How to tell a story : and other essays

HOW TO TELL A STORY

AND OTHER ESSAYS

BY

MARK TWAIN

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1898

BY MARK TWAIN.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC. Illus
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CONTENTS

PAGE

How TO TELL A STORY 3

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 15

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES .... 93

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 119

PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE "JUMPING FROG" STORY 149

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 167

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF Us 181

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 213

HOW TO TELL A STORY

NOTE

" How to Tell a Story " originally appeared in The Youth's
Companion; "In Defence of Harriet Shelley," " Fenimore
Cooper's Literary Offences," "What Paul Bourget Thinks
of Us," and 'The Private History of the 'Jumping Frog'
Story," in the North American Review ; " Travelling with a
Reformer," in the Cosmopolitan Magazine; and "Mental
Telegraphy Again," in Harper s Magazine. " A Little Note
to Paul Bourget " has not before appeared in print in this
country.

HOW TO TELL A STORY

The Humorous Story an American Development.— Its
Difference from Comic and Witty Stories.

I DO not claim that I can tell a story as it
ought to be told. I only claim to know how
a story ought to be told, for I have been al
most daily in the company of the most expert
story-tellers for many years.

There are several kinds of stories, but only
one difficult kind — the humorous. I will talk
mainly about that one. The humorous story
is American, the comic story is English^the
witty story isJFrencrh The "humorous story
depends for its effect upon thfTmanner~oi the
telling; the comic story andjt
upon ihejng£Acr.

The humorous story may be spun out to
great length, and may wander around as much
as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in partic
ular; but the comic and witty stories must
be brief and end with a point. The humor-

4 HOW TO TELL A STORY

ous story bubbles gently along, the others
burst.

The humorous story is strictly a work of
art — high and delicate art— and only an artist
can tell it ; but no art is necessary in telling
the comic and the witty story ; anybody cai,
do it. The art of telling a humorous story —
understand, I mean by word of| mouth, not
print — was created in America,' and has re
mained at home.

The humorous story is told gravely ; the
teller does his best to conceal the fact that he
even dimly suspects that there is anything
funny about it ; but the teller of the comic
story tells you beforehand that it is one of the
funniest things he has°ever heard, then tells it
with eager delight, and is the first person to
laugh when he gets through. And sometimes,
if he has had good success, he is so glad and
happy that he will repeat the " nub " of i
glance around from face to face, collectin
plause, and then repeat it again. It is a pa
thetic thing to see.

Very often, of course, the rambling and dis
jointed humorous story finishes with a nub,
point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.
Then the listener must be alert, for in many
cases the teller will divert attention from that

HOW TO TELL A STORY 5

nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and
indifferent way, with the pretence that he does
not know it is a nub.

Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal ;
then when the belated audience presently
caught the joke) he would look up with inno
cent surprise, as if wondering what they had
found to laugh at. Dan- Setchell used it be
fore him, Nye and Riley and others use it
to-day.

But the teller of the comic story does not
slur the nub; he shouts it at you — every time.
And when he prints it, in England, France,
Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some
whooping exclamation -points after it, and
sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of
which is very depressing, and makes one want
to renounce joking and lead a better life.

Let me set down an instance of the comic
method, using an anecdote which has been
popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen
hundred years. The teller tells it in this
way:

THE WOUNDED SOLDIER

In the course of a certain battle a soldier
whose leg had been shot off appealed to an
other soldier who was hurrying by to carry

6 HOW TO TELL A STORY

him to the rear, informing him at the same
time of the loss which he had sustained ;
whereupon the generous son of Mars, shoul
dering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out
his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were
flying in all directions, and presently one of
the latter took the wounded man's head off —
without, however, his deliverer being aware of
it. In no long time he was hailed by an offi
cer, who said :

" Where are you going with that carcass?"
"To the rear, sir — he's lost his leg!"
"His leg, forsooth?" responded the aston
ished officer; "you mean his head, you
booby."

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself
of his burden, and stood looking down upon
it in great perplexity. At length he said :

" It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then
•-; after a pause he added, " But he TOLD me IT
WAS HIS LEG! ! ! M"

Here the narrator bursts into explosion
after explosion of thunderous horse -laughter,
repeating that nub from time to time through
his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.

It takes only a minute and a half to tell
that in its comic-story form ; and isn't worth

HOW TO TELL A STORY '/

the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-
story form it takes ten minutes, and is about
the funniest thing I have ever listened to — as
James Whitcomb Riley tells it.

He tells it in the character of a dull-witted
old farmer who has just heard it for the first
time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is
trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he
can't remember it ; so he gets all mixed up
and wanders helplessly round and round, put
ting in tedious details that don't belong in the
tale and only retard it ; taking them out con
scientiously and putting in others that are just
as useless ; making minor mistakes now and
then and stopping to correct them and ex
plain how he came to make them ; remember
ing things which he forgot to put in in their
proper place and going back to put them in
there; stopping his narrative a good while in
order to try to recall the name of the soldier
that was hurt, and finally remembering that
the soldier's name was not mentioned, and re
marking placidly that the name is of no real
importance, anyway — better, of course,, if one
knew it, but not essential, after all — and so on,
and so on, and so on.

The teller is innocent and happy and pleased
with himself, and has to stop every little while

3 HOW TO TEEL A STORY

\

to hold himself in and keep from laughing out
right ; and does hold in, but his body quakes
in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles ; and
at the end of the ten minutes the audience
have laughed until they are exhausted, and
the tears are running down their faces.

The simplicity and innocence and sincerity
and unconsciousness of the old farmer are per
fectly simulated, and the result is a perform
ance which is thoroughly charming and de
licious. This is art — and fine and beautiful,
and only a master can compass it ; but a ma
chine could teU the, other story.

To string incongruities and absurdities to
gether in a wandering and sometimes purpose
less way, and seem innocently unaware that
they are absurdities, is the basis of the Amer
ican art, if my position is correct. Another
feature is the slurring of the point. A third
is the dropping of a studied remark apparent
ly without knowing it, as if one were thinking
aloud. The fourth and last is the pause.

Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and
four a good deal. He would begin to tell
with great animation something which he
seemed to think was wonderful ; then lose
confidence, and after an apparently
minded pause add an incongruous rer

HOW TO TELL A STORY 9

a soliloquizing way ; and that was the remark
intended to explode the mine — and it did.

For instance, he would say eagerly, excited
ly, " I once knew a man in New Zealand who
hadn't a tooth in his head " — here his anima
tion would die out ; a silent, reflective pause
would follow, then he would say dreamily, and
as if to himself, " and yet that man could beat
a drum better than any man I ever saw."

The pause is an exceedingly important feat
ure in any kind of story, and a frequently re
curring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and
delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous ;
for it must be exactly the right length — no
more and no less — or it fails of its purpose and
makes trouble. If the pause is too short the
impressive point is passed, and the audience
have had time to divine that a surprise is in
tended — and then you can't surprise them, of
course.

On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost
story that had a pause in front of the snapper
on the end, and that pause was the most im
portant thing in the whole story. If I got it
the right length precisely, I could spring the
finishing ejaculation with effect enough to
mak-j some impressible girl deliver a startled
little yelp and jump out of her seat — and that

IO HOW TO TELL A STORY

was what I was after. This story was called
" The Golden Arm," and was told in this fash
ion. You can practise with it yourself — and
mind you look out for the pause and get it
right.

THE GOLDEN ARM

Once 'pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean
man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone
by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby
she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah
in de prairie en buried her. Well, she had a
golden arm — all solid gold, fum de shoulder
down. He wuz pow'ful mean — pow'ful; en
dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat
golden arm so bad.

When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it
no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lan
tern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her
up en got de golden arm ; en he bent his head
down 'gin de win', en plowed en plowed en
plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden
he stop (make a considerable pause here, and
look startled, and take a listening attitude) en
say : " My Ian , what's dat !"

En he listen — en listen — en de win' say (set
your teeth together and imitate the w.viling
and wheezing singsong of the wind), " Bzzz-z-

HOW TO TELL A STORY II

zzz " — en den, way back yonder whah de grave
is, he hear a voice ! — he hear a voice all mix'
up in de win' — can't hardly tell 'em 'part —
" Bzzz-zzz — W-h-o — g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n
arm ? — 7?z — zzz — W-h-o g-o-t m-y g-o-l-d-e-n
arm ? (You ir.uct begin to shiver violently
now.)

En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, " Oh,
my! Ok, my Ian'!" en de win' blow de lan
tern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face
en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-
deep towards home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd
— en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en
(pause) it 'us comin' after him ! " Bzzz — zzz —
zzz — W-h-o — g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n — arm?"

When he git to de pasture he hear it agin—
closter now, en a-comm/ — a-comin' back dah
in de dark en de storm — (repeat the wind and
the voice). When he git to de house he rush
up-stairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head
and years, en lay dah shiverin' en shakin' — en
den way out dah he hear it agin! — en a-
comin ! En bimeby he hear (pause — awed,
listening attitude) — pat — pat — pat — hit's a-
comin up-stairs ! Den he hear de latch, en he
know it's in de room !

Den pooty soon he know it's ^-stannin by
de bed! (Pauae.) Den — he know it's ^-bendin

12 HOW TO TELL A STORY

down over him — en he cain't skasely git his
breath ! Den — den — he seem to feel someth'n
c-o-l-d, right down 'most agin his head ! (Pause.)

Den de voice say, right at his year — " W-h-o
— g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (Y^11 must
Avail it out very plaintively and accusingly ;-
then you stare steadily and impressively into
the face of the farthest-gone auditor — a girl,
preferably — and let that awe-inspiring pause
begin to build itself in the deep hush. When
it has reached exactly the right length, jump
suddenly at that girl and yell, " You've got it !"

If you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a
dear little yelp and spring right out of her
shoes. But you must get the pause right ; and
you will find it the most troublesome and ag
gravating and uncertain thing you ever under
took.)

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

I HAVE committed sins, of course ; but I
have not committed enough of them to en
title me to the punishment of reduction to
the bread and water of ordinary literature dur
ing six years when I might have been living
on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Pro
fessor Dowden's Life of Shelley, if I had been
justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a
life of peaceful ignorance. I was not aware
that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him,
and that that was why he deserted her and
wiped the stain from his sensitive honor by
entering into soiled relations with Godwin's
young daughter. This was all new to me when
I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of
it were in this book, and that this book's ver
dict is accepted in the girls' colleges of Amer
ica and its view taught in their literary classes.

1 6 HOW TO TELL A STORY

In each of these six years multitudes of
young people in our country have arrived at
the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multi
tudes unacquainted with this life of Shelley?
Perhaps they are; indeed, one may feel pretty
sure that the great bulk of them are. To
these, then, I address myself, in the hope that
some account of this romantic historical fable
and the fabulist's manner of constructing and
adorning it may interest them.

First, as- to its literary style. Our negroes
in America have several ways of entertaining
themselves which are not found among the
whites anywhere. Among these inventions of
theirs is one which is particularly popular with
them. It is a competition in elegant deport
ment. They hire a hall and bank the spec
tators' seats in rising tiers along the two sides,
leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free.
A cake is provided as a prize for the winner in
the competition, and a bench of experts in de
portment is appointed to award it. Some
times there are as many as fifty contestants,
male and female, and five hundred spectators.
One at a time the contestants enter, clothed
regardless of expense in what each considers
the perfection of style and taste, and walk
down the vacant central space and back again

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 17

with that multitude of critical eyes on them.
All that the competitor knows of fine airs and
graces he throws into his carriage, all that he
knows of seductive expression he throws into
his countenance. He may use all the helps
he can devise : watch-chain to twirl with his
fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy
handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects
out of, shiny new stovepipe hat to assist in his
courtly bows; and the colored lady may have
a fan to work up her effects with, and smile
over and blush behind, and she may add other
helps, according to her judgment. When the
review by individual detail is over, a grand re
view of all the contestants in procession fol
lows, with all the airs and graces and all the
bowings and smirkings on exhibition at once,
and this enables the bench of experts to make
the necessary comparisons and arrive at a ver
dict. The successful competitor gets the prize
which I have before mentioned, and an abun
dance of applause and envy along with it.
The negroes have a name for this grave de
portment-tournament ; a name taken from the
prize contended for. They call it a Cake-
Walk.

This Shelley biography is a literary cake-
walk. The ordinary forms of speech are ab-

1 8 HOW TO TELL A STORY

sent from it. All the pages, all the para
graphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say
mincingly, in their Sunday -best, shiny and
sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their
button-holes; it is rare to find even a chance
sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the
book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin,
child of sixteen, had known afflictions, the fact
saunters forth in this nobby outfit: " Mary
was herself not unlearned in the lore of pain "
— meaning by that that she had not always
travelled on asphalt ; or, as some authorities
would frame it, that she had " been there her
self," a form which, while preferable to the
book's form, is still not to be recommended.
If the book wishes to tell us that Harriet
Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace
fact gets turned into a dancing- master, who
does his professional bow before us in pumps
and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one
arm and his crush-hat under the other, thus :
"The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to
her babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the
introduction into his house of a hireling nurse
to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest
office."

This is perhaps the strangest book that has
seen the light since Frankenstein. Indeed, it

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 19

is a Frankenstein itself ; a Frankenstein with
the original infirmity supplemented by a new
one ; a Frankenstein with the reasoning facul
ty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and
is always trying. It is not content to leave a
mountain of fact standing in the clear sun
shine, where the simplest reader can perceive
its form, its details, and its relation to the rest
of the landscape, but thinks it must help him
examine it and understand it ; so its drifting
mind settles upon it with that intent, but al
ways with one and the same result : there is a
change of temperature and the mountain is
hid in a fog. Every time it sets up a premise
and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise
in store for the reader. It is strangely near
sighted, cross-eyed, and purblind. Sometimes
when a mastodon walks across the field of its
vision it takes it for a rat ; at other times it
does not see it at all.

The materials of this biographical fable are
facts, rumors, and poetry. They are connect
ed together and harmonized by the help of
suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion,
and semi-suppression.

The fable has a distinct object in view, but
this object is not acknowledged in set words.
Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something

20 HOW TO TELL A STORY

which in the case of other men is called a
grave crime ; it must be shown that in his case
it is not that, because he does not think as
other men do about these things.

Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist
is serious? Having proved that a crime is not
a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten
the responsibility of a crime which was not a
crime upon somebody else? What is the use
of hunting down and holding to bitter ac
count people who are responsible for other
people's innocent acts?

Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do
that. In his view Shelley's first wife, Harriet,
free of all offence as far as we have historical
facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably
responsible for her husband's innocent act in
deserting her and taking up with another
woman.

Any one will suspect that this task has its
difficulties. Any one will divine that nice
work is necessary here, cautious work, wily
work, and that there is entertainment to be
had in watching the magician do it. There is
indeed entertainment in watching him. He
arranges his facts, his rumors, and his poems
on his table in full view of the house, and
shows you that everything is there — no decep-

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 21

tion, everything fair and aboveboard. And
this is apparently true, yet there is a defect,
for some of his best stock is hid in an appen
dix-basket behind the door, and you do not
come upon it until the exhibition is over and
the enchantment of your mind accomplished
— as the magician thinks.

There is an insistent atmosphere of candor
and fairness about this book which is engag
ing at first, then a little burdensome, then a
trifle fatiguing, then progressively suspicious,
annoying, irritating, and oppressive. It takes
one some little time to find out that phrases
which seem intended to guide the reader
aright are there to mislead him ; that phrases
which seem intended to throw light are there
to throw darkness ; that phrases which seem
intended to interpret a fact are there to mis
interpret it ; that phrases which seem intend
ed to forestall prejudice are there to create it;
that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons
in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the
book establish Shelley's guilt in that one epi
sode which disfigures his otherwise superla
tively lofty and beautiful life ; but the histori
an's careful and methodical misinterpretation
of them transfers the responsibility to the
wife's shoulders — as he persuades himself.

22 HOW TO TELL A STORY

The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life,
as furnished by the book, acquit her of offence ;
but by calling in the forbidden helps of rumor,
gossip, conjecture, insinuation, and innuendo
he destroys her character and rehabilitates
Shelley's — as he believes. And in truth his
unheroic work has not been barren of the re
sults he aimed at ; as witness the assertion
made to me that girls in the colleges of Amer
ica are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain
upon her husband's honor, and that that was
what stung him into repurifying himself by
deserting her and his child and entering into
scandalous relations with a school -girl ac
quaintance of his.

If that assertion is true, they probably use a
reduction of this work in those colleges, may
be only a sketch outlined from it. Such a
thing as that could be harmful and mislead
ing. They ought to cast it out and put the
whole book in its place. It would not de
ceive. It would not deceive the janitor.

All of this book is interesting on account
of the sorcerer's methods and the attractive
ness of some of his characters and the repul-
siveness of the rest, but no part of it is so
much so as are the chapters wherein he tries
to think he thinks he sets forth the causes

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 23

which led to Shelley's desertion of his wife
in 1814.

Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen
years old. Shelley was teeming with advanced
thought. He believed that Christianity was a
degrading and selfish superstition, and he had
a deep and sincere desire to rescue one of his
sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his
various philosophies and looked upon him as
an intellectual wonder — which indeed he was.
He had an idea that she could give him valu
able help in his scheme regarding his sister;
therefore he asked her to correspond with him.
She was quite willing. Shelley was not think
ing of love, for he was just getting over a pas
sion for his cousin, Harriet Grove, and just
getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitch-
ener, a school-teacher. What might happen
to Harriet Westbrook before the letter-writing
was ended did not enter his mind. Yet an
older person could have made a good guess at
it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an
angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassum
ing, and so rich in unselfishnesses, generosities,
and magnanimities that he made his whole
generation seem poor in these great qualities
by comparison. Besides, he was in distress.
His college had expelled him for writing an

24 HOW TO TELL A STORY

atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the rever
end heads of the university with it, his rich
father and grandfather had closed their purses
against him, his friends were cold. Necessar
ily, Harriet fell in love with him ; and so deep
ly, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley
to save her from suicide but to marry her.
He believed himself to blame for this state of
things, so the marriage took place. He was
pretty fairly in love with Harriet, although he
loved Miss Hitchener better. He wrote and
explained the case to Miss Hitchener after the
wedding, and he could not have been franker
or more naive and less stirred up about the
circumstance if the matter in issue had been
a commercial transaction involving thirty-five
dollars.

Shelley was nineteen. He was not a youth,
but a man. He had never had any youth.
He was an erratic and fantastic child during
eighteen years, then he stepped into manhood,
as one steps over a door-sill. He was curiously
mature at nineteen in his ability to do inde
pendent thinking on the deep questions of life
and to arrive at sharply definite decisions re
garding them, and stick to them — stick to
them and stand by them at cost of bread,
friendships, esteem, respect and approbation.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 25

For the sake of his opinions he was willing
to sacrifice all these valuable things, and did
sacrifice them ; and went on doing it, too,
when he could at any moment have made
himself rich and supplied himself with friends
and esteem by compromising with his father,
at the moderate expense of throwing over
board one or two indifferent details of his
cargo of principles.

He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got
married. They took lodgings in Edinburgh
of a sort answerable to their purse, which was
about empty, and there their life was a happy
one and grew daily more so. They had only
themselves for company, but they needed no
additions to it. They were as cozy and con
tented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang even
ings or read aloud ; also she studied and tried
to improve her mind, her husband instructing
her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was
modest, quiet, genuine, and, according to her
husband's testimony, she had no fine lady airs
or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold's
judgment, she was "a pleasing figure."

The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh,
and then took lodgings in York, where Shel
ley's college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley pres
ently ran down to London, and Hogg took

26 HOW TO TELL A STORY

this opportunity to make love to the young
wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact
to her husband when he got back. It seems
a pity that Shelley did not copy this credit
able conduct of hers some time or other when
under temptation, so that we might have seen
the author of his biography hang the miracle
in the skies and squirt rainbows at it.

At the end of the first year of marriage —
the most trying year for any young couple, for
then the mutual failings are coming one by
one to light, and the necessary adjustments
are being made in pain and tribulation — Shel
ley was able to recognize that his marriage
venture had been a safe one. As we have
seen, his love for his wife had begun in a
rather shallow way and with not much force,
but now it was become deep and strong,
which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark,
one may admit. He addresses a long and lov
ing poem to her, in which both passion and
worship appear :

Exhibit A

"O thou

Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled,

. wilt thou not turn

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 27

Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven
And Heaven is Earth?

Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
But ours shall not be mortal."

Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August
of this same year in celebration of her birth
day :

Exhibit B

" Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts

o'erflow

Which force from mine such quick and warm re
turn."

Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud
and happy? We may conjecture that she was.

That was the year 1812. Another year
passed — still happily, still successfully — a
child was born in June, 1813, and in Septem
ber, three months later, Shelley addresses a
poem to this child, lanthe, in which he points
out just when the little creature is most par
ticularly dear to him :

Exhibit C

" Dearest when most thy tender traits express
The image of thy mother's loveliness."

28 HOW TO TELL A STORY

Up to this point the fabulist counsel for
Shelley and prosecutor of his young wife has
had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins,
for Shelley is getting ready to make some un
pleasant history for himself, and it will be nec
essary to put the blame of it on the wife.

Shelley had made the acquaintance of a
charming gray-haired, young-hearted Mrs. Boin-
ville, whose face " retained a certain youthful
beauty"; she lived at Bracknell, and had a
young daughter named Cornelia Turner, who
was equipped with many fascinations. Ap
parently these people were sufficiently senti
mental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville :

" The greater part of her associates were odious. I
generally found there two or three sentimental young
butchers, an eminently philosophical tinker, and sev
eral very unsophisticated medical practitioners or med
ical students, all of low origin and vulgar and offensive
manners. They sighed, turned up their eyes, retailed
philosophy, such as it was," etc.

Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27 (this is
still 1813), purposely to be near this unwhole
some prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says:
" It was the entrance into a world more ami
able and exquisite than he had yet known."

" In this acquaintance the attraction was
mutual " — and presently it grew to be very

'• 3

IN DEFENCE OF H^^IBT SHELLEY 29

mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia
Turner, when they got to studying the Italian
poets together. Shelley, " responding like a
tremulous instrument to every breath of pas
sion or of sentiment," had his chance here. It
took only four days for Cornelia's attractions
to begin to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on
the 27th of July ; on the 3ist he wrote a son
net to Harriet in which " one detects already
the little rift in the lover's lute which had
seemed to be healed or never to have gaped at
all when the later and happier sonnet to lanthe
was written" — in September, we remember:

Exhibit D

"EVENING. TO HARRIET

"O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line
Of western distance that sublime descendest,
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream ;
What gazer now with astronomic eye
Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
And turning senseless from thy warm caress
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."

^O HOW TO TELL A STORY

I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be
there. What the poem seems to say, is, that a
person would be coldly ungrateful who could
consent to count and consider little spots and
flaws in such a warm, great, satisfying sun as
Harriet is. It is a " little rift which had
seemed to be healed, or never to have gaped
at all." That is, " one detects" a little rift
which perhaps had never existed. How does
one do that ? How does one see the invisible ?
It is the fabulist's secret; he knows how to
detect what does not exist, he knows how to
see what is not seeable ; it is his gift, and he
works it many a time to poor dead Harriet
Shelley's deep damage.

" As yet, however, if there was a speck upon
Shelley's happiness it was no more than a
speck " — meaning the one which one detects
where " it may never have gaped at all " —
" nor had Harriet cause for discontent."

Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had
ceased. " From a teacher he had now become
a pupil." Mrs. Boinville and her young mar
ried daughter Cornelia were teaching him Ital
ian poetry ; a fact which warns one to receive
with some caution that other statement that
Harriet had no " cause for discontent."

Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 31

Latin, as before mentioned. The biographer
thinks that the busy life in London some time
back, and the intrusion of the baby, account
for this. These were hindrances, but were
there no others? He is always overlooking a
detail here and there that might be valuable
in helping us understand a situation. For in
stance, when a man has been hard at work at
the Italian poets with a pretty woman, hour
after hour, and responding like a tremulous
instrument to every breath of passion or of
sentiment in the meantime, that man is dog-
tired when he gets home, and he caiit teach
his wife Latin; it would be unreasonable to
expect it.

Up to this time we have submitted to hav
ing Mrs. Boinville pushed upon us as ostensi
bly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the
biographer drops her now, of his own accord.
Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher. Hogg
says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melan
choly, arising from causes purely imaginary ;
she required consolation, and found it in Pe
trarch. He also says, " Bysshe entered at
once fully into her views and caught the soft
infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest
melancholy, as every true poet ought."

Then the author of the book interlards a

32 HOW TO TELL A STORY

most stately and fine compliment to Cornelia,
furnished by a man of approved judgment who
knew her well " in later years." It is a very
good compliment indeed, and she no doubt
deserved it in her " later years," when she had
for generations ceased to be sentimental and
lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in
enchanting young husbands and sowing sor
row for young wives. But why is that com
pliment to that old gentlewoman intruded
there? Is it to make the reader believe she
was well-chosen and safe society for a young,
sentimental husband? The biographer's de
vice was not well planned. That old person
was not present — it was her other self that was
there, her young, sentimental, melancholy,
warm-blooded self, in those early sweet times
before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed
her back.

" In choosing for friends such women as
Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and Cornelia
Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight
and discrimination." That is the fabulist's
opinion — Harriet Shelley's is not reported.

Early in August, Shelley was in London try
ing to raise money. In September he wrote
the poem to the baby, already quoted from.
In the first week of October Shelley and fam-

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 33

ily went to Warwick, then to Edinburgh, ar
riving there about the middle of the month.

" Harriet was happy." Why? The author
furnishes a reason, but hides from us whether
it is history or conjecture ; it is because " the
babe had borne the journey well." It has all
the aspect of one of his artful devices — flung
in in his favorite casual way — the way he has
when he wants to draw one's attention away
from an obvious thing and amuse it with some
trifle that is less obvious but more useful — in
a history like this. The obvious thing is, that
Harriet was happy because there was much
territory between her husband and Cornelia
Turner now ; and because the perilous Italian
lessons were taking a rest ; and because, if
there chanced to be any respondings like a
tremulous instrument to every breath of pas
sion or of sentiment in stock in these days,
she might hope to get a share of them herself;
and because, with her husband liberated, now,
from the fetid fascinations of that sentimental
retreat so pitilessly described by Hogg, who
also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she
might hope to persuade him to stay away from
it permanently ; and because she might also
hope that his brain would cool, now, and his
heart become healthy, and both brain and
3

34 HOW TO TELL A STORY

heart consider the situation and resolve that
it would be a right and manly thing to stand
by this girl-wife and her child and see that
they were honorably dealt with, and cherished
and protected and loved by the man that had
promised these things, and so be made happy
and kept so. And because, also — may we con
jecture this? — we may hope for the privilege
of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that
used to be so pleasant and brought us so near
together — so near, indeed, that often our heads
touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons ;
and our hands met in casual and unintentional,
but still most delicious and thrilling little con
tacts and momentary clasps, just as they in
evitably do over Italian lessons. Suppose one
should say to any young wife : " I find that
your husband is poring over the Italian poets
and being instructed in the beautiful Italian
language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson " —
would that cozy picture fail to rise before her
mind? would its possibilities fail to suggest
themselves to her? would there be a pang in
her heart and a blush on her face ? or, on the
contrary, would the remark give her pleasure,
make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs
only to make the experiment — the result will
not be uncertain.

IX DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 35

However, we learn — by authority of deeply
reasoned and searching conjecture — that the
baby bore the journey well, and that that was
why the young wife was happy. That accounts
for two per cent, of the happiness, but it was
not right to imply that it accounted for the
other ninety-eight also.

Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the
Shelleys, was of their party when they went
away. He used to laugh at the Boinville
menagerie, and " was not a favorite." One of
the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said,
" The Shelleys have made an addition to their
party in the person of a cold scholar, who, I
think, has neither taste nor feeling. This,
Shelley will perceive sooner or later, for his
warm nature craves sympathy." True, and
Shelley will fight his way back there to get it
—there will be no way to head him off.

Towards the end of November it was neces
sary for Shelley to pay a business visit to Lon~
don, and he conceived the project of leaving
Harriet and the baby in Edinburgh with Har
riet's sister, Eliza Westbrook, a sensible, prac
tical maiden lady about thirty years old, who
had spent a great part of her time with the
family since the marriage. She was an esti
mable woman, and Shelley had had reason to

36 HOW TO TELL A STORY

like her, and did like her ; but along about this
time his feeling towards her changed. Part of
Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend
his London evenings with the Newtons — mem
bers of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But,
alas, when he arrived early in December, that
pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza
and the family arrived with him. We are left
destitute of conjectures at this point by the
biographer, and it is my duty to supply one.
I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who
interfered with that game. I think she tried
to do what she could towards modifying the
Boinville connection, in the interest of her
young sister's peace and honor.

If it was she who blocked that game, she
was not strong enough to block the next one.
Before the month and year were out — no date
given, let us call it Christmas — Shelley and
family were nested in a furnished house in
Windsor, " at no great distance from the Boin-
villes" — these decoys still residing atBracknell.

What we need, now, is a misleading conject
ure. We get it with characteristic promptness
and depravity:

" But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras,
the friend of his boyhood, in any wanderings to Wind
sor. Dr. Lind had died a year since, and with his

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 37

death Windsor must have lost, for Shelley, its chief
attraction."

Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there
was Bracknell, at any rate. While Bracknell
remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is rep
resented by this biographer as doing a great
many careless things, but to my mind this hir
ing a furnished house for three months in or
der to be with a man who has been dead a
year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels
for him — that is but natural, and does us hon
or besides — yet one is vexed, for all that. He
could have written and asked about the aged
Zonoras before taking the house. He may
not have had the address, but that is nothing
— any postman would know the aged Zonoras ;
a dead postman would remember a name like
that.

And yet, why throw a rag like this to us
ravening wolves? Is it seriously supposable
that we will stop to chew it and let our prey
escape? No, we are getting to expect this
kind of device, and to give it merely a sniff for
certainty's sake and then walk around it and
leave it lying. Shelley was not after the aged
Zonoras ; he was pointed for Cornelia and the
Italian lessons, for his warm nature was crav
ing sympathy.

38 HOW TO TELL A STORY

II

THE year 1813 is just ended now, and we
step into 1814.

To recapitulate : how much of Cornelia's
society has Shelley had, thus far? Portions
of August and September, and four days of
July. That is to say, he has had opportunity
to enjoy it, more or less, during that brief pe
riod. Did he want some more of it ? We
must fall back upon history, and then go to
conjecturing.

" In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a
frequent visitor at Bracknell."

" Frequent " is a cautious word, in this au
thor's mouth ; the very cautiousness of it, the
vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes
one suspect that this frequency was more fre
quent than the mere common every-day kinds
of frequency which one is in the habit of aver
aging up with the unassuming term " frequent."
I think so because they fixed up a bedroom
for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 39

need a bedroom if one is only going to run
over now and then in a disconnected way to
respond like a tremulous instrument to every
breath of passion or of sentiment and rub up
one's Italian poetry a little.

The young wife was not invited, perhaps.
If she was, she most certainly did not come,
or she would have straightened the room up ;
the most ignorant of us knows that a wife
would not endure a room in the condition in
which Hogg found this one when he occupied
it one night. Shelley was away — why, nobody
can divine. Clothes were scattered about,
there were books on every side : " Wherever a
book could be laid was an open book turned
down on its face to keep its place." It seems
plain that the wife was not invited. No, not
that ; I think she was invited, but said to her
self that she could not bear to go there and
see another young woman touching heads with
her husband over an Italian book and making
thrilling hand-contacts with him accidentally.
As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there,
"where he found an easeful resting-place in
the house of Mrs. Boinville — the white-haired
Maimuna — and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner."
The aged Zonoras was deceased, but the white-
haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see.

40 HOW TO TELL A STORY

"Three charming ladies entertained the mock
er (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours, Wie-
land's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the ce
lestial manna of refined sentiment." " Such,"
says Hogg, " were the delights of Shelley's
paradise in Bracknell."

The white-haired Maimuna presently writes
to Hogg:

" I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures.
Shelley is making a trial of them with us — "

A trial of them. It may be called that. It
was March 1 1, and he had been in the house a
month. She continues :

Shelley " likes them so well that he is resolved to
leave off rambling — "

But he has already left it off. He has been
there a month.

" And begin a course of them himself."

But he has already begun it. He has been
at it a month. He likes it so well that he has
forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his
reveals.

" Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest."

Yet he has been resting both for a month,
with Italian, and tea, and manna of sentiment,

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 41

and late hours, and every restful thing a young
husband could need for the refreshment of
weary limbs and a sore conscience, and a nag
ging sense of shabbiness and treachery.

" His journeys after what he has never found have
racked his purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved
to take a littl^ care of the former, in pity to the latter,
which I applaud, and shall second with all my might."

But she does not say whether the young
wife, a stranger and lonely yonder, wants an
other woman and her daughter Cornelia to be
lavishing so much inflamed interest on her
husband or not. That young wife is always
silent — we are never allowed to hear from her.
She must have opinions about such things,
she cannot be indifferent, she must be approv
ing or disapproving, surely she would speak if
she were allowed — even to-day and from her
grave she would, if she could, I think — but we
get only the other side, they keep her silent
always.

" He has deeply interested us. In the course of
your intimacy he must have made you feel what we
now feel for him. He is seeking a house close to us —

Ah ! he is not close enough yet, it seems —

41 and if he succeeds we shall have an additional mo
tive to induce you to come among us in the summer."

42 HOW TO TELL A STORY

The reader would puzzle a long time and
not guess the biographer's comment upon the
above letter. It is this :

"These sound like words of a considerate and ju
dicious friend."

That is what he thinks. That is, it is what
he thinks he thinks. No, that is not quite it :
it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particu
larly and unspeakably dull reader into think
ing it is what he thinks. He makes that com
ment with the knowledge that Shelley is in
love with this woman's daughter, and that it
is because of the fascinations of these two that
Shelley has deserted his wife — for this month,
considering all the circumstances, and his new
passion, and his employment of the time,
amounted to desertion ; that is its rightful
name. We cannot know how the wife re
garded it and felt about it ; but if she could
have read the letter which Shelley was writing
to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess
her thought and how she felt. Hear him :

" I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the
last month ; I have escaped, in the society of all that
philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismay
ing solitude of myself."

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 43

It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling
ashamed.

" They have revived in my heart the expiring flame
of life. I have felt myself translated to a paradise
which has nothing of mortality but its transitoriness ;
my heart sickens at the view of that necessity which
will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity
of this happy home — for it has become my home.

" Eliza is still with us — not here ! — but will be with
me when the infinite malice of destiny forces me to
depart."

Eliza is she who blocked that game — the
game in London — the one where we were pur
posing to dine every night with one of the
"three charming ladies" who fed tea and
manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.

Shelley could send Eliza away, of course ;
could have cleared her out loner acfo if so

£> o

minded, just as he had previously done with a
predecessor of hers whom he had first wor
shipped and then turned against ; but perhaps
she was useful there as a thin excuse for stay
ing away himself.

"I am now but little inclined to contest this point.
I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. . . .

" It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sen
sation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor

44 HOW TO TELL A STORY

little lanthe, in whom I may hereafter find the con
solation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the
fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded
abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no
more than a blind and loathsome worm, that cannot
see to sting.

" I have begun to learn Italian again. . . . Cornelia
assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you
that I thought her cold and reserved ? She is the re
verse of this, as she is the reverse of everything bad.
She inherits all the divinity of her mother. ... I
have sometimes forgotten that I am not an inmate of
this delightful home — that a time will come which
will cast me again into the boundless ocean of ab
horred society.

" I have written nothing but one stanza, which has
no meaning, and that I have only written in thought :

" Thy dewy looks sink in my breast ;

Thy gentle words stir poison there ;
Thou hast disturbed the only rest

That was the portion of despair.
Subdued to duty's hard control,

I could have borne my wayward lot :
The chains that bind this ruined soul

Had cankered then, but crushed it not.

" This is the vision of a delirious and distempered
dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of
morning. Its surpassing excellence and exquisite
perfections have no more reality than the color of an
autumnal sunset."

Then it did not refer to his wife. That is

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 45

plain ; otherwise he would have said so. It is
well that he explained that it has no meaning,
for if he had not done that, the previous soft
references to Cornelia and the way he has
come to feel about her now would make us
think she was the person who had inspired it
while teaching him how to read the warm and
ruddy Italian poets during a month.

The biography observes that portions of
this letter " read like the tired moaning of a
wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of
the wound are permissible; we will hazard
one.

Read by the light of Shelley's previous his
tory, his letter seems to be the cry of a tort
ured conscience. Until this time it was a
conscience that had never felt a pang or known
a smirch. It was the conscience of one who,
until this time, had never done a dishonorable
thing, or an ungenerous, or cruel, or treacher
ous thing, but was now doing all of these, and
was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shel
ley had been master of his nature, and it was
a nature which was as beautiful and as nearly
perfect as any merely human nature may be.
But he was drunk, now, with a debasing pas
sion, and was not himself. There is nothing
in his previous history that is in character with

46 HOW TO TELL A STORY

the Shelley of this letter. He had done boy
ish things, foolish things, even crazy things,
but never a thing to be ashamed of. He had
done things which one might laugh at, but the
privilege of laughing was limited always to
the thing itself; you could not laugh at the
motive back of it — that was high, that was
noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts
had a purpose back of them which made them
fine, often great, and made the rising laugh
seem profanation and quenched it ; quenched
it, and changed the impulse to homage. Up
to this time he had been loyalty itself, where
his obligations lay — treachery was new to him;
he had never done an ignoble thing — baseness
was new to him ; he had never done an un
kind thing — that also was new to him.

This was the author of that letter, this was
the man who had deserted his young wife and
was lamenting, because he must leave another
woman's house which had become a " home "
to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly
because he must go back to his wife and child?
No, the lament is mainly for what he is to
leave behind him. The physical comforts of
the house? No, in his life he had never at
tached importance to such things. Then the
thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 47

down to a person — to the person whose " dewy
looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose
seducing words had "stirred poison there."

He was ashamed of himself, his conscience
was upbraiding him. He was the slave of a
degrading love ; he was drunk with his passion,
the real Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This
is the verdict which his previous history must
certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.

One must be allowed to assist himself with
conjectures like these when trying to find his
way through a literary swamp which has so
many misleading finger-boards up as this book
is furnished with.

We have now arrived at a part of the swamp
where the difficulties and perplexities are go
ing to be greater than any we have yet met
with — where, indeed, the finger-boards are mul
titudinous, and the most of them pointing dil
igently in the wrong direction. We are to be
told by the biography why Shelley deserted
his wife and child and took up with Cornelia
Turner and Italian. It was not on account of
Cornelia's sighs and sentimentalities and tea
and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was be
cause " his happiness in his home had been
wounded and bruised almost to death."

48 HOW TO TELL A STORY

It had been wounded and bruised almost to
death in this way :

ist. Harriet persuaded him to set up a car
riage.

2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet
stopped reading aloud and studying.

3d. Harriet's walks with Ho'gg " commonly
conducted us to some fashionable bonnet-
shop."

4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th. When an operation was being per
formed upon the baby, " Harriet stood by, nar
rowly observing all that was done, but, to the
astonishment of the operator, betraying not
the smallest sign of emotion."

6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still
of the household.

The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all
in ; there is no more. Upon these six counts
she stands indicted of the crime of driving her
husband into that sty at Bracknell ; and this
crime, by these helps, the biographical prose
cuting attorney has set himself the task of
proving upon her.

Does the biographer call himself the attor
ney for the prosecution? No, only to him
self, privately ; publicly he is the passionless,
disinterested, impartial judge on the bench.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 49

He holds up his judicial scales before the
world, that all may see ; and it all tries to
look so fair that a blind person would some
times fail to see him slip the false weights in.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been
wounded and bruised almost to death, first,
because Harriet had persuaded him to set up
a carriage. I cannot discover that any evi
dence is offered that she asked him to set up
a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy
offence? Was it unique? Other young wives
had committed it before, others have com
mitted it since. Shelley had dearly loved her
in those London days ; possibly he set up the
carnage gladly to please her; affectionate
young husbands do such things. When Shel
ley ran away with another girl, by-and-by,
this girl persuaded him to pour the price of
many carriages and many horses down the
bottomless well of her father's debts, but this
impartial judge finds no fault with that. Once
she appeals to Shelley to raise money — neces
sarily by borrowing, there was no other way—
to pay her father's debts with at a time when
Shelley was in danger of being arrested and
imprisoned for his own debts ; yet the good
judge finds no fault with her even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that

4

£0 HOW TO TELL A STORY

rapacious mendicant's lap a sum which cost
him — for he borrowed it at ruinous rates —
from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars.
But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the supplica
tions were often sent through Mary, the good
judge is Mary's strenuous friend, so Mary gets
no censures. On the Continent Mary rode in
her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts,
" by one of the best makers in Bond Street/'
yet the good judge makes not even a passing
comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out
Count No. I against Harriet Shelley as being
far-fetched and frivolous.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been
wounded and bruised almost to death, second
ly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled
away to nothing, Bysshe had ceased to express
any interest in them." At what time was this ?
It was when Harriet " had fully recovered from
the fatigue of her first effort of maternity, . . .
and was now in full force, vigor, and effect."
Very well, the baby was born two days before
the close of June. It took the mother a month
to get back her full force, vigor, and effect ; this
brings us to July 2/th and the deadly Cornelia.
If a wife of eighteen is studying with her hus
band and he gets smitten with another wom
an, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 51

studies for that reason, and is not his wife's
interest in her studies likely to languish for
the same reason ? Would not the mere sight
of those books of hers sharpen the pain that
is in her heart? This sudden breaking down
of a mutual intellectual interest of two years'
standing is coincident with Shelley's re-en
counter with Cornelia ; and we are allowed to
gather from that time forth for nearly two
months he did all his studying in that person's
society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count
No. 2 from the indictment against Harriet.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been
wounded and bruised almost to death, thirdly,
because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly
led to some fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer
no palliation ; I only ask why the dispassion
ate, impartial judge did not offer one himself
— merely, I mean, to offset his leniency in a
similar case or two where the girl who ran
away with Harriet's husband was the shopper.
There are several occasions where she inter
ested herself with shopping — among them be
ing walks which ended at the bonnet-shop—
yet in none of these cases does she get a word
of blame from the good judge, while in one
of them he covers the deed with a justifying
remark, she doing the shopping that time to

52 HOW TO TELL A STORY

find easement for her mind, her child having
died.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been
wounded and bruised almost to death, fourth
ly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse.
The wet - nurse was introduced at the time
of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after
Shelley had been enjoying the two months of
study with Cornelia which broke up his wife's
studies and destroyed his personal interest in
them. Why, by this time, nothing that Shel
ley's wife could do would have been satisfac
tory to him, for he was in love with another
woman, and was never going to be contented
again until he got back to her. If he had
been still in love with his wife it is not easily
conceivable that he would care much who
nursed the baby, provided the baby was well
nursed. Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voic
ing itself now, Shelley's conscience was assur
edly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting
him. Shelley needed excuses for his altered
attitude towards his wife ; Providence pitied
him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence
had sent him a cotton doughnut it would have
answered just as well ; all he wanted was some
thing to find fault with.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 53

wounded and bruised almost to death, fifthly,
because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical
operation which was being performed upon
her child, and, "to the astonishment of the
operator," who was watching Harriet instead
of attending to his operation, she betrayed
" not the smallest sign of emotion." The au
thor of this biography was not ashamed to set
down that exultant slander. He was appar
ently not aware that it was a small business
to bring into his court a witness whose name
he does not know, and whose character and
veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow
him to strike this blow at the mother-heart of
this friendless girl. The biographer says, " We
may not infer from this that Harriet did not
feel " — why put it in, then ? — " but we learn
that those about her could believe her to be
hard and insensible." Who were those who
were about her? Her husband? He hated
her now, because he was in love elsewhere.
Her sister? Of course that is not charged.
Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The
wet-nurse? She does not testify. If any
others were there we have no mention of
them. " Those about her " are reduced to one
person — her husband. Who reports the cir
cumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was

54 HOW TO TELL A STORY

there — we do not know. But if he was, he
still got his information at second-hand, as it
was the operator who noticed Harriet's lack of
emotion, not himself. Hogg is not given to
saying kind things when Harriet is his subject.
He may have said them the time that he tried
to tempt her to soil her honor, but after that
he mentions her usually with a sneer. " Among
those who were about her" was one witness
well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish
all doubts, set our minds at rest ; one witness,
not called and not callable, whose evidence, if
we could but get it, would outweigh the oaths
of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and name
less surgeons — the baby. I wish we had the
baby's testimony ; and yet if we had it it would
not do us any good — a furtive conjecture, a
sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be
smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air
of judicial investigation, and its positiveness
would wilt into dubiety.

The biographer says of Harriet, "If words
of tender affection and motherly pride prove
the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved
her first-born child." That is, if mere empty
words can prove it, it stands proved — and in
this way, without committing himself, he gives
the reader a chance to infer that there isn't

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 55

any extant evidence but words, and that he
doesn't take much stock in them. How sel
dom he shows his hand ! He is^always lurk-
ing behind a non-committal " if " or something
of that kind; always gliding and dodging
around, distributing colorless poison here and
there and everywhere, but always leaving him
self in a position to say that his language will
be found innocuous if taken to pieces and ex
amined. He clearly exhibits a steady and
never-relaxing purpose to make Harriet the
scapegoat for her husband's first great sin-
but it is in the general view that this is re
vealed, not in the details. His insidious liter
ature is like blue water ; you know what it is
that makes it blue, but you cannot produce
and verify any detail of the cloud of micro
scopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary
can dip up a glassful and show you that it is
pure white and you cannot deny it ; and ,he
can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show
that every glassful is white, and prove it to
any one's eye — and yet that lake was blue and
you can swear it. This book is blue — with
slander in solution.

Let the reader examine, for example, the
paragraph of comment which immediately fol
lows the letter containing Shelley's self-expos-

56 HOW TO TELL A STORY

ure which we have been considering. This is
it. One should inspect the individual sen
tences as they go by, then pass them in pro
cession and review the cake-walk as a whole :

" Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from
this pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken ; it is
evident, also, that he knew where duty lay ; he felt
that his part was to take up his burden, silently and
sorrowfully, and to bear it henceforth with the quiet
ness of despair. But we can perceive that he scarcely
possessed the strength and fortitude needful for suc
cess in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself
was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite
of blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville
household ; for gentle voices and dewy looks and
words of sympathy could not fail to remind him of an
ideal of tranquillity or of joy which could never be
his, and which he must henceforth sternly exclude
from his imagination."

That paragraph commits the author in no
way. Taken sentence by sentence it asserts
nothing against anybody or in favor of any
body, pleads for nobody, accuses nobody.
Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as
moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is
a design against the reader ; its intent is to
remove the feeling which the letter must leave
with him if let alone, and put a different one
in its place — to remove a feeling justified by

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 57

the letter and substitute one not justified by
it. The letter itself gives you no uncertain
picture — no lecturer is needed to stand by
with a stick and point out its details and let
on to explain what they mean. The picture
is the very clear and remorsefully faithful
picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is
ashamed of himself ; an angel who beats his
soiled wings and cries, who complains to the
woman who enticed him that he could have
borne his wayward lot, he could have stood by
his duty if it had not been for her beguile-
ments ; an angel who rails at the " boundless
ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his
poor judicious sister-in-law. If there is any
dignity about this spectacle it will escape most
people.

Yet when the paragraph of comment is
taken as a whole, the picture is full of dignity
and pathos ; we have before us a blameless
and noble spirit stricken to the earth by ma
lign powers, but not conquered ; tempted, but
grandly putting the temptation away ; en
meshed by subtle coils, but sternly resolved to
rend them and march forth victorious, at any
peril of life or limb. Curtain — slow music.

Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take
the bad taste of Shelley's letter out of the read-

58 HOW TO TELL A STORY

er's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was
wasted ; without that, it has no relevancy —
the multiplication table would have padded
the space as rationally.

We have inspected the six reasons which we
are asked to believe drove a man of conspicu
ous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness,
and iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness,
from the wife whom he loved and who loved
him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise
of Bracknell. These are six infinitely little
reasons ; but there were six colossal ones,
and these the counsel for the destruction of
Harriet Shelley persists in not considering
very important.

Moreover, the colossal six preceded the lit
tle six, and had done the mischief before they
were born. Let us double-column the twelve ;
then we shall see at a glance that each little
reason is in turn answered by a retorting reason
of a size to overshadow it and make it insig
nificant :

1. Harriet sets up carriage. I. CORNELIA TURNER.

2. Harriet stops studying. 2. CORNELIA TURNER.

3. Harriet goes to bonnet-shop. 3. CORNELIA TURNER.

4. Harriet takes a wet-nurse. 4. CORNELIA TURNER.

5. Harriet has too much nerve. 5. CORNELIA TURNER.

6. Detested sister-in-law. 6. CORNELIA TURNER.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 59

As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia
Turner and the Italian lessons happened before
the little six had been discovered to be griev
ances, we understand why Shelley's happiness
in his home had been wounded and bruised
almost to death, and no one can persuade us
into laying it on Harriet. Shelley and Cor
nelia are the responsible persons, and we can
not in honor and decency allow the cruelties
which they practised upon the unoffending
wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a
chance to waste time and tears over six sen
timental justifications of an offence which the
six can't justify, nor even respectably assist
in justifying.

Six ? There were seven ; but in charity to
the biographer the seventh ought not to be
exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and
not only hung it out, but thought it was a
good point in Shelley's favor. For two years
Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food
and all that at home ; there was enough for
spiritual and mental support, but not enough
for luxury ; and so, at the end of the con
tented two years, this latter detail justifies him
in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia
Turner and supplying the rest of his need in
the way of surplus sympathy and intellectual

60 HOW TO TELL A STORY

pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man
in merely comfortable circumstances may rob
a bank without sin.

Ill

IT is 1814, it is the i6th of March, Shelley
has written his letter, he has been in the Boin-
ville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in
her husbandless home. Mischief had been
wrought. It is the biographer who concedes
this. We greatly need some light on Harriet's
side of the case now ; we need to know how
she enjoyed the month, but there is no way
to inform ourselves ; there seems to be a
strange absence of documents and letters and
diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary,
the approaching Mary Godwin kept a diary,
her father kept one, her half-sister by marriage,
adoption, and the dispensation of God kept
one, and the entire tribe and all its friends
wrote and received letters, and the letters were
kept and are producible when this biography
needs them ; but there are only three or four
scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary. Har
riet wrote plenty of letters to her husband —
nobody knows where they are, I suppose ; she

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 6 1

wrote plenty of letters to other people — ap
parently they have disappeared, too. Peacock
says she wrote good letters, but apparently in
terested people had sagacity enough to mislay
them in time. After all her industry she went
down into her grave and lies silent there — si
lent, when she has so much need to speak.
We can only wonder at this mystery, not ac
count for it.

No, there is no way of finding out what
Harriet's state of feeling was during the
month that Shelley was disporting himself in
the Bracknell paradise. We have to fall back
upon conjecture, as our fabulist does when he
has nothing more substantial to work with.
Then we easily conjecture that as the days
dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and
heavier under its two burdens — shame and re
sentment : the shame of being pointed at and
gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resent
ment against the woman who had beguiled
her husband from her and now kept him in a
disreputable captivity. Deserted wives — de
serted whether for cause or without cause — find
small charity among the virtuous and the dis
creet. We conjecture that one after another
the neighbors ceased to call ; that one after
another they got to being " engaged " when

62 HOW TO TELL A STORY

Harriet called; that finally they one after the
other cut her dead on the street ; that after
that she stayed in the house daytimes, and
brooded over her sorrows, and night-times did
the same, there being nothing else to do with
the heavy hours and the silence and solitude
and the dreary intervals which sleep should
have charitably bridged, but didn't.

Yes, mischief had been wrought. The bi
ographer arrives at this conclusion, and it is a
most just one. Then, just as you begin to
half hope he is going to discover the cause of
it and launch hot bolts of wrath at the guilty
manufacturers of it, you have to turn away
disappointed. You are disappointed, and you
sigh. This is what he says — the italics are
mine:

" However the mischief may have been wrought —
and at this day no one can wish to heap blame on any
buried head — "

So it is poor Harriet, after all. Stern jus
tice must take its course — justice tempered
with delicacy, justice tempered with compas
sion, justice that pities a forlorn dead girl and
refuses to strike her. Except in the back.
Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing,
but only insinuate it. Stern justice knows

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 63

about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the
bonnet -shop and the other dark things that
caused this sad mischief, and may not, must
not blink them; so it delivers judgment where
judgment belongs, but softens the blow by not
seeming to deliver judgment at all. To re
sume — the italics are mine :

" However the mischief may have been wrought —
and at this day no one can wish to heap blame on any
buried head — // z's certain that some cause or causes
of deep division between Shelley and his wife were 111
operation during tJie early part of the year 1814."

This shows penetration. No deduction
could be more accurate than this. There were
indeed some causes of deep division. But
next comes another disappointing sentence :

"To guess at the precise nature of these causes,
in the absence of definite statement, were useless."

Why, he has already been guessing at them
for several pages, and we have been trying to
outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is
tired of it and won't play any more. It is not
quite fair to us. However, he will get over
this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next
indiscretion and has to be guessed out of it at
Harriet's expense.

64 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" We may rest content with Shelley's own
words " — in a Chancery paper drawn up by
him three years later. They were these:
" Delicacy forbids me to say more than that
we were disunited by incurable dissensions."

As for me, I do not quite see why we should
rest content with anything of the sort. It is
not a very definite statement. It does not
necessarily mean anything more than that he
did not wish to go into the tedious details of
those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite
properly excuse him from saying, " I was in
love with Cornelia all that time ; my wife kept
crying and worrying about it and upbraiding
me and begging me to cut myself free from a
connection which was wronging her and dis
gracing us both ; and I being stung by these
reproaches retorted with fierce and bitter
speeches — for it is my nature to do that when
I am stirred, especially if the target of them
is a person whom I had greatly loved and re
spected before, as witness my various attitudes
towards Miss Hitchener, the Gisbornes, Har
riet's sister, and others — and finally I did not
improve this state of things when I deserted
my wife and spent a whole month with the
woman who had infatuated me."

No, he could not go into those details, and

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 65

we excuse him ; but, nevertheless, we do not
rest content with this bland proposition to
puff away that whole long disreputable episode
with a single meaningless remark of Shelley's.

We do admit that " it is certain that some
cause or causes of deep division were in oper
ation." We would admit it just the same if
the grammar of the statement were as straight
as a string, for we drift into pretty indifferent
grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in
historical work ; but we have to decline to
admit that we cannot guess those cause or
causes.

But guessing is not really necessary. There
is evidence attainable — evidence from the batch
discredited by the biographer and set out at
the back door in his appendix - basket ; and
yet a court of law would think twice before
throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy
person who would venture to offer in such a
place a good part of the material which is
placed before the readers of this book as " evi
dence," and so treated by this daring biogra
pher. Among some letters (in the appendix-
basket) from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the God-
winian share in the Shelleyan events of 1814,
she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and
her husband, agitated and weeping, to implore

5

66 HOW TO TELL A STORY

them to forbid Shelley the house, and prevent
his seeing Mary Godwin.

" She related that last November he had fallen in
love with Mrs. Turner and paid her such marked at
tentions Mr. Turner, the husband, had carried off his
wife to Devonshire."

The biographer finds a technical fault in
this ; " the Shelleys were in Edinburgh in No
vember." What of that? The woman is re
calling a conversation which is more than two
months old ; besides, she was probably more
intent upon the central and important fact of
it than upon its unimportant date. Harriet's
quoted statement has some sense in it ; for
that reason, if for no other, it ought to have
been put in the body of the book. Still, that
would not have answered ; even the biogra
pher's enemy could not be cruel enough to
ask him to let this real grievance, this com
pact and substantial and picturesque figure,
this rawhead-and-bloody-bones, come striding
in there among those pale shams, those rickety
spectres labelled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP,
and so on — no, the father of all malice could
not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic
goblins to a competition like that.

The fabulist finds fault with the statement

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 67

because it has a technical error in it ; and he
does this at the moment that he is furnishing
us an error himself, and of a graver sort. He
says:

"If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he
brought her back, and Shelley was staying with her
and her mother on terms of cordial intimacy in March,
1814."

We accept the "cordial intimacy" — it was
the very thing Harriet was complaining of—
but there is nothing to show that it was Tur
ner who brought his wife back. The statement
is thrown in as if it were not only true, but
was proof that Turner was not uneasy. Tur
ner's movements are proof of nothing. Nothing
but a statement from Turner's mouth would
have any value here, and he made none.

Six days after writing his letter Shelley and
his wife were together again for a moment —
to get remarried according to the rites of the
English Church.

Within three weeks the new husband and
wife were apart again, and the former was back
in his odorous paradise. This time it is the
wife who does the deserting. She finds Cor
nelia too strong for her, probably. At any
rate, she goes away with her baby and sister,
and we have a playful fling at her from good

68 HOW TO TELL A STORY

Mrs. Boinville, the " mysterious spinner Mai-
muna " ; she whose " face was as a damsel's
face, and yet her hair was gray " ; she of whom
the biographer has said, " Shelley was indeed
caught in an almost invisible thread spun
around him, but unconsciously, by this subtle
and benignant enchantress." The subtle and
benignant enchantress writes to Hogg, April
18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beaute
ous half went to town on Thursday."

Then Shelley writes a poem — a chant of
grief over the hard fate which obliges him now
to leave his paradise and take up with his wife
again. It seems to intimate that the paradise
is cooling towards him ; that he is warned off
by acclamation; that he must not even vent
ure to tempt with one last tear his friend Cor
nelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed
and cold and dares not entreat her lover to
stay :

Exhibit E

" Pause not ! the time is past ! Every voice cries

' Away !'
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle

mood ;

Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not en
treat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude."

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 69

Back to the solitude of his now empty home,
that is !

"Away! away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth."

But he will have rest in the grave by-and-
by. Until that time comes, the charms of
Bracknell will remain in his memory, along
with Mrs. Boinville's voice and Cornelia Tur
ner's smile :

"Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet, till the phan
toms flee
Which that house and hearth and garden made

dear to thee erewhile,

Thy remembrance and repentance and deep mus
ings are not free

From the music of two voices and the light of
one sweet smile."

We cannot wonder that Harriet could not
stand it. Any of us would have left. We
would not even stay with a cat that was in this
condition. Even the Boinvilles could not en
dure it; and so, as we have seen, they gave
this one notice.

" Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did
not yet despair of reconciliation with Harriet, nor
had he ceased to love her."

70 HOW TO TELL A STORY

^ Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble
to his biographer. They are constantly in
serted as " evidence," and they make much
confusion. As soon as one of them has proved
one thing, another one follows and proves quite
a different thing. The poem just quoted shows
that he was in love with Cornelia, but a month
later he is in love with Harriet again, and there
is a poem to prove it.

" In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he
has now no grief but one — the grief of having known
and lost his wife's love."

Exhibit F

" Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul."

But without doubt she had been reserving
her looks of love a good part of the time for
ten months, now — ever since he began to lav
ish his own on Cornelia Turner at the end of
the previous July. He does really seem to
have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in
one brief month, for he eulogizes Harriet in a
way which rules all competition out :

" Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate."

He complains of her hardness, and begs her

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 71

to make the concession of a " slight endur
ance " — of his waywardness, perhaps — for the
sake of " a fellow-being's lasting weal." But
the main force of his appeal is in his closing
stanza, and is strongly worded :

" O trust for once no erring guide !

Bid the remorseless feeling flee ;
Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,

Tis anything but thee ;
O deign a nobler pride to prove,
And pity if thou canst not love."

This is in May — apparently towards the end
of it. Harriet and Shelley were correspond
ing all the time. Harriet got the poem — a
copy exists in her own handwriting; she be
ing the only gentle and kind person amid a
world of hate, according to Shelley's own tes
timony in the poem, we are permitted to think
that the daily letters would presently have
melted that kind and gentle heart and brought
about the reconciliation, if there had been time
— but there wasn't : for in a very few days—
in fact, before the 8th of June— Shelley was in
love with another woman !

And so — perhaps while Harriet was walking
the floor nights, trying to get her poem by
heart— her husband was doing a fresh one—

72 HOW TO TELL A STORY

for the other girl — Mary Wollstonecraft God
win — with sentiments like these in it :

Exhibit G

"To spend years thus and be rewarded,
As thou, sweet love, requited me
When none were near.
. . . thy lips did meet
Mine tremblingly; . . .

" Gentle and good and mild thou art,

Nor can I live if thou appear
Aught but thyself.". . .

And so on. " Before the close of June it was
known and felt by Mary and Shelley that each
was inexpressibly dear to the other." Yes,
Shelley had found this child of sixteen to his
liking, and had wooed and won her in the
graveyard. But that is nothing ; it was better
than wooing her in her nursery, at any rate,
where it might have disturbed the other chil
dren.

However, she was a child in years only.
From the day that she set her masculine grip
on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she
had occupied the only kind and gentle Har
riet's place in March it would have been a
thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boin-
ville rookery and read the riot act. That holi-

• ^ J

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 73

day of Shelley's would have been of short
duration, and Cornelia's hair would have been
as gray as her mother's when the services were
over.

Hogg went to the Godwin residence in
Skinner Street with Shelley on that 8th of
June. They passed through Godwin's little
debt-factory of a book-shop and went up-stairs
hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there.
Shelley strode about the room impatiently,
making its crazy floor quake under him. Then
a door "was partially and softly opened. A
thrilling voice called, * Shelley !' A thrilling
voice answered, * Mary !' And he darted out
of the room like an arrow from the bow of the
far-shooting King. A very young female, fair
and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a pierc
ing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual
dress in London at that time, had called him
out of the room."

This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg.
The thrill of the voices shows that the love of
Shelley and Mary was already upward of a
fortnight old ; therefore it had been born with
in the month of May — born while Harriet was
still trying to get her poem by heart, we think.
I must not be asked how I know so much
about that thrill ; it is my secret. The biog-

74 HOW TO TELL A STORY

rapher and I have private ways of finding out
things when it is necessary to find them out
and the customary methods fail.

Shelley left London that day, and was gone
ten days. The biographer conjectures that he
spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It
would be just like him. To the end of his
days he liked to be in love with two women at
once. He was more in love with Miss Hitch-
ener when he married Harriet than he was
with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple
and unostentatious candor. He was more in
love with Cornelia than he was with Harriet
in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814,
yet he supplied both of them with love poems
of an equal temperature meantime ; he loved
Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting
ready to run off with the one, it is^conjectured
that he put in his odd time trying to get rec
onciled to the other; by -and -by, while still
in love with Mary, he will make love to her
half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the visi
tation of God, through the medium of clandes
tine letters, and she will answer with letters
that are for no eye but his own.

When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin
he was looking around for another paradise.
He had tastes of his own, and there were feat-

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 75

ures about the Godwin establishment that
strongly recommended it. Godwin was an ad
vanced thinker and an able writer. One of
his romances is still read, but his philosophical
works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue
now; their authority was already declining
when Shelley made his acquaintance — that
is, it was declining with the public, but not
with Shelley. They had been his moral and
political Bible, and they were that yet. Shel
ley the infidel would himself have claimed to
be less a work of God than a work of Godwin.
Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind
and interwoven themselves into it and become
a part of its texture ; he regarded himself as
Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not with
out self-appreciation ; indeed, it may be con
jectured that from his point of view the last
syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived
serene in his lofty world of philosophy, far
above the mean interests that absorbed smaller
men, and only came down to the ground at
intervals to pass the hat for alms to pay his
debts with, and insult the man that relieved
him. Several of his principles were out of the
ordinary. For example, he was opposed to
marriage. He was not aware that his preach
ings from this text were but theory and wind ;

76 HOW TO TELL A STORY

he supposed he was in earnest in imploring
people to live together without marrying, until
Shelley furnished him a working model of his
scheme and a practical example to analyze, by
applying the principle in his own family ; the
matter took a different and surprising aspect
then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the
main defect in Shelley's make-up was that he
was destitute of the sense of humor. This
episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's at
tention.

But we have said enough about the head of
the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin is described
as being in several ways a terror; and even
when her soul was in repose she wore green
spectacles. But I suspect that her main un-
attractiveness was born of the fact that she
wrote the letters that are out in the appendix-
basket in the back yard — letters which are
an outrage and wholly untrustworthy, for they
say some kind things about poor Harriet and
tell some disagreeable truths about her hus
band ; and these things make the fabulist grit
his teeth a good deal.

Next we have Fanny Godwin — a Godwin
by courtesy only ; she was Mrs. Godwin's nat
ural daughter by a former friend. She was
a sweet and winning girl, but she presently

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 77

wearied of the Godwin paradise, and poisoned
herself.

Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she pre
ferred to call herself) Clairmont, daughter of
Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was
very young and pretty and accommodating,
and always ready to do what she could to
make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off
with her part -sister Mary, she became the
guest of the pair, and contributed a natural
child to their nursery — Allegra. Lord Byron
was the father.

We have named the several members and
advantages of the new paradise in Skinner
Street, with its crazy book- shop underneath.
Shelley was all right now, this was a better
place than the other; more variety anyway,
and more different kinds of fragrance. One
could turn out poetry here without any trou
ble at all.

The way the new love-match came about
was this: Shelley told Mary all his aggrava
tions and sorrows and griefs, and about the
wet-nurse and the bonnet-shop and the sur
geon and the carriage, and the sister-in-law
that blocked the London game, and about
Cornelia and her mamma, and how they had
turned him out of the house after making so

78 HOW TO TELL A STORY

much of him ; and how he had deserted Har
riet and then Harriet had deserted him, and
how the reconciliation was working along and
Harriet getting her poem by heart ; and still
he was not happy, and Mary pitied him, for
she had had trouble herself. But I am not
satisfied with this. It reads too much like
statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and '
is too earthy and business-like. It has the
sordid look of a trades-union procession out
on strike. That is not the right form for it.
The book does it better ; we will fall back on
the book and have a cake-walk :

" It was easy to divine that some restless grief pos
sessed him ; Mary herself was not unlearned in the
lore of pain. His generous zeal in her father's behalf,
his spiritual sonship to Godwin, his reverence for her
mother's memory, were guarantees with Mary of his
excellence.* The new friends could not lack subjects
of discourse, and underneath their words about Mary's
mother, and ' Political Justice,' and ' Rights of Wom
an,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards the
other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direc
tion of the other. The desire to assuage the suffer
ing of one whose happiness has grown precious to us
may become a hunger of the spirit as keen as any

* What she was after was guarantees of his excellence.
That he stood ready to desert his wife and child was one of
them, apparently.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 79

other, and this hunger now possessed Mary's heart ;
when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was with
a look full of the ardor of a ' soothing pity.' "

Yes, that is better and has more composure.
That is just the way it happened. He told
her about the wet-nurse, she told him about
political justice ; he told her about the dead
ly sister-in-law, she told him about her mother;
he told her about the bonnet-shop, she mur
mured back about the rights of woman ; then
he assuaged her, then she assuaged him ; then
he assuaged her some more, next she assuaged
him some more ; then they both assuaged one
another simultaneously; and so they went on
by the hour assuaging and assuaging and as
suaging, until at last what was the result?
They were in love. It will happen so every
time.

" He had married a woman who, as he now per
suaded himself, had never truly loved him, who loved
only his fortune and his rank, and who proved her
selfishness by deserting him in his misery."

I think that that is not quite fair to Har
riet. We have no certainty that she knew
Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He
went back to Cornelia, and Harriet may have
supposed that he was as happy with her as

8o HOW TO TELL A STORY

ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay or
the whitewash, for Shelley is going to neec
many a coat of it now, and the sooner the
reader becomes used to the intrusion of the
brush the sooner he will get reconciled to it
and stop fretting about it.

After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Har
riet at Bath — 8th of June to iSth — "it seems
to have been arranged that Shelley should
henceforth join the Skinner Street household
each day at dinner."

Nothing could be handier than this ; things
will swim along now.

" Although now Shelley was coming to believe that
his wedded union with Harriet was a thing of the
past, he had not ceased to regard her with affectionate
consideration ; he wrote to her frequently, and kept
her informed of his whereabouts."

We must not get impatient over these curi
ous inharmoniousnesses and irreconcilabilities
in Shelley's character. You can see by the
biographer's attitude towards them that there
is nothing objectionable about them. Shelley
was doing his best to make two adoring young
creatures happy: he was regarding the one
with affectionate consideration by mail, and
he was assuaging the other one at home.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 8 1

" Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps
never desired that the breach between herself and
her husband should be irreparable and complete."

I find no fault with that sentence except
that the "perhaps" is not strictly warranted.
It should have been left out. In support — or
shall we say extenuation? — of this opinion I
submit that there is not sufficient evidence to
warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The
only "evidence " offered that Harriet was hard
and proud and standing out against a recon
ciliation is a poem — the poem in which Shel
ley beseeches her to " bid the remorseless feel
ing flee" and "pity" if she "cannot love."
We have just that as " evidence," and out of
its meagre materials the biographer builds a
cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coli
seum; conjectures which convince him, the
prosecuting attorney, but ought to fall far
short of convincing any fair-minded jury.

Shelley's love-poems may be very good evi
dence, but we know well that they are " good
for this day and train only." We are able to
believe that they spoke the truth for that one
day, but we know by experience that they
could not be depended on to speak it the next
That very supplication for a rewarming of
Harriet's chilled love was followed so sudden-

6

82 HOW TO TELL A STORY

ly by the poet's plunge into an adoring pas
sion for Mary Godwin that if it had been a
check it would have lost its value before a lazy
person could have gotten to the bank with it.
Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness
— these may sometimes reside in a young wife
and mother of nineteen, but they are not
charged against Harriet Shelley outside of
that poem, and one has no right to insert them
into her character on such shadowy " evidence"
as that. Peacock knew Harriet well, and she
has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted
by him :

" Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and
demeanor such manifest emanations of pure and truth
ful nature that to be once in her company was to
know her thoroughly. She was fond of her husband,
and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it ; if they lived
in retirement, she was satisfied ; if they travelled, she
enjoyed the change of scene."

" Perhaps " she had never desired that the
breach should be irreparable and complete.
The truth is, we do not even know that there
was any breach at all at this time. We know
that the husband and wife went before the
altar and took a new oath on the 24th of
March to love and cherish each other until

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 83

death — and this may be regarded as a sort of
reconciliation itself, and a wiping out of the
old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and
the sister-in-law removed herself from her so
ciety. That was in April. Shelley wrote his
" appeal " in May, but the corresponding went
right along afterwards. We have a right to
doubt that the subject of it was a " reconcili
ation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that
she needed to' be reconciled and that her hus
band was trying to persuade her to it — as the
biographer has sought to make us believe, with
his Coliseum of conjectures built out of a
waste-basket of poetry. For we have " evi
dence " now — not poetry and conjecture. When
Shelley had been dining daily in the Skinner
Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the
love-match which was already a fortnight old
twenty-five days earlier, he forgot to write
Harriet ; forgot it the next day and the next.
During four days Harriet got no letter from
him. Then her fright and anxiety rose to ex
pression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shel
ley's publisher which seems to reveal to us
that Shelley's letters to her had been the cus
tomary affectionate letters of husband to wife,
and had carried no appeals for reconciliation
and had not needed to :

84 HOW TO TELL A STORY

"BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).

" MY DEAR SIR, — You will greatly oblige me by giv
ing the enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble
you, but it is now four days since I have heard from
him, which to me is an age. -Will you write by return
of post and tell me what has become of him ? as I
always fancy something dreadful has happened if I
do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is well
I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from
you or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure
this dreadful state of suspense. You are his friend
and you can feel for me.

" I remain yours truly,

" H. S."

Even without Peacock's testimony that " her
whole aspect and demeanor were manifest em
anations of a pure and truthful nature," we
should hold this to be a truthful letter, a sincere
letter, a loving letter ; it bears those marks ; I
think it is also the letter of a person accus
tomed to receiving letters from her husband
frequently, and that they have been of a wel
come and satisfactory sort, too, this long time
back — ever since the solemn remarriage and
reconciliation at the altar most likely.

The biographer follows Harriet's letter with
a conjecture. He conjectures that she " would
now gladly have retraced her steps." Which
means that it is proven that she had steps to

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 85

retrace — proven by the poem. Well, if the
poem is better evidence than the letter, we
must let it stand at that.

Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shel
ley's honor — by authority of random and un
verified gossip scavengered from a group of
people whose very names make a person shud
der: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her
part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron ;
Godwin, the philosophical tramp, who gathers
his share of it from a shadow — that is to say,
from a person whom he shirks out of naming.
Yet the biographer dignifies this sorry rub
bish with the name of " evidence."

Nothing remotely resembling a distinct
charge from a named person professing to
know is offered among this precious " evi
dence."

1. " Shelley believed" so and so.

2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shel
ley told Mary Godwin so and so, and Mary
told her.

3. " Shelley said " so and so — and later " ad
mitted over and over again that he had been
in error."

4. The unspeakable Godwin " wrote to Mr.
Baxter" that he knew so and so " from un
questionable authority "—name not furnished.

86 HOW TO TELL A STORY

How any man in his right mind could bring
himself to defile the grave of a shamefully
abused and defenceless girl with these base
less fabrications, this manufactured filth, is in
conceivable. How any man, in his right mind
or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to per
suade anybody to believe it, or listen patiently
to it, or, indeed, do anything but scoff at it and
deride it, is astonishing.

The charge insinuated by these odious slan
ders is one of the most difficult of all offences
to prove; it is also one which no man has a
right to mention even in a whisper about any
woman, living or dead, unless he knows it to be
true, and not even then unless he can also prove
it to be true. There is no justification for the
abomination of putting this stuff in the book.

Against Harriet Shelley's good name there
is not one scrap of tarnishing evidence, and
not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes
from a source that entitles it to a hearing.

On the credit side of the account we have
strong opinions from the people who knew her
best. Peacock says :

" I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my
most decided conviction that her conduct as a wife
was as pure, as true, as absolutely faultless, as that of
any who for such conduct are held most in honor."

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 87

Thornton Hunt, who had picked and pub
lished slight flaws in Harriet's character, says,
as regards this alleged large one :

" There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of
scandal against her before her voluntary departure
from Shelley."

Trelawney says :

«• I v the evidence of the lew friends

-w both Shelley and 'his w'fc.- -YiW&'rilCV
He ck, and one of the Godwins — that Har-

vas perfectly innocent of all oifence."

What excuse was there for raking up a par
cel of foul rumors from malicious and dis
credited sources and flinging them at this
dead girl's head? Her very defencelessness
should have been her protection. The fact
that all letters to her or about her, with al
most every scrap of her own writing, had been
diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of
a voice, while every pen - stroke which could
help her husband's side had been as diligently
preserved, should have excused her from being
brought to trial. Her witnesses have all dis
appeared, yet we see her summoned in her
grave-clothes to plead for the life of her char
acter, without the help of an advocate, before
a disqualified judge and a packed jury.

88 HOW TO TELL A STORY

Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter
on the /th of July. On the 28th her husband
ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sis
ter Claire to the Continent. He deserted his
wife when her confinement was approaching.
She bore him a child at the end of November,
his mistress bore him another one something
over two months late*- ^h? truants were
back in -London bef.
occur

On one occasion, presently, Sheller

pressed for money to support his mistress

that he went to his wife and got some money
of his that was in her hands — twenty pounds.
Yet the mistress was not moved to gratitude ;
for later, when the wife was troubled to meet
her engagements, the mistress makes this entry
in her diary :

"Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman.
Now we shall have to change our lodgings."

The deserted wife bore the bitterness and
obloquy of her situation two years and a quar
ter; then she gave up, and drowned herself.
A month afterwards the body was found in
the water. Three weeks later Shelley married
his mistress.

I must here be allowed to italicize a re-

UNIV.

IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
^<

mark of the biographer's concerning Harriet
Shelley:

" That no act of Shelley s during the two years which
immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash
act which brought her life to its close seems certain"

Yet her husband had deserted her and her
children, and was living with a concubine all
that time ! Why should a person attempt to
write biography when the simplest facts have
no meaning to him? This book is littered
with as crass stupidities as that one — deduc
tions by the page which bear no discoverable
kinship to their premises.

The biographer throws off that extraordi
nary remark without any perceptible disturb
ance to his serenity; for he follows it with a
sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct
which has not a pang of conscience in it, but
is silky and smooth and undulating and pious

a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at

their best. There may be people who can read
that page and keep their temper, but it is
doubtful.

Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon
it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and
beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly
gracious and lovely from the ruck of these dis-

9° HOW TO TELL A STORY

astrous pages, in spite of the fact that they
expose and establish his responsibility for his
forsaken wife's pitiful fate — a responsibility
which he himself tacitly admits in a letter to
Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his tak
ing up with Mary Godwin as an act which
Eliza "might excusably regard as the cause
of her sister's ruin."

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY
OFFENCES

The Pathfinder and The Dccrslayer stand at the
head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There
are others of his works which contain parts as perfect
as are to be found in these, and scenes even more
thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of
them as a finished whole.

The defects in both of these tales are compara
tively slight. They were pure works of art. — Prof.
Lounsbury.

The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of
invention.

. . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction,
Natty Bumppo. . . .

The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trap
per, all the delicate art of the forest, were familiar to
Cooper from his youth up. — Prof. Brander Matthews.

Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of ro
mantic fiction yet produced by America. — Wilkte
Collins.

IT seems to me that it was far from right
for the Professor of English Literature in Yale,
the Professor of English Literature in Colum-

94 HOW TO TELL A STORY

bia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on
Cooper's literature without having read some
of it. It would have been much more deco
rous to keep silent and let persons talk who
have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place
in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of
two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 1 14
offences against literary art out of a possible
115. It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary
art in the domain of romantic fiction — some
say twenty- two. In Dcerslayer Cooper vio
lated eighteen of them. These eighteen re
quire :

1. That a tale shall accomplish something
and arrive somewhere. But the Deer slayer
tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the
air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale
shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall
help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale
is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and
arrives nowhere>the episodes have no rightful
place in the work, since there was nothing for
them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a
tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses,

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 95

and that always the reader shall be able to tell
the corpses from the others. But this detail
has often been overlooked in the Dcerslaycr
tale.

4. They require that the personages in a
tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a suffi
cient excuse for being there. But this detail
also has been overlooked in the Dccrslayer
tale.

5. They require that when the personages
of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall
sound like human talk, and be talk such as
human beings would be likely to talk in the
given circumstances, and have a discoverable
meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a
show of relevancy, and remain in the neigh
borhood of the subject in hand, and be inter
esting to the reader, and help out the tale, and
stop when the people cannot think of any
thing more to say. But this requirement has
been ignored from the beginning of the Deer-
slayer tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author de
scribes the character of a personage in his
tale, the conduct and conversation of that per
sonage shall justify said description. But this
law gets little or no attention in the Dcerslayer
tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.

96 HOW TO TELL A STORY

7. They require that when a personage talks
like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree -calf, hand-
tooled, seven -dollar Friendship's Offering in
the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk
like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But
this rule is flung down and danced upon in the
Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall
not be played upon the reader as " the craft
of the woodsman, the delicate art of the for
est," by either the author or the people in the
tale. But this rule is persistently violated in
the Deerslayer tale.

9. They require that the personages of a
tale shall confine themselves to possibilities
and let miracles alone ; or, if they venture a
miracle, the author must so plausibly set it
forth as to make it look possible and reason
able. But these rules are not respected in the
Deerslayer tale.

10. They require that the author shall make
the reader feel a deep interest in the person
ages of his tale and in their fate ; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in
the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader
of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people
in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes
they would all get drowned together.

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 07

11. They require that the characters ;

! tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader
can tell beforehand what each will Jo in a
given emergency. But in the Deer:,layer tale
this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large tules there are
some little ones. These require that the au
thor shall

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not
merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second
cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

1 8. Employ a simple and straightforward
style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently
violated in the Decrslayer tale.

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was
not a rich endowment ; but such as it was he
liked to work it, he was pleased with the ef
fects, and indeed he did some quite sweet
things with it. In his little box of stage prop
erties he kept six or eight cunning devices,
tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen
to deceive and circumvent each other with,
7

98 HOW TO TELL A STORY

ati£? ^ie was never so happy as when he was
working these innocent things and seeing them
go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined
person trcfad in the tracks of the moccasined
enemy, and^bhus hide his own trail. Cooper
wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in
working that triav Another stage-property
that he pulled out of iiis box pretty frequently
was his broken twig, t^e prized his broken
twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked
it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any
book of his when somebody doesn't step on a
dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for
two hundred yards around. Every time a
Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence
is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to
step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred
handier things to step on, but that wouldn't
satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn
out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do
it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather
Stocking Series ought to have been called the
Broken Twig Series.

I am sorry there is not room to put in a few
dozen instances of the delicate art of the for
est, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some
of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we
may venture two or three samples. Cooper

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 99

was a sailor— a naval officer; yet he gravely
tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee
shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot
by her skipper because he knows of an under
tow there which will hold her back against the
gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft,
or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat?
For several years Cooper was daily in the so
ciety of artillery, and he ought to have noticed
that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it
either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or
so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so
on, till it finally gets tired and rolls. Now in
one place he loses some " females " — as he al
ways calls women — in the edge of a wood
near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to
give Bumppo a chance to show off the deli
cate art of the forest before the reader. These
mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They
hear a cannon-blast, and a cannon-ball present
ly comes rolling into the wood and stops at
their feet. To the females this suggests noth
ing. The case is very different with the ad
mirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know
peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly
and follow the track of that cannon-ball across
the plain through the dense fog and find the
fort. Isn't it a daisy ? If Cooper had any real

IOO HOW TO TELL A STORY

knowledge of Nature's ways of doing things,
he had a most delicate art in concealing the
fact. For instance: one of his acute Indian'
experts, Chingachgook (pronounced Chicago,
I think), has lost the trail of a person he is
tracking through the forest. Apparently that
trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I
could ever have guessed out the way to find
it. It was very different with Chicago. Chi
cago was not stumped for long. He turned a
running stream out of its course, and there,
in the slush in its old bed, were that person's
moccasin - tracks. The current did not wash
them away, as it would have done in all other
like cases — no, even the eternal laws of Nature
have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up
a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander
Matthews tells us that Cooper's books " reveal
an extraordinary fulness of invention." As
a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander
Matthews's literary judgments and applaud
his lucid and graceful phrasing of them ; but
that particular statement needs to be taken
with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart,
Cooper hadn't any more invention than a
horse ; and I don't mean a high-class horse,
either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be

FENIMORE COOPER'S LVfl'RXkY Of"FtVCL^ IOi

very difficult to find a really clever "situation"
in Cooper's books, and still more difficult to
find one of any kind which he has failed to
render absurd by his handling of it. Look at
the episodes of "the caves" ; and at the cele
brated scuffle between Maqua and those oth
ers on the table-land a few days later ; and at
Hurry Harry's queer water- transit from the
castle to the ark ; and at Deerslayer's half-
hour with his first corpse ; and at the quarrel
between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later;
ajid at — but choose for yourself ; you can't go
amiss.

If Cooper had been an observer his inven
tive faculty would have worked better; not
more interestingly, but more rationally, more
plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the
way of " situations " suffer noticeably from
the absence of the observer's protecting
gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate.
Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He
saw nearly all things as through a glass eye,
darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the
commonest little every-day matters accurately
is working at a disadvantage when he is con
structing a " situation." In the Deerslayer
tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet
wide where it flows out of a lake ; it presently

OV SELL A STORY

narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no
given reason, and yet when a stream acts like
that it ought to be required to explain itself.
Fourteen pages later the width of the brook's
outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty
feet, and become " the narrowest part of the
stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for.
The stream has bends in it, a sure indication
that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet
these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long.
If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious ob
server he would have noticed that the bends
were oftener nine hundred feet long than short
of it.

Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty
feet wide, in the first place, for no particular
reason ; in the second place, he narrowed it to
less than twenty to accommodate some Ind
ians. He bends a "sapling" to the form of
an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals
six Indians in its foliage. They are " laying "
for a settler's scow or ark which is coming up
the stream on its way to the lake ; it is being
hauled against the stiff current by a rope
whose stationary end is anchored in the lake ;
its rate of progress cannot be more than a
mile an hour. Cooper describes the ark, but
pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimen-

FiNIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 103

sions " it was little more than a modern canal-
boat." Let us guess, then, that it was about
one hundred and forty feet long. It was of
" greater breadth than common." Let us guess,
then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This
leviathan had been prowling down bends which
were but a third as long^is itself, and scraping
between banks where it had only two feet of
space to spare on each side. We cannot too
much admire this miracle. A low-roofed log
dwelling occupies "two -thirds of the ark's
length " — a dwelling ninety feet long and six
teen feet wide, let us say — a kind of vestibule
train. The dwelling has two rooms — each
forty-five feet long and sixteen feet wide, let
us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is
the parlor in the daytime, at night it is papa's
bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to
less than twenty feet to accommodate the Ind
ians — say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare
on each side of the boat. Did the Indians
notice that there was going to be a tight
squeeze there? Did they notice that they
could make money by climbing down out of
that arched sapling and just stepping aboard
when the ark scraped by? No ; other Indians

104 HOW TO TELL A STORY

would have noticed these things, but Cooper's
Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks
they are marvellous creatures for noticing, but
he was almost always in error about his Ind
ians. There was seldom a sane one among
them.

The ark is one hu^lred and forty feet long ;
the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of
the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from
the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark
creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an
hour, and butcher the family. It will take the
ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will
take the ninety foot dwelling a minute to pass
under. Now, then, what did the six Indians
do? It would take you thirty years to guess,
and even then you would have to give it up, I
believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the
Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite
extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,
warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed
along under him, and when he had got his cal
culations fined down to exactly the right shade,
as he judged, he let go and dropped. And
missed the house ! That is actually what he
did^ He missed the house, and landed in the
stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall,
yet it knocked him silly. He lay there uncon-

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 105

scious. If the house had been ninety-seven
feet long he would have made the trip. The
fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in
the construction of the house. Cooper was no
architect.

There still remained in the roost five Ind
ians. The boat has passed under and is now
out of their reach. Let me explain what the
five did — you would not be able to reason it
out for yourself. No. I jumped for the boat,
but fell in the water astern of it. Then No.
2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water
still farther astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped
for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it.
Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the
water aivay astern. Then even No. 5 made a
jump for the boat — for he was a Cooper Ind
ian. In the matter of intellect, the difference
between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that
stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spa
cious. The scow episode is really a sublime
burst of invention ; but it does not thrill, be
cause the inaccuracy of the details throws a
sort of air of fictitiousness and general improba
bility over it. This comes of Cooper's inade
quacy as an observer.

The reader will find some examples of Coop
er's high talent for inaccurate observation in

106 HOW TO TELL A STORY

the account of the shooting - match in The
Pathfinder.

" A common wrought nail was driven lightly into
the target, its head having been first touched with
paint."

The color of the paint is not stated — an im
portant omission, but Cooper deals freely in im
portant omissions. No, after all, it was not an
important omission ; for this nail-head is a hun
dred yards from the marksmen, and could not be
seen by them at that distance, no matter what
its color might be. How far can the best eyes
see a common house-fly? A hundred yards?
It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that can
not see a house-fly that is a hundred yards away
cannot see an ordinary nail-head at that dis
tance, for the size of the two objects is the
same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a
nail-head at fifty yards — one hundred and fifty
feet. Can the reader do it ?

The nail was lightly driven, its head painted,
and game called. Then the Cooper miracles
began. The bullet of the first marksman
chipped an edge of the nail-head; the next
man's bullet drove the nail a little way into
the target — and removed all the paint. Haven't
the miracles gone far enough now? Not to

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 107

suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole
scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer-
Hawkeye -Long-Rifle -Leather- Stocking- Path-
finder-Bumppo before the ladies.

" ' Be all ready to clench it, boys !' cried out Path
finder, stepping into his friend's tracks the instant
they were vacant. ' Never mind a new nail ; I can
see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see
I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a
mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench !'

" The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the
head of the nail was. buried in the wood, covered by
the piece of flattened lead."

There, you see, is a man who could hunt
flies with a rifle, and command a ducal salary
in a Wild West show to-day if we had him
back with us.

The recorded feat is certainly surprising
just as it stands; but it is not surprising
enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch.
He has made Pathfinder do this miracle with
another man's rifle ; and not only that, but
Pathfinder did not have even the advantage
of loading it himself. He had everything
against him, and yet he made that impossible
shot; and not only made it, but did it with ab
solute confidence, saying, " Be ready to clench."
Now a person like that would have undertaken

I08 HOW TO TELL A STORY

that same feat with a brickbat, and with Coop
er to help he would have achieved it, too.

Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day
before the ladies. His very first feat was a
thing which no Wild West show can touch.
He was standing with the group of marksmen,
observing — a hundred yards from the target,
mind ; one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the
centre of the bull's-eye. Then the Quarter
master fired. The target exhibited no result
this time. There was a laugh. " It's a dead
miss," said Major Lundie. Pathfinder waited
an impressive moment or two ; then said, in
that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his,
" No, Major, he has covered Jasper's bullet,
as will be seen if any one will take the trouble
to examine the target."

Wasn't it remarkable ! How could he see
that little pellet fly through the air and enter
that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he
did ; for nothing is impossible to a Cooper
person. Did any of those people have any
deep-seated doubts about this thing? No;
for that would imply sanity, and these were
all Cooper people.

"The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his quick
ness and accuracy of sight " (the italics are mine) " was
so profound and general, that the instant he made this

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 109

declaration the spectators began to distrust their own
opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to
ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found
that the Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the
hole made by Jasper's, and that, too, so accurately as
to require a minute examination to be certain of the
circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly estab
lished by discovering one bullet over the other in the
stump against which the target was placed."

They made a " minute" examination ; but
never mind, how could they know that there
were two bullets in that hole without digging
the latest one out ? for neither probe nor eye
sight could prove the presence of any more
than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we
shall see. It is the Pathfinder's turn now ; he
steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and
fires.

But, alas ! here is a disappointment ; an in
credible, an unimaginable disappointment —
for the target's aspect is unchanged ; there is
nothing there but that same old bullet-hole !

" ' If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major
Duncan, ' I should say that the Pathfinder has also
missed the target !' "

As nobody had missed it yet, the " also "
was not necessary; but never mind about
that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.

110 HOW TO TELL A STORY

"'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, ' that would
be a risky declaration. I didn't load the piece, and
can't say what was in it ; but if it was lead, you will
find the bullet driving down those of the Quarter
master and Jasper, else is not my name Pathfinder.'

" A shout from the target announced the truth of
this assertion."

Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not
for Cooper. The Pathfinder speaks again, as
he " now slowly advances towards the stage
occupied by the females":

" ' That's not all, boys, that's not all ; if you find the
target touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quar
termaster cut the wood, but you'll find no wood cut
by that last messenger.' "

The miracle is at last complete. He knew
— doubtless saw — at the distance of a hundred
yards — that his bullet had passed into the
hole without fraying the edges. There were
now three bullets in that one hole — three bul
lets embedded processionally in the body of
the stump back of the target. Everybody
knew this — somehow or other — and yet no
body had dug any of them out to make sure.
Cooper is not a close observer, but he is inter
esting. He is certainly always that, no mat
ter what happens. And he is more interesting

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES III

when he is not noticing what he is about than
when he is. This is a considerable merit.

The conversations in the Cooper books have
a curious sound in our modern ears. To be
lieve that such talk really ever came out of
people's mouths would be to believe that
there was a time when time was of no value
to a person who thought he had something
to say ; when it was the custom to spread a
two-minute remark out to ten ; when a man's
mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all
day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought
into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad
iron by attenuation ; when subjects were sel
dom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered
all around and arrived nowhere; when conver
sations consisted mainly of irrelevances, with
here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with
an embarrassed look, as not being able to ex
plain how it got there.

Cooper was certainly not a master in the
construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observa
tion defeated him here as it defeated him in
so many other enterprises of his. He even
failed to notice that the man who talks cor
rupt English six days in the week must and
will talk it on the seventh, and can't help him
self. In the Deer slayer story he lets Deer-

112 HOW TO TELL A STORY

slayer talk the showiest kind of book talk
sometimes, and at other times the basest of
base dialects. For instance, when some one
asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so,
where she abides, this is his majestic answer :

" ' She's in the forest — hanging from the boughs of
the trees, in a soft rain — in the dew on the open
grass — the clouds that float about in the blue heavens
— the birds that sing in the woods — the sweet springs
where I slake ray thirst — and in all the other glorious
gifts that come from God's Providence !' "

And he preceded that, a little before, with
this:

" ' It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd
consarns a fri'nd.' "

And this is another of his remarks :

"'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or
carry in the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the
whole tribe; or if my inimy had only been a bear'" —
and so on.

We cannot imagine such a thing as a vet
eran Scotch Commander-in-Chief comporting
himself in the field like a windy melodramatic
actor, but Cooper could. On one occasion
Alice and Cora were being chased by the
French through a fog in the neighborhood of
their father's fort :

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 113

"'Point de quarticr aux coquins !' cried an eager
pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the
enemy.

" ' Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 6oths !' sud
denly exclaimed a voice above them ; ' wait to see the
enemy ; fire low, and sweep the glacis.'

'"Father! father !' exclaimed a piercing cry from
out the mist ; ' it is I ! Alice ! thy own Elsie ! spare,
O ! save your daughters !'

" ' Hold !' shouted the former speaker, in the awful
tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even to
the woods, and rolling back in solemn echo. ' Tis
she ! God has restored me my children ! Throw open
the sally-port; to the field, 6oths, to the field; pull
not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs ! Drive off these
dogs of France with your steel.' "

Cooper's word -sense was singularly dull.
When a person has a poor ear for music he
will flat and sharp right along without know
ing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not
the tune. When a person has a poor ear for
words, the result is a literary flatting and
sharping ; you perceive what he is intending
to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't
say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-
musician. His ear was satisfied with the ap
proximate word. I will furnish some circum
stantial evidence in support of this charge.
My instances are gathered from half a dozen
s

114 HOW TO TELL A STORY

pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses
" verbal," for " oral " ; " precision," for " facili
ty " ; " phenomena," for " marvels " ; " necessa
ry," for " predetermined " ; " unsophisticated,"
for " primitive " ; " preparation," for " expect
ancy " ; " rebuked," for " subdued " ; " depend
ant on," for " resulting from"; " fact," for
" condition"; "fact," for "conjecture"; "pre
caution," for " caution " ; " explain," for " de
termine " ; " mortified," for " disappointed " ;
" meretricious," for " factitious " ; "materially,"
for " considerably " ; " decreasing," for " deep
ening " ; " increasing," for " disappearing " ;
" embedded," for " enclosed " ; " treacherous,"
for " hostile " ; " stood," for " stooped " ; " soft
ened," for " replaced " ; " rejoined," for " re
marked "; "situation," for "condition"; "dif
ferent," for "differing"; "insensible," for
" unsentient " ; " brevity," for " celerity " ; " dis
trusted," for "suspicious"; "mental imbecili
ty," for "imbecility"; " eyes," for "sight";
" counteracting," for " opposing " ; " funeral
obsequies," for " obsequies."

There have been daring people in the world
who claimed that Cooper could write Eng
lish, but they are all dead now — all dead but
Lounsbury. I don't remember that Louns-
bury makes the claim in so many words, still

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 115

he makes it, for he says that Deer slayer is a
" pure work of art." Pure, in that connec
tion, means faultless — faultless in all details —
and language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury
had only compared Cooper's English with the
English which he writes himself — but it is
plain that he didn't ; and so it is likely that he
imagines until this day that Cooper's is as
clean and compact as his own. Now I feel
sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper
wrote about the poorest English that exists in
our language, and that the English of Deer-
slayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever
wrote.

I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me
that Deerslaycr is not a work of art in any
sense ; it does seem to me that it is destitute
of every detail that goes to the making of a
work of art ; in truth, it seems to me that
Dccrslayer is just simply a literary delirium
tremens.

A work of art ? It has no invention ; it has
no order, system, sequence, or result ; it has
no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of
reality; its characters are confusedly drawn,
and by their acts and words they prove that
they are not the sort of people the author
claims that they are; its humor is pathetic;

Il6 HOW TO TELL A STORY

its pathos is funny ; its conversations are— oh !
indescribable ; its love-scenes odious ; its Eng
lish a crime against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I
think we must all admit that.

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER

LAST spring I went out to Chicago to see
the Fair, and although I did not see it my
trip was not wholly lost — there were compen
sations. In New York I was introduced to a
major in the regular army who said he was
going to the Fair, and we agreed to go to
gether. I had to go to Boston first, but that
did not interfere ; he said he would go along,
and put in the time. He was a handsome
man, and built like a gladiator. But his ways
were gentle, and his speech was soft and per
suasive. He was companionable, but exceed
ingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of
the sense of humor. He was full of interest
in everything that went on around him, but
his serenity was indestructible ; nothing dis
turbed him, nothing excited him.

But before the day was done I found that
deep down in him somewhere he had a pas
sion, quiet as he was — a passion for reforming
petty public abuses. He stood for citizenship

120 HOW TO TELL A STORY

— it was his hobby. His idea was that every
citizen of the republic ought to consider him
self an unofficial policeman, and keep unsala-
ried watch and ward :over the laws and their
execution. He thought that the only effec
tive way of preserving and protecting public
rights was for each citizen to do his share in
preventing or punishing such infringements
of them as came under his personal notice.

It was a good scheme, but I thought it
would keep a body in trouble all the time ; it
seemed to me that one would be always trying
to get offending little officials discharged, and
perhaps getting laughed at for all reward. But
he said no, I had the wrong idea ; that there
was no occasion to get anybody discharged ;
that in fact you mustn't get anybody dis
charged ; that that would itself be a failure ;
no, one must reform the man — reform him and
make him useful where he was.

" Must one report the offender and then beg
his superior not to discharge him, but repri
mand him and keep him ?"

" No, that is not the idea ; you don't report
him at all, for then you risk his bread and but
ter. You can act as if you are going to report
him — when nothing else will answer. But
that's an extreme case. That is a sort of

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 121

force, and force is bad. Diplomacy is the ef
fective thing. Now if a man has tact — if a
man will exercise diplomacy—

For two minutes we had been standing at a
telegraph wicket, and during all this time the
Major had been trying to get the attention of
one of the young operators, but they were all
busy skylarking. The Major spoke now, and
asked one of them to take his telegram. He
got for reply :

" I reckon you can wait a minute, can't
you?" and the skylarking went on.

The Major said yes, he was not in a hurry.
Then he wrote another telegram :

"President Western Union Tel. Co.:

"Come and dine with me this evening. I can tell
you how business is conducted in one of your
branches."

Presently the young fellow who had spoken
so pertly a little before reached out and took
the telegram, and when he read it he lost color
and began to apologize and explain. He said
he would lose his place if this deadly telegram
was sent, and he might never get another. If
he could be let off this time he would give no
cause of complaint again. The compromise
was accepted.

122 HOW TO TELL A STORY

As we walked away, the Major said :
" Now, you see, that was diplomacy — and
you see how it worked. It wouldn't do any
good to bluster, the way people are always
doing — that boy can always give you as
good as you send, and you'll come out de
feated and ashamed of yourself pretty nearly
always. But you see he stands no chance
against diplomacy. Gentle words and diplo
macy — those are the tools to work with."

" Yes, I see ; but everybody wouldn't have
had your opportunity. It isn't everybody
that is on those familiar terms with the presi
dent of the Western Union."

" Oh, you misunderstand. I don't know the
president — I only use him diplomatically. It is
for his good and for the public good. There's
no harm in it."

I said, with hesitation and diffidence :
" But is it ever right or noble to tell a lie?"
He took no note of the delicate self-right
eousness of the question, but answered, with
undisturbed gravity and simplicity :

" Yes,, sometimes. Lies told to inju»re a per
son, and lies told to profit yourself are not
justifiable, but lies told to help another person,
and lies told in the public interest — oh, well,,
that is quite another matter. Anybody knows

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 123

that. But never mind about the methods:
you see the result. That youth is going to be
useful now, and well-behaved. He had a good
face. He was worth saving. Why, he was
worth saving on his mother's account if not
his own. Of course, he has a mother — sisters,
too. Damn these people who are always for
getting that ! Do you know, I've never fought
a duel in my life — never once — and yet have
been challenged, like other people. I could
always see the other man's unoffending wom
en folks or his little children standing be
tween him and me. They hadn't done any
thing — I couldn't break their hearts, you
know."

He corrected a good many little abuses in
the course of the day, and always without
friction — always with a fine and dainty " diplo
macy " which left no sting behind ; and he got
such happiness and such contentment out of
these performances that I was obliged to envy
him his trade — and perhaps would have adopt
ed it if I could have managed the necessary
deflections from fact as confidently with my
mouth as I believe I could with a pen, behind
the shelter of print, after a little practice.

Away late that night we were coming up
town in a horse -car when three boisterous

124 HOW TO TELL A STORY

roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilari
ous obscenities and profanities right and left
among the timid passengers, some of whom
were women and children. Nobody resisted
or retorted ; the conductor tried soothing
words and moral suasion, but the roughs only
called him names and laughed at him. Very
soon I saw that the Major realized that this
was a matter which was in his line ; evidently
he was turning over his stock of diplomacy in
his mind and getting ready. I felt that the
first diplomatic remark he made in this place
would bring down a land-slide of ridicule upon
him and maybe something worse ; but before
I could whisper to him and check him he had
begun, and it was too late. He said, in a level
and dispassionate tone:

" Conductor, you must put these swine out.
I will help you."

I was not looking for that. In a flash the
three roughs plunged at him. But none of
them arrived. He delivered three such blows
as one could not expect to encounter outside
the prize-ring, and neither of the men had life
enough left in him to get up from where he
fell. The Major dragged them out and threw
them off the car, and we got under way again.

I was astonished ; astonished to see a lamb

'

fl TJNJV

TRAVELLING WITH A\ REFORMER 125

X; ^^^

act so ; astonished at the strength displayed,
and the clean and comprehensive result; as
tonished at the brisk and business-like style of
the whole thing. The situation had a humor
ous side to it, considering how much I had
been hearing about mild persuasion and gen
tle diplomacy all day from this pile-driver, and
I would have liked to call his attention to that
feature and do some sarcasms about it ; but
when I looked at him I saw that it would be
of no use — his placid and contented face had
no ray of humor in it ; he would not have un
derstood. When we left the car, I said :

"That was a good stroke of diplomacy —
three good strokes of diplomacy, in fact."

"That? That wasn't diplomacy. You are
quite in the wrong. Diplomacy is a wholly
different thing. One cannot apply it to that
sort, they would not understand it. No, that
was not diplomacy ; it was force."

" Now that you mention it, I — yes, I think
perhaps you are right."

"Right? Of course I am right. It was
just force."

" I think, myself, it had the outside aspect
of it. Do you often have to reform people in
that way?"

" Far from it. It hardly ever happens. Not

126 HOW TO TELL A STORY

oftener than once in half a year, at the out
side."

" Those men will get well?"

"Get well? Why, certainly they will. They
are not in any danger. I know how to hit
and where to hit. You noticed that I did not
hit them under the jaw. That would have
killed them."

I believed that. I remarked — rather wittily,
as I thought — that he had been a lamb all
day, but now had all of a sudden developed
into a ram — battering-ram; but with dulcet
frankness and simplicity he said no, a batter
ing-ram was quite a different thing and not in
use now. This was maddening, and I came
near bursting out and saying he had no more
appreciation of wit than a jackass — in fact, I
had it right on my tongue, but did not say
it, knowing there was no hurry and I could
say it just as well some other time over the
telephone.

We started to Boston the next afternoon.
The smoking -compartment in the parlor -car
was full, and we went into the regular smoker.
Across the aisle in the front seat sat a meek,
farmer-looking old man with a sickly pallor in
his face, and he was holding the door open
with his foot to get the air. Presently a big

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 127

brakeman came rushing through, and when he
got to the door he stopped, gave the farmer
an ugly scowl, then wrenched the door to with
such energy as to almost snatch the old man's
boot off. Then on he plunged about his busi
ness. Several passengers laughed, and the
old gentleman looked pathetically shamed and
grieved.

After a little the conductor passed along, and
the Major stopped him and asked him a ques
tion in his habitually courteous way:

" Conductor, where does one report the mis
conduct of a brakeman? Does one report to
you?"

"You can report him at New Haven if you
want to. What has he been doing?"

The Major told the story. The conductor
seemed amused. He said, with just a touch
of sarcasm in his bland tones :

"As I understand you, the brakeman didn't
say anything."

" No, he didn't say anything."

" But he scowled, you say."

"Yes."

" And snatched the door loose in a rough
way."

"Yes."

"That's the whole business, is it?"

128 HOW TO TELL A STORY

"Yes, that is the whole of it."

The conductor smiled pleasantly, and said :

" Well, if you want to report him, all right,
but I don't quite make out what it's going to
amount to. You'll say — as I understand you
— that the brakeman insulted this old gentle
man. They'll ask you what he said. You'll
say he didn't say anything at all. I reckon
they'll say, how are you going to make out an
insult when you acknowledge yourself that he
didn't say a word."

There was a murmur of applause at the con
ductor's compact reasoning, and it gave him
pleasure — you could see it in his face. But
the Major was not disturbed. He said :

" There — now you have touched upon a cry
ing defect in the complaint-system. The rail
way officials — as the public think and as you
also seem to think — are not aware that there
are any kind of insults except spoken ones.
So nobody goes to headquarters and reports
insults of manner, insults of gesture, look, and
"so forth ; and yet these are sometimes harder
to bear than any words. They are bitter hard
to bear because there is nothing tangible to
take hold of ; and the insulter can always say,
if called before the railway officials, that he
never dreamed of intending any offence. It

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 129

seems to me that the officials ought to special
ly and urgently request the public to report
unwordcd affronts and incivilities."

The conductor laughed, and said :

" Well, that would be trimming it pretty
fine, sure !"

" But not too fine, I think. I will report
this matter at New Haven, and I have an idea
that I'll be thanked for it."

The conductor's face lost something of its
complacency; in fact, it settled to a quite sober
cast as the owner of it moved away. I said :

"You are not really going to bother with
that trifle, are you ?"

" It isn't a trifle. Such things ought always
to be reported. It is a public duty, and no
citizen has a right to shirk it. But I sha'n't
have to report this case."

"Why?"

" It won't be necessary. Diplomacy will do
the business. You'll see."

Presently the conductor came on his rounds
again, and when he reached the Major he leaned
over and said :

"That's all right. You needn't report him.
He's responsible to me, and if he does it again
I'll give him a talking to."

The Major's response was cordial :
9

130 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" Now that is what I like ! You mustn't
think that I was moved by any vengeful spirit,
for that wasn't the case. It was duty — just a
sense of duty, that was all. My brother-in-
law is one of the directors of the road, and
when he learns that you are going to reason
with your brakeman the very next time he
brutally insults an unoffending old man it will
please him, you may be sure of that."

The conductor did not look as joyous as
one might have thought he would, but on the
contrary looked sickly and uncomfortable. He
stood around a little ; then said :

"/ think something ought to be done to him
now. I'll discharge him."

" Discharge him ? What good would that
do ? Don't you think it would be better wis
dom to teach him better ways and keep
him?"

" Well, there's something in that. What
would you suggest?"

" He insulted the old gentleman in presence
of all these people. How would it do to have
him come and apologize in their presence?"

" I'll have him here right off. And I want
to say this : If people would do as you've done,
and report such things to me instead of keep
ing mum and going off and blackguarding the

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 131

road, you'd see a different state of things pret
ty soon. I'm much obliged to you."

The brakeman came and apologized. After
he was gone the Major said :

" Now, you see how simple and easy that
was. The ordinary citizen would have accom
plished nothing— the brother-in-law of a di
rector can accomplish anything he wants to."

" But are you really the brother-in-law of a
director?"

" Always. Always when the public inter
ests require it. I have a brother-in-law on all
the boards — everywhere. It saves me a world
of trouble."

" It is a good wide relationship."

" Yes. I have over three hundred of them."

" Is the relationship never doubted by a
conductor?"

" I have never met with a case. It is the
honest truth — I never have."

" Why didn't you let him go ahead and dis
charge the brakeman, in spite of your favorite
policy? You know he deserved it."

The Major answered with something which
really had a sort of distant resemblance to im
patience :

" If you would stop and think a moment
you wouldn't ask such a question as that. Is

132 HOW TO TELL A STORY

a brakeman a dog, that nothing but dog's
methods will do for him? He is a man, and
has a man's fight for life. And he always has
a sister, or a mother, or wife and children to
support. Always — there are no exceptions.
When you take his living away from him you
take theirs away too — and what have they
done to you? Nothing. And where is the
profit in discharging an uncourteous brake
man and hiring another just like him? It's
unwisdom. Don't you see that the rational
thing to do is to reform the brakeman and
keep him? Of course it is."

Then he quoted with admiration the con
duct of a certain division superintendent of
the Consolidated road, in a case where a switch
man of two years' experience was negligent
once and threw a train off the track and killed
several people. Citizens came in a passion to
urge the man's dismissal, but the superintend
ent said :

" No, you are wrong. He has learned his
lesson, he will throw no more trains off the
track. He is twice as valuable as he was be
fore. I shall keep him."

We had only one more adventure on the
trip. Between Hartford and Springfield the
train-boy came shouting in with an armful of

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 133

literature and dropped a sample into a slum
bering gentleman's lap, and the man woke up
with a start. He was very angry, and he and
a couple of friends discussed the outrage with
much heat. They sent for the parlor-car con
ductor and described the matter, and were de
termined to have the boy expelled from his
situation. The three complainants were wealthy
Holyokc merchants, and it was evident that
the conductor stood in some awe of them. He
tried to pacify them, and explained that the
boy was not under his authority, but under
that of one of the news companies ; but he ac
complished nothing.

Then the Major volunteered some testimony
for the defence. He said :

" I saw it all. You gentlemen have not
meant to exaggerate the circumstances, but
still that is what you have done. The boy has
done nothing more than all train-boys do. If
you want to get his ways softened down and
his manners reformed, I am with you and ready
to help, but it isn't fair to get him discharged
without giving him a chance."

But they were angry, and would hear of
no compromise. They were well acquainted
with the president of the Boston & Albany,
they said, and would put everything aside

134 HOW TO TELL A STORY

next day and go up to Boston and fix that
boy.

The Major said he would be on hand too,
and would do what he could to save the boy.
One of the gentlemen looked him over, and
said :

" Apparently it is going to be a matter of
who can wield the most influence with the
president. Do you know Mr. Bliss personally?"

The Major said, with composure :

"Yes; he is my uncle."

The effect was satisfactory. There was an
awkward silence for a minute or more ; then
the hedging and the half-confessions of over-
haste and exaggerated resentment began, and
soon everything was smooth and friendly and
sociable, and it was resolved to drop the mat
ter and leave the boy's bread-and-butter un
molested.

It turned out as I had expected : the presi
dent of the road was not the Major's uncle at
all — except by adoption, and for this day and
train only.

We got into no episodes on the return jour
ney. Probably it was because we took a night
train and slept all the way.

We left New York Saturday night by the
Pennsylvania road. After breakfast the next

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 135

morning we went into the parlor-car, but found
it a dull place and dreary. There were but
few people in it and nothing going on. Then
we went into the little smoking-compartment
of the same car and found three gentlemen in
there. Two of them were grumbling over one
of the rules of the road — a rule which forbade
card-playing on the trains on Sunday. They
had started an innocent game of high-low-jack
and been stopped. The Major was interested.
He said to the third gentleman :

44 Did you object to the game?"

" Not at all. I am a Yale professor and a
religious man, but my prejudices are not ex
tensive."

Then the Major said to the others :

" You are at perfect liberty to resume your
game, gentlemen ; no one here objects."

One of them declined the risk, but the other
one said he would like to begin again if the
Major would join him. So they spread an
overcoat over their knees and the game pro
ceeded. Pretty soon the parlor-car conductor
arrived, and said, brusquely :

" There, there, gentlemen, that won't do.
Put up the cards — it's not allowed."

The Major was shuffling. He continued to
shuffle, and said :

136 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" By whose order is it forbidden ?"

" It's my order. I forbid it."

The dealing began. The Major asked :

" Did you invent the idea?"

"What idea?"

"The idea of forbidding card -playing on
Sunday."

" No — of course not."

"Who did?"

" The company."

" Then it isn't your order, after all, but the
company's. Is that it ?"

" Yes. But you don't stop playing ; I have
to require you to stop playing immediately."

" Nothing is gained by hurry, and often
much is lost. Who authorized the company
to issue such an order?"

" My dear sir, that is a matter of no conse
quence to me, and — "

" But you forget that you are not the only
person concerned. It may be a matter of
consequence to me. It is indeed a matter of
very great importance to me. I cannot vio
late a legal requirement of my country with
out dishonoring myself; I cannot allow any
man or corporation to hamper my liberties
with illegal rules — a thing which railway com
panies are always trying to do — without dis-

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 137

honoring my citizenship. So I come back to
that question : By whose authority has the
company issued this order?"

" I don't knoiv. That's their affair."

" Mine, too. I doubt if the company has
any right to issue such a rule. This road runs
through several States. Do you know what
State we are in now, and what its laws are in
matters of this kind?"

" Its laws do not concern me, but the com
pany's orders do. It is my duty to stop this
game, gentlemen, and it must be stopped."

" Possibly ; but still there is no hurry. In
hotels they post certain rules in the rooms, but
they always quote passages from the State
law as authority for these requirements. I
see nothing posted here of this sort. Please
produce your authority and let us arrive at a
decision, for you see yourself that you are
marring the game."

" I have nothing of the kind, but I have my
orders, and that is sufficient. They must be
obeyed."

" Let us not jump to conclusions. It will
be better all around to examine into the mat
ter without heat or haste, and see just where
we stand before either of us makes a mistake
— for the curtailing of the liberties of a citizen

138 HOW TO TELL A STORY

of the United States is a much more serious
matter than you and the railroads seem to
think, and it cannot be done in my person
until the curtailer proves his right to do so.
Now—"

" My dear sir, will you put down those
cards?"

" All in good time, perhaps. It depends.
You say this order must be obeyed. Must.
It is a strong word. You see yourself how
strong it is. A wise company would not arm
you with so drastic an order as this, of course,
without appointing a penalty for its infringe
ment. Otherwise it runs the risk of being a
dead letter and a thing to laugh at. What is
the appointed penalty for an infringement of
this law?"

" Penalty? I never heard of any."

"Unquestionably you must be mistaken.
Your company orders you to come here and
rudely break up an innocent amusement, and
furnishes you no way to enforce the order?
Don't you see that that is nonsense? What do
you do when people refuse to obey this order?
Do you take the cards away from them ?"

"No."

" Do you put the offender off at the next
station ?"

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 139

"Well, no— of course we couldn't if he had
a ticket."

" Do you have him up before a court?"

The conductor was silent and apparently
troubled. The Major started a new deal, and
said :

" You see that you are helpless, and that the
company has placed you in a foolish position.
You are furnished with an arrogant order, and
you deliver it in a blustering way, and when
you come to look into the matter you find you
haven't any way of enforcing obedience."

The conductor said, with chill dignity :

" Gentlemen, you have heard the order, and
my duty is ended. As to obeying it or not,
you will do as you think fit." And he turned
to leave.

" But wait. The matter is not yet finished.
I think. you are mistaken about your duty be
ing ended ; but if it really is, I myself have a
duty to perform yet."

" How do you mean ?"

" Are you going to report my disobedience
at headquarters in Pittsburg?"

" No. What good would that do ?"

" You must report me, or I will report
you."

" Report me for what?"

140 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" For disobeying the company's orders in
not stopping this game. As a citizen it is
my duty to help the railway companies keep
their servants to their work."

" Are you in earnest?"

"Yes, I am in earnest. I have nothing
against you as a man, but I have this against
you as an officer — that you have not carried
out that order, and if you do not report me I
must report you. And I will."

The conductor looked puzzled, and was
thoughtful a moment ; then he burst out with :

" I seem to be getting myself into a scrape!
It's all a muddle ; I can't make head or tail of
it ; it's never happened before ; they always
knocked under and never said a word, and so
/ never saw how ridiculous that stupid order
with no penalty is. / don't want to report
anybody, and I don't want to be reported —
why, it might do me no end of harm ! Now
do go on with the game — play the whole day
if you want to — and don't let's have any more
trouble about it !"

<; No, I only sat down here to establish this
gentleman's rights — he can have his place
now. But before you go won't you tell me
what you think the company made this rule
for? Can you imagine an excuse for it? I

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 141

mean a rational one — an excuse that is not on
its face silly, and the invention of an idiot?"

" Why, surely I can. The reason it was
made is plain enough. It is to save the feel
ings of the other passengers — the religious
ones among them, I mean. They would not
like it, to have the Sabbath desecrated by card-
playing on the train."

" I just thought as much. They are willing
to desecrate it themselves by travelling on
Sunday, but they are not willing that other
people —

" By gracious, you've hit it ! I never thought
of that before. The fact is, it is a silly rule
when you come to look into it."

At this point the train -conductor arrived,
and was going to shut down the game in a
very high-handed fashion, but the parlor-car
conductor stopped him and took him aside to
explain. Nothing more was heard of the mat
ter.

I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and
got no glimpse of the Fair, for I was obliged
to return east as soon as I was able to travel.
The Major secured and paid for a state-room
in a sleeper the day before we left, so that I
could have plenty of room and be comfortable;
but when we arrived at the station a mistake

142 HOW TO TELL A STORY

had been made and our car had not been put
on. The conductor had reserved a section for
us — it was the best he could do, he said. But
the Major said we were not in a hurry, and
would wait for the car to be put on. The
conductor responded, with pleasant irony :

" It may be that you are not in a hurry, just
as you say, but we are. Come, get aboard,
gentlemen, get aboard — don't keep us wait
ing."

But the Major would not get aboard him
self nor allow me to do it. He wanted his
car, and said he must have it. This made the
hurried and perspiring conductor impatient,
and he said :

" It's the best we can do — we can't do im
possibilities. You will take the section or go
without. A mistake has been made and can't
be rectified at this late hour. It's a thing that
happens now and then, and there is nothing
for it but to put up with it and make the best
of it. Other people do."

" Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had
stuck to their rights and enforced them you
wouldn't be trying to trample mine under
foot in this bland way now. I haven't any
disposition to give you unnecessary trouble,
but it is my duty to protect the next man from

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 143

this kind of imposition. So I must have
my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago
and sue the company for violating its con
tract."

" Sue the company? — for a thing like that !"

" Certainly."

" Do you really mean that?"

" Indeed, I do."

The conductor looked the Major over won-
deringly, and then said :

"It beats me — it's bran-new — I've never
struck the mate to it before. But I swear I
think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the
station-master."

When the station-master came he was a
good deal annoyed — at the Major, not at the
person who had made the mistake. He was
rather brusque, and took the same position
which the conductor had taken in the begin
ning ; but he failed to move the soft-spoken
artilleryman, who still insisted that he must
have his car. However, it was plain that there
was only one strong side in this case, and that
that side was the Major's. The station-mas
ter banished his annoyed manner, and became
pleasant and even half-apologetic. This made
a good opening for a compromise, and the
Major made a concession. He said he would

144 HOW TO TELL A STORY

give up the engaged state-room, but he must
have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking,
one was found whose owner was persuadable ;
he exchanged it for our section, and we got
away at last. The conductor called on us in
the evening, and was kind and courteous and
obliging, and we had a long talk and got to be
good friends. He said he wished the public
would make trouble oftener — it would have
a good effect. He said that the railroads could
not be expected to do their whole duty by
the traveller unless the traveller would take
some interest in the matter himself.

I hoped that we were done reforming for
the trip now, but it was not so. In the hotel-
car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled
chicken. The waiter said :

" It's not in the bill of fare, sir ; we do not
serve anything but what is in the bill."

" That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled
chicken."

"Yes, but that is different. He is one of
the superintendents of the road."

" Then all the more must I have broiled
chicken. I do not like these discriminations.
Please hurry — bring me a broiled chicken."

The waiter brought the steward, who ex
plained in a low and polite voice that the

TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 145

thing was impossible — it was against the rule,
and the rule was rigid.

" Very well, then, you must either apply it
impartially or break it impartially. You must
take that gentleman's chicken away from him
or bring me one."

The steward was puzzled, and did not quite
know what to do. He began an incoherent
argument, but the conductor came along just
then, and asked what the difficulty was. The
steward explained that here was a gentleman
who was insisting on having a chicken when it
was dead against the rule and not in the bill.
The conductor said:

" Stick by your rules — you haven't any op
tion. Watt a moment — is this the gentleman ?"
Then he laughed and said : " Never mind your
rules — it's my advice, and sound; give him
anything he wants — don't get him started on
his rights. Give him whatever he asks for;
and if you haven't got it, stop the train and
get it."

The Major ate the chicken, but said he did
it from a sense of duty and to establish a prin
ciple, for he did not like chicken.

I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up
some diplomatic tricks which I and the reader
may find handy and useful as we go along.

PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE -JUMPING
FROG" STORY

PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE "JUMPING
FROG " STORY

FIVE or six years ago a lady from Finland
asked me to tell her a story in our negro dia
lect, so that she could get an idea of what that
variety of speech was like. I told her one of
Hopkinson Smith's negro stories, and gave her
a copy of Harper s Monthly containing it. She
translated it for a Swedish newspaper, but by
an oversight named me as the author of it
instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that,
because I got a good lashing in the Swedish
press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boc
caccio had told that very story, in his curt
and meagre fashion, five hundred years before
Smith took hold of it and made a good and
tellable thing out of it.

I have always been sorry for Smith. But
my own turn has come now. A few weeks
ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked
this question:

150 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" Do you know how old your Jumping Frog
story is ?"

And I answered:

" Yes — forty -five years. The thing hap
pened in Calaveras County in the spring of

1849."

" No ; it happened earlier — a couple of
thousand years earlier; it is a Greek story."

I was astonished — and hurt. I said :

" I am willing to be a literary thief if it has
been so ordained ; I am even willing to be
caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of
Hopkinson Smith, for he is my friend and a
good fellow, and I think would be as honest
as any one if he could do it without occasion
ing remark ; but I am not willing to antedate
his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must
ask you to knock off part of that."

But the professor was not chaffing ; he was
in earnest, and could not abate a century. He
named the Greek author, and offered to get
the book and send it to me and the college
text -book containing the English translation
also. I thought I would like the translation
best, because Greek makes me tired. January
3<Dth he sent me the English version, and I
will presently insert it in this article. It is
my Jumping Frog tale in every essential. It

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY { £

is not strung out as I have strung it out, but it
is all there.

To me this is very curious and interesting.
Curious for several reasons. For instance :

I heard the story told by a man who was
not telling it to his hearers as a thing new to
them, but as a thing which they had witnessed
and would remember. He was a dull person,
and ignorant ; he had no gift as a story-teller,
and no invention ; in his mouth this episode
was merely history — history and statistics;
and the gravest sort of history, too ; he was
entirely serious, for he was dealing with what
to him were austere facts, and they interested
him solely because they were facts ; he was
drawing on his memory, not his mind ; he saw
no humor in his tale, neither did his listeners ;
neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed ;
in my time I have not attended a more solemn
conference. To him and to his fellow gold-
miners there were just two things in the story
that were worth considering. One was the
smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking
the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the
other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's
nature — for he knew (as the narrator asserted
and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes
shot and is always ready to eat it. Those men

152 HOW TO TELL A STORY

discussed those two points, and those only.
They were hearty in their admiration of them,
and none of the party was aware that a first-
rate story had been told in a first-rate way,
and that it was brimful of a quality whose
presence they never suspected — humor.

Now, then, the interesting question is, did
the frog episode happen in Angel's Camp in
the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that
day in the fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure
that it did. I am also sure that its duplicate
happened in Bceotia a couple of thousand
years ago. I think it must be a case of history
actually repeating itself, and not a case of a
good story floating down the ages and surviv
ing because too good to be allowed to perish.

I would now like to have the reader exam
ine the Greek story and the story told by the
dull and solemn Californian, and observe how
exactly alike they are in essentials.

{Translation^

THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.*

An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was
sitting by the road-side looking at a frog. Seeing the
other approach, the Boeotian said his was a remarka-

* Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116.

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 153

ble frog, and asked if he would agree to start a con
test of frogs, on condition that lie whose frog jumped
farthest should receive a large sum of money. The
Athenian replied that he would if the other would
fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he
agreed, and when he was gone the Athenian took the
frog, and, opening its mouth, poured some stones into
its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem larger
than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon
returned with the other frog, and the contest began.
The second frog first was pinched, and jumped moder
ately ; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And he
gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort,
but he could not move his body the least. So the
Athenian departed with the money. When he was
gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter
with the frog, lifted him up and examined him. And
being turned upside down, he opened his mouth and
vomited out the stones.

And here is the way it happened in Cali
fornia :

FROM "THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALA-
VERAS COUNTY."

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken
cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till
you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for
him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a
frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated
to educate him ; and so he never done nothing for
three months but set in his back yard and learn that

154 HOW TO TELL A STORY

frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too.
He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next
minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a
doughnut — see him turn one summerset, or maybe a
couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-
footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in
the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice
so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as
he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was
education, and he could do 'most anything — and I
believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
down here on this floor — Dan'l Webster was the name
of the frog — and sing out " Flies, Dan'l, flies !" and
quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and
snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on
the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to
scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as
indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any
more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so
modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was
so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jump
ing on a dead level, he could get over more ground
at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever
see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit,
you understand ; and when it came to that, Smiley
would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he
might be, for fellers that had travelled and been every-
wheres all said he laid over any frog that ever they
see.

Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box,
and he used to fetch him down-town sometimes and
lay for a bet. One day a feller — a stranger in the

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 155

camp, he was— come acrost him with his box, and

says:

" What might it be that you've got in the box ?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, " It might
be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it
ain't — it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and
turned it round this way and that, and says, " H'm—
so 'tis. Well, what's he good for ?"

" Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, " he's good
enough for one thing, I should judge— he can outjump
any frog in Calaveras County."

The feller took the box again and took another
long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley and
says, very deliberate, " Well," he says, " I don't see no
p'ints about that frog that's any bctter'n any other
frog."

" Maybe you don't," Smiley says. " Maybe you
understand frogs and maybe you don't understand
'em ; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got
my opinion, and I'll resk forty dollars that he can out-
jump any frog in Calaveras County."

And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kind
er sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I
ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you."

And then Smiley says : " That's all right— that's all
right— if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get
you a frog." And so the feller took the box and put
up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down
to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking
to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his

HOW TO TELL A STORY

mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full
of quail shot — filled him pretty near up to his chin —
and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the
swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long
time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him
in and give him to this feller, and says :

" Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l,
with his fore-paws just even with DanTs, and I'll give
the word." Then he says, " One — two — three— -git!"
and him and the feller touched up the frogs from be
hind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l
give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders — so — like a
Frenchman, but it warn't no use — he couldn't budge ;
he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't
no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley
was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted, too,
but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of
course.

The feller took the money and started away ; and
when he was going out at the door he sorter jerked
his thumb over his shoulder — so — at Dan'l, and says
again, very deliberate: "Well," he says, "/ don't see
no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog."

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking
down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, " I do
wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for —
I wonder if there ain't something the matter with
him — he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow."
And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and
hefted him, and says, " Why, blame my cats if he don't
weigh five pound !" and turned him upside down, and
he belched out a double handful of shot. And then

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 157

he see how it was, and he was the maddest man — he
set the frog down and took out after that feller, but
he never ketched him.

The resemblances are deliciously exact.
There you have the wily Boeotian and the
wily Jim Smiley waiting — two thousand years
apart — and waiting, each equipped with his frog
and "laying" for the stranger. A contest is
proposed — for money. The Athenian would
take a chance " if the other would fetch him
a frog " ; the Yankee says : " I'm only a stran
ger here, and I ain't got no frog ; but if I had
a frog I'd bet you." The wily Boeotian and
the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two
thousand years between, retire eagerly and go
frogging in the marsh ; the Athenian and the
Yankee remain behind and work a base ad
vantage, the one with pebbles, the other with
shot. Presently the contest began. In the
one case " they pinched the Boeotian frog " ;
in the other, " him and the feller touched up
the frogs from behind." The Boeotian frog
" gathered himself for a leap " (you can just see
him !), but " could not move his body in the
least " ; the Californian frog " give a heave,
but it warn't no use — he couldn't budge." In
both the ancient and the modern cases the
strangers departed with the money. The Boeo-

158 HOW TO TELL A STORY

tian and the Californian wonder what is the
matter with their frogs ; they lift them and
examine ; they turn them upside down and
out spills the informing ballast.

Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact.
I used to tell the story of the Jumping Frog
in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward
came along and wanted it to help fill out a lit
tle book which he was about to publish ; so
I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher,
Carleton ; but Carleton thought the book had
enough matter in it, so he gave the story to
Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in
his Saturday Press, and it killed that paper
with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At
least the paper died with that issue, and none
but envious people have ever tried to rob me
of the honor and credit of killing it. The
" Jumping Frog " was the first piece of writ
ing of mine that spread itself through the
newspapers and brought me into public notice.
Consequently, the Saturday Press was a cocoon
and I the worm in it ; also, I was the gay-col
ored literary moth which its death set free.
This simile has been used before.

Early in '66 the " Jumping Frog" was is-
sued in book form, with other sketches of mine.
A year or two later Madame Blanc translated

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 159

it into French and published it in the Revue
des Deux Mondes, but the result was not what
should have been expected, for the Revue
struggled along and pulled through, and is
alive yet. I think the fault must have been
in the translation. I ought to have translated
it myself. I think so because I examined into
the matter and finally retranslated the sketch
from the French back into English, to see what
the trouble was ; that is, to see just what
sort of a focus the French people got upon it.
Then the mystery was explained. In French
the story is too confused, and chaotic, and
unreposeful, and ungrammatical, and insane;
consequently it could only cause grief and
sickness — it could not kill. A glance at my
re-translation will show the reader that this
must be true.

[My Retranslating
THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS.

Eh bien ! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats,
and some cocks of combat, and some cats, and all sort
of things ; and with his rage of betting one no had
more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him
imported with him (et 1'emporta chez lui) saying that
he pretended to make his education. You me believe
if you will, but during three months he not has noth
ing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a
sauter) in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison).

l6o HOW TO TELL A STORY

And I you respond that he have succeeded. He him
gives a small blow by behind, and the instant after
you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-
biscuit, make one summersault, sometimes two, when
she was well started, and re-fall upon his feet like a
cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to gob
ble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exer
cised continually— so well that a fly at the most far
that she appeared was a fly lost. Smiley had custom
to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the edu
cation, but with the education she could do nearly all
— and I him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose
Daniel Webster there upon this plank — Daniel Webster
was the name of the frog — and to him sing, "Some
flies, Daniel, some flies !" — in a flash of the eye Daniel
had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter,
then jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly
to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if
he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never
you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet
as she was. And when he himself agitated to jump
purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more
ground in one jump than any beast of his species than
you can know.

To jump plain — this was his strong. When he him
self agitated for that Smiley multiplied the bets upon
her as long as there to him remained a red. It must
to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog,
and he of it was right, for some men who were trav
elled, who had all seen, said that they to him would
be injurious to him compare to another frog. Smiley
guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he car
ried bytimes to the village for some bet.

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY l6l

One day an individual stranger at the camp him ar
rested with his box and him said :

" What is this that you have then shut up there
within ?"

Smiley said, with an air indifferent:

" That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin\
but this no is nothing of such, it not is but a frog."

The individual it took, it regarded with care, it
turned from one side and from the other, then he
said :

"Ticns ! in effect ! — At what is she good ?"

" My God !" respond Smiley, always with an air dis
engaged, " she is good for one thing, to my notice (d
mon avis), she can batter in jumping (elle pent batter
en saittant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras."

The individual re-took the box, it examined of new
longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an
air deliberate :

"Eh bicn! I no saw not that that frog had nothing
of better than each frog." (Je ne vozs pas que cette
grcnouille ait rien de micux quaucune grenouille). [If
that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself
no judge. — M. T.]

"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley,
" possible that you — you comprehend frogs ; possible
that you not you there comprehend nothing; possible
that you had of the experience, and possible that you
not be but an amateur. Of all manner (De toute ma-
m'cre) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping
no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras."

The individual reflected a second, and said like sad :

" I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog ;
but if I of it had one, I would embrace the bet."
ii

HOW TO TELL A STORY

" Strong, well !" respond Smiley ; " nothing of more
facility. If you will hold my box a minute, I go you
to search a frog (firai vous chercher)."

Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box,
who puts his forty dollars upon those of Smiley, and
who attends (et qui attend}. He attended enough
longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that
he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and
with a teaspoon him fills with shot of the hunt, even
him fills jus-t to the chin, then he him puts by the
earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in
a swamp. Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him car
ried to that individual, and said :

" Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel,
with their before-feet upon the same line, and I give
the signal " — then he added : " One, two, three — ad
vance !"

Him and the individual touched their frogs by be
hind, and the frog new put to jump smartly, but Dan
iel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the shoulders
thus, like a Frenchman — to what good ? he could not
budge, he is planted solid like a church, he not ad
vance no more than if one him had put at the anchor.

Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not him
self doubted not of the turn being intended (mats il
ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendii). The individual
empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb
over the shoulder — like that — at the poor Daniel, in
saying with his air deliberate — (L'individu empoche
V argent s'en va et en sen allant est ce qiiil ne donne
pas un coup de pouce par-dessus Fepaule, comme $a, au
pauvre Daniel, en dtsant de son air

PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 163

" Eh bicn ! / no see not that that frog has nothing of
better than another"

Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the
eyes fixed upon Daniel, until that which at last he
said :

" I me demand how the devil it makes itself that
this beast has refused. Is it that she had something ?
One would believe that she is stuffed."

He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him
lifted and said :

" The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds."

He him reversed and the unhappy belched two
handfuls of shot (et lemalhcitreux, etc.). — When Smiley
recognized how it was, he was like mad. He deposited
his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but
he not him caught never.

It may be that there are people who can
translate better than I can, but I am not ac
quainted with them.

So ends the private and public history of
the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, an in
cident which has this unique feature about it
—that it is both old and new, a "chestnut"
and not a " chestnut " ; for it was original
when it happened two thousand years ago,
and was again original when it happened in
California in our own time.

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN

I HAVE three or four curious incidents to
tell about. They seem to come under the
head of what I named " Mental Telegraphy "
in a paper written seventeen years ago, and
published long afterwards.*

Several years ago I made a campaign on the
platform with Mr. George W. Cable. In Mon
treal we were honored with a reception. It
began at two in the afternoon in a long draw
ing-room in the Windsor Hotel. Mr. Cable
and I stood at one end of this room, and the
ladies and gentlemen entered it at the other
end, crossed it at that end, then came up the
long left-hand side, shook hands with us, said
a word or two, and passed on, in the usual
way. My sight is of the telescopic sort, and
I presently recognized a familiar face among
the throng of strangers drifting in at the dis-

*The paper entitled " Mental Telegraphy," which origin
ally appeared in HARPER'S MAGAZINE for December 1893,
is included in the volume entitled The American Claimant,
and Other Stories and Sketches.

1 68 HOW TO TELL A STORY

tant door, and I said to myself, with surprise
and high gratification, " That is Mrs. R. ; I had
forgotten that she was a Canadian." She had
been a great friend of mine in Carson City,
Nevada, in the early days. I had not seen
her or heard of her for twenty years ; I had
not been thinking about her ; there was noth
ing to suggest her to me, nothing to bring her
to my mind ; in fact, to me she had long ago
ceased to exist, and had disappeared from my
consciousness. But I knew her instantly; and
I saw her so clearly that I was able to note
some of the particulars of her dress, and did
note them, and they remained in my mind. I
was impatient for her to come. In the midst
of the hand-shakings I snatched glimpses of
her and noted her progress with the slow-
moving file across the end of the room ; then I
saw her start up the side, and this gave me a
full front view of her face. I saw her last
when she was within twenty-five feet of me.
For an hour I kept thinking she must still be
in the room somewhere and would come at
last, but I was disappointed.

When I arrived in the lecture-hall that even
ing some one said : " Come into the waiting-
room ; there's a friend of yours there who
wants to see you. You'll not be introduced —

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 169

you are to do the recognizing without help if
you can."

I said to myself : " It is Mrs. R. ; I sha'n't
have any trouble."

There were perhaps ten ladies present, all
seated. In the midst of them was Mrs. R., as
I had expected. She was dressed exactly as
she was when I had seen her in the afternoon.
I went forward and shook hands with her and
called her by name, and said :

" I knew you the moment you appeared at
the reception this afternoon."

She looked surprised, and said : " But I was
not at the reception. I have just arrived
from Quebec, and have not been in town an
hour."

It was my turn to be surprised now. I said :
" I can't help it. I give you my word of honor
that it is as I say. I saw you at the recep
tion, and you were dressed precisely as you
are now. When they told me a moment ago
that I should find a friend in this room, your
image rose before me, dress and all, just as I
had seen you at the reception."

Those are the facts. She was not at the re
ception at all, or anywhere near it ; but I saw
her there nevertheless, and most clearly and
unmistakably. To that I could make oath.

1 70 HOW TO TELL A STORY

How is one to explain this? I was not
thinking of her at the time ; had not thought
of her for years. But she had been thinking
of me, no doubt ; did her thoughts flit through
leagues of air to me, and bring with it that
clear and pleasant vision of herself? I think
so. That was and remains my sole experience
in the matter of apparitions — I mean appari
tions that come when one is (ostensibly) awake.
I could have been asleep for a moment ; the
apparition could have been the creature of a
dream. Still, that is nothing to the point; the
feature of interest is the happening of the
thing just at that time, instead of at an earlier
or later time, which is argument that its origin
lay in thought-transference.

My next incident will be set aside by most
persons as being merely a " coincidence," I
suppose. Years ago I used to think some
times of making a lecturing trip through the
antipodes and the borders of the Orient, but
always gave up the idea, partly because of the
great length of the journey and partly be
cause my wife could not well manage to go
with me. Towards the end of last January
that idea, after an interval of years, came sud
denly into my head again — forcefully, too, and
without any apparent reason. Whence came

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 17 1

it? What suggested it? I will touch upon
that presently.

I was at that time where I am now — in
Paris. I wrote at once to Henry M. Stanley
(London), and asked him some questions about
his Australian lecture tour, and inquired who
had conducted him and what were the terms.
After a day or two his answer came. It
began :

" The lecture agent for Australia and New Zealand
\sflar excellence Mr. R. S. Smythe, of Melbourne."

He added his itinerary, terms, sea expenses,
and some other matters, and advised me to
write Mr. Smythe, which I did — February 3d.
I began my letter by saying in substance that
while he did not know me personally we had
a mutual friend in Stanley, and that would an
swer for an introduction. Then I proposed
my trip, and asked if he would give me the
same terms which he had given Stanley.

I mailed my letter to Mr. Smythe February
6th, and three days later I got a letter from
the selfsame Smythe, dated Melbourne, Decem
ber i /th. I would as soon have expected to
get a letter from the late George Washington.
The letter began somewhat as mine to him
had begun — with a self-introduction :

172 HOW TO TELL A STORY

" DEAR MR. CLEMENS,— It is so long since Archibald
Forbes and I spent that pleasant afternoon in your
comfortable house at Hartford that you have probably
quite forgotten the occasion."

In the course of his letter this occurs :

"I am willing to give you" [here he named the
terms which he had given Stanley] " for an antipodean
tour to last, say, three months."

Here was the single essential detail of my
letter answered three days after I had mailed
my inquiry. I might have saved myself the
trouble and the postage — and a few years
ago I would have done that very thing, for I
would have argued that my sudden and strong
impulse to write and ask some questions of a
stranger on the under side of the globe meant
that the impulse came from that stranger, and
that he would answer my questions of his own
motion if I would let him alone.

Mr. Smythe's letter probably passed under
my nose on its way to lose three weeks trav
elling to America and back, and gave me a
whiff of its contents as it went along. Letters
often act like that. Instead of the thought
coming to you in an instant from Australia,
the (apparently) unsentient letter imparts it to
you as it glides invisibly past your elbow in
the mail-bag.

(( UJ\

EGRAPHY AC

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 173

Next incident. In the following month —
March — I was in America. I spent a Sunday
at Irvington- on -the- Hudson with Mr. John
Brisben Walker, of the Cosmopolitan magazine.
We came into New York next morning, and
went to the Century Club for luncheon. He
said some praiseful things about the character
of the club and the orderly serenity and pleas
antness of its quarters, and asked if I had never
tried to acquire membership in it. I said I
had not, and that New York clubs were a con
tinuous expense to the country members with
out being of frequent use or benefit to them.

"And now I've got an idea!" said I.
" There's the Lotos — the first New York club
I was ever a member of — my very earliest
love in that line. I have been a member of
it for considerably more than twenty years,
yet have seldom had a chance to look in and
see the boys. They turn gray and grow old
while I am not watching. And my dues go on.
I am going to Hartford this afternoon for a
day or two, but as soon as I get back I will
go to John Elderkin very privately and say:
' Remember the veteran and confer distinction
upon him, for the sake of old times. Make
me an honorary member and abolish the tax.
If you haven't any such thing as honorary

174 HOW TO TELL A STORY

membership, all the better — create it for my
honor and glory.' That would be a great thing ;
I will go to John Elderkin as soon as I get
back from Hartford."

I took the last express that afternoon, first
telegraphing Mr. F. G. Whitmore to come and
see me next day. When he came he asked:

" Did you get a letter from Mr. John Elder-
kin, secretary of the Lotos Club, before you
left New York ?"

"No."

"Then it just missed you. If I had known
you were coming I would have kept it. It
is beautiful, and will make you proud. The
Board of Directors, by unanimous vote, have
made you a life member, and squelched those
dues ; and you are to be on hand and receive
your distinction on the night of the 3Oth,
which is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
founding of the club, and it will not surprise
me if they have some great times there."

What put the honorary membership in my
head that day in the Century Club? for I had
never thought of it before. I don't know what
brought the thought to me at that particular
time instead of earlier, but I am well satisfied
that it originated with the Board of Directors,
and had been on its way to my brain through

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 175

the air ever since the moment that saw their
vote recorded.

Another incident. I was in Hartford two
or three days as a guest of the Rev. Joseph H.
Twichell. I have held the rank of Honorary
Uncle to his children for a quarter of a cen
tury, and I went out with him in the trolley-
car to visit one of my nieces, who is at Miss
Porter's famous school in Farmington. The
distance is eight or nine miles. On the way,
talking, I illustrated something with an anec
dote. This is the anecdote :

Two years and a half ago I and the family
arrived at Milan on our way to Rome, and
stopped at the Continental. After dinner I
went below and took a seat in the stone-paved
court, where the customary lemon-trees stand
in the customary tubs, and said to myself,
" Now this is comfort, comfort and repose, and
nobody to disturb it ; I do not know anybody
in Milan."

Then a young gentleman stepped up and
shook hands, which damaged my theory. He
said, in substance :

" You won't remember me, Mr. Clemens, but
I remember you very well. I was a cadet at
West Point when you and Rev. Joseph H.
Twichell came there some years ago and talked

176 HOW TO TELL A STORY

to us on a Hundredth Night. I am a lieu
tenant in the regular army now, and my name
is H. I am in Europe, all alone, for a modest
little tour; my regiment is in Arizona."

We became friendly and sociable, and in the
course of the talk he told me of an adventure
which had befallen him — about to this effect :

" I was at Bellagio, stopping at the big
hotel there, and ten days ago I lost my letter
of credit. I did not know what in the world
to do. I was a stranger; I knew no one in
Europe ; I hadn't a penny in my pocket ; I
couldn't even send a telegram to London to
get my lost letter replaced ; my hotel bill was
a week old, and the presentation of it immi
nent — so imminent that it could happen at
any moment now. I was so frightened that
my wits seemed to leave me. I tramped and
tramped, back and forth, like a crazy person.
If anybody approached me I hurried away,
for no matter what a person looked like, I took
him for the head waiter with the bill.

" I was at last in such a desperate state that
I was ready to do any wild thing that promised
even the shadow of help, and so this is the
insane thing that I did. I saw a family lunch
ing at a small table on the veranda, and recog
nized their nationality — Americans — father,

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 177

mother, and several young daughters — young,
tastefully dressed, and pretty — the rule with
our people. I went straight there in my ci
vilian costume, named my name, said I was a
lieutenant in the army, and told my story and
asked for help.

"What do you suppose the gentleman did?
But you would not guess in twenty years. He
took out a handful of gold coin and told me
to help myself— freely. That is what he did."

The next morning the lieutenant told me
his new letter of credit had arrived in the
night, so we strolled to Cook's to draw money
to pay back the benefactor with. We got it,
and then went strolling through the great ar
cade. Presently he said, " Yonder they are ;
come and be introduced." I was introduced
to the parents and the young ladies; then
we separated, and I never saw him or them
any m —

" Here we are at Farmington," said Twichell,
interrupting.

We left the trolley-car and tramped through
the mud a hundred yards or so to the school,
talking about the time we and Warner walked
out there years ago, and the pleasant time we
had.

We had a visit with my niece in the parlor,

12

178 HOW TO TELL A STORY

then started for the trolley again. Outside
the house we encountered a double rank of
twenty or thirty of Miss Porter's young ladies
arriving from a walk, and we stood aside, os
tensibly to let them have room to file past,
but really to look at them. Presently one of
them stepped out of the rank and said :

"You don't know me, Mr. Twichell, but I
know your daughter, and that gives me the
privilege of shaking hands with you."

Then she put out her hand to me, and said :

"And I wish to shake hands with you too,
Mr. Clemens. You don't remember me, but
you were introduced to me in the arcade in
Milan two years and a half ago by Lieuten
ant H."

What had put that story into my head after
all that stretch of time? Was it just the
proximity of that young girl, or was it merely
an odd accident?

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US

HE reports the American joke correctly. In
Boston they ask, How much does he know?
in New York, How much is he worth ? in Phil
adelphia, Who were his parents ? And when
an alien observer turns his telescope upon us
— advertisedly in our own special interest — a
natural apprehension moves us to ask, What is
the diameter of his reflector?

I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chap
ters, for I know by the newspapers that there
are several Americans who are expecting to
get a whole education out of them ; several
who foresaw, and also foretold, that our long
night was over, and a light almost divine about
to break upon the land.

"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weigh
ty and well timed''

"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thought
fully and profitably studied"

These well-considered and important ver-

l82 HOW TO TELL A STORY

diets were of a nature to restore public confi
dence, which had been disquieted by question
ings as to whether so young a teacher would
be qualified to take so large a class as 70,000,-
ooo, distributed over so extensive a school-
house as America, and pull it through without
assistance.

I was even disquieted myself, although I am
of a cold, calm temperament, and not easily
disturbed. I feared for my country. And I
was not wholly tranquillized by the verdicts
rendered as above. It seemed to me that
there was still room for doubt. In fact, in
looking the ground over I became more dis
turbed than I was before. Many worrying
questions came up in my mind. Two were
prominent. Where had the teacher gotten
his equipment ? What was his method ?

He had gotten his equipment in France.

Then as to his method : I saw by his own
intimations that he was an Observer, and had
a System — that used by naturalists and other
scientists. The naturalist collects many bugs
and reptiles and butterflies and studies their
ways a long time patiently. By this means he
is presently able to group these creatures into
families and subdivisions of families by nice
shadings of differences observable in their char-

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 183

acters. Then he labels all those shaded bugs
and things with nicely descriptive group names,
and is now happy, for his great work is com
pleted, and as a result he intimately knows
every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and
out. It may be true, but a person who was
not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he
had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a
pleasant System, but subject to error.

The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classi
fier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a Generalizer, a
Psychologizer ; and, first and last, a Thinker.
He has to be all these, and when he is at
home, observing his own folk, he is often able
to prove competency. But history has shown
that when he is abroad observing unfamiliar
peoples the chances are heavily against him.
He is then a naturalist observing a bug, with
no more than a naturalist's chance of being
able to tell the bug anything new about itself,
and no more than a naturalist's chance of be
ing able to teach it any new ways which it
will prefer to its own.

To return to that first question. M.Bourget,
as teacher, would simply be France teaching
America. It seemed to me that the outlook
was dark — almost Egyptian, in fact. What
would the new teacher, representing France,

184 HOW TO TELL A STORY

teach us? Railroading? No. France knows
nothing valuable about railroading. Steam-
shipping? No. France has no superiorities
over us in that matter. Steamboating? No.
French steamboating is still of Fulton's date —
1809. Postal service ? No. France is a back
number there. Telegraphy ? No, we taught
her that ourselves. Journalism ? No. Mag-
azining? No, that is our own specialty. Gov
ernment ? No ; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,
Nobility, Democracy, Adultery — the system is
too variegated for our climate. Religion?
No, not variegated enough for our climate.
Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to en
rich ourselves. Novel- writing? No. M.
Bourget and the others know only one plan,
and when that is expurgated there is nothing
left of the book.

I wish I could think what he is going to
teach us. Can it be Deportment? But he
experimented in that at Newport and failed
to give satisfaction, except to a few. Those
few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy
as well as they can. They confess their hap
piness to the interviewer. They feel pretty
striped, but they remember with reverent rec
ognition that they had sugar between the cuts.
True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 185

true, they had some trouble to tell which was
sugar and which was sand, because the sugar
itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste ; still, they knew that the sugar
was there, and would have been very good
sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes,
they are pleased ; not noisily so, but pleased ;
invaded, or streaked, as one may say, with lit
tle recurrent shivers of joy — subdued joy, so
to speak, not the overdone kind. And they
commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit
of resignation and thankfulness, mixing these
elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the
one to the other and to the interviewer : " It
was severe — yes, it was bitterly severe ; but oh,
how true it was ; and it will do us so much
good !"

If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was
at this point that I seemed to get on the right
track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to
know ourselves ; that was it: he \vould reveal
us to ourselves. That would be an education.
He would explain us to ourselves. Then we
should understand ourselves ; and after that
be able to go on more intelligently.

It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could

1 86 HOW TO TELL A STORY

explain us to /myself — that would be easy.
That would be the same as the naturalist ex
plaining the bug to himself. But to explain
the bug to the bug — that is quite a different
matter. The bug may not know himself per
fectly, but he knows himself better than the
naturalist can know him, at any rate.

-A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of
a nation, but I think that that is as far as he
can get. I think that no foreigner can report
its interior — its soul, its life, its speech, its
thought. I think that a knowledge of these
things is acquirable in only one way ; not two
or four or six — absorption; years and years of
unconscious absorption ; years and years of
intercourse with the life concerned ; of living
it, indeed ; sharing personally in its shames
and prides, its joys and griefs, its loves and
hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows
and shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirl
winds of political passion, its adorations — of
flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the na
tional name. Observation? Of what real
value is it? One learns peoples through the
heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

There is only one expert who is qualified to
examine the souls and the life of a people and
make a valuable report — the native novelist.

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 187

This expert is so rare that the most populous
country can never have fifteen conspicuously
and confessedly competent ones in stock at
one time. This native specialist is not quali
fied to begin work until he has been absorb
ing during twenty-five years. How much of
his competency is derived from conscious " ob
servation"? The amount is so slight that it
counts for next to nothing in the equipment.
Almost the whole capital of the novelist is the
slow accumulation of unconscious observation
— absorption. The native expert's intentional
observation of manners, speech, character, and
ways of life can have value, for the native
knows what they mean without having to
cipher out the meaning. But I should be as
tonished to see a foreigner get at the right
meanings, catch the elusive shades of these
subtle things. Even the native novelist be
comes a foreigner, with a foreigner's limita
tions, when he steps from the State whose life
is familiar to him into a State whose life he
has not lived. Bret Harte got his California
and his Californians by unconscious absorp
tion, and put both of them into his tales alive.
But when he came from the Pacific to the At
lantic and tried to do Newport life from study
— conscious observation — his failure was abso-

1 88 HOW TO TELL A STORY

lutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous
place for the unacclimated observer, evidently.
To return to novel-building. Does the na
tive novelist try to generalize the nation ? No,
he lays plainly before you the ways and speech
and life of a few people grouped in a certain
place — his own place — and that is one book.
In time he and his brethren will report to you
the life and the people of the whole nation —
the life of a group in a New England village ;
in a New York village ; in a Texan village ;
in an Oregon village ; in villages in fifty States
andTerritories; then the farm-life in fifty States
and Territories ; a hundred patches of life and
groups of people in a dozen widely separated
cities. And the Indians will be attended to ;
and the cowboys ; and the gold and silver
miners ; and the negroes ; and the Idiots and
Congressmen ; and the Irish, the Germans, the
Italians, the Swedes, the French, the China
men, the Greasers ; and the Catholics, the
Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congrega-
tionalists, the Baptists, the Spiritualists, the
Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews,
the Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian
Scientists, the Mind-Curists, the Faith-Curists,
the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moon
shiners. And when a thousand able novels

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 189

have been written, there you have the soul of
the people, the life of the people, the speech
of the people ; and not anywhere else can these
be had. And the shadings of character, man
ners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.

" The nature of a people is always of a similar shade
in its vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its
labor. // is this physiognomy which it is necessary to
discover, and every document is good, from the hall
of a casino to the church, from the foibles of a fash
ionable woman to the suggestions of a revolutionary
leader. I am therefore quite sure that this American
soul, the principal interest and the great object of my
voyage, appears behind the records of Newport for
those who choose to see it." — M. Paul B our get.

[The italics are mine.] It is a large con
tract which he has undertaken. " Records "
is a pretty poor word there, but I think the
use of it is due to hasty translation. In the
original the word is fastes. I think M. Bour-
get meant to suggest that he expected to find
the great "American soul" secreted behind
the ostentations of Newport ; and that he was
going to get it out and examine it, and gener
alize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal
to him its hidden vast mystery : " the nature
of the people" of the United States of Amer
ica. We have been accused of being a nation

190 HOW TO TELL A STORY

addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust
that we shall be allowed to retire to second
place now.

There isn't a single human characteristic
that can be safely labelled " American." There
isn't a single human ambition, or religious
trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of ed
ucation, or code of principles, or breed of folly,
or style of conversation, or preference for a
particular subject for discussion, or form of
legs or trunk or head or face or expression or
complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
disposition, or any other human detail, inside
or outside, that can rationally be generalized
as " American."

Whenever you have found what seems to be
an " American" peculiarity, you have only to
cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in
the social scale, and you perceive that it has
disappeared. And you can cross the Atlantic
and find it again. There may be a Newport
religious drift or sporting drift, or conversa
tional style or complexion, or cut of face, but
there are entire empires in America, north,
south, east, and west, where you could not
find your duplicates. It is the same with
everything else which one might propose to
call "American." M. Bourget thinks he has

WHAT PAUL DOURGET THINKS OF US 19 1

found the American Coquette. If he had
really found her he would also have found, I
am sure, that she was not new, that she exists
in other lands in the same forms, and with the
same frivolous heart and the same ways and
impulses. I think this because I have seen
our coquette; I have seen her in life; better
still, I have seen her in our novels, and seen
her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget
had seen ours. He thought he saw her. And
so he applied his System to her. She was a
Species. So he gathered a number of samples
of what seemed to be her, and put them under
his glass, and divided them into groups which
he calls " types," and labelled them in his usual
scientific way with " formulas " —brief sharp
descriptive flashes that make a person blink,
sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As
a rule they are pretty far-fetched, but that is
not an important matter; they surprise, they
compel admiration, and I notice by some of
the comments which his efforts have called
forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are
a few of the coquette variants which he has
grouped and labelled :

THE COLLECTOR.

THE EQUILIBREE.

THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

IQ2 HOW TO TELL A STORY

THE BLUFFER.

THE GIRL-BOY.

If he had stopped with describing these
characters we should have been obliged to be
lieve that they exist ; that they exist, and that
he has seen them and spoken with them. But
he did not stop there; he went further and
furnished to us light-throwing samples of their
behavior, and also light- throwing samples of
their speeches. He entered those things in
his note-book without suspicion, he takes them
out and delivers them to the world with a
candor and simplicity which show that he be
lieved them genuine. They throw altogether
too much light. They reveal to the native
the origin of his find. I suppose he knows
how he came to make that novel and capti
vating discovery, by this time. If he does
not, any American can tell him — any Ameri
can to whom he will show his anecdotes. It
was " put up " on him, as we say. It was a
jest — to be plain, it was a series of frauds. To
my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and
contemptible. The players of it have their
reward, such as it is ; they have exhibited the
fact that whatever they may be they are not
ladies. M. Bourget did not discover a type of
coquette ; he merely discovered a type of prac-

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 193

tical joker. One may say the type of practical
joker, for these people are exactly alike all
over the world. Their equipment is always
the same : a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel
disposition as a rule, and always the spirit of
treachery.

In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or
three columns gravely devoted to the collating
and examining and psychologizing of these
sorry little frauds. One is not moved to laugh.
There is nothing funny in the situation ; it is
only pathetic. The stranger gave those people
his confidence, and they dishonorably treated
him in return.

But one must be allowed to suspect that M.
Bourget was a little to blame himself. Even
a practical joker has some little judgment.
He has to exercise some degree of sagacity
in selecting his prey if he would save himself
from getting into trouble. In my time I have
seldom seen such daring things marketed at
any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer.
It compels the conviction that there was some
thing about him that bred in those speculators
a quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged
them to strain their powers in his behalf. They
seem to have satisfied themselves that all he
is

UNIVEI

194 HOW TO TELL A STORY

wanted was " significant " facts, and that he
was not accustomed to examine the source
whence they proceeded. It is plain that there
was a sort of conspiracy against him almost
from the start — a conspiracy to freight him up
with all the strange extravagances those peo
ple's decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to
incredible. They told him things which surely
would have excited any one else's suspicion,
but they did not excite his. Consider this :

" There is not in all the United States an entirely
nude statue"

If an angel should come down and say such
a thing about heaven, a reasonably cautious
observer would take that angel's number and
inquire a little further before he added it to
his catch. What does the present observer do ?
Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels
it with this innocent comment:

" This small fact is strangely significant"

It does seem to me that this kind of observ
ing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal
person made him a present of. I should think
it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 195

of his suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was
a note from a fog-horn for strenuousness, it
seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not
catch it. If he had but caught it, it would
have saved him from several disasters :

" If the American knows that you are travelling to
take notes, he is interested in it, and at the same time
rejoices in it, as in a tribute."

Again, this is defective observation. It is
human to like to be praised ; one can even
notice it in the French. But it is not human
to like to be ridiculed, even when it comes in
the form of a "tribute." I think a little psy
chologizing ought to have come in there.
Something like this: A dog does not like to
be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be ridi
culed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a
Chinaman does not like to be ridiculed; let
us deduce from these significant facts this for
mula : the American's grade being higher than
these, and the chain of argument stretching
unbroken all the way up to him, there is room
for suspicion that the person who said the
American likes to be ridiculed, and regards it
as a tribute, is not a capable observer.

I feel persuaded that in the matter of psy
chologizing, a professional is too apt to yield

196 HOW TO TELL A STORY

to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that
great art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks.
Every now and then, at half-hour intervals, M.
Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies
and dissolves them in a panful of assorted ab
stractions, and runs the charge into a mould
and turns you out a compact principle which
will explain an American girl, or an Ameri
can woman, or why new people yearn for old
things, or any other impossible riddle which a
person wants answered.

It seems to be conceded that there are a
few human peculiarities that can be generalized
and located here and there in the world and
named by the name of the nation where they
are found. I wonder what they are. Per
haps one of them is temperament. One speaks
of French vivacity and German gravity and
English stubbornness. There is no American
temperament. The nearest that one can come
at it is to say there are two — the composed
Northern and the impetuous Southern ; and
both are found in other countries. Morals?
Purity of women may fairly be called universal
with us, but that is the case in some other
countries. We have no monopoly of it ; it
cannot be named American. I think that
there is but a single specialty with us, only

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 197

one thing that can be called by the wide name
" American." That is the national devotion
to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but the
British nation drinks beer, too ; so neither of
those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I
suppose we do stand alone in having a drink
that nobody likes but ourselves. When we
have been a month in Europe we lose our
craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel
folk that they needn't provide it any more.
Yet we hardly touch our native shore again,
winter or summer, before we are eager for it.
The reasons for this state of things have not
been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and
say no more.

It is my belief that there are some " nation
al " traits and things scattered about the world
that are mere superstitions, frauds that have
lived so long that they have the solid look of
facts. One of them is the dogma that the
French are the only chaste people in the world.
Ever since I arrived in France this last time I
have been accumulating doubts about that ;
and before I leave this sunny land again I will
gather in a few random statistics and psychol
ogize the plausibilities out of it. If people
are to come over to America and find fault
with our girls and our women, and psycholo-

198 HOW TO TELL A STORY

gize every little thing they do, and try to
teach them how to behave, and how to culti
vate themselves up to where one cannot tell
them from the French model, I intend to find
out whether those missionaries are qualified
or not. A nation ought always to examine
into this detail before engaging the teacher
for good. This last one has let fall a remark
which renewed those doubts of mine when I
read it :

" In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we
find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all
the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul."

You see, it amounts to a trade with the
French soul ; a profession ; a science ; the se
rious business of life, so to speak, in our high
Parisian existence. I do not quite like the
look of it. I question if it can be taught with
profit in our country, except of course to those
pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting
there so yearningly for the education which
M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the
serene summits of our high Parisian life.

I spoke a moment ago of the existence of
some superstitions that have been parading
the world as facts this long time. For in
stance, consider the Dollar. The world seems

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 199

to think that the love of money is " Ameri
can "; and that the mad desire to get sudden
ly rich is " American." I believe that both of
these things are merely and broadly human,
not American monopolies at all. The love of
money is natural to all nations, for money is a
good and strong friend. I think that this love
has existed everywhere, ever since the Bible
called it the root of all evil.

I think that the reason why we Americans
seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich
suddenly is merely because the opportunity to
make promising efforts in that direction has
offered itself to us with a frequency out of all
proportion to the European experience. For
eighty years this opportunity has been offering
itself in one new town or region after another
straight westward, step by step, all the way
from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. When
a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolera
bly long credit for ten months' savings out of
his wages, and reasonably expect to sell them
in a couple of years for ten times what he
gave for them, it was human for him to try
the venture, and he did it no matter what his
nationality was. He would have done it in
Europe or China if he had had the same
chance.

200 HOW TO TELL A STORY

In the flush times in the silver regions a
cook or any other humble worker stood a
very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of
money risked in a stock deal ; and that person
promptly took that risk, no matter what his
or her nationality might be. I was there, and
saw it.

But these opportunities have not been plen
ty in our Southern States ; so there you have
a prodigious region where the rush for sudden
wealth is almost an unknown thing — and has
been, from the beginning.

Europe has offered few opportunities for
poor Tom, Dick, and Harry ; but when she
has offered one, there has been no noticeable
difference between European eagerness and
American. England saw this in the wild days
of the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720
— time of Law and the Mississippi Bubble.
I am sure I have never seen in the gold and
silver mines any madness, fury, frenzy to get
suddenly rich which was even remotely com
parable to that which raged in France in the
Bubble day. If I had a cyclopaedia here I
could turn to that memorable case, and sat
isfy nearly anybody that the hunger for the
sudden dollar is no more " American " than it
is French. And if I could furnish an Ameri-

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 2OI

can opportunity to staid Germany, I think I
could wake her up like a house afire.

But I must return to the Generalizations,
Psychologizings, Deductions. When M. Bour-
get is exploiting these arts, it is then that
he is peculiarly and particularly himself. His
ways are wholly original when he encounters a
trait or a custom which is new to him. Another
person would merely examine the find, verify
it, estimate its value, and let it go ; but that is
not sufficient for M. Bourget : he always wants
to know why that thing exists, he wants to
know how it came to happen ; and he will not
let go of it until he has found out. And in
every instance he will find that reason where
no one but himself would have thought of
looking for it. He does not seem to care for
a reason that is not picturesquely located; one
might almost say picturesquely and impossibly
located.

He found out that in America men do not
try to hunt down young married women. At
once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any
one could have told him. He could have
divined it by the lights thrown by the novels
of the country. But no, he preferred to find
out for himself. He has a trustfulness as re
gards men and facts which is fine and unusual ;

202 HOW TO TELL A STORY

he is not particular about the source of a fact,
he is not particular about the character and
standing of the fact itself ; but when it comes
to pounding out the reason for the existence
of the fact, he will trust no one but himself.

In the present instance here was his fact:
American young married women are not pur
sued by the corruptor ; and here was the ques
tion : What is it that protects her ?

It seems quite unlikely that that problem
could have offered difficulties to any but a
trained philosopher. Nearly any person would
have said to M. Bourget : " Oh, that is very
simple. It is very seldom in America that a
marriage is made on a commercial basis; our
marriages, from the beginning, have been made
for love ; and where love is there is no room
for the corruptor."

Now, it is interesting to see the formidable
way in which M. Bourget went at that poor,
humble little thing. He moved upon it in
column — three columns — and with artillery.

" Two reasons of a very different kind ex
plain " — that fact.

And now that I have got so far, I am al
most afraid to say what his two reasons are,
lest I be charged with inventing them. But
I will not retreat now; I will condense them

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 203

and print them, giving my word that I am
honest, and not trying to deceive any one.

1. Young married women are protected from
the approaches of the seducer in New Eng
land and vicinity by the diluted remains of a
prudence created by a Puritan law of two hun
dred years ago, which for a while punished
adultery with death.

2. And young married women of the other
forty or fifty States are protected by laws
which afford extraordinary facilities for di
vorce.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurate
ly conveyed those two Vesuvian irruptions of
philosophy. But the reader can consult Chap
ter IV. of Outre-Mer and decide for himself.
Let us examine this paralyzing Deduction or
Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.

1. This universality of " protection " has ex
isted in our country from the beginning; be
fore the death penalty existed in New Eng
land, and during all the generations that have
dragged by since it was annulled.

2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are
of such recent creation that any middle-aged
American can remember a time when such
things had not yet been thought of.

Let us suppose that the first easy divorce

204 HOW TO TELL A STORY

law went into effect forty years ago, and got
noised around and fairly started in business
thirty -five years ago, when we had, say, 25,-
000,000 of white population. Let us suppose
that among 5,000,000 of them the young mar
ried women were " protected " by the surviv
ing shudder of that ancient Puritan scare —
what is M. Bourget going to do about those
who lived among the 20,000,000 ? They were
clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there
was no easy divorce law to protect them.

Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method
of truth-seeking — hunting for it in out-of-the-
way places — was new ; but that was an error.
I remember that when Leverrier discovered
the Milky Way, he and the other astronomers
began to theorize about it in substantially the
same fashion which M. Bourget employs in
his reasonings about American social facts and
their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypoth
esis that the Milky Way was caused by gase
ous protoplasmic emanations from the field of
Waterloo, which, ascending to an altitude de-
terminable by their own specific gravity, be
came luminous through the development and
exposure — by the natural processes of animal
decay — of the phosphorus contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THIN

Ptolemy, who, however, after much thought
and research, decided that he could not accept
it as final. His own theory was that the Milky
Way was an emigration of lightning-bugs;
and he supported and reinforced this theorem
by the well-known fact that the locusts do like
that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his
praises of Leverrier's important contribution
to astronomical science, and was at first in
clined to regard it as conclusive ; but later,
conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that
the Milky Way was a detachment or corps of
stars which became arrested and held in sus
pense suspcnsorum by refraction of gravitation
while on the march to join their several con
stellations ; a proposition for which he was
afterwards burned at the stake in Jacksonville,
Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque
theories, and each was received with enthusi
asm by the scientific world ; but when a New
England farmer, who was not a thinker, but
only a plain sort of person who tried to ac
count for large facts in simple ways, came out
with the opinion that the Milky Way was just
common, ordinary stars, and was put where it

206 HOW TO TELL A STORY

was because God "wanted to hev it so," the
admirable idea fell perfectly flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh
and striking as he is as a scientific one. He
says, " Above all, I do not believe much in an
ecdotes." Why? "In history they are all
false" — a sufficiently broad statement — "in
literature all libellous" — also a sufficiently
sweeping statement, coming from a critic who
notes that we are a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language — " and when it
is a matter of social life, almost all biassed."
It seems to amount to stultification, almost.
He has built two or three breeds of American
coquettes out of anecdotes — mainly " biassed "
ones, I suppose ; and, as they occur " in liter
ature," furnished by his pen, they must be
" all libellous." Or did he mean not in liter
ature or anecdotes about literature or literary
people ? I am not able to answer that. Per
haps the original would be clearer, but I have
only the translation of this instalment by me.
I think the remark had an intention ; also that
this intention was booked for the trip; but
that either in the hurry of the remark's de
parture it got left, or in the confusion of chang
ing cars at the translator's frontier it got side
tracked.

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 207

" But on the other hand I believe in statis
tics; and those on divorces appear to me to
be most conclusive." And he sets himself the
task of explaining — in a couple of columns —
the process by which Easy-Divorce conceived,
invented, originated, developed, and perfected
an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity
in the States. In 40 years. No, he doesn't
state the interval. With all his passion for
statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to
produce this gigantic miracle.

I have followed his pleasant but devious
trail through those columns, but I was not
able to get hold of his argument and find out
what it was. I was not even able to find out
where it left off. It seemed to gradually dis
solve and flow off into other matters. I fol
lowed it with interest, for I was anxious to
learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in
America, but I was disappointed ; I have no
idea yet how it did it. I only know it didn't.
But that is not valuable ; I knew it before.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving
thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all
our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and re
sentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes
their place. And so, when M. Bourget said
that bright thing about our grandfathers, I

208 HOW TO TELL A STORY

broke all up. I remember exploding its Amer
ican countermine once, under that grand hero,
Napoleon. He was only First Consul then,
and I was Consul -General — for the United
States, of course ; but we were very intimate,
notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I
waived that. One day something offered the
opening, and he said :

" Well, General, I suppose life can never get
entirely dull to an American, because when
ever he can't strike up any other way to put
in his time he can always get away with a few
years trying to find out who his grandfather
was !"

I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it
sound better; and then I was back at him as
quick as a flash :

" Right, your Excellency ! But I reckon a
Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull
time, too ; because when all other interests fail
he can turn in and see if he can't find out who
his father was !"

Well, you should have heard him just whoop,
and cackle, and carry on ! He reached up and
hit me one on the shoulder, and says :

"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely
good ! I'George, I never heard it said so good
in my life before ! Say it again."

WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 2OQ

So I said it again, and he said his again, and
I said mine again, and then he did, and then I
did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it,
and doing it, and I never had such a good
time, and he said the same. In my opinion
there isn't anything that is as killing as one of
those dear old ripe pensioners if you know how
to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh sort of
original way.

But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our
novels before he came. It is the only way to
thoroughly understand a people. When I
found I was coming to Paris, I read La Terre.

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

[The preceding squib was assailed in the North
American Review in an article entitled " Mark Twain
and Paul Bourget," by Max O'Rell. The following
little note is a Rejoinder to that article. It is possi
ble that the position assumed here— that M. Bourget
dictated the O'Rell article himself— is untenable.]

You have every right, my dear M. Bourget,
to retort upon me by dictation, if you prefer
that method to writing at me with your pen ;
but if I may say it without hurt — and certain
ly I mean no offence — I believe you would
have acquitted yourself better with the pen.
With the pen you are at home ; it is your nat
ural weapon ; you use it with grace, eloquence,
charm, persuasiveness, when men are to be
convinced, and with formidable effect when
they have earned a castigation. But I am
sure I see signs in the above article that you
are either unaccustomed to dictating or are
out of practice. If you will re-read it you will
notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness ; that

214 HOW TO TELL A STORY

it lacks purpose ; that it lacks coherence; that
it lacks a subject to talk about ; that it is loose
and wabbly ; that it wanders around ; that it
loses itself early and does not find itself any
more. There are some other defects, as you
will notice, but I think I have named the main
ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your
lack of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had
the impression at first that you had not dic
tated it. But only for a moment. Certain
quite simple and definite facts reminded me
that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else
without a specific invitation from you or from
me. I mean, it could not except as an intru
sion, a transgression of the law which forbids
strangers to mix into a private dispute be
tween friends, unasked.

Those simple and definite facts were these :
I had published an article in this magazine,
with you for my subject ; just you yourself; I
stuck strictly to that one subject, and did not
interlard any other. No one, of course, could
call me to account but you alone, or your au
thorized representative. I asked some ques
tions — asked them of myself. I answered
them myself. My article was thirteen pages

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 215

long, and all devoted to you ; devoted to you,
and divided up in this way: one page of
guesses as to what subjects you would instruct
us in, as teacher; one page of doubts as to
the effectiveness of your method of examining
us and our ways ; two or three pages of criti
cism of your method, and of certain results
which it furnished you ; two or three pages of
attempts to show the justness of these same
criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of
slight fault-findings with certain minor details
of your literary workmanship, of extracts from
your Outre-Mcr and comments upon them ;
then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat—
for certain reasons — that / closed with an anec
dote.

When I was asked by this magazine if I
wished to "answer" a " reply " to that article
of mine, I said " yes," and waited in Paris for
the proof-sheets of the " reply " to come. I
already knew, by the cablegram, that the " re
ply " would not be signed by you, but upon
reflection I knew it would be dictated by you,
because no volunteer would feel himself at
liberty to assume your championship in a pri
vate dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that
you are quite well able to take care of your
matters of that sort yourself and are not in

2l6 HOW TO TELL A STORY

need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could
not make such a venture. It would be too
immodest. Also too gratuitously generous.
And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could
not venture it. It would look like too much
anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate
had been provided for him. In fact he could
not get in at all, except by the back way and
with a false key ; that is to say, a pretext — a
pretext invented for the occasion by putting
into my mouth words which I did not use,
and by wresting sayings of mine from their
plain and true meaning. Would he resort to
methods like those to get in ? No ; there are
no people of that kind. So then I knew for
a certainty that you dictated the Reply your
self. I knew you did it to save yourself man
ual labor.

And you had the right, as I have already
said; and I am content — perfectly content.
Yet it would have been little trouble to you,
and a great kindness to me, if you had written
your Reply all out with your own capable hand.

Because then it would have replied — and
that is really what a Reply is for. Broadly
speaking, its function is to refute — as you will
easily concede. That leaves something for
the other person to take hold of: he has a

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 2 17

chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance
to refute the refutation. This would have hap
pened if you had written it out instead of dic
tating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcen-
trate the dictator's mind, when he is out of
practice, confuse him, and betray him into us
ing one set of literary rules when he ought to
use a quite different set. Often it betrays him
into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSA
TION BETWEEN A SHOUTER AND A DEAF PER
SON — as in the present case — when he ought
to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DIS
CUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The great
foundation-rule and basic principle of discus
sion with a fault-finder is relevancy and con
centration upon the subject ; whereas the great
foundation-rule and basic principle governing
conversation between a shouter and a deaf
person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion
of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to
illustrate by quoting example IV., section 7,
from chapter ix. of " Revised Rules for Con
ducting Conversation between a Shouter and
a Deaf Person," it will assist us in getting a
clear idea of the difference between the two
sets of rules :

Shouter. Did you say his name is WETH-
ERBY?

2l8 HOW TO TELL A STORY

Deaf Person. Change ? Yes, I think it will.
Though if it should clear off I —

Shouter. It's his NAME I want— his NAME.

Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so ; but it
will only be a shower, I think.

Shouter. No, no, no ! — you have quite mis-
underSTOOD me. If—

Deaf Person. Ah ! GOOD morning ; I am
sorry you must go. But call again, and let
me continue to be of assistance to you in
every way I can.

You see, it is a perfect kodak of the article
you have dictated. It is really curious and
interesting when you come to compare it with
yours ; in detail, with my former article to
which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk
twelve pages about your American instruction
projects, and your doubtful scientific system,
and your painstaking classification of non-ex
istent things, and your diligence and zeal and
sincerity, and your disloyal attitude towards
anecdotes, and your undue reverence for un
safe statistics and for facts that lack a pedi
gree ; and you turn around and come back at
me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is
good of you to repeat, with change of lan
guage, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 219

of my own article, and adopt my sentiments,
and make them over, and put new buttons on ;
and I like the compliment, and am frank to
say so ; but agreeing with a person cripples
controversy and ought not to be allowed. It
is weather ; and of almost the worst sort. It
pleases me greatly to hear you discourse with
such approval and expansiveness upon my
text:

"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors
of a nation, but I think that is as far as he
can get. I think that no foreigner can report
its interior ;"* which is a quite clear way of
saying that a foreigner's report is only valu
able when it restricts itself to impressions. It
pleases me to have you follow my lead in that
glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to com
bat. You should give me something to deny
and refute ; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn
the public against taking one of your books

*And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has
passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions
that are worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that
are worth repeating. For my part, I think that foreigners'
impressions are more interesting than native opinions. After
all, such impressions merely mean ' how the country struck
the foreigner.' "

220 HOW TO TELL A STORY

seriously."" Because I used to do that cun
ning thing myself in earlier days. I did it in
a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom

Sawyer.

NOTICE

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narra
tive will be prosecuted ; persons attempting to find a
moral in it will be banished ; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.

The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you
see — the public must not take us too seriously.
If we remove that kernel we remove the life-
principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it
pleases me to have you use that idea, for it is
a high compliment. But it leaves me nothing
to combat ; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not
a reply at all, M. Bourget ? If so, I must modi
fy that; it is too sweeping. For you have
furnished a general answer to my inquiry as

* When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I wrote
in a preface addressed to Jonathan : " If ever you should in
sist in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your coun
try and of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide
fame for humor will be exploded."

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 221

to what France — through you — can teach us.*
It is a good answer. It relates to manners,
customs, and morals — three things concern
ing which we can never have exhaustive and
determinate statistics, and so the verdicts de-

*" What could France teach America?" exclaims Mark
Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of
life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a
street of French working-men than in many avenues inhabited
by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps
how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making,
but that money-making is only a means to obtain an end.
She can teach her that wives are not expensive toys, but use
ful partners, friends, and confidants, who should always keep
men under their wholesome influence by their diplomacy,
their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness. These
qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not an
gular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to
Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life
outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain's ill-natured
sneer can not even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was
seen tipsy in his club would immediately see his name can
celled from membership. A man who had settled his fortune
on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would be refused
admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has
blown his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt.
Now would Mark Twain remark to this : " An American is
not such a fool : when a creditor stands in his way he closes
his doors, and reopens them the following day. When he
has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from business?"

222 HOW TO TELL A STORY

livered upon them must always lack conclu-
siveness and be subject to revision ; but you
have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as
any one could do it, in the circumstances. But
why did you choose a detail of my question
which could be answered only with vague
hearsay evidence, and go right by one which
could have been answered with deadly facts?
— facts in everybody's reach, facts which none
can dispute. I asked what France could teach
us about government. I laid myself pretty
wide open, there ; and I thought I was hand
somely generous, too, when I did it. France
can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer ap
proach, to perfect fairness than is the case in
any other land ; and she can teach us the wis
est and surest system of collecting them that
exists. She can teach us how to elect a Pres
ident in a sane way ; and also how to do it
without throwing the country into earthquakes
and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of
men, and make peaceful people wish the term
extended to thirty years. France can teach
us — but enough of that part of the question.
And what else can France teach us? She can
teach us all the fine arts — and does. She

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 223

throws open her hospitable art academies, and
says to us, " Come " — and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted ; and she sets
over us the ablest masters in the world and
bearing the greatest names ; and she teaches
us all that we are capable of learning, and per
suades us and encourages us with prizes and
honors, much as if we were somehow children
of her own ; and when this noble education is
finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over
our nation, and we come with homage and
gratitude and ask France for the bill — there is
nothing to pay. And in return for this impe
rial generosity, what does America do ? She
charges a duty on French works of art !

I wish I had your end of this dispute; I
should have something worth talking about.
If you would only furnish me something to
argue, something to refute — but you persist
ently won't. You leave good chances unutil
ized and spend your strength in proving and
establishing unimportant things. For instance,
you have proven and established these eight
facts here following — a good score as to num
ber, but not worth while :

Mark Twain is —

I. " Insulting."

224 H0W TO TELL A STORY

2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined
humorist."

3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.

4. Has uttered " an ill-natured sneer."

5. Is " nasty."

6. Needs a " lesson in politeness and good
manners."

7. Has published a " nasty article."

8. Has made remarks " unworthy of a gen
tleman."*

These are all true, but really they are not
valuable ; no one cares much for such finds.
In our American magazines we recognize this
and suppress them. We avoid naming them.
American writers never allow themselves to

* " It is more funny than his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote,
and would have been less insulting."

A quoted remark of mine " is a gross insult to a nation
friendly to America."

" He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."

' ' When Mark Twain visits a garden ... he goes in the
far-away corner where the soil is prepared."

" Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain
them " (the Frenchwomen).

"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is un
kind, unfair, bitter, nasty."

" But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.

"Mark might certainly have derived from it"(M. Bour-
get's book) " a lesson in politeness and good manners."

A quoted remark of mine is ' ' unworthy of a gentleman. "

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 225

name them. It would look as if they were in
a temper, and we hold that exhibitions of
temper in public are not good form — except
in the very young and inexperienced. And
even if we had the disposition to name them,
in order to fill up a gap when we were short
of ideas and arguments, our magazines would
not allow us to do it, because they think that
such words sully their pages. This present
magazine is particularly strenuous about it.
Its note to me announcing the forwarding of
your proof-sheets to France closed thus — for
your protection :

" It is needless to ask you to avoid any tiling
tJiat he might consider as personal."

It was well enough, as a measure of pre
caution, but really it was not needed. You
can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget ; I shall
never call you any names in print which I
should be ashamed to call you with your un
offending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in
America to a degree which you would con
sider exaggerated. For instance, we should
not write notes like that one of yours to a
lady for a small fault — or a large one.* We

* When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at
the expense of the Americans, "who can always get away
15

226 HOW TO TELL A STORY

should not think it kind. No matter how
much we might have associated with kings
and nobilities, we should not think it right
to crush her with it and make her ashamed

with a few years' trying to find out who their grandfathers
were," he merely makes an allusion to an American foible ;
but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain
is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards !
How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him
for thus speaking in their name !

Snobbery. ... I could give Mark Twain an example of
the American specimen. It is a piquant story. I never pub
lished it because I feared my readers might think that I
was giving them a typical illustration of American character
instead of a rare exception.

I was once booked by my manager to give a causcrie in
the drawing -room of a New York millionaire. I accepted
with reluctance. I do not like private engagements. At
five o'clock on the day the causene was to be given, the lady
sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to arrive
at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she
wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there.
Their minds are full of after-thoughts, and the most impor
tant part of their letters is generally to be found after their
signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I suppose he will
not expect to be entertained after the lecture."

I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, in
dulging myself in a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as
quick as a flash —

"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I
have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the
members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 22 7

of her lowlier walk in life ; for we have a say
ing, "Who humiliates my mother includes his
own."

Do I seriously imagine you to be the au
thor of that strange letter, M. Bourget? In
deed I do not. I believe it to have been
surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis
when your back was turned. I think he did it
with a good motive, expecting it to add force
and piquancy to your article, but it does not
reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
you when you see it. I also think he inter
larded many other things which you will dis
approve of when you see them. I am certain
that all the harsh names discharged at me

times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members
of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I
can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of
being entertained by royalty ; but my ambition has never
been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained
by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be
entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to en
tertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep
the engagement."

Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of
this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on
New York chronique scandaleuse, on the tenement houses
of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the
dens of San Francisco, and what not ! But not even your
nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.

228 HOW TO TELL A STORY

come from him, not you. No doubt you could
have proved me entitled to them with as lit
tle trouble as it has cost him to do it, but
it would have been your disposition to hunt
game of a higher quality.

Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish
me all that excellent information about Bal
zac and those others.* All this in simple jus
tice to you — and to me ; for, to gravely accept
those interlardings as yours would be to wrong
your head and heart, and at the same time

* " Now the style of M. Bourget and many other French
writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain ; but let
us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Vic
tor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan?
Has he read Gustave Droz's Monsieur, Madame, et Be'be1, and
those books which leave for a long time a perfume about
you ? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene
Sue, George Sand, and Balzac ? Has he read Victor Hugo's
Les Mise'rables and Notre Dame de Paris ? Has he read or
heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the
works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will
be household words all over the world for hundreds of years
to come ? He has read La Terre—ihis kind-hearted, refined
humorist ! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell
the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle ? No,
he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared.
Hear what he says: "I wish M. Paul Bourget had read
more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to
thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was com
ing to Paris I read La Terre"

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 229

convict myself of being equipped with a va
cancy where my penetration ought to be
lodged.

And now finally I must uncover the secret
pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew
— the anecdote which closed my recent article —
and consider how it is that this pimple has
spread to these cancerous dimensions. If any
but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget,
I would know that that anecdote was twisted
around and its intention magnified some hun
dreds of times, in order that it might be used
as a pretext to creep in the back way. But
I accuse you of nothing — nothing but error.
When you say that I " retort by calling France
a nation of bastards," it is an error. And not
a small one, but a large one. I made no such
remark, nor anything resembling it. More
over, the magazine would not have allowed
me to use so gross a word as that.

You told an anecdote. A funny one — I
admit that. It hit a foible of our American
aristocracy, and it stung me — I admit that ;
it stung me sharply. It was like this : You
found some ancient portraits of French kings
in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and
you said :

"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is

230 HOW TO TELL A STORY

the portrait of his grandfather ?" That is, the
American aristocrat's grandfather.

Now that hits only a few of us, I grant —
just the upper crust only — but it hits exceed
ingly hard.

I wondered if there was any way of getting
back at you. In one of your chapters I found
this chance :

" In our high Parisian existence, for in
stance, we find applied to arts and luxury,
and to debauchery, all the powers and all the
weaknesses of the French soul."

You see? Your " higher Parisian" class —
not everybody, not the nation, but only the
top crust of the nation — applies to debauchery
all the powers of its soul.

I argued to myself that that energy must
produce results. So I built an anecdote out
of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bona
parte say to me — but see for yourself the
anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed)
in paragraph eleven of your Reply.*

* So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like M. Paul Bour-
get's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great French
writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humor
ist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the
reason for taking a revenge ?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty.

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 231

Now then, your anecdote about the grand
fathers hurt me. Why? Because it had point.
It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had
point. You wouldn't have wasted space on it
if it hadn't had point.

My anecdote has hurt you. Why ? Be-

For example :

See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him :

" I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American,
because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in
his time, he can always get away with a few years trying to
find out who his grandfather was."

Hear the answer :

" I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull
time, too ; because when all other interests fail, he can turn
in and see if he can't find out who his father was ?"

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on
American snobbery. I may be utterly destitute of humor,
but I call the second remark a gratuitous charge of immoral
ity hurled at the French women — a remark unworthy of a man
who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, a gross
insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped
Mark Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation
where to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see
every door open wide to you.

If Mark Twain was hard up in search of a French " chest
nut," I might have told him the following little anecdote. It
is more funny than his, and would have been less insulting :
Two little street boys are abusing each other. " Ah, hold
your tongue," says one, " you ain't got no father."

"Ain't got no father !" replies the other ; " I've got more
fathers than you."

232 HOW TO TELL A STORY

cause it had point, I suppose. It wouldn't
have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged
from your remark about the diligence and
industry of the high Parisian upper crust that
it would have some point, but really I had no
idea what a gold-mine I had struck. I never
suspected that the point was going to stick into
the entire nation ; but of course you know your
nation better than I do, and if you think it punct
ures them all, I have to yield to your judgment.
But you are to blame, your own self. Your re
mark misled me. I supposed the industry was
confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.

Well, now that the unfortunate thing has
been done, let us do what we can to undo it.
There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am
willing to do anything that will help ; for I am
as sorry as you can be yourself.

I will tell you what I think will be the very
thing. We will swap anecdotes. I will take
your anecdote and you take mine. I will say
to the dukes and counts and princes of the
ancient nobility of France : " Ha, ha ! You
must have a pretty hard time trying to find
out who your grandfathers were?"

They will merely smile indifferently and
not feel hurt, because they can trace their
lineage back through centuries.

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 233

And you will hurl mine at every individual
in the American nation, saying :

" And you must have a pretty hard time
trying to find out who your fathers were."

They will merely smile indifferently, and not
feel hurt, because they haven't any difficulty
in finding their fathers.

Do you get the idea? The whole harm in
the anecdotes is in the point, you see ; and
when we swap them around that way, they
Jurct'tit any.

That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and
I am, Jlffad I thought of it. I am very glad
J,'M. Bourget ; for it was just that little
wee thing that caused the whole difficulty and
made you dictate the Reply, and your aman
uensis call me all those hard names which the
magazines dislike so. And I did it all in fun,
too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
another one — on the give-and-take principle,
you know — which is American. 7 didn't know
that with the French it was all give and no
take, and you didn't tell me. But now that I
have made everything comfortable again, and
fixod both anecdotes so they can never have
any point any more, I know you will forgive
me.

THE END

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