fiji,  was  not — Byron  to  the  contrary — 
and  is  not  much  drunk  in  Tahiti.  Feast- 
ing with  natives  outside  of  missionary 


circles,  you  will  probably  have  a 
chance  to  "experience"  orange  wine. 
This  is  a  harmless  looking  beverage  of 
insinuating  ways,  in  the  lucent  depths 
of  the  first  three  or  four  cups  of  which 
lurks  no  hint  of  the  devil  which  is 
curled  up  in  the  bottom  of  the  fifth 
or  sixth,  and  all  thereafter.  The  pro- 
verbial ungentlemanliness  of  the  on- 
slaught of  a  "battleship"  punch  on  a 
debutante  at  her  first  dance  on  board, 
is  nothing  to  the  "assault  from  am- 
bush" of  orange  wine  upon  the  un- 
wary stranger  who  dallies  overlong 
above  its  cup. 

Cocoanut  wine,  fermented  from  a 
juice  drawn  from  the  heart  of  the 
trunk  of  that  palm,  is  expensive  and 
hard  to  obtain  at  any  cost.  It  is  a 
gentleman's  drink,  however,  with  none 
of  the  "behind  the  back"  tactics  of 
the  soft-footed  orange  thunderbolt.  It 
romps  down  the  throat  like  a  torch- 
light procession,  and  promptly  starts 
a  conflagration  which  spreads  like 


TAMALPAIS.  197 

wildfire  from  the  head  to  the  heels.  An  In  America,  a  man  showing  the  same 
American  Indian  after  a  couple  of  symptoms  as  a  native  under  the  influ- 
drinks  of  cocoanut  wine,  would  com-  ence  of  cocoanut  wine,  would  be 
mence  murdering  his  fellows ;  the  gen-  gagged,  strait-jacketed  and  thrust  in  a 
tie  Tahitian,  in  like  instance,  quite  as  padded  cell.  In  Tahiti,  the  smiling 
much  uplifted,  both  mentally  and  phy-  policeman,  if  the  offender  becomes  too 
sically,  as  the  Indian,  is  content  to  boisterously  obstreperous,  accom- 
murder  sleep — his  own  and  every  one  plishes  a  similar  result  by  pitching  him 
else's.  He  enters  upon  a  period  of  off  the  seawall.  This  strikes  the  visi- 
song  and  dance,  which  lasts  as  long  tor  as  being  a  somewhat  drastic  pro- 
as the  supply  of  wine,  and  there  is  no  ceeding,  but  I  have  the  assurance  of 
peace  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  ra-  a  prominent  merchant  of  Papeete  that 
dius — or  farther,  according  to  his  num-  "you  would  be  surprised  how  few  of 
bers.  these  fellows  are  really  drowned." 


TAAALPAIS 


Day  after  day  I  tramp  thy  side, 
And  from  thy  crest  I  view  the  tide 
Of  sea-born  fogs  or  sun-kissed  bay, 
And  in  thy  silence  feel  thy  sway. 
The  mighty  hills  have  ever  held 
Great  mysteries  for  me  unspelled 
But  guessed;  and  here  I  seek  to  find, 
Communion  with  that  master  mind 
Who  lifted  up  thy  sun-crowned  head 
And  in  the  ocean  laid  thy  bed. 

In  rock-bound  majesty  you  stand 
A  sentinel  to  guard  the  land 
Encroaching  waves  and  north-bred  wind 
In  thee  a  taming  master  find. 
Here  in  each  sheltered  cove  or  glen 
I  find  the  homes  of  thoughtful  men, 
And  here  a  grove  primeval,  wild; 
By  man's  destruction  undefiled. 
Guardian  of  the  Western  gate 
You  challenge  men  and  bid  them  wait. 

A  Pisgah  thou,  on  which  I  stand, 
And  see  anew  that  promised  land; 
Which  Moses  saw  in  days  of  old 
Where  His  great  truths  shall  be  unrolled 
When  swords  are  turned  to  pruning  hooks, 
And  peace  flows  on  like  honeyed  brooks, 
I  see  all  men  as  brothers  meet, 
And  hold  thanksgiving  at  thy  feet. 
O  guard  thou  well  the  greater  plan, 
Thou  monument  of  God  for  man. 

WILLIAM  NAUNS  RICKS. 


On  one  of  the  old  river  mining  courses. 


The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp 


By  Bret  Harte 


This  being  the  Panama- Pacific  Exposition  year,  in  which  everything  of 
merit  in  California  is  being  reviewed  before  the  world,  the  management  of 
Overland  Monthly  has  decided  to  republish  in  its  pages  the  stories  and  poems 
that  made  the  magazine  famous  through  the  genius  of  Bret  Harte.  He  was  its 
first  editor,  and  it  was  his  keen  discernment  and  originality  which  gave 
the  contents  of  the  magazine  that  touch  of  the  spirit  of  the  West,  and  es- 
pecially of  California,  which  made  it  distinctive  and  enkindled  the  enthu- 
siasm of  discerning  readers  the  world  around.  These  early  contributions  of 
his  cover  several  years;  they  will  be  published  monthly  in  the  order  in  which 
they  appeared,  beginning  with  the  first  issue  of  Overland  Monthly,  July,  1868. 


THERE  was  commotion  in  Roar- 
ing Camp.     It  could  not  have 
been  a  fight,  for  in  1850  that  was 
not  novel  enough  to  have  called 
out  the  entire  settlement.  Ditches  and 
claims  were  not  only    deserted,     but 
"Turtle's"  grocery  had  contributed  its 
gamblers,  who,  it  will  be  remembered, 


calmly  continued  their  game  the  day 
that  French  Pete  and  Kanaka  Joe  shot 
each  other  to  death  over  the  bar  in  the 
front  room.  The  whole  camp  was  col- 
lected before  a  rude  cabin  on  the  outer 
edge  of  the  clearing.  Conversation  was 
carried  on  in  a  low  tone,  but  the  name 
of  a  woman  was  frequently  repeated. 


200 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


It  was  a  name  familiar  enough  in  the 
camp:  "Cherokee  Sal." 

Perhaps  the  less  said  of  her  the 
better.  She  was  a  coarse,  and,  it  is  to 
be  feared,  a  very  sinful  woman.  But  at 
that  time  she  was  the  only  woman  in 
Roaring  Camp,  and  was  just  then  lying 
in  sore  extremity  when  she  most  need- 
ed the  ministrations  of  her  own  sex. 
Dissolute,  abandoned  and  irreclaim- 
able, she  was  yet  suffering  a  martyr- 
dom— hard  enough  to  bear  even  in  the 
seclusion  and  sexual  sympathy  with 
which  custom  veils  it — but  now  terri- 
ble in  her  loneliness.  The  primal 
curse  had  come  to  her  in  that  original 
isolation,  which  must  have  made  the 
punishment  of  the  first  transgression 
so  dreadful.  It  was,  perhaps,  part  of 
the  expiation  of  her  sin,  that  at  a  mo- 
ment when  she  most  lacked  her  sex's 
intuitive  sympathy  and  care,  she  met 
only  the  half-contemptuous  faces  of 
her  masculine  associates.  Yet  a  few 
of  the  spectators  were,  I  think,  touched 
by  her  sufferings.  Sandy  Tipton 
thought  it  was  "rough  on  Sal,"  and 
in  the  contemplation  of  her  condition, 
for  a  moment  rose  superior  to  the 
fact  that  he  had  an  ace  and  two  bowers 
in  his  sleeve. 

It  will  be  seen,  also,  that  the  situa- 
tion was  novel.  Deaths  were  by  no 
means  uncommon  in  Roaring  Camp, 
but  a  birth  was  a  new  thing.  People 
had  been  dismissed  the  camp  effec- 
tively, finally,  and  with  no  possibility 
of  return,  but  this  was  the  first  time 
that  anybody  had  been  introduced  ab 
initio.  Hence  the  excitement. 

"You  go  in  there,  Stumpy,"  said  a 
prominent  citizen  known  as  "Ken- 
tuck,"  addressing  one  of  the  loungers. 
"Go  in  there,  and  see  what  you  kin  do. 
You've  had  experience  in  them  things." 

Perhaps  there  was  a  fitness  in  the  se- 
lection. Stumpy,  in  other  climes,  had 
been  the  putative  head  of  two  famil- 
ies; in  fact,  it  was  owing  to  some 
legal  informality  in  these  proceedings 
that  Roaring  Camp — a  city  of  refuge 
— was  indebted  to  his  company.  The 
crowd  approved  the  choice,  and 
Stumpy  was  wise  enough  to  bow  to  the 
majority.  The  door  closed  on  the  ex- 


tempore surgeon  and  midwife,  and 
Roaring  Camp  sat  down  outside, 
smoked  its  pipe,  and  awaited  the  is- 
sue. 

The  assemblage  numbered  about  a 
hundred  men.  One  or  two  of  these 
were  actual  fugitives  from  justice, 
some  were  criminal,  and  all  were  reck- 
less. Physically,  they  exhibited  no 
indication  of  their  past  lives  and  char- 
acter. The  greatest  scamp  had  a  Ra- 
phael face,  with  a  profusion  of  blonde 
hair;  Oakhurst,  a  gambler,  had  the 
melancholy  air  and  intellectual  abstrac- 
tion of  a  Hamlet;  the  coolest  and  most 
courageous  man  was  scarcely  over 
five  feet  in  height,  with  a  soft  voice 
and  an  embarrassed,  timid  manner. 
The  term  "roughs"  applied  to  them 
was  a  distinction  rather  than  a  defini- 
tion. Perhaps  in  the  minor  details  of 
fingers,  toes,  ears,  etc.,  the  camp  may 
have  been  deficient,  but  these  slight 
omissions  did  not  detract  from  their 
aggregate  force.  The  strongest  man 
had  but  three  fingers  on  his  right 
hand;  the  best  shot  had  but  one  eye. 

Such  was  the  physical  aspect  of 
the  men  that  were  dispersed  around 
the  cabin.  The  camp  lay  in  a  trian- 
gular valley,  between  two  hills  and  a 
river.  The  only  outlet  was  a  steep 
trail  over  the  summit  of  a  hill  that 
faced  the  cabin,  now  illuminated  by 
the  rising  moon.  The  suffering  woman 
might  have  seen  it  from  the  irude 
bunk  whereon  she  lay — seen  it  wind- 
ing like  a  silver  thread  until  it  was 
lost  in  the  stars  above. 

A  fire  of  withered  boughs  added 
sociability  to  the  gathering.  By  de- 
grees the  natural  levity  of  Roaring 
Camp  returned.  Bets  were  freely  of- 
fered and  taken  regarding  the  result. 
Three  to  five  that  "Sal  wou(ld  get 
through  with  it;"  even,  that  the  child 
would  survive;  side  bets  as  to  the  sex 
and  complexion  of  the  coming  stranger. 
In  the  midst  of  an  excited  discussion 
an  exclamation  came  from  those  near- 
est the  door,  and  the  camp  stopped 
to  listen.  Above  the  swaying  and 
moaning  of  the  pines,  the  swift  rush 
of  the  river  and  the  crackling  of  the 
fire,  rose  a  sharp  querulous  cry — a 


An  outlook  in  the  Bret  Harte  Country,  California. 


cry  unlike  anything  heard  before  in 
the  camp.  The  pines  stopped  moan- 
ing, the  river  ceased  to  rush,  and  the 
fire  to  crackle.  It  seemed  as  if  Na- 
ture had  stopped  to  listen  too. 

The  camp  rose  to  its  feet  as  one 
man!  It  was  proposed  to  explode  a 
barrel  of  gunpowder,  but,  in  consider- 
ation of  the  situation  of  the  mother, 
better  counsels  prevailed,  and  only  a 
few  revolvers  were  discharged;  for, 
whether  owing  to  the  rude  surgery  of 
the  camp,  or  some  other  reason, 
Cherokee  Sal  was  sinking  fast.  With- 
in an  hour  she  had  climbed,  as  it  were, 
that  rugged  road  that  led  to  the  stars, 
and  so  passed  out  of  Roaring  Camp, 
its  sin  and  shame  forever.  I  do  not 
think  that  the  announcement  disturbed 
them  much,  except  in  speculation  as 
to  the  fate  of  the  child.  "Can  he 
live  now?"  was  asked  of  Stumpy. 
The  answer  was  doubtful.  The  only 
other  being  of  Cherokee  Sal's  sex  and 
maternal  condition  in  the  settlement 
was  an  ass.  There  were  some  conjec- 
tures as  to  fitness,  but  the  experi- 


ment was  tried.  It  was  less  prob- 
lematical than  the  ancient  treatment  of 
Romulus  and  Remus,  and  apparently 
as  successful. 

When  these  details  were  completed, 
which  exhausted  another  hour,  the  door 
was  opened,  and  the  anxious  crowd, 
which  had  already  formed  themselves 
in  a  queue,  entered  in  single  file.  Be- 
side the  low  bunk  or  shelf,  on  which 
the  figure  of  the  mother  was  starkly 
outlined  below  the  blankets,  stood  a 
pine  table.  On  this  a  candle-box 
was  placed,  and  within  it,  swathed 
in  staring  red  flannel,  lay  the  last  ar- 
rival at  Roaring  Camp.  Beside  the 
candle-box  was  placed  a  hat.  Its  use 
was  soon  indicated.  "Gentlemen," 
said  Stumpy,  with  a  singular  mixture 
of  authority  and  ex  officio  compla- 
cency— "Gentlemen  will  please  pass  in 
at  the  front  door,  round  the  table, 
and  out  at  the  back  door.  Them  as 
wishes  to  contribute  anything  toward 
the  orphan  will  find  a  hat  handy." 
The  first  man  entered  with  his  hat  on ; 
he  uncovered,  however,  as  he  looked 


202 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


about  him,  and  so,  unconsciously,  set 
an  example  to  the  next.  In  such  com- 
munities good  and  bad  actions  are 
catching.  As  the  procession  filed  in, 
comments  were  audible — criticisms  ad- 
dressed, perhaps,  rather  to  Stumpy, 
in  the  character  of  showman:  "Is  that 
him?"  "mighty  small  specimen;" 
"hasn't  more'n  got  the  color;"  "ain't 
bigger  nor  a  deringer."  The  contribu- 
tions were  as  characteristic:  A  silver 
tobacco-box;  a  doubloon;  a  navy  re- 
volver, silver  mounted;  a  gold  speci- 
men; a  very  beautifully  embroidered 
lady's  handkerchief  (from  Oakhurst, 
the  gambler);  a  diamond  breastpin; 
a  diamond  ring  (suggested  by  the 
pin,  with  the  remark  from  the  giver 
that  he  "saw  that  pin  and  went  two 
diamonds  better");  a  slung-shot;  a 
Bible  (contributor  not  detected) ;  a 
golden  spur;  a  silver  teaspoon  (the 
initials,  I  regret  to  say,  were  not  the 
giver's);  a  pair  of  surgeon's  shears; 
a  lancet;  a  Bank  of  England  note 
for  five  pounds;  and  about  $200  in 
loose  gold  and  silver  coin.  During 
these  proceedings  Stumpy  maintained 
a  silence  as  impassive  as  the  dead 
on  his  left — a  gravity  as  inscrutable 
as  that  of  the  newly-born  on  his  right. 
Only  one  incident  occurred  to  break 
the  monotony  of  the  curious  proces- 
sion. As  Kentuck  bent  over  the 
candle-box  half  curiously,  the  child 
turned,  and  in  a  spasm  of  pain,  caught 
at  his  groping  finger,  and  held  it  fast 
for  a  moment.  Kentuck  looked  fool- 
ish and  embarrassed.  Something  like 
a  blush  tried  to  assert  itself  in  his 

weather-beaten  cheek.     "The  d d 

little  cuss!"  he  said,  as  he  extricated 
his  finger,  with,  perhaps,  more  tender- 
ness and  care  than  he  might  have 
been  deemed  capable  of  showing.  He 
held  that  finger  a  little  apart  from  its 
fellows  as  he  went  out,  and  examined 
it  curiously.  The  examination  pro- 
voked the  same  original  remark  in  re- 
gard to  the  child.  In  fact,  he  seemed 
to  enjoy  repeating  it.  "He  rastled 
with  my  finger,"  he  remarked  to  Tip- 
ton,  holding  up  the  member.  "The 

d d  little  cuss!" 

It  was  four  o'clock  before  the  camp 


sought  repose.  A  light  burnt  in  the 
cabin  where  the  watchers  sat,  for 
Stumpy  did  not  go  to  bed  that  night. 
Nor  did  Kentuck.  He  drank  quite 
freely,  and  related  with  great  gusto 
his  experience,  invariably  ending  with 
his  characteristic  condemnation  of  the 
new-comer.  It  seemed  to  relieve  him 
of  any  unjust  implication  of  senti- 
ment, and  Kentuck  had  the  weaknesses 
of  the  nobler  sex.  When  everybody 
else  had  gone  to  bed,  he  walked  down 
to  the  river  and  whistled,  reflectively. 
Then  he  walked  up  the  gulch,  past 
the  cabin,  still  whistling  with  demon- 
strative unconcern.  At  a  large  redwood 
tree  he  paused  and  retraced  his  steps 
and  again  passed  the  cabin.  Half  way 
down  to  the  river's  bank  he  again 
paused,  and  then  returned  and  knocked 
at  the  door.  It  was  opened  by 
Stumpy.  "How  goes  it?"  said  Ken- 
tuck,  looking  past  Stumpy  toward  the 
candle-box.  "All  serene,"  replied 
Stumpy,  "anything  up?"  "Nothing." 
There  was  a  pause — an  embarrassing 
one — Stumpy  still  holding  the  door. 
Then  Kentuck  had  recourse  to  his 
finger,  which  he  held  up  to  Stumpy. 

"Rastled  with  it— the     d d     little 

cuss,"  he  said,  and  retired. 

The  next  day  Cherokee  Sal  had  such 
rude  sepulchre  as  Roaring  Camp  af- 
forded. After  her  body  had  been 
committed  to  the  hill-side,  there  was  a 
formal  meeting  of  the  camp  to  discuss 
what  should  be  done  with  her  infant. 
A  resolution  to  adopt  it  was  unani- 
mous and  enthusiastic.  But  an  ani- 
mated discussion  in  regard  to  the 
manner  and  feasibility  of  providing 
for  its  wants  at  once  sprung  up.  It 
was  remarkable  that  the  argument 
partook  of  none  of  those  fierce  per- 
sonalities with  which  discussions 
were  usually  conducted  at  Roaring 
Camp.  Tipton  proposed  that  they 
should  send  the  child  to  Red  Dog — 
a  distance  of  forty  miles — where  fe- 
male attention  could  be  procured.  But 
the  unlucky  suggestion  met  with  fierce 
and  unanimous  opposition.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  no  plan  which  entailed  part- 
ing from  their  new  acquisition  would 
for  a  moment  be  entertained.  "Be- 


Working  on  a  water  flume  at  Cherokee,  the   home    of    Tennessee's    Pardner* 
(From  an  old  daguerreotype  taken  in  the  early  '50's.) 


sides,"  said  Tom  Ryder,  "them  fel- 
lows at  Red  Dog  would  swap  it  and 
ring  in  somebody  else  on  us."  A  dis- 
belief in  the  honesty  of  other  camps 
prevailed  at  Roaring  Camp  as  in  other 
places. 

The  introduction  of  a  female  nurse 
in  the  camp  also  met  with  objection. 
It  was  argued  that  no  decent  woman 
could  be  prevailed  to  accept  Roaring 
Camp  as  her  home,  and  the  speaker 
urged  that  "they  didn't  want  any  more 
of  the  other  kind." 

This  unkind  allusion  to  the  de- 
funct mother,  harsh  as  it  may  seem, 
was  the  first  symptom  of  propriety 
— the  first  symptom  of  the  camp's  re- 
generation. Stumpy  advanced  noth- 
ing. Perhaps  he  felt  a  certain  deli- 
cacy in  interfering  with  the  selection 
of  a  possible  successor  in  office.  But 
when  questioned  he  averred  stoutly 
that  he  and  "Johnny"— the  mammal 
before  alluded  to — could  manage  to 
rear  the  child.  There  was  something 
original,  independent  and  heroic 
about  the  plan  that  pleased  the  camp. 
Stumpy  was  retained.  Certain  arti- 
cles were  sent  for  to  Sacramento. 
"Mind,"  said  the  treasurer,  as  he 
pressed  a  bag  of  gold  dust  into  the 


express-man's  hand,  "the  best  that 
can  be  got — lace,  you  know,  and  fili- 
gree work  and  frills — d — m  the 
cost!" 

Strange  to  say,  the  child  thrived. 
Perhaps  the  invigorating  climate  of 
the  mountain  camp  was  compensation 
for  material  deficiencies.  Nature  took 
the  foundling  to  her  broader  breast. 
In  that  rare  atmosphere  of  the  Sierra 
foot-hills — that  air  pungent  with  bal- 
samic odor;  that  etherial  cordial,  at 
once  bracing  and  exhilarating,  he 
may  have  found  food  and  nourish- 
ment, or  a  subtle  chemistry  that 
transmuted  asses'  milk  to  lime  and 
phosphorus.  Stumpy  inclined  to  the 
belief  that  it  was  the  latter  and  good 
nursing.  "Me  and  that  ass,"  he  would 
say,  "has  been  father  and  mother  to 
him!  Don't  you,"  he  would  add,  apos- 
trophizing the  helpless  bundle  before 
him,  "never  go  back  on  us." 

By  the  time  he  was  a  month  old, 
the  necessity  of  giving  him  a  name  be- 
came apparent.  He  had  generally 
been  known  as  "the  Kid,"  "Stumpy's 
boy,"  "the  Cayote" — (an  allusion  to 
his  vocal  powers) — and  even  by  Ken- 
tuck's  endearing  diminutive  of  "the 
d d  little  cuss."  But  these  were 


204 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


felt  to  be  vague  and  unsatisfactory, 
and  were  at  last  dismissed  under  an- 
other influence.  Gamblers  and  adven- 
turers are  generally  superstitious,  and 
Oakhurst  one  day  declared  that  the 
baby  had  brought  "the  luck"  to 
Roaring  Camp.  It  was  certain  that 
of  late  they  had  been  successful. 
"Luck"  was  the  name  agreed  upon, 
with  the  prefix  of  Tommy  for  greater 
convenience.  No  allusion  was  made  to 
the  mother,  and  the  father  was  un- 
known. "It's  better,"  said  the  philo- 
sophical Oakhurst,  "to  take  a  fresh 
deal  all  around.  Call  him  Luck,  and 
start  him  fair."  A  day  was  accord- 
ingly set  apart  for  the  christening. 
What  was  meant  by  this  ceremony  the 
reader  may  imagine,  who  has  already 
gathered  some  idea  of  the  reckless  ir- 
reverence of  Roaring  Camp.  The  mas- 
ter of  ceremonies  was  one  "Boston,"  a 
noted  wag,  and  the  occasion  seemed 
to  promise  the  greatest  facetiousness. 
This  ingenious  satirist  had  spent  two 
days  in  preparing  a  burlesque  of  the 
church  service,  with  pointed  local  al- 
lusions. The  choir  was  properly 
trained,  and  Sandy  Tipton  was  to 
stand  godfather.  But  after  the  proces- 
sion had  marched  to  the  grove  with 
music  and  banners,  and  the  child  had 
been  deposited  before  a  mock  altar, 
Stumpy  stepped  before  the  expectant 
crowd.  "It  ain't  my  style  to  spoil 
fun,  boys,"  said  the  little  man,  stout- 
ly, eyeing  the  faces  around  him, 
"but  it  strikes  me  that  this  thing 
ain't  exactly  on  the  squar.  It's  playing 
it  pretty  low  down  on  this  yer  baby  to 
ring  in  fun  on  him  that  he  ain't  going 
to  understand.  And  ef  there's  going 
to  be  any  godfathers  round,  I'd  like 
to  see  who's  got  any  better  rights  than 
me."  A  silence  followed  Stumpy's 
speech.  To  the  credit  of  all  humor- 
ists be  it  said  that  the  first  man 
to  acknowledge  its  justice  was  the 
satirist,  thus  estopped  of  his  fun. 
"But,"  said  Stumpy,  quickly,  follow- 
ing up  his  advantage,  "we're  here  for 
a  christening,  and  we'll  have  it.  I 
proclaim  you  Thomas  Luck,  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  the  United  States 
and  the  State  of  California — So  help 


me  God."  It  was  the  first  time  that 
the  name  of  the  Deity  had  been  uttered 
aught  but  profanely  in  the  camp. 
The  form  of  christening  was  per- 
haps even  more  ludicrous  than  the 
satirist  had  conceived,  but  strangely 
enough,  nobody  saw  it  and  nobody 
laughed.  "Tommy"  was  christened  as 
seriously  as  he  would  have  been  under 
a  Christian  roof,  and  cried  and  was 
comforted  in  as  orthodox  fashion. 

And  so  the  work  of  regeneration 
began  in  Roaring  Camp.  Almost  im- 
perceptibly a  change  came  over  the 
settlement.  The  cabin  assigned  to 
"Tommy  Luck" — or  "The  Luck,"  as 
he  was  more  frequently  called — first 
showed  signs  of  improvement.  It 
was  kept  scrupulously  clean  and 
whitewashed.  Then  it  was  boarded, 
clothed  and  papered.  The  rosewood 
cradle — packed  eighty  miles  by  mule 
— had,  in  Stumpy's  way  of  putting  it, 
"sorter  killed  the  rest  of  the  furni- 
ture." So  the  rehabilitation  of  the 
cabin  became  a  necessity.  The  men 
who  were  in  the  habit  of  lounging  in 
at  Stumpy's  to  see  "how  The  Luck 
got  on"  seemed  to  appreciate  the 
change,  and,  in  self-defense,  the  rival 
establishment  of  "Tuttle's  grocery"  be- 
stirred itself  and  imported  a  carpet 
and  mirrors.  The  reflections  of  the 
latter  on  the  appearance  of  Roaring 
Camp  tended  to  produce  stricter  habits 
of  personal  cleanliness.  Again 
Stumpy  imposed  a  kind  of  quarantine 
upon  -those  who  aspired  to  the  honor 
and  privilege  of  holding  "The  Luck." 
It  was  a  cruel  mortification  to  Kentuck 
— who,  in  the  carelessness  of  a  large 
nature  and  the  habits  of  frontier  life, 
had  begun  to  regard  all  garments  as 
a  second  cuticle  which,  like  a  snake's, 
only  sloughed  off  through  decay — to 
be  debarred  this  privilege  from  cer- 
tain prudential  reasons.  Yet  such  was 
the  subtle  influence  of  innovation  that 
he  thereafter  appeared  regularly  every 
afternoon  in  a  clean  shirt,  and  face  still 
shining  from  his  ablutions.  Nor  were 
moral  and  social  sanitary  laws  neg- 
lected. "Tommy,"  who  was  supposed 
to  spend  his  whole  existence  in  a 
persistent  attempt  to  repose,  must  not 


An  old  miner  in  his  cabin,  near  Table  Mountain,  Tuolumne  County,  California, 
the  center  of  the  Bret  Harte  country. 


be  disturbed  by  noise.  The  shouting 
and  yelling  which  had  gained  the 
camp  its  infelicitous  title,  were  not 
permitted  within  hearing  distance  of 
Stumpy's.  The  men  conversed  in  whis- 
pers, or  smoked  in  Indian  gravity. 
Profanity  was  tacitly  given  up  in  these 
sacred  precincts,  and  throughout  the 
camp  a  popular  form  of  expletive, 

known  as  "D n    the    luck!"    and 

"Curse  the  Luck!"  was  abandoned,  as 
having  a  new  personal  bearing.  Vocal 
music  was  not  interdicted,  being  sup- 
posed to  have  a  soothing,  tranquilizing 
quality,  and  one  song,  sung  by  "Man- 
O'-War  Jack,"  an  English  sailor,  from 
Her  Majesty's  Australian  Colonies, 
was  quite  popular  as  a  lullaby.  It 
was  a  lugurbrious  recital  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  "the  Arethusa,  Seventy- 
four,"  in  a  muffled  minor,  ending  with 
a  prolonged  dying  fall  at  the  burden 
of  each  verse,  "On  b-o-o-ard  of  the 
Arethusa."  It  was  a  fine  sight  to  see 
Jack  holding  The  Luck,  rocking  from 
side  to  side  as  if  with  the  motion  of 
a  ship,  and  crooning  forth  this  naval 
ditty.  Either  through  the  peculiar 
rocking  of  Jack  or  the  length  of  his 
song — it  contained  ninety  stanzas,  and 
was  continued  with  conscientious  de- 


liberation to  the  bitter  end — the  lullaby 
had  the  desired  effect.  At  such  times 
the  men  would  lie  at  full  length  un^ 
der  the  trees,  in  the  soft  summer 
twilight,  smoking  their  pipes  and 
drinking  in  the  melodious  utterances. 
An  indistinct  idea  that  this  was  pas- 
toral happiness  pervaded  the  camp. 
"This  'ere  kind  o'  think,"  said  the 
Cockney  Simmons,  meditatively  re- 
clining on  his  elbow,  "is  evingly." 
It  reminded  him  of  Greenwich. 

On  the  long  summer  days  The  Luck 
was  usually  carried  to  the  gulch,  from 
whence  the  golden  store  of  Roaring 
Camp  was  taken.  There,  on  a  blan- 
ket spread  over  pine  boughs,  he  would 
lie  while  the  men  were  working  in 
the  ditches  below.  Latterly,  there 
was  a  rude  attempt  to  decorate  this 
bower  with  flowers  and  sweet  smelling 
shrubs,  ard  generally  some  one  would 
bring  him  a  cluster  of  wild  honey- 
suckles, azalias,  or  the  painted  blos- 
soms of  Las  Mariposas.  The  men 
"had  suddenly  awakened  to  the  fact 
that  there  were  beauty  and  significance 
in  these  trifles,  which  they  had  so  long 
trodden  carelessly  beneath  their  feet. 
A  flake  of  glittering  mica,  a  frag- 
ment of  variegated  quartz,  a  bright 


206 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


pebble  from  the  bed  of  the  creek,  be- 
came beautiful  to  eyes  thus  cleared 
and  strengthened,  and  were  invariably 
put  aside  for  "The  Luck."  It  was 
wonderful  how  many  treasures  the 
woods  and  hillsides  yielded  that 
"would  do  for  Tommy."  Surrounded 
by  playthings  such  as  never  child 
out  of  fairyland  had  before,  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  Tommy  was  content. 
He  appeared  to  be  securely  happy — 
albeit  there  was  an  infantile  gravity 
about  him — a  contemplative  light  in 
his  round  gray  eyes  that  sometimes 
worried  Stumpy.  He  was  always  tract- 
able and  quiet,  and  it  is  recorded  that 
once,  having  crept  beyond  his  "cor- 
ral"— a  hedge  of  tessallated  pine 
boughs,  which  surrounded  his  bed — 
he  dropped  over  the  bank  on  his 
head  in  the  soft  earth,  and  remained 
with  his  mottled  legs  in  the  air  for 
at  least  five  minutes  with  unflinching 
gravity.  He  was  extricated  without 
a  murmur.  I  hesitate  to  record  the 
many  other  instances  of  his  sagacity, 
which  rest,  fortunately,  upon  the 
statements  of  prejudiced  friends. 
Some  of  them  were  not  without  a  tinge 
of  superstition.  "I  crep  up  the  bank 
just  now,"  said  Kentuck  one  day,  in 
a  breathless  state  of  excitement,  "and 
dern  my  skin  if  he  wasn't  a-talking 
to  a  jay  bird  as  was  a-sittin'  on  his 
lap.  There  they  was,  just  as  free  and 
sociable  as  anything  you  please,  and 
a-jawin'  at  each  other  just  like  two 
cherry  bums."  Howbeit,  whether 
creeping  over  the  pine  boughs  or  ly- 
ing lazily  on  his  back,  blinking  at 
the  leaves  above  him,  to  him  the 
birds  sang,  the  squirrels  chattered, 
and  the  flowers  bloomed.  Nature  was 
his  nurse  and  playfellow.  For  him 
she  would  let  slip  between  the  leaves 
golden  shafts  of  sunlight  that  fell 
just  within  his  grasp;  she  would  send 
wandering  breezes  to  visit  him  with 
the  balm  of  bay  and  resinous  gums; 
to  him  the  tall  redwoods  nodded  fa- 
miliarly and  sleepily,  the  bumble-bees 
buzzed,  and  the  rooks  cawed  a  slum- 
brous accompaniment. 

Such   was   the   golden    summer   of 
Roaring    Camp.     They  were     "flush 


times" — and  the  Luck  was  with  them. 
The  claims  had  yielded  enormously. 
The  camp  was  jealous  of  its  privi- 
leges and  looked  suspiciously  on 
strangers.  No  encouragement  was 
given  to  immigration,  and  to  make 
their  seclusion  more  perfect,  the  land 
on  either  side  of  the  mountain  wall 
that  surrounded  the  camp,  they  duly 
pre-empted.  This,  and  a  reputation  for 
singular  proficiency  with  the  revolver, 
kept  the  reserve  of  Roaring  Camp  in- 
violate. The  express-man — their  only 
connecting  link  with  the  surrounding 
world — sometimes  told  wonderful 
stories  of  the  camp.  He  would  say: 
"They've  a  street  up  there  in 
'Roaring'  that  would  lay  over  any 
street  in  Red  Dog.  They've  got 
vines  and  flowers  round  their  houses, 
and  they  wash  themselves  twice  a  day. 
But  they're  mighty  rough  on  strangers, 
and  they  worship  an  ingin  baby." 

With  the  prosperity  of  the  camp 
came  a  desire  for  further  improve- 
ment. It  was  proposed  to  build  a  ho- 
tel in  the  following  spring,  and  to 
invite  one  or  two  decent  families  to 
reside  there  for  the  sake  of  "the 
Luck" — who  might  perhaps  profit  by 
female  companionship.  The  sacrifice 
that  this  concession  to  the  sex  cost 
these  men,  who  were  fiercely  skepti- 
cal in  regard  to  its  general  virtue  and 
usefulness,  can  only  be  accounted  for 
by  their  affection  for  Tommy.  A  few 
still  held  out.  But  the  resolve  could 
not  be  carried  into  effect  for  three 
months,  and  the  minority  meekly 
yielded  in  the  hope  that  something 
might  turn  up  to  prevent  it.  And  it 
did. 

The  winter  of  '51  will  long  be  re- 
membered in  the  foot-hills.  The  snow 
lay  deep  on  the  Sierras,  and  every 
mountain  creek  became  a  river,  and 
every  river  a  lake.  Each  gorge  and 
gulch  was  transformed  into  a  tumul- 
tuous water  course  that  descended  the 
hill  sides,  tearing  down  giant  trees 
and  scattering  its  drift  and  debris 
along  the  plain.  Red  Dog  had  been 
twice  under  water,  and  Roaring  Camp 
had  been  forewarned.  "Water  put  the 
gold  into  them  gulches,"  said  Stumpy. 


.5 


208 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"It's  been  here  once  and  will  be  here 
again!"  And  that  night  the  North 
Fork  suddenly  leaped  over  its  banks 
and  swept  up  the  triangular  valley  of 
Roaring  Camp. 

In  the  confusion  of  rushing  water, 
crushing  trees  and  crackling  timber, 
and  the  darkness  which  seemed  to 
flow  with  the  water  and  blot  out  the 
fair  valley,  but  little  could  be  done 
to  collect  the  scattered  camp.  When 
the  morning  broke,  the  cabin  of 
Stumpy  nearest  the  river  bank  was 
gone.  Higher  up  the  gulch  they  found 
the  body  of  its  unlucky  owner,  but 
the  pride — the  hope — the  joy — the 
Luck — of  Roaring  Camp  had  disap- 
peared. They  were  returning  with  sad 
hearts  when  a  shout  from  the  bank 
recalled  them. 

It  was  a  relief  boat  from  down  the 
river.  They  had  picked  up,  they  said, 


a  man  and  an  infant,  nearly  exhausted, 
about  two  miles  below.  Did  anybody 
know  them,  and  did  they  belong  here  ? 
It  needed  but  a  glance  to  show 
them  Kentuck  lying  there,  cruelly 
crushed  and  bruised,  but  still  holding 
the  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp  in  his 
arms.  As  they  bent  over  the  strangely 
assorted  pair,  they  saw  that  the  child 
was  cold  and  pulseless.  "He  is  dead," 
said  one.  Kentuck  opened  his  eyes. 
"Dead?"  he  repeated  feebly.  "Yes, 
my  man,  and  you  are  dying  too."  A 
smile  lit  the  eyes  of  the  expiring 
Kentuck.  "Dying,"  he  repeated,  "he's 
a-taking  me  with  him — tell  the  boys 
I've  got  the  Luck  with  me,  now;"  and 
the  strong  man,  clinging  to  the  frail 
babe  as  a  drowning  man  is  said  to 
cling  to  a  straw,  drifted  away  into  the 
shadowy  river  that  flows  ever  to  the 
unknown  sea. 


AONTEREY 


The  bugles  of  the  present  never  wake  the  town ; 
It  hears  only  the  chant  of  priests, 
The  cries  of  fighting 
And  the  voice  of  lovers 
Of  long  ago. 

The  'dobe  houses,  bullied  by  the  winds,  give  up  their  beauty 

But  cling  jealously  to  their  memories; 

The  crumbling  tiles  are  mindful  of  the  past. 

The  Mission  bell  calls  to  them  all,  Remember! 

The  four  winds  sojourn  here 
And  murmur  of  the  past; 
In  the  sea  sleep  many  memories 
Drowned  by  the  years. 

The  winds  bring  back  soft  snatches  of  old  songs — 
And  who  can  say  that  at  twilight  no  ghosts  of  Spanish  lovers 
walk  the  sands? 

The  still  town  lies 

Dreaming  of  those  whose  strong  hands  made  its  dreams : 

The  fishing  boats  fly  like  white  moths  around  the  candle  of 

the  sun, 
The  ocean  sleeps  upon  the  sand  and  dreams. 

Town  with  your  memories, 
I,  too,  dream  and  remember, 

MARY  CAROLYN  DAVIES. 


California  in  September 


By  William  Boyd  Gatewood 


HE  WAS  READING  when  the 
Chicago  Limited  drew  in  at 
Emporia.  Perhaps  if  he  had 
known  that  that  pretty  little 
city  in  Kansas  was  the  home  of  Wil- 
liam Allen  White  and  Walt  Mason,  he 
would  have  been  staring  out  the  win- 
dow. Mayhap  then  he  would  have 
seen  her  trip  aboard  his  coach.  But 
he  was  away  with  Dana  Gatlin,  and 
wondering  in  his  heart  why  it  was 
"The  Way  of  all  Mothers"  was  raising 
such  a  lump  in  his  throat.  He  would 
not  have  put  down  the  magazine  for 
a  set  of  Morgan  Robertson's  works. 
At  least,  that  was  the  way  he  felt  at 
the  moment. 

The  train  had  gotten  under  way  and 
was  roaring  over  an  autumn  brook 
when  a  clear  young  voice  pulled  him 
from  his  reverie.  It  sounded  awfully 
sweet,  that  voice.  It  was  singing, 
"Don't  you  remember  California  in 
September,"  and  its  fair  young  owner 
was  sitting  in  the  seat  next  to  his  own. 

He  put  down  his  magazine  and  took 
a  good,  frank,  uncovetous  look.  The 
girl  was  most  certainly  good  to  look 
upon — twenty  and  trim;  chic,  with  the 
biggest,  brownest  eyes  and  the  fairest 
skin  and  hair  he'd  ever  seen.  And  the 
complexion — well,  he  told  himself  it 
looked  like  the  kind  the  girls  had  at 
Santa  Monica.  And  then  he  got 
ashamed  of  himself ;  he's  been  looking 
so  steadily  and  long.  So  he  turned  to 
the  window  to  ease  his  chagrin. 

September  was  still  young,  very 
young — like  a  wee  babe  that  sleeps 
and  sleeps  and  sleeps  after  it  has  been 
expelled  from  the  no  where  into  the 
here.  And  so  the  golden  fields  of  Kan- 
sas slept,  under  a  lazy,  friendly,  som- 
nolent sun. 

The  Limited  tore  through  Elmdale 


and  kept  its  iron  nose  racing  for  Kan- 
sas City.  And  presently,  tired  of  the 
wheat  fields,  he  turned  again  to  his 
magazine.  He  finished  with  "The  Way 
of  all  Mothers,"  and  began  to  turn  the 
pages  aimlessly.  Then  he  caught  her 
humming  again,  and  listened  until  she 
wound  up  with  "California  and  you." 

"Say,"  he  began  unceremoniously, 
"I'm  strong  for  that  tune." 

"It's  awfully  catchy,"  she  returned 
quickly,  giving  him  a  smile  that  would 
have  brought  $6.35  at  a  Methodist 
bazaar. 

"Catchy!"  he  exclaimed.  "It's 
given  me  the  high  jinks,  that's  all. 
Maybe  it's  because  it's  about  'Cali- 
f  orny  and  you/ "  And  they  both 
laughed  merrily. 

"But  on  the  level,"  he  resumed, 
"anything  about  good  old  California 
gets  me  on  its  hip." 

"Then  you're  from  California,  too." 

"From  California!  Say!  Why,  we 
are  Native  Sons  and  Daughters  for 
'steen  generations." 

"I'm  from  Los  Angeles." 

"From  L.  A.?    Immense!    Shake!" 

They  had  a  good-fellow  handclasp, 
and  he  hung  onto  her  hand  just  a  wee 
bit  longer  than  was  necessary.  He 
kidded  himself  into  believing  that  he 
did  it  "just  to  see  if  she'd  let  him." 
And  she  did.  That  is  to  say,  she  did 
not  jerk  it  away  as  if  she'd  grabbed 
some  seaweed  in  the  surf.  It's  funny 
how  women  don't  like  the  feel  of  that 
stuff. 

"You  know,  it's  just  like  being  back 
in  Levy's  to  meet  you,"  he  told  her 
directly  he  had  freed  her  hand.  "There 
is  whole  schools  of  your  sort  to  be 
seen  there — good,  clean,  wholesome, 
desirable  looking  girls;  girls  a  fellow 
would  rather  ball  the  jack  with  than 


210 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


find  an  honest-to-goodness  maraschino 
cherry  in  a  dry  Martini." 

"Levy's,"  she  lingered  over  the 
word.  "I  haven't  been  to  Levy's  since 
Joe  Rivers  trounced  The  Turk.  The 
crowd  of  swells  that  poured  into 
Levy's  that  night!  It  was  in  Septem- 
ber." 

"California  in  September,"  said  he. 
Then  he  rattled  on : 

"But  it  isn't  all  Levy's.  Remember 
those  long  days  on  the  beach?  The 
sea — why,  it's  bluer  than — than — but 
your  eyes  aren't  blue!" 

She  laughed.  It  was  a  dead  swell 
laugh  she  had,  he  thought.  He  bet 
himself  she  could  sing  sweeter  than 
Laurette  Taylor  in  that  song  scene  in 
"Peg  o'  My  Heart." 

"You're  not  very  observing,"  she 
said,  merrily. 

"Deny  the  charge.  Right  oft  the 
reel  I  said  to  myself:  "She's  got 
cheeks  like  California  paints." 

It  wasn't  California  that  painted  the 
color  that  rushed  to  her  cheeks  at  his 
remark.  It  was  that  young  nymph, 
Delight. 

"That  was  nice  of  you." 

"Nice  of  me!  It  was  only  being 
honest  with  myself." 

"Is  honesty  one  of  your  virtues?" 

"Yes,  indeedy!  And  so's  not  to  de- 
ceive myself  and  throw  mud  on  my 
character,  I'm  just  going  to  come  right 
out  and  say  that  you  were  so  darned 
good  to  look  at  that  you  made  me  quit 
a  dead  swell  heart-throb  yarn  that  I 
was  reading." 

"I'm  so  sorry." 

"Well,  you  needn't  be;   I'm  glad.' 

"You  seemed  to  finish  the  story," 
she  accused. 

"Sure  I  did— had  to.  Couldn't  sit 
and  stare  at  you  all  day.  That'd  be 
too  bally  rude  of  me.  I'm  not  a  bloom- 
in'  boundar,  y'know." 

She  laughed  at  his  English  affecta- 
tion. "I  think  you're  bally  bold,  any- 
how," she  said,  joining  into  the  fun. 

"Aw,  that's  tough!  I  was  figuring 
on  playing  the  gallant  young  Ameri- 
can and  guiding  you  safely  to  an  hon- 
est lodging  house,  far  from  the  snares 
of  the  vile  'White  Slaver.'  But 


now —  He  made  a  deprecating 

gesture. 

"I  shan't  need  your  kind  services — 
not  in  K.  C." 

"Oh,  bound  for  old  K.  C.  That's 
nice.  Going  there  myself." 

"Of  course." 

"On  the  level,"  he  protested.  "Was 
going  there  anyhow." 

The  train  ran  screaming  through  a 
village.  The  sun  dropped  behind  a 
heavy  cloud,  as  if  affrighted  at  such 
blatency,  peeping  out  again  in  a  mo- 
ment to  slyly  watch  the  Limited  tear 
on.  It  was  clouding  up  outside,  and 
the  wind  that  beat  in  at  the  window's 
every  aperture  bore  a  distinct  bite  in 
its  teeth. 

"Don't  look  like  California — in  Sep- 
tember," he  said,  pointing  to  the  as- 
sembling clouds  and  the  fading  sun. 

"Oh,  no  place  looks  like  grand  old 
California!"  she  cried.  "It  hasn't  an 
equal  on  the  face  of  this  old  earth." 

"No  equal,"  he  agreed.  "Californy 
and  you." 

"I'd  like  to  go  back  again,  some 
day." 

"Well,  why  don't  you?  Gee,  I'm  go- 
ing soon." 

"Why  don't  I?  Why  don't  I  go  to 
the  Bermudas,  or  Havana,  or  Palm 
Beach,  or  yachting  to  the  South  Sea?" 

"Gee,  it's  tough!"  he  exclaimed  un- 
derstandingly. 

The  Limited  hurried  into  Kansas 
City  after  a  time,  and  they  made  their 
way  through  the  great  terminal  and 
uptown  in  a  jitney  'bus.  When  he  left 
her  at  Twelfth  and  Main  they  had  ex- 
changed cards  and  more  than  ordinary 
smiles.  His  card  told  her  only  that 
he  was  J.  Hamilton  Lines;  but  his 
smile  told  her  he  was  quite  good  look- 
ing, devilishly  attractive  and  decent — 
and  that  he  was  interested  in  her.  That 
was  the  nicest  thing  his  smile  had  to 
say.  Her  card  told  him  that  she  was 
"Miss  Marian  Norton,  Vocalist,"  and 
that  she  lived  at  "Rockhill  Apart- 
ments," where  she  had  a  studio.  It 
was  a  neat,  unpretentious  little  thing, 
that  card;  and  what  it  told  made  him 
pat  himself  on  the  back  as  a  first-rate 
judge  of  good  voices,  and  what  was 


CALIFORNIA  IN  SEPTEMBER 


211 


better  still,  of  good  character.  He 
knew  "Rockhill  Apartments"  for  re- 
spectable, homely  flats  where  repu- 
table people  lived,  and  he  was  quite 
glad  she  lived  there.  Then  he  fell  to 
considering  what  her  smile  had  told 
him.  Why  hadn't  he  insisted  on  see- 
ing her  to  a  quiet  little  dinner  for  two 
at  the  Baltimore?  What  a  chump  he 
was !  At  least  he  would  call  her  up  on 

the  morrow. 

*  *  *  * 

That  evening,  after  watching  a  fair 
burlesque  show  at  the  Gayety,  J. 
Hamilton  Lines  and  an  old  pal  saun- 
tered out  on  Kansas  City's  gay  Broad- 
way. Now,  Kansas  City  is  quite  proud 
of  her  night  life.  It  reminded  Lines 
of  a  photoplay  he  had  once  seen  Mary 
Pickford  in.  Rather,  it  reminded  him 
of  Mary  Pickford  acting  in  this  play, 
"The  Sorrows  of  the  Unfaithful/  or 
some  such  melodramatic  title. 

"In  this  particular  play,"  Lines  told 
his  friend  as  they  sat  in  Edwardes's 
munching  Saratogas  and  sipping 
"something  light,"  as  the  friend  had 
called  it — "in  this  particular  play, 
Mary  Pickford  was  the  darndest  flirt 
I  ever  saw.  Now,  that's  Kansas  City's 
night  life.  I'm  not  complaining;  I've 
had  lots  of  fun,  but  I've  been  flirted 
with." 

"If  that's  the  way  you  feel,"  said 
the  friend,  "I'll  take  you  to  the  Jef- 
ferson. You've  been  'most  every 
place  else." 

"All  right;  go  as  far  as  you  like. 
But  ever  since  I  met  the  girl  I  was 
telling  you  about — well,  I'd  just  rather 
be  up  in  Rockhill  Apartments  listening 
to  her  sing  'California  and  You/  " 

"Can  it!"  growled  the  friend.  "We're 
off  for  the  Jefferson;  you'll  forget 
Rockhill  and  California  over  there. 
And  girls!  They're  there  for  the  ask- 
ing— all  of  them." 

They  had  been  in  the  Jefferson  an 
hour.  It  seemed  longer  to  Lines.  He 
was  extremely  bored.  And  what  a 
riot  reigned!  He  had  seen  a  good 
cabaret  and  listened  to  the  most  popu- 
lar stuff  of  the  hour.  But  he  told  Nor- 
vell,  his  friend,  that  it  was  rotten,  all 
of  it.  He  pointed  out  the  prettiest 


girls  in  the  cafe,  and  inquired  very 
sarcastically  if  there  were  any  more 
at  Coffeyville  like  that.  Norvell  was 
doing  all  possible  to  show  him  a  good 
time,  and  failing.  This  blase  young 
writer  of  rags  was  continually  visual- 
izing Rockhill  Studio  and  its  fair 
young  vocalist. 

Their  table,  quite  removed  from  the 
performers'  stand,  was  probably  the 
most  obscure  in  the  cafe.  It  was  hard 
to  see  the  musicians  from  it,  and 
harder  to  be  seen. 

The  Jefferson  is,  perhaps,  Kansas 

City's At  any  rate,  the  Jefferson 

wouldn't  be  quite  the  proper  place  for 
a  good  Presbyterian,  because  the  flow- 
ing bowl  slops  over  at  the  edges  there 
and  the  music  borders  just  a  little  on 
the  daring,  and  the  pretty  girl  with 
the  two  big  blonde  ropes  of  hair  down 
her  back  will  wink  at  you  when  she 
comes  around  singing  "Adam  and  Eve 
Had  a  Wonderful  Time,"  and  the  girls 
paint  a  little  and  dance  about  with  in- 
triguing eyes,  and  altogether  times  are 
not  stupid  at  the  Jefferson. 

Lines  and  his  companion  were  tak- 
ing in  all  this  and  passing  generalities 
about  the  hilarity  when  the  orchestra 
struck  up  the  prelude  to  "California 
and  You."  Lines  became  interested. 

"O-ho!  Now  maybe  you'll  cheer 
up,"  chided  his  friend. 

But  the  song  was  the  bearer  of  ill 
news.  The  voice  that  carried  him  the 
melody  was  the  voice  he'd  heard  hum- 
ming it  on  the  Limited — her  voice. 
First  he  was  too  surprised  to  be  hurt; 
and  then  he  became  too  hurt  to  think 
to  be  surprised.  So  he  ordered  a 
heavier  drink  and  tried  to  pass  it  off. 
My,  how  she  sang  it! 

"Don't  you  remember 
California  in  September?" 

His  memory  of  California  in  Sep- 
tember, or  October,  or  November,  was 
vivid  and  pleasant.  It  would  be  quite 
less  pleasant  now,  and  more  vivid.  Un- 
til he  met  the  "vocalist"  it  would  have 
remained  unchanged.  He  argued  to 
himself  that  he  shouldn't  have  ex- 
pected much  more  of  her.  Why  had 
he?  Her  card  had  said  "vocalist." 


212 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Presently  he  suggested  that  they 
leave,  he  and  Norvell. 

"What!"  demurred  the  friend.  "Go 
now  ?  Why,  mister,  things  are  just  be- 
ginning to  pick  up!" 

"I  know — but  I've  had  enough." 

They  were  at  the  check  room  when 
he  saw  her  swinging  down  the  aisle, 
responding  to  a  hearty  encore  to  her 
number.  She  had  lots  of  grace  of 
body;  she  was  young  and  fresh  and 
wholesome  looking,  and  her  voice  was 
the  sweet,  clear  voice  of  an  honest 
girl's.  She  swung  past  a  handsome 
young  rake  who  smirked  up  at  her  and 
passed  a  side  remark.  Lines  saw  and 
heard.  With  a  nasty  glint  in  his  eyes 
he  made  for  the  man  at  the  table.  Nor- 
vell jerked  him  back. 

"Don't  be  a  fool!"  he  said.  "She's 
used  to  that.  Probably  she'll  go  out 
with  that  same  guy  after  her  turn's 
done." 

The  remark  of  his  friend  went 
through  his  body  and  sank  heavily  in 
his  stomach.  It  made  him  sick  and 
dizzy. 

"Do  you  know  her?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  no,"  was  the  nonchalant  re- 
sponse. "She's  new  here.  But  they're 
all  just  the  same." 

He  felt  a  little  better.  Watching 
her  swing  around  among  the  tables 
helped  some,  too;  she  was  that  fresh 
looking.  She  approached  the  good- 
looking  young  rake,  flushed  with  wine. 
As  she  did,  he  rose  unsteadily  to  his 
feet.  Lines  made  for  him  without  fur- 
ther thought. 

The  three  of  them  met  simultane- 
ously. The  girl  stifled  a  little  gasp  of 
surprise,  coloring.  The  rake  made  an 
affectionate  pass  for  her;  and  Lines 
knocked  him  down,  grimly  delighted 
when  he  hit  the  floor. 

It  was  quite  the  roughest  riot  the 
Jefferson  had  seen.  Lines  fought  his 
way  to  his  friend,  and  together  they 
fought  their  way  into  the  check  room. 
She  was  in  there  with  several  other 
girls,  quite  pale  and  frightened  and 
humiliated.  She  immediately  went  to 
him. 

"I — I  don't  know  how  to  thank  you," 
she  began. 


"You  don't  need  to,"  he  returned, 
blindly  rearranging  his  tie. 

"You  were  surprised  to  find  me 
here?"  she  asked. 

"Well,  yes,"  he  replied,  after  an 
awkward  silence. 

"I  knew  it!" 

"How?" 

"If  you'll  pardon  me,"  Norvell  broke 
in,  "I'll  leave  it  with  you  two.  I  guess 
it's  quite  safe  to  venture  out  now. 
These  squalls  usually  blow  over  very 
quickly  in  the  Jefferson.  Ain't  I 
right,  Miss — er — ain't  I  right?"  He 
winked  broadly,  moving  off. 

Lines  could  have  strangled  him  for 
the  wink.  But  he  called :  "Oh,  all 
right,  old  man."  Then  he  turned  to 
her  again.  "How  did  you  know  it?" 

"You  looked  it — when  I  first  began 
to  sing." 

"I  was.  But  let's  get  out  of  this. 
Here,  boy,  our  things." 

They  were  snug  in  a  taxi  and  whirl- 
ing toward  her  home,  when  he  sug- 
gested that  they  return  for  a  bite. 
"Hadn't  we  better  turn  around  and 
have  a  bite  and  a  jolly  little  chat  at 
the  Pennant?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  my  no!"  she  returned  quickly. 
"I'm  never  out  so  late  as  this." 

"No!"  he  said  sarcastically. 

vShe  flushed  and  dropped  her  eyes. 
"You  don't  believe  me." 

"Oh,  sure."  But  he  smiled,  and  it 
wasn't  altogether  a  believing  smile. 
"There's  no  harm  in  breaking  prece- 
dents." 

"Oh,  well,"  she  exclaimed,  suddenly 
emboldened,  "we'll  see  if  there  is  by 
breaking  one  to-night." 

In  a  velvet  gown  of  a  deep  lavender, 
with  her  fair  hair  shimmering  like  pale 
gold,  and  her  brown  eyes  so  bright 
with  the  magic  of  the  glitter  and  gay- 
ety  of  her  environment,  Marian  sat  at 
a  little  table  in  the  Pennant.  Across 
from  her  was  Lines.  About  her  was 
the  odor  of  lovely  women  and  the  en- 
chanting harmony  of  soft-toned  music. 
It  was  her  dream  night,  comparable 
only  to  the  night  at  Levy's  in  Los  An- 
geles. 

"You're  the  loveliest  woman  here," 
he  declared.  "California  beats  the 


CALIFORNIA  IN  SEPTEMBER 


213 


world  with  women.  It's  the  natural 
beauty.  Look  at  your  cheeks,  rosier 
than  a  floral  pageant.  And  your  hair! 
And  eyes!  You've  everything,  even  a 
corking  voice." 

"You  like  my  song,  then?"  She 
was  radiant,  breathing  deeply  of  the 
joyous  atmosphere. 

"Of  course.  But  not  quite  as  well 
as  when  you  hummed  it  on  the  Lim- 
ited." 

"It  didn't  go  so  well  to-night,"  she 
murmured  disappointedly. 

"Then  you  sing  every  night?" 

"Every  night." 

"I  didn't  know  you  sang  at — that  is, 
I  thought  you  were  more  of  a  'society' 
vocalist." 

"You  never  know  a  woman." 

"I  know  quite  enough  of  you." 

"I  wonder  just  what  you  know?" 
she  said,  archly. 

"George!  I  don't  have  to  know 
much  to  love  you  to  death." 

"Nor  almost  any  other  attractive- 
girl,"  she  returned. 

"I'm  not  quite  that  bad,"  he  said. 
"Lord!  Not  quite." 

"I'd  love  to  be  in  love;  but  I'd  hate 
to  be  like  that." 

"Aw,  that's  tough!  All  men  are 
more  or  less  polygamous,  you  know. 
But  they  all  get  an  honest-to-goodness 
case  sometimes;  and  now's  my  time." 

He  laughed  triumphantly. 

Marian  laughed  irresistibly. 

He  leaned  over  the  little  table  with 
a  caressing  intimacy  in  his  gaze.  Mar- 
ian thrilled  to  it  strangely,  and  her 
eyes  softened  and  smiled  into  his. 
Then  she  took  them  away,  and  with 
them  the  hand  which  he  held  in  both 
of  his. 

Then  she  suggested  going,  to 
which  he  demurred.  But  when  she  in- 
sisted he  acquiesced. 

"Very  well,  then,"  he  said.  "But 
where  shall  it  be?" 

A  strange  chill  went  through  Marian 
— a  little  chill  that  snuffed  out  the 
warmth  which  he  had  built  up  in  her 
heart,  that  left  the  evening  quite  gray 
and  chill  and  desolate. 

"Anywhere  you  say,"  he  said,  fol- 
lowing up  his  question. 


"To  my  home,  of  course,"  she  said 
simply. 

"Oh,  I  guess  I  didn't  understand." 

She  made  no  reply,  and  permitted  an 
attendant  to  assist  with  her  coat  while 
he  stood  by  awkwardly. 

The  trip  out  to  Rockhill  Apartments 
was  quite  frosty.  There  was  little  said 
between  them:  mere  commonplaces 
and  false  sorties  at  conversation.  But 
when  she  started  to  leave  him  at  her 
door,  he  caught  at  her  arm. 

"I  hope  I  haven't  offended  too 
deeply.  You'll  accept  apology,  of 
course." 

"Of  course.  I  suppose  your  mis- 
take was  somewhat  justifiable,  my  be- 
ing at  the  Jefferson  and  all  that." 

"Well,  I  hardly  expected  to  meet 
you  there.  I  don't  know  why,  but  I 
just  formed  a  different  opinion  of 
you." 

"I'm  glad  you  did.  You  should 
have." 

"How  came  you  there  ?  I — I  thought 
you  were  a  different  sort  of  vocalist." 

"And  so  I  am.  But  engagements — 
decent  engagements — aren't  so  numer- 
ous I  have  to  fend  them  off.  And 
there's  California  in  September,  and 
October,  and  November.  Oh,  there's 
Callifornia  all  the  time,  and  the  Ex- 
position going  on;  and  it's  a  long  way 
back  home."  She  laughed  a  nervous 
little  laugh,  as  if  she  were  about  to 
cry. 

He  was  suddenly  all  tenderness  and 
drew  closer  to  her. 

"Oh,  so  that's  the  racket.  Forgive 
me,  won't  you?  Maybe  we  could  go 
to  California  together— in  September; 
just  you  and  I  on  a  little  honeymoon.  I 
wonder  if  we  couldn't?" 

She  let  him  take  her  hand.  He  took 
advantage  of  the  permission  to  squeeze 
it  tenderly.  "George !  Nothing  would 
suit  me  better  than  California  and 
you." 

"But  it's  too  late  to  talk  of  that 
now,"  she  said. 

"But,  Marian!" 

"To-morrow — Hamilton." 

"Fine !"  And  then  he  kissed  her  un- 
resistingly and  walked  reluctantly 
away. 


Clayton,   Half-Caste 


By  Billee  Glynn 


THE  STERN-WHEELER,  Okra, 
behaved  very  well  for  a  maiden 
trip.  With  promising  steadiness 
the  beat  of  her  paddles  woke 
the  eerie  silence  of  the  delta  archi- 
pelago. Hills,  foliaged  in  palm-frond 
and  aerial  balletted,  whenever  the  sun 
shone,  in  the  soft  flight  of  myriad  but- 
terflies, cropped  up  in  constant  view 
and  passed  astern  to  give  place  to  other 
isles  of  exactly  the  same  nature.  In 
the  words  of  the  young  Lancashire 
engineer,  who  was  nursing  the  engines 
into  their  stride  before  entrusting  them 
wholly  to  the  native  crew,  "The  scen- 
ery was  all  right — if  there  wasn't  so 
much  rain  and  so  many  blooming  mos- 
quitoes in  it."  But  for  myself,  the 
fascination  of  that  rain-pearled,  varie- 
gated world  held  me  entranced.  I 
could  now  credit  all  those  garish  stor- 
ies of  palm-oil  ruffianism,  and  ju-ju 
fetish,  and  strange  practices  of  witch- 
craft I  had  heard — stories  unbelievable 
in  the  beaten  paths  of  civilization,  but 
easily  possible  to  this  African  jungle 
setting.  Suddenly  the  Okara  jarred 
from  stem  to  stern-post.  There  was  a 
breaking  sound  as  of  a  piston  rod 
crashing  through  solid  casting.  Then 
the  vessel  wobbled  weakly,  and  the 
current  catching  her,  swung  her  onto 


entwined  mangrove  roots.  Brimah,  the 
captain,  quickly  got  out  an  anchor. 

The  Lancashire  engineer  came  on 
deck. 

"Smashed  a  cylinder  head.  We'll 
have  to  return  to  the  shipyard — float 
on  the  stream.  What'll  you  do?" 

"How  far  to  the  nearest  trading  sta- 
tion?" I  asked. 

"Attaba  is  about  six  hours  by  canoe 
— but  where  are  you  going  to  get  one?" 

Scarcely  had  he  spoken  when  there 
glided  out  of  the  scenic  phantasma- 
goria three  cumbersome,  burnt-out 
canoes.  Brimah  explained  that  it  was 
a  chieftain  going  to  Attaba  to  trade  his 
cargoes  of  ebony,  rubber  and  kernels. 
He  suggested  that  I  take  passage  with 
him.  The  engineer  "reckoned  it  was 
all  right."  So  was  I  tumbled — guns, 
mattress  and  cooking  pots — into  a 
canoe  with  the  pot-bellied,  bow-legged, 
enormously  fat  chieftain  (cannibal,  for 
all  I  knew) ,  and  three  studies  in  bronze 
who  administered  to  his  comfort  in  de- 
mure obedience.  Never  before  nor 
since  have  I  felt  so  alone  in  the  world 
— so  entirely  cut  off  from  civilization 
and  security — as  when  the  white  decks 
of  the  Okara  were  lost  to  view  around 
the  bend.  I  was  expectant  of  any- 
thing. Fortunately,  however,  we  had 


CLAYTON,  HALF-CASTE 


215 


no  common  language,  and  therefore 
escaped  the  most  prolific  of  causes  of 
quarrel.  The  chieftain  proved  to  be 
a  dull,  phlegmatic  sort  of  animal.  Once 
only  did  he  show  animation — when  I 
drew  out  a  silver  match-box  to  get  a 
light  for  my  pipe.  He  examined  it 
with  much  grunting  and  very  covetous 
eyes.  I  discreetly  "dashed"  it  to  him. 
Following  the  custom  of  the  country  he 
"dashed"  me  in  return  a  bottle  of  palm 
wine. 

I  mentally  resolved  not  to  show 
any  more  of  my  treasures.  Nothing 
else  happened.  The  hours  crawled 
tediously  away.  Then  came  Attaba — 
just  as  quick-falling  night  blotted  out 
color  and  shape. 

I  sprang  up  the  high  clay  bank,  and 
would  have  slipped  down  into  the  mire 
had  not  a  hand  reached  me  out  of  the 
dark  and  hauled  me  to  firm  footing.  I 
found  myself  standing  beside  a  figure 
in  white,  and  a  cultured,  genteel  voice 
said  limpidly:  "How  do  you  do!"  The 
words  were  drawled  out  in  the  vacu- 
ous foppery  of  the  ultra  Englishman. 

I  answered  as  dryly:  "Very  well, 
thank  you." 

There  we  were  deadlocked.  But  I 
remembered  that  wretched  self-con- 
sciousness which  often  makes  an  Eng- 
lishman cold-appearing  when  he  is 
really  anxious  to  entertain.  I  ex- 
plained the  accident  to  the  Okara.  The 
figure  in  white  welcomed  me  to  Attaba 
and  introduced  himself  as  Arthur  Clay- 
ton, the  agent.  We  went  along  to  a 
low-roofed,  baked-clay  bungalow  cen- 
tering a  compound  walled  in  with 
sheet  iron  sheds  set  against  the  dense 
black  of  the  jungle  foliage.  Ducking 
our  heads  under  a  low  entrance  we 
passed  to  a  sort  of  central  hall  whence 
arches,  draped  in  native  mats,  led  to 
side  rooms,  after  the  manner  of  Moor- 
ish mosques.  There,  on  carved  native 
stools  that  might  have  been  purloined 
from  an  operatic  company's  Tannhau- 
ser  furniture,  we  seated  ourselves  to 
a  mahogany  table.  Hospitality  took 
the  usual  West  African  initiation 
through  the  whisky  bottle.  An  imp- 
ish, irresponsible  boy,  with  cheeks 
scored  with  the  tribal  mark  I  had 


learned  to  associate  with  the  Nupians, 
waited  on  us. 

In  the  warm  glow  of  a  heavy  brass 
lamp,  such  as  one  sometimes  finds  in 
old  country  churches,  I  quietly  studied 
my  host.  He  was  perhaps  twenty-five 
or  six  years  of  age,  of  athletic  build, 
six  feet  or  over  in  height,  and  hand- 
some in  a  Byronic  way;  a  head  that 
might  have  served,  indeed,  for  the  ori- 
ginal of  a  miniature  of  the  poet — sen- 
sitive, mobile  mouth  and  weak  chin, 
large,  dark,  flashing,  Southern  eyes, 
modelled  nose,  tumultuous  forehead, 
and  crisp-curling,  jet-black  hair.  Yet, 
in  spite  of  this  brave  exterior,  I  felt 
a  quick,  instinctive  dislike  to  his  per- 
sonality. His  affectation  of  indolence, 
the  precocious  familiarity  in  his  "old 
man"  form  of  address,  a  sallow,  evil- 
living  skin  and  cigarette  stained,  nerve 
twitching  fingers,  and  an  egotism  that 
amounted  almost  to  insanity — these 
things  all  antagonized  me.  Besides, 
though  his  manner  lacked  nothing  in 
politeness,  there  seemed  an  undercur- 
rent of  secretiveness  about  him — an  ef- 
fect heightened  probably  by  his  indif- 
ference to  the  voices  I  heard  in  one  of 
the  side  rooms;  though  he  must  have 
known  my  surprise  at  the  clear,  trill- 
ing-tongued  English  dropped  from  the 
lips  of  a  woman,  or  girl,  its  thrill  in- 
clining me  to  the  latter,  and,  as  well, 
my  speculation  as  to  the  second  voice, 
a  masculine  falsetto.  But  he  talked 
self,  cursing  his  present  circumstances 
and  boastfully  relating  the  glories  of 
the  days  when  he  owned  a  tea  planta- 
tion in  Ceylon.  Then  he  was  at  pains 
to  impress  the  standing  of  his  family. 
"The  Kent  Claytons,  old  man !  Squire 
Clayton  of  Clayton  Manor  refused  a 
baronage  from  the  last  government." 
Dormitory  and  playground  incidents  of 
a  public  school  celebrated  for  its  train- 
ing of  gentlemen,  he  exploited  pom- 
pously. But  for  the  mystery  of  that 
feminine  English,  the  situation  had 
been  tedious  to  yawning. 

Suddenly  the  voices  within  ceased. 
A  stool  scraped  the  floor,  and  a  man 
pushed  aside  the  hanging  mat,  crossed 
the  hall,  and  passed  out  into  the  night. 
I  caught  a  side  glance  of  a  small  sun- 


216 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


tanned  face  with  petite  features  and 
close-set  eyes.  The  man  could  not 
have  been  much  above  five  feet  in 
stature.  My  comment  escaped  me  ere 
I  was  aware. 

"So  you're  not  entirely  isolated  from 
white  companionship?" 

Clayton's  lips  curved  into  a  snarl. 
"White — that  fellow!  Yes,  he  had  a 
white  father — but  I  swear  they  never 
made  a  blacker  nigger."  He  glared 
for  a  moment  toward  the  door  where 
the  half-caste  had  disappeared,  then 
proceeded  to  pedigree  him  with  brutal 
earnestness.  ".You've  heard  tell  of 
'Ivory'  Stone,  the  Scotch  skipper  who 
first  traded  to  the  Oil  Rivers  and 
turned  a  half  of  a  million  out  of  the 
ivory  trade?  You  could  buy  a  forty- 
pound  tusk  in  those  days  for  a  penny 
mirror.  Well,  Stone  picked  up  a  Por- 
tuguese-Sierra Leone  for  a  wife.  That 
pup  is  the  male  offspring.  When  he 
had  made  his  pile,  Stone  sold  out  to 
the  Royal  Sokoto  Company  and  went 
home — married  into  the  aristocracy, 
and  lived  philanthropically  and  re- 
spectably as  Sir  John  Stone." 

The  head  waiting  boy  approached 
just  then  and  cut  short  the  history  with 
an  inquiry  about  "chop."  Clayton 
went  into  the  details  of  a  several- 
course  dinner  with  an  elaborateness  of 
detail  that  showed  how  uncustomary  it 
was,  and  gave  me  an  uncomfortable 
feeling  as  the  cause  of  the  bother,  as 
well  as  increasing  the  unhappy  sense 
of  intrusion  I  already  suffered.  The 
boy  stalked  importantly  away.  I  en- 
ticed Clayton  back  to  "Ivory"  Stone. 

"Didn't  he  make  any  provision  for 
the  boy?" 

"Oh,  yes;  put  the  fool  on  a  coffee 
plantation  in  Liberia.  He  failed  at 
that,  and  finally  drifted  into  the  com- 
pany's service." 

"Then  the  poor  devil  is  practically 
without  a  relation  in  the  world?" 

"He  has  a  sister,"  Clayton  snapped, 
jerking  his  finger  to  the  side  room. 

"Heavens!  She  must  have  heard 
every  word !"  I  remarked,  sotto  voce. 

He  laughed  a  dry,  unpleasant  laugh. 

"Do  you  think  that  will  hurt  her — 
'after  twelve  years  in  the  nigger  play- 


"I  came  on  the  girl  angled  in  a  rude 

seat  in  the  shade  of  a  clump 

of  plantains," 

ground  of  a  mission  school?  Two- 
thirds  white,  and  white  missionaries 
to  reveal  to  her  the  chasm — I  think 
Alice  Stone  knows  just  about  what 
Hell  is." 

His  sympathetic  understanding  of 
the  girl's  tragedy  seemed  significant  of 
something  in  the  background.  But 
why  did  he  not  extend  the  same  sym- 
pathy to  the  brother?  He  began  tell- 
ing me  anecdotes  of  that  playground — 
wretched  stories  of  a  child's  purgatory 
which  he  must  have  heard  from  the 
girl  herself.  At  the  same  time  he  tried 
to  disguise  the  anger  evoked  by  feel- 


:LAYTON,  HALF-CASTE 


217 


ings  of  which  he  was  either  ashamed 
as  a  weakness,  or  fearful  of  being  mis- 
interpreted on  my  part.  Distinctly  I 
was  to  understand  that  he  was  speak- 
ing of  some  one  in  whom  he  was  not 
personally  interested.  But  he  was  not 
actor  enough  to  carry  conviction. 

Again  the  head  boy  interrupted  us. 
He  carried  a  strip  of  calico.  Clayton 
arose,  laying  his  hand  on  my  shoulder 
in  that  abominable,  insincere  familiar- 
ity. "Come  along  to  my  room.  We'll 
talk  there  while  Jumbo  lays  the 
table." 

The  idea  I  had  already  formed  of 
him  was  endorsed  rather  by  the  char- 
acter of  his  room.  Questionable  "art" 
postals  were  tacked  to  the  clay  walls, 
one  group  of  them  making  a  nest  for 
a  picture  of  England's  king  resplend- 
ent in  field  marshal's  uniform.  A  col- 
ored print,  advertising  soap,  portrayed 
an  Irish  lassie  who  was  a  revelation  in 
buxomness,  and  on  a  rude  dresser  half 
a  dozen  French  novels  topped  a  set  of 
Kipling. 

My  host  took  up  a  leather  case. 
"Some  pictures  of  Ceylon  that  might 
interest  you."  He  shot  a  lot  of  ama- 
teur prints  on  to  a  wicker  table. 

I  went  over  them  leisurely.  The 
pictures  presented  Clayton  in  every 
heroic  pose  and  boastful  circumstance 
— on  the  polo  field,  before  the  cricket 
stumps,  on  the  diving  board,  centering 
a  group  of  plantation  coolies,  on  the 
porticos  of  clubs,  and  very  often  in 
company  with  a  girl,  evidently  an 
American.  In  one  instance  the  lady 
laughed  from  silken  folds  of  stars  and 
stripes — showing  tantalizing,  twin  rows 
of  ivory,  dimpling  cheeks,  and  a  pair 
of  the  most  captivating  eyes  that  ever 
stirred  a  man's  soul.  And  you  could 
see  her  buoyant  health  in  the  happily 
caught  snapshot  of  the  polo  field  and 
the  white  strength  of  her  shapely 
wrists  as  her  mount  took  the  fence. 
Clayton  lingered  over  the  sweet,  fresh 
face  with  a  wolfish,  devouring  hunger 
that  caused  me  to  turn  my  attention 
abruptly  to  other  pictures — rustic 
scenes  of  India,  temples  and  pagodas. 
I  came  on  a  photo  of  a  Ceylonese  prin- 
cess, a  plump,  olive-skinned,  dark- 


browed  woman  in  a  rich  native  cos- 
tume garlanded  over  with  a  king's  ran- 
som of  pearls.  The  large,  flashing 
black  eyes  struck  me,  held  me,  with 
a  queer  sense  of  familiarity.  Sud- 
denly the  photo  was  snatched  out  of 
my  hands.  I  looked  up  to  see  Clay- 
ton speechlessly  livid,  and  to  recog- 
nize in  the  likeness  of  the  black  eyes 
bent  upon  me  the  reason  for  my  in- 
stinct. 

Clayton  attempted  apology.  "I — I 
beg  pardon.  Didn't  mean  to  be  rude — 
but  there's  a  history  attached  to  that 
picture!" 

No  apology,  however,  could  wipe 
out  the  ugly  passion  I  had  surprised  in 
his  face.  The  situation  was  oppor- 
tunely relieved  by  the  head  boy  an- 
nouncing, "Chop,  sah!" 

I  went  to  dinner,  deeply  thoughtful. 
I  was  not  only  thoroughly  uncomfort- 
able, but  wholly  mystified.  As  I  could 
sense  it,  there  was  a  far-away  Ceylon- 
ese princess  near  enough  related  to 
Clayton  to  transmit  him  her  eyes  and 
temper — there  was  an  American  girl 
with  whom  he  was  on  an  intimacy  ac- 
corded only  to  engaged  couples — and 
there  was  a  venomous,  raucous  hatred 
on  his  part  toward  his  half-caste  as- 
sistant, and  a  sneaking  affection  for 
the  sister.  The  mystery  was  height- 
ened, if  possible,  a  few  minutes  later, 
when  Clayton  introduced  the  girl  to  me 
at  the  table.  Miss  Stone  put  out  her 
hand — the  daintiest,  veined,  velvet- 
soft  hand  I  had  ever  clasped — and 
smiled.  An  elfish  slip  of  a  thing  she 
was,  her  long-lashed  lids  modestly 
sweeping  her  cheeks,  and  freeing  me 
to  take  good  stock  of  her.  Never  had 
I  seen  anything  so  fragile,  so  will-o'- 
wispy,  so  fearfully  crushable — unless 
it  might  be  the  violet  on  the  sidewalk 
the  morning  after  the  dance.  But  far 
more  significant  than  her  physicali- 
ties  was  the  patient  resignation,  the 
pain-dramatized  expression  of  the  deli- 
cately molded  features.  I  think  a 
medical  man  would  have  diagnosed  her 
as  being  neurotic.  However  that  may 
be,  she  awoke  in  me  strong  compassion 
and  itching  anger  against  the  self- 
centered  Clayton.  The  latter  motioned 


218 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


us  to  be  seated.  The  girl  drew  his  at- 
tention to  the  brother  standing  timidly 
at  the  foot  of  the  table.  It  had  been 
Clayton's  intention  to  deliberately  ig- 
nore the  man — he  even  hesitated  now. 
But  the  girl  shot  him  a  swift  look  from 
her  large,  luminous  eyes  that  brought 
about  a  reluctant  and  surely  introduc- 
tion. 

"This  is  John  Stone,  my  assistant." 
I  gave  the  half-caste  a  grasp  of  os- 
tentatious warmth,  and  felt  a  small- 
boned  replica  of  the  girl's  hand.  The 
structural  features  of  the  face,  too, 
were  hers,  but,  while  forming  such  a 
dainty  and  pleasing  feminine  picture, 
they  acted  contrariwise  in  the  brother 
to  produce  a  manikin.  A  full-faced 
view  showed  me  how  greatly  I  was 
mistaken  in  taking  him  for  a  white. 
The  eyes  were  black  and  blood-shot, 
the  lips  thick,  and  the  pippin-like, 
conical  head  covered  in  tiny  curls. 

With  Clayton  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  we  ceremoniously  waded  through 
several  courses  of  tasteless  canned 
foods  and  aromatic  messes.  It  had 
been  tedious  beyond  description  but 
for  the  by-play  of  the  three  contrast- 
ing personalities.  Clayton  endeav- 
ored to  drag  me  into  enthusiasm  over 
certain  Meccas  in  England  where  he 
had  spent  different  "times."  As  often 
as  I  attempted  to  introduce  a  general 
subject  into  which  I  might  entice  John 
Stone,  he  as  quickly  sheered  off,  with 
snarling  criticism  and  the  lie  direct 
to  the  African's  timid  contributions. 
The  other  took  the  abuse  quietly, 
seeming  to  have  been  long  hectored 
into  submission.  Not  so  the  girl,  how- 
ever— again  and  again  she  flashed 
Clayton  those  admonishing  looks. 
Plainly  she  stood  between  her  affec- 
tion for  her  brother,  and  her  love  for 
the  handsome  egotist — for  her  man- 
ner showed  that  she  loved  him  beyond 
a  doubt.  She  caught  his  moods  with 
that  intuitiveness  of  soul-attuned  peo- 
ple, and  even  in  her  flashed  admonish- 
ings  there  was  a  homage  to  the  faults 
they  corrected,  and  which  love  col- 
ored to  heroic  weaknesses.  What  a 
turn  for  drama — those  three  meeting 
here  at  that  table  day  on  day,  wet  sea- 


son and  dry  season,  tornado  and  sun, 
and  ever  bringing  their  hate,  love,  fear 
and  pride.  How  was  it  when  the  re- 
straining presence  of  a  guest  was  not 
there?  Did  Clayton  always  so  far 
command  himself?  I  did  not  think 
so.  I  had  an  insistent  suspicion  that 
on  this  occasion  he  was  sitting  down 
on  himself — keying  himself  to  white- 
man  behavior.  Then  what  of  that 
American  girl?  It  was  a  relief  when 
black  coffee  came  at  last,  and  Clayton 
slipped  his  arm  through  mine  and  led 
me  out  to  the  veranda.  There  we 
smoked  and  talked  desultorily,  and  I 
felt  more  and  more  the  dark  mystery 
of  the  man. 

The  night  gave  dramatic  setting  to 
him,  as  it  were.  Inky-black,  bulging, 
hurricane  spiralled  clouds,  deluging 
torrents  of  rain  alternated  with  clear, 
starry  skies  lighted  by  a  two-thirds 
moon  that  bathed  the  jungle  flora  in 
ethereal  magic  witchery.  Over  on  the 
river  bank,  opposite  the  foot  of  the 
compound,  danced  the  grotesque 
priests  of  the  ju-ju  fetish  to  frenzied 
tom-toming.  Behind  them  reached  the 
black,  death-like  depths  of  the  jungle. 
Clayton,  his  chin  sunk  in  his  palms, 
his  eyes  on  the  oily  sweep  of  the 
Niger,  had  fallen  to  arguing  against 
Christian  theology.  Why,  he  tried  to 
make  me  admit,  were  not  these  sav- 
ages, with  their  superstitions  and  in- 
stinct, as  near  to  the  truth  as  the  white 
race  with  its  ceremonial  creeds.  He 
labored  eagerly  to  prove  his  conten- 
tion by  quotations  from  the  Indian 
sagas  and  weird  accounts  of  black-art 
as  practiced  by  the  Africans.  I  could 
understand  well  enough  an  isolated 
mind  being  warped  by  the  constant  as- 
sociation with  that  Primeval  Night; 
I  could  understand,  too,  it  falling  into 
morbid  speculation  on  the  Immortali- 
ties; but  with  Clayton  it  was  some- 
thing deeper,  something  uncanny  in 
his  nature,  and  of  which  he  was  aware 
and  fought  down — or,  rather,  tried  to 
fight  down.  Tiring  of  dragging  me  into 
an  acceptance  of  his  theories,  he  called 
at  length  to  the  girl  to  bring  her  gui- 
tar. She  came  at  once,  and,  without 
urging,  sang  "A  Hymn  for  Children" 


CLAYTON,  HALF-CASTE 


219 


delight  that  was  hers  when  she  first 
discovered  her  soul  in  language — she 
with  her  third  reader  English,  so  woe- 
fully inadequate  to  interpret  her  throt- 
tled sensibilities.  But  she  was  not 
minding  me — her  whole  soul  was  on 
the  handsome,  supercilious  Clayton. 
Suddenly  she  sprang  to  her  feet,  lips 
parted,  breast  heaving,  eyes  starting, 
hands  clutching  her  work.  Looking 
whence  her  alarm,  I  saw  Clayton  in 
the  midst  of  an  excited,  fighting  group 
of  black  figures  in  barter  quarrel.  The 
next  moment  his  white  helmet  dropped 
from  view.  The  fighting  stopped  in- 
stantly. The  negroes  fell  back  from 
the  prostrate  body.  The  girl  shrieked 
and  ran  forward,  throwing  herself  on 
the  unconscious  man  in  a  senseless 
abandoment  to  grief  that  exposed  her 
negress  taint  as  nothing  else  could 
have  done. 

I,  too,  hurried  to  the  scene.  Clay- 
ton, only  stunned  by  a  mis-aimed  rock 
meant  for  one  of  his  clerks,  was  al- 
ready recovering.  He  got  to  his  feet, 
petulantly  freeing  himself  of  the  girl's 
entwining  arms,  and  commenced  mete- 
ing  out  punishment  to  the  guilty  with 
theatrical  sang  froid.  The  girl  did  not 
recover  so  easily;  there  was  a  fainting 
fit,  hysterics  and  a  sobbing  that  tore 
her  v/hole  being. 

The  accident  gave  a  climaxing  touch 
to  my  uncomfortable  feeling  of  intru- 
sion. I  determined  not  to  wait  for  the 
Okara;  but  to  hire  canoes  and  push  on 
to  Illara.  Clayton  was  so  eagerly  ac- 
commodating in  getting  me  away,  fur- 
nishing both  canoes  and  men,  that  I 
felt  justified  for  my  discomfort.  I  left 
Attabar  at  noon.  But  I  did  not  leave 
behind  its  mysteries.  I  reached  Il- 
lara in  five  days,  and  almost  the  first 
remark  I  met  was  the  laughing  query 
of  the  young  sub-agent: 

"How  did  you  find  Clayton — still 
playing  white  man?" 

The  agent — the  real,  mellow-ton- 
gued,  indolently  good  natured  English 
gentleman  Clayton  affected  to  be — re- 
proved his  junior  mildly: 

"Bobby,  let  the  poor  devil  rest." 

We  had  walked  to  the  house  and 
were  sitting  on  a  wide  veranda  over- 


looking sky-horizoned  sweeps  of  stilly, 
glistening  lagoons  spotted  in  pampas- 
plumed  isles,  and  were  seductively 
sipping  whiskies.  I  make  the  state- 
ment with  one  exception,  for  the  Rev. 
Ebeneezer  Chortle,  a  missionary  from 
far  Idaho,  maintained  a  censuring  ab- 
stention. He  was,  I  understood,  "sit- 
ting down"  at  Illara  waiting  passage  to 
Old  Calabar,  thence  to  the  Liverpool 
boat. 

"Shucks!"  the  irreverent  junior 
pooh-poohed.  "All  the  river  knows 
the  story."  He  turned  to  me.  "If  you 
saw  anything  of  the  regime  at  Attaba 
you  must  have  brought  away  a  huge 
mystification." 

I  admitted  a  certain  curiosity  over 
the  pictures  of  the  American  girl  and 
the  Ceylonese  princess — but  did  not 
care  to  make  gossip  of  the  passion  of 
Miss  Stone. 

He  shot  an  amused  glance  to  the 
agent.  "So  you  got  the  whole  thing — 
including  the  sporty  American  beauty  ? 
How  the  poor  beggar  does  cling  to  his 
fairy  story!"  I  elevated  my  brows. 
"Oh,  it's  true  enough  in  a  way,"  he 
went  on;  "he's  a  Clayton  of  the  Kent 
Claytons,  all  right,  but  as  little  likely 
to  be  acknowledged  by  them  as  a 
brown  spaniel  sleeping  on  a  neigh- 
bor's door  mat.  His  college  boast  is 
also  true.  His  father  set  out  to  make 
an  English  gentleman  of  him,  but 
Clayton,  it  seemed,  hadn't  it  in  him. 
He  had  inherited  certain  sins — ah, 
hem!  wildnesses  from  his  Ceylonese 
strain — that  would  not  lie  down  in  the 
starched  bed  of  English  respectabil- 
ity. Stories  have  drifted  out  here  (we 
have  several  officers  in  the  company 
who  have  served  on  the  Ceylon  tea 
plantations),  ugly  stories  of  lapses 
from  grace.  You've  seen  a  man  fight- 
ing the  booze  with  all  his  soul,  steer- 
ing a  straight  course  for  a  couple  of 
months  maybe,  then  falling  again? 
Well,  Clayton  clenched  with  his  devil 
in  just  that  way — but  when  he  did  fall 
it  was  to  the  bottom  of  his  hell.  On 
one  occasion,  lost  from  his  habitues, 
he  was  discovered  in  a  hut  with  three 
native  wives.  Again  he  was  discov- 
ered in  abject  worship  before  heathen 


220 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


from  the  Episcopal  hymnal,  lisping 
the  simple  doggerel  in  the  parrot-like 
meaninglessness  in  which  she  had  been 
taught.  The  painful  ludicrousness  of 
the  contrast  between  the  hymn  and  the 
tragedy  of  the  girl's  face  it  is  impos- 
sible to  convey.  It  was  a  relief  when 
she  fell  into  a  native  song,  a  theme- 
less,  tuneless  rendering  of  vowel 
sounds — man's  first  groping  for  soul 
language.  When  it  was  through,  Clay- 
ton made  a  welcome  move  for  bed. 

As  we  entered  the  house,  John  Stone 
rose  from  the  table,  leaving  open  a 
quarto  volume  of  Robinson  Crusoe 
with  intentional  expose  of  the  fly-leaf 
inscription.  As  a  matter  of  courtesy 
I  picked  up  the  book,  on  a  pretext  of 
finding  out  what  it  was,  and  read: 
"Presented  to  John  Stone  for  Diligent 
Study  and  Exemplary  Conduct — The 
Mission  School,  Sierra  Leone." 

So  the  half-caste  was  not  without 
his  pride! 

Clayton  pointed  to  my  mattress  in  a 
corner  of  the  dining  hall.  "It's  the  best 
we  could  do,  old  man." 

The  girl  said  "Good-night"  and 
passed  in  under  a  hanging  mat  through 
a  side  room  to  a  room  beyond.  John 
Stone  took  his  book  under  his  arm  and 
went  in  behind  her  with  a  deliberate- 
ness  that  was  suggestive  of  a  sort  of 
guardianship.  Did  he  wait  thus  every 
night  to  put  his  person  between  his 
sister  and  Clayton,  I  wondered. 

I  slept  only  fitfully.  The  cramped 
hours  in  the  canoe,  the  infernal  tom- 
toming  and  shrieking  across  the  river, 
the  challenge  of  the  watchmen,  the 
spluttering,  guttural  masculine  laugh- 
ter and  shrill  feminine  trills  from  the 
colored  employees'  quarters,  all  served 
to  keep  me  awake.  Then  was  there  the 
persistent  train  of  thought  conjured 
by  the  mysteries  of  the  evening.  So 
it  was  that  during  a  lapse  of  silence 
my  alert  senses  caught  the  fall  of  a 
velvety,  careful  step,  and  I  glanced 
about  carefully  to  see  a  small  white 
foot  peep  under  the  mat  at  the  en- 
trance to  John  Stone's  room.  Then  an 
ethereal  slip  of  a  thing  in  cotton  print 
kimono  stole  noiselessly  across  the  hall 
to  my  corner,  pressing  two  large,  lumi- 


nous eyes  against  the  mosquito  cur- 
tains. I  watched  between  half-closed 
lids,  spell  bound  with  excited  curios- 
ity, whilst  she  devoured  my  every- 
day countenance.  I  use  "devoured" 
advisedly,  for  never  saw  I  such  hunger 
— which  I  interpreted  to  be  hunger  of 
kind  for  kind,  the  yearning  of  her 
white  inheritance.  Suddenly  the 
brother  came  out.  He  caught  her 
roughly  by  the  shoulder,  and  drew  her 
back  into  the  room.  I  heard  whis- 
pered admonitions  and  a  half-smoth- 
ered protest  in  native  tongue.  The  in- 
cident ended  there.  On  the  morrow,  I 
thought,  I  will  cultivate  her  acquaint- 
ance. 

The  morning,  as  it  happened,  pre- 
sented favorable  opportunity.  Clay- 
ton was  engaged  in  "barter  palaver" 
with  the  bow-legged  chieftain,  and 
John  Stone  was  busy  with  a  gang  of 
sweating,  jabbering  Kroomen  refining 
rubber  and  casking  kernels.  I  came 
on  the  girl  angled  in  a  rude  seat  in 
the  shade  of  a  clump  of  plantains.  She 
was  crocheting,  a  little  nervously,  it 
seemed,  her  ears  cocked  to  the  tiny 
piping  notes  of  a  gay-plumaged  bird 
in  a  cotton  tree.  She  arose  at  my  ap- 
proach in  shy  hesitation.  Then  she 
put  her  work  basket  down  from  the 
seat,  by  the  action  inviting  me  to  sit 
by  her.  I  picked  up  a  small  Bible, 
another  mission  school  "award."  It 
fell  open  at  thumbed  pages — the  Song 
of  Solomon.  I  made  the  Shulamite  a 
conversational  opener. 

"Do  you  like  this?" 

Her  eyes  were  following  Clayton's 
stride  across  the  compound.  Without 
lifting  them  from  their  object,  she  an- 
swered my  question  by  declaiming  two 
verses  with  a  passionate  revelation  of 
wild  love  that  had  inexpressibly 
shocked  the  orthodox  souls  of  her  in- 
structors. 

"Behold,  thou  art  fair,  my  love;  be- 
hold thou  art  fair " 

I  gaped  rudely — the  wonder  of  it! 
That  outpouring,  voluptuous  song  from 
the  sensitive  lips  of  that  spirituelle 
face  falling  on  the  dreaming,  opales- 
cent morning — the  ringing  joy  she  put 
into  the  words !  One  could  imagine  the 


CLAYTON,  HALF-CASTE 


221 


gods.  There  is,  too,  a  very  un-English 
story  of  a  knifing.  Whether  true  or 
not,  it's  a  fact  that  he  never  thinks 
of  using  his  fists  when  angered,  but 
claws  and  clutches  like  a  savage,  and 
he  wears  a  Ceylonese  dagger  worthy 
any  dago.  But  still  he  seems  to  have 
been  fairly  decent  up  to  a  period.  He 
was  accepted  at  the  planters'  clubs  as 
a  white  man,  and  was  accorded  other 
privileges,  mostly,  I  suppose,  for  his 
father's  sake ;  though  there  was  a  tact- 
ful understanding  among  the  whites 
that  he  should  not  be  given  too  much 
freedom  from  their  sisters.  There's 
the  situation,  then,  when  there  turns 
up  on  the  scene,  on  the  neighboring 
plantation,  a  fellow  from  America — 
Louisiana,  I  think — and  his  sister.  The 
neighborhood  soon  sat  up  to  see  Clay- 
ton in  constant*  attendance  on  the  girl 
— those  snapshots  he  boasts  tell  the 
story  pretty  well.  The  brother  was 
initiated  into  the  mysteries  of  Clay- 
ton's mixed  ancestry,  and  advised  the 
lady.  Maybe  he  did  it  clumsily — any- 
way, it  made  no  difference.  Never  a 
day  passed  that  she  was  not  out  riding 
or  walking  with  Clayton  just  the  same. 
Perhaps  she  wanted  to  show  American 
independence,  or  resented  interference, 
or  really  liked  the  man — maybe  it  was 
just  feminine  perversity,  or  deviltry. 
Of  course,  the  inevitable  followed — a 
bust-up  all  around.  The  Americans 
sold  out  and  went  home.  Clayton, 
surrendering  bestially  to  his  Ceylonese 
inheritance,  shamed  his  father  into 
death,  converted  the  estate  to  cash, 
and  shot  away  to  London,  living  a  life 
of  passionate  pleasure  till  his  finances 
ran  out,  then  came  into  the  service  of 
the  company  here.  Behind  that  bust- 
up  there's  another  story  again,  but  it's 
in  the  keeping  of  the  American  girl." 
The  sub-agent  reached  for  his  glass, 
and  added,  reflectively:  "And  there's 
a  bust-up  due  at  Attaba  soon,  too.  We 
have  a  situation  there  worthy  a  Drury 
Lane  melodrama,  with  its  thread  of 
comedy.  If  you  happened  on  Attaba 
unsighted,  you'd  surprise  Clayton  in 
carpet  slippers  and  pajamas,  and  sur- 
rendered to  the  law  of  his  own  fantas- 
tic will  like  a  lazy  living,  mission 


schooled  clerk."  He  pulled  himself 
up  and  turned  to  the  missionary  in 
quick  apology.  "Beg  pardon,  Mr. 
Chortle." 

The  Idahoan  waved  a  huge  paw. 
"We  know  the  local  estimate  of  our 
work — no  apology  is  necessary,"  he 
primly  returned. 

The  sub-agent  hastily  continued. 
"As  I  say,  it  is  his  Ceylonese  inheri- 
tance. But  he  is  always  ready,  in 
white  duck  impeccability  and  civilized 
manners,  to  play  white  man  before 
white  people.  That's  the  comedy.  The 
tragedy  lies  in  the  girl's  worship  of 
him — and  you've  got  to  know  her  kind 
to  fully  appreciate  that  worship.  As 
for  Clayton,  his  desire  for  her  is 
strong  enough,  but  his  wretched  fear 
of  identifying  himself  with  his  real 
half-caste  world,  his  nursed  hope  of 
white  women,  keeps  him  from  indulg- 
ing it  by  marriage.  Then,  think  of 
the  alert  watch  of  that  marionette 
brother  with  his  ready  knife  forever 
guarding  his  sister.  It's  a  nice  situa- 
tion for  a  dramatist. 

I  objected  that  Clayton  showed  no 
great  affection  during  my  stay.- 

"No;  he  wouldn't  do  that.  He'd  hide 
his  real  self  just  as  he  has  been  trying 
to  do  all  his  life.  I  know — you  see,  I 
was  hung  up  there  for  three  weeks  and 
saw  the  mask  off.  He  could  not  sus- 
tain the  effort,  couldn't  deny  himself 
the  girl's  caresses — caresses  with  a 
strict  boundary  line  guarded  by  the 
dangerous  brother."  He  finished  in 
the  unfeeling  curiosity  of  unimagina- 
tive youth :  "I'd  give  a  month's  pay  to 
see  the  curtain  drop." 

The  missionary  startled  us  with  his 
comment:  "For  my  part,  I  fail  to  see 
the  humor  in  such  a  picture  of  sinful 
passion.  I  will  make  it  my  duty  to 
stop  at  Attaba  and  endeavor  to  per- 
suade them  into  sanctified  marriage." 
He  excused  himself  and  went  to  his 
room. 

The  sub-agent's  eyes  sparkled.  "By 
Jove,  I'd  give  two  months'  pay  to  see 
the  curtain  drop  now." 

As  luck  would  have  it,  I  was  fated 
to  see  the  finale  myself.  Word  came 
that  the  Okara  would  be  at  Attaba  in 


222 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


a  few  days,  to  sail  thence  up  river  by 
a  channel  that  missed  Illara.  So  I 
doubleld  back,  with  the  missionary,  to 
that  post.  I  do  not  know  whether  the 
reverend  gentleman  disapproved  of  me 
or  whether  it  was  that  he  was  shaping 
his  thoughts  for  the  coming  battle  with 
the  forces  of  evil,  but  he  was  strangely 
silent  all  the  way  down. 

Canoes  approaching  Attaba  are  in 
view  a  long  hour  before  arrival.  Thus 
we  had  no  chance  of  putting  to  proof 
the  sub-agent's  theory  of  Clayton's 
heathenish  living.  As  on  the  former 
occasion  of  my  arrival,  he  greeted  us, 
to  use  the  sub-agent's  words,  in  his 
white-duck  impeccability  from  the  top 
of  the  bank.  The  Idahoan  he  received 
with  reverent  deference. 

We  had  started  up  to  the  bungalow 
together  when  the  missionary  imperi- 
ously signaled  me  to  drop  behind.  Re- 
gretfully I  did  so,  and  remained  out- 
side the  house,  endeavoring  to  interest 
myself  in  the  kaleidoscopic  life  of  the 
compound,  but  speculating  on  the 
scene  within. 

'  Presently  a  boy  came  dancing  on  the 
balls  of  his  feet  towards  me  with 
breathless  message:  "Massa  Clay'on 
wanta  go  look  you,  sah." 

As  I  reached  the  door  I  heard  a  stri- 
dent, assuring  bass  voice  in  street  cor- 
ner exhortation : 

"Bury  the  Old,  take  up  the  New,  for- 
give and  forget!" 

Entering,  I  saw  Clayton  sitting  at  the 
table,  chin  propped  on  elbows,  eyes 
hypnotized  to  the  Idahoan's  face,  com- 
batting and  surrendering  to  the  mag- 
netism of  the  man's  terrible,  positive 
earnestness  and  inflection.  Sometimes 
he  threw  out  a  protesting  hand,  at 
others  shrugged  his  shoulders  in  a 
badgered  way,  or  again  he  would  slip 
out  a  groping  hand  for  the  support  of 
the  elfish  girl  who  stood  at  his  side 
staring  and  shrinking  at  the  mission- 
ary's volcanic  emotionalism.  The 
Reverend  Ebeneezer  Chortle  had  the 
forces  of  evil  completely  at  his  mercy. 
Authoritatively  he  motioned  me  to  a 
stool  beside  John  Stone  at  the  bottom 
of  the  table. 

"...  Confess  the  past,  look  to  the 


future,  take  the  love  of  this  pure  girl, 
and  be  happy  .  .  ." 

Suddenly  Clayton  seemed  to  lose 
himself  to  it,  as  it  were.  He  jumped 
up  excitedly. 

"Confess,  is  it!"  he  exclaimed  dra- 
matically. "I'd  be  glad  to  tell  you  the 
story — a  priest  of  that  faith  which 
cursed  me  for  the  accident  of  birth." 
He  dropped  back  on  the  stool,  drawing 
the  girl  affectionately  against  his  coat, 
and  fell  into  quiet,  bitter  narrative. 
"Some  of  my  history — as  others  think 
they  know  it — you  seem  to  know  al- 
ready. What  you  don't  know  is  how  it 
was  to  me.  I  might  have  played  the 
game,  as  father  made  me  promise,  tell- 
ing me  of  the  ideals,  the  greatness  of 
his  people,  but  they  took  away  my  only 
chance.  Weaned  on  pride,  they  set  to 
work  torturing  me  through  that  pride — 
pride  of  family  and  religion.  God! 
my  youth  was  saturated  with  it !  While 
father  told  me  of  his  ancestry  and  took 
me  on  Sundays  to  the  English  church 
to  squirm  on  a  hard  seat,  my  mother 
every  week-day  used  to  instruct  me  in 
the  glories  of  her  people,  her  descent 
from  a  long  line  of  princes.  And  she 
had  a  little  bronze  god  hidden  away  in 
her  robe  chest  which  she  would  take 
out  and  teach  to  my  heart  real  things 
—things  which  I  afterwards  openly 
scoffed  at,  yet  inwardly  believed;  just 
as  I  believe  now  that  she,  my  mother, 
knew  as  much  of  the  hereafter  as  the 
priests  of  the  thousand  and  one  quar- 
reling creeds  of  civilization.  That  lit- 
tle bronze  god  I  took  to  England  with 
me  when  father  sent  me  there  to  school 
to  be  made  into  a  gentleman.  Yes,  and 
I  curled  up  on  my  knees  to  it  under  the 
bed  clothes  every  night  and  prayed 
for  revenge  on  the  boys  who  yelled 
'nigger'  at  me.  In  the  vacation  I  went 
down  to  Clayton  Manor — to  know  my- 
self for  the  family  skeleton.  I  asso- 
ciated with  English  girls — such  girls! 
—but  if  I  paired  off  with  the  same  one 
twice,  she  was  taken  aside  and  whis- 
pered to.  It  was  the  same  when  I  re- 
turned to  Ceylon.  The  planters'  clubs 
'took  me  in  as  one  of  themselves,  but 
always  they  drew  the  line  with  their 
sisters.  All  my  life  my  desire  has 


THE  SEQUOIA'S  CREED 


223 


been  to  associate  with  white  women, 
for  I  felt  I  was  nearer  to  them  than 
to  their  males.  But  I  played  the 
'game,'  disguised  my  heart  and  simu- 
lated enthusiasm,  accepted  the  life 
they  lived  and  denied  myself  my  life, 
took  the  morning  cold  tub,  cased  my- 
self in  their  stiff  shirts  and  manners, 
worshiped  the  army  uniform  and  dei- 
fied its  traditions.  Then  came  that 
damned  girl  and  shattered  me  with  her 
intimacy.  .  .  God,  what  times  we  had 
together !  How  she  would  laugh — and 
ride!  No  wonder  I  fooled  myself;  it 
was  her  nationality.  I  thought  maybe 
the  Americans  cared  little  for  birth 
— her  actions  looked  that  way.  Then 
her  brother  was  real  friendly,  too — 
took  me  for  myself.  Our  plantations 
adjoined,  and  when  I  wasn't  at  his 
place  he  was  usually  at  mine.  I  un- 
derstood his  game  later,  after  he  had 
trapped  me  into  exposure  and  brought 
his  sister  to  the  hut  where  I  kept  a 
native  girl.  I  could  have  killed  him! 
Oh,  but  he  was  cool  about  it!  Said 
he  hadn't  dared  oppose  his  sister  or 
she'd  have  plunged  and  married  me  out 
of  pity.  Perhaps  he  was  right,  per- 
haps he  wasn't.  Anyway  he  had  me 
fixed  good  and  plenty.  The  sister 
turned  me  down  like  a  very  wild-cat. 
Yet  she  still  walked  and  rode  with  the 
whites,  and  every  one  of  them  had 
known  native  girls.  Well,  there  it  was. 
Since  I  was  to  be  condemned  to  my 
half-world,  I  decided  there  shouldn't 


be  any  pretense  about  it.  Oh,  I  went 
what  that  American  would  call  'the 
limit,'  I  tell  you.  Father  gave  me  five 
thousand  pounds  and  told  me  to  go 
and  hide  myself.  I  went  to  London 
and  bought  white  love  with  it — five 
thousand  pounds'  worth,  Christians 
every  one  of  'em."  He  leapt  to  his 
feet  suddenly,  and  threw  up  a  hand  in 
the  manner  of  the  Scotch  oath.  "But 
here  and  forever  I  bury  white  man, 
Christian,  gentleman.  My  mother's 
son  I'll  be.  Allie  will  be  my  wife. 
And  pimple-head  there" — he  pointed 
to  John  Stone — "my  dear  brother-in- 
law."  He  turned  on  the  missionary. 
"If  you've  got  your  book,  sir,  we're 
ready." 

The  missionary  demurred.  "I  can- 
not administer  the  rites  of  my  church 
to  one  publicly  repudiating  the  faith. 
Indeed,  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  strongly 
warn  this  poor  girl " 

Clayton  cut  in  savagely.  "  'This 
poor  girl'  wants  none  of  it,  understand. 
We'll  take  canoe  right  away  for  the 
Resident  at  Abombo."  He  ran  to  the 
doorway  and  shouted  without:  "Ho, 
there,  Sabbo!  Get  canoes  ready  one- 
time." 

He  turned  back,  looking  doubt- 
fully at  John  Stone.  For  several  sec- 
onds they  exchanged  hostile  glances. 
Then  Clayton  flung  out  ungraciously: 
"All  right;  come  along." 

So  the  manikin  brother  accompanied 
—watchful,  silent,  knived. 


THE    SEQUOIA'S   CREED 

Shut  not  thy  soul  in  walls  to  pray 

The  prayers  that  others  wrote,  but  let  it  stray 

Where  the  Sequoia  lifts  to  Heaven  the  creed 

It  breathed  in  mighty  Caesar's  day  of  need : 

"Grow  strong.     Grow  straight,  and  upward  on  your  way. 

Look  to  the  skies  alone — never  away. 

If  some  calamity  should  cut  thee  down 

Rise  round  thy  ruin  with  a  vernal  crown 

In  an  eternal  circle,  richer  for  the  blow 

From  puny  power  that  laid  thee  low." 

LUCIA  E.  SMITH, 


Chili  Con  Carne 


(AVcat  With  Hot  Sauce) 


By  Lucia  E.  Smith 


AS   FLORITA,    looking    indeed 
like  a  little  flower,  came  sway- 
ing into  the  low-ceiled  room, 
Carlos,  late    water-carrier     to 
Don  Estes  of  Durango,  smote  his  lean 
brown  hands  together  and  scowled  at 
the  gay  ribbon  in  her  hair  she  had 
donned  in  lieu  of  the  roses  that  could 
not  be  made  to   grow  in  the  sandy 
stretches  about  their  humble  abode. 

"What  is  it?"  he  demanded,  show- 
ing white,  flashing  teeth;  "a  fiesta — 
no  ?"  And  he  pounded  his  brown  fore- 
head to  drive  out  such  a  thought. 

But  Florita  undaunted  hung  on  his 
arm,  smiling  into  his  face.  "A  fiesta 
surely.  Has  my  father  forgotten  it  is 
the  day  of  my  coming  to  him  so  long — 
ah,  yes,  twenty  years  ago,  not  quite? 
Well,  twenty  or  less,  it  must  be  a  day 
to  remember." 

"A  day  to  remember,  si;  who 
knows?"  and  he  shuddered. 

The  nodding  of  her  head  bobbed  the 
gay  ribbon  into  his  scowling  face,  and 
her  eyes  sparkled  with  mischief  as  she 
drew  him  by  a  strong  brown  hand  to 
the  cupboard,  a  rude  thing  made  of 
boxes,  and  pushed  his  unwilling  hand 
into  the  corner  where  lay  their  little 
hoard.  It  was  knotted  in  a  red  cloth 
and  jingled  as  they  drew  it  out.  Still 
reluctant,  Carlos  was  urged  to  the 
table  where  the  coins  were  poured  out. 

"Not  so  many,"  he  grumbled,  count- 
ing them  slowly.  "And  we  will  need 
them  to-morrow — a  fiesta  indeed.  What 
is  it  you  wish?" 

"A  bit  of  meat,"  Florita  pouted.  "If 
we  are  to  cross  to  safety  in  another 
day — we  need  it.  It  is  a  long  way  to 
the  border." 

Carlos  turned  to  take     his     jacket 


from  a  nail  and  drew  out  a  cigarette. 
"It.  is  not  wise,"  he  complained. 

"What  is  there  about  a  bone  of 
meat  to  bring  trouble?"  she  scoffed, 
and  pushed  him  playfully  from  the 
room.  "A  large  bone,"  she  called,  and 
gaily  her  feet  danced  on  the  sill  of  the 
door  as  she  watched  him  stalk  away 
along  the  yellow,  winding,  sandy  road, 
his  feet  stirring  up  puffs  of  dust  at 
every  reluctant  step.  When  he  had 
passed  the  turn  she  went  inside,  and 
soon  there  was  a  fine  odor  of  frying 
onions  and  garlic,  with  red  peppers 
from  the  string  that  hung  from  the 
roof,  for  the  hot  sauce  was  an  essential 
to  the  meat.  Carlos  was  one  of  the 
humblest  among  the  many  who  had 
worked  for  Don  Estes,  and  the  usual 
fare  of  Florita  and  her  father  was  the 
frijoles  or  Spanish  beans  with  chili 
sauce. 

Now  Florita,  as  she  cooked  and  sang 
fell  to  thinking  of  her  father's  words. 
To  be  sure,  there  were  terrible  things 
happening  about  them,  and  Don  Estes 
himself  had  warned  them  he  was  going 
to  leave;  since  he  had  incurred  the 
displeasure  of  Hilna,  the  rebel  leader, 
there  was  no  doubt  there  would  be 
trouble  for  them  all.  Don  Estes 
hoped  to  cross  the  border  within  a  few 
hours. 

Working,  the  time  passed  quickly, 
and  soon  Florita  heard  her  father  com- 
ing, this  time  swiftly,  almost  running. 
Something  was  spurring  him  on,  and 
she  ran  to  meet  him.  He  must  have 
heard  bad  news. 

But  she  would  not  have  him  think 
she  was  afraid,  so  she  took  the  pack- 
age he  handed  her  with  a  gay  laugh 
and  tossed  it  to  the  table,  while  she 


CHILI  CON  CARNE 


225 


lifted  the  kettle  over  the  bricks  of  her 
primitive  cooking  arrangement,  stir- 
ring up  the  fire  beneath  to  a  fine  red 
glow. 

"A  wonderful  bit  of  meat!"  she  com- 
mented, as  she  popped  it  into  the  bub- 
bling water  in  the  kettle.  "Now  rest 
you — it  was  a  hot  walk,  si?"  She 
pushed  him  out  and  into  the  shade  of 
the  little  adobe.  She  did  not  ask  him 
what  he  had  heard,  but  when  she 
went  inside  to  fashion  the  flat  cakes 
for  their  meal  she  did  not  sing  nor 
dance,  and  her  face  looked  pale.  Al- 
ready she  was  reproaching  herself  for 
having  delayed  their  departure  on  ac- 
count of  a  bit  of  meat. 

It  was  bubbling  merrily,  and  she 
tried  it  from  time  to  time,  prodding  it 
with  a  dexterous  twist  of  her  wrist  as 
she  handled  the  crude  iron  fork  of 
home  make  having  one  long  prong.  All 
the  while  she  kept  saying  to  herself, 
"Hurry  up,  hurry  up."  Yet  she  did  not 
know  why.  When  at  last  it  was  tender 
she  went  to  awaken  Carlos  and  saw 
that  he  was  sitting  with  wide-open 
eyes  watching  the  road.  Far  away  a 
dust  cloud  was  rising.  She  did  not 
speak  of  it,  although  she  felt  he  too 
had  seen  it,  but  called  gaily  for  him 
to  come  in. 

"A  brave  bit  of  meat,"  she  chattered. 
"How  fortunate  we  are  to-day!"  Yet 
all  the  time  she  was  thinking  she 
wished  they  were  on  their  way.  But 
the  sight  of  his  face  made  her  cry 
out  in  spite  of  her  wish  to  be  silent. 
"What  worries  thee,  padre  mio  ?"  She 
flung  her  arms  about  him. 

He  pushed  her  away  gently,  more 
so  than  usual.  "Nothing,"  and  he 
made  a  great  show  of  sharpening  the 
knife  in  his  belt  and  preparing  to 
carve  the  meat,  tearing  it  into  large 
pieces  in  clumsy  fashion  while  Florita 
surrounded  it  with  the  red  rich  sauce. 

She  paused  before  her  first  mouth- 
ful. "Surely  it  was  something  you 
heard  in  the  town,  si?" 

He  nodded.  "They  are  after  Don 
Estes — since  yesterday  morning." 

"Ah,  and  they  will  come  like  blood- 
thirsty dogs.  Woe  to  those  who  op- 
pose them!  You "  She  sprang 


to  her  feet.  "You  do  not  think  they 
will  come  this  way." 

Her  father  did  not  reply,  but  she 
noticed  he  was  not  relishing  the  meal. 
"It  were  better  we  went  this  morning 
and  had  not  this,"  he  pointed  to  his 
plate. 

Florita  laughed.  "Let  us  be  gay. 
If  they  come  they  come.  It  is  a  good 
fiesta.  See  how  tender?"  and  she 
thrust  a  naughty  finger  into  his  dish. 
"Hilna  cares  only  for  the  rich.  Why 
should  he  bother  with  us?" 

But  Carlos  repeated :  "It  were  better 
we  went  this  morning." 

"If  so  we  will  eat  fast  else  we  may 
not  live  to  feast,"  she  scoffed.  "You 
are  spoiling  it  all.  Shall  we  give  it 
to  the  dog?" 

Guessing  their  meaning,  that  lean 
creature  came  nearer  and  let  out  shrill 
staccato  barks,  his  eyes  blazing  with 
hunger,  watching  the  smoking  meat. 
Just  then  a  horse  galloped  down  the 
road  and  his  rider  pulled  him  to  his 
haunches  in  front  of  the  door.  It  was 
Don  Estes,  their  master,  and  he  was 
drooping  in  his  saddle.  "Food,  drink," 
was  his  feeble  cry. 

Quickly  a  package  was  stuffed  into 
his  pocket,  and  he  was  off  down  the 
road,  the  two  watching  him  from  the 
door,  watching  with  strained  faces,  for 
already  a  yellow  cloud  showed  coming 
nearer  on  the  road  he  had  ridden  to 
them.  Neither  spoke ;  they  knew  only 
too  well  who  it  was,  and  they  turned 
inside,  not  knowing  whether  to  stay  or 
to  flee.  The  dog  passed  them  swiftly 
with  the  rest  of  the  meat,  left  after 
the  portion  given  Don  Estes.  The 
fiesta,  was  ended,  yet  both  seated  them- 
selves at  the  table. 

"If  Hilna  should  ask  if  we  gave 
Don  Estes  meat?"  began  Carlos. 

"He  would  shoot  thee,"  sobbed  Flo- 
rita, "and  all  through  my  foolishness." 

"We  must  say  no,  no,"  commanded 
Carlos,  listening.  "They  are  here — 
be  quiet.  Do  not  tremble  so.  They 
must  not  think  we  fear  them — they  will 
suspect."  He  lighted  a  cigarette  and 
strolled  to  the  door. 

Florita  took  out  some  cloth  from  a 
box  and  began  drawing  threads.  She 
3 


226 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


sang,  keeping  time  with  her  foot.  She 
saw  3  fierce-looking  man  in  the  door. 
He  came  towards  her,  a  short,  swarthy 
man  with  whiskers  and  long  mus- 
taches, and  she  knew  it  was  Hilna. 
Outside  she  heard  voices,  laughs  min- 
gled with  curses. 

Carlos,  calmly  smoking,  did  not  look 
at  her.  He  greeted  the  leader  with  a 
low  bow,  and  assumed  a  stupid  air 
when  questioned,  smiling  all  the  time 
as  at  some  jest.  "Si,  Don  Estes  he 
went  that  way,  riding  like  the  evil  one, 
si,  sitting  very  straight  and  strong.  To 
the  border?  I  think  no — he  rides  not 
that  way." 

Florita  answered  in  listless  fashion 
without  looking  up.  She  was  afraid 
to  have  this  man  read  her  fright  of 
him. 

Hilna  frowned  as  he  went  outside 
and  called  to  his  band. 

Florita  heard  him  shout.  "This  man 
lied;  they  both  lied.  Go  half  of  you 
as  she  said,  on  the  chance  it  be  right, 
and  the  rest  to  the  border.  Gold  to 
the  man  who  gets  Don  Estes.  I  will 
stay  here  and  wait  for  you."  She 
heard  the  company  clatter  away,  and 
the  work  dropped  from  her  nervous 
fingers.  The  time  for  their  escape  had 
passed. 

Just  then  the  dog  trotted  in  with  a 
package  in  his  mouth — it  was  the  food 
they  had  given  Don  Estes,  and  he 
must  have  dropped  it.  Not  being  as 
hungry  as  usual,  the  dog  had  brought 
it  in  and  began  digging  a  hole  in  the 
earth  floor.  Florita  rose  to  drive  him 
out  when  a  man  entered  with  Hilna. 
He  kicked  the  dog  and  took  the  pack- 
age away.  "It  is  warm,"  he  remarked 
with  a  grin. 

Hilna  turned  to  Florita.  "I  fear 
thou  hast  lost  thy  dinner — or  was  it 
stolen  from  thee?" 

In  the  meanwhile  the  man  had 
snuffed  at  the  kettle,  discovered  the 
bone  outside,  and  Florida  felt  she  and 
Carlos  were  already  convicted,  tried 
and  sentenced,  in  Hilna's  mind — he 
brooked  no  opposition  from  any  re- 
tainers of  Don  Estes. 

With  a  gesture,  Carlos  was  com- 
manded to  be  bound  and  Hilna  smil- 


ingly remarked:  "Thou  hast  a  false 
tongue,  friend,  and  I  must  discipline 
thee  for  thy  good."  He  wagged  his 
head,  and  two  soldiers  took  Carlos  out- 
side and  away. 

Florita  felt  a  shriek  rise  in  her 
throat,  but  it  would  not  come  out;  she 
could  not  utter  a  sound.  Slowly  she 
moved  to  the  door  and  stared  to  where 
Carlos  stood  blindfolded  against  the 
wall.  She  saw  the  dazzling  glint  of  his 
gilded  buttons  as  the  sun  struck  them, 
and  his  sash  floated  in  the  breeze,  com- 
ing cool  and  fresh  with  the  evening. 
The  dog  sat,  tongue  out,  watching  his 
master. 

Suddenly  Florita  went  back,  and, 
taking  the  kettle,  filled  it  from  the 
spring,  her  back  to  the  soldiers  and 
Carlos,  singing  all  the  time.  She  took 
the  kettle  inside  and  placed  it  over 
the  warm  bricks. 

Hilna's  hand  dropped  and  he  went 
to  the  house  and  began  watching  her 
'curiously.  The  men  around  Carlos 
laughed  and  joked. 

But  Florita  paid  no  heed  to  any  of 
them.  She  stirred  the  water  in  the 
kettle  with  the  fork,  stabbing  it  at  in- 
tervals, and  singing  gaily,  her  foot 
keeping  time. 

Hilna  turned  to  a  man  at  his  side  and 
tapped  his  forehead  questioningly.  The 
man  nodded.  Hilna  crossed  himself 
piously,  and  drawing  a  purse  from  his 
breast,  laid  it  on  the  table. 

At  that  Florita  came  toward  him. 

Anger  flushed  his  face  and  he 
snatched  up  the  purse  and  started  to 
go  outside  to  Carlos  again,  but  she  had 
stepped  to  the  kettle,  and  he  heard 
her  say:  "A  fine  bit  of  meat,  si,  for 
my  fiesta." 

Her  mouth  had  a  foolish  droop — 
her  eyes  stared  straight  ahead. 

This  convinced  the  superstitious 
Hilna  that  he  had  come  across  the 
most  unlucky  of  all  things — a  person 
without  a  mind.  He  could  not  rid 
himself  of  her  too  quickly.  Flinging 
the  purse  to  the  floor  he  ran  to  his 
horse,  called  to  his  men  and  was  off 
in  a  whirl  of  dust,  flying  from  the  only 
thing  on  earth  he  feared. 

Carlos  tore  the  bandage    from    his 


THE  CANYON  TRAIL. 


227 


eyes,  and  ran  lamenting  to  Florita.  He 
had  heard  the  cries  of  the  men — the 
orders  of  Hilna,  and  heard  the  retreat. 
He  could  not  doubt  that  Florita's  mind 
had  gone,  driven  out  by  fright.  He 
caught  her  to  him,  overcoming  his  own 
superstitious  fears. 


But  she  flung  her  arms  about  him. 
"Let  us  go  quickly,  while  it  is  yet 
safe.  It  has  surely  been  a  day  to 
remember.  And  after  all  the  dog  ate 
that  fine  bit  of  meat."  .  Still  regretting, 
she  began  preparations  for  their 
speedy  departure. 


THE   CANYON  TRAIL 


In  stogie  boots  .and  khaki  suits, 
With  spirits  waked  by  wiles  of  Pan, 
We  lift  our  eyes  to  sunrise  skies 
And  drink  as  deeply  as  we  can 
The  morning's  breath  on  Dalton  Trail. 

The  mocker's  song  the  morning  long 
Enlivens  thicket,  glade  and  rill ; 
Red  robins  call  from  alders  tall, 
Brown  buzzards  sail  above  the  hill 
And  sweep  across  the  canyon  trail. 

And  as  we  pass  through  sun  scorched 

grass 

Across  a  half-cleared  mountain  space 
In  hurried  ranks,  a  gay  phalanx 
Of  chirping  crickets  leap  apace 
Along  the  open  hill-side  trail. 

And  butterflies  from  mid-day  skies 
Through  leaf-lace  shadows  thread  their 

way 

From  tidy  tips  to  lupine  lips 
Then  back  they  skim  to  sages  gray 
Beside  the  Dalton  canyon  trail. 

We  cross  the  slope  at  easy  lope 
And  swerve  around  the  mountain  side. 
Then  down  the  steep  we  firmly  keep 
A  tightened  rein,  and  slowly  ride 
Along  the  rough-descending  trail. 
Down,  down,  zig-zag,    each     faithful 

nag, 

Intent,  a  foothold  firmly  feels. 
The  loosened  shale  drops  down  like 

hail, 


On  stones  below  and  strikes  and  reels, 
Where  winds  the  Dalton  canyon  trail. 

A  deeper  shade  we  now  invade 
Beside  the  brooklet's  sweeping  source, 
The  creek  we  cross  floats  low  with 

moss, 
And  ferns  grow    frail    twixt    brakes 

more  coarse 
Along  the  wooded  canyon  trail. 

Long  shadows  creep  adown  the  steep, 
The  daylight  slips  from  cleft  to  crest, 
The  woodland  dove  coos  of  his  love, 
Home  steals  the  quail  unto  her  nest 
Beside  the  brush-bound  mountain  trail. 

The  evening  breeze  moves  through  the 

trees 

And  willow  leaves  to  silver  turn; 
From  stirrup  free,  on  bended  knee, 
We  stoop  to  drink  'neath  swaying  fern 
Along  the  Dalton  canyon  trail. 

The  ways  grow  dark,  coyotes  bark 
And  race  among  the  chapparal; 
The  day  is  spent,  we  pitch  our  tent, 
Careless  of  man  or  animal, 
Along  the  Dalton  canyon  trail. 

Though  rough  the  ground  our  sleep  is 

sound, 
Dreamless  and  deep  'neath  sky  and 

tree, 

With  days  full  long  and  spirits  strong 
Life  holds  all  wealth  for  you  and  me 
Who  take  the  winding  canyon  trail. 


MILDRED  C.  TALLANT. 


The  Light  Without 


By  John  Amid 


MAXWELL  Beacon  Thorpe  was 
born  just  one  week  after  his 
mother,        Harriet       Beacon 
Thorpe,  completed   her   fam- 
ous novel,  "Miniature  Men." 

From  the  time  he  was  able  to  crawl 
across  the  floor  and  eat  the  shavings 
of  sharpened  lead  pencils,  he  was 
treated  to  what  his  eccentric,  hard- 
working, nut-eating  parents  called  a 
literary  education.  He  never  went  to 
a  public  school  until  he  was  fourteen 
years  old.  Then,  both  his  parents 
drowning,  quite  theatrically,  in  a 
steamship  accident,  he  was  left  under 
the  protecting  wing  of  a  common  or 
garden  variety  of  uncle,  who  ate  meat. 

Previous  to  that  time  he  had  been 
taught  at  home  by  methods  that  would 
have  made  even  Madame  Montessori 
sit  up  and  take  notice.  He  was  started 
with  blocks  on  which  were  words  in- 
stead of  letters,  and  led  successfully 
through  years  when  he  was  compelled 
to  add  ten  new  words  to  his  vocabu- 
lary each  day.  By  the  time  he  had 
received  his  first  bloody  nose  he  had 
thrown  over  the  childish  works  of 
Scott,  and  was  deep  in  his  first  reading 
of  "The  Old  Curiosity  Shop." 

In  spite  of  these  mental  achieve- 
ments, however,  he  remained  in  most 
v.ays  a  normal,  active  boy.  He  liked 
to  mess  around  with  other  boys  of  his 
age,  and  he  rejoiced  for  many  years  in 
a  large  and  prosperous  collection  of 
assorted  turtles,  the  thriving  head  of 
which — a  regular  whopper  of  a  big 
brown  snapping  turtle — enjoyed  the 
pilfered  name  of  Maj.  Goliah  O'Grady 
Gahagan,  H.  E.  I.  C.  C.,  Commanding 
Battalion  Irregular  Horse,  Ahmednug- 
gar. 

By  the  time  he  finished  high  school 
young  Thorpe  had  developed  into  like- 


ly athletic  material,  and  was  snapped 
up  for  his  punting  possibilities  by  the 
football  enthusiasts  of  a  big  univer- 
sity. But  before  he  made  fullback  on 
the  'Varsity,  he  had  devoted  himself 
successfully  to  the  worship  of  Keats, 
Meredith,  Browning,  Stevenson,  Mae- 
terlink,  Tolstoi,  and  a  few  fleeting 
others.  He  admired  also,  in  passing, 
Turgenev,  Hauptman  and  Daudet,  and 
graduated  at  last  into  a  more  perma- 
nent affection  for  a  strange,  old-fash- 
ioned miscellany.  The  classic  flotsam 
of  favorites  accumulated  on  this  aston- 
ishing literary  voyage  included  Alice 
in  Wonderland,  John  Halifax,  Gentle- 
man, Captains  Courageous,  Our  Mutual 
Friend,  Dream  Life,  The  French  Revo- 
lution, the  Book  of  Job,  and  Water 
Babies. 

Once  safely  out  of  college,  young 
Thorps  descended  from  his  proud  po- 
sitions of  President  of  the  Associated 
Students,  Leader  of  the  Combined 
Musical  Clubs,  Secretary  of  the  Inter- 
fraternity  Conference,  Manager  of  the 
Athletic  Organization,  Chairman  of 
the  Prom  Committee,  and  Captain  of 
the  Chess  Team,  to  become  office  boy 
and  cub  reporter  of  the  sporting  de- 
partment of  a  freshwater  daily. 

As  the  latest  addition  to  the  Bugle's 
sporting  staff,  Maxwell's  duties  were 
to  edit  the  long-hand  athletic  news  of 
the  country  correspondents,  to  cover 
the  absorbing  contests  of  the  Bowling 
League,  and  in  the  sporting  editor's 
absence  to  write  those  stirring  accounts 
of  local  baseball  games  in  32-degree 
terms  of  fandom,  beginning:  "When 
Berlioz  clouted  the  pellet  on  the  nose 
for  a  full  circuit  in  the  sixth,  yester- 
day's game  was  neatly  packed  away  in 
the  refrigerator  for  the  Yellow  Jack- 
ets." 


THE  LIGHT  WITHOUT 


229 


During  his  first  year  on  the  Bugle, 
Maxwell  did  two  important  things :  he 
fell  in  love  with  'Gail  Maloney,  and 
decided  to  write  a  masterpiece. 

A  couple  of  years  afterward  he  mar- 
ried 'Gail  and  lived  happily  ever  af- 
terwards; but  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  us  here. 

We  are  here  following  his  literary 
development.  His  first  full-fledged  at- 
temps  to  scale  the  peaks  of  literature 
must  hold  our  absorbed  attention. 

He  named  his  great  work  "The  Man 
Who  Founded  Caesar,"  and  he  built  it 
in  a  unique  and  terrible  manner  quite 
his  own.  Hours  and  hours  he  spent 
on  its  construction,  working  through 
the  wee  sma'  portion  of  the  night  that 
succeeded  the  closing  bang  of  the  night 
editor's  desk  and  preceded  the  sudden 
stillness  that  came  when  the  presses 
stopped  rumbling  in  the  basement. 
When  the  tale  was  completed  in  all 
the  glory  of  its  ten  thousand  words, 
he  read  it  over,  then  tore  it  up  and 
wrote  it  again.  After  that  he  wrote 
and  re-wrote  it  half  a  dozen  times  be- 
fore admitting  to  himself  that  he  could 
do  no  more.  Finally  he  typed  a  neat 
copy  and  signed  it  with  his  chosen 
pseudonym,  Wade  Jenkins. 

Then,  and  not  until  then,  he  showed 
it  to  'Gail,  and  received  her  tremulous 
assurances  that  it  was  truly  wonder- 
ful. 

That  same  day  he  received  a  strenu- 
ous calling  down  from  the  city  editor 
for  Alighting  his  Bugle  work,  accom- 
panied by  the  threat  of  a  lost  position 
if  he  failed  to  show  immediate  im- 
provement. Even  while  realizing  that 
"The  Man  Who  Founded  Caesar" 
would,  the  moment  it  came  under  the 
enthusiastic  eye  of  the  first  great  mag- 
azine editor,  elevate  him  at  once  to 
fame  and  affluence,  Maxwell  felt  shiv- 
ers run  up  and  down  his  back  at  the 
thought  of  being  fired  from  his  first 
job.  For  a  fortnight  his  typewriter 
snapped  out  column  after  column  of 
copy,  while  "The  Man  Who  Founded 
Caesar"  lay  undisturbed  in  a  desk 
drawer. 

At  last,  for  a  "feeler"  before  des- 
patching the  manuscript  on  its  way, 


he  showed  it  to  Fred  Higgins,  the 
Bugle's  literary  critic  and  dramatic  edi- 
tor. Higgins  lugged  it  home  with  him 
and  honored  it  with  a  long,  careful 
reading  and  a  long,  care-free  laugh. 

"It's  all  right,  kid!"  was  his  remark 
to  Maxwell  when  he  passed  it  back 
next  day.  "Stay  at  it,  and  you'll  get 
there  some  time.  But  for  the  love  of 
Shad,  don't  show  this  thing  to  anybody 
else.  Your  job  wouldn't  be  worth  the 
peeling  off  a  dried  apple.  Then,  too," 
he  added  seriously,  "they  might  kill 
themselves  laughing,  and  you'd  be  held 
as  accessory  to  suicide." 

Of  course,  Maxwell  gave  Higgin's 
opinion  little  weight.  How  could  a 
literary  critic  understand  true  great- 
ness, anyway?  Still,  he  left  "The 
Man  Who  Founded  Caesar"  in  the 
drawer.  The  absorbing  game  of  writ- 
ing heads,  to  which  he  had  been  pro- 
moted, after  his  spurt  of  the  past 
month,  engrossed  for  the  time  his  en- 
tire attention.  When  'Gail  asked  him 
what  magazine  he  had  decided  to  send 
his  manuscript  to,  and  how  soon  they 
could  be  married  on  the  proceeds,  he 
put  her  off  with  an  evasive  answer. 

As  the  days  went  by,  and  he  came 
continually  into  closer  touch  with  lit- 
erature as  she  is  in  her  home  life, 
happily  wedded  to  the  great  American 
dollar,  the  glamour  began  to  fade  from 
"The  Man  Who  Founded  Caesar." 
Dust  accumulated  steadily  on  the  im- 
mortal pages. 

A  year  later,  when  Hichborn,  the 
sporting  editor,  threw  up  his  job  and 
headed  for  New  York,  Maxwell 
stepped  into  his  place.  This  necessi- 
tated the  transfer  of  his  miscellany 
from  the  ramshackle  desk  in  the  cor- 
ner to  the  littered  roll-top  contraption 
that  more  than  any  other  one  thing 
was  the  badge  of  office  of  the  sporting 
editor  of  the  Bugle.  It  was  with  some- 
thing akin  to  surprise  that  Maxwell 
ran  across  "The  Man  Who  Founded 
Caesar." 

"Almost  forgotten  the  blame  thing," 
he  muttered.  "Ought  to  send  it  out  if 
I'm  ever  going  to."  He  shuffled  the 
pages  idly,  glancing  at  lines  here  and 
there.  "Not  so  darned  bad,  you  know. 


230 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Some  crude,  but  at  least  original.  Be- 
lieve I'll  show  it  to  Billy." 

Billy  was  a  college  acquaintance 
who  hailed  from  the  Bugle's  home 
town,  and  who,  since  graduation,  had 
been  making  good  among  the  maga- 
zines. 

So  to  Billy  "The  Man  Who  Founded 
Caesar"  went,  for  prolonged  reading. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  say,  Maxey," 
explained  Billy,  when  the  two  next 
met.  "I  never  ran  against  anything 
like  it,  so  it's  hard  to  make  a  com- 
parison. There's  lots  of  good  in  some 
parts  of  it;  and  yet,  on  the  whole,  I 
think  it's  pretty  punk.  You  certainly 
were  green  when  you  wrote  it." 

"Hang  it,  Billy,  that's  the  very  trou- 
ble! I  wasn't  green  at  all — not  in  the 
way  you  mean.  I  did  every  one  of 
those  darn  fool  things  on  purpose — 
every  one  of  'em.  Higgins  thought  the 
same  thing — acted  as  if  I'd  never  read 
'beyond  the  story  of  Noah's  Ark  in 
"words  of  one  syllable.  Those  brilliant 
departures  from  precedent  do  seem 
rather  asinine,  though,"  he  ended, 
doubtfully. 

"Tell  you  what  you  do,"  said 
Billy.  "You  send  it  in  to  the  Milton 
Bureau.  I'll  give  you  the  address. 
They'll  criticise  the  blame  thing  for 
three  or  four  dollars,  and  if  there's 
anything  to  it  they'll  sell  it.  They  can 
sell  anything  down  to  the  mulings  of 
a  three  year  old  for  real  money.  They 
can  tell  you  more  about  your  darned 
yarn  on  two  pages  than  I  could  in  a 
hundred  years.  That  blamed  bureau 
has  been  the  making  of  me — I  never 
waste  postage  on  anything  they  put  the 
nix  sign  on." 

With  a  certain  pleasurable  sense  of 
exhilaration  and  excitement,  Maxwell 
drew  a  check  for  four  dollars  against 
his  slender  bank  account,  and  des- 
patched it,  snugly  folded  inside  "The 
Man  Who  Founded  Caesar"  to  the 
Milton  Literary  Bureau. 

In  due  time  the  bulky  return  envel- 
ope came  back  to  him,  enclosing  his 
precious  manuscript  and  eight  neatly 
typed  pages  of  careful  criticism.  His 
story,  the  Bureau  critic  explained, 
would  be  taken  up  under  the  following 


heads: — here  the  maker  of  authors 
neatly  took  off  his  mental  coat,  rolled 
back  his  metaphorical  cuffs,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  enumerate  in  the  abstract  the 
things  that  he  would  do  to  the  unfor- 
tunate manuscript  in  the  concrete.  Then 
he  proceeded  to  do  them — four  dollars 
worth — very  neatly,  very  scientifically, 
and,  according  to  his  lights,  painlessly. 

When  Maxwell  finished  the  eighth 
page  he  looked  about  him  a  little 
wildly,  as  if  half  expecting  to  see  tow- 
ering above  him  the  form  of  his  liter- 
ary antagonist,  ready  to  deliver  a  final 
blow  if  he  rose  to  his  knees  before  the 
count  of  ten.  "Well,"  he  muttered  to 
himself,  pulling  at  his  collar  to  get 
more  air.  "They  don't  seem  to  be 
holding  it  for  immediate  sale!  That's 
clear  enough,  anyway."  Then  he  read 
the  criticism  again,  more  carefully. 
"Darn  'em!"  he  said,  when  he  had 
finished  for  the  second  time.  "They 
don't  get  the  thing  at  all.  Why,  Heav- 
ens, Maude!"  as  the  full  realization  of 
certain  passages  came  to  him,  "they 
suggest  it  would  be  stronger  with  that 
Hector  cuss  left  out,  and  here  he's  the 
whole  thing!  Well,  I'll  be  diddle-dee- 
dog-goned  and  tee-totally  horn-swig- 
gled !  Yes,  sir !"  he  ended,  nodding  his 
head  affirmatively.  "I  have  been!" 

When  he  told  his  troubles  to  Billy, 
that  rising  individual  indulged  in  a 
cheerful  chuckle. 

"Maxey,  you  poor  young  ass,"  he 
said,  "if  you  don't  get  wise  now,  you 
never  will.  Some  people  don't,"  he 
continued  confidentially,  "and  later  on 
they  run  'em  into  the  bug-house.  Why, 
hang  it,  Maxey!  You  don't  need  to 
take  it  so  hard.  There  isn't  a  single 
inhabited  square  rod  of  this  great  and 
glorious  country  that  doesn't  hold  its 
poor  little  hero,  who  sets  out  at  the 
mature  age  of  twenty-three .  to  crowd 
the  world's  classics  off  the  shelves. 
They  all  do  it,  Maxey.  They  all 
write  their  masterpiece  before  they're 
twenty-five,  and  then  they  come  back 
to  earth  with  a  dull  gray  thud,  and 
continue  to  lay  bricks — or  shoe  horses 
— or  teach  the  young  mind  to  sprout 
— as  the  Lord  always  intended  they 
should.  That  is,  most  of  'em  do;  a 


THE  LIGHT  WITHOUT 


231 


few — and  I  guess  it's  a  lucky  thing 
for  mankind  that  they  are  blessed  few 
— try  it  again  when  they  get  wise. 
They  learn  the  game  from  the  bottom, 
and  by  and  bye  they  do  something 
worth  while  and  get  paid  for  it — paid 
for  it!  Do  you  hear  me,  Kid?  Cold, 
round  dollars — simoleons — iron  men! 
And  that's  where  that  Bureau  will  land 
you  if  you'll  stay  with  'em,  if  you 
really  have  the  goods.  Don't  talk  to 
me  about  this  game  of  starving  to 
death  in  a  garret — there's  nothing  to  it, 
boy.  The  guys  that  have  the  goods 
get  the  plunks.  It's  only  the  candidates 
for  the  loon  palace  that  hang  on  to  the 
work  that's  going  to  shake  the  world 
— and  when  it  comes  back,  write  sassy 
letters  to  the  editor.  You  take  my  ad- 
vice and  heave  this  piffle  into  the  gar- 
bage can.  I  thought  it  was  pretty  punk 
when  I  read  it  the  other  day;  but  it's 
worth  four  dollars  of  any  man's  money 
to  have  it  broken  gently.  You  stick 
to  that  sporting  job.  I  was  talking  to 
one  of  the  men  up  there  the  other  day 
— Whitney:  know  him? — and  he  says 
they've  got  their  eye  on  you.  Why, 
man!"  he  began  to  get  enthusiastic — 
"some  of  that  baseball  copy  you're 
throwing  at  'em  is  simply  great!  Oh, 
I  know,"  he  impatiently  waved  aside 
Maxwell's  unspoken  protest — "I  know 
all  about  that — debauching  the  noble 
art,  and  all  that.  But  don't  tell  it  to 
me!  I've  heard  that  kind  of  froth 
from  literary  cockerels  ever  since  I 
sold  four  lines  of  bleary  verse  to  the 
Golden  Eagle.  You  keep  snapping 
them  over  on  the  old  Bugle  until  you 
hit  your  gait,  and  then  tackle  the  mags, 
again.  Why,  Maxey,  you've  got  'em 
coming!  I  tell  you  after  you  get 
started  you'll  push  me  clean  under  the 
table!" 

The  sporting  editor's  salary  was 
enough  to  marry  on,  but  the  sporting 
editor's  work  was  hard  and  tiring. 
There  was  little  zest  left  at  the  end  of 
the  day  for  indulgence  in  vain  literary 
aspirations.  However,  Maxwell,  loy- 
ally encouraged  by  'Gail,  pegged  dog- 
gedly away  at  his  magazine  copy. 

Gradually,  as  he  came  to  understand 
the  requirements  of  the  various  maga- 


zines, and  won  into  touch  with  the  lit- 
erary market  and  the  editors  them- 
selves, he  began  to  break  through  the 
line  here  and  there.  Some  clever  per- 
sonal sketches  of  prominent  sporting 
celebrities  brought  him  his  first  real 
magazine  money;  yet  they  were  sold,, 
not  to  magazines  proper,  but  to  one  of 
the  smaller  syndicating  agencies  that 
retailed  them  out  to  a  dozen  little 
struggling  rural  dailies  scattered  across 
the  face  of  the  country.  After,  a  short, 
cleverly  written  baseball  story  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  Slam  Bang  Magazine; 
and  when,  two  weeks  later,  a  check  for 
five  dollars  tumbled  out  of  a  blue  en- 
velope from  "Merit"  (and  for  verse, 
too)  Maxwell  felt  his  first  real  thrill 
of  exultation. 

A  series  of  pithy  two-hundred  word 
descriptions  of  certain  innovations  in 
the  way  of  advertising,  that  had  been 
adopted  by  local  sporting  good  houses, 
drew  neat  little  sums  from  technical 
magazines.  Indeed,  this  branch  of 
his  side  work  rapidly  developed  into  a 
steady  income-producing  literary  mine. 
Maxwell  began  to  think  seriously  of 
throwing  over  his  job  as  sporting  edi- 
tor, which  had  failed  to  carry  him  to 
anything  beyond,  and  devote  his  whole 
time  to  the  magazines.  But  there  was 
a  little  Maxwell  Beacon  now,  and  a 
still  littler  Abigail  Harriett,  as  well, 
and  he  concluded  to  stay  by  the  old 
desk  until  he  could  see  clear  sailing 
ahead. 

He  gained  ground  steadily,  holding 
magazines  when  once  he  had  "landed" 
them,  and  continually  making  new 
friends  among  the  editors. 

Seven  years  from  the  time  the  syn- 
dicate sent  him  his  first  check,  he  ar- 
rived, in  a  blaze  of  glory,  clear  to  the 
top.  An  essay:  "Athletics  in  Ameri- 
can Journalism,"  was  accepted  by  that 
pinnacle  of  American  magazinedom — 
the  goal  of  every  struggling  writer — 
"The  Mausoleum."  Maxwell  Beacon 
Thorpe,  now  in  a  fair  way  of  being  a 
local  celebrity,  gave  up  his  position  as 
sporting  editor  of  the  Bugle,  and  settled 
down  to  life  as  an  author.  He  was  still 
young  and  the  world  was  before  him. 

Right  here  is  a  good  place  to  put 


232 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


this  story  down,  yawn  and  stretch,  and 
cheer  up :  we're  going  to  skip  twenty- 
five  years. 

Maxwell  Beacon  Thorpe,  author, 
white  haired  at  sixty-five,  with  sad- 
ness lingering  behind  the  wrinkles 
around  his  eyes,  can  sell  his  work 
where  he  pleases.  His  checks  are 
never  stupendous;  he  has  never  writ- 
ten a  "best  seller;"  he  has  never  torn 
the  world  apart  and  reconstructed  it 
anew;  but  he  has  quietly  continued  to 
make  good  in  the  literary  world,  until 
his  name  is  known  throughout  the  land 
as  the  creator  of  contained,  classical, 
structurally  perfect  stories,  and  articles 
of  American  work  and  play.  There  is 
nothing  brilliant  or  exotic  about  his 
productions.  Occasionally  he  smiles, 
a  little  grimly,  at  the  dollar  a  word 
stories  that  circulate  from  nowhere 
concerning  the  literary  orchids  of  his 
period.  Two  hundred  dollars  is  his 
conservative  estimate  of  the  commer- 
cial value  of  his  average  short  story. 
Frequently,  of  course,  he  gets  more; 
rarely  will  he  take  less.  He  is  com- 
monly supposed  to  realize  several 
times  that  amount  on  his  work  but  we 
are  looking  at  the  matter  from  the  in- 
side. The  largest  amount  he  ever  re- 
ceived for  a  single  short  story  was  six 
hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars,  and 
even  that  was  back  in  the  days  when 
the  demand  for  his  work  was  not  nearly 
as  steady  as  it  is  now. 

A  few  weeks  ago  he  received  a  let- 
ter from  the  editor  of  "The  Seer,"  with 
a  request  for  a  story  somewhat  longer 
than  he  was  in  the  habit  of  writing. 
"Preferably  well  up  towards  ten  thou- 
sand words,"  was  the  phrase  Sagamore 
used.  As  was  his  custom,  Maxwell 
Beacon  Thorpe  turned  first  to  the 
drawer  containing  his  unused  manu- 
scripts, to  see  if  by  any  chance  he  had 
anything  that  might  fit  the  require- 
ments. Finding  nothing  suitable,  he 
was  about  to  close  the  drawer  when  he 
noticed  the  edge  of  a  pile  of  slightly 
brown  manuscript  sticking  out  from  un- 
der some  note  books  at  the  back.  He 
grinned  with  delight  as  for  the  first 
time  in  several  years  he  pulled  "The 
Man  Who  Founded  Caesar"  from  its 


resting  place,  and  looked  through  the 
once  cherished  pages. 

"Crude!"  he  said  aloud.  "And  good 
Lord!  How  I  did  break  away  from 
the  accepted  standards!  What  a  fool 
I  was  to  think  that  any  editor  would 
have  looked  at  that!  Lucky  thing  I 
didn't  send  it  out — it  certainly  would 
have  broken  my  heart." 

"Why  don't  you  send  it  out?"  asked 
his  wife.  "The  Seer  will  very  likely 
take  it.  It  doesn't  make  any  difference 
to  them  what  it's  like  as  long  as  it's 
yours.  You  know  you  can  sell  any- 
thing you  put  your  name  on." 

Maxwell  shook  his  head. 

"That's  what  you  think,  dear,  but 
it's  not  entirely  so.  Even  Sagamore 
would  send  my  work  back  if  he 
thought  it  didn't  come  up  to  the  Seer 
standard." 

"Well,  then,"  triumphed  Mrs. 
Thorpe,  "you  certainly  aren't  running 
any  risk  by  sending  it  out.  Just  send 
it  along  and  say  nothing  about  it.  If 
they  don't  like  it  they  can  send  it  back. 
Your  reputation  is  too  good  to  be  hurt 
by  anything  like  that,  now.  If  they 
should  use  it  because  of  your  name, 
we'd  have  the  fun  of  hearing  what 
people  say  about  it — and  the  money 
besides." 

"I'll  do  it,"  said  the  author. 

At  the  end  of  a  fortnight  two  letters 
from  the  Seer  Publishing  Company 
were  delivered  to  him.  The  first  one 
he  opened  contained  a  brief  note  from 
the  editor. 

"My /dear  Thorpe,"  Sagamore  wrote, 
"a  fortnight  ago  I  wrote  asking  for  a 
ten  thousand  word  story;  not  having 
heard  from  you  since,  I  take  it  that 
you  have  not  yet  prepared  anything 
for  us.  If  this  is  so,  consider  the  ur- 
gency clause  in  my  last  letter  repealed, 
as  we  will  not  need  your  manuscript 
for  the  October  edition.  Send  it  in 
when  you  are  good  and  ready;  we  can 
use  it  later  on. 

"Sincerely  yours, 

"C.  G.  SAGAMORE." 

Somewhat  bewildered,  Maxwell 
Thorpe  tore  open  the  second  envelope. 

"Dear  Mr.  Jenkins,"  it  read,  "I  have 


THE  TORCH. 


233 


been  reading  with  pleasure  your  manu- 
script, The  Man  Who  Founded  Cae- 
sar.' " — Maxwell  pursed  his  lips  in 
perplexity,  then  picked  up  the  enve- 
lope again  and  received  enlightenment, 
"Mr.  Wade  Jenkins,  P.  O.  Box  401, 
New  London,  Penn."  Wade  Jenkins! 
His  old  discarded  nom-de-plume,  that 
in  his  days  as  sporting  cub  on  the 
Bugle  he  had  signed  to  "The  Man 
Who  Founded  Caesar."  He  had  for- 
gotten to  scratch  it  out  and  substitute 
his  flourishing  "Maxwell  Beacon 
Thorpe,"  so  his  old  manuscript  had 
gone  to  its  first  magazine  reading  sole- 


ly on  its  merits.  "I  have  been  reading 
with  pleasure  your  manuscript,  'The 
Man  Who  Founded  Ceasar,'  "  the  let- 
ter continued,  "and  wish  to  congratu- 
late you,  and  ourselves,  on  your  unique 
and  brilliant  conception.  I  hope  that 
you  will  soon  favor  us  with  more 
material  along  similar  lines.  I  am  en- 
closing our  check  for" — Thorpe  picked 
up  the  piece  of  bank  paper  that  had 
slipped  into  his  lap — "two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars. 

"Sincerely  yours, 
"C.  G.  SAGAMORE,  Editor." 


THE     TORCH 


(Sussex  Landscape) 


Is  it  your  watch-fire,  elves,  where  the  down  with  its  darkening  shoulder 
Lifts  on  the  death  of  the  sun,  out  of  the  valley  of  thyme? 

Dropped  on  the  broad  chalk  path,  and  cresting  the  ridge  of  it,  smoulder 
Crimson  as  blood  on  the  white,  halting  my  feet  as  they  climb. 

Clusters  of  clover-bloom,  spilled  from  what  negligent  arms  in  the  tender 
Dusk  of  the  great  grey  world,  last  of  the  tints  of  the  day, 

Beautiful,  sorrowful,  strange,  last  stain  of  that  perishing  splendor. 
Elves,  from  what  torn  white  feet,  trickled  that  red  on  the  way? 

No — from  the  sunburnt  hands  of  wha  t  lovers  that  fade  in  the  distance  ? 

Here — was  it  here  that  they  paused  ?     Here  that  the  legend  was  told  ? 
Even  a  kiss  would  be  heard  in  this  hush;  but,  with  mocking  insistence, 

Now  through  the  valley  resound — only  the  bells  of  the  fold. 

Dropt  from  the  hands  of  what  beautiful  throng  ?    Did  they  cry  Follow  after, 

Dancing  into  the  West,  leaving  this  token  for  me — 
Memory  dead  on  the  path,  and  the  sunset  to  bury  their  laughter? 

Youth  ?    Is  it  youth  that  has  flown  ?     Darkness  covers  the  sea, 

Darkness  covers  the  earth.    But  the  path  is  here.    I  assay  it. 

Let  the  bloom  fall  like  a  flake,  dropt  from  the  torch  of  a  friend. 
Beautiful  revellers,  happy  companions,  I  see  and  obey  it; 

Follow  your  torch  in  the  night,  follow  your  path  to  the  end. 

ALFRED  NOYES. 


Ode  to  California 

By  Harry  Cowell 


Hail,  California,  land  of  dreams  come  true, 

Where  Life  is  wonder  still  and  Earth  yet  young, 
Retaining  much  of  its  first  mornings'  dew 

And  that  primordial  melody  God  sung 
For  very  gladness,  self-moved  to  create! 
Hail,  Golden  State, 

Triumphant  strain  of  His  creative  tongue 

That  blinking  stars  among 
Rang  formative,  for  aye  reverberate! 
Thou  Eden  of  His  ecstasy,  as  new 

As  on  that  dawn  when  thy  gold  poppies  sprung 

From  His  red-gold  voice  flung 
Afar,  rich  notes  that  glad  the  eye 
And  dying  do  not  die; 

Thou  formed  of  song  that  stand'st  uncurst  apart, 
Lone  lyric  of  His  love,  I  hymn  thee  from  my  heart! 

Thou  poem  set  to  music  of  the  spheres, 

Sung  ere  man  was  athwart  the  morning  stars — 
In  Time's  vast  womb  that  heir  to  many  tears — 

Or  ever  Envy  rumoring  red  wars ; 
Before  black  Hate,  abominable  Lie, 
Or  loosed  Love-tie ; 

When  glowed  magnificent  in  beauty  Mars, 

No  visioned  note  that  jars, 
A  ruby  God-rejoicing  in  His  sky; 
I  hymn  thee  as  though  ne'er  in  Heaven's  ears 

Had  blared  harsh  brass  of  battle,  shrilled  those  bars 

That  back  of  victors'  cars 
The  tortured  mouths  of  victims  make 
With  every  gasped  intake, 
Sighed  exhalation,  of  mad  fevered  breath 
That  falls  on  upturned  faces  cold  as  dews  of  death. 

I  hymn  thee  for  a  fresh  fair  garden-spot, 

An  undefiled  Eden  that  has  stood 
Remote  from  Evil  as  though  Sin  were  not 

Since  first  'twas  evening,  and  lo  very  good, 


And  very  good  the  glad  voice  of  Daybreak 
Crying  Awake! 

To  each  hushed  wold  and  every  slumbering  wood. 
God's  spirit  still  doth  brood 
On  thy  great  waters;  ne'er  a  lake 

But  holds,  is  hallowed  by,  the  creative  mood. 

Of  awful  magnitude, 
Thy  immemorial  trees  have  heard 
The  wonder-working  Word 
That  from  the  void  evoked  fair  formful  things : 
At  eve  'tis  echoed  in  their  solemn  whisperings! 

Hail,  California,  land  of  beauty  bright, 

Land  fair  with  flowers,  fruits!  thy  sinless  skies 
Obey  as  then  thy  Lord's  Let  there  be  light! 

Reflect  as  then  the  glad  smile  in  God's  eyes 
When  He  sang  into  being  beast  and  bird 
And  man  deferred 

For  final  self-expression!    The  surprise 

Of  Life  new-waked  that  tries 

Wide-eyed  to  solve  its  Where,  what  am  I? — stirred 
To  undredged  depths  of  wonderment  at  sight, 

Sound,  smell,  taste,  feeling — seeks  to  realize 

Itself,  its  Paradise, 
Still  lends  a  pristine  purity  and  grace 
To  thy  rare  virgin  face 

Sweet  glowing  with  the  flush  of  Earth's  first  morns 
Before  Sin  sowed  it  thick  with  thistles  sore  and  thorns. 

Hail,  land  of  loveliness,  still  good  to  see 

As  when  thy  Poet,  the  Maker,  saw  thee  first 
As  contemplative  of  His  work  stood  He 

In  silence  vibrant  with  His  song's  outburst ! 
All  hail,  thou  Hope-land  of  the  human  race, 
Thou  cradle-place 

Of  a  great  rebeginning  for  man  athirst 

For  joy,  to  stand  uncurst 
And  sing  before  the  Lord  of  Song  a  space 
And  dance  a  measure  of  his  destiny 

As  born  of  God's  blithe  singing,  Nature-nursed, 

In  His  best  world,  not  worst; 
Thou  garden-close  of  gladness,  man's  true  fate, 
No  angel  guards  thy  gate 
Against  the  eternal  dreamer:  big  of  breast, 
Thou  mak'st  him  feel  at  home,  once  more  his  Maker's  guest. 


The  Night  of  the  Kona 


By  William    Francis  Aannix 


M 


ELE  herself  witnessed  the 
long-feared  combat  between 
Kimi  and  Kamauela,  the  rivals 
for  her  slender  brown  hand. 
She  was  seated  in  the  little  green  plot 
before  her  home,  taking  such  respite 
as  she  dared  from  the  bedside  of  a 
sick  mother,  when  Kimi  came  through 
the  vine-grown  pucapa  of  the  stone 
wall. 

"Ah,  Mele!  And  how  is  your  good 
mother?"  he  asked  politely,  removing 
his  brown  straw  and  standing  deferen- 
tially before  her. 

Her  dark  eyes  lifted  to  his,  and  a 
wan  smile  fluttered  in  the  tired  lines 
of  her  pretty  face. 

"It  is  good  of  you  to  ask — and  so 
often,  Kimi,"  she  answered,  "but 
mother  is  no  better,  no  worse,  Kimi." 

The  gentle  half-white  youth  drew 
nearer. 

"Let  me  tell  you,  Mele,"  he  whis- 
pered earnestly,  "it  is  my  learned 
father  who  says  that  more  of  'the 
medicine,  Mele,  more  of  the  medicine, 
will  make  her  well  again." 

"And  what  think  you,  Kimi?"  she 
asked,  looking  up  into  his  olive  face 
hopefully. 

"I  think  as  my  father  does,  Mele." 

The  words  had  not  been  spoken  ere 
a  frightened  look  came  into  the  eyes 
of  the  girl,  and  Kimi  turned  to  see 
Kamauela,  the  son  of  the  great  ka- 
huna— the  spirit  doctor — enter  the 
yard.  The  full-blood  Kanaka's  visage 
burned  with  hatred,  and  his  thick  lips 
parted  evilly. 

"More  of  the  apothecary's  medi- 
cine, eh?"  he  blurted  to  Mele,  his 
vengeful  gaze  upon  Kimi. 

Mele  turned  her  face  away,  and  her 
fingers,  toying  with  a  wreath  of  leis, 
in  her  lap,  trembled. 


"I  do  not  wish  to  speak  now  about 
such  things,  Kamauela,"  she  said, 
scarcely  above  a  whisper;  "please  go 
-away." 

"Yes,  I  will  go  away,  but  not  be- 
fore  " 

Deep-throated  Hawaiian  impreca- 
tions finished  the  sentence,  and  Ka- 
mauela's  strong  right  arm  wound  Ka- 
naka fashion  about  the  neck  of  Kimi 
in  an  attempt  to  strangle  him,  while 
his  right  fist  rained  blows  upon  his 
face.  Struggling  fiercely  they  went  to 
the  ground  together. 

"For  shame!"  cried  Mele,  rising 
quickly  and  going  to  the  stone  steps  of 
the  hale.  "For  shame,  I  say,  that  you 
will  fight  within  hearing  of  my  dying 
mother." 

Almost  as  an  echo  of  her  words  came 
the  faint  calling  of  her  name  from 
within  the  house. 

As  the  girl  hurried  through  the  open 
doorway  the  young  men  ceased  strug- 
gling and  rose  to  their  feet.  Kimi's 
neck  was  bleeding,  and  about  a  closed 
eye  a  great  ugly  lump  had  risen.  His 
neat  attire  was  in  dirt  and  disarray. 

He  looked  steadily  at  Kamauela. 

"You  might  have  found  some  other 
place  than  here  to  do  your  fighting," 
he  said. 

"Enough  of  that!"  retorted  the  fel- 
low, angrily.  He  approached,  threat- 
eningly. "If  you  dare  to  fight,  I  will 
kill  you!" 

"I  have  too  much  respect  for " 

He  glanced  with  his  one  eye  toward 
the  house.  Then,  hearing  Mele's  slip- 
pered feet  again  on  the  stone  flooring 
of  the  hale,  he  passed  out  through  a 
vine-grown  pucapa  and  made  his  way 
down  the  narrow  street  in  the  direction 
of  the  apothecary. 

"The  pua-a!"  muttered     Kamauela 


THE  NIGHT  OF  THE  KONA 


237 


just  then,  as  Male's  face,  pain  drawn 
and  white,  appeared  in  the  doorway. 

"He  is  not,  but  you  are — and  a  cow- 
ard," she  breathed,  looking  upon  the 
vain-glorious  youth.  "But  go  away — 
my  mother  will  not  live." 

"My  father  will  save  her.  Is  it  best 
that  I  go  quick  and  tell  him?"  It  was 
his  gentlest,  most  pleading  tone.  He 
hoped  in  her  hour  of  greatest  trial  and 
of  his  blackest  disgrace  to  win  one 
look,  one  word  of  forgiveness. 

"No!"  she  cried.  "No,  I  say;  'tis 
neither  his  medicine  nor  your  conduct 
that  will  help  my  poor  mother.  Go, 
and  please  do  not  come  back!" 

A  sneer  overspread  his  features. 
"Ah,  you,  Mele,  you  will  be  sorry.  The 
old  man  of  Kimi's  medicine  will  kill 
your  mother  and  you  will  love  Kimi 
then,  heh?  Ha,  ha!  you  are  a  fool, 
you  Mele.  That  Kimi  would  be  glad 
she  die — then  he  have  you  and  the 
hale,  and  all  the  land  your  father  work 
so  hard  to  get!  Ha,  ha!  you  don't  see 
—but  I  see!" 

While  Mele  stood  in  the  doorway  of 
the  little  hale,  bravely  holding  back 
her  tears,  the  crafty  Kamauela,  pleased 
with  the  thrust  he  had  given,  strode 
from  the  yard. 

Meanwhile  Kimi,  having  appeared 
somewhat  later  than  usual  at  the  drug 
store,  was  met  by  his  father's  irritable- 
query  : 

"What  kept  you  ?"  Then  in  a  differ- 
ent tone,  noting  his  son's  bruised  face : 
"Why,  what  is  this,  Kimi?" 

When  Kimi  explained  the  unusual 
occurrence,  the  father's  anger  rose  and 
bitter  words  were  used  about  the  ka- 
huna and  his  family. 

"Ah,  but  Mele  is  worth  fighting  for, 
Kimi,"  he  consoled,  "and  you  were 
right  as  to  the  medicine,  my  son.  If 
the  widow  will  take  it  she  will  surely 
live." 

Kimi  was  doctoring  his  face,  and 
seeing  that  his  father  lingered,  urged : 
"Do  not  stay  on  my  account,  father. 
You  are  weary  after  the  long,  hot  day. 
Go,  for  mother  will  be  waiting  and  the 
kona  will  soon  break." 

And  so  the  father,  agreeing  that  the 
kona  would  in  all  likelihood  keep  cus- 


tomers indoors,  and  pressing  his  lips 
to  the  swollen  face,  passed  out  of  the 
little  apothecary,  and  was  soon  lost 
to  sight  in  the  fast-falling  darkness. 

The  hours  that  followed  were  the 
longest  Kimi  had  ever  known.  Only 
the  wild  beating  of  the  rain  against 
the  front  windows  of  the  little  store, 
dashed  in  bucketfuls  by  the  fierce  kona 
coming  up  from  the  south,  and  the 
thundering  of  terrific  waves  on  the 
beach,  bore  him  company  during  the 
first  hours  of  the  night.  Scarce  a  soul 
moved  abroad  in  the  dark,  water- 
drenched  streets.  Even  little  Willie 
Punahoa,  who  lived  but  a  few  doors 
.away  over  the  bakery  did  not  visit 
him  the  hour  after  supper,  as  his  cus- 
tom was.  It  was  indeed  a  hard  storm 
when  it  kept  Willie  from  feasting  his 
eyes  upon  the  candies  in  their  card- 
board boxes  in  the  covered  glass  show- 
case. 

How  Kimi  wished  that  the  storm 
would  cease  and  that  Willie  would 
come!  Then  he  would  offer  him  an 
extra  portion  of  the  long  sweet  sticks 
to  carry  a  message  to  Mele;  just  a 
few  words  to  ask  of  the  mother,  for 
it  would  never  do  to  speak  of  love  after 
the  events  of  the  evening.  Oh,  to  think 
of  the  insult  that  had  been  offered  her 
in  that  boisterous  conduct!  Perhaps 
she  would  think  him  a  coward,  unwill- 
ing to  do  battle  for  his  lady  love !  Oh, 
if  he  had  only  not  gone! 

At  the  hour  of  ten,  the  usual  time 
for  turning  the  key  in  the  lock  of  the 
street  door,  and  for  extinguishing  all 
the  lamps  save  one,  which  cast  its  dull 
glare  through  the  globes  of  green  and 
red  in  the  window,  Kimi  sought  his 
narrow  couch  in  the  small  room  at  the 
back,  and  after  connecting  the  bell- 
cord,  which  at  night  reached  to  the 
street  entrance,  he  threw  himself  wear- 
ily upon  the  coverlet.  He  had  decided 
that  he  would  not  undress,  and  that  in 
case  the  kona  would  mitigate  its  fury 
he  would  climb  the  long  hill  to  Mele's 
home,  even  though  it  might  be  late,  and 
ask  of  the  mother.  But  it  seemed  as 
if  the  storm  grew  louder  in  its  fury 
with  each  passing  moment,  and  its 
very  music  lulled  him  in  his  pain  and 


238 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


perplexity.  And  he  fell  into  a  trou- 
bled sleep. 

As  he  slept  he  dreamed:  He  saw 
himself  standing  in  a  far-off  grave- 
yard, and  a  vast  concourse  was  there. 
A  body,  covered  with  flowers  and  with 
leis  about  the  feet  and  arms,  was  be- 
ing lowered  into  a  grave.  The  face 
shone  quite  white,  and  at  first  he  knew 
not  who  the  dead  person  was.  But 
as  he  shifted  his  gaze,  he  saw  Mele, 
the  tears  streaming  down  her  beautiful 
cheeks,  her  hands  clasped  in  agony. 
And  beside  her  stood  Kamauela,  close 
to  her,  giving  her  support.  And  on 
the  face  of  Kamauela  was  a  fearful 
look — a  leer,  a  something  of  inward 
satisfaction.  The  people  who  had 
gathered  were  listening  to  the  words  of 
a  man  who  was  talking  rapidly  and 
waving  his  arms.  He  could  hear  the 
man's  words,  and  they  drove  into  his 
soul.  "My  friends,"  the  man  was  say- 
ing, "my  friends,  this  is  what  we  see 
when  our  people  disown  our  gods,  Lo- 
nopuha  and  Koleamoku!  The  sick 
die,  the  well  are  made  sick !  Our  peo- 
ple go  to  the  false  god  of  the  haoles, 
the  god  that  was  hung  on  a  cross,  and 
they  ask  us  to  think  he  can  save  us. 
The  haoles  give  us  their  false  medicine 
and  we  die!  She — this  one  here — did 
take  their  red  liquids  and  she  is  dead." 

The  man  stopped  speaking.  His 
tawny  face  was  covered  with  sweat; 
cold  beads  stood  out  upon  his  massive 
forehead.  Cold  beads  were  upon  his 
hands.  And  with  one  of  these  hands 
he  pointed  to  Kimi  as  he  turned  about. 
And  all  eyes,  save  those  of  Mele, 
were  upon  Kimi. 

"There  is  the  murderer  of  this  wo- 
man— he  and  his  father,  with  their 
vile  concoctions.  This  wahine  would 
not  listen  to  the  akuas  whose  good 
words  and  healing  balm  it  was  in  my 
power  to  bring  her.  No !  but  she  gave 
her  spirit  into  the  keeping  of  a  strange 
god,  and  her  body  to  the  ministrations 
of  such  as  he — that  Kimi  there!" 

Then  it  was  that  the  crowd  turned 
upon  Kimi,  standing  afar  off  and  alone, 
and  would  rend  him  to  pieces.  But 
he  cried  aloud  to  Mele :  "O  Mele,  thou 
dost  know  I  did  not  kill  thy  dear 


mother!  For  love  of  thee  and  of  her  I 
would  not!  I  call  upon  the  Virgin  to 
be  witness  of  the  truth!" 

Suddenly  he  was  wakened  by  the 
tingling  of  the  little  night  bell  above 
his  bed,  and  he  wondered  who  could 
have  a  mission  so  urgent  as  to  brave 
the  fierce  kona. 

While  he  was  thus  thinking  he 
lighted  the  candle  upon  the  nearby 
table,  and  then  passed  sleepily,  fever- 
ishly, out  into  the  little  store.  He 
stumbled  along,  and  the  flicker  of  his 
candle  lighted  up  the  rows  of  flagons, 
bottles  and  jars  upon  the  shelves. 

Though  the  night  was  black  and  the 
rain  fell  like  a  moving  film  down  the 
glass  panes,  the  faint  light  showed  him 
the  storm-drenched  form  of  Mele 
standing  outside.  Pain  and  subdued 
terror  were  in  her  face,  and  her  hair 
fell  in  long,  wet  wisps  about  her  thinly 
clad  shoulders. 

"Mele!  What  brings  you  here?" 
he  asked  as  he  opened  the  door  and  let 
her  in. 

"Oh,  Kimi,  my  mother — my  mother 
— she  is  so  still  and  white !  You  must 
hurry,  Kimi — here " 

She  thrust  into  his  hands  a  little 
white  paper,  much  soiled. 

"You  must  hurry,  Kimi,  poor  boy" 
— even  for  the  moment  she  looked  up- 
on the  swollen  face — "mother  is  so 
still,  so  white,  and  I  must  be  back 
soon!" 

With  the  paper  spread  before  him  on 
the  rude  counter,  Kimi  was  already 
mixing  the  well  known  formula.  He 
tried  to  be  wide  awake,  but  his  dream 
was  still  before  him,  and  with  ner- 
vous hands  he  worked.  Once  he  even 
introduced  the  wrong  ingredients,  and 
he  had  to  commence  all  over  again. 

Though  he  worked  quickly,  the  time 
was  interminable  to  the  girl,  and  when 
he  handed  the  phial  to  her  she  re- 
warded him  with  but  a  sad  smile;  and 
before  he  could  say  more  than  a  word 
she  was  gone  in  the  outer  darkness.  He 
followed  to  the  door,  and  peered  anx- 
iously into  the  kona  filled  night,  and 
his  heart  wildly  urged  him  to  follow. 
But  that,  he  thought,  would  be  useless, 
knowing  that  already  Mele  had  flown 


THE  LIGHT  WITHOUT 


239 


with  the  fleetness  of  the  wind  on  her 
half-mile  journey. 

"Such  a  night,  too!"  he  whispered  to 
himself.  "May  God  care  for  her  in 
the  storm  and  for  the  sick  one  on  the 
hill!" 

Slowly  and  painfully  the  youth 
closed  the  door,  turning  the  key  as  he 
did  so,  and  picked  up  the  yellow  «candle 
shedding  its  dim  glare  from  the  nearby 
counter.  Then  he  remembered  that  in 
his  haste  he  had  not  returned  the  flag- 
ons to  their  shelves.  He  was  tired  and 
worn,  but  it  would  not  do  to  leave 
them  thus  out  of  their  places.  Perhaps 
his  father  might  arrive  earlier  than 
usual  in  the  morning  and  he  would  not 
be  pleased  to  see  such  evidence  of 
carelessness. 

As  he  held  aloft  the  candle,  almost 
idly  scanning  the  shelves,  he  was  sur- 
prised to  note  that  a  large  flagon  filled 
with  a  brownish  fluid,  one  of  the  chief 
items  of  the  prescription,  was  in  its 
place.  He  did  not  remember  having 
taken  it  down.  He  was  sure  he  had 
not  put  it  back. 

A  sudden  terror  gripped  his  heart. 
The  space  adjoining  that  of  the  black 
flagon  was  empty — and  there  upon  the 
counter  was  the  glass  retainer  that  be- 
longed in  that  place. 

"Oh,  good  Jesus!"  cried  Kimi.  He 
reached  with  trembling  hands  and  took 
the  great  bottle,  with  its  red  liquid,  and 
anxiously  examined  it.  Yes,  it  was 
plain  that  he  had  poured  out  that  leer- 
ing red  stuff :  the  fiery  skull  and  cross- 
bones  seemed  to  be  looking  at  him  with 
bloody  eyes.  He  would  have  fallen 
but  the  jutting  brass  shelves  gave  him 
support.  He  still  held  the  mocking 
flagon  between  his  trembling  hands, 
his  eyes  fixed  in  a  stare  upon  the 
warning  emblem  pasted  to  its  side. 
Then,  with  a  muttered  word,  half 
curse,  half  prayer,  he  threw  the  flagon 
crashing  to  the  floor. 

In  an  instant  he  was  vividly  awake, 
and  as  he  realized  the  awful  conse- 
quences of  this  mistake,  the  perspira- 
tion streamed  from  his  heart,  to  be 
frozen  upon  his  face  and  hands. 

"She  will  die Oh,  the  dream! — 


and  I  am  the  murderer!" 

For  a  moment  he  fell  to  his  knees 
and  lifted  his  eyes  to  the  dark  ceiling 
in  appealing,  agonizing  prayer — heart- 
rending words  begging  for  mercy  and 
forgiveness.  For  the  time  being  his 
very  life  seemed  to  have  lurched  from 
him,  and  his  soul  looked  upon  him 
as  the  destroyer  of  all  that  was  good 
and  beautiful. 

He  rose  again  to  his  feet,  and  for- 
getting coat  or  hat,  rushed  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  door.  But  again  the  bell  in 
the  little  back  room  was  tinkling  a 
feeble  but  urgent  message.  Impulsively 
he  turned  to  go  and  inquire  of  its 
wants,  but  once  more  he  faced  the  wet 
panes  of  the  front,  and  there,  in  the 
dim  outside,  but  more  feverishly  anx- 
ious than  ever,  was  again  the  face  of 
Mele.  Her  hands  were  pressed  wildly 
against  the  door  glass,  as  if  she  would 
push  it  in.  Tears  mingled  with  the 
rain  from  her  hair,  coursed  down  her 
cheeks. 

"Oh,  my  little  Mele,  have  you  come 
rightly  to  accuse  me?"  gasped  Kimi, 
forgetting  that  she  could  not  possibly 
have  reached  her  home  and  returned  in 
the  brief  interval. 

"Accuse  you,  Kimi?"  she  wailed. 
"No,  'twas  he,  Kimi,  that  kahuna's  son 
— 'twas  he  who  broke  the  bottle  and 
spilled  the  good  medicine  in  the  dark- 
ness. But,  oh,  hurry!  Kimi,  hurry!  for 
mother  was  so  still  and  white!" 

"Thank  thee,  O  Jesus!"  murmured 
the  boy.  And  he  kissed  her  face,  her 
hands  and  her  hair. 

Then  once  more,  but  with  steady  and 
sure  as  well  as  deft  hands,  he  filled 
the  prescription  lying  still  upon  the 
counter,  scarcely  conscious  of  the  anx- 
ious mien  of  Mele,  so  filled  was  his 
heart  with  a  double  joy.  And  when  he 
had  finished  his  work  he  smiled  reas- 
suringly into  the  face  of  the  drooping 
girl. 

"Now  I  will  go  with  thee,  Mele,"  he 
said,  "and  the  phial  will  not  be  broken 
and  your  good  mother  will  live  and 
bless  us!  We  shall  hurry,  Mele!" 

And  together  they  sped  away  in  the 
kona. 


The  Assimilation  of  the  Immigrant 


By  Frank  B.  Lenz 


Immigration  Secretary  Y.  /A.  C.  A.,  San  Francisco 


IN  THIS  PAPER  I  shall  not  attempt 
a  discussion  of  the  immigration 
problem,  either  in  regard  to  re- 
striction or  non-restriction  of  immi- 
grants. It  remains  for  the  Federal 
government  to  determine  our  policy  on 
this  point.  It  is  the  duty  of  Congress 
to  restrict  the  undesirables  from  other 
countries,  and  this,  I  think,  it  has  done 
to  a  satisfactory  degree.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  there  are  to-day  some 
fifteen  million  foreign  born  peoples  re- 
siding in  the  United  States  who  have 
come  from  practically  every  country 
of  the  globe.  What  is  our  attitude  to- 
ward these  people  ?  Do  we  wish  to  see 
them  become  a  part  of  the  American 
body  politic  ?  Is  it  our  desire  to  grant 
them  naturalization,  thus  giving  them 
the  privileges  of  American  citizens? 
Can  we  assimilate  them?  Will  they 
make  desirable  citizens? 

I  am  of  the  firm  opinion  that  the 
vast  majority  of  the  foreigners  now  in 
the  United  States  can  be  successfully 
assimilated  by  our  American  institu- 
tions. 

We  here  in  California  should  give 
the  closest  attention  to  the  question  of 
assimilating  the  alien  because  at  the 
present  time  twenty  per  cent  of  our 
population  is  from  across  the  seas.  The 
new  gateway  across  Panama  makes 
California  almost  as  accessible  to  the 
Southern  European  as  the  Eastern 
States  are  now.  In  San  Francisco  at 
the  present  time  seventy-five  per  cent 
of  the  population  is  foreign  born  or 
children  of  foreign  born  parents. 

Any  sudden  influx  of  aliens  will  af- 
fect our  political,  industrial,  social, 
economic  and  religious  life  very 
acutely.  We  cannot  say  that  the  for- 


eigner brings  with  him  many  severe 
problems,  but  we  can  say  that  his  pres- 
ence in  large  numbers  will  greatly  in- 
tensify and  aggravate  our  existing 
problems. 

What  are  the  assimilative  agencies  ? 
Some  of  the  most  important  are  the 
libraries,  playgrounds,  the  press,  the 
churches,  the  political  parties,  the  so- 
cial settlements  and  the  labor  unions. 
But  to  my  mind  the  most  potent  factor 
in  the  assimilative  process  is  the 
school. 

Libraries. — Libraries  tend  to  assimi- 
late only  those  classes  of  immigrants 
which  are  far  enough  advanced  to  take 
advantage  of  books  and  magazines.  If 
the  books  printed  in  foreign  languages 
deal  with  subjects  that  are  truly  Ameri- 
can, then  the  library  becomes  a  vital 
force.  But  in  the  city  of  Los  Angeles 
I  recently  found  that  the  Russian  peo- 
ple of  Boyle  Heights  were  circulating 
a  subscription  list  among  themselves 
to  provide  newspapers,  books  and  mag- 
azines in  their  own  language,  because 
they  wished  to  keep  in  touch  with  the 
social  and  economic  development  of 
their  own  country. 

In  the  city  of  San  Francisco  there 
are  six  branch  libraries,  fifteen  deposit 
stations  and  one  main  library.  The 
McCreary  branch  is  in  a  district  in- 
habited largely  by  Scandinavians.  The 
North  Beach  branch  is  in  the  heart  of 
the  Italian  quarter,  and  the  Potrero 
station  furnishes  reading  matter  for 
Russians  and  Italians.  Each  of  the 
deposit  stations  carries  about  six  hun- 
dred books,  a  number  of  which  are  in 
the  French,  Spanish,  German,  Italian 
and  Russian  languages.  Few  of  the 
books,  however,  deal  with  things 


THE  ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT 


241 


American.  Most  of  the  books  drawn 
from  the  North  Beach  branch  by  the 
Italians  are  on  travel,  history  and 
biography. 

The  County  Library  Law  of  Cali- 
fornia made  it  possible  for  every 
county  in  California  to  provide  itself 
with  good  literature.  Alameda 
County  seems  to  have  taken  the  lead 
in  the  development  of  this  idea,  and 
at  present  has  seventeen  branch  libra- 
ries in  the  following  towns:  Alameda, 
Alvarado,  Centerville,  Decoto,  Hay- 
ward,  Irvington,  Livermore,  -  Mission 
San  Jose,  Mt.  Eden,  Newark,  Niles, 
Pleasanton,  San  Lorenzo,  Sunol,  Warm 
Springs,  Dublin  and  Albany.  During 
1912  the  total  circulation  of  books 
from  these  branches  was  44,968. 

Many  of  the  small  towns  have  noth- 
ing in  the  way  of  entertainments  in 
the  evening.  A  radioptican  and  four 
hundred  interesting  postal  cards  were 
purchased,  and  with  this  equipment 
"picture  shows"  were  given  once  a 
week  in  the  different  towns.  The 
people  attended  in  large  numbers,  and 
the  experiment  proved  a  success,  es- 
pecially in  Alvarado,  San  Lorenzo  and 
Decoto,  where  the  majority  of  the  in- 
habitants are  Portuguese.  The  attend- 
ant at  Decoto  is  a  native  of  Portugal 
and  has  done  good  work  among  his 
people  in  interesting  them  in  the  li- 
brary. The  selection  of  Portuguese 
books  and  periodicals  was  left  largely 
in  his  hands.  Books  and  bulletins  on 
civics  have  been  made  accessible  at 
practically  all  these  branches. 

The  libraries  can  do  much  more  to 
educate  the  foreigner  than  they  are 
doing  at  present.  They  should  in- 
crease their  number  of  foreign  vol- 
umes, that  deal  with  American  life  and 
industry,  and  then  distribute  them  to 
the  various  factories  and  districts 
where  the  foreigner  works,  in  order  to 
cultivate  his  taste  for  reading.  They 
should  open  their  spare  rooms  for 
club  meetings  and  classes  in  English 
to  foreigners. 

Playgrounds.  The  recreation  cen- 
ters and  playgrounds  are  of  great  edu- 
cational value  in  the  immigrant's  life. 
To  counteract  the  desire  to  go  to  sa- 


loons for  drinks  and  meals,  we  find 
many  playgrounds  equipped  with 
lunch  counters  and  a  few  inviting 
tables  in  an  especially  fitted  room, 
where  simple  meals  and  coffee  and  co- 
coa are  served.  Public  comfort  sta- 
tions with  each  playground  and  field 
house  are  a  great  comfort  as  well  as 
an  educational  means  for  cleanliness. 
They  also  keep  men  from  going  into 
the  saloons. 

The  libraries  in  connection  with  the 
playgrounds,  with  their  stock  of  for- 
eign books  and  magazines,  play  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  development  of  the 
emigrant. 

The  field  house  auditoriums  are  al- 
ways available  to  clubs  and  societies 
which  want  to  entertain  by  theatricals, 
musicales  and  dancing. 

It  is  no  uncommon  sight  to  see  the 
Russian,  Jew,  Greek  and  Italian  use 
the  auditorium  for  theatricals  of  their 
own. 

The  objects  of  playgrounds  are  (1) 
to  keep  children  off  of  the  streets;  (2) 
to  give  them  wholesome  play  without 
compulsion;  (3)  to  develop  a  law  abid- 
ing spirit  to  offset  the  widespread  gang 
movement  which  cannot  be  controlled 
by  police  methods. 

The  city  of  Los  Angeles  maintains 
a  splendid  system  of  fifteen  play- 
grounds. The  playgrounds,  at  Violet 
street,  Recreation,  Center  and  Slauson 
are  in  or  near  the  foreign  districts,  and 
are  constantly  in  touch  with  Mexicans, 
Spaniards,  Italians,  Negroes  and  Rus- 
sians. 

San  Francisco  operates  nine  play- 
grounds, an  insufficient  number,  but 
equipped  with  good  apparatus  and 
grounds.  Three  playgrounds,  the 
Jackson,  the  North  Beach  and  the 
Hamilton,  are  doing  a  great  deal  for 
the  foreign  children  of  the  city.  A 
special  and  very  important  feature  of 
the  North  Beach  playground,  which  is 
located  in  the  Italian  Quarter,  is  the 
open  air  swimming  pool. 

Oakland's  system  of  fifteen  play- 
grounds is  reaching  practically  every 
district  in  the  city.  The  following 
playgrounds  are  located  in  distinctly 
foreign  districts :  Bay  View,  de  Frem- 
5 


242 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ery,  32d  and  Peralta,  Franklin  and 
Tompkins.  The  predominating  attend- 
ance at  the  Tompkins  playground  is 
foreign.  The  playground  is  a  big  fac- 
tor in  the  Americanization  of  the  im- 
migrant, for  it  gives  him  American 
standards  of  recreation  and  social  life. 

The  Press.  Foreign  papers  printed 
in  this  country  convey  American  prin- 
ciples to  the  foreigner.  Some  of  them 
discuss  political,  social  and  economic 
issues  such  as  English  papers  do,  and 
in  this  way  tend  to  change  the  immi- 
grant's thought  and  activity.  There 
are  more  than  twenty-five  foreign 
newspapers  and  journals  printed  in 
San  Francisco.  Most  of  these  publi- 
cations render  good  service  to  America 
by  putting  the  immigrant  in  sympathy 
with  our  ideals  and  institutions. 

The  Church.  The  church  does  some- 
thing to  Americanize  the  immigrant, 
but  in  another  sense  it  acts  as  a  hin- 
drance. Its  greatest  influence  is  in 
molding  the  morals  of  the  immigrant. 

Many  nationalities  comprising  the 
great  bulk  of  immigration  belong  to 
the  same  denomination — the  Catholic. 
The  church  tends  to  bring  American- 
ized immigrants  into  association  with 
un-Americanized  immigrants.  It  tells 
him  v/hat  the  new  laws  are,  and 
how  they  differ  from  those  of  his  na- 
tive country.  It  tells  him  what  the  new 
country  expects  of  him  socially,  politi- 
cally and  industrially.  The  church 
does  something  to  obliterate  slum  con- 
ditions, thus  raising  the  immigrant's 
standard  of  life  and  also  making  it 
possible  for  other  Americanized  forces 
to  affect  him. 

The  Protestant  churches  exert  con- 
siderable influence  among  immigrants, 
particularly  among  the  Germans  and 
Scandinavians.  Their  influence  is 
more  rapid  and  permanent  than  in  the 
case  of  the  Catholic  and  Jewish 
churches  because  they  do  not  offer 
much  resistance  to  the  introduction  of 
the  English  language. 

Political  Parties.  The  influence  of 
politics  has  done  much  to  assimilate 
foreigners.  In  1900,  56.8  per  cent  of 
foreign-born  males  of  voting  age  in  the 
United  States  were  naturalized,  83  per 


cent  had  filed  their  first  papers,  14.9 
per  cent  were  unknown,  and  20  per 
cent  were  aliens.  Thus  politics  direct- 
ly affects  considerably  more  than  the 
majority  of  immigrants. 

The  effect  of  politics  depends  upon 
local  conditions.  On  the  one  hand,  in 
many  of  the  large  industrial  centers  the 
political  "boss"  has  some  control  over 
the  immigrant  job.  He  orders  him  to 
vote  for  a  certain  candidate,  and  the 
immigrant,  through  fear,  votes  as  he 
is  told.  Under  such  conditions  the  bal- 
lot is  not  an  exercise  of  a  right  but  of 
a  compulsory  order;  such  a  condition 
does  not  mean  the  participation  in 
government  by  the  multitude,  and  cer- 
tainly does  not  lead  to  a  condition  in 
which  the  workmen  will  participate  in 
the  control  of  industry.  It  tells  the 
immigrant  that  his  "job"  belongs  to 
him  not  because  of  his  right  to  work, 
but  because  of  the  pleasure  of  some 
other  person. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  case  of 
those  immigrants  who  are  not  under 
the  control  of  the  political  "boss,"  poli- 
tics is  one  of  the  most  striking  differ- 
ences between  American  life  and  life 
in  their  native  country.  When  they 
vote  it  is  an  expression  of  their  will, 
and  inevitably  spurs  them  on  to  learn 
how  to  express  that  will  more  intelli- 
gently. It  tells  them  that  they  are  a 
part  of  society;  that  they  have  a  choice 
in  the  control  of  their  actions  and  that 
their  interests  are  not  merely  private, 
but  are  public.  Every  important  step 
in  our  political  system,  to  them,  means 
further  adoption  of  American  life. 

Social  Settlements.  I  found  in  San 
Francisco  four  settlements  which  are 
constantly  doing  work  among  the  im- 
migrant class.  The  names  of  these 
settlements  are  as  follows:  Telegraph 
Hill  Settlement,  People's  Place,  San 
Francisco  Settlement  Association, 
Nurses'  Settlement.  All  have  visiting 
nurses  who  do  valuable  educative  work 
among  the  immigrant  families  in  mat- 
ters of  hygiene  and  sanitation.  Dis- 
pensary service  is  a  large  part  of  the 
work.  Socials  and  plays  are  held  at 
regular  intervals  at  the  Settlement 
houses.  Classes  in  cooking,  sewing, 


THE  ASSIMILATION  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT 


243 


garden  work,  gymnasium  and  folk 
dancing  are  held. 

In  Oakland,  the  East  Oakland  Set- 
tlement and  the  Oakland  Social  Set- 
tlement are  located  in  foreign  districts, 
especially  in  districts  inhabited  by 
Italians  and  Portuguese. 

Labor  Unions.  The  influence  of  la- 
bor unions  is  generally  limited  to  the 
first  generation.  Their  effect  has 
hitherto  been  of  short  duration  because 
of  the  movement  toward  unskilled 
labor  in  the  large  industries  does  not 
permit  laborers  to  be  organized. 

But  some  of  the  most  important  ac- 
tivities of  the  trade  unions  which  are 
Americanized  factors  are  as  follows: 

The  union  teaches  the  immigrant  self 
government.  It  is  the  first  place  where 
they  learn  to  govern  their  own  actions 
and  to  obey  officers  which  they  them- 
selves elect.  Here  he  can  state  his 
grievances,  and  here  he  can  vote  with 
no  fear  of  punishment  from  a  superior 
force,  as  in  his  own  country. 

It  throws  different  nationalities  into 
united  groups,  so  that  the  foreign  na- 
tionality of  any  one  of  them  becomes 
lost.  They  then  adopt  the  common 
way  of  thinking  and  acting,  which  is 
American. 

It  often  brings  foreigners  into  direct 
association  with  members  of  the  unions 
who  have  already  been  assimilated. 
The  new  comers  then  see  the  differ- 
ences between  the  customs  of  these  as- 
similated workmen  and  their  own. 

Many  unions  require  that  every 
member  be  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States,'  or  to  have  declared  his  inten- 
tion of  becoming  one.  This  is  an  in- 
ducement to  the  foreigner  to  become 
naturalized. 

Unions  raise  the  immigrant's  wages, 
reduce  his  hours  and  improve  his  phy- 
sical working  conditions.  It  enables 
him  to  adopt  the  American  social  and 
moral  standard  of  living. 

The  School.  The  importance  of  the 


day  school  as  an  Americanization  force 
lies  chiefly  in  its  effect  upon  the  sec- 
ond generation.  Yet,  indirectly,  it  af- 
fects the  adult  in  that  the  children  take 
home  to  their  parents  that  which  they 
have  learned  at  school.  The  following 
are  some  of  the  main  assimilative  ac- 
tivities of  the  public  school : 

(a)  The  school  at  once  throws  the 
-children  of  various  nationalities  into 
mutual  relationship.     This  breaks  up 
the  standards  and  habits  of  any  one 
nationality,  and  in  order  to  progress, 
the  child  finds  that  he  must  adopt  a 
common  way  of  thinking  and  acting, 
which  means  that  he  must  adopt  the 
American   standard.     Newcomers     to 
foreign  colonies  see  very  soon  that  his 
friends  become  partly  Americanized, 
and  will  learn  American  customs  and 
habits  from  his  foreign  brother. 

(b)  The  public  school  teaches  the 
children  the  English  language,  which 
enables  him  to  associate  with  Ameri- 
cans and  various  other    nationalities, 
even  outside  of  the  school  and  his  own 
district. 

(c)  The  schools  tend  to  break  up 
hostilities   between  nationalities.   The 
teacher    prevents    hostilities    in    the 
school  room,  and  this  does  away  with 
strife  on  the  playground. 

(d)  It  teaches  American  traditions 
and  the  history  of  our  institutions,  un- 
der which  comes  a  growth  of  patriot- 
ism.    Race  ties  are  broken  up  and  a 
social  solidarity  is  secured. 

(e)  The  public  school  by  the  intro- 
duction of  manual  training  not  only 
gives  the  child  some  idea  of  American 
industrial   methods,   but  teaches   him 
that  manual  work  is  here  the  universal 
rule  and  not  a  stamp  of  inferiority. 

Other  Forces.  The  theatre,  popular 
amusements,  clubs,  private  societies, 
all  act  as  assimilators.  The  American 
child  meets  some  of  the  most  potent 
Americanizing  influences  on  the  streets 
of  our  large  cities. 


Panama-Pacific    Exposition 


The  /Aecca  of  the   Nation 


By  Hamilton  Wright 


WITH  the  summer  season  in  full 
swing  and  the  advent  of  tens 
of  thousands  of  visitors  from 
all  parts  of    the    American 
continents   and  the   Orient,  and   with 
many  from  Europe,  the  Panama-Pacific 
International  Exposition  to-day     pre- 
sents a  scene  of  unrivaled  activity  and 
splendor. 

Notable  men  in  every  branch  of  en- 
deavor are  thronging  to  the  city  of 
Palaces  at  the  Golden  Gate,  and  the 
verdict  is  that  nowhere  in  Ihe  world  is 
assembled  a  series  of  such  monumen- 
tal architectural  marvels  as  is  now  to 
be  beheld  at  San  Francisco.  The  rec- 
ord attendance  from  all  parts  of  the 
country  which  met  the  opening  days 
of  the  Exposition  has  been  followed 
by  the  still  greater  attendance  of  the 
summer  months,  and  tens  of  thousands 
who  have  not  yet  beheld  the  Exposi- 
tion, but  who  have  had  news  of  its 


progress,  are  preparing  for  the  journey 
during  the  early  fall. 

Of  all  periods  in  which  to  visit  the 
Exposition,  the  season  which  will  en- 
sue between  August  and  the  closing 
of  the  portals  of  this  greatest  and  most 
comprehensive  of  world's  expositions 
is  the  most  attractive  in  which  to  be- 
hold its  glories  and  partake  of  its 
pleasures.  The  weather  during  these 
months  is  equable  and  sunny,  and  the 
charm  of  Indian  summer  lingers  long 

er   that   period  has   passe-   i 
Eastern  States. 

Up  to  the  first  of  August,  9,250,000 
persons  had  passed  through  the  Expo- 
sition turnstiles,  while  large  numbers 
of  others  had  been  admitted  on  passes, 
in  parades,  and  through  the  special 
gates.  The  income  from  admissions 
from  February  20th  to  July  llth 
amounted  to  $1,568,126.80.  The  re- 
ceipts from  concessions  amounted  to 


$676,810.02;  the  miscellaneous  income 
was  $775,337.40.  The  gross  income 
since  the  opening  on  February  20th  un- 
til July  llth  is  $3,020,274.22. 

With  the  advent  of  August,  the  num- 
ber of  special  trains  and  special  par- 
ties from  all  parts  of  the  United  States 
is  greatly  augmented,  while  the  indi- 
vidual travel  from  remote  sections  is 
astonishingly  large.  For  the  first  time 
thousands  of  Americans  are  crossing 
the  Rockies  and  viewing  the  far  West 
of  the  United  States. 

Not  alone  are  the  vast  exhibit  pal- 
aces which  contain  more  than  four 
hundred  thousand  displays  garnered 
from  all  parts  of  the  globe,  being 
eagerly  inspected  by  visitors,  but  thou- 
sands from  the  States  of  the  Union 
are  registering  in  the  pavilion  of  their 
State.  From  the  thundering  Palace  of 
Machinery,  with  its  giant  engines, 
pumping  plants,  batteries,  printing 
presses  and  linotype  machines  in  ac- 
tion, through  the  vast  Palace  of  Trans- 
portation, where  the  earliest  types  of 
locomotives  contrast  with  the  giant  mo- 
gul engines  of  the  present  day,  where 
sections  of  huge  ocean  liners  are  seen 


in  contrast  with  tiny  models,  into  the 
great  Palace  of  Agriculture,  where 
threshing  machines,  harvesting  ma- 
chines, reapers,  sowers,  are  beheld  in 
operation,  into  the  Palace  of  Food  Pro- 
ducts where  the  closely  packed  throngs 
watch  every  step  in  the  preparation  of 
edibles,  and  into  the  other  vast  pal- 
aces an  amazed  and  delighted  throng 
daily  progresses  from  the  opening  of 
the  Exposition  in  the  morning  until 
the  close  of  the  exhibit  palaces  at 
night. 

A  feature  pleasing  to  the  many  thou- 
sands of  visitors  is  that  active  meas- 
ures are  taken  for  their  entertainment. 
There  are  upon  the  grounds  no  less 
than  fifty-four  moving  picture  shows, 
wherein  are  daily  displayed  without 
charge  in  the  exhibit  palaces  and  in 
State  and  national  pavilions,  well  se- 
lected and  attractive  photographs 
showing  the  activities  of  the  various 
States  and  countries.  Lectures  ac- 
company many  of  the  displays,  and 
the  visitor  is  enabled  to  enjoy  scenes 
from  Argentine,  China,  Japan,  the 
Philippines,  the  Netherlands,  Cuba, 
Sweden  and  forty-three  other  lands,, 


while  cinematographs  of  important 
works  such  as  the  Panama  Canal,  the 
New  York  State  lock  canal,  the  manu- 
factories of  the  great  corporations  of 
the  United  States,  and  of  other  inter- 
esting scenes  are  displayed  without 
charge. 

Wherever  practicable  throughout 
the  Exposition,  machinery  is  shown  in 
operation,  and  all  steps  in  the  pro- 
cesses of  production  from  the  raw  ma- 
terial to  the  finished  product  are  illus- 
trated. A  giant  laundry  operated  by 
latest  methods,  a  knitting  machine,  a 
broom  factory,  a  fire  hose  factory,  a 
coin  stamping  machine  are  among 
other  manufactories  illustrated  in  the 
Palace  of  Manufactures.  In  many  of 
the  exhibit  palaces  as  well  as  in  the 
State  buildings  and  national  pavilions 
phonographs  add  music  to  the  enter- 
tainment features.  Many  famous  mu- 
sicians are  constantly  reaching  San 
Francisco,  and  band  concerts,  recitals 
on  the  great  pipe  organ  in  Festival 
Hall,  or  on  the  pipe  organ  in  the  Illi- 
nois building,  or  that  of  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  in  the  Palace 
of  Mines  serve  to  rest  visitors  after  a 


tour  of  the  palaces  and  grounds.  Na- 
tive musicians,  such  as  trained  sing- 
ers from  Hawaii,  the  Hampton  Jubilee 
Singers  from  the  Southern  States,  the 
Mormon  Choir,  the  Marimba  Band  in 
the  Guatemalan  Pavilion,  the  strange 
chants  of  the  Maorians  in  the  Maori 
Village,  and  the  war  songs  of  the  Sa- 
moan  Islanders,  serve  to  instruct  and 
entertain.  Hundreds  of  open  air  meet- 
ings are  weekly  held  upon  the  grounds, 
and  the  sound  of  ringing  salvos  and 
loud  cheering  echoing  through  the 
courts  and  over  the  vast  exhibit  pal- 
aces is  no  uncommon  event.  The  bril- 
liance of  full  dress  uniforms  of  many 
nations,  the  blare  of  brass  bands,  the 
glitter  of  epaulets  and  the  sight  of 
thousands  and  even  tens  of  thousands 
of  men  in  the  uniform  of  the  trades  or 
of  the  fraternal  societies,  of  the  United 
States  army  or  militia  make  inspiring 
spectacles  at  the  great  center  of  world 
events  in  San  Francisco. 

In  the  Palace  of  Food  Products, 
thousands  of  visitors  daily  receive 
samples  prepared  by  the  cooks  of 
many  nations,  and  distributed  to  the 
delighted  throngs.  The  free  pyro- 


Northern  rving  Court  of  the  Universe. 


technics  at  night,  a  part  of  the  great 
illumination  plan,  where  lightning  and 
thunder  are  simulated  with  a  sem- 
blance of  vivid  reality,  together  with 
the  new  uses  of  night  illumination  as 
a  decorative  art  casting  the  colors  of 
the  rainbow  in  shafts  of  light  far 
against  the  heavens,  serve  to  entrance 
and  mystify  the  visitors. 

Many  special  functions  are  weekly 
held  in  the  many  State  buildings  and 
national  pavilions  upon  the  grounds. 
Dancing,  recitals,  banquets,  luncheons, 
and  other  gatherings  constantly  bring 
together  visitors  from  similar  parts  of 
the  world,  and  serve  to  instill  the  Ex- 
position with  sparkle,  life  and  bril- 
liancy. Giant  parades  and  pageants 
are  of  almost  daily  occurrence,  and 
dozens  of  important  conventions  meet 
in  San  Francisco  every  week,  either  in 
the  Festival  Hall  upon  the  Exposition 
grounds  or  in  the  auditorium  at  the 
Civic  Center.  A  constant  series  of 
sport  events,  athletic  and  marine 
events,  music  recitals  and  receptions 
are  staged.  Each  of  the  States  and 
nations  holds  open  receptions,  and 
many  important  personages,  including 


governors  of  States,  senators,  diplo- 
mats, dignitaries,  captains  of  industry, 
leaders  in  art  and  science,  are  con- 
stantly reaching  San  Francisco,  while 
hundreds  of  special  trains  are  throng- 
ing to  the  Golden  Gate  city  bearing 
delegates  from  all  parts  of  the  United 
States.  In  every  State  building  visi- 
tors from  the  home  State  are  regis- 
tering, and  as  many  as  three  thousand 
names  are  registered  from  one  State  in 
a  single  week. 

The  grounds  of  the  Exposition  were 
never  more  attractive  than  at  the  pres- 
ent time;  and  from  now  on  until  its 
close  the  vast  swards  of  green,  and 
many  acres  of  flowers  in  riotous  fields 
of  color,  the  palms  and  pines  from 
distant  portions  of  the  globe,  will  be 
beheld  in  vivid  contrast  with  the  lofty 
spires,  colonnades,  domes  and  turrets 
of  the  Exposition  city. 

Many  thousands  of  visitors  who 
have  thought  that  because  of  the  war 
the  European  nations  would  not  be 
adequately  represented  at  San  Fran- 
cisco are  surprised  not  alone  at  the  ex- 
tent and  diversity  of  their  representa- 
tion, but  by  the  care  and  excellence 


CQ 

~~* 


a 
I 


250 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


with  which  each  nation  has  selected 
its  most  beautiful  and  representative 
products.  How  many  visitors,  for  ex- 
ample, would  have  expected  that  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Luxembourg,  inde- 
pendent kingdom  in  the  midst  of  Eu- 
rope's turmoil,  would  have  been  able 
to  display  her  glories  and  her  pro- 
ducts? Though  not  vast  when  com- 
pared with  the  representation  of  other 
countries,  Luxembourg  has  presented 
a  fine  display  of  her  arts  and  indus- 
tries. Contained  in  the  beautiful  booths 
of  Luxembourg  are  many  textiles,  rare 
embroideries,  jewelry,  perfumes  and 
manufactured  wares.  A  distinct  fra- 


are  upon  exhibition.  The  Persian  ex- 
hibit in  this  palace  is  becoming  the 
mecca  for  thousands  of  persons  who 
desire  to  see  the  rare  offerings  of  that 
country,  whose  ancient  art  treasures 
are  even  now  sought  by  thousands  in 
preference  to  the  modern  machine- 
made  works.  In  this  exhibit  are  shown 
bits  of  pottery  taken  from  the  site  of 
the  ancient  city  of  Ragga.  For  many 
years  workmen  have  been  busily  en- 
gaged in  digging  and  bringing  forth 
the  hidden  treasures  from  the  thou- 
sand-foot depths.  A  single  royal  vase 
which  was  found  scattered  over  a  wide 
area,  and  which  is  glued  together  in 


Method  by  which  full-grown  trees  were  transplanted  to  produce  effective 

backgrounds. 


grance  pervades  the  booth  and  envel- 
ops it  with  an  enticing  aura. 

One  of  the  features  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg exhibit  is  a  peasant's  cottage, 
before  which  are  counters  with  goods, 
and  young  typical  Luxembourg  misses 
dispense  the  wares  that  are  for  sale. 

In  the  Persian  exhibit,  in  the  Palace 
of  Manufactures,  many  bits  of  exqui- 
site pottery,  pieces  of  ancient  armory, 
silver  bric-a-brac  and  wonderful  woven 
rugs  so  rare  and  priceless  that  their 
real  value  will  never  be  determined 


pieces,  is  worth  not  less  than  $15,000. 
In  the  royal  pottery  collection  are  150 
pieces,  with  a  total  value  of  not  less 
than  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars. 
This  includes  the  famous  Bowl  of 
Contemplation,  900  years  old  and  one 
that  could  not  be  duplicated  by  a  sin- 
gle collector.  The  famous  Persian  rugs 
represent  every  possible  school  of 
weaving  and  embroidery.  There  are 
velvets,  brocades  and  cashmeres  of 
every  century,  from  the  ninth  to  the 
fifteenth.  There  is  the  cloth  of  gold 


£ 


o 

! 


252 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


of  the  14th  century,  including  one  that 
shows  Adam,  Eve,  the  tree  of  lite,  the 
cypress  and  the  apple,  a  rare  bit  of 
embroidery  that  has  been  sought  by 
every  collector  in  the  world,  but  which 
still  remains  in  the  possession  of  the 
Shah  of  Persia.  The  royal  rug  of 
camel's  wool  that  has  been  used  but 
once  each  year  during  the  past  two 
centuries  during  the  royal  reception,  is 
on  exhibition.  More  than  one  hun- 
dred women  worked  upon  this  creation 
for  twelve  years;  and  as  it  is  spread 
before  the  visitor,  he  is  informed  that 
it  is  not  for  sale,  but  that  its  value  is  in 
excess  of  $100,000.  The  priceless  gir- 
dle worn  by  the  Shah  Abbie  in  the 
16th  century  is  displayed,  as  well  as  a 
reproduction  of  the  Shah's  room,  set  up 
in  tapestries,  tables,  chairs  and  desks, 
none  of  which  are  less  than  four  hun- 
dred years  old.  Many  of  the  rugs 
have  experienced  the  tread  of  a  million 
feet  during  all  the  centuries;  but  the 
handwork  of  the  ancient  Persians  had 
been  wrought  so  well  that  there  is  little 
or  no  indication  of  wear. 

In  the  Italian  pavilion,  in  the  Italian 
section  of  the  Palace  of  Varied  Indus- 
tries, and  in  the  Palace  of  Manufac- 
tures, is  a  display  of  what  is  pro- 
nounced to  be  one  of  the  two  finest  col- 
lections of  laces  in  the  world.  Only 
one  other  collection  in  the  world,  it  is 
said,  is  its  rival — that  now  owned  by 
the  Dowager  Queen  Margherita  of 
Italy,  to  whom  the  world  is  indebted 
for  the  revival  of  the  rare  art  of  Ital- 
ian lace  making.  The  laces  were  all 
made  in  Venice  or  on  the  island  of  Bu- 
rano,  close  by.  Hundreds  of  skilled 
employees  have  made  them  on  cush- 
ions by  needle.  Among  these  magnifi- 
cent exhibits  is  a  point  de  Venice  table 
cloth  of  the  14th  century,  valued  at 
$15,000;  a  Burano  lace  scarf  of  the 
13th  century,  with  a*  foundation  of 
tulle  and  a  border  of  Rosselina  lace. 
This  piece  is  absolutely  priceless,  and 
it  may  be  said  that  the  thread  used  to 
make  Burano  lace  is  so  fine  that  the 
girls  working  on  it  are  obliged  to  wear 
two  pairs  of  glasses;  a  teacloth  from 
the  17th  century  represents  Raffaelo's 
painting  of  the  twelve  hours  in  point 


de  Venice  and  filet;  a  small  lace  cush- 
ion top  about  20  by  39  inches  depicts 
Botticelli's  "Spring,"  and  is  valued  at 
$400.  A  beautiful  tea  cloth  represents 
Guide  Reni's  "Aurora."  A  parasol  of 
Burano  lace  modestly  represents  $800, 
while  when  one  is  shown  a  small  strip 
of  Argentan  and  is  told  it  is  worth 
$1,000,  and  a  small  metro  of  Parpari- 
zenice  is  $1,100,  the  visitor  realizes 
how  milady  cannot  help  being  extrava- 
gant. No  wonder  she  must  be  almost 
forcibly  dragged  away  from  this  dis- 
play, and  she  begins  to  wish  she  also 
were  a  collector  of  laces.  Their  charm 
is  irresistible.  The  exhibit  is  in  charge 
of  Pietro  Cattadori,  the  largest  col- 
lector of  laces  in  the  world,  represent- 
ing the  Scuolo  Burano,  which  is  undei 
the  patronage  of  Dowager  Queen  Map 
gherita. 

In  addition  to  the  unusual  collection 
of  laces,  Italy  displays  many  valuable 
bronzes,  marbles,  specimens  of  carved 
furniture,  painted  velvets,  silks,  hats, 
musical  instruments,  motor  cars,  wines 
and  food  products.  A  large  and  beau- 
tiful collection  of  modern  Italian  sculp- 
tures by  many  of  the  foremost  sculp- 
tors of  the  day  is  displayed  in  the  Pal- 
ace of  Manufactures.  These  include 
the  famous  statue,  Christ  emerging 
from  the  Pagan  Temple,  by  Professor 
Raffaelo  Romanelli,  who  is  pronounced 
by  many  notable  critics  to  be  the  fore- 
most of  European  sculptors ;  the  Foun- 
tain with  the  Frog  by  the  same  sculp- 
tor; Napoleon  at  Moscow,  by  Prof. 
Venetti;  the  Pompeiian  Girl  and  Al- 
gerian Girl,  Maternal  Love,  and  other 
striking  decorative  groups.  The  bril- 
liant contrasts  in  the  statuary  are  se- 
cured through  the  combined  use  of 
marble  and  bronzes,  which  give  a  life- 
like effect  to  the  figures.  The  beauti- 
ful Italian  pavilions  which  won  the 
grand  prix  for  foreign  pavilions  at  the 
Exposition,  is  always  crowded  with 
eager  and  enthusiastic  throngs  of  sight- 
seers. In  the  pavilion,  which  is  in 
reality  not  one,  but  eight  interconnect- 
ing structures  grouped  around  Italian 
courts,  one  finds  the  architecture  of 
typical  cities  at  the  height  of  the  Ital- 
ian Renaissance. 


C.  C.  Moore,  President  of  the  Panama-Pacific  International  Exposition. 


254 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


An  elaborate  exhibit  of  especial  in- 
terest at  this  time  is  that  of  Switzer- 
land, which,  although  a  neutral  nation, 
has  350,000  men  in  arms  guarding  her 
borders.  In  the  adequate  commercial 
and  artistic  representation  of  Switzer- 
land, there  are  represented  the  chief 
watchmaking  companies  of  the  Re- 
public, as  also  hundreds  of  displays 
illustrating  the  household  handicrafts. 
The  Berner  Wood  Carvers  Association 
of  Marringen  has  an  exhibit  of  the 
marvelous  wares  which  only  the  Swiss, 
in  their  winter  nights,  have  learned  to 
execute.  Tiny  figures  of  a  thousand 
sorts  will  be  borne  away  from  the  Ex- 
position to  the  ends  of  the  earth  as  sou- 
venirs of  the  remarkable  Swiss  exhibit. 
Rare  laces,  skillful  embroiders,  hand- 
carved  ivories  from  Bale,  fans  and 
bric-a-brac  are  in  the  display.  A  char- 
acteristic Swiss  chalet  has  been  erected 
in  the  Palace  of  Varied  Industries  by 
one  of  the  leading  chocolate  com- 
panies. 

The  displays  of  the  Scandinavian 
nations,  Norway,  Sweden  and  Den- 
mark, each  of  which  is  represented 
in  a  State  pavilion  in  characteristic  ar- 
chitecture, have  never  been  surpassed 
at  an  American  Exposition.  The  art 
exhibit  of  Norway,  part  of  which  came 
from  Venice  on  the  Jason  and  the  rest 
of  which  was  shipped  on  the  Jultan- 
dra,  which  took  an  Arctic  course  far  to 
the  north  of  the  Orney  Islands  to  avoid 
the  war  zone,  is  displayed  in  the  annex 
of  the  Palace  of  Fine  Arts,  and  occu- 
pies five  rooms  devoted  to  painting  and 
sculpture,  and  two  rooms  to  graphic 
art.  The  Norwegian  Pavilion,  always 
crowded  with  visitors,  is  filled  with 
dioramas  and  panoramas  portraying 
the  scenic  charms  of  the  country,  the 
northern  fjords,  the  lofty,  spruce-clad 
mountains,  the  fishing  industry;  and 
there  are  many  models  of  ships  of  the 
fleet  of  merchant  steamers  which 
carry  the  shipping  of  the  kingdom.  Du- 
plicates in  miniature  of  ancient  war 
craft  used  by  the  berserkers  of  the 
early  days  and  ancient  galleys  of  the 
type  the  Norwegians  used  when  they 
first  learned  of  the  shores  of  North 
America  are  exhibited. 


Another  European  display  of  extra- 
ordinary interest  is  that  of  the  Repub- 
lic of  France.  This  is  largely  portrayed 
in  the  French  national  pavilion,  al- 
though France  has  made  an  elaborate 
display  of  art  works  in  the  exhibit 
palaces  including  the  Palace  of  Fine 
Arts,  and  is  notably  represented  with 
her  wines,  her  machinery  and  laces  in 
the  Palace  of  Manufactures.  One  of 
the  interesting  exhibits  in  the  latter 
palace  is  a  new  type  of  rapid  firing  gun 
now  employed  by  the  legions  of 
France.  In  the  French  pavilion  are 
many  priceless  relics  and  antiques,  as 
well  as  displays  of  modern  commercial 
art,  the  latter  including  remarkable 
exhibits  of  life  size  models  draped  in 
the  latest  Parisian  fashions.  The  most 
noted  modistes  of  Paris  reveal  the  lat- 
est gowns,  and  the  styles  which  they 
decree  are  accepted  as  the  ultimatum 
of  the  fashionable  world. 

Included  in  the  French  display  are 
models  of  the  famous  French  dolls, 
priceless  Gobelin  tapestries  of  Louis 
IV,  relics  of  Rochambeau,  Lafayette, 
Balzac,  Victor  Hugo  and  other  French 
notables.  The  four  great  tapestries 
which,  with  many  modern  tapestries, 
are  in  the  pavilion,  belong  to  a  suite 
of  eleven,  the  cartoons  for  which  were 
the  work  of  Le  Brun,  the  great  painter, 
who  was  appointed  to  take  charge  of 
the  Gobelin  factory  in  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  They  were  made  between 
the  years  1664  and  1683,  and  represent 
different  scenes  in  the  life  of  Alexan- 
der the  Great,  the  conquests  of  the 
wild  tribes  of  Asia  being  the  theme 
of  the  scenes,  a  theme  which  lends  it- 
self to  graphic  portrayal  because  of  the 
slaves,  elephants  and  mighty  though 
crude  implements  of  war  employed  at 
that  time.  These  tapestries  are  of  enor- 
mous value,  reaching  into  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  dollars,  not  only  on  ac- 
count of  their  age  and  the  softness  of 
their  colors,  but  because  they  are  ex- 
ceedingly rare,  and  are,  as  well,  the 
achievements  of  the  greatest  artist  of 
the  period  of  Louis  XIV. 

The  superb  Netherlands  pavilion,  its 
giant  towers  rising  far  into  the  air 
and  surmounted  by  many  flagstaffs, 


Byzantine  door,  Palace  of  Education. 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


is  attracting  the  attention  from  visi- 
tors in  all  parts  of  the  world.  Fish- 
ing scenes  in  Holland  are  reproduced 
in  magnificent  panoramas  and  dio- 
ramas. Models  of  railway  cars,  of 
steamships,  displays  of  tin  and  rubber 
and  sugar  from  the  Netherlands'  opu- 
lent possessions  in  the  East  Indies,  to- 
gether with  illuminated  dioramic 


terraces  up  their  precipitous  sides.  One 
is  here  borne  into  a  far  country,  into 
the  Orient  of  spices,  of  rich  mines, 
and  vast  plantations  with  all  its  fasci- 
nation and  strange  life. 

Portugal  is  represented  by  an  attrac- 
tive pavilion;  and  Belgium,  through 
the  co-operation  of  France,  has  a  great 
section  entirely  its  own  in  the  French 


scenes  with  alcoves  from  which  the 
sightseer  may  gaze  down  upon  appar- 
ently distant  fields  dotted  with  tiny 
factories,  great  irrigation  flumes ;  while 
nearer,  as  though  upon  the  edge  of 
some  frowning  cliff,  is  seen  the  tropic 
foliage  of  the  country,  and  farther 
away  rise  the  lofty  mountains  indented 
by  rice  fields  that  rise  like  steps  in 


national  pavilion.  Spain  is  represented 
with  many  priceless  paintings  and 
works  of  art,  and  in  the  commercial 
section  by  her  wines,  tapestries  and 
valuable  antiques. 

Thus  it  is  that  the  Panama-Pacific 
International  Exposition,  despite  the 
greatest  war  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  presents  a  brilliant  and  unexam- 


THE  COURT  OF  THE  UNIVERSE.                           257 

pled  display  of  the  artistic  achieve-  never  been  the  good  fortune  of  Ameri- 

ments  of  the  European  nations,  and  he  cans  to  behold  in  America  so  wonderful 

who  visits  the  Exposition  may  rest  as-  and  comprehensive  a  collection  of  Eu- 

sured  that  each  has  displayed  those  ropean  displays  as  at  this  Exposition, 

arts   and   crafts   in   which   it  has  at-  in  which  thirteen  European  nations  are 

tained  prominence,  and  that     it    has  participating. 


The  Court  of  the  Universe 

(Panama-Pacific   Exposition) 

Beautiful  as  morning  on  the  hills 

Its  gleaming  columns  soar  against  the  light, 

The  Court  to  cosmic  service  consecrate. 

About  it  blow  the  winds  of  all  the  seas. 

Beneath  its  feet  in  strong-lipped  melody 

The  waves  purr  out  their  far-brought  song. 

Above  it  spheres  the  blue  of  cloud-sailed  sky 

As  fair  as  dreams  of  heaven  on  summer  morn 

That  stir  with  tremblings  as  of  angels'  wings 

Dipping  afar  from  some  far-gloried  sphere. 

And  in  the  air  about  it  is  a  chant 

All  made  of  golden  sounds  that  lift  the  soul — 

Bright  stairs  of  melody  the  spirit  mounts 

To  catch  the  wing-tip  gleam  of  Things  Beyond. 

Night-high  above  it  in  the  purple  deeps 

Stars  the  bright  planet  of  its  destiny — 

To  offer  wide-flung  hospice  to  the  world, 

Where  peaceful  in  a  peaceful  land  may  meet 

All  men,  all  tongues,  all  nations,  and  all  climes. 

While  in  the  elder  hemisphere  War  rolls 

His  bloody  thunders  on  the  groaning  earth, 

And  cries  of  men,  and  prayers  of  anguished  wives, 

And  helpless  children's  innocent,  starved  wails 

Go  up  in  hideous  clamor  to  the  skies, 

Here  there  is  peace,  and  welcome,  for  all  men. 

Here,  in  this  high-set  Court,  whose  columns 

Seek  aloft  into  the  blue,  Grecian  in  line, 

Gothic  in  height  of  heavenward  aspiration, 

Of  all  the  world,  for  all  the  world,  in  all, 

They  meet,  all  men,  heavy-handed  with  their  gifts; 

With  trophies — not  of  war,  nay!  never  that! — 

But  gains  of  peace  in  bloodless  conflict  won 

By  work  of  hands,  and  might  of  brain  and  will; 

The  precious  things  that  they  have  patient  wrought, 

Or  delved  for,  carven,  welded,  painted,  hewn — 

All  things  that  mean  the  onward,  upward  course 

From  out  the  Darkness  to  the  Light  beyond, 

Hither  they  bring,  man's  offering  to  man. 


JESSIE  MAUDE  WYBRO. 


Surveying  the  table  from  an  overhead  branch. 


Innkeeper   to    Birds   and   Squirrels 


DRAWINGS    BY    ANDREW    P.    HILL. 


By  Amanda  Aathews 


THE    FURRED    and    feathered 
guests  cared  not  a  wheat  grain 
for  the  traditions  of  the  hospice, 
though  even  within  their  brief 
memories  it  had  been  Jack  London's 
outdoor  dining-room.    That  was  before 
the     story    writer    left    Wake-Robin 
Lodge  at  Glen  Ellen,  to  dwell  on  his 
own  ranch  hard  by. 

The  room  which  I  occupied  during  a 
stay  at  Wake-Robin  Lodge  last  fall 
looked  directly  into  this  deserted  syl- 
van place  of  refreshment.  On  the 
other  side  of  it  flowed  Wildwater 
Creek.  The  refectory  was  sheltered 
and  partly  inclosed  by  manzanita, 
buckeye,  oak  and  maple.  Its  furnish- 
ings were  of  the  rudest — a  rusty  cook- 
stove  which  no  longer  sent  smoke  up 
into  the  branches,  a  roughly-carpen- 
tered kitchen  table  and  a  larger  dining 
table  covered  with  weather  damaged 
oilcloth.  Two  home-made  benches  and 
a  prostrate  tree  trunk  were  still  hospit- 
ably in  place  about  this  abandoned 
board,  just  as  when  in  Jack  London's 
time,  laughter,  socialism,  jests  and 


Spencerian  philosophy  mingled  with 
the  wind  in  the  tree-tops  and  the  trill- 
ing of  the  creek. 

"Why  not  perpetuate  the  good  cheer 
of  this  already  dedicated  spot  by  enter- 
taining here  humanity's  little  cousins  of 
the  wood?"  thought  I,  and  scattered 
grain  on  stove  and  tables. 

The  birds  and  squirrels  were  right- 
fully distrustful.  All  summer  the 
vicinity  had  been  pervaded  by  noisy 
and  disturbing  campers.  Fall  had 
banished  the  campers  but  had  brought 
the  hunters  in  their  stead.  Small  won- 
der that  the  wood  folk  did  not  trust 
their  human  kin! 

The  blue  jays  flew  by  the  bower  with 
mocking  screech.  "Nothing  doing! 
Nothing  doing!"  I  must  crave  indul- 
gence for  the  bluejay's  language.  He 
is  a  natural  rowdy  and  his  raucous 
squawk  can  be  translated  only  into 
slang. 

Then  I  tried  the  experiment  of  plac- 
ing wheat  in  troughs  made  of  fluted 
moldings,  which  were  fastened  among 
the  branches  above  the  tables.  Thus 


INNKEEPER  TO  BIRDS  AND  SQUIRRELS 


259 


a  bird  fluttering  casually  about  would 
find  himself  perched,  as  it  were,  at  a 
quick-lunch  counter. 

These  molding  troughs  proved  good 
advertising,  for  gradually  the  birds 
took  note  of  the  feast  below.  After 
flitting  to  half  a  dozen  nearby  twigs 
to  survey  the  proposed  destination 
from  as  many  view  points,  a  bird  per- 
son would  flash  down,  snatch  a  grain 
or  two,  and  be  off  in  a  self  inspired 
panic.  Often,  after  all  these  prelimi- 
naries, one  would  change  his  mind  in 
mid-air  and  shoot  back  to  an  upper 
branch  for  still  further  cautionary  con- 
sideration. 

It  was  fully  a  week  after  my  birds 
had  become  somewhat  accustomed  to 
the  stove  and  small  weather-darkened 
table  before  they  ventured  to  alight 
on  the  oil  cloth  and  this  table  con- 
tinued less  popular  to  the  end  of  the 
season.  Did  their  instincts  warn  them 
that  they  were  dangerously  conspicu- 
ous against  this  whiter  ground  ?  There 
seemed  no  other  reason  for  this  avoid- 
ance than  the  non-conformity  of  the 
oilcloth  background  with  nature's  pro- 
tective color  scheme. 

After  registering  a  number  of  regu- 
lar patrons,  my  next  step  was  to  make 
the  spread  still  more  popular  by  in- 
creasing the  menu  with  fruits  and  nuts, 
lettuce  leaves  and  bits  of  bread.  At 
once  the  tables  were  deserted,  and  the 
jays  flew  off,  jeering :  "It's  all  off.  It's 
all  off!"  Sure  enough  the  sillies  were 
afraid  of  this  strange  conglomeration. 
The  intruding  objects,  however,  be- 
haved with  such  comforting  stolidity 
that  by  the  end  of  a  week  confidence 
was  restored. 

'  Indeed,  it  increased  most  charming- 
ly :  no  longer  was  it  look  and  peck,  look 
and  peck,  look  and — away  for  no  rea- 
son at  all.  The  guests  got  past  their 
constrained  company  manners,  and 
acted  out  their  several  natures  with 
free-hearted  hilarity.  At  times  the 
caravansary  would  be  thronged  and 
seldom  was  it  entirely  unfrequented 
during  the  daylight  hours. 

Juncos,  blue  jays  and  towhees  were 
my  regular  patrons  from  the  first.  The 
juncos  came  singly,  doubly,  trebly 


"Righteously  distrustful." 

and  lastly  in  flocks.  The  junco  be- 
longs to  the  fringilline  connection,  and 
is  so  closely  related  to  the  snowbird  of 
the  Eastern  States  that  "western  snow- 
bird" is  another  name  by  which  he 
goes.  The  variety  found  about  Glen 
Ellen  is  a  plump  little  dark  tan  bird 
with  lighter  breast.  The  males  wear 
navy-blue  monklike  hoods,  while  the 
females  affect  hoods  matching  the  rest 
of  their  plumage. 

The  juncos'  table  manners  were  ex- 
ceedingly demure — no  conversation — 
only  the  tapping  of  their  tiny  bills. 
But  when  they  had  dined  and  were 
perched  on  adjacent  branches,  they 
kept  up  a  "tut!  tut!"  for  all  the  world 
like  the  favorite  disapproving  inter- 
jection of  old-fashioned  people.  No 
one  could  hear  this  "tut!  tut!  tut!"  and 
doubt  that  they  were  gossiping  about 
the  other  guests. 

They  surely  could  find  nothing  to 
deplore  in  the  conduct  of  the  towhees 
who  behaved  most  decorously,  unless 
it  was  that  the  male  towhee  usually 
came  alone,  and  the  gossipy  juncos 
may  have  felt  commiseration  for  the 
female  who  must  have  had  to  be  sat- 
isfied with  hearing  what  her  lord  had 
for  dinner.  The  towhee  is  a  plump, 
brown,  robin-sized  bird  of  simple,  un- 
ambitious spirit  and  humble  habits. 
He  would  fly  up  to  the  table  from  be- 
neath the  bushes,  where  he  was  ever- 
lastingly hopping  and  pecking,  help 
himself  modestly  and  moderately  from 
vthe  edge  of  the  table,  and  fly  down 
home  again. 

But  the  buccaneer  blue- jays!  What 
opportunities  they  offered  for  the  eter- 


260 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


nal  tut-tutting  of  the  juncos!  They 
came  in  gangs — the  jays — and  were  of 
two  distinct  varieties,  the  Steller  and 
the  California,  equally  striking  and 
picturesque.  The  Steller  jay  wears  a 
jetty  helmet  with  high  crest,  the  cloak 
of  a  cavalier,  short,  round  and  of  a 
velvety  black,  while  the  rest  of  his 
active  person  is  enveloped  in  dark, 
purplish  blue.  The  California  jay  has 
no  crest,  and  wears  a  coat  of  the 
brightest  imaginable  blue,  the  lapels 
of  which  almost  meet  in  front  over  his 
light  gray  waistcoat. 

The  females  of  both  species  dress 
exactly  like  the  males — tut!  tut!  tut! 
shame  on  them!  The  Steller  jay,  with 
his  rakish  crest,  seems  the  greater 
rowdy,  but  such  is  not  the  real  case. 
The  California  jay,  notwithstanding 
the  elegant  genuflection  he  invariably 
makes  when  helping  himself  to  a 
grain,  is  the  low-browed  brigand  who 
commits  the  more  atrocious  crimes 
against  the  eggs  and  young  of  other 
birds.  With  all  their  moral  shortcom- 
ings, both  jays  are  nevertheless  jolly 
good  fellows,  and  their  dash  and  bra- 
vado are  most  captivating. 

Of  my  furry  patrons,  the  common 
ground  squirrels  were  the  first  to  ap- 
pear. The  gray  and  black  fleckings 
of  their  fur  are  decidedly  pretty,  but 
according  to  the  canons  of  squirrel 
beauty  their  heads  are  disproportion- 
ately large  and  their  tails  are  scrubby. 
Their  manners  are  correspondingly 
plebeian.  They  would  fill  their  cheek 
pockets  so  full  of  wheat  that  they 
looked  like  bad  cases  of  double  mumps 
— scooting  to  their  holes,  and  back 
again  for  more.  Slices  of  apple,  how- 
ever, they  would  sit  up  and  nibble  on 
the  table,  holding  them  genteelly  in 
their  front  paws,  thus  showing  that, 
after  all,  they  knew  somewhat  of 
squirrel  etiquette.  Nor  were  they  al- 
together greedy,  for  they  would  delay 
after  dinner  to  disport  themselves 
most  gleefully.  One,  the  most  ven- 
turesome, investigated  the  stove,  and 
even  went  so  far  inside  the  stovepipe 
I  did  not  look  for  him  to  emerge  un- 
assisted, but  part  way  down,  with  a 
mighty  scratching  and  scrambling,  he 


evidently  righted  himself,    since     he 
emerged  covered  with  soot. 

A  belated  comer  at  my  inn  was  that 
tiny  electric  flash  of  animal  life,  the 
California  chipmunk.  The  dear,  perky 
little  chap  would  dart  from  stove  to 
tables,  and  tables  to  stove,  every  mo- 
tion a  lightning  jerk. 

But  the  "lions,"  to  speak  in  human 
parlance,  I  most  desired  to  entertain 
at  my  board  were  the  gray  tree  squir- 
rels, with  their  glorious  bushy  tails, 
like  curled  ostrich  plumes.  But  unfor- 
tunately they  had  long  been  the  target 
for  every  hunter,  and  consequently 
they  were  the  shyest  of  all  the  squir- 
rels. I  was  aware  that  several  were 
living  in  a  grove  of  young  redwoods 
across  the  creek,  and  hopefully  noted 
that,  day  after  day,  their  clucking  bark 
could  be  heard  nearer.  Finally  an  oc- 
casional one  would  cross  the  creek  on 
an  air-route  of  overhead  branches.  For 
some  days  he  would  not  venture  down 
to  my  bowered  tables,  but  would  sur- 
vey them  from  his  branch  of  safety, 
barking  and  pounding  the  bough  with 
his  tiny  front  paws  in  earnest  denun- 
ciation of  the  whole  institution.  At 
last  it  came  about  that  the  tree  squir- 
rels would  trail  their  magnificent 
brushes  through  my  corridors  or  curl 
them  over  their  backs  as  they  partook 
of  the  nuts  on  my  board. 

It  was  the  way  of  all  the  squirrels 
to  hold  long,  loud,  barking  or  cheep- 
ing soliloquies  off  in  the  brush,  appar- 
ently anent  the  dangers  of  the  under- 
taking, but  their  actual  coming  was 
always  swift  and  silent.  Chipmunk 
and  ground  squirrel  came  with  the 
short  run  alternated  with  full  stop 
which  is  the  characteristic  gait  of 
many  wild  denizens,  but  the  big  gray 
tree  squirrel  billowed  along  in  a  con- 
tinuous poem  of  flowing  motion. 

A  covey  of  mountain  quail  that 
ranged  up  and  down  the  bank  of  the 
creek  happened  to  discover  the  inn  late 
one  afternoon,  and  flew  up  to  the  low 
limbs  of  a  buckeye  for  chittering  con- 
sultation. Afterwards  they  made  their 
supper  from  the  wheat  scattered  on 
the  ground  and  then  went  to  roost  in 
the  buckeye  so  as  to  be  on  hand  for 


INNKEEPER  TO  BIRDS  AND  SQUIRRELS 


261 


an  early  breakfast.  Such  confidence 
was  touching  when  one  considers  that 
the  poor  things  were,  at  this  season, 
hunted  daily  from  cover  to  cover. 

Their  first  ceremonious  investiga- 
tion was  not  repeated;  day  after  day 
they  would  file  directly  up  the  trail 
to  the  bower,  led  by  a  self-important 
little  cock  with  pon-pon  crest  float- 
ing proudly  backward.  As  the  entire 
covey  scratched  among  the  leaves, 
manifestly  at  their  ease,  they  were  ab- 
surdly chicken-like. 

By  this  time  the  study  of  social  re- 
lations at  the  inn  was  most  fascinat- 
ing. Quail,  ground  squirrels  and  blue- 
jays  would  all  be  eating  separated  by 
distances  of  less  than  a  foot.  Not  once 
did  I  observe  the  least  show  of  hos- 
tility on  the  part  of  any  banqueter  to- 
ward another  of  a  different  sort. 

There  were,  however,  certain  rules 
of  precedence  observed  without  their 
being  actively  enforced.  In  general, 
less  in  size  made  way  for  greater. 
When  the  blue- jays  came  to  one  table 
the  juncos  moved  over  to  the  other; 
when  ground  or  tree  squirrel  appeared 
the  chipmunk  twinkled  himself  out  of 
the  direct  path. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  squirrel  held 
himself  the  social  superior  of  the  bird 
regardless  of  size.  Quail  and  blue- 
jay  would  sidestep  a  bit  for  squirrel, 
but  never  squirrel  for  quail,  nor  blue- 
jay.  Even  the  chipmunk  realized  his 
squirrelship,  and  would  feed  blithely 
right  under  the  beak  of  a  blue-jay, 
who  could  have  lifted  him  off  the  table 
by  the  scruff  of  his  neck,  but  did  not, 
although  it  is  hard  to  credit  the  arro- 
gant jay  with  deference  for  his  betters. 

Family  bickerings,  however,  were 
endless.  There  were  peckings  and 
chasings  among  the  quail.  The  blue- 
jays  were  engaged  in  continuous  quar- 
rel. No  jay  would  think  of  feasting 
without  screeching  his  call  note  over 
and  over.  Yet  when  another  jay  re- 
sponded, the  first  would  change  his  cry 
to  one  suggesting  the  crescendo  of 
tomcats  threatening  combat.  The  din- 
ing table  was  large  enough  to  seat 
eight  humans,  but  it  would  hold  two 
jays  just  long  enough  for  them  to  set- 


tle which  one  should  go  and  which  re- 
main. 

The  greater  amiability  of  the  juncos 
may  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  six 
of  them  could  feed  peaceably  on  the 
yard-square  table.  The  seventh  comer, 
however,  was  evicted,  or  stayed  at 
some  other  junco's  expense,  the  matter 
being  decided  by  a  chippering  duel  in 
mid-air  above  the  table.  Are  they 
superstitious  regarding  seven  at  table, 
or  do  six  juncos  to  the  yard  constitute 
company  and  seven  a  crowd? 

Beside  the  regular  boarders,  my  inn 
had  many  transients.  A  beautiful  pair 
of  woodpeckers  lighted  one  day  on  an 
oak  sapling  close  by  the  cookstove, 
looked  the  institution  over  at  their 
•ease,  held  a  consultation,  and  flew 
away,  never  to  return.  I  can  only  sur- 
mise that  they  were  on  a  diet,  and  also 
believed  in  pecking  wood  for  an  hour 
before  meals.  Other  transients  that 
came  on  rare  occasions  for  a  hasty 
grain  were  those  exquisite  scraps  of 
bird  life,  the  wren,  titmouse  and  "wild 
canary."  The  last  named,  gaily  suited 
in  gold  and  olive  green,  is  more  cor- 
rectly designated  as  the  California 
'wood  warbler.  The  titmouse,  while 
neutrally  colored  as  the  wren,  is  a 
piquant  chit  on  account  of  his  very 
large  round  black  eye  and  his  gray 
crest,  cut  quaintly  like  the  Steller 
blue-jay's. 

"What  fire  burns  in  that  little  chest, 
so  frolic,  stout  and  self-possest," 
writes  Emerson  of  his  New  England 
cousin. 

These  birdlings  acted  much  more  at 
home  in  the  trees  close  about  my  win- 
dow than  at  the  inn.  They  seemed  too 
timidly  domestic  for  such  hurly-burly 
public  feeding.  Indeed  the  wren 
chirped  something  about  their  being, 
"Content  with  a  little  beetle  on  a  quiet 
bough." 

The  water  thrush,  dwelling  among 
the  alders  of  the  creek  just  below  my 
'spa  never  showed  himself  even  once. 
Who  can  blame  this  nature  poet?  Im- 
aeine  his  being  elbowed  by  the  Philis- 
tine jays  and  measured  up  by  the  com- 
placent "tut!  tut!"  of  the  juncos! 
'  After  a  fortnight  observance  from 


262 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


my  window,  I  managed  to  introduce 
myself  into  the  midst  of  my  small  peo- 
ple by  taking  up  my  station  a  few  feet 
'closer  each  day.  Abrupt  motions 
frightened  them,  but  gentle,  swaying 
movements  like  wind-stirred  boughs 
did  not  disturb  them.  But  the  first  day 
that  I  ventured  to  sit  on  the  autumn 
leaves  between  table  and  stove,  the 
blue-jays  were  my  undoing.  The 
tables  were  occupied  by  juncos  and 
towhees,  while  some  quail  and  a 
ground  squirrel  fed  at  my  feet,  and  a 
gray  squirrel  at  the  top  of  an  oak  was 
considering  an  approach.  The  jays 
darted  through  the  diningroom,  squall- 
ing this  warning:  "Jigger!  Jigger! 
That's  no  stump!  That's. no  stump! 
Jigger!  Jigger!  Jigger!" 

The  gray  squirrel  heeded,  and  put 
four  trees  between  himself  and  me 
before  he  paused  to  voice  his  indigna- 
tion. Juncos  and  towhees  heeded  and 
flew  away ;  the  quail  scuttled  down  the 
bank.  But  the  braver  ground  squirrel 
sat  up  at  attention  and  looked  me  over. 
Seeing  no  harm  in  me,  and  concluding 
*he  was  smarter  than  any  blue-jay,  he 
let  himself  down  comfortably  and  re- 
sumed his  meal.  I  laughed.  The 
squirrel  fled  with  a  comical  shriek  of 


dismay,  which  I  interpreted:  "Zounds! 
That  is  no  stump!  I  am  betrayed." 

Nevertheless,  it  was  not  long  before 
the  jays,  too,  would  feed  within  reach 
of  my  hand — almost.  The  tree  folk 
accepted  my  presence,  but  not  with- 
out more  or  less  constraint  and  anx- 
iety. The  birds  never  lighted  on  me, 
nor  did  the  squirrels  climb  me. 

If  I  played  at  being  a  sort  of  Provi- 
dence to  fur  and  feathers,  Stuffed  Cal- 
ico, the  Lodge  house  cat  was  certainly 
their  Devil.  I  protected  them  from 
him  as  best  I  could,  but  one  day  in  the 
laundry  there  was  discovered  a  chip- 
munk tail  which  would  whisk  no  more, 
and  my  one  chipmunk  never  disported 
himself  about  the  stove  and  tables 
again. 

I  could  not  feel  myself  entirely 
guiltless  of  helping  to  bring  about  the 
catastrophe.  I  had  cajoled  Stuffed 
Calico's  victim  to  this  doom;  he  was 
"butchered  to  make  a  writer's  holi- 
day." 

<  Unfortunate  wildlings!  It  seems 
that  when  for  our  passing  pleasure  we 
humans  win  their  confidence,  we  do 
but  increase  their  risks  already  dis- 
tressingly numerous  in  a  world  which 
they  must  find  most  ungentle. 


CO/A  P  E  N  5  ATIO  N 


They  pruned  my  sheltering  tree. 

I  loved  each  low,  wide-spreading,  graceful  bough, 
Through  which  the  sunshine  sifted  down  to  me. 

I  mourned  them  all.     But  now — 

Mine  is  a  wider  view, 

The  opal  river,  and  the  brooding  sky, 
The  hills  in  strange,  supernal  splendors  new. 

Day's  glories  flashing  by. 

So  when  some  fair  joy  goes 
Radiant  with  bloom  and  blessing,  till  'tis  past, 
Love's  Hand  may  to  our  tear-filled  eyes  disclose 
A  dearer  joy  at  last. 


ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD. 


/Memories  of  Aark  Twain 


By  William  Alfred  Corey 


W.  W.  Barnes. 


IT  WAS  Emerson's  contention  that 
all  history  is  contained  in  the  bio- 
graphies of  the  men  and  women 
who  participated   in  or  helped  to 
mould  events.    If  so,  reminiscence  has 
its  historical  value,  and  as  the  "days 
of  gold"  period  in  the  chronology  of 
the  West  recedes  and  the  pioneers  of 
that  romantic  time  grow     older     and 
fewer,  their  reminiscences  grow  more 
valuable. 

Herewith  are  set  down  some  hitherto 
unpublished  incidents  culled  from  the 
recollections  of  Mr.  W.  W.  Barnes,  of 
Oakland,  concerning  Samuel  L.  Clem- 
ens while  the  great  humorist  was 
"Roughing  It"  in  Virginia  City,  Ne- 
vada. Incidentally,  Mr.  Barnes  is 
nearing  his  eightieth  year,  and  has 


been  a  newspaper  man  ever  since  he 
was  large  enough  to  hold  a  stick  and 
reach  the  cap  boxes  and  old  enough  to 
push  a  pencil.  He  worked  on  the  Vir- 
ginia City  Union  in  the  early  '50's, 
and  he  has  published  or  been  con- 
nected with  various  newspapers  in  the 
San  Joaquin  Valley  and  other  parts  of 
the  State  until  very  recent  years.  In 
his  capacity  as  a  newspaper  man,  Mr. 
Barnes  has  seen  much  of  the  history 
of  the  West  in  the  making,  and  has 
known  intimately  many  famous  men. 

Barnes  met  Clemens  in  Virginia 
City,  Nevada,  during  the  later  years 
of  the  Civil  War.  Barnes  was  then 
working  on  the  Union,  while  Clemens 
was  doing  his  first  reportorial  work  on 
the  rival  paper,  the  Enterprise. 

Real  news  was  scarce  in  Virginia 
City  at  times  in  those  days,  and  as 
readers  of  "Roughing  It"  will  remem- 
ber, the  author  frankly  admits  that 
many  of  his  stories  were  fabrications. 
Clemens,  it  will  be  remembered,  men- 
tions the  load  of  hay  which  was  made 
to  enter  the  town  from  many  different 
directions,  and  to  encounter  a  wide 
variety  of  strange  adventures  so  as  to 
make  "news"  and  fill  space. 

Mr.  Barnes  remembers  a  more  sen- 
sational case  in  point.  Readers  of  the 
Enterprise  were  astonished  to  find  in 
the  paper  one  day  the  story  of  a  man 
named  Brown  who  had  massacred  his 
whole  family,  consisting  of  a  wife  and 
seven  children.  The  killing,  said  to 
have  been  committed  on  some  isolated 
mountain  ranch,  was  described  with  all 
of  a  young  reporter's  gory  fidelity  to 
detail.  After  the  butchery,  the  mur- 
dered had  scalped  all  his  victims,  filled 
himself  with  corn  juice  and  rode  into 
town,  where  he  proudly  exhibited  his 
string  of  scalps  and  finished  the  cele- 


264 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


bration.  Of  course,  not  the  smallest 
part  of  the  story  was  true,  but  it  sold 
the  paper  and  helped  the  reporter  to 
hold  his  job.  Clemens  was  probably 
the  original  yellow  journalist. 

Mr.  Barnes  has  something  to  say 
about  the  famous  Jumping  Frog  story. 
This  story,  "The  Famous  Jumping 
Frog  of  Calaveras  County,"  was  the 
original  corner  stone  of  Mark  Twain's 
fame  as  a  humorist.  Barnes  says 
Clemens  stole  the  story.  The  story, 
before  Clemens  ever  heard  of  it,  was 
written  by  Samuel  Seabough,  and  was 
published  in  the  San  Andreas  Inde- 
pendent, the  leading  newspaper  of 
Calaveras  County.  Seabough  was  edi- 
tor of  the  Independent.  Incidentally, 
Seabough  was  himself  a  picturesque 
character  in  that  period.  He  had  been 
a  school  teacher,  was  a  brilliant  writer, 
and  had  a  marvelously  retentive  mem- 
ory. He  was  author  of  articles  on  vari- 
ous phases  of  the  Civil  War  that  at- 
tracted national  attention.  Like  so 
many  other  newspaper  men  at  that 
time  he  was  a  victim  of  the  liquor 
habit. 

Seabough  got  the  story  of  the  Jump- 
ing Frog  from  a  man  named  Parker, 
who  was  afterwards  a  member  of  the 
Legislature  from  Mono  County.  Par- 
ker had  lost  money  in  betting  on  the 
jumping  abilities  of  a  frog  in  a  saloon 
at  Mokelumne  Hill,  which  was  the 
county  seat  of  Calaveras  County.  To 
recoup  his  losses,  Parker  procured  a 
croaker  very  much  resembling  the 
jumping  frog  of  the  saloon  from  Chili 
Gulch,  a  frog  infested  locality  near 
Mokelumne  Hill.  He  pried  open  the 
frog's  mouth,  filled  its  bulging  body 
with  shot,  and  carrying  it  to  the  saloon, 
boldly  challenged  the  owner  of  the 
champion  frog  to  a  contest.  Then  he 
adroitly  managed,  without  letting  the 
move  be  seen,  to  substitute  his 
"loaded"  frog  for  the  famous  jumper. 
Naturally,  when  the  line  was  chalked 
on  the  bar-room  floor,  and  the  frogs, 
under  the  interested  gaze  of  the  on- 
lookers, were  simultaneously  tickled 
with  a  straw,  Parker's  frog  won  in  a 
jump,  as  it  were,  and  he  had  the  laugh 
and  the  glory  and  the  coin  on  his  side. 


Seabough,  Mr.  Barnes  says,  wrote  the 
story  and  published  it  in  his  paper. 
Clemens  simply  warmed  it  over, 
dished  it  up  as  his  own,  and  got  all 
the  credit. 

Mr.  Barnes  also  well  remembers  the 
episode  of  the  Sanitary  Sack  of  Flour, 
which  is  a  part  of  Nevada's  annals.  A 
mayoralty  election  was  to  be  held  near 
the  town  of  Austin.  A  man  named 
Gridley  was  the  Republican  candidate, 
while  the  Democratic  candidate's  name 
was  Beal.  It  was  agreed  between  the 
rivals  that  the  unsuccessful  aspirant 
was  to  carry  a  fifty-pound  sack  of  flour 
to  the  top  of  a  hill  near  the  town. 

Beal  was  elected,  and  Gridley  cheer- 
fully toted  the  sack  of  flour  to  the  top 
of  the  hill,  under  the  eyes  of  most  of 
the  town's  population.  Having  done 
this,  he  proposed  that  the  flour  be  sold 
to  the  highest  bidder  for  the  benefit  of 
the  National  Sanitary  Commission, 
which  was  the  forerunner  of  the  pres- 
ent International  Red  Cross  Society. 

This  was  agreed  to  by  all  parties, 
and  the  sack  of  flour  was  sold  and  re- 
sold many  times.  It  was  carried  about 
all  over  Nevada  and  California,  and 
sold  again  and  again.  It  was  the  means 
of  bringing  many  thousands  of  dollars 
to  the  humane  cause  represented  by 
the  Sanitary  Commission.  When  it 
was  sold  in  Virginia  City  the  em- 
ployees of  the  rival  newspapers,  the 
Union  and  the  Enterprise,  clubbed  to- 
gether and  started  bidding  against 
each  other.  There  was  more  or  less 
feeling  between  the  two  publications, 
professional,  political  and  otherwise, 
and  the  employees  of  the  Enterprise 
were  in  the  habit  of  referring  to  the 
Union  crowd  as  "Rebels,"  "Copper- 
heads/' etc.  Nevertheless,  the  Union 
boys  came  to  the  bat  with  a  purse  of 
$100  for  the  sack  of  flour.  Clemens 
passed  the  hat  in  the  Enterprise  office 
and  raised  the  Union's  bid  by  $50.  Not 
to  be  outdone,  the  "Democrats" 
brought  their  bid  up  to  $213,  and  car- 
ried off  the  prize.  Incidentally,  this 
historic  sack  of  flour  eventually  came 
into  the  possession  of  Gridley,  who 
first  carried  it  up  the  hill  at  Austin. 
Gridley's  descendants,  who  live  at  Mo- 


THE  WELL-BELOVED. 


265 


desto,  are  said  to  still  have  this  sack 
of  flour  enclosed  in  a  buckskin  bag. 

Something  of  the  old  rivalry  be- 
tween the  "boys"  of  the  Union  and 
those  of  the  Enterprise,  in  the  historic 
days  of  the  Comstock  Lode,  must  still 
linger  in  the  heart  of  one  of  them  who, 
though  feeble  with  age,  yet  maintains 
the  spirit  of  the  old  days.  For  the  old 
pioneer  tells  a  story  of  Mark  Twain 
which  has  never  before  seen  print,  and 
which,  while  a  characteristic  prank  of 
the  young  fun-maker,  and  typical  of 
the  West  that  was  all  wild  and  very 
woolly,  still  was  considered  a  rather 
coarse  joke. 

Artemus  Ward,  then  on  his  Western 
lecture  tour,  had  reached  Virginia  City 
and  was  billed  to  lecture  in  the  princi- 
pal hall.  Naturally,  he  found  con- 
genial spirits  in  the  city  of  sudden  for- 


tunes. Among  these  was  "Sam" 
Clemens.  The  visiting  humorist  also 
found  spirits  in  bottles  which  were 
more  than  congenial. 

But  it  was  hardly  fair  in  Clemens, 
with  the  lecture  hour  drawing  near,  to 
get  Ward  hopelessly  drunk,  black 
his  face  with  burnt  cork  and  then 
thrust  him  out  before  his  waiting  au- 
dience. In  fact,  it  was,  as  Mr.  Barnes 
tersely  characterized  it,  "A  damn  dirty 
trick."  But  so  be  it.  There  is  a  burnt 
cork  period  in  every  man's  life,  and 
both  Mark  Twain  and  Artemus  Ward 
were  in  that  period  of  their  lives  at 
that  time.  It  was  also  the  burnt  cork 
period  in  the  life  of  the  West  in  gen- 
eral, and  so  the  audience  itself,  prob- 
ably, regarded  the  matter  as  a  great 
joke,  and  alone  worth  the  price  of  ad- 
mission 


THE    WELL-BELOVED 


"Until  death  do  us  part" — 

Ah,  dearest  heart, 

We  scorn  the  ancient  lie 

And  death  defy, 

You  and  I ! 

Mayhap  you  journey  far 
From  star  to  star; 
On  earth  the  paths  you  trod 
Led  up  to  God, 
Spurned  the  sod : 

Mayhap  you  know  the  rest 
We  deemed  was  best; 
But  you  and  I  are  one — 
Such  love  begun 
Is  not  undone, 

And  be  we  flame  or  dust, 
Serene  I  trust 
That  one  same  fate  will  be 
For  you  and  me 
Eternally ! 

VIRGINIA  CLEAVER  BACON, 


The    Criminal   in    the    Drama 


By  Ella  Costillo  Bennett 


EVERY  few  years  there  is  a  de- 
cided change  in  the  drama,  and 
the  playwright  who  starts  the 
change — that  is,  gets  his  play 
before  the  public  first — either  blazes 
the  trail  for  a  new  style  of  play,  or, 
striking  a  chord  of  popularity,  is  the 
keynote  for  floundering  playwrights. 
Seeing  what  takes,  they  proceed  to 
supply  the  supposed  demand.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  determine,  if  those 
who  follow  are  imitators,  and  naturally 
fall  in  line,  when  somebody  starts  the 
procession,  or  whether,  with  a  similar 
idea,  long  germinating,  they  proceed 
to  the  firing  line  when  they  discover 
the  field  has  been  made  ready.  Any- 
way, new  plays  along  the  line  of  a 
"hit"  follow  in  rapid  succession.  And 
the  why  and  wherefore  does  not  con- 
cern us  so  much  as  the  type  of  play 
the  present  vogue  has  foisted  upon  us. 
The  criminal  is  in  the  limelight,  not 
as  a  specimen  of  the  race  to  be  studied 
under  the  microscope;  not  as  a  sub- 
ject for  pathological  examination,  nor 
yet  as  a  part  of  society  to  exemplify 
the  truth  and  facts,  and  problems;  but 
as  a  victim,  a  martyr,  a  product  of  ill- 
treatment;  No  one  will  gainsay  that 
there  are  many  people  who  commit 
crime — "criminals  by  occasion,"  as 
Lombroso  calls  them,  who  are  not  ad- 
dicted to  crime,  but  under  excessive 
rage,  jealousy  or  great  temptation, 
commit  a  crime — not  crimes.  Then 
there  is  the  criminal  of  circumstances, 
who  under  the  stress  of  dire  misfortune 
— either  unable  to  bear  continued  suf- 
fering, or  in  a  weak  mood,  chooses  be- 
tween two  evils — not  necessarily  the 
lesser — and  commits  a  crime.  For 
these  there  is  naturally  sympathy,  and 
should  be  moderate  leniency;  but  these 
are  not  the  types  in  the  drama.  The 


playwright  seems  to  prefer  to  deal  with 
the  habitual  criminal,  or  the  criminal 
who  considers  himself  a  victim  of  so- 
ciety, because  he  prefers  "easy  money" 
to  that  obtained  by  the  slow,  hard  pro- 
cess of  work — the  common  lot  of  man. 

Many  of  us  can  look  back  to  the 
day  when  the  melodrama  held  the 
boards,  likewise  the  breath  of  the  pub- 
lic. In  this  type  of  play  the  heroine 
was  the  gentle,  lovable,  erring  daugh- 
ter of  poor,  unsophisticated  country 
parents,  usually  the  victim  of  some 
city  scoundrel  of  loud  clothes,  red  ties 
and  black,  plastered  hair;  and  who 
was  unduly  addicted  to  the  cigarette 
habit.  Indeed  his  favorite  pose  was  to 
coolly  smoke  a  cigarette  in  the  face  of 
the  detective — in  the  last  act,  when 
he  was  led  off  in  handcuffs,  amid  the 
rejoicing  of  the  boys  in  the  gallery, 
while  he  was  almost  ignored  by  father, 
mother  and  the  returning  erring  daugh- 
ter— usually  the  victim  of  a  mock  mar- 
riage— now  happily  married  to  her  old 
sweetheart,  who  had  remained  faithful 
throughout.  This  was  in  the  time  of 
"Hazel  Kirk,"  which  many  of  us  re- 
member in  our  bread-and-butter  days, 
and  which  was  one  of  the  best  of  its 
kind.  Then  there  was  the  erring  wife. 
"East  Lynn"  and  "Frou-Frou"  came, 
and  still  come  every  other  year,  re- 
gardless of  style — like  Shakespeare. 
"Young  Mrs.  Winthrop,"  "Parted"  and 
various  other  plays  followed,  where 
husband  and  wife  quarreled  and  made 
up  over  the  child,  or  the  dead  child's 
shoes,  or  something  along  that  line. 

Later,  the  West  loomed  large  upon 
the  horizon,  and  the  "Silver  King"  and 
"Arizona"  and  "Tennessee's  Pardner" 
and  various  others,  some  of  them  very 
good  and  wholesome,  followed  in  suc- 
cession. Usually  about  two  types  of 


THE  CRIMINAL  AND  THE  DRAMA 


267 


plays  are  popular  at  the  same  time. 
Now  it  is  the  Symbolic  play — and  the 
stories  of  the  underworld,  neither  with 
much  to  recommend  them. 

And  so  on,  down  through  various 
styles  of  society  plays,  problem  plays, 
until  some  years  ago,  the  thief  in  the 
drama  became  popular.  This  was  go- 
ing far,  and  was  a  false  appeal  to  the 
sympathies,  but  it  drew,  which  is  more 
to  the  point  in  the  estimation  of  the 
playwright,  actor  and  manager;  and 
the  moralist  had  little  or  no  audience 
in  his  condemnation  of  this  sort  of 
drama,  reason,  logic,  ethics  all  were 
side-tracked  when  "In  the  Bishop's 
Carriage,"  "Raffles"  and  such,  capped 
by  "The  Thief,"  held  the  boards  and 
swelled  the  box  office  receipts.  Then 
followed  "Alias  Jimmy  Valentine,"  a 
play  not  in  the  least  true  to  life,  but 
pleasing,  amusing  and  not  one  that  is 
apt  to  do  any  particular  harm,  for 
certainly  no  banker  is  going  to  be  so 
false  to  his  trust,  or  so  foolish  as  to 
hand  over  all  the  cash  funds  of  his 
bank  to  an  ex-convict  and  safe- 
cracker  for  safe-keeping! 

This  thief  glorification,  however, 
started  something  that  is  now  in  full 
swing,  viz.,  plays  of  the  underworld, 
where,  as  in  one  or  two  of  these,  the 
dramatist  has  held  near  the  truth  and 
not  idealized  the  criminal,  good  may 
be  accomplished,  but  in  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  plays  in  which  the  crimi- 
nal holds  the  center  of  the  stage,  the 
dramatist  demands,  nay,  clamors  for 
your  approval,  consequently  much 
harm  may  be  done. 

The  really  thinking,  reasoning  per- 
son cannot  be  hurt  by  them;  but  will 
any  one  contend  that  the  audience  is 
constituted  of  this  class  of  people  ?  On 
the  contrary,  a  large  number  of  boys 
and  weak  men,  as  well  as  a  fair  sprink- 
ling of  women  whose  sentimentality 
needs  only  a  few  more  sob  sentences 
to  make  them  maudlin,  makes  fully  its 
pro  rata  of  the  audience. 

"The  Crime  of  the  Law,"  the  latest 
of  the  atrocities,  is  an  appeal — pro- 
logue and  epilogue,  as  well  as  the  body 
of  the  play — to  the  public  for  Prison 
Reform,  yet  no  better  argument  has 


ever  been  written  for  the  cold-blooded 
opposite  side — which  believes,  once 
get  the  criminal  behind  the  bars,  keep 
him  there. 

Any  one  who  has  posted  himself, 
even  casually,  on  the  prison  system, 
knows  that  it  is  foolish  and  cruel,  and 
a  glaring  expose  of  poor  economics.  It 
does  not  need  either  sentiment  or  deep 
thinking  to  acknowledge  the  apparent 
facts;  on  the  other  hand,  no  thinking 
person  classes  all  criminals — nor  even 
a  large  per  cent  of  them  as  victims  of 
circumstances.  The  facts  do  not  bear 
out  the  theories  of  the  sentimentalists, 
and  in  putting  on  plays  where  the 
criminal  is  practically  given  a  license 
to  continue  in  crime,  and  all  blame 
placed  upon  society,  is  to  go  to  the 
other  extreme  and  thereby  retard,  in- 
stead of  assisting  prison  reform.  "The 
Crime  of  the  Law"  is  about  the  best 
brief  presented  for  those  who  oppose 
any  leniency  or  parole  to  the  criminal ; 
meantime,  the  young  author,  Rachel 
Marshall,  who  evidently  has  imagina- 
tion and  considerable  dramatic  ability, 
and  did  a  good,  strong  piece  of  work 
in  "The  Traffic"  (excepting  the  finale) 
makes  through  this  play  a  plea  to  the 
public  for  the  criminal,  thinking  his 
ill  treatment  in  the  penitentiary  is  suf- 
ficient excuse  for  any  subsequent  crime 
— or  crimes;  but  the  plea  falls  flat. 
The  play  is  not  as  a  whole  true  to  life 
— indeed,  it  is  far  from  it.  It  is  ex- 
ceedingly inartistic,  and  its  criminals 
are  so  nauseating  as  to  mitigate,  if 
not  justify,  their  ill  treatment. 

A  much  stronger  and  more  artistic 
play  along  the  same  line,  is  "Within 
the  Law,"  but  even  here,  with  that  fine 
emotional  actress,  Margaret  Illington, 
who  shows  a  decided  predilection  for 
thieves — in  the  drama — having  starred 
in  Bernstein's  "Thief,"  "Kindling," 
and  "Within  the  Law"  consecutively, 
there  is  such  a  repugnance  to  the  thief, 
or  in  this  case  bunco  woman,  or  semi- 
blackmailer,  extortionist,  etc.,  that  not 
for  one  minute  does  sympathy  go  truly 
to  Mary  Turner.  Had  Mary  taken  re- 
venge on  the  Father  alone,  one's  sym- 
pathy would  have  been  wholly  with 
her,  for  despicable  as  the  passion  of 


268 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


revenge  may  be,  it  can  yet  be  dignified 
when  the  provocation  has  been  great, 
as  with  Shylock  and  as  with  Mary 
Turner;  but  when  the  criminal  makes 
the  innocent  suffer  for  the  guilty,  what 
right  has  he  or  she  to  challenge  the 
same  unjust  attitude  in  those  who 
brought  about  his  suffering?  Wherein 
was  Mary  Turner  any  better  than  her 
cold-blooded  employer?  Rather  she 
was  more  despicable,  for  at  least  her 
employer  believed  her  guilty  of  theft, 
but  she,  knowing  his  son  true,  kind 
and  honorable,  deliberately  plans  to 
make  him  suffer  anguish  and  humilia- 
tion to  revenge  herself  upon  his  father. 
Then,  too,  Mary  did  not  hesitate  to 
live  in  luxury  off  of  her  dishonest 
schemes,  justifying  herself  because 
"only  the  dishonest  were  hurt,"  but 
those,  again  to  reimburse  themselves, 
proceed  to  bunco  some  more  honest 
people,  who  in  their  turn  are  indirect- 
ly helping  to  pay  for  Mary  Turner's 
luxury,  and  the  gay  little  chum  Aggie, 
is  supposed  to  be  excusable  for  black- 
mailing because  she  is  virtuous! 

Playwrights  are  getting  their  morals 
sadly  mixed  when  a  lapse  from  the 
high  standard  of  virtue — or  purity — 
is  considered  the  unpardonable  sin, 
but  bunco  dealing,  stealing  and  black- 


mailing are  considered  quite  respect- 
able, if  you  are  discriminating  in  se- 
lecting as  your  victims  only  those  who 
are  not  admirable  or  lovable,  or  more 
exactly  speaking,  do  not  meet  with 
the  approval  of  the  aforesaid  thief 
and  blackmailer. 

"The  Deep  Purple"  was  a  plea  for 
sympathy  and  to  let  the  criminal  es- 
cape— and  there  followed  others,  and 
still  they  come!  But  of  all  types  and 
styles  of  the  drama  that  have  passed 
before,  this  present  fad  of  making  the 
criminal  a  hero,  martyr  or  victim — 
what  you  will — is  by. far  the  worst  we 
have  had.  Sentimentality  can  go  no 
further,  and  these  plays  and  the  les- 
son they  strive  to  teach,  would  fail 
because  of  their  fallacy,  if  it  were  not 
that  two-thirds  of  the  audience  consists 
of  the  young,  and  therefore  impres- 
sionable. It  is  not  the  habit  of  youth 
to  think  deeply,  and  the  inexperience 
of  the  young  makes  them  incapable  of 
correct  induction  or  deduction,  so  the 
damage  done  by  the  idealizing  of  the 
criminal  is  yet  to  be  calculated,  but 
this  much  good  we  can  count  on,  its 
vogue  will  soon  be  ended,  for  styles 
come  and  go  in  the  drama — even  as 
other  things — and  the  uglier  the  style 
the  earlier  its  demise.  Dei  Gratia! 


I     KNOW     A     VALLEY 

I  know  a  little  valley,  far  away,  so  far  away, 

And  my  heart,  my  heart  is  longing  to  be  back  home  in  May. 

Oh,  the  purple  of  the  mountains,  with  their  tiny  caps  of  snow, 

And  the  fragrance  of  the  breezes,  where  the  orange  blossoms  blow. 

There's  a  mocking  bird  a-trilling,  his  song  of  pure  delight, 

From  an  old  oak  where  the  roses  climb,  and  wave  their  branches  white. 

There's  a  road  within  this  valley,  winding  on  with  twists  and  turns, 

Dipping  through  a  rocky  hollow,  green  and  fresh  with  dainty  ferns. 

On  beside  brown  tumbled  fences,  and  an  old  adobe  wall, 

Where  the  Cherokees  climb  and  cluster  and  in  festooned  garlands  fall. 

Oh,  this  valley  where  my  heart  is,  far  away,  so  far  away, 

With  the  memories  and  stories  of  its  olden  Spanish  day, 

This  I  know,  though  well  I  love  it,  that  no  words  could  ever  tell, 

Half  the  languorous,  dreamy  beauty  of  my  own  San  Gabriel. 

ELIZABETH  A.  WILBUR. 


Is   Christian   Science   Reasonable? 


By   C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,   Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 

( This  is  the  first  of  a  series  of  two  articles  on  Christian  Science.    The  second 
will  appear  in  our  next  issue.) 


"Come,  now,  let  us  reason  together, 
saith  the  Lords  though  your  sins  be  as 
scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white  as 
snow." — Isaiah  1 :18. 

WHEN  a  number  of  people  as- 
sociate themselves,  adopt  a 
name,  publish  their  doctrines 
to  the  world  and  invite  mem- 
bers, their  doctrines  are  properly  sub- 
ject to  public  criticism.  They  still 
preserve  their  individual  rights,  how- 
ever. What  a  man  believes  or  disbe- 
lieves is  his  own  business,  and  not 
subject  to  public  criticism.  Doctrines 
only  may  be  criticised;  and  these 
should  be  honestly  treated,  not  misrep- 
resented. This  applies  to  every  creed, 
every  cult;  and  all  honest  people 
should  welcome  such  investigation  and 
truthful  criticism.  We  assume  that 
Christian  Scientists,  therefore,  will  ap- 
preciate what  we  now  have  to  say  as 
much  as,  or  more  than,  others.  We 
trust  that  we  always  have  this  attitude 
toward  any  criticism  leveled  against 
our  public  teachings.  We  are  there- 
fore following  the  Golden  Rule  laid 
down  by  the  Lord,  and  acknowledged 
by  all. 

The  growth  of  Christian  Science  has 
astonished  the  world.  Its  teachings 
seem  to  have  appealed  to  a  very  in- 
telligent, well-to-do  class  of  people,  of 
considerable  mental  independence, 
possessed  of  considerable  "backbone." 
So  far  as  we  have  conversed  with  them 
we  find  that  physical  healing  seems  to 
have  been  more  or  less  associated  with 


their  conversion  to  their  cult.  Either 
themselves  or  their  friends  have  been 
healed.  Their  realization  of  the  cure 
brought  them  religious  conviction  in- 
stead of  the  doubts  and  wonderments 
of  their  previous  experiences.  The 
awakening  to  this  conviction  that  there 
is  a  real  power  outside  of  man,  a  super- 
natural power,  aroused  a  religious  sen- 
timent such  as  they  had  never  known 
before.  It  seems  to  them  that  they 
have  started  a  new  life. 

The  reason  for  this  is  that  nominal 
Christianity  is  merely  a  form  of  god- 
liness, without  power  or  conviction. 
This  form  of  godliness  has  spread  to 
such  an  extent  that  the  whole  world  is 
styled  Christendom — Christ's  King- 
dom. In  countries  like  Great  Britain, 
Germany,  Russia  and  Scandinavia,  ap- 
proximately ninety-five  per  cent  of  the 
population  are  rated  as  Christians, 
even  though  some  of  these  are  in 
prison,  some  in  insane  asylums,  and 
some  too  young  to  think  at  all  or  be 
-anything.  In  Italy,  everybody  is  rated 
a  Christian — although  amongst  some 
of  the  Italians  who  come  to  our  shores 
flourish  works  of  the  Devil,  such  as  the 
Black  Hand,  the  Mafia,  etc. 

Bewildered  Christendom. 

Additionally,  a  sincere  class  of 
Christian  people  have,  during  the  last 
fifty  years,  been  in  great  perplexity 
because  of  the  stupendous  nonsense  in- 
termingled with  Truth  which  was 
handed  down  to  us  from  the  Dark 


270 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Ages.  Under  the  increasing  light, 
thinking  people  have  not  been  able  to 
swallow  some  of  the  monstrous  state- 
ments of  the  creeds  as  readily  as  did 
their  forefathers.  The  persecution  of 
Baptists  gave  place  to  toleration — that 
they  might  baptize  as  they  chose,  even 
though  their  teaching  that  immersion 
is  the  door  into  the  Church  implied 
that  all  the  unimmersed  are  outside 
the  true  Church,  outside  the  pale  of 
salvation,  and  hence  prospectively  sub- 
ject to  eternal  torture.  Presbyterians 
and  Methodists,  unable  to  down  each 
other  on  the  subject  of  Election  or 
Free  Grace,  agreed  to  "live  and  let 
live." 

The  great  churches  which  formerly 
persecuted  all  others  as  heretics,  for- 
bidding any  to  preach  except  by  their 
ordinations,  gradually  found  them- 
selves compelled  to  desist  from  mak- 
ing their  tenets  too  prominent.  Thus 
people  are  more  or  less  bewildered  as 
to  what  are  the  differences  between 
the  various  denominations;  and  many 
conclude  that  the  only  difference  is  in 
forms,  ceremonies,  ordinations,  etc. 

The  doctrine  that  God  had  foreor- 
dained 999  out  of  every  1,000  to  an 
eternity  of  torture  in  fire  was  gradually 
looked  at  as  too  horrible  to  believe. 
The  alternative  doctrine,  that  God  did 
not  foreordain  the  matter  thus,  but  had 
not  the  wisdom  or  power  to  avoid  such 
a  catastrophe  for  His  creatures,  was 
equally  repugnant.  As  a  consequence, 
preachers  began  to  tell  that  the  destiny 
of  the  world  was  not  literal  fire,  but 
gnawing  of  conscience,  etc. — each 
manufacturing  a  Hell  according  to  his 
own  wisdom  or  ignorance  and  to  suit 
his  congregation. 

Under  such  conditions  Christian 
Science  was  born,  and  has  grown  to  its 
present  proportions.  Three  things  es- 
pecially favored  it:  (1)  Its  acceptance 
of  the  Bible.  (2)  Its  rejection  of  ever- 
lasting torment,  mental  or  physical. 
(3)  Its  teaching  respecting  Divine 
healing.  Mrs.  Eddy,  the  acknowledged 
head  of  Christian  Science,  had  a  keen 
mind  and  considerable  wisdom  in  its 
exercise.  She  would  hold  to  the  Bible 
even  though  she  needed  to  pervert  its 


teachings.  She  would  not  make  her 
teachings  respecting  the  future  life  too 
pronounced  or  too  antagonistic  to 
other  theories.  She  contented  herself 
with  vague,  ambiguous  statements  re 
the  future  life.  She  laid  principal 
stress  on  healing,  and  settled  all  doc- 
trinal difficulties  with  the  dictum  that 
there  is  no  evil,  there  is  no  sin,  there 
is  no  death ;  that  what  have  been  called 
sin,  death  and  evil  are  merely  errors  of 
the  mind. 

The  very  absurdity  of  some  of  these 
^statements  advertised  them.  People 
said :  What  does  it  mean — There  is  no 
death,  no  sickness,  no  pain,  no  sorrow, 
no  evil  of  any  kind?  Absurd!  Later 
they  said,  We  will  see  how  Christian 
Scientists  explain  death,  sickness, 
pain,  sin.  Thus  curiosity  led  them  into 
the  metaphysical  labyrinth  which  Mrs. 
Eddy  had  skillfully  constructed.  Hav- 
ing no  intelligent  knowledge  of  the 
Bible,  they  were  just  in  condition  to 
fall  an  easy  prey  to  "Mother  Eddy's" 
errors.  If  some  of  her  definitions  were 
fanciful,  far-fetched  and  unscriptural, 
they  were  no  more  so  than  the  teach- 
ings to  which  people  had  been  accus- 
tomed from  childhood,  and  which  sub- 
stantially claim  that  the  more  unrea- 
sonable and  illogical  a  matter  is,  the 
more  faith  is  implied  by  the  believing 
of  it. 

C.  5.  Readers  and  Practitioners. 

Christian  Scientists  feel  what  might 
be  termed  spiritual  pride  in  connection 
with  their  healing  practices  and  with 
the  public  reading  of  the  Scriptures 
and  Mrs.  Eddy's  comments — as  much 
spiritual  pride,  perhaps,  as  is  some- 
times felt  in  other  churches  by  preach- 
ers, elders,  deacons,  vestrymen,  dea- 
conesses, etc.  To  be  lifted  from  the 
ordinary  walks  of  life  to  places  of  dis- 
tinction in  Christianity,  especially  in 
scientific  Christianty,  would  surely  ap- 
peal to  the  majority.  Once  elevated 
to  positions  as  readers  or  practitioners 
or  healing  practitioners,  it  becomes 
their  duty  loyally  to  support  and  de- 
fend the  system  which  they  represent. 
And  so,  just  as  earnestly  as  with  other 


IS  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE  REASONABLE 


271 


sects,  the  establishment  and  defense 
of  Christian  Science  goes  courageously 
onward. 

Still  another  class  is  interested, 
financially — those  in  control  of  the 
Christian  Science  literature.  It  sells 
at  good,  stiff  prices;  and  anybody 
questioning  the  merchandizing  of  the 
truth  is  given  to  understand  that  he  is 
unappreciative ;  and  with  the  majority 
of  people  the  price  regulates  the  value, 
anyway.  Having,  we  believe,  fairly 
stated  the  facts  and  claims  of  Christian 
Scientists,  we  now  inquire  whether  or 
not  their  teachings  are  logical.  We 
hold  that  they  are  not,  and  will  en- 
deavor to  show  in  what  respect  this  is 
true. 

7s  Christian  Science  Logical? 

Striving  for  a  truth,  "Mother  Eddy" 
declared  that  there  is  no  pain,  no  sick- 
ness, no  sorrow,  etc.  The  truth  she 
was  feeling  after,  but  did  not  fully 
grasp,  is  that  sin,  sickness,  sorrow, 
death,  are  abnormal  conditions.  There 
could  be  none  of  these,  except  for  the 
curse  that  came  upon  our  race  at  the 
beginning,  because  of  disloyalty  to 
God.  We  agree  with  Mrs.  Eddy  to  the 
extent  that  these  conditions  are  not  de- 
signed by  God  to  be  everlasting.  He 
does  not  recognize  them  as  proper  for 
those  in  fellowship  with  Him. 

Nothing  gives  any  reason  to  suppose 
that  there  are  prisons,  insane  asylums, 
hospitals,  doctors  or  cemeteries  in 
Heaven,  where  all  is  perfect  and  in 
fullest  harmony  with  God.  Messiah's 
great  work  of  Redemption  will  oblit- 
erate these  unsatisfactory  conditions 
from  the  earth.  Jesus  Himself  tells  us 
that  their  abolition  will  be  the  result 
of  His  Kingdom  work  of  a  thousand 
years. — Revelation  20:6;  21:4;  22:3. 

But  is  it  wise  for  us  to  say  in  one 
breath  that  all  these  will  pass  away, 
and  in  the  next  breath  that  they  are 
non-existent?  Surely  we  all  value 
consistency  and  logic!  Otherwise, 
language  would  bring  us  only  confu- 
sion, instead  of  intelligence.  Let  us 
then  say  that,  with  mankind  in  proper 
relationship  with  God  there  would  be 
none  of  these  things;  that  they  exist 


now  because  man  is  out  of  relationship 
with  God  through  sin;  and  that  God's 
provision,  according  to  the  Bible,  is 
that  mankind  shall  be  delivered  from 
this  bondage  of  sin  and  death  into  the 
glorious  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God. — 
Romans  8:21. 

In  this  view,  too,  we  see  that  the 
perfect  earth  was  represented  in  Eden, 
and  that  eventually  Eden  will  be  world 
wide.  The  perfect  race  was  repre- 
sented in  Father  Adam  before  he 
sinned ;  and  through  Christ,  eventually 
the  earth  will  be  filled  with  perfect 
human  beings,  such  as  Adam  was. 
Then  whoever  will  not  come  into  full- 
est accord  with  the  Lord  will  die  the 
Second  Death.  Theirs  will  be  perish- 
ing like  natural  brute  beasts,  which  St. 
Peter  mentions — the  punishing  with 
everlasting  destruction,  mentioned  by 
St.  Paul.  (2  Peter  2:12;  2  Thessalo- 
nians  1:9.)  But  nothing  in  the  Bible 
implies  an  everlasting  torture  of  any 
members  of  our  race  or  even  of  Adam 
himself. 

In  the  Bible  presentation  there  is  a 
special  place  for  the  Church  of  the 
Gospel  Age,  called  out  of  the  world 
before  the  Restitution  Times.  Her  ac- 
ceptance of  the  Call  implies  her  at- 
tempt to  live  in  fullest  harmony  with 
the  Lord  under  present  imperfect,  un- 
satisfactory conditions — even  to  the 
extent  of  laying  down  life  for  the 
brethren,  for  the  service  of  God  and 
His  Word.  To  this  Church  class,  the 
Bible  assures  us,,  will  come  a  still 
higher  blessing  than  that  of  Restitu- 
tion. The  Church  is  to  have  spirit  na- 
ture— yea,  the  highest  form  of  spirit 
nature— the  "Divine."— 2  Peter  1 :4. 

Truth  Biblical,  Scientific,  Sanctifying. 

We  commend  Christian  Scientists 
for  their  endeavor  to  hold  fast  to  the 
Bible,  but  remind  them  that  not  the 
letter  of  the  Bible  merely  will  en- 
lighten and  sanctify,  but  its  spirit,  its 
real  meaning.  This  is  obtainable,  not 
by  confusing  definitions,  but  by  sim- 
plicity of  mind  in  accepting  the  words 
for  what  they  are  and  putting  them 
together  in  logical  order. 

Let  us  give  Mrs.  Eddy  credit  for  de- 


272 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


siring  to  be  logical;  but  let  us  notice 
that,  whatever  she  thought,  her  lan- 
guage was  confusing  when  she  said: 
"There  is  no  death,  no  sickness,  no 
pain."  The  most  that  can  be  conceded 
by  the  most  generous  logician  would 
be  that  there  should  be  no  death,  no 
sickness,  no  pain,  no  sorrow,  if  things 
were  in  right  condition.  But  they  are 
not  in  right  condition,  as  the  Bible  de- 
clares, and  as  all  can  see.  And  they 
will  not  be  so  until  the  Savior,  who 
redeemed  the  world  by  the  sacrifice  of 
Himself,  shall  assume  His  kingly  of- 
fice and  right  the  wrongs  which  sin 
has  brought  us.  As  a  result  of  His 
work,  there  will  then  be — at  the  close 
of  the  Millennial  Age — no  sin,  no 
death,  no  sorrow,  no  pain. 

But  since  Mrs.  Eddy  and  Christian 
Science  fail  to  recognize  and  state 
these  facts  clearly,  it  follows  that  how- 
ever attractive  some  of  the  teachings 
may  be  to  some  people,  they  cannot  be 
relied  upon,  because  they  are  off  the 
true  foundation — recognizing  neither 
the  facts  of  sin  and  death,  nor  the  ne- 
cessity for  a  redemption  from  these 
conditions  by  the  sacrifice  of  Jesus, 
nor  appreciating  the  necessity  for  the 
coming  Restitution. 

Furthermore  Christian  Science  does 
not  clearly  differentiate  between  the 
Church,  which  has  been  in  process  of 
calling  and  election  for  more  than 
eighteen  centuries,  and  the  world, 
which  still  lies  in  the  Wicked  One,  and 
which  will  not  be  dealt  with  until  the 
Church  shall  be  glorified,  and  with 
her  Lord  shall  constitute  the  Kingdom 
of  Righteousness. 

Jesus  prayed  for  His  Church,  "Sanc- 
tify them  through  Thy  Truth;  Thy 
Wordjs  Truth."  While  Christian 
Scientists  and  people  of  other  denomi- 
nations, and  some  of  the  heathen  as 
well,  are,  many  of  them,  moral,  exem- 
plary, honorable,  nevertheless  few  of 
them,  surely,  claim  to  be  sanctified. 
Indeed,  the  sanctifying  features  of  the 
Truth  they  ignore  or  do  not  see.  We 
'are  not  to  think  of  church  attendance 
or  of  rejection  of  profanity,  liquor,  etc., 
as  sanctification.  The  putting  away 
of  the  filth  of  the  flesh  is  indeed  com- 


mendable, but  is  only  a  primary  step 
in  the  right  direction. 

God  is  now  calling  a  sanctified  class 
— a  set-apart  people — whom  He  is 
testing  under  the  promise,  "Be  thou 
faithful  unto  death,  and  I  will  give 
thee  a  Crown  of  Life."  This  does  not 
signify  faithfulness  to  a  denomination 
or  a  cult,  but  faithfulness  to  the  Lord, 
to  the  testimony  of  His  Word,  to  the 
principles  of  righteousness,  to  self- 
surrender  to  God  to  walk  in  Jesus' 
footsteps. 

We  will  not  discuss  at  length  the 
scientific  element  of  Christian  Science. 
To  some  it  seems  very  unscientific — 
inharmonious  with  the  Truth.  We  be- 
lieve the  only  way  that  anything  scien- 
tific could  be  associated  with  it  is  by 
adding  to  it  the  thought  that  sorrow, 
sin  and  death  are  in  the  world  only 
temporarily,  by  reason  of  transgres- 
sion of  Divine  Law,  and  that  they  are 
to  be  rooted  out  and  destroyed  as  nox- 
ious weeds  by  Messiah's  Kingdom. 

Christian  Scientists  tell  us  that  they 
have  received  great  benefit  mentally 
and  physically  from  following  Mrs. 
Eddy's  theory  denying  that  there  is 
any  pain,  etc.  We  quite  agree  that  the 
will  is  a  powerful  factor  in  resisting 
disease — that  if  we  brood  over  sor- 
rows, difficulties,  aches  and  pains,  they 
'are  increased  by  the  operation  of  our 
minds.  We  agree,  as  do  all  physi- 
cians, that  the  mind  should  be  lifted 
as  much  as  possible  from  our  diseases, 
and  placed  upon  happifying  subjects. 
This  is  rational  and  logical;  but  it  is 
irrational,  illogical  and,  above  all,  un- 
truthful, to  say  that  we  are  without 
pain  when  we  have  pain.  The  lover 
'of  the  truth  can  never  consent  to  this. 
Honesty  must  be  first  with  all  right- 
minded  people,  and  surely  is  pleasing 
to  God.  Let  us  then  not  go  to  the  ex- 
treme of  untruthfulness  or  to  the  other 
'extreme  of  exaggerating  our  ills;  but, 
Let  every  man  think  soberly. — Romans 
12:3. 

A    Very   Pernicious   Teaching. 

There  is  one  doctrine  held  by  Chris- 
tian Scientists — and  for  that  matter  by 
many  of  other  denominations,  who 


IS  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE  REASONABLE 


273 


state  themselves  less  positively — that 
is  very  pernicious,  very  injurious,  very 
untrue,  very  unscientific,  very  unscrip- 
tural.  This  is  the  teaching  that  God  is 
omnipresent — present  in  everything 
and  in  every  place.  Nothing  in  the 
Bible  so  declares,  and  when  we  attempt 
to  be  wiser  than  what  is  written,  we 
are  surely  making  a  very  great  mis- 
take. 

Whoever  thinks  of  God  as  omni- 
present necessarily  thinks  of  Him  as 
impersonal;  and  the  more  he  thinks, 
the  more  vague  his  God  becomes,  until 
gradually  he  has  no  God,  but  merely 
(as  some  Christian  Scientists,  includ- 
ing Mrs.  Eddy,  express  it)  believes  in 
a  principle  of  good,  and  calls  that 
principle  God.  Such  wish  to  believe  in 
a  Supreme  Creator,  but  by  this  erro- 
nious  reasoning  they  mislead  their  own 


intelligence  into  the  denial  of  a  per- 
sonal God.  Whoever  believes  in  a 
God  who  is  everywhere  believes  in  one 
who  is  not  a  person. 

The  Bible  teaches  a  personal  God — 
a  great  Spirit  Being.  The  Bible  gives 
Him  a  home,  or  locality,  and  does  not 
teach  that  He  is  everywhere.  It  was 
Jesus  who  taught  us  to  pray,  "Our 
Father,  which  art  in  Heaven."  Oh,  how 
different  this  is  from  saying  that  God 
is  in  everything  that  has  use  or  value — 
in  the  soil,  because  it  is  useful  for  the 
development  of  fruits;  in  the  chair, 
because  it  is  useful  to  sit  upon;  and  in 
the  table  because  it  is  useful  as  a  con- 
venience! Such  teachings  are  faith- 
destroying,  and  surely  lead  away  from 
the  sanctification  of  heart  and  life  and 
from  the  faith  which  the  Bible  incul- 
cates. 


Library  in  the  Pacific  Avenue  House. 


A  Select  School  for  Girls 


MISS    HAMLIN'S    School    for 
Girls    occupies   a    distinctive 
position  among  the  educational 
institutions  located  on  the  hill- 
sides circling  the  bay  of  San  Fran- 
cisco.    The  school  was  originally  the 
well  known  pioneer  seminary  located 
on  Van  Ness  avenue.  Its  last  principal 
was  Rev.  Samuel  H.  Willey,  D.  D.,  the 
founder  of  the  College  of  California, 
Oakland,  now  the  great  and  thriving 
University  of  California. 

There  is  no  finer  site  on  the  San 


Francisco  peninsula  than  the  hillside 
facing  the  entrance  to  the  Golden  Gate 
on  which  the  buildings  of  the  school 
are  located;  it  is  the  very  heart  of 
the  delightful  and  finest  residence  sec- 
tion of  the  city,  overlooking  the  Marin 
County  hills,  Mt.  Tamalpais,  the 
stately  vessels  passing  through  the 
Golden  Gate,  and  the  deep  vista  reach- 
ing up  the  inland  channel.  At  the  foot 
of  this  hillside,  and  within  walking 
distance,  lies  the  Panama- Pacific  Ex- 
position, with  its  huge  colored  domes 


One  end  of  the  playground. 


and  towers  rising  from  the  green  foli- 
age. 

The  large  and  commodious  school 
buildings  extend  from  Pacific  avenue 
to  Broadway,  and  provide  generously 
all  the  requirements  to  house  an  ex- 
cellent educational  system.  The  school 
is  accredited  by  the  leading  colleges 
of  the  country,  and  its  graduates,  on 
the  recommendation  of  the  Principal, 
are  received  without  examination  by 
Eastern  colleges,  by  California  uni- 
versities, and  by  all  "accrediting"  in- 
stitutions. The  instructors  are  all 
practically  college  or  normal  school 
graduates.  Special  care  is  taken  that 


no  pupil  shall  fail  to  keep  up  with  her 
work.  Reports  are  sent  to  parents 
every  five  weeks  of  the  school  term. 
Stereopticon  lectures  are  frequently 
given;  during  the  course  of  the  Expo- 
sition pupils  are  taken  to  the  Palace  of 
Fine  Arts  each  week  by  a  lady  of  long 
residence  and  extensive  travel  in  Eu- 
rope. 

The  school  is  religious  but  not  sec- 
tarian. Simple  religious  services  are 
held  daily  in  all  departments,  and  in 
each  evening  in  the  home. 

The  grounds  provide  a  round  of  out- 
door games.  Lawn  tennis  is  played  at 
the  California  Lawn  Tennis  Club  and 


The  Pacific  Avenue  house,  a  fine  large  family  residence, 
forming  a  unit  of  the  group  of  buildings. 


in  private  courts.  Riding  lessons  may 
be  taken  at  a  select  riding  school,  and 
dancing  lessons  in  the  large  gym- 
nasium. 

Special  care  is  taken  of  the  girls,  and 
proper  chaperons  provided  on  all  out- 
ing occasions.  The  boarding  depart- 
ment accommodates  thirty  pupils,  who 
are  given  every  advantage  in  social 
training.  Nothing  is  more  valuable  to 
a  young  life  than  a  well  developed  so- 


cial nature.  The  ability  to  make 
friends  and  hold  them,  to  entertain  and 
charm  with  grace,  to  enter  with  tact- 
fulness  and  sympathy  with  other  lives, 
is  a  real  power.  Directly  by  training, 
and  indirectly  by  its  atmosphere  of 
refinement,  enthusiasm  and  friendli- 
ness the  Miss  Hamlin  School  wishes 
to  develop  the  type  of  woman  whose 
presence  gives  brightness  and  joy  to 
simple  and  wholesome  living. 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly    When    Writing    Advertisers. 


ix 


*XZ£*XXX^V\YV\\%VK*my2a 

Leghorn   Breeders ! 

Send  in  your  subscription  to  The 
Leghorn  Journal  and  keep  posted  on 
the  progress  of  the  Leghorn  industry; 
as  it  is  devoted  exclusively  to  the  dif- 
ferent Leghorn  fowls.  Subscription 
price  50c.  per  year.  Special  offer- 
Send  us  lOc.  and  the  names  of  five 
of  your  neighbors  interested  in  Leg- 
horns and  we  will  send  you  The 
Leghorn  Journal  for  three  months 

THE    LEGHORN    JOURNAL 

APPOMATTOX,   VA. 


^  American     Open    Air 
f         School  Journal 

ft  Devoted  to  the  purpose  of  Vitalizing  school  children 

'I  by   means    of  fresh  air  class-rooms  and  Open  Air 

I  Schools.      Official  organ  of  the  American  Open  Air 

§  School  Association,  a  national  society  for  the  ex- 
tension  of  fresh  air  schools.    Beautifully  printed  and 

^  profusely   illustrated;  contains  reports  of  practical 

Jj  work  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 

K  Interests  thoughtful  parents,   Health  Officials,  Edu- 

X  cators,    School    Medical    Inspectors,    whole    com- 

Jl  munities.      Not  a  Juvenile  publication,  but  a  Big 

«  Man's  Journal.    Issued  monthly  at  $1.00  per  year; 

K  each  number  worth  ten  times  its  cost.     1140  Real 

\  Estate  Trust  Building,  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.  S.  A. 
Subscribe  for  it  today. 


r 


Fashion's 
Requirements 

Gives  that 
pearly  white 
Complexion  so 
much  desired 
by  the  Women 
of  Fashion. 

At  Druggists   and 
Department  Stores 

Gouraud's 

Oriental  Cream 

We  will  send  a  complexion 

chamois  and  book  of  pow- 

1        der  leaves  for  15c.  to  cover 

cost  of  mailing  and  wrapping 

FERD.  T.  HOPKINS  St  SON.    Props. 

37  Great  Jones  St.  New  York  City 


L 


EXCLUSIVE  COUNTY  REPRESENTATIVES  WANTED 

BIG  MONEY  FOR  THE  RIGHT  MEN 

We  can  put  1,000  men  to  work  for  themselves 
within  30  days  if  the  right  men  will  only  answer  this 
offer:  If  you  have  just  a  few  dollars  to  invest,  here 
is  your  opportunity  to  get  into  high-class,  profitable, 
permanent  business,  with  a  million  dollar  company 
right  back  of  you  every  minute. 

Write  For  Our  1915  Selling  Contract 

Don't  waste  your  time,  and  ours,  writing,  unless 
you  mean  business.  No  former  selling  experience 
necessary — just  a  clean  character,  a  natural  American  Hustle,  and  a  few  dollars, 
is  all  you  need.  Never  was  there  a  better  time  than  right  now  to  make  this 
start  for  yourself.  Don't  wait — write  at  once. 

If  not  interested  please  show  to  a  friend 


Fox  Typewriter  Co. 

4806-4816  Front  Ave.,  Grand  Rapids,  Mich. 


From  Overland  Monthly  for  September 

Name- 

Address   


"The  Last  Lap,"  or  "Outside  Intelli- 
gence," explained  by  D.  W.  Starrett, 
President  of  the  Perpetual  Health 
Institute. 

A  most  comprehensive  treatise 
which  will  especially  appeal  to  those 
interested  in  mental  healing,  new 
thought,  psychology  in  its  various  as- 
pects, and  kindred  subjects,  especially 
in  its  presentation  of  mysticism  as  a 
stable  science. 

Approach  is  made  through  two  ear- 
lier volumes,  and  several  brochures  on 
"What  Mind  Really  Is,"  "Whence 
Come  the  Three  Voices  that  Argue 
pro  and  con  Relative  to  all  Thoughts 
that  Flow  through  the  Brain  and  De- 
cide their  Meaning,"  "The  Exact  Way 
in  which  Mind  Diagnosing  is  Accom- 
plished under  Law,"  "The  Discovery 
that  the  Phenomena  of  Spiritism  is  an 
Exhibition  of  Natural  Law" — these 
publications  being  the  logical  outcome 
of  studies  preparatory  and  incident  to 
the  author's  work  as  president  of  the 
Perpetual  Health  Institute,  which  is 
teaching  by  correspondence  the  self- 
same doctrines  here  expounded. 

Price  $1.75.  Published  by  Sher- 
man, French  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass. 

"Gleams  of  Scarlet :  A  Tale  of  the  Ca- 
nadian Rockies,"  by  Gertrude  Ame- 
lia Proctor. 

The  scene  of  the  story  is  laid  in  the 
beautiful  Canadian  Rockies.  Dr. 
Moulton,  a  man  cultured  of  heart  and 
head,  and  a  splendid  example  of 
worth-while  independent  womankind, 
and  Nina  Wentworth,  a  selfish  and 
superficial  society  woman  whose 
beauty  is  her  chief  claim  to  attention — 


although  she  is  cruelly  clever  at  plot- 
ting for  her  own  ends — complete  the 
main  cast  for  the  drama.  The  three 
women — Roma,  Dr.  Moulton  and  Nina 
— furnish  an  interesting  study  of  vari- 
ous feminine  types.  Each  in  her  own 
way  affects  the  life  of  Allyn  Prentice, 
who,  although  reputed  to  be  indiffer- 
ent to  all  philandering,  proves  himself 
capable  of  a  very  pretty  romance 
nevertheless. 

Published  by  Sherman,    French     & 
Co.,  Boston,  Mass. 


"Songs  of  Hope,"     by     Rebecca     N. 

Taylor. 

This  'little  book  carries  the  golden 
key  to  a  life  triumphant  under  all  cir- 
cumstances, and  brings  a  message  of 
strength  and  good  cheer,  well  fash- 
ioned with  power  and  beauty.  The 
first  selection  in  particular  is  familiar 
all  over  this  country  and  in  England, 
as  it  has  been  reprinted  many  times, 
always  calling  forth  more  than  usual 
appreciation. 

Paper  boards,  12mo,  75  cents  net. 
Published  by  Sherman,  French  &  Co., 
Boston,  Mass. 


"The  Natural  Order  of  Spirit:  A  Psy- 
chic Study  and  Experience,"  by  Lu- 
cien  C.  Graves. 

That  the  author  is  an  orthodox  min- 
ister in  good  standing,  known  for  his 
scholarship,  assures  that  these  psychic 
studies  are  more  than  the  sleazy  con- 
structions of  an  untrained  dreamer. 
That  the  tragic  death  of  a  son  was  the 
underlying  impulse  for  this  search  as- 
sures that  it  was  made  with  reverent, 
sober  earnestness.  Dr.  James  H.  Hys- 


Please  Mention  Overland  Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


xi 


In  Service  APRIL   12th  and 
Daily  Thereafter 

THE 

SCENIC  LIMITED 


America's  Latest  Transcontinental  Train 
A  New  Thru  Fast  Ail-Steel  Train 

SAN  FRANCISCO 
and 

ST.  LOUIS 

Passing  Thru  The 


By  Daylight 

EVERY  MILE  A  PICTURE" 
The  Scenic  Way  to  or  from 

anama-pacific  Exposition 

Be  sure  your  ticket  reads  either 
on   the   going   or    return    trip 

Via 
The  Scenic  Line  of  the  World." 

E.  L.  LOMAX 

Asst.  Passenger  Traffic  Manager 
fcSan  Francisco,  Cal. 


The  Vose  Player  Piano 

is  so  constructed  that  even  a  little 
child  can  play  it.  It  combines  our  superior  player 
action  with  the  renowned  Vose  Pianos  which  have 
been  manufactured  during1  63  years  by  three  gene- 
rations of  the  Vose  family.  In  purchasing  this  in- 
strument you  secure  quality,  tone,  and  artistic  merit 
at  a  moderate  price,  on  time  payments,  if  desired. 
Catalogue  and  literature  sent  on  request  to  those 
interested.  Send  today. 
xv  You  should  become  a  satisfied  owner  of  a 


VOSE  &  SONS  PIANO  CO.,  189  Boylston  St.,  Boston,  Mass. 


Crossing  the  Plains 

A  Narrative  of  Early  Emigrant 

Travel  to  California,  by  the 

Ox-Team  Method 

AS   A    BOOK 

To  satisfy  the  demand  for  Wm.  Audley 
Maxwell's  instructive  and  highly  interesting 
story  in  form  suitable  for  the  library  and  as 
a  present  to  friends,  this  narrative,  which 
ran  as  a  serial  in  the  Overland  Monthly, 
will  appear  as  a  book,  bound  in  stiff  paper 
cover,  with  20  striking  illustrations. 

Retail  50  cents,  postpaid 

The  public  and  the  trade  supplied  by 

San  Francisco  News  Company 


747  HOWARD  STREET 


SAN  FRANCISCO,  CAL 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


lop,  in  his  introduction,  vouches  for 
Mrs.  Chenoweth,  the  psychic  through 
whom  the  interviews  came. 

To  "outsiders"  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting portions  of  the  book  is  a  ser- 
ies of  thirty  questions  put  by  the  au- 
thor and  answered.  They  are  not  the 
more  usual,  familiar  queries  about  per- 
sonal affairs,  but  concern  the  imper- 
sonal but  vital  aspects  of  life  after 
death  which  most  people  have  at  some 
time  put  to  themselves. 

Cloth  8vo,  illustrated;  $1.50  net. 
Published  by  Sherman,  French  &  Co., 
Boston,  Mass. 


"Challenging  a  God,"  by  Henry  Rosch 

Vanderbyle,  author  of  "The    Great 

Secret." 

In  the  present  volume  the  author, 
denouncing  the  belief  in  a  personal  god 
endeavors  to  show  that  our  conception 
of  the  universe  and  its  ruling  Power  is 
at  fault.  Thomas  Paine  and  Robert 
Ingersoll  attacked  superstition  and 
foundationless  belief.  He,  however, 
does  not  wish  to  destroy  only.  The 
one  motive  and  ambition  of  the  book 
is  to  give,  to  bring  understanding,  ac- 
cording to  the  concepts  of  the  author. 

Cloth,  12mo,  $1  net.  Published  by 
Sherman,  French  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass. 


The  Future  of  Boys. 

Many  heads  of  families  would  sit 
up  with  an  awakening  shock  on  reading 
a  few  pages  of  this  little  volume,  writ- 
ten by  a  "grown  up"  friend  of  boys 
to  voice  their  idea  of  the  new  and 
great  changes  in  life  confronting  them 
these  days,  changes  altogether  differ- 
ent from  those  their  fathers  experi- 
enced. Large  numbers  of  the  fathers 
of  to-day  were  raised  on  farms  or  in 
lonely  villages,  and  their  fathers  usu- 
ally gave  three  or  more  hours  a  day 
to  association  and  inculcating  helpful 
suggestions  of  ordinary  business  and 
social  life.  In  these  later  days  of  ag- 
gressive competition  few  fathers  find 
time  to  spend  more  than  a  few  hurried 
minutes  with  their  youngsters  each 
day.  The  boys  claim  that  unless  they 
are  engaged  in  something  useful  they 
are  likely  to  get  into  mischief.  Through 


years  of  intimate  association  with  boys 
— the  greatest  asset  of  the  country — 
the  author  has  obtained  their  viewpoint 
on  life,  and  the  eager  desires  that  are 
awakening  in  their  receptive  minds, 
and  he  voices  these  demands  tersely 
and  strongly,  beginning  with  "You 
fathers  should  re-arrange  your  work 
so  as  to  devote  more  time  to  training 
us  boys.  You  should  as  carefully  plan 
to  get  our  confidence  as  to  get  that  of 
your  employees  or  customers."  It  is 
a  timely  point  to  raise,  and  touches 
the  vital  interests  and  development  of 
every  household. 

Published  by    Babson's     Statistical 
Organization,  Boston. 


"Peace  Sonnets,"  by  Jessie  William 
Gibbs,  author  of  "Overtones." 
The  first  twenty  of  these  sonnets 
were  written  over  a  year  before  the 
war  began;  the  initial  number  having 
been  a  contribution  to  the  first  discus- 
sion as  to  whether  the  canal  tolls  dis- 
pute should  be  submitted  to  arbitra- 
tion. The  twenty-first  number  was 
written  in  view  of  possible  conflict 
with  Mexico  at  the  time  the  American 
fleet  was  anchored  off  Vera  Cruz.  The 
remaining  thirty-six  were  inspired  by 
the  present  war.  A  few  of  the  sonnets 
have  already  appeared  in  the  religious 
press.  All  the  sonnets  are  diffused 
with  a  strong  religious  fervor,  and  ap- 
peal strongly  to  Christians. 

The  cover,  in  white,  is  emblematical 
of  peace,  and  the  red  lettering  and 
decoration  the  sacrifice  necessary  to 
secure  it. 

Price  75  cents  net.  Published  by 
Jessie  Wiseman  Gibbs,  Villisca,  Iowa. 

"America  to  Japan,"  edited  by  Lind- 
say Russell,  President  of  the  Japan 
Society,  New  York. 
The  purpose  of  this  book  is  the  pro- 
motion of  friendly  relations  between 
the  United  States  and  Japan,  and  the 
diffusion  among  the  American  people 
of  a  more  accurate  knowledge  of  the 
Island  Kingdom,  its  aims,  ideals,  arts, 
sciences,  industries  and  economic  con- 
ditions.   There  is  an  advisory  council 
in  Tokio,   with   Baron   Shibusawa   as 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


xiii 


You  Can  Easily  Make 
$25  to  $50  Per  Week 

as  Chauffeur  or  Repair 
Man.     SEND  TODAY 

for  our  FREE  illustrated  Book  re- 
garding our  method  of  up-to-date 
SIMPLIFIED  instruction.  Free 
Models  to  all  students.  We  assist 
_  you  to  secure  position.  ( 

"Perfectly  simple.     You         PRACTICAL  AUTO  SCHOOL 
can  do  it,  if  I  can."      66-X  Beaver  St.  New  lork 


MANZAIMITA     HALL 

PALO    ALTO,     CALIFORNIA 

Makes  a  specialty  of  preparing  boys  and  young  men 
for  entrance  to  the  universities,  The  location,  adjacent 
to  Stanford  University  and  to  Palo  Alto,  a  town  of  re- 
markable culture,  makes  possible  a  school  life  of  unusual 
advantages  and  opportunities. 

For  catalogue  and  specific  information,  address 

W.  A.  SHEDD,  Head  Master 


Miss  Head's  School 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA 

A  home  and  day  school  for  girls,  combining  a 
cheerful  normal  home  life  with  thorough,  earnest 
instruction.  Out-of-door  sports  and  study  all 
the  year.  Miss  Mary  E.  Wilson,  Principal 

Twenty-eighth  year  begins  August  30th,   1915. 


THE 

Paul  Gerson 

DRAMATIC  SCHOOL 

Incorporated  Under  the  Laws  of  the  State  of  California 

The   Largest  Training  School 
of  Acting  in  America 

The  Only  Dramatic  School  on  the  Pacific  Coast 

TENTH  YEAR 

Elocution,  Oratory, 
Dramatic  Art 

Advantages: 

Professional  Experience  While  Study- 
ing. Positions  Secured  for  Graduates. 
Six  Months  Graduating  Course.  Stu- 
dents Can  Enter  Any  Time. 

Arrangements  can  be  made  with  Mr.  Gerson 
for  Amateur   and   Professional   Coaching 

Paul  Gerson  Dramatic  School  Bldg. 
MCALLISTER  and   HYDE  STREET 

San    Francisco,    Cal. 
Write  for  Catalogue. 


Freight  Forwarding  Co. 

household  goods  to  and  from  all  points  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  443  Marquette  Building,  Chicago 

640  Old  South  B~idg.,  Boston  I  1501  Wright  Bldg.,  St.  Louis 
324  Whitehall  Bldg.,  N.  Y.  878  Monadnock Builing,  San 
435  Oliver  Bldg.,  Pittsburgh  I  Francisco 

518  Central  Building,  Los  Angeles 
Write  nearest  office 


CAMERAOCc 

And  Complete  Outfit     farf  V 


Pictures  taken  and  finished  in 
two  minutes.  No  dark  room  re- 
quired; no  printing  necessary. 

Camera  and  complete  outfit  with 
instructions  so  that  even  a  child  of 
6  years  can  take  good  pictures  of 
landscapes,  buildings,  friends,  etc. 

Positively  no  knowledge  of  photog- 
raphy required.  Money  promptly  re- 
funded if  not  as  represented. 

War!    On    the    Camera    Trust 

Another  carload  of  these  fine  out- 
•fits  practically  given  away. 

Why  Pay  $5  or  $1  When  You 
Can  Get  This  Outfit  for  25c.? 
Complete  camera  and  outfit  ready 
for   use   shipped   prepaid    by   parcel 
post  for  only  25c  stamps  or  silver. 

National  Camera  If  g,  Co. 

143  W.  40th  St.,  oep't  220  New  York 


COMFORT  SELF  HEATING  IRONS 

Two  points.  Both  Ends  are 
front  Ends;  Costs  &  cent  per 
hour  to  operate.  Burns  live 
hours  on  one  filling  of  gaso- 
line. Lights  in  30  seconds. 
The  heat  can  be  regulated  to 
any  degree  and  maintained  to 
suit  work  in  hand,  Saves  its 
cost  in  a  few  months,  also 
saves  thousands  of  steps  and 
eliminates  discomfort.  No 
more  hot  stoves  necessary. 
The  Comfort  is  entirely  portable  and  will  operate  outdoors 
or  indoors.  Satisfaction  guaranteed.  Buy  at  your  local 
dealers  or  write  us  direct  and  send  your  dealers  name, 
NATIONAL  STAMPING  &  ELECTRIC  WORKS 
438  S.  Clinton  St. Chicago,  Illinois 

Gouraud's  Oriental  Beauty  Leaves 

A  dainty  little  booklet  of  exquisitely  perfumed 
powdered  leaves  to  carry  in  the  purse.  A  handy 
article  for  all  occasions  to  quickly  improve  the 
complexion.  Sent  for  10  cents  in  stamps  or  coin. 
F.  T.  Hopkins,  37  Great  Jones  St.,  New  York. 


MEN  OF  IDEAS 


and  inventive  ability 
should  write  for  new 
"Lists  of  Needed  Inven- 
tions," Patent  Buyers  and  "How  to  Get  Your  Patent 
and  Your  Money."  Advice  FREE.  Randolph  &  Co., 
Patent  Attorneys,  Dept.  86,  Washington,  D.  C. 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


chairman  to  co-operate  with  the  par- 
ent organization.  The  present  series 
of  essays  was  inspired  by  a  message 
of  like  spirit  of  purpose  from  Japan 
to  the  United  States,  edited  by  Naoichi 
Masaoka,  published  in  New  York  and 
Tokio  under  the  auspices  of  the  Japan 
Society.  The  two  books  constitute  an 
interchange  of  thought  between  lead- 
ing minds  of  the  two  countries,  indicat- 
ing that  the  points  upon  which  the 
East  and  West  can  meet.  This  volume 
consists  of  contributions  from  the  pens 
ef  representative  Americans,  states- 
men, publicists,  members  of  the  bar 
and  of  the  pulpit,  merchants,  manufac- 
turers and  educators,  a  composite  ex- 
pression of  opinion  on  international  is- 
sues of  importance  to  the  two  coun- 
tries, and,  in  this  instance,  a  compan- 
ion volume  to  "Japan  in  America." 

Price  $1.25  net.  Published  by  G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York. 

"Delia  Blanchflower,"  by  Mrs.  Hum- 
phrey Ward. 

As  a  social  history  of  her  own  times 
the  novels  of  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward 
should  prove  invaluable  to  later  gener- 
ations. She  caught  and  crystallized 
between  covers  the  greatest  religious 
movement  England  has  known  since 
the  days  of  Wesley  in  her  first  notable 
novel,  now  a  classic,  "Robert  Els- 
mere."  In  her  last  "Delia  Blanch- 
flower,"  she  has  recorded  the  most  re- 
markable political  movement  since  the 
Chartist  riots  and  the  conversion  of 
England  to  Free  Trade— the  Women's 
Militant  Suffrage  Movement.  It  may 
be  that  she  penned  it  just  in  time,  and 
that  no  later  writer  will  have  the  same 
chance  to  observe  this  phenomenon 
— for  since  the  war  engulfed  Europe, 
the  militant  women  have  turned  their 
energies  into  exactly  the  channels  Mrs. 
Ward  has  hitherto  pointed  out  as  their 
natural  outlets  for  public  activity.  The 
Militant  Movement  is,  if  not  dead, 
sleeping,  and  one  is  therefore  the  bet- 
ter enabled  to  view  "Delia  Blanch- 
flower"  and  her  violent  and  devoted 
friends — Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward  grants 
them  both  adjectives — in  the  calm 
light  of  historical  prospective.  Of 


course  so  finished  a  craftsman  as  Mrs. 
Ward  never  descends  to  making  a 
novel  a  mere  piece  of  propaganda. 
"Delia  Blanchflower"  is  a  human  and 
interesting  story  first,  and  an  expo- 
sition of  the  suffrage  movement  only 
secondarily.  The  heroine,  who  gives 
her  name  to  the  book,  is  a  kind  of  Ar- 
temis in  London,  beautiful,  willful, 
wealthy  and  almost  infatuated  with 
one  of  the  brilliant  leaders  of  the  ex- 
treme suffrage  group. 

Published  by  The  Hearst  Interna- 
tional Library  Company,  New  York. 


"What  is  Wrong  With  Germany?"  by 
William  Harbutt  Dawson,  author  of 
"The  Evolution  of     Modern     Ger- 
many," "Municipal  Life   and    Gov- 
ernment in  Germany,"  etc. 
The  author,  who  has  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century  made  a  special  study  of 
German   affairs,  upon  which  he  has 
written  more  than  a  dozen  volumes, 
traces  the  tendencies  of  German  na- 
tional thought  and  policy  which  have 
for  some  years  been  making  irrevo- 
cably for  war.     He  writes  of  Treit- 
schke's  influence  as  an  old  pupil  of 
that    historian.     Regarding     Prussian 
militarism  as  the  enemy  of  Germany 
and  Europe,  he  shows  its  ultimate  de- 
pendence upon  Germany's  semi-abso- 
lutistic  system  of  government,  and  in 
a  concluding  chapter     considers     the 
political  forms  necessary  to  the  peace 
of  that  country  and  of  the  world,  and 
how  they  should  be  brought  about. 

Second  impression,  crown  8vo,  $1 
net.  Published  by  Longmans,  Green 
&  Company,  New  York. 


"Ruggles  of  Red  Gap,"  by  Harry  Leon 

Wilson. 

Ruggles'  views  of  life  in  general  and 
American  life  in  particular  are  simply 
rich.  There  is  no  other  way  of  ex- 
pressing it.  Lovers  of  humor  should 
not  miss  them.  His  inability  to  re- 
gard matters  other  than  seriously  led 
him  into  many  misconceptions.  Hear- 
ing the  Negro  (blackamoor  as  he 
termed  him)  referred  to  as  a  "coon," 
he  immediately  seized  upon  the  word 
"racoon,"  and  henceforth  always  re- 


Please  Mention  Overland  Monthly  When  Writing  Advertisers 


Three  generations 


of  the  YOSC  family  have  made  the  art  of  man- 
ufacturing the  Vose  Piano  their  life-work.  For 
63  years  they  have  developed  their  instruments 
with  such  honesty  of  construction  and  materials, 
and  with  such  skill,  that  the  Vose  Piano  of  to- 
day is  the  ideal  Home  Piano. 


Delivered  in  your  home  free  of  charge.  Old  instruments 
taken  as  partial  payment  in  exchange.  Time  Payments 
accepted.  If  interested,  send  for  catalogues  today. 


VOSE  &  SONS  PIANO  CO. 

189  Boylston  Street  Boston,  Mass. 


The  German  Savings 
and  Loan  Society 

(The  German   Bank) 
Savings  Incorporated   1868  Commercial 

526    California    Street,    San    Francisco,    Cal. 
(Member  of  the  Associated   Savings   Banks   of  San 

Francisco) 

The  following  Branches  for  Receipt  and  Payment 
of  Deposits  only: 

MISSION  BRANCH 

S.  E.  CORNER  MISSION  AND  21ST  STREETS 

RICHMOND  DISTRICT  BRANCH 

S.  W.  CORNER  CLEMENT  AND  7TH   AVENUE 

HAIGHT  STREET  BRANCH 

S.   W.   CORNER  HAIGHT  AND  BELVEDERE 

June  30th,  1915: 

Assets    $60,321,343.04 

Deposits 57,362,899.35 

Capital  actually  paid  up  in  Cash  1,000,000.00 

Reserve  and  Contingent  Funds 1,958,443.69 

Employees'   Pension  Fund   199,164.12 

Number  of   Depositors    66,965 

Office  Hours:  10  o'clock  A.  M.  to  3  o'clock  P.  M., 
except  Saturdays  to  12  o'clock  M.  and  Saturday 
evenings  from  6  o'clock  P.  M.  to  8  o'clock  P.  M. 
for  receipt  of  deposits  only. 


For  the  6   months  ending  June  30th,  1915,  a  divi 
dend  to  depositors  of  4%  per  annum  was  declared. 


Right  care  and  the  right  food  will  make  your 
baby  as  strong  as  this  sturdy  "Eagle  Brand" 
baby.  Make  your  baby's  muscles  hard  — his 
flesh  firm  —  his  cheeks  rosy.  Build  up  his  little 
body  by  giving  him  "Eagle  Brand"— the  food 
that  thousands  of  careful  mothers  have  de- 
pended on  for  more  than  half  a  century. 

Send  for  helpful  book,  "J5a&y's  Welfare" 
Borden'sCondenced  MilkCo. 
"Leaders  of  Quality"  Est.1857 
108  Hudson  Street,  New  York 


EAGLE 

r*    „       BRAND        _  t~\ 

CONDENSED 

MILK 


Construction  News 
Press  Clippings 


Contractors,  Material  Men,  Builders,  Manu- 
facturers, in  fact,  anybody  interested  in  con- 
struction news  of  all  kinds,  obtain  from  our 
daily  reports  quick,  reliable  Information. 
Our  special  correspondents  all  over  the 
country  enable  us  to  give  our  patrons  the 
news  in  advance  of  their  competitors,  and 
before  it  has  become  common  property. 

Let  us  know  what  you  want,  and  we  will 
send  you  samples  and  quote  you  prices. 

Press  clippings  on  any  subject  from  all 
the  leading  current  newspapers,  magazines, 
trade  and  technical  journals  of  the  United 
States  and  Canada.  Public  speakers,  writ- 
ers, students,  club  women,  can  secure  re- 
liable data  for  speeches,  essays,  debates,  etc. 
Special  facilities  for  serving  trade  and  class 
journals,  railroads  and  large  industrial  cor- 
porations. 

We  read,  through  our  staff  of  skilled 
readers,  a  more  comprehensive  and  better 
selected  list  of  publications  than  any  other 
bureau. 

We  aim  to  give  prompt  and  intelligent  ser- 
vice at  the  lowest  price  consistent  with 
good  work. 

Write  us  about  it.  Send  stamp  for  book- 
let. 

United  States  Press  Clipping:  Bureau 


Rand  McNally  Bldg. 


CHICAGO,  ILL- 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ferred  to  our  colored  brethren  in  that 
way.  When  Ruggles  reached  Red  Gap 
some  one  called  his  attention  to  the 
fact  that  in  America  he  was  a  for- 
eigner. To  this  he  strongly  demurred. 
He  was  not  a  foreigner,  it  seemed,  but 
he  was  alone  among  foreigners.  He 
had  difficulty  in  convincing  his  in- 
formant of  the  distinction.  Numerous 
things  in  American  life  Mr.  Ruggles 
said  would  "never  do  with  us."  In 
fact,  such  a  description  applies  to 
North  America  in  general.  It  might 
be  interesting,  even  picturesque,  but  it 
certainly  was  not  "vogue."  Neverthe- 
less, in  time  Mr.  Ruggles  grew  to  like 
us  very  well,  and  even  to  see  some- 
thing of  truth  in  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, which  he  had  at  first  con- 
sidered an  absurd  document. 

The  Ruggles  humor  is  of  the  unc- 
tuous kind.  Sometimes,  Mr.  Wilson 
makes  it  a  little  obvious,  leaving  noth- 
ing for  the  reader  to  do,  but  that  is,  of 
course,  in  keeping  with  the  character 
of  his  mouthpiece. 

Published  by  Doubleday,  Page  & 
Company,  Garden  City,  New  York. 

"Biography  of   Professor  Baird,"  by 

Dr.  William  Dall. 

The  magnificent  halls  of  the  Na- 
tional Museum  at  Washington  contain 
some  remarkable  collections,  a  na- 
tional treasure  that  belongs  to  every 
loyal  American.  The  museum  was 
created  by  Spencer  Fullerton  Baird, 
one  of  the  two  foremost  American 
naturalists  and  scientists:  the  other 
was  Louis  Agassiz.  In  his  biography 
of  Professor  Baird,  Dr.  William  Dall 
tells  the  story  of  Prof.  Baird's  ser- 
vices to  his  country.  They  were  very 
great,  and  include  the  formation  of  the 


United  States  Fish  Commission,  the 
building  up  of  the  National  Museum, 
the  direction  for  years  of  the  Smith- 
sonian Institute,  and  work  for  the  con- 
servation of  the  animal  and  vegetable 
life  cf  this  continent.  He  did  more 
for  America  than  any  ten  men  of  af- 
fairs. 

Published  by  J.  B.  Lippincott  Co. 

Great  was  the  surprise  of  a  certain 
New  York  woman  doctor  recently 
when  a  frail,  gentle,  appealing  young 
woman  with  a  strong  foreign  accent 
told  her  that  she  had  been  operated  on 
for  appendicitis  "in  a  dreadful  place, 
a  preezon."  Her  surprise  was  not 
lessened  when  she  found  later  that  the 
frail  little  woman  had  killed  a  reac- 
tionary Russian  General,  and  that  she 
had  escaped  from  Siberia  and  finally 
became  known  in  America  as  Marie 
Sukloff,  author  of  "The  Life  Story  of 
a  Russian  Exile." 

Published  by  The  Century  Co.,  New 
York,  Union  Square. 

J.  B.  Lippincott  Company  will  pub- 
lish within  a  couple  of  weeks  a  book 
of  timely  interest,  "Aeroplanes  and 
Dirigibles  of  War."  The  author  is 
Frederick  A.  Talbot,  who  has  written 
a  number  of  popular  books  on  the  pro- 
gress of  the  world  in  various  lines  of 
invention.  Lippincotts  published  last 
winter  his  "Oil  Conquest  of  the 
world/'  the  story  of  the  remarkable  de- 
velopment of  the  oil  industry,  with  its 
astonishing  effect  upon  modern  indus- 
try. The  illustrations  for  the  new  book 
were  many  of  them  taken  on  or  near 
the  battlefields  of  Europe,  where  the 
airship  of  every  kind  is  undergoing  a 
baptism  of  fire. 


Mr.  C.  S.  S.  Forney  —See  Page  350. 


MY  YELLOW  BUTTERFLY 


A  bit  of  yellow  drifting  by; 
Overhead  an  azure  sky, 
Underneath,  a  carpet,  green; 
A  winged  sunbeam  flits  between. 


A  nodding  clover  head  near  by 
Beckons  my  yellow  butterfly; 
He  sips  the  honey;  sips  again 
And  rests  until  refreshed,  and  then  ? 


A  bit  of  yellow  drifting  by; 
Overhead  an  azure  sky, 
Underneath,  a  carpet,  green; 
A  winged  sunbeam  flits  between. 


THEODORA  A.  EDMOND. 


ODT4. 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


MONTHLY 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  October,  1915 


No.  4 


Three  little  Hopi  maidens  who  never  saw  a  seminary. 

Across  the  Desert  to  Aoencapi 


By   Bessie   R.  Ferguson 


CHAPTER  I 

ONE  EVENING,  as  we  sat  on  the 
porch  of  our  little  log  cabin  far 
in  the  mountains,  listening  to 
the  pure,  silvery  song  of  the 
white-throated   sparrow  coming  deep 
from  within  the  dark  shadow  of  the 
forest,  my  father  said  in  a  voice  filled 
with  enthusiasm,  "Well,  boys,  what  do 
you  say:  let's  try  it?"  at  which  the 
"boys"   agreed   so  heartily  they  had 
to  give  vent  to  their  high  spirits  by 


breaking  into  a  jolly  rollicking  song. 

My  blood  danced  and  sang  in  my 
veins,  for  I  knew  once  more  we  were 
going  out  on  the  trail.  To  ride  all 
day  in  this  great,  glorious  out-of-doors, 
then  at  night  to  crawl  into  blankets 
and  watch  the  thousand  twinkling 
stars,  to  feel  a  breath  of  cool  night  air 
brush  your  cheek  like  a  caress,  and  to 
see  the  hills  wrapped  in  the  cloak  of 
night  clearly  silhouetted  against  the 
glowing  sky  as  the  moon  first  peeps 
timidly  over  their  summits. 


280 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


So  we  four  made  ready  for  the  trip. 
The  artist,  the  tenderfoot,  my  father 
and  I.  We  were  to  ride  through  what 
part  of  Northern  Arizona  we  could, 
in  the  short  time  we  had,  and  stop 
among  those  fast  vanishing  people, 
the  Hopi  Indians  and  their  ancient 

villages. 

*  *  *  * 

For  a  day  we  had  been  following 
the  road  across  the  burning  sea  of  des- 
ert. Long  since,  we  had  passed  down 
from  the  cool  shadows  of  the  pine 
forest,  with  its  carpet  of  delicate-col- 
ored, swaying  flowers,  onto  a  plain  of 
scrubby  cedar  trees  with  their  refresh- 
ing olive  green,  which  now  were  far 
behind  us,  and  we  found  what  en- 
joyment we  could  out  of  the  alkali 
dust  covered  sage  brush  which  now 
stretched  out  before  us  to  the  horizon. 

Little  quivering  spirals  of  heat  rose 
from  the  hot  sands  which  seemed  to 
sizzle,  and  which  made  the  men  pull 
their  hats  low  on  their  foreheads, 
while  I  braved  the  sun's  glare,  squint- 
ing ahead  at  the  wavering  road  until 
the  skin,  tight  and  drawn  on  my  fore- 
head, seemed  tied  in  a  knot  and  the 
lower  part  of  my  face  I  felt  sure  was 
stretched  to  the  breaking  point.  Liz- 
ards scurried  across  our  path  to  the 
shelter  of  sage  brush,  and  once  we 
passed  the  bleached  white  bones  of 
a  skeleton,  which  the  men  said  were 
the  remains  of  an  old  government 
mule.  A  quite  notable  landmark  along 
that  way  for  every  one  traveling  these 
is  always  directed  by  that. 

We  expected  to  reach  the  half-way 
house  by  dusk.  Each  one  of  us 
thought  about  it  often;  then,  too,  it 
sounded  nice  as  we  talked  and  men- 
tioned what  we  intended  doing  upon 
reaching  it.  It  cheered  the  tenderfoot 
remarkably.  Now,  he  certainly  need- 
ed something  cheerful  to  think  about, 
for^every  time  he  shifted  into  a  new 
position  he  gritted  his  teeth,  having 
found  a  fresh  tender  spot.  He  would 
then  try  to  assume  a  cheerful  expres- 
sion and  grin,  which  threatened  to 
crack  his  sun-baked  face. 

The  artist  painfully  hooked  his  leg 
over  the  pommel  of  his  saddle,  then 


talked  of  the  misty  rainbow  colorL.^s 
of  the  painted  desert,  after  which  he 
would  equally  as  painfully  unhook  his 
leg  again  and  swear  softly  under  his 
breath.  He  tried  this  at  frequent  in- 
tervals, but  finally  gave  up,  sitting  in 
a  haunched  position  the  rest  of  the 
afternoon.  In  fact,  all  of  us  were  sit- 
ting limply  in  that  position,  for  if  there 
was  such  a  thing  as  comfort  then,  we 
had  come  as  near  to  finding  it  in  that 
particular  way. 

The  shadows  were  slowly  lengthen- 
ing, but  the  air  became  no  cooler.  The 
sun  beat  down  as  mercilessly  as  ever, 
and  we  rode  on  in  the  heat.  The  sun 
had  sunk  below  the  long  top  of  the 
mesa  in  the  distance  when  we  topped 
a  slight  rise,  to  see  a  few  miles  before 
us  a  square  store  house  with  a  corru- 
gated iron  roof,  which  proved  to  be, 
upon  reaching  it,  the  half-way  house, 
this  being  built  by  the  government  for 
the  use  of  the  employees  working  at 
the  reservation  school  situated  at 
Tuba,  which  is  ninety  miles  from  the 
nearest  railroad. 

Standing  there,  we  could  see  miles 
around  us,  and  nothing  but  grey  des- 
ert, thickly  dotted  with  sage  brush. 
Then  what  an  overpowering  silence! 
It  seemed  to  grip  you,  to  hold  you  in 
its  grasp,  at  which  you  wanted  to  shout 
— to  make  any  noise  to  break  that 
spell. 

The  tenderfoot  was  first  to  voice  his 
opinion.  On  his  face  was  stamped  a 
look  of  utter  disgust.  "So  this  is  the 
half-way  house,  then,"  he  said,  look- 
ing at  the  bleak  grey  stone  house  with 
a  lost  hope  expression  in  his  eyes, 
"and  to  think  that  I  had  pictured  it  as 
being  surrounded  by  cotton  wood  trees, 
a  cool  spring  near  by  and  plenty  of 
green  grass  to  stretch  out  on."  At 
which  he  sat  weakly  on  a  nearby  rock. 

We  were  all  disappointed,  for  that 
matter.  There  was  no  shade,  not  a 
sign  of  water,  and  we  were  so  tired  we 
even  dreaded  to  unpack  our  cooking 
utensils. 

Later  on  the  men  discovered  a  love- 
ly pool  of  water  some  hundred  yards 
from  the  house,  hidden  down  in  a  for- 
mation of  rock.  After  watering  the 


A  popular  old  Indian  pastime,  "a  chicken  pull" 


horses  and  fixing  them  for  the  night, 
we  turned  our  thoughts  to  ourselves. 

Soon  the  camp-fire  was  burning 
briskly,  while  over  it  hung  the  coffee- 
pot sending  out  fragrant  odors,  while 
the  bacon  and  beans  sizzled  merrily. 
We  had  ravishing  appetites,  and  when 
the  supper  call  was  sounded  on  an 
old  tin  bucket,  we  simply  "laid  to." 
The  quantity  of  food  that  was  con- 
sumed amazed  us;  never  before  had 
anything  tasted  so  good.  Yet  one 
cannot  eat  forever,  and  at  last  the 
men  lazily  stretched  out  on  their 
blankets,  smoking,  and  swapping 
rather  alarming  snake  stories. 

Forgotten  was  the  weariness  of  the 
day's  trip,  with  still  another  one  be- 
fore us.  What  if  we  did  have  disap- 
pointments? Here  in  the  cool  of  the 
evening,  around  the  glowing  coals  of 
a  camp  fire,  was  peace  and  content- 
ment. The  sky  blazed  with  a  million 
clear-cut,  twinkling  stars,  and  it 
seemed  as  though  you  could  all  but 
reach  up  and  pluck  one  of  these  beau- 
tiful, glowing  jewels  of  Heaven  from 
its  place. 

The  desert  lay  wrapped  in  a  great 
purple  shadow,  dotted  here  and  there 
by  the  soft,  quivering  camp  fires  of 


the  sheep  herder,  and  once  way  off 
in  the  shadow  somewhere,  came  the 
faint  barking  of  a  shepherd  dog. 

The  night  grew  chilly,  very  chilly  in 
fact,  so  lighting  our  way  with  candles 
we  investigated  the  interior  of  the 
half-way  house.  A  window  boarded 
up,  a  stone  fireplace  and  a  bolted  door 
leading  into  another  room,  were  what 
we  found.  Some  one  before  us  had 
left  some  straw  scattered  over  the 
floor,  and  I  knew  when  this  was 
scraped  up  into  a  pile  it  would  make 
a  bed  that  would  be  hard  to  equal  in 
warmth  and  softness.  The  men  de- 
cided to  crawl  in  their  blankets  and 
sleep  around  the  fire,  so  I  crawled  in 

my  blankets  and  slept  on  the  straw. 
*  *  *  * 

Gusts  of  sand-laden  winds  started 
to  make  life  miserable  for  us. 

The  men  had  no  more  than  wak- 
ened and  gathered  the  things  together 
before  the  desert  swept  onto  us  with 
all  its  fury.  The  moon  was  no  more, 
nor  the  hills;  everything  had  vanished 
and  in  their  places  was  an  inky  black- 
ness that  howled  and  shrieked,  into 
which  we  stumbled  on  our  way  to  the 
shelter  I  had  just  left,  the  sand  sifting 
under  our  clothing,  causing  a  friction 


282 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


equal  to  a  nutmeg  grater.  We 
reached  our  shelter,  tumbled  through 
the  doorway  and  fixed  ourselves  as 
bomfortably  as  possible.  The  greater 
part  of  the  night  the  wind  moaned  like 
some  lost  soul.  Drowsily  I  pulled 
the  blanket  over  my  head. 

Dawn  came  all  too  soon,  bringing 
us  out  of  our  blankets  long  before  the 
sun  rose  to  hurl  down  its  rays  of  heat. 
Life  throbbed  through  our  veins  as 
we  breathed  deep  of  the  cool,  pure  air, 
arousing  in  us  keen  appetites. 

The  hills  were  a  riot  of  ever-chang- 
ing colors.  Rose,  orange,  pale  green 
and  soft  pinking  red  melted  into  one 
another,  bringing  the  hills  out  in  bold 
relief  and  then  softening  them  until 
they  appeared  as  only  floating  mirages 
on  the  horizon. 

"All  hands"  prepared  breakfast. 
Hot  biscuits,  bacon  and  coffee  soon 
disappeared.  Everything  was  sea- 
soned plentifully  with  sand,  but  we 
could  have  eaten  lots  worse.  The 
dishes  were  washed  and  packed. 
Everything  was  in  readiness  for  the 
day's  ride,  and  with  much  laughter  and 
joking  we  started.  Toward  noon  we 
were  joined  by  a  Navajo  cow-puncher, 
a  splendid  fellow,  with  a  physique 
that  is  hard  to  find  among  the  Indian 
men,  now  that  civilization  is  taking  a 
firmer  hold  upon  them.  His  strong, 
clean-cut  features  and  keen  black  eyes 
truly  made  him  a  son  of  the  red  man 
who  first  inhabited  our  continent.  In 
the  lobe  of  each  ear  was  tied  a  piece 
of  turquoise,  and  even  in  his  silver 
handband  these  lovely  stones  were  set 
in.  On  his  long,  slender  fingers  were 
silver  rings,  wrought  in  crude  design, 
with  also  a  setting  of  turquoise.  His 
hair  was  fastened  at  the  back  of  his 
neck  in  that  peculiar  figure  eight  twist 
that  is  always  worn  and  rarely  taken 
down.  Whenever  his  pony  trotted, 
this  would  bob  up  and  down  in  an 
alarming  fashion  which  seemed  as  if 
it  would  come  down  any  moment.  Full 
six  feet  he  stood.  His  broad-brimmed 
sombrero,  leather  chaps  and  high- 
heeled  boots  with  silver  spurs  fastened 
to  them,  made  him  a  picturesque  fig- 
ure to  be  remembered.  In  vain  I  tried 


to  get  his  picture,  but  for  the  small 
sum  of  two  dollars  he  would  only  con- 
sent to  it.  He  left  us  soon  afterward, 
bidding  us  good-bye,  and  striking  out 
across  the  desert,  following  a  dim 
trail.  All  during  the  rest  of  our  trip 
we  did  not  see  another  such  type. 

Late  that  afternoon  we  dipped  down 
into  the  Moencapi,  a  place  of  delight- 
ful surprise.  On  one  side  rose  the  red 
clay  hills  that  had  been  worn  by  wind 
and  rain  into  rounding  towers,  caves 
and  ridges  of  striking  formation. 

Summer  hogans  (huts)  of  brush 
were  built  along  the  roadway,  with 
now  and  then  a  sheep  corral  added  to 
it.  Indian  women  sat  around  the  door- 
ways in  highly  colored  groups,  sort- 
ing over  yellow  ears  of  corn,  while  a 
few  sat  under  brush  sheds  weaving 
blankets  of  many  colors  and  quaint 
design.  When  we  would  ride  by, 
greeting  them,  they  would  giggle  like 
so  many  school  girls,  and  turn  their 
backs  on  us  in  their  shyness. 

Little  naked  children,  their  hair 
hanging  in  stringy  mats  over  their 
faces,  which  were  masses  of  dirt,  ran 
shouting  from  us  with  barking  dogs 
at  their  heels,  suddenly  to  disappear 
behind  a  rock  or  wagon  to  bob  out 
every  few  minutes  to  watch  us. 

Fragrant  fields  of  alfalfa  stretched 
far  out  over  the  land,  paths  of  nodding 
yellow  corn  rose  high  above  the  heads 
of  the  Indian  farmers  who  patiently 
tended  each  row,  while  golden  pump- 
kins and  squashes  lay  ripening  in  the 
sunlight.  The  air  was  heavy  with  the 
perfume  from  the  delicate  pink  blos- 
soms of  the  apple  trees  in  the  or- 
chard. Over  on  the  banks  of  the 
creek  and  along  the  irrigated  ditches, 
cottonwood  trees  grew,  filled  with  cho- 
ruses of  warbling  black  birds. 

What  a  picture !  It  was  far  beyond 
our  wildest  dreams  of  what  we  had 
expected.  Everything  lay  clothed  in 
the  richest  colorings,  giving  us  a 
spice  of  the  Orient.  It  was  not  hard 
to  realize  now  that  artists  from  all 
over  the  world  had  come  to  that  por- 
tion of  the  country  in  search  of  new 
material.  Slowly  we  rode,  watching 
-the  shadows  come  and  go  as  after- 


The  village  of  Mo  e  neap  i 


noon  gave  way  to  evening,  and  finally, 
just  at  dusk,  we  made  camp  at  the 
foot  of  the  ancient  Indian  village  of 
Morncapi,  the  place  of  running  water. 

The  following  morning  we  awoke  to 
the  sound  of  falling  rain,  a  down- 
pour which  caused  our  spirits  to  sink 
clear  to  our  heels.  We  watched  a 
couple  of  dejected  blanketed  figures 
ride  through  the  wash  which  had 
taken  on  the  appearance  of  a  river. 

We  bemoaned  our  fate,  and  while 
we  were  doing  so  the  "God  of  Luck" 
stepped  in  with  all  the  material  of  a 
perfect  spring  day.  The  sun  in  a  re- 
pentent  mood  shone  gently;  the  hills 
shyly  hid  in  a  floating  rosy  veil  of 
vapor  which  now  and  then  broke  as 
though  caught  and  torn  on  a  sharp 
crag  of  jutting  rock. 

With  bounding  spirits  we  splashed 
up  the  trail  to  the  village,  past  the  lit- 
tle foreign  looking  mission,  with  its 
setting  of  wild  rose  hedges  and  ram- 
bling, old-fashioned  flower  garden, 
with  its  hive  of  bees  which  were  al- 
ready droning  their  song  in  the  warm 
air. 

Before  us  on  a  mesa  top,  with  its 
clay  brick  dwellings  built  almost  on 
the  very  edge,  stood  the  pueblo 


"Moencapi,"  with  a  history  brimming 
of  romance  and  adventure  a  century 
old.  Always  will  that  picture  remain 
in  my  mind  of  that  little  sleepy  vil- 
lage tucked  away  from  all  the  harsh- 
ness and  bitterness  of  an  outside 
world. 

Far  down  the  valley,  like  a  slender 
silver  thread,  a  stream  of  water  played 
hide  and  seek,  finally  disappearing  in 
the  great  sand  slides  which  rose  to 
the  top  of  the  cliffs.  Then  the  desert, 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  see,  fascinat- 
ing, yet  horrible,  for  the  endless  bar- 
ren waste  seemed  to  be  calling — al- 
ways calling. 

Strings  of  red  peppers  drying  in 
the  sunlight  made  brilliant  blotches  of 
color  against  the  dull  adobe  walls  of 
the  Indian  homes.  Piles  of  yellow 
corn,  rows  of  golden  pumpkins  cov- 
ered the  house  tops,  mellowing  in  the 
warm  air.  Young  Indian  girls  were 
going  to  and  fro,  sunning  their  glori- 
ous bluish  black  hair,  their  rippling 
laughter  coming  to  us  full  of  the  joy 
of  living. 

Bedlam  broke  loose  as  we  rode  into 
the  main  street.  Dogs  barked  and 
swarmed  around  us,  snapping  at  our 
horses'  heels.  Babies  cried,  causing 


284 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


us  to  believe  that  was  what  most  of 
the  population  consisted  of,  and  that 
impression  still  remains. 

Tying  our  horses,  we  knew  that 
candy,  and  much  candy,  would  be 
needed  of  many  colors,  so  being  di- 
rected by  some  yellow  posters  adver- 
tising canned  goods  and  chewing  gum 
we  entered  the  cool,  dim  interior  of 
the  trading  store. 

Through  the  chinks  in  the  walls  sun- 
light sifted,  and  the  soft  deerskin  moc- 
casins with  their  fastenings  of  silver 
burtons,  hanging  from  the  great  walls 
overhead,  caught  the  stray  gleams  and 
reflected  them  in  added  beauty.  Every- 
where were  baskets,  some  gorgeously 
colored,  others  a  duel  brown  and 
black.  Dogs  were  curled  up  in  some, 
and  regarded  every  one  with  surly  in- 
terest. With  the  reddish  tinge  of 
adobe  walls  for  a  background,  hairy 
blankets  hung,  fastened  in  bunches, 
their  rich  colorings  allumingly  half- 
hidden,  enough  to  arouse  the  buying 
curiosity.  On  the  shelves  were  sheep- 
skins, piles  of  wool  ready  to  be  dyed, 
and  bolts  of  calico  and  velveteen 
goods.  Herbs  hung  everywhere,  caus- 
ing us  to  snuff  the  fragrant  air.  By 
a  pile  of  silky  fox  skins,  on  a  very 
dirty-  floor,  squatted  an  Indian  man, 
who  spat  tobacco  juice  most  viciously, 
his  long,  slender  fingers  wandering 
caressingly  through  the  soft  fur,  find- 
ing any  defects,  if  there  be  any,  while 
his  sharp  eyes  followed  our  every 
movement. 

In  a  mixture  of  English  and  very 
bad  Hopi  we  carried  on  a  rather  jum- 
bled conversation  with  the  Indian 
trader,  who  was  attired  in  a  brown 
velveteen  shirt  fastened  with  silver 
buttons,  and  very  tight  overalls.  Sev- 
eral strings  of  shells  and  silver  neck- 
laces hung  from  his  neck,  and  in  each 
ear  fastened  with  strings  were  tur- 
quoise. He  laughed  a  very  great  deal 
and  talked  with  his  hands  mostly. 

With  pockets  laden  with  the  pre- 
cious sweets,  we  made  our  way  out 
into  the  dirty  street.  Our  crowd  was 
waiting  for  us,  the  majority  seeming 
to  have  the  fiercest  of  colds  and  know- 
ing not  the  meaning  of  a  handker- 


chief. Upon  seeing  us  no  near,  all  at 
once,  they  fled  in  terror,  some  sprawl- 
ing headlong  and  giving  vent  to  lusty 
hair-raising  yells. 

The  news  had  already  spread  like 
wild-fire  throughout  the  village  of  the 
"white"  visitors.  Already  fat  old 
squaws  were  squatting  under  brush- 
sheds,  with  baskets  and  plaques  to 
sell;  all  at  once  everything  had  taken 
on  an  air  of  industry.  We  shied  clear 
of  all  this,  but  without  a  great  deal 
of  trouble,  and  found  shelter  in  what 
appeared  to  be  a  living  and  sleeping 
room  for  a  family  of  eight,  adding 
numerous  dogs,  cats  and  chickens. 

On  a  legless  cook  stove  dinner  was 
being  prepared,  the  inevitable  mutton 
and  coffee.  A  part  of  the  family  had 
already  formed  a  circle,  and  were  dip- 
ping crackers  in  an  open  can  of  to- 
matoes and  eating  them  with  relish. 
With  blessings  being  showered  on  us 
by  the  old  blind  grandmother,  who 
had  all  but  two  teeth  gone,  and  so 
dirty  as  to  the  extent  of  being  im- 
possible, we  squatted  on  the  dirt  floor 
to  partake  of  the  mid-day  meal. 

The  dwelling  was  well  worth  study, 
for  even  though  civilization  had  crept 
in,  marring  the  beauty  by  way  of  the 
cook  stove  and  pieces  of  lace  curtains 
draped  over  the  small  glass  windows, 
there  still  remained  beneath  it  all  the 
Indian  spirit  of  long  ago.  The  dirt 
floor  was  swept  as  clean  as  could  be 
considering  the  number  of  animals 
that  came  and  went,  and  the  adobe 
walls  were  spotless  with  their  coat  of 
whitewash.  Baskets  filled  every  niche 
and  corner;  some  held  the  blueish 
ground  corn  flower,  others  held  fruit 
and  kernels  of  freshly  roasted  corn. 
At  the  end  of  the  room  stood  a  long, 
oblong  loom  with  a  half  completed 
squaw  sash,  and  by  it  stacked  high 
lay  ears  of  corn  with  Navajo  blankets 
piled  on  them.  On  the  walls,  hideous 
grinning  idols  stared  at  us.  We  imme- 
diately wanted  to  buy  them,  but 
clinked  the  silver  in  vain,  for  if  the 
baby  should  wake  and  find  them  gone 
she  would  cry,  for  they  were  her  dolls. 
The  gowds  which  dangled  by  the  door 
and  gave  forth  such  queer  grating 


A  Hopi  dwelling  and  Hopi  girl. 


sounds  as  they  swung  in  the  breeze, 
were  not  to  be  parted  with  either.  They 
were  rattles,  and  the  one  so  wondrous- 
ly  colored  and  carved  was  used  in  the 
ceremonial  dances. 

From  the  logs  overhead  hung  the 
family's  footwear.  The  usual  soft 
brown  deer  skin  moccasin  in  all  sizes 
and  shapes,  with  all  the  different-made 
silver  fastenings  one  could  wish.  All 
of  the  silver  necklaces,  bracelets,  but- 
tons and  rings  are  made  by  the  Indian 
men  out  of  the  Mexican  pesos,  some  of 
which  are  very  beautiful,  and  of  which 
a  great,  many  are  sold  to  the  tourist. 

The  young  bucks  chatted  with  us 
and  were  very  much  at  their  ease  in 
too  tight  overalls  and  velveteen  shirts. 
All  spoke  very  good  English,  and  told 
us  of  when  they  had  attended  school, 
but  of  how  now  they  were  going  to 
stay  at  home. 

The  young  mother,  only  fifteen  she 


was,  with  her  blueish-black  hair  drawn 
snugly  back  in  two  pendant  rolls  at  the 
nape  of  her  neck,  symbolical  of  the 
ripened  squash  which  is  the  Hopi  em- 
blem of  fruitfulness,  the  dull  red 
beauty  of  her  rounded  neck  and 
shoulders,  the  bright  blue  of  the  vo- 
luminous calico  skirt,  the  deer-skin 
moccasins,  made  a  picture  worth  gaz- 
ing on  as  she  watched  us  with  brown 
eyes  filled  with  childish  interest. 

When  a  Hopi  girl  reaches  the  mar- 
rying age,  which  is  twelve  or  thirteen 
years,  she  must  arrange  her  lustrous 
black  hair  in  two  huge  coils  above 
each  ear,  typifying  the  squash  blossom 
which  is  their  emblem  of  maidenhood. 
At  night  thereafter  her  pillow  is  no 
longer  of  down,  but  a  wooden  head- 
rest in  order  that  her  hair  must  not 
become  disarranged. 

How  coy  she  becomes  then  with 
only  her  bright  eyes  showing  above 
2 


286 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Ho  pi  dancer. 

the  brilliant  shawl  around  her  shoul- 
ders; she  shyly  looks  at  a  young 
buck  admiringly,  then  in  embarrass- 
ment hides  there,  only  to  peek  forth 
again  and  stay  the  passing  glance  of 
her  suitor.  When  she  is  to  be  married, 
excitement  reigns.  Three  days  she 
grinds  corn  constantly,  a  tribal  cus- 
tom which  so  far  remains  through  the 
upheaval  caused  by  civilization;  then 
the  feasting  begins.  It  may  last  two 
days,  maybe  two  years,  but  however 
long  as  it  lasts,  the  young  couple  are 
not  married  until  it  is  over.  It  is  then 
she  must  rearrange  her  hair  in  the 
manner  such  as  I  have  already  spoken 
of,  the  ripened  squash,  symbolical  of 
the  squash  blossom. 

Never  before  have  I  seen  such  beau- 
tiful necks  and  shoulders  as  these  wo- 
men have,  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  carry- 
ing of  water  in  earthern-ware  jars  on 
their  shoulders.  On  the  mesa  Araibi, 
which  stands  five  hundred  feet  high, 


with  a  Hopi  pueblo  on  its  summit, 
where  the  famous  Snake  Dance  is 
held,  which  is  a  prayer  for  rain,  ^  the 
women  carry  water  up  the  steep,  dizzy 
trail,  gracefully  balancing  these  jars 
filled  to  the  brim  with  as  much  ease 
as  though  walking  on  level  ground. 

We  wandered  down  a  trail  and  found 
ourselves  in  the  burial  grounds.  On 
mounds  of  earth,  old  kettles,  pottery 
and  articles  of  clothing  were  lying  to 
help  the  soul  on  his  sad  and  lonely 
journey  to  the  "Great  Spirit."  The 
faint  silver  tinkling  of  bells  could  be 
heard  quite  often,  and  after  searching 
for  a  considerable  length  of  time  we 
found  a  string  of  tiny  silver  bells 
hanging  under  a  rock,  and  also  the 
remains  of  a  skeleton.  It  was  very 
easy  then  to  find  grave  after  grave  in 
the  rocks,  a  method  used  with  the  dead 
because  of  the  thieving  coyote,  and  to 
find  all  manners  of  things  to  frighten 
away  evil  spirits. 

We  found  a  new  trail,  climbed  up  it, 
and  found  ourselves  entering  at  the 
rear  of  a  different  village,  for  it  so  ap- 
peared to  us.  Adobe  walls  straight 
above  us  and  far  down  near  the  end 
some  steps  had  been  built  in  and  were 
worn  in  the  center  to  the  shape  of  the 
foot.  We  discovered  a  few  of  the 
dwellings  facing  this  direction,  but 
these  had  long  since  ceased  to  be  in- 
habited. Then  we  stumbled  on  the 
roof  of  an  underground  room,  with  an 
ancient  wooden  ladder  with  iron 
rounds  leading  down  into  it.  We  stuck 
our  heads  down  through  the  opening 
and  withdrew  them  as  quickly  as  we 
had  put  them  in.  What  an  odor  rose 
upward!  It  all  but  swept  us  off  our 
feet,  for  it  carried  with  it  all  the  un- 
pleasantness one  would  ever  wish  to 
remember. 

Curiosity  again  proved  stronger  than 
we,  so.  descending,  we  found  ourselves 
in  the  "Kiva,"  a  place  where  Ihe  ma- 
jority of  the  ceremonial  dances  are 
held.  A  few  of  the  sacred  fox-skins 
hung  on  the  wall,  otherwise  the  place 
was  bare.  Hurriedly  we  ascended  the 
ladder  and  filled  our  lungs  with  air 
that  even  though  not  of  the  purest, 
revived  us  considerably. 


A  camp  at  night. 


We  climbed  the  ladders  to  the  house 
tops,  visited  with  the  families  there, 
and  watched  filthy  old  squaws,  their 
bare  feet  with  the  toughness  of  a 
horse's  foot  doubled  under  them,  weav- 
ing baskets  and  not  paying  the  least 
attention  to  us. 

It  was  there  the  last  rays  of  the  set- 
ting sun  found  us.  On  a  house  top, 
watching  the  little  panorama  in  the 
street  below  us,  of  the  youths  sitting 
in  the  shadows,  idly  smoking  and 
watching  through  indolent  eyes,  the 
girls  in  brilliantly  colored  shawls  and 
hair  wound  high  over  each  ear,  play- 
ing among  themselves.  Then  to  look 
out  over  the  fields  and  seeing  the  In- 
dian farmers  leaving  the  tilling  of  the 
soil  and  slowly  climbing  the  trail  to- 
wards home,  to  hear  the  bleating  of 
sheep,  and  finally  seeing  them  in  a 


hazy  dust  cloud  with  the  old  shepherd 
hobbling  behind  them  with  his  dog. 
Young  married  women,  their  sleeping 
children  tied  on  their  backs  in  shawls, 
glanced  up  at  us  and  smiled  a  greet- 
ing as  they  hurry  on  to  the  evening 
service  at  the  mission. 

The  shadows  deepened  until  only 
the  dim  outline  of  the  pueblos  could 
be  seen.  Lights  appear  in  the  win- 
dows, a  sleepy  cry  of  a  child  is  heard, 
and  from  the  chapel  come  the  sound  of 
happy  voices  singing. 

Silently  we  mounted  our  horses  and 
rode  down  that  lonely  starlit  trail.  Way 
out  in  the  darkness  somewhere  came 
the  wild,  haunting  cry  of  the  coyote. 
Turning  in  our  saddles  for  one  last 
look  on  the  sleepy  village,  we  see  it 
high  on  the  mesa  top  clearly  outlined 
against  the  light  of  the  rising  moon. 


The  Angelus 

Heard  at  the   Mission   Dolores,   1868 
By    Bret    Harte 


This  being  the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition  year,  in  which  everything  of 
merit  in  California  is  being  reviewed  before  the  world,  the  management  of 
Overland  Monthly  has  decided  to  republish  in  its  pages  the  stories  and  poems 
that  made  the  magazine  famous  through  the  genius  of  Bret  Harte.  He  was  its 
first  editor,  and  it  was  his  keen  discernment  and  originality  which  gave 
the  contents  of  the  magazine  that  touch  of  the  spirit  of  the  West,  and  es- 
pecially of  California,  which  made  it  distinctive  and  enkindled  the  enthu- 
siasm of  discerning  readers  the  world  around.  These  early  contributions  of 
his  cover  several  years;  they  will  be  published  monthly  in  the  order  in  which 
they  appeared,  beginning  with  the  first  issue  of  Overland  Monthly,  July,  1868. 


Bells  of  the  Past,  whose  long-forgotten  music 

Still  fills  the  wide  expanse. 
Tinging  the  sober  twilight  of  the  Present 

With  color  of  romance : 

I  hear  your  call,  and  see  the  sun  descending 

On  rock,  and  wave,  and  sand, 
As  down  the  coast  the  Mission  voices  blending 

Girdle  the  heathen  land. 

Within  the  circle  of  their  incantation 

No  blight  nor  mildew  falls; 
Nor  fierce  unrest,  nor  lust,  nor  low  ambition 

Passes  those  airy  walls. 

Borne  on  the  swell  of  ycur  long  waves  receding, 

I  touch  the  further  Past— 
I  see  the  dying  glow  of  Spanish  glory, 

The  sunset  dream  and  last! 

Before  me  rise  the  dome-shaped  Mission  towers; 

The  white  Presidio; 
The  swart  commander  in  his  leathern  jerkin, 

The  priest  in  stole  of  snow. 

Once  more  I  see  Portolas  cross  uplifting 

Above  the  setting  sun; 
And  past  the  headland,  northward,  slowly  drifting 

The  freighted  galleon. 

O,  solemn  bells!  whose  consecrated  masses 

Recall  the  faith  of  old— 
0,  tinkling  bells!  that  lulled  with  twilight  music 

The  spiritual  fold! 

Your  voices  break  and  falter  in  the  darkness; 

Break,  falter,  and  are  still: 
And  veiled  and  mystic,  like  the  Host  descending, 

The  sun  sinks  from  the  hill! 


The  Star  Goddess,  a 
figure  repeated  on  sev- 
eral of  the  buildings. 


The 

Panama-Pacific 
Exposition 

in  Its 
Glorious 
Prime      i 

By 

Hamilton  Wright 


WITH  almost  three  months  to 
follow  before  its   close,   De- 
cember 4th,  the  Panama-Pa- 
cific International  Exposition 
has  more  than  met  the  highest  hopes 
of  its  projectors.     More  than  twelve 
million  entrances  had  been  clicked  by 
the  turnstiles  before  the  half  of  the 
first  week  in  September  was  passed, 


and  during  June,  July  and  August  more 
than  500,000  persons  passed  through 
the  Exposition  gates  each  week.  This 
result  has  been  achieved  amid  condi- 
tions unprecedented  and  unparalleled. 
A  year  ago  there  were  thousands  who 
predicted  that  the  huge  Fair  would  be 
postponed.  And  yet  to-day  it  is  ex- 
pected that  before  the  Exposition 


A  glimpse  of  the  west  facade  of  the  Palace  of  Education.  The  trees  in  the 
foreground  border  one  end  of  the  beautiful  lake  fronting  the  Palace  of  Fine 
Arts}  which  the  city  of  San  Francisco  is  planning  to  preserve  as  a  memorial. 


closes  more  than  twenty  million  per- 
sons will  have  passed  through  its  turn- 
stiles. Early  in  September  there  were 
more  than  750,000  visitors  from  east  of 
the  Rockies  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  Most 
of  the  travelers  are  getting  their  first 
glimpse  of  the  West.  On  September 
3d,  former  President  Taft  burned  can- 
celled notes  aggregating  $1,200,000, 
which  had  been  loaned  to  the  Exposi- 
tion before  its  opening  day  last  Feb- 
ruary. 

A  resume  of  this  greatest  of  world's 
Expositions  shows  forty-one  nations 
officially  participating,  and  practically 
every  civilized  portion  of  the  world 
represented  by  individual  exhibitors. 
Forty  States  are  taking  part,  and  in- 
dividual exhibitors  from  every  State 
in  the  Union  are  represented.  More 
than  500,000  different  exhibits  are  dis- 
played by  more  than  7,000  exhibitors. 
The  Exposition  cost  $50,000,000,  and 
the  value  of  the  exhibits  will  probably 
exceed  $450,000,000.  The  French  ex- 
hibits in  the  Palace  of  Fine  Arts  alone 


are  valued  at  $3,500,000. 

The  present  fall  season  is  the  most 
attractive  of  the  year  to  visit  the  Ex- 
position. The  giant  tree  ferns  brought 
from  New  Zealand  and  Central  Amer- 
ica, the  huge  beds  of  hydrangeas,  the 
large  groves  of  firs  and  eucalyptus 
trees  are  thriving  in  their  new  environ- 
ment ;  the  grounds  seem  a  vast  park  on 
which  years  of  cultivation  have  been 
expended.  Great  beds  of  begonias  in 
riotous  bloom  spreading  their  flaming 
colors  over  forty  acres,  adorn  the  vast 
South  Gardens.  Creepers  and  flower- 
ing vines  wind  upward  on  the  spread- 
ing palms.  From  now  until  the  close 
of  the  Exposition,  sunny  days  and  mild 
weather  are  the  rule.  As  an  additional 
incentive  to  those  who  have  not  yet 
visited  the  Exposition,  the  low  round- 
trip  ticket,  good  for  the  journey  to  San 
Francisco  and  return,  may  be  pur- 
chased up  to  November  30th. 

Over  three  hundred  conventions  and 
congresses  are  yet  to  be  held  on  the 
Exposition  grounds.  Of  special  inter- 


The  Spanish  patio  of  the  California  State  building.    It  is  beautifully  laid  out 
in  flowers,  fountains,  shrubs  and  trees  on  lines  of  the  old  Mission  gardens. 


est  will  be  a  giant  live  stock  show,  be- 
ginning September  30th,  and  conclud- 
ing with  the  Exposition.  One-half 
million  dollars  are  offered  in  prizes 
for  this  show,  and  many  valuable  pre- 
miums will  be  awarded  by  prominent 
breeding  associations  in  the  United 
States  and  abroad.  In  the  live  stock 
pavilions  covering  forty  acres  are  valu- 
able animals  from  almost  every  part 
of  the  world.  Hundreds  of  prize-win- 
ners are  reaching  San  Francisco  daily 
to  get  into  condition  for  the  show. 
Many  State  dairy  colleges  will  be  rep- 
resented. There  are  more  than  six 
miles  of  aisles  between  the  different 
rows  of  stalls  in  the  live  stock  pavil- 
ion. 

In  the  Palace  of  Liberal  Arts  is  the 
amazing  Audion  Amplifier,  without 
which  the  transcontinental  telephone 
would  not  have  been  possible.  Through 
its  use  the  voice  of  a  man  speaking 
into  the  telephone  in  New  York  may  be 
"stopped  up"  so  that  in  San  Fran- 
cisco it  will  fill  a  large  hall.  The 


transcontinental  telephone  is  one  of  the 
striking  features  of  the  Exposition. 
Every  afternoon  at  two  o'clock  a  large 
audience  gathers  in  the  Palace  of  Lib- 
eral Arts,  and  with  receivers  cupped  to 
ear,  listens  to  a  man  in  New  York  read- 
ing from  the  headlines  of  the  after- 
noon papers.  The  new  line  transmits 
sound  at  56,000  miles  per  second; 
speech  is  carried  thousands  of  times 
faster  than  its  natural  speed.  Charles 
S.  Whitman,  Jr.,  aged  three  months, 
gurgled  from  Albany,  N.  Y.,  to  his 
mother  at  the  Exposition,  a  distance  of 
3,400  miles.  Also  Mrs.  Whitman 
talked  to  the  nurse  about  the  baby. 

A  Swedish  inventor  named  Poulson 
has  struck  something  new,  the  tele- 
graphone.  This  will  record  a  question 
asked  over  the  'phone  so  that  the  busi- 
ness man  may  answer  at  his  conven- 
ience. It  also  does  away  with  the  disk 
used  in  the  ordinary  dictaphone  or 
music  box.  As  one  talks  into  the  re- 
ceiver a  thin  steel  wire  is  magnetized 
at  the  actual  point  of  contact  with  the 


Dedication  ceremonies,  Avenue  of  Palms,  south  esplanade,  the  most  spacious 
review  ground  at  the  Exposition.  The  dome  in  the  distance  marks  the  site 
of  the  Horticultural  Building,  another  beautiful  structure  which  San  Fran- 
cisco is  planning  to  preserve  as  a  memorial  of  the  Exposition. 


needle.  The  wire  shown  in  the  Palace 
of  Liberal  Arts  is  six  miles  long.  It 
runs  between  two  small  revolving 
drums,  which  will  take  down  75  min- 
utes of  continuous  conversation.  The 
wire  may  be  de-magnatized  and  used 
over  and  over  again. 

Visit  the  Norwegian  Pavilion.  Here 
you  will  see  how  oxygen  and  nitrogen 
in  the  air  are  combined  and  converted 
into  nitrates,  the  entire  manufacture 
being  based  on  power  from  waterfalls 
and  nitrogen  from  the  air.  The  exhi- 
bition is  based  on  the  big  power  plant 
at  Rjukan,  the  greatest  power  station 
in  the  world,  where  140,000  horse- 
power is  derived.  The  current  is  con- 
ducted to  the  furnace  house  through 
sixty  cables  of  a  length  of  three  miles 
each.  The  heat  of  the  furnaces  ex- 
ceeds 3,000  degrees  centigrade.  Any 
chemist  can  tell  you  about  the  process. 
One  thousand  million  gallons  of  air  are 
driven  by  blowers  through  the  electric 


furnaces  every  twenty-four  hours,  and 
more  than  two  thousand  barrels  of 
nitrates  are  produced  each  day.  The 
bi-products  of  the  factory  are  nitrogen 
of  soda,  used  in  the  dye  and  aniline  in- 
dustries, nitrate  of  ammonia,  used  for 
fertilizer  and  explosive  purposes,  and 
refined  nitrates  used  for  explosive,  and 
numerous  other  industrial  purposes. 

Many  advances  in  agriculture  are 
shown ;  one  of  the  most  entertaining  is 
the  calf -way  milker  in  the  live  stock 
section.  Here  daily  cows  are  milked 
by  this  method,  which  is  clean  and 
seems  not  to  annoy  the  cow. 

One  should  not  overlook  the  exhibit 
of  mesothorium  in  the  German  section 
in  the  Palace  of  Liberal  Arts.  This  is 
a  derivative  of  radium,  but  much  more 
radio  active,  and  consequently  more 
dangerous  to  handle.  It  is  used  mainly 
in  the  cure  of  cancer. 

In  the  giant  Palaces  of  Machinery, 
see  the  huge  Diesel  engine,  operating 


Night  scene  of  the  yacht  harbor  on  the    Marina,    overlooking    the    Golden 
Gate.  The  column  in  the  distance  is  surmounted  with  the  figure  of  Adventure. 


by  internal  combustion,  one  of  the  most 
revolutionary  innovations  in  the  last 
few  years.  As  most  readers  know, 
Diesel  driven  ships  are  now  being  em- 
ployed on  trans-oceanic  runs. 

No  one  should  miss  the  exhibit  of 
1916  automobile  models  and  of  cycle- 
cars  in  the  Palace  of  Transportation. 
Here  not  only  American,  but  French, 
Argentinan,  Italian  and  other  foreign 
makes  are  on  exhibition. 

A  year  ago  it  seemed  impossible 
that  Europe  would  be  well  represented. 
While  the  industrial  exhibition  is  not 
as  large  as  it  should  have  been  nor- 
mally, it  is  still  large  enough  to  fill 
every  available  space  and  larger  than 
at  most  world's  expositions.  The  ar- 
tistic exhibit  upon  which  greater  atten- 
tion was  concentrated,  is  very  compre- 
hensive. And  many  of  the  European 
countries  are  very  active  in  issuing 
propaganda.  In  the  Palace  of  Liberal 
Arts,  French  tourist  resorts  and  hotels 
have  a  big  display,  and  handsomely 
printed  and  well  illustrated  booklets 


exploiting,  in  both  English  and  French, 
the  charms  of  the  French  hostelries, 
are  being  distributed  gratis  to  hundreds 
of  visitors  each  day.  Some  of  the 
booklets  are  printed  in  three  colors. 
One  free  book  has  348  pages. 

Every  one  should  make  a  round  of 
all  the  foreign  pavilions.  The  Gold 
Medal  winner  among  the  pavilions  is 
that  of  Italy.  It  consists  not  of  one, 
but,  in  reality,  of  eight  different  struc- 
tures grouped  about  attractive  piazzas 
and  presenting  typical  architectural 
types  of  the  Fourteenth,  Fifteenth  and 
Sixteenth  centuries.  The  buildings 
present  both  the  monastic  and  commu- 
nistic styles  that  flourished  during  the 
period  of  the  self-governed  cities,  and 
during  the  religious  revival  following 
the  passing  from  Italy  of  the  impress 
of  pagan  Rome.  The  architect  of  the 
pavilion  was  Signer  A.  Piacentini.  Of 
especial  interest  to  women  in  this  pa- 
vilion is  the  exhibit  of  Italian  laces, 
woven  under  the  patronage  of  Dowager 
Queen  Margherita  of  Italy. 


Facade  of  the  California  State  Building. 


The  French  and  Canadian  buildings 
draw  the  two  largest  crowds  of  any 
foreign  buildings  on  the  ground.  The 
French  building  is  after  the  famous 
Palace  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  selected 
by  Napoleon  I  as  a  fitting  headquarters 
for  those  soldiers  who  had  won  dis- 
tinction in  the  field.  This  imposing 
structure  was  built  by  the  Prince  de 
Salm,  a  member  of  the  nobility  be- 
headed during  the  revolution,  and  after 


his  death  it  was  raffled  off.  The  holder 
of  the  lucky  ticket  was  unable  to  re- 
tain the  building,  and  it  passed  to  the 
government.  Attractive  features  of 
the  French  exhibition  are  Gobelin  tap- 
estries both  ancient  and  modern,  woven 
upon  the  great  scale  of  about  35  by  22 
feet,  most  of  them  depicting  the  vic- 
tories of  Alexander  the  Great  during 
his  Asiatic  incursions.  The  most  val- 
uable of  these — they  are  originals — 


THE  PANAMA-PACIFIC  EXPOSITION 


295 


are  worth  perhaps  $300,000  each.  A 
table,  desk  and  lamp  used  by  Victor 
Hugo  are  shown,  as  are  also  some  of 
his  hand-written  manuscripts.  Relics 
of  Balzac,  Lafayette  and  other  famous 
personages  are  displayed,  including 
the  sword  used  by  Lafayette  while  in 
America.  Among  the  modern  exhibits 
is  a  prodigious  display  of  latest  Paris- 
ian styles.  Wax  models  of  women  and 
girls  are  draped  in  this  year's  latest 
fashions.  The  exhibition,  encased  in 
glass,  occupies  an  entire  section  of  the 
pavilion  and  is  always  crowded.  A  dis- 
play in  another  wing  shows  upholstered 
furniture,  jewelry,  furniture  of  the 
Louis  XIV  period,  satin,  silks,  laces 
and  hosiery.  Illustrated  charts  show 
the  status  of  the  French  manufactories 
up  to  the  time  of  the  war,  while  the 
famous  French  doll  theatres  with  mani- 
kins attired  in  court  costumes,  appear 
on  illuminated  stages.  Also  there  are 


grounds  artificially  built  up  to  resem- 
ble nature,  fading  away  insensibly  in- 
to a  painted  scene,  comprise  the  chief 
feature.  In  one  scene  is  a  dam  with 
live  beavers,  trees,  rocks,  running 
water  with  live  trout  which  combine  in 
an  ensemble  that  gives  way  to  the 
painted  scene,  revealing  the  stream 
rising  far  in  the  misty  hills.  Other  rep- 
resentations are  of  the  prairies  with 
their  harvests,  of  wild  game,  apple  or- 
chards, grain  elevators  feeding  freight 
trains,  prodigious  water  powers,  the 
Canadian  Rockies,  Victoria,  B.  C.,  har- 
bor, wheat  raising  in  Edmonton,  the 
Northern  lights,  the  minerals  of  the 
Dominion.  The  wonderful  presentation 
has  never  been  surpassed  nor  even 
equalled. 

The  Argentine  has  made  its  finest 
exhibition.  The  chief  feature  is  the 
showing  of  the  stock  and  agricultural 
industries,  although  forests,  mines 


No  photograph  may  adequately  picture  the  wonderful  night  lighting  effects 
on  the  Exposition.  All  visitors  agree  it  is  the  most  attractive  effect  furnished. 
The  great  rays  of  light  in  the  distance  are  contributed  by  a  great  battery  of 
electrics,  and  cut  the  darkness  at  all  angles  and  in  changing  colors.  Part  of 
their  diversions  is  to  join  the  elaborate  fireworks  display  on  the  Marina. 


reproductions  of  scenes  in  the  trenches 
exquisitely  done  in  miniature.  Illu- 
minated dioramas  of  French  watering 
places  are  given. 

The  Canadian  Building,  which  cost 
more  than  $300,000,  contains  a  perma- 
nent exhibit.  Portions  of  this  display 
have  been  shown  at  former  exposi- 
tions, and  each  year  the  exhibit  is 
brought  up  to  date.  It  is  in  charge  of 
a  permanent  commission.  There  are 
no  cut  and  dried  exhibits,  and  the 
California  newspapers  are  urging  that 
this  method  be  substituted  for  jars  of 
processed  fruit.  A  great  number  of 
illuminated  dioramas  with  the  fore- 


and  schools'  are  well  exploited.  Chilled 
meats  are  encased  in  refrigerators;  the 
great  sections  of  polished  tree  trunks, 
huge  slabs  and  boards — all  of  hard- 
woods— give  a  big  idea  of  the  timber 
industry.  Argentina  has  five  thousand 
separate  exhibits  at  the  Fair. 

Although  Australia  is  taking  no  in- 
considerable part  in  the  war,  the  Do- 
minion has  been  recommended  for  no 
fewer  than  165  prizes,  including  one 
grand  prize,  11  medals  of  honor,  60 
gold  medals,  37  silver  medals,  33 
bronze  medals,  23  honorable  mentions. 
See  the  frozen  beef  and  mutton  in  the 
Australian  pavilion,  and  the  mine  dis- 


Vestibule,  main  entrance  to  the  Palace  of  Machinery,  the  largest  building 

on  the  grounds. 


play,  including  exhibits  from  the 
world's  largest  silver  field  at  Broken 
Hill  in  New  South  Wales,  and  gold 
from  wonderful  Mount  Morgan  in 
Queensland.  Australian  gems  and  pre- 
cious stones  collected  from  mines  in 
New  South  Wales  and  Queensland  may 
be  seen  with  jewel  cutters  at  work. 
Here,  too,  are  Australian  diamonds. 

In  the  Danish  pavilion,  reproducing 
the  famous  Kronberg  Castle  at  Elsi- 
nore,  are  displays  of  Denmark's  mari- 


time progress.  This  building  is  really 
a  great  social  hall.  You  will  find  the 
most  interesting  Danish  displays  in 
the  Palace  of  Manufactures.  Proba- 
bly the  finest  exhibit  is  that  of  the 
Royal  porcelain  factory  at  Copenha- 
gen. Exquisite  silver  work  is  shown 
in  profusion. 

Every  one  visits  the  Chinese  build- 
ings, which  are  enclosed  by  a  wall  and 
reproduce  a  portion  of  the  Forbidden 
City  of  Peking.  There  are  five  struc- 


THE  PANAMA-PACIFIC  EXPOSITION 


297 


tures,  one  being  an  exact  model  of 
Pai-ho  Palace,  built  in  the  Tsing  dy- 
nasty. 

See  the  Netherlands  pavilion  in 
characteristic  Dutch  architecture.  It 
has  one  hundred  flag  poles,  and  con- 
tains a  wealth  of  exhibits  from  the 
Dutch  East  Indies,  including  great 
panoramic  scenes  where  one  seems  set 
upon  a  mountain  top  with  its  prospect 
of  far  away  valleys  and  rich  tropical 
plantations.  Here  is  a  Java  tea  room, 
where  refreshments  are  served  by 
pretty  Dutch  Misses. 

The  Swedish  building,  designed  by 
Ferdinand  Boberg,  one  of  the  great 
architects  of  Sweden,  presents  the 
Swedish  architecture  in  the  Fifteenth 
century.  It  is  furnished  with  the  home 
woven  carpets  and  bedding  of  the 
Swedish  peasants,  commingling  state- 
liness  with  simplicity. 

Grown-ups  pay  fifty  cents  to  enter 
the  grounds;  children  between  7  and 
12  twenty-five  cents,  and  under  that, 
admission  is  free.  Good  meals  may 
be  had  in  San  Francisco  or  on  the  Ex- 
position grounds  for  fifty  cents.  Ten 
thousand  people  take  their  luncheons 
every  day;  there  are  fine  lunching 
places  on  the  grounds,  while  settees 
and  tables  are  provided  in  the  Japan- 
ese Pavilion,  the  Palace  of  Horticul- 
ture, and  in  numerous  other  gardens, 
where  coffee,  tea  or  sandwiches  may 
be  obtained.  In  the  Palace  of  Food 
Products,  hot  scones  and  snails  may 
be  had  for  five  cents  each,  and  across 
the  aisle  a  good  cup  of  coffee  for  ten 
cents.  Hotel  prices  in  San  Francisco 
are  the  same  as  those  in  other  cities, 
and  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the 
Exposition  grounds  good  rooms  may 
be  had  for  $3.50  per  week  and  up. 

Entertainments  are  going  on  in  dif- 
ferent portions  of  the  grounds  all  day 
after  ten  in  the  morning.  For  ten 
cents  you  may  hear  Edwin  Lemare  of 
London,  pronounced  the  world's  great- 
est organist,  give  an  hour's  recital  up- 
on the  huge  organ  in  Festival  Hall. 
Half  a  dozen  of  the  famous  bands  of 
the  country  give  daily  free  concerts. 
Each  of  the  States  hold  open  house, 
and  here  visitors  in  constant  numbers 


from  all  portions  of  the  world  register. 
All  of  the  State  buildings  and  foreign 
pavilions  are  equipped  with  grapha- 
phones.  In  the  Cuban  building,  for 
example,  dances  are  held  almost 
nightly,  and  all  are  welcome.  Girls 
appear  in  Spanish  costumes,  giving  ex- 
hibition dances  upon  the  floors  of  the 
great  inner  court  to  the  strains  of  a 
Spanish  orchestra.  During  the  visit 
of  the  midshipmen  from  Annapolis, 
the  ballroom  of  the  Illinois  building 
became  a  rendezvous  for  the  young 
tars,  where  daily  dances  were  held. 

The  Zone,  the  Midway  of  Chicago 
days,  is  well  worth  visiting.  It  cost 
$10,000,000,  and  2,000  people  are  em- 
ployed there.  Of  special  interest  is 
a  four-acre  topographical  map  of  the 
Panama  Canal  zone,  through  which 
runs  a  faithful  miniature  of  the  Pan- 
ama Canal,  on  which  steamers  are 
seen  entering  and  leaving  the  locks  in 
going  from  ocean  to  ocean.  The  ex- 
hibit is  viewed  from  a  traveling  plat- 
form set  about  twenty  feet  above  the 
map,  which  is  the  largest  topographi- 
cal map  in  the  world.  A  dictaphone 
at  each  chair,  with  ear  drums,  de- 
scribes each  point  of  interest  as  it  is 
passed.  The  splendid  illumination  of 
the  huge  map  lends  it  an  effect  of  dis- 
tance and  perspective. 

In  the  Maorian,  Samoan  and  Ha- 
waiian villages  bands  of  tribesmen 
give  native  dances.  In  the  Grand 
Canyon  of  Arizona  the  visitor  rides  on 
a  standard  gauge  train  and  beholds  a 
succession  of  great  illuminated  dia- 
ramas  presenting  the  scenes  of  the 
Canyon  as  observed  in  a  ride  of  one 
hundred  miles  along  its  brink.  Girls 
in  picturesque  costumes  of  the  Nava- 
jos  stationed  at  different  points  de- 
scribe the  scenery  as  the  car  comes  to 
a  stop  in  its  long  trip. 

The  aercscope  is  like  a  giant  see- 
saw, with  a  double-decked  passenger 
car  on  its  long  arm  and  a  huge  mass 
of  concrete  on  the  short  arm.  It  is  four 
feet  higher  than  the  Ferris  wheel,  and 
lifts  the  visitor  264  feet  above  the 
street  and  316  feet  above  San  Fran- 
cisco Bay.  When  once  the  great  car 
has  been  raised  almost  upright,  it  de- 


300 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


scribes  a  circle  parallel  to  the  earth. 
At  night,  illuminated,  it  seems  as 
though  a  Zeppelin  were  circling  over 
the  Zone.  A  tank  beneath  the  car  au- 
tomatically discharges  or  takes  on  an 
amount  of  water  equal  in  weight  to 
that  of  the  passengers  leaving  or  en- 
tering, so  that  the  balance  is  always 
evenly  maintained. 

The  illumination  of  the  Exposition 
is  its  most  marvelous  feature.  Former 
President  Roosevelt  said  it  was  the 
most  wonderful  illumination  in  the 
world's  history.  It  marks  tremendous 
progress  in  the  art  and  science  of 
lighting  since  the  last  great  exposition 
in  St.  Louis.  The  advance  in  appara- 
tus makes  it  possible  to  get  about 
three  times  the  amount  of  light  by  the 
same  amount  of  current,  while  the  de- 
velopment in  methods  has  been  mar- 
velous. Vast  areas  are  decorated  by 
luminous  colors;  the  whole  Exposition 
takes  on  an  indescribable  lustre  and 
brilliancy;  the  huge  Tower  of  Jewels, 
435  feet  high,  stands  out  satin-white 
against  the  heavens.  And  yet  nowhere 
is  the  visitor  obliged  to  look  directly 
at  an  unshielded  light.  So  widely  is 
the  light  diffused  that  it  is  possible 
to  read  a  letter  or  an  envelope  any- 
where upon  the  grounds.  Huge  search- 
lights concealed  on  the  roofs  of  the  ex- 
hibit palaces,  and  a  battery  of  forty- 
eight  search-lights,  the  largest  made, 
on  a  jetty  in  the  bay  hurl  their  rays 
against  the  facades  of  the  exhibit  pal- 
aces, the  giant  groups  of  statuary,  the 
lofty  colonnades,  the  towering  domes 
and  minarets,  bringing  out  every  de- 
tail. This  battery  has  three  billion 
six  hundred  million  candle  power.  At 
night  the  palaces  become  radiant,  as 
though  they  themselves  were  sources 
of  light.  Under  the  play  of  the  bril- 
liant shafts,  the  Exposition  assumes 
a  mystical,  elusive  quality.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  searchlights  are  the  con- 
cealed colored  lights  set  behind  the 
columns  and  colonnades,  their  reflected 
hues  standing  out  in  the  maze  of 
white  light  like  garnets  in  a  field  of 
snow.  The  search-light  battery  on  the 
harbor  is  manned  by  seventy-two 
United  States  marines,  and  the  light 


has  been  seen  one  hundred  miles  from 
the  Fair  Grounds. 

The  Exposition  has  still  almost  three 
months  to  run;  but  so  universal  is  the 
appreciation  of  its  beauty  that  a  move- 
ment is  under  way  to  save  several  of 
its  most  attractive  features;  more  es- 
pecially the  beautiful  water  frontage 
before  the  exhibit  palaces  known  as 
the  Marina  (Villa  Gardens.)  Through 
the  Marina  runs  a  boulevard  connect- 
ing with  Van  Ness  avenue  and  also 
with  the  Embarcadero,  a  boulevard 
that  extends  along  San  Francisco's 
water  front  beyond  the  Ferry  Building 
at  the  foot  of  Market  street.  On  the 
west,  the  Exposition  boulevard  runs 
into  the  broad  presidio  drive  that 
winds  through  the  reservation  along 
the  bluffs  overlooking  the  ocean.  All 
that  portion  of  the  Exposition  occu- 
pied by  the  State  and  foreign  buildings 
is  on  United  States  government  land 
(the  presidio),  and  it  would  therefore 
be  possible  to  permanently  retain  many 
of  these  structures.  It  is  said  that 
Japan  proposes  to  dedicate  her  beauti- 
ful gardens,  reproducing  those  that 
surround  the  temple  of  Kinkajuji  at 
Kioto,  to  the  government  as  a  lasting 
testimonial  from  Japan  to  America. 
The  Palace  of  Fine  Arts,  a  semi-cir- 
cular structure  describing  an  arc  1,100 
feet  in  its  outside  perimeter,  will  prob- 
ably be  saved.  The  building  proper, 
which  encloses  the  galleries,  was  con- 
structed of  steel  and  concrete  as  a 
protection  for  the  art  treasures  within, 
and  will  last  for  an  indefinite  period. 
The  colonnades  upon  its  east  facade, 
and  the  great  dome  rising  before  it 
from  the  lagoon,  are  of  staff  upon  wire 
mesh,  and  it  is  said  that  these  can  be 
resurfaced  and  permanently  preserved. 
It  is  also  probable  that  many  of  the 
imposing  sculptures  of  the  Exposi- 
tion, as  well  as  several  of  the  State 
buildings  and  national  pavilions  upon 
the  presidio  grounds,  will  be  preserved 
— thus  giving  the  city  at  the  Golden 
Gate  the  basis  of  an  unsurpassed  in- 
dustrial museum  through  which  the 
world,  seeking  wider  trade  upon  the 
ocean  now  opened  to  the  world's  trade 
routes,  may  take  advantage. 


THE  ALTAR  PLACE 


By  Jeannette  Hamilton  Tennyson 


I  MUST  CONFESS  I  was  feeling 
wretchedly  bored,  homesick,  and 
intolerably  lonely  my  last  Saturday 
afternoon  in  California,  dear." 

Stanley  Earle  unfolded  his  evening 
paper,  laid  it  across  his  knees, 
smoothed  out  its  creases,  stretched 
himself  in  his  substantial  Morris^chair, 
smiled  reminiscently,  and  fell  into  a 
reverie. 

Mrs.  Earle,  who  had  but  just  entered 
the  room  as  her  husband  spoke,  ad- 
vanced to  the  open  fire-place,  a  low 
song  on  her  lips,  and  grasping  the  fire 
tongs,  skillfully  navigated  a  charred 
and  smoking  log  into  a  bed  of  living 
coals.  The  flames  leaped  from  the 
lazy  spirals  of  smoke  and  the  pleasant 
room  brightened  into  a  rosy  glow.  Still 
humming,  Isobel  Earle  put  aside  the 
brass  tongs,  and  moved  in  a  fragrant 
atmosphere  of  mignonette  to  a  waiting 
chair  of  willow  and  cretonne.  As  she 
passed  her  husband  she  gently  patted 
his  smoothly  brushed  hair,  and  stoop- 
ing, kissed  with  exaggerated  accuracy 
an  undisguised  clearing  on  the  crown 
of  his  brown  head. . 

Isobel  Earle  was  a  woman  of  thirty 
or  there  abouts,  and  a  year  or  two  her 
husband's  junior  in  appearance,  but  as 
she  settled  down  in  her  chair,  with  its 
armful  of  fluffy  and  mysterious  needle- 
work, she  confided  to  her  stitching  a 
complacent  smile  which  betrayed  a 
peace  and  contentment  in  them. 

As  she  shook  out  the  soft  folds  of 
her  embroidery,  she  crooked  an  arched 
eyebrow  a  fraction  of  space  above  its 
fellow,  and  darting  a  twinkling  glance 
at  her  husband,  she  exclaimed  softly, 
as  though  she  had  just  heard  him 
speak:  "Ah,  but  that  was  what  you 
were  expecting,  wasn't  it,  Stanley? 
Then  you  were  not  disappointed !  What 


did  you  do?  I  thought  San  Francisco 
was  a  Lorelei  so  beautiful  and  fasci- 
nating that  to  see  her  was  to  succumb 
instantly  to  her  charms!  What  did 
you  do,  dear?" 

"Well,  for  one  thing,"  he  reflected 
leisurely,  as  he  piled  the  bowl  of  his 
pipe  full  of  tobacco  from  the  cupped 
hollow  of  his  hand,  "I  stood  on  the 
steps  of  the  Hotel  St.  Francis  and 
peered  discontentedly  at  the  slender 
column  that  reached  heavenward  from 
the  heart  of  Union  Square." 

"How  exciting!     Was  that  all?" 

Earle  lighted  his  pipe,  and  having 
puffed  profoundly  a  moment  or  two, 
tranquilly  proceeded: 

"Well,  no,  dearie.  I  was  impelled  as 
I  stood  there,  from  sheer  ennui,  to  join 
the  city's  vaudeville  contingent;  so  I 
strolled  down  Powell  street,  dodged 
across  Market,  got  a  ticket,  and 
found  myself  drifting  on  a  human  tide 
in  through  the  guarded  doors  to  the 
seat  assigned  me.  I  never  was  in  a 
San  Francisco  theatre  before,  and  be- 
ing but  a  blunt  male,  I  have  never 
laid  much  stock  on  my  own  intuitions, 
but  I  tell  you,  pettie,  the  moment  I 
breathed  the  atmosphere  of  that  house 
I  knew  it  would  have  been  better  for 
me  if  I  had  gone  out  and  hanged  a  mill 
stone  around  my  neck  and  dropped 
into  the  bay." 

Mrs.  Earle  burst  into  a  soft  rush  of 
laughter.  "You  blessed  idiot,"  she  ex- 
claimed. "Where  had  you  left  your 
fancy  for  the  captivating  bounce  and 
gusto  of  the  Melodeon  circuit?" 

Earle  smiled  musingly.  "Well,  never 
mind;  you  needn't  laugh,"  he  said, 
striving  to  appear  aggrieved. 

"I'm  not  laughing,  darling;  I'm  cry- 
ing, only  your  modest  intuition  is  not 
so  obvious  to  you  as  my  tears  are  to 
3 


302 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


me!  However,  that  by  way  of  paren- 
thesis. You  were  speaking  of  your  de- 
pressed spirits.  Was  your  theatre  too 
sad  to  respond  to  your  festive  mood, 
or  were  you  too  melancholy  to  re- 
spond to  its  levity?" 

"My  dear,  my  theatre  from  the  stage 
to  the  last  seat  slammed  was  a  Satur- 
nalia of  cigaretted  and  cocktailed  fem- 
ininity. You  know  yourself,  Isobel, 
my  sense  perceptions  are  not  touchy; 
I  am  neither  Quaker  nor  Sybarite,  but 
to  my  already  homesick  spirit  the  sig- 
nificant splendor  of  hullabaloo  ladies 
deepened  and  increased  my  heimweh, 
until  I  could  see,  feel,  hear,  think  only 
you.  I  looked  at  them,  Isobel,  mas- 
saged and  satiated,  varnished  and  tar- 
nished, and  through  the  heavy  atmos- 
phere my  crystal  wife  impressed  her- 
self upon  my  consciousness  in  contrast 
— 'Sweeter  than  honey  in  the  honey- 
comb.' ''' 

"Stanley!  Do  you  know  that  we  are 
positively  eccentric.  Here  we  are  sit- 
ting at  home  like  a  Darby  and  Joan, 
you  with  your  pipe,  and  I  with  my 
needle,  and  what  is  worse,  you  are 
making  extravagant  love  to  me.  Don't 
you  know,  dear,  that  at  this  very  mo- 
ment we  should  be  two  of  the  impec- 
cable diners  at  the  Lords'  impeccable 
board?  Poor  impeccable  diners!  I 
always  think  of  that  wail  of  Steven- 
son's when  I  see  them  lined  up  in  sol- 
emn, would-to-be-gay  array,  consum- 
ing their  perfect  and  imposing  dinners 
— 'Home,  no  more  home  to  me,  whither 
shall  I  wander?'  These  adventures 
into  the  realm  of  assorted  amusements 
seem  only  to  stimulate  within  us  a 
fiercer  determination  to  bide  a  wee 
more  persistently  by  our  own  comfort- 
able hearth,  don't  they,  man-o-mine?" 

"True,  dear,  and  had  it  not  been  that 
in  that  paste-pearl  audience  I  discov- 
ered a  genuine  jewel-like  face,  even 
my  lonely  sitting  room  would  have 
been  preferable." 

"Ah!  You  made  such  a  discovery, 
Stanley?"  inquired  his  wife,  her  brown 
head  suddenly  absorbed  over  the  work 
in  her  hands. 

"'Yes,  dear,"  replied  the  man,  flash- 
ing an  illuminating  smile  at  the  low- 


ered face.  "But  perhaps  it  would  be 
much  more  nearly  correct  to  say  that 
the  face  was  flower-like,  for  there 
were  really  none  of  the  brilliant  quali- 
ties of  a  jewel  about  it;  it  was  like  a 
gem  only  in  that  it  was  distinctly  good, 
rare,  genuine — but  more  like  the  flower 
of  the  Scriptures  that  cometh  forth 
and  is  cut  down." 

"Was  it  a  beautiful  face,  Stanley?" 

"It  was  a  face  that  was  learned  in 
suffering,  Isobel,  and  yet  it  was  not 
a  woebegone  face.  It  retained  the  out- 
line of  youth  (perhaps  she  was  about 
your  age),  and  it  was  not  doleful;  it 
was  simply  stamped  with  the  certain 
tracery  of  deep  sorrow.  Hers  was  a 
face  with  a  story :  a  story  hushed :  a 
story  significant  of  her  demeanor,  un- 
assuming, aloof,  apart." 

"And  did  that  awful  yawn  abate, 
Stanley?" 

"Inquisitor !  I  fell  absorbed  the  mo- 
ment my  idle  gaze  discovered  her.  She 
sat  only  across  the  aisle  from  me,  and 
a  row  or  two  nearer  the  stage.  I  sup- 
pose I  should  have  stared — her  sensi- 
tive face  so  compelled  my  attention — 
but  I  was  interrupted  in  my  study  of 
it.  The  seat  next  mine  was  not  yet 
occupied,  and  I  was  forced  to  stand  to 
allow  its  belated  occupant  to  pass.  Do 
you  remember  ever  having  heard  me 
speak  of  Arthur  Wilmington,  Isobel?" 

"Very  distinctly.  I  particularly  re- 
call having  heard  you  speak  of  him 
in  connection  with  the  Hope  Mines  in 
Pennsylvania.  I  remember  that  you 
planned  to  bring  him  back  with  you 
here  to  New  York  on  one  trip  you 
made,  and  were  disappointed.  Does 
he  do  tables  and  chairs  on  the  Me- 
lodeon  circuit  now?" 

"I  fancy  he  does  not  claim  so  pre- 
tentious a  talent,  although  he  did  par- 
ticipate in  an  attraction  not  billed  on 
the  program  that  afternoon.  It  was 
he  who  interrupted  my  engrossed  oc- 
cupation of  the  face  opposite.  I  did 
-not  recognize  him  until  after  he  had 
addressed  me.  He  was  considerably 
changed  since  my  connection  with  the 
Hope  mines.  Our  acquaintance  at  that 
time  was  most  cordial.  I  liked  him  for 
a  quiet,  gentlemanly  fellow,  conse- 


THE  ALTAR  PLACE 


303 


quently  I  was  not  prepared  to  instantly 
recognize  this  stern-faced,  serious, 
grave  person  who  spoke  my  name  in 
a  voice  of  polite  interrogation.  He 
seemed  distinctly  pleased  to  see  me, 
and  we  fell  into  intermittent  talk  when- 
ever the  bill  allowed.  I  soon  saw  that 
he,  too,  seemed  to  be  laboring  under 
the  spell  of  a  profound  melancholy, 
and  not  only  from  his  appearance  did 
I  judge,  but  his  manner  as  well.  His 
hair,  coal  black  when  I  knew  him,  was 
quite  gray;  his  eyes  were  years  older 
than  his  age;  his  mouth  had  a  deeply 
engraved  parenthesis  about  it;  and  I 
noticed  that  even  in  the  midst  of  a 
superficial  laugh  over  an  unusual  far- 
cical stunt  he  seemed  infinitely  re- 
moved from  it  all — absent — and  really 
silent,  even  when  he  talked.  I  fell  to 
wondering  about  him,  and  presently 
during  an  intermission  I  asked  if  his 
home  were  in  the  city.  I  was  con- 
scious immediately  that  I  had  stum- 
bled on  a  clue.  He  did  not  answer  for 
just  one  chilly  moment,  then  he  said, 
smiling  queerly,  and  looking  straight 
into  my  eyes:  'No,  I  have  no  home/ 
Of  course  I  felt  like  the  devil,  and 
muttered  an  apology  which  must  have 
made  him  see  I  was  far  more  embar- 
rassed than  he,  for  he  turned  to  me 
quite  warmly  immediately,  and  said: 
'I  have  not  had  a  home  since  before 
the  exolosion.  My  wife  left  me.' 

"'What  explosion?'  I  asked,  think- 
ing it  much  safer  to  avoid  domestic 
topics.  Then:  'Ah,  I  recollect  having 
heard  of  an  explosion  in  the  Hope 
mines.  Yes !  Yes !  And  now  I  recall 
that  you  were  at  first  reported  killed. 
Afterward  the  papers  stated  that  you 
were  not  injured  severely,  that  is  why 
your  share  in  it  escaped  me  for  the 
moment,  and  the  whole  affair  proved 
eventually  not  to  be  serious.  Did  you 
come  out  quite  alright?'  I  asked  him. 

"  'Oh,  yes,'  he  answered,  casually 
enough,  but  I  noticed  his  face  darken, 
and  the  eyes  that  were  once  so  particu- 
larly amiable  grow  sharp  and  hard,  I 
began  to  cast  about  in  my  mind  for  a 
diverting  topic.  I  could  see  the  in- 
cident, or  something  about  the  whole 
thing,  distressed  him — when  he  spoke 


again,  quite  calmly,  but  in  that  austere 
manner  that  he  had  acquired. 

"  'I  was  in  the  hospital  for  several 
weeks,'  he  said,  'and  when  I  got 
around  I  was  seized  with  the  spirit  of 
the  wanderlust.  I've  been  jogging 
about  ever  since.  Rotten  show,  isn't 
it?' 

"The  footlights  were  gleaming  again 
and  a  couple  of  make-believe  gods  and 
goddesses  were  disporting  themselves 
in  riotous  and  commercialized  vivacity 
under  some  impressionist  oaks  and 
beeches.  I  so  thoroughly  agreed  with 
him  that  I  was  about  to  abruptly  ter- 
minate my  stay,  when  my  eyes  were 
again,  magnetically,  drawn  to  the  one 
distinctive  face  within  the  circle  of 
my  vision.  She  stood  out  against  the 
dark  background  like  the  central  fig- 
ure of  an  artist's  canvas,  distinctive, 
solitary;  a  rather  formidable  uncon- 
scious dignity  enveloping  the  appeal- 
ing softness  of  the  delicate  form.  Her 
eyes  were  closed  as  nearly  as  I  could 
see  in  the  half  light,  and  she  did  not 
open  them  again  until  the  act  had 
changed  and  the  pictures  of  current 
events  were  dancing  across  the  great 
white  canvas. 

"Suddenly  I  saw  a  vital  change  pass 
over  her.  She  sat  up  quickly  and 
leaned  forward.  Her  body  seemed  to 
stiffen  and  grow  rigid,  as  though  to  for- 
tify itself  against  some  shock.  She 
fixed  her  eyes  fiercely  in  the  direction 
of  the  canvas,  and  I  could  see  she  was 
almost  panting.  I  glanced  quickly  in 
the  direction  of  the  stage  to  see  what 
had  upset  her,  and  was  just  in  time  to 

catch  the  words  ' Mine  Disaster/ 

before  they  flashed  off,  and  in  orderly 
succession  the  details  of  a  mining  ac- 
cident began  to  be  shown.  With  every 
view  I  could  see  her  agitation  deepen. 
I  saw  her  resistance  wavering.  I 
glanced  at  the  films.  On  a  stretcher 
two  men  were  carrying  a  white-sheeted 
form.  I  glanced  back.  In  another  in- 
stant I  saw  a  quiver  uncontrollably  run 
the  length  of  her  delicate  body.  I 
heard  a  slight  moan  and  saw  the  little 
lady  crumple  into  an  unconscious 
heap.  Somebody  screamed  (I  think 
it  was  the  woman  who  sat  next  to  her) , 


304 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


and  the  lights  flashed  on.  Instantly  I 
was  beside  the  limp  form,  and  stoop- 
ing was  about  to  lift  it  when  I  felt  a 
vice-like  grip  on  my  arm.  I  glanced 
up  in  amazement,  to  see  Wilmington 
crouching  over  me  like  a  tiger.  'I  will 
take  her,'  he  said,  in  a  voice  like  vel- 
vet and  steel.  I  gazed  at  him  fasci- 
nated. 'It's  alright,'  he  answered  my 
look.  'She's  my  wife.'  I  stepped 
back. 

'"What's  the  matter?'  came  in 
trembling  accents  from  all  over  the 
house.  'What's  the  matter?  What's 
the  matter?' 

"Wilmington  stood  up  in  the  aisle 
with  his  wife  in  his  arms.  'Nothing's 
the  matter,'  he  said,  in  a  voice  of  sin- 
gular distinctness.  'A  lady  has  fainted 
— that's  all.'  The  crowd  breathed  and 
craned  forward  to  see. 

"Wilmington  squared  his  shoulders, 
lifted  his  head,  and  marched  up  the 
aisle  like  a  triumphant  Roman  laden 
with  his  victorious  spoils. 

"I  followed  after,  conscious  of  noth- 
ing but  his  transformation  and  the  curi- 
ous delight  his  indifferent  strength 
commanded.  I  found  a  taxicab,  and  in 
two  minutes  we  were  in  the  hotel.  In 
another  two  or  three  the  little  lady  was 
occupying  a  bed  in  my  suite  with  the 
house  doctor  and  a  soft-voiced  nurse 
in  attendance. 

"Wilmington  paced  the  hall.  He 
had  kept  in  the  background  and  his 
wife  had  not  seen  him.  His  magnifi- 
cent confidence  had  left  him.  Instead 
a  rasping  system  of  raw  nerves  seemed 
to  lay  themselves  bare.  I  thought  he 
would  go  to  pieces  when  the  doctor 
told  him  he  might  go  in  to  her.  He 
stood  for  an  eternity  outside  her  door 
— fumbling — groping  for  poise — and 
mopping  the  perspiration  from  his 
forehead.  Suddenly  I  saw  resolution 
touch  him.  He  turned  his  head  and 
gave  me  a  long,  quiet  look,  and  with- 
out further  ado  walked  triumphantly, 
eagerly,  in  to  his  wife." 

Shanley  Earle  paused  for  a  moment 
and  drew  violently  at  his  pipe.  Against 
the  windows  a  gentle  gust  of  rain 
spattered.  The  log  fire  burned  brightly, 
bathing  the  softly  lighted  room  in  a 


luxury  of  warmth.  The  man  turned  an 
intent  gaze  on  the  lovely  face  of  his 
wife  as  she  sat  silently  stitching  with- 
in the  circle  of  the  table's  rose-shaded 
light.  It  was  an  eloquent  look,  and 
there  was  just  a  suspicion  of  a  glim- 
mer as  his  eyes  fell  from  the  charming 
face  to  the  wee  silken-flannel  garment 
in  her  hands. 

He  spoke  again  lightly,  but  his  voice 
was  deep. 

"Well,  you  know,  Isobel,  there  is  as 
much  happiness  to  be  found  in  an  ex- 
cellent dinner  as  in  the  discovery  of  a 
lost  wife — if  she  doesn't  happen  to  be 
your  own — so  I  set  about  ordering  a 
feast  to  be  served  in  my  sitting-room 
that  made  old  Omar's  sketchy  menu 
look  like  codfish  and  postum.  I 
waited,  of  course,  till  the  chef  said 
'when,'  then  I  tiptoed  valiantly  to  that 
silent  door  and  tapped.  I  called 
through  the  panels  that  I  had  a  health 
to  toast,  and  while  I  was  still  signal- 
ing, the  door  was  flung  open  and  Wil- 
mington was  on  the  threshold  with 
heaven  in  his  eyes  and  that  demure  lit- 
tle lady  following  after,  her  small  face 
aflame. 

"After  dinner  she  told  me  the  story 
while  she  sat  with  her  hand  in  her 
husband's,  and  we  smoked  beside  the 
open  window. 

"It  seems  that  a  cruel  and  silly  lie 
had  been  flung  into  their  home  by  a 
cloven-hoofed  angel.  Wilmington  had 
haughtily  refused  to  explain,  and  his 
wife  quivered  with  the  hurt  and  sting 
of  it,  had  crept  away  to  hide.  Arthur 
searched  for  her  in  vain. 

"At  the  end  of  six  months  she  de- 
cided that  she  had  a  greater  capacity 
for  love  than  denial,  so  she  stripped 
her  pride  and  telegraphed  him  that 
she  was  returning.  She  boarded  a 
train,  jubilant  in  the  decision  that  her 
duty  held  no  alternative.  To  compel 
her  trembling  to  silence  she  purchased 
a  daily  paper  and  was  confronted  in 
the  first  headlines  she  saw  with  the 
news  of  the  explosion  in  her  hus- 
band's mine  and  his  reported  death. 
She  collapsed.  They  carried  her  from 
the  train  and  took  her  to  a  hospital. 
She  lay  for  weeks  in  intimate  touch 


A  MEDITATION 


305 


with  death.  When  she  ultimately  re- 
covered, she  turned  her  face  away 
from  the  desolate  past,  her  strength 
still  too  infirm  to  investigate  the  crush- 
ing end  of  her  happiness.  Wandering 
from  town  to  village  and  from  village 
to  city,  ever  finding  the  thing  she  fled, 
she  strayed  that  Saturday  into  the 
stronghold  of  the  laughter  loving, 
thinking,  possibly,  that  she  could  es- 
cape from  herself.  I  have  told  you  the 
result. 

"You  know  they  say,  Isobel,  that 
the  quarrels  of  lovers  are  the  renewal 
of  love.  As  we  sat  there  in  the  smil- 
ing moonshine,  the  light  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land  fell  across  their  faces, 
imparting  an  ineffable  content.  I 
thought  as  I  looked  at  them  how  sor- 
row and  happiness  had  transformed 
them  into  creatures  too  big,  for  all 
time,  for  petty  things;  how  that  long 
way  round  would  prove  to  be  the  short 
cut  to  heaven  here  and  hereafter." 

Lifting  the  unperused  paper  from 
his  knees,  the  man  laid  it  on  the  table, 
and  beside  it  on  a  bronze  tray  he 
placed  his  pipe.  He  stepped  to  where 


his  wife  sat  stitching  in  the  soft  light, 
and  bending  over  her  took  her  hands 
in  his. 

"I  suddenly  perceived,"  he  said, 
"that  the  mood  of  the  afternoon  was 
directing  me  also  toward  a  beckoning 
road,  and  all  at  once  I  only  knew  it 
led  me  home." 

"You  wondered,  when  I  came,  and 
were  comforted;  now  you  know  and 
are  satisfied." 

He  exerted  a  gentle  force  and  his 
wife  stood  before  him. 

As  she  did  so,  a  dainty  bit  of 
creamy  flannel  fell  to  her  feet.  Stan- 
ley Earle  stooped  and  picked  it  up. 
Very  carefully  he  held  it  outstretched 
at  arm's  length  before  him. 

His  face  became  transfigured.  "Iso- 
bel!" he  exclaimed,  awe  and  wonder 
in  his  voice.  "Isobel,  what  is  it?" 

His  wife  gave  a  tremulous  little 
laugh  and  caught  the  soft  robe  to  her 
breast. 

"That,"  she  said,  with  a  catch  in  her 
voice,  "that  is  to  be  henceforth  a  sym- 
bol of  home — Home  that  our  feet  may 
leave — never  our  hearts." 


A     /A  E  D  IT  AT  I  O  N 

As  I  sat  all  alone  in  the  quiet — 

The  quiet  so  still  and  so  deep, 
And  watched  the  moon  silver  the  landscape — 

The  moon  that  has  secrets  to  keep, 
I  was  calmed  by  the  magical  stillness, 

My  heart  was  lulled  softly  to  rest, 
And  my  thoughts  were  a-wing  like  the  swallow, 

When  homeward  it  flies  to  its  nest. 

Back  to  the  days  of  my  childhood, 

Back  to  the  days  when  I 
Had  known  but  the  bloom  of  the  roses, 

And  seen  but  the  blue  of  the  sky ; 
When  my  mother's  lap  was  a  haven, 

At  every  hour  of  the  day, 
Where  childish  sobs  were  forgotten, 

And  the  bruises  were  kissed  away. 

Slowly  my  gowns  have  been  lengthened, 

And  now  I  am  taller  than  she, 
And  yet  how  I  long  for  the  comfort 

That  I  found  on  my  mother's  knee. 
As  I  sat  all  alone  in  the  quiet, 

The  thought  seemed  to  come,  somehow : 
That  mother  is  holding  me  always, 

Tis  her  heart  that  is  holding  me  now. 

ELLA  FLATT  KELLEP 


LIL 


By   Georgie   Brooks 


LIL  COULD  NOT  control  her  im- 
patience as  she  peered  out  of 
the  little  square  window  of  her 
room  for  the  fortieth  time,  per- 
haps, at  the  strong,  muscular  man  who 
had  engaged  her  father  and  her 
brother  Bill  in  a  lengthy  conversation. 
She  knew  why  he  had  come.  She 
knew  why  he  was  so  persistent,  for 
this  was  his  second  visit  to  her  home 
since  sunrise.  Nor  could  her  uneasi- 
ness be  lessened  when  she  realized 
that  the  high  water,  which  had  flooded 
the  low  land  in  the  night,  must  have 
driven  Luke  Bell,  her  fugitive  lover, 
from  the  thickets  near  the  river,  into 
the  danger  of  arrest. 

To  fly  to  Luke,  to  warn  and  save  him 
was  her  one  consuming  desire,  but 
how  could  she  when  this  grim,  deter- 
mined man  was  waiting  outside  for 
just  such  an  opportunity  as  she  might 
give  him,  should  she  attempt  to  put 
Luke  on  his  guard.  To  wait  was  tor- 
ture, but  there  was  no  other  alterna- 
tive, until  she  saw  the  sheriff  ride 
leisurely  down  the  oak-lined  road  to- 
ward Hampton,  carrying  with  him  her 
hate,  and  not  the  information  he  had 
sought.  For  she  knew  that  her  father 
and  her  brother  had  had  too  much 
experience  in  the  past  in  giving  out 
incriminating  evidence,  unintention- 
ally, to  fall  into  that  error  again.  Her 
Uncle  Sam,  her  father's  brother,  was 
now  serving  a  term  in  the  penitentiary 
because  of  a  blunder  of  this  kind.  She 
felt  that  the  sheriff  could  not  have  de- 
veloped sufficient  cleverness,  in  the 
meantime,  to  get  from  them  the  infor- 
mation that  he  wanted  as  to  Luke's 
whereabouts. 

As  soon  as  her  enemy  was  hidden 
from  sight  by  a  turn  in  the  road,  she 
hurried  out  to  the  tumble-down  fence 


in  front,  where  Bill,  her  elder  brother, 
a  strapping  fellow  of  nineteen  or 
twenty,  with  a  round  head  set  firmly 
on  a  short  neck  attached  to  broad 
shoulders,  continued  to  lounge  in  the 
sunshine.  She  lost  no  time  in  making 
known  to  him  her  wishes. 

"I  want  to  sell  Dandy,"  she  cried. 
"Don't  you  think  Dan  Hart'll  buy 
him  ?  He  wanted  to  give  me  fifty  dol- 
lars for  him  last  summer." 

Nonplussed  by  her  abruptness,  Bill 
looked  at  the  jgirl.  He  saw  that  a 
struggle  was  going  on  within  her,  and 
although  he  had  not  the  keenness  to 
analyze  her  agitation,  his  reply  was 
not  unkind,  as  was  his  usual  attitude 
toward  her  when  he  thought  that  she 
was  over-stepping  her  woman's  place. 

"I  don't  see  what  you  want  to  sell 
him  for?"  he  stupidly  inquired.  "What 
will  you  do  for  a  saddle  horse?  If 
he  was  mine  I  wouldn't  take  that  for 
him." 

"You  know  Luke  took  Jim  Cane's 
steer,"  she  went  on,  determinedly,  "an' 
sold  it  for  fifty  dollars,  because  I 
asked  him  to  help  pay  the  in'trest  on 
our  mortgage,  as  Dad  is  sick  so  much 
an'  couldn't  get  the  money.  If  I  could 
pay  Jim  fifty  dollars,  mebbe  he  would 
not  send  Luke  to  prison."  Then  she 
added,  by  way  of  apology  for  Luke: 
"Luke  allus  said  (Jim  stole  his  roan 
horse — the  one  he  could  never  find." 

She  did  not  look  at  Bill  while  she 
was  speaking.  Her  anger  was  fast 
vanishing,  and  tears  were  near. 
Ashamed  of  her  emotion,  and  to  divert 
Bill's  attention,  she  looked  down  at  her 
foot,  which  she  rocked  in  the  sand. 
"Won't  you  help  me  sell  Dandy  an' 
pay  for  the  steer?"  she  pleaded. 

"I  dunno  but  I  will,"  he  answered, 
with  an  interest  that  she  had  not  ex- 


LIL. 


307 


pected.  "But  I  don't  believe  Jim 
Cane'll  take  the  money.  He  hates 
Luke  like  pizen." 

"I  guess  he  will,"  Lil  replied.  "But 
I'm  afraid  Dan  won't  buy  the  horse, 
an'  I  don't  know  anybody  else  who 
would  want  him.  Mebbe  he  will, 
though." 

"Mebe  he  will,"  acquiesced  Bill,  as 
he  rose  with  a  lazy  yawn.  "I  guess  I'll 
go  right  away  an'  see  if  Dan'll  buy 
him." 

Lil  entered  the  house  again,  but  an 
instant  later  slipped  out  by  the  rear 
door,  and  took  a  circuitous  route  along 
the  newly  risen  water  line.  Screened 
by  the  clumps  of  weeds  on  the  high 
ground,  she  darted  forward,  close  to 
the  margin  of  the  water,  and  as  rap- 
idly as  her  clinging  calico  skirt  would 
permit.  Hurrying  on,  she  clambered 
over  piles  of  driftwood,  scraggly  and 
damp  smelling,  and  trunks  of  fallen 
trees.  Soon  she  came  to  the  bank  of 
the  river.  Here  she  paused,  and 
thrusting  her  flapping  gingham  sun- 
bonnet  from  her  face,  listened  intently. 
Wisps  of  her  dark,  curling  hair  es- 
caped from  the  loose  coil  at  the  back 
of  her  head  and  fell  over  her  ears.  A 
frown,  ill-suited  to  her  sixteen  years, 
gathered  between  her  brows,  marring 
her  prettiness. 

She  turned  abruptly  to  the  left  and 
went  cautiously  forward,  as  a  mother- 
bird  might  approach  its  nest  in  a  time 
of  danger.  Stopping  beside  a  growth 
of  young  willows  that  lined  the  outer 
edge  of  the  thicket,  a  barrier  between 
detection  and  any  secrets  which  the 
deep  woods  might  hold,  she  glanced 
round  to  make  sure  that  she  was  not 
being  observed. 

Her  dog  had  followed  her  without 
her  knowledge.  Crowding  his  way  to 
her  side,  he  sniffed  at  the  package, 
wrapped  in  a  newspaper,  which  she 
carried  in  her  hand. 

"Hist!"  she  scolded  in  a  half-whis- 
per. The  animal  crouched  at  her  feet. 

Her  pulse  throbbed;  her  breath 
came  in  soft,  hurried  jets.  Moving 
farther  into  the  thicket,  she  gave  a 
low,  short  whistle,  as  musical  as  that 
of  a  bird,  and  with  the  same  intona- 


tion. Having  lived  all  her  life  in  the 
woods,  to  imitate  the  call  of  a  bird 
was  an  easy  and  perfect  thing  for  her 
to  do.  She  parted  the  young  willows 
and  looked  for  a  secure  footing. 

"Luke !"  she  called  in  a  quick,  eager 
voice.  But  there  was  no  response. 

"Luke!"  she  called  again,  and  a  lit- 
tle more  boldly.  "It's  Lil.  Where  are 
you?" 

Slowly  the  head  and  shoulders  of  a 
young  man  rose  above  the  undergrowth 
a  few  feet  in  advance  of  her,  and  in  a 
dazed  way  plowed  his  way  to  her  side, 
his  large  frame  reeling  in  the  effort. 
Hardship  told  in  his  face,  and  his  fur- 
tive glance  and  hungry  look  appealed 
to  the  girl.  His  eyes  brimmed  with 
love. 

"Are  you  all  right?"  she  anxiously 
inquired,  looking  up  at  him.  "The 
water  didn't  shut  you  in?" 

He  laughed  carelessly,  betraying  a 
stolid  indifference  to  his  situation, 
rather  than  courage. 

"I  swum  out,"  he  answered,  with 
conscious  pride  in  his  prowess,  looking 
down  at  his  moist  garments  as  he  held 
up  his  arms  for  her  inspection.  "The 
water  come  up  when  I  was  asleep.  My 
bed's  in  there  now,"  he  nodded  toward 
the  inner  thicket,  "an*  I  guess  it'll  stay 
there.  I  don't  care  if  it  does,"  he 
added  with  a  finality,  translated  to 
mean  that  he  was  chagrined  to  confess 
to  Lil  that  even  the  water  had  out- 
witted him.  "I'm  awful  hungry,  Lil. 
Where's  my  grub?" 

She  thrust  into  his  hand  the  pack- 
age that  she  had  brought.  The  action 
may  have  resented  Luke's  abruptness, 
'or  she  may  not  have  known  the  deli- 
cacy of  presenting  it  in  a  gentler  way. 
She  mutely  watched  him  with  grave, 
far-seeing  eyes  as  he  eagerly  un- 
wrapped the  food. 

"I  couldn't  come  sooner,"  she  said, 
after  a  silence.  "He  was  there  twict 
this  morning.  I  guess  he  thought  the 
high  water'd  run  you  out.  Anyway,  I 
was  afraid  he'd  watch  me."  She  stood 
facing  Luke  while  she  talked,  bruising 
the  young  willow  tops  as  she  nervously 
twisted  them  about  her  fingers. 

"Where's  he  now?"  Luke  presently 


308 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


inquired  with  indifferent  interest. 

"I  guess  he  went  back  to  Hampton. 
He  started  that  way." 

"Was  he  by  himself?" 

"No.    Jim  Cane  was  with  him." 

At  the  mention  of  his  enemy's  name, 
Luke's  breath  came  with  a  sudden  ef- 
fort. His  steel-gray  eyes  glittered  as 
he  tried  to  steady  his  trembling  hands. 

"Didn't  he  say  nothin'  about  me — 
'bout  arrestin'  me?" 

"I  don't  know/  she  responded.  "He 
talked  to  Dad,  an'  I  hain't  seen  Dad 
since.  I  come  as  soon  as  the  sheriff 
went." 

Characteristically  unmindful  of  the 
girl's  comfort,  Luke  had  seated  him- 
self on  an  old  tree  trunk,  gnarled  and 
scarred,  reclining  against  the  slope  of 
the  bank,  and  was  quietly  munching 
the  bacon  and  biscuit,  which  had  been 
crushed  into  a  soggy  mass  by  the  ner- 
vous gripping  of  Lil's  hand. 

"This  tastes  mighty  good  to  a  feller, 
I  can  tell  you,"  he  remarked.  "Speci- 
ally as  he's  had  nothin'  to  eat  since 
yisterday.  Lil,  you're  a  mighty  good 
girl,  and  I'll  have  a  mighty  good  wife 
when  we're  married.  I'll  bet  Hank 
Mason'll  hate  me.  He  thinks  a  lot 
of  you." 

"Oh,  bother!"  fretfully  exclaimed 
the  girl.  "What  do  you  want  to  talk 
about  Hank  for?  You  know  I  don't 
like  him."  She  turned  partly  away, 
and  anxiety  again  settled  in  her  eyes. 

Luke  grinned.  He  was  not  the  one 
to  determine  whether  Lil's  pettishness 
grew  out  of  annoyance  at  his  implying 
a  doubt  of  her  affection,  or  whether 
her  woman's  instinct  repelled  all  at- 
tempts at  jesting  in  a  time  of  danger, 
but  her  answer  greatly  pleased  him,  as, 
secretly,  he  was  somewhat  jealous  of 
Hank. 

Again  Lil  broke  the  silence,  which 
was  becoming  oppressive. 

"Luke,  I  wish  you  hadn't  took  Jim 
Cane's  steer,"  she  complained  as  she 
continued  to  twist  the  willow  tops,  and 
Luke  went  on  munching  his  food.  It 
had  cost  her  an  effort  to  say  those 
words,  for  Luke  usually  resented,  in 
no  mild  way,  all  her  criticism  of  him 
or  his  acts. 


"Why?"  he  inquired  blankly.  It  did 
not  occur  to  him  to  resent  her  inter- 
ference, so  great  was  his  surprise  at 
her  unreasonableness.  "You  know  I 
got  fifty  dollars  for  that  steer,  an'  be- 
sides, Jim  stoled  my  horse,"  he  finished 
meekly. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  replied  Lil,  unpla- 
cated.  "But  I  wish  you  hadn't." 

"I  don't  see  why,"  he  urged,  his 
point  of  view  utterly  outside  her  hori- 
zon, carrying  him  over  any  scruples 
which  she  might  harbor  or  put  for- 
ward. 

Turning  so  that  she  directly  faced 
him,  she  looked  at  him  with  deep,  un- 
flinching eyes,  her  heart  wildly  beat- 
ing in  anticipation  of  the  worst. 

"If  the  sheriff  catches  you,"  she 
choked,  in  an  effort  to  control  her  emo- 
tion, "you'll  have  to  go  to  prison  for 
a  long  time,  an'  then  mebbe  we'll  never 
be  married."  The  hitch  in  her  voice 
was  not  lost  upon  Luke. 

"Never  do  you  mind,"  he  hurriedly 
answered,  and  with  much  bravado: 
"Catchin'  before  hangin',  you  know. 
The  first  time  Jim  Cane  gets  drunk 
he'll  forget  I  stoled  his  steer.  Don't 
you  mind,  Lil.  I'm  all  right.  He'll 
never  get  me." 

Barely  had  the  words  escaped  from 
Luke's  lips  when  Lil's  dog,  lying  near 
waiting  the  pleasure  of  his  mistress, 
rose  with  a  snarl  and  a  lunge,  heading 
for  the  clearing  in  front.  The  next 
instant  Lil's  startled  eyes  beheld  the 
sheriff,  followed  by  Cane,  plunging 
neck-deep  to  their  horses  into  the 
growth  of  young  willows.  So  complete 
was  her  surprise  that  she  stood  spell- 
bound. 

"Oh,  Luke!"  she  helplessly  wailed. 

"No  use  to  get  scart,"  sullenly 
droned  Luke,  finding  his  voice.  He, 
too,  seemed  to  have  lost  all  power  of 
volition.  "If  I'm  took,  I'm  took,"  he 
faltered,  while  awaiting  the  approach 
of  the  sheriff  as  an  ox  yields  to  the 
unavoidable  yoke. 

The  finality  of  Luke's  words  roused 
the  girl  from  the  paralyzing  fear  that 
had  overwhelmed  her.  Her  habit  of 
being  ready  for  any  emergency  came 
back  to  her.  "Down,  Tige !"  she  called 


LIL. 


309 


as  the  dog  rose  to  the  defense  of  his 
friends,  by  keeping  the  horses  of  the 
intruders  at  bay.  She  saw  that  in  an- 
other instant  Tige  would  have  felt  the 
keen  sting  of  a  bullet  from  Cane's  rifle 
which  he  held  ready. 

"This  looks  bad,  Luke,"  remarked 
the  sheriff,  in  easy  familiarity,  as  he 
advanced  with  the  handcuffs.  Cane 
had  not  dismounted,  but  sat  quietly 
overlooking  the  proceedings. 

Luke  made  no  reply  nor  offered  any 
resistance,  but  as  the  smothered  sobs 
of  the  girl  reached  him,  a  quiver,  half 
voluntary,  half  involuntary,  passed 
over  him. 

The  girl  caught  his  glance,  and  her 
tears  were  stayed.  In  an  instant  she 
was  transformed.  Hate,  determina- 
tion, vengeance,  shone  in  her  eyes  and 
settled  in  the  quick  lines  of  her  face. 
The  fury  of  her  soul  was  roused.  It 
was  not  a  time  to  weep.  She  must 
save  Luke. 

They  filed  out  of  the  thicket,  Cane 
leading,  and  Lil  and  Tige  following  at 
the  last.  Once  upon  open  ground  Cane 
dismounted  and  assisted  Luke  into  his 
saddle,  a  feat  not  easy  of  accomplish- 
ment, considering  Luke's  great  size 
and  weight,  and  his  manacles.  Cane 
gave  one  end  of  the  strong  rope,  which 
he  had  tied  round  the  neck  of  his 
horse,  to  the  sheriff,  while  he  himself 
prepared  to  keep  near  on  foot. 

Lil  waited  until  she  saw  there  was 
nothing  that  she  could  do  there  to  help 
Luke;  then,  like  a  startled  quail,  she 
darted  toward  home,  actuated  by 
stronger  emotions  than  those  which 
forced  her  onward  in  search  of  Luke 
a  short  time  before. 

How  had  the  sheriff  learned  of 
Luke's  whereabouts?  That  was  the 
question  which  was  burning  into  her 
soul.  Had  the  officer  followed  her  in 
spite  of  her  caution?  Surely  the  two 
men  were  well  on  the  road  to  town 
when  she  had  started  for  Luke's  hid- 
ing place.  But  she  had  not  seen  Hank 
Mason  lurking  in  the  edge  of  the 
thicket  near  where  she  entered  it.  Nor 
had  she  seen  him  gallop  after  the  sher- 
iff and  Cane,  guiding  them  to  the 
place  where  he  knew  Luke  could  be 


found,  then  hurriedly  ride  away  to- 
ward Hampton. 

As  she  drew  near  her  home,  she  saw 
Bill  and  Dan  Hart  by  the  fence  in 
front,  and  that  Dan  had  hold  of  the 
rope  which  was  fastened  round  Dandy. 
Her  heart  gave  a  leap.  She  knew  now 
that  Dan  would  buy  the  horse.  Sor- 
row at  the  loss  of  Dandy  stung  her  for 
a  moment,  but  it  could  not  linger  with 
her,  as  joy  that  she  was  to  possess  the 
precious  fifty  dollars  with  which  to 
purchase  Luke's  immunity  from  ar- 
rest and  imprisonment  rose  supreme 
within  her. 

She  soon  came  up  to  the  two  men. 
After  she  and  Dan  had  exchanged 
greetings,  he  remarkad: 

"Well,  Lil,  you'll  miss  your  saddle 
horse,  but  you  must  get  Bill  to  give 
you  another  one.  Dandy  is  just  the 
horse  I  need  to  ride  after  my  cattle. 
I  need  another  good  horse,  as  I  don't 
like  to  ride  one  too  hard.  Yesterday  I 
was  at  Upper  Kings  River,  and  I  saw 
that  little  roan  that  Luke  Bell  used  to 
own,  ranging  with  Henry  Knowles' 
herd.  Henry  wasn't  at  home,  and  his 
new  foreman  didn't  know  whether  the 
horse  was  for  sale  or  not.  I'm  going 
up  that  way  again  in  a  few  days,  and 
I'll  see  if  Knowles  will  sell  him." 

Lil  and  Bill  exchanged  glances  at 
this  piece  of  information  which  Hart 
had  unconsciously  given  them. 

After  a  little  further  conversation, 
Dan  gave  Lill  the  fifty  dollars  in  gold, 
and  led  Dandy  away. 

Lil  and  Bill  talked  together  for  a 
little  while  after  Hart's  departure, 
then  Lil  went  into  the  house  to  make 
some  preparations,  and  Bill  hurried 
away  to  saddle  another  horse.  They 
were  soon  headed  for  Knowles'  ranch, 
fifteen  miles  away. 

As  luck  would  have  it,  they  had  gone 
but  a  mile  or  two  when  they  met 
Knowles,  who  was  on  his  way  to 
Hampton.  It  did  not  take  Lil  many 
minutes  to  tell  him  of  their  errand, 
with  the  result  that  he  wrote  out  a 
copy  of  a  paper  that  he  had  in  his 
bank  book  and  gave  the  copy  to  Lil. 

Lil  and  Bill  then  turned  and  gal- 
loped to  Cane's  ranch,  where  they 


310 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


found  Cane  sitting  in  the  shade  of 
some  poplars  in  his  yard,  talking  to 
two  oi  his  friends.  As  his  ranch  was 
on  the  road  to  Hampton  from  Lil's 
home,  he  had  stopped  in  when  he  and 
the  sheriff  had  reached  there  with 
Luke,  intending  to  saddle  another 
horse  and  follow  the  sheriff  into  town. 
But  finding  his  friends  waiting  for  him 
he  remained  to  visit  with  them  for  a 
while. 

Lil  and  Bill  dismounted  and  hitched 
their  horses  to  the  willows  in  front  by 
the  fence.  As  the  brother  and  sister 
came  toward  the  group  under  the  trees 
the  men  stopped  talking.  Lil  moved 
rapidly  forward  and  in  advance  of  Bill, 
as  if  the  least  delay  might  deprive  her 
of  the  pleasure  of  the  onset.  Soon  she 
stood  before  Cane,  two  crimson  spots 
burning  in  her  cheeks.  Her  black  eyes, 
gleaming  with  a  defiant  light,  flashed 
a  challenge  to  those  who  would  oppose 
her.  With  the  gaze  of  all  the  little 
company  riveted  upon  her  she  dropped 
the  fifty  dollars  on  an  empty  chair  be- 
side Cane  and  said,  as  she  caught  the 
questioning  glances  of  the  others: 

"That's  to  pay  for  your  steer." 

"What  steer?"  inquired  Cane  who, 
as  usual,  was  partly  under  the  influ- 
ence of  liquor.  "You  hain't  bought 
any  steer  of  me." 

"The  steer  you're  putting  Luke  in 
prison  about,"  she  answered,  standing 
lithe  and  straight,  and  looking  down 
upon  him  as  if  she  were  an  avenging 
angel. 

"No.  That  don't  go,"  replied  Cane, 
now  that  the  true  situation  had  dawned 
upon  him.  "Here's  your  money.  I 
don't  want  it.  You  don't  owe  me.  I'd 
ruther  have  Luke  as  I've  got  him  than 
to  have  the  money.  I  know  he  won't 
steal  any  more  of  my  cattle  if  I  get 
him  in  prison."  Cane  gathered  up  the 
gold  pieces  and  attempted  to  return 
them  to  her. 

But  Lil  snatched  from  her  pocket 
the  paper  that  she  had  got  from 
Knowles,  and  held  it  up  before  his  be- 
wildered eyes. 


"What's  that  you've  got  there?"  he 
demanded,  his  tones  quavering  slight- 
ly. He  rose  to  take  the  paper  from 
her, 

Lil  stepped  back  out  of  his  reach, 
holding  tightly  to  the  paper.  When  at 
a  safe  distance  she  read  it  aloud  so  that 
the  others  might  know  what  it  was 
about.  It  was  a  copy  of  a  bill  of  sale, 
which  Cane  had  given  Henry  Knowles 
and  the  written  description  of  the  ani- 
mal sold  by  Cane  was  so  accurate  that 
those  who  knew  Luke's  horse  could 
recognize  it  as  the  one  which  had  been 
stolen. 

Cane  sat  silently  down,  with  the  air 
of  one  who  was  monentarily  helpless. 

"Now,  Jim  Cane,"  said  Lil,  as  she 
still  gripped  the  paper.  "You  take 
the  money  I  give  you,  an'  then  give 
me  a  written  paper  saying  that  Luke 
has  paid  you  for  that  steer,  and  that  he 
is  not  going  to  jail,  or  I'll  go  right  to 
the  sheriff  and  tell  him  you  stoled 
Luke's  horse,  and  this  paper  proves 
it." 

Not  seeing  an  easier  way  out  of  the 
difficulty,  Cane  reluctantly  took  pencil 
and  paper  from  his  pocket  and  wrote 
as  Lil  requested.  When  he  had  fin- 
ished, she  spoke  again: 

"You've  said  in  this  paper  that  you 
got  sixty  dollars  for  Luke's  horse  that 
you  stole.  You  got  more  for  the  horse 
than  the  steer  was  worth.  You  give 
me  ten  dollars.  You  owe  Luke  that 
much,  and  I'll  collect  it  for  him." 

Triumph  shone  in  her  eyes  as  she 
received  the  paper  Cane  had  written 
for  her,  and  the  ten  dollars  she  de- 
manded of  him.  Turning  to  Bill,  who 
had  stood  silently  by  while  she  was 
dealing  with  Cane,  she  said :  "Let's 
go,"  and  with  the  air  of  one  who  had 
settled  accounts  with  her  enemy  in  a 
manner  eminently  satisfactory  to  her- 
self, she  marched  to  her  horse,  mount- 
ed it  without  assistance,  and  with  Bill, 
started  toward  town,  not  deigning  to 
look  at  Hank  Mason,  who  had  just 
ridden  up,  and  who  looked  question- 
ingly  after  her. 


THE    SCAR 


By  Bailey  AVillard 


THE  FIERCE  tropic  sun,  the  sea 
glare,  the  stare  of  the  stark 
coral  beaches,  and  the  loneli- 
ness of  the  great  briny  blue, 
gnaw  at  the  nerves  of  white  men  in 
the  South  Seas.  But  it  was  not  al- 
together these  things  that  had  un- 
strung Walter  Fanning  and  sent  him 
to  bed  to  toss  and  turn  about  all 
through  the  hot  night  in  his  bunga- 
low under  the  feather  duster  palms. 

An  island  schooner  may  be  two 
weeks  overdue  without  taking  all  the 
urbanity  and  glee  out  of  a  young  man 
awaiting  its  arrival  on  a  mid-Pacific 
island,  but  when  that  schooner  is  a 
month  behind  time  and  the  man's  wife 
happens  to  be  aboard,  there  is  good 
cause  for  apprehension. 

"If  that  Alice  Robinson  wasn't  such 
a  rotten  old  tub,"  groaned  Fanning, 
when  he  and  Gideon  Ruggles,  his  part- 
ner, the  only  white  man  beside  himself 
on  the  lonely  little  atoll,  stood  on  the 
beach  at  five  the  next  morning  and 
searched  the  vacant  summer  sea  with 
their  glasses,  "I  shouldn't  fret  so  much 
— but  her  masts  are  apt  to  snap  in  a 
ten  mile  breeze." 

"Oh,  well,  a  matter  of  masts " 

began  Ruggles,  in  a  big,  wholesome, 
reassuring  tone  to  the  disheartened 
husband. 

"But  you  know  she  isn't  a  safe 
boat,  Gideon,"  cried  Fanning  in  a 
peevish  voice.  "You  heard  Captain 
Nielsen  say  the  last  time  in  that  he 
expected  she'd  pile  her  bones  upon 
some  reef  inside  of  a  year." 

The  two  men  made  an  odd  study  in 
contrasts  as  they  stood  there  on  the 
white  beach,  facing  the  eastern  sea, 
fringed  with  the  fire  of  the  up-leaping 
tropic  sun.  Big  Ruggles,  thirty-five 
and  thewed  like  a  Vulcan,  had  a  fine 


large  head,  and  a  clear,  hopeful  blue 
eye.  But  what  marred  the  man  was 
a  side-long  knife  gash  that  ran  the 
full  length  of  his  right  cheek  above 
the  beard  line,  showing  an  ugly  diago- 
nal band  of  white  through  the  tan. 

Fanning,  though  not  a  small  man, 
measured  only  to  Ruggles'  shoulder, 
and  was  trim,  light  and  youthful  look- 
ing. Both  men  were  in  white  duck,  in 
which  they  had  dressed  every  day  of 
late  in  readiness  for  the  schooner. 

Clarice  Fanning  had  not  wanted  to 
leave  San  Francisco  and  come  to  the 
islands.  She  had  been  married  five 
years,  and  for  three  years  Fanning  had 
been  shipping  copra  out  of  Upolulu,  in 
the  Tuamotu  group.  Fanning  had  be- 
gun there  in  a  very  modest  way  with 
Ruggles,  whom  he  had  first  met  in 
Manila,  and  who  had  appealed  to  him 
instantly  as  the  kind  of  man  he  al- 
ways had  wished  to  know.  The  big 
man  knew  Browning,  also  he  knew  how 
to  butt  two  mutinous  Kanakas'  heads 
together  so  as  to  smash  them  both. 
When  he  had  told  Fanning  of  far- 
away, over-looked  Upolulu,  with  its 
jpearl  possibilities  and  its  copra  cer- 
tainties, there  was  nothing  for  it  but 
that  the  two  should  bunch  their  sav- 
ings, rent  the  atoll  from  its  native 
owner,  who  lived  on  Laraka,  forty 
miles  away,  and  go  into  the  island 
trade  together. 

Fanning's  wife  had  protested.  She 
looked  upon  the  island  enterprise  as  a 
desperate  adventure.  But  Fanning 
had  shown  her  how  he  could  come 
home  once  a  year  for  a  few  weeks,  and 
how  they  soon  would  be  rolling  about 
in  a  big  limousine.  But  though  there 
were  plenty  of  pearls  in  the  lagoon 
they  were  in  deeper  water  than  Rug- 
gles thought,  and  at  first  they  had  to 


312 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


rely  upon  copra,  which  meant  fighting 
robber  crabs,  punching  up  tired  natives 
and  awaiting  shipping  returns  from 
ports  afar.  So  that  letters  had  had  to 
stand  for  visits,  and  Fanning  had  not 
seen  his  wife  but  once  in  three  years. 
Every  letter  from  him  was  a  plea  for 
her  coming  down,  and  at  last  she  had 
consented  and  had  sailed  in  the  Alice 
Robinson  with  a  missionary  and  his 
wife.  And  that  was  why  the  impatient, 
palpitating  Fanning  had  been  haunting 
the  beach  and  straining  his  eyes,  day 
after  day,  for  the  schooner  that  had 
not  come. 

"Better  go  back  to  the  job,  Walter," 
his  partner  was  advising  him  that 
morning  as  the  two  stared  out  upon  the 
vacant  blue.  "It  will  make  the  time 
go  faster." 

"Time!"  gruffed  Fanning.  "Six 
weeks  from  Hawaii,  and  it's  been  done 
in  ten  days!  I  know  what  I'll  do  if 
another  schooner  happens  in.  I'll 
charter  her  and  make  for  Honolulu." 

"Not  on  your  union  suit!"  objected 
Ruggles.  "Why,  the  Alice  would  come 
nosing  in  before  you  were  out  two 

days.  And  then "  He  shut  his 

eyes  and  clenched  his  big,  strong 
hands.  For  he  had  a  secret,  this  great 
ugly  man — and  it  concerned  Fanning's 
wife.  Never  had  he  breathed  to  him 
the  fact  that  he  knew  Clarice — that  he 
had  not  merely  known  her,  but  had 
loved  her  and  loved  her  still.  The  pic- 
ture of  her  sailing  tardily  in  while 
'Fanning  was  absent  on  his  idle  search 
— they  two,  Clarice  and  he,  alone  upon 
the  island — for  the  Kanaka  didn't 
count — was  too  much  for  his  imagina- 
tion. For  the  last  walk  they  had 
taken  together  along  the  willowed  ala- 
meda  at  San  Jose  years  agone  was  still 
vivid  before  him,  and  the  wistful  look 
in  her  sweet  brown  eyes  when  she  had 
said: 

"You  are  going  so  far  away,  dear! 
It's  a  tragic  distance  to  the  Philippines. 
Will  you  love  me,  away  off  there,  and 
come  back  to  me  again?" 

"I  will  always  love  you  and  I  will 
come  back  to  you,"  he  had  promised. 

But  he  had  not  come  back.  He  had 
stayed  to  make  his  fortune  in  the 


South  Seas — his  fortune  and  hers.  In 
the  Micronesian  group  he  had  bought 
a  little  schooner  and  had  gone  into  the 
island  trade.  But  the  island  outlaw, 
Bully  Hayes,  had  seized  the  vessel 
one  night  at  Butaritari,  and  after  a 
hard  fight  had  put  to  sea  in  her,  leav- 
ing Ruggles  insensible  on  the  beach, 
with  the  awful  knife-gash  in  his  cheek. 

Ended  were  all  his  hopes  of  Clarice. 
How  could  he  go  back  to  her  with  that 
hideous  scar  upon  his  face — to  the 
woman  who  had  told  him  over  and  over 
again  how  proud  she  was  of  her  hand- 
some lover?  He  was  glad  when  he 
read  in  a  San  Francisco  paper  of  how 
he  had  been  slain  on  the  beach  by  the 
pirate. 

And  now  Clarice  was  coming  to  Up- 
olulu.  Well,  there  was  but  one  thing 
to  do,  and  that  was  to  keep  clear  of 
the  Alice  Robinson  until  she  was  ready 
to  leave  the  island  and  then  to  sail  in 
her. 

"I'm  going  to  do  it,  Ruggles!"  in- 
sisted Fanning,  referring  to  his  pro- 
posed search  for  the  overdue  schooner. 
"The  Tropic  Bird  will  be  here  from 
Tahiti  soon,  and  I'll  buy  up  old  Wil- 
kins  and  go  scouring  the  sea  for  Clar- 
ice. You're  such  a  hog  for  work  you 
can  keep  on  the  job.  It  won't  be  spend- 
ing much  money.  A  handful  or  two 
of  those  pearls  will  do  it.  God!  I'd 
give  all  my  share  to  know  where  she 
is!" 

"You  could  have  mine,  too,  Walt," 
declared  Ruggles  in  fine,  friendly 
tones.  "But  you'd  better  wait  a  week. 
Come  back  to  work.  We're  getting  up 
some  beauties  now,  and  there'll  be  all 
the  more  to  show  Mrs.  Fanning  when 
she  comes  in." 

For  at  last  the  lagoon  had  been 
yielding  up  its  treasure.  The  new 
suits,  bought  with  the  copra  returns, 
had  admitted  of  the  divers  going  down 
in  many  fathoms,  to  search  out  "shell" 
on  virgin  banks  of  which  the  island's 
former  fishers  had  only  dreamed.  Fan- 
ning and  Ruggles  had  been  toiling  like 
demons,  but  the  looting  of  the  lagoon 
had  made  them  rich. 

"Here  comes  old  Safety  Matches!" 
boomed  Ruggles,  as  the  tall,  wonderful 


THE  SCAR 


313 


figure  of  a  naked  Kanaka  came  over 
from  the  lagoon.  "What's  wrong  now, 
Safe?" 

Safumassee,  the  native  foreman, 
blinked  his  eyes  and  shook  his  head. 

"Man  go  down — man  no  come  up. 
Mebbee  shark  get  him." 

"Lord!"  growled  Fanning,  turning 
quickly.  "We  can't  afford  to  lose  one 

of  those  suits  just  now  when Run 

down,  Rug,  and  see  what  can  be  done." 

"The  man's  something,  too,"  ob- 
served Ruggles,  hurrying  down  to  the 
boat. 

It  was  only  a  matter  of  ten  minutes' 
work  to  disentangle  a  fouled  line  and 
get  the  diver  up,  but  the  man's  bulging 
eyes  and  spasmodic  intake  of  breath 
told  the  story  of  how  near  he  had  come 
to  death.  Fanning,  tragically  inter- 
ested in  the  work  again,  brought  in  a 
boat  load  of  mother-of-pearl.  Then 
he  went  over  to  where  Ruggles,  who 
had  come  ashore  in  another  boat,  was 
superintending  the  opening  of  a  pile 
of  rotted  shell,  keeping  well  to  wind- 
ward, for  it  smelled  loudly. 

"Look  a-here,  partner!"  cried  Rug- 
gles. "See  what  we're  getting  out  of 
this  mess!  Look  at  this  one!  Some 
pearl,  eh!" 

"Yes,  but  what's  that  brown  devil 
trying  to  put  into  his  mouth?"  Fan- 
ning frowned,  seized  the  Kanaka's 
hand  and  wrenched  from  it  a  great 
white  gem.  It  fell  among  the  coral, 
and  both  partners  plumped  down  upon 
their  knees  and  began  poking  about 
for  it,  Fanning  finding  it  at  last. 

"The  biggest  yet!"  he  cried  with  de- 
light. "The  very  biggest!"  He  held 
the  white  jewel  aloft,  and  as  he  did 
so  his  eye  ran  down  the  lagoon  and 
out  through  the  rippling  inlet.  "Hoo- 
ray!" he  yelled  ecstatically.  "There's 
the  Alice!  Bless  her  rotten  old  tim- 
bers, they  held  together  this  trip." 

"Right-oh!"  boomed  Ruggles  in  in- 
stant glee.  Then  his  face  fell,  and  the 
great  scar  on  his  cheek  grew  a  ghast- 
lier white.  She  was  coming — she 
would  soon  be  there.  And  he  must 
go. 

"Wish  you'd  send  word  over  to  the 
house  and  have  Gotolo  get  up  a  big 


feed,"  said  Fanning.  "We'll  treat 
Captain  Nielsen  well  while  he's  here, 
and  when  he  sails " 

"When  he  sails  I  go  with  him," 
broke  in  Ruggles,  abruptly. 

"Go  with  him?"  cried  Fanning,  star- 
ing hard  at  his  partner.  "Are  you 
crazy,  man?  What  d'yeh  mean?" 

"I  mean  I'm  going!"  Ruggles 
watched  the  growing  hull.  "I've  been 
planning  to  set  up  shop  down  in  Mel- 
bourne— something  in  the  freighting 
line." 

"But  you  wouldn't  leave  me  in  the 
lurch  here  with  a  lot  of  Kanakas,  would 
you,  old  man?  Mrs.  Fanning  would 
not  have  it." 

"Why,  there'll  be  the  missionary 
and  his  wife — they're  a  heap  better 
company  than  I  am.  She  won't  be 
lonesome."  He  looked  wistfully  across 
the  lagoon  to  the  incoming  Alice,  now 
nearing  the  anchorage. 

There  was  a  fond  meeting  aboard 
the  schooner,  at  which  Ruggles  ashore 
glanced  with  a  great  heaving  sigh, 
then,  turning,  fled  for  the  palms.  He 
was  nowhere  in  sight  when  Fanning 
reached  the  beach  with  Clarice  and 
the  Reverend  Alex  Montgomery  and 
his  wife.  Nor  did  he  appear  at  dinner 
in  the  bungalow,  where  little,  round, 
red-faced  Captain  Nielsen  ate  heartily 
of  green  turtle  and  told  about  the  head 
winds  which  had  delayed  his  arrival. 

"And  pray,  where  is  that  interesting 
Mr.  Ruggles  of  yours,  Walter?"  asked 
Clarice,  curiously,  after  dinner.  "I'm 
dying  to  see  him." 

"Perhaps  he  isn't  well,  dear,"  re- 
plied Fanning.  "I'll  go  look  him  up." 

He  found  Ruggles  in  one  of  the 
cabins  under  the  palms. 

"Say,  Rug,  what  in  the  world  have 
you  turned  recluse  for?"  he  cried, 
shaking  the  big  man  by  the  shoulder 
as  he  sat  upon  the  edge  of  a  couch 
writing  in  his  note  book  by  the  light 
of  a  candle.  "Making  your  will?" 

"No — just  figuring  up  my  share." 

"Your  share!  Why,  there's  the 
whole  lagoon!  Nobody  knows  what's 
in  it.  "If  you're  chump  enough  to  go 
away  now " 

"You  can  have     the     rest.     You're 


314 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


married — you  need  more  than  I  do. 
Minute  I  saw  that  schooner  the  old 
wanderlust  got  me  again." 

"The  devil  got  you,  you  mean !  Why, 
Rug,  you  can't  leave  this  island — it's 
incredible." 

"Of  course  it  is — that's  why  I  do  it," 
came  the  inept  reply.  "Go  back  to 
them,  and  leave  me  to  my  figures." 

"All  right,  Old  Inscrutable!  But 
come  in  when  you're  done  with  'em. 
Clarice  wants  to  see  you." 

Ruggles'  big  frame  thrilled  again  at 
the  name,  but  he  only  nodded. 

"Oh,  you  and  she  are  sufficient  for 
each  other  to-night!"  he  sighed.  And 
as  Fanning  withdrew,  he  crushed  the 
notebook  in  his  great,  strong  hand. 

Up  until  the  very  hour  of  the 
schooner's  departure,  three  days  later, 
Ruggles  kept  away  from  Clarice.  On 
his  urgent  plea,  Fanning  had  settled 
accounts,  giving  him  a  check  on  a 
Sydney  bank  for  his  share  of  the 
pearls  and  copra. 

It  was  in  the  cool  of  late  afternoon 
and  the  palms  were  waving  in  a  light 
off-shore  breeze  when  the  Alice  sailed. 

"Clarice  thinks  it's  mighty  strange 
you  haven't  showed  yourself  to  her," 
complained  Fanning  to  Ruggles  in  the 
captain's  cabin  while  the  anchor  was 
coming  up.  Suddenly  he  turned  upon 
his  friend.  "Are  you  afraid  of  wo- 
men?" he  demanded. 

"That's  it,  old  man,  precisely — I'm 
afraid  of  women."  Ruggles'  eyes 
roved  wildly  about  the  little  cabin. 
Fanning  did  not  see  that  they  were  wet 
when  he  said:  "Tell  Mrs.  Fanning — 
tell  her — say  that  I  wanted  to  see  her, 

but— well,  that  I'm  different— I " 

And  he  pointed  to  the  scar. 

"Oh!"  cried  Fanning.  "You're 
away  off.  Why,  Clarice  wouldn't  mind 
that  at  all." 

"If  you  knew — if  you  only  knew." 
Ruggles  held  up  his  big  hands  des- 
pairingly. Then  he  reached  down  and 
caught  Fanning's  fingers  and  gripped 
them  hard.  "Good-bye,  my  boy! 
Good-bye!"  And  he  went  into  his 
own  cabin  and  shut  the  door. 

They  all  waved  their  adieux  as  the 
schooner  made  her  slow  way  over  the 


lagoon  and  down  the  creek,  and  Clar- 
ice waved  with  them;  but  Ruggles 
made  no  reply. 

As  the  Alice  dipped  her  nose  into 
the  first  souse  of  spray  outside,  he 
heard  eager  voices.  Captain  Nielsen 
and  his  mate  were  staring  at  a  strange 
schooner  that  came  bounding  over  the 
waves. 

"Vot  ship  is  it?  Ay  bane  seen  her 
before,  Ay  tank."  The  Captain  passed 
his  glass  to  Ruggles. 

"The  Southern  Star — my  schooner," 
gasped  Ruggles,  almost  unbelievingly. 
"The  same  that  was  stolen  out  of  Bu- 
taritari  by  Bully  Hayes  five  years 
ago." 

"Bully  Hayes!"  A  look  of  dark  anx- 
iety crossed  the  face  of  the  Captain. 
"Vy,  Ay  bane  hearing  of  him  yoost  a 
few  weeks  ago  to  Honolulu!  He 
shooted  the  captain  of  the  Islander  and 
stole  all  his  copra.  Ay  tanken  ve  put 
on  leedle  more  sail." 

"No;  he's  heading  for  the  inlet!" 
cried  Ruggles,  seizing  the  Captain  by 
the  arm;  "and  you're  going  right  back 
to  protect  those  women  of  Upolulu! 
He's  heard  about  our  pearling,  and  he 
is  interested  in  that.  You're  going 
back  and  help  fight  him  off,  d'yeh 
hear?" 

The  Captain  protested.  He  had  no 
women  or  pearls  to  protect.  Upolulu 
could  take  care  of  itself.  But  as  Hayes 
headed  in,  and  the  Star  showed  her 
stern,  he  grew  a  little  braver,  bouted 
ship  on  Ruggles'  insistent  plea,  and 
was  sailing  into  the  inlet  behind  the 
outlaw  when  of  a  sudden  a  shower  of 
rifle-shots  riddled  his  mainsail  and  the 
angry  voice  of  Bully  Hayes  bellowed 
through  the  megaphone: 

"On  your  way,  old  horse!  Or  I'll 
send  you  to  Kingdom  Come!" 

In  a  wild  panic  Nielsen  ordered  the 
Alice  about,  despite  the  urgent  prayer 
of  Ruggles,  and  she  was  making  off 
down  the  inlet  again  in  the  failing 
evening  light,  when  the  big  man 
dropped  gently  overboard  and  swam 
for  shore  with  great  swinging  strokes. 

In  twenty  minutes  he  was  on  the 
beach  in  the  gathering  murk;  in  a  half 
hour  he  had  passed  the  Star  where  she 


THE  SCAR 


315 


lay  quietly  at  anchor  just  inside  the 
lagoon,  and  within  an  hour  he  was 
calling  to  Fanning  from  the  shelter  of 
the  palms. 

"Great  Scott,  Ruggles,  back  again?" 
Fanning  stared  at  the  returned  voy- 
ager in  amaze.  "Montgomery  thought 
he  saw  the  schooner  sailing  back  up 
the  creek,  but  I  told  him  he  must  be 
mistaken,  for  she  showed  no  lights." 

"She  isn't  the  Alice  and  she  shows 
no  lights  because  Bully  Hayes  com- 
mands her,"  said  Ruggles  quietly. 
"That's  why  I  swam  ashore." 

"Bully  Hayes!"  cried  Fanning,  in 
dizzy  horror.  Then  he  shot  an  anxious 
glance  toward  the  house. 

"Yes — in  the  very  boat  he  stole  from 
me  five  years  ago.  He's  here  and  he's 
after  those  pearls.  Now,  there's  a 
dozen  rifles  in  the  rack.  Better  see 
that  they're  cleaned  up  and  that  the 
cartridges  are  all  right.  Give  me  a 
gun  right  now,  and  I'll  go  back  and  do 
some  scouting." 

He  took  the  rifle  handed  out  to  him 
and  disappeared  in  the  direction  of  the 
schooner. 

Fanning  stirred  up  the  natives  and 
tried  to  make  them  understand  the 
situation.  Perhaps  they  understood  it 
better  than  he,  for  the  name  of  Bully 
Hayes  was  a  terrible  one  to  them.  The 
half-a-dozen  rifles  placed  in  the  hands 
of  the  more  trusty  ones  were  gladly 
received.  Fanning  stationed  his  men 
on  the  veranda  of  the  bungalow  and 
went  in  to  consult  with  the  missionary. 
Clarice  and  Mrs.  Montgomery,  to 
whom  the  unpleasant  news  was  last 
to  come,  were  listening  to  the  minis- 
ter's tales  of  Bully  Hayes.  Fanning, 
who  feared  the  effect  of  these  stories 
upon  Clarice,  got  Montgomery  outside, 
and  while  they  waited,  rifles  in  hand, 
upon  the  veranda  where  the  silent  Ka- 
nakas lounged  and  smoked  and  cast 
worried  looks  toward  the  lagoon,  the 
missionary  resumed  his  history. 

"As  I  was  telling  the  ladies,"  he 
said  in  his  dry,  precise  tones,  "this 
Bully  Hayes  is  the  worst  man  who 
ever  came  into  the  South  Seas.  He 
stole  a  barkentine  out  of  Callao,  sailed 
her  to  San  Francisco,  loaded  her  up 


with  lumber,  sold  it  in  Acapulco,  and 
then " 

"Yes,  I  know,"  broke  in  Fanning  im- 
patiently. "But  instead  of  dealing  in 
ancient  history  we  ought  to  be  schem- 
ing to  outwit  the  beast.  Here  comes 
Ruggles.  Perhaps  he  has  learned 
something." 

"All  quiet,"  reported  Ruggles  from 
below  the  veranda  rail.  "Guess  he'll 
wait  till  morning  before  he  shows  up." 

He  went  back  to  the  little  shed  by 
the  lagoon  beach,  where  he  had 
watched  before,  and  took  Safumassee 
with  him. 

Ruggles  was  right.  Not  until  after 
sunrise  next  morning  did  Hayes  leave 
the  schooner.  The  big  sentinel  rushed 
back  to  the  bungalow  to  tell  the  news. 

"He's  coming  ashore  with  a  boatload 
of  men,"  he  told  Fanning,  who  came 
out  alone  to  meet  him.  "Where  are  all 
your  Kanakas?" 

"Lit  out,  every  cowardly  mother's 
son  of  'em!"  groaned  Fanning.  "Must 
have  seen  Hayes  leave  the  schooner." 

"There  they  go — in  the  boats !"  cried 
Ruggles,  pointing  toward  the  lagoon, 
"and  they're  taking  the  rifles  along 
with  them.  Hayes  won't  bother  about 
them.  He  wants  us  and  the  pearls. 
They're  off  for  Laraka — -Safety 
Matches  and  all.  I  thought  that  chap 

would  be  loyal,  but Say,  this  isn't 

the  pleasantest  situation  in  the  world, 
is  it!  Wish  now  we'd  paddled  out  in 
the  night  for  Laraka.  It's  only  forty 
miles." 

"Brilliant  hindsight!"  fumed  Fan- 
ning. "If  we'd  only  got  the  idea  last 
night.  Too  late  now,  eh?" 

"Perhaps  not,"  mused  Ruggles, 
glancing  across  the  veranda  to  where 
a  sweet,  pale  face  showed  inside  the 
window.  Clarice!  His  pulses  leaped. 
He  took  an  involuntary  step  toward 
her  and  stopped.  Then  he  stepped  for- 
ward again  boldly.  "We'd  better  try 
for  Laraka,"  he  said  in  low  tones  to 
Fanning;  "it's  about  the  only  chance 
we  have." 

"Clarice!"  Fanning  called  to  his 
wife.  "Where  are  the  Montgomeries?" 

"Gone  down  to  the  landing,"  she 
cried  back  in  the  old  musical  tones — 


316 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


only  there  was  a  quaver  of  fear  in 
them. 

"The  batty  old  duffer!  He  was  to 
stay  here.  I'll  go  call  'em."  And  he 
ran  down  the  coral  walk. 

Ruggles  stood  in  vibrant  hesitation 
as  Clarice  came  out  upon  the  veranda, 
her  white  skirt  fluttering  in  the  morn- 
ing breeze.  His  sensitive  soul  shrank 
at  the  thought  of  the  horror  that  would 
fill  those  familiar  sweet  brown  eyes — 
those  eyes  which  once  had  shone  with 
love  and  pride  for  him — when  they 
should  behold  his  pitifully  mutilated 
face.  Slowly  and  painfully  he  turned 
toward  Clarice,  who  was  now  standing 
by  the  veranda  rail  not  three  yards  dis- 
tant from  him,  and  saw  the  look  of 
mild  inquiry  fade  from  her  face,  leav- 
ing it  white  with  terror  and  amaze- 
ment. 

"Edgar  Vail!"  she  breathed,  her 
hand  clutching  the  rail  beside  her.  "Ed- 
gar! Then  you're — you're  not  dead!" 

"I  am  worse  than  dead,  Clarice,"  he 
said,  turning  his  marred  cheek  to  the 
woman  before  him. 

"And  it  was  because  of  that  scar  that 
you  never  came  back  to  me  ?  Did  you 
measure  my  love  at  so  little  as  to  think 
that  that  would  make  any  difference  to 
me?  Oh,  Edgar!  Was  that  all  that 
kept  you  away  from  me — only  that?" 
Her  voice  died  away  in  a  little  sob,  and 
Edgar  Vail  read  in  the  eyes  upturned 
to  his  all  the  fullness  of  life  and  love 
which  his  foolish  pride  and  sensitive- 
ness had  sacrificed. 

"Yes,  that  was  all!  But  wasn't  it 
enough?  I  planned  that  you  should 
never  see  me  again,  after  it  happened. 
I  thought  a  woman  couldn't  love  a  man 
so  multilated  as  this,  and  you,  Clarice, 
above  all  women,  with  your  dread  of 
the  unlovely  so  strong  in  you.  And 
I  loved  you  so!  God,  how  I've  loved 
and  longed  for  you  all  these  years,  yet 
T  was  too  cowardly  to  come  back  to 
you  and  see  in  your  eyes  the  horror 
and  revulsion  that  I  thought  they  must 
hold  for  me  when  they  beheld  this.  But 
now  you  say  it  would  have  made  no 
difference!  Bless  you — bless  you!" 
His  eyes  shone  proudly  for  a  moment, 
then  they  took  on  a  look  of  pain  as  he 


thought  of  his  great  loss.  "Say  it 
again,  Clarice — say  it  again." 

"It  would  have  made  no  difference 
to  me,"  she  repeated,  "not  the  least  in 
the  world!" 

"Thank  you!"  he  cried  with  a  half- 
sob,  as  he  clenched  his  hands  and  his 
whole  frame  trembled. 

Pity  for  him  and  his  suffering 
brought  the  quick  tears  to  her  eyes. 
"Oh,  my  poor  boy,  my  poor  boy!"  she 
whispered. 

The  sound  of  Fanning's  footsteps 
hurrying  back  from  the  beach  brought 
them  rudely  to  the  realization  of  things 
as  they  were  and  of  their  present 
danger. 

"You'd  better  get  ready,  Clarice," 
said  Vail.  "We're  going  in  a  boat  to 
Laraka.  Hurry,  there's  not  a  minute 
to  waste!" 

Fanning  came  running  back,  and 
while  he  and  Clarice  gathered  up  some 
light  belongings,  including  their  pearl 
treasure,  Vail  filled  a  demijohn  with 
water  and  flung  some  sea  biscuit  into 
a  bag.  Then  they  hurried  down  to  the 
little  palm  sheltered  cove  where  the 
Montgomerys  were  baling  out  a  native 
canoe. 

"They've  taken  everything  but  this 
little  old  boat,"  cried  the  missionary. 
"I  hope  she'll  hold  us  all." 

They  stowed  the  luggage  and  got  in. 

"She's  pretty  well  down  by  the 
stern,"  Vail  undertoned  to  Fanning, 
"and  I  don't  believe  there's  a  foot  of 
freeboard  forward.  I'm  such  a  weight 
— you  never  can  get  to  Laraka  with  me 
in  her."  The  three  men  plied  the  pad- 
dles vigorously,  Vail  on  his  side  pull- 
ing singly  against  the  other  two. 

"There  they  are,  at  the  landing!" 
cried  Fanning.  "They  haven't  seen  us 
yet.  If  we  hug  this  bushy  shore  until 
they  get  up  into  the  palms  we  can 
make  a  clean  getaway." 

"That's  our  game,"  said  Vail, 
quietly.  "Better  keep  the  whole  la- 
goon between  us  and  the  schooner." 

"But  if  we  get  outside  they'll  be 
sailing  down  after  us,"  suggested 
Montgomery. 

"Not  on  this  tide,"  said  Vail,  con- 
fidently. "The  schooner  can't  get 


THE  SCAR 


317 


through  the  creek  for  two  hours.  But 
their  small  boats  are  another  matter." 

He  glanced  back  at  the  calm,  sweet 
face  of  Clarice.  She  looked  at  him 
hopefully,  proudly,  as  to  one  who 
would  see  them  safely  through  this 
desperate  adventure.  As  they  swung 
around  the  point,  and  out  of  the  cove, 
they  saw  the  boats  of  the  landing  party 
lying  at  the  little  dock,  with  only  one 
man  in  her.  At  first  the  man  did  not 
observe  them,  but  when  just  opposite 
'him  and  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
away,  he  sprang  to  his  feet  suddenly, 
and  set  up  a  warning  shout  to  his 
mates. 

"Pull  away!"  cried  Vail,  tugging  so 
hard  at  his  paddle  that  the  big  mus- 
cles stood  out  upon  his  bare,  bronzed 
arms.  "Lively,  now.  It's  going  to  be 
a  race." 

But  in  the  time  that  intervened  be- 
fore Hayes  and  his  men  could  return 
to  the  boat,  the  canoe  was  well  out 
in  the  lagoon.  Though  down  in  the 
water,  with  her  overload,  she  was  mak- 
ing good  headway  under  the  stout 
strokes  of  the  paddles. 

"Good  Lord!"  cried  Fanning,  his 
face  graying;  "here  they  come!" 

"We're  all  right!"  came  the  assur- 
ing tones  of  Vail.  "We're  out  of 
range,  and  if  we  work  hard  we'll  stay 
out." 

He  stole  another  glance  at  Clarice, 
and  her  eyes  met  his  in  radiant  faith. 
She  saw  what  this  big,  strong  man  was 
doing  in  pushing  his  one  paddle  against 
the  other  two,  without  a  single  swerve 
of  the  bow  to  his  side,  and  her  frank 
pride  in  his  great  strength  and  un- 
daunted courage  was  reflected  in  her 
beautiful  eyes. 

They  passed  the  schooner,  half  a 
mile  away,  and  glanced  anxiously  to- 
ward her,  but  she  put  out  no  boat,  for 
the  Kanakas  were  all  napping  on  the 
deck.  The  little  isle  near  the  head  of 
the  creek  loomed  white  before  them 
with  its  tuft  of  palms.  Toward  this 
isle,  Vail,  by  a  still  stronger  sweep  of 
his  paddle,  and  by  dexterous  feather- 
ing, headed  the  canoe,  unobserved  by 
the  others.  For,  glancing  astern,  he 
had  seen  that  Hayes'  boat  was  gaining 


upon  them,  and  he  had  determined  up- 
on a  new  course. 

"Here,  we're  not  going  to  the  isl- 
and," protested  Fanning. 

"Yes,  we  are!"  came  the  vibrant 
tones  of  Vail,  and  on  toward  the  white 
beach  they  sped. 

"But  he's  gaining — we  can't  stop 
there."  Fanning  tried  to  head  the 
canoe  off  shore. 

"Only  a  moment!"  insisted  Vail. 

"But  did  you  hear  that  bullet?" 
gasped  Fanning,  ashen  white. 

"I  heard  it,  and  I  heard  that  one!" 
calmly  replied  Vail,  as  another  whirl 
of  lead  zipped  over  the  low  waves. 
"We're  going  to  the  island,  so's  to 
block  his  game — at  least  I  am.  Mrs. 
Fanning,  will  you  take  this  paddle!" 
He  passed  it  aft  to  her  and  plumped 
overboard  in  water  up  to  his  breast  and 
began  to  wade  ashore,  holding  his  rifle 
above  his  head.  "Go  ahead  Good- 
bye!" His  backward  gaze  was  all  for 
Clarice. 

"No,  no!"  she  cried,  agonizedly, 
turning  the  boat  with  her  paddle,  while 
the  two  men  paused  confusedly. 

Vail  grasped  the  stern  of  the  boat 
and  gave  it  a  mighty  push  that  sent  it 
flying  down  toward  the  mouth  of  the 
creek. 

"What  a  man!"  cried  the  mission- 
ary, picking  up  his  paddle  and  plying 
it  vigorously,  while  another  bullet  tore 
over  their  heads.  "He  knew  that  his 
weight  was  loading  down  the  canoe." 

"It  was  a  noble  act,"  commented  his 
wife. 

"That's  putting  it  mildly,"  cried 
Fanning.  "He'll  never  leave  the  isl- 
and alive.  He's  going  down  there  to 
make  a  stand."  He  pointed  to  the  nar- 
rows below.  "He's  going  to  keep  them 
from  following  us." 

He  could  not  have  dreamt  what  his 
words,  "He'll  never  leave  the  island 
alive,"  meant  to  Clarice,  though  she 
winced  visibly,  and  her  eyelids  tight- 
ened as  those  of  one  in  torment. 

Vail  was  now  ashore  and  running 
along  the  beach  ahead  of  them.  Soon 
he  came  to  the  lower  end  of  the  islet 
Where  a  drift  log  lay  white  in  the  morn- 
ing sunlight  upon  the  dazzling  coral. 
4 


318 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


As  they  passed  he  sang  out  to  them  in 
his  big,  easy,  good  humored  tones : 

"Good-bye,  folks!  Take  care  of 
yourselves!  Keep  her  due  east,  Wal- 
ter. You  ought  to  be  there  safe  before 
night.  It  isn't  rough  outside,  and  the 
wind  is  with  you.  Good-bye!"  His 
eyes  were  upon  Clarice  as  he  spoke, 
and  as  the  canoe  passed  within  biscuit 
toss  of  him  he  looked  fondly  and  ab- 
sorbedly  upon  her.  Her  soul  was  in 
her  face,  and  he  saw  it — the  pure  soul 
of  the  woman  who  might  have  been  his 
but  for  the  very  depth  of  his  love  for 
her — a  love  that  would  have  spared 
her  linking  with  a  man  so  marred. 

And  she  accepted  his  deed.  Her 
love  shining  forth  to  him  through  her 
calm,  brave  eyes.  She  accepted,  too, 
the  delicacy  of  the  great,  strong  man 
who  kept  toward  her,  for  her  last  view 
of  it,  the  unblemished  side  of  his  face. 
She  waved  her  white  hand  to  him  and 
the  canoe  fled  down  the  gleaming  creek 
in  the  swift  outward  current. 

"Well,"  said  the  man  on  the  beach, 
"Hayes  won't  get  those  pearls,  and 
here's  another  thing  he  won't  get." 
He  fished  a  bank  check  out  of  an  in- 
side pocket  tore  it  into  little  bits  and 
-watched  them  flutter  away  with  a 
smile.  A  bullet  sang  through  the  air 
near  his  head  and  another  tore  up  the 
coral  at  his  feet.  "Going  to  be  a  pretty 
hot  fight,  but  they  won't  go  very  far 
after  he's  potted."  He  sank  down  be- 
hind the  drift  log  and  hugged  the  stock 
of  his  rifle  between  cheek  and  shoul- 
der. "It  would  have  made  no  differ- 
ence,' she  said  to  me.'  His  face 
brightened  at  the  thought.  '  'It  would 
have  made  no  difference — not  the  least 
in  the  world.' " 

He  turned  his  eyes  seaward  where 
the  distance  diminished  canoe  showed 
its  dark  fleck  upon  the  blue,  and  smiled 


once  more.  Then  he  turned  again,  and 
the  smile  grew  grim  as  his  eye  glared 
over  the  gun  sight. 

"And  now  to  settle  things  with  Bully 
Hayes!  Wonder  what  he'd  say  if  he 
knew  that  the  man  upon  whose  face 
he  made  this  scar — the  man  whose  ship 
he  stole,  and  whose  life  he  wrecked — 
was  waiting  for  him  behind  this  piece 
of  drift.  .  .  And  'it  would  have  made 
no  difference — not  the  least  in  the 

world!' ' 

*  *  * 

When  the  Tropic  Bird  fluttered  into 
Upolulu  three  days  later  the  skipper 
yelled  from  the  forward  deck : 

"What's  that  thing  out  there  on  the 
beach?  Looks  like  the  body  of  a 
man!  Get  out  a  boat,  you  fellows,  and 
we'll  see." 

A  few  minutes  afterward,  when  he 
stood  upon  the  beach,  bending  over 
the  body,  the  Captain  exclaimed: 

"Well,  boys,  it's  Gid  Ruggles!  I 
know  him  by  that  scar!  Shot  all  to 
pieces.  Poor  devil!"  He  stood  up 
and  stared  toward  the  station.  "Ware- 
house and  cabins  all  gone.  Burnt  to 
the  ground.  Bet  it  was  Bully  Hayes' 
work.  He  was  seen  over  in  the  Tan- 
gas  a  week  or  two  ago.  Wonder  where 
he  is  now." 

The  sea-birds  that  circled  over  the 
lagoon  near  their  nests  on  its  tufted 
iselet  did  not  wonder.  For  they  had 
seen  the  body  of  Bully  Hayes  con- 
signed to  the  placid  waters  by  his 
crew  on  the  afternoon  of  the  same  day 
he  fell  before  the  rifle  of  the  man  be- 
hind the  drift  log,  the  unceremonious 
burial  taking  place  only  a  half-hour 
before  the  Southern  Star  sailed  out 
again  upon  the  blue  Pacific  waters  in 
her  vain,  belated  search  for  the  canoe 
and  its  pearls,  safe  away  on  her  voy- 
age to  Laraka. 


SKIN    DEEP 


By  Waldo  R.  Smith 


UPON  the  level  prairie  stood  a 
long  oval  of  tepees,  inter- 
spersed with  wall  tents,  the 
white  canvas  shining  in  the 
glaring  sunlight.  Indians,  clad  in  the 
buckskin  and  the  feather  head-dress  of 
olden  time,  their  ceremonial  costumes 
bright  with  may  colors  and  much  bead 
work,  glided  about  the  great  camp. 
Dogs,  of  every  size  and  variety,  ran 
here  and  there,  quarreling  over  scraps, 
or  dozed  in  the  heat.  Brown-skined 
youngsters  chased  each  other  in  and 
out  among  the  lodges,  yelling  in  shrill 
excitement,  It  was  the  annual  Give 
Away  camp  of  the  Oglala  Sioux. 

Now,  the  Give  Away  is  an  institu- 
tion. The  Sioux  of  to-day  have  aban- 
doned the  old  tribal  life.  Nearly  all 
are  owners  of  ranches,  and  eleven 
months  out  of  the  twelve  they  live 
scattered  about  the  reservation  in 
shacks,  log  cabins  and,  occasionally, 
frame  houses.  But  during  the  Give 
Away,  they  gather  in  force  at  four  or 
five  selected  spots,  and  for  a  period 
live  again  the  old  days.  It  is  an  occa- 
sion for  the  giving  of  many  presents, 
hence  the  name,  and  for  much  feast- 
ing and  dancing;  and  many  are  the 
stirring  tales  that  are  told  about  the 
lodge  fires  in  the  evening. 

To  Billy  Stoddard,  newly  arrived 
from  the  East  by  the  invitation  of  the 
doctor  by  whose  side  he  now  sat  in  an 
automobile,  it  seemed  as  if  the  buffalo 
days  had  returned,  and  he  were  sud- 
denly set  down  in  the  midst  of  them. 
Almost  he  looked  for  the  tall  scaffolds 
of  drying  meat  and  the  fresh,  brown- 
haired  hides  that  would  tell  of  a  suc- 
cessful hunt.  Only  the  steady  thrum 
of  the  cylinders  beneath  the  car  re- 
minded him  that  he  was  living  in  the 
twentieth  century. 


He  drew  a  deep  breath.  "Gosh!" 
he  remarked,  "I'd  give  a  good  deal  to 
have  seen  this  country — and  this  peo- 
ple— fifty  years  ago." 

The  doctor  grunted.  "You'd  'a' 
been  scalped,"  he  asserted,  pessimist- 
ically. 

"Not  if  I  was  living  with  'em,"  de- 
fended the  young  man.  The  doctor — 
his  name  was  Kent — grinned. 

"Think  you'd  like  to  be  an  Indian, 
daubs  of  paint  upon  you  and  a  war- 
club  in  your  hand,  eh?"  he  bantered. 

"Something  of  the  kind,"  Billy 
grinned,  rather  sheepishly.  "You 
know  I  always  was  strong  for  that  kind 
of  thing.  Remember  when  we  played 
Indian  in  old  man  Jackson's  cow-pas- 
ture?" 

"Yes — and  you  got  us  chased  out 
by  running  the  cows  around  for  buf- 
falo," the  doctor  returned. 

"Well,  I'd  still  like  to  play  Indian." 

"And  end  up  by  marrying  some 
beautiful  Indian  maiden,  I  suppose," 
Kent  jeered. 

"Well, " 

"Nice  lookers,  ain't  they?"  The 
doctor  jerked  a  contemptuous  thumb 
at  a  group  of  passing  squaws.  "How'd 
you  like  to  be  married  to  one  of  'em?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  the  young  man 
defended.  "I've  seen  worse — among 
white  wonmen,  too.  And  you  said 
yourself  that  there  was  a  heap  of  dif- 
ference in  looks  among  Indians.  Any- 
way," he  concluded,  philosophically, 
"beauty's  only  skin  deep." 

"Huh!"  Kent  grunted.  "Well, 
beauty  may  be  skin  deep,  but  race 
isn't,  and  you'd  find  that  out  before 
you  had  lived  with  these  people  a 
week.  There's  a  heap  of  difference 
between  an  Indian  and  a  Caucasian, 
Billy.  They  don't  look  alike,  act  alike 


320 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


or  think  alike.  You'd  have  a  gay  time 
tryin'  to  dance  like  that,  wouldn't 
you?"  nodding  toward  a  group  of  old 
warriors  who  were  circling  around  a 
tall,  flag-topped  pole  in  the  center  of 
the  camp. 

"What's  hard  about  it?" 

"Looks  easy,  don't  it?"  the  doctor 
agreed.  "But  that's  where  the  Indian 
blood  comes  in — one  of  the  places,  that 
is.  I  never  saw  a  full-blooded  white 
man  that  could  get  that  step.  And 
theres  a  lot  of  other  differences." 

Billy  considered. 

"Didn't  you  ever  hear  of  a  white 
man  living  with  Indians?"  he  queried. 

"Sure.  But  he  never  acted  like  an 
Indian.  If  he  married  a  squaw,  she 
got  herself  up  like  a  white  woman  right 
away.  Jim  Bridger  came  nearest  to 
acting  like  an  Indian,  but  he  dressed 
like  a  white  man." 

"There  was  Frances  Slocum " 

"She  was  captured  as  a  baby,  and 
grew  up  with  'em,"  the  doctor  cut  in. 
"You  were  speaking  of  a  full-grown 
man,  weren't  you?" 

"  'Still  I  stand  on  my  feet  and 
fight,' "  quoted  Billy,  laughingly. 
"Say,  there's  a  fine  looking  old  fellow," 
he  broke  off  abruptly,  indicating  an 
old  warrior  just  leaving  the  dance  shel- 
ter. The  old  man  was  dressed  from 
head  to  foot  in  beaded  buckskin,  and 
wore  a  long-tailed  war  bonnet.  His 
step  was  elastic,  his  head  erect,  his 
whole  bearing  that  of  a  chief. 

"That's  old  White  Beaver,"  the  doc- 
tor explained.  "I  was  up  to  his  place 
once  last  May.  His  wife  came  near 
having  pneumonia." 

"Say,  he  wants  to  see  you,  I  guess," 
remarked  the  young  man  suddenly. 
The  old  Indian  had  turned  in  their 
direction,  and  was  approaching  with 
rapid  strides. 

"Ho,  kola,"  he  greeted,  when  he 
was  near  enough.  Kent  replied  to  the 
salutation,  and  the  old  man  began  to 
speak  in  Sioux.  As  he  finished,  Kent 
turned  to  his  companion. 

"We've  got  an  invitation,  Billy," 
he  interpreted.  "White  Beaver  wants 
us  to  join  the  circle  around  his  lodge- 
fire  this  evning.  It's  a  sort  of  social 


meeting — telling  stories,  and  all  that. 
Everybody  will  talk  Sioux,  but " 

"Don't  let  that  worry  you,"  Billy 
smiled.  "I  can  talk  a  little  myself." 

The  amazed  doctor  stared.  "Where 
in  blazes  did  you  learn  it?"  he  de- 
manded. 

"Picked  it  up  from  a  young  Indian 
at  college,"  was  the  answer.  "I  told 
you  before  I  was  always  strong  for 
such  things." 

Kent  turned  to  the  waiting  Indian. 

"My  father  is  kind,"  he  said.  "We 
will  come." 

"Ho,"  acknowledged  the  other,  and 
turned  away. 

"Now  that's  what  comes  of  being 
a  doctor,"  grinned  Kent.  "The  old 
chap  wants  to  pay  me  back  for  bring- 
ing his  wife  through,  last  spring.  It's 
something  of  an  honor,  Billy.  I'll  bet 
there  isn't  another  white  man  in  South 
Dakota  that'll  get  an  invitation  to  an 
affair  of  this  sort  during  the  Give 
Away.  He's  a  queer  old  cuss,"  he 
added  thoughtfully.  "Understands 
English,  but  won't  talk  it  unless  he 
has  to,  to  make  himself  understood." 

He  shoved  in  the  clutch. 

"We'd  better  be  raising  a  dust," 
he  remarked,  "or  we  won't  get  supper 
in  time  for  the  stag  party." 

The  sun  dropped  slowly  down  from 
the  western  sky,  finally  disappearing 
in  the  gorgeous  colors  of  a  western 
sunset.  Out  at  the  Indian  camp,  the 
smokes  of  many  cooking  fires  rose  in 
the  cool  air.  A  hush  fell  on  the  prai- 
rie. 

As  dusk  came  on,  the  lodges  began 
to  light  up  one  by  one  like  huge  Chi- 
nese lanterns,  as  the  fires  kindled  with- 
in them.  Only  the  wall  tents  stood 
dark,  their  owners,  almost  to  a  man, 
having  been  invited  to  spend  the  even- 
ing in  the  tepee  of  a  friend. 

A  drum  at  the  lower  end  of  the  vil- 
lage began  its  rhythmic  throb.  The 
evening  had  begun. 

Over  in  White  Beaver's  tepee,  the 
guests  were  arriving,  singly  or  in  twos 
and  threes.  Billy  and  the  doctor  ar- 
rived early,  and  were  assigned  their 
places  about  the  fire  by  the  old  war- 
rior with  grave  courtesy.  Gradually 


SKIN  DEEP 


321 


the  circle  filled,  as  the  guests  took  their 
places. 

When  at  last  it  was  complete,  old 
White  Beaver  produced  a  long-stem- 
med red  stone  pipe,  lighted  it,  took 
four  puffs  and  handed  it  to  his  neigh- 
bor. It  passed  around  the  lodge,  Billy 
and  the  doctor  whiffing  it  in  turn. 
Then  the  old  man  reached  for  his  drum, 
which  hung  upon  one  of  the  tepee 
poles,  and  the  company  struck  up  an 
old-time  song. 

Immediately  Billy  discovered  anoth- 
er point  of  difference  between  the  rac- 
es: the  keen,  high-pitched  timbre  of 
the  singing  was  utterly  beyond  his 
vocal  powers. 

With  an  abrupt  "E-yo!"  the  song 
ended.  Their  host  refilled  his  pipe 
and  passed  it  as  before.  Then  he 
spoke. 

"Matononpa,"  he  said,  "tell  us  of 
the  fight  with  the  Crows  on  the  Wakpa 
Sica."  (Bad  River,  S.  D.) 

The  man  addressed  remained  silent 
for  some  minutes,  until  the  pipe  had 
passed  him.  Then  he  arose. 

The  story  he  told  was  of  the  early 
days  of  the  tribal  wars,  and  of  a  fight 
in  which  the  Sioux  warriors  had  put  to 
flight  a  war  party  of  Crows  who  had 
attacked  them  while  they  were  hunt- 
ing buffalo.  Billy  followed  him  read- 
ily enough,  although  the  language  he 
spoke  was  the  Teton  dialect,  whereas 
Billy's  friend  had  been  a  Santee.  As 
the  Indian  spoke,  the  old,  warlike  times 
seemed  to  live  again  in  the  young 
man's  imagination,  and  as  the  narra- 
tor finished,  he  found  himself  leaning 
forward,  his  breath  coming  quickly 
and  his  face  flushed  by  the  stirring 
recital. 

Evidently  the  story  had  been  en- 
joyed by  the  whole  company,  for  the 
warrior  resumed  his  seat  amid  a  cho- 
rus of  approving  "Ho's!"  All  was 
quiet  for  a  space,  each  man  gazing 
gravely  into  the  fire. 

^  Suddenly    old    White  Beaver  lifted 
his  head  and  looked  at  Billy. 

"Let  my  young  friend  tell  us  some 
experience  he  has  had,"  he  invited. 

Billy  was  nonplused.  The  idea  that 
he  would  be  called  upon  to  tell  a  story 


— and  tell  it  in  Sioux — had  not  occur- 
red to  him.  Indeed,  the  old  warrior 
had  called  upon  him  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  one  of  the  cardinal  rules  of 
Indian  etiquette :  in  a  company  of  old- 
er men,  the  young  ones  are  silent. 

In  his  confusion,  he  did  the  best 
possible  thing;  he  stared  contempla- 
tively into  the  blaze  for  full  two  min- 
utes. He  had  no  experiences  worth 
relating — at  least,  none  that  would  in- 
terest these  old  warriors.  Then,  all 
at  once,  a  story  came  to  his  memory — 
a  tale  that  his  grandmother  had  told 
him. 

He  rose.  The  doctor  regarded  him 
with  a  dubious  expression,  for  his  faith 
in  Billy's  mastery  of  the  Sioux  tongue 
was  not  great. 

"My  friends,"  the  young  man  be- 
gan hesitatingly,  "my  father  has  ask- 
ed me  to  tell  a  story.  I  have  no  ex- 
periences, for  I  was  born  too  late.  But 
my  grandmother  once  told  me  a  story 
of  the  old  days,  and  I  will  tell  it." 

He  paused,  groping  for  the  Sioux 
to  express  his  meaning.  The  narra- 
tive was  told  simply,  with  many  paus- 
es, and  much  blind  feeling  for  words. 
His  grandmother  had  come  West  with 
her  husband  in  'forty-nine,  and  the 
wagon  train  had  been  attacked  by  the 
Sioux. 

"The  men  were  all  killed,"  Billy 
finished,  "but  when  my  grandfather's 
wagon  was  set  afire,  my  grandmother 
leaped  out,  and  ran  into  the  arms  of 
one  of  the  Indians.  Then  she  faint- 
ed. When  she  came  to  she  was 
wrapped  in  a  blanket,  lying  beside  a 
little  stream,  and  the  Indian  was  cook- 
ing some  deer  meat  over  a  fire.  She 
tried  to  escape,  but  the  Indian  caught 
her,  and  seemed  to  be  trying  to  tell 
her  that  he  would  not  hurt  her,  but 
that  she  might  be  killed  if  she  ran 
away. 

After  this  she  did  not  try  to  get 
away.  The  Indian  had  only  one  pony 
and  my  grandmother  rode  behind  him 
for  four  days,  never  knowing  where 
he  was  taking  her.  Then  at  last,  on 
the  morning  of  the  fifth  day,  they 
came  to  a  settlement.  The  Indian  rode 
to  the  nearest  house,  helped  her  down, 


322 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


then  sprang  on  his  pony  again  and 
rode  away.  She  never  saw  him  again. 
The  white  people  welcomed  her  back, 
but  she  has  wondered  many  times  why 
the  Indian  brought  her  to  her  people, 
instead  of  taking  her  to  his  tribe." 

He  ended  abruptly  and  sat  down. 
Exclamations  of  applause  burst  from 
the  listeners.  The  doctor  caught  his 
eye  and  nodded  approvingly.  Silence 
fell  again  in  the  lodge. 

The  firelight  danced  and  flickered, 
throwing  fantastic  shadows  on  the 
tepee  wall.  One  of  the  warriors 
leaned  forward  and  shoved  a  stick  far- 
ther into  the  blaze,  sending  a  shower 
of  sparks  whirling  through  the 
smoke-hole. 

Then  old  White  Beaver  dropped  his 
blanket  from  his  shoulders  and  got 
slowly  upon  his  feet. 

"My  young  friend  has  told  his  sto- 
ry," he  began,  "and  it  has  reminded 
me  of  something  that  occurred  about 
the  same  time." 

He  paused  and  glanced  about  the 
circle. 

"Many  winters  ago,"  he  continued, 
"there  was  a  young  man  of  the  Ogla- 
las  who  loved  a  maiden  of  the  Waseca 
(white  people).  Her  heart  was  hard, 
and  he  had  come  to  the  land  of  the 
Sioux  to  forget  her.  When  the  La- 
kotas  took  the  warpath  against  the 
whites,  the  young  man  went  to  war 
with  the  others  for  a  time,  but  at  last 
he  would  go  no  more.  He  had  had  a 
dream,  he  said,  and  feared  it  would 
come  true.  But  at  last  they  persuad- 
ed him  to  join  one  more  war  party. 

"Three  days  after  the  warriors  left 
the  camp  they  came  upon  a  wagon 
train  of  the  Wasecas.  Just  at  day- 
break they  attacked,  and  the  white 
men  were  all  killed.  But  as  the  war- 


riors rushed  in,  a  frightened  woman 
leaped  from  a  burning  wagon  and  ran 
into  the  young  man's  arms.  At  once 
he  knew  her  for  the  girl  he  had  loved 
in  the  land  of  the  Waseca.  His  dream 
had  come  true." 

Billy  half  rose,  with  a  suppressed 
exclamation,  but  settled  back  again 
at  a  reproving  look  and  a  meaning 
headshake  from  the  doctor. 

"He  took  her  to  her  people,"  the 
narrator  went  on.  "Five  days  later, 
far  to  the  east,  they  came  to  a  village 
of  the  Waseca,  and  the  young  man  left 
her  with  them.  Then  he  returned  to 
the  Sioux  camp.  But  he  never  would 
go  on  another  war  party  against  the 
white  people.  Henala!"  Enough,  i. 
e.,  it  is  finished. 

The  old  man  resumed  his  seat  and 
gazed  dreamily  into  the  fire.  There 
was  a  long  silence.  The  stillness  in 
the  tepee  became  oppressive.  At  last 
Caucasian  patience  snapped. 

"But  if  he  loved  her  why  did  he 
not  take  her  to  the  Ogala  camp?" 
blurted  Billy.  The  old  warrior  raised 
his  head. 

"White  Beaver  has  lived  long  with 
the  Sioux,"  he  replied  softly.  "He  has 
hunted  the  buffalo,  gone  on  the  war 
path  with  his  brothers.  Cloud  Girl, 
the  daughter  of  a  chief,  found  him 
good  in  her  eyes,  and  she  waited  for 
him  in  the  tepee.  His  skin  is 
white — "  he  pushed  up  one  bead- 
banded  sleeve  to  disclose  a  milky 
forearm,  " — but  his  heart  is  red. 
White  Beaver  is  an  Oglala.  Why 
should  he  wish  to  marry  a  daughter 
of  the  Waseca?" 

Again  the  silence  fell.  The  fire 
rustled,  and  a  wind  fluttered  the 
smoke-flaps.  Across  the  tepee,  Billy 
met  the  doctor's  eyes. 


Slaney's  Night  of  Glory 


By   William    Freeman 


CORPORAL  SLANEY  sat  under  a 
furze-bush,  rubbing    a     bruised 
ankle.     In  the  valley  below  lay 
the  camp  he  was  leaving;   an 
isolated  light,  winking  from  the  win- 
dow of  a  whitewashed  building,  which 
until  half  an  hour  ago  had  been  his 
abiding    place,    marked    the    guard- 
house. 

Corporal  Slaney  had  been  in  the 
army  five  years;  and  the  second-lieu- 
tenant, who  had  called  him  an  unman- 
nerly hog,  had  held  his  commission 
rather  less  than  four  months.  The 
fault  had  been  the  lieutenant's,  and 
Corporal  Slaney  had  a  temper.  There 
had  been  a  certain  amount  of  plain 
and  personal  language.  The  face  of 
the  lieutenant  changed  from  pink  to 
purple,  and  he  had  reported  the  matter 
to  the  colonel.  Slaney,  for  the  first 
time  in  his  career,  found  himself  a 
prisoner,  sentence  postponed  for  con- 
sideration. 

That  it  would  involve  the  loss  of  his 
stripes  he  had  no  doubt  whatever.  His 
wrath  smouldered  fiercely.  The  guard 
was  being  changed,  and  the  Fates  or- 
dained that  only  M'Vane,  standing 
sentry  in  the  doorway,  should  be  in 
sight.  M'Vane  and  Slaney  had  termi- 
nated a  long  friendship  with  a  quarrel, 
and  M'Vane  had  commented  freely  on 
his  prisoner's  prospects.  Corporal  Sla- 
ney, deciding  that  he  might  as  well 
be  hanged  for  a  sheep  as  a  lamb,  had 
knocked  M'Vane's  helmet  over  his 
head  with  one  terrific  punch,  and,  real- 
izing that  the  British  army  was  no  lon- 
ger the  place  for  a  man  of  proper 
spirit,  stepped  over  his  plunging  body 
into  darkness  and  freedom. 

He  had  no  plan.  He  was  as  much 
the  sport  of  Chance  and  Destiny  as 
any  swaggering  soldier  of  fortune  of 


ten  generations  earlier.  Of  the  coun- 
try around  he  was  profoundly  ignorant. 
He  knew  that  he  would  have  various 
sentries  to  evade,  and  that  after  evad- 
ing them  he  might  come  into  contact 
with  an  enemy  that  had  hitherto  been 
singularly  chary  of  attack.  All  of 
which  should  have  made  him  pause. 
But  he  was  too  grimly  exasperated  to 
pause  at  all. 

He  continued  his  journey,  at  right 
angles  to  the  camp,  under  a  moon  hid- 
den by  rolling  banks  of  clouds.  The 
country  looked  vaguely  spacious,  and 
beyond  the  lines  of  tents  utterly  de- 
serted. The  gentle  hill  slope  he  was 
climbing  might  lead  to  anywhere.  It 
was  as  though  a  benevolent  Provi- 
dence had  placed  the  whole  continent 
of  Europe  at  his  disposal. 

He  passed,  in  all,  five  sentries,  only 
one  of  whom  gave  him  any  real  anx- 
iety. There  were  bushes  here  and 
there  behind  which  a  slight,  khaki-clad 
figure  crouching  on  all-fours  was  prac- 
tically invisible.  His  thoughts  were 
chiefly  on  the  guard  house  and  the 
time  it  would  take  for  M'Vane  to  give 
the  alarm. 

He  reached  the  crest  of  the  hill, 
found  that  the  ground  on  the  farther 
side  rose  and  fell  in  a  succession  of 
smaller  hillocks,  and  pushed  on.  He 
had  gone  a  mile  in  the  profoundest 
silence  and  solitude,  when  he  noticed 
two  lights  on  his  left.  They  shone  like 
the  eyes  of  some  big  animal.  Since 
the  general  commanding  does  not  con- 
fide his  more  intimate  plans  to  his  cor- 
porals, Slaney  had  no  idea  as  to  whe- 
ther the  lights  belonged  to  an  advance 
outpost  of  the  Allies  or  to  the  Ger- 
mans. With  excessive  caution  he 
edged  near  enough  to  see  that  the 
lights  came  from  the  high  windows 


324 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


of  a  dilapidated  shed.  He  could  not 
look  in,  but  he  could  hear  the  mutter 
of  voices.  Acute  and  consuming  curi- 
osity possessed  him.  He  had  crawled 
round  three  sides  of  the  shed  in  search 
of  a  door,  and  had  begun  the  fourth, 
when  something  hit  him  an  excruciat- 
ing blow  on  the  temple,  and  he  dropped 
backwards  into  black  unconsciousness. 

From  this  he  emerged  slowly,  to  dis- 
cover that  he  had  been  carried  or 
dragged  into  the  shed,  and  was  now 
lying  propped  with  his  back  against 
the  wall. 

At  a  table  in  the  centre  three  men 
were  seated,  talking  in  undertones.  A 
lamp  with  a  tin  reservoir  stood  in  the 
center,  revealing  the  remains  of  a 
hasty  meal,  together  with  various  scat- 
tered plans  and  documents.  The  rest 
of  the  place  was  in  comparative  dark- 
ness. 

None  of  the  men  took  the  slight- 
est notice  of  Slaney.  His  head  still 
swam.  Investigating  gingerly,  he 
found  a  large  and  contused  wound  over 
his  right  eye. 

A  f  attish  man,  vaguely  suggestive  of 
Mr.  Pickwick,  got  up  from  the  table 
and  came  forward.  "Better?"  he  in- 
quired. 

"Still  groggy,"  said  Corporal  Slaney. 
"Fell  down  a  bloomin'  well,  didn't  I?" 

The  f  attish  man  laughed.  "On  the 
contrary,  you  came  into  contact  with  a 
brass  knuckle  duster  wielded  by  my- 
self. It  is  a  pity  that  so  useful  a  wea- 
pon should  have  gone  out  of  fashion. 
We  are  an  intimate  party  which  does 
not  desire  uninvited  guests." 

Corporal  Slaney's  gaze  wandered 
dully  to  the  others.  One  was  a  tall 
officer,  with  an  upstanding  gray  mus- 
tache and  fierce  eyes;  the  other  a 
young  man  of  about  thirty,  with  a 
thin,  pale  face,  a  retreating  chin,  and 
an  air  of  intense  impatience.  All  three 
were  in  uniform.  Corporal  Slaney 
realized  that  he  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  It  seemed  a 
tame  and  stupid  enough  ending  to  the 
night  of  enterprise  and  glory  which 
had  begun  so  promisingly. 

The  Pickwick-like  person  spoke 
again.  His  accent  left  nothing  to  be 


desired.  "You  come  from  the  English 
lines?" 

"That's  so,  sir." 

"And  being  a  spy ' 

"Spy?"  Slaney's  indignation  was 
too  immense  to  be  anything  but  genu- 
ine. "Not  me!  Silly  blighter  of  an 
officer  got  me  shoved  into  the  guard- 
room, and  I  'ooked  it,  same  as  you'd 
'a  done." 

"Doubtless.  You  have  been  for 
some  time  in  the  army?" 

"Five  years." 

"Then  you  may  be  useful  to  us. 
There  are  certain  particulars  which — " 

"Meaning  that  I'm  to  turn  traitor?" 

"My  good  imbecile" — it  was  the  el- 
derly officer  who  spoke,  and  his  voice 
had  a  flat,  metallic  note  which  jarred 
on  Slaneys  nerves  and  made  him 
shiver — "believe  me,  you  will  either 
tell  us  the  things  we  wish  to  know  this 
evening,  or  you  will  be  given  no  op- 
portunities of  telling  anything  at  all." 

The  young  man  with  the  retreating 
chin  intervened.  He  addressed  the 
others  in  German,  waving  his  hands 
imperiously.  He  made  Slaney  feel 
that  he  was  accustomed  to  be  obeyed, 
and  in  a  hurry. 

"So!"  apologized  the  f  attish  man 
when  the  young  man  ceased.  He 
turned  to  the  prisoner  again.  "You 
are  still  dazed — ill.  I  forgot."  He 
took  a  flask  from  his  pocket,  uncorked 
it,  and  pushed  it  into  Slaney's  hands. 

Slaney  swallowed  a  generous  mouth- 
ful. It  was  heavy  stuff  that  stung  his 
throat  and  brought  tears  into  his  eyes ; 
but  it  made  him  his  own  man  again. 
"Thanks !"  he  said,  returning  the  flask. 

"You  are  hungry?" 

"I  could  do  with  a  bit,"  said  Slaney 
graciously. 

The  fattish  man  glanced  at  the  pale 
young  man,  who  nodded.  "Come  to 
the  table,  then,  and  eat." 

"And  when  you  come" — the  voice  of 
the  gray-mustached  officer  cut  like  a 
whiplash — "salute.  You  understand? 
Salute!" 

Slaney  stumbled  stiffly  to  his  feet, 
and  crossed  to  the  table.  He  saluted 
and  sat  down  on  the  packing  case  that 
the  fattish  man  dragged  forward.  The 


SLANEY'S  NIGHT  OF  GLORY 


325 


other  pushed  a  plate,  bread,  and  the 
remains  of  some  sort  of  pasty  towards 
him.  Slaney  settled  down  to  an  excel- 
lent meal.  He  did  not  hurry.  He 
wanted  to  think  the  position  over  as 
well  as  the  buzzing  in  his  head  would 
let  him.  Also,  he  was  hungry.  The 
others  watched  him  with  rising  impa- 
tience. 

"And  now,"  said  the  fattish  man, 
"you  will  tell  us  the  things  we  desire 
to  know." 

"Right-o!"  said  Slaney. 

The  man  with  the  gray  mustache — 
his  name  appeared  to  be  Colonel  von 
Blum — began  a  series  of  questions. 
They  dealt  with  nothing  that  could  not 
have  been  gleaned  from  the  first  stray 
prisoner  or  a  decent  ordnance-map, 
and  it  was  plain  to  Slaney  that  they 
merely  wished  to  discover  how  much 
he  knew,  and  whether  he  were  lying. 
His  answers  were  conscientious  and 
exact.  Glances  of  approval  flashed 
from  the  pale-faced  young  man  to  the 
colonel. 

"To  continue "  said  the  fattish 

man. 

Slaney  wiped  his  mouth  with  the 
back  of  his  hand. 

"Talking  is  dry  work,  gents." 

"You  forget  your-  position!"  began 
Von  Blum  angrily. 

The  pale-faced  young  man  leapt  to 
his  feet.  "Give  the  fool  enough  wine 
to  flood  Paris;  it  will  loosen  his  ton- 
gue!" he  said  impatiently. 

From  a  wicker  basket  at  his  feet 
the  fattish  man  took  two  square  stone- 
ware bottles. 

"Let  us,"  commanded  the  pale  young 
man,  "drink  to  the  eternal  confusion 
of  the  enemies  of  Europe!"  He  filled 
four  glasses. 

'  'Ear!  'ear!"  said  Corporal  Slaney. 

"To  the  day  when  her  fleets  may  be 
a  legend,  her  army  the  laughing  stock 
of  the  world!" 

"  'Ear!  'ear!"  said  Corporal  Slaney. 

Again  they  all  drank  heartily,  all 
but  Slaney.  "To  the  day  when  the 
half-fed,  white-faced  rabble  she  breeds 
may  be  swept  back  to  their  hovels !" 

"Ah!"  said  Slaney,  "now  you're 
talking!  I'm  rabble,  right  enough;  a 


bloomin'  conscript."  The  memory  of 
his  wrongs  burned  in  his  eyes. 

"Let  him  speak,"  said  the  young 
man.  "Let  him  tell  us  from  the  be- 
ginning— the  very  beginning." 

The  gray-mustached  colonel  growled 
objections.  He  was  silenced  with  a 
gesture.  Corporal  Slaney  found  him- 
self with  a  flushed,  attentive  audi- 
ence. 

"It's  this  way,"  he  said  confidently. 
"In  the  blighted  'ole  of  a  country  I 
come  from  things  ain't  nothing  like 
what  they're  made  out  to  be.  Kitch- 
ener says,  'I  want  men — three  million 
of  'em;'  but  what  he  don't  explain  is 
that  if  the  men  don't  come  of  their 
own  free  will  he'll  make  'em.  Conse- 
quently"— Slaney  sawed  the  air  to  give 
his  words  emphasis — "when  the  re- 
sponse aint  up  to  expectations,  there's 
armed  parties  go  out  of  a  dark  night, 
and  when  mornin'  comes  the  barracks 
is  full,  and  whole  streets  of  houses  is 
empty." 

The  pale  young  man  glanced  at  the 
others,  with  bright,  eager  eyes. 

"I  am  not  surprised.    Go  on." 

"About  a  mile  off  Margit,"  pursued 
Slaney,  warming  to  his  work,  "you'll 
see  a  row  o'  penny  steamers,  same  as 
used  to  potter  up  and  down  the 
Thames  before  you  fellows  sowed  it 
with  mines  an'  hung  up  navigation.  In 
them  steamers  is  the  recruities,  guard- 
ed by  a  Japanese  contingent.  They 
daren't  trust  white  men,  for  year  they'd 
—they'd " 

"Fraternize?"  suggested  the  fattish 
man. 

"Fraternize  is  the  word,  sir,  with  the 
prisoners  as  have  been  carried  off  from 
their  homes  to  learn  their  drill.  When 
they  know  enough  to  avoid  killin'  one 
another,  they're  transhipped  in  what 
merchantmen  we  can  rake  together." 

"I  understand,"  said  the  young  man. 
"It  is  plain — quite  plain — why  we  have 
been  able  to  advance  so  far  with  so 
little  opposition.  And  now " 

"Concerning  the  range  of  those  field 
guns  on  your  right?"  said  the  colonel. 

But  Corporal  Slaney  did  not  appear 
to  hear  him.  His  eyes  had  grown 
dreamy  and  reminiscent. 


326 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"There  was  me,  makin'  two  quid  a 
week  driving  a  motor-bus " 

"But — but  you  said  you  had  been  in 
the  army  five  years." 

"Beg  pardon,  sir.  Territorial  called 
up  for  service."  Slaney  thanked 
Heaven  that  the  colonel  did  not  look 
at  his  shoulder  strap,  and  went  on 
quickly:  "Now  we're  half-starved, 
half-clothed,  and  knocked  about  by 
drunken  swines  that  ain't  fit  to  take  a 
bullock-wagon  into  action.  Lor',  the 
things  I  could  tell  you!"  He  nodded 
his  head  with  the  solemnity  of  one  anx- 
ious to  prove  that  he  was  entirely 
sober. 

"Give  him  more  wine,"  said  the  pale 
young  man.  His  voice  was  high  and 
eager.  "This — this  scum  interests  me. 
I  suspected  a  good  deal,  but  not  so 
much  as  this." 

Slaney,  his  glass  refilled,  rose  to  his 
feet.  The  movement  showed  him  that 
both  the  elder  men  carried  revolvers. 
The  pale  faced  young  man  had  only  a 
sword. 

"Here's  luck!"  said  Slaney;  "best  o' 
luck !  Grand  German  army ;  may  it  get 
all  the  vic'tries  it  deserves!" 

Again  they  all  drank  solemnly,  all 
except  Corporal  Slaney. 

"Now  for  the  guns!"  said  Von  Blum. 

"Explanations  concerning  artillery," 
Slaney  said  sententiously,  "is  like 
matrimony,  not  to  be  entered  upon 
lightly.  If  you've  pencil  and  paper — " 

They  gave  him  both.  Three  heads 
bent  forward.  Slaney  put  his  hand  on 
the  nearest  stoneware  bottle. 

"This,"  he  said,  "stands  for  the  main 
German  army;  this" — he  took  up  the 
second  bottle — "for  a  mobile  strikin' 
force." 

Of  the  three,  the  pale  young  man 
was  the  only  one  who  had  anything  like 
a  clear  impression  of  what  followed. 
Even  that  was  momentary.  He  saw 
the  bottles  rise  and  fall  with  two  light- 
ning-like blows,  one  fairly  upon  the 
skull  of  the  fattish  man,  the  other  up- 
on Von  Blum.  The  fattish  man  dropped 
with  a  faint  grunt;  Van  Blum  flung  up 
a  protecting  arm,  and  received  a  sec- 
ond blow  on  the  temple  which  sent 
him  headlong,  and  smashed  the  bottle 


off  short  at  the  neck.  Then  the  pale 
young  man  perceived  the  figure  of  this 
mad  English  corporal  leaping  at  him 
panther-fashion,  and  prudently  ducked. 
The  table  and  everything  upon  it  shot 
over  sideways,  the  lamp  providentially 
went  out,  and  Slaney  landed  awk- 
wardly on  his  hands  and  knees.  The 
only  consolation — from  the  Slaney 
point  of  view — was  that  the  pale  faced 
young  man  was  underneath. 

"If  you  shout,"  said  Slaney — for  his 
prisoner  was  making  strange,  strangu- 
lated noises — "I'll  bash  your  silly  face 
inside  out,  so  that  the  tip  of  your  nose 
will  tickle  your  tongue.  Get  up." 

The  pale  young  man,  feeling  his  way 
uncertainly  in  the  darkness,  got  up 
slowly. 

"Put  up  your  hands." 

He  put  them  up,  and  Slaney,  grip- 
ping him  by  the  collar,  steered  him 
outside  to  where  an  uncertain  moon 
was  climbing  above  the  clouds.  There 
he  removed  his  prisoner's  sword  and 
belt — his  own  belt  was  in  the  guard- 
room— jerked  down  the  rigid  arms, 
and  with  great  efficiency  and  thorough- 
ness bound  the  wrists  of  the  pale  young 
man  behind  him. 

"Wait  here!"  he  commanded. 

He  plunged  into  the  building,  and 
emerged  with  a  handful  of  papers. 

"Ail  quiet  and  peaceable,"  he  re- 
ported, and  secured  the  door  with  a 
convenient  iron  staple.  The  papers  he 
bestowed  in  an  inner  pocket.  The 
prisoner  watched  him  dazedly. 

"Now  then,"  said  Corporal  Slaney, 
"by  the  right;  quick  march!" 

The  words  galvanized  the  other  into 
speech.  "I  will  not  go." 

"There,"  said  Slaney,  "we  bloomin' 
well  differ.  I've  met  your  high  spir- 
ited kind  before.  Gen'rally  they  ends 
with  blubberinV 

"Let  me  free,  I  tell  you!" 

Slaney  took  a  pace  forward;  the 
pale  young  man  gave  a  shout  and  tried 
to  run.  Five  seconds  later  he  was  ly- 
ing breathless,  and  his  head  was  be- 
ing systematically  and  steadily 
bumped  up  and  down  on  the  sun- 
baked earth. 

"Say  when,"  said  Corporal  Slaney 


SLANEY'S  NIGHT  OF  GLORY 


327 


invitingly.  His  arms  were  beginning 
tc  ache. 

"I— I  die!" 

"Not  yet!  Get  up  and  behave  de- 
cent, an'  we'll  push  on.  It's  a  long 
way  to  Tipperary." 

He  helped  the  prisoner  to  his  feet. 
For  some  moments  they  walked  in 
silence,  Slaney  a  trifle  in  the  rear.  Sud- 
denly the  pale  faced  young  man  came 
to  a  halt  again. 

"What  will  you  take  to  let  me  go  ?" 

"Alsace,  and  any  old  colonies  you've 
got  left  over,"  said  the  flippant  Slaney. 

"Tchtt,  you  are  childish !  I  will  give 
ten  thousand  marks." 

"An*  that's  more  than  I  ever  got  at 
school !" 

"Twenty  thousand,  and  a  safe  con- 
duct to  your  own  lines!" 

"That  there  fizzy  stuff,"  said  Slaney 
severely,  "has  been  an'  got  into  your 
alleged  brain.  You'll  be  offering  a 
million  next,  with  a  seat  in  the  House 
o'  Lords  thrown  in.  An'  then  I  shall 
lose  my  temper,  an*  there  will  be  an 
accident." 

"But — but  do  you  know  who  I  am?" 

"Not  me.  Nor  don't  want  to.  We're 
all  incog,  'ere.  Chase  yourself — 
quick!" 

So  they  journeyed  by  stages  that 
seemed  endless  to  where  the  first  of 
the  khaki-clad  sentries  faced  the  com- 
ing dawn — a  lonely  little  figure  on  the 
hill  crest.  At  the  sharp  challenge  the 
torpor  which  had  fallen  on  the  prisoner 
vanished,  and  he  plunged  violently 
and  broke  away.  He  and  Slaney  came 
to  the  ground  together.  The  sentry 
challenged  a  second  time,  and  then 
fired.  Luckily  for  the  pair  of  them, 
the  shot  went  wide. 

"Hold  hard!"  shouted  the  exasper- 
ated Slaney.  "It's  only  me  an'  a  young 
fool  I've  been  dinin'  wiv.  Come  up, 
unless  you  want  me  to  sit  on  your 
head!" 

Five  minutes  later  they  stood,  des- 
perately dusty  and  disheveled,  in  the 
presence  of  the  sergeant.  He  listened 
to  Slaney's  story  with  obvious  disbe- 
lief, and  marched  the  pair  of  them  to 
the  captain,  who  could  speak  German 
with  an  Oxford  accent.  The  captain 


gave  most  of  his  attention  to  the  pale- 
tace  young  man,  and  fetched  the  col- 
onel. This,  to  Slaney,  was  manifestly 
absurd.  A  prisoner  was  merely  a 
prisoner  all  the  world  over.  Immedi- 
ately afterwards  the  pale-faced  young 
man's  wrists  were  unfastened,  and  he 
was  escorted  to  a  separate  tent.  He 
did  not  even  glance  at  Slaney  as  he 
passed. 

"As  for  you,"  said  the  colonel,  blink- 
ing at  the  backslider,  "I  gather  that  you 
broke  out  of  the  guardroom  to  commit 
this — this  escapade.  Taking  the  full 
facts  of  the  case  into  consideration,  it 
had  not  been  my  intention  to  punish 
you  further.  Even  now,  if  you  were  to 
apologize " 

Slaney  fidgeted  with  his  feet  and 
avoided  the  colonel's  eye.  He  was 
back  among  his  own  people  again;  al- 
ready his  night  of  glory  had  begun  to 
seem  a  dream,  an  incredible  dream. 
Indubitably  he  had  behaved  like  a  fool. 
The  second-lieutenant  was  newly 
joined  and  raw.  It  was  the  duty  of 
old  soldiers  to  teach  the  young  ones 
manners. 

"I'm  sorry,  sir." 

"Very  good.  You  will  be  glad  to 
hear  that  Private  M'Vane  is  none  the 
worse  for  his — er — fall.  I  shall  con- 
sider the  matter  closed.  Go  to  your 
tent,  and  get  what  sleep  you  can." 

Slaney  fumbled  with  his  tunic.  "The 
papers,  sir." 

"Ah,  thanks.     Good-night!" 

"Good-night,  sir." 

Thereafter  for  three  hours  Corporal 
Slaney  slept  the  sleep  of  one  who  has 
squared  accounts  with  his  fellow-men, 
and  whose  conscience  is  clear.  He  saw 
nothing  more  of  his  prisoner.  For  two 
days  the  machinery  of  camp  life  ran  as 
usual. 

Then,  late  in  the  afternoon,  his  ser- 
geant appeared.  "You're  wanted,  Sla- 
ney." 

Slaney  reluctantly  abandoned  his 
tea  and  stood  up.  "Who  by?" 

"Gen'ral-commandin'.  Brush  them 
crumbs  off  your  coat,  and  look  slippy." 

Colonel  Slaney  looked  slippy.  He 
was  ushered,  somewhat  breathless, 
into  the  presence  of  a  short,  sturdily 


328 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


built,  gray-haired  man,  who  regarded 
him  with  twinkling  eyes. 

"So  this  is  the  redoubtable  corporal  ? 
Dear  me,  but  some  people  are  born 
lucky!  Ever  occurred  to  you  to  qualify 
for  a  seat  at  the  sergeants'  mess,  Sla- 
ney?" 

"N-no,  sir — yessir!"  The  turf 
seemed  rising  and  falling  under  Sla- 
ney's  feet. 

"Because  I've  asked  Colonel  Hip- 
white  to  see  to  the  matter.  I  think 
you  deserve  a  place  there.  And  that's 
all." 

Slaney  saluted  and  reeled  out  into 
the  sunlight  again,  drunk  with  unana- 
lyzable  emotions. 

M'Vane  overtook  him.    "Here,"  said 


M'Vane,  who  bore  no  malice,  "this  is 
something  that  might  be  of  interest  to 
you." 

It  was  an  advance  copy  of  the  of- 
ficial news-sheet  which  circulated 
among  the  troops.  M'Vane,  who  had 
been  a  compositor,  had  a  hand  in  its 
production. 

"His  Imperial  and  Royal  Highness 
Prince  Albrecht  Fritz  of  Prussia,"  read 
Slaney,  "was,  on  the  5th  instant,  mak- 
ing a  midnight  reconnaissance  in  com- 
pany with  two  members  of  his  staff, 
when  he  encountered  an  unofficial  pa- 
trol of  the  Allies.  He  is  at  present  a 
prisoner  in  the  British  lines." 

The  paper  slipped  from  his  nerveless 
fingers.  "Golly!"  said  Slaney. 


TWILIGHT 


Now  the  twilight  glow  is  resting 
On  Lone  Mountain's  lofty  peak, 
And  there  comes  the  peace  of  silenc< 
When  the  voice  of  God  can  speak 

In  the  quaking  of  the  aspen, 
In  the  purpl'ing  of  the  sage, 
In  the  twitter  of  the  night-bird. 
And  the  clouds'  low  pilgrimage, 

As  they  trail  and  wind  and  color, 
As  they  float  and  fade  away — 
As  the  mist  steals  o'er  the  canyon 
And  the  glint  is  turned  to  gray. 

As  the  Rocky  range  grows  darker 
Comes  the  hush  of  twilight  glow 
And  the  murm'rings  of  a  chorus 
Echo  in  the  river's  flow. 

In  the  whisp'ring  of  the  grasses, 
In  the  hum  that  ever  sings 
Through  the  quiet  hour  of  ev'ning 
Comes  the  peace  that  silence  brings. 


EMMA  VESTI  MILLER. 


Ay  Experiences  on  a  Sinking  Ship 


By   Clara   A.  Nicholson 


AFTER  weeks  of  most  careful 
packing,  making  doubly  sure 
that  I  leave  nothing  behind 
which  might  add  to  the  comfort 
and  pleasure  of  our  new  home  in  Val- 
dez,  Alaska,  and  with  joyous  anticipa- 
tion of  seeing  my  husband  (whom  I 
had  not  seen  for  two  years) ,  the  day  at 
last  arrived  for  Catherine  (my  little 
girl),  and  I  to  bid  good-bye  to  our 
many  dear  friends  and  relations.  Af- 
ter being  most  cordially  entertained, 
we  were  driven  to  the  dock  at  8:30 
p.  m.,  there  to  be  met  by  another  host 
of  friends,  who  showered  us  with 
candy,  flowers  and  magazines,  and  all 
good  wishes  for  a  delightful  voyage. 
But  as  a  heavy  mist  hung  low  over  all, 
a  strange  feeling  came  to  me,  and  as 
the  last  good-byes  were  said,  I  could 
scarcely  keep  back  the  tears,  not  so 
much  at  parting  (as  the  thought  of  be- 
ing with  my  husband  once  more 
seemed  to  compensate  for  all.)  I 
know  not  what  it  was,  but  that  strange, 
indescribable  something  seemed  to  tell 
me  that  I  was  going  to  pass  through 
some  great  crisis,  and  when  my  little 
girl  and  I  went  to  our  berth  about 
11 :30,  sleep  and  rest  were  far  from  me 
— so  after  disposing  of  our  baggage, 
and  on  finding  that  our  boat  did  not 
leave  the  dock  until  about  4:30  a.  m. 
(owing  to  a  very  heavy  cargo  which 
was  being  shipped  to  the  mines  at  Ju- 
neau,  Alaska),  we  decided  to  sit  on 
deck  for  a  short  time.  While  there, 
we  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  very 
nice  ,Dr.  and  wife,  who  were  on  a 
hunting  and  sight  -  seeing  trip  to 
Alaska.  After  a  few  moments  of  pleas- 
ant conversation,  we  decided  to  retire, 
as  most  of  the  passengers  were  not 
of  a  very  desirable  type,  it  being  late 
in  the  season  for  business  men  and 


tourists  to  make  the  trip. 

Sleep  would  not  come  to  me,  and 
about  4:30  a.  m.,  as  the  echo  from 
that  last  big  whistle  died  away,  and 
the  sound  of  the  men's  voices  in  the 
quiet  still  of  the  morning,  calling 
"Good-bye,  Joe,"  "Good-bye,  Tom," 
"So  long,"  "Good-bye,  Cap,  good  luck 
to  you,  old  man,"  came  to  me,  the 
thought,  so  "strangely,"  also  came, 
"will  it  be  good  luck,  Cap.,  or  other- 
wise." 

Little  they  dreamed  that  in  a  few 
short  hours  they  would  all  be  frantic 
with  fear,  and  that  dreaded  S.  O.  S. 
call  would  be  heralded  far  and  wide — 
a  few  minutes  later  to  know  that  their 
idolized  "Cap"  with  his  beloved  ship 
had  gone  to  their  watery  graves. 

We  steamed  slowly  from  dock,  as 
a  very  heavy  fog  hung  close  to  the 
Water,  making  it  impossible  to  make 
more  than  three  knots  an  hour.  Being 
very  restless  and  unable  to  sleep,  I 
would  look  at  my  little  girl  every  few 
minutes  and  see  if  she  were  sufficient- 
ly covered,  and  as  she  lay  peacefully 
sleeping,  I  thought  to  myself,  "Oh, 
how  foolish  you  are  to  lie  awake;  noth- 
ing is  going  to  happen,"  but  scarcely 
was  the  thought  from  my  mind  when 
our  fog  horn  began  to  blow  incessantly 
— frantically,  in  fact — it  was  almost 
human  in  its  appeal  to  the  oncoming 
vessel;  but  before  I  could  realize  our 
danger,  I  was  thrown  almost  out  of  my 
berth  by  the  impact  of  the  Princess 
Victoria  with  our  boat,  which  was 
rammed  stern  end  about  three  feet 
from  my  stateroom  (being  the  last  on 
upper  deck.)  I  needed  no  warning  to 
get  up  and  out;  the  crash  was  so  ter- 
rific that  I  knew  our  boat  must  be  al- 
most severed.  I  at  once  caught  Cath- 
erine from  her  berth  so  quickly  that 


330 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  child  was  quite  dazed,  having  been 
sound  asleep  and  unable  to  grasp  what 
had  happened.  By  that  time  every 
one  was  frantic.  I  was  told  to  get  out, 
not  to  dress,  but  when  I  stepped  on 
deck,  and  saw  that  mad  stampede  of 
people  trying  to  reach  the  ladder  that 
had  been  lowered  over  the  wreckage 
from  the  Princess  Victoria  to  our  boat, 
my  heart  failed  me.  It  seemed  as 
though  I  ran  more  risk  in  that  mad 
rush  for  the  ladder  than  staying  where 
I  was.  Many  were  pushed  into  the 
water,  women  were  dazed,  men  were 
wild,  not  caring  whom  they  trampled 
on  or  what  they  did.  (When  I  say  men 
I  must  not  include  all  the  men.)  The 
crew  were  panic  stricken,  and  thought 
only  of  themselves;  the  officers  did 
noble  work;  and  a  few  real  "men" 
(two  that  come  vividly  to  mind),  one 
being  thrown  into  the  water  three  times 
in  his  efforts  to  save  others,  another 
not  leaving  the  sinking  vessel  until  a 
rope  was  thrown  him,  both  could  have 
been  among  the  first  off.  They  were 
real  heroes,  although  the  world  will 
never  know. 

By  putting  on  some  of  our  clothing 
we  avoided  that  first  wild  stampede, 
and  were  able  to  get  up  the  ladder  with 
very  little  crowding,  although  I  could 
not  go  with  Catherine.  When  I  saw 
her  climb  onto  that  swinging  ladder 
over  wreckage  and  water  onto  a  burn- 
ing ship,  my  heart  sank,  and  I  turned 
away  with  the  thought:  "Will  I  ever 
see  her  again?'*  When  it  came  my 
turn  to  go  (being  the  last  woman  up 
the  ladder),  amid  the  rush  of  the 
water  into  the  fast  sinking  vessel,  the 
crashing  to  the  cargo,  as  it  shifted  to 
the  sunken  stern,  and  the  roar  of  the 
fire  (which  was  caused  by  the  bow  of 
the  Princess  Victoria  entering  the  Ad- 
miral Sampson  where  the  fuel  oil  was 


contained,  the  friction  of  the  two  ves- 
sels causing  the  oil  to  ignite  and  burn 
most  fiercely) — I  will  never  know  how 
I  reached  safety.  The  first  I  fully 
realized  was  that  I  once  again  had  my 
darling  child  in  my  arms.  As  I  turned 
for  one  more  look  at  our  stricken  ship, 
I  saw  her  noble  captain  and  some  of 
his  men  at  their  post  of  duty — I  turned 
away,  I  could  not  look — it  was  all  over 
— I  knew  that  he  with  many  others  had 
gone  to  their  last  rest. 

We  then  made  our  way  inside  the 
Princess  Victoria,  and  were  there  told 
to  put  on  life  preservers,  as  it  was  not 
known  to  what  extent  she  was  dam- 
aged. Very  few  passengers  from  the 
Admiral  Sampson  had  put  them  on, 
their  only  thought  being  to  get  off. 
Those  not  reaching  the  ladder  were 
compelled  to  jump,  as  there  was  only 
time  to  lower  one  life  boat  from  the 
Admiral  Sampson.  Others  being  low- 
ered from  the  Princess  Victoria  saved 
many  lives. 

Oh,  it  was  all  so  sudden,  all  so  hor- 
rible— all  over  in  six  minutes — a  life- 
time of  agony!  And  underneath  that 
calm,  deep  water  were  sixteen  bodies, 
their  idolized  "Cap,"  our  ship  with 
all  my  keepsakes,  treasured  from 
childhood  up,  heirlooms,  clothing,  fur- 
niture, all  that  it  had  taken  years  to 
collect — gone.  Yes,  gone — almost  be- 
fore we  could  turn  around,  but  with  it 
all  my  "dearest  treasure"  saved,  and 
life — and  I  am  thankful. 

After  patroling  the  water  for  an 
hour  or  more  to  see  if  there  were  any 
bodies  to  recover  and  ascertaining  the 
damage  to  the  Princess  Victoria,  we 
slowly  steamed  into  dock,  reaching 
Seattle  about  10:30  a.  m.,  there  again 
to  be  welcomed  by  loving  friends,  who 
so  few  short  hours  before  had  bidden 
us  "bon  voyage." 


The  Influence  of  the  War  on  Poetry 


By  Stephen  Phillips 


HOWEVER  perilous  it  may  be  to 
prophesy,  there  are  one  or  two 
changes  in  both  the  spirit  and 
style  of  English  verse  which 
may  with  some  safety  be  predicted  as 
following  on  the  close  of  the  present 
conflict.  One  certainly  can  be  reck- 
oned on  with  little  hesitancy.  That 
spirit  of  introspection,  of  terrible 
doubt  as  to  the  real  purpose  of  this 
world,  that  inward  agony  almost  of 
the  human  soul  as  to  its  individual  re- 
lations with  its  Creator  which  remains 
embodied  for  us  in  the  verse  of  Ten- 
nyson's "In  Memoriam,"  will  almost 
surely  pass.  For  the  conflict  there  is 
between  the  fear  created  by  the  recent 
discoveries  of  science  and  the  old 
transmitted  faith  of  many  generations 
of  the  just.  Tennyson  was  not  a  great 
original  thinker — is  it  necessary  that 
a  poet  should  be? — but  he  undoubt- 
edly reflected  more  clearly  than  any 
poet  that  has  ever  written  the  very 
age  and  embodiment  of  the  time.  It 
would  perhaps  be  too  narrow  a  criti- 
cism to  make  if  one  said  "he  was  not 
ior  all  time  but  for  an  age."  Let  us 
put  it  rather  that,  whether  or  not  he 
was  for  all  time,  he  was  certainly  for 
an  age. 

'  Now,  broadly  speaking,  one  might 
say  that  the  Tennysonian  appeal  to  the 
elect  of  his  day  was  a  very  beautiful 
lament  at  what  seemed  the  loss  of 
faith.  He  exclaims: 

"And  he,  shall  he, 
Man,  her  last  work,  who  seemed  so 

fair, 

Such  splendid  purpose  in  his  eyes, 
Who  rolled  the  psalm  to  wintry  skies 
Who  built  him     fanes     of     fruitless 
prayer, 

*  *  *  * 

"Who  loved,  who   suffered    countless 
ills, 


Who  battled  for  the  true,  the  just, 
Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust, 
Or  sealed  within  the  iron  hills?" 

These  verses  raise  the  grand-  ques- 
tion which  agitated  the  men  and  wo- 
men of  his  generation.  Nor  was  he 
alone  in  voicing  this  receding  of  an- 
cient faith  as  the  greatest  of  problems, 
the  one  matter  most  important  to  man- 
kind. Matthew  Arnold,  next  to  Ten- 
nyson the  singer  most  in  touch  with 
his  age,  speaks  in  a  well  known  pas- 
sage of  the  time  when  "Faith  was  at 
the  full,"  and  can  hear  only  now  its 

"Melancholy  long  withdrawing  roar." 

But  now  suddenly,  though  probably 
after  long  preparation,  the  whole  of 
Europe  is  plunged  into  a  struggle  of 
which  the  issue  is  even  now  uncer- 
tain, and  which  for  bloodshed,  brutal- 
ity and  ghastly  triumphs  of  chemistry 
is  unparalleled  in  history.  For  the 
time  at  least  no  man  has  the  leisure 
to  examine  his  own  soul  in  its  relation 
to  its  Creator;  he  must  be  up  and  do- 
ing, rendering  service  not  necessarily 
of  a  military  kind,  but  service  of  some 
'kind  to  an  Empire  which  is  seriously 
threatened.  Then,  in  the  Tennysonian 
day,  it  was  possible  to  dream,  and  if 
the  dream  were  a  nightmare,  still  to 
dream.  Now  it  is  a  time  for  the  coun- 
try to  put  its  house  in  order,  a  process 
carried  through  always  in  England 
with  no  indecency  of  haste,  and  the 
more  slowly  the  greater  the  immediate 
peril.  But  when  this  tremendous 
event  has  passed,  with  whatever  issue, 
how  will  English  poetry  be  affected, 
a  possession  no  less  dear  than  our 
military  or  naval  glory?  Personally, 
the  present  writer's  belief  is  that  once 
the  strident  wave  has  hoarsely  with- 
drawn, and  gradually,  and  it  must  be 


332 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


most  gradually,  the  human  mind  be- 
gins to  resume  a  clear  tranquility, 
there  will  be,  by  that  great  force  of 
reaction  which  keeps  the  earth  stable, 
a  return  to  the  vision,  and  the  gleam, 
to  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
land.  To  the  old  spiritual  speculations 
which  so  vexed  our  forefathers?  In 
a  manner,  yes,  but  with  a  bolder  and 
more  scientific  momentum.  One  hates 
to  use  the  words  "psychic,"  "super- 
natural," "spiritualistic,"  yet  this  jar- 
gon must  be  temporarily  employed. 
Suppose  then  this  war  to  be,  and 
there  is  some  warrant  for  the  supposi- 
tion, the  last  rally  and  grand  onrush 
of  the  powers  of  darkness  and  force 
against  the  earth,  may  it  not  be  pos- 
sible that  this  will  be  followed  by  a 
clearer  light  on  these  things  that  truly 
matter,  the  things  of  the  spirit;  that 
we  shall  largely  by  sheer  reaction  and 
defeat  of  force,  gain  some  nearer  in- 


-sight  into  that  world  which,  invisible 
though  it  be,  both  enwraps  and  con- 
trols this?  It  is  not  too  much  to  sug- 
gest that  we  may  after  such  noise 
clasp  a  more  precious  silence  than  be- 
fore, that  after  such  storm  and  wreck- 
age we  may  gain  a  clearer  sea  and  a 
more  transparent  deep.  If  this  sug- 
gestion should  at  all  prove  to  be  true, 
and  there  will  be  many  who  will  de- 
ride it,  then  a  more  wonderful  poetry 
may  be  given  to  man  than  possibly  in 
any  previous  age.  Did  not  the  French 
revolution  give  us  that  transcendent 
group  of  poets  whom  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  name?  And  what  was  that 
shock  compared  to  this?  It  is  per- 
missible to  forecast  an  era  of  verse 
'which  shall  be  the  deeper,  the  clearer 
and  the  more  gentle  because  it  has 
been  born  of  such  unexampled  vio- 
lence and  such  an  unparalleled  life- 
'  waste. 


COMPENSATION 


Fear  ye  lest  sickness  vex  awhile  thy  clay? 
Think,  rather,  health  is  with  us  every  day. 

There  are  a  thousand  happy,  laughing  boys 
For  one  who,  crippled,  shudders  at  their  noise. 

Some  ills  there  be,  as  known  to  human  sense, 
Yet  each  is  mother  to  sweet  recompense. 

When  thrones  pall,  interest  centers  in  a  glove ; 
Brief  dawn  for  parting;  all  the  night  for  love. 

Varied  the  motion  of  this  life's  wide  sea, 
Yet  hath  it  poise  in  action,  bounds  while  free. 

Alike  for  freedom  and  for  freedom's  bounds 
Faith's  song  of  harmony  resounds. 

Be  thine  the  pain?  the  bonds?  the  loveless  night? 
Ingrate !    God  offers  thee  clairvoyant  sight. 


ARTHUR  POWELL. 


Edwin  Aarkham 

The  Boy,  The  Man,  His  Art 

By  Henry  /Aeade  Bland 

Photographs  by  the  Author. 


ONE  TIME  in  pioneer  days  on 
the  far  West  Coast,  in  the  won- 
derful heart  of  Mendocino 
Mountains,  two  boys  with  the 
passion  for  adventure,  danced  a  mystic 
ring  around  a  flaming  redwood  fire. 
They  were  naked  as  when  first  nestled 
on  their  mothers'  bosoms;  for  on 
horseback,  a  half  hour  before,  tying 
themselves  to  their  saddles,  they  had 
just  swum  the  raging  winter  Eel 
River;  and,  since  every  thread  of  their 
blankets  and  clothing  was  soaked, 
they  thus  were  performing  their  imp- 
ish rites  before  the  flames. 

It  was  well  these  bold  young  rangers 
even  at  the  risk  of  their  lives  had 
placed  the  rolling,  unfordable  Eel  be- 
tween them  and  the  narrow  stretch  of 
civilization  where  they  lived;  for  one 
of  them  had,  a  day  or  two  before,  an- 
nexed a  horse  and  saddle,  and  no 
doubt  a  posse  was  already  after  him. 
In  those  days  to  steal  a  horse  was  as 
dangerous  to  the  perpetrator  as  to 
take  a  shot  at  one's  fellow.  No  sheriff 
could  have  dreamed  his  quarry  would 
have  crossed  that  tempestuous  stream, 
however;  and  as  the  runaways,  once 
their  outfit  was  dry,  promptly  lost 
themselves  in  primeval  redwoods, 
they  were  for  the  time  safe. 

Many  a  mile  they  continued  to  ride. 
Everywhere  about  them  was  game, 
from  the  shy  quail  to  the  fearless  griz- 
zly. No  Indian  ever  reveled  in  his 
own  deep  forest  shades  with  wilder 
incantations  to  his  hunter-god,  or 
drunk  deeper  drafts  of  the  glorious 
Sylvan,  than  did  these  woodsy  va- 
queros — devotees  of  Freemont  and 
Kit  Carson. 


Their  goal  was  the  summit  of  the 
range;  and  they  were  even  now  con- 
juring up  the  wild  adventures  awaiting 
them.  But  they  were  not  to  be  al- 
lowed to  look  over  this  height  to  the 
splendid  ocean  beyond,  for  a  gentle 
snow  began  to  fall,  threatening  to  ob- 
literate every  vestige  of  their  trail; 
so  they  veered  off  along  the  eastern 
slope  of  the  blue  range,  and  found 
themselves  among  Indians.  These, 
however,  were  not  dangerous;  more- 
over, they  were  on  a  government  re- 
serve; and  the  superintendent,  be- 
lieving the  boys  run-aways,  wheedled 
them  into  a  stay,  till  searchers  might 
arrive. 

But  the  pursuers  the  Indian  super- 
intendent expected  did  not  come;  and 
after  a  two-weeks'  stay  in  this  primi- 
tive paradise,  where  there  was  plenty 
to  eat  and  nothing  to  pay,  the  rovers 
moved  on. 

Down  into  the  rich  Sacramento  Val- 
ley they  went  among  the  broad  farms 
of  Colusa.  And  now  the  avenging  ne- 
mesis, a  sheriff's  deputy,  who  had 
been  carefully  tracing  their  vague 
trail,  caught  them,  and  recognizing  the 
stolen  horse,  detained  its  rider;  while 
the  black-eyed  younger  escapado  lis- 
tened in  terror  to  the  exciting  confer- 
ence. 

Then  the  deputy  looked  down  the 
road  to  see  a  streak  of  dust  and 
"greased  lightning,"  for  although  the 
younger  boy  had  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  stolen  horse,  he  had  decided 
to  take  no  chances  with  the  rope- 
swinging  vigilant  committee,  and,  put- 
ting spurs  to  his  horse,  saw  his  part- 
ner no  more. 


334 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


So  this  modern  knight-errant  and 
poet-to-be,  having  side  tracked  his 
unfortunate  companion,  who  had  thus 
been  cut  short  in  his  career  as  a  free- 
booter, rode  on  among  the  rich  farms. 
Harvest  was  at  hand.  He  was  al- 
ready hardened  to  toil  on  his  mother's 
farm,  and  was  glad  to  join  a  threshing 
crew,  with  which,  till  the  end  of  the 
season,  he  toiled  at  the  good  old- 
fashioned  job  of  "straw  buck."  When 
the  "run"  was  over,  and  the  crew  paid 
off,  a  new  adventure  opened,  wilder 
than  he  yet  had  dreamed  of. 

He  was  saddling  his  pony  to  leave 
when  a  strapping,  more  than  six  foot 
member  of  the  threshing  crew,  a  man 
of  wonderful  stride,  of  the  jettest  hair 
and  of  keenest  glance,  said: 

"Wait  a  minute,  young  man.  I've 
studied  you  for  six  weeks;  you've  got 
the  head  on  you  and  just  the  grit  of 
the  fellow  I  want.  Look  here,  now! 
I  hold  up  stages." 

The  straw-buck  at  this  startling 
speech  was  all  ears. 

"I  want  a  man  of  nerve  to  hold  the 
gun.  I've  watched  you,  and  you  can 
do  it." 

Thus  the  mighty  Black  Bart  went 
on,  for  this  was  the  famous  bandit : 

"Up  to  this  time  I've  had  to  do  it 
all  alone — hold  the  gun  in  one  hand, 
take  the  coin  and  jewelry  with  the 
other,  and  drop  the  loot  into  a  sack 
tied  around  me.  All  you've  got  to  do 
is  to  hold  the  gun,"  the  robber  further 
explained,  assuming  the  attitude  of 
the  hold-up  man. 

"You  can  do  it,"  he  said,  by  way  of 
clinching  the  argument. 

A  fiery  question  shot  through  the 
young  man's  mind.  He  was  tempted 
but  amazed;  but  it  is  not  to  be  sup- 
posed that  Markham  considered  the 
bandit's  proposition  for  more  than  an 
instant,  when  his  desire  to  be  a  high- 
way robber  was  at  an  end. 

At  this  opportune  moment  a  frantic 
mother,  who  had  traced  her  romantic 
boy-adventurer  almost  from  the  time 
he  left  home,  seized  him  with  a  firmer 
grip  than  ever  a  bandedero  could 
have  held  him  with,  and  (joy  to  his 
hungry  heart),  ordered  him  peremp- 


torily to  return  home  and  prepare  at 
once  to  go  to  school.  Was  not  this 
woman  truly  a  mother,  who  thus 
wrestled  with  her  wayward  born,  stud- 
ied him,  shaped  him,  mastered  him, 
and  opened  a  righteous  path  before 
him? 

This  mother  of  Edwin  Markham 
had  herself  the  spark  of  literary  gen- 
ius. She  once  wrote  verse  for  the 
newspapers  of  Oregon,  where  Edwin 
was  born,  whence  she  moved  with  her 
orphan  boys  to  California,  settling  in 
the  hill-circled  Lagoon  Valley  a  few 
miles  north  of  Suisun,  Solano  County. 
The  meagre  collection  of  books  in  the 
home  contained  "Byron,"  and  the  sad 
musical  "Melodies"  were  doubtless  his 
earliest  nurture.  The  Black  District 
Public  School  began  his  education, 
and  three  teachers,  all  men,  had  him 
under  tuition.  One  of  these  appar- 
ently left  no  impress  upon  the  pliant 
child,  and  his  name  is  forgotten;  but 
the  other  two,  Samuel  D.  Woods  and 
William  H.  Hill,  are  now  held  in 
grateful  memory  by  their  pupil.  Both 
were  deeply  interested  in  literature, 
and  touched  the  boy  with  fire  from 
their  favorites. 

William  H.  Hill  taught  him  to  love 
"Lalla  Rookh"  and  Tennysonian  lyr- 
ics as  "Tears,  Idle  Tears;"  Byron  and 
Bryant,  too,  were  this  teacher's  favor- 
ites; and  "The  Past"  and  "A  Dream" 
(not  "A  Dream  of  Darkness")  were 
poems  the  boy  was  taught  to  cherish. 
Thus  there  grew  a  demand  for  new 
books  in  the  Markham  home  library. 
Tom  Moore,  Bryant  and  Webster's 
Unabridged  being  among  the  desirable 
volumes. 

Yet  when  the  money  for  the  pur- 
pose was  not  to  be  had  in  Mistress 
Markham's  frugal  home,  he  was  by 
no  means  daunted.  He  rigged  up  a 
team,  hitched  to  his  plow,  and  hired 
to  a  neighbor,  breaking  up  twenty 
acres  at  a  dollar  an  acre ;  and  the  cov- 
eted books  were  secured. 

Mrs.  Markham  determined  after 
the  cowboy  episode  to  put  her  boy 
where  he  could  learn  broadly  and  at 
the  same  time  make  his  learning  im- 
mediately useful.  She  moved  all  her 


Edwin  Markham,  from  a  photograph  taken  about  the  time  he  wrote  "The 

Man  With  the  Hoe." 


Edwin  Markham  entertained  by  the  Pacific  Short  Story  Club  on  his  Cali- 
fornia visit  last  February.  On  the  left  of  the  poet  is  William  Herbert  Car- 
ruth,  of  "Each  in  His  Own  Tongue;"  on  the  right  is  George  Wharton  James 
historian  and  lecturer.  The  poet  has  a  floral  piece  resting  on  his  lap. 


worldly  goods  to  San  Jose,  California, 
and  there  put  the  vigorous  and  lively 
Edwin  into  the  State  Normal  School, 
that  he  might  become  a  teacher. 

The  time  from  1872,  when  Markham 
graduated,  to  1889,  may  be  called  the 
formative  period  of  the  young  poet. 
His  home  during  this  time  was  Santa 
Clara  Valley;  but  as  he  was  truly  an 
itinerant  teacher,  his  work  took  him 
into  many  different  parts  of  the  West. 
Once  he  went  again  to  a  private  col- 
lege and  studied  the  classics.  More- 
over, quaint  and  sometimes  exciting 
experiences  continued  to  come  to  him, 
and  not  a  few  sorrows  mingled  with 
these  early  adjustments  to  actual  life. 
He  was  an  idealist;  but  he  was  able 
to  put  touches  of  realism,  too,  into  his 
work  when  the  situation  demanded. 
His  first  work  was  in  a  district  in  San 
Luis  Obispo  County,  and  on  present- 
ing himself  to  teach,  he  found  no  sign 
of  a  school  house.  Without  hesitation 
he  selected  a  wide-spreading  live  oak, 


drove  stakes  in  form  of  a  fence  around 
it,  improvised  seats  and  a  desk,  and 
thus,  in  probably  the  first  open  air 
school  house  of  the  West,  proceeded 
to  conduct  classes.  Not  a  drop  of  rain 
could  penetrate  the  thick  perennially 
leaved  branches  of  his  covering,  while 
the  impromptu  wall  of  posts  served  to 
cut  off  the  winds.  He  had  scarcely 
opened  school  when  the  one  aristo- 
cratic lady  of  the  district  appeared  to 
enroll  her  little  boy.  Markham,  feel- 
ing somewhat  awkward  in  his  rustic 
environment,  was  delighted  to  see 
her  condescend  to  put  the  child  under 
his  sylvan  tuition. 

When  the  lady  left  she  called  the 
teacher  aside  for  a  sage  word  of  part- 
ing, saying:  "If  Reginald  misbehaves, 
you  whip  the  boy  next  to  him,  and 
then  he'll  be  so  scared  he'll  be  good!" 

During  all  these  years  Markham  as 
he  could  borrow  a  moment  was  prac- 
ticing his  poetic  art.  He  early  learned 
the  necessity  of  being  self-critical, 


EDWIN  MARKHAM 


337 


sometimes  keeping  his  productions  by 
him,  not  only  tor  months,  but  years, 
till  he  had  developed  their  genuine 
aroma.  He  was  an  unwearied  student, 
not  only  of  books  but  of  men;  and  a 
good  conversation  was  his  chief  joy. 
Once  he  arrived  at  night  fall  at  the 
house  of  an  old  friend  who  was  just 
recovering  from  scarlet  fever.  Tak- 
ing a  seat  far  across  the  room  to  es- 
cape infection,  the  two  talked  until 
neighboring  householders  began  to 
burn  their  early  morning  lights. 

His  later  years  in  the  school  room 
carried  him  into  the  high  Sierra  Ne- 
vada mountains,  where  he  was  a 
school  superintendent.  His  impres- 
sions of  nature  were  thus  enlarged, 
shifting  from  the  kindly  touches  drawn 
from  the  Coast  Range  to  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  loftier,  grander  stretches 
and  vistas  of  the  Sierra.  His  imagi- 
nation grew  and  deepened. 

"There  at  a  certain  hour  of  the  night, 
A  gray  cliff  with  a  demon  face  comes 

up, 
Wrinkled  and  old,  behind  the  peaks, 

and  with 
An  anxious  look  peers  at  the  Zodiac." 

In  all  this  work  a  definite  theory  of 
art  is  consciously  developing.  His 
method  is  first,  a  search  for  a  su- 
premely poetic  idea;  and  second,  in- 
cessant toil  upon  the  expression  of  it 
till  his  soul  tells  him  "it  is  finished." 
From  1889,  the  third  era  of  his 
growth,  when  the  idea  first  took  pos- 
session of  him  till  1899 — a  decade — 
he  shaped  and  re-shaped  the  "Man 
With  the  Hoe."  The  right  word  must 
be  found;  the  polish  must  be  perfect, 
the  real  fire  must  burn.  (So  well  does 
he  have  his  poetic  theory  in  hand  that 
it  may  be  said,  with  no  fear  of  over- 
drawing, he  is  in  criticism  in  the  class 
with  Poe  and  Stedman  as  an  arbiter 
of  literary  elegancies.  Some  may 
even  say  that  a  book  is  made  by  his 
sanction  as  a  reviewer;  or  unmade  if, 
when  it  is  called  to  his  attention,  he  is 
silent. 

The  intense  seriousness  of  his  work 
is  clearly  illustrated  in  both  "The  Man 
with  the  Hoe  and  Other  Poems,"  and 


in  the  collection  containing  "Lincoln." 
His  poetry  is  his  religion — each  is  in- 
terchangeable with  the  other.  In  fact 
it  is  persistently  held  by  him  that 
since  the  function  of  art  is  to  complete 
designs  of  nature  (not  to  imitate  na- 
ture) great  poetry  enters  the  realm  of 
prophecy.  Its  antipode  is  not  prose, 
but  science.  Science  can  go  no  fur- 
ther than  the  powers  of  sense  allow 
it;  poetry  with  its  subtle  inner  vision 
reaches  into  the  unknown.  It  is  an 
intense  yearning  for  the  perfect^ 

"(It)  comes  like  the  husht  beauty  of 

the  night 

And  sees  too  deep  for  laughter; 
(Its)  touch  is  a  vibration  and  a  light 
From  worlds  before  and  after." 

— Markham. 

It  is  the  gentle  sadness  that  gives 
the  face  of  the  muse  her  best  appear- 
ance; and  perhaps  the  best  reason  for 
this  deeper  attitude  of  the  poet  is  that 
behind  everything  is  the  divine  es- 
sence which  constantly  challenges  to 
thoughtfulness.  Humor,  conceits  and 
gawds,  as  well  as  their  more  exqui- 
site relative,  the  fancy,  have  a  pass- 
ing significance.  They  are  but  the 
early  stepping  stones  by  means  of 
which  the  hungry  intellect  leaps  on  to 
the  mystic  and  sublime  truth. 

Mr.  Markham,  the  critic,  thus  broad- 
ly establishes  three  canons,  as  the 
basis  of  his  poetic  judgment:  The 
poetic  conceit  is  the  lowest — a  form 
in  which  the  thought  is  concealed  by 
the  machinery  of  its  expression. 

Browning'aureferene  to  spring  in 
"Sordello"  is  to  the  point: 

"As  in  the  slumbrous  heart    o'     the 

woods 
Our  buried  year,  a  witch,  grew  young 

again 

To  placid  incantations,  and  that  stain 
About  were  from  her  cauldron,  green 

smoke  blent 
With  those  black  pines." 

As  also  are  Holmes'  odd  lines: 

"Day  hath  put  on  his     jacket,     and 

around 
His  burning  bosom  buttoned  it  with 

stars." 


^<<«C<(«<CC<(«^^ 


i 
& 


/  s 


Henry  M.  Bland. 


A  fancy  is  many  degrees  in  poetic 
value  beyond  the  conceit,  as  will  be 
observed  in  Longfellow's  famous  ex- 
tract from  Evangeline,  beginning: 

"Silently  one  by  one;" 
or  in  McDonald  Clark's: 

"Night  drew  her  sable  curtain  down, 
And  pinned  it  with  a  star;" 

or  in  Tennyson's : 

"Jewels  five  words  long 

That  on  the  stretched  forefinger  of  all 

Time 
Sparkle  forever." 

Conceits  and  fancies  belong  to  ear- 
lier phases  of  literature. 


Thirdly,  passages  which  are  shaped 
at  white  heat  in  the  forge  of  creative 
imagination  form  the  highest  type  of 
poetry.  Such  are  Lowell's : 

"Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold, 
Wrong  forever  on  the  throne;" 

Browning's  characterization  of  himself 
as: 

"One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but 
marched  breast  forward;" 

And  Shakespeare's : 

"Why,  what  should  be  the  fear? 
I  do  not  set  my  life  at  a  pin's  fee; 
And,  for  my  soul,  what  can  it  do  to 

that, 


EDWIN  MARKHAM 


339 


George  Wharton  James 

Being  a  thing  immortal  as  itself?" 

and  lines  from  "The  Man  with  the 
Hoe,"  also  illustrate  this  class  of 
poetry : 

"How  will  it  be  with  kingdoms  and 

with  kings — 
With  those  who  shaped  him  to  the 

thing  he  is — 
When  this  dumb  Terror  shall  reply  to 

God, 
After  the  silence  of  the  centuries?" 

It  is  now  fifteen  years  since  the 
poet  issued  the  two  thin  volumes 
which  embody  his  ideal  of  poetry,  and 
it  seems  strange  that  while  many  a 
magazine  has  used  his  lines,  only  now 
is  the  new  collection,  "The  Shoes  of 
Happiness,"  to  appear.  Shall  we  not 
say  that  devotion  to  splendid  ideals 
has  caused  the  continued  silence;  that 
the  feeling  that  the  old  standards  must 
be  passed  has  caused  the  hesitation  in 
hazarding  the  new  attempt? 

The  "Hoe-Man"  period  of  Edwin 
Markham's  life  was  passed  as  princi- 
pal of  the  Thompkins  School,  Oak- 
land, California.  Here  the  spirit  of 
his  teaching  was  suggested  to  the  vis- 
itor by  the  figure  of  the  Christ-Child, 
always  before  him  on  his  office  desk. 


The  spirit  of  his  school  was  said  by 
the  superintendent  to  be  above  re- 
proach; and  he  undoubtedly  was  a 
pioneer  in  making  children's  litera- 
ture an  approach  to  what  it  should  be, 
using  it  to  give  tone  to  his  school.  He 
truly  had  not  forgotten  the  spirit  of 
his  own  teachers  back  in  the  primitive 
lagoon  district.  His  method  was  im- 
pressional,  and  no  doubt  many  a  child 
now  grown  looks  back  with  pride  at 
once  being  seated  at  the  feet  of  this 
literary  Gamaliel. 

Unmeasured  success  came  to  Mark- 
ham  on  publication  of  the  "Man  with 
the  Hoe."  Besides  being  reproduced 
in  practically  every  periodical  of  the 
English  tongue,  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  of  the  book,  "The  Man  with 
the  Hoe,  and  Other  Poems,"  were 
sold. 

That  he  might  be  where  he  could 
work  to  the  best  advantage  in  a  broad- 
ened field,  after  this  success,  he  pro- 
ceeded to  New  York,  leaving  his  wife 
and  child  to  keep  the  California  home 
at  anchor.  As  metropolitan  editors, 
after  six  weeks'  stay  in  the  East,  con- 
tined  to  send  orders  for  work  from  his 
pen,  he  sent  the  telegram  to  Mrs. 
Markham  which  meant  the  breaking 
of  all  old  Western  ties: 

"Sell  everything  but  the  baby  and 
the  books,  and  come  on,"  he  said. 

It  was  a  great  store  of  wisdom,  na- 
ture and  experience  the  Hoeman  car- 
ried with  him  across  the  continent,  for 
in  California  he  had  loved  man,  books 
and  nature,  with  all  his  soul.  He  had 
developed  skilful  mastery  of  the  right 
use  of  the  vehicle  of  his  art.  In  his 
wooded  retreat  in  East  Oakland  hills 
he  had  absorbed  history,  art  and 
philosophy.  He  had  touched  Joaquin 
Miller,  Charles  Warren  Stoddard  and 
others  of  the  early  Californian  school 
in  the  secret  places  of  their  best 
thought.  Not  only  this,  but,  that  he 
might  know  what  it  was  to  toil,  he 
had  learned  the  blacksmith's  trade, 
and  in  truth  in  his  early  farm  life  he 
had  not  shirked  the  hardest  harvest 
labor.  Hence  his  sympathy  with  the 
poor.  All  these  elements  were  com- 
bined as  a  basis  to  make  his  virile 


340 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


thought  of  the  past  fifteen  years, 
which  in  truth  make  his  fourth  life- 
era. 

There  is  an  all-important  lesson,  to 
the  earnest  student,  in  Edwin  Mark- 
ham's  intellectual  life.  No  student  of 
the  superficial  and  insignificant  he! 
He  has  thrown  himself  into  Aristotle, 
into  Shakespeare,  into  the  Bible  (wit- 
ness his  "Poetry  of  Jesus"),  and  into 
the  masters  of  modern  science.  As  a 
result,  instead  of  being  overwhelmed 
by  the  contradictions  and  disputes  he 
found,  he  has  arrived  at  certain  defin- 
ite, simple,  optimistic  beliefs.  We 
find  him  definitely  and  positively  as- 
serting immortality.  He  holds  tena- 
ciously to  his  old  faith  in  the  brother- 
hood of  man,  and  holds  with  fidelity 
to  the  spirit  of  beauty  which  is  an- 
other name  for  truth.  He  lives  a  sim- 
ple, spontaneous  life,  continually  rec- 
ognizing the  "give  and  take,"  the  eter- 
nal law  which  goes  with  every  life : 
"There  is  a  sacred  Something  on  all 

ways — 
Something  that  watches  through  the 

universe ; 

One  that  remembers,  reckons  and  re- 
pays, 


Giving  us  love  for  love,  and  curse  for 
curse." 

It  ought  to  be  said,  finally,  that 
Markham's  inspiration  owes  a  great 
debt  to  his  contact  with  nature  in 
primitive  California  days,  when  the 
Western  land  was  still  an  approach  to 
what  it  was  in  primeval  simplicity, 
when  the  Indian,  the  grizzly,  the  elk, 
and  the  mountain  lion  companioned  in 
places  where  now  are  the  clear  marks 
of  civilization.  This  wild  and  won- 
derful freedom  was  his — such  as  never 
can  be  of  the  same  kind  again  in  these 
his  boyhood  haunts.  This  delight  in 
the  wild  and  primitive  has  tempered 
the  sorrow  and  rage  which  has  so  of- 
ten possessed  his  soul  as  he  has  stud- 
ied the  clash  of  his  fellowmen  in  the 
maelstrom  of  modern  civilization. 

This  impress  of  the  younger  day  can 
not  wear  from  his  mind,  and  he  comes 
back  again  and  again,  as  when  he 
lectures,  and  as  in  his  "California  the 
Wonderful,"  to  his  restful  "Mendo- 
cino  Memory,"  his  shining  "Lyric  of 
the  Dawn,"  his  gentle  "Blossoming 
Bough;"  and  his  loving  "Heart's  Re- 
turn." 


THE   EXPOSITION  BUILDERS 

Thus  said  the  Master  Builder  to  the  Artisan: 
"Go,  thou,  and  build  a  city  great  and  free, 
Upon  the  borders  of  this  Western  Sea; 

Build  columns,  courts  and  stately  walls,  that  men 

May  come  and  gaze,  then  come  and  gaze  again," 
Thus  to  the  Artist:  "Catch  the  tints  that  be 
In  rosy  dawn,  in  turquoise  sky,  from  lea 

Of  sun-dried  grass;  ochres  from  moor  and  fen. 

"Paint  thou  this  city  with  a  touch  so  fine 
That  art  shall  rival  nature.    Architect, 

High  over  all  these  domes  and  walls  erect 
A  tower  incrust  with  jewels,  that  shall  shine 

Even  as  the  stars.    Turn  the  great  arc  lights  high." 

Behold!    Earth  disappears  and  heaven  is  nigh. 


BY  AMY  W.  HAMLIN. 


Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa. 


(Courtesy  of  the  Outlook) 


Vasco  Nunez  De  Balboa 


By  Captain  Henry  Rowan  Lemly,  U.  5.  Army,  Retired 


THE  proximity  of     the     official 
opening    of    the     Interoceanic 
Canal   should  lend   interest  to 
everything    pertaining    to    the 
Isthmus,  and  not  least  to  the  discov- 
erer of  the  great  South  Sea,  to  whom 
San  Diego  and  the  Republic  of  Pan- 
ama are  about  to  erect  statues   (the 


latter  counting  among  its  subscribers 
the  King  of  Spain),  and  for  whom  the 
new  port  at  the  western  extremity  of 
the  famous  waterway  has  just  been 
named. 

Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa  was  the  first 
European  to  pass  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  but  the  scene  of 


342 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


this  exploit  was  farther  south  than  the 
site  of  the  canal,  in  that  part  of  the 
isthmus  then  named  and  still  called 
Darien.  Born  in  Jerez  de  los  Cabal- 
leros,  of  a  distinguished  family,  Bal- 
boa passed  his  early  youth  as  a  page 
in  the  palace  of  the  Lord  of  Moguer, 
in  whose  service  he  learned  practically 
all  that  a  Spanish  hidalgo  of  that  per- 
iod was  expected  to  know  and  which 
naturally  fitted  him  for  the  career  of 
arms.  The  time  of  (his  birth  is  not 
definitely  known,  but  he  is  first  heard 
of  in  1501,  when  still  very  young,  upon 
the  expedition  to  the  mainland  made 
by  Rodrigo  de  Bastidas,  who  navi- 
gated the  coast  from  Cape  Vela  to  the 
Gulf  of  Uraba.  Doubtless  with  his 
share  of  the  proceeds  of  this  voyage, 
Balboa  purchased  an  estate  in  Hispan- 
iola  (to-day  the  island  of  Haiti-San 
Domingo),  where  he  engaged  for  sev- 
eral years  in  agricultural  pursuits. 
These,  however,  were  evidently  not 
suited  to  his  adventurous  character, 
and  he  was  so  burdened  with  debts 
that,  when  he  wished  to  join  the  ex- 
pedition of  Enciso  who,  in  1511,  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Gulf  of  Uraba  to  succor 
Alonso  de  Ojeda,  either  to  escape  his 
creditors  or  from  fear  of  rejection,  he 
had  himself  secretly  carried  aboard  in 
an  empty  cask  and  thus  shipped  as  a 
stowaway.  Not  until  the  high  sea  was 
reached  was  he  discovered.  Enciso 
threatened  to  leave  him  upon  a  desert 
island  for  his  temerity,  but  was  so 
captivated  by  the  gallant  bearing  of 
Balboa  and  his  knowledge  of  the  coun- 
try to  be  visited  that  he  not  only  for- 
gave him,  but  appointed  him  to  a  place 
of  trust  and  honor. 

At  Cartagena  they  found  Francisco 
Pizarro  (later  the  conqueror  of  Peru) 
and  his  companions,  who  had  been 
sent  by  Ojeda  for  supplies.  Seeing 
that  their  party  would  more  than  fill 
the  two  boats  at  their  command,  they 
had  quietly  waited  for  disease  and  the 
arrows  of  the  natives  to  reduce  their 
number,  which  accomplished,  they 
had  set  sail  from  the  Gulf  of  Uraba, 
when  one  of  their  vessels  foundered 
with  the  loss  of  all  on  board.  Pizarro 
and  his  men  were  now  persuaded  to  re- 


turn to  Enciso  in  search  of  Ojeda. 

Near  the  mouth  of  the  River  Sinu 
they  remained  several  days  examining 
the  Indian  sepulchres  for  gold,  which 
had  been  reported  so  abundant  that 
the  natives  were  said  to  take  it  from 
the  mountain  torrents  with  fish-nets! 
And,  indeed,  some  years  later,  Pedro 
de  Heredia,  the  founder  of  Cartagena, 
secured  more  gold  in  the  aboriginal 
tombs  along  the  Sinu,  according  to  the 
historian  Acosta,  than  was  obtained  in 
the  conquest  of  Mexico  or  Peru.  En- 
ciso fulfilled  religiously  his  instruc- 
tions to  have  proclaimed  to  the  natives 
the  formula  prepared  by  the  Spanish 
Government,  briefly  as  follows:  That 
there  was  but  one  God,  whose  vice- 
regent  on  earth,  the  Pope,  had  given 
these  lands  to  His  Majesty,  the  King 
of  Spain,  and  that  any  resistance  to  his 
mandate  should  be  punished  by  death 
and  spoliation.  To  this  proclamation 
the  chiefs  listened  attentively,  but  En- 
ciso himself  reports  that  they  replied : 
As  to  there  being  one  God,  who  gov- 
erned the  heavens  and  the  earth  and 
was  Lord  of  all — this  appeared  to 
them  to  be  true;  but  as  for  the  Pope 
who  was  said  to  rule  the  universe  in 
the  place  of  God,  and  who  had  given 
this  land  to  the  King  of  Spain,  he  (the 
Pope)  must  have  been  drunk  when  he 
did  so,  since  he  gave  what  was  not 
his  own,  and  the  King  who  asked  for 
and  acepted  such  a  gift  must  have  been 
a  fool,  as  he  asked  for  what  was  an- 
other's, and  very  bold,  since  he  threat- 
ened those  whom  he  did  not  know. 

Enciso  immediately  gave  orders  to 
attack,  but  when  two  of  his  best  men 
had  been  killed,  he  precipitately  em- 
barked, resolved  not  to  lose  more  time 
or  lives  in  what  appeared  to  be  too 
difficult  a  task  at  that  moment.  Upon 
entering  the  Gulf  of  Uraba,  one  of  his 
vessels  was  wrecked,  and  although  the 
men  were  saved,  the  animals,  provi- 
sions, arms,  and  ammunition  intended 
for  the  colony  were  lost.  Arriving  at 
the  settlement  made  by  Ojeda  and 
abandoned  by  Pizarro,  it  was  found 
completely  destroyed  by  the  Indians. 

Balboa  now  offered  to  conduct  the 
expedition  to  a  fertile  and  salubrious 


Courtesy  of  Military  Service  Institute 

Balboa  discovering  the  Pacific  Ocean. 


region,  where  the  natives  did  not  use 
poisoned  arrows  (the  terror  of  the 
Spaniards),  and  which  he  had  visited 
ten  years  before  in  company  with  Bas- 
tidas.  To  this  proposition,  although 
he  knew  the  territory  was  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  his  province,  Enciso 
consented,  and  soon  they  passed  the 


mouth  of  the  Atrato  River  and  arrived 
at  a  spot  where  they  rejoiced  in  the 
sight  of  cultivated  fields  at  a  short 
distance  from  an  Indian  village,  which 
Balboa  pronounced  to  be  the  land  he 
was  in  search  of.  Enciso  disembarked 
with  his  men  and  attacked  the  natives, 
dispersing  and  driving  them  into  the 


344 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


forest.  He  then  solemnly  took  posses- 
sion of  the  country,  baptizing  the  fu- 
ture city  with  the  name  of  the  virgin 
venerated  in  Seville  as  Santa  Maria  de 
la  Antigua.  This  was  the  first  settle- 
ment that  existed  for  some  time  with- 
in the  limits  of  the  actual  Republic  of 
Colombia,  but  it  was  abandoned  fin- 
ally because  of  the  insalubrity  of  its 
climate. 

The  success  which  had  attended  the 
indications  of  Balboa  contributed 
greatly  to  his  prestige.  Moreover,  he 
was  young,  valiant,  gay,  decided,  frank 
with  his  companions  in  arms,  amiable 
with  his  inferiors,  polite  to  his  super- 
iors, humane  with  the  natives  as  were 
few  of  the  conquerors  of  that  epoch, 
unselfish,  not  covetous  of  gold,  al- 
though ambitious  of  command  and  of 
glory,  which  last  quality  he  shrewdly 
managed  to  conceal;  but  he  prepared 
the  ground  for  future  eminence  by  ex- 
ercising a  great  influence  among  the 
soldiers,  by  whom  he  was  especially 
beloved  because  of  his  generosity  in 
the  division  of  booty. 

Enciso,  an  elderly  lawyer,  was  the 
very  opposite  of  Balboa,  inflexible  in 
his  opinions,  disputatious  as  are  all  of 
his  profession,  rigid  to  excess,  unpopu- 
lar, and  with  the  covetousness  of  a 
man  who  abandons  a  tranquil  life  for 
one  of  adventure  merely  to  acquire 
gold  with  which  to  resume  his  former 
peaceful  existence.  Balboa,  it  must  be 
admitted,  exploited  these  defects  of 
his  chief  with  great  cleverness  and 
diplomacy  (which  latter  he  possessed 
in  a  high  degree),  for  what  he  aspired 
to  was  the  supreme  command  of  the 
colony. 

At  the  proper  time  he  attacked  En- 
ciso upon  his  own  ground,  that  of  the 
law,  alleging  that  the  government  was 
illegal,  since  the  site  of  the  new  city 
was  in  territory  which  rightfully  per- 
tained to  the  jurisdiction  of  Diego  de 
Nicuesa.  Thereupon,  he  convened  an 
assembly  of  the  principal  colonists,  to 
whom  he  presented  this  argument  and 
demanded  that  Enciso  should  be  de- 
posed as  a  usurper.  This  was  decreed 
almost  unanimously,  and  thus  was  con- 
summated, says  the  historian  Soledad 


de  Samper  (from  whose  interesting 
work  the  incidents  of  this  narrative 
have  been  chiefly  derived),  the  first 
of  the  many  revolutions  which  have 
since  afflicted  the  Isthmus  of  Panama. 
No  other  region  in  the  New  World  was 
so  fatal  to  the  Spaniards. 

However,  Balboa  was  only  partially 
successful  in  this  insurrection,  because 
the  colonists  resolved  that  he  should 
share  the  government  with  one  Samu- 
dio,  and  this  dual  administration  ex- 
isted for  about  a  year,  during  which 
period  a  fort  and  a  church  were  erected 
and  the  poor  Indians  were  compelled 
to  surrender  a  quantity  of  gold,  one- 
fifth  of  which  was  set  aside  for  His 
Majesty,  the  King  of  Spain,  and  the 
remainder  equally  divided  and  distrib- 
uted. 

Early  in  1511  the  colony  was  agree- 
ably surprised  by  the  arrival  of  two 
small  vessels,  well  supplied  with  pro- 
visions, under  the  command  of  Rod- 
rigo  de  Colmenares,  but  consigned  to 
Nicuesa,  whom  the  sailor  summoned 
after  having  persuaded  the  settlers  to 
accept  him  as  their  rightful  governor. 
This  naturally  suited  neither  Balboa 
nor  Enciso,  who  now  successfully  in- 
trigued and  combined  against  Nicuesa, 
preventing  him  from  disembarking  and 
forcing  him  to  set  sail  with  only  seven- 
teen men,  poorly  equipped  and  pro- 
visioned, in  a  small  and  unseaworthy 
vessel.  The  unfortunate  Spaniard  was 
never  seen  again.  His  party,  it  was 
currently  reported,  were  shipwrecked 
and  lost  upon  the  coast  of  Cuba,  in 
whose  inhospitable  forests,  upon  the 
bark  of  trees,  sundry  writings  were 
subsequently  discovered  which  told  of 
their  wanderings. 

Balboa,  whose  humanity  has  been 
praised,  did,  indeed,  intercede  for  Ni- 
cuesa, after  having  been  principally 
instrumental  in  raising  the  storm  about 
his  head;  but  apparently  his  prestige 
did  not  suffer  thereby,  for  shortly  af- 
ter, when  Enciso  had  proceeded  to 
Spain  to  complain  of  his  own  deposi- 
tion, Samudio  was  despatched  to  an- 
swer his  accusations,  and  Valdiva,  an- 
other possible  competitor,  was  sent  to 
Hispaniola  in  search  of  additional  sol- 


Courtesy  of  Silver,  Burdett  &  Company 

Balboa  taking  possession  of  the  South  Seas. 


diers  and  provisions.  Thus  Balboa 
finally  got  rid  of  all  four  of  his  rivals 
and  succeeded  to  single  and  supreme 
command,  an  event  which,  under  the 
circumstances,  proclaimed  him  to  have 
been  a  very  remarkable  man.  In  a 
few  months  the  stowaway  had  become 
governor. 

While  awaiting  events,  Balboa  was 
not  idle.  An  expedition  was  under- 
taken against  Careta,  who  possessed 
cultivated  fields  and  presided  over  a 
very  industrious  tribe  of  Indians.  His 
support  was  won,  however,  by  kindly 
treatment,  and,  indeed,  he  agreed  to 
furnish  sufficient  provisions  for  the 
Spaniards  if  they  would  assist  him  to 
subdue  a  neighboring  but  hostile  chief, 
to  which  proposition  Balboa  readily 
assented,  accepting  Careta's  daughter 
in  marriage  as  a  gage  of  the  father's 
fidelity.  Both  of  the  high  contracting 
parties  religiously  fulfilled  the  com- 
pact. 

A  second  expedition  led  Balboa  into 
the  territory  of  Comagre,  a  rich  caci- 
que whose  people  were  more  civilized 
than  any  natives  the  Spaniards  had 


yet  encountered.  These  Indians  dwelt 
in  small  but  comfortable  wooden 
houses,  wore  cotton  cloths  and  adorned 
their  persons  with  golden  ornaments, 
of  which  they  gave  a  great  many  to 
the  invaders.  It  was  here  that  Balboa 
first  heard,  from  the  son  of  the  old 
chief,  that  there  existed  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  mountains,  to  the  south- 
ward, a  vast  sea,  upon  the  coasts  of 
which  lived  a  great  and  thriving  people 
(Incas)  who  wore  clothes  like  the 
Spaniards,  navigated  its  waters  in 
boats  with  sails,  and  possessed  gold 
and  pearls  in  abundance.  This  sur- 
prising intelligence,  which  Balboa  de- 
termined to  transmit  immediately  to 
Spain,  caused  his  prompt  return  to  An- 
tigua, from  which  point  he  wrote 
for  reinforcements  and  provisions  with 
which  to  go  in  search  of  the  great 
South  Sea.  Pending  their  arrival, 
however,  he  explored  the  banks  of  the 
Atrato,  in  search  of  the  famous  but 
probably  fictitious  idol  of  gold  called 
Dobaiba,  which  was  never  discovered. 
On  the  contrary,  he  found  his  passage 
obstinately  disputed  by  the  natives, 


346 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


and,  but  for  the  timely  information 
brought  him  by  an  Indian  girl  whose 
good  graces  he  had  won  (as  happened 
to  Hernan  Cortes  in  Mexico),  all  of 
the  Spaniards  might  have  been  am- 
bushed and  massacred.  Instead,  Bal- 
boa surprised  their  camp,  captured  and 
hanged  their  chiefs  and  dispersed  their 
united  followers  among  the  dense  and 
almost  impenetrable  forests.  This 
was,  perhaps,  the  only  sanguinary  ex- 
ploit of  his  career  as  discoverer. 

Shortly  after  this  affair,  Balboa 
learned  that  the  Spanish  authorities 
had  resolved  to  send  another  governor 
to  Antigua,  and  he  determined  to  delay 
no  longer  his  southward  journey.  Leav- 
ing the  colony  at  peace,  with  the  sick 
and  least  warlike  within  the  gates  of 
the  city,  he  sallied  forth  with  ninety 
picked  men  and  a  dozen  dogs.  These 
latter  were  more  feared  by  the  Indians 
than  the  Spaniards  themselves;  and 
among  them  was  one  belonging  to  Bal- 
boa called  "Leoncico"  (Little  Lion), 
son  of  Becerro  (Calf),  famous  in  his- 
tory for  his  terrible  slaughter  of  the 
natives  in  the  Antilles.  To  the  owners 
of  these  ferocious  canines  double  pay 
and  booty  were  assigned,  and  Leoncico 
drew  those  of  an  officer. 

During  nearly  four  weeks  Balboa 
wandered  among  the  wilds  of  Darien, 
daily  fighting  the  Indians,  who  stub- 
bornly disputed  his  progress;  but  at 
last,  on  the  25th  of  September,  1513, 
from  the  crest  of  a  high  promontory, 
he  beheld  for  the  first  time  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  "A  little  while  before  reach- 
ing the  summit,"  says  the  historian 
Gomara,  "he  ordered  his  party  to  halt 
and  ascended  alone.  Looking  south- 
ward, he  beheld  the  sea,  and  kneeling, 
gave  thanks  to  our  Lord  for  His  great 
mercy."  Having  then  been  joined  by 
the  Spaniards,  they  united  in  praising 
God,  and  erected  a  monument  of  stones 
surmounted  by  a  wooden  cross,  surely 
the  first  Christian  sign  ever  raised  on 
these  shores. 

But  it  was  not  sufficient  to  behold 
the  Pacific;  it  was  necessary  to  take 
formal  possession  of  it  in  the  name  of 
the  King  of  Spain  and  of  his  daughter 
Juana.  This  was  accomplished  a  few 


days  later,  on  the  29th  of  September, 
1513,  the  day  of  San  Miguel,  which 
name  was  given  to  the  gulf  that  Balboa 
entered,  with  drawn  sword,  resolutely 
wading  through  its  waters.  After  sub- 
duing various  caciques  and  collecting 
a  large  sum  in  gold  and  many  pearls, 
Balboa  returned  in  triumph  to  Anti- 
gua, where  he  was  given  a  public  re- 
ception by  his  friends  and  followers, 
among  whom  were  Pizarro  and  Alma- 
gro,  respectively  the  future  conquerors 
of  Peru  and  of  Chile. 

Until  now  the  star  of  Balboa  had 
been  in  the  ascendant.  His  discovery 
of  the  Pacific  made  him  famous,  and 
not  without  cause,  he  despatched  a 
vessel  to  Spain  with  a  report  of  his 
success,  accompanied  by  a  gift  of  gold 
and  pearls  for  the  king  and  an  earnest 
request  for  his  appointment  as  gov- 
ernor of  the  regions  he  had  made 
known.  Unfortunately  his  messenger 
arrived  too  late.  So  slow  were  the 
communications  with  the  New  World 
that  when  Balboa's  commissioner 
reached  Spain  to  report  the  great  dis- 
covery of  September,  1513,  a  new  gov- 
ernor of  Darien,  Pedro  Arias  Davila, 
had  already  been  named,  and  had  set 
sail  from  Cadiz  in  April,  1514,  in  en- 
tire ignorance  of  what  had  transpired 
in  the  colony  seven  months  before. 

Pedrarias  (Pedro  Arias),  as  he  is 
generally  called,  arrived  at  Antigua 
in  June,  and  was  hospitably  received 
and  entertained  by  Balboa,  who  loy- 
ally surrendered  the  command  of  the 
colony,  restraining  his  soldiers  from 
manifesting  their  natural  discontent  at 
such  apparent  unjust  treatment  of  their 
distinguished  chief.  The  new  gov- 
ernor, on  the  contrary,  actuated  by 
envy  or  jealousy,  and  perhaps  by  both, 
instead  of  reciprocating  this  kindly 
treatment  upon  the  part  of  Balboa, 
caused  him  to  be  arrested;  and  al- 
though his  judges  declared  him  inno- 
cent of  any  crime  and  ordered  him  to 
be  released,  two  factions  were  imme- 
diately created  in  the  colony,  the  one 
embracing  the  friends  of  Balboa  and 
the  other  the  adherents  of  Pedrarias. 
Up  to  this  time  the  natives  had  con- 
tinued to  supply  the  colonists  with 


Balboa,  drawn  from  an  old  painting. 


348 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


provisions,  but  the  new  governor 
treated  them  so  cruelly  that  soon  they 
desisted  from  bringing  in  supplies. 
Famine  and  disease  were  the  natural 
result;  and  although  Pedrarias  had 
been  accompanied  by  1,500  men,  be- 
fore the  expiration  of  the  year  1514, 
their  number  had  been  reduced  to  700, 
the  most  of  them  sick  and  complain- 
ing. Balboa,  now  deprived  of  all  com- 
mand, submitted  without  a  murmur. 
Pedrarias  was  sustained  throughout  by 
the  Bishop  of  Burgos,  Juan  Rodriguez 
Fonseca,  the  Patriarch  of  the  Indies, 
who  was  a  gratuitous  enemy  of  Bal- 
boa, as  he  had  been  of  Columbus,  and 
was  presently  to  be  of  Hernan  Cortes. 
Finally,  to  rid  himself  of  Balboa,  Pe- 
drarias sent  him  with  a  few  men,  bad- 
ly armed  and  provisioned,  to  further 
explore  the  banks  of  the  Atrato,  where 
the  Indians  were  known  to  be  very 
numerous  and  were  noted  for  their 
ferocity.  The  expedition  was  natu- 
rally a  failure,  and  Balboa  was  se- 
verely wounded,  at  which  news  the 
governor  made  no  attempt  to  conceal 
his  joy.  However,  Balboa  recovered, 
and  one  day  a  ship  arrived  with  a  let- 
ter of  congratulation  from  the  king  and 
his  appointment  as  governor  of  the 
newly  discovered  territories;  but  to 
this  the  Patriarch  of  the  Indies  had  at- 
tached a  nullifying  provision  to  the  ef- 
fect that  Balboa  could  not  act  inde- 
pendently or  command  any  expedition 
without  the  consent  of  Pedrarias,  and 
such  permission  was  withheld. 

Matters  remained  in  this  unsatisfac- 
tory state  until  the  first  Bishop  of  the 
Mainland,  Juan  de  Queredo,  succeeded 
in  bringing  about  a  truce  by  arranging 
a  marriage  (notwithstanding  his  In- 
dian wife)  between  Balboa  and  a 
daughter  of  Pedrarias  remaining  in 
Spain.  The  irate  and  unjust  old  gov- 
ernor finally  gave  his  consent  for  Bal- 
boa to  cross  the  isthmus,  build  ships 
and  explore  the  coasts  of  the  South 
Sea,  but  this  permission  was  coupled 
with  the  obligation  'to  found  a  colony 
upon  the  Pacific  side,  and  only  eighty 
Spaniards  were  permitted  to  engage  in 
the  enterprise.  Balboa  supplemented 
these  by  Indians  and  negroes,  some  of 


whom  had  been  recently  brought  from 
Africa;  and  as  the  west  coast  did  not 
possess  suitable  timber  for  his  pur- 
poses, it  was  cut  upon  the  eastern 
shore  and  laboriously  dragged  across. 
To  add  to  his  difficulties,  a  freshet  car- 
ried away  the  first  supply.  Various  in- 
habitants of  Antigua  furnished  the 
necessary  funds,  but  not  until  1517  did 
Balboa  succeed  in  building  two  small 
caravels. 

In  a  preliminary  cruise  he  had 
sailed  some  fifty  miles  to  the  south. 
Pedrarias,  meanwhile,  had  established 
himself  in  Acla,  the  fortified  colony 
founded  by  Balboa  upon  the  Pacific; 
and  when  the  latter  returned  from  his 
first  voyage,  the  good  Bishop  Quevedo 
being  now  in  Spain  where  Balboa's 
promised  wife  still  remained,  Pedra- 
rias wrote  to  his  prospective  son-in- 
law  affectionately  urging  him  to  visit 
Acla  before  his  final  departure,  in  or- 
der that  he  might  receive  his  blessing. 
Balboa  immediately  started  alone  for 
Acla,  but  before  his  arrival  he  was 
met  by  a  party  of  soldiers  under  Fran- 
cisco Pizarro,  arrested,  placed  in  irons 
and  carried  before  Pedrarias,  who  ac- 
cused him  of  conspiracy  against  the 
king  in  harboring  the  intent  to  declare 
independent  such  regions  as  he  might 
discover,  an  accusation,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, as  ridiculous  as  it  was 
false.  Balboa  indignantly  denied  the 
charge  and  begged  that  he  might  be 
sent  to  Spain  or  to  Hispanola,  to  be 
judged,  but  Pedrarias  ordered,  in  writ- 
ing, the  reluctant  Mayor  of  Acla,  Gas- 
par  de  Espinosa,  to  condemn  him,  and 
three  of  his  followers,  to  immediate 
death,  fearing  that  any  delay  might 
prove  fatal  to  his  diabolical  project. 
Such  was  the  fear  inspired  by  the  san- 
guinary old  governor  among  the  colon- 
ists that  not  a  voice  was  raised  against 
this  cruel  and  unjust  sentence.  When 
the  executioner  announced :  "This  is 
the  justice  which  the  king,  our  master, 
and  his  lieutenant  Pedrarias,  command 
to  be  done  to  this  man,  as  a  traitor  and 
usurper  of  the  lands  subject  to  the 
Royal  Crown,"  Balboa,  indignant, 
could  not  restrain  himself  and  ex- 
claimed: "It  is  a  lie!  It  is  false!  I 


A  MOTHER'S  HANDS  349 

swear  it  before  God,  in  whose  pres-  Thus  perished  the  discoverer  of  the 

ence  I  am  about  to  appear,  and  before  Pacific  Ocean. 

every  man  who  hears  me.    I  pray  that  Pedrarias,  concealed  behind  a  fence, 

all  the  king's  subjects  may  be  as  loyal  witnessed  and  seemingly  enjoyed  the 

as  I  have  been."  execution.     Because  of  his  influence 

Immediately  his  head  was  cut  off,  with  the  Patriarch  of  the  Indies  he  was 

but  his  body  remained  unclaimed  upon  never  punished,  on  earth,  for  this  atro- 

the  scaffold  for     twenty-four     hours,  cious  crime. 


A  MOTHER'S  HAND 

The  hands  that  were  soft  and  dimpled, 

Are  weary  and  worn  and  scarred; 
The  palms  that  were  smooth  as  a  baby's 

Are  calloused  and  rough  and  hard; 
The  tapering,  slender  fingers 

Are  bruised  and  stiff  and  old, 
And  veins  that  were  once  but  a  tracing, 

Are  prominent,  rigid  and  bold. 
But  the  touch  of  those  hands  is  as  gentle 

As  the  lullaby  words  of  a  song, 
With  a  love  that's  divine  they  have  labored 

In  a  ministry,  noble  and  strong. 

Oft  while  the  others  were  sleeping, 

They  mended  a  little  torn  frock, 
And  worked  at  discouraging  stockings, 

Till  long  after  twelve  by  the  clock. 
They  glued  the  doll's  curls  that  were  cherished, 

And  fastened  a  wheel  on  a  cart, 
And  hoed  at  the  weeds  in  the  garden, 

Though  blisters,  when  broken,  would  smart. 
They  anxiously  nursed  in  a  sickness, 

And  toiled  o'er  the  heat  of  the  range, 
Then,  folded  in  prayer,  they  pleaded 

For  strength — but  not  for  a  change. 

Only  the  mother  who  travels 

O'er  the  mountainous  road  of  the  years, 
Can  know  with  what  tremulous  longings 

She  brushes  aside  the  stray  tears, 
With  hands  that  are  tender  and  loving, 

With  hands  that  have  never  complained, 
But  have  lifted  and  carried  the  burdens 

Till  they  tremble  and  ache  with  the  pain. 
The  heart  of  the  world  pays  a  tribute, 

Oh,  not  to  the  hands  that  are  fair, 
But  to  hands  that  are  daily  reflecting 

The  glory  of  motherhood  there. 

ELLA  FLATT  KELLER. 


Gas,  the  Nestor  of  Public  Utilities 


By  C.  5.  5.  Forney 


Mr.  C.  S.  S.  Forney,  who  contributes  the  following  article  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  making  of  gas  and  gas  processes,  is  prominent  among  those 
who  have  been  successful  in  making  and  distributing  gas  throughout  the  in- 
terior towns  of  California.  His  ingenious  and  broadening  suggestions  in 
this  line  of  endeavor  have  attracted  wide  attention  among  those  who  under- 
stand and  appreciate  the  intricate  problems  he  has  solved.  Mr.  Forney  is 
identified  with  those  public  utility  experts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada 
who  have  called  attention  to  the  advantage  of  high  standards  and  the  pos- 
sibilities of  economic  achievement  in  the  gas  business. 


LINE  UP  the  Public  Utilities  of 
the  country  in  any  order  that 
you  will,  and  gas  will  unques- 
tionably be  placed  as  the  con- 
sistent and  natural  leader  of  the  group. 
There  is  sound  reason  for  this. 

Public  service,  through  various 
forms  of  gas  enterprise,  is  over  one 
hundred  years  old,  and  holds  its  own 
as  securely  and  confidently  as  it  did 
on  the  day  the  first  user  awakened  to  its 
possibilities  of  usefulness.  The  ordi- 
nary man  does  not  usually  recall  that 
our  oldest  public  utility  has  an  honor- 
able record  of  one  hundred  years  of 
service. 

Gas  has  been  the  leader  in  the  util- 
ity field  from  its  inception.  It  is  the 
pioneer  of  utility  enterprises — the  pio- 
neer that  paved  the  way  for  the  utili- 
ties that  have  since  weaved  their  way 
over  the  land.  Because  of  its  inherent 
properties,  all  absolutely  useful  and 
ofttimes  necessary  in  every  household 
it  has  easily  maintained  its  position  in 
the  forefront  of  the  most  needful  utili- 
ties. The  years  roll  by  only  to  find 
more  fields  of  usefulness  for  gas. 

Though  the  telephone  was  invented 
forty  years  ago  it  has  only  found  its 
place  and  acquired  general  recognition 
in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  Elec- 


tricity, as  a  commercial  entity,  has 
found  itself  only  in  the  last  twenty 
years.  The  telegraph  only  in  a  limited 
sense  is  a  public  utility.  Water  is  not 
a  public  utility  in  the  true  sense,  for 
the  reason  that  as  there  is  no  substi- 
tute for  water,  it  is  a  slave  rather  than 
an  eager,  willing  servant. 

There  are  two  methods  of  manufac- 
turing gas:  from  coal,  which  is  the 
general  method  used  throughout  the 
world,  and  from  crude  oil,  a  distinc- 
tively Californian  development,  and  a 
process  that,  because  of  its  cheapness, 
has  to  an  unusual  degree  aided  gas 
development  throughout  the  State. 
California  leads  the  States  of  the 
Union  and  the  countries  of  the  world 
with  an  annual  production  of  crude 
oil  of  more  than  100,000,000  barrels, 
and  under  pressure  of  demand  can  eas- 
ily increase  this  flow.  Hence  the  State 
is  in  a  position  to  furnish  the  cheap- 
est gas,  aside  from  natural  gas,  which 
favors  a  few  communities  in  the  world. 
As  regards  gas  possibilities,  Califor- 
nia is  among  the  most  favored,  for  it 
possesses  untold  stores  of  petroleum 
and  has  a  number  of  natural  gas  fields, 
but  the  latter,  of  course,  exhaust  them- 
selves in  comparatively  short  times. 

Pipe  lines,  tank     cars     and     tank 


GAS,  THE  NESTOR  OF  PUBLIC  UTILITIES 


351 


steamers  transport  this  oil  practically 
to  every  village  of  any  consequence 
throughout  the  State,  to  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  those  small  communities 
which  avail  themselves  of  an  opportu- 
nity to  manufacture  gas  at  the  lowest 
possible  rate.  To  pay  from  $10  to  $14 
a  ton  for  coal  and  to  provide  for  other 
expenses,  including  interest,  would  re- 
quire the  rate  in  San  Francisco  to  be 
approximately  $1.20  per  thousand 
cubic  feet  for  coal  gas,  as  against  the 
present  rate  for  oil  gas  at  80  cents  per 
thousand  cubic  feet,  a  money  saving 
of  33  per  cent. 

In  the  larger  Eastern  cities,  with  coal 
selling  at  prices  ranging  from  $4  to  $6 
per  ton,  and  with  a  ready  market  for 
the  coke,  which  is  a  by-product  of  the 
coal  gas  process,  gas  is  sold  at  from 
20  per  cent  to  35  per  cent  higher  than 
under  comparable  conditions  in  Cali- 
fornia. 

This  brings  up  the  question:  What 
is  the  value  of  a  thousand  cubic  feet 
of  gas? 

Ordinarily,  value  is  what  a  thing  can 
be  sold  for,  or  what  amount  it  will 
earn.  But  ordinary  terms  have  no  ap- 
plication in  public  utility  matters.  The 
fact  has  been  established  that  within 
a  certain  range  the  value  of  a  public 
utility  property  is  its  cost  and  the 
value  of  its  service  is  the  cost  of  that 
service  including,  of  course,  interest 
on  the  investment  necessary  to  pro- 
duce the  service.  Manifestly  this  is  a 
proper  basis  of  value  for  all  property, 
but  the  establishment  of  such  a  basis 
for  all  property  is  Socialism.  It  is  not 
Socialism  with  respect  to  public  utility 
property,  because  included  in  the 
agencies  necessary  to  public  utility  ser- 
vice is  the  property  of  the  public, 
meaning  the  thoroughfares  of  the  com- 
munities themselves.  In  addition  to 
the  streets  used  by  a  gas  company,  for 
instance,  each  and  every  person  using 
that  company's  service  provides  a 
necessary  agency  in  the  form  of  an 
appliance,  and  therefore  has  a  direct 
collateral  investment  which,  for  its 
value,  depends  on  an  agency  beyond 
its  owner's  control.  This  evidences 
that  if  a  public  utility  has  the  power 


to  influence  the  value  of  its  consumers' 
property  it  is  obviously  just  that  the 
consumers,  collectively,  should  have 
the  power  to  influence  or  restrain  the 
value  which  a  gas  company  may  place 
on  its  product. 

Compare  the  relation  between  the  in- 
vestment of  one  of  the  smaller  gas 
companies,  which  amounts  to  $500,000 
and  the  investment  in  gas  stoves, 
water  heaters  and  lighting  appliances 
of  its  consumers,  which  amounts  to 
$100,000,  both  these  amounts  being  in 
round  figures. 

The  life  of  the  average  gas  appli- 
ance is  five  years  and  that  of  the  aver- 
age gas  plant  twenty-five  years,  so  that 
the  consumer  is  obliged  not  only  to 
provide  interest  on  the  company's  in- 
vestment, but,  included  in  the  price  of 
gas,  an  amount  sufficient  to  keep  the 
company's  investment  intact,  and,  in 
addition,  the  consumer,  on  an  average, 
will,  in  twenty-five  years,  have  re- 
peated their  original  investment  in  ap- 
pliances often  enough  to  have  equalled 
the  company's  investment,  because  five 
times  the  present  investment  in  appli- 
ances is  $500,000  and  another  $500,- 
000  is  the  amount  of  the  company's  in- 
vestment. 

Water,  electric,  telephone  and  rail- 
road utilities  of  course  do  not  repre- 
sent so  nearly  an  approximately  equal 
investment  on  the  part  of  the  con- 
sumer and  the  utility,  but  other  com- 
parisons than  investments  might  be 
made  to  show  as  distinctly  as  has  been 
shown  by  illustration  with  the  gas 
company  mentioned,  that  there  is  ab- 
solute equity  in  principle  that  public 
utilities  should  be  regulated. 

Selling  gas,  unlike  real  merchandis- 
ing, where  quality  of  product  affects 
the  standing  of  the  merchant,  and,  if 
not  his  profits,  at  least  his  social  satis- 
faction, is  a  sort  of  standardized  mer- 
chandising. The  same  gas  is  sold  to 
the  mansion  as  to  the  hut,  and  there 
is  no  such  opportunity  to  "cater  to  the 
best  trade"  as  there  is  in  the  grocery 
business,  or  the  jewelry  business,  or 
the  dry  goods  business. 

Lack  of  opportunity  to  "raise  the 
level  of  the  business"  exists  as  to  pro- 


352 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


duct,  but  there  is  opportunity  to  raise 
the  standard  of  service,  and  the  con- 
scientiousness of  the  particular  opera- 
tor must  provide  an  incentive  for  high 
standard. 

The  best  service,  of  course,  is  the 
service  which  is  least  annoying  and 
least  obtrusive,  and  a  gas  company 
which  is  so  operated  that  its  consum- 
ers on  an  average  have  not  each  more 
than  one  complaint  a  year  has  attained 
a  high  position  as  to  service.  This 
does  not  refer  to  complaints  as  to 
price,  but  to  complaints  of  poor  pres- 
sure, stoppages,  leaks,  etc.  A  com- 
plaint of  slow  delivery  by  the  grocer's 
boy,  unsatisfactory  meat  from  the 
butcher,  and  unsatisfactory  work  from 
the  laundry,  will  serve  for  a  good, 
broad  determination  of  the  general  av- 
erage excellence  of  gas  service. 

There  is  not  now,  and  never  has 
been,  opportunity  for  making  any  con- 
siderable sum  of  money  in  the  gas 
business  in  California,  but  it  has  come 
to  be  recognized  that  low  rates  and 
high  output  mean  safe  net  earnings.  As 
a  general  proposition,  under  skillful 
management,  it  has  been  possible  to 
earn  a  fair  return  on  actual  investment, 
but  interest  on  investment  is  not  profit. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  the  public  util- 
ity business  in  California  has  yielded 
poor  rewards  to  those  who  have  de- 
voted their  time  and  energies  to 
the  development  of  utilities.  We 
have  in  this  State  some  men  who 
are  reputed  to  be  oil  millionaires,  cat- 
tle kings  and  timber  barons,  but  not 
one  public  utility  millionaire,  nor  any 
group  of  men  who  have  made  any  con- 
siderable money  from  exploiting  pub- 
lic utilities.  Large  amounts  of  money 
may  have  been  made  elsewhere  in  the 
gas  business,  but  comparatively  small 
units  of  population  and  diversified 
ownership,  together  with  the  rapid 
growth  of  population  in  California 
communities,  have  imposed  a  burden 


of  social  and  economic  service  on  pub- 
lic utility  owners  entirely  out  of  pro- 
portion to  the  remuneration  enjoyed 
for  such  service. 

The  task  most  difficult  of  accom- 
plishment is  the  providing  of  funds 
for  more  and  more  mains  and  machin- 
ery, but  that  task  has  generally  been 
well  performed  in  this  State,  as  is  evi- 
denced by  the  fact  that  there  is  not  a 
town  in  California  having  an  excess  of 
3,000  population  which  does  not  have 
a  gas  company,  and  further  by  the 
fact  that  California  gas  companies 
have  more  miles  of  main  per  thousand 
consumers  than  do  gas  companies  of 
any  other  State  in  the  Union.  With 
the  rapid  development  in  this  State,  it 
is  remarkable  that  there  have  been  so 
few  mistakes  made  in  the  upbuilding 
of  the  various  gas  properties,  espec- 
ially when  it  is  considered  that  there 
has  been  no  general  influx  of  young 
men  technically  trained  in  the  busi- 
ness, while,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
very  circumstance  may  be  a  contribut- 
ing cause  to  the  general  success  of  gas 
property  development. 

The  chief  need  to-day  in  operation 
is  for  young  men,  who,  having  a 
knowledge  of  the  technical  side  of  the 
business,  are  able  to  make  actual  house 
to  house  canvasses  and  increase  the 
useful  consumption  of  gas  by  present 
consumers,  and  that  field  offers  a 
splendid  present  opportunity  with  a 
prospect  later  of  occupying  the  higher 
executive  positions  now  filled  by  men 
who  some  day  will  retire. 

With  uniform  accounting,  it  soon 
will  be  possible  to  draw  comparisons 
between  the  different  companies  and 
enable  skillful  management  to  have  the 
satisfaction,  if  not  the  benefit,  of 
proved  relatively  better  operation. 

All  things  considered,  California  to- 
day has  recognition  as  being  a  State 
of  worthy  achievement  and  high  de- 
velopment in  the  gas  business, 


The  First  Petroleum  Refinery  in  the 
United  States 


By  AV.   C.  Frederick 


BY  NAMING  the  gasoline  automo- 
bile as  one  of  the  ten  greatest 
patentable  inventions  of  the  last 
twenty-five  years,  a  winner  of  a 
"Scientific  American"  prize  placed  due 
emphasis  on  the  motive  power  that 
makes  the  wonderful  machine  possible. 
It  seems  almost  ludicrous,  consider- 
ing the  economic  magnitude  of  this 
"by-product"  of  petroleum,    that    no 
longer  ago  than  when  John  D.  Rocke- 
feller was  a  baby,  petroleum  was  val- 
ued only  as  a  medicine.     It  was  col- 
lected by  the  Indians  and  sold  in  small 
quantities  at  a  high  price,  under  the 
name  of  Senica  or  Genessee  oil,  to  the 
early  settlers  of  New  York  and  Penn- 
sylvania. 

It  is  true,  the  inflammable  nature 
of  "rock  oil"  (petra,  rock;  oleum,  oil), 
had  long  been  known.  Under  the  name 
of  bitumen  the  ancient  Greeks  and 
Romans  must  have  come  close  to  the 
secret  of  its  power,  for  we  are  told 
that  it  was  burned  in  lamps  in  a  town 
in  Cicily.  And  excavators  in  Baby- 
lon have  unearthed  fragments  of  tab- 
lets referring  to  the  temple  tower  of 
Babylon,  on  which  Nebuchadnezzar, 
the  king,  recorded  that  he  had  made 
the  temple  "brilliant  as  day  with  bitu- 
men and  blue,  glittering  bricks." 

Day,  in  his  History  of  Pennsylvania, 
says  that  the  commander  of  Fort  Du- 
quesne,  in  a  letter  to  Montcalm,  de- 
scribes an  Indian  ceremony  on  the 
banks  of  a  creek  at  night.  A  part  of 
the  performance  was  firing  the  scum 
of  oil  on  the  water,  lighting  up  the 
woods  with  flame,  the  Indians  greet- 
ing the  manifestation  with  shouts  and 
great  rejoicing. 


As  early  as  1826,  a  Dr.  Hildreth,  of 
Marietta,  Ohio,  saw  a  future  for  oil  as 
an  illuminant,  it  being  then  used  some- 
what in  workshops.  But  no  one  then 
found  or  sought  the  magic  key — dis- 
tillation— by  which  it  finally  burst  up- 
on the  world. 

We  know  the  story,  how  scientific 
experiments  in  England,  in  1694  pro- 
duced an  oil  by  distillation  of  bitumi- 
nous shales  and  coals.  The  product 
was  used  only  as  medicine,  until  Reich- 
enbach,  of  Germany,  made  extensive 
investigations  and  recognized  its  illu- 
minating qualities,  giving  the  world 
the  results  of  his  labors  in  1830.  Two 
years  later  a  French  firm  patented  the 
application  of  these  oils  for  illuminat- 
ing purposes.  In  1846,  Abraham  Ges- 
ner  made  oil  from  coal  in  Prince  Ed- 
ward's Island,  and  was  the  first  to  call 
it  kerosene. 

The  first  factory  in  the  United  States 
for  the  distillation  of  coal  oil  from  coal 
was  on  Newtown  Creek,  Long  Island, 
opposite  upper  New  York,  1854.  Others 
followed. 

In  the  meantime,  one  Samuel  Kier, 
a  Pittburg  druggist,  had  been  inter- 
ested in  selling  petroleum  as  a  medi- 
cine, apparently  without  much  suc- 
cess. He  then  turned  his  attention  to 
its  inflammable  qualities,  trying  to  sell 
it  as  an  illuminant,  with  little  better 
results.  Realizing  that  if  the  smoke 
and  odor  could  be  elminated  his  sales 
would  increase,  and  noting  its  simi- 
larity to  Abraham  Gesner's  rock  oil, 
it  occurred  to  him  to  try  Gesner's  pro- 
cess on  his  own  commodity.  Edwin 
C.  Bell,  an  authority  on  oil  history, 
thinks  Professor  Booth,  a  chemist  of 


354 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


The  Honolulu  gusher. 

Philadelphia,  gave  him  the  scientific 
process  of  how  to  convert  the  oil  into 
an  illuminant.  The  following  para- 
graph is  quoted  from  Bell's  "Life  of 
Col.  Edwin  L.  Drake." 

"It  was  not  until  1850  that  an  effort 
was  made  to  refine  petroleum  oil.  This 
was  accomplished  by  Samuel  M.  Kier, 
in  the  city  of  Pittsburg.  His  first  at- 
tempt was  made  with  a  cast  iron  still 
holding  one  barrel.  This  pioneer  re- 
finery was  located  on  Seventh  avenue, 
above  Grant  street.  Finding  sale  for 
the  distillate,  he  enlarged  his  works  to 
a  still  of  the  capacity  of  five  barrels. 
Afterwards  he  removed  the  refinery 
to  Lawrenceville,  a  suburb  of  Pitts- 
burg.  This  was  found  necessary  be- 
cause the  people  in  his  vicinity,  on 
Seventh  avenue,  became  alarmed  for 
fear  of  fire  in  the  refinery.  The  oil 
that  Mr.  Kier  used  came  from  his  own 
and  other  salt  wells  at  Tarentum.  And 
this  was  the  only  petroleum  refinery  in 
existence  when  Col.  Drake  struck  his 
well  on  Oil  Creek  in  1859." 

In  the  years  immediately  following 


1860,  manufacturing  coal  oil  from  coal 
was  entirely  abandoned,  and  the  estab- 
lishments changed  into  petroleum  re- 
fineries. 

But  there  is  another  little  story  not 
so  well  known.  Readers  of  California 
history  are  familiar  with  the  name  of 
General  Andres  Pico,  brother  of  Gov- 
ernor Pico  Pico,  a  Spanish  Californian 
prominent  in  the  history  and  politics 
of  the  State  in  its  most  eventful  per- 
iod. We  know  him  as  a  customs  offi- 
cial and  as  military  commander  for  a 
time  at  Monterey  and  Los  Angeles.  He 
was  one  of  the  commissioners  to  make 
inventory  of  Mission  property  at  the 
time  of  the  secularization  of  the  Mis- 
sions by  Mexico,  and  a  subsequent 
lessee  of  the  San  Fernando  Mission 
lands  for  a  term  of  years. 

At  the  victory  of  San  Pasqual  he 
was  in  command,  and  concluded  with 
Fremont  the  treaty  of  Cahuenga,  clos- 
ing the  war  in  California. 

At  the  front  in  whatever  was  going 
on,  in  1848  and  1849  he  had  a  com- 
pany of  miners  at  work  on  Mokel- 
umne.  Was  elected  to  the  Assembly 
in  '51,  and  a  presidential  elector  in 
1860-61. 

At  the  time  when  gold  was  the  all- 
absorbing  thought  of  the  California 
populace,  Pico's  mind  was  attracted 
to  what  is  now  one  of  the  chief  sources 
of  the  wealth  of  the  State.  The  value 
of  the  petroleum  products  at  the  pres- 
ent time  is  more  than  twice  the  out- 
put of  gold  and  silver. 

Petroleum  seeps  out  of  the  ground 
and  stands  in  pools  or  falls  down  the 
hillside  in  many  places  in  California. 
In  Pico  Canyon,  on  the  farther  side  of 
the  San  Fernando  mountains,  back  of 
the  Mission,  were  seepages  of  oil  re- 
ported to  have  sometimes  reached  as 
much  as  ten  barrels  a  day.  (This  is 
in  the  famous  Newhall  region.) 

In  the  early  fifties — authorities  dif- 
fer as  to  the  exact  date — Pico  col- 
lected this  oil  and  distilled  it  in  a  cop- 
per still  and  worm,  making  burning  oil 
for  the  Mission,  where  there  may  have 
been  seventy-five  or  a  hundred  souls, 
all  told.  This  included  the  retainers 
with  which  every  well-to-do  Califor- 


r~ 


Ten  thousand  barrels  of  oil  on  fire. Loss  $50}000. 


The  famous  Lakeview  gusher,  the  second  largest  gusher  ever  tapped  in 
the  world.    The  petroleum  is  shot  high  under  terrific  natural  gas  pressure. 


man  loved  to  surround  himself,  Mexi- 
cans employed  on  the  ranch,  and  Mis- 
sion Indians  who  still  lingered  after 
the  Fathers  departed,  some  of  them 
old  and  helpless,  some  too  young  to  be 
of  service,  but  all  welcome  to  remain. 

If  Pico  started  the  refinery  in  1850, 
as  stated,  in  Petroleum  in  Southern 
California,  page  159,  issued  by  the 
California  State  Mining  Bureau,  1913, 
then  with  Don  Andres  would  Samuel 
Kier  share  the  honor  of  operating  the 


first  oil  refineries  on  the  American  con- 
tinent. This  would  antedate  by  four 
years  the  plant  at  Newton  Creek  for 
the  distillation  of  oil  from  coal.  At  the 
very  latest  date  given,  it  was  still  sev- 
eral years  before  the  great  oil  strike 
in  Pennsylvania.  Two  or  three  years 
after  Pico,  one  Morrell  established  a 
refinery  at  Carpinteria,  but  it  was  not 
very  successful,  and  did  not  long  sur- 
vive. 

The  success  of  the  oil  business  in 


Petroleum  flowing  into  a  sump  at  the   rate  of  1,500  bbls.  a  day,  approxi- 
mately $750  every  twenty-four  hours.     Some  of  the  gushers  earned  $10,000 
a  day  for  months  before  the  gas  pressure  decreased. 


358 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Pennsylvania  stimulated  efforts  in 
California,  and  by  1865  there  existed 
70  oil  companies,  operating  chiefly  in 
Humboldt  County.  That  year  oil  was 
$1.75  per  gallon,  retail;  $1.40  whole- 
sale. Wells  were  sunk  in  Kern  County 
and  refining  done  in  a  small  way,  but 
the  difficulties  were  so  many,  chief  of 
which  was  the  high  freight  rates,  that 
the  work  was  abandoned.  Thomas 
Scott,  the  Pennsylvania  railroad  king, 
with  associates,  leased  the  great  Ojai 
grant,  but  did  not  find  oil  in  paying 
quantities. 

Operations  by  modern  methods  were 
not  begun  in  the  Newhall  district,  San 
Fernando  Mountains,  until  1876;  but 
by  1891  a  strip  of  land  in  Pico  Canyon, 


840  feet  wide  and  3,800  feet  long,  was 
reported  to  have  yielded  more  than  a 
million  and  a  half  barrels  of  oil,  and 
still  producing  without  any  appear- 
ance of  giving  out.  In  '83,  oil  was 
worth  from  15  to  17  cents  a  gallon. 

By  '99  California  had  come  into  her 
own.  The  output  for  1913  was  97,- 
867,183  barrels— nearly  half  the  out- 
put of  the  United  States — and  in  1914 
it  reached  the  enormous  total  of  103,- 
623,695  barrels,  an  increase  of  more 
than  five  and  three-quarter  million 
barrels.  Had  there  been  sufficient  de- 
mand and  the  wells  permitted  to  flow 
their  full  capacity,  the  Standard  Oil 
Bulletin  places  the  probable  yield  at 
more  than  110,000,000  barrels. 


LAD    O'    LAUGHTER 


I  am  weary  of  my  callers,  all  day  long  they  come  and  go, 
Grandsire  Grouch  with  loud  complainings,  Granny  Grief  with  head  bent  low. 
Father  Fear  has  gloomed  and  doubted,  Mother  Memory's  hands  bear  rue, 
Come,  oh,  come,  dear  Lad  o'  Laughter,  I'll  fling  wide  the  door  for  you. 

You  are  still  the  Guest  of  Honor,  cumbered  cot  or  haughty  hall, 
Burdened  hearts  leap  at  your  coming,  beds  of  pain  keep  festival. 
Strew. your  heartsease  o'er  Life's  nettles,  breathe  of  Courage  and  of  Cheer. 
Let  your  boyish  shout  re-echo  round  the  world,  and  through  the  year. 

Come,  and  from  your  radiant  presence  shapes  of  gloom  shall  flee  away. 
Speak  your  wisdom  of  the  ages:  "Past  is  past,  be  glad  to-day." 
Love  has  crowned  you  with  her  roses,  Hope  has  kissed  and  set  you  free, 
Wander  o'er  the  world  that  needs  you,  but  at  even  bide  with  me. 

ELEANOR  DUNCAN  WOOD. 


A  Born  Pioneer  in  Cultivating  Ausic 


By   Jean   /Aahan   Flank 


Mrs.  David  Campbell 

TO  SEE  visions  and  dream  dreams 
is  one  thing ;  to  have  the  quietly 
directed  will  that  works  or  waits 
for  their  fulfillment  is  another. 
In  the  first  years  of  this  century,  a 
modest  young  woman  with  a  sweet, 
absent  smile,  and  a  'cello-like  voice, 
was  living  a  simple,  domestic  life  on  a 
Colorado  ranch.  Her  days  were  spent 
in  doing  her  own  housework,  training 
her  three  little  sons  to  be  splendid 
men,  and  for  recreation,  jumping  upon 
a  pony  and  riding  breathlessly  across 
the  broad  mesa,  or  along  the  narrow 
canyon  trails,  and — dreaming.  Be- 
ware of  that  word  "dreaming!"  It  ex- 
presses something  that  is  like  yeast  in 
a  pan  of  dough. 

Her  whole  life  was  attuned  in  one 
keynote:  Contentment.     Here  on  the 


ranch  she  was  to  spend  her  days.  It 
was  her  delight — that  ranch-life  with 
her  husband  and  the  boys;  and  the 
'cello  voice  sang  merrily  while  her 
whole  being  rejoiced  in  the  freedom, 
the  rarified  air,  and  the  wildflowers 
and  crystal  torrents  of  the  Rockies. 

The  yeast,  however,  did  not  fail  to 
do  its  work.  In  this  second  decade  of 
the  century,  the  absent  smile,  which 
deepens  at  the  slightest  call  into  one 
of  understanding  friendliness,  and  the 
'cello  voice,  which  never  rises  to  sharp- 
ness under  the  most  extreme  provoca- 
tion, are  to  be  seen  and  heard  before 
a  desk  in  a  tiny  private  office  in  one 
of  the  tall,  beautiful  buildings  which 
face  the  vast  Lake  Michigan  in  Chi- 
cago. 

It  is  Mrs.  David  Campbell — for  she 
is  one  of  those  rare  moderns,  a  woman 
who  prefers  to  be  known  by  her  hus- 
band's name — who  sits  and  works, 
without  haste,  without  rest,  in  the  in- 
terests of  the  National  Federation  of 
Musical  Clubs,  and  of  its  organ,  The 
Musical  Monitor,  of  which  she  is  the 
editor. 

Mrs.  Campbell  came  out  of  the 
West,  but  behind  her  she  left  a  blazed 
trail  of  splendid  pioneer  work.  "A 
born  pioneer,"  she  calls  herself.  One 
of  her  associates  calls  her  "  a  live  wire 
in  the  Federation." 

It  was  the  Federation  that  did  it. 
How  could  she  stay  on  the  ranch  when 
the  voices  were  calling  to  her  to  come 
and  make  the  dreams  real?  All 
through  a  richly  generous  and  wholly 
selfless  life,  music  had  been  the  su- 
preme passion  next  to  her  husband  and 
the  children.  It  was  inevitable  that  the 
most  fragrant  flowers  of  her  work 
should  bloom  in  the  effort  to  give  to 
others  the  privileges  that  her  day  and 


A  BORN  PIONEER  IN  CULTIVATING  MUSIC 


361 


environment  had  made  so  difficult  for 
herself. 

A  glance  at  what  was  accomplished, 
nevertheless,  in  spite  of  handicaps,  by 
a  girl  who  was  married  at  nineteen,  be- 
came an  exquisite  home-maker,  and 
raised  three  fine  sons,  gives  cause  for 
marveling.  A  foundation  had  been 
laid  for  the  musical  development  of 
little  Viola  Vaille  Barnes  by  lessons, 
choir  singing  and  organ  playing  be- 
tween the  tender  ages  of  five  and  nine 
years.  Then  came  piano  study  and 
harmony.  The  deep  contralto  voice, 
however,  was  not  brought  to  its  full 
glory  until  after  the  early  marriage. 
Seconded  by  her  husband's  enthusi- 
asm, Mrs.  Campbell,  with  electric  en- 
ergy and  earnestness,  not  only  fulfilled 
admirably  her  duties  as  wife  and 
mother,  but  she  studied  voice-training 
with  three  excellent  American  teach- 
ers, went  to  London  and  worked  under 
Mme.  Cellini,  and  finally  made  her 
debut  in  that  city  in  1897  in  a  concert 
under  the  patronage  of  H.  R.  H.  the 
Prince  of  Wales. 

Her  study  for  equipment  in  musi- 
cianship, personality  and  voice  had 
been  made,  with  characteristic  thor- 
oughness, for  a  professional  career. 
But  when  the  worshiping  quartet  which 
formed  her  family  gathered  about  her 
with  loving  calls  upon  her  time,  she 
snapped  her  fingers  at  the  career.  The 
sweet  voice  was  given  to  the  church 
and  to  her  friends,  while  the  blue  eyes 
under  the  bronze  hair  sparkled  with 
that  curiously  joyous  contentment  that 
has  bloomed  like  a  flower  along  the 
whole  pathway  of  Mrs.  Campbell's 
life. 

She  had  been  saved  for  a  bigger 
thing — a  work  that  gathers  its  mater- 
ials from  the  realm  of  Creation.  The 
musical  interpreter's  life  touches  other 
lives  from  the  outside;  but  through 
Mrs.  Campbell's  enthusiastic  thought 
and  activities  personal  expression  of 
the  power  of  music  has  been  made 
possible  to  thousands. 

Here,  in  brief,  is  her  record,  which 
as  pioneer  work  has  taken  the  courage 
of  a  Lionheart,  and  the  faith  of  a  John 
the  Baptist  She  has  to  her  credit: 


The  first  presidency  of  the  Matinee 
Musical,  Lincoln,  Nebraska;  of  the 
Matinee  Musical,  Coffeyville,  Kansas; 
the  Tuesday  Club,  Bartlesville,  Okla- 
homa; the  Musical  Research,  Lander, 
Wyoming;  numerous  choral  clubs  or- 
ganized and  conducted;  while  not  the 
least  of  the  benefits  she  has  showered 
about  her  was  at  the  gathering  on  the 
ranch,  where  the  cowboys  and  mesa 
people  used  to  come  eagerly  to  hear 
the  beautiful  songs  and  listen  to  the 
only  piano  within  many  miles.  Along 
with  this  outpouring  of  free  service 
goes  a  curious  reserve  as  to  her  own 
achievements.  It  was  necessary  to 
camp  for  two  months  on  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell's trail,  so  to  speak,  in  order  to 
get  these  meagre  items;  but  when  she 
can  be  got  to  talk,  nothing  moves  her 
to  greater  enthusiasm  than  telling 
about  these  cowboy  gatherings,  and 
how  the  men's  hearts  opened  to  the 
beautiful  in  the  form  of  good  music. 

The  crowning  work  of  her  life, 
nevertheless,  is  the  service  she  is  now 
giving  in  the  National  Federation  of 
Musical  Clubs.  This  organization  has 
become  a  power  to  reckon  with  in  the 
musical  world,  and  the  history  of  Mrs. 
Campbell's  late  activities  is  really  a 
history  of  the  Federation. 

She  was  a  charter  member  of  the 
Federation;  its  first  Western  director; 
its  first  librarian ;  first  chairman  of  pub- 
lic school  music ;  a  member  of  the  first 
American  Music  Committee;  for  four 
years  first  vice-president,  now  honor- 
ary vice-president.  She  was  one  of 
the  projectors  of  the  idea  of  offering 
a  $10,000  prize  for  the  best  American 
opera,  the  prize  that  was  finally  given 
to  Horatio  Parker  of  Yale.  To  her  in- 
ventive imagination  is  due  the  contest 
for  young  American  professionals  that 
is  now  meeting  with  the  united  support 
of  press  and  public.  She  was  the  one 
to  see  a  vision  of  a  magazine  for  an 
official  organ  for  the  Federation. 
When  others  shrank  back  from  so 
precarious  an  undertaking,  Mrs.  Camp- 
bell had  the  courage  and  faith  to 
finance,  edit  and  publish  the  Musical 
Monitor.  The  first  year  she  blazed  the 
trail,  the  second  made  the  road,  and 


362                                       OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

now  in  its  third  year  the  way  is  made  out. 

pleasant  and  profitable  to  its  accumu-  Mrs.  Campbell  is  an  example  of 
lating  supporters,  and  the  work  is  es-  what  one  individual  possessed  by  an 
tablished.  idea,  and  brave  enough  to  stand  be- 
In  spite  of  the  manifold  labors  en-  hind  it  at  all  times,  can  accomplish  in 
tailed  by  these  responsibilities,  Mrs.  the  struggle  with  that  inertia  that 
Campbell  is  always  accessible  to  an  seems  to  be  a  fundamental  element  of 
appeal  for  help  or  advice.  To  her  human  nature.  Music,  beauty  and  re- 
friends  she  has  become  an  ora-  ligion  are  thoroughly  commingled  in 
cle.  When  a  stranded  foreign  musi-  her  mind;  her  faith  in  God's  provi- 
cian,  or  the  president  of  some  big  or-  dence  is  a  living  thing  which  has 
ganization,  or  a  mere  problem  harassed  "worked  through  a  great  culture  to  a 
writer  seeks  the  little  private  office,  great  simplicity;"  while  in  harmony 
it  is  to  receive  the  friendly  smile,  the  with  this,  she  cherishes  an  ardent  love 
warm  hand-clasp  and  a  swift,  intui-  for  our  country  and  a  clear  vision  of 
tive  suggestion  which  the  seeker  will  our  ultimate  supremacy  in  matters 
always  be  wise  and  safe  in  following  musical. 


THEN  I'LL  COWE  BACK  TO  YOU 

As  the  faint  ray  of  morn 

Breaks  from  the  night, 
So  is  man's  spirit  born 

Into  the  bright 
Immortal  world  above, 
Back  to  the  goal  of  love, 

Into  the  light. 

Death's  fatal  fair  caress 

The  door  unbars ; 
One  moment's  perfectness 

Beneath  the  stars; 
The  voices  of  the  spheres 
Sing  softly  through  the  years — 

No  sound  that  mars. 

Like  Night,  low  whispering, 

Crystal  and  fair; 
Lulled  where  bird-vespers  cling 

Upon  the  air; 
Held  in  the  hazy  mist 
Of  memory's  fond  tryst— 

Our  lost  are  there. 

Day's  glamour  fades  and  goes; 

A  shimmering  track 
Wavers  at  dusk  and  glows — 

Grows  sombre — black. 
"Then  I'll  come  back  to  you 
In  the  soft  twilight's  dew — 

Then  I'll  come  back!" 

ROSE  DE  VAUX-ROYER. 


Is   Christian   Science   Scriptural  ? 


By   C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,   Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 

(This  is  the  second  and  final  article  on  Christian  Science,  written  by  the 
famous  author  of  "Studies  in  the  Scriptures."  The  other  appeared  in  last 
month's  issue.) 


"There  shall  be  no  more  death,  nei- 
ther sorrow,  nor  crying;  neither  shall 
there  be  any  more  pain." — Revelation 
21:4. 

IN  MY  ARTICLE  of  last  month  hav- 
ing, I  believe,  fairly  stated  the 
facts  and  claims  of  Christian  Sci- 
ence, and  having  pointed  out  the 
unreasonableness  and  inconsistency  of 
some  of  its  statements,  I  now  proceed 
to  inquire  whether  its  teachings  are 
Scriptural.  This  is  the  question  of 
special  interest  to  us.  The  others  are 
merely  incidental.  I  hold,  and  will  en- 
deavor to  show,  that  Christian  Science 
is  in  conflict  with  the  Holy  Scriptures. 

The  Bible  distinctly  avers  that  God 
created  man  perfect — in  His  own  like- 
ness, morally,  intellectually.  It  de- 
clares that  Adam's  disobedience  was 
sin,  punishable,  not  with  eternal  tor- 
ment, but  with  death. — Romans  5:12; 
6:23;  1  Corinthians  15:21,  22;  Genesis 
2:17;  3:17-19;  Ezekiel  18:4,  20. 

Christian  Science  denies  these  facts, 
declaring  that  there  is  no  death  and 
that  whoever  dies  merely  commits 
"mortal  error."  It  is  surely  against 
Christian  Science,  but  confirmatory  of 
the  Bible  teaching  that  for  more  than 
six  thousand  years  mankind  have  been 
dying!  Even  "Mother  Eddy,"  who 
was  expected  not  to  commit  "mortal 
error,"  finally  succumbed  to  it.  What 
answer  can  our  Christian  Science 
friends  make  to  this?  We  know  of 


none,  except  that  they  might  claim  that 
the  unreasonableness  of  their  position 
is  no  greater  than  the  unreasonableness 
of  any  of  the  other  sects  and  creeds. 
Logic  never  seems  to  be  taken  into 
consideration  in  religious  matters;  the 
more  illogical  a  statement  the  more 
commendable  the  acceptance  of  it. 

If  all  disease  is  error,  if  death  is 
the  greatest  of  errors,  and  if  the  es- 
caping of  "mortal  error" — death — 
brings  the  reward  of  everlasting  life, 
how  do  our  Christian  Science  friends 
expect  to  get  everlasting  life,  when  at 
the  last  moment  of  their  trial  they 
make  failure  ?  For  those  of  them  who 
are  at  all  logical,  this  must  be  another 
very  perplexing  problem.  The  Bible 
declares  that  whoever  fails  in  one  point 
is  guilty  of  all  the  Law.  (James  2 :10.) 
Surely  he  who  commits  "mortal  error" 
has  failed  in  attaining  the  desidera- 
tum of  Christian  Science  more  than  in 
all  the  other  failures  of  his  life  in  com- 
bating all  other  things!  If  "mortal 
error"  thus  takes  hold  at  the  dying  mo- 
tnent,  what  hope  would  there  be  for 
such  a  person  as  respects  everlasting 
life,  if  only  to  overcomers  will  be 
granted  that  life  and  if  none  of  them 
overcome,  but  all  succumb  to  "mortal 
error?"  The  corollary  of  the  argu- 
ment would  be  hopeless  death  for  all 
mankind.  In  this  conclusion,  the  Bible 
agrees.  "The  .wages  of  sin  is  death;" 
sin  brings  death,  "mortal  error." — 
Ezekiel  18:4;  Genesis  2:17;  Romans 
6:23. 


364 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


What  the  Scriptures  Say. 

The  Bible  logically  and  beautifully 
points  out  God's  compassion  for  our 
race,  and  His  provision  in  Christ  for 
our  recovery  out  of  this  death  condi- 
tion by  a  resurrection  from  the  dead. 
The  Bible  logically  shows  that  the 
Divine  sentence  of  death  (not  torment) 
must  be  met  either  by  humanity  or  by 
a  Redeemer,  and  informs  us  that  for 
this  purpose  Christ  left  His  Heavenly 
glory,  that  He  might  redeem  Adam  and 
his  race  from  sin  and  its  death  penalty. 
So  the  Apostle  writes  by  inspiration: 
"As  by  a  man  (Adam)  came  death,  by 
a  man  also  (Jesus)  comes  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead.  For  as  all  in 
Adam  ,die,  even  so  all  in  Christ  shall 
be  made  alive."  (Corinthians  15:21, 
22.)  What  is  this  but  a  declaration 
that  the  sin  leading  to  "mortal  error" 
is  atoned  for  by  Divine  favor,  to  the 
intent  that  all  sinners  may  be  rescued 
from  "mortal  error" — from  death  ? 

The  Bible  is  so  much  more  reason- 
able and  beautiful  that,  we  believe, 
Christian  Scientists,  seeing  its  teach- 
ings with  clear  vision,  will  gladly  ex- 
change an  inferior  for  a  superior.  Why 
should  they  bind  themselves  too 
closely  to  "Mother  Eddy,"  who,  ac- 
cording to  her  own  theory,  failed  in 
the  highest  degree  in  committing  "mor- 
tal error" — and  hopelessly?  Would 
they  not  rather  take  the  older  and  still 
better  teaching  of  God's  Word,  and 
realize  that  Jesus'  resurrection  from 
the  dead  was  the  Divine  recognition 
of  His  perfect  sacrifice  and  a  guaran- 
tee that  His  death  had  accomplished 
the  designed  purpose  of  providing  a 
way  for  the  removal  of  "mortal  error" 
— death — from  all  ? 

Those  who  accept  Jesus'  death  and 
resurrection  as  the  satisfaction  for  sin 
provided  by  God,  and  who  believe  the 
Bible  teaching  that  the  actual  resur- 
rection is  to  occur  after  the  Second 
Advent  of  Jesus,  may  by  faith  speak 
of  themselves  as  already  risen  with 
Him.  But  those  who  deny  that  there 
is  any  death  must  of  necessity  deny 
that  Jesus  died,  and  hence  would  be, 
whether  intentionally  or  otherwise,  de- 


nying the  Ransom-Price — the  Redemp- 
tion Price — given  for  the  sins  of  the 
whole  world. 

Cannot  our  Christian  Science  friends 
accept  the  Redeemer  and  His  work, 
and  by  faith  look  forward  to  the  Res- 
titution, which  St.  Peter  declares  will 
follow  our  Lord's  Second  Advent? 
(Acts  3 :19-21.)  It  will  be  for  all  man- 
kind, and  will  last  a  thousand  years, 
dealing  with  "every  man  in  his  own 
order" — bringing  them  back  from  the 
tomb  and  from  all  their  weaknesses, 
which  are  the  blemishes  of  sin — back 
to  the  perfect  image  and  likeness  of 
God,  as  originally  represented  in 
Father  Adam. 

Healing  the  Sick  Not  a  Sin. 

Christian  Science  healers  necessar- 
ily acknowledge  that  there  is  sickness 
when  they  speak  of  healing;  for  how 
could  any  one  be  healed  who  is  not 
diseased  ?  We  have  already  conceded 
that  sickness,  sorrow  and  pain  would 
not  be  proper  for  any  who  are  God's 
people;  and  that  the  prevalence  of 
these  conditions  attests  the  fact  that 
God  is  dealing  with  the  world  as  crim- 
inals under  death  sentence.  The  ques- 
tion arises,  Is  not  the  Church  an  ex- 
ception to  the  world  in  this  matter? 
We  answer  that  those  who  believe  in 
Jesus'  redemptive  work  and  who  fully 
consecrate  their  lives,  are  counted  as 
separate  and  distinct  from  the  world. 
(John  17:16.)  Nevertheless,  to  the 
surprise  of  some,  it  is  not  the  Divine 
Plan  that  those  received  by  God  as 
sons  should  be  released  from  sick- 
ness, imperfection  or  death. 

Take  the  case  of  Jesus.  "Holy, 
harmless,  undefiled,  separate  from  sin- 
ners," the  Son  of  God  by  a  full  out- 
ward attestation  (Matthew  3:17;  John 
1:14),  He  was  weary,  He  hungered, 
He  agonized  in  the  Garden,  He  died 
on  the  Cross.  Nor  were  these  errors; 
rather  they  were  the  very  things  for 
which  He  came  into  the  world,  as  He 
Himself  declared;  and  without  Jesus' 
suffering  as  our  Redeemer,  Adam  and 
his  race  could  never  be  recovered,  ac- 
cording to  the  Divine  arrangement. 


Joaquin  Ailler 


November  1  Oth,  was  Joaquin  Miller  Day  at  the  Exposition 


By  Richard  Lew  Dawson 


Proudly  erect  as  is  a  lodge-pole  pine. 

Tallest  and  kingliest  tree  of  wilds  divine, 

Topping  the  peaks  and  chanting  to  the  sky, 

Tossing  in  sun  and  wind  its  arms  on  high, 

Holding  through  beating  storms  its  dauntless  crown^ 

From  lofty  rugged  Western  hights  came  down 

The  poet,  singing  such  a  strange  new  song 

Of  wild,  sweet  beauty  that  he  thrilled  the  throng, 

Who  paused  and  listened  in  delight  and  awe, 

And  as  they  gazed  at  him  amazed  they  saw 

The  brave,  grand  head  of  a  Norse  sea-king  bold, 

Faring  to  dare  and  conquer  as  of  old, 

He  with  his  harp,  the  Norseman  by  his  sword; 

Or  like  the  glorious  Moses  he  adored 

Bringing  from  God  the  tablets  of  command, 

Leading  his  people  to  the  Promised  Land ! 

Down  from  the  Hights  again  one  day  he  came, 

Put  on  immortal  raiment,  and  in  flame 

His  mortal  ashes  floated  to  the  breeze, 

To  bear  his  fame  again  o'er  the  Eastern  seas, 

And  out  the  Golden  Gate  into  the  dawn, 

And  now  we  watch  his  spirit  sailing  on 

To  reach  the  City  Beautiful  that  smiles 

Where  he  goes  singing  to  the  tropic  isles, 

And  as  with  straining  eyes  we  wait  alone 

For  one  more  glimpse,  to  catch  one  precious  tone, 

His  presence  seems  to  fill  the  twilight  air, 

And  all  his  song-creations  hover  there, 

From  the  Sierras  and  Hawaiian  bloom, 

From  Italy  and  Amazon  forest  gloom, 

From  Palestine  and  decks  Columbus  trod, 

From  human  hearts  he  filled  with  love  of  God! 


Craft  used  by  a  notorious  pearl  smuggler,  finally  caught  by  the  government 
officials  using  a  swift  motor  boat 


NOV  •» 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


MONTHLY 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  November,  1915 


No.  5 


Pearling  in  the  Americas 


By  Wm.  A.  Reid 


OVER  in  Ceylon  the  loyal  natives 
have  long  called  their  beautiful 
island  the  "Pearl-drop  on  the 
brow  of  India."    A  name  most 
appropriately  bestowed  when  we  recall 
that  in  Ceylon  waters  lie  probably  the 
oldest  pearl  fishing  grounds  known  to 
man.  For  thousands  of  years  they  have 
sent  forth  the  choicest  gems  to  add  lus- 
ter to  the  crown  of  royal  ruler  or  to 
adorn  the  bosom  of  the  fairest  queen 
of  culture  and  wealth. 


Shortly  after  nightfall  on  a  pleasant 
evening  our  little  steamer  sailed  out  of 
the  harbor  of  Colombo,  bound  for  the 
"pearly  shores,"  for  an  anchorage  a 
few  miles  off  the  port  of  Arippu,  near 
which  place  the  pearl  fishing  fleet  was 
to  begin  operations  at  the  rising  of  the 
sun.  In  Ceylon  the  oyster  beds  are 
under  government,  supervision,  and 
about  March  of  each  year  a  great  pearl 
fishing  expedition  hovers  over  the 
waters  of  the  Gulf  of  Mannar.  The 


Diving  suits  used  by  Americans  on  a  pearl  fishing  concession 


Diver  in  suit  prepared  to  remain  under  water  to  gather  pearl  oysters 


personnel  of  the  fleet  is  made  up  of 
Malays,  Arabs,  Indians,  Singalese,  and 
those  from  various  other  branches  of 
India's  teeming  millions. 

The  experience  of  the  stranger  with 
this  unique  fleet  is  not  disappointing. 
The  sight  of  thousands  of  divers  from 
hundreds  of  little  boats,  plunging  into 
the  water  or  riding  downward  astride 
heavy  weights,  rising  with  their  treas- 
ures, others  returning  to  the  watery 
depths,  the  Babel  of  strange  voices, 
combine  to  paint  a  picturesque  and 
lasting  impression  upon  the  mind  of 
the  visitor. 

The  waters  around  Ceylon  and  those 
of  the  Gulf  of  California  have  the  rich- 
est pearl  producing  oyster  beds  in  ex- 
istence. Situated  on  opposite  sides  of 
the  earth,  it  is  interesting  to  compare 
the  work  of  the  pearl  hunters  or  divers, 
so  far  separated,  yet  pursuing  many 
methods  in  common  in  the  search  for 
precious  gems  beneath  the  waters.  In 
Ceylon  upon  a  given  signal  the  diving 
begins;  the  boats  are  small  and  hold 
comfortably  8  or  12  persons.  The  men 
wear  few  clothes,  and  each  man  takes 


a  turn  at  diving,  for  all  of  them  appear 
to  be  experts.  A  rope  with  weight  at- 
tached is  thrown  over  the  side  of  the 
boat,  the  diver  attaches  himself  to  the 
rope,  and  his  assistant  lowers  him  into 
the  water.  Other  divers  plung  down- 
ward unassisted.  Around  the  diver 
hangs  a  bag,  within  which  he  places 
the  oysters  as  rapidly  as  he  can  pick 
them  from  the  sea  bottom.  He  may  re- 
main under  water  for  two  minutes  or 
even  longer,  according  to  the  depth  of 
the  water  and  his  ability  to  exist  with- 
out air. 

On  the  Mexican  coast,  of  which  La 
Paz  is  the  general  rendezvous,  the 
method  of  pearling  is  much  the  same 
as  in  Ceylon.  Many  of  the  vessels 
used  are  larger  and  the  modern  diving 
suit  is  more  in  evidence.  There  is  us- 
ually a  large  sailboat  called  the 
"mother"  and  probably  a  half  dozen 
small  ones  termed  "luggers."  The  lat- 
ter are  manned  by  a  crew  of  six  or 
eight  men,  one  or  two  of  whom  are 
divers.  The  small  boats  transfer  their 
catches  at  frequent  intervals  to  the 
larger  vessel  standing  by,  where  the 


I 

o 
« 


I 
"I 


Opening  large  pearl  oyster  shells 


shells  are  opened  and  carefully  exam- 
ined for  pearls. 

What  is  a  pearl?  Before  consider- 
ing other  pearl  fishing  grounds,  espe- 
cially those  of  the  Americas,  it  may  be 
of  interest  to  know  just  how  the  pearl 
is  produced;  that  is,  so  far  as  the  un- 
scientific reader  is  concerned.  One  of 
the  shortest  and  most  striking  defini- 
tions is  that  suggested  by  a  French  sci- 
entist, who  says  "a  pearl  is  the  brilliant 
sarcophagus  of  a  worm."  Others  go 
more  into  detail  and  declare  that  the 
growth  of  the  pearl  is  often  associated 
with  a  possible  degree  of  annoyance  or 
pain.  The  tiny  deposit  that  finds  itself 
within  the  shell  of  a  mollusk  or  oyster 
may  be  introduced  accidentally  or  pur- 
posely, as  we  shall  see  later.  The  for- 
eign substance  within  the  shell  is  be- 
lieved to  irritate  the  oyster  and  he  be- 
gins to  cover  it  with  a  series  of  thin 
layers  of  calcium  carbonate.  Little  by 
little  these  peculiar  layers  are  formed, 
and  in  a  few  years  a  beautiful  pearl 


may  be  the  result,  or  the  formation 
may  prove  absolutely  worthless. 

Pearl-forming  mollusks  are  widely 
distributed  over  the  world,  and  they 
may  be  univalves  or  bivalves;  in  the 
former  shape  we  sometimes  find  them 
in  conchs  and  in  the  latter  classifica- 
tion in  clams  and  oysters.  The  subject 
in  various  ramifications  has  proved  in- 
teresting and  fascinating  to  investiga- 
tors; but  this  story  is  only  a  general 
talk  about  the  pearl,  and  the  scientific 
details  are  left  to  those  who  make  a 
serious  study  of  the  nature  of  this  fam- 
ous and  much  prized  ornament. 

Salt  water  pearl  fishing  in  the  Amer- 
icas has  been  pursued  from  our  earliest 
history,  and  while  these  pearling 
waters  may  not  be  as  ancient  as  the 
fisheries  of  Ceylon  or  those  of  the 
Persian  Gulf,  Columbus  and  those  who 
followed  in  his  wake  often  found  un- 
civilized natives  wearing  pearls  of 
great  value.  Indeed,  so  many  pearls 
were  found  off  the  Venezuelan  coast 


£ 

t; 

o 

-£ 


§, 


I 
"I 


5 

"c/3 


A  station  on  the  pearl  grounds 


that  early  explorers  gave  the  name  of 
"El  Gulfo  de  las  Perlas"  to  certain 
waters  where  the  pearls  appeared  to 
be  plentiful. 

To-day  the  pearl  fisheries  of  Marga- 
rita Island,  off  the  Venezuelan  coast, 
become  active  each  autumn,  when  hun- 
dreds of  small  boats  present  a  scene 
not  unlike  that  of  the  pearl  season  of 
California  or  Ceylon.  The  Venezuelan 
waters,  however,  have  been  so  thor- 
oughly worked  and  the  divers  so 
skilled  that  the  government  found  it 
necessary  to  take  precautions  to  pre- 
vent the  complete  extermination  of  the 
beds.  Accordingly,  few  divers  were 
licensed  to  work  last  season,  but  sev- 
eral hundred  men  in  boats  were  per- 
mitted to  use  rakes;  the  latter  method 
is  not  so  thorough  as  the  hands  of  the 
expert  diver,  and  the  smaller  oyster  is 
left  behind  to  propagate.  Cubagua, 
Porlamar,  Maracapana,  Coro,  etc.,  are 
other  Venezuelan  sections  of  more  or 
less  note. 

Many  of  the  expert  divers  of  Venez- 
uela have  engaged  themselves  to  an 
Ecuadorian  company  which  is  develop- 


ing pearl  fishing  along  the  coast  of  that 
country.  Near  the  little  port  of  Manta 
the  results  have  proved  quite  satisfac- 
tory, and  during  a  recent  year  about 
$20,000  worth  of  pearls  were  shipped 
to  European  markets. 

About  the  shores  of  numerous  is- 
lands in  the  Bay  of  Panama  there  are 
pearl  fisheries.  One  of  these  islands, 
to  which  the  name  of  Pearl  has  been 
given,  has  long  been  supplying  pearls 
of  greater  or  less  value.  The  work 
about  this  and  other  islands  of  Panama 
Bay  is  carried  on  like  that  of  Lower 
California.  One  of  the  great  difficul- 
ties encountered  is  the  heavy  tides  of 
this  section  of  the  Pacific,  which  pre- 
vent steady  work.  A  valuable  pearl 
find  in  Panama  waters  was  that  made 
by  a  boy  who  accidentally  picked  up 
an  oyster  a  few  hundred  feet  from  the 
shore,  in  which  he  discovered  a  pearl 
that  brought  locally  $3,000.  Later  the 
same  pearl  was  sold  in  Paris  for  $12 - 
000. 

There  are  various  other  sections  of 
the  oceans  that  supply  fine  pearls,  such 
as  the  shore  of  Queensland  Australia, 


t 


Oysters  drying  out  in  a  government  storage  bin 


the  Red  Sea,  New  Guinea  waters, 
about  the  island  of  Madagascar,  and 
elsewhere.  Generally  speaking,  an  or- 
dinary fishing  boat  party  expects  to  se- 
cure several  tons  of  shells  a  day,  and 
possibly  one  shell  in  a  thousand  con- 
tains a  pearl.  The  Mexican  waters  in 
which  fishing  is  done  are  from  30  to 
50  feet  deep,  and  the  fleet  is  active 
four  to  six  months  in  the  year,  begin- 
ning operations  in  the  autumn.  A  pearl- 
ing expedition  as  equipped  for  the 
Mexican  waters  often  costs  $10,000  to 
$15,000  to  outfit,  and  possibly  at  the 
end  of  the  season  the  catch  may  not  be 
worth  half  the  amount  expended.  But 
if  no  mishap  occurs  to  any  of  the  little 
vessels  the  supply  of  mother-of-pearl 
shells  obtained  should  be  of  a  sufficient 
value  to  repay  the  general  outfitting 
expenses. 


One  of  the  allied  industries  of  pearl 
'fishing  is  that  of  obtaining  valuable 
shells,  which  we  know  as  mother-of- 
pearl.  The  latter  are  found  generally 
along  with  the  pearl  fisheries;  and  of- 
ten when  no  pearls  exist  within  the  oy- 
ster the  shells  themselves  may  be  of 
considerable  value. 

Mother-of-pearl  is  defined  as  the  "in- 
ternal nacreous  lining  of  the  molluscan 
shell."  This  shell,  as  is  well  known, 
is  seen  in  general  use  in  our  homes, 
where  it  is  highly  prized  for  toilet  ar- 
ticles, for  handles  to  knives,  for  but- 
tons and  countless  other  services  where 
a  high  polish  and  lasting  qualities  are 
desired.  The  monks  and  other  inhabi- 
tants of  Bethlehem  are  said  to  be 
among  the  world's  most  skilled  work- 
ers in  mother-of-pearl  shells ;  the  beau- 
tiful ornaments  that  come  from  that 


I 

« 

CO 


.§ 


I 


Native  Cingalese  experts  boring  pearls  for  stringing 


ancient  city  are  highly  valued  in  lead- 
ing cities  of  Europe  and  America. 

Pearls  in  the  Americas,  as  in  other 
countries,  should  now  be  within  the 
reach  of  those  of  modest  means.  To- 
day in  world  markets  of  London,  Bom- 
bay, Paris  or  La  Paz  the  pearl  is  sell- 
ing for  about  half  its  ordinary  value. 
The  pearls  of  American  fisheries  have 
long  found  the  best  market  in  Euro- 
pean countries,  and  dealers  have 
brought  them  back  to  American  shops, 
from  which  sales  have  always  been  ex- 
tensive. The  English  company  that  for 
a  number  of  years  held  the  pearling 
concession  off  the  Mexican  coast 
shipped  its  products  to  London;  but 
since  that  concession  was  canceled  a 
few  years  ago  the  pearls  have  come 
directly  to  markets  in  the  United 
States.  At  present  the  market  is  open 
and  American  buyers  can  doubtless 
find  a  large  and  varied  assortment  at 
La  Paz,  Mexico,  from  which  have  come 
in  the  past  many  beautiful  blue,  black, 
green  and  pink  pearls  of  great  value. 
These  pearls  have  a  variety  of  shapes 
and  colors,  such  as  flat  on  one  side,  ba- 
roque or  of  irregular  shape,  pear 
shaped,  round,  etc. 


It  is  said  that  pearls  from  waters  of 
the  Americas  are  to  be  seen  in  the 
crowns  of  most  European  rulers.  One 
of  the  most  valuable  pearls  ever  ob- 
tained in  Mexican  fisheries  was  sent  to 
Paris  and  there  sold  to  the  Emperor  of 
Austria  for  $10,000.  On  another  oc- 
casion the  government  of  Spain  pre- 
sented to  Napoleon  III  a  black  Mexi- 
can pearl  valued  at  $25,000.  The  com- 
bination tints  of  black,  blue  and  green 
are  quite  rare,  and  the  Mexican  and 
Panama  pearls  often  combine  these 
colorings,  and  apparently  have 
reached  pearl  perfection.  Many  valu- 
able pearls  are  secured  by  ignorant  div- 
ers who,  not  knowing  the  real  value, 
part  with  their  finds  for  a  mere  pit- 
tance; often  beautiful  gems  are  sold 
for  $10  or  $20,  only  to  be  resold  in  the 
markets  of  the  world  for  $10,000  or 
$20,000. 

The  Venezuelan  fisheries  produce 
annually  more  than  half  a  million  dol- 
lars' worth  of  pearls.  Many  of  the 
world's  most  beautiful  gems  have  come 
from  that  country,  and  it  is  said  that  in 
1579  King  Philip  of  Spain  obtained 
from  near  Margarita  Island  a  pearl 
weighing  250  carats,  which  was  vari- 


Chinese  pearl  buyer  in  his  office  on  a  junk 


376 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ously  estimated  to  be  worth  from  $40,- 
000  to  $100,000.  The  most  perfect 
pearl  in  the  world  is  said  to  be  "La 
Pellegrina,"  a  rare  gem  that  is  pre- 
served in  the  Zosima  Museum  in  Mos- 
cow; it  weighs  28  carats,  is  globular  in 
form,  and  originally  came  from  Indian 
waters.  The  world's  largest  pearl  is 
in  the  Hope  Collection  in  the  Victoria 
and  Albert  Museum,  London.  It  weighs 
3  ounces  and  has  a  circumference  of 
4l/2  inches. 

One  of  the  world's  leading  authori- 
ties on  pearls  is  Dr.  George  F.  Kunz. 
According  to  a  recent  writer,  the  for- 
mer says  that  a  pearl  of  the  finest 
grade  should  have  "a  perfect  skin,  fine 
orient  or  delicate  texture,  be  free  from 
specks  or  flaws,  and  be  of  translucent 
white  color,  with  a  subdued  iridescent 
sheen.  It  should  be  perfectly  spheri- 
cal, or  if  not,  of  a  symmetrical  shape. 
White  or  pink  pearls  are  the  finest,  ow- 
ing to  their  delicate  sheen." 

In  China  and  Japan  the  mention  of 
the  pearl  occurs  in  the  history  of  those 
countries  as  early  as  1000  B.  C.  Pearl- 
ing industries  in  both  nations  have 
passed  down  through  the  ages,  and 
even  to-day  it  gives  employment  to 
many  workers,  skilled  and  unskilled. 
Visitors  to  Japan  will  be  especially  in- 
terested in  Mikimoto's  pearl  farms  at 
Argo  Bay;  they  are  marvels  of  scien- 
tific accomplishment  in  the  propagation 
of  pearls.  The  methods  pursued  are 
more  or  less  as  follows:  The  young 
oysters  are  brought  from  the  water,  a 
serum  is  injected  into  the  shell;  this 
substance  sets  up  irritation  within,  and 
the  oyster,  it  seem,  then  begins  to  coat 
the  offensive  foreign  matter  with  layer 
after  layer  of  calcadeous  deposits.  A 
few  years  pass,  and  the  same  oyster  is 
fished  from  the  waters  and  his  pearl- 
making  work  examined.  Possibly  a 
beautiful  pearl  may  have  been  formed. 

Many  so-called  pearls  seen  to-day 
are  but  imitations  of  the  genuine  arti- 
cle; and  some  of  them  are  so  cleverly 
constructed  that  a  trained  eye  is  re- 
quired to  see  the  deception.  This  ar- 
tificial substance  is  made  by  injecting 
a  chemical  composition  into  small,  thin 


glass  spheres;  the  substance  adheres 
to  the  glass  walls,  and  the  minute  cen- 
tral cavity  is  filled  with  a  white  plas- 
ter; the  glass  covering  is  then  removed, 
the  article  skillfully  polished,  and  the 
spurious  pearl  sent  to  market  to  be  im- 
posed upon  the  innocent  purchaser. 

River  or  fresh  water  pearls  are  found 
quite  generally  in  temperate  climes  of 
the  Northern  Hemisphere,  especially 
in  the  English  Isles,  Saxony,  Bavaria, 
Bohemia,  Canada,  and  in  many  States 
of  the  Union.  In  several  of  the  rivers 
of  Ohio,  in  those  of  Wisconsin,  Illinois, 
Arkansas,  Tennessee,  Kentucky, 
Texas,  Michigan  and  other  States,  mus- 
sels have  been  found  from  time  to  time 
that  contained  good  pearls. 

According  to  a  monograph  of  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Fisheries, 
there  are  more  than  500  species  of 
fresh  water  mussels  in  North  America, 
and  a  considerable  number  of  these 
yield  pearls  of  value.  The  general 
public,  however,  seems  disinclined  to 
purchase  these  domestic  pearls,  and 
unscrupulous  dealers  frequently  offer 
them  as  "oriental  pearls;"  it  is  said 
this  designation  is  responsible  for  an 
increased  number  of  sales  of  the  do- 
mestic article.  Some  of  the  jewelers 
of  New  York  and  Milwaukee  have 
made  the  United  States  fresh  water 
pearl  better  known,  and  the  latter  are 
gradually  becoming  more  popular  with 
the  masses. 

The  business  of  fishing  for  pearls 
may  be  described  as  precarious.  The 
degree  of  uncertainty  that  attaches  to 
many  enterprises  is  ever  present  in  the 
search  for  pearls ;  yet  it  has  certain  at- 
tractions that  lure  thousands  of  fol- 
lowers from  more  stable  occupations. 
On  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the 
pearling  season  in  Ceylon,  mentioned 
in  the  beginning  of  this  story,  the  mot- 
ley throng  encamped  along  the  shore 
and  aboard  the  boats  was  variously  es- 
timated to  number  from  20,000  to  30,- 
000.  In  Panama,  Costa  Rica,  Venez- 
uela, and  Colombia  waters  the  fisher- 
men are  not  so  numerous,  but  on  many 
occasions  pearls  of  great  value  have 
been  secured. 


o 


FATE 

By  Bret  Harte 


This  being  the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition  year,  in  which 
everything  of  merit  in  California  is  being  reviewed  before  the 
world,  the  management  of  Overland  Monthly  has  decided  to  re- 
publish  in  its  pages  the  stories  and  poems  that  made  the  maga- 
zine famous  through  the  genius  of  Bret  Harte.  He  was  its  first 
editor,  and  it  was  his  keen  discernment  and  originality  which 
gave  the  contents  of  the  magazine  that  touch  of  the  spirit  of  the 
West,  and  especially  of  California,  which  made  it  distinctive 
and  enkindled  the  enthusiasm  of  discerning  readers  the  world 
around.  These  early  contributions  of  his  cover  several  years; 
they  will  be  published  monthly  in  the  order  in  which  they  ap- 
peared, beginning  with  the  first  issue  of  Overland  Monthly, 
July,  1868. 


"The  sky  is  clouded,  the  rocks  are  bare, 
The  spray  of  the  tempest  is  white  in  air; 
The  winds  are  out  with  the  waves  at  play, 
And  I  shall  not  tempt  the  sea  to-day. 

"The  trail  is  narrow,  the  wood  is  dim, 
The  panther  clings  to  the  arching  limb ; 
And  the  lion's  whelps  are  abroad  at  play, 
And  I  shall  not  join  in  the  chase  to-day." 

But  the  ship  sailed  safely  over  the  sea, 
And  the  hunters  came  from  the  chase  in  glee ; 
And  the  town  that  was  builded  upon  a  rock 
Was  swallowed  up  in  the  earthquake  shock. 


*   *   * 


n  v 


William  Jennings  Bryan  delivering  the  Panama-Pad  fie    Exposition    Indepen- 
dence Day  Address,  1915 


Features  of  the  Panama-Pacific 


Exposition 


By  Edward  H.  Hurlbut 


IT  IS  DIFFICULT  to  select  any  in- 
dividual thing  and  declare  it  to  be 
the  signal  feature  of  the  present 
Exposition.     As  an   instance,  the 
Diesel  engine  would  be  considered  by 
many  as  marking  possibly  the  most  im- 
portant advance  in  the  field  of  power 
development  since  the  Babcock-Cor- 
liss  combination  of  the  Philadelphia 
centennial  in  1876.    The  Diesel  engine 


is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  big  features 
of  this  exposition  as  marking  a  sen- 
sational advance  in  the  increase  of 
power  efficiency  in  proportion  to  fuel. 

But  in  the  Liberal  Arts  Palace,  for 
instance,  is  the  daily  demonstration  of 
the  New  York  to  San  Francisco  tele- 
phone. Tens  of  thousands  of  people 
have  heard  the  New  York  newspapers 
read  to  them  over  this  telephone,  and 


380 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


have  thrilled  to  listen  to  the  human 
voice  bridge  the  long  stretches  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 

These  are  both  epochal  advances  in 
the  respective  fields  of  power  and  word 
transmission.  Equally  important  are 
the  advances  featured  in  wireless  tele- 
graphy and  telephony  while,  in  a  more 
unfamiliar  field,  but  one  better  known 
to  the  average  readers  since  the  war, 
is  the  demonstration  of  the  processes 
by  which  nitrates  are  developed  from 
the  air. 

In  the  decade  that  has  passed  since 
the  St.  Louis  Exposition  progress  in 
the  electrical  field  has  touched  a  point 
where  it  now  is  possible  to  develop 
three  times  as  much  light  from  the 
same  amount  of  current  as  would  have 
been  developed  a  decade  ago. 

The  electric  engine,  placed  in  the 
Palace  of  Transportation,  and  all  of 
the  ramifications  of  the  automobile  in- 
dustry, furnish  sharp  and  visual  dem- 
onstrations of  the  advance  in  trans- 


portation. The  contrast  is  still  more 
sharply  defined  in  this  building,  where, 
beside  the  electric  engine  is  the  behe- 
moth mallet  compound  steam  engine, 
and  in  the  Wells-Fargo  exhibit,  the  old 
Concord  coach  that  blazed  the  trail  that 
the  transcontinental  railroads  since 
have  followed. 

There  are  improvements  in  the  elec- 
trical world  too  numerous  to  catalogue, 
but  of  the  more  important  are  the  im- 
provements shown  in  dynamos.  In  ag- 
riculture, sanitation  and  public  health, 
education — the  Montessori  system  of 
specialized  individual  instruction  is 
given  large  attention — in  factory  work 
and  the  economic  conditions  surround- 
ing labor,  in  horticulture,  live  stock, 
liberal  arts  and  fine  arts  there  are 
countless  attractions  evidencing  the 
giant  strides  taken  in  the  last  decade 
in  all  fields  of  human  endeavor. 

It  is  probable  that  the  two  things  for 
which  the  Exposition  will  be  known 
are  the  Diesel  engine  and  the  long- 


Ex-President  Roosevelt  addressing  seventy  thousand  people  in  the  Court  of 
the  Universe,  Panama-Pacific  Exposition,  San  Francisco,  July  21,  1915 


Part  of  the  Court  of  the  Universe)  looking  toward  the  Column  of  Progress  in 
the  distance  and  fronting  the  Marina 


distance  telephone,  the  one  signalizing 
a  mighty  step  forward  in  reducing  the 
cost  of  power  production,  the  other  in 
bringing  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific, 
as  it  were,  face  to  face  in  daily  conver- 
sation. What  wireless  telephone  will 
do  cannot  be  definitely  said  at  this 
time.  At  least  it  has  not  been  demon- 
strated with  the  practical  results  that 
the  wired  telephone  has. 

An  exposition  with  forty-seven  miles 
of  exhibit  aisles,  and  dozens  of  State 
and  national  structures  housing  dis- 
plays, cannot  be  disintegrated  in  a  few 
columns  of  type.  To  the  work  of  de- 
scribing this  exposition,  already  sev- 
eral millions  of  columns  of  printed 
matter  has  been  spread  before  the 
readers  of  the  world.  And  yet,  the 
daily  remark  of  tens  of  thousands  of 
visitors  who  have  read  newspaper  and 
magazine  accounts,  perused  guide 
books  and  heard  personal  descriptions, 
is  that  the  actual  fact  is  a  magnificent 
and  a  monumental  revelation  of  things 
but  half  anticipated. 


It  was  the  garb  in  which  the  Expo- 
sition was  dressed  that  gave  the  theme 
to  the  earlier  discussions  rather  than 
what  now  is  the  important  thing,  the 
educational  factor.  That  San  Fran- 
cisco was  to  have  an  exposition  in 
color  was  generously  heralded.  Hith- 
erto, expositions  had  been  handled  in 
one  color.  But  so  far  have  the  sci- 
ence and  the  art  of  illumination  been 
carried  that  results  were  possible  here 
that  hitherto  could  have  existed  only 
as  visions  in  a  dreamer's  mind.  Those 
who  witnessed  the  earlier  demonstra- 
tions of  the  lighting  effects  were 
moved  to  extravagance  in  endeavoring 
to  interpret  in  type  the  enchanting  pic- 
ture. 

Combined  with  the  lighting  effects 
was  the  color  scheme,  without  which 
the  full  glory  of  the  tonal  diapason 
would  not  have  been  possible.  Here 
again,  those  who  attempted  to  describe 
this  Aladdin's  city  were  subjected  at 
least  to  the  suspicion  of  an  enthusiasm 
either  inspired  by  a  patriotism  for  a 


382 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


native  city  or  by  the  commercial  im- 
petus of  the  paid  press  agent. 

Contributing  to  the  external  features 
of  the  vast  exposition  area  was — and 
is,  for  the  exposition  is  at  the  height 
of  its  success  and  remains  open  until 
December  4th — the  architectural  treat- 
ment, and,  as  is  requisite  in  any  grand 
outdoor  scheme  of  embellishment,  the 
landscape  effects.  Corollary  to  these 
major  phases  of  color,  light,  architec- 
ture and  landscape,  comes  the  detail 
of  landscape  effect,  the  sculptures  and 
mural  decorations.  It  has  been  called 
many  things :  the  miracle  city,  a  dream 
city  by  the  Hellespont,  the  jewel  city, 
the  fabled  city  of  our  childhood's  im- 
aginings, a  chalice  of  price  by  the 
Western  sea.  But  it  is  an  opal  city, 
shimmering  by  day,  glowing  by  night, 
iridescent  always,  with  ever  unex- 
plored beauties  to  reward  the  gazer. 

I  have  seen  it  in  the  first  purplings 
of  the  rising  sun  on  the  fairest  of  Cali- 
fornia's summer  mornings,  and  I  have 


seen  it  washed  by  the  spring  rains  in 
the  trade  winds,  a  naiad  arising  from 
the  crested  waters  of  the  storm  lashed 
bay,  a  thing  of  clean  beauty  with  wind 
blown  tresses.  I  have  seen  it  looming, 
vague,  reposeful,  in  subdued  color  and 
suggested  strength,  through  the  fogs 
that  swing  across  the  Golden  Gate.  I 
have  seen  it  in  the  full  glory  of  a 
soft  moon  night  when  nature  indeed 
felt  that  man  had  looked  in  the  face  of 
Diety  and  stolen  something  of  the 
mighty  and  unfathomable  secret  of 
creation.  I  have  seen  it  in  blazing  sun- 
light when  two  hundred  thousand  peo- 
ple massed  into  the  great  south  gar- 
dens, a  sight  to  stun  and  awe,  and  I 
have  seen  it  after  the  last  lone  visitor 
had  passed  out  the  turnstiles,  and  the 
majestic  entity  brooded  in  communion 
with  nature. 

It  is  a  part  of  San  Francisco,  a  por- 
tion of  the  blood  and  the  bone  of  the 
breed  of  the  pioneers,  the  concrete 
embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  a  people 


Blackfeet  Indians  getting  their  first  view  of  the  Pacific  Ocean.    The  famous 
Cliff  House,  overlooking  the  Golden  Gate,  in  the  distance 


Indians  of  the  101  Camp  putting  their  savings  in  a  bank  on  the  grounds 


who  know  no  discouragement,  imbued 
with  the  elan  of  a  perpetual  youth 
that  seeks  to  do,  and  does,  homer ic 
deeds. 

San  Francisco's  pride  in  this  Expo- 
sition is  a  natural  pride  when  it  is  re- 
called that  it  was  only  nine  years  ago 
that  436  square  blocks  of  the  heart  and 
lungs  of  this  city  were  burned — and 
promptly  rebuilt.  This  is  the  second 
epic  accomplishment  of  the  resilient 
city  by  the  Golden  Gate,  and  that  is 
why,  when  visitors  come  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, when  they  see  the  actuality,  they 
marvel. 

It  is  in  this  perfect  setting  that  the 
world  has  brought  its  goods  to  mart,  in 
a  combination  of  beauty  and  utilitari- 
anism never  equaled  in  world's  exposi- 
tions. 

And  to  get  down  to  concrete  facts, 
it  is  this  combination  that  enabled 
President  Moore  of  the  Exposition,  on 
September  3d  to  officiate  at  the  for- 
mal burning  of  the  last  bond  of  in- 


debtedness of  the  Exposition  company. 
The  salvage  after  the  close  of  the  Ex- 
position saved  St.  Louis.  Chicago  had 
her  slate  cleared  only  a  few  weeks  be- 
fore the  closing  time,  but  San  Fran- 
cisco, fighting  apparently  insurmount- 
able odds  after  the  declaration  of  war 
in  Europe,  wipes  clear  her  slate  three 
months  before  the  close  of  the  Expo- 
sition gates.  Even  before  the  war 
definitely  stopped  much  foreign  par- 
ticipation and  withheld  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  visitors,  there  were  those  who 
openly  declared  that  San  Francisco 
was  too  isolated  geographically  from 
the  centers  of  population  to  hope  to 
make  successful  a  $100,000,000  ven- 
ture. 

And  yet  the  statement  stands  uncon- 
troverted  that  there  are  a  greater  num- 
ber of  foreign  nations  participating 
than  participated  at  any  previous  ex- 
position, and  this  in  spite  of  the  war. 
To-day,  nine  months  after  the  opening 
of  the  Exposition,  15,000,000  visitors, 


384 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


from  the  counties  of  California,  the 
States  of  the  United  States,  the  nations 
of  the  globe,  have  gone  through  the 
turnstiles. 

It  is  not  only  in  the  commercial  ex- 
hibits by  thousands  of  competitive 
manufacturers,  from  patent  milkers  to 
aeroplanes,  from  granite  slabs  to  $100,- 
000  pearl  fans,  from  crude  oil  to  rare 
French  perfumes,  from  range  finders 
to  typewriters,  from  acousticons,  that 
magnify  the  voice  a  thousand  fold,  to 
the  exquisite  porcelains  of  Copenha- 
gen, from  the  silks  of  China,  the  sat- 
suma  of  Japan,  the  arts  and  crafts  of 
France,  to  the  pyramids  of  golden 
yellow  corn  of  Iowa,  the  monster  15,- 
000  pound  cheese  of  New  York,  the 
molasses  of  Louisiana,  the  hides  of 
Brazil  and  the  refrigerated  beef  of 
Australia.  It  is  the  panoramic  of  a 
decade;  the  decade  that  marks  a 
greater  stride  forth  in  the  things  that 
go  to  contribute  to  human  welfare  than 
any  of  the  other  nine  decades  of  the 
last  one  hundred  years.  It  is  the  ka- 


leidoscope of  the  crowning  decade  of 
a  century  that  has  done  more  for  so- 
cial progress  than  have  all  the  cen- 
turies of  the  Christian  era. 

Imagine,  after  the  first  flush  of  aes- 
thetic impulse  has  lessened  when  view- 
ing the  vast  completion  of  light,  color 
architecture,  landscape  and  sculpture, 
penetrating  into  the  exhibit  palaces 
where  the  things  of  utility  and  pleas- 
ure are  exhibited.  Take  any  palace  at 
random.  But  if,  after  the  pleasuring 
outside  impressions,  you  prefer  to  take 
your  practical  pabulum  by  a  softened 
gradation,  enter  the  Palace  of  Food 
Products.  If  you  have  not  already  an 
appetite,  this  will  titillate  your  palate 
for  the  many  cafes  of  the  grounds. 
The  aroma  of  savory  cooking  takes 
you  to  the  Sperry  Flour  Company's 
$100,000  exhibit,  where  cooks  of 
many  nations  prepare  the  dishes  for 
which  each  nation  is  noted.  Here  are 
the  famous  Indian  dishes,  Paukauri 
and  Khati,  enchiladas,  tortillas  and  ta- 
males;  Japanese  sen  pie  or  tea  cakes, 


Tourists  lunching  in  the  South  Gardens,  Horticultural  Palace  in  the  distance 


A  scene  ort  the  Zone 


Russian  perosky  and  verokeke,  South- 
ern corn  bread,  corn  pone  and  corn 
cake ;  Hebrew  matzos  and  noodles,  the 
han  far  cake,  olive  cake  and  yuksum  of 
China;  the  dainties  of  all  nations  are 
here. 

A  flour  mill  in  operation  takes  the 
wheat  and  grinds  the  flour  that  goes 
into  these  edibles  prepared  by  re- 
nowned chefs. 

Almost  adjacent,  and  furnishing  a 


sharp  contrast  to  the  finished  products 
of  the  kitchen  range,  is  the  fisheries 
exhibit  of  the  State  of  Washington. 
A  hatchery  in  active  operation  shows 
the  salmon  from  spawn  through  all 
stages.  Dozens  of  tanks  contain  living 
fish  of  every  species,  native  to  the 
Washington  waters.  There  are  steel- 
head  trout,  green  tench,  sturgeon,  dog 
fish — just  by  way  of  showing  the  va- 
riety— bass,  carp,  perch,  rock  fish, 


386 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


lampreys,  and  all  varieties  of  shell 
fish;  clams,  craw  fish,  shrimps,  oys- 
ters and  crabs. 

Close  by  this  raw  food  exhibit  is 
the  exhibit  of  a  nationally  noted  beer 
company,  and  next  is  the  booth  of  a 
famous  chef,  Lenher,  the  booth  being 
devoted  to  a  showing  of  menus  that 
Lenher  has  created,  many  of  them  for 
banquets  graced  by  the  crowned  heads 
of  Europe.  There  is  a  refrigerator 
plant,  a  vast  showing  of  California's 
native  wines,  a  huge  pot  in  which  a 
mighty  pother  of  mush  is  always  boil- 
ing, a  Japanese  tea  garden,  a  Chinese 
cafe,  mango  and  guanabana  preserves 
from  Cuba,  chocolates,  confections, 
cordials,  bay  rum.  Everything  is  here 
that  goes  into  the  kitchen  or  the  din- 
ing room  for  the  family  table,  whether 
it  be  the  table  of  peasant  or  prince. 

It  is  the  same  with  all  of  the  palaces, 
and  there  are  eleven  major  exhibit  pal- 
aces, from  Fine  Arts,  where  the  crea- 
tions of  palette,  chisel  or  the  engra- 
ver's point  thrill  the  imagination,  to 
the  mighty  turbines,  shafts  and  wheels 
of  the  Palace  of  Machinery,  the  larg- 
est frame  building  under  one  roof  in 
the  world  to-day. 

Drop  into  any  of  the  other  palaces, 


say  the  Varied  Industries  Palace, 
where  the  lover  of  arts  and  crafts,  of 
things  dainty  and  rare  for  the  person 
or  the  house  will  find  the  more  refined 
and  artistic  products  of  manufacture. 
For  instance,  there  are  here  silks  of 
exquisite  pattern  and  finest  workman- 
ship, porcelains  of  price,  ceramics,  em- 
broideries, needlework,  tapestries, 
clocks,  watches,  stationery;  and  along 
with  these  go  the  commoner  things  of 
the  household:  sewing  machines,  gas 
and  electrical  appliances,  steam  radia- 
tors, furniture,  carpets,  carpet  sweep- 
ers. Most  of  the  States  of  the  United 
States  are  represented,  Indiana  show- 
ing that  she  can  do  something  besides 
produce  authors,  for  this  State  has  a 
collective  display  of  over  one  hundred 
individual  exhibitors  of  arts  and  crafts. 
Denmark,  Spain,  Uruguay,  the  Balkan 
States,  Germany,  Austria,  China  and 
Switzerland  are  particularly  well  rep- 
resented. 

These  are  but  two  of  the  eleven  ex- 
hibit palaces.  All  of  the  others,  man- 
ufacturers, agriculture,  mines,  liberal 
arts,  horticulture,  fine  arts — particu- 
larly notable  is  the  collection  of  can- 
vases, etchings,  sculptures  and  bronzes 
in  this  palace — education,  machinery 


A  Fadgeol  Trackless  Train  on  its  way   over  the  asphalt    pavement    of    the 

Exposition  grounds 


FEATURES   OF   THE    PANAMA-PACIFIC    EXPOSITION         387 


and  transportation  offer  opportunities 
equally  rich  and  varied  for  the  inquisi- 
tive, the  curious  or  the  professionally 
interested. 

When  the  sightseeing  is  done,  there 
is  the  amusement  zone,  where  idle  dol- 
lars help  to  while  away  idle  hours,  and 
restaurants  where  Parisian  service  may 
be  secured  at  any  price,  or  menus  of- 
fered where  the  most  diligent  visitor, 
nursing  a  thin  pocket  book,  may  find 
full  repletion  at  modest  prices. 

With  the  great  South  gardens  glo- 
rious in  acre  after  acre  of  old  rose  be- 
gonias, with  the  alternate  sunshine  and 
refreshing  fogs  giving  to  temporary 
palaces  the  age  of  Italian  travertine, 
with  hosts  and  guests  in  a  thorough 
harmony  of  appreciation,  the  Panama- 
Pacific  International  Exposition  stands 
as  a  prophecy  not  only  that  San  Fran- 
cisco would  stage  the  greatest  exposi- 
tion of  history  in  beauty  and  in  ser- 
vice, but  that  San  Francisco  would  live 
up  to  the  reputation  she  has  earned 
since  the  splendid  days  of  the  Argo- 
nauts for  hospitality  and  good  cheer. 


THE  NEW  FADGEOL 

TRACKLESS  TRAIN 

The  most  original,  ingenious  and 
popular  transportation  problem  solved 
at  the  Exposition  is  credited  by  ex- 
perts to  the  Fadgeol  Trackless  trains, 
something  entirely  new  and  original  in 
passenger  service.  R.  B.  Fadgeol,  an 
Oakland  automobile  man,  originated 
the  idea  after  nine  months  of  experi- 


menting to  solve  the  problem  of  safely 
transporting  the  increasing  crowds  of 
pedestrians  eager  to  view  the  pano- 
ramic wonders  of  the  big  Fair  as  expe- 
ditiously  and  comfortably  as  possible. 

A  company  was  organized  and  suit- 
ably capitalized  with  E.  P.  Brinegar 
as  president,  which  quickly  met  with 
extraordinary  success  both  in  trans- 
porting sightseers  along  the  extended 
and  spacious  avenues  of  the  Exposi- 
tion, and  also  through  ready  sales  of 
these  convenient,  handy  and  economi- 
cal little  trains  to  interior  towns  in  the 
big  valleys  of  the  State,  where  the 
streets  and  roads  are  in  normal  level 
conditions.  Street  traffic  passenger 
experts  declare  that  these  cleverly 
adaptable  little  trackless  trains  will 
solve  the  present  perplexing  transpor- 
tation problems  of  the  smaller  towns 
of  the  country  that  cannot  yet  afford 
electric  passenger  cars  or  auto  service 
Previous  to  the  appearance  of  these 
little  trackless  trains,  some  nine 
months  ago,  the  cheapest  common 
street  carrier  along  this  line  was  the 
irrepressible  jitney,  but  the  Fadgeol 
trains  readily  and  easily  shouldered 
the  jitney  out  of  the  lead  the  moment 
economy  of  service,  safety  and  the  like 
were  compared. 

The  motor  used  in  the  Fadgeol  trac- 
tor is  the  same  as  that  used  in  the  jit- 
ney, but  the  Fadgeol  train  handles 
three  trailers,  carrying  64  passengers, 
or  as  many  passengers  as  16  jitneys 
would  carry,  and  with  the  same  ex- 
pense for  tires,  gasolene  and  one 


Caterpillar  train,  Exposition  grounds,  San  Francisco 


388 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


chauffeur.  The  Fadgeol  train  shoots 
ahead  of  the  jitney  again  when  the 
saving  of  seat  space  and  the  safety 
and  convenience  given  passengers  is 
compared.  As  against  electric  cars 
and  other  forms  of  passenger  service 
carried  on  the  regulation  street  car 
rails,  it  is  a  pioneer  of  its  kind  in  dem- 
onstrating the  unneedfulness  of  tear- 
ing up  the  streets  for  rail  traffic  pur- 
poses. Gasoline  and  the  new  kinds 
of  motor  cars  have  shifted  transporta- 
tion ideas  in  street  traffic,  and  this  lit- 
tle Fadgeol  Trackless  Train  is  pioneer- 
ing the  way.  Though  its  cars  are  con- 
nected in  trailer  shape,  they  are  con- 
trived by  expert  engineers  to  turn  a 
corner  as  readily  and  easily  as  does  a 
'train  on  a  steel  track. 

The  company  has  been  running 
twenty  trains  daily  on  the  avenues  of 
the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition  for  the 
past  nine  months,  each  train  consist- 
ing of  a  tractor  and  three  trailers,  seat- 


ing 1,200  passengers.  The  schedules 
are  worked  out  and  operated  by  means 
of  a  chart  similar  to  that  employed  by 
street  railway  companies,  the  fare 
from  terminal  to  terminal  being  ten 
cents. 

The  cars  are  built  close  to  the 
ground  with  a  view  to  securing  the 
maximum  of  safety  and  convenience. 
This  stepless  construction  of  seats  re- 
duces loading  and  unloading  delays  to 
a  minimum,  and  also  reduces  the  risk 
of  accidents  to  passengers.  Safeguards 
have  been  introduced  wherever  the 
shadow  of  a  possibility  might  occur. 
The  simplicity  of  construction,  elimi- 
nation of  passengers'  risks,  conven- 
ience and  ease  of  collecting  fares, 
economy  of  expense,  places  the  service 
of  these  Fadgeol  trains  easily  in  the 
lead  of  town  and  sections  of  big  city 
'passenger  transportation  where  the 
streets  and  roadways  provide  thor- 
oughfares for  ordinary  vehicle  traffic. 


Sidelights  in  a  Cafeteria 


By  Sarah  H.  Kelly 


OF  COURSE,"  I  said,  as  Zella 
dropped  wearily  on  my  front 
steps,  "of  course  it's  all  right 
to  teach  in  summer  school,  as 
a  prelude  to  your  life  work" — here  she 
made  a  wry  face — "but  you  can't  deny 
that  we  had  more  fun  working  at  the 
'caf .'  and  didn't  get  any  tireder,  either." 

"Fun,  to  say  the  least!  Do  you  re- 
member the  Man-who-sang-over-the- 
counter?" 

"The  one  who  always  asked  for 
'shortberry  strawcake'  and  'pie  all  over 
mud?'  Yes." 

"And  curly-haired  Billy?" 

"He  went  back  to  the  war  and  was 
killed." 

"What  a  shame — he  was  so  funny. 
And  the  man  who  always  wanted  a 
chunk  of  ice  in  his  milk?" 

"And  the  woman  who  wanted  her 
milk  in  a  bottle,  and  then  decided  on 
hot  milk,  but  insisted  that  'in  the  city 
they  always  give  it  to  me  in  bottles !' ' 

"Hot  milk?  Oh,  no,  not  hot  milk, 
but  in  the  city " 

"Ah,  them  was  happy  days.  You 
haven't  seen  the  new  place  yet,  have 
you.  It's  simply  wonderful.  'Utterly 
different,'  "  I  explained,  glancing  at  an 
advertisement  in  her  open  magazine. 
"Dainty — exquisite — are  the  most  suit- 
able adjectives  I  can  think  of.  All 
old  blue  and  ivory,  with  mahogany 
finishings  and  tables  and  chairs." 

"Is  it  bigger  than  the  old  place?" 

"Oh,  yes,  and  has  a  big  mezzanine, 
besides.  The  woodwork  and  all  is  fin- 
ished in  ivory,  and  the  walls  have 
panelings  and  a  border  of  the  old  blue, 
and  the  indirect  lighting  lights  have  a 
delicate  tracing  of  blue,  and  blue  vel- 
vet carpets  and  a  darling  little  office, 
and — oh,  let's  go  down  for  lunch  some 
day  and  see  it." 


"But  how  about  Marion?" 

"Oh,  I've  taken  her  before.  Just  put 
her  to  sleep  in  one  of  the  big  wicker 
chairs  in  the  rest  room,  and  she's  all 
right.  And  the  kitchen  girl!  It's  the 
most  efficient  kitchen  imaginable — the 
kind  you  see  in  dreams  or  in  canned 
goods  advertisements.  It's  downstairs 
— simply  immense — food,  linen,  dishes 
go  up  and  down  in  dumb  waiters. 
Everything  moves  along  in  succession 
— the  storeroom,  the  refrigerators,  the 
ranges,  cook  tables  and  sinks  and  ma- 
chinery, straight  on  to  the  dishwashing 
machine.  Nice  big  locker  and  dress- 
ing rooms,  too!" 

"I  imagine  it'll  make  a  marked 
change  in  the  cafeteria  idea.  Instead 
of  just  a  shiny,  sanitary,  quick-lunch, 
it'll  be  a  quiet,  luxurious  place  where 
you  doll  up  in  your  best  clothes  to  go 
for  dinner." 

"And  it's  so  much  lovelier  than  the 
ornate  and  gilded  cafes  and  restau- 
rants." 

"Let's  make  a  date  for  lunch  some 
day  the  first  of  the  week." 

It's  funny  what  a  sense  of  proprie- 
torship in  the  business  an  employee 
will  get.  I  remembered  "our  last  sum- 
mer in  the  caf."  Just  before  college 
closed,  Zella  and  I  started  out  to  hunt 
for  a  vacation  job.  Of  course  we  went 
to  the  cafeteria  first,  and  lo!  the 
checker  was  about  to  be  married,  and 
also,  somehow,  the  place  of  dessert  as- 
sistant was  vacant.  So  there  we  were. 

The  other  years  we  had  worked  at 
"the  little  place" — an  eighteen  table 
affair  that  the  Colonial  had  taken  over 
because  the  men  that  started  it  thought 
that  a  cafe  was  made  into  a  cafeteria 
merely  by  dismissing  the  waiters  and 
installing  steam  tables  and  trays — and 
somehow  there  seemed  to  be  something 
3 


390 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


wrong  about  it.  We  had  the  same  idea 
too,  until  we  found  out.  It's  the  wo- 
man influence  that  makes  the  cafe- 
teria. The  managers  should  be  real 
housewives — farmer's  wives  make 
good  ones,  and  I  know  a  number  of 
emancipated  schoolmarms — who,  how- 
ever, did  much  housework  between 
times — who  are  pre-eminently  success- 
ful. Then  the  cooks  are  all  women 
who  have  learned  their  accomplish- 
ment in  their  own  kitchens.  That's 
what  gives  people  the  "cafeteria  habit" 
— it  tastes  just  like  home. 

How  well  I  remember  those  noon 
rush  hours — the  long  line,  ever  chang- 
ing, but  never  lessening,  each  one  with 
tray  in  hand  quickly  selecting  his  food 
— from  the  shop  girl's  thirteen  cent 
salad,  cake  and  biscuit,  to  the  big  busi- 
ness man's  sixty-nine  cent  dinner.  I 
learned  to  be  marvelously  quick  at  fig- 
ures those  days. 

I  had  been  cashier  the  first  two  years 
and  had  held  myself,  as  is  the  manner 
of  cashiers,  superior  to  "help,"  mana- 
gers and  patrons.  Now,  in  the  "big 
place"  and  at  the  other  end  of  the  room 
I  began  to  really  be  interested,  and 
wished  I  hadn't  wasted  so  much  good 
time  before.  I  was  realizing  the  hu- 
man side  of  the  cafeteria  now.  I  had 
learned  nothing  but  plain  facts  before, 
though  they  were  rather  interesting, 
too. 

In  1905  the  first  one  had  been 
opened  in  Los  Angeles,  in  an  enor- 
mous basement  room  on  South  Hill 
street,  by  three  women,  only  one  of 
whom  had  the  most  meagre  knowledge 
of  the  business.  It  was  the  crudest  af- 
fair imaginable,  with  paper  napkins, 
the  dishes  washed  by  hand  in  ordinary 
porcelain  sinks,  and  the  diners  carry- 
ing back  their  own  trays.  They  really 
didn't  have  to  wash  the  dishes,  too, 
though  awestruck  strangers  were  al- 
ways so  warned.  It  was  simple  and 
crude,  but  it  took.  Within  three  months 
they  had  to  entirely  remodel  the  place 
and  others  had  sprung  up  all  over  the 
city,  at  the  beaches,  everywhere.  And 
now,  why,  that's  the  only  way  you  can 
eat  in  Los  Angeles.  If  you  ask  a 
direction  in  that  city,  you're  told,  for 


instance,  that  it's  "six  cafeterias  north 
and  eight  east." 

In  1909  they  reached  Oakland — the 
Colonial,  that  I  was  talking  about  at 
first — and,  in  1910,  the  Victoria  opened 
across  the  bay  in  San  Francisco.  Be- 
fore this,  quite  a  few  little  cafeterias 
had  sprung  up  and  died  down  sporadi- 
cally. Shortly  after  the  Victoria,  the 
B.  E.  M.  was  started  by  the  same  wo- 
men who  had  begun  the  whole  thing  in 
the  southern  city.  There  was  bitter 
rivalry  between  the  two,  until  so  many 
other  big  cafeterias  came  in  that  jeal- 
ousy was  absurd. 

We  read  the  "Philistine"  and  smile 
over  the  picture  presented  of  Elbert 
Hubbard  during  his  San  Francisco 
visit  leading  the  boycotter's  burro  up 
and  down  the  street  before  the  Victoria 
while  the  picket  went  inside  for  his 
dinner.  However,  these  things  were 
not  actually  interesting  to  us  girls,  ex- 
cept as  they  in  some  way  related  to 
"our  place." 

How  excited  I'd  be  when  my  day's 
checks  totaled  up  500  to  the  previous 
day's  490!  And  how  excited  the 
present  checker  would  be  to  have  only 
500 !  What  a  contrast  in  every  way  is 
that  big,  barnlike  room  with  its  bare 
floor,  plain  wooden  rail,  and  simple  fit- 
tings, to  the  beautiful  new  place !  There 
were  five  on  the  payroll,  and  the  first 
day's  checks  totaled  100,  a  number  of 
them  deadheads. 

Of  course,  gradually  the  first  place 
was  improved  and  fixed  up,  but  it  can 
never  be  anything  except  big,  clean 
and  simple,  which  has  been,  up  to  now, 
the  essential  outward  semblance  of  the 
cafeteria. 

I  never  knew  a  place  where  the 
"help"  were  so  contented.  It's  the  per- 
sonality of  the  manager  that  does  it. 
It  pervades  the  whole  establishment, 
from  the  office  to  the  pot-washer's  cor- 
ner. It  makes  the  "cafeteria  habit," 
and  it  breeds  that  chummy  spirit  of 
proprietorship  among  the  employees. 

There  was  always  lots  of  fun  in- 
dulged in  between-whiles  behind  the 
counter.  I  remember  one  broiling  hot 
holiday,  when  we  only  had  a  few  peo- 
ple for  lunch  (I'll  admit  that  our  cus- 


TANTALUS.  391 

ternary  phraseology  was  rather  canni-  known  it  anywhere  else,  and  as  a  re- 
balistic  in  tone)  that  Zella  and  I  took  suit  I'm  a  real,  ranting,  Saturday-night 
turns  sitting  on  the  ice-cream  cabinet  street  corner  soap  box  Socialist,  with 
to  keep  cool.  We  characterized  all  the  a  most  tender  feeling  for  all  capital- 
regular  patrons  by  some  descriptive  ists! 

name — Apollo  Belvedere   (he  was     a  It's  kept  on  spreading  all  over  the 

bookkeeper     in    a    laundry),    Annie  State,  this  cafeteria  habit,     north  to 

Rooney,  "Clarence,"  the  nice  little  man  Portland  and  Seattle,  too,  and  back  to 

with  the  pretty  wife,  and  there  was  its  original  sources,  lunch  rooms    for 

some  amusing  story  or  adventure  to  go  girls,  Y.  W.  C.  A.'s,  and  the  like. 

with  each  one.     We  were  all  friends  "For  them  as  likes  it,"  there's  cer- 

and  brothers  together,  patrons,  mana-  tainly  no  nicer  way  to  eat — and  most 

gers,  employees — there  must  be  some-  of  us  like  it. 

thing  in  the  cafeteria  atmosphere  to  Here's  to  the  cafeteria — long  may 

make  that  feeling,  for  I  have  never  she  wave! 


TANTALUS 

Take  thou  a  path,  a  green  walled  way, 
At  dawntide's  gold  or  even's  gray, 
Whence  gaze  upon  the  summer  sea — 
Mad  or  laughing  joyously — 
From  Tantalus! 

Climb  far  beyond  the  lifted  trend, 
To  thrill  in  rapture  at  the  end : 
Far  valleys  at  your  tired  feet, 
Dim  sky  and  wave  in  nuptials  meet, 
From  Tantalus! 

On  Beauty's  mountain  sit  and  rest; 
Heart-glad,  eye-seeking,  vision-blest! 
Dream  pictures  of  fair  land  and  sea 
Made  into  songs  of  mystery 
On  Tantalus ! 

The  yearning  sail,  the  answering  foam, 
Yon  tumbling  waters  from  mountain  home, 
Soft-singing  clouds  from  out  the  blue — 
Hawaii's  minstrelsy  for  you 
From  Tantalus! 

So  peaceful  then !    So  hushed,  so  high ; 
So  harbored  round  by  leaf  and  sky, 
By  whisper  of  the  ocean  breeze, 
By  fragrant  prayer-songs  of  the  trees 
On  Tantalus! 

Ah !  visions  of  the  soulful  clime, 
Come  back,  come  back  from  yonder  time ! 
Return  in  luring  strength  to  me 
And  bear  me  far  away  with  thee 
To  Tantalus! 

WILLIAM  FRANCIS  MANNIX. 


An  Ante  on  Telegraph  Mill 


By  Lannie  Haynes  Martin 


TO  WHOM  the  gods  decree  sepa- 
ration they  first  send  the  barb  of 
doubt.    She  doubted  if  he  were 
as  pleased  with  their  bourgeous 
Sunday  afternoon  diversion  as  he  was 
pretending.    He,  man-like,  looking  to 
the  future,  doubted  whether  she  would 
be   as   radiant  over   a  two-bit,   sans- 
Zinfandel  dinner  as  she  had  been  the 
night  before  with  champagne  and  a 
repast  that  began  with  glorified  arti- 
chokes and  ended  in  ambrosial  berries 
with  a  whipped-cream  halo. 

They  had  planned  it  all  with  equal 
abandon  and  a  carefully  estimated  sub- 
sequent expense  account;  a  thing  not 
often  done  simultaneously.  Between 
them  there  had  always  been  enough 
for  seventy-five  cent  table  d'hote  din- 
ners, a  movie  and  ice  cream  after- 
wards. There  had  always  been  enough 
for  carfares  to  the  park,  where  they 
sat  and  talked  silly  twaddle  about  the 
ducks,  or  walked  decorously  along  the 
driveways,  their  speech  punctuated  by 
automobile  honks  or  punctured  by 
vacuous  silences. 

There  had  always  been  conversa- 
tion enough  of  its  kind,  too  much,  per- 
haps, over  their  Zinfandel  washed 
down  dinners,  where  the  oft  repeated 
tinkle  of  surfaces  echoed  the  mechani- 
cal music  of  the  place.  Just  so  often 
as  they  heard  "Tipperary,"  and  with 
as  many  variations  had  she  told  him 
what  corking  good  stuff  he  was  going 
to  write — what  wonderful  things  he 
was  going  to  do — when  he  once  got  a 
shot  at  the  feature  end  of  the  paper. 
Just  so  often  as  the  sextette  from 
"Lucia"  had  been  jangled  forth  from 
discordant  keys  had  he  told  her  what 
wonderful  luck  she  was  having  in  put- 
ting over  fiction  stories  with  the  maga- 
zines. And  all  the  time  he  knew  that 


it  was  bigger  things  he  wanted,  things 
he  scarce  dared  confess  to  himself; 
and  all  the  while  she  knew  that  he 
knew  the  stories  she  wrote  were  medi- 
ocre and  purposeless,  reeking  with 
conscious  effort,  containing  no  hint  of 
the  personality  which  at  times  she  felt 
she  possessed  and  at  intervals  he  im- 
agined he  saw. 

One  of  the  times  was  when  they  sat 
and  ate  beneath  the  spell  of  the  candle- 
stick— the  magic  Manger  candlestick 
with  a  thousand  and  one  Arabian  night 
legends  spilled  in  hieroglyph  down  its 
sides;  waxen  stalactites  that  had 
dripped  away  the  love  and  laughter  of 
others  like  themselves,  perchance, 
seeking  life  but  shrinking  from  her 
face.  There,  as  the  red  wine  flowed 
and  the  crimson  candle  melted,  a  neb- 
ulous, fused  desire  came  into  her 
breast  like  the  drops  of  the  melting 
wax.  There,  flickering  like  the  flame 
in  him,  came  a  flash  glimpse  of  pur- 
pose. But  their  speech  was  as  inar- 
ticulate as  the  sound  of  the  goirglm^ 
pigeons  strutting  on  the  floor,  and  all 
in  an  instant  the  illusion  of  the  place 
had  vanished,  for  the  waiter  said: 
"Would  the  lady  like  a  beer?" 

That  their  collaborated  plan  for  the 
epicurean  feast  was  a  tacit  confession 
of  mutual  boredom  neither  suspected. 
It  was  just  to  do  something  different 
and  then  see  what  happened.  To  her, 
when  they  were  planning  to  spend  their 
combined  remnants  of  a  week's  sala- 
ries on  a  Saturday  night  dinner,  it  had 
seemed  that  one  of  the  most  delightful 
sensations  resulting  therefrom  would 
be  to  walk  around  Sunday  afternoon 
with  only  a  half  dollar  between  them, 
pretending  to  rhapsodize  over  the  opa- 
lescent wings  of  Fashion  fluttering  in 
the  shop  windows,  when  in  reality  they 


AN  ANTE  ON  TELEGRAPH  HILL 


393 


would  be  searching  for  a  hungry  man's 
tantalizer  in  the  shape  of  a  sign  that 
would  say,  in  substance,  the  largest 
grub  for  the  least  money! 

But  now,  having  looked  at  all  the 
thirty-five  dollar  hats  in  the  Geary 
street  windows  and  the  forty  dollar 
black  and  white  checks  for  the  jeu- 
nesse  doree  on  various  corners,  the  in- 
cipient doubt  began  to  fester  in  her 
mind.  If  they  looked  at  pale  Geor- 
gette crepe  blouses  and  a  hallelujah 
chorus  of  hosiery  in  the  little  shops, 
she  imagined  he  was  bored  by  the  pre- 
ponderance of  feminine  finery.  If  they 
stopped  for  a  moment  to  gaze  at  Palm 
Beach  ties  and  plaited  bosom  shirts,  or 
ran  on  to  a  moderately  priced  Tuxedo, 
she  wondered  if  he  regretted  the  squan- 
dered week's  salary.  If  they  strolled 
aimlessly  along,  jostled  by  the  aimless 
afternoon  crowd,  she  wondered  what 
kind  of  reaction  she  was  going  to  have 
wHen  he  left  her  after  the  dinner  and 
went  to  the  opera  with  the  other  wo- 
man. It  was  always  the  thought  of 
the  other  woman  that  made  her  doubt- 
ful of  the  present  and  distrustful  of  the 
future. 

And  all  the  while  he  swore  savagely 
under  his  breath  at  the  two  two-bit 
pieces  jingling  derisively  at  each  other 
in  his  pocket,  and  saw  neither  hats  nor 
haberdashery,  but  searched  eagerly 
for  a  friendly  face  in  which  he  might 
discern  the  latent  possibility  of  a  five 
dollar  loan.  No  such  state  of  mind, 
however,  was  betrayed  by  his  coun- 
tenance, and  no  such  financial  condi- 
tion was  ever  more  skillfully  disguised 
by  a  high  crowned  straw  hat,  shell- 
rimmed  glasses,  black  and  white 
striped  shirt  and  tie,  and  Sunday  morn- 
ing pressed  clothes  that  sank  in  at 
the  waist  line  like  a  colonial  belle's 
bodice.  So  opulent  indeed  was  his 
appearance  that  of  all  the  carefree, 
strolling  throng  he  was  most  frequently 
singled  out  by  the  avid  alms  seekers 
— the  down-and-outers. 

"Please,  mister,  won't  you ?" 

they  had  begun,  but  got  no  further. 

"Sorry  I  can't  do  anything  for  you," 
bruskly.  "Sorry  I  can't  do  anything 
for  you."  He  had  repeated  it  so  many 


times  that  now  she  looked  the  other 
way  to  save  him  the  embarrassment  of 
knowing  that  she  had  heard.  But  just 
as  she  was  turning  away  for  at  least 
the  eleventh  time  and  her  attention  was 
really  fascinated  by  a  perfect  dream 
of  a  dress,  a  pink,  full-flounced  taffeta 
in  a  big  Grant  avenue  shop,  something 
going  on  behind  her  made  her  turn.  He 
was  giving  a  man  a  quarter !  Actually 
the  thing  was  being  done  right  before 
her  eyes.  And  one  of  those  quarters, 
which  one  it  did  not  matter,  belonged 
to  her.  What  had  possessed  him? 

Then  she  looked  at  the  man.  He 
was  tall  and  young  and  gaunt,  and  his 
upper  and  nether  garments,  besides  be- 
ing ill-assorted  in  color,  were  mis- 
mated  in  size.  His  hat  was  too  big 
for  him,  and  his  lean  hands  hung  down 
limp  and  long,  too  far  below  the 
frayed  sleeves  of  a  ridiculous  frock 
coat.  In  his  face  there  was  something 
other  than  the  real  and  ravenous  hun- 
ger that  strangely  twitched  and  twisted 
it.  And  it  was  this  indefinable  some- 
thing that  had  magnetized  the  quarter. 
The  moment  the  man  received  the 
money  he  was  off  at  a  run. 

Neither  he  nor  she  spoke,  but  the 
even  strides  of  their  quickened  pace 
chorused  we  must  follow  him.  Out 
Grant  avenue  they  went,  panting  with 
the  pavement's  upgrade  slant,  on  up 
to  the  top  of  the  hill  where  Grant  re- 
sumes her  maiden  name  and  retains  a 
little  of  the  older  atmosphere,  dipping 
down  into  Chinatown  where  they  could 
see  the  flying  frock  coat  tails  dodging 
in  and  out  between  slow-shuffling  fig- 
ures, or  swerving  beyond  the  curb  to 
pass  a  toddling,  miniature  mandarin. 
As  the  high  crowned  straw  hat  was 
jammed  down  more  tightly  for  swifter 
flight  a  fluttering  remnant  of  mascu- 
line breath  gasped:  "Hop-head,  may- 
be!" 

But  the  flying  figure  did  not  stop  in 
Chinatown.  Past  Pacific,  across  Broad- 
way it  now  swung  into  a  narrower,  cut- 
on-the-bias  thoroughfare  where  ravioli 
signs,  snatches  of  song  and  black-eyed 
children  filled  the  street.  Now  it  was 
only  by  doubling  their  speed  that  they 
could  keep  him  in  sight.  Then  with 


394 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


new  impetus  they  saw  him  spring  for- 
ward with  a  sudden  spurt. 

A  little  ahead,  swaying  toward  him 
with  unsteady  steps,  fluttering  like  a 
pink,  wind-torn  poppy,  ran  a  little  girl. 
The  emaciated  figure  of  the  man 
seemed  to  engulf  the  child  as,  with- 
out slackening  his  stride,  he  swept  her 
into  his  arms  with  a  convulsive  hug 
and  continued  on  to  the  corner,  where 
he  disappeared  into  an  uninviting  door- 
way. The  instigators  of  this  mad  race 
followed  more  slowly,  and  when  they 
reached  the  point  where  the  beggar 
and  the  child  had  disappeared  from 
view,  a  dingy,  ill-lettered  sign  was 
visible,  which  read:  "Grow  fat  like 
Flambeau,"  followed  by  the  picture  of 
an  enormous,  grossly  fat  man  and  the 
words:  "Eat  raviola  and  tagliarina." 
Just  within  the  doorway  stood  Flam- 
beau himself,  but  his  pictured  repro- 
duction was  an  injustice,  for  Flambeau 
in  the  flesh  was  his  own  best  adver- 
tisement. 

Through  the  doorway  and  over  the 
fleshy  mountain  of  the  proprietor's 
shoulder  the  two  were  discernible,  the 
beggar  and  the  child,  seated  at  one 
of  the  uncovered  tables  and  eating, 
eating  with  a  ravenous  disregard  for 
their  surroundings,  but  in  a  manner  was 
a  joy  to  their  two  observers,  who 
watched  for  a  moment  with  mingled 
emotions,  pity  and  a  seething,  surging 
rebellion  against  conditions  as  they 
are,  predominating.  It  was  a  real  emo- 
tion. 

"He  wasn't  a  dope  fiend,"  said  she, 
finally,  in  a  tone  that  attested  her  pre- 
vious convictions  were  confirmed. 

"No.  He  wasn't  a  dope  fiend,"  re- 
peated he  in  a  tone  that  held  no  re- 
gret. Aimlessly,  silently,  they  con- 
tinued their  way,  each  engrossed  in 
thought,  dominated  by  emotions  too 
deep  for  utterance.  To  the  right  was 
a  cobble-paved  roadway  leading  up- 
ward, with  a  steep  roof-like  slope.  In- 
stinctively they  turned  with  the  half- 
formed,  unexpressible  idea  that  physi- 
cal exertion  might  relieve  their  men- 
tal oppression.  It  was  the  approach 
to  Telegraph  Hill. 

Then  up  a  rocky,  winding  path  they 


went,  silent,  tense ;  he  reaching  back  a 
hand  at  times  to  steady  her  when  the 
footing  was  insecure.  On  top  the 
wind  swept  the  long,  lush  grass  and  the 
bay  below  was  wind  swept,  too.  The 
waves  like  a  great  green  meadow 
seeming  to  pasture  the  shepherded 
ships.  When  they  had  reached  the  top 
she  stretched  out  her  arms  with  a  wide, 
wild,  all-embracing  gesture  and  then 
sank  down  in  a  shapeless  heap  in  the 
grass.  "Dios!"  she  gasped.  "I  feel 
as  though  I  could  melt  back  into  the 
elements." 

He  flung  himself  down,  but  did  not 
speak.  Presently  she  sat  up.  "Do  you 
sense  it?"  she  demanded.  "The  feel- 
ing here,  the  spirit  of  the  place  ?  This 
gay,  debonnair  wind  like  the  echo  of 
a  soul  laughing  itself  out  at  death? 
What  is  immortality  worth  if  debonair- 
ness has  to  die  ?  To  what  port,  I  won- 
der, did  Stevenson  take  his."  The  man 
said  nothing,  and  she  continued:  "It 
is  wonderful,  wonderful,  here.  Look 
at  the  sea.  Can't  you  feel  Miller's 
'on  and  on'  heroic  urge  upon  it  now?" 

The  man  sat  up  and  looked  at  her. 
His  eyes  were  narrowed  to  mere  slits 
and  his  mouth  was  set  in  brutal  lines. 
"Why,  in  Heaven's  name,"  he  said, 
"when  you've  got  what  you  have  in 
you,  why  have  you  written  such  damn- 
able rot?" 

The  tragic  tenseness  of  the  moment 
was  relieved  by  the  woman's  rippling 
laugh.  "Say  it  again,"  she  cried.  "Tell 
it  again !  Salvation's  story  repeat  o'er 
and  o'er,"  she  went  on  half  hysteri- 
cally. Then  with  sudden  seriousness : 
"Why?  Why?  Because  of  the  ful- 
some flattery  of  friends  who 'minister 
to  my  mediocrity.  Because  of  the  sac- 
carine,  soporific  sedatives  of  platitudi- 
nous people  who  feel  constrained  to  of- 
fer one  painless  pellets  in  the  shape  of 
praise.  Because " 

He  saw  she  was  simply  bubbling 
words  and  he  stopped  her.  "All  sorts 
of  soda  pop  and  ginger  ale  bottled 
up  in  you  isn't  there?" 

"Yes,  and  it's  the  bottling  process, 
too,  that  accounts  for  a  lot  more  than 
the  other.  I've  never  had  a  natural, 
spontaneous  idea  that  some  one,  usu- 


AN  ANTE  ON  TELEGRAPH  HILL 


395 


ally  a  member  of  my  family,  didn't 
clap  a  cork  over.  I've  never  had  an 
effervescent,  exuberant  bubbling  over 
of  joy  that  some  one  of  them  didn't 
come  along  and  pour  dark  brown  seal- 
ing wax  all  over  me." 

"I  had  forgotten  about  that,"  he  said. 

"Forgotten?"  she  echoed.  "How 
could  you  know  anything  about  that?" 

"It  was  in  your  voice,"  he  said,  "the 
first  time  we  talked  over  the  telephone. 
It  was  so  tentative,  so  suggestive  of  re- 
pressed emotions.  As  we  talk  now, 
face  to  face,  you  have  lost  it,  but  it  is 
that  same  muffled  mumbling  that  crops 
out  in  your  work.  You  are  afraid  of 
making  your  characters  human  beings 
because  you're  afraid  of  becoming  one 
yourself."  There  was  scorn  as  well  as 
passion  in  his  voice. 

"This  thing  of  becoming  a  human 
being,"  she  said  slowly,  "is,  I  fancy, 
a  case  of  regeneration.  Can  regenera- 
tion take  place  any  more  than  genera- 
tion, without  two  polar  currents  ?" 

Her  frankness  was  the  "open  ses- 
ame" to  his  own  walled  up  confidence. 
"I  have  never  confessed  it  before,"  he 
said  with  sudden  impetuousness,  "but 
I  have  hoped,  earnestly,  that  some  time 
— some  way — I  shall  be  able  to  render 
some  definite  service  to  humanity  as 
a  whole.  Does  that  sound  foolish?" 
She  shook  her  head  encouragingly. 

"It  can  be  done,"  she  said,  and  he 
continued : 

"I  believe  that  I  know  a  way  that 
will  relieve  much  misery  and  clear  up 
many  misunderstood  conditions.  There 
are  so  many  women  like  yourself, 
afraid  of  life,  afraid  of  themselves, 
failing  to  get  hold  of  the  possibilities 
within  themselves  simply  because  of 
the  need  of  a  little  specific  knowledge. 
I  gave  you  a  hint  once  of  my  interest 
along  scientific  lines.  It  is  the  science 
of  life,  psycho-analysis,  that  I  have 
been  dabbling  in  for  years,  reading 
everything  I  can  find — Brill,  Charcot, 
Freud,  Ellis,  all  of  'em — and  if  only  I 
were  not  such  a  coward,  if  I  could  only 
forget  my  own  present  prospects,  hap- 
piness and  desires  and  could  wrench 
myself  away  from  the  useless  things 
I  am  doing  now,  I  might " 


"Yes?" 

"I  might  give  that  definite  help  to 
humanity,  I  might  reach  the  highest 
qualitative  level  of  my  own  being,  I 
might "  He  broke  into  a  whimsi- 
cal laugh:  "I  might  be  able  to  offer 
more  than  a  two-bit  dinner  to  the  wo- 
man  "  He  almost  said  it,  but  he, 

too,  had  his  reservations,  reticences, 
repressions,  and  changed  it  to:  "The 
woman  to  whom  I  should  love  to  give 
everything." 

To  her  the  translation  meant  the 
same,  for  the  vibrations  in  the  voice 
told  more  than  words.  It  brought  her 
back  to  present,  personal  problems. 
"You  can't  even  do  that  to-night,"  she 
said,  wondering  how  he  was  going  to 
meet  the  situation. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  can,"  he  replied  with  a 
firmness  that  indicated  a  well-defined 
pre-arranged  plan.  "You  are  to  take 
the  two-bit  piece  and  have  your  din- 
ner." 

"And  you?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  need  any;  don't  want 
any." 

"And  you  think  I'll  do  that?"  she 
demanded. 

"Of  course  you  will/  with  fatuous, 
masculine  conviction. 

"Indeed  I  will  not,"  she  cried,  de- 
fiantly. 

"But  I  say  you  will."  The  slow,  de- 
liberate imperative  of  the  male  thrilled 
her,  but  it  was  not  with  an  impulse 
to  obey. 

But  how  was  he  to  know  when  she 
held  out  her  hand  and  said :  "Then  give 
it  to  me  now."  Of  course,  he  had 
meant  it  all.  There  was  nothing  else 
that  could  be  done.  He  had  never 
thought  of  anything  else.  But — but — 
why  couldn't  she  have  waited?  Why 
demand  it  so  imperatively.  He  passed 
her  the  coin  without  so  much  as  touch- 
ing her  hand.  This  was  a  strange  re- 
sponse, he  thought,  to  the  things  he 
had  just  said  to  her,  things  that  were 
not  easy  for  him  to  say. 

She  took  the  money  and  stood  up. 
In  her  face  there  was  a  look  he  had 
never  seen  in  a  face  before.  So 
priestesses  have  looked  when  they 
poured  libations  to  the  gods.  So  gam- 


396 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


biers  have  appeared  as  they  threw 
their  souls  along  with  their  last  cent 
into  the  game.  And  so  Sappho  might 
have  looked  when  she  flung  herself 
over  the  cliff.  But  it  was  not  herself 
that  the  woman  flung  over  the  cliff — 
it  was  the  two-bit  piece ! 

"Was  that  why?"  he  gasped.  In  an 
instand  he  understood.  It  was  just 
one  of  the  million  ways  a  woman  has 
of  saying  whither  thou  goest,  there  I 
will  go,  and  in  him  there  was  all  the 
wild,  surging  elemental  joy  the  savage 
'cave-man  captor  felt.  It  filled  him 
'with  a  superhuman  sense  of  strength 
and  a  purpose  which,  although  involv- 
ing complicated  lines  of  reasoning, 
crystalized  in  an  instant.  In  another 
moment  he  was  scrambling  down  the 
sides  of  the  cliff. 

She  looked  after  him  in  horror,  not 
so  much  at  the  imminent  and  actual 
danger  he  was  in  as  because  of  un- 
certainty of  the  motive  which  was 
prompting  him.  Could  it  be  that  his 
dominant,  masculine  desire  to  rule 
would  send  him  to  such  lengths,  or  was 
it  simply  a  sordid  instinct  to  save 
money?  Or  could  it  be  that  he  had 
sensed  the  passion  with  which  she  had 
consecrated  the  symbol  and  his  senti- 


ment was  seeking  it  as  a  talisman  ? 

In  the  tormenting  agony,  she  sank 
down  in  the  grass  and  buried  her  face 
in  her  hands.  When  she  looked  again, 
a  panting,  disheveled,  dust-covered 
figure  was  furiously  scribbling  on  a 
scratch-pad  leaf.  Nearby  stood  a 
small,  ragged  boy,  with  an  eager,  ex- 
pectant look  in  his  face.  The  flutter- 
ing piece  of  paper  was  held  out  for 
her  to  see. 

"My  dear  Mrs.  Montgomery,"  it 
read,  "I  am  out  on  a  big  assignment  to- 
night and  cannot  accept  the  hospitality 
of  your  box  at  the  opera.  Am  awfully 
sorry.  Would  you  mind  writing  that 
letter  of  introduction  to  the  doctor  in 
Vienna.  I'm  going  to  leave  to-mor- 
row. Please  send  a  reply  by  the  boy 
so  that  I  may  know  that  you  get  this." 

The  man  looked  at  the  boy  and  said : 
"When  you  bring  back  an  answer — " 
He  did  not  finish  the  sentence,  but 
held  up  the  two-bit  piece. 

"Was  that  why?"  she  gasped.  Then 
he  took  another  leaf  from  the  pad  and 
wrote : 

"For  the  exorcism  of  the  devil 
Doubt. — Take  two  two-bit  pieces,  give 
one  away  to  a  beggar  and  throw  the 
other  over  the  edge  of  Telegraph  Hill." 


GOD'S      LIG  HTS 


God's  Sun  hunts  out  the  brooklet  clear  and  bright 
To  make  the  water  gleam  within  its  dell 
And  shine  the  beauty  that  it  cannot  tell ; 
And  so  God's  Moon  looks  lovingly  by  night 
Till  finding  flowers  that  are  pure  and  white— 
A  rosebud  or  a  drooping  lily-bell — 
Caresses  them  and  proves  their  chasteness  well 
By  glorifying  them  with  glinting  light. 

God's  Love  hunts  out  some  hearts  we  might  not  deem 

Held  beauty,  thinking  we  descried  some  mar, 

Till  He  finds  whiteness  we  did  not  esteem 

Within  their  hidden  depths ;  and  from  afar 

His  love  shines  warmly  with  a  gentle  beam 

And  turns  each  heart  into  a  joyous  star. 


RUTH  E.  HENDERSON. 


"THE    LURE' 


By  Lewis  A.  Wentworth 


IT  WAS  a  gay  crowd    that     filled 
Louis'  that  night — gayer  than  us- 
ual.    Harvard  does  not  win  every 
year,  but  when  she  does,  something 
happens.    Something  was    happening 
that  night.     Wine,  Women  and  Song 
held  sway.     Pleasure  was  King.    Oc- 
casionally the  Harvard  yell  rang  out, 
and  immediately  the  air  was  full  of 
multi-colored   streamers  crossing  and 
re-crossing  the  room,  confetti  fell  like 
snow,  wooden  noise-making  machines 
added  to  the  din — and  over  all  sounded 
the  popping  of  champagne  corks. 

When  the  Bachelor  strolled  in,  his 
round,  jovial  face  wreathed  in  smiles, 
the  revelry  was  at  its  height.  It  may 
be  remarked  in  passing,  however,  that 
the  Bachelor  was,  in  reality,  not  a 
bachelor,  the  name  being  one  that  he 
had  once  tacked  onto  a  literary  venture 
as  a  non  de  plume  and  awoke  one 
morning  to  find  his  book,  himself  and 
the  name  famous,  and  the  latter  had 
always  clung.  He  now  paused  just 
inside  the  door,  looking  over  the  gay 
crowd,  and  for  the  fraction  of  a  sec- 
ond a  shadow  of  disappointment 
clouded  his  smile;  then  he  caught  the 
eye  of  the  head  waiter  and  the  latter 
at  once  led  the  way  to  a  table  in  a  far 
corner.  It  was  the  only  vacant  chair 
in  the  room  and  faced  a  man  who 
seemed  an  alien  in  that  gay  throng, 
for  he  sat  with  bowed  head,  lost  in 
thought,  apparently  unconscious  of  his 
surroundings,  toying  with  the  stem  of 
his  wine  glass,  rolling  it  back  and 
forth  between  the  thumb  and  fore- 
finger of  his  right  hand. 

"Some  bunch!"  exclaimed  the  Bach- 
elor, genially,  settling  himself  com- 
fortably in  his  chair.  "The  usual 
thing,  Martin,"  he  added  to  the  waiter 
who  hovered  near.  "Beg  pardon,"  he 


continued,  turning  his  attention  again 
to  the  man  opposite. 

The  other  lifted  his  eyes,  cold,  tired 
looking  eyes,  set  in  a  face  which  gave 
the  reason,  and  favored  the  speaker 
with  a  long  stare  of  inquiry;  not  the 
cold,  suspicious  look  which  the  ma- 
jority of  Bostonians  bestow  upon  those 
who  dare  accost  them  when  the  for- 
malities are  lacking,  but  simply  a  look 
which  said:  "And  who  the  devil  are 
you  ?" 

"Yes,"  was  the  reluctant  reply,  as 
he  again  bowed  his  head  and  resumed 
his  dreaming,  a  suspicion  of  a  sneer 
curling  the  corners  of  his  thin  lips. 
The  Bachelor  watched  him  in  silence  a 
few  minutes,  undecided.  He  wanted  to 
talk.  He  had  an  hour  to  spend  and 
he  wanted  to  make  the  most  of  it.  Fin- 
ally he  made  up  his  mind  to  try  again. 

"Looks  good  to  me,"  he  declared, 
lighting  a  cigarette  and  drawing  in  a 
deep  breath  of  appreciation.  "Believe 
me,  Europe's  no  place  for  a  fat  man 
these  days.  He  looms  too  big  on  the 
horizon!  Yes,  sir!  And  I'm  mighty 
glad  to  get  back."  He  blew  two  tiny 
feathers  of  smoke  from  his  nostrils  and 
smiled  reminiscently. 

The  man  opposite  lifted  his  head 
again  and  took  a  thoughtful  survey  of 
the  speaker,  then:  "I  thought,"  »  he 
said,  talking  into  his  empty  glass,  "by 
the  way  you  gave  your  order  you  were 
one  of  the  regulars." 

"Oh,  no ;  I  meant  the  usual  thing  for 
this  sort  of  an  occasion." 

"And  called  the  waiter  by  name?" 

"Did  I?  Well,  one  hits  the  nail  on 
the  head  sometimes.  No.  I've  seen 
but  little  of  this  sort  of  thing  for  some 
time.  Been  over  the  other  side  looking 
for  local  color." 

"Artist?" 


398 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"No.  Writer.  Ever  read  'Still  at 
Large?'" 

"Sounds  like  a  bid  for  applause," 
thought  the  Bachelor,  disgusted  at  him- 
self for  breaking  his  life-long  rule  of 
not  talking  about  himself  or  his  work. 
But  to-night  was  different.  He  wanted 
to  talk  about  his  books  and  he  wanted 
to  arouse  the  man  opposite. 

"You  are  not  The  Bachelor?'" 
queried  the  other,  suddenly  waking  up 
and  showing  a  gleam  of  interest. 

"Guilty,"  was  the  smiling  admission. 
"But  here's  the  wine!  That's  right, 
Martin,  pour  my  friend  a  glass,  too. 
Oh,  yes,  I  insist!  Couldn't  drink  a 
quart  of  the  stuff  alone,  you  know. 
Well,  here's  how!" 

The  glasses  were  raised  and  the  eyes 
of  the  two  men  met  over  them:  one's 
beaming  with  geniality,  enjoyment  and 
good-cheer,  the  other's  reflecting  curi- 
osity, weariness  and  a  gleam  of  in- 
terest strangely  intermingled. 

"Of  course,"  he  ventured,  after 
thoughtfully  sipping  his  wine  for  a 
moment,  "you  took  that  Lorrimer  case 
here  in  Boston  some  years  ago  for 
the  foundation  of  that  story.  I've  of- 
ten wondered,  though,  if  it  was  all 
fact  or— er — only  partly  so!  I  recall 
that  it  was  practically  the  same  as 
the  newspaper  accounts  up  to  a  certain 
point.  The  rest  was  fiction,  I  assume." 

"Well,  yes,  partly.  I  am  working  on 
a  sequel  at  the  present  time  that  is 
all  fiction,  but  which  should  be  the 
rightful  outcome  of  the  case.  It  was 
all  finished  except  the  last  chapter 
when  a  little  discussion  arose  between 
my  publishers  and  myself  regarding 
it,  and  bowing  to  their  mature  judg- 
ment, I  agreed  to  write  it  in  accord 
with  their  views — unless  they  discov- 
ered that  they  had  made  a  mistake. 
You  see,  I  claim  that  a  criminal,  sooner 
or  later,  returns  to  the  scene  of  his 
crime,  that  curiosity  proves  a  man's 
undoing  as  it  does  a  woman's.  My 
publishers  claim  it  is  not  so,  that  your 
criminal  of  the  present  day,  once  he 
makes  his  get-away,  does  not  come 
back — and  they  cite  the  very  case  of 
the  man  I  took  for  the  villain  in  my 
new  story,  'The  Lure/  " 


"And  that  was — " 

"The  broker,  of  course,  who  ruined 
the  Lorrimer  girl,  sent  her  brother  to 
prison  on  a  trumped  up  charge  of 
theft,  deserted  his  own  wife  and  got 
away  with  fifty  thousand  in  cash  be- 
longing to  his  customers." 

"Then  young  Lorrimer  really  did  not 
steal  that  money?" 

'"'Oh,  no;  it  was  discovered  later, 
three  years  later,  that  the  broker  him- 
self did  it,  taking  that  method  of  get- 
ting the  boy  out  of  the  way." 

"And  the  fellow  was  given  his  lib- 
erty, of  course." 

"Yes — liberty.  But  broken  in  health, 
penniless  and  with  the  memory  of  a 
prison  wall  to  haunt  him  all  his  future 
life — and  nothing  on  earth  can  blot 
it  out." 

The  Bachelor  paused  to  light  an- 
other cigarette.  The  other  shuddered 
and  drained  his  glass,  then  said:  "To 
go  back  to  the  other  subject,  I  am  in- 
clined to  agree  with  you  in  one  matter, 
and  with  your  publishers  in  another. 
For  instance,  do  you  suppose  that  the 
man  would  be  recognized  after  ten 
years  if  he  should  come  back?  Why, 
a  man  could  so  change  his  looks,  hab- 
its, voice  even,  that  he  would  not  be 
recognized  by  his  own  wife  after  ten 
years.  That  is,  a  man  in  the  twenties 
as  this  fellow  Vernane  was.  Of 
course,  at  my  age  one  could  not.  It's 
easier  to  get  lines  and  wrinkles  than 
it  is  to  get  rid  of  them." 

The  Bachelor  nodded  thoughtfully 
and  a  silence  fell  between  the  two. 
The  other  man  drew  a  pencil  from  his 
pocket  and  began  absently  tapping  his 
front  teeth  with  it,  his  attitude  and 
expression  settling  back  into  that  un- 
conscious, preoccupied  state  which  had 
been  his  when  the  Bachelor  first  sat 
down  at  the  table.  The  latter  looked 
up,  smiled,  then  filled  the  glasses  once 
more. 

"Yes,"  he  admitted  at  last,  "you  may 
be  right.  But  there's  one  factor  you 
have  overlooked :  the  woman  in  the 
case.  If  you  will  go  deep  enough  into 
the  history  of  any  crime  you  will  find 
that  somewhere  there  is  a  woman  con- 
nected with  it.  She  may  stand  out 


THE  LURE 


399 


boldly  in  the  lime-light  or  she  may  be 
hidden  far  in  the  background — but  she 
is  there  somewhere.  And  when  the 
criminal  is  brought  to  justice,  as  he  is 
bound  to  be  sooner  or  later,  look 
around  again  and  you  will  see — a  wo- 
man. In  'Still  at  Large'  the  villain  was 
not  caught — the  reason  is  obvious.  But 
since  writing  that  the  boy  has  come 
out  of  prison,  the  wife  of  Vernane  has 
divorced  him  and  re-married,  the  Lor- 
rimer  girl  has  become  famous  as  a 
singer  and  has  married,  also." 

"You  seem  well  informed  of  their 
private  affairs.  How  about  Vernane 
himself  ?"  asked  the  other,  coming  out 
of  his  reverie. 

"He  is  the  only  one  whose  confi- 
dence I  did  not  share,"  laughed  the 
Bachelor,  as  he  drained  his  glass  and 
looked  speculatively  around  the  room. 
"Guess  this  wine  is  getting  a  trifle 
cold,"  he  added,  smacking  his  lips 
sharply. 

Many  of  that  noisy,  gay  crowd  was 
preparing  to  leave.  A  young  fellow 
who  made  one  of  a  party  of  four  at  a 
near  table  arose  unsteadily  to  his  feet, 
lurched  against  the  table  where  the 
Bachelor  sat,  then  went  slowly  down 
the  room  to  the  door.  The  Bachelor 
watched  him  till  the  door  closed  be- 
hind him. 

"But  I  still  insist,"  went  on  the 
Bachelor,  after  a  moment,  "that  my 
theory  is  right.  In  the  book  I  intended 
to  have  the  broker,  Vernane,  come 
back,  lured  by  the  press  notices  of  the 
girl's  wonderful  beauty  and  her  bril- 
liant success  as  a  singer;  come  back 
to  look  once  more  into  the  eyes  that 
had  made  a  fool  of  him,  a  thief  and  a 
fugitive.  And  he  would  be  recognized 
and  captured." 

"Well,  theory  is  all  right,  but  facts 
are  stubborn  things.  I  think  in  the 
present  case  your  publishers  were 
right,  and  even  if  the  fellow  did  come 
back  he  would  not  be  recognized." 

"It  would  so  seem,  unless " 

A  slight  commotion  near  the  door 
caused  the  Bachelor  to  pause  and  look 
around.  The  young  fellow  who  had 
lurched  against  the  table  as  he  went 
out  had  returned,  and  with  him  was 


one  who  was  instantly  recognized  as 
Madaline,  the  singer.  A  dozen  tables 
were  instantly  vacated  that  she  might 
be  seated,  but  she  only  bowed,  shook 
her  head  and  smiled,  a  smile  in  which 
lay  that  which  would  cause  any  man 
to  lay  his  heart  at  her  feet,  a  smile  that 
would  lure  a  man  on  to  destruction  or 
raise  him  from  the  pit  as  she  willed. 
Then  turning  to  the  head-waiter  she 
said  something,  and  he  bowed,  stand- 
ing to  one  side,  and  she  slowly  made 
her  way  across  the  room. 

"Come,"  she  murmured,  laying  a 
hand  on  the  Bachelor's  shoulder;  "it's 
time  for  old  married  people  to  be  at 
home."  The  Bachelor  and  the  other 
instantly  arose. 

Then  turning  quickly  to  his  com- 
panion she  flashed  a  smile  at  him,  a 
smile  in  which  lay  hidden  things  that 
no  pen  can  describe,  and  said: 

"Why,  good-evening,  Mr.  Vernane !" 

"There  is  some  mistake,"  returned 
the  man,  easily,  his  eyes  wavering 
between  the  two  smiling  faces  oppo- 
site. 

"Yes,"  the  Bachelor  returned,  quick- 
ly, "but  my  publishers  made  one  and 
you  made  the  other.  Characteristics 
are  prone  to  crop  out  even  when  the 
face  and  the  voice  are  changed  beyond 
recognition.  Wait!  One  may  sit  in 
the  same  seat  in  the  front  row  of  the 
orchestra  six  nights  in  succession  with- 
out attracting  particular  attention,  but 
when  one  sits  and  taps  his  front  teeth 
with  a  pencil  an  hour  at  a  time  it 
may  attract  attention,  especially  if 
someone  is  looking  for  that  sort  of 
thing.  I  guess  that  is  all."  And  the 
Bachelor  nodded  slightly  to  the  three 
men  who  still  sat  at  the  table  that 
the  young  fellow  had  recently  left, 
three  men  who  looked  suspiciously  like 
police  officers  in  plain  clothes  as  they 
got  to  their  feet  and  began  donning 
their  coats,  and,  incidentally,  block- 
ing the  passage  to  the  door.  "Come, 
Pet,"  the  Bachelor  murmured,  in  a 
caressing  tone,  "we'll  go  now.  I've  got 
to  finish  that  last  chapter  before  I  go 
to  bed." 

At  the  door  the  two  paused  to  wait 
for  young  Lorrimer  who  had  stopped 


400                                      OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

for  a  word  with  the  three  men  as  they  ing.     And  as  they  climbed  in,  there 

stood     around     Vernane,     who     had  came  floating  out  on  the  night  air  the 

dropped  into  his  chair  in  a  limp  heap,  sound  of  many  voices  taking  up  the 

and  as  he  joined  them  they  passed  chorus  of  Madeline's     famous     song: 

quickly  out  to  where  a  car  stood  wait-  "It's  a  long,  long  way  to  Tipperary." 


THE      REAPER 


Chattering  squirrels  in  creaking  boughs 

Of  maples  splashed  with  red — 
And  a  hedge  aglow  with  goldenrod 

Where  summer's  wild  rose  bled. 
The  fir  trees  pitch  their  wigwam  tents 

Of  shadows,  amber-kissed — 
And  waving  ferns  like  emeralds  gleam 

Through  the  spangled  purple  mist. 

All  silver-stoled  the  birches  stand, 

While  chirping  crickets  cry, 
And  stately  oaks  rain  silken  leaves, 

Where  dreaming  violets  lie. 
Then  bearing  sunshine  on  his  wings, 

A  butterfly,  grown  bold, 
Woos  a  belated  crimson  rose 

And  breathes  love's  story  old. 

The  giant  trees  clasp  hands  on  high, 

And  down  the  moss-fringed  aisles — 
A  sunbeam  steals,  all  golden  fused, 

To  cast  his  magic  wiles. 
Skirting  the  velvet  pathway's  edge, 

The  pearl-tipped  waters  sing, 
While  day  betrothes  night's  stately  queen 

With  a  jeweled  silver  ring. 

Then,  bent  of  form,  a  figure  creeps 

Through  all  the  tangled  braes, 
And  gathers  softly,  one  by  one, 

The  fleeting  golden  days. 
The  rainbowed  drifts  of  silken  leaves, 

All  shuddering,  watch  him  pass, 
For  autumn's  red  claims  sands  of  gray 

In  Time's  frail  hour  glass. 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 


LAN  I 


By  Genevieve  Taggard 


LANI  clasped  the     child     astride 
her  hip. 
"And  what  for  do  you  laugh 
so,"  she  matched  her  father's 
scornful  thrust  of  the  head,  "why  do 
you  laugh  like  that  way  when  I  tell 
you  my  Hendry's  going?" 

Her  father  preferred  the  meaning  of 
silence.  His  thick  hands  threaded  the 
ilima  flower  on  a  spear  of  grass  and 
patted  it  snugly  against  its  fellow.  The 
girl  bent  to  select  the  reddest  mango 
from  the  pile  on  the  steaming  side- 
walk. She  knew  her  father's  eyes  were 
following  her  in  narrowed  amusement. 
The  child  bit  off  the  thick  toe  of  the 
skin  and  smeared  the  yellow  paste 
about  his  brown  nose  and  stained  the 
loose  sleeve  of  his  mother's  holoku. 
But  for  once  she  neglected  to  scold  or 
even  notice. 

"Hendry's  going  come  again,"  she 
argued  resentfully. 

His  shrewd  eyes  made  answer, 
skipping  over  the  warm  curves  of  her 
body.  He  shoved  a  pointed  finger  at 
her  smooth  neck,  bare  where  the  care- 
less holoku  fell  apart,  free  of  the 
throat.  Her  fingers  caressed  her  low 
bosom. 

"In  a  few  years,"  he  wagged  his 
great  head  jovially,  "the  same  every 
time.  Haole  men  go  sailing  off  to 
the  Coast  to  make  love  to  haole  girls 
who  got  tight  clothes  with  swell 
style." 

"Hendry  say  he  like  better  holokus," 
she  said,  and  caught  up  daintily  the 
long  sheer  train  and  fanned  the  lan- 
guorous curves  of  her  body  into  wav- 
ering ripples. 

"Hendry,"  sneered  her  father; 
"Hendry  is  a  haole." 

"Hendry's  going  come  again,  I  tell 
you.  Hendry's  father  got  a  drug-store 


in  California.  He  must  stay  over 
there  awhile.  Till  he  can  sell  any- 
way." 

The  fat  man  sniffed. 

She  let  the  long  train  droop  and 
studied  her  bare  foot  absently,  jog- 
ging the  child  higher  now  and  then 
and  pressing  his  chubby  legs  about 
her  body. 

"White  girls  work  in  the  drug 
stores?"  she  questioned,  turning  her 
head  suddenly. 

"Sure,  haole  girls  in  all  the  stores," 
,he  responded.  "And  they  can  make 
swell  style  when  they  walk  around." 

The  flower  man  heaved  his  stiff 
round  legs  out  of  the  sun  and  chuckled. 
She  questioned  no  more,  as  he  threaded 
the  flowers  narrowed  close  to  his  eyes, 
but  watched  sullenly. 

"You  poor  kanaka  fool,"  she  said. 
"You  don'  know  about  haoles." 

"When  the  soldiers  go,"  his  body 
shook  with  his  words  in  one  huge  tit- 
ter, "when  soldiers  go  it  is  one  big 
joke  for  all — on  eh? — the  kanaka 
girl/ 

She  drew  the  child  closer. 

"I'm  going  home  now  to  make  the 
lei,"  she  said.  "And  don'  you  ever 
say  things  like  that  about  my  Hendry 
again." 

He  laughed  and  eyed  her  shrewdly 
as  she  drifted  past. 

She  waved  about  confidently  on  the 
gutter's  edge. 

"And  how  do  you  know,"  she  said. 
"Maybe  Hendry's  not  going." 

That  night  the  garden  was  too  still. 
Hendry  seemed  to  have  so  little  to 
say. 

She  stirred  warmly  against  his 
shoulder  and  dropped  the  marigolds 
she  had  gathered  into  her  lap. 

"How  long,  Hendry?  Many  years?" 


402 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


She  thought  he  moved  away  rest- 
lessly; but  then  it  was  not  their  cus- 
tom to  talk. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  exactly,"  he  said 
slowly.  "You  see,  my  folks — well,  of 
course,  my  folks  don't  know  I'm  mar- 
ried. Pa's  always  said  I  could  have 
the  store,  you  know.  But  I  guess  I'll 
have  to  stay  there  awhile.  Till  I  can 
sell,  anyway." 

She  sighed.  The  sentences  were  as 
ever  the  same.  But  his  voice  seemed 
to  weigh  them  for  the  first  time  with 
a  vague  accent.  She  watched  gravely 
as  he  turned  aside  to  pluck  at  the 
fronds  of  grass.  A  black  beetle 
crawled  up  his  legging  and  sawed  its 
fingers  at  him,  for  shame. 

"I'll  leave  a  little  in  the  bank,  you 
know,"  he  added  hurriedly,  for  she 
had  said  no  word.  And  he  ran  a  long 
stemmed  marigold  lightly  into  her 
hair.  A  nervous  mosquito  came  whin- 
ing, insinuating  from  the  tree-heavy 
shadows. 

"I  will  make  leis.  I  will  not  go  to 
the  bank."  She  leaned  nearer,  search- 
ing his  face  in  the  finely  sifting  gloom. 
^  "Oh,"  she  drew  back  when  she  met 
his  fumbling  hands. 

The  child  was  sunk  in  a  tangle  of 
sweet  ginger,  mouthing  a  long  spicy 
stem,  appraising  his  father,  wide- 
eyed. 

"In  California  many  girls  wear  tight 
clothes  with  swell  style?"  she  gathered 
the  sheer  muslin  about  her  throat  and 
stealthily  hid  her  feet  among  the  white 
gardenias. 

"Oh,  yes.  Lots  of  style,  I  guess,  but 
none  so  pretty  as  you,  Lani.  Come 
over  here." 

She  laughed  softly  and  shook  out 
her  hair.  And  he  smiled  to  see  her 
arch  her  neck  to  look  over  her  shoul- 
der as  she  leaned  toward  him  laughing 
and  pointing  at  the  child. 

^"See,  Hendry,  the  baby  is  making 
leis  in  the  ginger  with  his  feet.  You 
making  leis  for  papa,  eh,  baby?" 

And  they  sat  more  closely  together 
as  they  watched  him  solemnly  thread 
the  sprays  in  and  out  through  his  toes. 

"You  will  miss  the  baby,  Hendry." 

He  seemed  annoyed. 


For  a  long  time  she  strung  the  pet- 
als in  silence  while  the  beetles  ticked 
noisily  about. 

"The  baby  will  miss  Hendry." 

"Come  here,  you  little  devil,"  he 
commanded,  and  the  child,  smoothing 
his  flimsy  dress  over  his  round  body, 
wobbled  toward  them,  unsmiling. 

"Going  to  miss  Hendry?"  he  de- 
manded, clutching  the  squirming 
brownie  in  the  air.  "Eh?  Going  to 
miss  Hendry,  are  you?" 

She  was  gathering  swift  courage 
now  as  she  pierced  the  flowers  deftly 
one  upon  the  other.  She  murmured  his 
name.  He  did  not  hear.  She  reached 
her  foot  timidly  out,  to  touch  his  leg- 
ging. 

"Eliza's  man,"  she  breathed,  bent 
low  over  the  lei,  "he  promised  alright. 
But  he  never  came  again,  Hendry." 
Even  the  birds  had  ceased  to  whisper 
in  the  mango  tree  above,  but  Hendry 
was  chucking  the  child  between  the 
ribs  and  swearing  absorbedly.  "Hen- 
dry,  won't  you  listen  ?  I  tell  you  sure, 
Eliza's  man  never  came  again." 

"Well,  I  guess  she  isn't  kicking," 
he  shot  over  his  shoulder  as  he  dan- 
gled the  child  in  the  air.  "She's  not 
sorry.  The  way  he  used  to  beat  her." 

Her  finger  tips  were  cold  again,  but 
she  only  said :  "I  be  sorry,  Hendry." 

She  knew  he  would  toss  the  child 
lightly  into  the  ginger  and  sit  back  on 
his  heels  to  laugh  for  an  instant  be- 
fore he  swung  her  up  into  his  arms. 
And  then  the  laughter  died  slowly  out 
on  his  lips  and  he  held  her  motion- 
less while  the  beetles  ticked  off  the 
swift  moments  and  the  long  drive  of 
the  night  wind  drifted  her  hair  about 
him  in  a  black  cloud. 

She  chided  him  softly  as  she  shook 
out  the  marigolds  that  clung  among 
her  garments,  crushed  to  yellow  pollen 
among  the  clinging  folds,  and  dodged 
merrily  the  rude  kisses  that  were 
snatched  at  her  mouth.  But  she  smiled 
— she  remembered  that  even  Eliza's 
man  had  loved  Eliza's  lips. 

He  found  the  half  strung  marigold 
chain  and  wound  it  playfully  about 
her  bare  foot. 

"I  must  make  another  lei,"  she  mur- 


LANI 


403 


mured  suddenly  weary,  and  pulled 
her  hair  about  to  hide  the  strange  tears. 

He  was  gone  with  few  other  words. 
The  rigid  figure  seemed  to  throw,  in 
spite  of  itself,  a  lingering  shadow 
back  toward  them  at  the  gate.  But 
his  leggings  were  creaking  briskly 
down  through  the  interlacing  shades. 
And  not  once  did  he  turn  to  look  back. 

Her  father  heaved  up  suddenly  from 
behind  the  vines  of  the  lanai. 

"Damn  fool  to  say  he  come  again," 
he  sneered,  and  then  fell  to  chuckling 
when  she  tore  off  the  marigold  anklet 
and  flung  it  away  in  the  dark. 

The  baby  wondered  that  night  why 
his  mother  wept  no  more,  but  sought 
ankle  deep  in  the  lush  grasses  of  the 
garden  for  a  certain  heavily-lidded 
flower  few  men  touch.  And  he  watched 
from  among  the  ginger,  drowsed  by 
its  heavy  incense,  as  she  sat  through 
the  dewy  night,  weaving  them  in  a 
lei. 

It  was  fresh  morning  when  her  father 
found  them.  The  level  sun  at  his 
back  sent  his  long  shadow  rollicking 
over  the  ginger.  When  he  saw  the  lei 
coiled  about  her  feet  he  chuckled  once 
again. 

"The  kanaka  girl  too  smart  for 
haoles,  eh?"  he  sniffed  the  perfume 
delightedly.  "He's  sure  going?" 

"Don'  you  talk  like  that  way  about 
my  Hendry,"  her  slight  fingers  let  the 
heavy  rope  slip. 

"Hendry  will  like  the  lei,"  he  as- 
sured her,  large  in  silent  chucklings. 
She  bowed  her  head  wearily. 

"Hendry  is  a  poor  red-faced  hoales. 
He  never  fool  me  once." 

"You  don'  know  about  hoales,"  she 
drew  her  feet  from  among  the  bright 
coils,  and  covered  them  smugly  with 
the  holoku  train.  "You  a  poor  ka- 
naka fool." 

"Too  bad,"  he  droned  on,  as  his 
thick  hands  sought  out  the  yellow- 
eyed  flowers  leisurely.  "Too  bad 
Eliza's  man  never  had  a  girl  so  smart 
to  make  a  sweet  lei  when  he  went 
sailing  off." 

"My  Hendry  is  not  the  same  as 
Eliza's  man,"  she  dashed  the  stray 
poison  petals  from  her  lap  as  she 


sprang  up  before  him.  "Am  I  a  fool 
like  all  you  kanakas?  Do  you  think 
I  take  Hendry's  money  like  all  the 
kanaka  girls?  You  ever  see  me  smile 
at  all  the  soldiers  when  I  sell  leis  on 
the  sidewalk?  You  think  I  am  lazy, 
like  Eliza,  eh?"  She  jerked  up  the  lei 
and  it  wriggled  like  a  live  thing  in 
her  hand.  "Lani  making  leis  all  night 
like  old  fat  woman."  She  was  beat- 
ing the  heavy,  scented  rope  on  the 
ground  before  him  like  a  flail.  "I  can 
be  the  same  as  hoale  girls  if  I  want," 
she  flung  the  black  cloud  of  hair  from 
her  face,  "and  I  tell  you,  my  Hen- 
dry  is  not  like  Eliza's  man." 

She  hurled  the  dusty,  ragged  thing 
at  him. 

"If  haoles  go,"  he  snarled  and 
dodged  aside,  "I  tell  you  sure,  they 
never  come  again." 

She  was  binding  up  her  hair  with 
swift  purpose. 

"Maybe  Hendry's  not  going  yet." 
She  caught  up  her  dewy,  fluttering 
skirts  and  held  them  high  as  she  picked 
her  steps  daintily  tip-toe  toward  the 
gate. 

"See,  I  can  walk  the  same  as  haole 
ladies.  Haole  ladies  walk  so,  with 
much  high  heels,"  she  whirled  about 
before  she  slipped  through  the  tall 
pickets.  "You  old  fat  kanaka,"  she 
mocked.  "And  I  am  going  to  beg 
some  tight  shoes  from  Eliza.  How  do 

you  know  Hendry's  going?" 

*  *  *  * 

One  does  not  kiss  one's  wife  good- 
bye on  a  great  wharf — if  she  is  a  ka- 
naka. It  is  well  to  have  it  over 
quietly,  and  get  aboard. 

But  Hendry  lingered,  while  the 
blood  thundered  at  his  temples  above 
the  jar  of  the  last  hoarse  whistle,  and 
still  gazed  down  at  her,  unconscious 
that  the  whole  regiment  was  snicker- 
ing across  the  rail  above.  Her  breast 
was  heaving  as  proudly  as  the  sea. 

"Say  good-bye  to  Hendry,"  she 
softly  urged  his  child  once  again,  and 
tried  to  shake  his  eyes  from  the  bright 
row  of  buttons  on  his  father's  uniform. 
The  child  even  twisted  about  erect  in 
her  arms  when  she  turned  aside  to 
snarl  scornfully  at  her  father. 


404 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"The  little  devil  don't  want  to  say 
good-bye."  Hendry  shifted  his  feet 
apologetically.  "Maybe  he'd  just  as 
leave  I  wouldn't  go." 

"Aw,  the  baby  will  forget  to  know 
Hendry's  face.  It  is  too  bad."  Her 
eyes  darkened,  and  cleared  again.  "But 
we  must  not  linger  now." 

She  was  standing  all  aslant  under 
the  one-sided  weight  of  the  child.  He 
could  not  read  her  face,  tipped  up  to 
him  as  in  a  dream.  And  yet  her  eyes 
were  as  ever,  clear  as  golden  wine. 

"Have  a  lei?"  her  father's  fat  arm 
shoved  at  his  ribs.  "Can  have  choice 
on  me." 

The  gongs  were  clattering  impa- 
tiently. 

"No,"  he  said  shortly.  "I  won't  need 
it." 

"All  aboard!"  The  regiment  took 
up  the  cry  and  waved  their  caps 
wildly.  Henry  warily  advanced  a  long 
finger.  The  baby  surrounded  it  with 
his  fist.  He  bent  closer.  She  slanted 
out  a  stilted  little  foot  shyly.  "Hendry, 
you  like  my  haole  shoes?" 

He  jerked  back  rudely.  She  turned 
quickly  as  she  heard  a  high  voice 
shrill  out: 

"Why,  if  Bolliver  ain't  still  down 
there  with  his  Kanak!" 

The  vast  place  seemed  crushed  still 
with  a  ringing  silence.  Henry  shouted 
back  and  dashed  up  the  gangway.  He 
shoved  in  among  them  at  the  rail.  A 


bright  coin  flashed  in  the  air  and  fell 
on  the  dock. 

His  red  perspiring  face  grinned 
down  at  her  from  above. 

"Get  you  some  socks,"  rasped 
through  his  fists. 

The  wall  of  steel  edged  itself  into 
the  circling  ripples.  There  was  a  strag- 
gling fringe  of  khaki  at  the  stern.  A 
swarm  of  black  heads  popped  up  about 
the  rudder  below,  and  shouted  with 
waving  arms  for  diving  coin.  Now 
and  then  a  bit  of  silver  flashed  over 
the  side  and  a  brown  body  cut  down 
out  of  sight  into  the  green  depths,  be- 
neath the  mottled  sunshine.  The  noon 
gong  banged  impatiently  over  the 
water,  and  the  lines  of  khaki  streamed 
below.  There  came  a  lap  of  laughter 
from  the  open  ports.  A  lone  deckhand 
was  sweeping  a  shower  of  bright  flow- 
ers over  the  side.  They  reddened  the 
crests  of  the  swells  as  they  rolled  and 
drifted  lazily  after. 

Lani  jogged  the  child  higher  and 
bent  to  pick  up  the  coin.  Her  father 
came  circling  down  the  wharf,  swing- 
ing his  ropes  of  yellow  leis  and  chuck- 
ling as  he  spat  with  a  certain  oath  upon 
the  timbers. 

"Poor  Kanaka  fool,  eh?  He — he! 
Poor  Kanaka  fool!" 

She  waved  past,  languidly  fanning 
to  and  fro  with  the  long  train.  "Poor 
Kanaka  fool,"  she  mocked.  "Eliza 
got  another  man!" 


"ICH     DIEN" 


I  ask  a  sign! 

But  kindly  eyes  that  cheered  me  many  a  day, 
Are  hostile  now  and  from  me  turn  away. 
It  matters  not  that  I  for  conscience  stand 
'Gainst  evil,  that  would  devastate  the  land, 

Few  hands  clasp  mine! 

E'en  those  whom  I  through  life  have  held  most  dear, 
Misunderstand  and  hold  aloof  in  fear. 
But  through  it  all,  God's  Truth  is  still  my  goal, 
And  I  remain  the  "Captain  of  my  Soul." 


MARIAN  TAYLOR. 


The  Opium  Fiend 


By  W.  R.  Wheeler 


"And  my  soul  from  out  the  shadow 
That  lies  floating  on  the  floor 
Shall  be  lifted  nevermore." 

SAN  FRANCISCO  was  wide 
open.  "Everything  goes"  was 
the  glad  tidings  which  brought 
gamblers,  sure-thing  men,  thugs 
and  thieves  and  the  derelicts  of  the  un- 
derworld flocking  thither  from  the  four 
corners  of  the  earth.  The  Barbary 
Coast  was  a  blaze  of  light  and  a  car- 
nival of  music  and  dancing,  of  laugh- 
ter and  song,  when  I  sought  the  com- 
parative quiet  of  Portsmouth  Square 
by  Stevenson's  memorial.  Turning  at 
an  arresting  hand  upon  my  arm  I  be- 
held the  shrunken  body,  corpse-like 
features  and  staring  eyes  that  spoke  in 
unmistakable  tones  of  the  ravages  of 
destructive  vice. 

"Please,  mister,  give  me  a  dime," 
he  whined,  as  I  shook  off  his  touch 
in  disgust. 

"What  is  it?"  I  asked  finally,  pity 
overcoming  my  repugnance.  "Dope?" 

"Yes.  Fifteen  years  of  it.  Stake  me 
to  a  dime.  I'm  all  in  for  a  shot." 

Scenting  a  story  I  said,  handing  him 
a  dollar:  "Bring  your  dope  up  to  my 
room.  Tell  me  your  story  and  I'll  give 
you  another." 

He  came  shambling  up  the  stairs 
fifteen  minutes  later. 

He  was  nervous  and  said:  "You'll 
have  to  wait  till  I  take  my  shot;  then 
I  can  talk." 

"Go  ahead,"  I  said. 

He  took  a  hypodermic  syringe  and 
a  spoon  and  a  bottle  of  morphia  from 
his  pocket  and  placed  them  on  the 
floor.  Then  he  poured  nearly  a  spoon- 
ful of  the  morphia  into  the  spoon  and 
cooked  it  over  the  flame  of  lighters 
made  of  twisted  paper.  When  the 


drug  was  dissolved  he  filled  the 
syringe,  and  bared  his  arm  and  shot 
the  contents  into  it.  He  repeated  the 
injections  until  the  spoon  was  empty. 
When  the  drug  commenced  its  work, 
his  eyes  brightened,  the  slouch  went 
out  of  his  form  and  he  seemed  a  differ- 
ent man.  Then  he  told  the  following 
story : 

"I  was  born  in  San  Jose,  and  my 
life  until  I  became  of  age  held  noth- 
ing out  of  the  ordinary.  I  graduated 
in  the  grammar  grade  of  the  public 
school,  which  did  me  but  little  good, 
as  I  knew  no  trade.  I  worked  when- 
ever I  could  find  anything  to  do,  but 
was  forced  to  lose  so  much  time  that 
I  soon  despaired  of  getting  anything 
ahead.  Then  I  began  to  hang  around 
the  pool  rooms  and  the  saloons,  and 
try  to  make  a  living  by  the  various 
tricks  which  rounders  use  to  escape 
work.  I  realize  now  that  this  was 
the  main  cause  of  my  downfall.  I  be- 
gan to  despise  the  man  who  labors 
with  his  hands  and  exalt  the  grafter 
who  was  smart  enough  to  get  through 
the  world  without  it.  My  best  friend 
and  chum  was  a  man  of  my  age,  named 
Barney  Munroe.  One  day  I  was  hor- 
rified to  discover  that  he  was  using  co- 
caine. 

"I  was  very  fond  of  Barney,  and 
made  many  fruitless  efforts  to  make 
him  quit.  One  day  when  I  was  in  a 
fit  of  despondency  he  induced  me  to 
try  it;  the  sensation  was  so  pleasant, 
it  seemed  to  raise  me  out  of  all  my 
troubles,  that  I  tried  it  again  and 
again,  and  soon  the  habit  got  upon  me. 
We  sank  lower  and  lower,  and  the  de- 
mands of  the  drug  became  so  insistent 
that  we  were  put  to  all  kinds  of  shifts 
to  get  the  money  to  buy  it.  At  last  we 
were  jailed  for  a  petty  theft.  We  were 


406 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


out  of  dope,  and  begged  the  jailer  for 
a  shot,  but  like  most  men  in  his  posi- 
tion he  was  a  heartless  brute,  and 
laughed  at  us. 

"We  were  soon  in  desperate  straits. 
The  next  time  the  jailer  appeared  Bar- 
ney begged  him  with  tears  in  his  eyes 
to  give  him  a  small  shot.  The  jailer 
got  mad  and  shouted:  "I'll  give  you 
something  to  close  your  trap."  He 
struck  poor  Barney  in  the  mouth. 

"In  the  next  cell  were  a  negro  named 
"Spats,"  and  an  Italian  named  Lum- 
bado.  They  were  fiends.  It  was  cus- 
tomary to  give  them  a  dose  every  even- 
ing, but  for  some  reason  they  missed 
Spats  and  his  partner  that  night.  When 
they  found  that  they  were  not  to  get 
any  dope  they  got  frantic  and  began 
to  scheme.  They  told  the  other  pris- 
oners to  beat  on  the  doors  with  their 
shoes  until  the  jailer  came.  When  he 
finally  showed  up  to  find  out  the  cause 
of  the  racket  he  was  as  mad  as  a  hor- 
net, and  threatened  to  turn  the  hose  on 
us  if  we  didn't  quit. 

"When  he  went  away,  we  yelled  and 
kept  up  such  a  racket  that  he  came 
back  and  turned  the  hose  on  us,  which 
quieted  us,  but  did  not  lessen  our 
craving  for  the  drug.  Then  Lumbado 
whispered  to  Spats: 

"You  throw  a  fit,  Spats;  that's  the 
only  way  we'll  get  any  dope  to-night." 

"Spats  immediately  fell  down,  feign- 
ing a  fit,  moaning  and  writhing  like  one 
in  mortal  pain.  He  was  a  good  actor, 
and  he  rolled  his  eyes  and  frothed  un- 
til he  presented  a  horrible  spectacle.  I 
really  thought  he  was  going  to  die.  At 
this  Lunbado  began  to  shout:  'Go  get 
the  jailer;  Spats  is  dying.' 

"The  jailer  looked  at  the  writhing 
man.  'Oh,  he's  only  shamming,'  he 
said  contemptuously. 

:' 'No,  he  ain't;  give  him  a  shot  or 
he'll  surely  croak,'  insisted  Lumbado. 
They  finally  convinced  the  jailer  that 
Spats  was  in  a  bad  way,  so  he  brought 
in  a  lump  of  dope.  Lumbado  cooked 
the  morphine  and  shot  it  into  the 
other's  arm;  Spats  recovered  miracu- 
lously, and  they  sat  up  till  midnight, 
talking  and  laughing  at  the  way  they 
had  fooled  the  jailer. 


"What  I  saw  in  that  jail  so  disgusted 
me  that  I  resolved  to  quit.  I  did  quit 
cocaine,  but  I  asquired  the  opium  habit, 
which  was  almost  as  bad. 

"The  first  person  I  met  when  I  was 
released  was  "Spider"  McDermott.  He 
was  an  ex-prize  fighter  and  was  wise 
to  all  the  tricks  to  get  money  and  dope 
without  work. 

"One  of  them  was  to  stand  in  front 
of  a  drug  store  where  there  was  a  lot 
of  traffic  and  have  a  fit.  At  the  right 
moment  a  confederate  would  cry: 
'Spider's  got  another  fit;  give  him  a 
shot  or  he'll  croak.' 

"Usually  the  sympathetic  bystand- 
ers would  carry  him  into  the  store, 
where  he  would  almost  always  get 
dope  or  money  from  some  one  in  the 
crowd.  Finally  Spider  sold  his  body 
to  a  doctor  who  agreed  to  give  him 
all  the  dope  he  wanted  as  long  as  he 
lived.  Maybe  he  was  of  some  use 
after  death.  He  surely  was  of  no  use 
to  the  world  when  alive. 

"Kelley  was  another  fiend  I  met  in 
jail.  He  used  to  feign  sickness  so  as 
to  be  sent  to  the  doctor's  office,  where 
he  would  steal  pile  salve.  This  he 
boiled  and  strained  through  a  cloth,, 
in  this  way  getting  his  opium. 

"While  in  jail  I  learned  that  many 
boys  who  were  confined  for  small  of- 
fences were  taught  the  use  of  dope 
by  the  older  prisoners.  It  looks  as  if 
any  one  with  the  least  sense  would 
know  better  than  to  confine  boys  with 
hardened  criminals ;  they  couldn't  do 
worse  if  they  wanted  to  make  crimi- 
nal wrecks  of  them. 

"Finding  that  there  was  no  chance 
for  me  to  break  away  from  the  habit 
as  long  as  I  associated  with  dope  fiends 
I  determined  to  break  away  from  their 
influence  and  try  to  make  a  fresh  start 
under  other  conditions. 

"I  boarded  a  freight  for  Portland, 
but  got  ditched  at  Red  Bluff.  I  was 
broke  and  hungry,  and  asked  a  hotel 
keeper  for  some  work  so  as  to  earn 
a  meal ;  he  turned  me  over  to  the  mar- 
shall,  who  took  me  to  jail  and  I  got 
thirty  days  for  vagrancy.  I  found  con- 
ditions worse  here  than  those  I  had 
left.  The  jail  was  full  of  dope-eaters 


THE  OPIUM  FIEND 


407 


of  every  character.  I  found  these  con- 
ditions everwhere  in  all  the  medium- 
sized  towns. 

"After  wandering  around  California 
for  awhile,  I  drifted  back  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  I  learned  to  smoke  hop. 
I  soon  became  an  expert  in  the  art  of 
cooking  opium  for  smokers,  and  made 
my  living  at  it  for  some  time.  The 
Toboggan  House  used  to  be  a  hang-out 
for  opium  fiends,  and  I  met  smokers 
there  from  all  walks  of  life. 

"Even  top-notchers  in  society  came 
into  this  part  of  the  city  to  hit  the 
pipe.  There  were  dozens  of  places 
where  opium  smoking  was  carried  on 
almost  in  the  open,  under  the  very 
noses  of  the  police,  who  must  have  had 
a  good  reason  for  overlooking  these 
joints.  Besides  the  public  places, 
smokers  all  over  the  Barbary  Coast 
had  layouts  in  their  rooms  so  that 
they  could  indulge  in  their  favorite 
vice  when  the  public  layouts  were 
closed. 

"I  was  a  wreck  and  had  given  up  all 
hope  of  recovery  when  I  was  called 
home  to  the  bedside  of  my  dying 
mother.  She  died  of  a  broken  heart 
over  my  disgrace. 

"When  I  entered  the  room  the  seal 
of  death  was  already  upon  her  brow. 
I  was  torn  with  remorse.  She  held  out 
her  wasted  hands  and  I  fell  upon  my 
knees,  begging  for  forgiveness,  and 
I  promised  to  stop  using  drugs.  I  lost 
the  best  friend  on  earth  when  she 
passed  away.  Her  death  made  such  a 
powerful  impression  on  me  that  I  re- 
solved to  quit  using  drugs  and  be  a 
man. 

"When  I  returned  to  town  after  the 
funeral  I  was  suffering  the  tortures 
of  the  damned.  Every  fibre  of  my  be- 
ing was  insistently  calling,  calling  for 
the  drug.  I  was  going  with  a  girl 
who  was  also  a  fiend.  She  had  drifted 
from  a  job  in  a  department  store  to 
various  employment  till  she  became 
a  "biscuit  shooter"  in  a  cheap  restau- 
rant. She  was  as  good  as  I,  no  matter 
what  she  was.  She  was  an  orphan 
who  had  come  to  the  city  from  a  coun- 
try town.  The  city  had  engulfed  her 
'as  it  had  swallowed  thousands  of  her 


kind.  When  I  came  into  her  room  the 
morning  after  the  funeral  she  asked  me 
where  I  had  been. 

"To  my  mother's  funeral,"    I    an- 
swered shortly.    Then  I  told  her  I  was 
going  to  quit. 

"'You  quit?'  she  laughed.  'You 
can't  quit,  and  you  know  it.' 

"Finally  I  convinced  her  that  I 
meant  it.  She  had  not  yet  taken  her 
morning  shot.  When  she  got  out  her 
outfit  and  started  to  cook  the  dope,  the 
sight  of  it  fairly  maddened  me,  and  I 
ran  from  the  room.  Then  I  hunted  up 
an  old  friend  of  the  family  who  lived 
in  the  suburbs,  and  explained  my  plan. 
We  hunted  up  a  vacant  house  where  I 
intended  to  confine  myself  while  I  was 
overcoming  the  habit.  We  found  a 
basement  room  with  a  single  window 
which  was  barred,  and  a  heavy  door. 
I  moved  in  my  few  belongings,  with 
a  stock  of  tobacco  and  some  maga- 
zines. My  friend  carried  the  key  and 
brought  me  food  twice  a  day.  I  got 
along  pretty  well  the  first  day  and  be- 
<gan  to  congratulate  myself  on  my  easy 
victory. 

"I  slept  some  the  first  night,  but 
awoke  before  morning  with  a  fit  of 
sneezing  which  shook  me  from  head 
to  foot.  Then  I  began  to  stretch  and 
yawn  and  shiver  until  I  was  seized 
with  cramps.  I  walked  the  room  al- 
most double,  gasping  for  breath.  Then 
nausea  came  on.  Violent  pains  shot 
through  my  body,  and  I  sweated  from 
every  pore.  I  could  not  eat;  extreme 
restlessness  tortured  me  all  day  and 
my  body  felt  as  though  it  had  been 
beaten  with  clubs. 

"I  got  no  sleep  that  night  except  fit- 
ful snatches,  with  all  sorts  of  horrible 
dreams.  When  my  friend  arrived  I 
tried  to  slip  by  him  and  beat  it  for 
Chinatown. 

"How  I  lived  through  the  day  I  don't 
know.  With  darkness  came  again 
those  distorted  visions,  and  I  seem 
to  have  lost  my  reason.  When  my 
friend  came  in  the  morning  a  look  at 
the  room  told  him  better  than  words 
what  had  occurred. 

"  'Frank,  what  can  I  do  to  help  you  ?' 
he  asked,  as  he  noted  the  wreck  about 


408 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


me.  'Don't  you  want  a  small  bit  of 
morphine.  You  can't  expect  to  break 
off  all  at  once.' 

"  'No,  I  insisted,  'I  don't  want  any 
more  of  the  damned  stuff.  I'm  going 
to  break  away  from  it  or  die.' 

"  'You  ought  to  have  a  doctor.' 

"  'It  wouldn't  do  any  good;  he'd  give 
me  morphine,  and  I  would  have  to  go 
through  it  all  again." 

"He  urged  me  to  taper  off,  and  left 
me  to  my  torment.  I  spent  another 
day  in  bed,  almost  too  weak  to  raise 
my  head,  my  body  racked  with  pains. 
That  night  I  got  a  little  sleep.  The 
next  morning  I  was  hungry  and  my 
appetite  gradually  came  back  and  I 
lost  my  craving  for  the  drug.  At  the 
end  of  a  month  I  felt  that  I  was  cured. 
When  my  friend  came  to  take  me  away 
he  was  overjoyed  at  my  deliverance. 
'Frank/  he  said,  'you  have  won.  Only 
one  man  in  ten  thousand  ever  does 
that.  But  you  should  have  been  in  a 
hospital.  If  society  cared  as  much  for 
its  citizens  as  it  does  for  its  domestic 
animals  it  would  provide  a  place  where 
dope  fiends  could  be  cured.' 

"I  dressed  in  a  new  suit  which  he 
had  brought.  Arm  in  arm  we  took  our 
way  toward  the  twinkling  lights  of  the 
city  and  to  his  home.  He  got  me  a 
job,  and  I  soon  repaid  my  debt.  His 
kindness  and  help  in  my  hour  of  trou- 
ble I  could  never  repay.  I  felt  like 
one  who  had  been  born  again,  as  the 
professing  Christians  say,  and  faced 
the  future  with  high  hopes.  But  hu- 
man resolves  are  as  unstable  as  chaff. 
I  had  over-estimated  my  strength;  it 
could  not  withstand  the  power  of  en- 
vironment. 

"I  had  been  keeping  clear  of  Fanny, 
but  one  day  met  her  in  the  street. 

"  'Frank/  she  exclaimed  with  glad 
surprise.  'My,  but  you're  looking 
fine.  Where  have  you  been?  Let's 
go  somewhere  where  we  can  talk/ 

"I  went  up  to  her  room.  Then  I  told 
her  that  I  had  quit  drugs  and  that  if 
she  expected  our  relations  to  continue 
she  would  have  to  quit  too. 

'  'Frank,  you  don't  mean  it,  do  you  ?' 
'  'Yes,  Fanny,  I  do.     Not  only  be- 
cause it  is  right,  but  because  it  is  a 


matter  of  self-preservation — you  are 
destroying  yourself  and  you  know 
what  the  end  will  be/ 

"She  was  silent  for  awhile,  then  got 
up  and  handed  me  her  outfit.  I  opened 
the  door  of  the  stove  and  threw  the 
accursed  things  into  the  flames.  To- 
gether we  watched  it  burn  and  re- 
solved to  start  anew.  She  would  have 
made  me  a  good  wife  had  she  been 
able  to  break  away  from  the  habit.  No 
doubt  we  would  have  got  something 
out  of  our  warped  and  twisted  lives  to- 
gether which  we  could  not  have  got 
alone,  if  we  had  kept  to  our  resolve. 

"Poor  girl;  she  did  her  best,  but 
the  habit  was  too  strong  and  she  soon 
got  back  into  the  old  ways. 

"I  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  a  social 
drink  occasionally,  which  was  the 
cause  of  my  undoing. 

"One  night  I  went  to  a  party  given 
by  a  friend.  There  was  liquor  on  the 
table  and  I  took  too  much.  Passing 
Fanny's  place  on  the  way  back,  I  went 
up  to  pay  her  a  visit.  When  I  entered 
the  room  I  found  an  outfit  on  a  chair. 
I  reproached  her  harshly  and  told  her 
that  I  was  done  with  her. 

"  'Don't  shut  me  out  of  your  life, 
Frank.  I  tried  to  quit.  I'll  swear  I 
did.  I  stood  it  for  a  week  until  I  was 
nearly  crazy,"  she  moaned. 

"A  cold  hand  seemed  to  grip  my 
heart.  How  well  I  knew  what  she  had 
suffered.  By  this  time  the  liquor  had 
made  me  sick,  and  I  lay  down  till  I  felt 
better.  I  fell  asleep  and  awoke  the 
next  morning  feeling  much  worse. 

"When  I  reached  the  street  I  took  a 
drink  of  liquor  to  brace  me  up,  and, 
finding  that  this  did  me  but  little  good, 
took  another  and  another.  I  kept  this 
up  for  a  week,  getting  more  restless 
and  cranky  every  day.  I  had  felt 
some  small  scars  on  my  breast  during 
the  week,  but  paid  but  little  attention 
to  them.  When  I  bathed  on  Saturday 
I  saw  that  they  were  punctures.  At 
once  the  reason  for  my  restlessness 
flashed  on  me.  Some  one  had  sfiven 
me  dope.  I  knew  at  once  that  Fanny 
had  done  it.  She  denied  it  at  first,  but 
finally  confessed. 

"'My  God,  girl;  what     have     you 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  WEST. 


409 


done?    Why  did  you  do  it?' 

"  'I  was  afraid  that  you  would  leave 
me/  she  sobbed. 

"There  was  a  long  silence,  broken 
by  her  sobs.  I  reviewed  the  suffering 
which  I  had  endured  for  nothing.  The 
memory  of  that  month  of  torture,  the 
realization  of  its  futility  and  the  shat- 
tering of  my  hopes,  was  maddening, 
and  again  I  fell  under  the  spell  of  the 
drug  demon. 

"I  was  soon  chained  to  my  idol  as 
firmly  as  ever,  and  became  more  reck- 
less. Finally,  I  got  a  letter  which 
brought  to  my  mind  a  realization  of  the 
depths  of  Fanny's  love  and  despair. 
It  read : 


;'  'My  dearest  Frank :  When  you  read 
this,  I,  who  have  done  you  so  much 
harm,  will  be  no  more.  Forgive  me 
for  ruining  your  life,  and  remember 
that  I  loved  you.  As  I  can  no  longer 
hold  your  love,  I  am  going  to  end  it 
all. 


'From  your  devoted 


'FANNY.' 


"She  kept  her  word,  and  her  body 
was  found  the  next  morning.  Since  then 
I  have  made  no  effort  to  reform;  I 
care  not  what  becomes  of  me.  My 
only  thought,  my  only  desire  is  to  get 
my  daily  drug." 


THE   AAKING   OF  THE  WEST 

It  seems  to  me  God  took  a  part  of  Eden 

And  purged  it  of  the  things  that  should  not  be; 

Then  moulded  on  it  gentle  hills  and  valleys, 
And  placed  it  by  His  own  most  wondrous  Sea ! 

He  builded  mountains,  traced  around  them  rivers : 
And  sowed  it  with  a  lavish  hand  in  grain : 

He  touched  it  with  the  energy  of  Ajax 
And  tinged  it  with  the  laziness  of  Spain. 

He  conjured  fruits  and  flowers  into  being, 
And  all  His  work  was  with  Perfection  blest: 

He  bathed  it  in  His  melted  Golden  Sunshine — 
And  so  God  made  this  Great  Pacific  West! 

KENNETH  A.  MILLICAN, 


The  Railroads  and  the  People 


By  Wm.  A.  Sproule,  President  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Company 


( This  address  was  delivered  recently 
at  the  annual  convention  of  the  Ameri- 
can Bankers'  Association,  Moore  Thea- 
tre, Seattle,  Wash.) 

THE  SUBJECT  assigned  me  by 
your  committee  is  "The  Rail- 
roads and  the  People."     I  like 
that  statement  of  the  subject, 
particularly  the  conjunction  "and,"  be- 
cause there  is  more  in  conjunction  be- 
tween the  railroads  and  the  people  than 
most  of  the  people  realize.    The  sub- 
ject would  not  be  correctly  stated  if 
it  had  been  entitled  "The  Railroads  or 
the  People,"  although  that  would  bet- 
ter fit  the  tongues  of  the  glib. 

A  recent  writer  about  Banks  and 
Railroads  said  that  the  great  American 
public  is  not  unfair;  that  in  fact  it  is 
eminently  fair  where  reasonably  well 
informed,  but  has  been  misled,  con- 
fused and  only  half-informed  at  the 
best.  He  said  that  both  parties  to  the 
controversy  are  at  fault:  the  govern- 
ment for  too  much  publicity  of  the 
wrong  kind,  the  railroads  for  too  little 
publicity  of  the  right  kind;  that  ele- 
mentary education  of  these  great  live, 
national  subjects,  education  that  can  be 
grasped  by  the  busy  man,  is  the  one 
great  need  in  the  present  juncture. 
Without  it,  the  questions  cannot  be 
settled  right,  and  no  question  is  ever 
settled  right  until  it  is  settled  with  jus- 
tice to  all  concerned. 

It  may  be  assumed,  accordingly,  that 
it  is  wise  for  us  to  address  ourselves 
to  the  duty  of  setting  before  the  peo- 
ple a  few  elementary  facts  and  princi- 
ples rather  than  spend  the  time  in  de- 
ploring unhappy  conditions.  In  the 
end  it  is  the  people  who  regulate  and 
rule  under  our  theory  of  government  in 
this  nation. 


The  primary  relation  of  the  railroads 
and  the  people  is  that  the  railroads  sell 
transportation  to  the  people.  To  many 
minds  this  relation  disposes  of  the 
subject.  The  common  notion  is  that 
the  people  have  nothing  more  to  do 
with  it  than  may  be  necessary  to  ob- 
tain their  transportation  at  the  lowest 
price.  If  the  buyers  of  bread  had  a 
voice  in  the  fixing  of  its  price,  bread 
would  be  cheaper  indeed.  If  the  buy- 
ers of  meat  had  a  voice  in  the  price  of 
meat,  it  would  not  be  long  before  the 
price  would  drop  so  low  that  the 
farmer  would  find  it  without  profit  to 
grow  livestock.  But  the  people  have 
indeed  a  voice  in  the  fixing  of  rates 
for  transportaton  and  the  buyer  of 
transportation  concerns  himself  little 
with  the  question  as  to  what  effect  the 
price  has  upon  the  railroads.  The 
price  is  seldom  low  enough  to  satisfy 
the  purchaser.  If  he  is  satisfied,  his 
satisfaction  with  any  given  transpor- 
tation rate  or  rate  condition  is  only 
temporary.  The  mere  lapse  of  time 
suffices  to  create  further  demands  that 
the  service  be  rendered  for  less  money. 
This  follows  the  impulse  of  self-in- 
terest. We  all  know  that  this  impulse 
is  not  always  safe  or  sound. 

There  is  an  epigram  that  in  a  king- 
dom of  the  blind  a  one-eyed  man  is 
king.  A  hard  task  before  the  rail- 
roads is  on  the  one  hand  to  correct  the 
impressions  which  serve  for  opinions 
among  people  blinded  by  what  ap- 
pears to  be  their  self-interest,  and  on 
the  other  hand  to  contend  against  that 
kind  of  one-eyed  domination  of  the 
railroads  which  keeps  one  eye  upon 
popular  opinion  without  an  eye  of  vis- 
ion for  what  is  necessary  to  bring  the 
greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number. 
Yet  there  is  a  conjunction  of  interest 


THE  RAILROADS  AND  THE  PEOPLE 


411 


which  so  far  has  hardly  been  per- 
ceived, but  which  is  sufficient  to  war- 
rant the  railroads  and  the  people  in 
taking  counsel  together  for  promotion 
of  the  common  safety. 

Let  us  see  why.  Allow  me  to  give 
you  a  few  figures,  here  and  there, 
which  I  will  state  in  round  numbers, 
because  they  serve  the  present  purpose 
without  needless  detail. 

There  are  in  the  United  States  over 
a  quarter  of  a  million  miles  of  steam 
railroad,  which  have  about  six  hun- 
dred thousand  shareholders  and  about 
a  million  and  three-quarters  of  em- 
ployees. This  figures  roughly  one 
shareholder  to  three  employees.  So 
little  is  thought  about  the  shareholder 
that  I  would  wish  to  say  more  about 
him,  and  I  take  this  opportunity  to 
tell  you  that  if  you  will  average  the 
railroad  shareholders  according  to  the 
railroad  mileage  they  will  stand  with- 
in seven  hundred  yards  of  each  other 
along  every  mile  of  steam  railroad  in 
the  nation.  This  means  that  through- 
out the  United  States  each  shareholder 
would  be  in  plain  sight  of  two  other 
stareholders  along  the  right  of  way, 
under  conditions  of  normal  vision.  Yet 
because  of  the  free  and  easy  way  in 
which  the  public  has  attached  to  the 
railroad  properties  the  names  of  well 
known  men,  the  people  generally  have 
a  vague  belief  that  the  railroads  are 
owned  by  a  very  few  very  wealthy 
people. 

The  facts  run  to  the  contrary.  The 
railroads  are  owned  by  a  great  army 
of  the  people;  people  who  have  put 
all  their  savings  into  railroad  shares 
until  six  hundred  thousand  of  them  are 
direct  owners.  It  requires  no  argument 
— unless  we  argue  the  obvious,  to  show 
that  if  the  savings  the  people  have  had 
thus  entered  into  railroad  ownership 
prove  to  be  secure,  and  the  returns  to 
them,  as  the  owners  of  the  money, 
prove  to  be  attractive,  there  will  be 
little  trouble  in  obtaining  from  them 
and  others  like  them  more  money  for 
improving  the  railroads  which  now 
serve  the  people,  and  for  extending 
them  into  sections  whose  development 
is  standing  still  because  of  the  lack 


of  railroad  service.  As  a  question  of 
public  policy  it  is  not  fundamentally 
sound  that  the  rights  of  these  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  saving  and  pru- 
dent people  should  be  given  as  serious 
consideration  as  any  other  factor  in 
the  railroad  question?  Is  it  not  obvi- 
ous that  there  should  be  accorded  to 
them  the  same  full  measure  of  solici- 
tude which  is  extended  to  other  hu- 
man factors  prominently  before  us  in 
all  industrial  discussions? 

But  there  are  still  other  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  the  people  who  have  a 
personal  interest  in  the  railroads. 
Those  whom  our  political  saviors  call 
the  common  people  (why  they  are 
called  common  I  do  not  know)  are 
the  chief  users  of  the  savings  banks  of 
this  nation.  These  savings  banks  have 
for  their  depositors  about  eleven  mil- 
lions of  the  people. 

The  depositors  rely  upon  the  abil- 
ity of  the  savings  banks  to  earn  with 
safety  and  certainty  enough  money  on 
their  deposits  to  pay  to  the  depositors 
a  satisfactory  rate  of  interest,  with 
such  a  banking  profit  added  as  will 
maintain  the  integrity  and  solvency  of 
the  bank  without  question. 

These  savings  banks  carry  between 
eight  hundred  and  nine  hundred  mil- 
lions of  dollars  in  railroad  bonds  and 
stocks. 

Upon  the  earnings  derived  from 
them,  these  savings  banks  properly, 
and  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of 
their  respective  States,  are  dependent 
for  an  important  part  of  their  income, 
and  their  income  is  for  the  benefit  of 
their  depositors. 

To  state  it  in  another  way,  if  these 
railroad  securities  owned  by  the  sav- 
ings banks  were  to  be  averaged  among 
the  depositors,  each  depositor  would 
have  an  interest  in  the  railroads  of  be- 
tween seventy-five  and  eighty  dollars. 

Every  depositor  is  thus  interested  in 
exercising  his  influence  to  prevent  de- 
cline in  the  value  of  these  securities 
which  safeguard  his  deposit. 

Is  it  not  plain  that  it  is  unfair,  and 
in  fact  dangerous  as  a  matter  of  pub- 
lic policy,  to  lose  sight  of  the  inter- 
ests of  these  hosts  of  the  people,  who 


412 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


have  a  personal  though  indirect  rela- 
tion to  the  railroads? 

Is  it  not  rather  the  function  of  the 
government  in  its  superior  knowledge 
to  the  watchful  of  their  interests  even 
when  they  themselves  may  but  dimly 
realize  their  own  interests  and  rights 
with  respect  to  those  things? 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  refer  to 
State  and  other  banks  and  trust  com- 
panies, whose  holdings  in  protection 
of  their  depositors  and  in  the  conduct 
of  their  business  count  up  to  several 
hundred  millions  of  dollars  more.  This 
aspect  of  the  subject  carries  up  into 
still  wider  fields. 

Among  the  large  holders  of  railroad 
securities  the  life  insurance  companies 
are  of  vast  importance  to  the  people. 
Nearly  every  man  of  family  carries 
insurance  of  some  sort.  It  is  the  duty 
of  the  insurance  companies  to  find 
profitable  investment  for  the  millions 
confided  to  them  by  their  policyholders 
- — and  what  form  of  investment  should 
be  more  secure  and  more  profitable 
than  that  which  appertains  to  the 
greatest  industry  in  this  country  or  in 
any  other,  the  American  railroads. 

In  the  United  States  there  are  over 
thirty-four  million  life  insurance  poli- 
cies. Every  holder  values  dearly  his 
insurance,  whether  for  himself  or 
those  dear  to  him  who  may  later  be 
dependent  upon  the  proceeds  of  that 
insurance,  and  so  every  policyholder 
is  interested  in  the  railroads  and  the 
stability  of  their  securities. 

When  the  efficiency  and  standards 
of  railroad  properties  are  impaired  and 
their  income  cut,  the  path  of  reduction 
leads  to  the  income  of  the  insurance 
companies,  and  it  is  upon  that  income 
the  insured  must  rely. 

Let  the  policyholder  bear  this  in 
mind. 

I  will  not  dwell  upon  fire,  accident 
or  other  insurance,  since  similar  rela- 
tions exist  with  respect  to  them. 

As  already  stated,  there  are  over  a 
quarter  of  a  million  miles  of  steam 
railroad  in  the  United  States,  with  a 
roster  of  about  one  and  three-quarter 
millions  of  men. 

This  is  a  vast  army,  even  in  these 


days  of  vast  armies  that  affect  us  with 
awe.  This  army  of  the  people  relies 
directly  upon  the  railroads  for  its  live- 
lihood. It  has  the  right  to  adequate 
consideration  by  the  government.  This 
consideration  it  has  only  in  part  re- 
ceived. 

There  has  been  no  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  working  hours  may  be  short- 
ened, conditions  of  labor  may  be  made 
ideal,  safety  may  be  attained,  crews 
may  be  stuffed  full  to  overflowing,  and 
yet  the  prosperity  of  this  army  of  the 
people  fail  simply  because  the  rail- 
roads lack  the  ability  to  earn  enough 
to  keep  the  man  at  work,  much  less  to 
expand,  improve  and  extend  the  lines 
and  the  service.  It  is  to  the  direct  in- 
terest of  the  employees  and  the  means 
dependent  directly  upon  them  for  their 
subsistence  that  the  railroads  have 
prosperous  earnings. 

It  is  to  the  further  interest  of  the 
employees  that  shareholders  also  have 
prosperous  returns,  for  the  employees 
cannot  safely  forget  that,  averaged 
over  the  American  system  of  railroads 
one  shareholder  means  three  em- 
ployees. To  maintain  and  operate  tne 
railroads  takes  not  the  shareholders 
alone  or  the  employees  alone;  it  re- 
quires them  both,  and  they  stand  as  to 
numbers  only  in  the  ratio  of  three  to 
one.  Theirs  is  in  reality  a  common  in- 
terest in  obtaining  adequate  earnings. 
It  is  not  exaggeration  to  say  that  dan- 
ger to  the  railroad  as  employer  cannot 
forever  or  for  long  be  averted  by  the 
employee.  No  matter  who  own  the 
railroads,  earnings  and  expenses,  or  in- 
come and  outgo,  are  two  blades  of  a 
shears. 

One  blade  cannot  for  long  cut  into 
gross  earnings  without  bringing  into 
'activity  the  other  blade  which  cuts  ex- 
penses. Of  expenses  over  forty-five 
fcer  cent  are  for  wages.  In  fact,  seventy 
per  cent  of  all  the  disbursements  of 
the  railroads,  even  when  taxes,  inter- 
est and  dividends  are  included,  are  for 
three  items  of  wages,  fuel  and  sup- 
plies. The  railroads  give  good  wages 
ungrudgingly.  The  contentions  are 
rarely  upon  the  wage  schedule  itself, 
but  upon  needless  and  embarrassing 


THE  RAILROADS  AND  THE  PEOPLE 


413 


and  complicated  incidentals.  What 
the  railroads  have  to  contend  and  urge, 
notwithstanding  their  desire  to  pay 
their  employees  well,  is  the  plain  tact 
that  the  railroads  have  not  adequate 
income  out  of  which  to  pay  these 
wages.  In  the  two  decades  from  1894 
to  1914  the  revenues  from  operations 
of  the  steam  railroads  increased  183 
per  cent,  but  expenses  of  operation  in- 
creased 200  per  cent.  The  number  of 
employees  increased  118  per  cent, 
while  the  compensation  of  employees 
increased  213  per  cent.  I  will  state  it 
in  another  way:  with  the  rates  of  1904 
as  a  unit,  the  railroads  would  have 
earned  about  one  hundred  and  sixty 
millions  of  dollars  more  than  the  earn- 
ings on  1914.  While  the  railroad  reve- 
nues were  thus  reduced  in  the  sum  of 
one  hundred  and  sixty  millions  of  dol- 
lars, the  compensation  paid  to  em- 
ployees was  in  the  same  time  increased 
by  something  over  one  hundred  mil- 
lions of  dollars. 

This  process  cannot  keep  up  indefi- 
nitely. As  an  economic  question  it  is 
impossible  that  the  compensation  of 
employees  can  continue  to  increase 
while  the  compensation  of  employer 
continues  to  decline.  There  are  in 
consequence  millions  of  people  con- 
sisting of  railroad  employees  and  those 
dependent  upon  them,  who  can  justly 
insist  that  the  interests  of  the  railroads 
be  nurtured  rather  than  ignored  in  the 
adjustment  of  transportation  questions. 
So  we  could  move  along  into  the  vari- 
ous phases  of  human  activity,  only  to 
find  that  the  railroads  and  the  people 
have  interests  in  common  to  an  extent 
the  people  do  not  yet  realize,  but  when 
they  do  realize  it  they  will  wake  up 
in  their  might  to  the  fact  that  the  rail- 
roads' prosperity  is  their  prosperity. 
The  people  will  rise  to  acknowledge 
that  it  is  the  function  of  the  govern- 
ment to  be  watchful  of  their  interests 
as  a  whole,  and  then  the  one-eyed  man 
no  longer  can  be  king.  The  people  will 
demand  breadth  and  scope  and  con- 
structive purpose,  they  will  demand 
that  both  sides  and  all  sides  of  the 
railroad  question  be  given  equal  and 
unprejudiced  consideration. 


They  will  insist,  in  the  interests  of 
all  the  people  that  the  railroads  be 
maintained  in  a  condition  of  physical 
and  financial  strength,  and  that  they 
be  released  from  "the  tyranny  of  pre- 
judice," and  relieved  from  the  paraly- 
sis of  uncertainty.  Whether  it  be  the 
shareholder,  the  bank,  depositor,  the 
holder  of  insurance  policies,  the  rail- 
road employees  and  their  people,  or 
the  public  generally,  all  will  do  well 
to  remember  that  amid  the  loose  and 
casual  talk  about  watered  stock,  over- 
capitalization, it  is  no  longer  seriously 
contended  that  the  railroad  properties 
of  the  United  States  are  worth  less 
than  the  amount  of  their  capital.  Yet 
the  earning  power  of  the  railroads  up- 
on the  capital  employed  has  so  de- 
clined that  at  the  present  time  out  of 
every  hundred  dollars  of  gross  earn- 
ings which  comes  into  the  treasury, 
fourteen  dollars  has  to  be  set  aside  to 
pay  interest  upon  bonds,  although  the 
bonds  bear  but  a  moderate  rate  of  in- 
terest. These  bonds  were  taken  up  on 
faith  in  the  earning  power  of  the  prop- 
erties and  were  issued  in  compliance 
with  the  laws  of  the  land.  They  are 
held  in  this  country  and  abroad,  and 
this  young  and  great  nation  can  well 
see  to  it  that  the  earning  power  of  its 
railroad  activities  is  maintained.  Es- 
pecially is  this  so  since  it  is  known 
throughout  the  world  that  the  railroads 
have  been  under  governmental  scru- 
tiny and  control  for  more  than  a  gen- 
eration. It  is  true  that  railroad  finan- 
cial administration  may  be  criticised  in 
spots,  and  just  criticism  is  wise,  but 
they  are  like  certain  dramatic  points 
in  a  picture;  they  catch  the  attention, 
but  they  do  not  tell  the  story.  The 
people,  instead,  may  be  invited  to  sur- 
vey the  whole  history  of  American 
railroading,  from  its  pioneer  begin- 
nings, through  unmapped  difficulties 
and  through  periods  of  crisis  when 
great  administrators  pledged  their  per- 
sonal fortunes  to  save  the  properties, 
down  to  the  present  moment,  and  in  a 
wide  survey  of  fifty  years  it  will  be 
acknowledged  that  as  a  bank  may  fail 
without  imperiling  the  banking  sys- 
tem, so  the  long  ordeal  through  which 


414 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  American  railroads  have  passed 
still  finds  the  moral  basis  of  railroad 
management  upon  a  very  high  plane  in 
which  the  American  people  may  take 
becoming  pride.  In  1904  these  rail- 
roads killed  one  passenger  in  carrying 
eighty-one  millions  the  equivalent  of 
one  mile.  Ten  years  after,  in  1914,  but 
one  passenger  was  killed  in  carrying 
four  hundred  and  ninety-five  millions 
of  people  the  equivalent  of  one  mile, 
or  the  whole  population  of  the  nation 
five  miles.  In  the  same  year,  1914, 
thirty-five  thousand  millions  of  pas- 
sengers and  two  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  thousand  millions  of  tons  of 
freight  were  carried  the  equivalent  of 
one  mile,  and  at  a  cost  per  passenger 
and  per  ton  of  freight  which  compares 
more  than  favorably  with  the  great 
empires  of  the  world.  I  have  purposely 
stated  in  such  terms  figures  which  are 
so  large  as  almost  to  bewilder. 

There  is  just  one  thing  which  the 
railroads  and  the  people  cannot  es- 
cape in  any  event,  namely — taxes. 
Railroad  taxes  have  risen  from  less 
than  sixty  two  millions  of  dollars  in 
1904  to  one  hundred  and  forty  million 
in  1914.  That  is,  they  have  risen  127 
per  cent  in  this  ten  year  period,  until 
now  out  of  each  one  hundred  dollars 
the  railroads  collect  they  have  to  pay 
in  taxes  four  dollars  and  sixty  cents. 
This  means  that  of  their  net  income, 
after  paying  their  operating  expenses 
only,  the  railroads  have  to  pay  in  taxes 
sixteen  dollars  out  of  every  hundred, 
and  that  is  before  paying  any  interest 
on  money  borrowed  or  a  dividend  to 
any  shareholder.  The  railroads  ex- 
pect to  pay  their  share  of  the  taxes, 
but  the  variety  and  extent  of  taxes 
paid  by  the  railroads  is  of  interest  to 
the  people  simply  in  this,  that  the  in- 
creasing burdens  of  railroad  taxation, 
now  aggregating  over  one  hundred  and 
forty  millions  of  dollars,  have  to  be 
met  by  the  railroads  out  of  their  earn- 
ings. Consequently  it  is  in  the  public 
interest  that  the  margin  between  oper- 
ating income  and  operating  expenses 
be  wide  enough  to  enable  just  taxes  to 
be  paid  and  just  compensation  given 
to  employees,  without  impairing  the 


physical  property  and  equipment 
which  should  be  maintained  at  a  high 
standard  of  excellence.  As  matters 
stand,  a  comparison  of  the  ten  year 
interval,  1904  with  1914,  shows  that 
operating  revenues  of  the  railroads  in- 
creased fifty-four  per  cent,  while  taxes 
and  operating  expenses  which  do  not 
include  wages  increased  sixty-six  per 
cent.  The  net  revenue  remaining  to 
pay  wages  and  for  other  purposes  in- 
creased but  forty-nine  per  cent.  Of 
this  forty-nine  per  cent,  which  repre- 
sents an  increase  of  six  hundred  and 
eighty-seven  millions  of  dollars,  sixty- 
eight  per  cent  or  five  hundred  and 
fifty-five  millions  of  dollars,  sixty- 
eight  per  cent  or  five  hundred  and 
fifty-five  millions  was  the  increased 
expenditure  for  wages,  although  the 
number  of  employees  increased  only 
thirty-one  per  cent,  and  the  mileage 
of  the  railroads  operated  increased  less 
than  seventeen  per  cent. 

Youth  will  be  served.  A  young  na- 
tion and  vigorous  country  demand  de- 
velopment. Investment  precedes  con- 
struction, and  construction  precedes  de- 
velopment. The  money  can  be  had  if 
the  people  who  own  the  money  believe 
the  investment  safe  and  the  returns  de- 
sirable. If  assured  of  this,  railroads 
will  be  built.  The  people  with  savings 
to  invest  judge  by  the  treatment  ac- 
corded the  savings  already  invested. 
An  adequate  return  to  the  share- 
holder who  puts  his  money  in  the  rail- 
road business  should  be  assured  him. 
He  should  have  the  greater  assurance, 
because,  being  private  money  devoted 
to  public  service,  that  service  is  regu- 
lated by  government  itself,  and  gov- 
ernment thereby  can  fairly  be  held 
sponsor  for  adequate  returns.  We 
must  come  to  a  point  or  basis  at  which 
'railroad  rates  shall  be  deemed  fair 
'and  not  subject  to  the  attack  of  any 
one  who  chooses.  The  no-bottom  basis 
of  the  present  is  false  in  principle  and 
dangerous  in  practice.  Sooner  or  later 
the  agencies  of  government  will  have 
to  stand  behind  the  stability  of  rail- 
road revenues,  not  for  the  benefit  of 
the  railroads  merely,  but  in  the  pub- 
lic interest. 


THE  RAILROADS  AND  THE  PEOPLE 


415 


In  this  nation  the  people  are  the 
source  of  all  power.  The  popular  will 
is,  and  will  be,  reflected  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  railroads  at  the  hands  of 
government.  At  times  that  popular 
will  has  amounted  to  willfulness,  as  in 
the  treatment  of  a  wayward  child,  but 
the  railroads  were  young  then,  and 
parental  regulation  was  inexperienced. 
We  have  all  grown  older  together.  Ex- 
perience is  the  only  teacher.  We  are 
learning  that  the  greatest  industry  in 
this  nation,  affecting  directly  millions 
of  employees  and  shareholders  and  af- 
fecting indirectly  many  millions  more 
of  security  holders  and  those  depend- 
ent upon  the  credit  and  income  those 
securities  afford,  cannot  be  affected  in- 
juriously and  let  the  rest  of  the  busi- 
ness of  the  country  go  unscathed. 

When  to  the  condition  of  the  present 
in  the  railroad  business,  involving  so 
many  millions  of  men  and  money,  are 
added  the  uncertainties  of  the  future; 
when  to  the  cumulative  force  and  effect 
of  successive  reductions,  extending 
throughout  several  decades,  there  are 
added  the  uncertainties  of  reductions, 
none  know  how  many  or  how  great, 
which  may  come  this  year,  next  year 
or  the  year  succeeding,  is  it  any  mar- 


vel that  the  business  of  the  nation  is 
repressed  and  that  all  business  men 
stand  in  suspense  and  deep  concern  as 
to  what  the  future  holds  for  them. 

It  is  time  for  the  railroads  and  the 
people  to  take  counsel  together  for  the 
uncertainty  which  touched  the  rail- 
roads first  has  now  reached  to  the 
people. 

This  country  needs  prosperity  more 
than  it  needs  anything  else.  No  busi- 
ness prospers  by  repression.  The  ef- 
fects and  influences  of  government 
should  be  stimulating  or  they  are  a 
failure.  The  American  people  pros- 
per together.  When  we  prosper  we 
are  all  prosperous.  The  pursuit  of 
life,  liberty  and  happiness  has  pros- 
perity for  its  reward,  the  railroads  and 
the  people  in  conjunction  and  alike. 

The  common  sense  of  the  people  can 
be  relied  upon  to  bring  about  the  con- 
ditions that  make  prosperity.  They 
are  merely  looking  for  light.  When 
they  find  it  we  shall  have  enlightened 
prosperity,  all  the  brighter  for  the 
dark  uncertainties  through  which  we 
have  been  passing.  There  is  no  room 
for  pessimism.  The  country  is  all 
right  and  the  people  are  all  right.  We 
are  in  their  hands. 


A  Reminiscence   of  North   Flatte 


As  Told  by  an  "Old-Timer" 


By  Grace  A.  Seabeck 


NEBRASKY  was  a  wild  place 
about  twenty-five  years  ago.  I 
was  living  back  in  old  North 
Platte  in  them  days,  and  I 
could  tell  yu,  stranger,  tales  of  more'n 
one  goin's-on  that  would  shock  yu, 
traveled  and  all  as  yu  are.  North 
Platt's  Bill  Cody's  home  town,  yu 
know. 

As  a  usual  thing,  a  feller  could  make 
a  fair  livin'  from  his  crops  and  a  few 
head  of  cattle  turned  out  on  the  range. 
About  the  time  of  which  I'm  tellin' 
yu,  though,  the  crops  for  several  sea- 
sons had  been  burned  up — no  rain,  yu 
understand — and  the  farmers  became 
quite  poor,  with  nothin'  to  tide  'em 
through  the  winter. 

I  remember  one  year  they  sent  into 
the  town  some  aid-coal,  which  was 
given  out  by  the  half-ton  to  those  who 
made  application  for  it  and  were 
needy.  I  was  down  on  my  luck  and 
poor,  but,  by  time,  I  was  proud,  and 
I'd  've  froze  before  I'd  've  asked  for 
charity.  There  were  some  others  in 
the  town  that  felt  the  same  way  about 
it. 

One  night,  seven  or  eight  men  stole 
a  load  of  coal  from  the  railroad  yards. 
That  same  night  my  nephew  and  I 
hitched  up  and  got  a  load  also.  The 
night  watchman  made  it  his  business 
to  keep  out  of  the  way  as  far  as  I 
was  concerned.  But  every  man  of  the 
other  outfit  was  caught,  arrested  and 
put  on  trial. 

The  next  day  the  Sheriff,  a  friend  of 
mine — name  was  Smith — see  the  coal 
back  of  my  house.  He  crossed  the 
street  and  come  up  to  me.  I  waited 
for  him  to  say  the  first  word. 


"Teller,  where's  yu  get  that  coal?" 

S'l:  "I  stole  it." 

Smith  laughed,  looked  around  to  see 
if  any  one  was  within  earshot,  then 
said :  "Better  let  me  swear  out  a  war- 
rant fer  yu,  and  yu  go  on  trial.  They'll 
probably  fine  yu  five  dollars  and  then 
yu  can  get  another  load." 

I  agreed,  and  went  for  trial.  When 
I  appeared  in  the  court  room,  Beck- 
with  said  to  me :  "Hello,  Teller,  what 
yu  doin'  here?" 

S'l :  "There's  a  warrant  out  fer  me." 

"Nothin'  on  the  books." 

"Well,  sir,  I  stole  a  load  of  coal.  I'm 
here  fer  trial." 

Beckwith  looked  at  me  severely,  al- 
though I  could  see  his  eyes  twinklin'. 
Then  he  said :  "Teller,  you'e  an  o'nery 
citizen.  You  hain't  got  no  public- 
spirit  whatever!"  Then  he  laughed 
outright.  "Stole  it,  eh?  Well,  that's 
more'n  these  other  fellers'll  admit. 
Anybody  helpin'  yu?" 

"No,  sir!"  My  nephew  helped  me 
load  it,  but  I  didn't  see  no  need  to  tell 
about  it.  Don't  look  so  shocked, 
friend — we  Westerners  ain't  always 
truthful  when  it  comes  to  the  matter 
of  pardners,  and  I  reckon  there's  times 
when  the  questioners  ain't  expectin'  us 
to  be  truthful,  neither. 

"Well,  I'll  fine  yu  five  dolalrs.  Don't 
know  as  I  blame  yu.  Guess  I'd  rather 
steal  aid-coal  myself  as  beg  it." 

Money  was  scurce,  so  I  worked  out 
the  fine.  That  same  night,  I  went  up 
to  the  yards  and  told  the  watchman  I 
was  intendin'  to  get  another  load  of 
coal.  He  was  excited,  and  said  to  me 
in  a  hoarse  whisper : 

"Keep  away  from     here     to-night, 


THE  SHADOW 


417 


Teller.  They're  watching  me  more'n 
they  are  yu!" 

"Sorry,  sir,  but  I  came  for  coal,  and 
I'm  goin'  to  get  a  load  before  I  leave 
to-night!" 

He  thought  a  moment,  and  then  he 
said: 

"Well,  come  back  about  two  o'clock 
to-night  and  get  a  load  from  the  north 
end.  The  road'll  be  clear  by  that 
time."  And  I  did. 

That  was  a  hard  winter.  One  night, 
in  a  driving  blizzard,  seven  of  us, 
masked,  flagged  a  train,  made  the 


engineer  back  the  train  onto  a  sidin' 
and  unloaded  the  coal.  Had  to — we 
were  freezin'. 

Stranger,  that's  a  queer  yarn  to  ex- 
pect you  to  approve  of.  Yu  don't  un- 
derstand times  like  them.  But  I 
reckon  that  if  you  ever  live  through  a 
grasshopper  plague  lastin'  several  sea- 
sons and  each  time  eatin'  the  fields 
bare,  or  droughts  that  burn  everythin' 
up  before  the  summer's  over,  same  as 
I  have,  yu'll  realize  how  'tis  a  chap'll 
steal  aid-coal  to  keep  his  family  from 
freezin'." 


THE    SHADOW 


Across  the  dial  a  shadow  moves 

A  ghostly  finger,  and  I  know 
That  thus  it  crept  in  Babylon, 

In  Grecian  gardens  long  ago. 

A  childish  palm  held  in  the  sun — 

And  lo!  the  shadow  is  no  more, 
And  yet  it  moves  unseen  around, 

Tracing  the  moments  as  before. 

The  marble  fanes  and  kingly  thrones 

Are  shadows,  not  the  finger  there, 
Counting  away  the  hours  that  go 

Forever  down  Time's  thoroughfare. 

So  silently  does  Justice  move, 

Though  Wrong's  dark  clouds  obscure  the  skies; 
So  Truth  is  present,  though  afar 

From  earth  and  right  men  say  she  flies. 

Across  the  years  a  Shadow  creeps, 

Though  none  at  times  its  motion  sees; 
It  marks  the  passing  of  the  kings — 

The  burdens  of  the  centuries! 

ARTHUR  WALLACE  PEACH. 


Ayths   of   Aonterey 


By  Grace  /AacFarland 


Legends  of  Junipero  Serra 


The  seeker  after  legends  of  Padre  Junipero  Serra  and  Mission  San  Carlos 
Borromeo  del  Carmelo  de  Monterey,  goes  in  vain  to  the  half-deserted  Mis- 
sion. In  a  very  modern,  flower-surrounded  cottage,  San  Carlos'  first  custo- 
dian and  prince  of  story  tellers  will  recount  the  quaint  old  tales  by  the 
hour.  Many  of  them  he  has  heard  from  the  lips  of  neophytes  who  were 
taught  by  Padre  Serra  himself.  Through  them  all,  from  saddest  to  fun- 
niest, runs  his  own  great  love  for  the  memory  of  Padre  Serra  and  the  Mis- 
sion where  he  labored  so  long  and  faithfully. 


1 — The  Cross  of  Fire 

AN  INDIAN  woman,  a  hundred 
years  old,  or  more,  when  she 
died,   always  maintained  that 
Portola  and  his  party  were  not 
the  first  to  plant  a  cross  on  the  Bay  of 
Monterey. 

Long  years  before,  in  the  time  of 
her  grandfather's  father,  white  men, 
dressed  in  strange  costumes,  three  of 
them  with  bare  feet  like  the  Indians, 
came  to  their  shores  in  odd  vessels 
similar  to  that  in  which  Padre  Serra 
came. 

The  Indians  were  frightened,  for 
these  men  spoke  a  language  they  could 
not  understand,  and  dealt  death  to  the 
deer  and  other  game  from  afar,  with- 
out hurling  spear  or  stone  or  knife. 
While  the  white  men  tarried,  no  Indian 
ventured  along  the  open  beach.  They 
crouched  among  the  rocks  to  watch 
or  hid  amid  the  pines  on  the  hills  back 
from  the  coast. 

One  day  the  barefooted  white  men 
put  up  a  big  wooden  cross  on  the  shore. 
All  the  white  men  knelt  before  it, 
making  strange  signs  and  sounds,  then 
they  sailed  away. 

It  seemed  to  the  superstitious  watch- 


ers that  a  new  God  had  been  left  on 
the  pine-clad  ensenada  (bay.)  Weeks 
passed  and  they  dared  not  go  near  it. 
The  Sakone  (a  Carmel  valley  tribe) 
chief's  son  became  very  ill.  Medicine 
men  and  witches  of  the  tribe  could  not 
help  him. 

At  last  they  took  him  to  the  beach, 
dug  a  shallow  pit,  placed  the  sick  man 
in  it,  laid  food  and  water  beside  him, 
muttered  a  few  hasty  incantations,  and 
left.  Such  was  the  ancient  custom 
of  the  Coast  Indians. 

That  night  the  whole  bay  was  light 
as  midday.  Trembling,  they  crept  out 
from  their  tule  huts,  then  terrified, 
stole  back  in  again.  The  Wooden 
Cross  was  on  fire,  whiter  and  clearer 
than  sunshine,  yet  softer  than  moon- 
light, it  illumined  the  shore  for  miles 
around.  All  night  long,  in  fear,  they 
watched  it.  Before  daylight  it  faded, 
seeming  once  more  merely  a  Wooden 
Cross. 

When  the  squaws  were  building  fires 
to  cook  their  acorn  cakes  and  fish  for 
the  morning  meal,  a  great  shout  went 
up  from  the  men  of  the  Sakones.  Along 
the  dusty  road  walked  the  Chief's  son, 
whom  they  had  left  on  the  beach  to 
die. 


MYTHS  OF  MONTEREY 


419 


Seeing  the  magic  power  of  the  cross 
that  could  become  light,  he  had 
crawled  to  it,  and  kneeling  at  its  foot, 
had  prayed  for  help  to  the  God  of  the 
Wooden  Cross.  He  was  cured. 

For  many  moons  and  many  seasons 
all  the  tribe  of  Sakone  and  the  neigh- 
boring tribes  brought  daily  gifts  to  the 
new  God,  and  worshiped  him  in  their 
own  wild  fashion.  The  sick  were 
healed,  there  were  no  wars,  the  tribes 
multiplied  and  grew  rich. 

One  winter  a  storm  came  and 
washed  the  Wooden  Cross  far  out  to 
sea  beyond  the  reach  of  all.  Their 
prayers  to  bring  it  back  availed  noth- 
ing. Their  God,  Giver  of  Light,  was 
gone.  Never  since  that  day  has  the 
tribe  of  Sakone  nor  their  neighbors  on 
Monterey  Bay  prospered,  for  they 
could  never  find  the  lost  God  of  the 
Wooden  Cross. 

Such  was  the  legend  they  told  Padre 
Serra  when  he  came,  bringing  Him 
back  to  the  heathen  who  had  so  long 
desired  His  return.  (This  legendary 
lighting  of  the  cross  is  explained  by 
the  phosphorus  which  had  formed  on 
it,  making  it  appear  light.  Phosphorus 
is  still  found  in  large  quantities  around 
Monterey  Bay.) 

2 — Padre  Serra's  Cure 

For  several  years  before  Padre 
Serra  began  the  long  journey  from 
San  Bias,  Mexico,  to  found  the  mis- 
sions in  California,  he  had  been  af- 
flicted by  an  incurable  sore  on  his  leg. 
The  long  marches  made  it  exceedingly 
painful.  Finally  the  suffering  became 
so  severe  as  to  prevent  his  walking. 
Some  one  suggested  making  a  litter 
and  carrying  him.  He  refused. 

"So,"  says  his  friend,  Padre  Palou, 
"he  prayed  to  God  fervently  for  help, 
and  calling  Juan  A.  Coronel,  a  mule 
driver,  said,  'My  son,  can  you  find 
some  remedy  for  my  sore  leg?' 

"  'What  remedy  can  I  have?'  re- 
plied Coronel.  T  am  only  a  mule- 
driver  and  can  only  cure  the  wounds 
of  my  beasts.' 

"  'Well,  son,'  said  the  Father,  'im- 
agine that  I  am  one  of  these  beasts 


and  this  is  one  of  their  wounds ;  apply 
the  same  remedy.' 

"The  mule  driver  said,  smiling,  'I 
will  do  so,  Father,  to  please  you.'  Tak- 
ing some  suet,  he  mixed  it  with  herbs, 
making  a  kind  of  plaster  or  poultice, 
which  was  applied  according  to  direc- 
tions. God  rewarded  the  humility  of 
His  servant  and  the  leg  got  better." 

3 — An  Unseen  Bell  Ringer 

Fifteen  years  the  great  Padre  had 
toiled  and  suffered  in  his  beloved  Cali- 
fornia, and  now,  after  a  last  visit  to 
all  the  missions,  he  had  come  back  to 
his  own  San  Carlos  del  Carmelo.  His 
old  limbs  were  weary,  and  body  al- 
most worn  out,  his  head  and  daunt- 
less heart  still  clamored  to  go  on  to 
save  more  heathen  souls. 

One  night  on  his  hard  bed  of  straw 
he  dreamed  that  in  a  few  days  he 
would  be  called  home. 

Quietly  as  he  might  have  requested 
the  making  of  a  new  chair,  he  gave 
directions,  next  morning,  to  the  bewil- 
dered neophytes  (Indian  converts)  for 
making  his  coffin.  "That  others  may 
not  be  troubled  on  my  account  when 
I  am  dead,"  he  told  his  lifelong  friend, 
Padre  Palou. 

When  the  coffin  was  completed,  Fra 
Serra  made  his  last  confession  to  Frau 
Palou,  said  his  last  Mass  and  sang  his 
last  "Resurexit,"  went  alone  to  his 
chamber  and  fell  asleep.  With  the 
first  rays  of  light  falling  across  the 
eastern  hill,  priests  and  neophytes 
were  startled  by  the  tolling  of  the  mis- 
sion bells.  All  hurried  to  the  church. 
No  one  was  in  the  belfry,  not  even  a 
passing  bird.  Still  those  six  bells 
tolled.  The  sombre  strains  echoed 
even  to  Monterey,  where  the  soldiers 
were  holding  a  merry  fandango.  Hear- 
ing the  bells,  they  stopped  their  danc- 
ing; gambling,  wine  drinking  and  love 
making  and  rode  to  Mission  San 
Carlos. 

"The  Saints  themselves  tolled  the 
bells,"  they  whispered  reverently,  "for 
in  the  night  our  dear  Padre  Serra 
died."  (It  is  supposed  that  the  wind, 
blowing  from  a  certain  direction,  set 


420 


IN  QUIET  VALES 


the  bells  in  motion.  Their  slow  ring- 
ing resembled  the  regular  tolling  of  a 
funeral.) 

4 — Sena's  Grave 

Among  the  descendants  of  some 
early  Montereyans  there  is  a  legend 
about  the  grave  of  Junipero  Serra. 

After  he  had  been  buried,  according 
to  his  own  wish,  behind  the  altar  rail 
of  Mission  San  Carlos,  word  of  his 
death  was  sent  to  Mexico.  Thence,  in 
course  of  time,  a  report  was  forwarded 
to  the  King  and  the  Church  authorities 
in  Spain. 

There  were  a  few  living  relatives  of 
Padre  Serra  in  Spain.  Some  of  them, 
though  not  of  the  highest  rank  at  court, 
were  somewhat  rich  and  influential.  It 


seemed  a  terrible  thing  for  their  kins- 
man to  be  buried  in  a  distant  land, 
where  heathen  savages  might  at  any 
moment  plunder  his  grave. 

Through  much  scheming  and  plan- 
ning, one  of  them  came  to  Mexico,  and 
from  there  took  passage  on  the  first 
boat  sailing  for  Monterey.  With  a 
handful  of  bribed  sailors  he  went  to 
San  Carlos  at  night,  stole  the  body  of 
Junipero  Serra  from  its  grave ;  put  the 
Padre's  vestments  on  the  dead  body  of 
a  criminal  they  had  brought  with  them, 
put  this  body  in  the  grave,  covered  it 
up  again  and  went  away  unnoticed. 

So  runs  the  legend,  not  in  San  Car- 
los del  Carmelo,  but  in  the  family 
cemetery  in  far  away  Mallorca,  Spain, 
Padre  Serra  lies  buried. 

(To  be  continued] 


IN    QUIET    VALES 

In  quiet  vales  the  wild  flowers  dwell  apart, 

The  faithful  keepers  of  the  unknown  way, 

With  flags  and  pennons  to  bedeck  the  day. 
Their  glowing  ranks  assail  the  gladdened  heart 
To  capture  it,  a  tribute  to  such  art; 

In  flawless  forms  voluminously  gay 

They  bring  to  earth  the  pageant  of  May 
While  bloom  and  color  into  beauty  start. 

Does  Man  or  Nature  most  to  Heav'n  relate  ? 

As  lift  the  blossoms  in  the  glitt'ring  dew, 
In  quiet  vales  the  thoughts  of  mystery  wait ; 
For  man  yet  errs,  the  subject  of  his  fate, 

While  tiny  seeds  are  marvelously  true 

And  rise  in  perfect  type  beneath  the  blue. 

LILLIAN  H.  S.  BAILEY, 


Ready  for  a  ride  on  the  trails. 


A  Woman's   Tramping  Trip  Through 
:     jf|  Yosemite 

By  /Aarion  Randall  Parsons,  Treasurer  of  Sierra  Club 


IN  JUNE,  Yosemite  Valley  is  at  the 
•very  height  of  its  beauty.    The  de- 
ciduous trees  are     in     new     leaf, 
maples  and  dogwood  in  tenderest, 
green,  oaks  tipped  with  pastel  shades 
of  pink  and  red  in  prophecy  of  their 
autumn  glory,  azaleas  in  full  bloom, 
and  the  meadows  a  rippling  mass  of 
exquisite  grass  brightened  with  flow- 
ers.   In  June,  too,  the  rivers  are  at  their 
highest  and  the  falls  in  wildest  beauty, 
while  the  fast  melting  snow  still  lies 
deep  in  the  upper  forests  and  on  the 
higher  mountain  slopes. 

After  a  week  or  more  in  the  valley, 
following  the  better-known  trails,  get- 
ting muscles  in  condition  again  after 


city-bound  days,  we  were  anxious  to 
see  what  spring  was  like  in  the  snowy 
upper  country.  Accordingly,  as  pack 
animals  were  not  to  be  obtained  for 
love  or  money,  we  prepared  to  make 
pack  animals  of  ourselves,  and  knap- 
sack over  to  Mount  Clark  (11,509 
feet)  on  the  southwestern  boundary  of 
the  park,  the  most  prominent  peak  of 
the  Merced  group. 

There  were  four  of  us  in  the  party, 
two  men  and  two  women,  and  we 
planned  to  be  out  two  nights  with  a 
comfortable  margin  of  provisions  for 
a  third  night,  if  necessary.  Bacon, 
hardtack,  and  that  blessing  to  moun- 
taineers, soup,  made  up  the  bulk  of  our 
5 


Campers  on  a  flat  located  near  the  Wawona  entrance  to  Yosemite. 


commissary,  re-enforce^,  however,  by 
raisins,  chocolate,  dried  fruit,  beans, 
spaghetti  and  cheese.  Our  personal 
outfits,  of  course,  were  reduced  to 
bare  essentials.  A  sleeping  bag,  weigh- 
ing about  eight  pounds,  a  sweater,  a 
change  of  hose,  toothbrush,  hairbrush, 
towel,  a  box  of  matches,  and  a  tiny 
roll  of  adhesive  tape  would  about 
complete  the  list.  Tin  buckets,  a  small 
frying  pan  and  a  tin  cup  and  spoon 
apiece  comprised  the  camp  equip- 
ment. 

We  women  who  "knapsack"  pride 
ourselves  on  being  able  to  do  our  share 
—so  while  we  do  not  pretend  to  carry 
such  heavy  packs  as  the  men,  we  carry 
our  own  outfits  and  a  part,  at  least,  of 
the  general  commissary  supplies. 
Short-skirted,  flannel-shirted,  with  hob 
nailed  boots  to  the  knee  and  "shocking 
bad  hats,"  we  are  as  easy  in  our  own 
clothing  and  as  regardless  of  wind  or 
weather  as  the  men  themselves. 


It  was  rather  hard  for  us  to  nerve 
ourselves  to  meet  the  stares  and  quer- 
ies of  the  tourists  we  met  along  the 
valley  trail  over  which  our  trip  must 
begin.  All  the  way  up  to  Little  Yo- 
semite we  were  beset  with  question: 
Where  were  we  going  ?  Didn't  we  find 
it  very  hard  work?  Wouldn't  we  get 
lost?  Weren't  we  afraid  of  getting 
sunburned  ?  We  had  an  inclination  to 
slink  shamefacedly  by  these  proper- 
looking  folk. 

In  Little  Yosemite  we  made  a  camp 
beside  the  smooth-flowing  Merced,  and 
after  lunch  set  out  on  a  ramble  up  to- 
ward the  base  of  Half  Dome.  Up 
the  Cloud's  Rest  trail  we  climbed,  and 
then  pushed  through  the  forest  to  the 
brink  of  Tenaya  Canyon,  a  gorge  al- 
most as  deep  as  Yosemite  Valley  itself 
— inaccessible  to  all  but  the  hardiest 
mountaineers.  The  great  chasm,  more 
than  2,000  feet  deep,  lay  at  our  feet. 
Half  Dome  towered  majestically 


Camps  of  U.  S.  soldiers  patroling  the  valley.     Yosemite  is  located  in  large 
region  reserved  as  a  National  Park 


Packers  preparing  for  a  trip  on  the  trails. 


against  the  sky,  and  still  farther  we 
could  see  the  shadowed  cliffs  of  El 
Capitan  and  the  Cathedral  Rocks. 

My  companion  on  this  ramble 
elected  to  climb  Cloud's  Rest  before 
returning  to  camp,  so  I  made  my  way 
back  to  Little  Yosemite  alone.  Near 
the  foot  of  the  trail,  in  a  glorious  little 
mountain  meadow,  I  surprised  a  beau- 
tiful buck,  the  largest  I  have  ever  seen 
in  the  Sierra.  His  horns  were  in  vel- 
vet, and  he  stood  so  near  me  that  I 
could  see  the  quick,  nervous  move- 
ment of  his  nostrils  as  he  watched  me. 
For  two  or  three  minutes  we  stood 
there  regarding  one  another.  Then, 
with  a  nonchalant  wag  of  his  funny 
little  tail,  he  turned  and  made  off 
through  the  woods,  as  unhurriedly  and 
indifferent  as  if  I,  too,  had  been  a 
woodland  creature.  Perhaps  I  looked 
it.  After  his  departure  I  examined 
the  meadow  more  closely.  It  was  a 
little  gem  of  its  kind,  sloping  from  a 
ledge  of  granite  that  was  covered  with 


gnarled  and  crooked  junipers.  At  the 
first  glimpse  I  thought  it  an  unbroken 
sheet  of  the  tiniest  blossoms  of  yellow 
mimulus,  but,  on  kneeling  down,  11 
species  of  flowers  revealed  themselves, 
all  the  daintiest  and  most  delicate  of 
their  kind — yellow  violets,  white  for- 
get-me-nots, gilias,  white  saxifrage, 
and  the  smallest  pink  pea  I  have  ever 
seen. 

A  knapsacker's  camp  is  a  simple  af- 
fair— a  bed  of  pine  needles,  a  few 
stones  rolled  together  to  make  a  fire- 
place, a  pile  of  firewood  gathered  to- 
gether; and  there  is  home.  By  five 
o'clock  next  morning  we  were  astir.  As 
our  energetic  leader  busied  himself 
with  the  breakfast  fire,  a  doe  came  out 
of  the  woods  and  stood  motionless  for 
a  long  minute  watching  him  before 
she  quietly  stole  away. 

Where  one's  possessions  are  so  few, 
washing  dishes  and  packing  is  a  mat- 
ter of  scant  ceremony.  In  less  than 
an  hour  we  were  'ready  for  the  trail, 


Yosemite  blanketed  in  Winter  snows. 


Campers  on  trail  leading  to  Yosemite    Valley. 


or  for  the  march,  rather,  as  we  ex- 
pected to  leave  trails  behind  us  and 
strike  cross  country  to  the  base  of 
Mount  Clark. 

We  held  it  to  be  but  a  tribute  to  our 
skill  as  mountaineers,  however,  when 
we  found  an  old  sheep  trail  following 
the  very  route  we  had  planned  to  take. 
For  many  miles  we  followed  it  through 
the  rolling  forest  east  of  Mount  Starr 
King,  through  Starr  King  Meadow,  and 
out  near  the  crest  of  a  granite  ridge 
near  Clark  Fork.  Here  we  left  it  be- 
hind and  struck  across  the  open  coun- 
try, over  ridge  after  ridge,  across 
stream  after  stream,  until  we  came  to 
the  northerly  fork  of  Gray  Creek, 
where  we  made  a  camp.  We  had 
reached  the  altitude  of  about  8,500 
feet,  and  snowdrifts  lay  deep  all  about 
us.  But  firewood  was  abundant,  and 
our  little  nook  among  the  tall  firs 
promised  every  comfort  that  a  knap- 
sacker  need  expect. 

In  default  of  extra  bedding  we  took 
hot  rocks  to  bed  with  us. 

The  night  passed  comfortably,  and 
we  were  up  at  dawn  ready  for  the  as- 
sault on  Mount  Clark,  confident  also  of 
success.  As  we  climbed  the  snow  lay 


even  deeper  about  us.  The  forest  of 
fir  and  mountain  pine  gave  way  to  the 
hardier  white-bark  pine,  the  tree  of 
timber-line.  Up  to  the  top  of  the  ridge 
it  crept,  at  the  top  a  mere  shrub,  bent 
and  twisted  beneath  the  winter's 
weight  of  snow. 

As  we  climbed,  our  horizon  to  the 
south  and  west  widened.  We  were 
looking  across  the  valley  of  the  Illi- 
louette  toward  the  snowy  divide  sepa- 
rating us  from  the  South  Fork  of  the 
Merced,  where  lies  Wawona  and  the 
splendid  Mariposa  grove  of  sequoias. 
Yosemite  Valley  was  but  a  blue  rift 
in  the  forest,  with  only  its  great 
domes,  Half  Dome,  Sentinel  Dome  and 
Starr  King,  rising  into  any  prominence. 

Far  different  was  our  view  to  east- 
ward from  the  crest.  Our  ridge  ended 
on  the  east  in  an  abrupt  precipice. 
Through  a  broken  "chimney"  or  win- 
dowlike  aperture  in  the  rocks,  we 
looked  down  500  feet  into  a  great 
snow  field  filling  all  the  eastern  basin, 
and  beyond  this  lay  the  cleft  of  the 
Merced  Canyon,  and,  still  beyond,  the 
magnificent  snowy  peaks  of  the  sum- 
mit crest,  Lyell,  McClure,  Ritter,  Dana, 
a  host  of  others,  all  above  13,000  feet, 


THE  CLIFF  DWELLER 


427 


all  shining  and  gleaming  in  the  bril- 
liant sunshine  with  a  radiance  that 
hardly  seemed  to  belong  to  this  world. 

Well  for  us  that  this  glorious  vision 
was  compensation  for  all  the  many 
miles  we  had  climbed,  for  we  got  no 
farther  that  day — and  Clark  still  re- 
mains unconquered.  For  we  had  an- 
ticipated the  season  for  mountain 
climbing  by  a  fortnight  or  more,  and 
the  slope  that  should  have  offered  an 
easy  rock  climb  to  the  summit  was 
now  a  precipitous  wall  of  treacherous 
snow.  We  had  no  rope,  no  ice  axe, 
not  even  a  knife  with  which  we  might 
have  cut  steps,  and  the  icy  edge  where 
rock  and  snow  met  proved  an  invinci- 
ble barrier  to  the  summit. 

Up  and  down  the  ridge  we  prowled, 
over  every  ledge,  into  every  chimney, 
only  to  admit  ourselves  defeated  in  the 
end. 

For  an  hour  or  more  we  remained 
upon  the  ridge,  feasting  our  eyes  on 


the  marvelous  panorama — a  hundred 
miles  of  snowy  range,  a  magnificent  al- 
pine region,  the  greater  part  of  which 
is  now  almost  inaccessible,  soon  to  be 
opened  to  travel  by  the  construction 
of  the  John  Muir  trail. 

After  luncheon  in  camp  a  15-mile 
walk  back  still  lay  ahead  of  us.  Our 
defeat  lay  lightly  upon  us,  for  many 
mountain  summits  have  been  ours  in 
the  past,  and  we  had  had,  after  all,  the 
inspiration  and  the  uplift  of  the  glo- 
rious upper  regions  of  snow  even  if  the 
exhilaration  of  the  summit  had  been 
lacking. 

Far  down  among  the  great  below 
of  yellow  pines,  under  the  spreading 
arms  of  sugar  pines  and  out  upon  open 
crests  covered  with  manzanita  and 
chinquapin,  we  hastened  past  Nevada 
and  Vernal  and  down  through  the 
Happy  Isles,  where  thrushes  sang  their 
evening  songs,  and  into  our  Yosemite 
Valley  camp. 


THE    CLIFF    DWELLERS 

Mute  remnant  of  a  long-departed  race,. 

Perpetual  sleeper  from  the  entombed  cliff, 

That  liest  yucca-wrapped,  immobile,  stiff, 
With  shriveled  limbs  and  meagre,  shrunken  face! 
Robbed  art  thou  now  of  thine  athletic  grace, 

That  laughed  at  dizzy  heights,  and  urged  thy  skiff 

O'er  many  a  watery  precipice,  as  if 
Fear  in  thy  naked  bosom  had  no  place. 
Little  didst  thou  dream  long  centuries  ago, 

The  white  man's  eyes  should  sometime  gaze  on  thee, 
Striving  with  curious  interest  to  know 

The  secret  of  thy  birth,  eternally 
Locked  up  within  thy  narrow,  earth-worn  shell, 
Leaving  thy  tale  for  these  poor  tools  to  tell. 

ST.  GEORGE  BEST. 


On  the  road  to  Kaumana 


The   Caves  of   Kaumana 


By  Alfred  Kummer 


NOTHING,  in  the  way  of  travel, 
is  more  full  of  interest  than  a 
visit  to  the  Hawaiian  Islands: 
to  see  Honolulu,  Hilo,  Kilauea, 
the  great  sugar  plantations,  the  rice 
and  banana  fields,  the  colors  of  the 
waters,  the  rainbow-colored  fishes,  the 
sunsets  and  dawns,     the     flora     and 
fauna,  to  ascend  Haleakala,  the  high- 
est extinct  volcano  in  the  world;  the 
seven  days'  voyage  from  San  Fran- 
cisco, through  the  Golden  Gate  on  to 
Honolulu,  every  hour  is  full  to  over- 
flowing of  interest  and  delight. 

I  had  lectured  for  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  at  Honolulu, 
then  again  at  Hilo  for  Dr.  Cruzan,  the 
pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church 


there,  who  proposed  that  we  make  a 
visit  to  the  caves  of  Kaumana,  and  as 
these  caves  are  little  known  and  have 
been  rarely  explored,  I  hope  to  be  able 
to  interest  the  many  readers  of  this 
magazine  by  my  narrative. 

The  caves  of  Kaumana  are  located 
some  five  or  six  miles  from  Hilo,  and 
the  drive  to  them,  like  the  much  longer 
drive  to  the  crater  of  Kilauea,  thirty 
miles  from  Hilo,  is  perfectly  unique, 
and  cannot  be  duplicated  on  this  con- 
tinent: the  surface  configurations, 
made  by  the  rivers  of  fiery  lava  as 
they  flowed  from  the  active  volcanoes 
and  gradually  cooled  into  many  fan- 
tastic sculptured  forms;  the  high  trel- 
lisses  to  carry  conducts  or  flumes  for 


THE  CAVES  ONF  KAUMANA 


429 


the  great  plantations;  the  strange  flora, 
especially  the  ferns  of  every  variety, 
and  always  so  pleasing  in  the  delicacy 
of  their  structure ;  the  vast  cane  fields ; 
the  cocoanut  trees,  strange  trees  with 
aerial  roots ;  and,  at  night,,  the  South- 
ern Cross,  there  are  only  a  few  of  the 
unusual  things  one  sees  on  this  drive. 

The  caves  were  formed  by  the 
contortions  of  the  lava  in  the  volcanic 
eruptions  of  this  island.  Hilo  is  on 
Hawaii,  the  largest  of  the  islands, 
while  Honolulu  is  on  Oahu,  one  of  the 
smaller  islands ;  there  have  been  many 
volcanic  eruptions,  and  some  great 
ones  in  quite  recent  times.  Mauna 
Kea  is  the  highest  peak  in  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  13,760  feet  high.  Mauna  Loa 
has  been  very  active,  and  has  had 
many  notable  eruptions  in  1843,  1868, 
1877,  and  in  more  recent  times;  this 
mountain  peak  is  13,393  feet  high,  and 
is  southwest  of  Mauna  Kea. 

We  reached  the  caves  in  time  to 
explore  one  in  the  forenoon  and  left 
the  larger  one  for  the  work  of  the  af- 
ternoon. The  first  one  is  only  about 
one-fourth  of  a  mile  in  length,  but  is 
typical  of  all.  We  are  led  by  a  guide 
who  has  been  in  this  cave  often,  but 
had  never  been  in  the  one  we  explored 
in  the  afternoon,  and  for  that  reason 
we  entered  it  with  some  anxiety.  Each 
person  in  our  little  party  carried  a 
candle;  we  also  had  one  lantern,  an 
abundance  of  matches,  and  a  ball  of 
twine. 

In  our  forenoon  work  we  found  our- 
selves in  some  very  tight  places,  where 
we  were  compelled  to  get  down  on  our 
knees,  or  prone  upon  our  stomachs, 
wriggling  along  like  fish-worms,  mak- 
ing very  slow  progress,  and  wonder- 
ing how  we  would  ever,  if  ever,  get 
back  again. 

But  the  main  purpose  of  this  article 
is  to  relate  an  experience  of  the  after- 
noon in  our  second  venture,  an  ex- 
perience which  might  have  terminated 
fatally  for  us  all. 

^  When  we  had  finished  the  explora- 
tion of  the  first  cave,  and  came  out 
again  into  the  open  air  and  the  sweet 
sunshine,  the  two  ladies  of  our  party 
soon  had  an  appetizing  lunch  spread 


upon  the  lava  for  us.  Here,  however, 
the  lava  is  completely  covered  with 
ferns  of  every  variety,  large  and  small, 
and  with  mosses,  vines  and  flowers 
forming  a  beautiful  tapestry  or  cov- 
ering for  an  enticing  lunch  to  which 
we  brought  a  royal  appetite. 

After  this  refreshing  picnic  lunch- 
eon, we  were  soon  off  for  the  second 
cave,  the  cave  of  Kaumana.  A  rope 
ladder  is  necessary  to  let  us  down  to 
its  mouth;  there  is  a  large  rectangu- 
lar space  in  front  of  the  opening  to 
the  cave;  this  space  is  closed  in  by 
walls  ten  or  twelve  feet  in  height  and 
overgrown  completely  with  ferns,  en- 
tangling vines  and  many  flowers ;  from 
this  open  space  there  are  two  open- 
ings, and  we  select  for  our  entrance 
the  one  in  which  the  guide  has  never 
been;  the  guide  and  his  wife,  who  is 
of  our  party,  too,  live  in  the  near  vicin- 
ity, and  their  presence  and  help  inspire 
us  with  confidence  and  courage  to  pro- 
ceed. We  enter  the  black  mouth  of 
the  cave,  and  go  on  until  the  light  of 
its  opening,  as  we  look  back,  is  sud- 
denly cut  off  by  a  sharp  turn ;  here  we 
stop  and  carefully  fasten  the  end  of 
our  ball  of  twine,  light  our  candles  and 
lanterns,  unrolling  the  twine  as  we 
proceed  with  our  exploration.  We  soon 
find  that  which  astonishes  us  beyond 
measure:  great  halls  and  chambers, 
narrow  alleys  and  byways,  grottoes 
and  fissures;  one  very  large  space  we 
call  "the  throne  room,"  for  there  are 
thrones  and  polished  seats  and  chairs; 
stalactites  abound,  and  they  are  of 
varied  lengths,  slate  blue  in  color  as 
a  rule,  though  some  are  dull  red  and 
of  other  sombre  colors;  water  trickles 
through  the  roof  everywhere,  some- 
times extinguishing  your  candle;  then 
were  we  glad  for  the  abundant  supply 
of  matches  in  our  pouches.  Though 
these  stalactites  and  stalagmites  are 
quite  heavy  and  difficult  to  break  off, 
we  managed  to  secure  some  of  the 
more  delicate  and  shapely  ones,  and 
bring  them  home  as  souvenirs  of  this 
most  strange  subterranean  place. 

The  contortions  of  the  lava,  the 
various  forms  and  rooms  and  halls, 
large  and  small,  the  sombre  colors,  the 


Palm  Avenue. 


weird  effects,  are  interesting  but  in- 
describable; in  some  the  surface  is 
smooth,  as  if  it  had  been  polished  by 
art;  in  other  places  it  is  very  rough 
and  corrugated;  in  a  number  of  places 
you  must  take  your  choice  of  direction, 
not  knowing  which  will  prove  the  bet- 


ter, or  whether  any  will  be  safe,  but 
your  passage  will  branch  off  into  two 
or  more  directions;  in  other  places, 
again,  you  will  be  thrown  back  upon 
yourself  by  some  dead  wall  in  front; 
then  you  are  compelled  to  wind .  up 
your  cord  and  strike  out  some  other 


Road  to   Volcano  Home  and  Crater  Hilo. 


way;  in  more  than  one  place  we  had 
to  wriggle  prone  as  in  the  forenoon, 
and  then  would  come  the  terrorizing 
thought  that  possibly  some  jagged 
rocks,  like  a  trap  in  which  fishes  are 
caught,  might  make  it  impossible  for 
us  to  wriggle  back.  If  that  should  be 
the  case,  and  well  it  might  be,  then 
what?  A  serious  reflection,  but,  like 
most  such  reflections,  too  late  to  be 
of  any  value.  There  is  only  one  thing 
for  us  to  do,  and  that  is  to  wriggle  on, 
often  on  our  knees,  then  erect  for  a 
few  steps,  then  down  again  on  our 
knees  or  bellies,  then  soon  again  with 
room  enough  for  a  great  company;  in 
such  places  we  gladly  halt  and  shout 
and  sing,  waking  the  echoes  and  rever- 
berations many  fold,  and,  while  we 
pause,  we  can  but  admire  what  heat 
and  motion  and  gravity  have  left  here 
in  enduring  and  marvelous  sculpture. 

When  we  had  exhausted  our  ball  of 
twine,  the  desire  to  go  on  was  so  strong 
with  every  member  of  our  party  that 
we  agreed  to  proceed,  the  difficulties 
already  overcome  giving  us  the  neces- 
sary courage.  We  therefore  fasten  a 


burning  candle  firmly  to  some  lava 
rocks  at  the  end  of  our  string;  then, 
turning  our  backs  on  the  glimmering 
light  so  placed  that  no  drops  of  water 
could  extinguish  it,  nor  any  chance 
current  of  air  blow  it  out,  we  marched 
and  crept  on  and  still  on,  overcoming 
many  of  the  difficulties  already  ex- 
plained, but  discovering  new  and 
strange  beauties  in  every  foot  of  that 
subterranean  passage.  But,  at  last, 
one  of  our  party,  not  a  woman,  de- 
clared that  he  would  go  no  farther; 
that  it  was  positively  dangerous  to  do 
so,  and  unjustifiable  temerity,  for  we 
had  now  no  string  to  lead  us  back  to 
our  lone  candle ;  in  fact,  he  was  fright- 
ened. But  just  as  we  were  about  to 
take  his  advice  and  turn  back,  Mr.  C. 
exclaimed:  "I  see  a  light!  We  can 
get  out  here!"  That  was  a  most  start- 
ling exclamation.  What  could  it  mean 
—is  there  another  mouth  to  this  cave  ? 
No  one  has  ever  heard  of  such  a 
thing.  Or,  possibly,  there  may  be 
another  party  in  the  cave  whose  light 
we  see.  But  that,  too,  is  an  incredible 
hypothesis,  for  this  is  a  very  solitary 


432 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


and  unfrequented  place,  and  we  be- 
lieve ourselves  to  be  pioneers  in  this 
exploration.  But  we  quickly  follow 
Mr.  C.,  when  lo,  his  great  light  proves 
to  be  nothing  more  or  less  than  our 
own  little  candle  faithfully  illuminat- 
ing the  lava  around  and  the  end  of 
our  string.  But  now  we  are  more  per- 
plexed than  before.  In  all  our  march 
in  this  labyrinth  we  had  our  backs  to 
the  light,  and  here  it  is  before  us. 
How  can  this  be?  There  is  only  one 
possible  solution  to  this  Chinese  puz- 
zle or  problem:  We  have  traveled  in 
a  circle,  or  loop. 

Then  came  the  sobering  thought : 
what  if,  from  any  cause,  our  candle 
had  gone  out?  Then  we  should  never 
have  found  the  end  of  our  string,  and 
might  have  traveled  around  in  that 
circle  or  loop  until  our  strength  was 
gone,  and  life  itself  have  gone  out  like 
our  light. 


I  have  picked  up  a  good  many 
strings  in  life,  and  of  many  kinds,  but 
never  before  and  never  since  have  I 
picked  up  any  string  of  any  kind  with 
such  unalloyed  gratitude  and  pleasure 
as  in  that  lonely,  dark  and  deceitful 
cave  of  Kaumana.  Theseus,  when 
Ariadne  gave  him  the  clue  by  means 
of  which  he  found  his  way  out  of  the 
Labyrinth,  was  not  more  happy  than 
we  as  once  more  we  held  the  end  of 
our  twine. 

However  difficult  and  torturous  the 
path  before  us  might  be,  what  care 
we :  it  will  lead  us  back  again  into 
the  blessed  light;  with  that  string  in 
our  hand  we  hold  the  Ariadne  clue, 
and  every  step  will  infallibly  lead  us 
to  the  rectangular  space  where  our 
rope-ladder  is  secured  against  the  vine 
covered,  flower  gemmed,  sun  kissed 
wall,  now  to  us  as  attractive  as  Para- 
dise. 


GOLDENROD 


Like  brave,  bold  knights  in  armor  clad, 

And  helmets  fused  with  gold — 

Your  glittering  spear-points  amber-tipped 

Light  mountain,  wood  and  wold. 

You  line  your  armies  near  the  shore, 

Though  rugged  cliffs  loom  gray, 

And  wave  your  shimmering  banners  high, 

Where  tawny  sumachs  sway. 

The  pine  trees  hurl  their  javelin  points, 

And  cupless  acorns  fall, 

But  through  the  forest  glades  you  march, 

Undaunted  by  them  all. 

Then,  when  you  pitch  your  yellow  tents 

By  maple  camp  fires,  red — 

You  taper  all  the  kneeling  flowers, 

That  pray  about  your  bed. 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 


Vasco,  the  Bandit  of  the  Pinnacles 


By  W.  W.  Canfield 


POBRE  VASQUEZ!  Forgotten 
as  he  is  by  the  world;  a  differ- 
ent life  should  he  have  lived, 
and  would  have,  saving  his  im- 
petuous temperament.  With  a  life  sen- 
tence in  place  of  hanging,  the  intrepid 
little  bandit  might  have  equaled  the 
once  famous  outlaw — now  respected — 
Bob  Dalton.  In  their  unsavory  profes- 
sion the  latter  had  no  equal  probably 
with  the  rifle,  as  was  demonstrated  in 
his  last  and  famous  bank  raid,  yet 
Vasquez  would  have  cut  a  "broad 
swath"  on  the  Orpheum  Circuit  in  "17 
minutes  in  Arizona"  with  his  revolver 
and  riata.  Rightly  said  California's 
last  and  greatest  cattle  King,  Henry 
Miller,  of  San  Francisco,  when  the 
judge  at  San  Jose  sentenced  the  little 
Mexican  to  death:  "That's  too  strong! 
Too  much  good  in  that  man.  I  will 
give  $20,000  if  you  give  him  life  im- 
prisonment instead  of  the  rope."  Alas 
for  Vasquez  and  the  stern,'  cold  de- 
cisions of  early  days ;  yet,  then,  it  was 
better  so. 

At  the  age  of  nineteen  Vasquez 
lived  a  quiet  and  respected  social  life 
in  Monterey,  and  there  at  a  ball  com- 
mitted his  first  deed  of  lawlessness 
which  fully  warranted  his  subsequent 
fate.  Yet  there's  good  in  the  worst  of 
men  if  we  look  for  it. 

The  old  capital,  Monterey,  was  for 
Tiburcio  Vasquez,  on  that  memorable 
night,  the  starting  point  in  his  wild, 
lawless  and  romantic  career,  which 
forced  him  for  his  life's  sake  to  be 
the  pioneer  of  the  coast  mountain  trails 
and  finally  as  leader  of  his  desperate 
band  to  repulse  the  posses  from  his 
Palasiades  or  "Pinnacle"  stronghold. 
Brightly  shone  the  lights  in  Monterey. 
The  ball  room  was  filled  with  dashing 
vaqueros  and  black-eyed  senoritas. 


Many  were  the  spectators,  Senora  So- 
and-So  with  watchful  eye,  and  cabal- 
leros  from  town  and  outlying  ranches. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  the  sheriff 
was  among  the  merry-makers  to  pre- 
serve order  and  to  have  a  swing  with- 
the  dark-eyed  beauties. 

After  the  midnight  fiesta  of  tamales, 
enchiladas,  wine  and  stronger  side 
drinks,  Vasquez,  all  too  conspicuous, 
became  a  mark  for  the  sheriff,  who 
warned  him  to  be  less  noisy  or  leave 
the  ball  room.  The  little  fellow  re- 
sented the  warning  as  an  insult,  where- 
upon the  officer  tried  to  force  him  to 
the  door.  "You  are  not  man  enough 
to  put  me  out!"  said  the  Mexican.  The 
sheriff  drew  his  gun,  but  Vasquez  was 
too  quick;  a  flash,  a  report,  a  dead 
man,  and  Vasquez,  mounting,  escaped 
to  the  bosom  of  nature,  there  to  re- 
flect and  to  collect  a  few  of  like  na- 
tures to  his  own,  and  he  became  from 
that  time  the  leader  of  one  of  Califor- 
nia's strongest  and  most  daring  bandit 
gangs,  making  friends  with  the  promi- 
nent cattle  men  of  the  outlying  ranges, 
they  can  tell  you  why,  on  'their  part, 
and  you,  reader,  would  have  known  the 
wisdom  of  the  friendship,  had  you 
been  in  their  boots. 

Tiburcio  was  no  novice.  He  was  at 
home  in  the  saddle  and  knew  the 
mountain  trails  from  Sierra  Madre  to 
San  Francisco,  and  across  to  the  fast- 
nesses of  the  snow-capped  Sierras,  as 
we  know  the  streets  that  bound  our 
block.  Brought  up  in  comfort  and  lux- 
ury, Vasquez  determined  to  continue  in 
his  wonted  life  of  plenty. 

Dropping  down  the  trail  early  one 
afternoon  from  Loma  Prieta,  Vasquez 
alone  drew  rein  at  a  wayside  tavern 
south  of  Santa  Cruz,  only  for  a  drink 
and  to  stock  up  with  material  for  the 


434 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


native  cigarritos.  Restlessly  champ- 
ing the  bit,  his  horse  pricked  up  his 
ears,  and  the  eagle  eye  of  his  rider 
was  ready  as  a  horseman  turned  the 
corner  and  drew  near.  Peace  settled 
over  the  features  of  the  bandit — sim- 
ply an  old  acquaintance,  and  the  usual 
greeting  followed:  "Que  hay  Tomas?" 
"Coma  esta  amigo?"  (What's  the 
news,  and  how  are  you?)  Throwing 
his  spurs  by  the  veranda  steps  the  old 
man  remarked :  "Alas !  Cuando  yo  era 
joven  y  tenia  dinero  me  decian  'Como 
esta  Don  Tomas/  pero  ahora  que  soy 
pobre  y  ya  no  tengo  me  dicen  no  mas 
Tomas."  (Alas,  when  I  was  young 
and  had  plenty  of  money  I  was  Don 
Tomas.  They  accosted  me :  "How  do 
you  do,  Don  Thomas."  Now  I  am  poor, 
my  money  all  gone,  I  am  only  Tom.) 
The  speech  caused  a  laugh,  and  Vas- 
quez,  after  putting  up  for  the  drinks, 
gave  a  low  whistle  and  his  horse  was 
ready  at  the  steps  leading  to  the  bar- 
room. Something  must  be  doing — 
"Adios  amigos!" 

One  subordinate  temporarily  sta- 
tioned on  "Moro  Cojo"  Rancho  near 
Castroville  was  to  be  in  Salinas  at 
three  in  the  afternoon  by  appointment, 
and  now  the  valley  road  offered  no 
shelter.  Carelessly  trusting  to  luck, 
the  little  Mexican  rode  to  the  suburbs 
of  Salinas,  meeting  his  confederate  at 
the  gate  of  Senora — who  handed  the 
pair  a  disguise  of  black  whiskers.  The 
men  exchanged  a  few  words  in  under- 
tones, commended  the  lady  to  God  and 
turned  into  the  main  street,  where  their 
horses  were  stabled. 

"  PBueno  y  ahora  que  ?"  (Well,  now 
what?)  Strolling  into  a  prominent  bar 
room,  Vasquez  sighted  a  familiar  face 
from  San  Juan  Bautista,  a  well-to-do 
merchant,  Thomas  McMahon,  who  at 
the  moment  was  treating  the  house. 
Indiscreetly  the  San  Juanite  revealed 
too  many  "yellow  boys,"  seven  of 
which  he  slipped  down  his  boot  leg 
before  leaving  town  at  five  o'clock. 
Two  other  men  left  soon  after,  without 
creating  any  disturbance.  A  strange 
armed  rider  or  two  coming  in  or  leav- 
ing town  in  those  days  caused  no  more 
comment  than  a  jitney  on  Market 


street  would  to-day.  Our  belated  trav- 
eler, on  reaching  the  foot  of  the  old 
San  Juan,  then  called  Monterey  Grade, 
noticed  two  horsemen  leisurely  ap- 
proaching. It  was  dusk  of  evening — 
no  one  else  in  sight.  Soon  the  jingling 
of  spurs  mingled  with  the  song  of 
crickets  and  chorus  of  the  frogs  on  the 
stream  below — the  merchant  became 
conscious  of  a  nearer  approach.  Sud- 
denly a  noose  settled  under  his  chin 
and  a  musical  voice  broke  the  stillness. 
"Good  evening,  Tom.  I'm  sorry  to 
trouble  you,  but  we  would  like  to  have 
what  money  you  have."  Vasquez, 
seated  on  his  horse,  was  spokesman, 
and  while  the  merchant's  pockets  were 
emptied  by  the  other  Mexican  he  had 
the  usual  drop.  Lucky  for  Tom,  his 
boots  were  not  inspected.  However, 
his  ring  and  watch  were  demanded,  as 
Vasquez  said:  "We  like  to  know  the 
time  in  the  mountains,  and  let  us  have 
that  overcoat,  please.  You  can  get 
another  when  you  get  in  town.  It's 
cold  in  the  hills  at  night.  Thank  you 
very  much,  Tom.  Good-evening  to 
you!" 

When  ex-Sheriff  John  L.  Matthews, 
of  Monterey  County,  was  a  small  boy 
he  was  sent  on  an  errand  up  the  San 
Benito  River  entrusted  with  forty  dol- 
lars with  which  to  pay  for  a  cow  pur- 
chased. Nearing  noon,  two  horsemen 
overtook  the  lad,  and  as  conversation 
warmed  up,  little  John  recognized  in 
one  of  them  the  notorious  Vasquez,  so- 
liloquizing the  while  as  to  the  fate  of 
his  two  twenties.  About  noon-time, 
the  Mexicans  turned  aside  to  the  shade 
of  some  friendly  live  oaks,  produced 
some  bread  and  wine  with  a  can  of 
sardines,  inviting  the  coming  detective 
to  partake  of  the  repast,  little  dreaming 
that  the  lonely  boy  had  what  they 
were  looking  for,  and  doubtless  in  need 
of  at  the  time.  Shortly  after  lunch  the 
three  arrived  at  the  "parting  of  the 
ways,"  and  Johnny  paid  his  bill  with 
a  grateful  heart. 

Leaders  of  the  several  bandit  gangs 
in  those  days  in  the  coast  mountains 
of  California  used  to  scatter  confed- 
erates at  times  to  play  good  as  va- 
queros  on  the  cattle  ranches,  and  some 


Tiburcio  Vasquez,  early  California   bandit. 


of  them  even  went  home  (if  they  had 
one)  into  the  towns.  In  this  way  they 
were  enabled  to  gather  information  of 
value  to  their  chiefs  and  keep  them 
posted,  also  if  searching  parties  were 
out — necessitating  their  retirement  to 
the  fastnesses  of  the  mountains,  to 
procure  and  deliver  fresh  meat  and 
provisions  to  the  camp. 

Needless  to  name  those  cattle  men 
in  large  outlying  ranges,  some  of  whom 
the  writer  has  had  the  pleasure  of 
knowing,  whose  ranch  headquarters 
were  often  the  scenes  of  hospitality  to 
the  bandits.  At  such  times  fresh  horses 
were  supplied  to  the  members  of  re- 
treating bands ;  in  fact,  before  my  day, 
the  notorious  Jack  Powers  with  his 
men  stayed  over  night  in  my  father's 


living  room  in  San  Juan  Valley,  dined, 
slept  before  the  log  fire,  declining  bed- 
rooms, and  left  like  gentlemen  early 
in  the  morning,  offering  to  pay  for  the 
hospitality  shown  them.  Later,  when 
I  adorned  the  cradle,  Chavez  and  his 
men  put  up  at  our  house  for  the  night. 
At  day  break,  as  my  father  watched 
them  wending  their  way  through  the 
glen  on  their  way  to  a  cut-off  on  the 
bid  hill  road  to  Santa  Cruz,  he  caught 
sight  of  the  approaching  posse  on  their 
trail.  Chavez  could  also,  and  did  at 
least  at  times,  play  the  part  of  a 
gentleman;  and  thus  it  was  that  by 
such  kindness,  or  a  greater  one,  per- 
haps, the  Cattle  King's  life  was  saved 
by  Vasquez,  who  was  ready  to  pay  the 
debt  of  gratitude  even  with  his  life. 


436 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


One  Ruiz — with  a  force  of  subordi- 
nates— having  got  word  through  one 
of  these  that  Mr.  Miller  was  to  leave 
Blookfield  Farm  (his  private  property 
on  the  Las  Animas  Grant  south  of  Gil- 
roy  in  the  Santa  Clara  Valley)  on  a 
certain  date,  to  go  by  way  of  Pacheco 
Pass  to  the  San  Joaquin  Canal  Farm 
at  the  foot  of  the  Sierras,  to  make  first 
payment  on  said  property  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars,  determined  to 
hold  up  the  cattle  king  on  the  summit, 
knowing  about  the  time  that  old  fur- 
coated  "Buggy  John"  (Miller's  famous 
driver)  would  draw  rein  at  that  point. 
Vasquez  had  also  been  informed,  and 
determined  to  intercept  Ruiz  to  save 
his  benefactor  of  former  days.  What 
thoughts  must  have  been  in  "Buggy 
John's"  mind  that  cool  morning  as  they 
ascended  into  the  fog  of  the  Pass.  Be- 
fore that  day  he  had  had  to  draw  rein 
to  accommodate  a  lawless  claim  by  two 
horsemen  in  the  open  plain  nearing 
Firebaugh's  Ferry.  The  fierce,  cutting 
east  wind  as  they  approached  the  sum- 
mit, again  and  again  forced  back  the 
driving  fog  till  a  swirling  shroud  en- 
veloped the  mountain.  What  was  in 
Mr.  Miller's  mind  at  this  time?  We 
who  know  him  can  imagine.  Being  a 
man  of  nerve,  meeting  danger  as  it 
came,  he  was  reconciled  to  it;  yet  at 
this  moment,  contrary  to  the  thoughts 
of  his  driver,  he  no  doubt  was  thinking 
of  his  business,  the  volume  of  which 
would  have  addled  the  brains  of  a 
hundred  common  men.  Mr.  Miller  is 
a  man  of  few  words  but  many  thoughts. 
With  all  the  attention  personally  paid 
by  him  to  the  voluminous  affairs  of 
the  thousand  and  one  ranches  scattered 
over  four  States,  his  observation  and 
attention  to  details  has  been  marvelous. 

Vasquez  the  while  was  hastening  to 
the  scene  with  four  confederates.  On 
reaching  the  summit  he  saw  a  solitary 
rig  by  the  roadside.  Was  he  too  late ! 
The  sound  of  rolling  stones  caught  his 
sharp  ears,  and  advancing  to  the  edge 
of  the  canyon  he  saw  and  recognized 
Mr.  Miller  with  his  hands  bound  be- 
hind his  back  being  led  by  Ruiz  and 
his  men.  They  had  gotten  but  two 
hundred  dollars,  and  the  leader  was 


infuriated  to  the  extent  of  taking  his 
life. 

"?Que  va  Ud.  a  hacer  con  este 
hombre?"  (What  are  you  going  to  do 
with  this  man?) 

"?Que  diablos  le  importa.  Noso- 
tros  solamente  vamos  por  la  Canada." 
(What  the  devil  is  it  to  you?  We  are 
only  going  down  into  the  canyon.) 

Riding  down  on  their  trail  and  up  in 
front  of  Ruiz,  Vasquez  gave  order  for 
the  Cattle  King's  release,  then  address- 
ing the  prisoner:  "Mr.  Miller,  you  can 
go  and  get  on  your  buggy.  I  will  send 
two  men  to  see  you  safe  as  far  as  Fire- 
baugh's Ferry."  With  his  right  hand 
convenient  to  his  hip,  addressing  his 
adversary,  the  chief  said:  "Ruiz,  you 
and  I  are  outlaws  together.  I  am  no 
better  than  you,  perhaps,  and  you  are 
no  better  than  me.  I  am  not  afraid 
to  die.  If  you  have  anything  against 
Mr.  Miller  settle  it  with  me  now."  Ruiz 
was  backed  down  with  eight  men 
against  Vasquez  with  but  two  left. 
Wouldn't  you,  friend,  in  like  circum- 
stances, have  offered  twenty  thousand 
to  save  such  a  man  from  the  gallows  ? 

One  of  Mr.  Miller's  most  trusted  va- 
queros  operating  at  Las  Animas  most 
of  the  time  during  my  boyhood  days 
was  a  reformed  hold-up,  and  the  Cat- 
tle King  turned  him  to  the  good. 

As  I  said,  "Buggy  John"  had  to  stop 
on  the  open  plain  in  San  Joaquin  Val- 
ley when  two  Mexicans  covered  them. 
Said  Mr.  Miller:  "You  want  money?  I 
give  you  what  I  have,  one  thousand 
dollars."  The  two  hold-ups  were  some 
distance  out  on  the  plain  when  "Buggy 
John"  was  told  to  turn  round  and  over- 
take them.  Approaching,  Miller  sig- 
naled the  horsemen  to  stop.  "I  want  to 
borrow  ten  dollars.  I'll  pay  you  back. 
I  need  it  when  I  get  to  the  ferry."  One 
of  the  Mexicans  handed  over  the  eagle. 
Some  two  years  later,  Miller,  in  com- 
pany with  Judge  Tully  on  Main  street 
in  Gilroy,  recognized  the  lender  of  the 
gold  piece.  Turning  aside  for  the  mo- 
ment, he  beckoned  to  the  vaquero. 
"Here,  I  owe  you  ten  dollars."  "I  don't 
know  you,"  was  the  rejoinder.  "Yes 
you  do ;  you  remember  I  borrowed  this 
amount  of  you  to  cross  the  ferry  in  the 


A  group  of  bandit  hunters. 


Valley.  Take  it— don't  be  afraid."  A 
month  later  the  two  met  at  Soap  Lake. 
"How  are  you  getting  along?"  said  the 
Cattle  King.  "Well,  Mr.  Miller,  I  am 
broke  and  I  want  to  go  to  work."  "Go 
to  the  ranch,  tell  the  foreman  I  s&nt 
you,  and  he  will  give  you  work."  And 
work  he  did,  handling  cattle  over  the 
ranches  and  driving  bands  on  the  road 
till  the  call  came  to  cross  the  Great 
Divide,  sometime  in  the  '80's.  His  ir- 
resistible impulse  to  hold  up  overcame 
him  one  day.  To  avoid  a  bad  piece  of 
the  county  road  near  Sargent,  tempo- 
rary travel  was  made  along  the  edge  of 
Las  Animas  Grant.  Orders  were  given 
to  keep  out  the  travel,  and  "Jesus," 
the  vaquero,  galloped  up  as  Mark  Re- 
gan, with  the  U.  S.  mail  aboard  his 
coach,  took  the  field  track.  Nothing 
much  was  said,  except  by  Mr.  Regan, 
as  the  noose  of  the  riata  settled  down 
on  one  of  his  leaders.  Answering  the 
complaint  incident  to  the  stopping  of 


the  mail  stage,  Mr.  Miller  said :  "I  will 
spend  ten  thousand  dollars  to  defend 
that  man!" 

Motoring  comfortably  on  the  four 
per  cent  scenic  boulevard  over  the  so- 
called  San  Juan  Hill,  the  tourist  of  to- 
day little  dreams  of  the  perilous  cross- 
ing over  the  mountain  in  early  days. 
The  first  road  crossed  the  summit  west 
of  the  present  road.  In  1870  the  sec- 
ond road  was  built,  and  Vasquez  pa- 
trolled it,  to  the  sorrow  of  more  than 
one  San  Juanite.  However,  one  good 
man  outwitted  him  on  the  summit  and 
beat  him  into  Salinas.  George  Moore, 
Sr.,  it  was,  manager  of  the  beautiful 
six  league  San  Justo  Ranch,  near  the 
Mission  of  San  Juan  Bautista.  It  was 
on  the  occasion  of  Mr.  Moore's  under- 
taking to  purchase  some  sheep,  by  or- 
der of  Flint,  Bixby  &  Co.,  at  Salinas. 
At  a  turn  of  the  grade,  Moore  dodged 
the  hissing  riata,  none  too  soon.  Vas- 
quez wouldn't  shoot,  trusting  to  a  sec- 
6 


438 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ond  throw;  but  the  San  Justo  horse 
won  the  "free  for  all"  to  the  plains  be- 
low, and  on  to  town. 

The  noted  Tres  Finos  raid  by  the 
Vasquez  band  aroused  the  whole  coun- 
try. Three  men  were  killed  and  some 
wounded,  though  it  was  said  Tiburcio 
Vasquez  shot  only  to  subdue  by 
wounding. 

Vasquez's  capture  took  place  not  a 
great  way  from  Los  Angeles,  and  the 
woman  in  the  case  cast  the  net.  By 
her  the  sheriff  was  given  the  clue.  The 
bandits  remaining  were  known  to  be 
at  a  wayside  tavern  on  a  mountain 
road.  The  sheriff  overhauled  an  old 
Mexican  in  the  mountains  who  was 
driving  home  with  a  load  of  branch 
wood.  Secreting  himself  back  of  the 
wagon  seat  under  the  wood  the  officer 


ordered  the  old  man  to  drive  to  the  tav- 
ern and  stop  at  the  water  trough  in 
front  of  the  bar  room.  As  the  horses 
pulled  up  to  the  watering  place,  the 
sheriff  threw  up  his  gun,  covering  the 
unsuspecting  chief,  and  a  running  fight 
ensued.  Vasquez,  being  wounded  by 
the  first  shot,  failed  to  reach  his  horse 
and  went  behind  the  bars  for  the  rest 
of  his  natural  life. 

It  has  been  said  that  Vasquez  was  a 
man  of  no  great  nerve ;  I  challenge  that 
statement.  He  proved  in  his  last  mo- 
ments that  such  assertions  were  un- 
founded, for  when  the  sheriff  on  duty 
clumsily  adjusted  the  noose,  Vasquez 
told  him  that  the  knot  was  poorly  made 
— and  he  readjusted,  with  his  own 
hands,  the  noose  upon  the  rope  that 
swung  him  into  eternity. 


THE     PROSPECTOR 

A  slowly-moving  speck  against  the  dull, 
Forsaken,  lonesome  hills  of  desert  gray — 

A  dream!    A  strike!    A  surge  of  youthful  hope! 
The  man  and  burro  thread  a  pathless  way. 

The  miner  daily  moves  from  camp  to  claim, 
And  daily  picks  and  pans  and  scans  the  dust, 

As  shuttles  move  when  threadless,  weaving  not — 
Thus  fades  his  gainless  life  and  fails  his  crust. 

The  purple  shadows  creep  upon  the  hills, 

And  noiseless  night  enshrouds  his  cabin  home — 

There  passed  within  the  desert's  speechless  depths 
A  wasted  life,  that  came,  and  went,  alone. 


L.  W.  BARTLETT 


Miss  Ina  Coolbrith 


Congress  of 
Authors 

and 

Journalists 

at  the 

Panama-Pacific 

International 

Exposition 

By  /Aarian  Taylor 


OH,  HOW  your  wonderful  city 
resembles  Greece!"  exclaimed 
a  distinguished  Eastern  visitor 
recenty,  as  we  motored  through 
the  Presidio  to  the  Exposition.  "There 
is  the  same  sapphire  sky,  the  same 
beautiful  marine  view.    Yes,  and  even 
some  delightful  flat-roofed  houses  by 
the  waterside  to  complete  the  picture 
of  Athens." 

This  being  so,  then  San  Francisco 
provided  just  the  right  setting  for  the 
recent  presentation  of  "The  Trojan 
Women" — Euripides'  great  tragedy,  so 
poignant  in  its  appeal  to  the  emotions, 
and  its  twentieth  century  application — 
and  for  the  unique  and  uplifting  cere- 
mony of  crowning  Ina  Donna  Cool- 
brith  Poet-Laureate  of  California. 

The  latter,  though  the  revival  of  an 
ancient  Greek  custom,  marked  an 
epoch,  it  being  the  first  time  such  an 
honor  had  been  conferred  upon  a  wo- 
man. The  splendid  idea  originated 


with  a  San  Francisco  poet,  Richard  E. 
White,  who  communicated  it  to  his  fel- 
low members  of  the  California  Litera- 
ture Association,  where  it  met  with 
instant  favor,  and  whence  it  spread  to 
all  classes,  culminating  in  the  inspiring 
investiture  of  June  30,  1915. 

In  keeping  with  the  dignity  of  the 
occasion,  Senator  James  D.  Phelan, 
Mr.  Arthur  Arlett  and  President  Ben- 
jamin Ide  Wheeler  represented  in  their 
order,  the  United  States,  the  State  of 
California,  and  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia. 

Senator  Phelan,  in  his  eloquent  ad- 
dress, referred  to  Ina  Coolbrith  as  one 
whom  Bret  Harte,  her  associate  of 
early  days,  had  called  "the  sweetest 
note  in  California  literature."  He  said 
of  her  work :  "She  has  not  flooded  the 
press  with  her  compositions.  She  has 
written  little,  but  that  little  is  great.  It 
is  of  the  purest  quality,  finished  and 
perfect,  as  well  as  full  of  feeling  and 


440 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Charles  F.  Lummis.  (From  an  unfin- 
ished bust  by  Julia  Bracker  Wendt). 

thought.  She  has  never  given  her 
fine  talents  to  an  unworthy  cause,  nor 
written  a  word  that  she  need  ever 
wish  to  recall." 

In  emphasis  of  the  poet's  high  call- 
ing, Edwin  Markham  next  gave  a  most 
eloquent  address  on  "The  Saving 
Power  of  Poetry."  He  said  in  brief: 
"The  poet  points  away  from  the  sel- 
fish, ephemeral  concerns  to  the  higher 
issues  of  life  and  death.  He  thunders 
his  averments  that  to  be  something  is 
more  than  to  get  something;  that  to 
make  a  life  is  more  than  to  make  a 
living;  that  we  must  put  back  into  the 
world  more  than  we  take  out  of  it ;  that 
we  are  all  the  conscripts  of  an  unseen 
Kingdom,  the  Comrade  Kingdom  that 
is  to  come." 

It  was  a  magnificent  protest  against 
materialism,  and  will  long  be  remem- 
bered as  a  noble  and  fitting  prelude  to 
the  crowning  of  one  who  has  ever 
kept  her  gift  spotless  and  undefiled. 

Eyes  were  wet  throughout  the  large 
audience  as  the  chairman,  Dr.  Benja- 
min Ide  Wheeler,  stepped  toward  Miss 
Coolbrith  with  the  laurel  wreath,  say- 


ing: "Upon  thee,  Ina  Coolbrith,  by 
common  consent  of  all  the  guild  of 
those  that  write — upon  thee,  sole  living 
representative  of  the  golden  age  of 
California  letters,  coadjutor  and  col- 
league of  the  great  spirit  of  that  age, 
thyself  well  worthy  by  natural  and  in- 
herent rights  to  hold  place  in  their  for- 
ward rank,  upon  thee  I  lay  this  poet's 
crown  and  name  thee  our  California 
Poet-Laureate." 

Clad  in  a  handsome  dress  of  black 
satin,  touched  with  the  rich  gold  of  the 
copa  de  oro  and  fashioned  by  loving 
hands,  the  stately  lady  stood  for  a  mo- 
ment before  the  hushed  and  reverent 
people — who  had,  with  one  accord, 
risen  to  their  feet — and,  in  a  voice 
broken  with  emotion,  made  reply: 
"Anything  I  have  done  has  been  a 
labor  of  love." 

The  Governor's  representative  came 
next,  with  felicitations  most  happily 
expressed,  and  then  the  writer  had  the 
honor  of  speaking  on  behalf  of  the 
Pacific  Coast  Women's  Press  Associa- 
tion— of  which  she  is  a  charter  mem- 
ber— and  of  presenting  a  basket  of 
roses  from  her  associates.  Charles  A. 
Murdock  followed,  with  an  able  paper 
on  Bret  Harte;  Charles  Phillips  read 
Miss  Coolbrith's  Bret  Harte  poem,  of 
which  Edwin  Markham  says :  "Nothing 
more  finished  has  ever  come  out  of  our 
golden  land,"  and  Yoeth  Eldredge,  the 
California  historian,  made  a  speech 
that  delighted  everybody. 

One  of  the  lovely  incidents  of  the 
afternoon  occurred  when  Miss  Cool- 
brith, extending  her  hand  toward  the 
floral  offerings  heaped  beside  her,  said, 
"There  is  one  woman  here  with  whom 
I  would  share  these  flowers,"  and  Mrs, 
Josephine  Clifford  McCracken,  of 
Santa  Cruz,  was  led  forward  to  the 
platform — that  veteran  writer  who  was 
associated  with  her  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Overland  Monthly,  and  who 
writes  for  the  magazine  still.  It  was  a 
dramatic  moment  and  one  supremely 
touching.  Resting  against  the  wall 
was  the  picture  of  Bret  Harte,  and  in 
her  modesty  and  loyalty,  the  Poet-Lau- 
reate was  not  content  without  sharing 
her  honors,  as  it  were,  with  both  "the 


CONGRESS  OF  AUTHORS  AND  JOURNALISTS 


441 


quick  and  the  dead." 

It  recalled  another  scene,  one  equal- 
ly striking  and  worthy  of  record,  set 
in  the  month  of  May,  1914,  at  the  Ebell 
Club,  Oakland.  Mrs.  C.  W.  Kinsey, 
who  is  chairman  of  the  California 
History  and  Landmarks'  Section,  had 
invited  Miss  Coolbrith  to  give  an 
address.  True,  as  ever,  to  the  memory 
of  her  old  friends  and  associates,  she 
chose  the  subject  of  Charles  Warren 
Stoddard,  delighting  the  audience  with 
her  personal  reminiscences.  It  was 
her  first  visit  to  Oakland  in  years,  and 
she  received  an  ovation,  the  Chatau- 
qua  salute  mingling  with  the  hand- 
clapping.  But  the  climax  was  reached 
when  Mrs.  Kinsey  stepped  forward, 
her  face  aglow  with  tenderness,  and 
presented  a  bouquet  of  lilies  of  the 
valley  to  Miss  Coolbrith,  quoting,  as 
she  did  so,  the  poet's  own  lines  in 
"Blossom  Time:" 


the  love  my  heart  would  speak 
I  will  fold  in  the  lily's  rim." 

A  wave  of  emotion  passed  over  the 
audience,  causing  tears  to  spring  to 
many  eyes.  The  Oakland  Coolbrith 
day  will  be  remembered,  and  that  in- 
cident, linking  1914  with  1915,  places 
.on  the  walls  of  memory  a  picture  that 
will  never  fade. 

As  the  Overland  Monthly  is  calling 
attention  to  the  life  and  works  of  Bret 
Harte,  its  founder,  this  Exposition 
year,  special  interest  attaches  to  the 
valuable  paper  of  his  old  friend,  Chas. 
A.  Murdock,  who  knew  him  when  he 
was  a  struggling  young  man,  and  who 
kept  in  touch  with  him  until  Harte  left 
'California  in  1871.  He  briefly  sketched 
his  life  and  career  up  to  the  time  he 
went  to  Humboldt  County,  where  he 
became  a  printer  and  associate  editor 
of  the  "Northern  Californian."  His 
personal  reminiscences  were  interest- 
Ing,  picturing  a  young  'man  of  refine- 
ment and  good  breeding,  well  educated, 
kindly,  humorous,  reserved,  willing  to 
do,  but  somewhat  helpless. 

"There  seemed  no  place  for  him, 
since  he  was  untrained  for  doing  any- 
thing that  needed  doing  in  that  com- 


Edwin  Markham 

munity/'  said  Mr.  Murdock.  "Learn- 
ing to  set  type  in  a  printing  office  was 
the  solution  of  the  problem.  When  he 
returned  to  San  Francisco  he  found 
employment  on  the  'Golden  Era'  as  a 
compositor,  but  was  soon  transferred  to 
the  editorial  department,  where  he  was 
paid  a  dollar  a  column  for  his  prose 
and  poetry.  He  soon  attracted  notice 
and  won  the  friendship  of  Starr  King 
arid  Jessie  Benton  Fremont.  Robert 
E.  Swain  made  him  his  private  secre- 
tary. From  the  'Golden  Era'  he  went 
to  the  'Californian/  and  in  1868  to  the 
'Overland  Monthly/ 

"  'The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp*  gave 
him  his  first  great  popularity,  which 
was  well  sustained  by  his  other  stories 
and  sketches,  and  by  his  humorous  and 
patriotic  poems.  In  1870  his  'Heathen 
Chinee'  gave  him  world-wide  recogni- 
tion, and  he  left  California  hoping  to 
realize  on  his  reputation.  For  eight 
years  he  wrote  and  lectured  with  vary- 
ing success.  He  then  went  abroad  as 
consular  agent,  spending  seven  years 
in  Germany  and  Scotland,  afterwards 
living  seventeen  years  in  England,  pa- 


442 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Exterior  of  her  home,  Russian  Hill 

thetically  alone,  writing  to  the  last,  but 
with  lessened  power. 

"The  Riverside  edition  of  his  works 
comprises  nineteen  volumes.  He 
painted  pictures  of  life  in  matchless 
beauty,  and  that  is  his  great  service. 
California  failing  to  honor  him  suffers 
loss.  He  should  be  cherished  as  her 
early  interpreter,  if  not  her  spirit's  dis- 
coverer. He  is  the  representative  fig- 
ure of  California,  and  deserves  to  be 
held  in  grateful  memory." 

The  idea  of  the  Congress  of  Authors 
and  Journalists  originated  with  Mrs.  I. 
Lowenberg,  past  president  of  the  Pa- 
cific Coast  Women's  Press  Association 
and  member  of  the  Women's  Board  of 
the  Exposition.  Its  committee  included 
the  leading  men  and  women  in  the  do- 
main of  literature,  as  well  as  the  heads 
of  the  two  California  Universities. 
Miss  Ina  Coolbrith,  president  of  the 
Pacific  Coast  Women's  Press  Associa- 
tion— under  the  auspices  of  which  the 
Congress  was  held — was  appointed 
President,  and  at  once  began  the  her- 
culean task  of  sending  out  more  than 
four  thousand  invitations  to  writers 


and  journalists  all  over  the  world. 

There  were  acceptances  from  such 
authors  as  John  Galsworthy,  Robert 
Hichens,  Hall  Caine,  Anthony  Hope, 
Sarah  Grand,  Albert  Kinross  (editor 
of  the  London  "Outlook"),  Lord  Cur- 
zon,  Beatrice  Harraden,  Louise  Imogen 
Guiney,  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  and  others, 
numbering  about  a  thousand  in  all; 
but,  alas!  war  robbed  us  of  the  privi- 
lege of  their  presence.  In  spite  of 
this,  however,  the  Congress  was  an 
unqualified  success,  and  was  attended 
by  a  few  from  abroad,  some  from 
Eastern  and  Northern  States,  and  by 
a  large  number  of  Californians. 

All  the  sessions  were  held  in  Hall 
D,  Exposition  Auditorium — with  the 
exception  of  the  last  one,  which  was 
transferred  to  Recital  Hall,  Exposition 
Grounds — the  Congress  extending 
from  Tuesday,  June  29th,  to  Friday, 
July  2d,  inclusive.  Three  ladies  alter- 
nated in  the  chair,  Miss  Coolbrith  and 
Mesdames  I.  Lowenberg  and  Laura  Y. 
Pinney,  each  one  filling  the  place  with 
dignity  and  ability;  the  president  giv- 
ing, in  addition,  a  most  excellent  open- 
ing address. 

The  subjects  dealt  with  embraced 
the  literature  of  all  nations;  the  pre- 
liminary speaker  being  Mr.  James  A. 
Barr,  director  of  Congresses,  P.  P.  I. 
E.,  who  in  the  course  of  his  address 
stated  that  the  very  first  application 
sent  in  to  him  was  that  of  the  Con- 
gress of  Authors  and  Journalists.  Mrs. 
North-Whitcomb  followed,  with  a 
most  schalcrly  paper  on  "Norse  Litera- 
ture," tracing  it  from  ancient  to  mod- 
ern times,  and  stirring  one  by  the 
strength  and  beauty  of  her  presenta- 
tion. Sin  Lun,  ex-Speaker  of  the  Chi- 
nese Senate,  next  gave  an  exceedingly 
comprehensive  outline  of  "Chinese 
Literature" — a  subject  with  which  the 
majority  are  unfamiliar — and  Dr.  Ed- 
ward Robeson  Taylor,  Dean  of  Hast- 
ings College  of  the  Law,  in  a  fine 
paper  on  "The  Value  of  Poetry,"  said 
among  other  things : 

"The  poet  must  come  to  feel  in  the 
very  bones  of  him  that  there  are  other 
things  than  dollars;  other  things  than 
material  splendor;  than  wasteful  lux- 


Living  room,  Miss  Coolbrith's  home,  San  Francisco 


ury;  and  that  while  the  materialities 
are  not  to  be  despised,  and  are  indeed 
necessary,  yet  the  springs  of  life 
which  poetry  feels  are  the  real  springs 
of  one  spiritual  being,  the  foundation 
of  all  saving  service,  and  the  true 
source  of  every  regeneration.  When 
we  become  absorbed  in  externals  we 
lose  sight  of  the  internals,  of  those 
spiritualities  in  and  by  which  we  are 
made  one  with  the  Divine  Mind." 

At  the  afternoon  session,  Redfern 
Mason,  the  well  known  music  critic, 
gave  a  most  illuminating  address  on 
the  "Song  Lore  of  Ireland,"  with  ex- 
quisite violin  illustrations  by  Hother 
Wismer.  Sweetest,  perhaps,  of  all, 
was  the  fairy  music  given  in  connec- 
tion with  the  Celtic  story  of  "Mider 
and  Etain,"  a  story  that  gave  Wm.  But- 
ler Yeats  his  "Land  of  Heart's  De- 
sire." 

The  next  subject  was  "The  Secret 
of  Successful  Dreams,"  by  Richard 
Walton  Tully,  who  analyzed  it  from 
the  days  of  Aristotle  to  the  present 
time,  and  incidentally  proved  himself 


an  eloquent  extemporaneous  speaker 
as  well.  He  seemed  to  think  that  the 
poet  has  a  much  easier  time  than  the 
dramatist,  stating  that  it  takes  all  the 
divine  attributes  and  emotions,  as  well 
as  a  year  and  a  half  of  hard  labor  to 
produce  a  successful  drama.  As  this 
handsome,  modern,  altogether  up-to- 
date  young  man  delved  into  the  past 
and  traced  the  drama  down  through 
the  ages,  we  could  not  help  thinking: 

"It's  a  long,  long  way  to  Aristotle* 
But  our  'Dick's'  right  there!" 

Spain  was  the  theme  that  followed,, 
Professor  Espinosa,  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity, reading  a  paper  on  "The  Na- 
tional Spanish  Drama,"  reviewing  it 
from  the  days  of  Lope  de  Vega  to  the 
present  century.  One  of  the  notable 
points  he  made  was  that  Cervantes, 
famous  for  his  "Don  Quixote,"  was 
universal  rather  than  national. 

Gertrude  Atherton's  paper,  "Liter- 
ary Merchandise" — read  by  T.  Coch- 
ran,  in  her  absence — was  a  direct  at- 


444 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


tack  on  the  inferior  quality  of  many  of 
the  contributions  to  periodicals.  She 
said  there  should  be  a  special  editor 
to  regulate  the  slipshod  English  of 
our  magazines,  which  may  be  specified 
as  split  infinitives,  vulgarisms  and 
grammatical  errors.  "These  may  be 
found,"  she  said,  "even  among  writers 
who  are  receiving  incomes  almost  as 
large  as  that  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States." 

On  the  second  day,  Yoeth  Eldredge 
— who  is  a  veritable  mine  of  informa- 
tion concerning  things  Californian,  and 
who  is  as  modest  as  he  is  wise — gave 
a  most  interesting  paper  on  "The  Gene- 
sis of  California  History."  He  was 
followed  by  Professor  William  Dallam 
Armes,  of  the  University  of  Califor- 
nia, on  "The  Beginnings  of  California 
Literature,"  who  said,  among  other 
things :  "The  old  devil  may  care,  free- 
hearted California  is  passing  away 
rapidly,  and  with  it  is  passing  the  old 
literature  of  Mark  Twain,  Bret  Harte, 
Ina  Coolbrith,  Joaquin  Miller  and 
others  of  the  golden  era.  Since  1890, 
others  have  entered  the  field  with  dif- 
ferent subjects  and  styles,  but  they 
are  all  imitations  of  the  free,  spontane- 
ous and  simple  craftsmen  of  the  old 
days.  They  are  poseurs  and  nothing 
more." 

Charles  Phillips,  editor,  author  and 
playwright,  next  gave  a  masterly  re- 
view of  California  poets  and  their 
work.  We  cannot  conceive  of  a  finer 
handling  of  the  subject,  but  then  he  is 
a  poet  himself,  though  modesty  pre- 
vented mention  of  the  fact.  We  were 
glad  indeed  to  hear  his  appreciative 
reference  to  Joaquin  Miller  and  others 
who  have  "crossed  the  bar." 

Herbert  Bashford,  poet  and  journal- 
ist, concluded  the  morning  session 
with  a  most  enlightening  paper  on 
"The  Sonnet  in  American  Literature," 
in  which  he  classed  Dr.  Edward  Robe- 
son  Taylor  as  the  finest  sonnet  writer 
in  America.  Mr.  Bashford's  genial 
personality  and  analytical  mind  made 
this  subject  one  of  the  treats  of  the 
Congress. 

On  the  third  day,  Takuma  Kuroda, 
art  critic  and  author,  was  heard  on  the 


interesting  theme  of  "Japanese  Litera- 
ture," and  Professor  Frank  E.  Hill,  of 
Stanford  University,  ably  defined 
"Free  Rhythm,"  mentioning  that  the 
trend  of  the  present  day  is  toward  sim- 
ple, direct  speech  and  the  elimination 
of  set  forms. 

Mrs.  Harriet  Lothrop,  author  of 
"Five  Little  Peppers,"  and  whose  pen- 
name  is  "Margaret  Sidney,"  next  gave 
personal  reminiscences  of  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  in  a  paper  entitled  "Haw- 
thorne in  Old  Concord  and  Home," 
which  proved  very  interesting,  owing 
to  the  fact  that  "Wayside,"  his  old 
home  in  the  former  city,  is  now  Mrs. 
Lothrop's  property  and  occupied  by 
her  in  summer-time,  her  winters  being 
spent  in  Boston.  The  morning  session 
concluded  with  a  paper  by  the  writer 
on  "Stratford  and  the  Shakespeare 
Festival." 

The  afternoon  session  commenced 
with  an  address  of  unusual  interest  by 
Rabbi  A.  Meyer,  Ph.  D.,  on  "Some 
Medieval  Jewish  Poets,"  in  which  he 
said:  "Jewish  people  are  thought  to 
be  without  humor,  whereas  they  not 
only  have  a  keen  perception  of  human 
character,  but  possess,  also,  a  great 
deal  of  humor,  one  might  well  say 
wit."  In  proof  of  his  statement,  the 
Rabbi — who  is  a  forceful  speaker — 
gave  examples  of  wit  and  humor  in 
Jewish  poets,  medieval  and  modern. 

Professor  R.  M.  Alden,  of  Stanford 
University,  followed  with  a  very 
timely  paper  on  "The  Victorians  and 
Contemporary  Literature,"  during  the 
reading  of  which  he  scored  what  he 
termed  the  self-dubbed  "modern 
writer,"  who  holds  the  writers  of  the 
Victorian  era  in  amused  contempt  be- 
cause of  their  old-fashioned  views  of 
life  and  their  more  ponderous  style, 
which  seem  in  direct  contrast  to  the 
present-day  liberality  of  sentiment  and 
freedom  of  expression.  "But,"  he 
added,  with  splendid  sarcasm,  "the 
modern  writer  will  be  as  great  as  those 
of  the  Victorian  era  only  when  he  can 
write  as  well." 

P.  E.  Quinn,  Commissioner  foi  New 
South  Wales,  brother  of  one  of  Aus- 
tralia's best  poets  and  a  poet  himself, 


I 


Miss  Ina  Coolbrith,   1894 


in  his  subject,  "The  Poetry  of  a  New 
Continent,"  performed  a  real  service 
for  his  country.  We  have  become  so 
accustomed  to  thinking  of  Australia 
as  merely  agricultural  that  his  excel- 
lent address  was  both  enlightening  and 
instructive. 

Alfred  E.  Acklom,  editor  and  poet, 
should  be  congratulated  on  his  choice 
of  subject  and  on  the  able  manner  in 
which  he  handled  it:  "Are  Poets  Un- 
practical." In  the  course  of  answering 


that  question  he  said:  "Society  con- 
ceives a  poet  as  an  utterly  unpractical 
being  with  his  head  in  the  clouds,  but 
this  is  not  really  the  case.  In  the  ma- 
ture periods  of  each  civilization  poets 
have  evolved  from  the  crude  bard  of 
the  harp  to  an  artist."  Mr.  Acklom's 
main  argument  was  that  the  habits  of 
concentration  and  condensation,  with 
the  tricks  of  the  rhymster  added,  de- 
veloped the  "divine  afflatus"  into  an 
art,  and  in  the  process  made  the  poet 


446 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


practical,  even  in  a  sense,  business- 
like; the  development  being  accentu- 
ated by  the  pangs  of  hunger  caused  by 
the  insufficient  compensation. 

As  instances  of  poets  who  showed 
practicality  by  acquiring  fortunes  and 
holding  responsible  positions,  Mr. 
Acklom  gave  the  names  of  Chaucer, 
Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Addison,  Sam- 
uel Johnson,  Southey,  Byron,  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott,  James  Russell  Lowell,  Wm. 
Cullen  Bryant,  John  Greenleaf  Whit- 
tier,  Dr.  Wendell  Holmes,  Longfellow, 
Stedman,  Joaquin  Miller  and  others. 

A  paper  by  Charles  F.  Lummis,  sci- 
entist, historian,  naturalist,  one-time 
editor  of  "Out  West,"  and  former  city 
librarian  of  Los  Angeles,  created  a 
mild  sensation,  even  though  read  by 
kindly  Yoeth  Eldredge.  It  was  the 
genuine  pill  of  the  Congress  without 
any  sugar  coating.  In  it  he  said :  "The 
clink  of  coin  and  rustle  of  the  check  is 
drowning  the  still,  small  voice  which 
was  once  the  only  song  that  Art  could 
hear.  What  ails  us  is  pathological  as 
well  as  psychological.  American  art 
of  all  sorts  has  developed  nervous  in- 
digestion. Worse  still,  it  has  fallen 
victim  to  the  complications  of  our  so- 
cial hyperaesthesia  along  with  our 
manners,  our  poise  and  our  humanity." 

At  the  last  session,  held  in  Recital 
Hall,  P.  P.  I.  E.,  a  commemorative 
bronze  plaque  was  presented  to  the 
Congress  by  Commissioner  Vogelsang, 
and  Mrs.  North- Whitcomb  gave  a 
comprehensive  review  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  Women's  Press  Association,  the 
members  of  which  make  moral  and 
intellectual  worth,  instead  of  social 
status,  the  criterion  in  their  judgment 
bf  each  other — surely  a  most  com- 
mendable rule.  Among  other  things, 
Mrs.  Whitcomb  said  that  no  other 
State  has  sent  forth  such  an  array  of 
brilliant  men  and  women  in  all  walks 
of  life  as  California,  and  as  she  gave 
name  after  name,  applause  greeted  her. 

It  was  a  delightful  program.  Mrs. 
Vincent  Cator,  Sen.,  recited  Dr.  Ed- 
ward Robeson  Taylor's  Exposition 
poem,  and  the  author,  being  called  to 
the  platform,  paid  a  tribute  to  Miss 
Coolbrith,  saying  of  her  that  she  is  a 


born  lyricist,  that  her  "Perfect  Day" 
is  a  perfect  poem,  and  that  her  "Cali- 
fornia" will  have  a  lasting  fame.  Chas. 
Phillips  then  read  the  latter  with  much 
expression,  and  two  of  Miss  Cool- 
brith's  songs  were  sung,  "In  Blossom 
Time,"  by  a  sweet-voiced  choir  boy, 
and  "Quest,"  by  Professor  Hervey  of 
New  York,  accompanied,  with  great 
expression,  by  Herbert  Bashford's 
gifted  daughter. 

The  social  features  of  the  Congress 
began  with  a  reception  in  honor  of 
Senator  James  D.  Phelan  on  June  15th, 
a  date  that  marked  the  opening  of  the 
club  headquarters  in  the  Forum  Club, 
and  on  which  occasion  there  was  an  ex- 
cellent program  by  professional  talent, 
with  Mrs.  Charles  H.  Smith  in  charge. 

The  second  gala  evening  was  on 
June  28th,  when  a  Spanish-California 
Fiesta  was  held  in  the  Cuban  Pavilion 
by  the  kind  courtesy  of  General  En- 
rique Loynay  del  Castillo,  Commis- 
sioner General  of  Cuba,  who  shared  the 
honor  of  receiving  with  Miss  Coolbrith 
and  the  officers  of  the  Women's  Press 
Association. 

What  a  charming  host  he  made,  this 
hero  of  eighty-seven  battles,  who  is 
poet  as  well  as  soldier — and  with  what 
lavish  hospitality  he  entertained !  Long 
will  the  brilliant  scene  be  remembered 
as  something  akin  to  an  Arabian 
night's  dream.  It  must  have  recalled 
to  Miss  Coolbrith  that  red-letter  night 
of  her  girlhood,  when  she  was  the 
chosen  one  to  open  a  ball  in  Los  An- 
geles, with  Don  Pio  Pico,  the  first 
Governor  of  California. 

There  was  a  wonderful  program  un- 
der the  management  of  Mrs.  Augusta 
Borle,  whose  splendid  training  of  the 
group  of  young  ladies  and  gentlemen 
of  Alameda  revealed  itself  in  Spanish 
songs  and  dances  that  aroused  enthu- 
siasm. She  also  secured  the  services 
of  several  well  known  professionals, 
including  Senorita  Flora  Mora,  the 
gifted  Cuban  pianiste,  who  has  ap- 
peared before  the  King  and  Queen  of 
Spain. 

The  closing  function  of  the  Congress 
was  a  dramatic  recital  at  the  Sorosis 
Club  under  the  able  management  of 


Group  of  Alameda  young  folks  who  were  drilled  by  Mrs.  Augusta  Borle  in 
Spanish  songs  and  dances  that  aroused  great  enthusiasm 


Mrs.  Eugene  H.  Folsom,  when  Miss 
Daisie  Kimball  Adams  gave  a  very  re- 
markable interpretation  of  Oscar 
Wilde's  version  of  "The  Tragedy  of 
Salome,"  and  Miss  Anita  Peters- 
Wright  revealed  her  artistry  in  "The 
Dance  of  the  Seven  Veils." 


The  lights  are  out,  and  the  last  lin- 
gering farewells  have  been  said,  but 
the  lesson  learned,  and  the  friendships 
formed,  remain  with  us,  to  lead  us  to 
higher  ideals,  and  to  strengthen  us  for 
better  service  in  the  days  that  are  to 
come. 


Ina  Coolbrith  Invested  With  Poets' 

Crown 

By  Josephine  Clifford  AcCrackin 


among  the  grand  celebra- 
tions that  have  occurred  in  Cali- 
fornia through  and  together  with 
the  Panama-Pacific  International 
Exposition  was  Ina  Coolbrith  Day, 
-during  the  week  of  Authors'  and  Jour- 
nalists' Congress  in  San  Francisco. 

The  Pacific  Coast  Womens'  Press 
Association,  of  which  Ina  Coolbrith  is 
President,  had  extended  thousands  of 
invitations,  to  every  part  of  the  Union 
.and  across  seas,  to  writers  and  jour- 
nalists to  attend  the  Congress,  of  which 
Miss  Coolbrith  was  president,  Mrs.  I. 
Lowenberg  past-president  of  the  P.  C. 
W.  P.  A.,  was  vice-president,  and  Mrs. 
L.  Y.  Pinney  second  vice-president. 
Mrs.  Gertrude  Atherton  was  vice-presi- 
dent at  large. 

The  sessions  of  the  Congress  of  Au- 
thors and  Journalists  were  held  in  the 
Exposition  Auditorium,  and  on  the  af- 
ternoon of  the  day  on  which  Ina  Cool- 
iDrith  was  to  be  crowned  queen,  one  of 
the  largest  halls  in  the  building  was 
filled  to  overflowing.  And  as  the  early 
""Overland  Monthly"  had  mirrored 
faithfully  the  work  and  the  literary 
status  of  every  contributor  to  its  pages, 
I  think  it  of  interest  to  the  readers  of 
this  latter  day  "Overland  Monthly"  to 
find  chronicled  the  names  of  those  dis- 
tinguished in  literature,  art  and  learn- 
ing, who  had  contributed  to  the  success 
of  the  week  of  Authors  and  Journalists' 
'Congress,  and  witnessed  the  historical 
episode  of  the  crowning  of  the  poet 
who  had  made  glorious  the  pages  of 
Bret  Harte's  "Overland." 

On  June  29,  1915,  Miss  Coolbrith, 
as  president,  spoke  her  greeting  to  the 
Congress,  and  was  followed  in  an  ad- 


dress  by  James  A.  Barr,  Director  of 
Congresses,  Panama-Pacific  Interna- 
tional Exposition.  Mrs.  M.  E.  North- 
Whitcomb  next  read  a  paper  on  Norse 
Literature,  and  Sin  Lun,  ex-Speaker  of 
the  Chinese  Senate,  spoke  on  "The  In- 
fluences of  Chinese  Literature  on  the 
Political  Development  of  the  Coun- 
try." Doctor  Edward  Robeson  Taylor, 
Dean  of  Hasting's  College  of  the  Law, 
closed  the  session  with  an  eloquent  ad- 
dress emphasizing  the  "Value  of 
Poetry." 

The  next  session  was  presided  over 
by  Mrs.  Lowenberg,  and  opened  with 
Redfern  Mason's  discourse  on  "Song 
Lore  of  Ireland."  He  was  followed  by 
Richard  Walton  Tully,  who  could  well 
speak  on  "The  Secret  of  Successful 
Drama."  Professor  Aurelio  M.  Espi- 
nosa,  Department  Romanic  Languages, 
Stanford  University,  spoke  on  "The 
National  Spanish  Drama,"  and  Ger- 
trude Atherton's  paper  on  "Literary 
Merchandise"  was  read  by  T.  Cochran. 

On  Wednesday  morning  Charles 
Phillips,  poet,  read  Ina  Coolbrith's 
"California,"  and  Zoeth  S.  Eldredge 
"Author  Beginnings  of  San  Fran- 
cisco," presented  the  "Genesis  of  Cali- 
fornia History;"  and  Professor  Wm. 
Dallam  Armes,  University  of  Califor- 
nia, spoke  on  "Beginnings  of  Califor- 
nia Literature;"  Herbert  Bashford, 
"The  Sonnet  in  American  Literature." 

At  another  session,  Mrs.  Pinney  pre- 
siding, Takuma  Kuroda,  Japanese  Art 
Critic  and  Author,  presented  a  paper 
on  "General  Idea  of  Japanese  Litera- 
ture;" Professor  Frank  E.  Hill,  of 
Stanford  University,  spoke  on  "Free 
Rhythm  in  Modern  Poetry,"  and  Chas. 


INA  COOL3RITH  INVESTED  WITH  POETS'  CROWN 


449 


Mrs.  Josephine  Clifford  McCracken 

Lummis  asked  "What's  the  Matter 
With  California  Literature?"  Mrs. 
Marian  Taylor  closed  the  session  with 
a  very  able  paper  on  "Stratford  and  the 
Shakespeare  Festival." 

At  the  next  session,  Martin  A. 
Meyer,  Ph.D.,  Rabbi  Temple  Emanuel, 
had  for  his  theme  "Some  Mediaeval 
Jewish  Poets."  Professor  Raymond 
Macdonald  Alden,  Stanford  Univer- 
sity, spoke  on  "The  Victorians  and 
Contemporary  Literature."  Harriet 
M.  Lpthrop  (pen  name  Margaret  Sid- 
ney) spoke  of  "Hawthorne  in  Old  Con- 
cord and  Rome."  P.  E.  Quinn,  Com- 
missioner for  Government  of  N.  S.  W., 
Australia,  to  P.  P.  I.  E.,  spoke  on 
"Poetry  of  a  New  Continent,"  and  A. 
E.  Acklom  propounded  the  question 
"Are  Poets  Unpractical?" 

The  session  in  which  Ina  Coolbrith 
was  invested  with  the  poet's  crown 
was  presided  over  by  Dr.  Benjamin 
Ide  Wheeler,  President  University  of 
California. 

If  I  have  seemed  pedantic  in  my  re- 
cital of  the  subjects  that  were  pre- 
sented in  papers  and  addresses  at  the 
Congress  of  Authors  and  Journalists, 


held  under  the  auspices  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  Women's  Press  Association, 
during  the  Panama-Pacific  Interna- 
tional Exposition,  1915;  and  have  been 
particular  to  mention  the  names  of 
those  who  were  distinguished  by  an 
invitation  to  appear  before  this  most 
critical  audience  of  authors  and  jour- 
nalists assembled  from  near  and  far, 
it  is  because  I  feel  the  responsibility 
of  the  chronicler  in  contributing  to  the 
history  of  California  literature  this 
memorable  event  in  the  life  of  Ina 
Coolbrith,  the  sweetest  songstress  on 
Pacific  shores. 

From  the  day  that  Miss  Coolbrith, 
the  slender,  graceful  girl,  whose  face 
held  an  expression  too  serious  for  her 
years,  was  presented  to  me,  the  more 
mature  woman,  her  dark  eyes  haunted 
me,  for  I  could  not  understand  the 
shadow  in  their  depths.  It  was  in  the 
Clay  street  office  of  the  "Overland 
Monthly,"  to  which  I  still  felt  a 
stranger,  as  I  felt  to  Bret  Harte,  who 
introduced  us;  and  I  learned  then  of 
the  friendship  that  had  already  bound 
the  three  together,  Ina  Coolbrith, 
Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  and  Bret 
Harte— the  Golden  Gate  Trinity.  It 
was  through  Stoddard,  whom  we 
all  called  Charley,  that  I  learned  later 
of  the  heavy  burden  borne  on  this 
girl's  shoulders;  borne  without  a  mur- 
mur, for  it  was  her  mother  first  who 
leaned  upon  her;  later  her  sister,  and 
then  her  sister's  children.  She  had 
never  had  time  to  think  of  happiness 
for  herself.  But  what  the  poet  lost  the 
world  has  gained;  and  only  once  the 
bitterness  that  would  have  marred  a 
lesser  poet's  verse,  finds  words  that 
seem  to  have  been  written  while  the 
scalding  tears  dropped  on  the  score, 
"The  Years."  I,  too,  have  felt  the 
scalding  tears  fall  from  my  eyes. 

In  something  written  about  the  early 
"Overland"  people,  I  had  said  of  the 
poetess  that  she  was  like  a  butterfly, 
to  be  shielded  and  watched  over,  that 
no  rude  hand  might  brush  the  bloom 
from  its  wings.  And  when  a  mutual 
friend  read  the  paper  to  her,  she  spoke 
sadly,  "a  butterfly,  crushed,  and  with 
its  wings  broken." 


450 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


There  are  two  German  poets  to 
whom  I  have  compared  Ina  Coolbrith ; 
Joseph  Victor  von  Scheffel,  and  T. 
Resa,  which  latter  is  the  non  de  plume 
of  a  very  gifted  woman.  In  Scheffel's 
"Frau  Aventiure,"  in  his  songs  of 
Heinrich  von  Otterdingen,  she  might 
have  written  "Am  Traunsee,"  "Sch- 
weigsam  treibt  mein  morscher  Ein- 
baum,"  or  the  lines  that  close  the  gay 
"Tanzweisen" :  "Im  Garten  der  Non- 
nen."  And  when  I  add  that  Resa's 
"Zweifel"  might  have  been  translated 
from  our  own  poetess,  I  have  given 
words  to  the  deepest  admiration  I  could 
feel. 

And  so  I  hastened  to  San  Francisco 
from  my  Santa  Cruz  home,  to  do  honor 
to  the  crowning  of  Ina  Coolbrith.  The 
greatest  and  the  noblest  of  the  land 
paid  tribute  to  her:  Governor  Johnson 
had  deputized  Arthur  Arlett  to  repre- 
sent him;  Senator  James  D.  Phelan, 
man  of  letters,  honored  her;  Edwin 
Markham,  Zoeth  Eldredge,  Charles 
Phillips,  Charles  A.  Murdock  and  Pres- 
ident Wheeler  in  the  chair. 

From  the  platform,  Mr.  Mur- 
dock read  his  paper  on  Bret  Harte,  a 
most  fitting  introduction  to  the  cere- 
mony of  crowning  the  friend  and  ad- 
visor of  the  illustrious  writer. 

I  had  but  a  few  hours  to  stay  in 
San  Francisco,  and  I  had  come  for 
just  this  ceremony,  so  I  had  at  once 
proceeded  to  the  Exposition  Auditor- 
ium. I  had  been  a  stranger  to  San 
Francisco  for  long  years,  but  a  dozen 
hands  were  stretched  out  in  greeting 
to  me  as  I  entered,  and  a  seat  was  se- 
lected for  me  near  the  stage.  Miss 
Coolbrith,  I  was  told,  had  not  yet 
come,  so  I  paid  close  attention  to  the 
paper  read. 

Then  the  reading  stopped,  there 
seemed  a  stir  in  the  audience,  and  sud- 
denly I  felt  a  hand  on  my  shoulder 
and  some  one  said :  "Jo !"  My  impulse 
was  to  jump  up  and  throw  my  arms 
around  her  neck,  but  remembering 
where  we  were,  I  could  say  only :  "Ina 
— oh,  Ina!"  And  as  I  drew  her  hand 
to  my  lips,  I  felt  I  was  sobbing;  and 
in  my  heart  there  was  bitter  pain  to- 


gether with  rejoicing,  for  I  kept  say- 
ing to  myself,  "The  Years,"  "The 
years,  what  have  they  brought  to  both 
of  us?" 

Then  she  moved  on,  a  stately  figure 
robed  in  black,  but  with  a  sash  in 
which  was  worked  a  garland  of  the 
Copa  de  Oro,  the  flower  adopted  as 
emblem  by  the  Pacific  Coast  Women's 
Press  Association. 

Senator  Phelan,  the  Californian,  had 
now  spoken,  and  in  his  usual  brilliant 
manner  had  paid  his  tribute  to  the 
queen  to  be  crowned ;  and  then  Mr.  Ar- 
lett told  of  the  admiration  Governor 
Johnson  entertained  for  the  Queen 
Poetess  of  California.  President 
Wheeler,  amidst  enthusiastic  applause, 
waving  of  handkerchiefs  and  hearty 
cheers,  presented  the  wreath  of  laurel 
to  Ina  Coolbrith>  who,  overcome  with 
emotion  first,  formed  fitting  words  with 
which  to  fill  the  reverent  silence  that 
had  fallen. 

The  stage  was  banked  with  flowers ; 
the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  beautiful 
flowers  California  offers,  were  laid  at 
Ina  Coolbrith's  feet.  In  front  of  their 
President  the  members  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  Women's  Press  Association  had 
placed  a  basked  filled  with  dark  red 
roses  and  delicate  fern;  and  touching 
these,  Ina  Coolbrith  spoke,  and  what 
she  said  fell  on  my  ear  as  in  a  dream, 
and  like  a  dream  it  seemed  when  the 
gentlemen  led  me  to  the  stage,  and  I 
stood  beside  Ina  Coolbrith  and  she 
clasped  my  hand;  and  what  she  had 
said  was  still  like  a  dream,  though  she 
spoke  clearly  and  distinctly.  And  the 
words  will  still  sound  in  my  ears  when 
I  cross  the  Great  River,  for  she  said: 
"There  is  one  woman  here  with  whom 
I  want  to  share  these  honors,  Josephine 
Clifford  McCrackin.  For  we  are 
linked  together,  the  last  two  living 
members  of  Bret  Harte's  staff  of 
'Overland'  writers." 

And  standing  in  the  reflected  glory 
of  the  star  that  had  shed  lustre  over 
the  pages  of  Bret  Harte's  "Overland," 
who  can  wonder  that  I  too  felt  the 
pride  of  having  held  a  place  in  its 
pages. 


The  Pigeons 


Panama 

California 

Exposition 

at 

San  Diego 

By 

Lewis  H.  Falk 


AN  ALL-YEAR  visitor  to  San 
Diego  wrote  back  East  as  fol- 
lows :  "The  strangest  thing  here 
is  that  electric  fans  and  coal 
scuttles  are  passe." 

All  of  which  is  a  reminder  that  in 
building  an  Exposition  Beautiful  in 
a  land  where  climate  allows  the  most 
extraordinary  feats  of  landscape  ar- 
chitecture, the  Panama-California  Ex- 
position at  San  Diego  has  not  confined 
its  efforts  to  passing  sensation.  It  has 
built  its  exhibits  with  a  view  to  pre- 
senting in  striking  form  the  resources 
of  the  American  West — resources  de- 
veloped to  show  what  has  been  done; 
resources  undeveloped,  to  show  what 
remains  to  be  done.  This  feature,  per- 
haps the  most  noteworthy  from  the 
viewpoint  of  permanent  economic  ad- 
vantage, is  set  forth  in  a  way  that  is 
destined  to  appeal  with  gripping  force 
to  banker,  to  manufacturer,  to  educa- 
tor, to  settler,  and  even  to  the  casual 
tourist.  The  tourist  may  come  for 
amusement,  but  he  is  going  away  with 
an  education. 

It  was  announced  soon  after  work 
was  started  on  the  San  Diego  Exposi- 
tion that  a  new  idea  would  be  intro- 


duced. There  was  talk  of  "processes, 
not  finished  products."  There  were 
suggestions  of  showing  progress  made 
and  progress  still  to  be  made.  These 
were  slogans.  In  themselves  they  con- 
veyed little  information,  but  from  these 
slogans  have  evolved  some  ideas  which 
do  convey  information,  ideas  which  are 
certain  to  have  a  mighty  effect  on  the 
upbuilding  of  a  Great  West. 

Statistics  have  been  compiled  con- 
cerning the  hinterland  of  the  West, 
vast  sections  of  which  are  entirely  un- 
developed, waiting  for  water  to  make 
crops  possible,  and  for  railroads  to 
make  marketing  possible.  The  figures 
show  what  can  be  done  in  each  of  these 
sections,  what  each  valley  is  best 
adapted  to  raise,  what  the  gross  pro- 
ducts should  be,  what  the  initial  and 
what  the  operating  cost  will  be.  There 
is  shown  what  will  be  the  total  expen- 
diture for  lumber,  for  hardward,  for 
roofing,  for  furniture,  for  implements. 

Hence,  the  prospective  settler  can 
learn : 

What  it  will  cost  him  to  get  started. 

What  it  will  cost  him  to  keep  going, 
whatever  his  crops. 

What  his  gross  returns  should  be. 


452 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Fourth  of  July  Celebration.    Children 
carrying  flag 

What  his  net,  after  all  deductions, 
will  be. 

And  the  business  man  will  learn : 

What  will  be  the  probable  farming 
population  eventually  in  a  given  sec- 
tion. 

What  will  be  the  value  of  products 
shipped  out. 

What  will  be  the  demand  for  manu- 
facturers of  various  sorts. 

The  tabulations  are  exhaustive,  and 
have  not  yet  been  made  public,  but 
enough  concerning  them  has  been 
given  out  to  indicate  the  serious  char- 
acter of  their  purpose.  Detailed  analy- 
sis of  these  statistics  is  deferred.  The 
mention  of  them  is  made  to  show  that 
the  Exposition  looks  to  permanent 
effect. 

Capital  to  develop  the  land  is  not 
the  main  requirement.  More  import- 
ant is  the  rallying  of  earnest,  active 
men  and  women  to  take  up  the  land, 
chiefly  in  small  units,  to  put  the  pro- 
jected irrigation  systems  to  use,  to 
furnish  long  and  short  haul  transpor- 
tation for  the  railroads,  and  to  become 
a  permanent  factor  in  the  West's  de- 
velopment. These  men  and  women  are 
in  the  East.  They  know  vaguely  the 
farmer  is  profiting.  They  wish  to  go 
back  to  the  land.  They  do  not  know, 
however,  how.  They  do  not  know  what 
they  will  find  when  they  get  back  to 
the  land.  They  have  an  idea  that  the 
labor  is  too  arduous  and  that  social 
life  must  be  abandoned.  The  real 


state  of  affairs  has  been  outlined  in  the 
magazine  articles  and  set  forth  in  the 
government  land  shows — indoors. 
There  have  been  no  offerings  of  first 
land  impressions. 

This  is  where  San  Diego  is  different. 

Near  the  north  entrance  of  the 
grounds  is  a  large  reservation  taken  by 
the  International  Harvester  Company. 
It  is  not  a  building  in  which  is  stand- 
ing machinery.  It  is  an  open  tract, 
and  on  that  growing  tract  will  be  shown 
the  heavy  machinery  of  the  Harvester 
Company  in  actual  operation.  Your 
Eastern  city  man,  who  wants  to  go 
back  to  the  land  but  is  a  bit  timid,  will 
see  the  tractor  and  the  motor  driven 
reapers  at  work.  He  will  see  one  man 
and  a  machine  doing  in  one-half  day 
as  much  work  as  kept  the  old  time 
farmer  and  five  men  busy  for  an  entire 
week.  He  will  see  why  the  progres- 
sive farmer  does  not  live  in  terror  of 
weather  changes.  He  will  see  why 
profits  are  large  and  expenses  light. 

His  wife,  walking  through  the  Home 
Economy  Building,  will  see  that  the 
same  mechanical  power  which  saves 
labor  in  the  meadow  also  can  be  put  to 
work  in  the  kitchen  and  laundry  and 
sewing  room  to  relieve  her  of  the  ardu- 
ous labors  she  had  feared. 


By  the  Home  Economy  Building 


PANAMA-CALIFORNIA  EXPOSITION 


453 


By  the  Home  Economy  Building 


Together  husband  and  wife  can  go 
to  the  model  small-unit  farm,  where 
a  model  bungalow  is  set  in  the  center 
of  an  intensively  cultivated  area,  where 
grow  fruits  and  vegetables  and  cereals 
and  poultry  in  the  narrowest  confines. 
The  point  is  that  they  can  see  all  this 
in  operation.  In  a  single  day  they 
can  observe  and  study  the  demonstra- 
tion of  facts  that  no  amount  of  read- 
ing would  ever  make  clear;  and  there 
is  born  the  irresistible  desire  to  go 
back  to  the  land. 

On  the  interior  wall  of  each  State 
building  is  placed  a  great  contour  map 
of  the  entire  commonwealth.  The  vis- 
itor shows  an  interest  in  a  particular 
exhibit  of  barley.  A  guide  shows  him 
on  the  map  exactly  where  that  barley 
was  grown.  The  guide  points  out  the 
nearest  route  to  market,  whether  by 
highway  or  railroad.  He  describes 
what  other  crops  can  be  raised  with 
profit  in  that  valley.  He  locates  the 
nearest  water  supply,  and  points  out 
the  nearest  school  and  church  of  the 
visitor's  denomination.  In  other  words 
the  visitor  can  stand  before  that  map 
and  learn  everything  he  can  wish  to 
know  about  any  and  every  section  of 
the  State. 


This  is  the  economic  aspect  of  San 
Diego's  Exposition.  It  is  a  big  mes- 
sage to  give  the  world,  and  it  is  being 
delivered  from  a  gorgeous  stage.  Pic- 
ture the  impressions  of  a  northern  visi- 
tor who  walks  or  rides  up  the  slope 
to  the  1,400  acre  Balboa  Park,  in  the 
heart  of  the  city,  glides  down  the  lane 
of  acacias,  and  crosses  the  great  Pu- 
ente  Cabrillo,  close  to  1,000  feet  long, 
with  its  arches  rising  from  the  pool 
135  feet  below.  He  passes  the  rose 
trellised  gateway,  and — presto ! 

The  hum  of  a  thriving  American  city 
is  gone.  He  has  stepped  backward 
three  or  four  centuries,  full  into  a  city 
of  old  Spain,  sprung  by  magic,  domed, 
towered,  castellated,  from  the  top  of 
the  mesa.  Dancing  girls  laugh  at  him 
from  beside  the  fountains.  Somber- 
clad  monks  stalk  down  the  colonnades. 
Gaily  attired  caballeros  saunter  out 
from  sunny  prado  and  cool  patio.  Pig- 
eons flutter  down  from  an  antique 
tower  by  the  Plaza  de  Panama  in  a 
shower  of  confetti.  Crimson  and  gold 
and  purple  flowers  clamber  high  over 
the  walls  of  the  missions  and  the  pal- 
aces, all  built  in  the  beautiful  style 
of  the  Spanish  Colonial. 

The  delicious  fragrance  of  the  big 
citrus  orchard,  which  is  a  spectacular 
exhibit  of  the  Southern  counties  of 
California,  floods  the  air.  From  the 
open  plazas  can  be  seen  below  the 
canyons  filled  with  cypress  and  palm 
and  eucalyptus,  beyond  the  rolling  hills 
and  in  the  distance  the  snow  capped 
peaks  of  California  and  old  Mexico.  To 
the  west  lies  the  Harbor  of  the  Sun, 
then  Coronado  and  Point  Loma,  and 


In  the  Hawaiian  village 


454 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Street  scene  on  Broadway,  San  Diego, 
California 

still  further,  the  blue  Pacific.  It  is  a 
resplendent  stage  from  which  to  de- 
liver a  great  message. 

Convention  bodies  from  every  in- 
dustry and  profession  are  rallying  in 
force  at  the  Exposition.  Since  Janu- 
ary 1st  it  has  housed  a  veritable  pot- 
pourri of  personalities,  the  layman,  the 
scientist,  the  scholar,  the  educator,  and 
continuing  on  down  to  and  even  includ- 
ing the  butcher,  the  baker  and  candle- 
stick maker. 

With  Europe's  gates  closed  on  ac- 
count of  the  war,  the  cosmopolite  is  an 
every-day  visitor,  and  he  declares: 
"Italy  cannot  boast  of  the  sunshine ; 
your  architecture  does  not  suffer  by 
comparison  with  that  of  the  old  world ; 


your  flora  is  like  century  old  planting ; 
and  in  all  of  this  you  have  associated 
that  restful  spirit  that  rejuvenates  the 
vacationist."  The  Exposition,  while 
not  international  in  is  scope,  touches 
on  the  foreign  countries  sufficiently  to 
furnish  the  visitor  with  a  comprehen- 
sive travalogue  in  a  sort  of  "vest 
pocket  edition."  He  sees  Japan,  parts 
of  South  America,  the  Hawaiian  vil- 
lage, while  before  him  at  every  hand 
in  science,  literature  and  art  is  exem- 
plified the  history  and  progress  of  the 
United  States. 

Diversity  of  the  Exposition  is  one 
of  its  most  appealing  points.  It  is 
capable  of  entertaining  a  scientist  who 
would  determine  the  psychological  ef- 
fect of  music  on  flowers,  and  likewise 
it  is  interesting  to  one  who  would  study 
the  military,  mining,  agriculture  or  the 
'evolution  of  man. 

It  has  been  written  that  "nothing 
succeeds  like  success,"  and  this  rather 
homely  phrase  is  found  in  a  receptive 
mood  at  San  Diego's  Exposition,  with 
its  gates  thrown  open  January  1st, 
marking  the  beginning  of  the  period  in 
which  the  first  all-year  exposition  in 
history  will  be  held.  The  attendance 
has  reached  expectations.  The  million 
mark  in  attendance  has  long  been 
passed,  and  the  record  is  reaching  out 
towards  two  million. 

While  San  Diego  takes  much  pride 
in  its  finished  product,  it  derives  great 
satisfaction  when  it  reflects  that  at  the 


Spanish  troubadours  in  front  of  Cali- 
fornia Building 


A  POEM  OF  PEACE  455 

time  this  Exposition  project  was  beaches  are  among  the  best  on  the 
launched  it  was  a  city  of  less  than  40,-  Pacific  Coast;  its  automobile  drives 
000  inhabitants.  To  be  exact,  San  are  of  boulevarded  roads  which  con- 
Diego's  population  was  39,578,  accord-  tourenate  through  sylvan  wilderness, 
ing  to  the  Government's  1910  census,  Its  land-locked  harbor  is  large  enough 
and  now  this  city,  after  building  and  to  anchor  the  fleets  of  the  world.  Its 
fostering  an  Exposition  of  incompar-  history  is  associated  with  the  estab- 
able  beauty  and  pronounced  success,  lishment  of  civilization  on  the  Pacific 
has  increased  its  population  to  100,000.  Coast,  and  its  missions  reverently  re- 
Naturally,  the  Exposition — oft-times  call  the  vistas  of  the  good  Fra  Junipero 
referred  to  as  the  "Exposition  Beauti-  Serra  in  1768.  Truly  San  Diego  has  a 
ful,"  or  "The  Dream  City  on  the  Hill,"  diversified  entertainment  for  its  guests, 
is  the  magnet  which  is  drawing  thou-  The  effete  Easterner,  the  open-handed 
sands  each  day  to  the  city,  which  is  the  Westerner,  the  sentimental  Southerner, 
farthest  southwest  in  the  United  States,  and  the  business  going  Northerner, 
Yet  San  Diego  has  something  to  offer  gather  within  its  gates  and  rejoice  in 
aside  from  its  big  project.  Its  bathing  the  entertainment  afforded. 


A  POE/A  OF  PEACE,  OR  THE  SERRA  OF  AONTEREY 

"He  being  dead — yet  speaketh" 

Nestled  within  green  hills'  embrace, 
O'erlooking  hence  the  sparkling  space 
Of  her  fair  bay,  lies  Monterey, 

Far  famed  in  history. 
Long  years  ago  Vizcaino  came, 
He  raised  the  cross,  flags  fluttering  gay 
On  Spanish  ships,  then  sailed  away. 
The  cross  remained;  the  glory  passed; 
The  vision  fair  had  paled :  at  last 
It  lived  again;  with  mystic  light, 
As  Serra  knelt,  the  cross  shone  bright. 

He  taught  its  motives  blest 

That  peace  and  love  are  best : 
The  vision  fair  abode  in  Monterey. 

So  long  ago;  yet  surely  still 
Serra  looks  down  from  yonder  hill, 
A  figure  grand,  with  sculptured  hand 
Upraised  to  bless  that  same  fair  land 

He  loved  so  well. 
Spirit  of  light,  source  of  his  might, 

Revisit  earth  in  power 

And  hasten  the  glad  hour 
Of  universal  peace. 

EMILY  VINCENT  WHITE. 

NOTE.— The  history  of  Monterey  is  closely  linked  with  that  of  early  days  in  California. 
Vizcaino  first  landed  on  the  shore  of  the  beautiful  bay  and  raised  there  the  cross.  And 
when,  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight  years  later,  Father  Junipero  Serra  re-discovered  Mon- 
terey, he  addressed  the  Indians  under  the  same  old  oak  that  still  sheltered  the  cross. 

Through  the  generosity  of  the  late  Mrs.  Stanford,  so  widely  known  as  the  founder  of  the 
University  of  that  name,  a  monument  has  been  erected  to  the  memory  of  Serra  on  Presidio 
Hill  at  Monterey.  The  following  is  a  part  of  the  inscription: 

"In  memory  of  Father  Junipero  Serra,  a  philanthropist  seeking  the  welfare  of  the  hum- 
blest, a  hero,  daring  and  ready  to  sacrifice  himself  for  the  good  of  his  fellow-men,  a  faith- 
ful servant  of  the  Master." 


Church's  Birth  Due  Now;  World's  Due 
Later — During  /Millennium 

By   C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,    Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 


"Ye  which  have  followed  Me,  in  the 
regeneration  when  the  Son  of  Man 
shall  sit  in  the  Throne  of  His  Glory 
ye  also  shall  sit  upon  Twelve 
Thrones."— Matthew  19:28. 

NONE  are  members  of  the  Church 
of  Christ  except  the  regenerate. 
This  fact  is  emphasized  by  our 
Lord  Jesus,  to  the  effect:  "Ye 
must  be  born  again,"  if  ye  would  be 
My  disciples.  This  teaching  has  prac- 
tically disappeared  from  the  pulpit,  for 
the  reason  that  the  hearts  of  Christian 
people  seem  to  be  more  tender  than 
were  those  of  their  fathers;  they  can- 
not bear  to  think  of  the  great  mass  of 
their  relatives,  friends  and  neighbors 
and  of  the  heathen  unregenerate  as 
subjects  for  eternal  torment  at  the 
hands  of  the  Devil.  Hence  they  ig- 
nore the  Scriptural  doctrine  of  regen- 
eration, and  endeavor  to  convince 
themselves  that  it  cannot  be  necessary; 
for  they  know  many,  many  people  not 
regenerated,  who  are  deserving  of  a 
far  better  fate. 

The  difficulty  met  with  in  consider- 
ing this  question  is  the  same  with 
which  we  so  often  meet  on  other  ques- 
tions; namely,  an  error  firmly  held  so 
biases  the  mind  as  to  make  Bible 
truths  seem  impossible.  Now,  how- 
ever, Bible  students  begin  to  see  that 
there  is  a  regeneration  promised  in  the 
Bible  for  the  world  in  the  Millennium, 
quite  separate  and  distinct  from  the 
regeneration  now  possible  to  the 


saintly  church.  When  we  get  the 
Bible  focus  upon  the  condition  of  the 
dead,  and  see  that  they  are  unconscious 
— or,  as  the  Bible  says,  sleeping,  wait- 
ing for  the  Resurrection  Morn,  when 
the  world  in  general  will  be  granted 
opportunities  of  regeneration,  we  see 
that  the  regeneration  of  the  present 
time,  that  of  the  Little  Flock,  will  not 
hinder  the  masses  from  regeneration 
by  and  by.  On  the  contrary,  the  re- 
generated Church  of  the  present  time 
will  be  associated  with  Messiah  in  the 
regeneration  of  the  world. 

This  puts  a  new  aspect  upon  the 
whole  matter.  Those  now  being  re- 
generated are  an  elect,  or  select,  class. 
Not  only  have  they  a  special  love  for 
righteousness  and  a  special  hatred  for 
iniquity,  but  additionally  they  exer- 
cise a  special  faith  in  God  and  His 
promises.  By  means  of  these  prom- 
ises and  the  trials  and  disciplines  of 
life,  these  regenerates  become  espe- 
cially qualified  for  God's  service  now 
and  hereafter. 

Regenerated  to  Different  Natures 

Another  item  to  be  noticed  is  that 
the  regenerating  processes  of  the 
present  time  are  with  a  view  to  bring- 
ing the  Church  class,  the  Elect  of  God, 
to  a  new  nature.  Their  regeneration 
began  when  God  imparted  to  them  the 
Holy  Spirit,  following  their  full  con- 
secration to  His  service  in  the  name 
and  merit  of  the  Redeemer.  The  re- 


CHURCH'S  BIRTH  DUE:  WORLD'S  DUE  LATER 


457 


generative  process  continues  during 
their  lifetime,  as  they  grow  in  grace, 
in  knowledge  and  in  love — in  the  char- 
acter likeness  of  God's  dear  Son.  This 
means  a  transforming  and  renewing 
work,  referred  to  by  St  Paul,  saying: 
"Not  by  works  of  righteousness  which 
we  have  done,  but  according  to  His 
mercy  He  saved  us,  by  the  purifying 
of  regeneration,  and  renewing  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.— Titus  3:5. 

No  well  informed  person  will  dis- 
pute the  fact  that  the  regenerated  con- 
stitute a  very  small  proportion  of  man- 
kind— yea,  that  they  constitute  a  very 
small  proportion  of  the  religious 
church  membership.  The  Apostle  re- 
fers to  these,  styling  them  New  Crea- 
tures in  Christ  Jesus,  and  declares  that 
to  these  "old  things  have  passed  away, 
and  all  things  have  become  new" — 
new  hopes,  new  aims,  new  ambitions, 
new  desires,  new  affections.  Such 
have  been  "transformed  by  the  renew- 
ing of  their  minds." — 2  Corinthians 
5:17;  Romans  12:2. 

New  Creatures  in  Christ  Jesus 

Surely  it  is  not  an  empty  statement 
on  the  Apostle's  part  that  all  these  re- 
generate ones  are  New  Creatures  in 
Christ  Jesus.  The  Apostle,  referring 
to  this  class,  tells  us  that  they  have 
been  begotten  by  the  Holy  Spirit 
through  the  Message  of  Truth.  Again 
St.  Peter  says,  God  hath  "given  unto 
us  (regenerates)  exceeding  great  and 
precious  promises;  that  by  these  we 
might  become  partakers  of  the  Divine 
nature."  (2  Peter  1:4.)  There  it  is! 
— these  by  nature  were  humans;  but 
God's  grace  in  Christ,  through  this  be- 
getting, they  become  of  a  different  na- 
ture— "partakers  of  the  Divine  na- 
ture." In  comparison  with  the  world, 
therefore,  these  New  Creatures — a 
fresh  creation,  entirely  aside  from  the 
human  family  to  which  they  once  be- 
longed. 

But  the  Scriptures  everywhere  re- 
mind us  that  the  New  Creation  is 
merely  an  embryo  and  will  not  be  per- 
fected until  the  resurrection.  They  in- 
form us  also  that  some,  by  repudiating 


their  covenant  with  the  Lord  and  turn- 
ing willfully  to  sin,  may  become  sub- 
jects of  the  Second  Death.  They  in- 
form us  that  many  begotten  of  the 
Spirit  may  never  attain  the  full  meas- 
ure of  their  possibilities — may  never 
become  joint-heirs  with  Jesus  Christ, 
their  Lord.  Because  of  slackness, 
worldly  mindedness,  they  may  attain 
only  to  a  lower  spiritual  degree  or  na- 
ture— like  unto  the  angels  and  not  like 
unto  the  Son  of  God,  who  is  the  ex- 
press image  of  the  Father's  glorious 
Person. 

We  perceive,  therefore,  that  the 
steps  of  consecration  and  spirit  beget- 
ting are  not  trifling  propositions,  but 
serious  ones;  and  that  with  this  op- 
portunity of  so  great  an  exaltation  go 
also  conditions,  limitations,  trials,  test- 
ings of  faith  and  loyalty.  "If  we  suf- 
fer with  Him,  we  shall  also  reign  with 
Him"— "be  glorified  together."— 2 
Timothy  2:12;  Romans  8:17. 

"Sit  on  Twelve  Thrones,  Judging" 

In  our  context  the  Redeemer  assured 
His  faithful  Apostles  that,  after  being 
tested,  the  worthy  ones  would  be  as- 
sociated with  Himself  in  His  Heavenly 
Kingdom — His  Millennial  Kingdom. 
These  they  would  sit  on  twelve  thrones 
judging  or  ruling.  No  doubt  some 
special  glory  and  honor  is  provided  in 
God's  great  Plan  for  the  twelve  faith- 
ful Apostles — St.  Paul  taking  the  place 
of  Judas.  Nevertheless  the  Lord  af- 
terward declared  that  all  of  His  faith- 
ful followers  would  be  granted  a  share 
with  Him  in  His  Millennial  Kingdom 
and  in  His  glory  and  power.  Mark  His 
words :  "To  him  that  overcometh  will  I 
grant  to  sit  with  Me  in  My  Throne" — I 
will  give  Him  power  over  the  nations" 
—the  Gentiles.— Revelation  3 :21 ; 
2:26. 

This  is  doubly  interesting  to  us :  first 
because  it  is  the  reward  of  those  who 
are  now  regenerated  and  who  prove 
faithful  to  the  spirit-begetting  which 
they  now  receive — to  those  who  even- 
tually shall  be  born  of  the  Spirit  in 
the  First  Resurrection.  As  every  be- 
getting in  the  flesh  must  have  a  birth, 


458 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


else  it  will  be  valueless,  so  the  be- 
getting of  the  Spirit  must  reach  the 
culmination  of  the  New  Birth  in  the 
Resurrection.  Jesus  describes  this 
Resurrection,  saying,  "Blessed  and 
holy  is  he  that  hath  part  in  the  First 
Resurrection:  on  such  the  Second 
Death  hath  no  power,  but  they  shall 
be  priests  of  God  and  of  Christ,  and 
shall  reign  with  Him  a  thousand  years. 
—Revelation  20 :6. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  time  when 
the  Church  will  be  reigning  with 
Christ  in  His  Kingdom  glory  will  be 
the  time  of  the  world's  regeneration — 
the  Millennium.  This  is  the  lesson  of 
our  text,  "Ye  which  have  followed  Me 
(in  the  narrow  way  of  self-sacrifice  in 
the  present  life),  in  the  regeneration, 
when  the  Son  of  Man  shall  sit  upon 
the  Throne  of  His  glory  (during  His 
Millennial  Reign),  ye  shall  sit  upon 
twelve  thrones."  How  plain!  How 
simple !  How  beautiful !  How  grand ! 
Could  any  of  the  Lord's  people  who 
have  experienced  the  purifying  of  their 
own  hearts  by  the  regenerating  influ- 
ences of  the  Holy  Spirit  have  a  selfish 
or  an  unkind  thought  toward  the  un- 
regenerated  world — so  that  they  would 
object  to  the  thought  here  presented! 
Would  not  all  such,  on  the  contrary, 
rejoice  to  know  that  the  Heavenly 
Father  has  a  Plan  by  which  the  non- 
elect  of  mankind  may  be  regenerated 
in  due  time?  We  hold  that  this  is 
true. 

Selfishness  and  every  desire  to  ex- 
clude others  from  blessings  and  favors 
which  God  has  promised  us  signify  so 
much  of  sin  in  control  of  the  mind. 
Love  not  only  thinketh  no  evil,  but  it 
hopeth  all  things,  and  is  glad  to  find 
in  God's  Word  various  promises  to  the 
effect  that  all  the  families  of  the  earth 
shall  yet  be  blessed  through  the  Spirit- 
ual Seed  of  Abraham — Christ  and  the 
Church.— Galatians  3:8;  16:29. 

All  Mankind  Need  Regeneration 

Some  may  see  that  the  Church  need 
regenerating  now,  but  fail  to  see  the 
need  of  the  world.  They  see  that  the 
Church's  regeneration  is  necessary  be- 


cause "flesh  and  blood  cannot  inherit 
the  Kingdom  of  God" — we  "must  be 
born  again."  But  there  would  be  no 
Kingdom  of  God,  there  would  be  no 
Millennium,  there  would  be  no  regen- 
eration of  the  world,  if  God  purposed 
only  the  salvation  of  the  Church.  On 
the  contrary,  however,  everywhere  in 
the  Bible  God  tells  of  His  compassion 
toward  the  world,  while  telling  of  His 
particular  love  for  the  true  Church, 
dear  as  the  apple  of  His  eye. — Zacha- 
riah  2:8. 

Note  that  favorite  text,  "God  so 
loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  Only 
Begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  believ- 
eth  in  Him  should  not  perish,  but  have 
everlasting  life."  (John  3:16.)  The 
whole  world  was  loved  of  God.  The 
whole  world  has  been  provided  for  in 
the  glorious  sacrifice  of  Jesus,  and  the 
whole  world  is  to  have  the  benefit  re- 
sulting from  that  sacrifice.  Christ's 
death  is  not  in  vain,  nor  merely  for  the 
Church,  the  Elect  few.  Through  these 
Elect  the  great  mass  of  mankind,  non- 
elect  and  unfit  for  the  Kingdom,  are  to 
be  blessed — blessed  with  an  opportu- 
nity for  regeneration  as  men — not  to 
a  new  nature,  as  the  Church,  but  to 
the  nature  once  assigned  humanity,  in 
the  image  of  God,  lost  through  sin. 

The  world's  regeneration,  therefore, 
will  be  to  perfect  human  nature,  lost 
in  Adam,  redeemed  by  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ's  human  life.  Moreover,  God's 
provision  of  Times  of  Regeneration — 
years  of  Regeneration — is  ample — a 
a  thousand  years.  Satan  shall  no 
longer  be  the  prince  of  this  world.  At 
the  beginning  of  Messiah's  Reign,  we 
have  the  assurance  that  he  will  be 
bound,  restrained,  that  he  may  deceive 
the  nations  no  more — that  he  may  put 
light  for  darkness  and  darkness  for 
light  no  more. 

The  great  Life-Giver  will  provide 
the  opportunity  for  regeneration  to  all 
the  thousands  of  millions  of  our  race 
who  died  in  Adam  and  who  were  re- 
deemed to  this  opportunity  for  ever- 
lasting life  through  Messiah's  death  at 
Calvary.  (1  Corinthians  15:21-23.) 
Ignorance  and  superstition,  darkness 
and  sin,  will  flee  before  the  rising  Sun 


CHURCH'S  BIRTH  DUE:  WORLD'S  DUE  LATER 


459 


of  Righteousness,  which  will  flood  the 
earth  with  the  knowledge  of  the  glory 
of  God.  Then  all  mankind,  whosoever 
will,  shall  have  the  opportunity  of 
coming  to  a  knowledge  of  God  and  of 
the  way  of  life,  and  of  being  begotten 
again  by  the  Life-Giver. 

The  regenerated  Elect  of  this  Age 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  giving  the 
life  to  the  world.  That  life  must  come 
from  the  Life-Giver,  who  has  secured 
the  right  to  be  the  world's  Everlasting 
Father  by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself. 
But  as  Christ  will  be  the  Second  Adam 
(1  Corinthians  15:45)  to  the  world  for 
its  regeneration,  so  the  Church  will  be 
the  Second  Eve,  to  nourish,  to  care 
for,  to  guide,  direct,  instruct,  all  the 
willing  and  obedient,  desirous  of  com- 
ing back  into  harmony  with  God  dur- 
ing the  Millennial  Age. 

At  the  conclusion  of  that  blessed 
Epoch  of  a  thousand  years,  when  all 
wilful  sinners  shall  have  been  de- 
stroyed in  the  Second  Death,  the  Rev- 
elator's  words  will  be  fulfilled — every 
creature  in  Heaven  and  on  earth  shall 
be  heard  saying,  Praise,  glory,  honor, 
dominion  and  might  be  unto  Him  that 
sitteth  upon  the  Throne  and  unto  the 
Lamb,  forever.  There  will  be  no  dis- 
cordant note.  God's  will  shall  then 
be  done  upon  earth,  even  as  it  is  now 
done  in  Heaven;  and  the  reward  of 
His  favor — everlasting  life,  with  no 
sickness,  sorrow  nor  pain — will  then  be 
with  humanity,  even  as  it  is  now  with 
the  angels. 

Mankind's  New  Trial  for  Life 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Adam 
did  not  lose  everlasting  life.  Although 
he  had  a  perfect  life  and  was  free  from 
all  elements  of  death,  nevertheless  he 
was  placed  in  Eden  on  probation  to  see 
whether  by  obedience  to  God  he  would 
develop  a  character  in  harmony  with 
God,  and  so  be  accounted  worthy  of 
everlasting  life.  Consequently,  when 
Adam  and  his  posterity  are  redeemed 
from  the  curse  of  death,  this  salvation 
does  not  entitle  them  to  life  everlast- 
ing, but  merely  to  a  fresh  trial  as  to 
worthiness  of  everlasting  life. 


This  fresh  trial  will  indeed  be  more 
favorable  for  Adam  and  his  race  in 
some  respects  than  was  Adam's  ori- 
ginal trial,  because  of  the  large  in- 
crease of  knowledge.  Man  has  had 
an  opportunity  to  learn  the  lesson  of 
the  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin.  He 
will  soon  have  an  opportunity  to  learn 
the  blessedness  of  righteousness  and 
to  know  of  the  grace  of  God  in  Christ, 
This  knowledge  will  be  of  great  ser- 
vice to  all  who  will  use  it  during  the 
Millennial  Age,  when  for  a  thousand 
years  the  whole  world  of  mankind  will 
be  on  trial  for  everlasting  life  before 
the  great  White  Judgment  Throne. — 
Revelation  20:11,  12. 

God  wills  that  all  men  should  be 
saved,  not  only  from  the  Adamic  death 
sentence,  but  also  from  the  ignorance 
'and  blindness  with  which  Satan  has 
darkened  their  minds.  (2  Corinthians 
4:4.)  He  wills  that  all  should  be  so 
saved  from  the  train  of  evils  which  has 
followed  Adam's  sin  and  its  penalty  of 
death,  in  order  that  they  may  come  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  Truth.  This  He 
does  to  the  intent  that  having  a  clear 
knowledge  of  the  Truth  they  may 
make  the  very  best  possible  use  of  the 
new  trial  for  life  secured  for  them  by 
the  Redeemer's  Ransom-sacrifice.  It 
is  for  this  very  purpose  that  the  Mes- 
sianic Kingdom  will  be  inaugurated, 
which  will  first  bind  Satan  and  then 
release  mankind  from  their  blindness, 
as  it  is  written.  (Isaiah  35:5.)  For 
the  same  reason  it  is  the  Divine  ar- 
rangement that  the  Kingdom  work 
shall  be  done  gradually  and  shall  re- 
quire a  thousand  years  for  its  com- 
pletion. 

The  Regeneration  of  Mankind 

Throughout  the  Millenial  Age  it  will 
be  the  work  of  Christ  Jesus,  as  the 
Second  Adam,  to  regenerate  mankind. 
The  regenerating  influences  will  begin 
with  their  awakening  from  the  sleep 
of  death,  in  harmony  with  the  Master's 
declaration,  "The  hour  is  coming  in 
which  all  that  are  in  the  graves  shall 
hear  the  voice  of  the  Sen  of  Man,  and 
shall  come  forth."— John  5 :28,  29. 

The  coming  forth  from    the    tomb 


460 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


will  be  merely  the  beginning  of  the 
work  of  regeneration.  It  will  be  only 
a  preparatory  work.  The  awakened 
sleepers  will  be  in  the  same  condition 
of  mind  as  when  they  fell  asleep  in 
death — in  a  very  similar  condition  to 
those  who  will  be  living  on  the  earth 
at  that  time.  But  before  they  can  be 
regenerated  they  must  be  brought  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  Truth.  Their  eyes 
and  ears  of  understanding  must  be 
opened.  This  the  Scriptures  assure 
us  shall  be  accomplished.  "Then  the 
eyes  of  the  blind  shall  be  opened,  and 
the  ears  of  the  deaf  shall  be  un- 
stopped." "The  earth  shall  be  full  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  the 
Lord,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea." — 
Isaiah  35:6;  11:9;  Habakkuk  2:14. 

The  good  news  of  Divine  Love  and 
of  the  possibilities  of  return  to  the  fa- 
vor of  God  through  the  atoning  work 


of  Jesus  having  then  been  clearly  dem- 
onstrated to  all,  each  one  will  have  the 
opportunity  of  deciding  for  himself 
whether  or  not  he  desires  to  return  to 
human  perfection  and  the  blessed  priv- 
ileges of  life  everlasting.  To  do  so  he 
must  be  begotten  again  by  the  Life- 
Giver,  who  will  beget  again  only  those 
who  are  desirous  of  having  the  new 
life.  All  wilful  rejectors  of  the  oppor- 
tunity will  die  the  Second  Death.  But 
those  who  accept  the  Savior's  proposi- 
tion will  come  under  the  helpful  and 
disciplinary  experiences  which  will 
gradually  lift  them  up  to  human  per- 
fection— mental,  moral  and  physical — 
to  all  that  was  lost  for  them  in  Adam's 
disobedience  and  that  was  regained  for 
them  by  the  Redeemer's  obedience  and 
the  Divine  arrangement  of  His  Mes- 
sianic Kingdom  for  the  regeneration  of 
the  world. 


In  the  Realm  of  Bookland 


"Undercurrents  in  American  Politics/' 
by  Arthur  Twining  Hadley,  Ph.  D., 
LL.  D.,  President  of  Yale  Univer- 
sity. 

This  unusually  illuminating  book  is 
based  on  two  lectures  delivered  by 
President  Hadley.  The  Ford  lecture 
shows  how  a  great  many  organized  ac- 
tivities of  the  community  have  been 
kept  out  of  government  control  alto- 
gether ;  the  Virginia  lectures,  on  Politi- 
cal Methods,  show  how  those  matters 
which  were  left  in  government  hands 
have  often  been  managed  by  very  dif- 
ferent agencies  from  those  which  the 
framers  of  the  Constitution  intended. 
Both  lectures  were  delivered  at  Ox- 
ford, England,  in  1914.  From  them 
the  casual  reader  of  American  history 
will  glean  a  great  deal  of  new  and 
fruitful  information  regarding  the  de- 
velopment of  the  idea  of  democracy  in 
this  country  and  of  the  mental,  social 
and  political  ideas  which  prevailed  at 
the  time  the  thirteen  States  cast  their 
fortunes  with  the  Federal  Constitution 
in  1788.  At  that  time,  "neither  the 
United  States  as  a  whole,  nor  any  of 


the  commonwealths  of  which  it  was 
composed,  was  a  democracy  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  word.  Ever  since 
their  original  settlement,  the  political 
and  social  system  of  the  English  colo- 
nies in  North  America  had  been  essen- 
tially aristocratic.  Nowhere  among 
them  do  we  find  universal  suffrage. 
The  right  to  vote  was  confined  to  tax- 
payers, and  almost  always  to  free- 
holders. The  higher  administrative 
officers  were  either  appointed  by  the 
crown  or  elected  by  councils  composed 
of  a  few  of  the  richest  and  most  influ- 
ential citizens.  The  man  of  small 
means  and  unconsidered  ancestry  had 
very  little  direct  participation  in  the 
affairs  of  State." 

A  clear  and  succinct  statement  is 
given  of  the  aristocratic  form  of  gov- 
ernment, influenced  by  property  hold- 
ings, which  prevailed  for  many  years. 
The  first  tide  of  democratic  spirit 
swept  over  the  country  in  the  flaming 
patriotism  which  arose  to  meet  the  is- 
sues of  the  war  of  1812.  The  next  and 
final  wave  which  ushered  in  the  mod- 
ern spirit  of  democracy  swept  through 
the  nation  with  the  election  of  Jackson, 


Please    Mention    Overland    Monthly   When    Writing    Advertisers. 


ixiBmE^m^r^JwmMmM^^KKKKmiwu&Mmwmrm.  K? 

Leghorn   Breeders! 

Send  in  your  subscription   to   The  $ 
Leghorn  Journal  and  keep  posted  on  J 
the  progress  of  the  Leghorn  industry;  \ 
as  it  is  devoted  exclusively  to  the  dif-  j 
ferent  Leghorn  fowls.      Subscription  R 
price  5Oc.  per  year.      Special  offer- 
Send  us  lOc.  and  the  names  of  five  S 
of  your  neighbors  interested  in  Leg-  Q 
horns    and    we    will    send    you     The  9 
Leghorn   Journal  for  three    months  I 

THE    LEGHORN    JOURNAL  | 

APPOMATTOX,   VA. 

Booms 


American     Open    Air 
School  Journal 

Devoted  to  the  purpose  of  Vitalizing  school  children 
by  means  of  fresh  air  class-rooms  and  Open  Air 
Schools.  Official  organ  of  the  American  Open  Air 
School  Association,  a  national  society  for  the  ex- 
tension  of  fresh  air  schools.  Beautifully  printed  and 
profusely  illustrated;  contains  reports  of  practical 
work  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada. 
Interests  thoughtful  parents.  Health  Officials,  Edu- 
cators,  School  Medical  Inspectors,  whole  com- 
munities.  Not  a  Juvenile  publication,  but  a  Big 
Man's  Journal.  Issued  monthly  at  $1.00  per  year; 
each  number  worth  ten  times  its  cost.  1140  Real 
Estate  Trust  Building,  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.  S.  A. 
Subscribe  for  it  today. 


A  Perfect 
Complexion 


Gives  that  deli- 
cately clear  and 
refined  com- 
plexion which 
every  woman 
desires.  Keeps 
way  skin 
troubles. 


S  troues.  t 

Gouraud's     R 

OrientalCream 


We  will  send  a  complexion 
chamois  and  book  of  Pow- 
der leaves  for  15c.  to  cover 
cost  of  mailing  and  wrapping. 
At  Druggists  and  Department  Stores 

FERD    T.   HOPKINS    &    SON 

37  Great  Jones  St.  New  York  City. 


L 


Over  the  Siskiyous 


Through  the  most  magnificent  mountain  scenery  in 
America— snow-capped  Shasta,  pine-clad  canyons  and 
foaming  streams.  From  Siskiyou's  glorious  summit 
looking  southward  on  California's  peaks  and  verdant 
slopes,  and  northward  on  Oregon's  timbered  heights 
and  orchard-checkered  valleys— a  succession  of  views 
unequaled  in  their  superb  vistas  and  bewildering 
expanse. 

On  SOUTHERN  PACIFIC 

"SHASTA  ROUTE" 

FOUR     DAILY    TRAINS 

San    Francisco  (  Ferry  Station  )  to   Portland,  Tacoma  and  Seattle 
"Shasta  Limited,"    Extra  Fare  $5,  11:OO  A.  M. 
"Portland  Express"  1:OO  P.  M. 

"Oregon  Express"  8:2O  P.  M. 

"Sound  Special"  11:4O  P.  M. 

Best   Dining  Car  in  America 
Automobile  Electric  Block  Safety  Signals 

Oil-Burning  Engines— No  Cinders,   No  Smudge,   No  Annoying  Smoke 
For  Fares,  Tickets  and  Berths,  inquire  Southern  Pacific  Ticket  Offices- 
Flood  Building,   Palace  Hotel.  Third-Street  Station,  Ferry  Station 
Southern  Pacific  Building,  Exposition  Grounds 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Old  Hickory,  a  shoemaker,  and  the 
first  candidate  of  the  common  people 
to  be  elected  to  the  highest  office  of 
the  land.  .  This  spirit  was  intensified 
and  broadened  by  the  opening  of  the 
western  land  to  settlement.  The  stock 
of  citizens  born  there  knew  nothing  of 
the  traditions  and  precedents  of  New 
England  and  the  Southern  States. 
Brains  and  character  hewed  their  way 
to  success,  and  the  only  form  of  gov- 
ernment they  knew  and  recognized  was 
in  the  democracy  set  forth  in  the 
clauses  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. 

Along  these  lines  the  author  traces 
the  salient  influences  which  have  de- 
veloped this  democracy,  among  them 
industrial  property  rights,  the  indus- 
trial unrest  of  the  Civil  War,  the  con- 
test between  the  shippers  and  the  rail- 
way powers,  and  the  serious  move- 
ment towards  State  socialism. 

In  the  chapters  devoted  to  Political 
Methods,  the  author  discusses  the  de- 
velopment of  the  growth  of  party  ma- 
chinery and  the  good  and  bad  influ- 
ences it  has  had  in  a  Democracy  where 
influential  winds  blow  from  many  di- 
rections. Party  machinery  has  passed 
through  several  stages  since  its  incep- 
tion in  this  country,  and  the  merits  and 
weaknesses  are  shown.  The  extraor- 
dinary influences  of  Aaron  Burr  and 
Tammany  Hall,  dominant  powers  in 
nominations,  are  shown,  and  the  sys- 
tem "to  the  victor  belongs  the  spoils," 
inaugurated  by  Andrew  Jackson.  All 
the  varying  influences  on  the  political 
game  are  set  forth  and  criticised,  from 
the  days  when  a  representative  voted 
as  he  thought  best  down  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  when  a  representative  is  sup- 
posed to  vote  as  his  constituents  wish. 
The  reaction  against  the  party  ma- 
chine and  the  revolt  of  the  grangers 
and  other  political  protests  which 
bridged  the  way  to  the  Progressive 
movement,  the  initiative,  referendum 
and  recall,  with  all  that  those  preg- 
nant movements  manifested,  are  logi- 
cally explained  and  their  merits  dis- 
cussed. 

Price,  $1.35  net,  postpaid.  Published 
by  Yale  University  Press,  New  Haven. 


"An  Art  Philosopher's  Cabinet :  Being 
Salient  Passages  from  the  Works  on 
Comparative  Aesthetics  of  George 
Lansing  Raymond,  L.  H.  D.,  Former 
Professor  of  Aesthetic  Criticism  in 
Princeton  University."  Selected 
and  Arranged  According  to  Subject 
by  Marion  Mills  Miller,  Litt.  D.,  Edi- 
tor of  the  Classics,  Greek  and  Latin, 
etc. 

Readers  interested  in  the  elements 
and  relations  of  the  arts  will  find  in  the 
wide  range  of  this  book  much  to  illu- 
minate their  understanding  of  the  finer 
shades  and  co-relations.  It  is  con- 
veniently paragraphed  and  arranged 
for  this  special  purpose.  Of  George 
Lansing  Raymond's  system  of  art-in- 
terpretation there  can  be  no  question: 
it  is  at  once  critical  and  philosophical. 
Every  reader  of  his  books  is  impressed 
by  the  manner  in  whHi  he  resolves 
form  existent  in  art  into  their  essen- 
tial elements,  and  from  these  recon- 
structs the  ideal  forms;  and  a  student 
who  has  examined  his  entire  system 
will  realize,  as  never  before,  the  inter- 
relation of  all  the  arts  and  their  com- 
mon foundation  on  broad  physical  and 
physiological  principles,  which  may  be 
harmonized  in  a  general  aesthetic  phil- 
osophy applicable  to  every  branch  of 
the  subject.  Professor  Raymond  is 
now  living  in  Los  Angeles,  still  delv- 
ing in  his  favorite  line  of  work.  For 
busy,  every-day  workers  who  have  not 
the  time  to  devote  to  the  ?tudy  of  Pro- 
fessor Raymond's  theory  of  art  and  its 
influences,  this  book  will  be  of  excep- 
tional value.  Thirteen  illustratons 
have  been  selected  from  the  books  of 
Professor  Raymond  on  account  of  the 
self-explanatory  testimony  which  they 
all  furnish  to  the  truth  of  one  of  the 
most  important  of  his  fundamental 
propositions.  That  is  the  primary  and 
most  useful  endeavor  of  the  imagina- 
tion when  influenced  by  the  artistic 
tendency  is  to  form  an  image  that  is 
'made  to  seem  a  unity  by  comparing 
and  grouping  together  effects  that, 
when  seen  or  heard,  are  recognized  to 
be  wholly  or  partially  alike. 

Price,  $1.50  net.  Published  by  G.  P, 
Putnam's  Sons,  New  York. 


I 


PORTOLA'S  CROSS 


Pious  Portola,  journeying  by  land, 

Reared  high  a  cross  upon  the  heathen  strand, 

Then  far  away 
Dragged  his  slow  caravan  to  Monterey. 

The  mountains  whispered  to  the  valleys,  "good!" 
The  sun,  slow  sinking  in  the  western  flood, 

Baptized  in  blood 
The  holy  standard  of  the  Brotherhood. 

The  timid  fog  crept  in  across  the  sea, 

Drew  near,  embraced  it,  and  streamed  far  and  free, 

Saying:  "O  ye 
Gentiles  and  Heathens,  this  is  truly  He!" 

All  this  the  Heathen  saw ;  and  when  once  more 
The  holy  Fathers  touched  the  lonely  shore — 

Then  covered  o'er 
With  shells  and  gifts — the  cross  their  witness  bore. 

BRET  HARTE 


OVERLAND 


Founded  1868 


MONTHLY 


BRET  HARTE 


VOL.  LXVI 


San  Francisco,  December,  1915 


No.  6 


Reminiscences 

of 
Bret  Harte 

and 

Pioneer 
Days 
in  the 
West    ' 


By   /Ars.  Josephine 
Clifford  /AcCrackin 


Mrs.    Josephine    Clifford   McCrackin, 

taken  at  the  time  she  joined  "Overland 

Monthly"  staff  under  Bret  Harte 


SEVERAL  years  ago,    when     the 
Sesnons  celebrated    the    house- 
warming  of  their  new  residence 
on  their  old  estate,  Pino  Alto,  I 
was  introduced  to  William  Greer  Har- 
rison.   Looking  at  me  in  the  most  quiz- 
zical manner,  he  burst  out  laughing  at 
last.     "Why — good  Lord!"    he     said. 


"Mrs.  McCrackin  is  Josephine  Clifford, 
and  I  said  she  was  dead!"  "I  know  it," 
I  made  reply,  "and  I  forgave  you,  and 
did  not  protest  when  I  read  the  kind 
things  you  said  about  me." 

Mr.  Harrison  is  not  the  only  writer 
who  believed  I  was  dead.  But  I  am 
not  only  not  dead,  but  have  remained 


After  the  big  forest  fire  of  October  8,   1899 


true  to  my  first  love,  the  "Overland 
Monthly."  It  was  only  that  I  wrote 
under  the  new  name  I  had  acquired, 
and  which,  I  flatter  myself,  I  had  in- 
troduced to  California,  at  least,  in 
quite  a  practical  manner. 

For  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  the 
Santa  Cruz  Mountains  were  my  home. 
Monte  Paraiso  Ranch  had  quite  a  for- 
est within  its  wide-spread  lines ;  and  as 
there  were  many  acres  of  fruit  and 
grapes,  I  learned  early  in  my  ranch 
career  how  ruthless  were  the  methods 
by  which  farmers  destroyed  their  best 
friends,  the  birds.  And  together  with 
a  few  women  who  were  educated  be- 
yond the  stage  of  savagery  that  de- 
mands bird  feathers  for  hat  ornaments 
and  the  life  of  any  bird  that  dared  pick 
at  a  cherry,  I  entered  the  lists  of  bird 
protectors.  The  Ladies'  Forest  and 
Song  Bird  Protective  Association  was 
formed — the  first  organization  of  its 
kind  in  California. 


That  I  wrote  volumes,  in  every 
paper  and  magazine  I  could  stick  my 
pen  into,  I  need  hardly  say;  but  it  was 
under  the  name  McCrackin.  Nor  need 
I  add  that  I  became  the  first  woman 
member  of  the  old  California  Game 
and  Fish  Protective  Association. 

"Who's  Who  in  America,"  in  volume 
VI  tells  about  this,  as  well  as  about 
the  part  I  took  in  saving  the  Big  Basin, 
to-day  the  California  Redwood  Park. 
Most  of  all,  I  feel  proud  of  the  words 
of  Mrs.  Lovell  White  who,  in  her 
paper  read  before  the  audience  gath- 
ered on  Sempervirens  Day,  at  the 
Panama-Pacific  Exposition,  said  that 
"the  initial  step  for  the  acquisition  of 
this  unparalleled  piece  of  woods  was 
taken  by  a  woman,  Mrs.  Josephine 
Clifford  McCrackin — on  March  7th, 
1900,  by  an  appeal  made  to  the  people 
of  California  through  the  Santa  Cruz 
Sentinel."  She  might  have  added  the 
saving  of  the  Redwoods  was  brought 


Fort  Wingate,  New  Mexico.    Taken  from  the  hill  back  of  the  Post 


about  by  one  of  the  tragedies  which 
seem  to  dot  my  life,  irregularly,  but 
quite  frequently. 

A  forest  fire,  lasting  almost  a  week, 
October,  1899,  in  the  Santa  Cruz 
Mountains,  had  laid  waste  beautiful 
Monte  Paraiso,  among  other  valuable 
and  highly  cultivated  ranches;  and 
with  the  description  of  the  forest  fire 
the  "Wide  World"  of  London  wanted 
pictures  of  California  redwood  trees. 
As  the  beauty  of  our  forest  had  been 
destroyed — though  the  redwoods  were 
not  burned  to  death,  A.  P.  Hill,  whose 
name  as  photographer  had  already 
reached  England,  was  engaged  to  pro- 
duce photographs  of  large  redwood 
trees.  Visiting  the  Big  Trees  near 
Santa  Cruz,  he  was  told  by  the  man 
then  owner  that  he  would  not  be  al- 
lowed to  take  pictures,  as  he,  the 
owner,  intended  to  cut  the  trees  down 
in  the  course  of  the  next  season. 

Mr.  Hill  was  broken-hearted,  and 
wrote  me  that  we  must  do  something 
to  save  the  redwoods;  and  while  he 
was  ploughing  his  way  into  and 


through  the  Big  Basin,  I  was  writing 
my  appeal  to  the  Californians  to  "Save 
the  Redwoods!" 

That  became  our  slogan.  And  of  all 
the  famous  people  who  were  promi- 
nent in  this  fiercely  fought  fight,  An- 
drew P.  Hill  will  live  forever  in  the 
heart  and  memory  of  the  tree-loving 
people  of  the  world. 

Again  I  wrote  volumes,  under  my 
name  McCrackin;  and  I  wrote  other 
things,  perhaps  not  of  such  practical 
value.  But  when  the  habit  of  story- 
telling has  once  fastened  on  a  person 
it  is  not  easily  shaken  off. 

I  had  published  my  second  book, 
"Another  Juanita,"  in  1893,  before  the 
forest  fire;  but  that  Moloch  had  de- 
voured what  few  volumes  I  still  owned 
of  "Overland  Tales,"  my  first  book, 
published  in  1877,  as  well  as  the  MSS. 
I  had  collected  for  a  third  volume. 

But  I  had  lost  so  many,  many  other 
things;  everything  was  destroyed,  ex- 
cept the  memory  of  halcyon  days  at 
the  ranch.  At  the  time  of  the  forest 
fire,  Ambrose  Bierce,  Dr.  Doyle — who 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Herman  Scheffauer 

wrote  "The  Shadow  of  Quong  Lung" — 
and  Herman  Scheffauer,  were  all  three 
in  the  Santa  Cruz  Mountains,  the  latter 
two  the  guests  of  the  former.  Bierce 
had  been  there  all  through  the  summer, 
one  of  the  few  men  whom  Mr.  Mc- 
Crackin  hobnobbed  with.  Herman 
Scheffauer  was  one  of  his  proteges, 
and  I  like  to  feel  that  Herman,  our 
"complimentary"  nephew,  recovered 
from  a  dangerous  illness  all  the  more 
quickly  for  being  with  us  on  Monte 
Paraiso. 

Mr.  McCrackin  and  I  had  several 
"complimentary"  grandchildren  in 
common.  They  were  really  grand- 
children of  McCrackin's  old  mining 
and  pioneering  "pardner,"  William 
Oury  of  Arizona,  but  as  I  had  been 
fortunate  enough  to  win  the  friendship 
of  his  daughter  while  we  were  "com- 
rades" in  the  Army,  all  the  children 
of  Colonel  and  Mrs.  G.  C.  Smith  be- 
came our  grandchildren.  And  as  the 
Smiths  were  a  strictly  Army  family, 
visitors  who,  at  a  hotel,  would  have 
written  U.  S.  A.  behind  their  name, 
were  not  infrequent  at  Monte  Paraiso. 
Even  Major-General  Barry,  then  Cap- 
tain, and  Mrs.  Barry,  knew  Monte  Pa- 
raiso before  the  fire. 

I  may  claim  that  I  came  by  my  taste 
for  the  Army  element  in  a  perfectly 
legitimate  manner.  While  I  was  the 
wife  of  Lieutenant  Clifford — in  the 


days  of  my  youth — I  had  met  many  of 
the  prominent  officers  in  Washington, 
and  had  met  Kit  Carson  in  New  Mex- 
ico. My  experience  in  Army  circles, 
as  in  other  circles,  has  been  that  the 
truly  great  are  unassuming;  and  that 
only  the  near-great  "put  on  airs." 

General  Sheridan,  General  Grant, 
General  Sherman,  General  Meade, 
even  President  Lincoln,  and  later 
President  Johnson,  I  have  spoken  to 
all  of  these  great  men.  And  no  less 
great  to  me  were  the  men  of  our  own 
command  when  on  the  march  to  New 
Mexico  and  the  frontiers,  at  the  close 
of  the  Civil  War,  General  Sykes,  Gen- 
eral Carleton  and  General  Alexander. 

Joins  Bret  Harte  on  Overland  Mionthly 

The  tragedy  that  brought  my  Army 
life  to  a  close  did  not  estrange  me  from 
the  Army.  Quite  the  contrary;  I 
learned,  in  trial  and  tribulation,  to  es- 
teem the  chivalry  of  the  men,  and  re- 
vere the  loving,  faithful  hearts  of  the 
women. 


Kit    Carson,    the    famous    scout    and 

pioneer,  who  cut  new  trails 

into  the  West 


Joaquin  Miller  in  his  home  at  the  "Mights"  Fruitvale,  California. 


But  a  new  life  lay  before  me,  in 
which  I  had  to  find  my  own  paths,  and 
seek  means  of  support  for  myself.  It 
was  like  being  thrust  out  into  the 
world,  this  seeking  a  livelihood.  I  did 
not  fear  work;  but  I  dreaded  the  ask- 
ing for  it.  Mother,  with  a  mother's 
pride,  thought  I  could  write ;  and  when 
I  could  keep  from  crying  long  enough 
to  write  of  some  of  the  things  I  had 
seen  and  learned,  I  took  heart  one  day, 
still  at  mother's  urging,  went  to  San 
Francisco,  and  tremblingly  submitted 
a  handful  of  written  sheets  to  the  edi- 
tor of  the  new  Magazine,  Bret  Harte 
of  the  "Overland  Monthly." 

The  editor's  office  was  at  that  time 
in  Roman's  bookstore  on  Montgomery 
street,  Anton  Roman  being  owner  of 
the  magazine.  Later,  there  were  edi- 
torial rooms  on  Clay  street,  and  here 
I  first  became  acquainted  with  the 
older  writers,  some  of  whom  were 
younger  in  years  than  myself.  Ina 
Coolbrith,  the  star  always,  beautiful  in 
form  and  figure  as  she  was  brilliant  in 
mind;  Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  a 
beardless  youth,  a  poet  born,  loved  by 


all  other  writers  of  that  day.  Hattie 
Dolson,  who  wrote  under  the  nom  de 
plume  Hilda  Roosevelt.  Laura  Lyon 
— now  Mrs.  Lovell  White;  all  these 
had  written  before;  and  though  they 
were  younger,  I  was  the  newest  writer 
on  the  "Overland  Monthly"  in  1869. 
Among  my  earliest  sketches  were  "An 
Officer's  Wife  in  New  Mexico,"  and 
"Down  Among  the  Dead  Letters."  This 
latter  article  was  returned  for  more 
of  it. 

Joaquin  Miller  I  met  some  time  later, 
and  quarreled  with  him  always,  on 
sight.  Which  did  not  prevent  us  from 
being  good  friends.  Not  many  years 
ago,  when  I  had  accused  him  of  writ- 
ing his  MS.  with  the  broken  end  of  a 
match,  he  sent  me  the  quill  with  which 
he  claimed  to  do  his  writing.  I  have 
it  now. 

Ambrose  Bierce  was  first  introduced 
to  me  by  Bret  Harte  in  the  Clay  street 
sanctum.  Years  later  when  I  met  him 
again,  he  laughed  over  his  youthful 
folly  of  that  time:  he  had  worn  a 
black  lamb's  skin  cap.  Bierce  was 
such  a  thoroughly  lovable  man.  I 


368 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


have  never  had  a  better  friend,  and  I 
fear  he  is  no  longer  on  this  earth.  I 
hold  his  letters  as  great  treasures, 
more  especially  the  last  two  he  wrote 
in  September,  1913.  He  had  learned 
to  call  me  Jo,  from  Mr.  McCrackin, 
whom  he  aided  and  assisted  in  tor- 
menting me.  I  am  glad  now  that  he 
could  laugh,  even  at  my  discomfiture, 
for  his  life  was  by  no  means  a  happy 
one.  Bierce  was  like  Goethe  in  many 
respects,  and  he  was  always  addressed 
as  "beloved  Grossmeister"  by  me  in 
letters. 

In  spite  of  self-interest  or  vanity  of 
which  I  may  be  accused,  I  believe 
there  was  never  anything  grander  and 
more  touching  written  than  the  lines 
Ambrose  Bierce  wrote  as  introduction 
to  my  last  book,  "The  Woman  Who 
Lost  Him."  Dr.  George  Wharton 
James,  who  published  this  book  for 
me,  had  submitted  the  idea  to  Bierce, 
and  Mr.  Bierce  said  he  thanked  him 
for  the  suggestion. 

The  Bierce  letters,  the  letters  of 
Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  those  of 
Joaquin  Miller,  and  some  of  the  Ina 
Coolbrith  letters,  were  written  after 
the  forest  fire.  The  wonder  is  that  I 
have  any  of  the  Bret  Harte  letters  still 
in  my  possession.  A  special  Provi- 
dence must  have  watched  over  some 
apple-boxes  into  which  the  fire-fighters 
"chucked'1  things  that  were  handy  and 
not  too  big  to  "chuck"  easily;  bundles 
of  letters  and  old  Congressional  Re- 
ports, alike. 

Bret  Harte  was  kind  to  me  in  many 
ways;  and  together  with  that  historic 
letter  from  Chicago,  in  which  he  writes 
of  the  "provincial  spirit"  of  the  people 
there,  he  incloses  a  letter  from  the  edi- 
tor of  the  "Lakeside  Monthly,"  in  re- 
gard to  money  due  me  for  contribu- 
tions. For  I  had  in  time  written  for 
other  magazines,  even  in  those  early 
days:  for  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia 
publications,  and  for  Harper's  Maga- 
zine. 

After  mother's  death,  in  December, 
1882,  I  married  Jackson  McCrackin,  a 


miner  from  Arizona;  discoverer  of  the 
McCrackin  mine,  pioneer  and  path- 
finder. We  moved  at  once  to  the  ranch. 
The  first  tragedy  I  encountered  after 
coming  there  was  the  unexpected,  sud- 
den death  of  my  only  living  brother, 
who  had  prepared  to  remove  to  the 
land  he  owned  next  to  ours;  had  set 
the  day  when  he  and  I  would  select 
the  spot  for  his  house  to  stand;  and 
instead  of  his  coming,  came  the  tele- 
gram that  he  lay  dead. 

George  had  lived  in  Salinas  almost 
since  the  beginning,  or  founding,  of 
the  place.  He  had  virtually  been 
banker  there  before  banks  were  estab- 
lished; and  he  had  always  money  to 
pay  vouchers  with  if  there  happened 
to  be  ebb  in  the  real  treasury.  At  that 
time  witnesses  were  paid  fees  in  crimi- 
nal cases;  and  when  the  bandit,  Vas- 
quez,  was  tried  in  Salinas,  many  wit- 
nesses were  brought  up  from  the  more 
southern  country,  and  they  all  had  to 
be  paid.  These  people  all  wanted  to 
go  back  home  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
George  bought  their  scrip  and  vouch- 
ers. They  were  mostly  Spanish  people, 
and  as  George  spoke  their  language 
well,  he  told  me  many  things  he  had 
heard  from  them,  outside  of  their  evi- 
dence on  the  stand.  After  years,  I 
utilized  this  material  for  "The  Wo- 
man Who  Lost  Him,"  which  was  first 
published  in  "Neale's  Monthly"  of 
New  York,  and  was  pronounced  one 
of  the  best  short  stories,  by  Walter 
Neale. 

One  of  the  stories  in  the  book  to 
which  that  story  gave  title  should  be  il- 
lustrated by  one  of  Remington's 
"Done  in  the  Open."  The  picture, 
"Caught  in  the  Circle,"  shows  the  two 
mail  riders,  soldiers  from  the  Fort, 
where  they  have  killed  their  horses  to 
make  breastworks  of  them;  and  the 
Indians,  riding  singly,  drawing  the  cir- 
cle closer  and  closer.  In  the  story, 
"The  Colonel's  Young  Wife,"  I  have 
spoken  of  Fort  Greengate,  which  is  not 
the  correct  name  of  this  army  post. 
( To  be  Continued) 


The 

Aonterey 
Cypress 

By 
Lconore  Kothe 


II 

A 


1 

fa 


1* 

A 


Witch  Tree 


EXPOSED  to  the  winds  and  storms 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  the  Mon- 
terey cypress  have  grown  into 
queer,  unreal,  fantastic  forms. 
The  weird  fancy  of  Dore  combined 
with  the  imagination  of  Dante  never 
depicted  anything  more  startling,  more 
uncanny  or  more  picturesque.  They 
twist  and  turn  and  writhe  in  strange, 
wild  attitudes ;  they  toss  their  distorted 
branches,  they  rock  to  and  fro,  they 
bend  in  the  west  wind  as  if,  fleeing  in 
despair  from  an  invisible  enemy,  they 
had  become  rooted,  where  they  stand 
doing  eternal  punishment  for  some 
mysterious  crime  until  the  Judgment 
Day. 

The  Monterey  cypress  is  peculiar  to 
California,  and  is  found  only  in  Mon- 
terey County  on  a  narrow  strip  of  coast 
land  two  miles  long  and  two  hundred 
yards  wide,  extending  from  Cypress 
Point  to  Carmel  Bay,  with  a  small 
grove  on  Point  Lobos.  In  appearance 


it  is  totally  unlike  its  Italian  cousin, 
the  cypress  of  history  and  mythology. 
If  this  tree  had  been  known  to  the  an- 
cient races  in  pre-historic  days,  its 
weird  appearance  would  certainly  have 
been  the  theme  of  many  strange  tales 
and  legends,  and  their  imaginative 
minds  would  have  endowed  it  with 
supernatural  power  and  given  it  a 
prominent  place  in  their  mythology. 
The  drive  to  Cypress  Point  over  the 
famous  Seventeen  Mile  drive,  through 
the  "land  of  a  thousand  wonders,"  is 
a  good  preparation  for  a  view  of  the 
trees.  The  road  winds  around  among 
rolling  sand  dunes,  blown  into  fantastic 
mounds  and  hummocks,  where  the 
white  sand  glistens  blue  in  the  reflec- 
tion of  the  sky  above.  Along  the 
rocky  shore  where  the  restless  ocean 
breaks  in  huge  white  capped  rollers 
or  dashes  in  clouds  of  spray  over  enor- 
mous boulders.  The  cypress  stand 
perched  on  a  rocky  promontory,  queer, 
2 


470 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


spook-like  apparitions  of  trees,  waving 
their  scraggy  branches  and  defying 
the  elements. 

Several  of  the  most  conspicuous 
have  been  appropriately  named.  One 
is  called  the  "witch-tree."  Here,  above 
the  leafless  branches  of  a  barren  stump 
a  bunch  of  live  foliage  forms  the  per- 
fect silhouette  of  a  witch  shaking  her 
broomstick,  while  the  hoofbeats  of 
Tarn  O'Shanter's  galloping  horse  can 
be  heard  in  the  roar  of  the  surf. 

In  another  place  two  trees  that  have 
become  entangled  together  resemble  a 


branches  that  invite  the  traveler  to 
pause  and  rest  in  their  refreshing 
shade.  Here  and  there,  scattered 
among  the  dunes,  small  distorted,  wind 
blown  trees,  almost  shrubs,  struggle 
for  existence,  half-buried  in  the  shift- 
ing sand. 

To  the  non-scientific  observer,  who 
loves  nature  and  who  listens  to  the 
secrets  she  is  ever  whispering,  trees 
possess  individuality.  This  trait 
seems  to  have  been  recognized  in  the 
olden  days  when  tree  worship  held  a 
prominent  place  in  religious  ceremon- 


The  Twin  Sisters 


gigantic  ostrich  strutting  on  the  bluff. 
Hence  the  name  "Ostrich  Tree." 

High  up  upon  a  steep  rocky  cliff  a 
solitary  cypress  stands,  majestic  in  its 
isolation,  forever  a  lone  sentinel  on  that 
bleak  shore. 

In  sheltered  places  we  see  the  tree 
in  a  different  aspect,  protected,  in  an 
agreeable  environment  it  has  devel- 
oped entirely  different  characteristics. 
Instead  of  a  weird  spectre  of  a  tree,  it 
has  grown  beautifully  round  and  sym- 
metrical, with  its  wide  spreading 


ies.  Different  trees  were  endowed 
with  different  attributes,  and  the  cy- 
press on  account  of  its  striking  ap- 
pearance and  the  remarkable  durabil- 
ity of  the  wood,  figures  extensively  in 
the  mythology  of  that  period.  The 
early  Persians  reared  it  as  a  symbol  of 
Ormuzd,  and  associated  it  with  fire- 
worship. 

It  is  frequently  represented  on  an- 
cient gravestones  in  conjunction  with 
the  lion,  the  symbol  of  the  sun-god 
Mithra.  In  Phoenicia  it  was  sacred  to 


The  Ostrich 


Astarte,  and  the  famous  cypress  tree 
at  Daphne  is  supposed  to  have  been 
planted  by  the  god  Melcarth. 

The  cypress  grove  on  the  acropolis 


at  Phluisin  Pieloponnesus  was  held  so 
sacred  that  fugitives  from  justice  came 
here  for  refuge,  and  the  escaped  pris- 
oners who  succeeded  in  reaching  its 


A  sheltered  tree 


On  the  dunes 


shelter  hung     their     chains     on     the 
branches  and  were  safe  from  pursuit. 

The  cypress  enters  extensively  into 
Greek  and  Roman  mythology.    It  was 


sacred  to  the  rulers  of  the  underworld 
and  their  companions  the  fates  and 
furies.  It  was  used  as  a  symbol  of 
death,  and  was  associated  with  the 


i 


Among  the  dunes 


THE  MONTEREY  CYPRESS 


473 


god  Pluto.  Its  branches  were  placed 
on  the  funeral  pyres,  and  either  before 
the  house  or  in  the  vestibule  as  a  sign 
of  mourning. 

There  is  a  legend  that  Cyparissus,  a 
beautiful  youth  beloved  by  Apollo, 
was  transformed  into  a  cypress  tree, 
where  he  mourns  forever. 

In  some  countries  the  wood  was  also 
considered  sacred.  It  was  used  exten- 
sively for  mummy  cases,  and  images 
of  the  gods  were  often  carved  from  it. 
The  wood  is  extremely  durable.  En- 
graved cylinders  are  found  in  Chaldea, 
some  of  which  date  back  to  4,000  B.  C. 
Pliny  mentions  a  statue  of  Jupiter 
made  of  cypress  wood  six  hundred 
years  old,  in  perfect  preservation. 
Laws  were  engraved  on  it,  and  objects 
of  value  were  preserved  in  recepticles 
made  of  it. 

The  cypress  doors  of  old  Saint  Peter 
at  Rome,  which  were  removed  by  Eu- 


genius  IV,  were  in  perfect  condition, 
without  a  sign  of  decay,  although  near- 
ly eleven  hundred  years  old.  Super- 
natural power  seems  to  have  been  at- 
tributed to  the  cypress  in  all  countries 
where  it  grows. 

In  Mexico  the  Indians  ascribed  mys- 
terious influences  to  an  old  cypress 
tree,  and  its  spreading  branches  were 
decorated  with  votive  offerings,  locks 
of  hair,  teeth,  strings,  arrows  and  the 
various  trinkets  prized  by  the  natives. 
It  was  many  centuries  old,  and  had 
been  decorated  long  before  Columbus 
discovered  America. 

The  cypress  of  the  Old  World, 
known  as  the  "mournful  tree,"  is  very 
unlike  the  Monterey  cypress.  It  is  a 
tall,  symmetrical  tree,  dark  hued, 
gloomy  and  forbidding,  but  its  spirial 
form  is  wonderfully  stately  and  pic- 
turesque, and  is  a  conspicuous  feature 
in  all  Italian  landscapes. 


Georgd  Sterling  (From  a  photo  by  Arnold  Genthe.) 


Sterling,  the  Poet  of  Seas  and  Stars 


By  Henry  AVeade  Bland 


AT  CARMEL,  the  King's  High- 
way touches  upon   the    eternal 
beauty  of  the     sea.    Then     it 
winds  through  a  shallow  can- 
yon in  the  sandy  hills — hills  which  are 
overgrown  with  pine  and     live     oak, 
whence  it  emerges  and  looks  upon  a 
fair  prospect  of  Carmel  Valley.    It  is 
here  that  the  poet's  house  rests  in  its 
narrow  niche  sentineling  the  fields  and 
flock  of  the  little  plain  below. 

It  was  on  the  porch  of  this  house 
that  I  first  came  to  really  know  George 
Sterling.  All  one  summer  afternoon 
we  sat  and  talked,  he  and  I  and  the 
dearly-beloved  of  California  letters, 
Charles  Warren  Stoddard.  Stoddard 
was  in  the  late  autumn  of  his  life.  In- 
deed he  told  me  that  every  day  his 
mind  was  not  as  productive  as  he  could 
have  wished,  an  there  was  a  note  in 
his  voice  prophetic  of  "the  day  of 
rest." 

But  Sterling  was  then  in  the  glamour 
of  the  light  around  him  from  the  bril- 
liant criticism  of  Ambrose  Bierce;  and 
he  was  then  working  on  three  sonnets, 
entitled  "On  Oblivion."  As  I  read  those 
sombre  lines  that  day,  I  saw  how  he 
had  been  touched  by  the  philosophy 
of  Persian  poetry;  and  I  recognized, 
too,  a  quality  of  his  verse — a  deep  har- 
mony of  movement — a  quality  which 
is,  doubtless,  the  basis  of  Bierce's  dic- 
tum. 

I  saw  in  "The  Night  of  the  Gods," 
one  of  the  three  on  "Oblivion,"  how 
great  a  medium  poetry  is  in  the  por- 
trayal of  a  majestic  overwhelming  all- 
sweeping  thought: 

"Their  mouths  have  drunken  the  eter- 
nal wine — 
The  draft  that  Baal  in  oblivion  sips. 


Unseen  about  their  courts  the  adder 

slips, 
Unheard  the  sucklings  of  the  leopard 

whine ; 
The   toad  has  found   a  resting-place 

divine. 
And  bloats  in  stupor  between  Ammon's 

lips. 
O!     Carthage    and    the    unreturning 

ships, 
The  fallen  pinnacle,  the  shifting  Sign ! 

Lo,  when  I  hear  from  voiceless  court 

and  fame 

Time's  adoration  of  eternity — 
The  cry  of  Kingdoms  past  and  Gods 

undone — 
I  stand  as  one  whose  feet  at  noontide 

gain 
A  lovely  shore;  who  feels  his  soul  set 

free, 
And  hears  the  blind  sea  chanting  to 

the  sun!" 

At  the  same  time  I  knew  I  had  felt 
that  note  before,  and  dug  round  in  the 
haze  of  sub-conscious  memory  till  the 
thought  was  paralleled  from  the  "Ru- 
baiyat": 

'"They  say  the  lion  and  the  leopard 

keep 
Watch  where  Jamshyd    gloried     and 

drank  deep, 
And  Bahram,  the  great    hunter,    the 

wild  ass, 
Stamps  o'er  his  head  and  he  lies  fast 

asleep." 

Perhaps  Eglamor's  idea,  as  por- 
trayed by  Browning: 

"Man  shrinks  to  naught 

If  matched  with  symbols  of  immensity, 


476 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


Must  quail,  forsooth,  before  a  quiet 

sky 
Or  sea,  too  little  for  their  quietude." 

enables  us  to  get  the  perspective  and 
value  of  such  poetic  eyes  as  in  the 
lines  on  "Oblivion,"  which  grow  from 
a  neglecting  of  the  value  of  the  soul. 
True,  the  idea  makes  poetry,  but  not 
the  greatest  poetry.  We  must  not  pause 
to  consider  too  deeply  the  sea's  im- 
mensities or  the  sky's  infinities  lest 
we  stumble. 

"What  are  the  seas  or  stars  com- 
pared with  human  hearts?" 

This  phrase  of  Sterling's  thought 
arises  from  two  conceptions  with  re- 
gard to  man;  first,  as  I  have  indicated 
before,  that,  compared  with  the  im- 
mensity of  the  suns  and  their  limitless 
sweep  across  the  sky,  man  is  the  ver- 
iest atom  and  sinks  into  infinitessimal 
insignificance.  Secondly,  judged  from 
the  physical  fact  that  all  matter  is  un- 
dergoing ceaseless  change,  the  human 
organism,  as  a  portion  of  the  physical, 
is  destined  to  destruction.  Thus  he 
writes : 

"Let  us  forget  that  mortals,  one  by 

one, 

At  last  must  driftwood  be, 
Cast  on  the  beaches  of  oblivion 
By  Time's  rejecting  sea." 

Besides  this  dark  philosophy  of 
George  Sterling,  this  "Somber  Lethe 
rolling  doom"  is  a  simpler  and  kindlier 
note,  the  influence  of  his  college 
teacher,  the  poet,  Father  Tabb.  Fol- 
lowing the  steps  of  an  elder  brother, 
Sterling  had  as  a  youth  decided  to  be- 
come a  priest,  and  entered  St.  Charles 
College  for  the  purpose  of  beginning 
preparation.  Here  his  literature  in- 
structor was  Father  Tabb,  whose  teach- 
ing developed  a  trend  of  life  which 
drew  him  away  from  the  very  ideal  the 
professor  would  have  had  him  most 
strive  for.  The  young  priest  evolved 
into  the  poet,  and  when  the  transfor- 
mation was  complete,  there  remained 
only  in  the  singer  the  extreme  serious 
imaginative  view  of  life  which  the 
priest  entertained. 


Drifting  at  last  entirely  from  church 
tenets,  when  he  came  West  the  young 
thinker  fell  into  the  group  of  robust 
socialistic  scientists  which  centered  in 
the  home  of  Jack  London  in  Oakland, 
California,  where  Sterling  became  cul- 
tured in  the  extremes  of  modern  ma- 
terialism, absorbing  Nietsche  and  other 
lines  of  hard  Germanistic  philosophy. 
In  poetry,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  he 
was  strongly  tinged  with  the  Rubaiyat, 
and  found  himself  confronted  by  an  ag- 
nosticism almost  unthinkable. 

With  these  two  influences  in  mind, 
we  may  approach  with  a  chance  of  un- 
derstanding Sterling's  first  volume, 
"The  Testimony  of  the  Suns." 

Here,  first,  we  find  touches  of  his 
earlier  college  influence.  The  lines  to 
"Constance  Crawley"  and  to  "One 
Asking  for  Lighter  Song"  when  care- 
fully studied,  show  these  earlier 
graces. 

In  the  former,  Sterling  begins  to  be 
the  singer  who  touches  the  heart: 

"Thine  is  the  frailest  of  the  arts 
And  like  the  flower  must  pass ; 
Its  empery  in  human  hearts 
Dies  with  the  voice,  alas ! 

"The  poet  tells  to  years  unborn 
His  dreams  of  joy  or  woe ; 
His  crown  is  of  a  farther  morn, 
From  hands  he  shall  not  know. 

"Tho'  time,  is  tardy  reckoning, 
Place  laurels  on  my  brow, 
Sing  as  I  might  I  could  not  sing 
A  fairer  dream  than  thou — 

"Who  by  thine  art  and  haunting  face 
Hast  filled  a  thoughtful  hour 
With  somewhat  of  the  passing  grace 
Of  twilight  and  the  flow'r." 

And  in  the  latter  there  is  that  tender 
human  longing  which  is  many  times 
the  essence  of  the  true  poetic: 

"A  gentle  sadness  best  becomes 
The  features  of  the  perfect  muse : 
The  shock  of  laughter  but  benumbs 
The  lips  that  crave  immortal  dews. 


STERLING,  THE  FOET  OF  SEAS  AND  STARS 


477 


"For  she  hath  known  diviner  fears, 
And  she  hath  held  her  vigils  far; 
But  never  in  untroubled  years, 
Nor  world  that  grief  came  not  to  mar. 

"For  joy  is  as  the  wreaths  that  lie 
Foam- wrought  along  the  sterile  sands ; 
And  sorrow  as  the  voice  whereby 
The  ocean  saddens  all  the  lands — 

"That  calls  afar  to  pine  and  palm, 
The  changeless  trouble  of  the  deep; 
That  murmurs  in  the  gentlest  calm 
And  haunts  unknown  the     realm     of 
sleep. 

"But  pleasure's  foam,  so  fondly  prized 
We  strive  to  keep.     (Unduly  dear — 
Its  very  touch  scarce  realized) 
With  hands  unwarned,  till,  lo !  a  tear." 

A  closer  study  of  Mr.  Sterling's 
verse  reveals  two  sources  of  power  in 
addition  to  the  sombre  poetic  philoso- 
phy, and  the  poem  which  touches  the 
heart  to  which  I  have  already  re- 
ferred. The  first  is  in  the  minuter 
construction  of  his  thought  and  con- 
sists of  a  most  unusual  and  deeply 
harmonious  music  in  his  line.  To  get 
a  parallel  to  this  quality  we  should  go 
to  such  thunderous  Miltonic  lines  as : 

"Gorgons  and  Hydras  and  Climeras 
dire" 

or, 

"Who  durst  defy  th'  Omnipotent  to 
arms," 

or, 

"And   from   his   horrid  locks   shakes 
Pestilence  and  War." 

After  all  else  has  been  said,  the  chief 
merit  of  "A  Wine  of  Wizardry"  lies  in 
this  word  music  or  sonorousness  of  in- 
dividual lines,  and  one  who  reads  this 
poem  must  expect  to  find  his  chief 
pleasure  in  this  kind  of  harmony,  thus : 

"A   cowled  magician  poring  on   the 
damned;" 

or, 

"And  treasuries  of  frozen  anadems;" 


or, 


"The  bleeding    sun's   phantasmagoric 
gules." 

Where  there  is  the  emptiness  of  plot 
as  in  the  Wine  of  Wizardry,  this  super- 
ior quality  of  harmony  does  not  ap- 
pear to  the  advantage  it  does  in  "Tasso 
to  Leonora,"  or  in  "Duandon,"  both  of 
which  are  based  on  tremendous  dra- 
matic situations. 

In  the  former  the  story  is  of  how  the 
Italian  poet,  Tasso,  in  love  with  the 
high-born  maid  Leonora,  is  thwarted 
by  the  lady's  brother,  who  considers 
the  poet  too  poor  and  ignoble  a  match 
for  his  sister.  Through  the  machina- 
tions of  the  brother,  Tasso  is  confined 
in  a  mad-house  charged  with  insanity. 
It  is  here  that  Tasso  gives  word  to  the 
love  monologue  which  Sterling  weaves 
into  the  poem.  Leonora  died  before 
'Tacco,  who  was  imprisoned  seven 
years,  was  released.  Here  the  striking 
word  pictures  and  deep  harmony  of 
line  are  evident: 

"Daphne  thou; 
Psyche  that  waits  her  lover    in     the 

night; 
Calypso  and  the  luring  of  her  lyres." 

"Songs  archangelic  panoply  of  light." 

"Thrills  with  the  rose  of  unremem- 
bered  dawns." 

"Never  had  lovers  dusk  such  moon  as 

thou! 
Never  had  moon     adoring    such   as 

mine!" 

"Thou  seemest  farther  from  me  than  a 

star, 
The  morning  star,  that  hovers  like  a 

flame 
Above  the  great  dawn  altar." 

The  chief  merit  of  "Duandon"  lies 
in  a  wonderful  description  of  the  sea. 
Both  Lord  Byron  and  Bryan  W.  Proc- 
tor have  sung,  one  of  the  ocean  in  its 
might  and  magnificence,  the  other  of 
the  sea  in  its  gentleness  and  calm;  but 
to  my  mind  the  color  of  the  sea  worked 
out  by  Sterling  in  the  following  is  un- 
rivaled : 


478 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


"Afar  he  saw  the  eddying  petrel  sweep 

O'er  reefs  where  hoarser  roared  the 
thwarted  deep, 

And  soon  before  his  eyes,  exultant, 
fain, 

Heavy  with  azure  gleamed  the  invest- 
ing main, 

And  quick  with  pulsings  of  a  distant 
storm, 

Strong  as  that  music  floating  Troy  to 
form. 

Splendid  the  everlasting  ocean  shone 

As  God's  blue  robe  upon  a  desert 
thrown ; 

Landward  he  saw  the  sea-born  break- 
ers fare, 

Young  as  a  wind  and  ancient  as  the 
air; 

August  he  saw  the  unending  ranks  up- 
roll, 

With  joy  and  wonder  mastering  the 
soul, 

With  marvel  on  the  hearing  and  the 

sight- 
Green  fires,  and  billows  tremulous  with 
light, 

With  shaken  soul  of  light  and  shud- 
dering blaze 

Of  leaping  emerald  and  cold  chryso- 
prase, — 

The  surge  and  suspiration  of  the  sea, 

Great  waters  choral  of  eternity, — 

The  mighty  dirge  that  will  not  cease 
for  day, 

Nor  all  the  stars'  invincible  array — 

The  thunder  that  hath  set,  since  Time 
began, 

Its  sorrow  in  the  lonely  heart  of  man. 

Duandon,  the  hero  of  this  poem, 
goes  at  dawn,  at  the  call  of  a  mystic 
rapturous  voice,  down  to  the  wonder- 
ful sea.  The  voice  again  and  again 
calls  him  into  this  Eden  under  the 
waves,  but  Duandon  hesitates  in  spite 
of  the  luring  persuasion  of  the  voice. 
He  dare  not  make  the  plunge.  Then 
comes  his  warlike  son  fresh  from  a 
wonderful  quest  and  rich  adventure, 
hears  the  call,  and  unhesitatingly  leaps 
to  the  wave  in  answer  to  the  siren  call, 
leaving  his  father,  Duandon,  to  repent 
the  fearsomeness  of  his  heart.  The 
story  is  symbolic  of  the  gain  and  vic- 
tory that  comes  from  daring. 


It  does  not  take  much  more  than  a 
glance  at  Sterling's  volumes — now  four 
in  number — to  discover  him  as  the 
"poet  of  sea  and  star,"  and  he  is  at  his 
best  when  he  is  down  by  the  eternal 
beauty  of  the  sea,  or  gazing  into  the 
infinitude  of  the  night.  This  restless, 
never  to  be  satisfied  longing  for  these 
lies  double  verity  of  beauty  he  has  put 
into  a  sonnet  on 

Beauty 

The  fairest  things  are  ever  loneliest: 
The  whitest  lily  ever  blooms  alone, 
And  purest  winds  from  widest  seas  are 

flown. 

High  on  her  utmost  tower  of  the  West 
Sits  Beauty,  baffling  an  eternal  quest; 
From  out  her  gates  and  aerials  un- 
known, 

The  murmurs  of  her  citadels  are  blown 
To  blue  horizons  of  the  world's  unrest. 

We  know  that  we  shall  seek  her  till 

we  die, 

And  find  her  not  at  all,  the  fair  and  far. 
Her  pure  domain  is  wider  than  the  sky 
And  never  night  revealed  her  whitest 

star; 
Beyond  the  sea  and  sun  her  feet  have 

trod; 
Her  vision  is  our  memory  of  God. 

George  Sterling's  books  of  poetry 
are  "The  Testimony  of  the  Suns,"  "A 
Wine  of  Wizardry,"  "The  House  of 
Orchids"  and  "Beyond  the  Breakers," 
published,  in  order  named,  by  Robert- 
son, San  Francisco.  Each  volume  con- 
tains not  only  a  long  poem  or  two,  but 
a  complement  of  shorter  productions. 
As  his  work  advances  the  lyric  human 
element  becomes  more  conspicuous,  as 
in  his  last  collection.  After  all  his 
soaring  after  the  infinite  and  diving 
after  the  unfathomable,  it  is  a  rest  to 
run  upon  some  rare  Wordsworthian 
touch — for  example,  the  simple  elegy 
to  the  lost  friend  of  childhood,  "Willy 
Pitcher;"  and  I  am  not  so  sure  that  it 
will  not  be  some  little  human  song  like 
this  that  will  keep  our  poet's  name 
alive,  rather  than  the  complex  music 
of  more  pretentious  harmonies. 


The  Web 


By  Van  Wagenen  Howe 


WE  WERE  cruising  off  one  of 
the  Ellice  Islands.    The  day 
was  calm,  and    there    were 
hardly   any   ripples   stirring 
the  surface  of  the  ocean.     The  first 
mate  was  the  one  that  saw  him.    He 
was  floating  on  a  piece  of  planking  or 
log,  and  behind  him,  partly  submerged, 
was  something  else  that  we  couldn't 
make  out. 

A  boat  was  lowered  and  we  rowed 
out  to  him.  He  showed  no  signs  of 
seeing  us  approach — he  proved  to  be 
unconscious.  How  long  he  had  been 
floating  is  a  question,  but  it  must  have 
been  days.  The  queer  part  about  it 
was  that  he  seemed  to  be  tied  on  with 
a  whitish  kind  of  cord.  This  cord  was 
attached  to  the  floating  body  behind 
him.  It  seemed  to  be  silk  or  some- 
thing of  that  quality,  and  heavy,  like 
packing  twine.  We  did  not  at  first 
know  what  it  was,  but  pulled  on  it  un- 
til we  came  to  the  other  object.  Then 
was  the  surprise.  It  was  a  huge  spider 
— fully  two  feet  across,  covered  with 
a  slick  hairy  skin  of  a  pure  black 
color.  We  didn't  know  whether  it  was 
dead  or  not,  so  the  mate  emptied  his 
revolver  into  it. 

But  to  return  to  the  man.  He  was 
covered  with  slime  that  stuck  to  our 
hands  and  made  everything  that  we 
touched  afterwards  sticky,  and  pieces 
of  his  skin  were  gone  as  if  something 
had  been  trying  to  eat  him.  He  showed 
no  signs  of  life,  but  we  rushed  him  to 
the  ship  doctor  to  make  sure,  and 
then  asked  permission  of  the  captain 
to  return  for  the  spider,  which  was  re- 
fused. 

A  couple  of  hours  later  the  doctor 
came  out  and  said  that  his  patient 
had  opened  his  eyes,  but  that  he  did 
not  believe  that  he  could  live  long. 


Then  again  towards  evening  he  came 
out  and  said  that  the  man  was  very 
anxious  to  talk,  and  judging  from  the 
fragments  that  he  had  picked  up,  had 
something  to  say  of  interest  to  us,  but 
that  he  didn't  advise  letting  him  speak 
as  yet.  However,  if  he  was  no  worse 
in  the  morning  he  could  tell  his  story. 

When  morning  came,  we  officers  of 
the  ship  gathered  about  him  in  the 
cabin  to  listen.  His  face  was  of  a 
ghastly  pallor,  with  bright,  pink  spots 
in  the  cheeks,  but  his  eyes  were  clear 
and  brilliant,  and  sparkled  when  the 
doctor  said  that  at  last  he  could  begin. 

"Chapin's  my  name — only  white 
man  living  at  Soaga,  Soaga.  All  the 
rest  natives.  For  God's  sake  keep 
away  from  there  and  warn  everyone 
else  to  do  the  same.  Natives  all  per- 
ished except  those  that  escaped  in 
boats." 

He  stopped  for  a  moment  and  stared 
wonderinlgly  at  us  to  see  if  we  had 
understood.  "We  had  warning  before 
they  came.  Men  killed  one  of  them 
back  in  the  interior  and  brought  it  to 
the  village.  Then  some  of  the  natives 
began  to  disappear.  Didn't  think  much 
of  it  at  the  time,  but  it  must  have  been 
those  critters  that  got  'em.  One  morn- 
ing I  ran  ino  a  piece  of  sticky  string 
across  the  road  on  one  of  my  walks. 
Before  I  could  get  away  from  it  I  was 
tangled  up  in  others.  Then  I  saw 
him.  He  was  big  and  black,  like  a 
huge  potato-bug  with  wicked  yellow 
eyes  that  blinked  at  me.  He  came 
creeping  towards  me  on  the  string, 
opening  and  closing  his  mouth  as  he 
came.  Thank  God,  I  had  my  revolver. 
I  shot  him  and  then  cut  myself  out  of 
the  strings — must  have  been  his  web. 

"I  told  the  natives,  and  warned  them 
to  be  careful,  but  they  only  laughed — 


480 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  fools.  A  couple  of  days  later  I 
ran  across  several  mounds  of  brown 
mud  that  had  been  neatly  erected  in  an 
open  field  near  the  village.  I  went  up 
to  one  of  them  and  began  kicking  it  to 
see  what  it  was,  when  another  of  these 
black  critters  came  out  of  a  hole  in 
the  top  and  began  edging  towards  me. 
I  didn't  stop  to  ask  questions. 

"I  tell  you  I  was  scared  this  time 
and  didn't  go  out  of  the  village,  but 
the  natives  began  telling  of  how  the 
whole  valley  several  miles  back  was 
dotted  with  these  mounds.  I  explained 
to  them  what  they  were,  but  they 
wouldn't  believe  me.  If  they  only  had 
— but  they  didn't,  and  more  of  them 
vanished.  Our  cattle  began  to  go,  too. 

"Then  came  the  day  they  invaded 
the  town.  I  woke  in  the  morning  with 
a  queer  feeling  in  my  stomach.  There 
was  a  strong,  sickly  stench  in  the  air. 
I  opened  the  window,  but  that  was 
'worse,  for  the  smell  came  from  the 
outside.  I  had  hardly  closed  it  when 
the  face  of  another  of  these  critters 
was  pressed  against  the  window.  He 
'was  puzzled  by  the  glass,  and  tried 
iseveral  times  to  get  in  before  going 
away.  I  looked  out.  There  were  doz- 
ens of  them  crawling  about  the  house 
and  in  and  out  of  the  natives'  huts. 
There  was  no  one  in  sight,  but  I  think 
that  some  escaped. 

"Then  a  group  of  them  came  strug- 
gling out  of  Salla's  hut,  dragging 
something  that  I  couldn't  see,  and  the 
rest  made  a  rush  for  it.  It  must  have 
been  her — she  was  a  little  brown  girl 
that  had  befriended  me.  Possibly  it 
wasn't  she — I  hope  so,  God  I  do.  They 
imade  a  seething  mass  of  black  over 
her  so  that  there  was  no  chance  to  see 
her  again.  I  would  have  liked  to  save 
her,  but  I  knew  I  couldn't,  so  as  this 
was  my  chance,  I  opened  the  door  and 
made  a  dash  for  it.  One  of  them  saw 
me  and  followed.  They  couldn't  move 
jrapidly,  so  I  gained  on  him.  Then  I 
ran  into  more  of  their  confounded 
(ropes.  One  of  them  wound  about  my 
neck  and  others  about  my  legs.  I  got 
free  just  in  time  before  the  spider 
came  up.  Lord,  how  he  leered  at  me! 

"I  was  more  cautious  after  this,  and 


kept  looking  for  them,  but  they  were 
strung  over  the  whole  country  like 
huge  nets.  I  tried  to  reach  the  ocean, 
hoping  that  they  couldn't  swim,  but 
ahead  of  me  on  the  beach  were  mov- 
ing black  dots.  I  knew  what  they  were 
— and  turning  ran  for  the  river.  Again 
I  was  confronted  by  a  spider.  It  was 
my  last  chance,  so  I  drew  my  revolver 
and  shot.  I  didn't  kill  him,  but  was 
able  to  get  past  and  then  for  the  river. 
How  good  it  looked,  glistening  there 
ahead  of  me.  I  turned  my  head  to  see 
how  far  ahead  of  them  I  was,  and  doz- 
ens of  them  were  after  me.  Those  in 
the  village  must  have  followed,  or  else 
they  were  joined  by  some  on  the  way. 
I  used  up  my  last  strength  to  reach  the 
river,  for  they  were  gaining  on  me 
now,  and  dove  in. 

"They  had  sense  enough  not  to  fol- 
low, but  lined  up  along  the  bank  and 
watched.  I  couldn't  stand  this  for- 
ever, so  began  floating  down  stream, 
hoping  to  come  out  on  the  beach  and 
get  my  boat  if  possible,  but  they  were 
too  clever  for  me,  so  when  I  found  a 
log  lodged  under  the  overhanging 
branches  of  a  banyan,  I  crawled  on  top 
of  it  and  set  it  adrift.  It  was  most  too 
big  for  me  to  steer,  and  I  couldn't  pre- 
vent its  drifting  up  by  the  shore.  One 
of  the  spiders  made  a  rush  for  it  and 
nearly  made  it,  some  of  his  feet  did 
touch  it,  but  the  rest  of  him  fell  in 
the  water,  and  slowly  he  lost  his  grip 
and  let  go,  but  the  critter  had  fast- 
ened on  by  one  of  those  ropes.  I  tried 
to  break  it,  but  then  he  began  to  reel  in 
— and  as  we  were  in  comparatively 
still  water  again  he  managed  to  get  on 
to  the  log  before  I  could  prevent 
him. 

"I  tried  to  push  him  back  off,  and 
kicked  and  jabbed  at  him,  but  it  was 
no  use.  I  reached  for  my  revolver — 
it  was  gone!  Then  one  of  his  arms 
reached  out  and  grabbed  a  hold  of  me. 
The  long  claws  sank  into  my  flesh, 
and  try  as  hard  as  I  could  I  couldn't 
free  myself.  He  began  to  creep  up  on 
me  and  bite  at  my  foot.  Such  sharp 
little  teeth.  It  was  like  a  mouse 
gnawing  at  you,  and  oh,  how  it  hurt. 

"This   didn't  seem  to   satisfy  him, 


THE  WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING 


481 


so  he  kept  crawling  up  my  body  while 
I  was  fighting  him  as  best  I  could.  I 
got  my  fingers  embedded  in  his  soft, 
fuzzy  face  with  his  teeth  clicking  and 
his  round  eyes  blinking  at  me.  I  held 
him  away  as  long  as  my  strength  lasted 
— but  my  foot  was  paining  frightfully, 
and  then  my  leg.  There  must  have 
been  poison  in  his  bite.  My  strength 
gave  out,  and  I  ceased  resisting.  I 
felt  his  legs  wrap  themselves  about  me 
and  he  began  biting  at  my  body.  I 
fainted. 

"When  I  came  to,  we  were  crossing 
the  bar  and  waves  were  breaking  over 
us,  but  the  spider  had  left  me.  I 
raised  my  head  and  looked — he  was 
gone.  However,  I  was  tied  firmly  to 


the  log  with  his  strings,  so  that  I  could 
not  get  up.  This  must  have  been  the 
best  thing  for  me.  I  don't  know  what 
had  happened  to  him,  but  he  must  have 
been  washed  off  the  log  when  we  hit 
the  breakers. 

"My  head  began  to  swim,  my  mouth 
seemed  parched,  although  it  was  moist. 
It  tasted  bitter  and  salty.  Then  it 
dawned  on  me  that  I  was  swallowing 
sea  water.  I  don't  remember  any 
more." 

He  ceased  speaking,  closed  his  eyes 
and  was  soon  asleep.  The  doctor  mo- 
tioned us  to  leave  the  room.  He  never 
again  regained  consciousness,  but  died 
during  the  night,  mumbling  "Spiders! 
Spiders!" 


THE   WAY   OF   UNDERSTANDING 


Had  you  not  failed  me  in  my  hour  of  need, 
Fled,  leaving  me  for  lost  beside  the  way, 
Perhaps  I  had  not  struggled  through  the  mire 
That  lines  the  Primrose  road — a  little  higher 
Climbing,  with  prayerful  heart,  each  toilsome  day : 
Paying  the  age-old  debt,  a  woman's  meed! 

Then  I  had  known  no  vistas  save  your  eyes, 

The  human  soul  not  known  nor  understood — 

For  life  had  meant  just  love,  the  whole  world  you ! 

The  mystery  of  sorrow,  ah,  how  true, 

'Tis  often  but  the  travail  of  great  good 

While  joys  deceive  us  with  their  fair  disguise ! 

But  so  I  learned.    When  dusk  falls  on  the  sod 

Like  some  rich,  fragrant  mantle  of  old  lace, 

A  faint  pain  plays  o'er  memory's  stringed  harp — 

No  longer  quiv-ring  with  its  grief  so  sharp — 

And  stirs  the  mother  in  me,  gives  me  grace 

To  help  another  up  the  steeps  I  trod ! 


Jo.  HARTMAN. 


The  Offering  to  the  Virgin 


(A  CHRIST/A  AS  POE/A) 


By  Lannie  Haynes  /Aartin 


So  holy  was  the  place,  you  felt, 
When  there  in  reverence  you  knelt, 
An  angel  in  it  might  have  dwelt 
With  folded  wings,  content  to  be 
There  guardian  of  its  sanctity. 
Close  by  the  church  lived  Hannah  Lee, 
A  mother,  whose  fair  daughters  three 
Were  taught  to  walk  acceptably 
Before  the  Lord.    From  infancy 
Her  babes  unto  the  church  each  morn 
With  dew-wet  flowers  to  adorn 
The  shrine  of  blessed  Virgin  there 
The  mother  brought  with  many  a  prayer, 
And  urged,  when  older,  some  gift  mete 
They  bring  and  lay  at  Virgin's  feet. 

Aida,  eldest  of  the  three, 

Adept  in  rare  embroidery, 

Upon  an  altar  cloth  of  silk, 

As  soft  as  cloud,  as  white  as  milk, 

Wrought  day  by  day  with  patient  skill, 

And  prayed  the  Virgin  to  fulfill 

Her  heart's  desire — her  gift  to  be 

Not  offering,  but  bribery. 

At  last  the  shimmering  cloth  all  done, 

It  gleamed  as  if  by  fairies  spun 

Of  starlight  on  a  loom  of  gold; 

And  from  the  fabric's  ev'ry  fold 

A  perfume  like  sweet  incense  came. 


Aida's  heart  leaped  like  a  flame 
When  at  the  Virgin's  feet  she  lay 
The  cloth,  and  made  pretense  to  pray. 
She  went  at  eve  forth  from  the  place, 
And  lo!  aglow  upon  her  face 
Was  Beauty,  that  one  gift  she  sought — 
All  else  on  earth  to  her  was  naught — 
Then  eyes  of  all  men  followed  her, 
But  not  their  hearts.    A  sinister, 
Proud,  cruel  smile  turned  hearts  to  stone. 
Through  all  the  years  she  walked  alone. 

The  flowers  that  Loretta  sought 

Were  not  now  to  the  Virgin  brought, 

But  in  the  market-place  she  sold 

Their  fragrant  breath  for  clinking  gold. 

The  gold  was  hid  and  hoarded  up 

To  buy  a  costly,  jeweled  cup, 

To  set  before  the  Virgin's  eyes 

That  she  the  giver's  zeal  should  prize 

And  in  return  a  favor  show 

So  great  that  all  the  world  might  know 

The  greatness  of  the  giver's  name — 

Her  prayer:  "Oh,  give  me  wealth  and  fame!" 

And  on  the  blessed  Virgin's  face 

Were  tear-drops,  for  from  out  the  vase 

No  daily  flowers,  as  of  old, 

Loretta's  love,  in  perfume,  told. 

And  then  came  youngest,  Evelyn, 

To  Virgin  to  confess  the  sin 

That  she  no  gift  had  yet  brought  there ; 

There,  kneeling,  she  made  simple  prayer: 

"Oh,  Virgin,  when  thy  gift  I  bring 

Accept  my  humble  offering, 

But  do  not,  oh,  I  pray  of  thee, 

Put  any  special  mark  on  me! 

For  I  would  not  my  path  should  be 

Away  frcm  earth's  humanity, 

But  kindred-hearted  let  me  see 

The  children  at  their  joyous  play, 

The  youth  and  maiden  on  their  way 


To  love,  and  all  the  old  who  wait 

The  opening  of  heaven's  gate. 

But  if  thcu  must  do  some  good  thing 

For  ev'ry  little  offering, 

Bring  back  old  Jotham's  boy  to  him, 

And  cure  poor  Martha's  crippled  limb, 

And  give  clear  sight  that  Hilda's  eyes 

May  see  the  beauteous  earth  and  skies — 

Ah !  there's  a  little  song  I  sing 

Of  them  when  I'm  a  wandering — 

I  wonder  if  I  sang  to  you 

You'd  bless  the  song" — Then  near  she  drew, 

So  close  that  not  a  priest  could  hear, 

And  whispered  in  the  Virgin's  ear : 

"I  love  the  earth,  the  brown,  bare  earth,  the  breast  I  lie  upon; 

I  love  the  whispers  of  the  wind,  the  kisses  of  the  sun; 

I  love  the  wide,  wide  stretching  sky — my  love  as  wide  and  clear, 

And  not  a  thing  in  all  the  world  have  I  to  hate  or  fear. 

And  ah !  of  all  most  blessed  things  I'd  love  to  be  like  thee 

With  baby  always  in  mine  arms  to  smile  its  love  at  me !" 

And  then  a  wonder  there  was  shown ! 

The  Virgin  stepped  down  from  her  throne, 

And  put  her  babe  upon  the  breast 

Of  woman.    "See,  I  give  thee  best 

And  send  Love  in  the  world  to  be 

A  balm  for  all  adversity," 

The  Virgin  said,  and  then  the  child, 

With  love,  looked  on  the  world  and  smiled! 


The  Unwritten  Law 


By  Yetta  Bull 


BEFORE  the  door  of  an  old  cabin 
an  Indian  woman  sat,  shading 
her  eyes  and  looking  down  the 
valley.  The  sun  beat  merci- 
lessly on  the  wide,  dusty  flat  with  its 
scattered  brush,  and  the  little  cabin, 
huddled  on  the  side.  From  across  the 
yellow,  silent  river  came  the  far-away 
ringing  of  the  school  bell  as  the  child- 
ren, glad  of  escape  from  the  sun, 
trooped  into  the  cool  white  building. 
The  woman  before  the  door  did  not 
stir  until  the  faint  sound  of  a  horse's 
hoofs  approached,  nearer  and  nearer. 
As  they  became  more  distinct,  she 
raised  her  head  moodily,  and  made  an 
effort  to  see  who  was  coming,  but  the 
bright  light  on  the  yellow  river  warned 
her  again. 

The  cloud  of  yellow  dust  grew  larger 
and  larger,  and  the  sweating  pinto 
pony  with  his  heavy  rider  drew  up, 
stopped  with  stiffened  legs,  and  then 
slumped  as  the  rider  jumped  off.  Not 
noticing  the  woman  he  passed,  he 
stepped  over  the  box  that  served  as 
step  and  entered  the  dark  little  cabin. 
The  pony,  left  to  himself,  reins  hang- 
ing, went  to  sleep.  Now  and  then, 
lazily  flicking  at  the  flies  on  his  dusty 
sweaty  sides,  he  stamped  his  foot  in 
exasperation  or  shook  his  head,  and 
then  dozed  off  again. 

Inside  the  house  there  were  heavy 
footsteps  with  the  jingling  of  spurs — 
now  and  then  another  noise,  as  though 
a  box  were  dropped  or  a  chair  shoved, 
and  the  man  appeared.  Slowly  he 
pulled  out  a  red  bandana  and  wiped  it 
over  his  shiny  forehead — then  pushed 
it  back  in  again.  She  sat  still,  with 
her  hands  loosely  folded  in  her  lap, 
and  body  slightly  tilted  forward,  for 
the  box  was  not  sitting  squarely  on 
the  ground.  He  looked  at  her,  and 


then  at  the  pony,  which  was  standing 
as  he  had  left  it,  reins  dragging  in  the 
dust. 

"Well,  I'm  off  again.  That  bunch 
that  went  through  here  last  week — 
you  know?"  She  nodded.  "Well, 
they  have  a  couple  of  horses  we're  not 
sure  of,  and  I'm  trailing  'em  up.  Guess 
it'll  take  a  week.  They're  over  toward 
the  Summit.  I  don't  know  just  how 
far." 

"Going  alone?" 

"No;  Joe  and  Roger  are  going  with 
me.  Don't  want  a  big  bunch,  as  we 
don't  expect  trouble.  Got  everything 
you  need  ?  I  told  'em  at  the  store  you 
would  be  in  for  things.  So-long." 
"So-long." 

He  strode  over  to  the  pony,  picked 
up  the  reins  and  mounted.  The  horse 
opened  first  one  eye  and  then  the 
other,  with  a  slight  effort  toward  in- 
dignant resistance,  but  at  the  prick  of 
the  spurs,  was  off — leaving  a  cloud  of 
dust,  which  settled  slowly  over  the 
flat,  on  the  cabin  and  on  the  woman. 

After  he  had  left,  she  picked  her- 
self up  slowly  and  went  into  the  house. 
Her  eyes  were  blinded  from  the  glare 
outside,  but  she  groped  over  to  the  bed 
in  the  corner.  Clasping  her  hands 
over  her  knees,  she  sat  on  the  edge, 
eyes  on  the  door. 

So  he  had  really  come  back  after 
all — and  for  her!  When  dashing  Jim 
Black,  the  auarterbreed,  with  his  yel- 
low hair,  had  left  the  reservation  seven 
years  before  he  had  promised  he'd 
come  back  and  very  soon — and  they 
hadn't  heard  from  him  for  years.  Slow- 
ly and  methodically  she  went  over  it 
all. 

Her  return  from  school  at  Riverside, 
the  talk  and  envy  of  the  valley  and  the 
object  of  attention  of  all  the  swain 


486 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


thereof,  Jim  Black  had  easily  been 
first,  and  being  sure  of  his  conquest, 
had  dallied.  There  was  plenty  of 
time  to  think  of  marriage,  but  now 
was  the  time  for  love-making.  In  his 
gay,  empty,  light-hearted  way,  he  had 
done  it  successfully,  and  the  weeks 
had  flown,  for  both  of  them.  Other 
girls  and  other  men  were  forgotten, 
but  were  not  so  forgetful.  That  Mary 
Fuller  and  Jim  Black  should  be  in  love 
was  to  be  expected,  but  that  they 
should  be  so  far  forgetful  of  the  feel- 
ings of  others  as  to  openly  snub  and 
ignore  them  was  not  to  be  forgiven. 

Then  Jim  had  come  to  her  one  night 
and  her  whole  world  had  been 
changed.  He  felt  a  restless  desire  to 
get  out  and  see  something  of  life;  of 
the  world  on  the  outside.  She  had 
been  to  school  out  there,  and  had  had 
what  he  now  wanted.  Never  would  she 
iorget  that  night.  The  moon  had  been 
"high  behind  the  Summit,  and  large, 
large  as  only  the  moon  in  the  high 
mountains  can  be;  and  they  had 
walked  down  to  the  river,  while  he  had 
told  her  everything.  Excited,  eager 
and  confident  of  her  understanding,  he 
had  not  noticed  her  silence.  Seated 
in  the  shadow  of  the  bank,  by  a  little 
bend  in  the  stream,  he  had  planned 
their  future. 

She  had  been  away  to  school;  she 
knew  the  limitations  of  the  valley  as 
well  as  he.  There  was  no  future  for 
either  of  them  there.  He  had  been 
satisfied  with  it  until  she  had  come, 
and  then  he  had  begun  to  see  about 
him  more  clearly.  Magnetically,  he 
drew  a  picture  of  her,  mistress  of  the 
home  of  his  dreams,  far  away  from 
the  hateful  Reservation  where  envy 
and  jealousy  were  so  strong.  He 
placed  her  in  gardens,  the  kind  she 
had  seen  on  a  few  excursions  from 
school;  as  mistress  of  servants — and 
as  his  wife.  She  thrilled  to  the  last; 
he  had  known  she  would  and  had  used 
it  so — but  in  her  heart  she  had  mis- 
givings. She  had  not  lived  out  there 
for  long  but,  had  learned  some  things 
she  would  never  forget. 

One  day  in  Los  Angeles,  on  a  shop- 
ping trip,  she  had  overheard  a  con- 


versation between  two  men. 

"Look  at  that  girl  there.  Stunning, 
isn't  she  with  that  hair  and  coloring." 
The  companion  turned. 

"Oh,  her — well,  they're  common 
enough  where  I  come  from.  'Breed,' 
we  call  'em.  Product  of  the  old  re- 
gime 'when  soldiers  wooed  dusky  mai- 
den,' "  and  he  turned  away  carelessly. 
The  other  man  had  stared  curiously, 
and  she,  with  throbbing  blood,  real- 
ized where  she  stood  in  the  world. 

As  her  lover  went  on,  the  incident 
came  back  to  her  and  she  shuddered. 
He,  deep  in  the  world  of  plans,  did  not 
notice,  and  she  was  glad.  The  humil- 
iation which  she  felt  at  the  recollection 
of  that  scene  covered  her  body  with 
shame. 

So  they  had  parted,  he  happy  in  the 
unknown  future  and  she  in  her  love 
for  him,  but  under  all  the  deep  uncer- 
tainty in  that  future.  At  first,  he  had 
sent  her  cards,  but  they  had  ceased, 
and  she  had  gone  steadily  on  with  her 
teaching. 

As  time  passed,  her  position  became 
more  or  less  anonymous — from  the 
sweetheart  of  Jim  Black,  the  finger  of 
the  scorned  drew  the  attention  of  the 
idle  to  the  "woman  that  Jim  Black  had 
left,"  and  the  time  dragged  on. 

There  had  still  been  plenty  of  suit- 
ors, but  supersensitive  as  to  her  posi- 
tion, she  had  been  so  cold  and  distant 
as  to  be  repellent.  Among  them;  had 
been  Jack  Wilson,  playmate  of  her 
early  childhood,  product  of  the  same 
environment  and  training.  Slow,  plod- 
ding, but  steady  and  faithful,  by  these 
very  Qualities  he  had  reached  and 
maintained  his  present  position  of  dep- 
uty sheriff,  and  they  now  served  him 
well.  Finally,  completely  worn  out, 
she  had  accepted  him  and  the  tongue 
of  gossip  wagged  more  slowly.  In  a 
place  like  the  Reservation,  it  never 
ceases  permanently.  There  had  been 
sudden  flareups  of  the  old  story,  but 
they  had  been  farther  and  farther 
apart,  and  now  were  almost  ceased. 

To-day,  however,  she  had  got  a 
card  from  the  Postoffice,  and  she  knew 
by  the  undertones  of  the  idlers  on  the 
porch  of  the  store,  as  she  went  out. 


She  would  look  very  attractive  with  his  bungalow  as  a  background 


488 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


that  they  shared  with  her  the  few  lines 
beneath  the  picture  of  the  Giant  Red- 
wood. She  stooped  forward,  and  the 
stiff  thing  in  the  front  of  her  dress 
bent,  so  she  drew  it  out.  The  post- 
mark was  Eureka  a  week  ago,  and  she 
knew  that  even  now  he  was  on  his  way 
back  home. 

It  had  grown  late,  and  a  tiny  breeze 
from  the  river  made  the  air  bearable. 
Outside,  seme  little  children  were 
playing,  and  their  shrill  little  voices 
roused  her.  Down  the  valley,  the  bell 
at  the  Hoopa  Valley  Hotel  clanged  out 
the  supper  hour,  and  there  was  loud 
talking  and  joying  as  the  men  crowded 
around  the  sink  or  the  one  towel,  in 
a  desperate  attempt  at  cleanliness  be- 
fore filing  into  the  dining  room;  the 
voices  of  mothers  calling  their  child- 
ren, and  then  the  lull  that  follows 
these  preparations.  The  shrill  barking 
of  several  Indian  dogs  told  the  initi- 
ated of  the  approach  of  a  stranger, 
but  she  did  not  heed  it. 

Behind  the  ridge  the  moon,  the  same 
big,  round,  autumn  moon,  came  up, 
and  she  sat  on  the  box  before  the  door 
watching  it.  There  was  a  soft  step  at 
the  corner  of  the  cabin,  and  he  had 
come.  It  was  just  a  repetition  of  the 
old,  and  she  wasn't  startled  or  sur- 
prised. 

She  had  known  he  was  coming 
and  he  was  here — the  same  Jim  Black ; 
but  she  held  him  off  and  looked  at  him 
again.  Was  this  really  he?  There 
was  the  same  careless  look,  but  the 
confidence  was  lacking;  new  lines 
around  the  mouth  and  eyes  which  did 
not  add  to  the  strength  of  the  face; 
her  eyes  shifted  and  took  in  his  fig- 
ure. Surely  the  clothes  were  of  better 
cut,  but  there  was  a  stout  flabbiness, 
and  she  looked  back  to  his  face. 

His  eyes  were  on  her,  and  he  made 
a  motion  to  draw  her  to  him.  All  the 
years  of  waiting,  the  desire  for  expla- 
nation, were  gone,  but  there  was  still 
a  feeling  of  reserve  that  puzzled  them 
both. 

"Mary,  I'm  back.  It's  been  a  long 
time,  but  I  couldn't  help  it."  She  was 
in  his  arms,  and  every  thing  was  set- 
tled. The  moon  rose  higher  and 


higher,  and  a  lone  coyote  in  the  hills 
back  of  the  river  set  up  his  shrill, 
sharp  bark  and  long  drawn  cry. 

She  shivered  and  drew  him  into  the 
house.  There  were  only  two  chairs, 
and  as  he  took  one,  she  reached  for 
the  lamp. 

"No,  don't." 

"Why?" 

"Well,  some  one  may  see  us,  and 
you  know  how  they  talk  here.  Glad 
of  any  excuse." 

Startled  by  his  reasoning,  but  see- 
ing the  logic  of  it,  she  set  the  lamp 
back  on  the  shelf  in  the  corner.  It 
came  to  her  that  he  knew  all  about  her 
and  she  hadn't  asked  a  thing  of  him. 
Questioningly  she  turned,  and  he  an- 
swered her. 

"Yes,  it's  all  right,  dear.  I'm  getting 
along  fine.  The  boys  all  like  me,  and 
will  give  me  a  lift  any  time.  And  the 
town :  you'll  like  it.  None  of  these  old 
'before  the  war'  dumps,  but  new.  New, 
that's  it.  They  don't  care  where  you 
come  from — who  you  are — or  any- 
thing." 

"But— with  Jack " 

"Oh,  I  know,  but  they  won't  ask  any 
questions,  and  if  they  do,  why,  they 
don't  care.  They  don't  have  time  to 
worry  about  things  like  that.  I  tell 
you,  it's  different.  A  man  don't  have 
to  explain  his  whole  life,  down  there. 
He's  just  what  he  is." 

"But  it  takes  a  long  time  to  get  a 
divorce,  and  money,  and  maybe 
Jack " 

"Divorce?  What  are  you  talking 
about?  Do  you  suppose  I'm  going  to 

stand  around  here  while  you  wait 

Oh,  pshaw,  it's  no  use  talking.  I  can't. 
Come,  dear,"  his  voice  changed,  "can't 
you  see  what  a  fuss  that  would  make, 
and  anyhow  I  can't,  wait  so  long.  There 
are  things  that  need  me  down  there. 
I  knew  that  Jack  had  gone,  so  that's 
why  I  came  now." 

"Oh,  Jim,  you  didn't  think  I'd  do 
that." 

"Why,  dear,  there's  nothing  to  worry 
about.  I've  made  all  the  plans.  Told 
the  boys  I  was  coming  up  for  my  wife, 
and  they'll  give  us  a  bang  up  reception 
when  we  get  back.  We'll  stop  in  the 


THE  UNWRITTEN  LAW 


489 


city  so  you  can  get  a  few  duds — you 
know  what  you  need." 

"Oh,  but  Jim,  you  don't  understand. 
Listen  to  me,"  she  clung  desperately 
to  him.  "I  couldn't.  Can't  you  see? 
Why,  I  couldn't  leave  him  that  way. 
He's  always  been  good  to  me.  Why, 
he  came  when  the  whole  alley  talked 
and  said "  She  stopped. 

"Well,  what  did  they  say?  Go  on; 
I'm  waiting." 

Desperately:  "That  you  went  off 
and  left  me.  Do  you  know  what  they 
called  me  until  he  came?  'The  wo- 
man Jim  Black  left,'  and  he  married 
me  after  that." 

"Well,  weren't  you  good  enough  for 
him?" 

She  couldn't  make  him  understand, 
so  gave  up  trying.  He  talked  on,  con- 
fident of  his  influence  over  her,  ex- 
plaining that  they  would  have  to 
leave  on  Monday  at  the  latest.  Jack 
would  be  back  in  a  week,  and  they 
would  leave  before  he  came,  thus  mak- 
ing matters  simpler  than  he  had  an- 
ticipated. It  would  have  taken  much 
more  care  to  have  gotten  away  with 
Jack  on  the  scene,  but  he  had  trusted 
to  luck,  and  it  had  been  with  him. 
Here  was  Jack  gone ;  Mary  a  little  re- 
luctant, but  he  had  expected  that,  and 
with  his  former  arrogance  went  on 
with  his  plans.  He  took  care  that  his 
visits  were  not  noticed,  not  out  of  con- 
sideration for  her,  but  rather  to  sim- 
plify matters  for  them  both.  Little 
did  he  know  of  what  was  going  on  in 
her  brain — that  the  silence  she  had 
maintained  was  not  due  to  womanly 
hesitation,  as  he  imagined,  but  to  a 
struggle  based  on  deeper  things  than 
he  dreamed  of:  the  conflict  arising 
from  the  knowledge  that  she  was  about 
to  injure  her  very  best  friend — the 
man  who  had  done  the  best  as  he  saw 
it  for  her.  When  she  was  worn  with 
the  ceaseless  continuity  of  reasoning, 
she  always  had  to  face  this  "giant 
gratitude."  It  wasn't  love  for  her  hus- 
band, all  of  that  had  been  given  to 
her  early  lover.  Balance  love  and 
gratitude,  and  the  scales  turn  easily, 
but  here  the  love  had  been  choked  and 
thwarted,  while  the  other  balance  had 


been  added  to  daily  with  the  waking 
sense  that  she  could  go  through  that 
day  without  the  finger  of  derision 
pointed  at  her. 

On  Friday  night  there  was  to  be  a 
dance  at  Long's,  over  the  store.  She 
hesitated  about  going,  because  without 
Jack  she  lost  her  sense  of  security, 
and  she  was  not  popular  with  any  of 
the  women.  However,  Friday  even- 
ing, Jack  returned,  tired  and  dusty,  but 
exultant  over  a  successful  trip. 

"Go  on,  Mary,  it'll  do  you  good,  and 
I'll  drop  in  for  you  later.  Have  to  see 
Goodrich,  and  I'm  too  tired  to  clean 
up  to  dance.  Joe's  going,  and  I'll  have 
him  look  after  you  there." 
•  Totally  unprepared  with  any  excuse 
she  went  with  Jack,  and  Joe,  her  hus- 
band's lifelong  friend.  At  the  foot  of 
the  stairs,  Jack  spotted  his  man,  and 
left  them  to  go  upstairs  to  the  dance. 

There  was  quite  a  crowd,  and  she 
nodded  coolly  as  they  walked  down 
the  room.  Around  the  walls  the  old 
women  squatted,  gay  with  their  plaid 
blankets  and  gingham  aprons  and  their 
little,  tight  caps  perched  on  their  heads, 
while  their  husbands,  types  of  the  old 
mountain  settler,  swung  gaily  on  the 
corners  the  daughters  of  similar 
unions. 

Outside  the  door,  looking  in  and 
laughing,  with  much  nudging  of  el- 
bows and  good-natured  shouldering 
aside,  were  brothers  of  the  same 
daughters,  striking  contrast  in  their 
heavy,  coarse  clothes,  to  their  pink  be- 
ribboned  sisters.  The  fiddle  twanged 
on,  though  the  organist  stopped  period- 
ically to  mop  his  forehead  and  get  a 
rew  grip  on  the  keys,  while  above 
them  all,  "George  Washington  Cross- 
i"?  the  Delaware"  looked  supremely 
do^m. 

Down  stairs  on  the  porch,  Jim  Black 
leaned  moodily  against  the  door,  smok- 
ing. There  was  a  step  beside  him,  and 
Joe  passed,  entering  the  store  where 
Jack,  Goodrich  and  a  half  dozen  others 
sat,  talking.  Leaning  aeainst  the 
counter,  he  listened  idly  until : 

"Black — yes,  he's  back.  About  a 
week.  Hprigfing  around.  Never  went 
much  on  him.  Too  taking  with  the 


490 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


women."  Realizing  what  he'd  said, 
he  stopped,  but  the  fuse  was  lighted. 
Jack  Wilson  looked  up. 

"Women,  what  do  you  mean?" 
"Oh,   nothing;   only     he's     always 
hanging  around." 

"Who — what  do  you  mean?" 
Waiting  to  hear  no  more,  Joe  went 
out  just  in  time  to  see  Jim  Black  walk- 
ing slowly  across  the  campus,  past  the 
pine  grove  toward  the  hotel.  Think- 
ing to  have  a  word  or  two  with  him, 
and  perhaps  give  him  a  word  of  ad- 
vice, he  followed.  Just  as  he  got  to 
the  clump  of  pines,  he  turned  and  saw 
a  figure  silhouetted  in  the  doorway, 
look  across  the  campus  and  come  down 
the  steps.  Realizing  the  explanation 
due  Jack,  if  seen  pursuing  Black,  any 
turn  of  which  would  bring  on  compli- 
cations, he  slipped  into  the  grove. 


The  footsteps  came  on  and  then 
stopped.  There  was  a  pause,  and  then, 

"Who's  in  there?"     Only  a  silence. 

"Who's  in  there,  I  say?"  A  little 
breeze  rustled  through  the  trees  and 
across  the  campus  came  the  music 
from  the  dance. 

"Who's  there,  I  say?  Answer,  or 
I'll  shoot." 

A  step — a  shot 

"My  God— it's  Joe!" 

Down  the  stairs,  across  the  campus, 
they  came  running,  and  out  of  breath, 
but  the  figure  kneeling  beside  the  one 
on  the  ground  never  turned. 

"God,  Joe — I  thought  it  was  Black, 
They  said  in  the  store " 

"I  know,  old  man — don't  let  them 
blame  you.  I'm  going " 

Ar.d  the  Indian  woman  sits  in  the 
"door  of  her  cabin,  waiting. 


THE  TWELFTH  AONTH 


The  gems  that  grace  December's  brow 

No  other  queen  may  wear; 

And   ermine-clad   she   writes   "Finis" — 

While  speeds  the  fleeting  year. 

Upon  her  breast,  the  holly  beads 

Like  rubies,  flash  their  red, 

And  gleaming  pearls  of  mistletoe 

Are  haloed  'round  her  head. 

The  months  have  winged  their  cycle, 

December  brings  the  morn, 

When  Christ — the  world's  salvation 

On  Christmas  Day — was  born. 

So,  down  the  star-hung  spaces, 

A  song  of  joy  she  sings — 

While  bidding  hearts  "put  by  dull  grief, 

And  greet  the  King  of  Kings." 

AGNES  LOCKHART  HUGHES. 


The  Sand  Rat 


By  Helen  Richardson  Brown 


WILLIAM  HARRISON  rose 
from  the  supper  table  and 
mounted  his  horse  for  a  ride 
to  El  Centre.  It  was  twenty 
miles  from  the  Harrison  ranch  to  the 
county  seat,  but  he  preferred  to  ride 
by  night,  for  the  heat  had  beaten  down 
fiercely  into  the  Imperial  Valley  that 
late  August  day.  The  air  was  still 
hot  and  parching,  but  this  rider  was 
not  conscious  of  any  discomfort.  He 
was  in  a  particularly  satisfied  frame  of 
mind.  He  had  received  that  morning 
from  the  Brawley  post  office  the  last 
returns  from  his  cantaloupe  crop,  and 
they  were  far  in  excess  of  his  expecta- 
tions. And  as  he  passed  his  great 
stretches  of  fragrant  green  alfalfa 
fields  and  noted  the  cattle  grazing 
therein,  he  realized  that  here,  too,  were 
represented  three  or  four  thousand  dol- 
lars more  that  he  would  receive  that 
year.  He  had  certainly  arrived;  his 
conquest  of  the  desert  was  complete. 
He  found  himself  wondering  vague- 
ly what  he  should  do  with  the  sur- 
plus money.  When  he  had  come  into 
the  desert  seven  years  ago,  a  young 
man  of  twenty-five,  fresh  from  the 
Eastern  centers  of  civilization,  the  ex- 
penditure of  practically  any  sum  of 
money  would  not  have  baffled  him,  but 
so  long  now  had  he  denied  himself 
every  luxury,  so  long  had  he  lived 
with  but  one  great  thought  in  mind — 
that  of  getting  out  of  debt — that  he 
could  not  at  first  conceive  of  returned 
affluence.  Presently  he  passed  a  rec- 
tangle of  palms  and  pepper  trees  which 
he  had  planted  the  first  year  he  got  his 
irrigating  water,  and  he  was  reminded 
of  an  old  dream — that  of  a  pretty  bun- 
galow rising  amongst  the  trees,  and  of 
a  broad  stretch  of  green  lawn  in  front 
— of  a  sweet,  bright-faced  girl  to  keep 


the  bungalow  and  a  child  or  two  to  roll 
about  the  grass. 

But  that  was  seven  years  ago.  He 
had  expected  to  have  his  land  and 
water  stock  paid  for  in  three  years,  but 
delays  of  one  kind  and  another  had 
occurred;  he  had  had  a  bad  "wash" 
one  year,  one  or  two  crop  experiments 
had,  due  to  inexperience,  proved  fail- 
ures, and  by  degrees  his  dreams  had 
faded.  He  had  worked  harder  that  he 
might  forget  his  loneliness,  and  gradu- 
ally he  had  become  accustomed  to- 
solitude.  He  had  reached  that  point 
where  human  companionship  was  no- 
longer  necessary  to  him.  He  smiled 
as  he  thought  of  his  dream  now — he 
was  too  old,  he  told  himself- — just  an 
old  "sand  rat,"  as  the  more  recent 
comers  called  the  pioneers  of  the  des- 
ert. 

Passing  the  extreme  southern  boun- 
dary of  his  land,  he  noticed  a  group  of 
cowboys  gathered  about  some  object. 
He  drew  rein  a  trifle  to  see  what  the 
cause  of  the  excitement  might  be. 

Billy  Stone,  one  of  Harrison's  own 
men,  who  was  a  member  of  the  group, 
seeing  Harrison,  stepped  to  his  horse's 
side. 

"What  is  it,  Billy?" 

"It's  a  strav  horse  that's  wandered 
over  here.  He's  an  outlaw — nobody 
can  ride  him.  Never  been  broken. 
Beida  says  he  was  foaled  down  in 
Mexico ;  you  can  tell  by  his  small  ears 
set  wide  apart  that  he's  got  a  little  of 
the  old  Arabian  blood  in  him  that 
came  over  with  the  Spanish  horses  into 
Mexico.  He  was  foaled  too  late  in  the 
season  for  branding  with  the  other  colts 
the  first  year;  the  second  year  he 
dodged  into  the  tules  and  hid  till  after 
the  branding  was  over.  After  that  he 


492 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


body  to  break  him.  There  are  lots  of 
different  ones  have  tried  it,  but  no- 
body has  succeeded.  Three  or  four 
men  have  been  killed,  they  say.  He's 
got  a  long  black  mark  across  his  hip 
that  Beida  says  means  'El  Diablo,'  and 
signifies  a  horse  that  can't  be  broken. 
I  guess  he's  'the  devil'  all  right.  Sev- 
eral of  the  boys  have  been  trying  him, 
but  they  don't  get  their  leg  across  his 
back  till  they  go  into  the  air.  Beida's 
just  got  his  wrist  sprained." 

"Better  let  him  alone,"  adjured  Har- 
rison. 

"Yes.  Say,  Pete  Conway  borrowed 
a  lariat  from  me  when  he  was  up  here 
last  week  and  he  hain't  returned  it.  He 
lives  down  near  El  Centre;  if  it  ain't 
too  much  out  of  your  way,  would  you 
call  and  get  it  fer  me?  This  other 
one  I  got  ain't  no  good." 

Harrison  nodded  and  rode  on. 

At  a  little  after  nine  the  next  morn- 
ing he  left  El  Centro  Hotel  and  rode 
to  Conway's  ranch,  the  other  side  of 
town. 

He  found  Conway,  a  long,  lean  in- 
dividual, with  a  huge  roll  of  tobacco 
in  his  cheek,  driving  a  herd  of  cattle 
very  audibly  from  one  pasture  to  an- 
other. Harrison  rode  up  to  the  fence, 
and  as  the  lariat  was  then  hanging 
from  the  horn  of  Conway's  saddle,  he 
obtained  it  without  difficulty. 

"Sorry  to  trouble  ye  to  come  fer  it," 
apologized  Conway,  "but  I  been  kind 
er  puttin'  it  off.  Jake  Carruthers  has 
been  talkin'  of  go  in'  up  that  way,  an' 
I  thought  maybe  he'd  take  it.  Excuse 
me  fer  goin'  on,  but  I've  got  one  very 
contrairy  steer  here  in  this  bunch,  an1 
if  I  don't  watch  him  he's  liable  to  git 
away.  He's  cantankerous  when  he  gits 
a-goin'." 

As  Harrison  rode  off  his  attention 
became  attracted  to  an  object  by  the 
side  of  the  road  some  distance  ahead. 
He  could  not  quite  make  out  what  it 
was.  It  was  pink;  it  might  be  a  girl 
or  a  woman  in  a  pink  dress,  but  if  so, 
she  was  sitting  low  and  working  at 
something  in  front  of  her.  While  he 
was  looking,  a  steer,  probably  the  one 
to  which  Conway  had  referred,  broke 
through  the  fence  a  short  distance  in 


front  of  him  and  started  down  the 
road.  The  animal  presently  stopped. 
He,  too,  had  sighted  the  pink  object. 
He  paused  a  moment,  then  lowered  his 
head,  shook  it,  and  with  a  deep  bellow 
started  toward  it  on  a  swift  run.  At  the 
sound  of  the  bellow  the  girl  rose  from 
her  seat  with  a  shriek  of  fright  and 
ran  down  the  road,  the  animal  in  pur- 
suit. 

Harrison  saw  her  flight  would  be 
cut  off  by  the  irrigating  canal  which 
crossed  the  road.  He  spurred  his 
horse,  as  he  unwound  the  lariat  and 
swung  it  in  slowly  widening  circles 
about  his  head. 

The  girl  reached  the  ditch — stopped 
— turned 

Harrison  threw  the  lasso,  and  jerked 
the  steer  to  his  knees.  The  girl  sank 
in  a  heap  upon  the  bank. 

He  gave  the  rope  a  quick  turn  on 
the  pommel,  dismounted  and  hurried 
to  the  girl.  She  lay  quite  still.  He 
looked  at  her,  and  felt  that  he  ought 
to  do  something,  but  he  did  not  quite 
know  what.  He  thought  of  sprinkling 
her  face  with  water  from  the  irrigat- 
ing ditch,  but  to  touch  anything  so  fair 
and  delicate  as  that  round  white  cheek 
with  that  muddy  water  seemed  like 
desecration. 

Presently  she  slowly  opened  her 
eyes,  then  more  full  recovering  con- 
sciousness, she  attempted  to  sit  up. 
Harrison  slipped  his  arm  under  her 
shoulders. 

"Was  it  you  who  stopped  him?" 

"Yes,"  said  Harrison.  He  felt  the 
blood  stirring  through  his  whole  body. 
If  the  girl  had  looked  beautiful  as  she 
lay  inanimate,  she  was  doubly  so  now 
that  the  color  was  returning  to  her 
cheeks. 

"Well,  I— I  thank  you."  She  at- 
tempted to  rise.  Harrison  lifted  her  to 
her  feet.  The  contact  thrilled  him;  had 
he  thought  the  night  before  that  he  was 
old! 

"I  just  came  out  to  sketch — that  dear 
little  house  with  its  palm-leaf  thatch 
was  so  cute  I  just  had  to  have  it,"  she 
said.  "I  didn't  suppose  those  cattle 
could  get  out." 

"Couldn't  have,  if  the   fence     had 


THE  SAND  RAT 


493 


been  in  proper  shape,"  said  Harrison, 
picking  up  her  jaunty  Panama. 

"I  wonder  what  I  did  with  my 
easel,"  she  said. 

"Guess  it's  where  you  left  it;  didn't 
notice  you  stop  for  any  baggage," 
laughed  Harrison.  The  girl  laughed. 

Harrison  secured  the  easel  and  re- 
turned. "If  you'll  allow  me,  I'll  carry 
it  to  your  home." 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  and  gave 
him  a  comprehensive  glance.  His 
dress  was  rough,  but  his  speech  and 
manner  were  those  of  a  gentlemna. 

"You  are  certainly  most  kind,"  she 
said. 

That  it  should  be  any  kindness  on 
his  part  struck  Harrison  as  ridiculous. 

During  the  walk  he  learned  that  she 
was  from  Keutucky ;  that  she  was 
stopping  at  the  same  hotel  where  he 
was  registered,  that  her  name  was 
Farrington,  that  she  had  come  West 
with  her  aunt  and  uncle,  who  stood  in 
the  place  of  parents  to  her.  They  were 
tourists,  he  gathered.  It  appeared  that 
they  had  some  object  in  coming  to  the 
valley,  though  just  what  she  did  not 
state. 

As  they  reached  the  arcade  of  the 
hotel  he  paused. 

"Won't  you  come  in  and  meet  my 
aunt  and  uncle,"  she  asked.  "I  know 
they  will  be  glad  to  know  you." 

Harrison  demurred.  There  was  his 
horse  to  look  after,  then  he  had  some 
errands  for  his  neighbors  to  attend  to, 
he  would  meet  them  later  in  the  after- 
noon, if  agreeable. 

She  consented,  and  taking  her  easel 
went  in. 

Harrison  rode  directly  to  the  best 
clothing  store  in  town.  When  he  came 
out  he  wore,  instead  of  his  "chaps"  and 
sombrero,  a  suit  of  light  grey  tweed, 
smart  tan  ties  with  silk  socks  to  match, 
a  white  silk  shirt  and  a  fifteen  dollar 
Panama  hat.  He  made  an  extended 
visit  to  the  barber's,  and  lastly,  by  a 
circuitous  route  through  the  back 
yards,  entered  a  manicure  parlor.  He 
could  not  help  but  think  what  Bud 
Longworthy,  whom  he  had  seen  on 
Main  street,  would  say  if  he  were  to 
see  him  visiting  a  manicure's.  He 


would  lose  caste  in  the  eyes  of  his 
boys  forever  should  such  an  evidence 
of  weakness  and  effeminacy  be  dis- 
covered. The  white  shirt  and  silk 
socks  might  be  forgiven  him,  but  the 
manicure — never ! 

It  was  half-past  five  when  he  re- 
turned to  the  hotel.  He  made  his  way 
through  the  crowd  about  the  desk,  and 
reached  the  stairway.  As  he  started  up 
a  party  of  three — a  middle-aged  man 
and  woman  and  a  young  girl- — were  just 
starting  down.  He  drew  back  and 
waited.  As  the  girl  turned  her  face 
toward  him  he  saw  with  a  leap  of  the 
heart  that  it  was  she.  She  had 
changed  her  pink  gown  for  a  white  one 
of 'some  gauzy  material,  sprinkled  over 
with  blue  flowers  and  cut  a  little  low  in 
the  neck,  from  which  fell  back  a  filmy 
ruffle  of  lace. 

She  looked  at  Harrison  for  a  moment 
without  recognition,  then  she  looked 
again,  and  her  face  lighted  with  a 
smile.  Such  a  smile  Harrison  thought 
he  had  never  seen. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Harrison,  it  is  you.  I  did 
not  quite  recognize  you  at  first — you — 
you  look — well,  you  were  in  your  rid- 
ing clothes  this  morning,  you  know — " 

"Aunty,  this  is  Mr.  Harrison,  of 
whom  I  told  you  this  morning.  He 
saved  my  life."  The  woman  extended 
her  hand  and  made  some  polite  ac- 
knowledgment, but  her  tone  was  for- 
mal and  reserved.  The  glance  she 
gave  him  struck  Harrison  as  a  trifle  ap- 
praising. 

The  uncle  was  unreservedly  cor- 
dial. He  wrung  Harrison's  hand 
warmly,  and  expressed  several  times 
his  appreciation  of  what  he  had  done. 
"Mighty  clever  trick  you  did,  from 
what  Phyllis  tells  me." 

"Oh,  nothing;  any  one  in  the  cattle 
business  could  have  done  it." 

Snowden  invited  him  to  dine  with 
them.  He  accepted. 

The  conversation  during  the  meal 
was  devoted  mostlv  to  the  va^ev,  its 
unique  history  of  flood  and  drought, 
and  the  wonderful  agricultural  achieve- 
ments under  irrigation  of  the  past  few 
years.  Snowden  asked  many  Questions, 
which  Harrison  answered.  The  girl 


494 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


seemed  a  most  interested  listener. 

As  they  rose  from  the  table,  Snow- 
den  suggested  a  game  of  bridge  for 
the  evening,  but  Mrs.  Snowden  pleaded 
a  headache,  and  after  a  few  words  of 
formal  leave,  went  upstairs.  Snowden 
then  suggested  a  smoke  in  the  chairs 
outside  upon  the  sidewalk,  and  Harri- 
son agreed.  The  girl  lingered  a  few 
moments  by  the  coat  hooks  in  the 
lobby.  Harrison  paused  also. 

"I  want  to  tell  you  how  interested  I 
was  in  your  story  of  the  valley,"  she 
said,  giving  him  her  hand.  "It  was 
nice  of  you  to  tell  us  so  much  about  it." 

The  words  were  commonplace,  but 
something  in  the  girl's  eyes  struck  him 
as  being  anything  but  that.  A  great 
hope  sprang  up  in  his  heart. 

"I  have  some  pictures  which  I  will 
be  pleased  to  show  you  to-morrow,"  he 
said;  "some  that  I  brought  down  for 
a  neighbor  to  be  developed ;  they  will 
give  you  a  better  idea  of  the  steps  in 
progress  than  I  can  by  telling.  I  will 
have  them  in  the  morning." 

They  shook  hands  once  more.  She 
turned  and  followed  her  aunt  up  the 
stairs,  and  he  joined  Snowden  out  up- 
on the  sidewalk. 

Later,  when  he  had  gone  to  his 
room,  Harrison  sat  by  his  window  a 
time  before  retiring.  His  reverie  was 
very  different  from  that  of  the  night 
before.  He  saw  now  the  bungalow, 
handsomer  than  he  had  ever  dreamed 
it,  rising  amongst  the  palms  and  pep- 
per trees,  and  there  was  being  moved 
in  a  complete  outfit  of  the  finest  furni- 
ture, including  a  grand  piano.  He 
found  himself  wondering  vaguely  what 
make  of  automobile  she  would  like 
best.  That  he  was  assuming  a  good 
deal  in  thus  planning  he  realized,  but  if 
he  did  not  win  her  for  his  wife,  it 
would  be  because  he  could  not  get  her. 
His  mind  was  made  up.  She  had  not 
shown  any  aversion  to  him,  and  that 
look  in  her  eyes  as  they  stood  in  the 
hallway  had  appeared  to  him  a  good 
deal  in  the  way  of  encouragement. 
Gratitude,  perhaps,  it  was,  but  if  any- 
thing could  be  done  to  make  it  develop 
into  love  it  should  be  done. 

He  was  down  in  the  lobby  by  six 


o'clock  the  next  morning.  He  ate  his 
breakfast,  looked  over  the  morning 
paper,  and  then  went  out  to  the  photo- 
grapher's. The  pictures  were  not  fin- 
ished until  ten.  When  he  obtained 
them,  he  returned  to  the  hotel.  There 
were  still  no  signs  of  the  Snowdens  or 
Miss  Farrington.  He  waited  till  eleven 
' — then,  unable  to  stand  it  any  longer, 
went  to  the  desk  and  asked  the  clerk 
if  he  had  seen  them. 

Yes:  Mr.  Snowden  had  gone  out 
about  nine  o'clock — had  taken  one  of 
the  auto  stages  up  the  valley,  he 
thought.  Miss  Farrington  had  gone 
out  soon  after;  had  an  easel  or  some- 
thing under  her  arm,  and  he  guessed 
she  was  going  to  stay  over  lunch-time, 
as  she  had  ordered  one  put  up.  Mrs. 
Snowden,  he  thought,  was  confined  to 
her  room  with  a  sick  headache. 

Harrison's  heart  sank.  He  did  not 
see  how  he  could  wait  even  a  few  hours 
to  see  her.  But  he  employed  the  af- 
ternoon in  making  some  purchases  for 
the  new  bunk  house — mattresses  and 
blankets  and  various  other  fittings. 

When  he  returned  to  the  hotel,  about 
five,  Phyllis  was  standing  at  the  desk 
making  some  inquiries  of  the  clerk 
about  the  laundry.  He  stepped  up  and 
they  greeted  each  other.  He  produced 
the  pictures,  and  then  drifted  into  the 
ladies'  parlor  and  sat  down  upon  the 
shiny  black  leather  sofa.  He  showed 
the  pictures,  one  by  one :  first  the  cat- 
erpillar engine  dragging  out  the  brush 
and  roots,  then  the  "Fresno,"  scraping 
and  leveling  the  land,  the  mule  teams, 
plowing,  the  turning  of  the  irrigating 
ditches,  the  building  of  the  head-gates, 
the  methods  of  turning  on  and  shutting 
off  the  water,  and  finally  the  cotton  and 
alfalfa,  growing.  Then  there  were  the 
more  intimate  scenes  on  the  ranch,  the 
Mexicans  eating  their  tortillas  and  fri- 
joles  in  the  shade  of  their  rough  weed 
ramades,  the  boys  cutting  each  other's 
hair  in  the  shade  of  the  cook  shack  on 
Sunday  morning,  the  whole  crowd 
making  their  toilets  out  of  a  single 
wash  basin  in  the  mornings.  She  was 
interested  in  them  all. 

"It's  pretty  rough,  at  the  first,  any- 
how," he  said. 


THE  SAND  RAT 


495 


'T  think  it  is  grand,"  she  replied; 
"to  think  how  they  have  turned  this 
whole  desert  into  a  garden;  I  admire 
the  strength  and  perseverance.  I  feel 
as  though  I  would  like  to  help." 

Harrison  was  gratified.  It  encour- 
aged him,  for  he  had  felt  sometimes 
as  he  looked  at  her  that  she  was  too 
delicate  for  such  a  country;  perhaps 
she  would  not  like  it,  even  with  the 
comforts  and  luxuries  that  he  could 
give  her. 

"I  would  like  to  take  you  and  your 
aunt  and  uncle  out  and  show  you  some 
of  these  things.  I  can  get  a  machine 
from  the  garage  in  the  morning,  and 
we  can  drive  up  to  the  North  End  and 
you  can  see  the  actual  work  going  on; 
that  is  better  than  the  pictures." 

"That  is  very  kind  of  you,"  she  said, 
turning  her  face  away  a  little,  from 
him.  "But  I  will  tell  you — I  think  per- 
haps I  ought  to  tell  you  that  I  am  en- 
gaged— engaged  to  be  married." 

Harrison  drew  back  abashed.  Af- 
ter all,  the  look  the  night  before  had 
meant  nothing. 

"I — I  didn't  know,"  he  said.  Then 
added  quckly:  "You  are  no  doubt  very 
happy.  Let  me  congratulate  you." 

The  girl  did  not  reply.  She  sat  look- 
ing down  into  her  lap. 

"Yes,  I  have  been  engaged  for  years 
— ever  since  I  was  a  child.  Our  fami- 
lies lived  next  door  to  each  other.  His 
mother  and  my  aunt  were  great  friends 
from  girlhood,  and  they  always  had  it 
arranged  that  when  we  were  grown  we 
should  be  married." 

"Yes,"  said  Harrison.  "And  you 
love  him?" 

She  did  not  reply  immediately. 
Again  she  sat  looking  down  into  her 
lap.  Then  she  raised  her  head  reso- 
lutely. "He  is  a  good  man;  at  least 
he  comes  from  a  very  good  family.  I 
haven't  seen  so  very  much  of  him  since 
I  was  grown,  for  I  was  away  at  semi- 
nary during  the  high  school  age,  and 
about  the  time  I  got  back  he  went 
away  to  college,  and  he  hasn't  been 
graduated  long.  Uncle  doesn't  seem 
to  entirely  approve  of  him,  but  Auntie 
thinks  a  great  deal  of  him,  His  fam- 
ily are  very  nice,  one  of  the  oldest 


families  in  Kentucky.  Aunty  thinks 
that  family  is  everything.  I  guess  it  is 
— isn't  it?" 

He  did  not  speak. 

"Warren — Mr.  Langley,"  she  pur- 
sued, "came  to  the  valley  with  us — or 
rather  we  came  with  him.  He  thought 
he  would  like  to  buy  some  land  here, 
and  we  came  with  him  to  look  about. 
He  has  a  piece  selected  now  which  he 
thinks  he  will  buy.  Uncle  was  up  there 
to-day;  Warren  is  still  there.  When 
Uncle  came  back  this  afternoon  he 
said  that  Warren  had  about  decided  to 
buy  it.  I  think  it  is  up  your  way." 

"That  so?"  responded  Harrison. 
"Well,  I  hope  that  he  gets  in  right;  if 
there  is  anything  I  can  do  to  be  of  as- 
sistance, let  me  know." 

"You  are  very  kind.  The  piece  is 
marked  on  this  map,"  she  said,  taking 
an  orange  colored  sheet  from  her  wide 
girdle;  "you  can  take  it — keep  it,  if 
you  like — we  have  another."  She  rose. 
"I  will  go  up  and  see  how  Auntie  is. 
Thank  you  for  showing  me  the  pic- 
tures— and  for  your  assistance  yester- 
day— and  your  kind  invitation." 

She  turned  suddenly  away  and  went 
to  the  stairs  leading  up  and  he  to  those 
leading  down. 

As  he  turned  the  first  landing  he 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  pause 
and  look  up.  She  had  stopped  on  the 
top  landing  and  was  looking  down. 
She  turned  quickly,  but  not  before  he 
had  caught  the  gleam  of  a  tear  in  her 
eye.  He  felt  an  impulse  to  rush  up 
and  gather  her  into  his  arms,  but  she 
vanished. 

He  left  the  hotel  .weighted  with  a 
deep  sense  of  disappointment.  He 
had  had  disappointments  of  many 
kinds — no  man  could  conquer  the  des- 
ert without  them — but  this  one,  some 
way,  seemed  heavier  than  the  others. 
He  could  not  shake  it  off.  He  went 
into  a  restaurant  and  ordered  some 
supper,  but  he  rose,  after  a  brief  time, 
leaving  most  of  the  food  upon  his 
plate.  As  he  walked  along  the  road  to 
shake  off  his  feelings,  it  occurred  to 
him  to  look  at  the  man.  He  unfolded 
it,  and  lighting  a  match,  looked  at  the 
marked  section. 


496 


OVERLAND  MQNTHLY 


He  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the 
road.  "That  piece!"  he  gasped. 
"That  lemon  that  every  real  estate 
dealer  has  been  trying  to  work  off  on 
every  tenderfoot  for  the  last  four 
years."  Why,  it  was  totally  worthless 
—the  man  would  be  ruined  if  he  pur- 
chased it.  He  turned  half  way  round. 
He  would  go  back  to  the  hotel  and 
tell  them  so.  But  he  paused.  The 
possibilities  came  to  him.  Suppose 
Langley  were  ruined,  would  it  not  be 
better  for  him,  Harrison?  Would  it 
not  give  him  the  chance  he  wanted? 
It  was  not  likely  that  the  aunt  would 
persist  in  urging  the  girl  to  marry  a 
ruined  man.  The  aunt's  influence  re- 
moved, he  felt  but  little  doubt  of  his 
own  success.  He  turned  again,  then 
for  some  reason,  perhaps  because  the 
moon  shone  down  upon  the  road  with 
unusual  brilliancy,  he  paused  and 
raised  his  eyes  to  the  sky. 

"No,"  said  the  man  as  if  in  answer, 
"that's  right.  It  isn't  giving  the  man 
a  square  deal.  Whatever  else  is  true 
or  isn't,  she's  his.  He's  won  her;  she's 
promised  to  marry  him,  and  if  he's 
worthy  of  her  he's  entitled  to  her.  He 
ought  to  have  a  square  deal." 

He  turned  once  more  and  walked 
rapidly  toward  the  hotel. 

There  were  none  of  the  Snowden 
party  about,  but  he  wrote  a  brief  note 
and  asked  the  clerk  to  put  it  in  their 
box: 

"Miss  Farrington — Don't  let  Mr. 
Langley  buy  that  piece.  It  is  good 
land,  but  he  can  never  get  any  water 
on  it,  for  it  lies  higher  than  the  ditch. 
Buy  anywhere  to  the  south,  east  or 
west.  Good-bye.  I  am  leaving  for 
the  ranch  to-night.  William  Harri- 
son." 

He  went  to  the  stable  for  his  horse 
and  rode  for  a  while  with  a  sense  of 
exaltation — that  sense  that  a  man  has 
when  his  conscience  tells  him  that  he 
has  done  the  right  thing ;  but  later,  as 
he  got  on  to  the  homeward  half  of 
his  journey  doubts  began  again  to  as- 
sail him.  Suppose  the  man  were  not 
what  he  should  be;  suppose  the  grl 
did  not  love  him;  suppose  she  were 
persuaded  against  her  own  best  feel- 


ings and  married  this  man  and  was  un- 
happy; would  it  not  be  his — Harri- 
son's fault?  He  could  have  prevented 
;it,  he  believed. 

He  was  still  revolving  this  question 
in  his  mnd  when  he  was  addressed  by 
a  horseman  that  rode  up  from  a  cross- 
'road.  He  looked  up  and  saw  it  was 
Billy. 

"I  see  you  got  it,  Mr.  Harrison." 

"What?"    Harrison  looked  puzzled. 

"The  lariat." 

"Oh,  yes."  He  took  it  from  the 
horn  of  his  saddle  and  threw  it  to 
Billy. 

"How's  everything?"  asked  Harri- 
son. 

"All  right,"  said  Billy,  "as  far  as 
the  ranch  is  concerned.  We  had  a  lit- 
tle excitement  late  this  afternoon, 
though.  A  man  killed." 

"Who?" 

"A  feller  from  the  East — or  rather 
from  the  South — Atlanta.  Langley : 
know  him?" 

Harrison  started. 

"He  was  up  here  lookin'  at  land," 
continued  Billy.  "He  bought  that 
piece  on  Section  8 — that  piece  that's 
no  eood." 

"How — how  did  the  accident  hap- 
pen?" asked  Harrison. 

"That  outlaw  horse.  Langley  tried 
to  ride  him,  and  he  threw  him  and 
killed  him." 

"Why — why  didn't  you  stop  him?" 

"We  couldn't.  We  warned  him,  but 
he  was  a  headstrong,  opinionated  sort 
of  feller;  he'd  been  drinking,  too." 

"Bad  work,"  Harrison  added,  as  he 
started  up  his  horse.  His  mind  was 
confused  for  some  time,  then  presently 
he  came  opposite  the  rectangle  of 
palms  and  pepper  trees,  He  paused 
and  watched  them  waving  gracefully 
in  the  moonlight.  He  sat  still  for 
some  time.  And  as  he  sat  he  fell  to 
dreaming  once  more  the  old  dream. 
Again  he  saw  the  bungalow  rising 
amongst  the  trees,  still  finer  and  hand- 
somer than  ever  before,  and  this  time 
it  was  so  real  that  before  he  went  to 
bed  that  night  he  wrote  to  an  architect 
in  Los  Angeles,  sending  a  sketch  and 
asking  for  plans  and  specifications. 


The  Creed  of  Ah  Sing 


By  Francis  J.  Dickie 


IT  WAS  early  evening  when  we  fin- 
ished dining.     Strolling  out  to  the 
big  rotunda,  Hawley  and  I  dropped 
with  contented  sighs  into  a  couple 
of  the  roomy  leather  chairs  that  faced 
the  big  window  looking  out  onto  Hast- 
ings street. 

It  was  five  years  since  either  of  us 
had  been  in  the  city.  A  changed  city 
it  now  was;  but  despite  that,  the  old 
air  of  at  homeness,  which  had  always 
seemed  to  permeate  the  town  of  the 
early  days,  was  still  about.  For  sev- 
eral moments  we  smoked  in  lazy  rest- 
fulness,  watching  the  ever-changing 
flow  of  pedestrians.  It  was  very  quiet 
within — the  rotunda  almost  deserted. 

Suddenly  I  started.  A  man  was 
passing.  As  he  did  so,  our  eyes  met. 
For  a  moment  I  thought  he  would  rec- 
ognize me,  but,  turning  his  head  away, 
'he  passed  on^down  the  street  without 
a  sign.  I  turned  to  find  Hawley's  eyes 
upon  me,  gazing  with  odd  questioning. 

"Did  you  see  that  man?"  I  queried. 

"Just  an  ordinary  Chinaman?"  Haw- 
ley's  voice  was  indirectly  questioning. 

Yes;  it  had  been  just  an  ordinary 
Chinaman,  dressed  in  the  loose,  large 
buttoned  kimono  like  coat  so  common- 
ly worn  on  the  street,  with  trousers 
and  slightly  turned  up  brimmed  hat  of 
black  felt  combining:  a  garb  half  of 
the  Orient  and  Occident. 

Yet,  in  passing,  he  brought  back  to 
me  once  more  the  realization  of  the 
strange,  inscrutable  ways  of  the  East; 
wavs  born  of  an  unprogressive  civili- 
zation three  thousand  years  old.  Be- 
fore taking  up  the  study  of  law  I  had 
wandered  far  afield,  holding  at  one 
time  a  position  with  a  large  firm  in 
Hong  Kong.  I  think  it  was  because 
of  my  knowledge  of  the  Chinese  lan- 
guage and  by  reason  of  an  oddly 


scrolled  gold  ring  I  wore — the  present 
of  a  Confucian  priest  given  for  a 
chance  done  favor — that  Ah  Sing  had 
made  me  a  confidant  during  my  former 
stay  in  the  city.  And  with  the  memory 
of  those  happenings  as  told  to  me  by 
him  that  night  five  years  ago  I  cannot 
but  believe  that  in  his  heart  there  was 
no  consciousness  of  wrong  for  his  deed 
— rather  it  was  a  thing  that  had  to  be. 
It  was  according  to  his  code  of  life. 
And  I,  being  only  a  white  man,  off- 
spring of  a  late  sprung,  precocious 
civilization,  do  not  attempt  to  judge 
him. 

Busy  with  my  memories  and  oddly 
wondering  why  he  had  refused  to  rec- 
ognize me,  I  had  forgotten  Hawley 
Now  his  voice  called  me  back  to  pres- 
ent things. 

"Well,  tell  us  the  story,"  he  re- 
marked, casually.  Knowing  me,  as 
Hawley  did,  he  knew  there  was  one 
forthcoming.  The  only  occupants  of 
the  rotunda  were  a  somnolent  bell-boy 
and  the  night  clerk,  so  I  proceeded. 

"In  the  old  days  here,  shortly  after 
I  had  gone  in  for  law,  sometimes  be- 
ing tired  of  poring  over  musty  relics 
of  Blackstone,  I  used  to  wander  down 
to  Fender  street.  It  was  not  called 
that  then,  but  no  matter,  the  locality  is 
the  same.  And  there,  mingled  among 
the  groups  collected  in  the  various 
'joints,'  Ah  Sing— that  was  he  that 
passed  up  the  street  to-night — ran  a 
chuck-a-luck  and  'hop*  joint  off  Co- 
lumbia avenue.  You  entered  from  that 
street  at  least,  and  after  going  through 
endless  doors  and  passageways,  and 
descending  sundry  flights  of  stairs,  you 
finally  reached  the  room  where  Ah 
Sine  sat  night  after  night  on  a  high 
stool  behind  a  wire  netting  and  shook 
the  little  wooden  box  with  its  three 


498 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ivory  dice.  Here  he  sat,  taking  in  and 
paying  off,  unsmiling,  immutable  as 
a  wooden  god.  Beside  him  were  little 
piles  of  silver  ranging  in  value  from 
five  cent  pieces  to  American  dollars. 
It  was  not  a  big  game,  for  his  patrons 
were  composed  for  the  most  part  of 
small  salaried  white  men;  teamsters 
and  clerks  and  the  like,  who  had  not  a 
great  deal  to  lose.  All  'Chinks'  are 
great  gamblers,  and  as  a  game  keeper 
Ah  Sing  was  a  wonder.  Night  after 
night  he  sat  there,  paying  and  taking 
in,  and  never  once  do  I  remember  of 
him  making  a  mistake.  With  his  right 
hand  he  would  pick  up  a  stack  of  coins 
and  slide  out  to  the  winner  the  exact 
amount.  His  long-nailed  index  finger 
allowing  just  so  many  coins.,  down  up- 
on the  board,  with  an  automatic  touch 
as  exact  and  precise  as  a  penny  in  the 
slot  gum  machine.  He  never  looked 
— seeming  to  do  it  all  by  some  sixth 
sense,  just  as  you  may  have  seen  a 
veteran  faro  dealer  snatch  a  given 
number  of  checks  from  his  rack  with- 
out ever  a  glance.  Only  in  Ah  Sing's 
case  the  feat  was  more  difficult,  the 
money  being  smaller  and  of  various 
sizes. 

Once  in  a  while  I  staked  a  few  cents 
more  because  I  did  not  want  to  appear 
as  always  standing  around  watching 
than  from  any  desire  to  gamble.  I 
did  not  always  wear  this  ring,  the  pres- 
ent of  the  Confucian  priest,  but  one 
night  I  had  it  on  when  playing  at  his 
board,  and  then  I  saw  those  strange 
little  eyes  of  his,  that  peered  out  al- 
ways from  half-shut  slits  of  lids, 
light;  the  barest  surprised  gleam 
shone  in  them  for  a  moment,  then  was 
gone.  For  awhile  I  played  indiffer- 
ently until  what  money  I  had  before 
me  was  gone.  Then  I  stood  aside  and 
idly  watched  the  others.  There  were 
not  many  in  that  night,  and  presently 
only  two  remained.  They  at  last 
turned  to  go.  I  was  about  to  follow 
them  when  Ah  Sing  sooke.  Very 
softly,  his  eagerness  well  hidden,  with 
only  casual  interest  did  he  remark: 
"You  likee  sell  lille  ring?" 

He  did  not  know  me  for  anything 
then  but  a  casual  player  at  his  tables, 


He  swung  open  the  door  of  the  foul  den 
and  we  came  out  into  the  alley 


did  not  know  that  I  spoke  Chinese. 
Probably  he  thought  I  had  found  the 
ring  or  bought  it  without  knowledge 
of  its  intrinsic  value.  However,  I  did. 
The  priest,  when  giving  it,  had  told 
me  that  while  it  was  upon  my  hand  no 
harm  would  ever  come  to  me  from  any 
of  his  people,  and  with  it  I  could  com- 
mand their  friendship  or  aid  in  time  of 
stress.  I  shook  my  head  carelessly. 
'No,  I  don't  think  so.'  This  is  said  in 
English.  I  stood  a  moment  till  the 
other  two  players  had  disappeared 
through  the  door,  when  I  spoke  in  Chi- 
nese. He  seemed  pleased,  and  for 
many  minutes  we  conversed. 

After  that  I  came  often  and  sat  in 
Ah  Sing's  cozy  little  den  back  of  the 
chuck-a-luck  room.  Sometimes  he 
would  smoke,  and  lying  on  his  side  tell 
me  many  tales.  It's  queer  how  a  'hop' 


THE  CREED  OF  AH  SING 


499 


smoker  likes  to  have  some  one  beside 
them  to  talk  to. 

One  night  the  police  raided  Ah 
Sing's  place.  Up  till  then  the  lid  had 
been  pretty  well  off,  but  a  change  at 
the  City  Hall  had  come,  and  with  it 
promptly  the  lid  was  put  on  tight. 

"While  the  rest  of  the  occupants 
were  madly  tearing  out  through  the 
main  doorway,  and  also  straight  into 
the  hands  of  a  waiting  squad  of  police, 
I  felt  a  touch  on  my  arm;  Ah  Sing  was 
at  my  side.  The  lights  had  gone  out, 
but  I  knew  his  voice.  He  clasped  my 
hand,  and  together  we  fled.  It  seemed 
to  me  through  the  very  wall. 

However,  Ah  Sing  was  not  invin- 
cible in  his  cunning.  Just  as  he  swung 
a  door  open  and  the  fresh  night  air 
struck  our  faces,  a  burly  form  barred 
the  way  and  a  hand  clutched  each  of 
us.  It  was  fairly  light  in  the  alley- 
way, and  I  recognized  O'Toole,  one  of 
the  plain  clothes  men  whom  I  had  met 
often  while  attending  some  case  at  the 
police  court.  For  a  moment  he  stared 
at  me. 

"  'For  Hivin's  sake,  what  are  you 
doing  in  that  heathen  hole?'  he  gasped 
not  ill-naturedly.  'Getting  a  little  lo- 
cal color,'  I  grinned. 

"  'Well,  you  better  beat  it  before 
any  one  else  comes,  or  else  you'll  get 
a  little  local  cooler,'  and  he  released 
my  arm. 

"'And  my  friend?'  I  questioned, 
gazing  at  Ah  Sing,  who  stood  placidly 
now  that  escape  was  cut  off.  For  a 
minute  the  detective  stared  at  me,  the 
light  of  suspicion  creeping  into  his 
eyes.  Even  his  knowledge  of  me  as  a 
lawyer  was  hardly  proof  against  this 
prima  facie  evidence  of  interest  in  a 
heathen  Chinee.  However,  O'Toole 
only  shook  his  head  very  slowly,  re- 
marking as  he  did  so,  'Better  beat  it 
now  while  you  got  the  chance.' 

"I  looked  at  Ah  Sing  and  he  nodded. 
'Better  go!'  he  said  in  Chinese;  'you 
can  do  me  no  good  by  staying!'  And 
again  I  caught  O'Toole's  eyes  upon 
me,  his  suspicions  deepened  to  a  cer- 
tainty. He  made  no  offer  to  retake  me, 
however,  so  I  turned  and  sped  down 
the  alley. 


"Well,  to  make  a  long  story  short, 
they  took  Ah  Sing  and  kept  him  in 
jail  a  week.  You  see,  they  had  had 
their  eyes  on  him  for  quite  awhile.  He 
was  mixed  up  in  a  little  of  everything 
that  was  not  within  the  law,  but 
chiefly  opium  smuggling.  Of  this  he 
was  head  of  an  organized  gang.  They 
had  not  really  anything  definite  against 
him  other  than  keeping  a  gambling 
house,  and  after  all,  in  those  days  that 
was  not  much  of  an  offense.  A  hun- 
dred dollar  fine  was  about  the  worst 
he'd  have  got,  and  that  next  morning 
in  the  police  court.  But  the  detectives 
wanted  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  the 
opium  business,  and  as  they  had  Ah 
Sing  in  the  toils  on  another  charge, 
they  had  him  remanded  for  a  week 
without  bail,  figuring  to  worm  the  par- 
ticulars out  of  him  by  various  cute 
little  methods  that  police  officers 
sometimes  use. 

"They  were  away  off  when  they  fig- 
ured on  getting  anything  out  of  Ah 
Sing.  He  was  little  brother  to  the 
Sphinx.  So  finally  after  about  a  week 
they  let  him  go,  after  he  had  pleaded 
guilty  to  the  charge  of  keeping  a  gam- 
bling house.  I  guess  during  that  time 
they  gave  him  their  particular  brand 
of  the  third  degree,  with  all  the  varia- 
tions, and  in  the  proceeding  O'Toole 
was  the  most  energetic  of  the  lot.  I'll 
give  you  Ah  Sing's  own  words  for  it. 
I  shudder  even  now  with  the  remem- 
brance of  sitting  watching  his  face  and 
listening  to  him  as  he  told  of  it,  a  few 
nights  later  in  a  lottery  joint  down 
Shanghai  Alley,  he  having  deserted 
his  old  quarters  after  the  raid. 

"His  face  was  drawn  and  gray,  and 
the  lids  clung  even  lower  than  ever, 
but  even  then  I  saw  the  terrible  smoul- 
dering wrath  that  lurked  within. 

"  'For  six  days  they  keep  me,'  he 
said,  speaking  in  English.  'Six  days 
they  keep  me,  no  let  me  smoke,  with- 
out it  I  no  can  eat,  no  can  sleep ;  I  al- 
most clazy.  And  all  the  time  they 
talk,  talk,  want  me  to  tell  them  tilings.' 
He  paused.  A  brief  second  his  voice 
lost  its  usual  dead  monotone  and  rose 
to  a  high  pitched  scream.  'They 
stlike  me  lots  times,  and  all  time  I 


500 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


sit  on.  never  speaking.  They  never 
learn  nothing.'  He  stopped  suddenly, 
staring  into  space.  'All  time  I  no  have 
smoke/  he  went  on  in  his  usual  low 
voice.  'And  that  Irish  devil  police- 
man, I  lose  my  face  to  him  and  nod 
— well — he  pay.  I  kille  him — save 
my  face.' 

"I  stared  at  him  without  speaking. 
After  all,  there  was  nothing  I  could 
say  that  mattered.  Nothing  could 
change  him  from  his  set  purpose. 

"That  indefinable  thing  which  the 
Oriental  calls  face,  a  thing  that  is  akin 
to  our  honor,  self-respect  and  personal 
esteem,  yet  which  is  different  with  a 
difference  we  cannot  understand,  that 
had  been  outraged.  He  had  lost  face, 
and  OToole  must  pay.  That  was  the 
only  possible  solution. 

"And  OToole!  They  found  him  one 
night  in  an  alley  with  a  knife  thrust 
through  his  heart.  It  was  many  months 
after  that  raid  on  Ah  Sing's  joint. 
There  was  no  clue  to  the  perpetrator 
of  the  deed.  Only  I,  when  I  read  of 
it  in  the  morning  paper,  knew,  and  I — 
well,  Ah  Sing  was  my  friend.  In  a 
little  way  I  understood.  In  the  past 
I  had  gained  a  little  insight  into  their 
ways;  as  much  as  the  white  man  per- 
haps ever  does  of  the  yellow;  and 
knowing  the  Orient  and  the  strange 
creeds  of  its  people,  judged  leniently 
and  was  silent. 

"During  all  these  months  from  that 
night  in  the  joint  in  Shanghai  Alley  I 
had  never  seen  Ah  Sing.  I  had  kept 
away  from  Chinatown,  for,  with  the 
putting  on  of  the  lid  it  had  lost  much 
of  its  interest,  its  nightly  picturesque- 
ness. 

"One  night  a  couple  of  days  after 
the  mysterious  death  of  detective 
O'Toole,  as  I  sat  in  my  room  the  door 
opened  quietly.  Noiselessly,  without 
knocking:.  Ah  Sing  slipped  into  the 
room.  How  he  knew  where  my  room 
was  I  do  not  know.  He  had  never 
been  there  before,  nor  had  I  ever  in 
the  past  mentioned  where  I  lived. 

"Closing  the  door  softly,  he  came 
across  the  room  and  sat  down  on  the 
edge  of  the  bed.  I  thought  he  looked 
a  little  thinner,  more  haggard  than  of 


old,  but  his  face  was  the  same  inscrut- 
able mask.  His  eyes,  that  looked  ever 
out  from  beneath  half-shut  lids,  were 
those  of  a  dreamer.  Yet  to-night  his 
whole  mein,  despite  his  quietness,  un- 
consciously conveyed  an  air  of  subtle 
triumph.  For  a  long  moment  he  sat 
in  silence,  then  spoke  in  Chinese.  'He's 
gone!'  he  said,  very  quietly,  without 
a  trace  of  feeling  or  exultation.  Just 
as  you  might  remark  of  some  friend 
who  had  just  left  the  city  on  a  short 
trip. 

"  'I  saw  it  in  the  paper,'  I  replied, 
without  sign  of  approbation  or  disap- 
proval. 

"  'Yes,'  he  repeated,  'he's  gone.  I 
saved  my  face!' 

"For  awhile  he  sat  on,  staring  into 
empty  space,  without  apparent  realiza- 
tion of  my  presence.  At  last  he  rose. 
"Well,  I  go.  Good-night!'  He  was  at 
the  door  and  gone  before  I  could 
speak. 

"That  is  the  story  of  Ah  Sing;  the 
same  man  that  passed  up  the  street 
to-night.  I  have  never  seen  him  since 
till  now.  Why  he  did  not  recognize 
me  to-night  I  do  not  know.  Why  he 
came  to  me  that  other  night  five  years 
ago  I  also  do  not  know.  Perhaps  it 
was  just  a  desire  to  confide  in  some- 
one, to  voice  his  success.  Some  one 
whom  he  thought  would  understand 
and  receive  appreciatively  the  infor- 
mation of  a  necessary  undertaking  suc- 
cessfully carried  through.  It  is,  after 
all,  a  very  human  trait,  common  to  us 
all. 

"It  was  only  five  words  he  sooke. 
'He's  gone;  I  save  my  face.'  Still,  in 
them  was  constituted  all  that  he  need- 
ed to  say  to  convey  his  success  to 
me." 

Outside,  the  slow  dying  summer 
night  had  faded  to  dun  darkness,  and 
suddenly  the  lights  blaze  out^  in  the 
rotunda.  Somehow,  the  coming  of 
these  lights  brought  us  back  to  the 
world  around  us,  which  I,  at  least,  had 
forgotten,  rapt  as  I  was  with  those 
happenings  of  the  past^  Hawley 
scratched  a  match,  lit  his  cigar.  To- 
gether we  rose,  and  in  silence  strolled 
out  onto  the  street. 


The  Morsethief 


By  Alice  L.  Hamlin 


NORA  BRADFORD  sat  holding 
her  baby  .  "Father  will  come  to 
thee  soo-oon;  Sleep,  my  little 
one,  sleep,  my  pretty  one,  sleep," 
she  crooned,  as  she  rocked  back  and 
forth. 

"Why  doesn't  he  come.  All  this  long 
day  he  has  been  gone.  Dinner  and 
supper  passed,  and  no  father.  Sh — , 
my  little  one,  mother  will  care  for  her 
babe,  even  if  father  doesn't  comse.  But 
why  doesn't  he  come?" 

Quietly  she  lay  the  sleeping  child  in 
the  crib.  Then  she  turned  the  light  a 
little  lower,  placed  a  shade  between 
the  baby's  head  and  the  lamp,  and  be- 
gan clearing  away  the  supper.  She 
had  not  tasted  the  supper.  Somehow, 
her  long  day  of  anxiety  had  taken 
away  all  want  of  food.  Joe  Bradford 
had  left  early  that  morning,  saying  he 
hoped  to  be  back  for  dinner.  He  had 
not  told  her  where  he  was  going.  It 
was  not  unusual  for  Joe  to  be  gone,  but 
he  usually  told  her  where  he  was  go- 
ing. That  is,  he  told  her  something. 
On  one  or  two  occasions,  Lora  had 
found  that  Joe  had  not  told  her  the 
truth  as  to  where  he  had  spent  his 
time. 

The  supper  things  cleared  away, 
Lora  stepped  to  the  bedroom.  In  the 
corner  stood  the  gun.  She  loaded  it 
and  stood  it  where  she  could  reach  it 
easily  from  the  door  into  the  sitting- 
room.  She  glanced  backward  into  the 
bedroom.  On  the  table  near  the  bed 
lay  Joe's  revolver.  "Strange,"  thought 
Lora.  "I  never  knew  Joe  to  go  away 
without  that.  I  wonder  if  he  thought 
I  might  need  it.  He  never  forgot  it, 
that's  one  thing  sure."  She  picked  it 
up.  It  was  loaded,  so  she  placed  it 
back  on  the  table.  Once  again  she 
walked  back  into  the  sitting-room. 


Billie  was  sleeping  peacefully.  She 
opened  the  door  and  looked  out.  The 
full  moon  had  risen  and  things  outside 
looked  as  bright  as  day.  Out  toward 
the  horse  corral  she  walked.  "I'll  see 
if  everything  it  all  right  for  the  night." 

A  strange  whinny  greeted  her  ears. 
"Oh,  I  bet  he's  coming."  On  walk- 
ing farther,  however,  she  saw  a  large, 
beautiful  horse  coming  toward  the  cor- 
ral. "Where  could  he  have  come 
from?"  thought  Lora,  "and  why  does 
he  come  here  ?  How  tired  he  is !  Here, 
you  beauty,  come  here  while  I  pump 
some  water  for  you."  She  walked  up 
to  him,  took  him  by  the  forelock,  and 
led  him  to  the  pump.  She  pumped  and 
pumped  into  the  tub,  while  the  thirsty 
animal  drank.  Then  again  she  took 
his  mane.  She  led  him  to  the  corral, 
took  down  the  bars,  and  put  him  in 
with  the  other  horses.  "I  wonder 
where  he  came  from.  I  wonder  if  his 
coming  has  anything  to  do  with  Joe's 
staying  away.  Oh,  dear!  I  wish  Joe 
would  come." 

She  went  to  bed,  but  could  not  sleep. 
Restlessly  she  tossed  from  side  to  side, 
listening,  waiting  hoping  that  Joe 
would  soon  come  home.  Once  she 
thought  she  heard  him  coming,  and 
rushed  to  the  door  to  listen,  but  the 
noise  was  that  of  the  horses  in  the 
corral,  and  not  Joe.  At  last,  exhausted, 
she  dozed  fitfully.  But  hark!  "Lora," 
called  a  voice.  "Lora,"  very  quietly. 
"It's  me,  Joe.  Don't  light  the  lamp. 
Get  some  dark  thing  on  and  come  out 
here  in  the  shade." 

It  didn't  take  Lora  long  to  do  as  she 
was  told.  Trembling,  apprehensive  of 
danger,  she  picked  up  the  revolver  and 
hurried  out. 

"Whatever  is  the  matter?" 

"Sh!    I  can't  take  long  to  explain.  I 


502 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


met  Hap  this  morning,  and  he  told  me 
he  had  some  horses  he  wanted  to  sell 
or  trade,  and  for  me  to  go  and  look  at 
them.  So  I  went.  I  didn't  know  the 
blamed  things  were  stolen.  The  sheriff 
had  followed  the  men  who  took  the 
horses,  and  he  caught  the  men  down  in 
the  brush  trying  to  dispose  of  them. 
Hap  and  I  were  at  the  corral  at  the 
time.  There  was  some  shooting  done; 
I  got  away,  but  they're  after  me.  Say, 
where  did  that  big  black  come  from? 
That's  one  of  them  horses.  They'll 
never  believe  I  didn't  know  the  horses 
were  stolen,  and  worse,  some  fellow 
fired  at  the  sheriff;  he  fired  back  and 
Hap  was  killed,  but  they  think  I  was 
the  guy  fired  first.  It  was  Hap  done  it. 
The  sheriff's  pretty  bad  hurt.  I  got 
away,  but  I  heard  one  fellow  say  I 
might  swing  for  it.  Say,  Kid,  have  you 
got  some  canned  stuff  you  can  give 
me  ?  Don't  light  the  lamp.  They'll 
sure  be  watching  the  house  before 
long.  They  thought  I  was  back  there 
in  the  mountains,  but  when  they  find 
I'm  not,  they'll  come  here  mighty 
quick. 

A  ray  of  intelligence  spread  over 
Lora's  usually  placid  face.  She  looked 
keenly  at  the  man  before  her  trying  to 
run  from  justice.  Large,  brute,  lazy — 
she  remembered  her  marriage  to  him  a 
few  years  before.  His  physique  had 
yon  her  for  him,  but  she  had  learned 
in  the  five  bitter  years  that  a  husband 
must  be  more  than  mere  body.  She 
thought  of  all  the  new  beautiful  horses 
that  he  had  been  buying;  of  all  the 
days  he  had  been  away  from  home 
"when  she  didn't  know  where  he  was; 
•of  all^the  food  they  had  been  able  to 
have  in  the  house,  and  she  knew  that 
Joe  hadn't  worked  to  earn.  She  had 
wondered  where  he  had  gotten  his 
money  to  buy  these  things.  Now  she 
understood.  Now  was  her  chance  for 
freedom. 

"You'll  not  get  away  from  here  now, 
Joe  Bradford,"  said  Lora,  leveling  the 
revolver  at  him.  "You've  had  your 
say;  now  I'll  say  mine.  You  married 
me  when  I  was  young  and  inexperi- 
enced, and  could  have  had  a  decent 
.man.  For  five  years  I've  worked  for 


you,  worried  for  you,  endured  your 
poverty  or  eaten  your  stolen  food.  You 
never  cared  for  me  further  than  to  have 
me  get  your  meals.  For  the  last  three 
years  you've  been  in  this  horse  busi- 
ness, with  the  ranch  here  to  mislead 
people.  I  don't  know  whether  you're 
telling  me  the  truth  or  not.  I  hope  you 
are.  But  you're  going  to  prove  it.  I'll 
help  you  prove  it  if  I  can,  but  I'm  go- 
ing to  hand  you  over  to  Lubbuck  and 
get  the  reward,  for  I  suppose  there  is 
one,  and  then  I'm  going  back  home. 
When  you  can  live  a  decent  man's  life 
^and  farm  the  land  the  government  gave 
you,  then  I'll  come  back.  I  wouldn't 
do  that  even  except  for  Billie.  But 
my  child  needs  a  father."  With  that 
she  raised  the  pistol  high  in  the  air 
and  fired  twice.  The  still  night  re- 
sounded with  the  noise. 

Joe,  when  he  realized  what  she  was 
doing,  made  one  jump  in  attempt  to 
get  the  revolver,  but  Lora  was  too 
quick  for  him.  "Don't  you  do  that 
again,  Joe  Bradford,  if  you  know  what 
is  good  for  you.  I'd  hate  like  every- 
thing to  have  to  hurt  you,  you're  Bil- 
lie's  father,  but  it  isn't  more  than  you 
deserve  if  I  should.  Listen!  They're 
coming  now.  When  they  get  here,  we 
will  talk  over  this  matter  and  see  what 
can  be  done  for  you." 

"Lord!  Lora,  don't  do  that.  Let 
me  hide.  I'll  do  anything  for  you.  I'll 
leave  and  let  you  have  everything.  I'll 
— but  there  was  no  time  to  finish.  The 
sheriff  and  his  deputies  galloped  up 
to  the  side  of  the  house.  "What's  the 
trouble  here  ?"  said  Lubbuck,  the  dep- 
uty, alighting  from  his  horse. 

"Do  you  want  this  man?"  said  Lora. 
"I'm  holding  him  for  you."  Lubbuck 
looked  at  her  puzzled. 

"You  bet  I  do  want  him.  But  what's 
your  game,  little  woman?" 

"Nothing,"  said  Lora.  "He  tells  me 
he  is  innocent,  and  if  he  is,  he  can 
surely  prove  it.  I  don't  believe  he  did 
anything,  and  there  are  enough  of  the 
fellows  in  the  gang  who  can  tell,  and 
they'll  free  him.  Is  there  a  reward  for 
him?  I'm  desperately  in  need  of 
money.  I  want  to  take  the  kid  and  go 
home. 


IN  THE  PLAZA  DE  PANAMA 


503 


"Can't  you  come  in  ?  Joe  hasn't  had 
anything  to  eat."  At  the  invitation  the 
men  shuffled  into  the  room.  Once 
again  Lora  spread  out  the  untasted 
supper.  She  opened  some  canned  stuff 
and  sat  quietly  back  while  the  men 
ate.  When  the  meal  was  finished, 
Lubbuck  rose  from  the  table,  drew 
from  his  pocket  a  check  book  and 
wrote  a  check  for  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars.  "The  reward,"  he  ex- 
plained. "I'm  mighty  sorry  you  did  it, 
little  woman,  it  may  make  it  worse  for 


him,  but  I'll  do  my  best  to  clear  him 
for  you." 

Lora  made  no  answer.  Mechanically 
she  took  the  check  and  watched  the 
men  depart  with  their  prisoner.  When 
they  were  well  out  of  sight,  she  stooped 
— poked  the  check  under  the  edge  of 
the  carpet  and  walked  over  to  the 
sleeping  baby.  "Billie  boy,"  she  said, 
"it's  the  only  way.  He's  guilty  as  can 
be,  Billie,  and  we'll  go  away  and  for- 
get it  all.  Mother  will  care  for  her 
babe  in  the  nest " 


IN  THE  PLAZA  DE  PANAAA 


(San  Diego) 


I  walk,  I  know  not  where  or  when, 
Save  that  I'm  in  some  far-off  fairyland 
Conjured  by  wizard's  potent  wand, 
Where  Spanish  arch    and     dome,     in 

silver  sheen, 

Or  dazzling  white,  with  now  and  then 
A  splash  of  red,  or  gold,  or  green, 
Shine  out  against  the  azure  sky 
Near  San  Diego's  Harbor  of  the  Sun. 
Here    mission    chimes,    silent    but 

eloquent, 

Take  one  in  fancy  back  to  times 
When  cowled  Franciscan  prayed  with 

penitent. 

Here  let  me  dream  of  Saint  Inez, 
Of  cloisters,  roses,  senoritas'  eyes, 
And  never  wake  from  such  a  Paradise. 

EDWARD  ROBINS. 


The  Neurotic 


By  Nellie  Cravey  Gillmore 


MRS.  BRADLEY  abruptly    left 
her  chair,  a  sudden  light  of 
determination  glowing  in  her 
eyes.    She  hurried  across  the 
room  to  her  desk,  rummaging  in    the 
drawer  of  letters  for  one  that  had  come 
tp  her  in  the  morning's  mail.    She  re- 
read it  again  and  again,  eagerly,  fever- 
ishly, finding  her  resolution  reinforced 
with  every  line :  the  resolution  that  had 
long  since  germinated  in  her  mind  and 
strengthened     gradually,     month     by 
month. 

The  appeal  which  had  put  the  "fin- 
ishing touches"  upon  her  decision  ran 
as  follows: 

New  York,  October  10,  1915. 
Eola  Bradley, 

Cedar  Rapids,  N.  C. 
My  dear  Madam : 

I  wish  to  compliment  you  upon  your 
story,  "When  Silence  was  a  Virtue," 
appearing  recently  in  one  of  our  mag- 
azines. 

I  seldom  give  more  than  perfunctory 
attention  to  the  hundreds  of  produc- 
tions which  pass  through  my  hands, 
but  this  dainty  bit  of  fiction  impresses 
me  as  an  exceptional  composition :  un- 
usual in  design,  pathos  and  virility. 
And  it  is  so  strongly  and  simply  human 
withal,  that  I  cannot  resist  the  impulse 
to  congratulate  you. 

In  this  day  of  woman's  progress  and 
position,  I  feel  that  I  am  justified  in 
predicting  for  you  a  brilliant  future. 

I  trust  you  will  favor  us  with  a  read- 
ing of  further  manuscripts  from  your 
pen,  and  can  assure  you  that  should 
you  ever  visit  New  York,  your  genius 
will  be  accorded  an  enthusiastic  wel- 
come. 

Most  respectfully, 

J.  MORTON  WELLS. 


Yes,  the  arrival  of  Mr.  J.  Morton 
Wells'  letter  was  undoubtedly  the  one 
thing  necessary  to  complete  the  struc- 
ture of  determination  that  had  been 
building  itself  in  Eola  Bradley's  mind 
for  a  long,  long  time. 

It  must  have  been  fully  a  year  ago 
that  she  had  reached  the  deduction  that 
she  was  totally  out  of  step  with  the 
prosaic,  humdrum  life  she  was  lead- 
ing. The  well-ordered,  comfortable 
"house-cat"  existence  that  was  the 
epitome  of  happiness  and  satisfaction 
to  the  average  woman  of  domestic  tim- 
bre was  but  a  prison  wall  to  one  of  her 
highly-keyed  sensibilities,  intellectual 
cravings  and  soaring  ideals.  The  spirit 
of  the  Great  Unrest  was  upon  her. 

After  five  years  of  uneventful,  too 
serene,  association  with  the  man  she 
married,  the  revelation  flashed  upon 
her  with  the  startling  force  of  an  elec- 
tric shock:  she  was  mismated.  The 
seething  tide  of  long-pent-up  emotions 
swept  turbulently  to  her  brain;  the 
aching  restlessness  of  tortured  nerves 
flamed  into  fierce  rebellion.  She 
wanted  the  excitement,  the  whirl,  the 
kernel  of  life.  This  deadly,  velvet  ex- 
istence forced  upon  her  by  her  phleg- 
matic husband  was  driving  her  mad. 
She  felt  buried  alive. 

Even  a  derelict  life,  she  told  herself, 
was  preferable  to  being  "safely  an- 
chored in  the  domestic  harbor" — a  gal- 
ley slave  to  the  sordid  and  common- 
place. 

With  every  fibre  of  her  aroused  be- 
ing she  longed  for  the  bigness  of 
things ;  her  very  soul  cried  out  against 
its  dungeon  confines. 

It  was  true,  just  as  J.  Morton  Wells 
had  said:  this  was  a  day  of  progress 
for  women ;  they  were  no  longer  bound 
by  old-fashioned  hearthstone  notions: 


THE  NEUROTIC 


505 


creatures  of  passivity — a  cross  between 
a  servant  and  a  plaything.  The  thought 
of  her  wasted  years  was  intolerable. 
She  could  almost  hear  the  rattling  of 
the  chains  that  bound  her! 

She  recalled  many  stories  she  had 
read  of  women  who  had  the  courage  to 
strike  out  for  themselves  and  achieve. 
New  York  was  the  axis  about  which 
life  in  its  every  phase  eternally  re- 
volved. She  would  find  a  welcome 
there,  and  with  courage  and  tenacity 
and  natural  ability,  why — she  could 
not  fail! 

The  frightful  conditions  of  her 
present  life  appalled  her.  She  was 
soul-sick.  Sick  of  her  good-natured, 
complacent  husband ;  he  had  never  un- 
derstood her,  never  appreciated  her. 
Sick  of  the  daily  ordering  of  the  deadly 
three  meals;  the  row  of  flower  pots, 
with  their  ever-blooming  varieties,  on 
the  front  porch ;  the  running  in  and  out 
of  tiresome  neighbors,  bent  in  their 
simple  way  on  being  "sociable."  Oh, 
she  was  dead  sick  of  it  all — even  the 
busy  little  clock  ticking  noisily  away 
on  her  bed  room  mantel — and  that  had 
to  be  wound  up  every  night — sickened 
her  beyond  endurance.  It  was  all 
sameness,  sameness,  sameness.  Every 
day  when  the  court-house  bell  chimed 
six,  Billy  stepped  up  on  the  veranda; 
always  he  had  the  identical  pleasant 
smile  with  which  to  greet  her — and 
ever  the  same,  habitual  kiss! 

Well,  she  was  done  with  it  all.  She 
had  beat  her  wings  against  the  cage 
long  enough;  the  door  was  open  at 
last  and  the  world  was  before  her.  Had 
not  Mr.  J.  Morton  Wells  said  so  him- 
self ?  She  had  a  soul  to  be  satisfied, 
a  mission  to  perform — and  an  indomi- 
table spirit,  risen  to  the  bursting  of  its 
bonds  at  last.  She  would  put  it  all 
behind  her,  trample  it  down  and  soar 
upward  to  those  heights  for  which  the 
great  god,  Nature,  intended  her. 

She  would  go  to  New  York.  Further- 
more, she  would  go  at  once.  She 
would  not  even  wait  to  communicate 
her  intention  in  person  to  her  husband. 
A  few  written  words  would  be  final 
and  self-explanatory.  Besides,  an  ar- 
gument with  Billy,  cut  and  dried  pro- 


duct as  he  was  of  a  long  line  of  stolid 
New  England  ancestors,  would  only  be 
productive  of  the  inevitable  clash  of 
fixed  tenets  against  the  expanding  ori- 
ginality of  true  genius.  And  the  die 
was  cast. 

With  exultant  new  life  tingling 
throughout  her  sensitive  little  body 
and  her  tumultuous  brain  afire  with  it, 
she  sat  down  before  her  desk  and  drew 
up  pen,  ink  and  paper.  She  wrote : 

Dear  Billy: 

I  have  threshed  the  subject  out  from 
every  point  of  view,  and  have  come 
to  the  final  conclusion  that  we  are  liv- 
ing all  wrong.  It  is  not  in  me  to  settle 
down  to  the  two-by-one  life  you  have 
mapped  out  for  me,  and  find  happiness 
in  an  existence  that  is  killing  me  by 
inches  with  its  wretched  monotony  and 
ruffleless  details.  I  need  excitement, 
adventure,  a  stimulant.  I  would  rather 
have  the  sharp  edges  of  life — and  life 
itself — than  to  end  my  days  on  its 
rounded  surfaces  asleep. 

I  do  not  think  you  have  ever  quite 
known  me  as  I  really  am.  I  have  no 
complaint  to  make  of  your  goodness, 
your  generosity  or  your  treatment  of 
me.  It  is  just  that  you  do  not  (because 
you  cannot)  understand.  There  are 
within  me  tremendous  forces  for 
achievement.  I  was  never  created  to 
adorn  the  Lares  and  Penates  of  any 
man's  home ;  or  that  is  to  say,  any  man 
of  your  calm  and  unruffled  poise.  I 
am  sorry  that  I  have  not  succeeded  in 
filling  the  place  in  your  home  that  you 
have  wished,  and  left  nothing  within 
your  power  undone,  to  bring  about. 
The  fault  is  in  me.  But  it  is  only  too 
fatally  true  that  our  feelings  make  our 
world,  and  the  struggle  has  been  a  hard 
and  a  bitter  one  for  me.  My  decision 
is  not  hasty,  but  the  result  of  mature 
deliberation.  I  am  going  away.  I 
want  to  be  somebody. 

We  are  too  temperamentally  at  vari- 
ance ever  to  meet  each  other  upon  com- 
mon ground;  therefore,  it  is  far  better 
that  we  live  our  separate  lives  as  best 
we  can.  Indeed,  the  very  absence  of 
friction  that  has  always  marked  our 
association  is  one  of  the  strongest 


506 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


proofs  of  our  mutual  unsuitability.  You 
have  my  best  wishes  for  your  happi- 
ness, and  one  of  these  days  I  hope  you 
will  see  things  as  they  are,  and  give 
me  yours. 

Farewell, 

EOLA. 

Mrs.  Bradley  re-read  what  she  had 
dashed  down,  with  the  scarlet  throb- 
bing in  her  cheeks.  A  passing  twinge 
of  conscience  caused  some  of  it  to  ebb 
away,  but  she  pulled  herself  together 
sharply.  She  had  reviewed  the  situa- 
tion too  often  and  too  fully  to  allow 
any  silly  squeamishness  to  throw  stum- 
bling blocks  in  her  path  now. 

True,  Bradley  loved  her,  she  sup- 
posed, in  a  simple,  affectionate  way — 
would  have  laid  down  his  life  for  her 
if  need  be;  but  of  all  those  thousand 
subtle  longings  of  the  brain  and  de- 
sires of  the  soul,  he  knew  nothing — 
and  cared  nothing.  They  could  not 
have  been  further  apart  with  oceans 
rolling  between  them,  and  never,  never 
again — her  resolution  once  taken — 
could  she  be  induced  to  give  up  the 
golden  infinitudes  stretching  before  her 
to  return  to  the  old  petty  routine ! 

Her  hands  were  trembling  with  ex- 
citement as  she  folded  her  letter,  ad- 
dressed it  and  placed  the  envelope  in 
a  conspicuous  place  on  the  mantel. 
Then  she  hurried  up  to  her  room  and 
began  to  pack  her  trunk.  She  felt  a 
little  numb  and  cold  when  she  had 
finished  and  her  reflection  in  the  mir- 
ror, as  she  rapidly  dressed  her  hair 
for  the  journey,  showed  tears  glittering 
between  the  curly  black  lashes.  But 
she  dashed  them  away  with  a  little 
gesture  of  self-disdain  and  concluded 
her  toilet  with  feverish  alacrity. 

The  three-forty  limited  whirled  out 
of  Cedar  Grove  promptly  on  time.  It 
had  paused  at  the  station  just  long 
enough  to  swallow  up  a  solitary  pas- 
senger, then  thundered  on  its  way. 

Eola  shrank  back  in  the  corner  of  her 
brown-plush  seat  and  slowly  unwound 
the  thick  veil  from  about  her  face. 
Her  cheeks  were  pale  enough  now  for 
all  their  rosy  warmth  of  an  hour  or  two 
ago;  but  the  determination  in  her  wide, 


gray-black  eyes  was  undiminished,  and 
the  heart  in  her  bosom  throbbed  excit- 
edly. She  looked  out  at  the  flying 
landscape,  and  felt  her  courage  go  up 
with  triumphant  leaps  and  bounds.  She 
had  left  her  chains  behind  her.  The 
prison  doors  had  opened,  emitted  her 
and  closed  again.  The  tired,  cramped 
wings  stirred,  fluttered  softly,  eager  to 

unfold  themselves  for  flight  .  .  . 
*  *  *  * 

As  the  last  stroke  of  six  died  away, 
William  Bradley  stepped  up  on  the 
front  veranda  of  his  home.  The  door 
stood  ajar  and  he  passed  through  the 
house,  not  pausing  till  he  reached  his 
wife's  room.  It  had  been  a  hard  day 
at  the  office;  more  than  the  usual  col- 
lection of  frets  and  trials  had  seemed 
to  bunch  up  to  raw  his  nerves  and  up- 
set his  patience;  but  the  thought  of 
Eola  waiting  for  him,  dainty  and  fresh 
and  sweet  in  one  of  her  white  muslin 
frocks,  cheered  him  and  brought  the 
unfailing  smile  of  pleasure  to  his  lips. 
He  called  her  name,  but  there  was  no 
response.  He  entered  the  room,  only 
to  find  it  strangely  empty,  with  articles 
of  discarded  wearing  apparel  scattered 
about  in  unprecedented  disarray. 

For  a  moment  he  stood  still  in  the 
middle  of  the  room,  his  eyes  drawn  to- 
gether in  a  puzzled  frown.  What  could 
it  mean  ?  It  was  the  first  time  in  years 
— the  first  time  in  his  life,  rather — 
that  she  had  gone  out  just  at  their  sup- 
per hour,  without  saying  something  to 
him.  Perhaps  she  was  hiding,  just  to 
tease  him  .  .  .  perhaps  one  of  the 
neighbors  was  in  trouble  and  she  had 
been  hastily  summoned  .  .  .  perhaps 
something — some  terrible  accident  had 
happened  to  her.  .  .  .  Bradley's  heart 
chilled  at  the  bare  thought,  illogical  as 
it  seemed.  He  turned  and  hurried  into 
the  kitchen.  That,  too,  was  deserted, 
and  instead  of  the  fragrant  aroma  of 
coffee — one  of  the  many  pleasant  little 
details  associated  with  his  home-com- 
ing at  evening,  the  coffee-pot  stood  up- 
side down  on  the  stove,  and  the  stove 
itself  was  cold.  Filled  with  a  nameless 
anxiety,  he  turned  back  and  entered 
the  little  front  sitting  room  where  their 
evenings  were  spent  together.  He 


THE  NEUROTIC 


507 


She  flung  herself  upon  the  pillow  in  utter  hopelessness 


switched  on  the  light  and  looked  about 
him  eagerly  for  some  sign  .  .  .  ah, 
there  it  was :  the  note  she  had  written 
him,  explaining  her  absence.  His 
heart  gave  a  lurch  of  relief,  and  he 
began  to  whistle  softly  as  he  tore  the 
edge  off  the  envelope. 

He  read  it  over  twice,  three  times; 
blinked  hard,  then  read  it  again.  He 
smiled  whimsically.  She  was  playing 
a  joke  on  him,  of  course ;  but  he  rather 
thought,  in  view  of  his  rasped  nerves, 
that  she  was  carrying  the  thing  a  little 
too  far.  But  he  controlled  his  irrita- 
bility, drew  up  a  chair  before  the 
smouldeing  fire  and  reached  for  a  mag- 
azine. He  lighted  a  cigar,  but  the 
flavor  disgusted  him  and  he  tossed  it 
in  the  fire  place  and  turned  the  pages 
of  the  periodical  absently.  Presently 
he  rose,  went  out  on  the  veranda  and 
looked  up  and  down  the  oak-lined  vista 
of  the  village  street.  It  was  quite  de- 
serted. He  walked  down  into  the 
flower-garden  and  peered  eagerly  be- 
hind rose-bushes  and  hedge-clumps; 
no  laughing,  flower-like  face  flashed 
into  tantalizing  view. 

With  a  dead,  sick  feeling  he  went 
back  into  the  house,  to  the  telephone, 
and  took  up  the  receiver.  He  called 
for  the  ticket  office  of  the  union  station. 
Yes,  the  clerk  informed  him  bruskly, 


a  ticket  had  been  sold  to  Mrs.  Bradley, 
for  New  York.  She  had  caught  the 
three-forty  train. 

Bradley  turned  away,  with  the  per- 
spiration oozing  from  every  pore.  It 
was  inconceivable ;  like  a  blow  between 
the  eyes.  Then  it  was  all  true:  she 
didn't  love  him,  had  never  cared  for 
him,  and  the  life  he  had  thought  such 
an  ideal  thing  had  been  only  a  farce 
and  a  misery  to  her!  If  she  had  only 
waited  and  talked  to  him — only  given 
him  a  chance  to  say  something — he 
was  quite  sure  he  would  have  been 
reasonable.  When  had  he  ever  denied 
her  anything  she  had  asked?  When 
he  came  to  think  of  it,  his  entire  life 
with  her  had  been  one  long  effort — 
and  delight — to  give  her  the  things  she 
wished,  whatever  the  sacrifice.  And 
now  .  .  . 

His  first  impulse  was  to  catch  the 
next  train  and  bring  her  back  home. 
His  first  emotion  was  a  mixture  of  an- 
ger and  despair;  his  next,  of  fear.  With 
all  her  boasted  independence,  Eola  was 
as  helpless  as  a  kitten.  What  might, 
or  might  not,  happen  to  a  woman  of 
her  childish,  impulsive  nature  in  a 
place  like  New  York,  unprotected,  ig- 
norant? But  by  degrees  he  disentan- 
gled his  excited  thoughts  and  mar- 
shalled them  into  logical  line.  Her 


508 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


very  innocence  would  shield  her  from 
disaster.  As  far  as  money  was  con- 
cerned, he  had  always  kept  her  sup- 
plied with  a  full  purse;  besides,  they 
had  friends  in  the  metropolis  to  whom 
she  could  appeal  in  case  of  distress. 
But  what  puzzled  him  most  was  just 
what  she  expected  to  do  in  a  city  like 
New  York  to  achieve  the  distinction 
of  becoming  "somebody."  And  what 
hurt  him  most  was  the  thought  that  her 
life  with  him  had  grown  unendurable, 
and  that  because  of  it  she  had  gone 
out  into  the  world  alone.  A  miserable 
sense  of  loneliness  and  anguish  settled 
upon  him,  but  he  thrust  it  aside  de- 
terminedly, and  set  about  devising 
plans  for  the  most  discreet  course  to 
pursue. 

At  the  end  of  an  hour  he  went  into 
the  deserted  dining  room  and  un- 
earthed some  bits  of  stale  toast  and  a 
pitcher  of  stale  cold  tea.  With  these 
he  fortified  himself  against  the  sense 
of  physical  weakness  that  was  stealing 
over  him,  then  hurried  down  to  the 
telegraph  office  and  dispatched  a 
night  letter  as  follows : 

Dear  Thorp : 

My  wife  left  on  the  afternoon  train 
for  New  York.  For  months  she  has 
been  suffering  from  a  case  of  neu- 
rotic nerves,  and  has  all  at  once  con- 
ceived the  notion  of  trying  her  wings 
in  the  city.  I  will  esteem  it  a  great 
favor  if  you  will  be  good  enough  to 
keep  an  eye  on  her,  unobserved.  No 
doubt  a  few  days  will  suffice  for  her 
experiment,  but  I  cannot  tell  until  I 
hear  from  her.  If  she  comes  to  your 
house,  kindly  humor  the  situation;  if 
she  decides  to  go  to  a  hotel,  look  out 
for  her  in  a  quiet  way  and  keep  me 
advised. 

Yours  sincerely, 

BRADLEY. 
*  *  *  * 

The  days  that  came  and  went  were 
eternities  of  torment  to  William  Brad- 
ley. The  line  he  had  received  from 
Thorp  assured  him  merely  of  his  wife's 
safe  arrival  and  of  the  fact  that  she 
was  registered  at  one  of  the  prominent 
hotels.  No  word  had  come  from  Eola 


herself,  and  the  sickening  certainty 
grew  upon  him  that  she  had  gone  out 
of  his  life  forever.  More  than  once  he 
made  up  his  mind  to  seek  her  out,  force 
an  explanation  and  demand  her  return. 
Then  the  biting  unconsciousness  would 
come  to  him  that  life  for  them  under 
such  conditions  would  be  no  life  at  all ; 
that  she  must  return  willingly — or 
never!  And  so  a  fortnight  passed. 

As  for  Eola,  the  first  few  days  of 
her  new  life  were  spent  in  such  a  whirl 
of  preparation  for  the  prodigious  work 
she  was  going  to  accomplish  that  little 
time  was  left  for  other  thoughts.  The 
fact  that  her  nights  were  for  the  most 
part  restless  and  dream-haunted,  and 
her  solitary  meals  in  the  cafe  tire- 
some and  unappetizing,  was  only  to  be 
expected  in  the  beginning.  Her  labors 
and  successes,  once  under  way,  the  big, 
spiritual  life  unfolding  itself  to  her 
starved  vision,  material  things  would 
no  longer  count;  would,  in  fact,  be 
completely  submerged  by  the  loftier 
things. 

She  rented  a  brand  new  typewriter, 
laid  in  a  supply  of  all  sorts  of  paper, 
purchased  a  pint  of  writing  fluid,  a 
dozen  press  pencils  and  a  fountain  pen. 
Then  she  visited  several  of  the  promi- 
nent publishing  houses  and  returned 
to  her  rooms  with  the  exhilarating  as- 
surance that  they  would  be  pleased  to 
look  at  (anything  she  would  care  to 
submit ! 

For  a  week  she  worked  unremit- 
tingly. At  the  end  of  the  second  week, 
she  sat  tearfully  reviewing  the  pile  of 
rejected  manuscripts  piled  on  her  desk. 
In  the  first  flush  of  composition  they 
had  seemed  to  her  vital,  immense, 
teeming  with  human  life  and  human 
appeal.  Re-reading  them  in  the  criti- 
cal light  of  calm  judgment,  her  heart 
dropped  several  fathoms  in  her 
breast.  The  soul  in  them  seemed  with- 
ered, if  soul  there  was  at  all.  Or  was 
it  the  ruthless  brutality  of  merciless 
editors  that,  through  the  vision  of  her 
collapsed  hopes,  had  succeeded  in 
strangling  all  life  out  of  her  little  tales ! 
She  did  not  know;  she  only  felt  in  a 
wretched,  helpless  way  that  Fate  had 
dealt  her  a  cruel  blow. 


THE  NEUROTIC 


509 


Time  and  again  her  efforts  were  re- 
peated, only  to  meet  with  the  same 
heartless  response.  And  suddenly  she 
found  herself  at  the  end  of  her  re- 
sources, both  mental  and  financial.  She 
tried  vainly  to  write,  but  her  pen  stuck 
to  the  paper,  and  instead  of  inspiration 
there  were  only  tears. 

All  about  her  was  life,  to  be  sure; 
life  in  its  every  phase.  And  she  ?  She 
was  just  one  of  the  million  atoms  of 
humanity  tossed  about  on  its  tide — of, 
not  above  it.  She  occupied  spacious 
apartments  in  a  big  hotel  in  the  big- 
gest city  in  the  States;  about  her  were 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  human  souls 
— and  yet  she  had  never  been  so  alone 
in  all  the  twenty-eight  years  of  her 
life.  Away  back  somewhere,  some- 
time, she  had  lived  in  a  little  village 
among  happy,  free-hearted  people — a 
strong  arm  had  been  behind  her — al- 
ways there  were  things  to  do  to  fill  in 
the  ^ spaces  of  long  afternoons  and 
evenings;  the  supper  to  be  prepared, 
the  fire  tended,  the  noisy  little  clock 
to  be  wound  up  for  the  night. 

She  wondered  in  a  detached  sort  of 
way  how  Billy  managed  about  the  sup- 
per and  the  flowers  and  the  chickens. 
She  began  to  wonder  with  a  sinking 
heart  if  he  would  ever  come  home  at 
six  every  day,  and  kiss  some  other 
woman!  Some  woman  more  worthy. 

Well,  she  would  make  one  more 
effort.  It  would  never  do  to  be  a  quit- 
ter. She  had  dealt  her  own  hand  in 
the  game  of  life,  and  she  must  play  it 
out  Tucked  away  in  a  corner  of  her 
trunk  was  Mr.  J.  Morton  Wells'  letter. 
She  had  kept  it  as  a  last  resort  in  case 
of  emergency.  At  first  she  had  wanted 
to  justify  his  predictions:  to  burst  up- 
on his  notice  in  the  full-fledged  colors 
of  her  triumph.  Now  it  seemed  that 
her  only  hope  lay  in  seeking  assistance 
at  the  hands  of  the  only  person  who 
could  help  her!  And  so  she  dressed 
herself  painstakingly,  caught  a  Broad- 
way car  and  was  whirled  down  to  his 
office. 

Bitter  disappointment  awaited  her. 
She  was  informed  by  the  office  boy 
who  responded  to  her  timid  inquiry 
that  Mr.  Wells  was  no  longer  with  the 


Crescent  Company;  he  had  sailed  for 
Europe  a  month  ago. 

Eola  retained  her  self-composure  by 
a  mighty  effort.  But  her  knees  trem- 
bled beneath  her  frail  weight.  The 
last  straw  had  floated  beyond  her 
grasp.  She  managed  to  articulate  a 
polite  "thank  you,"  and  was  on  the 
point  of  turning  away  when  a  flashy 
stranger,  pausing  suddenly  before  her, 
said  courteously: 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  madam,  but 
you  seem  to  have  met  with  some  diffi- 
culty. If  I  can  be  of  any  service — ?" 

I  swift  thought  leapt  to  her  throb- 
bing brain.  It  was  a  chance,  and  she 
grabbed  at  it. 

"Thank  you.  I  am  in  trouble.  I 
expected  to  see  Mr.  Wells,  and  have 
just  learned  of  his  absence  from  the 
city.  I  am  an  author  by  profession, 
and  had  hoped  to  secure  orders  for  my 
work  through  him.  I — am  in  rather  an 
embarrassing  predicament.  Are  you — 
his  successor?"  She  was  fumbling  in 
her  hand  for  the  letter,  unconscious  of 
the  bold  eyes  fixed  upon  her  flushed, 
downcast  face. 

She  tremblingly  unfolded  the  type- 
written sheet  and  held  it  out  to  him, 
convinced  that  such  an  expression 
from  the  well  known  magazine  man 
was  an  open  sesame  to  editorial  favor. 

He  accepted  it  with  a  gesture  of  en- 
nui, merely  glanced  at  the  contents, 
and  handed  it  back  to  her. 

"Ah,  I  see.  You  have  come  all  the 
way  to  New  York  to  try  your  luck." 
He  laughed  softly.  "And  you  aren't 
the  first  one,  not  by  any  means.  He 
looked  at  her  sharply,  gathering  in  the 
details  of  the  petite,  attractive  figure 
and  lovely,  flower-like  face.  "Now  it's 
just  too  bad  that  I  don't  happen  to  be 
one  of  your  literary  clan.  But  see 
here :  if  you're  hard  up,  I  see  no  reason 
why  you  should  have  difficulty  in  find- 
ing agreeable  occupation.  Ever — 
posed?" 

Eola  flushed  scarlet. 

"I — I  beg  your  pardon!"  she  cried 
sharply,  "but  I'm  afraid  you  misun- 
derstood me."  As  her  shamed  glance 
met  the  leering  eyes  fixed  insolently 
upon  her,  the  blood  suddenly  left  her 


510 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


face.  She  turned  as  though  to  sweep 
past  him,  but  a  detaining  hand  was 
laid  on  her  arm. 

"Come  now,  don't  go  up  in  the  air 
over  a  trifle.  Why,  there  are  dozens — 
hundreds — of  girls  in  this  town  who'd 
jump  at  the  chance  to  be  an  artist's 
model.  It's  a  respectable  enough  pro- 
fession." 

Tears  of  indignation  swam  in  Kola's 
eyes;  she  shook  off  his  touch  with  a 
gesture  of  repulsion.  She  turned  and 
hurried  toward  the  elevator,  the 
stranger  at  her  heels. 

As  she  pressed  the  bell,  she  flashed 
round  upon  him. 

"How — how  dare  you!"  she  ex- 
claimed angrily. 

But  the  man  merely  shrugged  his 
bulky  shoulders  and  laughed  amused- 
ly. A  wave  of  darker  purple  came  to 
his  florid  face. 

•'What  a  little  cyclone  it  is,  to  be 
sure !  I  assure  you,  dear  lady,  I  spoke 
only  with  the  best  intentions  and  the 
deepest  respect.  I  bid  you  good-morn- 
ing and — good  luck.  If,  however,  you 
should  find  yourself  in  need  of  assist- 
ance, I  am  always  happy  to  come  to  the 
rescue  of  lovely  woman  in  distress. 
Box  No.  321  X." 

Eola  never  knew  how  she  got  back 
to  her  hotel.  The  first  thing  that 
brought  her  to  herself  was  that,  just 
as  she  entered  the  lobby,  a  familiar 
voice  accosted  her  and  a  pair  of 
friendly  gray  eyes  were  searching  her 
white  face. 

"Mr.  Thorpe!"  she  gasped. 

He  held  out  his  hand,  smiling.  "De- 
lighted to  see  you  in  New  York,  Mrs. 
Bradley,  though  I  must  confess  to  a 
bit  of  surprise,  considering  Billy's  seri- 
ous illness." 

Billy's  illness ! 

"Why — why — what  do  you  mean?" 
she  blurted  out  faintly.  "I " 

"Ah!  Then  possibly  you  haven't 
yet  gotten  your  mail  ?  I've  only  a  few 
moments  ago  received  a  letter  from 
Fred  Andrews,  mentioning  it.  A — er 
— sudden  attack,  perhaps." 

"Yes,  yes ;  that  must  be  it.  And  oh, 
Mr.  Thorpe!  I  thank  you  so  much  for 
telling  me— in— time  to  catch  the  noon 


train.  I "  she  broke  off,  made  a 

terrific  effort  toward  self-control  and 
turned  away  to  hide  the  fast-gathering 
tears.  Billy  ill!  Perhaps  dying,  and 
she  hadn't  enough  money  in  the  world 
to  get  to  him.  The  thought  struck  her 
between  the  eyes,  and  stirred  her  wits 
to  swift  ingenuity. 

"Oh,  dear.  This  is  a  catastrophe. 
Why — why,  I've  lost  my  purse  contain- 
ing all  of  my  money  and  my  railroad 
ticket."  She  snapped  her  bag  to  with 
a  little  gesture  of  consternation.  Then 
she  ventured  embarrassedly:  "If  you 
could  loan  me  sufficient  to  make  the 
trip,  I — I  would  appreciate  it  im- 
measurably, Mr.  Thorpe.  You  see, 
there  won't  be  time  to  telegraph  home 
and " 

"Certainly.  It  will  be  a  pleasure  to 
do  so.  And  furthermore,  I  shall  be 
delighted  to  drive  you  to  the  depot  and 
help  you  with  your  luggage.  My  limou- 
sine is  outside.  Shall  I  wait  in  the 
lobby?" 

Eola  was  too  full  for  words,  so  she 
left  him  with  a  little  nod  and  a  smile  of 
gratitude,  hurrying  to  her  rooms  in  a 
feverish  daze.  She  did  not  stop  to 
change  her  dress,  nor  to  pack  any  of 
her  belongings,  but  stuffed  a  few  things 
in  a  suit  case  and  hastened  down  to 
join  her  benefactor. 

They  entered  the  car  and  flashed 
down  Broadway.  Eola  did  not  open 
her  lips  to  speak.  Her  set  eyes  were 
fixed  with  a  strange  unseeingness  on 
the  whirling  streets.  A  hideous  black- 
ness enveloped  her.  The  stopping  of 
the  machine  roused  her  from  her  torpor 
of  misery. 

Thorpe  conducted  her  to  the  ladies' 
waiting  room  and  went  to  purchase  her 
ticket.  When  he  returned,  she  thanked 
him  dully  and  suffered  him  to  escort 
her  to  the  train. 

A  few  minutes  later,  the  Limited 
Express  was  tearing  on  its  way  south, 
and  Eola  sat  huddled  in  the  corner  of 
her  seat,  her  little  cold  hands  gripped 
together  in  her  lap.  Events,  one  af- 
ter another,  piled  themselves  on  her 
aching  brain.  There  was  no  sleep  for 
her  that  night,  and  she  spent  a  year 
for  every  moment  of  the  interminably 


LOVE'S  MOMENT 


511 


dragging  hours,  waiting  for  daylight. 
It  came  at  last.  In  a  little  while  they 
would  reach  Cedar  Grove.  Would  she 
find  him  dying — dead?  And  if  alive 
— would  he  even  receive  her  now,  af- 
ter the  thing  she  had  done?  An  icy 
shiver  passed  over  her.  Suppose  he 
should  turn  from  her — cast  her  out? 

The  conductor  presently  came 
through  the  car,  shouting  the  name  of 
the  next  stop.  In  a  few  seconds  the 
train  blew.  Gradually  the  wheels 
ceased  moving.  Home  at  last! 

Twenty  minutes  later  she  was  mount- 
ing the  steps  of  the  little  bungalow. 
She  noted  mechanically  that  every- 
thing was  in  punctilious  order  about 
the  place  and  that  the  autumn  roses 
were  tumbling  over  each  other  in  show- 
ers, of  gold  and  white  and  crimson.  She 
pushed  open  the  front  door  and  en- 
tered the  corridor  with  noiseless  step. 
There  was  not  a  sound  to  mar  the  still- 
ness; an  ominous  hush  pervaded  the 
air.  He  must  be  very,  very  ill.  A 
lump  rose  in  her  throat.  Tremblingly, 
she  crept  forward  and  passed  before 
the  sitting  room  door,  her  breath  con> 
ing  and  going  in  little  dry  pants. 

Bradley,  seated  before  a  crackling 
fire,  cigar  in  mouth,  was  leisurely  scan- 
ning the  morning  paper.  The  pungent 
odor  of  broiling  beefsteak  was  in  the 


air.  The  curtains  and  tidies  were  crisp 
and  snowy,  and  the  furniture  and  wood 
work  polished  and  gleaming. 

Eola  felt  her  self-control  slipping 
away.  She  put  one  shaking  hand  to 
the  door-facing.  Her  nerveless  fingers 
relaxed  their  grasp  on  the  suit  case — 
and  it  crashed  to  the  floor. 

Bradley  started  up,  looked  round, 
caught  sight  of  her  thin  face  and  hol- 
low eyes — and  suddenly  checked  the 
laugh  with  which  he  had  intended  to 
greet  her  (for  Thorpe's  telegram  was 
reposing  snugly  in  one  of  his  vest 
pockets.) 

"Have  you — missed  me,  Billy?"  she 
asked  faintly,  as  he  folded  her  in  his 
arms. 

"Missed  you?  Well,  rather.  But  I 
didn't  want  to  spoil  your  fun,  dear,  by 
urging  you  to  return  home  prematurely. 
Dinah  came  to  look  after  things  for  me 
and  I've  been  comfortable  enough.  I 
fancied  you  were  having  a  big  time, 
seeing  life,  finding  your  soul,  and  all 

that "  He  held  her  from  him  and 

looked  with  exceeding  tenderness  into 
the  depths  of  her  misty  eyes. 

"Oh,  Billy!"  she  cried  miserably, 
crumpling  up  against  him  like  a  broken 
leaf.  "Don't!  What  a  little  fool  I  was. 
I  left  my  soul  behind  me  when  I — left 
— you!" 


LOVE'S     /AO/AENT 


A  silence  has  the  mountain  peak, 

A  silence  has  the  star, 
A  silence  has  the  tide  that  dreams 

Above  a  deep-sea  bar. 

But  one  hush  sweeter  far  there  is 

Than  quiet  of  the  star ; 
A  peace  more  holy  than  the  peak's 

Or  tide's  on  silver  bar. 

It  is  the  first  charmed  hush  of  hearts 

Who  on  love's  threshold  stand, 
And  with  clasped  hands  and  dreaming  eyes, 

Behold  love's  promised  land! 

ARTHUR  WALLACE 


PEACH 


Hester's  Holly  Hedge 


By   Agnes  Lockhart  Hughes 


WHAT  beautiful  holly,  and  such 
quantities  of  it.    I  never  saw 
so  much  of  it  together  in  my 
life,"  cried    Alice    Graham, 
halting  to  gaze  at  a  scarlet  studded 
hedge,  behind  which  retreated  a  low, 
rambling  house. 

"You've  never  visited  this  part  of  the 
country  before,"  replied  the  girl's  com- 
panion. "That's  why — nearly  every- 
body hereabouts  has  one,  or  more, 
holly  bushes." 

"Yes,  but  surely  not  in  hedges  like 
this,  Aunt  Emily — the  waxen  foliage, 
and  gleaming  berries,  seem  almost  too 
perfect  to  be  natural.  But  who  lives 
here?" 

"An  old  skinflint — Hester  Herne — 
so  sour  and  bitter  it's  a  wonder  a  row 
of  rue  doesn't  spring  up  between  her 
and  the  highway  instead  of  a  holly 
hedge ;  but  that's  been  there  for  years, 
planted  by  some  of  the  departed  Herns 
— no  one's  ever  been  known  to  get  so 
much  as  a  berry  given  to  them  off  that 
hedge,  let  alone  a  spray  of  holly.  That 
stingy  mortal  wouldn't  let  you  look  at 
the  hedge  if  she  could  help  it." 

"Does  she  live  alone?" 

"Sure.  Nobody  could  live  with  that 
vinegary  old  maid,  without  being 
turned  into  a  pickle  of  some  sort.  She 
never  receives  callers,  so  everybody 
just  lets  her  alone." 

"Too  bad!"  muttered  the  girl,  re- 
flectively; "perhaps  she's  left  too  much 
alone;  maybe  she's  had  a  sorrow,  or  a 
disappointment  of  some  sort,  to  make 
her  'vinegary/  as  you  call  her.  Any- 
way, she  ought  to  have  a  vote  of  thanks 
from  every  passerby,  for  the  breath  of 
Christmas  exhaling  from  that  hedge. 
I've  a  good  mind  to  run  in  and  tell 
her " 

"Heaven   forbid — she'd     eat     you. 


Come  along  and  leave  Hester  and  her 
prickley  hedge  to  themselves." 

The  voices  died  away,  and  Hester, 
from  her  crouching  position  beside 
a  window,  just  behind  the  hedge, 
arose  tall  and  stern.  "Vinegary  old 
maid,"  she  snapped,  "after  me  selling 
her  cracked  eggs  all  last  winter,  for 
almost  nothing,  and  then  letting  her 
have  a  setting  hen  at  a  bargain,  too — 
the  old  cat.  But  the  girl,"  she  added, 
softly;  "wish  I'd  got  a  better  look  at 
her.  Her's  were  the  first  good  words 
I've  heard  'bout  myself  for  many  a 
long  day.  Yes,  and  I'd  have  given  her 
all  the  holly  she  wanted,  into  the  bar- 
gain." Talking  to  herself,  as  was  her 
custom,  Hester  went  out  to  look  after 
her  feathered  stock,  but  drew  back 
under  the  shadow  of  the  hedge,  on 
again  hearing  voices. 

"  Twould  never  do  to  go  home  with- 
out Mary's  doll;  I  must  have  dropped 
the  package  somewhere  about  here,  or 
else  left  it  at  the  Postoffice." 

"Christmas  shopping's  a  nuisance," 
complained  the  older  voice. 

"Not  at  all.  if  done  in  the  right 
spirit.  Why,  I  just  revel  in  making 
some  being  happy,  at  this  season.  It 
isn't  the  amount  of  money  lavished, 
but  the  kindly  thought  that  gives  genu- 
ine pleasure ;  that's  the  real  meaning  of 
Christmas — to  make  others  happy." 

"Mebbe,  but  I  don't  believe  it. 
Christmas  has  gotten  to  be  a  time  of 
showing  off  who  can  give  the  best  pres- 
ents, and  of  wondering  what's  coming 
in  return.  But  I'm  clean  done  my  buy- 
ing: money's  about  gone." 

"I  agree  with  you,  Aunt  Emily,  it 
does  consume  a  quantity  of  coin,  shop- 
ping at  this  time;  but  think  of  the 
pleasure  of  sacrificing  for  somebody 
else.  I've  just  been  thinking  what  a 


HESTER'S  HOLLY  HEDGE 


513 


vast  amount  of  pleasure  one  could 
give  from  such  a  holly  hedge  as  Miss 
Herne's."  So  said  Alice  Graham. 

"Don't  talk  about  that  old  miser.  I 
guess  the  doll's  not  around  here;  we'd 
best  go  back  to  the  Postoffice  and  see 
if  it's  there.  We'll  never  get  it  dressed 
in  time  if  we  don't  hurry." 

"I've  just  been  wondering  if  Miss 
Herne  ever  had  a  favorite  doll." 

A  loud  laugh  greeted  Alice's  remark : 
"A  tabby  cat's  about  as  far  as  she  ever 

got  with  a  pet ;  but  come "  and  the 

sound  of  receding  steps  told  Hester 
that  the  speakers  had  passed  on. 

"Christmas,"  she  muttered,  rising 
from  behind  the  hedge;  "Christmas, 
and  what  do  folks  around  here  know 
about  it.  Stingy  mortal — humph — and 
me  giving  a  pair  of  chickens  to  our 
minister  for  nigh  on  to  twenty  years. 
Talk's  cheap,  but  that's  not  here  nor 
there  when  poultry's  to  be  fed.  But 
what's  this?"  she  added,  as  in  her  en- 
deavor to  lock  the  little  picket  gate  in 
the  hedge  she  noticed  a  package.  A 
few  minutes  later  she  was  dancing 
about  her  kitchen,  hugging  an  inani- 
mate form  and  kissing  it  repeatedly. 
"Never  had  a  doll — humph — only  a 
tabby  cat.  I'll  show  them,"  and  with 
the  little,  naked  thing  still  held  close 
in  her  arms,  she  climbed  the  creaking 
stairs  to  the  attic  storeroom.  Unlock- 
ing an  old  horsehair  trunk,  she  ex- 
plored its  depths,  drawing  forth  a  spick 
and  span  doll  dressed  in  the  style  of 
some  thirty  years  ago.  She  laid  it 
beside  the  French  beauty,  but  its  glit- 
tering china  face  seemed  opaque — its 
steely  blue  eyes  stared  unsympatheti- 
cally  into  hers,  and  the  painted  black 
hair  lay  coldly  on  its  brow.  Yet  this 
had  once  been  her  cherished  prize — 
through  childhood  days.  The  French 
doll  smiled  engagingly  at  her,  showing 
pearly  teeth.  Its  eyes  were  of  a  heav- 
enly blue,  that  opened  and  closed, 
while  the  hair  was  soft  and  fluffy. 

With  an  exclamation  of  disgust  she 
thrust  the  china  doll  roughly  back  into 
the  trunk  and  laid  the  French  beauty 
gently  on  a  mink  muff  beside  her.  A 
fur  coat  and  a  bonnet,  then  she  in- 
spected; both  had  seen  many  seasons 


of  wear,  and  now  seemed  miuch  out  of 
date  to  Hester,  who  intended  donning 
them  for  the  festive  day.  "What's 
Chistmas,  anyway?"  she  cried.  "What 
is  it,  anyway  ?  It's  a  time  when  every- 
body's trying  to  beat  the  other  giving 
gim-cracks,  all  right.  I  want  none  of 
it.  Plain  Hester  Herne  I  was  born — 
plain  Hester  Herne  I'll  die;  and  no- 
body'll  ever  say  I  tried  to  outdo  my 
neighbor  giving  presents.  That's  all 
there  is  to  Christmas,  anyhow;  but 
no,  it  isn't,  either.  Now  what  was  it 
she  said?"  And  jumping  up,  Hester 
pondered  with  knitted  brows.  Then 
she  moved  to  a  little  window  under  the 
eaves  and  peered  out.  Snow  was  fall- 
ing softly,  and  nestling  like  pearls 
amidst  the  scarlet  berries  on  the  hedge. 
"She  said  something  about  making 
others  happy — something  about  the 
hedge,  too — and  I  will,"  she  added, 
hurrying  down  the  winding  staircase. 

Shortly  afterwards  she  was  walking 
up  the  road  with  a  basket  of  glittering 
holly  sprays  and  gleaming  berries  on 
her  arm.  She  was  actually  on  her  way 
to  call  at  a  neighbor's  house,  and  her 
heart  went  pit-a-pat.  Turning  the  cor- 
ner of  a  lane,  she  almost  collided  with 
another  figure  hurrying  in  the  opposite 
direction.  Hester,  recovering  herself, 
said :  "Beg  your  pardon,  Miss.  I  was 
on  my  way  to  Mrs.  Wylie's  to  ask 
where  you  were  stopping.  I'm  Miss 
Herne,  and  I  overheard  you  and  your 
aunt  talking  while  you  were  searching 
for  a  lost  package.  I  found  it  after- 
wards, and  was  bringing  it  to  you,  with 
some  holly  from  my  hedge  that  you 
fancied  so,  this  morning.  You  seemed 
so  kind-like  of  speech  that  it  set  me 
thinking  about  Christmas,  for  you  see 
it  hasn't  meant  much  to  a  lonely  crea- 
ture like  me.  But  here's  the  holly,  Miss, 
and  I  hope  you'll  enjoy  it." 

"How  perfectly  lovely,  Miss  Herne ; 
my  name's  Graham,  Alice  Graham.  I 
am  so  glad  to  meet  you,  and  very  grate- 
ful for  the  package  and  especially  for 
the  holly.  I  was  on  my  way  to  the 
Postoffice,  and  if  you're  going  right 
home,  would  like  to  walk  along  with 


you. 


Reaching    the    hedge,  they  stopped 


514 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


for  a  second,  when  Hester  invited 
Alice  to  enter  the  house  behind  the 
hedge.  Soon,  the  two  were  chatting 
pleasantly  over  a  cup  of  tea.  After- 
wards, Hester  brought  forth  Jemima, 
the  china  doll,  and  beamed  with  de- 
light when  Alice  went  into  ecstacies 
over  it.  Before  Alice  left  Miss  Herne's 
home  she  had  promised  to  come  soon 
again,  and  when  the  door  closed  after 
the  smiling  young  caller,  Hester,  too, 
smiled  until  she  scarcely  recognized 
her  reflection  in  the  mirror.  It  was 
years  since  this  quicksilvered  glass 
had  reflected  so  happy  a  face.  Long 
Hester  sat,  smiling  at  her  reflection, 
and  repeating:  "Christ  was  a  little 
child  once — at  Christmastide.  His 
mission  was  to  feed  the  hungry,  clothe 
the  poor,  and  make  glad  the  hearts  of 
the  oppressed;  and  I'll  do  it,  too,"  she 
added,  with  a  shake  of  the  head. 

The  next  day,  while  everybody  was 
supposed  to  be  busy  about  her  own  af- 
fairs, many  of  Hester's  neighbors 
were  gossiping  about  the  strange  hap- 
penings behind  the  hedge.  A  boy 
had  been  seen  carrying  forth  a  basket 
heavily  laden  with  holly.  Another 
had  emerged  with  sundry  packages, 
and  it  was  whispered  that  Hester  had 
contributed  a  Christmas  tree  and  the 
"fixins"  to  the  Sunday  school.  She 
had  also  given  orders  to  have  groceries 
delivered  to  several  needy  families, 
and  the  gossips  were  unanimous  in 
their  decision  that  Hester  Herne  must 
be  going  to  die.  But  Hester  was 
never  more  alive,  as  any  one  might 
have  seen  who  made  bold  enough  to 
peep  through  one  of  her  windows.  Her 
erstwhile  tightly  drawn  back  hair  was 
gathered  loosely  about  a  brow  that  to- 
day looked  wonderfully  fair,  and  ten 
years  seemed  to  have  dropped  from 
her  appearance  of  a  few  days  ago. 
The  old  melodeon  creaked,  as  she 
played  the  accompaniment  to  a  Christ- 
mas hymn,  that  she  sang  in  a  cracked 
voice,  while  the  cat,  unused  to  such 
sights  and  sounds,  arose  from  its  ac- 
customed place  beside  the  hearth,  and 
arching  its  back,  watched  in  amaze- 
ment. Then  the  mistress  of  Holly 
Hedge,  rising  from  the  instrument, 


looked  almost  apologetically  at  the 
china  ornaments,  standing  stiffly  in  a 
row  on  the  mantel.  It's  Christmastide, 
you  know,"  she  spoke  softly,  address- 
ing a  daguerrotype  of  her  mother.  "A 
time  to  be  happy  and  make  others  so," 
and  she  fancied  the  picture  smiled  up- 
on her. 

Alice  Graham  dropped  in  as  she  had 
promised  for  a  cup  of  tea,  and  to  give 
a  touch  of  modernism  to  Hester's  an- 
tique hat. 

"Your  own  mother  wouldn't  know 
you  now,  Miss  Herne.  You  don't  look 
like  the  same  person;  that  hat  suits 
you  fine,  and  your  hair  is  wonderfully 
becoming,  arranged  so." 

The  village  church  had  never  looked 
more  attractive  than  on  this  Christmas 
day.  Holly  was  in  evidence  every- 
where, and  many  eyes  turned  towards 
Hester,  who  wore  a  spray  of  the  scar- 
let berries  pinned  on  her  coat,  and 
even  dared  to  flaunt  some  on  her  hat. 

For  years  the  congregation  had  been 
accustomed  to  seeing  Hester  soberly 
dressed,  sitting  alone  in  the  old  fam- 
ily pew,  but  today  the  order  of  things 
was  reversed,  and  another  Miss  Herne 
— -younger,  brighter  and  happier,  fairly 
beamed  with  joy  from  the  shadowy 
pew. 

Back  of  the  Hern's  was  a  pew  that 
had  not  been  occupied  by  any  of  the 
original  holders  for  a  decade  of  years, 
or  since  Will  Shelton,  the  last  of  his 
family,  suddenly  left  the  village.  It 
was  then  rumored  that  he  had  been 
"keeping  company"  with  Hester  Herne 
— but  whatever  the  surmises,  they 
were  never  affirmed  nor  denied  by 
Hester,  who,  after  Shelton's  depart- 
ure, became  even  more  reticent  than 
before,  until  holding  aloof  from  her 
neighbors,  they  gradually  shunned  her 
entirely.  To-day  the  Shelton  pew 
had  an  occupant,  and  many  eyes  wan- 
dered toward  him,  and  back  again  to 
where  Hester  sat,  oblivious  of  the  new 
church  arrival. 

The  last  hymn  had  been  sung,  and 
the  church  was  being  emptied  of  its 
congregation.  Then  little  knots  gath- 
ered here  and  there,  many  nodding  in 
Hester's  direction.  She  walked  aloof, 


HESTER'S  HOLLY  HEDGE 


515 


and  had  gone  but  a  few  paces  when 
the  Shelton  pew  occupant  overtook 
her.  Oblivious  of  the  many  eyes 
watching,  Shelton  strode  after  Hester, 
and  raising  his  hat,  said,  as  though 
they  had  parted  but  yesterday.  "A 
merry  Christmas,  Hester!"  She  turned 
in  confusion,  to  look  at  the  man  be- 
side her,  but  could  only  articulate  in 
gasps:  "Will — Will — you?"  "Come, 
Hester,  dear,  it's  I,  all  right— Will 
Shelton  in  the  flesh,  and  I've  traveled 
all  the  way  from  New  York  just  to 
wish  you  a  Merry  Christmas,  for  after 
ten  years  of  the  world  I  find  my  heart 
still  beats  for  the  mistress  of  Holly 
Hedge;  and  this  time  I'll  not  take  'no' 
for  my  answer.  Hester,  I  want  to 
walk  home  with  you,  and  through  life, 
as  well.  May  I?" 

"Yes,  dear,"  she  answered  smilingly, 
"and  it'll  be  the  happiest  day  I've  ever 


known  if  you'll  come  in  and  help  eat 
the  Christmas  dinner  cooked  by  the 
mistress  of  Holly  Hedge." 

The  narrow  picket  gate  in  the  hedge 
clicked  softly;  the  seldom  used  front 
door  of  the  rambling  homestead 
opened  to  Hester  Herne  and  Will 
Shelton,  then,  shutting  behind  them, 
left  the  village  gossips  wondering  how 
swell,  generous  Will  Shelton  could 
ever  have  fancied  the  miserly  mistress 
of  Holly  Hedge — "but  there's  no  ac- 
counting for  taste,"  said  Mrs.  Wylie. 

"And  his,"  answered  Alice  Graham, 
"I  think  admirable.  Miss  Herne's  ex- 
terior may  appear  cold  like  the  leaves 
on  her  holly  hedge,  but  her  heart,  like 
its  berries,  is  red  with  human  love  and 
charity.  She  has  learned,  too,  what 
many  of  you  have  failed  to  learn — the 
true  spirit  of  Christmas,  the  gaining 
of  happiness  through  the  giving  of  it." 


The  Cowboy's  Inamorata 


By  Newell  Batman 


Near  the  western  line  of  Texas, 
Where  the  cactus  dots  the  sand, 
And  the  desert  winds  are  blowing 
'Cross  the  muddy  Rio  Grande, 

In  a  little  'dobe  ranch  house, 
There  beyond  the  river  line, 
Just  a  pasear  o'er  the  border 
Lives  a  Spanish  girl  of  mine. 

She's  as  pretty  as  the  desert, 
And  there's  roses  on  her  cheek; 
And  her  voice  is  like  the  murmur 
Of  a  little  mountain  creek. 


And  I  rest  there  half  a  dreamin', 
With  my  arm  about  her,  so; 
While  we  talk  in  lovin'  whispers 
Till  the  southern  moon  is  low. 

And  sometimes  I  get  to  thinkin' 

Of  one  night  a-goin'  home, 

When  I'd  almost  reached  the  river — 

I  was  ridin'  on  the  roan — 

How  the  mare  heard  some  one  comin', 
And  her  balkin'  saved  my  life; 
'Cause  she  pranced  around  in  terror, 
So  he  missed  me  with  the  knife. 


And  she  says  she's  always  lonely        Then  my  forty-four's  a-blazin' 
When  I'm  ridin'  on  the  range ;  Told  the  skunk  he'd  missed  his  mark, 

Though  I  think  she's  sometimes  lyin',But  the  light  was  bad  for  shootin' 
'Cause  it  seems  almighty  strange         And  he  got  off  in  the  dark. 


That  a  pretty  girl  like  Chita 
'D  ever  miss  a  cuss  like  me, 
Just  an  ordinary  puncher 
That  rides  the  double  E. 

But  still  the  way  she  greets  me 
When  I  ride  across  to  call, 
Dispels  my  doubt  and  wonder, 
And  I  think  she  means  it  all. 

And  it's  fine  to  sit  there  evenin's, 
'Neath  the  droopin'  pepper's  shade, 
And  listen  to  her  singin' 
Like  a  fairy  in  a  glade. 

With  her  eyes  a  softly  shinin', 
Like  the  lonely  desert  star, 
And  those  pretty  fingers  tremblin' 
On  the  strings  of  her  guitar. 


So  when  Chita  told  me  after 

How  a  Mexican  cashed  in, 

'Cause  she  wouldn't  be  his  sweetheart, 

Then  I  knew  that  man  was  him. 

And  I  kind  'a  felt  half  sorry, 
For  somehow  I  didn't  see, 
Just  the  reason  I  should  blame  him 
For  the  game  he  tried  on  me. 

Anyhow  when  it's  past  midnight, 
With  the  east  a-growin'  light, 
And  the  stars  a-slowly  fadin' 
As  they  drift  on  with  the  night, 

It's  adios,  my  Chita! 
Just  a  kiss  and  then  I'm  gone; 
Spurrin'  up  the  drowsy  pinto, 
Lopin'  homeward  with  the  dawn. 


California  in   Exposition  Art 


By  Jessie  /Aaude  Wybro 


CALIFORNIA  has  long  been  rec- 
ognized as  the  happy  hunting 
ground  of  the  artist.  But  it  is 
only  when  one  discovers  the 
great  number  of  canvases  devoted  to 
Caiifornian  subjects  in  the  galleries  of 
the  Palace  of  Fine  Arts  at  the  Pan- 
ama-Pacific Exposition  that  one  real- 
izes how  happily  the  artist  has  hunted. 
Not  only  the  Caiifornian  artists,  but 
men  who  have  painted  the  world  over. 
Men,  for  instance,  like  Childe  Has- 
sam,  who  has  sought  inspiration  in 
France,  Spain,  Italy,  The  Netherlands, 
find  their  repertoire  incomplete  with- 
out the  inevitable  bit  of  California. 

William  Keith — our  own  Keith,  who 
has  perhaps  seen  deeper  and  more 
beautifully  into  the  soul  of  the  Caii- 
fornian landscape  than  any  other — oc- 
cupies one  of  the  largest  of  the  galler- 
ies set  apart  for  individual  exhibitors 
in  the  Palace  of  Fine  Arts.  Here  a 
long  array  of  canvases  live  from  the 
touch  of  his  brush,  all  of  them  either 
done  directly  from  Caiifornian  scenes 
or  showing  the  trace  of  Caiifornian 
color  and  influence.  His  soft,  rich 
tones,  his  poetic  interpretation,  his 
fine  and  sensitive  handling  of  the  in- 
most beauty  of  the  land  he  loved  are 
too  familiar  to  need  discussion. 

Arthur  F.  Matthews  has  a  most  dis- 
tinctive charmi — a  way  of  seeing  and 
of  expressing  himself  that  sets  his 
work  apart  from  that  of  any  other 
artist.  There  is  a  kind  of  hushed  still- 
ness about  his  pictures,  a  poetic  at- 
mosphere in  which  he  envelops  them 
that  seems  to  say  to  the  beholder: 
"Peace!  This  is  Beauty's  temple! 
Humble  your  soul  and  listen!"  He 
sees  in  subdued  tints.  For  those  who 
like  vivid  tones — who  sympathize,  for 
instance,  with  the  bright  joyousness  of 


Hassam's  color  vision,  Matthews  will 
have  no  message.  But  for  those  who 
can  subdue  their  consciousness  to  his 
individual  key,  his  peculiar  coloring 
and  soft  nuances  of  tone  will  be  full  of 
charm.  Unlike  Keith  and  Ritschel,  he 
does  not  confine  himself  to  landscape. 
His  greatest  achievements  are  un- 
doubtedly in  the  realm  of  figure  paint- 
ing. His  "Masque  of  Pandora"  and 
"The  Carnation"  are  full  of  creative 
beauty,  and  his  mural  in  the  Court  of 
Palms — "The  Victorious  Spirit" — has 
attracted  much  attention  for  the  origi- 
nality and  power  of  its  conception. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  of  his 
California  pieces  at  the  Exposition  is 
"Cypress  Grove."  It  is  characteristi- 
cally dull  in  tint,  poetic,  full  of  a  beau- 
tiful, dreamy  suggestion.  "Monterey 
Hills"  presents  low  slopes  of  rounded 
modelling  under  a  subdued  light,  the 
trees  showing  as  dark  masses  that  melt 
almost  to  black.  The  flowing  lines 
have  a  soft  cadence,  fitted  to  the  dull 
harmony  of  tone  and  the  simplicity  of 
composition. 

William  Ritschel's  interpretations  of 
the  California  landscape  differ  as  much 
from  Keith's  and  Matthews'  as  these 
two  from  each  other's.  Keith  and  Mat- 
thews are  both  poetic  in  their  contrast- 
ing ways.  Ritschel  is  dynamic.  He 
sees  in  terms  of  action  and  grandeur 
rather  than  in  soft  lights  and  flowing 
lines.  He  is  comparable  in  the  realm 
of  nature  to  Brangwyn  in  the  realm  of 
figure  painting,  whose  canvases  ex- 
press so  well  the  feverish  activity,  the 
chaos  of  movement  that  characterize 
modern  life.  He  gives  us  no  sympho- 
nies of  soft  tones,  no  tender  moods  of 
nature  that  invite  the  soul  with  their 
poetic  harmonies.  His  is  the  full 
crash  of  Wagnerian  orchestration — 

S 


518 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


the  vigor  and  swing  of  the  elements  in 
action.  His  vision  is  utterly  sincere, 
and  he  has  a  facile  technique  with 
which  to  express  himself.  "In  the 
Shadow  of  the  Cliffs:  Monterey"  is  a 
splendid  thing,  of  great  power  and 
vitality.  The  blue-green  water,  the 
white  of  the  hurled  surf,  the  stern 
cliffs,  are  rendered  with  a  vigor  that 
carries  conviction;  it  is  the  very  splen- 
dor of  the  sea  itself  in  a  mighty  mood. 
"Tide  Pool :  Carmel"  shows  a  swirl  of 
noble  water,  with  the  light  falling 
strongly  upon  the  dull  yellowish-gray 
of  the  sea-beaten  cliffs.  "Summer 
Night:  Point  Lobos"  approaches  the 
poetic  more  nearly  than  any  other  of 
his  compositions.  It  is  a  portrait  of 
the  sea  in  a  softer  mood — a  thing  of 
beautiful  lights  and  shadows  and  fine 
gradations  of  tone.  In  the  foreground 
the  gnarled  old  trees  of  the  shore  catch 
at  the  remaining  gleam  of  day,  at  the 
same  time  that  their  foliage  gathers 
the  shadows  darkly.  Off  shore  the 
breakers  curl  white  against  the  glim- 
mering half-light.  Beyond  them  is  a 
space  of  quiet  water,  green  and  deep, 
that  gives  the  last  word  of  the  linger- 
ing dusk  before  it  is  absorbed  in  the 
waiting  night.  It  is  a  composition  full 
of  feeling,  with  a  particularly  skilful 
handling  of  light  and  shade.  "Fog  and 
Breakers:  Carmel"  gives  again  the 
swirl  of  the  blue-green  water,  the 
gleam  of  the  dull-toned  cliffs,  and  the 
white  of  dashed  spray — all  the  rhyth- 
mic, rugged  splendor  that  the  artist 
sees  in  the  spot  he  loves  best  to  paint. 

E.  Charlton  Fortune  exhibits  "Car- 
mel Mission,"  the  interior  of  the  fam- 
ous ^  old  structure  beloved  of  Padre 
Junipero  Serra.  It  is  charmingly  done 
with  a  simplicity  of  composition  and 
a  harmony  of  tone  that  delight  the  eye. 
All  extraneous  material  is  cut  away. 
The  perspective  leads  the  eye  in  a 
sweep  of  space  across  the  body  of  the 
church  to  a  focus  at  the  altar,  where 
the  dull  tones  are  relieved  by  the  vivid 
coloring  of  the  altar  pieces.  It  is  fresh 
and  spontaneous  in  technique,  and  car- 
ries instant  appeal. 

"The  Pier,"  another  of  Mr.  Fortune's 
canvases,  forms  a  very  decided  con- 


trast to  this.  It  is  strongly  impres- 
sionistic in  style,  done  in  broad  strokes 
and  vivid  colors.  The  pier  itself  does 
not  seem  to  be  a  very  seaworthy  af- 
fair— but  that  really  is  no  concern  of 
the  artist's.  It  affords  an  opportunity 
for  some  swinging  brush  strokes,  and 
a  wet  surface  that  catches  the  light 
satisfyingly.  It  is  also  an  excuse  to 
which  to  tie  the  green  and  orange  boats 
that  float  vividly  on  the  bright  blue 
water.  Its  vivacity  of  tone  and  its 
out-door  freshness  furnish  a  certain 
pleasure. 

"The  San  Gabriel  Vine,"  the  third 
of  Mr.  Fortune's  exhibits  to  present  a 
California  theme,  shows  the  marvelous 
old  grape-vine  planted  so  long  ago  by 
the  padres  of  San  Gabriel  Mission, 
and  grown  into  one  of  the  seven  won- 
ders of  the  vegetable  world.  The  ar- 
tist, however,  is  not  particularly  con- 
cerned with  either  its  size  or  its  age. 
To  him  it  is  solely  an  opportunity  to 
depict  a  joyous  springtime  mood — fil- 
tering gold  of  sunlight  through  vivid 
green,  shimmering  lights  and  warm 
shadows — all  the  luxuriance  of  tints 
characteristic  of  California. 

Benjamin  Chambers  Brown  has 
taken  a  most  astounding  view  of  things 
in  his  "Cliffs:  Golden  Gate."  The 
spot  lends  itself  naturally  to  the  he- 
roic. At  the  very  least,  to  the  strong 
and  vigorous.  Mr.  Brown  has  chosen 
to  see  it  in  a  mood  so  peaceful — not 
to  say  anaemic — as  to  render  it  prac- 
tically unrecognizable.  The  brown 
cliffs  and  quiet  waters  he  portrays 
might  be  anywhere,  for  any  sugges- 
tion they  contain  of  the  characteristic 
splendor  of  the  spot  or  the  vividness 
of  Californian  coloring.  From  a  hun- 
dred different  view-points  the  cliffs  of 
the  Golden  Gate  can  be  seen  as  splen- 
did masses  of  rock  foamed  about  by  a 
dramatic  fury  of  waters.  If  the  artist 
wished  to  paint  a  quiet  scene,  why  he 
should  have  selected  this  particular 
spot  is  beyond  solution  for  the  merely 
intelligent. 

Maurice  Braun's  "Hillside  Morning" 
has  nothing  in  particular  to  say,  but 
says  it  rather  gracefully.  The  color- 
ing is  delicate,  and  the  tones  well  har- 


f^ 

•+^  o 


o 

.  Ci. 

* 

tq 


. 
* 


o  a 

IS 

*>  § 


CALIFORNIA  IN  EXPOSITION  ART 


521 


monized.  His  "Sunlit  Hills:  Southern 
Calitornia"  is  much  more  vivacious.  It 
even  savors  of  impressionism  in  its 
vivid  greens  and  its  blue  treatment  of 
shadow.  Like  the  "Hillside  Morning" 
it  is  light  in  tone,  and  somewhat  in- 
consequent. The  same  is  true  of  "Hills 
and  Valley:  Southern  California." 

A  very  decided  contrast  to  these  is 
"Late  Afternoon  in  the  Sierras,"  by 
Maurice  del  Mue.  The  coloring  is  deep 
and  the  sweep  of  line  suggests  strength 
and  grandeur.  He  sees  the  hills  in 
much  the  same  mood  as  Ritschel  the 
water  and  cliffs  of  his  beloved  Carmel. 

Childe  Hassam's  "California  Hills 
in  Spring"  is  a  charming  bit  of  color, 
done  in  the  vivid  tints  that  translate 
so  well  the  glow  and  charm  typical  of 
California.  He  has  chosen  to  portray 
the  hills  when  they  are  fresh  washed 
by  the  rains  and  lift  their  wonderful 
living  green  against  a  sky  that  sings 
in  the  bright  glory  of  its  azure. 

Mr.  Eugen  Neuhaus  and  Mr.  Fran- 
cis McComas  must  doubtless  be  for- 
given for  their  color-vision,  since  we 
can  only  hope  for  forgiveness  in  the 
degree  that  we  forgive.  But  how  sane 
eyes  can  see  nothing  but  gray-browns 
and  dull-golds  and  clay-whites — and 
other  combinations  of  low  tones  that 
the  dictionary  knoweth  not — in  the 
vivid  colors  in  which  the  ordinary  eye 
sees  the  Californian  landscape,  these 
artists  might  possibly  be  able  to  ex- 
plain. But  assuredly  no  one  else  can. 
Mr.  McComas'  "Oaks  of  the  Monte," 
"Pines  at  Monterey"  and  "A  Los  Oli- 
vos  Oak  Tree"  are  all  done  in  these 
characteristic  tints.  He  elects  to  ex- 
press shadow  in  a  peculiar,  vivid  dull- 
blue — if  an  oxymoron  may  be  coined 
to  describe  the  indescribable.  It  must 
be  confessed,  however,  that  he  uses 
this  in  a  most  effective — not  to  say 
startling — way.  "The  Broken  Oak" 
shows  a  more  ordinary  color-vision, 
portraying  a  splendid  old  oak  tree  in 
the  poetic  tragedy  of  its  ruin. 

Mr.  Neuhaus'  "A  Corner  of  Lake 
Merced"  gives  a  delightfully  rhyth- 
mic swirl  of  water,  the  dull  tones  re- 
lieved a  little  by  the  glowing  green  of 
the  bank,  but  so  overshadowed  by  the 


prevailing  tonality  as  not  to  be  at  once 
perceptible  in  its  own  color-value. 
"Monterey  Dunes"  is  a  subject  that 
lends  itself  admirably  to  his  vision ; 
the  low  tones  of  the  sand  dunes — a 
dull  pinkish-gray,  as  he  sees  them — 
and  the  low  curves  of  their  contour 
fitting  together  in  a  harmony  that  is 
distinctly  pleasing  to  the  eye.  His 
"Eucalypti  at  Berkeley  Hills"  is  well 
composed,  with  a  particularly  beautiful 
perspective  ending  at  the  sky  of  dull 
gold — a  thing  whose  harmony  carries 
a  certain  conviction,  however  little  one 
may  sympathize  with  the  low  tonality. 

In  both  of  these  men  is  to  be  dis- 
cerned a  certain  poetry  of  interpre- 
tation, though  each  attains  it  in  a  very 
different  way.  The  only  thing  that 
links  them,  in  fact,  is  their  overween- 
ing use  of  low  tones.  As  to  that — 
Abraham  Lincoln  hit  the  nail  of  a 
similar  situation  precisely  on  the  head 
•when  he  used  one  of  his  famous  aphor- 
isms :  "If  you  like  that  kind  of  a  man 
— well,  that's  the  kind  of  a  man  you 
like!" 

Giuseppe  Cadenasso  also  inclines  to 
the  use  of  low  tones.  His  "Summer" 
is  rather  a  pleasing  thing,  of  gently 
bending  trees  and  flowers  glimmering 
white  in  the  half-light.  "The  Reflec- 
tion," showing  the  same  color  sense,  is 
especially  successful  in  its  presenta- 
tion of  water — no  mere  surface  glisten, 
but  limpidly  beautiful  depths  that  in- 
vite the  eye. 

Clark  Hobart's  "Blue  Bay:  Mon- 
terey" shows  characteristic  vividness 
of  tone.  George  W.  Smith  in  "Euca- 
lyptus Trees"  also  expresses  himself 
in  bright  blues  and  greens.  Lucy  V. 
Pierce's  "Carmel  Landscape"  harks 
back  again  in  theme  to  the  artistic 
paradise  of  Carmel ;  it  is  rich  and  deep 
in  tone,  contrasting  strongly  with  the 
canvases  just  mentioned. 

The  list  of  notable  interpretations 
of  the  charm  of  Californian  landscape 
might  be  elaborated  almost  indefin- 
itely. Those  mentioned  have  all  been 
oil  paintings.  The  long  array  of 
water  colors,  prints  and  etchings  con- 
cerned with  that  theme  have  not  even 
been  touched  upon  in  this  discussion. 


The  Spirit  of  Russian  Hunters  Devised 

THE  "SONG   OF  BARANOV,"  1799 


This  publication  by  Zagoskin,  in  the  Muscovite  for  1849,  is  the  only  rec- 
ord made  of  what  the  "song"  was;  it  had  never  been  translated,  or  even  re- 
ferred to  in  any  of  the  subsequent  publications  regarding  Baranov,  either  be- 
fore or  after  his  death. 

Bancroft,  in  his  "History  of  Alaska,"  1889,  quotes  one  of  the  officers  of 
the  sloop-of-war  Kamchatka,  in  which  Captain  Golovnin  arrived  at  Sitka,  a 
short  time  before  Baranov  left  (November  27,  1818)  with  regard  to  the 
manner  in  which  the  old  chief  manager  received  and  entertained  Golovnin 
and  associates :  On  pp.  5,  6 — 517,  we  find  that  young  officer  of  the  Kam- 
chatka saying: 

"We  had  just  cast  anchor  in  port  and  were  sitting  down  to  dinner  when 
Baranov  was  announced.  The  life  and  actions  of  this  extraordinary  man 
had  excited  in  me  a  great  curiosity  to  see  him.  He  is  much  below  medium 
height.  His  face  is  covered  with  wrinkles  and  he  is  perfectly  bald;  but  for 
all  that,  he  looks  younger  than  his  years,  considering  his  hard  and  trou- 
bled life.  The  next  day  we  were  invited  to  dine  with  hirr*.  After  dinner, 
singers  were  introduced  who,  to  please  the  late  manager,  spared  neither 
their  own  lungs  nor  our  ears.  When  they  sang  his  favorite  song,  'The  Spirit 
of  Russian  Hunters  Devised,'  he  stood  in  their  midst,  and  rehearsed  with 
them  their  common  deeds  in  the  new  world." 

THE  INVOCATION  OF  BARANOV 

Composed  and  chanted  by  him  at  the  dedication  of  Fort  St.  Michael  (Old 
Sitka)  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  settled  occupation  of  the  Sitkan  Archi- 
pelago by  white  men,  August  20-30,  1799. 

(Translated  from  "The  Muscovite,"  March,  1849;  No.  5,  Book  I.    St.  Peters- 
burg.    By  Henry  W.  Elliott,  January  29,  1915.) 

"Song  by  A.  A.  Baranov,  1799." 

"The  Russian  mind  has  devised  many  avenues  and  plans  of  trade ; 

It  has  sent  free  people  out  all  over  the  uncharted  seas 
To   discover   and  acquaint  themselves  with  every  grade 

Of  benefit  therein,  for  Holy  Russia,  and  the  glory  of  her  dynasties. 

"The  Almighty  God,  in  His  mercy,  has  helped  them,  and  helps  us  here! 

He  has  strengthened  the  Russian's  courage,  then,  now,  and  everywhere — 
Even  here — tho'  only  just  surveyed — see! — 'tis  settled  without  fear, 

To  soon  become  an  important  place  on  Mother  Earth — yes,  important  and 
most  fair. 

"In  forming  our  fraternal  societies  in  this  unknown  wilderness, 

We  did  not  need  to  invoke  the  splendid  Grecian  muse- 
Only  must  we  know  how  to  obey,  then  never  will  we  transgress 
The  laws  of  nature,  or  the  simple  rights  of  men,  confuse  or  abuse. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  RUSSIAN  HUNTERS  DEVISED  523 

"Rise,  ye  buildings!  oh,  rise  up  in  this  part  of  a  new  world! 

For  Russia  is  most  ambitious — and,  see!    Nootka  meets  her  ends! 
The  savages — people  of  all  these  barbarous  clans,  who  at  first  hurled 

Themselves  against  us,  have  now,  willingly,  become  our  friends, 

"Oh,  Peter  the  Great!    Were  you  to  be  among  and  with  us  here,  and  now, 
You  would  behold  proof  of  your  faith  in  Russian  spirit  and  persistence. 

For,  behold  us  as  your  own  descendants — we  who  have  all  known  how 

To  discover  this  new  land  for  the  glory  of  an  Empire,  and  its  rich  in- 
heritance ! 

"The  Argonauts  were  attracted  by  glittering  visions  of  golden  gains : 
They,  too,  like  us,  went  in  search  of  many  gilded  hides. 

Had  they  only  known  then,  of  these  undiscovered  hills  and  plains, 

They  would  have  served  their  country  far  better,  and  themselves  besides, 

"Although  there  are  no  'golden  fleeces'  here,  nor  do  visions  of  them  obtrude,. 

Still,  the  otter's  fur  is,  as  precious  gold,  poured  in  to  us  from  all  around* 
And,  if  our  friends,  the  Europeans,  did  not,  and  do  not  intrude, 

Then  our  gains  would  be  greater  and  yet  plentiful  from  the  sea  and  ground.. 

"The  tall  'Sookarev  Towers'  are  standing  to  adorn  Moscow,  where  we  find,. 

'The  Bell,'  and  'Tsar  of  Cannons,'  which  united,  amaze  the  people  there,, 
With  many  wonders,  as  'Ivan  the  Great' — but,  never  mind — 

There  are  others,  too,  vastly  greater  all  around,  as  we  view  them  every- 
where. 

"We  are  drawn  together  on  this  spot  by  wish  for  honor  and  for  fame; 

We  are  united  here,  by  our  manly  friendship  and  our  common  brotherhood. 
So,  let  us  build  here  wisely,  then,  when  done,  go  forth  again  to  proclaim 

Our  intention  of  occupying  more  of  America  for  Russia's  glory  and  her 
good, 

"Altho*  nature  seems  so  very  wild — so  savage,  so  lonely  here,  and 
The  habits  and  the  lives  of  the  natives  are  most  sanguinary  and  bad; 

Yet  securing  these  advantages  of  this  virgin  wealth  for  our  own  Fatherland, 
Make  our  lonesomeness  with  perils,  vanish  while  our  hearts  are  very  glad. 

"In  this  new  world — in  this  wild  new  land  of  the  midnight  sun, 

We  stand  lined  up  for  fame,  as  strong  as  any  willing  loyal  man  could; 
The  savages  around,  all  see  it — and  they  will  make  peace  for  what  we  have 

done. 

So,  be  wide  awake! — remember  what  you  are,  and  then  do  as  Russians 
should. 

"We  are  not  caring  as  we  labor  here,  for  rank  or  eulogistic  story; 

Well  we  know  that  all  we  want,  or  need,  is  peaceful  brotherhood; 
What  we  have  and  shall  secure  for  Holy  Russia's  gain  and  glory, 

No  matter  how,  or  what,  will  be  placed  by  patriotic  minds  to  our  honor  and 
our  good." 

Note — This  "song"  or  chant,  or  invocation,  was  composed  by  Alexander 
Baranov,  who,  as  the  Governor  of  the  Russian  American  Company,  or 
"Chief  Manager,"  recited  it  at  the  dedication  of  Fort  St.  Michael,  Alaska, 


524  OVERLAND  MONTHLY 

August  20,  1799,  which  was  the  first  building  erected  by  white  men  in  the 
Sitkan  Archipelago;  and  it  was  located  just  six  miles  north  of  the  present 
town  of  Sitka.  He  landed  there  May  25,  1799,  and  then  set  half  of  his 
hunting  party  at  work  building  this  block  house  or  "redoubt/'  which  was 
finished  by  the  middle  of  August.  When  finished,  Baranov,  with  his  whole 
party,  twenty  Russians  and  some  300  native  Aleutian  and  Kodiak  hunters, 
held  a  solemn  dedication  of  it.  He  prepared  the  chant  or  invocation  (as 
above  translated  from  the  Russian  text)  which  was  first  intoned  verse  by 
verse,  in  Baranov's  own  voice,  then  each  verse  was  repeated  after  him  in 
rhythmic  chorus,  by  all  of  his  associates.  Copies  of  it  were  carefully  made 
and  given  to  all  of  the  Russian  traders,  not  only  at  this  time  and  place,  but 
were  distributed  all  over  Russian-American  territory,  where  the  traders 
were  busy  with  the  request  by  Baranov  that  the  words  be  repeated  on  every 
occasion  of  a  new  post  or  station  being  established.  To  this  fact  we  owe  the 
possession  of  this  copy  of  Baranov's  invocation;  for  when  the  Russians 
founded  the  post  of  St.  Michael  on  St.  Michael  Island,  Norton  Sound,  Bering 
Sea,  in  1830,  it  was  recited  then  and  there  by  Tebenkov  and  Glazunov.  A 
copy  was  given  to  Lt.  Zagoskin,  who  explored  the  upper  Yukon  River,  and 
the  Kuskowkwim  in  1842-43.  In  1849,"  Zagoskin  published  it  at  St.  Peters- 
burg in  a  Russian  semi-monthly  magazine  known  as  the  "Muskovite,"  issue 
of  March,  1849;  "No.  5,"  "Book  I."  The  above  translation  I  have  made  from 
this  publication,  as  stated,  and  it  is  the  only  translation  of  it  that  has  ever 
been  made,  so  far  as  I  can  learn. 
Washington,  D.  C.,  July  2,  1915  .  HENRY  W.  ELLIOTT. 


The  Tragic  Sequel  to  the  First  White 

Settlement  in  the  Sitkan 

Archipelago 

Not  many  of  our  people  who,  as  American  Company    (which  received 

tourists  or  on  business,  leave  Seattle,  its  complete  control   in  1799)    deter- 

Portland  and  San  Francisco  nowadays  mined  early  in  the  season  of  1799  to 

to   visit  Alaska,   ever  think   as   they  fit  out  a  party  and  go  down  from  Ko- 

pass  through  the  silent  fiords  of  the  diak  to  build  a  post,  and  take  active 

'Sitkan  Archipelago,  that  a  white  set-  possession  of  all  the  coast  and  islands 

tlement  was  made  there  in  the  summer  as  far  south  as  Noobha,  or  Vancouver 

of  1799,  and  years  and  years  before  Island.     He  knew  that  he  could  not 

one  was  made  at  Seattle  or  in  Portland,  prevent    those     "European     traders" 

When  the  Russians  who  were  settled  vessels  from  coming  in  shore  waters, 

at  Kodiak  and  Prince  William's  Land  but  he  knew  that  if  he  was  on  the 

ever  since  1763-64,  learned  that  Eng-  ground  there  all  the  time  with  supplies 

lish  and  French  trading  vessels  were  which  the  natives  coveted,  he  could  an- 

busy  in  the  waters  of  the  Sitka  Ar-  ticipate  and  secure  all  their  trade, 
chipelago  during  the  seasons  of  1797-         Stimulated  by  that  idea,     Baranov 

98,  Baranov  the  Chief  General  Mana-  left    Kodiak    and    Prince    William's 

ger  and  "Governor"  of  the    Russian-  Sound  early  in  May,  1799,     with     a 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  RUSSIAN  HUNTERS  DEVISED 


525 


large  party  of  his  own  Russian  hunters 
— some  20  of  therm,  with  a  priest,  and 
more  than  300  Kodiak  and  Aleutian 
Sea  otter  hunters.  The  natives  all  trav- 
eled in  their  hunting  canoes  or  "bidar- 
kas,"  while  Baranov  kept  company 
with  them  in  two  small  sloops  or  brigs 
of  about  150  or  200  tons  each. 

The  progress  of  the  party  was  slow, 
because  it  was  compelled  to  closely 
skirt  the  coast,  and  camp  ashore  every 
night,  and  if  the  weather  was  stormy, 
to  remain  there  in  those  camps  till  it 
was  clear  and  favorable.  It  was  not 
much  before  the  middle  or  end  of 
June  when  Baranov  decided  to  locate 
his  new  post  on  a  site  just  six  miles 
north  of  what  is  now  so  well  known  as 
the  town  of  Sitka. 

The  reason  why  he  did  not  locate 
then  on  the  present  Sitka  site  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  the  place  of 
chief  residence  of  the  Sitkan  tribe, 
which  was  the  largest  and  most  ener- 
getic as  a  sea  otter  hunting  village  that 
Baranov  had  knowledge  of,  north  of 
Vancouver's  Island,  or  "Nootha." 

He  therefore  determined  to  put  his 
trading  post  as  near  to  this  large  Sit- 
kan village  as  the  lay  of  the  land  per- 
mitted, and  yet  to  be  at  a  safe  and 
not  too  great  a  distance  for  trade 
with  it. 

It  should  be  said  that  the  Sitkans, 
and  indeed  all  the  natives  of  the  Ar- 
chipelago, resented  and  objected  to  the 
appearance  of  those  Aleutians  and 
Kodiak  hunters  who  came  with  Bara- 
nov. But  when  the  Russians  assured 
them  that  these  strangers  were  not  go- 
ing to  remain  as  hunters — were  only 
there  to  build  a  trading  post,  and  to  go 
home  as  soon  as  it  was  erected,  the 
skies  cleared  up,  and  the  Sitkans  be- 
came friendly. 

Soon  the  sound  of  axes  and  thud  of 
mallets  was  heard  in  the  virgin  forests 
of  "Old  Sitka,"  on  Baranov  Island,  and 
by  the  middle  or  end  of  August,  1799, 
a  conventional  "redoubt"  or  palisaded 
post  was  erected :  this  consisted  chiefly 


of  a  main  store,  or  block  house,  in  the 
center  of  a  large  stockade,  with  smaller 
cabins  facing  it,  for  the  shelter  of  the 
employees  and  their  families. 

On  or  about  the  30th  of  August,  the 
redoubt  "St.  Michael"  was  finished  and 
ready  for  occupancy.  Baranov  had 
arranged  for  a  formal  dedication  of  it, 
and  had  composed  the  accompanying 
chant  or  invocation,  which  he  recited 
when  the  place  was  consecrated  and 
named  on  this  August  day  aforesaid. 

It  will  be  observed  that  Baranov  be- 
lieved that  he  had  concluded  a  lasting 
peace  with  the  Sitkan  natives,  for  he 
declares  that  belief  in  verses  4  and 
11  of  the  foregoing  invocation. 

It  seems,  however,  that  Baranov  did 
not  live  up  to  his  agreement  with  the 
•Sitkans.  He  continued  to  bring  Aleu- 
tian and  Kodiak  hunters  down,  and 
turn  them  loose  after  sea  otters  every- 
where in  the  Archipelago.  This,  of 
course,  cut  into  the  volume  of  trade 
which  the  Sitkans  believed  themselves 
entitled  to. 

So,  taking  note  of  the  fact  that  Fort 
St.  Michael  was  not  on  guard  against 
them,  and  wholly  unsuspicious,  and 
that  it  could  be  easily  destroyed,  the 
Sitkans  resolved  to  make  way  with  it 
and  its  few  defenders.  They  surprised 
and  massacred  the  16  Russians  who 
were  in  charge  one  June  Sunday  in 
1802,  and  after  looting  all  the  stores, 
they  burned  the  buildings  to  the 
ground. 

The  story  of  how  Baranov  received 
the  news  while  absent  at  Kodiak  late 
in  the  season,  and  how  he  returned  in 
1804  to  rebuild  by  destroying  the  Sit- 
kan village  at  the  present  site  of  Sitka, 
is  another  well  recorded  chapter  in  the 
life  of  this  remarkable  man.  But  this 
record  of  his  dedication  of  Ft.  Saint 
Michael  has  never  been  published  be- 
fore, and  is  as  remarkable  and  striking 
as  anything  he  ever  did  during  his 
long,  stormy  administration  of  the  Rus- 
sian-American Company's  affairs  from 
1799  to  1818  inclusive. 


The  Great  Orations  of  the  Expositions 


By  Henry  /Aeade  Bland 


IT  IS  strikingly  significant  that  the 
two  central  personalities  in  Ameri- 
can thought,   Theodore    Roosevelt 
and  William  J.  Bryan,  should  come 
to  the  West  to  deliver  the  two  most 
important  Twentieth  Century  messages 
to  the  American  people.    It  illustrates 
more  than  anything  in  recent  years  the 
position  the  West  is  to  occupy  in  the 
work  of  the  Republic.     And  this  is 
well:  not  only  because  California  is 
naturally  a  land  of  striking  position 
and  adapted  to  the  performance  of  stir- 
ring deeds;  but  the  wealth  and  glory 
of  San  Francisco  and  the  daring  and 


genius  of  her  citizenry  makes  great 
thought  sure  of  ready  response.  These 
two  masterful  orations  are  well  worth 
serious  consideration. 

The  recently  retired  Secretary  of 
State  came  on  the  invitation  of  far-see- 
ing President  Moore  and  the  Directors 
of  the  Exposition  to  deliver  the  Inde- 
pendence Day  address.  That  he  had 
something  vital  to  say,  no  one  doubted 
— nor  could  it  be  doubted  the  time  and 
place  had  been  well  chosen.  On  the 
edge  of  the  westmost  city  by  the  shore 
of  the  westmost  sea,  amid  marvels 
commemorating  the  mightiest  triumph 


Roosevelt  talking  straight  and  direct  from  the  shoulder. 


Bryan  striking  a  highly  exalted  note. 


of  peace — this  was  an  occasion  wor- 
thy of  a  great  oration,  a  scene  worthy 
of  a  great  orator. 

The  crowd  that  had  waited,  some  as 
long  as  three  hours,  filled  the  broad 
open  air  auditorium  from  the  Jewel- 
Tower  to  the  Fountain  of  Energy,  and 
numbered  not  less  than  fifty  thousand 
— not  an  ordinary  sightseeing,  pick- 
nicking  crowd,  but  a  concourse  of 
thoughtful  Americans.  After  the  read- 
ing of  the  Declaration  there  were 
clamoring  shouts  for  "Bryan, 
Bryan!"  and  a  change  of  program 
brought  the  speaker's  immediate  in- 
troduction. The  murmur  of  voices  al- 
most instantly  ceased,  and  those  who 
could  hear  began  to  close  in  a  giant 
human  ring,  bent  on  catching  the  least 
word. 

It  was  truly  a  wonderful  sea  of  hu- 
manity he  faced,  the  greatest  convoca- 
tion, he  himself  said,  he  had  ever 
spoken  to.  There  had  been  but  slight 


attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Exposition 
officials  to  marshal  foreign,  State  or 
national  officialdom.  The  tens  of  thou- 
sands were  from  every  walk  of  life, 
and  they  came  spontaneously. 

The  Commoner  struck  a  highly  ex- 
alted note  in  the  first  few  clear  sen- 
tences. Pausing  to  speak  of  the  Ex- 
position as  unparalleled,  and  then  set- 
ting aside  all  intention  to  adulate  or 
indulge  in  happy  felicitation  on  na- 
tional greatness,  or  on  the  success  of 
a  great  celebration,  he  solemnly  set 
himself  to  his  task,  saying:  "Never 
before  have  I  had  an  opportunity  to 
speak  to  such  an  audience  as  this.  I 
dare  not  miss  this  opportunity  or  fail 
to  improve  it." 

The  unmeasured  seriousness  of  Wil- 
liam Jennings  Bryan  in  devotion  to 
high  ideals  was  manifest  in  this  con- 
secration to  his  sacred  duty.  He  was 
every  inch  an  orator.  It  was  the  living 
ideal  of  ethical  truth  bodied  forth — 


528 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


none  other  than  the  exalted  doctrines 
of  the  Prince  of  Peace.  "This  nation," 
•he  said,  "more  than  any  other  nation 
is  at  liberty  to  put  God's  truth  to  the 
test,  and  in  international  affairs  try 
the  efficacy  of  those  methods  which 
prove  successful  among  individuals." 
He  spoke  as  if  divining  what  was  in 
the  inmost  hearts  of  his  hearers,  one 
who  had  the  responsibility  of  their 
souls  upon  his;  as  if  he  were  saying 
the  things  which  should  lift  the 
shadow  of  war  from  his  country. 

He  founded  his  argument  deep  on 
abstract  principles  of  right,  putting  the 
value  of  human  life — the  human  soul 
— before  every  physical  consideration. 
He  pleaded  for  the  growth  of  the  in- 
dividual. "All  life  is  a  triumph  over 
the  law  of  gravitation.  Precedent  says 
"I  fear;"  progress  says  "I'll  try." 

He  went  to  Thomas  Jefferson,  from 
whom  he  drew  the  principle  "That  hu- 
man life  is  greater  in  value  than  prop- 
erty." He  pointed  out  that  Abraham 
Lincoln  emphasized  this  principle 
more  clearly  than  Jefferson.  Then  he 
traced  it  back  to  .the  Bible  and  Christ. 
'  'Is  not  the  life  more  than  meat,  and 
the  body  than  raiment?'  When  you 
strike  the  man  down  there  is  none  left 
to  use  the  property." 

It  was  the  old,  old  gospel  of  love  he 
spoke. 

The  matchless  orator's  message  sunk 
most  deep  when  he  pointed  out  the  po- 
sition the  United  States  occupies 
among  nations.  "We  must  solve  the 
problems  of  to-day  for  the  benefit  of 
all  the  world.  We  are  like  a  city  set 
upon  a  hill.  God  has  given  us  an  op- 
portunity to-day  such  as  no  other  na- 
tion ever  had,  that  may  never  come 
again,  to  lift  the  world  out  of  bondage 
of  brute  force. 

"And  we  cannot  overlook  another 
important  fact,  namely:  that  we  have 
the  machinery  by  which  peace  can  be 
preserved,  while  the  nations  of  Europe 
have  only  the  machinery  of  war.  We 
have  thirty  treaties  linking  us  to  three- 
quarters  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  globe 
and  pledging  us  to  the  investigation  of 
every  dispute  before  a  declaration  of 
war  or  the  commencement  of  hostili- 


ties. The  plan  embodied  in  these  trea- 
ties gives  us  an  honorable  means  of 
avoiding  hasty  action;  it  gives  us  an 
opportunity  to  appeal  to  the  sober  sec- 
ond thought  of  those  with  whom  we 
have  a  controversy.  These  treaties  do 
not  make  war  impossible.  We  can, 
under  these  treaties,  have  war  if,  af- 
ter due  deliberation,  the  people  really 
want  war,  but  they  give  the  parties  to 
the  treaties  a  chance  to  think  before 
they  shoot." 

At  last  in  the  climax  of  his  oration, 
raising  his  voice  till  it  re-echoed  far 
into  the  Court  of  the  Universe,  and  till 
those  on  the  far  outskirts  of  the  listen- 
ing thousands  caught  its  surge,  he  ut- 
tered the  benediction :  "And  may  the 
God  of  our  fathers  give  us  light  and 
keep  our  feet  in  the  path  of  truth  as  we 
strive  to  fulfill  the  high  mission  to 
which  he  has  called  our  country." 

In  judging  of  the  views  on  war  and 
peace  of  both  these  distinguished 
statesmen,  it  is  difficult  to  get  beyond 
the  pales  of  prejudice.  One  critic,  with 
an  eye  turned  into  the  political  past, 
tempers  his  judgment  by  saying,  Bryan 
is  an  idealist;  and  the  other  questions 
his  judgment;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  he  is  a  man  of  lofty  ideals,  and 
when  the  life  of  the  nation  is  in  dan- 
ger, to  whom  shall  we  look,  if  not  to 
men  of  high  ideals  ? 

Theodore  Roosevelt  came  to  the 
Exposition  as  the  guest  of  the  Expo- 
sition directors  and  of  the  people  of 
the  West,  because  his  was  the  presi- 
dential proclamation  that  made  the 
'construction  of  the  Panama  Canal  pos- 
sible, and  consequently  made  the  Pan- 
ama-Pacific Exposition  possible.  Im- 
portant and  unique  as  was  the  "Bryan 
Day"  of  the  Fair,  "Roosevelt  Day" 
was  even  more  striking  and  unusual. 
There  was  more  of  military  pomp  and 
gorgeous  parade,  all  in  harmony  with 
the  spirit  of  the  hour.  The  Court  of 
the  Universe  became  the  vast  amphi- 
theatre in  which  gathered  the  seventy 
thousand  who  crowded  in  to  hear.  As 
on  the  former  occasion  there  was  much 
to  suggest  splendor  of  occasion  and 
glory  of  message.  The  wisdom  of  the 
ages  look  down  upon  the  throng  from 


THE   GREAT   ORATIONS   OF  THE  EXPOSITION 


529 


splendid  facade,  spire,  and  dome. 
Here  was  civilization,  with  the  highest 
accentuation,  on  the  very  ground  where 
a  century  and  a  half  ago  lapped  the 
timeless  tide  upon  savage  lagoons  and 
shores. 

The  very  sea  upon  which,  in  plain 
sight,  great  warships  rode,  seemed 
conscious  of  the  presence  of  the  New 
World  spirit,  which,  since  the  days  of 
Balboa,  had  dreamed  of  the  great  gate- 
way at  Panama  between  the  Atlantic 
and  Pacific. 

The  one  man  in  California  whose 
oratory  could  rise  to  the  spirit  of  such 
an  occasion — Governor  Hiram  W. 
Johnson — presented  the  ex-President, 
and  from  that  moment  Rooseveltian 
spirit  dominated  the  hour. 

There  could  scarcely  be  a  greater 
contrast  than  between  the  oratory  of 
retired  Secretary  and  of  the  ex-Presi- 
dent. There  is  the  logic  of  Bryan,  fin- 
ished, measured  and  polished  to  the 
last  syllable,  with  an  unconscious  use 
of  the  arts  possessed  by  historic  world 
orators ;  pointed  with  epigram,  weight- 
ed with  period,  and  rounded  with  pero- 
ration, carrying  his  hearers  to  the  sub- 
lime heights  of  enthusiasm  or  to  the 
depths  of  passion,  holding  his  audi- 
ence upon  the  needle-balance  of  a  sin- 
gle word.  This  is  Bryan  driving  home 
his  Arcadian,  Christ-like  ideal. 

On  the  ether  hand,  the  oratory  of 
Roosevelt  ignores  or  is  unconscious 
of  traditionary  art.  He  is  the  man  with 
a  burning  idea,  who  takes  the  shortest 
cut  to  drive  it  to  the  hearts  of  his 
hearers.  He  talks  as  straight  and  as 
unconventionally  to  ten  thousand  as 
to  ten.  His  zeal  is  to  have  his  idea 
known  and  absorbed  and  believed.  He 
believes  in  himself,  strikes  straight 
from  the  shoulder,  divests  language  of 
all  conventionalism,  drops  into  the 
language  of  the  street  that  he  may  be 
more  clearly  understood,  thunders  and 
stamps,  and  by  sheer  weight  of  enthu- 
siasm carries  his  hearers  with  him. 
Even  the  seemingly  uncontrollable  fal- 
setto which  creeps  into  his  voice,  is 
utilized  to  accentuate  flashes  of  irony 
or  sarcasm. 

His  personality  is  catching,  and  it 


has  arrived  before  him.  The  70,000 
who  listened  to  him  in  the  Court  of  the 
Universe  knew  what  was  coming,  and 
that  they  were  going  to  touch  a  live 
wire.  They  were  pregnant  with  the 
spirit  of  Rooseveltianism.  The  spirit 
of  a  man  in  the  audience  who  was 
knocked -down  by  the  accidental  fall 
of  a  heavy  glass  electric  globe,  and  yet 
who  insisted  on  returning  to  hear  the 
speach  to  a  finish  after  the  surgeons 
had  fixed  him  up,  was  typical  of  the 
entire  concourse;  they  were  Roosevelt- 
ized,  and  ready  to  respond  to  Roose- 
veltian ideas. 

There  are  two  world  types  of  man- 
kind, the  ideal-realists  and  the  real- 
idealists.  The  first  approaches  his 
problem  from  an  ideal  standpoint.  If 
he  succeeds  he  must  ultimately  have 
his  idealism  touched  and  modified  by 
realism.  The  second  begins  with  the 
real,  and  if  he  amounts  to  anything  at 
all  must  continually  pull  himself  on 
and  up  by  the  ideal. 

Both  types  of  men  are  of  great  ser- 
vice to  humanity.  Both  Colonel  Roose- 
velt and  Colonel  Bryan  are  doing  an 
immense  service  to  humanity  by  in- 
terpreting two  all-important,  signifi- 
cant points  of  view.  Bryan  is  prob- 
ably doing  what  no  churchman  could 
do,  and  Roosevelt's  voice  is  stronger 
than  the  realistic,  materialistic  press. 
Both  go  to  the  Bible  to  give  point  and 
authority  to  their  doctrines.  The  ex- 
President's  reading  from  Ezekiel,  33d 
Chapter,  was  one  of  the  most  effective 
presentation  of  scripture-texts  ever 
presented  from  a  platform.  The  ex- 
traordinary thing  about  this  reading 
was  that  the  Colonel's  voice,  which  at 
times  during  the  two-hour  oration 
seemed  about  to  break,  in  this  final  ef- 
fort came  out  round  and  full,  and 
rolled  like  peals  of  thunder. 

One  secret  of  the  ex-President's 
power  is  that  he  is  clear-headed  and 
knows  where  he  is  going.  Nor  does 
he  ever  forget  his  attitude  of  fairness, 
which  is  his  ruling  passion.  It  is  not 
a  wonder  that  he  moved  in  his  Exposi- 
tion oration  in  the  role  of  popular  fav- 
orite. The  photograDher  who,  in  tak- 
ing his  picture  during  the  speech,  shut 


530 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


off  the  view  of  hundreds,  is  peremp- 
torily commanded  to  stop  because  he 
is  in  the  way  of  a  square  deal  to  the 
audience. 

Roosevelt  picks  up  and  hurls  at  his 
auditors  the  points  of  his  address  as  if 
hurling  so  many  bowlders.  The  fin- 
ished orator  rounds  out  a  period, 
pauses  and  gives  time  for  applause. 
Not  so  with  this  kind  of  an  orator.  He 
is  never  ready  for  the  applause  about 
to  come,  and  shakes  his  head  or 
waves  his  hand  impatiently  when  it 
breaks  in.  Put  with  his  vehemence, 
his  objection  to  the  recent  international 
peace  treaties  is,  to  the  Western  voter, 
practically  unanswerable. 

The  essence  of  Roosevelt's  doctrine 
of  war  and  its  relation  to  the  interest 
of  the  country,  as  we  glean  it  from  the 
two  hours'  oration  at  the  Exposition,  is 
to  be  found  in  his  personal  life  motto : 
"Be  ready."  Wordiness  to  him  is  er- 
ror, and  weakness  has  the  effect  of 
crime.  His  doctrine  does  not  include 
militarism  for  the  sake  of  militarism — 
the  danger  always  arising  from  a  pro- 
fessional standing  army — it  includes  a 
body  of  strong  citizens  alive  to  and 
trained  for  the  necessity  of  defense; 
but  also  alive  to  the  necessity  of  happy 
hearths  and  rich  and  useful  homes. 


Such  are  the  plain  messages  of  the 
Commoner  and  the  ex-President  to  the 
men  and  women  of  America — mes- 
sages of  greater  import  than  we  can 
now  conceive,  clouded  as  are  our 
views  by  the  cynicism  of  a  daily  press 
which  names  one  interpretation  a  "ser- 
mon," the  other  a  "harangue."  Yet 
out  of  the  discussion  of  the  two  views 
let  us  hope  there  shall  come  the  light 
which  shall  safely  guide  our  national 
destiny. 

It  is  fortunate  for  patriotic  America 
that  these  acknowledged  leaders  in 
national  thought  should  unselfishly  put 
the  relations  of  peace  and  war  so 
clearly  before  the  people;  and  it  is 
eminently  notable  that  out  of  the  Pan- 
ama-Pacific Exposition  should  come 
two  of  the  most  striking  messages  of 
recent  times.  It  is  also  significant  that 
the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition,  on  its 
face  a  celebration  of  the  greatest 
achievement  of  modern  times  of  peace, 
has  brought  out  these  orations,  not  as 
ornate  eulogies  upon  the  riches  and 
glory  of  the  nation,  but  as  thoughtful 
and  intellectual  analyses  of  the  means 
of  conservation  and  perpetuation  of 
the  nation's  honor,  riches  and  glory — 
discussions  of  the  vital  policies  which 
shall  lead  the  nation  to  endure. 


The  Tides  of  Love 


By  Belle  Willey  Gue 


Love  is  a  sea — so  wide — so  deep — 
That  in  its  bosom  wild  things  sleep : 
All  the  emotions  of  the  soul 
Beneath  its  placid  surface  roll: 
All  the  strange  longings  of  the  heart 
Are  of  its  mystery  a  part. 

The  strength  of  love  must  ebb  and  flow, 
The  waves  are  high,  the  waves  are  low. 
Love's  call  is  shallow  when  it  dies 
From  promises  to  speechless  sighs: 
But,  with  self-sacrifice  and  right 
Love's  tide  may  rise  to  heaven's  height. 


•    Christian  Science  As  It  Is 

By  Clifford  P.  Smith,   Committee  on  Publication  of  The  First 
Church  of  Christ,  Scientist,  in  Boston 


THE  BELIEFS  of  Pastor  Russell 
are  so  fundamentally  different 
from  Christian  Science  that  he 
could  hardly  be     expected     to 
speak  of  it  accurately,  but  his  articles 
on  this  subject,  which  you  published 
recently,  were  not  fair  even  to  him- 
self, for  they  put  him  in  the  position 
of   speaking   in   an   oracular  manner 
without  insight  or  appreciation. 

The  main  thread  of  Pastor  Russell's 
argument  was  woven  about  a  series 
of  mistaken  suppositions  regarding  the 
position  of  Christian  Science  toward 
the  item  of  human  experience  called 
death.  The  philosophy  of  Christian 
Science  was  supposed  to  be  as  fol- 
lows: Whoever  dies  commits  mortal 
error;  death  is  the  greatest  of  errors, 
and  one's  failure  to  overcome  it  here 
and  now  leaves  him  hopeless — he  has 
failed  in  the  last  moment  of  his  trial. 
The  conclusion  drawn  from  these  pre- 
mises was  that  the  death  of  Christian 
Scientists  disproves  the  truth  of 
Christian  Science.  The  fallacy  of  this 
conclusion,  however,  begins  with  the 
falsity  of  its  premises,  for  they  do  not 
represent  the  teachings  of  Christian 
Science  in  a  single  particular. 

The  position  of  Christian  Science 
with  reference  to  the  change  called 
death  is  simply  that  of  original  and 
unadulterated  Christianity.  When 
Christ  Jesus  said :  "If  a  man  keep  my 
saying,  he  shall  never  see  death,"  and 
when  he  said,  "Be  ye  therefore  per- 
fect, even  as  your  father  which  is  in 
heaven  is  perfect,"  he  lifted  up  an 
ideal  which  will  sooner  or  later  draw 
all  men.  But  it  is  not  only  in  the  be- 
lief called  "this  world"  that  we  have 


hope  in  Christ;  the  true  idea  must 
reign  in  your  thoughts  until  the  mortal 
qualities  of  human  consciousness  are 
wholly  eliminated.  The  passing  on  of 
a  Christian  Scientist  no  more  dis- 
proves the  truth  of  Christian  Science 
than  the  same  event  in  the  experience 
of  St.  Paul  disproves  his  statement 
that  "we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our 
being"  in  God.  Like  St.  Paul,  Chris- 
tian Scientists  have  perceived  the 
truth  of  being ;  they  have  complete  au- 
thority for  it  in  the  teaching  and  ex- 
ample of  the  Master.  They  have 
themselves  experienced  a  satisfying 
degree  of  proof,  and  they  do  not  re- 
gard any  human  event  as  final  or  cap- 
able of  closing  the  door  of  opportu- 
nity. Jesus  said,  "I  live  by  the 
Father,"  and,  "All  live  unto  Him." 

One  of  the  difficulties  encountered 
by  our  critic  while  speaking  of  Chris- 
tian Science  is  due  to  his  insistence 
on  its  being  a  system  of  negative  think- 
ing. Take  this  illustration :  "Christian 
Scientists  declare  that  the  ten  most  po- 
tent words  ever  written  are  the  first 
ten  words  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  scientific 
statement  of  being:  "There  is  no  life, 
truth,  intelligence,  nor  substance  in 
matter/'  I  have  been  a  daily  reader  of 
Christian  Science  literature  for  over 
fifteen  years,  and  have  talked  with  sev- 
eral thousand  Christian  Scientists,  yet 
I  never  read  or  heard  such  an  esti- 
mate from  a  Christian  Scientist.  If 
anybody  will  read  the  "Scientific  state- 
ment of  being,"  on  page  468  of  "Sci- 
ence and  Health,  with  Key  to  the 
Scriptures,"  to  which  this  critic  re- 
ferred, the  reader  will  find  it  to  be  a 
paragraph  of  six  sentences,  in  which 


CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE  AS  IT  IS 


533 


positive  and  negative  statements  are 
evenly  balanced.  In  form  and  in  sub- 
stance the  entire  paragraph  corre- 
sponds to  these  words  from  Christ 
Jesus,  "It  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth 
(giveth  life) ;  the  flesh  profiteth  noth- 
ing." For  any  one  to  say  that  Chris- 
tian Scientists  regard  the  ten  words 
in  question  as  the  most  potent  ever 
written,  would  be  like  saying  that 
Christianity  is  founded  on  the  un- 
profitableness of  the  flesh — on  the 
nothingness  of  Spirit's  opposite. 

When  Mrs.  Eddy  chose  a  single 
form  of  statement  corresponding  to  the 
words  quoted  by  Pastor  Russell,  she 
slpoke  affirmatively:  "Christian  Sci- 
ence .  .  .  rests  on  the  conception  of 
God  as  the  only  Life,  substance  and 
intelligence"  (Science  and  Health, 
p.  185.)  It  is  doubtless  true,  however, 
that  both  affirmations  of  truth  and  cor- 
responding denials  of  error  are  requi- 
site for  clear  thinking  when  thought 
has  been  confused.  This  was  particu- 
larly the  case  when  Christian  Science 
was  introduced  to  a  world  that  was  ac- 
customed to  regard  matter  no  less  than 
Spirit  both  real  and  good. 

Another  mistake  that  this  critic  in- 
sisted on  making  for  Christian  Scien- 
tists was  expressed  by  him  as  "their 
teaching  that  God  is  in  everything." 
There  is  no  such  teaching  in  Christian 
Science.  Mrs.  Eddy  has  said,  "Spirit, 
Soul,  is  not  confined  in  man,  and  is 
never  in  matter"  (Science  and  Health, 
p.  467.)  Christian  Science  is  based 
on  infinite  Spirit,  and  the  infinitude  of 
Spirit  means,  as  expressed  by  Mrs. 
Eddy,  "One  God  and  His  creation, 
and  no  reality  in  aught  else"  (Chris- 
tian Science  versus  Pantheism,  p.  9.) 
Therefore  the  entire  argumentative 
structure  that  Pastor  Russell  built  on 
the  supposition  that  "God  is  in  every- 
thing" as  the  teaching  of  Christian 
Science,  must  fall  for  lack  of  founda- 
tion. 

His  cavil  at  Mrs.  Eddy's  use  of  the 
word  "Principle"  as  a  synonym  for 
God,  showed  that  he  had  given  but 
very  superficial  consideration  to  the 
different  meanings  of  this  word  and 
the  propriety  of  giving  it  a  new  mean- 


ing. In  the  larger  dictionaries,  the 
primary  meaning  of  the  word  "princi- 
ple" is  origin,  source,  cause;  that  from 
•which  anything  proceeds;  fundamen- 
tal substance;  primordial  substance.  It 
has  been  used  by  lexicographers  in 
their  definitions  of  Soul,  or  Spirit,  as 
follows :  "Soul,  the  principle  of  thought 
and  action  in  man"  (Oxford  English 
Dictionary) ;  "Spirit,  the  principle  of 
life"  (Century  Dictionary) ;  "Spirit, 
the  universal  principle  imparting  life 
from  the  creator"  (Hastings'  Diction- 
ary ,of  the  Bible) ;  "Spirit,  the  princi- 
ple of  self-consciousness,  self-activity 
and  of  rational  power  in  general;  that 
which  signifies  a  likeness  in  man  to 
the  Divine  Being"  (Webster's  New  In- 
ternational Dictionary.) 

Taking  the  word  "principle"  as  thus 
in  use,  Mrs.  Eddy  gave  it  a  distinctly 
deific  meaning  which  she  distinguished 
by  means  of  a  capital  letter,  and  em- 
ployed the  word  "Principle"  with  sev- 
eral other  terms  "to  express  the  na- 
ture, essence  and  wholeness  of  Deity" 
(Science  and  Health,  p.  465.)  That  is 
to  say,  Mrs.  Eddy  did  with  the  word 
in  question  what  St.  John  did  with  the 
'word  love.  Such  is  "the  process  with 
every  great,  creative  religious  mind," 
writes  Professor  Rauschenbusch  on 
page  57  of  his  "Christianity  and  the 
Social  Crisis;"  the  connection  with 
the  past  is  maintained  and  the  old 
terms  are  used,  but  they  are  set  in 
new  connections  and  filled  with  new 
qualities." 

Pastor  Russell  also  found  fault  with 
Christian  Science  because  it  does  not 
agree  with  him  on  the  following  prop- 
ositions: "God  is  dealing  with  the 
world  as  criminals  under  death  sen- 
tence." "The  church  should  not  ex- 
pect divine  healing,  which  is  so  much 
of  restitution,  and  will  belong  to  the 
world  by  and  by,  after  the  Messiah's 
kingdom  shall  have  been  established." 
Christian  Science  agrees  that  true 
healing  depends  on  the  will  or  law  of 
God,  but  emphatically  differs  from 
everything  else  expressed  or  implied 
in  these  propositions.  Such  doctrines 
were  repudiated  over  five  hundred 
years  before  the  Christian  era,  indeed 


6 


534 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


they  should  have  been  obsolete  from 
the  days  of  Moses,  for  he  said,  speak- 
ing of  God,  "He  is  thy  life." 

According  to  the  teachings  of  in- 
spired prophets  whose  sayings  are  re- 
corded in  the  Old  Testament,  God  is 
just  to  each  individual,  and  does  not 
punish  any  one  for  what  another  has 
done,  nor  condemn  any  one  after  the 
occasion  for  punishment  has  ceased. 
(See  Psalms  Ixii.  11,  12;  Prov.  xxiv. 
12;  Isa.  Iv.  7;  Jer.  xxxii.  19;  Ezek. 
xviii.  1-3,  30-32;  xxxiii.  14-20.)  Some 
of  these  teachers  perceived  that  God's 
will  is  to  heal  or  restore,  and  to  give 
life  to  all  men.  (See  Psalms  xxiv. 
12-22;  xxxvi.  7-9;  xc.;  ciii.  1-6;  cvii. 
15-22.)  With  the  advent  of  -Christ 
Jesus,  the  law  of  divine  Love  was  fully 
revealed  in  its  universal  relation  to 
human  interests — "Even  the  very  hair 
of  your  head  are  all  numbered,"  and 
in  its  universal  availability  to  all  men 
— "It  is  not  the  will  of  your  Father 


which  is  in  heaven,  that  one  of  these 
little  ones  should  perish."  As  for  the 
postponement  of  healing  until  after  the 
establishment  of  a  Messianic  kingdom, 
Tie  clearly  taught  that  the  kingdom  of 
God  comes  upon  you  in  the  very  pro- 
cess of  healing.  (See  Luke  x.  9;  xi. 
20.) 

The  rejection  of  Mark  xvi.  15-18  by 
recourse  to  "higher  criticism,"  as  pro- 
posed by  the  same  critic,  would  not 
help  him  to  controvert  the  present  pos- 
sibility of  Christian  healing,  for  two 
parallel  sayings  would  still  remain  in- 
tact. 

No  criticism  has  yet  found  a  rea- 
son for  expunging  the  Master's  com- 
mand to  his  disciples,  "Heal  the  sick," 
and  his  extension  of  it  to  "all  nations," 
as  recorded  by  St.  Matthew,  nor  any 
reason  for  deleting  these  words  pre- 
served by  St.  John,  "He  that  believeth 
in  me,  the  works  that  I  do  shall  he  do 
also." 


THE  END  OF  THE  TRAIL 


Far  spent  and  bowed  with  travel  toil; 
Of  lure  and  "wanderlust"  the  spoil, 
Or  broken  by  dire  Want,  were  they — 
These  hardened  travelers  at  bay? 

How  fresh  and  daring  came  they  forth 
One    blushing    dawn    and    journeyed 

north ; 

The  tang  of  Earth,  the  rush  of  Air 
Matched  to  the  senses  of  the  pair. 

How  to  this  desperate  plight  they  fared 
Till  man  and  beast  nor  knew  nor  cared. 
What  stress  of  storm,  or  tortuous  way 
Gripped,  harrowed  them;  ah,  who 
shall  say? 

The  "trail"  perchance,  too  far  and  long, 
That  first  was  followed  with  a  song, 
Beset  by  some  relentless  foe, 
Became  a  "trek"  of  pain  and  woe. 

ELIZABETH  CRIGHTON. 


Ayths  of  Aonterey 

(Concluded) 
By  Grace  AVacFarland 


Junipero's     Healing    Handkerchief 

OF  ALL  the  relics  given,  after 
Padre     Serra's    death,    to  the 
grief  stricken  soldiers  and  civ- 
ilians and    heart-broken    neo- 
phytes, perhaps  none  was  more  ten- 
derly kept  nor  proved  more  wonderiul 
than  the  silk  handkerchief  which  was 
apportioned  to  the  young  surgeon  at 
Monterey. 

Many  years  after,  the  surgeon  was 
called  upon  to  attend  a  sailor  who  had 
been  unable  to  sleep  for  several  days 
on  account  of  a  violent  headache  which 
all  drugs  had  failed  to  cure.  He  tried 
the  usual  remedies  and  found  them 
useless.  A  sudden  thought  came  to 
him.  Taking  the  sacredly  guarded 
handkerchief  from  its  hiding  place 
among  his  treasured  possessions,  he 
very  carefully  bound  it  on  the  sailor's 
aching  head.  The  man  immediately 
fell  asleep.  For  hours  the  surgeon  sat 
by  his  side  and  watched  for  some  sign 
of  returning  life.  Toward  evening  his 
patient  awakened,  his  headache  gone, 
with  a  ravenous  appetite  in  its  place. 
Ever  after,  when  some  case  baffled 
the  skill  of  the  surgeon,  he  took  the 
handkerchief  and  bound  it  on  the 
patient.  His  faith  was  always  re- 
warded. Padre  Junipero's  handker- 
chief never  failed  to  heal  the  sick. 

The  Night   Watch 

The  Commandante  long  wondered 
why  his  soldiers  were  so  eager  to  ob- 
tain a  place  on  the  night  guard,  but 
never  could  learn  their  reason.  At 
last  he  decided  to  start  a  strict  inves- 
tigation of  motive.  There  had  been 
trouble  with  smugglers  all  along  the 


coast.  He  feared  that  there  were  more 
valuable  prizes  to  be  won  by  helping 
land  contraband  silks  and  other  im- 
ports than  could  be  coaxed  from  the 
Monte  table. 

Each  man  was  questioned  about  his 
experiences  on  the  preceding  night 
and  other  nights  of  his  watch.  No  re- 
sult. Each  was  offered  a  change  to 
the  day  watch.  All  refused.  It  was 
suggested  that  the  time  of  each  watch 
be  shortened.  All  eagerly  agreed,  and 
there  was  a  general  excitement.  The 
very  best  men  of  his  command  wanted 
the  extra  night  watches. 

Baffled  at  every  point,  the  Comman- 
dante called  a  young  private  of  whom 
he  was  especially  fond  to  his  own 
quarters.  "Why  do  you  all  clamor  for 
the  night  watch  Miguel  ?"  he  asked. 

"Because,  Commandante,  whenever 
the  watch  is  changed,  Padre  Serra,  the 
great  Padre  Serra  who  loved  us  all  so 
much,  comes  and  pronounces  a  bless- 
ing upon  us  as  we  take  our  places. 
Only  in  the  night  watches,  Comman- 
dante, can  we  receive  his  blessing,  for 
only  then  does  he  come." 

Through  many  weeks  the  Comman- 
dante himself  stood  watch  with  his 
men  during  the  long,  lonely  hours  of 
the  night. 

Rosary 

The  little  sacristy  of  Mission  San 
Carlos  was  never  so  entirely  neglected 
as  the  main  chapel.  When  people  were 
stealing  Mission  tiles  for  barns  and 
woodshed  roofs,  a  thatched  roof  was 
put  over  this  little  room.  Sand  was 
not  allowed  to  drift  in  heaps  upon  its 
floor,  and  weeds  found  no  haven  there. 

No  one  was  ever  seen  entering  or 


536 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


leaving  the  Mission,  but  at  night  trav- 
elers along  the  road  sometimes  heard 
sounds  as  of  some  strange,  unearthly 
singing.  There  was  no  light  in  the 
church,  and  wayfarers  feared  to  inves- 
tigate lest  the  songs  prove  only  a  snare 
set  by  the  Evil  One. 

When  one,  braver  than  the  rest,  crept 
cautiously  to  the  chapel,  he  found  a 
group  of  aged  Indians  in  the  chapel. 
They  were  singing  as  best  they  could 
from  memory,  some  of  the  chants  Pa- 
dre Serra  had  taught  them  when  they 
were  children.  In  their  midst  was  a 
sick  man. 

In  response  to  the  visitor's  gentle 
questions,  they  told  how,  since  the  Mis- 
sion was  deserted,  and  no  one  ever 
said  Mass  there  any  more,  they  came 
alone,  in  the  night,  when  no  white 
man  knew,  to  "say  Rosary"  as  Padre 
Serra  had  taught  them.  Sometimes, 
they  said,  especially  on  San  Carlos 
,Day,  he  rose  from  his  grave  behind  the 
altar  rail  and  blessed  them  as  of  old. 
They  always  brought  their  sick  with 
them,  for  when  he  appeared  the  sick 
were  healed  by  his  blessing. 

San  Carlos  Day 

A  similar  legend  of  Padre  Serra's 
miraculous  appearance  and  participa- 
tion in  ghostly  ceremonies  is  told  in 
Richard  White's  poem,  "Midnight 
Mass." 

November  4th  is  San  Carlos  Day, 
;t  apart  in  the  Cathe^ic  calendar  as 
the  special  day  on  which  to  honor  San 
Carlos  Borromeo  for  whom  Mission 
San  Carlos  was  named.  This  legend 
relates  that,  on  that  day,  Padre  Serra 
and  the  whole  company  of  priests,  sol- 
diers and  neophytes  who  lie  buried  in 
and  around  the  old  mission,  rise  from 
their  graves  "Midnight  Mass  to  cele- 
brate." 

When  this  ghostly  ceremony  is 
ended,  all  return  to  their  weed  grown 
resting  places,  there  to  stay  for  an- 
other year,  when  they  rise  again  to  do 
honor  to  the  patron  Saint  of  Mission 
San  Carlos  del  Carmelo  de  Monterey, 
formerly  chief  of  the  Missions  of  Cali- 
fornia. 


The  Padre's  Eyes 

Among  the  superstitious  neophytes, 
Padre  Serra  and  his  fellow  Franciscans 
were  worshiped  as  supernatural  be- 
ings, second  in  power  only  to  the  God 
they  bade  the  Indians  adore.  Even  the 
simplest  device  of  the  white  man 
seemed  to  these  people  a  miracle  of 
the  gods. 

It  was  a  never-ending  source  of 
amazement  to  their  simple  minds  that 
if  one  grew  restless  and  inattentive 
while  the  Padre  said  the  long  Latin 
sentences  of  Mass,  he  was  sure  to  be 
called  and  sternly  reproved,  after  the 
services,  for  his  sin.  Now  the  Padre 
stood  with  his  back  toward  the  neo- 
phytes during  Mass,  and  they  said  he 
must  have  eyes  that  could  see  around 
corners,  like  God's. 

On  either  side  of  the  main  altar 
hung  a  queer  shaped,  bright  object 
which  the  Padre  carefully  covered  be- 
fore leaving  the  chapel  after  Mass.  No 
one  noticed  them,  even  seemed  aware 
of  their  existence. 

These  objects  were  a  convey  and  a 
concave  mirror,  in  which  the  Padre 
could  see  his  neophytes,  but  so  hung 
that  they  could  see  nothing  but  the 
brilliance  of  these  discs  as  they  hung 
on  the  chapel  wall. 

An  Avenue  of  Crosses. 

When  Commodore  Sloat  captured 
Monterey,  Mission  San  Carlos  was,  in 
the  language  of  an  American  officer 
who  visited  it  at  that  time,  "A  quaint 
'old  church,  falling  to  decay,  with 
crumbling  tower  and  belfry,  broken 
roofs,  and  long  lines  of  mud  built 
dwellings,  all  in  ruins."  Its  doorways 
were  choked  with  sand,  its  paths  hid- 
den by  weeds,  for  there  were  no  wor- 
shipers at  San  Carlos. 

All  who  journeyed  from  Monterey 
southward  along  the  coast  must  travel 
the  old  Mission  road,  which  came  to  be 
called  the  Avenue  of  Crosses. 

Almost  every  tree  and  stump  beside 
the  road  bore  its  rude  cross  made  of 
twigs  or  tules,  or  whatever  other  ma- 
terial the  traveler  had  found  handy. 


Monument  erected  at  Monterey  to  commemorate  the  arrival  in  California,  on 
June  3,  1770,  and  founding  of  the  early  Mission  in  California.  The  monu- 
ment was  erected  by  Jane  L.  Stanford  in  1891. 


538 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


The  Evil  One  held  high  carnival 
among  the  ancient  cypresses  and  moss 
hung  pines  on  the  road  to  Carmelo,  and 
only  by  erecting  crosses  could  they  es- 
cape his  baleful  influence  and  skilfully 
hidden  snares. 

Even  with  all  these  precautions, 
many  weird  adventures  befell  the 
wayfarer  who  was  so  unfortunate  as 
to  be  compelled  to  travel  the  forest 
road  after  dark. 

Satan's  Chickens 

An  old  lady,  Senora  Migueles,  living 
on  a  ranch  below  Carmelo,  once  came 
to  Monterey  to  do  some  shopping.  She 
stayed  in  town  rather  late,  and  just  as 
she  was  starting  on  the  Mission  road, 
homeward  bound,  a  heavy  fog  blew  in, 
making  it  dark  as  night. 

At  the  Avenue  of  Crosses  she 
stopped  her  noisy  cart,  got  out,  fast- 
ened a  twig  cross  to  the  nearest  tree, 
climbed  back  into  the  cart  and  drove 
on,  all  the  while  devoutly  telling  her 
beads. 

When  she  rounded  the  turn  at  the 
hill  top  which  shut  Monterey  from 
view,  Signora  Migueles  heard  the  soft 
"cluck-cluck"  of  a  mother  hen  and  the 
frightened  "peep-peep"  of  a  lost  chick. 
She  recalled  stories  of  traps  set  by 
Satan  for  unwary  ones,  and  listened 
long  and  earnestly.  There  was  no  mis- 
taking that  noise. 

No  harm  could  befall  her,  she  felt 
sure,  because  of  the  cross  and  her 
carefully  numbered  beads.  One  more 
hen  and  a  brood  of  chicks  would  help 
greatly  on  the  ranch.  She  got  out  and 
began  peering  among  the  bushes.  No 
sign  of  either  hen  or  chick. 

She  finally  decided  to  abandon  the 
search,  and  much  perturbed,  clambered 
back  into  her  cart.  As  she  grasped  the 
reins  ready  to  start  off,  the  long  sought 
hen  flew  into  a  nearby  tree. 

Senora  Migueles  said  the  hen  had  a 
forked  tail  and  one  foot  was  a  cloven 
hoof. 

The  Cloven  Hoof 

A  cloven  hoof  where  some  other  sort 
of  foot  should  have  been  was  very  fre- 
quently the  only  way  in  which  travel- 


ers recognized  the  manifestations  of 
Satan. 

Young  Senor  Galverez  was  gallop- 
ing along  the  Mission  road  on  his  way 
to  a  fandango  at  the  Washington  Hotel 
in  Monterey,  singing  and  thinking  of 
Marie,  the  pretty  maid  whom  he  was 
courting.  So  busy  was  he  with  these 
thoughts  that  he  forgot  to  fasten  a 
cross  on  the  Avenue  of  Crosses. 

In  the  midst  of  the  forest,  he  was 
startled  by  a  baby  crying.  It  was  such 
a  pitiful  cry  that  he  pulled  his  horse 
up  short,  listening  intently.  The  cry- 
ing continued. 

Some  more  of  the  Indians'  doings, 
he  thought.  They  must  have  stolen 
the  baby,  then  become  frightened  and 
left  it  there. 

He  searched  among  the  weeds  and 
bushes  and  soon  found  the  baby.  With 
it  in  his  arms,  Senor  Galvarez  mounted 
his  horse  and  galloped  on. 

As  he  cuddled  the  baby  closer  to 
keep  it  warm,  he  crossed  himself.  Im- 
mediately one  tiny  foot  peeped  out 
from  the  long  dress.  It  was  a  cloven 
hoof. 

Realizing  that  this  was  a  snare  of 
the  Devil,  and  no  human  baby,  he 
hurled  it  against  the  nearest  tree.  The 
babe,  with  an  awful  shriek,  vanished 
into  thin  air.  Senor  Galvarez  contin- 
ued his  journey  without  further  moles- 
tation, but  henceforth  did  not  neglect 
to  put  a  cross  on  some  tree  along  the 
Avenue  of  Crosses. 

A  Dare 

Some  of  the  weirdest  of  these  haunt- 
ed road  legends  are  told  in  "Monterey, 
Cradle  of  California's  Romance." 

A  group  of  young  profligates  were 
scoffing  one  evening  at  the  tales  of 
adventure  on  Carmel  road.  The  bold- 
est suddenly  startled  them  all  by  say- 
ing that  he  had  just  as  soon  walk  that 
road  alone  at  midnight. 

The  others  picked  up  his  idle  words 
and  proposed  to  put  him  to  the  test 
that  very  night.  He  agreed.  As  proof 
that  he  actually  went  to  San  Carlos,  he 
was  to  drive  a  specially  marked  nail 
into  the  Mission  wall. 

Shortly  before  midnight  he  wrapped 


The  famous  adobe  of  the  rosebush,  a  romance  of  the  Spanish  regime. 


On  the  beach  at  Monterey 


his  Spanish  cloak  about  him,  took 
hammer  and  marked  nail,  and  set  out, 
singing  a  love  song  as  he  went. 

Every  rod  of  the  way  grew  longer 
than  the  last;  at  each  step  the  black- 
ness seemed  heavier;  his  feet  dragged; 
the  night  was  full  of  noises;  his  song 
died  away  in  a  frightened  cry. 

At  last  he  saw,  close  ahead,  the  dim 
form  of  the  Mission,  staggered  up  to 
it,  raised  his  hand  and  drove  the  nail 
into  the  wall.  Terrified  by  the  sound 
of  his  own  hammer  he  turned  to  run 
away.  He  could  not  move;  something 
'held  him  fast  as  though  bound  with 
iron  to  the  wall. 

Next  morning  his  friends,  coming 
to  see  the  outcome  of  their  "dare," 
found  him  still  standing  by  the  wall, 
dead.  The  nail  was  driven  through  one 
corner  of  his  cloak,  holding  him  there, 
even  in  death. 

Such  vengeance  was  wreaked  on 
those  who  desecrated  the  Queen  of 
California's  Mission. 

Mission   Meadows. 

Dire  punishment  frequently  fell  on 
the  heads  of  those  who  desecrated 
even  the  Mission  grounds  where  the 
neophytes  and  Padres  slept. 

When  the  Americans  took  posses- 


sion of  California  the  Missions  had  al- 
ready been  deprived  of  most  of  their 
land  by  Royal  Decree.  There  was  no 
one  to  fix  the  boundaries  or  defend  the 
rights  of  these  fast  crumbling  build- 
ings. The  Franciscans  had  been 
driven  out.  The  pressing  need  of  es- 
tablishing and  maintaining  a  govern- 
ment left  the  American  officials  no 
time  for  attending  to  land  claims. 

In  the  fertile  valley  of  El  Rio  Car- 
melo  many  Gringo  ranchers  settled. 
One  of  these,  being  very  greedy  for 
land,  carefully  plowed  the  fields  to  the 
very  walls  of  San  Carlos.  The  thrifty 
farmer  did  not  pause  in  his  furrows 
when  his  plow  turned  up  skulls  and 
skeletons.  Land  was  worth  almost  a 
dollar  an  acre,  and  he  wanted  a  big 
crop. 

Buzzards  came  to  wail  over  the 
bones,  long  stripped  of  any  flesh, 
which  his  plowing  laid  bare.  Indians 
refused  to  work  there.  Crows  and 
ravens  feasted  on  the  broadly  scat- 
tered seed.  Harvest  time  found  the 
field  as  barren  as  spring  had  left  it. 

The  farmer's  wife  died  before  an- 
other planting  season.  Two  sons  who 
sowed  the  second  spring  went  insane 
in  the  midst  of  their  work  and  killed 
each  other.  A  daughter  ran  away  with 
a  man  who  only  abused  her,  and  be- 


IN  MINOR  KEY 


541 


fore  harvest  time  she,  too,  was  dead. 
The  Mission  Meadows  bore  no  crop. 

Then  the  farmer  ceased  to  plow  and 
plant  on  the  graves,  and  reaped  no 
more  punishment  for  his  wanton  dese- 
cration of  the  tombs  of  San  Carlos.  . 

Silver. 

Bancroft,  the  historian,  recounts  a 
mining  legend  of  the  Monterey  hills 
that  has  persisted  until  the  present 
day. 

While  California  was  still  a  Mexi- 
can province,  many  Americans  settled 
and  established  trading  companies  at 
Monterey  and  other  ports.  It  was  easy 
for  the  Mexicans  to  dispose  of  many 
things  to  these  Gringoes  about  which 
they  might  have  had  to  answer  embar- 
rassing questions  had  the  government 
officials  been  consulted. 

Senora  Marie  Romero,  a  widow  who 
had  gone  to  some  hot  springs  back  in 


the  hills  to  cure  her  rheumatism,  was 
one  who  took  advantage  of  this  op- 
portunity. 

With  the  aid  of  her  two  children  she 
mined  a  little  silver  near  her  house, 
smelted  it  and  sold  the  crudely  shaped 
bars  to  Captain  Cooper,  a  Gringo 
trader. 

Some  of  the  Mexican  officials,  learn- 
ing from  the  Captain  the  source  of  his 
silver  bars,  determined  to  find  the  mine 
and  take  it  as  contraband  mining.  They 
found  Marie  Romero  in  bed  with  her 
rheumatism  and  unable  to  get  up  at 
all.  The  children  denied  all  knowl- 
edge of  the  mine.  Though  the  officers 
searched  every  nook  of  the  nearby 
hills,  they  could  never  find  it  nor 
catch  them  at  their  mining. 

Yet,  somewhere  in  the  hills  just 
back  of  Monterey  near  the  hot  spring 
is  Marie  Romero's  silver  mine  with  an 
undug  fortune  for  its  finder. 


IN   AINOR   KEY 


When  I  am  dead  and  gone,  bright  May 

Will  beckon  children  out  to  play 

Among  her  flowers ;  and  joyous  June 
Lure  lovers  'neath  her  plenilune ; 

And  Mother  Earth  keep  holiday. 

At  morn,  the  lark  light  winged  and  gay 
Will  flood  the  meadows  with  his  lay, 
Men's  hearts  athrob  take  up  the  tune, 
When  I  am  dead. 

No  whit  the  world  its  work  will  stay ; 

My  friends  will  go  their  wonted  way; 

E'en  she  who'll  weep  me  most,  how  soon 
She'll  smile  because  mere  breath's  a  boon, 

Love  ris'n  from  out  love's  ashes  gray, 
When  I  am  dead ! 


HARRY  COWELL. 


Golden  Age  at  Hand 


By    C.  T.  Russell 

Pastor  New  York,   Washington  and  Cleveland  Temples  and  the 
Brooklyn  and  London  Tabernacles 


"And  He  that  sat  upon  the  Throne 
said,  'Behold,  I  make  all  things  new'  " 
— Revelation  21 :5. 

BIBLE  chronology  shows  that  in 
1875  we  entered  upon  a  great 
Sabbath  of  one  thousand  years. 
Six  great  Days,  each  a  thousand 
years  long,  were  behind  us,  and  the 
final  one  thousand  years  there  began. 
This  great  Week  of  seven  thousand 
years  will  witness,  neither  the  end  of 
God's  dealings  with  humanity  nor  the 
destruction  of  the  world,  but  the  com- 
pletion of  the  creation  of  our  race. 
By  that  time  the  earth  will  be  a  world- 
wide Paradise;  the  human  family, 
brought  to  perfection,  will  have  filled 
the  earth,  according  to  the  original 
Divine  Program,  and  propagation  will 
have  ceased.  Originally  man  was  in 
God's  likeness  and  "very  good."  The 
sex  division  was  merely  for  the  propa- 
gation of  the  race,  and  not  designed  to 
be  permanent. — Genesis  1:28;  Luke 
20:35,36. 

It  was  never  more  the  Divine  pur- 
pose that  man  should  contend  with 
sickness,  sorrow,  pain,  weakness  and 
death  itself  than  that  the  angels  should 
be  thus  afflicted.  The  same  God  that 
created  the  angels,  and  gave  them  hap- 
piness and  perfection,  created  men  and 
properly  endowed  him  at  the  begin- 
ning. The  present  difference  between 
the  perfection  of  the  angels  and  the 
decrepitude  of  humanity — mental, 
moral  and  physical — is  explained  by 
the  Bible  alone.  It  tells  that  Adam 
was  originally  perfect  and  pleasing  to 
God,  and  that  his  rejection  by  God  and 
his  subjection  to  death  and  all  its  con- 
comitants are  the  results  of  his  dis- 
obedience in  Eden. — Romans  5:12. 

The  Turning  Point — Divine  Mercy 

There  was  no  turning  point  so  far  as 
the  Divine  Purpose  was  concerned. 


The   Bible  assures  us  that  God  pur- 
posed human  redemption  from  sin  and 
death  from  the  very  beginning.     But 
the  first  manifestation  of  that  Purpose 
was  the  turning-point  so  far  as  human 
observation  discerned.     That  turning- 
point  was  the  birth  of  Jesus,  who  was 
born  into  the  world,  not  sinful  and  im- 
perfect like  Adam's  race,  but  especi- 
ally born  "holy,  harmless,     undefiled 
and  separate  from  sinners,"  that  He 
might  become  the  Redeemer  of  men 
and  thus  make  possible  their  recovery 
from  imperfect,  dying  conditions.    His 
birth   of  the   Virgin   stands     related, 
therefore,  to  the  great  Divine  Plan  re- 
specting His  death,  which  really  began 
at  Jordan,  when  He  consecrated  Him- 
self to  death,  and  was  baptized     by 
John,  and  which  was  completed  when 
on  Calvary  He  cried,  "It  is  finished!" 
The  next  step  in  the  Divine  Pro- 
gram was  Jesus'  resurrection.     Put  to 
death  in  flesh,  He  was  quickened  in 
spirit,  still  more  glorious  than  before 
He  was     made     flesh.     (Philippians 
2:9-11.)     The  next  step  in  the  pro- 
gram was  the  anointing  of  the  most 
holy  of  His  followers  to  be  fellow- 
members  of  the  same  glorious  com- 
pany under  His  Headship.    This  took 
place  at  Pentecost,  and  the  work  there 
begun  has  continued  for  more     than 
eighteen  centuries.    As  our  Lord  there 
anointed  the  most  holy  of  the  Jews 
and  continued  to  anoint  all  who  would 
be  members  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  so 
in  due  time  He  began  to  anoint  the 
most  holy  amongst  the  Gentiles — those 
who  would  become  members  of  the 
same  Body,  which  is  His  Church. 

The  Divine  Purpose  is  that  the  risen 
Christ,  the  Second  Adam,  shall  have  a 
Bride  class,  the  second  Eve — a  Divine- 
ly foreordained  number.  These  eigh- 
teen centuries  have  been  used  of  the 
Lord  for  the  selection,  or  election,  of 


GOLDEN  AGE  AT  HAND 


543 


this  Church  to  be  His  joint-heirs  in 
His  Kingdom;  and  as  soon  as  this  elect 
number  shall  have  been  demonstrated, 
their  loyalty  proved,  etc.,  this  Age  will 
end  and  the  New  Age  be  fully  inau- 
gurated. Many  Bible  students  agree 
with  me  that  we  are  very  near  the  time 
when  the  Church  will  be  completed, 
and  by  the  glorious  change  of  the  First 
Resurrection  be  made  like  the  Lord — 
spirit  beings,  "partakers  of  the  Divine 
nature."  (1  John  3:2;  2  Peter  1:4.) 
This  will  usher  in  the  next  step  of  the 
Divine  Program — the  Messianic  King- 
dom, with  Christ  and  His  Church- 
Bride  associated  with  Him  in  the 
power  and  great  glory  necessary  for 
the  ruling,  judging  and  uplifting  of  all 
the  families  of  the  earth. 

If  the  Divine  Program  has  consumed 
so  much  time  in  getting  ready  for  the 
blessing  of  the  world,  what  a  great 
blessing  must  be  designed!  This  is 
fully  attested  by  both  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments.  They  speak  of  the  New 
Dispensation  now  dawning  as  Times  of 
Restitution,  Times  of  Refreshing. 
(Acts  3:19.)  They  tell  us  that  the 
earth  will  yield  her  increase;  and  this 
we  see  already  beginning,  as  abund- 
antly testified.  They  tell  us  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  will  fill 
the  whole  world,  breaking  the  shackles 
of  ignorance  and  superstition.  This 
we  see  abundantly  witnessed  on  every 
hand. 

Earth's  Coming  Glory 

The  next  step  in  the  Divine  Program 
which  is  about  to  begin  will  require, 
the  Bible  says,  a  thousand  years,  and 
will  accomplish  all  that  God  has  de- 
clared. The  earth  will  be  brought  to 
perfection.  Even  now  we  see  evidences 
of  this  in  the  wonderful  fruits  and 
flowers  of  our  day,  far  superior  to 
those  of  the  past  in  general,  since 
Eden's  bloom  and  beauty  were  lost. 

The  point  I  am  emphasizing  is  that 
Millennial  blessings  are  not  coming  to 
the  world  by  a  process  of  evolution,  but 
as  a  result  of  God's  lifting  the  veil 
from  our  eyes  and  permitting  us  to  see 
what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it.  The  same 
operation  of  Divine  providence  is 


manifested  in  all  the  great  inventions 
of  our  day.  These  were  not  gradually 
evolved  during  the  past  six  thousand 
years,  but  have  practically  sprung  into 
existence  before  our  eyes — very  many 
of  them  during  the  past  40  years;  all 
of  them,  I  might  say,  within  the  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  years  from  1799, 
a  period  known  in  the  Bible  as  the  Day 
of  God's  preparation.  (Nahum  2:3.) 
During  this  period  God  has  been  pre- 
paring the  world  for  the  Millennium. 

Our  great  inventors  acknowledge 
that  their  work  is  not  so  much  the  re- 
sult of  personal  effort,  but  rather  a 
kind  of  inspiration.  Their  eyes  of 
understanding  opened,  and  things  kept 
secret  since  the  foundation  of  the 
world  stood  plainly  before  them,  and 
were  readily  put  into  practical  form. 
It  is  the  same  respecting  the  progress 
in  Bible  study  and  in  the  understand- 
ing of  the  Divine  Plan  of  the  Ages.  It 
came,  not  by  plodding  study,  but 
rather  as  an  illumination  of  the  mind 
by  the  Holy  Spirit;  for  God's  due  time 
had  come  when  those  of  honest  mind 
should  know  the  Truth. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  imagine  that 
such  wonderful  conditions  as  have  be- 
come common  in  our  day — such  won- 
derful knowledge  of  the  Bible  as  is 
now  possible  to  God's  Elect,  and  such 
wonderful  fruits,  flowers,  etc. — should 
be  only  the  beginning  of  God's  bless- 
ings. Yet  it  must  be  so;  it  must  be 
that  we  are  merely  on  the  verge  of  still 
greater  things — physical  and  mental 
blessings  for  all  mankind. 

Doctrines  of  Demons  Interfere 

We  now  see  clearly  that  the  horrible 
doctrines  of  the  Dark  Ages  so  be- 
clouded our  mental  vision  and  so  stag- 
nated thought  as  to  handicap  the  world 
in  respect  to  every  matter  of  progress 
and  intelligence.  Our  creeds  of  the 
Dark  Ages  deceived  us  into  thinking 
of  the  Almighty  as  a  cunning,  power- 
ful Being  who  had  planned  our  injury 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
who  purposed  to  torture  eternally  more 
than  ninety-nine  per  cent  of  the  bil- 
lions He  had  created.  Under  these 
mental  delusions,  the  Bible  came  back 


544 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


to  God's  people  after  it  had  been  ex- 
plained by  the  creeds  for  twelve  hun- 
dred years.  When  our  fathers  began 
to  study  the  Bible  afresh,  their  minds 
were  so  impregnated  with  what  the 
Bible  styles  "doctrines  of  demons," 
that  they  were  looking  for  devilish 
things  and  made  them  out  of  Scrip- 
tural statements  which  had  no  such 
significance. 

Our  Unscriptural  Expectations 

Christians  have  long  realized  that 
God  does  not  purpose  to  leave  the 
world  forever  in  a  sin  and  death  con- 
dition. But  they  have  looked  for 
Divine  victory  in  the  wrong  direction, 
because  they  have  accepted  the  theo- 
ries of  the  Dark  Ages  formulated  when 
the  Bible  was  not  in  the  hands  of  the 
people.  The  theory  was  that  God 
wished  the  church  to  establish  the  Mil- 
lennium by  converting  the  world  from 
sin  to  righteousness.  An  endeavor  has 
been  made  to  follow  that  theory.  In- 
quisitions and  persecutions  were  in- 
voked to  force  the  people  into  church 
membership.  How  successful  it  was 
is  witnessed  by  conditions  in  Europe 
at  the  present  time. 

•  Great  Britain  claims  95  per  cent 
Christians,  Germany  the  same,  Russia 
about  the  same,  while  Italy  claims  that 
all  her  people  are  Christians.  In  this 
fashion  they  have  been  attempting  to 
convert  the  world — by  calling  people 
Christians  who  were  not  Christians  at 
all,  and  by  including  their  names  on 
church  records.  By  these  methods 
they  have  counted  up  a  total  of  400 
million  Christians,  as  against  a  total  of 
1600  millions  of  earth's  pouulation. 
Thus  the  world  is  not  half  Christian, 
even  of  the  nominal  sort;  and  instead 
of  the  heathen  coming  rapidly  to  Chris- 
tianity, we  find  that  they  doubled  dur- 
ing the  last  century. 

Let  us  glance  at  the  character  of 
those  thus  forcibly  brought  under  the 
name  Christian  by  making  them 
Christians  as  infants.  We  perceive 
that  many  of  these  are  in  jails,  peni- 
tentiaries and  insane  asylums;  and 
while  we  believe  that  in  every  nation 
and  denomination  there  are  some  true 


saints  of  God,  members  therefore  of 
the  true  Church  of  God,  nevertheless, 
taken  as  a  whole,  can  we  not  see  that 
what  Jesus  said  of  some  in  His  day 
must  be  applicable  in  what  to-day  is 
styled  Christendom — "Ye  are  of  your 
father  the  Devil;  for  his  works  ye 
do?" 

We  ask  ourselves,  Are  the  people  of 
Europe  doing  the  works  of  God  or  of 
the  devil?  The  Apostle  tells  us  that 
"if  any  man  have  not  the  Spirit  of 
Christ  he  is  none  of  His;"  that  the 
fruits  of  Christ's  Spirit  are  meekness, 
gentleness,  patience,  brotherly  kind- 
ness, love;  that  anger,  malice,  hatred, 
envy,  strife,  are  works  of  the  flesh  and 
of  the  Devil.  "By  their  fruits  we  shall 
know  them,"  said  the  Master.  Surely, 
we  ought  to  know  that  some  huge  mis- 
take has  been  made  when  the  peoples 
of  Europe  have  been  styled  Christen- 
dom— Christ's  Kingdom — and  why 
they  are  enrolled  as  Christians. 

How  sad  was  the  mistake  which  oc- 
curred when  the  "doctrines  of  demons" 
were  brought  in !  Now  we  see  that  the 
Bible  tells  a  very  different  story.  It 
tells  that  God's  time  for  saving  the 
world  from  sin  and  death  will  be  dur- 
ing the  thousand  years  of  Messiah's 
Kingdom;  and  that  then  they  shall 
have  every  good  opportunity  that  Di- 
vine Wisdom,  Love  and  Justice  will 
arrange  on  their  behalf. 

The  dead  are  not  in  Heaven  nor  in 
the  Catholic  Purgatory,  nor  in  the  still 
worse  Protestant  eternal  torture.  They 
are  asleep,  as  the  Bible  declares.  But 
for  Jesus  and  His  work  they  would  be 
dead  in  the  same  sense  that  a  brute  is 
dead.  Because  Jesus  died  for  sins, 
therefore  there  is  to  be  a  resurrection 
from  the  dead ;  and  therefore  the  dead 
are  spoken  of  as  beinsr  asleep,  uncon- 
scious, waiting  for  the  Morning  of 
Messiah's  Coming  and  for  the  glorious 
blessings  of  resurrection  promised. 

The  Seventh  Trumpet — The  Last 

With  our  minds  filled  with  the  fears 
of  the  Dark  A^es,  we  once  thought  of 
the  "trump  of  God"  as  though  it  were 
a  trumoet  of  the  Devil,  as  though  it 
implied  horrible  disaster  to  the  human 


GOLDEN  AGE  AT  HAND 


545 


family.  But  now,  the  eyes  of  our  un- 
derstanding opened  to  discern  more 
clearly  the  Bible  teachings,  we  are 
amazed  to  find  that  the  trumpet  of 
God  is  symbolical,  like  the  preceding 
six;  that  it  stands  related  to  Messiah's 
Kingdom  and  to  the  world's  release 
from  the  bondage  of  Sin  and  Death. 
Thank  God  for  the  Seventh  Trumpet, 
the  last  trump,  the  trump  of  Love ! 

In  the  past  this  was  pictured  as  the 
Jubilee.  Under  the  Jewish  law  ar- 
rangement, God  provided  that  every 
fiftieth  year  should  be  a  Jubilee  year, 
in  which  all  debts  should  be  cancelled 
and  all  bondages  terminated.  This  was 
not  only  a  beneficial  arrangement  for 
the  Jews,  but  was  a  type  of  the  future. 
It  pictured  the  full  forgiveness  of  sin 
and  the  full  release  of  humanity  from 
all  the  consequences  of  Adam's  dis- 
obedience. 

At  the  opening  of  the  year  of  Jubilee 
the  fact  was  announced  by  the  priests, 
who  blew  upon  silver  trumpets,  pro- 
claiming that  the  Jubilee  had  come, 
and  that  all  might  return  to  their  for- 
mer estate.  The  great  Seventh  Day, 
a  thousand  years  long,  the  antitypical 
Jubilee  Year,  began  in  1875,  according 
to  Scriptural  chronology.  It  is  the 
proper  time  for  all  the  servants  of 
God,  members  of  the  antitypical 
Priesthood,  to  blow  the  silver  trumpet 
of  Truth  and  to  make  known  to  the 
people  the  character  of  the  bondage  to 
Sin  and  Death,  and  to  inform  them  that 
it  is  God's  will  that  they  go  free  from 
these. 

Such  proclamations  have  been  go- 
ing forth  from  Bible  students  the  world 
over  during  the  past  forty  years.  The 
matter  has  been  opposed  by  many.  As 
among  the  Israelites  there  was  a  nomi- 
nal priesthood  who  opposed  the  Mes- 
sage of  Jesus  and  the  Apostles,  so 
there  is  to-day  a  nominal  priesthood 
who  oppose  the  Message  of  Truth,  the 
Message  that  Messiah  is  about  to  take 
His  great  power  and  reign. 

All  Things  to  be  Made  New 

Meantime,  humanity  has  been  in- 
creasingly anxious  concerning  its 


bondage,  and  has  restlessly  been  seek- 
ing liberty — sometimes  wisely,  some- 
times unwisely.  Some  employers  and 
teachers  have  realized  the  impending 
change,  and  have  governed  and  taught 
accordingly.  Others,  realizing  the 
change,  have  invoked  still  further  the 
powers  of  ignorance  and  superstition, 
with  a  view  to  continuing  the  present 
order  of  things,  which  God  has  de- 
clared shall  give  place  to  the  New 
Christ  is  now  taking  to  Himself  His 
great  power  and  is  about  to  begin  His 
Reign ;  and  in  our  text  He  tells  us  that 
toy  that  Reign  He  will  make  all  things 
new. 

Happy  would  it  be  for  all  classes 
if  they  would  recognize  that  the  great 
Clock  in  the  Divine  Plan  has  tolled 
out  a  change  of  dispensation;  that  the 
New  Order  is  due  to  come  in  and  the 
Old  to  go  out.  But  because  selfishness 
has  hardened  their  hearts,  the  world  is 
not  ready  for  the  Restitution  blessings, 
and  hence  God,  foreknowing  this,  has 
foretold  the  Time  of  Trouble  which 
even  now  is  at  our  door. 

According  to  the  Divine  Word  the 
present  great  European  war  is  but  the 
prelude  to  Armageddon,  as  Armaged- 
don will  be  the  prelude  to  Messiah's 
Kingdom.  According  to  the  Bible  the 
present  war,  without  bringing  special 
advantage  to  any  nation,  but  bringing 
discontent  to  all,  will  prepare  the  world 
for  the  most  wonderful  revolution  ever 
known,  symbolically  styled  in  the 
Bible  "a  great  earthquake."  (Revela- 
tion 16:18.)  Following  this  revolution 
will  come  the  symbolical  "fire"  of  the 
Bible,  not  a  literal  fire  that  will  liter- 
ally burn  the  earth,  but  the  fire  of  An- 
archy, which  will  consume  our  present 
civilization;  and  except  those  days 
should  be  shortened,  no  flesh  would 
survive.  (Matthew  24:22.)  But  our 
Lord  assured  us  that  those  days  will 
be  shortened — that  the  Elect  will  take 
the  Kingdom  and  establish  righteous- 
ness and  peace  on  the  firm  foundation 
of  Justice.  Man's  extremity  will  be- 
come God's  opportunity,  wisely  pro- 
vided before  the  foundation  of  the 
world. 


"Memories  of  a  Publisher,  1865-1915," 
by  George  Putnam,  Litt.  D.,  author 
of  "Memories  of  My  Youth,"  "Books 
and  Their  Makers  in    the     Middle 
Ages,"  "Abraham  Lincoln,"  etc. 
George  Haven  Putnam  has  already 
given  us  a  memoir  of  his  father,  Geo. 
P.  Putnam;  following  that  interesting 
volume  came  the  "Memories  of  My 
Youth,"  which  gave  his  experiences  as 
a  soldier  in  the  war  of  the  Rebellion, 
and  the  present  volume  completes  the 
trilogy  in  point  of  time  and  life  sur- 
vey to   1915.     All  three  books  have 
been   written   for   the   benefit   of   his 
children  and  for  those  who  are  inter- 
ested in  the  biographical  and  histori- 
cal material  gathered  at  first  hand.    As 
the  author  expresses  it,  "Each  man  is 
in  a  position  to  pass  on  something  to 
his  fellows  and  to  those  that  are  to 
follow  him." 

His  position  as  a  prominent  pub- 
lisher and  his  interest  in  political  and 
social  affairs  brought  him  in  intimate 
touch  with  many  of  the  prominent  men 
and  women  of  his  day,  and  he  provides 
many  delightful  etchings  of  their  idio- 
syncrasies, ambitions,  failings,  strength 
and  aspirations. 

In  a  few  scalpel-like  sentences  he 
cleverly  lays  bare  a  skeleton  of  the 
man's  character,  and  these  sketches 
are  intensely  interesting  to  those  who 
incline  to  be  more  intimately  acquaint- 
ed with  such  men  as  Grover  Cleveland, 
Andrew  Carnegie,  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, Carl  Schultz,  Joseph  H.  Choate, 
Henry  Villard,  William  H.  Baldwin, 
Judge  Roger  A.  Pryor,  Chester  Arthur, 
Edwin  Abbey,  Lord  Kitchener,  Walter 
Besant,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and 
a  score  of  other  celebrities.  Very  in- 


teresting, too,  are  the  accounts  of  the 
varied  uses  and  abuses  heaped  upon 
publishers  by  authors  and  of  the  pub- 
lishing undertakings  of  the  firm  of  G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons.  The  book  closes 
with  an  appendix  furnishing  a  num- 
ber of  letters  covering  main  issues  of 
.the  present  European  war,  which  the 
author  had  occasion  to  bring  into 
print.  When  eighteen  years  of  age, 
he  enlisted  in  the  Civil  War  as  a  pri- 
vate and  was  mustered  out  a  Major. 
With  this  experience,  he  is  competent 
to  offer  opinions  on  war  and  warfare, 
and  these  are  set  forth  forcefully.  Long 
before  the  reader  reaches  the  close  of 
this  interesting  volume  he  will  be  im- 
pressed with  the  kindly  humor,  pene- 
trating observation,  fine  sense  of  dis- 
crimination and  ripe  wisdom  of  the 
author. 

Price  $2.     Published  by  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons,  New  York. 


"How  to  Live.     Rules  for  Healthful 
Living,  Based  on  Modern  Science," 
authorized  and  prepared  in  collabo- 
ration with  the  Hygienic  Reference 
Board  of  the  Life  Extension  Insti- 
tute, Inc.,  by  Irving  Fisher  of  Yale 
University,  and  Eugene  Lyman  Fisk, 
M.  ,D.,  with  a  Foreword  by  former 
President  Wm.  H.  Taft. 
The  purpose  of  this  book     is     to 
spread  knowledge   of   individual   hy- 
giene, and  thus  to  promote  the  aims  of 
the  Life  Extension  Institute.     Great 
results   are  certain  to   be  won  along 
these  lines  of  sane,  concentrated  and 
persistent  effort  for  the  work  already 
done  has   cut  the     supposedly  fixed 
death  rates  by  one-half.    This  manual 
considers   the   relation  of  hygiene  to 


IN  THE  REALM  OF  BOOKLAND 


547 


health  rather  than  to  disease,  and  on 
this  line  it  is  treated  in  its  relation  to 
the  preservation  of  health,  the  im- 
provement in  the  physical  condition  of 
the  individual  and  the  increase  of  his 
vitality,  all  on  positive  lines.  The 
various  questions  and  influence  of  air, 
food,  poisons,  work,  play,  rest,  sleep 
and  others  are  discussed  plainly  and 
to  the  point. 

12mo,  cloth,  345  pages,  indexed  and 
illustrated.  Price  $1  net;  by  mail, 
$1.25.  Published  by  Funk  &  Wag- 
nail  Co.,  New  York. 


"The  Hundredth  Wave,  Written  to 
Accomplish  Two  Strongly  Inter- 
linked Purposes,"  by  Grantly  Stan- 
derson. 

The  two  purposes  blended  in  the 
book  are  for  "truth  seekers":  the  one 
to  arouse  spiritually  thousands  of  de- 
vout, honest  followers  of  a  false  re- 
ligion (Mormon)  to  the  real  degrada- 
tion of  their  religion,  and  the  other  "as 
high  a  purpose  as  ever  can  move  a 
human  being."  The  author  believes 
he  has  a  sacred  message  for  the  hu- 
man race;  it  is  clothed  in  this  book 
for  the  purpose  of  reaching  many 
readers.  He  wishes  to  be  considered 
as  a  composite  of  the  many  philoso- 
phers whose  thoughts  and  labors  have 
been  assimilated  and  used  in  this 
book. 

Price  $1.35  net;  added  postage  by 
mail.  Published  by  Charles  H.  Kerr 
Company,  Chicago. 

"The  Woman  Question    Again/'     by 

Ida  M.  Tarbell. 

Under  this  title  the  author  seeks  to 
interpret  informally  certain  activities 
and  responsibilities  of  the  average  nor- 
mal woman  of  to-day.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  in  an  age  characterized  as 
ours  is  by  changes  in  outward  habits, 
conduct,  points  of  view  and  ways  of 
doing  things,  there  should  come  a  cer- 
tain contempt  for  the  great  slow  cur- 
rents with  which  mankind  has  moved 
since  the  world  began.  But  to  con- 
clude that  these  old  currents  are  lost 
and  that  the  new  world  of  machines 
and  systems,  the  world  of  Kultur,  has 


wholly  replaced  the  old,  is,  Miss  Tar- 
bell  maintains,  to  reason  only  from 
the  surface.  She  holds  that  the  few 
great  currents  of  life  persist  as  do  the 
tides  or  the  Gulf  Stream,  and  that  they 
carry  with  them  the  human  life  oi  the 
world.  There  persists,  too,  as  an  in- 
evitable, unescapable  result  of  the  cur- 
rents certain  obligations  and  activities. 
Published  by  the  Macmillan  Com- 
pany, New  York. 

"How  to  Add  Ten  Years  to  Your  Life, 
and  to  Double  Its  Satisfaction,"  by 
S.  S.  Curry,  Ph.  D.,  Litt.  D. 
The  pith  of  the  book  is  that  no  mat- 
ter how  old  you  are,  you  may  add  to 
your  years  by  taking  a  simple  exer- 
cise while  dressing  in  the  morning. 
The  author  cites  the  poet  Bryant  as 
adding  ten  years  to  his  eighty  by 
adopting  this  simple  method.  The  au- 
thor has  always  been  greatly  inter- 
ested in  the  matter  of  human  develop- 
ment, and  contributes  abundantly  and 
wisely  in  practical  information  gar- 
nered in  that  field.  For  instance,  he 
has  discovered  that  "true  exercises 
are  all  mental  and  emotional,  and  not 
physical,  and  that  both  body  and 
voice  can  never  be  truly  improved  ex- 
cept by  right  thinking  and  feeling." 
Accordingly  Professor  Curry  embod- 
ies a  few  points  about  health.  With- 
out going  deeply  into  the  points  in- 
volved, a  short  program  is  given,  the 
practice  of  which  has  already  accom- 
plished wonderful  results.  The  book 
embodies  his  own  experience  and 
obeys  the  scientific  principles  involved 
in  training. 

Price  $1.  Published  by  School  of 
Expression,  Pierce  Building,  Copley 
Square,  Boston. 

"The  Smile,"  by  S.  S.  Curry,  Ph.  D., 

Litt.  D. 

Professor  Curry  is  the  author  of 
many  standard  books  in  the  art  of  ex- 
pression of  which  the  recent  issue  is 
prominent.  The  book  is  an  encyclo- 
pedia on  smiles  in  all  its  moods  and 
kinds  of  expression,  what  it  stands  for, 
what  it  accomplishes,  and  its  func- 
tions, ethics  and  influences.  The  ob- 


548 


OVERLAND  MONTHLY 


ject  of  the  book  is  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  action  as  a  language  is  more 
important  than  words;  for  instance, 
what  phrase  can  translate  as  smile? 
Professor  Curry  stands  high  in  the  in- 
struction of  dramatic  expression,  and 
has  delved  hard  in  that  field  to  dis- 
cover the  basic  truths.  You  will  find 
most  of  them  in  this  book,  backed  by 
the  authorities  and  by  their  present 
usage  by  the  most  prominent  orators, 
after  dinner  speakers  and  actors  of  the 
day.  The  Smile,  of  course,  is  only 
one  form  of  expression,  but  it  covers 
such  a  remarkable  field  that  the  au- 
thor uses  it  for  his  text.  He  backs  his 
points  with  apt  and  interesting  anec- 
dotes illustrative  of  how  the  great  men 
of  the  past  and  present  used  the  smile 
and  other  forms  of  expression  to  score 
happy  advances  to  success. 

Price  $1.  Published  by  School  of 
Expression,  Pierce  Building,  Copley 
Square,  Boston. 


"Goethe's  Life-Poem,  As  Set  Forth  in 

His  Life  and  Works,"  by  Denton  J. 

Snider. 

The  contents  of  the  book  are  com- 
pletely covered  by  the  title,  and  gives 
in  detail  the  leading  events  in  the  life 
of  Goethe,  which  developed  and 
moulded  his  character  and  mental  and 
spiritual  vision.  Goethe  confessed  that 
he  had  had  two  births,  the  one  of 
nature  and  the  other  of  spirit,  between 
which  two  births  he  placed  the  primal 
grand  sweep  of  his  whole  career. 
These  two  births  are  used  by  the  au- 
thor to  mark  the  two  great  periods  in 
Goethe's  development.  The  first  per- 
iod naturally  covers  the  range  of  his 
young  manhood  to  his  thirty- seventh 
year.  The  achievements  of  Goethe 
are  taken  up  seriatim  in  these  periods. 
The  author  is  sympathetic  and  shows 
an  appreciation  of  those  floods  of  emo- 
tion which  played  such  an  important 
part  in  the  life  of  this  German  genius. 
His  criticisms  and  comments  are  to 
the  point  and  happily  illuminate  many 
of  the  points  in  the  involved  and  com- 
plex character  of  Goethe. 

Published  by  Sigma  Publishing  Co., 
210  Pine  street,  St.  Louis,  Mo. 


"A  Dictionary  of  Simplified  Spelling," 
by  Frank  H.  Vizetelly,  Litt.  D.f  L. 
L.  D.,  Member  of  the  Advisory 
Council  of  the  Simplfied  Spelling 
Board;  author  of  "Essentials  of 
English  Speech  and  Literature,"  etc. 
This  compact  little  volume  is  based 
on  the  publications  of  the  United 
States  Bureau  of  Education  and  the 
rules  of  the  American  Philological  As- 
sociation and  the  Simplified  Spelling 
Board.  For  several  years  past  there 
has  been  a  constant  demand  on  the 
part  of  writers  for  some  such  rational 
and  simple  authority  as  this  for  quick 
and  convenient  consultation.  It  covers 
all  the  simpler  forms  of  spelling  rec- 
ommended by  the  leading  association 
societies  of  the  country  and  those  of 
the  United  States  Department  of  Edu- 
cation in  its  bulletins.  Accordingly  it 
will  supply  the  needs  of  those  persons 
who  have  been  sufficiently  interested 
in  the  simplified  spelling  movement. 
The  book  is  so  arranged  that  it  may  be 
enlarged  at  will  by  following  the  ordi- 
nary rules  laid  down.  Printers'  signs 
are  given  by  which  words  may  readily 
be  segregated  in  the  group  where  they 
belong.  Editors,  teachers  and  others 
interested  in  this  important  movement 
to  simplify  our  nonsensical  spelling 
should  support  this  work. 

Price,  75  cents.    Published  by  Funk 
&  Wagnalls  Company,  New  York. 


"George  Bernard  Shaw:  Harlequin  or 
Patriot?"  by  John  Palmer,  author 
of  "The  Future  of  the  Theatre,"  etc. 
Of  every  famous  men  there  are  two 
— the  legendry  and  the  real.  The  le- 
gendary Shaw  is  more  or  less  well- 
known.  The  real  Shaw  is  just  as  inter- 
esting, but  he  is  practically  unknown. 
This  book  is  about  both  the  Shaws, 
especially  about  the  unknown  one.  Is 
Shaw  an  original  thinker  ?  He  says  he 
is  a  picker  for  other  people's  brains.  Is 
he  a  cold-blooded  egotist?  Or  is  he 
humble  and  passionate?  Is  he  a  jes- 
ter? Is  he  an  anarchist? 

Price  50  cents  net,  postage  5  cents. 
Published  by  the  Century  Co.,  New 
York.