UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
v
Ut
A LIBRARY
OF
AMERICAN LITERATURE
Vol. X.
— ^ — -
-x XZ^
A LIBRARY OF
AMERICAN LITERATURE
FROM THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT
TO THE PRESENT TIME
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN AND
ELLEN MACKAY HUTCH INSON
IN ELEVEN VOLUMES
VOL. X.
NEW-YORK
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY
1892
COPYRIGHT, 1889,
3T CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY.
(All rights reserved.)
GiGG
PRESS OF
JENKINS & McCowAK,
NEW YORK.
so'4
CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.
literature of ti)e i&eputlic. $art ¥&.— OTontinuetr.
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. PAQE
Grizzly 3
In the Tunnel .4
The Outcasts of Poker Flat T 5
Plain Language from Truthful James 12
The Society upon the Stanislaus . 13
The Aged Stranger 14
Tennessee's Partner 14
Guild's Signal 21
At the Hacienda 21
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.
The Chevalier of the Lost Cause 22
STEPHEN HENRY THAYER.
The Waiting Chords 27
HENRY GEORGE.
Property in Land in the United States 26
FRANCIS AMASA WALKER.
The Best Holding of the Land 31
JOHN WHITE CHADWICK.
Recognition 34
His Mother's Joy 35
JOHN TORREY MORSE, JR.
A Picture of John Quincy Adams ..35
ROBERT KELLEY WEEKS.
A Song for Lexington 37
On the Shore 38
Anadyomene 38
JOHN CLARK RIDPATH. , .
Tenets of Liberty . 0 38
ROSSITER JOHNSON.
Laurence ....40
At the End of the War 41
vi CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.
LAURA REDDEN SHAKING.
Disarmed
WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON.
The Martyrdom of Lovejoy 44
" Peaceable Separation " Mooted by the Abolitionists of 1845 45
Post-Meridian .... 47
WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER.
Examination of a Cardinal Protectionist Theory 48
The " Loco-Focos " of 1835 51
AMELIA WALSTIEN CARPENTER.
In the Slant o' the Sun 53
HENRY WATTERSON.
The New South 54
EUGENE SCHUYLER.
The Czar as a Carpenter 5C
KATE FIELD.
Some Reminiscences of Landor 58
HENRY BERNARD CARPENTER.
Garfield 62
Stanzas from " Fryeburg " 63
HENRY MORELAND STANLEY.
A Meeting in the Heart of Africa 63
MARY AINGE DE VERB.
A Farewell 68
A Quiet House 69
God Keep You 69
GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS.
The Come'die Humaine 70
Business 71
JAMES HERBERT MORSE.
Loss 74
GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
Old "Beau" and "Crutch, the Page" 75
In Rama 79
ClNCINNATUS HlNER MlLLER.
From " Arizonian " 80
Written in Athens 81
Kit Carson's Ride 82
Mount Shasta 85
DENTON JAQUES SNIDER.
At the House of Pindar . 85
KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
Driving Home the Cows
Latent
MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE.
Zola .
CONTENTS OF VOLUME X. v[i
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. PAGE
The Lover's Song , 96
Opportunity 96
The Fool's Prayer 97
Eve's Daughter 98
GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.
Gladstone Speaking • 98
NORA PERRY.
Some Day of Days 101
The Love-Knot 101
Riding Down 103
The Coming of the Spring 103
TITUS MUNSON COAN.
On Being Born Away from Home 104
The Watch-Fire 107
WILLIAM GORDON McCABE.
Dreaming in the Trenches 108
Christmas Night of '62 109
CHARLES EDWARD CARRYL.
Robinson Crusoe 109
MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE.
Spiritualism Ill
The Shadow 114
SUSAN DABNEY SMEDES.
Thomas Dabney, a Planter of the Old Time 114
ANNIE DOUGLAS ROBINSON.
Two Pictures 120
Pussywillow 120
BRONSON HOWARD.
The Laws of Dramatic Construction 121
THOMAS STEPHENS COLLIER.
Sacrilege J 128
CHARLES MONROE DICKINSON.
The Children 129
ELLEN WARNER OLNEY KIRK.
His Wife's Relations ; 130
MARY ANNA PHINNEY STANSBURY.
How He Saved St. Michael's 137
HENRY ABBEY.
May in Kingston 139
Winter Days 140
JOHN FISKE.
Immortality the Logical Outcome of Evolution 14C
SIDNEY LANIER.
The Marshes of Glynn 145
Song of the Chattahoochee 147
The Mocking Bird 148
The Revenge of Hamish 148
Night and Day 151
x CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.
MARGRET HOLMES BATES. PAGE
A Hoosier Rascal .............. ^
CLIFFORD LANIER.
Time, Tireless Tramp
ELIZABETH BACON OUSTER.
A Dakota Blizzard
Custer and his Hounds
MARGARET THOMSON JANVIER.
The Dead Doll
GEORGE HATEN PUTNAM.
International Copyright ............. 304
THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY.
Monev and the Snob ............ •> 308
WILL CARLETON.
Betsey and I are Out ,311
MARIA LOUISE POOL.
The Last Straw .... 313
GERTRUDE BLOEDE.
My Father's Child 316
LUCRETIA GRAY NOBLE.
A Roaring Ledge . . . 317
In the Battle 319
THE AUTHOR OP "DEMOCRACY."
Breaking in a President . . . . * 320
THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY."
A Country Breakfast in England 325
Patrician Amenities 326
JOHN HENRY BONER.
Poe's Cottage at Fordham ...... 331
We Walked among the Whispering Pines . 331
The Light'ood Fire 332
Midsummer Night 332
GEORGE KENNAN.
A Visit to Count Tolstoi 333
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
Friendship after Love 336
Solitude .336
Will 337
GEORGE THOMAS LANIGAN.
Latter-Day Fables 337
A Threnody .... 339
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE.
The Spiritual Element in Modern Literature „ 340
APPLETON MORGAN.
Shylock's Appeal 343
CONTENTS OF VOLUME X. xj
JULIAN HAWTHORNE. PAGE
The Metamorphosis of Archibald Malmaison 347
INA D. COOLBRITH.
When the Grass shall Cover Me .... 356
A Perfect Day 357
ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND.
Altruistic Faith 357
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN ROHLFS.
The Storm in the Wood * .... 360
At the Piano 363
ALICE WILLIAMS BROTHERTON.
The Ragged Regiment 365
WILLIAM YOUNG.
Scenes from " Pendragon ". 365
The Flower Seller 370
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY.
In the Chamber of Charlemagne 371
HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS.
Bumble-Bee e 379
HughLatimer 379
The Singer of One Song .380
WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP.
A Little Dinner . 380
BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD.
At the Pardon 392
The Dowager Countess of Kronfels 396
EDGAR FAWCETT.
To an Oriole 405
The Meeting 405
The Sphinx of Ice 405
The Gentleman who Lived too Long 406
The Old Beau 412
The Dying Archangel 412
A Dead Butterfly 414
MARY HALLOCK FOOTE.
Home-Life in Mexico 415
JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE.
Andromeda 420
TheV-a-s-e 421
JOSIAH STRONG.
Facts and Thoughts Concerning Immigration . 421
WALTER LEARNED.
At the Golden Gate 424
On the Fly- Leaf of a Book of Old Plays .424
In Explanation 425
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.
The Lady of Little Fishing ... 425
xjj CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.
EDWARD KING. PAGE
A Woman's Execution 439
O Birds that Flit by Ocean's Rim 439
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story 440
A Revival Hymn 441
Free Joe and the Rest of the World 442
GEORGE WILLIS COOKE.
The Poet's Art 451
JOHN VANCE CHENEY.
And Who is She? 453
Evensong . 454
Dirge 454
Hilda 454
A Saint of Yore 455
HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN.
A Norse Radical - 455
Hilda's Little Hood 464
WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR.
The Last Supper of the Borgias 465
FREDERICK WADSWORTH LORING.
In the Old Churchyard at Fredericksburg 472
FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR.
After the Mountain Wedding 473
CHARLES DE KAY.
Ulf in Ireland 480
Little People 481
Then shall I Triumph 481
The Vision of Nimrod 482
RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER.
The Nature and Origin of Copyright 484
ELLA DIETZ CLYMER.
Song 487
When I am Dead
GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS.
The Negro Soldiers at Port Hudson ' 488
Educating the Negro 491
EMMA LAZARUS.
Venus of the Louvre 493
The Cranes of Ibycus 493
The Crowing of the Red Cock 493
The Dance to Death ' 494
The Banner of the Jew 498
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
Mr. Rogers's " Onjestice." 498
O. C. AURINGER.
The Flight of the War-Eagle 510
SAKAH ORNE JEWETT.
Miss Tempy's Watchers 510
A Child's Grave , 518
CONTENTS OF VOLUME X. xj[j
PHILIP HENRY WELCH. PAGE
Social Phonograms ; . 518
GEORGE AUGUSTUS BAKER.
Love's Young Dream . 522
KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER McDowELL.
Aunt Beckey "Kunjured" 523
THOMAS CHALMERS HARBAUGH.
Grant— Dying 528
THOMAS RUSSELL SULLIVAN.
"Sans Vie, Sans Amour" 529
FRANCIS SALTUS SALTUS.
Graves 533
Anank^ 534
THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER.
San Antonio of the Gardens 534
MARY NEWMARCH PRESCOTT.
The Old Story 544
Song 544
Asleep 544
HENRY FRANCIS KEENAN.
The Sacrifice of La Roquette 545
VIRGINIA WALES JOHNSON.
At Venice . , 549
ROBERT BURNS WILSON.
The Death of Winter
LAFCADIO HEARN.
The Legend of L'fle Derniere . . ... . 554
GEORGE WASHINGTON WRIGHT HOUGHTON.
The Witch of York 562
HENRY CABOT LODGE.
The Real George Washington 564
LUCY WHITE JENNISON.
A Simile 571
A Dream of Death 572
Chaucer 572
ARLO BATES.
A Bride's Inheritance 573
The Danza 576
A Shadow Boat 576
A Lament 577
A Browning Club in Boston 577
Our Dead 581
ANNA BOWMAN DODD.
A Plantation Rosalind 582
EDWARD BELLAMY.
A Dream within a Dream 586
xjy CONTENTS OF VOLUME X
CLARENCE CLOUGH BUEL.
The Guardian of our Dumb Friends
On the Trapping of a Mouse that Lived in a Lady's Escritoire
WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON.
Where Sleeps Titania
ALICE FRENCH.
The Bishop's Vagabond
EDGAR WILSON NYE.
The Pass Came too Late
EUGENE FIELD.
Dutch Lullaby 613
Casey's Table D'Hote 614
The Bibliomaniac's Prayer 616
The Old Man 616
A Fairy Glee 618
portraits in tins
ON STEEL.
FRANCIS BRET HARTE FRONTISPIECE.
SIDNEY LANIER . . . . ' . ... . . . Page 150
MISCELLANEOUS.
ClNCINNATUS HlNER MlLLER 80
BRON^*< 'HOWARD 122
JOHN FISKE . ... . 140
HENRY JAMES, JR 190
RICHARD WATSON GILDER .......... 252
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE . 270
JULIAN HAWTHORNE 348
BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD 392
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON ......... 426
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS . . . . . . . . . . 446
EMMA LAZARUS ............ 492
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT .......... 504
SARAH ORNE JEWETT ........... 514
THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER .......... 536
LITERATUKE
OF THE REPUBLIC
PAET IV— CONTINUED
1861-1888
A HUNDRED years ago the English-speaking population of America amounted to 3,000,000 ;
it now amounts to 60,000,000, and we are told, with every appearance of probability, that in
another hundred years it will amount to 600,000,000. Under these circumstances, I wish to
recognize the right of America to be considered as being, prospectively at least and even now
to .1 certain extent— for we have not in our small islands yet quite touched 40,000,000 — I wish
to recognize the prospective and approaching right of America to be the great organ of the
powerful English tongue.
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. A.D. 1889.
A novel country : I might make it mine
By choosing which one aspect of the year
Suited mood best, and putting solely that
On panel somewhere in the House of Fame,
Landscaping what I saved, not what I saw:
Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both,
The land dwarfed to one likeness of the land,
Life cramped corpse-fashion. Better learn and love
Each facet-flash of the revolving year !— •
Red, green and blue that whirl into a white,
The variance now, the eventual unity.
See it for yourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING. A.D. 1869.
Where there is no centre like an academy, if you have genius and powerful ideas, you are
apt not to have the best style going ; if you have precision of style and not genius, you are apt
not to have the best ideas going.
MATTHEW ARNOLD. A.D. 1854.
We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works
to what has been done before, as by their difference from it. ...
The more powerful the intellect, the less will its works resemble those of other men,
whether predecessors or contemporaries.
JOHN RUSKIN. A.D. 18—.
LITEKATUKE
OF THE REPUBLIC.
PART IV.— CONTINUED.
1861-1888.
francig 'Bret
BORN in Albany, N. Y., 1839.
GRIZZLY.
[Poetical Works. 1870-74.— Works. Riverside Edition. 1883-87,]
COWARD,— of heroic size,
In whose lazy muscles lies
Strength we fear and yet despise;
Savage, — whose relentless tusks
Are content with acorn husks ;
Robber, — whose exploits ne'er soared
O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard ;
Whiskered chin, and feeble nose,
Claws of steel on baby toes, —
Here, in solitude and shade,
Shambling, shuffling, plantigrade,
Be thy courses undismayed !
Here, where Nature makes thy bed,
Let thy rude, half-human tread
Point to hidden Indian springs,
Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses,
Hovered o'er by timid wings,
Where the wood-duck lightly passes,
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. [1861-88
Where the wild bee holds her sweets, —
Epicurean retreats,
Fit for thee, aud better than
Fearful spoils of dangerous man.
In thy fat-jowled deviltry
Friar Tuck shall live in thee ;
Thou mayest levy tithe and dole ;
Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer,
From the pilgrim taking toll ;
Match thy cunning with his fear;
Eat, and drink, and have thy fill;
Yet remain an outlaw still !
IN THE TUNNEL.
DIDN'T know Flynn, — I heard him call:
Flynn of Virginia, "Run for your life, Jake!
Long as he's been 'yar ? Run for your wife's sake 1
Look 'ee here, stranger, Don't wait for me."
Whar hev you been ? And that was all
Heard in the din,
Here in this tunnel Heard of Tom Flynn, —
He was my pardner, Flynn of Virginia.
That same Tom Flynn, —
Working together, That's all about
In wind and weather, Flynn of Virginia.
Day out and in. That lets me out.
Didn't know Flynn! Here in the damp, —
Well, that is queer; Out of the sun, —
Why, it's a sin That 'ar derned lamp
To think of Tom Flynn, — Makes my eyes run.
Tom with his cheer, Well, there,— I'm done!
Tom without fear, —
Stranger, look 'yar ! But, sir, when you'll
Hear the next fool
Thar in the drift, Asking of Flynn, —
Back to the wall, Flynn of Virginia,—
He held the timbers Just you chip in,
Ready to fall; Say you knew Flynn ;
Then in the darkness Say that you've been 'yar.
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HAUTE.
THE OUTCASTS OP POKER FLAT.
[The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches. 1871.— Works. Riverside Edition.
1882-87.]
AS Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker
Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was
conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.
Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached,
and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air,
which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst' s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indi-
cations. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was another
question. " I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected ; "likely it's
me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been
whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly
discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Peker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suf-
fered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a promi-
nent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as
lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret
committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This
was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from
the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment
of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these
were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impro-
priety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards
of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this cate-
gory. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible exam-
ple, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the
sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, " to let
this yer young man from Roaring Camp — an entire stranger — carry away
our money. " But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those
who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this
narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the
less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too
much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncer-
tain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat
to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known
to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort
was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly
known as " The Duchess " ; another, who had won the title of " Mother
Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed
drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor
g FRANCIS BRET HARTE. [1861-88
was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked
the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and
to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hys-
terical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and
a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst
alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut
somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she
would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped
out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-humor charac-
teristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, "Five
Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not
draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her
somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry ; Mother Shipton
eyed the possessor of " Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy in-
cluded the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar — a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some in-
vitation to the emigrants — lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant
a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of
the moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing air
of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess,
rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no
farther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre,
surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gen-
tly toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was,
undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a canip, had camping been advisable.
But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was ac-
complished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This
fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commen-
tary on the folly of " throwing up their hand before the game was played
out." But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood
them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remon-
strances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence.
Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the
Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone
remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which re-
quired coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own lan-
guage, he " couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent fellow-exiles,
the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits of life, his very vices,
for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting
his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic
of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The
thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps
occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 7
which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for
which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand
feet sheer above the circling pines around him ; at the sky, ominously cloud-
ed ; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so,
suddenly he heard his own name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the new-
comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as "The In-
nocent " of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a " little
game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune — amount-
ing to some forty dollars — of that guileless youth. After the game was fin-
ished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus
addressed him : " Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble
worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money
back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom
Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting
of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his
fortune. " Alone ? " No, not exactly alone ; in fact (a giggle), he had run
away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney ? She that
used to wait on the table at the Temperance House ? They had been en-
gaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run
away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And
they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout,
comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-tree, where she had
been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with pro-
priety ; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate. He re-
tained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who
was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognize in
Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He then
endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He
even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of making
a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by assuring the
party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by
the discovery of a rude attempt at a log-house near the trail. " Piney can
stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and
I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the
canon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the
tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the
usual profanity. But when he returned to the party he found them seated
by a fire — for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast — in ap-
parently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and anima-
tion she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth,
8 FRANCIS BRET HARTE. [1861-88
apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was
actually relaxing into amiability. " Is this yer a d — d picnic ? " said Uncle
Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing fire-
light, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea min-
gled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently
of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist
into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the
tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, was set apart for
the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so hon-
est and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The
frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned
to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word
to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and
in a few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed
and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it, — snow !
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for
there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying,
he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips.
He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered ; they were no longer
there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his
usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peace-
fully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face ; the virgin Piney
slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by celestial guar-
dians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his
mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of
snow-flakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of the
landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the valley, and
summed up the present and future in two words, — "snowed in \"
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,
had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious fingers of Uncle
Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might last ten days
longer. " That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, " if you're
willing to board us. If you ain't — and perhaps you'd better not— you can
wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason,
Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and
so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had acci-
dentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and
Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.
" They'll find out the truth about us all when they find out anything," he
added, significantly, " and there's no good frightening them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr. Oak-
hurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion. " We'll
1861-88] FBANCIS BRET HAUTE. Q
have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll all go back
together." The cheerful gayety of the young man and Mr. Oakhurst's calm
infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid of pine-boughs, extempo-
rized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes
of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. " I reckon now you're used
to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply
to conceal something that reddened her cheek through its professional tint,
and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to " chatter. " But when Mr. Oak-
hurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy
laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts
first naturally reverted to the whiskey, which he had prudently cached. ' ' And
yet it don't somehow sound like whiskey," said the gambler. It was not until
he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding storm and the
group around it that he settled to the conviction that it was "square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whiskey as something
debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain
that, in Mother Shipton's words, he " didn't say cards once " during that
evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat
ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some diffi-
culties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods man-
aged to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment
by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowniug festivity of
the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers,
joining hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a
certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any
devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined
in the refrain : —
" I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in his army."
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable group,
and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the stars
glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional
habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount of sleep, in
dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed to take upon him-
self the greater part of that duty. He excused himself to the Innocent by
saying tEat he had " often been a week without sleep." " Doing what ? "
asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously ; "when a man
gets a streak of luck, — nigger-luck, — he don't get tired. The luck gives in
first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, " is a mighty queer thing.
All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's find-
ing out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of
bad luck since we left Poker Flat, — you come along, and slap you get into
it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all right. For/' added
the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance, —
^0 FRANCIS BRET EARTE. [1861-88
" ' I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I'm bound to die in his army.' "
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of provisions for
the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate
that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in
regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow
piled high around the hut,— a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white
lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through
the marvellously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat
rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her
rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last
vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a cer-
tain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duch-
ess. ' ' Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to the
task of amusing " the child/' as she and the Duchess were pleased to call
Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of
the pair thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't im-
proper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the ac-
cordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering
camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insuffi-
cient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney, — story-telling.
Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their per-
sonal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent.
Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's in-
genious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal
incidents of that poem — having thoroughly mastered the argument and
fairly forgotten the words — in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so
for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth.
Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in
the cafton seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst
listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate
of "Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-
footed Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
over tho heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from
leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer
around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their
prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty feet above
their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even
from the fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in the drifts. And yet no
one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked
into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly
to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had
been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton — once the strongest
of the party — seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HAUTE. H
called Oakhnrst to her side. " I'm going/' she said, in a voice of querulous
weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take
the bundle from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It con-
tained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. " Give 'em to
the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. " You've starved your-
self," said the gambler. " That's what they call it/' said the woman, queru-
lously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face to the Avail, passed quietly
away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was for-
gotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the snow,
Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snow-shoes,
which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. " There's one chance in
a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney ; " but it's there," he
added, pointing toward Poker Flat. " If you can reach there in two days
she's safe." "And you ? " asked Tom Simson. " I'll stay here," was the curt
reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. " You are not going, too ? " said
the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him.
"As far as the canon," he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the
Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling limbs rigid with
amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one had
quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The tears
rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke ; but Piney, accepting the position
of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess's waist.
They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm reached
its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very
hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours : " Piney, can you
pray ? " " No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piuey's shoulder,
spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head
of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled
about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down
upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly
travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed
the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal
peace that dwelt upon them which was dia that had singed Even the law
12
FRANCIS BRET HAUTE, [1861-88
of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in
each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore
the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand :
t
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHTJRST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
\
And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his
heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES.
TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870.
TTTHICH I wish to remark, — Which we had a small game,
* » And my language is plain, — And Ah Sin took a hand:
That for ways that are dark, It was Euchre. The same
And for tricks that are vain, He did not understand ;
The heathen Chinee is peculiar. But he smiled as he sat by the table,
Which the same I would rise to ex- With the smile that was childlike and
plain. bland.
Ah Sin was his name ; Yet the cards they were stocked
And I shall not deny In a way that I grieve,
In regard to the same And my feelings were shocked
What that name might imply, At the state of Nye's sleeve :
But his smile it was pensive and child- Which was stuffed full of aces and bow-
like, ers,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye. And the same with intent to deceive.
It was August the third ; But the hands that were played
And quite soft was the skies ; By that heathen Cliiuee,
Which it might be inferred And the points that he made,
That Ah Sin was likewise; Were quite frightful to see,—
Yet he played it that day upon Wil- Till *t last he put down a right bower,
liam Which the same Nye had dealt unto
And me in a way I despise. me.
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HARTE. \§
Then I looked up at Nye, In his sleeves, -which were long,
Arid he gazed upon ine ; He had twenty-four packs, —
And he rose with a sigh, "Which was coming it strong,
And said, " Can this be ? Yet I state but the facts;
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor, " — And we found on his nails, which were
And he went for that heathen Chinee. taper,
What is frequent in tapers, — that's
In the scene that ensued wax.
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed Which is why I remark,
Like the leaves on the strand And my language is plain,
With the cards that Ah Sin had been That for ways that are dark,
hiding, And for tricks that are vain,
In the game "he did not under- The heathen Chinee is peculiar, —
stand. " Which the same I am free to maintain.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS.
T RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
-L I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to ' ' put a head " on him.
Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare:
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mule*.
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault.
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault:
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And en several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass, — at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order — when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
14
FRANCIS BRET HAUTE. [1861-88
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, ^
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stauislow.
THE AGED STRANGER.
AX INCIDENT OF THE WAR.
" T WAS with Grant "—the stranger
-L said;
Said the farmer, " Say no more,
But rest thee here at my cottage porch,
For thy feet are weary and sore."
"I was with Grant" — the stranger said;
Said the farmer, "Nay, no more, —
I prithee sit at my frugal board,
And eat of my humble store.
' ' How fares my boy, — my soldier boy,
Of the old Ninth Army Corps ?
I warrant he bore him gallantly
In the smoke and the battle's roar ! "
"I know him not," said the aged man,
"And, as I remarked before,
I was witli Grant" — "Nay, nay, I know,"
Said the farmer, " say no more:
"He fell in battle, — I see, alas!
Thou'dst smooth these tidings o'er, —
Nay : speak the truth, whatever it be,
Though it rend my bosom's core.
" How fell he, — with his face to the foe,
Upholding the flag he bore ?
Oh say not that my boy disgraced
The uniform that he wore! "
"I cannot tell," said the aged man,
"And should have remarked, before,
That I was with Grant, — in Illinois, —
Some three years before the war."
Then the farmer spake him never a word,
But beat with his fist full sore
That aged man, who had worked for
Grant
Some three years before the war.
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
I DO not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in
1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were
derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree
Jack" ; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in " Saleratus Bill,"
so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread ;
or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in ' ' The Iron Pirate," a mild,
inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispro-
nunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been the
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HAUTE. ^5
beginning of a rude heraldry ; but I am constrained to think that it was be-
cause a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported
statement. " Call yourself Clifford, do you ? " said Boston, addressing a
timid new-comer with infinite scorn ; " hell is full of such Cliffords ! " He
then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened to be really
Clifford, as " Jay-bird Charley," — an unhallowed inspiration of the moment
that clung to him ever after.
But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other
than this relative title ; that he had ever existed as a separate and distinct in-
dividuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat
to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got any far-
ther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young person who
waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals. One morning he
said something to her which caused her to smile not unkindly, to somewhat
coquettishly break a plate of toast over his upturned, serious, simple face,
and to retreat to the kitchen. He followed her, and emerged a few moments
later, covered with more toast and victory. That day week they were married
by a Justice of the Peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that
something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it
was current at Sandy Bar — in the gulches and bar-rooms — where all senti-
ment was modified by a strong sense of humor.
Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason that
Tennessee, then living with his partner, one day took occasion to say some-
thing to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she smiled not un-
kindly and chastely retreated, — this time as far as Marysville, where Tennes-
see followed her, and where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a
Justice of the Peace. Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply
and seriously, as was his fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennes-
see one day returned from Marysville without his partner's wife, — she hav-
ing smiled and retreated with somebody else, — Tennessee's Partner was the
first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had
gathered in the canon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their
indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Ten-
nessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In
fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical detail which
was unpleasant in a difficulty.
Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the
Bar. He was known to be a gambler ; he was suspected to be a thief. In
these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised ; his con-
tinued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only
be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last
Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his
way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled
the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically conclud-
ed the interview in the following words : " And now, young man, I'll trouble
you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see your weppinga
might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation to the
16
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. [1861-88
evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San Francisco. I shall
endeavor to call." It may be stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of
humor, which no business preoccupation could wholly subdue.
This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he
made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd
before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canon ; but at its farther ex-
tremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men looked at
each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and
independent, and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth cen-
tury would have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply " reck-
less.''" " What have you got there ?— I call," said Tennessee, quietly. " Two
bowers and an ace/* said the stranger, as quietly, showing two revolvers
and a bowie-knife. " That takes me," returned Tennessee ; and with this
gamblers' epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode back with his
captor.
It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that even-
ing withheld from Sandy Bar. The little cation was stifling with heated res-
inous odors, and the decaying drift-wood on the Bar sent forth faint, sicken-
ing exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce passions, still filled
the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no
answering reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the
pines the windows of the old loft above the express office stood out staringly
bright, and through their curtainless panes the loungers below could see the
forms of those who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And
above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and pas-
sionless, crowned with remoter passionless stars.
The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a
judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The law
of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and person-
al feeling of the chase were over ; with Tennessee safe in their hands they
were ready to listen patiently to any defence, which they were already satis-
fied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their own minds, they were
willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist. Secure in
the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged, on general principles, they in-
dulged him with more latitude of defence than his reckless hardihood seemed
to ask. The Judge appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who,
otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility
he had created. " I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his inva-
riable but good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge — who was also
his captor — for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot him " on
sight," that morning, but presently dismissed this human weakness as un-
worthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door,
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 17
and it was said that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner,
he was admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members
of the jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful,
hailed him as a relief.
For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a
square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
" jumper/' and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect un-
der any circumstances would, have been quaint, and was now even ridicu-
lous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpet-bag he was carry-
ing, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and inscriptions,
that the material with which his trousers had been patched had been origi-
nally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great
gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each person in the room with
labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face on a red bandanna
handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand
upon the table to steady himself, and thus addressed the Judge :
" I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, " and I thought I'd just
step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar, — my pardner.
It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the Bar."
He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological
recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket-handkerchief, and for some
moments mopped his face diligently.
" Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner ? " said the Judge,
finally.
" Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. ' ' I come yar as
Tennessee's pardner, — knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet and
.dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but thar ain't
Wany p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I
don't know. And you sez to me, sez you, — confidential-like, and between
man and man, — sez you, ' Do you know anything in his behalf ? ' and I sez
to you, sez I, — confidential-like, as between man and man, — ' What should
a man know of his pardner ? ' "
" Is this all you have to say ? " asked the Judge, impatiently, feeling, per-
haps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize the
Court.
" Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't for me to say any-
thing agin' him. And now, what's the case ? Here's Tennessee wants mon-
ey, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner. Well, what does
Tennessee do ? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that stranger. And
you lays for him, and you fetches him; and the honors is easy. And I put it
to you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you, gentlemen, all, as far-minded
men, ef this isn't so."
" Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions to ask
this man ? "
"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. "I play this yer
hand alone. To come down to the bed-rock, it's just this : Tennessee,
thar, has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this
|g FRANCIS BRET HARTE [1861-88
yer camp. And now, what's the fair thing ? Some would say more ; some
would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a watch,
— it's about all my pile, — and call it square !" And before a hand could be
raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the carpet-bag upon
the table.
For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their
feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to " throw
him from the window " was only overridden by a gesture from the Judge.
Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement, Tennes-
see's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with his hand-
kerchief.
When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the
use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offence could not be con-
doned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those
who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled slightly on the
table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the gold to the carpet-
bag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which
swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had not of-
fered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and saying " This yer is a lone
hand, played alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the jury and was
about to withdraw, when the Judge called him back. " If you have anything
to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now. " For the first time that even-
ing the eyes of the prisoner and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled,
showed his white teeth, and saying " Euchred, old man ! " held out his
hand. Tennessee's Partner took it in his own, and saying " I just dropped
in as I was passin'to see how things was gettin'on,"let the hand passively
fall, and adding that "it was a warm night," again mopped his face with
his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.
The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled in-
sult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch — who, whether bigoted, weak, or nar-
row, was at least incorruptible — firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical
personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate ; and at the break
of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.
How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how per-
fect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported, with the
addition of a warning moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the Eed
Dog Clarion, by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English
I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that midsummer morning,
the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, .the awakened life of the free
woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all,
the infinite serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported, as not be-
ing a part of the social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was
done, and a life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of
the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the
flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before ; and possibly the Eed
Dog Clarion was right.
Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous
1861-88] FRANCIS BRET HAUTE. ig
tree. But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular ap-
pearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they
approached, they at once recognized the venerable "Jenny "and the two-
wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner,— used by him in carry-
ing dirt from his claim ; and a few paces distant the owner of the equipage
himself, sitting under a buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration from his glow-
ing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of the
" diseased/' " if it was all the same to the committee/' He didn't wish to
"hurry anything " ; he could " wait." He was not working that day ; and
when the gentlemen were done with the "diseased," he would take him.
" Ef thar is any present," he added, in his simple, serious way, " as would
care to jine in the fun'l, they kin come." Perhaps it was from a sense of
humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar, — per-
haps it Avas from something even better than that ; but two thirds of the
loungers accepted the invitation at once.
It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of his
partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a
rough, oblong box, apparently made from a section of sluicing, and half
filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was further decorated with
slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye-blossoms. When the body
was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew over it apiece of tarred
canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with his feet upon
the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. The equipage moved slowly on,
at that decorous pace which was habitual with "Jenny " even under less sol-
emn circumstances. The men — half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-
humoredly — strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, some a little in
the rear of the homely catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the
road or some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company
fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external
show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a
funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from a
lack of sympathy and appreciation — not having, perhaps, your true humor-
ist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.
The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this time clothed in funereal
drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasoned feet in the
red soil, stood in Indian-file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction
from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into
helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside, as
the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from high-
er boughs ; and the blue-jays, spreading their wings, fluttered before them
like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary
cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines, the
unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the California min-
er, were all here, with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few paces from
the cabin there was a rough enclosure, which, in the brief days of Tennes-
20
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. [1861-88
see's Partner's matrimonial felicity, had been used as a garden, but was now
overgrown with fern. As we approached it we were surprised to find that
what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil
about an open grave.
The cart was halted before the enclosure ; and rejecting the offers of assist-
ance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout,
Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and deposited it,
unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board which
served as a lid ; and mounting the little mound of earth beside it, took off
his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his handkerchief. This the crowd
felt was a preliminary to speech ; and they disposed themselves variously on
stumps and bowlders, and sat expectant.
" When a man," began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, " has been running
free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do ? Why, to come home.
And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do ? Why,
bring him home ! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we
brings him home from his wandering." He paused, and picked up a frag-
ment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on : "It ain't
the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't
the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help
himself ; it ain't the first time that I and ' Jinny ' have waited for him on yon
hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he couldn't speak,
and didn't know me. And now that it's the last time, why — " he paused,
and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve — "you see it's sort of rough on
his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he added, abruptly, picking up his
long-handled shovel, "the fun'Fs over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's
thanks, to you for your trouble."
Kesisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave, turning
his back upon the crowd, that after a few moments' hesitation gradually
withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar from view,
some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's Partner, his work
done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face bur-
ied in his red bandanna handkerchief. But it was argued by others that you
couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that distance ; and this point
remained undecided.
In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day, Tennes-
see's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared him of
any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general
sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and proffering various un-
couth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude health and
great strength seemed visibly to decline ; and when the rainy season fairly
set in, and the tiny grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky
mound above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed.
One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in the storm, and
trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swol-
len river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from the
1861-88]
FRANCIS BRUT HARTE.
21
pillow, saying, " It is time to go for Tennessee ; I must put ' Jinny ' in the
cart " ; and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint of his attend-
ant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular fancy : " There, now, steady,
'Jinny/ — steady, old girl. How dark it is ! Look out for the ruts, — and
look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind drunk,
he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the
top of the hill. Thar — I told you so ! — thar he is, — coming this way, too, —
all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee ! Pardner ! "
And so they met.
GUILD'S SIGNAL.
rr^WO low whistles, quaint and clear,
J- That was the signal the engineer —
That was the signal that Guild, 'tis
said —
Gave to his wife at Providence,
As through the sleeping town, and thence
Out in the night,
On to the light,
Down past the farms, lying white, he
sped !
As a husband's greeting, scant, no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,
"Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love-song, or midnight roundelay
Said what that whistle seemed to say :
" To my trust true,
So love to you !
Working or waiting, good night!" it
said.
Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters along the line,
Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,
Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,
Pierced through the shadows of Provi-
dence,—
"Nothing amiss —
Nothing ! — it is
Only Guild calling his wife," they said.
Summer and Winter, the old refrain
Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain,
Pierced through the budding boughs
o'erhead,
Flew down the track when the red leaves
burned
Like living coals from the engine spurned ;
Sang as it flew :
"To our trust true,
First of all, duty! Good night!" it
said.
And then, one night, it was heard no more
From Stonington over Rhode Island
shore,
And the folk in Providenoe smiled and
said,
As they turned in their beds, "The en-
gineer
Has once forgotten his midnight cheer."
One only knew,
To his trust true,
Guild lay under his engine, dead.
AT THE HACIENDA.
KNOW I not whom thou mayst be
Carved upon this olive-tree, —
"Manuela of La Torre,"
For, around on broken walls
GEORGE CART EGGLESTON. [1861-88
Summer sun and Spring rain falls,
And in vain the low wind calls
"Manuela of La Torre."
Of that song no words remain
But the musical refrain:
"Manuela of La Torre."
Yet at night, when winds are still,
Tinkles on the distant hill
A guitar, and words that thrill
Tell to me the old, old story,—
Old when first thy charms were sung,
Old when these old walls were young,
"Manuela of La Torre."
Carv
BORN in Vevay, Ind., 1839.
THE CHEVALIER OP THE LOST CAUSE.
[A Rebel's Recollections. 1875.]
IN the great dining-hall of the Briars, an old-time mansion in the Shen-
andoah Valley, the residence of Mr. John Esten Cooke, there hangs a
portrait of a broad-shouldered cavalier, and beneath is written, in the hand
of the cavalier himself,
" Yours to count on,
J. E. B. STUART,"
an autograph sentiment which seems to me a very perfect one in its way.
There was no point in Stuart's character more strongly marked than the one
here hinted at. He was " yours to count on " always : your friend if possible,
your enemy if you would have it so, but your friend or your enemy " to count
on," in any case. A franker, more transparent nature, it is impossible to
conceive. "What he was he professed to be. That which he thought, he
said, and his habit of thinking as much good as he could of those about him
served to make his frankness of speech a great friend- winner.
I saw him for the first time when he was a colonel, in command of the lit-
tle squadron of horsemen known as the first regiment of Virginia cavalry.
The company to which I belonged was assigned to this regiment immediately
after the evacuation of Harper's Ferry by the Confederates. General John-
ston's army was at Winchester, and the Federal force under General Patter-
son lay around Martinsburg. Stuart, with his three or four hundred men,
was encamped at Bunker Hill, about midway between the two, and thirteen
miles from support of any kind. He had chosen this position as a conven-
1861-88] GEORGE CART EGGLESTON. 23
lent one from which to observe the movements of the enemy, and the tireless
activity which marked his subsequent career so strongly had already begun.
As he afterwards explained, it was his purpose to train and school his men,
quite as much as anything else, that prompted the greater part of his madcap
expeditions at this time, and if there be virtue in practice as a means of per-
fection, he was certainly an excellent school-master.
My company arrived at the camp about noon, after a march of three or
four days, having travelled twenty miles that morning. Stuart, whom we
encountered as we entered the camp, assigned us our position, and ordered
our tents pitched. Our captain, who was even worse disciplined than we
were, seeing a much more comfortable camping-place than the muddy one
assigned to us, and being a comfort-loving gentleman, proceeded to lay out
a model camp at a distance of fifty yards from the spot indicated. It was
not long before the colonel particularly wished to consult with that captain,
and after the consultation the volunteer officer was firmly convinced that
all West Point graduates were martinets, with no knowledge whatever of the
courtesies due from one gentleman to another.
We were weary after our long journey, and disposed to welcome the pros-
pect of rest which our arrival in the camp held out. But resting, as we soon
learned, had small place in our colonel's tactics. We had been in camp per-
haps an hour, when an order came directing that the company be divided
into three parts, each under command of a lieutenant, and that these report
immediatelv for duty. Reporting, we were directed to scout through the
country around Martinsburg, going as near the town as possible, and to give
battle to any cavalry force we might meet. Here was a pretty lookout, cer-
tainly ! Our officers knew not one inch of the country, and might fall into
all sorts of traps and ambuscades ; and what if we should meet a cavalry
force greatly superior to our own ? This West Point colonel was rapidly for-
feiting our good opinion. Our lieutenants were brave fellows, however, and
they led us boldly if ignorantly, almost up to the very gates of the town occu-
pied by the enemy. We saw some cavalry but met none, their*orders not be-
ing so peremptorily belligerent, perhaps, as ours Avere ; wherefore they gave
us no chance to fight them. The next morning our unreasonable colonel
again ordered us to mount, in spite of the fact that there were companies
in the camp which had done nothing at all the day before. This time he led
us himself, taking pains to get us as nearly as possible surrounded by infan-
try, and then laughingly telling us that our chance for getting out of the
difficulty, except by cutting our way through, Avas an exceedingly small one.
I think we began about this time to suspect that we were learning something,
and that this reckless colonel was trying to teach us. But that he was a hare-
brained fellow, lacking the caution belonging to a commander, we were
unanimously agreed. He led us out of the place at a rapid gait, before the
one gap in the enemy's lines could be closed, and then jauntily led us into
one or two other traps, before taking us back to camp.
But it was not until General Patterson began his feint against Winchester
that our colonel had full opportunity to give us his field lectures. When the
advance began, and our pickets were driven in, the most natural thing to do,
24
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON. [1861-88
in our view of the situation, was to fall back upon our infantry supports at
Winchester, and I remember hearing various expressions of doubt as to the
colonel's sanity when, instead of falling back, he marched his handful of
men right up to the advancing lines, and ordered us to dismount. The Fed-
eral skirmish line was coming toward us at a double-quick, and we were set
going toward it at a like rate of speed, leaving our horses hundreds of yards
to the rear. We could see that the skirmishers alone outnumbered us three
or four times, and it really seemed that our colonel meant to sacrifice his com-
mand deliberately. He waited until the infantry was within about two hun-
dred yards of us, we being in the edge of a little grove, and they on the other
side of an open field. Then Stuart cried out, " Backwards — march ! steady,
men, — keep your faces to the enemy ! " and we marched in that way through
the timber, delivering our shot-gun fire slowly as we fell back toward our
horses. Then mounting, with the skirmishers almost upon us, we retreated,
not hurriedly, but at a slow trot, which the colonel would on no account per-
mit us to change into a gallop. Taking us out into the main road he halted
us in column, with our backs to the enemy.
" Attention ! " he cried. " Now I want to talk to you, men. You are
brave fellows, and patriotic ones too, but you are ignorant of this kind of
work, and I am teaching you. I want you to observe that a good man on
a good horse can never be caught. Another thing : cavalry can trot away
from anything, and a gallop is a gait unbecoming a soldier, unless he is going
toward the enemy. Eemember that. We gallop toward the enemy, and trot
away, always. Steady now ! don't break ranks ! "
And as the words left his lips a shell from a battery half a mile to the rear
hissed over our heads.
" There," he resumed. " I've been waiting for that, and watching those
fellows. I knew they'd shoot too high, and I wanted you to learn how shells
sound."
We spent the next day or two literally within the Federal lines. We were
shelled, skirmTshed with, charged, and surrounded scores of times, until we
learned to hold in high regard our colonel's masterly skill in getting into
and out of perilous positions. He seemed to blunder into them in sheer
recklessness, but in getting out he showed us the quality of his genius ; and
before we reached Manassas we had learned, among other things, to enter-
tain a feeling closely akin to worship for our brilliant and daring leader. We
had begun to understand, too, how much force he meant to give to his favor-
ite dictum that the cavalry is the eye of the army.
His restless activity was one, at least, of the qualities which enabled him to
win the reputation he achieved so rapidly. He could never be still. He was
rarely ever in camp at all, and he never showed a sign of fatigue. He led
almost everything. Even after he became a general officer, with well-nigh
an army of horsemen under his command, I frequently followed him as my
leader in a little party of half a dozen troopers, who might as well have gone
with a sergeant on the duty assigned them ; and once I was his only follower
on a scouting expedition, of which he, a brigadier-general at the time, was
the commander. I had been detailed to do some clerical work at his head-
1881-88] GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON. 25
quarters, and, having finished the task assigned me, was waiting in the piaz-
za of the house he occupied, for somebody to give me further orders, when
Stuart came out.
"Is that your horse ?" he asked, going up to the animal and examining
him minutely.
I replied that he was, and upon being questioned further informed him
that I did not wish to sell my steed. Turning to me suddenly, he said :
"Let's slip off on a scout, then ; I'll ride your horse and you can ride mine.
I want to try your beast's paces " ; and mounting, we galloped away. Where
or how far he intended to go I did not know. He was enamoured of my horse,
and rode, I suppose, for the pleasure of riding an animal which pleased him.
We passed outside our picket line, and then, keeping in the woods, rode
within that of the Union army. Wandering about in a purposeless way, we
got a near view of some of the Federal camps, and finally finding ourselves
objects of attention on the part of some well-mounted cavalry in blue uni-
forms, we rode rapidly down a road toward our own lines, our pursuers riding
quite as rapidly immediately behind us.
" General," I cried presently, " there is a Federal picket post on the road
just ahead of us. Had we not better oblique into the woods ?"
" Oh no. They won't expect us from this direction, and we can ride over
them before they make up their minds who we are."
Three minutes later we rode at full speed through the corporal's guard
on picket, and were a hundred yards or more away before they could level a
gun at us. Then half a dozen bullets whistled about our ears, but the cava-
lier paid no attention to them.
"Did you ever time this horse for a half-mile ?"was all he had to
say
It was on the day of my ride with him that I heard him express his views
of the war and his singular aspiration for himself. It was almost immedi-
ately after General McClellan assumed command of the army of the Poto-
mac, and while we were rather eagerly expecting him to attack our strongly
fortified position at Centreville. Stuart was talking with some members of
his staff, with whom he had been wrestling a minute before. He said some-
thing about what they could do by way of amusement when they should go
into winter-quarters.
" That is to say," he continued, " if George B. McClellan ever allows us to
go into winter-quarters at all."
" Why, general ? Do you think he will advance before spring ? " asked one
of the officers.
" Not against Centreville," replied the general. " He has too much sense
for that, and I think he knows the shortest road to Richmond, too. If I am
not greatly mistaken, we shall hear of him presently on his way up the James
River."
In this prediction, as the reader knows, he was right. The conversation
then passed to the question of results.
"I regard it as a foregone conclusion," said Stuart, "that we shall ulti-
mately whip the Yankees. We are bound to believe that, anyhow ; but the
26 GEORGE CART EGGLESTON. [1861-88
war is going to be a long and terrible one, first. We've only just begun it,
and very few of us will see the end. All I ask of fate is that I may be killed
leading a cavalry charge."
The remark was not a boastful or seemingly insincere one. It was made
quietly, cheerfully, almost eagerly, and it impressed me at the time with
the feeling that the man's idea of happiness was what the French call glory,
and that in his eyes there was no glory like that of dying in one of the tre-
mendous onsets which he knew so well how to make. His wish was grant-
ed, as we know. He received his death-wound at the head of his troop-
ers
General Stuart was, without doubt, capable of handling an infantry com-
mand successfully, as he demonstrated at Chancellorsville, where he took
Stonewall Jackson's place and led an army corps in a very severe engage-
ment ; but his special fitness was for cavalry service. His tastes were those
of a horseman. Perpetual activity was a necessity of his existence, and he
enjoyed nothing so much as danger. Audacity, his greatest virtue as a cav-
alry commander, would have been his besetting sin in any other position.
Inasmuch as it is the business of the cavalry to live as constantly as possible
within gunshot of the enemy, his recklessness stood him in excellent stead
as a general of horse, but it is at least questionable whether his want of cau-
tion would not have led to disaster if his command had been of a less mobile
sort. His critics say he was vain, and he was so, as a boy is. He liked to win
the applause of his friends, and he liked still better to astonish the enemy,
glorying in the thought that his foemen must admire his " impudence," as
he called it, while they dreaded its manifestation. He was continually do-
ing things of an extravagantly audacious sort, with no other purpose, seem-
ingly, than that of making people stretch their eyes in wonder. He enjoyed
the admiration of the enemy far more, I think, than he did that of his
friends. This fact was evident in the care he took to make himself a con-
spicuous personage in every time of danger. He would ride at some distance
from his men in a skirmish, and in every possible way attract a dangerous
attention to himself. His slouch hat and long plume marked him in every
battle, and made him a target for the riflemen to shoot at. In all this there
was some vanity, if we choose to call it so, but it was an excellent sort of
vanity for a cavalry chief to cultivate. I cannot learn that he ever boast-
ed of any achievement, or that, his vanity was ever satisfied with the things
already done. His audacity was due, I think, to his sense of humor, not less
than to his love of applause. He would laugh uproariously over the aston-
ishment he imagined the Federal officers must feel after one of his pecul-
iarly daring or sublimely impudent performances. When, after capturing
a large number of horses and mules on one of his raids, he seized a telegraph
station and sent a despatch to General Meigs, then Quartermaster-General
of the United States army, complaining that he could not afford to come
after animals of so poor a quality, and urging that officer to provide better
ones for capture in future, he enjoyed the joke quite as heartily as he did
the success which made it possible.
The boyishness to which I have referred ran through every part of his
1861-88] STEPHEN HENRY THAYER. 27
character and every act of his life. His impetuosity in action, his love of
military glory and of the military life, his occasional waywardness with his
friends and his generous affection for them, — all these were the traits of a
great boy, full, to running over, of impulsive animal life.
While I was serving in South Carolina, I met one evening the general
commanding the military district, and he, upon learning that I had served
with Stuart, spent the entire evening talking of his friend, for they two
had been together in the old army before the war
During the evening's conversation this general formulated his opinion of
Stuart's military character in very striking phrase.
" He is," he said, " the greatest cavalry officer that ever lived. He has
all the dash, daring, and audacity of Murat, and a great deal more sense. "
It was his opinion, however, that there were men in both armies who would
come to be known as greater cavalrymen than Stuart, for the reason that
Stuart used his men strictly as cavalry, while others would make dragoons
of them. He believed that the nature of our country was much better adapt-
ed to dragoon than to cavalry service, and hence, while he thought Stuart
the best of cavalry officers, he doubted his ability to stand against such men
as General Sheridan, whose conception of the proper place of the horse in
our war was a more correct one, he thought, than Stuart's. " To the popu-
lar mind," he went on to say, " every soldier who rides a horse is a cavalry-
man, and so Stuavt will be measured by an incorrect standard. He will be
classed with General Sheridan and measured by his success or the want of it.
General Sherida'i is without doubt the greatest of dragoon commanders, as
Stuart is the greatest of cavalrymen ; but in this country dragoons are worth
a good deal moro than cavalry, and so General Sheridan will probably win the
greater reputation. He will deserve it, too, because behind it is the sound
judgment which tells him what use to make of his horsemen."
It is worthy of remark that all this was said before General Sheridan had
made his reputation as an officer, and I remember that at the time his name
was almost new to me.
BORN in New Ipswich, N. H., 1839.
THE WAITING CHORDS.
[Songs of Sleepy Hollow. 1886.]
TTEEDLESS she strayed from note to note,
-*-J- A maid, scarce knowing that she sang;
The dainty accents from her throat
In undulations lightly rang.
She sang in laughing rhythms sweet;
A bird of spring was in her voice ;
HENRY GEORGE. [1861-88
Till on through measures deft and fleet
She caught the ditty of her choice.
A song of love, in words of fire,
Now made her breast with passion stir;
It breathed across her living lyre,
And thrilled the waiting chords in her.
Uplifted like a quivering dart,
One moment poised the tones on high,
To tell the language of her heart,
And swell the paean ere it die.
She smote the keys with will and force,
Like storm-winds swept the sounds along;
Her flying fingers in their course
Vied with the tumult of her song.
Her eyes flashed with the burning theme;
A glow of triumph flushed her cheek;
No need of words to tell the dl'eam
Of love her lips would never speak.
When the wild cadence died in air,
And all the chords to silence fell,
I knew the spirit lurking there,
The secret that had wrought the spell.
BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1839.
PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES.
[Progress and Poverty. 1879.— Revised Edition. 1880.]
rFIHE republic has entered upon a new era, an era in which the monopoly
JL of the land will tell with accelerating effect. The great fact which has
been so potent is ceasing to be. The public domain is almost gone — a very
f ew*years will end its influence, already rapidly failing. I do not mean to say
that there will be no public domain. For a long time to come there will be
millions of acres of public lands carried on the books of the Land Depart-
ment. But it must be remembered that the best part of the continent for
agricultural purposes is already overrun, and that it is the poorest land that is
left. It must be remembered that what remains comprises the great mountain
ranges, the sterile deserts; the high plains fit only for grazing. And it must
be remembered that much of this land which figures in the reports as open
to settlement is uusurveyed land, which has been appropriated by possessory
claims or locations which do not appear until the land is returned as survey-
1861-88] HENRY GEORGE. 29
ed. California figures on the books of the Land Department as the greatest
land State of the Union, containing nearly 100,000,000 acres of public land
— something like one-twelfth of the whole public domain. Yet so much of
this is covered by railroad grants or held in the way of which I have spoken ;
so much consists of untillable mountains or plains which require irrigation,
so much is monopolized by locations which command the water, that as a mat-
ter of fact it is difficult to point the immigrant to any part of the State where
he can take up a farm on which he can settle and maintain a family, and so
men, weary of the quest, end by buying land or renting it on shares. It is
not that there is any real scarcity of land in California — for, an empire in
herself, California will some day maintain a population as large as that of
France — but appropriation has got ahead of the settler and manages to keep
just ahead of him.
Some twelve or fifteen years ago the late Ben Wade of Ohio said, in a speech
in the United States Senate, that by the close of th'is century every acre of
ordinary agricultural land in the United States would be worth $50 in gold.
It is already clear that if he erred at all, it was in overstating the time. In
the twenty-one years that remain of the present century, if our population
keeps on increasing at the rate which it has maintained since the institution
of the Government, with the exception of the decade which included the civil
war, there will be an addition to our present population of something like
forty-five millions, an addition of some seven millions more than the total
population of the United States as shown by the census of 1870, and nearly
half as much again as the present population of Great Britain. There is no
question about the ability of the United States to support such a population
and many hundreds of millions more, and, under proper social adjustments,
to support them in increased comfort ; but in view of such an increase of
population, what becomes of the unappropriated public domain ? Practi-
cally there will soon cease to be any. It will be a very long time before it is
all in use ; but it will be a very short time, as we are going, before all that
men can turn to use will have an owner.
But the evil effects of making the land of a whole people the exclusive
property of some do not wait for the final appropriation of the public do-
main to show themselves. It is not necessary to contemplate there in the
future ; we may see them in the present. They have grown with our growth,
and are still increasing.
We plough new fields, we open new mines, we found new cities ; we drive
back the Indian and exterminate the buffalo ; we girdle the land with irt>n
roads and lace the air with telegraph wires ; we add knowledge to knowl-
edge, and utilize invention after invention ; we build schools and endow col-
leges ; yet it becomes no easier for the masses of our people to make a living.
On the contrary, it is becoming harder. The wealthy class is becoming more
wealthy ; but the poorer class is becoming more dependent. The gulf be-
tween the employed and the employer is growing wider ; social contrasts are
becoming sharper ; as liveried carriages appear, so do barefooted children.
We are becoming used to talk of the working classes and the propertied
classes; beggars are becoming so common that where it was once thought a
30 HENRY GEORGE. [1861-88
crime little short of highway robbery to refuse food to one who asked for it,
the gate is now barred and the bulldog loosed, while laws are passed against
vagrants which suggest those of Henry VIII.
We call ourselves the most progressive people on earth. But what is the
goal of our progress, if these are its wayside fruits ?
These are the results of private property in land — the effects of a princi-
ple that must act with increasing and increasing force. It is not that labor-
ers have increased faster than capital ; it is not that population is pressing
against subsistence ; it is not that machinery has made " work scarce "; it
is not that there is any real antagonism between labor and capital — it is sim-
ply that land is becoming more valuable ; that the terms on which labor can
obtain access to the natural opportunities which alone enable it to produce
are becoming harder and harder. The public domain is receding and narrow-
ing ; property in land is concentrating. The proportion of our people who
have no legal right to the land on which they live is becoming steadily larger.
Says the " New York World" : "A non-resident proprietary, like that of Ire-
land, is getting to be the characteristic of large farming districts in New Eng-
land, adding yearly to the nominal value of leasehold farms; advancing year-
ly the rent demanded, and steadily degrading the character of the tenantry/'
And the "Nation," alluding to the same section, says : " Increased nominal
value of land, higher rents, fewer farms occupied by owners ; diminished pro-
ducts ; lower wages ; a more ignorant population ; increasing number of wo-
men employed at hard, outdoor labor (surest sign of a declining civilization),
and a steady deterioration in the style of farming — these are the conditions
described by a cumulative mass of evidence that is perfectly irresistible."
The same tendency is observable in the new States where the large scale of
cultivation recalls the latifundia that ruined ancient Italy. In California a
very large proportion of the farming land is rented from year to year, at rates
varying from a fourth to even half the crop.
The harder times, the lower wages, the increasing poverty perceptible in
the United States are but results of the natural laws we have traced — laws as
universal and as irresistible as that of gravitation. We did not establish the
republic when in the face of principalities and powers we flung the declara-
tion of the inalienable rights of man ; we shall never establish the republic
until we practically carry out that declaration by securing to the poorest child
born among us an equal right to his native soil! We did not abolish slavery
when we ratified the Fourteenth Amendment ; to abolish slavery we must
abolish private property in land ! Unless we come back to first principles,
unless we recognize natural perceptions of equity, unless we acknowledge the
equal right of all to land, our free institutions will be in vain, our common
schools will be in vain ; our discoveries and inventions will but add to the
force that presses the masses down !
1861-88J FRANCIS AMASA WALKER.
francig
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1840.
THE BEST HOLDING OP THE LAND.
[Land and Its Rent. 1883.]
A WIDE difference in the degree of advantage which may be expected to
-LA. result from the application of the subdivision of labor and the aggre-
gation of capitals in agriculture, as compared with manufactures, enters to
justify a very different view of the two cases.
It would be wholly reasonable to admit that the enormous gain in product-
ive power which results from the modern organization of mechanical labor
must be accepted as outweighing all the evils incidental to that system, while
denying emphatically that the productive power of land in large estates un-
der a single management shows any such excess over the productive power of
land when cut up into small farms cultivated by their respective owners, as to
compensate for the disadvantages that might be held to result from a less
equable distribution of wealth, through the discouragement of frugality,
through a more wanton increase of population, or through the merely polit*
ical loss resulting to the State from the destruction of an independent and
self-reliant yeomanry.
That the excess of advantages, productively considered, upon the side of
large estates, as compared with what are usually called peasant properties,
cannot be very great, is shown by the fact that the existence of such an excess
in any degree has been disputed by writers so intelligent and candid as
Messrs. Mill, Thornton, and Hippolyte Passy. ....
The reason why the division of labor and the concentration of capital ac-
complish so much less, relatively, in agriculture than in manufactures, is
twofold.
On the one hand, the nature of agricultural operations, the extent of the
field over which they are carried on, the varying necessities of the seasons in
their order, and the limited applicability of machinery and elemental power,
preclude the possibility of achieving a gain in this department of activity
which shall be at all comparable to that which is attained where hundreds and
thousands of workmen are gathered upon a few acres of ground, where ma-
chinery the most delicate and the most powerful may be applied successively
to every minute operation, and where the force of steam or gravity may be
invoked to multiply many fold the efficiency of the unaided man.
On the other hand, there is a virtue in the mere ownership of land by the
actual laborer, which goes far, very far, to outweigh the advantages which
great capitals bring to the cultivation of the soil. The " magic of property "
in transmuting the bleak rock into the blooming garden, the barren sand of
the seashore into the richest mould, has been told by a hundred travellers
and economists since Arthur Young's day. In his tireless activity, "from
the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb "; in his unceasing vigilance
32 FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. [1861-bS
against every form of waste ; in his sympathetic care of the drooping vine,
the broken bough, the tender young of the flock and the herd ; in his inti-
mate knowledge of the character and capabilities of every field, and of every
corner of every field, within his narrow domain ; in his passionate devotion to
the land which is all his own, which was his father's before him, which will
be his son's after him, the peasant, the small proprietor, hold the secret of an
economic virtue which even the power of machinery can scarcely overcome.
Americans are perhaps likely to overrate the degree in which operations on
a vast scale, under a single management, may be advantageously carried on.
The stories of the great farms of Illinois and California, and, even more pro-
digious, of the Dalrymple farms alonglihe line of the Northern Pacific Rail-
road, are likely to create the impression on the mind of the reader that there
is almost no limit to the success of great, even of gigantic, agriculture.
Such cases are, however, highly exceptional, even in the cultivation of the
staple cereal crops and of cotton ; while, as we reach the numberless minor
crops, which in their aggregate constitute a large part of the agriculture of
the world, the advantages of aggregated capitals diminish rapidly or disap-
pear altogether
In addition to the question of gross production, we have considerations re-
lating to the distribution of the produce, which may properly enter to affect
the mind of the economist or the statesman when dealing with the tenure of
the soil.
That the industrial position of the individual agent, — as, for instance,
whether producing in his own right and name, by permission of no one, a
merchantable product, regarding which he has only to take the risks of a
fortunate or unfortunate exchange, or, in the opposite case, as a candidate
for employment at the hands of another, through whose consent only can be
obtained the opportunity to take a part in production, and with whom, con-
sequently, he has to make terms in advance of production and as a condition
precedent to production, — that the industrial position of the individual
agent may powerfully affect the distribution of the produce among those who
take part in production ; that the injuries suffered in that distribution by
the economically weak should result, more or less extensively, in permanent
industrial disability, through loss of health and strength, through loss of
constitutional energy or corruption of the blood, through loss of self-respect
and social ambition, such disability being as real and as lasting as the dis-
abilities incurred in a railway accident, the laborer, in consequence thereof,
sinking to a lower industrial grade, beyond the reach of any reparative or
restorative forces of a purely economical origin ; and, lastly, that in the re-
action of the distribution upon production, the whole community and all
classes should suffer, both economically and socially ; — how any one can de-
ny these things, I cannot conceive, although it has mysteriously pleased the
economists almost wholly to omit consideration of causes of this nature.
That the system of small holdings reduces to a minimum the difficulties
and the economic dangers attending the distribution of wealth, is implied in
the very statement of the case. The great majority of those who work upon
the land being self-employed, and the produce being their own, without de-
1861-88] FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 33
ducticn, the question what they shall receive as the fruit of their labor be-
comes a question of their own industry and prudence, subject alone to the
kindness or unkindness of nature in giving the sunshine and the rain in their
due season and measure, or the reverse.
. The reduction of the mass of those Avho work upon the land to the condi-
tion of hired laborers brings upon each the necessity of finding a master with
whom he must make terms precedent to production ; of entering into a com-
petition at once with his fellows as to priority of employment, and with the
members of the employing class as to rates of wages and forms of payment,
for which competition he may be more or less disqualified by poverty, ignor-
ance, and mental inertia, by distrust of himself or by jealousy of others. The
condition of the agricultural laborers of England during the past hundred
years shows that the evils portrayed are not merely imaginary.
Even more important than the considerations relating to the production
and the distribution of wealth, bearing upon the tenure of land, which have
been indicated, are certain considerations connected with the Consumption
of Wealth.
Under which system of holdings are the forces which determine the uses
to be made of wealth likely to be most favorable to the strength and prosper-
ity of the community ?
That the ownership of land, in the main, by the cultivating class, pro-
motes frugality and a wiser application of the existing body of wealth, is too
manifest to require discussion. The true savings-bank, says Sismondi, is the
soil. There is never a time when the owner of land is not painfully conscious
of improvements which he desires to make upon his farm, of additions which
he desires to make to his stock. For every shilling of money, as for every
hour of time, he knows an immediate use. He has not to carry his earnings
past a drinking-saloon to find an opportunity to invest them. The hungry
land is, even at the moment, crying aloud for them. ....
Beyond the considerations which I have felt at liberty to adduce, is the in-
terest of the community in the development of the manhood of its citizens,
through the individuality and independence of character which spring from
working upon the soil that you own.
"I believe," wrote Emerson, "in the spade and an acre of good ground.'
Whoso cuts a straight path to his own bread, by the help of God in the sun
and rain and sprouting of the grain, seems to me an universal workman.
He solves the problem of life, not for one, but for all men of sound body/'
Still, in addition to this, is the political interest which the State has, that
as many as may be of its ci tizens shall be directly interested in the land. Es-
pecially with popular institutions is there a strong assurance of peace, order,
purity, and liberty, where those who are to make the laws, to pay the taxes,
to rally to the support of the Government against foreign invasion or domes-
tic violence, are the proprietors of the soil.
I would by no means argue in favor of a dull uniformity of petty holdings.
Probably Professor Eoscher is right in saying that a mingling of large, me-
dium, and small properties, in which those of medium size predominate,
forms the most wholesome of national and economical organizations.
VOL. x. — 3
34
,7051V WHITE CHAD WICK [1861-88
In such an organization each class of estates is a help and strength to every
other. The great estates afford adequate field and ample capital for ad-
vanced experimental agriculture, by the results of which all will, in turn,
profit. They set the standard of "the straight furrow, the well-bnilt ricks,
and the beautiful lines of drilled corn," to use the enthusiastic phrase of Sir
James Caird.
The multitude of small proprietors, on the other hand, as Professor Emile
de Laveleye has well expressed it, serve as a kind of political rampart and
safeguard for the holders of large estates ; they offer the laborer a ready
resort to the land, a sort of economical " escape/' in the failure of mechanical
employment ; and they provide the nation with a solid body of yeom6n, not
easily bought or bullied or cajoled by demagogues.
In the medium-sized farms, again, may be found united no small measure
of the advantages of both the large estate and the petty holding, the three
degrees together forming the ideal distribution of the soil of any country,
where both economical and social considerations are taken into account.
What, if anything, should be done by the State to promote the right hold-
ing of land ? Mr. Thornton's reply to this question is the reply of Diogenes
to Alexander : " Get out of my light ! " And, indeed, in a country like our
own, with vast unoccupied tracts still available for settlement, with a pop-
ulation active, alert, aggressive, both industrially and socially, and with no
vicious traditions, no old abuses, perverting the natural operation of eco-
nomic forces to ends injurious to the general interest, it is only needful that
the State should keep off its hand, and allow the soil to be parted as the un-
helped and unhindered course of sale and bequest may determine. But
wherever there is a peasantry unfitted for competition, upon purely commer-
cial principles, with a powerful and wealthy class, under a painful pressure
of population, there the regulation of the holding of laud becomes a proper
matter of State concern.
9!ol)n Mtytt CJjatitDtcfe,
BORN in Marblehead, Mass., 1840.
RECOGNITION.
[A Book of Poems. 1876.— In Nazareth Town. 1883.]
"V1THEN souls that have put off their mortal gear
» * Stand in the pure, sweet light of heaven's day,
And wondering deeply what to do or say,
And trembling more with rapture than with fear,
Desire some token of their friends most dear,
Who there some time have made their happy stay,
And much have longed for them to come that wav,
What shall it be, this sign of hope and cheer ?
1861-86] JOHN TORREY MORSE, JR. 35
Shall it be tone of voice or glance of eye ?
Shall it be touch of hand or gleam of hair
Blown back from spirit-brows by heaven's air, —
Things which of old we knew our dearest by ?
Oh, naught of this; but, if our love is true,
Some secret sense shall cry, Tis you and— you !
HIS MOTHER'S JOY.
T~ ITTLE, I ween, did Mary guess, The joy that every mother knows
-1*^ As on her arm her baby lay, Who feels her babe against her breast:
What tided of joy would swell and beat, The voyage long is overpast,
Through ages long, on Christmas day. And now is calm and peace and rest.
And what if she had known it all, — "Art thou the Christ ? " The wonder
The awful splendor of his fame ? came
The inmost heart of all her joy As easy as her infant's breath:
Would still, methiuks, have been the But answer none. Enough for her,
same : That love had triumphed over death.
December 25, 1877.
Corre?
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1840.
A PICTURE OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
[John Quincy Adams. 1882.]
IN" his conscientious way he was faithful and industrious to a rare degree.
He was never absent and seldom late ; he bore unflinchingly the burden
of severe committee work, and shirked no toil on the plea of age or infirmity.
He attended closely to all the business of the House ; carefully formed his
opinions on every question ; never failed to vote except for cause ; and always
had a sufficient reason independent of party allegiance to sustain his vote.
Living in the age of oratory, he earned the name of " the old man eloquent."
Yet he was not an orator in the sense in which Webster, Clay, and Calhoun
were orators. He was not a rhetorician ; he had neither grace of manner nor
a fine presence, neither an imposing delivery, nor even pleasing tones. On
the contrary, he was exceptionally lacking in all these qualities. He was
short, rotund, and bald ; about the time when he entered Congress, com-
plaints become frequent in his Diary of weak and inflamed eyes, and soon
these organs became so rheumy that the water would trickle down his cheeks;
a shaking of the hand grew upon him to such an extent that in time he had
gg JOHN TORBET MORSE, JR. [1861-88
to use artificial assistance to steady it for writing ; his voice was high, shrill,
liable to break, piercing enough to make itself heard, but not agreeable. This
hardly seems the picture of an orator ; nor was it to any charm of elocution
that he owed his influence, but rather to the fact that men soon learned that
what he said was always worth hearing. When he entered Congress he had
been for much more than a third of a century zealously gathering knowl-
edge in public affairs, and during his career in that body every year swelled
the already vast accumulation. Moreover, listeners were always sure to get
a bold and an honest utterance and often pretty keen words from him, and
he never spoke to an inattentive audience or to a thin house. Whether
pleased or incensed by what he said, the Eepresentatives at least always lis-
tened to it. He was by nature a hard fighter, and by the circumstances of
his course in Congress this quality was stimulated to such a degree that par-
liamentary history does not show his equal as a gladiator. His power of in-
vective was extraordinary, and he was untiring and merciless in his use of it.
Theoretically he disapproved of sarcasm, but practically he could not refrain
from it. Men Avinced and cowered before his milder attacks, became some-
times dumb, sometimes furious with mad rage before his fiercer assaults.
Such struggles evidently gave him pleasure, and there was scarce a back in
Congress that did not at one time or another feel the score of his cutting
lash; though it was the Southerners and the Northern allies of Southern-
ers whom chiefly he singled out for torture. He was irritable and quick
to wrath ; he himself constantly speaks of the infirmity of his temper, and
in his many conflicts his principal concern was to keep it in control. His
enemies often referred to it and twitted him with it. Of alliances he was
careless, and friendships he had almost none. But in the creation of enmi-
ties he was terribly successful. Not so much at first, but increasingly as
years went on, a state of ceaseless, vigilant hostility became his normal con-
dition. From the time when he fairly entered upon the long struggle against
slavery, he enjoyed few peaceful days in the House. But he seemed to thrive
upon the warfare, and to be never so well pleased as when he was bandying
hot words with slave-holders and the Northern supporters of slave-holders.
"When the air of the House was thick with crimination and abuse he seemed
to suck in fresh vigor and spirit from the hate-laden atmosphere. When
invective fell around him in showers, lie screamed back his retaliation with
untiring rapidity and marvellous dexterity of aim. No odds could appall
him. With his back set firm against a solid moral principle, it was his joy
to strike out at a multitude of foes. They lost their heads as well as their
tempers, but in theextremest moments of excitement and anger Mr. Adams's
brain seemed to work with machine-like coolness and accuracy. With
flushed face, streaming eyes, animated gesticulation, and cracking voice, he
always retained perfect mastery of all his intellectual faculties. He thus be-
came a terrible antagonist, whom all feared, yet fearing could not refrain
from attacking, so bitterly and incessantly did he choose to exert his won-
derful power of exasperation. Few men could throw an opponent into wild
blind fury with such speed and certainty as he could ; and he does not con-
ceal the malicious gratification which such feats brought to him. A leader
1861-88]
ROBERT KELLEY WEEKS.
37
of such fighting capacity, so courageous, with such a magazine of experience
and information, and with a character so irreproachable, could have won
brilliant victories in public life at the head of even a small band of devoted
followers. But Mr. Adams never had and apparently never wanted follow-
ers. Other prominent public men were brought not only into collision but
into comparison with their contemporaries. But Mr. Adams's individuality
was so strong that he can be compared with no one. It was not an individ-
uality of genius nor to any remarkable extent of mental qualities ; but rather
an individuality of character. To this fact is probably to be attributed his
peculiar solitariness. Men touch each other for purposes of attachment
through their characters much more than through their minds. But few
men, even in agreeing with Mr. Adams, felt themselves in sympathy with
him. Occasionally conscience, or invincible logic, or even policy and self-
interest, might compel one or another politician to stand beside him in de-
bate or in voting ; but no current of fellow-feeling ever passed between such
temporary comrades and him. It was the cold connection of duty or of busi-
ness. The first instinct of nearly every one was opposition towards him ;
coalition might be forced by circumstances but never came by volition. For
the purpose of winning immediate successes this was of course a most unfor-
tunate condition of relationships. Yet it had some compensations : it left
such influence as Mr. Adams could exert by steadfastness and argument en-
tirely unweakened by suspicion of hidden motives or personal ends. He
had the weight and enjoyed the respect which a sincerity beyond distrust
must always command in the loner run.
Bobert
BORN in New York, N. T., 1840. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1878.
A SONG FOR LEXINGTON.
{Poems.— Collective Edition. 1881.]
rr^HE Spring came earlier on
-*- Than usual that year;
The shadiest snow was gone,
The slowest brook was clsar,
And warming in the sun
Shy flowers began to peer.
'Twas more like middle May,
The earth so seemed to thrive,
That Nineteenth April day
Of Seventeen Seventy-Five;
Winter was well away,
New England was alive!
Alive and sternly glad !
Her doubts were with the snow;
Her courage, long forbade,
Ran full to overflow;
And every hope she had
Began to bud and grow.
She rose betimes that morn,
For there was work to do;
A planting, not of corn.
Of what she hardly knew, —
Blessings for men unborn;
And well she did it too!
38
JOHN CLARK RID PATH.
[1861-88
With open hand she stood,
And sowed for all the years,
And watered it with blood,
And watered it with tears,
The seed of quickening food
For both the hemispheres.
This was the planting done
That April morn of fame :
Honor to every one
To that seed- field that came!
Honor to Lexington,
Our first immortal name !
ON THE SHORE.
HERE many a time she must have walked,
The dull sand brightening 'neath her feet,
The cool air quivering as she talked,
Or laughed, or warbled sweet.
The shifting sand no trace of her,
No sound the wandering wind retains,
But, breaking where the foot-prints were,
Loudly the sea complains.
ANADYOMENE.
rpHE passionate first flush
-L Of that great sunset came,
And vanished, like a rush
Of self-consuming flame ;
But deep within the west,
Long lived the afterglow,
And on the water's breast
Slow heaving to and fro;
And where the lower blue
Was lost in tender green,
An eager star burst through
The palpitating screen ;
And darkly whispering went
The wind among the grass,
And o'er the waves ; — intent
On what should come to pass,
Eastward I turned my eyes
In vague expectancy,
And saw the moon arise
Like Venus from the sea.
Clarfe
BORN iii Putnam Co., lud., 1840.
TENETS OP LIBERTY.
[A Popular History of the United States. 1876.]
rilO the thoughtful student of history several things seem necessary to the
-L perpetuity and complete success of American institutions. The first of
these is the prevalence of the idea of National Unity. Of this spake Wash-
1861-88] JOHN CLARK RIDPATH. 39
ington in his Farewell Address, warning his countrymen in solemn words to
preserve and defend that government which constituted them one people. Of
this wrote Hamilton and Adams. For this pleaded Webster in his great ora-
tions. Upon this the far-seeing statesmen of the present day, rising above
the strifes of party and the turmoils of war, plant themselves as the one thing
vital in American politics. The idea that the United States are one Nation,
and not thirty-eight nations, is the grand cardinal doctrine of a sound politi-
cal faith. State pride and sectional attachment are natural passions in the
human breast, and are so near akin to patriotism as to be distinguished from
it only in the court of a higher reason. But there is a nobler love of country
— a patriotism that rises above all places and sections, that knows no County,
no State, no North, no South, but only native land ; that claims no mountain
slope ; that clings to no river bank ; that worships no range of hills ; but lifts
the aspiring eye to a continent redeemed from barbarism by common sacri-
fices and made sacred by the shedding of kindred blood. Such a patriotism
is the cable and sheet-anchor of our hope.
A second requisite for the preservation of American institutions is the
Universal Secular Education of the People. Monarchies govern their sub-
jects by authority and precedent ; republics by right reason and free will.
Whether one method or the other will be better, turns wholly upon the intel-
ligence of the governed. If the subject have not the knowledge and discipline
necessary to govern himself, it is better that a king, in whom some skill in the
science of government is presupposed, should rule him. As between two
stupendous evils, the rational tyranny of the intelligent few is preferable to
the furious and irrational tyranny of the ignorant many. No force which has
moved among men, impelling to bad action, inspiring to crime, overturning
order, tearing away the bulwarks of liberty and right, and converting civiliza-
tion into a waste, has been so full of evil and so powerful to destroy as a blind,
ignorant, and factious democracy. A republic without intelligence — even a
high degree of intelligence — is a paradox and an impossibility. What means
that principle of the Declaration of IndependeT .ce which declares the consent
of the governed to be the true foundation of a'l just authority? What kind of
' ' consent " is referred to ? Manifestly not the passive and unresisting ac-
quiescence of the mind which, like the potter's clay, receives whatever is
impressed upon it ; but that active, thinking, resolute, conscious, personal
consent which distinguishes the true freeman from the puppet. When the
people of the United States rise to the heights of this noble and intelligent
self-assertion, the occupation of the party leader — most despicable of all ty-
rants— will be gone forever ; and in order that the people may ascend to that
high plane, the means by Avhich intelligence is fostered, right reason exalted,
and a calm and rational public opinion produced, must be universally se-
cured. The public Free School is the fountain whose streams shall make
glad all the lauds of liberty. We must educate or perish.
A third thing necessary to the perpetuity of American liberties is Tolera-
tion— toleration in the broadest and most glorious sense. In the colonial
times intolerance embittered the lives of our fathers. Until the present day
the baleful shadow has been upon the land. The proscriptive vices of the
40 R08SITER JOHNSON. [1861-88
Middle Age have flowed down with the blood of the race and tainted the life
that now is, with a suspicion and distrust of freedom. Liberty in the minds
of men has meant the privilege of agreeing with the majority. Men have
desired free thought, but fear has stood at the door. It remains for the
United States to build a highway, broad and free, into every field of liberal
inquiry, and to make the poorest of men who walks therein more secure in
life and reputation than the soldier who sleeps behind the rampart. Pro-
scription has no part nor lot in the American system. The stake, the gibbet,
and the rack, thumb-screws, sword, and pillory, have no place on this side of
the sea. Nature is diversified.; so are human faculties, beliefs, and practices.
Essential freedom is the right to differ ; and that right must be sacredly re-
spected. Nor must the privilege of dissent be conceded with coldness and
disdain, but openly, cordially, and with goodwill. No loss of rank, abate-
ment of character, or ostracism from society must darken the pathway of the
humblest of the seekers after truth. The right of free thought, free inquiry,
and free speech, is as clear as the noonday and bounteous as the air and ocean.
Without a full and cheerful recognition of this right, Americais only a name,
her glory a dream, her institutions a mockery.
The fourth idea, essential to the welfare and stability of the Eepublic, is
the Nobility of Labor. It is the mission of the United States to ennoble toil
and honor the toiler. In other lands to labor has been considered the lot of
serfs and peasants ; to gather the fruits and consume them in luxury and
war, the business of the great. Since the mediaeval times European society
has been organized on the basis of a nobility and a people. To be a nobleman
was to be distinguished from the people; to be one of the people was to be for-
ever debarred from nobility. Thus has been set on human industry the stig-
ma of perpetual disgrace. Something of this has been transmitted to the new
civilization in the "West — a certain disposition to renew the old order of lord
and laborer. Let the odious distinction perish : the true lord is the laborer
and the true laborer the lord. It is the genius of American institutions, in
the fulness of time, to wipe the last opprobrious stain from the brow of toil
and to crown the toiler with the dignity, lustre, and honor of a full and
perfect manhood.
ISoggtter
BORN iu Rochester, N. Y., 1840.
LAURENCE.
[Idler and Poet. 1883.]
TTE came in the glory of summer; in the terror of summer he went:
-L-L Like a blossom the breezes have wafted ; like a bough that the tempest has rent.
His blue eyes unclosed in the morning, his brown eyes were darkened at morn,
And the darauce of pain could not banish the beauty wherewith he was born.
1861-88] HOSSITEE JOHNSON.
He came — can we ever forget it, while the years of our pilgrimage roll ? —
He came in thine anguish of body, he passed 'mid our anguish of soul.
He brought us a pride and a pleasure, he left us a pathos of tears :
A dream of impossible futures, a glimpse of uncalendared years.
His voice was a sweet inspiration, his silence a sign from afar ;
He made us the heroes we were not, he left us the cowards we are.
For the moan of the heart follows after his clay, with perpetual dole,
Forgetting the torture of body is lost in the triumph of soul.
A man in the world of his cradle, a sage in his infantine lore,
He was brave in the might of endurance, was patient, — and who can be more ?
He had learned to be shy of the stranger, to welcome his mother's warm kiss,
To trust in the arms of his father, — and who can be wiser than this ?
The lifetime we thought lay before him, already was rounded and whole,
In dainty completeness of body and wondrous perfection of soul.
The newness of love at his coming, the freshness of grief when he went,
The pitiless pain of his absence, the effort at argued content,
The dim eye forever retracing the few little footprints he made,
The quick thought forever recalling the visions that never can fade, —
For these but one comfort, one answer, in faith's or philosophy's roll:
Came to us for a pure little body, went to God for a glorified soul.
AT THE END OF THE WAR.
[A Short History of the War of Secession. 1888.]
rriHE home-coming at the North was almost as sorrowful as at the South,
-1- because of those that came not. In all the festivities and rejoicings
there was hardly a participator whose joy was not saddened by missing some
well-known face and form now numbered with the silent three hundred
thousand. Grant was there, the commander that had never taken a step
backward ; and Farragut was there, the sailor without an equal ; and the un-
failing Sherman, and the patient Thomas, and the intrepid Hancock, and
the fiery Sheridan, and the brilliant Ouster, and many of lesser rank, who in
a smaller theatre of conflict would have won a larger fame. But where was
young Ellsworth ? Shot dead as soon as he crossed the Potomac. And TVin-
throp — killed in the first battle, with his best books unwritten. And Lyon
— fallen at the head of his little army in Missouri, the first summer of the
war. And Baker — sacrificed at Ball's Bluff. And Kearny at Chantilly, and
Eeno at South Mountain, and Mansfield at Antietam, and Keynolds at Get-
tysburg, and Wadsworth in the Wilderness, and Sedgwick at Spottsylvania,
and McPherson before Atlanta, and Craven in his monitor at the bottom of
the sea, and thousands of others, the best and bravest, all gone — all, like La-
tour, the immortal captain, dead on the field of honor, but none the less dead
and a loss to their mourning country. The hackneyed allegory of Curtius
had been given a startling illustration aud a new significance. The South,
42 ROSSITER JOHNSON. [1861-88
too, had lost heavily of her foremost citizens in the great struggle— Bee and
Bartow at Bull Eun ; Albert Sidney Johnson, leading a desperate charge at
Shiloh ; Zollicoffer, soldier and journalist, at Mill Spring ; Stonewall Jack-
son, Lee's right arm,, at Chancellorsville ; Polk, priest and warrior, at Lost
Mountain ; Armistead, wavering between two allegiances and fighting alter-
nately for each, and Barksdale and Garnet — all at Gettysburg ; Hill at Pe-
tersburg ; and the dashing Stuart, and Daniel, and Perrin, and Bearing, and
Doles, and numberless others. The sudden hush and sense of awe that im-
presses a child when he steps upon a single grave may well overcome the
strongest man when he looks upon the face of his country scarred with bat-
tle-fields like these, and considers what blood of manhood was rudely wasted
there. And the slain were mostly young, unmarried men, whose native vir-
tues fill no living veins, and will not shine again on any field.
It is poor business measuring the mouldered ramparts and counting the
silent guns, marking the deserted battle-fields and decorating the grassy
graves, unless we can learn from it all some nobler lesson than to destroy.
Men write of this as of other wars as if the only thing necessary to be im-
pressed upon the rising generation were the virtue of physical courage and
contempt of death. It seems to me that is the last thing that we need to
teach ; for since the days of John Smith in Virginia and the men of the
Afayflower in Massachusetts, no generation of Americans has shown any lack
of it. From Louisburg to Petersburg — a hundred and twenty years, the
full span of four generations — they have stood to their guns and been shot
down in greater comparative numbers than any other race on earth. In the
War of Secession there was not a State, not a county, probably not a town,
between the Great Lakes and the Gulf, that was not represented on fields
where all that men could do with powder and steel was done, and valor was
exhibited at its highest pitch. It was a common saying in the Army of the
Potomac that courage was the cheapest thing there ; and it might have been
said of all the other armies as well. There is not the slightest necessity for
lauding American bravery or impressing it upon American youth. But
there is the gravest necessity for teaching them respect for law, and rever-
ence for human life, and regard for the rights of their fellow-men, and all
that is significant in the history of our country — lest their feet run to evil
and they make haste to shed innocent blood. I would be glad to convince
my compatriots that it is not enough to think they are right, but they are
bound to know they are right, before they rush into any experiments that
are to cost the lives of men and the tears of orphans, in their own land or in
any other. I would warn them to beware of provincial conceit. I Avould
have them comprehend that one may fight bravely, and still be a perjured
felon ; that one may die humbly, and still be a patriot whom his country can-
not afford to lose ; that as might does not make right, so neither do rags and
bare feet necessarily argue a noble cause. I would teach them that it is
criminal either to hide the truth or to refuse assent to that which they see
must follow logically from ascertained truth. I Avould show them that a
political lie is as despicable as a personal lie, whether uttered in an editorial,
or a platform, or a president's message, or a colored cartoon, or a disin°-enu-
1861-88] LAURA REDDER SEARING. 43
ous ballot ; and that political chicanery, when long persisted in, is liable to
settle its shameful account in a stoppage of civilization and a spilling of life.
These are simple lessons, yet they are not taught in a day, and some whom
we call educated go through life without mastering them at all.
It may be useful to learn from one war how to conduct another ; but it is
infinitely better to learn how to avert another. I am doubly anxious to im-
press this consideration upon my readers, because history seems to show us
that armed conflicts have a tendency to come in pairs, with an interval of a
few years, and because I think I see, in certain circumstances now existing
within our beloved Republic, the elements of a second civil war. No Ameri-
can citizen should lightly repeat that the result is worth all it cost, unless he
has considered how heavy was the cost, and is doing his utmost to perpetu-
ate the result. To strive to forget the great Avar, for the sake of sentimental
politics, is to cast away our dearest experience and invite, in some troubled
future, the destruction we so hardly escaped in the past. There can be re-
membrance without animosity, but there cannot be oblivion without peril.
Laura
BORN in Somerset Co., Md., 1840.
DISARMED.
[Sounds from Secret Chambers. By Howard Glyndon. 1873.]
OLOVE, so sweet at first, Yes, cruel as the grave, —
So bitter in the end ! Go, go, and come no more!
Thou canst be fiercest foe, But. canst thou set my heart
As well as fairest friend. Just where it was before ?
Are these poor, withered leaves Go, go, — and come no more!
The fruitage of thy May ? Go, leave me with my tears,
Thou that wert strong to save, The only gift of thine
How art thou swift to slay! That shall outlive the years.
Ay, thou art swift to slay, Yet shall outlive the years
Despite thy kiss and clasp, One other, cherished thing,
Thy long, caressing look, Slight as a vagrant plume
Thy subtle, thrilling grasp! Shed from some passing wing:
Ay, swifter far to slay The memory of thy first
Than thou art strong to save, Divine, half-timid kiss.
And selfish in thy need, Go! I forgive thee all
And cruel as the grave. In weeping over ttes!
WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. [1861-38
BOKN in Cambridgeport, Mass., 1840.
THE MARTYRDOM OP LOVEJOY.
[ William Lloyd Garrison : The Story of his Life, told by his Children. 1885-89.]
T OVEJOY'S fourth press was secretly conveyed into a warehouse,
I 1 "guarded by volunteer citizens with their guns." On the night follow-
ing (November 7, 1837) the tragedy occurred. No personal incident of the
anti-slavery struggle — the fate of John Brown excepted — made so profound
tin impression on the North as the murder of Lovejoy. We call it a murder,
although the primary object of the riot was not his destruction, but that of
his press ; just as we call him a martyr, though we are accustomed to asso-
ciate more or less of passivity with martyrdom, and he fell while aggressively
repelling with arms an armed mob. In both cases the terms are correctly
used, as the circumstances conclusively show. Three presses had already
been destroyed on the same spot by the same community ; a fourth had been
procured, whose destruction meant silence — the opposition, grown more
desperate, having already almost compassed the editor's assassination. He
might have removed the " Observer" to Quincy or to Springfield, but there
was no assurance that the liberty of the press would be vindicated in either
place. The violence at Alton was, indeed, actually preceded and begotten
by violence at St. Louis, but the mob-spirit was everywhere endemic at the
North. With unsurpassable courage, Lovejoy accepted the decision of his
friends that the stand should be made then and there, not as for an anti-sla-
very publication merely or mainly, but for the right under the Constitution
and upon American soil to utter and print freely, subject only to the re-
straints and penalties of the law. To maintain this right against local public
sentiment, the impotence of the city authorities compelled the friends of law
and order to enroll themselves in a military organization (having the mayor's
approval), whose first duty it was to prevent an anti-slavery convention from
being broken up, and next to guard the newly-arrived press from being
thrown into the Mississippi like its predecessors. Among them, not more in
defence of himself or of his property than of the principle at stake, Lovejoy
took his place ; formed one of the little band of twenty who held the ware-
house on the night of the fatal attack ; volunteered, with a rash and mag-
nanimous heroism, among the first who left the burning building to face the
infuriated and drunken mob ; was ambushed and fell, the only victim of the
defence.
The greatest feeling produced by this atrocity was in the city the most re-
mote from the scene — in Boston, where, by a rich compensation, it overcame
the timidity of Channing, revealed the oratory and fixed the destiny of Wen-
dell Phillips, and with him drew Edmund Quincy into the forefront of the
ranks of the despised abolitionists. The aldermen, who at first refused the
use of Faueuil Hull for an indignation meeting, and Attorney-General Aus-
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
LOS ANGELES. -:- CAL
1861-88] WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. 45
tin, who desecrated tlie hall afresh by declaring that Lovejoy had died as the
fool dieth, were surprised by the demonstration of a new Boston upon which
they had not counted. The Boston which had come near having its Lovejoy
in the person of Mr. Garrison, in October, 1835, had undergone a revolution
in two years— a revolution perhaps to be defined as the Aveakening of South-
ern ascendency. The response of Faneuil Hall to the Alton riot was North-
ern resentment against a pro-slavery invasion, as it seemed.
"With more exactness, however, it may be said that Lovejoy was sacrificed
on Southern soil. All the towns along the Mississippi were frequented by
Southerners, often largely settled by them. Little more than a dozen years
had elapsed since the strenuous exertions of Governor Edward Coles had
barely defeated the attempt of the Southern element in Illinois to legalize
slavery by amending the constitution. Alton, situated in the southern half
of the State, opposite the slave-cursed shore of Missouri and not far from
St. Louis, in intimate commercial relations with the cotton-growing dis-
tricts, was, though owing its prosperity, and even a certain reputation for
philanthropy, to Eastern settlers, predominantly Southern in tone. Southern
divines helped to harden public sentiment against the further countenance
or toleration of Lovejoy ; Southern doctors took an active part in the mob,
and one of them perhaps fired the murderous shot. So, the year before, Cin-
cinnati, tumbling Birney's press into the Ohio, was truly a Southern city; so,
the year after, Philadelphia, burning Pennsylvania Hall to the ground. In
fact, the least Southern and most surprising of all the mobs of that epoch
was precisely the Boston mob against the editor of the " Liberator."
Of this mob every citizen of Boston and its vicinity must have been re-
minded when the news came — not as now by telegraph — of Lovejoy's fate.
" PEACEABLE SEPARATION " MOOTED BY THE ABOLITIONISTS OP 1845.
[From the Same.]
THE levers of disunion ready to the hands of the Massachusetts abolition-
ists were the recent expulsions of the State's delegates from South Caro-
lina and Louisiana, and the impending annexation of Texas. At the annual
meeting, "Wendell Phillips reported resolves that the Governor should de-
mand of the Federal Executive an enforcement of the Constitution, and the
maintenance of Mr. Hoar's right to reside in Charleston ; in default of which
the Legislature should authorize the Governor to proclaim the Union at an
end, recall the Congressional delegation, and provide for the State's foreign
relations. This was the logic of the situation. So far as Massachusetts (or
any free State) was concerned, South Carolina had dissolved the Union :
Federal rights were disregarded in her borders, the Federal laws were subor-
dinate or inoperative, Federal protection could have been exercised only by
force and at the cost of a civil war. There could be no better occasion for
weighing the value of the Union, or for taking the initiative in peaceable
46
WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. [1861-88
separation as advocated by the abolitionists. But no other class or party in
the State was equal to this simple and manly procedure. Governor Briggs's
messages in regard to Messrs. Hoar and Hubbard were unexceptionable in
tone and temper, rhetorically considered ; but they meant nothing and
could effect nothing, since disunion was the only remedy. The Legisla-
ture did, indeed, pass the equally unexceptionable joint resolve? prepared
by Charles Francis Adams, suggesting retaliation with reference to South
Carolina ; but no enactment followed, nor, notoriously, could any such
have been sustained in the Federal courts.
The same paralysis befell the political opposition to the annexation of
Texas. Governor and Legislature pledged Massachusetts anew to the posi-
tion that annexation would have no binding force on her. But how would
it have no binding force ? Texas once in the Union, would laws passed by
the aid of her representatives be resisted ? No one not an abolitionist ever
advocated any measure of irreconcilability — so to call it — except Henry Wil-
son in the Massachusetts Senate. His proposal, to " provide by law that the
moment a man held as a slave in Texas stepped upon the soil of Massachu-
setts, his liberty should be as sacred as his life," and to " make it a high crime
to molest him," fell dead, and was, in fact, though well meant, absurd, either
as a practicable mode of opposition or as a quid pro quo, even supposing the
whole North to have taken this stand along with Massachusetts. The truth
was, slavery was dragging the country down an inclined plane, and there
was no escape but by cutting the rope that bound the North to the South.
The impracticable politicians of all parties, therefore, who struggled against
the inevitable, while refusing to look facts in the face, filled the year at which
we have now arrived with the emptiest of empty words. ....
Months passed, during which inaction on the part of the North paved the
way to the catastrophe, and sapped the courage of the resistants — the politi-
cal and "practical" resistants. William H. Seward, in a public letter to
Salmon P. Chase, submitted in advance to the inevitable annexation of Tex-
as, repudiating disunion. His counter measure was to enlarge the area of
freedom — as if the South did not provide for that by coupling the admission
of a slave State with that of a free State. Already, in February, Florida had
been thus admitted into the Union, paired with Iowa, in spite of the intense
Northern feeling against more slave States aroused in the case of Texas ; in
spite, too, of the Florida Constitution making slavery perpetual, and author-
izing the Legislature to forbid the landing of any colored seaman — the tol-
eration of which by Congress was a virtual approval of the action of South
Carolina towards Mr. Hoar. Yet still Mr. Seward contended — " We must
resist unceasingly the admission of slave States, and demand the abolition
of slavery in the District of Columbia " ; and he even dreamed, when one in-
dependent Congress had been elected, that the " internal slave-trade will be
subjected to inquiry. Amendments to the Constitution will be initiated."
Robert C. Winthrop made his surrender on the Fourth of July, and in Fan-
euil Hall, toasting, in famous words, " Our country . . . however
bounded ; ... to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all
our hands " — an abasement which accepted war with Mexico, along with
1861-88] WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON. 47
that spread of slave territory which he had hitherto strenuously opposed.
In the same hall of heroic memories the Whig State Convention in October
withdrew from the opposition, and left the Constitutional question to the
Supreme Court of the United States ! Governor Slade of Vermont could no
longer urge his State to take, unsupported, an unrelenting attitude, and
sought comfort in the illusion that the entrance of Texas into the Union
would make slavery a national institution as never before, and expose it to
attack as such. Webster, accusing the Liberty Party (by its defeat of Clay)
of having procured annexation, hoped, or professed to hope, the consumma-
tion might yet be averted ; as Charles Francis Adams, seeing nothing fur-
ther left, and disregarding the example of Florida, vainly looked for some
modification of the pro-slavery Constitution of Texas. Abbott Lawrence and
Nathan Appletou, ex-members of Congress, not only desisted from opposi-
tion to a deed actually accomplished, but rebuked those of their colleagues
whose conscience and zeal outran their discretion as "practical men."
A1
POST-MERIDIAN.
EVENING.
GE cannot wither her whom not gray hairs
Nor furrowed cheeks have made the thrall of Time;
For Spring lies hidden under Winter's rime,
And violets know the victory is theirs.
Even so the corn of Egypt, unawares,
Proud Nilus shelters with engulfing slime;
So Etna's hardening crust a more sublime
Volley of pent-up fires at last prepares.
O face yet fair, if paler, and serene
With sense of duty done without complaint
O venerable crown! — a living green,
Strength to the weak, and courage to the faint —
Thy bleaching locks, thy wrinkles, have but been
Fresli beads upon the rosary of a saint!
The Century Magazine. 1888.
WILLIAM GRAIIAM SUMMER. [1861-88
BORN in Paterson, N. J., 1840.
EXAMINATION OF A CARDINAL PROTECTIONIST THEORY.
[Protectionism. 1885.]
rpHE protectionist says that he is going to create an industry. Let us ex-
-L amine this notion also from his standpoint, assuming the truth of his
doctrine, and see if we can find anything to deserve confidence. A protective
tax, according to the protectionist's definition, "has for its object to effect
the diversion of a part of the labor and capital of the people . . . into
channels favored or created by law." If we follow out this proposal, we shall
see what those channels are, and shall see whether they are such as to make
us believe that protective taxes can increase wealth.
What is an industry ? Some people will answer : It is an enterprise which
gives employment. Protectionists seem to hold this view, and they claim
that they "give work" to laborers when they make an industry. On that
notion we live to work ; we do not work to live. But we do not want work.
We have too much work. We want a living ; and work is the inevitable but
disagreeable price we must pay. Hence we want as much living at as little
price as possible. We shall see that the protectionist does "make work " in
the sense of lessening the living and increasing the price. But if we want a
living we want capital. If an industry is to pay wages, it must be backed up
by capital. Therefore protective taxes, if they were to increase the means of
living, would need to increase capital. How can taxes increase capital ?
Protective taxes only take from A to give to B. Therefore, if B by this ar-
rangement can extend his industry and "give more employment," A's power
to do the same is diminished in at least an equal degree. Therefore, even on
that erroneous definition of an industry, there is no hope for the protectionist.
An industry is an organization of labor and capital for satisfying some
need of the community. It is not an end in itself. It is not a good thing to
have in itself. It is not a toy or an ornament. If we could satisfy our needs
without it, we should be better off, not worse off. How then can we create
industries ?
If any one will find, in the soil of a district, some new power to supply hu-
man needs, he can endow that district with a new industry. If he will in-
vent a mode of treating some natural deposit, ore or clay for instance, so as
to provide a tool or utensil which is cheaper and more convenient than what
is in use, he can create an industry. If he will find out some new and better
way to raise cattle or vegetables, which is, perhaps, favored by the climate,
he can do the same. If he invents some new treatment of wool, or cotton, or
silk, or leather, or makes a new combination which produces a more con-
venient or attractive fabric, he may do the same. The telephone is a new in-
dustry. What measures the gain of it ? Is it the "employment" of certain
persons in and about telephone offices ? The gain is in the satisfaction of the
1861-88] WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNEJt, 49
need of communication between people at less cost of time and labor. It is
useless to multiply instances. It can be seen what it is to "create an indus-
try/' It takes brains and energy to do it. How can taxes do it ?
Suppose that we create an industry even in this sense. What is the gain
of it ? The people of Connecticut are now earning their living by employ-
ing their labor and capital in certain parts of the industrial organization.
They have changed their " industries" a great many times. If it should be
found that they had a new and better chance hitherto undeveloped, they
might all go into it. To do that they must abandon what they are now do-
ing. They would not change unless gains to be made in the new industry
were greater. Hence the gain is the difference only between the profits of
the old and the profits of the new. The protectionists, however, when they
talk about "creating an industry," seem to suppose that the total profit of
the industry (and some of them seem to think that the total expenditure
of capital) measures their good work. In any case, then, even of a true and
legitimate increase of industrial power and opportunity, the only gain would
be a margin. But, by our definition, "a protective duty has for its object to
effect the diversion of a part of the capital and labor of the people out of the
channels in which it would otherwise run." Plainly this device involves coer-
cion. People would need no coercion to go into a new industry which had
a natural origin in new industrial power or opportunity. No coercion is
necessary to make men buy dollars at 98 cents apiece. The case for coercion
is when it is desired to make them buy dollars at 101 cents apiece. Here the
statesman with his taxing power is needed, and can do something. What ?
He can say : "If you will buy a dollar at 101 cents, I can and will tax John
over there two cents for your benefit ; one to make up your loss and the other
to give you a profit." Hence, on the protectionist's own doctrine, his device
is not needed, and cannot come into use, when a new industry is created in
the true and only reasonable sense of the words, but only when and because
he is determined to drive the labor and capital of the country into a disad-
vantageous and wasteful employment.
Still further, it is obvious that the protectionist, instead of "creating a
new industry," has simply taken one industry and set it as a parasite to live
upon another. Industry is its own reward. A man is not to be paid a pre-
mium by his neighbors for earning his own living. A factory, an insane-asy-
lum, a school, a church, a poor-house, and a prison cannot be put in the
same economic category. We know that the community must be taxed to
support insane-asylums, poor-houses, and jails. When we come upon such
institutions we see them with regret. They are wasting capital. We know
that the industrious people all about, who are laboring and producing, must
part with a portion of their earnings to supply the waste and loss of these
institutions. Hence the bigger they are the sadder they are. . ....
But the factories and farms and f ounderies are the productive institutions
which must provide the support of these consuming institutions. If the fac-
tories, etc., put themselves on a line with the poor-houses, or even with the
schools, what is to support them and all the rest too ? They have nothing
behind them. If in any measure or way they turn into burdens and objects of
50 WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. [1861-88
care and protection, they can plainly do it only by part of them turning upon
the other part, and this latter part will have to bear the burden of all the
consuming institutions, including the consuming industries. For a protected
factory is not a producing industry. It is a consuming industry ! If a factory
is (as the protectionist alleges) a triumph of the tariff, that is, if it would
not be but for the tariff (and otherwise he has nothing to do with it), then it
is not producing ; it is consuming. It is a burden to be borne. The bigger
it is the sadder it is.
If a protectionist shows me a woollen-mill and challenges me to deny that
it is a great and valuable industry, I ask him whether it is due to the tariff.
If he says no, then I will assume that it is an independent and profitable
establishment, but then it is out of this discussion as much as a farm or a
doctor's practice. If he says yes, then I answer that the mill is not an in-
dustry at all. We pay 60 per cent, tax on cloth simply in order that that mill
may be. It is not an institution for getting us cloth, for, if we went into
the market with the same products which we take there now and if there
were no woollen-mill, we should get all the cloth we want, but the mill is
simply an institution for making cloth cost per yard 60 per cent, more of our
products than it otherwise would. That is the one and only function which
the mill has added, by its existence, to the situation. I have called such a
factory a " nuisance." The word has been objected to. The word is of no
consequence. He who, when he goes into a debate, begins to whine and cry
as soon as the blows get sharp, should learn to keep out. What I meant was
this : A nuisance is something which by its existence and presence in soci-
ety works loss and damage to the society — works against the general inter-
est, not for it. A factory which gets in the way and hinders us from attain-
ing the comforts which we are all trying to get — which makes harder the
terms of acquisition when we are all the time struggling by our arts and
sciences to make those terms easier — is a harmful thing, and noxious to the
common interest.
Hence, once more, starting from the protectionist's hypothesis, and assum-
ing his own doctrine, we find that he cannot create an industry. He only
fixes one industry as a parasite upon another, and just as certainly as he has
intervened in the matter at all, just so certainly has he forced labor and cap-
ital into less favorable employment than they would have sought if he had
let them alone. When we ask which "channels" those are which are to be
"favored or created by law," we find that they are, by the hypothesis, and
by the whole logic of the protectionist system, the industries which do not
pay. The protectionists propose to make the country rich by laws which
shall favor or create these industries ; but these industries can only waste
capital, so that if they are the source of wealth, waste is the source of wealth.
Hence the protectionist's assumption that by his system he could correct our
errors and lead us to greater prosperity than we would have obtained under
liberty, has failed again, and we find that he wastes what power we do possess.
1861-88] WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER. 51
THE " LOCO-FOCOS " OF 1835.
[Andrew Jackson as a Public Man. 1882.]
A FACTION arose in New York City in 1834-35, which called itself the
-£A_ " equal rights party/' or the " Jeffersonian anti-monopolists." The
organization of the Tammany Hall democrats, under Van Buren and the re-
gency, had become rigid and tyrannical. The equal rights faction revolted,
and declared that Tammany was aristocratic. They represented a new up-
heaval of democracy. They took literally the dogmas which had been taught
them, just as the original Jackson men had done ten years before, only that
now, to them, the Jackson party seated in power seemed to have drifted
away from the pure principles of democracy, just as Monroe had once ap-
peared to the Jackson men to have done. The equal rights men wanted "to
return to the Jeffersonian fountain" again, and make some new deductions.
They revived and extended the old doctrines which Duane, of the "Aurora,"
taught at the beginning of the century in his "Politics for Farmers," and
similar pamphlets. In general the doctrines and propositions might be de-
scribed as an attempt to apply the procedure of a township democracy to a
great state. The equal rights men held meetings at first secretly, at four
different places, and not more than two successive times at the same place.
They were, in a party point of view, conspirators, rebels — " disorganizes,"
in short ; and they were plotting the highest crime known to the political
code in which they had been educated, and which they accepted. Their plat-
form was : No distinction between men save merit ; gold and silver the only
legitimate and proper circulating medium ; no perpetuities or monopolies ;
strict construction of the Constitution ; no bank charters by States (be-
cause banks of issue favor gambling, and are " calculated to build up and
strengthen in our country the odious distribution of wealth and power against
merits and equal rights"); approval of Jackson's administration; election
of President by direct popular vote. They favored the doctrine of instruc-
tions. They also advocated free trade and direct taxes. They had some very
sincere and pure-minded men among them, a large number of overheated
brains, and a still larger number of demagogues, who were seeking to organ-
ize the faction as a means of making themselves so valuable that the regular
managers would buy them. The equal rights men gained strength so rap-
idly that, on the 29th of October, 1835, they were able to offer battle to the
old faction at a primary meeting in Tammany Hall for the nomination of a
congressman and other officers. The "regular" party entered the hall by
the back entrance, and organized the meeting before the doors were opened.
The anti-monopolists poured in, nominated a chairman and elected him, ig-
noring the previous organization. The question of ' ' equal rights " between
the two chairmen was then settled in the old original method which has pre-
vailed ever since there has been life on earth. The equal rights men dispos-
sessed the other faction, and so proved the justice of their principles. The
non-equal rights party then left the hall, but they "caused " the equal rights
men " to be subjected to a deprivation of the right" to light by turning out
52 WILLIAM GRAHAM BUHNER. [1861^86
the gas. The equal rights men were thus forced to test that theory of nat-
ural rights which affirms that said rights are only the chance to have good
things, if one can get them. In spite of their dogma of the equality of all
men, which would make a prudent man no better than a careless one, and a
man' with capital no better than one without capital, the equal rights men
had foreseen the emergency, and had provided themselves with capital in the
shape of candles and loco-foco matches. They thus established their right
to light, against nature and against their enemies. They duly adopted their
platform, nominated a ticket, and adjourned. The regular leaders met else-
where, nominated the ticket which they had previously prepared, and dis-
pensed, for that occasion, with the ornamental and ceremonious formality
of ?. primary meeting to nominate it.
On the next day the "Courier and Enquirer" dubbed the equal rights
party the loco-focos, and the name clung to them. Hammond quotes a cor-
respondent who correctly declared that "the workingmen's party and the
equal rights party have operated as causes, producing effects that will shape
the course of the two great parties of the United States, and consequently the
destinies of this great republic. " The faction, at least in its better elements,
evidently had convictions and a programme. It continued to grow. The
" Evening Post " became its organ. That paper quarrelled with the admin-
istration on Kendall's order about the mails, and was thereupon formally
read out of the party by the " Globe." The loco-focos ceased to be a revolting
faction. They acquired belligerent rights. The faction, however, in its in-
ternal economy ran the course of all factious. It went to extremes, and then
began to split up. In January, 1836, it declared its independence of the
Democratic-Eepublican party. This alienated all who hated the party tyran-
ny, but who wanted reform in the party. The faction declared itself opposed
to all acts of incorporation, and held that all such acts were repealable. It
declared that representative institutions were only a practical convenience,
and that legislatures could not create vested rights. Then it went on to
adopt a platform of "equality of position, as well as of rights."
In October, 1836, Tammany made overtures to the equal rights men for a
reunion, in preparation for the Presidential election. Some of the loco-focos
wanted to unite ; others refused. The latter were the men of conviction ; the
former were the traders. The former called the latter ' ' rumps " ; the latter
called the former "buffaloes." Only one stage now remained to complete the
old and oft-repeated drama of faction. A man named Slamm, a blatant ig-
noramus, who, to his great joy, had been arrested by order of the Assembly
of New York for contempt and breach of privilege, and who had profited to
the utmost by this incident to make a long "argument" against the "privi-
lege" of an American Legislature, and to pose as a martyr to equal rights,
secured his own election to the position of secretary of the equal rights party.
He then secured a vote that no constitutional election could be held unless
called by the secretary. He never would call one. There were those who
thought that he sold out the party.
Thus the faction perished ignominiously, but it was not without reason
that its name passed, a little later, to the whole Jackson- Van Buren party;
1861-88]
AMELIA WALSTIEN CARPENTER.
53
i. e., to the radical anti-paper currency, not simply anti-United States Bank,
wing of the national Democratic party. The equal rights men maintained
impracticable doctrines'of civil authority and fantastic dogmas about equal-
ity, but when these were stripped away there remained in their platform
sound doctrines and imperishable ideas. They first put the Democratic party
on the platform which for five or six years it had been trying to find. When
it did find that platform it was most true to itself, and it contributed most
to the welfare of the country. To-day the Democratic party is, by tradition, a
party of hard money, free trade, the non-interference theory of government,
and no special legislation. If that tradition be traced up to its source, it will
lead back, not to the Jackson party of 1829, but to the loco-focos of 1835.
Amelia malgtien Carpenter*
BORN in Stephentown, Rensselaer Co., N. Y., 1840.
IN THE SLANT 0' THE SUN.
rT^HE homely country scent of musk
-L Was in the air that past her blew ;
The sunflower seeds fell from their husk,
Black moths and white about her flew ;
The gentlest life ! O sweet and true,
The sweetest soul earth ever knew
Left here, lone in the lonely dusk !
She pins her faded knitting sheath
With wrinkled hands that tremble still ;
Below her white hair's crowning wreath
Her aching eyes with slow tears fill ;
Slow gathered tears that drop until
They seem like other words that breathe
The cry — "Lord! Lord! do thou thy
will!"
Again she lifts the sacred book —
She holds it to her aching eyes:
What stress was e'er that He forsook?
" Lord ! Lord ! " the sufferer cries
(The Lord that he denies —
The Lord he crucifies).
Down from his cross He turns his look —
"To-night— in Paradise! "
Still in the long slant of the sun
The watcher keeps her lonely seat;
Farther the darkening shadows run
And closer gather at her feet.
The day's long toils cease, one by one —
She hears the passing laborers greet ;
"Lord ! Lord ! " her hands in pleading
meet —
"Save her! and yet— Thy will be done!
"Lord! should she come to me once
more,
To-night, — come from her darkened
way —
Yea, should she pause here at my door,
Wouldst Thou not bid me bid her stay?
(Lord — Lord — for this I pray) —
Shepherd, Thy word went long before,
'I seek for them that stray
Far from the fold away ! ' "
The moth above the sunflower wheels,
The lingering light drops from the
skies,
The village bell in music peals,
While in the west the sunset dies.
But lo ! what shape is this that steals
From out the dusk? — that comes and
kneels
And peers into the glazing eyes?
Oh late! too late! Oh woful cries!
O faithful soul! Oh true and wise! —
" To-night! — to-night — in Paradise! "
HENRY WATTER80N. [1861-88
Oftattergon,
BORN in Washington, D. C., 1840.
THE NEW SOUTH.
[Speech at the National Bankers? Convention, Louisville, Ky., 11 October, 1883.]
IT was not, however, to hear of banks and bankers and banking that you did
me the honor to call me before you. I am told that to-day you are consid-
ering that problem which has so disturbed the politicians — the South — and
that you wish me to talk to you about the South. The South ! The South !
It is no problem at all. I thank God that at last we can say with truth, it
is simply a geographic expression. The whole story of the South may be
summed up in a sentence : She was rich, and she lost her riches ; she was poor
and in bondage ; she was set free, and she had to go to work ; she went to work,
and she is richer than ever before. You see it was a groundhog case. The
soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse
of slavery. God passed the rod across the land and smote the people. Then,
in His goodness and mercy, He waved the wand of enchantment, and lo, like
a flower, His blessing burst forth ! Indeed, may the South say, as in the ex-
perience of men it is rare for any to say with perfect sincerity :
" Sweet are the uses of adversity."
The South never knew what independence meant until she was taught by
subjection to subdue herself. We lived from hand to mouth. We had our
debts and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our debts and walloped
our niggers. Under the new we pay our niggers and wallop our debts. We
have no longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts, and can exclaim
with the old darkey at the camp-meeting, who, whenever he got happy, went
about shouting, l ' Bless the Lord ! I'm gittin' fatter an' fatter ! "
The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South wore to its shirt, there
lay concealed a superb manhood. That this manhood was perverted, there is
no doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles, is beyond dispute. That
it took a pride in cultivating what is called " the vices of a gentleman," I am
afraid must be admitted. But, at heart, it was sound ; from that heart flowed
honest Anglo-Saxon blood ; and, when it had to lay aside its " store-clothes"
and put on its homespun, it was equal to the emergency. And the women
of the South took their place by the side of the men of the South, and, with
spinning-wheel and ploughshare, together they made a stand against the wolf
at the door. That was fifteen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward
offered in a single Southern State for wolf skins. The fact is, the very wolves
have got ashamed of themselves and gone to work.
I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my purpose is neither to amuse nor
mislead you. Although my words may seem to carry with them an unbusi-
nesslike levity, I assure you that my design is wholly business-like. You can
see for yourselves what the South has done : what the South can do. If all
1861-88] HENRY WATTER80N. 55
this has been achieved without credit, and without your powerful aid — and I
am now addressing myself to the North and East, which have feared to come
South with their money — what might not be achieved if the vast aggrega-
tions of capital in the fiscal centres should add this land of wine, milk, and
honey to their fields of investment, and give us the same cheap rates which
are enjoyed by nearer, but not safer, borrowers ? The future of the South is
not a whit less assured than the future of the West. "Why should money
which is freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to Alabama and Missis-
sippi ? I perfectly understand that business is business, and that capital is
as unsectional as unsentimental. I am speaking from neither spirit. You
have money to loan. We have a great country to develop.
We need the money. You can make a profit off the development. When I
say that we need money, I do not mean the sort of money once demanded by an
old Georgia farmer, who, in the early days, came up to Milledgeville to see
General Robert Toombs, at the time a director of the State Bank. " Robert,"
says he, " the folks down our way air in need of more money." The profane
Robert replied : " Well, how in are they going to get it ? " " Why/'
says the farmer, " can't you stomp it ?" "Suppose we do stomp it, how are
we going to redeem it ?" " Exactly, Robert, exactly. That was just what I
was coming to. You see the folks down our way air agin redemption." We
want good money, honest money, hard money, money that will redeem itself.
We have given hostages to fortune and our works are before you. I know
that capital is proverbially timid. But what are you afraid of ? is it our cot-
ton that alarms you ? or our corn ? or our sugar ? Perhaps it is our coal and
iron. Without you, in truth, many of these products must make slow progress,
whilst others will continue to lie hid in the bowels of the earth. With you
the South will bloom as a garden and sparkle as a gold-mine ; for, whether
you tickle her fertile plains with a straw or apply a more violent titillation to
her fat mountain sides, she is ready to laugh a harvest of untold riches.
I am not a banker, and it would be an affectation in me to undertake to
advise you in your own business. But there is a point which relates to the
safe investment of money on which I can venture to express an opinion with
some assurance. That is, the political stability, involving questions of law
and order, in the South. My belief is that life and property are as secure in
the South as they are in New England. I am certain that men are at least
as safe in Kentucky and Tennessee as women seem to be in Connecticut.
The truth is, the war is over and the country is whole again. The people,
alwavs homogeneous, have a common National interest. For my own part,
I have never believed in isothermal lines, air-lines, and water-lines separating
distinct races. I no more believe that that river yonder, dividing Indiana
and Kentucky, marks off two distinct species than I believe that the great
Hudson, flowing through the State of New York, marks off distinct species.
Such theories only live in the fancy of morbid minds. We are all one people.
Commercially, financially, morally, we are one people. Divide as we will
into parties, we are one people. It is this sense which gives a guarantee of
peace and order at the South, and offers a sure and lasting escort to all the
capital which may come to us for investment.
EUGENE SCHUYLER. [1861-88
Cugene
BORN in Ithaca, N. Y., 1840.
THE CZAR AS A CARPENTER.
[Peter the Great. A Study of Historical Biography. 1884.]
A T Voronezh, at Archangel, and elsewhere, Peter had met shipwrights
-LA_ from Zaandam, who had praised so much their native town, that he
was convinced that only there could he learn the art of ship-building in its
perfection. His journey from Koppenbriigge and down the Ehine had been
rapid, and passing through Amsterdam without halting, the Tsar reached
Zaandam early on the morning of August 18, having with him only six vol-
unteers, including the Prince of Imeritia and the two brothers Menshik6f .
On the way he saw an old Moscow acquaintance, the smith Gerrit Kist, fish-
ing in the river. He hailed him, and told him for what purpose he had come
to Zaandam. Binding him to absolute secrecy, the Tsar insisted on taking
up his quarters in his house ; but it was necessary first to persuade the wo-
man who already lodged in this small wooden hut to vacate it, and then to
prepare it a little for the illustrious guest. Peter therefore took refuge in
the "Otter" Inn, for it was Sunday, and the streets were thronged with
people, and although he was in a workman's dress, with a tarpaulin hat, yet
the Eussian dress of his comrades excited the curiosity of the crowd. The
next day, he entered himself as a ship-carpenter at the wharf of Lynst Eogge,
on the Buitenzaan.
Peter's stay in Zaandam lasted a week only, and as, during this time, he
visited nearly all the mills and factories in the neighborhood, at one of which
he made a sheet of paper with his own hands, and as the next day after his
arrival he bought a row-boat, and passed much of his time on the water,
supped, dined, and talked familiarly with the families and relations of men
whom he had known in Eussia, he could not have done much work. The
popular curiosity proved too annoying for him. . . . .
The house in which Peter lived at Zaandam has been a place of pilgrimage
for a century, beginning with a royal party, which included the Emperor
Joseph II., Gustavus III., King of Sweden, and the Grand Duke of Eussia
(afterward the Emperor Paul), then travelling as the Comte du Nord. Even
Napoleon visited it. Bought in 1818 by a Eussian princess, at that time
Queen of Holland, it is now preserved with great care inside a new building.
In itself it is no more worth visiting than any other house where Peter may
have been forced to spend a week. It is only of interest as being the spot
where the ruler of a great country sought to gain knowledge of an art which
amused him, and which he thought would be beneficial to his people. His
real life as a workman was all in Amsterdam.
During the festivities Peter asked the Burgomaster Witsen, whose person-
al acquaintance he had at last made, whether it would not be possible for him
to work at the docks of the East India Company, where he could be free from
1861-88] EUGENE SCHUYLER. 57
the public curiosity which so troubled him at Zaandam. The next day, at a
meeting of the directors of the East India Company, it was resolved to allow
" a high personage, present here incognito," to work at the wharf, to assign
him a house in which he could live undisturbed within the precincts, and
that, as a mark of their respect, they would proceed to the construction of a
frigate, in order that he might see the building of a ship from the beginning.
This frigate was to be one hundred or one hundred and thirty feet long, ac-
cording to the wisli of the Tsar, though the Company preferred the length
of one hundred feet. The Tsar was at the dinner of state given to the em-
bassy by the city of Amsterdam when he received a copy of this resolution.
He wished to set to work immediately, and was with difficulty persuaded to
wait for the fireworks and the triumphal arch prepared in his honor ; but
as soon as the last fires had burnt out, in spite of all entreaties he set out
for Zaandam on his yacht in order to fetch his tools. He returned early the
next morning, August 30, and went straight to the wharf of the East India
Company, at Oostenburg.
For more than four months, with occasional absences, he worked here at
ship-building, under the direction of the Baas Gerrit Claes Pool. Ten of the
Kussian " volunteers " set to work at the wharf with him. The rest were
sent to other establishments to learn the construction of masts, boats, sails,
and blocks, while Prince Alexander of Imeritia went to the Hague to study
artillery, and a certain number of others were entered as sailors before the
mast. The first three weeks were taken up with the preparations of materi-
als. On September 19, Peter laid the keel of the new frigate, one hundred
feet in length, to be called " the Apostles Peter and Paul," and on the next
day wrote to the Patriarch at Moscow as follows :
' i "We are in the Netherlands, in the town of Amsterdam, and by the mercy
of God, and by your prayers, are alive and in good health, and, following the
divine command given to our forefather Adam, we are hard at work. What
we do is not from any need, but for the sake of learning navigation, so that,
having mastered it thoroughly, we can, when we return, be victors over the
enemies of Jesus Christ, and liberators of the Christians who live under
them, which I shall not cease to wish for until my latest breath."
Peter allowed no difference to be made between himself and the other work-
men, and it is said that when the Earl of Portland and another nobleman
came from the king's chateau at Loo to have a sight of him, the overseer, in
order to point him out, said : " Carpenter Peter of Zaandam, why don't you
help your comrades ?" and Peter, without a word, placed his shoulder under
the timber which several men were carrying, and helped to raise it to its place.
In the moments of rest, the Tsar, sitting down on a log, with his hatchet be-
tween his knees, was willing to talk to any one who addressed him simply as
Carpenter Peter, or Baas Peter, but turned away and did not answer those
who called him Sire or Your Majesty. He never liked long conversations.
When Peter came home from the wharf, he devoted much of his time to
learning the theory of ship-building, for which he had to make additional
studies in geometry. His note-books, which have been carefully preserved,
show the thoroughness with which he worked
gg KATE FIELD. [1861-88
In his hours of recreation, Peter's curiosity was insatiable. He visited fac-
tories, workshops, anatomical museums, cabinets of coins, botanical gardens,
theatres, and hospitals, inquired about everything he saw, and was soon rec-
ognized by his oft-repeated phrases : " What is that for ? How does that
work ? That will I see." He journeyed to Texel, and went again to Zaan-
dam to see the Greenland whaling fleet. In Leyden he made the acquaint-
ance of the great Boerhave, and visited the celebrated botanical garden
under his guidance, and in Delft he studied the miscroscope under the natu-
ralist Leeuwenhoek. He made the intimate acquaintance of the Dutch mil-
itary engineer Baron Van Coehorn, and of Admiral Van Scheij. He talked
of architecture with Simon Schynvoet, visited the museum of Jacob de
Wilde, and learned to etch under the direction of Schonebeck. An imr
pression of a plate he engraved — for he had some knowledge of drawing — of
Christianity victorious over Islam, is still extant. He often visited the dis-
secting- and lecture-room of Professor Ruysch, entered into correspondence
with him, and finally bought his cabinet of anatomical preparations. He
made himself acquainted with Dutch home and family life, and frequented
the society of the merchants engaged in the Russian trade. He became
especially intimate with the Thessing family, and granted to one of the
brothers the right to print Russian books at Amsterdam, and to introduce
them into Russia. Every market day he went to the Botermarkt, mingled
with the people, studied their trades, and followed their life. He took les-
sons from a travelling dentist, and experimented on his servants and suite ;
he mended his own clothes, and learned cobbling enough to make himself a
pair of slippers. He visited the Protestant churches, and of an evening he
did not forget the beer-houses, which we know so well through the pencils of
Teniers, Brouwer, and Van Ostade.
The frigate on which Peter worked so long was at last launched, and proved
a good and useful ship for many years, in the East India Company's service.
fcate
BORN in St. Louis, Mo.
SOME REMINISCENCES OF LANDOR.
[Last Days of Walter Savage Landor.—The Atlantic Monthly. 1866.]
IT was a modest house in a modest street that Landor inhabited during
the l&st six years of his life. Tourists can have no recollection of the
Via Nunziatina, directly back of the " Carmine/' in the old part of Flor-
ence ; but there is no loving lounger about those picturesque streets that does
not remember how, strolling up the Via del Seragli, one encounters the old
shrine to the Madonna which marks the entrance to that street made his-
torical henceforth for having sheltered a great English writer. There, half-
1861-88] KATE FIELD. 59
way down the via, in that little two-story casa, No. 2671, dwelt Walter Sav-
age Landor, with his English housekeeper and cameriera. Sitting-room,
bed-room, and dining-room opened into each other ; and in the former he
was always found, in a large arm-chair, surrounded by paintings ; for he de-
clared he could not live without them. His snowy hair and beard of patri-
archal proportions, clear, keen, gray eyes, and grand head, made the old poet
greatly resemble Michel Angelo's world-renowned masterpiece of "Moses" ;
nor was the formation of Landor's forehead unlike that of Shakespeare.
"If, as you declare," said he, jokingly, one day, " I look like that meekest
of men, Moses, and like Shakespeare, I ought to be exceedingly good and
somewhat clever. "
At Landor's feet was always crouched a beautiful Pomeranian dog, the gift
of his kind American friend, William W. Story. The affection existing be-
tween " Gaillo" and his master was really touching. Gaillo's eyes were al-
ways turned towards Landor's ; and upon the least encouragement the dog
would jump into his lap, lay his head most lovingly upon his master's neck,
and generally deport himself in a very human manner. "Gaillo is such a
dear dog ! " said Landor, one day, while patting him. "We are very fond of
each other, and always have a game of play after dinner ; sometimes, when
he is very good, we have two. I am sure I could not live if he died ; and
I know that when I am gone he will grieve for me." Thereupon Gaillo
wagged his tail, and looked piteously into padrone's face, as much as to say
he would be grieved indeed. Upon being asked if he thought dogs would be
admitted into heaven, Landor answered : " And, pray, why not ? They have
all of the good and none of the bad qualities of man." No matter upon what
subject conversation turned, Gaillo's feelings were consulted. He was the
only and chosen companion of Landor in his Avalks ; but few of the Floren-
tines who stopped to remark the vecchio con quel bel canino knew how great
was the man upon whom they thus commented.
It is seldom that England gives birth to so rampant a republican as Lan-
dor. Born on the 30th of January, two years before our Declaration of In-
dependence, it is probable that the volcanic action of those troublous times
had no little influence in permeating the mind of the embryo poet with that
enthusiasm for and love of liberty for which he was distinguished in maturer
years. From early youth Landor was a poor respecter of royalty and rank
per se. He often related, with great good-humor, an incident of his boyhood
which brought his democratic ideas into domestic disgrace. An influential
bishop of the Church of England, happening to dine with young Landor's
father one day, assailed Person, and, with self -assumed superiority, thinking
to annihilate the old Grecian, exclaimed : " We have no opinion of his schol-
arship." Irate at this stupid pronunciamento against so renowned a man,
young Landor looked up, and, with a sarcasm the point of which was not in
the least blunted by age, retorted : " We, my Lord ? " Of course such unheard-
of audacity and contempt of my Lord Bishop's capacity for criticism was
severely reprobated by Landor senior ; but no amount of reproof could force
his son into a confession of sorrow.
" At Oxford," said Landor, " I was about the first student who wore his
60
KATE FIELD. [1861-88
hair without powder. < Take care/ said my tutor ; ' they will stone you for
a republican. ' The Whigs (not the wigs) were then unpopular ; but I stuck
to my plain hair and queue tied with black ribbon."
Of Laudor's mature opinion of republics in general we glean much from a
passage of the " Pentameron," in which the author adorns Petrarca with his
jwn fine thoughts :
" When the familiars of absolute princes taunt us, as they are wont to do,
with the only apothegm they ever learnt by heart — namely, that it is better
to be ruled by one master than by many — I quite agree with them ; unity of
power being the principle of republicanism, while the principle of despotism
is division and delegation. In the one system, every man conducts his own
affairs, either personally or through the agency of some trustworthy repre-
sentative, which is essentially the same : in the other system, no man, in qual-
ity of citizen, has any affairs of his own to conduct ; but a tutor has been as
much set over him as over a lunatic, as little with his option or consent, and
without any provision, as there is in the case of the lunatic, for returning rea-
son. Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent in them, as active in
the particles as in the mass, in the circumference as in the centre. Eternal
it must be, as truth and justice are, although not stationary."
Let Europeans who, having predicted the dismemberment of our Union,
proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who be-
lieve that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Eepublic, think well
of what great men have written. Though North America were submerged
to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to
a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as the elements endure
— borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of air, abiding its opportu-
nity to become an active principle. Absorbed in our own peculiar form of
egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has cast the cause of humanity
upon one die, to prosper or perish by the chances of our game. What belit-
tling of the Almighty ! what magnifying of ourselves !
Though often urged, Landor never became a candidate for Parliamentary
honors. Political wire-pulling was not to the taste of a man who, notwith-
standing large landed interests, could say : "I never was at a public dinner,
at a club or hustings. I never influenced or attempted to influence a vote,
and yet many, and not only my own tenants, have asked me to whom they
should give theirs." Nor was he ever presented at court, although a presen-
tation would have been at the request of the (at that time) regent. Landor
would not countenance a system of courtrfavor that opens its arms to every
noodle wearing an officer's uniform, and almost universally turns its back
upon intellect. He put not his faith in princes, and of titles says : " For-
merly titles were inherited by men who could not write ; they now are confer-
red on men who will not let others. Theirs may have been the darker age ;
ours is the duller. In tl.-eirs a high spirit was provoked ; in ours, proscribed.
In theirs the bravest were preeminent ; in ours, the basest."
It was impossible to be in Land or' s society a half -hour and not reap advan-
tage. His great learning, varied information, extensive acquaintance with
the world's celebrities, ready wit, and even readier repartee, rendered his
1861-88] KATE FIELD. Q±
conversation wonderfully entertaining. He would narrate anecdote after
anecdote with surprising accuracy, being possessed of a singularly retentive
memory, that could refer to a catalogue of notables far longer than Don Gio-
vanni's picture-gallery of conquests. Names, it is true, he was frequently
unable to recall, and supplied their place with a " God bless my soul, I for-
get everything " ; but facts were indelibly stamped upon his mind. He re-
ferred back to the year one with as much facility as a person of the rising
generation invokes the shade of some deed dead a few years. I looked with
wonder upon a person who remembered Napoleon Bonaparte as a slender
young man, and listened with delight to a voice from so dim a past. " I was
in Paris," said Landor one day, "at the time that Bonaparte made his en-
trance as First Consul. I was standing within a few feet of him when he
passed, and had a capital good look at him. He was exceedingly handsome
then, with a rich olive complexion and oval face, youthful as a girl's. Near
him rode Murat, mounted upon a gold-clad charger, and very handsome he
was too, but coxcombical."
Like the rest of human kind, Landor had his prejudices ; they were very
many. Foremost among them was an antipathy to the Bonaparte family.
It is not necessary to have known him personally to be aware of his detesta-
tion of the first Napoleon, as in the conversation between himself, an Eng-
lish and a Florentine visitor, he gives expression to a generous indignation,
which may well be inserted here, as it contains the pith of what Landor re-
peated in many a social talk. " This Holy Alliance will soon appear unholy to
every nation in Europe. I despised Napoleon in the plenitude of his power
no less than others despise him in the solitude of his exile : I thought him
no less an impostor when he took the ermine than when he took the emetic.
I confess I do not love him the better, as some mercenaries in England and
Scotland do, for having been the enemy of my country ; nor should I love
him the less for it had his enmity been principled and manly. In what man-
ner did this cruel wretch treat his enthusiastic admirer and humble follower,
Toussaint 1'Ouverture ? He was thrown into a subterranean cell, solitary,
dark, damp, pestiferously unclean, where rheumatism racked his limbs, and
where famine terminated his existence." Again, in his written opinions of
Caesar, Cromwell, Milton, and Bonaparte, Landor criticises the career of the
latter with no fondness, but with much truth, and justly says that " Napo-
leon, in the last years of his sovereignty, fought without aim, vanquished
without glory, and perished without defeat."
Great as was Lander's dislike to the uncle, it paled before his detestation
of the reigning Emperor — a detestation too general to be designated an
idiosyncrasy on the part of the poet. We always knew who was meant when
a sentence was prefaced with "that rascal " or "that scoundrel " ; such were
the epithets substituted for the name of Louis Napoleon. Believing the
third Napoleon to be the worst enemy of his foster-mother, Italy, as well as
of France, Landor bestowed upon him less love, if possible, than the major-
ity of Englishmen. Having been personally acquainted with the Emperor
when he lived in England as an exile, Landor, unlike many of Napoleon's
enemies, acknowledged the superiority of his intellect. " I used to see a
g2 HENRY BERNARD CARPENTER. [1861-88
great deal of the Prince when he was in London. I met him very frequently
of an evening at Lady Blessington's, and had many conversations with him,
as he always sought me and made himself particularly civil. He was a very
clever man, well informed on most subjects. The fops used to laugh at him
and call him a bore. A coxcombical young lord came up to me one evening
after the Prince had taken his leave, and said, ' Mr. Landor, how can you
talk to that fool, Prince Napoleon ? ' To which I replied, ' My Lord, it takes
a fool to find out that he is not a wise man ! ' His Lordship retired somewhat
discomfited," added Landor with a laugh. " The Prince presented me with
his work on Artillery, and invited me to his house. He had a very handsome
establishment, and was not at all the poor man he is often said to have been."
Of this book Landor writes in an article to the "Quarterly Review" (I
think) : " If it is any honor, it has been conferred on me, to have received
from Napoleon's heir the literary work he composed in prison, well knowing,
as he did, and expressing his regret for, my sentiments on his uncle. The
explosion of the first cannon against Rome threw us apart forever."
Bernard Carpenter*
BOBN in Ireland, 1840.
GARFIELD.
T~ O, as a pure white statue, wrought with care
-L^ By some strong hand that moulds with tear and sigh
Beauty more beautiful then things that die, —
And straight 'tis veiled; cacl whilst all men repair
To see this wonder in the workshop, there!
Behold, it gleams unveiled to curious eye,
Far-seen, high-placed in Art's pale gallery,
Where all stand mute before a work so fair:
So he, our man of men, in vision stands,
With Pain and Patience crowned imperial ;
Death's veil has dropped; far from this house of woe
He hears one love-chant out of many lands,
Whilst from his mystic morn-height he lets fall
His shadow o'er these hearts that bleed below.
1861-88] HENRY MORELAND STANLEY. 53
STANZAS FROM "FRYEBURG."
[Poem at Fryeburg, Me., 1882.]
KEARSARGE.
rpWO crowns of glory clasp thy calm, chaste brow,
-L O ye strong hills, bear witness to my verse,
Thou " Maledetto," mountain of the curse,
Chocorua, blasted by thy chief, and thou,
Kearsarge, slope-shouldered monarch of this vale,
Who gavest thy conquering name to that swift sail
Which caught in Gallic seas the rebel bark,
And downward drove the Alabama's pride •
To deep sea-sleep in Cherbourg's ravening tide,
What time faint Commerce watched a nation's ark
Sinking with shattered side.
WEBSTER.
TFT WAS Magna Charta's morning in July,
J- When, in that temple reared of old to Truth,
He rose, in the bronze bloom of blood-bright youth,
To speak what he respake when death was nigh.
Strongly he stood, Olympian-framed, with front
Like some carved crag where sleeps the lightning's brunt,
Black, thunderous brows, and thunderous deep-toned speech
Like Pericles, of whom the people said
That when he spake it thundered ; round him spread
The calm of summer nights when the stars teach
In silence overhead.
BORN near Denbigh, Wales, 1840. Came to America, 1855.
A MEETING IN THE HEART OF AFRICA.
[How I Found Livingstone. 1872.]
WE push on rapidly, lest the news of our coming might reach the people
of Bunder Ujiji before we come in sight and are ready for them. We
halt at a little brook, then ascend the long slope of a naked ridge, the very
last of the myriads we have crossed. This alone prevents us from seeing the
lake in all its vastness. We arrive at the summit, travel across and arrive at
its western rim, and — pause, reader — the port of Ujiji is below us, embow-
ered in the palms, only five hundred yards from us ! At this grand moment
g4 HENRY MOREL AND STANLEY. [1861-88
we do not think of the hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundred of
hills that we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have trav-
ersed, of the jungles and thickets that annoyed us, of the fervid salt plains
that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor the dangers and
difficulties, now happily surmounted. At last the sublime hour has arrived !
— our dreams, our hopes, and anticipations are now about to be realized !
Our hearts and our feelings are with our eyes as we peer into the palms and
try to make out in which hut or house lives the white man with the gray beard
we heard about on the Malagarazi.
"Unfurl the flags, and load your guns !"
"Ay Wallah, ay Wallah, bana I" respond the men, eagerly.
"One, two, three— fire \"
A volley from nearly fifty guns roars like a salute from a battery of artil-
lery : we shall note its effect presently on the peaceful-looking village below.
"Now, kirangozi, hold the white man's flag up high, and let the Zanzibar
flag bring up the rear. And you men keep close together, and keep firing
until we halt in the market-place, or before the white man's house. You
have said to me often that you could smell the fish of the Tanganika. I can
smell the fish of the Tanganika now. There are fish, and beer, and a long
rest waiting for you. March ! "
Before we had gone a hundred yards our repeated volleys had the effect de-
sired. We had awakened Ujiji to the knowledge that a caravan was coming,
and the people were witnessed rushing up in hundreds to meet us. The mere
sight of the flags informed every one immediately that we were a caravan, but
the American flag, borne aloft by gigantic Asmani, whose face was one vast
smile on this day, rather staggered them at first. However, many of the peo-
ple who now approached us remembered the flag. They had seen it float
above the American Consulate, and from the mast-head of many a ship in the
harbor of Zanzibar, and they were soon heard welcoming the beautiful flag
with cries of "Bindera kisungu !" — a white man's flag ! "Bindera Meri-
kani ! " — the American flag !
Then we were surrounded by them— by Wajiji, Wanyamwezi, Wangwana,
Warundi, Waguhhu, Wamauyuema, and Arabs, and were almost deafened
with the shouts of ' ' Yambo, yambo, bana ! Yambo, bana ! Yambo, bana ! "
To all and each of my men the welcome was given.
We were now about three hundred yards from the village of Ujiji, and the
crowds are dense about me. Suddenly I hear a voice on my right say :
"Good morning, sir I"
Startled at hearing this greeting in the midst of such a crowd of black peo-
ple, I turn sharply around in search of the man, and see him at my side, with
the blackest of faces, but animated and joyous — a man dressed in a long white
shirt, with a turban of American sheeting around his woolly head, and I ask :
"Who the mischief are you ?"
"I am Susi, the servant of Dr. Livingstone," said he, smiling, and show-
ing a gleaming row of teeth.
"What ! Is Dr. Livingstone here ?"
"Yes, sir."
1861-88] HENRY MORELAND STANLEY. Q5
' In this village?"
! Yes, sir."
'Are you sure ?"
' Sure, sure, sir. Why, i leave him just now."
'Good morning, sir/' said another voice.
' Hallo," said I, "is this another one?"
; Yes, sir."
' Well, what is your name ? "
'My name is Chumah, sir."
• What ! are you Chumah, the friend of Wekotani ?"
:Yes, sir."
; And is the Doctor well?"
'Not very well, sir."
'Where has he been so long ?"
'In Manyuema."
'Now, you Susi, run, and tell the Doctor I am coming."
:Yes, sir," and off he darted like a madman.
But by this time we were within two hundred yards of the village, and the
multitude was getting denser, and almost preventing our march. Flags and
streamers were out ; Arabs and Wangwana were pushing their way through
the natives in order to greet us, for, according to their account, we belonged
to them. But the great wonder of all was, " How did you come from Unyany-
embe?"
Soon Susi came running back, and asked me my name ; he had told the
Doctor that I was coming, but the Doctor was too surprised to believe him,
and, when the Doctor asked him my name, Susi was ratlier staggered.
But, during Susi's absence, the news had been conveyed to the Doctor that
it was surely a white man that was coming, whose guns were firing and whose
flag could be seen ; and the great Arab magnates of Ujiji — Mohammed bin
Sali, Sayd bin Majid, Abid bin Suliman, Mohammed bin Gharib, and oth-
ers— had gathered together before the Doctor's house, and the Doctor had
come out from his veranda to discuss the matter and await my arrival.
In the meantime the head of the Expedition had halted, and the kiran-
gozi was out of the ranks, holding his flag aloft, and Selim said to me : "I see
the Doctor, sir. Oh, what an old man ! He has got a white beard." And I —
what would I not have given for a bit of friendly wilderness, where, unseen,
I might vent my joy in some mad freak, such as idiotically biting my hand,
turning a somersault, or slashing at trees, in order to allay those exciting
feelings that were wellnigh uncontrollable. My heart beats fast, but I must
not let my face betray my emotions, lest it shall detract from the dignity of
a white man appearing under such extraordinary circumstances.
So I did that which I thought was most dignified. I pushed back the
crowds, and, passing from the rear, walked down a living avenue of people,
until I came in front of the semicircle of Arabs, in the front of which stood
the white man with the gray beard. As I advanced slowly towards him I
noticed he was pale, looked wearied, had a gray beard, wore a bluish cap with
a faded gold band round it, had on a red-sleeved waistcoat, and a pair of gray
66
HENRY MOREL AND STANLEY. [1861-88
tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the pres-
ence of such a mob — would have embraced him, only, he being an English-
man, I did not know how he would receive me ; so I did what cowardice and
false pride suggested was the best thing — walked deliberately to him, took
off my hat, and said :
"Dr. Livingstone, I presume ?"
"Yes," said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap slightly.
I replace my hat on my head, and he puts on his cap, and we both grasp
hands, and I then say aloud :
"I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you."
He answered : "I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you."
I turn to the Arabs, take off my hat to them in response to the saluting of
" Yambos " I receive, and the Doctor introduces them to me by name. Then,
oblivious of the crowds, oblivious of the men who shared with me my dan-
gers, we — Livingstone and I — turn our faces towards his tembe. He points
to the veranda, or, rather, mud platform, under the broad overhanging
eaves ; he points to his own particular seat, which I see his age and experi-
ence in Africa has suggested, namely, a straw mat, with a goatskin over it,
and another skin nailed against the wall to protect his back from contact
with the cold mud. I protest against taking this seat, which so much more
befits him than me, but the Doctor will not yield : I must take it.
We are seated — the Doctor and I — with our backs to the wall. The Arabs
take seats on our left. More than a thousand natives are in our front, filling
the whole square densely, indulging their curiosity, and discussing the fact
of two white men meeting at Ujiji — one just come from Mauyuema, in the
west, the other from Unyanyembe, in the east.
Conversation began. What about ? I declare I ha,ye forgotten. Oh ! we
simultaneously asked questions of one another, such as "How did 3Toucome
here ?" and "Where have you been all this long time ? — the world has be-
lieved you to be dead." Yes, that was the way it began ; but whatever the
Doctor informed me, and that which I communicated to him, I cannot cor-
rectly report, for I found myself gazing at him, conning the wonderful man
at whose side I now sat in Central Africa. Every hair of his head and beard,
every wrinkle of his face, the wanness of his features, and the slightly
wearied look he wore, were all imparting intelligence to me — the knowl-
edge I craved for so much ever since I heard the words, "Take what you
want, but find Livingstone." What I saw was deeply interesting intelligence
to me, and unvarnished truth. I Avas listening and reading at the same time.
What did these dumb witnesses relate to me ?
Oh, reader, had you been at my side on this day in Ujiji, how eloquently
could be told the nature of this man's work ! Had you been there but to see
and hear ! His lips gave me the details ; lips that never lie. I cannot repeat
what he said ; I was too much engrossed to take my note-book out and begin
to stenograph his story. He had so much to say that he began at the end,
seemingly oblivious of the fact that five or six years had to be accounted for.
But his account was oozing out ; it was growing fast into grand proportions —
into a most marvellous history of deeds.
1861-88] HENRY MORELAND STANLEY. Q^j
The Arabs rose up, with a delicacy I approved, as if they intuitively knew
that we ought to be left to ourselves. I sent Bombay with them, to give them
the news they also wanted so much to know about the affairs at Unyanyembe.
Sayd bin Majid was the father of the gallant young man whom I saw at Mas-
ange, and who fought with me at Zimbizo, and who soon afterwards was
killed by Mirambo's Ruga- Ruga in the forest of Wilyankuru ; and, knowing
that I had been there, he earnestly desired to hear the tale of the fight ; but
they had all friends at Unyauyembe, and it was but natural that they should
be anxious to hear of what concerned them.
After giving orders to Bombay and Asmani for the provisioning of the men
of the Expedition, I called " Kaif-Halek," or " How-do-ye-do," and intro-
duced him to Dr. Livingstone as one of the soldiers in charge of certain goods
left at Unyanyembe, whom I had compelled to accompany me to Ujiji, that
he might deliver in person to his master the letter-bag he had been intrusted
with by Dr. Kirk. This was that famous letter-bag marked "Nov. 1st,
1870," which was now delivered into the Doctor's hands 365 days after it left
Zanzibar ! How long, I wonder, had it remained at Unyanyembe had I not
been despatched into Central Africa in search of the great traveller !
The Doctor kept the letter-bag on his knee, then presently opened it,
looked at the letters contained there, and read one or two of his children's
letters, his face in the meanwhile lighting up.
He asked me to tell him the news. " No, Doctor," said I, ' ' read your let-
ters first, which I am sure you must be impatient to read."
"Ah," said he, "I have waited years for letters, and I have been taught
patience. I can surely afford to wait a few hours longer. No, tell me the
general news : how is the world getting along ? "
" You probably know much already. Do you know that the Suez Canal
is a fact — is opened, and a regular trade carried on between Europe and India
through it?"
" I did not hear about the opening of it. Well, that is grand news ! What
else ? "
Shortly I found myself enacting the part of an annual periodical to him.
There was no need of exaggeration — of any penny-a-line news, or of any
sensationalism. The world had witnessed and experienced much the last
few years. The Pacific Railroad had been completed ; Grant had been elect-
ed President of the United States ; Egypt had been flooded with savans ; the
Cretan rebellion had terminated ; a Spanish revolution had driven Isabella
from the throne of Spain, and a regent had been appointed ; General Prim
was assassinated ; a Castelar had electrified Europe with his advanced ideas
upon the liberty of worship ; Prussia had humbled Denmark, and annexed
Schleswig-Holstein, and her armies were now around Paris ; the " Man of
Destiny" was a prisoner at Wilhelmshohe ; the Queen of Fashion and the
Empress of the French was a fugitive ; and the child born in the purple had
lost forever the Imperial crown intended for his head ; the Napoleon dy-
nasty was extinguished by the Prussians, Bismarck and Von Moltke ; and
France, the proud Empire, was humbled to the dust.
What could a man have exaggerated of these facts ? What a budget of
gg MART AINGE DE VERE. [1861-88
news it was to one who had emerged from the depths of the primeval forests
of Manyuema ! The reflection of the dazzling light of civilization was cast
on him while Livingstone was thus listening in wonder to one of the most
exciting pages of history ever repeated. How the puny deeds of barbarism
paled before these ! Who could tell under what new phases of uneasy life
Europe was laboring even then, while we, two of her lonely children, re-
hearsed the tale of her late woes and glories ! More worthily, perhaps, had
the tongue of a lyric Demodocus recounted them ; but, in the absence of the
poet, the newspaper correspondent performed his part as well and truthfully
as he could.
Not long after the Arabs had departed, a dishful of hot hashed-meat cakes
was sent to us by Sayd bin Majid, and a curried chicken was received from
Mohammed bin Sali, and Moeni Kheri sent a dishful of stewed goat-meat
and rice ; and thus presents of food came in succession, and as fast as they
were brought we set to. I had a healthy, stubborn digestion — the exercise I
tad taken had put it in prime order ; but Livingstone— he had been complain-
ing that he had no appetite, that his stomach refused everything but a cup
of tea now and then— he ate also — ate like a vigorous, hungry man ; and, as
le vied with me in demolishing the pan-cakes, he kept repeating, " You
have brought me new life ; you have brought me new life."
" Oh, by George ! " I said, " I have forgotten something. Hasten, Selim,
and bring that bottle ; you know which ; and bring me the silver goblets. I
"brought this bottle on purpose for this event, which I hoped would come to
pass, though often it seemed useless to expect it/'
Selim knew where the bottle was, and he soon returned with it — a bottle
of Sillery champagne ; and, handing the Doctor a silver goblet brimful of the
exhilarating wine, and pouring a small quantity into my own, I said :
"Dr. Livingstone, to your very good health, sir."
"And to yours," he responded.
And the champagne I had treasured for this happy meeting was drunk
with hearty good wishes to each other
jftar?
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y.
A FAREWELL.
[Littell's Living Age— The Century Magazine— etc.']
I~ TAKE my hand from thine and turn away, —
-L Why should I blame that slight and fickle heart,
That cannot bravely go, nor boldly stay,
Too weak to cling, and yet too fond to part ?
Dead passion chains thee where its ashes lie —
Cold is the shrine, ah cold forevermore 1
1861-88]
MART AINGE DE VERB.
69
Why linger, then, while golden moments fly
And sunshine waits beyond the open door ?
Nay — fare thee well — for memory and I
Must linger here, and wait ; we have no choice
Nor other better joy, until we die,
Only to wait, and hear nor step nor voice,
Nor any happy advent come to break
The watch we keep alone — for dear love's sake!
A QUIET HOUSE.
MY house is quiet now — so still!
All day I hear the ticking clock;
The hours are numbered; clear and
shrill
Outside the robins chirp and trill :
My house is quiet now — so still !
But silence breaks my heart. I wait,
And waiting yearn for call or knock,
To hear the creaking of the gate
And footsteps coming, soon or late:
The silence breaks my heart. I wait.
All through the empty house I go,
From hall to hall, from room to room;
The heavy shadows spread and grow,
The startled echoes mock me so,
As through the empty house I go.
Ah, silent house! If I could hear
Sweet noises in the tranquil gloom,
The joyous tumult, loud and near.
That vexed me many a happy year, —
Ah, silent house, if I could hear!
Ah, lonely house ! If once, once more,
My longing eyes might see the stain
Of little foot-prints on the floor —
The sweet child-faces at the door—
Ah, blessed Heaven, but once, once more !
My house and home are very still.
I watch the sunshine and the rain :
The years go on . . . Perhaps Death
will
Life's broken promises fulfil.
My house, my home, my heart, are still !
GOD KEEP YOU.
f~^\ OD keep you, dearest, all this lonely night;
^^ The winds are still,
The moon drops down behind the western hill.
God keep you safely till the morning light.
God keep you, when sweet slumber melts away
And care and strife
Take up new arms, to fret your waking life..
God keep you through the battle of the day.
God keep you. Nay, beloved soul, how vain,
How poor is prayer !
I can but say again, and yet again,
God keep you, every time, and everywhere!
GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS. (1861-88
d&eorge tfre&enc
BORN in Brighton, England, 1840.
THE COMEDIE HUMAINE.
[Honore de Balzac.— The Atlantic Monthly. 1886.]
THE plan of the Comedie Humaine came to Balzac after he had estab-
lished his reputation. He was a long time in discovering his vocation,
but he had been educating himself for the great work of his life during his
dreary apprenticeship. He would become the analyst of society. He would
do for the human family what Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire had done for the brute
creation. The Comedie Humaine was to be a philosophical dissection of so-
ciety, a description of contemporary life and manners from top to bottom,
and embracing all ranks, classes, and occupations. The conception was gi-
gantic, and, when all the defects of the work are allowed for, it will have to
be admitted that the execution is marvellous. Nor could it have been even
partially accomplished save by the method Balzac adopted. A series of sep-
arate and unconnected stories would not have admitted of the subtle working
out of complicated and far-reaching sequences of events such as real life pre-
sents. In the ordinary novel it is necessary either to represent a section of
life cut off abruptly, without beginning or end, or fidelity to truth must be
sacrificed to the exigencies of the plot. Balzac, by carrying his characters
through a whole series of stories, was enabled to present them in many differ-
ent aspects, and at the same time to work out those side-plots and ramifica-
tions of human relationship with which real existence abounds. His method
enlarged his canvas enormously, and also gave an entirely new interest and
emphasis to his situations. But only a master could have accomplished so
great an undertaking with the measure of success he has achieved, or could
have avoided the difficulties inherent in the scheme. In considering the qual-
ifications demanded for the work, some of the faults charged upon Balzac are
at least explained. To do what he attempted — that is, to paint human na-
ture as it existed in his time and country — a mind as many-sided as nature
is needed. But to paint human nature as manifested in the social organiza-
tion, a catholicity of view is required which excludes optimism. It is one
thing to describe the world as it ought to be, or as one would have it, but
quite another to describe it as it is. In most novels we find bad men repent-
ing and becoming good, virtuous men rewarded by material prosperity, the
villains punished and the heroes triumphing. But how far is this from what
actually happens! As John Stuart Mill observes, "The general tendency
of evil is towards further evil. Bodily illness renders the body more suscep-
tible of disease ; it produces incapacity of exertion, sometimes debility of
mind, and often the loss of means of subsistence. Poverty is the parent of a
thousand mental and moral evils. What is still worse, to be injured or op-
pressed, when habitual, lowers the whole tone of the character. One bad ac-
tion leads to others, in the agent himself, in the bystanders, and in the suf-
1861-88] GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS. 71
ferers. All bad qualities are strengthened by habit, and all vices and follies
tend to spread. Intellectual defects generate moral, and moral intellectual ;
and every intellectual or moral defect generates others, and so on without
end." This, of course, is but one side of the case, but it is precisely the side
which fiction usually ignores, to the detriment alike of art and verisimili-
tude. But Balzac did not ignore it, and his recognition and full represen-
tation of it constitute one of his strongest claims upon posterity. In him,
indeed, we see a resemblance to Nature, who distributes good and evil im-
partially, indifferently ; elaborating the hideous and venomous tarantula as
carefully as the gentle dove or the fragrant rose, and not seldom seeming, as
in the tiger, to lavish her most splendid ornamentation upon incarnations of
ferocity and savage power. Balzac took society as he found it. He did, not
attempt to improve it, unless showing it its own image might have an elevat-
ing tendency. He regarded his mission as that of a scientific social histo-
rian. And he undertook not only to describe society in its external aspects,
but to analyze the springs of its various activities, to explain and character-
ize the motives that inspired it, and to dissect away the conventional tissues
which concealed its true desires and intents.
In applying his analytical methods he was deterred by no sentimental re-
straints. He looked everywhere, and set down what he saw — vice or virtue,
honor or infamy, as the case might be. That he should have been a cause of
offence to many was inevitable, and equally so that the frank intrepidity of
his analysis should be denounced as insufferable coarseness. He is coarse.
There is no need to deny it, and his coarseness is often an injury to his work.
But the question is whether, with a more delicate temperament, he could
have done the work before him ; and if the answer to this question is in the
negative, as I think it must be, it will perhaps be considered well that he did
it, even with the drawbacks attached to it. For so powerful a work has never
been accomplished by another, nor is likely to be. And even in his most au-
dacious moods, when, as his critics have said, he seems to take special delight
in the analysis of some monstrous vice, some hideously deformed character,
the marvellous insight which exhibits the inmost workings of a depraved hu-
man soul, the equally marvellous truth of touch which shows the gradual ob-
scuration and extinction of the good principles and tendencies, assuredly
produce upon the reader no seductive or demoralizing effect, but rather the
emotion caused by the spectacle of an implacable destiny urging the lost crea-
ture to its doom.
BUSINESS.
[The Growth of Materialism.— The Atlantic Monthly. 1887.]
IT is one of the most significant facts of the material civilization that its
supreme code — that, namely, upon which what it terms "business" is
based — should declare the union of friendship with the sacred cult of money
to be inadmissible. In the counting-house, the factory, the exchange, there
must be no entangling alliances. There, in the arcana of " business," all
(^9 GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS. [1861-88
pretences, save those which conduce to material advantage, are to be put
aside. Popular philosophy takes the form of proverbs and sententious say-
ings, which, if not always polite and delicate, are generally terse and to the
point. This popular sentiment long ago expressed, in its crude way, the
prevailing idea of the way the world wags, in the rough but expressive words,
" Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. " It is upon this
principle that we usually conduct business in this progressive and hurried
age. It may, perhaps, be thought somewhat curious that the habitual put-
ting off of friendship, as Mohammedans put of! their slippers on entering
the mosque, in proceeding to business, should not have given rise to some sus-
picion of the nature of the cult that requires such a surrender. It is, how-
ever, but the last step in a threefold descent. The first is from the religion
we profess to the religion we practise : the second is from the family code
to the social code : the third is from the latter to the ethics of "business."
Perhaps the graduation of the descent helps to conceal it from most of us.
Perhaps the dazzling effulgence which breaks from the shrine of Mammon
blinds his worshippers to the nature of the approaches by which they reach
his feet. Such, however, is the fact. The principle of business is selfishness
in its most open and undisguised form ; selfishness ministering to its own
rapacity by a hundred base and shameful tricks and chicaneries ; selfishness
assisting itself with deceit and fraud, with overreaching and misrepresenta-
tion ; selfishness pluming itself upon superior intelligence when it effects a
roguery by playing upon the trustfulness of another ; selfishness hardily
sneering at integrity and scoffing at honor as an outworn imbecility. There
is really nothing too base to be perpetrated in the name of business. It
knows no conscience : witness the despatch of ship-loads of rum to poison un-
civilized races. It knows no patriotism : witness the eagerness with which
in all wars traders have supplied their country's enemies with arms and muni-
tions ; and witness, in our own time, the manner in which rebellious Indian
tribes have been repeatedly furnished by American citizens with arms where-
with to fight American soldiers. When the North was in death-grapple with
the South, it supplied our men in the field with shoes that could not be worn,
with shoddy clothing, with fraud in every shape an army contract could cov-
er. In times of peace it calls in adulteration to its aid, and poisons whatever
can be sophisticated. The spirit of the age is shown forth in the invention of
oleomargarine, or sham butter, and especially in the arguments used to de-
fend and justify the product. The haste to be rich, indeed, debases every-
thing and demoralizes every one. There is no great line of modern develop-
ment which is not branded by the rank dishonesty this lust produces. It
flourishes rankly in governmental affairs. Wherever the sense of responsibil-
ity is weakened by the absence of personal headship and ownership, fraud
has entered freely. The land system of the country is honeycombed with it.
The history of the distribution of the public lands is a history of continued
and gigantic robberies. There has never been an issue of land-scrip to any
class, soldiers, Indians, or civilians, or to States for educational purposes,
which has not been made the machinery for effecting these knaveries. Gov-
ernment timber has been stolen as generally as government land. Railroad
1861-88] GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS. 73
enterprises, too, have frequently been made the cover for extraordinary ra-
pacity and dishonesty in the same directions. All this is known far and wide,
but it signifies nothing. It is in no sense a figure of speech that any man
may become rich by positive stealing : that the truth concerning his manner
of obtaining his money may be generally known ; and that not only will he
not lose caste by his immoral methods, but a large number of people will ad-
mire him for his "smartness," which, being interpreted, perhaps means
successful roguery
A chief danger of the situation consists in the fact that all the most potent
evils of materialism tend to feed and fatten upon their own substance, and to
perpetuate themselves after the manner of certain low organisms in the physi-
cal world. It would not, for instance, require more than one or two genera-
tions of undisciplined self-seekers to establish a breed of egoists more self-
centred, more void of sympathy, than any form of advanced civilization has
yet known, and the influence of such men and women upon any society can
be easily perceived. Toleration of fraud and mendacity, for a comparatively
brief period, would produce equally marked consequences. Xor is the effect
less in minor phenomena. In a country where the ballot is the ultimate ex-
pression of popular will, it is only necessary greatly to stimulate the rapacity
of the masses to bring about, in due course, legislation involving confiscation
of the possessions of the rich. In the Greek republics this kind of social
war frequently occurred, and naturally, when matters reached that extrem-
ity, the only law capable of enforcement was that of force majenre; so some-
times the poor overcame the rich, and sometimes the rich overcame the poor,
and whichever side was victor practised hideous cruelties upon the van-
quished. The history of the Paris Commune proves that the lowest depths
of savagery are not beyond the possible descent of civilized societies, and we
cannot therefore solace ourselves with the nattering assurance that like causes
would not produce like effects among us. The decline in the sense of duty
tends to similar consequences. When responsibility decays, regard for the
rights of others is sure to be weakened. Communities which tolerate the
practice of abuses upon themselves are apt to manifest loose morality in gen-
eral. Good citizenship implies self-respect and full recognition of the neigh-
bor's rights, together with equally clear perception of one'aown and one's fel-
low's obligations. Those who are careless of what is due to themselves will be
not less apathetic concerning what is due to the commonwealth. But inciv-
ism is the fruit of unsocial selfishness. "Whoever refuses to do his duty as a
citizen does so because he is absorbed in his personal occupations, and, as a
rule, is thus absorbed by the greed of gain. As all force is masterful, selfish
and greedy men exercise a strong influence on the community, and their
concentration of purpose usually secures their ends. But let the masses also
acquire this energy of acquisitiveness, and apply it through the ballot, and
the strong purpose of the selfish minority must be borne down by the pressure
of the much greater though similar force. What redemption there could be
for a community or a nation so circumstanced it is difficult to see. All re-
version tends to spread. Savagery superimposed upon civilization can only
be met by savagery.
JAMES HERBERT MORSE. [18G1-&8
3|ame$ f etibett jttotge*
BOBN in Hubbardston, Mass., 1841.
LOSS.
rpHE moon last night was shining
•*• Brightly on land and sea,
And I from the pine grove could see her,
As I leaned against a tree.
I doffed my hat, though 'twas midnight,
As she slowly rode through the sky,
And I said to her softly and sadly:
"Pale moon, far off and high,
"Thou seest a thousand churchyards, —
All still they lie, and white ;
And thou pourest thy holy splendor
O'er all of them, night by night.
"There is one on a hillside lying, —
'Tis little and lonely and bare ;
But O shine down more softly,
Sweet moon, when thou comest there ! "
I came to an inland river, —
For on, from state to state,
With a burden not easy to carry,
I have wandered much of late, —
'Twas midnight. Amid the alders
I sat down, the river nigh,
And my shadow sat there beside me,
For the moon was full and high.
The river seemed sighing and sobbing:
"O River, why sighest thou so ? " —
"There are so many tombstones
On my banks, wherever I go ! "
"Then thy sighing and thy sobbing,
O River, I cannot blame."
And I dropped my head on my bosom,
My shadow did the same.
1861-88] GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. 75
aifreD CotongenD,
BORN in Georgetown, Del., 1841.
OLD "BEAU" AND "CRUTCH, THE PAGE."
[Crutch, the Page.— Tales of the Chesapeake. 1880.]
" A ND now/' said Mr. Bee, " as we wair all up late at the club last night,
-£A_ I propose we take a second julep, and as Reybold is coming in he will
jine us."
" I won't give you a farthing !" cried Reybold at the door, speaking to
some one. " Chips, indeed ! "What shall I give you money to gamble away
for ? A gambling beggar is worse than an impostor ! No, sir ! Emphati-
cally no ! "
' ' A dollar for four chips for brave old Beau ! " said the other voice. ' ' I've
struck 'em all but you. By the State Arms ! I've got rights in this distreek !
Everybody pays toll to brave old Beau ! Come down ! "
The Northern Congressman retreated before this pertinacious mendicant
into his committee-room, and his pesterer followed him closely, nothing
abashed, even into the privileged cloisters of the committee. The Southern
members enjoyed the situation.
" Chips, Right Honorable ! Chips for old Beau. Nobody this ten-year
has run as long as you. I've laid for you, and now I've fell on you. Judge
Bee, the fust business befo' yo' committee this mornin' is a assessment for old
Beau, who's away down ! Rheumatiz, bettin' on the black, failure of remit-
tances from Fauqueeah, and other casualties by wind an' flood, have put ole
Beau away down. He's a institution of his country and must be sustained ! "
The laughter was general and cordial amongst the Southerners, while the
intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object ; tall,
grim, half -comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed
mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his
elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd
gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old roue's, patched
up and calked, but the features were those of a once handsome man of style
and carriage.
He wore what appeared to be a cast-off spring overcoat, out of season and
color on this blustering winter day, a rich buff waistcoat of an embossed pat-
tern, such as few persons would care to assume, save, perhaps, a gambler,
negro buyer, or fine "buck" barber. The assumption of a large and flashy
pin stood in his frilled shirt-bosom. He wore watch-seals without the accom-
panying watch, and his pantaloons, though faded and threadbare, were once
of fine material and cut in a style of extravagant elegance, and they covered
his long, shrunken, but aristocratic limbs, and were strapped beneath his
boots to keep them shapely. The boots themselves had been once of var-
nished kid or fine calf, but they were cracked and cut, partly by use, partly
for comfort ; for it was plain that their wearer had the gout, by his aristo-
i^Q GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. [1861-88
cratic hobble upon a gold-mounted cane, which was not the least inconsistent
garniture of his mendicancy.
"Boys/' said Fitzchew Smy, "I s'pose we better come down early.
There's a shillin', Beau. If I had one more sech constituent as you, I should
resign or die premachorely ! "
"There's a piece o' tobacker," said Jeems Bee languidly, "all I can af-
forde, Beau, this mornin'. I went to a chicken-fight yesterday and lost all
my change."
"Mine," said Box Izard, "is a regulation pen-knife, contributed by the
United States, with the regret, Beau, that I can't 'commodate you with a pine
coffin for you to git into and git away down lower than you ever been."
" Yaw's a dollar," said Pontotoc Bibb ; " it'll do for me an' Lowndes Cle-
burn, who's a poet and genius, and never has no money. This buys me off,
Beau, for a month."
The gorgeous old mendicant took them all grimly and leering, and then
pounced upon the Northern man, assured by their twinkles and winks that
the rest expected some sport.
"And now, Right Honorable from the banks of the Susquehanna, Colonel
Reybold — you see, I got your name; I ben a layin' for you ! — come down hand-
some for the Uncle and ornament of his capital and country. What's yore's ? "
" Nothing," said Reybold in a quiet way. " I cannot give a man like you
anything, even to get rid of him."
" You're mean," said the stylish beggar, winking to the rest. " You hate
to put your hand down in yer pocket, mightily. I'd rather be ole Beau, and
live on suppers at the faro banks, than love a dollar like you !"
" I'll make it a V for Beau," said Pontotoc Bibb, " if he gives him a rub
on the raw like that another lick. Durn a mean man, Cleburn ! "
"Come down, Northerner," pressed the incorrigible loafer again; "it
don't become a Right Honorable to be so mean with old Beau."
The little boy on crutches, who had been looking at this scene in a state
of suspense and interest for some time, here cried hotly :
" If you say Mr. Reybold is a mean man, you tell a story, you nasty beg-
gar ! He often gives things to me and Joyce, my sister. He's just got me
work, which is the best thing to give ; don't you think so, gentlemen ?"
" Work," said Lowndes Cleburn, " is the best thing to give away, and the
most onhandy thing to keep. I like play the best — Beau's kind o' play ! "
" Yes," said Jeroboam Coffee ; " I think I prefer to make the chips fly
out of a table more than out of a log."
"I like to work!" cried the little boy, his hazel eyes shining, and his
poor, narrow body beating with unconscious fervor, half suspended on his
crutches, as if he were of that good descent and natural spirit which could
assert itself without bashfulness in the presence of older people. " I like to
work for my mother. If I was strong, like other little boys, I would make
money for her, so that she shouldn't keep any boarders—except Mr. Rey-
bold. Oh ! she has to work a lot ; but she's proud and won't tell anybody.
All the money I get I mean to give her j but I wouldn't have it if I had to
beg for it like that man !"
1861-88J GEORGE ALFRED TOWN8END. 77
' ' 0 Beau/' said Colonel Jeems Bee, "you've cotched it now ! Reybold's
even with you. Little Crutch has cooked your goose ! Crutch is right elo-
quent when his wind will permit."
The fine old loafer looked at the boy, whom he had not previously noticed,
and it was observed that the last shaft had hurt his pride. The boy returned
his wounded look with a straight, undaunted, spirited glance, out of a child's
nature. Mr. Reybold was impressed with something in the attitude of the
two, which made him forget his own interest in the controversy.
Beau answered with a tone of nearly tender pacification :
" Now, my little man ; come, don't be hard on the old veteran ! He's
down, old Beau is, sence the time he owned his blooded pacer and dined with
the Corps Diplomatique; Beau's down sence then ; but don't call the old
feller hard names. We take it back, don't we ? — we take them words back ? "
" There's a angel somewhere," said Lowndes Cleburn, "even in a Wash-
ington bummer, which responds to a little chap on crutches with a clear
voice. Whether the angel takes the side of the bummer or the little chap, is
a p'int out of our jurisdiction. Abe, give Beau a julep. He seems to have
been demoralized by little Crutch's last. "
" Take them hard words back, Bub," whined the licensed mendicant,
with either real or affected pain ; "it's a p'int of honor I'm a standin' on.
Do, now, little Major !"
" I shan't !" cried the boy. " Go and work like me. You're big, and you
called Mr. Eeybold mean. Haven't you got a wife or little girl, or nobody to
work for ? You ought to work for yourself, anyhow. Oughtn't he, gentle-
men ?"
Reybold, who had slipped around by the little cripple and was holding him
in a caressing way from behind, looked over to Beau, and was even more im-
pressed with that generally undaunted worthy's expression. It was that of
acute and suffering sensibility, perhaps the effervescence of some little re-
maining pride, or it might have been a twinge of the gout. Beau looked at
the little boy, suspended there with the weak back and the narrow chest, and
that scintillant, sincere spirit beaming out with courage born in the stock he
belonged to. Admiration, conciliation, and pain were in the ruined va-
grant's eyes. Reybold felt a sense of pity. He put his hand in his pocket
and drew forth a dollar.
" Here, Beau," he said, " I'll make an exception. You seem to have some
feeling. Don't mind the boy !"
In an instant the coin was flying from his hand through the air. The
beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane, confronted the Congressman
like a maniac.
" You bilk ! " he cried. "You supper customer ! I'll brain you ! I had
rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof, with-
out a doss to sleep on — a town pauper, done on the vag — than to have been
made scurvy in the sight of that child and deserve his words of shame !"
He threw his head upon the table and burst into tears.
The Lake and Bayou Committee reaped tbe reward of a good action.
78 GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. [1861-88
Crutch, the page, as they all called Uriel Basil, affected the sensibility of the
whole committee to the extent that profanity almost ceased there, and vul-
garity became a crime in the presence of a child. Gentle words and wishes
became the rule ; a glimmer of reverence and a thought of piety were not
unknown in that little chamber.
" Dog my skin !" said Jeems Bee, " if I ever made a 'pintment that give
me sech satisfaction ! I feel as if I had sot a nigger free ! "
The youthful abstractionist, Lowndes Cleburn, expressed it even better.
" Crutch/' he said, "is like a angel reduced to his bones. Them air wings
or pinions, that he might have flew off with, being a pair of crutches, keeps
him here to tarry awhile in our service. But, gentlemen, he's not got long
to stay. His crutches iso growing too heavy for that expandin' sperit. Some
day we'll look up and miss him through our tears."
They gave him many a present ; they put a silver watch in his pocket, and
dressed him in a jacket with gilt buttons. He had a bouquet of flowers to
take home every day to that marvellous sister of whom he spoke so often ;
and there were times when the whole committee, seeing him drop off to sleep
as he often did through frail and weary nature, sat silently watching lest he
might be wakened before his rest was over. But no persuasion could take
him off the floor of Congress. In that solemn old Hall of Eepresentatives, un-
der the semicircle of gray columns, he darted with agility from noon to dusk,
keeping speed upon his crutches with the healthiest of the pages, and racing
into the document-room, and through the dark and narrow corridors of the
old Capitol loft, where the House library was lost in twilight. Visitors looked
with interest and sympathy at the narrow back and body of this invalid child,
whose eyes were full of bright, beaming spirit. He sometimes nodded on the
steps by the Speaker's chair ; and these spells of dreaminess and fatigue in-
creased as his disease advanced upon his wasting system. Once he did not
awaken at all until adjournment. The great Congress and audience passed
out, and the little fellow still slept, with his head against the Clerk's desk,
while all the other pages were grouped around him, and they finally bore him
off to the committee-room in their arms, where, amongst the sympathetic
watchers, was old Beau. When Uriel opened his eyes the old mendicant was
looking into them.
"Ah! little Major," he said, "poor Beau has been waiting for you to
take those bad words back. Old Beau thought it was all bob with his little
cove."
" Beau," said the boy, " I've had such a dream ! I thought my dear father,
who is working so hard to bring me home to him, had carried me out on the
river in a boat. We sailed through the greenest marshes, among white lilies,
where the wild ducks were tame as they can be. All the ducks were diving
and diving, and they brought up long stalks of celery from the water and gave
them to us. Father ate all his. But mine turned into lilies and grew up so
high that I felt myself going with them, and the higher I went the more
beautiful grew the birds. Oh ! let me sleep and see if it will be so again."
The outcast raised his gold-headed cane and hobbled up and down the
room with a laced handkerchief at his eyes.
1861-88] GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. 79
" Great God I" he exclaimed, ''another generation is going out, and here
I stay without a sluke, playing a lone hand forever and forever."
" Beau," said Reybold, " there's hope while one can feel. Don't go away
until you have a good word from our little passenger."
The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by the
vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern committeemen.
" Ole Beau's jib-boom of a mustache '11 put his eye out," said Pontotoc
Bibb, " ef he fetches another groan like that."
" Beau's very shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard ; " he's
been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand up too long."
The little boy unclosed his eyes and looked around on all those kindly,
watching faces.
" Did anybody fire a gun ?" he said. " Oh ! no. I was only dreaming
that I was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that
were making tuch a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I
hunt with faiher, dear gentlemen ?"
They all felt the tread of the mighty hunter before the Lord very near at
hand ; the hunter whose name is Death.
" There are little tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. " They
twitter and run into the surf and back again, and am I one of them ? I must
be ; for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me ! Don't
whistle for me now ; for I don't get much play, gentlemen ! Will the Speaker
turn me out if I play with the beach-birds just once ? I'm only a little boy
working for my mother."
" Dear Uriel," whispered Reybold, " here's Old Beau, to whom you once
spoke angrily. Don't you see him ?"
The little boy's eyes came back from far-land somewhere, and he saw the
ruined gamester at his feet.
" Dear Beau," he said, " I can't get off to go home with you. They won't
excuse me, and I give all my money to mother. But you go to the back gate.
Ask for Joyce. She'll give you a nice warm meal every day. Go with him,
Mr. Reybold ! If you ask for him it will be all right ; for Joyce- — dear Joyce !
— she loves you."
The beach-birds played again along the strand ; the boy ran into the foam
with his companions and felt the spray once more. The Mighty Hunter shot
his bird — a little cripple that twittered the sweetest of them all. Nothing
moved in the solemn chamber of the committee but the voice of an old for-
saken man, sobbing bitterly.
IN RAMA.
A LITTLE face there was, A son to me— how strange ! —
-£^- When all her pains were done, Who never was a man,
Beside that face I loved : But lived from change to change
They said it was a son. A boy, as I began.
80
CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER.
[1861-88
More boyish still the hope
That leaped within me then,
That I, matured in him,
Should found a house of men;
And all my wasted sheaves,
Bound up in his ripe shock,
Give seed to sterner times
And name to sterner stock.
He grew to that ideal
And blossomed in my sight;
Strange questions filled his day,
Sweet visions in the night,
Till he could walk with me,
Companion, hand in hand ;
But nothing seemed to be
Like him, in Wonder-land.
For he was leading me
Beyond the bounds of mind,
Far down Eternity,
And I so far behind.
One day an angel stepped
Out of the idle sphere —
The man had entered in,
The boy is weeping here.
My house is founded there
In heaven that he has won.
Shall I be outlawed, then,
O Lord who hast my son?
This grief that makes me old,
These tears that make me pure,
They tell me time is time,
And only heaven mature.
Cincinnati^ ^iner jftiller*
BORN in Wabash District, Ind., 1841.
FROM "ARIZONIAN."
[Songs of the Sierras. By Joaquin Miller. 1871.]
f j^HE red ripe stars hang low overhead,
L Let the good and the light of soul reach up,
Pluck gold as plucking a butter-cup :
But I am as lead and my hands are red ;
There is nothing that is that can wake one passion
In soul or body, or one sense of pleasure,
No fame or fortune in the world's wide measure,
Or love full-bosomed or in any fashion.
The doubled sea, and the troubled heaven,
Starred and barred by the bolts of fire,
In storms where stars are riven, and driven
As clouds through heaven, as a dust blown higher;
The angels hurled to the realms infernal,
Down from the walls in unholy wars
That man misnameth the falling stars;
The purple robe of the proud Eternal,
The Tyrian blue with its fringe of gold,
Shrouding His countenance, fold on fold —
All are dull and tame as a tale that is told.
For the loves that hasten and the hates that linger,
The nights that darken and the days that glisten,
And men that lie and maidens that listen,
I care not even the snap of my finger.
1861-88] CINCINNATU8 HINER MILLER.
So the sun climbs up, and on, and over,
And the days go out and the tides come in,
And the pale moon rubs on the purple cover
Till worn as thin and as bright as tin ;
But the ways are dark and the days are dreary,
And the dreams of youth are but dust in age,
And the heart gets hardened, and the hands grow weary
Holding them up for their heritage.
And the strained heartstrings wear bare and brittle,
And the fond hope dies when so long deferred ;
Then the fair hope lies in the heart interred,
So stiff and cold in its coffin of lead.
For you promise so great and you gain so little ;
For you promise so great of glory and gold,
And gain so little that the hands grow cold ;
And for gold and glory you gain instead
A fond heart sickened and a fair hope dead.
So I have said, and I say it over,
And can prove it over and over again,
That the four-footed beasts on the red-crowned clover,
The pied and horned beasts on the plain
That lie down, rise up, and repose again,
And do never take care or toil or spin,
Nor buy, nor build, nor gather in gold,
Though the days go out and the tides come in,
Are better than we by a thousandfold ;
For what is it all, in the words of fire,
But a vexing of soul and a vain desire ?
WRITTEN IN ATHENS.
SIERRAS, and eternal tents With eager and inquiring eyes ?
Of snow that flash o'er battlements Be my reward some little place
Of mountains ! My laud of the sun, To pitch my tent, some tree and vine
Am I not true ? have I not done Where I may sit above the sea,
All things for thine, for thee alone, And drink the sun as drinking wine,
O sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own? And dream, or sing some songs of
From other loves and other lands, thee;
As time, perhaps, as strong of hands, Or days to climb to Shasta's dome
Have I not turned to thee and thine, Again, and be with gods at home,
O sun-land of the palm and pine, Salute my mountains — clouded Hood,
And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies, Saint Helen's in its sea of wood —
Till Europe lifted up her face Where sweeps the Oregon, and where
And marvelled at thy matchless grace, White storms are in the feathered fir.
VOL. X.— 6
CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER [18G1-88
KIT CAESON'S RIDE.
" ~D UN ? Now you bet you; I rather guess so!
-L^ But he's blind as a badger. Whoa, Pach6, boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is, badger blind, and it happened this wise.
" We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
" We lounged \a the grasses — her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine-red, and pressed never by one;
And her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reached to the kiss of the sun,
And her words were as low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot eager answer to earliest love,
Or the bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
' ' We lay low in the grass on the broad plain le'vels,
Old Revels and I, and niy stolen brown bride ;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,
To the right and the left, in the light of the sun.
' Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,' muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground ;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed, —
' Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on tire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore,
1861-88] CINC1NNATUS HINER MILLER. 33
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.'
" We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over again,
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapaderas, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the cantinas red-spangled with gold,
And gold -mounted Colt's, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse —
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God — without word, or one word of command.
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the ail-
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.
" Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
• Of love-note or courage ; but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows:
Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
" Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! . . . thirty miles! . . . a dim distant speck . .
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right —
But Revels was gone ; I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger ; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
A terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.
And lie rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER. [1861-88
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly, and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns, through the storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted again ;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.
"I looked to my left then — and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvellous eyes,
With a longing and love, yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fall as dead.
Then she saw sturdy Pach6 still lorded his head,
With a look of delight; for nor courage nor bribe,
Nor naught but my bride, could have brought him to me.
For he was her father's, and at South Santafee
Had once won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown.
And so when I won the true heart of my bride —
My neighbor's and deadliest enemy's child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe —
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight
Prom the lodge of the chief to the North Brazos side;
And said, s half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Faclie", so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the North Brazos side,
And await her — and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horn in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of tire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape — a love — a desire —
Yet never a word, not one look of appeal,
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.
" Then the rushing of fire around me and under,
And the howling of beasts and a sound as of thunder —
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them, and wove her
Red hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died—
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan.
1361-88] DENTON JAQUES SNIDER. gg
A» a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone . . .
And into the Brazos ... I rode all alone —
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blind and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.
" Sell Faclie" — blind Faclie" ? Now, mister, look here,
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,
For the ways they were rough and Camanches were near;
But you'd better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, got no turn-turn at all ?
Sell Pache- ! You buy him ! A bag full of gold !
You show him ! Tell of him the tale I have told !
Why, he bore me through tire, and is blind, and is old !
. . . Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of ... Blast you and your tinl"
MOUNT SHASTA.
fT^O lord all Godland ! lift the brow Where storm-born shadows hide and
-•- Familiar to the noon, — to top hunt
The universal world, — to prop I knew thee in my glorious youth.
The hollow heavens up, — to vow I loved thy vast face, white as truth.
Stern constancy with stars, — to keep I stood where thunderbolts were wont
Eternal ward while eons sleep; To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
To tower calmly up and touch And heard rent mountains rock and roll.
God's purple garment-hems that sweep I saw thy lightning's gleaming rod
The cold blue north! Oh, this were Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll
much! The awful autograph of God!
3iaqueg
BOBN in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, 1841.
AT THE HOUSE OF PINDAR.
[A Walk in Hellas. 1881.]
WE have entered another world, the tragic discord of the Syrma haa
been cut off and left far behind, and man has become a most harmo-
nious being who dwells forever amid the tuneful spheres ; we have entered
the house of Pindar.
86
DENTON JAQUES SNIDES. [1861-88
Upon this spot it stood according to our ancient guide ; here the poet when
he rose at morn saw the first beams of Helius play over the Dirkean waters.
The material house has indeed disappeared, but that other house built by
Pindar stands visible, nay audible to-day and forever. For it is a musical
house still, though partly in ruins ; the most happy musical temple ever
erected out of the lofty hymn. Into it we may enter and tarry long, catching
its harmonies broken at times, but still possessed of the sweetest and sub-
limest cadences.
Many were the miraculous things told of him in antiquity indicating that
he was truly a child of the Gods. On that hot day while he was going to
Thespia, he seems to have received his first revelation ; he fell asleep along
the road and the bees lit upon his lips, depositing their waxen cells for honey ;
when he woke, he began to sing ; such, says the ancient narrator, was the be-
ginning of his making hymns. Then the appearance of Persephone, God-
dess of the Lower Eegions, to the Poet in a dream, complaining that to her
alone of the divinities he had never written a hymn, was justified by his char-
acter ; dark Tartarean realms he avoids, but delights to dwell on the upper
earth in Greek sunshine. Therefore he was the special favorite of Apollo,
God of Light, whose games he has celebrated in such rapturous splendor ;
the priestess at Delphi announced to all Greece to give to Pindar a share of
the first-fruits equal to that of the God. Then too the proclamation was long
afterward heard at the Delphic shrine : " Let the poet Pindar come in to his
supper with the God/' Indeed he is the product and culmination of Delphi,
thither we shall have to follow him in order to reach the deepest and richest
vein of his character. In the dell of the Oracle, at the fount of Castalia, un-
der the tops of Parnassus, we shall have to place him, where prophecy and
poesy rocked the hills with musical wisdom, whereof he is the highest expres-
sion. Pindar, on the whole, may be taken as the best Delphic utterance
remaining for us to-day.
Still he belongs here too, and in him all Thebes turns to harmony — that
discordant Thebes so full elsewhere of tragic destinies ; nay, that sensual
Thebes, receiving its nickname from swinish indulgence, becomes through
him the most ethereal of poetic existences. It is one of the marvels of this
land that it could bring him forth, him the most ideal of men. From this
fat soil he sprang, this heavy air he breathed, upon this gross vegetation he
fed, yet he has the freest rein and the widest bound of all poets, often a little
too sudden in his earth-defying leaps. To-day we confess him unrivalled in
the lyric ; he has the exaltation, the sweep of imagination and the greatness
of thought which belong to all supreme poetic utterance.
But the quality in which he surpasses every poet whom I have read after,
is what may be called his harmony. Not that light superficial thing called by
the critics harmonious versification is meant now ; this true harmony flows
from the deepest of matters, it is the harmony of the All, of the Universe
uttering itself in the measured syllables of the bard. At his best moment
each word is set in vibration which sings long afterward in the ear or rather
in the soul, indeed one will never get rid of that music truly heard ; but such
a word is only a note of the song which iu its completeness will make your
1861-88] DENTON JAQUES SNIDER. 37
whole being throb and thrill in attunement with its strains. Yet not you
alone, but nature outside of you vibrates to the chords of the lyre which the
poet touches ; both the inner and outer world are absorbed into the stride and
swell of his harmonies. All Time, too, is therein made musical, as to-day
sunny Thebes seems to be gently moving to pulsations of those ancient hymns.
Such is the Pindaric music, unattainable by any external combination of
sounds and syllables, or by any arrangement of the scanning machine ; what
modern would get it, if only thus it could be reached ? It goes far deeper, as
it must in all true poetry ; the rhythm must lie ultimately in the thought
wedding itself to speech ; the words are but the outward drapery dropping
into symphonic folds' from the rapturous pulsations within ; the fountain of
Pindar's harmony is in the soul, and there only can it be truly heard. It is
a great mistake to think that the music of poetry comes from the jingle of
sounds, short and long, accented and unaccented, from the employment of
open vowels, from the abolition of certain consonants in certain situations.
Much talk of this kind has been heard of late ; but such doctrines can do
hardly more than construct a well-regulated poetical machine which will
grind at any time with any person turning the crank ; thus we may attain a
light-flowing Italian melody at the very best, but not all-pervading, all-sub-
duing organ harmonies. First there must be the thought great and worthy,
then it must pulse with an inner ecstasy which bursts forth into utterance.
No counting of syllables, then, is going to reveal to you the deepest secret
of poetic harmonies. It is true that in verse measure is necessary ; but this
is the mechanical part, it is the outer to which there must be an inner that
creates it and puts it musically on like a rich glowing vestment. Poetry can-
not do without that fixed recurrence of accents called metre ; even the sea,
most melodious of Nature's instruments, has a measured rhythm, a regular
beat in its rise and fall, as if the waves were keeping time after some invisi-
ble master. Yet hardly are we to think of the metre the while, but to hear
the music ; it is the harmonious thought of Pindar which makes every word
drop tuneful from his lips ; too often his strains get lost in that labyrinth of
metrical schemes, which produce so much discord, at least among gramma-
rians. I cannot help thinking that Pindar's verse, and all true verse, makes
its own scheme a#it goes along, to a degree ; it throbs great waves of harmony
through any soul musically attuned, without scansion ; for I must refuse to
believe that the dry prosodical man who scans Pindar is the sole person who
has become heir to his melodious wealth. An inborn poetic sense may per-
haps be better tested by Pindar's verse than by that of any other poet ; if no
music be heard there, whatever the outer ear may be, the poetic soul is of
dubious existence.
This harmony then, combined with his exaltation, is Pindar's highest poeti-
cal characteristic. Next to him perhaps Dante should be placed, who like-
wise possesses the power of setting all in vibration to the strains of his poetry ;
even the dry abstractions of scholastic theology move in his "Paradiso" with
a strange enraptured rhythm. Here also lies the chief miraculous gift of
our Milton, though he is behind the two who have been mentioned. These
are preeminently the poets of harmony, to my mind ; others greater than they
gg KATE PUTNAM OSOOOD. [1861-88
have existed because of the possession of a still greater quality, in conjunc-
tion with this one.
Pindar is the most rapt expression of the Greek world, the Delphic utter-
ance of it we may say. His sympathy with Hellenic life is complete ; he is in
the main content to live as his forefathers lived ; we do not find in him the
profound questionings of the Attic poets, he is too harmonious. He does not
assail the established, he is at one with the religion and morality of his age —
a conservative poet we may consider him. Yet he will not accept all the
myths which have been handed down, nor does he fail to castigate certain
evils of his city and time. But he is not a satirist, not a revolutionist ; he is
in harmony with the world and the world with him ; so that he becomes the
throbbing utterance of the games, of the festivals, of the songs in that joyous
Greek life around him.
BORN in Fryeburg, Me., 1841.
DRIVING HOME THE COWS.
[Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1865.]
OUT of the clover and blue-eyed grass
He turned them into the river-lane ;
One after another he let them pass,
Then fastened the meadow-bars again.
Under the willows, and over the hill,
He patiently followed their sober pace;
The merry whistle for once was still,
And something shadowed the sunny face.
Only a boy ! and his father had said
He never could let his youngest go :
Two already were lying dead
Under the feet of the trampling foe.
But after the evening work was done,
And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,
Over his shoulder he slung his gun
And stealthily followed the foot-path damp.
Across the clover, and through the wheat,
With resolute heart and purpose grim,
Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet
And the blind bat's flitting startled "him.
Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
And now, when the cows came back at night,
The feeble father drove them home.
1861-88] KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD. 39
For news had come to the lonely farm
That three were lying where two had lain;
And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm
Could never lean on a son's again.
The summer day grew cool and late.
He went for the cows when the work was done ;
But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
He saw them coming one by one :
Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
Shaking their horns in the evening wind ;
Cropping the buttercups out of the grass —
But who was it following close behind ?
Loosely swung in the idle air
The dnpty sleeve of army blue ;
And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
Looked out a face that the father knew.
For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,
And yield their dead unto life again ;
And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn
In golden glory at last may wane.
The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes ;
For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb:
And under the silent evening skies
Together they followed the cattle home.
LATENT.
WITHOUT the garden wall it grows, Somewhere, however these deny,
A flowerless tree ; The color and the fragrance lie ;
Wrung by the restless blast that blows Somewhere the perfect flower its dry,
Across the sea. Dull stalks contain.
Forgotten of the fickle Spring
The scanty leaves droop, withering. - in a kindlier soil perchance
Scarce would it seem-poor, sapless The root should grow,
thin^I Where dews would fall, and sunbeams
A°rose to be. Slance'
And soft airs flow,
Yet must the frail and faded spray Fair as the flower the garden shows
A rose remain, The leaf might spring, the bud unclose.
Though bitter-blowing winds to-day From out the calyx of a rose
Its growth restrain. A rose will blow !
MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. [1861-88
BOKN in Boston, Mass., 1841.
ZOLA.
[Chats about Books, Poets, and Novelists. 1883.]
TTTHETHER our tastes or our convictions prompt us to side with those
VV who praise, or with those who scout him, the fact is beyond dispute
that Emile Zola has attained a measure of success seldom paralleled in our
generation, and that his themes and his style, his aims, methods, and per-
formances have provoked the widest attention and the liveliest discussion
throughout Europe. The truth is that the author of the series of novels,
grouped together under the generic title of "Les Rougon-Macquart" is a
phenomenon that invites at once the study of the artist, the scientist, and the
politician. As regards subject and treatment, Emile Zola incarnates an aes-
thetic revolution, while in his social and political leanings he represents the
literary side of the great upheaval which followed the collapse of the second
empire. Still more curious and suggestive is his deliberate application of
Darwinism to literature, his portrayal of life and character under the strict
conditions of the evolutionary theory, namely, heredity and atavism on the
one hand, with environment and natural or sexual selection on the other.
These are Zola's credentials, and such a man deserves to be scanned, if not
with sympathy and approval, at all events with respect, as the type of an
epoch.
M. Zola would probably contend that his distinctive attitude as a student
of human life is mainly due to physical causes, including, of course, heredi-
tary aptitudes. He would not repudiate, however, the influence exercised
by intellectual ancestors, whose works by virtue of a subtle affinity, or of long
contact at an impressionable age, may have tinctured, developed, or directed
his mind. He is not unwilling to be counted the successor of writers who
have recognized more or less distinctly the same aims — as the latest exponent
of a school whose origin may be traced back for a century. He himself calls
Rousseau the founder of realistic narrative in Erance, having in view, of
course, the " Confessions," and not the "Nouvelle Heloise," as some of his
critics have imagined. But Rousseau only suggested the tremendous force
that lies in naked veracity, and it was Balzac who first carried out the pro-
cess of ruthless vivisection on a great scale. The wonderful minuteness with
which the individual characters of his persons were projected by the author
of the " Comedie Humaine," and the painstaking accuracy of the surround-
ings in which he placed them, sharply distinguished his treatment from Vic-
tor Hugo's exaggerated coloring on the one hand, and from George Sand's
pursuit of abstract types upon the other. But although Balzac diverged at
once from romantic and from classical models, he did not always evince the
scrupulous, and, so to speak, mechanical fidelity of the modern naturalists.
He was no mere photographer, a strangely fecund fancy and an irresistible
1861-88] MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. gi
instinct of generalization not seldom forcing him to transform individuals
into veritable types, as in the case of "Rastignac," or "Lucien de Rubem-
pre"," or " La Femme de trente Ans." After Balzac's death realism in litera-
ture lost its hold on the French world for almost a generation. Something,
it is true, was done by the coworkers Erckmann-Chatrian within a restricted
provincial horizon, something by Emile Gaboriau in the almost unworked
field of the judicial and detective novel, and something on a wider canvas by
the brothers Goncourt. But if we except some of Gaboriau'c stories, which
ran through numerous editions, the works of the realists failed to please the
artificial, jaded society of the second empire, and were eclipsed not only by
clever adepts in the classic conventions like Octave Feuillet, but even by the
wretched imitators of the elder Dumas, who spun out serial sensations for
the daily newspapers. And even Zola's veritable master, Gustave Flaubert,
whose "Madame Bovary" and " L'Education Sontimentale " are consum-
mate examples of novel-writing conceived as a form of natural history where
the methods of scientific scrutiny are applied with perfect cynicism, never
won anything beyond the esteem of a narrow circle. Certainly a man of his
temper was scarcely fitted to be the pet of the Tuileries, or to become, like
Feuillet, the arbiter of festivals and charades at Compiegne, or, like Prosper
Merimee, the literary mentor of the frivolous personage whom caprice and
accident had made Empress of France.
With the empire fell a vast scaffolding of spurious or fragile reputations
in art and literature, which had helped to prop the political structure. What
has become of Houssaye and Belot, who made a sumptuous living by the por-
trayal of vice and scandal ? What has paralyzed the pen of Gustave Droz,
whose quaint admixture of sentiment and sensuality had the piquancy of a
new sauce ? What has come over the public which used to flock by tens of
thousands to buy " Camors," but which now turns with indifference, almost
with contempt, from the listless elegance and refined vapidity of Feuillet's
latest works ? So, too, the cunning affectations and pungent epigrams of
the accomplished Genevese, Cherbuliez, seem to have lost much of their sa-
vor, if we may judge from the waning vogue of his performances at home.
And if Theuriet has so far escaped the general submergence of former favor-
ites, it is solely due to his descriptions of natural scenery, where, of course,
a novelist's special qualifications do not come at all in question. The real
sovereigns of the French reading public at this time, as attested by the con-
clusive voucher of unapproached success, are Zola and Alphonse Daudet.
The latter began as an idealist, and his " Lettres de mon Moulin " and " Tar-
tarin de Tarascon " are charming examples of the sentimental school ; but it
was only when he joined Zola in accepting Flaubert for a master, and under
his impulse produced " Fromont Jeune," " Jack," and " Le Nabab " that he
attained a great reputation. Yet it is a curious fact that the orthodox real-
ists are not quite willing to class Daudet in their ranks. They admit that the
persons of his recent books are human beings of very complex character about
which it is not easy to pronounce an absolute opinion, but in their judgment
he makes the mistake of sympathizing with his heroes, and giving too much
scope to poetry and feeling. Moreover, his style wants, they say, the simpli-
92
MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. [1861-88
city and translucency with which the more austere realist seeks to efface his
personality and mirror with crystalline distinctness the object of his por-
traiture. He has borrowed, seemingly from the brothers Goncourt, a some-
what affected diction, loaded with florid ornament and far-fetched meta-
phor, and at the same time rugged and precipitous in movement, as if the
novelist meant to suggest to the ear the headlong current of Paris life. The
French naturalism of our day finds, as we have seen, its perfect model in
Flaubert's " Madame Bovary," but that wonderful anatomist of vicious
instincts wanted industry or fecundity, and only once returned to the task of
impassive, implacable reproduction. Accordingly his mantle has fallen on
Zola's shoulders, who not only undertakes the function of dissection without
the faintest sign of conventional shudder or rebuke, but avows his purpose
of disclosing in all his personages the physiological causes of their actions.
What is the object contemplated by the author of the " Bougon-Mac-
quart " novels ? It is, as we have said, to trace the natural and social history
of a family which by one or another of its offshoots shall represent every class
of French society. The better to define his purpose and enforce the essential
unity of his design, the author has prefixed to one of his volumes, " Un Page
d'Amour," a genealogical tree, which, exhibiting the origin of the lineage,
marks its early bifurcation into two main trunks sharply distinguished in
physical traits, which, however, are sometimes softened, sometimes accented
in their various ramifications. The remarkable virility of a peasant progeni-
tor is transmitted through two channels, legitimate and illegitimate, and, ac-
cording to the greater or less influence of the female lines, is transformed in
his descendants into diverse forms of moral and intellectual energy or weak-
ness. Under felicitous conditions of admixture and environment, this ances-
tral vigor rises to the heights of heroism, of creative genius, or of consu mmate
executive ability, while in untoward circumstances it engenders dexterous
knavery or desperate crime. In one of the main branches there is an heredi-
tary taint amounting to a disease of the nervous system, which in some of
the offspring is sublimated to the sensitive organization of the poet, or the
mystical fervor of the priest, while in others it breeds a frantic excitation of
the appetites, conducting in the end, perhaps, to imbecility. In the case of
every individual whose career is made the object of special study, we are put
in possession of all the physiological facts which a materialist might deem
indispensable to a just sentence upon his conduct. We are told about his
parents and his grandparents ; we know what passions, proclivities, sensi-
bilities he brought with him into the world ; how far these congenital ten-
dencies have been encouraged, lulled, or supplanted by his surroundings,
until, when he is launched into a given medium, we can almost forecast his be-
havior. As with each new volume anew problem in human life is laid before
us, we approach its solution with a conviction that at least the statement of
its terms has been exhaustive, that none of the springs of motive, so far as
these are physical or social, have escaped the author's scrutiny. You are
impressed also by the glacial impartiality of the narrative, as if the worst
extremes of sin and suffering and the divinest soarings of self-sacrifice and
virtue were alike referred to the inexorable workings of natural law. In
1861-88] MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. 93
Zola's indifference, however, there is nothing galling : there is no trace of
malicious satisfaction, as in Flaubert's cynicism ; it recalls rather the pro-
found, far-gazing serenity of an Assyrian statue, the inflexible, inscrutable
tranquillity of a sphinx. It is not to be supposed, meanwhile, that because
Zola never blames or applauds his characters the reader's sympathies are
equally unstirred. Such is often the power of his trenchant strokes, such
the vitality of certain figures, that you quite lose sight of the ai'tist's uncon-
cerned, impassive temper, and fix your eyes with an eager, poignant intent-
ness on the canvas. Curiously, too, this man, who handles like a surgeon
the most delicate fibres of the human heart, discovers the effusive tender-
ness of a poet when he turns to outward nature. It is as if the materialist
were blended with the pantheist in his philosophy ; as if the God whom he
had lost in the labyrinth of physiology were found again in the play of light
and motion, the infinite beauty and suggestion of the inanimate world.
It is true that M. Zola eschews psychological analysis, that he is satisfied
with an outward portrayal of people, and that for this reason their soul es-
capes him. We say of his creations, Yes, they are most lifelike, we might
have passed them but now in the street ; on the other hand, we know no more
of them than if we had passed thean in the street. We may con, if we choose,
a catalogue of the physiological causes for their feelings and actions. But in
real life we never use such data ; we only see them transformed in sentiment
and motive, and it is the transformations which kindle interest and consti-
tute originality. To Avhich M. Zola might reply that if the soul has escaped
him, perhaps it Avas not there. That he knows very well what judges, and
juries, and law-makers, and, for that matter, novelists, have been wont to
look at ; that it is a question, however, not of what we are accustomed to
study, but of what we ought to study. If we seem to know less intimately
the men and women to whom Zola has introduced us than we know the im-
pressive or exquisite types created by other masters of fiction, the author of
" L'Assommoir " would probably remind us that typ^ do not exist in na-
ture, that what we call our knowledge of such figments is a delusion, that
nothing is known but physiology, and that the transmutation of food into
thought is still a mystery. Moreover, it is not quite fair to compare Zola's
characters to the stranger that brushes us in the street ; we understand them
quite as thoroughly, after all, as we understand our acquaintances, or indeed
our personal friends, for we can foretell their conduct with rather more pre-
cision. We shall never probably in this world know so much of any human
being as we know of certain personages in the works of Fielding, Thackeray,
or George Eliot. Now, is it the business of a novelist to draw figures of which
we shall say, these are men and women, ordinary, every-day folk, neither bet-
ter nor worse ; or figures in which you shall recognize winning and noble
types sufficiently individualized for you to caress the dream of their possible
incarnation ? That is the question at issue between the realist and the ideal-
ist, and Zola, for his part, does not hesitate to accept the former conception
of the function undertaken by the writer of prose fiction.
A word as to the crudities and vulgarities which disfigure many of Zola's
pages. Those who have read only " L'Assommoir" or "Le Ventre de Pa-
94
MA TO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. [1861-88
ris," and who are accustomed to the carefully pruned diction of Octave Feu-
illet, are naturally shocked to stumble upon words belonging to the imprinted
vocabulary which exists in every language. The truth is that when this thor-
ough-going realist essays to describe a particular stratum of society, he does
not purpose to put you off with his impression, but means to paint it pre-
cisely as it is, and let you form impressions for yourself. He insists that if
this principle is anything but a pretence, if the truth is really to be shown
in its native rawness and squalor, then the author must reproduce without
squeamishness or euphuism the idiom of the class and calling he has elected
to depict ; otherwise we miss the master-key to its intellectual and moral atti-
tude. Of course, those who do not care to study at first hand the factory and
the grog-shop need not read " L'Assommoir/' but they should not go the
length of supposing that the same language is employed to photograph very
different phases of society. "When, for example, the author sketches the
home circle of the Tuileries or the Ministerial vicissitudes of the second em-
pire, we can assure the reader that M. Zola's style is not unequal to the occa-
sion, although his pen is not by any means that of a courtier. In a Avord,
Zola's novels are like the world. If your ears cannot bear the coarse and
brutal phrase by which vulgar folk are wont to drive an idea home, you must
pick your company. There will be scope enough for dainty discrimination
in these twenty volumes.
There is something almost colossal in the proportions of Zola's undertak-
ing, yet it is already wellnigh completed. He purposes, as we have said, to
leave behind him a complete panorama of French civilization under the
social and political conditions of the second empire. In " La Fortune de
Kougon" he has unfolded the circumstances of provincial life and the char-
acteristic features of the mercantile calling in the petty commerce of a rural
town. " La Faute de FAbbe Mouret" is a study of the Church, and espe-
cially of the privations, compensations, experiences, and temptations inci-
dent to the clerical jocation. In " Le Ventre de Paris" the author studies
the method of provisioning Paris, while in " L'Assommoir " he depicts the
burdens, blunders, vices, and the redeeming virtues, the shabby, the revolt-
ing, and the honorable sides of a workman's life in the Faubourg St. An-
toine. In " Son Excellence Eugene Kougon/' we have a portrait of Eugene
Rouher, the famous ex-Minister of the empire, so curiously minute in its
biographical details that almost every incident and personage in its pages
can be identified. In another number of the series, ' ' Un Page d 'Amour " —
which by the way is accessible in an English version under the name of " A
Love Episode" — Zola opens to us those minor professional circles of the Pa-
risian community which embrace the households of notaries, of physicians
in moderate practice, of Government employees below the grade of heads of
bureaus, in fact all that stratum of society which in England would be
ranked just below the top of the lower middle class. In succeeding novels
the army, journalism, the magistracy will by turns occupy the field of his
camera. Zola contemplates also a volume on the Commune, that is to say,
on the artisan in his political aspect.
Whatever may be thought of the fundamental principles of realism in art
1861-88] MAYO WILLIAMSON HAZELTINE. 95
and literature — a discussion into which we will not just now enter — it is
manifest that Zola's immense accumulations will prove of singular value to
the future student of France under the social conditions of our day. It is
probable that hereafter the young bachelor of arts, returning from his so-
journ in the Quartier Latin, and pressed to account for his wide knowledge
of Paris — instead of replying like his fathers, " I have read Balzac, and that
suffices" — will point to " Les Kougon-Macquart" as the exhaustless treasure-
house of vicarious observation.
It may be thought that the theories of realism received a sufficiently crude
embodiment in "L'Assommoir" and "Le Ventre de Paris," but the scope
of those works at least embraced something besides sheer animalism. They
purported to be exhaustive transcripts of the life of workshop and market,
and, accordingly, types of industry, sobriety, and kindliness were inter-
spersed, as we see them every day,* a mid illustrations of sloth, viciousness,
and shame. They attested, too, such a profound comprehension of the
mechanism of society in the particular strata portrayed, of the rude necessi-
ties and coarse devices, of the promptings, pressures, contagions amid which
the tinge and fibre of individual character is acquired, that our respect for
the observer modified our judgment of the artist. The student of social
science seemed so signally to obscure the novelist that we were scarcely more
disposed to quarrel with a raw phrase, or an offensive fact, than we should
be to insist on a surgeon's performing vivisection in immaculate kid gloves.
Yet, even in those cases, the suspicion must not seldom have crossed us that
this unshrinking, all-embracing scrutiny of human life belonged to the
methods of science, rather than the processes of art ; that the uncompromis-
ing purpose of telling the whole truth, in the most literal and unvarnished
words, would preclude the exercise of the artistic faculty in the selection, dis-
position, and accentuation of materials. In proportion as the inquirer's pur-
pose should be fully carried out, as his eye should be keen, his hand firm,
and his tongue fearless, his work, it v/as suggested, must inevitably pass out
of the category of artistic composition, and be classified with the raw mate-
rial of history. Unassorted, unwinnowed, and uuchastened with any refer-
ence to esthetic emphasis and significance, the record of his observations
would be, at best, a photograph and not a picture, a diary and not a novel, a
chapter of biography, a cross-section of real life. Heretofore, however, none
of the champions of realism, neither Flaubert, nor the brothers Goncourt,
nor Zola himself, had been perfectly unswerving and unscrupulous in the
application of their theory. Zola, for instance, in "La Faute de 1'Abbe
Mouret," actually reverted, for a moment, to the idyl and the parable. His
latest work, " Nana," on the other hand, is the most extravagant result of
the doctrine that anything which is true may be printed, and that noth-
ing human, though it reek with the foulness of a worse than bestial human-
ity, is foreign to the purpose of the student of manners and the painter of
society
To purge the passions, we are told on high authority, is the aim of tragedy ;
but Aristotle is far from affirming that the methods of the dramatist and
gg EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. [1861-88
those of the physician should be identical. It is one thing to watch, rapt
and awestruck, on the stage of an Athenian theatre those who have sinned
in the high places, a Thyestes, a Clytemnestra, caught in the meshes of an
irrevocable doom. It is another thing to track the fetid course of a lewd
woman from pinchbeck magnificence to hopeless squalor, from the lazaretto
to the morgue. For his part, however, Zola cares but little about the abstract
conceptions of beauty and sublimity, and he snaps his fingers at aesthetic
canons, no matter how potent the names which may have sanctioned them.
He is a Jacobin in politics, an iconoclast in literature ; he prefers the dissect-
ing-room to the studio, and is perfectly willing to be refused the title of ar-
tist, provided you will concede to him the useful name of physiologist. Cer-
tainly the works of Zola will be accounted valuable material by the future
student of nineteenth century society. What the writings of Apuleius and
Petronius Arbiter are for the resolute inquirer into Roman civilization, that
Zola's " Nana" may be found when another generation shall seek to compre-
hend the social decomposition and political catastrophe of France under the
second empire.
BORN in Windsor, Conn., 1841. DIKD in Cleveland, Ohio, 1887.
THE LOVER'S SONG.
[Venus of Milo, and Other Poems. Privately Printed. 1883.— Poems. By Edward
Rowland Sill. 1888.]
T END me thy fillet, Love! Ah! Banished so from stars and sun —
•*M I would no longer see : Why need it be my fate ?
Cover mine eyelids close awhile, If only she might dream me good
And make me blind like thee. And wise, and be my mate !
Then might I pass her sunny face, Lend her thy fillet, Love !
And know not it was fair ; Let her no longer see :
Then might I hear her voice, nor guess If there is hope for me at all,
Her starry eyes were there. She must be blind like thee.
OPPORTUNITY.
a^HIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —
- There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
1861-88]
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel —
That blue blade that the king's son bears, — but this
Blunt thing — ! " he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
THE FOOL'S PRAYER.
feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish
care,
And to his jester cried: " Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer! "
The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court be-
fore;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.
He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool !
"No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as
wool ;
The rod must heal the sin : but Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool !
" 'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay ;
'Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.
"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end ;
These hard, well-meaning hands we
thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.
"The ill-timed truth we might have
kept—
Who knows how sharp it pierced and
stung !
The word we had not sense to say —
Who knows how grandly it had rung I
"Our faults no tenderness should ask,
The chastening stripes must cleanse
them all ;
But for our blunders — oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.
" Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge the
tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool ! "
The room was hushed ; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
' ' Be merciful to me, a fool ! "
VOL* x.— 7
GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. [1861-88
EVE'S DAUGHTER
I WAITED in the little sunny room:
The cool breeze waved the window-lace, at play,
The white rose on the porch was all in bloom,
And out upon the bay
I watched the wheeling sea-birds go and come.
"Such an old friend,— she would not make me stay
While she bound up her hair." I turned, and lo,
DanaB in her shower! and fit to slay
All a man's hoarded prudence at a blow :
Gold hair, that streamed away
As round some nymph a sunlit fountain's flow.
" She would not make me wait! "—but well I know
She took a good half-hour to loose and lay
Those locks in dazzling disarrangement so !
jttafeepeace Cotole.
BORN in Washington, D. C., 1841.
GLADSTONE SPEAKING.
[Certain Men of Mark. 1880.]
IT was in the lobby of the Commons that, some fifteen years ago, I first
saw Mr. Gladstone. He was then in the full -prime of life, being about
fifty-five years of age. He had already won a degree of political renown only
less than the highest. At that time he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in
Lord Palmerston's cabinet ; and, next to Lord Palmerston, was the most dis-
tinguished member of the popular House. He had been a member of Parlia-
ment thirty-three years ; and his career there, at least as far as reputation
was concerned, had been a triumphal progress, ever and steadily advancing.
No one doubted that at some day not far distant Mr. Gladstone would be
summoned to assume the post of Prime Minister.
A glance sufficed to recognize him. His photographs peered at the passer-
by from every book-store and print-shop in London ; and no one could have
seen them without taking note of the very remarkable, expressive, intense
features they discovered. But there was something about Mr. Gladstone as
he stood there, gravely talking with two gentlemen who listened to him with
every outward sign of respect, which the photographs had not disclosed.
There was a certain plainness, almost rusticity, of dress and external appear-
ance ; a thick-set, farmer-like body, far from graceful ; a certain negligence
of attire and toilet and manner, and simple gravity of bearing, which one had
1861-88] GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. gg
not expected to see in the brilliant and eloquent scholar who had so often
thrilled the House, and, through the medium of the press, the world. But
after the first superficial glance, when you raised your eyes to the face and
head, and observed the features, you soon found the man's character re-
flected there. The not very large, but brilliant, earnest, burning eyes ; the
retreating, but nobly shaped forehead ; the very un-English swarthy com-
plexion ; the firm, thin mouth, to which every line lent new expressiveness ;
the squareset jaw, and bold straight nose ; the spirit and warmth that glowed
in the whole countenance betokened a mind and soul alike lofty, zealous,
and intense.
Never once did the slightest smile cross those almost grim features ; and
the contrast between this grimness of expression and the sweet, silvery voice,
the tones of which now and then reached my ear, was very striking. Mr.
Gladstone's smiles, indeed, are very few and slight. He has always been too
dead-in-earnest ; and dead-in-earnestness has stamped itself on his face, as
it has throughout the record of his public career. . . . . '
When the orator rose from the front government bench, drew himself up,
holding a small slip of paper in his hand, and quietly looked around on the
multitude whose single gaze was upon him, he seemed younger and more im-
posing than he had done when standing chatting in the lobby. You recog-
nized at once, by his mere expression and motion, that he was already warm
and proud with the ardor of forensic conflict ; that he loved this arena on
which he stood, and that his whole soul was in the task before him. In his
first few simple sentences one already felt the sweet and persuasive power of
a voice which, even in his age, has perhaps no equal in any assembly on earth.
There were the soul and life of intense earnestness in its very first tones, as
the commonplace opening of the speech was uttered ; now subdued, to be
sure, but soon to burn out and glow with all the fire of the man's warm intel-
lectual nature. The next thing observed was the contrast between this
smooth, steady flow of words, this rising fluency of language, pouring out
long and involved sentences without a pause, a hitch, an instant's loss of the
right Avord, and the halting and hesitating oratory of most English public
men. After listening to the stammering of Lord John Eussell, the humming
and hawing of the genial Palmerston, and the studied abruptness of Disraeli,
this rapid, steady, limpid quality of Mr. Gladstone's eloquence was charm-
ing. To his wonderful fluency, the flexibility and strength as well as sweet-
ness of his voice added striking effect ; for it has depth, volume, and wide
range of tone, and quickly adapts itself to the rhetorical need of the moment.
His style of speaking was easy and simple. As he proceeded, he played
with a piece of paper in his hand, which soon proved to contain the few notes
he had prepared ; and every now and then he stroked the thin hair above his
forehead with his forefinger or thumb, as if to encourage the idea to come
out into expression. The gestures were at first few, the clenched hand oc-
casionally suddenly sawing the air for a moment, then falling as suddenly
prone at his side. As he advanced, he often straightened himself up from a
colloquial to a declamatory posture, with his head thrown back, his sunken
dark eyes glistening from beneath the heavy brows, and the strong jaw seem-
GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. [1861-88
ing to set, as for a serious purpose ; and then, as he passed to another branch
of the subject, he would relapse into the conversational attitude again. The
movements, it could be easily seen, were quite unstudied ; the impulse of the
moment guided the action of head or hand, or the expression of the speaking
features. As he warmed to his subject, his action became more excited, and
his gestures more frequent. Now his head was almost every moment high
in air, his hands would be clasped as if in appeal, he turned often to the right
and to the left, or bent over the table in front of him. Every attitude was at
once ungraceful and strong. The spontaneity, the earnestness, made even
the orator's occasional awkwardness eloquent ; while the continual, unhesi-
tating, liquid flow of the words and sentences, and the solid chain of thought,
most often diverted the listener's mind from the gestures altogether.
You recognized at once that this was not an extempore speech, in the sense
of being delivered off-hand and without preparation. Every point had been
thought over carefully, every series of figures conned, the array of the gen-
eral current of the argument duly and methodically arranged in the mind.
But the words, the sentences, the few telling figures of speech, came with
voluble spontaneity. The opening deceived you somehow into the idea that
the flow of the harangue would be sweet and serene throughout. But before
Mr. Gladstone had been speaking fifteen minutes he seemed, as Sydney
Smith said of Webster, " a steam-engine in trousers." No orator was ever
more susceptible to the warming-up process, caused by the very act of speak-
ing, than he. No orator ever became more Avrapt, more absorbed, in the
task before him. You felt profoundly that he was speaking from the most
firmly rooted convictions ; that the cause he advocated was buried deep in
his heart, and was the outcome alike of conscience and intellectual self -per-
suasion. The dominant idea with him was, not to make a great display, not
to produce a refined and polished-off bit of eloquence, but to persuade and to
convince. He produced that powerful effect upon his hearer, which is one
of the highest triumphs of oratory, that made you feel ashamed and perverse
not to agree with him and be persuaded. I cannot imagine even a stolid
Tory squire listening to such appeals without feeling some dull qualm at his
own silent resistance to the persuasive argument. There was, too, a proud
consciousness of his own powers betrayed in every motion and utterance ;
not vain self-conceit was this, but the pride that assured him that these
powers might be and should be used to attain the unselfish public end he had
in view. " He stands up," as a shrewd observer once said of him, ' ' in the
spirit of an apostle with a message to deliver, certain of its truth, and certain
that he, and not some other man, is appointed to deliver it." That is just
the impression which Mr. Gladstone has always produced, and still produces,
on those who hear him speak ; and this apostolic earnestness is, indeed, the
chief source of his forensic power.
1861-88] NORA PERRY. 101
BORN in Dudley, Mass.
SOME DAY OP DAYS.
[After the Sail, and Other Poems. 1875.]
SOME day, some day of days, threading the street
With idle, heedless pace,
Unlocking for such grace,
I shall behold your face !
Some day, some day of days, thus may we meet.
Perchance the sun may shine from skies of May,
Or winter's icy chill
Touch whitely vale and hill.
What matter ? I shall thrill
Through every vein with summer on that day.
Once more life's perfect youth will all come back,
And for a moment there
I shall stand fresh and fair,
And drop the garment care ;
Once more my perfect youth will nothing lack.
I shut my eyes now, thinking how 'twill be, —
How face to face each soul
Will slip its long control,
Forget the dismal dole
Of dreary Fate's dark separating sea;
And glance to glance, and hand to hand in greeting,
The past with all its fears,
Its silences and tears,
Its lonely, yearning years,
Shall vanish in the moment of that meeting.
THE LOVE-KNOT.
TYING her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.
They were strolling together up the hill,
Where the wind comes blowing merry and chill;
102
NORA PERRT. [1861-88
And it blew the curls, a frolicsome race,
All over the happy peach-colored face,
Till, scolding and laughing, she tied them in,
Under her beautiful dimpled chin.
And it blew a color, bright as the bloom
Of the pinkest fuchsia's tossing plume,
All over the cheeks of the prettiest girl
That ever imprisoned a romping curl,
Or, tying her bonnet under her chin,
Tied a young man's heart within.
Steeper and steeper grew the hill;
Madder, merrier, chillier still
The western wind blew down, and played
The wildest tricks with the little maid,
As, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.
O western wind, do you think it was fair,
To play such tricks with her floating htiir ?
To gladly, gleefully do your best
To blow her against the young man's breast,
Where he as gladly folded her in,
And kissed her mouth and her dimpled chin ?
Ah ! Ellery Vane, you little thought,
An hour ago, when you besought
This country lass to walk with you,
After the sun had dried the dew,
What perilous danger you'd be in,
As she tied her bonnet under her chin !
RIDING DOWN.
OH, did you see him riding down, And did you hear the drums' gay beat,
And riding down, while all the town The drums' gay beat, the bugles sweet,
Came out to see, came out to see, The cymbals' clash, the cannons' crash,
And all the bells rang mad with glee ? That rent the sky with sound and
flash ?
Oh, did you hear those bells ring out,
The bells ring out, the people shout, And did you see me waiting there,
And did you hear that cheer on cheer Just waiting there and watching there,
That over all the bells rang clear ? One little lass, amid the mass
That pressed to see the hero pass ?
And did you see the waving flags,
The fluttering flags, the tattered flags, And did you see him smiling down,
Red, white, and blue, shot through and And smiling down, as riding down
through, With slowest pace, with stately grace,
Baptized with battle's deadly dew? He caught the vision of a face, —
1861-88]
NORA PERRY.
103
My face uplifted red and white,
Turned red and white with sheer delight,
To meet the eyes, the smiling eyes,
Outflashing in their swift surprise ?
Oh, did you see how swift it came,
How swift it came, like sudden flame,
That smile to me, to only me,
The little lass who blushed to see ?
And at the windows all along,
Oh, all along, a lovely throng
Of faces fair, beyond compare,
Beamed out upon him riding there 1
Each face was like a radiant gem,
A sparkling gem, and yet for them
No swift smile came, like sudden flame,
No arrowy glance took certain aim.
He turned away from all their grace,
From all that grace of perfect face,
He turned to me, to only me,
The little lass who blushed to seel
THE COMING OP THE SPRING
rp HERE'S something in the air
-*- That's new and sweet and rare-
A scent of summer things,
A whir as if of wings.
There's something, too, that's new
In the color of the blue
That's in the morning sky,
Before the sun is high.
And though, on plain and hill,
'Tis winter, winter still,
There's something seems to say
That winter's had its day.
And all this changing tint,
This whispering stir, and hint
Of bud and bloom and wing,
Is the coming of the spring.
And to-morrow or to-day
The brooks will break away
From their icy, frozen sleep,
And run and laugh and leap !
And the next thing, in the woods,
The catkins in their hoods
Of fur and silk will stand,
A sturdy little band.
And the tassels soft and fine
Of the hazel will untwine,
And the elder-branches show
Their buds against the snow.
So, silently but swift,
Above the wintry drift,
The long days gain and gain,
Until, on hill and plain,
Once more and yet once more
Returning as before,
We see the bloom of birth
Make young again the earth.
104; TITUS MUNSON CO AN. [1861-88
Citug jftungon Coan,
BORN in Hilo, Hawaiian Islands, 1841.
ON BEING BORN AWAY FROM HOME.
[The Galaxy. 1877.]
A LEXANDER HAMILTON was an eminent American who migrated
-£A. in search of a home ; but seeking, not quitting, our country. Born
of English parents in another British colony, the West Indies, he spent
his boyhood cursing the fate which had doomed him, apparently, to what
he called the "grovelling condition of a clerk" in the North Caribbee
islands. He longed to escape from trade ; boylike, he longed for a war, for
the opportunity of distinction in affairs. Nor did he have to wait until age,
or even until maturity, for verification of the saying of his contemporary,
Goethe, about the final fulfilment of the desires of youth. What Hamilton
desired in boyhood came to him promptly, almost as by the rubbing of the
lamp. We all know the story : how at fifteen he found his way to New Jer-
sey, whence extricating himself he went to Columbia college; and how,
while he was there, the Revolutionary war broke out, making the lad drop his
books at once to accept an appointment as major of artillery ; and how
naturally his career flowed from that initial point. And in our own times
Thackeray was another product of a British colony, having been born in Cal-
cutta, and spending the first seven years of his childhood there. I will not
venture to say that I trace much colonial influence in his writings. He may
have been an Indian at heart, but his novels are certainly those of a clubman
and a Londoner ; and none of his essays disclose very much of the Hindoo.
Sainte-Claire Deville, again, one of the truest of Frenchmen, was born,
like Hamilton, in the Antilles.
But how many have there been who never found a real home, though they
sought it painfully and with tears ! Byron, the predestinate wanderer, and
Rousseau, who never found rest, who complained that his birth was but the
beginning of his misfortunes, le premier de mes malheurs — these are types
of the less fortunate class. We need not multiply examples ; it is the old
story of wandering and homelessness. How often is the homing effort made
in vain ! One would fancy the air filled with piloting spirits that endeavor
to find ways of escape for the languishing body, spirits constantly coming
and going between the rock of exile and the far distant home. Sometimes
the effort succeeds, and sometimes it fails ; the spirit wastes itself in vain
endeavor, passes away like the unnoticed melting of a cloud. To spirits
thus aspiring, thus failing, life is indeed what old Desportes calls it, a bit-
ter and thorny blossom, unefleur espineuse et poignante. For what is the
loss of opportunity but the loss of the soul ? and the conscious loss of oppor-
tunity may go on for a lifetime, a protracted martyrdom. Take the case
of any intelligent exile, some wanderer in the Macerian desert, some refined
person unluckily born in Patagonia, who rejects the Patagonian ideals, who
1861-88] TITUS MUNSON CO AN. 105
no longer craves the most succulent of limpets gathered at the lowest tide :
in our own comfort and satisfaction cannot we extend a little compassion to
him ? Not that I have the least prejudice against Patagonia ; but we need
a name for the better concentration of our sympathy. The intelligent but
discontented Patagonian, then, the man who rejects the Patagonian ideals,
whose thoughts are not the thoughts of Patagonia, whose ways are not Pata-
gonian ways, he to whom even the most successful popular career in Pata-
gonia would seem a humiliation, because it would associate him with the
Patagonian character, and so compromise him before the extra-Patagonian
world — his, I say, is not a happy case. His exile must end like other banish-
ments for life — either in escape or in death. For while he lives he must do
without spiritual light and heat, without the intellectual climate that he
needs.
Do you call this a morbid state of mind in the Patagonian ? Well, it may
be that he should imitate the repose, the serenity of the limpet ; it may be
his duty to rest contented with the beach at low tide, with the estate to which
he was born ; and yet I say that his feeling is not devoid of a certain distinc-
tion. It may be, indeed, very blamable, but it is a feeling that is no trait of
ignoble natures.
And there is, too, a sanative quality in that feeling. His critical attitude
may help the exile to keep before him higher standards, whether in thought
or in conduct, whether in his " Hellenizing" or his " Hebraizing" tenden-
cies, as Mr. Arnold calls them, than he might entertain were he living com-
fortably at the very centre. His privations may thus be more effective than
the maceration of the recluse in keeping him in sympathy with culture, with
the best things of the mind ; and surely that is some compensation for liv-
ing in Patagonia ! There is still another : there is a fortunate exemption
for such exiles — fortunate we may safely call it, though it is but a negative
beatitude — the exemption from envy. That is worth not a little. In Paris,
in London, in Pekin, how many provocatives to envy beset even the philos-
opher ! For in those towns he must see many undeniably superior persons
about him — persons superior to himself not only in fortune, but in ability.
There, in attainment of all kinds, he meets his rivals ; and if he is a real phi-
losopher, he will remember Creon's caution — "not to get the idea fixed in
your head that what you say and nothing else is right." Still, philosopher or
not, he will be likely to envy some of the desirable things that he sees ; and
the fault is perhaps excusable : at any rate an occasional touch of the claw, an
effleurement now and then of the passion, need not surprise us, even when we
do not excuse it, in London or Pekin. But in the Patagonian civilization,
however important it may be to the progress of the world, what does such a
man find to envy ? Surely the higher provocatives to that weakness are not
abundant. Hereditary wealth, ancient family dignities, culture, scholar-
ship, imposing genius — these do not surround him, these do not confront
him with his inferiority as they do (let us say) in our country. It is we, then,
who are the unhappy ones in this respect ; but we can understand, at least,
the weakness of brethren who may be a little shaken by the contemplation of
the desirable things in which the richer civilizations abound.
106
TITUS MUNSON COAN. [1861-88
Yes, the careers which we may observe from day to day may certainly prove
stumbling-blocks to some of us. The thriving politician or contractor, for
instance, Dives in his barouche, the blooming members of literary cliques,
the fashionable clergymen and poets, chorusing gently to feminine audi-
ences who listen intent, perhaps even "weeping in a rapturous sense of
art," — as Heine tells us the women of his day wept when they heard the
sweet voices of the evirates who sang of passion, of " Liebessehnen, von Liebe
und Liebeserguss," — how admirable are all these characters ! These, in-
deed, are careers to move any but the steadfast mind.
And yet even in Philistia it is not every one that will yearn after successes
like these. In Philistia, far from the promised land, the exile may yet con-
template without desire all these desirable things, envying neither them nor
their possessors. He may even indulge in a saving scorn of them, a scorn of
the main achievements, the popular men of the Philistine community ; bath-
ing himself in irony as a tonic against the spiritual malaria. Such a man I
once knew, a man of Askelon. He lived in that rich city as a recluse, and
he was not rich according to any standard recognized in Askelon. On this
text he would sometimes quote delightful old Eutebeuf :
" Je ne sai par ou je coumance,
Tant ai de matyere abondance
For parleir de ma povretei."
Yet this man was not without his pleasures. One of them, I remember,
came from his interest in the study of architecture. For Askelon was an ex-
pensively built city ; and he used to walk much in the streets of it, gazing
upon the fronts of the costly houses, all patterned, as I was told, after the
purest Greek orders. He used to walk around admiring, and making me
admire. But this man had a wonderful eye, a visual gift which must have
been, I think, much the same thing as the second sight or clairvoyance of
which we read ; for upon the fronts of these fine houses he saw more than
what the delicate taste, the cunning hand of the builder, had placed there.
He certainly made out writing upon those walls and doors which I, for one,
could never see, though I have no doubt that it was really there. But they
were legends which would have startled the residents could they have been
audibly published in the streets of Askelon. " What inscriptions upon these
door-plates ! " he would sometimes remark, walking down the Pentodon, the
most fashionable street in the place : " Let me read you a few that I discern
in this neighborhood " ; and as we passed slowly before the Greek houses he
pronounced, one by one, these remarkable words, reading them off, as it
seemed, from the lintels of the very finest edifices. I cannot give all of them,
but these, if I remember, were some : Charlatan, Tartufe, Peculator, Sharp-
er, Parthis mendacior ; and when we came to one of the corner houses, or
"palaces," as they called them in Askelon, he said : "One of our furtive
men lives there — one of our men of three letters. We have as many of them
here in Askelon as ever existed in Plautus's time, and they are quite as able
now as they then were to live in fine houses to which they have not quite the
most honest claim in the world/' While he spoke the man of three letters
1861-88] TITUS MUNSON CO AN. 107
came out and ran down the marble staircase, smiling, and offering, I thought,
to salute my friend as he stepped into his chariot ; but my friend, though he
had clear sight for the palace, did not see the owner.
But you were surely too severe, dear friend of mine ! There were just
men even in Askelon — upright, religious, and intelligent, full of good works.
What if this clever conveyancer had appropriated to himself enough to buy
him a fine house ? Was it not in the very air of Askelon that he should do
such a thing — that he, like others, should at any rate establish himself com-
fortably ? and may not some honester man than himself live after him in the
fine house ? Come now, confess, I used to say, that you yourself in his place
might not have done much better : confess, at least, that when you were a
boy you put your fingers into the sugar-bowl when you should have kept
them out, when well you knew that you ought to keep them out ! And then
my friend would confess the pressure of the environment, the power of the
" Zeitgeist, " as we have learned to call it since then. Poor man ! That was
long ago ; and things have changed greatly in Askelon of latter years. They
tell me that everybody there has now grown honest, and that nobody goes
around any more reading invisible writing on the houses. And all of the
fine buildings are still standing, it appears ; though the journals of that city
remark that the Grecian architecture has mostly peeled off from the fronts
of the houses in the Pentodon, having been insecurely fastened on, it seems,
at first. And how my poor friend used to criticise those very palaces in his
dry, technical way ! One thing in particular that he said I remember by the
antithesis, the turn of it ; he used to say that the architects of Askelon were
never certain whether to construct ornament or to ornament construction.
Well, he is gone now ; he will never blame Askelon again, or run down
Gath. He died in Philistia. Perhaps he served his purpose there, but I am
sure he would have done more if he had been a little less Quixotic in his
notions.
M
THE WATCH-FIRE.
"Y soul goes wandering in the wilderness
All the day long ; nor through the hours of light
Can any foe my constant footing fright,
Although I fare alone and weaponless:
But when deep shadows fall, and lay their stress
Upon me, and giant creatures glare in sight,
The panther Terror, leaping from the night,
The fiery-eyed soft-pacing lioness, —
How guard the pilgrim then, and compass him,
And beat Abaddon from him, in the hour
When age o'ertakes him in the desert dim ?
The flame of Poesy shall fling a shower
Of guarding radiance — and the monsters grim
Shall flee the spot protected by its power 1
The Century Magazine. 1888.
WILLIAM GORDON M'CABE. [1861-88
BORN near Richmond, Va., 1841.
DREAMING IN THE TRENCHES.
I PICTURE her there in the quaint old room,
Where the fading fire-light starts and falls,
Alone in the twilight's tender gloom
With the shadows that dance on the dim-lit walls.
x
Alone, while those -faces look silently down
From their antique frames in a grim repose-
Slight scholarly Ralph in his Oxford gown,
And stanch Sir Alan, who died for Montrose.
There are gallants gay in crimson and gold,
There are smiling beauties with powdered hair,
But she sits there, fairer a thousand-fold,
Leaning dreamily back in her low arm-chair.
And the roseate shadows of fading light
Softly clear steal over the sweet young face,
Where a woman's tenderness blends to-night
With the guileless pride of a knightly race.
Her hands lie clasped in a listless way
On the old Romance — which she holds on her knee —
Of Tristram, the bravest of knights in the fray,
And Iseult, who waits by the sounding sea.
And her proud, dark eyes wear a softened look
As she watches the dying embers fall —
Perhaps she dreams of the knight in the book,
Perhaps of the pictures that smile on the wall.
What fancies I wonder are thronging her brain,
For her cheeks flush warm with a crimson glow !
Perhaps — ah ! me, how foolish and vain !
But I'd give my life to believe it so!
Well, whether I ever march home again
To offer my love and a stainless name,
Or whether I die at the head of my men, —
I'll be true to the end all the same.
Petersburg Trenches. 1864.
1861-88]
CHARLES EDWARD CARRTL.
109
CHRISTMAS NIGHT OF '62.
rpHE wintry blast goes wailing by,
-»- The snow is falling overhead ;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.
Dim forms go flitting through the gloom ;
The soldiers cluster round the blaze,
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.
My sabre swinging overhead
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
And memory leads me to the dead.
My thoughts go wandering to and fro,
Vibrating 'twixt the Now and Then;
I see the low-browed home again,
The old hall wreathed with mistletoe.
And sweetly from the far-off years
Comes borne the laughter faint and
low,
The voices of the Long Ago !
My eyes are wet with tender tears.
I feel again the mother-kiss,
I see again the glad surprise
In the Army of Northern Virginia.
That lightened up the tranquil eyes
And brimmed them o'er with tears of
bliss,
As, rushing from the old hall-door,
She fondly clasped her wayward boy —
Her face all radiant with the joy
She felt to see him home once more.
My sabre swinging on the bough
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow
Aslant upon my saddened brow.
Those cherished faces all are gone I
Asleep within the quiet graves
Where lies the snow in drifting
waves, —
And I am sitting here alone.
There's not a comrade here to-night
But knows that loved ones far away
On bended knees this night will pray :
"God bring our darling from the fight."
But there are none to wish me back,
For me no yearning prayers arise.
The lips are mute and closed the eyes —
My home is in the bivouac.
Cartel
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1841.
ROBINSON CRUSOE.
[Davy and the OoUin. 1885.]
rpHE night was thick and hazy
-1- When the "Piccadilly Daisy"
Carried down the crew and Captain in the sea;
And I think the water drowned 'em,
For they never, never found 'em,
And I know they didn't come ashore with me.
Oh ! 'twas very sad and lonely
When I found myself the only
CHARLES EDWARD CARRTL. [1881-88
Population on this cultivated shore;
But I've made a little tavern
In a rocky little cavern,
And I sit and watch for people at the door.
I spent no time in looking
For a girl to do my cooking,
As I'm quite a clever hand at making stews;
But I had that fellow Friday
Just to keep the tavern tidy,
And to put a Sunday polish on my shoes.
I have a little garden
That I'm cultivating lard in,
As the things I eat are rather tough and dry;
For I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I'm really very fond of beetle-pie.
The clothes I had were furry,
And it made me fret and worry
"When I found the moths were eating off the hair*
And I had to scrape and sand 'em,
And I boiled 'em and I tanned 'em,
Till I got the fine morocco suit I wear.
I sometimes seek diversion
In a family excursion
With the few domestic animals you see;
And we take along a carrot
As refreshments for the parrot,
And a little can of jungleberry tea.
Then we gather as we travel
Bits of moss and dirty gravel.
And we chip off little specimens of stone,
And we carry home as prizes
Funny bugs of handy sizes,
Just to give the day a scientific tone.
If the roads are wet and muddy,
We remain at home and study,
For the Goat is very clever at a sum —
And the Dog, instead of fighting,
Studies ornamental writing,
While the Cat is taking lessons on the drum.
We retire at eleven,
And we rise again at seven ;
And I wish to call attention, as I close,
To the fact that all the scholars
Are correct about their collars,
And particular in turning out their toes.
1861-88] MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE. \\\
BORN in Norridgewock, Me., 1841.
SPIRITUALISM.
[Unity Pulpit. 1889.]
T T seems to me that a great many people are intellectually confused as to
-1- the choice they must make between the two great theories of life. There
are people who put aside any claims to proof in this direction or that as bear-
ing upon the spiritual nature of man, and yet cling to their own belief in his
spiritual nature illogically and without any proof whatever. We are present-
ed with two theories, and we cannot choose a little of one and a little of the
other. One or the other is certainly true. One theory is the materialistic.
In accordance with that, human life, any intelligent life, is merely a passing,
transitory stage, of no more permanent existence than these blossoms that
now surround me. Humanity itself, its brain, its heart, its life, its hope, its
Jesus, its Shakespeare, its Buddha, all the great names of the world, are only
curious and strange manifestations of this material world, blossoming as the
plants blossom, fading as the plants fade. On that theory, — think a moment
what it means, — the world, all the past of the world, is a desert, darkness, a
black abyss, just behind us — nothing. All who have ever lived have been blot-
ted out, and all that great array of figures are only fancies of a dream. And
before us what ? Night and the dark again. We live, we think, we feel for a
little while, and that is the end. Here is this world of ours, with just a few
generations that are now peopling it, sailing through space, and this is all ;
and when one drops out he drops into everlasting nothingness. That is one
theory. It does not commend itself to me, either to my intellect or to my
heart.
The other theory is what ? It is that spirit and life are first, supreme ;
that spirit shaped and controls form, that form only expresses spirit. Why,
I have had a dozen bodies since I was born into this life. There is nothing
that I know of in any science to make it unreasonable to believe that after
the fact which we call death I may still go on clothed with a body as real as
is this. This theory teaches us that the universe is ail alive. Young, the
great scientist who discovered what has been the universally accepted theory
of light, who lived just a little after Sir Isaac Newton's time, recognized as
one of the most acute and profound thinkers of the world, put it forth as a
speculation merely, — he did not claim anything more, — that for anything
science knew to the contrary — we now see hints that look that way — there
might be no end of living, pulsing, throbbing worlds all around us, a spiritual
system of which we are the material counterpart.
At any rate, we must choose between the theory of materialism and a spir-
itualistic theory. If the spiritualistic theory be true, then death is not the
end. I may hope to find my friends once more ; and it is quite natural that
the spiritual natures of certain susceptible ones of the race should become
112
MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE. [1861-88
developed so that they are capable of receiving communications from the
other side from those who attempt to come into communication with them.
Does that not seem to you perfectly natural? If there be such a thing as a
spiritual world, if my father is alive, if your brother, sister, husband, wife,
is alive, and if they are not very far away, would it not be the most natural
thing in the world for them to try, at any rate, to reach you ?
I propose now to hint to you a few words as to the proof of these claims
which Spiritualists offer. One thing is significant, and is immensely to the
credit of this higher Spiritualism. It does not ask anybody to believe with
his eyes shut. It does not ask anybody to take the statement of the most
truthful person on the face of the earth. It offers, or claims to offer, no end
of facts as proved ; and it asks you to investigate, and believe or reject on the
basis of these claims. I say it is immensely to the credit of this higher Spir-
itualism that it should put itself on this purely scientific basis as being per-
fectly in accord with the tendencies and movement of the modern world.
You are familiar in a general way with the kind of facts that are offered as
proof. They are spoken of lightly, sometimes sneered at. It has been said,
Even suppose a physical body is lifted up or moved by a force that has appar-
ently no connection with the muscular power of any people present, — I have
heard this spoken of and sneered at a thousand times, — suppose it is, what
of it ? One of the most learned men of this country has given this hint as to
what of it. I repeat it from him. He makes this point. Everything in this
world, so far as we know, if let alone, tends downward under the force of
universal gravity. There is no power known in heaven or earth that is capa-
ble of lifting even a pin against this force of gravity except the power of in-
telligent will. If, therefore, it should happen, if it should be demonstrated,
that there is any such force that is capable of doing this, here would be the
Eubicon, the very dividing line between materialism and spiritualism, ab-
solute demonstration that here is intelligent will at work. I give you this as
quotation, not verbally, but the idea, as expressing the opinion of one of the
most learned men in this country as to the significance of such a fact, sup-
posing it ever occurred. And I say to you frankly, in passing, that I am con-
vinced that such facts have occurred and do occur.
I cannot, at this time, even hint at the many proofs that the Spiritualists
offer. You can find them for yourselves. You may, however, be interested
if I give you one or two brief hints of things which have come under my own
observation and which have filled me with most restless and eager question-
ing.
There has been in the modern world a manifestation in these last few years
of certain strange powers on the part of mind as already embodied, such as
was not recognized or given any place in science until the last half-century.
A French scientific commission investigated hypnotism and pronounced it
all humbug. To-day there is not a competent scientific man who does not
recognize its truth. There used to be once great incredulity as to the exist-
ence of clairvoyance and clairaudience. To-day, I venture to say there is no
person of competent intelligence, who has investigated the matter, who does
not believe that these powers exist. It was once believed that there could be
1861-88] MINOT JUDSON SA VAOE. U3
no such thing as communication on the part of one mind with another, ex-
cept through recognized physical media. The idea would have been scorned
and flouted a few years ago. I venture here again to say that there is proba-
bly not a man of competent intelligence, who has given it careful and earnest
investigation, who does not believe in telepathy, or mind-reading, — the pos-
sibility of minds communicating with each other without much regard to
space, providing the conditions and circumstances are favorable.
These do not prove Spiritualism at all, but note this one thing. It proves
that there has been a tremendous increase and Avidening of the recognition
of the powers of the human mind. They prove what appears to be, at least,
a semi-independence of the recognized physical faculties of communication.
What kind of mind is this that can manifest itself to another a thousand
miles away ? Something different from the old idea of mind that used to be
generally entertained. Phenomena like these have become so familiar to me
that they are no more wonderful now than the telegraph and the telephone.
I cannot explain the telegraph and the telephone, but I know they are true.
I cannot explain these things, but I know they are true.
The one thing, the only thing that any sane man can desire, is the truth.
It seems to me the most foolhardy of all things for any man to object to a
fact. If it is a fact, then it is only folly to object; for if indeed it be a fact it
will remain a fact after you have objected your life long. The only sane
search in the world, then, is for truth. I am so anxious to find the truth that
I cannot afford to make up my mind too readily. I must pause, I must wait.
I must not only think certain things probable, but I must know they are
true.
But this much I will say. It seems to me due to the claims of this higher
Spiritualism to say that, if I should ever come to accept the central claim of
Spiritualism, I cannot see wherein it would change my belief, scientific,
philosophic, ethical, practical, one whit. What would it do ? It would sim-
ply place under my feet a rock, demonstrated to be a rock, instead of a hope,
a trust, a great and glorious belief.
If this higher faith of Spiritualism should ever be universally accepted,
what would follow ? It would abolish death. It would make you know that
the loved are not lost, though they have gone before you. It would make any
human life here, whatever its poverty, disease or sorrow, worth while, be-
cause of the grand possibility of the outlook. It would give victory over s«r-
row, over heart-break, over tears. It would make one master not only of
death, but of life.
VOL. X.— 8
H4 SUSAN DABNEY SMEDES. [1861-88
THE SHADOW.
[Poems. 1882.]
TN a bleak land and desolate, A hideous wretch stood in his track,
J- Beyond the earth somewhere, Deformed, and cowering there.
Went wandering through death's dark
te "And who art thou," he shrieked in
A soul into the air. fright,
" Tli at dost my steps pursue ?
And still, as on and on it fled, Go, hide thy shapeless shape from sight,
A wild, waste region through, Nor thus pollute my view ! "
Behind there fell the steady tread
Of one that did pursue. The foul form answered him : " Alway
Along thy path I flee.
At last he paused, and looked aback; I'm thine own actions. Night and day
And then he was aware Still must I follow thee ! "
BORN in Raymond, Hinds Co., Miss.
THOMAS DABNEY, A PLANTER OF THE OLD TIME.
[Memorials of a Southern Planter. 1887.]
'T^HE war ended in April. The news of Lincoln's assassination came a short
-1- time previous to this, and was received with deep regret by Thomas.
" He was the best friend that we had," he said, " and his death was the great-
est calamity that could have befallen the South."
It was no longer Thomas's duty to spend a part of his time in Montgomery,
Alabama. He was at Burleigh when he heard of General Lee's surrender.
On the day that the news reached him, he called his son Thomas to him, and
they rode together to the field where the negroes were at work. He informed
them of the news that had reached him, and that they were now free. His
advice was that they should continue to work the crop as they had been
doing. At the end of the year they should receive such compensation for
their labor as he thought just.
From this time till January 1, 1866, no apparent change took place among
the Burleigh negroes. Those who worked in the fields went out as usual,
and cultivated and gathered in the crops. In the house, they went about
their customary duties. We expected them to go away, or to demand wages,
or at least to give some sign that they knew they were free. But, except that
they were very quiet and serious, and more obedient and kind than they had
ever been known to be for more than a few weeks, at a time of sickness or
other affliction, we saw no change in them.
1861-88] SUSAN DABNET SMEDE8. ^5
At Christmas such compensation was made them for their services as
seemed just. Afterwards fixed wages were offered and accepted. Thomas
called them up now and told them that as they no longer belonged to him
they must discontinue calling him "master."
" Yes, rnarster," ' ' yes, marster," was the answer to this. " They seem to
bring in 'master* and say it ofteuer than they ever did/' was his comment,
as he related the occurrence to his children. This was true. The name seemed
to grow into a term of endearment. As time went on, and under the
changed order of things, negroes whom he had never known became tenants
on his plantation ; these new people called him master also. This was unpre-
cedented in the South, I think. They were proud of living on his place, on
account of the good name that he had won for himself as a master. Not in-
frequently they were heard to express a regret that they had not belonged to
him, when they saw the feeling that existed between himself and his former
slaves. Sometimes he came to us with a puzzled look to ask who those negroes
were who had just called him old master and shaken hands with him.
"I cannot recall their faces," he would say; "surely, I never owned
them."
Finally the negroes on the neighboring plantations, and wherever he went,
came to call him old master. They seemed to take pride in thus claiming a
relationship with him, as it were ; and he grew accustomed to the voluntary
homage.
He had come home to a house denuded of nearly every article of furniture,
and to a plantation stripped of the means of cultivating any but a small pro-
portion of it. A few mules and one cow comprised the stock. We had brought
a few pieces of common furniture from Georgia, and a very few necessary
articles were bought. In the course of time some home-made contrivances
and comforts relieved the desolate appearance of the rooms, but no attempt
was ever made to refurnish the house.
He owned nothing that could be turned into money without great sacrifice
but five bales of cotton. There were yet two sons and tMro daughters to be
educated. He decided to get a tutor for them, and to receive several other
pupils in his house in order to make up the salary. The household was put
on an economical footing. The plantation negroes were hired to work in the
fields, and things seemed to promise more prosperous days. So the first year
was passed
And now a great blow fell on Thomas Dabney. Shortly before the war he
had been asked by a trusted friend to put his name as security on some papers
for a good many thousand dollars. At the time he was assured that his name
would only be wanted to tide over a crisis of two weeks, and that he would
never hear of the papers again. It was a trap set, and his unsuspicious nature
saw no danger, and he put his name to the papers. Loving this man, and
confiding in his honor as in a son's, he thought no more of the transaction.
It was now the autumn of 1863. One night he walked up-stairs to the room
where his children were sitting, with a paper in his hand. " My children,"
he said, "I am a ruined man. The sheriff is down-stairs. He has served
this writ on me. It is for a security debt. I do not even know how many
•j^g SUSAN DABNET SMEDES. [1861-88
more such papers have my name to them." His face was white as he said
these words. He was sixty-eight years of age, with a large and helpless fam-
ily on his hands, and the country in such a condition that young men scarce-
ly knew how to make a livelihood.
The sheriff came Avith more writs. Thomas roused himself to meet them
all. He determined to pay every dollar.
But to do this he must have time. The sale of everything that he owned
would not pay all these claims. He put the business in the hands of his lawyer,
Mr. John Shelton, of Kaymond, who was also his intimate friend. Mr. Shel-
ton contested the claims, and this delayed things till Thomas could decide
on some way of paying the debts.
A gentleman to whom he owed personally several thousand dollars cour-
teously forbore to send in his claim. Thomas was determined that he should
not on this account fail to get his money, and wrote urging him to bring a
friendly suit, that, if the worst came, he should at least get his proportion.
Thus urged, the friendly suit was brought, the man deprecating the proceed-
ing, as looking like pressing a gentleman.
And now the judgments, as he knew they would, went against him one by
one. On the 27th of November, 1866, the Burleigh plantation was put up at
auction and sold, but the privilege of buying it in a certain time reserved to
Thomas. At this time incendiary fires were common. There was not much
law in the land. We heard of the gin-houses and cotton-houses that were
burned in all directions. One day as Thomas came back from a business
journey the smouldering ruins of his gin-house met his eye. The building
was itself valuable and necessary. All the cotton that he owned was consumed
in it. He had not a dollar. He had to borrow the money to buy a postage
stamp, not only during this year, but during many years to come. It was a
time of deepest gloom. Thomas had been wounded to the bottom of his af-
fectionate heart by the perfidy of the man who had brought this on his house.
In the midst of the grinding poverty that now fell in full force on him, he
heard of the reckless extravagance of this man on the money that should
have been used to meet these debts.
Many honorable men in the South were taking the benefit of the bankrupt
law. Thomas's relations and friends urged him to take the law. It was mad-
ness, they said, for a man of his age, in the condition the country was then
in, to talk of settling the immense debts that were against him. He refused
with scorn to listen to such proposals. But his heart was wellnigh broken.
He called his children around him, as he lay in bed, not eating and scarce-
ly sleeping.
"My children," he said, "I shall have nothing to leave you but a fair
name. But you may depend that I shall leave you that. I shall, if I live, pay
every dollar that I owe. If I die, I leave these debts to you to discharge. Do
not let my name be dishonored. Some men would kill themselves for this.
I shall not do that. But I shall die."
The grief of betrayed trust was the bitterest drop in his cup of suffering.
But he soon roused himself from this depression and set about arranging to
raise the money needed to buy in the plantation. It could only be done by
1861-88] SUSAN DABNEY SMEDES. \-[*j
giving up all the money brought in by the cotton crop for many years. This
meant rigid self-denial for himself and his children. He could not bear the
thought of seeing his daughters deprived of comforts. He was ready to stand
unflinchingly any fate that might be in store for him. But his tenderest
feelings were stirred for them.- His chivalrous nature had always revolted
from the sight of a woman doing hard work. He determined to spare his
daughters all such labor as he could perform. General Sherman had said
that he would like to bring every Southern woman to the wash-tub. "He
shall never bring my daughters to the wash-tub," Thomas Dabney said. « ' I
will do the washing myself." And he did it for two years. He was in his
seventieth year when he began to do it.
This may give some idea of the labors, the privations, the hardships, of
those terrible years. The most intimate friends of Thomas, nay, his own
children, who were not in the daily life at Burleigh, have never known the
unprecedented self-denial, carried to the extent of acutest bodily sufferings,
which he practised during this time. A curtain must be drawn over this part
of the life of my lion-hearted father !
When he grew white and thin, and his frightened daughters prepared a
special dish for him, he refused to eat the delicacy. It would choke him, he
said, to eat better food than they had, and he yielded only to their earnest
solicitations. He would have died rather than ask for it. When the liv-
ing was so coarse and so ill-prepared that he could scarcely eat it, he never
failed, on rising from the table, to say earnestly and reverently, as he stood
by his chair, "Thank the Lord for this much."
During a period of eighteen months, no light in summer, and none but a
fire in winter, except in some case of necessity, was seen in the house. He
was fourteen years in paying these debts that fell on him in his sixty-ninth
year. He lived but three years after the last dollar was paid.
When he was seventy years of age he determined to learn to cultivate a
garden. He had never performed manual labor, but he now applied himself
to learn to hoe as a means of supplying his family with vegetables. With the
labor of those aged hands he made a garden that was the best ordered that
we had ever seen at Burleigh. He made his garden, as he did everything
that he undertook, in the most painstaking manner, neglecting nothing that
could insure success. The beds and rows and walks in that garden were
models of exactness and neatness. It was a quarter of a mile from the house
and from water, on the top of a long, high hill, and three-quarters of an acre
in extent. In a time of drought, or if he had set out anything that needed
watering, he toiled up that long, precipitous hill with bucket after bucket of
water. " I never look at the clouds" had been a saying of his in cultivating
his plantation, and he carried it out now. That garden supplied the daily
food of his family nearly all the year round. He planted vegetables in such
quantities that it was impossible to consume all on the table, and hesold bar-
rels of vegetables of different kinds in New Orleans.
.Oftentimes he was so exhausted when he came in to dinner that he could
not eat for a while. He had his old bright way of making every one take an
interest in his pursuits, — sympathy was as necessary and sweet to him as to
118
8VSAN DABNET SMEDES. [1861-88
a child,— and he showed with pride what he had done by his personal labor
in gardening and in washing. He placed the clothes on the line as carefully
as if they were meant to hang there always, and they must be admired, too !
He said, and truly, that he had never seen snowier ones.
Oh, thou heroic old man 1 Thou hast a right to thy pride in those exact
strokes of the hoe and in those superb potatoes, " the best ever seen in the
New Orleans market," and in those long lines of snowy drapery ! But those
to whom thou art showing these things are looking beyond them, at the man !
They are gazing reverently, and with scarce suppressed tears, on the hands
that have been in this world for three-score and ten years, and are beginning
to-day to support a houseful of children !
At the end of the hard day's work he would say, sometimes: "General
Sherman has not brought my daughters to the wash-tub. I could not stand
that/'
General Sherman's words were as a cruel spur in the side of a noble steed
that needed no spur, and was already running beyond his strength.
He urged some of his old friends to follow his example, and was quite dis-
gusted at the answer of one, that he had no "turn " for working in a garden.
" No turn !" he repeated, indignantly, in speaking of it to his children. " I
hear that he allows the ladies to do all this work. I wonder what turn for it
they have ! I have no toleration for such big Indian talk. "
His hands were much bent with age and gout. No glove could be drawn
over them. They had been so soft that a bridle-rein, unless he had his gloves
on, chafed them unpleasantly. He expressed thankfulness that the bent
fingers and palms did not interfere with his holding either his hoe-handle or
his pen. He wrote as many letters as ever, and an article for a State news-
paper or a Virginia or New Orleans paper occasionally, if interested in any-
thing that was going on. But he said that politics were getting to the state
that oiriy disgusted him, and he took no active part or interest even in State
government till he saw a hope of throwing off "carpet-bag " rule. "When he
spoke of the expense of the postage on his correspondence, he said that he
could not maintain himself in his station if he wrote fewer letters.
He tried hard to learn to plough, but he could not do it. It was a real dis-
appointment. He tried to learn to cut wood, but complained that he could
not strike twice in the same spot. It was with great labor that he got a stick
cut in two. His failure in this filled him with a dogged determination to
succeed, and he persisted in cutting wood in the most painful manner, often
till he was exhausted. Some one told him of a hand-saw for sawing wood,
and he was delighted and felt independent when he got one. He enjoyed it
like a new toy, it was so much better in his hands than the axe. He sawed
wood by the hour, in the cold and in the heat. It seemed to be his rule never
to stop any work till he was exhausted.
His son Edward lived with him during these years. He tried to lessen his
father's labors. But Thomas Dabney was not a man to sit down while his
children worked. Besides, there was work enough for these two men, and
more than enough. The arrangement of both house and plantation had been
planned to employ many servants, as was the custom in the South. Every-
1861-88] SUSAN DABNET SMEDES. Hg
thing was at a long distance from everything else. As time went on, an ef-
fort was made to concentrate things. But, without money, it was impossible
to arrange the place like a Northern farm, with every convenience near at
hand.
One fall, in putting down the dining-room carpet, Thomas heard his
daughter say that she meant to turn the carpet, because it looked new on the
other side.
" Do not turn it, then," he said. " I do not wish any one to suppose that
I would buy a new carpet, owing money as I do."
In these years he was preparing once for a business visit to New Orleans.
His daughter asked him to buy a new suit, as he spoke of calling on his
friends in the city.
" No," he answered ; "I should be ashamed to wear new clothes. What
hope would my creditors have of ever getting their money if they saw me in
New Orleans in new clothes ? No ; I am going in this suit that you say looks
so shabby and faded. I shall call on all my creditors in this suit. I have not
a dollar to take to them, but I shall let them see that I am not shunning them
for that. I shall show myself to them, and tell them that I am doing my very
best to pay them, and that they shall have every dollar if they will have pa-
tience. You see, my child, this is the only assurance I can give them that I
mean to pay them. Now, could I expect to be believed if I were handsomely
dressed ?"
His merchants, Giquel & Jamison, were among the creditors whom he saw
during this visit. They informed him that all their books had been burned
during the war, and that they had no bill against him. They said also that
they had accounts amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars set
down in those books, and that he was the only man who had come forward to
pay them. He was not to be turned from paying his debt.
An humble neighbor had said years ago that he hated Colonel Dabney be-
cause he acted as if he considered himself a prince. In these later days he ad-
mired Thomas as much as he had before disliked him. " I thought him a
haughty man because he was rich ; now I see that he is the same man poor
that he was rich. Now I know that he is a prince."
One of his daughters had occasion to offer a draft of his to an ignorant
man in a distant county of Mississippi. She felt a natural diffidence, as she
was not sure that it would be accepted in payment of her indebtedness. She
asked the man if he had ever heard of Thomas Dabney.
"Heard of him ?" he said. "Every letter in his name is pure gold. I
would as soon have that draft as the gold in my hand."
Seeing one of his daughters look sad and quiet, Thomas said to her : "My
child, it seems to me that you look coldly on me. I cannot bear that. You
are the very core of my heart. If I have done anything that you do not like,
tell me."
Oh, what heart would not bound out to the father who could say that to
his own child !
And the tender, satisfied look when he was embraced and kissed, and the
real trouble confided to his sympathizing bosom !
ANNIE DOUGLAS ROBINSON. [1861-88
annfe ^ouglag Eolringotu
BORN in Plymouth, N. H., 1842.
TWO PICTURES.
[Poems by "Marian Douglas"]
A N old farm-house, with meadows wide,
-£^- And sweet with clover on each side;
A bright-eyed boy, who looks from out
The door with woodbine wreathed about,
And wishes his one thought all day, —
" Oh, if I could but fly away
From this dull spot the world to see,
How happy, happy, happy,
How happy I should be ! "
Amid the city's constant din,
A man who round the world has been,
Who, 'mid the tumult and the throng,
Is thinking, thinking all day long, —
"Oh, could I only tread once more
The field-path to the farm-house door,
The old green meadows could I see,
How happy, happy, happy,
How happy I should be ! "
PUSSY WILLOW.
THE brook is brimmed with melted Soon red will bud the maple trees,
snow, The bluebirds will be singing,
The maple sap is running, And yellow tassels in the breeze
And on the highest elm a crow Be from the poplars swinging ;
His big black wings is sunning. And rosy will the May-flower lie
A close green bud the May-flower lies Upon its mossy pillow,
Upon its mossy pillow ; But you must come the first of all.
And soft and low the South wind blows, ' ' Come, Pussy ! " is the South wind's
And through the bare fields calling goes, call —
"Come, Pussy! Pussy Willow! "Come, Pussy! Pussy Willow!
Within your close brown wrapper stir! A fairy gift to children dear,
Come out and show your silver fur! The downy firstling of the year —
Come, Pussy ! Pussy Willow ! " Come, Pussy ! Pussy Willow I "
1861-88] BRONSON HOWARD.
BOBN in Detroit, Mich., 1842.
THE LAWS OF DRAMATIC CONSTRUCTION.
THEIR PRACTICAL APPLICATION IN THE HISTORY OF " THE BANKER'S
DAUGHTER."
[From a Lecture before the Shakespeare Chib of Harvard University. 1886.]
IT happens that one of my own plays has had a very curious history. It
has appeared before the American public in two forms, so radically dif-
ferent that a description of the changes made, and of the reasons for making
them, will involve the consideration of some very interesting laws of dra-
matic construction. I shall ask you to listen very carefully to the story, or
"plot," of the piece as it was first produced in Chicago in 1873. Then I shall
trace the changes that were made in this story before the play was produced
at the Union Square Theatre in New York, five years later. And after that,
to follow the very odd ad ventures jof the same play still further, I shall point
out briefly the changes which were made necessary by adapting it to English
life with English characters, for its production at the Court Theatre, Lon-
don, in 1879. All the changes which I shall describe to you were forced upon
me (as soon as I had decided to make the general alterations in the play) by
the laws of dramatic construction ; and it is to the experimental application
of these laws to a particular play that I ask your attention. The learned
professors of Harvard University know much more about them than I do,
so far as a study of dramatic literature, from the outside, can give them that
knowledge ; and the great modern authorities on the subject — Hallam, Les-
sing, Schlegel, and many others — are open to the students of Harvard in her
library ; or, rather, shall I say. they lie closed on its shelves. But I invite
you to-day to step into a little dramatic workshop, instead of a scientific
library, and to see an humble workman in the craft, trying, with repeated
experiments — with failures and wasted time — not to elucidate the laws of
dramatic construction, but to obey them ; exactly as an inventor (deficient,
it may be, in all scientific knowledge) tries to apply the general laws of me-
chanics to the immediate necessities of the machine he is working out in his
mind. . . . But what are the laws of dramatic construction ? No one
man knows much about them. They bear abou t the same relation to human
character and human sympathies as the laws of nature bear to the material
universe. When all the mysteries of humanity have been solved, the laws of
dramatic construction can be codified and clearly explained , not until then.
But every scientific man can tell you a little about nature, and every drama-
tist can tell you a little about dramatic truth. A few general principles have
been discovered by experiment and discussion. These few principles can be
brought to your attention. But after you have learned all that has yet been
learned by others, the field of humanity will still lie before you, as the field
122 BRONSON HOWARD. [1861-88
of nature lies before the scientist, with millions of times more to be discov-
ered, by you or by some one else, than has ever yet been known. All I pur-
pose to-night is to show you how certain laws of dramatic construction as-
serted themselves from time to time as we Avere making the changes in this
play ; how they thrust themselves upon our notice ; how we could not
possibly ignore them, and you will see how a man comes to understand any
particular law, after he has been forced to obey it, although, perhaps, he has
never heard of it or dreamed of it before.
And let me say here, to the students of Harvard — I do not presume to ad-
dress words of advice to the faculty — it is to you and to others who enjoy the
high privileges of liberal education that the American stage ought to look for
honest and good dramatic work in the future. Let me say to you, then :
Submit yourselves truly and unconditionally to the laws of dramatic truth,
so far as you can discover them by honest mental exertion and observation.
Do not mistake any mere defiance of these laws for originality. You might
as well show your originality by defying the law of gravitation. . . .
Even if you feel sometimes that your genius — that's always the word in the
secret vocabulary of our own minds — even if your genius seems to be ham-
pered by these dramatic laws, resign yourself to them at once.
The story of the play, as first produced in Chicago, may be told as follows :
Act first — Scene, New York. Lilian Westbrook and Harold Routledge
have a lovers' quarrel. Never mind what the cause of it is. To quote a pas-
sage from the play itself : ' ' A woman never quarrels with a man she doesn't
love" — this is one of the minor laws of dramatic construction — " and she is
never tired of quarrelling with a man she does love." But, when Lilian an-
nounces to Harold Routledge that their engagement is broken forever, he
thinks she means to imply that she doesn't intend to marry him. Women
are often misunderstood by our more grossly practical sex ; we are too apt
to judge of what they mean by what they say. Harold Routledge, almost
broken-hearted, bids Lilian fare well, and leaves her presence. . . . Lil-
ian's father enters. He is on the verge of financial ruin, and he has just re-
ceived a letter from Mr. John Strebelow, a man of great wealth, asking his
daughter's hand in marriage. Mr. Westbrook urges her to accept him, be-
cause he dreads to leave, in his old age, a helpless girl, trained only to luxury
and extravagance, to a merciless world. Lilian, on her part, shudders at
the thought of her father renewing the struggle of life when years have ex-
hausted his strength ; and she sacrifices her own heart. Mr. Strebelow is a
man of about forty years, of unquestioned honor, of noble personal character
in every way. He marries her without knowing that she does not love him ;
much less, that she loves another.
Act second — Paris. Lilian has been married five years, and is residing
with her husband in the French capital. As the curtain rises, Lilian is
teaching her little child, Natalie, her alphabet, All the warm affection of a
woman's nature, suppressed and thrown back upon her own heart, has con-
centrated itself upon this child. Lilian has been a good wife, and she rever-
ences her husband. But she does not love him as a wife. Mr. Strebelow now
enters, and tells Lilian that he has just met an old friend of hers and of him-
1861-88] BRONSON HOWARD. 123
self — the American artist, Mr. Harold Routledge, passing through Paris on
his way from his studio in Rome. He has insisted on a visit from Mr. Rout-
ledge, and the two parted lovers are brought face to face by the husband.
They are afterward left alone together. . . . Lilian forgets everything
except the moment when her lover last parted from her. She is again the
wayward girl that waited for his return ; and she does what she would have
done five years before ; she turns, passionately, to throw herself into his
arms. At this moment, her little child, Natalie, runs in. Lilian is a mother
again, and a wife. She falls to her knees and embraces her child at the very
feet of her former lover. Harold Routledge bows his head reverently, and
leaves them together.
Act third. The art of breaking the tenth commandment — thou shalt not
covet thy neighbor's wife — has reached its highest perfection in France. One
of the most important laws of dramatic construction might be formulated in
this way ; if you want a particular thing done, choose a character to do it
that an audience will naturally expect to do it. I Avanted a man to fall in
love with my heroine after she was a married woman, and I chose a French
count for that purpose. Harold Routledge overhears the Count de Carojac,
a hardened roue and a duellist, speaking of Lilian in such terms as no hon-
orable man should speak of a modest woman. ... A duel is arranged.
The parties meet at the Chateau Chateaubriand, in the suburbs of Paris.
. . . A scream from Lilian, as she reaches the scene in breathless haste,
throws Routledge off his guard ; he is wounded and falls. Strebelow, too,
has come on the field. Lilian is ignorant of her husband's presence, and she
sees only the bleeding form of the man she loves lying upon the snow. She
falls at his side, and words of burning passion, checked a few hours before
by the innocent presence of her child, spring to her lips. The last of these
words are as follows : "I have loved you — and you only — Harold, from the
first. " John Strebelow stands for a moment speechless. When his voice re-
turns, he has become another man. He is hard and cold. He will share all
his wealth with her ; but, in the awful bitterness of a great heart, at that mo-
ment, he feels that the woman who has deceived him so wickedly has no nat-
ural right to be the guardian of their child. " Return to our home, madam ;
it will be yours, not mine, hereafter ; but our child will not be there." Un-
generous words ! But if we are looking in our own hearts, where we must
find nearly all the laws of dramatic construction, how many of us would be
more generous, with such words as John Strebelow had just heard ringing
in our ears ? As the act closes, the startled love of a mother has again and
finally asserted itself in Lilian's heart, the one overmastering passion of her
nature. With the man she has loved lying near her, wounded, and, for aught
she knows, dying, she is thinking only of her lost child.
Maternal love, throughout the history of the world, has had triumphs over
all the other passions ; triumphs over destitution and trials and tortures ;
over all the temptations incident to life : triumphs to which no other impulse
of the human heart — not even the love of man for woman — has ever risen.
One of the most brilliant men I had ever known once said in court : " Wo-
man, alone, shares with the Creator the privilege of communing with an un-
124: BRONSON HOWARD. [1861-88
born human being"; and, with this privilege, the Creator seems to have
shared with woman a part of his own great love. All other love in our race is
merely human. The play, from this time on, becomes the story of a mother's
love. Two years later Lilian is at the home of her father, in New York. Her
husband has disappeared with her child. Harold Eoutledge was wounded
seriously in the duel, but not killed ; he is near Lilian, seeing her every day ;
but he is her friend, rather than her lover, now ; she talks with him of her
child, and he feels how utterly hopeless his own passion is in the presence of
an all-absorbing mother's love. . . . The sudden return and reappear-
ance of the husband falls like a stroke of fate upon both ; but Lilian dies at
'last, a smile of perfect happiness on her face, with her child in her arms.
The radical change made in the story I have just related to you, before the
production of the play in New York, was this : Lilian lives, instead of dying,
in the last act. My reasons for making the change were based upon one of the
most important principles of the dramatic art, namely : A dramatist should
deal, sc tar as possible, with subjects of universal interest, instead of with
such as appeal strongly to a part of the public only. I do not mean that he
may not appeal to certain classes of people, and depend upon those classes
for success ; but just so far as he does this he limits the possibilities of that
success. I have said that the love of offspring in woman has shown itself the
strongest of all human passions ; and it is the one most nearly allied to the
boundless love of Deity. But the one absolutely universal passion of the race
— which underlies all other passions — on which, indeed, the very existence
of the race depends — the very fountain of maternal love itself — is the love of
the sexes. The dramatist must remember that his work cannot, like that of
the novelist or the poet, pick out the hearts, here and there, that happen to
be in sympathy with its subject. He appeals to a thousand hearts at the same
moment ; he has no choice in the matter ; he must do this. And it is only
when he deals with the love of the sexes that his work is most interesting to
that aggregation of human hearts we call the " audience." Furthermore —
and here comes in another law of dramatic construction — a play must be, in
one way or another, " satisfactory " to the audience. This word has a mean-
ing which varies in different countries, and even in different parts of the same
country ; but, whatever audience you are writing for, your work must be
" satisfactory" to it. In England and America, the death of a pure woman
on the stage is not " satisfactory," except when the play rises to the dignity
of tragedy. The death, in an ordinary play, of a woman who is not pure, as
in the case of "Frou-Frou," is perfectly satisfactory, for the reason that it is
inevitable. The wife who has once taken the step from purity to impurity
can never reinstate herself in the world of art on this side of the grave : and
so an audience looks with complacent tears on the death of an erring woman.
But Lilian had not taken the one fatal step which would have reconciled an
audience to her death. She was still pure, and every one left the theatre
wishing that she had lived. . . . The play which finally takes its place
on the stage usually bears very little resemblance to the play which first sug-
gested itself to the author's mind. The most magnificent figure in the Eng-
lish drama of this century was a mere faint outline, merely a fatherly old
1861-88] BBONSON HOWARD. 125
man, until the suggestive mind of Macready stimulated the genius of Bul-
wer Lytton, and the great author, eagerly acknowledging the assistance ren-
dered him, made " Cardinal Richelieu" the colossal central figure of a play
that was first written as a pretty love story. Bulwer Lyttoii had an eye sin-
gle, as every dramatist ought to have — as every successful dramatist must
have — to the final artistic result ; he kept before him the one object of mak-
ing the play of " Richelieu " as good a play as he possibly could make it. The
first duty of a dramatist is to put upon the stage the very best work he can, in
the light of whatever advice and assistance may come to him. Fair acknowl-
edgment afterward is a matter of mere ordinary personal honesty. It is not
a question of dramatic art.
So Lilian is to live, and not die, in the last act. The first question for us
to decide — I say "us" — the New York manager, the literary attache of the
theatre and myself — the first practical question before us was : As Lilian
is to live, which of the two men who love her is to die ? There are axioms
among the laws of dramatic construction, as in mathematics. One of them
is this : three hearts cannot beat as one. ... It was easy enough to kill
either of them, but which ? We argued this question for three weeks. Mere
romance was on the side of the young artist. But to have had him live would
have robbed the play of all its meaning. Its moral, in the original form, is
this : It is a dangerous thing to marry, for any reason, without the safeguard
of love, even when the person one marries is worthy of one's love in every pos-
sible way. If we had decided in favor of Routledge, the play would have had
no moral at all, or rather a very bad one. If a girl marries the wrong man,
she need only wait for him to die ; and if her lover waits, too, it'll be all right.
If, on the other hand, we so reconstruct the whole play that the husband and
wife may at last come together with true affection, we shall have this moral :
Even if a young girl makes the worst of all mistakes, and accepts the hand
of one man when her heart belongs to another, fidelity to the duty of a wife
on her side, and a manly, generous confidence on the part of her husband,
may, in the end, correct even such a mistake. The dignity of this moral
saved John Strebelow's life, and Harold Routledge was killed in the duel
with the Count de Carojac. But there are a number of problems under the
laws of dramatic construction which we must solve before the play can now
be made to reach the hearts of an audience as it did before. Let us see what
they are.
The love of Lilian for Harold Routledge cannot now be the one grand pas-
sion of her life. It must be the love of a young girl, however sincere and in-
tense, which yields, afterward, to the stronger and deeper love of a woman
for her husband. The next great change, therefore, which the laws of dra-
matic construction forced upon us was this: Lilian must now control her own
passion, and when she meets her lover in the second act she must not depend
for her moral safety on the awakening of a mother's love by the appearance
of her child. Her love for Harold is no longer such an all-controlling force
as will justify a woman — justify her dramatically, I mean — in yielding to it.
For her to depend on an outside influence now would be to show a weakness
of character that would make her uninteresting. Instead, therefore, of re-
•£9(5 BBONSOfl HOWARD. [1861-88
ceiving her former lover with dangerous pent-up fires, Lilian now repels him.
This is now the end of the second act ; a very different end, you see, from
the other version, where the little girl runs in, and, in her own innocence,
saves her mother from herself.
The third step, in the changes forced upon us by the laws of dramatic con-
struction, was a very great one, and it was made necessary by the fact, just
mentioned, that the child, Natalie, had no dramatic function to fulfil in the
protection of her mother's virtue. In other words, there is no point in the
play, now, where sexual love is, or can be, replaced by maternal love, as the
controlling passion of the play. . . . The fourth great change— forced
on us, as the others were — concerns the character of John Strebelow. As he
is now to become the object of a wife's mature affection, he must not merely
be a noble and generous man ; he must do something worthy of the love
which is to be bestowed on him. He must command a woman's love. "When,
therefore, he hears his wife, kneeling over her wounded lover, use words
which tell him of their former relations, he does, not what most of us would
do, but what an occasional hero among us would do. He takes her gently in
his arms, and becomes her protector. John Strebelow thus becomes the hero
of the play, and it is only necessary to follow the workings of Lilian's heart
and his a little further, until they come together at last, loving each other
truly, the early love of the wife for another man being only a sad memory in
her mind.
Another change which I was obliged to make will interest you, because it
shows very curiously what queer turns these laws of dramatic construction
may take. As soon as it was decided to have Lilian live, in the fifth act, and
love John Strebelow, I was compelled to cut out the quarrel scene between
Lilian and Harold Koutledge in the first act. This is a little practical mat-
ter, very much like taking out a certain wheel at one end of a machine be-
cause you have decided to get a different mechanical result at the other end.
Harold Eoutledge must not appear in the first act at all. He could only be
talked about as Lilian's lover. John Strebelow must be present alone in the
eyes and the sympathy of the audience. If Eoutledge did not appear until
the second act, the audience would regard him as an interloper ; it would
rather resent his presence than otherwise, and would be easily reconciled to
his death in the next act. Even if Harold had appeared in the first act, the
quarrel scene would have been impossible. He might have made love to Lil-
ian, perhaps, or even kissed her, and the audience would have forgiven me
reluctantly for having her love another man afterward. But if the two young
people had had a lovers' quarrel in the presence of the audience, no power
on earth could have convinced any man or woman in the house that they
were not intended for each other by the eternal decrees of divine Providence.
Now, if you please, we will cross the ocean. I have had many long discus-
sions with English managers on the practice in London of adapting foreign
plays, not merely to the English stage, but to English life, with English
characters. The Frenchmen of a French play become, as a rule, English-
men ; the Germans of a German play become Englishmen ; so do Italians,
and Spaniards, and Swedes. They usually, however, continue to express
1861-88] • BRONSON HOWARD.
foreign ideas and to act like foreigners. Luckily, the American characters
of "The Banker's Daughter," with one exception, could be twisted into
very fair Englishmen, with only a faint suspicion of our Yankee accent. Mr.
James Albery, one of the most brilliant men in England, author of "The
Two Roses/' was engaged to make them as nearly English as he could. I
learned more about the various minor differences of social life in England and
America while we were thus at work together than I could have learned in a
residence there of five years. I have time to give you only a few of the points.
Take the engagement of Lilian, broken in act first. An engagement in Eng-
land is necessarily a family matter, and it could neither be made nor broken
by the mere fiat of a young girl, without consultation with others, leaving
the way open for the immediate acceptance of another man's hand. In the
English version, therefore, there is no engagement with Harold Routledge.
It is only an understanding between them that they love each other. Then
the duel — it is next to impossible to persuade an English audience that a
duel is justifiable or natural with an Englishman as one of the principals.
So we played a rather sharp artistic trick on our English audience. In the
American version, I assume that, if a plucky young American in France in-
sults a Frenchman purposely, he will abide by the local customs, and give
him satisfaction, if called upon to do so. So would a young Englishman, be-
tween you and me ; but the laws of dramatic construction deal with the sym-
pathies of the audience as well as with the natural motives and actions of the
characters in a play ; and an English audience would think the French count
ought to be perfectly satisfied if Routledge knocked him down. How did
we get over the difficulty ? First, we made Routledge a British officer re-
turning from India, instead of an artist on his way from Rome — a fighting
man by profession : and then we made the Count de Carojac pile so many
sneers and insults on this British officer, and on the whole British nation,
that I verily believe a London audience would have mobbed Routledge if he
hadn't tried to kill him. The English public walked straight into the trap,
though they abhor nothing on earth more than the duelling system.
The peculiar history of the play is my only justification for giving you all
these details of its otherwise unimportant career. I only trust that I have
shown you how very practical the laws of dramatic construction are in the
way they influence a dramatist. The art of obeying them is merely the art of
using your common sense in the study of your own and other people's emo-
tions. All I now add is, if you write a play, be honest and sincere in using
your common sense. . . . The public often condescends to be trifled
with by mere tricksters, but, believe me, it is only a condescension, and very
contemptuous. In the long run, the public will judge you, and respect you,
according to your artistic sincerity.
THOMAS STEPHENS COLLIER. • [1861-88
Collier*
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1842.
SACRILEGE.
BESIDE the wall, and near the massive gate
Of the great templ3 in Jerusalem,
The legionary, Probus stood elate,
His eager clasp circling a royal gem.
It was an offering made by some dead king
Unto the great Jehovah, when the sword
Amid his foes had mown a ghastly ring,
Helped by the dreaded angel of the Lord.
There, on his rival's crest, among the slain,
Through the red harvest it had clearly shone,
Lighting the grimuess of the sanguine plain
With splendors that had glorified a throne.
Above the altar of God's sacred place,
A watchful star, it lit the passing years,
With radiance falling on each suppliant's face,
Gleaming alike in love's and sorrow's tears,
Till swept the war-tide through the sunlit vales
Leading from Jordan, and the western sea
And the fierce host of Titus filled the gales
With jubilant shouts and songs of victory.
Then came the day when over all the waits
The Romans surged, and Death laughed loud and high,
And there was wailing in the palace halls,
And sound of lamentations in the sky.
Torn from its place, it lay within the hand
Of Probus, whose keen sword had rent a way,
With rapid blows, amid the priestly band
Whose piteous prayers moaned through that dreadful day.
And there, beside the wall, he stopped to gaze
Upon the fortune, that would give his life
The home and rest that come with bounteous days,
And bring reward for toil and warlike strife.
There was no cloud in all Heaven's lustrous blue,
Yet suddenly a red flash cleft the air,
And the dark shadow held a deeper hue, —
A dead man, with an empty hand, lay there.
The Youth's Companion. 1883.
1861-88]
CHARLES MONROE DICKINSON.
129
jftonroe
BORN in Lowville, Lewis Co., N. Y., 1842.
THE CHILDREN.
[The Children, and Other Verses. 1889.]
WHEN the lessons and tasks are all
ended,
And the. school for the day is dismissed,
The little ones gather around me,
To bid me good night and be kissed;
O, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in their tender embrace !
O, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
Shedding sunshine of love on my face!
And when they are gone, I sit dreaming
Of my childhood too lovely to last, —
Of joy that my heart will remember,
While it wakes to the pulse of the past,
Ere the world and its wickedness made
me
A partner of sorrow and sin,
When the glory of God was about me,
And the glory of gladness within.
All my heart grows as weak as a woman's,
And the fountain of feeling will flow,
When I think of the paths steep and
stony,
Where the feet of the dear ones must
go,—
Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er
them,
Of the tempest of fate blowing wild ; —
O, there's nothing on earth half so holy
'As the innocent heart of a child !
They are idols of hearts and of house-
holds;
They are angels of God in disguise;
His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,
His glory still shines in their eyes ;
Those truants from home and from heav-
en,—
They have made me more manly and
mild ;
And I know now how Jesus could liken
The kingdom of God to a child.
I ask not a life for the dear ones,
All radiant, as others have done,
But that life may have just enough
shadow
To temper the glare of the sun;
I would pray God to guard them from
evil,
But my prayer would bound back to
myself ; —
Ah ! a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.
The twig is so easily bended,
I have banished the rule and the rod ;
I have taught them the goodness of
knowledge,
They have taught me the goodness of
God: .:...'
My heart is the dungeon of darkness
Where I shut them for breaking a rule ;
My frown is sufficient correction ;
My love is the law of the school.
I shall leave the old house in the autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more ;
Ah, how I shall sigh for the dear ones
That meet me each morn at the door !
I shall miss the "good nights" and the
kisses,
And the gush of their innocent glee,
The group on the green, and the flowers
That are brought every morning for
I shall miss them at morn and at even,
Their song in the school and the street ;
I shall miss the low hum of their voices,
And the tread of their delicate feet.
When the lessons of life are all ended,
And death says "The school is dis-
missed ! "
May the little ones gather around me,
To bid me good night and be kissed !
VOL.
ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. [1861-88
(Ellen auarner
BORN in Southington, Conn., 1843.
HIS WIFE'S RELATIONS.
[A Daughter of Eve. 1889.]
MRS. BARE YMORE often said that she was before all things a mother.
Her maternal instinct was fully developed, and she loved to tear her
own breast to line the nest for her young, and make it soft and downy. Still,
when Valerie had come to her with tears, and implored her to get some
money for her dear Benno, who was in the state of mind in which men com-
mit suicide, not even Mrs. Barrymore could have enjoyed the role imposed
upon her. But does any one suppose that the mother bird finds her best per-
sonal comfort in making provision for her ravenous offspring ? When you
watch a robin fly back to her brood with a wriggling worm, have you so little
imagination as to take it for granted that it was her real choice to run the
risks of cats and shotguns ?
However, necessities like the baron's have always governed circumstances,
and, accordingly, some two minutes after Patty had left Mr. Litchfield, Mrs.
Barrymore rang at his door, was admitted, and, walking along the hall
majestically, waved the servant away, and said that she herself would find
her son-in-law, and accordingly Bunce drew back and retreated to his pan-
try. .... •
Accordingly, now putting every thought behind her of any possible un-
pleasantness in the coming interview, she tiptoed along the hall, opened the
door of her son-in-law's book-room, and looked in, meeting him face to face
as he was pacing the room, thinking over his talk with Patty.
" Here I am," said Mrs. Barrymore, in her sprightliest manner. " Dear
David, I am so glad to see you ! " And she put up her still fresh cheek to be
kissed.
He did not evade the caress — shook hands, besides — placed a chair for
her, and gave her the end of his tube to talk into.
"What do you suppose I have come for, David ?" she asked, in her pretty,
playful way, her head a little on one side, smiling, arch, all her face laughing
but her eyes, which always seemed on the watch.
" I never guess," said Mr. Litchfield ; " you will have to tell me."
" I came to ask a favor — just a little favor," said Mrs. Barrymore. " Now,
promise me you will grant it. It is nothing to you, literally nothing ; yet to
me it is everything."
"If it is anything for yourself — anything for your individual self — con-
sider it granted."
Here was Mrs. Barrymore's opportunity ; she might have filled up this
carte blanche in a way to make her comfortable for many a day to come, but
we all have our ideal of character to live up to, and, fond of substantial gains
although Mrs. Barrymore was, her consistency was dearer. She knew her
1861-88] ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. 131
own disinterestedness, and stood aghast at times at the world's ingratitude
towards such unrecorded virtues.
" For myself ? " she shrieked into the tube. " Did you ever know me to
make a personal request ? None ! I can suffer ; I can go without ; I can
resign. My only thought is for my family, and I am a mother before all
things. You have heard how the pelican " —
" You are a good mother, no doubt," said Mr. Litchfield ; " but you must
reflect that all good mother birds, when the young ones are fully fledged,
push them out of the nest, to teach them to fly alone."
" Oh, but, dear David, we have not only the devotedness of birds; we need
far more. We have to be patient even when our young ones stay in the nest.
It is so important, indeed," she pursued, carrying on the metaphor, "that
they should not fly until the right time. David, my dear son, you are a self-
made man."
She glanced into his face winningly, and he looked back at her with his
serene, meditative gaze.
" A self -made man ! " he repeated. "I always supposed God made me,
like the rest of his creatures. "
"I mean," said Mrs. Barrymore, "that you began as a poor boy. You
came to New York with a few dollars in your pocket."
"The truth is," said Mr. Litchfield, with a faint chuckle, "I came to
New York without a penny in my pocket. I was born here."
Mrs. Barrymore may have been impatient with this mild joke; at least she
did not seem to discover any humor in it.
" Your success has been amazing — amazing," she said, with animation,
but with the most solemn emphasis. " You began at the very bottom of
the ladder, but now you have reached a really proud position."
" Still, I try not to be proud."
" But you may well be proud," insisted Mrs. Barrymore, " connected as
you now are with the Careys, the Dorseys, the Barrymores, and not only with
the first families of New York, but the very highest aristocracy of Europe."
" But am I ? " asked Mr. Litchfield, as if in consternation.
" You are brother-in-law to Baron Benno von Lindholm ! " shouted Mrs.
Barrymore, whose nerves began to feel the strain of this demand upon her
voice and her patience. It was at such moments that a conviction flashed
a clear illumination into the recesses of her inmost soul that her son-in-law
was not deaf ; that he was not even so innocent as he seemed to be.
" There is no better family in Germany than the Lindholm-Gatzbergs.
They have forty quarterings and they live in a schloss."
" A schloss, good Heavens ! " said Mr. Litchfield, holding his tube with an
air of the most sedulous attention.
' ' Yes, a schloss. Benno's father, the baron, his mother, the baroness, and
his brothers, and their wives, all live in this schloss."
" It needs to be of good size," suggested Mr. Litchfield ; then, with a
brightening eye, as if on the threshold of a new idea, he added: " I suppose
the reason our baron does not take Valerie to the ancestral schloss is because
there is no room. "
132 ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. [1861-88
" He will take her next year," said the long-suffering mother-in-law, with
perfect sweetness. " He is simply waiting to realize on those shares, you
know, and they are to begin work next month. It is of the greatest impor-
tance that he should be on the spot, for everybody predicts that the stock
will go up like a rocket."
" That is excellent news— excellent."
" Benno is such a good fellow," said Mrs. Barrymore. " So cultivated, so
superior, such tastes ! I wish your deafness did not cut you off from his con-
versation, for I should like to have you hear him talk about art. And he
plays the flute exquisitely. I wonder if with your trumpet you could not
hear some of his trills. And he has such manners ! They bear the court
stamp. He makes us poor Americans seem crude."
" But then a baron like that is not a self-made man," said Mr. Litchfield.
" He came into the world with a gold spoon in his mouth."
''Yes, indeed. A man like that is the product of centuries," said Mrs.
Barrymore, bent on hammering in these obvious truths.
" A costly product," observed Mr. Litchfield, with a faint sigh.
" Of course, one has to pay for these luxuries," said Mrs. Barrymore, with
a lighter air. " It is very delightful to have a son-in-law who is a baron, but
a connection with the aristocracy of Europe is expensive."
" I wouldn't have him, then," said Mr. Litchfield, with a sudden air of
decision. " I would get rid of him. Let the state support him."
Such uncompromising hostility was enough to discourage the most ardent
advocate. Mrs. Barrymore, however, could not afford to be discouraged.
The lines in the corners of her mouth stiffened a little, and her eyes grew
more vigilant ; but she showed no sign of defeat, merely reenforced herself
with a fresh argument, and advanced on a new line.
" You see, dear David," she said, with as confidential an air as was possi-
ble in talking to a deaf man, "the baron married Valerie with high expecta-
tions. Naturally, any one of that rank expects a handsome dower with his
wife, and, judging by dear Olive's splendid position, he took it for granted
that we were all very rich."
" Oh, I see," said Mr. Litchfield. " He supposed that Olive brought me
my fortune."
" Yes," said Mrs. Barrymore ; and they looked at each other a moment in
silence. He waited for her to proceed.
"And, since he made such a mistake as that, we owe him a little some-
thing. Don't we, David ? " she said, coaxingly.
" No doubt of it — no doubt of it. "
" I wonder if you could find it in your heart to give the dear fellow a little
ready money ; he is so sadly in need of it."
' ' Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Litchfield ; " I'll write you a check at
once."
He turned in his chair to his desk, opened his check-book for the second
time, and took up his pen. But, in spite of his air of alacrity, Mrs. Barry-
more watched his proceedings with a tremor. It was not his way to disburse
large sums in such an offhand way.
1801-88] ELLEN WARNER OLNEY KIRK 133
" I will give him enough to pay his passage back to the paternal schloss,"
said Mr. Litchfield. " I will give him a hundred dollars."
• • A hundred dollars ! " shrieked Mrs. Barrymore. " Just think, David, —
a man like that, a near connection, a baron " —
"I know — I know," said Mr. Litchfield, his head bent, leaning his chin
on his hand with a look of musing, "a baron — a schloss— forty quarter-
ings, seven brothers, all barons. It is very little. But I shall not give him
any more, Mrs. Barrymore/' he went on, with a mild, serious glance at her
from beneath his eyebrows. " Neither now nor at any time in future will I
give Baron Benno von Lindholm any more money."
'•' But, dearest David," said Mrs. Barrymore, entreatingly, " Valerie told
me with sobs and tears last night that the baron had said unless he could
have at least two hundred and fifty dollars he should go — to — the — devil."
'• My dear Mrs. Barrymore," said Mr. Litchfield, with an air of conviction
and relief, " why not let him go ?"
Whether Mrs. Barrymore could have rallied from this rebuff we are not
certain. She did not despair too easily, knowing that patient persistence
wears out the sternest opposition in time. But at this moment her son
Carey walked into the room, and, with an air of having accomplished his
part of a serious obligation, walked up to Mr. Litchfield, lifted the end of the
tube, and said, " I am here, as you requested."
Mr. Litchfield nodded. " Carey and I have a very particular engagement,"
he said to Mrs. Barrymore. " I hope you will excuse us. I dare say you will
find Olive in her room."
Mrs. Barrymore, realizing the importance of the interview to Carey's peace
of mind, withdrew at once. She had huddled the check into her bag as she
heard the door opened, and knew, as she went upstairs to find Olive, who
was still sitting over the fire, with her notes and invitations in her lap, that
her mission had not, after all, resulted in complete failure.
Meanwhile, Mr. Litchfield had seated himself at his desk, and Carey had
drawn a comfortable chair to his side.
"I have come," he said again, impressively. "I made a point of com-
ing."
"That is extremely good of you," said Mr. Litchfield.
" I am very punctilious about the least engagement," said Carey, with due
solemnity. " The baron wanted me to go over to Long Island and look at a
horse he is interested in, but I told him I was coming here."
" The baron is interested in horses, is he ?"
" I fancy he means to back him for the spring races."
" Oh, the baron bets, does he ? "
" I suppose he does ; but then I fancy he does it without much idea of
winning, chiefly as a distraction ; he is so confoundedly troubled about his
money matters."
Mr. Litchfield regarded his innocent-faced young visitor with an odd sort
of smile.
" You are a little troubled, too, aren't you, Carey ?" said he. " Do you
get along without any distractions ? "
134 ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. [1861-88
"I have got a stronger mind than the baron has," said Carey, " and, be-
sides, I have not had to shoulder my own responsibilities so far."
" Exactly, — the actions are yours, the consequences are other people's."
11 Of course I had to be educated. That is always an expensive process,
which has to be paid for by somebody. I couldn't do it myself, you know.
But, now that I am educated, I am ready to do my duty in life."
" That is very handsome of you, I think, Carey," said Mr. Litchfield.
" Some people like to go on shirking their responsibilities. "
" I am sure I want to be independent as soon I can," said Carey.
Mr. Litchfield again regarded the young man attentively, his head a little
on one side, and a smile lighting his face.
"I have looked over those bills," said he.
" I should never have thought of troubling you with such details unless
you had asked to see them," said Carey.
" I prefer to understand such details," said Mr. Litchfield.
"That is your business way of doing things," said Carey, benevolently.
" I myself footed them up and made a memorandum of the amount, which
seemed all that was necessary. "
" That is your large way of doing things," said Mr. Litchfield. " My busi-
ness habits are of the old-fashioned sort, and I feel compelled to count odd
dollars and cents."
"I like round numbers, myself," said Carey.
*' Here is the schedule," said Mr. Litchfield. " Do you know, it quite
interested me."
" I dare say. You have been a young man yourself."
" Not exarctly your sort of a young man. When I was twenty-three years
of age I had been married and had lost my wife. My salary up to that time
had been eight hundred a year, and it was then raised to fifteen hundred."
" Oh, I say," put in Carey, "unless you had somebody to pay your bills,
life on such terms must have been a pretty poor affair."
" I had no bills — or, if I had, I paid them myself," said Mr. Litchfield.
" But still, life, in spite of its poverty and its sorrows, indeed for its poverty
and for its sorrows, was well worth having. Everywhere it opened before
me wonderful vistas — everywhere was spread out a great banquet. It was
not for me, it is true ; even if I was admitted to it, I often fasted, — in fact, I
generally fasted, for I resolutely told myself the sweets would not have
been good for me."
Carey listened with an air of bland condescension, putting up heroically
with a disagreeable experience.
"Now, my boy, you have not fasted," said Mr. Litchfield, with a half-
humorous laugh. " You have revelled in the good things without stint or
misgiving."
Carey smiled, but did not speak.
" These bills show that you possess strong and diversified tastes," said Mr.
Litchfield.
" I always try not to be one-sided," said Carey, modestly. " Of course I
like some things better than I do others."
1861-88] ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. 135
Mr. Litchfield unrolled a sheet of legal cap on which he had neatly written
out the list.
" Why, sir/' said Carey, " you remind me of Leporello with his roll of his
master's peccadilloes."
But Mr. Litchfield had dropped his end of the tube and did not hear.
" I was much struck by your tailor's bills," said he. "I really did not sup-
pose that a man could wear so many coats and trousers. It is hard for me to
get enough wear out of two suits a year, and my evening clothes are ten years
old. I have had my two top-coats some five years."
" A fellow doesn't expect to wear his clothes till they get shiny at the
seams," said Carey.
" No, apparently not. Now, I should suppose that you and the Prince of
Wales had about the same wardrobe."
" A gentleman is a gentleman ; he can be no more. I have no court dress,"
Carey remarked, blandly.
" Nor coronation robes, but I think you may congratulate yourself on
being handsomely equipped for all other occasions. You will see that I have
made a little comment on most of the items, and opposite your tailor's and
furnisher's bills I have put ' Princely.'"
He read out the amount, compared it with the bills which lay on his desk,
then passed on to the bootmaker's.
"I envy you your boots," said he, plaintively. "I always thought it
would be a pleasure to have a pair of every kind of boots known to civilized
man."
"Why don't you try ? " said Carey.
"I cannot afford it," said Mr. Litchfield. "Two hundred a year is my
limit for my personal expenses. But against your bootmaker's and your
shoemaker's bills I have put 'Cap-a-pie complete.'"
If Mr. Litchfield had an idea of amusing himself a little at the young
man's expense, he had gone successfully to work. He had given more than
one epigrammatic touch to his schedule. The photographers had evidently
done much for Carey. " Hold the mirror up to the glass of fashion and the
mould of form," said Mr. Litchfield. There were upholsterers', picture-
dealers', book-binders', jewellers', livery-men's, wine-merchants', and con-
fectioners' accounts.
"I told you I would pay your bills, Carey," said Mr. Litchfield, "but I
confess that such extravagance as this was not only beyond my experience,
but beyond my fancy of what a penniless young man could spend. Had I
written what inevitably came into my mind, I should have put ' A beggar on
horseback,' etc., after your livery bill."
" Oh, if you call that extravagance," said Carey, "I should really like to
have you know what Standish and Waring's bills were. That set of fellows
considered me mean. But I always kept within bounds, and did not care
what others thought of me. If one is governed by other men's expectations
of what one should do, one commits all sorts of follies; but I am lucky enough
to have no vices. I like a good glass of wine, but there I stop. I have a con-
tempt for a wine-bibber. A dozen bundles of cigarettes will last me a fort-
136 ELLEN WARNER OLNET KIRK. [1861-88
night, and I never buy cigars; they are ruinous ; a man has to give so many
away. Then, as to jewellery, I am the most moderate of men. If one has half
a dozen different sets of studs, and a good watch and chain, and a scarf-pin
or so, what else does he want ? I would as soon wear rings in my ears as on
my fingers. I like to ride a good horse, but not every day, — only when I feel
like it. I am willing to be hospitable on occasion, but I have no intention of
ruining myself by feeding other people. I assure you, brother David, that,
taking into account all the temptations that may beset a man in college, my
bills are well within bounds. "
Pausing to see if his hearer had gone along with him, Carey saw that the
old man sat bending forward with an abstracted gaze ; he was shaking his
head slowly, as if he found it impossible to accept his visitor's views.
"You must remember, sir," said Carey, "that we have all been young."
Mr. Litchfield looked at him, still shaking his head.
"We have all been young," he said, gently, "but we have not all been
old."
He rose and began to pace the floor with a troubled face.
" Suppose the bills are paid, Carey," he said, after a little silence, " what
is your outlook in life ?"
" That is exactly what I want to know," remarked Carey, as if glad that
they were coming to the point.
" You are young, strong, decently intelligent. You ought to accomplish
some useful work."
"I am ready to do anything suitable."
"What do you call suitable ?"
"Anything a gentleman can do, and which has a fair salary attached to it.
I should very much like to know what my career is to be. I hate to fling my-
self away. My theory is, that a man ought to take pains to do one thing well,
and win success in that line. It does not make so much difference what it is,
but if he does one thing admirably — say he dresses well, or dances well, has
a really correct taste in art, or knows how to make money in Wall Street —
he is master of the situation ; everybody respects him and makes way for
him. And it has really been a grievance with me that I have not known
what to turn my attention to. I like to meet the world on equal terms."
" Listen to me, Carey," said David Litchfield, " I have a definite sugges-
tion to make."
1861-88] MARY ANNA PHINNET STANSBTTRY.
£nna
BORN in Vernon, N. Y., 1843.
HOW HE SAVED ST. MICHAEL'S.
[Contributed to The Aldine, N. Y., May, 1873.]
O O you beg for a story, my darling — my brown-eyed Leopold —
^ And you, Alice, with face like morning, and curling locks of gold;
Then come, if you will, and listen — stand close beside my knee —
To a tale of the Southern city, proud Charleston by the sea.
It was long ago, my children, ere ever the signal gun
That blazed above Fort Sumter had wakened the North as one ;
Long ere the wondrous pillar of battle-cloud and fire
Had marked where the unchained millions marched on to their hearts' desire.
On the roofs and the glittering turrets, that night, as the sun went down,
The mellow glow of the twilight shone like a jewelled crown,
And, bathed in the living glory, as the people lifted their eyes,
They saw the pride of the city, the spire of St. Michael's, rise
High over the lesser steeples, tipped with a golden ball,
That hung like a radiant planet caught in its earthward fall;
First glimpse of home to the sailor who made the harbor-round,
The last slow-fading vision dear to the outward-bound.
The gently gathering shadows shut out the waning light ;
The children prayed at their bedsides, as you will pray to-night;
The noise of buyer and seller from the busy mart was gone,
And in dreams of a peaceful morrow the city slumbered on.
But another light than sunrise aroused the sleeping street,
For a cry was heard at midnight, and the rush of trampling feet ;
Men stared in each other's faces through mingled fire and smoke,
While the frantic bells went clashing clamorous stroke on stroke !
By the glare of her blazing roof-tree the houseless mother fled,
With the babe she pressed to her bosom shrieking in nameless dread,
While the fire-king's wild battalions scaled wall and cap-stone high,
And planted their flaring banners against an inky sky.
From the death that raged behind them and the crash of ruin loud,
To the great square of the city, were driven the surging crowd,
Where yet firm in all the tumult, unscathed by the fiery flood,
With its heavenward-pointing finger the church of St. Michael's stood.
But e'en as they gazed upon it there rose a sudden wail,
A cry of horror blended with the roaring of the gale,
On whose scorching wings updriveu a single flaming brand
Aloft on the towering steeple clung like a bloody hand.
8 MART ANNA PH1NNE7 STANSBVRY. [1861-88
"Will it fade ? " The whisper trembled from a thousand whitening lips;
Far out on the lurid harbor they watched it from the ships —
A baleful gleam that brighter and ever brighter shone,
Like a flickering, trembling will-o'-wisp to a steady beacon grown.
" Uncounted gold shall be given to the man whose brave right hand,
For the love of the perilled city, plucks down yon burning brand ! "
So cried the Mayor of Charleston, that all the people heard,
But they looked each one at his fellow, and no man spoke a word.
Who is it leans from the belfry, with face upturned to the sky?
Clings to a column and measures the dizzy spire with his eye ?
Will he dare it, the hero undaunted, that terrible, sickening height ?
Or will the hot blood of his courage freeze in his veins at the sight ?
But see! he has stepped on the railing, he climbs with his feet and his hands,
And firm on a narrow projection with the belfry beneath him he stands!
Now once, and once only, they cheer him — a single, tempestuous breath —
And there falls on the multitude gazing a hush like the stillness of death.
Slow, steadily mounting, unheeding aught save the goal of the fire,
Still higher and higher, an atom, he moves on the face of the spire ;
He stops! Will he fall ? Lo! for answer, a gleam like a meteor's track,
And, hurled on the stones of the pavement, the red brand lies shattered and
black !
Once more the shouts of the people have rent the quivering air,
At the church-door Mayor and Council wait with their feet on the stair,
And the eager throng behind them press for a touch of his hand —
The unknown savior whose daring could compass a deed so grand.
But why does a sudden tremor seize on them while they gaze ?
And what means that stifled murmur of wonder and amaze ?
He stood in the gate of the temple he had perilled his life to save,
And the face of the hero, my children, was the sable face of a slave!
With folded arms he was speafring, in tones that were clear, not loud,
And his eyes ablaze in their sockets burnt into the eyes of the crowd :
" You may keep your gold, — I scorn it! — but answer me, ye who can,
If the deed I have done before you be not the deed of a man ? "
He stepped but a short space backward, and from all the women and men
There were only sobs for answer, and the Mayor called for a pen
And the great seal of the city, that he might read who ran ;
And the slave who saved St. Michael's went out from the door, a man.
1861-88] HENRY ABBEY. 139
BORN in Rondout, N. Y., 1843.
MAY IN KINGSTON.
[Poems. Enlarged Edition. 1886.J
OUR old colonial town is new with May :
The loving trees that clasp across the streets
Grow greener-sleeved with bursting buds each day.
Still this year's May the last year's May repeats;
Even the old stone houses half renew
Their youth and beauty, as the old trees do.
High over all, like some divine desire
Above our lower thoughts of daily care,
The gray, religious, heaven-touching spire
Adds to the quiet of the springtime air;
And over roofs the birds create a sea,
That has no shore, of their May melody.
Down through the lowlands now of lightest green,
The undecided creek winds on its way.
There the lithe willow bends with graceful mien,
And sees its likeness in the depths all day;
While in the orchards, flushed with May's warm light,
The bride-like fruit-trees dwell, attired in whjte.
But yonder loom the mountains old and grand,
That off, along dim distance, reach afar,
And high and vast against the sunset stand
A dreamy range, long and irregular —
A caravan that never passes by,
Whose camel-backs are laden with the sky.
So, like a caravan, our outlived years
Loom on the introspective landscape seen
Within the heart; and now, when May appears,
And earth renews its vernal bloom and green,
We but renew our longing, and we say :
" Oh, would that life might ever be all Mayl
"Would that the bloom of youth that is so brief,
The bloom, the May, the fulness ripe and fair
Of cheek and limb, might fade not as the leaf;
Would that the heart might not grow old with care,
Nor love turn bitter, nor fond hope decay;
But soul and body lead a life of May! "
JOHN FISKE. [1861-88
WINTER DAYS.
NOW comes the graybeard of the For all the hay and corn are down
north ; And garnered ; and the withered leaf,
The forests bare their rugged breasts Against the branches bare and brown,
To every wind that wanders forth, Rattles; and all the days are brief.
And, in their arms, the lonely nests
That housed the birdlings months ago An icJ hand is on the Iand5
Are egged with flakes of drifted snow. The cloudy sky is sad and g™? ?
But through the misty sorrow streams,
No more the robin pipes his lay Outspreading wide, a golden ray.
To greet the flushed advance of morn ; And on the brook that cuts the plain
He sings in valleys far away ; A diamond wonder is aglow,
His heart is with the south to-day; Fairer than that which, long ago,
He cannot shrill among the corn. De Rohan staked a name to gain.
BORN in Hartford, Conn., 1842.
IMMORTALITY THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF EVOLUTION.
[The Destiny of Man, Viewed in the Light of his Origin. 1884.]
ryiHE virtues of forbearance and self-control are still in a very rudimentary
-L state, and of mutual helpfulness there is far too little among men.
Nevertheless in all these respects some improvement has been made, along
with the diminution of warfare, and by the time warfare has not merely
ceased from the earth, but has come to be the dimly remembered phantom
of a remote past, the development of the sympathetic side of human nature
will doubtless become prodigious. The manifestation of selfish and hateful
feelings will be more and more sternly repressed by public opinion, and such
feelings will become weakened by disuse, while the sympathetic feelings
will increase in strength as the sphere for their exercise is enlarged. And
thus at length we see what human progress means. It means throwing off the
brute-inheritance — gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that
are by and by to make struggle needless. Man is slowly passing from a primi-
tive social state, in which he was little better than a brute, toward an ultimate
social state, in which his character shall have become so transformed that noth-
ing of the brute can be detected in it. The ape and the tiger in human nat-
ure will become extinct. Theology has had much to say about original sin.
This original sin is neither more nor less than the brute-inheritance which
every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance toward
true salvation. Fresh value is thus added to human life. The modern prophet,
employing the methods of science, may again proclaim that the kingdom of
heaven is at hand. Work ye, therefore, early and late, to prepare its coming.
i
1861-88] JOHN FISKK 141
Now, what is this message of the modern prophet but pure Christianity ?
— not the mass of theological doctrine ingeniously piled up by Justin Martyr
and Tertullian and Clement and Athanasius and Augustine, but the real
and essential Christianity which came, fraught with good tidings to men,
from the very lips of Jesus and Paul ! When did St. Paul's conception of
the two men within him that warred against each other, the appetites of our
brute nature and the God-given yearning for a higher life — when did this
grand conception ever have so much significance as now ? When have we
ever before held such a clew to the meaning of Christ in the Sermon on the
Mount ? " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." In the
cruel strife of centuries has it not often seemed as if the earth were to be
rather the prize of the hardest heart and the strongest fist ? To many men
these words of Christ have been as foolishness and as a stumbling-block,
and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount have been openly derided as too
good for this world. In that wonderful picture of modern life which is the
greatest work of one of the great seers of our time, Victor Hugo gives a con-
crete illustration of the working of Christ's methods. In the saint-like
career of Bishop Myriel, and in the transformation which his example works
in the character of the hardened outlaw Jean Valjean, we have a most pow-
erful commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. By some critics who could
express their views freely about "Les Miserables" while hesitating to im-
pugn directly the authority of the New Testament, Monseigneur Bienvenu
was unsparingly ridiculed as a man of impossible goodness, and as a milksop
and fool withal. But I think Victor Hugo understood the capabilities of
human nature, and its real dignity, much better than these scoffers. In
a low stage of civilization Monseigneur Bienvenu would have had small
chance of reaching middle life. Christ himself, we remember, was cruci-
fied between two thieves. It is none the less true that when once the degree
of civilization is such as to allow this highest type of character, distinguished
by its meekness and kindness, to take root and thrive, its methods are in-
comparable in their potency. The Master knew full well that the time was
not yet ripe — that he brought not peace, but a sword. But he preached
nevertheless that gospel of great joy which is by and by to be realized by toil-
ing Humanity, and he announced ethical principles fit for the time that is
coming. The great originality of his teaching, and the feature that has
chiefly given it power in the world, lay in the distinctness with which he
conceived a state of society from which every vestige of strife, and the modes
of behavior adapted to ages of strife, shall be utterly and forever swept
away. Through misery that has seemed unendurable and turmoil that has
seemed endless, men have thought on that gracious life and its sublime
ideal, and have taken comfort in the sweetly solemn message of peace on
earth and good will to men.
I believe that the promise with which I started has now been amply re-
deemed. I believe it has been fully shown that so far from degrading Hu-
manity, or putting it on a level with the animal world in general, the doc-
trine of evolution shows us distinctly for the first time how the creation and
the perfecting of Man is the goal toward which Nature's work has been tend-
142 JOHN FISKE. [1861-88
ing from the first. We can now see clearly that our new knowledge enlarges
tenfold the significance of human life, and makes it seem more than ever
the chief object of Divine care, the consummate fruition of that creative en-
ergy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe.
It is not likely that we shall ever succeed in making the immortality of
the soul a matter of scientific demonstration, for we lack the requisite data*
It must ever remain an affair of religion rather than of science. In other
words, it must remain one of that class of questions upon which I may not
expect to convince my neighbor, while at the same time I may entertain a
reasonable conviction of my own upon the subject. In the domain of cere-
bral physiology the question might be debated forever without a result.
The only thing which cerebral physiology tells us, when studied with the
aid of molecular physics, is against the materialist, so far as it goes. It tells
us that, during the present life, although thought and feeling are always
manifested in connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibil-
ity can thought and feeling be in any sense the products of matter. Nothing
could be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Oabanis, that
the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is not even correct to
say that thought goes on in the brain. What goes on in the brain is an
amazingly complex series of molecular movements, with which thought and
feeling are in some unknown way correlated, not as effects or as causes, but
as concomitants. So much is clear, but cerebral physiology says nothing
about another life. Indeed, why should it ? The last place in the world to
which I should go for information about a state of things in which thought
and feeling can exist in the absence of a cerebrum would be cerebral physi-
ology !
The materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things, and
that the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is per-
haps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the
history of philosophy. No evidence for it can be alleged beyond the familiar
fact that during the present life we know Soul only in its association with
Body, and therefore cannot discover disembodied soul without dying our-
selves. This fact must always prevent us from obtaining direct evidence for
the belief in the soul's survival. But a negative presumption is not created
by the absence of proof in cases where, in the nature of things, proof is in-
accessible. With his illegitimate hypothesis of annihilation, the material-
ist transgresses the bounds of experience quite as widely as the poet ,vho
sings of the New Jerusalem with its river of life and its streets of gold.
Scientifically speaking, there is not a particle of evidence for either view.
But when we desist from the futile attempt to introduce scientific demon-
stration into a region which confessedly transcends human experience, and
when we consider the question upon broad grounds of moral probability, I
have no doubt that men will continue in the future, as in the past, to cherish
the faith in a life beyond the grave. In past times the disbelief in the soul's
immortality has always accompanied that kind of philosophy which, under
whatever name, has regarded Humanity as merely a local incident in an end-
less and aimless series of cosmical changes. As a general rule, people who
1861-88] JOHN FISKE. ^43
have come to take such a view of the position of Man in the universe have
ceased to believe in a future life. On the other hand, he who regards Man
as the consummate fruition of creative energy, and the chief object of Di-
vine care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is
not completed with the present life upon the earth. Difficulties on theory
he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters ; but these will not weak-
en his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view
the difficulties are at least as great. We live in a world of mystery, at all
events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact depart-
ments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem
that we can neither solve nor elude. A broad common-sense argument has
often to be called in, where keen-edged metaphysical analysis has confessed
itself baffled.
Now, we have here seen that the doctrine of evolution does not allow us to
take the atheistic view of the position of Man. It is true that modern astron-
omy shows us giant balls of vapor condensing into fiery suns, cooling down
into planets fit for the support of life, and at last growing cold and rigid in
death, like the moon. And there are indications of a time when systems of
dead planets shall fall in upon their central ember that was once a sun, and
the whole lifeless mass, thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous
cloud like that with which we started, that the work of condensation and
evolution may begin over again. These titanic events must doubtless seem
to our limited vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes.
They disclose no signs of purpose, or even of dramatic tendency ; they seem
like the weary work of Sisyphos. But on the face of our own planet, where
alone we are able to survey the process of evolution in its higher and more com-
plex details, we do find distinct indications of a dramatic tendency, though
doubtless not of purpose in the limited human sense. The Darwinian theory,
properly understood, replaces as much teleology as it destroys. From the
first dawning of life we see all things working together toward one mighty
goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritual qualities which character-
ize Humanity. The body is cast aside and returns to the dust of which it
was made. The earth, so marvellously wrought to man's uses, will also be
cast aside. The day is to come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish as
a scroll, and the elements be melted with fervent heat. So small is the value
which Nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter ! The question, then,
is reduced to this : are Man's highest spiritual qualities, into the production
of which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest ? Has
all this work been done for nothing ? Is it all ephemeral, all a bubble that
bursts, a vision that fades ? Are we to regard the Creator's work as like that
of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knock-
ing them down ? For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can
see no good reason for believing any such thing. On such a view the riddle
of the universe becomes a riddle without a meaning. Why, then, are we any
more called upon to throw away our belief in the permanence of the spirit-
ual element in Man than we are called upon to throw away our belief in the
constancy of Nature ? When questioned as to the ground of our irresistible
144 JOHN FISKE. [1861-88
belief that like causes must always be followed by like effects, Mr. Mill's
answer was that it is the result of an induction coextensive with the whole
of our experience ; Mr. Spencer's answer was that it is a postulate which we
make in every act of experience ; but the authors of the "Unseen Universe,"
slightly varying the form of statement, called it a supreme act of faith —
the expression of a trust in God, that He will not " put us to permanent in-
tellectual confusion." Now, the more thoroughly we comprehend that pro-
cess of evolution by which things have come to be what they are, the more
we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual
element in Man is to rob the whole process of its meaning. It goes far to-
ward putting us to permanent intellectual confusion, and I do not see that
any one has as yet alleged, or is ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason for
our accepting so dire an alternative.
For my own part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not
in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a
supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work. Such a belief, re-
lating to regions quite inaccessible to experience, cannot of course be clothed
in terms of definite and tangible meaning. For the experience which alone
can give us such terms we must await that solemn day which is to overtake
us all. The belief can be most quickly defined by its negation, as the re-
fusal to believe that this world is all. The materialist holds that when you
have described the whole universe of phenomena of which we can become
cognizant under the conditions of the present life, then the whole story is
told. It seems to me, on the contrary, that the whole story is not thus told.
I feel the omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it far easier for
me to adopt the view of Euripides, that what we call death may be but the
dawning of true knowledge and of true life. The greatest philosopher of
modern times, the master and teacher of all who shall study the process of
evolution for many a day to come, holds that the conscious soul is not the
product of a collocation of material particles, but is in the deepest sense
a divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, the divine energy which is
manifested throughout the knowable universe is the same energy that wells
up in us as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can see no insuperable
difficulty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of Humanity
this divine spark may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness
to survive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. Such a crowning
wonder seems to me no more than the fit climax to a creative work that has
been ineffably beautiful and marvellous in all its myriad stages.
Only on some such view can the reasonableness of the universe, which still
remains far above our finite power of comprehension, maintain its ground.
There are some minds inaccessible to the class of considerations here alleged,
and perhaps there always will be. But on such grounds, if on no other, the
faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who look upon the genesis
of the highest spiritual qualities in Man as the goal of Nature's creative work.
This view has survived the Copernican revolution in science, and it has sur-
vived the Darwinian revolution. Nay, if the foregoing exposition be sound,
it is Darwinism which has placed Humanity upon a higher pinnacle than
1861-88] SIDNEY LANIER. 145
ever. The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of hope. Strife
and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream
of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musi-
cian, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge ; and as we gird ourselves,
up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when in the truest
sense the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of Christ, and
He shall reign for ever and ever, king of kings and lord of lords.
lanfcr,
BOKN in Macon, Ga., 1842. DIED at Lynn, N. C., 1881.
THE MARSHES OF GLYNK
[Poems of Sidney Lanier. Edited by hisWife. 1884.]
/^\ LOOMS of, the live-oaks, beautiful-braided asd woven
^J~ i With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, — JL-
Emerald twilights,— c-
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, A*
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades *
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn ; —
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, —
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, —
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good ; —
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine ;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, -•-
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, —
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, -
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
VOL. x.— 10
SIDNEY LANIER. [1861-88
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnaniable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, —
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
\. To the forest-dark : —
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low, —
Thus — with your favor — soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land !)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand,
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and
curl -L
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of
a girl. ^
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. ^
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high ?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea ?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea !
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God :
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God :
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
1861-88] SIDNEY LANIER. 147
And the sea lends large, as the marsh : lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go -
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun !
The creeks overflow : a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whir;
Passeth, and all is still ; and the currents cease to run ;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be !
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height :
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep ?
And I would I could know what swimuieth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.
1878.
O1
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE.
DT of the hills of Habersham, The dewberry dipped for to work de-
Down the valleys of Hall, lay,
I hurry amain to reach the plain, And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,
Run the rapid and leap the fall, Here in the hills of Habersham
Split at the rock and together again, Here in the valleys of Hall.
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side High °'er tbe hills of Habersham,
With a lover's pain to attain the plain Veiling the valleys of Hall,
Far from the hills of Habersham, The hickory told me manifold
Far from the valleys of Hall. Fair tales of sha(le' the P°Plar tal1
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
All down the hills of Habersham, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the
All through the valleys of Hall, pine,
The rushes cried Abide, abide, Overleaniug, with flickering meaning and
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, sign,
The laving laurel turned my tide, Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
The ferns and the fondling grass said Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
Stay, These glades in the valleys of Hall
}48 SIDNEY LANIER. [1861-88
And oft in the hills of Habersham, But oh, not the hills of Haber-
And oft in the valleys of Hall, sham,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth And oh, not the valleys of Hall
brook-stone Avail : I am fain for to water the plain.
Did bar me of passage with friendly Downward the voices of Duty call —
brawl, Downward, to toil and be mixed with the
And many a luminous jewel lone main,
— Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to
Ruby, garnet and amethyst — turn,
Made lures with the lights of streaming And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
stone And the lordly main from beyond the
In the clefts of the hills of Haber- plain
sham, Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall. Calls through the valleys of Hall.
1877.
THE MOCKING BIRD.
SUPERB and sole, upon a plumed spray
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He sumrn'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.
Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again.
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain :
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakspeare on the tree ?
THE REVENGE OF HAMISH.
~TT was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
•*• And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.
Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril ; she was the daintiest doe ;
In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern
She reared, and rounded her ears in turn.
Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go
Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;
And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,
For their day-dream slowlier came to a close,
Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.
1861-83] SIDNEY LANIER. 14 9
Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,
The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound,
The hounds swept after with never a sound,
But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.
For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild,
And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds
For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds :
" I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child."
So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand;
But he hurried tall Harnish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," —
Cried Maclean — "if the deer seek to cross to the burn,
Do thou turn them to nie: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand."
No\v hard-fortuned Hainish, half blown of his breath with the height of the hill,
Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does
Drew leaping to burn-ward ; huskily rose
His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak for his will.
So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn.
But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below.
Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go
All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,
And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eye-balls shone,
As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see.
"Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee ?"
Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.
"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild,
" And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed;
I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast."
Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child
I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong! "
Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:
" Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,
And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong! "
So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled.
" Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, " for it still may be,
If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,
I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child ! "
Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that ; and over the hill
Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame ;
And that place of the lashing full quiet became ;
And the wife and the child stood sad ; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.
But look ! red Hamish has risen ; quick about and about turns he.
" There is none betwixt me and the crag-top! " he screams under breath.
Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,
He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.
SIDNEY LANIEB. [1861-88
Now the mother drops breath ; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space,
Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the gleu,
And that place of the lashing is live with men,
And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.
Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold.
They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea,
And the lady cries: " Clansmen, run for a fee ! —
Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold
Fast Hamish back from the brink ! " — and ever she flies up the steep,
And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain.
But, mother, 'tis vain ; but, father, 'tis vain ;
Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.
Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still.
And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees,
Crying : ' • Hamish ! O Hamish ! but please, but please
For to spare him! " and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.
On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song,
Cries : " So ; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all,
Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall,
And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"
Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red,
Breathed short for a space, said : " Nay, but it never shall be!
Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea! "
But the wife: " Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead ?
Say yea! — Let them lash me, Hamish?" — "Nay !"—" Husband, the lashing will
heal;
But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave ?
Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave ?
Quick! Love! I will bare thee — so — kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kueel
With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth.
Then the henchman — he that smote Hamish — would tremble and lag;
"Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag;
Then he struck him, and " One! " sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his
mirth.
And no man spake beside Hamish ; he counted each stroke witli a song.
When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height,
And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight
Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.
And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer —
And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace,
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face-
In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,
And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea,
Shrill screeching, "Revenge! " in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean,
Age-feeble with auger and impotent pain,
Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree—
-o~^
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
ANGELES, -> CAL.
1861-88] ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 15 J
And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine,
And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew,
And the mother stared white on the waste of blue,
And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.
1878.
NIGHT AND DAY.
rriHE innocent, sweet Day is dead. Now, in a wild, sad after-mood
-L Dark Night hath slain her in her bed. The tawny Night sits still to brood
O, Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed ! Upon the dawn-time when he wooed.
— Put out the light, said he. — I would she lived, said he.
A sweeter light than ever rayed Star-memories of happier times,
From star of heaven or eye of maid Of loving deeds and lovers' rhymes,
Has vanished in the unknown Shade. Throng forth in silvery pantomimes.
— She's dead, she's dead, said he. — Come back, O Day ! said he.
18CO.
&nna
BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1842.
THE DRAFT RIOT OF JULY, 1863.
[ What Answer ? 1868.]
ON the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of July, began this outbreak,
unparalleled in atrocities by anything in American history, and equalled
only by the horrors of the worst days of the French Revolution. Gangs of
men and boys, composed of railroad employes, workers in machine-shops,
and a vast crowd of those who lived by preying upon others, thieves, pimps,
professional ruffians, the scum of the city, jail-birds, or those who were
running with swift feet to enter the prison-doors, began to gather on the cor-
ners, and in streets and alleys where they lived ; from thence issuing forth
they visited the great establishments on the line of their advance, com-
manding their instant close and the companionship of the workmen — many
of them peaceful and orderly men — on pain of the destruction of one and
a murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant
compliance.
A body of these, five or six hundred strong, gathered about one of the
enrolling-offices in the upper part of the city, where the draft was quietly
proceeding, and opened the assault upon it by a shower of clubs, bricks, and
paving-stones torn from the streets, following it up by a furious rush into
the office. Lists, records, books, the drafting-wheel, every article of furni-
l§2 ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. [1861-88
ture or work in the room was rent in pieces and strewn about the floor or
flung into the streets ; while the law officers, the newspaper reporters — who
are expected to be everywhere — and the few peaceable spectators, were com-
pelled to make a hasty retreat through an opportune rear exit, accelerated
by the curses and blows of the assailants.
A safe in the room, which contained some of the hated records, was fallen
upon by the men, who strove to wrench open its impregnable lock with their
naked hands, and, baffled, beat them on its iron doors and sides till they
were stained with blood, in a mad frenzy of senseless hate and fury. And
then, finding every portable article destroyed — their thirst for ruin grow-
ing by the little drink it had had— and believing, or rather hoping, that
the officers had taken refuge in the upper rooms, set fire to the house, and
stood watching the slow and steady lift of the flames, filling the air with de-
moniac shrieks and yells, while they waited for the prey to escape from some
door or window, from the merciless fire to their merciless hands. One of
these, who was on the other side of the street, courageously stepped forward,
and, telling them that they had utterly demolished all they came to seek, in-
formed them that helpless women and little children were in the house, and
besought them to extinguish the flames and leave the ruined premises ; to
disperse, or at least to seek some other scene.
By his dress recognizing in him a government official, so far from hearing
or heeding his humane appeal, they set upon him with sticks and clubs,
and beat him till his eyes were blind with blood, and he, bruised and man-
gled, succeeded in escaping to the handful of police who stood helpless be-
fore this howling crew, now increased to thousands. With difficulty and
pain the inoffensive tenants escaped from the rapidly spreading fire, which,
having devoured the house originally lighted, swept across the neighboring
buildings till the whole block stood a mass of burning flames. The firemen
came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the mis-
creants who surrounded them and who cheered at their approach, but either
made no attempt to perform their duty, or so feeble and farcical a one, as
to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and ennoble.
At last, when there was here nothing more to accomplish, the mob, swol-
len to a frightful size, including myriads of wretched, drunken women, and
the half-grown vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed through the inter-
vening streets, stopping cars and insulting peaceable citizens on their way,
to an armory where were manufactured and stored carbines and guns for the
government. In anticipation of the attack, this, earlier in the day, had been
fortified by a police squad capable of coping with an ordinary crowd of ruf-
fians, but as chaff before fire in the presence of these murderous thousands.
Here, as before, the attack was begun by a rain of missiles gathered from
the streets ; less fatal, doubtless, than more civilized arms, but frightful in
the ghastly wounds and injuries they inflicted. Of this no notice was taken
by those who were stationed within. It was repeated. At last, finding they
were treated with contemptuous silence, and that no sign of surrender was
offered, the crowd swayed back, then forward, in a combined attempt to
force the wide entrance-doors. Heavy hammers and sledges, which had been
1861-88J ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 153
brought from forges and workshops, caught up hastily as they gathered the
mechanics into their ranks, were used with frightful violence to beat them
in, at last successfully. The foremost assailants began to climb the stairs,
but were checked, and for the moment driven back by the fire of the officers,
who at last had been commanded to resort to their revolvers. A half-score
fell wounded ; and one who had been acting in some sort as their leader —
a big, brutal, Irish ruffian — dropped dead.
The pause was but for an instant. As the smoke cleared away there was a
general and ferocious onslaught upon the armory ; curses, oaths, revilings,
hideous and obscene blasphemy, with terrible yells and cries, filled the air
in every accent of the English tongue save that spoken by a native Ameri-
can. Such were there mingled with the sea of sound, but they were so few
and weak as to be unnoticeable in the roar of voices. The paving-stones flew
like hail, until the street was torn into gaps and ruts, and every window-
pane and sash and door-way was smashed or broken. Meanwhile, divers
attempts were made to fire the building, but failed through haste or ineffec-
tual materials, or the vigilant watchfulness of the besieged. In the midst of
this gallant defence, word was brought to the defenders from headquarters
that nothing could be done for their support, and that, if they would save
their lires, they must make a quick and orderly retreat. Fortunately, there
was a side passage with which the mob was unacquainted, and one by one
they succeeded in gaining this and vanishing. ....
The work was begun, continued, gathering in force and fury as the day
wore on. Police-stations, enrolling-offices, rooms or buildings used in any
way by government authority, or obnoxious as representing the dignity of
law, were gutted, destroyed, then left to the mercy of the flames. News-
paper offices, whose issues had been a fire in the rear of the nation's armies
by extenuating and defending treason, and through violent and incendiary
appeals stirring up "lewd fellows of the baser sort" to this very carnival of
ruin and blood, were cheered as the crowd went by. Those that had been
faithful to loyalty and law were hooted, stoned, and even stormed by the
army of miscreants who were only driven off by the gallant and determined
charge of the police, and in one place by the equally gallant and certainly
unique defence which came from turning the boiling water from the en-
gines upon the howling wretches, who, unprepared for any such warm recep-
tion as this, beat a precipitate and general retreat. Before night fell it was
no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of
gatherings, scattered over the whole length and breadth of the city, some
of them engaged in actual work of demolition and rum, others, with clubs
and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparently with no definite
atrocity to perpetrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer, and,
by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer, or solitary soldier, or
inoffensive negro, who crossed the line of their vision ; these three objects —
the badge of a defender of the law, the uniform of the Union army, the
skin of a helpless and outraged race — acted upon these madmen as water
acts upon a rabid dog.
Late in the afternoon a crowd which could have numbered not less than
154 ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. [1861-88
ten thousand, the majority of whom were ragged, frowsy, drunken women,
gathered about the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children— a large and
beautiful building, and one of the most admirable and noble charities of
the city. When it became evident, from the menacing cries and groans of
the multitude, that danger, if not destruction, was meditated to the harm-
less and inoffensive inmates, a flag of truce appeared, and an appeal was
made in their behalf, by the principal, to every sentiment of humanity which
these beings might possess, — a vain appeal ! Whatever human feeling had
ever, if ever, filled these souls was utterly drowned and washed away in the
tide of rapine and blood in which they had been steeping themselves. The
few officers who stood guard over the doors, and manfully faced these demo-
niac legions, were beaten down and flung to one side, helpless and stunned,
whilst the vast crowd rushed in. All the articles upon which they could
seize — beds, bedding, carpets, furniture, the very garments of the fleeing
inmates, some of these torn from their persons as they sped by — were carried
into the streets and hurried off by the women and children who stood ready
to receive the goods which their husbands, sons, and fathers flung to their
care. The little ones, many of them assailed and beaten ; all, orphans and
care-takers, exposed to every indignity and every danger, driven on to the
street, the building Avas fired. This had been attempted whilst the help-
less children, some of them scarce more than babies, were still in their
rooms ; but this devilish consummation was prevented by the heroism of one
man. He, the Chief of the Fire Department, strove by voice and arm to stay
the endeavor ; and when, overcome by superior numbers, the brands had
been lit and piled, with naked hands, and in the face of threatened death,
he tore asunder the glowing embers and trod them under foot. Again the
effort was made, and again failed through the determined and heroic oppo-
sition of this solitary soul. Then, on the front steps, in the midst of these
drunken and infuriate thousands, he stood up and besought them, if they
cared nothing for themselves nor for those hapless orphans, that they would
not bring lasting disgrace upon the city by destroying one of its noblest
charities, which had for its object nothing but good.
He was answered on all sides by yells and execrations, and frenzied shrieks
of "Down with the nagurs ! " coupled with every oath and every curse that
malignant hate of the blacks could devise, and drunken Irish tongues could
speak. It had been decreed that this building was to be razed to the ground.
The house was fired in a thousand places, and in less than two hours the
walls crashed in, a mass of smoking, blackened ruins, whilst the children
wandered through the streets, a prey to beings who were wild beasts in every-
thing save the superior ingenuity of man to agonize and torture his victims.
Frightful as the day had been, the night was yet more hideous, since to
the horrors which Avere seen was added the greater horror of deeds Avhich
might be committed in the darkness ; or, if they were seen, it Avas by the
lurid glare of burning buildings, the red flames of which — flung upon the
stained and brutal faces, the torn and tattered garments, of men and Avomen
who danced and howled around the scene of ruin they had caused — made
the Avhole aspect of affairs seem more like a gathering of fiends rejoicing in
1861-88] ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON. 155
Pandemonium than aught with which creatures of flesh and blood had to
do
The next morning's sun rose on a city which was ruled by a reign of ter-
ror. Had the police possessed the heads of Hydra and the arms of Briareus,
and had these heads all seen, these arms all fought, they would have been
powerless against the multitude of opposers. Outbreaks were made, crowds
gathered, houses burned, streets barricaded, fights enacted, in a score of
places at once. Where the officers appeared they were irretrievably beaten
and overcome ; their stand, were it ever so short, but inflaming the passions
of the mob to fresh deeds of violence. Stores were closed ; the business por-
tion of the city deserted ; the large works and factories emptied of men, who
had been sent home by their employers or were swept into the ranks of the
marauding bands. The city cars, omnibuses, hacks, were unable to run,
and remained under shelter. Every telegraph wire was cut, the posts torn
up, the operators driven from their offices. The mayor, seeing that civil
power was helpless to stem this tide, desired to call the military to his aid
and place the city under martial law, but was opposed by the Governor —
a governor who, but a few days before, had pronounced the war a failure,
and not only predicted but encouraged this mob-rule, which was now crush-
ing everything beneath its heavy and ensanguined feet. This man, through
almost two days of these awful scenes, remained at a quiet sea-side retreat
but a few miles from the city. Coming to it on the afternoon of the second
day, instead of ordering cannon planted in the streets, giving these crea-
tures opportunity to retire to their homes, and, in the event of refusal, blow-
ing them there by powder and ball, he first went to the point where was
collected the chief est mob, and proceeded to address them. Before him
stood incendiaries, thieves, and murderers, who even then were sacking
dwelling-houses and butchering powerless and inoffensive beings. These
wretches he apostrophized as " My friends," repeating the title again and
again in the course of his harangue, assuring them that he was there as a
proof of his friendship, which he had demonstrated by "sending his ad-
jutant-general to Washington, to have the draft stopped "; begging them to
" wait for his return" ; "to separate now as good citizens" ; with the promise
that they "might assemble again whenever they wished to so do"; mean-
while, he would " take care of their rights." This model speech was inces-
santly interrupted by tremendous cheering and frantic demonstrations of
delight, one great fellow almost crushing the Governor in his enthusiastic
embrace. ....
His allies in newspaper offices attempted to throw the blame upon the loyal
press and portion of the community. This was but a repetition of the cry,
raised by traitors in arms, that the government, struggling for life in their
deadly hold, was responsible for the war : "If thou wouldst but consent to
be murdered peaceably, there could be no strife." ....
It was absurd and futile to characterize this new Reign of Terror as any-
thing but an effort on the part of Northern rebels to help Southern ones, at
the most critical moment of the war, with the State militia and available
troops absent in a neighboring Commonwealth, and the loyal people un-
156 DAVID LAW PROUDFIT. [1861-88
prepared. These editors and their coadjutors, men of brains and ability,
were of that most poisonous growth — traitors to the Government and the
flag of their country— renegade Americans. Let it, however, be written
plainly and graven deeply that the tribes of savages — the hordes of ruffians
— found ready to do their loathsome bidding were not of native growth nor
American-born.
While it is true that there were some glib-tongued fellows who spoke the
language without foreign accent, all of them of the lowest order of Demo-
cratic ward-politicians, or creatures skulking from the outstretched arm of
avenging law ; while the most degraded of the German population were rep-
resented ; while it is also true that there were Irish, and Catholic Irish too,
industrious, sober, intelligent people, who indignantly refused participa-
tion in these outrages, and mourned over the barbarities which were dis-
gracing their national name ; it is preeminently true — proven by thou-
sands of witnesses, and testified to by numberless tongues — that the masses,
the rank and file, the almost entire body of rioters, were the worst classes of
Irish emigrants, infuriated by artful appeals, and maddened by the atro-
cious whiskey of thousands of grog-shops.
By far the most infamous part of these cruelties was that which wreaked
every species of torture and lingering death upon the colored people of the
city — men, women, and children, old and young, strong and feeble alike.
Hundreds of these fell victims to the prejudice fostered by public opinion,
incorporated in our statute-books, sanctioned by our laws, which here and
thus found legitimate outgrowth and action. The horrors which blanched
the face of Christendom were but the bloody harvest of fields sown by soci-
ety, by cultured men and women, by speech, and book, and press, by pro-
fessions and politics, nay, by the pulpit itself, and the men who there make
God's truth a lie, garbling or denying the inspired declaration that " He
has made of one blood all people to dwell upon the face of the earth " ; and
that He, the All- Just and Merciful One, " is no respecter of persons."
Lato
BOBN in Newburgh, N. Y., 1842.
THE WILLIS.
[Mask and Domino. 1883.]
rpHE Willis are out to-night, The forest is asleep;
-*- In the ghostly pale moonlight, All things that fly or creep
With robes and faces white. A death-like silence keep.
Swiftly they circle round, A fear is over all ;
And make not any sound, From spectral trees and tall
Nor footprint on the ground. The gathering night-dews fall.
1861-88]
DAVID LAW PROUDFIT.
157
Moveless are leaf and limb,
While through the forest dim
Slow glides a figure slim.
A figure slim and fair,
With loosened, streaming hair,
Watching the Willis there !
"These are the ghosts," she said,
"Of hapless ones unwed,
Who loved and now are dead."
Her hair was drenched with dew :
The moonlight shimmered through
And showed its raven hue.
"Each one of these," she cried,
" Or ever she was a bride,
For love's sake sinned and died."
" I come," she said, " I too;
Ye are by one too few,"
And joined the phantom crew.
Swiftly they circled round,
Nor was there any sound,
Nor footprint on the ground.
POOR LITTLE JOE.
"DROP yer eyes wide open, Joey,
-^ Fur I've brought you sumpin' great.
Apples ? No, enough sight better!
Don't you take no int'rest ? Wait !
Flowers, Joe — I know'd you'd like 'em —
Ain't them scrumptious ? Ain't them
high ?
Tears, my boy ? Wot's them fur, Joey ?
There — poor little Joe ! — don't cry !
I was skippin' past a winder
Where a bang-up lady sot,
All amongst a lot of bushes —
Each one climbin' from a pot ;
Every bush had flowers on it —
Pretty? Mebbe not! Oh, no!
Wish you could 'a seen 'em growin'.
It was such a stunnin' show.
Well, I thought of you, poor feller,
Lyin' here so sick and weak,
Never knowin' any comfort,
Aikl I puts on lots o' cheek.
"Missus," says I, "if you please, mum,
Could I ax you for a rose ?
For my little brother, missus,
Never seed one, I suppose."
Then I told her all about you—
How I bringed you up — poor Joe !
(Lackiii' women folks to do it)
Sich a imp you was, you know !
Till yer got that awful tumble,
Jist as I had broke yer in
(Hard work, too) to earn your livin';
Blackiu' boots for honest tin.
How that tumble crippled of you,
So's you couldn't hyper much —
Joe, it hurted when I seen you
Fur the first time with yer crutch.
"But," I says, "he's laid up nc
mum,
'Pears to weaken every day ; "
Joe, she up and went to cuttin' —
That's the how of this bokay.
Say, it seems to me, ole feller,
You is quite yourself to-night ;
Kind o' chirk — it's been a fortnit
Sence yer eyes has been so bright.
Better ? Well, I'm glad to hear it !
Yes, they're mighty pretty, Joe.
Suiellin' of 'em's made you happy ?
Well, I thought it would, you kno-w
Never see the country, did you ?
Flowers growin' everywhere!
Some time when you're better, Joey,
Mebbe I kin take you there.
Flowers in Heaven ? 'M — I s'pose so ;
Dunno much about it, though ;
Ain't as fly as wot I might be
On them topics, little Joe.
158
CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS.
[1861-88
But I've heerd it hinted somewheres
That in Heaven's golden gates
Things is everlastin' cheerful —
B'lieve that's what the Bible states.
Likewise, there, folks don't git hun-
gry:
So good people, w'en they dies,
Finds theirselves well fixed forever —
Joe, uiy boy. wot ails yer eyes ?
Thought they looked a little sing'ler.
Oh, no! Don't you have no fear;
Heaven was made fur such as you is —
Joe, wot makes you look so queer ?
Here — wake up ! Oh, don't look that way !
Joe, my boy ! Hold up yer head !
Here's yer flowers — you dropped 'em,
Joey.
Oh, my God, can Joe be dead ?
Jfollcn
BORN iu Dorchester, Mass., 1842.
YAWCOB STRAUSS.
[Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems. 1878.]
IHAF von funny leedle poy,
Vot gomes schust to mine knee ;
Der queerest schap, der Greatest rogue,
As efer you dit see.
He runs, und schumps, und sch mashes
dings
In all barts off der house :
But vot off dot ? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He get der measles und der mumbs,
Und eferyding dot's oudt;
He sbills mine glass off lager bier,
Foots schnuff indo mine kraut.
He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese, —
Dot vas der roughest chouse :
I'd dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum,
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit, —
Mine cracious, dot vas drue!
I clinks mine hed vas schplit abart,
He kicks oup sooch a touse :
But nefer mind ; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.
He asks me questions sooch as dese:
Who baints mine nose so red ?
Who vas it cuts dot schmoodth blace
oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed ?
Und vhere der plaze goes vrom der lamp
Vene'er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss ?
I somedimes dink I schall go vild
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beacef ul dimes enshoy ;
But ven he vas ashleep in ped,
So guiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, " Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss."
1861-88] AMERICUS WELLINGTON BELLAW. J.5Q
Wellington I3cllato,
BORN in Troy, Ohio, 1842.
COTTON-FIELD SONG.
WHEN de sun am wakin', darkey jumps roan',
Sun clamuiin' high, de darkey wilte down,
Foots git hebby in de cotton groun'
Hi oh, my oh, me.
Aft'noon sun trabble slow,
It's a mighty long time gittin' low,
But better times am comin', I know,
Nex' week when de moon shines, O.
De boss see fur when de cotton am small;
Rudder lay aroun' dan to wuk at all,
Shade mighty skase till de cotton am tall,
Hi oh, my oh, me.
O it's ebbery day alike, some way,
And it's ebbery day alike, I say,
But O Malindy, we'll be gay
Nex' week when de moon shines, O.
De rows am long when de heart's far away,
But ole Bob White he whissel an' he say,
" Soon de hoe an' de grubber aside you will lay/*
Hi oh, my oh, me.
Foots git lighter when dey go
Closer to de aind ob de row,
Soon you'll hear Uncle Rosin's ole bow,
Nex' week when de moon shines, O.
So it's wuk away till de night draps down,
Sweatin's hard wuk when de boss am roun',
Hoe gettin' hebby in de cotton groun',
Hi oh, my oh, me.
But I hear Rosin callin' far away,
" Hurry up, ye darkeys, I say,
For de time am a comin' to be gay,
Nex' week when de nioou shines, O/7
CHARLES BERTH AND LEWIS. [1861-88
Charles 'BertranD Letote*
BORN in Liverpool, Ohio, 1842.
FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE LIME-KILN CLUB.
[Brother Gardner's Lime-Kiln Club. . . . By M. Quad and Brother Gardner. 1883-88.]
NOT A CONGRESHUNAL BODY.
•"' TT may be well to menshun a leetle sarcumstance right heah an' now,"
-L -said Brother Gardner, as the next meeting opened: "I want it dis-
tinctly understood dat de rules of Congress doan' govern de purcedins of dis
club only to a sartin figger. Fur instance, if Calculation King and Romance
Floyd should make use of dis floo' to call each odder liars an' blackguards,
an' to make a display of muscle, an apology nex' day would have no effect on
dis club. Kasewhy? Kase de two members wouldn't be heah to apologize !
Dat's de remark I war gwine to sot f o'th, an' we will now go on wid de reg'lar
bizness."
COMMUNICATIONS.
A letter from David Field, of Lynn, Mass., made inquiries of the club as
to whether the rainfall in Michigan during the past twelve months was
above or below the average.
The Rev. Penstock, who has been very quiet and humble-minded since his
jump from the back window, got upon his feet and replied : "I s'pose dat
queshun 'peals to me personally, kase I s'pose I'm de only member of dis club
who watches sech things. It am my opinyun dat de rainfall for de last y'ar
am far below the averidge."
" Brudder Penstock," said the President, "you am a valuable member of
dis club, an' de club would be mighty lonesome to lose you, but still what
you doan' know about de rainfall would lay de foundashun fur a heap o' dry
weather. My old woman keeps a bar'l under de spout to ketch rain-water,
an' I is confident dat de quantity of rain-water in dat bar'l fur de last y'ar
has been moah dan for eny y'ar in ten y'ars. De secretary will reply accord-
ingly."
THE HONEST MAN.
" If I should find a perfeckly honest man — honest in his expressions, hon-
est in his dealings, sincere in his statements — I shouldn't like him ! " said
Brother Gardner, as the meeting was called to order. " He would be a lone-
some object in dis aige. He would seek in vain fur companionship. "While
I believe dat honesty am de bes' policy, I doan' look to see it practised beyond
a certain limit. When I trade mules wid a man, I kinder like to doubt his
word. I want to feel dat he am keeping still 'bout de ring-bones an' spavins,
an' dat de beast he says am jist turnin'' fo'teen y'ars, will nebber see his
twenty-first birthday no moar. It am monotonous to deal wid a man who am
perfeckly honest. If I lend a man money I want him to be honest 'nuif
1861-88] CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS. \§\
to return it, but if he kin trade me a watch worth three dollars for a gun
worth seben, I shall think none the less of him.
" If men were so sincere dat we felt obleeged to believe whateber dey as-
serted, we should hab no use fur theories an' argyments. When I gib my
note I expect to pay it. When I ax a man how he would like to trade his
wheelbarrow fur my dog, I'm not gwine to inform him dat Caesar am all bark
an' no bite, an' he am not gwine to tell me dat he borrowed dat wheelbarrow
in de night, an forgot to return it. If a grocer leaves me in charge of his sto'
Ize gwine to sot fur half an hour beside a box of herrings an' keep my hands
in my pockets all de time. Yet, if dat same man sells me a pound of tea he
expects me to try an' pass off on him a half-dollar wid a hole in it.
" Continer, my frens, to believe dat honesty am de bes' policy, but doan'
expect too much of so-called honest men. You kin trust men wid your wal-
let who would borrow a pitchfork an' nebber return it. You kin lend your
hoss to a man who would cheat you blind in tradin' obercoats. You kin send
home a pa'r o' dead ducks at noon-day by a man who would steal your live
chickens at midnight.
" When I lend my naybur Mocha coffee I like to wonder if he won't pay it
back in Rio. When de ole woman buys kaliker on a guarantee she rather
hopes it will fade in de washin'.
" I solemnly believe dat de world am honest 'miff, jist as it am. When
you gin your word stick to it if it busts de bank. When you do a job of work
do it well ; when you make a debt pay it. Any man who am mo' honest dan
dat will want yon to cut a penny in two to make out his shilling ; he will ring
you up at midnight to return your mouse-trap ; he will take one shingle from
your bunch an' offer you de one-hundredth part of what de bunch cost ; he
will borrow your boot-jack an' insist dat you borrow his wash-board to offset
it. We will now proceed to bizness."
PLEASE ARREST HIM.
The secretary announced a letter from the Hon. Occupation Buckworthy,
of Portsmouth, Va., stating that a colored man calling himself Judge John
Waterman, and claiming to be an active local member of the Lime-Kiln
Club, was in that city disposing of photographs supposed to represent Bro-
ther Gardner. He sold the photographs at twenty cents each, and claimed
that the funds were to be sent to Liberia, to establish a mouth-organ factory.
The photographs represented a colored person with a broken nose, a squint
eye, front teeth gone, and ears large enough to throw a shadow over a wall
eighteen feet high. Was it all right, or was the man an impostor ?
Brother Gardner was jumping two feet high before the secretary had fin-
ished, and it took him only four minutes to write and send out a telegram
asking the Portsmouth man to arrest the impostor if it cost two hundred
dollars.
In this connection it may be well to state :
1. The Lime-Kiln Club employs no travelling agent.
2. It offers no chromos.
VOL. X.— 11 >
162 CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS. [1861-88
3. None of its members are allowed to attach their names to medical in-
ventions.
4. It favors no scheme to build observatories in Liberia, or orphan asylums
in the Sandwich Islands.
5. It publishes no dime novels, sends out no hair dyes and has no Presi-
dential candidate for 1884.
UNPLEDGED AND UNCERTAIN.
The secretary announced a letter from the State Department of New Jer-
sey, inquiring if Brother Gardner favored the annexation of Canada to the
United States, and the old man carefully felt of his left ear and replied :
" Dat's a subjeck which has troubled me a great deal, an' up to de present
time I am onsartin and unpledged. De same toof-brush which am sold for
twenty cents on dis side kin be bought fur fifteen ober dar. If we annex
Canada we kin hab cheap toof-brushes. On de odder han', de same rat-
trap dat we sell fur twenty-five cents on dis side can't be had ober dar fur
less dan thirty. If Canada annexes us she am suah of cheap rat-traps. Dar
it am, you see, an' whether we should annex Canada or Canada annex us am
a queshun which I cannot decide to my own satisfaxun."
KILLED IN THE BUD.
Trustee Fullback offered the following resolution :
"Resolved, Dat usurpashun am de death blow of liberty."
" B rudder Fullback," said the President, as he looked at the member over
the top of his spectacles, " do you know what usurpashun means ?"
" I — I — 'spect I does, sah."
"What is it ?"
Brother Pullback hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed his elbow, and was
evidently fast-aground on a sand bar.
" You had better take dat resolushun an' place it softly on top de stove,"
resumed the President. " Dar am too much chin-music in dis kentry 'bout
usurpashun, monopoly, centralizashun, loss o' liberty, an' so on. If anybody
wants to usurp let him go ahead. As fur loss o' liberty, we has got such
dead loads of it dat we kin afford to lose a sheer. Sot down, Brudder Pull-
back — sot down, an' remember dat shootin' off big words doan' pay fur meat
an' 'taters."
A STATESMAN'S DESCENT.
" In case Brudder Cinnamon Carter am in de Hall to-night, I should like
to have him step dis way," said the President, as Pickles Smith got through
blowing his nose and Elder Toots secured an easy rest for his back.
The member inquired for rose up at the back end of the Hall and came
forward with a look of surprise cantering across his countenance.
1861-88] CHARLES BERTRAND LEWIS. 163
' Brudder Carter, when did you jine dis Club ?" asked the President.
' 'Bout six months ago, sah."
' What was your object in becomin' a member ?"
' I wanted to improve my mind."
1 Do you fink it has helped your mind any ? "
' I do, sah. "
' Well, I doan' ! In de fust place, you has borrowed money from ebery
member who would lend you eben a nickel. In de nex' place, I can't learn
dat you has put in one honest day's work since you became one of us. You
war' sayin' to Samuel Shin las' night dat de world owed you a livin V
"Yes, sah."
" I want to undeceive you. De world owes no man only what he aims.
You may reason dat you am not to blame for bein' heah. Werry good ; de
world kin reason dat you am to blame for stayin' in it when it costs nuffin' to
jump inter de ribber. Brudder Carter, what has you done for de world dat
it owes you a livin' ?"
" I— Ize— Ize "
" Just so ! " observed the President. " You has walked up an' down, an*
wore cloze, an' consumed food an' drink, an' made one mo' in de crowd aroun'
a new buildin'. An' for dis you claim de world owes you a livin' ? You has
made no diskiveries, brought out no inventions, written no song an' held no
offis. Not five hundred people in de world know of you by name. You can't
name one single man who am under obligashuns to you. You eat what odders
produce. You w'ar out de cloze odder people make. An' yit you have the
impudence to sot down on a bar'l of dried apples, cross yer legs an' fold yer
hands, an' say dat the world owes yer a livin', an' by de great horn spoons
mus' gin it to you ! Brudder Carter, look at yerself a few minits ! "
" Yes, sah — ahem — yes — Ize sorry, sah," stammered the member.
" What fur ? Sorry kase you've bin found out ? Sorry kase you've entered
dis Hall for de las' time ? Brudder Carter, we doan' want sich men as you in
dis Club. De world doan' owe us a cent. On de contrary, we owe de world
mo' dan we kin eber pay. De man who argys dat he am entitled to any mo'
dan what his brains or muscle kin aim him am a robber at heart. We shall
cross your name from de rolls, show you de way down stairs, an' permit you
to go your own road f rew life. If you kin make de world clothe, feed an'
shelter you fur de privilege of seein' you hold down a dry-goods box in front
of a sto' which doan' advertise, dat will be your good luck."
Brother Carter thought the matter over and decided that the world owed
him a place in Paradise Hall, but he was mistaken again. The Committee
on Internal Revenue stepped forward at a nod from Brother Gardner, and the
expelled member only struck the stairs twice in going from top to bottom.
ELDER TOOTS AT THE FRONT.
During the last two or three meetings Elder Toots had managed to keep
awake most of the time by keeping a bit of ice on his head and permitting
the melting stream to trickle down the back of his neck, but on this occasion
164 FREDERICK HENRY PILCH. [1861-88
he had slept sweetly for twenty minutes, when he suddenly rose and offered
the following resolution :
"Resolved, Dat dis Club do hereby express its sympathy fur de cause of liberty in
Cuba."
During the deep silence which followed the reading of the above, Prof.
High-Strung Smith was plainly heard chewing slippery elm, and a sudden
sneeze from Gen. Overworked Johnson rattled along the ceiling and brought
down hundreds of small pieces of plaster.
' Brudder Toots, what do you know 'bout Cuba ? " asked the President.
'Nuffin, sah."
' What do you know 'bout de cause of liberty ?"
'Nuffin/?
' Who axed you to present dat resolushun ? "
'Judge Gallipolee Thompson, sah."
( Brudder Toots, you go out an' soak de back of yer neck in cold tea ! You
has bin made a fool of ! You are a purty middlin' aiverage ole nigger, but
de mo' you sleep while present at our meeting de mo' benefit you will derive
from de purceedins. As fur you, Brudder Thompson, you am hereby fined
nine hundred dollars an' costs fur disruptin' de reg'lar purceedins. I may
add at dis time dat de costs am about fo' hundred dollars."
The Judge fell to the floor in a dead faint, but was immediately drawn out
of the Hall by the left leg, and business went right on.
fre&ericfe
BORN in Newark, N. J., 1842. DIED at Bloomfield, N. J., 1889.
DE 'SPERIENCE OB DE REB'REND QUAWKO STRONG.
[Homespun Verses. 1882.]
Q1 WING dat gate wide, 'Postle Peter, Den let Moses bring de crown an'
^ Ring de big bell, beat de gong, Palms an' weddin' gown along,
Saints an' martyrs den will meet dair Wid percession to de landin' ;
Brudder, Reb'rend Quawko Strong. Here's de Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
Sound dat^bugle, Angel Gabriel ! Tune your harpstrings tight, King David,
Tell de elders, loud an' long, Sing your good Ole Hunderd song,
" Cl'ar out dem high seats of Hebben, Let de seraphs dance wid cymbals
Here comes Reb'rend Quawko Strong." 'Roun' de Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
Turn de guard out, Gineral Michael, Joseph, march down wid yer bredderen,,
Arms present de line along ; Tribes an' banners musterin' strong —
Let de band play " Conkerin' Hero," Speech ob welcome from ole Abram ;
For de Reb'rend Quawko Strong. Answer, Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
1861-88]
EDWIN LAS8ETTER BTNNEB.
165
Angels, hear me yell Hosanner !
Hear my dulcem sperritool song ;
Halleluyer ! I'm a-coinin' !
I'm de Reb'rend Quawko Strong!
Make dat white robe rudder spacious,
An' de waist-belt 'stronery long,
'Cause 'twill take some room in glory
For de Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
What ! No one to de landin' ?
'Pears like suffln'-nudder's wrong;
Guess I'll gib dat sleepy Peter
Fits — from Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
How am dis ? De gates all fastened ;
Out ob all de shinin' frong
Not a mulatter cherub eben
Greets the Reb'rend Quawko Strong !
What a narrer little gateway !
My ! dat gate am hard to move.
"Who am dat ? " says Tostle Peter
From de parapet above.
Uncle Peter, don't you know me —
Me, a shinin' light so long ?
Why, de berry niggers call me
Good ole Reb'rend Quawko Strong.
Dunno me, de shoutin' preacher ?
Reg'lar hull-hog Wesleyan, too;
Whar in de woods you been a-loafln' ?
Some ole rooster's boddered you,
I reckon. Wy ! I convarted
Hunderds o' darkies in a frong!
Dunno me, nor yit my Masser!
Deny Deacon Quawko Strong!
Hark to dat ar cur'us roarin'
Far away, but a-rollin' nigher;
See de drefful dragon flyin',
Head like night, an' mouf ob fire !
"Tis de berry King of Debbils,
An' he'm rushin' right along.
O, dear Peter, please to open
To Classleader Quawko Strong.
Ole Nick's comin'. I can feel it
Gettin' warmer all about.
O, my good, kind Kurnal Peter,
Let me in, I'm all too stout
To go 'long wid Major Satan
Into dat warm climate, 'inong
Fire an' brimstone. Hear me knockin',
Ole Churchmember Quawko Strong.
Dat loud noise am a-comin nearer —
Drefful smell, like powder smoke ;
Nudder screech ! Good Hebben help me !
Lor' forgib dis pore ole moke.
Allers wuz so berry holy,
Singin' an' prayin' extry long;
Now de Debbil's gwine to cotch me,
Pore ole nigger, Quawko Strong.
Hi! dat gate swing back a little,
Mighty squeezin' to git froo!
Ole Apollyon howlin' louder,
Eberyting aroun' am blue.
Bang de gate goes ! an' Belzebub,
Bunch ob wool upon his prong,
Goes 'long home widout de soul ob
Mis'abul sinner, name ob Strong.
Laggetter linnet,
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y., 1842.
ALL SAINTS' DAT AT LISBON.
[Agnes Surriage. 1886.]
was an awful pause of thirty seconds, — to the appalled city it
-L might have been thirty years. Then the solid earth rose beneath their
feet, — rose and fell like the waves of the sea. Dizziness seized the brain.
166 EDWIN LASSETTER BTNNEB. [1861-88
The sky whirled about like a teetotum. The universe seemed turned topsy-
turvy, and the bonds of universal matter unloosed.
With ashen face and glaring eyes Frankland saw in his delirium the tall
spire of the Cathedral rock to its base and fall in a mass of ruins upon the
serried thousands within its doors. Everywhere towers, spires, and turrets
sank crumbling to the ground, and the air was filled with an infernal roar of
falling walls.
A sudden cry of "Kaya ! Kaya !" arose in the street. It a woke Frankland
to life and energy. Seizing the reins from the paralyzed driver, he turned
the horse to the river, where the great quay, clear of surrounding buildings,
offered a haven of safety. Hundreds besides themselves had heard the cry
and were hurrying thither. It was already crowded when they came in sight.
They might yet be in time — there was still space for more — a few yards only
intervened — they were rushing on at frantic speed, when — they were stopped
by a fearful sight.
Before their eyes the massive pier, loaded with its myriad shrieking, pray-
ing victims, turned slowly over and sank to unfathomable depths below the
quicksands.
Prone and dumb before the dread cataclysm, the hapless human creatures,
like half-drowned flies, crawled in the dust awaiting their fate. Mother
Earth had turned to a devouring fiend. There seemed but one refuge
left ; they turned with faint hope to the sea. Even as they "looked, that hope
changed to despair within them. The deep current of the Tagus was sucked
up in a moment, leaving the broad bed of the river dry. Great ships were
swept out to sea ; others, whirling round and round like spinning-tops, dived
out of sight in the swirl of waters. Another moment, and a despairing cry
arose from the crowd :
"The sea! the sea!"
The great Atlantic seemed indeed to have risen. Far off a mighty wall of
water was seen moving slowly inland.
The last vestige of hope and courage died in Frankland's heart. He sat
limp and nerveless, watching the oncoming flood quite unconscious, as it
seemed, of the wretched creature who still clung to him, the foam of mad-
ness upon her painted lip, babbling of God and mercy.
The horse alone, with the instinct of preservation not yet extinct in
him, whirled about with a wild snort and dashed back into the thick of the
town.
Amid the ruins of fallen buildings, over the dead and dying, through the
blinding dust which blotted out the sun and made darkness of noonday, he
plunged on, uuguided in his frantic course.
Suddenly the earth became still. As if with intelligent and devilish malice
she yielded for a moment to the normal sway of gravitation. It was but for
the briefest space. Before the poor people could shake off their dizziness,
could look around and study chances of escape, — before they could do any-
thing but hug to their heart a false, deluding hope, she broke loose again
from the control of law and brought back chaos and anarchy.
The horse stopped. A great heap of ruins barred his way. There was a
1861-88] EDWIN LA8SETTER BYNNER. IQ^
movement in the air. Frankland looked up. A dark mass tottered above
them.
"Almighty God have mercy I"
The cry was wrung from him. He saw that the end had come. Lady Betty,
in the last, futile, aimless struggle against her impending doom, caught his
arm in her mouth and sank her teeth through into the living flesh. The
next moment, with a roar of thunder, the mass descended and overwhelmed
them in its ruins.
Startled by the first shock of the earthquake, Agnes rushed forth into the
street. The house sank into a shapeless ruin behind her. A creature and an
animal, she obeyed an animal instinct and cowered before the awful convul-
sion. Stock-still she stood, and gazed upon the wide desolation : saw the day
change, in a moment, to night ; saw death overtake every living thing about
her, yet, held fast as in the horrid paralysis of nightmare, dumbly awaited
her turn.
Well is it for humanity that such a strain cannot last— that hope will
skirmish in the very face of danger, and custom stale even extremest terror.
With returning self-possession the first impulse was still animal and purely
selfish — the impulse of escape.
This was not for long ; directly another impulse came— came as visibly as
lightning athwart a thunder-cloud. Straightway she was transfigured. The
new thought possessed her wholly, driving out every vestige of fear and any
meaner motive.
Everything is equally miraculous to the deep-going student. To the vul-
gar there are miracles and miracles, with the difference that some do not
stir the blood. Here is one that should — this spectacle of a commonplace
mortal sweeping in a trice from the lowest note to the highest in the gamut
of being. No old-fashioned stock heroine of history ever struck more surely
or rang forth more clearly her alt limit of range.
Now, for all their influence upon her, the accumulated horrors were as so
many stage effects in the cosmic melodrama. They were as they were not.
She was beyond their reach — unconscious. To whomsoever can realize it,
such sublimity in an earthworm may well confirm a wavering faith in im-
mortality.
Insensible henceforth to every danger — the falling walls, the rush of the
frantic crowd, the wild tramp of runaway horses — she made her slow way
to the Cathedral. The once stately pile lay before her a monstrous and un-
sightly heap of rubbish. She stood staring in bewilderment, doubting the
evidence of her own senses, when a sudden cry arose from the crowd :
"Fogo! Fogo!"
Too true it proved. The last fell element had been let loose upon the
doomed city. For once the fires, kindled upon the altars, were glutted with
sacrifice, as with hungry flaming tongues they revelled amid the ruins, and
drank the blood of the shrieking victims beneath. Agnes turned shuddering
from the sickening holocaust, and, clinging to a forlorn hope, set out to find
Lady Betty's lodgings.
EDWIN LA8SETTER BYNNER. [1861-88
The darkness, the destruction of all landmarks, the wild confusion of the
streets, brought her to a standstill. Realizing presently the impossibility of
making her way through streets where at best she was but little acquainted,
she stopped and looked helplessly about. At this moment there was a move-
ment in the crowd. As by a common impulse, they all began rushing in one
direction. The whispered word "Kaya" — whispered with a selfish but futile
attempt at concealment — came to her ears. She tried to escape, but was
borne along in the press.
Directly came the second shock of earthquake, — came, not in short, quick
tremblings, as before, but with a long sideway roll, like a ground-swell at
sea. With one accord the crowd flung themselves upon the ground and
poured forth frenzied prayers to the Virgin.
"Misericordia ! Misericordia \" The air resounded with the hoarse and im-
potent cry.
Reeling with vertigo, Agnes saw somewhere before her dizzied senses the
vision of a flying chaise, a falling building. She stretched out her hands
and made a drunken movement to go toward it, but was pulled down by the
maddened crowd.
"See the heretic ! she will not pray \"
"'Tis the heretics are the cause of it."
"The city is overrun with tkem, and God is cursing us I"
" Misericordia ! Misericordia ! "
" Down with her ! "
"To your knees, she-devil!"
" Let her not escape ! "
" Misericordia! Misericordia I"
"She shall pray \"
"Make her kiss the cross ! "
"Misericordia ! Misericordia ! "
Foreseeing a movement of violence, Agnes made a vain effort to escape.
She was caught and dragged back.
"Kneel ! kneel, foul witch I"
"Thrust her down ! "
"Kneel, unbelieving devil I"
" 'Tis you are the cause of it ! "
"Toss her in the fire ! "
"Nay ; give her the cross to kiss ! — if she refuse, then the flames ! "
Frantic with eagerness to pursue her search, and thinking only of escape,
Agnes fervently kissed the cross, muttered an incoherent prayer, and was
at length suffered to go.
Again the earth became still. With recovered equilibrium she started
forth. That buried chaise ! where had she seen it, — to the north, south, east,
or west ? Under which of all these heaps of ruins did it lie ? But why search ?
Among the hundreds of buried vehicles, why waste time — precious time,
whose loss might be fatal — upon that special chaise ?
In this doubt and anxiety she groped her way distractedly amid the dark-
ness and choking dust from ruin to ruin. In vain ; in the universal waste
1861-68] EDWIN LASSETTER BTNNER. Jgg
there was no guide, no trace. Despairing, she called aloud the name of
Frankland. Up and down among the masses of rubbish she went, repeating
the cry, her clear strong voice resounding above the nearer tumult.
Stopping, with strained ears, to listen, she heard a feeble moaning near
at hand. What then ! There was moaning and groaning on every side. She
bent over the nearest pile of rubbish, and waited with bated heart and breath.
Again it came, plainly from beneath. To this side and that with frantic
haste she flung the heavy bricks and stones. The perspiration fell from her
face like rain ; the dust blinded and choked her ; the nails and splinters tore
her arms till they streamed with blood. Unheeding all she plied her task.
She dug as a hunted animal digs for life. The moans became more distinct.
Presently she made an opening.
"Frankland ! Franklaud !"
"'Tisyou — God be praised ! Courage ! courage ! Keep up your heart ; I
will save you \"
"Air lair!"
" Yes — yes — one minute ! You shall have it ! "
Again she flew upon the rubbish as upon a mortal enemy, flinging out mor-
tar, splinters, nails, and broken glass with infuriated zeal.
' ' Now — there ! Can you breathe ? Harry ! darling ! do you hear me ? "
" Yes — ye-es ! "
"Courage — wait then ! — a few minutes — I will save you \"
Working at her task with might and main, pausing now and then to speak
a comforting word to the prisoner, she came at length upon the heavy tim-
bers of the roof interlaced and wedged together in such a ponderous mass
above him that all her efforts to move them were in vain.
" Harry — these timbers — I cannot move them. I must go for help ! "
" No, no ; do not leave me ! "
" Only for a minute ! "
" Do not — do not go ! I cannot live ; it is of no use. My time is come ! "
" You shall — you must live ! I will save you ! — Wait ! wait ! and be pa-
tient!"
" Stay ! stay, Agnes ! Agnes, darling, do not go — you'll never come back.
The earth will swallow you— will swallow us both. The sea is rolling in !
The Judgment-Day has come — speak, darling ! "
"I am here!"
" Say— say while I can hear you — say before it is too late" —
" What shall I say ?"
" That you forgive me" —
"Yes, yes!"
' ' All my wrong, — my cruel wrong against you ! "
" I do ; I do — all, everything — But oh— oh, darling ! — 'tis not for a sin-
ful creature like me to forgive. Pray to God ! pray to Him while I am gone ! "
"Agnes ! — Agnes ! " —
The piteous cry rang in her ears as she darted away.
Flinging herself in the thick of the throng, she cried aloud for help. She
170 EDWIN LA88ETTER BTNNER. [1861-88
might as well have called upon the winds. Men and women, — they were a
herd of animals under the sway of one craven instinct. By such as were calm
enough to listen, her absurd request was laughed to scorn.
" For pity — for mercy's sake, if ye be men ! See ! 'tis here ; 'tis but a
moment, to lift a beam — he will die ! Help ! help ! "
A foreign woman, babbling idiocy, she was thrust aside and trampled up-
on by the fighting, struggling crowd.
' ' Gold ! gold ! I have money ; I will make you rich ! A thousand moi-
dores— ten thousand — ten thousand gold moidores to him will aid me ! "
Throwing herself again into the press, she darted from man to man as
their faces held out promise of success. But greed, for the moment, was
stifled. A fiercer and overmastering passion held sway. Her magnificent of-
fers were spurned by the beggars of the streets.
Finding her efforts vain, back she rushed for one more trial of her unaid-
ed strength. Useless, as before ; she could not budge the heavy beams an
inch. Again she flew away for help.
Some sailors were passing in a crowd ; she plucked one of them by the
sleeve :
" Help ! help ! Ten thousand moidores — broad gold moidores — for a mo-
ment's help ! "
The man flung her off with a brutal oath ; she staggered, and fell against
his companion. The latter put out his arm to catch her.
Job !"
Ag!"
God ha' sent ye. Quick, quick, mon ! Lend ahond ! "
Wher-r?"
Her-r's one buried., An he be not dead, oi ha' hopes to save him ! "
He turned and followed her several paces, then stopped ; a dark look of
suspicion and hatred settled down upon his face. She saw his thought in a
flash. It was no time for equivocation. She told the truth at a fatal risk.
"Ay, ay, — 'tis he ; oi'll not deceive ye. He ha' wr-ronged ye, 'n' oi ha'
wr-ronged ye, 'n' ha' paid a heavy pr-rice for 't, too. Oh, Job, Job ! 'Tis no
toime to harbor-r gr-rudges i' this awfu' moment !"
She held him clutched by the arm and gazed breathlessly into his face.
' ' Job ! Job, mon ! we stond wher' th' earth may open 'n' swallow us the
next minute. Job, oi say, speak ! Say ye forgi' me ! say ye forgi' him ! "
" 'Tis God's business ! " he muttered, with an awed and humbled look.
"Haste, haste, then ! This way, mon ! Ye wor a giant i' th' old days ; an
yer strength ha' not failed, we'll save him yet ! "
Powerful as Job was, the task before him strained every nerve in his
stalwart frame. The heavy timbers were still half mortised together. He
worked with a fierce will and determination, aided and urged on by the im-
patient woman at his side. Lifting a massive beam, he at length made an
opening through which Agnes reached down and clutched the suffering man.
About to drag him forth, she was stayed by a ghastly sight. Lady Betty's
lifeless figure, crushed almost beyond recognition, lay in the way. Nerving
herself to the task, Agnes gently moved aside the body of the hapless woman,
1861-88] MAT RILET SMITH. ^H
and at last, with the strength of hope and love, dragged forth the bruised
and wounded man to the outer air. His wig gone, his face bruised, his rich
dress covered with lime and dust, there was nothing but his voice to iden-
tify him. Half leading, half carrying him between them, Agnes and Job
followed in the wake of the crowd, intent like them upon quitting the ruined
city by the nearest way.
An hour's hard tramp brought them to the open country. They were
amazed to find it still day. The sun was blazing in mid-heaven. Ages
seemed to have passed since that sun had risen. The pure air, the green trees
and herbage, the singing birds, made their recent experience seem like an
escape from Pandemonium. Placing Frankland upon the soft grass, Agnes
tenderly brushed the dust from his face, and gazing a moment to assure her-
self that he was indeed living, burst into a hysterical fit of weeping.
Bile?
BORN in Brighton, Monroe Co., N. T., 1842.
SOMETIME.
(X Gift of Gentians, and Other Verses. 1882.]
QOMETIME, when all life's lessons have been learned,
O And sun and stars forevermore have set,
The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,
The things o'er which we grieved with lashes wet,
Will flash before us, out of life's dark night,
As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue ;
And we shall see how all God's plans are right,
And how what seemed reproof was love most true.
And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,
God's plan goes on as best for you and me ;
How, when we called, He heeded not our cry,
Because his wisdom to the end could see.
And even as wise parents disallow
Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,
So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now
Life's sweetest things, because it seemeth good.
And if, sometimes, commingled with life's wine,
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink,
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink.
And if some friend we love is lying low,
Where human kisses cannot reach his face,
O, do not blame the loving Father so,
But wear your sorrow with obedient grace 1
WILLIAM HENRT M'ELROY. [1861-88
And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath
Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend.
And that, sometimes, the sable pall of death
Conceals the fairest boon his love can send.
If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within and all God's workings see,
"We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key !
But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart !
God's plans like lilies pure and white unfold.
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart,
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
And if, through patient toil, we reach the land
Where tired feet, with sandals loose, may rest,
When we shall clearly see and understand,
I think that we will say "God knew the best! "
BORN in Albany, N. Y.
AN OLD WAR-HORSE TO A YOUNG POLITICIAN.
[The Atlantic Monthly. 1880.]
MY DEAR NEPHEW : I was seventy years old yesterday, and although
I feel as young as I ever did, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that in
spite of my feelings I really am an old man. So, since I must soon pass off
the stage on which — if I say it who shouldn't — I have long been a prominent
figure, it is only natural that I should desire, in the absence of a son of my
own, that my mantle should fall to a son of one of my blood. I believe you
have good stuff in you. Your valedictory when you graduated, last summer,
although containing too little that was practical to suit my taste, would have
done credit to the average Cong — I was going to write Congressman ; but I
can justly go further than that. It would have done credit to the Washing-
ton journalists, who sometimes compose — that is to say, revise — speeches for
some of us Congressmen. This, however, like the rest of my communication,
is strictly between ourselves.
When I left you on Commencement Day I urged you to lose no time in
getting into politics, promising that I would help you push your fortunes as
occasion offered. Since then I have received a letter from you, in which you
write that you have read Story on the Constitution, Benton's Thirty Years
in the United States Senate, Greeley's American Conflict, two or three
works on Political Economy, and De Tocqueville on America. I suppose
there can be no objection to such reading. Likely enough it has its value.
But what I particularly desire, my dear nephew, is that you should become
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY M'ELROT. 173
a practical politician — a thoroughly practical politician. I never remember
reading any of the works you have mentioned, or any like them, unless, in-
deed, you call Barnum's How to Make Money a treatise on finance. And yet,
cast your eyes over the salient points of my career. I have been alderman,
supervisor, mayor, State representative, State senator, and Congressman.
For many years I have been chairman of our State and county committees. I
can hardly remember the time when I didn't carry the vote of my own ward
in my vest pocket and of my own city in my trousers pocket, and I've got
them there yet. For going on half a century I have had things pretty much
my own way in caucuses and primaries, and the like. What has been the
secret of my unusual success ? I will try — in strict confidence, as you will
understand — to give you some plain, blunt, non-partisan hints for your guid-
ance in politics which may serve to answer the question.
I. Never allow yourself to lose sight of the fact that politics, and not
poker, is our great American game. If this could be beaten into the heads of
some presumably well-meaning but glaringly unpractical people, we should
hear less idiotic talk about reform in connection with politics. Nobody ever
dreams of organizing a reform movement in poker. How droll it would
sound to read that " Hon. John Oakhurst, Hon. William Nye, and Hon. Ah
Sin, in connection with other well-known citizens of California, are engaged
in endeavoring to reform poker from the inside ! " And yet political reform
clubs, designed to reform politics from the inside or the outside, are spring-
ing up on all sides. Of course, it is just as well not to attempt to argue the
masses out of their deeply rooted notion that politics is what Noah Webster
defines it to be, " that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation and
government of a nation or state." Ethics is very good in connection with
politics. But then Webster, it must be remembered, was simply a learned
lexicographer, and not a practical politician. No, no. Don't try to reason
with the masses in this matter. The public has no head for such things. It
will not understand.
II. Mr. Lincoln, a very estimable and justly popular, but in some re-
spects an impracticable man, formulated another widely diffused error in
regard to politics. He held that ours is a government of the people, by the
people, for the people. I maintain, on the contrary, that it is a government
of politicians, by politicians, for politicians. If your political career is to be
a success, you must understand and respect this distinction with a differ-
ence.
III. Not a few capable but unpractical people, when they fall to discuss-
ing our governmental system, argue that the existence of parties is neces-
sary to the welfare of our country. But long experience has taught me that
the more sensible way for a practical politician to look at it is that the exist-
ence of the country is necessary to the welfare of parties. Thank Heaven,
my dear nephew, that we have a country !
IV. You have received your commission as postmaster of your village. A
post-office is a capital political opening for a young man who has sense enough
to discover how to make the right use of it. You will of course leave all mat-
ters touching the postal service to your deputy. Never forget that your
WILLIAM HENRY M'ELROT. [1861-88
pivotal duty as postmaster will be to nurse the party in your section. As a
practical man, you must see, if you reflect a moment, that postmaster and
local partymaster must be convertible terms with you if you expect to be ap-
proved by the great party leaders, and to become a great leader yourself, some
day. To be sure, if you find leisure, there can be nothing indelicate in your
appearing at the post-office now and then arid doing a few strokes of purely
postal work. But take care that such service does not encroach upon the
hours when you ought to be fostering the party boom. In your selection
of clerks you will be guided primarily by a determination to have only such
men around you as will register your will every time at caucuses and conven-
tions. Should it turn out in any instance that you have been deceived in
your man, be nice about the phrase with which you discharge him . I sub-
mit a formula which has been repeatedly tried, and generally found to work
well. We will suppose the clerk who won't answer is named John Doe. You
will call him into your private office and address him substantially as follows :
"Mr. Doe, I am compelled with all reluctance, at the call of duty, to dis-
sever our relations, and must request you to file your resignation forthwith.
During your connection with this office as letter-carrier you have displayed
an ability and a fidelity, a grace of manner and a strength of character, that
have endeared you to all your associates and done not a little to elevate the
tone of the entire American postal service. If I have brought myself to part
with you, it is solely to the end that there may be greater homogeneousness
of view, so to speak, in the office/' One of your predecessors used this for-
mula with great satisfaction to himself, and apparently to those whom he
decapitated. He always found, he told me, that the first part of it put the
clerk to whom it was addressed in capital humor, while the " homogeneous-
ness " dazed him to that extent that he walked out of the office minus his
head, not appreciating what had been the matter, but having a nebulous im-
pression that he had been killed by kindness.
V. I sincerely hope it is not necessary that I should counsel you always to
vote the regular ticket, the whole regular ticket, and nothing but the regu-
lar ticket. Hold fast, I beseech of you, to the doctrine of the infallibility of
your party in convention assembled. Delegates, like kings, "can do no
wrong." The voters who scratch ballots or bolt nominations are to be re-
garded as the bane of politics, just as certain other reformers have been the
bane of religion. They all belong in the same category, and all are equally
deserving of the execration of every practical man, as exponents of the pes-
tiferous doctrine of the right of private judgment. And just here a word in
reply to the familiar question, Would you vote for the Devil if he received the
party's regular nomination ? I have no hesitation in affirming that I cer-
tainly would. Let's look at it. If the day ever comes when the Devil is nomi-
nated, the other side will be pretty sure to run Gabriel against him. Of the
two, my choice would be the Devil. To be sure, it would not be an ideal
nomination, — but then, neither is ours an ideal world. I am aware that the
Devil has split hoofs, pronounced horns, and a bifurcated tail. But do we
choose candidates for their good looks ? As to his moral character, I frankly
admit it is not all I could desire ; but after criticism has exhausted itself,
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY M'ELROT. 175
the fact remains, conceded by both parties, that he is not as black as he is
painted. On the other hand, he has many qualities that ought to commend
him to practical men. He is self-made, he is thoroughly in earnest in all he
undertakes, he is an untiring worker, he is one of the shrewdest of wire-pul-
lers, he possesses vast and versatile accomplishments, he is unsurpassed in
ability to find and manipulate the springs that move men, he has a positive
genius for making friends. Gifted, popular, magnetic, at home in all cir-
cles, from the highest to the lowest, he would be certain to make a splendid
run. As for Gabriel, I have only to say that, while his intellectual and moral
endowments are undoubtedly of the highest order, there is great reason to
fear that he would not succeed in the realm of practical politics. If elected
to office, it is more than likely that he would prove more of a botheration
than a boon to his party. He would be living up to the promises made dur-
ing the canvass ; he would resolutely decline to let well enough alone. Let
me not be misunderstood. I yield to no one in my regard for Gabriel. But,
as a practical man, I would feel called upon to vote against him, and do all
I could for his opponent. In my own ward, where my influence is most
potent and my political theories most approved of, I feel convinced that the
Devil would have a very large majority. This hypothetical case is of course
an extreme one, and is never likely to occur. I have dealt with it simply for
the sake of showing you that the position of those who insist upon the in-
variable support of regular nominations is sound in the last analysis.
VI. How are scratchers and bolters to be dealt with ? It is an exceedingly
difficult question. I myself am at a loss to determine whether it is better to
be extremely tender or awfully rough with them. Each policy is good at
times, and in making a choice you must be guided by circumstances. In a
sterner age than ours, an age that had less stomach for nonsense, gentlemen
who were convicted of the crime of private judgment were burned at the
stake. It is not permitted us in these latter, laxer days to make it as warm
for scratchers and bolters as it was once made for John Huss ; still we can
show that we possess the sturdy practical views of those who flung Huss to
the fagots, by pelting the scratchers and bolters with jeers, sneers, and innu-
endoes, by crediting them with the meanest of motives, and insisting that
they are either traitorous, inconsequential knaves, or silly inconsequential
fools. As for those upon whom such treatment is lost (and I confess that
I suspect it fails with the majority of scratchers and bolters), try what is
known to practical politicians as the postponement treatment. By the skil-
ful use of this treatment I kept Vandyke Podgers from scratching or bolting
for thirty-six consecutive years, and then just before the state election he
died, and there was an end of that embarrassment. When I began to reason
with him there was a presidential canvass on. " Podgers, " said I, "as you
love your country, do not scratch this year. Consider the far-reaching and
vital importance of the issues involved." Podgers concluded to postpone.
The following year I accomplished my purpose by reminding him that "this
is the first and therefore the most critical year of an administration which
upon the whole you indorse, Podgers, and which it is incumbent upon you
to make some sacrifices heartily to sustain/' He concluded to postpone.
U 6 WILLIAM HENRY ATELROY. [1861-88
The next year my argument took the shape of, "My dear Podgers, let me
beg of you to vote a straight ticket this year. Do you realize what year it is,
Podgers ? Of course you do. I need not remind a gentleman of your excep-
tional intelligence that this election is but the prelude to the presidential
election of next year, with its issues of far-reaching and vital importance."
Podgers concluded to postpone. The next year was the presidential year,
when I repeated the argument first mentioned. The others in turn again did
service, and so on for thirty-six years. And that's the way I kept persuading
Podgers to postpone. He never was, but always to be, a scratcher or a bolter.
At the elections at which no national or state ticket was run, and only minor
local offices were to be filled, I pointed out to Podgers the necessity of keep-
ing the party organization intact ; and when all other arguments failed I
insisted that of two evils he should always choose the least and that, admit-
ting that our ticket was evil, it was the least of the two. Even this brief and
inadequate account of its application will make sufficiently clear to you, I
think, the true inwardness of the postponement treatment. Just one word
more about it. Those who employ it with the most gratifying results allow
the impression to be produced in the patient's mind at the outset that,
although they have never happened to find an election at which scratching
or bolting could be indulged in without perfectly harrowing injury to public
interests of colossal moment, yet, nevertheless, they heartily and unreserved-
ly approve of scratching and bolting in the abstract. Such an attitude on
my part toward poor Podgers won his confidence at our first political con-
ference on this subject, and produced in him a mood hospitable to all my sub-
sequent arguments and admonitions.
This communication has already exceeded reasonable limits, and yet I
have only touched upon a few points. But perhaps I have written enough
to start you right, to make you understand the nature of our great American
game, and to put you in possession of the clew to the secret of playing it suc-
cessfully. Be it yours to consult the expedient, leaving it to the purists of
the party to consult the highly proper. Beware of those who take senti-
mental views of unsentimental matters. A man who would " rather be right
than be president" by all means ought to decline a presidential nomination,
and run for a position in a theological seminary, a Sunday-school, or Vassar
College ; while he who holds that " one with God is a majority" antagonizes
the system of reckoning which has come down to us from the fathers, and
which has the approval of every practical inspector of American elections.
Be practical in your politics, be practical, evermore be practical.
With fervent hopes and high anticipations of your future, I subscribe my-
self your affectionate uncle,
To , Esy.
1861-88] CHARLES GOODRICH WHITING. 17 7
BOKN in St. Albaus, Vt., 1842.
THE EAGLE'S FALL.
[The Saunterer. 1886.]
THE eagle, did ye see him fall ?
Aflight beyond mid-air
Erewhile his mighty pinions bore him,
His eyry left, the sun before him;
And not a bird could dare
To match with that tremendous motion,
Through fire and flood, 'twixt sky and ocean,
But did ye see the eagle fall ?
And so ye saw the eagle fall!
Struck in his flight of pride
He hung in air one lightning moment,
As wondering what the deadly blow meant,
And what his blood's ebb-tide.
Whirling off sailed a loosened feather;
Then headlong, pride and flight together, —
'Twas thus ye saw the eagle fall!
Thus did ye see the eagle fall !
But on the sedgy plain,
Where closed the monarch's eye in dying,
Marked ye the screaming and the vying
Wherewith the feathered train,
Sparrow and jackdaw, hawk and vulture,
Gathered exulting to insult your
Great eagle in his fall ?
SEA-SHORE.
A ND still it does not always satisfy. In those weary heats wherein the
-£^- grasshopper and everything else becomes a burden, this mountain
wind, with all its careering freedom and bounteous perfume of field and for-
est, is but a makeshift. The true elixir in midsummer faintness is the salt
tonic of ocean, the essence of the world-embracing seas. Some cannot feel its
full power unless free of the land, dandled by the waves and uncertain as to
their horizons ; but perhaps they get little on a voyage that is more valuable
than what they might have on shore — besides sea-sickness. It is a matter of
temperament, however, and to some it is delight to battle with the clashing
elements, to " revel in their stormy faculties," to sport with ocean and
"on her breast to be
Borne like a bubble onward. "
VOL. x.— 12
CHARLES GOODRICH WHITING. [1861-88
The sea needs longer knowing than the hills, which to one who has the
password of Nature offer at once their unstaled intimacy. The sea gives
nothing to the stranger at the first, unless he find it in one of its grand moods,
and it is not in such moods that friendship is formed. Summers and winters
for a life are not too much to gain and satisfy that deep charm which the
waves enfold. It is a mightier spell than that of the hills, for among them
there abides no challenging personality, but the encompassing spirit of Nat-
ure ; while the sea is itself personal, and the spirit that rides upon its waters
is the spirit of God.
The sea at calm of receding tide, beneath a burning sky and a stilt air, pre-
sents a curious aspect of sleeping power, — but only to one who has looked
upon that power's manifestation. To see it thus at first is not to cry, with
Xenophon's Greeks, " Thalatta ! Thalatta ! " but to echo the disappointed
exclamation of Gebir, —
" Is this the mighty ocean ? Is this all ? "
Yet after knowing the ways of the waves, the sea is never more impressive
than in this feline beauty of quiet, when the ripples make their purring mur-
mur on the beach, and the sun lines the horizon with a band of blinding white.
A better first meeting is as the surf rolls in strong at flood-tide, either on
sand or shingle, or against the cliffs of some stern coast. Except when on
shipboard in mid-ocean, the ship itself an inconsequent speck on a limitless
expanse, man can hardly feel more insignificant than in facing a surf, urged
by tide and beaten by winds up the beach. Each wave that curls and crests
itself seems dashing down upon his head ; and it is hard to realize the illu-
sion, and that the rolling water will in a few moments fling its highest foam
beneath his feet. Often the illusion extends farther, so that the whole ocean
from the sky-line seems majestic rapids, irresistibly pouring to the land.
The rocks reveal new phases. High on some cliff one looks upon broken
masses of its constituent rock hurled in shapeless confusion around its base,
and curiously observes where at some future instant the part on which one
sits shall yield to the endless onset and join these age-old fragments. At
each side the pounding waves have worn long galleries through softer strata,
or beneath have carved "the coastwise mountain into caves." They dash
and sprinkle spray far up the crag, then drop and wash around its base,
among the stones they have for ages been rounding and polishing, and re-
treat and gather for new assaults. With untiring interest and question one
watches these blows, — so ponderous, so gracefully foam-fringed, — so nota-
bly alike, so continually varied, — so individual and irregular, so harmonious
and rhythmic. These aspects of the sea, in which the white sails gleam on
its wide fields, and it seems the welcoming or subject friend of man, are
but its superficial character. Into its darker depths we who seek midsum-
mer rest will not now pry ; it may chance a word shall utter thence un-
sought. For it is on the shore that the ocean wreaks its power in expres-
sion ; there, not on its bosom, that its voice is clearly heard ; thence that its
magic sends, and thither that it draws them "that go down unto the great
deep." ....
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. 179
The sea-shore is full of wonder, yet full of rest. Nowhere can man be more
potently awake, nowhere more happily asleep. The lull of the waves on the
beach is better than any other croon of babyhood or echo of life. And when
the storm rises, and the rush of the waters up the sands or their dash upon
the rocks is heard, and the foamy spray tops the crag and booms and dashes
far a-land, the whole sense wakes, and the pulse quickens to delight in ele-
mental strife. The god of the storms knows well how the life of his creatures
stirs under the assault of his minions of wind and rain and lightning. In the
dawn that follows a night of storm, when everything smiles as if no force of
Nature had been wrenched to its limit, what a surprise the day is ! Has
there ever before been a dawn like this ?
FOR RONALD IN HIS GRAVE.
OH are the heavens clear, ye say ? Oh Nature has a cruel heart
Oh is the air still sweet ? To smile when mine's so sore!
Oh is there joy yet in the day, Oh deeper stings the cruel smart
And life yet in the street ? Than e'en it did before !
I thought the sky in tears would break, How can the merry earth go dance,
I thought the winds would rave, And all the banners wave,
I thought that every heart would ache The children shout, the horses prance, -
For Ronald in his grave. And Ronald in his grave ?
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1843.
BEAUTIFUL ENGLAND.
[A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. 1875.]
T3 ETWEEN the fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worces-
_D ter rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills.
Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found
Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, though in
which county I forget. In the pages of this genial volume, Lockley Park
and its appurtenances made a very handsome figure. We took up our abode
at a certain little way-side inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach must
have stopped for lunch, and burnished pewters of rustic ale been tenderly
exalted to " outsides " athirst with breezy progression. Here we stopped,
for sheer admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its
homely porch. We allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected
strolls and sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to
IgQ HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
execute the especial purpose of our journey. This admirable region is a com-
pendium of the general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness of
the scenery, its subtle old-friendliness, the magical familiarity of multitu-
dinous details, appealed to us at every step and at every glance. Deep in our
souls a natural affection answered. The whole land, in the full, warm rains
of the last of April, had burst into sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of
the hedge-rows had turned into blooming screens ; the sodden verdure of
lawn and meadow was streaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth with-
out loss of time for a long walk on the hills. Beaching their summits, you
find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the
vast range of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closely be-
neath us lay the dark, rich flats of hedgy Worcestershire and the copse-
checkered slopes of rolling Hereford, white with the blossom of apples. At
widely opposite points of the large expanse two great cathedral towers rise
sharply, taking the light, from the settled shadow of the circling towns, —
the light, the ineffable English light ! "Out of England, " cried Searle,
" it's but a garish world ! "
The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect lay answering in a
myriad fleeting shades the cloudy process of the tremendous sky. The Eng-
lish heaven is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. We possess in
America the infinite beauty of the blue ; England possesses the splendor of
combined and animated clouds. Over against us, from our station on the
hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compacted and shifted, blotting the
azure with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields
of gray, bursting into a storm of light or melting into a drizzle of silver.
We made our way along the rounded summits of these well-grazed heights,
— mild, breezy inland downs, — and descended through long-drawn slopes of
fields, green to cottage doors, to where a rural village beckoned us from its
seat among the meadows. Close beside it, I admit, the railway shoots fierce-
ly from its tunnel in the hiLo-; and yet there broods upon this charming
hamlet an old-time quietude and privacy, which seems to make it a violation
of confidence to tell its name so far away. We struck through a narrow lane,
a green lane, dim with its height of hedges ; it led us to a superb old farm-
house, now jostled by the multiplied lanes and roads which have curtailed
its ancient appanage. It stands in stubborn picturesqueness, at the receipt
of sad-eyed contemplation and the sufferance of "sketches/' I doubt wheth-
er out of Nuremberg — or Pompeii ! — you may find so forcible an image of
the domiciliary genius of the past. It is cruelly complete ; its bended beams
and joists, beneath the burden of itc gables, seem to ache and groan with
memories and regrets. The short, low windows, where lead and glass com-
bine in equal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger of the mediae-
val gloom within, still prefer their darksome office to the grace of modern
day. Such an old house fills an American with an indefinable feeling of re-
spect. So propped and patched and tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clus-
tered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations,
so humanized with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed
to offer to our grateful eyes a small, rude synthesis of the great English social
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. JgJ
order. Passing out upon the high-road, we came to the common browsing-
patch, the " village green " of the tales of our youth. Nothing was wanting ;
the shaggy, mouse-colored donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and huge
proboscis, the geese, the old woman, — the old woman, in person, with her
red cloak and her black bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled be-
side her decent, placid cheeks, — the towering ploughman with his white
smock-frock, puckered on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty
calves, his big, red, rural face. We greeted these things as children greet
the loved pictures in a story-book, lost and mourned and found again. It
was marvellous how well we knew them. Beside the road we saw a plough-
boy straddle, whistling, on a stile. Gainsborough might have painted him.
Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath lay, like a
thread of darker woof. We followed it from field to field and from stile to
stile. It was the way to church. At the church we finally arrived, lost in its
rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from the work-day world by the broad
stillness of pastures, — a gray, gray tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of vil-
lage graves, with crooked headstones, in grassy, low relief. The whole scene
was deeply ecclesiastical. My companion was overcome.
" You must bury me here/' he cried. " It's the first church I have seen
in my life. How it makes a Sunday where it stands ! "
The next day we saw a church of statelier proportions. AVe walked over to
Worcester, through such a mist of local color, that I felt like one of Smol-
lett's pedestrian heroes, faring tavern ward for a night of adventures. As we
neared the provincial city we saw the steepled mass of the cathedral, long
and high, rise far into the cloud-freckled blue. And as we came nearer still,
we stopped on the bridge and viewed the solid minster reflected in the yellow
Severn. And going farther yet we entered the town, — where surely Miss
Austen's heroines, in chariots and curricles, must often have come a shop-
ping for swan's-down boas and high lace mittens ; — we lounged about the
gentle close and gazed insatiably at that most soul-soothing sight, the wan-
ing, wasting afternoon light, the visible ether which feels the voices of the
chimes, far aloft on the broad perpendicular field of the cathedral tower ;
saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it loves to do on all bold architectural
spaces, converting them graciously into registers and witnesses of nature ;
tasted, too, as deeply of the peculiar stillness of this clerical precinct ; saw
a rosy English lad come forth and lock the door of the old foundation school,
which marries its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church, and
carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet canonical houses ; and then
stood musing together on the effect on one's mind of having in one's boy-
hood haunted such cathedral shades as a King's scholar, and yet kfipt ruddy
with much cricket in misty meadows by the Severn. On the third morning
we betook ourselves to Lockley Park, having learned that the greater part
of it was open to visitors, and that, indeed, on application, the house was oc-
casionally shown.
Within its broad enclosure many a declining spur of the great hills melted
into parklike slopes and dells. A long avenue wound and circled from the
outermost gate through an uttrimmed woodland, whence you glanced at
jg2 HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
further slopes and glades and copses and bosky recesses, — at everything ex-
cept the limits of the place. It was as free and wild and untended as the
villa of an Italian prince ; and I have never seen the stern English fact of
property put on such an air of innocence. The weather had just become per-
fect; it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English year — days
stamped with a refinement of purity unknown in more liberal climes. It
was as if the mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which
starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had
been meted out to us by the cubic foot — tempered, refined, recorded !
TWO MODERN TYPES.
[The American. 1877.]
AS the two .men sat with their heels on Newman's glowing hearth, they
heard the small hours of the morning striking larger from a far-off bel-
fry. Valentin de Bellegarde was, by his own confession, at all times a great
chatterer, and on this occasion he was evidently in a particularly loquacious
mood. It was a tradition of his race that people of its blood always conferred
a favor by their^gmiles, and as his enthusiasms were as rare as his civility was
constant, he had a double reason for not suspecting that his friendship could
ever be importunate. Moreover, the flower of an ancient stem as he was,
tradition (since I have used the word) had in his temperament nothing of
disagreeable rigidity. It was muffled in sociability and urbanity, as an old
dowager in her laces and strings of pearls. Valentin was what is called in
France a gentilhomme, of the purest source, and his rule of life, so far as it was
definite, was to play the part of a gentilhomme. This, it seemed to him, was
enough to occupy comfortably a young man of ordinary good parts. But all
that he was he was by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his
character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues, which in some
aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant, acquired in his application of them
an extreme geniality. In his younger years he had been suspected of low
tastes, and his mother had greatly feared he would make a slip in the mud of
the highway and bespatter the family shield. He had been treated, there-
fore, to more than his share of schooling and drilling, but his instructors had
not succeeded in mounting him upon stilts. They could not spoil his safe
spontaneity, and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young
nobles. He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that he had now
a mortal grudge against family discipline. He had been known to say, within
the limits of the family, that, light-headed as he was, the honor of the name
was safer in his hands than in those of some of its other members, and that
if a day ever came to try it, they should see. His talk was an odd mixture of
almost boyish garrulity and of the 'reserve and discretion of the man of the
world, and he seemed to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin
races often seemed to him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly ma-
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. Ig3
ture. In America, Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty have old
heads and young hearts, or at least young morals ; here they have young
heads and very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.
"What I envy you is your liberty/' observed M. de Bellegarde, "your
wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of people,
who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of you. I live,"
he added with a sigh, " beneath the eyes of my admirable mother."
" It is your own fault ; what is to hinder your ranging ? " said Newman.
" There is a delightful simplicity in that remark ! Everything is to hinder
me. To begin with, I have not a penny."
" I had not a penny when I began to range."
" Ah, but your poverty was your capital. Being an American, it was im-
possible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor — do I
understand it ? — it was therefore inevitable that you should become rich.
You were in a position that makes one's mouth water ; you looked round you
and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and take hold of.
When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world with everything
ticketed ' Hands off !' and the deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant
only for me. I couldn't go into business, I couldn't make money, because I
was a Bellegarde. I couldn't go into politics, because I was a Bellegarde —
the Bellegardes don't recognize the Bonapartes. I couldn't go into litera-
ture, because I was a dunce. I couldn't marry a rich girl, because no Belle-
garde had ever married a roturiere, and it was not proper that I should begin.
We shall have to come to it, yet. Marriageable heiresses, de notre bord, are
not to be had for nothing ; it must be name for name, and fortune for for-
tune. The only thing I could do was to go and fight for the Pope. That I
did, punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castelfidardo.
It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see. Rome
was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula, but it has sadly
fallen off since. I passed three years in the Castle of St. Angelo, and then
came back to secular life."
" So you have no profession — you do nothing," said Newman.
" I do nothing ! I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell the truth, I
have amused myself. One can, if one knows how. But you can't keep it up
forever. I am good for another five years, perhaps, but I foresee that after
that I shall lose my appetite. Then what shall I do ? I think I shall turn
monk. Seriously, I think I shall tie a rope round my waist and go into a
monastery. It was an old custom, and the old customs were very good. Peo-
ple understood life quite as well as we do. They kept the pot boiling till it
cracked, and then they put it on the shelf altogether."
" Are you very religious ?" asked Newman, in a tone which gave the in-
quiry a grotesque effect.
M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the ques-
tion, but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness. " I am
a very good Catholic. I respect the Church. I adore the blessed Virgin. I
fear the Devil. "
"Well, then," said Newman, "you are very well fixed. You have got
|g4 HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
pleasure in the present and religion in the future; what do you complain
of?"
" It's a part of one's pleasure to complain. There is something in your
own circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I have ever en-
vied. It's singular, but so it is. I have known many men who, besides any
factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into the bar-
gain ; but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But you
have got something that I should have liked to have. It is not money, it is
not even brains — though no doubt yours are excellent. It is not your six feet
of height, though I should have rather liked to be a couple of inches taller.
It's a sort of air you have of being thoroughly at home in the world. When
I was a boy, my father told me that it was by such an air as that that people
recognized a Bellegarde. He called my attention to it. He didn't advise me
to cultivate it ; he said that as we grew up it always came of itself. I sup-
posed it had come to me, because I think I have always had the feeling. My
place in life was made for me, and it seemed easy to occupy it. But you who,
as I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the
other day, have manufactured wash-tubs — you strike me, somehow, as a man
who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height. I fancy you going
about the world like a man travelling on a railroad in which he owns a large
amount of stock. You make me feel as if I had missed something. What
is it?"
" It is the proud consciousness of honest toil— of having manufactured a
few wash-tubs," said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
" Oh no ; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made
not only wash-tubs, but soap — strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars ;
and they never made me the least uncomfortable."
"Then it's the privilege of being an American citizen," said Newman.
" That sets a man up."
" Possibly," rejoined M. de Bellegarde. " But I am forced to say that I
have seen a great many American citizens who didn't seem at all set up or in
the least like large stockholders. I never envied them. I rather think the
thing is an accomplishment of your own."
" Oh, come," said Newman, " you will make me proud !"
" No, I shall not. You have nothing to do with pride, or with humility —
that is a part of this easy manner of yours. People are proud only when they
have something to lose, and humble when they have something to gain."
" I don't know what I have to lose," said Newman, ' ' but I certainly have
something to gain."
" What is it ? " asked his visitor.
Newman hesitated a while. (< I will tell you when I know you better."
" I hope that will be soon ! Then, if I can help you to gain it, I shall be
happy."
" Perhaps you may," said Newman.
" Don't forget, then, that I am your servant," M. de Bellegarde answered ;
and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde several times, and
1881-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. J85
without formally swearing an eternal friendship the two men established a
sort of comradeship. To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman,
the Frenchman of tradition and romance, so far as our hero was acquainted
with these mystical influences. Gallant, expansive, amusing, more pleased
himself with the effect he produced than those (even when they were well
pleased) for whom he produced it ; a master of all the distinctively social vir-
tues and a votary of all agreeable sensations ; a devotee of something myste-
rious and sacred to which he occasionally alluded in terms more ecstatic even
than those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman, and which was sim-
ply the beautiful though somewhat superannuated image of honor; he was
irresistibly entertaining and enlivening, and he formed a character to which
Newman was as capable of doing justice when he had once been placed in
contact with it, as he was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures of
our human ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did
not in the least cause him to modify his needful premise that all Frenchmen
are of a frothy and imponderable substance ; he simply reminded him that
light materials may be beaten up into a most agreeable compound. No two
companions could be more different, but their differences made a capital
basis for a friendship of which the distinctive characteristic was that it was
extremely amusing to each.
THE SORROWFUL WORLD OF TURGE^IEFF.
[French Poets and Novelists. 1878.]
"TTTE hold to the good old belief that the presumption, in life, is in favor
VV of the brighter side, and we deem it, in art, an indispensable condi-
tion of our interest in a depressed observer that he should have at least tried
his best to be cheerful. The truth, we take it, lies for the pathetic in poetry
and romance very much where it lies for the " immoral." Morbid pathos is
reflective pathos ; ingenious pathos, pathos not freshly born of the occasion ;
noxious immorality is superficial immorality, immorality without natural
roots in the subject. We value most the " realists " who have an ideal of
delicacy and the elegiasts who have an ideal of joy.
" Picturesque gloom, possibly/' a thick and thin admirer of M. Turge-
nieff' s may say to us, " at least you will admit that it is picturesque." This
we heartily concede, and, recalled to a sense of our author's brilliant diver-
sity and ingenuity, we bring our restrictions to a close. To the broadly gen-
erous side of his imagination it is impossible to pay exaggerated homage, or,
indeed, for that matter, to its simple intensity and fecundity. No romancer
has created a greater number of the figures that breathe and move and speak,
in their habits as they might have lived ; none, on the whole, seems to us to
have had such a masterly touch in portraiture, none has mingled so much
ideal beauty with so much unsparing reality. His sadness has its element of
error, but it has also its larger element of wisdom. Life is, in fact, a battle.
On this point optimists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong ;
jgg HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
beauty enchanting but rare ; goodness very apt to be weak ; folly very apt
to be defiant ; wickedness to carry the day ; imbeciles to be in great places,
people of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. But the world
as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night ; we wake
up to it again for ever and ever ; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dis-
pense with it. We can welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it
demands, in exchange for something which it is idle to pause to call much
or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume of consciousness. In
this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there
hovers a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to understand. So
much as this we seem to decipher between the lines of M. Turgenieff's mi-
nutely written chronicle. He himself has sought to understand as zealously
as his most eminent competitors. He gives, at least, 110 meagre account of
life, and he has done liberal justice to its infinite variety. This is his great
merit ; his great defect, roughly stated, is a tendency to the abuse of irony.
He remains, nevertheless, to our sense, a very welcome mediator between
the world and our curiosity. If we had space, we should like to set forth
that he is by no means our ideal story-teller — this honorable genius possess-
ing, attributively, a rarer skill than the finest required for producing an art-
ful rechauffe of the actual. But even for better romancers we must wait for
a better world. Whether the world in its higher state of perfection will
occasionally offer color to scandal, we hesitate to pronounce ; but we are
prone to conceive of the ultimate novelist as a personage altogether purged
of sarcasm. The imaginative force now expended in this direction he will
devote to describing cities of gold and heavens of sapphire. But, for the
present, we gratefully accept M. Turgenieff, and reflect that his manner
suits the most frequent mood of the greater number of readers. If he were a
dogmatic optimist we suspect that, as things go, we should long ago have
ceased to miss him from our library. The personal optimism of most of us
no romancer can confirm or dissipate, and our personal troubles, generally,
place fictions of all kinds in an impertinent light. To our usual working
mood the world is apt to seem M. Turgenieff's hard world, and when, at mo-
ments, the strain and the pressure deepen, the ironical element figures not a
little in our form of address to those short-sighted friends who have whis-
pered that it is an easy one.
MISS DAISY MILLER OF SCHENECTADY, U. S.
[Daisy Miller : A Study. 1878.]
TTTINTEKBOURNE, who had returned to Geneva the day after his ex-
VV cursionto Chillon, went to Rome toward the end of January. His
aunt had been established there for several weeks, and he had received a
couple of letters from her. " Those people you were so devoted to last sum-
mer at Vevay have turned up here, courier and all," she wrote. " They seem
to have made several acquaintances, but the courier continues to be the
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR.
most intime. The young lady, however, is also very intimate with some
third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes much
talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez's — ( Paule Mere ' — and don't
come later than the 23d. "
In. the natural course of events, Winterbourne, on arriving in Rome,
would presently have ascertained Mrs. Miller's address at the American bank-
er's, and have gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. " After what hap-
pened at Vevay, I think I may certainly call upon them," he said to Mrs.
Costello.
"If, after what happens — at Vevay and everywhere — you desire to keep
up the acquaintance, you are very welcome. Of course a man may know
every one. Men are welcome to the privilege ! "
" Pray what is it that happens — here, for instance ?" Winterbourne de-
manded.
' ' The girl goes about alone with her foreigners. As to what happens fur-
ther, you must apply elsewhere for information. She has picked up half a
dozen of the regular Roman fortune-hunters, and she takes them about to
people's houses. When she comes to a party she brings with her a gentleman
with a good deal of manner and a wonderful mustache."
" And where is the mother ? "
" I haven't the least idea. They are very dreadful people."
Winterbourne meditated a moment. " They are very ignorant — very in-
nocent only. Depend upon it they are not bad."
" They are hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. " Whether or no being
hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad ' is a question for the metaphysicians. They
are bad enough to dislike, at any rate ; and for this short life that is quite
enough."
The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half a dozen wonderful
mustaches checked Winterbourne's impulse to go straightway to see her. He
had, perhaps, not definitely flattered himself that he had made an inefface-
able impression upon, her heart, but he was annoyed at hearing of a state of
affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately flitted in and out
of his own meditations ; the image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old
Roman window and asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would
arrive. If, however, he determined to wait a little before reminding Miss
Miller of his claims to her consideration, he went very soon to call upon two
or three other friends. One of these friends was an American lady who had
spent several winters at Geneva, where she had placed her children at school.
She was a very accomplished woman, and she lived in the Via Gregoriana.
Winterbourne found her in a little crimson drawing-room on a third floor ;
the room was filled with southern sunshine. He had not been there ten min-
utes when the servant came in, announcing " Madame Mila ! " This an-
nouncement was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Mil-
ler, who stopped in the middle of the room and stood staring at Winterbourne.
An instant later his pretty sister crossed the threshold ; and then, after a
considerable interval, Mrs. Miller slowly advanced.
" I know you ! " said Randolph.
}gg HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
" Fmsure you know a great many things/' exclaimed Winterbourne, tak-
ing him by the hand. " How is your education coming on ? "
Daisy was exchanging greetings very prettily with her hostess ; but when
she heard Winterbourne's voice she quickly turned her head. " Well, I de-
clare ! " she said.
; I told you I should come, you know/' Winterbourne rejoined, smiling.
• Well, I didn't believe it," said Miss Daisy.
: I am much obliged to you," laughed the young man.
: You might have come to see me ! " said Daisy.
'• I arrived only yesterday/'
' I don't believe that ! " the young girl declared.
Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother ; but this lady
evaded his glance, and, seating herself, fixed her eyes upon her son. " We've
got a bigger place than this," said Randolph. " It's all gold on the walls."
Mrs. Miller turned uneasily in her chair. " I told you if I were to bring
you, you would say something ! " she murmured.
" I told you ! " Randolph exclaimed. " I tell you, sir ! " he added, jocose-
ly, giving Winterbourne a thump on the knee. " It is bigger, too !"
Daisy had entered upon a lively conversation with her hostess ; Winter-
bourne judged it becoming to address a few words to her mother. '•' I hope
you have been well since we parted at Vevay/' he said.
Mrs. Miller now certainly looked at him — at his chin. " Not very well,
sir/' she answered.
" She's got the dyspepsia," said Randolph. " I've got it too. Father's got
it. I've got it most ! "
This announcement, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to re-
lieve her. " I suffer from the liver," she said. " I think it's this climate ;
it's less bracing than Schenectady, especially in the winter season. I don't
know whether you know we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy
that I certainly hadn't found any one like Dr. Davis, and I didn't believe I
should. Oh, at Schenectady he stands first ; they think everything of him.
He has so much to do, and yet there was nothing he wouldn't do for me. He
said he never saw anything like my dyspepsia, but he was bound to cure it.
I'm sure there was nothing he wouldn't try. He was just going to try some-
thing new when we came off. Mr. Miller wanted Daisy to see Europe for
herself. But I wrote to Mr. Miller that it seems as if I couldn't get on with-
out Dr. Davis. At Schenectady he stands at the very top ; and there's a great
deal of sickness there, too. It affects my sleep."
Winterbourne had a good deal of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis's pa-
tient, during which Daisy chatted unremittingly to her own companion.
The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she was pleased with Rome. " Well,
I must say I am disappointed," she answered. "We had heard so much
about it ; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn't help that. We
had been led to expect something different."
"Ah, wait a little, and you will become very fond of it," said Winter-
bourne.
" I hate it worse and worse every day !" cried Randolph.
1861-88] HENRT JAMES, JR. Igg
" You are like the infant Hannibal," said Winterbourne.
" No, I ain't ! " Randolph declared, at a venture.
" You are not much like an infant," said his mother. " But we have seen
places," she resumed, " that I should put a long way before Rome." And in
reply to Winterbourne's interrogation, " There's Zurich," she concluded,
" I think Zurich is lovely ; and we hadn't heard half so much about it."
"tThe best place we've seen is the City of Richmond ! " said Randolph.
" He means the ship," his mother explained. " We crossed in that ship.
Randolph had a good time on the City of Richmond."
" It's the best place I've seen," the child repeated. " Only it was turned
the wrong way."
" Well, we've got to turn the right way some time," said Mrs. Miller, with
a little laugh. Winterbourne expressed the hope that her daughter at least
found some gratification in Rome, and she declared that Daisy was quite
carried away. " It's on account of the society — the society's splendid. She
goes round everywhere ; she has made a great number of acquaintances. Of
course she goes round more than I do. I must say they have been very so-
ciable ; they have taken her right in. And then she knows a great many gen-
tlemen. Oh, she thinks there's nothing like Rome. Of course, it's a great
deal pleasanter for a young lady if she knows plenty of gentlemen."
By this time Daisy had turned her attention again to Winterbourne. " I've
been telling Mrs. Walker how mean you were ! " the young girl announced.
"And what is the evidence you have offered ?" asked Winterbourne,
rather annoyed at Miss Miller's want of appreciation of the zeal of an ad-
mirer who on his way down to Rome had stopped neither at Bologna nor at
Florence, simply because of a certain sentimental impatience. He remem-
bered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women —
the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom — were at once the
most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebted-
ness.
"Why, you were awfully mean at Vevay,"said Daisy. "You wouldn't do
anything. You wouldn't stay there when I asked you."
" My dearest young lady," cried Winterbourne, with eloquence, " have I
come all the way to Rome to encounter your reproaches ? "
' ' Just hear him say that !" said Daisy to her hostess, giving a twist to a
bow on this lady's dress. " Did you ever hear anything so quaint ? "
" So quaint, my dear ? " murmured Mrs. Walker, in the tone of a partisan
of Winterbourne.
" Well, I don't know," said Daisy, fingering Mrs. Walker's ribbons. " Mrs.
Walker, I want to tell you something."
" Mother- r," interposed Randolph, with his rough ends to his words, "I
tell you you've got to go. Eugenio '11 raise — something ! "
4 ' I'm not afraid of Eugenio/' said Daisy, with a toss of her head. " Look
here, Mrs. Walker," she went on, "you know I'm coming to your party."
" I am delighted to hear it."
" I've got a lovely dress ! "
" I am very sure of that."
HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
" But I want to ask a favor — permission to bring a friend."
"I shall be happy to see any of your friends/' said Mrs. Walker, turning
with a smile to Mrs. Miller.
" Oh, they are not my friends/' answered Daisy's mamma, smiling shyly,
in her own fashion. " I never spoke to them."
" It's an intimate friend of mine — Mr. Giovanelli," said Daisy, without a
tremor in her clear little voice or a shadow on her brilliant little face.
Mrs. Walker was silent a moment ; she gave a rapid glance at Winter-
bourne. " I shall be glad to see Mr. Giovanelli," she then said.
" He's an Italian," Daisy pursued, with the prettiest serenity. " He's a
great friend of mine ; he's the handsomest man in the world — except Mr.
Winterbourne ! He knows plenty of Italians, but he wants to know some
Americans. He thinks ever so much of Americans. He's tremendously
clever. He's perfectly lovely ! "
It was settled that this brilliant personage should be brought to Mrs.
Walker's party, and then Mrs. Miller prepared to take her leave. " I guess
we'll go back to the hotel," she said.
" You may go back to the hotel, mother, but I'm going to take a walk,"
said Daisy.
" She's going to walk with Mr. Giovanelli," Randolph proclaimed.
' ' I am going to the Pincio," said Daisy, smiling.
" Alone, my dear — at this hour ? " Mrs. Walker asked. The afternoon
was drawing to a close — it was the hour for the throng of carriages and of
contemplative pedestrians. " I don't think it's safe, my dear," said Mrs.
Walker.
" Neither do I," subjoined Mrs. Miller. " You'll get the fever, as sure as
you live. Remember what Dr. Davis told you ! "
" Give her some medicine before she goes," said Randolph.
The company had risen to its feet ; Daisy, still showing her pretty teeth,
bent over and kissed her hostess. " Mrs. Walker, you are too perfect," she
said. " I'm not going alone ; I am going to meet a friend."
"Your friend won't keep you from getting the fever," Mrs. Miller ob-
served.
" Is it Mr. Giovanelli ? " asked the hostess.
Winterbourne was watching the young girl ; at this question his attention
quickened. She stood there smiling and smoothing her bonnet ribbons; she
glanced at Winterbourne. Then, while she glanced and smiled, she an-
swered, without a shade of hesitation : " Mr. Giovanelli — the beautiful Gio-
vanelli. "
" My dear young friend," said Mrs. Walker, taking her hand, pleading-
ly, " don't walk off to the Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian."
"Well, he speaks English," said Mrs. Miller.
' ' Gracious me ! " Daisy exclaimed, " I don't want to do anything improp-
er. There's an easy way to settle it." She continued to glance at Winter-
bourne. ' ' The Pincio is only a hundred yards distant ; and if Mr. Winter-
bourne were as polite as he pretends, he would offer to walk with me ! "
Winterbourne's politeness hastened to affirm itself, and the young girl
I
_
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. 19]_
gave him gracious leave to accompany her. They passed down-stairs before
her mother, and at the door Winterbourne perceived Mrs. Miller's carriage
drawn up, with the ornamental courier whose acquaintance he had made at
Vevay seated within. " Good-bye, Eugenio ! " cried Daisy ; " I'm gcing to
take a walk."
THE LIFTING OF A VEIL. _._
[The Portrait of a Lady. 1881.]
IT was not till the evening that she was able to see Ralph. He had been
dozing all day ; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was
there, but after a while he went away — the local doctor, who had attended
his father, and whom Ralph liked. He came three or four times a day ; he
was deeply interested in his patient. Ralph had had Sir Matthew Hope, but
he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his mother
to send word that he was now dead, and was therefore without further need
of medical advice. Mrs. Touchett had simply written to Sir Matthew that
her son disliked him. On the day of Isabel's arrival Ralph gave no sign, as I
have related, for many hours ; but toward evening he raised himself and said
he knew that she had come. How he knew it was not apparent, inasmuch
as, for fear of exciting liim, no one had offered the information. Isabel came
in and sat by his bed in the dim light ; there was only a shaded candle in a
corner of the room. She told the nurse that she might go — that she herself
would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and
recognized her, and had moved his hand, which lay very helpless beside him,
so that she might take it. But he was unable to speak ; he closed his eyes
again and remained perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She
sat with him a long time — till the nurse came back ; but he gave no further
sign. He might have passed away while she looked at him ; he was already
the figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome, but
this was worse ; there was only one change possible now. There was a strange
tranquillity in his face ; it was as still as the lid of a box. With this he was a
mere lattice of bones ; when he opened his eyes to greet her, it was as if she
were looking into immeasurable space. It was not till midnight that the
nurse came back ; but the hours, to Isabel, had not seemed long ; it was ex-
actly what she had come for. If she had come simply to wait, she found am-
ple occasion, for he lay for three days in a kind of grateful silence. He
recognized her, and at moments he seemed to wish to speak ; but he found no
voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as if he too were waiting for some-
thing— for something that certainly would come. He was so absolutely
quiet that it seemed to her what was coming had already arrived ; and yet
she never lost the sense that they were still together. But they were not al-
ways together ; there were other hours that she passed in wandering through
the empty house and listening for a voice that was not poor Ralph's. She
had a constant fear ; she thought it possible her husband would write to her.
|92 HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
But he remained silent, and she only got a letter from Florence from the
Countess Gemini. Ralph, however, spoke at last, on the evening of the
third day.
" I feel better to-night," he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless dim-
ness of her vigil ; ' ' I think I can say something."
She sank upon her knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own ;
begged him not to make an effort — not to tire himself.
His face was of necessity serious — it was incapable of the muscular play
of a smile ; but its owner apparently had not lost a perception of incongrui-
ties. " What does it matter if I am tired, when I have all eternity to rest ? "
he asked. ' ' There is no harm in making an effort when it is the very last.
Don't people always feel better just before the end ? I have often heard of
that ; it's what I was waiting for. Ever since you have been here, I thought
it would come. I tried two or three times ; I was afraid you would get tired
of sitting there." He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses ;
his voice seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased, he lay with his
face turned to Isabel, and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. "It
was very good of you to come," he went on. "I thought you would; but
I wasn't sure."
"I was not sure either, till I came," said Isabel.
" You have been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about
the angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You have been like that ;
as if you were waiting for me."
"I was not waiting foryour death ; I was waiting for — f or this. This is
not death, dear Ralph."
" Not for you — no. There is nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see
others die. That's the sensation of life — the sense that we remain. I have
had it — even I. But now I am of no use but to give it to others. With me it's
all over." And then he paused. Isabel bowed her head further, till it rest-
ed on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She could not see
him now ; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. " Isabel," he went
on, suddenly, "I wish it were over for you." She answered nothing; she
had burst into sobs ; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay silent,
listening to her sobs ; at last he gave a long groan. " Ah, what is it you have
done for me ? "
"What is it you did for me ?" she cried, her now extreme agitation half
smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide
things. Now he might know ; she wished him to know, for it brought them
supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. " You did some-
thing once — you know it. Oh, Ralph, you have been everything ! What
have I done for you — what can I do to-day ? I would die if you could live.
But I don't wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you." Her
voice was as broken as his own, and full of tears and anguish.
"You won't lose me — you will keep me. Keep me in your heart ; I shall
be nearer to you than I have ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better ; for in
life there is love. Death is good — but there is no love."
" I never thanked you — I never spoke — I never was what I should be ! "
1861-88] HE3RY JAMES, JR. 193
Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse herself, to
let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment, became single
and melted together into this present pain. " What must you have thought
of me ? Yet how could I know ? I never knew, and I only know to-day be-
cause there are people less stupid than I."
"Don't mind people," said Ralph. " I think I am glad to leave people."
She raised her head and her clasped hands ; she seemed for a moment to
pray to him.
" Is it true — is it true ? " she asked.
' ' True that you have been stupid ? Oh, no," said Ralph, with a sensible
intention of wit.
" That you made me rich — that all I have is yours ?"
He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last —
"Ah, don't speak of that — that was not happy." Slowly he moved his
face toward her again-, and they once more saw each other. " But lor that
— but for that — ;' And he paused. " I believe I ruined you," he added
softly.
She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain ; he seemed
already so little of this world. But even if she had not had it she would still
have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only knowledge that was not
pure anguish— the knowledge that they were looking at the truth together.
" He married me for my money," she said.
She wished to say everything ; she was afraid he might die before she had
done so.
He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their
lids. But he raised them in a moment, and then —
" He was greatly in love with you," he answered.
" Yes, he was in love with me. But he would not have married me if I
had been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I ? I only want
you to understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding ; but
that's all over."
" I always understood," said Ralph.
" I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it."
" You don't hurt me — you make me very happy." And as Ralph said this
there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again,
and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. " I always understood," he con-
tinued, " though it was so strange — so pitiful. You wanted to look at life for
yourself — but you were not allowed ; you were punished for your wish. You
were ground in the very mill of the conventional ! "
" Oh yes, I have been punished," Isabel sobbed.
He listened to her a little, and then continued :
" Was he very bad about your coming ? "
" He made it very hard for me. But I don't care."
" It is all over, then, between you ?"
" Oh, no ; I don't think anything is over."
" Are you going back to him ? " Ralph stammered.
" I don't know — I can't tell, I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't
VOL. X.— 13
194 EENRT JAMES, JR. [1861-88
want to think — I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and that
is enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my knees, with
you dying in my arms, I am happier than I have been for a long time. And
I want you to be happy — not to think of anything sad; only to feel that
I am near you and I love you. Why should there be pain ? In such hours
as this what have we to do with pain ? That is not the deepest thing ; there
is something deeper."
Ealph evidently found, from moment to moment, greater difficulty in
speaking ; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared to
make no response to these last words ; he let a long time elapse. Then he
murmured simply :
"You must stay here."
" I should like to stay, as long as seems right."
" As seems right — as seems right ?" He repeated her words. "Yes, you
think a great deal about that."
" Of course one must. You are very tired," said Isabel.
" I am very tired. You said just now that pain is not the deepest thing.
No — no. But it is very deep. If I could stay "
" For me you will always be here," she softly interrupted. It was easy to
interrupt him.
But he went on, after a moment :
" It passes, after all ; it's passing now. But love remains. I don't know
why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I shall find out. There are many
things in life ; you are very young."
" I feel very old," said Isabel.
" You will grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe —
I don't believe" And he stopped again ; his strength failed him.
She begged him to be quiet now. " We needn't speak to understand each
other," she said.
"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours — can hurt you for
more than a little."
" Oh, Ralph, I am very happy now," she cried, through her tears.
" And remember this," he continued, "that if you have been hated, you
have also been loved. "
"Ah, my brother ! " she cried, with a movement of still deeper prostration.
He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that
if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost with
which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled the
necessary condition ; for the next morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she knew •
that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down without undress-
ing, for it was her belief that Ralph would not outlast the night. She had no
inclination to sleep ; she was waiting, and such waiting was wakeful. But
she closed her eyes ; she believed that as the night wore on she should hear
a knock at her door. She heard no knock, but at the time the darkness
began vaguely to grow gray, she started up from her pillow as abruptly as if
she had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant that Ralph waa
1861-88] HENRY JAMES, JR. jgg
standing there — a dim, hovering figure in the dimness of the room. She
stared a moment ; she saw his white face — his kind eyes ; then she saw there
was nothing. She was not afraid ; she was only sure. She went out of her
room, and in her certainty passed through dark corridors and down a flight
of oaken steps that shone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside of
Ealph's door she stopped a moment, listening ; but she seemed to hear only
the hush that filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she
were lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Touchett sitting
motionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his hands in
her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Ealph's further wrist
resting in his professional fingers. The nurse was at the foot, between them.
Mrs. Touchett took no notice of Isabel, but the doctor looked at her very
hard ; then he gently placed Ealph's hand in a proper position, close beside
him. The nurse looked at her very hard too, and no one said a word ; but
Isabel only looked at what she had come to see. It was fairer than Ealph
had ever been in life, and there was a strange resemblance to the face of his
father, which, six years before, she had seen lying on the same pillow.
THE GLORY OP NIAGARA.
[Portraits of Places. 1 884. ]
rilHOUGH hereabouts so much is great, distances are small, and a ramble
-L of two or three hours enables you to gaze hither and thither from a dozen
standpoints. The one you are likely to choose first is that on the Canada
cliff, a little way above the suspension bridge. The great fall faces you, en-
shrined in its own surging incense. The common feeling just here, I believe,
is one of disappointment at its want of height ; the whole thing appears to
many people somewhat smaller than its fame. My own sense, I confess, was
absolutely gratified from the first ; and, indeed, I was not struck with any-
thing being tall or short, but with everything being perfect. You are, more-
over, at some distance, and you feel that with the lessening interval you will
not be cheated of your chance to be dizzied with mere dimensions. Already
you see the world-famous green, baffling painters, baffling poets, shining on
the lip of the precipice ; the more so, of course, for the clouds of silver and
snow into which it speedily resolves itself. The whole picture before you is
admirably simple. The Horseshoe glares and boils and smokes from the cen-
tre to the right, drumming itself into powder and thunder ; in the centre the
dark pedestal of Goat Island divides the double flood ; to the left booms in
vaporous dimness the minor battery of the American Fall ; while on a level
with the eye, above the still crest of either cataract, appear the white faces
of the hithermost rapids. The circle of weltering froth at the base of the
Horseshoe, emerging from the dead-white vapors — absolute white, as moon-
less midnight is absolute black — which muffle impenetrably the crash of the
river upon the lower bed, melts slowly into the darker shades of green. It
jgg HENRY JAMES, JR. [1861-88
seems in itself a drama of thrilling interest, this blanched survival and re-
covery of the stream. It stretches away like a tired swimmer, struggling
from the snowy scum and the silver drift, and passing slowly from an eddy-
ing foam-sheet, touched with green lights, to a cold, verd-antique, streaked
and marbled with trails and wild arabesques of foam. This is the beginning
of that air of recent distress which marks the river as you meet it at the lake.
It shifts along, tremendously conscious, relieved, disengaged, knowing- the
worst is over, with its dignity injured but its volume undiminished, the most
stately, the least turbid of torrents. Its movement, its sweep and stride,
are as admirable as its color, but as little as its color to be made a matter of
words. These things are but part of a spectacle in which nothing is imper-
fect. As you draw nearer and nearer, on the Canada cliff, to the right arm
of the Horseshoe, the mass begins in all conscience to be large enough. You
are able at last to stand on the very verge of the shelf from which the leap is
taken, bathing your boot-toes, if you like, in the side-ooze of the glassy curve.
I may say, in parenthesis, that the importunities one suffers here, amid the
central din of the cataract, from hackmen and photographers and vendors
of gimcracks, are simply hideous and infamous. The road is lined with lit-
tle drinking-shops and warehouses, and from these retreats their occupants
dart forth upon the hapless traveller with their competitive attractions. You
purchase release at last by the fury of your indifference, and stand there gaz-
ing your fill at the most beautiful object in the world.
The perfect taste of it is the great characteristic. It is not in the least
monstrous ; it is thoroughly artistic and, as the phrase is, thought out. In
the matter of line it beats Michael Angelo. One may seem at first to say the
least, but the careful observer will admit that one says the most, in saying
that it pleases — pleases even a spectator who was not ashamed to write the
other day that he didn't care for cataracts. There are, however, so many
more things to say about it — its multitudinous features crowd so upon the
vision as one looks — that it seems absurd to begin to analyze. The main
feature, perhaps, is the incomparable loveliness of the immense line of the
shelf and its lateral abutments. It neither falters, nor breaks, nor stiffens,
but maintains from wing to wing the lightness of its semicircle. This per-
fect curve melts into the sheet that seems at once to drop from it and sustain
it. The famous green loses nothing, as you may imagine, on a nearer view.
A green more vividly cool and pure it is impossible to conceive. It is to the
vulgar greens of earth what the blue of a summer sky is to artificial dyes, and
is, in fact, as sacred, as remote, as impalpable as that. You can fancy it the
parent-green, the head-spring of color to all the verdant water-caves and
all the clear, sub-fluvial haunts and bowers of naiads and mermen in all the
streams of the earth. The lower half of the watery wall is shrouded in the
steam of the boiling gulf — a veil never rent nor lifted. At its heart this eter-
' nal cloud seems fixed and still with excess of motion — still and intensely
white ; but, as it rolls and climbs against its lucent cliff, it tosses little whiffs
and fumes and pants of snowy smoke, which betray the convulsions we never
behold. In the middle of the curve, the depth of the recess, the converging
walls are ground into a dust of foam, which rises in a tall column, and fills
1861-88] CLARENCE KING. }Q7
the upper air with its hovering drift. Its summit far overtops the crest of
the cataract, and, as you look down along the rapids above, you see it hang-
ing over the averted gulf like some far-flowing signal of danger. Of these
things some vulgar verbal hint may be attempted ; but what words can ren-
der the rarest charm of all — the clear-cut brow of the Fall, the very act and
figure of the leap, the rounded passage of the horizontal to the perpendicu-
lar ! To say it is simple is to make a phrase about it. Nothing was ever more
successfully executed. It is carved as sharp as an emerald, as one must say
and say again. It arrives, it pauses, it plunges ; it comes and goes forever ;
it melts and shifts and changes, all with the sound as of millions of bass
voices ; and yet its outline never varies, never moves with a different pulse.
It is as gentle as the pouring of wine from a flagon — of melody from the lip
of a singer. From the little grove beside the American Fall you catch this
extraordinary profile better than you are able to do at the Horseshoe. If the
line of beauty had vanished from the earth elsewhere, it would survive on
the brow of Niagara. It is impossible to insist too strongly on the grace of
the thing, as seen from the Canada cliff. The genius who invented it was
certainly the first author of the idea that order, proportion, and symmetry are
the conditions of perfect beauty. He applied his faith among the watching
and listening forests, long before the Greeks proclaimed theirs in the meas-
urements of the Parthenon. Even the roll of the white batteries at the base
seems fixed and poised and ordered, and in the vague middle zone of differ-
ence between the flood as it falls and the mist as it rises you imagine a mystical
meaning — the passage of body to soul, of matter to spirit, of human to divine.
Clarence
BORN in Newport, R. I., 1843.
THE HELMET OF MAMBRINO.
[The Century Magazine. 1886.]
" How can I be mistaken, thou eternal misbeliever? " cried Don Quixote ; " dost thou
not see that knight that comes riding up directly toward us upon a dapple-gray steed, with
a helmet of gold on his head ? "
" I see what I see," replied Sancho, "and the devil of anything can I spy but a fellow
on such another gray ass as mine is, with something that glitters o'top of his head."
"I tell thee that is Mambrino's helmet," replied Don Quixote. — Cervantes.
DEAR DON HORACIO : You cannot have forgotten the morning we
turned our backs upon San Francisco, and slowly rambled seaward
through winding hollows of park, nor how the mist drooped low as if to hear
the tones of fondness in our talk of Cervantes and the Don, nor how the ap-
proving sun seemed to send a benediction through the riven cloud-rack over-
head.
It was after we had passed the westward edge of that thin veneer of polite
|gg CLARENCE KING. [1861-88
vegetation which a coquettish art has affixed to the great wind-made waves
of sand, and entered the waste of naked drift beyond, that we heard afar a
whispered sea-plaint, and beheld the great Pacific coming in under cover of
a low-lying fog, and grinding its white teeth on the beach.
Still discoursing of La Mancha, we left behind us the last gateway of the
hills, came to the walk's end and the world's end and the end of the Aryan
migrations.
We were not disturbed by the restless Aryan who dashed past us at the
rate of 2:20 with an insolent flinging of sand, a whirling cobweb of hickory
wheel, and all the mad hurry of the nineteenth century at his heels.
For what (we asked one another as we paced the Cliff-House verandah)
did this insatiable wanderer leave his comfortable land of Central Asia and
urge ever westward through forty centuries of toilsome march ? He start-
ed in the world's youth a simple, pastoral pilgrim, and we saw him pull up
his breathless trotters at the very Ultima Thule, rush into the bar-room, and
demand a cocktail.
Having quenched this ethnic thirst and apparently satisfied the yearning
of ages, we watched him gather up his reins and start eastward again, as if
for the sources of the sacred Ganges, and disappear in the cloud of his own
swift-rushing dirt.
By the fire in our private breakfast-room we soon forgot him, and you led
me again into the company of the good knight.
Even Alphonso must have felt the chivalric presence, for all unbidden he
discreetly hispanized our omelet.
Years have gone since that Cervantean .morning of ours, and to-day, my
friend, I am come from our dear Spain.
' As I journeyed in the consecrated realm of Don Quixote, it happened to
me to pass a night " down in a village of La Mancha, the name of which I
have no desire to recollect."
Late in the evening, after a long day in the saddle, we had stopped at an
humble posada on the outskirts of an old pueblo, too tired to press on in
search of better accommodations, which we believed the town would proba-
bly afford. We were glad enough to tie our weary animals to their iron rings
within the posada, and fling ourselves down to sleep in the doorway, lulled
by the comfortable munching sound of the beasts, and fanned by a soft wind
which came fitfully from the south.
The mild, dry night, wherein thin veils of cloud had tempered the moon-
light and overspread the vacant plains with specti*al shadows, was at length
yielding to the more cheerful advance of dawn.
From an oaken bench on which I had slept, in the arched entrance of the
posada, I could look back across those wan swells of plain over which my com-
panion and I had plodded the day before, and watch the landscape brighten
cheerfully as the sun rose.
Just in front, overhanging the edge of a dry, shallow ravine, stood the
ruin of a lone wind-mill, a breach in its walls rendering visible the gnarled
trunk of an old olive-tree, which hugged the shade of the ancient mill, as if
saie under the protection of a veritable giant.
1861-68] CLARENCE KING. igg
Oaken frames of the mill-arms, slowly consuming with dry-rot, etched
their broken lines against the soft gray horizon. A rag or two of stained can-
vas, all that was left of the sails, hung yellow, threadbare, and mouldering in
the windless air.
The walls of our doorway seemed visibly to crumble. Here and there lin-
gering portions of stucco still clung to a skeleton of bricks; and overhead, by
the friendly aid of imagination, one could see that time out of mind the arch
had been whitewashed.
Signs of life one by one appeared. From a fold somewhere behind the
posada a small flock of gaunt, lately sheared sheep slowly marched across my
narrow field of view.
Single file, with heads down, they noiselessly followed a path faintly traced
across the plain, the level sun touching their thin backs, and casting a pro-
cession of moving shadows on the gray ground. One or two stopped to rub
against the foundation-stones of the mill; and presently all had moved on
into a hollow of the empty land and disappeared.
Later, at the same slow pace, and without a sound of footfall, followed a
brown and spare old shepherd, with white, neglected hair falling over a tat-
tered cloak of coarse homespun. His face wore a strange expression of imbe-
cile content. It was a face from which not only hope but even despair had
faded out under the burning strength of eternal monotony.
A few short, jerky, tottering steps, and he too was gone, with his crust of
bread and cow's horn of water, his oleander-wood staff, and his vacant smile
of senile tranquillity.
Then an old, shrivelled parrot of a woman, the only other inhabitant of
the posada, came from I never knew where, creeping in through the open
portal, heavily burdened with an earthen jar of water for our beasts. "Bue-
nos dias ! " fell in a half-whisper from her lips, which held a burning cigar-
ette. She too disappeared.
On the other side of the arched entry, against the opposite wall, on an
oaken bench like mine, his head to the outer air, asleep on his back, lay my
guide and companion, Salazar — a poor gentleman, humbled by fate, yet
rich in the qualities of sentiment which make good men and good friends.
His arms were crossed on his breast, after the manner of those pious per-
sonages who lie in their long bronze or marble slumber in church and
chapel. His delicate constitution, yielding at last to the wear of time, and
now plainly declining, had decreed for him only a narrow margin of life.
In a little while, in a few short years, he will lie as he lay that morning in
La Mancha, and his countenance will wear the same expression of mingled
pain and peace.
I had chosen him as companion for this episode of travel because of his
fine, appreciative knowledge of Cervantes, and from his personal resem-
blance to the type of Don Quixote. He had listened affectionately to my talk
of the Bachelor of San Francisco, and joined with zest in my search for a
" Helmet of Mambrino," which I hoped to send as a gift to the gentleman
by the western sea.
I scanned his sleeping features long and thought him a perfect Spanish
2QO CLARENCE EINQ. [1861-88
picture. How sternly simple the accessories ! Only a wall of time-mellowed
brick, barred by lines of yellow mortar, and patched by a few hand-breadths
of whitened plaster ! Only a solid, antique bench of oak, weather-worn into
gray harmony with an earthen floor ! Nothing more !
His ample cloak of dark, olive-colored cloth, reaching from foot to chin,
covered him, save for one exposed hand, completely, and hung in folds to
the ground. There was nothing to distract from his face, now thrown into
full profile against the rough wall.
Far back over the bald cranial arch, a thin coat of mixed gray and brown
wiry hair covered the back of his head, just where it rested on the blue hand-
kerchief he had carefully composed over an improvised pillow. The heavy
eyebrow formed a particularly long, high bow, and ended abruptly against
a slightly sunken bony temple. The orbital hollow, an unusually large and
cavernous bowl, showed beneath the brow a tracery of feeble blue veins ; but
the closed eye domed boldly up, its yellow lids strongly fringed with long
brown lashes. The hooked beak of a well-modelled but large aquiline nose
curved down from the brow. Over his always compressed mouth grew a deli-
cate, grizzled mustache, the ends of which turned up in the old Spanish way.
His jaw was refined rather than strong, and bore oiihis long chin a thin tuft
of hair, which grew to a point and completed a singularly chaste and knight-
ly profile. The shallow thinness of his figure, the sunken yellow cheek, and
emaciated throat, were all eloquent of decline.
Age, too, recorded itself in the exposed hand — not so much in its pallor
or slenderness of finger, as in the prominence of bony framework, which
seemed thrust into the wrinkled muscular covering as into a glove which is
too large and much outworn.
These are but material details, and only interesting as the seat and foun-
dation of a fixed air of gentlemanliness, which, waking or sleeping, never
left his countenance.
He was, as he slept, the figure of the dead Quixote — a gaunt face soft-
ened by a patient spirit, an iron frame weakened and refined by lifelong
frugality, and now touched by the wintry frosts of age; but, above all, the
sleeping mask, with its slightly curled lip, wore an aspect of chivalric scorn
of all things mean and low. I watched the early light creep over his bald
forehead, and tinge the sallow cheek with its copper warmth, and I marked
how the sharp shadow of his nose lay like a finger of silence across his lips.
There lay one of those chance friends whom to meet is to welcome from
the heart, and from whom I for one never part without perplexing wonder
whether chance or fate or Providence will so throw the shuttle through the
strange pattern of life's fabric that our two feeble threads will ever again
touch and cross and interweave.
Chocolate is the straw at which the drowning traveller catches in the
wide ocean of Spanish starvation. Its spicy aroma, with that of a cigarette,
announced the coming of the old posadera.
I reluctantly awakened Salazar, and we began the day by each pouring
water from an earthen jar for the other's ablutions. From a "leathern wallet
1861-88] CLARENCE KINO. 201
my companion produced a few dry, crumbled little cakes, and my ulster
pocket yielded up a bottle of olives I had brought from Seville. The woman
squatted by us and smoked.
While waiting for his boiling beverage to cool, Salazar addressed our host-
ess. "This American gentleman has in his own country a friend of whom
he is exceedingly fond, a certain Don Horacio, who, it seems, is in the habit
of reading the adventures of Don Quixote, which you very well know, Se-
flora, happened here in LaMancha. This Don Horacio has never seen one of
our Spanish barbers' basins, such as the good Don Quixote wore for a helmet.
" It is to find him an ancient basin that we have come to La Mancha. There
were plenty of new ones in Seville and Cordova, but they will not serve. We
must have an ancient one, and one from this very land. Do you by chance
remember where there is such an one ? "
The good woman reflected, while we sipped the chocolate and ate the
cakes and the olives. She threw away the end of the cigarette, and began
rolling another. This little piece of manipulation, well known as provoca-
tive of thought, was hardly accomplished when she exclaimed :
" Mira I I do know the very piece. Come to the door ! Do you see that
church in ruins ? Bueno I Just beyond is an old posada. The widow Barri-
lera, with her boy Crisanto, lives there. Poor people put up their beasts
there. It used to be a great fonda many years ago, and ever since I was a
child an old basin has hung in the patio. It ought to be there now." At
this we were much gladdened ; for our search all the day before among the
villages and hamlets had been fruitless. The posadera was so dumb at the
silver we gave her that she forgot to bid us "Go with God \" till we were
mounted and moving away from her door toward the pueblo.
A Spanish town, especially in wide, half-waste regions between great cit-
ies, sometimes sinks into a slow decline, and little by little gives up the
ghost of life ; dying, not of sudden failure in the heart or central plaza, but
wasting away by degrees around its outskirts, and shrinking by the slow ruin
of block after block inward toward the centre of vitality. This form of de-
cay comes at last to girdle the whole town with mounds of fallen Avail, vacant
squares of roofless masonry, fragments of paved patio, secluded no more by
enclosing corridors, but open and much frequented of drowsy goats, who
come from their feeding-grounds to sleep on the sun-heated stones.
Here and there a mere firmly founded edifice, like a church or a posada,
resists the unrelenting progress of destruction, and stands for a few years in
lonely despair among the levelled dust of the neighbor buildings.
If a church, it is bereft of its immemorial chimes, which are made to
jangle forth the Angelus from some better-preserved tower on the plaza.
Owls sail through the open door, and brush with their downy wings the sa-
cred dust from wooden image of Virgin or Saviour ; till at last the old towers
and walls, yielding to rain and wind, melt down into the level of humbler
ruin.
The old posadas, while they last, are tenanted by the poorest of the poor.
Childless widows too old to work end here in solitary penury their declining
days, sister tenants with wandering bats and homeless kids.
202 CLARENCE KING. [1861-88
Past such an old and dying church Salazar and I rode, following the di-
rections of our hostess, and soon drew rein before an old oaken gate in a high
wall of ancient masonry. Upon the lintel was rudely cut, as with a pocket-
knife, the sign " For raje." Half the double gate, fallen from its rusty hinges,
lay broken and disused on the ground, its place taken by a ragged curtain
of woollen cloth, which might once have been a woman's cloak. This, with
the half gate still standing, served to suggest that the ruinous enclosure was
to be respected as private ground.
My grave companion alighted from his horse, folded his cloak, which till
now he had worn against the morning cold, laid it carefully across his sad-
dle, and knocked very gently; then after a pause, as if to give misery a time
to compose its rags, he drew aside the curtain an inch or so, and after peer-
ing around the enclosed yard, turned to me with a mysterious smile, laid his
finger on his lips, and beckoned to me to look where he pointed.
I saw a large, square, walled enclosure bounded on the right by a one-
story house, with a waving, sagging, collapsing roof of red tiles. The left or
eastern wall, which rose to a height of twenty feet or so, was pierced by sev-
eral second-story window-openings and two doorways. Through these we
looked out upon the open plain, for the apartments into which the doorways
had once led were ruined and gone.
Over the eastern door was traced the half -faded word " Comedor," and
over the other "Barberia." Still above this latter sign there projected from
the «olid masonry an ornamental arm of wrought iron, from which hung a
barber's basin of battered and time-stained brass, the morning light just
touching its disk of green.
Salazar knocked a little louder, when a cheery, welcoming woman's voice
called out, "Pasen, senores!" We held aside the woollen curtain, crossed
the enclosure, and entered a little door directly opposite the old barberia,
scenting as we entered a rich, vigorous odor of onion and garlic.
There are nerves so degenerate, there are natures so enfeebled, as to fall
short of appreciating, as even to recoil from, the perfume of these sturdy es-
culents ; but such are not worthy to follow the footsteps of Don Quixote in
La Mancha, where still, as of old, the breath of the cavalier is the savor of
onions, and the very kiss of passion burns with the mingled fire of love and
garlic.
From a dilapidated brick floor rose the widow Barrilera, a handsome,
bronzed woman of fifty, with a low, broad brow, genial, round face, and stout
figure ; who advanced to meet us, and rolled out in her soft Andalusian dia-
lect a hearty welcome, smiling ardently out of sheer good-nature, and show-
ing her faultless teeth.
It did not seem to have occurred to her to ask, or even consider, why we
had come. Our entrance at this early hour created no surprise, no question-
ing, not even a glance of curiosity. It was enough for her sociable, afflu-
ent good-nature that we had come at all. She received us as a godsend, and
plainly proposed to enjoy us, without bothering her amiable old brains about
such remote, intricate conceptions as a cause for our coming.
To one of us she offered a stool, to the other a square of sheepskin, and
1861-88] CLARENCE KING. 203
urged ns to huddle down with her in the very focus of the garlic pot, which
purred and simmered and steamed over a little fire. She remarked in the
gayest way that it was still cool of a morning, and laughed merrily when we
assented to this meteorological truth, adding that a little fire made it all
right, and then beaming on in silence, while she stirred the savory contents
of the pot, never varying the open breadth of her smile, till she pursed up
her lips as if about to whistle, and blew on a ladle full of the soup till it was
cool, when she swallowed it slowly, her soft eyes rolling with delight at the
flavorous compound.
" Seiiora," said my hollow-eyed and hollow-voiced comrade, " the gentle-
man is a lover of good Don Quixote."
The woman flashed on me a look of curiosity, as who should say, " So is
every one. What of that ?"
" My friend is Americano," continued Salazar.
" Valgame Dios ! " ejaculated the now thoroughly interested widow. " All
the way from Buenos Ayres ! No ? Then from Cuba, of course ! Yes, yes !
My father's cousin was a soldier there, and married a woman as black as a
pot."
" No, senora, my friend is from another part of America ; and he has come
here to buy from you the old brass basin above the barberia door."
Curiosity about America suddenly gave way to compassion.
" Pobrecito!" she said in benevolent accents. ''You take care of him !
He is" — making a grimace of interrogation, arching up her brows, and
touching her head — "a little wrong here."
Salazar, with unbroken gravity, touched his own head, pointed to me, and
replied, " Perfectly clear ! "
" What in the name of the Blessed Virgin does he want of that old basin
with a hole in it ?" shrugging her fat, round shoulders till they touched her
earrings, and turning up the plump, cushiony palms of her hands to heaven.
" It seems very droll, my good woman, does it not ?" I interrupted, " but
I have in my own country a charming friend whom I love very much. He is
called the Bachelor of San Francisco, and he has never seen a Spanish bar-
ber's basin, so I want to carry this as a gift to him. We have no barbers'
basins in America."
" Caramba!" she exclaimed, " what a land ! Full of women as black as
coals, and no barbers ! My father's cousin had a beard like an Englishman
when he came back, and his wife looked like a black sheep just sheared. As
to the basin, sefior, it is yours."
Then turning to a hitherto unnoticed roll of rags in a dark corner, she
gave an affectionate shove with her foot, which called forth a yawning, smil-
ing lad, who respectfully bowed to us, while yet half asleep.
" Crisanto, get down the old barber's basin from the patio, and bring it
here!"
In a moment the boy returned with the old relic, but seemed to hesitate
before relinquishing it to his mother, who extended her hand to receive it.
" What are you waiting for, child ?" said the woman.
" It is mine. You gave it to me," said the boy bashfully.
204 CLARENCE KING. [1861-88
" My lad," said Salazar, " we shall give yon two silver duros for it."
The boy at once brightened and consented. His mother seized the basin
in one hand, a wet rag in the other, with her toe scraped out some ashes from
the fire, and was about to fall upon it with housewifely fury, and in a trice,
had I not stopped her, would have scraped away the mellow green film, the
very writing and sign-manual of the artist Time.
A few silver duros in the smiling lad's palm, a bit of gold to the mother, a
shudder of long unknown joy in the widow's heart, a tear, a quiver of the lip,
then a smile — and the bargain was made.
I was grasping her hand and saying " adios!" she was asking the Virgin
to give me "a thousand years," when Salazar said :
" No, no ! it is not yet adios. This basin and bargain must be certified to
by the Ayuntamiento in a document stamped with the seal of the pueblo, and
setting forth that here in La Mancha itself was bought this barber's basin."
" Seguro!" replied the woman, who flung over her head a tattered black
shawl, tossing the end over her left shoulder. We all walked, Salazar and I
leading our beasts, to the door of the Alcalderia.
The group of loungers who sat around the whitewashed wall of the cham-
ber of the Ayuntamiento showed no interest in our arrival. To our story the
secretary himself listened with official indifference, sipped his morning cof-
fee, only occasionally asking a question of idle curiosity, or offering objec-
tion to the execution of so trivial a document.
" Eidiculous ! " he exclaimed ; " the authorities of Spain have not pro-
vided in the Codex for such jesting. What is all this for?*' <
" Sefior Secretario," I replied, "I have conceived this innocent little ca-
price of legalizing my purchase of the basin, to gratify a certain Don Horacio,
known in America as the Bachelor of San Francisco, a gentleman whose
fine literary taste has led him to venerate your great Cervantes, and whose
knightly sentiments have made him the intimate friend of Don Quixote."
" But," said the secretary, " no contract of sale with a minor for vendor
can be legalized by me. The Codex provides " — He was going on to ex-
plain what the Codex did provide, when Salazar, who knew more about the
legal practice of provincial Spain than the Codex itself, stepped forward,
passed behind the august judicial table, and made some communication in a
whisper, which was not quite loud enough to drown a curious metallic clink,
as of coins in collision.
Thus softened, the cold eye of the secretary warmed perceptibly, and he
resumed : " As I was about to say when my friend here offered me a — a —
cigarette, the Codex does not in terms recognize the right of an infant to
vend, transfer, give over, or relinquish real or personal property ; but on re-
flection, in a case like this, I shall not hesitate to celebrate the act of sale."
A servant was despatched for some strong paper, and the softened magis-
trate fell into general conversation.
'•' You have had a great Avar in your country."
'"Yes," I replied, "very destructive, very exhausting ; but, thank God,
North and South are now beginning to be friends again."
'•' Are you of the North or of the South ?"
1861-88] CLARENCE KING. 205
"The North."
' ' Do you not find it very trying to have those Chilians in your Lima,
seilor?"
Weeks before this I had given up trying to stretch the Spanish conception
of America to include a country north of Mexico, for the land of Cortes is the
limit of imagination in that direction ;. so I helplessly assented. Yes, it was
trying.
The boy returned with the paper ; ink-horns and pens were successfully
searched for, and the document was executed and sealed.
Salazar and I withdrew after saluting the upright official, mounted our
beasts, received the soft benediction of the smiling widow, and pricked for-
ward down a narrow way which led to the open plain. We were descending
a gentle slope on the outskirts of the pueblo when we were overtaken by the
secretary's servant, who charged down upon us, his donkey nearly upsetting
mine in the collision.
Like a wizard in a show, he drew from under his jacket an incredibly bright
and brand-new barbers basin.
" The secretary, " he said, " remembered, just after you had gone, that the
old Duchess of Molino had deposited with him, as security for a large loan,
this basin, which is proved to have been the authentic and only one from
which Cervantes was shaved every day while prisoner at Argamosillo. The
secretary knew that you would like to see this valued relic, and to touch it
with your own hand. The duchess, seflor" (lowering his eyes and face), " is
in gloria. For ten duros you can have this undoubted memento ; and full
documents shall follow you to Madrid or Lima by the next mail."
" Hombre! " I replied, " do me the favor to present to the secretary my
most respectful compliments, and say that the supposed death of the duch-
ess is a curious mistake. The old lady is living in great luxury in Seville,
and her steward is already on the way to redeem her favorite relic."
The man, who saw the force of my pleasantry, laughed explosively, and
shamelessly offered me the basin at two duros and a half. We shook our
heads and rode away. Having gone a hundred yards, we heard a voice, and
looking back beheld the servant, who brandished aloft the basin and shouted :
"One duro ?" I answered " Xever," and we rode out upon the brown and
sunburnt plain.
Some sheep lay dozing, huddled in the shadow of a few stunted cork-
trees. Brown and dim as if clad in dusty leather, the Sierra Morena lay sleep-
ing in the warm light. Away up among the hazy summits were pencillings
of soft, cool color ; but we were too far away to discern the rocks and groves
where Don Quixote did his amorous penance.
After riding long and silently, Salazar addressed me :
" Seflor, this friend of yours, this Don Horacio, will he ever come to La
Mancha?"
" Quien sale 9 " I replied ; " but if he comes you will certainly know him
and love him as he is known and loved by his friend."
To the Bachelor of San Francisco. K.
206 FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE. [1861-88
francig tfi^er QBrotone*
BORN in South Halifax, Vt., 1843.
UNDER THE BLUE.
rpHE skies are low, the winds are slow, the woods are filled with Autumn glory;
-L The mists are still, on field and hill ; the brooklet sings its dream y story.
I careless rove through glen and grove; I dream by hill, and copse, and river;
Or in the shade by aspen made I watch the restless shadows quiver.
I lift my eyes to azure skies that shed their tinted glory o'er me;
While memories sweet around me fleet, as radiant as the scene before me.
For while I muse upon the hues of Autumn skies in splendor given,
Sweet thoughts arise of rare deep eyes whose blue is like the blue of heaven.
Bend low, fair skies ! Smile sweet, fair eyes ! from radiant skies rich hues are stream-
ing;
But in the blue of pure eyes true the radiance of my life is beaming.
O skies of blue! ye fade from view; faint grow the hues that o'er me quiver;
But the sure light of sweet eyes bright shines on forever and forever.
VANQUISHED.
NOT by the ball or brand
Sped by a mortal hand,
Not by the lightning stroke
When fiery tempests broke, —
Not mid the ranks of war
Fell the great Conqueror.
Unmoved, undismayed,
In the crash and carnage of the cannonade, —
Eye that dimmed not, hand that failed not,
Brain that swerved not, heart that quailed not,
Steel nerve, iron form, —
The dauntless spirit that o'erruled the storm.
While the Hero peaceful slept
A foeman to his chamber crept,
Lightly to the slumberer came,
Touched his brow and breathed his name:
O'er the stricken form there passed
Suddenly an icy blast.
1861-88] HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON. 207
The Hero woke : rose undismayed :
Saluted Death, and sheathed his blade.
v.
The Conqueror of a hundred fields
To a mightier Conqueror yields;
No mortal foeman's blow
Laid the great Soldier low:
Victor in his latest breath —
Vanquished but by Death.
&ctt&rtcfe
BORN in Hamilton, Madison Co., N. Y., 1843.
"WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?"
[The Meaning of Song. The North American Review. 1884.]
M^HEKE is a thrice familiar and yet half -forgotten song which illustrates
-L in an odd way the power of association against that of language, if not
of melody. It is " When Shall We Three Meet Again ?" It is known that
Samuel Weobe, a celebrated composer, born in London in 1740, wrote the
music ; but the words have been claimed for our country through two col-
lege traditions. One attributes them to a member of the first company of
young men who devoted themselves to foreign missions, and so links them
with the famous hay-stack of Williams College. Another speaks of them
confidently as the work of an Indian, an early graduate of Dartmouth. In
proof of the latter theory the following stanza is quoted :
" When around this youthful pine
Moss shall creep and ivy twine ;
When these burnished locks are gray
Thinned by many a toil-spent day;
May this long-loved bower remain,
Here may we three meet again."
The apparent allusion to the old pine at Dartmouth, and the word "bur-
nished," so descriptive of an Indian's hair, constitute an argument. An old
resident of N"ew Hampshire told me that his sister and he learned the song
from hearings t sung in his mother's house by an Indian graduate of the class
of 1840. In an old English collection the lyric appears without the quoted
stanza. It is there attributed to "a lady." I judge it to be English, per-
haps written by the wife of a missionary. It was so appropriately sung by the
first foreign missionaries in this country that it might easily be attributed to
one of them. That was about 1810, when Dartmouth College was still
208 SAMUEL WILLOUQHBT DUFFIELD. [1861-88
known as Moor's Indian School. An Indian graduate, I conjecture, wrote
for the graduating exercises, perhaps the tree-planting of his class, the stanza
given above, which, although good for an Indian, is as much out of place in
the lyric as a bit of wampum would be in a pearl necklace. I like to recall
the beautiful original verses without the poor stanza :
" When shall we three meet again ?
When shall we three meet again ?
Oft shall glowing hope expire,
Oft shall wearied lave retire,
Oft shall death and sorrow reign,
Ere we three shall meet again.
" Though in distant lands we sigh,
Parched beneath the burning sky;
Though the deep between us rolls,
Friendship shall unite our souls.
Still in fancy's rich domain
Oft shall we three meet again.
" When the dreams of life are fled,
When its wasted lamp is dead;
When in cold oblivion's shade
Beauty, wealth, and power are laid 5
Where immortal spirits reign,
There shall we three meet again."
If words could keep a song upon the lip, would not this one be often heard ?
If association were not as powerful as melody, would not the Indian stanza
have been rejected ?
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y., 1843. DIED at Bloomfleld, N. 3., 1887.
THE GREAT HYMN OF ABELARD.
[Letter to The New- York Tribune. 1883.]
ryiHAT hymn — " 0 quanta qualiasunt ilia Sabbata " — has a romantic his-
-L tory. For its true text and its proper order of stanzas it is necessary
to consult the immense compilation which passes under the name of J.
P. Migne — volume 178 of the "Patrilogiae Cursus Completus." It is the
"XXVIII. Ad Vesperas" of the ninety-three hymns written by the unfor-
tunate Abelard for the Abbey of the Paraclete, to be sung theA by the sweet
voices of Heloise and her nuns. For many years these hymns were utterly
lost, except as they were to be detected floating around anonymously, and
ascribed to an earlier or later date. We now know that they must have been
written about the year 1150, and that this present splendid lyric was there-
fore not " of the thirteenth century" at all
1861-88] SAMUEL WILLOUGHBT DUFFIELD. 209
And now for the romance of the hymn itself. "When the French occupied
Belgium these ninety-three hymns were tucked safely away in the Royal
Library at Brussels "in codice quincunciali" — probably a box about five
inches high. Other manuscripts were with them and they were transported
to Paris untouched and unopened, and so remained during the days of Na-
poleon Bonaparte. When his empire fell the box went back to Belgium.
Upon it were the seals of the French Republic and the French Empire and
the stamp of the Royal Library at Brussels. One day a rummaging German
student named Oehler chanced to investigate the "codex" and found in it a
"libellus" — which libellus, a little book, contained the lost hymns of Abe-
lard. These are in three series and are arranged for all the religious hours
and principal festivals of the church, and their authorship is undoubted.
Oehler published eight of them at once, and, having described the rest, Mons.
Cousins, hearing of it, bought a full transcript "at a fair price" from the
discoverer.
But this was not all. A certain Emile Gachet, a Belgian, also happened
to hit on the " codex," and unearthed the companion to the "libellus " in an
epistle of Abelard to Heloise. In this he tells her that he sends these hymns
of his own composition, and gives her the sketch, which she had requested,
of the origin of Latin hymnology — dating it back to Hilary of Poictiers and
Ambrose of Milan. This of course sets the authorship of the " 0 quanta
qualia " beyond the shadow of a question. So that this hymn has the pathet-
ic interest of having been composed by the most brilliant and unhappy man
of his age, at a time when he had been persecuted to the edge of despair and
had learned his hope of heaven from the horrors of earth. And whoever wills
may read this touching story in Morison's " Life and Times of St. Bernard."
I venture, then, to offer another translation of this fine hymn, following the
true order of the stanzas and keeping as closely as possible to the original text
and metre.
AT VESPERS.
OWHAT shall be, O when shall be, that holy Sabbath day,
Which heavenly care shall ever keep and celebrate alway,
When rest is found for weary limbs, when labor hath reward,
When everything, f orevermore, is joyful in the Lord ?
The true Jerusalem above, the holy town, is there,
Whose duties are so full of joy, whose joy so free from care;
Where disappointment cometh not to check the longing heart,
And where the heart, in ecstasy, hath gained her better part.
O glorious King, O happy state, O palace of the blest !
O sacred place and holy joy, and perfect, heavenly rest!
To thee aspire thy citizens in glory's bright array,
And what they feel and what they know they strive in vain to say.
VOL. x.— 14
210 EHRMAN SYME NADAL. [1861-88
For while we wait and long for home, it shall be ours to raise
Our songs and chants and vows and prayers in that dear country's praise;
And from these Babylonian streams to lift our weary eyes,
And view the city that we love descending from the s-kies.
There, there, secure from every ill, in freedom we shall sing
The songs of Zion, hindered here by days of suffering,
And unto Thee, our gracious Lord, our praises shall confess
That all our sorrow hath been good, and Thou by pain canst bless.
There Sabbath day to Sabbath day sheds on a ceaseless light,
Eternal pleasure of the saints who keep that Sabbath bright;
Nor shall the chant ineffable decline, nor ever cease,
Which we with all the angels sing in that sweet realm of peace.
carman ^>ymt J3aDal*
BORN in Lewisburg, W. Va,, 1843.
THACKERAY'S RELATION TO ENGLISH SOCIETY.
[Essays at Home and Elsewhere. 1882.]
IT is apparent to the readers of Thackeray that the mind of that great
writer was, in some respects, a turbid and a confused one. This confu-
sion was due to his sensitiveness and to his having certain qualities which I
shall refer to further on ; but it was especially due to his having, in a high
degree, two traits which are inconsistent and difficult to reconcile — a love of
the world and a love of that simple and original life of man cared for by the
poet. A worldly man is a simple character. A poet or philosopher is com-
paratively a simple character. Each of these may pursue a contented and
simple existence. But confusion and discontent begin when the interest is
divided between the world and those things which poets care for. If irreso-
lution and the inability to decide what one wants are added to this character,
the mind is taken up with a dialogue of thoughts, which, like the combat
of principles in the Manichean theology, may go on forever. This was
Thackeray's state of mind. He discovered daily the vanity of mundane
matters, but the discovery had nevertheless to be made the day after. He
was born a poet and a humorist. His eyes were fixed on the original human
nature so strongly that it would have been impossible for him to withdraw
them. He could not cease to be a poet ; but he could not forget the world.
He believed in the world, and bestowed a reluctant but inevitable worship
upon it. He had also a desire for position in it which he was unable to put
aside. But I doubt if anybody with a mind like his, and living as he did,
could have put it aside. People do not usually overcome a deep-seated dis-
position by an effort of the will, but by putting themselves in circumstances
amidst which they may forget it. The thing is then out of sight, and is.
1861-88] EHEMAN STME NADAL. 211
therefore, out of mind. But Thackeray lived amidst just those circumstances
in which it was most difficult to avert his mind from social ambition and pride
of position. In Switzerland he might have forgotten it ; but he could not
forget it in Pall Mall ; and Pall Mall was his proper place. His character was
strongly social. Society and human beings had educated him, and he lived
upon them. There was nothing for him, therefore, but to get on as best he
could with the people among whom his lot fell.
The nature of that society is, perhaps, the most egotistical in the world.
No other society so compels its constituents to be egotists, to be thinking con-
tinually upon the subject of their own consequence. Thackeray's lot was,
therefore, cast in a society the tendency of which was to educate rather than
to allay his egotism, to excite to the highest degree his social pride. Doubt-
less, in some societies the mere fact of having written great works would give
a man a social position sufficiently high to satisfy any ambition.' Such is the
case in America, and such is said to be the case in France ; but such is not
the case in England. Thackeray was aware that no matter what works he
wrote he could never be the equal of many people whom he was in the habit
of seeing. He knew that though he spoke with the tongue of men and of
angels, though he had the gift of prophecy and understood all mysteries and
all knowledge, though he could remove mountains, and though he gave his
body to be burned, he could never be as good as the eldest son of a great peer.
He might indeed have gone apart and lived among artists and other people
of his own sort, whose society he said, and no doubt truly, that he preferred
to any other. He might have given himself up to admiring the virtues and
graces of people who make no figure in the world. But then he would have
had to write himself down as one of the excluded, and this he would not have
been able to do. As he could not obtain social position by writing great
works, he was compelled to supplement his literary success by the pursuit of
society.
It is easy to see that such a man as Thackeray, in making an object of get-
ting on in society, would be at a disadvantage, as compared with others in
the same line. See the way in which your entirely and simply worldly man
goes to work. Such pride as he has he is able to put in his pocket. He never
falls in love with any but the right people. He is betrayed into no sudden
movements of the heart or fancy — supposing him to be capable of such — with
obscure or doubtful persons. He wastes no words on people who cannot help
him on the way. " This one thing I do," he says, and, like most people who
have one object, usually reaches it. Thackeray, on the contrary, saw and
could not help caring for the souls of people. He liked the good, the sim-
ple, the honest, the affectionate. It is evident, therefore, in this business,
Thackeray had too much to carry. The result was confusion and unrest.
Yet he was never able to let it alone. Not only did he follow it in the com-
mon way, but we find him ready at any time to give himself up to some office
or appointment, the possession of which will, in his own notion, make him
more respectable. Thus, he wanted tc be Secretary of Legation at Washing-
ton. He would have been of no use in such a place. Why did he want it ?
Perhaps he remembered that Addison and Prior were diplomatists, and was
212 EHRMAN SYME NADAL. [1861-88
ready to choose a profession with the instincts of a fancier of old china. But
the real reason was this : there, no doubt, seemed to him a particular decency
in the occupation of a diplomats which he wished to transfer to and unite
with himself. Every man, of course, may choose what objects he shall pur-
sue, and Thackeray had, perhaps, at this time done enough to earn the right
to be idle. But then he had what so few have — a real task to perform. He
had an unmistakable employment cut out for him by his own genius, and
prepared for him by the age ; his head was full of great works which he
wished to write ; he wanted money, and he could make more money by writ-
ing these works than by doing anything else. At the time of which we are
speaking, he had only ten more years of life, though, of course, he did not
know this. Yet he was willing to stop his own proper business, his " Work
with a big W," as he would have called it, to go to playing with sealing-wax ;
for the consciousness of belonging to a profession, which in his eyes appears
to have worn an air of peculiar respectability, he was ready to step down
from one of the highest literary thrones of the day that he might accept a
position in which he should copy the words of masters at home who were
scarcely conscious of him, and take lessons of juniors, who regarded him as
an interloper and a good-for-nothing.
It was because Thackeray so desired the respect of others, was so anxious
for the social consideration of the people he was meeting, that he thought so
much about snobs and snobbishness. Shakspeare says that the courtier has
a "melancholy, which is proud." By this we understand that the courtier's
mind is apt to be busy with the question of the favor in which he is held by
the great personages with whom he lives, and of the consideration which he
enjoys in that society which constitutes their entourage. This melancholy
is not by any means confined to courts or courtiers. It was the "courtiers
melancholy" which Thackeray had. He was a sensitive man. It was, in
general, his habit to take the world hard, and it was especially natural to him
to suffer strongly from the unfriendly sentiments of others toward himself.
He looked at the snobbish mind so closely and with such interest, because
that mind had been directed upon himself. He examined it as a private sol-
dier examines the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was the quickness of his sensibility to
disrespect or unkindness — it was his keenly sympathetic consciousness of
the hostile feelings of people toward himself — which awakened him to such
energetic perception of the snobbish moods. It was this which caused him
to look with such power upon a snob. During his fifty years of life he had
conned a vast number of snobbish thoughts, and must have accumulated a
great quantity of snob-lore. No doubt, he thought too much about snobs.
The late Mr. Bagehot said that Thackeray judged snobbishness too harshly.
Mr. Bagehot went on to say that it is only to be expected that people should
wish to rise in society ; that it is no such great sin to admire and court the
successful, and to neglect the unsuccessful. It was Mr. Bagehot's mistake to
suppose the thoughts of one society to be those of the world, to take as uni-
versal a sentiment which, in the degree in which he knew it, was merely Brit-
ish. Certainly no other people in the world think so much about conse-
quence as the English. Egotism in that country is made into a science. The
1861-88] EHRMAN SYME NADAL. 213
subtlety which the subject is capable of in the hands of clever or even of
stupid persons is surprising ; for a large part of the community it would '
seem to constitute a liberal education. 1
I may here add that Thackeray was very much alive to the feelings toward
himself of those who looked at him as a man rather than as a member of so-
ciety. Much as Thackeray wished to be considered, he wished even more to
be liked. He did not care very much to be admired ; he had little vanity,
and he liked kindness better than anything else in the world. He suffered
keenly from the unfriendly thoughts of others concerning himself, and, one
might fancy, half believed them. We might hazard the guess that he was
one upon whom opinions, especially if they concerned himself or his affairs,
had a great effect. His doubting temper disposed him to disbelieve his own
opinions, no matter with what pains and care he might have formed them.
The opinion of another, on the contrary, was a fact ; it was, at any rate, a
fact that the opinion had been expressed. Thus, he gave to the lightest
breath of another the superstitious attention which an enlightened and scep-
tical heathen might have yielded to an oracle in which he was still half ready
to believe. He had no large share of that just and right self-esteem which
Milton teaches.
LANDSCAPE, WITH FIGURES.
[Notes of a Professional Exile.— The Century Magazine. 1885-87.]
SHE was the daughter of a Quaker family whose farm-house overlooks
Long Island Sound. They see at noon the cheerful blue of its glitter-
ing wave and the white rim of the distant shore. She was extremely pretty.
She talked incessantly. But it did not seem like talking ; conversation, or
rather monologue, was her normal state of existence. It was only another
sort of silence. I say that she was a Quaker. As a matter of fact I believe
that her family had separated from the Quaker faith, but she was sufficiently
near the Quaker character and mode of life. Her eloquence must have been
derived from generations of preachers of that denomination. Her language,
although truthful, was full and fluent. She read you with introvertive eye
from the tablets of her mind numbers of thoughts, which seemed to my be-
witched ears beautiful and original, upon poetry, art, books, people, etc.
She repeated these in a voice the most charming I have ever listened to ; po-
etical quotations sounded so very fine when she uttered them, as she did now
and then, in her simple way. She even imparted a certain natural magic to
the flinty metres of that pedant W . She admired widely, and you yourself
came in for a share of the lively interest with which she regarded creation.
The air of wonder with which she listened to what you said excited your self-
love to the highest pitch. I visited their farm-house twice. I remember an
orchard near at hand which stretched along the crest of a broken hill. I saw
this once when the spring had sent a quick wave of bright verdure over the
sod cropped short by the cows. The orchard was cut into three or four small
214 EHRMAN SYME NADAL. [1861-88
patches, but there was a break in each of the separating fences, so that from
room to room you could walk the orchard floors. I went again later, one hot
midsummer morning, when our path led to a wood through a blazing wheat-
field, in which I stopped to pull a branch of wild roses. We came soon to a
deep break on an abrupt hill-side, where, shut in by masses of dense and
brilliantly painted greenery, moving incessantly with the forest zephyrs, and
not far from a white dog-wood tree, we rested from the heat. I began to cut
away the thorns from the branch of wild roses, an action which I was half
conscious was mistaken. I had better have let her prick her fingers, for she
said : "You can't care for wild roses if you cut away the thorns."
Another recollection I have — of walking along a country road-side in that
twilight which is almost dark. The daughter of the Quakers wore a blue silk
cape with long fringes. She was talking her "thees"and "thous" to a half-
grown lad, her cousin, as if she were no better than other women. The tall
white daisies, thickly sown by the road-side, wheeled and swam in ghostly
silence. It seemed that the slight figure that stepped briskly before me had
a cosmic might and force residing among and descended from those stars and
planets which had begun to strew the black heavens.
The family to which this girl belonged seemed to me to be people who prac-
tised a very high order of civilization. She was the most obedient and duti-
ful of daughters ; but for all that she seemed to dominate the whole connec-
tion, and the landscape too, I should say. Her liberty was so a part of herself
that I could not imagine her without it
There are some hills, mountains you might call them, to the west of this
German town. Sometimes I walk in their direction about sundown, at which
time their sides wear some fine colors. These mountains, a broad and well-
cultivated plain, a flock of sheep met on the roadway, a few solitary kine
driven by peasants, and here and there a little hamlet with its tinkling bel-
fry, and a sweet and ample light over the whole, make up an agreeable view.
I like the scenery about here better than most European scenery, far better
than the pampered and petty scenery of England. But I miss everywhere I
have been on this continent the sentient energy of nature in America, the
dexterous and pliant mind which I saw in that country as a boy, and which
I find again as often as I return there, the dazzling sword-play with which
that invincible soul rains upon the underlying evening world the pride of its
transcendent life. It is one of my regrets that my life has been passed away
from that nature.
I say that what I saw in American scenery as a boy I find again whenever
I return to it. During a short visit home a few summers ago I went to spend
the night with some friends who live near West Point. It was upon a day
such as is common in our semi-tropical summers. I had taken a late after-
noon train from New York, and on arriving had but ten minutes in which to
dress for dinner. My host had given me a room facing to the south. There
was an airy and graceful combination of hills in view. I had little leisure
to look out, but could see them as they ran upward in purple waves and filled
the sky with their irresolute azure pathway ; there lived among them a bird-
1861-88] LAURENCE BUTTON. 216
like flight of outline, which soared, but did not depart, which, although in-
finitely evanescent, did not vanish, but remained. This scene, lying in the
benign splendors of the golden South, and fraught with the fairest tropic
color, bloomed beyond my open window.
A business errand took me northward along the Housatonic. The train
follows for hours the line of the mountains, which run northward in waves,
broken at long intervals, as if swept upward by the winds. I found those
mountains as I had known them before. I saw them from the car- window,
pondering in their lucent bosoms memories pure, vast, sedate, profound, in
unison with the dewy stars and the streams that rest for a moment in the
midst of the meadows, and seem to say, " We also remember."
Laurence Button,
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1848.
MASTER BETTY.
[Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States. Edited by Brander
Matthews and Laurence Hutton. 1886.]
f MHE exact position of the Infant Phenomena on the stage it is not easy to
-L determine. They occupy, perhaps, the neutral ground between the
monstrosity and the amateur, without belonging to either class, or to art.
As being professional, though in embryo, they cannot share exemption
from the severe tests of criticism with those who only play at being play-
ers ; and as being human, though undeveloped, they cannot be judged as
leniently as are the educated pigs or trained monkeys, from whom some dis-
ciples of Darwin might claim them to have been evolved.
In no case is the Phenomenon to be emulated, to be encouraged, or to be
admired. How great a nuisance the average prodigy is to his audiences all
habitual theatre-goers know ; how much of a nuisance he is to his fellow-
players Nicholas Nickleby has shown ; and what a bitter burden he is likely
to become to himself, his own experiences, if he lives to have experiences, will
certainly prove. Loved by the gods — of the gallery — the Phenomenon, hap-
pily for himself and for his profession, as a rule, dies young. He does not
educate the masses, he does not advance art, he does nothing which it is the
high aim of the legitimate actor to do ; he does not even amuse ; he merely
displays precocity that is likely to sap his very life ; he probably supports a
family at an age when he needs all the support and protection that can be
given him, and if he does not meet a premature death, he rarely, very rare-
ly, fulfils in any way the promise of his youth.
A decided distinction, however, should be made between the phenomenal
young actor or actress who walks upon the stage in leading parts — a child
Richard, o'r an infant Richmond — and the youthful member of the company,
216 LAURENCE BUTTON. [1861-88
born of dramatic people, who, never attempting what is beyond his years or
his stature, plays Young York or Young Clarence to support his father in
leading roles, says his few lines, gets his little round of applause, is not no-
ticed by the critics, and goes home, like a good boy, to his mother and his
bed. It is as natural for the child of an actor to go upon the stage as it is
for the son of a sailor to follow the sea. But while the young mariner, put
before the mast, is taught the rudiments of his profession by the hardest
and roughest of experiences, the Young Eoscius is given command of the
dramatic ship before he can box the dramatic compass, or tell the difference
in the nautical drama between " Black-Eyed Susan" and the " Tempest."
William Henry West Betty, the most remarkable and successful of Phe-
nomena, was also one of the most melancholy and ridiculous figures in the
whole history of the stage. He was not so much absurd in himself as the
cause of extravagant imbecility in others. He was born at, or near, Shrews-
bury, on September 13, 1791. The following year he was carried to the north
of Ireland, and in the summer of 1802 was taken to see Mrs. Siddons play
1 ' Elvira/' at Belfast. With the performance and the performer he became
"rapt and inspired," and possessed with that passion for the stage which
nothing but cruel failure, or death, has ever been known to extinguish in
child or man. On August 16 in the following year he was permitted by his
father to appear in public at the Belfast Theatre, choosing the character of
Osman in the tragedy of " Zara." He exhibited not the slightest sign of fear
or embarrassment, and although only eleven years of age went through his
part without confusion or mistake. The applause was tumultuous and long
continued ; and thus suddenly arose the star which was destined to outshine
every other planet in the firmament, until it was as suddenly eclipsed for-
ever, by the shadow of its own mature mediocrity. On November 28 Betty
made his first appearance in Dublin, at the Crow Street Theatre, as Young
Norval. He was carried triumphantly to Cork, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bir-
mingham, Liverpool, and Manchester ; and on December 1, 1804, in the
character of Selim in " Barbarossa," at Drury Lane, and at a salary of £50
a night, he set all London mad.
The excitement he created has only been equalled by the craze over the
South Sea Bubble. Hundreds gathered under the piazza as early as ten
o'clock in the mornings; Avhen the theatre doors were opened the crush was
so great that women, and even men, were killed by the crowd ; the silence
when he was on the stage was so deep and the interest so intense that his
slightest whisper could be heard in every part of the house ; the First Gen-
tleman in Europe led the applause; the receipts at the box-office were con-
sidered fabulous ; his own fortune was made in a single season ; lords and
ladies and peers of the realm were among his worshippers ; royal dukes
were proud to call him friend ; George the Third and his Queen gave him
an audience; Mr. Home, the author of "Douglas," declared him a wonder-
ful being who for the first time had realized the creator's conception of
Young Norval; he was considered greater than Garrick in Garrick's own
parts ; John Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, Cooke, and Kean played
to empty benches when at the rival house ; bulletins were issued, when he
1861-88] LAURENCE BUTTON. 217
was ill, stating the condition of his health ; the University of Cambridge se-
lected him as the subject of a prize ode; and Parliament itself adjourned,
on motion of Mr. Pitt, to see him play Hamlet, at Drury Lane; than which
no higher compliment could have been paid by England to mortal man.
Betty played alternately at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, his salary
after the first performance being raised to £100 a night. And the gross re-
ceipts for twenty-eight nights were £17,210.11 (about $86,000). His parts,
during his infancy, ware Norval, Hamlet, Borneo, Frederic (in "Lover's
Vows "), Octavian (in the " Mountaineers "), Holla, Tancred, Richard III.,
Osman (in "Zara"), and Selim ; and some idea of the intelligence of the ba-
by who was " Cooke, Xemble, Holman, G-arrick, all in one," may be gathered
from the fact that he studied and learned and played the part of Hamlet in
four days ! London recovered from its madness before the beginning of Bet-
ty's second season; the provinces, growing saner by degrees, were not cured
for two or three years. He retired from the stage at Bath, March 26, 1808,
at the age of seventeen ; and was entered a Fellow-Commoner at Christ's
College, Cambridge, in the summer of the same year. In the month of Feb-
ruary, 1812, Betty reappeared upon the boards at Bath, as the Earl of Es-
sex ; he played occasionally in London, more frequently in the provinces,
but with indifferent success, and August 9, 1824, at Southampton he finally
quit the stage. That he was a commonplace actor during the twelve years
of his professional life as a man, there seems to be no question. He died in
London on August 24, 1874, after having outlived himself for half a cen-
tury, and his own fame for seventy years.
FROM UNCOLLECTED ESSAYS,
THE AMERICAN PLAY.
rpHE American play is yet to be written. Such is the unanimous verdict
-L of the guild of dramatic critics of America, the gentlemen whom Mr.
Phoebus, in " Lothair," would describe as having failed to write the Ameri-
can play themselves. Unanimity among critics of any kind is remarkable,
but in this instance the critics probably are right. In all of its forms, except
the dramatic, we have a literature which is American, distinctive, and a
credit to us. The histories of Motley and of Prescott are standard works
throughout the literary world. Washington Irving and Hawthorne are as
well known to all English readers and are as dearly loved as are Thackeray
and Charles Lamb. Poems like Longfellow's "Hiawatha," Whittier's
" Snow-Bound," Lowell's "The Courtin'," and Bret Harte's "Cicely," be-
long as decidedly to America as do Gray's " Elegy " to England, " The Cot-
ter's Saturday Night "to Scotland, or the songs of the Minnesingers to the
German Fatherland, and they are perhaps to be as enduring as any of these.
Mr. Lowell, Mr. Emerson, and Prof. John Fiske are essayists and philoso-
phers who reason as well and as clearly and with as much originality as do
218 LAURENCE BUTTON. [1861-88
any of the sages of other lands. In our negro melodies we have a national
music that has charms to soothe the savage and the civilized breast in both
hemispheres. American humor and American humorists are so peculiarly
American that they are sui generis, and belong to a distinct school of their
own; while in fiction Cooper's Indian novels, Holmes's "Elsie Venner,"
Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folk," Howells's " Silas Lapham," and Cable's " Old
Creole Days/' are purely characteristic of the land in which they were writ-
ten and of the people and manners and customs of which they treat, and are
as charming in their way as are any of the romances of the Old World. Free-
ly acknowledging all this, the dramatic critics still are unable to explain
the absence of anything like a standard American drama and the non-exist-
ence of a single immortal American play.
THE MOTHER IN FICTION.
The father, the uncle, even the mother-in-law or the step-mother, plays
an important part in fiction ; but the mother, if she is introduced at all, is
always an uncomfortable figure, is always in the way. Can any student of
human nature explain this ? " No love like mother's love ever was known/'
— so sings the ballad-monger, though in many keys and in many ways ; but in
love stories every love but mother's love is sung, and sung and sung again.
The practical Scotch lassie said not long after her marriage : "A man's a man,
ye ken ! but he's no' a body's mither ! " Put the practical Scotch lassie into
a novel, and see how quickly and how completely she forgets and forsakes
her mither, and cleaves to her man. The mothers who ran to catch us when
we fell were not common even in the literature of our childhood. "The
English Orphans" certainly were motherless. Robinson Crusoe's mother
was rarely, if ever, in his thoughts. Friday found his father, but does not
seem to have asked for his mother. There were no mothers in " Sandford
and Merton," in "The Boy Hunters," or in " The Wide, Wide World"!
Mother Goose was a mother only to other people's children ; Mother Hub-
bard's only child, seems to have been her dog ; and the old lady who lived
in the shoe went so far to the other extreme that her children were greater
in number than she could properly bring up. . . . From Richardson
to Henry James, Jr., the novel has been little more than a half orphan
asylum. Who can tell why? Who will give us a Becky Sharp who is not
forced to become her own mamma ; or a Jenny Wren who is not only her
own mother, but her father's mother too ? Why have all the Pips been
brought up by hand ; why have all the Topsys growed ?
1861-88] CHARLES WARREN 8TODDARD. 219
barren
BORN in Kocliester, N. Y., 1843.
THE SURF-SWIMMER.
[South-Sea Idyls. 1873.]
WE found the floor of the valley very solemn and very lovely, when we
at last got down into it. Three youngsters, as brown as berries,
and without any leaves upon them, broke loose from a banana-orchard and
leaped into a low hou-tree as we approached. They were a little shy of my
color, pale-faces being rare in that vicinity. Two women who were washing
at the ford — and washing the very garments they should have had upon their
backs — discovered us, and plunged into the stream with a refreshing splash,
and a laugh apiece that was worth hearing, it was so genuine and hearty.
Another youngster hurried off from a stone-wall like a startled lizard, and
struck on his head, but didn't cry much, for he was too frightened. A large
woman lay at full length on a broad mat, spread under a pandanus, and slept
like a turtle. I began to think there were nothing but women and children in
the solitary valley, but Kahele had kept an eye on the reef, and, with an air
of superior intelligence, he assured me that there were many men living
about there, and they, with most of the women and children, were then out
in the surf, fishing.
" To the beach, by all means ! " cried I ; and to the beach we hastened,
where, indeed, we found heaps of cast-off raiment, and a hundred footprints
in the sand. What would Mr. Robinson Crusoe have said to that, I wonder !
Across the level water, heads, hands, and shoulders, and sometimes half-
bodies, were floating about, like the amphibia. We were at once greeted with
a shout of welcome, which came faintly to us above the roar of the surf, as
it broke heavily on the reef, a half-mile out from shore. It was drawing
toward the hour when the fishers came to land, and we had not long to wait
before, one after another, they came out of the sea like so many mermen and
mermaids. They were refreshingly innocent of etiquette — at least, of our
translation of it; and, with a freedom that was amusing as well as a little
embarrassing, I was deliberately fingered, fondled, and fussed with by near-
ly every dusky soul in turn. " At last, " thought I, " fate has led me beyond
the pale of civilization; for this begins to look like the genuine article."
AVith uncommon slowness, the mermaids donned more or less of their ap-
parel, a few preferring to carry their robes over their arms ; for the air was
delicious, and ropes of sea-weed are accounted full dress in that delectable
latitude. Down on the sand the mermen heaped their scaly spoils— fish of
all shapes and sizes, fish of every color; some of them throwing somersaults
in the sand, like young athletes; some of them making wry faces, in their
last agony; some of them lying still and clammy, with big, round eyes like
smoked-pearl vest-buttons set in the middle of their cheeks; all of them
smelling fishlike, and none of them looking very tempting. Small boys laid
220 CHARLES WARREN 8TODDARD. [1861-88
hold on small fry, bit their heads off, and held the silver-coated morsels be-
tween their teeth, like animated sticks of candy. There was a Fridayisli
and Lent-like atmosphere hovering over the spot, and I turned away to
watch some youths who were riding surf-boards not far distant — agile,
narrow-hipped youths, with tremendous biceps and proud, impudent heads
set on broad shoulders, like young gods. These were the flower and chiv-
alry of the Meha blood, and they swam like young porpoises, every one of
them.
Thare was a break in the reef before us ; the sea knew it, and seemed to
take special delight in rushing upon the shore as though it were about to
devour sand, savages, and everything. Kahele and I watched the surf -swim-
mers for some time, charmed with the spectacle. Such buoyancy of material
matter I had never dreamed of. Kahele, though much in the flesh, could
not long resist the temptation to exhibit his prowess, and having been of-
fered a surf -board that would have made a good lid to his coffin, and was it-
self as light as cork and as smooth as glass, suddenly threw off his last claim
to respectability, seized his sea-sled, and dived with it under the first roller
which was then about to break above his head, not three feet from him. Be-
yond it, a second roller reared its awful front, but he swam under that with
ease ; at the second of his " open sesame," its emerald gates parted and closed
after him. He seemed some triton playing with the elements, and dreadful-
ly " at home " in that very wet place. The third and mightiest of the waves
was gathering its strength for a charge upon the shore. Having reached its
outer ripple, again Kahele dived and reappeared on the other side of the
watery hill, balanced for a moment in the glassy hollow, turned suddenly,
and, mounting the towering monster, he lay at full lengthen his fragile raft,
using his arms as a bird its pinions— in fact, soaring for a moment with the
wave under him. As it rose, he climbed to the top of it, and there, in the
midst of foam seething like champagne, on the crest of a rushing sea-ava-
lanche about to crumble and dissolve beneath him, his surf -board hidden in
spume, on the very top bubble of all, Kahele danced like a shadow. He
leaped to his feet and swam in the air, another Mercury, tiptoeing a heaven-
kissing hill, buoyant as vapor, and with a suggestion of invisible wings about
him — Kahele transformed for a moment, and for a moment only; the next
second my daring sea-skater leaped ashore, with a howling breaker swashing
at his heels. It was something glorious and almost incredible.
ALBATROSS.
rpIME cannot age thy sinews, nor the gale
•*- Batter the network of thy feathered mail,
Lone sentry of the deep !
Among the crashing caverns of the storm,
With wing unfettered, lo! thy frigid form
Is whirled in dreamless sleep!
1861-88] CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. 221
Where shall thy wing find rest for all its might ?
Where shall thy lidless eye, that scours the night,
Grow blank in utter death ?
When shall thy thousand years have stripped thee bare,
Invulnerable spirit of the air,
And sealed thy giant-breath ? ^
Not till thy bosoin hugs the icy wave —
Not till thy palsied liinbs sink in that grave,
Caught by the shrieking blast,
And hurled upon the sea with broad wings locked,
On an eternity of waters rocked,
Defiant to the last!
THE COCOA-TREE.
/^AST on the water by a careless hand,
^-^ Day after day the winds persuaded me:
Onward I drifted till a coral tree
Stayed me among its branches, where the sand
Gathered about me, and I slowly grew,
Fed by the constant sun and the inconstant dew.
The sea-birds build their nests against my root,
And eye my slender body's homy case.
Widowed within this solitary place
Into the thankless sea I cast my fruit ;
Joyless I thrive, for no man may partake
Of all the store I bear and harvest for his sake.
No more I heed the kisses of the morn ;
The harsh winds rob me of the life they gave;
I watch my tattered shadow in the wave,
And hourly droop and nod my crest forlorn,
While all my fibres stiffen and grow numb
Beckoning the tardy ships, the ships that never come!
222 HARRIET WATERS PRESTON. [1861-88
garnet Waters pregtotu
BORN in Danvers, Mass.
RUSSIAN NOVELISTS.
[The Spell of the Russian Writers.— The Atlantic Monthly. 1887.]
TT is Dickens who, simultaneously with Gogol, marks the transition from
JL romanticism to realism in the literature of his own country. And not
Dickens himself, as it seems to me, begins his work in higher spirits, less
hampered by the behests of a "cold moral" or teased by the importunities of
any fundamental doubt. The temper of both men altered sadly as the
years went on. That of Gogol changed the earlier and more profoundly, by
just so much as he was more thorough in his practice of the new method;
more sincere and unreserved in his adoption of that principle of blank verac-
ity on which what we call realism must needs rest. No man retains into
mature life the spirits of his youth who does not also retain a certain number
of illusions. Dickens was the first of the present generation of English real-
ists, but he was never altogether a realist. He was romantic and rhetorical
to his dying day. Gogol is rhetorical too, sometimes, especially in those elo-
quent apostrophes to Russia which abound in the first volume of the "Ames
Mortes,"but he is never romantic/ He published, it is true, in his melan-
choly last years, after his writings had secured him many enemies, a number
of elaborate letters on thesubjectof the "Ames Mortes," in which he claimed
to have been actuated, from the first conception of the book, by a high phil-
anthropic purpose. I cannot quite believe it. He simply, as I think, under-
took to tell what he saw, and what he saw began by diverting and ended by
overpowering him. He was like those heroes in the old-fashioned fairy-tales
who, having dared to fix their eyes upon a magic mirror, saw the smooth
surface begin slowly to darken and to swirl, and grim depths open, and fierce
forms emerge, until the whole uncanny thing was thick with strife and
grewsome with all manner of horror. He had set himself dispassionately to
observe the social condition of rural Russia in the last years of serfdom.
There is no hint in all the "Ames Mortes" that he ever personally questioned
the righteousness of that "peculiar institution" of Russia, or seriously re-
garded the serf otherwise than as a piece of property. He seems hardly to
have troubled himself about the serf at all. It is what he sees of the effect
of slavery, and the semi-barbarism it implies, upon the master, which ends
by taking all the heart out of him.
DOSTOIEVSKY.
Turgueneff went away to a career of honor and emolument in a foreign
land, and yet he went away broken-hearted, and the fixed sentiment which
underlies all the wonderfully varied studies of Russian life which he subse-
1861-88] HARRIET WATERS PREtiTON. 223
quently made from a distance is one of despair. Turgueueff and Gogol are
the true Nihilists, though the latter never knew the name of his complaint,
and the former was bitterly accused of having trenched on Dostoievsky's
province, in assuming to discuss and illustrate it. With minds congenitally
clear of cant, they had plunged fearlessly — the elder even jauntily — into the
deep labyrinth of latter-day speculation ; but neither went far enough, be-
fore he died, to discern the faint spark of light at the extremity of the noi-
some cavern, or suspect the point of its ultimate issue.
For Nihilism, in its largest acceptation, that is to say the flat negation of
all faith and hope, whether in the social, political, or spiritual order, is not
a possible permanent attitude of the human mind. Whatever it may mean,
whether it be for our consolation or our delusion, the fact is so. The planet
must return from its eclipse, the soul from its nadir of universal denial. It
seems strange to think of Dostoievsky, the mouthpiece of the "humiliated
and offended," the master of horrors, as the prophet of such a return, and
yet I find him to have been so. He, more than any of the rest of these new
men and would-be teachers, has been unfortunate in the order in which his
productions have been given to the western world. It is hardly possible to
comprehend or even tolerate " Crime et Chatimeut " without having first read
the "Souvenirs de la Maison des Morts"; or fully to appreciate the latter
without knowing something of the personal history of the author. I must
also confess to having been myself beaten by '''Crime et Chatiment," when I
first attempted to read it. I began the book, and had not nerve enough to
finish it. But I did afterwards read the " Souvenirs "from beginning to end,
and this, which was really the earlier work, reconciled me to the later. It is
one long, dry chronicle of human misery, of which not a single distressing
or even revolting detail is spared the reader; but it is a chronicle of such
misery endured unto the end, and, before the end, surmounted by the might
of the inviolable human will.
TOLSTOI.
The rereading, or readjustment, of Christianity proposed by Count Leo
Tolstoi in'4 Ma Religion" has its fantastic features. It recalls the earliest pre-
sentation of that doctrine, at least in this: that it can hardly fail to prove a
"stumbling-block" to one half the well-instructed world, and an epitome of
"foolishness" to the other. It consists merely in a perfectly literal inter-
pretation of the fundamental precepts, resist not evil, be not angry, commit
no adultery, swear not, judge not. Even the qualifications which our Lord
himself is supposed to have admitted in the passage, " Whosoever is angry
with his brother without a cause," and in the one excepted case to the inter-
dict against divorce, our amateur theologian rejects as the glosses of uncan-
did commentators, or the concessions of an interested priesthood. He then
proceeds to show that the logical results of his own rigid interpretations, if
reduced to practice, would be something more than revolutionary. They
would involve the abolition of all personal and class distinctions; the efface-
ment of the bounds of empire ; the end alike of the farce of formally admin-
istered justice and of the violent monstrosity of war ; the annihilation of
224 HARRIET WATERS PRESTON. [1861-88
so much even of the sense of individuality as is implied in the expectation of
personal rewards and punishments, whether here or hereafter. For all this
he professes himself ready. The man of great possessions and transcendent
mental endowment, the practised magistrate, the trained soldier, the con-
summate artist, the whilom statesman, having found peace in the theoretic
acceptance of unadulterated Christian doctrine as he conceives it, offers
himself as an example of its perfect practicability.
" Ma Religion " was given to the world as the literary testament of the au-
thor of "Guerre et Paix" and "Anna Karenine." From the hour of the
date inscribed upon its final page — Moscow, February 22, 1884 — he disap-
peared from the scene of his immense achievements and the company of his
intellectual and social peers. He went away to his estates in Central Russia,
to test in his own person his theories of lowly-mindedness, passivity, and uni-
versal equality. He undertook to live henceforth with and like the poorest
of his own peasants, by the exercise of a humble handicraft.
Those who know him best say that he will inevitably return some day;
that this phase will pass, as so many others have passed with Tolstoi'; and
that we need by 110 means bemoan ourselves over the notion that he has said
hie last word at fifty-seven. Indeed, he seems to have foreshadowed such a
return in his treatment of the characters of Bezouchof and Lenine, with
both of whom we instinctively understand the author himself to be so close-
ly identified. We are bound, I think, to hope that Turgueneff's last prayer
may be granted ; those of us, at least, who are still worldly-minded enough to
lament the rarity of great talents in this last quarter of our century.
And yet, there is a secret demurrer ; there are counter-currents of sympa-
thy. A suspicion will now and then arise of something divinely irrational,
something — in all reverence be it said — remotely messianic, in the sacrifice
of this extraordinary man. The seigneur would become as a slave, the tow-
ering intelligence as folly, if by any means the sufferer may be consoled, the
needy assisted. Here, at any rate, is the consistency of the apostolic age.
And is it not true that when all is said, when we have uttered our impatient
protest against the unconditional surrender of the point of honor, and had
our laugh out, it may be, at the flagrant absurdity of any doctrine of non-
resistance, a quiet inner voice will sometimes make itself heard with inqui-
ries like these :
"Is there anything, after all, on which you yourself look back with less
satisfaction than your own self-permitted resentments, your attempted re-
prisals for distinctly unmerited personal wrong ? What is the feeling with
which you are wont to find yourself regarding all public military pageants
and spectacles of warlike preparation ? Is it not one of sickening disgust
at the ghastly folly, the impudent anachronism, of the whole thing?" In
Europe, at all events, the strain of the counter-preparations for mutual
destruction, the heaping of armaments on one side and the other, has been
carried to so preposterous and oppressive a pitch that even plain, practical
statesmen like Signor Bonghi, in Rome, are beginning seriously to discuss
the alternative of general disarmament, the elimination altogether of the ap-
peal to arms from the future international policy of the historic states.
1861-88]
MAURICE THOMPSON.
225
jttaurice
BORN in Fairfield, Ind., 1844.
THE DEATH OF THE WHITE HERON.
[Songs of Fair Weather. 1883.]
T PULLED my boat with even sweep
-•- Across light shoals and eddies deep,
Tracking the currents of the lake
From lettuce raft to weedy brake.
Across a pool death-still and dim
I saw a monster reptile swim,
And caught, far off and quickly gone,
The delicate outlines of a fawn.
Above the marshy islands flew
The green teal and the swift curlew ;
The rail and dunlin drew the hem
Of lily-bonnets over them ;
I saw the tufted wood-duck pass
Between the wisps of water-grass.
All round the gunwales and across
I draped my boat with Spanish moss,
And, lightly drawn from head to knee,
I hung gay air-plants over me ;
Then, lurking like a savage thing
Crouching for a treacherous spring,
I stood in motionless suspense
Among the rushes green and dense.
I kept my bow half-drawn, a shaft
Set straight across the velvet haft.
Alert and vigilant, I stood
Scanning the lake, the sky, the wood.
I heard a murmur soft and sad
From water-weed to lily-pad,
And from the frondous pine did ring
The hammer of the golden-wing.
On old drift-logs the bitterns stood
Dreaming above the silent flood ;
VOL. X.— 15
The water-turkey eyed my boat,
The hideous snake-bird coiled its throat,
And birds whose plumage shone like
flame —
Wild things grown suddenly, strangely
tame —
Lit near me ; but I heeded not :
They could not tempt me to a shot.
Grown tired at length, I bent the oars
By grassy brinks and shady shores,
Through labyrinths and mysteries
Mid dusky cypress stems and knees,
Until I reached a spot I knew,
Over which each day the herons flew.
I heard a whisper sweet and keen
Flow through the fringe of rushes green,
The water saying some light thing,
The rushes gayly answering.
The wind drew faintly from the south,
Like breath blown from a sleeper's mouth,
And down its current sailing low
Came a lone heron white as snow.
He cleft with grandly spreading wing
The hazy sunshine of the spring ;
Through graceful curves he swept above
The gloomy moss-hung cypress grove ;
Then gliding down a long incline,
He flashed his golden eyes on mine.
Half-turned he poised himself in air;
The prize was great, the mark was
fair!
I raised my bow, and steadily drew
The silken string until I knew
226
MAURICE THOMPSON.
[1861-88
My trusty arrow's barbed point
Lay on iny left forefinger joint —
Until I felt the feather seek
My ear, swift-drawn across my cheek :
Then from my fingers leapt the string
With sharp recoil and deadly ring,
Closed by a sibilant sound so shrill
It made the very water thrill, —
Like twenty serpents bound together,
Hissed the flying arrow's feather !
A thud, a puff, a feathery ring,
A quick collapse, a quivering —
A whirl, a headlong downward dash,
A heavy fall, a sullen plash,
Cypress Lake, Florida.
And like white foam, or giant flake
Of snow, he lay upon the lake !
And of his death the rail was glad,
Strutting upon a lily-pad ;
The jaunty wood-duck smiled and
bowed ;
The belted kingfisher laughed aloud,
Making the solemn bittern stir
Like a half-wakened slumberer;
And rasping notes of joy were heard
From gallinule and crying-bird,
The while with trebled noise did ring
The hammer of the golden-wing 1
THE BLUEBIRD.
"TTTHEN jce j8 thawed and snow is
vv
gone,
And racy sweetness floods the trees;
When snow-birds from the hedge have
flown,
And on the hive-porch swarm the
bees,
Drifting down the first warm wind
That thrills the earliest clays of spring,
The bluebird seeks our maple groves,
And charms them into tasselling.
He sits among the delicate sprays,
With mists of splendor round him
drawn,
And through the spring's prophetic veil
Sees summer's rich fulfilment dawn :
He sings, and his is nature's voice —
A gush of melody sincere
From that great fount of harmony
Which thaws and runs when spring is
here.
Short is his song, but strangely sweet
To ears aweary of the low,
Dull tramp of Winter's sullen feet,
Sandalled in ice and muffed in snow:
Short is his song, but through it runs
A hint of dithyrambs yet to be —
A sweet suggestiveness that has
The influence of prophecy.
From childhood I have nursed a faith
In bluebirds' songs and winds of spring :
They tell me, after frost and death
There comes a time of blossoming ;
And after snow and cutting sleet,
The cold, stern mood of Nature yields
To tender warmth, when bare pink feet
Of children press her greening fields.
Sing strong and clear, O bluebird dear!
While all the land with splendor fills,
While maples gladden in the vales
And plum-trees blossom on the hills :
Float down the wind on shining wings,
And do thy will by grove and stream,
While through my life spring's freshness
runs
Like music through a poet's dreaui.
1861-88] MAURICE THOMPSON. 227
THE MOTIF OP BIRD-SONG.
[Sylvan Secrets, in Bird-Songs and Books. 1887.]
A LL our birds use what we call their voices, just as we use ours, for the
-£-L purposes of expression generally, and I am convinced that bird-song
proper, though of tenest the expression of some phase of the tender passion,
is not confined to such expression. In a limited way birds have their lyric
and their dramatic moods, their serious and their comic songs, their recita-
tive and their oratorical methods. They are conscious of any especial superi-
ority of voice, just as they are keenly aware of any particular brilliancy of
colors on their plumage. It may be noticed, in passing, that here again the
birds and reptiles agree (many of the latter giving evidence of a taste for
bright colors), while below man no other animals show much more than mere
curiosity in this regard. A parrot having gay feathers in its wings and tail
will display them to please your eye in return for the favor of a nut or a
cracker, without ever having been taught to do it. It is conscious of the fact
that brilliant colors are acceptable to the eye, and it instinctively seeks to
thank you, so to say, by the delicate strut which uncovers all its hidden
wealth of red, yellow, and blue. So the sweetest sounds at its command are
instinctively flung out by the song-bird whenever it feels especially happy.
The migratory song-birds, upon their spring arrival, are (no doubt) delight-
ed at finding themselves once more in their breeding-haunts, and immedi-
ately they begin to give free vent to their feelings through their melodious
throats. It would be interesting to know whether or not they do the same
at the extreme southern end of their migration. I have noted that along
the gulf-coast of Mississippi and Louisiana the non-resident mocking-birds,
when they first come in from farther south, are noisily communicative of
their ecstatic pleasure. For a few days they make the groves ring with their
songs, then pass on farther north, many of them finally reaching Tennessee,
some going over the mountains to Kentucky, and a few touching with a
light spray of melody the southernmost knobs of Ohio and Indiana. I might
easily mass a large sum of facts going to show that no one desire or instinctive
emotion is the sole cause of bird-song. That the tender passion engenders
lyrical fervor and makes a feathered troubadour of the gay sylvan lover
there can be no doubt, but love is not always at the root of the lay. The
song-bird is a gourmand of the most pronounced type, and we find him going
into a rapture of sweet sounds over a feast of insects or fruit. He enjoys
bright colors, too, so that he is always hilarious when he finds himself in the
midst of green leaves and beautiful bloom-sprays. A haw-bush or wild apple-
tree in full flower often is the inspiration of the brown thrush and the cat-
bird. In a certain way, indeed, the birds are true poets, singing forth the in-
fluence of their environments — just as Burns sang his, just as Millet painted
his. I do not mean to be fanciful in this regard. Call it instinct, as it is,
and say that birds do not reason, which is true ; but add, nevertheless, the
indisputable fact that instinct is of kin to genius, in that it has its origin
(as genius has its) in the simplest and purest elements of nature, and so you
will get my meaning.
228 MAURICE THOMPSON. [1861-88
It is impossible to know, with any degree of certainty, how clear or how
dim may be the bird's conception of melody or of beauty ; but we can know
that its enjoyment of color and sweet sounds is most intense. The wood-
pecker, beating his unique call on a bit of hard, elastic wood, is making an
effort, blind and crude enough, but still an effort, to express a musical mood
vaguely floating in his nature. We may not laugh at him, so long as from
the interior of Africa explorers bring forth the hideous caricatures of music-
al instruments that some tribes of our own genus delight themselves withal.
Among the Southern negroes it was once common to see a dancer going
through an intricate terpsichorean score to the music of a " pat," which was
a rhythmical hand-clapping performed by a companion. I mention this in
connection with the suggestion that the chief difference between the high-
est order of bird-music and the lowest order of man-music is expressed by
the word rhythm. There is no such an element as the rhythmic beat in any
bird-song that I have heard. Modulation and fine shades of ' ' color," as the
musical critic has it, together with melodious phrasing, take the place of
rhythm. The meadow-lark, in its mellow fluting, comes very near to a meas-
ure of two rhythmic beats, and the mourning dove puts a throbbing cadence
into its plaint ; but the accent which the human ear demands is wholly
wanting in each case. On the other hand, the mocking-bird, the cat-bird,
and the brown thrush accentuate their songs, but not rhythmically ; indeed,
the cat-bird's utterance is an impetuous stream of glittering accents, as it
were — irregular, tricksy, flippant, and yet as symmetrical, in a certain sense,
as the bird itself — and the mocking-bird's song is like a flashing stream of
water flowing over stones in the sunlight and flinging ariose bubbles and
tinkling spray in every direction. I have watched birds at their singing
under many and widely differing circumstances, and I am sure that they ex-
press joyous anticipation, present content, and pleasant recollection, each
as the mood moves, and all with equal ease. It is not so plain, however, that
the avian nature is fitted to formulate hate, or sorrow, or anger in song,
for any unpleasant mood seems to take expression in cries 'altogether un-
musical. I have never heard one sweet note by any angry or in any way
unhappy bird. The avian life is beset with every danger except, probably,
that of epidemic disease, and yet so flexible and elastic is it that the moment
any terrible ordeal is past the bird is quite ready for a new and energetic
effort in song-singing. ....
Among human beings a fine voice is the notable exception ; among male
mocking-birds in a wild state there is no exception — they all sing, and so
nearly equally well that it requires close attention to discover any difference.
So one wild bluebird's piping is practically identical, in volume, compass,
and timbre, with that of every other wild male bluebird in the world. From
this and a hundred kindred facts, it is safe to say that generation and the
constant transmission of organic power and equipoise are very nearly perfect
with birds of the highest order. Indeed, in song, as in so many other ways,
the bird shows the operation of a nearly unerring heredity, and I have been
forced to conclude, from all that I have been able to note in the lives and
habits of song-birds, that a good part of bird-song is the mechanical response
1861-88] MAURICE THOMPSON. 229
to what may be called hereditary memory. The mocking-bird, reared in cap-
tivity, far from the haunts of its ancestors, will repeat the cries of birds it has
never seen and whose voices it has never heard. I have heard it do this. Not
only the power to mimic is hereditary, but there, lingering in the bird's
nature, is the memory, so to call it, of the voices it is born to mimic — the
voices its ancestors mimicked ten thousand years ago.
It has been the fashion for men of science to make light of the common
legend of the power of birds and other animals to foretell rain and other
meteorological phenomena ; but I long ago learned to credit it in a large de-
gree. Birds are not always right in their predictions, because weather-threats
are not always carried out. The yellow-billed cuckoo is more vociferous when
the barometer indicates rain, but often the barometer fails to fetch the show-
er. The tree-frog, another sort of song-bird, squeals and chirps at the first
indication of a rain-atmosphere, but the rain may fail to come. Birds sing
with emphasis after a shower, as if they felt as much refreshed as the violets,
and the clover, and the maple-leaves, and no doubt they do thus express
some sense of delight in their revivified surroundings, just as they have sung
or cackled in pleasant anticipation of the same before it came.
I have seen a mocking-bird eat the best part of a luscious pear or apricot,
and then leap to the topmost spray of the tree and sing as if it would trill it-
self into fragments for very joy of the feast. The shrike cannot sing, but
after impaling a grasshopper on a thorn he will make a hideous effort to be
melodious over the deed. So the bluejay will utter its softest and sweetest
"oodle-doo, oodle-doo," as soon as it has wiped its bill clear of the blood-
stain received in murdering a nest-full of young sparrows. Even the belted
kingfisher cackles gleefully every time he swallows a minnow, as the barn-
yard hen does when she has laid an egg. • .- . « -
Many of our song-birds are consummate actors, within narrow limits, and
have a command of gesture that any opera-star might well covet. The com-
parison between the mocking-bird and any other oscine species must be cut
short, however, when it comes to the denouement — the final outcome of the
song — for it is here that our American nightingale is incomparable. In
speaking of this, Buff on says: "When it gives full freedom to its voice
in bursts wherein the sounds are at first full and brilliant, then softening
down by degrees, and finally dying out and losing themselves altogether in
a silence as charming as the rarest melody, then it is that one sees it hover
gently above its perch, slowly slackening the motion of its wings, and rest-
ing quiet at last, as if suspended in mid-air.'' But I have seen it go far be-
yond even this extraordinary performance, and slowly fall to the ground,
panting, and apparently exhausted from the effect of its ecstatic climax of
exertion. During many visits to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the
spring, I have availed myself of ample opportunity to study this Shakes-
peare of the birds, and I have concluded, from what I think sufficient proof,
that the mocking-bird sings, consciously at times, for the purpose of gain-
ing the favor of man. One thing is easily noted : Its song, sung close to hu-
man habitations — in the vines and orchards and gardens of man's planting
— is not the same song it sings in the wild depths of the Southern woods. I
230 MAURICE THOMPSON. [1861-88
was so struck with this that I put it to the test in every way I could, and I got
so familiar with the difference that, while wandering in the lonely forests,
I could know when I was nearing a settler's clearing or a negro's cabin by
the peculiar notes of the mocking-birds. All along the charming gulf-coast
from Mobile to Bay St. Louis, or, in the other direction, to St. Mark's and
Tallahassee, there is not a cot, no matter how lonely or lowly, provided it
has a fig-tree, that there is not a pair of mocking-birds to do it honor. The
Scuppernong vineyards, too, are the concert-halls of this famous singer.
Near the home of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and, I believe, upon the estate of the
ex-Confederate chieftain, I sat in the shade of a water-oak and heard a mock-
ing-bird sing, over in a thrifty vineyard, the rare dropping-song of which
naturalists appear to have taken no notice. It was a balmy day in March ;
the sky, the gulf, the air all hazy and shimmering, the whole world swim-
ming in a purplish mist of dreams, and I felt that the song was the expres-
sion of some such sweet passionate longing as exhales from Keats's " Ode to
a Nightingale." Under the low-hanging boughs, and over the level, daisy-
sprinkled ground, I gazed upon the sheeny reach of water, half convinced
that I was looking through
"Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,"
and the very tones of the bird's voice accorded with the feeling in which the
day was steeped.
Genuine bird-song is simply the highest form of avian vocalization, by
which instinctively, if not premeditatedly, the bird finds expression of pleas-
ure. The absence of true rhythm probably is significant of a want of power
to appreciate genuine music, the bird's comprehension compassing no more
than the value of sweet sounds merely as such.
As to the origin of bird-song, it has come, it seems to me, in response to
a growth of the natural desire for a means of expression. Language is the
highest mode of expression, and bird-song is a beautiful and witching, but
very imperfect, language. In this connection it is a striking fact that all the
most gifted avian singers are small. The nightingale and the mocking-bird
are insignificant physically, when compared with the ostrich, the condor,
and the crane. The entire skull of the mocking-bird is no larger than the
end of one's thumb, ard its brain will weigh about one-quarter of an ounce.
No great scope of intelligence could be expected in such a case ; but we
must admit that, in a slender way, this brain is amazingly developed and
balanced, and that, compared with man's, it is proportionately the more
powerful and under far better control. If a quarter-ounce brain can shape a
bird-voice so as to captivate the imagination of man throughout the ages,
what ought a brain of ninety-two cubic inches do with an equal opportunity ?
Like the musician of old, it should set the very trees to dancing.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. £31
ATALANTA.
WHEN spring grows old, and sleepy But joyfully I bare my limbs,
winds Anoint me with the tropic breeze,
Set from the south with odors sweet, And feel through every sinew thrill
I see my love, in green, cool groves, The vigor of Hippomenes.
Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet.
O race of love ! we all have run
She throws a kiss and bids me run, Thy happy course through groves of
In whispers sweet as roses' breath ; spring,
I know I cannot win the race, And cared not, when at last we lost,
And at the end, I know, is death. For life or death, or anything!
BORN at Dovvth Castle, County Meath, Ireland, 1844.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
[Songs from the Southern Seas. 1873.— Songs, Legends, and Ballads. 187S.—The Statue
in the Block, etc. 1881.— In Bohemia. 1886.]
O BEAUTEOUS Southland ! land of yellow air,
That hangeth o'er thee slumbering, and doth hold
The moveless foliage of thy valleys fair
And wooded hills, like aureole of gold.
O thou, discovered ere the fitting time,
Ere Nature in completion turned thee forth !
Ere aught was finished but thy peerless clime,
Thy virgin breath allured the amorous North.
O land, God made thee wondrous to the eye !
But his sweet singers thou hast never heard ;
He left thee, meaning to come by and by,
And give rich voice to every bright-winged bird.
He painted with fresh hues thy myriad flowers,
But left them scentless : ah ! their woful dole,
Like sad reproach of their Creator's powers —
To make so sweet fair bodies, void of soul.
He gave thee trees of odorous precious wood ;
But, midst them all, bloomed not one tree of fruit.
He looked, but said not that his work was good,
When leaving thee all perfumeless and mute.
He blessed thy flowers with honey: every bell
Looks earthward, sunward, with a yearning wist;
But no bee-lover ever notes the swell
Of hearts, like lips, a-hungering to be kist.
232 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [1861-88
O strange land, thou art virgin ! thou art more
Than fig-tree barren! Would that I could paint
For others' eyes the glory of the shore
Where last I saw thee ; but the senses faint
In soft delicious dreaming when they drain
Thy wine of color. Virgin fair thou art,
All sweetly fruitful, waiting with soft pain
The spouse who comes to wake thy sleeping heart.
IN TROPIC RAINS.
FKOM "THE KING OF THE VASSE."
rT^HE bush is whispering in her pent-up glee,
J- As myriad roots bestir them to be free,
And drink the soaking moisture ; while bright heaven
Shows clear, as inland are the spent clouds driven ;
And oh ! that arch, that sky's intensate hue !
That deep, God-painted, unimagined blue
Through which the golden sun now smiling sails,
And sends his love to fructify the vales
That late he seemed to curse! Earth throbs and heaves
With pregnant prescience of life and leaves ;
The shadows darken 'neath the tall trees' screen,
While round their stems the rank and velvet green
Of undergrowth is deeper still ; and there,
Within the double shade and steaming air,
The scarlet palm has fixed its noxious root,
And hangs the glorious poison of its fruit;
And there, 'mid shaded green and shaded light,
The steel-blue silent birds take rapid flight
From earth to tree and tree to earth ; and there
The crimson-plumaged parrot cleaves the air
Like flying fire, and huge brown owls awake
To watch, far down, the stealing carpet-snake,
Fresh-skinned and glowing in his changing dyes,
With evil wisdom in the cruel eyes
That glint like gems as o'er his head flits by
The blue-black armor of the emperor-fly ;
And all the humid earth displays its powers
Of prayer, with incense from the hearts of flowers
That load the air with beauty and with wine
Of mingled color, as with one design
Of making there a carpet to be trod,
In woven splendor, by the feet of God!
And high o'erhead is color : round ahd round
The towering guns and tuads, closely wound
Like cables, creep the climbers to the sun,
And over all the reaching branches run
1881-58] JOHN BOYLE &REILLY. 233
And hang, and still send shoots that climb arid wind
Till every arm and spray and leaf is twined,
And miles of trees, like brethren joined in love,
Are drawn and laced ; while round them and above,
When all is knit, the creeper rests for days
As gathering might, and then one blinding blaze
Of very glory sends, in wealth and strength,
Of scarlet flowers o'er the forest's length !
MY NATIVE LAND.
IT chanced to me upon a time to sail
Across the Southern Ocean to and fro ;
And, lauding at fair isles, by stream and vale
Of sensuous blessing did we ofttimes go.
And months of dreamy joys, like joys in sleep,
Or like a clear, calm stream o'er mossy stone,
Unnoted passed our hearts with voiceless sweep,
And left us yearning still for lands unknown.
And when we found one — for 'tis soon to find
In thousand-isled Cathay another isle —
For one short noon its treasures filled the mind,
And then again we yearned, and ceased to smile.
And so it was, from isle to isle we passed,
Like wanton bees or boys on flowers or lips ;
And when that all was tasted, then at last
We thirsted still for draughts instead of sips.
I learned from this there is no southern land
Can fill with love the hearts of northern men.
Sick minds need change; but, when in health they stand
'Neath foreign skies, their love flies home again.
And thus with me it was : the yearning turned
From laden airs of cinnamon away,
And stretched far westward, while the full heart burned
With love for Ireland, looking on Cathay !
My first dear love, all dearer for thy grief !
My land, that has no peer in all the sea
For verdure, vale, or river, flower or leaf, —
If first to no man else, thou'rt first to me.
New loves may come with duties, but the first
Is deepest yet — the mother's breath and smiles :
Like that kind face and breast where I was nursed
Is my poor land, the Niobe of isles.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [1861-88
A SAVAGE.
DIXON, a Choctaw, twenty years of age,
Had killed a miner in a Leadville brawl;
Tried and condemned, the rough- beards curb their rage,
And watch him stride in freedom from the hail.
"Return on Friday, to be shot to death ! "
So ran the sentence — it was Monday night.
The dead man's comrades drew a well-pleased breath ;
Then all night long the gambling dens were bright.
The days sped slowly; but the Friday came,
And flocked the miners to the shooting-ground;
They chose six riflemen of deadly aim,
And with low voices sat and lounged around.
"He will not come." " He's not a fool." " The men
Who set the savage free must face the blame."
A Choctaw brave smiled bitterly, end then
Smiled proudly, with raised head, as Dixoii came.
Silent and stern — a woman at his heels —
He motions to the brave, who stays her tread.
Next minute — flame the guns: the woman reels
And drops without a moan — Dixon is dead.
A DEAD MAN.
T MHE Trapper died — our hero — and we grieved;
-L In every heart in camp the sorrow stirred.
" His soul was red ! " the Indian cried, bereaved ;
"A white man, he! " the grim old Yankee's word.
So, brief and strong, each mourner gave his best —
How kind he was, how brave, how keen to track:
And as we laid him by the pines to rest,
A negro spoke with tears : ' ' His heart was black . '
A PASSAGE.
THE world was made when a man was born ;
He must taste for himself the forbidden springs,
He can never take warning from old-fashioned things ;
He must fight as a boy, he must drink as a youth,
He must kiss, he must love, he must swear to the truth
Of the friend of his soul, he must laugh to scorn
1861-88] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 235
The hint of deceit in a woman's eyes
That are clear as the wells of Paradise.
And so he goes on, till the world grows old,
Till his tongue has grown cautious, his heart has grown cold,
Till the smile leaves his mouth, and the ring leaves his laugh,
And he shirks the bright headache you ask him to quaff ;
He grows formal with men, and with women polite,
And distrustful of both when they're out of his sight;
Then he eats for his palate, and drinks for his head,
And loves for his pleasure, — and 'tis time he was dead!
THE PILGRIMS.
[From the Poem read at the Dedication of the Monument to the Pilgrim Fathers at
Plymouth, Mass., 1 August, 1889.]
TTERE, where the shore was rugged as the waves,
J — L Where frozen nature dumb and leafless lay,
And no rich meadows bade the Pilgrims stay,
Was spread the symbol of the life that saves :
To conquer first the outer things ; to make
Their own advantage, unallied, unbound ;
Their blood the mortar, building from the ground;
Their care the statutes, making all anew ;
To learn to trust the many, not the few ;
To bend the mind to discipline ; to break
The bonds of old convention, and forget
The claims and barriers of class; to face
A desert land, a strange and hostile race,
And conquer both to friendship by the debt
That nature pays to justice, love, and toil.
Here, on this rock, and on this sterile soil,
Began the kingdom not of kings, but men;
Began the making of the world again.
Here centuries sank, and from the hither brink
A new world reached and raised an old-world link,
When English hands, by wider vision taught,
Threw down the feudal bars the Normans brought,
And here revived, in spite of sword and stake,
Their ancient freedom of the Wapentakc.
Here struck the seed — the Pilgrims' roofless town,
Where equal rights and equal bonds were set.
Where all the people equal- franchised met;
Where doom was writ of privilege and crown ;
Where human breath blew all the idols down;
Where crests were naught, where vulture flags were furled,
And common men began to own the world!
235 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. [1861-88
francig
BOKN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1844.
IN NO MAN'S LAND.
[From " Boscosel."—The Septameron. 1888.]
I WAS aroused from my reverie by a gentle double tap at my door. It
was Watkins, my servant. He always knocked in that way — a sort of
unassertive deferential appeal of the knuckles, which announced a presence
but scarcely asked an audience — altogether a respectful and dutiful and
valet-like knock. I bade Watkins enter, and, acting upon the permission,
he brought in a crystal pitcher of ice- water on a salver, and deposited two
fresh towels on the rack ; then he inquired in the lowest of voices whether
he could serve me further, and, receiving a negative reply, glided with the
silentest of footsteps to the door. He was about to close it behind him, when
he suddenly returned.
" I beg your pardon, sir," he said, " but I noticed this morning that you
had neglected to open your mail of one day last week. It was covered by some
magazines, and I thought perhaps you might have overlooked it."
"I overlook one of my mails ! That's very curious, Watkins. I never did
such a thing in my life before."
" No, sir ; it was because I knew how systematic you were that I made bold
to speak of it. I hope you will excuse the liberty, sir."
" Find it for me, Watkins. I know nothing about it."
Silently Watkins glided to my table ; silently he lifted a pile of papers and
periodicals, and silently removing a packet of letters, sealed and stamped, he
handed them to me with a silent bow.
" Strange, strange," I muttered ; " I never saw these before." Then turn-
ing, " Thank you, Watkins ; you may go."
He bowed again and left the room. I opened the first envelope ; it con-
tained a lead-pencil note scribbled in haste by an old friend, and referred to
an appointment at luncheon. I knew the handwriting well, but somehow I
could not for the life of me recall the appointment or even remember to have
seen the writer for a long while. I opened the second envelope ; it contained
a bill. The third was larger ; it was bordered with black, and bore a large
seal impressed with a legend and crest. A sense of familiarity assailed my
mind as I glanced at this seal. I paused before breaking it. It was very odd.
I certainly knew the crest ; the Latin motto, crowded in a little scroll be-
neath, had a singularly familiar sound. I read it aloud with a lilt and swing
in my voice, just as I used to scan a line of Horace. It was all so natural ;
and yet years seemed to have intervened since last I saw it — this highly dec-
orous legend with its ethical statement of an improbable virtue linked to
an impossible valor. Why did my hand shake as I opened the envelope ?
Faugh ! it did not shake ; it was only that uncomfortable draught of air from
somewhere. As I drew forth the note I saw that it was bordered with black
1861-88] FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. £37
to match the envelope. Having gotten myself into a funereal frame of mind,
what was my surprise to find, upon unfolding the single heavy sheet, these
engraved words of invitation:
DR. AND MRS. MACFARLANE
request the honor of your company
on Thursday evening, January 24=th,
at nine o'clock.
R. S. V. P.
I rubbed my eyes and read it again ; then I went over it line by line. Dr.
and Mrs. MacFarlane ! I used to know them well — long ago. But now —
they had both been dead for years ; at least so I had understood when I came
back from the war. Could it be that I had been misinformed ? Impossible !
And yet here was the invitation — yes, and the crest and legend ; it all came
back to me now. There was no mistake about them. Here was palpable evi-
dence of vitality. But how strange to issue such an invitation on so gloomy
a piece of stationery ! And then the date. " Heavens I" I ejaculated as I
again read the words, " Thursday evening, January 24th ! Why that is to-
night \»
My vexation at having overlooked this particular mail was mingled with
a blank astonishment at the contents of this particular portion of it. Was I
dreaming ? I looked at my watch ; it indicated four minutes past 9. Surely it
must be much later. I held it to my ear ; yes, it had stopped. What was I to
do ? I had already been guilty of an unintentional rudeness in not acknowl-
edging the invitation ; the only reparation was to go to the ball or reception,
or whatever it might be, and explain my oversight. And then, I had an un-
controllable curiosity to solve the mystery which attended the whole matter.
Whether owing to the unusual character of this emotion, or to the restoring
qualities of the cigarettes, I felt much less weary than when I had flung my-
self into the easy-chair with the intention of there remaining until I retired
for the night. I was actually conscious of a certain exhilaration — a desire
to emit superfluous energies in some of those impromptu calisthenic gyra-
tions peculiar to the hopeful seasons of early youth. The work of transform-
ing myself from a meditative bachelor en deshabille into a society man in
evening dress was, therefore, neither onerous nor protracted, and before I
was well aware of the rather abrupt alteration in the current of my thoughts
and intentions, I found myself in a hansom rattling down the broad avenue
upon which the mansion of Dr. MacFarlane used to front. And there it stood,
as of yore, a few patches of snow lying snugly in the corners of the brown
stone steps, the doors massively carved and emitting a line of bright light
through the crack which was hospitably visible between them. I hastily dis-
missed my driver and mounted the steps ; the doors were opened and I passed
into the broad hallway ; waves of delicious music came to me through the
silken meshes of the portie'res ; there was the sudden, dulcet odor of scores
of roses and rare exotic plants, and as I passed with silent footfall up the lux-
uriously carpeted stairs I caught a glimpse of swaying figures, with oriental
238 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. [1861-88
voluptuousness of motion marking time to the rise and fall of the music of
the dance. The servant stationed at the door of the upper room added a
smile of recognition to his respectful bow as he indicated the apartment in
which I was to deposit my impedimenta. I remembered him well — an old
family-piece with the MacFarlanes. It seemed to me years since I had seen
him, but he looked no older. Hastily submitting to the removal of my wraps,
I again descended the stairs, and in another moment was making my ad-
dresses and excuses to the host and hostess. Mrs. MacFarlane in her sweet
gracious way was making me feel quite at home ; she had always possessed
that delightful savoir-faire which is of so much more value in society than
any amount of mere courtesy. As for the Doctor, his rubicund face wore the
same jovial smile and his voice was rounded out with the same hearty robust-
ness which had so often been pleasing memories to me in hours of homesick-
ness and sadness.
"Ah! Dangerfield, my dear fellow; delighted to see you, Fm sure/' he
said, as he took my hand in both his own. " It is positively like old times,
you know. We were half afraid we shouldn't succeed in getting you here,
but Boscosel said he was sure you would arrive to-day, so we took chances in
sending you an invitation. Ha ! ha ! ha ! it does me good to see you, upon
my soul. How are all the men at the club ?
In a somewhat dazed voice I replied that I was delighted to again meet my
good friend, Dr. MacFarlane, and that the men at the club were generally in
good health so far as my knowledge extended. Then I asked myself the ques-
tion, Who the deuce is Boscosel ? and turned to reply to a pleasant remark
from my hostess.
" Ah ! madam/' I said, " you were always too good. And while speaking
of good nature let me apologize for having so far trespassed upon yours. I
assure you I was thoroughly mortified when I discovered that I had not re-
plied to your invitation for this evening."
"Oh," she answered with a laugh, "we certainly didn't expect you to
reply. Of course we understood the nature of the case fully."
I could not help an inward sentiment of satisfaction that somebody under-
stood the nature of the case. Certainly I did not. What on earth did she
mean by saying that they didn't expect a reply ? I knew that I was regarded
as being a most punctilious person in matters of social etiquette ; why, then,
should it be assumed as a matter of course that I would be guilty of a flagrant
breach of the most usual requirements of society ?
Several couples were promenading up and down, and making desperate
attempts at conversation between the enforced pauses for breath which their
recent dancing rendered necessary. One exceedingly exquisite young man
was sending a tiny spray of cologne- water upon the flushed brow of the fair
partner at his side, while another exceedingly exquisite young man languid-
ly fanned surrounding space with the brim of his opera-hat, evidently under
the pleasing delusion that his lady was catching a portion of the breeze. On
the stairway couples were ranged like rising parterres of flowers, looking
down or up or obliquely at each other, according to the exigencies of posture,
but never under any circumstances getting on a level ; the regard passionne,
1861-88] FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. 239
I have observed, invariably demands an angle in order to be effective. Serv-
ants were handing light refreshments on parti-colored cut-glass, and the
couples on the stairs were sliding from ices to flirtation in a manner at once
canonical and variegated.
I paused for a moment watching the scene with the eye of a man partly
philosophical by nature and partly blase through experience. Then, as there
came a pause in the music, and additional couples began wandering out in
search of more air, I entered the drawing-room, intending to seek out the
hostess of the evening, of whom I much desired to learn certain things which
were just now puzzling me sorely. I had hardly passed through the door-
way, however, when a familiar voice said:
"Why, Mr. Dangerfield, is it possible you are going to pass your old
friends with never a recognition ?" And then there was the merry, musical
laugh of a lady whom I had known well long ago.
" Oh, Miss Denise ! " I cried. "Is it possible, or do my eyes deceive me ?
I — really — I didn't expect to — pardon me ; this is very sudden." I have no
doubt the last words must have appeared quite too emotional for the occa-
sion, for, beyond a pleasant acquaintanceship, there was no reason why a
meeting with Denise Fleury should have especially unnerved me — no rea-
son at all, except — except that she had been dead for a year !
I felt the color mount to my hair, and then I knew that I grew pale. I
knew, too, that Denise noticed my embarrassment. She was French in the
quickness of her apprehension as well as in her name and ancestry. With ex-
cellent tact she covered my confusion by a volume of small-talk, and then,
turning to a young lady of apparently her own age who stood by her side,
she begged to present me.
" Mamma, Mr. Dangerfield. Mr. Dangerfield, this is my mother."
"I beg pardon," I said, oblivious to everything except blank astonish-
ment ; " I have the honor of being presented to Miss ? "
"To Madame Fleury, my mother," explained Denise.
" Your mother ! " Then I became aware of what a horrible mess 1 was
making, and by a desperate effort managed to bow and express the happiness
I experienced in meeting Madame Fleury. But my dismay was too evident
for concealment, and Madame Fleury, smiling the while with charming
graciousness, said softly, in her pretty French accent:
" I quite comprehend that Monsieur finds it difficult to reconcile fact and
appearance. Let me explain, Monsieur, that my daughter has only been with
me for a year. I left nineteen years ago."
" Left ! " I reiterated in the same tone which I had used in repeating the
significant word to Miss Postelthwaite earlier in the evening. " Left ! "
"Yes, Monsieur." Then, as she observed my continued mystification,
she added : " The family had not the honor of your acquaintance, Monsieur,
at that time. We had never met."
" True, true," I murmured, inanely. " I did not know — that is, I had not
heard ..." I was rapidly getting myself into another tangle. Denise
again'came to the rescue.
" No," she said. " It was very sudden. Typhoid-pneumonia, you know."
240 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. [1861-88
" Ah, yes ; I see," I said, with an attempt at a sympathetic intonation and
an inward conviction that I certainly did not see. Gracefully and deftly the
two ladies led the conversation into other channels, and I soon found my-
self chatting in the pleasantest manner possible, imparting little items of
gossip interesting to a society woman and of occurrence too recent for the
personal knowledge of Denise.
Then the musicians began a delicious " Strauss/' and I asked the favor of
a waltz, taking out first Madame Fleury as a tribute to her grotesquely ma-
tronly distinction ; then coming back for her daughter of equal years. It
was all very odd and weird ; but the music was exceedingly fine, and every
surrounding in such perfect taste ! Presently another man was brought up
to be presented, and I once more found myself seeking the cooler atmosphere
of the halls and ante-rooms. Then I wandered towards the conservatory,
glimpses of whose arboreal loveliness were visible through an archway at the
end of the corridor. My brain seemed on fire ; once I touched the heavy
panellings to make sure that I was surrounded by something more substan-
tial than the mere ghosts of things. As I passed under the arch, the heavy,
sense-compelling air of exotic plants in bloom struck me like a perfume-
laden breeze from the tropics. Great palms spread their broad leaves above
me in hospitable welcome ; rare ferns fluttered in the slight breath of air
which came from a single aperture near the crystal roof ; many-petalled roses
bowed in the gentlest of obeisances and seemed to follow me with their ten-
der eyes. I could see no one in the conservatory, and felt absolute relief at
the thought of being for a moment away from the throng. " What does it
mean?" I queried, half aloud. "Is Life, then, but a phantom — Love a
dream ? " The dulcet waves of music came chastened by distance into a mere
intimation of the waltz — asuggestion of rhythmic arrangement so rounded
and blurred at the angles as to leave only an impression of symmetry dis-
solving and reforming on the mellifluous chaos of sweet sound. I passed
completely across the conservatory to the farther side. I wanted to find some
spot where I could be entirely alone for a few moments. I saw no one. A
sense of relief mingled with the consciousness of the great mental pressure
under which I labored. There was a large tropical plant at the angle of the
apartment nearest me, and a low rustic bench seemed to invite rest. I walked
towards it, and as I bent my head to escape the broad, drooping luxuriousness
of the plant, I suddenly observed the figure of a woman standing with her
back towards me at the opposite side of the aisle. Apparently she had not
heard my approach, for she continued pulling the petals gently one by one
from a tender white flower in her hand. The position which she occupied
relatively to the direction whence I came rendered it impossible for either
of us to have observed the other until I was within a few feet of her, and I
was therefore placed in the rather embarrassing predicament of being unable
either to retreat or to advance without the appearance of a rude intrusion.
Under these circumstances I stood perfectly still and regarded her in silence.
The outlines of her figure indicated that she was quite young, though I could
form no idea otherwise, even her profile being hidden. Her hair was very
beautiful, and was worn high from the neck and twisted simply after the
1861-88] FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS.
manner of classic statues. A single silver arrow was shot through the coils
and appeared to be the only means of keeping them from falling about her
shoulders, and I noticed how the shades lightened and turned to burnished
copper where a soft short tress half concealed the delicate upper curve of the
ear. I cannot tell what there was in the poise of her figure — in the shadows
underlying her hair — which so enthralled me ; I only know that I experi-
enced the sense of an absolute realization of an ideal — the answer to an un-
f rained question of my soul. Quietly she pulled away the petals of the flow-
er ; they fluttered and dropped at her feet like leaves from a recording angel's
book of fate ; then she came to the end and dropped the bare stem too ; in
doing this her left hand was brought to my view, and I noted how soft and
white and blue-veined it was ; then I felt a mighty throb in my pulses, a sud-
den suffocation as of dust in my throat ; my brain reeled, and the light spans
of the conservatory ceiling seemed rocking about and threatening a univer-
sal crash. I should have cried out, I think, but that my lips refused their
office. Yet, after all, why should I so madly sway before the breath of Des-
tiny ? That which I saw upon one of her slender fingers was but a gew-gaw,
— a golden serpent wrapped in two folds, and bearing little translucent,
malignant garnets in its head for eyes. It seemed to cleave very closely to
the soft, perfect texture of her flesh, and, in accordance with a somewhat
musty symbolism, held its tail in its mouth to indicate Eternity. There was
little in such a trinket to move a man as I was moved. And yet I knew that
the great climacteric of my existence had arrived. I stood face to face with
a problem so profound and with a possibility so ecstatic that for me the uni-
verse seemed trembling on its foundations. For a moment I wavered, and
then I had become master of the situation and of myself. With perfect calm-
ness I stepped close to her side and very gently spoke her name:
"Helen."
She started, but it was apparently owing rather to the unexpectedness of
any salutation than to the tones of this particular one. She turned almost
slowly and looked me deliberately in the eyes. It was a look of recognition
from the first — full of a light as tender as the dawn — replete with the pas-
sion which makes man divine. I saw her then as I had seen her twenty years
before. Time had stood still for her ; she was very beautiful, and as she let
her eyes rest upon me, there was a gradual heightening of the color at her
temples which brought into more pronounced contrast the whiteness of her
throat.
She offered me her hand and said quietly :
" I have been waiting for you a long while, Arthur."
"Waiting ?"
"Yes."
"And, if there were no bar, could you yet pronounce, as once you did,
the three small words which were my talisman of life ? "
" There is no bar," she answered. " I love you."
I heard the music stealing brokenly through the broad leaves around us ;
there was a smell of roses in the heavy air. I did not speak — only spread my
arms abroad and took Helen to my breast. I noted the quick, broken lisp of
VOL. x.— 16
242 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. [1861-88
her indrawn breath, after the manner of women when they yield to an in-
stinctive demand of sense ; I felt the weight of her head upon my shoulder,
the slight pressure of her bosom against mine. I folded the splendor of her
womanhood closely within my embrace, conscious that though another had
claimed her once, she yet was mine forever.
" No one shall take you from me now," I whispered.
" No one has the power/' she said. " My promise was ' Till death do us
part/ and my divorcement bears the seal of an eternal judge."
Again I felt the awful sense of an incomprehensible problem stealing over
me.
" I do not understand," I said wanderingly. " I cannot comprehend ; but
I arn happy, and I care not to know. "
" Why should you ?" she murmured.
I drew her to the rustic bench, and there, close to my heart, she told me
all the secrets of her own. I cannot say how long we remained, but there
came a loud blare of the brasses from the orchestra in the drawing-room, as
though a finale had been reached. I started. There was the hum of distant
talk from many lips — the confused, muffled sound of many steps. Still we
lingered. Presently I heard the low, scornful laugh of a man's voice close to
us ; it fell upon the air with metallic distinctness, repressed to the limits
of decorous requirement, yet ironical, bitter, terrible in its suggestion.
Helen, too, heard it and looked up. There in the doorway stood a man re-
garding us intently. His eyes were black and piercing, his hair cropped
closely and brushed straight up, his nose slightly aquiline and almost con-
cealing the central portion of his black moustache. He was dressed fault-
I sprang up intending to resent this insolent intrusion, but he was gone.
I turned to Helen and saw that she was quite pale. She noticed my astonish-
ment, and quickly said :
" It is nothing. Do not follow him. It was only Boscosel."
" And who is he f " I eagerly demanded.
In reply she only said softly : " Come ; let us go."
We passed out of the conservatory. The hallway was deserted ; the ante-
rooms were dark. I drew my companion closely to my side.
" It is very cold," I exclaimed.
" Yes," she answered.
" I wonder what time it is," I said, half inquiringly and with a partly de-
fined expectation that she could afford the desired information.
She looked at me curiously, and there was an evident absence of all com-
prehension of my meaning as she repeated blankly, " Time ? "
"Yes," I said. " It must be very late. The guests have gone. It must be
nearly dawn."
" I do not understand," she said, with the simplicity of a little child.
I pressed my hand to my brow. Time had no meaning to her conscious-
ness. It had ceased for her. And yet, and yet — there in the angle stood a
massive clock, antique in carving and splendid with ornaments of brass. It
was one of those ancient family-pieces whose face exhibits periodically the
1861-88] FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS. 243
all-too-rotund visage of the placid moon between impossibly bespangled
firmaments, and beneath whose solemn second-hand the month and day ap-
pear. Strange that it should be here, where no one seemed conscious of the
fact it recorded.
Here — but where ? I had an indistinct impression that I ought at least to
make my adieus to Dr. and Mrs. MacFarlane, but then it was dark and all
was so silent, so very silent. I leaned close and felt Helen's breath upon my
cheek. Her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. I kissed her on the lips, and
then looked at the ancient clock to find the answer to my query. The hour-
hand rested upon the characters " IX," the minute-hand had not yet reached
the "I." Quickly my glance sought the slender steel pointer which, in its
special dial, tells off the seconds as the Genius of Humanity might reckon
his sins on the rosary of time. It moved not at all, only trembled upon its
axis, like the delicate needle of a compass jarred by the passing of a heavy
step. I listened ; there was no sound save the quick sibilant vibration of
Helen's breath as she leaned nearer and reached her hands towards my face.
I looked through the pane near the base of the clock-case. There in full
view hung the pendulum, vertical, motionless. Again I glanced at the face.
In an oblong opening I saw the abbreviations Thurs., Jan., and immediate-
ly beneath appeared the figures 24. Then I understood. Time had ceased
for me too. I had died on the evening of Thursday, January 24th, 1884, at
four minutes after nine o'clock.
SONG.
[The Princess Elizabeth. A Lyric Drama. 1880.]
A BIRD in my bower They joined, and together
-"• Sat calling, a-calling ; Fast flying, a-flying,
A bird answered low from the garden Were lost to my gaze in the arch ot the
afar. sky.
His note came with power, The wind through the heather
While falling, a-falling, Is sighing, a-sighing;
Her note quivered faint as the light of Ah! how should it ever do other than
a star. sigh ?
"I am Life! I am Life! " Where art thou, where art thou,
From the bower a-ringing, Life, flying, a-flying ?
Thrilled forth a mad melody, soaring Where art thou, O Love, sweetest child
above ; of the dawn ?
" I am Love ! I am Love ! " The song in the meadow
From the garden a-singing, Is dying, a-dying;
Came soft as a dream, and the echoes My heart groweth heavy, and whispereth
sang ' ' Love. " — " Gone. "
244
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. [1861-88
^tuatt
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1844.
AN AUTUMN VIOLET.
[Poetic Studies. 1875.— Songs of the Silent World. 1885.]
T SAW a miracle to-day !
J- Where the September suiishine lay
Languidly as a lost desire
Upon a sumach's fading fire,
Where calm some pallid asters trod,
Indifferent, past a golden-rod,
Beside a gray-haired thistle set —
A perfect purple violet.
I wonder what it were to miss
The life of spring, and live like this?
To bloom so lone, to bloom so late,
And were it worth the while to wait
So long for such a little day?
And were it not a better way
Never, indeed (worse might befall),
To be a violet at all?
So lonely when the spring was gone,
So calm when autumn splendors shone,
So peaceful midst the blazing flowers,
So blessed through the golden hours,
So might have bloomed my love for thee.
It is not, and it cannot be, —
It cannot, must not be, — and yet,
I picked for thee the violet.
ALAS, POOR GHOST 1
[The Gates Between. 1887.]
TT was morning, and Brake's clerk was coming in. It was very early ; ear-
-L Her than he usually came, perhaps ; but I could not tell. He did not no-
tice me at first, and, remembering Drayton's hypothesis, I shrank behind
the tall desk, and instinctively kept out of sight for a few uncertain min-
utes, wondering what I had better do. The clerk called the janitor, and
scolded a little about the fire, which he ordered lighted in the grate. It was
a cold morning. He said the room would chill a corpse. He had the morn-
ing papers in his hand. He unfolded the " Herald," and laid it down upon
his own desk, as if about to read it.
1861-88] ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 245
At that instant the telegraph clicked, and he pushed the damp, fresh
paper away from him, and went immediately to the wires. The young man
listened to the message with an expression of great intentness, and wrote
rapidly. Moved by some unaccountable impulse, I softly rose and glanced
over his shoulder.
The despatch was dated at midnight, and was addressed to Henry Brake,
It said :
"Have you seen my husband to-night 9" and it was signed, " Hele:
Thome"
Oh, poor Helen ! . . . -
N"ow, maniac with haste to get to her, it occurred to me that the moment
while the clerk was occupied in recording this message was as good a time as
I could ask for in which to escape unobserved, as I greatly wished to do. As
quietly as I could — and I succeeded in doing it very quietly — I therefore
moved to leave the broker's office. As I did so, my eye caught the heading,
in large capitals, of the morning news in the open "Herald " which lay upon
the desk behind the clerk. I stopped, and stooped, and read. This is what
I read :
SHOCKING ACCIDENT.
TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.
RUNAWAY AT THB WEST END.
The eminent and popular physician,
Dr. Esmerald Thome,
KILLED INSTANTLY.
At this moment the broker entered the office.
With the " Herald" in my hand, I made haste to meet him.
"Brake !" I cried, "Mr. Brake ! Thank Heaven, you have come ! I have
passed such a night — and look here ! Have you seen this abominable ca-
nard ? This is what has come of my being locked into your" •
The broker regarded me with a strange look ; so strange that for very
amazement I stood still before it. He did not advance to meet me ; neither
his hand nor his eyes gave me the human sign of welcome ; he looked over
me, he looked through me, as a man does at one whose acquaintance he has
no desire to recognize.
I thought —
"Dray ton has crammed him. He too believes that I was shut in here to
sleep it off. The story will get out in two hours. I am doomed in this town
henceforth for a drunken doctor. I'd better have been killed instantly, as
this infernal paper says."
But I said —
"Mr. Brake ? You don't recognize me, I think. It is I, Dr. Thome. I
couldn't get here before two. I went to your house last evening. I got the
impression you were here, so I came after you. I was locked in here by your
confounded watchman. They have this minute let me free. I am in a
great hurry to get home. Nice job this is going to be ! Have you seen
that?"
246 ELIZABETH STUART P HELPS WARD. [1861-88
I put my shaking finger upon the "Herald's " fiery capitals, and held the
column folded towards him.
"Jason/' he said, after an instant's pause, "pick up the ' Herald,' will
you ? A gust of wind has blown it from the table. There must be a draught.
Please shut the door."
To say that I know of no earthly language which can express the sensation
that crawled over me as the broker uttered these words is to say little or
nothing about it. I use the expression " crawled" with some faint effort to
define the slowness and the repulsiveness with which the suspicion of that
to which I dared not and did not give a name made itself manifest to my
mind.
"Excuse me, Brake," I said with some agitation, "you did not hear what
I said . I was locked in. I am in a hurry to get home. Ask Drayton. Dray-
ton let me in. I must get home at once. I shall sue the 'Herald' for that
outrageous piece of work — What do you suppose my wife — Good God !
She must have read it by this time ! Let me by, Brake ! "
"Jason," said the broker, "this is a terrible thing ! I feel quite broken
up about it."
" Brake !" I cried, " Henry Brake ! Let me pass you ! Let me home to
my wife ! You're in my way — don't you see ? You're standing directly be-
tween me and the door. Let me pass ! "
"There's a private despatch come," said the clerk sadly. " It is for you,
sir. It is from Mrs. Thome herself."
" Brake ! " I pleaded, " Brake, Brake !— Jason !— Mr. Brake ! Don't you
hear me?"
"Give me the message, Jason," said Brake, holding out his hand; he
seated himself, as he did so, at the office table, where I had sat the night
out ; he looked troubled and pale ; he handled the message reluctantly, as
people do in the certainty of bad news.
"In the name of mercy, Henry Brake !" I cried, "what is the meaning
of this ? Don't you hear a word I say ? Don't you feel me ? — There ! " I
gripped the broker by the shoulder, and clinched both hands upon him with
all my might. "Don't you feel me ? God Almighty ! don't you see me,
Brake?"
"When did this despatch come, Jason ? " said the broker. He laid Helen's
message gently down ; he had tears in his eyes.
"Henry Brake," I pleaded brokenly, for my heart failed me with a
mighty fear, "answer me, in human pity's name. Are you gone deaf and
blind? Or am I struck dumb ? Or am I"
"It came ten minutes ago, sir," replied Jason. "It is dated, I see, at
midnight. They delivered it as soon as anybody was likely to be stirring
here ; a bit before, too ; considering the nature of the message, I suppose,
sir."
" It is a terrible affair ! " repeated the broker nervously. " I have known
the doctor a good many years. He had his peculiarities ; but he was a good
fellow. Say — Jasou ! "
"Yes, sir?"
1861-88] ELIZABETH STUART P HELP 8 WARD. 247
•'How does it happen that Mrs. Thome — You say this message was
dated at midnight ? "
"At midnight,, sir. 12.15."
"How is it she didn't know by that time ? I pity the fellow who had to
tell her. She's a very attractive woman. . . . The ' Herald ' says — Where
is that paper ?"
" The 'Herald' says/' answered Jason decorously, "that he was scooped
into the buggy-top, and dragged, and dashed against — Here it is."
He handed his employer the paper, as I had done, or had thought I did,
with his finger on the folded column. The broker took the paper, and slow-
ly put on his glasses, and slowly read aloud :
" 'Dr. Thorne was dragged for some little distance, it is thought, before
the horse broke free. He must have hit the lamp-post, or the pavement.
He was found in the top of the buggy, which was a wreck. The robe was
over him, and his face was hidden. His medicine-case lay beneath him ; the
vials were crushed to splinters. Life was extinct when he was discovered.
His watch had stopped at five minutes past seven o'clock. It so happened
that he was not immediately identified, though our reporter could not learn
the reason of this extraordinary mischance. By some unpardonable blun-
der, the body of the distinguished and favorite physician was taken to the
Morgue ' "—
" That accounts for it," said Jason.
— " 'Was taken to the Morgue,' " read on Mr. Brake with agitated voice.
" 'It was not until midnight that the mistake was discovered. A messenger
was despatched at twenty minutes after twelve o'clock to the elegant resi-
dence of the popular doctor, in Delight Street. The news was broken to the
widow as agreeably as possible. Mrs. Thorne is a young and very beautiful
woman, on whom this shocking blow falls with uncommon cruelty.
" ' The body was carried to Dr. Thome's house at one o'clock. The time
of the funeral is not yet appointed. The " Herald" will be informed as soon
as a decision is reached.
" ' The death of Dr. Thorne is a loss to this community which it is im-
possible to,' — hm — m — 'his distinguished talents' — hm— m— hm — m."
The broker laid down the paper and sighed.
" I sent for him yesterday, to consult about his affairs," he observed gen-
tly. " It is a pity for her to lose that Santa Ma. She will need it now. I'm
sorry for her. I don't know how he left her, exactly. He did a tremendous
business, but he spent as he went. He was a good fellow — I always liked the
doctor ! Terrible affair ! Terrible affair ! Jason ! Where is that adver-
tisement of Grope County, Iowa, Mortgage ? You have filed it in the wrong
place ! Be more careful in future."
..." Mr. Brake I " I tried once more ; and my voice was the voice of
mortal anguish to my own appalled and ringing ear.
" Do you not hear ? Can you not see ? Is there no one in this place who
hears ? Or sees me, either f "
An early customer had strayed in ; Drayton was there ; and the watchman
had entered. The men (there were five in all) collected by the broker's desk,
248 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. [1861-88
around the morning papers, and spoke to each other with the familiarity
which bad news of any public interest creates. They conversed in low tones.
Their faces wore a shocked expression. They spoke of me ; they asked for
more particulars of the tragedy reported by the morning press ; they men-
tioned my merits and defects, but said more about merits than defects, in
the merciful, foolish way of people who discuss the newly dead.
" Fve known him ten years," said the broker.
" Fve had the pleasure of the doctor's acquaintance myself a good while, "
said the inspector politely.
" Wasn't he a quick-tempered man ?" asked the customer.
"He cured a baby of mine of the croup/' said the watchman. " It was
given up for dead. And he only charged me a dollar and a half. He was
very kind to the little chap."
"He set an ankle for me once, after a foot-ball match," suggested the
clerk. * " I wouldn't ask to be better treated. He wasn't a bit rough."
. . . "Gentlemen," I entreated, stretching out my hands toward the
group, " there is some mistake — I must make it understood. I am here. It
is I, Dr. Thorne — Dr. Esmerald Thorne. I am in this office. Gentlemen !
Listen to me ! Look at me ! Look in this direction ! For God's sake, try
to see me — some of you ! " . . .
" He drove too fast a horse," said the customer. " He always has."
" I must answer Mrs. Thome's message," said the broker sadly, rising and
pushing back the office chair.
... I shrank, and tried no more. I bowed my head, and said no other
word. The truth, incredible and terrible though it were, the truth which
neither flesh nor spirit can escape, had now forced itself upon my conscious-
ness.
I looked across the broker's office at those five warm human beings as if I
had looked across the width of the breathing world. Naught had I now to
say to them ; naught could they communicate to me. Language was not be-
tween us, nor speech, nor any sign. Need of mine could reach them not, nor
any of their kind. For I was the dead, and they the living men.
..." Here is your dog, sir," said Jason. " He has followed you in. He
is trying to speak to you, in his way."
The broker stooped and patted the dumb brute affectionately. " I iinder-
stand, Lion," he said. "'Yes, I understand you."
The dog looked lovingly up into his master's face, and whined for joy.
This incident, trifling as it was, I think, did more than anything which
had preceded it to make me aware of the nature of that which had befallen
me. The live brute could still communicate with the living man. Skill of
scientist and philosopher was as naught to help the human spirit which had
fled the body to make itself understood by one which occupied a body still.
More blessed in that moment was Lion, the dog, than Esmerald Thorne, the
dead man. I said to myself :
" I am a desolate and an outcast creature. I am become a dumb thing in
a deaf world."
1861-88] ELIZABETH STUART PHELP8 WARD. 249
I thrust my hands before me, and wrung them with a groan. It seemed
incredible to me that I could die ; that was more wonderful, even, than to
know that I was already dead.
"•It is all over/' I moaned. "I have died. I am dead. I am what they
call a dead man."
Now, at this instant the dog turned his head. No human tympanum in
the room vibrated to my cry. No human retina was recipient of my anguish.
What fine, unclassified senses had the highly-organized animal by which he
should become aware of me ? The dog turned his noble head. He was a St.
Bernard, with the moral qualities of the breed well marked upon his physiog-
nomy. He lifted his eyes and solemnly regarded me.
After a moment's pause he gave vent to a long and mournful cry.
" Don't, Lion," I said. " Keep quiet, sir. This is dreadful \"
The dog ceased howling when I spoke to him ; after a little hesitation he
came slowly to the spot where I was standing, and looked earnestly into my
face, as if he saw me. Whether he did, or how he did, or why he did, I
knew not, and I know not now. The main business of this narrative will be
the recording of facts. Explanations it is not mine to offer ; and of specu-
lations I have but few, either to give or to withhold.
A great wistfulness came into my soul as I stood shut apart there from
those living men, within reach of their hands, within range of their eyes,
within the vibration of their human breath. I looked into the animal's eyes
with the yearning of a sudden and an awful sense of desolation.
" Speak to me, Lion," I whispered. " Won't you speak to me ? "
" What is that dog about ?'" asked the customer, staring. " He is stand-
ing in the middle of the room and wagging his tail as if he had met some-
body."
The dog at this instant, with eager signs of pleasure or of pity — I could
not, indeed, say which — put his beautiful face against my hand, and kissed,
or seemed to kiss it, sympathetically.
" He has queer ways," observed Jason, the clerk, carelessly ; "he knows
more than most folks I know."
" True/' said his master, laughing. "I don't feel that I am Lion's equal
more than half the time, myself. He is a noble fellow. He has a very su-
perior nature. My wife declares he is a poet, and that when he goes off by
himself, and gazes into vacancy with that sort of look, he is composing
verses."
Another customer had strolled in by this time ; he laughed at the broker's
easy Avit ; the rest joined in the laugh ; some one said something which I did
not understand, and Drayton threw back his head and guffawed heartily. I
think their laughter made me feel more isolated from them than anything
had yet done.
"Why !" exclaimed the broker sharply, "what is this? Jason! What
does this mean ? "
His face, as he turned it over his shoulder to address the clerk, had changed
color ; he was indeed really pale. He held his fingers on the great sheet of
blue blotting-paper, to which he pointed unsteadily.
250 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. [1861-88
"Upon my soul, sir/' said Jason, flushing and then paling in his turn.
" That is a queer thing ! May I show it to Mr. Drayton ? "
The inspector stepped forward as the broker nodded, and examined the
blotting-paper attentively.
" It is written over/' he said in a professional tone, "from end to end. I
see that. It is written with one name. It is the name of "
" Helen ! " interrupted the broker.
" Yes/' replied the inspector. " Yes, it is : Helen ; distinctly, Helen.
Some one must have "
But I staid to hear no more. What some one must have done, I sprang
and left the live men to decide — as live men do decide such things — among
themselves. I sprang, and crying "Helen! Helen! Helen!" with one
bound I brushed them by, and fled the room, and reached the outer air and
sought for her.
As nearly as one can characterize the emotion of such a moment, I should
say that it was one of mortal intensity ; perhaps of what in living men we
should call maniac intensity. Up to this moment I could not be said to
have comprehended the effect of what had taken place upon my wife.
The full force of her terrible position now struck me like the edge of a
weapon with whose sheath I had been idling.
Hot in the flame of my anger I had gone from her ; and cold indeed had I
returned. Her I had left dumb before my cruel tongue, but dumb was that
which had come back to her in my name.
I was a dead man. But like any living of them all — oh, more than any
living — I loved my wife. I loved her more because I had been cruel to her
than if I had been kind. I loved her more because we had parted so bitterly
than if we had parted lovingly. I loved her more because I had died than if
I had lived. I must see my wife ! I must find my wife ! I must say to her
— I must tell her — Why, who in all the world but me could do anything
for Helen now ?
Out into the morning air I rushed, and got the breeze in my face, and up
the thronging street, as spirits do, unnoted and unknown of men, I passed —
solitary in the throng, silent in the outcry, unsentient in the press.
The sun was strong. The day was cool. The dome of the sky hung over
me, too, as over those who raised their breathing faces to its beauty. I, too,
saw, as I fled on, that the day was fair. I heard the human voices say :
" What a morning ! "
" It puts the soul into you ! " said a burly stock-speculator to a railroad-
treasurer; they stood upon the steps of the Exchange, laughing, as I brushed
by.
" It makes life worth while," said a healthy elderly woman, merrily, mak-
ing the crossing with the light foot that a light heart gives.
" It makes life possible," replied a pale young girl beside her, coming
slowly after.
" Poor fellow ! " sighed a stranger whom I hit in hurrying on. " It was
an ugly way to die. Nice air this morning ! "
"He will be a loss to the community/' replied this man's companion.
1861-88] ELIZABETH STUART PHELP8 WARD. 251
" There isn't a doctor in town who has his luck with fevers. You can't con-
vince my wife he didn't save her life last winter. Frost last night, wasn't
there ? Very invigorating morning ! "
Now, at the head of the street some ladies were standing, waiting for a car.
I was delayed in passing them, and as I stepped back to change my course I
saw that one of them was speaking earnestly and that her eyes showed signs
of weeping.
" He wouldn't remember me," she said ; " it was eleven years ago. But
sick women don't forget their doctors. He was as kind to me "
" Oh, poor Mrs. Thome ! " a soft voice answered, in the accented tone of
an impulsive, tender-hearted woman. " It's bad enough to be a patient.
But, oh, his wife ! "
" Let me pass, ladies ! " I cried, or tried to cry, forgetting, in the anguish
which their words fanned to its fiercest, that I could not be heard and might
not be seen. " There seems to be some obstruction. Let me by, for I am in
mortal haste ! "
Obstruction there was, alas ! but it was not in them whom I would have
entreated. Obstruction there was, but of what nature I could not and I can-
not testify. "While I had the words upon my lips, .even as the group of
women broke and left a space about me while they scattered on their ways,
there on the corner of the thoroughfare, in the heart of the town, by an in-
visible force, by an inexplicable barrier, I, the dead man fleeing to my living
wife, was beaten back.
Whence came that awful order ? How came it ? And wherefore ? I knew
no more than the November wind that passed me by and went upon its
errand as it listed.
I was thrust back by a blast of Power Incalculable ; it was like the current
of an unknown natural force of infinite capability. Set the will of soul and
body as I would, I could not pass the head of the street.
AT THE PARTY.
HALF a dozen children Little eyes demurely
At our house ! Cast upon the ground,
Half a dozen children Little airs and graces
Quiet as a mouse, All around.
Quiet as a moonbeam. •«
You could hear a pin — High time for that party
Waiting for the party To begin !
To begin. To sit so any longer
Were a sort of sin ;
Such a flood of flounces! As if you weren't acquainted
(Oh dear me!) With society.
Such a surge of sashes What a thing to tell of
Like a silken sea. That would be !
252
RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
[1861-88
Up spoke a little lady
Aged five :
"I've tumbled up ray over-dress,
Sure as I'm alive !
My dress came from Paris;
We sent to Worth for it;
Mother says she calls it
Such a fit ! "
Quick there piped another
Little voice:
"/didn't send for dresses,
Though I had my choice ;
/have got a doll that
Came from Paris too;
It can walk and talk as
Well as you ! "
Still, till now, there sat one
Little girl ;
Simple as a snow-drop,
Without flounce or curl.
Modest as a primrose,
Soft, plain hair brushed back,
But the color of her dress was
Black— all black.
Swift she glanced around with
Sweet surprise ;
Bright and grave the look that
Widened in her eyes.
To entertain the party
She must do her share.
As if God had sent her
Stood she there;
Stood a minute, thinking,
With crossed hands,
How she best might meet the
Company's demands.
Grave and sweet the purpose
To the child's voice given:
"/have a little brother
Gone to Heaven ! "
On the little party
Dropped a spell ;
All the little flounces
Rustled where they fell;
But the modest maiden
In her mourning gown,
Unconscious as a flower,
Looketh down.
Quick my heart besought her,
Silently:
' ' Happy little maiden,
Give, O give to me
The highness of your courage,
The sweetness of your grace,
To speak a large word, in a
Little place."
OTatgon
BORN iu Bordentown, N. J., 1844.
MY LOVE FOR THEE DOTH MARCH LIKE ARMED MEN."
[The New Day. 1875.
The Celestial Passion. 1878-85.
Editions of 1887.]
Lyrics. 1878-85. Revised
HV/TY love for thee doth march like armed men
-L*J- Against a queenly city they would take.
Along the army's front its banners shake ;
Across the mountain and the sun-smit plain
It steadfast sweeps as sweeps the steadfast rain;
And now the trumpet makes the still air quake,
And now the thundering cannon doth awake
Echo on echo, echoing loud again.
But, lo! the conquest higher than bard had sung;
1861-88] RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 253
Instead of answering cannon comes a small
"White flag; the iron gates are open flung,
And flowers along the invaders' pathway fall.
The city's conquerors feast their foes among,
And their brave flags are trophies on her wall.
LISTENING TO MUSIC.
WHEN on that joyful sea
Where billow on billow breaks ; where swift waves follow
Waves, and hollow calls to hollow;
Where sea-birds swirl and swing,
And winds through the rigging shrill and sing;
Where night is one vast starless shade ;
Where thy soul not afraid,
Though all alone unlonely,
Wanders and wavers, wavers wandering: —
On that accursed sea
One moment only,
Forget one moment, Love, thy fierce content ;
Back let thy soul be bent —
Think back, dear Love, O Love, think back to me !
I COUNT MY TIME BY TIMES THAT I MEET THEE."
I COUNT my time by times that I meet thee ;
These are my yesterdays, my morrows, noons
And nights ; these my old moons and my new moons.
Slow fly the hours, or fast the hours do flee,
If thou art far from or art near to me :
If thou art far, the birds' tunes are no tunes ;
If thou art near, the wintry days are Junes, —
Darkness is light, and sorrow cannot be.
Thou art my dream come true, and thou my dream,
The air I breathe, the world wherein I dwell ;
My journey's end thou art, and thou the way ;
Thou art what I would be, yet only seem ;
Thou art my heaven and thou art my hell;
Thou art my ever-living judgment day.
254 RICHARD WATSOJT GILDER. [1861-88
MORS TRIUMPHALIS
IN the hall of the king the loud mocking of many at one ;
While lo ! with his hand on his harp the old bard is undone !
One false note, then he stammers, he sobs like a child, he is failing,
And the song that so bravely began ends in discord and wailing.
Can it be it is they who make merry, 'tis they taunting him?
Shall the sun, then, be scorned by the planets, the tree by the limb!
These bardlings, these mimics, these echoes, these shadows at play,
While he only is real : — they shine but as motes in his day !
All that in them is best is from him ; all they know he has taught ;
But one secret he never could teach, and they never have caught,—
The soul of his songs, that goes sighing like wind through the reeds,
And thrills men, and moves them to terror, to prayer, and to deeds.
Has the old poet failed, then, — the singer forgotten his part ?
Why, 'twas he who once startled the world with a cry from his heart ;
And he held it entranced in a life-song, all music, all love ;
If now it grow faint and grow still, they have called him above.
Ah, never again shall we hear such fierce music and sweet, —
Surely never from you, ye who mock, — for his footstool unmeet;
E'en his song left unsung had more power than the note ye prolong,
And one sweep of his harp-strings outpassioned the height of your song.
But a sound like the voice of the pine, like the roar of the sea,
Arises. He breathes now ; he sings ; oh, again he is free.
He has flung from his flesh, from his spirit, their shackles accursed,
And he pours all his heart, all his life, in one passionate burst.
And now as he chants those who listen turn pale — are afraid ;
For he sings of a God that made all, and is all that was made ;
Who is maker of love, and of hate, and of peace, and of strife ;
Smiles a world into life; frowns a hell, that yet thrills with his life.
And he sings of the time that shall be when the earth is grown old,
Of the day when the sun shall be withered, and shrunken, and cold ;
When the stars, and the moon, and the sun, — all their glory o'erpast, —
Like apples that shrivel and rot, shall drop into the Vast.
And onward and out soars his song on its journey sublime,
Mid systems that vanish or live in the lilt of his rhyme ;
And through making and marring of races, and worlds, still he sings
One theme, that o'er all and through all his wild music outrings ; —
This one theme : that whace'er be the fate that has hurt us or joyed,
Whatever the face that is turned to us out of the void ;
Be it cursing or blessing; or night, or the light of the sun;
Be it ill, be it good ; be it life, be it death, it is ONE ; —
One thought, and one law, and one awful and infinite power;
In atom, and world; in the bursting of fruit and of flower;
1861-88] RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 255
The laughter of children, and roar of the lion untamed ;
And the stars in their courses — one name that can never be named.
But sudden a silence has fallen, the music has fled ;
Though he leans with his hand on his harp, now indeed he is dead!
But the swan-song he sang shall for ever and ever abide
In th« heart of the world, with the winds and the murmuring tide.
THE CELESTIAL PASSION.
O WHITE and midnight sky, O starry bath,
Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood;
Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath -
Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood !
Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps;
Touch and baptize me with the mighty power
Tnat in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps;
Make me all yours for one blest, secret hour!
O glittering host, O high angelic choir,
Silence each tone that with thy music jars ;
Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire
Till all I am is kindred to the stars!
Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy night. • -
So shall my days be full of heavenly light!
T
A CHRISTMAS HYMN.
ELL me what is this innumerable throng
Singing in the heavens a loud angelic song ?
These are they who come with swift and shining feet
From round about the throne of God the Lord of Light to greet.
Oh, who are these that hasten beneath the starry sky —
As if with joyful tidings that through the world shall fly ? —
The faithful shepherds these, who greatly were afeared
When, as they watched their flocks by night, the heavenly host appeared.
Who are these that follow across the hills of night
A star that westward hurries along the fields of light ?
Three wise men from the East who myrrh and treasure bring
To lay them at the feet of him their Lord and Christ and King.
What babe new-born is this that in a manger cries ?
Near on her lowly bed his happy mother lies.
Oh, see the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings —
This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of Kings.
256 BICHARD WATSON GILDER. [1861-88
ON A PORTRAIT OF SERVETUS.
THOU grim and haggard wanderer who dost look
With haunting eyes forth from the narrow page, —
I know what fires consumed with inward rage
Thy broken frame, what tempests chilled and shook 1
Ah, could not thy remorseless foeman brook
Time's sure devourment, but must needs assuage
His anger in thy blood, and blot the age
With that dark crime which virtue's semblance took!
Servetus ! that which slew thee lives to-day,
Though in new forms it taints our modern ail-
Still in heaven's name the deeds of hell are done :
Still on the high-road, 'neath the noon-day sun,
The fires of hate are lit for them who dare
Follow their Lord along the untrodden way.
ODE.
I AM the spirit of the morning sea ;
I am the awakening and the glad surprise ;
I fill the skies
With laughter and with light.
Not tears, but jollity
At birth of day brim the strong man-child's eyes.
Behold the white
Wide three-fold beams that from the hidden sun
Rise swift and far, —
One where Orion keeps
His armed watch, and one
That to the midmost starry heaven upleaps ;
The third blots out the firm-fixed Northern Star.
I am the wind that shakes the glittering wave,
Hurries the snowy spume along the shore
And dies at last in some far-murmuring cave.
My voice thou hearest in the breaker's roar,—
That sound which never failed since time began,
And first around the world the shining tumult ran.
I light the sea and wake the sleeping land.
My footsteps on the hills make music, and my hand
Plays like a harper's on the wind-swept pines.
With the wind and the day
I follow round the world — away! away!
Wide over lake and plain my sunlight shines
1861-88] RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 257
And every wave and every blade of grass
Doth know me as I pass ;
And me the western sloping mountains know, and me
The far-off, golden sea.
O sea, whereon the passing sun doth lie!
O man, who watchest by that golden sea!
Weep not, — O weep not thou, but lift thine eye
And see me glorious in the sunset sky !
I love not the night
Save when the stars are bright,
Or when the moon
Fills the white air with silence like a tune.
Yea, even the night is mine
When the Northern Lights outshine,
And all the wild heavens throb in ecstasy divine ; —
Yea, mine deep midnight, though the black sky lowers,
When the sea burns white and breaks on the shore in starry showera
I am the laughter of the new-born child
On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled.
And I all sweet first things that are :
First songs of birds, not perfect as at last, —
Broken and incomplete, —
But sweet, oh, sweet !
And I the first faint glimmer of a star
To the wrecked ship that tells the storm is past;
The first keen smells and stirrings of the Spring;
First snow-flakes, and first May-flowers after snow;
The silver glow
Of the new moon's ethereal ring;
The song the morning stars together made,
And the first kiss of lovers under the first June shade.
My sword is quick, my arm is strong to smite
In the dread joy and fury of the fight.
I am with those who win, not those who fly;
With those who live I am, not those who die.
Who die ? Nay— nay— that word
Where I am is unheard ;
For I am the spirit of youth that cannot change,
Nor cease, nor suffer woe ;
And I am the spirit of beauty that doth range
Through natural forms and motions, and each show
Of outward loveliness. With me have birth
All gentleness and joy in all the earth.
Raphael knew me, and showed the world my face;
Me Homer knew, and all the singing race, —
For I am the spirit of light, and life, and mirth.
VOL. x.— 17
258 RICHARD WATSON GILDER. [1861-88
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
rj^HIS bronze doth keep the very form and mould
J- Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he :
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on ; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day, —
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
"With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength : his pure and mighty heart.
THE SONNET.
WHAT is a sonnet ? 'Tis the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously ;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet ? 'Tis the tear that fell
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy ;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song — ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath ;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is — beware who ventureth!
For like a fjord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.
DESECRATION.
rpHE poet died last night; Hushed is that piercing strain, —
-*- Outworn his mortal frame. Who heard, for pleasure wept.
He hath fought well the fight, . His were our joy and pain :
And won a deathless name. He sang — our sorrow slept.
Bring laurel for his bier, Yes, weep for him ; no more
And flowers to deck the hearse. Shall such high songs have birth:
The tribute of a tear Gone is the harp he bore
To his immortal verse. Forever from the earth.
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 259
Weep, weep, and scatter flowers To do our poet wrong —
Above his precious dust : To break the sealed tomb ?
Child of the heavenly powers, —
Diviue, and pure, and just. Not the great world and gay
That pities not, nor halts
"Weep, weep — for when to-night By thoughtless night or day —
Doth hoot the horned owl, But, O more sordid-false,
Beneath the pale moon's light
The human ghouls will prowl. His trusted Wend and near,
To whom his spirit moved;
What creatures those will throng The brother he held dear;
Within the sacred gloom, The woman that he loved.
Cable*
BORN in New Orleans, La., 1844.
MADAME DELICIEUSE.
[Old Creole Days. 1883.]
TUST adjoining the old Cafe de Poesie on the corner, stood the little one-
*J story, yellow-washed tenement of Dr. Mossy, with its two glass doors
protected by batten shutters, and its low, weed-grown tile roof sloping out
over the sidewalk. You were very likely to find the Doctor in, for he was a
great student and rather negligent of his business — as business. He was a
small, sedate, Creole gentleman of thirty or more, with a young-old face and
manner that provoked instant admiration. He would receive you — be you
who you may — in a mild, candid manner, looking into your face with his
deep-blue eyes, and reassuring you with a modest, amiable smile, very sweet
and rare on a man's mouth.
To be frank, the Doctor's little establishment was dusty and disorderly-
very. It was curious to see the jars, and jars, and jars. In them were ser-
pents and hideous fishes and precious specimens of many sorts. There were
stuffed birds on broken perches ; and dried lizards, and eels, and little alli-
gators, and old skulls with their crowns sawed off, and ten thousand odd
scraps of writing-paper strewn with crumbs of lonely lunches, and inter-
spersed with long-lost spatulas and rust-eaten lancets.
All New Orleans, at least all Creole New Orleans, knew, and yet did not
know, the dear little Doctor. So gentle, so kind, so skilful, so patient, so
lenient; so careless of the rich and so attentive to the poor; a man, all in all,
such as, should you once love him, you would love him forever. So very
learned, too, but with apparently no idea of how to show himself 'to his social
profit, — two features much more smiled at than respected, not to say ad-
mired, by a people remote from the seats of learning, and spending most of
their esteem upon animal heroisms and exterior display.
260 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
"Alas I" said his wealthy acquaintances, "what a pity; when he might
as well be rich."
" Yes, his father has plenty."
"Certainly, and gives it freely. But intends his son shall see none of it."
" His son ? You dare not so much as mention him."
" Well, well, how strange ! But they can never agree — not even upon
their name. Is not that droll ? — a man named General Villivicencio, and
his son, Dr. Mossy ! "
" Oh, that is nothing ; it is only that the Doctor drops the de Villivicen-
cio."
"Drops the de Villivicencio? but I think the de Villivicencio drops him,
ho, ho, ho, — diable!"
Next to the residence of good Dr. Mossy towered the narrow, red-brick-
front mansion of young Madame Delicieuse, firm friend at once and always
of those two antipodes, General Villivicencio and Dr. Mossy. Its dark, cov-
ered carriage-way was ever rumbling, and, with nightfall, its drawing-rooms
always sent forth a luxurious light from the lace-curtained windows of the
second-story balconies.
It was one of the sights of the Eue Eoyale to see by night its tall, narrow
outline reaching high up toward the stars, with all its windows aglow.
The Madame had had some tastes of human experience ; had been be-
trothed at sixteen (to a man she did not love, "being at that time a fool,"
as she said) ; one summer day at noon had been a bride, and at sundown — a
widow. Accidental discharge of the tipsy bridegroom's own pistol. Pass it
by ! It left but one lasting effect on her, a special detestation of quarrels and
weapons.
The little maidens whom poor parentage has doomed to sit upon street
door-sills and nurse their infant brothers have a game of "choosing" the
beautiful ladies who sweep by along the pavement ; but in Eue Eoyale there
was no choosing ; every little damsel must own Madame Delicieuse or no-
body, and as that richly adorned and regal favorite of old General Villivi-
cencio came along they would lift their big, bold eyes away up to her face
and pour forth their admiration in a universal — " Ah-h-h-h ! "
But, mark you, she was good Madame Delicieuse as well as fair Madame
Delicieuse : her principles, however, not constructed in the austere Anglo-
Saxon style, exactly (what need, with the lattice of the Confessional not a
stone's-throw off?). Her kind offices and beneficent schemes were almost as
famous as General Villivicencio's splendid alms ; if she could at times do
what the infantile Washington said he could not, why, no doubt she and her
friends generally looked upon it as a mere question of enterprise.
She had charms, too, of intellect — albeit not such a sinner against time
and place as to be an "educated woman" — charms that, even in a plainer
person, would have brought down the half of New Orleans upon one knee,
with both hands on the left side. She had the whole city at her feet, and,
with the fine tact which was the perfection of her character, kept it there
contented. Madame was, in short, one of the kind that gracefully wrest from
society the prerogative of doing as they please, and had gone even to such
1861 -88J GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 261
extravagant lengths as driving out in the Americain faubourg, learning the
English tongue, talking national politics, and similar freaks whereby she
provoked the unbounded worship of her less audacious lady friends. In the
centre of the cluster of Creole beauties which everywhere gathered about
her, and, most of all, in those incomparable companies which assembled in
her own splendid drawing-rooms, she was always queen lily. Her house,
her drawing-rooms, etc. ; for the little brown aunt who lived with her was a
mere piece of curious furniture. ,
There was this notable charm about Madame Delicieuse, she improved by
comparison. She never looked so grand as when, hanging on General Villi-
vicencio's arm at some gorgeous ball, these two bore down on you like a
royal barge lashed to a ship-of-the-line. She never looked so like her sweet
name as when she seated her prettiest lady adorers close around her and got
them all a-laughing.
Of the two balconies which overhung the banquette on the front of the
Deljcieuse house, one was a small affair, and the other a deeper and broader
one, from which Madame and her ladies were wont upon gala days to wave
handkerchiefs and cast flowers to the friends in the processions. There they
gathered one Eighth of January morning to see the military display. It was
a bright blue day, and the group that quite filled the balcony had laid wrap-
pings aside, as all flower-buds are apt to do on such Creole January days,
and shone resplendent in spring attire.
The sight-seers passing below looked up by hundreds and smiled at the
ladies' eager twitter, as, flirting in humming-bird fashion from one subject
to another, they laughed away the half-hours waiting for the pageant. By
and by they fell a-listening, for Madame Delicieuse had begun a narrative
concerning Dr. Mossy. She sat somewhat above her listeners, her elbow on
the arm of her chair, and her plump white hand waving now and then in
graceful gesture, they silently attending with eyes full of laughter and lips
starting apart.
" Vous savez," she said (they conversed in French of course), "you know
it is now long that Dr. Mossy and his father have been in disaccord. Indeed,
when have they not differed ? For, Avhen Mossy was but a little boy, his fa-
ther thought it hard that he was not a rowdy. He switched him once be-
cause he would not play with his toy gun and drum. He was not so high
when his father wished to send him to Paris to enter the French army ; but
he would not go. We used to play often together on the banquette — for I am
not so very many years younger than he, no indeed — and, if I wanted some
fun, I had only to pull his hair and run into the house ; he would cry, and
monsieur papa would come out with his hand spread open and"
Madame gave her hand a malicious little sweep, and joined heartily in the
laugh which followed.
" That was when they lived over the way. But wait ! you shall see ; I have
something. This evening the General "
The houses of Rue Eoyale gave a start and rattled their windows. In the
long, irregular line of balconies the beauty of the city rose up. Then the
houses jumped again and the windows rattled ; Madame steps inside the win-
262 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
dow and gives a message which the housemaid smiles at in receiving. As she
turns the houses shake again, and now again ; and now there comes a dis-
tant strain of trumpets, and by and by the drums and bayonets and clatter-
ing hoofs, and plumes and dancing banners ; far down the long street stretch
out the shining ranks of gallant men, and the fluttering, over-leaning
swarms of ladies shower down their sweet favors and wave their countless
welcomes.
In the front, towering above his captains, rides General Villivicencio,
veteran of 1814-15, and, with the gracious pomp of the old-time gentleman,
lifts his cocked hat, and bows, and bows.
Madame De"licieuse's balcony was a perfect maze of waving kerchiefs. The
General looked up for the woman of all women : she was not there. But
he remembered the other balcony, the smaller one, and cast his glance
onward to it. There he saw Madame and one other person only. A small
blue-eyed, broad-browed, scholarly-looking man whom the arch lady had
lured from his pen by means of a mock professional summons, and who
now stood beside her, a smile of pleasure playing on his lips and about his
eyes.
" Vite ! " said Madame, as the father's eyes met the son's. Dr. Mossy lifted
his arm and cast a bouquet of roses. A girl in the crowd bounded forward,
caught it in the air, and, blushing, handed it to the plumed giant. He bowed
low, first to the girl, then to the balcony above ; and then, with a responsive
smile, tossed up two splendid kisses, one to Madame, and one, it seemed
"For what was that cheer?"
" Why, did you not see ? General Villivicencio cast a kiss to his son."
The staff of General Villivicencio were a faithful few who had not bowed
the knee to any abomination of the Americains, nor sworn deceitfully to any
species of compromise ; their beloved city was presently to pass into the
throes of an election, and this band, heroically unconscious of their feeble-
ness, putting their trust in "reactions" and like delusions, resolved to
make one more stand for the traditions of their fathers. It was concerning
this that Madame Delicieuse was incidentally about to speak when inter-
rupted by the boom of cannon ; they had promised to meet at her house that
evening.
They met. With very little discussion or delay (for their minds were
made up beforehand), it was decided to announce in the French-English
newspaper that, at a meeting of leading citizens, it had been thought conso-
nant with the public interest to place before the people the name of General
Hercule Mossy de Villivicencio. No explanation was considered necessary.
All had been done in strict accordance with time-honored customs, and if
any one did not know it, it was his own fault. No eulogium was to follow,
no editorial indorsement. The two announcements were destined to stand
next morning, one on the English side and one on the French, in severe sim-
plicity, to be greeted with profound gratification by a few old gentlemen in
blue cottonade, and by roars of laughter from a rampant majority.
As the junto were departing, sparkling Madame Delicieuse detained the
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 263
General at the head of the stairs that descended into the tiled carriage-way,
to wish she was a man, that she might vote for him.
" But, General," she said, " had I not a beautiful bouquet of ladies on my
balcony this morning ?"
The General replied, with majestic gallantry, that "it was as magnificent
as could be expected with the central rose wanting." And so Madame was
disappointed, for she was trying to force the General to mention his son.
"I will bear this no longer; he shall not rest," she had said to her little
aunt, " until he has either kissed his son or quarrelled with him/' To which
the aunt had answered that, "coute que coute, she need not cry about it";
nor did she. Though the General's compliment had foiled her thrust, she
answered gayly to the effect that enough was enough ; "but, ah ! General,"
dropping her voice to an undertone, "if you had heard what some of those
rosebuds said of you ! "
The old General pricked up like a country beau. Madame laughed to her-
self, "Monsieur Peacock, I have thee" ; but aloud she said gravely :
" Come into the drawing-room, if you please, and seat yourself. You must
be greatly fatigued."
The friends who waited below overheard the invitation.
"Aurevoir, General," said they.
" Au revoir, Messieurs," he answered, and followed the lady.
"General," said she, as if her heart were overflowing, "you have been
spoken against. Please sit down."
"Is that true, Madame ?"
"Yes, General."
She sank into a luxurious chair.
"A lady said to-day — but you will be angry with me, General."
"With you, Madame ? That is not possible."
"I do not love to make revelations, General ; but when a noble friend is
evil spoken of" — she leaned her brow upon her thumb and forefinger, and
looked pensively at her slipper's toe peeping out at the edge of her skirt on
the rich carpet — "one's heart gets very big."
" Madame, you are an angel ! But what said she, Madame?"
"Well, General, I have to tell you the whole truth, if you will not be
angry. We were all speaking at once of handsome men. She said to me :
'Well, Madame Delicieuse, you may say what you will of General Villivi-
cencio, and I suppose it is true; but everybody knows' — pardon me, Gen-
eral, but just so she said — 'all the world knows he treats his son very
badly.'"
"It is not tirue," said the General.
"If I wasn't angry !" said Madame, making a pretty fist. " 'How can that
be ?' I said. 'Well,' she said, 'mamma says he has been angry with his son
for fifteen years.' 'But what did his son do ?' I said. 'Nothing,' said she.
'Mafoi,' I said, 'me, I too would be angry if my son had done nothing for
fifteen years' — ho, ho, ho !"
"It is not true," said the General.
The old General cleared his throat, and smiled as by compulsion.
2Q4 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
"You know, General/' said Madame, looking distressed, "it was nothing
to joke about, but I had to say so, because I did not know what your son had
done, nor did I wish to hear anything against one who has the honor to call
you his father/'
She paused a moment to let the flattery take effect, and then proceeded :
"But then another lady said to me; she said: 'For shame, Clarisse, to
laugh at good Dr. Mossy; nobody— neither General Villivicencio, ne'
ther any other, has a right to be angry against that noble, gentle, kind,
brave'"-
"Brave !" said the General, with a toucn of irony.
"So she said," answered Madame Delicieuse, "and I asked her, 'how
brave ?' 'Brave ?' she said, 'why, oraver than any soldier, in tending the
small-pox, the cholera, the fevers, and all those horrible things. Me, I saw
his father once run from a snake ; I think lie wouldn't fight the small -pox —
my faith !' she said, 'they say that Dr. Mossy does all that and never wears
a scapula ! — and does it nine hundred and ninety-nine times in a thousand
for nothing ! Is that brave, Madame Delicieuse, or is it not ?' — And, Gen-
eral,— what could I say ?"
Madame dropped her palms on either side of her spreading robes and
waited pleadingly for an answer. There was no sound but the drumming of
the General's fingers on his sword-hilt. Madame resumed :
"I said: 'I do not deny that Mossy is a noble gentleman' ; — I had to say
that, had I not, General ?"
"Certainly, Madame," said the General, "my son is a gentleman, yes."
" 'But,' I said, 'he should not make Monsieur, his father, angry.'"
"True," said the General, eagerly.
"But that lady said: ''Monsieur, his father, makes himself angry/ she
said. 'Do you know, Madame, why his father is angry so long?' Another
lady says: 'I know !' 'For what ?' said I. 'Because he refused to become a
soldier ; mamma told me that. ' ' It cannot be ! ' I said. "
The General flushed. Madame saw it, but relentlessly continued :
"'Mais oui,' said that lady. 'What !' I said, 'think you General Villivi-
cencio will not rather be the very man most certain to respect a son who has
the courage to be his own master ? Oh, what does he want with a poor fool
of a son who will do only as he says ? You think he will love him less for
healing instead of killing ? Mesdemoiselles, you do not know that noble
soldier ! ' "
The noble soldier glowed, and bowed his acknowledgments in a dubious,
half remonstrative way, as if Madame might be producing material for her
next confession, as, indeed, she diligently was doing ; but she went straight
on once more, as a surgeon would.
"But that other lady said : 'No, Madame ; no, ladies ; but I am going to
tell you why Monsieur, the General, is angry with his son.' 'Very well,
why ? ' — ' Why ? It is just — because — he is — a little man ! ' "
General Villivicencio stood straight up.
"Ah ! mon ami," cried the lady, rising excitedly, "I have wounded you
and made you angry, with my silly revelations. Pardon me, my friend.
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 265
Those were foolish girls, and, anyhow, they admired you. They said you
looked glorious — grand — at the head of the procession."
Now, all at once, the General felt the tremendous fatigues of the day ;
there was a wild, swimming, whirling sensation in his head that forced him
to let his eyelids sink down ; yet, just there, in the midst of his painful be-
wilderment, he realized with ecstatic complacency that the most martial-
looking man in Louisiana was standing in his spurs with the hand of Louis-
iana's queenliest woman laid tenderly on his arm.
"I am a wretched tattler I" said she.
"Ah ! no, Madame, you are my dearest friend, yes."
"Well, anyhow, I called them fools. 'Ah! innocent creatures/ I said,
'think you a man of his sense and goodness, giving his thousands to the
sick and afflicted, will cease to love his only son because he is not big like a
horse or quarrelsome like a dog ? No, ladies, there is a great reason which
none of you know.' 'Well, well/ they cried, 'tell it; he has need of a very
good reason; tell it now/ 'My ladies/ I said, 'I must not' — for, General,
for all the world I knew not a reason why you should be angry against your
son; you know, General, you have never told me/'
The beauty again laid her hand on his arm and gazed, with round-eyed
simplicity, into his sombre countenance. For an instant her witchery had
almost conquered.
"Nay, Madame, some day I shall tell you ; I have more than one burden
here. But let me ask you to be seated, for I have a question, also, for you,
which I have longed to ask. It lies heavily upon my heart ; I must ask it
now. A matter of so great importance "
Madame's little brown aunt gave a faint cough from a dim corner of the
room.
"'Tis a beautiful night/' she remarked, and stepped out on the bal-
cony.
Then the General asked his question. It was a very long question, or,
maybe, repeated twice or thrice ; for it was fully ten minutes before he
moved out of the room, saying good-evening.
Ah ! old General Villivicencio. The most martial-looking man in Louisi-
ana ! But what would the people, the people who cheered in the morning,
have said, to see the fair Queen Delicieuse at the top of the stair, sweetly
bowing you down into the starlight — humbled, crestfallen, rejected !
The campaign opened. The Villivicencio ticket was read in French and
English with the very different sentiments already noted. In the Exchange,
about the courts, among the "banks/'' there was lively talking concerning
its intrinsic excellence and extrinsic chances. The young gentlemen who
stood about the doors of the so-called "coffee-houses" talked with a frantic
energy alarming to any stranger, and just when you would have expected to
see them jump and bite large mouthfuls out of each other's face, they would
turn and enter the door, talking on in the same furious manner, and, walk-
ing up to the bar, click their glasses to the success of the Villivicencio ticket.
Sundry swarthy and wrinkled remnants of an earlier generation were still
266 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
more enthusiastic. There was to be a happy renaissance ; a purging out of
Yankee ideas ; a blessed home-coming of those good old Bourbon morals
and manners which Yankee notions had expatriated. In the cheerfulness of
their anticipations they even went the length of throwing their feet high in
air, thus indicating how the Villivicencio ticket was going to give "doze
Americains" the kick under the nose.
In the three or four weeks which followed, the General gathered a surfeit
of adulation, notwithstanding which he was constantly and with pain imag-
ining a confused chatter of ladies, and when he shut his eyes with annoy-
ance, there was Madame Delicieuse standing, and saying, "I knew not a
reason why you should be angry against your son," gazing in his face with
hardened simplicity, and then — that last scene on the stairs Avherein he
seemed still to be descending, down, down.
Madame herself was keeping good her resolution.
"Now or never," she said, "a reconciliation or a quarrel."
When the General, to keep up appearances, called again, she so moved
him with an account of certain kindly speeches of her own invention, which
she imputed to Dr. Mossy, that he promised to call and see his son; "per-
haps;" "pretty soon;" "probably."
Dr. Mossy, sitting one February morning among his specimens and books
of reference, finishing a thrilling chapter on the cuticle, too absorbed to
hear a door open, suddenly realized that something was in his light, and,
looking up, beheld General Villivicencio standing over him. Breathing a
pleased sigh, he put down his pen, and, rising on tiptoe, laid his hand upon
his father's shoulder, and lifting his lips like a little wife, kissed him.
"Be seated, papa," he said, offering his own chair, and perching on the
desk.
The General took it, and, clearing his throat, gazed around upon the jars
and jars with their little Adams and Eves in zoological gardens.
"Is all going well, papa ?" finally asked Dr. Mossy.
"Yes."
Then there was a long pause.
"'Tis a beautiful day," said the son.
"Very beautiful," rejoined the father.
"I thought there would have been a rain, but it has cleared off," said the
son.
"Yes," responded the father, and drummed on the desk.
"Does it appear to be turning cool ? " asked the sou.
"No ; it does not appear to be turning cool at all," was the answer.
"H'm 'm !" said Dr. Mossy.
"Hem !" said General Villivicencio.
Dr. Mossy, not realizing his own action, stole a glance at his manuscript.
"I am interrupting you," said the General, quickly, and rose.
" No, no ! pardon me ; be seated ; it gives me great pleasure to — I did not
know what I was doing. It is the work with which I fill my leisure mo-
ments. "
So the General settled down again, and father and son sat very close to
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 267
each other — in a bodily sense ; spiritually they were many miles apart. The
General's finger-ends, softly tapping the desk, had the sound of far-away
drums.
"The city— it is healthy ?" asked the General.
"Did you ask me if" — said the little doctor, starting and looking up.
"The city — it has not much sickness at present ?" repeated the father.
"No, yes — not much," said Mossy, and, with utter unconsciousness,
leaned down upon his elbow and supplied an omitted word to the manu-
script.
The General was on his feet as if by the touch of a spring.
"I must go !"
"Ah ! no, papa," said the son.
"But, yes, I must."
" But wait, papa, I had just now something to speak of"
"Well ?" said the General, standing with his hand on the door, and with
rather a dark countenance.
Dr. Mossy touched his fingers to his forehead, trying to remember.
"I fear I have — ah ! I rejoice to see your name before the public, dear
papa, and at the head of the ticket."
The General's displeasure sank down like an eagle's feathers. He smiled
thankfully, and bowed.
"My friends compelled me," he said.
" They think you will be elected ? "
" They will not doubt it. But what think you, my son ?"
Now the son had a conviction which it would have been madness to ex-
press, so he only said :
"They could not elect one more faithful."
The General bowed solemnly.
"Perhaps the people will think so ; my friends believe they will."
" Your friends who have used your name should help you as much as they
can, papa," said the Doctor. "Myself, I should like to assist you, papa, if I
could."
"A-bah !" said the pleased father, incredulously.
"But, yes," said the son.
A thrill of delight filled the General's frame. This was like a son.
"Thank you, my son ! I thank you much. Ah, Mossy, my dear boy, you
make me happy ! "
"But," added Mossy, realizing with a tremor how far he had gone, "I
see not how it is possible."
The General's chin dropped.
"Not being a public man," continued the Doctor; "unless, indeed, my
pen — you might enlist my pen."
He paused with a smile of bashful inquiry. The General stood aghast for
a moment, and then caught the idea.
"Certainly! cer-tainly! ha, ha, ha!" — backing out of the door — "cer-
tainly ! Ah ! Mossy, you are right, to be sure ; to make a complete world we
must have swords and pens. Well, my son, au revoirj no, I cannot stay — I
268 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
will return. I hasten to tell my friends that the pen of Dr. Mossy is on our
side ! Adieu, dear son."
Standing outside on the banquette he bowed — not to Dr. Mossy, but to
the balcony of the big red-brick front — a most sunshiny smile, and de-
parted.
The very next morning, as if fate had ordered it, the Villivicencio ticket
was attacked — ambushed, as it were, from behind the Americain newspaper.
The onslaught was— at least General Villivicencio said it was — absolutely
ruffianly. Never had all the lofty courtesies and formalities of chivalric con-
test been so completely ignored. Poisoned balls — at least personal epithets
— were used. The General himself was called "antiquated" ! The friends
who had nominated him, they were positively sneered at ; dubbed "fossils,"
"old ladies," and their caucus termed "irresponsible" — thunder and light-
ning ! gentlemen of honor to be termed " not responsible" ! It was asserted
that the nomination was made secretly, in a private house, by two or three
unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with
more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed,
"The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not
the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have
been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high
time the universal wish should be realized in its withdrawal.
Among the earliest readers of this production was the young Madame.
She first enjoyed a quiet gleeful smile over it, and then called :
"Ninide, here, take this down to Dr. Mossy — stop." She marked the
communication heavily with her gold pencil. "No answer; he need not
return it."
About the same hour, and in a neighboring street, one of the " not respon-
sibles " knocked on the Villivicencio castle gate. The General invited him
into his bedroom. With a short and strictly profane harangue the visitor
produced the offensive newspaper, and was about to begin reading, when one
of those loud nasal blasts, so peculiar to the Gaul, resounded at the gate, and
another " not responsible " entered, more excited, if possible, than the first.
Several minutes were spent in exchanging fierce sentiments and slapping the
palm of the left hand rapidly with the back of the right. Presently there was
a pause for breath.
" Alphonse, proceed to read," said the General, sitting up in bed.
" De Crayfish-eaters' Ticket " — began Alphonse ; but a third rapping at
the gate interrupted him, and a third "irresponsible" reenforced their
number, talking loudly and wildly to the waiting-man as he came up the
hall.
Finally, Alphonse read the article. Little by little the incensed gentle-
men gave it a hearing, now two words and now three, interrupting it to rip
out long, rasping maledictions, and wag their forefingers at each other as
they strode ferociously about the apartment.
As Alphonse reached the close, and dashed the paper to the floor, the
whole quartet, in terrific unison, cried for the blood of the editor.
But hereupon the General spoke with authority.
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 269
"No, Messieurs," he said, buttoning his dressing-gown, savagely, "you
shall not fight him. I forbid it — you shall not ! "
" But/' cried the three at once, " one of us must fight, and you — you can-
not ; if you fight our cause is lost ! The candidate must not fight."
"Hah-h ! Messieurs," cried the hero, beating his breast and lifting his
eyes, "grace au del. I have a son. Yes, my beloved friends, a son who shall
call the villain out and make him pay for his impudence with blood, or eat
his words in to-morrow morning's paper. Heaven be thanked that gave me
a son for this occasion ! I shall see him at once — as soon as I can dress."
"We will go with you."
" No, gentlemen, let me see my son alone. I can meet you at Maspero's in
two hours. Adieu, my dear friends."
He was resolved.
" Au revoir," said the dear friends.
Shortly after, cane in hand, General Villivicencio moved with an ireful
stride up the banquette of Rue Royale. Just as he passed the red-brick front
one of the batten shutters opened the faintest bit, and a certain pair of love-
ly eyes looked after him, without any of that round simplicity which we
have before discovered in them. As he half turned to knock at his son's
door he glanced at this very shutter, but it was as tightly closed as though
the house were an enchanted palace.
Dr. Mossy's door, on the contrary, swung ajar when he knocked, and the
General entered.
"Well, my son, have you seen that newspaper? No, I think not. I see
you have not, since your cheeks are not red with shame and anger."
Dr. Mossy looked up with astonishment from the desk where he sat writ-
ing.
"What is that, papa?"
"My faith ! Mossy, is it possible you have not heard of the attack upon
me, which has surprised and exasperated the city this morning ?"
"No," said Dr. Mossy, with still greater surprise, and laying his hand on
the arm of his chair.
His father put on a dying look. "My soul !" At that moment his glance
fell upon the paper which had been sent in by Madame Delicieuse. "But,
Mossy, my son," he screamed, "there it is !" striking it rapidly with one fin-
ger— "there! there! there! read it! It calls me 'not responsible'! 'not
responsible ' it calls me ! Read ! read ! "
"But, papa," said the quiet little Doctor, rising, and accepting the crum-
pled paper thrust at him, "I have read this. If this is it, well, then, already
I am preparing to respond to it."
The General seized him violently, and, spreading a suffocating kiss on his
face, sealed it with an affectionate oath.
"Ah, Mossy, my boy, you are glorious ! You had begun already to write !
You are glorious ! Read to me what you have written, my son."
The Doctor took up a bit of manuscript, and resuming his chair, began :
" MESSRS. EDITORS : On your journal of this morning "
270 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
"Eh ! how ! you have not written it in English, is it, son ?"
" But, yes, papa."
"'Tis a vile tongue/' said the General; "but, if it is necessary — proceed."
" MESSRS. EDITORS : On your journal of this morning is published an editorial article
upon the Villivicencio ticket, which is plentiful and abundant with mistakes. Who is the
author or writer of the above said editorial article your correspondent does at present ig-
nore, but doubts not he is one who, hasty to form an opinion, will yet, however, make his
assent to the correction of some errors and mistakes which "
"Bah ! " cried the General.
Dr. Mossy looked up, blushing crimson.
" Bah ! " cried the General, still more forcibly. " BMise! "
" How ?" asked the gentle son.
"'Tis all nonsent I" cried the General, bursting into English. "Hall you
'ave to say is : 'Sieur Editeurs ! I want you s'all give de nem of de indig-
nan' scoundrel who meek some lies on you' paper about mon pere et ses
amis I"
"Ah-h !" said Dr. Mossy, in a tone of derision and anger.
His father gazed at him in mute astonishment. He stood beside his dis-
orderly little desk, his small form drawn up, a hand thrust into his breast,
and that look of invincibility in his eyes such as blue eyes sometimes surprise
us with.
"You want me to fight," he said.
" My faith ! " gasped the General, loosening in all his joints. " I believe
— you may cut me in pieces if I do not believe you were going to reason it
out in the newspaper ! Fight ? If I want you to fight ? Upon my soul, I
believe you do not want to fight ! "
"No," said Mossy.
"My God !" whispered the General. His heart seemed to break.
"Yes," said the steadily gazing Doctor, his lips trembling as he opened
them. "Yes, your God. I am afraid"
"Afraid !" gasped the General.
"Yes," rang out the Doctor, "afraid ; afraid ! God forbid that I should
not be afraid. But I will tell you what I do not fear — I do not fear to call
your affairs of honor — murder !"
"'My son !" cried the father.
" I retract," cried the son ; "consider it unsaid. I will never reproach my
father."
" It is well," said the father. " I was wrong. It is my quarrel. I go to set-
tle it myself."
Dr. Mossy moved quickly between his father and the door. General Vil-
livicencio stood before him utterly bowed down.
"What will you ?" sadly demanded the old man.
"Papa," said the son, with much tenderness, "I cannot permit you.
Fifteen years we were strangers, and yesterday were friends. You must not
leave me so. I will even settle this quarrel for you. You must let me. I am
pledged to your service."
1861-881 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 271
The peace-loving little doctor did not mean "to settle/' but "to adjust."
He felt in an instant that he was misunderstood ; yet, as quiet people are apt
to do, though not wishing to deceive, he let the misinterpretation stand. In
his embarrassment he did not know with absolute certainty what he should
do himself.
The father's face — he thought of but one way to settle a quarrel — began
instantly to brighten. "I would myself do it," he said, apologetically, "but
my friends forbid it."
"And so do I," said the Doctor, "but I will go myself now, and will not
return until all is finished. Give me the paper."
"My son, I do not wish to compel you."
. There was something acid in the Doctor's smile as he answered :
"No ; but give me the paper, if you please."
The General handed it.
"Papa," said the son, "you must wait here for my return."
"But I have an appointment at Maspero's at"
"I will call and make excuse for you," said the son.
"Well," consented the almost happy father, "go, my son; I will stay.
But if some of your sick shall call ?"
"Sit quiet," said the son. "They will think no one is here." And the
General noticed that the dust lay so thick on the panes that a person outside
would have to put his face close to the glass to see within.
In the course of half an hour the Doctor had reached the newspaper office,
thrice addressed himself to the wrong person, finally found the courteous
editor, and easily convinced him that his father had been imposed upon ; but
when Dr. Mossy went farther, and asked which one of the talented editorial
staff had written the article :
"You see, Doctor," said the editor — "just step into my private office a
moment."
They went in together. The next minute saw Dr. Mossy departing hur-
riedly from the place, while the editor complacently resumed his pen, assured
that he would not return.
General Villivicencio sat and waited among the serpents and innocents.
His spirits began to droop again. Kevolving Mossy's words, he could not
escape the fear that possibly, after all, his son might compromise the Villi-
vicencio honor in the interests of peace. Not that he preferred to put his
son's life in jeopardy ; he would not object to an adjustment, provided the
enemy should beg for it. But if not, whom would his son select to perform
those friendly offices indispensable in polite quarrels ? Some half -priest,
half -woman ? Some spectacled book- worm ? He suffered.
The monotony of his passive task was relieved by one or two callers who
had the sagacity (or bad manners) to peer through the dirty glass, and then
open the door, to whom, half rising from his chair, he answered, with a po-
lite smile, that the Doctor was out, nor could he say how long he might be
absent. Still the time dragged painfully, and he began at length to wonder
why Mossy did not return.
There came a rap at the glass door different from all the raps that had fore-
272 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
run it — a fearless, but gentle, dignified, graceful rap ; and the General, be-
fore he looked around, felt in all his veins that it came from the young Ma-
dame. Yes, there was her glorious outline thrown sidewise upon the glass.
He hastened and threw open the door, bending low at the same instant, and
extending his hand.
She extended hers also, but not to take his. With a calm dexterity that
took the General's breath, she reached between him and the door, and
closed it.
"What is the matter ?" anxiously asked the General — for her face, in
spite of its smile, was severe.
"General," she began, ignoring his inquiry — and, with all her Creole
bows, smiles, and insinuating phrases, the severity of her countenance but
partially waned — "I came to see my physician — your son. Ah ! General,
when I find you reconciled to your son, it makes me think I am in heaven.
You will let me say so ? You will not be offended with the old playmate of
your son ? "
She gave him no time to answer.
"He is out, I think, is he not ? But I am glad of it. It gives us occasion
to rejoice together over his many merits. For you know, General, in ail the
years of your estrangement, Mossy had no friend like myself. I am proud
to tell you so now ; is it not so ?"
The General was so taken aback that, when he had thanked her in a me-
chanical way, he could say nothing else. She seemed to fall for a little while
into a sad meditation that embarrassed him beyond measure. But as he
opened his mouth to speak, she resumed :
"Nobody knew him so well as I ; though I, poor me, I could not alto-
gether understand him ; for look you, General, he was — what do you think Y
— a great man! — nothing less."
"How ?" asked the General, not knowing what else to respond.
"You never dreamed of that, eh ?" continued the lady. " But, of course
not ; nobody did but me. Some of those Americains, I suppose, knew it ;
but who would ever ask them ? Here in Royal Street, in New Orleans, where
we people know nothing and care nothing but for meat, drink, and pleasure,
he was only Dr. Mossy, who gave pills. My faith! General, no wonder you
were disappointed in your son, for you thought the same. Ah! yes, you did !
But why did you not ask me, his old playmate ? I knew better. I could have
told you how your little son stood head and shoulders above the crowd. I
could have told you some things too wonderful to believe. I could have told
you that his name was known and honored in the scientific schools of Paris,
of London, of Germany ! Yes ! I could have shown you " — she warmed as
she proceeded — "I could have shown you letters (I begged them of him),
written as between brother and brother, from the foremost men of science
and discovery!"
She stood up, her eyes flashing with excitement.
" But why did you never tell me ? " cried the General.
"He never would allow me — but you — why did you not ask me ? I will
tell you ; you were too proud to mention your son. But he had pride to
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 273
match yours — ha ! — achieving all — everything — with an assumed name !
'Let me tell your father/ I implored him ; but — 'let him find me out,' he
said, and you never found him out. Ah ! there he was fine. He would not,
he said, though only for your sake, reenter your affections as anything
more or less than just — your son. Ha ! "
And so she went on. Twenty times the old General was astonished anew,
twenty times was angry or alarmed enough to cry out, but twenty times she
would not be interrupted. Once he attempted to laugh, but again her hand
commanded silence.
"Behold, Monsieur, all these dusty specimens, these revolting fragments.
How have you blushed to know that our idle people laugh in their sleeves at
these things ! How have you blushed — and you his father ! But why did
you not ask me ? I could have told you : ' Sir, your son is not an apothecary;
not one of these ugly things but has helped him on in the glorious path of
discovery ; discovery, General — your son — known in Europe as a scientific
discoverer !' Ah-h ! the blind people say, 'How is that, that General Villi-
vicencio should be dissatisfied with his son ? He is a good man, and a good
doctor, only a little careless, that's all/ But you were more blind still, for
you shut your eyes tight like this ; when, had you searched for his virtues as
you did for his faults, you, too, might have known before it was too late
what nobility, what beauty, what strength, were in the character of your
poor, poor son ! "
"Just Heaven ! Madame, you shall not speak of my son as of one dead
and buried ! But, if you have some bad news"
"Your son took your quarrel on his hands, eh ? "
"I believe so— I think"
" Well ; I saw him an hour ago in search of your slanderer !"
" He must find him!" said the General, plucking up.
"But if the search is already over," slowly responded Madame.
The father looked one instant in her face, then rose with an exclama-
tion:
"Where is my son ? What has happened ? Do you think I am a child,
to be trifled with — a horse to be teased ? Tell me of my son ! "
Madame was stricken with genuine anguish.
"Take your chair," she begged ; "wait ; listen ; take your chair."
"Never !" cried the General ; "I am going to find my son — my God! Ma-
dame, you have locked this door! What are you, that you should treat me
so ? Give me, this instant "
"Oh ! Monsieur, I beseech you to take your chair, and I will tell you all.
You can do nothing now. Listen ! suppose you should rush out and find
that your son had played the coward at last ! Sit down and"
" Ah ! Madame, this is play ! " cried the distracted man.
"But no ; it is not play. Sit down ; I want to ask you something."
He sank down and she stood over him, anguish and triumph strangely
mingled in her beautiful face.
"General, tell me true; did you not force this quarrel into your son's
hand ? I know he would not choose to have it. Did you not do it to test his
VOL. x.— 18
274 GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. [1861-88
courage, because all these fifteen years you have made yourself a fool with
the fear that he became a student only to escape being a soldier ? Did you
not?"
Her eyes looked him through and through.
"And if I did ?" demanded he with faint defiance.
" Yes ! and if he has made dreadful haste and proved his courage ?" asked
she.
"Well, then," — the General straightened up triumphantly — "then he is
my son ! "
He beat the desk.
"And heir to your wealth, for example I"
"Certainly."
The lady bowed in solemn mockery.
"It will make him a magnificent funeral !"
The father bounded up and stood speechless, trembling from head to foot.
Madame looked straight in his eye.
" Your son has met the writer of that article."
"Where ?" the old man's lips tried to ask.
"Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a passage-way."
"My God ! and the villain"
" Lives !" cried Madame.
He rushed to the door, forgetting that it was locked.
"Give me that key !"he cried, wrenched at the knob, turned away be-
wildered, turned again toward it, and again away ; and at every step and
turn he cried, " Oh ! my son, my son ! I have killed my son ! Oh ! Mossy,
my son, my little boy ! Oh ! my son, my son ! "
Madame buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud. Then the father
hushed his cries and stood for a moment before her.
" Give me the key, Clarisse ; let me go."
She rose and laid her face on his shoulder.
"What is it, Clarisse?" asked he.
"Your son and I were ten years betrothed."
"Oh, my child!"
"Because, being disinherited, he would not be my husband."
"Alas ! would to God I had known it ! Oh ! Mossy, my son ! "
"Oh! Monsieur," cried the lady, clasping her hands, "forgive me— mourn
no more — your son is unharmed ! /wrote the article — I am your recanting
slanderer ! Your son is hunting for me now. I told my aunt to misdirect
him. I slipped by him unseen in the carriage-way."
The wild old General, having already staggered back and rushed forward
again, would have seized her in his arms, had not the little Doctor himself
at that instant violently rattled the door and shook his finger at them play-
fully as he peered through the glass.
"Behold !" said Madame, attempting a smile : "open to your sou ; here
is the key."
She sank into a chair.
Father and son leaped into each other's arms ; then turned to Madame :
1861-88] ROBERT JONES BURDETTE. 275
"Ah ! thou lovely mischief -maker"
She had fainted away.
"Ah ! well, keep out of the way, if you please, papa," said Dr. Mossy, as
Madame presently reopened her eyes; "no wonder you fainted; you have
finished some hard work — see ; here ; so ; Olarisse, dear, take this."
Father and son stood side by side, tenderly regarding her as she revived.
"Now, papa, you may kiss her ; she is quite herself again, already."
"My daughter !" said the stately General ; "this — is my son's ransom ;
and, with this, — I withdraw the Villivicencio ticket."
"You shall not," exclaimed the laughing lady, throwing her arms about
his neck.
"But, yes !" he insisted ; "my faith ! you will at least allow me to remove
my dead from the field."
" But, certainly," said the son ; "see, Clarisse, here is Madame, your aunt,
asking us all into the house. Let us go."
The group passed out into the Rue Royale, Dr. Mossy shutting the door
behind them. The sky was blue, the air was soft and balmy, and on the
sweet south breeze, to which the old General bared his grateful brow, floated
a ravishing odor of —
"Ah ! what is it ? " the veteran asked of the younger pair, seeing the iit-
tle aunt glance at them with a playful smile.
Madame Delicieuse, for almost the first time in her life, and Dr. Mossy
for the thousandth— blushed.
It was the odor of orange-blossoms.
Robert ioneg 'BiirDette,
BORN in Greensborough, Penn., 1844.
BARTIMEUS.
Luke xviii. 41.
I WOULD receive my sight; my clouded eyes
Miss the glad radiance of the morning sun,
The changing tints that glorify the skies
With roseate splendors when the day is done;
The shadows soft and gray, the pearly light
Of summer twilight deepening into night.
I cannot see to keep the narrow way,
And so I blindly wander here and there,
Groping amidst the tombs, or helpless stray
Through pathless, tangled deserts, bleak and bare;
Weeping I seek the way I cannot find-
Open my eyes, dear Lord, for I am blind.
276 THEODORE WHITEFIELD HUNT. [1861-88
And oft I laugh with some light, thoughtless jest,
Nor see how anguish lines some face most dear,
And write my mirth, a mocking palimpsest,
On blotted scrolls of human pain and fear;
And never see the heartache interlined —
Pity, O Son of David ! I am blind.
I do not see the pain my light words give;
The quivering, shrinking heart I cannot see;
So, light of thought, midst hidden griefs I live,
And mock the cypressed tombs with sightless glee ;
Open my eyes, — light, blessed ways to find:
Jesus, have mercy on me — I am blind.
My useless eyes are reservoirs of tears,
Doomed for their blind mistakes to overflow;
To weep for thoughtless ways of wandering years,
Because I could not see — I did not know.
These sightless eyes — than angriest glance less kind —
Light of the World, have pity! I am blind.
C^eoDore
BOKN in Metuchen, N. J., 1844.
ARNOLD AND HIS STYLE.
[Matthew Arnold as an English Writer.— The New Princeton Review. 1888.]
STUDENTS of Mr. Arnold's poetry must be well aware of this under-
tone of sadness that runs like a sombre current below the visible level of
his verse. Herein is one of those limitations of his poetic genius, whereby
the spontaneity of his style is impaired, and the head waits not upon the
heart. We cannot, therefore, expect to find in his poems free flexibility of
movement, blitheness and buoyancy of spirit, and the impulse of deep emo-
tion, in that the nature from which such poetic fruits are "furnished forth "
is wanting. So is it in his prose. Seriousness is too often seen to give place
to sadness, and to a sadness which is nothing less than Byronic and oppress-
ive. Of the presence and the pressure of this weight upon him, Mr. Arnold
himself is not always aware. There is a something in the sentence and the
line — he scarcely knows what — that binds it to the earth and prevents its
free excursion heavenward. In this profitless effort to lift the world from its
lower tendencies by culture only ; in this pursuit of perfection through im-
perfect agencies ; in this almost cruel restriction of the spirit within the cir-
cle of the humanities ; in this Avell-meant but unwise attempt to eliminate
the supernatural from the problem of life, — in this, indeed, we have the fact
of sadness and its sufficient explanation. The " sick fatigue and languid
1861-88] THEODORE WHITEFIELD HUNT. 277
doubt/' which the author himself deplores, will never give place to that
'•'sweet calm" of mind that he so craves, until the established relation of
things is accepted, and Christianity takes rank above culture. This feature
apart, the prose is marked bj a solid and impressive earnestness which never
tolerates the trifling, and is an order of prose especially timely in an age in-
clined so strongly as this to the frivolous in authorship. In this respect, if
not so in others, Mr. Arnold's style is Baconian and Miltonic, never descend-
ing to the plane of the charlatan for the sake of effect, but ever keeping aloft
on the high table-land of thought and motive, among the sober-minded con-
tributors to the cause of good letters.
If asked, as we close, what is the most useful service that Mr. Arnold has
rendered, in his style, to modern England and America, we answer : the
wide diffusion of the literary spirit, the emphasis of literature as a most im-
portant department of education and an essential factor in all national prog-
ress. This result he has accomplished, in part, by his unwearied exaltation
of the mental above the merely material, and, in part, by his earnest en-
deavor to stimulate the people to the attainment of that culture which to
him is the crowning principle of all literature and life. Nothing is more
needed among the English-speaking peoples of to-day than the free circula-
tion of this literary life. Despite such high literary antecedents and tradi-
tions, and the goodly number of English authors steadily at work along the
old literary lines, so strong is the " stream of tendency" in the direction of
commercialism, that special effort is needed to prevent its influx even into
the centres of intellectual culture. This tendency is even more marked in
what Mr. Emerson has called " this great, intelligent, sensual, and avari-
cious America." If we inquire further into the extent and probable perma-
nence of Mr. Arnold's influence as a prose-writer, we must answer, first of all,
that he cannot be consistently called a popular English essayist. There is
not enough of the common or colloquial element in the style to give it cur-
rency among the great body of what he terms the middle class. That ex-
treme Eestheticism to which we have referred, as also his dogmatic independ-
ence and indifference of manner, would serve to narrow the circle of appre-
ciative readers, while, even among the higher classes themselves, our author
is read by many who read only to dissent. If we compare his essays, in this
respect, with those of Lamb and Macaulay, the difference is marked in favor
of the latter, and the difference is one between restricted and general circu-
it ion.
Mr. Arnold cannot be said to have formed a school, either in prose or verse.
Whatever his constituency may be, they do not stand related to him as an
organic body to an acknowledged leader, accepting his literary dicta without
question, and devoting their energies to the dissemination of his teachings.
Young men, especially, who, at first, are attracted to his style and committed
to it as an unerring guide, come, at length, in their maturer judgment, to
question where they have blindly accepted, and somewhat modify their alle-
giance. Mr. Arnold, in his " American Addresses," refused to rank Mr.
Emerson, as he also did Mr. Carlyle, among "the great writers" or "the
great men of letters." He used the word great as it is applicable to such his-
278 MARIETTA EOLLET. [1861-88
toric authors as Plato and Cicero, Pascal and Voltaire and Bacon — writers
"whose prose, by a kind of native necessity, is true and sound," who have
"a genius and an instinct for style." From such a ''charmed circle" as
this, Mr. Arnold himself must be excluded. A representative writer of En-
glish prose, he is not so in the largest sense, as Cicero in Latin letters or De
Quincey in English. Whatever the merits of his style may be, as we have dis-
cussed them, he has not that "vision and faculty divine" which belong to
the eminently great prose-writer as to the eminently great poet. He does
not see deep enough and far enough to pen oracular words for those who are
waiting for them. Culture, as he conceived it, can never rise to the height
of power. Criticism, as he applied it, can never be more than an elegant art ;
while style itself, as he illustrated it, can never be that inspiring procedure
which we find it to be in the writings of the masters — in the poetry of Shake-
speare or in the prose of Pascal. A cultured, an acute, and a dignified style
is one thing, and marks the good writer. A profound, philosophic, compre-
hensive, and soul-stirring style is another and a grander thing, and marks
the "great writer." We have a style before us that pleases our taste, im-
presses our minds, corrects, in many instances, our erroneous judgments, and
rebukes our natural tendencies to the lighter and baser forms of literature ;
and this is all. When the profoundest depths of our being are to be reached
and roused ; when we are to be uplifted to that sublime spiritual outlook of
which Milton and Longinus speak ; when we are to be so addressed and moved
that the thoughts of the author take possession of us, and make us efficient
factors in the world's intellectual and moral advancement, then must we look
elsewhere than here — to those supremely-gifted authors who are great of a
truth, and who make us great as well, to the degree in which we hold rever-
ential converse with them. That style is great, and that only, which is in-
stinct throughout with the very spirit of power ; which, while obedient to
the laws of literary art, is immeasurably above all art, and, with all its marks
of human origin and limitation about it, is seen to have, in its character and
method, something that is supernal.
BORN in Ellisburg, Jefferson Co., N. Y., 1844.
THE CLINGING VINE THEORY.
[My Opinions and Betsey Sobbet's. By Josiah Allen's Wife. 1872.]
THE next week Saturday after the poetry come out, Tirzah took it into
her head that she wanted to go to Elder Morton's a visitin'; Maggie
Snow was a goin' to meet her there, and I told her to go — I'd get along with
the work somehow.
I had to work pretty hard, but then I got it all out of the way early, and
1861-88] MARIETTA HOLLET. 279
my head combed and my dress changed, and I was jest pinnin' my linen col-
ler over my clean gingham dress (broun and black plaid) to the lookin' glass,
when lookin' up, who should I see but Betsey Bobbet comin' through the
gate. She stopped a minute to Tirzah Ann's posy bed, and then she come
along kinder gradually, and stopped and looked at my new tufted bedspread
that I have got out a whitenin' on the grass, and then she come up the steps
and come in.
Somehow I was kinder glad to see her that day. I had had first rate luck
with all my bakin', everything had turned out well, and I felt real recon-
ciled to havin' a visit from her.
But I see she looket ruther gloomy, and after she sot down and took out
her tattin' and begun to tat, she spoke up and says she :
" Josiah Allen's wife, I feel awful deprested to-day."
" What is the matter ?" says I in a cheerful tone.
"I feel lonely," says she, " more lonely than I have felt for yeahs."
Again says I, kindly but firmly :
" What is the matter, Betsey ?"
" I had a dream last night, Josiah Allen's wife."
" What was it ? " says I in a sympathizin' accent, for she did look melon-
cholly and sad indeed.
"I dreamed I was married, Josiah Allen's wife," says she in a heart-bro-
ken tone, and she laid her hand on my arm in her deep emotion. " I tell you
it was hard, after dreamin' that, to wake up again to the cold realities and
cares of this life ; it was hard," she repeated, and a tear gently flowed down
her Koman nose and dropped off onto her overskirt. She knew salt water
would spot otter color awfully, and so she drew her handkerchief out of her
pocket, and spread it in her lap (it was white trimmed with narrow edgein')
and continued :
"Life seemed so hard and lonesome to me, that I sot up in the end of the ;
bed and wept. I tried to get to sleep again, hopin' I would dream it ovah,
but I could not."
And again two salt tears fell in about the middle of the handkerchief. I
see she needed consolation, and my gratitude made me feel soft to her, and
so says I, in a reasurin' tone:
" To be sure husbands are handy on 4th of July's, and funeral prosessions ;
it looks kinder lonesome to see a woman streamin' along alone, but they are
contrary creeters, Betsey, when they are a mind to be."
And then to turn the conversation and get her mind offen her trouble,
says I :
" How did you like my bedspread, Betsey ?"
"It is beautiful," says she sorrowfully.
" Yes," says I, "it looks well enough now it's done, but it most wore my
fingers out a tuftin' it — it's a sight of work."
But I saw how hard it was to draw her mind off from broodin' over her
troubles, for she spoke in a mournful tone.
" How sweet it must be to weah the fingers out for a deah companion. I
would be willing to weah mine clear down to the bone. I made a vow some
280 MARIETTA HOLLEY. [1861-88
yeahs ago/' says she, kinder chirkin' up a little, and beginnin' to tat agin.
"I made a vow yeahs ago that I would make my deah future companion
happy, for I would neveh, neveh fail to meet him with a sweet smile as he
came home to me at twilight. I felt that that was all he would requireh to
make him happy. Do you think it was a rash vow, Josiah Allen's wife ?"
" Oh," says I in a sort of blind way, " I guess it won't do any hurt. But,
if a man couldn't have but one of the two, a smile or a supper, as he come
home at night, I believe he would take the supper."
" Oh deah," says Betsey, "such cold, practical ideahs are painful to me."
" Wall," says I cheerfully but firmly, "if you ever have the opportunity,
you try both ways. You jest let your fire go out, and your house and you
look like fury, and nothin' to eat, and you stand on the door smilin' like a
first class idiot — and then agin you have a first rate supper on the table,
stewed oysters, and warm biscuit and honey, or somethin' else first rate, and
a bright fire shinin' on a clean hearth, and the tea-kettle a singin', and the
tea-table all set out neat as a pink, and you goin' round in a cheerful, sensi-
ble way gettin' the supper onto the table, and you jest watch, and see which
of the two ways is the most agreeable to him."
Betsey still looked unconvinced, and I proceeded onwards.
" Now I never was any hand to stand and smile at Josiah for two or three
hours on a stretch ; it would make me feel like a natural born idiot ; but I
always have a bright fire and a warm supper a waitin' for him when he
comes home at night."
" Oh food ! food ! what is food to the deathless emotions of the soul ? What
does the aching young heart care for what food it eats — let my deah future
companion smile on me, and that is enough."
Says I in reasonable tones : " A man can't smile on an empty stomach, Bet-
sey, not for any length of time. And no man can't eat soggy bread, with
little chunks of saleratus in it, and clammy potatoes, and beefsteak burnt
and raw in spots, and drink dishwatery tea, and muddy coffee, and smile —
or they might give one or 2 sickly, deathly smiles, but they wouldn't keep
it up, you depend upon it they wouldn't, and it haint in the natur' of a man
to, and I say they hadn't ought to. I have seen bread, Betsey Bobbet, that
was enough to break down any man's affection for a woman, unless he had
firm principle to back it up — and love's young dream has been drounded in
thick, muddy coffee more'n once. If there haint anything pleasant in a
man's home, how can he keep attached to it ? Nobody, man nor woman,
can't respect what haint respectable, or love what haint lovable. I believe
in bein' cheerful, Betsey ; a complainin', fretful woman in the house is worse
than a cold, drizzlin' rain comin' right down all the time onto the cook stove.
Of course men have to be corrected, I correct Josiah frequently, but I believe
in doin' it all up at one time and then have it over with, jest like a smart
dash of a thunder shower that clears up the air."
" Oh, how a female woman that is blest with a deah companion can even
speak of correcting him is a mystery to me."
But again I spoke, and my tone was as firm and lofty as Bunker Hill monu-
ment:
1861-88] MARIETTA HOLLEY. 281
"Men have to be corrected, Betsey; there wouldn't be no livin' with 'em
unless you did."
"Well," says she, "you can entertain such views as you will, but for me,
I will be clingin' in my nature, I will be respected by men ; they do so love
to have wimmin clingiu', that I will, until I die, carry out this belief that is
so sweet to them — until I die I will nevah let go of this speah."
I didn't say nothin', for gratitude tied up my tongue, but as I rose and
went upstairs to wind me a little more yarn — I thought I wouldn't bring
down the swifts for so little as I wanted to wind — I thought sadly to myself,
what a hard, hard time she had had, sense I had known her, a handlin' that
spear. We got to talkin' about it the other day, how long she had been a
handlin' of it. Says Thomas Jefferson : "She has been brandishin' it for
fifty years."
Says I : " Shet up, Thomas J., she haint been born longer ago than that."
Says he : " She was born with that spear in her hand."
But as I said she has had a hard and mournful time a try in' to make a run-
nin' vine of herself sense I knew her. And Josiah says she was at it for years
before I ever see her. She has tried to make a vine of herself to all kinds of
trees, straight and crooked, sound and rotten, young and old. Her mind is
sot the most now on the Editor of the Augur, but she pays attention to any
and every single man that comes in her way. And it seems strange to me that
them that preach up the doctrine of woman's only spear don't admire one
who carrys it out to its full extent. It seems kinder ungrateful in 'em, to
think that when Betsey is so willin' to be a vine, they will not be a tree ; but
they won't, they seem sot against it.
I say if men insist on makin' runnin' vines of wimmin, they ought to pro-
vide trees for 'em to run up on, it haint nothin' more'n justice that they
should, but they won't and don't. Now ten years ago the Methodist minis-
ter before Elder Wesley Minkly came was a widower of some twenty odd
years, and he was sorely stricken with years and rheumatiz. But Betsey
showed plainly her willin'ness and desire to be a vine, if he would be a tree.
But he would not be a tree — he acted real obstinate about it, considerin' his
belief. For he was awful opposed to wimmin's bavin' any rights only the
right to marry. He preached a beautiful sermon about woman's holy mis-
sion, and how awful it was in her to have any ambition outside of her own
home. And how sweet it was to see her in her confidin' weakness and gen-
tleness clingin' to man's manly strength. There wasn't a dry eye in the
house only mine. Betsey wept aloud, she was so affected by it. And it was
beautiful, I don't deny it ; I always respected clingers. But I love to see
folks use reason. And I say again, how can a woman cling when she haint
got nothin' to cling to ? That day I put it fair and square to our old minister,
he went home with us to supper, and he began on me about wimmin's rights,
for he knew I believe in wimmin's havin' a right. Says he : "It is flyin' in
the face of the Bible for a woman not to marry."
Says I: " Elder, how can any lady make brick without straw or sand — how
can a woman marry without a man is forthcomin' ?" says I, " wimmen's will
may be good, but there is some things she cannot do, and this is one of 'em."
Og2 ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON GREELT, [1861-88
Says I : "as our laws are at present no woman can marry unless she has a
man to marry to. And if the man is obstinate and hangs back what is she to
do?"
He begun to look a little sheepish and tried to kinder turn off the subject
onto religion.
But no steamboat ever sailed onward under the power of biled water steam
more grandly than did Samantha Allen's words under the steam of bilein'
principle. I fixed my eyes upon him with seemingly an arrow in each one of
'em, and says I :
"Which had you rather do, Elder, let Betsey Bobbet vote, or cling to you?
She is fairly achin' to make a runnm' vine of herself/' and says I, in slow,
deep, awful tones, "are you willin' to be a tree?"
Again he weakly murmured somethin' on the subject of religion, but I
asked him again in slower, awf uler tones :
"Are you willin' to be a tree f "
He turned to Josiah, and says he : "I guess I will go out to the barn and
bring in my saddle bags." He had come to stay all night. And that man
went to the barn smit and conscience struck, and haint opened his head to
me sense about wimmin's not havin' a right.
BORN in Newburyport, Mass., 1844.
THE DEATH OF A HERO.
[Three Years of Arctic Service. 1886.]
midnight of April 6th, Sergeant Eice and Private Frederick
started southward to Baird Inlet. They went to attempt the recovery
of the hundred pounds of English beef which had been abandoned in Novem-
ber, 1883. Such abandonment, it will be remembered, was necessary to save
the life of Sergeant Elison, then dangerously frost-bitten. The journey had
been proposed by the two men about the middle of March, but I had persist-
ently objected to it, foreseeing the great chances of a fatal result. The men,
however, represented to me the desperate straits to which we were reduced,
the value of the meat if obtained, their confidence in their ability to find the
cache, and the certainty of their strength being sufficient for the journey.
They asked but one favor, that they be permitted to make the attempt on
the same ration as that issued to the general party — four ounces of meat
and four ounces of bread daily. In such case they said no injury could result
to the party in the event of failure. The provisions might be increased, they
could not be diminished.
At first I refused to countenance the attempt, but as the days passed and
the strength of the party waned, and death to some seemed imminent, I felt
1861-88] ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON OREELT. 283
the necessity of yielding. I accordingly decided on the trip, and fixed April
1st as the day of departure, provided the weather was good and our prospects
not improved. The success of our hunters, Long and Jens, in obtaining
birds, on March 27th, awakened hopes that the journey would not be neces-
sary, and the departure was consequently postponed. Early April brought
no relief, and game again failed. Christiansen's death decided me. I no
longer hesitated, but gave the final orders. The orders were verbal. De-
tailed instructions to such men on such an errand would have been unwise,
if not culpable. Kice was regarded naturally as the leader of the forlorn
hope, and to him the orders were given simply to go and do the best he could.
I, however, cautioned him particularly against over-exertion, knowing his
great ambition and fearing for his strength. He had not been well on Thurs-
day, and I had asked him to be fair and candid, so that I might not send a
sick and unfit man on so trying and dangerous a journey. I told him that
Sergeant Brainard, ever willing and anxious to serve us all, had expressed
more than willingness to go in his stead. He on Sunday noon came into my
sleeping-bag, and had a long talk over the situation. Rice declared that he
had recovered entirely from his indisposition, insisted that he was as strong
as Brainard, and that the duty should come to him, not only as the origina-
tor, but on account of his knowledge of the locality and his familiarity with
the appearance of the ice as gained from two trips to Isabella.
In order to avoid the long detour through Rice Strait, he decided to go
direct across Bedford Pirn Island.
The sledge, loaded in the morning, was hauled during the day to the crest
of the island by Lieutenant Kislingbury, Brainard, Ellis, and Whisler. They
returned about 6 P. M., thoroughly exhausted by their labors. Whisler was
much bruised from frequent falls on the glacier by which they had de-
scended.
After a final consultation with me, Rice, in default of other sleeping-place,
his bag being with the sledge, crept in with his comrade, Lynn, who had just
died. He slept for a short time with the dead, unconscious that in a few
hours he, too, would pass away.
When Rice and Frederick started, our hearts were almost too full for ut-
terance, but we managed to send after them a feeble cheer, that they might
know our prayers and Godspeed were with them on their perilous journey.
Their outfit, though our best, was simple : A rough, common sledge (the one
brought back by the rescuing squadron), a two-man sleeping-bag, a rifle, an
axe, an alcohol-lamp, and a small cooking-pot. No tent was available ; nor
had there been, Avould their enfeebled condition have permitted them to haul
it. For food, very much against their inclination, I increased the daily ra-
tion to six ounces of bread and six of pemmican, with a small allowance of
tea. A cooking-ration of five ounces daily of alcohol was granted, and for
medicinal purposes, if needed, a small quantity of rum and spirits of ammo-
nia and a few pills were added.
The details of the journey, told us in simple, touching words by Frederick
on his return, were substantially as follows :
The temperature was — 8 (— 22.2° C.) when they started. On reaching
284 ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON GREELT. [1861-88
the summit of the island, where the sledge awaited them, a heavy gale was ex-
perienced. The descent into Rosse Bay was made through much deep snow,
and the enfeebled men frequently pitched headlong into a drift, from which
they always emerged breathless and exhausted. At last the ice in the bay
was reached ; but, contrary to their hopes, the wind increased and drifting
snow filled the air. Struggling on as long as they could, they were finally
compelled, about 8 A. M. of the 7th, to camp.
The high wind and blinding snow rendered the lighting of the lamp for
tea impossible, and so, without drink of any kind, they stretched their sleep-
ing-bag on the ice, and, taking a few ounces of frozen pemmican, crawled
into it for rest. They were confined to the bag for twenty-two hours by a
violent storm, which buried them completely with snow. About 6 A. M. of
the 8th they got out of their bag, but were too cold to cook until they had
travelled an hour. A warm meal, with tea, refreshed them very much, as
they had been nearly thirty-six hours without drink. About 7 P. M. that
evening dark and blustering weather drove them to camp. Their sledge was
drawn up between a large iceberg and the face of Alfred Newton glacier.
The morning of April 9th broke calm and clear, and an hour's travel brought
them to our old camp at Eskimo Point. Being within six miles of the place
where the meat had been cached, they decided to drop their sleeping-bag and
a portion of their rations, expecting, with their lightened sledge, to reach
the meat and return in one march.
Frequently open pools of water around the grounded icebergs caused long
detours. At times the tidal overflow wet their feet, and their foot-gear froze
solid the instant they touched the dry ice. To add to their misfortunes,
about 11 A. M. a strong northwest gale sprang up, with drifting snow, which
tended to chill and exhaust them. In a short time they were unable to see
any considerable distance. Struggling on, by 3 P. M. they had reached the
place where the meat had been abandoned ; but, notwithstanding a very care-
ful and extended search, they were unable to find any traces of it. No signs
of their old sledge-tracks could be seen, and from the appearance of the place
they inclined to the conclusion that the ice had broken up and moved out since
their last trip the preceding autumn. Frederick at this juncture proposed
that they return to their sleeping-bag, and resume the search on the morrow.
Rice favored remaining, hoping it would soon clear and that the meat would
be found. About 4 P.M. Frederick noticed indications of weakness in Rice,
and reminded him of their mutual agreement to give timely warning of ap-
proaching exhaustion so as to avert disaster. Rice said that if they travelled
a little slowly he would soon be rested, but in a short time he showed such
signs of exhaustion that Frederick called a halt, and gave him a quantity of
spirits of ammonia in rum until some tea could be cooked. After warm food
and drink, Frederick in vain urged him to start to avoid freezing. His con-
dition had now become alarming. He was too weak to stand up, and his
mind continually reverted to home, relatives, and friends, and to the pleas-
ures of the table in which he intended to indulge on his return. At the same
time he appeared to realize his critical condition, and gave detailed instruc-
tions regarding his manuscripts and personal effects.
1861-88J ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON GREELY. 285
In the meantime Frederick did all possible for him. Although a driving
storm of wind and snow, with a temperature of 2° (—16.7° C.), as shown by
our camp records, prevailed, he stripped himself of his temiak (jumper), in
which to wrap poor Bice's feet. In his shirt-sleeves, sitting on the sledge,
he held his dying comrade in his arms until a quarter of eight, when Rice
passed away. Save the last half hour, this time was enlivened, as far as it
could be, by cheerful jocoseness and lively remarks, in which Rice and Fred-
erick had always indulged. It must not be thought a mockery, for death
had been looked so long in the face that he had no terror for most of the
party, and killing the present by distracting the mind had become a second
nature to many of us. Frederick's condition may be more readily imagined
than described. Starved by slow degrees for months, weakened by his severe
and exhausting labors, chilled nearly to numbness, he was alone on an ex-
tended icefield with his dead comrade. His sleeping-bag was miles from
him, and to reach it he must struggle against a cutting blast filled with drift-
ing snow. Such a march might well daunt the strong and hearty, but to
that weak, starving man it must have seemed torture and destruction. For
a moment, he said, he thought he must lie down and die ; it was the easiest
thing to do. But then came to him the recollection of his starving comrades,
who awaited his return with eagerness and hope. If he came not, some of
those behind, he well knew, would venture forth and risk their lives to learn
tidings or bring succor. Thus thinking he turned away from the dead to
return to us, the living.
He reached Eskimo Point and his sleeping-bag too weak to open it until he
had laid down a while and revived himself by a mixture of ammonia and
rum. Recovering strength and vitality by sleep and a little food, he was un-
willing to return to us until he had buried Rice, and to cover his comrade
with snow and ice he walked ten or twelve miles over the floe.
Frederick's return to us was a marvel of forethought, energy, and endur-
ance. Dragging his sledge as far each march as his feebleness would permit,
he took a little food, and getting into his bag drank a spoonful of ammonia
and rum, which enabled him to sleep. As soon as he awoke, benumbed and
stiff, he immediately got out of his bag, travelled on until he was thoroughly
warmed up, then prepared tea and food, and marched on as far as possible.
In this way he managed to bring back to us everything hauled out ; and, as-
tonishing to say, he turned in Rice's rations, having done this work on the
food allotted.
286 CHARLES KING. [1861-88
BORN in Albany, N. Y., 1844.
A RIDE THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH.
[Marion's Faith. 1886.]
~p\ ARKNESS has settled down in the shadowy Wyoming Valley. By the
-L^ light of a tiny fire under the bank some twenty forms can be seen
stretched upon the sand ; they are wounded soldiers. A little distance away
are nine others, shrouded in blankets ; they are the dead. Huddled in con-
fused and cowering group are a few score horses, many of them sprawled up-
on the sand motionless ; others occasionally struggle to rise or plunge about
in their misery. Crouching among the timber, vigilant but weary, dispersed
in big, irregular circle around the beleaguered bivouac, some sixty soldiers
are still on the active list. All around them, vigilant and vengeful, lurk the
Cheyennes. Every now and then the bark as of a coyote is heard, — a yelp-
ing, querulous cry, — and it is answered far across the valley or down the
stream. There is no moon ; the darkness is intense, though the starlight is
clear, and the air so still that the galloping hoofs of the Cheyenne ponies far
out on the prairie sound close at hand.
" That's what makes it hard," says Eay, who is bending over the prostrate
form of Captain Wayne. " If it were storming or blowing, or something to
deaden the hoof -beats, I could make it easier ; but it's the only chance."
The only chance of what ?
When the sun went down upon Wayne's timber citadel, and the final ac-
count of stock was taken for the day, it was found that with one fourth of
the command, men and horses, killed and wounded there were left not more
than three hundred cartridges, all told, to enable some sixty men to hold out
until relief could come against an enemy encircling them on every side, and
who had only to send over to the neighboring reservation — forty miles away
— and get all the cartridges they wanted. Mr. - would let their friends
have them to kill buffalo, though Mr. - and their friends knew there
wasn't a buffalo left within four hundred miles.
They could cut through, of course, and race up the valley to find the — th,
but they would have to leave the wounded and the dismounted behind — to
death by torture; so that ended the matter. Only one thing remained. In
some way, by some means, word must be carried to the regiment. The
chances were ten to one against the couriers slipping out. Up and down the
valley, out on the prairie on both sides of the stream, the Cheyennes kept
vigilant watch. They had their hated enemies in a death-grip, and only
waited the coming of other warriors and more ammunition to finish them —
as the Sioux had finished Custer. They knew, though the besieged did not,
that, the very evening before, the — th had marched away westward, and
were far from their comrades. All they had to do was to prevent any one's
escaping to give warning of the condition of things in Wayne's command.
1861-88] CHARLES KING. 287
All, therefore, were on the alert, and of this there was constant indication.
The man or men \vho made the attempt would have to run the gauntlet.
The one remaining scout who had been employed for such work refused the
attempt as simply madness. He had lived too long among the Indians to
dare it, yet Wayne and Eay and Dana and Hunter, and the whole com-
mand, for that matter, knew that some one must try it. Who was it to be?
There was no long discussion. Wrayne called the sulking scout a damned
coward, which consoled him somewhat, but didn't help matters. Eay had
been around the rifle-pits taking observations. Presently he returned, lead-
ing Dandy up near the fire— the one sheltered light that was permitted.
"Looks fine as silk, don't he?" he said, smoothing his pet's glossy neck
and shoulder, for Ray's groom had no article of religion which took prece-
dence over the duty he owed the lieutenant's horse, and no sooner was the
sun down than he had been grooming him as though still in garrison. " Give
him all the oats you can steal, Hogan; some of the men must have a hatful
left."
Wayne looked up startled.
" Ray, I can't let you go ! "
" There's no helping it. Some one must go, and who can you send?"
Even there the captain noted the grammatical eccentricity. What was
surprising was that even there he made no comment thereon. He was silent.
Ray had spoken truth. There was no one whom he could order to risk death
in breaking his way out since the scout had said 'twas useless. There were
brave men there who would gladly try it had they any skill in such matters,
but that was lacking. "If any man in the command could ' make it,' that
man was Ray." He was cool, daring, keen ; he was their best and lightest
rider, and no one so well knew the country or better knew the Cheyennes.
Wrayne even wished that Ray might volunteer. There was only this about it,
— the men would lose much of their grit with him away. They swore by
him, and felt safe when he was there to lead or encourage. But the matter
was settled by Ray himself. He was already stripping for the race.
" Get those shoes off," he said to the farrier, who came at his bidding;
and Dandy wonderingly looked up from the gunny-sack of oats in which he
had buried his nozzle. " What on earth could that blacksmith mean by tug-
ging out his shoe-nails? " was his reflection ; though, like the philosopher he
was, he gave more thought to his oats — an unaccustomed luxury just then.
There seemed nothing to be said by anybody. Wayne rose painfully to his
feet. Hunter stood in silence by, and a few men grouped themselves around
the little knot of officers. Ray had taken off his belt and was poking out the
carbine-cartridges from the loops; there were not over ten. Then he drew
the revolver, carefully examined the chambers to see that all were filled ;
motioned with his hand to those on the ground, saying, quietly, "Pick those
up. Y'all may need every one of 'em." The Blue Grass dialect seemed crop-
ping out the stronger for his preoccupation. "Got any spare Colts? "he
continued, turning to Wayne. "I only want another round." These he
stowed., as he got them, in the smaller loops on the right side of his belt.
Then he bent forward to examine Dandy's hoofs again.
288 CHARLES KING. [1861-88
" Smooth them off as well as you can. Get me a little of that sticky mud
there, one of you men. There ! ram that into every hole and smooth off the
surface. Make it look just as much like a pony's as you know how. They
can't tell Dandy's tracks from their own then, don't you see?"
Three or four pairs of hands worked assiduously to do his bidding. Still,
there was no talking. No one had anything he felt like saying just then.
" Who's got the time ?" he asked.
Wayne looked at his watch, bending down over the fire.
"Just nine fifteen."
"All right. I must be off in ten minutes. The moon will be up at eleven. "
Dandy had finished the last of his oats by this time and was gazing con-
tentedly about him. Ever since quite early in the day he had been in hiding
down there under the bank. He had received only one trifling clip, though
for half an hour at least he had been springing around where the bullets flew
thickest. He was even pining for his customary gallop over the springy
turf, and wondering why it had been denied him that day.
" Only a blanket and surcingle," said Ray to his orderly, who was coming
up with the heavy saddle and bags. "We're riding to win to-night, Dandy
and I, and must travel light."
He flung aside his scouting-hat, knotted the silk handkerchief he took
from his throat, so as to confine the dark hair that came tumbling almost in-
to his eyes, buckled the holster-belt tightly round his waist, looked doubt-
fully an instant at his spurs, but decided to keep them on. Then he turned
to Wayne.
"A word with you, captain."
The others fell back a short distance, and for a moment the two stood
alone speaking in low tones. All else was silent except the feverish moan
of some poor fellow lying sorely wounded in the hollow, or the occasional
pawing and stir among the horses. In the dim light of the little fire the
others stood watching them. They saw that Wayne was talking earnestly,
and presently extended his hand, and they heard Ray, somewhat impatient-
ly, say, " Never mind that now," and noted that at first he did not take the
hand ; but finally they came back to the group and Ray spoke :
"Now, fellows, just listen a minute. I've got to break out on the south
side. I know it better. Of course there are no end of Indians out there,
but most of the crowd are in the timber above and below. There will be
plenty on the watch, and it isn't possible that I can gallop out through them
without being heard. Dandy and I have got to sneak for it until we're
spotted, or clear of them ; then away we go. I hope to work well out towards
the bluffs before they catch a glimpse of me, then lie flat and go for all I'm
worth to where we left the regiment. Then you bet it won't be long before
the old crowd will be coming down just a humping. I'll have 'em here by
six o'clock, if, indeed, I don't find them coming ahead to-night. Just you
keep up your grit, and we'll do our level best, Dandy and I ; won't we, old
boy ? Now I want to see Dana a minute and the other wounded fellows."
And he went and bent down over them, saying a cheery word to each ; and
rough, suffering men held out feeble hands to take a parting grip, and looked
1861-88] CHARLES KING. 289
up into his brave young face. He had long known how the rank and file re-
garded him, but had been disposed to laugh it off. To-night as he stopped
to say a cheering word to the wounded, and looked down at some pale, beard-
ed face that had stood at his shoulder in more than one tight place in the old
Apache days in Arizona, and caught the same look of faith and trust in him,
something like a quiver hovered for a minute about his lips, and his own.
brave eyes grew moist. They knew he was daring death to save them, but
that was a view of the case that did not seem to occur to him at all. At last
he came to Dana lying there a little apart. The news that Kay was going to
"ride for them "had been whispered all through the bivouac by this time,
and Dana turned and took Eay's hand in both his own.
" God speed you, old boy ! If you make it all safe, get word to mother
that I didn't do so badly in my first square tussle, will you ? "
"If I make it, you'll be writing it yourself this time to-morrow night.
Even if I don't make it, don't you worry, lad. The colonel and Stannard
ain't the fellows to let us shift for ourselves with the country full of Chey-
ennes. They'll be down here in two days, anyhow. Good-by, Dana ; keep
your grip and we'll larrup 'em yet."
Then he turned back to Wayne, Hunter, and the doctor.
" One thing occurs to me, Hunter. You and six or eight men take your
carbines and go up-stream with a dozen horses until you come to the rifle-
pits. Be all ready. If I get clear through you won't hear any row, but if
they sight or hear me before I get through, then, of course, there will be the
liiggest kind of an excitement, and you'll hear the shooting. The moment
it begins, give a yell ; fire your guns ; go whooping up the stream with the
horses as though the whole crowd were trying to cut out that way, but get
right back. The excitement will distract them and help me. Now, good-
by, and good luck to you, crowd,"
" Kay, will you have a nip before you try it ? You must be nearly used up
after this day's work." And Wayne held out his flask to him.
" N~o. I had some hot coffee just ten minutes ago, and I feel like a four-
year-old. I'm riding new colors ; didn't you know it ? By Jove ! " he added,
suddenly, "this is my first run under the Preakness blue." Even there and
then he thought too quickly to speak her name. " Now, then, some of you
crawl out to the south edge of the timber with me, and lie flat on the prairie
and keep me in sight as long as you can." He took one more look at his re-
volver. " I'm drawing to a bob-tail. If I fail, I'll bluff ; if I fill, I'll knock
spots out of any threes in the Cheyenne outfit."
Three minutes more and the watchers at the edge of the timber have seen
him, leading Dandy by the bridle, slowly, stealthily, creeping out into the
darkness ; a moment the forms of man and horse are outlined against the
stars ; then, are swallowed up in the night. Hunter and the sergeants with
him grasp their carbines and lie prone upon the turf, watching, waiting.
In the bivouac is the stillness of death. Ten soldiers, carbine in hand,
mounted on their unsaddled steeds, are waiting in the darkness at the upper
rifle-pits for Hunter's signal. If he shout, every man is to yell and break for
the front. Otherwise, all is to remain quiet. Back at the watch-fire under
VOL. x.— 19
290 CHAELES KINO. [1861-88
the bank Wayne is squatting, watch in one hand, pistol in the other. Near
by lie the wounded, still as their comrades just beyond — the dead. All
around among the trees and in the sand-pits up- and down-stream, fourscore
men are listening to the beating of their own hearts. In the distance, once
in a while, is heard the yelp of coyote or the neigh of Indian pony. In the
distance, too, are the gleams of Indian fires, but they are far beyond the
positions occupied by the besieging warriors. Darkness shrouds them. Far
aloft the stars are twinkling through the cool and breezeless air. With wind,
or storm, or tempest, the gallant fellow whom all hearts are following would
have something to favor, something to aid ; but in this almost cruel stillness
nothing under God can help him — nothing but darkness and his own brave
spirit.
"If I get through this scrape in safety/' mutters Wayne between his set
teeth, "the — th shall never hear the last of this work of Ray's."
"If I get through this night/' mutters Ray to himself, far out on the
prairie now, where he can hear tramping hoofs and guttural voices, " it will
be the best run ever made for the Sanford blue, though I do make it."
Nearly five minutes have passed, and the silence has been unbroken by
shot or shout. The suspense is becoming unbearable in the bivouac, where
every man is listening, hardly daring to draw breath. At last Hunter, rising
to his knees, which are all a-tremble with excitement, mutters to Sergeant
Roach, who is still crouching beside him :
" By heaven ! I believe he'll slip through without being seen."
Hardly has he spoken when far, far out to the southwest two bright flashes
leap through the darkness. Before the report can reach them there comes
another, not so brilliant. Then, the ringing bang, bang, of two rifles — the
answering crack of a revolver.
"Quick, men. Go!" yells Hunter, and darts headlong through the tim-
ber back to the stream. There is a sudden burst of shots and yells and sol-
dier cheers ; a mighty crash and sputter and thunder of hoofs up the stream-
bed ; a foot-dash, yelling like demons, of the men at the west end in support
of the mounted charge in the bed of the stream. For a minute or two the
welkin rings with shouts, shots (mainly those of the startled Indians), then
there is as sudden a rush back to cover, without a man or horse hurt or miss-
ing. In the excitement and darkness the Cheyennes could only fire wild,
but now the night-air resounds with taunts and yells and triumphant war-
whoops. For full five minutes there is a jubilee over the belief that they
have penned in the white soldiers after their dash for liberty. Then, little
by little, the yells and taunts subside. Something has happened to create
discussion in the Cheyenne camps, for the crouching soldiers can hear the
liveliest kind of a pow-wow far np-stream. What does it mean ? Has Ray
slipped through, or — have they caught him ?
Despite pain and weakness, Wayne hobbles out to where Sergeant Roach
is still watching, and asks for tidings.
"I can't be sure, captain ; one thing's certain, the lieutenant rode like a
gale. I could follow the shots a full half-mile up the valley, where they
seemed to grow thicker, and then stop all of a sudden in the midst of the row
1861-88] CHARLES KING. 291
that was made down here. They've either given it up and have a big party
out in chase, or else they've got him. God knows which. If they've got
him, there'll be a scalp-dance over there in a few minutes, curse them ! "
And the sergeant choked.
Wayne watched some ten minutes without avail. Nothing further was
seen or heard that night to indicate what had happened to Ray except once.
Far up the valley he saw a couple of flashes among the bluffs ; so did Roach,
and that gave him hope that Dandy had carried his master in safety that far
at least.
He crept back to the bank and cheered the wounded with the news of what
he had seen. Then another word came in ere long. An old sergeant had
crawled out to the front, and could hear something of the shouting and talk-
ing of the Indians. He could understand few words only, though he had
lived among the Cheyennes nearly five years. They can barely understand
one another in the dark, and use incessant gesticulation to interpret their
own speech ; but the sergeant gathered that they were upbraiding somebody
for not guarding a coulee, and inferred that some one had slipped past their
pickets, or they wouldn't be making such a row.
That the Cheyennes did not propose to let the besieged derive much com-
fort from their hopes was soon apparent. Out from the timber up the stream
came sonorous voices shouting taunt and challenge, intermingled with the
vilest expletives they had picked up from their cowboy neighbors, and all
the frontier slang in the Cheyenne vocabulary.
" Hullo ! sogers ; come out some more times. We no shoot. Stay there :
we come plenty quick. Hullo ! whitt chief, come fight fair ; soger heap
'fraid ! Come, have scalp-dance plenty quick. Catch white soger ; eat him
heart bime by."
"Ah, go to your grandmother, the ould witch in hell, ye musthard-
sthriped convict ! " sings out some irrepressible Paddy in reply ; and Wayne,
who is disposed to serious thoughts, would order silence, but it occurs to him
that Mulligan's crude sallies have a tendency to keep the men lively.
"I can't believe they've got him," he whispers to the doctor. "If they
had they would soon recognize him as an officer and come bawling out their
triumph at bagging a chief. His watch, his shoes, his spurs, his undercloth-
ing, would all betray that he was an officer, though he hasn't a vestige of
uniform. Pray God he is safe ! "
Will you follow Ray and see ? Curiosity is what lures the fleetest deer to
death, and a more dangerous path than that which Ray has taken one rarely
follows. Will you try it, reader ? — just you and I ? Come on, then. We'll
see what our Kentucky boy "got in the draw," as he would put it.
Ray's footfall is soft as a kitten's as he creeps out upon the prairie ; Dandy
stepping gingerly after him, wondering but obedient. For over a hundred
yards he goes, until both up- and down-stream he can almost see the faint
fires of the Indians in the timber. Farther out he can hear hoof-beats and
voices, so he edges along westward until he comes suddenly to a depression,
a little winding "cooley" across the prairie, through which in the early
spring the snows are carried off from some ravine among the bluffs. Into
292 CHARLES KING. [1861-88
this he noiselessly feels his way and Dandy follows. He creeps along to his
left and finds that its general course is from the southwest. He knows well
that the best way to watch for objects in the darkness is to lie flat on low
ground so that everything approaching may be thrown against the sky. His
plainscraft tells him that by keeping in the water-course he will be less apt
to be seen, but will surely come across some lurking Indians. That he ex-
pects. The thing is to get as far through them as possible before being seen
or heard, then mount and away. After another two minutes' creeping he
peers over the western bank. Now the fires up-stream can be seen in the
timber, and dim, shadowy forms pass and repass. Then close at hand come
voices and hoof-beats. Dandy pricks up his ears and wants to neigh, but
Eay grips his nostrils like a vice, and Dandy desists. At rapid lope, within
twenty yards, a party of half a dozen warriors go bounding past on their way
down the valley, and no sooner have they crossed the gully than he rises and
rapidly pushes on up the dry sandy bed. Thank heaven ! there are no stones.
A minute more and he is crawling again, for the hoof-beats no longer drown
the faint sound of Dandy's movements. A few seconds more and right in
front of him, not a stone's throw away, he hears the deep tones of Indian
voices in conversation. Whoever they may be they are in the "cooley" and
watching the prairie. They can see nothing of him, nor he of them. Pass
them in the ten-foot-wide ravine he cannot. He must go back a short dis-
tance, make a sweep to the east, so as not to go between those watchers and
the guiding fires, then trust to luck. Turning stealthily he brings Dandy
around, leads back down the ravine some thirty yards, then turns to his
horse, pats him gently one minute, " Do your prettiest for your colors, my
boy," he whispers ; springs lightly, noiselessly, to his back, and at cautious
walk comes up on the level prairie, with the timber behind him three hun-
dred yards away. Southward he can see the dim outline of the bluffs. West-
ward— once that little arroya is crossed, he knows the prairie to be level and
unimpeded, fit for a race ; but he needs to make a detour to pass the Indians
guarding it, get way beyond them, cross it to the Avest far behind them, and
then look out for stray parties. Dandy ambles lightly along, eager for fun
and little appreciating the danger. Kay bends down on his neck, intent with
eye and ear. He feels that he has got well out east of the Indian picket un-
challenged, when suddenly voices and hoofs come bounding up the valley
from below. He must cross their front, reach the ravine before them, and
strike the prairie beyond. "Go, Dandy !" he mutters with gentle pressure
of leg; and the sorrel bounds lightly away, circling south westward under the
guiding rein. Another minute and he is at the arroya and cautiously de-
scending, then scrambling up the west bank ; and then from the darkness
comes savage challenge, a sputter of pony hoofs. Eay bends low and gives
Dandy one vigorous prod with the spur, and with muttered prayer and
clinched teeth and fists he leaps into the wildest race for his life.
Bang ! bang ! go two shots close behind him. Crack ! goes his pistol at a
dusky form closing in on his right. Then come yells, shots, the uproar of
hoofs, the distant cheer and charge at camp, a breathless dash for and close
along under the bluffs where his form is best concealed, a whirl to the left
1861-88] MARQRET HOLMES BATES. 293
into the first ravine that shows itself, and, despite shots and shouts and
nimble ponies and vengeful foes, the Sanford colors are riding far to the
front, and all the racers of the reservations cannot overhaul them.
'Bateg,
BOKN in Fremont, Ohio, 1844.
A HOOSIER RASCAL.
[The Chamber over the Gate. 1886.]
WHEN" Hugh came to supper and found the house so much quieter than
he had left it, and a more than ordinarily good supper waiting for
him, his spirits revived. That his children were absent because of the illness
of his wife diminished his satisfaction not one whit. He acknowledged to
himself what he never would to any other person : He really did not enjoy
being quite so much of a family man. That there were three sons in his
father's family only added worth to the name. He and his brothers were
not near each other in point of age or pursuits in life. One of these older Gat-
simers would never be mistaken for the other. John remained on the farm,
and even now, young as he was, was known, far and near, as one of the best
authorities on stock-raising and subsoil-culture in his part of the state. He
was heart and soul an agriculturist, and dignified his work quite as much as
did Stephen his profession or Hugh his business. "That's as it should
be," Hugh was in the habit of saying. " Whatever our folks know or do,
they know it or do it twice as well as anybody else. Thank the Lord, we're
not common !" And yet, no matter how safe and above the herd that gen-
eration might be, "The Gatsimer twins " had a common sound. If people
would only take the pains to say ' ' Hugh Gatsimer's twins"; but they didn't.
Now that this thorn in the flesh was out of sight, he'd forget it for a while
anyway. He was quite tractable.
He took the directions for Miriam's medicine from Becky when she went
to bed, and at eleven o'clock, when Stephen came in, he found his patient
sleeping, and her watcher sitting near her, wakeful and attentive.
Miriam moved uneasily when Stephen laid his finger on her wrist, but
opening her eyes and seeing who had disturbed her, she gave a sigh that
seemed to be of relief, and slept again.
After the professional part of the visit was over, the brothers stood on the
porch and talked in low tones. The night was clear and cool.
"There'll be frost to-night. You'd better have a little fire in the grate,
Hugh ; it'll make you more comfortable and do good besides. You know
I've great faith in purification by fire."
" Yes, I was thinking of a fire. But what of Miriam ? Is she very sick ? "
Stephen answered deliberately : " Yes, she's very sick. Her symptoms are
294 MAEGRET HOLMES BATES. [1861-88
the same as her mother's were. They were both worn out before taking the
fever. She'll need the most constant care, so you'd better sleep all you can
to-night, and, unless the disease works more rapidly than I expect, for several
nights to come. When the worst stage comes, you'll not want to be entirely
worn out."
" I'll try and manage that all right. Of course mother can't help us much,
with that army of young ones on her hands."
" No, but she'll be in often for an hour or two, and so will Aunt Hester.
Letty will come, I know ; and she's one of the best nurses I ever saw."
" If Letty had been born our brother instead of our sister, what a man
she'd have been ! "
Stephen answered dryly : ' ' She can be just as much as a woman ; more,
really, because women, as a rule, have so much more adaptability than men.
If we had more strong, level-headed women who're not afraid to use their
wits and* speak their minds, the world would be all the better. Dick Scott
wouldn't be half the man he is if he were not trying to live up to her ideal.
Ah, yes ; Lettice is one in a thousand. I'll see her in the morning and send
her to help you."
"All right, if she can."
The morning sun shone on a white frost, and the air was clear and brac-
ing, but before noon it was warm and soft, and pale faces were seen here and
there peering from doors and windows, and shaky figures walked slowly
and aimlessly on the sunny sides of the streets.
May Crandall was out for the first time in two months. Her father carried
her in his arms to the carriage, where, nestled amongst pillows and cushions
and drowned in shawls and rugs, and supported by the ever faithful Coral,
she took her invalid's airing, while her mother held the lines.
Letty told Hugh she'd stay with Miriam each alternate night. So she d id,
and there were many strange things said to her by her weak little sister-in-
law in her delirium. One night when Miriam had dropped into a fitful sleep
Letty said to Stephen, as they stood together by the fire :
"I never would have believed how unhappy Miriam has been all these
years ; and now that Hugh is disappointed about Mr. Lowe's money, she's
in constant fear of what he may say or do. Whenever he's near, in sight
even, she talks about it. No matter how delirious she may be, she always
knows him. I'm afraid he's said some very cruel things about her father's
will."
" I'm afraid so too"; and Stephen looked thoughtfully into the fire. Turn-
ing to face his sister, his back to the room in which Miriam lay, he said :
"I've felt, ever since the day Hugh told me she was sick, that it would
maybe be a mercy to her, maybe save her from worse things, if she shouldn't
weather the storm. With this disease, a little neglect in nursing, a little
mistake of remedies or diet, and off she goes. I don't want to be the one re-
sponsible for the mistake, if one is made ; I know you won't be, and that is
the great reason why I insisted on your coming."
The brother and sister looked into each other's eyes, and Letty turned pale
to the lips. She felt as if in the presence of some undefinable evil. A creep-
1861-88] MARGRET HOLMES BATES. 295
ing chill went over her, and she reached out her hand blindly. Stephen took
and held it between both his own while he talked.
"I've been here so much. Hugh's careless, not in the least considerate;
don't believe, in some instances, notably a case of fever, that a trifle can
make much difference. Becky knows exactly what Miriam must have for
nourishment, and how often she must have it. The keys to the pantry are
in her possession, to be given to no one but yourself or mother."
" Yes, she hands them to me every night ; never by any chance lays them
down anywhere. I wondered at it — said to her once, ' Put them there on
the table'; but she said, ' It would be just like Mr. Gatsimer to pocket them
by mistake. Then we'd be in a pretty fix.' "
" Yes," Stephen laughed, " I took unmeasured care to impress her with
Hugh's absent-mindedness."
" Well, she believes in you implicitly, and obeys your directions to the
letter."
A night or two after this, a night when Hugh was to watch with his wife
and Becky was to be roused at certain hours to give her beef -tea, Stephen
came in an hour earlier than had been his custom. He noiselessly opened
the side-door, and entered the room adjoining that in which his patient lay.
She was awake, and was talking or trying to talk in a very excited manner.
At this stage of the fever her voice was almost entirely different from what
it was in health, but Stephen thought there was still a foreign tone — a sharp
ring of fright, remonstrance, pleading, — what was it ?
Hugh stood over the bed, supporting her with one arm ; in the other hand
he held a spoon which he was trying to force into her mouth. He had grasped
one of her arms with the hand that raised her from the pillow, and her other
skeleton hand was thrown about wildly in resistance, and as well as she with
her swollen lips and tongue could articulate, she called out :
" No, no — you did ; you did — Oh, Letty ! Becky — Oh, Stephen, do come !
No — I won't — no" — and one frantic reach of her pale fingers touched the
spoon, and the contents were spilled on the bed-clothing. Hugh dropped
her head on the pillows.
" Lie there, then ! And I hope to God you'll be a corpse before morning ! "
Stephen stepped into the light and grasped Hugh's arm.
" In mercy's name, what are you saying ?"
Hugh trembled in every limb, and his face was bloodless. He pulled him-
self away from his brother.
" She won't take her medicine ; hasn't had any since seven o'clock. I'm
worn out with her perversity."
Miriam, quivering like a wind-shaken leaf, made inarticulate sounds, while
tears rolled over her cheeks, and her thin fingers were clutched in Stephen's
coat.
" You must take your medicine, Miriam," he said coaxingly. He picked
up the spoon and the glass that held the mixture. " You'll take it now,
won't you ? "
" No, no !" she cried, and with a great effort she raised herself from her
pillows, and with gestures and half-words she told Stephen something that
296 MARQRET HOLMES BATES. [1861-88
made his heart stand still. He wouldn't look at Hugh. If the medicine had
been tampered with he must have other evidence than that to be read in his
brother's eyes.
" She takes the queerest fancies/' Hugh said, " and sticks to them too,
and that makes her wholly unmanageable. She's got the notion now that I
put something in her medicine."
Stephen took up the glass. " I think it's stale. I'll see, and perhaps
change it."
He was raising the glass to his lips. Miriam screamed with all her strength,
rising again from her pillows, and Hugh starting forward, ostensibly for the
purpose of restraining her, shook the glass from his brother's hand, and it
fell to the floor in a hundred pieces. The eyes of the two men met. There
was no need of words. For an instant both seemed turned to stone. Stephen
spoke first.
" Go away, Hugh — go to bed — and — sleep if you can. You're in greater
danger than your wife is. I'll watch with her till morning."
Hugh hesitated, but Stephen waved him away with his hands, saying :
" Go, go ; don't let me see your face again, till morning, at least."
And this problem, " How shall he be saved from himself ?" racked the
doctor's mind through the hours he watched and tended his brother's wife.
Her fright and agitation made her fitful slumber still more uneasy than
usual, but the touch of Stephen's hands, the sound of his voice, reassured her
as often as she started from her pillows after dreaming over again that dread-
ful thing she but faintly realized in her weakness and delirium.
Next morning, as Stephen was going away, Hugh said : " I suppose Mim'll
chatter to everybody her silly suspicions of last night, and make a sensation —
give people something to talk about."
Stephen wondered, " "What can this brother of mine be made of ? There
was confession in his look and manner last night, and he knows I saw the
confession ; yet he braves me this way." He said aloud : "Take care, Hugh,
that you give her no further reason for strange fancies. Treat her with the
kindness you'd bestow on one of your dogs or horses if they were sick and
helpless. When she gets well — and she will get well — if you find 'for better
for worse' so much worse than you bargained for, let the law sever the bond
you made against your own judgment. There's more than one way out of an
uncongenial marriage. Divorce is low, common, a disgrace to humanity,
but many very excellent people justify it and avail themselves of it ; and if
one of our name must be smirched, I hope it won't be with a cowardly crime
— a mere matter of brute strength. Let us, at least, keep within the law,
and be able to think ourselves clean in the eyes of our neighbors, though de-
spising ourselves."
1861-88] CLIFFORD LANIER. 297
Clifford lanter*
BORN in Griffin, Ga., 1844.
TIME, TIRELESS TRAMP.
OTIME, thou running tramp so fleet,
If thou wouldst only lag awhile!
I pause to ease my weary feet
And thou hast sped a inile.
How long a journey may I take
With thee ? Is life but just one stage :
Our next inn death ? New life the break
Of dawning age on age ?
Millennial eons round, like flowers,
Thou must have known in bud and bloom-
And secular days from crescent powers
Waning to sunless gloom.
Didst chat with Luna, ere she grew
So chastely sad and ghostly cold,
About her fairness ere she knew
The wrinkle of growing old ?
Art come to age's memory yet ?
Wilt gossip of thine earliest days ?
The middle countless years forget
And sing us primal lays ?
A hundred thousand springs eclipse
In blank forgetfulness. Retrace
Some million stades, and on thy lips
And round thy youthful face
Let speak the word, let shine the light
That sang and shone when stars were born !
Wast thou Beginning's eremite
Unwed, alone, forlorn ?
How old wast thou when Adam played
With Flora and the Fauns and Pan ;
What time throned Jah from lustrous shade
Spake music unto man ?
Beyond do vaster oceans roll ?
How long canst thou expect to be ?
All time thy body, timeless soul,
Hast reached maturity ?
Thou seem'st a Jack-o'-lantern though
E'er dancing over feus of fern,
ELIZABETH BACON CUSTER. [1861-88
Fitful, afeard of getting caught,
And dark when thou shouldst burn.
Did God exhale thee while he slept,
The very vapor of his breath,
That, breath of Life, thou yet hast kept
The Elfin-ness of Death ?
The Independent. 1889.
BORN in Monroe, Mich.
A DAKOTA BLIZZARD.
["Boots and Saddles," or, Life in Dakota with General Cutter. 1885.]
rpHE general had returned completely exhausted and very ill. Without
J- his knowledge I sent for the surgeon, who, like all of his profession in
the army, came promptly. He gave me some powerful medicine to admin-
ister every hour, and forbade the general to leave his bed. It was growing
dark, and we were in the midst of a Dakota blizzard. The snow was so fine
that it penetrated the smallest cracks, and soon we found white lines appear-
ing all around us, where the roof joined the walls, on the windows and under
the doors. Outside the air was so thick with the whirling, tiny particles
that it was almost impossible to see one's hand held out before one. The
snow was fluffy and thick, like wool, and fell so rapidly, and seemingly from
all directions, that it gave me a feeling of suffocation as I stood outside.
Mary was not easily discouraged, and piling a few light fagots outside the
door, she tried to light a fire. The wind and the muffling snow put out
every little blaze that started, however, and so, giving it up, she went into
the house and found the luncheon-basket we had brought from the car, in
which remained some sandwiches, and these composed our supper.
The night had almost settled down upon us when the adjutant came for
orders. Knowing the scarcity of fuel and the danger to the horses from ex-
posure to the rigor of such weather after their removal from a warm climate,
the general ordered the breaking of camp. All the soldiers were directed
to take their horses and go into Yankton, and ask the citizens to give them
shelter in their homes, cow-sheds, and stables. In a short time the camp
was nearly deserted, only the laundresses, two or three officer?, and a few
dismounted soldiers remaining. The towns-people, true to the unvarying
western hospitality, gave everything they could to the use of the regiment ;
the officers found places in the hotels. The sounds of the hoofs of the hur-
rying horses flying by our cabin on their way to the town had hardly died
out before the black night closed in and left us alone on that wide, deserted
plain. The servants, Mary and Ham, did what they could to make the room
below-stairs comfortable by stopping the cracks and barricading the frail
1861-88] ELIZABETH BACON CUSTER. 299
door. The thirty-six hours of our imprisonment there seems now a fright-
ful nightmare. The wind grew higher and higher, and shrieked about the
little house dismally. It was built without a foundation, and was so rickety
it seemed as it rocked in a great gust of wind that it surely would be unroofed
or overturned. The general was too ill for me to venture to find my usual com-
fort from his reassuring voice. I dressed in my heaviest gown and jacket,
and remained under the blankets as much as I could to keep warm. Occa-
sionally I crept out to shake off the snow from the counterpane, for it sifted in
between the roof and clapboards very rapidly. I hardly dared take the little
vial in my benumbed fingers to drop the precious medicine, for fear it would
fall. I realized, as the night advanced, that we were as isolated from the
town, and even the camp, not a mile distant, as if we had been on an island
in the river. The doctor had intended to return to us, but his serious face
and impressive injunctions made me certain that he considered the life of
the general dependent on the medicine being regularly given.
During the night I was startled by hearing a dull sound, as of something
falling heavily. Flying down the stairs, I found the servants prying open
the frozen and snow-packed door, to admit a half dozen soldiers who, be-
coming bewildered by the snow, had been saved by the faint light we had
placed in the window. After that several came, and two were badly frozen.
We were in despair of finding any way of warming them, as there was no
bedding, and, of course, no fire, until I remembered the carpets which were
sewed up in bundles and heaped in one corner, where the boxes were, and
which we were not to use until the garrison was reached. Spreading them
out, we had enough to roll up each wanderer as he came. The frozen men
were in so exhausted a condition that they required immediate attention.
Their sufferings were intense, and I could not forgive myself for not having
something with which to revive them. The general never tasted liquor, and
we were both so well always we did not even keep it for use in case of sick-
ness.
I saw symptoms of that deadly stupor which is the sure precursor of freez-
ing, when I fortunately remembered a bottle of alcohol which had been
brought for the spirit-lamps. Mary objected to Tising the only means by
which we could make coffee for ourselves, but the groans and exhausted and
haggard faces of the men won her over, and we saw them revive under the
influence of the fiery liquid. Poor fellows! They afterwards lost their feet,
and some of their fingers had also to be amputated. The first soldier who
had reached us unharmed, except from exhaustion, explained that they had
all attempted to find their way to town, and the storm had completely over-
come them. Fortunately one had clung to a bag of hard-tack, which was
all they had had to eat. At last the day came, but so darkened by the snow
it seemed rather a twilight. The drifts were on three sides of us like a wall.
The long hours dragged themselves away, leaving the general too weak to
rise, and in great need of hot, nourishing food. I grew more and more ter-
rified at our utterly desolate condition and his continued illness, though
fortunately he did not suffer. He was too ill, and I too anxious, to eat the
fragments that remained in the luncheon-basket. The snow continued to
300 ELIZABETH BACON CUSTER. [1861-88
come down in great swirling sheets, while the wind shook the loose window-
casings and sometimes broke in the door. When night came again and the
cold increased, I believed that our hours were numbered. I missed the voice
of the courageous Mary, for she had sunk down in a corner exhausted for
want of sleep, while Ham had been completely demoralized from the first.
Occasionally I melted a little place on the frozen window-pane, and saw that
the drifts were almost level.with the upper windows on either side, but that
the wind had swept a clear space before the door. During the night the
sound of the tramping of many feet rose above the roar of the storm. A
great drove of mules rushed up to the sheltered side of the house. Their
brays had a sound of terror as they pushed, kicked, and crowded themselves
against our little cabin. For a time they huddled together, hoping for
warmth, and then despairing, they made a mad rush away, and were soon
lost in the white wall of snow beyond. All night long the neigh of a dis-
tressed horse, almost human in its appeal, came to us at intervals. The door
was pried open once, thinking it might be some suffering fellow-creature in
distress. The strange, wild eyes of the horse peering in for help haunted
me long afterwards. Occasionally a lost dog lifted up a howl of distress un-
der our window, but before the door could be opened to admit him he had
disappeared in the darkness. When the night was nearly spent I sprang again
to the window with a new horror, for no one, until he hears it for himself,
can realize what varied sounds animals make in the excitement of peril.
A drove of hogs, squealing and grunting, were pushing against the house,
and the door which had withstood so much had to be held to keep it from
being broken in.
It was almost unbearable to hear the groans of the soldiers over their swol-
len and painful feet, and know that we could do nothing to ease them. To
be in the midst of such suffering, and yet have no way of ameliorating it ;
to have shelter, and yet to be surrounded by dumb beasts appealing to us
for help, was simply terrible. Every minute seemed a day ; every hour a
year. When daylight came I dropped into an exhausted slumber, and was
awakened by Mary standing over our bed with a tray of hot breakfast. I
asked if help had come, and finding it had not, of course, I could not under-
stand the smoking food. She told me that feeling the necessity of the gen-
eral's eating, it had come to her in the night-watches that she would cut up
the large candles she had pilfered from the cars, and try if she could cook
over the many short pieces placed close together, so as to make a large flame.
The result was hot coffee and some bits of the steak she had brought from
town, fried with a few slices of potatoes. She could not resist telling me how
much better she could have done had I not given away the alcohol to the
frozen men !
The breakfast revived the general so much that he began to make light of
danger in order to quiet me. The snow had ceased to fall, but for all that it
still seemed that we were castaways and forgotten, hidden under the drifts
that nearly surrounded us. Help was really near at hand, however, at even
this darkest hour. A knock at the door, and the cheery voices of men came
up to our ears. Some citizens of Yankton had at last found their way to our
1861-88] ELIZABETH BACON OUSTER. 3Q1
relief, and the officers, who neither knew the way nor how to travel over such
a country, had gladly followed. They told us that they had made several
attempts to get out to us, but the snow was so soft and light that they could
make no headway. They floundered and sank down almost out of sight,
even in the streets of the town. Of course no horse could travel, but they
told me of their intense anxiety, and said that fearing I might be in need of
immediate help they had dragged a cutter over jhe drifts, which now had a
crust of ice formed from the sleet and the moisture of the damp night-air.
Of course I declined to go without the general, but I was more touched than
I could express by their thought of me. I made some excuse to go upstairs,
where, with my head buried in the shawl-partition, I tried to smother the
sobs that had been suppressed during the terrors of our desolation. Here
the general found me, and though comforting me by tender words, he still
reminded me that he would not like any one to know that I had lost my
pluck when all the danger I had passed through was really ended.
CUSTER AND HIS HOUNDS.
[From the Same.]
f I ^HE pack of hounds were an endless source of delight to the general.
-L We had about forty : the stag-hounds that run by sight, and are on the
whole the fleetest and most enduring dogs in the world, and the fox-hounds
that follow the trail with their noses close to the ground. The first rarely
bark, but the latter are very noisy. The general and I used to listen with
amusement to their attempts to strike the key-note of the bugler when he
sounded the calls summoning the men to guard-mount, stables, or retreat.
It rather destroyed the military effect to see, beside his soldierly figure, a
hound sitting down absorbed in imitation. With lifted head and rolling
eyes there issued from the broad mouth notes so doleful they would have
answered for a miser icordia.
The fox-hounds were of the most use in the winter, for the hunting was
generally in the underbrush and timber along the river. I never tired of
watching the start for the hunt. The general was a figure that would have
fixed attention anywhere. He had marked individuality of appearance, and
a certain unstudied carelessness in the wearing of his costume that gave a
picturesque effect, not the least out of place on the frontier. He wore troop-
boots reaching to his knees, buckskin breeches fringed on the sides, a dark
navy-blue shirt with a broad collar, a red necktie, whose ends floated over
his shoulder exactly as they did when he and his entire division of cavalry
had worn them during the Avar. On the broad felt hat, that was almost a
sombrero, was fastened a slight mark of his rank.
He was at this time thirty-five years of age, weighed one hundred and
seventy pounds, and was nearly six feet in height. His eyes \vere clear blue
and deeply set, his hair short, wavy, and golden in tint. His mustache was
302 ELIZABETH BACON CUSTER. [1861-88
long and tawny in color ; his complexion was florid, except where his fore-
head was shaded by his hat, for the sun always burned his skin ruthlessly.
He was the most agile, active man I ever knew, and so very strong and in such
perfect physical condition that he rarely knew even an hour's indisposition.
Horse and man seemed one when the general vaulted into the saddle. His
body was so lightly poised and so full of swinging, undulating motion, it
almost seemed that the win/1 moved him as it blew over the plain. Yet every
nerve was alert and like finely tempered steel, for the muscles and sinews
that seemed so pliable were equal to the curbing of the most fiery animal.
I do not think that he sat his horse with more grace than the other officers,
for they rode superbly, but it was accounted by others almost an impossibil-
ity to dislodge the general from the saddle, no matter how vicious the horse
might prove. He threw his feet out of the stirrups the moment the animal
began to show his inclination for war, and with his knees dug into the sides
of the plunging brute, he fought and always conquered. With his own
horses he needed neither spur nor whip. They were such friends of his, and
his voice seemed so attuned to their natures, they knew as well by its inflec-
tions as by the slight pressure of the bridle on their necks what he wanted.
By the merest inclination on the general's part, they either sped on the wings
of the wind or adapted their spirited steps to the slow movement of the march.
It was a delight to see them together, they were so in unison, and when he
talked to them, as though they had been human beings, their intelligent
eyes seemed to reply.
As an examplo of his horsemanship he had a way of escaping from the stag-
nation of the dull march, when it was not dangerous to do so, by riding a
short distance in advance of the column over a divide, throwing himself on
one side of his horse so as to be entirely out of sight from the other direction,
giving a signal that the animal understood, and tearing off at the best speed
that could be made. The horse entered into the frolic with all the zest of
his master, and after the race the animal's beautiful, distended nostrils
glowed blood-red as he tossed his head and danced with delight.
In hunting, the general rode either Vic or Dandy. The dogs were so fond
of the latter, they seemed to have little talks with him. The general's favor-
ite dog, Bliicher, would leap up to him in the saddle, and jump fairly over
the horse in starting. The spirited horses, mounted by officers who sat them
so well, the sound of the horn used for the purpose of calling the dogs, their
answering bay, the glad voices, and "whoop-la" to the hounds as the party
galloped down the valley, are impressions ineffaceable from my memory.
They often started a deer within sound of the bugle at the post. In a few
hours their shouts outside would call me to the window, and there, drooping
across the back of one of the orderlies' horses, would be a magnificent black-
tailed deer. We had a saddle of venison hanging on the wood-house almost
constantly during the winter. The officers', and even the soldiers', tables
had this rarity to vary the monotony of the inevitable beef.
After these hunts the dogs had often to be cared for. They would be lame,
or cut in the chase, through the tangle of vines and branches. These were
so dense it was a constant wonder to the general how the deer could press
1861-88] MARGARET THOMSON JANVIER. 303
through with its spreading antlers. The English hounds, unacquainted
with our game, used to begin with a porcupine sometimes. It was pitiful,
though for a moment at first sight amusing, to see their noses and lips look-
ing like animated pin-cushions. There was nothing for us to do after such
an encounter but to begin surgery at once. The general would not take
time to get off his hunting-clothes nor go near the fire until he had called
the dog into his room and extracted the painful quills with the tweezers from
his invaluable knife. I sat on the dog and held his paws, but quivered even
when I kept my head averted. The quills being barbed cannot be with-
drawn, but must be pulled through in the same direction in which they en-
tered. The gums, lips, and roof of the mouth were full of little wounds,
but the dogs were extremely sagacious and held very still. When the pain-
ful operation was over they were very grateful, licking the general's hand as
he praised them for their pluck.
Sometimes, when the weather was moderate, and I rode after the fox-
hounds, one of them separated himself from the pack, and came shaking his
great, velvet ears and wagging his cumbrous tail beside my horse. The gen-
eral would call my attention to him, and tell me that it was our latest surgical
patient, paying us his bill in gratitude, " which is the exchequer of the poor."
Among the pack was an old hound that had occasional fits. When he felt
the symptoms of an attack he left the kennel at the rear of the house, came
round to the front-door, and barked or scratched to get in. My husband
knew at once that the dog was going to suffer, and that instinct had taught
him to come to us for help. Rover would lie down beside the general until
his hour of distress, and then solicit the ever-ready sympathy with his mourn-
ful eyes. The general rubbed and cared for him, while the dog writhed and
foamed at the mouth. He was always greatly touched to see the old hound,
when he began to revive, try to lift the tip of his tail in gratitude.
With the stag-hounds, hunting was so bred in the bone that they some-
times went off by themselves, and even the half -grown puppies followed. I
have seen them returning from such a hunt, the one who led the pack hold-
ing proudly in his mouth a jack-rabbit.
BORN in New Orleans, La.
THE DEAD DOLL.
[The Dead Doll, and Other Verses. By Margaret Vandegrift. 1888.]
~V7"OU needn't be trying to comfort me — I tell you my dolly is dead !
-L There's no use in saying she isn't, with a crack like that in her head.
It's just like you said it wouldn't hurt much to have my tooth out, that day ;
And then, when the man 'most pulled my head off, you hadn't a word to say.
304 GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM. [1861-88
And you must think I'm only a baby, when you say you can mend it with glue!
As if I didn't know better than that ! Why, just suppose it was you ?
You might make her look all mended — but what do I care for looks ?
Why, glue's for chairs and tables, and toys, and the backs of books !
My dolly ! my own little daughter ! Oh, but it's the awfulest crack !
It makes me feel sick to think of the sound when her poor head went whack
Against that horrible brass thing that holds up the little shelf.
Now, Nursey, what makes you remind me ? I know that I did it myself!
I think you must be crazy — you'll get her another head !
What good would forty heads do her ? I tell you my dolly is dead!
And to think I hadn't quite finished her elegant new Spring hat !
And I took a sweet ribbon of hers last night to tie on that horrid cat !
When my mamma gave me that ribbon — I was playing out in the yard — •
She said to me, most expressly, " Here's a ribbon for Hildegarde."
And I went and put it on Tabby, and Hildegarde saw me do it ;
But I said to myself, " Oh, never mind, I don't believe she knew it! "
But I know that she knew it now, and I just believe, I do,
That her poor little heart was broken, and so her head broke too.
Oh, my baby! my little baby! I wish my head had been hit!
For I've hit it over and over, and it hasn't cracked a bit.
But since the darling is dead, we must bury her, of course ;
We will take my little wagon, Nurse, and you shall be the horse ;
And I'll walk behind and cry ; and we'll put her in this, you see —
This dear little box — and we'll bury her under the maple tree.
And papa will make me a tombstone, like the one he made for my bird;
And he'll put what I tell him on it — yes, every single word!
I shall say: "Here lies Hildegarde, a beautiful doll, who is dead;
She died of a broken heart, and a dreadful crack in her head."
|£utnam*
BORN iu London, England, 1844.
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.
[Literary Property. — Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science, etc. 1884. ]
rpIHE efforts in this country in behalf of international copyright have been
-L always more or less hampered by the question being confused with that
of a protective tariff. The strongest opposition to a copyright measure has
uniformly come from protectionists. Kichard Grant White said, in 1868 :
" The refusal of copyright in the United States to British authors is, in fact,
though not always so avowed, a part of the American protective system.
1681-88] GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM. 3Q5
With free trade, we shall have a just international copyright." It would be
difficult, however, for protectionists to show logical grounds for their posi-
tion. American authors are manufacturers who are simply asking, first,
that they shall not be undersold in their home market by goods imported
from abroad on which no (ownership) duty has been paid, which have been
simply " appropriated " ; secondly, that the government may facilitate their
efforts to secure compensation for such of their own goods as are enjoyed by
foreigners. These are claims with which a protectionist who is interested in
developing American industry ought certainly to be in sympathy. The con-
tingency that troubles him, however, is the possibility, that, if the English
author is given the right to sell his books in this country, the copies sold may
be, to a greater or less extent, manufactured in England, and the business of
making these copies may be lost to American printers, binders, and paper-
men. He is much more concerned for the protection of the makers of the
material casing of the book than for that of the author who created its essen-
tial substance.
It is evidently to the advantage of the consumer, upon whose interest the
previously-referred-to Philadelphia resolutions lay so much stress, that the
labor of preparing the editions of his books be economized as much as possi-
ble. The principal portion of the cost of a first edition of a book is the set-
ting of the type, together with, if the work is illustrated, the designing and
engraving of the illustrations. If this first cost of stereotyping and engrav-
ing can be divided among several editions, say one for Great Britain, one for
the United States, and one for Canada and the other colonies, it is evident
that the proportion to be charged to each copy printed is less, and that the
selling price per copy can be smaller, than would be the case if this first cost
had got to be repeated in full for each market. It is, then, to the advantage
of the consumer, that, whatever copyright arrangement be made, nothing
shall stand in the way of foreign stereotypes and illustrations being dupli-
cated for use here whenever the foreign edition is in such shape as to render
this duplicating an advantage and a saving in cost. The few protectionists
who have expressed themselves in favor of an international copyright meas-
ure, and some others who have fears as to our publishing interest being able
to hold its own against any open competition, insist upon the condition that
foreign works to obtain copyright must be wholly remanufactured and re-
published in this country. "We have shown how such a condition would, in
the majority of cases, be contrary to the interests of the American consumer,
while the British author is naturally opposed to it because, in increasing
materially the outlay to be incurred by the American publisher in the pro-
duction of his edition, it proportionately diminishes the profits, or prospects
of profits, from which is calculated the remuneration that can be paid to the
author.
The suggestion of permitting the foreign book to be reprinted by all deal-
ers who would contract to pay the author a specified royalty has, at first
sight, something specious and plausible about it. It seems to be in harmony
with the principles of freedom of trade, in which we are believers. It is, how-
ever, directly opposed to those principles. First, it impairs the freedom of
VOL. x.— 20
306 GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM. [1861-88
contract, preventing the producer from making such arrangements for sup-
plying the public as seem best to him ; and secondly, it undertakes, by pa-
ternai legislation, to fix the remuneration that shall be given to the producer
for his work, and to limit the prices at which this work shall be furnished to
the consumer. There is no more equity in the government's undertaking
this limitation of the producer and protection of the consumer in the case of
books than there would be in that of bread or beef. Further, such an arrange-
ment would be of benefit to neither the author, the public, nor the publishers,
and would, we believe, make of international copyright, and of any copy right,
a confusing and futile absurdity. A British author could hardly obtain much
satisfaction from an arrangement which, while preventing him from placing
his American business in the hands of a publishing house selected by him-
self, and of whose responsibility he could assure himself, would throw open
the use of his property to any dealers who might scramble for it. He could
exercise no control over the style, the shape, or the accuracy of his American
editions ; could have no trustworthy information as to the number of copies
the various editions contained ; and if he were tenacious as to the collection
of the royalties to which he was entitled, he would be able in many cases to
enforce his claims only through innumerable lawsuits, and would find the
expenses of the collection exceed the receipts. The benefit to the public
would be no more apparent. Any gain in the cheapness of the editions pro-
duced would be more than offset by their unsatisfactoriness ; they would, in
the majority of cases, be untrustworthy as to accuracy or completeness, and
be hastily and fiimsily manufactured. A great many enterprises, also, de-
sirable in themselves, and that would be of service to the public, no pub-
lisher could, under such an arrangement, afford to undertake at all, as, if
they proved successful, unscrupulous neighbors would, through rival edi-
tions, reap the benefit of his judgment and his advertising. In fact, the
business of reprinting would fall largely into the hands of irresponsible par-
ties, from whom no copyright could be collected. The arguments against a
measure of this kind are, in short, the arguments in favor of international
copyright
It is due to American publishers to explain that, in the absence of an inter-
national copyright, there has grown up among them a custom of making
payments to foreign authors, which has become, especially during the last
twenty-five years, a matter of very considerable importance. Some of the
English authors who testified before the British commission stated that the
payments from the United States for their books exceeded their receipts in
Great Britain. These payments secure, of course, to the American pub-
lisher no title of any kind to the books. In some cases they obtain for him
the use of advance sheets, by means of which he is able to get his edition
printed a week or two in advance of any unauthorized edition that might be
prepared. In many cases, however, payments have been made some time after
the publication of the works, and when there was no longer even the slight
advantage of " advance sheets " to be gained from them. While the author-
ization of the English author can convey no title or means of defence against
the interference of rival editions, the leading publishing houses have, with
1861-88] GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM. 307
very inconsiderable exceptions, respected each other's arrangements with
foreign authors, and the editions announced as published ' ' by arrangement
with the author/' and on which payments in lieu of copyright have been duly
made, have not been, as a rule, interfered with. This understanding among
the publishers goes by the name of " the courtesy of the trade." I think it
is safe to say that it is to-day the exception for an English work of any value
to be published by any reputable house without a fair, and often a very lib-
eral, recognition being made of the rights (in equity) of the author. In
view of the considerable amount of harsh language that has been expended
in England upon our American publishing houses, and the opinion prevail-
ing in England that the wrong in reprinting is entirely one-sided, it is in
order here to make the claim which can, I believe, be fully substantiated,
that, in respect to the recognition of the rights of authors unprotected by
law, their record has in fact, during the past twenty-five years, been better
than that of their English brethren. English publishers have become fully
aroused to the fact that American literary material has value and availability,
and each year a larger amount of this material has had the honor of being
introduced to the English public. According to the statistics of 1878, 10
per cent, of the works issued in England in that year were American re-
prints. The acknowledgments, however, of any rights on the part of Amer-
ican authors have been few and far between, and the payments but incon-
siderable in amount. The leading English houses would doubtless very
much prefer to follow the American practice of paying for their reprinted
material, but they have not succeeded in establishing any general under-
standing similar to our American " courtesy of the trade," and books that
have been paid for by one house are, in a large number of cases, promptly re-
issued in cheaper rival editions by other houses. It is very evident that, in
the face of open and unscrupulous competition, continued or considerable
payments to authors are difficult to provide for ; and the more credit is due
to those firms who have, in the face of this difficulty, kept a good record with
their American authors
We may, I trust, be able, at no very distant period, to look back upon, as
exploded fallacies of an antiquated barbarism, the two beliefs, that the mate-
rial prosperity of a community can be assured by surrounding it with Chinese
walls of restriction to prevent it from purchasing in exchange for its own
products its neighbor's goods, and that its moral and mental development
can be furthered by the free exercise of the privilege of appropriating its
neighbor's books.
THOMAS SERGEANT PERRT. [1861-88
BORN in Newport, R. I., 1845.
MONEY AND THE SNOB.
[The Evolution of the Snob. 1887.]
rriHAT money is to all intents and purposes now omnipotent, no serious-
-L minded person will deny ; and its new and raw possessor, as we see in
countless instances, at once endeavors to adapt himself to a state of society
in which aristocratic principles still flourish. He puts himself in the hands
of a parasite who, for board and luxury, shall teach his patron to distinguish
between Hochheimer and Johannisberger, between Mecloc and more deli-
cate clarets, and how to tell the different soups, the order of dishes at din-
ner, etc., without apparent effort. The mere possession of vast wealth is
not alone enough, perhaps, to insure an inevitable advance ; but the desire
for social progress, combined with a little tact, will accomplish everything
in time. What may be a little difficult at home, where jealousy and envy
keep one's neighbors' memory in abnormal activity, becomes very simple
abroad, where good society does not distinguish between foreigners, and
smiles at these fanciful distinctions. There, any taint that may unfit him
for success at home is not observed. He elbows the greatest, and enjoys every
triumph. To be sure, the doors through which he so easily enters are like
those attached to public buildings, and swing in both directions ; but with
those poor wretches who fall out we have nothing to do : those who stay in
alone concern us. It is to be noticed, that they are gradually becoming
aware that they are the real possessors of power ; that taste, intelligence,
ability, energy, exist but for their service ; and that even the long-intrenched
aristocracy is only a useful means of delight for the rich. Already a poor
nobleman who tries to hide his nakedness with leaves from his family tree
is a most despised object ; power is shifting from lineage and title to wealth,
and the possessor of this qualification will be sure to receive the respect which
is always given to power. By its ready worship of mammon, the aristocracy
is cultivating wood for its own guillotine. The change is perceptible to
every observer who will notice the lessening of respect for mere length of
lineage, and the common habit of regarding coats-of-arms and such symbols
of antiquity as mere affectations. Especially is this true of America, where
"daddyism" has long been laughed at, and pride of family is the coldest
comfort and but a meagre support. That this form of vanity has existed
and still exists, no one who knows the facts will deny ; but the general ten-
dency of the country is against it. It survives as a condition of respectabil-
ity or gentility ; but outside of what faint theoretic reverence it may extort,
it has no practical value. The old helmet of a Crusader would be as valu-
able for modern wear as descent from him would be useful in money-getting.
It should be said, however, that if le monde s'americanise, as despondent
European critics are prone to say, it will alter slowly, for one peculiarly
1861-88] THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY. 309
American quality is- its intense conservatism ; it is not Anglo-Saxon for
nothing, and it adheres with, on the whole, wonderful tenacity to what has
won the approval of Europe. These questions, it seems, will rather be de-
cided by the Russians, who appear to be destined to take the place long held
by the French ; that, namely, of becoming the Greeks of modern times,— in
other words, the people who shall carry out their ideas in action, who put
their theories into practice. "We are least of all a nation that lives on ideas.
There is scanty room for them here, with all our territory : it is in the appli-
cation of steam, the invention of machinery, that we are interested ; here we
have no equal. Our excellence is in devising methods of saving labor, and
the invention and promulgation of theories requires the severest toil.
As matters stand, it may be safely asserted that illustrious descent is, in
this country at least, an interesting decoration, like a suit of armor in a cor-
ner of a hall ; but it is the rich, no matter how obscure their origin, who are
the real objects of interest and envy. To be sure, tjiose who amass wealth
adorn their acquisitions with various heraldic devices, as a matter of fashion ;
• but it is not these coats-of-arms, or their newly bought family portraits, that
inspire respect. Those, we feel, are but concessions to an expiring notion
of aristocratic belongings ; they are not an essential part of social position
as they were in the past. The threatening problems of the present day are
not those that concern a privileged aristocracy, but those that demand a set-
tlement of the various claims to wealth. Mere aristocracy is a luxury for
those who care for it ; it is not a living question. The disposition to adorn
people with extraneous majesty is practically extinct, or on the .way. to ex-
tinction ; but the world is interested in the distribution of dollars and cents,
and in those who have succeeded in acquiring this desirable art. "'They are
the great of this world, before whom drawing-rooms and' palaces are open,
who are tempted by the offer of all that politics can present ; who are, in-
deed, the masters of the world.
There is one advantage : there is no mystery about them, as it was sup-
posed that there was about the aristocracy who enjoyed a monopoly of aqui-
line noses, eagle eyes, curved lips, glossy raven or curling light hair, as fash-
ion swayed, almond-shaped nails, arched insteps, graceful gait, small hands
and feet, and, above all, a somewhat scornful air, which was the despair
of outsiders. This was what we call their uniform, which indicated a host of
qualities no less imposing, and even more unlike the customary traits of
human nature. They were intenser than most people, and far more serious,
for they lived up to their dazzling exterior ; they were as exempt from petti-
nesses as their lives were free from sordid care. They were always on pa-
rade, it seemed ; and as a child imagines a king wearing his crown all day,
perched upon a throne, with a sceptre forever in his hand, and even sleeping
with several pounds weight of metal and jewels on his uneasy head, so the
aristocracy of birth or genius was separated from the multitude, who were
alone capable of being cross, unreasonable, bored, uncertain, and petty. The
very vices of the great shared their magnificent superiority to customary
sins, as we may see in the mysterious veil wherein Byron enwrapped himself
while under the influence of gin, and in the wide-spread notion that there
310 THOMAS SERGEANT PERRT. [1861-88
was something grand in the inevitable viciousness of genius. Indeed, the
whole conception of genius as something that lifted its possessor far above
the common herd by an inexplicable quality — an idea which was carefully
nurtured by writers who had the ear of the public — was one that had wide
ramifications ; and demi-gods acquired full rights of citizenship in modern
society. Genius became as ready and satisfactory an explanation ..of every
form of conspicuous merit, as instinct of the actions of animals ; and in the
lordly company of those who possessed it the ordinary qualities of human
nature appeared unworthy of contemplation. The great-man theory ruled
triumphant in literature as in society, and snobbishness was one of the forms
in which its recognition found expression. It was the perception of a myste-
rious quality which could be shared by all people of position, who were will-
ing to accept its responsibilities ; what these responsibilities were, fashion-
able life shows.
When a plutocracy is in power, this glamour disappears. Yet, of course,
much of the machinery of former splendor survives, just as people use horses
in the days of steam ; but it lingers as a temptation to extravagance, and as
a warrantable source of lavish expenditure, rather than as the impressive
thing that it was in times past. The mystery is gone when robbing a bank
will suffice to fit one for greatness, and the first question asked is how much
a man can spend. With these altered conditions, snobbishness must change,
and does change. It loses the side whereby it was related to the admiration
of the dignity of life, and becomes a practical worship of the material side of
worldly success. Whereas— although the habit of thus labelling and sub-
dividing human qualities is most dangerous — the exaggerated worship of an
aristocracy bore in the past some of the marks of pride, the ostentation of
money-getters and -spenders is apt to degenerate into mere vanity, the idlest
display, — possibly instances will suggest themselves to our readers, — and
since this extravagance has a merely commercial measure, like so much lace
or so many jewels, it becomes a subject to be treated by political economy,
not one that appeals to even fanciful reverence. This is the position, as has
just been said, that society is apparently beginning to take, or rather pre-
paring to take, about it : all title-deeds are to be examined. Hence we may
say, perhaps, that as snobbishness is the exaggeration, or, apparently, the
evil application, of a way of looking at the world that has been full of fruit,
so the present worship of money is at bottom a frank acceptance of things
as they are, which is in many respects a commendable action. Whether the
frank worship of wealth is in itself, however, a commendable thing, each
one may decide for himself : the answer will be recorded by some future his-
torian.
1861-88] WILL CARLETON. 3
mill Catleton.
BORN in Hudson, Lenawee Co., Mich., 1845.
BETSEY AND I ARE OUT.
[Farm Sallade. 1873.]
DRAW up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em good and stout;
For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.
We, who have worked together so long as man and wife,
Must pull in single harness for the rest of our nat'ral life.
"What is the matter ? " say you. I swan it's hard to tell!
Most of the years behind us we've passed by very well ;
I have no other woman, she has no other man —
Only we've lived together as long as we ever can.
Sc I have talked with Betsey, and Betsey has talked with me,
Ard so we've agreed together that we can't never agree;
Not that we've catched eacli other in any terrible crime;
We've been a-gathering this for years, a little at a time.
There was a stock of temper we both had for a start,
Although we never suspected 'twould take us two apart ;
I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone ;
And Betsey, like all good women, had a temper of her own.
The first thing I remember whereon we disagreed
Was something concerning heaven — a difference in our creed;
We arg'ed the thing at breakfast, we arg'ed the thing at tea,
And the more we arg'ed the question the more we didn't agree.
And the next that I remember was when we lost a cow;
She had kicked the bucket for certain, the question was only — How ?
I held my own opinion, and Betsey another had ;
And when we were done a-talkin', we both of us was mad.
And the next that I remember, it started in a joke ;
But full for a week it lasted, and neither of us spoke.
And the next was when I scolded because she broke a bowl;
And she said I was mean and stingy, and hadn't any soul.
And so that bowl kept pourin' dissensions in our cup;
And so that blamed cow-critter was always a-comin' up ;
And so that heaven we arg'ed no nearer to us got,
But it gave us a taste of soniethin' a thousand times as hot.
And so the thing kept workin', and all the self-same way;
Always somethin' to arg'e, and somethin' sharp to say;
And down on us came the neighbors, a couple dozen strong,
And lent their kindest sarvice for to help the thing along.
And there has been days together — and many a weary week —
We was both of us cross and spunky, and both too proud to speak;
WILL CARLETON. [1861-88
And I have been thinkin' and thinkin', the whole of the winter and fall,
If I can't live kind with a woman, why, then, I won't at all.
And so I have talked with Betsey, and Betsey has talked with me,
And we have agreed together that we can't never agree ;
And what is hers shall be hers, and what is mine shall be mine;
And I'll put it in the agreement, and take it to her to sign.
Write on the paper, lawyer — the very first paragraph —
Of all the farm and live-stock that she shall have her half ;
For she has helped to earn it, through many a weary day,
And it's nothing more than justice that Betsey has her pay.
Give her the house and homestead — a man can thrive and roam;
But women are skeery critters, unless they have a home ;
And I have always determined, and never failed to say,
That Betsey never should want a home if I was taken away.
There is a little hard money that's drawin' tol'rable pay:
A couple of hundred dollars laid by for a rainy day ;
Safe in the hands of good men, and easy to get at;
Put in another clause there, and give her half of that.
Yes, I see you smile, sir, at my givin' her so much ;
Yes, divorce is cheap, sir, but I take no stock in such !
True and fair I married her, when she was blithe and young;
And Betsey "was al'ays good to me, exceptin' with her tongue.
Once when I was young as you, and not so smart, perhaps,
For me she mittened a lawyer, and several other chaps ;
And all of them was flustered, and fairly taken down,
And I for a time was counted the luckiest man in town.
Once when I had a fever — I won't forget it soon —
I was hot as a basted turkey and crazy as a loon ;
Never an hour went by me when she was out of sight —
She nursed me true and tender, and stuck to me day and night.
And if ever a house was tidy, and ever a kitchen clean,
Her house and kitchen was tidy as any I ever seen;
And I don't complain of Betsey, or any of her acts,
Exceptin' when we've quarrelled, and told each other facts.
So draw up the paper, lawyer, and I'll go home to-night,
And read the agreement to her, and see if it's all right;
And then in the mornin', I'll sell to a tradin' man I know,
And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the world I'll go.
And one thing put in the paper, that first to me didn't occur:
That when I am dead at last she'll bring me back to her;
And lay me under the maples I planted years ago,
When she and I was happy before we quarrelled so.
And when she dies I wish that she would be laid by me,
And, lyin' together in silence, perhaps we will agree ;
And, if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn't think it queer
If we loved each other the better because we Quarrelled here.
1881-88] MARIA LOUISE POOL. 3^3
jftarta Loutee
BORN in Rockland, Mass., 1845.
THE LAST STRAW.
[Tenting at Stony Beach. 1888.]
RANDY RANKIN always sits straight. She never lolls. As she sat
there in the most uncomfortable chair in the tent, she was a great con-
trast to us, who came to the shore with intent to do nothing but lounge, and
who appeared to be accomplishing our intentions. I am sure there are some
people who are never comfortable save when they are uncomfortable. As I
reclined on our couch and looked at Mrs. Rankin, I could but wonder if Mr.
Rankin also always wanted to sit straight ; if he did not, I thought I had a
clew as to why he should now live by himself in that old school-house, while
she should dwell in the Two-mile. This woman is considerably above the
average native on these shores ; it was interesting to have her spend part of a
day with us, but I could not put from me the feeling that she might be some-
what overwhelming as a constant companion. I noticed one peculiarity about
her speech : she would frequently speak correctly for several consecutive sen-
tences, and then would lapse with apparent hopelessness into a tangle of sub-
jects and predicates. I decided that she knew how to use the simple laws of
grammar, but that the custom and example of years were generally more
powerful than any other consideration.
At our request she had taken off her "things," which were a black-fringed
silk shawl and a sun-bonnet. A pair of large drab cotton gloves had also been
removed, and were pulled into each other in the form of a ball, and placed in
the sun-bonnet. Her dress was black alpaca, which was so shiny as to look
new ; of course it was not wrinkled, for alpaca cannot wrinkle. Although
the cloth looked so new, I felt that this appearance was deceptive, for I was
sure that not within thirty years at the very least could any dressmaker have
been persuaded to cut a " bodice " like that. Perhaps I may as well state here
that later I was informed by Mrs. Marlow that the dress was new, had never
been worn before, and was cut and made by Mrs. Raukin herself. It was of
that fashion once known as "the fan- waist/' Those who have seen this style
will know what I mean, and to those who have not I can give no description
which would be sufficiently graphic. It was cut down in the neck, so that a
slight hint of the collar-bone could be seen, and round this neck was "fulled
on" a strip of that Hamburg edging which is brought round in packs by
Jew peddlers. She wore a white apron with three tucks at the bottom, and
finished off with more edging.
Now, if you think Randy Rankin, in spite of her face and dress, was one
for whom you could feel anything like pity or condescension, you are entirely
mistaken. There was a grimness, a decision, and a strength about her, a
shrewdness and sense, that made it impossible not to have a sort of respect
for her. If she chose to dress as she did when she was young, you could only
314 MARIA LOUISE POOL. [1861-88
be amused ; the conviction that she would not care if you went into convul-
sions of laughter at her made the convulsions impossible.
She was in the habit of relating some of the infelicities of her married life
with the matter-of-fact calmness with which any of the fishermen here might
tell of a poor haul at certain seasons. A poor haul was unfortunate, but it
was a subject which could be fully discussed without any delicacy.
I have said that my walking across the floor of the tent with slippers whose
heels clacked at every step excited in our caller reminiscences of her mar-
ried life.
" It ain't no secret why Mr. Rankin and me can't live together/' she said as
she slowly drank her lemonade. " I never did believe in mysteries, and when
folks want to know the trouble I'm always willin' to tell 'em. Mr. Rankin
was so easy goin' 't I guess he could'er put up with me, or anybody, till the
jedgment day, but my nerves can't bear everything. There were two things
that decided me." Mrs. Rankin here spoke Avith extraordinary decision.
" One was them down-to-the-heel slippers. I d' know where he fished 'em
up from ; under the eaves somewhere, I expect. 'T any rate, he come into the
kitchen one morning with them on. He wa'n't very well that day, 'n' he
stayed in the house, and kep' walkin' up and down, clack, clack, clack, clack,
across that oil-cloth, until I felt that I should fly. I c'n bear some things Avell
enough, but some things I can't ; and Mr. Rankin, one way 'n' 'nother, had
got to be awful tryin'. My teeth were on edge most of the time. I said to him,
' Hadn't you better put on them list slippers o' yourn ? ' I went and got 'em,
and put 'em down in front of him. He didn't say he wouldn't put 'em on ;
that wa'n't his way ; but all the same, he didn't do it, but kept on them
things, and kept walkiu' and clackin' all that day. He wa'n't well for a week,
and the whole of that mortal time he wore them slippers, with heels that had
busted off the uppers jest far enough to let 'em down good with every step.
I s'pose you know there's always a last straw. I concluded that I had about
reached that straw, and I told Mr. Rankin so. He laughed, and said he
guessed not ; he guessed things would go on with us about as usual. Will
you believe it, all the rest of the time I lived with him, about six months, he
would never wear any other slippers but them ! I had given the matter the
most earnest thought of which I was capable. I was fearful unhappy, and
growin' more so every day. The man's whole nature rasped on mine so that
I was sometimes afraid of myself when I saw him coming. And yet he was an
upright, honest man. I have nothing to say against his character. He must
have had his trials with me. Luckily for him, he had a thick skin."
Mrs. Rankin paused, and seemed to be looking into the past. After a mo-
ment she resumed :
" But, lor, 't ain't no use whining. Jonas Rankin 's jest what he is, 'n'
I'm jest what I be. I had made a firm resolution that them slippers, even if
he wore 'em 's long 's I lived, shouldn't be the last straw. But I told him fair
and square that the very next thing would be. I'd got to the end of my rope.
He laughed. I guess that laugh of his has made me as mad 's I ever wanter
be. I used to pray over things. My health wa'n't first-rate, and I've noticed
prayer seems to do more good when you're kind of sound bodily. No,
1861-88] MARIA LOUISE POOL. 3^5
don't give me no more lemonade. Wall, what do you think that man did
next?"
Eandy waited for us to guess, but, naturally, we did not fully know the ca-
pabilities of Mr. Jonas Rankin, and so could make no guess at all.
" The Tree of Death was the next thing," she said, with such an intensity
of utterance that we stopped the laugh that rose to our lips, and waited with
what patience we might.
" Yes," she went on. " It belonged to his first wife, she that was a Lin-
coln, and he said they used to have it in their parlor. This he told me when
we were first married. He gave it to his son, who lives under the first cliff on
the shore, you know. One day Mr. Eankin come in with a large flat parcel
under his arm. He took off the wrappings, and said he guessed we'd have
that in the sitting-room now. Then he hung up the thing in a place where
you'd see it, and nothing else, if you were anywhere in the room. I begged
him not to have it there. There was nothing in the world I hated so much.
Did you ever see one ? "
No, we never had seen one.
" It's a tall, black, dead-looking tree, with a horrible picture of the devil
tramping about the roots with a watering-pot, from which great streams of
water are running. The devil has cloven feet, horns, and a tail with a prong to
it. He is grinning because the tree is so flourishing. For fruit there are great
black balls, and in each ball is printed the name of some sin, such as Lying,
Theft, Lust, Covetousness, and other sins which I need not mention. This
picture was in a frame of Avood painted a light blue, with gilt sprigs on it.
"What do you think ? That man was bound to have the picture hung there.
He said the sight of it was wholesome for frivolous souls. I told him that if
we had ever been frivolous, it had all been taken out of us long ago. He said
he guessed it had better hang there. And I knew it was settled. I found out
afterward that John's little girl — John is Mr. Rankin's son — had had fits
just from looking at the Tree of Death. I could believe that well enough, for
the child was a nervous, fanciful thing. She was frightened almost out of
her senses. She couldn't keep away from the picture, either, and used to
steal into the room where it was, and-stand and look at it. Finally her mother
found it out. Lily threw herself into her mother's arms one day, and said
that the devil was watering the sins in her heart, and soon they would be as
big as those black balls. Then she had a kind of convulsion. That picture
came down double quick. The doctor said that child would be crazy if she
were left to have such notions.
" Do you think I was goin' ter hev that blarsted thing there for me ter stare
at ? No ; that was the last straw. I told Mr. Rankin it was the last straw. I
wa'n't a-goin' ter keep house for him no more. He tried ter argue the point.
I told him he might save his breath. The house happened ter be mine. I
told him he might take his traps and go. He had jest about enough int'rest
money to git his victuals and clothes, if he lived by himself. ' Jest keep yer
int'rest,' says I. ' You jest row your own boat, and I'll row mine.' I guess
there wa'n't no love lost atween us. He took his things, or ruther his fust
wife's things, V went an' bought an old school-house that the town ain't had
GERTRUDE BLOEDE.
[1861-88
no use for this dozen years. He paid fifty dollars for it. He's lived there ever
sence ; be seven years next spring. I do some washin' and some slop-work,
and pick some huckleberries. I git "long. I ain't got no Tree of Death in
my house, nor nobody that wears slippers that click on the oil-cloth. I do
Mr. Eankin's washing and mending, but I don't charge him nothin' for it. I
send the clothes back by the baker every f ortnit, and the grocery man brings
'em. I don't see Mr. Rankin from year's end to year's end, and I don't want
to. His son and I are on good terms. John is a good fellow. I like him ; and
naturally there's great sympathy between his family and me on the subject
of that picture. John's wife has been so far as to say that she didn't blame
no woman for not livin' with no man who wanted to put the Tree of Death
under her nose all the time. Of course I'm lonesome once in a while. I often
think, if my son had lived, 'twould have been different."
Mrs. Rankin became silent. Her deep-set eyes seemed to look more sunken
than ever. She roused herself.
" Oh, yes," she said, " I git 'long."
BORN in Dresden, Germany, 1845.
MY FATHER'S CHILD.
[Beyond the Shadow. By Stuart Sterne. 1888.]
A BOUT her head or floating feet
"C^; No halo's starry gleain,
Still dark and swift uprising, like
A bubble in a stream, —
A soul from whose rejoicing heart
The bonds of earth were riven,
Sped upward through the silent night
To the closed gates of heaven.
And waiting heard a voice — "Who comes
To claim Eternity ?
Hero or saint that bled and died
Mankind to save and free ? "
She bent her head. The voice once more —
" Didst thou then toil and live
For home and children — to thy Love
Last breath and heart's-blood give ? "
Her head sank lower still, she clasped
Her hands upon her breast —
"Oh, no!" she whispered, "my dim life
Has never been so blest!
"I trod a lonely, barren path,
' And neither great nor good,
Gained not a hero's palm, nor won
The crown of motherhood !
' ' Oh, I was naught ! " Yet suddenly
The white lips faintly smiled —
"Save, oh, methinks I was mayhap
My Heavenly Father's Child ! "
A flash of light, a cry of joy,
And with uplifted eyes
The soul, through gates rolled open wide
Passed into Paradise.
1861-88] LUCRETIA GRAY NOBLE. 317
Lucretta
BORN in Lowell, Mass.
A ROARING LEDGE.
[A Reverend Idol. A Novel. 1882.]
OUT into the wild night she fled, distraught. Her insomnia of so many
nights and days had become at last a self -begetting disease ; to the
fierce throbbing brain-cells there was no longer any possibility of rest. Only
one idea was seized by her reeling faculties. It was that Heaven had always
allowed women the right to choose death rather than dishonor, and that the
hour of that last alternative had come to her. Out of a world where mis-
takes were far more surely punished than crimes, 'a.; world which had some
terrible necessity to keep social forms inviolate at any and every cost, she
must go — and go to-night. She felt the pursuers close on her track — that
strangest trio of pursuers — coming with that dreadful swiftness with which
all the crises of her fate had crowded on each other ; and deliriously she
started for the sea. In the deserted house, with only the deaf woman in the
kitchen, there was none to stay her; only a faithful, four-footed creature
sprang out and followed her as she ran from the house.
"Go h'6me!" she bade him. But Duke George, usually obedient to a
word from his young mistress, found something too strange about this lone-
ly sortie ; and, disappearing for a moment only, he was presently rushing
again by her side.
" Go home ! go home ! " she cried. But he only wagged his tail deprecat-
ingly ; he would not leave her.
She fell on her knees, clinging desperately round his neck, and sobbing,
" Mind poor, poor Monny, and go home/'
As if the wail of human anguish pierced to the comprehension of the brute
creature, this time the dog did go back ; and the panting fugitive went on
her wild flight alone.
All the stark immensity of sand and sea and sky lay in that kind of spectral
gloom made by a moon shining behind one uniform, thick veil of cloud ; only
in the west there was a long belt of livid light where the sun had gone down,
momently darkening, and, like a lonely speck in the awful universe, the girl
felt herself flying on and on, with a blind terror in her crazing brain, lest that
sullen, vanishing light would not last long enough for her to find her grave
by. But the fire of fever iu her veins bore her up and on with such speed
and strength, incredibly soon she reached the bluff, the beach, and that
sound of the surge which told her that the tide — was not in, but coming. She
fled on towards the sound ; but her feet sank in the briny ooze ; the belt of
tide-mud was impassable. At this she turned, and rushed away for Soaring
Ledge — a broken chain of rocks which began a short distance above her,
and extended far out into the deep sea. She had just reached this ledge
when a shaggy form pushed against her — yes— Duke George. He had only
318 LUCRETIA GRAY NOBLE. [1861-88
made a feint of going back ; at a little distance behind her he had stealthily
followed all her flight. Many and many a time, at low- water, had he gone
out on Eoaring Ledge with his young mistress (its farthest seaward rock
was a favorite sketching-place Avith her), her light foot springing safely
enough over the sea-channels between the rocks, when these were shallow
and the sun was shining. But now, in the slippery darkness, and with the
hoarse tide coming in, the creature knew it was a place of death, and tugged
at her dress to ask what wild business she had there. She thrust him off :
but he would not leave her ; and, as she still plunged wildly on, he flew after,
beginning finally to bark aloud.
With a last, cruel sense that her very dog was turned her foe, the delirious
girl leaped only the more desperately from point to point, catching foothold
by that miraculous sense with which the somnambulist walks where the wak-
ing could not tread ; the tide was rushing in to meet her only a few rods be-
yond, and she could jump from the rocks into depths where the sea devoured
its dead, and never rolled them in-shore to trouble the eyes of the living.
With this one idea in her burning brain, she bounded on, until in a desper-
ate struggle with the dog, — who, as if comprehending at last that his mis-
tress had gone daft, seized her garments to detain her by force, — she. caught
her foot, whirled, and fell headlong ; her temples struck with sharp concus-
sion on the rock, and she knew no more.
Then, indeed, the dog, with no conflicting instinct of obedience, lifted up
his wild cry for help over that silent form. Setting his teeth in the girl's
garments, he dragged her to the higher levels of the rock ; but even around
these the waves were rising with frightful rapidity, and a bark that grew
human in its anguish rang afar through the shrouding darkness and over the
beating seas.
A man who had ridden early and late rode up to the Doane house not very
long after Monny fled from it. Mrs. Doane was with him. She had come
home by rail from the next station above Lonewater. To the first inquiry
made by both, the deaf housekeeper replied that the young lady was quiet in
her own rooms. These being forthwith explored by Mrs. Doane, and found
empty, she said to Mr. Leigh: " She has gone to the village, of course ; prob-
ably to the Widow Macey's. Some one will be coming home with her pres-
ently."
Waiting being impossible to the man's mood, he was rushing out of the
door to go to the village, when Bobby Hines, small member of the very large
Hines family, came running up the yard, calling out: " Where's Miss Mormy
Eivers ? "
At this echo of everybody's cry, Mr. Leigh stood still, while the child
panted on :
" The tide hev' got her dog out on Eoaring Ledge, and he's barking dread-
ful ! And mother said I must come and tell Miss Eivers, cos she'd take on
so if he was drownded. Mother said maybe he'd hurt hisself out there, —
broke his leg, or something, so he can't swim in ; for he can swim like any-
thing. "
1861-88] LUCRETIA GRAY NOBLE. 3^9
Mr. Leigh heard no more, for he was running already for the lane which
led to the sea. The first far echo of the dog's voice when he came within
sound of it struck him with such horror of foreboding, all the order of events
which followed he never knew. Every nerve at mortal strain to devour the
distance between himself and that " barking dreadful," and find out what it
meant, was all he remembered. By land and water he must get there, run-
ning, swimming, rowing, launching a boat where never boat was launched
before, some other hands bearing help, bringing lights, — all the while rising
wilder and wilder that barking dreadful, with its nameless, ghastly sugges-
tion, to the man who had wronged a delicate girl, he knew at last how terri-
bly. With desperate difficulty they rowed out towards the sound, keeping
the boat off the sands of the bar, off the rocks of the ledge (all buried now be-
neath the tide, except those highest points where that agonized cry arose) ;
and even as they neared it, it broke strangely, then, with one long, piercing
wail which seemed to cleave the very heavens, it ceased utterly.
Leaning far over from the boat, Mr. Leigh strained his eyes into the gloom
to discern at last something which made him drop his oars, and with a cry
which caught up, as it were, in human tones, the silenced agony of the dog's
voice, he plunged overboard, and struck out towards that desperate sight. It
was of a dog swimming with all his strength, but able to make no headway,
only to hold above water the head of some human burden, which the tide,
whelming now the last point of the ledge, had washed off into the deep. The
creature could bark no more, for his teeth were set firm in her garments —
yes, there was the flow and swash of a woman's garments, and a dripping
fleece of long hair swaying on the tide.
The boat came up and took in the three — the man, the dog, and the
maiden ; but her they lifted as we lift the dead.
IN THE BATTLE.
rpHE drums are beat, the trumpets I hear it in my vibrant soul,
blow, Deep thundering back its counter roll;
The black-mouthed cannon bay the foe, And all life's ore seems newly wrought
Dark, bristling o'er each murky height, In the white furnace of my thought.
And all the field is whirled in fight.
The long life in the drowsy tent *° dfl"7 t^t made my days divine
„ , ,° . . But flashes back some mystic sign ;
Fades from me like a vision spent;- ^ ergt was brf ht
I stand upon the battle's marge, g me P nted in u ht*
And watch the smoking squadron s
charge.
High legends of immortal praise,
Behold one starry banner reel Brows of world heroes bound with
With that wild shock of steel on steel; bays,
And ringing up by rock and tree The crowned majesties of Time
At last the cry that summons me. Rise visioned on my soul sublime,
320 THE AUTHOR OF "DEMOCRACY." [1861-88
Dear living lips of love and prayer On ! on ! where wild the battle swims,
Sound chanting through the blackened air; On! on! no shade my vision dims;
And eyes look out of marble tombs, Transcendent o'er yon smoky wreath,
And hands are waved from churchyard I see the glory of great Death !
glooms.
"Charge! charge!" at last the captain's Come flashing blade, and hissing ball!
cry! I give my blood, my breath, my all,
We pant, we speed, we leap, we fly ; So that on yonder rocking height
I feel my lifting feet aspire, The stars and stripes may wave to-
As I were born of wind and fire ! night !
author of
BREAKING IN A PRESIDENT.
[Democracy. An American Novel. 1880.]
/^\F all titles ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is that of
V_x the Roman pontiffs : "Servus servorum Dei" — "Servant of the serv-
ants of God/' In former days it was not admitted that the devil's servants
could by right have any share in government. They were to be shut out,
punished, exiled, maimed, and burned. The devil has no servants now ;
only the people have servants. There may be some mistake about a doctrine
which makes the wicked, when a majority, the mouthpiece of God against
the virtuous, but the hopes of mankind are staked on it ; and if the weak in
faith sometimes quail when they see humanity floating in a shoreless ocean,
on this plank, which experience and religion long since condemned as rot-
ten, mistake or not, men have thus far floated better by its aid than the
popes ever did with their prettier principle ; so that it will be a long time
yet before society repents.
Whether the new President and his chief rival, Mr. Silas P. Ratcliffe, were
or were not servants of the servants of God is not material here. Servants
they were to some one. No doubt many of those who call themselves serv-
ants of the people are no better than wolves in sheep's clothing, or asses in
lions' skins. One may see scores of them any day in the Capitol when Con-
gress is in session, making noisy demonstrations, or more usefully doing
nothing. A wiser generation will employ them in manual labor ; as it is,
they serve only themselves. But there are two officers, at least, whose serv-
ice is real — the President and his Secretary of the Treasury. The Hoosier
Quarryman had not been a week in Washington before he was heartily home-
sick for Indiana. No maid-of -all-work in a cheap boarding-house was ever
more harassed. Every one conspired against him. His enemies gave him no
peace. All Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets, pub-
lished on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief Magistrate's say-
ings and doings, chronicled with outrageous humor, and placed by malicious
1861-88] THE AUTHOR OF " DEMOCRACY." 321
hands where the President could not but see them. He was sensitive to
ridicule, and it mortified him to the heart to find that remarks and acts,
which to him seemed sensible enough, should be capable of such perversion.
Then he was overwhelmed with public business. It came upon him in a del-
uge, and he now, in his despair, no longer tried to control it. He let it pass
over him like a wave. His mind was muddled by the innumerable visitors to
whom he had to listen. But his greatest anxiety was the Inaugural Address
which, distracted as he was, he could not finish, although in another week
it must be delivered. He was nervous about his Cabinet ; it seemed to him
that he could do nothing until he had disposed of Katcliffe. Already, thanks
to the President's friends, Katcliffe had become indispensable; still an enemy,
of course, but one whose hands must be tied ; a sort of Samson, to be kept
in bonds until the time came for putting him out of the way, but in the mean-
while to be utilized. This point being settled, the President had in imagina-
tion begun to lean upon him ; for the last few days he had postponed every-
thing till next week, "when I get my Cabinet arranged"; which meant,
when he got Ratcliffe's assistance ; and he fell into a panic whenever he
thought of the chance that Katcliffe might refuse.
He was pacing his room impatiently on Monday morning, an hour before
the time fixed for Ratcliffe's visit. His feelings still fluctuated violently, and
if he recognized the necessity of using Katcliffe, he was not the less deter-
mined to tie Ratcliffe's hands. He must be made to come into a Cabinet where
every other voice would be against him. He must be prevented from having
any patronage to dispose of. He must be induced to accept these conditions
at the start. How present this to him in such a way as not to repel him at
once ? All this was needless, if the President had only known it, but he
thought himself a profound statesman, and that his hand was guiding the
destinies of America to his own reelection. When at length, on the stroke
of ten o'clock, Ratcliffe entered the room, the President turned to him with
nervous eagerness, and, almost before offering his hand, said that he hoped
Mr. Ratcliffe had come prepared to begin work at once. The Senator replied
that, if such was the President's decided wish, he would offer no further op-
position. Then the President drew himself up in the attitude of an Ameri-
can Cato, and delivered a prepared address, in which he said that he had
chosen the members of his Cabinet with a careful regard to the public inter-
ests ; that Mr. Ratcliffe was essential to the combination ; that he expected
no disagreement on principles, for there was but one principle which he
should consider fundamental, namely, that there should be no removals
from office except for cause ; and that under these circumstances he count-
ed upon Mr. Ratcliffe's assistance as a matter of patriotic duty.
To all this Ratcliffe assented without a word of objection, and the Presi-
dent, more convinced than ever of his own masterly statesmanship, breathed
more freely than for a week past. Within ten minutes they were actively at
work together, clearing away the mass of accumulated business. The relief
of the Quarryman surprised himself. Ratcliffe lifted the weight of affaira
from his shoulders with hardly an effort. He knew everybody and every-
thing. He took most of the President's visitors at once into his own hands
VOL. x.— 21
322 THE AUTHOR OF " DEMOCRACY." [1861-8b
and dismissed them with great rapidity. He knew what they wanted ; he
knew what recommendations were strong and what were weak ; who was to
be treated with deference and who was to be sent away abruptly ; where a
blunt refusal was safe, and where a pledge was allowable. The President
even trusted him with the unfinished manuscript of the Inaugural Address,
which Katcliffe returned to him the next day with such notes and suggestions
as left nothing to be done beyond copying them out in a fair hand. With all
this, he proved himself a very agreeable companion. He talked well and en-
livened the work ; he was not a hard taskmaster, and when he saw that the
President was tired, he boldly asserted that there was no more business that
could not as well wait a day, and so took the weary Stone-cutter out to drive
for a couple of hours, and let him go peacefully to sleep in the carriage.
They dined together, and Ratcliffe took care to send for Tom Lord to amuse
them, for Tom was a wit and a humorist, and kept the President in a laugh.
Mr. Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough
to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand. When
the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief, who was in
high good humor with his dinner, his champagne, and his conversation,
swore with some unnecessary granite oaths that Ratcliffe was "a, clever fel-
low anyhow," and he was glad "that job was fixed."
The truth was that Ratcliffe had now precisely ten days before the new
Cabinet could be set in motion, and in these ten days he must establish his
authority over the President so firmly that nothing could shake it. He was
diligent in good works. Very soon the court began to feel his hand. If a
business letter or a written memorial came in, the President found it easy to
indorse: "Referred to the Secretary of the Treasury." If a visitor wanted
anything for himself or another, the invariable reply came to be: "Just men-
tion it to Mr. Ratcliffe" ; or, "I guess Ratcliffe will see to that." Before
long he even made jokes in a Catonian manner ; jokes that were not pecu-
liarly witty, but somewhat gruff and boorish, yet significant of a resigned
and self-contented mind. One morning he ordered Ratcliffe to take an iron-
clad ship of war and attack the Sioux in Montana, seeing that he was in
charge of the army and navy and Indians at once, and jack-of-all-trades ;
and again he told a naval officer who wanted a court-martial that he had
better get Ratcliffe to sit on him, for he was a whole court-martial by himself.
That Ratcliffe held his chief in no less contempt than before, was probable
but not certain, for he kept silence on the subject before the world, and
looked solemn whenever the President was mentioned.
Before three days were over, the President, with a little more than his
usual abruptness, suddenly asked him what he knew about this fellow Car-
son, whom the Pennsylvanians were bothering him to put in his Cabinet.
Ratcliffe was guarded: he scarcely knew the man ; Mr. Carson was not in
politics, he believed, but was pretty respectable — for a Pennsylvanian. The
President returned to the subject several times ; got out his list of Cabinet
officers and figured industriously upon it with a rather perplexed face ; called
Ratcliffe to help him ; and at last the "slate" was fairly broken, and Rat-
cliffe's eyes gleamed when the President caused his list of nominations to be
1861-88] THE AUTHOR OF " DEMOCRACY." 303
sent to the Senate on the 5th March, and Josiah B. Carson, of Pennsylvania,
was promptly confirmed as Secretary of the Interior.
But his eyes gleamed still more humorously when, a few days afterwards,
the President gave him a long list of some two-score names, and asked him
to find places for them. He assented good-naturedly, with a remark that it
might be necessary to make a few removals to provide for these cases.
"Oh, well," said the President, "I guess there's just about as many as
that had ought to go out anyway. These are friends of mine ; got to be
looked after. Just stuff 'em in somewhere/'
Even he felt a little awkward about it, and, to do him justice, this was the
last that was heard about the fundamental rule of his administration. Re-
movals were fast and furious, until all Indiana became easy in circumstances.
And it was not to be denied that, by one means or another, Ratcliffe's friends
did come into their fair share of the public money. Perhaps the President
thought it best to wink at such use of the Treasury patronage for the present,
or was already a little overawed by his Secretary.
Ratcliffe's work was done. The public had, with the help of some clever
intrigue, driven its servants into the traces. Even an Indiana stone-cutter
could be taught that his personal prejudices must yield to the public service.
What mischief the selfishness, the ambition, or the ignorance of these men
might do, was another matter. As the affair stood, the President was the
victim of his own schemes. It remained to be seen whether, at some future
day, Mr. Ratcliffe would think it worth his while to strangle his chief by
some quiet Eastern intrigue, but the time had gone by when the President
could make use of either the bow-string or the axe upon him.
All this passed while Mrs. Lee was quietly puzzling her poor little brain
about her duty and her responsibility to Ratcliffe, who, meanwhile, rarely
failed to find himself on Sunday evenings by her side in her parlor, where
his rights were now so well established that no one presumed to contest his
seat, unless it were old Jacobi, who from time to time reminded him that he
was fallible and mortal. Occasionally, though not often, Mr. Ratcliffe came
at other times, as when he persuaded Mrs. Lee to be present at the Inaugu-
ration, and to call on the President's wife. Madeleine and Sybil went to the
Capitol and had the best places to see and hear the Inauguration, as well as
a cold March wind would allow. Mrs. Lee found fault with the ceremony ;
it was of the earth, earthy, she said. An elderly western farmer, with silver
spectacles, new and glossy evening clothes, bony features, and stiff, thin,
gray hair, trying to address a large crowd of people, under the drawbacks
of a piercing wind and a cold in his head, was not a hero. Sybil's mind was
lost in wondering whether the President would not soon die of pneumonia.
Even this experience, however, was happy when compared with that of the
call upon the President's wife, after which Madeleine decided to leave the
new dynasty alone in future. The lady, who was somewhat stout and coarse-
featured, and whom Mrs. Lee declared she wouldn't engage as a cook, showed
qualities which, seen under that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
seemed ungracious. Her antipathy to Ratcliffe was more violent than her
husband's, and was even more openly expressed, until the President was
324 THE AUTHOR OF " DEMOCRACY." [1861-88
quite put out of countenance by it. She extended her hostility to every one
who could be supposed to be Ratcliffe's friend, and the newspapers, as well
as private gossip, had marked out Mrs. Lee as one who, by an alliance with
Ratqliffe, was aiming at supplanting her own rule over the White House.
Hence, when Mrs. Lightfoot Lee was announced, and the two sisters were
ushered into the presidential parlor, she put on a coldly patronizing air,
and in reply to Madeleine's hope that she found Washington agreeable, she
intimated that there was much in Washington which struck her as awful
wicked, especially the women ; and, looking at Sybil, she spoke of the style
of dress in this city, which she said she meant to do what she could to put a
stop to. She'd heard tell that people sent to Paris for their gowns, just as
though America wasn't good enough to make one's clothes ! Jacob (all Presi-
dents' wives speak of their husbands by their first names) had promised her
to get a law passed against it. In her town in Indiana, a young woman who
was seen on the street in such clothes wouldn't be spoken to. At these re-
marks, made with an air and in a temper quite unmistakable, Madeleine
became exasperated beyond measure, and said that "Washington would be
pleased to see the President do something in regard to dress-reform — or any
other reform"; and with this allusion to the President's ante-election reform
speeches, Mrs. Lee turned her back and left the room, followed by Sybil in
convulsions of suppressed laughter, which would not have been suppressed
had she seen the face of their hostess as the door shut behind them, and the
energy with which she shook her head and said : ' ' See if I don't reform you
yet, you — jade !"
Mrs. Lee gave Ratcliffe a lively account of this interview, and he laughed
nearly as convulsively as Sybil over it, though he tried to pacify her by say-
ing that the President's most intimate friends openly declared his wife to be
insane, and that he himself was the person most afraid of her. But Mrs. Lee
declared that the President was as bad as his wife ; that an equally good Presi-
dent and President's wife could be picked up in any corner-grocery between
the Lakes and the Ohio ; and that no inducement should ever make her go
near that coarse washerwoman again.
Katcliffe did not attempt to change Mrs. Lee's opinion. Indeed he knew
better than any man how Presidents were made, and he had his own opinions
in regard to the process as well as the fabric produced. Nothing Mrs. Lee
could say now affected him. He threw off his responsibility and she found
it suddenly resting on her own shoulders. When she spoke with indignation
of the wholesale removals from office with which the new administration
marked its advent to power, he told her the story of the President's funda-
mental principle, and asked her what she would have him do. "He meant
to tie my hands," said Ratcliffe, " and to leave his own free, and I accepted
the condition. Can I resign now on such a ground as this ?" And Made-
leine was obliged to agree that he could not. She had no means of knowing
how many removals he made in his own interest, or how far he had outwitted
the President at his own game. He stood before her a victim and a patriot.
Every step he had taken had been taken with her approval. He was now in
office to prevent what evil he could, not to be responsible for the evil that
1861-88] THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY." 325
was done ; and he honestly assured her that much worse men would come in
when he went out, as the President would certainly take good care that he
did go out when the moment arrived.
author of
A COUNTRY BREAKFAST IN ENGLAND.
[By the Author of "Aristocracy," "American Coin," etc.]
SCENE. — Breakfast-room at Beaulieu Manor. High wainscot of old oak ; walls papered
in deep maroon ; deep-maroon damask window-curtains, and maroon leather-seated
chairs. Old oak fire-place ; log fire in the grate ; long breakfast-table, hissing urn and
tea things at one end, four covered silver dishes at the other containing cutlets, sau-
sages, poached eggs, and curried fowl. In the middle and up the sides, plates of hot
rolls in napkins : a large dish of butter scrolls and bullets, a silver stand of boiled
eggs, a glass dish of orange marmalade, and two racks of dry toast. On sideboard,
cold ham, beef, game, and huge loaf of bread.
PEOPLE AT TABLE.
LADY BAR-DEXTER (the lady of the house), age thirty-five, once pretty, now buxom, with
that burnt-faced, dimmishing-eyed look which the average high-born British matron
(unless a " frisky ") gets in a few years after marriage, and which is not so much the
result of annual maternity as the effect of an unlimited consumption of brown stout
at luncheon and brown sherry at dinner.
The HON. MRS. VILLIERS and Miss VILLIERS, mother and daughter. Mother, gray-
haired, arched eyebrows, pale, thin and icy: daughter, thoroughbred and shy.
LADY VIOLET CROPPER, a "frisky" ; pretty, bold, cold-eyed, and horsey.
LORD HENRY NODDLE, her brother.
CAPTAIN FITZRUBBISHE, of the Queen's Own Bombardiers.
[Silence reigns. Enter your humble servant— whom we will call MR. THOMPSON WITHA-
PEE, of Philadelphia, Both the men are reading their letters while they eat, the torn-
open envelopes littering the table and adjoining plates.]
MEN. Baw! [which I interpret as " Good morning.1'1]
WOMEN. Ning! [ichich I ditto.]
[I seat myself in one of a half-dozen vacant places amid utter silence. After a pause:]
LADY BAR-DEXTER. Tea, Mr. Withapee ?
I. If you please.
[LADY B-D. pours out the tea, and I wait some minutes.]
LADY BAR-DEXTER. Here is your tea, Mr. Withapee. [/ am separated from her
Ladyship by NODDLE and FITZRUBBISHE, but neither offers to pass the cup.] Come
and get it, please. [ This I discover to ~be the custom. Every one gets up and goes for
his own tea. I go for my tea. I go back to my seat and. wonder how I shall get some-
thing to eat. While I sip my tea and puzzle about it :]
LADY BAR-DEXTER. The Hammonds come to-morrow, Captain Fitzrubbishe.
CAPTAIN FITZRUBBISHE. Oh ! Do they ?
LADY BAR-DEXTER. They can only stay two nights, though.
326 THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY." [1861-88
CAPTAIN FITZRTJBBISHE. Really. Can't they.
[Enter LORD BASIL DUMPLINGE, age twenty-five, in scarlet hunting-coat and top-boots.}
MEN. Baw!
WOMEM. King!
[DUMPLINGE makes straight for the silver dishes, lifts the cover off each, and scrutinizes
•contents through eye-glass. Looks disappointed, but helps himself to a poached egg,
and carries it to seat next me. Sits down, and proceeds to open his letters, which are
in a pile beside his plate. I take the tip and go and help myself to a sausage.]
LORD BASIL DUMPLINGE [with eyes on letter]. By Jove! I say [to LADY VIOLET
CROPPER, to ichom he hasn't "before spolcen."]
LADY VIOLET. Hello!
LORD BASIL. Here's a lark. The Jones-Fieldings have a meet at their shop next
Tuesday.
LADY VIOLET. Never !
[LoED BASIL tears open another letter with his thumb.'}
CAPTAIN FITZRUBBISHE. Really !
LADY BAR-DEXTER [to Miss VILLIERS]. There's to be a hunt-ball at Boskell
next week.
Miss VILLIERS. Is there ?
[Enter SIR JOHN BAR-DEXTER, a bearded man of forty-five, and a bluff manner, also in
hunting "pink."]
MEN. Baw!
WOMEN. Ning!
SIR JOHN [after helping himself in silence to some cold grouse from the sideboard}.
Look sharp, Duinplinge. Ha' pas' nine, and eight miles to Tombridge Tun.
LADY VIOLET. Going to ride Vixie ?
LORD BASIL. No fear.
[/ have disposed of my sausage, and think I'll say something.]
I. What a beautiful view there is from my room window, Lady Bar-Dexter.
LADY BAR-DEXTER. Oh, is there ?
I. It is the finest woodland bit of scenery I can remember.
LADY BAR-DEXTER. Really. Is it ?
I. Yes. It seemed like a reproduction of one of Wilkie's or Birket Foster's best
landscapes.
LADY BAR-DEXTER. Fancy !
[The other men look up and regard me curiously through their eye-glasses. LADY VIOLET
winks openly at DUMPLINGE, who draws down the corners of his mouth. I feel sat
upon, and subside.]
SIR JOHN. Ought to have a rattling good ruii to-day. My tea, please.
[And so on for half an hour longer, while three or four more men come in, and I sit and
listen.]
The Argonaut, 188-.
PATRICIAN AMENITIES.
[Aristocracy. A Novel 1888.]
~\H, you only talk like that because you're an American. If you were
_y an Englishman, you'd hunt, never fear."
Perhaps I couldn't afford to have any horses of my own."
1861-88] THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY." 327
Lady Oaktorrington and Lord Beyndour catch all but the first word of this
speech, and exchange glances. Lady Henry sees an opportunity to find out
something she has been anxious to know before wasting any ammunition
upon Allen, for she has mentally selected him for a victim, should events
recommend and justify it in her estimation.
" What bosh I" she exclaims. " All you Americans are so awfully rich.
Aren't you ? "
Lady Oaktorrington pays no heed to something the duke is saying to her,
but sits breathless awaiting Allen's reply :
" I — I — really — I can't answer for all my countrymen. Some of them are
very wealthy, I dare say. Vanderbilt, for instance, and Jay Gould and Gor-
don Bennett and Mackay. But they are only four."
" Oh, come, you know you yourself are said to be enormously rich ?"
" Am I ? People talk without book sometimes."
Lady Henry grows desperate.
"Well, aren't you?"
" What ? said to be enormously rich ? I don't know. You say so."
" Oh, no ; you know quite well what I mean. Aren't you awfully rich ? "
Allen winces and reddens, at the point-blank question, and his disgust at
the grossness of its personal character is doubled as he becomes vaguely con-
scious that everybody is silently listening for his answer.
" You must pardon my declining to answer," he says, stiffly. " There is
nothing I detest more than discussing myself at any time, and especially for
the edification of a whole dinner-table."
" By Jove ! if he hasn't shuffled out of it. I thought he would," mutters
Lord Beyndour to himself but loud enough for his neighbors to hear. " He's
afraid to lie before so many people, of course. I say mother ! Freddy ought
to feel proud of himself, don't you think ?"
The marchioness, who hasn't this time caught Allen's answer, owing to an
inopportune remark from the duke, replies by a puzzled, questioning look,
whereat Lord Beyndour shuffles his feet under the table in a temper, and
says:
" By Jove, she can't think of anything but Harborough."
" I'm not going to have such an answer as that," Lady Henry says, with a
little laugh, fearful of having gone too far in her rudeness to a man whose
evasive reply to her questions she is woman enough of the world to know is.
better proof of his riches than if he openly declared the fact to her. She must
try and make up for it, she thinks, and for the first time it dawns upon her
that Allen is " awfully good-looking." Not that that fact would have had
much weight with her had she not now felt morally convinced of his wealth.
She throws into her eyes all the suggestive power that can come from half-
closed lids veiling upward-turned pupils, and says in a soft, cooing voice,
that dozens of men have known to their cost :
"You must tell me some other time soon, all to myself. Promise me,
won't you ? I shan't tell any one. I never tell any one anything — not even
my husband," and she opens her eyes for one second and shoots a glance full
of meaning at Allen. He is not the man to misunderstand her. No man
328 THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY." [1861-88
knows woman and her ways better than he. He is conscious of a slight quick-
ening of his heart-beats, and sense of sudden heat in his temples as she
speaks, for she is really, by candle-light, a very pretty woman.
" You will tell me ? " she persists.
" Certainly I will," he answers in a low voice. " But it must be under the
condition you mention; you must be alone. And" He looks up and catch-
es Lady Edith's eye. She is looking at him with her great big soft gray eyes
full of wonder and reproach. He colors and stops short.
"And — what ? what else ? Oh, I'm afraid you're wasting your time if
that is your game. She's engaged to be married."
"Yes? And to whom?"
" To the man she's sitting next and with whom she came in to dinner —
Jack Bouverie " — this in a whisper, for Lord Bouverie's ears are wide open.
"I should hardly have fancied he filled her ideal."
" Girls in these days are not allowed such inconvenient impediments to
matrimony as ideals, my dear. We find our ideals after marriage, not be-
fore. Some of us find them and some don't. I'm still looking for mine,"
and the old look comes into her eyes. '•' Perhaps I shall find it sooner than I
thought."
" And do you mean to say, she is really engaged to that young man ? Are
you sure ? It has not been formally announced ? "
" No, not yet. But they have been engaged for more than a year, I know.
Lady Oaktorringtou told me. There ! will that satisfy you ? But you mustn't
breathe a word of it to any one, for it is a secret yet. But there. How tire-
some ! Lady Oaktorrington is putting on her gloves. You won't stay long,
promise me — and," in a low whisper, " come to me directly you can. I've got
something I particularly want to say to you."
When the ladies retire, Allen is left to the tender mercies of Lord Bou-
verie, in whose demeanor to him he notices a marked change. The old warmth
of manner and glaringly apparent desire to ingratiate himself with the rich
stranger by overdone attentions and forced interest-takings have vanished,
and in their place he finds cold and distant civility. After a few interchanges
of words of the most commonplace character, during which Lord Bouverie
gives indisputable evidence of a wish to listen to, if not join in, the talk of
the others, Allen lets the conversation drop, and sits silent and alone among
his own conflicting thoughts. No one utters a word to him, no one takes
heed of his presence, and the only part he takes in the assembly is to mechani-
cally pass on the decanters as they come his way in their periodical circuits
of the table.
" I say Monty ; heard anything of Bazzy, lately ? " asks Lord Beyn-
dour.
' Who ? Bazzy Paget ? "
<Um."
' No, only that he's gone to the dogs, neck and crop."
' The devil ! you don't mean it ? "
' I do mean it, though. He's been tumbling downhill fast enough the last
1861-88] THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY" 329
two years for anybody to expect it, I should think. . . . He said he was
thinking seriously of going out to America "
"Fancy Bazzy Paget on a cattle-ranch ! " laughs Lord Beyndour, whose
sole ideas of America are associated with his brother Freddy.
" Cattle-ranch ? No fear, my dear boy. Cattle-ranching wasn't his little
game. He thought he'd go over and pick up a Yankee heiress, with a mil-
lion's worth of plating over her twang."
Allen turns crimson, and the veins in his temples stand out like knotted
whipcord with suppressed anger as he sees Lord Beyndour look over at him
and laugh to himself. Jack Bouverie and Bertie exchange winks, and cough
pointedly at each other.
" Oh, for one — just one — of the boys, Al Freeman, Joe Spaulding, Ed
Billings, or any one of them, to back me and see fair play, and I'd tackle the
whole lot of them, duke and all ! " groans Allen, helping himself to some
grapes to appear indifferent. " Why, oh, why, did I ever come among them ?
Why, indeed ? " and his thoughts flow into a different channel.
' Poor chap," says the duke. " Fancy being driven to that extremity/'
1 By-the-bye, talking of Yankee heiresses, have you seen Haskell's wife ?"
' No, I haven't. Have you ? "
' Yes, I have. I met her "
' Stop a bit," interrupts the duke. " Is that the girl from 'Frisco ? If
so, I can tell you something about her. But go on, Vereker, I'll wait."
" I met her and Sir George staying at the Charterises up in Yorkshire last
winter. I believe she's got two millions and a small foot, but there it stops."
" Oh, I say now," shouts the duke, " draw it mild, Vereker. I happen to
have seen her myself, and she's deuced pretty."
" Tastes differ. She said ' yes sur ' to me when I spoke to her first, but
when we got ' bettur 'quainted' as she called it, her favorite forms of acqui-
escence in any of my observations were 'that's so,' 'you bet you,' and 'I
should remark.' I stopped counting the e guesses ' after the first ten min-
utes."
" Oh, come now," exclaims the duke. " That's too large an order. I've
met loads of Americans myself, and though I should be deuced sorry to be
so hard put as to have to take one to wife, they don't talk like that. Give the
devils their due."
" That's just what I am doing. I'm telling you exactly the sort of woman
Haskell's Yankee wife is. They call her ' the mustang ' up in Yorkshire."
" And more shame for them, is all I can say ! " exclaims Allen, quickly,
unable longer to restrain his tongue. " I don't know what you may think
about it yourselves, but to a foreigner like myself, such a remark applied to
a lady is simply atrocious. English chivalry must, indeed, have gone to the
dogs — if it ever existed, which I begin to doubt — when it can permit any
man, I won't say gentleman— to call a lady ' a mustang.' "
The men look from one to the other thoroughly taken aback, for a minute.
Then Lord Beyndour sneers and tries to laugh, while Lord Bouverie wakes
up from a doze, and asks :
"What's the row? Urn. Eh?"
330 THE AUTHOR OF "ARISTOCRACY." [1861-88
The duke is about to say something disagreeable, from the look in his eye,
when Vereker, with a very pale face, thinks discretion the better part of
valor, and says, with a pacificatory smile to Allen :
" What harm ? I don't in the least know what a mustang is. I had a sort
of idea it meant a fairy, or "
" Oh, ho — ho — ho ! Ha — ha— ha \" shouts Lord Beyndour in an explo-
sion of laughter. " That's too good. A fairy ! oh, ho — ho— ho I"
" Or a foreign princess, or something of that sort," proceeds Vereker, as
soon as he can make himself heard. " I thought it was something compli-
mentary, at all events."
" Fancy sucking up to him like that ! " says Lord Beyndour to the duke.
" He needs a devilish good snubbing for his impertinence."
" I'll give him one presently," the duke answers. " Just wait."
" Fll tell you what a mustang is," Allen says, " and you'll see how compli-
mentary it is. It's a half-bred Mexican horse, half -broken, half -wild."
"It may not be complimentary," says the duke, "but I call it damned
appropriate."
Allen rises quickly from his seat.
"I have assumed that I was addressing myself to gentlemen," he says,
hoarsely. " Am I to understand that I have been wrong ? I happen to have
the honor of knowing the lady, and were it not so, she is a countrywoman
of my own. As she is a friend, a countrywoman, and a woman, may I ask
you to refrain from further comment upon her in my presence ? "
" Certainly — of course — we didn't know," explains Vereker, who is a man
of some knowledge of the world outside the radius of English aristocratic
society. " Pray sit down."
" Perhaps you'll allow me to speak, Vereker," scowls the duke; " our an-
swer to you is this : Mr.— what's his name ?" aside to Lord Beyndour.
" I'm blessed if I know," Lord Beyndour answers with a grin.
" "Well, then, our answer to you, sir, is this : "We propose to talk upon any
subject we see fit, without any dictation from you. If you do not like it you
can "
" Eetire. Which I most assuredly shall do." And Allen leaves the table
and walks out of the room, without a voice or hand to stay him.
" Beastly cad ! " exclaims Lord Beyndour, as soon as the door is shut. " It
serves mother right for asking him here."
" Who is he ? " asks the duke.
" A Yankee friend of Freddy's he picked up on his journey home."
" It's deuced lucky the servants had left the room," remarks Lord Bou-
verie. "Urn? Eh?"
1861-88]
JOHN HENRY BONER.
331
I3oner*
BORN in Salem, N. C., 1845.
POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM.
[The Century Magazine. 1889.]
TTERE lived the soul enchanted
-I — *- By melody of song ;
Here dwelt the spirit haunted
By a demoniac throng;
Here sang the lips elated ;
Here grief and death were sated;
Here loved and here unmated
Was he, so frail, so strong.
Here wintry winds and cheerless
The dying firelight blew,
While he whose song was peerless
Dreamed the drear midnight
through,
And from dull embers chilling
Crept shadows darkly filling
The silent place, and thrilling
His fancy as they grew.
Here, with brow bared to heaven,
In starry night he stood,
With the lost star of seven
Feeling sad brotherhood.
Here in the sobbing showers
Of dark autumnal hours
He heard suspected powers
Shriek through the stormy wood.
From visions of Apollo
And of Astarte's bliss,
He gazed into the hollow
And hopeless vale of Dis ;
And though earth were surrounded
By heaven, it still was mounded
With graves. His soul had sounded
The dolorous abyss.
Proud, mad, but not defiant,
He touched at heaven and helL
Fate found a rare soul pliant
And rung her changes well.
Alternately his lyre,
Stranded with strings of fire,
Led earth's most happy choir
Or flashed with Israfel.
No singer of old story
Luting accustomed lays,
No harper for new glory,
No mendicant for praise,
He struck high chords and splen-
did,
Wherein were fiercely blended
Tones that unfinished ended
With his unfinished days.
Here through this lowly portal,
Made sacred by his name,
Unheralded immortal
The mortal went and came.
And fate that then denied him,
And envy that decried him,
And malice that belied him,
Have cenotaphed his fame.
WE WALKED AMONG THE WHISPERING PINES.
[Whispering Pines. Poems by John H. Boner. 1883.]
TT was a still autumnal day —
•*- So sadly still and strangely bright —
The hectic glow of quick decay
Tinged everything with lovely light.
It warmly touched the fragrant air
And fields of corn and crumbling vines
Along the golden Yadkin, where
We walked aniongthe whispering pines.
332 JOHN HENR7 BONER. [1861-88
Alas, that tender hectic glow Ah, fatal roses — never yet
Shone in her gentle, pallid face, Have they deceived. She drooped and
And none save God in heaven could died.
know We parted and we never met
My agony to see its trace — Again ; but often at my side
To watch those fatal roses bloom An angel walks — her step I know —
Upon her cheeks — red, cruel signs — A viewless arm my neck entwines.
But all of love, not of the tomb, O, angel love, so years ago
We spoke among the whispering pines. We walked among the whispering pines.
THE LIGHT'OOD FIRE.
"TTTHEN wintry days are dark and drear
' * And all the forest ways grow still,
When gray snow-laden clouds appear
Along the bleak horizon hill,
When cattle all are snugly penned
And sheep go huddling close together,
When steady streams of smoke ascend
From farm-house chimneys — in such weather
Give me old Carolina's own,
A great log house, a great hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar
And a red, leaping light'ood fire.
When dreary day draws to a close
And all the silent laud is dark,
When Boreas down the chimney blows
And sparks fly from the crackling bark,
When limbs are bent with snow or sleet
And owls hoot from the hollow tree,
With hounds asleep about your feet,
Then is the time for reverie.
Give me old Carolina's own,
A hospitable wide hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar
And a red, rousing light'ood fire.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT.
A H what a perfect night is this While the warm night air, rich with
•*^- For sauntering slowly hand in scent
hand — Of white magnolia and red rose,
Under moon-silvered leaves to stand Languidly sweetens as it blows
And touch lips brimming with a kiss, Through the low limbs above you bent.
1861-88J GEORGE EENNAN. 333
feennan*
BOBN in Norwalk, Huron Co., Ohio, 1845.
A VISIT TO COUNT TOLSTOI.
[The Century Magazine. 1887.]
rpHE day was a warm and sultry one ; he had just returned from work in
-L the fields, and his apparel consisted of heavy calfskin shoes, loose, al-
most shapeless, trousers of the coarse homespun linen of the Kussian peas-
ants, and a white cotton undershirt without collar or neckerchief. He wore
neither coat nor waistcoat, and everything that he had on seemed to be of
domestic manufacture. But even in this coarse peasant garb Count Tolstoi
was a striking and impressive figure. The massive proportions of his heavily
moulded frame were only rendered the more apparent by the scantiness and
plainness of his dress, and his strong, resolute, virile face, deeply sunburned
by exposure in the fields, seemed to acquire added strength from the femi-
nine arrangement of his iron-gray hair, which was parted in the middle and
brushed back over the temples. Count Tolstoi's features may be best de-
scribed in Tuscan phrase as " moulded with the fist and polished with the
pickaxe," and the impression which they convey is that of indepenaence,
self-reliance, and unconquerable strength. The face does not seem at first
glance to be that of a student or a speculative thinker, but rather that of a
man of action accustomed to deal promptly and decisively with perilous
emergencies, and to fight fiercely for his own hand, regardless of odds. The
rather small eyes deeply set under shaggy brows are of the peculiar gray
which lights up in excitement with a flash like that of drawn steel ; the nose-
is large and prominent, with a singular wideness and bluntness at the end ;
the lips are full and firmly closed ; and the outlines of the chin and jaws, sa
far as they can be seen through the full gray beard, only give additional em-
phasis to the expression of virile strength which is the distinguishing char-
acteristic of the large, rugged face.
In the book which has been translated into English by Isabel F. Hapgood,
and published in New York under the title of " Childhood, Boyhood, and
Youth," Count Tolstoi refers to the pain which he felt at the early age of six
years, when his mother was obliged to confess that he was a homely boy. " I
fancied," he says, "that there was no happiness on earth for a person with
such a wide nose, such thick lips, and such small gray eyes as I had ; I be-
sought God to work a miracle, to turn me into a beauty, and all I had in the
present or might have in the future I would give in exchange for a handsome
face." But there is something better and higher in Count Tolstoi's face
than mere beauty or regularity of feature, and that is the deep impress of
moral, intellectual, and physical power.
He stood for an instant on the threshold as if surprised to see a stranger,
but quickly advanced into the room with outstretched hand, and when I had
briefly introduced myself he expressed simply but cordially the great pleas-
334 GEORGE KENNAN. [1861-88
ure and gratification which he said it gave him to receive a visit from a for-
eigner, and especially from an American. I explained to him that my call
was the result partly of a promise which I had made to some of his friends
and admirers in Siberia, and partly of a desire to make the personal acquaint-
ance of an author whose books had given me so much pleasure.
" What books of mine have you read ?" he asked quickly. I replied that
I had read all of his novels, including " War and Peace," " Anna Karenni-
na," and " The Cossacks/'
" Have you seen any of my later writings ?" he inquired.
" No/' I said ; " they have all, or nearly all, appeared since I went to
Siberia/'
" Ah !" he responded, " then you don't know me at all. We will get ac-
quainted."
At this moment my ragged and generally unpresentable droshky-driver,
whose existence I had wholly forgotten, entered the door. Count Tolstoi at
once rose, greeted him cordially as an old acquaintance, shook his hand as
warmly as he had shaken mine, and asked him with unaffected interest a
number of questions about his domestic affairs and the news of the day in
Tula. It was perhaps a trifling incident, but I was not at that time as well
acquainted as I now am with Count Tolstoi's ideas concerning social ques-
tions, and to see a wealthy Kussian noble, and the greatest of living novelists,
shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged, and not
overclean droshky-driver whom I had picked up in the streets of Tula was
the first of the series of surprises which made my visit to Count Tolstoi mem-
orable. When the droshky-driver, after inquiring affectionately with re-
gard to the health of the Countess and of all the children, had taken his
departure, Count Tolstoi excused himself for a moment and returned to the
apartment out of which he had come, leaving me alone.
The room where I sat was small and nearly square, and seemed to serve a
double purpose as a reception-room and a hall. Two of its walls were of white
plaster ; the third consisted of one side of a large oven covered with glazed
tiles, and the fourth was formed by an unpainted wooden partition pierced
by a door which opened apparently into Count Tolstoi's library or work-room.
The floor was bare ; the furniture, which was old-fashioned in form, con-
sisted of two or three plain chairs, a deep sofa, or settle, upholstered with
worn green morocco, and a small cheap table without a cloth. Three pairs
of antlers were fastened against the walls, and upon one of them hung an old
slouch hat and a white cotton shirt similar to that which Count Tolstoi had
on. There was a nwble bust in a niche behind the settle, but the only pic-
tures which the room contained were a small engraved portrait of Dickens
and another of Schopenhauer. It would be impossible to imagine anything
plainer or simpler than the room and its contents. More evidences of wealth
and luxury might be found in many a peasant's cabin in Eastern Siberia.
Before I had had time to do more than glance hastily about me, Count
Tolstoi reappeared in the act of belting around his waist, with a wide black
strap, a coarse gray blouse, or tunic, of homespun linen, which he had put on
in the adjoining room. Then seating himself beside me, he began to ques-
1861-88] GEORGE EENNAN. 335
tion me about the journey to Siberia from which I had just returned, and
I — mindful of my promise to the exiles — began to tell him what I knew about
Russian administration and the treatment of political convicts. It soon be-
came evident that he was not to be surprised, or shocked, or aroused by any
such information as I had to give him. He listened attentively, but without
any manifestation of emotion, to my descriptions of exile life, and drew from
the storehouse of his own experience as many cases of administrative injus-
tice and oppression that were new to me as I could give that were new to him.
He was evidently familiar with the whole subject, and had with regard to it
well-settled views which were not to be shaken by a few additional facts not
differing essentially from those that he had previously considered. I finally
asked him whether he did not think that resistance to such oppression was
justifiable.
" That depends," he replied, " upon what you mean by resistance ; if you
mean persuasion, argument, protest, I answer yes ; if you mean violence —
no. I do not believe that violent resistance to evil is ever justifiable under
any circumstances."
He then set forth clearly, eloquently, and with more feeling than he had
yet shown, the views with regard to man's duty as a member of society which
are contained in his book entitled " My Religion," and which are further ex-
plained and illustrated in a number of his recently published tracts for the
people. He laid particular stress upon the doctrine of non-resistance to evil,
which, he said , is in accordance both with the teachings of Christ and the re-
sults of human experience. He declared that violence, as a means of redress-
ing wrongs, is not only futile, but an aggravation of the original evil, since
it is the nature of violence to multiply and reproduce itself in all directions.
" The revolutionists^" he said, " whom you have seen in Siberia, undertook
to resist evil by violence, and what has been the result ? Bitterness, and mis-
ery, and hatred, and bloodshed ! The evils against which they took up arms
still exist, and to them has been added a mass of previously non-existent hu-
man suffering. It is not in that way that the kingdom of God is to be real-
ized on earth."
I cannot now repeat from memory all the arguments and illustrations with
which Count Tolstoi enforced his views and fortified his position; but I still
remember the eloquence and earnestness with which they were presented,
and the deep impression made upon me by the personality of the speaker.
The ideas themselves were not new to me ; I had repeatedly heard them dis-
cussed in literary circles in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, and Kazan ; but
they never appealed to me with any real force until they came from the lips
of a strong, sensitive, and earnest man who believed in them with passionate
fervor.
For a long time I did not suggest any difficulties or raise any objections ;
but at last I made an effort to escape from the enthralment of Count Tolstoi's
strong personal influence by proposing to him questions which would necessi-
tate the application of his general principles to specific cases. It is one thing
to ask a man in a general way whether he would use violence to resist evil,
and quite another thing to ask him specifically whether he would knock down
336 ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. [1861-88
a burglar who was about to cut the throat of his mother. Many men would
say yes to the first question who would hesitate at the second. Count Tolstoi,
however, was consistent. I related to him many cases of cruelty, brutality,
and oppression which had come to my knowledge in Siberia, and at the end
of every recital I said to him, " Count Tolstoi, if you had been there and had
witnessed that transaction, would you not have interfered with violence ?"
He invariably answered, ' ' No." I asked him the direct question whether he
would kill a highwayman who was about to murder an innocent traveller,
provided there were no other way to save the traveller's life. He replied,
" If I should see a bear about to kill a peasant in the forest, I would sink an
axe in the bear's head ; but I would not kill a man who was about to do the
same thing. " There finally came into my mind a case which, although really
not worse than many that I had already presented to him, would, I thought,
appeal with peculiar force to a brave, sensitive, chivalrous man.
Clla
BORN in Johnstown, Wis.
FRIENDSHIP AFTER LOVE.
[Maurine, and Other Poems. 1882.— Poems of Passion. 1883.]
A FTER the fierce midsummer all ablaze
••*» Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed Friendship : with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air ?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss ?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat ;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.
SOLITUDE.
T AUGH, and the world laughs with you ; Sing, and the hills will answer;
J-J Weep, and you weep alone, Sigh, it is lost on the air:
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But has trouble enough of its own. But shrink from voicing care.
1861-88] GEORGE THOMAS LAN JO AN. 337
Rejoice, and men will seek you ; Feast, and your halls are crowded,
Grieve, and they turn and go. Fast, and the world goes by.
They want full measure of all yourpleasure, Succeed and give, and it helps you
But they do not need your woe. live,
Be glad, and your friends are many ; But no man can help you die.
Be sad, and you lose them all, — There is room in the halls of pleasure
There are none to decline your nectared For a large and lordly train,
wine, But one by one we must all file on
But alone you must drink life's gall. Through the narrow aisles of pain.
WILL.
rpHERE is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
-*- Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
All things give way before it, soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea-seeking river in its course,
Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait ?
Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate
Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
Whose slightest action or inaction serves
The one great aim.
Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes for such a will.
lanigan*
BORN in St. Charles, P. Q., Canada, 1845. DIED in Philadelphia, Penn., 1886.
LATTER-DAY FABLES.
[Fables, by G. Washington ^Esop. 1878.]
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE SIMPLETON".
A SIMPLETON, having had Occasion to seat himself, sat down on a Pin ;
-L\. whereon he made an Outcry unto Jupiter. A Philosopher, who hap-
pened to be holding up a Hitching- Post in the Vicinity, rebuked him, say-
ing, " I can tell you how to avoid hurting yourself by sitting down on Pins,
and will, if you will set them up." The Simpleton eagerly accepting the
Offer, the Philosopher swallowed four fingers of the Rum which perisheth,
and replied, "Never sit down." He subsequently acquired a vast Fortune
roL. x.— 23
338 GEORGE THOMAS LANIGAN. [1861-88
by advertising for Agents, to whom he guaranteed $77 a Week for light and
easy Employment at their Homes.
Moral.— The Wise Man saith, " There is a Nigger in the Fence/' but the
Fool Sendeth on 50 Cents for Sample and is Taken in.
THE TWO TURKEYS.
An Honest Farmer once led his two Turkeys into his Granary and told
them to eat, drink, and be merry. One of these Turkeys was wise and one
foolish. The foolish Bird at once indulged excessively in the Pleasures of
the Stable, unsuspicious of the Future, but the wiser Fowl, in order that he
might not be fattened and slaughtered, fasted continually, mortified his
Flesh, and devoted himself to gloomy Eeflections upon the brevity of Life.
When Thanksgiving approached, the Honest Farmer killed both Turkeys,
and by placing a Rock in the interior of the Prudent Turkey made him
weigh more than his plumper Brother.
Moral. — As we Travel through Life, let us Live by the Way.
THE WORRIED CLAM.
A Clam, while passing through a Carpenter's Shop, encountered a hungry
Heron, and (for the Wind was southerly) knowing him from the surround-
ing Handsaws, modestly withdrew into his Shell. The Heron commented
unfavorably upon his conduct for some time and proposed a Mutual Coun-
cil, but all was of no avail. Finally a Thought struck him, and he denounced
the Clam before Heaven as a perjurer and a Horse-Thief. The indignant
Clam thereupon imprudently abandoned his Policy of Silence, but, alas ! he
had hardly opened his Mouth when the Heron swallowed him.
Moral. — Second Thoughts are not Always Best.
THE FOX AKD THE CROW.
A Crow, having secured a Piece of Cheese, flew with its Prize to a lofty
Tree, and was preparing to devour the Luscious Morsel, when a crafty Fox,
halting at the foot of the Tree, began to cast about how he might obtain it.
"How tasteful," he cried, in well-feigned Ecstasy, "is your Dress; it can
not surely be that your Musical Education has been neglected. Will you
not oblige — ?" "I have a horrid Cold," replied the Crow, "and never sing
without my Music, but since you press me . At the same time, I should
add that I have read ^Esop, and been there before." So saying, she deposited
the Cheese in a safe Place on the Limb of the Tree, and favored him with a
Song. "Thank you," exclaimed the Fox, and trotted away, with the Re-
mark that Welsh Rabbits never agreed with him, and were far inferior in
Quality to the animate Variety.
Moral. — The foregoing Fable is supported by a whole Gatling Battery of
Morals. We are taught (1) that it Pays to take the Papers; (2) that Invita-
tion is not Always the Sincerest Flattery; (3) that a Stalled Rabbit with con-
1861-88]
GEORGE THOMAS LANIGAN.
339
tentment is better than No Bread, and (4) that the Aim of Art is to Conceal
Disappointment.
THE SHAKE AND THE PATRIARCH.
During the Deluge, as a Shark was conducting a Thanksgiving service for
an abundant Harvest, a prudent Patriarch looked out and addressed him
thus: "My Friend, I am much struck with your open Countenance ; pray
come into the Ark and make one of us. The Probabilities are a falling Bar-
ometer and Heavy Kains throughout the Region of the Lower Universe dur-
ing the next Forty Days." " That is just the sort of Hair-pin I am," replied
the Shark, who had cut several rows of Wisdom Teeth ; "fetch on your Del-
uges." About six Weeks subsequently the Patriarch encountered him on the
summit of Mount Ararat, in very straitened Circumstances.
Moral. — You Can't pretty much most Always Tell how Things are going
to Turn Out Sometimes.
A THRENODY.
The Ahkoond of Swat is dead.— London Papers of 22 January, 1876.
WHAT, what, what,
What's the news from Swat ?
Sad news,
Bad news,
Conies by the cable led
Through the Indian Ocean's bed,
Through the Persian Gulf, the Red
Sea and the Med-
iterranean— he's dead ;
The Ahkoond is dead!
For the Ahkoond I mourn,
Who wouldn't?
He strove to disregard the message stern,
But he Ahkoodn't.
Dead, dead, dead;
(Sorrow Swats!)
Swats wha hae wi' Ahkoond bled,
Swats whom he hath often led
Onward to a gory bed,
Or to victory,
As the case might be,
Sorrow Swats!
Tears shed,
Shed tears like water,
Your great Ahkoond is dead I
That Swats the matter !
Mourn, city of Swat!
Your great Ahkoond is not,
But lain 'mid worms to rot.
His mortal ,part alone, his soul was
caught
(Because he was a good Ahkoond)
Up to the bosom of Mahound.
Though earthy walls his frame surround
(Forever hallowed be the ground !)
And sceptics mock the lowly mound
And say "He's now of no Ahkoond! "
His soul is in the skies —
The azure skies that bend above his
loved
Metropolis of Swat.
He sees with larger, other eyes,
Athwart all earthly mysteries —
He knows what's Swat.
Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond
With a noise of mourning and
of lamentation !
Let Swat bury the great Ahkoond
With the noise of the mourning
of the Swattisli nation!
Fallen is at length
Its tower of strength,
Its sun is dimmed ere it had nooned;
Dead lies the great Ahkoond,
The great Ahkoond of Swat
Is not!
340 HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE. [1801-88
Hamilton
BOKN in Cold Spring, N. Y., 1845.
THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENT IN MODERN LITERATURE.
[ The Andover Review. 1886.]
TTTITH all its radiant loveliness Greek art is of the earth ; it is forever lost
VV to us, not because skill has forsaken us or the instinct for beauty died
out in our souls, but because we can never return to the attitude in which men
stood when they created it. It is true, as we are constantly reminded, that
we can never match it with a kindred perfection ; it is also true, and true
in the deepest sense, that we have outgrown it. It no more represents our
thought, our ideal, our faith, than the images of the gods which it has pre-
served for us represent our conception of the unseen and eternal Spirit. The
Greek moved through a single world, and his thought, by virtue of self-im-
posed limitations, was simple, clear, orderly, and harmonious; we live, move,
and have our being in two worlds, and our perpetual struggle is to bring them
into harmony ; hence the complexity, variety, and apparent confusion of our
life and our art. We have lost the antique simplicity, definiteness, and har-
mony, but we have gained the inexhaustible inspirations and resources of the
spiritual life.
What, then, is the spiritual element in literature, and how does it reveal
itself ? The spiritual element is the perception of a relationship between hu-
manity and a divine nature outside of and above it, of actual fellowship be-
tween men and this divine nature, and of obligations, resources and consola-
tions growing out of that fellowship ; in brief, of a complete organized life
of the soul in large measure independent of its material surroundings, and
in which is to be found the fulness and completeness of life. In the Iliad,
for instance, though the gods hover over the plains of Troy they are as mate-
rial as the men who struggle beneath them, and the poem finds its motive and
its consummation within the limits of purely human activity. There is not
a breath from Olympus which inspires any hero with an unselfish or ideal
purpose ; there is no suggestion anywhere that the long struggle is to be de-
cided by any but material forces, or that victory is to bring anything greater
than a material reward. In Browning's " Paracelsus/' on the other hand, or
in Goethe's " Faust/' both representative modern poems, the story has a
spiritual motive ; there is a recognition of spiritual relationships that rest
upon spiritual need and fellowship ; there is clear, definite movement to a
spiritual end. And all through the literature of this century we find such
relationships, purposes, and ideals. The books of pure literature are few
which do not bring into the foreground the thoughts of God, of immortality,
and of the possible greatness of human life reached by the power and through
the consciousness of these fundamental conceptions. The spiritual world is
the background of almost all modern poetry, from those early songs of Long-
fellow which have become the familiar psalms of universal experience to such
1861-88] HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE. 34^
noble interpretations of human life from the spiritual side as Tennyson's
"In Memoriam." In the poetry which does not give this thought promi-
nence it is still present in ever-recurring suggestion and illustration; we feel
its presence as we feel the presence of the sky when we look into the heart
of the summer flowers and know that without it they could not have been.
Almost without exception the names of the poets of this century who have
reached the maturity of their powers and turned the passing attention of men
into lasting fame suggest, by a law of common association, some human re-
lationship lifted into the light of a spiritual significance, some interpretation
of life from the spiritual side. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, the Brown-
ings, Tennyson, the entire company of American poets, with one or two ex-
ceptions, have carried this light in their hands in all their explorations of
nature and life, and it is this interpenetration of supernal radiance which
gives their best work its beauty and its truth. It is not too much to say that
it is the presence and power of this spiritual element which differentiates our
century from all preceding ages most decisively. v .- . .
We have no monopoly of the spiritual life, and every great writer is by no
means an interpreter of spiritual truth ; but the spiritual experience of the
race has brought the spiritual perceptions in this century to a far more fruit-
ful and constant discovery of spiritual truth, and has suffused the horizon of
thought with the glow of spiritual aspirations and ideals. It must be borne
in mind that there is a fundamental difference between the morality which
other ages have described and illustrated even more effectively than our own,
and this spiritual element. Morality is based upon the recognition of the
sovereignty of moral law, and received its noblest expression as long ago as
those remote ages in which the Hebrew Scriptures were written, or as that
wonderful period of Greek development when JSschylus, Sophocles, and Eu-
ripides each disclosed, according to the method of his genius, the play and
supremacy of that law. In one form or another this law has never ceased to
be proclaimed. Shakespeare taught it as no modern writer has been able to
teach it ; and George Eliot, in whose latest work the presence of the spiritual
element can scarcely be detected, has been its eloquent and convincing expo-
nent. But spirituality is something altogether different ; something higher,
more subtle, pervasive and vital. Morality is obedience to law ; spirituality
is an intuitive perception of spiritual truth, a personal consciousness and re-
ception of that truth, and a conception of life which accepts it as controlled
and governed by spiritual forces. Morality recognizes the law written in our
own natures ; spirituality is personal fellowship and communion with an in-
visible spiritual world.
Many causes have combined to develop the spiritual perceptions in recent
years. The stream of modern civilization shows two great currents ; one hav-
ing origin among the Greeks, the other among the Hebrews. These two
tendencies are now in process of assimilation, but are still in some measure
divergent and at times antagonistic. We have the Greek spirit almost en-
tirely unmodified by the Hebrew spirit in such writers as Walter Savage Lan-
dor, and the Hebrew spirit almost entirely unmodified by the Greek spirit
in such writers as Carlyle. It is the struggle between these two tendencies —
342 APPLETON MORGAN. [1861-88
the one artistic, plastic, and liberalizing; the other moral, intense, and con-
servative— which introduces an element of confusion into the literature of
our century. The Greeks had their consistent thought of the universe, and
their unbroken effort to express that thought in art. The Hebrews, on their
side, had their one distinct and commanding thought of the universe, and
the unique characteristic of their literature is the marvellous power with
which that thought was developed, extended, and made controlling through
their long and varied history. ....
The reaction against Puritanism, against the exclusive rule of the Hebrew
spirit, is still incomplete. It is not a reaction toward " worldliness," con-
formity to lower and more material standards ; it is a reaction from the par-
tial to the whole ; from the rigid and arrested movement of mind to its free,
healthful, and complete activity ; from the endeavor to live by vision of a
single side of life to the endeavor to live by vision of a complete life. Mat-
thew Arnold has said Puritanism locked the English mind in a dungeon ; a
more exact statement would be that it led the English people through a deep
defile in the mountains from which only a single star was visible, the polar
star of righteousness. That star is not less visible to us than to the Puritans,
but it is no longer solitary ; a whole heaven of moving constellations has
swept into our vision. We see the star of righteousness as clearly as ever the
Puritan saw it, but it has become the centre of a universe that shines out in
a divine revelation of beauty around it. The Hebrew tendency is being sup-
plemented by the Greek tendency, but neither diverted nor impaired by the
process. The note of unrest in the verse of the poets of the "art school,"
and of Arnold and Clough, is the expression of this lack of harmony in the
age. It is the recovery of that harmony which these poets have striven after.
They bring us face to face with the great problem which confronts us : the
harmonizing of beauty and liberty with the order, the discipline, and the
noble severity of the moral law. Two worlds lie in our vision, and art can-
not turn its face from either. Milton has given us an earthly and Dante a
heavenly paradise ; the masters have left us an imperishable heritage in the
immortal faces on the walls of Italian palaces and churches, but Christianity
has yet to find its highest expression in art.
Sippleton jftorgan*
BORN in Portland, Me., 1846.
SHYLOCK'S APPEAL.
[Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism. 1888.]
TO demonstrate wherein — as it strikes me — the entire trial scene shows,
not a knowledge but a most consummate ignorance of all or any legal
procedure, I have imagined Portia's decision in the case of Shylock v. An-
1861-88] APPLETON MORGAN. 343
tonio as having been twice appealed from, and that the following appears in
a volume of the Reports of the imaginary appellate court.
SHYLOCK'S APPEAL
(affirming Shylock v. Antonio : 75 Italian R., p. 104)
In the HIGH COURT OF APPEAL OF THE KINGDOM OF UNITED ITALY.
January 9th, 1887.
ANTONIO, respondent (defendant below) v.
SHYLOCK, appellant (plaintiff below).
[The indexed Points and Maxims prefixed to the Report are omitted by the Editors from,
this reprint.']
EBROR FROM THE STRICT COURT OF VENICE.
The material facts are stated in the opinion:
BONFATI, C. J.:
This case was argued before Venice, in the person of the Duke, and the
opinion delivered by Portia, delegate of Amicus Curiae, called in by the
Duke. The facts were taken in open court, and submitted to an Amicus
Curise (Bellario), who sent his delegate (Portia) to deliver his opinion and
decision upon them in open court. This is a regular, though not a usual
practice. There is no report of the first day's session before Venice ; and no
transcript of the .evidence put in on that day is brought here. These proceed-
ings, therefore, are presumed to be regular. The decision, as pronounced by
Portia, and the extraordinary scenes attendant upon such pronouncement,
the interruptions by the defendant and his friends, harangues by the plaintiff,
and sarcastic comments upon the bearing of the latter by the former, are re-
ported with unusual verisimilitude in Shakespeare's Reports (Rolfe's Friend-
ly Edition, vol. VII. ). We pass these many and obvious contempts of court,
remarking only what appears to us to have been the extraordinary complai-
sance of the court. Doubtless it is as within the power of a court to tolerate
as to punish contempts. But undoubtedly, in behalf of good manners, such
scenes as accompanied the delivery of the opinion of the court below ought
not to be largely imitated in our nisi prius tribunals.
The plaintiff below loaned the defendant three thousand ducats, taking a
written instrument conditioned in a penalty, that if the principal sum were
not forthcoming in three months, plaintiff should cut a pound of flesh from
the body of defendant in the vicinity of the latter's heart. This instrument
was not impeached below, but the case (as reported by Rolfe, ante),came be-
fore us a year ago on appeal from the first judgment rendered by Portia as
delegate Amicus Curias, and we then overruled and reversed every single
proposition laid down by that young person as contrary to every known prin-
ciple of law, and monstrous to the very horn-book maxims of jurisprudence.
We held on that occasion (75 I. R., 104) :
I. That plaintiff below was badly advised in bringing action for the penalty of the instru-
ment. But, nevertheless, it appearing from the evidence that plaintiff had substantial
344 APPLETON MORGAN. [1861-88
merits, as set forth in his complaint, the court should have reformed his action, making
it an action for the recovery of the money loaned. • ., . .
II. 'The delegate Amicus Curiae Portia erred in holding:
1. That, not having paid the principal sum of 3,000 ducats within or at the expiration of
the three months, plaintiff was entitled to a foreclosure for the penalty. Granted that
the instrument could stand, the action for its foreclosure was then an equitable action,
and equitable maxims would govern. There is no older maxim than that equity abhors
a penalty; and defendant would certainly have been entitled to his equity of redemption
here.
2. That the plaintiff could elect between the principal sum and the penalty. It follows
from the foregoing that, whatever the penalty, he can recover only principal, interest,
and costs.
3. That having elected for the penalty, plaintiff could cut therefor; but, in the cutting,
was not entitled to a hair's weight of flesh more or less than an exact pound, or a single
drop of blood. It is an eternal principle of jurisprudence that, when the law gives any-
thing, it also gives that without which the thing could not be enjoyed or reduced to pos-
4. Could the preceding decisions be surpassed in silliness, we think that the proposition
that, plaintiff having refused a tender of " three times the sum," plaintiff must be non-
suited, would clearly surpass them. Since the days of Father Moses, a tender has never
quite discharged or destroyed a debt. The utmost it can do is to discharge all or any
interest and costs that would have accrued subsequent to the tender. Neither is a gran-
-stander, friend, or claquer of one party to the other of "three
egal
times the sum " a tender in any known or legal sense of the word. However, it would
have doubtless been in the power of the court below to have suspended proceedings at
this juncture, that any reasonable offer of compromise or settlement should be heard,
when the by-stander could have (through the proper channels) reduced his inclination to
compromise the case to a formal and regular offer. Courts of justice always look favor-
ably upon settlements. " It is public policy that there should be as little litigation as
possible," is a very fundamental maxim of every known jurisprudence. But especially
has it been the spirit of Italian jurisprudence since when the memory of man runneth
not .....
Plaintiff, therefore, was entitled to a tender if defendant had seen fit to make it. Nor can
he be prejudiced either by the informality in which (if made in good faith) it was made,
or by his own refusal to accept it.
Such being our decision, we sent the case back with every ruling reversed,
and ordered a new trial on the merits. A new trial was had with the court
constituted as before, the same delegate Amicus Curiae delivering the judg-
ment. With submission to the rulings above quoted, Portia gave judgment
at once for the plaintiff in the sum of 3,000 ducats, with interest and costs,
but coupled it with the following :
"Tarry, Jew:
The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice
If it be prov'd against an alien
That, by direct or indirect attempts,
He seek the life of any citizen;
The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one-half his goods ; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the State,
And the offender's life lies in the mercy
Of the Duke only; 'gainst all other voice:
In which predicament, I say thou stand'st."
Of Portia's prior judgment we endeavored to speak decorously. But the
present branch it is difficult to characterize consonantly with a due sense of
1861-88] APPLETON MORGAN. 345
the dignity and decorum of this high court. To say that Portia is as reckless
and shameless in her construction of statutes as she was densely ignorant
and puerile in her comprehension of the common law, is, perhaps, too mild
a statement. Certainly there is a Venetian statute to the effect that an alien
conspirator against the life of a citizen shall be (upon proper apprehension
and indictment thereunder, and trial and conviction had) sentenced to death
and confiscation of his goods, a moiety to the State and a moiety to his pro-
posed victim. But penal statutes cannot be applied ex parte and ab initio
by a civil court sitting in a civil suit — on its own motion and at its own dis-
cretion. The usual processes of charge, arrest, indictment, arraignment,
trial, with opportunity for defence, can hardly be dispensed with entirely,
even by a delegate Amicus Curiae of the feminine gender. The effrontery of
the present dispenser of justice — her civil rulings being reversed as fast as
uttered — recouping herself, as it were, for the disgrace, at one fell swoop, by
citing a penal statute and pronouncing a litigant guilty thereunder, — nay,
in the same breath sentencing him to death in the pleasure of the State, — is
certainly not paralleled in the history of Europe, whatever in other grand
divisions of the globe may have been attempted. That Portia did not at once
proceed to execute her judgment, and decapitate the plaintiff with an axe, is
perhaps to be wondered at. Certainly the function of headsman is the only
function she has not usurped. She has made the charge, arraigned the pris-
oner, presided at his trial, testified against him, found him guilty on her
own testimony, and pronounced his sentence, all in ten lines. She has been
informer, arraigner, witness, judge, and jury. ....
But we think the sublimity of impudence is yet to come. Having in cres-
cendo pronounced sentence of death, Portia now begins in diminuendo to ar-
rogate to herself the pardoning power, and to assume that the condemned
man would prefer life — minus worldly goods and the religion of his race —
to death. She therefore, upon her own application, proceeds to commute
the death sentence to a judgment — (I), that plaintiff make a deed of gift of
his property, real and personal, to his daughter; and (2), that he himself
presently " become a Christian." Xo court nor State has power to compel a
party to alienate by deed his property without consideration. Still less does
the power anywhere obtain to confiscate a man's religion. We are of opinion
that nothing would be more desirable than that the plaintiff below should
become a Christian. Socially, it would be a most happy consummation, for
he is of that patient and long enduring race of which — as he himself says —
sufferance is the badge. But it does not seem to have occurred to the extraor-
dinary young jurist who invokes mercy (which is a kind of irregular equity)
for the Christian but forgets it for the Jew, that the faith of a man's fathers
may possibly be as dear to him as life itself, and that it will be ample time
for Shylock to become Christian when he himself covets the preferment.
Suffice it to say, however, that plaintiff's religion, no more than his worldly
goods, have ever come under the jurisdiction of the delegate Amicus Curige
who poses below, or within reach of her decree. A man's religion, provided
that in the actual practice of the rites and ceremonies thereof there be nothing
contrary to the public peace, or that injures his neighbors, or works perpes-
346 APPLETON MORGAN. [1861-88
ture or nuisance, is as Tmich his possession as any other estate, thing, ease-
ment, right, or chattel, choate or inchoate, that is his; nor can a deprivation
of one's religion or religious liberty ever be or compose a sentence or parcel of
a sentence of a court of justice even after a conviction for crime. Had plain-
tiff below been legally sentenced to death, and the Duke seen fit to pardon
him, this court could not have inquired into the motives or considerations
moving the Duke to extend his pardon (and had one of the inducements been
a change on plaintiff's part of the religion of his fathers, no record would
have been made for this court to review). But not even the Duke of Venice,
nor his delegated authority, has yet acquired power to compel an apostasy in
open court. If, in the history of the jurisprudence of this planet it has come
to pass that it is left to this court to declare that a human being (even though
he be a despised Jew) has a right to the accumulations of his own labor, thrift,
and economy, and that if he has loaned 3,000 ducats, or any other sum, he has
the right to expect the assistance and not the hinderance of courts in recov-
ering it if it be withheld : I say, if it is left to this court, and at this stage
of the world's history to so declare, this court, at least, will not be found un-
equal to the emergency.
All the proceedings in the court below are hereby ordered to be, and they are,
peremptorily set aside, except the judgment directed by this court in the
former appeal ; and it is further
ORDEEED : That so much of the judgment of the court below as decrees an
escheat and penalties against plaintiff be set aside.
ORDERED : That the court below enter judgment absolute for plaintiff in the
sum of 3,000 ducats, with interest, costs of both trials and appeals, together
with an extra allowance on the entire recovery, of five per cent.
All concur.
MARTINI (concurring) : Since the brazen offer of 3,000 ducats to the dele-
gate Amicus Curiae as the price of her partisan efforts is not called to our
judicial notice, we are unable to punish the acceptance of the reward of cham-
perty and malfeasance here. But the court below is directed to hear and grant
a motion to disbar the said Portia permanently, and to direct payment by her
into court of the 3,000 ducats aforesaid, if received by her. Had Bellario or
even Portia been merely a referee or master in chancery, to whom the case
was referred, the payment alluded to by the associate justice above might not
be irregular. If so, the Duke's speech, "Antonio, gratify this gentleman "
(that is, pay him for his services), is properly explained, as I understand the
custom of a referee's fees being paid by the prevailing party to be one so old
that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
1861-88] JULIAN HA WTHORNE.
Sluitan ^attt^orne,
BOBN in Boston, Mass., 1846.
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF ARCHIBALD MALMAISON.
[Archibald Mcdmaison. 1878.— 1884.]
IF Pennroyal had been twenty years younger when this catastrophe fell
upon him, it might merely have had the effect of enraging him ; but he
was near fifty years of age, and old for his years, and it seems to have over-
whelmed and cowed him. He sat still in his house, like a rat in his hole, say-
ing nothing, and noticing nothing, but drinking a great deal of brandy. The
fiery stuff did not excite him ; it merely had the effect of keeping him from
sinking into unconsciousness of his misery. He knew that he was a ruined
man, and that it was too late to retrieve his ruin. Means and energy were
alike lacking, and could never be supplied. He sat in his chair, and brooded
over all his life, and realized the utterness of his failure ; and nothing could
rouse him — not even the intelligence that his enemy, Sir Archibald, having
by the death of his aunt, MissTremount, come into an inheritance of upward
of seventy thousand pounds, was buying up the mortgages, and would prob-
ably foreclose on him when he got him thoroughly in his power. Archibald
had beaten him, and he would fight no more. Let him enjoy his triumph,
and push it to the utmost. There was one point, at all events, on which Rich-
ard had the better of him, and this thought brought with it the sole spark of
comfort that these evil days afforded him. He had his wife — the woman to
win whom Sir Archibald would have given all his lands and fortune, and his
soul into the bargain. Yes, Kate was his, and his only ; and it was the re-
solve to keep her his, and thus spite his enemy as long as possible, that with-
held Richard from seeking relief in suicide at this juncture. So Providence
leads men from agony to worse agony, with intent, doubtless, to torture out
of them the evil which they will not voluntarily relinquish.
One winter evening, Richard sitting brooding and sipping brandy as usual,
with a lamp burning on the table beside him, and the embers of the fire flick-
ering on the broad hearth at his feet, there came a light, measured step and
the rustle of a dress, and he knew that his wife was in the room. He raised
his haggard visage and looked at her. What a goddess of beauty she seemed !
How young, graceful, lovely ! How pure and clear were the tints of her face,
how lustrous dark her eyes, how soft her ample hair ! How peerless she was !
and all she was — all this treasure of fragrant womanhood — was his, and not
another's. Ay, and his willingly ; she really loved him, he thought ; she had
shown it of late ; she cared for him, old, ruined, and degraded though he
was. It was a strange thing ; it was a pleasant thing. Perhaps, he thought,
if he had had such a creature to love him in earlier days, he might not have
been where he was now. But then, in earlier days, he was not a ruined ana
wasted man.
"Kate!"
348 JULIAN HAWTHORNE. [1861-88
" Yes, Richard."
" Oh, never speak so formally ! Am I not Dick, thy own dear old Dick —
eh?"
" I did not mean to be formal."
" Come and sit here beside me — no, here, on the arm of my chair. It was
good of you to come in here. I was getting lonesome. I wanted my Kate to
tell me she loved me — eh ? "
" I only came in to say good-night. It is late."
"Late? — pooh! It's not nine o'clock. Stay and be sociable a bit. There,
I won't touch another drop if you'll stay."
" I'm tired ; I have a headache. You don't want me."
" Not want you ! Ay, but I do though ! Without you, Kate, I should have
been a dead man weeks ago. Not want you ! "
"Nonsense ! what do you mean ? You have drunk too much already, I
fear."
"I mean that, but for you, I'd have blown my brains out the day of the
trial — after I'd blown out his, the scoundrel ! But since I have you, I know
a way to worry him better than by blowing his brains out. To know that you
are mine is hell to him. And in that hell I'll keep him, as long as my body
and soul will hang together ! "
" What should he care whether I am yours or not ? "
" Because he loves you — that's why he cares ! Ay, you needn't start. He
loves you, and it's hell to him to feel that another man has you. How many
thousand pounds do you think he'd give to kiss this little hand as I kiss it
now. I wish he could see me do it ! "
" Nonsense, you are crazy. . . . And so you only care for me to spite
him ? "
" No, not that. God knows — if there is a God — I love you, Kate, with all
there is left of me — except what hates him ! That's my life — love for you and
hate for him ! And I believe I hate him less than I love you, though that's
saying a great deal ! "
" Oh, I think you love that brandy better than you do me."
" You do ? If you say so, I'll never touch it again ! "
" Oh, I don't care. I don't want you to give up anything that makes you
comfortable."
" Ay, you do love me, don't you, Kate ? "
" Come, Richard, our courting days are over. And I must go. Good-by ! "
" No, don't go ! I feel, somehow, as if I couldn't spare you to-night."
" Shall I pour you out another glass ? "
"Yes— no! I'll drink no more to-night. Kate ..."
"Well?"
" I'm getting old. In the natural course of things I should die long before
you. I shan't die yet a while — but some time, you know. Will you promise
something ? "
" I'll promise nothing to-night. I dare say you'll outlive me."
" Promise, come what will, you'll never marry him ; eh, Kate ? "
" Really, Richard, I — I never heard anything so foolish ! I can't stay
1881-88] JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 349
to hear any more such talk. You are not your right self. There — let me
go!"
" Go ? — go where ? Gad, I've a mind to say you shan't go ! Well, yes, 1
didn't mean it ; forgive me, Kate ! Only you're my wife, you know, and I'm
your husband ; and I love you ; and somehow I feel afraid to let you out of
my sight — as if I might not see you again. Well, then. . . . But one
thing you shall do — you shall give me a kiss before you go ! Else you shan't
go at all ! "
Thus compelled, Mrs. Pennroyal kissed her husband, or let herself be
kissed by him ; and then she escaped from the room, with a shudder and a
sinking of the heart.
Richard Pennroyal sat there alone ; the embers of the fire were now gray
and lifeless. He stirred them with his foot, and they fell into ashes. He
felt cold. How still the house was ; how lonely ! And he had no pleasant
thoughts to keep him company now that his wife had left him ; but many
thoughts, many memories that were far from pleasant, were lying in wait for
him in the dark corners of his mind, ready to leap out upon him if he gave
them a chance. Among them, why did the foolish face of crazy old Jane, his
wife of many years ago, persist in obtruding itself ? Why did it wear that
look of stupid, unreasonable reproach ? yes, unreasonable ; for how was he to
blame ? He had but let things take their course ; no more than that . . .
well, scarcely more ! And yet that face, that silly old face, that dull, lifeless,
drowned old face, kept meeting his in the dark corners, turn where he would.
If he closed his eyes, it was still visible through the eyelids, and seemed nearer
than ever.
So he opened his eyes ; and there hovered the face, in the gloom beyond
the lamp. What an expression ! Was it signalling him to come away ? Was
it mocking him for fearing to come ? Fearing ? He was not afraid. He was
a Pennroyal ; he had noble blood in his veins ; though he was now a bit old
and shaky, and had, perhaps, been taking a little too much brandy of late.
But — afraid! not he. Why, he would follow the thing, if it came to that;
follow it to . . .
He rose slowly from his chair, still keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon it,
and moved toward it, with his hands outstretched. He did not get any nearer
to it; it was retreating before him, like a will-o'-the-wisp. He kept on, cross-
ing the length of the room ; it seemed to pass through the substance of the
door, and yet he saw it beyond. He opened the door softly ; yes, there it was
in the hall. A pistol was lying on the little table beside the door, which Eich-
ard knew to be loaded. Mechanically, and without looking at it, he took it
up as he passed. Then down the hall on tiptoe, the shadowy, unmeaning face
marshalling him the way, and leering at him if he hesitated. Ay, he would
follow it to the end, now. Fortunately, the house-door stood open; there
would be no noise in getting out. Out they glided, pursuer and pursued, into
the cold stillness of the night. There was a moon, but it was dim and low
down. The shadows seemed more real than the light. There was no snow to
betray footprints. But whither would this chase lead ? It seemed to be head-
ing toward the northwest — toward Malmaison ; ay, and toward the pool that
350 JULIAN HAWTHORNE. [1861-88
lay on the borders of the estate. Richard shuddered when he thought of that
pool, and of the grisly significance of his being led thither by this witless,
idiotic old phantom of his dead wife's face. Stay, the face seemed to have
got itself a body within the last few moments : it was a gray figure that now
flitted on before him ; gray and indistinct in the dim moonlight, with noise-
less, waving drapery. It was going the very path that old Jane had gone that
day, many years ago — her last day on earth ; and yet, was she not here again
to-night ? And she was leading him to the pool ; and what then ?
Swiftly she flitted onward, some seventy paces in advance apparently, now
lost in shadow, now reappearing in the light. She never turned nor beck-
oned, but kept straight on, and Richard had much ado to keep pace with her.
At length he caught the gleam of the dark pool some little distance beyond.
He set his teeth, and came on. The gray phantom had paused at last. But
was that Jane after all ? Not Jane's was that tall and graceful figure. This
must be some other woman's ghost. Was it a ghost ? And if so, was that
another — that man who issued from behind a clump of bushes, and came
toward her ? The two figures met ; the man took the woman in his arms, and
kissed her many times on the lips and eyes. Kisses ! ay, those were kisses
indeed ! Now they seemed to be conversing together ; his arms were round
her waist. The moonlight revealed his features ; it was the enemv — it was
Archibald Malrnaison ! And the woman was not the dead wife, but the liv-
ing one.
" We are perfectly safe, my darling," Archibald was saying. " The room
was all prepared for you, and there is no possibility of discovery. There will
be a great outcry and confusion for a week or so, and they will search for you,
dead and alive ; and I along with the rest, the better to disarm suspicion. It
will be settled, at last, that you must have escaped to some foreign country ;
or, maybe, Richard himself will fall under suspicion of having made away
with you, as he did with his first wife. Sooner or later, at any rate, they will
give up the search ; and, whether or not, we shall always be free to each
other. You could not persuade any one at Malmaison to so much as put
his nose into the east chamber, and as to the other, you and I are the only
living creatures who even dream of its existence. Darling, you will not
mind being a prisoner for a little while, since love will be a prisoner with
you ? "
The woman clung to him tremulously. "I did not know it would be so
hard to leave him," she murmured. " I hate him, and yet it was hard. He
is so wretched ; and he is all alone. What will he do now ? He kept saying
that he loved me and asking me to love him, and to call him Dick ; and
... he made me kiss him. Oh, Archie, I feel that kiss beneath all yours.
I shall always feel it ! "
" No, this sha1! make you forget it "
" Hush ! I hear something ! "
'•' You are nervous"
"Ah! look! It is he. Now God have mercy !"
Sir Archibald looked ; and there, indeed, stood the tall figure of the Hon-
orable Richard Pennroyal, without his hat, and with an expression on his
1861-88] JULIAN HAWTHORJXE. 351
face that was a living curse to behold. And yet that face smiled and bowed
with a hideous politeness.
" Good-evening, Sir Archibald. Will you permit me to inquire whether
you are armed ? "
Sir Archibald put his hand within his vest, and drew out a pistol.
" Ah, that comes in very conveniently. Now, let us see. Mrs. Pennroyal,
since you are my wife, perhaps you will be good enough to give us the word ?
— No, she insists upon fainting. Well, then, we must manage the best way
we can. But let me entreat you to take your aim carefully, my dear Sir Archi-
bald, for if you miss it will involve unpleasant consequences for Mrs. Penn-
royal as well as for yourself. Now, I will toss up this pebble, and when it
strikes the surface of the water we will fire. Is it agreed ? Here goes, then."
He had the pebble in his hand, and was in act to toss it, when the baronet,
breaking silence for the first time, said :
" Mr. Pennroyal, I am willing that this shall go no further/'
" Scoundrel and coward ! " snarled the other, his deadly fury breaking in
a moment through the thin mockery of courtesy ; "come up then, and be
shot like the cur you are ! "
There could be no more words. Sir Archibald raised his pistol ; his antag-
onist threw the pebble high in the air, and as it smote the smooth surface of
the pool in its descent, both pulled trigger. Richard Pennroyal's weapon
missed fire; Sir Archibald's bullet passed through his enemy's heart; he
swayed backward and forward for a moment, and then fell on his face, hurl-
ing his pistol as he fell at the prostrate figure of his wife, who lay huddled on
the ground ; but it flew wide, and struck Sir Archibald on the temple. Be-
fore the ripples caused by the pebble's fall had died away, Pennroyal had
ceased to live.
Mrs. Pennroyal was still apparently insensible, but as Sir Archibald ap-
proached her she partly raised herself up, and looked first at him and then at
the dead body.
" It was not worth while," she said.
" It's done," he murmured. " Are you hurt ? "
" What shall we do ? "
" We must get back to Malmaison."
" We cannot leave him here."
Sir Archibald bent over the body of his enemy, and turned the face up-
ward. It wore a calm and happy expression.
"I will sink him in the pool," he said. "His will not be the first dead
body that has lain there."
He stoopod accordingly, and getting his hands beneath the arms of the
corpse, dragged it to one of the flights of steps that led down to the water.
Kate sat watching him with her hands clasped in her lap. She heard a splash-
ing sound and a ripple. Sir Archibald came back, picked up the pistol, and
flung it also into the pool.
" The water will freeze to-night," he said, " and the fishes will do the rest.
Now, come ! "
In a secret chamber at Malmaison lamps were burning softly in a dozen
352 JULIAN HAWTHORNE. [1861-88
sconces of burnished silver round the walls. Their light fell on luxurious
furniture, fit for the boudoir of a lovely and noble lady. The broad-backed
ebony chairs were upholstered in delicate blue damask ; cups and salvers of
chased gold stood on the inlaid cabinet ; the floor Avas covered with richly-
tinted Persian rugs and soft-dressed furs ; a warm fire glowed on the hearth,
and upon the table was set out a supper such as might have aWakened an ap-
petite in a Koman epicure. A tall mirror, at the farther end of the room, re-
flected back the lights and the color and the sparkle, while in a niche at one
side stood rigidly upright an antique suit of armor, its gauntlets seeming to
rest meditatively upon the hilt of its sword, while from between the closed
bars of the helmet one might fancy that the dark spirit of its former inmate
was gazing grimly forth upon all this splendor and luxury, and passing a
ghastly jest thereon. But it was as fair and comfortable a scene as perhaps
this world can show, and well calculated to make the sternest ascetic in love
with life.
Through the massive oaken door, clamped with polished steel bands, en-
tered now two pallid and haggard persons — a man and a woman. The light
striking on their eyes made them blink and look aside. The man led the
woman to the fire, and seated her upon a low chair ; and taking a blue satin
coverlid from the bed in the recess, he folded it tenderly round her shoulders.
She scarcely seemed to notice where she was, or what was being done ; she
sat with her eyes and face fixed, shivering now and then, and with her mind
apparently preoccupied with some ugly recollection. The man then went to
the table and poured out a glass of wine, and held it to the woman's lips, and
after a little resistance she drank some of it.
" You are as safe here," said he, " as if you were in an island of the South
Sea. I will see that you want for nothing while you have to remain here."
"What is the use ? " she asked, with a kind of apathetic peevishness.
" Before long we shall be able to go away," he continued. " My darling,
don't be disheartened. All our happiness is to come."
" I can never forget it," she said, with a shiver. " What is the use ? I can
never get away from him now. Do you think the water is frozen yet ? "
" You must not think of that at all. When you are warm, and have drunk
some wine, you will not feel this nervousness. Nothing has been done that
is worth regretting, or that could have been helped. Kate, I love you more
than ever."
"What is the use? " she repeated, in a dull tone. "It was not worth while."
There was a pause.
" I must leave you for a few minutes," he said gently. " It is necessary
that I should show myself to Lady Malmaison and to the servants. No one
knows that I have left the house. By the time I come back you will have got
warm, and we will sup together. Don't be downhearted, my darling."
He bent forward to kiss her. With a sudden gesture of aversion she pushed
him back. " There is blood upon your forehead ! " she said, in a sharp whis-
per.
" Only ascratch — I had forgotten it," heanswered, trying to smile. "Well,
then, in half an hour, at the utmost, we will meet again."
1861-88] JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 353
She made no rejoinder ; and, after standing a moment looking down at
her, he turned and went out. He closed the oaken door behind him, and
locked it, then felt his way along the stone passage, and let himself out by
the concealed entrance. He put the silver rod in its receptacle beneath the
floor, and walked toward the room adjoining. On the threshold of that room
he paused a moment, leaning against the door-post. A sensation of sluggish
weariness had come over him ; his head felt full and heavy. He roused him-
self presently, and went on trying to remember whither he was going. By
the time he had reached the top of the great staircase, the idea that he was
in search of seemed to have come to him. He descended the stairs and went
directly to Lady Malmaison's room. It was then about eleven o'clock. The
good lady was playing cards with her companion, her spaniel sleeping on her
knees. She looked up in astonishment, for Sir Archibald seldom honored
her with a visit.
" Mamma/' said he, going up to her chair, and standing there awkwardly,
" where is Kate ? "
" My son ! what has happened ? "
" Was she married to-day ? " pursued the baronet, in an aggrieved tone.
Lady Malmaison and the companion exchanged a terrified glance.
" I think it is very unkind, then," declared the young man, reproachfully;
"for Richard promised me I should be groomsman — and now they have
gone and got married while I was asleep. It was unkind of Kate, and I don't
love her ; but I don't believe it was Richard's fault, because he is good, and
I love him."
" Ring the bell, Simpson," said Lady Malmaison, in a broken voice, " and
tell them to send for Dr. Rollinson."
During all the months of consternation, speculation, and vague hue-and-
cry that followed the mysterious disappearance of the Honorable Mr. and
Mrs. Pennroyal, it never for one moment occurred to any one to suggest any
connection between that unexplained circumstance and the equally curious
but impertinent fact that poor Sir Archibald had " gone daft " once more.
How should it ? It was known that Sir Archibald had been in his room all
that day and evening up to the time when he came into his mother's cham-
ber without his wits. It was true that there had been no love lost of late be-
tween the houses of Malmaison and Pennroyal, but that was neither here nor
there.
The notion that the vanished persons had met with foul play was never
seriously entertained, it being generally agreed that Mr. Pennroyal had am-
ple reasons for not wishing to remain in a place where his credit and his wel-
come were alike worn out. In all likelihood, therefore, the pair had slunk
away to foreign parts, and were living under an assumed name somewhere on
the Continent, or in America.
It was not surprising that they had gone together, for it was known that
they were on very good terms with each other, especially during the last year.
An idle story of a groom, who affirmed that he had been present at an inter-
354 JULIAN HAWTHORNE. [1861-88
view between Mrs. Pennroyal and Sir Archibald, on horseback, a few weeks
before the trial, when, according to this narrator, they had appeared to be
rather friendly than otherwise, was not thought to be in any way to the
point.
So the months passed away, and the years followed the months ; the house
and the lands of the Pennroyals were sold, and their very name began to be
forgotten. The daft baronet and his aged mother went on living at Malmai-
son in a quiet and uneventful manner, seeing very few people, and doing
nothing except allow their large property to grow larger. Yet, in spite of
their retiring inoffensiveness, a shadow seemed to brood over the ancient
house.
The old story of Sir Archibald's past exploits in the magical line, and of
his ancestors before him, were still revived occasionally round evening fire-
sides ; and it was submitted whether his present condition were not a judg-
ment upon him for having tampered with forbidden mysteries.
In the opinion of these fireside juries, there was a curse upon Malmaison,
especially upon that part of it which contained the east chamber. That room
was haunted, and had never been haunted so badly as during the few days
immediately following Sir Archibald's loss of memory.
It may have been a demon's carousal over the sad plight of the poor, fool-
ish young baronet. At all events shrieks had been heard, faint and muffled,
but unmistakable, proceeding from that region, when everybody knew that
no living soul was there or could be there ; but all the servants at Malmaison
could swear to the sounds. Ay, the place was accursed.
Late on the night of the 22d of January, 1833, Sir Archibald found him-
self mounting the staircase of Malmaison, with but an indistinct idea of how
he came to be doing so. He could not recollect whether he had seen his
mother and the servants or not. No wonder if his thoughts had been a little
absent, with such a dark and burdensome secret as that which lay upon his
soul. But, of course, he must have seen them. He had left Kate with the
intention of doing so, within this very hour ; and how should he be coming
up-stairs, unless from the execution of that purpose ? His mind was busy
with many projects. It would probably be thought that Mr. and Mrs. Penn-
royal had left the country to escape creditors. If only the pond froze, and
the cold weather held on for a week or two, there would be no trace that could
lead to a suspicion of anything else. For himself, he would find no difficulty
in proving an alibi, if it came to that. And after all, he had but acted upon
compulsion, and in self-defence, and upon equal terms. He was guilty of no
crime, except — well, call it a crime ; he was willing to bear the brunt of that.
So they would be able to get away soon, and in Italy, Spain, somewhere, any-
where, they could live and be happy many years. Perhaps after a time they
could venture to marry and return openly to England. There were number-
less and indefinite possibilities in their favor. Life was all they Avanted. and
life they had. They were both young; the gloom of this unlucky tragedy
would soon be dispelled. Kate had been nervous and distraught when he
left her, and no wonder, poor love ! but wine, and food, and warmth would
1861-88] JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 355
soon bring the color back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. Lovely
Kate ! sweet, wayward, tender, haughty, but his own at last— his own in
spite of earth and heaven ! Yes, he and she would have their will and take
their pleasure in spite of God and man ; and if God would kill them, then, at
any rate, they would die together, and in each other's arms.
With these and many like thoughts flying through his mind, Sir Archi-
bald Malmaison reached the east chamber, struck a light, and lit the candle
that stood on the table beside the door. He looked at his watch — half-past
eleven ; he was within his time then ; he had been absent less than half an
hour. What was Kate doing ? he wondered. He stopped a moment, pictur-
ing her to himself in some luxurious attitude ; but his impatience would not
suffer him to delay. He quickly got the silver rod from its receptacle,
opened the concealed door, and went in, carrying the lighted candle in his
hand. In a moment he was at the inner oaken door ; it resisted his attempt
to open it. Then he recollected that he had locked it for additional security.
The key was in the lock ; he turned it, and entered.
An involuntary cry of surprise escaped him. Instead of the soft blaze of
light that he had expected, the room was full of a heavy darkness, that
seemed to rush out to meet him, and almost overwhelmed the feeble glim-
mer of his wretched candle. And why was it so deadly cold ? Where had
gone that cheerful fire which was burning so ardently on the hearth half an
hour ago ? Could Kate have put out the lights and gone off ? Impossible,
since the doors were fastened. Ah, there she was !
She was kneeling with her face bowed forward on her arms, which rested
on the seat of one of the low chairs. Her attitude was that of passionate
prayer. Her thick brown hair was unfastened, and fell over her shoulders.
She made no movement. It was strange ! Was she praying ? Could she
be asleep ?
He took a step or two, and then stopped. Still no movement.
" Kate ! " he said in a hushed voice ; and as she did not answer, he spoke
more loudly : " Kate, I have come back ; and I've a mind to scold you for
letting the fire go out, and startling me with this darkness. What are you
doing on your knees ? Come, my darling, we want no prayers to-night.
Kate . . . will you give me a kiss now ?
" Perhaps she may have fainted. Poor darling, she must have fainted ! "
He went close up to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder : he seemed to
grasp nothing but the empty stuff of the dress. With a terrified, convulsive
motion, he pulled her round, so that the head was disturbed from its posi-
tion on the arms, and the ghastly mystery was revealed to his starting eye-
balls. The spectacle was not one to be described. He uttered a Weak, waver-
ing scream, and stood there, unable to turn away his gaze.
I must confess that I do not care to pursue this narrative any farther :
though it is just at this point, according to my venerable friend Dr. Rollin-
son, that the real scientific interest begins. He was constantly with Sir
Archibald during the eight or nine mouths that he remained in life after
this episode ; and made some highly important and edifying notes on his
35(5 ETA D. COOLBRITE. [1861-88
" case," besides writing down the unhappy baronet's confessions, as given
from time to time. After his death, the Doctor made an autopsy of the
brain, and discovered — I care not what ! It was not the mystery of the man's
soul, I am convinced.
91na ®. Coolbritl),
BORN near Springfield, 111.
WHEN THE GRASS SHALL COVER ME.
[A Perfect Day, and Other Poems. 1881.]
WHEN the grass shall cover me,
Head to foot where I am lying;
"When not any wind that blows,
Summer blooms nor winter snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
Close above me as you pass,
You will say, " How kind she was,"
You will say, " How true she was."
When the grass grows over me.
When the grass shall cover me,
Holdeu close to earth's warm bosom
While I laugh, or weep, or sing
Nevermore, for anything,
You will find in blade and blossom,
Sweet small voices, odorous,
Tender pleaders in my cause,
That shall speak me as I was —
When the grass grows over me.
When the grass shall cover me!
Ah, beloved, in my sorrow
Very patient, I can wait,
Knowing that, or soon or late,
There will dawn a clearer morrow :
When your heart will moan: "Alas!
Now I know how true she was;
Now I know how dear she was " —
When the grass grows over me!
1861-88]
ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND.
357
A PERFECT DAY.
I WILL be glad to-day : the sun
Smiles all adown the land ;
The lilies lean along the way ;
Serene on either hand,
The full-blown roses, red and white,
In perfect beauty stand.
The mourning-dove within the woods
Forgets, nor longer grieves ;
A light wind lifts the bladed corn,
And ripples the ripe sheaves;
High overhead some happy bird
Sings softly in the leaves.
The butterflies flit by, and bees ;
A peach falls to the ground ;
The tinkle of a bell is heard
From some far pasture-mound ;
The crickets in the warm, green grass
Chirp with a softened sound.
The sky looks down upon the sea,
Blue, with not anywhere
The shadow of a passing cloud ;
The sea looks up as fair —
So bright a picture on its breast
As if it smiled to wear.
A day too glad for laughter — nay,
Too glad for happy tears !
The fair earth seems as in a dream
Of immemorial years:
Perhaps of that far morn when she
Sang with her sister spheres.
It may be that she holds to-day
Some sacred Sabbath feast ;
It may be that some patient soul
Has entered to God's rest,
For whose dear sake He smiles on us,
And all the day is blest.
Cleveland.
BORN in Fayetteville, N. Y., 1846.
ALTRUISTIC FAITH.
[George Eliot's Poetry, cmd Other Studies. 1885.]
! What image does the name evoke ? The image, I venture,
Vy if any, of a very distinct and magnificent face — of eyes dark yet glow-
ing, like a midnight full of stars, of flowing, silky beard, of turban folded
over prophetic locks — the face, not at all of Cadijah, but of Mahomet. There
is no biography of Cadijah, and no portrait. All that we certainly know of
her is that she was Mahomet's first wife, a noble and wealthy widow, whom
he wedded when he was twenty-five and she much older, and to whom he was
singly devoted and faithful up to the time of her death.
How, then, may this woman, standing in the darkness which gathers
around the vestibule of the Middle Ages, offer from her poverty of resource
anything worth our while to consider, we
" The heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time " ?
Years after the death of Cadijah, when Ayesha, the beautiful girl, the pet
child- wife of Mahomet's old age, arrogant with the arrogance of a beauty
and a favorite, attempted to rally her now illustrious and powerful husband
35g ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND. [1861-88
upon his loyal love for his first wife, and said to him, " Was she not old ? and
has not God given you a better in her place ? " Mahomet replied, with an
effusion of honest gratitude, " No, by Allah ! there can never be a better.
She believed in me when men despised me."
" She believed in me ! " From Mahomet's own lips we have our question
answered. Cadijah offers to us a splendid and immortal example of the ef-
fectual, fervent faith of one soul in another. And this it is of which I have
to speak. Not of the Mahomets, except by implication, but of Cadijah.,
whose faith has wrought out Mahomet, since ever the world began — whose
faith must still evolve him so long as the world lasts and Mahomets sur-
vive. ....
By the term, abstract altruistic faith, I mean to imply that general atti-
tude of mind which is hopeful and expectant of humanity ; a faith in human
nature's intrinsic worth and capability ; a faith which beholds man, as in
Nebuchadnezzar's dream, sadly and mysteriously mixed of things precious
and things base, but which beholds as clearly the head of fine gold and the
breast of silver as the feet of iron and clay ; a faith that the race is steadily
gravitating toward a goal of final good rather than evil ; a faith that, when
the averages of the ages are accurately struck, the leverage will be found to
be constantly upward, not downward ; a faith that humanity is persistently
electing itself to honor, glory, and immortality by a majority which secure*
to the same party all future canvasses ; a faith which wavers not an instant
before the question, however cleverly put by the pessimist, " Is life worth
living?" but responds with an immediate and hearty, "Yes, a thousand
times Yes ! Life is infinitely worth living !" A faith which looks into poor-
houses, and idiot-asylums, and penitentiaries — ay, and into the darkness of
great cities by night, and still believes in humanity reclaimable, however
marred or fallen, and infinitely worth saving. . . . But the abstract
faith is subordinate — an effect rather than a cause. For generalities and
abstractions do not demand our prolonged consideration. Our lives are not
laid out in vast, vague prairies, but in definite domestic door-yards, within
which we are to exercise and develop our faculties. Altruistic faith in the
abstract is most valuable, but it is, at best, but a passive rather than an active
possession. We cannot touch humanity at large except as we touch humanity
in the individual. Altruistic faith must exercise itself upon concretions,
not abstractions, if it be a real power for good. One may possess a whole
Milky WTay of vague general belief in humanity, and yet it may be of less
avail to the benighted traveller than a single rushlight put sympathetically
into his hand. We must focus our faith upon the individual in order to get
or to give the good of it.
This concrete altruistic faith does not require for its exercise that its pos-
sessor belong to the female sex. The contrary idea is, I fear, deeply rooted
in the public mind. There is a very general impression that it is in the
nature of things that woman should walk principally by faith, and that this
faith should be principally altruistic. I myself confess to a lurking suspicion
that it is oftener a woman than a man who is a Cadijah. It may be easier for
a woman to believe in somebody else than for a man to do so. Men, as a rule,
1861-88] ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND, 359
are very much occupied with believing in themselves. Woman is confess-
edly altruistic, but not exclusively so. Carlyle had his Cadijah in his wife ;
George Eliot had hers in her husband.
But this faith, though not inconsistent with the estate of holy matrimony,
is yet not dependent upon that estate. I use the name Cadijah to represent
the character of an efficient believer in somebody else ; but Cadijah couid
have exercised her faith in Mahomet to its full effect on his fortunes without
having been his wife. The exercise of Mrs. Carlyle's faith in her husband
had nothing to do with the exercise of her hands and feet upon the Craigen-
puttock kitchen-floor. Cadijah may or may not have a passionate personal
love for her Mahomet, but she will not be so " in love " with him as to induce
the blindness of that undesirable condition. Pascal said : " In order to know
God we must love Him ; in order to love man we must know him/' I am not
sure that all love for individual man depends upon knowing him ; there is
love and love, but the rational, lasting love must admit, at least, if not
demand, for its persistence, some real acquaintanceship. To all love that
rightly culminates in marriage there is, doubtless, an irrational phase, a
normal abnormality that may or may not outlast the honeymoon, and then
gives place to something better. In this period no Cadijah can flourish ; in-
deed, the conditions of concrete altruistic faith do not demand the condi-
tions of courtship or of marriage. Cadijah-ism is not necessarily connubi-
ality.
Xor is this faith hero-woiship. We all have our heroes who are veritable
heroes to us, frequently for no other reason than because we cannot be valets
to them. And that is well and good. But the one to whom you are Cadijah
will not be a hero to you. You will serve him, but you will not worship him.
Cadijah never imagines, as do the worshippers, that her Mahomet can do or be
anything he may please, or she may please. She perceives that he can do and
be one thing, and possibly that this is the thing which pleases him not. She
does not discover him to be a predestined prophet or a born poet because her
love or ambition elects him to be such. It maybe, rather, that her faith dis-
cerns in him supreme capabilities for a dry-goods clerk or a ranchman. No.
Though my Cadijah love me as her own soul, and have set her whole heart
on me, she cannot, this clear-eyed Cadijah of mine, persuade herself that I
can be what I cannot be. She can only perceive me to be what I can be.
Cadijah is a seer, but she is not a visionary. She wields a diviner's rod, but
not a wizard's wand. The historical Cadijah was, I venture, greatly enam-
oured of her young and handsome lord. But I am not sure she thought him
a great prophet or a spotless priest. What I am sure of is, that this shrewd,
demoted woman perceived him to be a born predestined leader, a man of des-
tiny, one to sway multitudes with the mighty magnetism of his personality ;
a man to beckon and be followed ; a man to speak and be believed ; a man to
command and be obeyed. She saw the oak in the acorn with this sixth sense
of hers. She believed in him when all men despised him, but she did not
give him hero-worship.
It is clear that to Mrs. Carlyle her husband was not a hero. As an apostle
of silence and several other things he was a great joke to her. But as a man
36Q ANNA KATHARINE GREEN ROHLF8. [1861-88
of ideas, great, grotesque, forceful, propulsive, full of the vitality of immor-
tal genius, worthy and destined to live in literature, as such she saw him
when his fame was yet in embryo. And this faith of hers in his power to do
never flagged until it became sight before all the world, a wisdom justified
of her children. And this is not hero-worship. It is a far finer and usef uler
thing.
To speak affirmatively, this quality of the Cadijahs I define as that fac-
ulty in my friend by which he discriminates in me what I am good for — nay,
what I am best for. That one who comes to me, resolute for me when I stand
irresolute for myself, at that point in my straight turnpike where by-roads
fork out from it — that one who comes to me while I waver in view of the old
highway and cast lingering glances at the new by-ways, and who, with hand
uplifted and with finger pointed straight before, says to me, with emphasis
of unalterable conviction, "This is your way ; this, no other, the path which
leads you to your goal ! " this man, or this woman, is my Cadijah. He may
or may not have vehement love for me, but if he has vehement faith in me,
and gives me the benefit of its momentum, he is my friend, and " there can
never be a better/' for he believes in me when a worse than the despising of
men has befallen me — the despising of myself ! " Quand tout est perdu, c'est
le moment des grandes dmes," said Lacordaire. A grand soul is Cadijah ; she
comes to me when all is lost ! How common to us all is the experience of
meeting one who seems to have a peculiar insight into our character, so that
we say, "He divined me." How often do we hear it said, "He seems to
understand me better than any one else." " She appreciates me more truly
than any one ever has." This quality of divination is the intellectual ele-
ment of altruistic faith. It is not the whole of it, for another element lies
in the will and is essential ; but it is the extraordinary element, and far from
infrequent.
anna &at^arine d^rcen
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y., 1846.
THE STORM IN THE WOOD.
[Hand and Ring. By Anna Katharine Green. 1883.]
r p^ HOUGH unmindful of the storm, he was dimly conscious of the dark-
-L ness that was settling about him. Quicker and quicker grew his pafie,
and at last he almost broke into a run as the heavy pall of a large black cloud
swept up over the zenith and wiped from the heavens the last remnant of blue
sky. One drop fell, then another, then a slow, heavy patter, that bent double
the leaves they fell upon, as if a shower of lead had descended upon the heav-
ily writhing forest. The wind had risen, too, and the vast aisles of that clear
and beautiful wood thundered with the swaying of boughs, and the crash
here and there of an old and falling limb. But the lightning delayed,
1861-88] ANNA KATHARINE GREEN ROHLFS. %Ql
The blindest or most abstracted man could be ignorant no longer of what
all this turmoil meant. Stopping in the path along which he had been speed-
ing, Mr. Byrd glanced before him and behind, in a momentary calculation
of distances, and deciding he could not regain the terminus before the storm
burst, pushed on toward the hut.
He reached it just as the first flash of lightning darted down through the
heavy darkness, and was about to fling himself against the door, when some-
thing— was it the touch of an invisible hand, or the crash of awful thunder
which at this instant ploughed up the silence of the forest and woke a pan-
demonium of echoes about his head ? — stopped him.
He never knew. He only realized that he shuddered and drew back, with
a feeling of great disinclination to enter the low building before him, alone ;
and that presently taking advantage of another loud crash of falling boughs,
he crept around the corner of the hut, and satisfied his doubts by looking in-
to the small, square window opening to the west.
He found there was ample reason for all the hesitation he had felt. A man
was sitting there, who, at the first glimpse, appeared to him to be none other
than Craik Mansell. But reason soon assured him this could not be, though
the shape, the attitude — that old attitude of despair which he remembered
so well — was so startlingly like that of the man whose name was uppermost
in his thoughts, that he recoiled in spite of himself.
A second flash swept blinding through the wood. Mr. Byrd advanced his
head and took another glance at the stranger. It was Mr. Mansell. No other
man would sit so quiet and unmoved during the rush and clatter of a terrible
storm.
Look ! not a hair of his head is stirred, not a movement has taken place
in the hands clasped so convulsively beneath his brow. He is an image, a
stone, and would not hear though the roof fell in.
Mr. Byrd himself forgot the storm, and only queried what his duty was in
this strange and surprising emergency.
But before he could come to any definite conclusion he was subjected to
a new sensation. A stir that was not the result of the wind or the rain had
taken place in the forest before him. A something — he could not tell what
— was advancing upon him from the path he had himself travelled so short
a time before, and its step, if step it were, shook him with a vague appre-
hension that made him dread to lift his eyes. But he conquered the un-
manly instinct, and merely taking the precaution to step somewhat further
back from view, looked in the direction of his fears, and saw a tall, firmly-
built woman, whose grandly poised head, held high, in defiance of the gale,
the lightning, and the rain, proclaimed her to be none other than Imogene
Dare.
It was a juxtaposition of mental, moral, and physical forces that almost
took Mr. Byrd's breath away. He had no doubt whom she had come to see,
or to what sort of a tryst he was about to be made an unwilling witness. But
he could not have moved if the blast then surging through the trees had up-
rooted the huge pine behind which he had involuntarily drawn at the first
impression he had received of her approach. He must watch that white face
362 ANNA KATHARINE GREEN ROHLFS. [1861-88
of hers slowly evolve itself from the surrounding darkness, and he must be
present when the dreadful bolt swept down from heaven, if only to see her
eyes in the flare of its ghostly flame.
It came while she was crossing the glade. Fierce, blinding, more vivid
and searching than at any time before, it flashed down through the cringing
boughs, and, like a mantle of fire, enveloped her form, thnnving out its every
outline, and making of the strong and beautiful face an electric vision which
Mr. Byrd was never able to forget.
A sudden sweep of wind followed, flinging her almost to the ground, but
Mr. Byrd knew from that moment that neither wind nor lightning, not even
the fear of death, would stop this woman if once she was determined upon
any course.
Dreading the next few moments inexpressibly, yet forcing himself, as a
detective, to remain at his post, though every instinct of his nature rebelled,
Mr. Byrd drew himself up against the side of the low hut and listened. Her
voice, rising between the mutterings of thunder and the roar of the ceaseless
gale, was plainly to be heard.
"Craik Mansell," said she, in a strained tone, that was not without its
severity, "you sent for me, and I am here."
Ah, this was her mode of greeting, was it ? Mr. Byrd felt his breath come
easier, and listened for the reply with intensest interest.
But it did not come. The low rumbling of the thunder went on, and the
wind howled through the grewsorne forest, but the man she had addressed
did not speak.
" Craik ! " Her voice still came from the door- way, where she had seem-
ingly taken her stand. " Do you not hear me ? "
A stifled groan was the sole reply.
She appeared to take one step forward, but no more.
" I can understand," said she, and Mr. Byrd had no difficulty in hearing
her words, though the turmoil overhead was almost deafening, "why the
restlessness of despair should drive you into seeking this interview. I have
longed to see you too, if only to tell you that I wish heaven's thunderbolts
had fallen upon us both on that day when we sat and talked of our future
prospects and "
A lurid flash cut short her words. Strange and awesome sounds awoke in
the air above, and the next moment a great branch fell crashing down upon
the roof of the hut, beating in one corner, and sliding thence heavily to the
ground, where it lay with all its quivering leaves uppermost, not two feet
from the door- way where this woman stood.
A shriek like that of a lost spirit went up from her lips.
" I thought the vengeance of heaven had fallen ! " she gasped. And for a
momer. *• not a sound was heard within or without the hut, save that low flutter
of the disturbed leaves. " It is not to be," she then whispered, with a return
of her old calmness that was worse than any shriek. " Murder is not to be
avenged thus." Then, shortly : " A dark and hideous line of blood is drawn
between you and me, Craik Mansell. / cannot pass it, and you must not,
forever and forever and forever. But that does not hinder me from wishing •
1861-88] ANNA KATHARINE GREEN ROHLFS. 353
to help you, and so I ask, in all sincerity, "What is it you want me to do for
you to-day ? "
A response came this time.
" Show me how to escape the consequences of my act," were his words,
uttered in a low and muffled voice.
She did not answer at once.
" Are you threatened ? " she inquired at last, in a tone that proved she had
drawn one step nearer to the bowed form and hidden face of the person she
addressed.
" My conscience threatens me," was the almost stifled reply.
Again that heavy silence, all the more impressive that the moments before
had been so prolific of heaven's most terrible noises.
" You suffer because another man is forced to endure suspicion for a crime
he never committed," she whisperingly exclaimed.
Only a groan answered her ; and the moments grew heavier and heavier,
more and more oppressive, though the hitherto accompanying outcries of
the forest had ceased, and a faint lightening of the heavy darkness was tak-
ing place overhead. Mr. Byrd felt the pressure of the situation so power-
fully, he drew near to the window he had hitherto avoided, and looked in.
She was standing a foot behind the crouched figure of the man, between
whom and herself she had avowed a line of blood to be drawn. As he looked
she spoke.
" Craik," said she, and the deathless yearning of love spoke in her voice
at last, " there is but one thing to do. Expiate your guilt by acknowledging
it. Save the innocent from unmerited suspicion, and trust to the mercy of
God. It is the only advice I can give you. I know no other road to peace.
If I did " She stopped, choked by the terror of her own thoughts.
" Craik," she murmured, at last, " on the day I hear of your having made
this confession, I vow to take an oath of celibacy for life. It is the only rec-
ompense I can offer for the misery and sin into which our mutual mad am-
bitions have plunged you."
And subduing with a look of inexpressible anguish an evident longing to
lay her hand in final caress upon that bended head, she gave him one part-
ing look, and then, with a quick shudder, hurried away, and buried herself
amid the darkness of the wet and shivering woods.
AT THE PIANO.
[The Defence of the Bride, and Other Poems. 1882.]
TDLAY on! Play on! As softly Are one, are one; and hope and bliss
•*- glides Move hand in hand, and thrilling, kiss
The low refrain, I seem, I seem 'Neath bowery blooms,
To float, to float on golden tides, In twilight glooms,
By sunlit isles, where life and dream And love is life, and life is love.
364
ALICE WILLIAMS BROTHERTON.
[1861-88
Play on! Play on! As higher rise
The lifted strains, I seem, I seem
To mount, to mount t h rough roseate skies,
Through drifted cloud and golden
gleam,
To realms, to realms of thought and fire,
Where angels walk and souls aspire,
And sorrow comes but as the night
That brings a star for our delight.
Play on ! Play on ! The spirit fails,
The star grows dim, the glory pales,
The depths are roused — the depths, and
oh!
The heartthat wakes, the hopes thatglow !
The depths are roused : their billows call
The soul from heights to slip and fall ;
To slip and fall and faint and be
Made part of their immensity ;
To slip from Heaven ; to fall and find
In love the only perfect mind ;
To slip and fall and faint and be
Lost, drowned within this melody,
As life is lost and thought in thee.
Ah, sweet, art thou the star, the star
That draws my soul afar, afar ?
Thy voice the silvery tide on which
I float to islands rare and rich ?
Thy love the ocean, deep and strong,
In which my hopes and being long
To sink and faint and fail away ?
I cannot know. I cannot say.
But play, play on.
£Uce Cftilliamg
BORN In Cambridge, Ind.
PASSING.
[The Sailing of King Olaf, and Other Poems. 1887.]
"TTTHAT ship is this coines sailing
» ' Across the harbor bar,
So strange yet half familiar,
With treasure from afar?
O comrades shout, good bells ring out,
Peal loud your merry din !
O joy 1 At last across the bay
My ship comes sailing in."
Men said, in low whispers,
" It is the passing bell.
At last his toil is ended."
They prayed, ' ' God rest him well."
"Ho Captain, my Captain,
What store have you on board?"
" A treasure far richer
Than gems or golden hoard. —
The broken promise welded firm,
The long forgotten kiss,
The love more worth than all on earth,
All joys life seemed to miss ! "
The watchers sighed softly:
' ' It is the death-change !
What vision blest has given
That rapture deep and strange?"
"O Captain, dear Captain,
What are the forms I see
On deck there beside you?
They smile and beckon me ;
And soft voices call me,
Those voices sure I know! "
"All friends are here that you held dear
In the sweet long ago."
"The death-smile," they murmured,
"It is so passing sweet,
We scarce have heart to hide it
Beneath the winding-sheet."
" O Captain, I know you !
Are you not Christ the Lord?
With light heart and joyous
I hasten now on board.
Set sail, set sail, before the gale;
Our trip will soon be o'er;
To-night we'll cast our anchor fast
Beside the heavenly shore! "
Men sighed : " Lay him gently
Beneath the heavy sod."
The soul afar beyond the bar
Went sailing on to God.
1861-88] WILLIAM YOUNG. 365
THE RAGGED REGIMENT.
I LOVE the ragged veterans of June,
Not your trim troop drill-marshalled for display
In gardens fine,— but such as dare the noon
With saucy faces by the public way.
Moth-mullein, with its moth-wing petals white,
Round Dandelion, and flaunting Bouncing-Bet,
The golden Butter-and-Eggs, and Ox-eye bright,
Wild Parsley, and tall Milkweed bee-beset.
Ha, sturdy tramps of Nature, mustered out
From garden service, scorned and set apart, —
There's not one member of your ragged rout
But wakes a warmth of welcome in my heart.
goung*
BORN in Monmouth, 111., 1847.
SCENES FROM "PENDRAGON."
[Pendragon. A Tragedy in Five Acts. First performed at Me Vicker's Theatre, Chicago,
5 December, 1881, with Lawrence Barrett as King Arthur. Reproduced, February,
1882, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York.]
ACT in. SCENE : The Queen's Closet.
[Stage discovered, dark and waiting. Lightning, thunder. The door C. is thrown
violently open, and enter GUINEVERE, breathless from her flight. A blaze of light-
ning, thro^lgh window, halts and dazzles her.]
/GUINEVERE. [Falling to her knees.] Shield and preserve me! Havel
^T here a shelter ?
Am I outcast ? Doth Nature too condemn me,
Adding her voice to this yet wilder storm,
Here, here, within ? [Rising.] Alack! and what is this
That I have wrought ? But, sure, he dare not follow,
Or if he should !— What do I fear ? What then ?
Ay, if he should ! Is it so much I ask ?
Only to know, for the last time — O friend! —
Is it so much ? Or, measured but by thine,
O faultless King, is then my guilt so great
That thou should'st rise from every darkened corner
To haunt me thus ? Art thou so faultless, truly ?
That which I am hast thou not served to make me ?
Hast thou not glory to thy mistress ? — Nay
To wedded wife! For what am I to thee ?
When hast thou looked upon me save with eyes that pass
366 WILLIAM YOU NO. [1681-88
Through and beyond, to her, my hated rival ?
As well were I the beggar of the lanes !
Wilt thou have all ? — botli this world, and the next ? —
Be served and feared, and yet drag after thee
Love, as a captive, but to dally with,
When grown aweary of the greater sport
Of crowns and sceptres ? Nay, but if thou wilt,
Dwell with thy phantoms I Lights, there! Vivien!
I will not see him. [At door (7.J Vivien! — How now ?
Not yet returned ! But have I then so far
Out-speeded her ? Or hath some evil hap —
That scarce could be.— So! so!— What's this I think on ?—
But yester-eve with Modred did she walk,
In the long corridor — nor seemed at ease,
But when I faced them
[A reverberating clang without.]
Hark! The thunder ? No—-
The great portcullis falling in its grooves !
And all without the sound of trumpet blown !
And now — the tramp — Hark! Ay — the tramp of horse!
[The clatter of a cavalcade without, R.]
Within the gates — Nor one alone, but many,
And at full speed ! O, am I then the dupe,
The very plaything of mine enemies ?
A plot ! a plot ! Yet if he be not crazed,
Hatli he not heard ? Hath he, too, not been warned ?
[Springing to door R. F., she throws the bar across it, and turns toward door C. At
the same instant, enter, door C.t LAUNCELOT.]
Ah,— Launcelot! What dost thou here ? Fly! Fly!
LAUN. My Queen
GUIS. O, fly!
LAUN. But am I not expected ? [Advancing.]
GUIN. Approach me not !
LAUN. Or dost thou now repent ?
Nay, but too late.
GUIN. Thou art entrapped.
LAUN. Entrapped ?
GUIN. Quick! while thou cansfc!
[The secret door L. F. opens. Enter VIVIEN.]
Viv. Then let me be thy guide,
Or else too late most truly shalt thou find it,
Forevermore.
GUIN. [Jo VIVIEN.] O, traitress!
Viv. Even so!
But not to thee I answer. {To LAUNCELOT.] Good my lord,
Sir Launcelot of the Lake, 'tis like my words
May seem to thee not over-maidenly ;
But I have such a little time for choice,
And needs must say my say — and thou must hear.
Sir, I have loved thee — though without return-
As well I know — and thou hast chosen, Sir,
To seem to know it not. And now I come,
1861-88] WILLIAM TO UNO.
To prove to thee what woman's love may do,
Even when scorned ; for know there is but one
Can save thee from these toils, and that is I.
GUIN. O, viie!
LAUN. [At her side.] Peace! peace!
Viv. I speak all truth, or none.
Before, behind, they lie in wait for thee —
Twelve oath-bound men, of Arthur's trustiest,
And thou with nothing but thy naked sword.
And still, because I will not have it so —
Because I rather choose to lay on thee
The burden of a debt thou canst not pay,
Nor yet forget, one door is left unguarded.
This have I done for thee. — Ask me not how —
Thou know'st the why. [Points to door through which she has come.]
There, at the turret's foot,
Thou'lt find my palfrey saddled. Mount, and ride,
I care not whither — Only take this with thee,
That unto Vivien thou ow'st thy life,
And unto her thy shame. And so, my lord,
Thanks, or no thanks, I am thy creditor,
Till death shall make us quits.
LAUN. Go! Christ forgive thee!
[Exit VIVIEN, door C., her gaze fixed triumphantly upon the QUEEN. The latter reels.
LAUNCELOT supports her.]
GUIN. [Covering her face.] O, hath she gone ?
LAUN. O, Guinevere ! My Queen !
GUIN. Queen ? Queen no more! Let me not look upon her!
But hath she gone ?
LAUN. Nay, rouse thee. [Extricates himself from Tier grasp, hurries up stage,
throws ~bar across door C.]
GUIN. O, my friend,
What wilt thou do ? What, now, are bolts or bars ?
But fly ! She loves thee. Trust her, Launcelot.
O, save thyself!
LAUN. [Returning to her side, his hand upon her lips.} Wilt thou be silent ?
Hist!
Mark now my words — nor answer, but obey,
Without a question. True it is, I think,
That she doth love me. Therefore will T trust her;
And therefore, through this door which she hath opened,
Tis thou shalt fly.
GUIN. I
LAUN. Thou! Dost understand ?
Then hear me well, and let each syllable
Of what I speak be graven on thy brain.
'Tis but three little leagues, by beaten ways,
Which well thou knowest, to a sanctuary,
But once beneath the shadow of whose towers,
Not all the violence of maddened men
Or kings can harm thee. Hast thou not, ere now.
O'er thrice that distance ridden to the death
WILLIAM YOUNG. [1861-88
Of fox or stag ? So ride to-night, for life,
And never doubt we'll smile at this hereafter,
To Almesbury!
GUIN. To Almesbury ?
LAUN. Ay ! Courage !
There trust the abbess only with thy secret,
And bide until I come.
GUIN. Until thou comest ?
LAUN. Have I not said ? Delay, and thou art lost.
Here will I tarry but a little space,
To turn aside the currents of pursuit.
GUIN. " A little space " ? — Ah, tell me not, my friend —
Thou — all unarmed
LAUN. Unarmed ? With this ? [Hand to sword.] Unarmed ?
GUIN. Beset with odds thou knowest not !
LAUN. What then ?
Hast thou forgot the fords of Celidon ?
Or pass of the White Horse ? And dost thou think
In such a cause, free-armed, and unencumbered —
But O, what wait we for ? One only kiss,
To seal my strength.
GUIN. Ah, no, no, no ! I dare not.
I dare not.
LAUN. Dare not ?
GUIN. Ah, my God ! the darkness !
The long, long, dreary way !
LAUN. What ! thou, afeard ?
GUIN. And thus to part with thee — O, cease, my friend.
Though thou art Launcelot, art thou not mortal ?
In vain! in vain! Why wilt thou trouble me ?
Here let me die. [Sinks to floor.}
LAUN. And do I hear aright ? •
Is this that Guinevere whom once I loved ? —
GUIN. O, pity me !
LAUN. That once proud peerless Queen,
Who with her eyes first taught me scorn of peril ?
GUIN. O, pity me!
LAUN. I do. I pity thee.
And thus I prove it. Since thou durst not choose
To win this certain safety for us both,
Why then, bide here ; and here, too, will I bide,
And here be hewn in pieces at thy feet.
I swear it. Hark ! They come !
GUIN. [Springing to her feet.] Enough — Farewell!
Take, then, thy kiss! [They embrace.]
LAUN. Dear love !
GUIN. The last!
LAUN. Not so !
GUIN. The kiss of death ; and O, condemn me not
That I have given it thee.
LAUN. What words are these ?
Thus do I answer them — May Heaven defend thee I
1861-88] WILLIAM YOUNG. 369
GUIN. And thee! and thee! O, God protect thee, Love I
Was it for this ?
LAUN. Yet though we die to-night,
This have we known.
GUIN. And canst thou, Love, forget ?
LAUN. And wilt thou, Love, remember ? Haste 1
GUIN. Yet stay!
LAUN. But for thy sake !
GUIN. One little moment more!
O, Launcelot, and wilt thou let me go ?
And was it but for this ? No more than this ?
LAUN. O, haste ! No more !
GUIN. No more, forever, then!
LAUN. I tell thee nay.
GUIN. Forever!
LAUN. [Urging the QUEEN through the secret door L. F., closes it behind her,
and throws his back against it.] And forever!
ACT iv. SCENE : A paved court-yard surrounded by massive and gloomy walls and tow-
ers. In wall C., at back, gates swinging inward, and revealing when open a passage,
at the further extremity of which a grated portcullis is arranged to fall. In tower,
R., oblique, great doors, approached by steps. Chime of bells, and chant heard
within, at curtain.
[GUINEVERE discovered, descending steps R., clad in the robe of a nun, with a breviary in
her hand.]
GUIN. [Heads.]
Ave, Regina ccelorum !
Ave, Domina angelorum !
Over and under tolls the convent bell,
Like a gray shuttle through the woof of sound —
Under and over, and the flying web
Tangles and ties itself about my heart —
Tangles and lifts me heavenward, and snaps ;
And through the silence, down from gloom to gloom,
I fall to utmost hell. O sisterhood
Of Almesbury, your prayers were made for saints,
Not sinners. What a fool of fools am I,
To breathe my supplications in a tongue
I know not, to a Heaven that knows not me!
"Queen among angels!" Ay, by so much more
Hath she forgot the little frets of earth
And all its voices. O conceit most vain !
That my poor plaint, of all the woful many,
Least heeded here, shall so on high prevail,
Above the clamor of the universe ! .
Why, e'en the daws about the turret-tops
Outshriek me; and doth not all nature go
Wrangling f rflm dawn till even with one cry :
"Help! Save! " — And who shall answer? Who shall lay
The all-forgiving hand upon my head ?
Shall ye, my sisters ? Deftly though ye lift
Your skirts above the drabble of the ways,
VOL. x.— 24
370 WILLIAM YOUNG. [1881-88
Do I not know the plague-spots in your hearts ?
The small self-righteousness, the lust, the greed,
And spite of your small station ? Had ye worn
My purple, and my limbs been clad upon
With your dull hodden gray — who knows ? — Or thou,
Dubric — High Saint of Britain — with thy flock
Of aping acolytes, wilt thou assure
My soul's salvation — thou, that art not sure
Whether thine own soul yet shall pass the gates —
Dismiss my great temptation, with a waft
Of thy sleek hand, and bid me sin no more ?
O, thou, the Highest, Ruler over all,
To whom alike the cowl'd and crowned dead
Must answer on that day, desert us not,
Whate'er thy gracious purposes may be,
ITnto each other's pity ! That were woe
More to be dreaded than the doom of fire.
Behold how all these myriad pygmy tribes,
That swell the mingled hum from holt and glebe,
Do mock thy greatness ! Whether we be clad
In serge or samite, each doth vaunt himself
The vilest of God's creatures — save his neighbor —
Sins while 'tis summer — pranks about the fields,
And ere the winter of his life doth learn
His proper "Miserere," which he chirps
Like a belated cricket i' the sedge,
And dreams that straightway from the gates of bliss,
Above the desert spaces of the wind,
The whirlwind, and the thunder, and the storm
Of prayers and curses blown about the world,
All Heaven stoops to listen. — Nay, but this
Is heresy. Come, scoffer, to thy task!
[Reads,] Salve radix,
Salve poria,
Ex qua mundo
Lux est orta !
Gaude, Virgo glorioso, !
THE FLOWER-SELLER.
[Wishmakers' Town. 1885.]
MYRTLE, and eglantine,
For the old love, and the new !
And the columbine,
With its cap and bells, for folly !
And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth ! and the rue,
For melancholy 1
1861-88] ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARD7.
But of all the blossoms that blow,
Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if you may,
This gentle guest,
Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray,
Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low
Upon her breast.
For the orange flower
Ye may buy as ye will ; but the violet of the wood
Is the love of maidenhood ;
And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
No, never again shall he meet with a flower that shall seem
So sweet and pure ; and forever, in after years,
At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
The past shall arise,
And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise,
Though he stand in the shambles of death.
BOBN in Andover, Mass., 1847.
IN THE CHAMBER OF CHARLEMAGNE.
[Passe Rose. 1889.]
SEEING the attention of all diverted and the bronze doors momentarily
. deserted, Passe Rose pushed the heavy panel far enough to slip within,
and without pause or deliberation ran up the broad stairs she saw before her.
At their summit extended a long corridor, down which she advanced hur-
riedly, till the clamor of many voices and the metallic ring of dishes caused
her to retreat. Passing thus quickly from the noise and light without into
the gloom and solitude within, she heard every heart-beat, and felt her cour-
age desert her. At the sound of approaching footsteps, she began to run,
and at the first door she met glided behind its tapestry screen. This door
gave access to the great hall where the noble youth of the kingdom assem-
bled to listen to the teachings of the school of the palace, and adjoined the
private apartments of the king. Passe Eose had no sooner lifted the curtain
than she saw a page, who, sitting on the floor at the entrance of the passage
to the king's chamber, was amusing himself with a parchment, from which
hung a multitude of tasselled strings. Seeing that she was observed, she
went forward timidly, gaining courage, however, at sight of the pretty face
of the boy. The latter, whose duty it was to summon the chaplain when the
king had finished his reading, occupying himself with no business but his
own, evinced only a lively curiosity in the young girl, whose presence prom-
372 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. [1861-88
ised to relieve the tedium of his waiting. Passe Eose, on her side, having
no fear of a boy, approached with all the unconcern she could affect, smil-
ing, her eyes fixed upon the silken fringe, but alert for every sound.
" What hast thou there ?" she asked, stooping over the parchment in the
boy's hands.
" The Oracle of Truth," he replied, looking up into her face.
"The Oracle?" whispered Passe Kose, glancing sidewise through the
doorway. "Pray, what is that ?"
"Choose one of these strings," said the boy. Passe Rose reached out her
hand. "Nay, shut thine eyes, then choose, and I will tell thee what will
befall."
"Canst thou read ?" asked Passe Eose, observing the characters on the
parchment.
"Nay, but I know the answers by heart. This one with the blue string
reads thus: 'Beware: after honey, gall!' But choose; only close thine
eyes."
Forgetting for the moment her purpose, and fascinated by the mysterious
parchment, Passe Eose shut her eyes, and, first signing herself, touched one
of its pendent strings. * ' What is it ? " she asked, opening her eyes and bend-
ing forward with anxiety.
The boy clapped his hands, laughing. "The yellow, the yellow ! What
luck ! See," — pointing with his finger, — " * A great happiness is on its way
to thee.'"
Passe Eose stood up, her eyes dilating, her bosom swelling. She could not
speak. This great hall was not large enough for her to breathe in. Stooping
quickly, she kissed the boy's face, then disappeared in the corridor which
led to the chamber of the king.
"Ho! Knowest thou not he is within?" called the page. Passe Eose
neither paused nor turned. "Ho, I tell thee !" he called again, springing to
his feet. But Passe Eose had already disappeared. " Seigneur !" cried the
boy, terrified by such audacity, and running across the hall to tell the chief
of the pages that a strange girl had entered the sleeping-chamber of the
king.
On emerging from the obscurity of the passage-way into the light, Passe
Eose was still smiling. She paused a moment on the threshold of the cham-
ber, then stepped upon its mosaic floor, and stood still again. The room was
empty, yet, as when gazing at the altar in the chapel of Immaburg, sure of
some invisible presence, she searched its length and breadth, her heart beat-
ing fast with expectation, and her members numb with awe. Before her
was the king's bed, low and wide, with its ermine cover and pillows of broid-
ered silk, partly concealed by curtains hung from swinging rods. On the
floor beside it stretched the red skin of a fox, and upon the table stood the
king's cup and the candelabrum, whose six candles of wax indicated the hour
of the day ; for the king had not yet received the famous brass water-clock,
damaskeened with gold, presented to him by the Caliph Aroun-al-Easchid,
whose falling balls sounded the hours night and day. Three of these candles
were already consumed ; it would therefore be more than an hour before the
1661-88] ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. 373
king would send for his chaplain. From the bed Passe Rose's eyes followed
the tapestry which hid the wall to the height of her shoulders, and above
which a carved shelf made the circuit of the apartment. Behind the objects
upon this shelf the walls displayed flowers, painted in red and yellow and
other colors, of such marvellous forms and hues that Passe Rose could think
of nothing but the beautiful fields of Paradise. Moreover, above the door
opposite her she saw an image of the blessed St. Martin, who divided his
cloak with a beggar ; and the face of this image, rudely carved though it was,
certainly smiled upon her, while its lips, albeit of wood, moved visibly, as if
saying, "A great happiness is on its way to thee." Persuaded that the saint
really addressed her, she approached, her two hands crossed upon her bosom,
when she perceived that the sounds came from within the door, and sud-
denly
" Turn over some pages," said a clear voice, as it were at her very side.
She started back, but catching sight again of the encouraging counte-
nance of the saint, murmured a quick prayer, and advancing to the door
laid her ear close to the golden lions of the tapestry. Some one was speaking.
She held her breath, and listened.
' ' But now as regards loftiness of place, it is altogether ridiculous to be so
influenced by the fact that the demons inhabit the air, and we the earth, as
to think that on that account they are to be put before us ; for in this way
we put all the birds before ourselves. But the birds, when they are weary
with flying, or require to repair their bodies with food, come back to the
earth to rest or to feed, which the demons, they say, do not. Are they there-
fore inclined to say that the birds are superior to us, and the demons supe-
rior to the birds ? But if it be madness to think so, there is no reason why we
should think that, on account of their inhabiting a loftier element, the de-
mons have a claim to our religious submission."
This passage excited in Passe Rose so lively an interest that she forgot
everything. Her face flushed redder than the fabric next her cheek, and
in her eagerness to catch every word she parted the fringe, revealing to
the reader a pair of dark eyes, which glistened like dew-drops among the
silk marigolds of the tapestry. Disconcerted by this apparition, the clerk
paused.
" Read on," said the king sharply.
The clerk would have obeyed, but the place was lost ; in vain did he seek
it with his finger, for he could not wrest his eyes from the girl's face ; so that
the king, following his gaze, and turning quickly, discovered Passe Rose
standing terrified in the doorway.
Whether because his face inspired confidence (for in the presence of some
we are at our best, as in that of others every good quality deserts us without
reason), or whether because her courage rose when put to the proof, no
sooner did the king's eye meet hers than her terror left her, and with a firm
step she advanced into the room, rendering gaze for gaze. She had taken no
thought of what she should say, but, going in, she remembered how, when a
little girl dancing before Queen Hildegarde at the Easter fetes, a young
chamberlain came with a message, and, bending upon one knee, said, "In
374 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. [1861-88
the name of God, who suffered for us, I salute you " ; and how the queen
made answer, "In the name of God, who was our ransom, hail." These fine
words came back to her and were on her lips as she approached, when, just
beyond the king's chair, she saw Agnes of Solier, and stopped, mute and
staring. A hundred times the space in which Passe Hose stood thus trem-
bling like a tense bowstring would not suffice to tell all she felt and saw in
that moment of silence, though in reality it was but the length of two
breaths. All which before had seemed sure and easy became suddenly hope-
less and of no avail, while every evil fear she had once lightly set aside was
uppermost. How could she contend with a king's daughter ? She had killed
the queen's favorite ! What if, as the prior had said, the papers were of
other matters ? Who would then believe her ? Where were her witnesses ?
It was perhaps a dream, and she made a little movement of the fingers to
feel whether the wounds caused by the Saxon's knife were still there ; seeing
at the same time the white hands of Agnes of Solier and her own, brown
with toil and stained with blood. A confused recollection of what the clerk
had read crossed her mind. " Demon of hell," whispered a voice in her ear,
"the abbot, the prior, the monk, will swear to it, and the captain also,
whom thou hast possessed." "Ay, whom I possess," she replied ; and she
heard the page saying to her, "A great happiness is on its way to thee."
She repeated the words softly, "A great happiness, a great happiness," as if
they could conjure away her fears, clinging with her eyes to the king, and
resisting with all her strength the challenging gaze of Agnes of Solier. The
latter, no less surprised than Passe Kose, stared back in wonder.
" Who art thou, and what dost thou wish ?" asked the king, astonished at
her sudden appearance and agitated face.
At the sound of his voice, the words broke like a torrent from Passe Eose's
lips : "This one I found by the fish-ponds," — she had thrust the papers in
his hand, — " and this the Saxon gave the monk for the prior. Read, read ! "
and drawing the cord through the wax seal with her trembling fingers, she
spread the parchment on his knee. " I was in the tower ; there came two,
the prior and another, — then the Saxon maid who sat at supper at Imma-
burg. I heard what they said. Look ! there are the prints of her knife ! the
knife was for thee."
"Peace !" exclaimed the king, rising to his feet, and crushing the parch-
ment in his hand. It was a cry rather than a command, for incoherent as
were the words he heard, they were sharper than any knife to his pride. He
stood for a moment in doubt, and then, as if convinced by the girl's fearless
manner, sank back into his chair, opening the papers slowly, and fixing
from time to time, as he read, a searching look upon Passe Rose. Her heart
was beating violently, but her fear was over, and she watched the king's face
boldly. Every trace of anger and distress had fallen from it, as a mantle
falls from the shoulder to the ground. He neither started nor frowned, as
she had thought to see him do ; nevertheless, she was content, for his eyes
were good to look at, and she felt the happiness of which she had been fore-
told running, as the tide runs in the sea-meadows, to her finger-tips. She
wished to laugh aloud, to dance, to sing, and at the same time tears of which
1861-88] ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. 375
she could give no account dimmed her vision, causing the garnet in the clasp
of the king's cloak to swell and glisten like a bubble of blood. She heard
the clerk closing his book and retiring softly behind her, but when the king
turned to Agnes of Solier with a sign that she should go also, Passe Bose
reached out her hand.
"I pray thee let this lady listen/' she said entreatingly.
Surprised beyond measure, the king knit his brow, looking from Passe
Hose's eager face to the flushed countenance of Agnes of Solier, who had
risen to her feet, and stood beside his chair, her hand resting upon his.
" Speak on," he said, feeling the hand trembling upon his own.
Anxious lest his patience should be exhausted, divided in her mind as to
what was trivial and what important, Passe Eose began, relating her meet-
ing with Gui of Tours in the wood of Hesbaye, her adventure in the abbey
and consultation with the sorceress (though this were a forbidden thing),
and then her return to the abbey at midnight to tell Friedgis what the gos-
pels had said, and how the captain had promised to seek the Saxon maid in
the household of the king. "It was going down the hill after the prior was
gone that I found the paper," she said, pointing to the parchment, "for the
moon came up while I was hid."
So candid was her speech and so eager her haste that the king listened in
silent wonder, though he saw her oft bewildered between two stories, one for
him and one for Agnes of Solier. But here she paused, and a sob rose in her
throat.
"Father and mother have I none," she continued, "because of the pest ;
and they being dead, I went wherever the wind blew, with dancing-girls and
jugglers, — it was then I danced at Chasseneuil, before Queen Hildegarde,
— and afterwards with merchants. But I parted from these at the fair of St.
Denis because of a certain Greek," — here Passe Eose looked full at Agnes of
Solier ; "for love is like God's winds, coming at no man's bidding and dis-
pelled by no command, except it be the Christ's, as told in the gospels. Af-
terwards, till now," — for the first time she hesitated, — "I lived with Werdric,
the goldsmith of Maestricht, and his wife, Jeanne, till — till I came to Im-
maburg."
"What brought thee to Immaburg?" interrupted Agnes of Solier quickly.
The question was rude, and Passe Eose grew hot and cold by turns. A de-
fiant light flashed in her eyes, but she kept them fixed upon the king. "If
one should mock thee to thy face, what wouldst thou do ?" she said, lip and
voice quivering together.
"By the Lord of Heaven !" cried the king, startled by this unexpected
question, but liking well her boldness, "were I the stronger"
"Nay, the weaker."
Perplexed, the king observed her in silence.
" When I returned from the abbey," continued Passe Eose in a hard voice,
"the night was far gone, and the goldsmith met me at the garden gate.
'Wanton !' he said. For that reason," looking at Agnes of Solier, "I left
my home, wandering two days in the wood of Hesbaye, and came to Imma-
burg, as thou sawest, not knowing where I was. There it was I first saw the
376 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY, [1861-88
Saxon maid. She came by stealth into the strangers' hall, and gave these
papers to the monk as he sat by the fire, bidding him deliver them to the
?rior. Why I took them from him I know not, except it were God's will, for
thought no more of them till yesternight, being distraught at what the
page told me."
"What did he tell thee ?" asked Agnes of Solier.
"That thou wert a king's daughter, and betrothed to Gui of Tours."
The king's face flushed red, but Agnes of Solier, pale as the holy napkin,
neither spoke nor stirred.
"What happened at supper thou knowest," continued Passe Eose.
"But what happened afterwards I know not !" cried Agnes of Solier, torn
between her jealousy and her pride.
"I am come to tell thee," answered Passe Hose with dignity. "When
thou wert gone, I said to the captain, ' Though I were the meanest slave in
the kingdom, what God hath given the king's daughter he hath given to me,
and I yield it to none except at his altar.' With that I ran to the chapel to
pray and seek counsel of the priest. But because in my anger I had cast
down the image of the Virgin above my bed, God would not listen to me ;
the priest at Immaburg is witness that he took away my senses, and when I
got them back I was in the wagon on the high-road. Dost thou remember
how the stream was swollen at the ford ? I was there, and while they sound-
ed the water I heard the voices of women in the Avagon next to mine. One
said that the heart of the captain was plainly mine, and could not be had of
me for all the gold of the Huns."
"Insolent !" murmured Agnes of Solier, tightening her fingers on the
king's hand. But the king, chary of words, waited.
" Another," pursued Passe Eose, "replied that it were easier for a dancing-
girl to give herself to a captain than for a king's daughter to forget an injury.
'Mark well what I tell thee,' she said : 'one hath his heart ; the other will
have his head.' ' Liar ! ' I said to myself. ' What a king's daughter will do
I know not, but what a dancing-girl can do I will show thee.' So, when the
ford was passed, I cut a hole through the skins with my knife, and Avent mine
own way."
A gesture of surprise escaped the king, who had risen from his chair, and
was pacing slowly to and fro between the door and the window. At this mo-
ment the troop was filing through the archway into the square, and the Gas-
con, followed by the prior, was opening the wicket gate leading to the room
where the body of Eothilde lay.
It were idle to deny that Passe Eose was conscious of the greatness of her
action, for even the angels serve God with pleasure ; and if it be that they
rejoice over the sinner's repentance, some echo, as it were, of this rejoicing
is borne to the soul Avhich doeth well, for its encouragement and satisfaction.
Yet so little did Passe Eose think to Avin applause that she mistook the
king's gesture for a sign of impatience. " I am coming to it fast," she said,
pointing to the parchment, and hurrying on to tell how she hid in the sheep-
fold, how Jeanne came bereft of reason and Avithout the poAver to know her
own, and all she saAV and heard from the tower while Jeanne slept.
1861-88] ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. 3^
Not once during this recital did the king cease his walk or lift his eyes
from the floor till Passe Rose told how Friedgis was slain ; "I heard a sword
drawn, and the rustle of leaves underfoot ; afterwards, from the wood, a cry
— and then the Saxon maid said "
She stopped short. The king stood before her, his brow knit as with pain
and his face gloomy with suppressed passion. " Well, what said she ?" he
asked, fixing upon Passe Rose his piercing eye.
"'Bring me now thy Greek, and I will show him the way to the king's
bed.'"
The king drew himself up to his full height. For a moment he was silent,
his eyes shining with points of flame. Then he struck his palms together,
whispering a few words to the page who at this signal came in haste from the
adjoining room, and, returning to the window, gazed thoughtfully into the
court.
Passe Rose, motionless, stood speechless. It was one of those silences which
one does not dare to break. " Continue," said the king at length, in a calm
voice.
' ' When the Saxon was gone into the wood, the prior concerted with his
companion how they should get the papers from the captain that night, by
fair means or foul," pursued Passe Rose, stealing a glance at Agnes of Solier.
' ' ' Ask her where this captain lies,' said the soldier. ' Nay/ replied the pri-
or, 'it will alarm her. Hi^t ! she comes.'"
"Aye, she comes," murmured the king, beckoning to Passe Rose. "See."
Obeying his motion, she approached, holding her breath with the pre-
sentiment of impending shock. The throng had followed the troop into the
square, and the court was empty. From the farther angle a litter, borne by
soldiers, issued from the shadow of the gallery. Over the litter a cloth was
spread, and on the cloth a cross glittered in the sun.
Passe Rose, leaning forward, drew a quick breath. " The Saxon ! " she
whispered.
"Slain, yesternight, by the monk."
"By the monk !" gasped Passe Rose.
"Yonder, in the square."
" Nay, it was I ! " she cried vehemently, grasping the king's arm. " Look,
the marks of her knife ! My mother spake in her dreams when the prior
was gone. I laid my hand to her mouth, but it was too late. Before I could
get to my knees, she" — pointing to the bier — " was on the stair. I caught
the blade in my hand as her blow fell, and then we locked, without breath to
speak, she above, and I below. God is my witness I had done her no harm but
that I knew she or I must die, and die I would not till the captain was warned,
for the prior's words were in my ears. Time was lacking to pray, but I saw
the stars, and strained leg and arm till her fingers gave way and my throat
was free. Then I stood up alone — how it happened I know not, but I heard
the waters splash, and, once, a cry." She stopped, her bosom heaving, her
eyes fixed upon the litter. " Jesu !" she murmured, her voice falling to a
whisper, " it was I."
The king regarded her in a stupor of wonder and admiration. He strode
378 ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY. [1861-88
back and forth from wall to wall, looking now at Passe Rose, and now, un-
easily, at Agnes of Solier, who, pale and speechless, stared back with eyes of
stone. Suddenly, with an abrupt gesture, he stopped before Passe Rose.
" If the King of heaven gave thee thy heart's wish, what wouldst thou
ask?"
" The reason of my mother Jeanne/' said Passe Rose.
The king started. '' I will ask it this day in my prayers. And of me" —
his voice trembling — " what wouldst thou ?"
"To give me leave to go in peace to Maastricht, and then to send thither
my mother, whom I left in the house by the gate at Frankenburg : for if she
see me in the garden combing wool, in my own attire, her reason will re-
turn."
"Afterward," said the king, a shadow of vexation passing over his face.
Indeed, it were hard to say which was suitor to the other, for his voice fal-
tered, and hers was firm and clear. " That is not all. Afterward," he re-
peated impatiently.
The color deepened on Passe Rose's cheeks, she trembled violently, and,
no longer able to support his gaze, she turned her shining eyes to Agues of
Solier, and threw herself at her feet.
" By the Mother of God ! " exclaimed the king, taking Agnes of Solier's
hand and seating her in his own chair, "thou art right. She is a king's
daughter. Ask her, and thou shalt see what a king's daughter can do."
And stooping to Agnes of Solier, he kissed her on the forehead, and left the
room.
If love and death could be made subject to will and reason, so that instead
of loving love and fearing death, as nature and instinct compel us, we should
love death and fear love, then had Passe Rose never gotten from her knees
when the Saxon's knife threatened her, nor thrown herself at the feet of
Agnes of Solier. But in concerns of love and death nature is stronger than
reason, and impulse will countervail consideration ; and though at the
king's going Passe Rose felt shame drying the source of her tears, and pride
nipping the buds of her heart's promise, yet, "If I rise," she said to herself,
"all is lost" ; and thus bowed down by the weight of her love, before lesser
motives could sway her she felt warm arms pressed about her neck, her face
was drawn upwards, and she saw two eyes shining in tears like her own.
No word was spoken. They thought no more of their grief and joy than of
the coarse wool and silken tissue which clothed them, but like two naked
souls fresh from God's hands gazed at one another.
"Thou hast seen him?" murmured Agnes of Solier. Passe Rose's eyes
answered. " And he loves thee — he has told thee" — Passe Rose buried her
face in the broidered dress, her shoulders shaken with sobbing. It seemed
to her that she could not bear the kiss she felt upon her hair, nor the arms'
tender pressure.
" By the Blessed Jesus," she exclaimed, struggling to her feet, " would I
might die for thee ! "
1861-88]
HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS.
379
BOKN in Buffalo, N. Y., 1847.
BUMBLE-BEE.
[The Thankless Muse. 1885.]
A S I lay yonder in tall grass
-£^- A drunken bumble-bee went past
Delirious with honey toddy.
The golden sash about his body
Could scarce keep in his swollen belly
Distent with honeysuckle jelly.
Rose-liquor and the sweet-pea wine
Had filled his soul with song divine ;
Deep had he drunk the warm night
through ;
His hairy thighs were wet with dew.
Full many an antic he had played
While the world went round through
sleep and shade.
Oft had he lit with thirsty lip
Some flower-cup's nectared sweets to sip,
When on smooth petals he would slip
Or over tangled stamens trip,
And headlong in the pollen rolled,
Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold.
Or else his heavy feet would stumble
Against some bud and down he'd tumble
Amongst the grass ; there lie and grumble
In low, soft bass — poor maudlin bumble!
With tipsy hum on sleepy wing
He buzzed a glee — a bacchic thing
Which, wandering strangely in the moon,
He learned from grigs that sing in June,
Unknown to sober bees who dwell
Through the dark hours m waxen cell.
When south wind floated him away
The music of the summer day
Lost something : sure it was a pain
To miss that dainty star-light strain.
HUGH LATIMER.
HIS lips amid the flame outsent
A music strong and sweet,
Like some unearthly instrument
That's played upon by heat.
As spice- wood tough, laid on the coal,
Sets all its perfume free,
The incense of his hardy soul
Rose up exceedingly.
To open that great flower, too cold
Were sun and vernal rain;
But fire has forced it to unfold,
Kor will it shut again.
WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
THE SINGER OF ONE SONG.
-| I E sang one song and died — no more but that:
-iJ A. single song and carelessly complete.
He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,
Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,
To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,
Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.
A few slow beads, blood-red and honey-sweet,
Oozed from the grape, which burst and spilled its fat.
But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest things
That weight his pack, will carry diamonds long.
So through the poets' orchestra, which weaves
One music from a thousand stops and strings,
Pierces the note of that immortal song: —
"High over all the lonely bugle grieves."
azwitam f enr?
BORN in Hartford, Conn., 1847.
A LITTLE DINNER.
[The Brown Stone Boy, and Other Queer People. 1888.]
I REGRET to have to use so unpleasant a description, — and nothing in
the world would induce me to do it outside of this confidential circle,
— but Juliet Scatterbury — who afterwards became Mrs. Bang — was one of
the most superlative of liars. Oh, it was so admitted. You should hear the
gentle irony of Sam Lambert's remarks about her ! His wife checks him, it
is true, as to the particular case here to be described, believing that to have
been largely her own fault, but the fact remains that Juliet was an egre-
gious follower of Ananias and Sapphira.
There was wide range and ingenuity in her inventions ; no one ever ap-
peared to take a more genuine comfort in mendacity than she. It often
seemed as if she would rather employ it than truth, even when the latter
would have answered the purpose better. She sometimes wore a rapt and
imaginative air as if she thoroughly believed in her statements herself. She
would romance, for instance, about her early life, tell you of journeys she
had made, thrilling adventures she had met with, priceless jewels and won-
drous ball-dresses she had worn, and unmeasured social attentions that had
been showered upon her. She would make small scruple, if it suited her
whim, of claiming she had owned the largest steam-yacht in the world, had
written, anonymously, the last popular novel, or had sometimes played the
parts of Ristori or Bernhardt, appearing under proper disguise. With all
LA
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 3g][
this, she was young, pretty, possessed the art of dressing well, and was ac-
complished in several ways.
Her career in the large Western city of — let us say — Minneapolis was but
a brief one. Her family were not in affluent circumstances ; they had moved
about a good deal; her father had something to do with contracts. But
they were much respected, and as for Juliet she was the associate of the
leading people. While there she was not thoroughly found out. There were
always some who believed in her, thought her a very sprightly and entertain-
ing person, and confidently expected her to make a great match. The young
men in particular did not credit all the ill they heard of her, but laid a good
part of this to the natural jealousy of their sisters and cousins, her rivals.
It was probably not till individuals from different quarters of the country
began to meet casually and compare notes about her that the full measure of
her iniquities came out.
Now, Juliet Scatterbury also confidently counted on making a brilliant
match. When she removed to New York, and, in some unaccountable way,
made one of quite the opposite sort instead, she was still anxious that an im-
pression to that effect should go out among the denizens of the place she had
left. The view, in fact, prevailed there, from some artful hints let fall in a
few letters she had sent back, that, though the marriage had been a very
quiet one, it was due to a recent death in Mr. Bang's family ; that it covered
in reality a good deal of solid magnificence, and that her position in the world
was a highly enviable one.
She had, in truth, married a club man, and the son of a club man, a fellow
of good intentions enough, but not at all enterprising and with no very defi-
nite means of support. They lived in a small flat, in a respectable neighbor-
hood, where everything was, as it were, something else. Their bedstead, for
instance, when off duty, was a mantelpiece ; their piano a refrigerator, and
the principal arm-chair a coal-box. About the only genuine piece of furni-
ture was an easel, holding some photo-engravings. This gave an air of ele-
gant space, and served no extraneous purpose save to suggest to Mr. Bang
his standing pun as to the facility with which it also might have been some-
thing else.
This manner of living was Juliet's own doing ; she was still brimful of
vanity and active social push.
They had some prosperous acquaintances who befriended them ; among
these, a Mrs. Lambert, a former schoolmate of Juliet's, a friend of her hus-
band, and a person, it would seem, of quite phenomenal good-nature.
"Poor little thing!" said Mrs. Lambert. "And her husband has the
makings of such a good fellow about him, and they have so much to contend
with."
Many the quiet dinner, therefore, they had at her house, and many the
comfortable drive had Juliet in her carriage.
As to Mrs. Bang's peculiar trait of invention, she probably employed it
outside of the house, at this time, as briskly as ever, but she did not employ
it at home, having found out from Jim, in very emphatic form, soon after
their marriage, that he did not approve of it.
3g2 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
One afternoon she rushed in, in a state of much excitement, and said to
Jim :
" I have just met the Gradshaws of Minneapolis — a mother and daughter,
you know — the most prominent people there. They were at Arnold's, and
are staying in town a short time, at the Bolingbroke. I hardly knew how I
should get away from them, but I made a great palaver about intending to
go and see them immediately, and escaped under cover of the confusion."
" Oh," said Jim, with but a languid interest, looking for a fresh cigar in
a Japanese jug on the mantelpiece.
" I wish we could think of some way of entertaining them without letting
them come near us. Our fate is in their hands ; whatever they report, when
they go back to Minneapolis, will settle it. I told them we were all upset
with house-cleaning. If they should once see how we live "
" Well, we haven't any patent on it, and can't expect to keep it to our-
selves always. I don't know as there's any invention of ours they'd want to
steal very much, unless it's the way that piano plays sonatas on the butter
and eggs, when you touch the keys."
" Jim, you don't quite understand. I guess you'd .want to produce a good
impression too, in the place where you used to live and were brought up.
They seem to think I've made a — a rich marriage ; that we are great swells,
you know, and rolling in luxury."
" They've got left, haven't they ? Well, then, I see nothing for it but to
pretend to be such swells we couldn't possibly associate with anybody so
much beneath us. We must cut their acquaintance."
Mrs. Bang repeated this same source of anxiety to her friend Mrs. Lam-
bert, when she happened to drop in upon the latter the next morning.
" They live a thousand miles away, and will not turn up here again in no-
body knows how long," she recited complainingly. " Why can't I think of
something to do for them ? If I could only give them a little dinner in such
a charming house as yours. Why cannot such things be done ? Why could
not one go to a friend and say, ' Here, just lend me your beautiful house for
one evening ' ? It wouldn't be such a very great tax upon them, and might
do such an enormous amount of good to somebody else."
" It can be done," said Mrs. Lambert, whose amiability sometimes ran to
quixotic extremes. " You shall have my house for any evening you may se-
lect— provided it be within the week, for after that, unfortunately, I expect
visitors."
" Beware, I may take you at your word."
" That is just how I mean to be taken," said her hostess, warming with
the idea. " It will not incommode us in the least. Mr. Lambert is at the
South, and the date of his return is indefinite, and my parents, whom I had
been expecting this week to begin their annual visit to us, have written to
say that they have put it off a few days longer. I will go to the opera on that
night, and take care not to return too early."
" It is too kind of you. Of course I shall only say that we are in the house
of one of our friends for a short time," said Mrs. Bang. " If they happen to
think that our own is just as good, and is closed for repairs or something of
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 333
the sort, why, we can't help that, can we ? " To this extent alone Mrs. Lam-
bert became a sharer in the proposed deception.
" Oh, here, no nonsense ! " said Jim, when he heard of the plan.
' ' I will do it/' responded Juliet.
She explained it to him, and began with feverish energy to carry out her
preparations for it. It was necessary to manoeuvre somewhat for the proper
date. The best would be that just previous to her intended guests leaving
town ; otherwise they might turn up again, in some awkward way, at her
supposed residence, and then all would be lost. She discovered that they
were to go on the 24th, and that their tickets and sleeping-car berths were
already taken, and, accordingly, invited them for the 23d — addressing to
them somewhat the following discourse :
" It has been the greatest grief to me ever since you have been here that
we are so upset that we could not receive you at our house ; b1..*, thank
heaven, in a day or two everything will be in order, and you positively must
dine with us on the 23d. I cannot think of letting you go back without a
glimpse of our interior, modest as it is. It will please my dear friends at
Minneapolis to know that you have seen it and broken bread with us. And
my husband as well as myself will be inconsolable if you will not promise to
make us a long visit on your next coming to town."
By such hospitable insistence she managed to secure the Gradshaws on her
own date. They had not intended to go out at all that evening, but rather
to reserve themselves for the fatigues of their long journey, which was to
begin at a seasonable hour on the following morning.
A cab deposited them before a handsome house in West Thirty-seventh
street. All, both without and within, accorded with what they were pre-
pared to expect of the good fortune of Juliet Scatter bury.
Mrs. Juliet met them in the hall and went upstairs with them herself.
The door below being heard to shut again, she left them and hurried down
to say a word, by way of warning to Jim. It was characteristic of that rather
slow-moving person that he had only at this moment arrived, leaving him-
self no time to become more familiar with his surroundings.
" Of course you will take care to sustain me in all that I say, Jim," she
said. " We may have to make a few harmless little— a — efforts, to carry out
our position."
Jim began to grumble, but, at this moment, the guests were heard coming
downstairs.
Mrs. Gradshaw had a bustling, assertive way with her, and was evidently
a person used to much consideration. Her daughter was of the quieter sort,
yet quite ready to echo all her opinions, the more especially in the present
case as she wholly agreed with them. The two professed themselves de-
lighted with everything.
"Such comfort, such good taste ! We thought we had a good deal, but I
begin to see now, we don't half know how to live," explained the elder.
" Everything is perfect. You really must excuse me if I stare round a lit-
tle." She put up her eyeglass, first at one wall of the parlor, then at the
other. " You say there is a separate bath-room for each sleeping-apartment ?
384 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
And, then, all this patent ventilation, and hot-air supply, and electrical
attachments, and the sliding shutters— it is perfect, perfect."
" There is one thing poor Jim insists upon ; I don't know that he is such
d particularly selfish individual, but he will have comfort."
Fortunately, at this time, Jim had led Miss Gradshaw to the front win-
dow, and they were gazing out of it at the dimly discerned architecture of
the neighborhood.
" What does the vapor-bath attachment connect with ? It seems so con-
venient. We must have one too/' continued Mrs. Gradshaw.
Juliet was a little flustered. " The — the elevator, I believe," she said, and
then launched out into a torrent of words, intended to mystify her visitor
and carry her over this tight place. " And all the furnace-pipes, and elec-
tric bells, and range, and burglar-alarms, and stationary tubs, and every-
thing, a. ? hydrostatic, pneumatic, interchangeable, and self-acting. We
wouldn't be without them for anything."
The rugs, portieres, astral lamps, an elaborate piece of statuary, and the
pottery, even to a choice collection of old lustre-ware, were a subject on
which she was much more nearly at home. She drew attention to some of
these things of her own accord, and deftly invented the occasions on which
they had acquired them. The portraits were a more difficult field. Still,
Juliet had thought it quite probable she might have to respond to some
comments about them, and — though her answers were left chiefly to the in-
spiration of the moment — she did not shrink from the ordeal. She had hur-
ried round just before the arrival of the guests, and put away most of the
small family photographs, porcelain-types, and the like that bestrew the
usual American household, and replaced them from an album full of similar
mementos of her own ; but the framed pieces were naturally too heavy to be
treated in this summary fashion. She proceeded to account for the large
heads of the Clamptons, Mrs. Lambert's father and mother, by saying they
were a dear old great aunt and uncle of her own, who had always been ex-
tremely devoted to her. They had sent their portraits on their last birthday
as a token of their warm regard, — the birthdays of both occurring, by a sin-
gular coincidence, on the same date.
Mrs. Gradshaw paused before a painting of Mr. Lambert, in Huntington's
best bank-president manner, including a red curtain, a column, a table, and
a globe.
" Who is this ? " she asks.
"Jim's — that is, Mr. Bang's father." To have made it any more remote
connection she thought would have necessitated too elaborate an accounting
for the principal place given it.
" Mr. Bang's father, so young ? "
There was in reality but little difference in the ages of the two men.
" Oh, it was taken a long time ago, you know ; and it really is remarkable
how young he does look for his age. It is noticed by everybody."
" And who is this ? " She stops now before the likeness of the Lambert's
boy, now absent at boarding-school, painted with an orange and a hoop in
either hand.
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 385
" Oh, that is only a fancy piece/' replies Juliet, nonchalantly.
" Oh, I thought it must be a portrait ; it's so very like one."
"It's Louis XIV. at the battle of — how execrable my memory is ! — Of
course I mean before the battle. It's from some old painting. I forget what
— but I want you to look at this."
She escaped in this way similar inquiry as to the likeness of Lambert's
daughter, diverting her guests' attention to a valuable picture of the Munich
school that hung near by. She thought good to affect to scorn it.
" I have never had any patience with it," she said. " Did you ever see
such sheep and peasants ? Jim sat at Leavitt's sale like grim death till he
got it. It cost him ten thousand dollars. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I actually
cried the night he brought it home."
Jim, coming up, had caught the last words of this, and his eyes opened
widely, but a maid, of a veteran air, now appeared at the portiere announc-
ing dinner.
" We have had to let our butler go for to-day ; one of his family is sick,
and we shall have to try to put up with the girl," whispered Juliet, confiden-
tially, as they went in. " We are so fortunate in our servants ; we have had
the same ones, either in Jim's family or mine, almost always. Entertaining
as much as I do, even in my quiet way, you can appreciate what an incalcu-
lable blessing it is."
There were indications, upon this, in the figure of Jim, who was going in
first with Mrs. Gradshaw on his arm, as if he were about to kick backwards
in some alarming way, or even to burst.
Nevertheless — for the memory of the prevaricator must be a good one —
Mrs. Juliet was soon mistaking repeatedly even her long-tried servant's name.
" Miss Gradshaw is not drinking her wine ; won't you see if you can find
some Apollinaris water, Susan ? " she said. Again, " The terrapin is a little
under-flavored ; will you just mention it to the cook, Susan ? "
"Jane, ma'am," corrected the woman, in a stolid way, not too respect-
fully, it must be admitted, but she was secretly resenting the invasion.
At table, in the cosey, rich dining-room, not too large, Juliet romanced
about the plates, reconciled discrepancies in the monograms on the silver
and linen, and fabricated striking origins for the handsome screen and
carved, high-backed chairs. These were a few of the "harmless little
efforts " they were to make, to carry out their position. Jim was a person of
so little imagination that all this adapting of one's self in detail to the small
intimacies of another's household had never once occurred to him as a neces-
sity of the situation, but he could not now retreat, and he endeavored to dis-
tract himself from it for the time being, by opening a little flirtation with
Miss Gradshaw, who was comely, and did not show herself wholly averse to
something of that sort.
Whenever anything inconvenient was trenched upon, Mrs. Juliet began
to ply Mrs. Gradshaw with more sweet-breads, or mushrooms, or red-head
duck, or the delicacies of dessert. That lady was fond of her dinner, and the
policy was generally successful. As to Lucy, she plied her with questions
upon the current state of society at Minneapolis, asking her who was mar-
VOL. x.— 25
386 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
ried, who were the belles, who was giving parties, who leading the germans,
and the like. In spite of all this management, however, there was presently
an inquiry that fell like a thunderbolt.
" By the way, who is the portrait over the mantel, in your room ? " broke
out Mrs. Gradshaw. addressing herself to Jim.
" In my room ? " murmured Jim, taken extremely aback.
"Yes, the door of the adjoining one where we were stood ajar, and we
really couldn't resist the temptation of peeping in, to see what the retreat of
the lord and master was like. Of course it was wholly inexcusable/'
" Do try some of the vegetables," hastily interposed Juliet. " Speaking
of vegetables, Mrs. Hedges, who has lately returned from San Francisco,
was telling me the other day what a wonderful market they have for vege-
tables there. Do you know, I want to see San Francisco so much." And so
forth, and so forth, and so forth.
But without avail, for though diverted from the subject for the time being,
Mrs. Gradshaw kept an air of having something on her mind, and returned
to it again.
" Such an unusual face and such an excellent piece of crayon work," she
said ; " we were both intending to speak to you about it."
It was, in fact, that of Mrs. Lambert herself.
Now, Jim had never been in the chamber thus ascribed to him, and Juliet
could not, for the life of her, remember the likeness, nor even whether it
was that of a man or a woman. Jim, driven to the necessity of saying some-
thing, was about to open his mouth for a reply that would certainly have
been their utter ruin, but Juliet snatched the words from him, and manoeu-
vred for time. Could she have got at the key controlling its electric light-
ing, she would have suddenly extinguished all the gas. As it was, she medi-
tated tipping over her bottle of claret, to escape the topic under cover of a
calamitous crash. There was a long-drawn moment of suspense, when Miss
Lucy let fall a further word or two giving, as Juliet thought, a clew to the
sex of the person. Upon no more basis than this, — in which she was mis-
taken,— she launched out intrepidly :
" Oh, yes, that is Colonel Toplift — in citizen's dress. He is one of the
most gentlemanly men and best fellows that ever was. He comes in on my
mother's side, — my mother was a Toplift, you know. Jane, I think there
is a draught ; just draw the screen a little more. I am sure you must feel
it, dear Mrs. Gradshaw ; these New York dining-rooms are so draughty, do
•what you will."
" Not at all, I assure you. But the one I was speaking of was not a man's
face ; it was a woman's."
" Yes, such a really charming expression," echoed the daughter.
" To be sure ! How stupid I am ! Colonel Toplift was sent to the frame-
makers', for repairs, only a few days ago. I couldn't think for the moment
just which one you meant. It is a Mrs. N — Neuf chatel, a cousin of Jim's.
There's the most romantic history connected with her life. I wish I had
time to tell it to you with all the details. She was a great beauty. The fam-
ily lived in Portugal. All the men at the foreign legations and consulships
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 387"
and everything were wildly in love with her. They say whenever she left
St. Petersburg to visit this country, it was like a perfect funeral. She and
Jim were wrecked, on the same steamer, once, and saved each other's lives.
It was near Havana. That was before she married, of course. I suppose I
ought to be jealous about leaving her up there for Jim to gaze upon all the
time, but, you know, they were always like brother and sister together ; and
then, if there's one thing I do abominate, it's having your own portraits all
around the house, so one must fill up with something."
Furthermore, on the retirement to the drawing-room, the budget of the
Lamberts' small effects which Juliet had meant to put away, but, in reality,
had only absently laid down instead, turned up again and fell into the hands
of the visitors, necessitating new prodigies of invention. She met them, as
she thought, to a marvel. The greatest absolute awkwardness, if not danger
of detection, after so many miraculous escapes, arose from her unf amiliarity
with so innocent-seeming a bit of furniture as a coal-scuttle. It was of a new
ornamental pattern, which would not give out its contents, when she under-
took to throw coal on the fire, without pressing on a certain spring. Again,
Jim, in order to give himself an easy air of proprietorship, after remaining
by himself to smoke as long as possible in the dining-room, undertook to
kindle in the library grate a fire of ostensible logs, which turned out to be
only a cunning imitation in cast iron, designed to be illuminated by gas —
though this, with a sickly kind of smile, he managed to turn off as only his
humor.
However, even these episodes passed safely over, and the evening came to
an end without disaster. The Gradshaws made their farewells in the friend-
liest manner. They may have felt that Juliet, as of old, was a little absent
in her replies and not always governed by the strictest accuracy of state-
ment— perhaps they did not thoroughly believe, for instance, the story of
the romantic shipwrecked cousin of Jim's, with its numerous variations of
scene between Portugal and St. Petersburg — but what seemed certain was
that Juliet had a most comfortable home. She appeared a person of decid-
edly important and luxurious position in the world, and to that, as we all
know, much may be forgiven. As to Jim, he was an honest soul, without an
atom of pretence about him.
Hardly had they taken their departure when the Bangs — Juliet first
gathering up her photographic mementos — followed them. Jim was exceed-
ingly grouty, declaring he would rather spend an evening in the infernal
regions than another such as this. Juliet comforted him, and defended the
case on the plea that once in they had to keep it up. But it was all over
now, it was a great success, the Gradshaws were immensely pleased, and
there was no telling how much good it might do in the future.
A few minutes after they had gone Mrs. Lambert returned from the opera.
She found the house quiet and everything pretty much in its usual order.
The first object on which she set eyes, after entering her room and tossing
about a few light articles on the dressing-table, was a valuable ring.
At an early hour the next morning she ordered her carriage and drove
away. While she was out, it so happened that the elderly Clamptons and
388 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
Mr. Lambert himself unexpectedly arrived. The former had changed back
to an original plan once countermanded, and now calmly proceeded to install
themselves. Lambert, like a true business man, hurried out again on some
affair, the very moment he was at home, leaving word he would return to
lunch.
This being the new situation in the house, about eleven o'clock a hack
loaded with travelling-trunks drew up before it in a hasty way, and Mrs.
Gradshaw, followed by her daughter, alighted and ascended the steps.
" Is Mrs. Bang at home ? "
" She don't live here, ma'am. "
" You don't quite understand : I said Mrs. Bang," repeated Mrs. Grad-
shaw blandly. " We dined here last evening, you remember. Will you ask
her to step here a moment ? it is about something important."
" Those ones went away last night, and Mrs. Lambert is out," returned
the maid.
" Went away last night ? went away ? " catching her breath in amazement
at this unforeseen rebuff. " Well, where did they go ? "
" They might V went home, ma'am ; I couldn't say."
' ' In goodness' name ? you mean to tell me they went home ? Where is
their home, if not here ? "
" I disremember, ma'am. You might inquire next door," suggested the
servant ; " I ain't livin' very long in this block."
" Can it be that we have somehow mistaken the number, Lucy ?" Mrs.
Gradshaw said, gazing round in an unsettled way at her daughter. " I was
so absolutely sure of the place."
" No, mamma, it is the right number," replied Lucy. " Here is the same
carved oak chest — from the royal palace at Dresden, you know — and the
chairs — from the Cologne cathedral." And they proceeded to identify many
other objects immediately under their eyes, in the entrance hall.
' ' Let this stupidity cease instantly, "now exclaimed Mrs. Gradshaw, to the
flurried maid. " Go at once and tell your mistress we would like to see her.
We must catch a train at Forty-second street, and have but little time to spare."
With that, she pushed on into the drawing-room, as having a perfect right
to do so. She heaved a sigh of relief at seeing there the alleged portrait of
Mr. Bang's father, the little Louis XIV., and the rest of the well-known ob-
jects of the night before. But, as they entered, the maid who had waited at
dinner, and who had heard something of the altercation at the door, came
up to corroborate the other, and said :
" Mrs. Lambert, the lady's name as lives here, is out, ma'am, and Mr. and
Mrs. Bang don't belong to us at all."
" Oh, this is a gross conspiracy, Lucy," cried the matron, flushing red
with indignation. " This girl is probably the one who has stolen your ring,
and the family being away from home, she has formed a plot with the other
to evade us in this brazen way, at least until she has a chance to escape. I
think I ought to have our driver bring a policeman at once. You stay here,
Lucy, to see that she does not leave the house."
"Is it me steal a ring, me that was with the Lambert family for twenty
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 339
years ? Oh, my ! Oh, my ! but the poor girls do have their characters easy
took away."
She gave a hysterical gasp and then a scream that hastened the advent of
the elderly Clamptons, who were already coming down.
" Thank heaven ! the ' dear old great aunt and uncle ' \ " Mrs. Gradshaw
exclaimed, at sight of them ; " now we shall see."
But Mrs. Clampton, far from being conciliatory, sailed an with the ma-
jesty of a seventy-four-gun ship.
" What is the meaning of this invasion of a peaceful home, this browbeat-
ing of our servants ?" she demanded, full of trepidation, shared by the old
gentleman who attended at her side.
" I asked only for Mrs. Bang. I presume you have but lately arrived and
do not know the circumstances," said Mrs. G-radshaw, bristling in return.
" My daughter unfortunately lost a valuable ring when we dined here last
night. If Mrs. Bang is not at. home, will you kindly look on the dressing-
table upstairs, where the ring was left ? We discovered the loss only as we
were starting for our train, and have driven here on our way."
" We know nothing about Mrs. Bang. You have certainly mistaken the
address."
" Mistaken the address ? and here is Mr. Bang's portrait before our eyes,
and there your own, Juliet's great aunt and uncle ! "
" Great aunt and uncle ? ha, ha ! " hysterically ; " we are Mrs. Lambert's
father and mother. Lester," — to her husband, — "perhaps they are burglars
and want to rob the house ; you must certainly bring a policeman."
" It is a shameless conspiracy to defraud us of our property, Lucy. Who
could have suspected it in such a place ? Or else they are all mad. But I
will not be done out of it so. I insist upon going upstairs. I know just
where the ring was left. And do you see that none of them leave."
She made a bold push to go up the stairs, but, being a stout woman, and
her way being barred by somebody, this was not effective. There was gen-
eral hysteria among the women. The suspected servant, pale with fright,
was almost fainting. Lucy Gradshaw leaned, weeping, against the wall. A
policeman had, somehow, actually been brought, and, instigated by the
Lambert servants, even went so far as to confront Mrs. Gradshaw in a sort
of official way. Mrs. Lambert, now returning, followed almost upon his
heels. In the midst of all the confusion, the two visitors recognized her as
the heroine of the multifarious adventures of which they had heard ; they
turned upon each other wild eyes of wonderment, and Mrs. Gradshaw
" The beautiful cousin from Portugal ! "
Next Lambert rushed in, and sustained pleasing Lucy Gradshaw in his
arms — by some unconscious mental process selecting her as the most worthy
object of sympathy. But he made a vigorous effort, at the same time, to dis-
sipate the misunderstandings that had settled down upon all the group like
an obfuscating fog.
' ' In heaven's name, what does all this mean ? " he ejaculated, " Anita,"
— to his wife, — " explain it."
390 WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. [1861-88
" It means, it means," breathed Mrs. Lambert faintly, "that — that they
dined here last night, and — and Juliet must have represented this as her
own house. I did not think she would do that. And — and some one left a
valuable ring. So I drove right down to their flat, after breakfast, to give
it to Juliet. She was not at home," — addressing the visitors, — " and I left
it for her with a very particular note. I thought it might belong to her
guests."
" Pray, where is this flat ?" demanded Mrs. Gradshaw grimly.
The others were all so occupied in offering her profuse apologies, with
which by degrees she allowed herself to be somewhat mollified, that she
could not for a while procure the address. Why dwell upon the long con-
versation and comparison of notes about Juliet Scatterbury that followed ?
Mrs. Gradshaw persisted in her demand for the address, wrote it down, and
departed to find it.
" I will go there myself ; we have now lost our train, and there is plenty
of time," she said, with the same ominous grimness.
"The deceitful, deceitful, deceitful little minx!" ejaculated old Mrs.
Clampton. " What punishment is bad enough for her ?"
Mrs. Lambert made a feeble attempt to say something for her quondam
friends, but was easily put down.
"A quarter of an hour with Mrs. Gradshaw will be a very good begin-
ning," responded Lambert, his wonted cheerful flow of spirits quite restored
at the prospect. So, indeed, it proved. Mrs. Bang had sallied forth that
morning, after an earlier breakfast than Mrs. Lambert. After performing
various errands, she bethought her that it would be becoming and polite to
go and thank the friend who had so kindly loaned her house the night be-
fore ; the more so as the visit was, more likely than not, to be accompanied
by an invitation to stay to lunch. She was in the vicinity of Thirty-fourth
street, going up Madison avenue, when she saw the carriage containing the
Gradshaws, coming down. Not that she would have noticed it, except that
they two had their heads out of the window, their eyes glaringly fixed upon
her. They waved her to stop, and drew up close beside the curbstone, where
she met them. She suspected some unusual circumstance, of course, from
an excited air worn by the inmates, but supposed it would be only some
travellers' delay, and, seeing the baggage piled high behind, had no idea of
any change of plan that could interfere with the successful consummation
of events as they had been left. Mrs. Gradshaw in her eagerness thrust the
door ajar. Both women opened their mouths at once, but Juliet, with tra-
ditional glibness, got in her effusion first.
"What a delightful surprise ! Not off yet ? It is such a pleasure to see
you again. Now, why will you not postpone your going and come and make
us a nice visit ? I declare ! I am going to tell your coachman to drive around
to Thirty-seventh street at once." And she bobbed her pretty head aside as
if about to do so.
Good Mrs. Gradshaw fell back, all but in an apoplectic fit, at this unheard-
of attempt to renew the imposition.
" You wicked, disgraceful, brazen girl, get right into this carriage," she
1861-88] WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP. 391
exclaimed, straightening herself again. " Oh, what a cheat and humbug
you are ! You always were, from a little child. "We know all about you ; you
never lived there ; all those people you described were utter fictions. We
have been there. It was all owing to the blessed circumstance of Lucy's
ring. She left it, and Mrs. Lambert took it round to your — abode, and we
are going after it. Produce it instantly, or get into this carriage and drive
with us to where it may be found."
She even laid her hand on Juliet's shoulder to enforce her commands.
" I haven't got it," murmured Juliet feebly, overwhelmed by a torrent so
violent that it was useless to think of stemming it ; she offered no resistance,
but entered the carriage with them.
" This shall go to Minneapolis ; this shall be related to your old acquaint-
ances," resumed the Nemesis, with high and mighty sarcasm ; " this is what
is called keeping up appearances, I suppose — I don't know why I don't ex-
pose you to the people in the street."
Juliet essayed some other feeble fabrications — that she and Jim had had
a wager ; that some people had different ideas of hospitality from others ;
that it was a joke, and she had meant to tell them all about it; but all was
overborne in Mrs. Gradshaw's indignation.
" Mamma !" expostulated the daughter, from time to time. Her own
way would have been much better "form," — to treat this person with dig-
nified silence, and simply keep clear of all such entanglements hereafter.
Finally, " You had a good dinner, at any rate," declared Juliet, trying
open bravado ; but immediately after she broke down, put both hands before
her face, begged her accusers not to relate the affair in Minneapolis, and
threw herself back among the cushions sobbing.
"Mamma! " exclaimed Lucy Gradshaw, this time with even greater ener-
gy— touched by her tears.
Mrs. Gradshaw was fond of describing the "tongue-lashing" she gave
the reprobate, but they rode the rest of the way in silence.
They mounted the stairs to the flat, and found the "very particular"
note, with the ring. Mrs. Gradshaw surveyed with a supercilious air all the
economic make-shifts in the place, which, had it had a straightforward mis-
tress, she would have considered a trim and attractive little domicile. De-
livering a parting homily in the same severe strain, she withdrew, leaving
the culprit in a cowed attitude, overcome with chagrin.
Juliet did not dare tell her husband, but he could not fail to hear of it.
This particular offence was condoned, but the circumstance became the
starting-point of a final rupture. Juliet Scatterbury went abroad to reside,
and Jim — having in the mean time done well in the financial way — as yet
sends her monev to maintain existence in the Riviera.
292 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. [1861-88
-Blanche Milli* fotoarD.
BORN in Bangor, Me., 1847.
AT THE PARDON.
[Guenn : A Wave on the Breton Coast. 1883.]
THE Pardon was a ceremony centuries old — a festival that would have
taken place had never a strange foot trod Nevin streets, had never a
stranger's eye rolled in a fine frenzy before Nevin picturesqueness. But the
young men in brown velveteen, and the young women in Rubens hats and
Velasquez frills, mingled with the folk with amiable condescension, smiling
graciously upon the motley costumes and the rough sport. " For us these
attitudes, for us these colors, for us this naive display of the habits of a primi-
tive people. How picturesquely historic, how vividly antique ! " So with a
cormorant power of appropriation the strangers swallowed the Breton Par-
don.
Guenn v/as everywhere present. A score of voices asked : " Who is that
beautiful girl with the bold eyes and the graceful movements ? " The peas-
ants answered : " It's Guenn Rodellec, of course ; who else could she be ?"
The painters: " It's Hamor's model ; lucky dog!" ...
Guenn was staring in a friendly way at them all, her hands on her hips,
swinging herself gently to and fro in time to the enlivening strains of the
carousal, where Nannie, dizzy but ecstatic, was soaring proudly aloft, tak-
ing his seventh aerial excursion upon a foaming wooden charger with scarlet
ears.
" Your name is Guenn ? " asked the artist, merely to prolong the conver-
sation.
" Yes, Fm Guenn," wondering if Hamor liked a plain gray dress and linen
collar, and wishing she could see the lady's hands ungloved.
" But you do not know me ? "
" Oh, yes, I do : you are Monsieur Staunton's sweetheart."
The stranger blushed deeply. She and Staunton were still in the stage of
vague and pleasurable uncertainty, and she was not prepared for this un-
compromising directness.
The young Englishman came promptly to the rescue : " But, Guenn, you
wear no end of pretty things ; why have you more than anybody else ? "
" Because I am the favorite, to be sure," raising her eyebrows with some
surprise, as if everybody ought to know that self-evident truth. " Good-
day ; Fm going."
"I should like to see you again," remarked the young lady, recovering
her composure.
" Oh, you'll see me dance, of course," Guenn said brightly ; " everybody*!!
see me dance. You'd better get a good place soon," she said eagerly to Ha-
mor, "so that you can see me wherever I go. Hark ! Don't you hear?
1861-88] BLANCHE WILLIS HO WARD. 393
That's the call : we're going to begin." She clasped her hands above her
head, and giving him one intense look of excitement, joy, and devotion, she
sprang rapidly through the crowd, pushing and elbowing her way freely to-
wards Alain, who was spinning along with equal momentum from the oppo-
site direction. Smiling broadly upon the three judges with a deliberate in-
tention of prejudicing their opinion, she took her place in the line ; but such
audacious wiles were superfluous ; for, had her feet been less light and un-
tiring, her movements less elastic and graceful, where was the man who could
resist her lovely face ?
The gavotte began. The bagpipes shrieked their monotonous shrill tune.
Back and forward, balancing, turning, passing on, wreathed the intermina-
ble line of couples — peasants in the distinctive dress of their villages and
districts; heavy young men and women taking their pleasure soberly, not
knowing what to do with their feet, but pushing on with stolid endurance ;
awkward and grinning youths and maidens taking their pleasure shyly, but
yielding gradually to its intoxication ; handsome sailors from the Merle,
dancing easily with a superior air of worldliness, giving one another know-
ing winks in the midst of their rustic conquests ; peasant heiresses, conscious
of their prerogative and of much silver embroidery, and over-careful of their
steps — such were the dancers springing, shuffling, moving on and on, as a
rule with more good faith than grace, to the indefatigable shriek of the bag-
pipes and their own ever-increasing laughter and noisy talk.
Perfect in rhythm, exquisite in the free grace of her motion, Guenn Ro-
dellac danced with a passionate abandon which captivated the painters and
turned the elderly brains of the rustic judges. Her small head erect, her
smiles by turns mocking and sweet, her cheeks flushed deliciously, her light
little figure balancing, swaying, retreating, beckoning the enamoured Alain
on, her clear eyes seeking Hamor's with a kind of proud pleading — the girl
was a breathing poem.
The music stopped. They called her name. She went forward to receive
the prize for the best dancing. It was a long light silver chain. She took it
with a little cry of pleasure. Hamor, smiling kindly at her, was standing
near. " Let me put it on for you," he said, throwing it lightly over her
shoulders. Guenn's eyelids drooped till the dark lashes shaded her cheeks,
and her heart beat faster from his attention than from all her rapid exercise.
" Aha," laughed a Nevin artist. " You flirt with them, do you ? "
"Never," returned Hamor with dignity. " I am merely kind to them."
After a pause, of inhuman brevity it would have seemed to most people,
the musician sounded the call, and the same couples for the most part formed
for the more important trial, the longest continued dancing.
" This is the greater honor," Guenn confided to Hamor in an excited
whisper.
" Then I hope you may get it."
" Ah, now I have no fear," she said sweetly.
She took her place, smoothed her coiffe, already as smooth as glass, re-
pinned her red kerchief, and patted her skirts, as if some unforeseen loose-
ness, some stray end or fold in her extremely compact little costume might
394 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. [1861-88
impede her movements or lessen her powers of endurance. This was going
to be a very different kind of contest, she well knew. It was not speed or
lightness this time, and other girls were sound of wind and strong of limb.
She straightened herself and looked very much in earnest. " We must not
laugh and talk at first, Alain," she warned. Alain assented, as deeply im-
pressed as she with the vastness of the moment. Guenn turned and cleverly
measured her foes. " There's that proud thing from Trevignan. She tossed
her head at me. She thinks she's going to win."
" Toss yours "
" Why, I did, simpleton. I've tossed it at every good dancer in the line.
Alain, I shall die if we don't win ! Wait "-
She had spied Nannie leaning on a cider-keg in a corner. In an instant
she was near him. " Nannie — Nannie, is it luck ? " bending over the pale
face of the self-appointed oracle. " Quick," she begged softly, " is it luck ?"
" It is luck, this time," croaked the child with mysterious emphasis.
Back she flew to Alain just in time to begin. " Luck, luck ! " cried the
bagpipes, " Luck ! " echoed her happy heart, and she heard an emphatic
" Luck ! " in every stamp with which honest Alain marked the time — self-
contained reserved stamps indeed, now since breath was precious. She saw
Hamor's face and Nannie's; her own grew white with excitement as she
moved at first with measured gentle step. On went the monotonous horn-
pipe or jig; round and round moved the long circle of the gavotte, after a
half -hour growing perceptibly smaller. The Trevignan heiress was crimson
to the temples, and panting audibly. Many an honorable rival had retreat-
ed to gasp for breath outside. Then Guenn threw prudence to the winds.
"Aliens !" she cried, and danced as she never danced before. " Faster ! "
she called to the last relay of musicians, then laughingly beckoned them to
descend from their perch. Wondering, steadily playing, they slowly obeyed.
Every eye was on her. Her magnetism controlled the room. Not a trace of
fatigue showed itself in her brilliant little face or in her buoyant movements.
Imperious, lovely, audacious, laughing, she led the dancers with a sudden
bound out of the building into the village-street, where, in this vital moment,
the free air and sunshine summoned her with irresistible force. By the
booths and the hurdy-gurdies back and forth went the line, now reduced to
ten or fifteen couples, and followed by the crowd with the intense interest
which a genuine race of any description always inspires. Again Guenn's
clever eyes took account of the weaknesses of her adversaries. " Brigitte has
her hand on her side, and Marie is pale about the mouth. 0 joy ! " Towards
the church where the Pardon ceremonies that morning had begun with the
procession of chanting priests, and the train of men and women with tall
tapers, and gold and white banners, moving three times round the graveyard,
this charming little imitation of the Pied Piper was now leading them, with
a refinement of strategy, up hill. But the exhausted nature of the whole
assembly could endure no more. One after another, the couples retired to
private life. Last of all the bagpipes expired with a wheeze of fatigue.
Alain, whether from gallantry or want of breath, had already stopped, and
Guenu stood facing the crowd alone and victorious.
1861-88J BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. 395
She extended her arms wide and threw them back, as if to exhibit beyond a
doubt to all mankind the veritable person of the victor, then let them slowly
fall, her lips parted, breathing fast more from excitement than fatigue. It
was the zenith of her glory. She raised her impassioned eyes towards the
sky; she saw the green hill-slopes and tree-tops beyond the narrow village-
street, and the small stone houses and the waiting crowd with all the familiar
faces watching her. Her father and Loi'c and Hoe'l ; the handsome sailors
of the Merle ; Meurice and Andre smiling broadly at her ; the girls she had
always known ; and all the fish-wives of Plouvenec. It was her world wit-
nessing her triumph. She could lay it now at Earner's feet. These poor
laurels, fairly won, were the best she knew. Trembling with emotion, her
whole ardent soul called to Hamor's. Her beautiful eyes sought his with a
passionate yet childlike prayer. " Your smi4e too, 0 my master ! " they
pleaded, "your smile, to crown my joy."
Hamor had watched her steadily and with extreme pleasure, but at this
moment he happened to be discussing a moral point with considerable ani-
mation. The Danish girl had remarked that it would be a pity little Helene
should grow vain and spoiled — posing so young, and continually hearing
her beauty discussed in detail. Hamor argued that she was far better off,
serving as a useful study to the painters, whatever the stimulating effects
upon her self-esteem, than if she should grow up in utter unconsciousness of
her beauty to toil and become coarse and ugly with sardine-packing and
rough work.
Guenn saw his face turned from her — his face alone, in this great mo-
ment— his face alone in this great crowd. She pressed her hand suddenly
to her side. What she felt was akin to strong physical pain. There was, with
the cruel disappointment, a look of startled incredulity in her face. She
stretched her head forward. Her eyes dilated. He would surely look. Bend-
ing easily towards the young artist, Hamor was fluently expounding his com-
fortable sophistries. Guenn made one impetuous step towards him. Her
nature instinctively prompted a fierce attack of the lady and a storm of open
reproach to Hamor. But love and pain had begun their work of discipline.
She turned to Alain and Jeanne, who were nearest, and, moving heavily, as
if all her strength and buoyancy had left her, said with a strained look about
the mouth : "I shall never dance again ! "
What was it all worth ! The long waiting ; the glowing anticipations ; the
sacrifice of her soft, shining hair ; her eager hope to please him with the poor
little gown so dearly bought ; the admiration in the bold eyes of the Merle
sailors ; the envy of the girls ; the stirring call of the bagpipes ; the rap-
ture of the circling gavotte : the joy in being young and strong and lightest
of foot and prettiest of face ; and all the exuberance of life and pride and
ambition that had caused her in the intensity of her triumph to face the
whole village and the whole unknown world beyond in tacit challenge — im-
periously demanding, "Is there then anything more glorious than this, to
be Guenn Eodellac and win both prizes in public contest with the best dan-
cers of all Cornouaille ?" — what was it worth? What was life itself worth?
He had turned away his face. If she could flee into dark woods and crawl
3g6 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD, [1861-88
into a cave and lie upon the ground and die ! It was too light here, and the
people made a cruel noise.
' ' Take me away," she cried hoarsely to Alain.
"But the prize, Guenn, the prize ! " exclaimed Jeanne. " They are wait-
ing to give it to you. Oh, it is beautiful ! Oh, how glad I am ! Oh, I knew
you would win ! "
" Have I won ? " Guenn shivered from head to foot.
" Are you mad ? " laughed Jeanne.
" It is fatigue. She must have one swallow of grog — no more/' Alain said
authoritatively. " Jeanne, you wait here with her. I will bring it."
"• And you can wear the beautiful silver embroidery when you dance at
the next Pardon."
"I shall never dance again," Guenn repeated with a pitiful wail in her
voice.
Patient Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. Was not Guenn always odd ?
But Nannie, who unperceived had limped up to them, stood looking at
his sister, nodding his head in slow, solemn acquiescence, not with his mock-
ing air, but as if something akin to pity were stirring in his ugly face.
" 0 Nannie ! 0 Nannie ! " Guenn grasped his arms convulsively.
" Go and get the prize," said the boy in a curt tone. "All the fools are
watching. Go, Guenn."
THE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF KRONFELS.
[The Open Door. 1889.]
A DELHEID, Countess of Kronfels, was in the habit of rising between
JLJL. ten and eleven A. M. This event was accompanied by the vehement
pealing of electric bells, and by the breathless hurrying up and down stairs
and through long corridors of her own maid, the second maid, the first
housemaid, and the corpulent butler. Although from one year's end to an-
other there was slight variation in the ceremonies of the Countess of Kron-
fels' morning toilet, although her slaves and vassals had never failed to
produce the requisite bath-tubs, the hot and cold water, the toast and tea,
the morning post, and to regulate heat and ventilation, and consult ther-
mometers, all in the desired sequence, she invariably presupposed some-
thing was about to be wrong in the matutinal rites, and began each day
with a jealous suspicion that her fellow-creatures might underrate her im-
portance.
Her methods, however open to criticism, had the advantage of securing
praiseworthy speed and punctuality in her service, for none knew when her
habitually cold and imperious manner would resolve itself into violence.
Until her attendants were aware that she had advanced from her exclusive-
ly personal observances to the toilet of her little yellow dog, Mousey, their
vigilance was unremitting, and they dared breathe freely only when she was
enveloped in a voluminous wrapper, surrounded by Mousey's ivory brushes
1861-88] BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. 397
and tortoise-shell combs ; Mousey's towels, embroidered with his own mono-
gram ; Mousey's sponges, flannels, and rugs ; Mousey's bath of warm, scent-
ed water, and the object of her adoration snarling on his blanket stretched
across her knees.
For if the countess tyrannized over her quaking household, Mousey en-
acted the role of god of vengeance, and for every affront which she offered
harmless human beings in her power, the insolent, bad-tempered little cur
exacted retribution. Let philosophers determine the nature of the attach-
ment between the old lady and her mongrel pet, whose every snap and snarl
were her laws. Indeed a tradition existed to the effect that the first and
only time that the countess attempted to chastise Mousey for some breach of
canine etiquette, he turned fiercely and bit her. Happily his teeth were
poor. But the countess grew pale with fright and remorse, and tearfully
entreated the sulky little brute, who was far too clever not to recognize his
crime and was guiltily backing under a chair, expectant, no doubt, of cap-
ital punishment, to "come to his mamma," which, after a long period of
coaxing, and extravagant endearment, he finally consented to do. The rec-
onciliation was complete, but who ruled the villa after that was no secret.
The second maid, who ventured to say, " Why, I thought they always killed
'em when they was nasty enough to bite their masters," was discharged on
the spot for impertinence.
Mousey was tiny, flaxen-blond, shaggy and silky, with the cleverness of
a fiend peering out of his wicked black eyes. He had a pampered body, an
undeniable malformation of the hind legs, and no tail. He was ugly, vicious,
unfaithful, hypocritical, and of nameless race. Men were apt to raise their
eyebrows with an amused expression when the countess descanted volubly
uppn his "points," but if a guest was so reckless as to imply a doubt of
Mousey's pedigree, never again did he have the honor of dining at the villa.
Better discover a blot on the Kronfels scutcheon than on Mousey's. He
slept in the countess's bed. He feasted at her table. She did not love ani-
mals. To her there was but one dog, and she was his prophet.
The moment of the countess's descent to her son's rooms was nearly as ab-
sorbing to her retainers as were her first bells and commands. Large, cor-
pulent, pale, with cold light eyes, a thin and severe mouth, a small straight
nose with flat nostrils, and the conspicuous whiteness which, according to
the erudite interpreters of this feature, denotes "cruelty, "yet altogether
what is called a handsome presence, she came slowly down the marble stair-
way, panting slightly with a suggestion of asthma, and holding her treasure
under her left arm, above which Mousey's sagacious, diabolical eyes gleamed
through his silky, overhanging yellow locks. The procession was headed
by the portly butler to fling open the doors, while behind the majestic, slow-
ly advancing figure the countess's own maid followed with a breakfast-
shawl, and a second maid with Mousey's ball, doll, and white lamb's-wool
rug brought up the rear.
Such was the train which, heralded by occasional irrelevant yelps, ap-
proached the wing occupied by Count Hugo, and happily remote from the
countess's precincts. He was lying on his sofa, weary from his unwonted ex-
398 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. [1861-88
ertion, and wearier from his painful thoughts, which seemed to revolve con-
tinually in a fatal circle. The unutterable melancholy of his eyes filled
Lipps's heart with discomfort, and the poor fellow, whose strength lay not in
book-lore, was blindly groping in the recesses of his memory for the name of
the volume over which he had seen the count smile some days previous,
when the butler's knock announced the approach of the countess and her
suite.
Bidding her son good-morning, she extended her large, well-shaped hand,
which he mechanically raised to his lips, rejoining :
" Good-morning, mamma. How are you to-day ?"
The butler and second maid had withdrawn. The countess's own maid
waited, in case Mousey should express a wish. Lipps, with a non-committal
mien, stood with his shortness well drawn up behind his master's sofa, pre-
pared for offensive or defensive possibilities as circumstances should demand.
"Oh, I am sadly fatigued," sighed the countess, "and my neuralgia
scarcely allowed me to sleep an hour. My breathing is troublesome, again,
too. Isn't it, Mousey, mon bijou? Come to your own mamma. Did it want
to play a little, the dear little sportive lambkin ? Well, it should. " What the
sportive lambkin chiefly wanted was to snarl and snort and snap at the head
of the white bear skin flung over Hugo's low, broad sofa, and it gave full
vent to its inclinations.
"Do you still take a few glasses of cura9oa and some sweet biscuit before
going to bed ? " the count inquired coolly.
" But I feel so faint, Hugo; I require it.'*
"It would make the boniest lieutenant begin to get puffy."
"Bony ! Puffy ! What expressions, my son ! You know very well I can-
not fast. I am too sensitive."
" I know simply this : you eat too many sweets and take too little exer-
cise. Any doctor would tell you that. Walk regularly every day and your
breathing will be all right."
"Any doctor !" exclaimed the old lady, mounting a hobby. "No doctor
here understands my constitution. In fact I never met but one physician
who suited me. That dear Pressigny in Paris ! What a man ! What a
manner ! What a voice ! And what broad shoulders ! What insight and in-
tuition! ' My dear, dear madame,' he used to say, 'you, with your sensi-
bilities, can never be treated according to ordinary rules ! ' Is your doctor
capable of that, Hugo?"
"Emphatically not."
"I prefer then to be my own doctor, so far as possible following his foot-
steps. Poor dear man ! So tender, so discriminating ! We wept when he
died, did we not, Mousey, my angel?"
The angel was up on the window-seat, barking angrily at a dog he per-
ceived at a safe distance. For reasons which did credit to his intelligence if
not to his valor, he was never known, unless protected, as in this instance,
by the window-pane, to insult an animal of his own size, but greatly enjoyed
snarling at the heels of some great good-natured mastiff who would regard
his petulant ebullitions with dignified surprise.
1861-88] BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. 399
"Do you feed Mousey with cura9oa and sweet biscuits, too?"
"A wee crumb of biscuit now and then, for he loved it. Didn't you love
it, pet?"
''Because he is asthmatic too. Hear how stuffed and strangled his bark
sounds."
"Hugo! How cruel you are ! Do you want to frighten me?"
" Not in the least. I merely say the dog is overfed."
"His poor little stomach was rather distended last night. I rubbed it
with sweet-oil and gave him three globules of nux-vomica. But I know it is
not his food. It is a little fever. He is so sensitive. He is going out with
his mamma to take a little airing after lunch, and then he will feel better.
Won't he ? Yes, he will, poor little suffering, sweet thing ! Babette," she
called, with a sudden change of tone, " when you see that Mousey wishes to
play ball, why are you not more attentive? Eoll it for him nicely, Babette."
"Give him nothing but water and a bone for two or three days, and his
sensitiveness will be all right," the count said carelessly.
"Since I find you in this unsympathetic mood, my dear Hugo," she began
rapidly in French, "I can of course leave you. I came in with the kindest
intentions. For I think it is in every respect proper that a mother should
sit a while every day with her invalid son. But of course, if you desire, I can
go in now to my lonely lunch. Come, Mousey, my comfort, my only friend !
Lipps," she said sternly, "when Mousey's ball rolls under the book-case
near you, can't you get it for him?"
Lipps stood as if riveted to the floor, his eyes fixed upon his master's face.
Hugo nodded, and the man took a ruler from the writing-table and pushed
the ball towards Mousey, who received it with engaging growls and gnashings.
"I had no intention of being unsympathetic," Hugo said, without look-
ing at his mother.
"I know — in your state" — she began.
"Kindly leave my state out of the question," he interrupted with a quick
flush.
"I know," she persisted, "that one must make allowance for your condi-
tion. But Hugo, if you would only cultivate resignation !"
He closed his eyes and did not reply. Lipps watched him uneasily.
"Because," she continued, always in French, "after all, what God does
is well done."
"I presume so," he returned with a sneer.
" Hugo," she began, rising with dignity, " one thing which I will not per-
mit in my presence is irreverence. You know my principles."
"Yes, yes, I think I know them. Suppose we don't discuss them just
now. What did you wish to say to me ? And won't you send off your woman,
and Mousey? His bell is rather distracting when one is dead tired. Lipps
can go too. I can listen better, and we are a more harmonious family party
without so many spectators."
"Of course, if you insist, although it is a mystery to me how you can be
so hard-hearted to Mousey. He wears his little bell because he was out for a
frolic with Koschen, and is going out with his Mumsey directly after lunch.
400 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. [18G1-88
Blessed little sweetheart, come to your Mumsey!" making a dive after him
with some difficulty, as her velvet gown was tight in the waist and sleeves.
The gifted Mousey's human contemporaries unanimously attributed to
him comprehension of every word in all languages spoken in his presence,
as well as a proficiency in mind-reading which would put most popular
psychic experts to shame. With an undeniable snap at the countess's per-
suasive hand, he dodged it easily, and retreated beneath Hugo's sofa, snarl-
ing sotto voce, and promenading himself tantalizingly beyond her reach.
Kneeling, breathing loud, she coaxed and pleaded in vain.
" Come here, you fiend !" said Hugo in a low voice.
Mousey with a bound came up over the back of the sofa and stood upon
Hugo's breast with a sardonic grin on his countenance and a plain intima-
tion that if he had had a tail he would have wagged it.
"How he jumped !" exclaimed the countess, panting as she reseated her-
self ; "and the roguish little love always makes me lift him."
"You demon !" said Hugo in the same low tone, parting the silky hair
falling over the dog's eyes and looking at him attentively.
"Singular, that he lets you touch his head," she said jealously ; "why he
scarcely bears my hand on it. But don't call him names. It hurts his feel-
ings. Do you know he would have come when I called him, only he is a lit-
tle vexed with me, aren't you, sweet pet? because I wouldn't give him anoth-
er lump of sugar; but it was for your good, you darling doggums."
"Here, Lipps, take him out," and Hugo put the shrinking animal into
the man's arms.
Again a striking metamorphosis took place in Mousey's eloquent person-
ality. Small as he was, he seemed to diminish bodily and become the most
harmless of inanimate flaxen balls as soon as Lipps touched him. His ex-
pression was meek if not pious, and he subtly conveyed the impression that
he was drooping the tail he had not.
" Be attentive to Mousey, Babette, and entertaining. Ask him if he would
like a run in the garden. Adieu, my precious," throwing kisses to him as
Lipps with unwonted rapidity left the room.
"I am convinced that Lipps is a bad man," the countess began when they
were alone. " I frequently urged your father to discharge him."
"But my father didn't," observed Hugo dryly.
"No, — your father was peculiar in some things," she said with a sigh.
"But I wish you would send the man off. Mousey's behavior is so singular.
He positively shrinks before him. And when he hears Lipps's step, he often
runs and hides. His more delicate perceptions teach him what is hidden to
our duller senses."
Hugo privately suspected that Mousey's delicate perceptions had more
than once come in contact with Lipps's indelicate boot. For when the dog's
nervous patter and the incessant tinkling of his bell were heard too near the
invalid's quarters, Lipps would steal out, and after a somewhat excited
though hushed colloquy, inwhich Mousey tenaciously defended his position,
certain unequivocal sounds were heard, which resulted in the sudden di-
minuendo of the tinkling, while Mousey, as fast as his too long legs could
1861-88] BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD, 401
carry his too fat body, pattered down the corridor and up the stairway, to
the flesh-pots of Egypt which always awaited him in his own apartments.
It was under these circumstances that the countess hearing him imperiously
demand admittance was apt to cry in rapture:
"He wants his own Mumsey, yes he did, the dear faithful heart! He
loved his Mumsey, and his Mumsey loved her Mousey! Yes, so she did!"
whereupon she would rain showers of kisses upon him, even upon his rather
warm nose.
"I think I will keep Lipps for the present," Hugo replied with a slight
smile ; " Mousey is welcome to his estimate of the man's character, but you
know he happens to be in my personal service, and as Mousey did not en-
gage him, it strikes me that it is little less than a liberty for Mousey to inter-
fere."
' ' How absurd you are, Hugo ! I do not quite see how you can care to joke
BO much. One would think you would feel sad and dignified."
He tugged at one of his cushions and finally pushed it violently until it
fell.
" I was never good in private theatricals, you remember. I always refused
to play the role assigned to me. And you see that I am inordinately merry
and full of jest."
She sighed. It was hard to reconcile so much levity with a recumbent
position.
"If I had found you in a different mood, I should have talked with you
about Gabrielle."
'What, again?" he returned in unfeigned surprise.
'I have been reconsidering"
' Then I am sorry," he said quickly. " I thought we had settled all that."
"But, Hugo"
' Mamma," he said, raising himself upon one elbow, and speaking impet-
uously, "why discuss the matter? Have we not exhausted every detail?
You know my opinion. I know yours. You shared mine at one time. You
decided not to have her come. That you begin again is conclusive evidence
that somebody has influenced you. Doubtless, the Frau Major," and he
looked at her sharply.
"She was considerate enough to think that a bright, sunny young girl
would cheer me Avhen I was low-spirited," the countess admitted uneasily.
"And who will cheer your bright, sunny young girl when she is low-spir-
ited ?" he demanded hotly. "And have you intimated to the Frau Major
what dot you intend to settle upon your sunny young girl, in case she suits
your whims and Mousey's ?"
"Hugo, you forget yourself"
" I beg your pardon," he said, falling back wearily. " Do me the justice
to remember that I tried to avoid the conversation."
11 It seems to me very proper to discuss a step of so much importance with
one's only son."
" But if one's only son has already declared himself unalterably opposed
to the step ? "
VOL. x.— 26
402 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. . [1861-88
"So unreasonable, " she murmured, "so obstinate I"
"It is possible. I admit the question does not concern me materially.
Your sunny young person will not disturb me. But still I protest. Why
must you do it, mamma ? "Why add a new name to the sad old list ? You
never were satisfied with one of them. You suspected them of a thousand
meannesses. No, I don't intend to be rude. But remember, there was al-
ways, sooner or later, an open scene after a long smouldering quarrel; then
complaints, tears, recriminations, and the rapid exit of the companion. We
have tried relatives, strangers, German, French, and English girls. There
was Cousin Marie, a widow — a pleasing, gentle little woman — musical —
cheerful — practical "
" Don't talk to me of her, Hugo ! Deceitful little cat ! "
" Precisely. Let us for the sake of argument admit that they were all de-
ceitful cats. In that case I don't see what is going to prevent this Gabrielle
from also being a cat, and deceitful. You will adore her and caress her and
call her 'Moonbeam' if she is fair, and 'Twilight' if she is dark, and there
will be peace for fourteen days — for three weeks provided she is a miracle of
patience ; then her fall from favor will be more rapid than her ascent."
"One would think, Hugo, that I was a"
"I am not analyzing the reasons of things, but merely sketching their
outward sequence. You have made fifteen trials of companions, have you
not? Or is it sixteen?"
"I have been singularly unfortunate, I admit. I am too trusting. Then
Gabrielle will not be like a companion. A girl of good family — a baroness
— a distant relative of ours, — she will be like a daughter of the house."
"It sounds well," Hugo returns sceptically. "But she is poor, and young,
and will be in your power. Our servants have at least their Sunday out, and
can ridicule us and abuse us royally down in the basement. But what vent
to her feelings has the companion of a fashionable woman ? Particularly if
she is a poor relative. Her dignity forbids her to complain, until she grows
desperate and throws up the situation. She could not, for instance, even
confide to me that she found bezique a bore and hated Mousey."
"You are complimentary — as usual, Hugo," she retorted displeased,
" and yet you know well that my ideal is the companionship of a true friend,"
she continued in a curiously sentimental manner. "All my life I have
longed for sympathy, and in vain. Why should my son wish to deny me the
possibility of finding it ?"
When the countess was sentimental she always had him at a disadvantage.
For thin, empty, and transitory as her feeling was, he believed it to be not
wholly insincere. He dreaded the little conscious smile so foreign to her
hard features, and the school-girlish talk of the ideal woman-f riend. Wheth-
er her own fault or not, it represented her sense of dissatisfaction with her
life, her longing for something she had never had ; it meant a note of unhap-
piness, which seemed real and human to him, and when he heard it he was
sorry for her.
"I wish I need not offend you," he said gently. "What I mean is that
your personality is so — so — so dominant, so engrossing, I do not think you
1861-88] BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. 403
adapted to the intimacy which you always seem to desire with another
woman. Friendship necessitates some kind of equality. You are used to the
constant society of servants, whose smiles and lip-service you buy; and you
are accustomed to superficial intercourse with women of the world, whose
smiles and lip-service you also buy in a certain sense ; at least you exchange
yours for theirs; but in both cases thoughts are free and well-disguised, and
I do not believe any other relationship would satisfy you. Above all, this
child from the country. For the last time, I say let the girl stay where she
is/'
" But I intend to make her happy. I have always wanted a daughter. A
daughter would have understood me." On the cold face was still the thin
mask of sentimentality.
" I have heard you frequently say so. But the fact remains, this girl is not
your daughter. She will have no freedom, she will have no rights. If she is
animated, you will call her pert. If she is quiet and deliberate, you will find
her \\oiprevoyante. Whether pretty or ugly, she will be in your opinion co-
quette. Whether she will or not, she must drive with you, pay visits, go
shopping, as if under military orders."
" And is that a hardship for a young girl from the country, I should like
to inquire ? To go where I go and do what I do ? "
" I don't know," he replied curtly. "It depends upon the girl. If she is
a toady, she will enjoy it vastly for a time, because she will be playing her
own game. But if she has an atom of honesty in her composition, she would
rather go out on the road and break stones."
He moved his hands restlessly ; his cheeks were hot.
"You have a singularly unamiable way of presenting your views," she
complained, hesitated a moment, then with increasing coldness, " For my
part I anticipate only agreeable experiences with Gabrielle. I have had the
rose-room prepared for her."
Hugo threw back his head, rolled up his eyes toward his frescoed ceiling,
and stared at a flying swallow under a cloudy sky.
The countess was never calm under disapproval.
"Well ?" she said, in peevish interrogation.
He stared persistently at the bird and did not open his lips.
" I meant it as a pleasant surprise for you. She arrives to-day."
Still no response from Hugo.
" Have you nothing to say, Hugo ? Why do you do that ? " she demanded
with great irritation.
" I congratulate the Frau Major," he said at length.
"Nonsense! You do her injustice. I sometimes think she is the only
faithful friend I have."
"There is safety in your ' sometimes.' Should you always think so — VCB
victis!—A.nd. mamma, when she has decided upon your course another time,
pray dispense with my superfluous reflections. I have not over-abundant
vitality. Why should I waste it attacking your foregone conclusions ? I sup-
pose she means Loreuz and Egon to run ? I bet you five to one on Lorenz.
Just give me a hint from time to time which leads. And otherwise, mamma,
404 BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. [1861-88
leave me out of your calculations. Don't ask me to burn incense when the
girl comes, or fling brickbats when she goes. Once f or^all, I wash my hands
in innocence."
"Hugo," said the countess rising, "I consider some of your remarks
coarse/'
"It is the nature of man," he returned uncompromisingly.
She was angry he saw by her increased paleness. The black lace of her co-
quettish French cap with its crimson rose trembled wrathfully, and so did
trtie smooth white hands. She was a handsome woman still, he thought, with
her regular features, her delicate, wonderfully preserved skin, and her gray
hair of exquisite quality, and beautiful enough to frame the pure and serene
countenance of a typical aged saint. He watched her with his flashing, un-
pleasant smile. Whatever self-command she had she was apt to use in his
presence.
"I really ought to go," she said; "I have worlds to do, and it must be
nearly two o'clock."
"I will call Lipps," and he raised his whistle.
Her cold eyes looked uneasy and wandering. She stood by her son resent-
ing his disapproval. Lipps came in and held the door open for her. " Oh,
I saw you on the lawn, this morning. You bore it well, I hope."
" Well enough, thanks."
"I am glad to hear that," she remarked formally. "And you are sleeping
well?"
" Well enough, thanks," he said again, still with the smile that made her
uncomfortable, and reminded her of the late count.
"That is more than I can say. My neuralgia" — she murmured, "and
Mousey is so restless — and those horrid workmen begin now before seven.
You are fortunate that they are not on your side of the house."
"Very fortunate."
" Well, a pleasant day to you, Hugo. I am glad to be able to give so good
an account of you to your friends. As you are determined not to approve of
Gabrielle, I presume I need not hasten to present her."
"No, that ceremony can be indefinitely postponed." She extended her
hand, which he again raised mechanically to his lips.
"The gracious countess is served," announced the fat and solemn butler
at the door. Presently Mousey's bell and her voluble endearments were
heard in the hall.
" I wish to be alone," said the count to his man. " Leave me."
An hour later Lipps stole softly in, and found the invalid asleep. Two
bright spots glowed on his cheeks, and from time to time his hands twitched
nervously. In a distant corner the little black book lay spread out on its
face, as if flung by an impatient hand. Lipps solicitously smoothed its
crumpled leaves.
1861-88] EDGAR FAWCETT. 4Q5
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1847.
TO AN ORIOLE.
[Fantasy and Passion. 1878.— Song and Story. 1884.]
HOW falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly
In tropic splendor through our Northern sky ?
At some glad moment was it nature's choice
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice ?
Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black,
In some forgotten garden, ages back,
Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird ?
THE MEETING.
T SAW in dreams a dim bleak heath, Chaste as though bathed in breaking day,
-L Where towered a gaunt pine by a And radiant with all saintly charms,
rock, She flew toward him till she lay
And suddenly, from the earth beneath, Close-locked in his dark arms!
That rent itself with an angry shock,
A shape sprang forth to that wild place, : heard a far va£ue voice that said :
Whose limbs by chains were trenched "On earth these twain had loved so
and marred, wel1
And whose sardonic pain-worn face That now their 1,ives' when both are dead»
Was grimly scorched and scarred. Burst the Sreat bounds of Heaven and
Hell.
He waited by the spectral pine ; Alike o'er powers of gloom and light
Aloft he lifted haggard eyes; Prevailed their fervid prayers and tears;
A woman's form, of mien divine, They meet on this bleak heath one night
Dropt earthward in seraphic wise. In every thousand years! "
THE SPHINX OF ICE.
WITH dark, with frost, with silence for her shrine,
Girt by her ghastly realms of dearth, despair,
She reigns in solitude, contented there,
A goddess beautiful and saturnine.
Round her vast huddling bergs of frozen brine
Jut spectral from the bitter North's gray air;
Above her, weird auroras leap and flare.
And like swords' points the acute stars ever shine.
406 EDGAR FAWCETT. [1861-88
And venturous mariners, through weary years,
Push up their bold barks, eager to discern
Her great pale shape, her secret to entice,
Till wrecked, numb, doomed, with half insensate ears
They hear long terrible laughter pealing stern
In arctic mockery from the Sphinx of Ice !
THE GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED TOO LONG.
[Social Silhouettes. 1885.]
"YTTHAT man who has ever gone into the whirl and glitter of his first
V V ball does not clearly remember it ? I remember mine. I was about
twenty-three, and I appeared in a room filled with lights, flowers, music,
dancing or sitting guests, hilarious festivity, and yet I did not know a soul
with whom I could exchange a single authorized word.
True enough, I was Mark Manhattan. But who knew or cared for that ?
I was young, and I had never been seen before. I had bowed to my hostess,
and passed on. Other people, I perceived, were bowing and passing on. But
nobody passed on as I did, without finding somebody else whom he could
pause beside and talk to. I could not find a soul. I roamed hither and
thither, en martyr.
And yet every one was staring at me, or so I felt. I sidled near an alcove,
and found that my back had come into contact with two male and female
beings seated there. I blundered away, murmuring an apology, which was
perhaps unheard above the brisk and dulcet waltz. I discovered a small knot
of observant gentlemen, and shrank behind one of them, whose shoulders
were shieldingly broad, and whose general physical height and bulk offered
a most tempting ambuscade. But suddenly this gentleman, just as I had
cleverly ensconced myself in his rear, made a dash forward for the purpose
of joining some passing lady, and I was once more left mercilessly and glar-
ingly revealed. It seemed to me that the wide critical stare at once began
again. Was I quite sure that there was nothing in my cosftime out of order ?
Had I given sufficient attention to my white necktie ? Might it not have
drooped, sagged, grown demoralized ? Did my new coat fit me rightly ?
Were my trousers bagging at the knees ? Had my chaste oval of shirt-bosom
become wrinkled ? Some of the beautiful young girls, with their milky necks
and arms, and their ethereal dresses, seemed to pass me in a sort of lovely
disdain. " Why do you come here at all, you horrid young hobbledehoy ?"
their red, smiling lips seemed to inquire. I wondered whether it would look
very strange if I slipped out of the rooms by a back door, thence upstairs,
and thence, after procuring my wraps, down again to the street. Of course
such a proceeding would be noticed at this early hour of the evening, and es-
pecially as my appearance had caused so universal and extraordinary a scru-
tiny. But, even if it did make them talk a little, why should I care ? I meant
never, never to go into society again. I was not fitted for it ; perhaps I was
1861-88] EDGAR FAWCETT. 4QJ
above its flippancies, perhaps I was below its graces and felicities. However
this might be, I had emphatically seen my last evening of mirth and melody,
of revelry and roses.
While this gloomy resolution was shaping itself within my spirit, I found
myself affably addressed by a person standing at my elbow. He was an elder-
ly gentleman, and he then appeared to my grateful mind the most charming
elderly gentleman in all the world. It was so delightful to be noticed at last
in a conversational way — to feel one's self an appreciable unit in the ignor-
ing throng. I looked into the face of my companion while he spoke, and at
first decided that he was a personnage. His pure white mustache flowed
toward either pink cheek in rippling fulness ; his white hair, still abundant,
gleamed above a pair of restless hazel eyes ; his form was compact and of good
apparent capability. He had a bunch of violets in the lapel of his coat, and
he posed his arms with a jaunty curve. He was clearly old, and yet a most
elastic and potent vitality still dwelt in him. You felt that his foot was
planted upon the floor with a firmness to which his actual age did not cor-
respond.
But closer observation soon resulted in a new judgment. His impressive-
ness was wholly physical and facial. It was indeed hardly even the latter ; for
when you looked well into his countenance you saw there a certain vacancy
that matched the inane quality of his words. Later it became plain to me
that he would just as soon make himself audible in my society as in that of
any one else. He had really nothing to say ; it was all a stream of copious,
artless prattle. It was about the weather, about the heat of the rooms, about
the temperature desirable at a ball, about a ball last night where the temper-
ature was just high enough, about the new way in which young girls wore
their hair, about the prevalence of white dresses causing the whole festival
to lack gayety. And sometimes it was about absolutely nothing, in so far as
I could ascertain, while he babbled on in his short, jerky sentences, and in
his guttural, monotonous, but entirely genial tones.
I noticed that he bowed often, as the ladies with their escorts moved past
us, and that many bows were given him in return. He appeared to know
everybody, as the phrase goes. I had said very little, myself, thus far ; but
feeling that he doubtless had it in his power to make me acquainted with at
least three-quarters of the assembled guests, if so disposed, I ventured to
sound his good nature on this important point. I began by telling him that
I had hoped to meet a few of my relations there that night, but that none of
them chanced to be present — a circumstance which I was compelled to re-
gret, as it prevented me from securing an introduction to any of the attrac-
tive young ladies whom I saw on all sides. " And to-night," I finished, " is
really my first appearance in New York society."
" I know nearly everybody," he secretly gladdened me by saying, in his
rapid, spasmodic, cordial way. " I guess I could fix things for you. Let's
see — you said your name was "
I had not said what my name was, but on hearing it the gentleman grasped
my hand and declared himself on the best of terms with about fifty of my
relations. He talked so much of the large Manhattan family, flying from
EDGAR FAWCETT. [1861-88
members of it who lived to members of it who had long ago been dead, that
I conceived a fear lest he should quite forget his previous offer.
But he did not forget it ; or rather a gentle reminder on my part stopped
the ample current of his reminiscences, and I was subsequent!}' made to know
several of the ladies present. I owe to him my launching, as it were, upon
the social stream. And I soon learned just who the gentleman was by whose
kindness I had benefited.
His name was Billington, and for years he had been called Old Beau Bil-
lington. His age was estimated to be seventy, if a day, though he might
even have been older. There was a time when he appeared in the exclusive
circles of New York, and received many sidelong looks of distrust. Few
strangers ever crossed, in those days, our quiet Knickerbocker limits. Mr.
Billington was reported to have come originally from an Eastern State, but
he had lived several years abroad. It was such a picturesque thing, then, to
have lived several years abroad ! But a great deal of suspicion at first attached
to the brilliant newcomer, who danced the antique cotillion with so ravish-
ingly graceful a pigeon's-wing, who wore his stock with so modish an ele-
gance, and who whispered compliments garnished by so novel an embellish-
ment of dainty French idiom. But for some time Beau Billington had to
carefully work his way. Our grandmothers remember being cautioned
against him in their girlhood. Bowling Green was then the Madison Square
of our little, provincial, semi-Dutch New York, and more than one pretty
girl was instructed by her sedulous mother to turn her face in another direc-
tion when she met Mr. Billington strolling in beflowered waistcoat and with
nicely-poised cane along the streets bordering on that miniature park. The
Amsterdams, Ten Eycks, and Van Twillers for the most part disapproved
of him. He lived on an income of his own, and did no business. It was such
an unprecedented thing for any young gentleman, at that time, to do no
business ! It seemed quite shocking that he should haunt the breezy Battery
of an afternoon, while all the scions of respectable families were poring dec-
orously over ledgers and accounts in the offices of their merchant parents.
But the blooming daughters of Knickerbockerdom did not all obey the pa-
rental behest. Some of them rankly and daringly disobeyed it. They found
Beau Billington, whose clothes fitted him to such perfection and whose
foreign touches were so irresistibly winsome, a great deal more interesting
than their brothers and cousins and friends, who held it disreputable to be
seen smoking a cigar in "business hours," and who cared as much for a verse
of poetry as for the Koran or the Talmud. Beau Billington cared for poetry.
and could write stanzas of it that were simply adorable. He had met Lord
Byron abroad, and had once spent an evening in his company. There was a
fascinating wickedness about this fact — if fact it could really be termed.
His stanzas all had the most romantic ring. They were full of phrases like,
" Fair lady, at thy shrine I lay my heart," and
" When silver Dian beams above,
And summer dewdrops glisten clear,
I drop, in memory of my love,
A tender but respectful tear "
1861-88] EDGAR FAWCETT. 499
Certain copies of Mr. Billington's poetic tributes went fluttering like little
insidious doves among the genteel maidens of old New York. But, unlike
doves, they carried trouble instead of peace below their sly literary wings.
And one day society woke to the alarming news that Miss Elizabeth Man-
hattan (very probably one of my own direct ancestresses) had openly braved
the wrath of both her parents, and declared that she would either marry Beau
Billington or live and die a spinster. The young lovers had been caught,
one spring afternoon, together, wandering in sweet converse far out into the
country. They had crossed the sluggish little canal that is now Canal Street,
and before the cruel destroyers of their peace pounced upon them they must
have reached those leafy, rural regions which lay where Union Square now
lifts to an unmindful public its libellous statue of Lincoln.
But they were dragged apart, and a great scandal followed. Beau Billing-
ton, deluged with sentimental sympathy from one source, and pelted with
animadversions from another, remained majestically constant to his aristo-
cratic sweetheart. Popular feeling ran high ; everybody took either one side
or another. The entire Van Horn family cut every member of the Schenec-
tady family, one Sunday morning, at the door of Old Trinity, just after
church, in consequence of different opinions on this mighty and absorbing
subject. There was even some talk of a duel between Beau Billington and a
fiery young brother of poor Elizabeth Manhattan. The duel was to take
place somewhere "across the river" ; report even named the precise historic
spot in which Burr had killed Hamilton. But I believe there is no doubt
that the duel failed to take place.
Something sadder took place, however. Elizabeth paled, faded, and
drooped in her captivity. Her parents continued relentless. She was a great
heiress — great, that is, for those days ; she would probably inherit, if she
lived, the massive sum of $50,000. Her father was a very rich man ; he had
four children, and it was confidently expected that they would receive a for-
tune of at least $200,000 between them.
But poor, love-lorn Elizabeth inherited nothing. It is stated that she died
literally of a broken heart. I am writing of generations ago. Hearts were
more brittle in New York society then than now. They broke then, some-
times ; now they get sprained a little, like a wrist or an ankle, and ultimately
recover.
Beau Billington's fidelity survived the death of his Elizabeth. He never
married. He went to Boston and lived there for two or three years, and at
length returned to New York. All the slanderous stories about his being a
moneyless adventurer were slowly and thoroughly refuted. He had been in
every respect what he had represented himself. His attachment to the young
heiress from whom he was so mercilessly torn clad him with a new charm,
melancholy and delicate, as years slipped on. His fealty to her memory kept
his popularity forever fresh. He was still young, and still unusually hand-
some. He wrote new verses for the albums of many devout feminine friends.
But they were all tinged with the same hue of sadness. "The loved and the
lost" recurred again and again amid their funereal iambics.
And here comes the real pathos of my history. Beau Billington gradually
410 EDGAR FAWCETT. [1861-88
grew old. But he grew old in the most unskilful and injudicious way. If
he had died at forty his fame as a new Abelard of constancy might have been
preserved intact. If he had retired from the world at forty-five, there might
still have remained a rich chance for his future poetic and legendary corona-
tion as hero and martyr. Years of gout and rheumatism, passed in seclu-
sion, Avould still have left his chivalrous renown untarnished. But he chose
to linger in drawing-rooms until every vestige of youth had departed from
him. His superabundant physical health, and his undying love for the pomp
and glitter of fashion, had ruined him as a type of manly devotion. He be-
came a senile bachelor, whom every one tolerated and laughed at.
Thus he stood on the evening we met. The grandchildren and the great-
grandchildren of all those who once made his name a sort of social war-cry
lazily recollected his old prestige while they yawned at the dreary figments
of his wandering brain. He was like a theatre from which the audience
have departed and in which the lights of the auditorium burn no longer,
while, strangely enough, the performance on the stage still continues, but
with what mockery of its old alertness, vigor, and vivacity ! How tame and
thin it looks and sounds beside the energy and ring of the old entertain-
ment!
The romance lingering about this plaintive little story of the old Beau's
past devotion appealed to me at once. I don't pretend to declare why. I
suppose it was because one has grown to expect nothing of this sort in our
big, hard, cold city, which imports its sentiment as it does its bric-a-brac.
I have always had a tenderness for Bowling Green, too, and the Battery. Any
affair of the heart which occurred there a good many years ago was like find-
ing, when I heard it, a pretty picture to fit a quaint frame long in my pos-
session. I tried to forget that Beau Billington had been displumed as a po-
tential gallant of song and story ; that he had played his beau role quite too
continuously ; that he resembled a tenor whose " Gennaro" and " Manrico "
have once drawn forth wildest plaudits, but who has long outsung his prime
and gets the bitter wage of silence where golden enthusiasm cheered him. I
tried to forget this, and very fairly succeeded. Instead of encouraging such
disillusionment, I dipped the brush of fancy, as one might say, into Colonial
coloring, and saw the lovers strolling together on the airy Battery — he with
a ruffled shirt-bosom and she in a poke-bonnet and mitts. I saw the rows of
prim houses near by, with their plain black iron railings and their white
arched doorways and the dormer windows standing forth from their sloped
roofs. Beau Billington and his sweetheart were so much more agreeable to
think of than if they had been two modern lovers promenading along the
brownstone smartness of Fifth avenue, she with French heels that hurt her
and he with an English collar that hurt him!
I was very kind to Beau Billington for a year or two after that. And some-
times being kind to him meant being talked to by him for perhaps twenty
good minutes in some such strain as the following :
" Yes, that little thing over there in blue (or is it pink ? — yes, pink — I de-
clare I forgot to call the color by the right name — yes, really I did). "Well,
now, what was I just saying ? Oh, yes, you needn't tell me" (Beau Billing-
1861-88] EDGAR FAWCETT. 41 j
ton hated an interruption as though it were a troublesome insect), "for I
recollect perfectly well. It was about that little thing over there in blue — I
mean pink — yes, pink. Who'd ever suppose she could be Margaret Cart-
wright's great-grandchild ? I — I do believe there must be some mistake. I
used to know Margaret Cartwright as well! Why, bless my soul, she mar-
ried a man old enough to be her father — Colonel Preston, a Southerner,
who'd been all through the Revolution. Made her an excellent husband,
though. Poor fellow, he died long before she did. But not of old age — died
from one of his wounds — caught cold in it, going, one very cold night, to the
firemen's ball. We used to have firemen's balls in those days, and some of
the biggest folks in the city would go to 'em, too. You see, the whole fire
department was different then from what it is now. They didn't have any
horses hitched to the engines, you understand — no horses at all — and "
Perhaps I would break in just here with a polite statement that I knew
well how the old fire department in New York had been managed (or mis-
managed, should I have said ?) ; and then, backing away with a smile or a
wave of the hand, I would leave Beau Billington to find some other recipient
of his garrulity. For, on the whole, being kind to him was by no means
always a sinecure.
At length I awoke one evening to the fact that I had not seen the old gen-
tleman for several weeks. Learning his residence, I called there. I found
him lying back in an arm-chair, quite alone. The chamber bore no signs of
poverty, but it was grim and stiff in all its appointments. It needed the evi-
dence of a woman's touch. I thought of the dead-and-gone Elizabeth. How
different everything would have been if — But, good heavens ! of what was
I thinking ? Elizabeth, even if she had married Beau Billington, might have
lived to a good old age and still long ago have been in her grave.
The old invalid smiled when he saw me, but while I sat down beside him
and took his hand he gave me no further sign of recognition. His old volu-
ble tongue was silent forever. His paralysis had affected him most of all in
that way. Every morning he would be dressed and go to his chair, walking
feebly, but still walking. And there he would sit all day, never speaking,
yet smiling his dim, vacant, pathetic smile if the doctor or the landlady or
his valet addressed him.
He was quite deserted by all his friends. No ; I should say that he had no
friends left to desert him. He had lived too long. There was no one to come
except me. And I, strangely enough, was a Manhattan — a kinsman of his
long-lost Elizabeth ! Of course, if he had had any kindred here it would have
been otherwise. But there was not a soul to whom one could say : " Old Beau
Billington is dying at last, and the tie of blood makes it your duty to seek
him out and watch beside him." As for his kindred in other cities or States,
no one knew them. And if any had been found there, they would doubtless
have been perfect strangers to him — the children and grandchildren of van-
ished cousins.
He had lived too long !
Often during the days that followed, while I sat beside his arm-chair, I
told myself that there was infinitely more sadness in a fate like his than in
412 EDGAR FAWCETT. [1881-88
having died too early ! The gods had never loved any human life of which
they were willing to make so lonely and deserted a wreck as this !
At last, one spring evening, at about six o'clock, I chanced to be sitting in
his chamber. He had dozed much during the day, they told me ; but I fan-
cied that, as I took his hand and looked into his hazel eyes, there was a more
intellectual gleam on his face than he had shown for weeks past. A window
was open near his arm-chair ; the air was bland as June that evening, though
as yet it was only early May. I had brought some white and pink roses, and
had set them in a vase on the table at his side, and now their delicious odor
blent in some subtile way with the serenity of the chamber, the peace and
repose of its continual occupant, the drowsy hum of the great city as it ceased
from its daily toil, and the slant, vernal afternoon light.
Suddenly he turned and looked at me, and I at once saw a striking change
in his face. I could not have explained it ; I simply understood it, and that
was all.
I bent over his chair, taking his hand. It occurs to me now, as I recall
what happened, that I could not possibly have been mistaken in the single
faintly uttered word which appeared to float forth from under his snow-
white mustache. And that word (unless I curiously underwent some delu-
sion) was — "Elizabeth."
The next instant his eyes closed. And then, only a short time later, I stood
by his arm-chair and smelt the roses as they scented the sweet, fresh spring
twilight, and thought, with no sense of death's chill or horror —
" Perhaps there is a blessing, after all, in having lived too long, if only one
can pass away at the end as peacefully as Old Beau Billington."
THE OLD BEAU.
HOW cracked and poor his laughter Gleam near the grandsons of the belles
rings ! He smiled on forty years ago !
How dulled his eye, once flashing
warm t We watcli him here, and half believe
But still a courtly pathos clings Our gaze maJ witness, while he
About his bent and withered form. prates,
Death, like a footman, touch his sleeve
To-night, where mirth with music dwells, And tell him that the carriage
His wrinkled cheek, his locks of snow waits.
THE DYING ARCHANGEL.
[Romans and Revery. 1886.]
TDEYOND the sense or dream we know as man's,
-*— ' In heights or deeps where time and space are one
And either as the mote that specks a ray;
1861-88] EDGAR FAWCETT. 41 3
At fountain-head of mystery, force and rule
Whose funds of calm are causes of &11 worlds,
Ended, begun or yet to roll and shine, —
A being, a child of light and majesty,
Did evil, sinned a terrible sin, and felt
His immortality tremble, while a Voice
Whose mandate was creation and whose wrath
Extinction, spake the doom he feared must fall.
"So near wert thou to natal roots of good
That almost thou wert I, as I was thou;
And hence the incomparable deed devised
Of thee, sin's primal enemy, hath sent
A shudder among t'ne voids where systems wheel
And made the soul of order rock with threat.
Great is thy sin, as thou, bright subaltern,
Art great ; and therefore great must be thy shame.
Death is that shame ; and yet a loftier death
Should take thee, as befits thy place and power.
So shall thy passing into emptiness
Be archangelic for its dignity,
As thou, archangel, shouldstin grandeur die."
Then he that heard with anguish raised his eyes,
Dark as two seas in storm, yet dared not speak.
And while he stood, with glory and ruin each
Blent in his mien, like some wild shattered cloud
That lightning rends and leaves, once more the Voice:
"Thou knowest of how among my million stars
One beautifully beamed for centuries, yet
Hatli aged at last, and nears its fated close.
That star I love as I loved thee; for both
Served me in radiance as my vassals, both
Shone the exemplars of obedience, both
With memories of proud loyalty shall haunt
Eternity through all its domes ar.d zones.
Go, therefore, thou, imperial in thy pain
Of exile and of punishment, to lay
The shadowed splendor of thy limbs and brows
Dying upon that dying star! A world
Of melancholy as mighty as thine own
Shall compass thee, and while it fades and dims,
Thy spirit in unison shall wane. Farewell ! "
Then sought the Archangel, plaintless and alone,
This ancient star whose orb should be his tomb.
Once its wide continents had swarmed with man,
But now the torpid life of toad or worm
Reigned sole among nude fields and spectral woods.
No beast was left, no hint of leaf on bough,
No delicate wraith of flower, no glimpse of vine,
Or yet, through many a year, no trill of bird ;
414
EDGAR FAWCETT. [1861-88
But all was dreariness and desuetude,
Fatigue, affliction, languor and decay;
The star had been a planet, allegiant
To a vast sun that glimmered at this hour
Wan as a wasted ember from its heaven.
In bends of rivers that had shrunk to streams,
On coasts of seas that flashed a glassy gray,
Phantoms of cities reared their roofs and towers,
With streets that swept by mouldering palaces,
With monstrous parks, where crumbling statues loomed,
With temples, mausoleums and monuments
In pathos of debasement ; with long wharves
Where sick, monotonous ripples ever lapped
On towering hulls of rotted ships that once
Had scorned the ire of tempests, — nay, with all
To attest a race of such magnificence,
Dominion, empire and supremacy
As knowledge wed to wisdom nobly breeds.
Then, drooping low, the accursed Archangel spake i
" O star, I knew thee in thy luminous prime,
And loved thee not alone that thou wert fair,
But for the attainments and the victories
Wrought of thy peoples till they rose like gods!
For slowly did they climb, while aeons passed,
From brutish aims to deeds of golden worth.
I watched and loved their leaders of high thought,
Their stealthy change of laws from vile to pure,
Their conquests over tyrannies and wrongs,
Their agonies, hopes, rebellions, and at last
The white dawn of their peace ! But most of all
I loved, O star, the poets upon thy sphere,
And found in these melodious prophecy
Of dreams thy future waited to fulfil. . . .
But now thy future and thy past are one,
And I, who am fallen from immortality,
Shall rob thy dissolution, to my joy,
Of death's worst pang, being come to lay myself
In thee as in a sepulchre sublime ! "
So, while the dimness gathered gloom, and night
That had no morning shrouded these lone lands,
The Archangel bowed his head and screened his face,
And died in silence with the dying star !
A DEAD BUTTERFLY.
TMMORTAL were you named when earth was young,
•*- Yet here, with wings where florid fire still stays,
On the cold strand of death I find you flung,
Blent with its desultory waifs and strays!
1861-88] MARY RALLOCK FOOTS. 415
Ahl blithe and lovely Bedouin of the air,
Once to such revelling life so richly wed,
Well might I dream, while gazing on you there,
That immortality itself lay dead !
^aliocfe foote,
BORX in Milton-on-the-Hudson, N. Y., 1847.
HOME-LIFE IN MEXICO.
[.4 Provincial Capital of Mexico.— The Century Magazine. 1882.]
MORELIA, from the point of view of the Casa G , is a very different
experience from the same place viewed from the Hotel Michoacan.
Instead of the bedside tray of coffee and rusks served by the waiter with the
impenetrable head of hair, who never knocked at the door, one awakened
to the luxury of a bath, a daintily served cup of chocolate or a bumper of hot
milk, fresh eggs, fresh fruit, in the flower-scented dining-room, at whatever
hour one chose to ask for it. The air of early morning was indescribably pure
and cool — cool enough to suggest an open fire to an English or American
constitution — but the sunny side of the corridor was a very good substitute.
The flowers were freshly watered and fragrant. All the galleries in Mexico
surrounding the inner courts are lined with flowers. It is one of the pretti-
est features of their domestic architecture. The vines festooned along the
arches stirred a little in the breeze which lifted and let fall the heavy leaves
of the banana tree near the dining-room door. Clear shadows slanted across
the pale-tinted stone fa9ade of the cloistered gallery. There was a hammock
of Panama grass, swinging empty, or cradling the little daughter of the
house, always attended by a fluffy white poodle^ whom she addressed as "En-
rique! mi Alma I " (my Soul !).
A man-servant, of the shade of complexion called moreno — chocolate with
a little milk in it — and eyes of chocolate unmixed, in a white linen blouse,
with a red sash girding the waist, shuffled listlessly about the gallery at this
hour, watering the plants or sweeping the red-tiled pavement with a broom
made of palm splints. There was a parrot, like a great jewel, on his perch in
the sun. The gray turtle-doves are regarded by the Mexican servants as
harbingers of evil to the house where their soft guttural note is heard, but
the Casa G rejected this superstition of the country, and gave shelter to
the doves. The noises of the house were very pleasant ; loud, harsh voices
or footsteps were unheard ; no bell ever rang. If the young mistress had
need of a servant, she stepped into the corridor and clapped her hands. The
signal was answered by Leonarda, or Eita, or Michaela, or the disconsolate
Ascension, who did everything with a fine gloomy air, even to the carrying
about on his shoulders of the little Jose, the child of Leonarda, the Camar-
410 MARY HALLOCK FOOTE. [1861-88
ista. Their mediaeval associations reconciled one to the only loud noises of
the house — the deep, echoing bay of the two gaunt young bloodhounds
chained to the wall of the court below, and the stamping of the horses' feet
on the pavement of their stalls under the arches. The rear court was called
the corral. It was here the steeds— two saddle-horses, and a pair of very large
and solemn white mules, who drew the family carriage to the paseo every
afternoon — were watered, at the stone tank built against the high wall and
overshadowed by a bamboo thicket — all smooth brown stems, leaning in
graceful curves, supporting or letting fall a shimmer of pale-green leaves over
the brown water. Ysabel, the coachman, with his sarape over his shoulder,
sitting on the edge of the tank while the white mules drank, suited well this
corner of the court, rich in color and shadow. A little community of fowls
inhabit a part of the corral, and the care of them was one of my host's pas-
times. There was not a plebeian among them ; almost all were Creoles of
purest foreign blood ; a few of foreign birth also, as the gallant English game-
cock, the prince consort to a small clipper-built Spanish hen of flawless ex-
traction. The most beautiful and valiant of the game-cocks were translated
to the corridor above the corral — a kind of Walhalla, where, from the soli-
tude of a hero's seat, they looked down on the domestic cares and small, bust-
ling lives of their kindred below. The days began with much life and cheer-
fulness— the dogs baying in the court, excited by the coming and going of
their master's footsteps ; loud discussions among the hens in the corral ; the
cocks calling to each other in the corridor; the porters washing down the
pavement of the courts. There was practising in the sala, or recitations, au-
dible through the open doors of the school-room presided over by the German
governess; my hostess in the " dispensary," giving out the household stores
for the day to the women-servants, or inspecting the attractive basket Ysabel
brings from the market — as picturesque as a fruit-and-game "piece " with
its miscellaneously heaped contents, including fruits from the Tierra Cali-
ente, brought on donkeys up the slopes of the Sierra Madre, strange herbs
and vegetables, and always a mass of flowers for the table. The first cere-
monious meal at which the family assembled was the midday breakfast,
almuerzo. There was a succession of courses, chiefly meats, in surprising
quantity and variety in a climate where a very little animal food is sufficient,
ending with dulces and coffee. After the soup, rice, cooked in the Mexican
fashion, was invariably served and eaten with bananas. The game and poul-
try had the advantage of the most perfect cooking over a charcoal fire. A
spit is used in roasting, and every Mexican kitchen is well provided with a
multitude of pottery vessels, even to pottery griddles, light and clean, which
seemed to me far preferable to our heavy, unappetizing metal ones.
From time to time a national dish appeared, rather to humor the guests'
fancy for their novelty than for a preference for them on the part of the fam-
ily. One called turco, I was told, is of Moorish origin. It is composed of
chicken, cooked slowly in a paste made of the flour of a very small and deli-
cate dried pea, and served with ?, sauce of complex flavor. Eaisins and olives
are an incidental feature of it, and the whole dish tastes of the Arabian
Nights. The famous sweetmeat of Michoacan, guaravate, made from the
1861-88] MART HALLOCK FOOTE. 4^7
fruit of the guayaba, but less cloying than guava jelly, was generally a part
of the dessert. There were meringues called suspiros de la monja (nuns*
sighs), and a very rich custard, ' ' golden cup/' made by vigorous beating of
eggs, sugar, and flour of almonds, which was said to be a fleshly temptation
to tlaepadres, and sometimes, alas! offered as such, by naughty little lambs
of their flock who wished to be let off easy at confession. We made the ac-
quaintance of several strange tropical fruits: tne chirimoya, a delicate custard,
with black seeds enclosed in a rough green rind ; the granadita, which is
eaten like an egg out of its beautifully colored shell. The contents is slip-
pery, seedy, sweet, with a faint aromatic sub-flavor. The almuerzo corre-
sponds to our dinner in social significance. One is not asked to dine in Mex-
ico, but literally to " take soup at this, your house " (su casa de Vd), and you
are told, with other complimentary phrases, that your host is your servant.
The siesta follows the almuerzo. It was not the custom with the active ladies
of the house, but my shaded bed-chamber opening on the corridor was very
inviting, and the softness of the air, May following February, undermined
the best resolutions in regard to letter-writing, sketching, and the study of
Spanish. The light brass bedstead was exquisitely furnished with the finest
of linen and the painful hand-embroidery of the country, taught originally
by the nuns, and considered a necessary part of a Mexican lady's education.
The long, narrow pillows were covered with " ticking" of crimson Chinese
crepe, which glowed through the sheer linen-lawn cases and the interstices
of the embroidery and "drawn work" with which they were lavishly
trimmed. The bed had a canopy of brass bars, but it was uncurtained ; in
Mexico as few draperies as possible are used, because of the constant warfare
housekeepers wage against fleas, moths, and insects of all kinds.
Opposite the bed, with its dainty feminine fittings, hung a complete fen-
cing outfit, arranged on a green baize-covered shield against the wall. It
included both the light French foil and the heavy German-student sword.
The door-way was flanked on one side by a tall case of weapons, contain-
ing some beautiful Toledo swords, an old blunderbuss with its bell-shaped
barrel, all the modern rifles, elegant wicked-looking duelling pistols ; and
among the mementos of warlike passages in my host's varied life was a box
containing seven bullets that had at different times been taken from his body.
The book-case on the other side of the door was filled with well-selected books
in German, French, and Spanish — the remains of his fine library, the most
of which, while being moved in boxes during one of the political crises of the
country, went to make part of a barricade. The ladies in Mexico who "dress"
always dress for the paseo — the public promenade where the youth and ro-
mance of the old city enact the subtle dramas of a society where mediaeval
barriers still exist. It is by no means permitted that young men and women
should meet freely before marriage ; they may look at each other on the
paseo, or from convenient balconies.
You observe a youth sitting for hours motionless on a stone bench in the
plaza, or leaning in a door-way, his eyes fixed on an upper window or bal-
cony of the opposite houses. The object of his gaze is probably not visible,
unless the affair has prospered and happiness already " blooms like a lusty
VOL. x.— 27
41 g MARY HALLOCK FOOTE. [1861-88
flower in June's caress " ; but, however coy the hidden eyes may be, they are
doubtless cognizant of the patient figure of their adorer in the street below.
This is Mexican courtship. The eyes of mamma and papa are also carefully
cognizant, and this is Mexican marriage.
At five o'clock the carriage rolls out of the court, with Ysabel on the box
in his best sarape, a gray, braided jacket, and a wide-brimmed gray felt hat,
ornamented with silver cord and braid. Eubio, the ancient portero, shuts
the carriage-door, and Eoberto at the gate rises and takes off his great hat.
Seflor G , who, after twenty years of the Mexican climate, keeps his
northern habits of exercise, generally walks to the alameda, and meets the
carriage at the entrance, where the vista of black-ash trees, the rows of stone
benches, and the broad paved walk begin. As the white mules pace sedate-
ly down the roughly paved streets, the ladies keep a hand ready to make the
customary signal of greeting from the carriage-windows to their friends at
the windows and balconies of the street. It is an indescribably fascinating
gesture — so swift and subtle, almost like a fleeting expression across the face.
It is made by a quick flutter of the second finger, the hand being raised, palm
inward, to a level with the eyes. How much its charm is enhanced by the
beauty of those dark southern eyes it half conceals, it would take a very
stolid observer to decide. It seemed to me excessively intimate ; in Mo-
relia I believe it is kept for one's friends only, but in the capital it is the
usual greeting at a distance between acquaintances. I have seen nothing
prettier in their social customs, except the way the ladies meet and lean their
cheeks together, and pat each other softly on the back of the shoulder. The
paseo bounds the alameda on either side, and joining beyond it, goes ram-
bling through the wooded park of San Pedro, which gives it its name. If you
are driving, it is very pretty to look in across the high-backed stone benches
at the little parade of wives and daughters under the ash trees. All classes
are there : the bare-footed Indian girls in rebozos, their long black hair
smoothly braided or flowing loose over their shoulders, sit beside the ladies
of the chief families in crisp silks and muslins. The classes are so distinct
that there is no need to insist on the distinctions in public. The young girls
walk two or three abreast, the light falling on their uncovered heads and
shining, undulating braids. The women are sometimes dull-looking, and
by no means always beautiful, but they have a quality which is exciting to
the imagination. It may be presumed that it is not for the enjoyment of
sylvan beauty alone that the young Morelianos who display their horseman-
ship on the paseo get themselves up magnificently in braided jackets and
trousers, tight as long hose, and buttoned from hip to ankle with silver, and
set off their dark glances with a halo of silver-braided hat-brim. One regrets '
to see that many of the most fashionable young gentlemen have abandoned
the national dress, wear " chimney-pot " hats, and ride tall English horses, 1
while French bonnets and elaborately trimmed walking-dresses are replac-
ing the trailing skirt and the graceful feminine shawl. Powder is used with-
out reserve or the slightest consideration for that subtle harmony which
nature preserves between hair, eyes, and complexion. The effect is that of
being surrounded by feminine masks, with beautiful human eyes looking
1861-88] MART HALLOCK FOOTS. 419
out from them with an intensity of expression very startling in its contrast
to the blank, soulless surface of faintly rouged white which the face presents.
At the end of the alameda, where the paseo turns into the lovely wild park
of San Pedro, illumined with the low sunset light, and gorgeously dim as a
painted window, stands one of the most perfect bits of church architecture
we saw in Mexico — the Convent of San Diego. A screen of tall cypresses
weave their long shadows across the green close before its low, arched en-
trance. A few lean wearily upon their comrades, but their general air is of
guarded and somber dignity — a grave company of dark-robed priests silent-
ly pointing upward to the tall white bell-tower, and the Holy Family in pale
blue stucco, raised in rich relief below the light arches of the bell-tower. It
is so high up, this mass of figures in pale blue, that one cannot be quite sure
of its significance beyond its nobly decorative character. Deep, narrow,
barred windows make spots of shadow on the clear pale spaces of the front
elevation, which is long and low rather than lofty. San Diego has been sec-
ularized, and is now rented in apartments to families ; but one can only
imagine sober, ecclesiastic figures in black and white walking under the
cypresses or entering the low, deep portal. The colors of sunset begin to
glow through the trees as we enter the woods by the paseo. We pass a circu-
lar fountain with a paved walk surrounding it, and stone benches facing the
walk, enclosing the fountain in a greater circle. This ancient rendezvous
is called the Glorieta. It keeps a pathetic suggestion of a social life in the
city's past much more crowded and gay than anything San Pedro now ex-
hibits. The roomy, colloquial benches are empty, and grass is growing in
the chinks of the pavement. One may often see a group of Indian women
filling their water-jars at the fountain, or following the winding foot-paths
through the wood, with a cdntara supported on one shoulder by a bare up-
lifted arm.
Wild roses are in blossom among the untrimmed and neglected hedges ;
the trees are leafing out ; the wood-dove's coo, coo, coo comes from one can-
not see where; it pervades the wood, like the low sunset light. The paseo
is enlivened only by a few private carriages rolling along at lonely intervals.
There is a separate road for riders. We saw very few ladies riding ; in fact,
I remember but two, and both of them sat their horses very ineffectually, in
a helpless sidelong fashion. Often we left the carriage, and walked with a
wistful pleasure through those old trodden footpaths that lead away into the
dim days before the Conquest, when San Pedro was the site of a populous In-
dian village, with a history of its own reaching back and losing itself in other
dim days of traditional conquest before the advent of the Spaniards. The
aqueduct crosses the paseo diagonally from the city ; at the edge of the wood
it bends and swings off across the green valley toward the hills that feed the
city fountains. When the bells of the city strike the hour of oration, we re-
enter the carriage and drive slowly homeward. By this time the alameda is
nearly deserted, the brief southern twilight has suddenly faded, and the
lamps are beginning to shine in the streets. The Indian women who sit in a
row along the sidewalk opposite the entrance to the alameda, with bunches
of lettuce, dressed with poppies, for sale, have rolled up their strips of mat-
420 JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. [1861-88
ting and camped farther up the street, near the plaza. Their little fires,
shining at intervals along the street, supplement the scattering lamps. They
are cooking supper over a few coals of charcoal in a copper brazier ; or they
have kindled a lightwood torch to ward off the chill of night and advertise
their heaps of dulces; or are boiling a kind of sweatmeat, made of molasses,
in a shallow pottery dish ; or, over the brazier of charcoal, are making and
frying tortillas — the kind that are spread with meat and chile and rolled to-
gether like an omelet. All the bells of all the churches, from the great cathe-
dral with its dome and triple towers to the little church with a single tower
and a single cypress tree beside it, rising together as if equally a part of the
architect's design, are sounding at this hour. The bells of the cathedral strike
the hours and quarter-hours of the day and night, and all the churches unite
at the services of morning and evening. The cavalry regiment stationed in
the town contributes its mysterious bugle-calls and drum-taps.
There are lonely cries of street-venders, the dull bumping of wooden cart-
wheels drawn by oxen, and, at the hour of the paseo, a roll of carriage- wheels
and a stirring clatter of hoofs along the streets ; but all these sounds throb
upon a stillness as deep and restful as the shadow of the cypress on the yel-
low gable of the little church. By the time we arrive at home the court is
dimly lighted by the moon, and Eubio has placed a lamp in the sconce at the
head of the staircase. He opens the carriage-door, and shuffles slowly up the
stairs behind us with the wraps. He always reminded me of that " ancient
beadsman " in the " Eve of St. Agnes."
Supper is served at eight o'clock — a heavy meal with courses of meat, but
not so elaborate as the breakfast. There is very little evening afterward.
"We sat in the large, dimly lighted sola, or leaned over the balcony railings,
and listened to the music which burst forth in an irrelevant way from the
band of the regiment, like their unaccountable bugle-calls and drum-taps.
fames
BORN in Queen's Co., Ireland, 1847.
ANDROMEDA.
[Songs and Satires. 1887.]
ri^HEY chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone;
The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own;
The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone.
Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her,
Ye left her there alone !
My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain ;
The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main:
But lo ! a light is breaking of hope for thee again ;
1861-88] JO SI AH STRONG. 421
'Tis Perseus' sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming
Across the western main.
O Ireland ! 0 my country ! he comes to break thy chain !
THE V-A-S-E.
TT^ROM the madding crowd they stand But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred
*•• apart, To crush the stranger with one small
The maidens four and the Work of Art; word.
And none might tell from sight alone Deftly hiding reproof in praise,
In which had Culture ripest grown,— She cries : '"Tis, indeed, a lovely vaze I "
The Gotham Million fair to see, But brief her unworthy triumph when
The Philadelphia Pedigree, The lofty one from the home of Penn»
The Boston Mind of azure hue, With the consciousness of two grand-
Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,— papas,
Exclaims: "It is quite a lovely vans! "
For all loved Art in a seemly way,
With an earnest soul and a capital A. And glances round with an anxious thnll,
Awaiting the word of Beacon Hill.
Long they worshipped ; but no one broke But the Boston maid smiles courteouslee
The sacred stillness, until up spoke And gently murmur8: «Oh, pardon me!
The Western one from the nameless place, "I did not catch your remark, because
Who blushing said : "What a lovely I was so entranced with that charming
vace!" vaws!"
Over three faces a sad smile flew, Dies erit prcsgelida
And they edged away from Kalamazoo. Sinistra quum Bostonia.
BORN in Naperville, Du Page Co., 111., 1847.
FACTS AND THOUGHTS CONCERNING IMMIGRATION.
[Our Country : its Possible Future and its Present Crisis. 1885.]
TTTHILE in 1880 the foreign-born were only thirteen per cent, of the en-
V V tire population, they furnish nineteen per cent, of the convicts in our
penitentiaries, and forty-three per cent, of the inmates of work-houses and
houses of correction. And it must be borne in mind that a very large pro-
portion of the native-born prisoners were of foreign parentage.
Moreover, immigration not only furnishes the greater portion of our crim-
inals; it is also seriously affecting the morals of the native population. It is
JOSIAH STRONG. [1861-88
disease and not health which is contagious. Most foreigners bring with
them continental ideas of the Sabbath, and the result is sadly manifest in all
our cities, where it is being transformed from a holy day into a holiday. But
by far the most effective instrumentality for debauching popular morals is
the liquor traffic, and this is chiefly carried on by foreigners. In 1880, of
the "traders and dealers in liquors and wines" (I suppose this means
wholesale dealers), sixty-three per cent, were foreign-born, and of the brew-
ers and maltsters seventy-five per cent., while a large proportion of the re-
mainder were of foreign parentage. Of saloon-keepers about sixty per cent,
were foreign-born, while many of the remaining forty per cent, of these cor-
ruptors of youth, these western Arabs, whose hand is against every man, were
of foreign extraction.
We can only glance at the political aspects of immigration. As we have
already seen, it is immigration which has fed fat the liquor power ; and there
is a liquor vote. Immigration furnishes most of the victims of Mormonism ;
and there is a Mormon vote. Immigration is the strength of the Catholic
church ; and there is a Catholic vote. Immigration is the mother and nurse
of American socialism ; and there is to be a socialist vote. Immigration
tends strongly to the cities, and gives to them their political complexion.
And there is no more serious menace to our civilization than our rabble-
ruled cities. These several perils, all of which are enhanced by immigration,
will be considered in succeeding chapters.
Many American citizens are not Americanized. It is as unfortunate as it
is natural, that foreigners in this country should cherish their own language
and peculiar customs, and carry their nationality, as a distinct factor, into
our politics. Immigration has created the " German vote " and the ' ' Irish
vote," for which politicians bid, and which have already been decisive of
State elections, and might easily determine national. A mass of men but
little acquainted with our institutions, who will act in concert and who are
controlled largely by their appetites and prejudices, constitute a very para-
dise for demagogues.
We have seen that immigration is detrimental to popular morals. It has
a like influence upon popular intelligence, for the percentage of illiteracy
among the foreign-born population is thirty-eight per cent, greater than
among the native-born whites. Thus immigration complicates our moral
and political problems by swelling our dangerous classes. And as immigra-
tion is to increase much more rapidly than the'population, we may infer
that the dangerous classes are to increase more rapidly than hitherto. From
1870 to 1880 the population increased 30.06 per cent. During the same
period the number of criminals increased 82.33 per cent. It goes without
saying, that there is a dead-line of ignorance and vice in every republic, and
when it is touched by the average citizen free institutions perish ; for intel-
ligence and virtue are as essential to the life of a republic as are brain and
heart to the life of a man.
A severe strain upon a bridge may be borne with safety if evenly distrib-
uted, which, if concentrated, would ruin the whole structure. There is
among our population of alien birth an unhappy tendency toward aggrega-
1861-88] J08IAE STRONG. 423
tion, which concentrates the strain upon portions of our social and political
fabric. Certain quarters of many of the cities are, in language, customs, and
costumes, essentially foreign. Many colonies have bought up lands and so
set themselves apart from Americanizing influences. In 1845, New Glarus,
in southern Wisconsin, was settled by a colony of 108 persons from one of
the cantons of Switzerland. In 1880 they numbered 1,060 souls ; and " no
Yankee lives within a ring of six miles round the first-built dug-out/' This
Helvetian settlement, founded three years before Wisconsin became a State,
has preserved its race, its language, its worship, and its customs in their in-
tegrity. Similar colonies are now being planted in the West. In some cases
100,000 or 200,000 acres in one block have been purchased by foreigners of
one nationality and religion; thus building up states within a State, having
different languages, different antecedents, different religions, different ideas
and habits, preparing mutual jealousies, and perpetuating race antipathies.
If our noble domain were tenfold larger than it is, it would still be too small
to embrace, with safety to our national future, little Germanics here, little
Scandinavias there, and little Irelands yonder. A strong centralized gov-
ernment, like that of Rome under the Caesars, can control heterogeneous
populations, but local self-government implies close relations between man
and man, a measure of sympathy, and, to a certain extent, community of
ideas. Our safety demands the assimilation of these strange populations,
and the process of assimilation will become slower and more difficult as the
proportion of foreigners increases.
When we consider the influence of immigration, it is by no means reas-
suring to reflect that seventy-five per cent, of it is pouring into the formative
West. We have seen that in 1900 our foreign population, with their chil-
dren of the first generation, will probably number not less than 43,000,000.
If the movement westward continues, as it probably will, until the free
farming-lands are all taken, 25,000,000 of that foreign element will be west
of the Mississippi. And this will be two thirds of all the population of the
West, even if that population should increase 350 per cent, between 1880
and 1900. Already is the proportion of foreigners in the Territories from two
to three times greater than in the States east of the Mississippi. We may well
ask — and with special reference to the West — whether this in-sweeping im-
migration is to foreignize us, or we are to Americanize it. Mr. Beecher
hopefully says, when the lion eats an ox the ox becomes lion, not the lion ox.
The illustration would be very neat if it only illustrated. The lion happily
has an instinct controlled by an unfailing law which determines what, and
when, and how much he shall eat. If that instinct should fail, and he should
some day eat a badly diseased ox, or should very much overeat, we might
have on our hands a very sick lion. I can even conceive that under such con-
ditions the ignoble ox might slay the king of beasts. Foreigners are not
coming to the United States in answer to any appetite of ours, controlled by
an unfailing moral or political instinct. They naturally consult their own
interests in coming, not ours. The lion, without being consulted as to time,
quantity, or quality, is having the food thrust down his throat, and his only
alternative is, digest or die.
424 WALTER LEARNED. [1861-88
Walter LeanteD,
BOBN in New London, Conn., 1847.
AT THE GOLDEN GATE.
[Between Times. 1889.]
UPON her wedding robe the dew is damp;
Poor, weary, foolish fair,
Who with gem-circled arms and empty lamp
Stands, waiting, listening, there.
Brief space her erring sisters made their moan ;
Nor did they lingering wait,
But left her in her dumb despair, alone
Before the golden gate.
"Come, follow us," they cried; "the Bridegroom spurns
Our tardy homage. Haste !
For black night falls. Since He no more returns,
Why here the moments waste ?
"Lo, still some gallant waits; and love is sweet,
And life is fair ; and yet
Somewhere the lute shall stir our dancing feet,
If we can but forget."
Silent she stood, nor turned ; for love was dear,
So dear, it was her choice
To wait and listen, if she might but hear
Only the Bridegroom's voice.
So stood she ; loving, though the door was barred,
Thus sorrowful to wait,
Repentant, though her punishment was hard,
Before the golden gate.
When the night falls, who knows what mercy waits
To pardon guilt and sin ?
Perchance the Lord himself unbarred the gates
And led the wanderer in.
ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS.
AT Cato's Head in Russell Street Before her, in the street below,
-£^- These leaves she sat a-stitching ; All powder, ruffs, and laces,
I fancy she was trim and neat, There strutted idle London beaux
Blue-eyed and quite bewitching To ogle pretty faces;
1861-88]
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.
425
While, filling many a Sedan chair
With hoop and monstrous feather,
In patch and powder London's fair
Went trooping past together.
Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
They sauntered slowly past her,
Or printer's boy, with gown and cap
For Steele, went trotting faster.
For beau nor wit had she a look,
Nor lord uor lady minding;
She bent her head above this book,
Attentive to her binding.
And one stray thread of golden hair,
Caught on her nimble fingers,
Was stitched within this volume, where
Until to-day it lingers.
Past and forgotten, beaux and fair;
Wigs, powder, all out-dated;
A queer antique, the Sedan chair;
Pope, stiff and antiquated.
Yet, as I turn these odd old plays,
This single stray lock finding,
I'm back in those forgotten days
And watch her at her binding.
IN EXPLANATION.
HER lips were so near
0 That — what else could I do \
You'll be angry, I fear,
But her lips were so near —
Well, I can't make it clear,
Or explain it to you,
But — her lips were so near
That— what else could I do ?
Constance f entmore OToolgon,
BORN in Claremont, N. H.
THE LADY OF LITTLE FISHING.
[Castle Nowhere. Lake Country Sketches. 1875.]
IT was an island in Lake Superior.
I beached my canoe there about four o'clock in the afternoon, for the
wind was against me and a high sea running. The late summer of 1850, and
I was coasting along the south shore of the great lake, hunting, fishing, and
camping on the beach, under the delusion that in that way I was living
" close to the great heart of nature," — whatever that may mean. Lord Ba-
con got up the phrase ; I suppose he knew. Pulling the boat high and dry
on the sand with the comfortable reflection that here were no tides to dis-
turb her with their goings-out and comings-ill. I strolled through the woods
on a tour of exploration, expecting to find bluebells. Indian pipes, juniper
rings, perhaps a few agates along-shore, possibly a bird or two for company.
I found a town.
426 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. [1861-88
It was deserted ; but none the less a town, with three streets, residences, a
meeting-house, gardens, a little park, and an attempt at a fountain. Kuins
are rare in the New World ; I took off my hat. " Hail, homes of the past ! "
I said. (I cultivated the habit of thinking aloud when I was living close to
the great heart of nature.) " A human voice resounds through your arches"
(there were no arches, — logs won't arch ; but never mind) " once more, a
human hand touches your venerable walls, a human foot presses your de-
serted hearth-stones. " I then selected the best half of the meeting-house for
my camp, knocked down one of the homes for fuel, and kindled a glorious
bonfire in the park. "Now that you are illuminated with joy, 0 Ruin," I
remarked, " I will go down to the beach and bring up my supplies. It is
long since I have had a roof over my head ; I promise you to stay until your
last residence is well burned ; then I will make a final cup of coffee with the
meeting-house itself, and depart in peace, leaving your poor old bones buried
in decent ashes. "
The ruin made no objection, and I took up my abode there ; the roof of
the meeting-house was still water-tight (which is an advantage when the
great heart of nature grows wet). I kindled a fire on the sacerdotal hearth,
cooked my supper, ate it in leisurely comfort, and |hen stretched myself on
a blanket to enjoy an evening pipe of peace, listening meanwhile to the
sounding of the wind through the great pine trees. There was no door to
my sanctuary, but I had the cosey far end ; the island was uninhabited,
there was not a boat in sight at sunset, nothing could disturb me unless it
might be a ghost. Presently a ghost came in.
It did not wear the traditional gray tarlatan armor of Hamlet's father, the
only ghost with whom I am well acquainted ; this spectre was clad in sub-
stantial deerskin garments, and carried a gun and loaded game-bag. It came
forward to my hearth, hung up its gun, opened its game-bag, took out some
birds, and inspected them gravely.
" Fat ? " I inquired.
"They'll do," replied the spectre, and forthwith set to work preparing
them for the coals. I smoked on in silence. The spectre seemed to be a
skilled cook, and after deftly broiling its supper, it offered me a share ; I ac-
cepted. It swallowed a huge mouthful and crunched with its teeth ; the
spell was broken, and I knew it for a man of flesh and blood.
He gave his name as Reuben, and proved himself an excellent camping
companion ; in fact, he shot all the game, caught all the fish, made all the
fires, and cooked all the food for us both. I proposed to him to stay and help
me burn up the ruin, with the condition that when the last timber of the
meeting-house was consumed, we should shake hands and depart, one to the
east, one to the west, without a backward glance. " In that way we shall not
infringe upon each other's personality," I said.
"Agreed," replied Reuben.
He was a man of between fifty and sixty years, while I was on the sunny
side of thirty ; he was reserved, I was always generously affable ; he was an
excellent cook, while I — well, I wasn't ; he was taciturn, and so, in payment
for the work he did, I entertained him with conversation, or rather mono-
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. 427
logue, in my most brilliant style. It took only two weeks to burn up the
town, burned we never so slowly ; at last it came the turn of the meeting-
house, which now stood by itself in the vacant clearing. It was a cool Sep-
tember day ; we cooked breakfast with the roof, dinner with the sides, supper
with the odds and ends, and then applied a torch to the frame-work. Our
last camp-fire was a glorious one. We lay stretched on our blankets, smok-
ing and watching the glow. "I wonder, now, who built the old shanty," I
said in a musing tone.
" Well," replied Eeuben, slowly, "if you really want to know, I will tell
you. I did."
You!"
Yes."
You didn't do it alone ? "
' No ; there were about forty of us."
Here?"
' Yes ; here at Little Fishing."
'Little Fishing?"
' Yes ; Little Fishing Island. That is the name of the place."
' How long ago was this ? "
'Thirty years."
' Hunting and trapping, I suppose ? "
' Yes ; for the Northwest and Hudson Bay Companies."
' Wasn't a meeting-house an unusual accompaniment ? "
Most unusual."
' Accounted for in this case by "
'A woman."
'Ah ! " I said in a tone of relish ; " then of course there is a story ? '
; There is."
' Out with it, comrade. I scarcely expected to find the woman and her
story up here ; but since the irrepressible creature would come, out with her
by all means. She shall grace our last pipe together, the last timber of our
meeting-house, our last night on Little Fishing. The dawn will see us far
from each other, to meet no more this side heaven. Speak then, 0 comrade
mine ! I am in one of my rare listening moods ! "
I stretched myself at ease and waited. Reuben was a long time beginning,
but I was too indolent to urge him. At length he spoke.
" They were a rough set here at Little Fishing, all the worse for being all
white men ; most of the other camps were full of half-breeds and Indians.
The island had been a station away back in the early days of the Hudson
Bay Company ; it was a station for the Northwest Company while that lasted ;
then it went back to the Hudson, and staid there until the company moved
its forces farther to the north. It was not at any time a regular post ; only a
camp for the hunters. The post was farther down the lake. 0, but those were
wild days ! You think you know the wilderness, boy ; but you know noth-
ing, absolutely nothing. It makes me laugh to see the airs of you city gen-
tlemen with your fine guns, improved fishing-tackle, elaborate parapherna-
lia, as though you were going to wed the whole forest, floating up and down
42g CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. [1861-88
the lake for a month or two in the summer ! You should have seen the hunters
of Little Fishing going out gayly when the mercury M^as down twenty de-
grees below zero, for a week in the woods. You should have seen the trap-
pers wading through the hard snow, breast high, in the gray dawn, visiting
the traps and hauling home the prey. There were all kinds of men here,
Scotch, French, English, and American ; all classes, the high and the low,
the educated and the ignorant ; all sorts, the lazy and the hard-working.
One thing only they all had in common, — badness. Some had fled to the
wilderness to escape the law, others to escape order ; some had chosen the
wild life because of its wildness, others had drifted into it from sheer leth-
argy. This far northern border did not attract the plodding emigrant, the
respectable settler. Little Fishing held none of that trash ; only a reckless
set of fellows who carried their lives in their hands, and tossed them up, if
need be, without a second thought. "
" And other people's lives without a third/' I suggested.
" Yes; if they deserved it. But nobody whined ; there wasn't any non-
sense here. The men went hunting and trapping, got the furs ready for the
bateaux, ate when they were hungry, drank when they were thirsty, slept
when they were sleepy, played cards when they felt like it, and got angry
and knocked each other down whenever they chose. As I said before, there
wasn't any nonsense at Little Fishing, — until she came."
"Ah! the she!"
" Yes, the Lady, — our Lady, as we called her. Thirty-one years ago ; how
long it seems ! "
" And well it may," I said. ' ' Why, comrade, I wasn't born then ! "
This stupendous fact seemed to strike me more than my companion ; he
went on with his story as though I had not spoken.
" One October evening, four of the boys had got into a row over the cards ;
the rest of us had come out of our wigwams to see the fun, and were sitting
around on the stumps, chaffing them, and laughing ; the camp-fire was burn-
ing in front, lighting up the woods with a red glow for a short distance, and
making the rest doubly black all around. There we all were, as I said be-
fore, quite easy and comfortable, when suddenly there appeared among us,
as though she had dropped from heaven, a woman !
"She was tall and slender, the firelight shone full on her pale face and
dove-colored dress, her golden hair was folded back under a little white cap,
and a white kerchief lay over her shoulders ; she looked spotless. I stared ;
I could scarcely believe my eyes ; none of us could. There was not a white
woman west of the Sault Ste. Marie. The four fellows at the table sat as if
transfixed ; one had his partner by the throat, the other two were disputing
over a point in the game. The lily lady glided up to their table, gathered
the cards in her white hands, slowly, steadily, without pause or trepidation
before their astonished eyes, and then, coming back, she threw the cards in-
to the centre of the glowing fire. ' Ye shall not play away your souls,' she
said in a clear, sweet voice. ' Is not the game sin ? And its reward death ?'
And then, immediately, she gave us a sermon, the like of which was never
heard before ; no argument, no doctrine, just simple, pure entreaty. ' For
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON". 429
the love of God/ she ended, stretching out her hands towards our silent,
gazing group, — * for the love of God, my brothers, try to do better/
" "VYe did try ; but it was not for the love of God. Neither did any of us
feel like brothers.
" She did not give any name ; we called her simply our Lady, and she ac-
cepted the title. A bundle carefully packed in birch-bark was found on the
beach. ' Is this yours ? ' asked Black Andy.
" ' It is/ replied the Lady ; and removing his hat, the black-haired giant
carried the package reverently inside her lodge. For we had given her our
best wigwam, and fenced it off with pine saplings so that it looked like a
miniature fortress. The Lady did not suggest this stockade ; it was our own
idea, and with one accord we worked at it like beavers, and hung up a gate
with a ponderous bolt inside.
" ' Mais, ze can nevare farsen eet wiz her leetle fingares/ said Frenchy, a
sallow little wretch with a turn for handicraft ; so he contrived a small spring
which shot the bolt into place with a touch. The Lady lived in her fortress ;
three times a day the men carried food to her door, and, after tapping gently,
withdrew again, stumbling over each other in their haste. The Flying
Dutchman, a stolid Holland-born sailor, was our best cook, and the pans and
kettles were generally left to him ; but now all wanted to try their skill, and
tne results were extraordinary.
" ' She's never touched that pudding, now/ said Nightingale Jack, dis-
contentedly, as his concoction of berries and paste came back from the for-
tress door.
" ' She will starve soon, I think,' remarked the Doctor, calmly ; ' to my
certain knowledge she has not had an eatable meal for four days.' And he
lighted,a fresh pipe. This was an aside, and the men pretended not to hear
it ; but the pans were relinquished to the Dutchman from that time forth.
"The Lady wore always her dove-colored robe, and little white cap,
through whose muslin we could see the glimmer of her golden hair. She
came and went among us like a spirit ; she knew no fear ; she turned our life
inside out, nor shrank from its vileness. It seemed as though she was not of
earth, so utterly impersonal was her interest in us, so heavenly her pity. She
took up our sins, one by one, as an angel might ; she pleaded with us for our
own lost souls, she spared us not, she held not back one grain of denunciation,
one iota of future punishment. Sometimes for days we would not see her ;
then, at twilight, she would glide out among us, and, standing in the light of
the camp-fire, she would preach to us as though inspired. We listened to her ;
I do not mean that we were one whit better at heart, but still we listened to her,
always. It was a wonderful sight, that lily face under the pine trees, that
spotless woman standing alone in the glare of the fire, while around her lay
forty evil-minded, lawless men, not one of whom but would have killed his
neighbor for so much as a disrespectful thought of her.
" So strange was her coming, so almost supernatural her appearance in
this far forest, that we never wondered over its cause, but simply accepted it
as a sort of miracle ; your thoroughly irreligious men are always superstitious.
Not one of us would have asked a question, and we should never have known
430 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOL SON. [1861-88
her story had she not herself told it to us ; not immediately, not as though it
was of any importance, but quietly, briefly, and candidly as a child. She
came, she said, from Scotland, with a band of God's people. She had always
been in one house, a religious institution of some kind, sewing for the poor
when her strength allowed it, but generally ill, and suffering much from pain
in her head ; often kept under the influence of soothing medicines for days
together. She had no father or mother, she was only one of this band ; and
when they decided to send out missionaries to America, she begged to go, al-
though but a burden ; the sea voyage restored her health ; she grew, she said,
in strength and in grace, and her heart was as the heart of a lion. Word came
to her from on high that she should come up into the northern lake-country
and preach the gospel there ; the band were going to the verdant prairies.
She left them in the night, taking nothing but her clothing ; a friendly ves-
sel carried her north ; she had preached the gospel everywhere. At the Sault
the priests had driven her out, but nothing fearing, she went on into the
wilderness, and so, coming part of the way in canoes, part of the way along-
shore, she had reached our far island. Marvellous kindness had she met with,
she said ; the Indians, the half-breeds, the hunters, and the trappers had all
received her and helped her on her way from camp to camp. They had lis-
tened to her words also. At Portage they had begged her to stay through the
winter, and offered to build her a little church for Sunday services. Our men
looked at each other. Portage was the worst camp on the lake, notorious for
its fights ; it was a mining settlement.
" * But I told them I must journey on towards the west/ continued our
Lady. ' I am called to visit every camp on this shore before the winter sets
in ; I must soon leave you also/
" The men looked at each other again ; the Doctor was spokesman.. e But,
my Lady/ he said, ' the next post is Fort William, two hundred and thirty-
five miles away on the north shore/
" ' It is almost November ; the snow will soon be six and ten feet deep.
The Lady could never travel through it, — could she, now ? ' said Black Andy,
who had begun eagerly, but in his embarrassment at the sound of his own
voice, now turned to Frenchy and kicked him covertly into answering.
" ' Nevare ! ' replied the Frenchman ; he had intended to place his hand
upon his heart to give emphasis to his word, but the Lady turned her calm
eyes that way, and his grimy paw fell, its gallantry wilted.
" ' I thought there was one more camp, — at Burnt- Wood Kiver,' said our
Lady in a musing tone. The men looked at each other a third time ; there
was a camp there, and they all knew it. But the Doctor was equal to the
emergency.
" ' That camp, my Lady/ he said gravely, — ' that camp no longer exists ! '
Then he whispered hurriedly to the rest of us : ' It will be an easy job to clean
it out, boys. We'll send over a party to-night ; it's only thirty-five miles. '
" We recognized superior genius ; the Doctor was our oldest and deepest
sinner. But what struck us most was his anxiety to make good his lie. Had
it then come to this — that the Doctor told the truth ?
" The next day we all went to work to build our Lady a church ; in a week
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOL80N. 43 \
it was completed. There goes its last cross-beam now into the fire ; it was a
solid piece of work, wasn't it ? It has stood this climate thirty years. I re-
member the first Sunday service : we all washed, and dressed ourselves in the
best we had ; we scarcely knew each other, we were so fine. The Lady was
pleased with the church, but yet she had not said she would stay all winter ;
we were still anxious. How she preached to us that day ! We had made a
screen of young spruces set in boxes, and her figure stood out against the
dark-green background like a thing of light. Her silvery voice rang through
the log-temple, her face seemed to us like a star. She had no color in her
cheeks at any time ; her dress, too, was colorless. Although gentle, there
was an iron inflexibility about her slight, erect form. "We felt, as we saw her
standing there, that if need be she would walk up to the lion's jaws, the can-
non's mouth, with a smile. She took a little book from her pocket and read
to us a hymn, — ' 0 come, all ye faithful,' the old 'Adeste Fideles.' Some of
us knew it ; she sang, and gradually, shamefacedly, voices joined in. It was
a sight to see Nightingale Jack solemnly singing away about ' choirs of an-
gels'; but it was a treat to hear him, too, — what a voice he had ! Then our
Lady prayed, kneeling down on the little platform in front of the evergreens,
clasping her hands, and lifting her eyes to heaven. We did not know what
to do at first, but the Doctor gave us a severe look and bent his head, and we
all followed his lead.
" When service was over and the door opened, we found that it had been
snowing ; we could not see out through the windows, because white cloth was
nailed over them in place of glass.
" ' Now, my Lady, you will have to stay with us,' said the Doctor. We all
gathered around with eager faces.
" ' Do you really believe that it will be for the good of your souls ? ' asked
the sweet voice.
The Doctor believed — for us all.
' Do you really hope ? '
The Doctor hoped.
' Will you try to do your best ?*
The Doctor was sure he would.
' I will,' answered the Flying Dutchman, earnestly. ' I moost not fry de
meat any more ; I moost broil ! '
" For we had begged him for months to broil, and he had obstinately re-
fused ; broil represented the good, and fry the evil, to his mind ; he came out
for the good according to his light ; but none the less did we fall upon him
behind the Lady's back, and cuff him into silence.
" She staid with us all winter. You don't know what the winters are up
here ; steady, bitter cold for seven months, thermometer always below, the
snow dry as dust, the air like a knife. We built a compact chimney for our
Lady, and we cut cords of wood into small, light sticks, easy for her to lift,
and stacked them in her shed ; we lined her lodge with skins, and we made
oil from bear's fdt and rigged up a kind of lamp for her. We tried to make
candles, I remember, but they would not run straight ; they came out hump-
backed and sidling, and burned themselves to wick in no time. Then we
432 CONSTANCE FENIMOEE WOOLSON. [1861-88
took to improving the town. We had lived in all kinds of huts and lean-to
shanties ; now nothing would do but regular log-houses. If it had been sum-
mer, I don't know what we might not have run to in the way of piazzas and
fancy steps ; but with the snow five feet deep, all we could accomplish was a
plain, square log-house, and even that took our whole force. The only way
to keep the peace was to have all the houses exactly alike ; we laid out the
three streets, and built the houses, all facing the meeting-house, just as you
found them."
" And where was the Lady's lodge ? " I asked, for I recalled no stockaded
fortress, large or small.
My companion hesitated a moment. Then he said abruptly, " It was torn
down."
" Torn down ! " I repeated. " Why, what "
Reuben waved his hand with a gesture that silenced me, and went on with
his story. It came to me then for the first time that he was pursuing the
current of his own thoughts rather than entertaining me. I turned to look
at him with a new interest. I had talked to him for two weeks in rather a
patronizing way ; could it be that affairs were now, at this last moment, re-
versed ?
" It took us almost all winter to build those houses," pursued Eeuben.
"At one time we neglected the hunting and trapping to such a degree that
the Doctor called a meeting and expressed his opinion. Ours was a volun-
tary camp, in a measure, but still we had formally agreed to get a certain
amount of skins ready for the bateaux by early spring ; this agreement was
about the only real bond of union between us. Those whose houses were not
completed scowled at the Doctor.
" ' Do you suppose I'm going to live like an Injun when the other fellows
has regular houses ? ' inquired Black Andy, with a menacing air.
" ' ' By no means/ replied the Doctor, blandly. ' My plan is this : build at
night/
"'At night?'
" ' Yes ; by the light of pine fires.*
' ' We did. After that, we faithfully went out hunting and trapping as
long as daylight lasted, and then, after supper, we built up huge fires of pine
logs, 'and went to work on the next house. It was a strange picture : the for-
est deep in snow, black with night, the red glow of the great fires, and our
moving figures working on as complacently as though daylight, balmy air,
and the best of tools were ours.
"The Lady liked our industry. She said our new houses showed that
the ' new cleanliness of our inner man required a cleaner tabernacle for the
outer/ I don't know about our inner man, but our outer was certainly much
cleaner. ....
" Spring came, the faltering spring of Lake Superior. I won't go into my
own story, but such as it was, the spring brought it back to me with new
force. I wanted to go, — and yet I didn't. ( Where/ do you ask ? To see her,
of course, — a woman, the most beautiful, — well, never mind all that. To be
brief, I loved her ; she scorned me ; I thought I had learned to hate her — but
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. 433
— I wasn't sure about it now. I kept myself aloof from the others and gave
up my heart to the old sweet, bitter memories ; I did not even go to church
on Sundays. But all the rest went ; our Lady's influence was as great as ever.
I could hear them singing ; they sang better now that they could have the
door open ; the pent-up feeling used to stifle them. The time for the bateaux
drew near, and I noticed that several of the men were hard at work packing
the furs in bales — a job usually left to the voyageurs who came with the boats.
' What's that f or ? ' I asked.
' ' ' You don't suppose we're going to have those bateau rascals camping
on Little Fishing, do you ? ' said Black Andy, scornfully. ' Where are your
wits, Reub?'
"And they packed every skin, rafted them all over to the mainland, and
waited there patiently for days, until the train of slow boats came along and
took off the bales ; then they came back in triumph. ' Now we're secure for
another six months/ they said, and began to lay out a park, and gardens for
every house. The Lady was fond of flowers ; the whole town burst into blos-
6om. The Lady liked green grass ; all the clearing was soon turfed over like
a lawn. The men tried the ice-cold lake every day, waiting anxiously for the
time when they could bathe. There was no end to their cleanliness ; Black
Andy had grown almost white again, and Frenchy's hair shone like oiled
silk.
" The Lady staid on, and all went well. But, gradually, there came a dis-
covery. The Lady was changing, — had changed ! Gradually, slowly, but
none the less distinctly to the eyes that knew her every eyelash. A little
more hair was visible over the white brow, there was a faint color in the
cheeks, a quicker step; the clear eyes were sometimes downcast now, the
steady voice softer, the words at times faltering. In the early summer the
white cap vanished, and she stood among us crowned only with her golden
hair ; one day she was seen through her open door sewing on a white robe !
The men noted all these things silently ; they were even a little troubled as
at something they did not understand, something beyond their reach. Was
she planning to leave them ?
' ' ' It's my belief she's getting ready to ascend right up into heaven,' said
Salem.
" Salem was a little 'wanting,' as it is called, and the men knew it ; still,
his words maae an impression. They watched the Lady with an awe which
was almost superstitious ; they were troubled, and knew not why. But the
Lady bloomed on. I did not pay much attention to all this ; but I could not
help hearing it. My heart was moody, full of its own sorrows ; I secluded
myself more and more. Gradually I took to going off into the mainland for-
ests for days on solitary hunting expeditions. The camp went on its way re-
joicing; the men succeeded, after a world of trouble, in making a fountain
which actually played, and they glorified themselves exceedingly. The life
grew quite pastoral. There was talk of importing a cow from the East, and
a messenger was sent to the Sault for certain choice supplies against the com-
ing winter. But, in the late summer, the whisper went round again that the
Lady had changed, this time for the worse. She looked ill, she drooped from
VOL. x.— 28
434 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. [1861-88
day to day ; the new life that had come to her vanished, but her former life
was not restored. She grew silent and sad, she strayed away by herself
through the woods, she scarcely noticed the men who followed her with
anxious eyes. Time passed, and brought with it an undercurrent of trouble,
suspicion, and anger. Everything went on as before ; not one habit, not one
custom was altered ; both sides seemed to shrink from the first change, how-
ever slight,. The daily life of the camp was outwardly the same, but brood-
ing trouble filled every heart. There was no open discussion; men talked
apart in twos and threes ; a gloom rested over everything, but no one said
' What is the matter?'
"There was a man among us, — I have not said much of the individual
characters of our party, but this man was one of the least esteemed, or rather
liked ; there was not much esteem of any kind at Little Fishing. Little was
known about him ; although the youngest man in the camp, he was a moon-
ing, brooding creature, with brown hair and eyes and a melancholy face.
He wasn't hearty and whole-souled, and yet he wasn't an out-and-out rascal ;
he wasn't a leader, and yet he wasn't follower either. He wouldn't be ; he
was like a third horse, always. There was no goodness about him ; don't go
to fancying that that was the reason the men did not like him ; he was as bad
as they were, every inch ! He never shirked his work, and they couldn't get
a handle on him anywhere ; but he was just — unpopular. The why and the
wherefore are of no consequence now. Well, do you know what was the sus-
picion that hovered over the camp ? It was this : our Lady loved that man !
' ' It took three months for all to see it, and yet never a word was spoken.
All saw, all heard ; but they might have been blind and deaf for any sign
they gave. And the Lady drooped more and more.
" September came, the fifteenth ; the Lady lay on her couch, pale and
thin ; the door was open and a bell stood beside her, but there was no line of
pickets whispering tidings of her state to an anxious group outside. The
turf in the three streets had grown yellow for want of water, the flowers in
the little gardens had drooped and died, the fountain was choked with weeds,
and the interiors of the houses were all untidy. It was Sunday, and near the
hour for service ; but the men lounged about, dingy and unwashed.
' ' ' A' n't you going to church ? ' said Salem, stopping at the door of one of
the houses ; he was dressed in his best, with a flower in his button-hole.
' ' ' See him now ! See the fool/ said Black Andy. ' He's going to church,
he is ! And where's the minister, Salem ? Answer me that ! '
" ' Why, — in the church, I suppose,' replied Salem, vacantly.
" ' No, she a'n't ; not she ! She's at home, a-Aveeping, and a- wailing, and
a-ger-nashing of her teeth,' replied Andy with bitter scorn.
" ' What for ? ' said Salem.
" ' What for ? Why, that's the joke ! Hear him, boys ; he wants to know
what for ! '
" The loungers laughed, — a loud, reckless laugh.
" ' Well, I'm going anyway,' said Salem, looking wonderingly from one to
the other ; he passed on and entered the church.
" ' I say, boys, let's have a high old time,' cried Andy, savagely. ' Let's
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOL80N. 435
go back to the old way and have a jolly Sunday. Let's have out the jugs and
the cards and be free again ! '
" The men hesitated ; ten months and more of law and order held them
back.
" ' What are you afraid of ? ' said Andy. ' Not of a canting hypocrite, I
hope. She's fooled us long enough, I say. Come on ! ' He brought out a
table and stools, and produced the long-unused cards and a jug of whiskey.
' Strike up, Jack/ he cried ; ' give us old Fiery-Eyes/
" The Nightingale hesitated. Fiery-Eyes was a rollicking drinking song ;
but Andy put the glass to his lips and his scruples vanished in the tempting
aroma. He began at the top of his voice, partners were chosen, and, trem-
bling with excitement and impatience, like prisoners unexpectedly set free,
the men gathered around and made their bets.
" ' What born fools we've been,' said Black Andy, laying down a card.
' ' ' Yes/ replied the Flying Dutchman, ' porn fools ! ' And he followed suit.
" But a thin white hand came down on the bits of colored pasteboard. It
was our Lady. With her hair disordered, and the spots of fever in her
cheeks, she stood among us again ; but not as of old. Angry eyes confronted
her, and Andy wrenched the cards from her grasp. ' No, my Lady/ he said,
sternly ; ' never again ! '
" The Lady gazed from one face to the next, and so all around the circle ;
all were dark and sullen. Then she bowed her head upon her hands and
wept aloud.
" There was a sudden shrinking away on all sides; the players rose; the
cards were dropped. But the Lady glided away, weeping as she went ; she
entered the church door and the men could see her taking her accustomed
place on the platform. One by one they followed ; Black Andy lingered till
the last, but he came. The service began, and went on f alteringly, without
spirit, with palpable fears of a total breaking down which never quite came ;
the Nightingale sang almost alone, and made sad work with the words ; Sa-
lem joined in confidently, but did not improve the sense of the hymn. The
Lady was silent. But when the time for the sermon came she rose and her
voice burst forth.
" ' Men, brothers, what have I done ? A change has come over the town,
a change has come over your hearts. You shun me ! What have I done ? '
"There was a grim silence; then the Doctor rose in his place and an-
swered :
' Only this, madam. You have shown yourself to be a woman.'
' And what did you think me ? '
< A saint.'
' God forbid ! ' said the Lady, earnestly. * I never thought myself one.'
' I know that well. But you were a saint to us ; hence your influence.
It s gone/
' Is it all gone ? ' asked the Lady, sadly.
' Yes. Do not deceive yourself ; we have never been one whit better save
through our love for you. We held you as something high above ourselves ;
we were content to worship you.'
43(5 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOL SON. [1881-S8
" ' 0 no, not me ! ' said the Lady, shuddering.
" ' Yes, you, you alone ! But — our idol came down among us and showed
herself to be but common flesh and blood I What wonder that we stand
aghast? What wonder that our hearts are bitter? What wonder (worse than
all !) that when the awe has quite vanished, there is strife for the beautiful
image fallen from its niche ? '
" The Doctor ceased, and turned away. The Lady stretched out her hands
towards the others ; her face was deadly pale, and tnere was a bewildered ex-
pression in her eyes.
" ' 0, ye for whom I have prayed, for whom I have struggled to obtain a
blessing, — ye whom I have loved so, — do ye desert me thus ? ' she cried.
" ' You have deserted us/ answered a voice.
" <I have not.'
' ' ' You have,' cried Black Andy, pushing to the front. ' You love that
Mitchell ! Deny it if you dare ! '
" There was an irrepressible murmur, then a sudden hush. The angry
suspicion, the numbing certainty had found voice at last ; the secret was out.
All eyes, which had at first closed with the shock, were now fixed upon the
solitary woman before them ; they burned like coals.
"'Do I?' murmured the Lady, with a strange questioning look that
turned from face to face, — ' do I ? Great God ! I do/ She sank upon her
knees and buried her face in her trembling hands. ' The truth has come to
me at last, — I do ! '
" Her voice was a mere whisper, but every ear heard it, and every eye saw
the crimson rise to the forehead and redden the white throat.
" For a moment there was silence, broken only by the hard breathing of
the men. Then the Doctor spoke :
" ' Go out and bring him in/ he cried. ' Bring in this Mitchell ! It seems
he has other things to do — the blockhead ! '
" Two of the men hurried out.
" ' He shall not have her/ shouted Black Andy. ' My knife shall see to
that ! ' And he pressed close to the platform. A great tumult arose ; men
talked angrily and clinched their fists ; voices rose and fell together. ' He
shall not have her,— Mitchell ! Mitchell ! '
" ' The truth is, each one of you wants her himself/ said the Doctor.
" There was a sudden silence, but every man eyed his neighbor jealously.
Black Andy stood in front, knife in hand, and kept guard. The Lady had
not moved ; she was kneeling, with her face buried in her hands.
' ' ' I wish to speak to her/ said the Doctor, advancing.
" ' You shall not/ cried Andy, fiercely interposing.
" ' You fool ! I love her this moment ten thousand times more than you
do. But do you suppose I would so much as touch a woman who loved an-
other man ? '
" The knife dropped ; the Doctor passed on and took his place on the plat-
form by the Lady's side. The tumult began again, for Mitchell was seen
coming in the door between his two keepers.
" ' Mitchell ! Mitchell ! ' rang angrily through the church.
1861-88] CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. 437
' ' ' Look, woman ! ' said the Doctor, bending over the kneeling figure at
his side. She raised her head and saw the wolfish faces below.
" ' They have had ten months of your religion/ he said.
" It was his revenge. Bitter, indeed ; but he loved her.
" In the mean time the man Mitchell was hauled and pushed and tossed
forward to the platform by rough hands that longed to throttle him on the
way. At last, angry himself, but full of wonder, he confronted them, this
crowd of comrades suddenly turned madmen ! ' What does this mean ? ' he
asked.
' ' ' Mean ! mean ! ' shouted the men ; ' a likely story ! He asks what this
means ! ' And they laughed boisterously.
'' ' The Doctor advanced. ' You see this woman/ he said*
" ' I see our Lady/
" * Our Lady no longer ; only a woman like any other, — weak and fickle.
Take her, — but begone.'
"'Take her!5 repeated Mitchell, bewildered, — 'take our Lady! And
where ? '
" ' Fool ! Liar ! Blockhead ! ' shouted the crowd below.
" ' The truth is simply this, Mitchell/ continued the Doctor, quietly. ' "We
herewith give you up our Lady, — ours no longer ; for she has just confessed,
openly confessed, that she loves you.'
" Mitchell started back. ' Loves me ! '
"'Yes.'
" Black Andy felt the blade of his knife. ' He'll never have her alive/ he
muttered.
" ' But/ said Mitchell, bluntly confronting the Doctor, ' I don't want her/
"' You don't want her ?'
<" I don't love her/
<" You don't love her ?'
" 'Not in the least/ he replied, growing angry, perhaps at himself . 'What
is she to me ? Nothing. A very good missionary, no doubt ; but / don't
fancy woman-preachers. You may remember that /never gave in to her in-
fluence ; /was never under her thumb, /was the only man in Little Fish-
ing who cared nothing for her ! '
" ' And that is the secret of her liking/ murmured the Doctor. ' 0 woman !
woman ! the same the world over ! '
" In the mean time the crowd had stood stupefied.
" ' He does not love her ! ' they said to each other ; ' he does not want her !'
" Andy's black eyes gleamed with joy ; he swung himself up onto the plat-
form. Mitchell stood there with face dark and disturbed, but he did not
flinch. Whatever his faults, he was no hypocrite. ' I must leave this to-
night/ he said to himself, and turned to go. But quick as a flash our Lady
sprang from her knees and threw herself at his feet. ' You are going/ she
cried. ' I heard what you said, — you do not love me ! But take me with you.
— oh, take me with you ! Let me be your servant— your slave — anything—
anything, so that I am not parted from you, my lord and master, my only,
only love ! '
438 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. [1861-88
" She clasped his ankles with her thin, white hands, and laid her face on
his dusty shoes.
" The whole audience stood dumb before this manifestation of a great love.
Enraged, bitter, jealous as was each heart, there was not a man but would at
that moment have sacrificed his own love that she might be blessed. Even
Mitchell, in one of those rare spirit-flashes when the soul is shown bare in the
lightning, asked himself, ' Can I not love her ? ' But the soul answered, ' No/
He stooped, unclasped the clinging hands, and turned resolutely away.
" ' You are a fool/ said the Doctor. ' No other woman will ever love you
as she does/
" ' I know it,' replied Mitchell.
" He stepped down from the platform and crossed the church, the silent
crowd making a way for him as he passed along ; he went out into the sun-
shine, through the village, down towards the beach. They saw him no more.
" The Lady had fainted. The men bore her back to the lodge and tended
her with gentle care one Aveek, — two weeks, — three weeks. Then she died.
" They were all around her ; she smiled upon them all, and called them
all byname, bidding them farewell. ' Forgive me/ she whispered to the Doc-
tor. The Nightingale sang a hymn, sang as he had never sung before. Black
Andy knelt at her feet. For some minutes she lay scarcely breathing ; then
suddenly she opened her fading eyes. ' Friends/ she murmured, ' I am well
punished. I thought myself holy, — I held myself above my kind, — but God
has shown me I am the weakest of them all.'
" The next moment she was gone.
" The men buried her with tender hands. Then, in a kind of blind fury
against Fate, they tore down her empty lodge and destroyed its every frag-
ment ; in their grim determination they even smoothed over the ground and
planted shrubs and bushes, so that the very location might be lost. But they
did not stay to see the change. In a month the camp broke up of itself, the
town was abandoned, and the island deserted for good and all ; I doubt wheth-
er any of the men ever came back or even stopped when passing by. Prob-
ably I am the only one. Thirty years ago, — thirty years ago ! "
" That Mitchell was a great fool/' I said, after a long pause. " The Doc-
tor was worth twenty of him ; for that matter, so was Black Andy. I only
hope the fellow was well punished for his stupidity."
"He was."
(( 0, you kept tract of him, did you ? "
" Yes. He went back into the world, and the woman he loved repulsed
him a second time, and with even more scorn than before."
"Served him right."
" Perhaps so ; but after all, what could he do ? Love is not made to order.
He loved one, not the other ; that was his crime. Yet, — so strange a crea-
ture is man, — he came back after thirty years, just to see our Lady's grave."
"What! Are you"
" I am Mitchell— Reuben Mitchell."
1861-88] EDWARD KING. 439
BORN in Middlefield, Mass., 1848.
A WOMAN'S EXECUTION.
(Paris, 1871.)
[Echoes from the Orient. 1880.]
QJWEET-breathed and young, (Hair to her waist,
*-J The people's daughter, Limbs like a Venus) :
No nerves unstrung, Robes are displaced :
Going to slaughter! " Soldiers, please screen us
" Good morning, friends, " He at the front ?
You'll love us better, — That is my lover:
Make us amends ; Stood all the brunt ; —
We've burst your fetter! Now — the fight's over.
" How the sun gleams! "Powder and bread
(Women are snarling): Gave out together:
Give me your beams, Droll ! to be dead
Liberty's darling! In this bright weather!
" Marie's my name; " Jean, boy, we might
Christ's mother bore it. Have married in June!
That badge ? No shame: This the wall ? Right!
Glad that I wore it! " Vive la Commune!"
0 BIRDS THAT FLIT BY OCEAN'S RIM.
O BIRDS that flit by ocean's rim,
And make your plaint to silent sky:
O waves that lap horizons dim,
Ye shall be tranquil by and by!
O rose-tree giving petals fair
In some lost garden lone to lie,
Weep not because your stems are bare;
They shall reblossom by and by.
O singer, singing in the night,
Turn not and curse the heavens and die;
Your heritage is peace and light —
You shall be richer by and by!
440 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1861-88
3|oel Cljan&ler l^arrte*
BORN in Eatouton, Ga., 1848.
THE WONDERFUL TAR-BABY STORY.
[Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. 1881.]
"T~\ IDN'T the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle Kemus ? " asked the little
boy the next evening.
" He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you bawn — Brer Fox did. One
day atter Brer Eabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk
en got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun
w'at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de big
road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer ter see w'at de news wuz gwineter be.
En he didn't hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit
pacin' down de road — lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity — dez ez sassy ez a
jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come prancin' 'long twel he
spy de Tar-Baby, en den he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz 'ston-
ished. De Tar-Baby, she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
" ' Mawnin' ! ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee — ' nice wedder dis mawnin',' sezee.
" Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.
" ' How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate ? ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.
" Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de Tar-Baby, she ain't
sayin' nuthin'.
" ' How you come on, den ? Is you deaf ? ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. * Kaze
if you is, I kin holler louder,' sezee.
** Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
"'Youer stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I'm
gwineter kyore you, dat's w'at I'm a gwineter do,' sezee.
" Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did, but Tar-Baby
ain't sayin' nuthin'.
" ' I'm gwineter larn you howter talk ter 'specttubble f okes ef hit's de las'
ack,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. 'Ef you don't take off dat hat en tell me
howdy, I'm gwineter bus' you wide open,' sezee.
" Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
" Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin'
nuthin', twel present'y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip
he tuck 'er side er de head. Right dar's whar he broke his merlasses jug.
His fis' stuck, en he can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im. But Tar-Baby, she
stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
" ' Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you agin,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee,
en wid dat he fotch 'er a wipe wid de udder ban', en dat stuck. Tar-Baby,
she ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.
" f Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de natal stuffin' outen you,' sez Brer Rabbit,
sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on, en den
Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer Fox, he lay low.
1861-88] JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 441
Den Brer Eabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don't tu'n 'im loose he butt
'er cranksided. En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer Fox,
he sauntered fort', lookin' des ez innercent ez wunner yo' mammy's mockin'-
birds.
" ' Howdy, Brer Eabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee. ' You look sorter stuck up
dis mawnin',' sezee, en den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he
couldn't laff no mo'. ' I speck you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rab-
bit. I done laid in some calamus root, en 1 ain't gwineter take no skuse/
sez Brer Fox, sezee."
Here Uncle Kemus paused, and drew a two-pound yam out of the ashes.
" Did the fox eat the rabbit ? " asked the little boy to whom the story had
been told.
" Dat's .all de fur de tale goes," replied the old man. "He mout, en den
agin he moutent. Some say Jedge B'ar come 'long en loosed 'im — some say
he didn't. I hear Miss Sally callin'. You better run 'long."
A REVIVAL HYMN.
[From the Same.]
OH, whar shill we go w'en de great day comes,
Wid de blowin' er de trumpits en de bangin' er de drums ?
How many po' sinners '11 be kotched out late
En fine no latch ter de golden* gate ?
No use fer ter wait twel ter-morrer!
De sun musn't set on yo' sorrer,
Sin's ez sharp ez a bamboo-brier —
Oh, Lord! fetch de mo'ners up higher!
Wen de nashuns er de earf is a stan'in all aroun',
"Who's a gwineter be choosen fer ter w'ar de glory-crown ?
Who's a gwine fer ter stan' stiff-kneed en boP,
En answer to der name at de callin' er de roll ?
You better come now ef you comin' —
Ole Satun is loose en a bummin' —
De wheels er distruckshun is a hummin' —
Oh, come 'long, sinner, ef you comin' !
De song er salvashun is a mighty sweet song,
En de Pairidise win' blow fur en blow strong,
En Aberham's bosom, hit's saft en hit's wide,
En right dar's de place whar de sinners oughter hide!
Oh, you nee'nter be a stoppin' en a lookin' ;
Ef you fool wid ole Satun you'll git took in ;
You'll hang on de aidge en get shook in,
Ef you keep on a stoppin' en a lookin'.
De time is right now, en dish yer's de place —
Let de sun er salvashun shine squar' in yo' face:
442 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1801-88
Fight de battles er de Lord, fight soon en fight late,
En you'll allers fine a latch ter de golden gate.
No use fer ter wait twel ter-morrer,
De sun musn't set on yo' sorrer —
Sin's ez sharp ez a bamboo-brier,
Ax de Lord fer ter fetch you up higher!
FREE JOE AND THE REST OF THE WORLD.
[Free Joe, and Other Georgian Sketches. 1888.]
rriHE name of Free Joe strikes humorously upon the ear of memory. It
J- is impossible to say why, for he was the humblest, the simplest, and the
most serious of all God's living creatures, sadly lacking in all those elements
that suggest the humorous. It is certain, moreover, that in 1850 the sober-
minded citizens of the little Georgian village of Hillsborough were not in-
clined to take a humorous view of Free Joe, and neither his name nor his
presence provoked a smile. He was a black atom, drifting hither and thither
without an owner, blown about by all the winds of circumstance, and given
over to shiftlessness.
The problems of one generation are the paradoxes of a succeeding one,
particularly if war, or some such incident, intervenes to clarify the atmos-
phere and strengthen the understanding. Thus, in 1850, Free Joe repre-
sented not only a problem of large concern, but, in the watchful eyes of Hills-
borough, he was the embodiment of that vague and mysterious danger that
seemed to be forever lurking on the outskirts of slavery, ready to sound a
shrill and ghostly signal in the impenetrable swamps, and steal forth under
the midnight stars to murder, rapine, and pillage — a danger always threat-
ening, and yet never assuming shape; intangible, and yet real; impossible,
and yet not improbable. Across the serene and smiling front of safety, the
pale outlines of the awful shadow of insurrection sometimes fell. With this
invisible panorama as a background, it was natural that the figure of Free
Joe, simple and humble as it was, should assume undue proportions. Go
where he would, do what he might, he could not escape the finger of obser-
vation and the kindling eye of suspicion. His lightest words were noted, his
slightest actions marked.
Under all the circumstances it was natural that his peculiar condition
should reflect itself in his habits and manners. The slaves laughed loudly
day by day, but Free Joe rarely laughed. The slaves sang at their work and
danced at their frolics, but no one ever heard Free Joe sing or saw him dance.
There was something painfully plaintive and appealing in his attitude, some-
thing touching in his anxiety to please. He was of the friendliest nature,
and seemed to be delighted when he could amuse the little children who had
made a playground of the public square. At times he would please them by
making his little dog Dan perform all sorts of curious tricks, or he would tell
1861-88] JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 443
them quaint stories of the beasts of the field and birds of the air ; and fre-
quently he was coaxed into relating the story of his own freedom. That story
was brief, but tragical.
In the year of our Lord 1840, when a negro-speculator of a sportive turn
of mind reached the little village of Hillsborough on his way to the Missis-
sippi region, with a caravan of likely negroes of both sexes, he found much to
interest him. In that day and at that time there were a number of young
men in the village who had not bound themselves over to repentance for the
various misdeeds of the flesh. To these young men the negro-speculator
(Major Frampton was his name) proceeded to address himself. He was a
Virginian, he declared ; and, to prove the statement, he referred all the fes-
tively inclined young men of Hillsborough to a barrel of peach-brandy in one
of his covered wagons. In the minds of these young men there was less doubt
in regard to the age and quality of the brandy than there was in regard to the
negro-trader's birthplace. Major Frampton might or might not have been
born in the Old Dominion, — that was a matter for consideration and inquiry,
— but there could be no question as to the mellow pungency of the peach-
brandy.
In his own estimation, Major Frampton was one of the most accomplished
of men. He had summered at the Virginia Springs ; he had been to Phila-
delphia, to Washington, to Kichmond, to Lynchburg, and to Charleston,
and had accumulated a great deal of experience which he found useful.
Hillsborough was hid in the woods of Middle Georgia, and its general aspect
of innocence impressed him. He looked on the young men who had shown
their readiness to test his peach-brandy as overgrown country boys who
needed to be introduced to some of the arts and sciences he had at his com-
mand. Thereupon the major pitched his tents, figuratively speaking, and
became, for the time being, a part and parcel of the innocence that charac-
terized Hillsborough. A wiser man would doubtless have made the- same
mistake.
The little village possessed advantages that seemed to be providentially
arranged to fit the various enterprises that Major Frampton had in view.
There was the auction-block in front of the stuccoed court-house, if he de-
sired to dispose of a few of his negroes ; there was a quarter-track, laid out to
his hand and in excellent order, if he chose to enjoy the pleasures of horse-
racing; there were secluded pine thickets within easy reach, if he desired to
indulge in the exciting pastime of cock-fighting ; and various lonely and un-
occupied rooms in the second story of the tavern, if he cared to challenge the
chances of dice or cards.
Major Frampton tried them all with varying luck, until he began his
famous game of poker with Judge Alfred Wellington, a stately gentleman
with a flowing white beard and mild blue eyes that gave him the appearance
of a benevolent patriarch. The history of the game in which Major Framp-
ton and Judge Alfred Wellington took part is something more than a tradi-
tion in Hillsborough, for there are still living three or four men who sat
around the table and watched its progress. It is said that at various stages of
the game Major Frampton would destroy the cards with which they were
444 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1861-88
playing, and send for a new pack, but the result was always the same. The
mild blue eyes of Judge Wellington, with few exceptions, continued to over-
look " hands " that were invincible — a habit they had acquired during a long
and arduous course of training from Saratoga to New Orleans. Major Framp-
ton lost his money, his horses, his wagons, and all his negroes but one, his
body-servant. When his misfortune had reached this limit, the major ad-
journed the game. The sun was shining brightly, and all nature was cheer-
ful. It is said that the major also seemed to be cheerful. However this may
be, he visited the court-house, and executed the papers that gave his body-
servant his freedom. This being done, Major Frampton sauntered into a
convenient pine thicket and blew out his brains.
The negro thus freed came to be known as Free Joe. Compelled, under
the law, to choose a guardian, he chose Judge Wellington, chiefly because
his wife Luciuda was among the negroes won from Major Frampton. For
several years Free Joe had what may be called a jovial time. His wife Lucinda
was well provided for, and he found it a comparatively easy matter to provide
for himself ; so that, taking all the circumstances into consideration, it is not
matter for astonishment that he became somewhat shiftless.
When Judge Wellington died, Free Joe's troubles began. The judge's
negroes, including Lucinda, went to his half-brother, a man named Calder-
wood, who was a hard master and a rough customer generally — a man of
many eccentricities of mind and character. His neighbors had a habit of
alluding to him as " Old Spite"; and the name seemed to fit him so com-
pletely that he was known far and near as " Spite " Calderwood. He prob-
ably enjoyed the distinction the name gave him; at any rate, he never resented
it, and it was not often that he missed an opportunity to show that he de-
served it. Calderwood's place was two or three miles from the village of
Hillsborough, and Free Joe visited his wife twice a week, Wednesday and
Saturday nights.
One Sunday he was sitting in front of Lucinda's cabin, when Calderwood
happened to pass that way.
' Howdy, marster ? " said Free Joe, taking off his hat.
' Who are you ? " exclaimed Calderwood abruptly, halting and staring at
the negro.
' I'm name' Joe, marster. I'm Lucindy's ole man. "
' Who do you belong to ? "
' Marse John Evans is my gyardeen, marster."
' Big name — gyardeen. Show your pass. "
Free Joe produced that document, and Calderwood read it aloud slowly,
as if he found it difficult to get at the meaning : —
"To whom it may concern: This is to certify that the boy Joe Frampton
has my permission to visit his wife Lucinda."
This was dated at Hillsborough, and signed "John W. Evans."
Calderwood read it twice, and then looked at Free Joe, elevating his eye-
brows, and showing his discolored teeth.
" Some mighty big words in that there. Evans owns this place, I reckon.
When's he comin' down to take hold ? "
1861-88] JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 44$
Free Joe fumbled with his hat. He was badly frightened.
" Lucindy say she speck you wouldn't min' my comin", 'long ez I behave,
marster. "
Calderwood tore the pass in pieces and flung it away.
" Don't want no free niggers 'round here," he exclaimed. " There's the
big road. It'll carry you to town. Don't let me catch you here no more.
Now, mind what I tell you."
Free Joe presented a shabby spectacle as he moved off with his little dog
Dan slinking at his heels. It should be said in behalf of Dan, however, that
his bristles were up, and that he looked back and growled. It may be that
the dog had the advantage of insignificance, but it is difficult to conceive how
a dog bold enough to raise his bristles under Calderwood's very eyes could be
as insignificant as Free Joe. But both the negro and his little dog seemed to
give a new and more dismal aspect to f orlornness as they turned into the road
and went toward Hillsborough.
After this incident Free Joe appeared to have clearer ideas concerning his
peculiar condition. He realized the fact that though he was free he was more
helpless than any slave. Having no owner, every man was his master. He
knew that he was the object of suspicion, and therefore all his slender re-
sources (ah ! how pitifully slender they were !) were devoted to winning, not.
kindness and appreciation, but toleration ; all his efforts were in the direc-
tion of mitigating the circumstances that tended to make his condition so
much worse than that of the negroes around him — negroes who had friends
because they had masters.
So far as his own race was concerned, Free Joe was an exile. If the slaves
secretly envied him his freedom (which is to be doubted, considering his mis-
erable condition), they openly despised him, and lost no opportunity to treat
him with contumely. Perhaps this was in some measure the result of the at-
titude which Free Joe chose to maintain toward them. No doubt his instinct
taught him that to hold himself aloof from the slaves would be to invite from
the whites the toleration which he coveted, and without which even his mis-
erable condition would be rendered more miserable still.
His greatest trouble was the fact that he was not allowed to visit his wife ;
but he soon found a way out of this difficulty. After he had been ordered
away from the Calderwood place, he was in the habit of wandering as far in
that direction as prudence would permit. Near the Calderwood place, but
not on Calderwood's land, lived an old man named Micajah Staley, and his
sister Becky Staley. These people were old and very poor. Old Micajah had
a palsied arm and hand ; but, in spite of this, he managed to earn a precari-
ous living with his turning-lathe.
"When he was a slave Free Joe would have scorned these representatives of
a class known as poor white trash, but now he found them sympathetic and
helpful in various ways. From the back door of their cabin he could hear
the Calderwood negroes singing at night, and he sometimes fancied he could
distinguish Lucinda's shrill treble rising above the other voices. A large
poplar grew in the woods some distance from the Staley cabin, and at the
foot of this tree Free Joe would sit for hours with his face turned toward
446 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1861-88
Calderwood's. His little dog Dan would curl up in the leaves near by, and
the two seemed to be as comfortable as possible.
One Saturday afternoon Free Joe, sitting at the foot of this friendly pop-
lar, fell asleep. How long he slept, he could not tell ; but when he awoke
little Dan was licking his face, the moon was shining brightly, and Lucinda
his wife stood before him laughing. The dog, seeing that Free Joe was
asleep, had grown somewhat impatient, and he concluded to make an excur-
sion to the Calderwood place on his own account. Lucinda was inclined to
give the incident a twist in the direction of superstition.
"I 'uz settin' down front er de fireplace," she said, "cookin' me some
meat, w'en all of a sudden I year sumpin at de do' — scratch, scratch. I tuck'n
tu'n de meat over, en make out I aint year it. Bimeby it come dar 'gin —
scratch, scratch. I up en open de do', I did, en, bless de Lord ! dar wuz little
Dan, en it look like ter me dat his ribs done grow tergeer. I gin 'im some
bread, en den, w'en he start out, I tuck'n f oiler 'im, kaze, I say ter myse'f,
maybe my nigger man mought be some'rs 'roun'. Dat ar little dog got iense,
mon."
Free Joe laughed and dropped his hand lightly on Dan's head. For a long
time after that he had no difficulty in seeing his wife. He had only to sit by
the poplar tree until little Dan could run and fetch her. But after a while
the other negroes discovered that Lucinda was meeting Free Joe in the
woods, and information of the fact soon reached Calderwood's ears. Calder-
wood was what is called a man of action. He said nothing ; but one day he
put Lucinda in his buggy and carried her to Macon, sixty miles away. He
carried her to Macou and came back without her ; and nobody in or around
Hillsborough, or in that section, ever saw her again.
For many a night after that Free Joe sat in the woods and waited. Little
Dan would run merrily off and be gone a long time, but he always came back
without Lucinda. This happened over and over again. The " willis-whis-
tlers" would call and call, like phantom huntsmen wandering on a far-off
shore ; the screech-owl would shake and shiver in the depths of the woods ;
the night-hawks, sweeping by on noiseless wings, would snap their beaks as
though they enjoyed the huge joke of which Free Joe and little Dan were
the victims ; and the whip-poor-wills would cry to each other through the
gloom. Each night seemed to be lonelier than the preceding, but Free Joe's
patience was proof against loneliness. There came a time, however, when
little Dan refused to go after Lucinda. When Free Joe motioned him in the
direction of the Calderwood place, he would simply move about uneasily and
whine ; then he would curl up in the leaves and make himself comfortable.
One night, instead of going to the poplar tree to wait for Lucinda, Free
Joe went to the Staley cabin, and, in order to make his welcome good, as he
expressed it, he carried with him an armful of fat-pine splinters. Miss Becky
Staley had a great reputation in those parts as a fortune-teller, and the school-
girls, as well as older people, often tested her powers in this direction, some
in jest and some in earnest. Free Joe placed his humble offering of light-
wood in the chimney-corner, and then seated himself on the steps, dropping
Ms hat on the ground outside.
1861-88] JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 44^
" Miss Becky," he said presently, "whar in de nameer gracious you reckon
Lucindy is ? "
" Well, the Lord he'p the nigger ! " exclaimed Miss Becky, in a tone that
seemed to reproduce, by some curious agreement of sight with sound, her
general aspect of peakedness. " Well, the Lord he'p the nigger! haint you
been a-seein' her all this blessed time ? She's over at old Spite Calderwood's,
if she's anywheres, I reckon."
"No'm, dat I aint, Miss Becky. I aint seen Lucindy in now gwine on
mighty nigh a montV
" Well, it haint a-gwine to hurt you," said Miss Becky, somewhat sharply.
" In my day an' time it wuz allers took to be a bad sign when niggers got to
honeyin' 'roun' an' gwine on."
" Yessum," said Free Joe, cheerfully assenting to the proposition — "yes-
sum, dat's so, but me an' my ole 'oman, we 'uz raise tergeer, en dey aint bin
many days w'en we 'uz 'way fum one 'n?er like we is now."
" Maybe she's up an' took up wi' some un else," said Micajah Staley from
the corner. " You know what the sayin' is, ' New master, new nigger.' "
" Dat's so, dat's de sayin', but tain't wid my ole 'oman like 'tis wid yuther
niggers. Me en her wuz des natally raise up tergeer. Bey's lots likelier
niggers dan w'at I is," said Free Joe, viewing his shabbiness with a criti-
cal eye, "but I knows Lucindy mos' good ez I does little Dan dar — dat I
does."
There was no reply to this, and Free Joe continued :
" Miss Becky, I wish you please, ma'am, take en run yo' kyards en see
sump'n n'er 'bout Lucindy; kaze ef she sick, I'm gwine dar. Dey ken take
en take me up en gimme a stroppin', but I'm gwine dar."
Miss Becky got her cards, but first she picked up a cup, in the bottom of
which were some coffee-grounds. These she whirled slowly round and round,
ending finally by turning the cup upside down on the hearth and allowing it
to remain in that position.
"I'll turn the cup first," said Miss Becky, "and then I'll run the cards
and see what they say."
As she shuffled the cards the fire on the hearth burned low, and in its fitful
light the gray-haired, thin-featured woman seemed to deserve the weird rep-
utation which rumor and gossip had given her. She shuffled the cards for
some moments, gazing intently in the dying fire ; then, throwing a piece of
pine on the coals, she made three divisions of the pack, disposing them about
in her lap. Then she took the first pile, ran the cards slowly through her
fingers, and studied them carefully. To the first she added the second pile.
The study of these was evidently not satisfactory. She said nothing, but
frowned heavily ; and the frown deepened as she added the rest of the cards
until the entire fifty-two had passed in review before her. Though she frowned,
she seemed to be deeply interested. Without changing the relative position
of the cards, she ran them all over again. Then she threw a larger piece of
pine on the fire, shuffled the cards afresh, divided them into three piles, and
subjected them to the same careful and critical examination.
" I can't tell the day when I've seed the cards run this a-way," she said
448
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1861-88
after a while. " What is an' what aint, I'll never tell you ; but I know what
the cards sez."
" Wat does dey say, Miss Becky ? " the negro inquired, in a tone the so-
lemnity of which was heightened by its eagerness.
"They er runnin' quare. These here that I'm a-lookin' at," said Miss
Becky, " they stan' for the past. Them there, they er the present ; and the
t'others, they er the future. Here's a bundle,"— tapping the ace of clubs
with her thumb, — "an' here's a journey as plain as the nose on a man's face.
Here's Lucindy "
" Whar she, Miss Becky ? "
" Here she is — the queen of spades."
Free Joe grinned. The idea seemed to please him immensely.
" Well, well, well ! " he exclaimed. " Ef dat don't beat my time ! De
queen er spades ! W'en Lucindy year dat hit'll tickle 'er, sho' ! "
Miss Becky continued to run the cards back and forth through her fingers.
" Here's a bundle an' a journey, and here's Lucindy. An' here's ole Spite
Calderwood."
She held the cards toward the negro and touched the king of clubs.
"De Lord he'p my soul !" exclaimed Free Joe with a chuckle. "De
faver's dar. Yesser, dat's him ! W'at de matter 'long wid all un um, Miss
Becky?"
The old woman added the second pile of cards to the first, and then the
third, still running them through her fingers slowly and critically. By this
time the piece of pine in the fireplace had wrapped itself in a mantle of flame,
illuminating the cabin and throwing into strange relief the figure of Miss
Becky as she sat studying the cards. She frowned ominously at the cards
and mumbled a few words to herself. Then she dropped her hands in her lap
and gazed once more into the fire. Her shadow danced and capered on the
wall and floor behind her, as if, looking over her shoulder into the future, it
could behold a rare spectacle. After a while she picked up the cup that had
been turned on the hearth. The coffee-grounds, shaken around, presented
what seemed to be a most intricate map.
"Here's the journey," said Miss Becky, presently; "here's the big road,
here's rivers to cross, here's the bundle to tote." She paused and sighed.
"They haint no names writ here, an' what it all means I'll never tell you.
Cajy, I wish you'd be so good as to ban' me my pipe."
" I haint no hand wi' the kyards," said Cajy, as he handed the pipe, " but
I reckon I can patch out your misinformation, Becky, bekaze the other day,
whiles I was a-finishin' up Mizzers Perdue's rollin'-pin, I hearn a rattlin' in
the road. I looked out, an' Spite Calderwood was a-drivin' by in his buggy,
an' thar sot Lucindy by him. It'd in-about drapt out er my min'. "
Free Joe sat on the door-sill and fumbled at his hat, flinging it from one
hand to the other.
"You aint see um gwine back, is you, Mars Cajy?" he asked after a
while.
" Ef they went back by this road," said Mr. Staley, with the air of one who
is accustomed to weigh well his words, " it must 'a' bin endurin' of the time
1861-88] JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 449
whiles I was asleep, bekaze I haint bin no furder from my shop than to yon
bed/'
"Well, sir!" exclaimed Free Joe in an awed tone, which Mr. Staley
seemed to regard as a tribute to his extraordinary powers of statement.
" Ef it's my beliefs you want," continued the old man, " I'll pitch 'em at
yon fair and free. My beliefs is that Spite Calderwood is gone an' took Lu-
cindy outen the county. Bless your heart and soul ! when Spite Calderwood
meets the Old Boy in the road they'll be a turrible scuffle. You mark what I
tell you."
Free Joe, still fumbling with his hat, rose and leaned against the door-
facing. He seemed to be embarrassed. Presently he said :
" I speck I better be gittin' 'long. Nex' time I see Lucindy, I'm gwine tell
'er w'at Miss Becky say 'bout de queen er spades — dat I is. Ef dat don't
tickle 'er, dey ain't no nigger 'oman never bin tickle'."
He paused a moment, as though waiting for some remark or comment,
some confirmation of misfortune, or, at the very least, some indorsement of
his suggestion that Lucinda would be greatly pleased to know that she had
figured as the queen of spades ; but neither Miss Becky nor her brother said
anything.
" One minnit ridin' in the buggy 'longside er Mars Spite, en de nex' high-
falutin' 'roun' playin' de queen er spades. Mon, deze yer nigger gals gittin'
up in de pictur's ; dey sholy is."
With a brief " Good-night, Miss Becky, Mars Cajy," Free Joe went out
into the darkness, followed by little Dan. He made his way to the poplar,
where Lucinda had been in the habit of meeting him, and sat down. He sat
there a long time ; he sat there until little Dan, growing restless, trotted off
in the direction of the Calderwood place. Dozing against the poplar, in the
gray dawn of the morning, Free Joe heard Spite Calderwood's fox-hounds in
full cry a mile away.
'•'Shoo!" he exclaimed, scratching his head, and laughing to himself,
" dem ar dogs is des a-warmin' dat old fox up."
But it was Dan the hounds were after, and the little dog came back no
more. Free Joe waited and waited, until he grew tired of waiting. He went
back the next night and waited, and for many nights thereafter. His wait-
ing was in vain, and yet he never regarded it as in vain. Careless and shabby
as he was, Free Joe was thoughtful enough to have his theory. He was con-
vinced that little Dan had found Lucinda, and that some night when the
moon was shining brightly througli the trees, the dog would rouse him from
his dreams as he sat sleeping at the foot of the poplar tree, and he would open
his eyes and behold Lucinda standing over him, laughing merrily as of old ;
and then he thought what fun they would have about the queen of spades.
How many long nights Free Joe waited at the foot of the poplar tree for
Lucinda and little Dan no one can ever know. He kept no account of them,
and they were not recorded by Micajah Staley nor by Miss Becky. The sea-
son ran into summer and then into fall. One night he went to the Staley
cabin, cut the two old people an armful of wood, and seated himself on the
door-steps, where he rested. He was always thankful — and proud, as it
450 JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. [1861-88
seemed — when Miss Becky gave him a cup of coffee, which she was some-
times thoughtful enough to do. He was especially thankful on this particu-
lar night.
" You er still layin' off for to strike up wi' Lucindy out thar in the woods,
I reckon," said Micajah Staley, smiling grimly. The situation was not with-
out its humorous aspects.
" Oh, dey er comin', Mars Cajy, dey er comin', sho," Free Joe replied.
"I boun' you dey'll come ; en w'en dey does come, I'll des take en fetch um
yer, whar you kin see um wid you own eyes, you en Miss Becky."
" No," said Mr. Staley, with a quick and emphatic gesture of disapproval.
"Don't ! don't fetch 'em anywheres. Stay right wi' 'em as long as may be."
Free Joe chuckled, and slipped away into the night, while the two old peo-
ple sat gazing in the fire. Finally Micajah spoke :
"Look at that nigger; look at 'im. He's pine-blank as happy now as a
killdee by a mill-race. You can't 'faze 'em. I'd in-about give up my t'other
hand ef I could stan' flat-footed an' grin at trouble like that there nigger.''
" Niggers is niggers," said Miss Becky, smiling grimly, "an' you can't rub
it out ; yit I lay I've seed a heap of white people lots meaner9 n Free Joe. He
grins, — an' that's nigger, — but I've ketched his under jaw a-trimblin' when
Lucindy's name uz brung up. An' I tell you," she went on, bridling up a
little, and speaking with almost fierce emphasis, " the Old Boy's done sharp-
ened his claws for Spite Caldervvood. You'll see it."
" Me, Rebecca ? " said Mr. Staley, hugging his palsied arm ; "me ? I hope
not."
" Well, you'll know it then," said Miss Becky, laughing heartily at her
brother's look of alarm.
The next morning Micajah Staley had occasion to go into the woods after
a piece of timber. He saw Free Joe sitting at the foot of the poplar, and the
sight vexed him somewhat.
" Git up from there," he cried, " an' go an' am your livin'. A mighty
purty pass it's come to, when great big buck niggers can lie a-snorin' in the
woods all day, when t'other folks is got to be up an' a-^wine. Git up from
there!"
Receiving no response, Mr. Staley went to Free Joe and shook him by the
shoulder ; but the negro made no response. He was dead. His hat was off,
his head was bent, and a smile was on his face. It was as if he had bowed and
smiled when death stood before him, humble to the last. His clothes were
ragged ; his hands were rough and callous ; his shoes were literally tied to-
gether with strings ; he was shabby in the extreme. A passer-by, glancing at
him, could have no idea that such a humble creature had been summoned as
a witness before the Lord God.of Hosts.
1861-88] GEORGE WILLIS COOKE. 45 \
Coofec*
BORN in Comstock, Mich., 1848.
THE POET'S ART.
[Poets and Problems. 1886.]
THE TOUCH OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.
TDOETRY cannot be made by rule. The more the rules are thought of
JL the less is the result in poetry. It is true enough that there must be a
groundwork of rule, and compliance with the fixed requirements of form ;
but the poet who is obliged to keep these in his mind, and to work conscious
of them, is sure never to produce anything worthy of the name of true art.
The poet who counts his syllables to see if the lines are of the right length is
no poet worthy of the name. He must know as by instinct, even more surely
than if he counted, that they are right, or there is no hope for him. The
musician gives much time to the study of the technique of his art, and he rec-
ognizes that it rests on a basis of rigid mathematical rule ; but with this
there must be a soul for music, an ear that tells if it is right, and a heart that
catches up in an instant all the pathos and loveliness of it. The passion and
the instinct for music absent, the most perfect knowledge of the rules and
laws is utterly incapable of producing it. These given, music will result,
even if there is no technical knowledge.
So it is in poetry ; the soul must have a touch of heavenly beauty in it, or
no poetry can grow out of it. Rules will not put it in or take it out. This the
rules will do, however : dry it up, and turn the pure stream of that water of
life from a babbling brook full of delight, as it pours down the mountain-
side, into a mere ditch, very regular, but wanting all charm and beauty.
Not that there can be genuine poetry without rules and form, for these are
always necessary in their place ; but they are, and must be kept, subordi-
nate ; and they are not to be enforced against the poet who chooses to create
some other way for himself than that which is in common use.
Life is not manifested in customs and costumes, but in spontaneity and
spirit. The more man lives by conventional rule the more he lives on the
surface of his nature, and the more he fails to reach the deepest springs of
original and noble purpose. If he lives to conform he lives feebly, and he can
never be himself in a life-giving manner. So in poetry ; it must come to life
and expression, not out of the conventional and traditional, but out of what
the poet has seen for himself, and experienced with his own soul. If it has
this latter quality, it can in some measure dispense with the merely technical
requirements. All true poetry is lived ; is music, harmony, and grandeur in
the soul first, and then puts itself into words in that way which will best
produce upon others the same effects which have been produced upon the
poet, or which will kindle in other hearts the living fire of truth and beauty
which were first in his heart. If this power is carried swiftly and surely from
,eo GEORGE WILLIS COOKE. [1861-88
one to the other, and the poet has the gift of making others see what he has
seen, feel what he has felt, and believe what he has believed, the form little
matters. It is this power of kindling the fires of truth and beauty in other
souls which is the real power and charm of the poet ; and if this is wanting,
all else that is of much value is also absent. It is not enough to please, if
pleasing is all, though that has its place and its value as truly as other things
have theirs ; but genuine poetry is the outgrowth of what is otherwise intrin-
sically good, and for other reasons. Nothing genuinely pleases which' does
not do more than gratify for the moment. True pleasure grows out of roots
of beauty, truth, and right ; and it must always have ends other than its own.
The poet must be either a teacher or an artist ; or, what is better, he may be
both in one. Therefore, he can never stop at form or at what delights and
charms, merely. He must go on to the expression of something of deep and
real abidingness of thought or beauty. This comes at last to be the real thing
for which he works, which he seeks to bring into expression Avith such power
and grandeur in it as he can produce, and which he wills to send forth for
the sake of this higher impression on the world.
Poetry is the interpretation of life in response to emotion and imagina-
tion. Its object is the satisfaction of ideal desire. It gives pleasure by means
of its artistic form, the human mind naturally seeking to express its more
elevated thoughts and emotions in rhythmic language. This is the artistic
meaning of poetry ; but the soul of it is the life of man uplifted and trans-
formed by the world of the ideal. There is nothing of poetry in the bare real-
ism of nature and life. Nature is lovely only when a poet's eye looks upon it.
Fishermen toiling with their nets or peasants bowing at the sound of a be 11
calling them to prayer are objects of artistic pleasure because of the human
sentiments associated with them. A man exists before a poet is possible ;
and it is the man's soul which gives to poetry all there is in it that delights
other men.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HOPE AND OP THE FUTURE.
Whenever there is a growth of idealism, literature feels the new life which
it creates. Most of the great literary periods have been associated with a re-
vival of this philosophy in some one of its many forms. There are an im-
pulse, an energy, and a largeness of conception in what it has to teach, and
in the life it produces, which are conducive to literary creation. Whatever
its limitations, it affects the imagination and the emotions, gives the largest
conceptions of nature and man, and kindles the soul with the fire of renew-
ing life.
Idealism is the philosophy of hope and of the future. It clings not to the
low earth, but embraces the circle of the heavens. Thought it raises to the
place of supreme arbiter in the realm of human experience. It gives the im-
agination objects worthy of its creative vision, and it lifts the whole mind
with an exalted sense of its relations to Absolute Being.
It is not fancy, but reality, in which idealism finds its life and its reason
for being. It creates a love of nature, it awakens the spirit of humanity, and
it draws man into ardent sympathy with the world about him. Wherever the
1861-88] JOHN VANCE CHENEY. 453
idealist goes there are voices to be heard chanting the glory and the beauty
of creation. He finds everywhere a life responsive to his own, that reveals
to him truth and accords to him peace.
The idealist is the only true realist. He it is who takes the world as an ac-
tuality, and who stands before it with reverence and awe, because of the life
made known in every leaf and star and man. He reads nature with the whole
of his mind, and all the pages of her book are bound together into one work
for his delight. He does not accept this and reject that, but he peruses all
her truths in search of the light which he is sure they contain for him.
Literature has gained from the idealist its joy, its beauty, and its fra-
grance. When it glows with eternal freshness and vigor there his hand is
seen and the throbbing of his heart is felt. He it is who interprets the ideas
after which the creative process proceeds, making it live anew in poem, es-
say, or romance.
The revival of idealism in Germany, in the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury, had a remarkable influence on English literature. It gave us Words-
worth and Coleridge in the place of Pope and Gray. It brought nature, im-
agination, feeling, and the real world into literature. It gave to the real
world a capacity to touch men with its freshness, beauty, and living signifi-
cance. There came with it a conviction that, if we come into true sympathy
with the natural world, we stand face to face with what is real. All worlds
are in fact one. They are unified by an immeasurable and inexhaustible life
flowing through them all. They therefore reflect, and supplement, and in-
terpret one another. The world of matter is a vision of the world of mind.
When we have solved the problem of human thought we have discovered the
nature of God.
trance
BORN in Groveland, Livingston Co., N. Y., 1848.
AND WHO IS SHE?
{Thistle-Drift. 1887.— Wood-Blooms. 1888.]
SHE lives, she lives up in the hills While slender vines, in glossy braid,
Where mists and eagles are, Around her brow are bound.
Blithe shepherdess of rocks and rills,
'Twixt mortal and a star. And who is she? Ah> bJ and bJ>
A-corning in her grace,
So light no fairy foots it there, My airy fair, so light and shy —
With moonbeams on the green ; They'll see, they'll see her face !
You'd swear her wee feet walk the air,
The hills and clouds between. Ah> bJ and bJ> she'n quit the hiUs»
Where mists and eagles are,
Of acorns is her necklace made, This shepherdess of rocks and rills,
And reddest berries found; 'Twixt mortal and a star.
454
JOHN VANCE CHENEY.
[1861-88
EVENSONG.
TT is that pale, delaying hour
J- When Nature closes like a
flower,
And on the spirit hallowed lies
The silence of the earth and skies.
The world has thoughts she will not own
When shades and dreams with night have
flown;
Bright overhead, the early star
Makes golden guesses what they are.
DIRGE.
Q WEET flower in perfect bloom,
^ Thy leaves shall withered be;
Lone winds above thy tomb
Shall nightly sigh with me —
Sigh with me.
Blithe brook of merry song,
Thy goal's the moaning sea ;
Thy laughter spent, ere long
Thou'lt mourn, ay, moan with me —
Moan with me.
All days, with love's short day,
Steal on to darkness deep :
Beauty shall pass away,
Nor mirth her measures keep —
Weep, oh, weep!
HILDA.
/^1 RAY Hilda to the churchyard came,
^-^ A withered gypsy, bent and lame;
Straightway she struck her witches'
light-
Three greenish flames, sharp-tongued and
bright.
Next, she the magic circle drew,
Caught thrice three leaves the night-
wind blew;
Then fixed, as in death, sat she
Among the grave* all silently.
So sat she till the village clock
Struck twelve; with its last, warning
shock
She broke the charm — sent back below
The dim shapes gliding to and fro.
These passed, but till the darkness fled
Old Hilda sat among the dead ;
Where, overhead, night-long a bough
Did sigh, and since has sighed till
now.
At morn she rose, cried thrice aloud :
"Young Winsted, when she wears her
shroud,
The fish shall feed ! " Then, thin and
gray,
Like a live mist, she want her way.
God rest her soul — old Hilda gray !
The dreary morn they laid away
The maid freneath the churchyard tree
Curst Winsted's ship went down at
1361-88]
EJALMAR HJORTH BO YE SEN.
455
A SAINT OP YORE
rpHERE lived of yore a saintly dame,
•*• Retired of life, unknown to fame,
Whose wont it was with sweet accord
To do the bidding of her Lord.
In quaintly-fashioned bonnet
"With simplest ribbons on it,
The neighboring folk remember well
How prompt she was at Sabbath bell.
I see her now — her decent shawl,
Her sober gown, silk mitts, and all;
Again I see her with a smile
Pass meekly up the narrow aisle.
The deacons courtly meet her,
The pastor turns to greet her,
And maid and matron quit their place
To find her fan or smooth her lace.
Of all the souls that worshipped there,
She best became the House of Prayer;
Her gracious presence — from it beamed
The light that robes the Lord's redeemed.
That gentle mien did often
Some "hardened sinner" soften,
Whose thought had else turned light
away
From rigid lesson of the day.
Her eyes, with reverent reading dim,
Sought neither chapter-page nor hymn,
She knew them both ; and as in song
Her voice kept evenly along,
'Twas not so much like singing
As like the music clinging
About some sacred instrument,
Its lessening breath not wholly spent.
Still, one by one, the good folk fill
The little church upon the hill—
The little church with open door,
Just as it stood in days of yore,
The grass around it growing
For nearest neighbors' mowing.
The row of battered sheds behind
Ready to rattle with the wind.
Old Groveland Church! I mark it
well,
From weathered steps to belfry bell.
Few changes there ; but in yon ground
Have thickened fast the slab and mound.
Hark! Shall I join the praises?
Rather, among the daisies,
Let me, in peaceful thought, once more
Be silent with the saint of yore.
BORN in Fredericksvarn, Norway, 1848.
A NORSE RADICAL.
[From "A Child of the Age."— Vagabond Tales. 1889.]
A DROWSY red light was spreading from the late sun over fiord and val-
. ley, as Herluf in his exalted mood marched slowly homeward. There
was something strangely unreal in the long-familiar scene, as if he had waked
from a dream the vividness of which made reality seem pale and phantasmal.
Everything was hushed ; water and air were oppressively still ; but it was not
the spontaneous stillness of sleep, but a sultry silence which rested heavily
upon the sense. It was as if Nature were holding her breath. A foreboding
of a catastrophe of some sort took possession of Herluf; yet his courage in
no wise deserted him. He saw in the anxious look of his wife, who stood wait-
4gg HJALMAR EJORTH BOYESEN. [1861-88
ing for him at the garden gate, that the story of his exploit had preceded him,
and that he would thus be spared the trouble of explaining.
'•' 0 Herluf ! " she cried tremulously, running to meet him, " don't let
father see you. He is furious with you, and there is no knowing what he
might do, should he find you to-night. The sheriff was here an hour ago,
and he has told him something that has incensed him terribly."
They were standing in the shadow of a great walnut tree at the entrance
to the garden. She put her arms about his neck and clung to him weeping.
" You will never do such a thing again, Herluf dear," she said imploring-
ly. " For my sake, for baby's sake, you will not do it."
He stood for a minute pondering. " Listen, Hilda," he said at last; "hence-
forth you must make up your mind whether you will follow me or father. I
have my work too in the world, and whether it leads to poverty and shame
or to wealth and honor, I have no choice but to do it."
" Oh ! that is that horrid Bjornson," she cried, bursting into a fresh fit of
weeping. " I know that hateful spirit which I have so long tried to quell in
you, and now he has come and undone it all. We were so happy until he
came."
You may have been happy," he answered sternly ; " I was miserable."
' But baby, Herluf, baby ! " she exclaimed with a pitiful appeal ; " what
is to become of baby if you break with father ? "
It will have an honest man for a father instead of a knave."
; Do you call your father a knave ? " she ejaculated, gazing at him in horror.
' No, child, no ! He may be honest enough, but I could scarcely continue
to please him without being a knave. I am appalled to think how I have, day
by day, lapsed from my true standard of rectitude, how I have dragged my
manhood in the dirt, how I have become degraded and contemptible in my
own eyes, and all in order to please my father. Now I have done with all that ;
henceforth I intend to please myself."
He spoke with a half -suppressed vehemence which frightened her. He had
always been gentle in her presence, and she had insensibly come to look upon
him as an easy subject for management. She drew back from him now and
regarded him with an air of reproachful dignity.
" What terrible riddles you utter," she said, shaking her head. " An evil
spirit has taken possession of you, and it is useless to talk to you. Only one
thing I must beg of you, for your own good, and that is to ask father's par-
don, in case I can induce him to forgive you on that condition. If you will
go over to the parsonage and sleep there to-night, I know I can get everything
arranged by to-morrow morning."
It would have been amusing, if it had not been sad, to see her implicit trust
in her own little shallow arts of management. Men were born to make trouble
in the world, she reasoned, and it was the province of women by their superi-
or diplomatic subtlety to smooth things over and reestablish pleasant rela-
tions. The principles which were at stake she calmly ignored as little more
than twaddle, fixing her mind the more intently upon the only important
issue— the reestablishment of domestic peace upon the easiest conditions.
The grunt of impatience with which her husband greeted her benevolent
1861-88] HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. 457
proposition convinced her still further of the correctness of her view ; but
perceiving that reasoning would be of no avail, she resolved to resort to a
much more effective weapon — tender cajolery. But unfortunately she had
not yet devised a natural transition to affectionate tactics when heavy foot-
steps were heard on the gravel, and the judge's portly figure was seen looming
up among the flower-beds and the blooming hawthorn hedges.
" Run, Herluf," she whispered imploringly ; " for God's sake, run."
" I shall not run," answered Herluf stubbornly.
" But he might strike you, dearest," she continued in the same anxious
voice, sinking down upon her knees and smothering her sobs. " He is in such
a terrible rage."
He made no answer, but, disengaging himself from her arms, stepped out
from the shadow of the tree and faced his father. The old gentleman did
not at once see him ; he was standing in the gravel walk, meditatively de-
capitating an aster with his riding-whip. He expended a good deal of energy
in the operation, as if giving vent to a latent animosity. As he caught sight
of his son standing but a few feet from him, he gave a start, and, clutch-
ing his riding-whip tightly, advanced a step ; then, at the sight of Hilda, re-
strained himself.
" Go into the house, Hilda," he commanded sternly. " I wish to speak
alone with — with — this gentleman here."
"No, I will not go away," she replied excitedly; "I won't let you hurt
Herluf, and I know that is what you intend to do."
The judge, disdaining to reply, turned to his son with a peering, malicious
look, and remarked in an ominously pleasant tone : " You have been dis-
tinguishing yourself, I am told, as a patriotic orator. You spoke, I believe,
against your father, whom you described as a scamp, and an unscrupulous
monster who restrained the dear innocent peasants from the rightful exercise
of their suffrage. Wasn't that it ? "
"It is true and not true," answered the son, leaning with folded arms
against the tree. " I said nothing about you that I have not already said to
you."
" Ah, how very good of you ! " The judge here drew a step nearer, hold-
ing with a tremulous grasp the whip-handle, which shook perceptibly in his
hand. " And I too will do nothing of which I have not already given you
warning. You know what I promised."
Here he darted forward with the whip raised above his head, but in the
same inatant Hilda had flung herself upon her husband's neck, shielding him
with her body. Herluf remained immovable ; he had lifted his arm to ward
off the blow, but his face betrayed neither fear nor anger.
"I give you warning, father," he said, with slow and solemn emphasis,
" that if you dare strike, it is the last time you will ever see my face."
"You miserable coward," cried the old man, suddenly losing control of
himself, " if you think the petticoats will protect you "
And before Herluf could raise his hand again the whip whizzed about his
ears, and he felt a stinging pain across his cheek and forehead. Hilda, pale
and cowering, fell down upon the grass and hid her face in her hands. The
458
HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN. [1861-88
judge, anxious to reach the house before his wrath should give way to shame,
strode ruthlessly across the flower-beds and was soon out of sight. Herluf,
too stunned, by the moral rather than the physical effect of the blow, to think,
stood gazing fixedly into the air ; but there was something like a veil before
his eyes, and a rushing sound as of water in his ears. Half absently he touched
his face, and felt a great welt extending from the left cheek across the nose
to his forehead. He bowed his head and groaned ; the degradation of it
was terrible. His wife, at the sound of his groan, suddenly recovered her-
self, rose, and went toward him ; but at the sight of his face she again
burst into tears, put her arms caressingly about him, and kissed his swollen
cheek.
" Let us go over to the parsonage, Heiiuf," she whispered ; " stay there to-
night. I will go up and get baby."
" We are going farther than the parsonage, dear," he answered brokenly.
4 'Go and get the child."
Although but dimly comprehending him, she obeyed ; it was a relief to
have some duty to perform which required motion. The twilight was spread-
ing under the great trees ; the sun had sunk behind the mountain-tops, but
a dim yellow light lingered in the upper regions of the air and tinged the
western cloud-banks. There was something feverish in this light which dazed
the sense like the atmosphere of a lurid romance, in which all things seem
possible. It seemed easy to Herluf to take a great resolution now, a resolution
which he had meditated before, but which in the broad daylight of reason had
appeared wild and impossible. He would take his wife and child to America,
and there found a new home and a new existence. He had friends in Bergen
of whom he could easily borrow enough money to pay their passage. A defi-
ant exultation suddenly broke through his burning sense of wrong, as he
i magined his glorious independence of thought and deed on that remote shore,
where no paternal authority and no cramping traditions could reach him.
He opened the garden gate, walked out upon the pier, and made a boat ready
to receive his wife and child : twen ty minutes elapsed before they came, and
he began to grow impatient. Nearly every trace of Hilda's recent emotion
had vanished, as she came bearing the child in her arms and with a valise in
her disengaged hand. She was again the busy, bustling mother. The moth-
er had conquered the wife.
" Hand me baby," he said, standing in the boat, and stretching out his
hands to receive the child.
"Tell me first where you are going," she said, pausing at the top of the
stairs.
"To America."
" To America ! " she cried, " in an open boat ! "
" "We can catch the Bergen steamer which will pass here at ten. Come,
there is no time to be lost."
"But, Herluf, you will not — you cannot — oh ! Herluf, do come back to
me," she wailed in irresolute despair ; " father will surely forgive you.''
" But I will not forgive him. Would you like to see the scene of to-day re-
1861-88] HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN. 459
" No ; but I cannot go with you. Think of baby in that wild, terrible
America. You should sacrifice your own feelings to baby's welfare, Herluf."
" Feelings ! yes, feelings I can sacrifice, but not my honor, my usefulness,
my self-respect. You can persuade me no more, Hilda. Will you follow me,
or will you not ? "
" Oh ! this is cruel/' she broke out with renewed vehemence. "If you could
only speak, baby, and restrain your father from his terrible folly ! Oh ! do
noUeave us, Herluf, do not leave us."
" Then you will not come ? "
He had seized the oar and was about to push the boat from the pier.
" Yes, stay, I will follow you."
With reluctant steps she descended the stairs ; but as he eagerly held out
his arms to receive her, she turned away, and looked up toward the stately
pile of masonry which traced its outline darkly against the sky.
" Oh ! my God," she moaned, " I cannot, I cannot."
With a vigorous thrust of the oar the boat flew out into the water. With
an aching heart he stood gazing at her as the distance between them slowly
widened. Then he seated himself, and the thud of his measured oar-strokes
fell heavily upon Hilda's ears. A terrible sense of desolation stole over her.
She wished she had chosen differently. She wished she had followed him.
But something still restrained her from calling him back. As a last wild hope
she sprang up the steps, and from the end of the pier held the child out over
the water in her outstretched arms. " Herluf ! " she called with a loud voice
of anguish, " Herluf ! ''
The oar-strokes ceased for a moment, but there came.no answer. The fig-
ure in the boat grew dimmer and dimmer, and faded away in the twilight.
The black hull of the steamer hove into view, paused in the middle of the
fiord, shrieked dismally once, twice, thrice, and again broke a path of foam
through the calm waters. Hilda hugged her child tightly to her breast, and
gazed out into the thickening twilight. An empty boat came drifting sea-
ward with the tide.
A year had passed since Herluf s flight. It was again summer ; the thrush-
es sang through the long light nights in the birch-groves ; the lilies of the
valley grew m nodding clusters, filling the mountain glens with their faint
fragrance ; and the meadows were bright with pansies and violets. During all
this time Herluf s name had rarely been mentioned in his father's house. It
was understood that the judge had forbidden it. Since his defeat for the
Storthing by a few dozen votes, he felt more bitterly toward his son than ever
before. It was he who had encouraged rebellion among the dependants of the
estate, and blasted his father's hopes of political distinction. Such unnatu-
ral crimes could not be too severely punished. It cost a considerable effort on
the old gentleman's part, however, to persevere in this attitude.
Once or twice, when letters came to Hilda bearing American stamps, he
was sorely tempted to break his resolution. He walked nervously up and down
the floor, fidgeted with his watch-chain, and cast uneasy glances toward the
letter. As for the ladies, they preserved a well-studied indifference in the par-
460
HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN. [1861-88
lor, but the moment Hilda had retired to her own rooms Miss Catherine was
sent by her mother to ascertain how the prodigal fared. And when they heard
what a hard time he was having (though this could only be read between the
lines), they melted toward him, and kissed the baby and cried over it.
It was evident that Herluf s letters concealed more than they told ; but in
a half-humorous way which had the singular effect of making the three wo-
men cry, he related that he had acquired a number of new accomplishments
— that, in fact, since his arrival in America he had been a coal-heaver, a brake-
man on a railroad, a supernumerary in a negro minstrel show, and that now
he had advanced to the position of a miner. He owned a claim in a Colorado
mining-camp, which might, for aught he knew, some day make him amillion-
naire. It was the wide range of possibility in the thing which fascinated him.
He gave descriptions of the life in the camp, full of a kind of lugubrious hu-
mor with which it was his wont to cloak his wretchedness. The ladies suspect-
ed as much, but each, for fear of distressing the others, refrained from saying
what she thought. Each pretended to be delighted at Herluf 's cheerfulness,
his excellent prospects, and his " interesting mode of life "; and their sham
nilarity was pathetic to observe.
Hardly had they separated before each burst into tears ; for everybody's
heart had been wondrously softened toward the prodigal since he had gone so
far away and seemed lost to them. They reproached themselves in secret for
their harsh treatment of him ; and the little wife, who had noliarsh treatment
to reproach herself with, upbraided herself bitterly for having failed him in
the hour of his need, for having broken her vow made at the altar. Mrs. Gam-
borg, who had been one of the foremost believers in his depravity, found her-
self contemplating his errors in a more lenient spirit, and there were even
moments in which she censured her husband for his inconsiderate severity.
Of course, she would not for the world have the judge suspect that she dis-
approved of his conduct; but really that blow had opened her eyes and set
her thinking. It was, after all, but the father's spirit which was revealing it-
self in the son, and how could it be that the same line of conduct could be
laudable in the one and criminal in the other ? Miss Catherine, too, began
to have revelations of a similar sort, though, of course, she was too wise to let
any one suspect that she was undutiful enough to disapprove of her father.
Even the parson, who had preached the celebrated political sermons, began
to look askance at the judge, when he saw his daughter's pale cheeks and
hushed dispirited manner, so different from her joyous energy and light-
hearted ness in former days.
" The line must be drawn somewhere," he remarked to his wife, who always
cordially agreed with him ; " parental authority is no longer unlimited ; and
to strike a grown-up son on account of a political disagreement is brutal and
barbaric. I doubt if we ought to allow our daughter to remain under the roof
of a man who is capable of such conduct."
The wife, who cherished a similar doubt, was not slow to second this senti-
ment, and the result was that Hilda and her child took up their abode at the
parsonage. The judge, strange to say, offered no strenuous opposition, al-
though he knew that the large, empty house would be doubly desolate with-
1861-88] HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN. 461
out Hilda and his grandchild. He had aged much within the last months.
His combative temper seemed to have deserted him ; he was a vain man, and
•with all his pride very dependent upon the admiration of his fellow-men.
His loud self-assertion was not an indication of strength of character, but
rather of an exaggerated conceit, nourished by the constant adulation of his
family and dependants. The withdrawal of this homage cut the judge to the
quick, and his uneasy conscience, which brooded on the wrong he had done
his son, saw in every evidence of disrespect the finger of Nemesis.
That much of it was due to the democratic spirit which during the last
years had invaded even the remote mountain valleys of Norway, he was in-
capable of comprehending. Yet, in most instances, he was undoubtedly right ;
the whole valley had become the champion of his absent son, and his aveng-
er. When he stepped from his carriage at the gate of the churchyard, people
turned their backs or walked away to avoid greeting him ; the pastor no long-
er waited to commence his sermon until Mr. Gamborg was in his seat ; his
boatmen, who rowed him to court in his large twelve-oared barge, answered
curtly when he spoke to them, and plainly showed him their ill-will.
It was no consolation to him to know that the story of his maltreatment of
his son had been enormously exaggerated ; his dignity forbade him to justify
himself. He would have liked very well, too, to reinstate the tenants whom
he had " evicted " after the election, had only his dignity permitted ; not be-
cause he pitied their misery, but as an indirect expiation of the wrong done
to his son. But it was that accursed dignity of his which stood in the way of
all his good resolves.
In the meanwhile he suffered as he had never suffered before. Not only
through his vanity and his thirst for praise did he receive many a wound, but
these surface hurts roused the regions of his soul next within, and stirred the
depths into tumult. His wife and his daughter, who had always seemed so
near to him, and been his stanch partisans through right and wrong, had,
somehow, drifted away from him ; and the thought tormented him that they
undoubtedly had read all Herluf 's letters, and deceived him by their pretended
ignorance. He would himself have given a year of his life to know what Her-
luf was doing and how he fared, but how could he divest himself of that cher-
ished dignity of his, and ask the questions which he had himself forbidden ?
After much meditation the judge formed a plan which seemed both ingen-
ious and feasible. He invited Hilda and her parents to dinner on Mrs. Gam-
borg's birthday, and during the evening he absented himself on the plea of
pressing business (as he was often in the habit of doing), and hastened along
the beach toward the parsonage. Chance favored his design ; he entered un-
observed by the front door, mounted the broad, dusky stairway to his daugh-
ter-in-law's room, and peered cautiously through the half-open door. There
was a small spirit-lamp burning on the table ; the child was sleeping peace-
fully in its cradle, and the nurse was absent. The judge was out of breath,
and he paused on the threshold to compose himself ; his heart ran riot and
the blood hammered in his temples.
The floor creaked under the weight of his portly figure as he stooped down
to kiss the sleeping child, and with a start he straightened himself and gazed
462
HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN. [1861-88
uneasily about him. He stole on tiptoe up to the window where a little ma-
hogany writing-table stood, and placing the lamp upon it, he unlocked one
of the drawers and seized a package of letters tied with a pink ribbon. With
a tremulous hand he untied the knot, and after having once more satisfied
himself that he need have no fear of interruption, he began to read.
It was the first letter, in which Herluf told of his arrival in England and
of a dangerous adventure he had had in Liverpool. The coolness and address
with which he had acted excited the judge's admiration. He read on breath-
lessly. He had himself never been out of Norway, and his son's description
of the great world with its wonderful sights interested him. Then came the
next letter, from New York, which dealt chiefly with the voyage and queer
types of men from widely separated climes. The descriptions were very clev-
er and full of vivid touches. The judge smiled with pride and delight; he
had never known that his son was such a talented man ; he (the judge) was
himself scarcely capable of writing such a letter.
Time slipped by, but the judge took no note of it ; he was now at the coal-
heaving period, which was passed over lightly and humorously by the writer,
but in which a loving ingenuity would read a pathos too sad for tears. The
judge was deeply moved ; to such need had his son been reduced, and yet been
• too proud to appeal to his father for aid. He had preferred to heave coal with
hands unused to toil, rather than humiliate himself before a father who had
wronged him. Such a feeling the judge could understand ; it appealed might-
ily to him. Vehemently aroused, he arose, heedless of the sleeping baby, and
began to pace the floor.
" He is my son indeed," he cried, " my own son, my own, my own ! "
The tears coursed down his cheeks, his broad chest heaved ; then, eager to
continue the narrative, he flung himself upon the chair at the writing-table
and was soon absorbed in the next letter. His features changed with every
varying emotion ; he had completely forgotten the situation. He did not hear
the light creaking of the stairs without, nor did he see the shadow which
paused in consternation on the threshold, then slowly stretched across the
floor until it reached the white window-curtain, where it bent cautiously over
his own. A hand was laid upon the judge's shoulder. He started up with a
bewildered exclamation. But in an instant he recovered himself, and seizing
Hilda by the arm drew her gently up to him.
" Child," he whispered, " will you help me ? "
" Help you, father ? " she asked, gazing into his face with joyous, tear-
dimmed eyes.
" Bring my son back again," begged the old man brokenly, and turned
away to master his emotion.
" Yes, father, I will bring him back to you," she answered.
" God bless you ! " he exclaimed.
The pastor, although he was not fond of America, and had often made
warning allusions to the Union in his sermons, was nothing loath to accom-
pany his daughter on her daring expedition. It availed him little that he
spoke in his farewell sermon of the solemn call of duty, and alluded feelingly
1861-88] HJALMAR HJORTH BOTESEN. 4 (53
to the many dear ties which bound him to his home ; his eagerness to get away
and take a little jaunt in the world was so great that he caught himself twenty
times a day forgetting his role of a martyr to duty. The government, it ap-
peared, valued so highly his political sermons, though they had been some-
what scarce of late, that it could ill afford to spare him, even for a limited
time, but agreed with him that such herculean efforts of intellect must in-
volve a terrible expenditure of cerebral tissue, and further concluded that so
valiant a servant of the state had well earned his leisure.
The judge in the meanwhile occupied his leisure in divesting himself of
his dignity. His first act after his daughter-in-law's departure was to sum-
mon his evicted tenants and announce to them that they were at liberty to re-
sume their holdings and to entertain whatever political opinions they pleased.
"You know," he said pleasantly, "my son and I have not always agreed
in political matters. If I could not persuade him, how much less can I expect
to control my tenants ? I am an old fellow, and perhaps don't see things as
clearly as I thought I did. But I have a son who is abreast of the age. He
will soon come home and take my place."
He made haste to write to Hilda what he had done, so as to clear away every
obstacle to his son's return. He grew as light-hearted as a boy when the let-
ter was sent, and talked freely with everybody about Herluf's American ex-
periences and his expected return. He felt a glow of paternal pride when he
related how manfully " the boy " had struggled with adversity and only made
light of it, and it gave him a thrill of pleasure to perceive with what respect
his son was regarded in the valley, and how near he seemed to be to the hearts
of all.
It was one morning early in October that the judge was seen standing at
the end of the pier spying anxiously into the distance through a field-glass.
Six small cannon were placed along the beach, and Hans, the groom, stood
with a fuse in his hand, watching for the judge's signal. The flag was flutter-
ing feebly from the top of the tall flag-pole, and the twelve-oared official
barge, gayly decorated, lay gently bobbing upon the water. It was early in
the morning, and the sun had not yet appeared above the mountain-peaks, al-
though there was a great yellow blaze in the eastern sky, and the highest peaks
to the north had caught some stray shafts of light, and flashed with a daz-
zling radiance. There was yet a touch of frost in the air, and a light smoke
hung over the fiord and drifted seaward. To the westward the fog seemed
denser, and as there was scarcely any breeze, the judge's field-glass was of no
avail.
Suddenly and silently the steamer's huge hull loomed out of the fog, and
the judge was so amazed that he came near forgetting the signal which was to
give the rest of the family warning. Bang, bang, bang, went the cannon, and
the steamer, which would not be behindhand in politeness, banged away in
return ; the twelve oarsmen in the barge cheered ; the ladies came running
down upon the pier, and were scolded for their tardiness. Then out shot the
barge through the light morning mist, and within a few minutes hove along-
side the steamer. A stairway was lowered, and the judge ran up the steps
like a youth of twenty. A tall, handsome, bearded man grasped his hand at
464
EJALNAR HJORTH BOYESEN. [1861-88
the head of the stairs and pressed it warmly. The judge met his eyes and
gazed into them for a moment silently. Both understood the meaning of that
glance. Each asked the other's forgiveness and received it. Then,- with an
utterly irrational movement, the judge turned abruptly away and embraced —
the pastor. It was a grievous mistake ; the embrace had been meant for Hilda.
But perhaps the judge was excusable. His eyes were dimmed with tears.
HILDA'S LITTLE HOOD.
[Idyls of Norway, and Other Poems. 1883.]
r sooth I have forgotten, for it is long ago,
And winters twelve have hid it beneath their shrouds of snow;
And 'tisn't well, the parson says, o'er bygone things to brood,
But, sure, it was the strangest tale, this tale of Hilda's hood.
For Hilda was a merry inaid, and wild as wild could be,
Among the parish maidens was none so fair as she;
Her eyes they shone with wilful mirth, and like a golden flood
Her sunny hair rolled downward from her little scarlet hood.
I once was out a-fishing, and, though sturdy at the oar,
My arms were growing weaker, and I was far from shore ;
And angry squalls swept thickly from out the lurid skies,
And every landmark that I knew was hidden from mine eyes.
The gull's shrill shriek above me, the sea's strong bass beneath,
The numbness grew upon me with its chilling touch of death, —
And blackness gathered round me ; then through the night's dark shroud
A clear young voice came swiftly as an arrow cleaves the cloud.
It was a voice so mellow, so bright and warm and round,
As if a beam of sunshine had been melted into sound;
It fell upon my frozen nerves and thawed the springs of life;
I grasped the oar and strove afresh ; it was a bitter strife.
The breakers roared about me, but the song took bolder flight,
And rose above the darkness like a beacon in the night;
And swift I steered and safely, struck shore, and by God's rood,
Through gloom and spray I caught the gleam of Hilda's scarlet hood.
The moon athwart the darkness broke a broad and misty way,
The dawn grew red beyond the sea and sent abroad the day;
And loud I prayed to God above to help me, if He could,
For deep into my soul had pierced that gleam from Hilda's hood.
I sought her in the forest, I sought her on the strand,
The pine trees spread their dusky roof, bleak lay the glittering sand.
Until one Sabbath morning at the parish church I stood,
And saw, amid a throng of maids, the little scarlet hood.
1861-88] WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. 455
Then straight my heart ran riot, and wild my pulses flew ;
I strove in vain my flutter and my blushes to subdue ;
"Why, Eric! " laughed a roguish maid, "your cheeks are red as blood;'*
"It is the shine," another cried, "from Hilda's scarlet hood."
I answered not, for 'tis not safe to banter with a girl ;
The trees, the church, the belfry danced about me in a whirl ;
I was as dizzy as a moth that flutters round the flame ;
I turned about, and twirled my cap, but could not speak for shame.
But that same Sabbath evening, as I sauntered o'er the beach
And cursed that foolish heart of mine for choking up my speech,
I spied, half wrapped in shadow at the margin of the wood,
The wavy mass of sunshine that broke from Hilda's hood.
With quickened breath on tiptoe across the sand I stepped ;
Her face was hidden in her lap, as though she mused or slept;
The hood had glided backward o'er the hair that downward rolled,
Like some large petal of a flower upon a stream of gold.
" Fair Hilda," so I whispered, as I bended to her ear;
She started up and smiled at me without surprise or fear.
"I love you, Hilda," said I; then in whispers more subdued:
"Love me again, or wear no more that little scarlet hood."
"Why, Eric," cried she, laughing, " how can you talk so wild ?
I was confirmed last Easter, half maid and half a child,
But since you are so stubborn — no, no ; I never could —
Unless you guess what's written in my little scarlet hood."
"I cannot, fairest Hilda," quoth I with mournful mien,
While with my hand I gently, and by the maid unseen,
Snatched from the clustering wavelets the brightly flaming thing,
And saw naught there but stitches small, crosswise meandering.
"There's nothing in your hood, love," I cried with heedless mirth.
" Well," laughed she, " out of nothing God made both heaven and earth;
But since the earth to you and me as heritage was given,
I'll only try to make for you a little bit of heaven."
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1848.
THE LAST SUPPER OF THE BORGIAS.
[Valentino. An Historical Romance of the Sixteenth Century in Italy. 1886.]
ri^HE cardinal's fate was not long undetermined. A messenger from the
-L Pontiff brought to him at his adjacent palace the gift of a rarely illumi-
nated missal — the Horcs Beata Vergine — and a kindly invitation to supper
in the Belvedere Villa at the setting of the sun.
VOL. x.— 30
466
WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. [1861-88
A guilty conscience awakened his alarm. There was nothing extraordinary
in the summons ; he had often broken bread with his spiritual master in the
latter's favorite summer-house ; but now, in the act of promising attendance,
his voice changed, and as the messenger made his ceremonious exit the car-
dinal sank unnerved in his chair.
He remained but a moment thus overcome. Hastening through an obscure
vicolo to a remote part of the Vatican, he entered unannounced the chamber
of Kesequenz, major-domo to the Duke of Eomagna, where he beheld that
individual seated at a table and plunged in abstraction.
" Resequenz ! " exclaimed the cardinal in an agony of apprehension, eager-
ly scrutinizing the face of the man before him, as the latter with sudden start
rose to his feet and made formal obeisance, "a fearful dread has come upon
me — I behold a.spectre from which you alone, perhaps, can save me."
The official thus addressed had been taken off his guard, and failed to
show that instantaneous self-possession which alone would have deceived the
searching gaze of his panic-stricken interlocutor. Something unconsciously
sinister in his face confirmed the cardinal's alarms.
Throwing himself on his knees in a frenzy of terror, he clasped the hands
of the silent steward :
" It is true, then ! " he cried ; " play not upon words, but answer ! "
" Would not your fate then be mine ? " asked the other, simply.
The cardinal rose to his feet. He trembled violently, but the transforma-
tion of a nervous fear to the certainty of a danger from which he saw but one
escape gave him presence of mind.
"You will not lay such inhuman cruelty upon your soul," he pleaded.
" Would you have to answer for a crime against one of the heads of the
Church ? Eesequenz," piteously cried the cardinal, " if you hope for mercy
hereafter, take what you will of my wealth and grant me life. To-morrow I
will fly ; and far from the vengeance of my enemies, and remote from this
centre of infamy, I will end my days in seclusion, at peace with Heaven and
unmolested by the world."
" Why not escape at once ? Why are you not already on the road ? "
" Heartless man ! would you have me go empty-handed ? The sun is near
the meridian ; betwixt now and the hour of this accursed supper I will make
ready, and at midnight start for Viterbo with my goods and a retinue of men
sufficient to protect me by the way, and pressing forward without stopping
to draw breath, I can be in safety at Perugia ere pursuit can overtake."
" Gold ! Gold ! " ejaculated the other with a sardonic laugh ; "its chains
link you even to the chance of death in preference to life without it."
" But, dear Resequenz," interposed Corneto, " there need be no chance of
death."
" And what would you pay me for the risk to myself ? "
" Fifty thousand sequins."
The major-domo's face illumined.
" It must be here before the supper," he said.
" Fear not. It would need a bolder man than I to trifle with you now."
"You must feign to be poisoned — cramp, vertigo, quivering chill — cause
1861-88] WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. 4437
yourself to be assisted from the room, and after that it will not be my fault
if antidotes cure you, and you escape from Eome. But at Perugia you must
pretend a lingering illness."
" Of course ; the after-effect of the drug."
" Here," said the major-domo, " I put into your hand this blue vial which
the duke gave me an hour ago. Both at the beginning and at the end of the
repast there will be sweet comfits, sugar-coated nuts, and the like ; my orders
are to prepare the second course, which I shall serve myself ; you will notice
that the Pope and Valentino and the Farnese eat not a morsel from that dish,
however much they take upon their plates. Do you eat plentifully of it, and
let the effect be manifested within a quarter of an hour."
The cardinal nodded, pressed his benefactors hand in silence, and taking
with him the poison vial, turned to go.
" Be not seen going hence," whispered Resequenz after him, " or a rope in
the court of St. Angelo would be presently waiting for us both."
Corneto turned with a sudden thought :
" Suppose that the Borgias examine the comfits and discover why the dose
failed?"
" The instant you are out of the room," answered the other, " every atom
remaining in the dish will be destroyed."
At the Belvedere Villa, as the sun passed below the line of the Ostian hills,
Cardinal Corneto was in waiting, and presently Pope Alexander, accompa-
nied by his son and followed by Pulcio and Resequenz, and the usual escort
of pages, were seen leisurely walking through the garden behind the Vati-
can. All were in serene good spirits, and no one scanning Corneto's placid
face would have suspected the tempest of the morning.
They seated themselves, Cesare and the cardinal at the right and left of
the Pope, the places at first set for Giulia Faruese and for Michelotto having
been removed on account of the "indisposition" of those personages.
The major-domo withdrew to superintend the serving of the repast, and
Pulcio addressed himself to a brace of chained falcons perched in shady nooks
upon a veranda where was also suspended the frame of staples upon which
the birds taken in the chase were hung.
" I have a letter to-day from the Viceroy," said the Pope to the cardinal ;
" you shall read it to-morrow ; his letters always put one in good humor ; so
calm, so practical, so decided, and so amiable withal."
" The Viceroy is a man of the world," answered Corneto, slightly troubled
by an allusion to despatches from Naples.
"Wait till he grows a few years older," remarked Cesare, "and he may
not be so smooth-spoken. Time plants a crotchet beneath every white
hair."
"Master," inquired the dwarf, turning from the birds, "do white hairs,
think you, represent the sorrows or the indulgences of life ? "
" When mine begin to come, Pulcio," answered the duke, " I shall rather
please myself by thinking that each stands for a pleasure than that all of
them have sprung from a grief."
,~g WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. [1861-88
Resequenz entered at this moment, accompanied by servants who offered
a prelude of sweets.
These were followed by the piece de resistance of the meal, a boar's head,
with slices cut from the hams prepared in the manner of the modern agro
dolce.
" I pray you eat heartily," said the Pope, " if but to keep me company. It
is said that large eaters are not graceful men ; but surely a small eater never
was a good companion."
Agro dolce gave place to a peacock with tail magnificently spread, which
was the supreme effort of the Italian cuisine.
"A beautiful dish," remarked the cardinal, declining to be helped from
it, " but a tough bird."
" So say I," assented Alexander, " but my cooks would die of chagrin if I
forbade their serving it occasionally."
The silver chalices they drank from were replenished with white wine of
Montefiascone, or with red from the slopes of Vesuvius.
" I notice we have a flask of Cyprus," said Cesare, emptying his cup.
" I know nothing of it," answered Alexander ; " it was brought doubtless
as a matter of course."
" It stands in the ante-camera," rejoined his son, " but be it of your store
or of mine, let us keep it for the last. "
Upon hearing this colloquy, the dwarf left the room and returned a mo-
ment later.
" I have laid the Chypre in snow," he explained.
"Your Holiness will have been pleased," remarked Corneto, addressing
the Pope, " to hear of the discovery at Hadrian's Tiburtine villa."
" What is the discovery ? " inquired Cesare.
" A mosaic the size of this table, representing a basket of flowers, and of
marvellous workmanship."
"Those ancients were wonderful men ; they made their roses and their
loves immortal ; only their songs cannot reach to us. 'Tis pity, for how me-
lodious must the Greek and how inspiriting must the Eoman music have
been."
"Simple and monotonous, though," objected Alexander; "cymbals,
trumpets with three notes, the lyre with half a dozen, and pipes in abun-
dance—a wretched concert we should call that now."
The peacock was removed after sustaining but moderate damage, and its
place was filled by a heap of sugar egg-shells, each of which contained a quail
stuffed with herbs.
There were no game-laws in the sixteenth century, and quails were eaten
in August as in December. This proved a welcome dish, and paid the pen-
alty of the peacock's toughness.
" Is there news from the French in the Abruzzi ? " inquired the cardinal,
moistening his fingers in a silver basin.
" Only a budget of descriptions by eye-witnesses of Ives d'Allegre's defeat ;
the Spaniards set upon him in a difficult place, and drove half his army into
the Garigliano." ....
1861-88] WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOB. 4(59
The fateful moment had come, and the second course of sweets was placed
before the feasters, by whom it was observed with different sentiments.
Corneto bore himself with heroic self-possession. Rising, he took the dish
from the hand of Restquenz, who was about to offer it to the Pope, and
with profound reverence presented it himself, by that act implying that al-
though permitted to sit at the same table, he was but the menial of the head
of the Church.
Alexander took several pieces upon his plate ; the cardinal resumed his
place, the major-domo handed him the dish from which he helped himself,
and passed it to Cesare, who declined it, saying :
"Sweets once at a meal is enough for my taste."
The wine of Cyprus appeared at this moment fresh from its cold bath, and
with a few flakes of the snow of the Apennines in the spaces of the straw
wrapper that enfolded the glass. The goblets were filled while the Pope nib-
bled a crust of bread, leaving his sugar-plums untasted.
Both he and his son observed that the cardinal ate without stint of those
on his plate.
Resequenz also watched him with interest, for the part of a poisoned man
was now to be acted before the eyes of connoisseurs.
The cardinal went on with his candies with increasing relish.
" To return to Ives d'Allegre," he said, addressing Valentino with the sat-
isfied good humor of one who has eaten and drunk well, "I have often
thought, and the mention of military affairs recalls the subject, that even if
your superb stroke at Sinigallia had not been made, you with your army
would none the less have crushed the Orsini."
"It might have been so," replied the duke reflectively; "nothing is
stronger than desire backed by despair."
" But it was surer and safer in the method adopted," pursued the cardinal,
glad to talk upon a subject which could not be agreeable to the remembrance
of either of his companions.
" Sinigallia has made me many enemies," said Cesare, answering the car-
dinal ; "success is the one unpardonable sin."
" Success ! " exclaimed Corneto, emptying his silver cup. " What a preg-
nant word is that. No man can look without emotion down the vista of life
to the brilliant days when all was new, and the future seemed a galaxy of
stars. But how glad must be the retrospect when the harvest is ours, and all
the things we coveted are garnered."
" Is the Chypre cold enough ? " inquired the dwarf as the three goblets
were set down empty.
" Ay, it keeps its subtle flavor, which too much snow would spoil."
The servants had withdrawn from the room, and only Resequenz remained
standing in respectful attention and with his eyes fixed upon the cardinal.
It was time, he thought, for the effect of the sweets.
" I once heard you say," remarked Corneto to Cesare, " that there are
seven ways to strike an enemy ; through life, health, freedom, reputation,
wife, children, property."
" I but quoted Galeazzo Visconti," answered the duke.
470 WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. [1861-88
" And have you never thought, since Sinigallia, that the greatest of all
faults is to suffer the heirs of the dead to escape ? Think you the children of
Vitellozzo and the son of Pagolo Orsini will not rise to confront you with
arms, or to strike you unawares hereafter ?"
The answer was upon Valentino's lips, when Kesequenz perceived at
length the first indication of the comedy to be enacted.
Alexander and Cesare also observed it, and fixed their eyes in silence upon
the cardinal, whose face, till now flushed with the good cheer, had changed
color. His jaw dropped, his breath became labored, the eyes stared vacantly,
a shudder convulsed his frame.
" Done to perfection," murmured Kesequenz to himself ; " he must have
seen a poisoned man die."
"What is it?" cried Cesare in pretended amaze. "Give him air and
water," he said as the major-domo sprang to the cardinal's assistance. But
the latter shook him off with a gasp of anguish. " Poisoned ! Poisoned ! "
he shrieked with a wail that rang down the silent gardens of the Belvedere.
" Your promise was false — you have killed me I "
Kesequenz started with a sudden thrill of dismay.
" Yet no," continued Corneto in a stifled voice — " I wrong you . . .
it is that hateful dwarf ... he got the vial from me ... he has
poured it in the wine . . . oh ! . . . it is the wine that burns like
fire ! "
Valentino sprang to his feet, and glanced hastily about him, but the jester
had vanished. His eyes fell on the face of his father — there too he beheld
the change of color, the vacant stare, the head dropped backward, a foam
gathering upon the lips.
Summoned by the cries of the cardinal, the servants rushed into the room.
" Quick," said Valentino, to the foremost of them, " take me to the pal-
ace . . . to my room . . . one of you bring the drops that . . ."
His utterance failed, his body became rigid beneath the first spasm of the
fiery poison ; he would have fallen, had not strong arms borne him from the
room.
By Resequenz's direction the Pontiff and the cardinal were similarly re-
moved, each to his chamber.
Cesare was laid upon his bed, and a leech was sent for. On hearing this
order, he murmured, " No . . . Ormes."
One of the servants hastened away in quest of the magician ; a second ran
to find some philter of his own, the third stood awestruck. The duke's power
of speech had nearly failed, and his face was distorted with the spasm of an
approaching convulsion, but with the supreme effort of one whose life de-
pends upon utterance, he said in accents barely audible:
" The ivory cabinet in the next room — break it — in a secret drawer is an
antidote . . ."
The servant hurried from the room, and a moment later was heard the
crash of the cabinet being wrenched to pieces.
The duke's eyes became fixed upon a presence that had crept swiftly to his
side. It was Pulcio, his worn old face suddenly tenfold wrinkled, and with
1861-88] WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. 47^
mouth askew and quivering. "It was I did it," he hissed in Valentino's
ear; " I met Corneto with the blue bottle in his hand ; I knew what it was,
I had seen one like it before. I swore if he did not give i t me I would denounce
him as plotting to poison you — ha ! ha ! " laughed the dwarf — the poor fool's
last jest ! " And now my heart is content, for she is avenged."
"She !" faintly echoed Valentino; " of whom speak you ? "
" Of Nerina — my little daughter whom you took from me three years ago.
She died dishonored — but that crime, at least, you expiate 1 "
The steps of the returning servant were heard, but ere he passed the thresh-
old the fool had gone.
Valentino was past speech and barely conscious. The servant poured a
little of the essence into his mouth. A moment after arrived Ormes, breath-
less ; he snatched the vial from the domestic, glanced at it, and raising the
sufferer's head, poured all that remained down his throat.
The effect of this remedy became presently apparent ; the rigid muscles
relaxed, the convulsion which was commencing ceased, the breathing showed
that the heart was recovering its action.
Don Michele entered the room aghast at the result of the attempt upon
the cardinal. Soon after came del Nero ; for the news had flashed over the
city that the Pope was dead and the Duke of Romagna dying.
" Will he live ? " asked the condottiere.
"Yes," answered Orraes; " begone all of you, and by midnight I shall
have brought him back to consciousness." ....
The condottiere made his way through the streets which thronged with
the populace, flocking this way and that, bearing torches, questioning one
another, and adding to the general alarm by the fearful rumors which sprang
into 'circulation. At the bridge of St. Angelo the guards had been doubled ;
hurrying from their barrack came a column of infantry to seize the approaches
to the Vatican.
The posts at the city gates were ordered to be on the alert ; it was vaguely
feared that some calamity was about to smite the city, and that the Pope and
his son had been but the first victims of an unknown enemy.
But none spoke a word of commiseration.
Some shouted for Colonna, and some called that the Orsini were at hand ;
but all, between the exclamations of apprehension and the faction cries with
which they made the air resound, cursed the fallen Borgias. It almost reached
the sick man's room — that startling cry of rage and vengeance long re-
strained—
" To the Tiber with Duca Valentino ! "
FREDERICK WADSWORTH LORING. [1861-88
Loring*
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1848. KILLED by Indians, near Wickenburg, Arizona, 1871.
IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD AT FREDERICKSBURG.
[The Atlantic Monthly. 1870.]
IN the old churchyard at Fredericksburg
A gravestone stands to-day,
Marking the place where a grave has been,
Though many and many a year has it seen
Since its tenant mouldered away.
And that quaintly carved old stone
Tells its simple tale to all : —
" Here lies a bearer of the pall
At the funeral of Shakespeare. "
There in the churchyard at Fredericksburg
I wandered all alone,
Thinking sadly on empty fame,
How the great dead are but a name, —
To few are they really known.
Then upon this battered stone
My listless eye did fall,
Where lay the bearer of the pall
At the funeral of Shakespeare.
Then in the churchyard at Fredericksburg
It seemed as though the air
"Were peopled with phantoms that swept by.
Flitting along before my eye,
So sad, so sweet, so fair ;
Hovering about this stone,
By some strange spirit's call,
Where lay a bearer of the pall
At the funeral of Shakespeare.
For in the churchyard at Fredericksburg
Juliet seemed to love,
Hamlet mused, and the old Lear fell,
Beatrice laughed, and Ariel
Gleamed through the skies above,
As here, beneath this stone,
Lay in his narrow hall
He who before had borne the pall
At the funeral of Shakespeare.
And I left the old churchyard at Fredericksburg;
Still did the tall grass wave,
With a strange and beautiful grace,
Over the sad and lonely place,
Where hidden lay the grave ;
1861-88] FRANCES CO UR TEN A Y BA TL OR. 473
And still did the quaint old stone
Tell its wonderful tale to all:—
" Here lies a bearer of the pall
At the funeral of Shakeopeare."
Courtenar I3ai?iot;,
BORN in Fayetteville, Ark., 1848.
AFTER THE MOUNTAIN WEDDING.
[Behind the Blue Ridge. A Homely Narrative. 1887.]
PAP had been sitting silent and mortified ever since his rebuff from the
elders, who had let him severely alone, except when they looked at him
over or under their horn spectacles with a glance indifferent, vacant, cold, or a
" What kind of a sort of a fellow is this we've got here ? " of puzzled inquiry
from some "furriner," who lived some miles away, and only half divined that
he was " no 'count " and had best be left to his own company and devices. He
felt shy about going up to E. Mintah. To cross the room and set himself up
to be stared at, as it were, seemed impossible. Such bold proceedings were
not for pariahs, he felt ; so he sat still, with Willy leaning against him and
trying already to wink the sleep out of his round eyes, and with other com-
panions, in the shape of his own thoughts, that he would have gladly shaken
off, they were so bad. Only yesterday, as it seemed, he had been a bridegroom
too, and had stood in just sucli an assembly, feeling immortal in youth and
love and joy. And he remembered another bride, the best and fairest among
women. "Then" and "now," the twin vultures, were tearing at his heart,
— that bright " then " when he had been so rich that all the tribute and treas-
ures of the world could have added nothing to his wealth ; this dark "now"
of bankruptcy in which there were none so poor as to do him reverence, and
in which only one thing — the little child that his arm encircled — stood be-
tween him and the utter darkness and despair of unloved, unhonored old
age. His eyes, in roaming around the room, fell upon his violin, wrapped in
the dead wife's shawl. The poor, faded, threadbare thing was as familiar to
him as any sight in the world ; but he got a heart-stab from it now, it was elo-
quent of so much besides his lost happiness. He withdrew his arm hastily
from about Willy, and, leaning forward, rested his head on his hands with
his fingers shielding his eyes.
" Old Johnny's gittin' tired. Look yonder at him a-noddin' and ready to
fall off the bench. Ha ! ha ! He's had enough of this," said one of the youth-
ful rustics to Darfchuly Meely, who "He! he! he'd" with a sympathetic
snigger over the amusing spectacle.
" He's done bin to town to-day, maybe," remarked rustic the second, not
to be outdone in wit. " 'Tain't the first time he's crookt his elbow sence day-
474
FRANCES COURTENAT BAT LOR. [1861-88
break. That's why he's so peart and lively to-night. I reckon he'll roll plum'
off on the floor in a minnit."
R. Mintah noticed him, too, arid came tripping towards him, saying,
" Pa-ap ! Pa-ap ! Ain't you got no words fur me ? Ain't you goin' to shake
hands and wish me joyful ?"
Pap started up and looked bewildered. "R. Mintah, my dear! Is that
you? God bless you !" he said, brokenly, and then released her hand sud-
denly, seized his crutch, and made his way rapidly out of a side-door into
the darkness. He was still sitting on the door-step when one of the rustic
youths already mentioned came in search of him, saying, "They're minded
to have a merry-bout in there, and is askin' fur the fiddler. That's you,
ain't it?"
" No, it ain't," said Pap. "I can't play to-night. I ain't a-goin' to play."
He was very sorehearted, and the manner of the request had not been sooth-
ing. R. Mintah came running to him, though, the next minute, saying,
" What's this ? What's this 'bout you not playin' fur my weddin' ? Oh, Pa-
ap ! You ain't never meant it. Jonah's and me's weddin' ! Hit's never ain't
possible ! Why, it's you that has brought us to this. Ef you hadn't of holpen
me and talked to him like you did we wouldn't have had no weddin', and
I'd have gone single to my grave. Not play ? And him sech a beautiful
dancer ! And me ready to jump over the house ! And you playin' so eli-
gunt ! Come 'long in this minnit, which you've always been a good friend to
me, — always. "
Of course Pap relented. There never was a creature more susceptible to
kindness ; and for affection, or affection's sake, what would he not have done
or been ? " Well, R. Mintah, to pleasure you, I can't say you nay, seein' it's
your weddin'-night, — me that have knowed you sence you waru't as big as
my Willy."
At he entered with her, a general murmur of satisfaction filled the room,
entirely selfish in its origin, but helping to put the old man in tune. " Now
we'll git somethin' that's wuth the listenin'," said old Jacob Potter to his
neighbor, Tim White. " I always did like a tune, and Johnny Shore kin play
the fiddle first-rate. Hit's about the only thing he's good fur. "
Pap heard and smiled, and tucked his beloved violin under his chin where
he stood, and gave a long scrape from tip to end of bow and looked about him
with positive assurance.
" Run, git me a stooi, Willy boy, to rest Jim Wilkins on," he said to his
little shadow ; and, going across the room, he turned an empty water-bucket
upside down in the low window-seat, and having enthroned himself, with
Willy's help, gave a second scrape of his bow to say that he was ready. Willy
hopped off with his crutch, and it was Incky that both were got out of the way
in time, for the effect of Pap's signal was almost electrical, and in a moment
the bashful youths, who had been clinging together all evening so desperate-
ly, parted company by one impulse,. and, as bold as lions, advanced, seized a
maiden apiece by her elbow or hand, and marched with her into the middle
of the room. Gone was all stiffness and embarrassment from that moment.
A babel of talk burst forth. Podge Brown, who had been the envy of his own
1861-88] FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR. 475
sex and the delight, apparently, of the opposite one, was suddenly completely
eclipsed and altogether deserted. Podge could not dance.
Not being afflicted with the faintest trace of shyness, he had been talking
to the girls all evening and making himself irresistible in his own fascinating
way, showing his easy feeling about society and familiarity with its usages in
a variety of ways. He had begun by seating himself on the same bench with
the maidens — between A. Mander and Darthuly Meely indeed — and had
brilliantly excused the boldness of the intrusion by saying that " merlasses
must look to catch flies." He had continued to get off a great number of
equally original and lively sallies, to the great amusement and satisfaction of
his audience, and the disgust of his companions near the door. He went so
far as to make a mock declaration of affection, which he called "a pop," to
two young ladies seated some distance below him. He ended by tickling
them all, which threw them into the greatest possible state of arch confusion,
and produced such protestations, affectations, profuse giggles, and threats
that, naturally, he was driven in self-defence to make fresh demonstrations,
whereupon all the timid darlings took refuge in each other's laps, where they
embraced and kissed each other most fondly, and quite by accident looked
over at the now furious masculine majority who suffered and were strong.
But with the very first bars of ' ' Zip Coon " the conquering Brown found him-
self no better off than Napoleon at Elba, and in a flash about twenty couples
were hard at it, jigging, and hopping, and spinning, and twirling, and not
caring a pin what became of him. Away they went, in pairs, and faced each
other, and set to, and capered, and bounded, swung half around a circle, fell
to their "steps," swung back into place again, seized each other around the
waist and spun madly around for a moment, faced each other again, set to,
and so on da capo with fresh energy and other "steps" until not a breath was
left in a single body. Such coquetting and pirouetting, such bright eyes and
flushed cheeks, such freedom of movement and native grace among the girls !
Such swing and fling, such rampings and stampings, such shouts of delight
from the men ! Such perfect, unrestrained enjoyment for all ! " Zip Coon"
melted into "Miss McLeod," "Miss McLeod" was merged in " Money
Musk," "Money Musk" slipped into "Gray Eagle," "Gray Eagle" ran
into "Yellow Stockings," "Yellow Stockings " was skilfully pinned with-
out a break to "Fisher's Hornpipe."
On they all went, Pap playing with a fire and enthusiasm that worked the
dancers up to the highest pitch of excitement, playing as if there wasn't a
heartache in the world and never had been, his eyes half shut, a smile on his
face, beating time regularly with his left foot, the dancers dancing to match
with all their might and main and heart and soul, and with every muscle of
their bodies. The old floor sent up clouds of dust. The walls trembled and
swayed. The windows rattled. The candle-sticks clattered. The broom fell
in a fright against the disguised flour-barrel. The twins shrieked for joy, and
danced, too, about the door after their own fashion. The elders leaned eagerly
forward, and beamed, and oscillated on their seats, and nodded to the music,
and exclaimed, and patted the floor with their sticks. And still the reels and
reelers went thundering on. Pap grew paler and paler, the dancers were all
476
FRANCES COUBTENAT BAYLOR. [1861-88
aflame, but still there was no pause uor break. And now came a loud roar
and a mighty tramp. It was a mercy that the shell of a tenement did not col-
lapse like a card-house as all the couples bounded off in the "grand cirkit"
all around the room, doing the long glide and hop of "the Irish trot," which,
being well named for wildness and fury, would have been trying to the consti-
tution of the most substantial structure. Utterly exhausted when this highly
characteristic outburst of Milesian mirth was over, the dancers fell into the
first seats they could find. The first frenzy of movement was over, and Pap
could and did stop, too, and proceeded to mop his face with his handkerchief,
which he then rolled into a tight ball and returned to his pocket. Nobody
thanked him, nobody joined him, except Willy, whom he sent off again to
bring him "a gode of water," but nevertheless he felt that he had his reward.
" The folks is had agood fling, ain't they, honey ?" he said to the child when
he returned
Some little time passed before any more dancing was done, and then a sen-
sation was created by Jonah's challenging Alf Peters to "a break-down."
Jonah was considered by many people the "handsomest dancer on the Moun-
tain." Alf Peters had won " the endurance prize" for break-downs the week
before at the fair. Great interest was naturally felt in such a contest. Both
men began by removing their coats, and after a few preliminary stamps and
steps each threw back his head, shoulders, and arms, and settled to his shuf-
fling and double-shuffling with a will, " the folks " gathering about them in a
circle, Tim White " patting Juber," Pap fiddling for his life, and R. Mintah
shrieking out in her feminine treble squeak, "Don't you stop, Jonah ! Go
on ! Don't git beat, Jonah ! That's you !" the opposition petticoated ele-
ment encouraging Alf in much the same fashion. A more exciting struggle
for supremacy was never seen on the Mountain, and how R. Mintah 's eyes
did shine with gratified pride when Alf Peters, pumped into an exhausted
air-receiver, suddenly stopped, sank on the floor, and thereby confessed him-
self vanquished. " He's give in ! I knowed it would be so ! Stop, Jonah,"
she cried. But Jonah went on for some moments to show that he could do so,
not that there was the least danger of any dispute or altercation, everybody
having seen for some moments that Alf had lost his steadiness and was reel-
ing as a top does before it comes to a stand-still. When Alf rose and sulkily
resumed his linen " duster," with ill-concealed disgust, Jonah cocked his hat
very much on the back of his head, stuck his thumbs in his suspenders, and
made the tour of the room with R. Mintah hanging on his arm and looking
up to him with fondest admiration. He then li t a five-cent cigar, and, in the
fulness of his satisfaction, he actually went up to his late deadly enemy, voung
Culbert, and offered him one, adding a hearty clap on his back that was almost
enough to produce a hemorrhage on the spot. "Ain't you 'most dead, my
dear ?" asked R. Mintah of her giant, anxiously.
" No," he replied, with great scorn. "I ain't teched. Git out there and
show me Avhat you kin do."
Out they got on the floor. Jonah stuck his arms akimbo. Pap, who had
exhausted his repertoire, went back to "Zip Coon." R. Mintah caught up
her skirts, turned out her elbows squarely, stuck her pretty head roguishly
1861-88] FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR.
on one side. Jonah, with a wild " Whoop-ee I " jumped fully two feet into the
air, clapped his heels swiftly three times together before he alighted, whirled
to the right, whirled to the left, advanced, retreated, gyrated.
R. Mintah teetered forward prettily on her toes, flew right, flew left, with a
little fluttering motion like that of a butterfly with wings outspread, retreated
when he advanced, advanced when he retreated, glanced archly now over the
right shoulder, now over the left, her cheeks like damask roses, her eyes like
stars.
Jonah darted towards her with his arms extended ; R. Miiitah slipped un-
der them and floated away. Jonah danced all around her ; R. Mintah kept
well out of his reach. Jonah pretended that he was exhausted, and let his
steps die away to a faint shuffle, intended to convey the impression that he
was quite spent ; R. Mintah relaxed her vigilance. Jonah immediately darted
forward again, and this time seized the little wife around the waist, and, lift-
ing her up in his strong arms, deposited her bodily on the mantel-shelf, and
left her there — a sweet novelty in chimney ornaments. The shouts of the
delighted audience had not died away, when Mr. Newman appeared at the
door, very tall and straight, very solemn and formal. " Suppur-r, ladies and
gentlemen ! " he said in loud, mechanical voice, with a whir in it as of a
clock running down. " Suppur-r-r ! And pleass to form yourselves in cou-
ples of two and walk out."
This was a welcome sound to Pap, whose head had dropped lower and lower
over his violin, and who had been playing for some time with intermittent
vigor. And to the elders, all of whom were drooping, too, and some of them
dozing. And to Podge Brown, who had been threatening to go home for
hours, but somehow had not gone. And to Matilda, who had sat bolt upright
all the evening, looking almost as sour and odious as she was. And to Willy,
who had rolled off and under a bench, and was "sound," as Pap remarked
when he waked him. And to Stone and Pete, who had not been able to close
an eye for thinking of it. And to the dank and grewsome, who rose with
alacrity to respond to the summons, but, with all the others, was stopped by
Mr. Newman, who gave out : " The bride and the bridegroom will form their-
selves as the fust pair of two, and lead forth before all, which will follow on."
This plan of Mr. Newman's for ensuring due and proper precedence necessi-
tated R. Min tah's being taken down from her exalted position, anjd Jonah
effected this in a twinkling, whereupon R. Mintah, by dint of standing on
tiptoe, managed to administer a mock-violent box on his ear. Peace being
restored between them, both suddenly became very dignified and grave. R.
Mintah put on her white cotton gloves, which she had taken off. Jonah did
the same, and pulled up his collar, moreover, and held his head as high as he
could get it. R. Mintah took his arm, and, having " formed theirselves,"
they waited a moment for the other "couples of two " to do the same, and then
marched out of the room, solemnly, with measured steps, at the slowest pos-
sible rate of speed consistent with moving at all, to " Bonaparte crossing the
Rhine," from Pap. To have laughed or talked during this progress would
have been a gross indecorum. But when they had arrived at the supper table
and taken their places, when Mr. Mathers had asked a blessin' at great length,
478
FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR. [1861-88
and been blessed for not making it shorter, and when Mr. Newman had called
out warniogly, ' ' Ladies to get their fill fust, gentlemen, and don't you disre-
member it. Guzzlers to wait till the last. Begin to commence to wait on your
ladies, gentlemen, and don't spare the vittles pervided and made and set out
before you for the same,"— then, I say, there was noise enough. ... A
bountiful supper that, and certainly a merry company. Podge Brown was
again in a position to show the superiority of head over heels, and became
every moment more fatally fascinating. Before Mr. Mathers had well got out
his "Amen," he was sportively pouring coffee in the custard, and daubing
the pound-cake with mustard, by way of showing the tricksy quality of his
wit, and from this he went on to other delightful and genial antics that com-
pletely enslaved all the young ladies about him, whom he tickled impartially
and persistently, causing them to "think they'd die," and to assure him that
they "would split their sides," to say nothing of spilling their coffee, drop-
ping their plates, and choking over and over again. But although thus de-
voted to the sex at large, Mr. Brown was a man, and an unmarrited one, and so
it came about that he gradually and very artfully narrowed the circle of his
charming attentions until Darthuly Meely was the object of most of them,
and before the banquet was consumed he had contrived to give her the most
signal marks of his preference, such as pulling down her hair, breaking most
of her pearls, and repeatedly pulling her chair from under her. Something,
however, must be allowed for the expansion of stocks and stones even under
certain favorable conditions, and Mr. Brown was but mortal man, Darthuly
Meely the dynamic force surging within him and seeking expression in play-
ful fancies. Even Timothy White made throe remarks in the course of that
supper, and looked almost animated when fruit-cake was handed. And Jin-
ny's tongue wagged freely in spite of such apparently insuperable obstacles to
conversation as biscuits, and apples, and cakes, and pickles, of which her
mouth was full. "You did jerk the liveliest to-night," she said to Pap.
"When I knowed you was dead and in your grave, I usened to tell Alfred
often that fur fiddlin' his Pa-ap beat all. And so you do, John, no matter
who's the next one, fur it's jes' Hvin' music ef ever I heerd any, and you
with a leg buried, anyways, to my certain knowing. Hit's jes' a wonderment
how you kin."
One lady present certainly got what Mr. Newman wished all to have, and
that was the dank and grewsome, who, considering that the meats were not
cold baked, nor served on or out of a coffin, contrived to dispose of enough
and to spare. She was still sitting over in a corner with a plate in her lank lap
heaped high with a miscellaneous collection of eatables, with which she was
apparently making close connection as far as could be seen (which was not far,
the black sun-bonnet being cast down within an inch of the same, and mys-
terious sounds of chumping, and cracking, and gulping, and gurgling going
on under its immediate protection as behind a screen), when the company
trooped back to the living-room, leaving Simon Peter and Stonewall Jackson
still skirmishing in the rear— perhaps to cover their retreat and bring off
the D. and G.
The evening was now over, as soon appeared. Mothers began to think of
1861-88] FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR. 479
their babies and of their bread. Fathers " reckoned it was 'bout time to be
gittin'. " Grandfathers yawned dolorously, and were no longer to be ke#t up
even by their sticks. Seeing this, Mr. Newman made his last official declara-
tion : " Them that goes with the bride to her home-bringin' will git ready to
start right away, and ef they've got any saddlin' and bridlin' to do they'd bet-
ter be mighty quick about it, as aforesaid." A general commotion of prepa-
ration now ensued. Children were sought for, shawls and bonnets resumed,
farewells made, and the heads of families, the elders, and the little ones made
their way outside, unhitched their " teams," clambered into their carts, and
then waited, as etiquette demanded, for the departure of the bride and groom.
Out came E. Mintah the next moment, followed by Jonah, and all cloaked
and hooded. The night was black and starless, and it had been difficult to
distinguish anything or anybody, but now fully fifty pine-knots were lit in
rapid succession, and flamed and smoked in the fresh breeze that blew from
the direction of the Ridge. And now R. Mintah was swept up on a white
pony, with a beautiful flowing tail and mane, by Jonah. And now Jonah
mounted a big bony chestnut, and laid his hand on his wife's bridle-rein. And
now the young men and maidens mounted their respective steeds, and fell
into line behind the first pair who were to be like another first pair, of whom
it is said that "Adam delved and Eve span." And now Stone and Pete rush
out and whisk up behind two of the cavaliers, and cling there like a couple of
limpets. And now R. Mintah cries out, "Good-by ! Good-by !" over and
over again. "Good-night, Pa-ap. Good-by, dear Mother Newman. Good-
by, Father Newman. Come over soon. Good-by all." And Jonah gives two
short "good-nights," too, atrd the procession starts. The gleam of R. Min-
tah's red dress and hood is seen for some time, and then is to be seen no longer.
The carts and wagons all go creaking, rattling away. The procession turns
into the Red Lane now, and the young men and maidens burst into a song full
of joy and triumph. Mother Newman turns away in tears. The dank and
grewsome flits out into the darkness like Poe's raven. Matilda stalks off to-
wards home in a temper because Alfred has lingered so long. Little Willy is
fretting, too, and appears to be trying to gouge out one of his blue eyes with
his fist. The procession is winding around the Mountain now, and they can
see the torches still flaming, still smoking, still borne aloft. And now they
have suddenly disappeared. Father Newman goes in and shuts the door.
Jonah and R. Mintah are married. Pap, Alfred, and the child stumble home
in silence — the old leaning, moss-roofed home, with the tottering porch and
the wavy chimney, into which a bride as young and fair as R. Mintah walked
so long, long ago. As they enter the gates, the clouds part a little and show
a brilliant stretch of stars. And Pap looking up at them thinks of one who
has passed beyond them.
480
CHARLES DE KAY.
[1861-88
tie
BOKN in Washington, D. C., 1848.
ULF IN IRELAND.
(A. D. 790.)
[Hesperus, and Other Poems. 1880.]
WHAT then, what if my lips do burn,
Husband, husband;
What though thou see'st uiy red lips
burn,
Why look'st thou with a look so stern,
Husband ?
It was the keen wind through the reed,
Husband, husband :
'Twas wind made sharp with sword-edge
reed
That made my tender lips to bleed,
Husband.
And hath the wind a human tooth,
Woman, woman ?
Can light wind mark like human tooth
A shameful scar of love uncouth,
Woman f
What horror lurks within your eyes,
Husband, husband ?
What lurking horror strains your eyes,
What black thoughts from your heart
arise,
Husband ?
Who stood Reside you at the gate,
Woman, woman?
Who stood so near you by the gate
Woman ?
So God me save, 'twas I alone,
Husband, husband!
So Christ me save, 'twas I alone
Stood listening to che ocean moan,
Husband !
Then hast thou four feet at the least,
Woman, woman!
Thy Christ hath lent thee four at least,
Oh, viler than four-footed "beast,
Woman !
A heathen witch hath thee unmanned,
Husband, husband!
A foul witchcraft, alas, unmanned :
Thou saw'st some old tracks down the
sand,
Husband !
Yet were they tracks that went not far ',
Woman, woman;
Those ancient foot-marks went not far,
Or else you search the harbor bar,
Woman.
It is not yours al»ne that Heed,
Woman, woman;
Your wound has been avenged with speed.,
• Woman !
Why talk you so of bar and wound,
Husband, husband ?
What ghastly sign of sudden wound
And kinsman smitten to the ground,
Husband ?
I saw your blood upon his cheek,
Woman, woman /
The moon had marked his treacherous
cheek,
I marked his heart beside the creek,
Woman f
What, have you crushed the only flower,
Husband, husband !
Among our weeds the only flower ?
Henceforward get you from my bower,
Husband !
I love you not ; I loved but him,
Husband, husband;
In all the world I loved but him ;
Not hell my love for Brenn shall
dim,
Husband !
1861-88]
CHARLES DE KAY.
481
He's caught her by her jet-black hair;
Sorrow, sorrow!
He's bent her head back by the hair
Till all her throbbing throat lies
bare —
Sorrow !
You knew me fiercer than the wolf,
Woman, woman;
You knew I well am named the wolf;
I shall both you and him engulf,
Woman.
Yet I to you was always kind,
Woman, woman;
To serpents only fools are kind ;
Yet still with love of you Pm blind,
Woman.
m look no more upon your face,
Woman, woman;
These eyes shall never read your face,
For you shall die in this small space,
Woman !
He's laid his mouth below her chin,
Horror !
That throat he kissed below the chia
No breath thereafter entered in :
Horror, horror!
LITTLE PEOPLE.
I STOLE so gently on their dance,
Their pygmy dance in red sunrise,
I caught the warm and tender glance
Each gallant gave his dear one's
eyes.
Wee ladies clad in fine bat's-wing
With plumed lordlings stamp the
heel;
Behind them swords and fans they fling
And foot it blithely down the reel.
They sighed and ogled, whispered, kissed
In meetings of the swaying dance —
Then fled not, but were swiftly missed,
Like love from out a well-known
glance.
I sprang : the flashing swords were grown
Mere blossom-stalks from tulips tossed ;
The fans that sparkled on the stone
Were turned to sprays of glittering
frost.
THEN SHALL 1 TRIUMPH.
[The Love Poems of Louis Barnaval. 1883. J
WHEN we are touched by wrinkled
age
Your bosom, now ineffable
As God's most pure, unwritten page,
No longer glorious in swell,
War on the ravished eyes will wage
Nor still of other beauties tell.
Your lips will pinch, your neck turn sal-
low,
Your eyesight fail and cheeks grow hol-
low.
Then shall I triumph, then those lips
I'll press with bliss by so much
clearer
As from your frame the beauty slips
And to your eyes the soul is nearer.
Thus have you seen of seaworn ships
Crumbled in wreck the lifelong
steerer
Feel for the hulk more love and pride
Than e'er for yachts that brave the
tide,
VOL. X. — 31
CHARLES DE KAY. [1861-88
THE VISION OP NIMROD.
[The Vision of Nimrod. 1881.]
~VT~O sun, no moon. Northward the star Orion,
-INI The star of Nimrod, had the zenith won,
When from the waste the roaring of a lion
Boomed like the bursting of a signal gun.
They saw with fright the even dusk of night
Roll to a shape, black on the starlit heaven,
And lo, a Lion of enormous might,
Shadowy, shaggy ! From his jaws of ravin
Issued the awful sound
That shook the ground.
And as they gazed, speechless with mortal terror,
It took new form like ocean's clouds at morn;
The lion changed ;— that surely was no error
Which saw a bull shaking his dreadful horn ?
But hardly of the new shape were they 'ware
When the brute's head of him so fiercely charging
Turned human ; a grave face with curling hair,
Its ordered locks on breast and back discharging,
Loomed through the dusky night.
And stayed their flight.
Then from the face, locked with a steadfast meaning
Upon their eyes, the shape took change and flow,
And lo, a giant on a war-club leaning,
Lifted on high, held the dark plain below.
Purple and golden on his stalwart shoulders
His garments lay, but spotted all and torn,
Like robe that long in royal cavern moulders;
And round his neck upon a chain was worn,
Like a strange cross to see,
An amber key.
But all that coat, by tooth of time corroded,
Was full of eyes and little crescent moons
And peaches over-ripeness has exploded —
Pomegranates cloven by a score of noons.
The war-club whereupon his left hand rested
Was scaly like a pinecone huge in size ;
Against those two his shadowy bulk he breasted
And with his right hand pointed toward the skies.
Then in a voice of dread
Croaking, he said :
"Barbarians! Once, with the sages of Chaldee,
I, Nimrod, watched upon a tower's back,
Marking the planets creep most cunningly
A pinnacle past, which sharply cut their track;
Methought this arm, that was all rigid grown
1861-88] CHARLES DK KAT. 433
With following slow their motions wise and stealthy,
Grew boundless large, reached upward to yon sown
Broad field, the sky, with red ripe star-fruits wealthy,
Plucked and consumed them still
At my fair will !
"'Twixt Kaf and Kaf, those hills that wall the world,
My body stretched, and from my heaving breast
The streams of breath, against the hard sky hurled,
Were turned to clouds that veered at my behest.
Anon the horizon with sharp white was lit
And by that glare the veil of things was riven;
The door to strange new lands was suddenly split,
As if I, earth, had caught a glimpse of heaven.
I saw how great that bliss,
How petty thisl
" That was the hour of evil fates descending;
From that strange night I was not merely man:
Where'er I marched crowds must be still attending
Me, the great midpoint of the earthly plan.
Euphrates was the life-blood of my heart ;
Tigris a vein that throbbed with ceaseless motion ;
In me the firs of Ararat had part
And I was earth, air, fife and boundless ocean !
Folly from that black day
Held me in sway.
"From Ur the town I marched with vainness blinded
And founded empires in the teeming plain;
Lured to revolt ten cities fickle-minded,
And dared the gods that could not save their slain.
I was their god. I was the lord of all, —
Each step a new town or a plundered palace.
I drowned a land with break of water wall;
Repeopled it. when kindness grew from malice.
Who reckoneth all my crimes?
He falls who climbs.
"Of Babylon I made the stateliest city
The earth has yet upon its surface known.
Nation I fenced from nation without pity
That all might wend toward Babylon alone.
Tribe might not trade with tribe, nor north with south,
But all must barter at my market centre;
Nor eastman speak with westman mouth to mouth
Unless they first within my limits enter.
Thus grew each tongue and art
Slowly apart.
But, spite of crimes, spite of my wealth and glory,
Of me what know ye, men of a puny age?
RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER. [1861-88
I am a rumor, an uncertain story,
A vanished smoke, a scarce-remembered page!
The angry peoples showed they could be kinder
To rny great fame than after- follow ing kings,
For hate still kept a little sour reminder
When every mark of me had taken wings.
Whate'er on brick I traced
My sons effaced.
" Yes, my own sons, for whom I bear these curses,
Melted my statues, overturned my grave,
Hammered from living rock the deep-hewn verses
That from oblivion my vast fame should save.
Thrice was this mass of brickwork, seamed with ravage,
All newly builded by succeeding kings :
What of the rage of desert-dwelling savage?
From sons a treachery far deeper stings !
Every one hundredth year
Some man must hear,
" Must hear how they betrayed me, yes, and ponder
O'er my great crimes, my splendor and my fall,
How messengers from some great godhead yonder
In vain approach, Nimrod from sin to call.
I know not who he is, foretold by many,
For on my mind weighs a thick cloud of doubt,
Like fogs across these barren plains and fenny,
So fertile once, they laughed at want and drought.
List, though you shrink with fear,
Tremble, but hear ! "
BORN iu Salem, Mass., 1848.
THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF COPYRIGHT.
[Copyright : Us Law and its Literature. 1886.]
/COPYRIGHT (from the Latin copia, plenty) means, in general, the right
\^-J to copy, to make plenty. In its specific application it means the right to
multiply copies of those products of the human brain known as literature
and art.
There is another legal sense of the word " copyright" much emphasized
by several English justices. Through the low Latin use of the word copia,
our word " copy " has a secondary and reversed meaning, as the pattern to
be copied or made plenty, in which sense the schoolboy copies from the
" copy " set in his copy-book, and the modern printer calls for the author's
1861-88] RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER. 435
"copy." Copyright, accordingly, may also mean the right in copy made
(whether the original work or a duplication of it), as well as the right to make
copies, which by no means goes with the work or any duplicate of it. Said
Lord St. Leonards : " When we are talking of the right of an author we must
distinguish between the mere right to his manuscript, and to any copy which
he may choose to make of it, as his property, just like any other personal
chattel, and the right to multiply copies to the exclusion of every other per-
son. Nothing can be more distinct than these two things. The common law
does give a man who has composed a work a right to it as composition, Just
as he has a right to any other part of his personal property ; but the question
of the right of excluding all the world from copying, and of himself claiming
the exclusive right of forever copying his own composition after he has pub-
lished it to the world, is a totally different thing." Baron Parks, in the same
case, pointed out expressly these two different legal senses of the word copy-
right, the right in copy, a right of possession, always fully protected by the
common law, and the right to copy, a right of multiplication, which alone
has been the subject of special statutory protection.
There is nothing which may more properly be called property than the
creation of the individual brain. For property means a man's very own, and
there is nothing more his own than the thought, created, made out of no ma-
terial thing (unless the nerve-food which the brain consumes in the act of
thinking be so counted), which uses material things only for its record or
manifestation. The best proof of own-ership is that, if this individual man
or woman had not thought this individual thought, realized in writing or in
music or in marble, it would not exist. Or if the individual, thinking it, had
put it aside without such record, it would not, in any practical sense, exist.
We cannot know what "might have beens" of untold value have been lost
to the world where thinkers, such as inventors, have had no inducement or
opportunity to so materialize their thoughts.
It is sometimes said, as a bar to this idea of property, that no thought is
new — that every thinker is dependent upon the gifts of nature and the
thoughts of other thinkers before him, as every tiller of the soil is dependent
upon the land as given by nature and improved by the men who have toiled
and tilled before him, a view of which Henry C. Carey has been the chief ex-
ponent in this country. But there is no real analogy — aside from the ques-
tion whether the denial of individual property in land would not be setting
back the hands of progress. If Farmer Jones does not raise potatoes from a
piece of land Farmer Smith can ; but Shakespeare cannot write " Paradise
Lost " nor Milton " Much Ado," though before both Dante dreamed and
Boccaccio told his tales. It was because of Milton and Shakespeare writing,
not because of Dante and Boccaccio who had written, that these immortal
works are treasures of the English tongue. It was the very self of each, in
propria persona, that gave these form and worth, though they used words
that had come down from generations as the common heritage of English-
speaking men. Property in a stream of water, as has been pointed out, is not
in the atoms of the water, but in the flow of the stream.
Property right in unpublished works has never been effectively questioned
486 RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER. [1861-88
— a fact which in itself confirms the view that intellectual property is a
natural inherent right. The author has " supreme control " over an unpub-
lished work, and his manuscript cannot be utilized by creditors as assets
without his consent. " If he lends & copy to another," says Baron Parks,
" his right is not gone ; if he sends it to another under an implied undertak-
ing that he is not to part with it or publish it he has a right to enforce that
undertaking." The receiver of a letter, to whom the paper containing the
writing has undoubtedly been given, has no right to publish or otherwise
use the letter without the writer's consent. The theory that by permitting
copies to be made an author dedicates his writing to the public, as an owner
of land dedicates a road to the public by permitting public use of it for twenty-
one years, overlooks the fact that in so doing the author only conveys to each
holder of his book the right to individual use, and not the right to multiply
copies, as though the landowner should not give but sell permission to indi-
viduals to pass over his road, without any permission to them to sell tickets
for the same privilege to other people. The owner of a right does not forfeit
a right by selling a privilege.
It is at the moment of publication that the undisputed possessory right
passes over into the much-disputed right to multiply copies, and that the vexed
question of the true theory of copyright property arises. The broad view of
literary property holds that the one kind of copyright is involved in the
other. The right to have is the right to use. An author cannot use — that is,
get beneficial results from his work, without offering copies for sale. He
would be otherwise like the owner of a loaf of bread who was told that the
bread was his until he wanted to eat it. That sale would seem to contain
" an implied undertaking " that the buyer has liberty to use his copy but not
to multiply it. Peculiarly in this kind of property the right of ownership
consists in the right to prevent use of one's property by others without the
owner's consent. The right of exclusion seems to be indeed a part of owner-
ship. In the case of land the owner is entitled to prevent trespass to the ex-
tent of a shot-gun, and in the same way the law recognizes the right to use
violence, even to the extreme, in preventing others from possession of one's
own property of any kind. The owner of a literary property has, however,
no physical means of defence or redress ; the very act of publication by which
he gets a market for his productions opens him to the danger of wider mul-
tiplication and publication without his consent. There is, therefore, no kind
of property which is so dependent on the help of the law for the protection of
the real owner.
The inherent right of authors is a right at what is called common law —
that is, natural or customary law. So far as concerns the undisputed rights
before publication, the copyright laws are auxiliary merely to common law.
Rights exist before remedies ; remedies are merely invented to enforce rights.
; The seeking for the law of the right of property in the law of procedure re-
lating to the remedies/' says Copinger, " is a mistake similar to supposing
that the mark on the ear of an animal is the cause, instead of the consequence,
of property therein." After the invention of printing it became evident that
new methods of procedure must be devised to enforce common-law rights.
1861-88] ELLA DIETZ CLTMER.
Copyright became therefore the subject of statute law, by the passage of laws
imposing penalties for a theft which, without such laws, could not be pun-
ished.
These laws, covering naturally enough only the country of the author, and
specifying a time during which the penalties could be enforced, and provid-
ing means of registration by which authors could register their property
rights, as the title to a house is registered when it is sold, had an unexpected
result. The statute of Anne, which is the foundation of present English
copyright law, intended to protect authors' rights by providing penalties
against their violation, had the effect of limiting those rights. It was doubt-
less the intention of those who framed the statute of Anne to establish, for
the benefit of authors, specific means of redress. Overlooking, apparently,
the fact that law and equity, as their principles were then established, en-
abled authors to use the same means of redress, so far as they held good, which
persons suffering wrongs as to other property had, the law was so drawn that
in 1774 the English House of Lords (against, however, the weight of one half
of English judicial opinion) decided that, instead of giving additional sanc-
tion to a formerly existing right, the statute of Anne had substituted a new
and lesser right to the exclusion of what the majority of English judges held
to have been an old and greater right. Literary and like property to this ex-
tent lost the character of copyright, and became the subject of copy-privilege,
depending on legal enactment for the security of the private owner. Ameri-
can courts, wont to follow English precedent, have rather taken for granted
this view of the law of literary property, and our Constitution, in authoriz-
ing Congress to secure "for limited terms to authors and inventors the ex-
clusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," was evidently
drawn from the same point of view, though it does not in itself deny or with-
draw the natural rights of the author at common law.
?&fet? Ctymer,
BORN in New York, N. Y.
SONG.
[The Triumph of Love. 1878.— The Triumph of Time. 1884.]
O TOUCH me not, unless thy soul Within thy sight ; express
Can claim my soul as thine; Only the truth, though it should be
Give me no earthly flowers that fade, Cold as the ice on northern sea.
No love, but love divine :
For I gave thee immortal flowers, ° never 8Peak of love to me>
That bloomed serene in heavenly bowers. LTnless thJ heart can feel
That in the face of Deity
Look not with favor on my face, Thou wouldst that love reveal:
Nor answer my caress, For God is love, and His bright law
Unless my soul have first found grace Should find our hearts without one flaw.
488
ELLA DIETZ CLTMER.
[1861-88
WHEN I AM DEAD.
WHEN I am dead what man will say
She used to smile in such a way,
Her eyes were dark and strangely bright
As are the solemn stars of night ?
What man will say her voice's tone
Was like the far-off winds that moan
Through forest trees ? O voice and eyes
That brought me dreams of Paradise !
I think no man, when I am dead,
Will say these things that thou hast said
Unto my living human face,
And all the bloom and all the grace
Will then be buried out of sight,
Thought of no more, forgotten quite,
As are the flowers of other springs,
Upon whose grave the wild bird sings.
O flowers and songs of other days!
What sweet new voice will sing your
praise ?
What choir will celebrate the spring
When love and I went wandering
Between the glades, beneath the trees,
Or by the calm blue summer seas,
And thought no thing beneath the skies
So lovely as each other's eyes ?
When we are dead, when both are gone,
Buried in separate graves alone,
Perchance the restless salt sea wave
Will sing its dirge above my grave,
While you, on some far foreign shore,
May hear the distant ocean roar,
And long at last your arms to twine
About this cold dead form of mine.
When we are dead, when both are cold,
When love is as a tale that's told,
Will not our lips so still and mute
Still long for love's untasted fruit ?
Though lands and seas hold us apart
Will not my dead heart reach thy heart,
And call to thee from farthest space
Until we both stand face to face ?
When we are dead, yea, God doth know
When that shall be, if it were so
This moment now, if thou and I
Lay dead together 'neath this sky,
Could any future to us bring
So sad and desolate a thing
As this sad life ? nay, can there be
Such sorrow in eternity ?
O long sad days! we need in truth
Some recompense for our lost youth:
By woes forlorn, and sins forborne,
By joys renounced or from us torn,
By thorns that bore no single rose,
By loving hands that, dealt us blows;
We pray that when this life shall cease
We then may know eternal peace.
When we are dead, when sea and air
Have claimed the forms that once were
fair,
Will joys of Heaven compensate
For two lone hearts left desolate
On earth so long ? Will all these years
Of anxious love and burning tears
Be as the water turned to wine,
The best of all that feast divine ?
BORN in Bedford Springs, Penn., 1849.
THE NEGRO SOLDIERS AT PORT HUDSON.
[History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1880. By George W. Williams,
first Colored Member of the Ohio Legislature, etc. 1883.]
TT was a question of grave doubt among white troops as to the fighting
L qualities of negro soldiers. There were various doubts expressed by the
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS. 489
officers on both sides o%f the line. The Confederates greeted the news that
"niggers " were to meet them in battle with derision, and treated the whole
matter as a huge joke. The Federal soldiers were filled with amazement and
fear as to the issue.
It was the determination of the commanding officer at Port Hudson to
assign this negro regiment to a post of honor and danger. The regiment
marched all night before the battle of Port Hudson, and arrived at one Dr.
Chambers's sugar-house on the 27th of May, 1863. It was just 5 A.M. when
the regiment stacked arms. Orders were given to rest and breakfast in one
hour. The heat was intense and the dust thick, and so thoroughly fatigued
were the men that many sank in their tracks and slept soundly.
Arrangements were made for a field -hospital, and the drum-corps instruc-
ted where to carry the wounded. Officers' call was beaten at 5.30, when they
received instructions and encouragement. "Fall in" was sounded at 6
o'clock, and soon thereafter the regiment was on the march. The sun was
now shining in his full strength upon the field where a great battle was to be
fought. The enemy was in his stronghold, and his forts were crowned with
angry and destructive guns. The hour to charge had come. It was 7 o'clock.
There was a feeling of anxiety among the white troops as they watched the
movements of these blacks in blue. The latter were anxious for the fray.
At last the command came, " Forward, double-quick, march ! " and on they
went over the field of death. Not a musket was heard until the command
was within four hundred yards of the enemy's works, when a blistering fire
was opened upon the left wing of the regiment. Unfortunately Companies
A, B, C, D, and E wheeled suddenly by the left flank. Some confusion fol-
lowed, but was soon over. A shell — the first that fell on the line — killed and
wounded about twelve men. The regiment came to a right about, and fell
back for a few hundred yards, wheeled by companies, and faced the enemy
again with the coolness and military precision of an old regiment on parade.
The enemy was busy at work now. Grape, canister, shell, and musketry
made the air hideous with their noise. A masked battery commanded a bluff,
and the guns could be depressed sufficiently to sweep the entire field over
which the regiment must charge. It must be remembered that this regiment
occupied the extreme right of the charging line. The masked battery worked
upon the left wing. A three-gun battery was situated in the centre, while a
half dozen large pieces shelled the right, and enfiladed the regiment front and
rear every time it charged the battery on the bluff. A bayou ran under the
bluff, immediately in front of the guns. It was too deep to be forded by men.
These brave colored soldiers made six desperate charges with indifferent suc-
cess, because
" Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them.
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell."
The men behaved splendidly. As their ranks were thinned by shot and
grape, they closed up into place and kept a good line. But no matter what
,QQ GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS. [1861-88
high soldierly qualities these men were endowed with, no matter how faith-
fully they oheyed the oft-repeated order to " charge," it was both a moral and
physical impossibility for these men to cross the deep bayou that flowed at
their feet — already crimson with patriots' blood — and capture the battery on
the bluff. Colonel Nelson, who commanded this black brigade, despatched
an orderly to General Dwight, informing him that it was not in the nature of
things for his men to accomplish anything by further charges. " Tell Colo-
nel Nelson, " said General D wight, "I shall consider that he has accomplished
nothing unless he takes those guns." This last order of General D wight's
will go into history as a cruel and unnecessary act. He must have known
that three regiments of infantry, torn and shattered by about fifteen or twenty
heavy guns, with an impassable bayou encircling the bluff, could accomplish
nothing by charging. But the men, what could they do ?
" Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die."
Again the order to charge was given, and the men, worked up to a feeling
of desperation on account of repeated failures, raised a cry and made another
charge. The ground was covered with dead and wounded. Trees were felled
by shell and solid shot ; and at one time a company was covered with the
branches of a falling tree. Captain Callioux was in command of Company E,
the color company. He was first wounded in the left arm, the limb being
broken above the elbow. He ran to the front of his company, waving his
sword and crying "Follow me." But when within about fifty yards of the
enemy he was struck by a shell, and fell dead in front of his company.
Many Greeks fell defending the pass at Thermopylae against the Persian
army, but history has made peculiarly conspicuous Leonidas and his four
hundred Spartans. In a not distant future, when a calm and truthful history
of the battle of Port Hudson is written, notwithstanding many men fought
and died there, the heroism of the " Black Captain," the accomplished gen-
tleman and fearless soldier, Andre Callioux, and his faithful followers, will
make a most fascinating picture for future generations to look upon and study.
" Colonel, I will bring back these colors to you in honor, or report to God
the reason why." It was now past 11 A.M., May 27, 1863. The men were
struggling in front of the bluff. The brave Callioux was lying lifeless upon
the field that was now slippery with gore and crimson with blood. The ene-
my was directing his shell and shot at the flags of the First Eegiment. A
shell, about a six-pounder, struck the flag-staff, cut it in two, and carried
away part of the head of Planciancois. He fell, and the flag covered him as
a canopy of glory, and drank of the crimson tide that flowed from his muti-
lated head. Corporal Heath caught up the flag, but no sooner had he shoul-
dered the dear old banner than a musket-ball went crashing through his head
and scattered his brains upon the flag, and he, still clinging to it, fell dead
upon the body of Sergeant Planciancois. Another corporal caught up the
banner and bore it through the fight with pride.
This was the last charge, the seventh ; and what was left of this gallant
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS. 49 J
black brigade came back from the hell into which they had plunged with so
much daring and forgetfulness seven times.
They did not capture the battery on the bluff, it's true, but they convinced
the white soldiers on both sides that they were both willing and able to help
fight the battles of the Union. And if any person doubts the abilities of the
negro as a soldier, let him talk with General Banks, as we have, and hear
" his golden eloquence on the black brigade at Port Hudson."
EDUCATING THE NEGRO.
[From the Same.]
THE work of education for the negro at the South had to begin at the
bottom. There were no schools at all for this people ; and hence the
work began with the alphabet. And there could be no classification of the
scholars. All the way from six to sixty the pupils ranged in age ; and even
some who had given slavery a century of their existence — mothers and fathers
in Israel — crowded the schools established for their race. Some ministers of
the Gospel after a half century of preaching entered school to learn how to
spell out the names of the twelve Apostles. Old women who had lived out
their threescore years and ten prayed that they might live to spell out the
Lord's prayer, while the modest request of many departing patriarchs was
that they might recognize the Lord's name in print. The sacrifices they
made for themselves and children challenged the admiration of even their
former owners.
The unlettered negroes of the South carried into the school-room an in-
born love of music, an excellent memory, and a good taste for the elegant —
almost grandiloquent — in speech, gorgeous in imagery, and energetic in nar-
ration ; their apostrophe and simile were wonderful. Geography and history
furnished great attractions, and they developed ability to master them. In
mathematics they did not do so well, on account of the lack of training to
think consecutively and methodically. It is a mistake to believe this a men-
tal infirmity of the race ; for a very large number of the students in college at
the present time do as well in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, mensu-
ration, and conic sections as the white students of the same age ; and some of
them excel in mathematics.
The majority of the colored students in the Southern schools qualify them-
selves to teach and preach, while the remainder go to law and medicine. Few
educated colored men ever return to agricultural life. There are two reasons
for this : First, reaction. There is an erroneous idea among some of these
young men that labor is dishonorable ; that an educated man should never
work with his hands. Second, some of them believe that a profession gives a
man consequence. Such silly ideas should be abandoned — they must be aban-
doned ! There is a great demand for educated farmers and laborers. It re-
quires an intelligent man to conduct a farm successfully, to sell the products
EMMA LAZARUS. [1861-88
of his labor, and to buy the necessaries of life. No profession can furnish a
man with brains, or provide him a garment of respectability. Every man
must furnish brains and tact to make his calling and election sure in this
world, as well as by faith in the world to come. Unfortunately there has been
but little opportunity for colored men or boys to get employment at the
trades ; but prejudice is gradually giving way to reason and common sense ;
and the day is not distant when the negro will have a free field in this coun-
try, and will then be responsible for what he is not that is good. The need of
the hour is a varied employment for the negro race on this continent. There
is more need of educated mechanics, civil engineers, surveyors, printers, arti-
ficers, inventors, architects, builders, merchants, and bankers than there is
demand for lawyers, physicians, or clergymen. Waiters, barbers, porters,
boot-blacks, hack-drivers, grooms, and private valets find but little time for
the expansion of their intellects. These places are not dishonorable ; but
what we say is, there is room at the top ! An industrial school, something
like Cooper Institute, situated between New York and Philadelphia, where
colored boys and girls could learn the trades that race prejudice denies them
now, would be the grandest institution of modern times. It matters not how
many million dollars are given toward the education of the negro; so long as
he is deprived of the privilege of learning and plying the trades and mechanic
arts his education will injure rather than help him. We would rather see a
negro boy build an engine than take the highest prize in Yale or Harvard.
(Emma
BORN in New York, N. Y,, 1849. DIED there, 1887.
VENUS OF THE LOUVRE.
•
[Poems, Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic. Collective Edition. 1888.]
T^vOWN the long hall she glistens like a star,
-*-^ The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone,
Yet none the less immortal, breathing on.
Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar.
When first the enthralled enchantress from afar
Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone,
Serenely poised on her world-worshipped throne,
As when she guided once her dove-drawn car, —
But at her feet a pale, death-stricken Jew,
Her life adorer, sobbed farewell to love.
Here Heine wept! Here still he weeps anew,
Nor ever shall his shadow lift or move,
While mourns one ardent heart, one poet-brain,
For vanished Hellas and Hebraic pain.
1861-88J
EMMA LAZARUS.
493
THE CRANES OP IBYCDS.
rriHERE was a man who watched the river flow
J- Past the huge town, one gray November day.
Round him in narrow high-piled streets at play
The boys made merry as they saw him go,
Murmuring half-loud, with eyes upon the stream,
The immortal screed he held within his hand.
For he was walking in an April land
With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream
Was the prose-world, the river and the town.
Wild joy possessed him ; through enchanted skies
He saw the cranes of Ibycus swoop down.
He closed the page, he lifted up his eyes,
Lo — a black line of birds in wavering thread
Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!
THE CROWING OF THE RED COCK.
A CROSS the Eastern sky has glowed
-^- The nicker of a blood-red dawn,
Once more the clarion cock has crowed,
Once more the sword of Christ is
drawn.
A million burning rooftrees light
The world-wide path of Israel's flight.
Where is the Hebrew's fatherland ?
The folk of Christ is sore bestead ;
The Son of Man is bruised and banned.
Nor finds whereon to lay his head.
His cup is gall, his meat is tears,
His passion lasts a thousand years.
Each crime that wakes in man the beast,
Is visited upon his kind.
The lust of mobs, the greed of priest,
The tyranny of kings, combined
To root his seed from earth again,
His record is one cry of pain.
When the long roll of Christian guilt
Against his sires and kin is known,
The flood of tears, the life-blood spilt,
The agony of ages shown,
What oceans can the stain remove,
From Christian law and Christian love ?
Nay, close the book ; not now, not here,
The hideous tale of sin narrate,
Re6choing in the martyr's ear,
Even he might nurse revengeful hate,
Even he might turn in wrath sublime,
With blood for blood and crime for
crime.
Coward ? Not he, who faces death,
Who singly against worlds has fought,
For what ? A name he may not breathe,
For liberty of prayer and thought.
The angry sword he will not whet,
His nobler task is — to forget.
4Q4 EMMA LAZARUS. [1861-88
THE DANCE TO DEATH.
[The Dance to Death. A Historical Tragedy.— Songs of a Semite. 1882.]
PLACE : Nordhausen, Saxony. TIME : May, A. D. 1349.
ACT V. SCENE III.— Within the Synagogue. Above in the gallery, women sumptuously
attired; some with children by the hand or infants in their arms. Below, the men and
boys with silken scarfs about their shoulders.
RABBI JACOB. The Lord is nigh unto the broken heart.
Out of the depths we cry to thee, O God!
Show us the path of everlasting life ;
For in thy presence is the plenitude
Of joy, and in thy right hand endless bliss.
[Enter SUSSKIND, REUBEN, etc.}
SEVERAL VOICES. Woe unto us who perish !
A JEW. Siisskind von Orb,
Thou hast brought down this doom. Would we had heard
The prophet's voice !
SUSSKIND. Brethren, my cup is full!
Oh let us die as warriors of the Lord.
The Lord is great in Ziou. Let our death
Bring no reproach to Jacob, no rebuke
To Israel. Hark ye! let us crave one boon
At our assassins' hands; beseech them build
Within God's acre, where our fathers sleep,
A dancing-floor to hide the fagots stacked.
Then let the minstrels strike the harp and lute,
And we will dance and sing above the pile,
Fearless of death, until the flames engulf,
Even as David danced before the Lord,
As Miriam danced and sang beside the sea.
Great is our Lord ! His name is glorious
In Judah, and extolled in Israel!
In Salem is his tent, his dwelling-place
In Zion ; let us chant the praise of God !
A JEW. Susskind, thou speakest well! We will meet death
With dance and song. Embrace him as a bride.
So that the Lord receive us in His tent.
SEVERAL VOICES. Amen ! amen ! amen ! we dance to death !
RABBI JACOB. Susskind, go forth and beg this grace of them,
[Exit SUSSKIND.]
Punish us not in wrath, chastise us not
In anger, oh our God ! Our sins o'erwhelm
Our smitten heads, they are a grievous load ;
We look on our iniquities, we tremble,
Knowing our trespasses. Forsake us not.
Be thou not far from us. Haste to our aid,
Oil God, who art our Saviour and our Rock!
[ReSnter SUSSKIND.]
SUSSKIND. Brethren, our prayer, being the last, is granted.
1861-88] EMMA LAZARUS. 495
The hour approaches. Let our thoughts ascend
From mortal anguish to the ecstasy
Of martyrdom, the blessed death of those
Who perish in the Lord. I see, I see
How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes
These flames that would eclipse it dark as blots
Of candle-light against the blazing sun.
We die a thousand deaths, drown, bleed, and burn;
Our ashes are dispersed uuto the winds.
Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed,
The waters guard it in their crystal heart,
The fire refuseth to consume. It springs,
A tree immortal, shadowing many lands,
Unvisited, unnamed, undreamed as yet.
Rather a vine, full-flowered, golden-branched,
Ambrosial-fruited, creeping on the earth,
Trod by the passer's foot, yet chosen to deck
Tables of princes. Israel now has fallen
Into the depths, he shall be great in time.
Even as we die in honor, from our death
Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives,
Brave through our bright example, virtuous
Lest our great memory fall in disrepute.
Is one among us brothers, would exchange
His doom against our tyrants, — lot for lot ?
Let him go forth and live — he is no Jew.
Is one who would not die in Israel
Rather than live in Christ,— their Christ who smiles
On such a deed as this ? Let him go forth —
He may die full of years upon his bed.
Ye who nurse rancor haply in your hearts,
Fear ye we perish unavenged ? Not so !
To-day, no! nor to-morrow! but in God's time,
Our witnesses arise. Ours is the truth,
Ours is the power, the gift of Heaven. We hold
His Law, His lamp, His covenant, His pledge.
Wherever in the ages shall arise
Jew-priest, Jew-poet, Jew-singer, or Jew-saint —
And everywhere I see them star the gloom —
In each of these the martyrs are avenged !
RABBI JACOB. Bring from the Ark the bell-fringed, silken-bound
Scrolls of the Law. Gather the silver vessels,
Dismantle the rich curtains of the doors,
Bring the Perpetual Lamp; all these shall burn,
For Israel's light is darkened, Israel's Law
Profaned by strangers. Thus the Lord hath said:
" The weapon formed against thee shall not prosper,
The tongue that shall contend with thee in judgment,
Thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage
Of the Lord's servants and their righteousness.
For thou shalt come to peoples yet unborn,
Declaring that which He hath done. Amen!"
4g g EMMA LAZARUS. [1861-88
[The doors of the synagogue are burst open with tumultuous noise. Citizens and officers
rush in.]
CITIZENS. Come forth ! the sun sets. Coine, the Council waits!
What ! will ye teach your betters patience ? Out !
The Governor is ready. Forth with you,
Curs! serpents! Jiulases! The bonfire burns ! [Exeunt.]
SCENE IV.— A Public Place. Crowds of Citizens assembled. Oti a platform are seated
DIETRICH vox TETTENBORN and HENRY SCHHETZEN ivith other Members of the Council.
1ST CITIZEN. Here's such a throng! Neighbor, your elbow makes
An ill prod for my ribs.
2D CITIZEN. I am pushed and squeezed.
My limbs are not mine own.
3D CITIZEN. Look this way, wife.
They will come hence, — a pack of just-whipped curs.
I warrant you the stiff-necked brutes repent
To-day if ne'er before.
WIFE. I am all a-quiver.
I have seen monstrous sights, — an uncaged wolf,
The corpse of one sucked by a vampyre,
The widow Kupfen's malformed child — but never
Until this hour, a Jew.
3o CITIZEN. D'ye call me Jew ?
Where do you spy one now ?
WIFE. You'll have your jest
Now or anon, what matters it ?
4TH CITIZEN. Well, I
Have seen a Jew, and seen one burn at that ;
Hard by in Wartburg; he had killed a child.
Zounds! how the serpent wriggled! I smell now
The roasting, stinking flesh !
BOY. Father, be these
The folk who murdered Jesus ?
4TH CITIZEN. Ay, my boy.
Remember that, and when you hear them come,
I'll lift you on my shoulders. You can fling
Your pebbles with the rest.
[Trumpets sound.]
CITIZENS. The Jews! the Jews!
BOY. Quick, father! lift me! I see nothing here
But hose and skirts.
[Music of a march approaching.]
CITIZENS. What mummery is this ?
The sorcerers brew new mischief.
ANOTHER CITIZEN. Why, they come
Pranked for a holiday; not veiled for death.
ANOTHER CITIZEN. Insolent braggarts! They defy the Christ!
[Enter, in procession to music, the Jews. First. RABBI JACOB ; after him, sick people,
carried on litters; then old men and women, followed promiscuously by men, women,
and children of all ages. Some of the men carry gold and silver vessels, some the Rolls
of the Law. One bears the Perpetual Lamp, another the Seven-branched silver Can-
1861-88] EMMA LAZARUS. 497
dlestick of the Synagogue. The mothers have their children by the hand or in their
arms. All richly attired.}
CITIZENS. The raisers ! they will take their gems and gold
Down to the grave !
CITIZEN'S WIFE. So these be Jews ! Christ save us !
To think the devils look like human folk !
CITIZENS. Cursed be the poison-mixers ! Let them burn!
CITIZENS. Burn! burn!
[Enter SUSSKIND vox ORB, LIEBHAID, REUBEN, and CLAIRE.]
SCHNETZEN. Good God ! what maid is that ?
TETTENBORN. Liebhaid von Orb.
SCHNETZEN. The devil's trick !
He has bewitched mine eyes.
SUSSKIND [as he passes the platform]. Woe to the father
Who murders his own child !
SCHNETZEN. I am avenged,
Svisskind von Orb ! Blood for blood, fire for fire,
And death for death !
[Exeunt SUSSKIND, LIEBHAID, etc.]
[Enter Jewish youths and maidens.]
YOUTHS [in chorus]. Let us rejoice, for it is promised us
That we shall enter in God's tabernacle !
MAIDENS. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Zion,
Within thy portals, O Jerusalem ! [Exeunt.']
CITIZEN'S WIFE. I can see naught from here. Let's follow, Hans.
CITIZEN. Be satisfied. There is no inch of space
For foot to rest on yonder. Look! look there!
How the flames rise !
BOY. O father, I can see !
They all are dancing in the crimson blaze.
Look how their garments wave, their jewels shine,
When the smoke parts a bit. The tall flames dart.
Is not the fire real fire ? They fear it not.
VOICES WITHOUT. Arise, oh house of Jacob. Let us walk
Within the light of the Almighty Lord!
[Enter in furious haste PRINCE WILLIAM and NORDMANN.]
PRINCE WILLIAM. Respite! You kill your daughter, Henry
Schnetzen !
NORDMANN. Liebhaid von Orb is your own flesh and blood.
SCHNETZEN. Spectre ! do dead men rise ?
NORDMANN. Yea, for revenge !
I swear, Lord Schnetzen, by my knightly honor,
She who is dancing yonder to her death,
Is thy wife's child!
[SCHNETZEN and PRINCE WILLIAM make a rush forward towards the flames. Music
ceases ; a sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry — Hallelujah /]
PRINCE WILLIAM and SCHNETZEN. Too late ! too late !
CITIZENS. All's done!
PRINCE WILLIAM. The fire ! the fire ! Liebhaid, I come to thee.
[He is about to spring forward, but is held back by guards.]
VOL. x.— 32
498
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
[1861-88
SCHNETZEN. Oh cruel Christ ! Is there no bolt in heaven
For the child-murderer ? Kill me, my friends ! my breast
Is bare to all your swords.
[He tears open his jerkin, and falls unconscious. ]
[Curtain falls.]
THE BANNER OF THE JEW.
•YTTAKE, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
V V The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
His five-fold lion- lineage:
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.
From Mizpeh's mountain-ridge they saw
Jerusalem's empty streets, her shrine
Laid waste where Greeks profaned the
Law,
With idol and with pagan sign.
Mourners in tattered black were there,
With ashes sprinkled on their hair.
Then from the stony peak there rang
A blast to ope the graves : down poured
The Maccabean clan, who sang
Their battle-anthem to the Lord.
Five heroes lead, and following, see,
Ten thousand rush to victory !
Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleepers high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance — but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.
Oh deem not dead that martial fire,
Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses' law and David's lyre,
Your ancient strength remains uubent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the Banner of the Jew!
A rag, a mock at first — erelong,
When men have bled and women wept,
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
Even they who shrunk, even they who
slept,
Shall leap to bless it, and to save.
Strike ! for the brave revere the brave 1
francos ^oftgittm Burnett,
BORN in Manchester, England, 1849.
MR. ROGERS'S "ONJESTICE."
[Louisiana. 1880.]
TpERROL was obliged to admit when they turned their faces homeward
that the day was hardly a success, after all. Olivia had not been at her
best, for some reason or other, and from the moment they had taken the right-
hand road Louisiana had been wholly incomprehensible.
In her quietest mood she had never worn a cold air before ; to-day she had
been cold and unresponsive. It had struck him that she was absorbed in
thinking of something which was quite beyond him. She was plainly not
thinking of him, nor of Olivia, nor of the journey they were making. During
1861-88] FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 499
the drive she had sat with her hands folded upon her lap, her eyes fixed
straight before her. She had paid no attention to the scenery, only rousing
herself to call their attention to one object. This object was a house they
passed — the rambling, low-roofed white house of some well-to-do farmer. It
was set upon a small hill and had a long front porch, mottled with blue and
white paint in a sanguine attempt at imitating variegated marble.
She burst into a low laugh when she saw it.
" Look at that," she said. " That is one of the finest houses in the coun-
try. The man who owns it is counted a rich man among his neighbors."
Ferrol put up his eye-glasses to examine it. (It is to be deplored that he
was a trifle near-sighted.)
" By George ! " he said. " That is an idea, isn't it, that marble business !
I wonder who did it ? Do you know the man who lives there ? "
"I have heard of him," she answered, " from several people. He is a name-
sake of mine. His name is Rogers."
When they returned to their carriage, after a ramble up the mountain-side,
they became conscious that the sky had suddenly darkened. Ferrol looked
up, and his face assumed a rather serious expression.
"If either of you is weather-wise," he said, "I wish you would tell me
what that cloud means. You have been among the mountains longer than I
have."
Louisiana glanced upward quickly.
"It means a storm," she said, "and a heavy one. "We shall be drenched
in half an hour."
Ferrol looked at her white dress and the little frilled fichu, which was her
sole protection.
" Oh, but that won't do !" he exclaimed. " What insanity in me not to
think of umbrellas ! "
"Umbrellas!" echoed Louisiana. "If we had each six umbrellas they
could not save us. We may as well get into the carriage. We are only losing
time."
They were just getting in when an idea struck Ferrol which caused him to
utter an exclamation of ecstatic relief.
" Why," he cried, " there is that house we passed ! Get in quickly. We
can reach there in twenty minutes."
Louisiana had her foot upon the step. She stopped short and turned to
face him. She changed from red to white and from white to red again, as if
with actual terror.
" There ! " she exclaimed. " There ! "
" Yes," he answered. " We can reach there in time to save ourselves. Is
there any objection to our going — in the last extremity ? "
For a second they looked into each other's eyes, and then she turned and
sprang into the carriage. She laughed aloud.
" Oh, no," she said. " Go there ! It will be a nice place to stay — and the
people will amuse you. Go there. "
They reached the house in a quarter of an hour instead of twenty minutes.
They had driven fast and kept ahead of the storm, but when they drew up
500 FRANCES HO DO SON BURNETT. [1861-88
before the picket fence the clouds were black and the thunder was rolling be-
hind them.
It was Louisiana who got out first. She led the way up the path to the
house and mounted the steps of the variegated porch. She did not knock at
the door, which stood open, but, somewhat to Ferrol's amazement, walked
at once into the front room, which was plainly the room of state. Not to put
too fine a point upon it, it was a hideous room.
The ceiling was so low that Ferrol felt as if he must knock his head against
it ; it was papered — ceiling and all — with paper of an unwholesome yellow
enlivened with large blue flowers ; there was a bedstead in one corner, and
the walls were ornamented with colored lithographs of moon-faced houris,
with round eyes and round, red cheeks, and wearing low-necked dresses, and
flowers in their bosoms, and bright yellow gold necklaces. These works of
art were the first things which caught Ferrol's eye, and he went slowly up to
the most remarkable, and stood before it, regarding it with mingled wonder-
ment and awe.
He turned from it after a few seconds to look at Louisiana, who stood near
him, and he beheld what seemed to him a phenomenon. He had never seen
her blush before as other women blush ; now she was blushing, burning red
from chin to brow.
" There — there is no one in this part of the house," she said. " I — I know
more of these people than you do. I will go and try to find some one."
She was gone before he could interpose. Not that he would have inter-
posed, perhaps. Somehow, without knowing why, he felt as if she did know
more of the situation than he did — almost as if she were, in a manner, doing
the honors for the time being.
She crossed the passage with a quick, uneven step, and made her way, as
if well used to the place, into the kitchen at the back of the house.
A stout negro woman stood at a table, filling a pan with newly made bis-
cuits. Her back was toward the door and she did not see who entered,
" Aunt Cassandry," the girl began, when the woman turned toward her.
" Who's dar ?" she exclaimed. " Lor', honey, how ye skeert me ! I ain't
no C'sandry."
The face she turned was a strange one, and it showed no sign of recogni-
tion of her visitor.
It was an odd thing that the sight of her unfamiliar face should have been
a shock to Louisiana ; but it was a shock. She put her hand to her side.
" Where is my — where is Mr. Eogers ? " she asked. " I want to see him."
" Out on de back po'ch, honey, right now. Dar he goes ! "
The girl heard him, and flew out to meet him. Her heart was throbbing
hard, and she was drawing quick, short breaths.
" Father !" she cried. "Father! Don't go in the house !"
And she caught him by both shoulders and drew him round. He did not
know her at first in her fanciful-simple dress and her Gainsborough hat. He
was not used to that style of thing, believing that it belonged rather to the
world of pictures. He stared at her. Then he broke out with an exclama-
tion,
1861-88] FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 501
" Lo-rd ! Louisianny ! "
She kept her eyes on his face. They were feverishly bright, and her cheeks
were hot. She laughed hysterically.
"Don't speak loud," she said. "There are some strange people in the
house, and — and I want to tell you something."
He was a slow man, and it took him some time to grasp the fact that she
was really before him in the flesh. He said, again :
" Lord, Louisianny ! " adding, cheerfully, " How ye've serprised me ! "
Then he took in afresh the change in her dress. There was a pile of stove-
wood stacked on the porch to be ready for use, and he sat down on it to look
at her.
" Why, ye've got a new dress on ! " he said. " Thet thar's what made ye
look sorter curis. I hardly knowed ye."
Then he remembered what she had said on first seeing him.
" Why don't ye want me to go in the house ? " he asked. " What sort o'
folks air they?"
" They came with me from the Springs," she answered ; " and— and I
want to — to play a joke on them."
She put her hands up to her burning cheeks, and stood so.
" A joke on 'em ? " he repeated.
"Yes," she said, speaking very fast. " They don't know I live here, they
think I came from some city, — they took the notion themselves, — and I want
to let them think so until we go away from the house. It will be such a good
joke."
She tried to laugh, but broke off in the middle of a harsh sound. Her fa-
ther, with one copperas-colored leg crossed over the other, was chewing his
tobacco slowly, after the manner of a ruminating animal, while he watched
her.
" Don't you see ? " she asked.
" Wa-al, no," he answered. " Not rightly."
She actually assumed a kind of spectral gayety.
"I never thought of it until I saw it was not Cassandry who was in the
kitchen," she said. " The woman who is there didn't know me, and it came
into my mind that — that we might play off on them," using the phraseology
to which he was the most accustomed.
"Waal, we mought," he admitted, with a speculative deliberateness.
" Thet's so. We mought — if thar was any use in it."
" It's only fora joke," she persisted, hurriedly.
" Thet's so," he repeated. " Thet's so."
He got up slowly and rather lumberingly from his seat and dusted the chips
from his copperas-colored legs.
" Hev ye ben enjyin' yerself, Louisianny ? " he asked.
" Yes," she answered. " Never better."
" Ye must hev," he returned, " or ye wouldn't be in sperrits to play jokes."
Then he changed his tone so suddenly that she was startled.
"What do ye want me to do ? " he asked.
She put her hand on his shoulder and tried to laugh again.
5Q2 FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [1861-88
" To pretend you don't know me — to pretend I have never been here be-
fore. That's joke enough, isn't it ? They will think so when I tell them the
truth. You slow old father ! Why don't you laugh ? "
" P'r'aps," he said, " it's on account o' me beiu' slow, Louisianny. Mebbe
I shall begin arter a while/'
"Don't begin at the wrong time," she said, still keeping up her feverish
laugh, " or you'll spoil it all. Now come along in and — and pretend you
don't know me," she continued, drawing him forward by the arm. " They
might suspect something if we stay so long. All you've got to do is to pre-
tend you don't know me. "
"Thet's so, Louisianny," with a kindly glance downward at her excited
face as he followed her out. " Thar ain't no call fur me to do nothin' else, is
there — just pretend I don't know ye ?"
It was wonderful how well he did it, too. When she preceded him into
the room the girl was quivering with excitement. He might break down, and
it would be all over in a second. But she looked Ferrol boldly in the face
when she made her first speech.
" This is the gentleman of the house," she said. " I found him on the back
porch. He had just come in. He has been kind enough to say we may stay
until the storm is over. "
" Oh, yes," said he hospitably, " stay an' welcome. Ye ain't the first as has
stopped over. Storms come up sorter suddent, an' we hain't the kind as turns
folks away."
Ferrol thanked him, Olivia joining in with a murmur of gratitude. They
were very much indebted to him for his hospitality ; they considered them-
selves very fortunate.
Their host received their protestations with much equanimity.
" If ye'd like to set out on the front porch and watch the storm come up,"
he said, " thar's seats thar. Or would ye drutber set here ? Wimmin-folks is
gin'rally fond o' settin' in-doors whar thar's a parlor."
But they preferred the porch, and followed him out upon it.
Having seen them seated, he took a chair himself. It was a split-seated
chair, painted green, and he tilted it back against a pillar of the porch and
applied himself to the full enjoyment of a position more remarkable for ease
than elegance. Ferrol regarded him with stealthy rapture, and drank in
every word he uttered.
" This," he had exclaimed delightedly to Olivia, in private — "why, this is
delightful ! These are the people we have read of. I scarcely beneved in them
before. I would not have missed it for the world ! "
"In gin'ral, now," their entertainer proceeded, " wimmin-folk is fonder
o' settin' in parlors. My wife was powerful sot on her parlor. She wasn't
never satisfied till she bed one an' bed it fixed up to her notion. She was all-
ers tradin' fur picters fur it. She tuk a heap o' pride in her picters. She allers
had it in her mind that her little gal should have a showy parlor when she
growed up."
"You have a daughter ? " said Ferrol.
Their host hitched his chair a little to one side. He bent forward to ex-
18(51-88] FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 593
pectorate, and then answered with his eyes fixed upon some distant point to-
ward the mountains.
" Wa-al, yes," he said ; "but she ain't yere, Louisianny ain't. "
Miss Ferrol gave a little start, and immediately made an effort to appear
entirely at ease.
" Did you say," asked Ferrol, " that your daughter's name was "
" Louisianny," promptly. " I come from thar. "
Louisiana got up and walked to the opposite end of the porch.
" The storm will be upon us in a few minutes," she said. " It is beginning
to rain now. Come and look at this cloud driving over the mountain-top."
Ferrol rose and went to her. He stood for a moment looking at the cloud,
but plainly not thinking of it.
" His daughter's name is Louisiana,''' he said, in an undertone. " Louisi-
ana ! Isn't that delicious ? "
Suddenly, even as he spoke, a new idea occurred to him.
" Why," he exclaimed, "your name is Louise, isn't it ? I think Olivia
said so."
" Yes," she answered, " my name is Louise."
" How should you have liked it," he inquired, absent-mindedly, " if it had
been Louisiana ? "
She answered him with a hard coolness which it startled him afterward to
remember.
" How would you have liked it ? " she said.
They were driven back just then by the rain, which began to beat in upon
their end of the porch. They were obliged to return to Olivia and Mr. Kogers,
who were engaged in an animated conversation.
The fact was that, in her momentary excitement, Olivia had plunged into
conversation as a refuge. She had suddenly poured forth a stream of remark
and query which had the effect of spurring up her companion to a like ex-
hibition of frankness. He had been asking questions, too.
" She's ben tellin' me," he said, as Ferrol approached, "that you're a lit-
tery man, an' write fur the papers — novel-stories, an' pomes an' things. I
never seen one before — not as I know on."
" I wonder why not ! " remarked Ferrol. " We are plentiful enough."
" Air ye now ? " he asked reflectively. " I had an idee thar was only one
on ye now an' ag'in — jest now an' ag'in."
He paused there to shake his head.
" I've often wondered how ye could do it," he said. " / couldn't. Thar's
some as thinks they could if they tried, but I wa'n't never thataway — I wa'n't
never thataway. I hain't no idee I could do it, not if I tried ever so. Seems
to me," he went on, with the air of making an announcement of so novel a
nature that he must present it modestly, "seems to me, now, as if them as
does it must hev a kinder gift fur it, now. Lord ! I couldn't write a novel. I
wouldn't know whar to begin."
" It is difficult to decide where," said Ferrol.
He did not smile at all. His manner was perfect — so full of interest, in-
deed, that Mr. Rogers quite warmed and expanded under it
504
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [1861-88
"The scenes on 'em all, now, bein' mostly laid in Bagdad, would be agin
me, if nothin' else war," he proceeded.
" Being laid ? " queried Ferrol.
" In Bagdad or— wa-al, f urrin parts tharabouts. Ye see I couldn't tell
nothin' much about noplace but North Ca'liny, an' folks wouldn't buy it."
" But why not ? " exclaimed Ferrol.
" Why, Lord bless ye I " he said, hilariously, ' ' they'd know it wa'n't true.
They'd say in a minnit : ' Why, thar's thet fool Rogers ben a writin' a pack
o' lies thet ain't a word on it true. Thar ain't no cas-tles in Hamilton County,
an' thar ain't no folks like these yere. It just ain't so ! ' I 'lowed thet thar was
the reason the novel-writers allers writ about things a-happenin' in Bagdad.
Ye kin say most anythin' ye like about Bagdad an' no one cayn't contradict ye."
" I don't seem to remember many novels of — of that particular descrip-
tion," remarked Ferrol, in a rather low voice. " Perhaps my memory "
" Ye don't ?" he queried, in much surprise. " Waal now, jest you notice
an' see if it ain't so. I hain't read many novels myself. I hain't read but
one "
" Oh ! " interposed Ferrol. " And it was a story of life in Bagdad."
" Yes ; an' I've heard tell of others as was the same. Hance Claiborn, now,
he was a-tellin me of one."
He checked himself to speak to the negro woman who had presented her-
self at a room-door.
" We're a-comin', Nancy," he said, with an air of good-fellowship. " Now,
ladies an' gentlemen, '"' he added, rising from his chair, " walk in an' have
some supper."
Ferrol and Olivia rose with some hesitation.
" You are very kind," they said. " We did not intend to give you trouble."
" Trouble ! " he replied, as if scarcely comprehending. " This yere ain't no
trouble. Ye hain't ben in North Ca'liny before, hev ye ? " he continued, good
naturedly. " We're bound to hev ye eat, if ye stay with us long enough. We
wouldn't let ye go 'way without eatin', bless ye. We ain't that kind. Walk
straight in."
He led them into a long, low room, half kitchen, half dining-room. It was
not so ugly as the room of state, because it was entirely unadorned. Its ceiled
walls were painted brown and stained with many a winter's smoke. The pine
table was spread with a clean homespun cloth and heaped with well-cooked,
appetizing food.
" If ye can put up with country fare, ye'll not find it so bad," said the host.
" Nancy prides herself on her way o' doin' things."
There never was more kindly hospitality, Ferrol thought. The simple gen-
erosity which made them favored guests at once warmed and touched him.
He glanced across at Louisiana to see if she was not as much pleased as he was
himself. But the food upon her plate remained almost untouched. There
was a strange look on her face ; she was deadly pale and her downcast eyes
shone under their lashes. She did not look at their host at all ; it struck Fer-
rol that she avoided looking at him with a strong effort. Her pallor made
him anxious.
STATEflORMALSCHOOL
ANGELES, -;- CAL
1861-88] FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 505
" You are not well/' he said to her. " You do not look well at all."
Their host started and turned toward her.
" Why, no ye ain't ! " he exclaimed, quite tremulously. ( ' Lord, no ! Ye
cayn't be. Ye hain't no color. What — what's the trouble, Lou — Lord ! I
was gwine to call ye Louisianny, an' she ain't yere, Louisianny ain't."
He ended with a nervous laugh.
" I'm used to takin' a heap o' care on her," he said. " I've lost ten on 'em,
an' she's all that's left me, an' — an' I think a heap on her. I — I wish she was
yere. Ye musn't get sick, ma'am."
The girl got up hurriedly.
" I am not sick, really," she said. " The thunder — I have a little head-
ache. I will go out on to the porch. It's clearing up now. The fresh air will
do me good."
The old man rose, too, with rather a flurried manner.
"If Louisianny was yere," he faltered, "she could give ye something to
help ye. Camphire now — sperrits of camphire — let me git ye some."
" No — no," said the girl. " No, thank you."
And she slipped out of the door and was gone.
Mr. Rogers sat down again with a sigh.
" I wish she'd let me git her some," he said, wistfully. " I know how it is
with young critters like that. They're dele-cate," anxiously. " Lord, they're
dele-cate. They'd oughter hev' their mothers round 'em. I know how it is
with Louisianny."
A cloud seemed to settle upon him. He rubbed his grizzled chin with his
hand again and again, glancing at the open door as he did it. It was evident
that his heart was outside with the girl who was like " Louisianny."
The storm was quite over, and the sun was setting in flames of gold when
the meal was ended and they went out on the porch again. Mr. Rogers had
scarcely recovered himself, but he had made an effort to do so, and had so far
succeeded as to begin to describe the nature of the one novel he had read.
Still, he had rubbed his chin and kept his eye uneasily on the door all the
time he had been talking.
"It was about a Frenchman," he said, seriously, "an' his name was —
Frankoyse — F-r-a-n-c-o-i-s,Frankoyse. Thet thar's a French name, ain't it?
Me an' lanthy 'lowed it was common to the country. It don't belong yere,
Frankoyse don't, an' it's got a furrin sound."
" It — yes, it is a French name," assented Ferrol.
A few minutes afterward they went out. Louisiana stood at the end of
the porch, leaning against a wooden pillar and twisting an arm around it.
" Are ye better ? " Mr. Rogers asked. " I am goin' to 'tend to my stock,
an' if ye ain't, mebbe the camphire — sperrits of camphire "
"I don't need it," she answered. " I am quite well."
So he went away and left them, promising to return shortly and "gear up
their critters " for them that they might go on their way.
When he was gone, there was a silence of a few seconds which Ferrol could
not exactly account for. Almost for the first time in his manhood, he did not
£Qg FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [1861-88
know what to say. Gradually there had settled upon him the conviction that
something had gone very wrong indeed, that there was something mysterious
and complicated at work, that somehow he himself was involved, and that
his position was at once a most singular and delicate one. It was several mo-
ments before he could decide that his best plan seemed to be to try to conceal
his bewilderment and appear at ease. And, very naturally, the speech he
chose to begin with was the most unlucky he could have hit upon.
" He is charming/' he said. " What a lovable old fellow ! What a deli-
cious old fellow ! He hat been telling me about the novel. It is the story of a
Frenchman, and his name— try to guess his name."
But Louisiana did not try.
" You couldn't guess it," he went on. " It is better than all the rest. His
name was — Frankoyse."
That instant she turned round. She was shaking all over like a leaf.
" Good heavens !" flashed through his mind. " This is a climax ! This is
the real creature ! "
' ' Don't laugh again ! " she cried. " Don't dare to laugh ! I won't bear it !
He is my father ! "
For a second or so he had not the breath to speak.
"Your father!" he said, when he found his voice. "Your father ! Yours!"
" Yes," she answered, " mine. This is my home. I have lived here all my
life — my name is Louisiana. You have laughed at me too ! "
It was the real creature, indeed, whom he saw. She burst into passionate
tears.
" Do you think that I kept up this pretence to-day because I was ashamed
of him ? " she said. " Do you think I did it because I did not love him — and
respect him — and think him better than all the rest of the world ? It was be-
cause I loved him so much that I did it — because I knew so well that you
would say to each other that he was not like me — that he was rougher, and
that it was a wonder I belonged to him. It is a wonder I belong to him ! I am
not worthy to kiss his shoes. I have been ashamed — I have been bad enough
for that, but not bad enough to be ashamed of him. I thought at first it
would be better to let you believe what you would — that it would soon be
over, and we should never see each other again, but I did not think that I
should have to sit by and see you laugh because he does not know the world
as you do — because he has always lived his simple, good life in one simple,
country place."
Ferrol had grown as pale as she was herself. He groaned aloud.
" Oh ! " he cried, " what shall I say to you ? For heaven's sake try to un-
derstand that it is not at him I have laughed, but "
" He has never been away from home," she broke in. ' ' He has worked too
hard to have time to read, and" — she stopped and dropped her hands with a
gesture of unutterable pride. " Why should I tell you that ? " she said. "It
sounds as if I were apologizing for him, and there is no need that I should."
" If I could understand," began Ferrol, — "if I could realize "
"Ask your sister," she replied. " It was her plan. I— I" (with a little sob)
" am only her experiment."
1861-88] FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 507
Olivia came forward, looking wholly subdued. Her eyes were wet, too.
" It is true," she said. " It is all my fault."
" May I ask you to explain ? " said Ferrol, rather sternly. " I suppose some
of this has been for my benefit."
" Don't speak in that tone," said Olivia. " It is bad enough as it is. I — I
never was so wretched in my life. I never dreamed of its turning out in this
way. She was so pretty and gentle and quick to take a hint, and — I wanted
to try the experiment — to see if you would guess at the truth. I — I bad a
theory, and I was so much interested that — I forgot to — to think of her very
much. I did not think she would care."
Louisiana broke in.
" Yes," she said, her eyes bright with pain, " she forgot. I was very fond
of her, and I knew so very little that she forgot to think of me. I was only a
kind of plaything — but I was too proud to remind her. I thought it would
be soon over, and I knew how ignorant I was. I was afraid to trust my feel-
ings at first. I thought perhaps — it was vanity, and I ought to crush it down.
I was very fond of her."
" Oh ! " cried Olivia, piteously, ' ' don't say ' was/ Louise ! "
" Don't say 'Louise/ "was the reply. "Say 'Louisiana.' I am not ashamed
of it now. I want Mr. Ferrol to hear it."
" I have nothing to say in self-defence," Laurence replied, hopelessly.
" There is nothing for any of us to say but good-by," said Louisi-
ana
Sometimes when her father talked she could scarcely bear to look at his
face as the firelight shone on it.
So, when she had bidden him good-night at last and walked to the door
leaving him standing upon the hearth watching her as she moved away, she
turned round suddenly and faced him again, with her hand upon the latch.
" Father," she cried, " I want to tell you — I want to tell you "
" What ?" he said. " What, Louisianny ?"
She put her hand to her side and leaned against the door — a slender, pite-
ous figure.
" Don't look at me kindly," she said. " I don't deserve it. I deserve noth-
ing. I have been ashamed "
He stopped her, putting up his shaking hand and turning pale.
" Don't say nothin' as ye'll be sorry fer when ye feel better, Louisianny,"
he said. " Don't git carried away by yer feelings into sayin' nothin' es is hard
on yerself. Don't ye do it, Louisianny. Thar ain't no need fer it, honey.
Yer kinder wrought up, now, an' ye cayn't do jerself jestice."
But she would not be restrained.
' ' I must tell you," she said. " It has been on my heart too long. I ought
never to have gone away. Everybody was different from us — and had new
ways. I think they laughed at me, and it made me bad. I began to ponder
over things until at last I hated myself and everything, and was ashamed that
I had been content. When I told you I wanted to play a joke on the people
who came here, it was not true. I wanted them to go away without knowing
that this was my home. It was only a queer place, to be laughed at, to them,
RAO FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [1861-88
and I was ashamed of it, and bitter and angry. When they went into the
parlor they laughed at it and at the pictures, and everything in it, and I stood
by with my cheeks burning. When I saw a strange woman in the kitchen it
flashed into my mind that I had no need to tell them that all these things that
they laughed at had been round me all my life. They were not sneering at
them — it was worse than that — they were only interested and amused and
curious, and were not afraid to let me see. The — gentleman had been led by
his sister to think I came from some city. He thought I was — was pretty
and educated— his equal, and I knew how amazed he would be and how he
would say he could not believe that I had lived here, and wonder at me and
talk me over. And I could not bear it. I only wanted him to go away without
knowing, and never, never see me again ! "
Remembering the pain and fever and humiliation of the past, and of that
dreadful day above all, she burst into sobbing.
" You did not think I was that bad, did you ? " she said. " But I was ! I
was ! "
" Louisianny," he said, huskily, ' ' come yere. Thar ain't no need fer ye to
blame yerself thataway. Yer kinder wrought up."
" Don't be kind to me ! " she said. " Don't ! I want to tell you all — every
word ! I was so bad and proud and angry that I meant to carry it out to the
end, and tried to — only I was not quite bad enough for one thing, father — I
was not bad enough to be ashamed of you, or to bear to sit by and see them
cast a slight upon you. They didn't mean it for a slight — it was only their
clever way of looking at things — but / loved you. You were all I had left,
and I knew you were better than they were a thousand times ! Did they think
I would give your warm, good heart — your kind, faithful heart — for all they
had learned, or for all they could ever learn ? It killed me to see and hear
them ! And it seemed as if I was on fire. And I told them the truth — that
you were my father and that I loved you and was proud of you — that I might
be ashamed of myself and all the rest, but not of you — never of you — for I
wasn't worthy to kiss your feet ! "
For one moment her father watched her, his lips parted and trembling. It
seemed as if he meant to try to speak, but could not. Then his eyes fell with
an humble, bewildered, questioning glance upon his feet, encased in their
large, substantial brogans — the feet she had said she was not worthy to kiss.
What he saw in them to touch him so it would be hard to tell, for he broke
down utterly, put out his hand, groping to feel for his chair, fell into it with
head bowed on his arm, and burst into sobbing too.
She left her self-imposed exile in an instant, ran to him, and knelt down
to lean against him.
" Oh ! " she cried, " have I broken your heart ? Have I broken your heart ?
Will God ever forgive me ? I don't ask you to forgive me, father, for I don't
deserve it."
At first he could not speak, but he put his arm round her and drew her
head up to his breast ; and, with all the love and tenderness he had lavished
upon her all her life, she had never known such love and tenderness as he
expressed in this one movement.
1861.-88J FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 509
" Louisianny," he said, brokenly, when he had found his voice, "it's you
as should be a-forgivin' me."
"II" she exclaimed.
He held her in his trembling arm so close that she felt his heart quivering.
" To think," he almost whispered, " as I should not hev ben doin' ye jes-
tice ! To think as I didn't know ye well enough to do ye jestice ! To think
yer own father, thet's knowed ye all yer life, could hev give in to its bein' like-
ly as ye wasn't — what he'd allers thought, an' what yer mother 'd thought,
an' what ye was, honey."
" I don't" she began falteringly.
" It's me as oughter be a-standin' agin the door," he said. " It's me ! I
knowed every word of the first part of what ye've told me, Louisianny. I've
been so sot on ye thet I've got into a kinder noticin' way with ye, an' I guessed
it out. I seen it in yer face when ye stood thar tryin' to laugh on the porch
while them people was a-waitin'. Twa'n't no nat'ral gal's laugh ye laughed,
an' when ye thought I wasn't a-noticin' I was a-noticin' an' a-thinkin' all the
time. But I seen more than was thar, honey, an' I didn't do ye jestice — an*
I've ben punished fer it. It come agin me like a slungshot. I ses to myself,
' She's ashamed o' me ! It's me she's ashamed of — an' she wants to pass me
off fer a stranger ! ' "
The girl drew off from him a little and looked up into his face wonderingly.
" You thought that ! " she said. " And never told me — and humored me,
and-
" I'd oughter knowed ye better," he said ; " but I've suffered fer it, Louis-
ianny. I ses to myself, ' All the years thet we've ben sot on each other an*
missed each other through our little sick spells, an' keered fer each other, hes
gone fer nothin'. She wants to pass me off fer a stranger. ' Not that 1 blamed
ye, honey. Lord ! I knowed the difference betwixt us ! Td knowed it long
afore you did. But somehow it warn't eggsakly what I looked fer an' it was
kinder hard on me right at the start. An' then the folks went away an' ye
didn't go with 'em, an' thar was somethin' workin' on ye as I V >wed ye
wasn't ready to tell me about. An' I sot an' steddied it over an' watched ye,
an' I prayed some, an' I laid wake nights a-steddyin'. An' I made up my
mind thet es I'd ben the cause o' trouble to ye I'd oughter try an' sorter bal-
ance the thing. I allers 'lowed parents hed a duty to their child'en. An' I
ses, ' Thar's some things thet kin be altered an' some thet cayn't. Let's alter
them es kin ! ' "
She remembered the words well, and now she saw clearly the dreadful pain
they had expressed ; they cut her to her soul.
" Oh ! father," she cried. " How could you ? "
" I'd oughter knowed ye better, Louisianny," he repeated. " But I didn't.
I ses, ' What money an' steddyin' an' watchin '11 do fer her to make up, shell
be done. I'll try to make up fer the wrong I've did her onwillin'ly — onwillm'-
ly.' An' I went to the Springs an' I watched an' steddied thar, an' I come
home an' I watched an' steddied thar — an' I hed the house fixed, an' I laid
out to let ye go to Europe— though what I'd heern o' the habits o' the people,
an' the brigands an' sich, went powerful agin me makin' up my mind easy.
£10 SARAH ORNE JEWETT. [1861-88
An' I never lost sight nary minnit o' what I'd laid out fer to do — but I wasn't
doin'ye jestice an' didn't suffer no more than I'd oughter. An' when ye stood
up thar agen the door, honey, with yer tears a-streamin' an' yer eyes a-shi-
nin', an' told me what ye'd felt an' what ye'd said about — wa'F' (delicately),
"about thet thar as ye thought ye wasn't worthy to do, it set my blood a-
tremblin' in my veins — an' my heart a-shakin' in my side, an' me a-goin' all
over — an' I was struck all of a heap, an' knowed thet the Lord hed ben better
to me than I thought, an' — an' even when I was fondest on ye, an' proudest
on ye, I hadn't done ye no sort o' jestice in the world — an' never could ! "
fl), c
BOBN in Glens Falls, N. Y., 1849.
THE FLIGHT OF THE WAR-EAGLE.
[Scythe and Sword. Poems. 1887.]
rpHE eagle of the armies of the West,
J- Dying upon his alp, near to the sky,
Through the slow days that paled the imperial eye,
But could not tame the proud fire of his breast, —
Gone with the mighty pathos ! Only rest
Remains where passed that struggle stern and high ;
Rest, silence, broken sometimes by the cry
Of mother and eaglets round the ravaged nest.
'Twas when the death-cloud touched the mountain crest,
A singer among the awed flocks cowering nigh,
Looked up and saw against the sunrise sky
An eagle, in ethereal plumage dressed,
Break from the veil, and flame his buoyant flight
Far toward the hills of heaven unveiled and bright.
23 July, 1885.
BORN in South Berwick, Me., 1849.
MISS TEMPY'S WATCHERS.
[The Atlantic Monthly. 1888.]
n^HE time of year was April ; the place was a small farming- town in New
-L Hampshire, remote from any railroad. One by one the lights had been
blown out in the scattered houses near Miss Tempy Dent's ; but as her neigh-
1861-88] SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 5]_]_
bors took a last look out-of-doors, their eyes turned with instinctive curiosity
toward the old house, where a lamp burned steadily. They gave a little sigh.
" Poor Miss Tempy ! " said more than one bereft acquaintance ; for the good
woman lay dead in her north chamber, and the lamp was a watcher's light.
The funeral was set for the next day, at one o'clock.
The -watchers were two of the oldest friends, Mrs. Crowe and Sarah Ann
Binson. They were sitting in the kitchen, because it seemed less awesome than
the unused best room, and they beguiled the long hours by steady conversa-
tion. One would think that neither topics nor opinions would hold out, at
that rate, all through the long spring night ; but there was a certain degree of
excitement just then, and the two women had risen to an unusual level of ex-
pressiveness and confidence. Each had already told the other more than one
fact that she had determined to keep secret; they were again and again
tempted into statements that either would have found impossible by daylight.
Mrs. Crowe was knitting a blue yarn stocking for her husband; the foot was
already so long that it seemed as if she must have forgotten to narrow it at
the proper time. Mrs. Crowe knew exactly what she was about, however;
she was of a much cooler disposition than Sister Binson, who made futile at-
tempts at some sewing, only to drop her work into her lap whenever the talk
was most engaging.
Their faces were interesting — of the dry, shrewd, quick-witted New Eng-
land type, with thin hair twisted neatly back out of the way. Mrs. Crowe
could look vague and benignant, and Miss Binson was, to quote her neigh-
bors, a little too sharp-set ; but the world knew that she had need to be, with
the load she must carry of supporting an inefficient widowed sister and six
unpromising and unwilling nieces and nephews. The eldest boy was at last
placed with a good man to learn the mason's trade. Sarah Ann Binson, for
all her sharp, anxious aspect, never defended herself, when her sister whined
and fretted. She was told every week of her life that the poor children never
would have had to lift a finger if their father had lived, and yet she had kept
her steadfast way with the little farm, and patiently taught the young people
many useful things, for which, as everybody said, they would live to thank
her. However pleasureless her life appeared to outward view, it was brimful
of pleasure to herself.
Mrs. Crowe, on the contrary, was well to do, her husband being a rich
farmer and an easy-going man. She was a stingy woman, but for all that she
looked kindly ; and when she gave away anything, or lifted a finger to help
anybody, it was thought a great piece of beneficence, and a compliment, in-
deed, which the recipient accepted with twice as much gratitude as double
the gift that came from a poorer and more generous acquaintance. Every-
body liked to be on good terms with Mrs. Crowe. Socially she stood much
higher than Sarah Ann Binson. They were both old schoolmates and friends
of Temperance Dent, who had asked them, one day, not long before she died,
if they would not come together and look after the house, and manage every-
thing, when she was gone. She may have had some hope that they might be-
come closer friends in this period of intimate partnership, and that the richer
woman might better understand the burdens of the poorer. They had not
§12 SARAH ORNE JEWETT. [1861-88
kept the house the night before ; they were too weary with their care of their
old friend, whom they had not left until all was over.
There was a brook which ran down the hillside very near the house, and
the sound of it was much louder than usual. When there was silence in
the kitchen, the busy stream had a strange insistence in its wild voice, as
if it tried to make the watchers understand something that related to the
past.
" I declare, I can't begin to sorrow for Tempy yet. I am so glad to have
her at-rest," whispered Mrs. Crowe. " It is strange to set here without her,
but I can't make it clear that she has gone. I feel as if she- had got easy and
dropped off to sleep, and I'm more scared about waking her up than know-
ing any other feeling. "
"Yes," said Sarah Ann, "it's just like that, ain't it ? But I tell you we
are goin' to miss her worse than we expect. She's helped me through with
many a trial, has Temperance. I ain't the only one who says the same,
neither."
These words were spoken as if there were a third person listening ; some-
body beside Mrs. Crowe. The watchers could not rid their minds of the feel-
ing that they were being watched themselves. The spring wind whistled in
the window-crack, now and then, and buffeted the little house in a gusty way
that had a sort of companionable effect. Yet, on the whole, it was a very still
night, and the watchers spoke in a half-whisper.
" She was the freest-handed woman that ever I knew," said Mrs. Crowe,
decidedly. "According to her means, she gave away more than anybody. I
used to tell her 'twa'n't right. I used really to be afraid that she went with-
out too much, for we have a duty to ourselves."
Sister Binson looked up in a half-amused, unconscious way, and then rec-
ollected herself.
Mrs. Crowe met her look with a serious face. " It ain't so easy for me to
give as it is for some," she said simply, but with an effort which was made
possible only by the occasion. " I should like to say, while Tempy is laying
here yet in her own house, that she has been a constant lesson to me. Folks
are too kind, and shame me with thanks for what I do. I ain't such a gener-
ous woman as poor Tempy was, for all she had nothin' to do with, as one may
say."
Sarah Binson was much moved at this confession, and was even pained and
touched by the unexpected humility. ' ' You have a good many calls on you,"
she began, and then left her kind little compliment half finished.
" Yes, yes, but I've got means enough. My disposition's more of a cross
to me as I grow older, and I made up my mind this morning that Tempy's
example should be my pattern henceforth." She began to knit faster than
ever.
;' 'Taiu't no use to get morbid : that's what Tempy used to say herself,"
said Sarah Ann, after a minute's silence. " Ain't it strange to say ' used to
say ' ? " and her own voice choked a little. " She never did like to hear folks
git goin' about themselves."
" 'Twas only because they're apt to do it so as other folks will say 'twasn't
1861-88] SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 513
so, an' praise 'em up," humbly replied Mrs. Crowe, "and that ain't my ob-
ject. There wa'n't a child but what Tempy set herself to work to see what
she could do to please it. One time my brother's folks had been stopping here
in the summer, from Massachusetts. The children was all little, and they
broke up a sight of toys, and left 'em when they were going away. Tempy
come right up after they rode by, to see if she couldn't help me set the house
to rights, and she caught me just as I was going to fling some of the clutter
into the stove. I was kind of tired out, starting 'em off in season. ' Oh, give
me them ! ' says she, real pleading ; and she wropped 'em up and took 'em
home with her when she went, and she mended 'em up and stuck 'em togeth-
er, and made some young one or other happy with every blessed one. You'd
thought I'd done her the biggest favor. ' No thanks to me. I should ha'
burnt 'em, Tempy,' says I."
"Some of 'em came to our house, I know," said Miss Binson. "She'd
take a lot o' trouble to please a child, 'stead o' shoving of it out o' the way,
like the rest of us when we're drove. "
" I can tell you the biggest thing she ever gave, and I don't know 's there's
anybody left but me to tell it. I don't want it forgot," Sarah Binson went
on, looking up at the clock to see how the night was going. "It was that
pretty-faced Trevor girl, who taught the Corners school, and married so well
afterward, out in New York State. You remember her, I dare say ? "
" Certain," said Mrs. Crowe, with an air of interest.
" She was a splendid scholar, folks said, and give the school a great start ;
but she'd overdone herself getting her education, and working to pay for it,
and she all broke down one spring, and Tempy made her come and stop with
her awhile, — you remember that ? "Well, she had an uncle, her mother's
brother, out in Chicago, who was well off and friendly, and used to write to
Lizzie Trevor, and I dare say make her some presents ; but he was a lively,
driving man, and didn't take time to stop and think about his folks. He
hadn't seen her since she was a little girl. Poor Lizzie was so pale and weakly
that she just got through the term o' school. She looked as if she was just
going straight off in a decline. Tempy, she cosseted her up awhile, and then,
next thing folks knew, she was tellin' round how Miss Trevor had gone to see
her uncle, and meant to visit Niagary Falls on the way, and stop over night.
Now I happened to know, in ways I won't dwell on to explain, that the poor
girl was in debt for her schoolin' when she come here, and her last quarter's
pay had just squared it off at last, and left her without a cent ahead, hardly ;
but it had fretted her thinking of it, so she paid it all ; they migh£ have
dunned her that she owed it to. An' I taxed Tempy about the girl's goin' off
on such a journey till she owned up, rather 'n have Lizzie blamed, that she'd
given her sixty dollars, same 's if she was rolling in riches, and sent her off to
have a good rest and vacation. "
" Sixty dollars ! " exclaimed Mrs. Crowe. " Tempy only had ninety dollars
a year that came in to her ; rest of her livin' she got by helpin' about, with
what she raised off this little piece o' ground, sand one side an' clay the other.
An' how often I've heard her tell, years ago, that she'd rather see Niagary
than any other sight in the world ! "
VOL. x. — 33
514 SARAH ORNE JEWETT. [1861-88
The women looked at each other in silence ; the magnitude of the generous
sacrifice was almost too great for their comprehension.
" She was just poor enough to do that ! " declared Mrs. Crowe at last, in an
abandonment of feeling. " Say what you may, I feel humbled to the dust,"
and her companion ventured to say nothing. She never had gi ven'away sixty
dollars at once, but it was simply because she never had it to give. It came to
her very lips to say in explanation, "Tempy was so situated"; but she
checked herself in time, for she would not break in upon her own loyal guard-
ing of her dependent household.
" Folks say a great deal of generosity, and this one's being public-sperited,
and that one free-handed about giving," said Mrs. Crowe, who was a little
nervous in the silence. "I suppose we can't tell the sorrow it would be to
some folks not to give, same 's 'twould be to me not to save. I seem kind of
made for that, as if 'twas what I'd got to do. I should feel sights better about
it if I could make it evident what I was savin' for. If I had a child, now,
Sarah Ann," and her voice was a little husky, — "if I had a child, I should
think I was heapin' of it up because he was the one trained by the Lord to
scatter it again for good. But here's Crowe and me, we can't do anything
with money, and both of us like to keep things same's they've always been.
"Sow Priscilla Dance was talking away like a mill-clapper, week before last.
She'd think I would go right off and get one o' them new-fashioned gilt-and-
white papers for the best room, and some new furniture, an' a marble-top
table. And I looked at her, all struck up. 'Why,' says I, ' Priscilla, that nice
old velvet paper ain't hurt a mite. I shouldn't feel 'twas my best room with-
out it, Dan'el says 'tis the first thing he can remember rubbin' his little baby
fingers onto it, and how splendid he thought them red roses was.' I main-
tdn," continued Mrs. Crowe stoutly, " that folks wastes sights o' good money
doin' just such foolish things. Tearin' out the insides o} meetin'-houses, and
fixin' the pews different ; 'twas good enough as 'twas with mendin' ; then
times come, an' they want to put it all back same's 'twas before."
This touched upon an exciting subject to active members of that parish.
Miss Binson and Mrs. Crowe belonged to opposite parties, and had at one
time come as near hard feelings as they could, and yet escape them. Each
hastened to speak of other things, and to show her untouched friendliness.
" I do agree with you," said Sister Binson, " that few of us know what use
to make of money, beyond every-day necessities. You've seen more o' the
world than I have, and know what's expected. When it comes to taste and
judgment about such things, I ought to defer to others "; and with this mod-
est avowal the critical moment passed when there might have been an im-
proper discussion.
In the silence that followed, the fact of their presence in a house of death
grew more clear than before. There was something disturbing in the noise
of a mouse gnawing at the dry boards of a closet- wall near by. Both the watch-
ers looked up anxiously at the clock ; it was almost the middle of the night,
and the whole world seemed to have left them alone with their solemn duty.
Only the brook was awake.
" Perhaps we might give a look up-stairs now," whispered Mrs. Crowe, as
1861-88] SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 515
if she hoped to hear some reason against their going just then to the cham-
ber of death ; but Sister Binson rose, with a serious and yet satisfied counte-
nance, and lifted the small lamp from the table. She was much more used to
watching than Mrs. Crowe, and much less affected by it. They opened the
door into a small entry with a steep stairway ; they climbed the creaking
stairs, and entered the cold upper room on tiptoe. Mrs. Crowe's heart began
to beat very fast as the lamp was put on a high bureau, and made long, fixed
shadows about the walls. She went hesitatingly toward the solemn shape
under its white drapery, and felt a sense of remonstrance as Sarah Ann gen-
tly, but in a business-like way, turned back the thin sheet.
" Seems to me she looks pleasanter and pleasanter," whispered Sarah Ann
Binson impulsively, as they gazed at the white face with its wonderful smile.
" To-morrow 'twill all have faded out. I do believe they kind of wake up a
day or two after they die, and it's then they go." She replaced the light cov-
ering, and they both turned quickly away ; there was a chill in this upper
room.
" 'Tis a great thing for anybody to have got through, ain't it ? " said Mrs.
Crowe softly, as she began to go down the stairs on tiptoe. The warm air
from the kitchen beneath met them with a sense of welcome and shelter.
" I don' know why it is, but I feel as near again to Tempy down here as I
do up there," replied Sister Binson. " I feel as if the air was full of her, kind
of. I can sense things, now and then, that she seems to say. Now I never
was one to take up with no nonsense of sperits and such, but I declare I felt
as if she told me just now to put some more wood into the stove."
Mrs. Crowe preserved a gloomy silence. She had suspected before this
that her companion was of a weaker and more credulous disposition than her-
self. " 'Tis a great thing to have got through," she repeated, ignoring defi-
nitely all that had last been said. "I suppose you know as well as I that
Tempy was one that always feared death. Well, it's all put behind her now ;
she knows what 'tis." Mrs. Crowe gave a little sigh, and Sister Binson's quick
sympathies were stirred toward this other old friend, who also dreaded the
great change.
" I'd never like to forgit almost those last words Tempy spoke plain to me,"
she said gently, like the comforter she truly was. " She looked up at me
once or twice, that last afternoon after I come to set by her, and let Mis'
Owen go' home ; and I says, ' Can I do anything to ease you, Tempy ? ' and
the tears come into my eyes so I couldn't see what kind of a nod she give me.
* No, Sarah Ann, you can't, dear,' says she ; and then she got her breath
again, and says she, looking at me real meanin', 'I'm only a-gettin' sleepier
and sleepier ; that's all there is,' says she, and smiled up at me kind of wish-
ful, and shut her eyes. I knew well enough all she meant. She'd been look-
in' out for a chance to tell me, and I don' know's she ever said much after-
wards."
Mrs. Crowe was not knitting ; she had been listening too eagerly. "Yes,
'twill be a comfort to think of that sometimes," she said, in acknowledgment.
"I know that old Dr. Prince said once, in evenin' meetin', that he'd
watched by many a dyin' bed, as we well knew, and enough o' his sick folks
51 6 8ARAH ORNE JEWETT. [1861-88
had been scared o' dyin' their whole lives through ; but when they come to
the last, he'd never seen one but was willing and most were glad, to go. * Tis
as natural as bein' born or livin' on,' he said. I don't know what had moved
him to speak that night. You know he wa'n't in the habit of it, and 'twas
the monthly concert of prayer for foreign missions anyways," said Sarah Ann ;
" but 'twas a great stay to the mind to listen to his words of experience."
" There never was a better man," responded Mrs. Crowe, in a really cheer-
ful tone. She had recovered from her feeling of nervous dread, the kitchen
was so comfortable with lamplight and firelight ; and just then the old clock
began to tell the hour of twelve with leisurely whirring strokes.
Sister Binson laid aside her work, and rose quickly and went to the cup-
board. " We'd better take a little to eat," she explained. " The night will
go fast after this. I want to know if you went a'nd made some o' your nice
cupcake, while you was home to-day ?" she asked, in a pleased tone ; and
Mrs. Crowe acknowledged such a gratifying piece of though tfulness for this
humble friend who denied herself all luxuries. Sarah Ann brewed a generous
cup of tea, and the watchers drew their chairs up to the table presently, and
quelled their hunger with good country appetites. Sister Binson put a spoon
into a small, old-fashioned glass of preserved quince, and passed it to her
friend. She was most familiar with the house, and played the part of host-
ess. " Spread some o' this on your bread and butter," she said to Mrs. Crowe.
" Tempy wanted me to use some three or four times, but I never felt to. I
know she'd like to have us comfortable now, and would urge us to make a
good supper, poor dear. "
" What excellent preserves she did make ! " mourned Mrs. Crowe. " None
of us has got her light hand at doin' things tasty. She made the most o'
everything, too. Now, she only had that one old quince-tree down in the far
corner of the piece, but she'd go out in the spring and tend to it, and look at
it so pleasant, and kind of expect the old thorny thing into bloomin'."
" She was just the same with folks," said Sarah Ann. "And she'd never
git more'n a little apernful o' quinces, but she'd have every mite o' goodness
out o' those, and set the glasses up onto her best-room closet shelf, so pleased.
'Twa'n't but a week ago to-morrow mornin' I fetched her a little taste o' jelly
in a teaspoon ; and she says ' Thank ye,' and took it, an' the minute she tast-
ed it she looked up at me as worried as could be. ' Oh, I don't want to eat
that,' says she. 'I always keep that in case o' sickness.' 'You're goin' to
have the good o' one tumbler yourself,' says I. ' I'd just like to know who's
sick now, if you ain't ! ' An' she couldn't help laughin', I spoke up so smart.
Oh, dear me, how I shall miss talkin' over things with her ! She always
sensed things, and got just the p'int you meant."
" She didn't begin to age until two or three years ago, did she ? " asked
Mrs. Crowe. "I never saw anybody keep her looks as Tempy did. She
looked young long after I begun to feel like an old woman. The doctor used
to say 'twas her young heart, and I don't know but what he was right. How
she did do for other folks ! There was one spell she wasn't at home a day to
a fortnight. She got most of her livin' so, and that made her own potatoes
and things last her through. None o' the young folks could get married
1861-88] SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 517
without her, and all the old ones was disappointed if she wa'n't round when
they was down with sickness and had to go. An' cleanin', or tailorin' for
boys, or rug-hookin', — there was nothin' but what she could do as handy as
most. * I do love to work,' — ain't you heard her say that twenty times a week ?"
Sarah Ann Binson nodded, and began to clear away the empty plates.
" We may want a taste o' somethin' more towards mornin'," she said.
" There's plenty in the closet here ; and in case some comes from a distance
to the funeral, we'll have a little table spread after we get back to the house."
" Yes, I was busy all the mornin'. I've cooked up a sight o' things to bring
over," said Mrs. Crowe. " I felt 'twas the last I could do for her."
They drew their chairs near the stove again, and took up their work. Sis-
ter Binson's rocking-chair creaked as she rocked ; the brook sounded louder
than ever. It was more lonely when nobody spoke, and presently Mrs. Crowe
returned to her thoughts of growing old.
" Yes, Tempy aged all of a sudden. I remember I asked her if she felt as
well as common, one day, and she laughed at me good. There, when Dan'el
begun to look old, I couldn't help feeling as if somethin' ailed him, and like
as not 'twas somethin' he was goin' to git right over, and I dosed him for it
stiddy, half of one summer. "
" How many things we shall be wanting to ask Tempy ! " exclaimed Sarah
Ann Binson, after a long pause. " I can't make up my mind to doin' with-
out her. I wish folks could come back just once, and tell us how 'tis where
they've gone. Seems then we could do without 'em better."
The brook hurried on ; the wind blew about the house now and then ; the
house itself was a silent place, and the supper, the warm fire, and an absence
of any new topics for conversation made the watchers drowsy. Sister Binson
closed her eyes first, to rest them for a minute ; and Mrs. Crowe glanced at
her compassionately, with a new sympathy for the hard-worked little woman.
She made up her mind to let Sarah Ann have a good rest, while she kept
watch alone ; but in a few minutes her own knitting was dropped, and she,
too, fell asleep. Overhead, the pale shape of Tempy Dent, the outworn body
of that generous, loving-hearted, simple soul, slept on also in its white rai-
ment. Perhaps Tempy herself stood near, and saw her own life and its sur-
roundings with new understanding. Perhaps she herself was the only watcher.
Later, by some hours, Sarah Ann Binson woke with a start. There was a
pale light of dawn outside the small windows. Inside the kitchen, the lamp
burned dim. Mrs. Crowe awoke, too.
" I think Tempy 'd be the first to say 'twas just as well we both had some
rest," she said, not without a guilty feeling.
Her companion went to the outer door, and opened it wide. The fresh air
was none too cold, and the brook's voice was not nearly so loud as it had been
in the midnight darkness. She could see the shapes of the hills, and the great
shadows that lay across the lower country. The east was fast growing bright.
'"Twill be a beautiful day for the funeral," she said, and turned again,
with a sigh, to follow Mrs. Crowe up the stairs. The world seemed more and
more empty without the kind face aiid helpful hands of Tempy Dent.
518
PHILIP HENRT WELCH.
[1861-88
A CHILD'S GRAVE
MORE than a hundred years ago
They raised for her this little
stone ;
"Miss Polly Townsend, aged nine,"
Under the grass lies here alone.
'Twas hard to leave your merry notes
For ranks of angels, robed and
crowned,
To sleep until the Judgment Day
in Copp's Hill burying-grouud.
You must have dreaded heaven then, —
A solemn doom of endless rest,
Where white-winged seraphs tuned their
harps —
You surely liked this life the best !
The gray slate head-stones frightened
you,
When from Christ Church your father
brought
You here on Sunday afternoons,
And told you that this world was
naught ;
And you spelled out the carven names
Of people who, beneath the sod,
Hidden away from mortal eyes,
Were at the mercy of their God.
You had been taught that He was
great,
And only hoped He might be good. —
An awful thought that you must jom
This silent neighborhood.
No one remembers now the day
They buried you on Copp's Hill side;
No one remembers you, or grieves
Or misses you because you died.
I see the grave and reverend men
And pious women, meek and mild,
Walk two by two in company,
The mourners for this little child.
The harbor glistened in the sun,
The bell in Christ Church steeple tolled,
And all the playmates cried for her,
Miss Polly Townsend, nine years old.
f enr?
BOBN in Angelica, N. Y., 1849. DIED in Brooklyn, N. T., 1889.
SOCIAL PHONOGRAMS.
[The Tailor-Made Oirl. Her Friends, her Fashions, and her Follies. 1888.]
AN EVENING OUT.
. TEWKSBURY. What beastly bore is on for to-night ?
MRS. TEWKSBURY. I don't think your hostess would be flattered to hear you.
MR. T. It isn't the hostess— it's the whole blanked thing.
MRS. T. Oh!
MR. T. Who is she, by the way ?
MRS. T. The blanked thing ?
Mu. T. No ; the hostess.
MRS. T. Our first hostess is Mrs. B. G. Busby Salamander, for dinner, and
MR. T. Gad ! I hope the dinner will be as hot as the name
MRS. T. Afterward a dance at the Robinsons
MR. T. Cold soup may be all very well in Russia ; but it is deuced poor stuff in
New York.
1861-88] PHILIP HENRY WELCH. 519
MRS. T. And where, may I ask, do you get cold soup ?
MR. T. At half the places we dine. A week ago at the Bitterns, Monday at the
Tinderboxes, and last night down-stairs, my love, with my legs stretched under our
own mahogany.
MRS. T. It isn't mahogany, it's English oak.
MR. T. A mere figure of speech — the soup was cold, just the same.
MRS. T. A mere figure of speech — the soup was boiling.
MR. T. My love!
MRS. T. My dear!
MR. T. Mrs. Tewksbury!
MRS. T. Mr. Tewksbury!
MR. T. You are warm, my love ; wherein you are very unlike the soup.
MRS. T. The soup was delicious.
MR. T. The soup was execrable.
MRS. T. Barou Vendredi spoke specially of it, and asked if our chef was a cordon
lieu.
MR. T. Did he ? That's rich! I forgive the soup. What did you say ?
MRS. T. Oh, I parried the blow!
MR. T. You were wise. Mrs. Magillicuddy may be a las bku, although I question
any las at all ; but she is decidedly not a cordon lieu.
MRS. T. Bridget is a very good cook.
MR. T. Oh, yes — who's been at my dressing-case ?
MRS. T. Yourself, principally.
MR. T. I can only find one brush.
MRS. T. You have two in your hands.
MR. T. Oh, so I have. I was going to remark, my dear, that Baron Vendredi
pays you a good deal of attention.
MRS. T. I was his hostess last night.
MR. T. You are not always his hostess.
MRS. T. Frenchmen are all manner, you know.
MR. T. H'm. Does he dine at the Salamanders to-night ?
MRS. T. I believe so.
MR. T. Does he know you are to be there ?
MRS. T. Probably — he sent me flowers to-day.
MR. T. The devil !
MRS. T. No ; Baron Vendredi.
MR. T. It's all the same. You shall not wear them.
MRS. T. " Shall not" doesn't sound well, Mr. Tewksbury.
MR. T. It means well, though. You are pinning them in your corsage now.
MRS. T. Am I ?
MR. T. [shouting]. Yes, you are; and you may take them out too!
MRS. T. {removes them]. As you like.
MR. T. [someichat mollified]. Thanks! You have other flowers ?
MRS. T. None that I care to wear.
MR. T. I sent you some to-day.
MRS. T. I received them.
MR. T. Did they please you ?
MRS. T. Oh, yes!
MR. T. Why don't you wear them ?
MRS. T. You told me not to.
MR. T. I ? Ah, I see ! Those were my flowers you were fastening on your dress ?
MRS. T. Yes.
MR. T. Mrs. Tewksbury, you are an angel, as usual, and as usual I am
£20 PHILIP HENRT WELCH. [1861-88
MRS. T. Mr. Tewksbury.
MR. T. Right you are! What shall it be ?
MRS. T. [archly]. Do you think that diamond bracelet
MR. T. You shall have it to-morrow morning. Am I forgiven ?
MRS. T. There is nothing to be forgiven. You laid the train, fired it, and then
got singed with your own powder.
MR. T. Then the bracelet
MRS. T. Will be merely a souvenir of the occasion.
MR. T. Ah !
A BAD COUGH.
REV. DR. HAUTTON [before service, to sexton]. Jones, slant the second window
to the left behind the pulpit; it throws a pleasant light on the reading-desk.
JONES. Very well, sir !
REV. DR. H. [solus]. The green hue also enhances the pallor of my face.
REV. DR. H. [after service] . Good-morning, my dear Mr. CKESUS! What a charm-
ing day has been graciously vouchsafed to us!
MR. CRCESUS. H'm — yes — yes; fine season of the year!
REV. DR. H. [coughing]. I noticed Mrs. Croesus's absence from church this mom-
ing. I hope the dear lady is not ill.
MR. CRCESUS. No, no — used up a little ; she's been on that Kirmess all the week,
you know, and it's (excuse me) been a dayvilish hard job.
REV. DR. H. Mrs. Cro3sus is apt to go beyond her strength, I fear — her enthusi-
asm is so great.
MR. CRCESUS. It was pure spunk, this time ; she made up her mind to lay the
Bullion faction out cold, and she did it in great style.
REV. DR. H. [coughing]. I noticed a pleasant rivalry.
MR. CRCESUS. It was war to the knife. I told Julia to go in and win, and I'd
back her any amount — and we got there! [chuckling],
REV. DR. H. The whole affair was very successful.
MR. CRCESUS. Successful ! I should think so ! Why, the Bullion booth couldn't
hold a candle to ours ! I paid seven hundred dollars for the floral decorations alone.
REV. DR. H. [coughing violently]. Your generous nature, Mr. Croesus, is a noble
endowment.
MR. CROESUS. Ain't you barking inore'n usual, Doctor ?
REV. DR. H. A trifle only — my old bronchial trouble.
MR. CRCESUS. Better take a run down the coast. You ain't been away since you
got home from Europe in November — and the summer vacation is two months
off yet.
REV. DR. H. I presume my unremitting labors have somewhat aggravated my
trouble, but
MR. CRCESUS \chuckling]. Weak lot, these ministers — have to look after 'em all
the time. I'll speak to the vestry.
REV. DR. H. [smiling too]. What a vein of humor you have!
REV. DR. H. Good-morning, my dear Mrs. Bullion ; in your place, as always.
MRS. BULLION. Yes; / can come to church on Sunday if I have worked all the
week ; some people can't.
REV. DR. H. A little relaxation would have been pardoned to-day, dear Mrs.
Bullion— your zeal during the past week has been so great.
1861-88] PHILIP HENRY WELCH. 521
MRS. BULLION. I did work hard, and it was all the more galling to have my efforts
so belittled, as they were in one direction.
REV. DR. H. [coughing]. Oh, I think not! Everybody spoke of your lovely booth.
MRS. BULLION [softening a little]. Is that so ? I'm really gratified. The Croesuses
party seemed to think there was nothing worth looking at but theirs. What a cold
you have, Doctor Hautton! I told Mr. Bullion there was something more than
mere money outlay to be looked for in the arrangement of the booth, and I am so
pleased you recognized it.
REV. DR. H. [coughing]. I did, indeed! Mrs. Hautton, too, commented on the
lovely combination of color.
MRS. BULLION. Did she ? She has so much taste! But you must take care of
your cough — a little change would break it up the quickest.
REV. DR. H. Yes; I am thinking of a short sea-trip — a run down the coast,
perhaps.
MRS. BULLION. The very thing! I'll have Mr. Bullion see that you get off very
soon.
REV. DR. H. You are so very sympathetic, dear Mrs. Bullion.
MRS. BACKPEW. Good-morning, Dr. Hautton!
REV. DR. H. Oh — ah — good-morning, good-morning!
MRS. BACKPEW. I enjoyed the service so much this morning — it's the first time
in seven weeks I've been at church.
REV. DR. H. H'm — a long time to be away from one's place in the Lord's house.
MRS. BACKPEW. But you know my children have all been ill with scarlet fever.
REV. DR. H. Ah, true ; that alters the case somewhat, still
MRS. BACKPEW. I was so afraid you or Mrs. Hautton might call. I sent a mes-
sage to the rectory, begging you not to do so — the infection is so great, you know.
REV. DR. H. H'm — yes, very thoughtful, I'm sure. I presume the message was
received, as we did not call — did we ?
MRS. BACKPEW. Oh, no! Now, however, all danger is over, and
REV. DR. H. Oh, excuse me, if you please; I must speak to Mrs. Veuveriche a
moment.
REV. DR. H. Good-morning, my dear Mrs. Veuveriche ! Allow me to see you to
your carriage ! [coughing].
MRS. VEUVERICHE. Oh, Doctor Hautton, I want to see you! I am positively
alarmed about you! Your pallor in the pulpit this morning was ghastly. You
must have a change !
REV. DR. H. Oh, it is nothing, my dear madam, nothing!
MRS. VEUVERICHE. Nonsense! it's a great deal. Come around with Mrs. Haut-
ton. and take supper with me after service to-night. Bartrand shall make you a
dish of your favorite terrapin, and we'll see what can be done for you.
REV. DR. H. What a great noble heart you have !
522
GEORGE AUGUSTUS BAKER.
[1861-88
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1849.
LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.
[Point-Lace and Diamonds. 1875.]
you— much obliged, old
- boy.
Yes, it's so ; report says true.
I'm engaged to Nell Latine —
What else could a fellow do?
Governor was getting fierce ;
Asked me, with paternal frown,
When I meant to go to work,
Take a wife, and settle down.
Stormed at my extravagance,
Talked of cutting off supplies —
Fairly bullied me, you know —
Sort of thing that I despise.
Well, you see, I lost worst way
At the races — Governor raged —
So, to try and smooth him down,
I went off, and got engaged.
Sort of put up thing, you know —
All arranged with old Latiue —
Nelly raved about it first,
Said her " pa was awful mean! "
Now it's done we don't much mind —
Tell the truth, I'm rather glad ;
Looking at it every way,
One must own it isn't bad.
She's good-looking, rather rich,—
Mother left her quite a pile ;
Dances, goes out everywhere;
Fine old family, real good style.
Then she's good, as girls go now,
Some idea of wrong and right,
Don't let every man she meets
Kiss her, on the self-same night.
We don't do affection much,
Nell and I are real good friends,
Call there often, sit and chat,
Take her 'round, and there it ends.
Spooning! Well, I tried it once —
Acted like an awful calf —
Said I really loved her. Gad !
You should just have heard her
laugh.
Why, she ran me for a month,
Teased me till she made me wince:
"Mustn't flirt with her," she said,
So I haven't tried it since.
'Twould be pleasant to be loved
Like you read about in books —
Mingling souls, and tender eyes-
Love, and that, in all their looks;
Thoughts of you, and no one else;
Voice that has a tender ring,
Sacrifices made, and — well —
You know — all that sort of tiling.
That's all worn-out talk, they say,
Don't see any of it now —
Spooning on your fiancee
Isn't good style, anyhow.
Just suppose that one of us —
Nell and me, you know — some day
Got like that on some one else-
Might be rather awkward — eh !
All in earnest, like the books —
Wouldn't it be awful rough !
Jove ! if I — but pshaw, what bosh !
Nell and I are safe enough.
Sonfe time in the Spring, I guess ;
Be on hand to wish us joy ?
Be a groomsman, if you like —
Lots of wine — good-bye, old boy.
1861-88] KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER M'DOWELL. 523
ftattyarine ^ert»oo& I3onner
BORN in Holly Springs, Miss., 1849. DIED there, 1883.
AUNT BECKEY "KUNJURED."
[Suwanee River Tales. By Sherwood Banner. 1884.]
"TTTHILE we were at breakfast, Aunt Beckey's niece, Leah, came running
V V in. Leah was a queer little darky, with her hair tied in countless pig-
tails pointing in every direction, and her eyes continually rolling about like
beads in a socket.
" Mars' Charles," said she, "Aunt Beckey done sont me fur you. She
want ter see you quick. She's powerful low dis mornin'. "
" What's the matter ? "
" She do say she's been tricked " — in a loud whisper.
"Nonsense !" cried my father, tossing a biscuit at the small messenger.
" Tell her I'll be with her in five minutes."
I went with father to Aunt Beckey's cabin. What a change in one night !
Her face looked drawn and pinched ; her eyes were startled and full of fear.
" Oh, Mars' Charles ! " she cried, pitifully, " ole Sini has witched me sho*
an' sartin', an' I'm full of little snakes ! "
" Why, Aunt Beckey, what on earth do you mean ? "
" Jes' what I say, Mars' Charles ; an' it's God's trufe I'm speakin'. When
I saw ole Sini at de camp meetin' I mistrusted dat she meant ter work me a
mischief ; an' I kep' away from her jes' as much as I could ; fur, as sho'ly as
de devil lives an' trimbles befo' de face o' de Lord, dat ole witch 'ooman hes
got de Evil Eye. But I couldn't keep my thoughts off'n her ; an' I wus a-
wishin' her evil in my heart all de time."
" Well, Beckey, that was natural enough," said my father, kindly.
" Mebbe it wus natural," groaned Aunt Beckey ; " but oh ! it wus sinful,
an' I am punished fur it, jes' as little Missy said I would be."
"Why, what have you to do with this ?" said my father, turning to me
sternly, to my great alarm.
" I only told her a proverb," faltered I.
" Curses, like chickens, come home ter roost," moaned Aunt Beckey, —
" come home ter roost ! Mebbe if I hadn't been harborin' sech wickedness
an' ill-will in my heart, de good Lord would have protected me from her dep-
eradations on me. For I'll tell you, Mars' Charles, what happened," — and
Aunt Beckey half raised herself in bed and fixed her great black feverish eyes
on my father's face.
" Las' night I was a-lyin' here, wid my eyes wide open an' all my faculties
broad awake, when in come ole Sini, a-slippin' an' a-glidin', like de snake dat
she is. I tried ter jump up an' scream, but she heV me ter de bed wid dat witch
eye of hern, till I wus jes' stagnated, an' couldn't 'a' moved an inch. No, not
if it had V been ter have slipped my neck from de hang-man's noose.
" « Drink dis,' she says, bendin' over me, an hissin' hot in my ear. An' she
524 KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER M' DO WELL. [1861-88
hel' out a cup of water, witch water, full o' somethin' like wrigglin' hairs. I
knowed dey wus snakes, but I had no power ter push dat cup away. I jes*
drunk it down like a baby, an' from dat minnit I wus lost. Ole Sini laughed,
an' a sort of blue flame busted out all around her, an' dar was sech a smell of
brimstone dat I fainted clean away. When I come to, Sini wus gone, but dem
snakes wus wrigglin' through me in streaks of pain, an' from dat on, Mars'
Charles, I ain't had one minnit's peace."
" You should have sent for me, Beckey. I might have given you something
to relieve that pain at once. You have evidently taken a violent cold ; and
your trouble is caused by your old foe, rheumatism. As for the rest, my poor
soul, you have had a bad dream. Old Sini couldn't trick you if she wanted
to ! The good Lord never gave one mortal that power over another."
" And then, papa," cried I eagerly, " Sini lives on the Weatherly planta-
tion, thirty miles away. She couldn't get here ! "
" Dey rides through de air," murmured poor Aunt Beckey. " Dey rides
on de souls o' lost sinners dat wanders up an' down an' over de earth/'
"I won't have that nonsense," said my father sharply; " where is your
common-sense, Beckey ? "
" Snakes ! snakes !" cried Aunt Beckey frantically ; and then to our hor-
ror the poor creature went off into convulsions, foaming at the mouth, clinch-
ing her hands until the nails drew blood, stiffening and relaxing her form,
resisting all attempts at quieting her, until forced to yield to the effects of an
opiate.
This was the beginning. " And Heaven knows what the end will be," said
my father, his kind face clouded with anxiety.
During the next two weeks three doctors in turn were called in to see Aunt
Beckey. Through their skill, perhaps, the attack of pneumonia or inflam-
matory rheumatism with which she had seemed threatened was warded off;
but she grew no stronger. All sorts of remedies were tried in vain. The doc-
tors declared they could do no more for her, and that there was no reason
why she should not, as it were, take up her bed and walk. But poor Aunt
Beckey ! There she lay, tranquil now, sometimes even smiling, saying little,
losing flesh daily, looking out on the vanishing world with big solemn eyes
glowing strangely in her gaunt face, — dying as surely as though Aunt Sini's
imagined draught had been in truth the deadly Italian acqua, the introvabile
poison whose traces could never be discovered, though one drop sufficed to
kill with slow and nameless tortures.
My mother spent hours beside the sufferer, but all her influence was of no
avail. Tricked Aunt Beckey was, and tricked she meant to remain, in the
teeth of a whole college of physicians or sceptics.
" Don't you know, Aunt Beckey," cried my mother one day, " that what
you say is impossible?— that snakes cannot live in the human stomach ? "
"Dey ain't in my stomach, honey, not in pertikeler. Dey is everywhar dat
feelin' lives, a-curlin' an' a-coilm' an' a-strikin' dar fangs over every part of
my po' tormented body."
" Like Ariel, ' flaming amazement ' over all the ship/' murmured I ; for I
had just begun to read Shakespeare.
1861-88] KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER M> DO WELL. 525
" Dey's in my legs now/' continued Aunt Beckey, mournfully ; " an' I tell
you, Mis' Mary, I'd be willin' fur my legs ter be cut off, if I could git red of
de snakes dat race from my knees ter my feet."
It was a strange, gloomy time. The place was never so quiet. No more
dancing to the banjo's ting, nor singing on moonlight nights. The negroes
moved about silently, and talked in low frightened whispers. Every evening
the little cabin was filled with visitors from the adjoining plantations, who
mourned and sang over Aunt Beckey, I believe, the entire night through.
Some of their songs were fine old Methodist hymns, which were rolled out
with grand effect ; others must have been improvised for the occasion, as for
instance :
Satan's sech a liar,
And a kunjurer too ;
Bf you don't mind,
He'll kunjur you I
Kunjur you —
He will kunjur you !
During the fourth week of Aunt Beckey's illness, my father was called
away from home, to be gone some days. But for his absence, the audacious
piece of roguery I am about to chronicle would never have been attempted,
and I should have had no story to tell.
It began with Cousin Henry's persuading mamma to let him take charge
of Aunt Beckey's case.
" You know uncle has given her up," he urged.
"True," said my mother with a sigh ; " he told me, the night before he
left, that, although he believed her disease purely imaginary, yet he had
given up all hope of saving her. But what can you do for her, Henry, — a
mere boy like you, though you are a saucy medical student ? "
"Fancying myself very wise !" laughed Henry. " Go on, Aunt May ; I
know you want a rap at my conceit ! But I am not going over the old ground
with Aunt Beckey. I fancy the wisdom of the schools has been exhausted in
her behalf. I'm so liberal in my views that I've no objection to a bit of quack-
ery, when I can gain a point by it."
" There seems to be only one thing to be said in favor of quacks," re-
marked my mother, thoughtfully ; " they always cure their patients ! "
" Treason in the home camp ! " cried Henry. " What would uncle say to
such a speech ? But do let me try to help poor old Beckey, aunty dear. If I
could save her life, would you object to any means by which that good end
came about ? "
" How could I ? " cried my mother. " No indeed, Henry, if you can help
poor Aunt Beckey, God's blessing will be on your effort ; and my prayers will
go with you every step of the way."
Henry had the grace to blush a little at this, but he skipped off quite cheer-
fully to Aunt Beckey's cabin. Of course I went with him. Where Henry led
I usually followed in those days ! What a torment I was, to be sure !
" I'm awfully sorry to see you so ill, Aunt Beckey," he said cordially.
" Yes, Marster, I'se mighty bad off," she said feebly. Poor soul ! she talked
526 KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER M' DOW ELL. [1861-88
no more of being tricked. She was tired of telling her story to sceptical
ears.
Henry looked at her with perfect gravity. " There has been foul work
here/' said he ; "this is a case of witchcraft."
Aunt Beckey burst into tears. At last she had found some one to believe
her. ' ' Oh, Mars' Henry ! how come you so wise ? You's de fust one — de
only one — ter know de trufe."
" ' None so blind as those who won't see/ " quoted Henry ; " it's as plain to
me as the sunlight ; you've been tricked."
"Not many days of life left for poor old Beckey," said the interesting
victim.
" I'm not so sure of that/' said Henry cheerfully. " I've studied this sub-
ject, and I know the ins and outs of it. I've read more books about demons
than there are hairs on your head ; and I've seen sights to make your heart
jump out of your body. With my own eyes I have seen water blazing like a
tar-barrel on fire ; and I have seen a dead man rise in his shroud and thrust
out his cold arm as if to seize you "
" Oh ! Mars' Henry, hush ! it skeers me to hear sech things. Maybe you're
a Hoodoo witch yourself."
" How can you think such a thing? " shouted Henry. " No ! I am the bit-
terest enemy the Hoodoos have ; and I know how to come up with all their
tricks."
" Maybe you can help me/' said Aunt Beckey timidly.
" Of course I can. I would have offered to do it long before, but these grand
doctors were so sure they could cure you ! But mind, Aunt Beckey ! if I take
you in hand you must obey me in everything. The least slip in following my
directions might prove fatal."
" Try me ! try me ! " she cried, eagerly ; " oh ! Mars' Henry, you can't tell
me nothin' tu hard ter do ; fur I ain't ready yit — de good Lord knows I ain't
— ter cross beyond de swellin' floods."
Henry drew a hideous little wooden image from his pocket, and gave it to
Aunt Beckey with the injunction that she should wear it over her heart night
and day. " It is a very powerf ul fetich," said he, " and will protect you from
any future harm."
Then he turned to gran'mammy, who stood by, with a gleam of hope bright-
ening her face, and told her to kill a white chicken just as the moon rose, and
make a strong broth for Aunt Beckey.
" Put plenty of red pepper and rice in it," said he, " and feed her exactly
one pint every three hours ; not a spoonful more or less, or I can't answer for
the consequences. To-morrow I shall call at the same hour, and I will see to
the snakes that have caused you so much trouble. I suppose you are willing
to suffer some pain in order to get them out of your system ? "
"Yes, Mars' Henry, God knows I'm williu' ter suffer anything." And
Aunt Beckey closed her lips with the air of a martyr.
That afternoon my cousin and my small brother Sam went hunting. On
their return, I noticed that Sam carried a small oblong box in his hand ; but
he would not tell us what it held.
1861-88] KATHARINE SHERWOOD BONNER M'DOWELL. 527
The next day, at dusk, Cousin Henry led the way to Beckey's cabin, fol-
lowed by mother, Ruth, Sam, and myself. Aunt Beckey looked better and
brighter. She declared that she felt strength flowing into her from the little
wooden idol that she held clasped tightly to her bosom. And it did not occur
to the good simple soul that the chicken-soup might be responsible for this
new-born strength ! The backyard was densely packed with negroes, but
not one was allowed to enter. Inside the cabin, the scene was worthy of a
painter. The primitive lamp — an iron bowl of lard-oil, with a wick floating on
the surface — burned with a black smoke above the flame, and cast strange,
flaring, hobgoblin shadows on the whitewashed walls. Henry drew a chalk
circle in the middle of the floor, marking inside of it ridiculous designs, which
it pleased him to call cabalistic. Then he swung a lighted censer, chanted
a Latin hymn, and was withal so grave that even I dared no longer smile,
though the pungent odor of the incense set me sneezing.
Aunt Beckey's dark figure lay motionless on the bed ; but her great hollow
eyes followed Henry's every motion with painful eagerness, until at a signal
from the impromptu doctor, my mother stepped forward and tied a cool
bandage across the hot lids.
Gran'mammy bared her daughter's swollen rheumatic limbs, and Henry
rubbed them gently for about half an hour. Then he said : "I find, Aunt
Beckey, that the snakes are now all in the right leg. The fetich has troubled
them so much that they are trying to get out. The only thing to do is to cut
open the foot, and they will drop out of themselves. Are you willing ? "
" Go on/' said Aunt Beckey.
" Stand back, all of you ! " cried Henry. " No one must come near me but
Sam. He must hold the basin."
I saw a twinkle in the small boy's eye, and I crept pretty near myself, un-
rebuked by my absorbed cousin. He pierced the foot with a sharp lancet, and
the blood flowed freely. The light was so dim that for all my efforts I could
not quite see what was going on. But I noticed that Sam held the oblong
box in one hand ; and from time to time an exclamation from one of this
precious pair — " There is another ! " " Don't let it get away ! " " Four, is
it ? " or some such significant cry — set us all quivering with excitement.
" That is all," said Henry at last. " She is saved."
He bound up the foot, and took the bandage from Aunt Beckey's eyes.
" Fetch another light," he said quietly.
Then he held the basin, so that she could examine its contents ; and there
were at least six wicked-looking little snakes. " Those who have eyes to see,
let them see," said that wretched Henry, without so much as the flicker of an
eyelash !
I can hear Aunt Beckey's scream of joy to this day ! Then how she wept !
What blessings she called down on the head of the arch impostor ! What
shouts of " Glory ! Glory !" resounded through the little room ! How the
darkies outside took up the strain, and all night long praised the Lord in
singing and in prayer.
As for my dear mother, she was so divided between indignation and laugh-
ter that she had to hurry away. She was so conscientious that she could not
528
THOMAS CHALMERS HARBAUGH.
[1861-88
reconcile herself to such a tremendous fraud as that which Henry had prac-
tised ; and yet, when she saw our dear old Aunt Beckey fast getting well, how-
could she help being grateful to the clever and mischievous boy who had
brought it about ?
My father heard the story with an unmoved face. " Lucky I was not here,
you young rascal/' he remarked.
" Lucky for Aunt Beckey," said Henry dryly.
Certainly, Aunt Beckey did get well, and appeared better in mind and
body for her strange experience. She has not been tricked since ; thanks per-
haps to the fetich that she wears like an amulet over her heart ; or to the
charitable prayers that she is in the habit of offering for Aunt Sini.
" No mo' curses shell come home to roost on my head," she says, with slow,
solemn words ; " fur I bless, an' I curse not, an' I pray fur dem dat 'spitefully
uses me ; an' dis I shall do forevermo', as long as I live on de earth, an' my
name is Beckey Bonner. "
Cljomag
BORN in Middletown, Md., 1849.
GRANT— DYING.
TT seemed to me that yesternight
•*- I heaVd the branches sighing
Beneatli my window, soft and low :
"The great war chief is dying! "
His marches o'er, his battles won,
His bright sword sheathed forever,
The grand old soldier stands beside
The dark and silent river ;
Whilst fame for him a chaplet weaves
Within her fairest bowers,
Of Shiloh's never-fading leaves,
And Donelson's bright flowers ;
Grim Vicksburg gives a crimson rose,
Embalmed in deathless story,
And Appomattox adds a star
To crown the wreath of glory.
He's dying now ! the angel Death,
Insatiate and impartial,
With icy fingers, stoops to touch
The Union's old field-marshal,
Who, like a soldier brave, awaits
The summons so appalling,
While o'er the land, from sea to sea,
The silent tear is falling.
Still in his veterans' hearts to-day
His battle-drums are beating;
His bugles always blew advance —
With him was no retreating;
And tenderly, with moistened eye,
Columbia bends above him,
And everywhere the sorrowed heart
Tells how the people love him.
From golden-fruited orange groves
To where the pines are sighing,
The winds waft messages of love
To Grant, the hero, dying.
The Old World sends across the wave
A token of its sorrow ;
The greatest chief alive to-day
May fall asleep to-morrow.
O touch the hero gently, Death !
The land is filled with weeping,
And be his passing like a child's —
The counterfeit of sleeping.
A million boys in blue now stand
Around their dying brother;
The mighty world knows but one Grant,
'Twill never know another.
1861-88] THOMAS RUSSELL SULLIVAN. 529
So let him die with honors crowned I listened to the winds last night,
To live fore'er in story ; How mournful was their sighing !
The fields he won, the land he saved, It seemed to me a nation's sobs
Will be his lasting glory. O'er Grant, the soldier, dying.
\) mighty Ajax of the North ! O touch him, touch him softly, Death,
Old field-marshal immortal ! Insatiate and impartial ;
My saddened heart's with thee to-day He is the Union's mightiest chief —
Before the darkened portal. My cherished old field-marshal !
April, IbSo.
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1849.
"SANS VIE, SANS AMOUR."
[Roses of Shadow. A Novel. 1885.]
rpHE walk was enchanting. The air was clear and fresh with just a touch
-L of frost in it, cool in the shadow, but very warm in the sun. In a little
patch of garden before the one house upon the island, the clumps of crimson
and yellow dahlias had just reached perfection. A collie dog had stretched
himself out in the porch. Near by stood a middle-aged woman picking
grapes from a trellis. She had in her face that same placid, saint-like expres-
sion— the look of Sister Felicienne. " It is the place," thought Miss G6-
rard, and she longed to talk with her. But the woman looked at her shyly
and did not speak. She walked on. The sumachs were blood-red, the maples
were pink and gold ; at her feet the ground was purple with great beds of
wild asters. The little wood-paths running off into the wilderness were
ankle-deep with fallen leaves, through which the squirrels scurried away at
the sound of her step. She met no one. The rush of summer travel was over ;
the world and his wife had taken themselves off, and the wonderful island in
all its tangled beauty was hers to enjoy alone. All around her, through the
flickering leaves, the rapids leaped and shone and sung to the eternal drum,
drum, drum of the cataract that thrilled her with its invisible presence. All
that she could see delighted and exhilarated her. She gave herself up to this
mysterious charm, lingering at every turn to draw long breaths, and to study
the book that is open to all men, that no man ever learns. There was an old
tree cut all over with names and dates — long-forgotten challenges to Time,
some of them already blotted out by his reproving fingers. One name, high
above the others, interested her. ' ' Kenyon, 1821. " A good name, an uncom-
mon one ; she remembered it in an old romance of Hawthorne. Perhaps he
had first seen it there, and had stopped in that very place to write it down.
" 1821 ." It must have been deeply cut to endure so long. She wondered if
Kenyon were still living and who he was.
She wandered clown to a reedy spot on the shore, where the rapid, none the
VOL. x.— 34
530 THOMAS RUSSELL SULLIVAN. [1861-88
less swift for being shallow, went gliding along with hardly a ripple. For
some time she watched its glassy surface and the smooth pebbles lying there
just out of reach ; then, turning away, she stumbled and almost fell over a
rock half hidden in the yellow grass. Her eyes caught some lettering upon
the stone, and she knelt down to read it. Many winters had dealt rudely with
it — it was almost gone. There was no name ; no date ; but at last she made
out these words :
ALL IS CHANGE
ETERNAL PROGRESS
NO DEATH
She pondered long over this strange inscription. She had never heard of
it before. Whose work was it ? The old story of the hermit of the falls came
back to her ; if that were true, he had built his rough shelter within a stone's
throw ; and but a few yards off he had gone to his death in the river, under
the American Fall. Had he carved here at his own gravestone ? Or had some
hermit of a day, like this of hers, devoted himself to this memorial ? No ; the
man who did that knew the ground well, and loved it as one loves a dear rela-
tion. The words would not go from her mind. "Eternal Progress ! " The
whole spirit of the place was there.
She followed the path again to the outer shore of the island, till far off upon
the Canadian side the familiar lines of the convent came out against the sky.
At last she stood in sight of home, yet parted from it by the wide river at its
fiercest point — by that scene which is the despair of all who try to paint it,
either in colors or in words. There was the broken verge of the great Horse-
shoe, along which the water waited, as if in wonder at its own recklessness,
with the shining stretch of unbroken green in it, down which nothing seemed
to move. There, too, almost in the centre of the fall, and on its very edge,
was the flat rock that the water never covers, even for an instant. As a child,
she had often longed for the power to stand there and look down. She had
known the Horseshoe well, but never well enough. For the greater fall, un-
like its American fellow, permits no one to enter upon intimate relations with
it, but holds itself aloof, as Jove did from Semele. From many points upon
the shore it is possible to get glimpses of its far-off grandeur. At either end
one may draw nearer, and lose one half of i t in peering over at the other. But
no man has ever seen it all and lived.
Leaving behind her all this tumult of the waters, Miss Gerard turned off
into the quiet woods, among the startled squirrels, through the thickly-
strewn leaves, and over mossy logs that crumbled when she stepped upon
them. Here there were no paths ; but she pushed on, until she came out
upon another shore, at the southern end of the island. Here a triangular
shoal stretches away for a long distance, to a vanishing point where the river
divides into two branches that form the American and Canadian Eapids, be-
tween which Goat Island lies. This reach of still water, hardly three feet in
depth, is smooth as the water of a lake— so smooth that on that day it only
lapped gently the grassy bank upon which Miss Gerard sat down to rest.
There was little here to attract the eye or to divert the mind. It was a quiet
1361-88] THOMAS RUSSELL SULLIVAN. 531
nook., where one might easily drowse away an hour in a waking dream. And
before long such a dream began to steal in upon Miss Gerard — a dream of her
past life, in which, one by one, came trooping back, unbidden, a host of rec-
ollections, some sad, some bright ; all its great events, and others so slight
that they had been long forgotten. . . : »
To-day all these forgotten things came back with strange vividness as she
sat alone in sight of the very spot where her career of ingratitude had begun.
An hour passed and left her still absorbed, struggling against herself in her
own defence, this time with indifferent success. At last she forced herself
to think of other things. She looked out over the quiet shoal to the point
beyond it, where the rapid changed its course and broke into two streams ;
beyond that still to the distant river, that looked as calm as the water at her
feet. She could see the white sail of a boat there miles away. She wondered
how near the rapid it would be safe for the boat to come. What if it should
venture too near and be drawn down beyond the reach of help ? It would not
take long. From that place to the great fall could hardly be a minute's jour-
ney, by the river.
The shadows were growing longer. Just one look at another place close
by, and she would turn back to the hotel, and then to the ferry. It was time
to go on.
Stretching from the south shore of Goat Island straight out into the heart
of the boiling rapid are three wonders of Niagara, that till lately were inac-
cessible— three feathery islands, known as the Three Sisters, separated from
their huge brother by three chasms, over which light bridges have been
thrown. Through these channels, that it is always wearing deeper, the river
plunges in three sister torrents, all beautiful, yet resembling each other only
faintly as sisters are wont to do. The first stream, that falls over its black
rocks like a net-work of jewels, is comparatively shallow, yet it would be un-
safe to set foot in it. The first island, like the others, is a jungle of pine and
birch and swamp-maple, struggling up between mossy rocks and the decayed
stumps of older growth. Miss Gerard did not wait here long, for just at the
end of the bridge she found an artist sketching. She remembered his face at
the hotel, and perhaps he remembered hers, for he eyed it curiously over his
easel. She went on over the second torrent, which breaks into a bar of foam
above the bridge and tumbles all in a heap below. Queer little bits of rainbow
play about the foaming places, but if looked for twice are not to be found.
She watched for them a moment or two, and then followed the path along
over the middle isle to its farther shore, where some wooden steps lead down
to the rocks below the last bridge. She was well out into the river, and this
was the point she wanted. Here she seated herself close upon the brink of the
third torrent, which is deeper and wider and wilder than the others. As she
looked up at it, the water formed for her its broken horizon line against the
sky, and seemed to come tearing down out of the blue distance, as if all the
evil spirits of Baron Fouque were struggling and snarling in it for the mas-
tery. It was of all colors from bottle-green to black ; and, at its lowest point,
the water was lashed into showers of drops, tossed high into the air and glit-
tering like bits of ice. The gulf is perhaps thirty yards in width, and beyond
532 THOMAS RUSSELL SULLIVAN. [1861-88
it lies the narrow strip of the outer island ; beyond that, the great Canadian
Rapid stretches away like the sea, but more terrible than the sea, because of
its reckless onward movement that never slackens, that no human force can
stem or resist even for a single instant. Far out in this fearful current, a
great, broken globe of foam rises and falls incessantly above the highest waves.
This column of water, which has been named the Leaping Rock, seems to nod
and beckon with uncouth gestures, as though there were life imprisoned in it.
To Miss Gerard, in childhood, it had been the embodiment of Kiihleborn, the
evil genius of the story of Undine. She had watched it often from her win-
dow ; it had been a real thing to her then, and she half believed that its fran-
tic motions had some hidden meaning in them that could be learned. To-
day, she looked at it again and shuddered.
All around her the noise was deafening. The water at her feet was of the
purest green, so beautiful that it was hard to believe death lurked in it. Down
the river, a few hundred yards to the north, this same color repeated itself in
a clear, glassy line — the brink of the Horseshoe — where all this rush and roar
of water seemed to end quietly without a murmur or a ripple. And the con-
vent had coine in sight again ; it made a dark blot there on the western sky.
That was her goal. It looked not unlike a prison. It was a grim rest, after
all, that awaited her behind those stone walls. Was it worth while to come so
far and gain so little ? She shook her head and sighed.
Then the past came rushing back with all its bitter memories, its charges
that she knew were just. They could not be denied, they would not be for-
gotten. The cross ! Ah, the cross ! If she had only not stolen it ; if, having
stolen it, she had only sent it back in answer to her sister's letter ! And her
course with Mr. Musgrave— how she had deceived him ! She had been false
as the water there — as cold and cruel and heartless as that smiling rapid.
How she had lied over and over again to him and to Gilbert Marvin ! Marvin !
Ah, there was a despairing thought ! She had been so near to real happi-
ness. In another moment she believed he would have spoken. Then all these
wrongs might have been set right. Her love for him was so far above all other
influences she had ever known, that in time it must have changed her nature,
and given her the power to make atonement for every sin she had committed.
How, she did not know ; but in that way peace of mind would have surely
come. And now she had shut the door upon the world. Well, it had treated
her harshly. Why had she been made to suffer and endure so much ? She
had not asked for life— it was all a mistake ; and yet, perhaps, she had fifty
years to live.
A white sea-gull soared along overhead. How strange to see him there so
far from home ! She watched him as he flew northward toward Lake Ontario.
"He will drop down there," she thought, "upon some gentle wave, fold his
wings and rest." And for her there was no rest. She could never stay in the
convent. While life lasted, through all those fifty years, the eternal struggle
must go on. She was like the rapid.
She looked down at it ; the spray was flying over her, the water was within
reach of her hand. She knew every turn of it well. It had a dreadful beauty,
like that of Medusa and the Sirens ; their danger, too. To watch and listen
1861-88] FRANCIS SAL TVS SALTUS. 533
there gave one a longing to leap into it. It held her now with an impression of
enchanting loveliness, of power and of cruelty. Ifc was merciless, irresistible.
"Sans vie, sans amour! " Yes, she was like the rapid. Then, why not one
with it ? Why not yield to this new impulse, make the plunge, and become a
part of that inexorable force that seemed to draw her down ? One little mo-
ment would spare her all the weariness of living. "It is only putting one's
foot into cold water," she thought. She caught up a twig and tossed it into
the foam. "Just there — it would be just there !" she said aloud ; and be-
fore she spoke the twig was out of sight.
An old tree grew on the very edge, throwing one great lower limb out over
the water. She leaped up and ran along it, ready to throw herself headlong.
She waited a second too long and could not do it. "No, I dare not," she
cried ; " I am not fit to die so. I must live — live and pray ! " She started back
along the branch ; there came a crash, and she knew that it had broken. Then,
with a wild shriek that her own ears hardly caught above the mocking uproar
that surrounded her, she fell through the shining water-drops — and was gone.
They never found her. Hours afterward, when she was missed, the artist
remembered that she had passed him on the way to the outer islands, and that
he had not noticed her return. A search revealed the broken branch and a
footprint or two, from which her death and the manner of it were surmised.
The story passed into the folk-lore of the place ; and to this day the queer,
amphibious guides to the ledge below the Horseshoe whisper of a sunless cav-
ern, where her bones are said to lie with the water dripping over them, turned
into stone so hard that not Niagara itself can ever soften it or wear it away.
And on through all the years go those foaming ridges, howling like fiends,
lashing the dark cliffs, sweeping round the great whirlpool and still pressing
forward in eternal progress.
Eternal Progress ! Yes. But it leads on through an Eternal Peace in the
depths of the great lake, where the white- winged sea-gull settled down. And
the waters there are as blue as the wide arch of Heaven.
tfrancig
BORN in New York, N. Y., 1849. DIED at Tarrytown, N. Y., 1889.
GRAVES.
riiHE sad night-wind, sighing o'er sea and strand,
-L Haunts the cold marble where Napoleon sleeps ;
O'er Charlemagne's grave, far in the northern land,
A vigil through the centuries it keeps.
O'er Grecian kings its plaintive music sweeps:
Proud Philip's tomb is by its dark wings fanned,
And round old Pharaohs, deep in desert sand,
Where the grim Sphinx leers to the stars, it creeps.
534 THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. [1861-88
Yet weary it is of this chill, spectral gloom,
For mouldering grandeur it can have no care,
Rich mausoleums in their granite doom
It fain would leave, to wander on elsewhere,
To cool the violets upon Gautier's tomb,
And lull the long grass over Baudelaire.
1874.
ANANKE.
A TREE is blooming in some distant grove,
A mammoth oak whose branches pierce the sky.
Peopled with birds, where agile squirrels rove,
"Where owlets hoot, and where the eagles die.
A maid is seated in a dreary room,
Her drearier thoughts are far, ah! far away,
While with a heart immersed in utter gloom
She weaves a cerement till the close of day.
Fair flowers are sleeping in the frozen ground
Until spring beckons them in ways unseen,
To aid the glory of new Nature crowned,
And, star-like, light the meadow's dewy green.
A. block of marble in a quarry lies,
Inert, unfeeling, in its silent sleep,
While o'er it, roaring through the sombre skies,
The wintry winds their doleful vigils keep.
From that same tree my coffin will be wrought,
Kind hands will place that flower upon my head;
The maiden's work will be the shroud I sought,
The marble block will hold me with the dead.
Janbiet;,
BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1849.
SAN ANTONIO OF THE GARDENS.
[The Century Magazine. 1889.]
HE who goes westward from the City of Mexico goes out by the gate of
the Tlaxpana, and so along the causeway to Tacuba, the very path
over which the Spaniards passed, leaving many killed and of the living nearly
all being sore wounded, when they fled from the city that dismal night more
than three hundred and fifty years ago.
1861-88] THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. 535
But this now is a very pleasant path ; for on the right and on the left of it
are fertile fields and trimly kept gardens, and shading it are many great green
trees. And only a little way out upon it is the village of San Antonio, built
of gray-brown adobe on the level land beside the causeway, and peopled by
certain ragged, uncared-for, easy-going descendants of the race that now
serves where once it ruled.
The wayfaring stranger who loves a dish of friendly talk with chance ac-
quaintances— and the wayfaring stranger not thus socially disposed will find
all lands barren, and will come again to his own land not one whit the wiser
of the world than when he left his home — will rest awhile in this village to
chat with whomsoever it may please Heaven to send him to hold converse
with. Nor need he fear that Heaven will not provide him with a talking-
mate. Let him but seat himself beneath one of the great trees beside the
roadway, and presently a stray old man will pause to pass a greeting with him;
then a vender of earthen pots, coming in from some outlying village to the
city to sell his wares, will halt his donkey — on whose patient back the great
red pots are high heaped up — and will ask in a gentle voice for a light for his
corn-husk cigarito; an old woman will hobble up and say a friendly word or
two ; a young woman with a baby in her arms will edge out shyly from a near-
by doorway, and so stand modestly aside, but ready to add her contribution
to the conversation when it shall become a little more general and when ami-
cable relations with the stranger shall become a little more assured; then an-
other old man or two will join the group, accepting with a grave courtesy the
offered cigarito ; a lazy young fellow with baskets to sell, but with no ap-
parent desire to sell them, will seat himself near ; and outside of all will be a
light fringe of pernicious ragged little boys. And all of these simple-hearted
folk presently will be as frank and as friendly as though they had known their
chance acquaintance all their lives.
It will be in such wayside talk as this that the stranger alone will learn —
for in books he will look for it in vain — the story of the little church that once
stood hereabouts ; of the very little convent there was adjoining it ; of the two
Franciscan friars who ministered in the church, dwelling in the convent, and
whose earthly possessions (and these but held in trust from Heaven) were a
little garden, and the doves which had built nests in a corner of the convent,
and a certain grave, black cat, and a lame and very lazy ass.
It was all in the far-back time when the Spanish viceroys were the rulers of
Mexico ; when the fleet sailed once a year from Cadiz westward, and once a
year sailed eastward again from Vera Cruz laden deep with silver from the
mines ; when hushed voices still told in horror of great cruelties done by the
fierce Chichemecas to frontier adventurers into the region north of Quere-
taro ; and when the good fathers, setting death and torture at defiance that
God's work might be done by them, still were busy sending out their holy
missions for the saving of heathen souls. The viceroy in those days was the
illustrious Don Antonio Sebastian de Toledo, Marques de Mancera: who
came into the capital of his vice-kingdom and there assumed the duties of his
high office in the month of October in the year 1 664.
About this time it was that in the convent of San Antonio de Padua-— that
53(5 THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. [1861-88
in a little time came to be known only as San Antonio of the Gardens, because
hereabouts, then as now, the fertile land was laid out in many little gardens
which the Indians tilled — there dwelt the two brothers Antonio and Inocen-
cio. Fray Inocencio was a short and round and plump-cheeked, ruddy little
man; and Fray Antonio was very tall and thin and pale. These brothers were
vowed to the rule of St. Francis, and until ordered hither for the cure of In-
dians' souls the great convent of San Francisco in the City of Mexico had
been their home. A wonderful change it was for them when they came out
from that "vast bee-hive of holiness" — as the convent of San Francisco is
called by a chronicler of the time — to dwell in a convent whereof they were
the only inhabitants, and the extent of which, not counting the tiny sacristy
of their tiny church, was just a little refectory, that also was a kitchen, and
two cells. Yet had it been the size of a city they scarcely could have been
more elated by their translation ; for whereas in the great convent they were
but two brothers among hundreds, with many above them in degree, here
they were everything themselves — free to divide between them the whole
range of the conventual offices, from that of Portero up to that of Guardian.
As they stood for the first time alone together in the little garden, the door
behind them that opened upon the causeway being closed and barred, and as
the knowledge of the absolute power that was theirs in this their kingdom
came into their hearts, Fray Inocencio, who was of a lively disposition and
very quick to give animated expression to his thoughts, skipped in a most
carnal fashion ; and still more carnally stood for an appreciable length of
time upon one leg while he held the other leg in the air.
Fray Antonio, whose mind was of a graver and more temperate cast, looked
upon this exhibition of worldly pride sorrowfully, but not reproachfully.
Weakness of the flesh was Fray Inocencio's besetting sin; but he knew his
weakness, and when he failed to overcome it he expiated it by penance and
sought remission of it in prayer. This was known to Fray Antonio, and so
was his loving, gentle soul the less disposed to manifest by outward sign his
inward sorrow when, as now, his brother lapsed from grace.
In the darkness that night Fray Antonio heard the sound of scourging in
Fray Inocencio's cell, and in the morning the usually ruddy cheeks of the
little round brother were pale and his eyes were dull ; but peace rested on
him, for he felt that through the sacrifice of the flesh the sin of the flesh had
been expiated, and so his spirit was at rest.
"When the mass which they celebrated together was ended, and they had
come into the refectory to make and to drink their chocolate, he said simply,
as he stood beside the fireplace, stirring the chocolate in its earthen pot :
" God brings the least deserving of us, brother, into the high places of the
earth ; but he loves best those who, though thus exalted, still serve him hum-
bly. We have only to seek his aid, and of his strength he will so arm our weak-
ness that we may prevail over the sin that shows itself in carnal pride."
The gentle eyes of Fray Antonio rested lovingly upon Fray Inocencio, and
in them shone the light of a comforting and sustaining trust as he answered :
"Brother, the grace of God ever is greater than our sins." Nor did the
thought at all enter his simple soul — as assuredly it would have entered a soul
1861-88] THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. 537
in which there had been even the very least of worldly guile — that other than
a serious meaning could attach to Fray Inocencio's reference to the exalta-
tion of their estate. Thus ever did Fray Antonio help and strengthen Fray
Inocencio with a sweet and holy love : and many needs had Fray Inocencio of
such comforting, for, the flesh proverbially being weak in little round and
ruddy men, the seasons were sadly short in which he had not some misdeed
of his unruly, nature to bemoan.
In all seasons a heavy burden rested upon Fray Inocencio's soul because he
was so ruddy and so fat. This corporal affliction, sadly unseemly in one
vowed to the austerities of the religious life, was of such a nature that absti-
nence had no effect upon it, and for the removal of it even prayer was with-
out avail ; so that what little solace his case allowed him was to be got by re-
garding his fatness as a cross put upon him for his soul's sake, wan .ing him
to eat little and so to mortify the flesh that good might come to him in the
end. Yet was this a hard cross for Fray Inocencio to bear ; for he had a very
eager natural love, as strong as it was sinful, for all manner of toothsome
things. Especially had he a most passionate fondness for beans which after
being well boiled were fried delicately in lard — which dish was not less deli-
cious than it was damnably fattening. Most pathetic was his look of resigna-
tion when beans thus cooked were served in the refectory of the great con-
vent of San Francisco, as he resisted their succulent temptation and ate
instead the little dry cakes of corn-meal.
In the convent of San Antonio of the Gardens Fray Inocencio was spared
.the temptation of fried beans, for Fray Antonio, that his brother might not
be led into sin, declared that he preferred his beans boiled. And more than
this did Fray Antonio do for his brother's comforting. Being himself a most
abstemious man naturally, with no liking for food save as a means of sustain-
ing his life and strength in God's service, he deliberately set himself to eating
in private great quantities of all manner of fattening things ; and this he did
to the end that by rounding out his own leanness he might make the plump-
ness of Fray Inocencio easier for him to bear. But beyond throwing into
disorder by such unwonted quantities of rich food the functions of his liver,
the stuffing that Fray Antonio gave himself produced no results. Therefore,
being as yellow as an orange, he gladly gave over his strange discipline. And
this was wise of him : for the simple truth of the matter was that it had
pleased God that one of these brothers should be fat and that the other should
be thin ; and neither of them, howsoever he might strive, the one by eating
too little and the other by eating too much, could change that which God
had decreed.
Though thus tried in flesh and in spirit, these brothers were very happy in
their life in the little convent and in their ministrations of the sacred offices
in the little church. In their garden they tilled the earth lovingly, taking
great pleasure in its sweet, fresh smell, and in the bounteous return that it
yielded them. Fray Inoceucio had a rare knowledge of the gardener's craft,
and especially had he a relish for growing such vegetables as were good to eat.
In this previcarious form of gluttony, as it might be called, he did not deny
himself ; for, setting a stout guard upon the cravings of his own stomach, he
538 THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. [1861-88
carried on his back the best of all the good things which he grew to the great
convent, where the brothers, less scrupulous than himself, ate them all with
a prompt avidity. Fray Antonio, though he did his share of work in the
kitchen-garden, found his pleasure in the growing of beautiful and sweet-
smelling flowers, which each day he set before the sacred image of the great
San Antonio that the little church enshrined. Sometimes Fray Antonio fan-
cied that as he placed upon the altar dedicated to his holy nanjesake these
sweet offerings there shone upon the gentle face of the saint a loving smile.
Nor would such miracle have been surprising, for this very image— as the
chronicler Vetancurt tells — had raised a dead child to life ! In that good
time faith was a living principle in the hearts of men, and the blessed saints
graciously requited the trust that was placed in them by working many mir-
acles. It is not so in these evil later days.
In the holy work that was set them of saving heathen souls the brothers
ever were instant and zealous. Fray Inocencio assailed the devil at all times
and in all places with a stout energy that was in keeping with the sturdiness
of his body and mind. Indeed, such pictures as this plump little friar drew
of the entire devilishness of a very personal devil, and of the blazing horrors
of a most real hell, sufficed to scare many an Indian, though through all his
life set firmly in the wicked courses of idolatry, into the saving ways of Chris-
tian righteousness. Fray Antonio was less successful as an exorciser, but his
gentle words and great tenderness of heart and spirit enabled him to make,
perhaps, more lasting converts. Through the ministrations of this good
brother many a troubled heathen soul was set at rest in Christian holiness,
being brought happily to grace through love.
So far as this was possible in one whose heart was full of love and charity,
Fray Inocencio at times envied Fray Antonio because he was superior to the
many temptations which made his own life burdensome ; but he knew noth-
ing of the temptations of the spirit which beset his finer-natured companion,
which sometimes, as in the present yielding to a too whimsical humor, — that
yet was as much a part of his natural being as of Fray Inocencio's natural
being were his stoutness and his ruddy cheeks, — begot evil results which
caused him heart- bitterness and much distress of soul.
Doubtless, being more sublimate, the pains of conscience which attend
upon waywardness of the spirit are more searching than those which attend
upon waywardness of the flesh ; yet because of their gross and tangible nature
the fleshly sins are more instantly appalling. Thus Fray Inocencio probably
would have reasoned, had he possessed a mind disposed towards such abstract
considerations, together with a knowledge of the spiritual suffering which
Fray Antonio at times endured ; but as neither of these possessions was his,
he simply bemoaned very heartily his own frequent lapses from grace. And
greatly did he lament one especially great sin, the doing of which came about
in this wise :
One day, while Fray Inocencio was gathering lettuces, and while Fray An-
tonio was tending lovingly his flowers, there came over the top of the garden
wall the sound of angry words, and then of heavy blows, and then of a cry
1361-88] THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. 539
that was something like the bray of an ass, and — being a very great cry and
terrible— something like the shriek of a giant in pain. With the promptness
that was customary with him, Fray Inocencio unbarred the door and ran out
upon the causeway to see what was the meaning of this commotion ; and as
beside the door stood a stout staff, that he carried with him for support when
he walked to the great convent with a back-load of vegetables, he seized it
that he might not affront the danger, if danger there were, unarmed. More
deliberately came out also through the doorway Fray Antonio. And very
pitiable was the sight that met their eyes.
Upon the ground lay a poor ass, laden with great earthen pots, and the two
Indians with him were beating him with their sticks to make him rise, the
while shouting at him all manner of coarse abuse. The ass, with so agonized
a look that a heart of stone would have been melted by it with pity, was cry-
ing aloud in pain ; for one of his legs — as the brothers saw, though the In-
dians seemed to perceive it not — had broken under him as he fell beneath his
too-heavy load. He was but a small ass, and his lading of pots would have
been overheavy for a strong mule.
Then was the wrath of Fray Inocencio so kindled within him that every
fibre of his little round person tingled with rage. Forgetting all the teach-
ings of gentleness of the blessed saints, and the example of long-suffering set
him by the good father St. Francis, and his own vow to a life of peace and
holiness — forgetting all this, Fray Inocencio in an instant had gathered up
and tucked into his girdle the skirts of his blue gown, that he might have the
free use of his short stout legs, and most carnally had fallen afoul of the backs
and shoulders of those cruel Indians with his staff.
As for the Indians, this visible outbreak of the wrath of God took them so
sharply by surprise, while such pain penetrated their brown hides with the
blows which Fray Inocencio rained down upon them, that without pausing
for thought or consideration they incontinently took to their heels. In an
instant they had plunged through the slimy water of the acequia beside the
causeway, and were fleeing away across the meadow-laud beyond as though
their assailant had been not a little stout friar, but the devil himself.
Then Fray Inocencio, puffing greatly — for at the best of times he was but
a short-winded man — knelt down beside the ass with Fray Antonio and aided
him to loose the cords which bound the pots upon its back, and so set it free
of its grievous load. Together, very tenderly, they lifted the maimed crea-
ture and carried it into the convent garden ; and while Fray Inocencio gave
it water to drink — and this before he had quenched his own thirst — Fray An-
tonio, who had a good knowledge of the surgeon's craft, set himself to bind-
ing up the broken leg in a splint. And the poor ass, seeming to understand
that it was being dealt with by friends who meant well by it, suffered them
to do with it what they would.
It was not until their labors were ended — the broken leg well set, and the
ass straitly fastened in a little stall that they made for him that he might not
stir the leg in its setting — that Fray Inocencio had time to think of the sin
which he had fallen into in giving his righteous anger such unrighteous vent.
He was the more distressed in spirit because, for the very life of him, he could
540 THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. [1861-88
not create in his heart a sincere repentance of haying given to those Indians
so sound a beating. Strive however much he might to crush it, the thought
would assert itself that they richly deserved not only every blow that they
received, but also the great many more blows which they escaped by running
away. And with this thought most persistently came a carnal longing to get
at them again and finish the work that he had so vigorously begun. To Fray
Inocencio's dying day this sin remained with him ; and while the prickings
of it were hard to bear, he had of it, at least, the compensating advantage
that it always was with him as a wholesome reminder to keep his too-ready
anger within due bounds.
Fortunately — for it is to be feared that he could not have resisted it— the
temptation to finish the beating was not put in his way. That the Indians
returned and carried off their earthen pots was inferred by the brothers when,
having ended their surgical and other ministrations to the ass's comfort, they
looked out upon the causeway and found that the pots were gone. And they
believed that from the Indians came the rather mysterious old man who pre-
sented himself the next day at the convent with a confused request for medi-
cine for a sick child ; and who contrived, while the apothecary-work was in
progress, to get into the garden where the hurt ass was and make an exami-
nation of its state. But from this old man they could learn nothing of the
owners of the ass ; nor were their many inquiries among the Indians round
about better rewarded. That the owners thus modestly veiled their identity,
and that they made no effort to reclaim their property, on the whole was not
surprising. No doubt they held, and wisely, that a broken-legged ass was not
worth adventuring for within the dangerous range of the little friar's staff.
Chiefly, asFray Inocencio very firmly believed, because of the many prayers
to this end that he addressed to the miracle-working image of San Antonio
that was in the little church, the ass in due season got well. But as, through
some mischance, the broken bone had gone awry in the splint, it healed
crookedly ; so that that leg was shorter than the other legs. From this fresh
misfortune the ass suffered no pain, but thenceforward he was very lame.
Being thus healed, and, after a fashion, a serviceable ass once more, the
question what they should do with him perplexed the brothers sadly. Of
other valuable property, being strictly vowed to poverty, they had none. The
cat Timoteo, called Susurro, and the doves, were wild things of nature ; of
no use to man save in so far as they were a source of happiness through the
love in them and for them that God inspired. But the case of the ass, an
animal both useful and valuable, was different. Fray Inocencio, into whose
heart the devil put the thought that the ass very well might bear to the great
convent the loads which he himself was wont to carry thither on his back,
reasoned that, inasmuch as the ass in truth was not their own, but only in
their ward until his rightful owners should be found, they might use him in
all conscionable work without falling into sin. But Fray Antonio, seeing
more clearly, pointed out that they had striven earnestly but vainly to find
the ass's owner, and that now there was small chance that the owner ever
would be found at all ; and he showed, further, that no matter m whom
might vest his actual ownership, to them would belong, should they elect to
1861-88] THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. 541
avail themselves of it, his usufruct ; which possession was a thing of value in-
consistent with the poverty to which they were vowed. Yet, since the ass
was not truly their own, he admitted, they had no right to sell him and to
give the money to the poor — supposing the somewhat improbable case of any
one being found willing to buy an ass that in addition to great natural lazi-
ness was hopelessly lame ; nor were they free to give him away. Giving him
in trust, to be surrendered should his owner ever be found, was the only so-
lution of the matter that they could arrive at ; and this failed because they
could find no one who would accept the ass on these — or, indeed, on any other
— terms. Yet to support an ass in absolute idleness, as Fray Antonio was
forced to own, would be to violate the law of his being under which a benefi-
cent Creator had placed him in the world for the good of man.
Altogether this case of conscience was so nice a one, and so beset by diffi-
culties, that after the brothers had debated it for a long while together fruit-
lessly, and had prayed for guidance without receiving light upon their path
in answer to their prayer, they determined to relegate its decision, through
Fray Agustin de Vetancurt, — to whom, their little church being adjunct
to the parish church of San Jose in San Francisco, they were directly responsi-
ble,— to the Very Reverend Father Friar Juan Gutierrez, who then governed
the province of the Santo Evangelic, to which their convent pertained, and
who was the Senior Provincial of the Franciscan order in New Spain.
This high resolve they executed. Driving before them the cause of their
spiritual tribulation, and accommodating their steps to the halting slowness
of his gait, and even stopping when he turned aside to crop in a meditative
fashion at some especially tempting bunch of grass, they went together along
the causeway, past the church of San Cosme, the convent of San Diego, the
burning-place of the Inquisition, and the Alameda, and so through the out-
skirts of the city to the great convent. They entered by the gate from the
Zuleta, and fastened the ass in the courtyard beneath the windows of the
building set apart for the use of the commissioners-general of the order —
the same building that now profanely has been changed into a hotel.
There was not a little merriment among the brothers when the purpose
for which Fray Antonio and Fray Inocencio had come thither with the ass
was known ; for already the brothers within this convent, being grown rich
and lustful of earthly pleasures, had so fallen from grace that conscientious
scruples in regard to the ownership of a lame, wretched ass seemed to them
laughable. But the Father Vetancurt, who was a holy man, and who had
chosen Fray Antonio and Fray Inocencio for the missionary work that they
had in charge because in the midst of much that was evil and corrupt they
had remained pure, treated with a due seriousness the case of conscience that
they had come to have resolved. That he smiled a little as he exhibited the
matter to the Father Provincial is true ; and this great dignitary smiled also
on hearing what a quaint cause of perplexity beset the souls of the two broth-
ers, and had been brought by them, in their rare simplicity, to him for reso-
lution and adjustment. But the smiles of these two good men had in them
nothing of derision, and, in truth, were not far removed from tears.
" It is the spirit of our father St. Francis alive again," said the Provincial,
542 THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. [1861-88
reverently ; and in all humility they thanked God that innocency so excellent
should be found remaining pure amid so much of earthly corruption and
spiritual guile.
Then came the brothers before the Father Provincial, and by his grace told
him the whole of the matter that filled with anxious doubts their souls. Fray
Antonio, who feared nothing but evil and the doing thereof, said what he had
to say reverently, as became him in such a case, yet plainly and at his ease :
telling how the ass came into their possession, yet touching but lightly upon
the fiery part that Fray Inocencio had played ; how they had sought earnestly
but had failed to find his lawful owner, and therefore had no right either to
sell him or to give him away ; how no one could be found willing to accept
him as a trust; and how, being thus forced to keep him themselves, they
feared that the use of him was a valuable possession that their vow of poverty
forbade. Fray Inocencio, who was terribly frightened at speaking to so great
a personage, grew pale and stumbled in his speech ; but by God's help he told
truly how he had beaten those cruel Indians ; how his repentance of this act
was not complete, since he could not banish from his heart the wish to finish
the punishment that he had begun ; and how the devil had put into his heart
the desire to keep the ass, that in bringing vegetables to the great convent
his own back might be spared. Having thus said to the end what he felt it to
be his duty to say, he drew a long breath, wiped with the sleeve of his gown
the beads of sweat from his forehead, and was still. That the case might be
complete, the Father Provincial looked from the window and saw the ass
fastened in the court below, and the brothers pointed to his crooked leg and
told how in its healing the bone had gone awry ; and the ass, hearing the
voices of his friends, looked up towards them with affection and brayed a
mighty bray.
With a full heart answered to them the Father Provincial :
" It is God himself, my brothers, who hath given this ass to you in reward
for your tenderness and goodness of heart, and to accept a gift from him
surely is no infraction of your vow. Go in peace to your convent again, and
keep for your service this poor beast that you have saved from a life of misery,
and in whose brute heart I perceive that there is for you such well-deserved
love. Take you also my blessing — though, in truth, rather should I ask your
blessing than thus give you mine."
And the brothers, very grateful for the dispensation in their favor, but not
at all understanding the full meaning of the Father Provincial's words, made
proper reverence to him and went their way homeward ; being full of happi-
ness because of the glad consciousness, untroubled by doubt or misgiving,
that the ass now really was their very own.
Thereafter so often as it was necessary that vegetables should be brought
from the little convent to the great one the bearer of the load was the lame
ass, and behind him or beside him Fray Inocencio walked. As they slowly
journeyed, these two held pleasant converse together ; for Fray Inocencio
maintained that the ass understood the meaning of human speech as well as
he himself understood the meaning of the glances which the ass gave him,
and the various twitchings of his scraggy tail, and the shakings of "his head,
1801-88] THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER. 543
and, above all, the whole vocabulary that was in the waggings of his ample
ears.
It was, indeed, a cheery sight to see these friends upon the road together.
At his best the ass hobbled along at a pace that a tortoise would have scorned
for its slowness ; and at times he would stop wholly and would gaze around
him with a look of thoughtful inquiry ; or he would step aside to crop a bit
of grass that pleased his fancy ; and ever and anon he would edge up to his
friend and rub his long nose gently against the friar's side, and then would
look into his face with a glance so movingly tender that nothing more could
have been added to it for the expression of his love. For his part, Fray Ino-
cencio patiently accommodated the naturally brisk movements of his own
stout little legs to the ass's infinite slowness : when the ass would stop, he
would stop also ; when by any chance the ass missed sight of a choice bunch
of grass, he wou«ld lead him to it and would wait by him until he had cropped
it to the very last blade ; and when the ass by his nose-rubbings would mani-
fest his love, he would gather the ass's long, shaggy head in his arms against
his breast and would lavish upon him all manner of terms of endearment as
he gently stroked his fuzzy ears.
So the fame of these two went through all the city ; and upon the ass, who
truly was as lazy as he was lame, the common people bestowed the name of
Flojo, which word, in the Spanish tongue, signifies " the lazy one." In this
wise came the proverb that is spoken of any one who greatly loves a useless
beast or person : he loves him as Fray Inocencio loved Flojo, the lame ass.
Over the brothers, dwelling peacefully in their little convent, and serving
God by loving his creatures and by ministering faithfully to the welfare of
the souls of their fellow-men, the years drifted happily. Unharmed by Timo-
teo, called Susurro, who waxed fat and sluggish as age stole upon him, yet
lost nothing of the sweetness of his nature nor of the thunderousness of his
purr, the doves increased and multiplied ; the little garden yielded ever
freshly its substance of fresh food and sweet-smelling flowers ; the ass, Flojo,
tenderly cherished by his masters, developed yet greater prodigies of laziness
as his years advanced ; and the brothers themselves, happy in leading a life
in all ways innocent and very excellent in the sight of Heaven, knew not what
it was to grow old, because their hearts ever remained young.
And in the fulness of their years, their good lives ended, Fray Antonio
and Fray Inocencio passed out gently from time into eternity, and were gath-
ered home to God.
544
MART NEWMARCH PRE8COTT.
[1861-88
BORN in Calais, Me., 1849. DIED at Deer Island, Amesbury, Mass., 1888.
THE OLD STORY.
BY the pleasant paths we know
All familiar flowers would grow,
Though we two were gone;
Moon and stars would rise and set,
Dawn the laggard night forget,
And the world move on.
Spring would carol through the wood,
Life be counted sweet and good,
While the seasons sped ;
Winter storms would prove their might,
Winter frosts make bold to bite,
Clouds lift overhead.
Still the sunset lights would glow,
Still the heaven-appointed bow
In its place be hung;
Not one flower the less would blobin,
Though we two had met our doom,
No song less be sung.
Other lovers through the dew
Would go, loitering, two and two,
When the day was done ;
Lips would pass the kiss divine,
Hearts would beat like yours and mine,
Hearts that beat as one.
SONG.
SLIPPING, drifting with the tide,
All the summer twilight through,
While in heaven the stars abide,
In my heart sweet dreams of you.
Echoes following from the shore
Seem the chorus of our song,
Summer odors blown before
Float the tune along.
Shall we linger till the day
Paints the eartli a thing divine ?
Spread the sail and haste away
Where the distant breakers shine ?
Held within their fearful grasp,
Would they crush us like a shell ?
Dying, dearest, in your clasp
All would yet be well!
ASLEEP.
SOUND asleep : no sigh can reach
Him who dreams the heavenly dream ;
No to-morrow's silver speech
Wake him with an earthly theme.
Summer rains relentlessly
Patter where his head doth lie ;
There the wild fern and the brake
All their summer leisure take,
Violets blinded with the dew,
Perfume lend to the sad rue,
Till the day breaks, fair and clear,
And no shadow doth appear.
1861-88] HEXRY FRANCIS KEEN AN. 545
^enr? tfrancfg &eenan*
BORN in Rochester, N. Y., 1849.
THE SACRIFICE OP LA ROQUETTE.
[Trajan. 1885.]
rpORTURED by the burden of his fear that Elliot in his new madness
JL would destroy the chance fortune had given him, Trajan crouched in
the darkness, uncertain whether to make an effort for his own life or not. If
Elliot persisted in his purpose and came back to the cell, all chance for either
of them would be gone. But for Elliot's safety some one must be in the cell
when the keeper opened it an hour later. Elliot's change from blond to
brunette made it possible for him to deceive anything but close scrutiny.
The two were nearly the same stature, and in such confusion as marked
the last days of the patriot's administration, the light eyes of Arden would
not be remarked or the sudden change to black. Provided Elliot did not per-
sist in his marplot purpose, the key in his possession might give him an op-
portunity to escape. At auy rate to return to the cell was the only present
safety. He could denounce Elliot as a madman if he came to undo the work
he had begun.
He breathed with a sort of tranquil satisfaction as he sank down on the cot
where Elliot had passed a day and night of terror.
Worn out by the fatigue of the days he had endured without rest, he did
not awake until the turnkey passed on his second tour — ten o'clock in the
morning. He confronted the official fearlessly now, for he had not seen him
before and suspected that he was a new-comer. Trajan, wondering why he
had been allowed to sleep so long, asked the keeper if there was no breakfast
for him. The man laughed, answering significantly :
" You will be let out soon, don't give yourself any uneasiness about food.
The patriots have none to spare now — since the Versaillaise have entered the
city!"
This explained the change hi the routine, and Trajan didn't know whether
to rejoice or fear. He knew what the " letting out " meant. It was the hid-
eous buffoonery of the assassins, signifying shooting. He had seen scores,
happy in the delusion of liberation thus announced to them, marched upon
ambuscades of musketry and drawn bayonets.
The glowing sunshine of the 24th of May stole in through the long narrow
slits far above the dungeon. The priests in the cells opposite were absorbed
in devotion. The gray hair of the poor old archbishop could be seen, like the
pale shade of a martyr's crown, as he kneeled by his miserable cot. For a half
hour during the afternoon the priests and Judge Bon jean were taken out and
permitted to descend to the prison garden for air and recreation. It was a
touching spectacle, as the six, whom every one knew were doomed, walked
calmly down the great corridor, the guards insulting and berating them.
They bore the curses and even blows with saintly meekness — one of them, a
VOL. x.— 35
546 HENRY FRANCIS KEENAN. [1861-88
handsome young priest, provoking the buffets upon himself, that the sacred
person of the prelate might he spared.
The prison shook at times with the explosions that seemed to come from a
not distant quarter. Every one realized that a decisive moment was at hand.
The chance of Elliot's doing anything desperate diminished with every hour,
and Trajan began to think of a means of flying to the succor he knew to be
near. If he could have seen or signalled the old keeper, whom he knew to be
a foe to the commune at heart, he would have asked him to lend him assist-
ance. But the man was nowhere to be seen. The corridors began to fill with
unfamiliar uniforms. At seven o'clock, when the first friendly dimness was
settling over the gloomy towers, a loud shouting was heard at the end of the
prison, toward the stairs.
A group of scarlet-sashed personages tramped in, and behind them a mob
of reeling, gesticulating figures. Trajan's heart leaped to his throat ; among
• them he saw a dozen not in uniform. He was saved. He could, when the
friendly darkness became thick enough, mingle with these and take his
chances for flying to the soldiers. He could not contain his impatience. Had
he the key ? Yes, safe. Would it work ? His hands shook with excitement.
He dared not try it in the lock. He listened eagerly. A great glare of light
suddenly came in wavering streaks from the direction of the vestibule. Heavy
steps sounded nearer and nearer and nearer. Heavens, could it be Elliot com-
ing to bring ruin, now that release was in sight ? Under the overmastering
fear of it, he thrust his hand through the bars, resolved to fly and be himself
shot down before the foolish fellow could compromise himself. A voice in
the next cell arrested his movement.
" My God, it is Ferre ! The priests will be slaughtered ! "
The marching group had now come in direct range of Trajan's cell. Sure
enough ! There was the young miscreant he had exposed as a thief in the
club. His glasses were still on his eyes, secured by a gold chain, instead of
the paper cord he had worn in his student days. His slim body was gorgeous
in a closely fitting Prince Albert of white cloth ; the scarlet insignia of his
office passed diagonally over his shoulder. He was flanked by fellow digni-
taries, and with these again crowded by a howling bedlam of guards of all de-
scriptions— drunk with madness or liquor, probably both — insatiable now
for blood, as the dream of pillage drew to a term. Eanging themselves mid-
way between Trajan's and the priests' cells, Ferre commanded silence, and
holding a paper lavishly blotched with red ink, called out as the turnkey threw
the doors open.
" Georges Darboy, calling himself servant of a person named God ! " He
paused.
From cell 23, the aged archbishop came out into the hideous mass of an-
archy, for a moment silent. His purple soutane covered his emaciated figure.
His hands hung beside him. He came quite forward to his assassins and bow-
ing his head meekly waited, shading his eyes with the paper, held as a screen.
Ferre gave the pathetic figure a verifying glance and then resumed the fear-
ful roll-call.
" Gaspard Deguerrey, »oi disant serviteur d'un nomme Dieu! " the voice
1861-88] HENRT FRANCIS KEENAN. 547
tranquil, decisive and egotistically prolonged, as if the assassin called the mob
to remark the confidence with which he swept these instruments of supersti-
tion from the path of the people.
At the call, an aged man, past his eightieth year, dragged his poor old
limbs tremblingly forward, and, like the bishop, answered simply and meekly :
" Here."
Then came the nomme Leon De Coudray — a large fine-looking man in
middle life, rector of the School of St. G-enevie" ve, and a Jesuit. There was
no meekness in the resonant " me void " with which he answered his name,
nor quailing in the glance of derisive contempt with which he swept the tat-
terdemalion mob, whose eyes flamed in impatient ferocity for his audacious
blood.
Alexis Clerc, a brother Jesuit, hastened from his cell, with a buoyant step
and sparkling eye. He was still a mere boy, having but just attained orders.
He had coveted martyrdom since his novitiate, and now that the crown was
in his sight he was joyous as the lover before the rose garlands of the marriage
feast. A murmur ran through the reeking mass of lust and murder as the
young handsome face became visible ; but Ferr6, repressing the outbreak by
a terrible " Silence, citoyens !" proceeded to the end of the list marked for
sacrifice.
Thelast of the five names called was Louis Bonjean, president of the " Cour
de Cassation," a man in vigorous old age, who was put among the hostages
through private apite of lawyers in the commune against whom he had made
decisions in other years. The list complete, Ferre gave the order to march
the victims, two by two, and the archbishop, leaning on the arm of the
judge, was last in the line.
To Trajan's unspeakable surprise, instead of retracing the way they had
come, Ferre led the soldiers toward the narrow cylinder staircase, within a
few yards of the scene that had just passed. Now, if ever, was the time for
him to make use of the key. The flaming torches of petroleum passed to the
front, on a call from Ferre, to light the dark stairs.
In the friendly gloom thus flung over the corridor, the door was softly
opened and in two minutes Trajan was mingling with the mob, pushing and
jostling down the narrow corkscrew stairs. When pressed forward by the
eager throng behind, he reached the landing on the second floor, Ferre was
enforcing order and selecting the firing party. The first spot selected was
found to be in full view of the invalids in the infirmary, whose heads were
thrust against the grating ; for some reason the place was deemed inappro-
priate and the cortege, retracing its steps, came out in the broad court of the
prison. While some one went forward to unlock the iron gates leading to a
smaller paved court, the archbishop leaned wearily against the railings. It
was a sepulchral spectacle. What with the darkness of the night and the thick
blackness of the smoke settling in fantastic shapes over the awful work, the
deed and its surroundings were in ghastly sympathy. The flaming torches
threw just enough light to give the scene diabolic outline and atmosphere.
At the bend in the wide avenue running around the interior building the
party came to a final halt.
548 HENRY FRANCIS KEEN AN. [1861-88
In all the horror of his own critical position, Trajan felt an instinctive sense
of guilt in being one, even involuntarily, of this sacrilegious massacre. He
had only escaped Ferre's clutches by causing his friends in the "Treize" to
circulate the rumor that Gray was still in Spain with Gambetta. Ferre had
denounced him to the Committee of Public Safety, and he had been declared
hors la loi; any patriot bringing his head to the committee would be rewarded
by the patrie. His mind was divided between the nearness of his own and
Elliot's danger and the anguish of the scene. He scrutinized as closely as
he dared the hideous faces about him, in search of Elliot, dreading an impru-
dent exclamation on the latter's part should he suddenly recognize his res-
cuer.
The prisoners were placed in a row, their backs against the wall. As the
bishop was hustled roughly into place, with a gentle movement he arrested
the steps of his guards, and, turning to the group, now motionless, said, with
an accent of sincerity that drew tears on many an eye :
"My children ! I freely forgive you. If the cause of my Master can be
served in this sacrifice, I surrender my short remaining space of life as gladly
as I have devoted fifty years to his sublime ministry. But my heart aches for
you; I know you do not know what you do, and I pray the good God that
this may not be visited upon you — I "
But here, with a brutal curse, Ferre ordered the crowd to clamor the be-
nignant voice into silence. At this, moved beyond resistance, two of the
guards fell on their knees imploring the martyr's blessing.
Outraged by such pusillanimity and surrender to the superstition of the
nomme God, the mob of guards, with Ferre at their head, seized the recalci-
trants and whisked them away under a volley of such frightful blasphemy as
the French language alone seems the fit vehicle for.
Trajan could not believe that the scene was real. The figures swam before
his eyes. The savage guards, the revolting jests and scurrilities, the priests
ranged in line along the wall. Surely, it was a phantom horror that was prank-
ing in this devil's comedy before him ! No ! The victims stand erect ; the
priests, with clasped hands, are praying ; the glistening barrels are raised on
a line ; the hoarse clamor is hushed ; the figure of Ferre, rigid, satanic, jo-
cose, looms up under the spluttering flame —
"Make ready— fire!"
A cry of horror, a confused gurgling of insatiable execration, a demon
chorus of exultant joy, possible to no human throats, — and the figures at the
wall lie a confused mass. But they have not met the mercy of swift death.
There is a gasping movement in the tortured heap; another volley is fired,
then straggling shots, as if to prolong the delights of it ; and then Ferre him-
self, to mark his place in the tragedy, runs to the mass, and planting his pis-
tol on the gray hairs of the bishop, fires the last shot.
Some ran shrieking from the scene ; others moved solemnly away. The
guards were formed in confused order, the mob was driven before them, and
the place left in darkness — Cimmerian — terrifying. Horror was in the air,
thick, choking, blinding. The guilty mob fled, and Trajan was borne with
them, through the wide roadway, through the gloomy passages, into the great
1861-88] VIRGINIA WALES JOHNSON. 549
court, where the first-comers looked back in dread, as if they expected to see
the bloody corpses with the whips and scorpions of vengeance upborne in
their dead hands.
males
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y., 1849.
AT VENICE.
[The House of the Musician. 1887.] '
ESUALDA was in the kitchen. Bianca paused irresolutely.
" We must tell her that we are going out," she demurred, with a doubt-
ful glance at Marina.
" Let her alone. We shall return in half an hour," said the elder sister,
yawning slightly.
" Gesualda seems to have lost her head this morning/' said Bianca. " I
believe it is the lottery."
" Who knows ?" was the enigmatical response.
The walk was not as purposeless as it at first appeared. Marina left Bianca
gazing in at the window of a jeweller's shop, retraced her steps along a nar-
row calle, and entered the Monte di Pieta, where she unhesitatingly pawned
the valuable watch and chain of her father.
Before rejoining Bianca, she sought a stand of gondoliere of the vicinity,
and, avoiding the older men, talked long and earnestly with a young fellow
of sturdy build, and a good-humored, insouciant physiognomy.
As a result of the colloquy, Marina sprang lightly into the gondola, and
was taken around the corner into a dark little canal, where, beneath an arch-
ing bridge, she divided the money received for the watch into two piles. One
portion she thrust into the hand of the bewildered gondoliere, and restored
the other to her own purse.
" Listen ! We must go over there to meet an old servant of our family
this morning," she explained. "It is an affair of property and creditors,
my friend. If you take us swiftly, the rest of this sum of money will belong
to you as well. "
The gondoliere shrugged his broad shoulders.
" Altro! I do not object to running a little risk now and then, and one
must live. The wind is rising, signora, and soon "
" It is perfectly safe at this hour," interposed Marina imperiously.
Bianca was astonished to hear the voice of her sister calling to her by name
from the water. Approaching the bridge, she discerned Marina in the gon-
dola, leaning back languidly among the cushions.
" We are to go on the canal in such weather! " exclaimed the young girl,
shrinking back.
550 VIRGINIA WALES JOHNSON. [1861-88
" The weather is good, signorina," protested the gondoliere eagerly.
The money intoxicated him, and he longed to claim the rest.
" I am tired/' said Marina. " Let us go back thus."
Relieved of her vague apprehensions, Bianca entered the gondola. Mari-
na's hand, cold, but firm as steel, closed on her wrist, as if holding her pris-
oner. Bianca did not attempt to release her soft arm. They would be home
as soon as the pigeon delivered the note, she reasoned, and Gerard would laugh
at her fears. Still she did not like the glitter of Marina's eye, her quiet de-
meanor, the set look of her mouth.
The gondola threaded rapidly the most sheltered by-ways, then suddenly
swept out on the broader space where the tide was beginning to run high.
The sea-flood threatened the city.
Bianca uttered a wondering cry.
" Oh, why are we here ? " she demanded piteously. The grasp of Marina's
fingers on her wrist tightened.
' ' Don't be a fool ! " she whispered, in menacing accents. " The gondoliere
must suspect nothing, or he might be tempted to rob us. Listen. Something
has happened to Gesualda, and she has sent for us to come over here immedi-
ately. Child ! The message was very curious. I will tell you later, when the
man yonder is not all ears. Oh, I do not believe it is a misfortune ! Hush !
Gesualda must have found a treasure."
" A treasure ? " gasped Bianca, and her blue eyes dilated with childish sur-
prise. " Gesualda should have told us at home, and not have sent for us out
here, when sirocco is beginning to blow."
"We can return as soon as we find her. Do you fear that the artist will
miss you too much? " inquired Marina, with a bitter sneer.
Bianca blushed and became silent.
The light craft skimmed over the water in the direction of the sandy ledge,
until Marina indicated a spot where she wished to land.
She allowed Bianca to first step ashore.
" Look for Gesualda, and bid her hasten back with us," she urged.
" How can Gesualda be here, when we left her in the kitchen at home ?"
protested Bianca, with fresh misgivings.
" You must ask her that question. Go ! "
Bianca, thus admonished, and fearful of the threatening aspect of sea and
sky, lost no time in obeying.
" Gesualda ! " she called aloud, running over the sands, and looking eager-
ly about for the stout and familiar figure of the nurse.
Marina placed the remainder of the sum promised in the palm of the gon-
doliere.
" Now go back while the canal is safe," she said.
The man stared at her doubtfully.
' ' How will the ladies return ? " he demurred.
" Oh, we are not going back to-day," she replied with a smile. " Our old
servant lives among the fisher-folk yonder."
" To-morrow there will be a sea-flood in the city," warned the gondoliere,
shaking his head.
1861-88] VIRGINIA WALES JOHNSON. 551
" Then we will remain/' said Marina Bardi, still smiling. " Ah ! I like
the storm/'
" Gesualda is not here/' cried Bianca, retracing her steps. " I have searched
for her. Oh, it is some trick, Marina mia. Did the dwarf tell you ? Let us
go back at once."
Marina was walking toward her. The gondola had turned in the direction
of the town.
Bianca paused, grew pale, and reeled beneath the shock of terror and be-
wilderment. Oh, why had she consented to enter the gondola at all ? She
read her own doom in the stern look fixed upon her by Marina, and, falling
on her knees, burst into sobs and tears.
" Oh, what is it? "shrieked the girl. "What has happened, that wo may not
go home in the gondola ? You will drive me mad if you look at me like that."
Marina threw herself down on the sands beside her cowering companion,
and, taking the blonde head of Bianca between her hands, covered curls and
brow with hot and rapid kisses.
" I love thee, little one ! " she said wildly. " Ah, I have brought thee away
safely from all evil. Child, Gesualda is not here. We are alone, the Bardi
daughters, dearest. This is the end. Even our house will soon be taken from
us. There remains for us only to die."
At these words Bianca, flushed and panting, tore herself, by a desperate
effort, from the arms encircling her, and fled towards the sandy brink of
shore, screaming aloud for help.
The gondola was rapidly disappearing, and the wind bore away the sound
of her voice unheard.
Marina followed her.
" Shriek thyself hoarse, and weep thyself blind, my beautiful angel. No
one will hear," she said tauntingly.
Bianca wrung her hands together in an agony of despair, and continued to
strain her eyes gazing over the waters. Surely help must come !
Marina approached nearer. The contemplation of the girl's agitation and
fear seemed to inspire in her a savage joy, much as a feline creature plays with
the trembling prey before devouring it.
" Did you love the artist ?" she demanded fiercely.
"Yes," faltered Bianca.
" Poor child ! I save thee from all the miseries of deception and cruel de-
sertion."
"But Gerard loves me," said Bianca wonderingly.
" Loves thee ! " echoed the elder sister with scornful bitterness. " Loves
thee with a boy's sportive fancy, and until he meets another girl with a skin
as white and hair as yellow as thine ! Loves thee as an artist, until he finds
a new model. We have sheltered a traitor beneath our roof."
" It is false ! Oh, he is good, and he loves me," cried Bianca, with sadden
spirit.
The next moment she cowered before Marina's look, fell again on her knees,
and, stretching out her hands towards the city, began to pray with a fervor
of appeal urged by despair.
552 VIRGINIA WALES JOHNSON. [1861-88
Gerard must have received her note by the faithful pigeon. Gesualda must
have missed her nursling by this time, and be arousing the neighbors by her
cries and lamentations, to hasten to the rescue.
The quivering lips framed every supplication ever taught them in the par-
ish church, and implored the aid of all the saints of the calendar. Buoyed up
by her own supplications, she beheld Gerard, as in a vision, coming over the
water, the St. George strong to rescue.
Marina observed her curiously. She listened without respect, but also with-
out derision.
" What use to pray ? " she scoffed. " The saints will not hear. They never
help trouble and pain. Do I not know ? "
Then Bianca cast herself at Marina's feet, and besought to be spared. Why
should they die, when life was so beautiful ?
In all her fawning caresses and tears, instinct prompted the girl to gain
time, to divert the sombre thoughts of her sister, and avert the danger, even
by an hour, a moment, hanging over their heads.
" No ! " retorted Marina.
Gradually she ceased to listen to the appeals of the young creature clinging
to her feet. She had finished with the wearisome bondage called life. The
straw of Gerard's devotion, at which she had caught with eager fingers, had
broken, casting her back into the gulf ; and as the ground crumbled beneath
her feet, she had taken Bianca with her. Bianca was to be the lamb sacrificed
on this altar of a terrible vengeance. She saved the child in her innocence.
Bianca should not be left behind to suffer for the love of man.
The exaltation of her mood was fast gaining upon her. She cast aside her
hat and loosened the heavy masses of her black hair, turning a look of irre-
pressible longing towards the sea. Out there amidst the tossing surges were
to be found oblivion, annihilation.
The spot was isolated, and the weather rendered the scene one of most tragic
desolation. The sisters stood on a waste of sand, which wended inland in
irregular mounds, seamed by sluggish pools and winding channels. The low-
hanging clouds seemed to mingle their dun-colored masses with the billows
of the Adriatic, which were tawny and crested with foam, as they beat on the
shore with ever-increasing violence. Lightning flashed on the horizon, and
the tide flowing towards Venice in the channels had acquired the tint of jade-
stone.
Not a human being was in sight. A sail flitted before the blast, and several
sea-birds winged their flight across the Lido. The gondola could not have
made its way here at this hour.
Time had ceased for Marina Bardi. Bianca, exhausted by her own supplica-
tions, lay prone on the ground, stunned by the thunder of the surf and the
rush of the wind.
" Enough !" exclaimed Marina, arousing her victim roughly. "I have
listened patiently and long. Finish. "
She dragged the trembling Bianca to an upright posture, and took from
her bosom a thin and flat bottle which contained a white liquid.
" Half for thee, and half for me," she said.
1861-88] ROBERT BURNS WILSON. 553
A wail of despair was wrung from Bianca's lips at these words ; but only
the sea-birds answered her, by a harsh note, as they flew past overhead.
Marina had found this vial in the chest of the musician's chamber. The
glass stopple was covered with skin, and by way of label Leonardo Bardi had
written :
The Great Temptation.
She now tore off the skin covering the cork, and proffered it to Bianca.
" Drink ! " she commanded.
Bianca received the fatal bottle in her cold hands, and looked fixedly at
her sister. Escape was impossible. Hope was spent.
Marina's eyes wavered, shifted, and she averted her head. No ! Even in
the shadowy land beyond, she could not confront the ordeal of having watched
Bianca put the bottle to her lips.
There was a momentary silence before Marina extended her fingers to re-
ceive back the vial. Even then she moved away, without again looking at
her companion. She heard a feeble cry behind her, and was dimly aware that
Bianca had fallen insensible on the sands.
The distant city was already a blank, the girl on the sands forgotten ; for
before her extended the sea, storm-driven.
"Enrico mio ! " she cried aloud ; and the mingled voices of the tossing surges
and the wind caught up the name, until the prolonged echo filled all space.
The sirocco lifted her tangled hair, the salt spray blinded her, the wide-
spreading circles of white foam obliterated her footsteps.
What did she behold, pausing there on the brink of eternity ? A leaf caught
in the eddy of the tempest, a creature of the dust blaspheming against her
Creator,— surely in the awful flash of awakening, as the lightning sparkled
on the dim horizon, and in the emptiness and darkness of her soul's misery,
she saw
" The grave's mouth, the heaven's gate, God's face
With implacable love evermore.'5
And so slept.
BORN ill Washington Co., Penn., 1050.
THE DEATH OF WINTER.
[Life and Love. Poems. 1887.]
"PIERCED by the sun's bright arrows, Winter lies
XT With dabbled robes upon the blurred hill-side;
Fast runs the clear cold blood, in vain he tries
With cooling breath to check the flowing tide.
He faintly hears the footsteps of fair Spring
Advancing through the woodland to the dell,
554 LAFCADIO HEARX. [1861-88
Anon she stops to hear the waters sing,
And call the flowers, that know her voice full well.
Ah, now she smiles to see the glancing stream ;
She stirs the dead leaves with her anxious feet;
She stoops to plant the first awakening beam,
And woos the cold Earth with warm breathings sweet.
"Ah, gentle mistress, doth thy soul rejoice
To find me thus laid low ? So fair thou art !
Let me but hear the music of thy voice ;
Let me but die upon thy pitying heart.
"Soon endeth life for me. Thou wilt be blessed;
The flowering fields, the budding trees be thine.
Grant me the pillow of thy fragrant breast;
Then come, oblivion, I no more repine."
Thus urged the dying Winter. She, the fair,
Whose heart hath love, and only love, to give,
Did quickly lay her full warm bosom bare
For his cold cheek, and fondly whispered "Live."
His cold white lips close to her heart she pressed ;
Her sighs were mingled with each breath he drew ;
And when the strong life faded, on her breast
Her own soft tears fell down like heavenly dew.
O ye sweet blossoms of the whispering lea,
Ye fair, frail children of the woodland wide,
Ye are the fruit of that dear love which she
Did give to wounded Winter ere he died.
And some are tinted like her eyes of blue,
Some hold the blush that on her cheek did glow,
Some from her lips have caught their scarlet hue,
But more still keep the whiteness of the snow.
• LafcaDto
BOKN in Leucadia, Sauta Maura, Ionian Islands, 1850.
THE LEGEND OF L'lLE DERXIERK
f Chita : a Memory of Last Island. 1889 J
r I ^HIRTY years ago, Last Island lay steeped in the enormous light of ...
-L magical days. July was dying ; — for weeks no fleck of cloud had broken
the heaven's blue dream of eternity ; winds held their breath ; slow wavelets
caressed the bland brown beach with a sound as of kisses and whispers. To
1861-88] LAFCADJO HEARN.
555
one who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and beyond the
hearing of its voices, — the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weird -
ness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a cause-
less apprehension : they are omens sometimes— omens of coming tempest.
Nature, — incomprehensible Sphinx ! — before her mightiest bursts of rage,
ever puts forth her divinest witchery, mates more manifest her awful
beauty. . . .
But in that forgotten summer the witchery lasted many long days, — days
born in rose-light, buried in gold. It was the height of the season. The long
myrtle-shadowed village was thronged with its summer population ; — the big
hotel could hardly accommodate all its guests ; — the bathing- houses were too
few for the crowds who flocked to the water morning and evening. There
were diversions for all, — hunting and fishing parties, yachting excursions,
rides, music, games, promenades. Carriage-wheels whirled flickering along
the beach, seaming its smoothness noiselessly, as if muffled. Love wrote its
dreams upon the sand. . . .
. . . Then one great noon, when the blue abyss of day seemed to yawn over
the world more deeply than ever before, a sudden change touched the quick-
silver smoothness of the waters — the swaying shadow of a vast motion. First
the whole sea-circle appeared to rise up bodily at the sky ; the horizon-curve
lifted to a straight line ; the line darkened and approached, — a monstrous
wrinkle, an immeasurable fold of green water, moving swift as a cloud-shadow
pursued by sunlight. But it had looked formidable only by startling con-
trast with the previous placidity of the open : it was scarcely two feet high ;
— it curled slowly as it neared the beach, and combed itself out in sheets of
woolly foam with a low, rich roll of whispered thunder. Swift in pursuit
another followed — a third — a feebler fourth ; then the sea only swayed a lit-
tle, and stilled again. Minutes passed, and the immeasurable heaving recom-
menced— one, two, three, four . . . seven long swells this time ; — and the
Gulf smoothed itself once more. Irregularly the phenomenon continued to
repeat itself, each time with heavier billowing and briefer intervals of quiet
— until at last the whole sea grew restless and shifted color and flickered
green ; — the swells became shorter and changed form. Then from horizon to
shore ran one uninterrupted heaving — one vast green swarming of snaky
shapes, rolling in to hiss and flatten upon the sand. Yet no single cirrus-
speck revealed itself through all the violet heights : there was no wind ! —
you might have fancied the sea had been upheaved from beneath. . . .
And indeed the fancy of a seismic origin for a windless surge would not ap-
pear in these latitudes to be utterly without foundation. On the fairest days
a southeast breeze may bear you an odor singular enough to startle you from
sleep, — a strong, sharp smell as of fish-oil ; and gazing at the sea you might
be still more startled at the sudden apparition of great oleaginous patches
spreading over the water, sheeting over the swells. That is, if you had never
heard of the mysterious submarine oil-wells, the volcanic fountains, unex-
plored, that well up with the eternal pulsing of the Gulf-Stream. . . .
But the pleasure-seekers of Last Island knew there must have been a "great
blow" somewhere that day. Still the sea swelled ; and a splendid surf made
556 LAFCADIO HEARN. [1861-88
the evening bath delightful. Then, just at sundown, a beautiful cloud-bridge
grew up and arched the sky with a single span of cottony pink vapor, that
changed and deepened color with the dying of the iridescent day. And the
cloud-bridge approached, stretched, strained, and swung round at last to
make way for the coming of the gale, — even as the light bridges that traverse
the dreamy Teche swing open when luggermen sound through their conch-
shells the long, bellowing signal of approach.
Then the wind began to blow, with the passing of July. It blew from the
northeast, clear, cool. It blew in enormous sighs, dying away at regular in-
tervals, as if pausing to draw breath. All night it blew ; and in each pause
could be heard the answering moan of the rising surf, — as if the rhythm of
the sea moulded itself after the rhythm of the air, — as if the waving of the
water responded precisely to the waving of the wind, — a billow for every puff,
a surge for every sigh.
The August morning broke in a bright sky; — the breeze still came cool and
clear from the northeast. The waves were running now at a sharp angle to
the shore : they began to carry fleeces, an innumerable flock of vague green
shapes, wind-driven to be despoiled of their ghostly wool. Far as the eye could
follow the line of the beach, all the slope was white with the great shearing of
them. Clouds came, flew as in a panic against the face of the sun, and passed.
All that day and through the night and into the morning again the breeze
continued from the northeast, blowing like an equinoctial gale. . . .
Then day by day the vast breath freshened steadily, and the waters height-
ened. A week later sea-bathing had become perilous : colossal breakers were
herding in, like moving leviathan-backs, twice the height of a man. Still the
gale grew, and the billowing waxed mightier, and faster and faster overhead
flew the tatters of torn cloud. The gray morning of the 9th wanly lighted
a surf that appalled the best swimmers : the sea was one wild agony of foam,
the gale was rending off the heads of the waves and veiling the horizon with
a fog of salt spray. Shadowless and gray the day remained ; there were mad
bursts of lashing rain. Evening brought with it a sinister apparition, loom-
ing through a cloud-rent in the west — a scarlet sun in a green sky. His san-
guine disk, enormously magnified, seemed barred like the body of a belted
planet. A moment, and the crimson spectre vanished ; and the moonless
night came.
Then the Wind grew weird. It ceased being a breath : it became a Voice
moaning across the world, — hooting, — uttering nightmare sounds, — Wfioo!
— wJioo! — whoo! — and with each stupendous owl-cry the mooing of the wa-
ters seemed to deepen, more and more abysmally, through all the hours of
darkness. From the northwest the breakers of the bay began to roll high
over the sandy slope, into the salines ; — the village bayou broadened to a bel-
lowing flood. ... So the tumult swelled and the turmoil heightened until
morning, — a morning of gray gloom and whistling rain. Rain of bursting
clouds and rain of wind-blown brine from the great spuming agony of the
sea.
The steamer Star was due from St. Mary's that fearful morning. Could
she come ? No one really believed it, — no one. And nevertheless men
1861-88] LAFCADIO HEARN. 557
struggled to the roaring beach to look for her, because hope is stronger than,
reason. . . .
Even to-day, in these Creole islands, the advent of the steamer is the great
event of the week. There are no telegraph lines, no telephones : the mail-
packet is the only trustworthy medium of communication with the outer
world, bringing friends, news, letters. The magic of steam has placed New
Orleans nearer to New York than to the Timbaliers, nearer to Washington
than to Wine Island, nearer to Chicago than to Barataria Bay. And even
during the deepest sleep of waves and winds there will come betimes to so-
journers in this unfamiliar archipelago a feeling of lonesomeness that is a
fear, a feeling of isolation from the world of men, — totally unlike that sense
of solitude which haunts one in the silence of mountain-heights, or amid the
eternal tumult of lofty granitic coasts : a sense of helpless insecurity. The
land seems but an undulation of the sea-bed : its highest ridges do not rise
more than*the height of a man above the salines on either side ; — the salines
themselves lie almost level with the level of the flood-tides ;— the tides are
variable, treacherous, mysterious. But when all around and above these ever-
changing shores the twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin to utter the tre-
mendous revelation of themselves as infinite forces in contention, then indeed
this sense of separation from humanity appalls. . . . Perhaps it was such a
feeling which forced men, on the tenth day of August, eighteen hundred and
riity-six, to hope against hope for the coming of the Star, and to strain their
eyes towards far-off Terrebonne. "It was a wind you could lie down on,"
said my friend the pilot.
. . . "Great God !" shrieked a voice above the shouting of the storm, —
"she is coming!" . . . It was true. Down the Atchafalaya, and thence
through strange mazes of bayou, lakelet, and pass, by a rear route familiar
only to the best of pilots, the frail river-craft had toiled into Caillou Bay, run-
ning close to the main shore ; — and now she was heading right for the island,
with the wind aft, over the monstrous sea. On she came, swaying, rocking,
plunging, — with a great whiteness wrapping her about like a cloud, and mov-
ing with her moving, — a tempest-whirl of spray ; — ghost-white and like a
ghost she came, for her smoke-stacks exhaled no visible smoke — the wind de-
voured it ! The excitement on shore became wild ; — men shouted themselves
hoarse; women laughed and cried. Every telescope and opera-glass was di-
rected upon the coming apparition ; all wondered how the pilot kept his
feet ; all marvelled at the madness of the captain.
But Captain Abraham Smith was not mad. A veteran American sailor, he
had learned to know the great Gulf as scholars know deep books by heart :
he knew the birthplace of its tempests, the mystery of its tides, the omens of
its hurricanes. While lying at Brashear City he felt the storm had not yet
reached its highest, vaguely foresaw a mighty peril, and resolved to wait no
longer for a lull. "Boys," he said, "we've got to take her out in spite of
Hell ! " And they "took her out." Through all the peril, his men stayed by
him and obeyed him. By mid-morning the wind had deepened to a roar, —
lowering sometimes to a rumble, sometimes bursting upon the ears like a.
measureless and deafening crash. Then the captain knew the Star was run-
558 LAFGAD10 HEARN. [1861-88
ninga race with Death. "She'll win it," he muttered; — "she'll stand it.
. . . Perhaps they'll have need of me to-night."
She won ! With a sonorous steam-chant of triumph the brave little vessel
rode at last into the bayou, and anchored hard by her accustomed resting-
place, in full view of the hotel, though not near enough to shore to lower her
gang-plank. . . . But she had sung her swan-song. Gathering in from the
northeast, the waters of the bay were already marbling over the salines and
half across the island ; and still the wind increased its paroxysmal power.
Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props upon which
they rested. A chimney tumbled. Shutters were wrenched off ; verandas de-
molished. Light roofs lifted, dropped again, and flapped into ruin. Trees
bent their heads to the earth. And still the storm grew louder and blacker
with every passing hour.
The Star rose with the rising of the waters, dragging her anchor. Two
more anchors were put out, and still she dragged — dragged in with the flood,
— twisting, shuddering, careening in her agony. Evening fell ; the sand be-
gan to move with the wind, stinging faces like a continuous fire of fine shot ;
and frenzied blasts came to buffet the steamer forward, sideward. Then one
of her hog-chains parted with a clang like the boom of a big bell. Then an-
other ! . . . Then the captain bade his men to cut away all her upper works,
clean to the deck. Overboard in the seething went her stacks, her pilot-house,
her cabins, — and whirled away. And the naked hull of the Star, still drag-
ging her three anchors, labored on through the darkness, nearer and nearer
to the immense silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred windows were now all
aflame. The vast timber building seemed to defy the storm. The wind, roar-
ing round its broad verandas, — hissing through every crevice with the sound
and force of steam, — appeared to waste its rage. And in the half-lull between
two terrible gusts there came to the captain's ears a sound that seemed strange
in that night of multitudinous terrors ... a sound of music !
. . . Almost every evening throughout the season there had been dancing
in the great hall ; — there was dancing that night also. The population of
the hotel had been augmented by the advent of families from other parts
of the island, who found their summer cottages insecure places of shelter :
there were nearly four hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it was for this
reason that the entertainment had been prepared upon a grander plan than
usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable ball. And all those pleasure-
seekers, — representing the wealth and beauty of the Creole parishes, — wheth-
er from Ascension or Assumption, St. Mary's or St. Landry's, Iberville or
Terrebonne, whether inhabitants of the multi-colored and many-balconied
Creole quarter of the quaint metropolis, or dwellers in the dreamy paradises
of the Teche, — mingled joyously, knowing each other, feeling in some sort
akin — whether affiliated by blood, connaturalized by caste, or simply inter-
associated by traditional sympathies of class sentiment and class interest.
Perhaps in the more than ordinary merriment of that evening something of
nervous exaltation might have been discerned, — something like a feverish re-
solve to oppose apprehension with gayety, to combat uneasiness by diversion.
1861-88] LAFCADIO HEARN. 559
But the hours passed in mirthfulness ; the first general feeling of depression
began to weigh less and less upon the guests ; they had found reason to con-
fide in the solidity of the massive building ; there were no positive terrors, no
outspoken fears ; and the new conviction of all had found expression in the
words of the host himself, — "II n'y a rien de mieux a faire que de s'amu-
ser!" Of what avail to lament the prospective devastation of cane-fields, —
to discuss the possible ruin of crops ? Better to seek solace in choregraphic
harmonies, in the rhythm of gracious motion and of perfect melody, than
hearken to the discords of the wild orchestra of storms ; — wiser to admire the
grace of Parisian toilets, the eddy of trailing robes with its fairy-foam of lace,
the i vorine loveli ness of glossy shoulders and jewelled throats, the glimmering
of satin-slippered feet, — than to watch the raging of the flood without, or the
flying of the wrack. . . .
So the music and the mirth went on : they made joy for themselves — those
elegant guests ; they jested and sipped rich wines ; — they pledged, and hoped,
and loved, and promised, with never a thought of the morrow, on the night
of the tenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. Observant parents
were there, planning for the future bliss of their nearest and dearest ; — mo-
thers and fathers of handsome lads, lithe and elegant as young pines, and
fresh from the polish of foreign university training ; — mothers and fathers
of splendid girls whose simplest attitudes were witcheries. Young cheeks
flushed, young hearts fluttered with an emotion more puissant than the ex-
citement of the dance ; — young eyes betrayed the happy secret discreeter lips
would have preserved. Slave-servants circled through the aristocratic press,
bearing dainties and wines, praying permission to pass in terms at once hum-
ble and officious, — always in the excellent French which well-trained house-
servants were taught to use on such occasions.
. . . Night wore on : still the shining floor palpitated to the feet of the dan-
cers ; still the pianoforte pealed, and still the violins sang, — and the sound
of their singing shrilled through the darkness, in gasps of the gale, to the
ears of Captain Smith, as he strove to keep his footing on the spray-drenched
deck of the Star.
— " Christ ! " he muttered, — " a dance ! If that wind whips round south,
there'll be another dance ! . . . But I guess the Star will stay." . . .
Half an hour might have passed ; still the lights flamed calmly, and the
violins trilled, and the perfumed whirl went on. . . . And suddenly the wind
veered !
Again the Star reeled, and shuddered, and turned, and began to drag all
her anchors. But she now dragged away from the great building and its
lights, — away from the voluptuous thunder of the grand piano, — even at that
moment outpouring the great joy of Weber's melody orchestrated by Berlioz :
V Invitation a la Valse, — with its marvellous musical swing !
— "Waltzing!" cried the captain. "God help them! — God help us
all now ! . . . The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his part-
ner!" . . .
0 the stupendous Valse-Tourbillon ! 0 the mighty Dancer ! One— two—
560 LAFCADIO HEARN. [1861-88
three ! From northeast to east, from east to southeast, from southeast to
south : then from the south he came, whirling the Sea in his arms. . . .
. . . Some one shrieked in the midst of the revels ;— some girl who found
her pretty slippers wet. What could it be ? Thin streams of water were
spreading over the level planking, — curling about the feet of the dancers. . . .
What could it be ? All the land had begun to quake, even as, but a moment
before, the polished floor was trembling to the pressure of circling steps; —
all the building shook now ; every beam uttered its groan. What could it
be ? ...
There was a clamor, a panic, a rush to the windy night. Infinite darkness
above and beyond ; but the lantern-beams danced far out over an unbroken
circle of heaving and swirling black water. Stealthily, swiftly, the measure-
less sea-flood was rising.
— " Messieurs — mesdames, ce n'est rien. Nothing serious, ladies, I assure
you. . . . Minis nous en avons vu bien souvent, les inondations comme celle-
ci; ya passe vite! The water will go down in a few hours, ladies ; it never
rises higher than this ; il n'y a pas le moindre danger, je vous dis ! Allans ! il
n'ya— My God ! what is that ?". . .
For a moment there was a ghastly hush of voices. And through that hush
there burst upon the ears of all a fearful and unfamiliar sound, as of a colossal
cannonade — rolling up from the south, with volleying lightnings. Vastly
and swiftly, nearer and nearer it came, — a ponderous and unbroken thunder-
roll, terrible as the long muttering of an earthquake.
The nearest mainland, — across mad Caillou Bay to the sea-marshes, — lay
twelve miles north ; west, by the Gulf, the nearest solid ground was twenty
miles distant. There were boats, yes ! — but the stoutest swimmer might
never reach them now ! . . .
Then rose a frightful cry, — the hoarse, hideous, indescribable cry of hope-
less fear, — the despairing animal-cry man utters when suddenly brought face
to face with Nothingness, without preparation, without consolation, without
possibility of respite. . . . Sauve quipeut! Some wrenched down the doors ;
some clung to the heavy banquet-tables, to the sofas, to the billiard -tables : —
during one terrible instant, — against fruitless heroisms, against futile gener-
osities,— raged all the frenzy of selfishness, all the brutalities of panic. And
then — then came, thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom
on boom ! . . . One crash ! — the huge frame building rocks like a cradle, see-
saws, crackles. What are human shrieks now ? — the tornado is shrieking !
Another ! — chandeliers splinter ; lights are dashed out ; a sweeping cataract
hurls in : the immense hall rises, — oscillates, — twirls as upon a pivot, — crep-
itates, —crumbles into ruin. Crash again ! — the swirling wreck dissolves into
the wallowing of another monster billow ; and a hundred cottages overturn,
spin in sudden eddies, quiver, disjoint, and melt into the seething.
... So the hurricane passed, — tearing off the heads of the prodigious
waves, to hurl them a hundred feet in air, — heaping up the ocean against the
land, — upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollen to abysses ; rivers
regorged ; the sea-marshes were changed to raging wastes of water. Before
New Orleans the flood of the mile-broad Mississippi rose six feet above
1861-88] LAFCADIO HEARN. §Ql
highest water-mark. One hundred and ten miles away, Donaldsonville trem-
bled at the towering tide of the Lafourche. Lakes strove to burst their boun-
daries. Far-off river-steamers tugged wildly at their cables, — shivering like
tethered creatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers.
Smoke-stacks were hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins blown
to fragments.
And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,— over the agony of Caillou Bay, — the
billowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf, — tearing and swallowing the
land in its course, — ploughing out deep-sea channels where sleek herds had
been grazing but a few hours before, — rending islands in twain, — and ever
bearing with it, through the night, enormous vortex of wreck and vast wan
drift of corpses. . . .
But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long, good
rope about his waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging to snatch
victims from death, — clutching at passing hands, heads, garments, inthecat-
aract-sweep of the seas, — saving, aiding, cheering, though blinded by spray
and battered by drifting wreck, until his strength failed in the unequal strug-
gle at last, and his men drew him aboard senseless, with some beautiful half-
drowned girl safe in his arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued
by him ; and the Star stayed on through it all.
Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skeleton could still
be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, in valiant witness
of how well she stayed.
Day breaks through the flying wrack, over the infinite heaving of the sea,
over the low land made vast with desolation. It is a spectral dawn : a wan
light, like the light of a dying sun.
The wind has waned and veered ; the flood sinks slowly back to its abysses
— abandoning its plunder, — scattering its piteous waifs over bar and dune,
over shoal and marsh, among the silences of the mango-swamps, over the long
low reaches of sand-grasses and drowned weeds, for more than a hundred
miles. From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto Bay
the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift ; — from their cypress groves
the vultures rise to dispute a share of the feast with the shrieking frigate-
birds and squeaking gulls. And as the tremendous tide withdraws its plung-
ing waters, all the pirates of air follow the great white-gleaming retreat : a
storm of billowing wings and screaming throats.
And swift in the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers come, the
Spoilers of the dead, — savage skimmers of the sea, — hurricane-riders wont to
spread their canvas-pinions in the face of storms ; Sicilian and Corsican out-
laws, Manilamen from the marshes, deserters from many navies, Lascars,
marooners, refugees of a hundred nationalities, — fishers and shrimpers by
name, smugglers by opportunity, — wild channel-finders from obscure bayous
and unfamiliar citenieres, all skilled in the mysteries of these mysterious wa-
ters beyond the comprehension of the oldest licensed pilot. . . .
There is pluu der for all — birds and men. There are drowned sheep in mul-
VOL. x.— 36
562 GEORGE WASHINGTON WRIGHT HOUGHTON. [1861-88
titude, heaped carcasses of kine. There are casks of claret and kegs of brandy
and legions of bottles -bobbing in the surf. There are billiard-tables over-
turned upon the sand ; — there are sofas, pianos, footstools and music-stools,
luxurious chairs, lounges of bamboo. There are chests of cedar, and toilet-
tables of rosewood, and trunks of fine stamped leather stored with precious
apparel. There are objets de luxe innumerable. There are children's play-
things : French dolls in marvellous toilets, and toy carts, and wooden horses,
and wooden spades, and brave little wooden ships that rode out the gale in
which the great Nautilus went down. There is money in notes and in coin
— in purses, in pocket-books, and in pockets : plenty of it ! There are silks,
satins, laces, and fine linen to be stripped from the bodies of the drowned, —
and necklaces, bracelets, watches, finger-rings and fine chains, brooches and
trinkets. . . . " Chibidizza!— Oh! chi bcdda mughieri! Eccu,labidizza!"
That ball-dress was made in Paris by — But you never heard of him, Sicilian
Vicenzu. . . . "Che bella sposina!" Her betrothal ring will not come off,
Giuseppe ; but the delicate bone snaps easily : your oyster-knife can sever the
tendon. . . . "Guardate! chi bedda picciota ! " Over her heart you will find
it, Valentino — the locket held by that fine Swiss chain of woven hair — " Cay a
manan ! " And it is not your quadroon bondsmaid, sweet lady, who now dis-
robes you so roughly ; those Malay hands are less deft than hers, — but she
slumbers very far away from you, and may not be aroused from her sleep.
"Naquita mo! dalaga! — na quita maganda!" . . . Juan, the fastenings
of those diamond ear-drops are much too complicated for your peon fingers :
tear them out! — "Dispense, chulita!" . . .
. . . Suddenly a long, mighty silver trilling fills the ears of all : there is a
wild hurrying and scurrying ; swiftly, one after another, the overburdened
luggers spread wings and flutter away.
Thrice the great cry rings rippling through the gray air, and over the green
sea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs, where the huge white flashes are,—
sheet-lightning of breakers, — and over the weird wash of corpses coming in.
It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, hastening to rescue the living, to
gather in the dead.
The tremendous tragedy is over !
BORN in Cambridge, Mass., 1850.
THE WITCH OF YORK.
[Niagara, and other Poems. 1882.]
UP o'er the hill and broken wall She crept unbidden, and before
There stole a weird form, bent but tall ; The hearth-fire crouching, gazed upon
And softly through our unlatched door us all.
1861-88] GEORGE WASHINGTON WRIGHT HOUGHTON.
563
All looked, none spake; the chimney
The cat mewed drearily and tried
To go but could not; close and dim
The room became, and ghastly grim
The ghosts that fell on us and multiplied.
We heard the gusts ride through the
pines,
We heard them twist from the trellised
vines
The bean-blows; and the scowling
west
Sent up a growl of hoarse unrest,
As of some hungry beast that frets and
whines.
Lean spectres seemed to spur the wind,
Weird doubts and fancies stormed the
mind,
And doubt is fear, and what is fear
But anguish! — "Say! what lurketh
near ?
Shall our to-morrow cruel prove, or
kind ? "
Then from her breast the creature drew
Her fate-pack ; moodily she blew
And deftly shuffled black with red ;
Till Esther gaped and whispering said
To Robert, "One would think she thought
she knew."
Whereat, the eyes of the woman-witch
First sparkled, then grew black as pitch ;
We shivered at her evil look,
Her ear-rings in the glamour shook,
And we could see her neck-cords writhe
and twitch.
The low clouds huddled overhead
In black disorder ; on the shed
We watched the sunshine, charging,
beat
Them back, then struggle and retreat :
"Come, woman, come! 'twill soon be
time for bed ! "
She passed the pack ; the maiden broke
It into three ; then Robert spoke :
" Tell, mother, this my sister's fate."
The woman only muttered, "Wait!"
And silent, fanned the embers into smoke.
The dim light lit the topmost card,
She looked upon it long and hard,
Then peering through her grisly brow
Glared upward at the girl— "Now,
now,
Will I unlock my lips; mind you each
card !
"Ace hearts: sole child, and of love's bed;
A spade twice next : both parents dead ;
Black tenners twice in turn — beware!
Though comely shaped, thy features
fair,
Thy feet in snares I see, webs round thy
head.
"No sister thou! — black seven: no kin;
Aha! queen clover, treacherous then !
Well may thy pouting mouth turn pale,
Within a deuce, beneath swollen sail
Thou-fliest from some sorrow or some sin.
"The second deal holds more. Still
pain!
Within a tres behold thy stain
A smoke to blur and blind the skies,
A fire kindled, that thine eyes
May quench not though they should dis-
" Black still and clover: in a one
A coffin ; now third deal, and done.
Hearts six, and dabbled o'er with red :
Within that space thy wooer dead ;
Spades seven: to thee are left seven
years to run."
Aghast we stood ; she spake no more,
But flung the cards across the floor,
And up the yawning chimney's throat,
With wind-rush and one thunder note,
She swept. — We looked, and saw the
buttoned door.
We heard the swallows cry and call,
Then late, the storm's long-looked-for
brawl ;
And louder, shriller than the last,
Up through the cavernous flue one
blast
Sucked flame and fuel, cat and cards, —
and all!
5G4 HENRY CABOT LODGE. [1861-88
Cabot Lodge*
BORN in Boston, Mass., 1850.
THE REAL GEORGE WASHINGTON.
[George Washington. — American Statesmen Series. 1889.]
no man in our history has greater injustice of a certain kind been done,
-L or more misunderstanding been meted out, than to Washington, and
although this sounds like the merest paradox, it is nevertheless true. From
the hour when the door of the tomb at Mount Vernon closed behind his cof-
fin to the present instant, the chorus of praise and eulogy has never ceased,
but has swelled deeper and louder with each succeeding year. He has been
set apart high above all other men, and reverenced with the unquestioning
veneration accorded only to the leaders of mankind and the founders of na-
tions ; 'and in this very devotion lies one secret at least of the fact that, while
all men have praised "Washington, comparatively few have understood him.
He has been lifted high up into a lonely greatness, and unconsciously put out-
side the range of human sympathy. He has been accepted as a being as nearly
perfect as it is given to man to be, but our warm personal interest has been
reserved for other and lesser men who seemed to be nearer to us in their vir-
tues and their errors alike. Such isolation, lofty though it be, is perilous and
leads to grievous misunderstandings. From it has come the widespread idea
that Washington was cold, and as devoid of human sympathies as he was free
from the common failings of humanity.
Of this there will be something to say presently, but meantime there is an-
other more prolific source of error in regard to Washington to be considered.
Men who are loudly proclaimed to be faultless always excite a certain kind of
resentment. It is a dangerous eminence for any one to occupy. The temples
of Greece are in ruins, and her marvellous literature is little more than a col-
lection of fragments, but the feelings of the citizens who exiled Aristides
because they were weary of hearing him called "just " exist still, unchanged
and unchangeable. Washington has not only been called ' ' just/' but he has
had every other good quality attributed to him by countless biographers and
eulogists with an almost painful iteration, and the natural result has followed.
Many persons have felt the sense of fatigue which tho Athenians expressed
practically by their oyster shells, and have been led to cast doubts on Wash-
ington's perfection as the only consolation for their own sense of injury.
Then, again, Washington's fame has been so overshadowing, and his great-
ness so immutable, that he has been very inconvenient to the admirers and the
biographers of other distinguished men. From these two sources, from the
general jealousy of the classic Greek variety, and the particular jealousy born
of the necessities of some other hero, much adverse and misleading criticism
has come. It has never been a safe or popular amusement to assail Washing-
ton directly, and this course usually has been shunned ; but although the
attacks have been veiled they have none the less existed, and they have been
all the more dangerous because they were insidious.
1861-88] HENRY CABOT LODGE. 555
In his lifetime Washington had his enemies and detractors in abundance.
. . . Adverse contemporary criticism, however, is slight in amount and
vague in character ; it can be readily dismissed, and it has in no case weight
enough to demand much consideration. Modern criticism of the same kind
has been even less direct, but is much more serious and cannot be lightly
passed over. It invariably proceeds by negations setting out with an appar-
ently complete acceptance of Washington's greatness, and then assailing him
by telling us what he was not. Few persons who have not given this matter
a careful study realize how far criticism of this sort has gone, and there is
indeed no better way of learning what "Washington really was than by exam-
ining the various negations which tell us what he was not.
Let us take the gravest first. It has been confidently asserted that Wash-
ington was not an American in anything but the technical sense. This idea
is more diffused than, perhaps, would be generally supposed, and it has also
been formally set down in print, in which we are more fortunate than in many
other instances where the accusation has not got beyond the elusive condition
of loose talk.
In that most noble poem, the " Commemoration Ode," Mr. Lowell speaks
of Lincoln as "the first American." The poet's winged words fly far, and
find a resting-place in many minds. This idea has become widespread, and
has recently found fuller expression in Mr. Clarence King's prefatory note
to the great life of Lincoln by Hay and Nicolay. Mr. King says : " Abraham
Lincoln was the first American to reach the lonely height of immortal fame.
Before him, within the narrow compass of our history, were but two preem-
inent names — Columbus the discoverer, and Washington the founder ; the
one an Italian seer, the other an English country gentleman. In a narrow
sense, of course, Washington was an American. . . . For all that, he was
English in his nature, habits, moral standards, and social theories ; in short,
in all points which, aside from mere geographical position, make up a man,
he was as thorough-going a British colonial gentleman as one could find any-
where beneath the Union Jack. The genuine American of Lincoln's type
came later. . . . George Washington, an English commoner, vanquished
George, an English king."
In order to point his sentence and prove his first postulate, Mr. King is
obliged not only to dispose of Washington, but to introduce Columbus, who
never was imagined in the wildest fantasy to be an American, and to omit
Franklin. The omission of itself is fatal to Mr. King's case. Franklin has
certainly a " preeminent name." He has, too, " immortal fame," although
of course of a widely different character from that of either Washington or
Lincoln, but he was a great man in the broad sense of a world-wide reputa-
tion. Yet no one has ever ventured to call Benjamin Franklin an English-
man. He was a colonial American, of course, but he was as intensely an
American as any man who has lived on this continent before or since. A man
of the people, he was American by the character of his genius, by his versa-
tility, the vivacity of his intellect," and his mental dexterity. In his abilities,
his virtues, and his defects he was an American, and so plainly one as to be
beyond the reach of doubt or question. There were others of that period, too,
5(36 HENRY (JABOT LODGE. [1861-88
who were as genuine Americans as Franklin or Lincoln. . . . But Frank-
lin is enough. Unless one is prepared to set Franklin down as an Englishman,
which would be as reasonable as to say that Daniel Webster was afine example
of the Slavic race, it must be admitted that it was possible for the thirteen
colonies to produce in the eighteenth century a genuine American who won
immortal fame. If they could produce one of one type, they could produce a
second of another type, and there was, therefore, nothing inherently impos-
sible in existing conditions to prevent Washington from being an American.
Lincoln was undoubtedly the first great American of his type, but that is
not the only type of American. It is one which, as bodied forth in Abraham
Lincoln, commands the love and veneration of the people of the United
States, and the admiration of the world wherever his name is known. To the
noble and towering greatness of his mind and character it does not add one
hair's breadth to say that he was the first American, or that he was of a com-
mon or uncommon type. Greatness like Lincoln's is far beyond such qualifi-
cations, and least of all is it necessary to his fame to push Washington from
his birthright. To say that George Washington, an English commoner, van-
quished George, an English king, is clever and picturesque, but like many
other pleasing antitheses it is painfully inaccurate. Allegiance does not make
race or nationality. The Hindoos are subjects of Victoria, but they are not
Englishmen.
Franklin shows that it was possible to produce a most genuine American
of unquestioned greatness in the eighteenth century, and with all possible
deference to Mr. Lowell and Mr. King, I venture the assertion that George
Washington was as genuine an American as Lincoln or Franklin. He was an
American of the eighteenth and not of the nineteenth century, but he was
none the less an American. I will go further. Washington was not only an
American of a pure and noble type, but he was the first thorough American
in the broad, national sense, as distinct from the colonial American of his time.
After all, what is it to be an American ? Surely it does not consist in the
number of generations merely which separate the individual from his fore-
fathers who first settled here. Washington was fourth in descent from the
first American of his name, while Lincoln was in the sixth generation. This
difference certainly constitutes no real distinction. There are people to-day,
not many luckily, whose families have been here for two hundred and fifty
years, and who are as utterly un-American as it is possible to be, while there
are others, whose fathers were immigrants, who are as intensely American as
any one can desire or imagine. In a new country, peopled in two hundred
and fifty years by immigrants from the old world and their descendants, the
process of Americanization is not limited by any hard and fast rules as to
time and generations, but is altogether a matter of individual and race tem-
perament. The production of the well-defined American types and of the
fixed national characteristics which now exist has been going on during all
that period, but in any special instance the type to which a given man belongs
must be settled by special study and examination.
Washington belonged to the English-speaking race. So did Lincoln. Both
sprang from the splendid stock which was formed during centuries from a
1861-88] HENRY CABOT LODGE. 5gf
mixture of the Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Norman peoples, and
which is known to the world as English. Both, so far as we can tell, had noth-
ing but English blood, as it would be commonly called, in their veins, and
both were of that part of the English race which emigrated to America, where
it has been the principal factor in the development of the new people called
Americans. They were men of English race, modified and changed in the
fourth and sixth generations by the new country, the new conditions, and the
new life, and by the contact and admixture of other races. Lincoln, a very
great man, one who has reached " immortal fame," was clearly an American
of a type that the old world cannot show, or at least has not produced. The
idea of many persons in regard to Washington seems to be, that he was a
great man of a type which the old world, or, to be more exact, which England,
had produced. One hears it often said that "Washington was simply an
American Hampden. Such a comparison is an easy method of description,
nothing more. Hampden is memorable among men, not for his abilities,which
there is no reason to suppose were very extraordinary, but for his devoted
and unselfish patriotism, his courage, his honor, and his pure and lofty spirit.
He embodied Avhat his countrymen believe to be the moral qualities of their
race in their finest flower, and no nation, be it said, could have a nobler ideal.
Washington was conspicuous for the same qualities, exhibited in like fashion.
Is there a single one of the essential attributes of Hampden that Lincoln also
did not possess ? Was he not an unselfish and devoted patriot, pure in heart,
gentle of spirit, high of honor, brave, merciful, and temperate ? Did he not
lay down his life for his country in the box at Ford's Theatre as ungrudging-
ly as Hampden offered his in the smoke of battle upon Chalgrove field ? Sure-
ly we must answer yes. In other words, these three men all had the great
moral attributes which are the characteristics of the English race in its high-
est and purest development on either side of the Atlantic. Yet no one has
ever called Lincoln an American Hampden, simply because Hampden and
Washington were men of ancient family, members of an aristocracy by birth,
and Lincoln was not. This is the distinction between them ; and how vain
it is, in the light of their lives and deeds, which make all pedigrees and social
ranks look so poor and Avorthless ! The differences among them are trivial,
the resemblances deep and lasting.
I have followed out this comparison because it illustrates perfectly the en-
tirely superficial character of the reasons which have led men to speak of
Washington as an English country gentleman. It has been said that he was
English in his habits, moral standards, and social theories, which has an im-
portant sound, but which for the most part comes down to a question of dress
and manners. He wore black velvet and powdered hair, knee-breeches and
diamond buckles, which are certainly not American fashions to-day. But
they were American fashions in the last century, and every man wore them
who could afford to, no matter what his origin. Let it be remembered, how-
ever, that Washington also wore the hunting-shirt and fringed leggings of
the backwoodsman, and that it was he who introduced this purely American
dress into the army as a uniform.
His manners likewise were those of the century in which he lived, formal
568 HENRY CABOT LODGE. [1861-88
and stately, and of course colored by his own temperament. His moral stand-
ards were those of a high-minded, honorable man. Are we ready to say that
they were not American ? Did they differ in any vital point from those of
Lincoln ? His social theories were simple in the extreme. He neither over-
valued nor underrated social conventions, for he knew that they were a part
of the fabric of civilized society, not vitally important and yet not wholly
trivial. . . . .
Once more, what is it to be an American ? Putting aside all the outer shows
of dress and manners, social customs and physical peculiarities, is it not to
believe in America and in the American people ? Is it not to have an abiding
and moving faith in the future and in the destiny of America ? — something-
above and beyond the patriotism and love which every man whose soul is not
dead within him feels for the land of his birth ? Is it not to be national and
not sectional, independent and not colonial ? Is it not to have a high con-
ception of what this great new country should be, and to follow out that ideal
with loyalty and truth ?
Has any man in our history fulfilled these conditions more perfectly and
completely than George Washington ? Has any man ever lived who served
the American people more faithfully, or with a higher and truer conception
of the destiny and possibilities of the country ?
He was the first to rise above all colonial or state lines, and grasp firmly the
conception of a nation to be formed from the thirteen jarring colonies. The
necessity of national action in the army was of course at once apparent to
him, although not to others ; but he carried the same broad views into widely
different fields, where at the time they wholly escaped notice. It was Wash-
ington, oppressed by a thousand cares, who in the early days of the Revolu-
tion saw the need of Federal courts for admiralty cases and for other pur-
poses. It was he Avho suggested this scheme, years before any one even dreamed
of the Constitution ; and from the special committees of Congress, formed
for this object in accordance with this advice, came, in the process of time,
the Federal judiciary of the United States. Even in that early dawn of the
Revolution, Washington had clear in his own mind the need of a continental
system for war, diplomacy, finance, and law, and he worked steadily to bring
this policy to fulfilment.
When the war was over, the thought that engaged his mind most was of
the best means to give room for expansion, and to open up the unconquered
continent to the forerunners of a mighty army of settlers. For this purpose
all his projects for roads, canals, and surveys were formed and forced into
public notice. He looked beyond the limits of the Atlantic colonies. His
vision went far over the barriers of the Alleghanies ; and where others saw
thirteen infant States backed by the wilderness, he beheld the germs of a great
empire. While striving thus to lay the West open to the march of the settler,
he threw himself into the great struggle, where Hamilton and Madison, and
flll who " thought continen tally," were laboring for that union without which
all else was worse than futile
His personal impressiveness affected every one upon all occasions.
1861-88] HENRY JJABOT LODGE. 559
Mr. Bush, for instance, saw Washington go on one occasion to open Con-
gress. He drove to the hall in a handsome carriage of his own, with his ser-
vants dressed in white liveries. When he had alighted he stopped on the step,
and pausing faced round to wait for his secretary. The vast crowd looked at
him in dead silence, and then, when he turned away, broke into wild cheer-
ing. At his second inauguration he was dressed in deep mourning for the
death of his nephew. He took the oath of office in the Senate Chamber, and
Major Forman, who was present, wrote in his diary : " Every eye was on him.
When he said, ' I, George Washington/ my blood seemed to run cold, and
every one seemed to start." At the inauguration of Adams, another eye-wit-
ness wrote that Washington, dressed in black velvet, with a military hat and
black cockade, was the central figure in the scene, and when he left the
chamber the crowds followed him, cheering and shouting to the door of his
own house.
There must have been something very impressive about a man who, with
no pretensions to the art of the orator and with no touch of the charlatan,
could so move and affect vast bodies of men by his presence alone. But the
people, with the keen eye of affection, looked beyond the mere outward no-
bility of form. They saw the soldier who had given them victory, the great
statesman who had led them out of confusion and faction to order and good
government. Party newspapers might rave, but the instinct of the people
was never at fault. They loved, trusted, and wellnigh worshipped Washing-
ton living, and they have honored and reverenced him with an unchanging
fidelity since his death, nearly a century ago.
But little more remains to be said. Washington had his faults, for he was
human ; but they are not easy to point out, so perfect was his mastery of him-
self. He was intensely reserved and very silent, and these are the qualities
which gave him the reputation in history of being distant and unsympathetic.
In truth, he had not only warm affections and a generous heart, but there was
a strong vein of sentiment in his composition. At the same time he was in no
wise romantic, and the ruling element in his make-up was prose, good solid
prose, and not poetry. He did not have the poetical and imaginative quality
so strongly developed in Lincoln. Yet he was not devoid of imagination, al-
though it was here that he was lacking, if anywhere. He saw facts, knew
them, mastered and used them, and never gave much play to fancy ; but as
his business in life was with men and facts, this deficiency, if it was one, was
of little moment. He was also a man of the strongest passions in every way,
but he dominated them; they never ruled him. Vigorous animal passions
were inevitable, of course, in a man of such a physical make-up as his. How
far he gave way to them in his youth no one knows, but the scandals which
many persons now desire to have printed, ostensibly for the sake of truth, are,
so far us I have been able to learn, of entirely modern parentage. I have ran
many of them to earth ; none have any contemporary authority, and they may
be relegated to the dust-heaps. If he gave way to these propensities in his
youth, the only conclusion that I have been able to come to is that he mas-
tered them when he reached man's estate.
He had, too, a fierce temper, and although he gradually subdued it, he
570 HENRY CABOT^LODGE. [1861-88
would sometimes lose control of himself and burst out into a tempest of rage.
When he did so he would use strong and even violent language, as he did at
Kip's landing and at Monmouth. Well-intentioned persons in their desire to
make him a faultless being have argued at great length that Washington
never swore, and but for their argument the matter would never have attract-
ed much attention. He was anything but a profane man, but the evidence is
beyond question that if deeply angered he would use a hearty English oath ;
and not seldom the action accompanied the word, as when he rode among the
fleeing soldiers at Kip's landing, striking them with his sword, and almost be-
side himself at their cowardice. Judge Marshall used to tell also of an occa-
sion when Washington sent out an officer to cross a river and bring back some
information about the enemy, on which the action of the morrow would de-
pend. The officer was gone some time, came back, and found the General
impatiently pacing his tent. On being asked what he had learned, he replied
that the night was dark and stormy, the river full of ice, and that he had not
been able to cross. Washington glared at him a moment, seized a large lead-
en inkstand from the table, hurled it at the offender's head, and said with a
fierce oath: "Be off, and send me a man!" The officer went, crossed the
river, and brought back the information.
But although he would now and then give way to these tremendous bursts
of anger, Washington was never unjust. As he said to one officer, " I never
judge the propriety of actions by after events ; " and in that sound philosophy
is found the secret not only of much of his own success, but of the devotion
of his officers and men. He might be angry with them, but he was never un-
fair. In truth, he was too generous to be unjust or even over-severe to any
one, and there is not a line in all his writings which even suggests that he
ever envied any man. So long as the work in hand was done, he cared not
who had the glory, and he was perfectly magnanimous and perfectly at ease
about his own reputation. He never showed the slightest anxiety to write
his own memoirs, and he was not in the least alarmed when it was proposed
to publish the memoirs of other people, like General Charles Lee, which
would probably reflect upon him.
He had the same confidence in the judgment of posterity that he had in
the future beyond the grave. He regarded death with entire calmness and
even indifference not only when it came to him, but when in previous years
it had threatened him. He loved life and tasted of it deeply, but the cour-
age which never forsook him made him ready to face the inevitable at any
moment with an unruffled spirit. In this he was helped by his religious faith,
which was as simple as it was profound. He had been brought up in the Prot-
estant Episcopal Church, and to that church he always adhered ; for its
splendid liturgy and stately forms appealed to him and satisfied him. He
loved it too as the church of his home and his childhood. Yet he was as far
as possible from being sectarian, and there is not a word of his which shows
anything but the most entire liberality and toleration. He made no parade
of his religion, for in this as in other things he was perfectly simple and sin-
cere. He was tortured by no doubts or questionings, but believed always in
an overruling Providence and in a merciful God, to whom he knelt and prayed
1861-88] L UC7 WHITE JENNI80N.
in the day of darkness or in the hour of triumph with a supreme and child-
like confidence
For many years I have studied minutely the career of Washington, and with
every step the greatness of the man has grown upon me, for analysis has failed
to discover the act of his life which, under the conditions of the time, I could
unhesitatingly pronounce to have been an error. Such has been my experi-
ence, and although my deductions may be wrong, they at least have been care-
fully and slowly made. I see in Washington a great soldier who fought a try-
ing war to a successful end impossible without him ; a great statesman who
did more than all other men to lay the foundations of a republic which has
endured in prosperity for more than a century. I find in him a marvellous
judgment which was never at fault, a penetrating vision which beheld the
future of America when it was dim to other eyes, a great intellectual force, a
will of iron, an unyielding grasp of facts, and an unequalled strength of pa-
triotic purpose. I see in him too a pure and high-minded gentleman of daunt-
less courage and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner, kind and gen-
erous of heart. Such he was in truth. The historian and the biographer may
fail to do him justice, but the instinct of mankind will not fail. The real hero
needs not books to give him worshippers. George Washington will always
receive the love and reverence of men because they see embodied in him the
noblest possibilities of humanity.
Luc? mfyitt 3!ennteon*
BORN iu Newton, Mass.
A SIMILE.
[Love Poems and Sonnets. By Owen Innsly. 1882.]
AT sea, far parted from the happy shore,
-^j- The solitary rock lies all unmoved
By the caressing waves, though unreproved
Their constant kisses on its breast they pour.
So it stands witnessed by all human lore,
Where'er the wanton god of love has roved,
His shafts fell never equal; one beloved,
One lover, there must be forevermore.
Dear, if thou wilt, be thou that rock at sea,
But let me be the waves that never leave
Their yearning towards it through the ocean space;
And be thou the beloved, but let me
Be the fond lover destined to receive
And hold thee in love's infinite embrace.
572
LUCY WHITE JENNI80N.
[1861-88
A DREAM OF DEATH.
HELENA.
Du hast mich beschworen aus dem Grab
Durch dcinen Zauberwillen,
Belebtest mich mit Wollustgluth,
Jetzt kannst du die Gluth nicht stillen.
Press deinen Mund auf meinen Mund,
Der Menschen Odem 1st gottlich,
Ich trinke deine Seele aus,
Die Todteu sind unersattlich.— Heine.
I DIED ; they wrapped me in a shroud,
With hollow mourning, far too loud,
And sighs that were but empty sound,
And laid me low within the ground.
I felt her tears through all the rest ;
Past sheet and shroud they reached my
breast ;
They warmed to life the frozen clay,
And I began to smile and say :
At last thou lov'st me, Helena !
I rose up in the dead of night ;
I sought her window; — 'twas alight.
A pebble clattered 'gainst the pane, —
"Who's there? the wind and falling
rain ? "
"Ah! no; but one thy tears have led
To leave his chill and narrow bed
To warm himself before thy breath ;
Who for thy sake has conquered death.
Arise, and love me, Helena ! "
She oped the door, she drew me in.
Her mouth was pale, her cheek was
thin;
Her eyes were dim ; its length unrolled,
Fell loosely down her hair of gold.
My presence wrought her grief's eclipse;
She pressed her lips upon my lips,
She held me fast in her embrace,
Her hands went wandering o'er my
face:
At last thou lov'dst me, Helena!
The days are dark, the days are cold,
And heavy lies the churchyard mould.
But ever, at the deep of night,
Their faith the dead and living plight.
Who would not die if certain bliss
Could be foreknown ? and such as this
No life — away ! the hour is nigh,
With heart on fire she waits my cry :
Arise, and love me, Helena!
CHAUCER.
A LIMPID source, a clear and bubbling spring,
Born in some wooded dell unknown of heat,
Above whose breast the leafy branches meet
And kiss, and earthward wavering shadows fling;
Upon whose brink the perfumed flower-cups swing
'Neath the light tread of hurrying insect feet ;
Such, Chaucer, seems the sturdy note and sweet
In thine unfettered song reechoing.
Hence they who sometimes weary of the play
Of fountains and the artificial jets
Which in gay parks and gardens dance and leap,
Turn back again into that forest- way
Where thy fresh stream the grass and mosses wets
That slumber on its margin cool and deep.
1801-88] ARLO BATES.
BORN in East Machias, Me., 1850.
A BRIDE'S INHERITANCE.
[A Wheel of Fire. 1885.]
IT had been Damaris's wish to be married in a dark travelling-dress, but she
had deferred to the desire of Elsie and of Sherlock, and consented to be
what the former called " a real bride " in white. The gown which her cousin
and old Hannah assisted her in donning was a perfectly plain robe of creamy
Ottoman silk, heavy and soft, relieved with no trimming but some time-yel-
low lace which Elsie declared made her willing to break all the command-
ments at once through envy. She was pale as ever, seeming doubly so from
the darkness of her thick hair, which, plainly arranged, showed well the
shape of ber head ; but she had never been more beautiful.
"It is all a trick, Maris," Elsie declared, " you look pale on purpose, be-
cause it is becoming. You look as distinguished as Mary Queen of Scots
going to be executed."
" Executed ! " repeated Hannah Stearns under her breath, with the indig-
nation of a superstitious woman who regards the speaking of baleful words
upon a wedding-day as of ill omen.
" Oh, a wedding is a sort of execution," ran on Elsie, laughing. " There's
an end of all your independence now, my lady, let me tell you that. Have
you got on something borrowed ? "
'•' Yes," Damaris answered smilingly. " I have them all :
" ' Something old and something new,
Something borrowed and something blue.'
Is there anything else absurd you can think of ? "
" There's something about which foot to put over the threshold, but I
can't remember which it is, so perhaps it's better to leave it to luck. It is
such a pity you wouldn't have bridesmaids, at least me."
" You may come after me, if you like, and carry my train."
"]$To, I thank you. Oh, Maris, you are just perfect. It is such a shame
that you are not going to be married in Trinity Church. You'd be such a
credit to the family, and Kate West would be so enraged. She's the last one
of our class left single but myself, and I never let a chance slip of reminding
her of it. She takes every wedding in our set as a personal insult."
" Is everything ready down-stairs ? "
" Everything. They are all sitting about in the parlor with the cheerfully
solemn air of chief mourners. Mother has her handkerchief all ready to
weep, and father is wondering how much he can lose by possible changes in
the stock market before he gets back to State street."
Hannah Stearns regarded the excited girl with an air of serious disfavor,
but she contented herself with setting her lips together in an expression of
574 ARLO BATES. [1861-88
firm disapproval and laying her hands over her wrists in that attitude which
is so much more expressive of virtuous indignation than even the most ag-
gressive folding of the arms.
" Go into the front chamber," pursued Elsie, no mo.re observing the effect
of her words than if the housekeeper had been a piece of the furniture, " and
I'll send him up. It's a great pity you can't have a wedding without hav-
ing a great, horrid man mixed up in it."
She walked laughing to the door, but turned back impulsively to clasp her
cousin in her arms, the quick tears in her eyes.
" Oh, Man's, Maris," she whispered, kissing the bride fervently. "There,"
she went on, springing away and wiping her eyes. " I hope I didn't muss you,
but I couldn't help it. You look so white and so still and so blessed. Bah !
What a goose I am ! "
Hannah Stearns looked after the girl as she ran hastily away with a soft-
ening of her rigid old features.
" She isn't so bad at heart," she commented.
Damaris smiled faintly and passed through alone into the other chamber.
It was the room which Dr. Wilson had occupied during his stay at Ash
Nook, and the antique mirror before which Damaris sat down to wait her
bridegroom was the same in which Chauncy had admired the reflection of
his handsome features, glowing with youth and vigor. It was the same mir-
ror in which once Damaris, passing the half -open door of the chamber, had
seen a picture of her lover's beautiful, manly hand, and she had more than
once smiled to herself before the old glass as if she could at will invoke from
it the vanished image. Over the secrets of its depths brooded the quaintly
carved bird, brave in the glory of time-tarnished gilding, a guardian genius
uncommunicative and impassive. Generations of fair women and brave men
had seen their fleeting shadows in the antique surface, but never shape more
beautiful and sad had passed before it than the lovely white-robed creature
who now gazed intently at the picture it gave back.
It seemed to Damaris as if a hand of ice clutched her heart. Since the ques-
tion of her right to marry had been the problem which had tortured her, the
ceremony itself had come illogically but naturally to seem the awful crisis,
and she was possessed by a vague feeling that if she could so far evade the
vigilance of malevolent fate as to get past the actual rite, she might yet
escape. She felt as if she could not bear the delay of an instant, so strongly
was she oppressed with a horrible sense that her doom was approaching with
swift feet, and that if she were not Lincoln's wife before the horror could
reach her she must fall a victim to its fury. The moments she waited seemed
to her endless. She heard Hannah moving in the next room, unwilling to
go down stairs until her mistress did, and it was with difficulty Damaris re-
strained herself from calling out to bid her inquire why the groom did not
come.
Then she smiled with a painful sense of her folly, and endeavored to be
reasonable. She knew it had in reality been but a moment since Elsie left
her, and she tried to give her whole attention to the details of her toilet. She
looked into the mirror to see if the lace at her throat was graceful in its folds.
1861-88] ARLO BATES. 575
and suddenly, without warning, a horrible fancy came to her that it would
be a wild joy to clutch such a soft, white neck with fierce fingers and crush
out all the life ! She seemed impelled to reach out to catch and strangle that
image in the glass; yet, too, she felt, in a strange double consciousness, as if
some one behind her chair were preparing to seize her. Then with a thrill of
agony she realized what she was thinking, and she cast around her a beseech-
ing glance, vainly seeking help.
Yet surely that girl in the mirror was another creature than herself. Dam-
aris extended her hand toward the figure with a mocking gesture, and laughed
a little, in an absent-minded, absorbed fashion, when the white-robed stranger
did the same. She dropped her hands into her lap, and, watching with a
glance of horrible cunning from beneath her drooping lids the white, smooth
neck of that other girl, she began with furtive haste to pull off her gloves.
She would assure herself whether the fair throat were as soft as it appeared ;
and with motions cat-like and swift she cast the gloves to the floor and rose
to steal upon the stranger.
Then it occurred to her that this must be some guest at her own wedding,
and the hereditary instinct of hospitality asserted itself. She sank back into
her chair, her hands falling passive in her lap. She felt confused and dizzy.
Something seemed to be unutterably wrong, yet she knew not what it was.
Why should this stranger be here, and why did she regard her so closely ? S:ie
struggled with her wandering thoughts, striving painfully to understand how
it chanced that she was not alone.
Watching intently, she saw with a shock of surprise and pity that this hap-
less girl in the mirror was twisting her fingers in the well-remembered gest-
ure which in her mother had shown the coming on of madness. Damaris was
seized with a great compassion of grief for the fair young creature whom such
an awful doom had overtaken. The fate of this stranger had been swifter,
Damaris reflected, than the feet of her bridegroom. Her bridegroom ! The
word touched the very core of her half-dazed intelligence. Like the swift
thrust of a white-hot sword, with rending, searing agony, the truth came
home to her. •
She knew the image was herself.
The unspeakable anguish of ages of pain was concentrated into that mo-
ment. It was like the horror of one who hangs a measureless instant upon the
dizzy brink of an abyss down which he knows himself dashing. That fatal
gesture which she knew so well smote the hapless bride with a terror too great
for words. All power failed her ; she could not breathe ; an intolerable pres-
sure crushed her bosom. Great drops of suffering beaded her forehead, and
she gasped with as absolute a sense of suffocation as if an ocean had suddenly
rolled over her head.
She heard Wallace at the door, and with a mad impulse to flee she sprang
to her feet just as Lincoln knocked. The sound seemed to come from some
far distance, and was muffled and half-lost amid the confused murmur which
filled her ears like the beat of rushing waters. Then once more for an instant
her failing reason struggled to consciousness, as a drowning swimmer writhes
a last time to the surface and gasps a breath only to give it up in futile bubbles
576
ARLO BATES.
[1861-88
that mark the spot where he sank. With a supreme effort her vanquished
will for a moment reasserted itself. She knew her lover was at the door, and
she knew also that the feet of doom had been swifter than those of the bride-
groom. She even asked herself in agonized frenzy if she might not have been
saved had Sherlock reached her a moment sooner. And as she thought, she
sprang forward and threw open the door.
" I am mad ! " she shrieked, in a voice which pierced to every corner of the
old mansion.
The housekeeper came running from the inner chamber, while Wallace
shrank whining at his mistress's feet. Lincoln, white as death, caught Dam-
aris in his arms, as if he would snatch her from the jaws of death itself if need
be. She struggled in his embrace, a wild glare replacing the nickering light
of intelligence in her eyes.
Then Hannah Stearns took her from him, drew her into the chamber, and
closed the door.
THE DANZA.
[Berries of the Brier. 1886.]
IF you never have danced the danza,
With its wondrous rhythmic swirl,
"While close to your bosom panted
Some dark-eyed Creole girl,
Of dancing you know naught !
By Inez I was taught.
'Tis a dance with strangest pauses ;
It moves as the breezes blow :
Her lips were like pomegranate blossoms,
While her teeth were white as snow.
Of beauty I knew naught;
By Inez I was taught.
The fountain splashed in the garden
Where the palm-trees hid the moon;
Who well had danced the danza,
A kiss might crave as boon.
Of loving I knew naught;
By Inez I was taught 1
A SHADOW BOAT.
UNDER ray keel another boat
Sails as I sail, floats as I float ;
Silent and dim and mystic still,
It steals through that weird nether-world,
Mocking my power, though at my
will
The foam before its prow is curled,
Or calm it lies, with canvas furled.
Vainly I peer, and fain would see
What phantom in that boat may be ;
Yet half I dread, lest I with ruth
Some ghost of my dead past divine,
Some gracious shape of my lost youth,
Whose deathless eyes once fixed on mine
Would draw me downward through the
brine !
1861-88] ARLO BATES.
577
A LAMENT.
T ET gleeful muses sing their roundelays!
-" So might iny muse have sung;
But in the jocund days
When she was young,
She chanced upon a grave
New-made, and since, there strays
A mournful cadence through her lightest stave.
Her mask, however gay,
Still covers cheeks tear-wet;
She cannot, in her singing, smile
Until she can forget.
A BROWNING CLUB IN BOSTON.
[The Philistines. 1889.]
THE president of the club, at this moment, called the assembly to order,
and announced that Mr. Fenwick had kindly consented—" Readers
always kindly consent," muttered Fenton aside to Mrs. Staggchase — to read
"Bishop Blougram's Apology," to which they would now listen. There
was a rustle of people settling back into their chairs; the reader brushed a
lank black lock from his sallow brow, and with a tone of sepulchral earnest-
ness began :
"'No more wine ? then we'll push back chairs, and talk.' "
For something over an hour the monotonous voice of the reader went
dully on. Fenton drew out his tablets and amused himself and Miss Dim-
mont by drawing caricatures of the company, ending with a sketch of a hand-
some old dowager who went so soundly to sleep that her jaw fell. Over this
his companion laughed so heartily that Mrs. Staggchase leaned forward smil-
ingly and took his tablets away from him ; whereat he produced an envelope
from his pocket and was about to begin another sketch, when suddenly, and
apparently somewhat to the surprise of the reader, the poem came to an end.
There was a joyful stir. The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory
clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people were
assured that there was no mistake about his being really quite through. A
few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an awful pause,
while the president, as usual, waited in the never-fulfilled hope that the dis-
cussion would start itself without help on his part.
"How cleverly you do sketch," Miss Dimmont said, under her breath;
" but it was horrid of you to make me laugh."
" You arc grateful," Fenton returned, in the same tone. " You know I
kept you from being bored to death."
VOL. x.— 37
578 ARLO BATES. [1861-88
"I have a cousin, Miss Wainwright," pursued Miss Dimmont, "whose
picture we want you to paint."
" If she is as good a subject as her cousin," Fenton answered, " I shall be
delighted to do it."
The president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet,
half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural agility,
and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely grateful to Mr.
Fen wick for his very intelligent interpretation of the poem read.
"Did he interpret it ?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why
wasn't I told ? "
" Hush ! " she answered, " I will never let you sit by me again if you do not
behave better."
" Sitting isn't my metier, you know," he retorted.
The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the poem
were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to explore them all
in one evening, but that he was sure there must be many who had thoughts
or questions they wished to express, and to start the discussion he would call
upon a gentleman whom he had observed taking notes during the reading
— Mr. Fenton.
" The old scaramouch ! " Fenton muttered, under his breath. " I'll paint
his portrait and send it to ' Punch.' "
Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the
parlor.
" I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, " that I am not
at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of saying any-
thing ; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over at home, and
not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you examined the paper.1'
At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely like
a laugh strangled at its birth.
" The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved ; " it is so clever
in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a certain time
after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely admiring its tech-
nique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of course the bit about 'an
artist whose religion is his art' touches me keenly, for I have long held to the
heresy that art is the highest thing in the world, and, as a matter of fact, the
only thing one can depend upon. The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram
shows well enough how one can juggle with theology ; and, after all, theology
is chiefly some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same
mistakes that he does."
Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and that
in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he was rapidly
getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd whimsicalities
which always came as a surprise when committed by a man who usually dis-
played so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of endeavoring to get
upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly and sat down.
His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest from
the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the Church of
1861-88] ARLO BATES. 579
the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization "with which Mrs. Fen-
ton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with abundant au-
burn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands, and eyes of eager
enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New England Puritanism had
been to implant in his soul the true martyr spirit. Fenton was never weary
of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness, his jests serving as an outlet not
only for the irritation physical ugliness always begot in him, but for his feel-
ing of opposition to his wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman
as upholding her. The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover,
awakened in the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive
mind there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a char-
acter which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely forsaken. Arthur
said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly person. " He is so
out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I always have a strong inclina-
tion to rub him out and make him over again." In that inmost chamber of
his consciousness where he allowed himself the luxury of absolute frankness,
however, the artist confessed that his animosity to the young rector had other
causes.
As Fenton sank into his seat, Mrs. Staggchase leaned over to quote from
the poem —
" ' For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.' "
The artist turned upon her a glance of comprehension and amusement,
but before he could reply, the rough, rather loud voice of Mr. Candish arrest-
ed his attention.
" If the poem teaches anything," Mr. Candish said, speaking according to
his custom, somewhat too warmly, " it seems to me it is the sophistry of the
sort of talk which puts art above religion. The thing that offends an honest
man in Bishop Blougram is the fact that he looks at religion as if it were an
art, and not a vital and eternal necessity, — a living truth that cannot be
trifled with."
" Ah," Fen ton's smooth and beautiful voice rejoined, "that is to confound
art with the artificial, which is an obvious error. Art is a passion, an utter
devotion to an ideal, an absolute lifting of man out of himself into that essen-
tial truth which is the only lasting bond by which mankind is united."
Fenton's coolness always had a confusing and irritating effect upon Mr.
Candish, who was too thoroughly honest and earnest to quibble, and far from
possessing the dexterity needed to fence with the artist. He began confus-
edly to speak, but with the first word became aware that Mrs. Fenton had
come to the rescue. Edith never saw a contest between her husband and the
clergyman without interfering if she could, and now she instinctively spoke,
without stopping to consider where she was.
" It is precisely for that reason," she said, " that art seems to me to fall
below religion. Art can make man contented with life only by keeping his
attention fixed upon anideal, while religion reconciles us to life as it really is."
A murmur of assent showed Arthur how much against the feeling of those
around him were the views he was advancing.
580 ARLO BATES. [1861-88
" Oh, well," he said, in a droll sotto voce, " if it is coining down to a family
difference we will continue it in private. "
And he abandoned the discussion.
" It seems to me," pursued Mr. Candish, only half conscious that Mrs.
Fenton had come to his aid, "that Bishop Blougram represents the most
dangerous spirit of the age. His paltering with truth is a form of casuistry
of which we see altogether too much nowadays."
" Do you think," asked a timid feminine voice, " that Blougram was quite
serious ? That he really meant all he said, I mean ? "
The president looked at the speaker with despair in his glance ; but she was
adorably pretty and of excellent social position, so that snubbing was not to
be thought of. Moreover, he was thoroughly well trained in keeping his
temper under the severest provocation, so he expressed his feelings merely by
a deprecatory smile.
" We have the poet's authority," he responded, in a softly patient voice,
"for saying that he believed only half."
There was a lit-tle rustle of leaves, as if people were looking over their books,
in order to find the passage to which he alluded. Then a young girl in the
front row of chairs, a pretty creature, just on the edge of womanhood, looked
up earnestly, her finger at a line on the page before her.
" I can't make out what this means," she announced, knitting her girlish
brow :
" ' Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely.'
Of course he can't mean that the Madonna winks ; that would be too irrever-
ent."
There were little murmurs of satisfaction that the question had been asked,
confusing explanations which evidently puzzled some who had not thought
of being confused before ; and then another girl, ignoring the fact that the
first difficulty had not been disposed of, propounded another.
" Isn't the phrase rather bold," she asked, " where he speaks of ' blessed
evil'?"
" Where is that ?" some one asked.
" On page 106, in my edition," was the reply ; and a couple of moments
were given to finding the place in the various books.
" Oh, I see the line," said an old lady, at last. "It's one — two — three —
five lir.es from the bottom of the page :
" ' And that's what all the blessed evil's for.' "
" You don't think," queried the first speaker, appealing personally to the
president, " that Mr. Browning can really have meant that evil is blessed, do
you?"
The president regarded her with an affectionate and fatherly smile.
" I think," he said, with an air of settling everything, " that the explana-
tion of his meaning is to be found in the line which follows —
" ' It's use in Time is to environ us.' "
1861-88] ARLO BATES.
581
"Heavens!" whispered Fenton to Mrs. Staggchase; "fancy that incar-
nate respectability environed by ' blessed evil' ! "
" For my part," she returned, in the same tone, " I feel as if I were visiting
a lunatic asylum."
" Yes, that line does make it beautifully clear," observed the voice of Miss
Catherine Pen wick ; "and I think that's so beautiful about the exposed brain,
and lidless eyes, and disemprisoned heart. The image is so exquisite when
he speaks of their withering up at once."
Fenton made a droll grimace for the benefit of his neighbor, and then ob-
served with great apparent seriousness :
" The poem is most remarkable for the intimate knowledge it shows of
human nature. Take a line like
" ' Men have outgrown the shame of being fools ; '
We can see such striking instances of its truth all about us."
" How can you ? " exclaimed Elsie Dimmont, under her breath.
Fenton had not been able wholly to keep out of his tone the mockery which
he intended, and several people looked at him askance. Fortunately for him,
a nice old gentleman who, being rather hard of hearing, had not caught what
was said, now broke in with the inevitable question, which, sooner or later,
was sure to come into every discussion of the club :
" Isn't this poem to be most satisfactorily understood when it is regarded
as an allegory?"
The members, however, did not take kindly to this suggestion in the pres-
ent instance. The question passed unnoticed, while a severe-faced woman
inquired, with an air of vast superiority :
" I have understood that Bishop Blougram is intended as a portrait of
Cardinal Wiseman ; can any one tell me if Gigadibs is also a portrait ? "
" Oh, Lord ! " muttered Fenton, half audibly. " I can't stand any more
of this."
And at that moment a servant came to tell him that his carriage was waiting.
OUR DEAD.
[Sonnets in Shadow. 1887.]
WE must be nobler for our dead, be sure,
Than for the quick. We might their living eyes
Deceive with gloss of seeming; but all lies
Were vain to cheat a prescience spirit-pure.
Our soul's true worth and aim, however poor,
They see who watch us from some deathless skies
With glance death-quickened. That no sad surprise
Sting them in seeing, be ours to secure.
582 ANNA BOWMAN DODD. [1861-88
Living, our loved ones make us what they dream j
Dead, if they see, they know us as we are.
Henceforward we must be, not merely seem.
Bitterer woe than death it were by far
To fail their hopes who love us to redeem ;
Loss were thrice loss that thus their faith should mar.
anna I3ot*mtan
BORN in Brooklyn, N. Y.
A PLANTATION ROSALIND.
[Qlorinda. A Story. 1888.]
WHEN on the plantation, Withers at once began a diligent search for
Glorinda. He went into all the rooms on the ground-floor, but she
was not in any of them. He made a tour of the porticos ; she was beneath
none of them. He strolled through the outhouses and the yard, among the
trees in front of the house ; only Parthenia and the turkeys inhabited those
domains. He was on the eve of asking Parthenia to see if Miss Glory was in
her room and would come down to him, when he bethought him of the wood.
It came to him with a swift flash of divination that she had surely gone there ;
she would be the more likely to have gone, since she supposed him off for the
day.
The woods, as he entered them, seemed as empty and deserted as the house
and park. As he cautiously made his way toward his old hiding-place, his
quick ear soon detected the sounds of a voice. It was a voice he knew well
now, and it was pitched in a tragic key ; but it was still melodious and sono-
rous. She was there, and was reciting. His heart gave a quickened throb.
He almost crept along, beneath the protecting shelter of the tree-trunks.
As he neared his old ambuscade, creep he did in reality, on hands and knees,
pushing the briers aside, working his way through the tangled underbrush,
letting the weight of his knees and feet strike the crackling forest leaves as
lightly as he could. For nothing in the world would he have her see him ; he
felt it indeed to be a kind of treachery to push his way toward her, to spy her
thus unseen. Yet he felt that for nothing in the world would he miss seeing
her once more, as he had first seen her, in the comical yet strangely beauti-
ful surroundings which her extraordinary fancy had conjured about her.
He had reached the poke-berries now. He was behind them. In front of
him was a protecting cluster of young sumach. The leaves were more brill-
iantly scarlet than they had been a week since ; they made the better shelter.
They made also a kind of flaming network through which, as he crouched
behind them, "Withers could look out into the little amphitheatre in front
of him.
1861-88] ANNA BOWMAN DODD. ego
The voice was declaiming in strained, affected tones ; there were the same
misplaced accents, the same melodramatic changes he had heard before. The
girl herself he could not see ; she was not in her old place, under the great
elm. The little dusky audience, however, was in full session. The group of
darkies beneath the shade of the great trees was lying in various postures and
in the most complete stillness. Ever and anon the canopy of leaves above the
recumbent figures would be lifted by a light slow breeze. Then the noon sun
would flood the upturned faces and black skins in a bath of broad sunlight ;
and the motionless little negroes were like so many bronze figures. From the
intent expression of their round fixed eyes Withers could divine the direction
from which the voice came. They were as still as if under the magnetism of
some spell, as through the trees came the fluttering sound of advancing foot-
steps.
" Come, woo me, woo me ! for now I am in a holiday humor and like enough to consent,"
Glorinda's rich voice cried out. The next instant, as she went on finishing
the lines, she came, springing with light steps with hair afloat, her blue mantle
caught into wind-swept folds, from the sudden rush she made as she rounded a
near tree-trunk. And Glorinda — and Rosalind — stood before Withers's eyes.
She had on the famous blue tights. The mantle, the cloak she had worn
as Juliet, fell to her knees, the splendid masses of her hair almost covering it.
Some tunic she wore beneath, which he could not distinguish ; all Withers
really saw was the slender line from the knee downward, and the glorious
hair that swept her figure like a veil.
" My God ! how beautiful she is ! " he cried out under his breath.
She was a vision as she stood there, the sun showering its light upon her,
crowning her head like an aureole, dusting her brown tresses into a cloud of
light, her face swept by the strong fierce brightness till it shone with a trans-
figured glory. The blue mantle encased her like some royal robe. The deli-
cate limbs, released from their petticoat bondage, freed for the full play of
their lovely sinuous action, palpitated in motion beneath, as one sees the stir
of life beneath the wing of a bird.
She was reciting Orlando's part now, in the deep bass notes he had heard
before. It was like a child playing at make-believe, he said to himself.
" How if the kiss be denied ? "
said the pseudo-bass voice.
"Then she puts you to entreaty,"
Rosalind answered, changing swiftly to falsetto. But m spite of the falsetto
she was charming, she was adorable. She was better as Rosalind than she had.
been as Juliet ; she was more coquettish, her touch was lighter, she had more
movement and action, Withers said to himself beneath his breath, as he
watched her. Nothing could be prettier than her innocent by-play, of the
real conception of which she had no more knowledge than a kitten ; yet it
was charmingby-play for all that. Beautiful indeed she was when she clasped
her white arms above her head, to look her imaginary Orlando in the face;
more adorably lovely still when she made her red lips pout in i mitation of a kiss.
584 ANNA BOWMAN DODD, [1861-88
Then, all at once, there fell upon the air a terrible stillness.
Glorinda's voice had stopped with an awful suddenness. She was stand-
ing quite still, and she was looking at him, full, straight in the eyes. She
had seen him through the bushes ; he must have ventured too far beyond
them.
Glorinda grew at first deadly white. Withers felt his own face to be turn-
ing to flame.
It was a full moment before she recovered herself. Then she went on —
continuing, however, to give the lines in a perfectly commonplace voice — in
tones which it made Withers's heart ache to hear, they were so treacherously
unsteady.
She did not go to the end of the scene. She gave a few more lines, and then
stopped. With a sudden access of self-possession she turned toward him, look-
ing him full in the eyes again ; through the network of leaves her eyes seemed
like two threatening flames in their'brilliancy.
She spoke to the negroes, although Withers knew only too well whom she
was really addressing.
"You may go now ; I can't go on — it's too hot, and I'm tired. Please go
away at once."
He knew himself to be dismissed, and yet he could not move ; he felt him-
self to be glued to the spot. He must see her once, cost what it might ; he
must speak to her and gain her forgiveness.
The little audience had quickly scattered. Withers rose then, pushing his
way toward the place where she had been standing. But she was no longer
there; she had gone down into the hollow to undress, probably; he would
wait. Then a low, stifled sob fell on his ear ; the edge of a blue mantle caught
his eye. It must be — it was Glorinda ; she was lying on the ground, on the
other side of the tree-trunk.
She had thrown herself prone upon the ground ; she had hidden her face
in her mantle ; she was sobbing convulsively.
Withers was beside her in an instant. Unconsciously he put his arm about
her, as he knelt over her.
" Oh, don't, don't, Miss Glory ! " he cried out, as he tried to raise her, to
clasp her waist, and to pull her upward. " I — I am a brute ; I am ashamed ; I
can never forgive myself ; but oh, for Heaven's sake don't weep ! you will
break my heart ; you will make yourself ill ; " and he went on struggling to
raise her all the while, to turn her face toward him. But Glory still kept it
hidden, now in her mantle, now in the masses of her hair. She was weeping
still, but not so violently. She was sobbing softly as she let him pull her to-
ward him, raising her till she was sitting beside him, with her face still buried
in her hair. She kept on weeping, but less and less bitterly. Withers stroked
the long tresses with his hand, as for a few brief seconds Glorinda's head lay,
in the abandonment of her distress, upon his shoulder. He kept on talking
all the while in the heat of his remorse and repentance.
" I can never forgive myself — never. I am ashamed, — I am ashamed even
to ask you to forgive me for doing such an outrageous thing, — for spying on
jou like that."
1S61-88] ANNA BOWMAN DODD.
The head on his shoulder gave a convulsive little sob.
" But you see," he went on, trying to lift the head that he might look into
her face,—" but you see, I had done it before, I had seen you before, as—
Juliet — last week— before I came, and "
The head was suddenly raised now. Glorinda's sobbing ceased. She
brushed a wet mist from before her eyes, as she sat, drawing herself away
from him, that she might look him quite full in the face.
" You saw me before as Juliet ? " She had found her voice, which was firm
in spite of the tears still hanging on her wet eyelids.
" Yes, yes, it was by accident— wholly by accident. I was passing, you
know, through the woods, resting here, and I couldn't help seeing you ; you
were acting when I got here, — before I came "
" Then you have known all the time, ever since you came, that I— that" —
She almost broke down here, her voice dying into a half- born sob ; but she
rallied, straightening herself up with a bravery that made Withers ache to
see. Some new force now possessed her ; for her eyes suddenly brightened,
in spite of the tears which suffused them.
" Then, since you've seen me, since you know all, you can tell me — will
you — truly, frankly ? " In her new-born earnestness, she leaned toward
Withers, grasping his hand, as she spoke.
"Tell you — tell you what ? I'll tell you anything; you know I will ! "
" Then — tell me — do you think I shall succeed, — do you think there's any
chance?"
Withers could scarcely divine her meaning. She seemed to see, to com-
prehend his perplexity. She went on :
" I mean, do you think there's any chance for me in the theatres ; that any
one would take me ? You ought to know ; you live in the great cities. I've
thought of asking you before ; but — but I've never dared ; I was afraid"
" My dear little girl, what has put such nonsense into your head ? why do
you want to act ? " Withers answered, as he took both Glory's hands in one
of his, turning her face full in front of him with the other. He had a hard
truth to tell, and he felt it would be easier to do so if he could look into her
eyes. They did not lower beneath his gaze, as she responded quickly :
" Because — because I must ; because we are so — so poor. Don't you think
I could ? "
He could see that she was in an agony of suspense.
" Yes, I do, with years of practice, under skilled teachers. But that means
time and money ; and if you want "
"Oh, couldn't I begin at once, in little parts, — in tiny, tiny parts? Fve
heard of others doing that, and rising "
" Yes ; but such a life is one you couldn't lead. What do yon know of the
world ? Who could go about with you, to protect you ? And besides, where
would the money come from ? For in little parts you'd get little or no pay.
No, no, Miss Glory, you'd better give it up ; it isn't any sort of a life for you."
Her face, as he had gone on trying to say all he must, as kindly as hacould,
had worn a hundred different expressions, as it was swept by the emotions
that were rending her young bosom. If the gift of mobility were all an ac-
586 EDWARD BELLAMY. [1861-88
tress needed as a pledge of success, she was at least fully equipped in that capa-
city. But she did not look in the least like taking his advice, like renouncing
her hopes, as he drew to the end of his sentence ; the buoyancy had died out
of her face, but the determination was still set on brow and lip.
" "Why — why couldn't I try as Juliet, as Rosalind, then, at once ? Others
have, who've not been trained, — I've read of them ; perhaps I'd succeed, too.
Are you sure I wouldn't succeed ? " she went on, gazing up at him with a pas-
sion of hope in her great eyes.
As she had gone on talking, she had begun to braid her hair, to get it out of
the way. She was braiding the last ends now, as she continued to look up at
him ; her swift fingers were running in and out of the strands like pink and
white shuttles through a golden web. In the hurry of her braiding, the blue
mantle had slipped. It had become loosened at the shoulder ; it had fallen
so that the short tunic and the encased limbs were fully revealed.
As his eye swept the full yet delicate lines of her figure, Withers could have
laughed aloud at her question ; for hers was the shape, and these were the
curves, of a young goddess. Succeed ? Good God ! what couldn't she do with
such a beauty as hers ?
He held his breath. He could barely summon strength to meet her eyes ;
for she was still looking up at him with her wild-eyed, eager, expectant gaze,
as she went on mechanically braiding her hair.
For one fierce moment the temptation nearly blinded him to clasp her to
him, to gather all that beauty and loveliness in one sweet swift embrace to his
arms, to his lips. Then Withers turned to clutch wildly at the tufts of grass,
digging the hand on which he was leaning deep into the moist dull earth, and
the moment of his temptation had passed. That cool touch of the soil be-
Ueath his fingers was the drop of moisture that checked the fever in his blood.
'Bellamy
BORN in Chicopee Falls, Mass., 1850.
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
[Looking backward : 2000-1887. 1888.]
FOE a considerable time I remained . . . sitting up in bed gazing at
vacancy, absorbed in recalling the scenes and incidents of my fantastic
appearance. Sawyer, alarmed at my looks, was meanwhile anxiously inqui-
ring what was the matter with me. Roused at length by his importunities to
a recognition of my surroundings, I pulled myself together with an effort and
assured the faithful fellow that I was all right. " I have had an extraordinary
dream, that's all, Sawyer," I said, — " a most ex-traor-dinary dream."
I dressed in a mechanical way, feeling light-headed and oddly uncertain
of myself, and sat down to the coffee and rolls which Sawyer was in the habit
1861-88] EDWARD BELLAMY.
587
of providing for my refreshment before I left the house. The morning news-
paper lay by my plate. I took it up, and my eye fell on the date May 31, 1887.
I had known, of course, from the moment I opened my eyes that my long and
detailed experience in another century had been a dream, and yet it was start-
ling to have it so conclusively demonstrated that the world was but a few
hours older than when I had lain down to sleep.
Glancing at the table of contents at the head of the paper which reviewed
the news of the morning, I read the following summary :
' ' FOR EIGN AFFAIRS. —The impending war between France and Germany. The French
Chambers asked for new military credits to meet Germany's increase of her army. Prob-
ability that all Europe will be involved in case of war. — Great suffering among the un-
employed in London. They demand work. Monster demonstration to be made. The
authorities uneasy. — Great strikes in Belgium. The government preparing to repress
outbreaks. Shocking facts in regard to the employment of girls in Belgian coal-mines.
—Wholesale evictions in Ireland.
"HoME AFFAIKS. — The epidemic of fraud unchecked. Embezzlement of half a mil-
lion in New York.— Misappropriation of a trust fund by executors. Orphans left pen.
niless.— Clever system of thefts by a bank-teller ; $50,000 gone.— The coal barons decide
to advance the price of coal and reduce production.— Speculators engineering a great
wheat corner at Chicago. — A clique forcing up the price of coffee. — Enormous land-grabs
of Western syndicates.— Revelations of shocking corruption among Chicago officials.
Systematic bribery.— The trials of the Boodle aldermen to go on at New York.— Large
failures of business houses. Fears of a business crisis.— A large grist of burglaries and
larcenies. — A woman murdered in cold blood for her money at New Haven. — A house-
holder shot by a burglar in this city last night.— A man shoots himself in Worcester be-
cause he could not get work. A large family left destitute. — An aged couple in New
Jersey commit suicide rather than go to the poor-house. — Pitiable destitution among the
women wage-workers in the great cities. — Startling growth of illiteracy in Massachusetts.
— More insane asylums wanted. — Decoration Day addresses. Professor Brown's oration
on the moral grandeur of nineteenth century civilization. "
It was indeed the nineteenth century to which I had awaked ; there could
be no kind of doubt about that. Its complete microcosm this summary of
the day's news had presented, even to that last unmistakable touch of fatuous
self-complacency. Coming after such a damning indictment of the age as
that one day's chronicle of world-wide bloodshed, greed and tyranny, it was
a bit of cynicism worthy of Mepbistopheles, and yet of all whose eyes it had
met this morning I was, perhaps, the only one who perceived the cynicism,
and but yesterday I should have perceived it no more than the others. That
strange dream it was which had made all the difference. For I know not how
long I forgot my surroundings after this, and was again in fancy moving in
that vivid dream-world, in that glorious city, with its homes of simple com-
fort and its gorgeous public palaces. Around me were again faces nnmarred
by arrogance or servility, by envy or greed, by anxious care or feverish ambi-
tion, and stately forms of men and women who had never known fear of a
fellow man or depended on his favor, but always, in the words of that sermon
which still rang in my ears, had " stood up straight before God."
With a profound sigh and a sense of irreparable Was, not the less poignant
that it was a loss of what had never really been, I roused at last from my
revery, and soon after left the house.
A dozen times between my door and Washington street I had to stop and
588 EDWARD BELLAMY. [1861-88
pull myself together, such power had been in that vision of the Boston of the
future to make the real Boston strange. The squalor and malodorousness of
the town struck me, from the moment I stood upon the street, as facts I had
never before observed. But yesterday, moreover, it had seemed quite a mat-
ter of course that some of my fellow-citizens should wear silks and others
rags; that some should look well fed and others hungry. Now on the con-
trary the glaring disparities in the dress and condition of the men and women
who brushed each other on the sidewalks shocked me at every step, and yet
more the entire indifference which the prosperous showed to the plight of
the unfortunate. Were these human beings, who could behold the wretch-
edness of their fellows without so much as a change of countenance ? And
yet, all the while, I knew well that it was I who had changed, and not my
contemporaries. I had dreamed of a city whose people fared all alike as chil-
dren of one family and were one another's keepers in all things.
Another feature of the real Boston which assumed the extraordinary effect
of strangeness that marks familiar things seen in a new light was the preva-
lence of advertising. There had been no personal advertising in the Boston
of the twentieth century, because there was no need of any, but here the walls
of the buildings, the windows, the broadsides of the newspapers in every hand,
the very pavements, everything in fact in sight, save the sky, were covered
•with the appeals of individuals who sought, under innumerable pretexts, to
attract the contributions of others to their support. However the wording
might vary, the tenor of all these appeals was the same :
" Help John Jones. Never mind the rest. They are frauds. I, John Jones,
am the right one. Buy of me. Employ me. Visit me. Hear me, John Jones.
Look at me. Make no mistake, John Jones is the man and nobody else. Let
the rest starve, but for God's sake remember John Jones ! "
Whether the pathos or the moral repulsiveness of the spectacle most im-
pressed me, so suddenly become a stranger in my own city, I know not.
Wretched men, I was moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be
helpers of one another, are doomed to be beggars of one another from the
least to the greatest ! This horrible babel of shameless self-assertion and mu-
tual depreciation, this stunning clamor of conflicting boasts, appeals, and
adjurations, this stupendous system of brazen beggary, what was it all but
the necessity of a society in which the opportunity to serve the world accord-
ing to his gifts, instead of being secured to every man as the first object of
social organization, had to be fought for !
I reached Washington street at the busiest point, and there I stood and
laughed aloud, to the scandal of the passers by. For my life I could not have
helped it, with such a mad humor was I moved at sight of the interminable
rows of stores on either side, up and down the street so far as I could see,
scores of them, to make the spectacle more utterly preposterous, within a
stone's throw devoted to selling the same sort of goods. Stores ! stores ! stores !
miles of stores ! ten thousand stores to distribute the goods needed by this
one city, which in my dream had been supplied with all things from a single
warehouse, as they were ordered through one great store in every quarter
where the buyer, without waste of time or labor, found under one roof the
1861-88] EDWARD BELLAMY.
world's assortment in whatever line he desired. There the labor of distribu-
tion had been so slight as to add but a scarcely perceptible fraction to the
cost of commodities to the user. The cost of production was virtually all he
paid. But here the mere distri button of the goods, their handling alone, add-
ed a fourth, a third, a half and more, to the cost. All these ten thousand
plants must be paid for, their rent, their staffs of superintendence, their pla-
toons of salesmen, their ten thousand sets of accountants, jobbers, and busi-
ness dependents, with all they spent in advertising themselves and fighting
one another, and the consumers must do the paying. What a famous process
for beggaring a nation !
Were these serious men I saw about me, or children, who did their business
on such a plan ? Could they be reasoning beings who did not see the folly
which, when the product is made and ready for use, wastes so much of it in
getting it to the user ? If people eat with a spoon that leaks half its contents
between bowl and lip, are they not likely to go hungry ?
I had passed through Washington street thousands of times before and
viewed the ways of those who sold merchandise, but my curiosity concerning
them was as if I had never gone by their way before. I took wondering note
of the show-windows of the stores, filled with goods arranged with a wealth
of pains and artistic device to attract the eye. I saw the throngs of ladies
looking in, and the proprietors eagerly watching the effect of the bait. I went
within and noted the hawk-eyed floor-walker watching for business, over-
looking the clerks, keeping them up to their task of inducing the customers
to buy, buy, buy for money if they had it, for credit if they had it not, to buy
what they wanted not, more than they wanted, what they could not afford.
At times I momentarily lost the clew and was confused by the sight. Why
this effort to induce people to buy ? Surely that had nothing to do with the
legitimate business of distributing products to those who needed them. Surely
it was the sheerest waste to force upon people what they did not want, but
what might be useful to another. The nation was so much the poorer for
every such achievement. What were these clerks thinking of ? Then I would
remember that they were not acting as distributors like those in the store I
had visited in the dream Boston. They were not serving the public interest,
but their immediate personal interest, and it was nothing to them what the
ultimate effect of their course on the general prosperity might be, if but they
increased their own hoard, for these goods were their own, and the more they
sold and the more they got for them the greater their gain. The more waste-
ful the people were, the more articles they did not want which they could be
induced to buy, the better for these sellers. To encourage prodigality was
the express aim of the ten thousand stores of Boston.
Nor were these storekeepers and clerks a whit worse men than any others
in Boston. They must earn a living and support their families, and how were
they to find a trade to do it by which did not necessitate placing their individ-
ual interests before those of others and that of all ? They could not be asked
to starve while they waited for an order of things such as I had seen in my
dream, in which the interest of each and that of all were identical. But, God
in heaven ! what wonder, under such a system as this about me, what wonder
590 EDWARD BELLAMY. [1861-88
that the city was so shabby, and the people so meanly dressed, and so many
of them ragged and hungry !
Some time after this it was that I drifted over into South Boston and found
myself among the manufacturing establishments. I had been in this quarter
of the city a hundred times before, just as I had been on Washington street,
but here, as well as" there, I now first perceived the true significance of what
I witnessed. Formerly I had taken pride in the fact that, by actual count,
Boston had some four thousand independent manufacturing establishments,
but in this very multiplicity and independence I recognized now the secret
of the insignificant total product of their industry.
If Washington street had been like a lane in Bedlam, this was a spectacle
as much more melancholy as production is a more vital function than distri-
bution. For not only were these four thousand establishments not working
in concert, and for that reason alone operating at prodigious disadvantage,
but, as if this did not involve a sufficiently disastrous loss of power, they were
using their utmost skill to frustrate one another's efforts, praying by night
and working by day for the destruction of one another's enterprises.
The roar and rattle of wheels and hammers resounding from every side was
not the hum of a peaceful industry, but the clangor of swords wielded by
foemen. These mills arid shops were so many forts, each under its own flag,
its guns trained on the mills and shops about it, and its sappers busy below,
undermining them.
Within each one of these forts the strictest organization of industry was
insisted on ; the separate gangs worked under a single central authority. No
interference and no duplicating of work were permitted. Each had his allot-
ted task, and none were idle. By what hiatus in the logical faculty, by what
lost link of reasoning account, then, for the failure to recognize the necessity
of applying the same principle to the organization of the national industries
as a whole, to see that if lack of organization could impair the efficiency of a
shop, it must have effects as much more disastrous in disabling the industries
of the nation at large as the latter are vaster in volume and more complex in
the relationship of their parts.
People would be prompt enough to ridicule an army in which there were
neither companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, or army corps,
— no unit of organization, in fact, larger than the corporal's squad, with no
officer higher than a corporal, and all the corporals equal in authority. And
yet just such an army were the manufacturing industries of nineteenth cen-
tury Boston, an army of four thousand independent squads led by four thou-
sand independent corporals, each with a separate plan of campaign.
Knots of idle men were to be seen here and there on every side, some idle
because they could find no work at any price, others because they could not
get what they thought a fair price.
I accosted some of the latter and they told me their grievances. It was very
little comfort I could give them. " I am sorry for you," I said. " You get
little enough, certainly, and yet the wonder to me is, not that industries con-
ducted as these are do not pay you living wages, but that they are able to pay
you any wages at all. "
IStfl-88] EDWARD BELLAMY.
591
^ Making my way back again after this to the peninsular city, toward three
o'clock I stood on State street, staring, as if I had never seen them before, at
the banks and brokers' offices, and other financial institutions, of which there
had been in the State street of my vision no vestige. Business men, confiden-
tial clerks, and errand boys, were thronging in and out of the banks, for it
wanted but a few minutes of the closing hour. Opposite me was the bank
where I did business, and presently I crossed the street, and, going in with
the crowd, stood in a recess of the wall looking on at the army of clerks hand-
ling money, and the cues of depositors at the tellers' windows. An old gen-
tleman whom I knew, a director of the bank, passing me and observing my
contemplative attitude, stopped a moment.
"Interesting sight, isn't it, Mr. West," he said. "Wonderful piece of
mechanism ; I find it so, myself. I like sometimes to stand and look on at it
just as you are doing. It's a poem, sir, a poem ; that's what I call it. Did you
ever think, Mr. West, that the bank is the heart of the business system ?
From it and to it, in endless flux and reflux, the life-blood goes. It is flowing
in now. It will flow out again in the morning." And, pleased with his little
conceit, the old man passed on smiling.
Yesterday I should have considered the simile apt enough, but since then
I had visited a world incomparably more affluent than this, in which money
was unknown and without conceivable use. I had learned that it had a use
in the world around me only because the work of producing the nation's live-
lihood, instead of being regarded as the most strictly public and common of
all concerns, and as such conducted by the nation, was abandoned to the hap-
hazard efforts of individuals. This original mistake necessitated endless ex-
changes to bring about any sort of general distribution of products. These
exchanges money effected — how equitably, might be seen in a walk from the
tenement-house districts to the Back Bay — at the cost of an army of men
taken from productive labor to manage it, with constant ruinous break-downs
of its machinery, and a generally debauching influence on mankind which
had justified its description, from ancient time, as the "root of all evil."
Alas for the poor old bank director with his poem ! He had mistaken the
throbbing of an abscess for the beating of the heart. What he called " a won-
derful piece of mechanism" was an imperfect device to remedy an unneces-
sary defect, the clumsy crutch of a self-made cripple.
After the banks had closed I wandered aimlessly about the business quar-
ter for an hour or two, and later sat a while on one of the benches of the Com-
mon, finding an interest merely in watching the throngs that passed, such as
one has in studying the populace of a foreign city, so strange since yesterday
had rny fellow-citizens and their ways become to me. For thirty years I had
lived among them, and yet I seemed to have never noted before how drawn
and anxious were their faces, of the rich as of the poor, the refined, acute
faces of the educated as well as the dull masks of the ignorant. And well it
might be so, for I saw now, as never before I had seen so plainly, that each as
he walked constantly turned to catch the whispers of a spectre at his ear — the
spectre of Uncertainty. "Do your work never so well," the spectre was whis-
pering,— " rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or serve faithfully, you
592 EDWARD BELLAMY. [1861-88
shall never know security. Rich you may be now, and still come to poverty at
last. Leave never so much wealth to your children, you cannot buy the as-
surance that your son may not be the servant of your servant, or that your
daughter will not have to sell herself for bread. "
A man passing by thrust an advertising-card in my hand, which set forth
the merits of some new scheme of life-insurance. The incident reminded me
of the only device, pathetic in its admission of the universal need it so poorly
supplied, which offered these tired and hunted men and women even a par-
tial protection from uncertainty. By this means, those already well-to-do, I
remembered, might purchase a precarious confidence that after their death
their loved ones would not, for a while at least, be trampled under the feet of
men. But this was all, and this was only for those who could pay well for it.
What idea was possible to these wretched dwellers in the land of Ishmael,
where every man's hand was against each and the hand of each against every
other, of true life-insurance as I had seen it among the people of that dream-
land, each of whom, by virtue merely of his membership in the national
family, was guaranteed against need of any sort, by a policy underwritten by
one hundred million fellow-countrymen.
Some time after this it was that I recall a glimpse of myself standing on
the steps of a building on Tremont street, looking at a military parade. A
regiment was passing. It was the first sight in that dreary day which had
inspired me with any other emotions than wondering pity and amazement.
Here at last were order and reason, an exhibition of what intelligent coop-
eration can accomplish. The people who stood looking on with kindling
faces, — could it be that the sight had for them no more than a spectacular
interest ? Could they fail to see that it was their perfect concert of action,
their organization under one control, which made these men the tremendous
engine they were, able to vanquish a mob ten times as numerous ? Seeing
this so plainly, could they fail to compare the scientific manner in which the
nation went to war with the unscientific manner in which it went to work ?
Would they not query since what time the killing of men had been a task so
much more important than feeding and clothing them, that a trained army
should be deemed alone adequate to the former, while the latter was left to a
mob?
It was now toward nightfall, and the streets were thronged with the work-
ers from the stores, the shops, and mills. Carried along with the stronger
part of the current, I found myself, as it began to grow dark, in the midst of
a scene of squalor and human degradation such as only the South Cove tene-
ment district could present. I had seen the mad wasting of human labor ;
here I saw in direst shape the want that waste had bred.
From the black doorways and windows of the rookeries on every side came
gusts of fetid air. The streets and alleys reeked with the effluvia of a slave-
ship's between-decks. As I passed I had glimpses within of pale babies gasp-
ing out their lives amid sultry stenches, of hopeless-faced women deformed
by hardship, retaining of womanhood no trait save weakness, while from the
windows leered girls with brows of brass. Like the starving bands of mongrel
curs that infest the streets of Moslem towns, swarms of half -clad brutalized
1861-88] CLARENCE CLOUGH BUEL.
593
children filled the air with shrieks and curses as they fought and tumbled
among the garbage that littered the court-yards.
There was nothing in all this that was new to me. Often had I passed
through this part of the city and witnessed its sights with feelings of disgust
mingled with a certain philosophical wonder at the extremities mortals will
endure and still cling to life. But not alone as regarded the economical fol-
lies of this age, but equally as touched its moral abominations, scales had
fallen from my eyes since that vision of another century. No more did I look
upon the woful dwellers in this inferno with a callous curiosity as creatures
scarcely human. I saw in them my brothers and sisters, my parents, my chil-
dren, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. The festering mass of human
wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced my
heart like a knife, so that I could not repress sighs and groans. I not only saw
but felt in my body all that I saw.
Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more closely, I
perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were so many living
sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the hicjacet of a soul
dead within.
As I looked, horror-struck, from one death's head to another, I was affected
by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face super-
imposed upon each of these brutish masks, I saw the ideal, the possible face
that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived. It was not till I
was aware of these ghostly faces and of the reproach that could not be gain-
said which was in their eyes, that the full piteousness of the ruin that had
been wrought was revealed to me. I was moved with contrition as with a
strong agony, for I had been one of those who had endured that these things
should be. I had been one of those who, well knowing that they were, had
not desired to hear or be compelled to think much of them, but had gone on
as if they were not, seeking my own pleasure and profit. Therefore now I
found upon my garments the blood of this great multitude of strangled souls
of my brothers. The voice of their blood cried out against me from the
ground. Every stone of the reeking pavements, every brick of the pestilen-
tial rookeries, found a tongue and called after me as I fled : What hast thou
done with thy brother Abel ?
Clarence Clou($ Buel
BORN in Laona, Chautauqua Co., N. Y ., 1850.
THE GUARDIAN OF OUR DUMB FRIENDS.
[Henry Sergh and his Work. 1879.]
rr^HE position Mr. Bergh occupies at the head of one of the greatest moral
-L agencies of the time is not more unique than his personal character.
Here is a man of refined sensibilities and tender feelings, who relinquished
VOL. x.-38
594 CLARENCE CLOUOH BUEL. [1861-88
an honored position and the enjoyment of wealth, to become the target of
sneers and public laughter, for the sake of principles of humanity the most
unselfish. By day and by night, in sunshine and storm, he gives his strength
to the cause as freely as he aided it with his fortune. For a few years his per-
son and his purposes were objects of ridicule, in the less scrupulous public
prints and on the streets. He was bullied by lawyers in courts of justice, and
took his revenge according to Gospel precept. He was called a fanatic, a vis-
ionary, a seeker after notoriety, and a follower of Don Quixote. But faith
and courage never forsook him, nor the will to shield a dumb animal from a
brutal blow and help a fellow-human to control his evil passions. The results
and his reward are already proportionate to his labors, for the legislatures of
thirty-three States have decided that dumb animals have rights that masters
must respect ; and the Court of Errors, the highest tribunal in the Empire
State, has recently confirmed the equity and constitutionality of the cruelty
laws.
Thirteen years of devoted labor have wrought no very great change in the
appearance and manner of Henry Bergh. If the lines of his careworn face
have multiplied, they have also responded to the kindly influence of public
sympathy and the release of his genial disposition from austere restraint. A
visitor who had no claims on Mr. Bergh's indulgence once remarked: "I was
alarmed by the dignity of his presence and disarmed by his politeness. " Since
Horace Greeley's death, no figure more familiar to the public has walked the
streets of the metropolis. Nature gave him an absolute patent on every fea-
ture and manner of his personality. His commanding stature of six feet is mag-
nified by his erect and dignified bearing. A silk hat with straight rim covers
with primness the severity of his presence. A dark-brown or dark-blue frock
overcoat encases his broad shoulders and spare, yet sinewy, figure. A decisive
hand grasps a cane strong enough to lean upon, and competent to be a de-
fence without looking like a standing menace. When this cane, or even his
finger, is raised in warning, the cruel driver is quick to understand and heed
the gesture. On the crowded street he walks with a slow, slightly swinging
pace peculiar to himself. Apparently preoccupied, he is yet observant of
everything about him and mechanically notes the condition from head to hoof
of every passing horse. Everybody looks into the long, solemn, finely chiselled
and bronzed face wearing an expression of firmness and benevolence. Brown
locks fringe a broad and rounded forehead. Eyes between blue and hazel,
lighted by intellectual fires, are equally ready to dart authority or show com-
passion. There is energy of character in a long nose of the purest Greek type ;
melancholy in a mouth rendered doubly grave by deep lines, thin lips, and a
sparse, drooping mustache, and determination in a square chin of leonine
strength. The head, evenly poised, is set on a stout neck rooted to broad
shoulders. In plainness, gravity, good taste, individuality, and unassuming
and self-possessed dignity, his personality is a compromise between a Quaker
and a French nobleman whose life and thoughts no less than long descent are
his title to nobility. . *
Whisperings of his true mission in life came to Henry Bergh about the
time of his appointment as Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburgh in 1862.
1861-88] CLARENCE CLOUOH BUEL.
595
For years he had taken note of the cruelties practised on dumb animals in
European countries, and the brutal sports in which animal life was sacrificed.
His strong sense of justice and human obligation led him to regard such cru-
elty as one of the greatest blemishes on human character. In Russia the com-
mon people have, or had, a profound respect for official position. Mr. Bergh's
footman wore the gold lace that served to distinguish members of the diplo-
matic corps. One day he interfered in behalf of a donkey that was being
cruelly beaten, and made the happy discovery that the owner of the beast, as
well as the crowd, stood in awe of the gold lace of his equipage. " At last,"
he said, " I've found a way to utilize my gold lace, and about the best use
that can be made of it." So he formed a society of two for the protection of
dumb animals, his coachman, as executive officer, sympathizing in the work
to the extent of the wages paid him. This coachman was a rather pompous
muzhik, who spoke bad French to his master and prided himself on his com-
mand of Russian billingsgate. During his daily drives, if Mr. Bergh saw an
animal in the toils of a "cruelist," he would order his coachman to take the
human brute into a side street and give him a "regular blowing up." This
and the gold lace always had the desired effect, though, so far as Mr. Bergh
could understand, his coachman might have been reciting pastoral poetry
in an off-hand way
Before leaving Russia he determined to devote the remainder of his life to
the interests of dumb animals, and on his way home stopped in London to
confer with Lord Harrowby, president of the English society that was after-
ward Mr. Bergh's model. He landed at New York in the autumn of 1864 and
spent a year in maturing his plans. First of all, he took himself aside, as it
were, and scrupulously inquired if he had the strength to carry on such a
work and the ability to make the necessary sacrifices. He concluded that he
was equal to the task.
A paper now hangs on the walls of the office bearing the signatures of sev-
enty citizens of New York and inspiring almost as much reverence of a kind
as the Declaration of Independence. It proclaims the duty of protecting ani-
mals from cruelty, and among the signers are Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper,
George Bancroft, John A. Dix, Henry W. Bellows, Mayor Hoffman, John
Jacob Astor, and Alexander T. Stewart. After procuring this paper, Mr.
Bergh next prepared a charter and laws, and successfully urged their passage
at Albany. On the evening of February 8, 1866, Mayor Hoffman, A. T.
Stewart, and a few other gentlemen came through rain and six inches of slush
to listen to Mr. Bergh at Clinton Hall. In the -following April the society
was legally organized, Henry Bergh being elected president and George Ban-
croft a vice-president. At the close of his brief address the enthusiastic presi-
dent cried : "This, gentlemen, is the verdict you have this day rendered,
that the blood-red hand of cruelty shall no longer torture dumb beasts with
impunity."
That same evening Henry Bergh buttoned his overcoat and went forth
to defend the laws he had been mainly instrumental in securing, aware that
on himself more than on any other man depended whether they were laughed
at or obeyed. They were a radical innovation, for up to 1865 no law for the
596 CLARENCE CLOUGH BUEL. [1861-88
protection of animals from cruelty could be found on the statute-book of any
State in the Union. The common-law regarded animals simply as property,
and their masters, in wanton cruelty, or anger (for which Eozan, the French
moralist, says there is no better definition than "temporary insanity"),
might torture his sentient chattels without legal hindrance or accountability.
Henry Bergh put on this new armor of the law to battle no less for humanity
than for dumb animals. A timely arrival at Fifth avenue and Twenty-second
street, where a brutal driver was beating a lame horse with the butt-end of a
whip, resulted in an indecisive skirmish. He tried to reason with the man,
who simply laughed in derision and offered to pommel him if he would step
into the street. Mr. Bergh went home reflecting that there was a material
difference between brute protection in America, where every man felt that he
was something of a king, and in Eussia, where there were gold lace and a sub-
missive peasantry. The next day, from an omnibus, he saw a butcher's wagon
loaded with live sheep and calves, thrown together like so much wood, their
heads hanging over the edges of the wagon-box and their large innocent eyes
pleading in dumb agony. He alighted, and made a sensation by arresting
the butcher and taking him before a magistrate ; but New York justice was
not at that time quite prepared to act without a precedent. Early in May Mr.
Bergh succeeded in having a Brooklyn butcher fined for similar acts of cru-
elty, and numerous arrests, resulting in a few convictions, were made in New
York. He visited the market-places and the river-piers and walked the busy
streets, searching his brains for some means of bringing his cause prominent-
ly before the people. One morning, late in May, he saw a schooner just ar-
rived in port from Florida with a cargo of live turtles that had made the pas-
sage on their backs, their flippers having been pierced and tied with strings.
Seeing his opportunity to make a stir, Mr. Bergh arrested the captain and the
entire crew for cruelty to animals and marched them into court, the judge
sharing the amusement of the spectators and the lawyers. The captain's
counsel urged that turtles were not animals within the meaning of the law,
but fish, and if they were animals the treatment was not cruelty because pain-
less. The learned judge, in giving a decision favorable to the prisoners, said
it was past his belief that cruelty could have been inflicted on the turtles
when the sense of pain caused by boring holes in their fins was about what a
human being would experience from a mosquito bite. Professor Agassiz after-
ward came to Henry Bergh's assistance in the long struggle to "make it le-
gally apparent," as the latter said, "if not otherwise, to the torturers of the
poor despised turtle, that the great Creator, in endowing it with life, gave to
it feeling and certain rights, as well as to ourselves."
Mr. Bennett had already begun in his newspaper to ridicule the society, and
Mr. Bergh as the "Moses of the movement," while a little later he aided the
cause with money. He did the greatest possible good to the movement, how-
ever, two or three days after the turtle suit, by publishing a satire several
columns long, purporting to be a report of a mass meeting of animals at Union
Square, Mr. Bergh "in the chair." Each animal expressed his honest con-
viction concerning the work, and the article was so amusing and keen that
before forty-eight hours had passed Mr. Bergh and his society had engaged
1861-88] CLARENCE C LOUGH BUEL. 597
the attention of perhaps half a million of people. From that day the cause
moved steadily forward
Henry Bergh and his officers cannot be everywhere at once, but they some-
times think that some mysterious providence leads them to cases of cruelty,
so successful are they in being at the right place at the right time. All mem-
bers of the society have a badge of authority, and frequently supplement the
officers' efforts. Many gentlemen with no authority assume it. In January
lust a Broad street merchant was seen to rush out of his office into the street
and shake his fist at a teamster sitting on fifteen bales of cotton, with his
truck fast in the snow, the merchant exclaiming : " You ruffian ! Stop lick-
ing those horses, or I'll have you locked up!" The driver stopped. Two
ambulances for disabled horses are now kept ready for public use. When the
ambulance was first introduced, it was passing Wallack's Theatre one even-
ing with a noble white horse that had been injured, standing in it. The novel
spectacle attracted the crowds that were passing into the theatre. They
turned around, waited for the cavalcade to pass, and gave three cheers for
the society. A clergyman once said : "That ambulance preaches a better
sermon than I can." Devices for raising animals out of street excavations,
and various other appliances, are kept at the principal office.
Every few days the superintendent, with an officer, drives at six o'clock in
the morning to the pork-packing establishments on the west side, where
horses are made to draw enormous loads ; then to the trains at Forty-first
street, where live hogs are unloaded ; thence down the west side, stopping at
all the Jersey ferries to examine the milk-cart horses and truck-horses ; thence
to Washington Market and Fulton Market to look at the peddlers' horses, get-
ting back to the office at nine o'clock, ready for the daily routine.
Great as are the material benefits society derives from Henry Bergh's work,
in the economy of animal life, the moral benefits obtained are vastly greater.
Indeed, the work was first rendered possible by the liberation of the slave,
because a reasonable people could not have listened to the claims of dumb
animals while human beings, held in more ignoble bondage, were subjected
to greater cruelty and added outrage. He took up the principles of human-
ity, for which two chief martyrs fell, crowned with human love, and is carry-
ing them f orward by teaching men to be noble and strong through pity and
self-restraint.
ON THE TRAPPING OF A MOUSE THAT LIVED IN A LADY'S ESCRITOIRE
P
IOOR mousie ! you have learned too late,
This lady's scorn of mice— and men,
Who envy yet thy better fate, —
To hear the music of her pen ;
To kiss the rug her feet have kissed ;
To gambol round her dainty slippers,
And wonder if, in Beauty's list,
The foot of Venus could outstrip hers :
598 WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON. [1861-88
To draw the splendor of her eyes,
That flash as they discover you,
And picture in their swift surprise
Your fleeting bliss, and sentence, too ;
To have her fingers set the snare
And bait with crumbs have touched her lip,
Inviting to ambrosial fare
And sudden death's endearing grip :
While men may sigh and sigh in vain,
And suffer torturing Love's demur,
Without a smile to ease their pain
Or even leave to die for her.
1880.
OUtlltam Hamilton
BOKN in Sandy Hook, Conn., 1850.
WHERE SLEEPS TITANIA.
[A Midnight Ramble.— Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1888.]
MY first midnight walk was a revelation, and a severe shock to my com-
fortable self-conceit. The woods and meadows had been full of faces
that I had known and welcomed familiarly for years in my daily walks. But
when I sallied forth with my lantern that night, I stepped from my threshold
upon foreign sod. I found no greeting nor open palms, and I lost my way as
though in a strange land. I opened a fresh humble page in my botany. In
whatever direction I might look over the broad meadow I found the same
strange complexion everywhere to the limits of my vision, and what "a pleas-
ing land of drowsy-head it was ! "
" We are all a-noddin', nid-nid-noddin',"
seemed the universal lullaby. What a convocation of nightcaps and sleepy-
heads !
The nature of the nocturnal movements and attitudes of plants, both in
leaves and flowers, has long been a theme of speculation among botanists. In
the case of many flowers the night attitudes have been conclusively shown to
have relation solely to their fertilization by insects.
The drooping attitude of leaves at night was commonly supposed to indi-
cate an aversion to moisture, many plants assuming the same position during
rain as in the dew, thus seeming to verify the conjecture ; but when the same
pranks were played in a cloudy day or a dewless night, the explanation had
to be abandoned. In the clover tribe the nocturnal positions seem to be as-
sumed only in the darkness, and this invariably, dew or no dew, while the
leaves seem to revel in the rain, remaining freely open.
1861-88] WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON. 599
I doubt not that if our eyes were sharp enough they might discern a certain
strangeness in the nocturnal expression of every plant and tree, such as is
remarkably emphasized in the locust, which, by the way, is a member of that
same leguminous order of plants with the clovers, especially noted for the
pronounced irritability of the leaves and odd nocturnal capers, and whose
seeming vital consciousness has caused some botanists to class them at the
extremity of their system, in contact with the limits of the animal king-
dom
Turning to his "posies," our floriculturist may pick an exotic bouquet from
his own familiar borders. His starry " blue-bottles " have raised their horns
and assumed the shape of a shuttlecock. His balsams wear a hang-dog look,
with every leaf sharply declined. His coreopsis blossoms are turned vertical-
ly by a sharp bend at the summit of the stem. Many of his favorites, like the
eschscholtzia blossoms, have closed their eyes or perhaps hung their heads, and
refuse to look him in the face, while his climbing nasturtiums, especially if
they should be of the dwarf English variety, await his coming in hushed ex-
pectancy, and their wall of sheeny shields flashes a " boo " at him out of the
darkness, which immediately reveals the changed position of their foliage.
Every individual shield is now seen to stand perpendicularly, the stem being
bent in a sharp curve. In the midst of his surprise the flowers one by one now
seem to steal into view, peering out here and there behind the leaves, and he
will discern a grimace then that he never noted before. That bright bouquet
upon his mantel will henceforth wear a new expression for him and a fresh
identity. He will find himself exchanging winks therewith now and then,
and hover about the room among his friends in the proud consciousness of a
certain preferment not vouchsafed to common mortals.
The effect of such a bank of nasturtium leaves as the writer recently ob-
served is irresistibly queer. So instinct with mischievous consciousness did
it seem that he found himself entering into conversation at once, and laughed
outright in the darkness. It has been supposed that this vertical position of
the leaf was assumed to avoid the collection of dew, but this is obviously an
error. There is no disposition in the nasturtium to avoid moisture, as would
be apparent to any one who has watched the leaves dunng rain, catching and
coddling the great dancing drop at its hollowed centre, and loath to let it fall.
Our midnight gardener has still further surprises in store for him among
his plantations. Following the alluring fragrance of his melilot, he turns
the rays of his lantern among its branches, and finds them full of nocturnal
capers. The single leaflet of the melilot is threefold, like a clover, to which
it is closely akin. At night these three leaflets twist edge uppermost on their
stems, with the faces of the outer pair turned inward, while the end leaflet
folds its face flat to one side or the other, to the cheek of its chosen chum for
the night. And there they are, a dozy company in truth, yet not without a
subtle suggestion that it may all be a subterfuge for the moment to cover some
mischief or other
Tall strange columns loom up, white and ghostly, beneath the glare of your
lantern, here and there among the potato plants. They prove to be pigweeds,
but for strangeness they might have sprung up like mushrooms since your last
600 WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON. [1861-88
visit, most of the upper leaves, which during the day had extended wide on
their long stems, now inclining upward against the stalk, and enclosing the
tops of younger branches. Still other older plants are seen with leaves ex-
tended much as at mid-day, but nearly all turned edgewise by a twist in the
stem.
The chickweed's eye is closed, and
" Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel."
The creeping-mallow blossom now ignores proud array of " cheeses," and the
oxalis flower has left her shooting pods to keep the vigil, closed and nodding
upon its stem, while its foliage masquerades in one of the oddest disguises of
all this somnambulistic company, the three heart-shaped leaflets reflexed and
adjusting themselves back to back around the stem with many curious con-
tortions.
Whatever the disputed function of this nocturnal movement, it has at least
been shown to be essential to the life of the plant, careful experiment having
demonstrated, according to one authority, that " if the leaves are prevented
from so regulating their surface, they lose their color and die in a few days. "
Darwin also conclusively demonstrated thesame fact with various other plants.
The sleepiest beds in the garden, at least as to the flowers, will be found
among the poppies.
" Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday,"
mutters lago to Othello. The poppy, " lord of the land of dreams," sets a
beautiful example of that somnolence for which it is itself the emblem and
ministering nepenthe.
In a recent moonlight stroll in Switzerland I visited the poppies in their
native haunts, the common wild species whose flaming scarlet sets the foreign
summer fields ablaze in the mid-day sun. But I found their fires now smoul-
dering beneath the dew, and giving no token beneath the moon, for the blos-
soms were closed in luxurious slumber.
In the dim moonlight I beheld thousands of these folded flowers swaying
among the familiar daisies and grasses of my own land, and otherwise attend-
ed by a host of meadow flowers whose names I had not yet learned. The night
ephemerae fluttered here and there, and a large moth, which seemed almost
phosphorescent in its whiteness, hovered spirit-like close above the poppies.
The poppy welcomes all the " meadow tribes " during the day, but at night
her four damask curtains are closely drawn, the two inner petals being coiled
within each other above the tiny head that wears a crown within, and the
outer pair enfolding all in their crumpled bivalve clasp
Our evening primrose does not bloom in the dark hours for mere sentiment
or moonshine, but from a motive which lies much nearer her heart. From
the first moment of her wooing welcome she listens for murmuring wings,
and awaits that supreme fulfilment anticipated from her infant bud. For it
will almost invariably be found that those blossoms which open in the twi-
18G1-88] WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON. 601
light have adapted themselves to the crepuscular moths and other nocturnal
insects. This finds a striking illustration in the instances of many long tu-
bular-shaped night-blooming flowers, like the honeysuckle and various or-
chids, whose nectar is beyond the reach of any insect except the night-flying
hawk-moth. It is true that in other less deep nocturnal flowers the sweets
could be reached by butterflies or bees during the day if the blossoms remained
open, but the night murmurers receive the first fresh invitation, which, if
met, will leave but a wilted, half-hearted blossom to greet the sipper of the
sunshine. This beautiful expectancy of the flower determines the limit of
its bloom
Look ! Our misty dell is fast lighting its pale lamps in the twilight. One by
one they flash out in the gloom as if obedient to the hovering touch of some Ariel
unseen — or is it the bright response to the fire-fly's flitting torch ? The sun
has long sunk beneath the hill. And now, when the impenetrable dusk has
deepened round about, involving all, where but a moment since all was visi-
ble, this shadowy dell has forgotten the sunset, and knows a twilight all its
own, independent of the fading glow of the sky. It was a sleepy nook by day,
where it is now all life and vigilance ; it was dark and still at noon, where it
is now bright and murmurous. The "delicious secret" is now whispered
abroad, and where in all the mystic alchemy of odors or attars shall you find
such a witching fragrance as this which is here borne on the diaphanous tide
of the jealous gliding mist, and fills the air with its sweet enchantment— the
stilly night's own spirit guised in perfume ? Yonder bright cluster, deep
within the recess of the alders, how it glows ! fanned by numerous feathery
wings, it glimmers in the dark like a phosphorescent aureole — verily as
though some merry will-o'-the-wisp, tired of his dancing, had perched him
there, while other luminous spires rise above the mist, or here and there hover
in lambent banks beyond, or, like those throbbing fires beneath the ocean
surge, illume the fog with half -smothered halo. This lustrous tuft at our
elbow ! Let us turn our lantern upon it. Its nightly whorl of lamps is already
lit, save one or two that have escaped our fairy in his rounds, but not for
long, for the green veil of this sunset bud is now rent from base to tip. The
confined folded petals are pressing hard for their release. In a moment more,
with an audible impulse, the green apex bursts asunder, and the four freed
sepals slowly reflex against the hollow tube of the flower, while the lustrous
corolla shakes out its folds, saluting the air with its virgin breath.
The slender stamens now explore the gloom, and hang their festoons of
webby pollen across their tips. None 'too soon, for even now a silvery moth
circles about the blossom, and settles among the outstretched filaments, sip-
ping the nectar in tremulous content. But he carries a precious token as he
hies away, a golden necklace, perhaps, and with it a message to yonder blos-
som among the alders, and thus until the dawn, his rounds directed with a
deep design of which he is an innocent instrument, but which insures a per-
petual paradise of primroses for future sippers like himself. Nor is it neces-
sary to visit the haunt of the evening primrose to observe this beautiful epi-
sode. The same may be witnessed almost any summer evening much nearer
home, even about your porch, and among city walls, heralded by those fresh,
(502 ALICE FRENCH. [1861-88
dewy whiffs from the night-blooming honeysuckle, where the bright bevies
of blushing buds are bursting in anticipation of that " kiss which harms not/*
as the welcome sphinx-moth, piloted by the two great glowing lanterns of its
eyes, hovers in the murmurous cloud of its humming phantom-wings. How
often have I watched these mimic humming-birds in the gathering dusk,
whirling about the flowers, following the circuit of each fresh-blown cluster,
tilting and swaying in their buoyant poise above the blossom's throat, only
their long bodies visible in the fuzzy, buzzy halos of wings, the slender capil-
lary tongues uncoiled, nearly six inches in length, and thrust in turn deep
into the honeyed tubes
Most of the nocturnal flowers have thus adapted themselves especially to
these long-tongued Lepidoptera, hiding their honey in such deep tubes or
spurs that it is only accessible to the hawk-moths. To these there is intrusted
the perpetuity of many night-flowering plants. .
In attributing a phosphorescent quality to the evening primrose I have
mainly followed the license of fancy, although, if the scientists are to be be-
lieved, I have indeed scarcely wandered from the literal truth. For the sin-
gular luminous glow of this and other nocturnal flowers has long attracted
the attention of the curious, and positive qualities of inherent light have
been accorded in many instances. It is true that "the evening primrose is
perfectly visible in the darkest night/' from which fact phosphorescent prop-
erties have been ascribed to it. " Many perfectly authenticated instances are
on record of luminous, electrical, lightning-like phosphorescence playing
about flowers. The daughter of Linnaeus was the first to note it," observes
one writer. Pursh also subsequently observed and chronicled it. Similar
flashes or corona have been discerned on nasturtiums, double marigold, red
poppy, geraniums, tuberose, sunflower, anil evening primrose, according to
these authorities.
£ltce f tend).
i
BORN in Andover, Mass.
THE BISHOP'S VAGABOND.
[Knitters in the Sun. By Octave Thanet. 1887.]
PT^HE Bishop, after deliberation, had decided to accompany Demming to
-L Charleston. He excused his interest in the man so elaborately and plaus-
ibly that his daughter was reminded of Talboys.
Saturday morning all three — the Bishop, the vagabond, and Talboys —
started for Charleston. Talboys, however, did not know that the Bishop was
going. He bought Demming's ticket, saw him safely to a seat, and went into
the smoking-car. The Bishop was late, but the conductor, with true South-
ern good-nature, backed the train and took him aboard. He seated himself
in front of Demming, and began to wipe his heated brow.
1861-88] ALICE FRENCH. 603
" Why do they want to have a fire iii the stove this weather ? " said he.
"Well," said the cracker slyly, "you see we hain't all been runnin', an'
we're kinder chilly !"
" Humph ! " said the Bishop. After this there was silence. The train
rolled along ; through the pine woods, past small stations where rose-tree*
brightened trim white cottages, then into the swamp lands, where the moist-
ure painted the bark of tall trees, and lay in shiny green patches among them.
The Southern moss dripping from the giant branches shrouded them in a
weird drapery, soft as mist. There was something dreary and painful, to a
Northern eye, in the scene ; the tall and shrouded trees, the stagnant pools
of water gleaming among them, the vivid green patches of moss, the barren
stretches of sand. The very beauty in it all seemed the unnatural glory of
decay, repelling the beholder. Here and there were cabins. One could not
look at them without wondering whether the inhabitants had the ague, or its
South Carolina synonyme, the " break-bone fever." At one, a bent old woman
was washing. She lifted her head, and Demming waved his hat at her. Then
he glanced at the Bishop, now busy with a paper, and chuckled over some
recollection. He looked out again. There was a man running along the side
of the road waving a red flag. He called out a few words, which the wind of
the train tore to pieces. At the same instant, the whistle of the engine began
a shrill outcry. "Sunthin' 's bust, I reckon," said Demming. And then,
before he could see, or know, or understand, a tremendous crash drowned
his senses, and in one awful moment blended shivering glass and surging
roof and white faces like a horrible kaleidoscope.
The first thing he noticed, when he came to himself, was a thin ribbon of
smoke. He watched it lazily, while it melted into the blue sky, and another
ribbon took its place. But presently the pain in his leg aroused him. He
perceived that the car was lying on one side, making the other side into a
roof, and one open w'indow was opposite his eyes. At the other end the car
was hardly more than a mass of broken seats and crushed sides, but it was
almost intact where he lay. He saw that the stove had charred the wood-
work near it ; hence the smoke, which escaped through a crack and floated
above him. The few people in the car were climbing out of the windows as
best they might. A pair of grimy arms reached down to Demming, and he
heard the brakeman's voice (he knew Jim Herndon, the brakeman, well)
shouting profanely for the " next."
" Whar's the Bishop ? " said Demming.
" Reckon he's out," answered Jim. " Mought as well come yo'self !
H ! you've broke yo' leg ! "
" Pull away, jes the same. I don' wanter stay yere an' roast ! ':
The brakeman pulled him through the window. Demming shut his teeth
hard ; only the fear of death could have made him bear the agony every mo-
tion gave him.
The brakeman drew him to one side before he left him. Demming could
see the wreck plainly. A freight train had been thrown from the track, and
the passenger train had run into it while going at full speed. " The brakes
wouldn't work," Demming heard Jim say. Now the sight was a sorry one—
(304 ALICE FRENCH. [1861-88
a heap of rubbish which had been a freight car ; the passenger engine sprawl-
ing on one side, in the swamp, like a huge black beetle ; and, near it, the two
foremost cars of its train overturned and shattered. The people of both
trains were gathered about the wreck, helplessly talking, as is the manner of
people in an accident. They were, most of them, on the other side of the
track. Xo one had been killed ; but some were wounded, and were stretched
in a ghastly row on car cushions. The few women and children in the train
were collected about the wounded.
" Is the last man out ? " shouted the conductor.
Jim answered, " Yes, all out — no, d it ! I see a coat-tail down here.''
" Look at the fire !" screamed a woman. " Oh, God help him ! The car's
afire ! "
" He's gone up, whoever he is," muttered Jim. " They ain't an axe nor
nothin' on board, an' he's wedged in fast. But come on, boys ! I'll drop in
onct mo' !"
" You go with him," another man said. " Here, you fellows, I can run
fastest; I'll go to the cabin for an axe. Some of you follow me for some
water ! "
Demming saw the speaker for an instant, — an erect little figure in a fop-
pish gray suit, with a "cat's eye" gleaming from his blue cravat. One in-
stant he stood on the piece of timber upon which he had jumped ; the next
he had flung off his coat, and was speeding down the road like a hare.
" D ef 'tahft the Cunnel," said Demming.
" Come on !" shouted Talboys, never slackening his speed. " Hurry ! "
The men went. Demming, weak with pain, was content to look across the
gap between the trains and watch those left behind. The smoke was growing
denser now, and tongues of flame shot out between the joints of wood. They
said the man was at the other end. Happily, the wind blew the fire from him.
Jim and two other men climbed in again. Demming could hear them
swearing and shouting. He looked anxiously about, seeking a familiar figure
which he could not find. He thought it the voice of his own fears, that cry
from within the car. " Good God, it's the Bishop ! " But immediately Jim
thrust his head out of the window, and called: "The Bishop's in hyar !
Under the cyar seats ! He ain't hurt, but we cyant move the infernal things
ter get him out ! "
" Oh, Lordy ! " groaned the vagabond ; " an' I'm so broke up I cyant liff
a han' ter help him ! "
In desperation, the men outside tried to batter down the car walls with a
broken tree limb. Inside, they strained feverishly at the heavy timbers. Vain
efforts all, at which the crackling flames, crawling always nearer, seemed to
mock.
Demming could hear the talk, the pitying comments, the praise of the
Bishop : " Such a good man ! " " His poor daughter, the only child, and her
mother dead I" " They were so fond of each other, poor thing, poor thing ! "
And a soft voice added, " Let us pray ! "
"Prayin5," muttered Demming, "jes like wimmen ! Laws, they don't
know no better. How'll I git ter him ? "
1861-88] ALICE FRENCH. gQ5
He began to crawl to the car, dragging his shattered leg behind him, reck-
less of the throbs of pain it sent through his nerves. " Ef I kin ony stan' it
till I git ter him ! " he moaned. " Burnin' alive's harder nor this." He felt
the hot smoke on his face ; he heard the snapping and roaring of the fire ; he
saw the men about the car pull out Jim and his companions, and perceived
that their faces were blackened.
" It'll cotch me, suah's death ! " said Demming between his teeth. " Well,
'tain't much mattah ! " Mustering all his strength he pulled himself up to
the car window below that from which Jim had just emerged. The crowd,
occupied with the helpless rescuers, had not observed him before. They
shouted at him as one man : "Get down, it's too late !" "You're crazy,
you ! " yelled Jim, with an oath.
" Never you min'," Demming answered coolly. " I know what I'm 'bout,
I reckon."
He had taken his revolver from his breast, and was searching through his
pockets. He soon pulled out what he sought, merely a piece of stout twine ;
and the crowd saw him, sitting astride the trucks, while he tied the string
about the handle of the weapon. Then he leaned over the prison walls, and
looked down upon the Bishop. Under the mass of wood and iron the Bishop
lay, unhurt but securely imprisoned ; yet he had never advanced to the chan-
cel rails with a calmer face than that he lifted to his friend.
" Demming," he cried, "you here I Go back, I implore you ! You can't
save me."
" I know thet, Bishop," groaned the cracker. " I ain't aimin' ter. But I
cyan't let you roast in this yere d barbecue ! Look a yere ! " He lowered
the revolver through the window. " Thar's a pistil, an' w'en th' fire cotches
onter you an' yo' gwine suah's shootin', then put it ter yo' head an' pull the
trigger, an' yo'll be outen it all ! "
The Bishop's firm pale face grew paler as he answered, " Don't tempt me,
Demming! Whatever God sends I must bear. I can't doit!" Demming
paused. He looked steadily at the Bishop for a second ; then he raised the
revolver, with a little quiver of his mouth. " And go away, for God's sake,
my poor friend ! Bear my love to my dear, dear daughter ; tell her that she
has always been a blessing and a joy to me. And remember what I have said
to you, yourself. It will be worth dying for if you will do that ; it will, in-
deed. It is only a short pain, and then heaven ! Now go, Demming. God
bless and keep you. Go ! "
But Demming did not move. " Don' you want ter say a prayer, Bishop ?"
he said in a coaxing tone, — " jes a little mite o? one fur you an' me ? Ye don'
need ter min' 'bout sayin' 't loud. I'll unnerstan' th' intention, an' feel jes
so edified. I will, fur a fac."
" Go, first, Demming. I am afraid for you ! "
" I'm a-gwine, Bishop," said Demming, in the same soft, coaxing tone.
" Don' min' me. I'm all right." He crouched down lower, so that the Bishop
could not see him, and the group below saw him rest the muzzle of the pistol
on the window-sill and take aim.
A gasp ran through the crowd,— that catching of the breath in which over-
606 ALICE FRENCH. [1861-88
taxed feeling relieves itself. " He's doin' the las' kindness he can to him,"
said the brakeman to the conductor, " and by the Lord, he's giv' his own life
to do it!"
The flames had pierced the roof, and streamed up to the sky. Through
the sickening, dull roar they heard the Bishop's voice again :
" Demming, are you gone ? "
The cracker struck a loose piece of wood, and sent it clattering down.
"Yes, Bishop, that wuz me. I'm safe on th' groun'. Good-by, Bishop. I
do feel 'bleeged ter you ; an', Bishop, them chickens wuz the fust time. They
wuz, on my hen ah. Now, Bishop, shet yo' eyes an' pray, for it's a-comin' !"
The Bishop prayed. They could not hear what he said, below. No one
heard save the uncouth being who clung to the window, revolver in hand,
steadily eying the creeping red death. But they knew that, out of sight, a
man who had smiled on them, full of life and hope but an hour ago, was fac-
ing such torture as had tried the martyr's courage, and facing it with as high
a faith.
With one accord men and women bent their heads. Jim, the brakeman,
alone remained standing, his form erect, his eyes fixed on the two iron lines
that made an angle away in the horizon. "Come on !" he yelled, leaping
wildly into the air. " Fo' the Lord's sake, hurry ! D him, but he's the
bulliest runner ! "
Then they all saw a man flying down the track, axe in hand. He ran up to
the car side. He began to climb. A dozen hands caught him. "You're a
dead man if you get in there!" was the cry. "Don't you see it's all
afire ?"
" Try it from the outside, Colonel ! " said the conductor.
" Don't you see I haven't time ?" cried Talboys. " He'll be dead before
we can get to him. Stand back, my men, and, Jim, be ready to pull us both
out!"
The steady tones and Talboys's business-like air had an instantaneous effect.
The crowd were willing enough to be led ; they fell back, and Talboys dropped
through the window. To those outside the whole car seemed in a blaze, and
over them the smoke hung like a pall ; but through the crackling and roaring
and the crash of falling timber came the clear ring of axe-blows, and Talboys's
voice shouting: "I say, my man, don't lose heart ! We're bound to get you
out ! "
"Lordy, he don't know who 'tis," said Demming. "Nobody could see
through that thar smoke ! "
All at once the uninjured side of the car gave way beneath the flames, fall-
ing in with an immense crash. The flame leaped into the air.
" They're gone ! " cried the conductor.
" No, they're not ! " yelled Demming. " He's got him, safe an' soun' ! "
And as he spoke, scorched and covered with dust, bleeding from a cut on his
cheek but holding the Bishop in his arms, Talboys appeared at the window.
Jim snatched the Bishop, the conductor helped out Talboys, and half a dozen
hands laid hold of Demming. He heard the wild cheer that greeted them ;
he heard another cheer for the men with the water, just in sight ; but he heard
1861-88] ALICE FRENCH.
607
no more, for as they pulled him down a dozen fiery pincers seemed tearing at
his leg, and he fainted dead away.
The Bishop's daughter sat in her room, making a very pretty picture, with
her white hands clasped on her knee and her soft eyes uplifted. She looked
sad enough to please a pre-Raphaelite of sentiment. Yet her father, whom
this morning she would have declared she loved better than any one in the
world, had just been saved from a frightful death. She knew the story of his
deliverance. At last she felt that most unexpected thrill of admiration for
Talboys ; but Talboys had vanished. He was gone, it was all ended, and she
owned to herself that she was wretched. Her father was with Demmiug and
the doctors. The poor vagabond must hobble through life on one leg, hence-
forward. " If he lived," the doctor had said, making even his existence as a
cripple problematic. Poor Demming, who had flung away his life to save
her father from suffering, — a needless, useless sacrifice, as it proved, but
touching Louise the more because of its very failure !
At this stage in her thoughts, she heard Sam, the waiter, knocking softly,
outside. Her first question was about Demming. "The operation's ovah,
miss, an' Mr. Demming he's sinkin'," answered Sam, giving the sick man a
title he had never accorded him before, "an' he axes if you'd be so kin' 's to
step in an' speak to him ; he's powerful anxious to see you."
Silently Louise arose and followed the mulatto. They had carried Dem-
ming to the hotel : it was the nearest place, and the Bishop wished it. His
wife had been sent for, and was with him. Her timid, tear-stained face was
the first object that met Louise's eye. She sat in a rocking-chair close to the
bed, and, by sheer force of habit, was unconsciously rocking to and fro, while
she brushed the tears from her eyes. Demming's white face and tangle of
iron-gray hair lay on the pillow near her.
He smiled feebly, seeing Louise. She did not know anything better to do
than to take his hand, the tears brightening her soft eyes. "Laws," said
Demming, " don' do thet. I ain't wuth it. Look a yere, I got sun'thin' ter
say ter you. An' you mustn't min', 'cause I mean well. You know 'bout —
yes'day mahnin'. Mabbe you done what you done not knowin' yo' own min',
— laws, thet's jes girls, — an' I wants yo/i ter know jes what kin' o' feller he
is. You know he saved yo' pa, but you don' know, mabbe, thet he didn't
know 'twas the Bishop till he'd jump down in thet thar flamin' pit o' hell, as
'twere, an' fished him out. He done it jes 'cause he'd thet pluck in him, an'
— don' you go fer ter chippin' in, Gunnel. I'm a dyin' man, an' don' you for-
get it ! Thar he is, miss, hidin' like behin' the bed."
Louise during this speech had grown red to the roots of her hair. She
looked up into Talboys's face. He had stepped forward. His usual composure
had quite left him, so that he made a pitiful picture of embarrassment, not
helped by crumpled linen and a borrowed coat a world too large for him.
" It's just a whim of his," he whispered hurriedly ; "he wanted me to stay.
I didn't know — I didn't understand ! For God's sake, don't suppose I meant
to take such an advantage of the situation ! I am going directly. I shall
leave Aiken to-night."
g() 3 ALICE FRENCH. [1861-88
It was only the strain on her nerves, but Louise felt the oddest desire to
laugh. The elegant Martin cut such a very droll figure as a hero. Then her
eye fell on Demming's eager face, and a sudden revulsion of feeling, a sudden
keen realization of the tragedy that Martin had averted brought the tears
back to her eyes. Her beautiful head dropped. " Why do you go — now ? "
said she.
" Hev you uns made it up, yet ? " murmured Demming's faint voice.
" Yes," Talboys answered, " I think we have, and — I thank you, Deni-
ini ng. " The vagabond waved his hand with a feeble assumption of his familiar
gesture. " Yo' a square man, Cunnel. I allus set a heap by you, though I
didn't let on. An' she's a right peart young lady. I'm glad yo' gwine ter be
so happy. Laws, I kind o' wish I wuz to see it, even on a wooden leg." The
woman at his side began to sob. "Thar, thar, Alwynda, don' take on so;
cyan't be helped. You mus' 'scuse her, gen'lemen ; she so petted on me she
jes cyau't hole in ! "
" Demming," said the Bishop, " my poor friend, the time is short ; is there
anything you want me to do ?" Demming's dull eyes sparkled with a glim-
mer of the old humor.
" Well, Bishop, ef you don' min', I'd like you ter conduc' the fun'al ser-
vices. Reckon they'll be a genuwine co'pse this yere time, fo' suah. An',
Bishop, you'll kind o' look ayfter Alwynda ; see she gets her coffee an' ter-
bacco all right. An' I wants ter 'sure you all again thet them thar chickens
wuz the fust an' ony thing I evah laid han's on t'want mine. Thet's the sol-
emn truf ; ain't it, Alwynda ? "
The poor woman could only rock herself in the chair and sob : " Yes, 'tis.
An' he's been a good husband to me. I've allus hed the bes' uv everything !
Oh, Lordy, 'pears's like I cyan't bear it, nohow ! "
Louise put her hand genily on the thin shoulder, saying : " I will see that
she never wants anything we can give, Demming ; and we will try to comfort
her."
The cracker looked wistfully from her fresh, young face to the worn face
below. " She wuz's peart an' purty's you, miss, w'en I fust struck up with
*er," said he slowly. "Our little gal wuz her very image. Alwynda," in p
singularly soft, almost diffident tone, "don' take on so ; mabbe I'm gwine
fer ter see 'er again. 'Twon't do no harm ter think so, onyhow," he added,
with a glance at Talboys, as though sure there of comprehension.
Then the Bishop spoke, solemnly, though with sympathy, urging the dy-
ing man, whose worldly affairs were settled, to repent of his sins and prepare
for eternity. " Shall I pray for you, Demming ? " he said in conclusion.
" Jes as you please, Bishop," answered Demming, and he tried to wave his
hand. " I ain't noways parti okler. I reckon God A'mighty knows I'd be th'
same ole Demming ef I could get up, an' I don' mean ter make no purtences.
But mabbe it'll cheer up th' ole 'ooman a bit. So you begin, an' I'll bring in
an amen whenever it's wanted ! "
So speaking, Demming closed his eyes wearily, and the Bishop knelt by
the bedside. Talboys and Louise left them thus. After a while, the wife
stretched forth her toil-worn hand and took her husband's. She thought she
1861-88] EDGAR WILSON NTE. gQ9
was aware of a weak pressure. But when the prayer ended there came no
amen. Demming was gone where prayer may only faintly follow ; nor could
the Bishop ever decide how far his vagabond had joined in his petitions.
Such doubts, however, did not prevent his cherishing an assured hope that
the man who died for him was safe, forever. The Bishop's theology, like that
of most of us, yielded, sometimes, to the demands of the occasion.
BORN in Shirley, Me., 1850.
THE PASS CAME TOO LATE.
>rpWAS just after the Thornburg massacre on Milk River, and some time
-L subsequent to the ghastly horror of the White River Agency, and while
we were the neighbors of the mild, gentle Ute, the low-browed but loving
Ute, who murdered poor old Agent Meeker, and dragged his gray head
through the clay with a log-chain about his neck afterward, because he had,
in a cruel and harsh spirit, asked the whole White River tribe to hoe two acres
of their own potatoes !
Our town being more or less of a mining town, and the Utes, especially
under Colorow, the wickedest unhung murderer west of the Missouri, having
prior claims to a good deal of our mining district, which seemed to curse the
most of us with doubt when we went into a prospect hole, as to whether we
would ever come out alive or not, we were watching the reports with a good
deal of interest, and doing very little general prospecting.
It was at the close of one of these apprehensive days that a healthy but ple-
beian-looking party, weighing about two hundred pounds, rapped softly, and
then came into the dugout which we called our office.
I will call him St. Aubrey, because I do not exactly recall his name, and
because I can just remember that he was an Englishman with a French name.
He was a "low-sot" man with an air of neglect about his clothes, such as
most anybody would have after dining and dressing out of a hollow-chested
pack-saddle for six months, during which time he hadn't seen a white man
or a Chinese laundry.
I was sitting on a frontier chair, made of a pine butt with a strap handle
nailed on the top, and administering a dose of kerosene to my " weepon,"
when Mr. St. Aubrey came in.
He didn't try to look pretty, like a toy cowboy with a chamois shirt and a
nine-dollar sombrero with wattles on the side, or wear soft buckskin panta-
loons, trimmed with beads. He was homely, I'll admit, and onery as you
might say, with a tendency toward gastric preponderance. His eyes were
small, and he had a contour like a woodchuck or a prairie-dog after a pros-
perous season. He had the air of a man who might be in search of more
means, and so he didn't impress me very well, for I had been doing a pretty
VOL. x.— 39
610 EDGAR WILSOtf NTE. [1861-88
active business in the way of assisting deserving but busted young people
down toward San Francisco, and then when they had been hungry enough
there, and at the same time jobless, I had helped them to get back to the
States, where the home-nest was just suffering to receive them. So I was coy
when Mr. St. Aubrey said he had called to see me, bearing a note of intro-
duction from the managing editor of the Denver " Tribune." I did not flush
with that keen sense of general jubilee that had soaked into my system when
such a letter was presented to me earlier in the season.
I controlled myself, and kept on swabbing the cylinder of my great blood-
purifier and self-cocking arbitrator. He didn't get mad. He remained
patient, and bided his time.
He said he was a newspaper man. I said yes, this seemed to be a good year
for newspaper men. Several hundred of them had gone to San Francisco dur-
ing the past twelve months in palace cars, returning later on in a more delib-
erate way, by means of the old overland dirt road. I had been the humble
means of half-soling and rehabilitating several myself.
Mr. St. Aubrey did not seem to squirm or get irritated. He just quietly
looked at me, and waited for me to read the note of introduction. I didn't
read it, though, for I am prejudiced against letters of introduction generally,
knowing as I do that they are frequently written under duress, and that be-
tween the lines there is ever and anon a dumb appeal for the recipient to kick
the bearer across a wide sweep of country, in the interests of humanity.
"And so you are going on over to the coast, Mr. St. Aubrey ?" I asked,
feeling certain that he was, and that the meaner I could treat him now the
less likely he would be to assess me on his way back in the fall.
"Yes, sir," he said. " I am the correspondent of the Liverpool ' Courier. '
I've got a whole lot of letters here from prominent Americans, if you would
like to look them over."
He then produced a red cotton handkerchief, containing about forty let-
ters, with tear-stains and bacon gravy on the outside. I waved them aside,
stating that I had so far kept myself aloof from prominent people, mixing up
more with the lowly, as a general thing, where I could have fun.
He took it all in good part, and put the letters back in his pocket. After a
while I asked him if he had his special car this trip, or did he expect to over-
take it on the way ? He said he was just travelling in a plain way by himself,
and that while the overland train was taking twenty minutes for supper, he
had run in to see me.
" And so you have missed your supper to drop in here ? "
"Yes."
"Well, what can I do for you ?" I asked, feeling apprehensively in my
pocket.
" Oh, nothing special. I wasn't very hungry, anyhow, and I thought I
wouldn't go through without seeing you and shaking hands with you."
Well, to be brief about it, I put on my hat and strolled down to the train
with him. He talked like a cultivated American, and when he said that he
was an Englishman, in spite of his odd name, I could not believe it, for he
didn't talk at all like our domestic Englishman.
1861-88] EDGAR WILSON NTE. g-Q
Casually he remarked that he was paying full fare on the railroad, and
asked if I thought he ought to do so, considering that he was a newspaper
man, with the proper credentials. As the local fare was then ten cents a mile,
it cut into the profits, and he wondered if he couldn't at least get half rates.
I then looked over his credentials, and feeling sure that he was entitled to
privileges, agreed to introduce him to the division superintendent.
As soon as we came in, I knew that it was a gone case, for the superintend-
ent showed on his face that he would grant no favors to Mr. St. Auhrey. He
said he was sorry, and all that, and in fact did have that pained look which a
superintendent wears when his whole being gets upon its hind feet and yearns
to give a man a pass, but stern duty just simply will not let him do it.
By that time I began to take an interest in St. Aubrey, especially as it
seemed to me that he was a quiet, modest man, who had some local pride in
himself, though it did not run in the direction of clothes. So I said to him :
" You just telegraph to the general passenger agent, and I'll vouch for your
credentials, and you can have your pass meet you at Green River to-morrow
for breakfast."
He thanked me and forthwith did so. I will add that the pass was there
waiting for him when the train came in, but he was not on the train.
The next day I got a note from him stating that he had stopped off at Rock
Creek, only a few miles up the road, and was working with a section gang for
a couple of days, to get the experience and write it up for his paper. The note
was full of massive English humor, which went to my heart. You know
how pathetic some English humor is. "Well, it was so with this note. It had
parenthetical explanations of preceding humor, and full directions, and a lit-
tle oil-can, and side-notes, and everything that ought to go with an English
joke.
All that he had said to me, and all the letters I had seen introducing him,
had failed to move my stony heart, but when he began to joke with me, my
eyes were moist, and as I finished the letter I began to pity him.
Moreover, I feared that he was concealing the truth from me, and that be-
hind the light and flippant mask of his kiln-dried humor he strove to hide
the fact that he was stranded at Rock Creek, and couldn't reach his pass at
Green River until he had put in a week on the section.
That same day I got a letter from the editor of the " Tribune " saying that
St. Aubrey was up our way somewhere, and that he had been for the past six
weeks travelling alone through the hostile hill country, with no human being
near him except a pearl-gray pack jack, which was almost like no society at
all, and that on a saddle horse he had made the trip through from the Milk
River massacre and the White River Agency, seeing and writing up everything
for his paper, which was just about like going through the regions of the
damned, lengthwise, with a two-gallon bomb in each coat-tail pocket, writing
up the general aspect and resources of the country. In other words St. Aubrey
didn't care a speckled anathema for danger, while we people, with a garrison
two miles away, didn't dare to go to church for fear we would be killed be-
fore we could get there and get our sins forgiven.
I wrote to St. Aubrey and told him that I feared he needed money, and
612 EDGAR WILSON NTE. [1861-88
too poor to ask for it, and I asked him to tell me candidly about it, as I knew
where I could get some under the circumstances. I even went so far as to tell
him that I had just sold my interest in a stove-polish mine at Sabile Pass for
nine dollars, a part of which had already been paid in on the property, and
that if four dollars would be of any use to him, to so state by note sent at once
care of conductor on Number 6.
The letter was on his body when we found him.
The day following he had drawn his pay as a section man, and at evening
had tried to get aboard the west-bound emigrant train as it left Rock Creek.
In the uncertainty of night his foot had slipped, and when we found him,
the whole pitiful story was clear to us all. The wheel had gone over his right
arm and right leg, and then pushed him into a culvert. Realizing that it was
a question of a few agonizing hours — hours which he could spare himself —
he had reached around to his right hip pocket with his left hand, and with
his English bull-dog cut short the little tragedy.
In his pocket we found the letters which neither the superintendent nor I
had cared to read, all strong and cordial indorsement of a brave and modest
man, and in the bosom of his gray flannel shirt there was another letter of
indorsement more powerful and more tender than all the rest. It came en-
tirely unsought, from a warm, true heart away in England. It did not state
in formal terms that the bearer was a man of integrity and worth. It did not
say that he was entitled to respect and esteem, but in every line, and between
the lines, it said :
" You are all I have in the world. Your life is my horizon. Should any-
thing befall you, the sun will shine no more for me. Take care of yourself,
not alone for yourself, but because if you were never, never to return, the
daylight will come to me no more until we meet again beyond all this."
Soiled with frequent handling and powder-burned on one corner, and with
a bright red stain on the envelope, lay his most powerful and most beautiful
letter of indorsement, and in his pocket the little he had earned as a section
man — too little to pay his fare to Green River — and that was all.
In the shadow of the Snowy Range, where the hoary heads of the Rocky
Mountains are on terms of eternal intimacy with the blue sky, on the high
plateau, near the shore of the waterless sea, where the grass is greenest and
the cactus blossoms through the snow, St. Aubrey is buried.
That is all.
In the little frontier graveyard, where most everybody, according to the
tombstones, seems to have been " killed," and where very few have "died,"
lies young St. Aubrey.
A two-line cablegram in the English paper broke the heart that beat for
him alone.
There is no moral to this story. It is just a plain tale, true as to every de-
tail so near as I can recall it after ten years. There is no more to tell. The
tragedy was a brief one, and many a weather-beaten cheek browned by pros-
pecting across dazzling snow and against keen mountain winds was wet as
the curtain went down, and the ghoulish undertaker jerked the leather lines
1861-88] EUGENE FIELD. 613
from under the cheap coffin, and kicking a few yellow clods of mountain soil
into the shallow grave, drove away.
But out of it all came the calm and unruffled railroad " one trip-pass
ahead."
Cugene field*
BORN in St. Louis, Mo., 1850.
DUTCH LULLABY.
[A Little Book of Western Verse. 1889.]
"TTTYNKEN, Blynken, and Nod one night
' ' Sailed off in a wooden shoe, —
Sailed on a river of misty light
Into a sea of dew.
" Where are you going, and what do you wish ? "
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea ;
Nets of silver and gold have we,"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and sung a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea.
" Now cast your nets wherever you wish,
But never af card are we ! "
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
For the fish in the twinkling foam,
Then down from the sky came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home ;
'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be ;
And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
614 EUGENE FIELD. [1861-88
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed ;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock on the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three, —
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
CASEY'S TABLE D'H6TE.
OH, them days on Red Hoss Mountain, when the skies wuz fair 'nd blue,
When the money flowed like likker, 'nd the folks wuz brave 'nd true!
When the nights wuz crisp 'nd balmy, 'nd the camp wuz all astir,
With the joints all throwed wide open 'nd no sheriff to demur!
Oh, them times on Red Hoss Mountain in the Rockies fur away, —
There's no sich place nor times like them as I kin find to-day !
What though the camp hez busted ? I seem to see it still
A-lyin', like it loved it, on that big 'nd warty hill;
And I feel a sort of yearnin' 'nd a chokin' in my throat
When I think of Red Hoss Mountain 'ud of Casey's tabble dote !
Wai, yes; it's true I struck it rich, but that don't cut a show
When one is old 'nd feeble 'nd it's nigh his time to go ;
The money that he's got in bonds or carries to invest
Don't figger with a codger who has lived a life out West;
Us old chaps like to set around, away from folks 'nd noise,
'Nd think about the sights we seen and things we done wheu boys;
The which is why /love to set 'nd think of them old days
When all us Western fellers got the Colorado craze, —
And that is why I love to set around all day 'nd gloat
On thoughts of Red Hoss Mountain 'nd of Casey's tabble dote.
This Casey wuz an Irishman, — you'd know it by his name
And by the facial features appertainin' to the same.
He'd lived in many places 'ud had done a thousand things,
From the noble art of actin' to the work of dealin' kings,
But, somehow, hadn't caught on ; so, driftin' with the rest,
He drifted for a fortune to the undeveloped West,
And lie come to Red Hoss Mountain when the little camp wuz new,
When the money flowed like likker, 'nd the folks wuz brave and true ,
And, havin' been a stewart on a Mississippi boat,
He opened up a caffy 'nd he run a tabble dote.
The bar wuz long 'nd rangey, with a mirror on the shelf,
'Nd a pistol, so that Casey, when required, could help himself;
1861-88] EUGENE FIELD.
Down underneath there wuz a row of bottled beer 'nd wine,
'Nd a kag of Burbun whiskey of the run of '59;
Upon the walls wuz pictures of bosses 'nd of girls,
Not much on dress, perhaps, but strong on records 'nd on curls 1
The which had been identified with Casey in the past,
The bosses 'nd the girls, I mean, —and both wuz mighty fast !
But all these fine attractions wuz of precious little note
By the side of what wuz offered at Casey's tabble dote.
There wuz half-a-dozen tables altogether in the place,
And the tax you had to pay upon your vittles wuz a case;
The boardin'-houses in the camp protested 'twuz a shame
To patronize a robber, which this Casey wuz the same !
They said a case was robbery to tax for ary meal ;
But Casey tended strictly to his biz, 'nd let 'em squeal ;
And presently the boardin'-houses all began to bust,
While Casey kept on sawin' wood 'nd layin' in the dust ;
And oncet a trav'lin' editor from Denver City wrote
A piece back to his paper, puffin' Casey's tabble dote.
A tabble dote is different from orderin' aller cart:
In one case you git all there is, in Pother, only part f
And Casey's tabble dote began in French, — as all begin, —
And Casey's ended with the same, which is to say, with "viu";
But in between wuz every kind of reptile, bird, 'nd beast,
The same like you can git in high-toned restauraws down east;
'Nd windin' up wuz cake or pie, with coffee demy tass,
Or, sometimes, floatin' Ireland in a soothin' kind of sass
That left a sort of pleasant tickliu' in a feller's throat,
'Nd made him hanker after more of Casey's tabble dote.
The very recollection of them puddin's 'nd them pies
Brings a yearnin' to my buzzuin 'nd the water to my eyes;
'Nd seems like cookin' nowadays ain't what it used to be
In camp on Red Hoss Mountain in that year of '63 ;
But, maybe, it is better, 'nd, maybe, I'm to blame—
I'd like to be a-livin' in the mountains jest the same —
I'd like to live that life again when skies wuz fair 'nd blue,
When things wuz run wide open 'nd men wuz brave 'nd true;
When brawny arms the flinty ribs of Red Hoss Mountain smote
For wherewithal to pay the price of Casey's tabble dote.
And you, O cherished brother, a-sleepin' way out West,
With Red Hoss Mountain huggin' you close to its lovin' breast, -
Oh, do you dream in your last sleep of how we use to do,
Of how we worked our little claims together, me 'nd you ?
Why, when I saw you last a smile wuz restin' on your face,
Like you wuz glad to sleep forever in that lonely place ;
And so you wuz, 'nd I'd be, too, if I wuz sleepin' so.
But, bein' how a brother's love ain't for the world to know,
Whenever I've this heartache 'nd this chokin' in my throat,
I lay it all to thinkin' of Casey's tabble dote.
EUGENE FIELD. [1861-88
THE BIBLIOMANIAC'S PRAYER.
KEEP me, I pray, in wisdom's way But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee
That I may truths eternal seek; To keep me in temptation's way,
I need protecting care to-day, — I humbly ask that I may be
My purse is light, my flesh is weak. Most notably beset to-day ;
So banish from my erring heart Let my temptation be a book,
All baleful appetites and hints Which I shall purchase, hold, and keep,
Of Satan's fascinating art, Whereon when other men shall look,
Of first editions, and of prints. They'll wail to know I got it cheap.
Direct me in some godly walk Oh, let it such a volume be
Which leads away from bookish strife, As in rare copperplates abounds,
That I with pious deed and talk Large paper, clean, and fair to see,
May extra-illustrate my life. Uncut, unique, unknown to Lowndes.
THE OLD MAN.
[A Little Book of Profitable Tales. 1889.]
I CALLED him the Old Man, but he wuzn't an old man ; he wuz a little
boy — our fust one; 'nd his gran'ma, who'd had a heap of experience in
sich matters, allowed that he wuz for looks as likely a child as she'd ever
clapped eyes on. Bern' our fust, we sot our hearts on him, and Lizzie named
him Willie, for that wuz the name she liked best, bavin' had a brother Wil-
lyum killed in the war. But I never called him anything but the Old Man,
and that name seemed to fit him, for he wuz one of your sollum babies, — alwuz
thinkin' 'nd thinkin' 'nd thinkin', like he wuz a jedge, and when he laffed it
wuzn'fc like other children's laffs, it wuz so sad-like.
Lizzie 'nd I made it up between us that when the Old Man growed up we'd
send him to collige 'nd give him a lib'ril edication, no matter though we had
to sell the farm to do it. But we never cud exactly agree as to what we wuz
goin' to make of him ; Lizzie havin' her heart sot on his bein' a preacher like
his gran'pa Baker, and I vvantin' him to be a lawyer 'ud git rich out'n the cor-
porations, like his uncle Wilson Barlo\v. So we never come to no definite con-
clusion as to what the Old Man wuz goin' to be bime by ; but while we wuz
thinkin' 'nd debatin' the Old Man kep' growin' 'nd growing and all the time
he wuz as serious 'nd sollum as a jedge.
Lizzie got jest wrapt up in that boy ; toted him round ever'where 'nd never
let on like it made her tired, — powerful big 'nd hearty child too, but heft
warn't nothin' 'longside of Lizzie's love for the Old Man. When he caught
the measles from Sairy Baxter's baby Lizzie sot up day 'nd night till he wuz
well, holdin' his hands 'nd singin' songs to him, 'nd cryin' herse'f almost to
death because she dassent give him coid water to drink when he called f'r it.
As for me, my heart wuz wrapt up in the Old Man, too, but, bein' a man, it
wuzn't for me to show it like Lizzie, bein' a woman ; and now that the Old
1861-88] EUGENE FIELD. gj-j-
Man is — wall, now that he has gone, it wouldn't do to let on how much I sot
by him, for that would make Lizzie feel all the wuss.
Sometimes, when I think of it, it makes me sorry that I didn't show the
Old Man some way how much I wuz wrapt up in him. Used to hold him in
my lap 'nd make faces for him 'nd alder whistles 'nd things ; sometimes I'd
kiss him on his rosy cheek, when nobody wuz lookin' ; oncet I tried to sing
him a song, but it made him cry, 'nd I never tried my hand at singin' again.
But, somehow, the Old Man didn't take to me like he took to his mother :
would climb down outern my lap to git where Lizzie wuz ; would hang on to
her gownd, no matter what she wuz doin', — whether she wuz makin' bread,
or sewin', or puttin' up pickles, it wuz alwuz the same to the Old Man ; he
wuzn't happy unless he wuz right there, clost beside his mother.
Most all boys, as I've heern tell, is proud to be round with their father,
doin' what he does 'nd wearin' the kind of clothes lie wears. But the Old Man
wuz diff 'rent ; he allowed that his mother wuz his best friend, 'nd the way he
stuck to her — wall, it has alwuz been a great comfort to Lizzie to recollect it.
The Old Man had a kind of confidin' way with his mother. Every oncet
in a while, when he'd be playin' by hisself in the front room, he'd call out,
" Mudder, mudder ;" and no matter where Lizzie wuz, — in the kitchen, or
in the wood-shed, or in the yard, she'd answer : " What is it, darlin' ?" Then
the Old Man 'ud say: "Turn here, mudder, I wanter tell you sumfin'."
Never could find out what the Old Man wanted to tell Lizzie ; like's not he
didn't wanter tell her nothin' • may be he wuz lonesome 'nd jest wanted to
feel tnat Lizzie wuz round. But that didn't make no diff'rence ; it wuz all
the same to Lizzie. No matter where she waz or what she wuz a-doin', jest
as soon as the Old Man told her he wanted to tell her somethin' she dropped
ever'thing else 'nd went straight to him. Then" the Old Man would luff one
of his sollum, sad-like laffs, 'nd put his arms round Lizzie's neck 'nd whisper
— or pertend to whisper — somethin' in her ear, 'nd Lizzie would laff 'nd say,
"Oh, what a nice secret we have atween us !" and then she would kiss the
Old Man 'nd go back to her work.
Time changes all things, — all things but memory, nothin' can change that.
Seems like it wuz only yesterday or the day before that I heern the Old Man
callin', "Mudder, mudder, I wanter tell you sumfin'," and that I seen him
put his arms around her neck 'nd whisper softly to her.
It had been an open winter, 'nd there wuz, /fever all around us. The Bax-
ters lost their little girl, and Homer Thompson's children had all been taken
down. Ev'ry night 'nd mornin' we prayed God to save our darlin' ; but one
evenin' when I come up from the wood lot, the Old Man wuz restless 'nd his
face wuz hot 'nd he talked in his sleep. May be you've been through it your-
self,— may be you've tended a child that's down with the fever ; if so, may be
you know what we went through, Lizzie 'nd me. The doctor shook his head
one night when he come to see the Old Man ; we knew what that meant. I
went out-doors,— I couldn't stand it in the room there, with the Old Man
seein' 'nd talkin' about things that the fever made him see. I wuz too big a
coward to stay 'nd help his mother to bear up ; so I went out-doors 'nd brung
in wood, brung in wood enough to last all spring,— and then I sat down
gig EUGENE FIELD. [1861-88
alone by the kitchen fire 'nd heard the clock tick 'nd watched the shadders
flicker through the room.
I remember Lizzie's comin' to me and say in' : " He's breathin' strange-like,
'nd his little feet is cold as ice." Then I went into the front chamber where he
lay. The day wuz breakin' ; the cattle wuz lowin' outside ; a beam of light
come through the winder and fell on the Old Man's face, — perhaps it was the
summons for which he waited and which shall sometime come to me 'nd you.
Leastwise the Old Man roused from his sleep 'nd opened up his big blue eyes.
It wuzn't me he wanted to see.
" Mudder ! mudder ! " cried the Old Man, but his voice warn't strong 'nd
clear like it used to be. " Mudder, where be you, mudder ?"
Then, breshin' by me, Lizzie caught the Old Man up 'nd held him in her
arms, like she had done a thousand times before.
" What is it, darlin' ? Here I be/' says Lizzie.
" Turn here," says the Old Man, — " turn here ; I wanter tell you sumfin V
The Old Man went to reach his arms around her neck 'nd whisper in her
ear. But his arms fell limp and helpless-like, 'nd the Old Man's curly head
drooped on his mother's breast.
A FAIRY GLEE.
FROM the land of murk and mist
Fairy folk are coming
To the mead the dew has kissed,
And they dance where'er they list
To the cricket's thrumming.
Circling here and circling there,
Light as thought and free as air,
Hear them cry, ' ' Oho, oho, "
As they round the rosey go.
Appleblossom, Surnmerdew,
Thistleblow, and Ganderfeather!
Join the airy fairy crew
Dancing on the sward together!
Till the cock on yonder steeple
Gives all faery lusty warning,
Sing and dance, my little people, —
Dance and sing " Oho" till morning!
EJTD OF VOL. X.
INDEX OF AUTHORS, ETC., IN VOL. X.
ABBEY, HENRY
ADAMS, CHARLES FOLLEN 158
" ARISTOCRACY," THE AUTHOR OF
ASTOR, WILLIAM WALDORF
AURINGER, 0. C
BAKER, GEORGE AUGUSTUS
BATES, ARLO
BATES, MARGRET HOLMES
BAYLOR, FRANCES COURTENAY
BEERS, HENRY AUGUSTIN
BELLAMY, EDWARD 586
BELLA w, AMERICUS WELLINGTON 159
BISHOP, WILLIAM HENRY 380
BLOEDE, GERTRUDE
BONER, JOHN HENRY 331
BOWKER, RICHARD ROGERS 484
BOYESEN, HJALMAR HJORTH.
BROTHERTON, ALICE WILLIAMS 864
BROWNE, FRANCIS FISHER.
BUEL, CLARENCE CLOUGH 593
BURDETTE, ROBERT JONES 275
BURNETT, FRANCES HODGSON 498
BYNNER, EDWIN LASSETTER
CABLE, GEORGE WASHINGTON
CARLETON, WILL 311
CARPENTER, AMELIA WALSTIEN
CARPENTER, HENRY BERNARD
CARRYL, CHARLES EDWARD
CHADWICK, JOHN WHITE
CHENEY, JOHN VANCE
CLEVELAND, ROSE ELIZABETH
CLYMER, ELLA DIETZ
COAN, TITUS MUNSON 104
COLLIER, THOMAS STEPHENS 128
COOKE, GEORGE WILLIS
COOLBRITH, INA D 356
CUSTER, ELIZABETH BACON
DE KAY, CHARLES
"DEMOCRACY," THE AUTHOR OF..
DE VERB, MARY AINGE
DICKINSON, ANNA ELIZABETH! . .
DICKINSON, CHARLES MONROE . .
AOE
139
158
325
465
510
522
573
293
473
379
586
159
380
316
331
484
455
364
206
593
275
498
165
259
311
53
62
109
34
453
357
487
104
128
451
356
298
480
320
68
151
m
i
DODD, ANNA BOWMAN
DUFFIELD, SAMUEL WILLOUGHBY
EGGLESTON, GEORGE CART
FAWCETT EDGAR
>A8B
582
208
22
405
613
58
140
415
602
44
28
598
252
282
528
371
440
3
347
90
554
278
562
392
121
276
215
179
303
534
571
510
207
40
549
545
286
FIELD EUGENE
FIELD, KATE
FISKE JOHN
FRENCH ALICE
GARRISON WENDELL PHILLIPS
GIBSON, WILLIAM HAMILTON
GILDER RICHARD WATSON.
GREELY, ADOLPHUS WASHINGTON
GREEN, ANNA K. (See A. K. G. Rohlfs.)
HARBAUGH, THOMAS CHALMERS
HARDY, ARTHUR SHERBURNE
HARRIS, JOEL CHANDLER
HARTE, FRANCIS BRET
HOUGHTON, GEORGE W. W
HOWARD, BLANCHE WILLIS
HUNT, THEODORE WHITEFIELD
JAMES, HENRY, JR
JANVIER, MARGARET THOMSON
JANVIER, THOMAS ALLIBONE
JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
JOHNSO. ,
' tr WiTU-Q
KING. CHARLES
INDEX OF AUTHORS, ETC., IN VOL. X.
KING, CLARENCE ' 197
KING, EDWARD 439
KIRK, ELLEN WARNER OLNEY 130
LANIER, CLIFFORD 297
LANIER, SIDNEY 145
LANIGAN, GEORGE THOMAS 337
LAZARUS, EMMA 492
LEARNED, WALTER 424
LEWIS, CHARLES BERTRAND 160
LODGE, HENRY CABOT 564
LORING, FREDERICK WADS WORTH 472
MABIE, HAMILTON WRIGHT 340
McCABE, WILLIAM GORDON 108
MCDOWELL, KATHARINE SHERWOOD
BONNER 523
MCELROY, WILLIAM HENRY 172
MILLER, CINCINNATUS HINER (Joaquin). 80
MORGAN, APPLETON 342
MORSE, JAMES HERBERT 74
MORSE, JOHN TORREY, JR 35
NADAL, EHRMAN SYME 210
NOBLE, LUCRETIA GRAY 317
NYE, EDGAR WILSON 609
O'REILLY, JOHN BOYLE 231
OSGOOD, KATE PUTNAM 88
PARSONS, GEORGE FREDERIC 70
PERRY, NORA 101
PERRY, THOMAS SERGEANT 308
PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART. (See
E. S. P. Ward.)
PILCH, FREDERICK HENRY 164
POOL, MARIA LOUISE 313
PRESCOTT, MARY NEWMARCH 544
PRESTON, HARRIET WATERS 222
PROUDFIT, DAVID LAW 156
PUTNAM, GEORGE HAVEN .
RIDPATH, JOHN CLARK
ROBINSON, ANNIE DOUGLAS
ROCHE, JAMES JEFFREY
ROHLFS, ANNA KATHARINE GREEN.
SALTUS, FRANCIS SALTUS
SAVAGE, MINOT JUDSON
SCHUYLER, EUGENE
SEARING, LAURA REDDEN
SILL, EDWARD ROWLAND
SMEDES, SUSAN DABNEY
SMITH, MAY RILEY
SNIDER, DENTON JAQUES
STANLEY, HENRY MORELAND
STANSBURY, MARY ANNA PHINNEY.
STODDAED, CHARLES WARREN
STRONG, JOSIAH
SULLIVAN, THOMAS RUSSELL
SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM
THAYER, STEPHEN HENRY
THOMPSON, MAURICE
TOWLE, GEORGE MAKEPEACE
TOWNSEND, GEORGE ALFRED
WALKER, FRANCIS AMASA
WARD, ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS
WATTERSON, HENRY
WEEKS, ROBERT KELLEY
WELCH, PHILIP HENRY
WHITING, CHARLES GOODRICH ,
WILCOX, ELLA WHEELER
WILLIAMS, FRANCIS HOWARD
WILLIAMS, GEORGE WASHINGTON . . ,
WILSON, ROBERT BURNS
WOOLSON, CONSTANCE FENIMORE
120
420
360
533
111
56
43
96
114
171
85
63
137
219
421
529
48
27
225
98
75
31
244
54
37
518
177
336
236
488
553
425
YOUNG, WILLIAM 365
A General Index of Authors and Selections will be found in the Closing Volume.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
The Editors and the Publishers of this work are under obligations to many Pub-
lishing Houses, without whose generous cooperation the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE could not be completed upon its design. Besides our general thanks
to authors, editors, etc., whose copyrighted works are represented in the course of
this series, special acknowledgment is here made to the following proprietors of
matter used in the present volume:
Mr. JOHN B. ALDEN, New York. — Maurice Thompson's Sylvan Secrets in Bird-
Songs and Books.
The AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, New York. — Strong's Our Country.
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